COSETTE




　　　　　　　　BOOK FIRST
　　　　　　WATERLOO



I. WHAT YOU MEET IN COMING FROM LAVILLE



ON a beautiful morning in May, last year (1861), a traveller, hr who tells this story,
was journeying from Nivelles towarrds La Hulpe. He travelled a-foot. He was following,
between two rows of trees, a broad road, undulating over hills, which, one after another,
upheave it and let it fall again, like enormous waves. He has passed Lillois vand Bois-
Seigneur-lsaac. He saw to the west the slated steeple of Braine-l'Alleud, which has the
form of an inverted vase. He had just passed a wood upon a hill, and at the corner of a
crossroad, beside a sort of worm-eaten sign-post, bearing the inscription --Old Toll-Gate,
No. 4--a tavern with this sign: The Four Winds. Echlaleau, Private Cafe.

Half a mile from this tavern, he reached the bottom of a little valley, where a stream flowed
beneath an arch in the embankment of the road. The cluster of trees, thin-sown but very
green, which fills the vale on one side of the road, on the other spreads into meadows,
and sweeps away in graceful disorder towards Braine l'Alleud.

At this point there was at the right. and immediately on the road, an inn, with a four-
wheeled cart before the door, a great bundle of hop-poles, a plough, a pile of dry brush
near a quickset hedge, some lime which was smoking in a square hole in the ground, and a
ladder lying along an old shed with mangers for straw. A young girl was pulling weeds in
a field. where a large green poster, probably of a travelling show at some annual fair,
fluttered in the wind. At the corner of the inn, beside a pond, in which a flotilla of
ducks was navigating, a difficult foot-path lost itself in the shrubbery. The traveller
took this path.

At the end of a hundred paces, passing a wall of the fifteenth century, surmounted by a
sharp gable of crossed bricks, he found himself opposite a great arched stone doorway,
with rectilinear impost, in the solemn style of Louis XIV., and plain medallions on the
sides. Over the entrance wag a severe facade. and a wall perpendicular to the facade almost
touched the doorway. flanking it at an abrupt right angle. On the meadow before the door
by three harrows, through which were blooming, as best they could, all the flowers of May.
The doorway was closed. It was shut by two decrepit folding-doors, decorated with an old
rusty knocker.

The sunshine was enchanting; the branches of the trees had that gentle tremulousness of
the month of May which seems to come from the birds' nests rather than the wind. A spruce
little bird, ' probably in love, was singing desperately in a tall tree.

The traveller paused and examined in the stone at the left of the door, near the ground,
a large circular excavation like the hollow of a sphere. Just then the folding-doors open-
ed, and a peasant woman came out.

She saw the traveller, and perceived what he was examining. "It was a French ball which
did that," said she.

And she added--

"What you see there, higher up, in the door, near a nail, is the hole made by a Biscay
musket. The musket has not gone through the wood."

"What is the name of this place?" asked the traveller

"Hougomont," the woman answered.

The traveller raised his head. He took a few steps and looked over the hedges. He saw in
the horizon, through the trees, a sort of hillock, and on this hillock something which,
in the distance, resembled a lion.

He was on the battle-field of Waterloo.



II. HOUGOMONT



Hougomoont--this was the fatal spot, the beginning of the resis-tance, the first check
encountered at Waterloo by this great butcher of Europe, called Napoleon; the first knot
under the axe.

It was a chateau; it is now nothing more than a farm. Hougomont, to the antiquary, is
Hugomons. This manor was built by Hugo, sire de Somerel, the same who endowed the sixth
chaplainship of the abbey of Villiers.

The traveller pushed open the door, elbowed an old carriage under the porch, and entered
the court.

The first thing that he noticed in this yard was a door of the sixteenth century, which
seemed like an arch, everything having fallen down around it. The monumental aspect is
often produced by ruin. Near the arch opens another door in the wall, with keystones of
the time of 'Henry IV., which discloses the trees of an orchard. Beside this door were a
dung-hill, mattocks and shovels, some carts, an old well with its flag-stone and iron
pulley, a skipping colt, a strutting turkey, a chapel surmounted by a little steeple, a
pear-tree in bloom, trained in espalier on the wall of the chapel; this was the court,
the conquest of which was the aspiration of Napoleon. This bit of earth, could he have
taken it, would perhaps have given him the world. The hens are scattering the dust with
their beaks. You hear a growling: it is a great dog, who shows his teeth, and takes the
place of the English.

The English fought admirably there. The four companies of guards under Cooke held their
ground for seven hours, against the fury of an assaulting army.

Hougomont, seen on the map, on a geometrical plan, comprising buildings and inclosure,
presents a sort of irregular rectangle. one corner of which is cut off. At this corner
is the southern entrance, guarded by this wall, which commands it at the shortest musket
range. Hougomont has two entrances: the southern, that of the chateau, and the northern,
that of the farm. Napoleon sent against Hougomont his brother Jerome. The divisions of
Gunleminot. Foy, and Bachelu were hurled against it; nearly the whole corps of Reille
was there employed and there defeated, and the bullets of Kellermann were exhausted a-
gainst this heroic wall-front. It was too much for the brigade of Bauduin to force Hou-
gomont on the north, and the brigade of Soyc could only batter it on the south--it could
not take it.

The buildings of the farm are on the southern side of the court. A small portion of the
northern door, broken by the French, hangs dangling from the wall. It is composed of four
planks, nailed to two cross-pieces, and in it may be seen the scars of the attack.

The northern door, forced by the French, and to which a piece has been added to replace
the panel suspended from the wall, stands half open at the foot of the court-yard; it is
cut squarely in a wall of stone below, and brick above, and closes the court on the north.
It is a simple cart-door, such as are found on all small farms, composed of two large fold-
ing-doors, made of rustic planks; bevond this are the meadows. This entrance was furiously
contested. For a long time there could be seen upon the door all sorts of prints of bloody
hands. It was there that Bauduin was killed.

The storm of the combat is still in this court: the horror is visible there; the overturn
of the conflict is there petrified; it lives, it dies; it was but yesterday. The walls are
still in death agonies; the stones fall, the breaches cry out; the holes are wounds; the
trees bend and shudder, as if making an effort to escape.

This court, in 1815, was in better condition than i: is today. Structures which have since
been pulled down formed redans. angles, and squares.

The English were barricaded there; the French effected an entrance. but could not maintain
their position. At the side of the chapel, one wing of the chateau. the only remnant which
estate of the manor of I lotsgomont, stands crumbling, one might almost say disembowelled.
The chateau served as donjon; the chapel served as block-house. There was work of extermi-
nation. The French, shot down from all sides, from behind the walls, from the roofs of the
barns, from the bottom of the cellars, through every window, through every air-hole, through
every chink in the stones, brought fagots and fired the walls and the men: the storm of
balls was answered by a tempest of flame.

A glimpse may be had in the ruined wing, through the iron-barred windows, of the dismantled
chambers of a main building; the English guards lay in ambush in these chambers; the spiral
staircase, broken from foundation to roof, appears like the interior of a broken shell. The
staircase has two landings; the English, besieged in the staircase, and crowded upon The up-
per steps, had cut away the lower ones. These are large slabs of blue stone, now heaped to-
gether among the nettles. A dozen steps still cling to the wall: on the first is cut the
image of a trident. These inaccessible steps are firm in their sockets; all the rest re-
sembles a toothless jawbone. Two old trees are there; one is dead, the other is wounded at
the root, and does not leaf out until April. Since 1850 it has begun to grow across the
staircase.

There was a massacre in the chapel. The interior, again restored to quiet, is strange. No
mass has been said there since the carnage. The altar remains, however--a clumsy wooden al-
tar, backed by a wall of rough stone. Four whitewashed walls, a door opposite the altar,
two little arched windows, over the door a large wooden cmcifix, above the crucifix a square
opening in which is stuffed a bundle of straw; in a corner on the ground, an old glazed sash
all broken, such is this chapel. Near the altar hangs a wooden statue of St. Anne of the fif-
teenth century; the head of the infant Jesus has been carried away by a musket-shot. The
French, masters for a moment of the chapel, then dislodged, fired it. The flames filled this
ruin; it was a furnace; the door was burned, the floor was burned, but the wooden Christ
was not burned. The fire ate its way to his feet, the blackened stumps of which only are
visible; then it stopped. A miracle, say the country people. The infant Jesus, decapitated,
was not so fortunate as the Christ.

The walls are covered with inscriptions. Near the feet of the Christ we read this
name: Henquincz. Then these others: Conde de Rio Major Marques y Marquess de
Amagn (Habana). There are French names with exclamation points, signs of anger.
The wall was whitewashed in 1819. The nations were insulting each other un it.

At the door of this chapel a body was picked up holding an axe in its hand. This
body was that of second-lieutenant Legros.

On coming out of the chapel, a well is seen at the left. There are two in this
yard. You ask: why is there no bucket and no pulley to this one.? Because no
water is drawn from it now. Why is no more water drawn from it? Because it is full
of skeletons.

The last man who drew water from that well was Guillaume Van Kylsom. He was a
peasant, who lived in Hougomont, and was gardener there. On the 18th of June,
1815, his family fled and hid in the woods.

The forest about the Abbey of Villiers concealed for several days and several
nights all that scattered and distressed population. Even now certain vestiges
may be distinguished, such as old trunks of scorched trees, which mark the place
of these poor trembling bivouacs in the depths of the thickets.

Fuillaume Van Kylsom remained at Hougomont, "to take care of the chateau," and
hid in the cellar. The English discovered him there. He was torn from his hiding
place, and, with blows of the flat of their swords, the soldiers compelled this
frightened man to wait upon them. They were thirsty; this Guillaume brought them
drink. It was from this well that he drew the water. Many drank their last quaff.
This well, where drank so many of the dead, must die itself also.

After the action, there was haste to bury the corpses. Death has its own way of
embittering victory, and it causes glory to be followed by pestilence. Typhus is
the successor ol triumph. This well was deep, it was made a sepulchre. Three
hundred desd were thrown into it. Perhaps with too much haste. Were they all
dead? Tradition says no. It appears that on the night after the burial, feeble
voices were heard calling out from the well.

This well is isolated in the middle of the courtyard. Three walls, half brick and
half stone, folded back like the leaves of a screen, and imitating a square
turret, surround it on three sides. The fourth side is open. On that side the wa-
ter is drawn. The back wall has a sort of shapeless bull's-eye, perhaps a hole
made by a shell. This turret had a roof. of which only the beams remain. The iron
that sustains the wall on the right is in the shape of a cross. You bend over
the well, the eye is lost in a deep brick cylinder, which is filled with an accum-
ulation of shadows. All around it, the bottom of the walls is covered by nettles.

This well has not in front the large blue flagging stone which serves as a curb
for all the wells of Belgium. The blue stone is re-placed by a cross-bar on
which rest five or six misshapen wooden stumps, knotty and hardened, that resem-
ble huge bones. There is no longer either bucket, or chain, or pulley; but the stone
basin is still there which served for the waste water. The rain water gathers there,
and fron time to time a bird from the neighbouring forest comes to drink and flies
away.

One house among these ruins, the farm-home. is still inhabited. The door of this
house opens upon the court-yard. By the side of pretty Gothic key-hole plate
there is upon the door a handful of iron in trefoil, slanting forward. At the
moment that the Hanover ian lieutenant Wilda was seizing this to take refuge in
the farm house, a French sapper struck off his hand with the blow of an axe.

The family which occupies the house calls the former gardener, Van Kylsom, long
since dead, its grandfather. A grey-haired woman said to us: "I was there. I
was three years old. My sister, larger, was afraid, and cried. They carried us
away into the woods; I was in my mother's arms. They laid their ears to the
ground to listen. For my part, I mimicked the cannon, and I went boom, boom."

One of the yard doors, on the left, we have said, opens into the orchard.

The orchard is terrible.

It is in the three parts, one might almost say in three acts. The first part
is a garden, the second is the orchard, the third is a wood. These three parts
have a common indosure; on the sick of the entrance the buildings of the chateau
and the farm, on the left a hedge, on the right a wall, at the back a wall. The
wall on theright is of brick, the wall on the back is of stone. The garden is
entered first. It is sloping, planted with currant bushes, covered with wild
vegetation, and terminated by a terrace of cut stone, with balusters with a
double swell. It is a seignorial garden, in this first French style, which pre-
ceded the modern; now ruins and .briers. The pilasters are surmounted by globes
which look like stone cannon-balls. We count forty-three balusters still in their
places; the others are lying in the grass, nearly all show some scratches of
musketry. A broken baluster remains upright like a broken leg.

It is in this garden, which is lower than the orchard, that six of the first
Light Voltigeurs, having penetrated thither, and being unable to escape, caught
and trapped like bears in a pit, engaged in a battle with two Hanoverian compan-
ies, one of which was armed with carbines. The Hanoverians were ranged along
these balusters, and fired from above. These voltigeurs, answering from below,
six against two hundred, intrepid, with the currant bushes only for a shelter,
took a quarter of an hour to die.

You rise a few steps, and from the garden pass into the orchard proper. There,
in these few square yards, fifteen hundred men fell in less than a hour. The wall
seems ready to recommence the combat. The thirty-eight loopholes, pierced by
the English at irregular heights, are there yet. In front of the sixteenth, lie two
English tombs of granite. There are no loopholes except in the south-wall, the
principal attack came from that side. This wall is concealed on the outside by
a large quickset hedge; the French came up, thinking there was nothing in their
way but the hedge, crossed it, and found the wall, an obstacle and an ambush,
the English Guards behind, the thirty-eight loopholes pouring forth their fire
at once, a storm of grape and of balls; and Soye's brigade broke there. Waterloo
commenced thus.

The orchard, however, was taken. They had no scaling ladders, but the French
climbed the wall with their hands. They fought hand to hand under the trees.
All this grass was soaked with blood. A battalion from Nassau, seven hundred
men, was annihilated there. On the outside, the wall against which the two bat-
teries of Kellermann were directed, is gnawed by grape.

This orchard is as responsive as any other to the month of May. It has its
golden blossoms and its daisies; the grass is high; farm horses are grazing;
lines on which clothes are drying cross the intervals between the trees, making
travellers bend their heads; you walk over that sward, and your foot sinks in
the path of the mole. In the midst of the grass you notice an uprooted trunk,
lying on the ground, but still growing green. Major Blackmann leaned back against
it to die. Under a large tree near by fell the German general, Duplat, of a
French family which fled on the revocation of the edict of Nantes. Close beside
it leans a diseased old apple tree swathed in a bandage of straw and loam. Nearly
all the apple trees are falling from old age. There is not one which does not
show its cannon ball or its musket shot. Skeletons of dead trees abound in this
orchard. Crows fly in the branches; beyond it is a wood full of violets.

Bauduin killed, Foy wounded, fire, slaughter, carnage, a brook made of English
blood, of German blood, and of French blood, mingled in fury; a well filled with
corpses, the regiment of Nassau and the regiment of Brunswick destroyed, Duplat
killed, Blackmann killed, the English Guards crippled, twenty French battalions,
out of the forty of Reille's corps, decimated, three thousand men, in this one
ruin of Hougomont, sabred, slashed, slaughtered, shot, burned; and all this in
order that today a peasant may say to a traveller: Monsieur, give me three
francs; if you like, I will explain to you the affair of Waterloo.



III. THE 18TH OF JUNE, 1815



LET us go back, for such is the stow-teller's privilege, and place ourselves
in the year 1815, a little before the date of the commencement of the action
narrated in the first part of this book.

Had it not rained on the night of the 17th of June, 1815, the future of Europe
would have been changed. A few drops of water more or less prostrated Napoleon.
That Waterloo should be the end of Austerlitz, Providence needed only a little
rain, and an unseasonable cloud crossing thee sky sufficed for the overthrow of
a world:

The battle of Waterloo--and this gave Blucher time to come up--could not be com-
menced before half-past eleven. Why? Because the ground was soft. It was neces-
sary to wait for it to acquire some little firmness that the artillery could manoeuvre.

Napoleon was an artillery officer, and he never forgot it. The foundation of
this prodigious captain was the man who, in his report to the Directory upon
Aboukir, said: Such of our balls killed six men. All his plans of battle were
made for projectiles. To converge. the artillery upon a given point was his key
of victory. tk f 'cto He treated the strategy of the hostile general as a cit-
adel, and battered it to a breach. He overwhelmed the weak point with grape;
he joined and resolved battles with cannon. There was marksmanship in his gen-
ius. To destroy squares, to pulverise regiments, to break lines, to crush and
disperse masses, all this was for him, to strike, strike, strike incessantly,
and he entrusted this duty to the cannon ball. A formidable method, which,
joined to genius, made this sombre athlete of the pugilism of war invincible
for fifteen years.

On the 18th of June, 1815, he counted on his artillery the more because he had
the advantage in numbers. Wellington had only a hundred and fifty-nine guns;
Napoleon had two hundred and forty.

Had the ground been dry, and the artillery able to move, the ac-tion would have
been commenced at six o'clock in the morning. The battle would have been won
and finished at two o'clock, three hours before the Prussians turned the scale
of fortune.

How much fault is there on the part of Napoleon in the loss of this battle? Is
the shipwreck to be imputed to the pilot?

Was the evident physical decline of Napoleon accompanied at this time by a cor-
responding mental decline? had his twenty years of war worn out the sword as
well as the sheath, the soul as well as the body? was the veteran injuriously
felt in the captain? in a word, was that genius, as many considerable historians
have thought, under an eclipse? had he put on a frenzy to disguise his enfeeble-
ment from himself? did he begin to waver, and be bewildered by a random blast?
was he becoming, a grave fault in a general, careless of danger? in that class
of material great men who may be called the giants of action, is there an age
when their genius becomes short-sighted? Old age has no hold on the geniuses of
the ideal; for the Dantes and the Michael Angelos, to grow old is to grow great;
for the Hannibals and the Bonapartes is it to grow less? had Napoleon lost his
clear sense of victory? could he no longer recognise the shoal, no longer div-
ine the snare, no longer discern the crumbling edge of the abyss? had he lost
the instinct of disaster? was he, who formerly knew all the paths of triumph,
and who, from the height of his flashing car, pointed them out with sovereign
finger, now under such dark hallucination as to drive his tumultuous train of
legions over the precipices? was he seized, at forty-six years, with a sup-
reme madness? was this titanic driver of Destiny now only a monstrous break?
neck?

We think not.

His plan of battle was, all confess, a masterpiece. To march straight to the
centre of the allied line, pierce the enemy, cut them in two, push the British
half upon Hal and the Prussian half upon Tongres, make of Wellington and Blucher
two fragments, carry Mont Saint Jean, seize Brussels, throw the German into the
Rhine, and the Englishman into the sea. All this, for Napoleon, was in this bat-
tle. What would follow, anybody can see.

We do not, of course, profess to give here the history of Waterloo; one of the
scenes that gave rise to the drama which we are describing hangs upon that battle;
but the history of the battle is not our subject; that history moreover is told,
and told in a masterly way, from one point of view by Napoleon, from the other
point of view by Charras. As for us, we leave the two historians to their contest;
we are only a witness at a distance, a passer in the plain, a seeker bending over
this ground kneaded with human flesh, taking perhaps appearances for realities;
we have no right to cope in the name of science with a mass of facts in which
there is doubtless some mirage; we have neither the military experience nor the
strategic ability which authorises a system; in our opinion, a chain of accidents
overruled both captains at Waterloo; and when destiny is called in this mysterious
accused, we judge like the people, that artless judge.



IV A



THOSE who would get a clear idea of the battle of Waterloo have only to lay
down upon the ground in their mind a capital A. The left stroke of the t'-s
the road from Nivelles, the right stroke is the road from. Genappe, the cross
of the A is the sunken road from Ohain to Braine l'Alleud. The top of the A
is Mont Saint Jean, Wellington is there; the left-hand lower point is Hougomont
Reille is there with Jerome Bonaparte; the right-hand lower t:iutint is La Belle
Alliance, Napoleon is there. A little below the point where Zaciross of the A
meets and cuts the right stroke, is La Haie Sainte. At the ule of this cross is
the precise point where the final battle-word was hero. Spoken. There the lion
is placed, the involuntary symbol of the supreme heroism: of the Imperial Guard.

The triangle contained at the top of the A, between the two strokes between the
two strokes and the cross. is the plateau Uf Mn: Saint ir.tn I he -mil:- gle
for this plateau was the whole of the battle.

The wings of the two tanks extended to the right and kit of the two roads from
Genappe and from Nivelks D'Erlon opposite Picton. Reille opposite Hill.

Behind the point of the A, behind the plateau of Mont SaintJean, is the forest
of Soignes.

As to the plain itself, we must imagine a vast undulating country each wave com-
manding the next, and these undulations rising towards Mont Saint Jean, are
there bounded by the forest.

Two hostile armies upon a field of battle are two wrestlers. Their arms are locked;
each seeks to throw the other. They grasp at every aid; a thicket is a point of
support; a corner of a wall is a brace for the shoulder; for lack of a few sheds
to lean upon a regiment loses its footing; a depression in the plain, movement of
the soil, a convenient cross path, a wood, a ravine, may catch the heel of this col-
ossus which is called an army, and prevent him from falling. He who leaves the field
is beaten. Hence, for the responsible chief, the necessity of examining the smallest
tuft of trees and appreciating the slightest details of contour.

Both generals had carefully studied the plain of Mont Saint Jean, now called the
plain of Waterloo. Already in the preceding year, Wellington, with the sagacity of
prescience, had examined it as a possible site for a great battle. On thisground
and for this contest Wellington had the favourable side, Napoleon the unfavourable.
The English army was above, the French army below.

To sketch here the appearance of Napoleon, on horseback, glass in hand, upon the
heights of Rossomtne, at dawn on the 18th of June, 1815, would be almost superfluous.
Before we point him out, everybody has seen him. This calm profile under the little
chapeau of the school of Brienne, this green uniform, the white facings concealing
the stars on his breast, the overcoat concealing the epaulets, the bit of red sash
under the waistcoat, the leather breeches, the white horse with his housings of pur-
ple velvet with crowned N.'s and eagles on the corners, the Hessian boots over silk
stockings, the silver spurs, the Marengo sword, this whole form of the last Caesar
lives in all imaginations, applauded by half the world, reprobated by the rest.

That form has long been fully illuminated; it did have a certain traditional obscur-
ity through which most heroes pass, and which always veils the truth for a longer
or shorter time; but now the history is luminous and complete.

This light of history is pitiless; it has this strange and divine quality that, all
luminous as it is, and precisely because it is luminous, it often casts a shadow
just where we saw a radiance; of the same man it makes two different phantoms, and
the one attacks and punishes the other, and the darkness of the despot struggles
with the splendour of the captain. Hence results a truer measure in the final judg-
ment of the nations. Babylon violated lessens Alexander; Rome enslaved lessens Cae-
sar; massacred Jerusalem lessens Titus. Tyranny lessens Titus. Tyranny follows the
tyrant. It is woe to a man to leave behind him a shadow which has his form.



V. THE QUID OBSCURUM OF BATTLES



EVERBODY KNOWS the first phase of this battle; the difficult opening, uncertain,
hesitating, threatening for both armies, but for the English still more than for
the French.

It had rained all night; the ground was softened by the shower; water lay here
and there in the hollows of the plains as in basins; at some points the wheels
sank into the axles; the horses' girths dripped with liquid mud; had not the wheat
and rye spread down by that multitude of advancing carts filled the ruts and made
a bed under the wheels, all movement, particularly in the valleys on the side of
Papelotte, would have been impossible.

The affair opened late; Napoleon, as we have explained, had a habit of holding
all his artillery in hand like a pistol, aiming now at one point, anon at another
point of the battle, and he desired to wait until the field-batteries could wheel
and gallop freely; for this the sun must come out and dry the ground. But the sun
did not come out. He had not now the field of Austerlitz. When the first gun was
fired, the English General Colville looked at his watch and noted that it was
thirty-five minutes past eleven.

The battle commenced with fury, more fury perhaps than the emperor would have
wished, by the left wing of the French at Hougomont. At the same time Napoleon
attacked the centre by hurling the brigade of Quiot upon La Haie Sainte, and Ney
pushed the right wing of the French against the left wing of the English
which rested upon Papelotte.

The attack upon Hougomont was partly a feint; to draw Wellington that way, to make
him incline to the left; this was the plan. This plan would have succeeded had not
the four companies of the English Guards, and the brave Belgian; of Perponcher's
division, resolutely held the position, enabling Wellington, instead of massing
his forces upon that point, to limit himself to reinforcing them only by four add-
itional companies of guards, and a Brunswick battalion.

The attack of the French right wing upon Papelotte was intended to overwhelm the
English left, cut the Brussels road, bar passage of the Prussians, should they come,
to carry Mont Saint Jean drive back Wellinton upon Hougomont, from thence upon Braine
l'Alleud, from thence upon Hal; nothing is clearer. With the exception of a few inci-
dents, this attack succeeded. Papelotte was taken; La Haie Sainte was carried.

Note a circumstance. There were in the English infantry, particularly in Kempt's bri-
gade, many new recruits. These young soldiers, before our formidable infantry, were
heroic; their inexperience bore itself boldly in the affair; they did especially good
service as skirmishers; the soldier as a skirmisher, to some extent left to himself,
becomes, so to speak, his own general; these recruits exhibited something of French
invention invention and French fury. This raw infantry showed enthusiasm. That dis-
pleased Wellington.

After the capture of La Haie Sainte, the battle wavered.

There is in this day from noon to four o'clock, an obscure interval; the middle of
this battle is almost indistinct, and partakes of the thickness of the conflict.
Twilight was gathering. You could perceive vast fluctuations in this mist, a giddy
mirage, implements of war now almost unknown, the flaming colbacks, the waving sabre-
taches, the crossed shoulder-belts, the grenade cartridge boxes, the dolmans of the
hussars, the red boots with a thousand creases, the heavy shakos festooned with
fringe, the almost black infantry of Brunswick united with the scarlet infantry of
England, the English soldiers with great white circular pads on their sleeves for
epaulets, the Hanoverian light horse, with their oblong leather cap with copper
bands and flowing plumes of red horse-hair, the Scotch with bare knees and plaids,
the large white gaiters of our grenadiers; tableaux, not strategic lines, the need
of Salvator Rosa, not of Gribeauval.

A certain amount of tempest always mingles with a battle, Quid obscurum, quid
divinum. Each historian traces the particular lineament which pleases him in this
hurly-burly. Whatever may be the combinations of the generals, the shock of armed
masses has incalculable recoils in action, the two plans of the two leaders enter
into each other, and are disarranged by each other. Such a point of the battle-
field swallows up more combatants than such another, as the more or less spongy
soil drinks up water thrown upon it faster or slower. You are obliged to pour out
more soldiers there than you thought. An unforeseen expenditure. The line of battle
waves and twists like a thread; streams of blood flow regardless of logic; the
fronts of the armies undulate; regiments entering or retiring make capes and gulfs;
all these shoals are continually swaying back and forth before each other; where
infantry was, artillery comes; where artillery was, cavalry rushes up, battalions
are smoke. There was something there; look for it; it is gone; the vistas are dis-
placed; the sombre folds advance and recoil; a kind of sepulchral wind pushes for-
wards, crowds back, swells and disperses these tragic multitudes. What is a hand
to hand fight? an oscillation. A rigid mathematical plan tells the story of a min-
ute, and not a day. To paint a battle needs those mighty painters who have chaos
in their touch. Rembrandt is better than Vandermeulen. Vandemeulen, exact at noon,
lies at three o'clock. Geometry deceives; the hurricane alone is true. This is
what gives Folard the right to contradict Polybius. We must add that there is always
a certain moment when the battle degenerates into a combat, particularises itself,
scatters into innumerable details, which, to borrow the expression of Napoleon him-
self. "belong rather to the biography of the regiments than to the history of the
army." The historian, in this case, evidently has the right of abridgment. He can
only seize upon the principal outlines of the struggle, and it is given to no nar-
rator, however conscientious he may be, to fix absolutely the form of this hor-
rible cloud which is called a battle.

This, which is true of all great armed encounters, is particularly applicable to
Waterloo.

However, in the afternoon, at a certain moment, the battle assumed precision.



VI. FOUR O'CLOCK IN THE AFTERNOON



TOWARDS four o'clock the situation of the English army was serious. The Prince of
Orange commanded the centre, I ItII the right wing, Pieton the left wing. The
Prince of Orange. desperate and intrepid, cried to the!Janosto-Belgian%: Nassau!
Brunswick never retreat! Hill, exhausted, had fallen back upon Wellington. Picion
was dead. At the very moment that the English had taken from the French the colours
of the 105th of the line, the French had killed General Picton by a ball through
the head. For Wellington the battle had two points of support, I Iougonit nit and
la!hale Sainte; Hougomont still held out, but was burning; La I laic Sainte had
been taken. Of the German battalion which defended it, forty-two men only survived;
all the officers, except five, were dead or prisoners. Three thousand combatants
were massacred in that grange. A sergeant of the English Guards, the best boxer
in England. reputed invulnerable by his comrades, had been killed by a little
French drummer. Baring had been dislodged. Allen put to the sword. Several col-
ours had been lost, one belonging to Allen's division, and one to the Luneburg
battalion, borne by a prince of the family of DeuxPouts. The Scotch Grays were no
more: Ponsonby's heavy dragoons had been cut to pieces. That valiant cavalry had
given way before the lancers of Bro and the cuirassiers of Travers; of their
twelve hundred horses there remained six hundred; of three lieutnant-colonels,
two lay on the ground, Hamilton wounded, Mather killed. Ponsonby had tallest.
pierced with seven thructc of a lance. Gordon was dead, Marsh was dead. Two slivi,
innc, the fifth aral the sixth. were destroyed.

Hougomont yielding. La Haie Sainte takcti, there was but one knot left, the
centre. That still held. Wellington reinforced it called thither Hill who was
at Merbe Braine, and Chasse who was at Braine l'Alleud

The centre of the English army, slightly concave, very dense and very compact,
held a strong position. It occupied the plateau of Mont Saint Jean, with the vil-
lage behind it and in front the declivity, which at that time was steep. At the
rear it rested on this strong stone-house, then an outlying property of Nivelles,
which marks the intersection of the roads, a sixteenth century pile so solid that
the balls ricocheted against it without injuring it. All about the plateau, the English
had cut away the hedges here and there, made embrasures in the hawthorns,
thrust the mouth of a cannon between two branches, made loopholes in the thickets.
Their artillery was in ambush under the shrubbery. This punic labour, undoubtedly
fair in war, which allows snares, was so well done that Haxo, sent by the emperor
at nine o'clock in the morning to reconnoitre the enemy's batteries, saw nothing
of it, and returned to tell Napoleon that there was no obstacle, except the two
barricades across the Nivelles and Genappe roads. It was the season when grain is
at its height; upon the verge of the plateau, a battalion of Keropes brigade, the
95th, armed with carbines, was lying in the tall wheat.

Thus supported and protected, the centre of the Anglo-Dutch army was well situated.

The danger of this position was the forest of Soignes, then contiguous to the bat-
tle-field and separated by the ponds of Groenendael and Boitsfort. An army could not
retreat there without being routed; regiments would have been dissolved immediately,
and the artillery would have been lost in the swamps. A retreat, according to the
opinion of many military men--contested by others, it is true--would have been an
utter rout.

'Wellington reinforced this centre by one of Chasse's brigades, taken from the right
wing, and one of Wincke's from the left in addition to Clinton's division. To his
English, to Halkett's regiments, to Mitchell's brigade, to Maitland's guards, he
gave as supports the infantry of Brunswick, the Nassau contingent, Kleimansegge's
Hanovenans, and Ompteda's Germans. The right wing, as Charras says, was bent back
behind the centre. An enormous battery was faced with sand-bags at the place where
now stands what is called "the Waterloo Museum." Wellington had besides, in a lit-
tle depression of the ground, Somerset's Horse Guards, fourteen hundred. This was
the other half of that English cavalry, so justly celebrated. Ponsonby destroyed,
Somerset was left.

The battery, which, finished, would have been almost a redoubt, was disposed behind
a very low garden wall, hastily covered with sand-bags and a broad, sloping bank of
earth. This work was not finished; they bad not time to stockade it.

Wellington, anxious, but impassible, was on horseback, and remained there the whole
day in the same attitude, a little in from of the old mill of Mont Saint Jean, which
is still standing. under an elm which an Englishman, an enthusiastic vandal, has
since bought for two hundred francs, cut down and carried away. Wellington was
frigidly heroic. The balls rained down. His aide-de-camp, Gordon, had just fallen
at his side. Lord Hill, showing him a bursting shell, said: My Lord, what are your
instructions. and what orders do you leave us, if you allow yourself to be killed?--
To follow my example, answered Wellington. To Clinton, he said laconically: Hold this
spot to the last man. The day was clearly going badly. Wellington cried to his old
companions of Talavera, Vittoria, and Salamanca: Boys! We must not be beat: what
would they say of us in England!

About four o'clock, the English line staggered backwards. All at once only the art-
illery and the sharp-shooters were seen on the crest of the plateau, the rest disap-
peared; the regiments, driven by the shells and bullets of the French, fell back
into the valley now crossed by the cow-path of the farm of Mont Saint Jean; a retro-
grade moyement took place, the battle front of the English way slipping. away, Well-
ington gave ground. Beginning retreat! cried Napoleon.



VII. NAPOLEON IN GOOD HUMOR




THE emperor, although sick and hurt in his saddle by a local affliction, had never
been in so good humour as on that day, Since morning, his impenetrable countenance
had worn a smile. On the 18th of June. 1815, that profound soul masked in marble, shone
obscurely forth. The dark-browned man of Austerlitz was gay at Waterloo. The greatest,
when foredoomed, present these contradictions. Our joys are shaded. The perfect smile
belongs to God alone.

Ridet Caesar, Pompeiuts flebit, said the legionaries of the Fulminatrix Legion. Pom-
pey at this time was not to weep. but it is certain that Caesar laughed.

From the previous evening, and in the night, at one o'cle,eh. exploring on horseback,
in the tempest and the rain, with Itertrant the hills near Rossomtne, and gratified
to see the long line of the English fires illuminating all the horizon from Frischemont
to Braine-l'Alleud, it had seemed to him that destiny, for which he had made an
appointment. for a certain day upon the field of Watertrloo, was punctual: he stopped
his horse. and remained some time motionless, watching the lightning and listening
to the thunder; this fatalist was heard to utter in the darkness these myserious
words: "We are in accord." Napoleon was deceived. They were no longer in accord.

He had not taken a moment's sleep; every instant of that night had brought him a new
joy. He passed along the whole line of the advanced guards, stopping here and there
to speak to the pickets. At half-past two, near the wood of Hougomont, he heard the
tread of a column in march; he thought for a moment that Wellington was falling back.
He said: It is the English rear guard startineo get away. I shall take the six thou-
sand Englishmen who have just arrived at Ostend prisoners. He chatted freely; he had
recovered that animation of the disembarkation of the first of March; when he showed
to the Grand Marshal the enthusiastic peasant of Gulf Juan crying: Well, Bertrand,
there is a reinforcement already! On the night of the 17th of June, he made fun of
Wellington: This little Englishman must have his lesson, said Napoleon. The rain re-
doubled; it thundered while the emperor was speaking.

At half-past three in the morning one illusion was gone; officers sent out on a recon-
naissance announced to him that the enemy was making no movement. Nothing was stir-
ring, not a bivouac fire was extinguished. The English army was asleep. Deep silence
was upon the earth; there was no noise save in the sky. At four o'clock, a peasant
was brought to him by the scouts; this peasant had acted as guide to a brigade of
English cavalry, probably Vivian's brigade on its way to take position at the vil-
lage of Ohain, at the extreme left. At five o'clock, two Belgian deserters reported
to him that they had just left their regiment, and that the English army was expect-
ing a battle. So much the better! exclaimed Napoleon, I would much rather cut them
to pieces than repulse them.

In the morning, he alighted in the mud, upon the high bank at the corner of the road
from Planchenoit, had a kitchen table and a peasant's chair brought from the farm of
Rossomme, sat down, with a bunch of straw for a carpet, and spread out upon the table
the plan of the battle-field, saying to Soult: "Pretty chequer-board!"

In consequence of the night's rain, the convoys of provisions, mired in the softened
roads, had not arrived at dawn; the soldiers had not slept, and were wet and fasting;
but for all this Napoleon cried out joyfully to Ney: We have ninety chances in a hundred.
At eight o'clock the emperor's breakfast was brought. He had invited several generals.
While breakfasting, it was related, that on the night but one before, Wellington was at
a ball in Brussels, given by the Duchess of Somerset; and Soult, rude soldier that he
was, with his archbishop's face, said: The ball is today. The emperor jested with Ney,
who said: Wellington will not be so simple as to wait for your majesty. This was his
manner usually. He was fond of joking, says Fleury de Chaboulon. His character at bottom
was a playful humour, says Gourgaud. He abounded in pleasantries, oftener grotesque
than witty, says Benjamin Constant. These gaieties of a giant are worthy of remembrance.
He called his grenadier, "tbr growlers;" he would pinch their ears and would pull their
mustaches. The emperor did nothing but play tricks on us: so one of them said. During
the mysterious voyage from the Wand of Etta to France, on the 27th of February, in the
open sea. the French brig-of-war Zephyr having met the brig Inconstant, on which Napol-
eon was concealed, and having asked the Inconstant for news of Napoleon, the emperor,
who still had on his hat the white and amaranth cockade, sprinkled with bees, adopted
by him in the island of Elba, took the speaking trumpet, with a laugh, and answered
himself: the emperor is getting on finely. He who laughs in this way is on familiar
terms with events; Napoleon had several of these bursts of laughter during his Water-
loo breakfast. After breakfast. for a quarter of an hour, he collected his thoughts:
then two generals were seated on the bundle of straw, pen in hand, and paper on knee,
and the emperor dictated the order of battle.

At nine o'clock, at the instant when the French army. drawn up and set in motion in five
columns, was deployed, the divisions urn two lines. the artillery between the brigades.
music at the head. playing marches, with the rolling of drums and the sounding of trum-
pets--mighty, vast, joyous,---a sea of casques. sabres, and bayonets in the horizon, the
emperor. excited, cried out, and repeated: "Magnificent! magnificent!"

Between nine o'clock and half-past ten, the whole army, which seems incredible, had tak-
en position, and Iva, ranged in six lines, forming, to repeat the expression of the em-
peror, "the figure of six V's." A few moments after the formation of the line of battle,
in the midst of this profound silence, like that at the commencement of a storm, which
precedes the fight, seeing as they filed by the three batteries of twelve pounders, de-
tached by his orders from the three corps of D'Esion, Relic, and Lobau, to commence the
action In attacking Mont Saint Jean at the intersection of the roads from NI: elks and
Genappe, the emperor struck I inso on the shoulder, There are twenty- four pretty girls,
General.

Sure of the event, he encouraged with a smile, as they passed before him, the
company of sappers of the first corps, which he had designated to erect barr-
icades in Mont Saint Jean. as soon as the village was carried. All this serenity
was disturbed by but a word of haughty pity; on seeing, massed at his left, at
a place where there is today a great tomb, those wonderful Scotch Grays, with
their superb horses, he said: "It is a pity."

Then he mounted his horse, rode forward from Rossome, and chose for his point of
view a narrow grassy ridge, at the right ofthe road from Grenappe to Brussels,
which was his second station during the battle. The third station, that of seven
o'clock betweenLa Belle Alliance and La Wale Sainte is terrible; it is a consid-
erable hill which can still be seen, and behind which the guard was massed in a
depression of the plain. About this hill the balls ricocheted over the paved road
up to Napoleon. As at Brienne, he had over his headthe whistling of balls and bul-
lets. There have been gathered, old upon the spot pressed by his horse's feet,
crushed bullets, old sabreblades, and shapeless projectiles, eaten with rust. Scara
rubigine. Some years ago, a sixty-pound shell was dug up there, still loaded, the
fuse having broken off even with the bomb. It was at this last station that the
emperor said to his guide Lacoste, a hostile peasant, frightened, tied to a hussar's
saddle, turning around at every volley of grape, and trying to hide behind Napoleon:
Dolt, this is shameful. You will get yourself shot in the back. He who writes these
lines has himself found in the loose slope of that hill, by turning up the earth,
the remains of a bomb, disintegrated by the rust of forty-six years, and some old
bits of iron which broke like alder twigs in his finger.

The undulations of the diversely inclined plains, which were the theatre of the en-
counter of Napoleon and Wellington, are, as everybody knows, no longer what they
were on the 18th of June, 1815. In taking from that fatal field wherewith to make
its monument, its real form was destroyed: history, disconcerted, no longer recognises
herself upon it. To glorify it, it has been disfigured. Wellington, two years after-
wards, on seeing Waterloo, exclaimed: They have changed my battle-field Where to-
day is the great pyramid of earth surmounted by the lion, there was a ridge which
sank away towards the Nivelles road in a practicable slope, but which, above the
Genappe road, was almost an escarpment. The elevation of this escarpment, silent
may be measured today by the height of the two great burial mounds which embank
the road from Genappe to Brussels; the English tomb at the left, the German tomb
at the right. There is no French tomb. For France that whole plain is a sepulchre.
Thanks to thousands and thousands of loads of earth used in the mound of a hundred
and fifty feet high and a half a mile in circuit, the plateau of Mont St. Jean is
accessible by a gentle slope; on the day of the battle, especially on the side of
La Hale Sainte, the declivity was steep and abrupt. The descent was there so prec-
ipitous that the English artillery did not see the farm below them at the bottom
of the valley, the centre of the combat. On the 18th of June, 1815, the rain had
gullied out this steep descent still more; the mud made the ascent still more dif-
ficult; it was not merely laborious, but men actually stuck in the mire. Along the
crest of the plateau ran a sort of ditch, which could not possibly have been sus-
pected by a distant observer.

What was this ditch? we will tell. Braine l'Alleud is a village of Belgium. Ohain
is another. These villages, both hidden by the curving of the ground, are con-
nected by a road about four miles long which crosses an undulating plain, often
burying itself in the hills like a furrow, so that at certain points it is a rav-
ine. In 1815, as now, this road cut the crest of the plateau of Mont Saint Jean
between the two roads from Genappe and Nivelles; only, today it is on a level
with the plain; whereas then it was sunk between high bank,. It's two slopes were
taken away for the monumental mound. That road was and is still a trench for the
greater part of its length: a trench in some parts a dozen feet deep, the slopes
of which are so steep as to slide down here and there, especially in winter,
after showers. Accidents happen there. The road was so narrow at the entrance of
Braine l'Allend that a traveller was once crushed by a waggon as is attested by
a stone cross standing near the cemetery, which gives the name of the dead. Mon-
sieur Bernard Petty, snerchant of Brussels, and the date of the accident, February,
1637,' It was so deep at the plateau of Mont Saint Jean, that a peasant, Matthew
Nicaise, had been crushed there in 1783 by thy falling of the bank, as another
stone cross attested; the top of this has disappeared in the changes, but its o-
verturned pedestal is still visible upon the sloping bank at the left of the road
between Li I laic Sainte and the farm of Mont Saint Jean.

On the day of the battle, this sunken road, of which nothing gave warning, along
the crest of Mont Saint Jean, a ditch at the summit of the escarpment, a trench
concealed by the ground, was invisible, that is to say terrible.



VIII. THE EMPEROR PUTS A QUESTION TO THE GUIDE LACOSTE



On the morning of Waterloo then, Napoleon was satisfied.

He was right; the plan of battle which he had conceived, as we have shown, was indeed
admirable.

After the battle was once commenced, its very diverse fortune, the resistance of Hou-
gomont, the tenacity of I.a link Sainte, Banduin killed, For put hors de ronthat, the unex-
pected wall against which Snye's brigade was broken, the fatal blunder of Gunk:it:not in
having neither grenades nor powder, the miring of the batteries, the fifteen pieces without
escort cut off by Uxbridge in a deep cut of a road, the slight effect of the bombs that
fell within the English lines, burying themselves in the soil softened by the rain and
only succeeding in making volcanoes of mud, so that the explosion was changed into a
splash, the uselessness of Pire's demonstration upon Braine I'Alleud, all this cavalry,
fifteen squadrons, almost destroyed, the English right wing hardly disturbed, the left
wing hardly moved, the strange mistake of Ney in massing, instead of drawing out, the
four divisions of the first corps, the depth of twenty-seven ranks and the front of two
hundred men offered up in this manner to grape, the frightful gaps made by the balls
in these masses, the lack of connection between the attacking columns, the slanting bat-
tery suddenly unmasked upon their flank, Bourgeois, Donzelot, and Durutte entangled,
Quiot repulsed, Lieutenant Vieux, that Hercules sprung from the Polytechnic School,
wounded at the moment when he was beating down with the blows of an axe the door of La
Haic Sainte under the plunging fire of the English barricade barring the turn of the
road from Genappe to Brussels, Marcognet's caught between infantry and cavalry, shot
down at arm's length in the wheat field by Best and Pack, sabred by Ponsonby, his bat-
tery of seven pieces spiked, the Prince of Saxe Weimar holding and keeping Frischemont
and Smohain in spite of Count D'Erlon, the colours of the 105th taken, the colours of
the 43rd taken, this Prussian Black Hussar, brought in by the scouts of the flying col-
umn of three hundred chasseurs scouring the country between Wavre and Planchenoit,
the disquieting things that this prisoner had said, Grouchy's delay, the fifteen hundred
men killed in less than an hour in the orchard of Hougomont, the eighteen hundred men
fallen its still less time around La Hale Sainte--all these stormy events, passing like
battle clouds before Napoleon, had hardly disturbed his countenance, and had not dark-
ened its imperial expression of certainty. Napoleon was accustomed to look upon war
fixedly; he never made figure by figure the tedious addition of details; the figures
mattered little to him, provided they gave this total: Victory; though beginnings went
wrong he was not alarmed at it, he who believed himself master and possessor of the
end; he knew how to wait, believing himself beyond contingency, and he treated destiny
as an equal treats an equal. He appeared to say to Fate: thou would'st not dare.

Half light and half shadow, Napoleon felt himself protected in the right, and tolerated
in the wrong. He had, or believed that he had, a connivance, one might almost say com-
plicity, with events, equivalent to the ancient invulnerability. However, when one has
Beresina, Leipsic, and Fontainebleau behind him, it seems as if he might distrust Wat-
erloo. A mysterious frown is becoming visible in the depths of the sky.

At the moment when Wellington drew back, Napoleon started up. He saw the plateau of
Mont Saint Jean suddenly laid bare, and the front of the English army disappear. It
rallied, but kept concealed. The emperor half rose in his stirrups. The flash of vic-
tory passed into his eyes.

Wellington hurled back on the forest of Soignes and destroyed; that was the final over-
throw of England by France; it was Cressy Poitiers, Malplaquet, and Ramillies aveng-
ed. The man of Marengo was wiping out Agincourt.

The emperor then, contemplating this terrible turn of fortune, swept his glass for the
last time over every point of the battle-field. His guard standing behind with grounded
arms, looked up to him with a sort of religion. He was reflecting; he was examining
the slopes, noting the ascents, scrutinising the tuft of trees, the square rye field, the
footpath; he seemed to count every bush. He looked for some time at the English barri-
cades on the two roads, two large abattis of trees, that on the Genappe road above La
Haie Sainte, armed with two cannon, which alone, of all the English artillery, bore
upon the bottom of the field of battle, and that of the Nivellei road where glistened
the Dutch bayonets of Chasse's brigade. He noticed near that barricade the old chapel
of Saint Nicholas, painted white, which is at the corner of the cross-road toward
Braine l'Alleud. He bent over and spoke in an under tone to the guide Lacoste. The guide
made a negative sign of the head, probably treacherous.

The emperor rose up and reflected. Wellington had fallen back. It remained only to com-
plete this repulse by a crushing charge.

Napoleon, turning abruptly, sent off a courier at full speed to Paris to announce that
the battle was won. Napoleon was one of those geniuses who rule the thunder. He had
found his thunderbolt. He ordered Milhaud's cuirassiers to carry the plateau of Mont
Saint Jean.



IX. THE UNLOOKED FOR



There were three thousand five hundred. They formed a line of half a mile. They
were gigantic men on colossal horses. There were twenty-six squadrons and they
had behind them, as a suppot, the. division of Lefebvre Desnouettes, the hundred
and six gendarmes d'elite, the Chasseurs of the Guard, seven hundred and ninety-
seven men. and the Lancers of the Guard, eight hundred eighty lances They wore
casques with plumes, and cuirasses of wrought iron, with horse pistols in their
holsters and long sabre-swords. In the morning, they had been the admiration of
the whole army, when at nine o'clock, with trumpets sounding, and all the bands
playing, Veillons au salut de l'empire, they came, in heavy column, one of their bat-
teries on their flank, the other at their centre, and deployed in two ranks be-
tween the. Genappe road and Frischemont, and took their position of battle in
this powerful second line, so wisely made up by Napoleon, which, having at its ex-
treme left the cuirassiers of Kellerman, and at its extreme right the cuirassiers
of Milhaud, had, so to speak, two wings of iron.

Aide-de-camp Bernard brought them the emperor's order. Ney drew his sword and
placed himself at their head. The .enormous squadrons began to move.

Then was seen a fearful sight.

All this cavalry, with sabres drawn, banners waving and trumpets sounding, formed
in column by division, descended with an even movement and as one man--with the
precision of a bronze battering-ram opening a breach--the hill of La Belle Alli-
ance, sank into that formidable depth where so many men had already fallen, disa-
ppeared in the smoke, then, rising from this valley of shadow reappeared on the
other side, still compact and serried, mounting at full trot, through a cloud of
grape emptying itself upon them, the frightful acclivity of mud of the plateau of
Mont Saint Jean. They rose, serious, menacing, imperturable; in the intervals of
the musketry and artillery could be heard the sound of this colossal tramp. Being
in two divisions, they formed two columns; Wathier's division had the right, De-
lord's the left. From a distance they would be taken for two immense serpents of
steel stretching themselves towards the crest of the plateau. That ran through
the battle like a prodigy.

Nothing like it had been seen since the taking of the grand redoubt at La Moscowa
by the heavy cavalry; Murat was not there, but Ney was there. It seemed as if this
mass had become a monster, and had but a single mind. Each squadron undulated
and swelled like the ring of a polyp. They could be seen through the thick smoke, as
it was broken here and there. It was one pell-mell of casques, cries, sabres; a
furious bounding of horses among the cannon, and the flourish of trumpets, a ter-
rible and disciplined tumult; over all, the cuirasses, like the scales of a hydra.

These recitals appear to belong to another age. Something like this vision appeared,
doubtless, in the old Orphic epics which tell of centaurs, antique hippanthropes,
those titans with human faces, and chests like horses, whose gallop scaled Olympus,
horrible, invulnerable, sublime; at once gods and beasts.

An odd numerical coincidence, twenty-six battalions were to receive these twenty-
six squadrons. Behind the crest of the plateau. under cover of the masked battery,
the English infantry, formed in thirteen squares, two battalions to the square,
and upon two lines--seven on the first, and six oil the second--with musket to the
shoulder, and eye upon their sights, waiting calm, silent. and immovable. They
could not see the cuirassiers, and the cuirassiers could not see them. They listened
to the rising of this tide of men They heard the increasing sound of three thousand
horses. the alternate and measured striking of their hoofs at full trot, the rattling
of the cuirasses, the clicking of the sabres, and a sort of fierce roar of the coming
host. There was a moment of fearful silence, then. suddenly, a long line of raised
arms brandishing sabres appeared above the crest, with casques, trumpets, and
standards, and three thousand faces with grey moustaches, crying. Vive l'emper-
eur! this cavalry debouched on the plateau, and it was like tin: beginning of an
earthquake.

All at once, tragic to relate, at the left of the English. and on our right, the
head of the column of cuirassiers reared with a frightful clamour. Arrived at the
culminating point of the crest, unmanageable, full of fury, and bent upon the ex-
termination of the square, and cannons, the cuirassiers saw between themselves
and the English a ditch, a grave. It was the sunken road of Ohain.

It was a frightful moment. There was the ravine, unlooked for, yawning at the very
feet of the horses, two fathoms deep between its double slope. The second rank
pushed in the first, the third pushed in the second; the horses reared, threw them-
selves over, fell upon their backs, and struggled with their feet in the air, pil-
ing up and overturning their riders; no power to retreat: the whole column was no-
thing but a projectile. The force acquired to crush the English crushed the French.
The inexorable ravine could not yield until it was filled; riders and horses roll-
ed in together pell-mell, grinding each other, making common flesh in this dreadful
gulf, and when this grave was full of living men, the rest marched over them and
passed on. Almost a third of Dubois' brigade sank into this abyss.

Here the loss of the battle began.

A local tradition. which evidently exaggerates, says that two thousand horses and
fifteen hundred men were hurled in the sunken road of Chain. This undoubtedly com-
prises all the other 'bodies thrown into this ravine on the morrow after the battle.

Napoleon, before ordering this charge of Milhaucrs cuirass.ier, had examined the
ground, but could not see tisk hollow road, which did not make even a wrinkle on the
surface of the plateau. Warurel. however, and put on his guard IT the little white
chapel which marks its junction with the Niceties road, he had, probably en the con-
tingency of an obstacle, put a quection to the guile Lan:str. The guide bad atom:
ern! no. It ma) al... be s:.61;ha: th, t.hal:c of a peasant's head came the entac-
trethe m Nap,Trnn.

Still other fatalities must arise.

Was it possible that Narleon riltoulil %, in Oa, battle: Wt no. Why? Because of
Wellington? Because of Blucher? No. Because of God.

For Bonaparte to be conqueror at Waterloo was not in the lay of the nineteenth cen-
tury. Another series of facts were preparing in which Napoleon had no place. The
ill-will of events had long been announced.

It was time that this vast man should fall.

The excessive weight of this man in human destiny disturbed the equilibrium. This
individual counted, of himself alone, more than the universe besides. These pleth-
oras of all human vitality concentrated in a single head, the world mounting to
the brain of one man, would be fatal to civilisation if they should endure. The
moment had come for incorruptible supreme equity to look to it. Probably the prin-
ciples and elements upon which regular gravitations in the moral order as well as
in the material depend, began to murmur. Reeking blood, overcrowded cemeteries,
weeping mothers--these are formidable pleaders. When the earth is suffering from a
surcharge, there are mysterious moanings from the deeps which the heavens hear.

Napoleon bad been impeached before the Infinite, and his fall was decreed.

He vexed God.

Waterloo is not a battle; it is the change of front of the universe.



X. THE PLATEAU OF MONT SAINT JEAN



AT the same time with the ravine, the artillery was unmasked.

Sixty cannon and the thirteen squares thundered and flashed into the cuirassiers.
The brave General Delord gave the military salute to the English battery. All the
English flying artillery took position in the squares at a gallop. The cuirassiers
had not even time to breathe. The disaster of the sunken road had decimated, but
not discouraged them. They were men who, diminished in number, grew greater in
heart.

Wathier's column alone had suffered from the disaster; Dc-lord's, which Ney bad
sent obliquely to the left, as if he had a presentiment of the snare, arrival en-
tire.

The cuirassiers hurled themselves upon the English squares.

At full gallop, with free rein, their sabres in their teeth, and their pistols
in their hands, the attack began.

There are moments in battle when the soul hardens a man even to changing the
soldier into a statue, and all this; flesh becomes granite. The English battalions,
desperately assailed, did not yield an inch.

Then it was frightful.

All sides of the English squares were attached at once, A whirlwind of frenzy
enveloped them. This frigid infantry remained impassible. The first rank, with
knee on the ground, received the cuirassiers on their bayonets, the second shot
them down; behind the second rank, the cannoneers loaded their guns, the front
of the square opened, made way for an eruption of grape, and closed again. The
cuirassiers answered by rushing upon them with crushing force,. Their great horses
reared, trampled upon the ranks. leaped over the bayonets and fell, gigantic, in the
midst of these four living walls. The balls made gaps in the ranks of the cuirassiers,
the cuirassiers made breaches in the squares. Files of men disappeared, ground
down beneath the horses' feet. Bayonets were buried in the bellies of these centaurs.
Hence a monstrosity of wounds never perhaps seen elsewhere. The squares. con-
sumed by this furious cavalry, closed up without wavering. Inexhaustible in grape,
they kept up an explosion in the midst of their assailant:. It was a monstrous sight.
These squares were battalions no longer, they were crates; these cuirassiers were
cavalry no longer, they were a tempest. Each square was a volcano attacked by a
thunder-cloud; the lava fought with the lightning.

The square on she extreme right, the most exposed of all, being in the open field,
was almost annihilated at the first shock. It was formed of the 75th regiment of
highlanders. The piper in the centre, while the work of extermination wag going on,
profoundly oblivious of all about him, casting down his melancholy eye full of the
shadows of forests and lakes, seated upon a drum, his bagpipe under his arm,
was playing his mountain airs. These Scotchmen died thinking of Ben Lothian, as
the Greeks died remembering Argos. The sabre of a cuirassier, striking down the pi-
broch and the arm which bore it, caused the strain to cease by killing the player.

The cuirassiers, relatively few in number, lessened by the catastrophe of the
ravine, had to contend with almost the whole the English army, but they multiplied them-
selves, each man becoming equal to ten. Nevertheless some Hanoverian battalions fell
back. Wellington saw it and remembered his cavalry. Had Napoleon, at that very mo-
ment, remembered his infantry, he would have woin the battle. This forgetfulness was
his great fatal blunder.

Suddenly the assailiing cuirassers perceived that they were assailed, The English cavalry
was upon their back. Beroe them squares, behind them Somerset; Somerset, with the
fourteen hundred dragoon guards. Somerset had on his right Dornberg with his German
light-horse and on his left Trip, with the Belgian carbineers. The cuirassiers, attacked
front, flank, and rear, by infantry and cavalry,. were compelled to face in all directions.
What was that to them? They were a whirlwind. Their valour became unspeakable.

Besides, they had behind them the ever thundering artillery. All that was necessary in
order to wound such men in the back. One of their cuirasses, with a hole in the left
shoulder-plate made by a musket ball, is in the collection of the Waterloo Museum.
With such Frenchmen only such Englishmen could cope.

It was no longer a conflict, it was a darkness, a fury, a giddy vortex of souls and cou-
rage, a hurricane of sword-flashes. In an instant the fourteen hundred horse guards
were but eight hundred; their lieutenant, fell dead. Ney rushed up with the lancers and
chasseurs of Lefebvre-Desnouettes. The plateau of Mont Saint Jean was taken, retaken,
taken again. The cuirassiers left the ecavalry to return to the infantry, or more cor-
rectly, all this terrible multitude wrestled with each other without letting go their
hold. The squares still held. There were twelve assaults. Ney had four horses killed
under him. Half of the cuirassiers lay on the plateau. This struggle lasted two hours.

The English army was terribly shaken. There is no doubt, if they had not been crippled
in their first shock by the disaster of the sunken road, the cuirassiers would have
overwhelmed the centre, and decided the victory. This wonderful cavalry astounded Clin-
ton, who had seen Talavera and Badajos. Wellington, though three-fourths conquered,
was struck with heroic admiration. He said in a low voice: "splendid!"

The cuirassiers annihilated seven squares out of thirteen, took or spiked sixty pieces
of cannon, and took from the English regiments six colours, which three cuirassiers and
three chasseurs of the guard carried to the emperor before the farm of La Belle Alliance.

The situation of Wellington was growing worse. This strange battle was like a duel be-
tween two wounded infuriates who, while yet fighting and resisting, lose all their
blood. Which of the two shall fall first?

The struggle of the plateau continued.

How far did the cuirassiers penetrate? None can tell. One thing is certain: the day
after the battle, a cuirassier and his horse were found dead under the frame of the hay-
scales at Mont Saint jean, at the point where the four roads from Nivelles, Genappe, La
Itulpe, and Brussels meet. This horseman had pierced the E.nglish lines. One of the men
who took away the body still lives at Mont Saint Jean. His name is Dehaze; he was then
eighteen years old.

Wellington felt that he was giving way. The crisis was upon him.

The cuirassiers had not succeeded, in this sense, that the centre was not. broken. All
holding the plateau, nobody held it, and in fact it remained for the most part with
the English. Wellington held the village and the crowning plain; Ney held only the crest
and the slope. On both sides they seemed rooted in this funebral soil.

But the enfeeblement of the English appeared irremediable. The haemorrhage
of this army was horrible. Kempt, on the left wing, called for reinforcements.
"Impossible," answered Wellington; "we must die on the spot we now occupy."
Almost at the same moment--singular coincidence which depicts the exhaustion
of both armies--Ney sent to Napoleon for infantry, and Napoleon exclaimed:
"Infantry! where does he expect me to take them! Does he expect me to make
them?"

However, the English army was farthest gone. The furious onslaughts of these
great squadrons with iron cuirasses and steel breastplates had ground up the
infantry. A few men about a flag marked the place of a regiment; battalions
were now commanded by captains or lieutenants. Alten's division, already so
cut up at La Haie Sainte, was almost destroyed; the intrepid Belgians of Van
Kluze's brigade strewed the rye field along the Nivelles road; there were
hardly any left of those Dutch grenadiers who, in 1811, joined to our ranks
in Spain, fought against Wellington, and who, Li 1815, rallied on the English
side, fought against Napoleon. The loss in officers was heavy. Lord Uxbridge,
who buried his leg next day, had a knee fractured. If, on the side of the
French, in this struggle of the cuirassiers, Delord, l'Heritier, Colbert, Dm:).
Travers, and Blancard were hors de combat, on the side of the English, Alten
was wounded, Barrie was wounded. Delancey was killed, Van Meeren was killed.
Ompteda was killed, the entire staff of Wellington was decimated, and England
had the worst share in this balance of blood. The second regiment of foot
guards had lost five lieutenant-colonels, four captains, and three ensigns;
the first battalion of the thirtieth infantry had lost twenty-four officers
and one hundred and twelve soldiers; the seventy-ninth Highlanders had twenty-
four officers wounded, eighteen officers killed, and four hundred and fifty
soldiers slain. Cumberland's Hanoverian hussars, an entire regiment, having
at its head Colonel Hacke, who was afterwards court-martialed and broken,
had drawn rein before the fight, and were in flight in the Forest of Soignes,
spreading the panic as far as Brussels. Carts, ammunition-wagons, baggage-
waggons, ambulances full of wounded, seeing the French gain ground, and ap-
proach the forest, lied precipitately; the Dutch, sabred by the French cav-
alry, cried murder! From Vert-Coucou to Groenendael, for a distance of near-
ly six miles in the direction towards Brussels, the roads, according to the
testimony of witnesses still alive, were choked with fugitives. This panic
was such that it reached the Prince of Conde at Malines, and Louis XVIII.
at Ghent. With the exception of the small reserve drawn up in echelon behind
the hospital established at the farm of Mont Saint Jean, and the brigades
of Vivian and Vandeleur on the flank of, the left wing, Wellington's caval-
ry was exhausted. A number of batteries lay dismounted. These facts are con-
fessed by Siborne; and Pringle, exaggerating the disaster, says even that
the Anglo-Dutch army.was reduced to thirty-four thousand men. The Iron Duke
remained calm, but his lips were pale. The Austrian Commissary, Vincent,
the Spanish Commissary,!Nava, present at the battle inthe English staff,
thought the duke was beyond hope. At five o'clock Wellington drew out his
watch, and was heard to murmur these sombre words: Blucher, or nigh!!

It was about this time that a distant line of bayonets glistened on the
heights beyond Frischemont.

Here is the turning-point in this colossal drama.



XI. SAD GUIDE FOR NAPOLEON; GOOD GUIDE FOR BULOW



WE understand the bitter mistake of Napoleon; Grouchy hoped for, Blucher
arriving; death instead of life.

Destiny has such turnings. Awaiting the world's throne, Saint Helena became
visible.

If the little cowboy, who acted as guide to Bulow, Blucher's lieutenant,
had advised him to debauch from the forest above Prischernont rather than
below Planchenoit, the shaping of the nineteenth century would perhaps
have been different. Napoleon would have won the battle of Waterloo. By
any other road than below Planchenoit, the Prussian army would have
brought up at a ravine impassable for artillery, and Bulow would not have
arrived.

Now. an hour of delay, as the Prussian general Muffling declares, and Black-
er would not have found Wellington in position; "the battle was lost."

It was time, we have seen, that Bulow should arrive. He had bivouacked at
Dion le Mont, and started on at dawn. But the roads were impracticable, and
his division stuck in the mire. The cannon sank to the hubs in the ruts.
Furthermore, he had to cross the Dyle an the narrow bridge of Wavre; the
street leading to the bridge had been fired by the French; the caissons
and artillery waggons, being unable to pass between two rows of burning
houses, had to wait till the fire was extinguished. It was noon before
Bulow could reach Chapelle Saint Lambert.

Had the action commenced two hours earlier, it would have been finished at
four o'clock, and Blucher would have fallen upon a field already won by
Napoleon. Such are these immense chances, proportioned to an infinity,
which we cannot grasp.

As early as mid-day, the emperior, first of all, with his field gkiss, per-
ceived in the extreme horizon something which fixed his attention. He said:
"I see yonder a cloud which appears to me to be troops." Then he asked the
Duke of Dalmatia: "Soult, what do you see towards Chapelle Saint Lambert?"
The marshal, turning his glass that way, answered: "Four or five thousand
men, sire. Grouchy, of course." Meanwhile it remained motionless in the
haze. The 'glasses of the whole staff studied "the cloud" pointed out by
the emperor. Some said: "They are columns halting." The most said: "It is
trees." The fact is, that the cloud did not stir. The emperor detached
Damon's division of light cavalry to reconnoitre this obscure point.

Bulow, in fact, had not moved. His vanguard was very weak, and could do
nothing. He had to wait for the bulk of his corps d'armee, and he was
ordered to concentrate his force before enter' ing into' line; but at
five o'clock, seeing Wellington's peril, Blucher ordered Bulow to attack,
and uttered these remarkable words: "We must give the English army a
breathing spell."

Soon after the divisions of Losthin, Hiller, Hacke, and Ryssel deployed
in front of Lobau's corps, the cavalry of Prince William of Prussia de-
bouched from the wood of Paris, Planchenoit was in flames, and the
Prussian balls began to rain down even in the ranks of the guard in re-
serve behind Napoleon.



XII. THE GUARD



THE rest is known; the irruption of a third army, the battle thrown
out of joint, eighty-six pieces of artillery suddenly thundering
forth, Pirch the First coming up with Bulow, Ziethen's cavalry led by
Blucher in person, the French crowded back, Marcognet swept from the
plateau of Ohain, Durutte dislodged from Papelotte, Donzelot and Quiot
recoiling, Lobau taken en echarpe, a new battle falling at night-fall
upon our dismantled regiments, the whole English line assuming the of-
fensive and pushed forward, the gigantic gap made in the French army,
the-English grape and the Prussian grape lending mutual aid, extermi-
nation, disaster in front, disaster in flank, the guard entering into
line amid this terrible crumbling.

Feeling that they were going to their death, they cried out: Vive
l'Empereur! There is nothing more touching in history than this'death-
agony bursting forth in acclamations.

The sky had been overcast all day. All at once, at this very mament:--
it was eight o'clock at night--the clouds in the horizon broke, and
through the elms on the Nivelles road streamed the sinister red light
of the setting sun. The rising sun shone upon Austerlitz.

Each battalion of the guard, for this final effort, was commanded,
by a general. Friant, Michel, Roguet, Harlet, Mallet, Pond de
Morvan, were there. When the tall caps of the grenadiers of the
guard with their large eagle plates appeared, symmetrical, drawn up
in line, calm, in the smoke of that conflict, the enemy felt respect
for France; they thought they saw twenty victories entering upon the
field of battle, with wings extended, and those who were conquerors,
thinking themselves conquered, recoiled; but Wellington cried: "Up,
guards, and at them!" The red regiment of English guards, lying be-
hind the hedges, rose up, a shower of grape riddled the tricoloured
flag fluttering about our eagles, all hurled themselves forward, and
the final carnage began. The Imperial Guard felt the army slipping
away around them in the gloom, and the vast overthrow of the rout;
they heard the sauve qui pent!* which had replaced the vive l'Empereur!
and, with flight behind them, they held on their course, battered
more and more and dying faster and faster at every step. There were
no weak souls or cowards there. The privates of that band were as
heroic as their generals. Not a man flinched from the suicide.

Ney, desperate, great in all the grandeur of accepted death, bared
himself to every blow in this tempest. He had his horse killed under
him. Reeking with sweat, fire in his eyes, froth upon his lips, his
uniform unbuttoned, one of his epaulets half cut away by the sabre
stroke of a horse-guard, his badge of the grand eagle pierced by a
ball, bloody, covered with mud, magnificent, a broken sword in his
hand, he said: "Come and see how a marshal, of France dies upon the
field of battle!" But in vain, he did not die. He was haggard and
exasperated. He flung this question at Drouet D'Erlon. "What! are
you not going to die?" He cried out in the midst of all this artil-
lery which was mowing down a handful of men: "Is there nothing,
then, for me? Oh! I would that all these English balls were buried
in my body!" Unhappy man! thou wast reserved for French bullets!



XIII. THE CATASTROPHE



THE route behind the guard was dismal.

The army fell back rapidly from all sides at once, from Hougomont,
from La Haie Sainte, from Papelotte, from Planchenoit. The cry: Trea-
chery! was followed by the cry: Sauve qui pent! A disbanding army is
a thaw. The whole bends, cracks, snaps, floats, rolls, falls, crashes,
hurries, plunges. Mysterious disintegration. Ney borrows a horse,
leaps upon him, and without hat, cravat, or sword. plants himself
in the Brussels road, arresting at once the English and the French.
He endeavours to hold the army, he calls them hack, he reproaches
them, be grapples with the rout. He is swept away. The soldiers flee
from him, crying: Vive Marshal Ney! Durutte's two regiments come and
go, frightened, and tossed between the sabres of the Uhlans and the
fire of the brigades of Kempt, Best, Pack, and Rylandt; rout is the
worst of all conflicts; friends slay each other in their flight;
squadrons and battalions are crushed and dispersed against each other,
enormous foam of the battle. Lobau at. one extremity, like Reille, at
the other, is rolled away in the flood. In vain does Napoleon make
walls with the remains of the guard; in vain does he expend his re-
serve squadron in a last effort. Quiot gives way before Vivian, Kell-
ermann before Vandeleur, Lobau before Bulow, Moraud before Pirch,
Domon and Lubervic before Prince William of Prussia. Guyot, who had
led the emperor's squadrons to the charge, falls under the feet of
the English horse. Napoleon gallops along the fugitives, harangues
them, urges, threatens, entreats. The mouths, which in the morning
were crying vive l'Empereur, are now agape; he is hardly. recog-
nised. The Prussian cavalry, just come up, spring forward, fling
themselves upon the enemy, sabre, cut, hack, kill, exterminate. Teams
rush off, the guns are left to the care of themselves; the soldiers
of the train unhitch the caissons and take the horses to escape; wag-
gons upset, with their four wheels in the air, block up. the road,
and are accessories of massacre. They crush and they crowd; they
trample upon the living and the dead. Arms are broken. A multitude
fills roads, paths, bridges, plains, hills, valleys, woods, choked
up by this flight of forty thousand men. Cries, despair, knapsacks
and muskets cast into the rye, passage forced at the point of the
sword; no more comrades, no more officers, no more generals; inex-
pressible dismay. Ziethen sabring France at his ease. Lions become
kids. Such was this flight.

At Genappe there was an effort to turn back, to form a line, to make
a stand. Lobau rallied three hundred men. The entrance to the village
was barricaded, but at the first volley of Prussian grape, all took
to flight again, and Lobau was captured. The marks of that volley of
grape are still to be seen upon the old gable of a brick ruin at the
right of the road, a short distance before entering Genappe. The
Prussians rushed into Genappe, furious, doubtless, at having conquer-
ed so little. The pursuit was monstrous. Blucher gave orders to kill
all. Roguet had set this sad example by threatening with death every
French grenadier who should bring him a Prussian prisoner. Bliicher
surpassed Roguet. The general of the Young Guard, Duhesme, caught at
the door of a tavern in Genappe, gave up his sword to a Hussar of
Death, who took the sword and killed the prisoner. The victory was
completed by the assassination of the vanquished. Let us punish,
since we are history: old Blucher disgraced himself. This ferocity
filled the disaster to the brim. The desperate rout passed through
Genappe, passed through Quatre Bras, passed through Somhreffe, passed
through Frasnes,fpassed through 'Min, passed through Charleroi, and
stopped only at the frontier. Alas! who now was flying in such wise?
The Grand Army.

This madness, this terror,' this falling to ruins of the highest brave-
ry which ever astonished history, can that be without cause? No. The
shadow of an enormous right hand rests on Waterloo. It is the day of
Destiny. A power above man controlled the day. Hence, the loss of mind
in dismay; hence, all these great souls yielding up their swords. Those
who had conquered Europe fell to the ground, having nothing more to say
or to do, feeling a terrible presence in the darkness. Hoc erat in fatis.
That day, the perspective of the human race changed. Waterloo is the
hinge of the nineteenth century. This disappearance of the great man
was necessary for the advent of the great century. One, to whom there
is no reply, took it in charge. The panic of heroes is explained. In
the battle of Waterloo, there is more than a cloud, there is a meteor.
God passed over it.

In the gathering night, on a field near Genappe, Bernard and Bertrand
seized by a flap of his coat and stopped. a haggard, thoughtful, gloomy
man, who, dragged thus far by the current of the rout, had dismounted,
passed the bridle of his horse under his arm, and, with bewildered eye,
was returning alone towards Waterloo. It was Napoleon endeavouring to
advance again, mighty somnambulist of a vanished dream.



XIV. THE LAST SQUARE



A few squares of the guard, immovable in the flow of the rout as rocks in
running water, held out until night. Night approaching; and death also,
they waited this double shadow, and yielded unfaltering, to its embrace.
Each regiment, isolated from the others, and having no further communica-
tion with the army, which was broken in all directions, was dying alone.
They had taken position, for this last struggle, some upon the heights of
Rossomme, others in the plain of Mont Saint Jean. There, abandoned, con-
quered, terrible, these sombre squares suffered formidable martyrdom. Ulm,
Wagram, Jena, Friedland, were dying in them.

At dusk, towards nine o'clock in the evening, at. the foot of the plateau
of Mont Saint Jean, there remained but one. In this fatal valley, at the
bottom of that slope which had been climbed by the cuirassiers. inundated
now by the English masses, under the converging fire of the victorious ar-
tillery of the enemy, under a frightful storm of projectiles, this square
fought on. It was commanded by an obscure officer whose name was Cambronne.
At every discharge, the square grew less, but returned the fire. It replied
to grape by bullets, narrowing in its four walls continually. Afar off the
fugitives, stopping for a moment out of breath, heard in the darkness this
dismal thunder decreasing.

When this legion was reduced to a handful, when their flag was reduced to
a shred, when their muskets, exhausted of ammunition, were reduced to no-
thing but clubs, when the pile of corpses was larger than the group of the
living, there spread among the conquerors a sort of sacred terror about
these sublime martyrs, and the English artillery, stopping to take breath,
was silent. It was a kind of respite. These combatants had about them, as
it were, a swarm of spectres, the outlines of men on horseback, the black
profile of the cannons, the white sky seen through the wheels and the gun-
carriages; the colossal death's head which heroes always see in the smoke
of the battle was advancing upon them, and glaring at them. They could hear
in the gloom of the twilight the loading of the pieces, the lighted matches
like tigers' eyes in the night made a circle about their heads; all the
linstocks of the English batteries approached the guns, when, touched by
their heroism, holding the death-moment suspended over these men, an Eng-
lish general, Colville, according to some, Maitland, according to others,
cried to them: "Brave Frenchman. surrender!" Cambronne answered:
"Merde!"*



XV. CAMERONNE



OUT of respect to the French reader, the finest word, perhaps, that a French-
man ever uttered cannot be repeated to him. We are prohibited from embalming
a sublimity in history.

At our own risk and peril, we violate that prohibition.

Among these giants, then, there was one Titan--Cambronne.

To speak that word, and then to die, what could be more grand! for to accept
death is to die, and it is not the fault of this man, if, in the storm of
grape, he survived.

The man who won the battle of Waterloo is not Napoleon put to rout; nor Well-
ington giving way at four o'clock, desperate at five; not Bliicher, who did
not fight; the man who won the battle of Waterloo was Cambronne.

To fulminate such a word at the thunderbolt which kills you is victory.

To make this answer to disaster, to say this to destiny, to give this base
for the future-lion, to fling down this reply at the rain of the previous night,
at the treacherous wall of Hougomont, at the sunken road of Ohain, at the delay
of Grouchy, at the arrival of Blocher, to be ironical in the sepulchre, to act
so as to remain upright after one shall have fallen, to drown in two syllables
the European coalition, to offer to kings these privities already known to the
Caesars, to make the last of words the first, by associating it with the glory
of France, to close Waterloo insolently by a Mardi Gras, to complete Leonidas
by Rabelais, to sum up this victory in a supreme word which cannot be pronounced,
to lose the field, and to preserve history, after this carnage to have the laugh
on his side, is immense.

It is an insult to the thunderbolt. That attains the grandeur of Aeschylus.

This word of Cambronne's gives the effect of a fracture. It is
the breaking of a heart by scorn; it is an overplus of agony in ex-
plosion. Who conquered? Wellington? No. Without Blucher he
would have been lost. Blucher? No. If Wellington had not com-
menced, Bliicher could not have finished. This Cambronne, this passer at the
last hour, this unknown soldier, this infinitesimal of war, feels that there
is there a lie in a catastrophe, doubly bitter; and at the moment when he is
bursting with rage, he is offered this mockery--life? How can he restrain him-
self? They are there, all the kings of Europe, the fortunate generals, the thun-
dering Joves, they have a hundred thousand victorious soldiers, and behind the
hundred thousand, a million; their guns, with matches lighted, are agape; they
have the Imperial Guard and the Grand Army under their feet; they have crushed
Napoleon, and Cambronne only remains; there is none but this worm of the earth
to protest. He will protest. Then he seeks for a word as one seeks for a sword.
He froths at the mouth, and this froth is the word. Before this mean and mon-
strous victory, before this victory without victors, this desperate man straigh-
tens himself up, he suffers its enormity, but he establishes its nothingness;
and he does more than spit upon it; and overwhelmed in numbers and material
strength he finds in the soul an expression--ordure. We repeat it, to say that,
to do that, to find that, is to be the conqueror.

The soul of great days entered into this unknown man at that moment of death.
Cambronne finds the word of Waterloo, as Rouget de l'Isle finds the Itlarseil-
laise, through a superior inspiration. An effluence from the divine afflatus
detaches itself,. and passes over these men, and they tremble, and the one
sings the supreme song, and the other utters the terrible cry. This word of
titanic scorn Cambronne throws down not merely to Europe, in the name of the
Empire, that would be but little; he throws it down to the past, in the name
of the Revolution. It is heard, and men recognize in Cambronne the old soul
of the giants. It seems as if it were a speech of Damon, or a roar of Kleber.

To this word of Cambronne, the English voice replied: "Fire!" the batteries
flamed, the hill trembled, from all those brazen throats went forth a final
vomiting of grape, terrific; a vast smoke, dusky white in the light of the
rising moon, rolled out, and when the smoke was dissipated, there was nothing
left. That formidable remnant was annihilated; the guard was dead. The four
walls of the living redoubt had fallen, hardly could a quivering be distin-
guished here and there among the corpses; and thus the French legions, grander
than the Roman legions, expired at Mont Saint Jean on ground soaked in rain
and blood, in the sombre wheat-fields, at the spot where now, at four o'clock
in the morning, whistling, and gaily whipping up his horse, Joseph passes,
who drives the mail from Nivelles.



XVI. QUOT LIBRAS IN DUCE?



THE battle of Waterloo is an enigma. It is as obscure to those who won it as
to him who lost it. To Napoleon it is a panic; Blucher sees in it only fire;
Wellington comprehends nothing of it. Look at the reports. The bulletins
are confused, the commentaries are foggy. The former stammer, the latter fal-
ter. Jomini separates the battle of Waterloo into four periods; Muffling div-
ides it into three tides of fortune; Charras alone, though upon some points
our appreciation differs from his, has seized with his keen glance the charac-
teristic lineaments of that catastrophe of human genius struggling with divine
destiny. All the other historians are blinded by the glare, and are groping a-
bout in that blindness. A day of lightnings, indeed, the downfall of the mili-
tary monarchy, which, to the great amazement of kings, has dragged with it all
kingdoms, the fall of force, the overthrow of war.

In this event, bearing the impress of superhuman necessity, man's part is no-
thing.

Does taking away Waterloo from Wellington and from Blucher, detract anything
from England and Germany? No. Neither illustrious England nor august Germany
is in question in the problem of Waterloo. Thank heaven, nations are great a-
side from the dismal chances of the sword. Neither Germany, nor England, nor
France, is held in a scabbard. At this day when Waterloo is only a clicking of
sabres, above Blucher, Germany has Goethe, and above Wellington, England has
Byron. A vast uprising of ideas is peculiar to our century, and in this aurora
England and Germany have a magnificent share. They are majestic because they
think. The higher plane which they bring to civilisation is intrinsic to them;
it comes from themselves, and not from an accident. The advancement which
they have made in the nineteenth century does not spring from Waterloo. It is
duly barbarous nations who have a sudden growth after a victory. It is the
fleeting vanity of the streamlet swelled by the storm. Civilised nations, es-
pecially in our times, are not exalted nor abased by the good or bad fortune
'of a captain. Their specific gravity in the human race results from something
more than:a combat. Their honour, thank God, their dignity, their light, their
genius, are not numbers that heroes and conquerors, those gamblers, can
cast into the lottery of battles. Oftentimes a battle lost is progress attained.
Less glory, more liberty. The drum is silent, reason speaks. It is the game at
which he who loses, gains. Let us speak, then, coolly of Waterloo on both sides.
Let us render unto Fortune the things that are Fortune's, and mad God the
things that are God's What is Waterloo? A victory? No. A prize.

A prize won by Europe, paid by France.

It was not much to put a lion there.

Waterloo moreover is the strangest encodnter in history. Napoleon and Well-
ington: they are not enemies, they are opposites. Never has God, who takes
pleasure in antitheses, made a more striking contrast and a more extraord-
inary meeting. On one side, precision, foresight, geometry, prudence, re-
treat assured, reserves economised, obstinate composure, imperturbable
method, strategy to profit by the ground, tactics to balance battalions,
carnage drawn to the line, war directed watch in hand, nothing left volun-
tarily to intuition, inspiration, a military marvel, a superhuman instinct;
a chance, ancient classic courage, absolute correctness; on the other,
Clashing glance, a mysterious something which gazes like the eagle and
strikes like the thunderbolt, prodigious art in disdainful. impetuosity,
all the mysteries of a deep soul, intimacy with Destiny; river, plain, for-
est, hill, commanded, and in some sort forced to obey, the despot going
even so far as to tyrannise over the battlefield; faith in a star joined
to strategic science, increasing it, but disturbing it. Wellington was the
Barreme of war,.Napoleow was its Michael Angelo, and this time genius was
vanquished by calculation.

On both sides they were expecting somebody. It was the exact calculator who
succeeded. Napoleon expected Grouchy; he did not come. Wellington expected
Blucher; he came.

Wellington is classic war taking her revenge. Bonaparte, in his dawn. had
met her in Italy, and defeated her superbly. The old owl fled before the
young vulture. Ancient tactics had been not only thunderstruck, but bad
received mortal offence? What was this Corsican of twenty-six? What meant
this brilliant novice who, having ever3 7fliing against him, nothing for
him, with no provisions, no munitions, no cannon, no shoes,.almost without
an army, with a handful Of men against..multitrides, rushed upon allied
Europe, andabSinjdly gained victories that were impossible? Whence came
this thiindering madman who, almost without taking breath, and with the
same set of the combatants in hand, pulverised one after the other the
five armies of the Emperor of Germany. overthrowing Beaulieu upon Alvinzi,
Wurmser upon Beaulieu, Melas upon Wurmser, Mack upon Melas? Who was this
new-comer in war with the confidence of destiny? The academic military
school excom-municated him as it ran away. Thence an implacable hatred
of the old system of war against the new, of the correct sabre against
the flashing sword, and of the chequer-board against genius. On the 18th
of June, 1815, this hatred had the last word, and under Lodi, Montebello,
Montenotte, Mantua, Marengo, Arcola, it wrote: Waterloo. Triumph of the
commonplace, grateful to majorities. Destiny consented to this irony. In
his decline, Napoleon again found Wurmser Wore him, but young. Indeed,
to produce Wunnser, it would have been enough to whiten Wellington's hair.

Waterloo is a battle of the first rank won by a captain of the second.

What is truly admirable in the battle of Waterloo is England, English
firmness, English resolution, English blood; the superb thing which Eng-
land had there--may it not displease her--is herself. It is not her cap-
tain, it is her army.

Wellington, strangely ungrateful, declared in a letter to Lord Bathurst
that his army, the army that fought on the 18th of June, 1815, was a
"detestable army." What does this dark assemblage of bones, buried be-
neath the furrows of Waterloo, think of that?

England has been too modest in regard to Wellington. To make Wellington so
great is to belittle England. Wellington is but a hero like the rest. These
Scotch Grays, these Horse Guards, these regiments of Maitland and of Mitchell,
this infantry of Pack and Remit this cavalry of Ponsonby and of Somerset,
these Highlanders playing the bagpipe under the storm of grape, these batta-
lions of Rylandt, these raw recruits who hardly knew how to handle a musket,
holding out against the veteran bands of Essling and Rivoli--all that is grand.
Wellington was tenacious, that was his merit, and we do not underyalue it, but
the least of his foot-soldiers or his horsemen was quite as firm as he. The iron
soldier is as good as the Iron Duke. For our part, all our glorification goes to
the English 'soldier, the English army; the English people. If trophy there be;
to England the trophy is due. The Waterloo column would be more just'if, instead
of the figure of a man, it lifted to the clouds the statue of a nation:

But this great England will be offended at what we say here. She has still, after
her 1688 and our 1789, the feudal illusion. She believes in hereditary right, and in
the hierarchy. This people, surpassed by none in might and glory, esteems itself as
a nation, not as a people. So much so that as a people they subordinate themselves
willingly, and take a Lord for a head. Workmen, they submit to be despised soldiers,
they submit to be whipped. We remember that at the battle of Inkerman a sergeant
who, as it appeared, had saved the army, could not be mentioned by Lord Raglan, the
English military hierarchy not permitting any hero below the rank of officer to be
spoken of in a report.

What we admire above all, in an encounter like that of Waterloo, is the prodigious
skill of fortune. The night's rain, the wall of Hougomont, the sunken road of Ohain,
Grouchy deaf to cannon, Napoleon's guide who deceives him, Bulow's guide who leads
him right; all this cataclysm is wonderfully carried out.

Taken as a whole, let us say, Waterloo was more of a massacre than a battle.

Of all great battles, Waterloo is that which has the shortest line in proportion to
the number engaged. Napoleon, two miles, Wellington, a mile and a half; seventy-two
thousand men on each side. From this density came the carnage.

The calculation has been made and this proportion established: Loss of men: at Aust-
erlitz, French, fourteen per cent.; Russians, thirty per cent.; Austrians, forty-
four per cent. At Wagram, French, thirteen per cent.; Austrians, fourteen. At La
Moscowa, French, thirty-seven per cent.; Russians, forty-four. At Bautzen, French,
thirteen per cent.; Russians and Prussians, fourteen. At Waterloo, French, fifty-six
per cent.; Allies, thirty-one. Average for Waterloo, forty-one per cent. A hundred
and forty-four thousand men; sixty thousand dead.

The field of Waterloo today has that calm which belongs to the earth, impassive sup-
port of man; it resembles any other plain.

At night, however, a sort of visionary mist arises from it, and if some traveller be
walking there, if he looks, if he listens, if he dreams like Virgil in the fatal plain
of Philippi, he becomes possessed by the hallucination of the disaster. The terrible
18th of June is again before him; the artificial hill of the monument fades away, this
lion, whatever it be, is dispelled; the field of battle resumes its reality; the lines
of infantry undulate in the plain, furious gallops traverse the horizon; the bewildered
dreamer sees the flash of sabres, the glistening of bayonets, the bursting of shells,
the awful intermingling of the thunders; he hears, like a death-rattle from the depths
of a tomb, the vague clamour of the phantom battle; these shadows are grenadiers; these
gleams are cuirassiers; this skeleton is Napoleon; that skeleton is Wellington; all this
is unreal, and yet it clashes and combats; and the ravines run red, and the trees shiver,
and there is fury even in the clouds, and, in the darkness, all those savage heights,
Mont Sain Jean, Hougomont, Frischemont, Papelotte, Planchenoit, appear confusedly
crowned with whirlwinds of spectres exterminating each other.



XVII. MUST WE APPROVE WATERLOO?



THERE exists a very respectable liberal school, which does not hate Waterloo. We are
not of them. To us Waterloo is but the unconscious date of liberty. That such an eagle
should come from such an egg, is certainly an unlooked-for thing.

Waterloo, if we place ourselves at the culminating point of view of the question, is
intentionally a counter-revolutionary victory. It is Europe against France; it is Pet-
ersburg, Berlin, and Vienna against Paris; it is the status quo against the initiative;
it is the 14th of June, 1789, attacked by the 20th March, 1815; it is the monarchies
clearing the decks for action against indomitable French uprising. The final extinction
of this vast people, for twenty-six years in eruption, such was the dream, It was the
solidarity of the Brunswicks, the Nassaus, the Romanoffs, the I f ohenzollern s, and
the Hapsburgs, with the Bourbons. Divine right rides behind wir h kVater loo. It is
true that the empire having been despotic, royalty, by the natural reaction of things,
was forced to become liberal, and also that a constitutional order has indirectly
sprung from Waterloo, to the great regret of the conquerors. The fact is, that revo-
lution cannot be conquered, and that being providential and absolutely decreed, it
reappears continually, before Waterloo in Bonaparte, throwing the old thrones, after
Waterloo in Louis: VI l I., granting and submitting to the charter. Bonaparte places
a postillion on the throne of Naples and a sergeant on the throne of Sweden, employing
inequality to demonstrate equality; Louis X VI I I. at Saint Ouen countersigns the dec-
laration of the rights of man. Would you realise what Revolution is, call it Progress
and would you realise what Progress is, call it To-morrow. To-morrow performs its work
irresistibly, and it performs it from today, It always reaches its aim through unexpect-
ed means. It employ Wellington to make Foy, who was only a soldier, an orator. Foy
falls at ' Hougomont and rises again at the rostrum. Thus progress goes on. No tool
comes amiss to this workman It adjusts to its divine work, without being disconcerted,
the man who strode over the Alps, and the good old tottering invalid of the Pere Elysee.
It makes use of the cripple as well as the conqueror, the conqueror without, the, cripple
within. Waterloo, by cutting short the demolition of European thrones by the sword,
has had no other effect than to continue the revolutionary work in another way. The
saberers have gone out, the time of the thinkers has come. The age which Waterloo
would have checked, has marched on and pursued its course. This inauspicious victory
has been conquered by liberty.

In fine and incontestably, that which triumphed at Waterloo; that which smiled be-
hind Wellington; that which brought him all the marshals' batons of Europe, among
them, it is said, the baton of marshal of France, that which joyfully rolled
barrows of earth full of bones to rear the mound of the lion; that which has
written triumphantly on that pedestal this date: June 18th, 1815; that which
encouraged Blucher sabering the fugitives; that which, from the height of the
plateau of Mont Saint jean, hung over France as over a prey, was Counter-revo-
lution. It was Counter-revolution which murmured this infamous word--dismember-
ment. Arriving at Paris, it had a near view of the crater; it felt that these
ashes were burning its feet, and took a second thought. It came back lisping of
a charter.

Let us see in Waterloo only what there is in Waterloo. Of intentional liberty,
nothing. The Counter-revolution was involuntarily liberal, as, by a correspond-
ing phenomenon, Napoleon was involuntarily revolutionary. On the 18th June, 1815,
Robespierre on horseback was thrown from the saddle.



XVIII. RECRUDESCENCE OF DIVINE RIGHT



END OF the dictatorship. The whole European system fell.

The empire sank into a darkness which resembled that of the expiring Roman world.
It rose again from the depths, as in the time of the Barbarians. Only, the barbar-
ism of 1815, which should be called by its special name, the counter-revolution,
was short-winded, soon out of breath, and soon stopped. The empire, we must acknow-
ledge, was wept over, and wept over by heroic eyes. If there be glory in the sceptre-
sword, the empire had been glory itself. It had spread over the earth all the light
which tyranny can give--a sombre light. Let us say further--an obscure light. Com-
pared to the real day, it is night. This disappearance of night had the effect of an
eclipse.

Louis XVIII. returned to Paris. The dancing in a ring of the 8th of July effaced the
enthusiasm of the 20th of March. The Corsican became the antithesis of the Bearnois.
The flag of the dome of the Tuileries was white. The exile mounted the throne. The
fir table of Hartwell took its place before the chair decorated with fleur-de-lis of
Louis XIV. Men talked of Bouvines and Fontenoy as of yesterday, Austerlitz being out
of date. The altar and the throne fraternised majestically. One of the most unquest-
ionably safe forms of society in the nineteenth century was established in France
and on the Continent. Europe put on the white cockade. Trestail became famous.
The device non pluribus impar reappeared in the radiations on the facade of the bar-
racks of the quay of Orsay. Where there had been an imperial guard, there was a red
house. The are du Carrousel--covered with awkwardly gained victories,--disowned by
these new times and a little ashamed, perhaps, of Marengo and Arcola, extricated it-
self from the affair by the statue of the Duke of Angouleme. The cemetery de la
Madeleine, the terrible Potter's field of '93, was covered with marble and jasper,
the bones of Louis XVI. and Marie-Antoinette being in this dust. In the ditch of
Vincennes, a sepulchral column rose from the ground, recalling the fact that the
Duke of Enghien died in the same month in which Napoleon was crowned. Pope Pius
VII., who had performed this consecration very near the time of this death, tran-
quilly blessed the fall as he had blessed the elevation. At Schoenbrunn there was
a little shadow four years old which it was seditious to call the King of Rome.
And these things were done, and these kings resumed their thrones, and the master
of Europe was put in a cage, and the old regime became the new, and all the light
and shade of the earth changed place, because, in the afternoon of a summer's day,
a cowboy said to a Prussian in a wood: "Pass this way and not that!"

This 1815 was a sort of gloomy April. The old unhealthy and poisonous realities
took on new shapes. Falsehood espousd 1789, divine right masked itself under a
charter, fictions became constitutional, prejudices, superstitions and mental
reservations, with article 14 hugged to the heart, put on a varnish of liberalism.
Serpents changing their skins.

Man had been at once made greater and made less by Napoleon. The ideal, under
this splendid material reign, had received the strange name of ideology. Serious
recklessness of a great man, to turn the future into derision. The people, however,
that food for cannon so fond of the cannoneer, looked for him. Where is he? What
is he doing? "Napoleon is dead," said a visitor to an invalid of Marengo and Water-
loo. "He dead!" cried the soldier; "are you sure of that?" Imagination defied this
prostrate man. The heart of Europe, after Waterloo, was gloomy. An enormous void
remained long after the disappearance of Napoleon.

Kings threw themselves into this void. Old Europe profited by it to assume a new
form. There was a Holy Alliance. Belle Alliance the fatal field of Waterloo had
already said in advance.

In presence of and confronting this ancient_Europe made over, the lineaments of a
new France began to appear. The future, the jest of the emperor, made its appearance.
It had on its brow this star, Liberty. The ardent eyes of rising generations turned
towards it. Strange to tell, men became enamoured at the same time of this future,
Liberty, and of this past, Napoleon. Defeat had magnified the vanquished. Bonaparte
fallen seemed higher than Bonaparte in power. Those who had triumphed, were struck
with fear. England guarded him through Hudson Lowe, and France watched him through
Montchenu. His folded arms became the anxiety of thrones. Alexander called him, My
Wakefulness. This terror arose from the amount of revolution he had in him. This
is the explanation and excuse of Bonapartist liberalism. This phantom made the old
world quake. Kings reigned ill at ease with the rock of Saint Helena in the horizon.

While Napoleon was dying at Longwood, the sixty thousand men fallen on the field of
Waterloo tranquilly mouldered away, and something of their peace spread over the world.
The congress of Vienna made, from it the treaties of 1815, and Europe called that the
Restoration.

Such is Waterloo.

But what is that to the Infinite? All this tempest, all this cloud, this war, then
this peace, all this darkness, disturb not for a moment the light of that infinite
Eye, before which the least of insects leaping from one blade of grass to another
equals the eagle flying from spire to spire among the towers of Notre-Dame.



XIX. THE FIELD OF BATTLE AT NIGHT



WE return, for it is a requirement of this book, to the fatal field of battle.

On the 18th of June, 1815, the moon was full. Its light favoured the ferocious pursuit
of Blucher, disclosed the traces of the fugitives, delivered this helpless mass to
the bloodthirsty Prussian cavalry, and aided in the massacre. Night sometimes lends such
tragic assistance to catastrophe.

When the last gun had been fired the plain of Mont Saint Jean remained deserted.

The English occupied the camp of the French; it is the usual verification of victory to
sleep in the bed of the vanquished. They established their bivouac around Rossomme. The
Prussians, let loose upon the fugitives, pushed forward. Wellington went to the
vil-
lag of Waterloo to make up his report to Lord Bathurst.

If ever the sic vou non vobis were applicable, it is surely to this village of Waterloo.
Waterloo did nothing, and was two miles distant from the action. Mont Saint Jean was
cannonaded, Hougomont was burned, Papelotte was burned, Planchenoit was burned, La Haie
Sainte was taken by assault, La Belle Alliance witnessed the meeting of the two conquerors;
these names are scarcely known, and Waterloo, which had nothing to do with the battle, has
all the honour of it.

We are not of those who glorify war; when the opportunity presents itself we describe its
realities. War has frightful beauties which we have not concealed; it has also, we must admit,
some deformities. One of the most surprising is the eager spoliation of the dead after a vic-
tory. The day after a battle dawns upon naked corpses.

Who does this? Who thus sullies the triumph? Whose is this hideous furtive hand which glides
into the pocket of victory? Who are these pickpockets following their trade in the wake of
glory? Some philosophers, Voltaire among others, affirm that they are precisely those who have
achieved the glory. They are the same, say they, there is no exchange; those who survive pill-
age those who succumb. The hero of the day is the vampire of the night. A man has a right,
after all, to despoil in part a corpse which he has made.

For our part we do not believe this. To gather laurels and to steal the shoes from a dead man,
seems to us impossible to the same hand.

One thing is certain, that, after the conquerors, come the robbers. But let us place the sol-
dier, especially the soldier of today, beyond this charge.

Every army has a train, and there the accusation should lie. Bats, half brigand and half valet,
all species of night bird engendered by this twilight which is called war, bearers of uniforms
who never fight, sham invalids, formidable cripples, interloping sutlers, travelling, sometimes
with their wives, on little carts and stealing what they sell, beggars offering themselves as
guides to officers, army-servants, marauders; armies on the march formerly--we do not speak
of the present time--were followed by all these, to such an extent that, in technical language,
they are called "camp-followers." No army and no nation was responsible for these beings;
they spoke Italian and followed the Germans; they spoke French and followed the English. It
was by one of these wretches, a Spanish camp-follower who spoke French, that the Marquis of
Fervacques, deceived by his Picardy gibberish, and taking him for one of us, was treacherously
killed and robbed on the very battle-field during the night which followed the victory of
Cerisoles. From marauding came the marauder. The detestable maxim, Live on your enemy, pro-
duced this leper, which rigid discipline alone can cure. There are reputations which are illu-
sory; it is not always known why certain generals, though they have been great, have been so
popular. Turenne was adored by his soldiers because he tolerated pillage; the permission to do
wrong forms part of kindness; Turenne was so kind that he allowed the Palatinate to be burned
and put to the sword. There were seen in the wake of armies more or less of marauders according
as the commander was more or less severe. Roche and .Marceau had no camp-followers; Wellington--
we gladly do him this justice--had few. . .

However, during the night of the 18th of June, the dead were despoiled. Wellington was rigid;
he ordered whoever should be taken in-the act to he put to death; but rapine is persevering.
The marauders were robbing in one corner of the battle-field while they were shooting them in
another.

The moon was an evil genius on this plain.

Towards midnight a man was prowling or rather crawling along the sunken road of Ohain. He was,
to all appearance, one of those whom we have just described, neither English nor French, peasant
nor soldier, less a man than a ghoul, attracted by the scent of the corpses, counting theft
for victory, coming to rifle Waterloo. He was dressed in a blouse which was in part a capote,
was restless and daring, looking behind and before as he went. Who was this man? Night, proba-
bly, knew more of his doings than day! He had no knapsack, but evidenly large pockets under
his capote. From time to time he stopped, examined the plain around him as if to see if he
were observed, stooped down suddenly, stirred on the ground something silent and motionless,
then rose up and skulked away. His gliding movement, his attitudes, his rapid and mysterious
gestures, made him seem like those twilight spectres which haunt ruins and which the old
Norman legends call the Goers.

Certain nocturnal water-birds make such motions in marshes.

An eye which had carefully penetrated all this haze, might have noticed at some distance,
standing as it were concealed behind the ruin which is on the Nivelle road at the corner of
the route from Mont Saint Jean to Brain l'Alleud, a sort of little sutler's waggon, covered
with tarred osiers, harnessed to a famished jade browsing nettles through her bit, and in the
waggon a sort of woman seated tin some trunks and packages. Perhaps there was some con-
nection between this waggon and the prowler.

The night was serene. Not a cloud was in the zenith. What mattered it that the earth was red;
the moon retained her whiteness. Such is the indifference of heaven. In the meadows, branches
of trees broken by grape, but not fallen and held by the bark, swung gently in the night wind.
A breath, almost a respiration, moved the brushwood. There was a quivering in the grass which
seemed like the departure of souls.

The tread of the patrols and groundsmen of the English camp could be hemd dimly in the dis-
tance.

Hougomont and ta La Haie continued to burn making, one in the east and the other in
the west, two great flames, to which was attached, like a necklace of rubies with two car-
buncles at its extremities, the cordon of bivouac fires of the English, extending in an im-
mense semicircle over the hills of the horizon.

We have spoken of the catastrophe of the road to Ohain. The heart almost sinks
with terror at the thought of such a death for so many brave men.

If anything is frightful, if there be a reality which surpasses dreams, it is
this: to live, to see the sun, to be in full possession of manly vigour, to
have health and joy, to laugh sturdily, to rush towards a glory which dazzling-
ly invites you on, to feel a very pleasure in respiration, to feel your heart
beat, to feel yourself a reasoning being, to speak, to think, to hope, to love;
to have mother, to have wife, to have children, to have sunlight, and suddenly,
in a moment, in less than a minute, to feel yourself buried in an abyss, to fall,
to roll, to crush, to be crushed, to see the grain, the flowers, the leaves, the
branches, to be able to seize upon nothing, to feel your sword useless, men under
you, horses over you, to strike about you in vain, your bones broken by some kick
in the darkness, to feel a heel which makes your eyes leap from their sockets,
to grind the horseshoes with rage in your teeth, to stifle, to howl, to twist,
to be under all this, and to say: just now I was a living man!

There, where this terrible death-rattle had been, all was now silent. The cut of
the sunken road was filled with horses and riders inextricably heaped together.
Terrible entanglement. There were no longer slopes to the road; dead bodies filled
it even with the plain, and came to the edge of the banks like a well-measured
bushel of barley. A mass of dead above, a river of blood below--such was this
road on the evening of the 18th of June, 1815. The blood ran even to the Nivelles
road, and oozed through in a large pool in front of the abattis of trees, whibh
barred that road, at a spot which is still sIown. It was, it will be remembered,
at the opposite point towards the road from Genappe, that the burying of the cui-
rassiers took place. The thickness of the mass of bodies was proportioned to the
depth of the hollow road. Towards the middle, at a spot where it became shallower,
over which Delord's division had passed, this bed of death became thinner.

The night prowler which we have just introduced to the reader went in this direct-
ion. He ferreted through this immense grave. He looked about. He passed an inde-
scribably hideous review of the dead. He walked with his feet in blood.

Suddenly he stopped.

A few steps before him, in the sunken road, at a point where the mound of corpses
ended, from under this mass of men and noises appeared an open hand, lighted by
the moon.

This hand had something upon a finger which sparkled a gold ring.

The man stooped down, remained a moment, and when he rose again there was no
ring upon that hand.

He did not rise up precisely; he remained in a sinister and startled attitude,
turning his back to the pile of dead, scrutinising the horizon, on his knees, all
the front of his body being supported on his two fore-fingers, his head raised
just enough to peep above the edge of the hollow road. The four paws of the
jackal are adapted to certain actions.

Then, deciding upon his course, he arose.

At this moment lie experienced a shock. He felt that be was held from behind.

He turned; it was the open hand, which had closed, seizing the lappel of his ca-
pote.

An honest man would have been frightened. This man began to laugh.

"Oh," said he, "it's only the dead man. I like a ghost better than a gendarme."

However, the band relaxed and let go its hold. Strength is soon exhausted in the
tomb.

"Ah ha!" returned the prowler, "is this dead man alive? Let us see."

He bent over again, rummaged among the heap, removed whatever impeded him, seized
the hand, laid hold of the arm, disengaged the head, drew out the body, and some
moments after dragged into the shadow of the hollow road an inanimate man, at
least one who was senseless. It was a cuirassier, an officer; an officer, also,
of some rank; a great gold epaulet protruded from beneath his cuirass, but he had
no casque. A furious sabre cut had disfigured his face, where nothing but blood was
to be seen. It did not seem, however, that he had any limbs broken; and by some hap-
py chance, if the word is possible here, the bodies were arched above him in such a
way as to prevent his being crushed. His eyes were closed.

He had on his cuirass the silver cross of the Legion of Honour.

The prowler tore off this cross, which disappeared in one of the gulfs which he had
under his capote.

After which he felt the officer's fob, found a watch there, and took it. Then he
rummaged in his vest and found a purse, which he pocketed.

When he had reached this phase of the succour he was lending the dying man, the of-
ficer opened his eyes.

"Thanks," said he feebly.

The rough movements of the man handling him, the coolness of the night, and breath-
ing the fresh air freely, had roused him from his lethargy.

The prowler answered not. He raised his head. The sound of a footstep could be heard
on the plain; probably it was some patrol who was approaching.

The officer murmured, for there were still signs of suffering in his voice:

"Who has gained the battle?"

"The English," answered the prowler.

The officer replied:

"Search my pockets. You will there find a purse and a watch. Take them."

This had already been done.

The prowler made a pretence of executing the command, and said:

"There is nothing there."

"I have been robbed," replied the officer; "I am sorry. They would have been yours."

The step of the patrol became more and more distinct. "Somebody is coming," said the
prowler, making a movement as if he would go.

The officer, raising himself up painfully upon one arm, held him back.

"You have saved my life. Who are you?"

The prowler answered quick and low:

"I belong, like yourself, to the French army. I must go. If I are. taken I shall be
shot. I have saved your life. Help yourself now."

"What is your grade?"

"Sergeant.

"What is your name?"

"Thenardier."

"I shall not forget that name," said the officer. "And you, remem-ber mine. My name
is Pontmercy."




　　　　　　　 　BOOK SECOND
　　　　　　THE SHIP ORION



NUMBER 24601 BECOMES NUMBER 9430



JEAN Valjean has been retaken.

We shall be pardoned for passing rapidly over the painful details. We shall merely re-
produce a couple of items published in the newspapers of that day, some few months after
the remarkable events that occurred at M-- sur M--,

The articles referred to are somewhat laconic. It will be remembered that the Gazelle
des Tribunaux had not yet been established.

We copy the first from the Drapeau Blanc. It is dated the .25th of July, 1823:

"A district of the Pas-de-Calais has just been the scene of an extraordinary occurrence.
A stranger in that department, known as Monsieur Madeleine, had, within a few years past,
restored, by means of certain new processes, the manufacture of jet and black glass ware--
a former local branch of industry. He had made his own fortune by it, and, in fact, that
of the entire district. In acknowledgment of his services he had been appointed mayor.
The police has discovered that Monsieur Madeleine was none other than an escaped convict,
condemned in 1796 for robbery, and named Jean Valjean. This Jean Valjean has been sent
back to the galleys. It appears that previous to his arrest, he succeeded in withdrawing
from I-antes a sum amounting to more than half a million which he had deposited there,
and which it is said, by the way, he had very legitimately realised in his business.
Since his return to the galleys at Toulon, it has been impossible to discover where Jean
Valjean concealed this money."

The second article, which enters a little more into detail, is taken from the Journal de
Paris of the same date:

"An old convict, named Jean Valjean, has recently been brought beforethe Var Assizes,
under circumstances calculated to attract attention. This villain had succeeded in elud-
ing the vigilance of the police; he had changed his name, and had even been adroit enough
to procure the appointment of mayor in one of our small towns in the North. He had estab-
lished in this town a very considerable business, but was, at length unmasked and arrested,
thanks to the indefatigable zeal of the public authorities. He kept, as his mistress, a
prostitute, who died of the shock at the moment of his arrest. This wretch, who is endowed
with herculean strength, managed to escape, but, three or four days afteywards, the police
retook him, in Paris, just as he was getting into one of the small vehicles that ply between
the capital and the village of Montfermeil ( Seine-etOise). It is said that he had availed him-
self of the interval of these three or four days of freedom, to withdraw a considerable sum
deposited by him with one of our principal bankers. The amount is estimated at six or seven
hundred thousand francs. According to the minutes of the case, he has concealed it in some
place known to himself alone, and it has been impossible to seize it; however that may 'be,
the said Jean Valjean has been brought before the assizes of the Department of the Var
under indictment for an assault and robbery on the high road committed vi et armis some
eight years ago on the person of one of those honest lads who, as the patriarch of Ferney
has written in immortal verse,

. . . De Savoie arrivent tous les ans,
Et dont la main legerement essuie
Ces longs canaux engorges par la stile".
( Who come from Savoy every year,
And whose hand deftly wipes out
Those long channels choked up with soot.)

This bandit attempted no defence. It was proven by the able and eloquent representative of
the crown that the robbery was shared in by others, and that Jean Valjean formed one of a
band of robbers in the South. Consequently, Jean Valjean, being found guilty, was condemned
'to death. The criminal refused to appeal to the higher courts, and the king, in his inex-
haustible clemency, deigned to commute his sentence to that of hard labour in prison for
life. Jean Valjean was immediately forwarded to the galleys at Toulon."

It will not be forgotten that Jean Valjean had at M-- sur M--.certain religious habits.
Some of the newspapers and, among them, the Constitutionnel, held up this commutation as
a triumph of the clerical party.

Jean Valjean changed his number at the galleys. He became 9430.

While we are about it, let us remark, in dismissing the subject, that with M.' Madeleine,
the prosperity of M-- sur M-- disappeared; all that he had foreseen, in that night of fever
and irresolution, was realised; he gone, the sou/ was gone. After his downfall; there was
at sur M-- that egotistic distribution of what is left when great men have fallen--that
fatal carving up of prosperous enterprises which is daily going on, out of sight, in hu-
man society, and whichhistory has noted but once,. and then, because it took place after
the death of Alexander. Generals crown themselves kings; the foremen, in this case,
assumed the position of manufacturers. Jealous rivalries arose. The spacious
workshops of M. Madeleine were closed; the building fell into ruin, the workmen
dispersed. Some left the country, others abandoned the business. From that time
forth, everything was done on a small, instead of on the large scale, and for
gain rather than for good. No longer any centre; competition on all sides, and
on all sides venom. M. Madeleine had ruled and directed everything. He fallen,
every man strove for himself; the spirit of strife succeeded to the spirit of
organisation, bitterness to cordiality, hatred of each against each instead of
the good will of the founder towards all; the threads knitted by M. Madeleine
became entangled and were broken; the workmanship was debased, the manufactur-
ers were degraded, confidence was killed; customers diminished, there were fewer
orders, wages decreased, the shops became idle, bankruptcy followed. And, then,
there was nothing left for the poor. All that was there disappeared.

Even the state noticed that some one had been crushed, in some direction. Less
than four years after the decree of the court of assizes establishing the iden-
tity of M. Madeleine and Jean Valjean, for the benefit of the galleys, the expense
of collecting the taxes was doubled an the district of M--sur and M. de Villele
remarked the fact, on the floor of the Assembly, in the month of February, 1827.



II. IN WHICH A COUPLE OF LINES WILL BE READ WHICH CAME, PERHAPS, FROM THE EVIL ONE



Before proceeding further, it will not be amiss to relate, in some detail, a singular
incident which took place, about the same time, at Montfenneil, and which, perhaps,
does not fall in badly with certain conjectures of the public authorities.

There exists, in the neighbourhood of Montfermeil, a vet"' ancient superstition, all
the more rare and precious from the fact that a popular superstition in the vicinity
of Paris is like an aloe tree in Siberia. Now, we are of those who respect anything
in the way of a rarity. Here, then, is the superstition of Mont lemma they believe,
there, that the Evil One has, from time immemorial, chosen the forest as the hiding-
place for his treasure. The good wives of the vicinity affirm that it is no unusual
thing to meet. at sundown, in the secluded portions of the woods, a black-looking
man. resembling a waggoner or wood-cutter, shod in wooden shoes, clad in breeches
and sack of coarse linen, and recognisable front the circumstance that; instead of a
cap or hat, he has two immense horns upon his head. That certainly ought to render
him recognisable. This man is Constantly occupied in digging holes. There are three
ways of dealing when you meet him.

The first mode is to approach the man and speak to him. Then you perceive that
the man is nothing but a peasant, that he looks black because it is twilight,
that he is digging no hole whatever, but is merely cutting grass for his cows;
and that what had been taken for horns are nothing but his pitchfork which he
carries on his back, and the prongs of which, thanks to the night perspective,
seemed to rise from his head. You go home and die within a week. The second meth-
od is to watch him, to wait until he has dug the hole, dosed it up, and gone away;
then, to run quickly to the spot, to open it and.set the "treasure" which the
black-looking man has, of course, buried there. In this case, you die within a
month. The third manner is not to speak to the dark man nor even to look at him,
and to run away as fast as you can. You die within the year.

As all three of these methods have their drawbacks, the second, which, at least,
offers some advantages, among others that of possessing a treasure, though it be
but for a month, is the one generally adopted.Daring fellows, who never neglect a
good chance, have, therefore, many times, it is asseverated, reopened the holes
thus dug by the black-looking man, and tried to rob the Devil. It would appear,
however, that it is not a very good business--at least, if we are to believe trad-
ition, and, more especially, two enigmatic lines in barbarous Latin left us, on
this subject, by a roguish Norman monk, named Tryphon, who dabbled in the black
art. This Tryphon was buried in the abbey of St. Georges de Bochervile, near Rouen,
and toads are produced from his grave.

Well then, the treasure-seeker makes tremendous efforts, for the holes referred to
are dug, generally, very deep; he sweats, he digs, he works away all night, for
this is done in the night-time; he gets his clothes wet, he consumes his candle,
he hacks and breaks his pickaxe, and when, at length, he has reached the bottom of
the hole, when he has put his hand upon the "treasure," what does he find? What is
this treasure of the Evil One? A penny--sometimes a crown; a stone, a skeleton, a
bleeding corpse, sometimes a spectre twice folded like a sheet of paper in a port-
folio, sometimes nothing. This is what seems to be held forth to the indiscreet
and prying by the lines of Tryphon:

Podit, et in fossa thesauros coridit opaca,
As, nummos, Lapides, cadaver, simulacra, nihilque.
(He digs, and in the dark grave hides,
nothing but coins, gems, a corpse and pictures.)


It appears that, in our time, they find in addition sometimes a powder-horn with
bullets, sometimes an old pack of brown and greasy cards which have evidently been
used by the Devil. Tryphon makes no mention of these articles, as Tryphon lived in the
twelfth century, and it does not appear that the Evil One had wit enough to invent
powder in advance of Roger Bacon or cards before Charles VI.

Moreover, whoever plays with these cards is sure to lose all he has, and as to the
powder in the flask, it has the peculiarity of bursting your gun in your face.

Now, very shortly after the time when the authorities wok it into their heads that
the liberated convict Jean Valjean had, during his escape of a few days' duration,
been prowling. about Montfermeil, it was remarked, in that village, that a certain
old road-labourer named Boulatruelle had "a fancy" for the woods. People in the
neighbourhood claimed to know that Boulatruelle had been in the galleys; be was
under police surveillance, and, as he could find no work anywhere, the government
employed him at half wages as a mender on the cross-road from Gagny to Lagny.

This Boulatruelle was a man in bad odour with the people of the neighbourhood; he
was too respectful, too humble, prompt to doff his cap to everybody; he always trem-
bled and smiled in the presence of the gendarmes, was probably in secret connection
with robber-bands, said the gossips, and suspected of lying in wait in the hedge
corners, at night-fall, He had nothing in his favour except that he was a drunkard.

What had been observed was this:

For some time past, Boulatruelle had left off his work at stone-breaking and keeping
the road in order, very early, and had gone into the woods with his pick. He would
be met towards evening in the remotest glades and the wildest thickets, having the
appearance of a person looking for something and, sometimes, digging holes. The good
wives who passed that way took hint at first for-Beelzebub, then they recognised
Boulatruelle, and were by no means reassured. These chance meetings seemed greatly
to disconcert Boulamelte. It was clear that he was trying to conceal himself, and that
there was something mysterious in his operations.

The village gossips said:--"It's plain that the Devil has been about, Boulatruelle
has seen him and is looking for his treasure. The truth is. he is just the fellow to
rob the Evil One."--The Voltairians added: "Will Boulatruelle catch the Devil or the
Devil catch Boulatruelle?"--The old women crossed themselves very often.

However, the visits of Boulatruelle to the woods ceased and he recommenced his regular
labour on the road. People began to talk about something else.

A few, however, retained their curiosity, thinking that there might he involved in the
affair, not the fabulous treasures of the legend, but some goodly matter more substan-
tial than the Devil's bank-bills,' and that Boulatruelle had half spied out the secret.
The worst puzzled of all were the schoolmaster and the taven-keeper, Thenardier, who
was everybody's .friend, and who had not disdained to strike up an intimacy with even
Boulatruelle.

"He has been in the galleys," said .Thenardier.:"Good Lord! nobody knows who is there
or who may be there!"

One evening, the schoolmaster remarked that, in old times, the authorities would have
inquired into what Boulatruelle was about in the woods, and that he would have been com-
pelled to speak--even put to torture, if need were--and that Boulatruelle would not have
held out, had he been put to the question by water, for example.

"Let us put him to the wine question," said Thenardier.

So they made up a party and plied the old roadsman with drink. Boulatruelle drank enor-
mously, but said little. He combined with admirable art and in masterly proportions the
thirst of a guzzler with the discretion of a judge. However, by dint of returning to the
charge and by putting together and twisting the obscure expressions that he did let fall,
Thenardier and the schoolmaster made out, as they thought, the following:

One morning about daybreak as he was going to his work, Boulatruelle had been surprised
at seeing under a bush in a corner of the wood, apickaxe and spade, as one would say, hi-
dden there. However, he supposed that they were the pick and spade of old Six-Fours, the
water-carrier, and thought no more about it. But, on the evening of the same day, he had
seen, without being seen himself, for he was hidden behind a large tree, "a person who
did not belong at all to that region, and whom he, Boulatruelle, knew very wel!"--or, as
Thenardier translated it, "an old comrade at the galleys"--turn off from the high road
towards the thickest part of the wood. Boulatruelle obstinately refused to tell the stran-
ger's name. This person carried a package, something square, like a large box or a small
trunk. Boulatruelle was surprised. Seven or eight minutes, however, elapsed before it oc-
curred to him to follow the "person."' But he was too late. The person was already in the
thick woods, night had come on, and Boulatruelle did not succeed in overtaking him. There-
upon he made up his mind to watch the outskirts of the wood. "There was a moon." Two or
three hours later, Boulatruelle saw this person come forth again from the wood, this time
carrying now not the little trunk but a pick and a spade. Boulatruelle let the person pass
unmolested, because, as he thought to himself, the other was three times as strong as he,
was armed with a pickaxe, and would probably murder him, on recognising his countenance
and seeing that he, in turn, was recognised. Touching display of feeling in two old com-
panions unexpectedly meeting! But the pick and the spade were a ray of light to Boulatru-
elle he hastened to the bushes, in the morning, and found neither one nor the other. He
thence concluded that this person, on entering the wood, had dug a hole with his pick, had
buried the chest, and had; then, filled up the hole with his spade. Now, as the chest was
too small to contain a corpse, it must contain money; hence his continued searches. Boula-
truelle had explored, sounded, and ransacked the whole forest, and had rummaged every spot
where the earth seemed to have been freshly disturbed. But all in vain.

He had turned up nothing. Nobody thought any more about it, at Montfermeil, excepting a
few good gossips, who said: "Be sure the road-labourer of Carty didn't make all that fuss
for nothing: the devil was certainly there."



III. SHOWING THAT THE CHAIN OP THE IRON RING MUST NEEDS HAVE
UNDERGONE A CERTAIN PREPARATION TO DE THUS 'BROKEN
BY ONE BLOW OF THE HAMMER



TOWARDS the end of October, in that same year, 1823, the inhabitants of Toulon saw coming
back into their port, in consequence of heavy weather, and in order to repair some damages,
the ship Orion, which was at a later period employed at Brest as a vessel of instruction,
and which then formed a part of the Mediterranean squadron. This ship, crippled as she was,
for the sea had used her roughly, produced some sensation on entering the roadstead. She
flew I forget what pennant, but it entitled her to a regular salute of eleven guns, which
she returned shot for shot: in all twenty-two. It has been estimated that in salutes, royal
and military compliments, exchanges of courteous hubbub, signals of etiquette, roadstead
and citadel formalities, risings and settings of the sun saluted daily by all fortresses
and all vessels of war, the opening and closing of gates, etc., etc., the civilised world,
in every part of the globe, fires off, daily, one hundred and fifty thousand useless =non
shots. At six francs per shot, that would amount to nine hundred thousand francs per day,
or three hundred millions per year, blown off in smoke. This is only an item. In the mean-
while, the poor are dying with hunger.

The year 1623 was what the Restoration has called the "time of the Spanish War."

That war comprised many events in one, and no small number of singular things. It was a great
family affair of the Bourbons; the French branch aiding and protecting the branch at Madrid,
that is to say, performing the duties of seniority; an apparent return to our national trad-
itions, mixed up with subserviency, and cringing to the cabinets of the North; the Due d'Ang-
ouleme, dubbed by the liberal journals the hero of Andujar, repressing, with a triumphal at-
titude--rather contradicted by his peaceful mien--the old and very real terrorism of the Holy
Office, in conflict with the chimerical terrorism of the Liberals; sans-culottes revived, to
the great alarm of all the old dowagers, under the name of descamisados; monarchists striving
to impede progress, which they styled anarchy; the theories of '89 rudely interrupted in
their undermining advances; a halt from all Europe, intimated to the French idea of revolu-
tion,- making its tour of the globe; side by side with the son of France, general-in-chief,
the Prince de Carignan, afterwards Charles Albert, enlisting in this crusade of the kings a-
gainst the peoples, as a volunteer, with a grenadier's epaulets of red wool; the soldiers of
the empire again betaking themselves to the field, but after eight years of rest, grown old,
gloomy, and under the white cockade; the tricolour displayed abroad by a heroic handful of
Frenchmen, as the white flag had been at Coblentz, thirty years before; monks mingling with
our troopers; the spirit of liberty and of innovation reduced by bayonets; principles struck
dumb by cannon-shot; France undoing by her arms what she had done with her mind; to cap the
climax, the leaders on the other side sold, their troops irresolute; cities besieged by mil-
lions of money; no military dangers, and yet some explosions possible, as is the case in every
mine entered and taken by surprise; but little blood shed, but little honour gained; shame
for a few, glory for none. Such was this war, brought about by princes who descended from
Louis XIV., and carried on by generals who sprang from Napoleon. It had this wretched fate,
that it recalled neither the image of a great war nor of a great policy.

A few feats of arms were serious affairs; the taking of Trocadero, among others, was a hand-
some military exploit; but, taken all in all, we repeat, the trumpets of this war emit a crack-
ed and feeble sound, the general appearance of it was suspicious, and history approves the un-
willingness of France to father so false a triumph. It seemed clear that certain Spanish offi-
cers intrusted with the duty of resistance, yielded too easily, the idea of bribery was suggest-
ed by a contemplation of the victory; it appeared as if the generals rather than the battles
had been won, and the victorious soldier returned humiliated. It was war grown petty indeed,
where you could read Bank of France on the folds of the flag.

Soldiers of the war of 1808, under whose feet Saragossa had so terribly crumbled, knit their
brows at this ready surrender of fastness and citadels, and regretted Palafox. It is the mood
of France to prefer to have before her a Rostopchine rather than a Ballesteros.

In a still graver point of view, which it is well to urge, too, this war, which broke the mil-
itary spirit of France, fired the democratic spirit with indignation. It was a scheme of sub-
jugation. In this campaign, the object held out to the French soldier, son of democracy, was the
conquest of a yoke for the neck of another. Hideous contradiction. France exists to arouse the
soul of the peoples, not to the stifle it. Since 1792, all the revolutions of Europe have been
but the French Revolution: liberty radiates on every side from France. That is a fact as dear
as noonday. Blind is he who does not see it! Bonaparte has said it.

The war of 1823, an outrage on the generous Spanish nation, was, at the same time, an outrage
on the French Revolution. This monstrous deed of violence France committed, but by compulsion;
for, aside from wars of liberation, all that armies do they do by compulsion. The words passive
obedience tell the tale. An army is a wondrous masterpiece of combination, in which might is
the result of an enormous sum-total of utter weakness. Thus only can we explain a war waged by
humanity against humanity, in despite of humanity.

As to the Bourbons, the war of 1823 was fatal to them. They took it for a success. They did not
see what danger there is in attempting to kill an idea by.a military watchword. In their simp-
licity, they blundered to the extent of introducing into their establishment, as an element of
strength, the immense enfeeblement of a crime. The spirit of ambuscade and lying in wait entered
into their policy. The germ of 1830 was in 1823. The Spanish campaign became in their councils
an argument on behalf of violent measures and intrigues in favour of divine right. France having
restored el rcy ncto ut Spain, could certainly restore the absolute monarchy at home. They
fell into the tremendous error of mistaking the obedience of the soldier for the acquiescence of
the nation. That fond delusion ruins thrones. It will not do to fall asleep either in the shade
of a upas tree or in the shadow of an army.

But let us return to the ship Orion.

During the operations of the army of the Prince, commanding-in-chief, a squadron cruised in the
Mediterranean. We have said that the Orion belonged to that squadron, and that she had been dri-
ven back by stress of weather to the port of Toulon.

The presence of a vessel of war in port has about it a certain influence which attracts and en-
gages the multitude. It is because it is something grand, and the multitude like what is imposing.

A ship-of-the-line is one of the most magnificent struggles of human genius with the forces of
nature.

A vessel of the line is composed of the heaviest, and at the same time the lightest materials,
because she has to contend, at one and the same time. with the three forms of matter, the solid,
the liquid. and the fluid. She has eleven claws of iron to grasp the rock at the bottom of the
sea. and more wings and feelers than the butterfly to catch the breezes in the clouds. Her breath
goes forth through her hundred and twenty guns as through enormous trumpets, and haughtily an-
swers the thunderbolt. Ocean strives to lead her astray in the frightful sameness of his billows, but
the ship has her compass, which is her soul, always counselling her and always pointing towards
the north. In dark nights, her lanterns take the place of the stars. Thus, then, to oppose the
wind, she has her ropes and canvas; against the water her timber; against the rock her iron, her
copper, and her lead; against the darkness, light; against immensity, needle.

Whoever would form an idea of all these gigantic proportions, the aggregate of which constitutes
a ship-of-the-line, has but to pass under one of the covered ship-houses, six stories high, at
Brest or Toulon. The vessels in process of construction are seen there under glass cases, so to
speak. That colossal beam is a yard; that huge column of timber lying on the ground and reach-
ing out of sight is the mainmast. Taking it from its root in the hold to its summit in the clouds,
it is sixty fathoms long, and is three feet in diameter at its base. The English mainmast rises
two hundred and seventeen feet above the water-line. The navy of our fathers used cables, ours
uses chains. Now the mere coil of chains of a hundred-gun ship is four feet high, twenty feet
broad, and eight feet thick. And for the construction of this vessel, how much timber is required?
It is a floating forest.

And yet, be it remembered, that we are here speaking only of the war vessel of some forty years
ago, the mere sailing craft; steam, then in its infancy, has, since that time, added new wonders
to this prodigy called a man-of-war. At the present day, for example, the mixed vessel, the screw-
propeller, is a surprising piece of mechanism moved by a spread of canvas measuring four thousand
square yards of surface, and by a steam-engine of twenty-five hundred horse power.

Without referring to these fresher marvels, the old-fashioned ship of Christopher Columbus and of
De Ruyter is one of the noblest works of man. It is exhaustless in force as the breadth of infini-
tude; it gathers up the wind in its canvas, it is firmly fixed in the immense chaos of the waves,
it floats and it reigns.

But a moment comes, when the white squall breaks that sixty-foot yard like a straw; and when the
wind flaw bends that four hundred foot mast like a reed; when that anchor, weighing its tons upon
tons, is twisted in the maw of the wave like the angler's hook in the jaws of a pike; when those
monster guns utter plaintive and futile roarings which the tempest whirls away into space and
night, when all this might and all this majesty are engulfed in a superior might and majesty.

Whenever immense strength is put forth only to end in immense weakness, it makes men meditate.
Hence it is that, in seaports, the curious, without themselves knowing exactly why, throng about
these wonderful instruments of war and navigation.

Every day, then, from morning till night, the quays, the wharves, and the piers of the port of
Toulon were covered with a throng of saunterers and idlers, whose occupation consisted in gazing
at the Orion.

The Orion was a ship that had long been in bad condition. During her previous voyages, thick lay-
ers of shellfish had gathered on her bottom to such an extent as to seriously impede her progress;
she bad been put on the dry-dock the year before,. to be scraped, and then she had gone to sea a-
gain. But this scraping had injured her fastening.

In the latitude of the Balearic Isles, her planking had loosened and opened, and as there was in
those days no copper sheathing, the ship had leaked. A fierce equinoctial came on, which had stove
in the larboard bows and a porthole, and damaged the fore-chainwales. In consequence of these inju-
ries, the Orion had put back to Toulon.

She was moored near the arsenal. She was in commission, and they were repairing her. The hull had
not been injured on the starboard side, but a few planks had been taken off here and there, accord-
ing to custom, to admit the air to the framework.

One morning, the throng which was gazing at her witnessed an accident.

The crew was engaged in furling sail. The topinan, whose duty it was to take in the starboard tip-
per corner of the main top-sail, lost his balance. He was seen tottering; the dense throng assem-
bled on the wharf of the arsenal uttered a cry, the man's head overbalanced his body. and he whirl-
ed over the yard, his arms outstretched towards the deep; as he went over, he grasped the man-ropes,
first with one hand, and then with the other, and hung suspended in that manner. The sea lay far be-
low him at a giddy depth. The shock of his fall had given to the man-ropes a violent swinging motion,
and the poor fellow hung dangling to and fro at the end of this line, like a stone in a sling.

To go to his aid was to run a frightful risk. None of the crew, who were all fishermen of the coast re-
cently taken into service, dared attempt it. In the meantime, the poor topman was becoming exhausted;
his agony could not be seen us his countenance, but his increasing weakness could be detected in the
movements of all his limbs. His arms twisted about in horrible contortions. Every attempt he made to
reascend only increased the oscillations of the man-ropes. He did not cry out, for fear of losing his
strength. All were now looking forward to the moment when he should let go of the rope, and, at instants,
all turned their heads away that they might not see him fall. There are moments when a rope's end, a
pole, the branch of a tree, is life itself, and it is a frightful thing to see a living being lose his hold u-
pon it, and fall like a ripe fruit.

Suddenly, a man was discovered clambering up the rigging with the agility of a wildcat. This man
was clad in red--it was a convict; he wore a green cap--it was a convict for life. As he reached
the round top, a gust of wind blew off his cap and revealed a head entirely white: it was not a
young man.

In fact, one of the convicts employed on board in some prison task, had, at the first alarm, run
to the officer of the watch, and, amid the confusion and hesitation of the crew, while all the
sailors trembled and shrank back, had asked permission to save the topman's life at the risk
of his own. A sign of assent being given, with one blow of a hammer he broke the chain riveted
to the iron ring at his ankle, then took a rope in his hand, and flung himself into the shrouds.
Nobody, at the moment, noticed with what ease the chain was broken. It was only some time
afterwards that anybody remembered it.

In a twinkling he was upon the yard. He paused a few seconds, and seemed to measure it with
his glance. Those seconds, during which the wind swayed the sailor to and fro at the end of the
rope, seemed ages to the lookers-on. At length. the convict raised his eyes to heaven, and took
a step forward. The crowd drew a long breath. He was seen to run along the yard. On reaching
its extreme tip, he fastened one end of the rope he had with him, and let the other hang at full
length. Thereupon, he began to let himself down by his hands along this rope, and then there was
an inexpressible sensation of terror; instead of one man, two were seen dangling at that giddy
height.

You would have said it was a spider seizing a fly; only, in this case, the spider was bringing life,
and not death. Ten thousand eyes were fixed upon the group. Not a cry; not a word was uttered;
the same emotion contracted every brow. Every man held his breath, as if afraid to add the
least whisper to the wind which was swaying the two unfortunate men.

However, the convict had, at length, managed to make his way down to the seaman. It was time;
one minute more, and the man, exhausted and despairing, would have fallen into the deep. The
convict firmly secured him to the rope to which he clung with one hand whale he worked with
the other. Finally, lie was seen reascending to the yard, and hauling the sailor after him; he
supported hind there, for an instant, to let him recover his strength, and then, lifting him in his
arms, carried him, as he walked along the yard, to the crosstrees, and from there to the round-
top, where he left him in the hands of his mess-mates.

Then the throng applauded; old galley sergeants wept, women hugged each other on the wharves,
and, on all sides, voices were heard exclaiming, with a sort of tenderly Subdued enthusiasm:

"This man must be pardoned!"

He, however, had made it a point of duty to 'descend again immediately, and go back to his work.
In order to arrive more quickly, he slid down the rigging, and started to run along a lower yard.
All eves were following him. There was a certain moment when every one felt alarmed; whether
it was that he felt fatigued, or because his head swam, people thought they saw him hesitate
and stagger. Suddenly, the throng uttered a thrilling outcry: the convict had fallen into the sea.

The fall was perilous. The frigate Allgesiras was moored close to the Orion, and the poor convict
had plunged between the two ships. It was feared that he would be drawn under one or the other.
Fourmen sprang, at once, into a boat. The people cheered them on, and anxiety again took pos-
session of all minds. The man had not again risen to the surface. He had disappeared in the sea,
without making even a ripple, as though he had fallen into a cask of oil. They sounded and dragged
the place. It was in vain. The search was continued until night, but not even the body was found.

The next morning, the Toulon Journal published the following lines:--"November 17, 1823. Yes-
terday, a convict at work on board of the Orion, on his return from rescuing a sailor, fell into
the sea, and was drowned. His body was not recovered. It is presumed that it has been caught
under the piles at the pier-head of the arsenal. This man was registered by the number 9430,
and his name was Jean Valjean."




　　　　　　　BOOK THIRD
FULFILMENT OF THE PROMISE TO THE DEPARTED




I. THE WATER QUESTION AT MONTFERMEIL



MONTFERMEIL is situated between Livry and Chelles, upon the southern slope of
the high plateau which separates the Ourcq from the Marne. At present, it is a
considerable town, adorned all the year round with stuccoed villas, and, on Sun-
days, with citizens in full blossom. In 1823, there were at Montfermeil neither
so many white houses nor so many comfortable citizens; it was nothing but a vil-
lage in the woods. You would find, indeed, here and there a few country seats of
the last century, recognisable by their grand appearance, their balconies of
twisted iron, and those long windows the little panes of which show all sorts of
different greens upon the white of the closed shutters. But Montfermeil was none
the less a village. Retired dry-goods merchants and amateur villagers had not yet
discovered it. It was a peaceful and charming spot, and not upon the road to any
place; the inhabitants cheaply enjoyed that rural life which is so luxuriant and
so easy of enjoyment. But water was scarce there on account of the height of the
plateau.

They had to go a considerable distance for it. The end of the village towards
Gagny drew its water from the magnificent ponds in the forest on that side; the
other end, which surrounds the church and which is towards Chelles, found drinking-
water only at a little spring on the side of the hill, near the road to Chelles,
about fifteen minutes' walk from Montfermeil.

It was therefore a serious matter for each household to obtain its supply of water.
The great houses, the aristocracy, the Thenardier tavern included, paid a penny a
bucket-full to an old man who made it his business, and whose income from the Mont-
fermeil waterworks was about eight sous per day; but this man worked only till sev-
en o'clock in summer and five in the winter, and when night had come on, and the
first-floor shutters were closed, whoever had no drinking-water went after it, or
went without it.

This was the terror of the poor being whom the reader has not perhaps forgotten--
little Cosette. It will be remembered that Cosette was useful to the Thenardiers
in two ways. they got pay from the mother and work from the child. Thus when the
mother ceased entirely to pay, we have seen why,,in the preceding chapters, the
Thenardiers kept Cosette. She saved them a servant. In that capacity she ran for
water when it was wanted. So the child, always horrified at the idea of going to
the spring at night took good care that water should never be wanting at the house.

Christmas in the year 1823 was particularly brilliant at Montfermei!. The early
part of the winter had been mild; so far there had been neither frost nor snow.
Some jugglers from Paps had obtained permission from the mayor to set up their
stalls in the main street of the village, and a company of pedlars had, under the
same licence, put up their booths in the square before the church and even in the
lane du Boulanger, upon which, as the reader perhaps remembers, the Thenardier
chophouse was situated. This filled up the taverns and pot-houses, and gave to
this little quiet place a noisy and joyous appearance. We ought also to say, to be
a faithful historian, that, among the curiosities displayed in the square, there
was a menagerie in which frightful clowns, clad in rags and come nobody knows whence,
were exhibiting in 1823 to the peasants of Montfermelt one of those horrid Brazilian
vultures, a specimen of which our Museum Royal did not obtain until 1845, and the
eye of which is a tri-coloured cockade. Naturalists call this bird, I believe, Car-
acara Polyborus; it belongs to the order of the Apicidm and the family of the vul-
tures. Some good old retired Bonapartist soldiers in the village went to see the
bird as a matter of faith. The jugglers pronounced the tri-coloured cockade a unique
phenomenon, made expressly by God for their menagerie.

On that Christmas evening, several men, waggoners and pedlars, were seated at table
and drinking around four or five candles in the low hall of the Thenardier tavern.
This room resembled all barrooms; tables, pewter-mugs, bottles, drinkers, smokers;
little light, and much noise. The date, 1823, was, however, indicated by the two
things then in vogue with the middle classes, which were on the table, a kaleido-
scope and a fluted tin lamp. Thenardier, the wife, was looking to the supper, which
was cooking before a bright blazing fire; the husband, 'Thenardier, was drinking
with his guests and talking politics.

Aside from the political discussions, the principal subjects of which were the Span-
ish war and the Duc d'Angouleme, local interludes were heard amid the hubbub, like
these, for instance:--

"Down around Nanterre and Suresnes wine is turning out well. Where they expected ten
casks they are getting twelve. That is getting 2.good yield of juice out of the
press." "But the grapes can't be ripe r "Oh, in these parts there is no need of har-
vesting ripe; the wine is fat enough by.spring." "It is all light wine then?" "There
is a good deal lighter wines than they make hereabouts. You have to harvest green."

Etc.

Or, indeed, a miller might be bawling:--

"Are we responsible for what there is in the bags? We find a heap of little
seeds there, but we can't amuse ourselves by picking out, and of course we
have got to let 'em go through the stones; there's darnel, there's fennel,
there's cockles, there's vetch, there's hemp, there's fox-tail, and a lot of
other weeds, not counting the stones that there is in some wheat, especially
Breton wheat. I don't like to grind Breton wheat, no more than carpenters like
to saw boards with nails in 'em. Just think of the dirt that all that makes
in the till. And then they complain of the flour. It's their own fault. We
ain't to blame for the flour."

Between two windows, a mower seated at a table with a farmer, who was making
a bargain for a piece of work to be done the next season, was saying:-

"There is no harm in the grass having the dew on. It cuts better. The dew is
a good thing. It is all the same, that are grass o' yours is young, and pretty
hard to cut. You see it is so green; you see it bends under the scythe."

Etc.

Cosette was at her usual place, seated on the cross-piece of the kitchen table,
near the fire-place; she was clad in rags; her bare feet were in wooden shoes,
and by the light of the fire she was knitting wollen stockings for the little
Thenarcliers. A young kitten was play-under the chairs. In a neighbouring room
the fresh voices of two children were heard laughing and prattling; it was Epo-
nine and Azelma.

In the chimney-corner, a cow-hide hung upon a nail.

At intervals, the cry of a very young child, which was somewhere in the house,
was heard above the noise of the bar-room. This was a little boy which the woman
had had some winters before--"She didn't know why," she said: "it was the cold
weather,"--and which was a little more than three years old. The mother had nursed
him, but did not love him. When the hungry clamour of the brat became too much to
hear:--"Your boy is squalling," said Thenardier, "why don't you go and see what
he wants?" "Bah!" answered the mother; "I am sick of him." And the poor little
fellow continued to cry in the darkness.



II. TWO PORTRAITS COMPLETED



THE Thenardiers have hitherto been seen in this book in profile only; the time
has come to turn this couple about and look at them on all sides.

Thenardier has just passed his fiftieth year; Madame Thenardier had reached her
fortieth, which is the fiftieth for woman;so that there was an equilibrium of
age between the husband and Wife.

The reader has perhaps, since her first appearance, preserved some remembrance
of this huge Thenardiess;--for such we shall call the female of this species,--
large, blond, red, fat, brawny, square, enormous, and agile; she belonged, as
we have said, to the race of those colossal wild women who posturise at fairs with
paving-stones hung in their hair. She did everything about the house, the cham-
ber-work, the washing, the cooking, anything she pleased, and played the deuce
generally. Cosette was her only servant; a mouse in the service of an elephant.
Everything trembled at the sound of her voice; windows and furniture as well as
people. Her broad face, covered with freckles, had the appearance of a skimmer.
She had a beard. She was the ideal of a butcher's boy dressed in petticoats. She
swore splendidly; she prided herself on being able to crack a nut with her fist.
Apart from the novels she had read, which at times gave you an odd glimpse of the
affected lady under the ogress, the idea of calling her a woman never would have
occurred to anybody. This Thenardiess seemed like a cross between a wench and a
fishwoman. If you heard her speak, you would say it is a gendarme; if you saw
her drink, you would say it is a cartman; if you saw her handle Cosette, you
would say it is the hangman. When at rest, a tooth protruded from her mouth.

The other Thenardier was a little man, meagre, pale, angular, bony, and lean,
who appeared to be sick, and whose health was excellent; here his knavery began.
He smiled habitually as a matter of business, and tried to be polite to everybody,
even to the beggar to whom he refused a penny. He had the look of a weazel, and
the mien of a man of letters. He had a strong resemblance to the portraits of
the Abbe Define. He affected drinking with waggoners. Nobody ever saw him drunk.
He smoked a large pipe. He wore a House, and under it an old black coat. He made
pretensions to literature and materialism. There were names which he often pro-
nounced in support of anything whatever that he might say. Voltaire, Ravnal,
Parny, and, oddly enough, St. Augustine. He professed to have "a system." For the
rest, a great swindler. A fellow-sopher. There is such a variety. It will be remem-
bered, that he pretended to have been in the service; he related with some pomp
that at Waterloo, being sergeant in a Sixth or Ninth Light something. he alone,
against a squadron of Hussars of Death, had covered with his body, and saved amid
a shower of grape, "a general, dangerously wounded." Hence the flaming picture on
his sign, and the name of his inn, which was spoken of in the region as the "tavent
of the sergeant of Waterloo." He was liberal; classical, and a Bonapartist. He had
subscribed for the Champ d'Asile. It was said in the village that he had studied
for the priesthood.

We believe that he had only studied in Holland to be an inn-keeper. This whelp of
the composite order was, according to all probability, some Fleming of Lille in
Flanders, a Frenchman in Paris, a Belgian in Brussels, conveniently on the fence
between the two frontiers. We understand his prowess at Waterloo. As we have seen,
he exaggerated it a little. Ebb and flow, wandering, adventure, was his element; a
violated conscience is followed by a loose life; and without doubt, at the stormy
epoch of the 18th of June, 1815, Thenardier belonged to that species of marauding
sutlers of whom we have spoken, scouring the country, robbing here and selling
there, and travelling in family style, man, woman, and children, in some rickety
carry-all, in the wake of marching troops, with the instinct to attach himself al-
ways to the victorious army. This campaign over, having, as he said, some "quibus,"
he had opened a "chop-house" at Montfermeil.

This "quibus," composed of purses and watches, gold rings and silver crosses, gath-
ered at the harvest time in the furrows sown with corpses," did not form a great to-
tal, and had not lasted this sutler, now become a tavern-keeper, very long.

Thenardier had that indescribable stiffness of gesture which, with an oath, reminds
you of the barracks, and, with a sign of the cross, of the seminary. He was a fine
talker. He was fond of being thought learned. Nevertheless, the schoolmaster remark-
ed that he made mistakes in pronunciation. He made out travellers' bills in a super-
ior style, but practised eyes sometimes found them faulty in orthography. Thenardier
was sly, greedy, lounging, and clever. He did not disdain servant girls, consequently
his wife had no more of them. This giantess was jealous. It seemed to her that this
little, lean, and yellow man must be the object of universal desire.

Thenardier, above all a man of astuteness and poise, was a rascal of the subdued or-
der. This is the worst species; there is hypocrisy in it.

Not that Thenardier was not on occasion capable of anger, quite as much as his wife;
but that was very rare, and at such times, as if he were at war with the whole human
race, as if he had in him a deep furnace of hatred, as if he were of those who are
perpetually avenging themselves, who accuse everybody about them of the evils that
befall them, and are always ready to throw on the first comer, as legitimate grie-
vance, the sum-total of the deceptions, failures, and calamities of their life--as
all this leaven worked in him, and boiled up into his mouth and eyes, he was fright-
ful. Woe to him who came within reach of his fury, then!

Besides all his other qualities, Thenardier was attentive and penetrating, silent or
talkative as occasion required, and always with great intelligence. He had somewhat
the look of sailors accustomed to squinting the eye in looking through spy-glasses.
Thenardier was a statesman.

Every new-comer who entered the chop-house said, on seeing the Thenaidiers:
There is the master of the house. It was an error. She was not even the mis-
tress. The husband was both master and mistress. She performed, he created.
He directed everything by a sort of invisible and continuous magnetic action.
A word sufficed, sometimes a sign; the mastodon obeyed. Thenardier was to her,
without her being really aware of it, a sort of being apart and sovereign.
She had the virtues of her order of creation; never would she have differed
in any detail with "Monsieur Thenardier"--nor--impossible supposition--would
she have publicly quarrelled with her husband, on any matter whatever. Never
had she committed "before company' that fault of which women are so often guil-
ty, and which is called in parliamentary language: discovering the crown. Al-
though their accord had no other result than evil, there was food for con-
templation in the submission of the Thenardiess to her husband. This bustling
mountain of flesh moved under the little finger of this frail despot. It was,
viewed from its dwarfed and grotesque side, this great universal fact: the
homage of matter to spirit; for certain deformities have their origin in the
depths even of eternal beauty. There was somewhat of the unknown in Thenar-
dier; hence the absolute empire of this man over this woman. At times, she
looked upon him as upon a lighted candle; at others, she felt him like a
claw.

This woman was a formidable creation, who loved nothing but her children, and
feared nothing but her husband. She was a mother because she was a mammal.
Her maternal feelings stopped with her girls, and, as we shall see, did not extend
to boys. The man had but one thought--to get rich.

He did not succeed. His great talents had no adequate opportunity. Thenardier
at Montfenneil was ruining himself, if ruin is possible at zero. In Switzerland,
or in the Pyrenees, this penniless rogue would have become a millionaire. But
where fate places the innkeeper he must browse.

It is understood that the word innkeeper is employed here in a restricted sense,
and does not extend to an entire class.

In this same year, 1823, Thenardier owed about fifteen hundred francs, of press-
ing debts, which rendered him moody.

However obstinately unjust destiny was to him, Thenardier was one of those men
who best understood, to the greatest depth and in the most modern style, that
which is a virtue among the barbarous, and a subject of merchandise among the
civilised--hospitality. He was, besides, an admirable poacher, and was counted
an excellent shot. He had a certain cool and quiet laugh, which was particu-
larly dangerous.

His theories of innkeeping sometimes sprang from him by flashes. He had
certain professional aphorism's which he inculcated in the mind of his
wife. "The duty of the innkeeper," said he to her one day, emphatically, and
in a low voice, "is to sell to the first comer, food, rest, light, fire, dirty
linen, servants, fleas, and smiles; to stop travellers, empty small purses, and
honestly lighten large ones; to receive families who are travelling, with respect:
scrape the man, pluck the woman, and pick the child; to charge for the open win-
dow, the closed window, the chimney corner, the sofa, the chair, the stool, the
bench, the feather bed, the mattress, and the straw bed; to know how much the
mirror is worn, and to tax that; and, by the five hundred thousand devils, to
make the traveller pay for everything, even to the flies that his dog eats!"

This man and this woman were cunning and rage married--a hideous and terrible
pair.

While the husband calculated and schemed, the Thenardiess thought not of absent
creditors, took no care either for yesterday or the morrow, and lived passion-
ately in the present moment.

Such were these two beings. Cosette was between them, undergoing their double
pressure, like a creature who is at the same time being bruised by a millstone,
and lacerated with pincers. The man and the woman had each a different way. Cos-
ette was beaten unmercifully; that came from the woman. She went barefoot in
winter; that came from the man.

Cosette ran up stairs and down stairs; washed, brushed, scrubbed, swept, ran,
tired herself, got out of breath, lifted heavy things, and, puny as she was,
did the rough work. No pity; a ferocious mistress, a malignant master. The Then-
ardier chop-house was like a snare, in which Cosette had been caught, and was
trembling. The ideal of oppression was realised by this dismal servitude. It was
something like a fly serving spiders.

The poor child was passive and silent.

When they find themselves in such condition at the dawn of existence, so young,
so feeble, among men, what passes in these souls fresh from God!



III. MEN MUST HAVE WINE AND HORSES WATER



FOUR new guests had just come in.

Cosette was musing sadly; for, though she was only eight years old, she had al-
ready suffered so much that she mused with the mournful air of an old woman.

She had a black eye from a blow of the Thenardiess's fist, which made the Then-
ardiess. say from time to time, "How ugly she is with her patch on her eye."

Cosette was then thinking that it was evening, late in the evening, that the bowls
and pitchers in the rooms of the travellers. who had arrived must be filled
immediately, and that there was no more water in the cistern.

One thing comforted her a little; they did not drink much water in the Thenardier
tavern. There were plenty of people there who were thirsty; but it was that kind
of thirst which reaches rather towards the jug than the pitcher. Had anybody asked
for a glass of water among these glasses of wine, he would have seemed a savage
to all those men. However, there was an instant when the child trembled; the Then-
ardiess raised the cover of a kettle which was boiling on the range, then took a
glass and hastily approached the cistern. She turned the faucet; the child had
raised her head and followed all her movements. A thin stream of water ran from
the faucet, and filled the glass half full.

"Here," said she, "there is no more water!" Then she was silent for a moment. The
child held her breath.

"Pshaw!" continued the Thenardiess, examining the half-filled glass, "there is
enough of it, such as it is."

Cosette resumed her work, but for more than a quarter of an hour she felt her heart
leaping into her throat like a great ball.

She counted the minutes as they thus rolled away, and eagerly wished it were morning.

From time to time, one of the drinkers would look out into the street and exclaim:--
"It is as black as an oven!" or, "It would take a cat to go along the street
without a lantern to-night!" And Cosette shuddered.

All at once, one of the pedlars who lodged in the tavern came in, and said in a
harsh voice:

"You have not watered my horse."

"Yes, we have, sure," said the Thenardiess.

"I tell you no, ma'am," replied the pedlar.

Cosette came out from under the table.

"Oh, yes, monsieur!" said she, "the horse did drink; he drank in the bucket, the
bucket full, and 'twas me that carried it to him, and l talked to him."

This was not true. Cosette lied.

"Here is a girl as big as my fist, who can tell a lie as big as a house," ex-
claimed the pedlar. "I tell you that he has not had any water, little wench! He
has a way of blowing when he has not had any water, that I know well enough."

Cosette persisted, and added in a voice stifled with anguish, and which could
hardly be heard:

"Rut he did drink a good deal."

"Come," continued the pedlar, in a passion, "that is enough; give my horse some
water, and say no more about it."

Cosette went back under the table.

"Well, of course that is right," said the Thenardiess; "if the beast has
not had any water, she must have some."

Then looking about her:

"Well, what has become of that girl?"

She stooped down and discovered Cosette crouched of the other end of the
table, almost under the feet of the drinkers.

"Aren't you coming?" cried the Thenardiess.

Cosette came out of the kind of hole where she had hidden. The Thenardiess
continued:

"Mademoiselle Dog-without-a-name, go and carry some drink to this horse."

"But, ma'am," said Cosette feebly, "there is no water." The Thenardiess
threw the street door wide open.

"Well, go after some!"

Cosette hung her head, and went for an empty bucket that was by the chimney
corner.

The bucket was larger than she, and the child could have sat down in it
comfortably.

The Thenardiess went back to her range, and tasted what was in the kettle
with a wooden spoon, grumbling the while.

"There is some at the spring. She is the worst girl that ever was. I think
Would have been better if I'd left out the onions."

Then she fumbled in a drawer where there were some pennies, pepper, and
garlic.

"Here, Mamselle Toad," added she, "get a big loaf at the baker's, as you come
back. Here is fifteen sous."

Cosette had a little pocket in the side of her apron; she took the piece with-
out saying a word, and put it in that pocket.

Then she remained motionless, bucket in hand, the open door before her. She
seemed to be waiting for somebody to come to her aid. "Get along!" cried the
Thenardiess.

Cosette went out. The door closed.



IV. A DOLL ENTERS UPON THE SCENE



THE row of booths extended along the street from the church, the reader will
remember, as far as the Thenardier tavern. These booths, on account of the
approaching passage of the citizens on their way to the midnight mass, were
all illuminated with candles, burning in paper lanterns, which, as the
schoolmaster of Montfermeil, who was at that moment seated at one of Thenar-
dier's tables, said, produced a magical effect. In retaliation, not a star was
to be seen in the sky.

The last of these stalls, set up exactly opposite Thenardier's door, was a
toy-shop, all glittering with trinkets, glass beads, and things magnificent in
tin. In the first rank, and in front, the merchant had placed, upon a bed of
white napkins, a great doll nearly two feet high dressed in a robe of pink-
crape with golden wheat-ears on its head, and which had real hair and enamel
eyes. The whole, day, this marvel had been displayed to the bewilderment of
the passers under ten years of age, but there had not been found in Montfermeil
a mother rich enough, or prodigal enough to give it to her child. Epbnine and
Azelma had passed hours in contemplating it, and Co-sate herself, furtively,
it is true, had dared to look at it.

At the moment when Cosette went out, bucket in hand, all gloomy and overwhelmed
as she was, she could not help raising her eyes towards this wonderful doll,
towards the lady, as she called it. The poor child stopped petrified. She had
not seen this doll so near before.

This whole booth seemed a palace to her; this doll was not a doll, it was a
vision. It was joy, splendour, riches, happiness, and it appeared in a sort
of chimerical radiance to this unfortunate little being, buried so deeply in
a cold and dismal misery. Cosette was measuring with the sad and simple saga-
city of childhood the abyss which separated her from that doll. She was saying
to herself that one must he a queen, or at least a princess, to have a "thing"
like that. She gazed upon this beautiful pink dress, this beautiful smooth hair,
and she was thinking, "How happy must be that doll!" Her eye could not turn
away from this fantastic booth. The longer she looked, the more she was dazzled.
She thought she saw paradise. There were other dolls behind the large one that
appeared to her to be fairies and genii. The merchant walking to and fro in the
back part of his stall, suggested the Eternal Father.

In this adoration, she forgot everything, even the errand on which she had been
sent. Suddenly, the harsh voice of the Thenardiess called her back to the
reality: "How, jade, haven't you gone yet? Hold on; I am canting for you! I'd
like to know what she's doing there? Little monster, be off!"

The Thenardiess had glanced into the street, and perceived Cosette in ecstasy.

Cosette fled with her bucket, running as fast as she could.



V. LITTLE GIRL ALL ALONE



As the Thenardier tavern was in that part of the village which is near the church.
Cosette bad to go to the spring in the woods towards Chelles to draw water.

She looked no more at the displays in the booths, so long as she was in the lane
Boulanger; and in the vicinity of the church, the illuminated stalls lighted the
way, but soon the last gleam from the last stall disappeared. The poor child found
herself in darkness. She became buried in it. Only, as she became the prey of a
certain sensation, she shook the handle of the bucket as much as she could on her
way. That made a noise, which kept her company.

The further she went, the thicker became the darkness. There was no longer anybody
in the street. However,. she met a woman who turned around on seeing her pass, and
remained motionless, muttering between her teeth; "Where in the world can that
child be going? Is it a phantom child?" Then the woman recognised Cosette. "Oh,"
said she, "it is the lark!"

Cosette thus passed through the labyrinth of crooked and de-serted streets, which
terminates the village of Montfermeil towards Chelles. As long as she had houses,
or even walls, on the sides of the road; she went on boldly enough. From time to
time, she saw the light of a candle through the cracks of a shutter; it was light
and life to her; there were people there; that kept up her courage. However, as she
advanced, her speed slackened as if mechanically. When she had passed the corner of
the last house, Cosette stopped. To go beyond the last booth had been difficult; to
go further than the last house became impossible. She put the bucket on the ground,
buried her hands in her hair, and began to scratch her head slowly, a motion pecul-
iar to terrified and hesitating children. It was Montfermeil no longer, it was the
open country; dark and deserted space was before her. She looked with despair into
this darkness where nobody was, where there were beasts, where there were perhaps
ghosts. She looked intensely, and she heard the animals walking in the grass, and
she distinctly saw the ghosts moving in the trees. Then she seized her bucket again;
fear gave her boldness: "Pshaw," said she, "I will tell her there isn't any more
water!" And she resolutely went back into Montfermeil.

She had scarcely gone a hundred steps when she stopped again, and began to scratch
her head. Now, it was the Thenardiess that appeared to her; the hideous Thenardiess,
with her hyena mouth, and wrath flashing from her eyes. The child cast a pitiful
glance before her and behind her. What could she do? Nlihat would become of her?
Where should she go? Before her, the spectre of the Thenardiess; behind her, all the
phantoms of night and of the forest. It was at the Thenardiess that she recoiled. She
took the road to the spring again, and began to run. She ran out of the village; she
ran into the woods, seeing nothing, hearing nothing. She did not stop running until out
of breath, and even then she staggered on. She went right on, desperate.

Even while running, she wanted to cry.

The nocturnal tremulousness of the forest wrapped her about completely.

She thought no more; she saw nothing more. The immensity of 'night con-
fronted this little creature. On one side, the infinite shadow; on the other,
an atom.

It was only seven or eight minutes' walk from the edge of the woods to the
spring. Cosette knew the road, from travelling it several times a day.
Strange thing, she did not lose her way. A remnant of instinct guided
her blindly. But she neither turned her eyes to the right nor to the left,
for fear of seeing things in the trees and in the bushes. Titus she ar-
rived at the spring.

It was a small natural basin, made by the water in the loamy soil, about
two feet deep, surrounded with moss, and with that long figured grass
called HenryFourth's collars, and paved with a few large stones. A brook
escaped from it with a gentle, tranquil murmur.

Cosette did not take time to breathe. It was very dark, but she was accus-
tomed to come to this fountain. She felt with her left hand in the darkness
for a young oak which bent over the spring and usually served her as a sup-
port, found a branch, swung herself from it, bent down and plunged the bucket
in the water. She was for a moment so excited that her strength was tripled.
When she was thus bent over, she did not notice that the pocket of her apron
emptied itself into the spring. The fifteen-sous piece fell into the water.
Cosette neither saw it nor heard it fall. She drew out the bucket almost full
and set it on the grass.

This done, she perceived that her strength was exhausted. She was anxious to
start at once; but the effort of filling the bucket had been so great that it
was impossible for her to take a step. She was compelled to sit down. She fell
upon the grass and remained in a crouching posture.

She closed her eyes, then she opened them, without knowing why, without the
power of doing otherwise. At her side, the water shaken in the bucket made
circles that resembled serpents of white fire.

Above her head, the sky was covered with vast black clouds which were like
sheets of smoke. The tragic mask of night seemed to bend vaguely over this
child. Jupiter was setting in the depths of the horizon.

The child looked with a startled eye upon that great star which she did not
know and which made her afraid. The planet, in fact, was at that moment very
near the horizon and was crossing a dense bed of mist which gave it a horrid
redness. The mist, gloomily empurpled, magnified the star. One would have
called it a luminous wound.

A cold wind blew from the plain. The woods were dark, without any rustling of
leaves, without any of those vague and fresh coruscations of summer. Great
branches drew themselves up fearfully. Mean and shapeless bushes whistled in
the glades. The tall grass wriggled under the north wind like eels. The bram-
bles twisted about like long arms seeking to seize their prey in their claws.
Some dry weeds driven by the wind, passed rapidly by, and appeared to flee
with dismay before something that was following. The prospect was dismal.

Darkness makes the brain giddy. Man needs light, whoever plunges into the op-
posite of day feels his heart chilled. 'When the eye sees blackness, the mind
sees trouble. In an eclipse, in night, in the sooty darkness, there is anxiety
even to the strongest. Nobody walks alone at night in the forest without trem-
bling. Darkness and trees, two formidable depths--a reality of chimeras appears
in the indistinct distance. The Inconceivable outlines itself a few steps from
you with a spectral clearness. You see floating in space or in your brain some-
thing strangely vague and unseizable as the dreams of sleeping flowers. There
are fierce phantoms in the horizon. You breathe in the odours of the great
black void. You are afraid, and are tempted to look behind you. The hollowness
of night, the haggardness of all things, the silent profiles that fade away as
you advance, the obscure dishevelments, angry clumps, livid pools, the gloomy
reflected in the funereal, the sepulchral immensity of silence, the possible
unknown beings, the swaying of mysterious branches, the frightful twistings of
the trees, long spires of shivering grass against all this you have no defence.
There is no bravery which does not shudder and feel the nearness of anguish.
You feel something hideous, as if the soul were amalgamating with the shadow.
This penetration of the darkness is inexpressibly dismal for a child.

Forests are apocalypses; and the beating of the wings of a little soul makes
an agonising sound under their monstrous vault.

Without being conscious of what she was experiencing, Cosette felt that she
was seized by this black enormity of nature. It was not merely terror that held
her, but something more terrible even than terror. She shuddered. Words fail
to express the peculiar strangeness of that shudder which chilled her through
and through. Her eye had become wild. She felt that perhaps she would be com-
pelled to return there at the same hour the next night.

Then, by a sort of instinct, to get out of this singular state, which she did
not understand, but which terrified her, she began to count aloud, one, two,
three, four, up to ten, and when she had finished, she began again. This re-
stored her to a real perception of things about her. Her hands, which she had
wet in drawing the water, felt cold. She arose. Her fear had returned, a natural
and insurmountable fear. She had only one thought, to fly; to fly with all her
might, across woods, across fields, to houses, to windows, to lighted candles.
Her eyes fell upon the bucket that was before her. Such dread with which the
Thenardiess inspired her, that she did not dare to go without the bucket of
water. She grasped the handle with both hands. She could hardly lift the bucket.

She went a dozen steps in this manner, but the bucket was full, it was heavy,
she was compelled to rest it on the ground. She breathed an instant, then grasp-
ed the handle again, and walked on, this time a little longer. But she had to
stop again. After resting a fete seconds, she started on. She walked bending
forward, her head down, like an old woman: the weight of the bucket strained
and stiffened her thin arms. The iron handle was numbing and freezing her little
wet hands; from time to time she bad to stop, and every time she stopped, the
cold water that splashed from the bucket fell upon her naked knees. This took
place in the depth of a wood, at night, in the winter, far from all human sight;
it was a child of eight years; there was none but God at that moment who saw
this sad thing.

And undoubtedly her mother, alas!

For there are things which open the eyes of the dead in their grave.

She breathed with a kind of mournful rattle; sobs choked but she did not
dare to weep; so fearful was she of the Thenardiess, even at a distance.
She always imagined that the Thenardiess was near.

However, she could not make much headway in this manner, and was getting
along very slowly. She tried hard to shorten her resting spells, and to
walk as far as possible between them. She remembered with anguish that it
would take her more than an hour to return to Montfenneil thus, and that
the Thenardiess would beat her. This anguish added to her dismay at being
alone in the woods at night. She was worn out with fatigue, and was not
yet out of the forest. Arriving near an old chestnut tree which she knew,
she made a last halt, longer than the others, to get well rested; then she
gathered all her strength, took up the bucket again, and began to walk on
courageously. meanwhile the poor little despairing thing could not help cry-
ing: "Oh! my God! my God!"

At that moment she felt all at once that the weight of the bucket was gone.
A hand, which seemed enormous to her, had just caught the handle, and was
carrying it easily. She raised her head. A large dark form, straight and erect,
was walking beside her in the gloom. It was a man who had come up behind
her, and whom she had not heard. This man, without saying a word, had
grasped the handle of the bucket she was carrying.

There are instincts for all the crises of life.

The child was not afraid.



VI. WHICH PERHAPS PROVES THE INTELLIGENCE OF BOULATRUELLE



IN the afternoon of that same Christmas-day, 1823, a man walked a king time
in the most deserted portion of the Boulevard de l'Hapi tal at Paris. This man
had the appearance of some one who was looking for lodgings, and seemed to
stop by preference before the most modest houses of this dilapidated part of
the Faubourg Saint Marceau.

We shall see further on that this man did hi fact hire a room in this isolated
quarter.

This man, in his dress as in his whole person, realised the type of what might
be called the mendicant of good society--extreme misery being combined with
extreme neatness. It is a rare coincidence which inspires intelligent hearts
with this double respect that we feel for him who is very poor and for him who
is very worthy. He wore a round hat, very old and carefully brushed, a long coat,
completely threadbare, of coarse yellow cloth, a colour which was in nowise ex-
traordinary at that epoch, a large waistcoat with pockets of antique style, black
trousers worn grey at the knees, black woollen stockings, and thick shoes with
copper buckles. One would have called him an old preceptor of a good family,
returned from the emigration. From his hair, which was entirely white, from
his wrinkled brow, from his livid lips, from his face in which everything
breathed exhaustion and weariness of life, one would have supposed him con-
siderably over sixty. From his firm though slow step, and the singular vigour
impressed upon all his motions, one would hardly have thought him fifty. The
wrinkles on his forehead were well disposed, and would have prepossessed in his
favour any one who observed him with attention. His lip contracted with a strange
expression, which seemed severe and yet which was humble. There was in the
depths of his eye an indescribably mournful serenity. He carried in his left hand
a small package tied in a handkerchief, with his right he leaned upon a sort of
staff cut from a hedge. This staff had been finished with some care, and did not
look very badly; the knots were smoothed down, and a coral head had been formed
with red wax; it was a cudgel, and it seemed a cane.

There are few people on that boulevard, especially in winter. This man appeared
to avoid them rather than seek them, but without affectation.

At that epoch the king, Louis XVIII., went almost every day td Choisy Le Roy. It
was one of his favourite rides. About two o'clock, almost invariably, the
carriage and the royal cavalcade were seen to pass at full speed through the
Boulevard de l'Hospital.

This supplied the place of watch and clock to the poor women of the quarter,
who would say: It is two o'clock, there he is going back to the Tuileries."

And some ran, and others fell into line; for when a king passes by, there is
always a tumult. Moreover, the appearance and disappearance of Louis XVIII.
produced a certain sensation in the streets of Paris. It was rapid, but maj-
estic. This impotent king had a taste for fast driving; not being able to walk,
he wished to run; this cripple would have gladly been drawn by the lightning.
He passed by, peaceful and severe, in the midst of naked sabres. His massive
coach, all gilded, with great lily branches painted on the panels, rolled noi-
sily along. One hardly had time to catch a glance of it. In the back corner on
the right could be seen, upon cushions covered with white satin, a broad face,
firm and red, a forehead freshly powdered a la bird of paradise, a proud eye,
stern and keen, a well-read smile, two large epaulets of bullion waving over a
citizen's dress, the Golden Fleece, the cross of Saint Louis, the cross of the
Legion of Honour, the silver badge of the Holy Spirit, a big belly, and a large
blue ribbon; that was the king. Outside of Paris, lie held his hat with white
feathers upon Ins knees, which were inclosed in high English gaiters; when he
re-entered the city, he placed his hat upon his head, bowing but little. He
looked coldly upon the people, who returned his look. When he appeared for the
first time in the Quartier' Saint Marceau. all he succeeded in eliciting was
this saying of a resident to his comrade: "It's that big fellow who is the gov-
ernment."

This unfailing passage of the king at the same hour was then the daily event of
the Boulevard de l'Hospital.

The promenader in the yellow coat evidently did not belong to the quarter, and
probably not to Paris, for lie was ignorant of this circumstance. When at two
o'clock the royal carriage, surrounded by a squadron of silver-laced body-guard,
turned into the boulevard, after passing La Salpetriere, he appeared surprised,
and almost frightened. There was no one else in the cross alley, and he retired
hastily behind a corner of the side wall, but this did not prevent the Duke
d'Havre seeing hint. The Duke d'Havre, as captain of the guards in waiting that
day, was seated in the carriage opposite the king. He said to his majesty: "There
is a man who has a had look." Some policemen, who were clearing the passage for
the king, also noticed him; one of them was ordered to follow him. But the man
plunged into the little solitary streets of the Faubourg. and as night was coming
on the officer lost his track, as is established by a report addressed on the
same evening to the Comte Angles,:Nlinister of State, Prefect of Police.

When the man in the yellow coat had thrown the officer off his track, he turned
about, not without looking back many 'times to make sure that he was not fol-
lowed. At a quarter past four, that is to say, after dark, he passed in front
of the theatre of the Porte' Saint Martin where the play that day was The Two
Convicts. The poster, lit up by the reflection from the theatre, seemed to
strike him, for, although he was walking rapidly, he stopped to read it A mo-
ment after, he was in the cul-de-sac de la Planchette, and entered the Pewter
platter, which was then the office of the Lagny stage. This stage started at
half past four. The horses were harnessed, and the travellers, who had been
called by the driver hastily, were climbing the high iron steps of the vehicle.

The man asked:

"Have you a seat?"

"Only one, beside me, on the box," said the driver.

"I will take it."

"Get up then."

Before starting, however, the driver cast a glance at the poor apparel of the
traveller, and at the smallness of his bundle, and took his pay.

"Are you going through to Lagny?" asked the driver. "Yes," said the man.

The traveller paid through to Lagny.

They started off. When they had passed the barriere, the driver tried to start
a conversation, but the traveller answered only in monosyllables. The driver
concluded to whistle, and swear at his horses.

The driver wrapped himself up in his cloak. It was cold. The man did not appear
to notice it. In this way they passed through Gournay and Neuilly sur Marne.
About six o'clock in the evening they were at Chelles. The driver stopped to let
his horses breathe, in front of the waggoners' tavern established in the old
buildings of the royal abbey.

"I will get down here," said the man.

He took his bundle and stick, and jumped down from the stage.

A moment afterwards he had disappeared.

He did not go into the tavern.

When, a few minutes afterwards, the stage started off for Lagny, it did not
overtake him in the main street of Chelles.

The driver turned to the inside passengers:

"There," said he, "is a man who does not belong here, for I don't know him. He
has an appearance of not having a sou; however, he don't stick about money; he
pays to Lagny, and he only goes to Chelles. It is night, all the houses are shut,
he don't go to the tavern, and we don't overtake him. He must, then, have
sunk into the ground."

The man had not sunk into the ground, but he had hurried rapidly in the dark-
ness along the main street of Chelles; then he had turned to the left, before
reaching the church, into the cross road leading to Montfermeil, like one who
knew the country and had been that way before.

He followed this road rapidly. At the spot where it intersects the old road bor-
dered with trees that goes from Gagny to Lam, he heard footsteps approaching. He
concealed himself hastily in a ditch, and waited there till the people who were
passing were a good distance off. The precaution was indeed almost superfluous,
for, as we have already said, it was a very dark December night. There were scarce-
ly two or three stars to be seen in the sky.

It is at this point that the ascent of the hill begins. The man did not return to
the Montfermeil road; he turned to the right across the fields, and gained the
woods with rapid strides.

When he reached the wood, he slackened his pace, and began to look carefully at
all the trees, pausing at every step, as if he were seeking and following a mys-
terious route known only to himself. There was a moment when he appeared to lose
himself, and when he stopped, undecided. Finally he arrived, by continual groping,
at a glade where there was a heap of large whitish stones. He made his way quickly
towards these stones, and examined them with attention in the dusk of the night,
as if he were paiiing them in review. A large tree, covered with these excrescences
which are the warts of vegetation, was a few steps from the heap of stones. He went
to tins tree, and passed his hand over the bark of the trunk, as if he were seeking
to recognise and to count all the warts.

Opposite this tree, which was an ash, there was a chestnut tree wounded in the bark,
which had been staunched with a bandage of zinc nailed on. He rose on tip-toe and
touched that band of zinc.

Then he stamped for some time upon the ground in the space between the tree and the
stones, like one who would be sure that the earth had not been freshly stirred.

This done, he took his course and resumed his walk through the woods.

This was the man who had fallen in with Cosette.

As he made his way through the copse in the direction of Montfermeil, he had per-
ceived that little shadow, struggling along with a groan, setting her burden on the
ground, then taking it up and going on again. He had approached her and seen that
it was a very young child carrying an enormous bucket of water. Then he had gone to
the child, and silently taken hold of the handle of the bucket.



VII. COSETTE SIDE BY SIDE WITH THE UNKNOWN, IN THE DARKNESS.



COSETTE, we have said, was not afraid.

The man spoke to her. His voice was serious, and was almost a whisper.

"My child, that is very heavy for you which you are carrying there."

Cosette raised her head and answered:

"Yes, monsieur."

"Give it to me," the man continued, "I will carry it for you." Cosette let go of the
bucket. The man walked along with her. "It is very heavy, indeed," said he to himself.
Then he added: "Little girl, how old are you?"

"Eight years, monsieur."

"And have you come far in this way?"

"From the spring in the woods."

"And are you going far?"

"A good quarter of an hour from here."

The man remained a moment without speaking, then he said abruptly:

"You have no mother then?"

"I don't know," answered the child.

Before the man had had time to say a word, she added:

"I don't believe I have. All the rest have one. For my part, I have none."

And after a silence, she added:

"I believe I never had any."

The man stopped, put the bucket on the ground, stooped down and placed his hands upon
the child's shoulders, making an effort to look at her and see her face in the darkness.

The thin and puny face of Cosette was vaguely outlined in the livid light of the sky.

"What is your name?" said the man.

"Cosette."

It seemed as if the man had an electric shock. He looked at her again, then letting go
of her shoulders, took up the bucket, and walked on.

A moment after, he asked:

"Little girl, where do you live?"

"At Montfermeil, if you know it."

"It is there that we are going?"

"Yes, monsieur.'?

He made another pause, then he began:

"Who is it that has sent you out into the woods after water at this time of night?"

"Madame Thenardier."

The man resumed with a tone of voice which he tried to render indifferent, but in which
there was nevertheless a singular tremor: "What does she do, your Madame Thenardier?"

"She is my mistress," said the child. "She keeps the tavern." "The tavern," said the man.

"Well, I am going there to lodge to-night. Show me the way."

"We are going there," said the child.

The man walked very fast. Cosette followed him without difficulty. She felt fatigue no
more. From time to time, she raised her eyes towards this man with a sort of tranquillity
and inexpressible confidence. She had never been taught to turn towards Providence and to
pray. However, she felt in her bosom something that resembled hope and joy, and which rose
towards heaven.

A few minutes passed. The man spoke:

"Is there no servant at Madame Thenardier's?"

"No, monsieur."

"Are you alone?"

"Yes, monsieur."

There was another interval of silence. Cosette raised her voice: "That is, there are two
little girls."

"What little girls?"

"Ponine and Zelma."

The child simplified in this way the -romantic names dear to the mother.

"What are Ponine and Zelma?"

"They are Madame Thenardier's young ladies, you might say her daughters."

"And what do they do?"

"Oh!" said the child, "they have beautiful dolls, things which there's gold in; they are
full of business. They play, they amuse themselves."

"All day long?"

"Yes, monsieur."

"And you?"

"Me! I work."

"All day long?"

The child raised her large eyes in which there was a tear, which could not be seen in the
darkness, and answered softly:

"Yes, monsieur."

She continued after an interval of silence:

"Sometimes, when I have finished my work and they are willing, I amuse myself also."

"How do you amuse yourself?"

"The best I can. They let me alone. But I have not many play-things. Ponine
and Zelma are not willing, for me to play with their dolls. I have only a
little lead sword, not longer. than that."

The child showed her little finger.

"And which does not cut?"

"Yes, monsieur," said the child, "it cuts lettuce and flies' heads."

They reached the village; Cosette guided the stranger through the streets. They
passed by the bakery, but Cosette did not think of the bread she was to have
brought back. The man questioned her no more, and now maintained a mournful
silence. When they had'passed the church, the man, seeing all these booths in
the street, asked Cosette:

"Is it fair-time here!"

"No, monsieur, it is Christmas."

As they drew near the tavern, Cosette timidly touched his arm: "Monsieur?"

"What, my child?"

"Here we are close by the house."

"Well?"

"Will you let me take the bucket now?"

"What for?"

"Because, if madame sees that anybody brought it for me, she will beat me."

The man gave her the bucket. A moment after they were at the door of the chop-
house.



VIII. INCONVENIENCE OP ENTERTAINING A POOR MAN WHO IS PERHAPS RICH



Cosette could not help casting one look towards the grand doll still displayed in
the toy-shop, then she rapped. The door opened. The Thenardiess appeared with a
candle in her hand.

"Oh! it is you, you little beggar! Lud-aLmassy! you have taken your time! she has
been playing, the wench!"

"Madame," said Cosette, trembling, "there is a gentleman who is coming to lodge."

The Thenardiess very quickly' replaced her fierce air by her amiable grimace, a
change at sight peculiar to innkeepers, and looked for the new-comer with eager
eyes.

"Is it monsieur?" said she.

"Yes, madame," answered the man, touching his hat.

Rich travellers are not so polite. This gesture and the sight of the stranger's
costume and baggage which the Thenardiess passed in review at a glance made the
amiable grimace disappear and the fierce air reappear. She added drily:

"Enter, goodman. '

The "goodman" entered. The Thenardiess cast a second glance at him, examined par-
ticularly his long coat which was absolutely threadbare, and his hat which was some-
what broken, and with a nod, a wink, and a turn of her nose, consulted her husband,
who was still drinking with the waggoners. The husband answered by that impercept-
ible shake of the forefinger which, supported by a protrusion of the lips, signifies
in such a case: "complete destitution." Upon this the Thenardiess exclaimed:

"Ah! my brave man, I am very sorry, but I have no room.

"Put me where you will," said the man, "in the garret, in the stable. I will pay as
if I had a room."

"Forty sous."

"Forty sous. Well."

"In advance."

"Forty sous," whispered a waggoner to the Thenardiess, "but it is only twenty sous."

"It is forty sous for him," replied the Thenardiess in the same tone. "I don't lodge
poor people for less."

"That is true," added her husband softly, "it ruins a house to have this sort of people."

Meanwhile the man, after leaving his stick and bundle on a bench, had seated himself
at a table on which Cosette had been quick to place a bottle of wine and a glass. The
pedlar, who had asked for the bucket of water, had gone himself to carry it to his
horse. Cosette had resumed her place under the kitchen table and her knitting.

The man, who hardly touched his lips to the wine he had turned out, was contemplating
the child with a strange attention.

Cosette was ugly. Happy, she might, perhaps, have been pretty. We have already sketch-
ed this little pitiful face. Cosette was thin and pale; she was nearly eight years old, but
one would hardly have thought her six. Her large eyes, sunk in a sort of shadow, were
almost put out by continual weeping. The corners of her mouth had that curve of habitual
anguish, which is seen in the condemned and in the hopelessly sick. Her hands were, as
her mother had guessed, "covered with chilblains."

The light of the fire which was shining upon her, made her bones stand out and rendered
her thinness fearfully visible. As she was always shivering, she had acquired the habit
of drawing her knees together. Her whole dress was nothing but a rag, which would have
excited pity in the summer. and which excited horror in the winter. She had on nothing
but cotton, and that full of holes; not a rag of woollen. Her skin showed here and there,
and black and blue spots could be distinguished, which indicated the places where the
Thenardiess had touched her. Her naked legs were red and rough. The hollows under her
collar bones would make one weep. The whole person of this child, her gait, her attitude,
the sound of her voice, the intervals between one word and another, her looks, her silence,
her least motion, expressed and uttered a single idea: fear.

Fear was spread all over her; she was, so to say, covered with it; fear drew back her
elbows against her sides, drew her heels under her skirt, made her take the least possible
room, prevented her from breathing more than was absolutely necessary, and had become
what might be called her bodily habit, without possible variation, except of increase.
There was in the depth of her eye an expression of astonishment mingled with terror.

This fear was such that on coming in, all wet as she was, Cosette had not dared go and
dry herself by the fire, but had gone silently to her work.

The expression of the countenance of this child of eight years was habitually so sad and
sometimes so tragical that it seemed, at certain moments, as if she were in the way of
becoming an idiot or a demon.

Never, as we have said, had she known what it is to pray, never had she set foot within
a church. "How can I spare the time?" said the Thenardiess.

The man in the yellow coat did not take his eyes from Cosette.

Suddenly, the Thenardiess exclaimed out:

"Oh! I forgot! that bread!"

Cosette, according to her custom whenever the Thenardiess raised her voice,
sprang out quickly from under the table.

She had entirely forgotten the bread. She had recourse to the expedient of
children who are always terrified. She lied.

"Madame, the baker was shut."

"You ought to have knocked."

"I did knock, madame."

"Well?"

"He didn't open."

"I'll find out to-morrow if that is true," said the Thenardiess, "and if you are
lying you will lead a pretty dance. Meantime give me back the fifteen-sous piece."

Cosette plunged her hand into her apron pocket, and turned white. The fifteen-sous
piece was not there.

"Come," said the Thenardiess, "didn't you hear me?"

Cosette turned her pocket inside out; there was nothing there. What could have be-
come of that money? The little unfortunate could not utter a word. She was petrified.

"Have you lost it, the fifteen-sous piece?" screamed the Thenardiess, "or do you
want to steal it from me?"

At the same time she reached her arm towards the cowhide hanging in the chimney
corner.

This menacing movement gave Cosette the strength to cry out:

"Forgive me! Madame! Madame! I won't do so any more!"

The Thenardiess took down the whip.

Meanwhile the man in the yellow coat had been fumbling in his waistcoat pocket,
without being noticed. The other travellers were drinking or playing cards, and paid
no attention to anything.

Cosette was writhing with anguish in the chimney-corner, trying to gather up and hide
her poor half-naked limbs. The Thenardiess raised her arm.

"I beg your pardon, madame," said the man, "but I just now saw something fall out of
the pocket of that little girl's apron and roll away. That may be it."

At the same time he stooped down and ap eared to search on p the for an instant.

"Just so, here it is," said he, rising.

And he handed a silver piece to the Thenardiess.

"Yes, that is it," said she.

That was not it, for it was a twenty-sous piece, but the Thenardiess found
her profit in it. She put the piece in her pocket, and contented he's self
with casting a ferocious look at the child and saying:

"Don't let that happen again, ever."

Cosette went back to what the Thenardiess called "her hole," and her large
eye, fixed upon the unknown traveller, began to assume an expression that
it had never known before. It was still only an artless astonishment, but a
sort of blind confidence was associated with it.

"O! you want supper?" asked the Thenardiess of the traveller.

He did not answer. He seemed to be thinking deeply.

"What is that man?" said she between her teeth. "It is some frightful pauper.
He hasn't a penny for his supper. Is he going to pay me for his lodging only?
It is very lucky, anyway, that he didn't think to steal the money that was on
the floor."

A door now opened, and Eponine and Azelma came in.

They were really two pretty little girls, rather city girls than peasants, very
charming, one with her well-polished auburn tresses, the other with her long black
braids falling down her back and both so lively, neat, plump, fresh, and healthy,
that it was a pleasure to see them. They were warmly clad, but with such ma-
ternal art, that the thickness of the stuff detracted nothing from the coquetry
of the fit. Winter was provided against without effacing spring. These two little
girls shed light around them. Moreover, they were regnant. In their toilet, in
their gaiety, in the noise they made, there was sovereignty. When they entered,
the Thenardiess said to them in a scolding tone, which was full of adoration:
"Ah! you are here then, you children!"

Then, taking them upon her knees one after the other, smoothing their hair, tying
over their ribbons, and finally letting them go with that gentle sort of shake
which is peculiar to mothers, she exclaimed:

"Are they dowdies!"

They went and sat down by the fire. They had a doll which they turned backwards
and forwards upon their knees with many pretty panel Clings. From time to time,
Cosette raised her eyes from her knitting, and looked sadly at them as they were
playing.

Eponine and Azelma did not notice Cosette. To them she was like the dog. These
three little girls could not count twenty-four years among them all, and they
already represented all human society; on one side envy, on the other disdain.

The doll of the Thenardier sisters was very much faded, and old and broken; and
it appeared none the less wonderful to Cosette, who had never in her life had a
doll, a real doll, to use an expression that all children will understand.

All at once, the Thenardiess, who was ot ntinually going and coming about the room,
noticed that Cosette's attention wasdistracted, and that instead of working she was
busied with the little girls who were playing.

“Ah! I've caught you!" cried she. "That is the way you work! I'll make you work
with a cowhide, I will."

The stranger, without leaving his chair, turned towards the Thenardiess.

"Madame," said he, smiling diffidently. "Pshaw! let her play!"

On the part of any traveller who had eaten a slice of mutton, and drunk two bottles
of wine at his supper, and who had not had the appearance of a horrid pauper, such a
wish would have been a command. But that a man who wore that hat should allow
himself to have a desire, and that a man who wore that coat should permit himself to
have a wish, was what the Thenardiess thought ought not to be tolerated. She replied
sharply:

"She must work, for she eats. I don't support her to do nothing."

"What is it she is making?" said the stranger, in that gentle voice which contrasted
so strangely with his beggar's clothes and his porter's shoulders.

The Thenardiess deigned to answer.

"Stockings, if you please. Stockings for my little girls who have none, worth speaking
of, and will soon be going barefooted."

The man looked at Cosette's poor red feet, and continued: "When will she finish that
pair of stockings?"

"It will take her at least three or four good days, the lazy thing."

"And how much might this pair of stockings be worth, when it is fin-
ished?"

The Thenardiess cast a disdained glance at him.

"At least thirty sous."

"Would you take five francs for them?" said the man.

"Goodness!" exclaimed a waggoner who was listening, with a horse-laugh, "five francs?
It's a humbug! five bullets!"

Thenardier now thought it time to speak.

"Yes, monsieur, if it is your fancy, you can have that pair of stockings for five francs.
We can't refuse anything to travellers."

"You must pay for them now," said the Thenardiess, in her short and peremptory way.

"I will buy that pair of stockings," answered the man, "and," added, he, drawing a five
franc piece from his pocket and laying it on the table, "I will pay for them."

Then he turned towards Cosette.

"Now your work belongs to me. Play, my child."

The waggoner was so affected by the five franc piece, that at he left his glass and went
to look at it.

"It's so, that's a fact!" cried he, as he looked at it. "A regular and no counterfeit!"

Thenardier approached, and silently put the piece in his pocket.

The Thenardiess had nothing to reply. She bit her lips, and her face assumed an expression
of hatred.

Meanwhile Cosette trembled. She ventured to ask:

"Madame, is it true? can I play?"

"Play!" said the Thenardiess in a terrible voice.

"Thank you, madame," said Cosette. And, while her mouth thanked the Thenardiess, all her
little soul was thanking the traveller.

Thenardier returned to his drink. His wife whispered in his ear:

"What can that yellow man
be?"

"I have seen," answered Thenardier, in a commanding tone, "millionaires with coats like
that."

Cosette had left her knitting, but she had not moved from her place. Cosette always stirred
as little as was possible. She had taken from a little box behind her a few old rags, and
her little lead sword.

Eponine and Azelma paid no attention to what was going on. They had just performed a very
important operation; they had caught the kitten. They had thrown the doll on the floor, and
Eponine, the elder, was dressing the kitten, in spite of her miaulings and contortions, with
a lot of clothes and red and blue rags. While she was engaged in this serious and difficult
labour, she was talking to her sister in that sweet and charming language of children, the
grace of which, like the splendour of the butterfly's wings, escapes when we try to preserve
it.

"Look! look, sister, this doll is more amusing than the other. She moves, she cries, she is
warm. Come, sister, let us play with her. She shall be my little girl; I will be a lady. I'll
come to see you, and you must l) And her. By and by you must see her whiskers, and you must
be surprisa then you must see her ears, and then you must see her tail, and that will astonish
you. And you must say to me: 'Oh! my stars!' and I will say to you `Yes, madame, it is a lit-
tle girl that I have like that.' Little girls are, now."

Azelma listened to Eponine with wonder.

Meanwhile, the drinkers were singing an obscene song, at which they laughed enough to
shake the room. Thenardier encouraged and accompanied them.

As birds make a nest of anything, children make a doll of no matter what. While
Eponine and Azelma were dressing up the cat, Cosette, for her part, had dressed
up the sword. That done, she had laid it upon her arm, and was singing it softly
to sleep.

The doll is one of the most imperious necessities, and at the same tim one of the
most charming instincts of female childhood. To care for, to e clothe, to adorn,
to dress, to undress, to dress over. again, to teach, to scold a little, to rock,
to cuddle, to put to sleep, to imagine somebody--all the future of woman is there.
Even while musing and prattling, while making little wardrobes and little baby-
clothes, while sewing little dresses, little bodices, and little jackets, the child
becomes es a little girl, the little girl becomes a great girl, the great girl be-
comes a woman. The first baby takes the place of the last doll.

A little girl without a doll is almost as unfortunate and quite as impossible as a
woman without children.

Cosette had therefore made a doll of her sword.

The Thenardiess, on her part, approached the yellow man. "My husband is right,"
thought she; "it may be Monsieur Laffitte. Some rich men are so odd."

She came and rested her elbow on the table at which he was sitting.

"Monsieur," said she---

At this word monsieur, the man turned. The Thenardiess had called him before only
brave man or good man.

"You see, monsieur," she pursued, putting on her sweetest look, which was still more
unendurable than her ferocious manner, "I am very willing the child should play, I am
not opposed to it; it is well for once, because you are generous. But, you see, she
is poor; she must work."

"The child is not yours, then?" asked the man.

"Oh dear! no, monsieur! It is a little pauper that we have taken in through charity.
A sort of imbecile child. She must have water on her brain. Her head is big, as you
see. We do all we can for her, but we are not rich. We write in vain to her country;
for six months we have had no answer. We think that her mother must be dead."

"Ah!" said the man, and he fell back into his reverie.

"This mother was no great things," added the Thenardiess. "She abandoned her child."

During all this conversation, Cosette, as if an instinct had warned her that they were
talking about her, had not taken her eyes from the Thenardiess. She listened. She heard
a few words here and there.

Meanwhile the drinkers, all three-quarters drunk, were repeating their foul chorus with
redoubled gaiety. It was highly spiced with jests, in which the names of the Virgin and
the child Jesus were often heard. The Thenardiess had gone to take her part in the hil-
arity. Cosette, under the table, was looking. into the fire, which was reflected from her
fixed eye; she was again rocking the sort of rag baby that she had made, and as she rocked
it, she sang in a low voice; "My mother is dead! my mother is dead! my mother is dead!"

At the repeated entreaties of the hostess, the yellow man, "the millionaire," finally con-
sented to sup.

"What will monsieur have?"

"Some bread and cheese," said the man.

"Decidedly, it is a beggar," thought the Thimardiess.

The revellers continued to sing their songs, and the child, under the table, also sang
hers.

All at once, Cosette stopped. She had just turned and seen the little Thenardiers' doll,
which they had forsaken for the cat and left on the floor, a few steps from the kitchen
table.

Then she let the bundled-up sword, that only half satisfied her, fall, and ran her eyes
slowly around the room. The Thenarcliess was whispering to her husband and counting some
money, Eponiac and Azelma were playing with the cat, the travellers were eating or drink-
ing or sing-ing, nobody was looking at her. She had not a moment to lose. She crept out
from under the table on her hands and knees, made sure once more that nobody was watching
her, then darted quickly to the doll, and seized it. An instant afterwards she was at
her place, seated, motionless, only turned in such a way as to keep the doll that she
held in her arms in the shadow. The happiness of playing with a doll was so rare to her
that it had all the violence of rapture.

Nobody had seen her, except the traveller, who was slowly eating his meagre supper.

This joy lasted for nearly a quarter of an hour.

But in spite of Cosette's precautions, she did not perceive that one of the doll's feet
stuck out, and that the fire of the fireplace lighted it up very vividly. This rosy and
luminous foot which protruded from the shadow suddenly caught Azelma's eye, and she
said to Eponine: "Oh! sister!"

The two little girls stopped, stupefied; Cosette had dared to take the doll.

Eponine got up, and without letting go of the cat, went to her mother and began
to pull at her skirt.

"Let me alone," said the mother; "what do you want?" "Mother," said the child,
"look there."

And she pointed at Cosette.

Cosette, wholly absorbed in the ecstasy of her possession, saw and heard nothing
else.

The face of the Thenardiess assumed the peculiar expression which is composed of
the terrible mingled with the commonplace and which has given this class of
women the name of furies.

This time wounded pride exasperated her anger still more. Cosette had leaped over
all barriers. Cosette had laid her hands upon the doll of "those young ladies." A
czarina who had seen a moujik trying on the grand cordon of her imperial son would
have had the same expression.

She cried with a voice harsh with indignation:

"Cosette

Cosette shuddered as if the earth had quaked beneath her. She turned around.

"Cosette!" repeated the Thenardiess.

Cosette took the doll and placed it gently on the floor with a kind of veneration
mingled with despair. Then, without taking away her eyes, she joined her hands, and,
what is frightful to tell in a child of that age, she wrung them; then, what none of
the emotions of the day had drawn from her, neither the run in the wood, nor the
weight of the bucket of water, nor the loss of the money, nor the sight of the cow-
hide, nor even the stern words she had heard from The Thenardiess, she burst into
tears. She sobbed.

Meanwhile the traveller arose.

"What is the matter?" said he to the Thenardiess.

"Don't you see?" said the Thenardiess, pointing with her finger to the corpus delicti
lying at Cosette's feet.

"Well, what is that?" said the man.

"That beggar," answered the Thenardiess. "has dared to touch the children's doll."

"All this noise about that?" said the man. "Well, what if she did play with that doll?"

"She has touched it with her dirty hands!" continued the Thenardiess, "with her horrid
hands!"

Here Cosette redoubled her sobs.

"Be still!" cried the Thenardiess.

The man walked straight to the street door, opened it, and went out.

As soon as he had gone, the Thenardiess profited by his absence to give Cosette under
the table a severe kick, which made the child shriek.

The door opened again, and the man reappeared, holding in his hands the fabulous doll
of which we have spoken, and which had been the admiration of all the youngsters of
the village since morning; he stood it up before Cosette, saying:

"Here, this is for you."

It is probable that during the time he had been there--moret than an hour-- in the
midst of his reverie, he had caught confused glimpses of this toy-shop, lighted up with
lamps and candles so splendidly that it shone through the bar-room window like an illu-
mination.

Cosette raised her eyes; she saw the man approach her with that doll as she would have
seen the sun approach, she heard those astounding words: This is for you. She looked at
him, she looked at the doll, then she drew back slowly, and went and hid as far as she
could under the table in the corner of the room.

She wept no more, she cried no more, she had the appearance of no longer daring to
breathe.

The Thenardiess, Eponine, and Azelma were so many statues. Even the drinkers stopped.
There was a solemn silence in the whole bar-room.

The Thenardiess, petrified and mute, recommenced her conjectures anew: "What is this old
fellow? is he a pauper? is he a millionaire? Perhaps he's both, that is a robber."

The face of the husband Thenardier presented that expressive wrinkle which marks the human
countenance whenever the dominant instinct appears in it with all its brutal power. The
innkeeper contemplated by turns the doll and the traveller; he seemed to be scenting this
man as he would have scented a bag of money. This only lasted for a moment. He approached
his wife and whispered to her:

"That machine cost at least thirty francs. No nonsense. Down on your knees before the man!"

Coarse natures have this in common with artless natures, that they have no transitions.

"Well, Cosette," said the Thenardiess in a voice which was meant to be sweet, and which was
entirely composed of the sour honey of vicious women, "a'n't you going to take your doll?"

Cosette ventured to come out of her hole.

"My little Cosette," said Thenardier with a caressing air, “Monsieur gives you a doll.
Take it. It is yours."

Cosette looked upon the wonderful doll with a sort of terror. Her face was still flooded
with tears, but her eyes began to fill, like the sky in the breaking of the dawn, with
strange radiations of joy What she experienced at that moment was almost like what she
would have felt if some one had said to her suddenly: Little girl, you are queen of France.

It seemed to her that if she touched that doll, thunder would spring forth from it.

Which was true to some extent, for she thought that the Thenardiess would scold and beat
her.

However, the attraction overcame her. She finally approached and timidly murmured, turning
towards the Thenardiess:

"Can I, madame?"

No expression can describe her look, at once full of despair, dismay, and transport.

"Good Lord!" said the Thenardiess, "it is yours. Since monsieur gives it to you.

"Is it true, is it true, monsieur?" said Cosette; "is the lady for me?"

The stranger appeared to have his eyes full of tears. He seemed to be at that stage of emo-
tion in which one does not speak for fear of weeping. He nodded assent to Cosette, and put
the hand of "the lady" in her little hand.

Cosette withdrew her hand hastily, as if that of the lady burned her, and looked down at the
floor. We are compelled to add, that at that instant she thrust out her tongue enormously.
All at once she turned, and seized the doll eagerly.

"I will call her Catharine," said she.

It was a strange moment when Cosette's rags met and pressed against the ribbons and the fresh
pink muslins of the doll.

"Madame," said she, "may I put her in a chair?"

"Yes, my child," answered the Thenardiess.

It was Eponine and Azelma now who looked upon Cosette with envy.

Cosette placed Catharine on a chair, then sat down on the floor before her, and remained mo-
tionless, without saying a word, in the attitude of contemplation.

"Why don't you play, Cosette?" said the stranger.

"Oh! I am playing," answered the child.

This stranger, this unknown man, who seemed like a visit from Providence to Cosette, was at
that moment the being which the Thenardiess hated more than aught else in the world. However,
she was compelled to restrain herself. Her emotions were more than she could endure, accust-
omed as she was to dissimulation, by endeavouring to copy her husband in all her actions.
She sent her daughters to bed immediately, then asked the yellow man's permission to send
Cosette to bed--who is very tired today, added she, with a motherly air. Cosette went to
bed, holding Catharine in arms.

The Thenardiess went from time to time to the other end of the room, where her husband was,
to soothe her soul, she said. She exchanged a few words with him, which were the more furious
that she did not dare to speak

The old fool! what has he got into his head, to come here to disturb us! to want that little
monster to play! to give her dolls! to give forty-franc dolls to a slut that I wouldn't give
forty sous for. A little more, and he would say your majesty to her, as they do to the Duchess
of Berry Is he in his senses? he must be crazy, the strange old fellow!"

"Why? It is very simple," replied Thenardier. "If it amuses him! It amuses you for the
girl to work; it amuses him for her to play. He has the right to do it. A traveller can do
as he likes, if he pays for it. If this old fellow is a philanthropist, what is that to you? if
he is crazy it don't concern you. What do you interfere for, as long as he has money?"

Language of a Master and reasoning of an innkeeper, which neither in one case
nor the other admits of reply.

The man had leaned his elbows on the table, and resumed his attitude of rev-
erie. All the other travellers, pedlars, and waggoners, had drawn back a little,
and sung no more. They looked upon him from a distance with a sort of respectful
fear.

This solitary man, so poorly clad, who took five-franc pieces from his pocket
with so much indifference, and who lavished gigantic dolls on little brats in
wooden shoes, was certainly a magnificent and formidable goodman.

Several hours passed away. The midnight mass was said, the revel was finished,
the drinkers bad gone, the house was closed, the room was deserted, the fire had
gone out, the stranger still remained in the same place and in the same posture.
From time to time he changed the elbow on which he rested. 'That was all. But he
had not spoken a word since Cosette was gone.

The Thenardiers alone out of propriety and curiosity, had re-mained in the room.

"Is he going to spend the night like this?" grumbled the Thenardiess. When the
clock struck two in the morning, she acknowledged herself beaten, and said to her
husband: "I am going to bed, you may do as you like." The husband sat clown at a
table in a corner, lighted a candle. and began to read the Courrier Francais,

A good hour passed thus. The worthy innkeeper had read the Courrier Francais at
least three times, from the date of the number to the name of the printer. The
stranger did not stir.

Thenardier moved, coughed, spit, blew his nose, and creaked his chair. The man
did not stir. "Is he asleep?" thought Thenardier. The man was not asleep, but
nothing could arouse him.

Finally, Thenardier took off his cap, approached softly, and ventured to say:

"Is monsieur not going to repose?"

Not going to bed would have seemed to him too much and too familiar. To repose
implied luxury, and there was respect in it. Such words have the mysterious
and wonderful property of swelling the bill in the morning. A room in which
you go to bed costs twenty sous; a room in which you repose costs twenty francs.

"Yes," said the stranger, "you are right. Where is your stable?" "Monsieur,"
said Thenardier, with a smile, "I will conduct monsieur."

He took the candle, the man took his bundle and his staff, and Thenardier led
him into a room on the first floor, which was very showy, furnished all in
mahogany, with a high-post bedstead and red calico curtains.

"What is this?" said the traveller.

"It is properly our bridal chamber." said the innkeeper. "We occupy another
like this, my spouse and I; this is not open more than three or four times
in a year."

"I should have liked the stable as well," said the man, bluntly. Thenardier
did not appear to hear this not very civil answer.

He lighted two entirely new wax candles, which were displayed upon the mantel:
a good fire was blazing in the fireplace. There was on the mantel, under a
glass case, a woman's head-dress of silver thread and orange-flowers.

"What is this?" said the stranger.

"Monsieur." said Thenardier, "it is my wife's bridal cap."

The traveller looked at the object with a look which seemed to say: "there was
a moment, then when this monster was a virgin."

Thenardier lied, however. When he hired this shanty to turn it into a chop-
house, he found the room thus furnished, and bought this furniture, and pur-
chased at second-hand these orange-flowers, thinking that this would cast a
gracious light over "his spouse," and that the house would derive from them
what the English call respectability.

When the traveller turned again the host had disappeared. Thenardier had dis-
creetly taken himself out of the way without daring to say good-night, not des-
iring to treat with a disrespectful cordiality a man whom he proposed to skin
royally in the morning. The innkeeper retired to his room; his wife was in bed,
but not asleep. When she heard her husband's step, she turned towards him and
said:

"You know that I am going to kick Cosette out doors to-mor-row!"

Thehardier coolly answered:

"You are, indeed!"

They exchanged no further words, and in a few moments their candle was blown out.

For his part, the traveller had put his staff and bundle in a corner. The host
gone, he sat down in an arm-chair, and remained some time thinking. Then he drew
off his shoes, took one of the two candles, blew out the other, pushed open the
door, and went out of the room, looking about him as if he were searching for
something. He passed through a hull, and came to the stairway. There he heard a
very soft little sound, which resembled the breathing of a child. Guided by this
sound he came to a sort of triangular nook built under the stairs, or, rather,
formed by the staircase itself. This hole was nothing but the space beneath the
stairs. There, among all sorts of old baskets and old rubbish, in the dust and a-
mong the cobwebs, there was a bed; if a mattress so full of holes as to show the
straw, and a covering so full of holes as to show the mattress, can be called a bed.
There were no sheets. This was placed on the floor immediately on the tiles. In
this bed Cosette was sleeping.

The man approached and looked at her.

Cosette was sleeping soundly; she was dressed. In the winter she did not undress on
account of the cold. She held the doll clasped in her arms; its large open eyes shone
in the obscurity. From time to time she heaved a deep sigh, as if she were about to
wake, and she hugged the doll almost convulsively. There was only one of her wooden
shoes at the side of her bed. An open door near Cosette's nook disclosed a large dark
room. The stranger entered. At the further end, through a glass window, he perceived
two little beds with very white spreads. They were those of Azelma and Eponinc. Half
hid behind these beds was a willow cradle without curtains, in which the little boy
who had cried all the evening was sleeping.

The stranger conjectured that this room communicated with that of the Thenardiers. He
was about to withdraw when his eye fell upon the fireplace, one of those huge tavern
fireplaces where there is always so little fire, when there is a fire, and which are
so cold to look upon. In this one there was no fire, there were not even any ashes.
What there was, however, attracted the traveller's attention. It was two little chil-
dren's shoes, of coquettish shape and of different sizes. The traveller remembered the
graceful and immemorial custom of children putting their shoes in the fireplace on
Christmas night, to wait there in the darkness in expectation of some shining gift
from their good fairy. Eponine and Azelma had taken good care not to forget this,
and each had put one of her shoes in the fire-place.

The traveller bent over them.

The fairy--that is to say, the mother--had already made her visit, and shining in
each shoe was a beautiful new ten-sous piece.

The man rose up and was on the point of going away, when he perceived further
along, by itself, in the darkest corner of the fireplace, another object. He
looked, and recognised a shoe, a horrid wooden shoe of the clumsiest sort, half broken
and covered with ashes and dried mud. It was Cosette's shoe. Cosette, with that
touching confidence of childhood which can always be deceived without ever being
discouraged, had also placed her shoe in the fireplace.

What a sublime and sweet thing is hope in a child who has never known anything
but despair!

There was nothing in this wooden shoe.

The stranger fumbled in his waistcoat, bent over, and dropped into Cosette's
shoe a gold Louis.

Then he went back to his room with stealthy tread.



IX. THENARDIER MANUFACTURING



ON THE following morning, at least two hours before day, Thenardier, seated at
a table in the bar-room, a candle by his side with pen in hand, was making out
the bill of the traveller in the yellow coat.

His wife was standing, half bent over him, following him with her eyes. Not a
word passed between them. It was, on one side, a profound meditation, on the
other that religious admiration with which we observe a marvel of the human
mind spring up and expand. A noise was heard in the house; it was the lark,
sweeping the stairs.

After a good quarter of an hour and some erasures, Thenardier produced this
masterpiece.





Service was written servisse.

Twenty-three francs!" exclaimed the woman, with an enthusiasm Which was mingled
with some hesitation.

Like all great artists Thenardier was not satisfied.

Pooh!" said he.

It was the accent of Castlereagh drawing up for the Congress of Vienna the bill
which France was to pay.

"MonsiuerThenardier, you are right; he deserves it," murmured the woman, thinking of
the doll given to Cosette in the presence, of her daughters; "it is right! but it's
too much. He won't pay it."

Thenardier put on his cold laugh, and said: "He, will pay it"

This laugh was the highest sign of certainty and authority. What was thus said, must
be. The woman did not insist. She began to arrange the tables; the husband walked back
and forth in the room. A moment after he added:

"I owe, at least, fifteen hundred francs!"

He seated himself thoughtfully in the chimney corner, his feet in the warm ashes.

"Ah ha!" replied the woman, "you don't forget that I kick Cosette out of the house
today? The monster! it tears my vitals to see her with her doll! I would rather marry
Louis XVIII, than keep her in the house another day!"

Thenardier lighted his pipe, and answered between two puffs:

"You'll give the bill to the man."

Then he went out.

He was scarcely out of the room when the traveller came in. Thenardier reappeared
immediately behind him, and remained motionless in the half-open door, visible only
to his wife.

The yellow man carried his staff and bundle in his hand.

"Up so soon!" said the Thenardiess; "is monsieur going to leave us already?"

While speaking, she turned the bill in her hands with an embarrased look, and made
creases in it with her nails. Her hard face exhibited a shade of timidity and doubt
that was not habitual.

To present such a bill to a man who had so perfectly the appearance of "a pauper"
seemed too awkward to her.

The traveller appeared pre-occupied and absent-minded.

He answered:

"Yes, madame, I am going away."

"Monsieur, then, had no business at Montfermeil?" replied she.

"No, I am passing through; that is all. Madame," added he, "what do I owe?"

The Thenardiess, without answering, banded him the folded bill.

The man unfolded the paper and looked at it; but his thoughts were evidently else-
where.

"Madame," replied he, "do you do a good business in Montfer-men?"

"So-so, monsieur," answered the Thenardiess, stupefied at seeing no other explosion.

She continued in a mournful and lamenting strain:

"Oh! monsieur, the times are very hard, and then we have so few rich people around
here! It is avert' little place, you see. If we only had rich travellers now and then, like
monsieur! We have so many expenses! Why, that little girl eats us out of house and
home."

"What little girl?"

"Why, the little girl you know! Cosette the lark, as they call her about here!"

"Ah!" said the man.

She continued:

"How stupid these peasants are with their nicknames! She looks more like a bat
than a lark. You see, monsieur, we don't ask charity, but we are not able to
give it. We make nothing, and have a great deal to pay. The licence, the excise,
the doors and windows, the tax .on everything! Monsieur knows that the government
demands a deal of money. And then I have my own girls. I have nothing to spend
on other people's children."

The man replied in a voice which he endeavoured to render indifferent, and in
which there was a slight tremulousness.

"Suppose you were relieved of her?"

"Who? Cosette?"

"Yes."

The red and violent face of the woman became illumined with a hideous expression.

"Ah, monsieur! my good monsieur! take her, keep her, take her away, carry her off,
sugar her, stuff her, drink her, eat her, and be blessed by the holy Virgin and
all the saints in Paradise!"

"Agreed."

"Really! you will take her away?"

"I will."

"Immediately?"

"Immediately. Call the child."

"Cosette!" cried the Thenardiess.

"In the meantime." continued the man. "I will pay my bill. How much is it?"

He cast a glance at the bill, and could not repress a movement of surprise.

"Twenty-three francs?"

He looked at the hostess and repeated:

"Twenty-three francs?"

There was, in the pronunciation of these two sentences, thus repeated, the accent
which lies between the point of exclamation and the point of interrogation.

The Thenardiess had had time to prepare herself for the shock. She replied with as-
surance:

"Yes, of course, monsieur! it is twenty-three francs."

The stranger placed five five-franc pieces upon the table. " Go for the little girl,"
said he,

At this moment Thonardier advanced into the middle of the room and said:

"Monsieur owes twenty-six sous."

"Twenty-six sous!" exclaimed the woman.

"Twenty sous for the room," continued Thenardier coldly, "and six for supper. As to
the little girl, I must have some talk with monsieur about that. Leave us, wife."

The Thenardiess was dazzled by one of those unexpected flashes which emanate from
talent. She felt that the great actor had entered upon the scene, answered not a word,
and went out

As soon as they were alone, Thenardier offered the traveller a chair. The traveller
sat down, but Thenardier remained standing, and his face assumed a singular expression
of good-nature and simplicity.

"Monsieur," said he, "listen, I must say that I adore this child." The stranger looked
at him steadily.

"What child?"

Thenardier continued:

"How strangely we become attached! What is all this silver? Take back your money. This
child I adore."

"Who is that?" asked the stranger.

"Oh, our little Cosette! And you wish to take her away from us? Indeed, I speak frankly,
as true as you are an honourable man, I cannot consent to it. I should miss her. I have
had her since she was very small. It is true, she costs us money; it is true she has her
faults, it is true we are not rich, it is true I paid four hundred francs for medicines
at one time when she was sick. But we must do something for God. She has neither father
nor mother; I have brought her up. I have bread enough for her and for myself. In fact,
I must keep this child. You understand, we have affections; I am a good beast; myself;
I do not reason; I love this little girl; my wife is hasty, but she loves her also. You
see, she is like our own child. I feel the need of her prattle in the house."

The stranger was looking steadily at him all the while. He continued:

"Pardon me, excuse me, monsieur, but one does not give his child like that to a traveller.
Isn't it true that I am right? After that, I don't say--you are rich and have the appear-
ance of a very fine man --if it is for her advantage,--but I must know about it. You under-
stand? On the supposition that I should let her go and sacrifice my own feelings, I should
want to know where she is going. I would not want to lose sight of her, I should want to
know who she was with, that I might come and see her now and then, and that she might know
that her good foster-father was still watching over her. Finally, there are things which
are not possible. I do not know even ' your name. If you should take her away, I should
say, alas for the little Lark, where has she gone? I must, at least, see some poor rag of
paper, a bit of a passport, something."

The stranger, without removing from him this gaze which went, so to speak, to the bottom
of his conscience, answered in a severe and firm tone.

"Monsieur Thenardier, people do not take a passport to come five leagues from Paris. If I
take Cosette, I take her, that is all. You will not know my name, you will not know my abode,
you will not know where she goes, and my intention is that she shall never see you again in
her life. Do you agree to that? Yes or no?"

As demons and genii recognise by certain signs the presence of a superior God, Thenardier
comprehended that he was to deal with one who was very powerful. It came like an intuition;
he understood it with his clear and quick sagacity; although during the evening he had been
drinking with the waggoners, smoking and singing bawdy songs, still he was observing the
stranger all the while, watching him like a cat, and studying him like a mathematician. He
had been observing him on his own account, for pleasure and by instinct, and at the same
time lying in wait as if he had been paid for it. Not a gesture, not a movement of the man
in the yellow coat had escaped him. Before even the stranger had so clearly shown his in-
terest in Cosette, Thenardier had divined it. He had surprised the searching glances of
the old man constantly returning to the child. Why this interest? What was this man? Why,
with so much money in his purse, this miserable dress? These were questions which he put
to himself without being able to answer them, and they irritated him. He had been thinking
it over all night. This could not be Cosette's father. NVas it a grandfather? Then why did
he not make himself known at once? When a man has a right, he shows it. This man evidently
had no right to Cosette. Then who was he? Thenardier was lost in conjectures. He caught
glimpses of everything, but saw nothing. However it might be, when he commenced the conver-
sation with this man, sure that there was a secret in all this, sure that the man had an
interest in remaining unknown, he felt himself strong; at the stranger's clear and firm
answer, when he saw that this mysterious personage was mysterious and nothing more, he felt
weak. He was expecting nothing of the kind. His conjectures were put to flight. He rallied
his ideas. He weighed all in a second. Thenardier was one of those men who comprehend a
situation at a glance. He decided that this was the moment to advance straight forward and
swiftly. He did what great captains do at that decisive instant which they alone can recog-
nise; he unmasked his battery at once.

"Monsieur," said he, "I must have fifteen hundred francs."

The stranger took from his side-pocket an old black leather pocket-book, opened it, and drew
forth three bank bills which he placed upon the table. He then rested his large thimb on
these bills, and said to the tavern-keeper.

"Bring Cosette."

While this was going on what was Cosette doing?

Cosette, as soon as she awoke, had run to her wooden shoe. She had found the gold piece in
it. It was not a Napoleon, but one of those new twenty-franc pieces of the Restoration, on
the face of which the little Prussian queue had replaced the laurel crown. Cosette was daz-
zled. Her destiny began to intoxicate her. She did not know that it was a piece of gold;
she had never seen one before; she hastily concealed it in her pocket as if she had stolen
it. Nevertheless she felt it boded good to her. She divined whence the gift came, but she
experienced a joy that was filled with awe. She was gratified; she was moreover stupefied.
Such magnificent and beautiful things seemed unreal to her. The doll made her afraid, the
gold piece made her afraid. She trembled with wonder before these magnificences. The stran-
ger himself did not make her afraid. On the contrary, he reassured her. Since the previous
evening, amid all her astonishment, and in her sleep, she was thinking in her little child's
mind of this man who had such an old, and poor, and sad appearance, and who was so rich
and so kind. Since she had met this goodman in the wood, it seemed as though all things
were changed about her. Cosette, less happy than the smallest swallow of the sky, had never
known what it is to take refuge under a mother's wing. For five years, that is to say, as
far back as she could remember, the poor child had shivered and shuddered. She had always
been naked under the biting north wind of misfortune, and now it seemed to her that she was
clothed. Before her soul was cold, now it was warm. Cosette was no longer afraid of the
Thenardier; she was no longer alone; she had somebody to look to.

She hurriedly set herself to her morning task. This Louis, which she had placed in the same
pocket of her apron from which the fifteen-sous piece had fallen the night before, distract-
ed her attention front her work. She did not dare to touch it, but she spent five minutes
at a time contemplating it, and we must confess, with her tongue thrust out. While sweeping
the stairs, she stopped and stood there, motionless, forgetting her broom, and the whole
world besides, occupied in looking at this shining star at the bottoin of her pocket.

It was in one of these reveries that the Thenardiess found her.

At the command of her husband, she had gone to look for het. Wonderful to tell, she did not
give her a slap nor even call her a bard name.

"Cosette," said she, almost gently, "come quick."

An instant after, Cosette entered the bar-room.

The stranger took the bundle he had brought and untied it. This bundle contained a little
woollen frock, an apron, a coarse cotton under-garment, a petticoat, a scarf, woollen
stockings, and shoes--a complete dress for a girl of seven years. It was all in black.

"My child," said the man, "take this and go and dress yourself quick."

The day was breaking when those of the inhabitants of Montfermeil who were beginning to
open their doors, saw pass on the road to Paris a poorly clad goodman leading a little
girl dressed in mourning who had a pink doll in her arms. They were going towards Livry.

It was the stranger and Cosette.

No one recognised the man; as Cosette was not now in tatters, few recognised her.

Cosette was going away. With whom? She was ignorant. Where? She knew not. All she un-
derstood was, that she was leaving behind the Thenardier chop-house. Nobody had thought
of bidding her good-by, nor had she of bidding good-by to anybody. She went out from
that house, hated and hating.

Poor gentle being, whose heart had only been crushed hitherto.

Cosette walked seriously along, opening her large eyes, and looking at the sky. She
had put her louis in the pocket of her new apron. From time to time she bent over and
cast a glance at it, and then looked at the goodman. She felt somewhat as if she were
near God.



X. WHO SEEKS THE BEST MAY FIND THE WORST



THE THENARDIESS, according to her custom, had left her husband alone.
She was expecting great events. When the man and Cosette were gone,

Thenardier after a good quarter of an hour, took her aside, and showed
her the fifteen hundred francs.

"What's that?" said she.

It was the first time, since the beginning of their housekeeping, that she had dared
to criticise the act of her master.

He felt the blow.

"True you are right," said he; "I am a fool. Give me my hat."

He folded the three bank bills, thrust them into his pocket, and started in all haste,
but he missed the direction and took the road to the right. Some neighbours of whom
he inquired put him on the track; the Lark and the man had been seen to go in the
direction of Livry. He followed this indication, walking rapidly and talking to him-
self.

"This man is evidently a millionaire dressed in yellow, and as for me, I am a brute.
He first gave twenty sous, then five francs, then fifty francs, then fifteen hundred
francs, all so readily.. He would have given fifteen thousand francs. But I shall catch
him.'

And then this bundle of clothes, made ready beforehand for the little girl; all that was
strange, there was a good deal of mystery under it. When one gets hold of a mystery, he does
not let go of it. The secrets of the rich are sponges full of gold; a man ought to know how
to squeeze them. All these thoughts were whirling in his brain. "I am a brute," said he.

On leaving Montfermeil and reaching the turn made by .the road to Livry, the route may be
seen for a long distance on the plateau. On reaching this point he counted on being able to
see the man and the little girl. He looked as far as his eye could reach, but saw nothing.
He inquired again. In the meanwhile he was losing time. The passers-by told him that the man
and child whom he sought had travelled towards the wood in the direction of Gagny. He hast-
ened in this direction.

They had the start of him, but a child walks slowly, and he went rapidly. And Then the coun-
try was well known to him.

Suddenly he stopped and struck his forehead like a man who 'has forgotten the main thing,
and who thinks of retracing his steps.

"I ought to have taken my gun!" said he.

Thenardier was one of those double natures who sometimes ap-pear among us without our know-
ledge, and disappear without ever being known, because destiny has shown us but one side of
them. It is the fate of many men to live thus half submerged. In a quiet ordinary situation,
Thenardier had all that is necessary to make--we do not say to be--what passes for an honest
tradesman, a good citizen. At the same time, under certain circumstances, under the opera-
tion of certain occurrences exciting his baser nature, he had in him all that was necessary
to be a villain. He was a shopkeeper, in which lay hidden a monster. Satan ought for a moment
to have squatted in some corner of the hole in which Thenardier lived and studied this hide-
ous masterpiece.

After hesitating an instant:

"Bah!" thought he, "they would have time to escape!"

And he continued on his way, going rapidly forward, and almost as if he were certain, with
the sagacity of the fox scenting a flock of partridges.

In fact, when he had passed the ponds, and crossed obliquely the large meadow at the right
of the avenue de Bellevue, as he reached the grassy path which nearly encircles the hill,
and which covers the arch of the old aqueduct of the abbey of Chelles, he perceived above a
bush. the hat on which he had already built so many conjectures. It was the man's hat. The
bushes were low. Thenardier. perceived that the man and Cosette were seated there. The
child could not be seen, she was so short, but lie could'see the head of the doll:

Thenardier was not deceived. The man had sat down there to give Cosette a little rest. The
chop-house keeper turned aside the bushes, and suddenly appeared before the eyes of those
whom he sought.

"Pardon me, excuse me, monsieur," said he, all out of breath; "but here are your fifteen
hundred francs."

So saying, he held out the three bank bills to the stranger. The man raised his eyes:

"What does that mean?"

Thenardier answered respectfully:

"Monsieur, that means that I take back Cosette."

Cosette shuddered, and hugged close to the goodman.

He answered, looking Thenardier straight in the eye, and spac-ing his syllables.

"You--take---back--Cosette?"

"Yes, monsieur, I take her back. I tell you I have reflected. In-deed, I haven't the right
to give her to you. I am an honest man, you see. This little girl is not mine. She belongs
to her mother. Her mother has confided her to me; I can only give her up toiler mother.
You will tell me: But her mother is dead. Well. In that case, I can only give up the child
to a person who shall bring me a written order, signed by the mother, stating I should de-
liver the child to him. That is clear."

The man, without answering, felt in his pocket, and Thenardier saw the pocket-book contain-
ing the bank bills reappear.

The tavern-keeper felt a thrill of joy.

"Good!" thought he; "hold on. He is going to corrupt me!"

Before opening the pocket-book, the traveller cast a look about him. The place was entirely
deserted. There was not a soul either in the wood, or in the valley. The man opened the
pocket-book, and drew from it, not the handful of bankbills which Thenardier expected, but
a little piece of paper, which he unfolded and presented open to the innkeeper, saying:

"You are right. Read that!"

Thenardier took the paper and read.

"M-- stir M--, March 25, 1823.

"Monsieur Thenardier
"You will deliver Cosette to the bearer. He will settle all small debts.
"I have the honour to salute you with consideration.

'FANTINE."

"You know that signature?" replied the man.

It was indeed the signature of Fantine. Thenardier recognised it.

There was nothing to say. He felt doubly enraged, enraged at being compelled to give up the
bribe which he hoped for, and enraged at being beaten. The man added:

"You can keep this paper as your receipt."

Thenardier retreated in good order.

"This signature is very well imitated," he grumbled between his teeth. "Well, so be it!"

Then he made a desperate effort.

"Monsieur," said he, "it is all right. Then you are the person. But you must settle 'all
small debts.' There is a large amount due to me.'

The man rose to his feet, and said at the same time, snapping with his thumb and finger
some dust from his threadbare sleeve:

"Monsieur Thenardier, in January the mother reckoned that she owed you a hundred and twenty
francs; you sent her in February a memorandum of five hundred 'francs; you received three
hundred francs at the end of February, and three hundred at the beginning of March. There
has since elapsed nine months which; at fifteen francs per month, the price agreed upon,
amounts to a hundred and thirty-five francs. You had received a hundred francs in advance.
There remain thirty-five francs due you. I have just given you fifteen hundred francs."

Thenardier felt what the wolf feels the moment when he finds himself seized and crushed by
the steel jaws of the trap.

"What is this devil of a man?" thought he.

He did what the wolf does, he gave a spring. Audacity had succeeded with him once already.

"Monsieur-l-don't-know-your-name," said he resolutely, and putting aside this time all show
of respect. "I shall take back Cosette or you must give me a thousand crowns."

The stranger said quietly:

"Come, Cosette."

He took Cosette with his left hand, and with the right picked up his staff, which was on
the ground.

Thenardier noted the enormous size of the cudgel, and the solitude of the place.

The man disappeared in the wood with the child, leaving the chop-house keeper motionless
and non-plussed.

As they walked away, Thenardier observed his broad shoulders, a little rounded, and his
big fists.

Then his eyes fell back upon his own puny arms and thin hands. "I must have been a fool
indeed," thought he, "not to have brought my gun, as I was going on a hunt."

However, the innkeeper did not abandon the pursuit.

"I must know where he goes," said he; And he began to follow them at a distance. There
remained two things in his possession, one a bitter mockery, the piece of paper signed
Fantine, and the other a consolation, the fifteen hundred francs.

The man was leading Cosette in the direction of Livry and Bondy. He was walking slowly,
his head bent down, in an attitude of reflection and sadness. The winter had bereft the
wood of foliage, so that Thenardier did not lose sight of them, though remaining at a
considerable distance behind. From time to time the man turned, and looked to see if
he were followed. Suddenly he perceived Thenardier. He at once entered a coppice with
Cosette, and both disappeared from sight. "The devil!" said Thenardier. And he redou-
bled his pace.

The density of the thicket compelled him to approach them. When the man reached the
thickest part of the wood, he turned again. Thenardier had endeavoured to conceal him-
self in the branches in vain, he could not prevent the man from seeing him. The man
cast an uneasy glance at him, then shook his head, and resumed his journey. The inn-
keeper again took up the pursuit. They walked thus two or three hundred paces. Suddenly
the man turned again. He perceived the innkeeper. This time he looked at him so for-
biddingly that Thenardier judged it "unprofitable" to go further. Thenardier went home.



XI. NUMBER 9430 COMES UP AGAIN, AND COSETTE DRAWS IT



JEAN Valjean was not dead.

When he fell into the sea, or rather when he threw himself into it, he was as we have seen,
free from his irons. He swam under water to a ship at anchor to which a boat was fastened.

He found means to conceal himself in this boat until evening. At night he betook himself
again to the water, and reached the land a short distance from Cape Brun.

There, as he did not lack for money, he could procure clothes. A little public-house in
the environs of Balaguier was then the place which supplied clothing for escaped convicts,
a lucrative business. Then Jean Valjean, like all those joyless fugitives who are endeav-
ouring to throw off the track the spy of the law and social fatality, followed an obscure
and wandering path. He found an asylum first in Pradeaux, near Beausset. Then he went to-
wards Grand Villard near Briancon, in the Hautes Alpes. Groping and restless flight,
threading the mazes of the mole whose windings are unknown. There were afterwards found
some trace of his passage in Ain, on the territory of Civrieux, in the Pyrenees at Accons,
at a place called the Grange-de-Domecq, near the hamlet of Chavailles, and in the environs
of Perigneux, at Brunies, a canton of Chapelle Gonaguet. He finally reached Paris. We have
seen him at Montfermeil.

His first care, on reaching Paris, had been to purchase a mourning dress for a little girl
of seven years, then to procure lodgings. That done, he had gone to Afontfermeil.

It will be remembered that, at the time of his former escape, or near that time, he had made
a mysterious journey of which justice had had some glimpse.

Moreover, he was believed to be dead, and that thickened the obscurity which surrounded him.
At Paris there fell into his hands a paper which chronicled the fact. He felt reassured, and
almost as much at peace as if he really had been dead.

On the evening of the same day that Jean Valjean had rescued Cosette from the clutches of
the Thenardiess, he entered Paris again. He entered the city at night-fall, with the child,
by the barriere de Monceaux. There he took a cabriolet, which carried him as far as the
esplanade of the Observatory. There he got out, paid the driver, took Cosette by the hand,
and both in the darkness of the night, through the deserted streets in the vicinity of
l'Ourcine and la Glaciere, walked towards the boulevard de l'Hopital.

The day had been strange and full of emotion for Cosette; they had eaten behind hedges
bread and cheese bought at isolated chop-houses; they had often changed carriages, and had
travelled short distances on foot. She did not complain; but she was tired, and Jean Valjean
perceived it by her pulling more heavily at his hand while walking. He took her in his arms;
Cosette, without letting go of Catharine, laid her head on Jean Valjean's shoulder, and went
to sleep.




　　　　　　　　BOOK FOURTH
　　　　THE OLD GORBEAU HOUSE



I. MASTER GORBEAU



FORTY years ago, the solitary pedestrian who ventured into the unknown reg-
ions of La Salpetriere and went up along the Boulevard as far as the Barriere
d'Italie, reached certain points where it might be said that Paris disappeared.
It was no longer a solitude, for there were people passing; it was not the
country, for there were houses and streets; it was not a city, the streets had
ruts in them, like the highways, and grass grew along their borders; it was not
a village, the houses were too lofty. What was it then? It was an inhabited
place where there was nobody, it was a desert place where there was somebody;
it was a boulevard of the great city, a street of Paris, wilder, at night, than
a forest, and gloomier, by day, than a graveyard.

It was the old quarter of the Horse Market.

Our pedestrian, if he trusted himself beyond the four tumbling walls of this Horse
Market, if willing to go even further than the Rue du Petit Banquier, leaving on
his right a courtyard shut in by lofty walls, then a meadow studded with stacks
of tanbark that looked like the gigantic beaver dams, then an inclosure half fill-
ed with lumber and piles of logs, sawdust and shavings, from the top of which a
huge dog was baying, then a long, low, ruined wall with a small dark-coloured and
decrepit gate in it, covered with moss, which was full of flowers in spring-time,
then, in the loneliest spot, a frightful broken-down structure on which could be
read in large letters: POST NO BILLS; this bold promenader, we say, would reach
the corner of the Rue des Vignes-Saint-Marcel, a latitude not much explored. There,
near a manufactory and between two garden walls, could be seen at the time of which
we speak an old ruined dwelling that, at first sight, seemed as small as a cottage,
yet was, in reality, as vast as a cathedral. It stood with its gable end towards
the highway, and hence its apparent diminutiveness. Nearly the whole house was hid-
den. Only the door and one window could be seen.

This old dwelling had but one story.

On examining it, the peculiarity that first struck the beholder was that the door
could never have been anything but the door of a hovel, while the window, had it
been cut in freestone and not in rough material, might have been the casement of a
lordly resident.

The door was merely a collection of worm-eaten boards rudely tacked together with
cross-pieces that looked like pieces of firewood clumsily split out. It opened dir-
ectly on a steep staircase with high steps covered with mud, plaster, and dust, and
of the same breadth as the door,and which seemed from the street to rise perpendic-
ularly like a ladder, and disappear in the shadow between two walls. The top of the
shapeless opening which this door dosed upon, was disguised by a narrow topscreen,
in the middle of which had been sawed a three-cornered orifice that served both for
skylight and ventilator when the door was shut. On the inside of the door. a brush
dipped in ink had, in a couple of strokes of the hand, traced the number 52, and
above the screen, the same brush had daubed the number 50, so that a new-comer
would hesitate, asking: Where am I?

The top of the entrance says, at number 50; the inside, however, replies, No! at
number 52! The dust-coloured rags that hung in guise of curtains about the three-
cornered ventilator, we will not attempt to describe.

The window was broad and of considerable height, With large panes in the sashes
and provided with Venetian shutters; only the panes had received a variety of wounds
which were at once concealed and made manifest by ingenious strips and bandages of
paper, and the shutters were so broken and disjointed that they menaced the passers-
by more than they shielded the occupants of the dwelling. The horizontal slats were
lacking, here and there, and bad been very simply replaced with boards nailed across,
so that what had been a Venetian, in the first instance, ended as a regular close
shutter. This door with its dirty look and this window with its decent though dilap-
idated appearance, seen thus in one and the same building, produced the effect of two
ragged beggars bound in the same direction and walking side by side, with different
mein under the same rags, one having always been a pauper while the other had been a
gentleman.

The staircase led up to a very spacious interior, which looked like a barn convened
into a house. This structure had for its main channel of communication a long hall,
on which there opened, on either side, apartments of different dimensions scarcely hab-
itable, rather resembling booths than rooms. These chambers looked out upon the shape-
less grounds of the neighbourhood. Altogether, it was dark and dull and dreary, even
melancholy and sepulchral, and it was penetrated, either by the dim, cold rays of the
sun or by icy draughts, according to the situation of the cracks, in the roof, or in
the door. One interesting and picturesque peculiarity of this kind of tenement is the
monstrous size of the spiders.

To the left of the main door, on the boulevard, a small window that had been walled
up formed a square niche some six feet from the ground, which was filled with stones
that passing urchins had thrown into it.

A portion of this building has recently been pulled down, but what remains, at the
present day, still conveys an idea of what it was. The structure, taken as a whole,
is not more than a hundred years old. A hundred years is youth to a church, but old
age to a private mansion. It would seem that the dwelling of Man partakes of his brief
existence, and the dwelling of God, of His eternity.

The letter-carriers called the house No. 50-52; but it was known, in the quarter, as
Gorbeau House.

Let us see how it came by that title.

The "gatherers-up of unconsidered trifles" who collect anecdotes as the herbalist his
simples, and prick the fleeting dates upon their memories with a pin, know that there
lived in Paris, in the last century, about 1770, two attorneys of the Chatelet, one
named Corbeau and the other Renard--two names, anticipated by La Fontaine. The chance
for a joke was altogether too fine a one to be let slip by the goodly company of law-
yers' clerks. So, very soon, the galleries of the court-rooms rang with the following
parody, in rather gouty verse:

Maitre Corbeau. sur un dossier perch&
Tenait dans son bee une saisie executoire;
Maitre Renard, par l'odeur alleche,
Lui fit a peu pros cette histoirc:
He! bonjour! etc.'

'Master Crow, on a document perched.
In his beak held a fat execution,
Master Fox, with his jaws well besmirched.
Thus spoke up, to his neighbour's confusion.
"Good dayl my fine fellow," quoth he, etc.

The two honest practitioners, annoyed by these shafts of wit, and rather disconcerted
in their dignity by the roars of laughter that followed them, resolved to change their
names, and, with that view, applied to the king. The petition was presented to Louis XV.
on .the very day on which the Pope's Nuncio and the Cardinal de La Roche-Aymon in the
presence of his Majesty. devoutly kneeling. one on each side of Madame Du Barry. put her
slippers on her naked feet, as she was getting out of bed. The king, who was laughing,
continued his laugh; he passed gaily from the two bishops to the two advocates, and ab-
solved these limbs of the law from their names almost. It was granted to Master Corbeau,
by the king's good pleasure, to add a flourish to the first letter of his name, thus
making it Gorbeau; Master Renard was less fortunate, as he only got permission to put a
P. before the It which made the word Prenard, a name no less appropriate than the first
one.

Now, according to tradition, this Master Gorbeau was the pro-prietor of the structure
numbered 50-52, Boulevard del Hopital. He was, likewise, the originator of the monumental
window.

Hence, this building got its name of Gorbeau House.

Opposite No. 50-52 stands, among the shade-trees that line the Boulevard, a tall elm,
three-quarters dead, and almost directly in front, opens the Rue de la Barriere des
Gobelins--a street, at that time, without houses, unpaved, bordered with scrubby trees,
grass-grown or muddy, according to the season, and running squarely up to the wall en-
circling Paris. An odour of vitriol ascended in puffs from the roofs of a neighbouring
factory.

The Barriere was quite near. In 1832, the encircling wall yet existed.

This Barriere itself filled the mind with gloomy images. It was on the way to the Bicetre.
It was there that, under the Empire and the Restoration, condemned criminals re-entered
Paris on the day of their execution. It was there, that, about the year 1829, was com-
mitted the mysterious assassination, called "the murder of the Barriere de Fontainebleau,"
the perpetrators of which the authorities have never discovered--a sombre problem which
has not yet been solved, a terrible enigma not yet unravelled. Go a few steps further,
and you find that fatal Rue Croulebarbe where Ulbach stabbed the goatherd girl of Ivry,
in a thunderstorm, in the style of a melodrama. Still a few steps, and you come to those
detestable clipped elm-trees of the Barriere Saint Jacques, that expedient of philanthro-
pists to hide the scaffold, that pitiful and shameful Place de Breve of a cockney, shop-
keeping society which recoils from capital punishment, yet dares neither to abolish it
with lofty dignity, nor to maintain it with firm authority.

Thirty-seven years ago, excepting this place, Saint-Jacques, which seemed fore-doomed, and
always was horrible, the gloomiest of all this gloomy Boulevard was the spot, stilt so un-
attractive, where stood the old building 50-52.

The city dwelling-houses did not begin to start up there until some twenty-five years later.
The place was repulsive. In addition to the melancholy thought that seized you there, you
felt conscious of being between a La Salpetriere, the cupola of which was in sight, and
Bicetre, the barrier of which was dose by--that is to say, between the wicked folly of
woman and that of man. Far as the eye could reach, there was nothing to be seen but the
public shambles, the city wall, and here and there the side of a factory, resembling a bar-
rack or a monastery; on all sides, miserable hovels and heaps of rubbish, old walls as black
as widows' weeds, and new walls as white as winding-sheets; on all sides, parallel rows of
trees, buildings in straight lines, low, flat structures, long, cold perspectives, and the
gloomy sameness of right angles. Not a variation of the surface of the ground, not a caprice
of architecture, not a curve. Altogether, it was chilly, regular, and hideous. Nothing sti-
fles one like this perpetual symmetry. Symmetry is ennui, and ennui is the very essence of
grief and melancholy. Despair yawns. Something more terrible than a hell of suffering may be
conceived; to wit, a hell of ennui. Were there such a hell in existence, this section of the
Boulevard de l'Hopital might well serve as the approach to it.

Then, at nightfall, at the moment when the day is dying out, especially in winter, at that
hour when the evening breeze tears from the elms their faded and withered leaves, when the
gloom is deep, without a single star, or when the moon and the wind make openings in the
clouds, this boulevard became positively terrifying. The dark outlines shrank together, and
even lost themselves in the obscurity like fragments of the infinite. The passer-by could not
keep from thinking of the innumerable bloody traditions of the spot. The solitude of this
neighbourhood in which so many crimes had been committed, had something fearful about it. One
felt presentiments of snares in this obscurity; all the confused outlines visible through the
gloom were eyed suspiciously. and the oblong cavities between the trees seemed like graves.
In the day-time it was ugly; in the evening, it was dismal; at night, it was ominous of evil.
In summer, in the twilight, some old woman might be seen seated, here and there, under the
elms, on benches made mouldy by the rain. These good old dames were addicted to begging.

In conclusion. this quarter, which was rather superannuated than ancient, from that time began
to undergo a transformation. Thenceforth, whoever would see it. must hasten. Each day, some of
its details wholly passed away. Now, as has been the case for twenty years past, the terminus
of the Orleans railroad lies just outside of the old suburb, and keeps it in movement. Wherever
von may locate, in the outskirts of a capital, a railroad depot, it is the death of a suburb
and the birth of a city. It would seem as though around these great centres of the activity of
nations, at the rumbling of these mighty engines, at the snorting of these giant draught-horses
of civilisation, which devour coal and spout forth fire, the earth, teeming with germs of life,
trembles and opens to swallow old dwellings of men and to bring forth new; old houses crumble,
new houses spring up.

Since the depot of the Orleans railway invaded the grounds of La Salpetriere, the old narrow
streets that adjoin the Fosses Saint Victor and the jardin des Plantes are giving way, violently
traversed, as they are, three or four times a clay, by those streams of diligences, hacks, and
omnibuses, which, in course of time, push back the houses right and left; for there are things
that sound strangely, and yet which are precisely correct; and, just as the remark is true that,
in large cities, the sun causes the fronts of houses looking south to vegetate and grow, so is
it undeniable that the frequent passage of vehicles widens the streets. The symptoms of a
new life are evident. In that old provincial quarter, and in its wildest corners, pavement is be-
ginning to appear, sidewalks are springing up and stretching to longer and longer distances,
even in those parts where there are as yet no passers-by. One morning, a memorable morning
in July, 1845, black kettles filled with bitumen were seen smoking there: on that day, one could
exclaim that civilisation had reached the Rue de l'Ourcine, and that Paris had stepped across
into the Faubourg Saint Marceau.



II. A NEST FOR OWL AND WREN



BEFORE this Gorbeau tenement Jean Valjean stopped. Like the birds of prey, be had chosen this
lonely place to make his nest.

He fumbled in his waistcoat and took from it a sort of night-key, opened the door, entered, then
carefully closed it again and ascended the stairway, still carrying Cosette.

At the top of the stairway he drew his from pocket another key, with which he opened another door.
The chamber which he entered and closed again immediately was a sort of garret, rather spacious,
furnished only with a mattress spread on the floor, a table, and a few chairs. A stove containing
a fire, the coals of which were visible, stood in one corner. The street lamp of the boulevards
shed a dim light through this poor interior. At the further extremity there was a little room con-
taining a cot bed. On this Jean Valjean laid the child without waking her.

He struck a light with a flint and steel and lit a candle, which, with his tinder-box, stood ready,
beforehand, on the table; and, as he had done on the preceding evening, he began to gaze upon Cos-
ette with a look of ecstasy, in which the expression of goodness and tenderness went almost to the
verge of insanity, The little girl. with that tranquil confidence which belongs only to extreme
strength or extreme weakness, had fallen asleep without knowing with whom she was, and continued
to slumber without knowing where she was.

Jean Valjean bent down and kissed the child's hand.

Nine months before, he had kissed the hand of the mother, who also had just fallen asleep.

The same mournful, pious. agonising feeling now filled his heart.

He knelt down by the bedside of Cosette.

It was broad daylight, and yet the child slept on. A pale ray from the December sun struggled
through the garret window and traced upon the ceiling long streaks of light and shade. Suddenly a
carrier's waggon, heavily laden, trundled over the cobble-stones of the boulevard, and shook the
old building like the rumbling of a tempest, jarring it from cellar to roof-tree.

"Yes, madame!" cried Cosette, starting up out of sleep, "here I am! here I am!"

And she threw herself from the bed, her eyelids still half closed with the weight of slumber,
stretching out her hand towards the corner of the wall.

"Oh! what shall I do? Where is my broom?" said she.

By this time her eyes were fully open, and she saw the smiling face of Jean Valjean.

"Oh! yes--so it is!" said the child. "Good morning, monsieur."

Children at once accept joy and happiness with quick familiarity, being themselves naturally all
happiness and joy.

Cosette noticed Catharine at the foot of the bed, laid hold of her at once, and, playing the
while, asked Jean Valjean a thousand questions.--Where was she? Was Paris a big place? Was Ma-
dame Thenardier really very far away? Wouldn't she come back again, etc., etc. All at once she
exclaimed, "How pretty it is here!"

It was a frightful hovel, but she felt free.

"Must I sweep?" she continued at length.

"Play!" replied Jean Valjean.

And thus the day passed by. Cosette, without troubling herself with trying to understand anything
about it, was inexpressibly happy with her doll and her good friend.



III. TWO MISFORTUNES MINGLED MAKE HAPPINESS



THE dawn of the next day found Jean Valican again near the bed of Cosette. He waited there, motion-
less, to see her wake. Something new was entering his soul.

Jean Valjean had never loved anything. For twenty-five years he had been alone in the world. He
had never been a father, lover, husband, or friend. At the galleys, he was cross, sullen, abstinent,
ignorant, and intractable. The heart of the old convict was full of freshness. His sister and her
children had left in his memory only a vague and distant impression, which had finally almost en-
tirely vanished. He had made every exertion to find them again, and, not succeeding, had forgotten
them. Human nature is thus constituted. The other tender emotions of his youth. if any such he had,
were lost in an abyss.

When he saw Cosette, when he had taken her, carried her away, and rescued her, he felt his heart
moved. All that he had of feeling and affection was aroused and vehemently attracted towards this
child. He would approach the bed where she slept, and would tremble there with delight; he felt
inward yearnings, like a mother, and knew not what they were; for it is something very incompre-
hensible and very sweet, this grand and strange emotion of a heart in its first love.

Poor old heart, so young!

But, as he was fifty-five and Cosette was but eight years old, all that he might have felt of
love in his entire life melted into a sort of ineffable radiance.

This was the second white vision he had seen. The bishop had caused the dawn of virtue on his
horizon; Cosette evoked the dawn of love.

The first few days rolled by amid this bewilderment.

On her part, Cosette, too, unconsciously underwent a change, poor little creature! She was so
small when her mother left her, that she could not recollect her now. As all children do, like
the young shoots of the vine that cling to everything, she had tried to love. She had not been
able to succeed. Everybody had repelled her--the Thenardiers, their children, other children.
She had loved the dog; it died, and after that no person and no thing would have aught to do
with her. Mournful thing to tell, and one which we have already hinted, at the age of eight her
heart was cold. This was not her fault; it was not the faculty of love that she lacked; alas it
was the possibility. And so, from the very first day, all that thought and felt in her began to
love this kind old friend. She now felt sensations utterly unknown to her before--a sensation
of budding and of growth.

Her kind friend no longer impressed as old and poor. In her eyes Jean Valjean was handsome,
just as the garret had seemed pretty.

Such are the effects of the aurora-glow of childhood, youth, and joy. The newness of earth and
of life has something to do with it. Nothing is so charming as the ruddy tints that happiness
can shed around a garret room. We all, in the course of our lives. have had our rose-coloured
sky-parlour.

Nature had placed a wide chasm--fifty years' interval gap--between Jean Valjean and Cosette.
This chasm fate filled up. Fate abruptly brought together, and wedded with its resistless power,
these two shattered lives, dissimilar in years, but similar in sorrow. The one, indeed, was the
complement of the other. The instinct of Cosette sought for a father, as the instinct of Jean
Valjean sought for a child. To meet, was to find one another. In that mysterious moment, when
their hands touched, they were welded together. When their two souls saw each other, they recog-
nised that they were mutually needed, and they closely embraced.

Taking the words in their most comprehensive and most absolute sense, it might be said that,
separated from everything by the walls of the tomb, Jean Valjean was the husband bereaved, as
Cosette was the orphan. This position made Jean Valjean become, in a celestial sense, the father
of Cosette.

And, in truth, the mysterious impression produced upon Cosette, in the depths of the woods at
Chelles, by the hand of Jean Valjean grasping her own in the darkness, was not an illusion but
a reality. The coming of this man and his participation in the destiny of this child had been
the advent of God.

In the meanwhile, Jean Valjean had well chosen his hiding-place. He was there in a state of
security that seemed to be complete.

The apartment with the side chamber which he occupied with Cosette, was the one whose window
looked out upon the boulevard. This window being the only one in the house, there was no neigh-
bour's prying eye to fear either from that side or opposite.

The lower floor of No. 50-52 was a sort of dilapidated shed; it served as a sort of stable for
market gardeners, and had no communication with the upper floor. It was separated from it by
the flooring, which had neither stairway nor trap-door, and was, as it were, the diaphragm of
the old building. The upper floor contained, as we have said, several rooms and a few lofts,
only one of which was occupied--by an old woman, who was maid of all work to Jean Valjean.
All the rest was uninhabited.

It was this old woman, honoured with the title of landlady, but, in reality, intrusted with
the functions of portress, who had rented him these lodgings on Christmas Day. He had passed
himself off to her as a gentle-man of means, ruined by the Spanish Bonds, who was going to
live there with his grand-daughter. He had paid her for six months in advance, and engaged
the old dame to furnish the chamber and the little bedroom, as we have described them. This
old woman it was who had kindled the fire in the stove and made everything ready for them,
on the evening of their arrival.

Weeks rolled by. These two beings led in that wretched shelter a happy life.

From the earliest dawn, Cosette laughed, prattled, and sang. Children have their morning song,
like birds.

Sometimes it happened that Jean Valjean would take her little red hand, all chapped and frost-
bitten as it was and kiss it. The poor child, accustomed only to blows, had no idea what this
meant, and would draw back ashamed.

At times, she grew serious and looked musingly at her little black dress. Cosette was no longer
in rags; she was as in mourning. She was issuing from utter poverty and was entering upon life.

Jean Valjean had begun to teach her to read. Sometimes, while teaching the child to spell, he
would remember that it was with the intention of accomplishing evil that he had learned to read,
in the galleys. This intention had now been changed into teaching a child to ready. Then the old
convict would smile with the pensive smile of angels.

He felt in this a pre-ordination from on high, a volition of some one more than man, and he
would lose himself in reverie. Good thoughts as well as bad have their abysses.

To teach Cosette to read, and to watch her playing, was nearly all Jean Valjean's life. And
then, he would talk to her about her mother, and teach her to pray.

She called him Father, and knew him by no other name.

He spent hours seeing her dress and undress her doll, and listening to her song and prattle.
From that time on, life seemed full of interest to him, men seemed good and just; he no longer,
in his thoughts, reproached any one with any wrong; he saw no reason, now, why he should not
live to grow very old, since his child loved him, lie looked forward to a long future illum-
inated by Cosette with charming light. The very best of us are not altogether exempt from
some tinge of egotism. At times, he thought with a sort of quiet satisfaction, that she
would be by no means handsome.

This is but personal opinion; but in order to express our idea thoroughly, at the point Jean
Valjean had reached, when he began to love Cosette, it is not clear to us that he did not
require this fresh supply of goodness to enable him to persevere in the right path. He had
seen the wickedness of men and the misery of society under new aspects--aspects incomplete
and, unfortunately, showing forth only one side of the truth--the lot of woman summed up in
Fantine, public authority personified in Javert; he had been sent back to the galleys this
time for doing good; new waves of bitterness had overwhelmed him; disgust and weariness had
once more resumed their sway; the recollection of the bishop, even, was perhaps eclipsed,
sure to reappear afterwards, luminous and triumphant; yet, in fact, this blessed remembrance
was growing feebler. Who knows that Jean Valjean was not on the point of becoming discou-
raged and falling back to evil ways? Love came, and he again grew strong. Alas! he was no less
feeble than Cosette. He protected her, and she gave strength to him, Thanks to him, she
could walk upright in life; thanks to her, he could persist in virtuous deeds. He was the
support of this child, and this child was his prop and staff. Oh, divine and unfathomable
mystery of the compensations of Destiny



IV. WHAT THE LANDLADY DISCOVERED



JEAN Valjean was prudent enough never to go out in the daytime. Every evening, however,
about twilight, he would walk for an hour or two, sometimes alone, often with Cosette, selecting
the most unfrequented side alleys of the boulevards and going into the churches at nightfall.
He was fond of going to St. Medard, which is the nearest church. When he did not take Cosette,
she remained with the old woman; but it was the child's delight to go out with her kind old
friend. She preferred an hour with him even to her delicious the a-tetes with Catharine. He
would walk along holding her by the hand, and telling her pleasant things,

It turned out that Cosette was very playful.

The old woman was housekeeper and cook, and did the marketing.

They lived frugally, always with a little fire in the stove, but like people in embarrassed
circumstances Jean Valjean made no change in the furniture described on the first day, except-
ing that be caused a solid door to be put up in place of the glass door of Cosette's little
bed-chamber.

He still wore his yellow coat, his black pantaloons, and his old hat. On the street he was
taken for a beggar. It sometimes happened that kind-hearted dame, in passing. would turn
and bawl him a penny. Jean Valjean accepted the penny and bowed humbly. It chanced, some-
times, also, that he would meet some wretched creature begging alms, and then, glancing
about him to be sure no one was looking, he would stealthily approach the beggar, slip a
piece of money, often silver, into his hand, and walk rapidly away. This had its inconven-
iences. He began to be known in the quarter as the beggar who gives alms.

The old landlady, a crabbed creature, fully possessed with that keen observation as to all
that concerned her neighbours, which is peculiar to the suburbs. watched Jean Valjean closely
without exciting his suspicion. She was a little deaf, which made her talkative. She had but
two teeth left, one in the upper and one in the lower jaw, and these she was continually
rattling together. She had questioned Cosette, who, knowing nothing, could tell nothing,
further than that she came from Montfermeil. One morning this old female spy saw Jean Val-
jean go, with an appearance which seemed peculiar to the old busybody, into one of the un-
inhabited apartments of the building. She followed him with the steps of an old cat, and
could see him without herself being seen, through the chink of the door directly opposite.
an Valjean had, doubtless for greater caution, turned his back towards the door in question.
The old woman saw him fumble in his pocket, and take from it a needle case, scissors, and
thread, and then proceed to rip open the lining of one lapel of his coat and take from under it
a piece of yellowish paper, which he unfolded. The beldame remarked with dismay, that it
was a bank bill for a thousand francs. It was the second or third one only that she had ever
seen. She ran away very much frightened.

A moment afterwards, Jean Valjean accosted her, and asked her to get this thousand-franc
bill changed for him, adding that it was the half-yearly interest on his property which he
had received on the previous day. "Where?' thought the old woman. He did not go out until
six o'clock, and the government treasury is certainly not open at that hour. The old woman
got the note changed, all the while forming her conjectures. This bill of a thousand francs,
commented upon and multiplied, gave rise to a host of breathless conferences among the gos-
sips of the Rue des Vignes Saint Marcel.

Some days afterwards, it chanced that Jean Valjean, in his shirtsleeves, was sawing wood in
the entry. The old woman wasin his room doing the chamberwork. She was alone. Cosette was
intent upon the wood he was sawing. The woman saw the coat hanging on a nail, and examined
it. The lining had been sewed over. She felt it carefully and thought she could detect in
the lappets and in the padding, thicknesses of paper. Other thousand-franc bills beyond a
doubt!

She noticed, besides, that there were all sorts of things in the pockets. Not only were
there the needles, scissors, and thread, which she had already seen, but a large pocket-
book, a very big knife, and, worst symptom of all, several wigs of different colours. Every
pocket of this coat had the appearence of containing something to be provided with against
sudden emergencies.

Thus, the occupants of the old building reached the closing days of winter.




V. A FIVE FRANC PIECE FALLING ON THE FLOOR MAKES A NOISE




THERE was, in the neighbourhood of Saint Medard, a mendicant who sat crouching over the
edge of a condemned public well near by, and to whom Jean Valjean often gave alms. He never
passed this man without giving hint a few pennies. Sometimes he spoke to him. Those who were
envious of this poor creature said be was in the pay of the police. He was an old church
beadle of seventy-five, who was always mumbling prayers.

One evening. as Jean Valjean was passing that way, unaccompanied by Cosette. he noticed
the beggar sitting in his usual place, under the street lamp which had just been lighted.
The man, according to custom seemed to be praying and was bent over. Jean, Valjean walked
up to him him and put a piece of money in his hand, as usual. The beggar suddenly raised
his eyes, gazed intently at Jean Valjean, and then quickly dropped his head. This movement
was like a flash; Jean Valjean shuddered; it seemed to he had just seen, by the light of
the street-lamp, not the calm, sanctimonious face of the aged beadle, but a terrible and
well-known countenance. He experienced the sensation one would feel on finding himself
suddenly face to face, in the gloom, with a tiger. He recoiled, horror-stricken and
petrified, daring neither to breathe nor to speak, to stay nor to fly, but gazing upon
the beggar who had once more bent down his head, with its tattered covering, and seemed
to be no longer conscious of his presence. At this singular moment, an instinct, perhaps
the mysterious instinct of self preservation, prevented Jean Valjean from uttering a word.
The beggar had the same form, the same rags, the same general appearance as on every
other day. "Pshaw!" said Jean Valjean to himself, "I am mad! I am dreaming! It cannot
be!" And he went home, anxious and ill at ease.

He scarcely dared to admit, even to himself, that the countenance he thought he had seen
was the face of Javert.

That night, upon reflection, he regretted that he had not questioned the man so as to
compel him to raise his head a second time. On the morrow, at nightfall, he went thither,
again. The beggar was in his place. "Good day! Good day!" said Jean Valjean, with firm-
ness, as he gave him the accustomed alms. The beggar raised his head and answered in a
whining voice: "Thanks, kind sir, thanks!" It was indeed, only the old beadle.

Jean Valjean now felt fully reassured. He even began to laugh. "What, the deuce was I
about to fancy that I saw Javert," thought he; "is my sight growing poor already?" And
he thought no more about it.

Some days after, it might be eight o'clock in the evening, he was in his room, giving
Cosette her spelling lesson, which the child was repeating in a loud voice, when he
heard the door of the building open and close again. that seemed odd to him. The old
woman the only occupant of the house besides himself and Cosette, always went to bed
at dark to save candles. Jean Valjean made a sign to Cosette to be silent. He heard
some one coming up the stairs. Possibly, it might be the old woman who had felt unwell
and had been to the druggist. Jean Valjean listened. The footstep was heavy, and
sounded like a man's; but the old woman wore heavy shoes, and there is nothing so
much like the step of a man as the step of an old woman. However, Jean Valjean
blew out his candle.

He sent Cosette to bed, telling her in a suppressed voice to lie down very quietly--
and, as he kissed her forehead, the footsteps stopped. Jean Valjean remained silent
and motionless, his back turned towards the door, still seated on his chair from which
he had not moved, and holding his breath in the darkness. After a considerable interval,
not hearing anything more, he turned round without making any noise, and as he raised
his eyes towards the door of his room, he saw a light through the keyhole. This ray of
light was an evil star in the black background of the door and the wall. There was,
evidently, somebody outside with a candle who was listening.

A few minutes elapsed, and the light disappeared. But he heard no sound of footsteps,
which seemed to indicate that whoever was listening at the door had taken off his shoes.

Jean Valjean threw himself on his bed without undressing, but could not shut his eyes
that night.

At daybreak, as he was sinking into slumber from fatigue, he was aroused, again, by
the creaking of the door of some room at the end of the hall, and then he heard the same
footstep which had ascended the stairs, on the preceding night. The step approached. He
started from his bed and placed his eye to the keyhole, which was quite a large one,
hoping to get a glimpse of the person, whoever it might be, who had made his way into
the building in the night-time and had listened at his door. It was a man, indeed, who
passed by Jean Val jean's room, this time without stopping. The hall was still too dark
for him to make out his features; but, when the man reached the stairs, a ray of light
from without made his figure stand out like a profile, and jean Valjean had a full view
of his back. The man was tall, wore a long frock-coat, and had a cudgel under his arm.
It was the redoubtable form of Javert.

Jean Valjean might have tried to get another look at him through his window that opened
on the boulevard, but he would have had to raise the sash, and that be dared not do.

It was evident that the man had entered by means of a key, as if at home. "Who, then,
had given him the key?--and what was the meaning of this?"

At seven in the morning, when the old lady came to clear up the rooms, Jean Valjean
eyed her sharply, but asked her no questions. The good dame appeared as usual.

While she was doing her sweeping, she said:--

"Perhaps monsieur heard some one come in, last night?"

At her age and on that boulevard, eight in the evening is the very darkest of the night.

"Ah! ves, by the way, I did," he answered in the most natural tone. "Who was it?"

"It's a new lodger," said the old woman, "who has come into the house."

"And his name--?"

"Well, I hardly recollect now. Dumont or Daumont.-- Some such name as that."

"And what is he--this M. Daumont?"

The old woman studied him, a moment, through her little foxy eyes, and answered:

"He's a gentleman living on his income like you."

She may have intended nothing by this, but Jean Valjean thought he could make out that
she did.

When the old woman was gone, he made a roll of a hundred francs he had in a drawer and
put it into his pocket. Do what he would to manage this so that the clinking of the
silver should not be heard, a five-franc piece escaped his grasp and rolled jingling
away over the floor.

At dusk, he went to the street-door and looked carefully up and down the boulevard. No
one was to be seen. The boulevard seemed to be utterly deserted. It is true that there
might have been someone hidden behind a tree.

He went upstairs again.

"Come," said he to Cosette.

He took her by the hand and they both went out.




　　　　　　　　BOOK FIFTH
A DARK CHASE NEEDS A SILENT HOUND



I. THE ZIGZAGS OF STRATEGY



IN order to understand the pages immediately following, and others also which will
be found further on, an observation is here necessary.

Many years have already passed away since the .author of this book, who is compelled,
reluctantly, to speak of himself, was in Paris. Since then, Paris has been transformed.
A new city has arisen, which to him is in some sense unknown. He need not say that
he loves Paris; Paris is the native city of his heart. Through demolition and recon-
struction, the Paris of his youth, that Paris which he religiously treasures in his
memory, has become a Paris of former times. Let him be permitted to speak of that
Paris as if it still existed. It is possible that where the author is about to con-
duct his readers, saying: "In such a street there is such a house," there is now no
longer either house or street. The reader will verify it, if he chooses to take the
trouble. As to himself, the author knows not the new Paris, and writes with the old
Paris before his eyes in an illusion which is precious to him. It is a sweet. thing
for him to imagine that there still remains something of what he saw when he was in
his own country, and that all is not vanished. While we are living in our native
land, we fancy that these streets are indifferent to us, that these windows, these
roofs, and these doors are nothing to us, that these walls are strangers to us, that
these trees are no more than other trees, that these houses which we never enter are
useless to us, that this pavement on which we walk is nothing but stone. In after
times, when we are there no longer, we find that those streets are very dear, that
we miss those roofs, those windows, and those doors, that those walls are necessary
to us, that those trees are our well-beloved, that those houses which we never en-
tered we entered every day, and that we have left something of our affections, our
life, and our heart in those streets. All those places which we see no more. which
perhaps we shall never see again, but the image of which we have preserved, assume
a mournful chann, return to us with the sadness of a spectre, make the holy land
visible to us, and are, so to speak, the very form of France; and we love them and
call them up such as they are, such as they were, and hold to them, unwilling to
change anything, for one clings to the form of his fatherland as to the face of his
mother.

Permit us, then, to speak of the past in the present. Saying which, we beg the
reader to take note of it, and we proceed.

Jean Valjean had immediately left the boulevard and began to thread the streets,
making as many turns as he could, returning sometimes upon his track to make sure
that he was not followed.

This manoeuvre is peculiar to the hunted stag. On ground where the foot leaves a
mark, it has, among other advantages, that of deceiving the hunters and the dogs
by the counter-step. It is what is called in venery false reimbushment.

The moon was full. Jean Valjean was not sorry for that. The moon, still near the
horizon, cut large prisms of light and shade in the streets. Jean Valjean could
glide along the houses and the walls on the dark side and observe the light side.
He did not, perhaps, sufficiently realise that the obscure side escaped him. How-
ever, in all the deserted little streets in the neighbourhood of the Rue de Poli-
veau, he felt sure that no one was behind him.

Cosette walked without asking any questions. The sufferings of the first six years
of her life had introduced something of the passive into her nature. Besides--and
this is a remark to which we shall have more than one occasion to return--she had
become familiar, without being fully conscious of them, with the peculiarities of
her good friend and the eccentricities of destiny. And then, she felt safe, being
with him.

Jean Valjean knew, no more than Cosette, where he was going. He trusted in God, as
she trusted in him. It seemed to him that he also held some one greater than himself
by the hand; he believed he felt a being leading him, invisible. Finally, he had no
definite idea, no plan, no project. He was not even absolutely sure that this was
Javert, and then it might be Javertt and Javert not know that he was jean Valjean.
Was he not disguised? was he not supposed to be dead? Nevertheless, singular things
had happened within the last few days. He wanted no more of them. He was determined
not to enter Getheau House again. Like the animal hunted from his den, he was look-
ing for a hole to hide in until he could find one to remain in.

Jean Valjean 'described many and varied labyrinths in the Quartier lIouffetard,
which was asleep already as if it were still theunder the discipline of middle age
and the yoke of the curfew he produced different combinations, in wise strategy,
with the Rue Cennsier and the Re Copeath, the Rue du Battoir Saint Victor and
the Rue du Puits l'Ermite. There are lodgings in that region, but he did not even
enter them, not finding what suited him. He had no doubt whatever that if, perchance,
they had sought his track, they had lost it.

As eleven o'clock struck in the tower of Saint Etienne du Mont, he crossed the Rue
de Pontoise in front of the bureau of the Commissary of Police, which is at No. 14.
Some moments afterwards; the instinct of which we have already spoken made him turn
his head. At this moment he saw distinctly--thanks to the commissary's lamp which
revealed them--three men following him quite near, pass one after another under this
lamp on the dark side of the street. One of these men entered the passage leading.
to the commissary's house. The one in advance appeared to him decidedly suspicious.

"Come, child!" said he to Cosette, and he made haste to get out of the Rue de Pon-
toise.

He made a circuit, went round the arcade des Patriarches, which was closed on account
of the lateness of the hour, walked rapidly through the Rue de 1'46e-de-3ois and the
Rue de l'Arbalete, and plunged into the Rue des Pastes.

There was a square there, where the College Rollin now is, and from which branches
off the Ruc Neuve-Sainte-Genevieve.

(We need not say that the Rue Neuve-Sainte-Genevieve is an old street, and that there
a postchaise did not pass once in ten years through the Rue des Postes. This Rue des
Posies was in the thirteenth century inhabited by potters, and its true name is Rue
des Pots.)

The moon lighted up this square brightly. Jean Valjcan concealed himself in a doorway,
calculating that if these men were still following him, he could not fail to get a
good view of them when they crossed this lighted space.

In fact, three minutes had not elapsed when the men appeared. There were now four
of them; all were tall, dressed in long brown coats, with round hats, and great clubs
in their bands. They were not less fearfully forbidding by their size and their large
fists than by their stealthy tread in the darkness. One would have taken them air
four spectres in citizen's dress.

They stopped in the centre of the square and formed a group like people consulting.
They appeared undecided. The man who seemed to be the leader turned and energetically
pointed in the direction in which Jean Valjean was; one of the others seemed to insist
with some obstinacy on the contrary direction. At the instant when the leader turned,
the moon shone full in his face. Jean Valjean recognised Javert perfectly.



II. IT IS FORTUNATE THAT VEHICLES CAN CROSS THE BRIDGE OF AUSTERLITZ



UNCERTAINTY was at an end for Jean Voljean; happily, it still continued with these
men. He took advantage of their hesitation; it was time lost for them, gained for him.
He came out from the doorway in which he was concealed, and made his way into the Rue
des Postes towards the region of the Jardin des Plantes. Cosette began to be tired;
he took her in his arms, and carried her. There was nobody in,the streets, and the
lamps had not been lighted on account of the moon.

He doubled his pace.

In a few steps, he reached the Goblet pottery, on the facade of which the old in-
scription stood out distinctly legible in the light of the moon:

De Goblet Ms c'est icf la fabrique;
Vote choisir des cruchcs ct des brocs,
Des pots a flours, des tugaux, de la briquc.
A tout venant It Cur vend des Carreaux.

He passed through the Rue de la Clef, then by the Fontaine de Saint Victor along the
Jardin des Plantes by the lower streets, and reached the quay. There be looked around.
The quay was deserted. The streets were deserted. Nobody behind him. He took breath.

He arrived at the bridge of Austerlitz.

It was still a toll-bridge at this period.

He presented himself at the toll-house and gave a sous.

"It is two sous," said the toll-keeper. "You are carrying a child who can walk. Pay
for two."

He paid, annoyed that his passage should have attracted observation. All flight
should be gliding.

A large cart was passing the Seine at the same time, and like him was going towards
the right bank. This could be made of use. He could go the whole length of the bridge
in the shade of this cart.

Towards the middle of the bridge, Cosette, her feet becoming numb, desired to walk.
He put her down and took her by the hand.

The bridge passed, he perceived some wood-yards a little to the right and walked in
that direction. To get there, he must venture into a large clear open space. He did
not hesitate. Those who followed him were evidently thrown off his track, and Jean
Valean believed himself out of clanger. Sought for, he might be, but followed he was
not.

A little street, the Rue de Chemin Vet Saint Antoine, opened between two wood-yards
inclosed by walls. This street was narrow, obscure, and seemed made expressly for him.
Before enter he looked back.

From the point where he was, he could see the whole length of the bridge of Austerlitz.

Four shadows, at that moment, entered upon the bridge. These shadows were coming from
the Jardin des Plantes wards the right bank.

These four shadows were the four men.

Jean Valjean felt a shudder like that of the deer when he s the hounds again upon his
track.

One hope was left him; it was that these men had not enter upon the bridge, and had not
perceived him when he crossed the large square clear space leading Cosette by the hand.

In that case, by plunging into the little street before him, if he could succeed in
reaching the wood-yards, the marshes, the fields, the open grounds, he could escape.

It seemed to him that he might trust himself to this silent'little street. He entered
it.



III. SEE THE PLAN OF PARIS OF 1727



SOME three hundred paces on, he reached a point where the street. forked. It divided into
two streets, the one turning off obliquely to the left, the other to the right. Jean Val-
jean had before him the two branches of a Y. Which should he choose?

He did not hesitate, but took the right.

Why?

Because the left branch led towards the faubourg--that is to st towards the inhabited re-
gion, and the right branch towards tl country--that is, towards the uninhabited region.

But now, they no longer walked very fast. Cosette's step slackened Jean Valjean's pace.

He took her up and carried her again. Cosette rested her head tpon the goodman's shoulder,
and did not say a word.

He turned, from time to time, and looked back. He took care keep always on the dark side of
the street. The street was straight hind him. The two or three first times he turned, he saw
nothing; the silence was complete, and he kept on his way somewhat reassured. Suddenly, on
turning again, he thought he saw in the portion of the street through which he had just
passed, far in the obscurity, something which stirred.

He plunged forward rather than walked, hoping to find some street by which to escape, and
once more to elude his pursuers. He came to a wall.

This wall, however, did not prevent him from going further; it was a wall forming the side of
a cross alley, in which the street Jean Valjean was then in came to an end.

Here again he must decide; should he take the right or the left?

He looked to the right. The alley ran out to a space between some buildings that were mere
sheds or barns, then terminated abruptly. The end of this blind alley was plain to be seen--
a great white wall.

He looked to the left. The alley on this side was open, and, about two hundred paces further
on, ran into a street of which it was an affluent. In this direction lay safety.

The instant Jean Valjean decided to turn to the left, to try to reach the street which he saw
at the end of the alley, he perceived, at the corner of the alley and the street towards which
he was just about going, a sort of black, motionless statue.

It was a man, who had just been posted there, evidently, and who was waiting for him, guarding
the passage.

Jean Valjean was startled.

This part of Paris where Jean Valjean was, situated between the Faubourg Saint Antoine and the
La Rapee, is one of those which have been entirely transformed by the recent works--a change
for the worse, in the opinion of some, a transfiguration, according to others. The vegetable
gardens, the wood-yards, and the old buildings are gone. There are now broad new streets, am-
phitheatres, circuses, hippodromes, railroad depots, a prison, Mazas; progress, as we see, with
its corrective.

Half a century ago, in the common popular language, full of tradition, which obstinately calls
l'Institut Les Quartre Nations, and l'Opera Comique Thyleau, the precise spot which Jean Val-
jean bad reached was called the Petit Pie pus. The Porte Saint Jacques, the Porte Paris, the
Barriere des Sergents, the Porcher-ons, the Galiote, the Celestins, the Capuchins, the Mail,
the Bourke, the Arbre de Carcovie, the Petite Pologne, the Petit Picpus, these are names of
the old Paris floating over into the new. The memory of the people buoys over these waifs of
the past.

The Petit Picpus, which in fact hardly had a real existence, and was never more than a mere
outline of a quarter, had almost the monkish aspect of a Spanish city. The roads were poorly
paved, the streets were thinly built up. Beyond the two or three streets of which we are about
to speak, there was nothing there but wall and solitude. Not a shop, not a vehicle, hardly a
light here and there in the windows; all the lights put out after ten o'clock. Gardens, con-
vents, wood-yards, market gardens, a few scattered low houses, and great walls as high as the
houses.

Such was the quarter in the last century. The Revolution had already very much altered it.
The republican authorities had pulled down buildings and run streets into and through it. Dep-
ositories of rubbish had been established there. Thirty years ago, this quarter was being grad-
ually erased by the construction of new buildings. it is now completely blotted out. The Petit
Picpus, of which no present plan retains a trace, is clearly enough indicated in the plan of
1727, published at Paris by Denis Thierry, Rue Saint Jacques, opposite the Rue du Platte, and
at Lyons by Jean Ginn, Rue MerciCre, a la Prudence. The Petit Picpus had what we have just
called a Y of streets, formed by the Rue du Chemin Vert Saint Antoine dividing into two branch-
es and taking on the left the name Petite Rue Picpus and on the right the name of the Rue Pol-
onceau. The two branches of the Y were joined at the top as by a bar. This bar was called the
Rue Droit Mur. The Rue Polonceau ended there; the Petite Rue Picpus passed beyond, rising to-
wards the Marche Lenoir. He who, coming from the Seine, readied the extremity of the Rue Polo-
nceau, had on his left the Rue Droit Mur turning sharply at a right angle, before him the side
wall of that street, and on his right a truncated prolongation of the Rue Droit Mur, without
thoroughfare, called the Cul-de-sac Genrot.

Jean Valjean was in this place.

As we have said, on perceiving the black form standing sentry at the corner of the Rue Droit
Mur and the Petite Rue Picpus, he was startled. There was no doubt. He was watched by this
shadow.

What should he do?

There was now no time to turn back. What he had seen moving in the obscurity some distance be-
hind him, the moment before, was undoubtedly Javert and his squad. Javert probably had already
reached the commencement of the street of which Jean Valjean was at the end. Javert, to all ap-
pearance, was acquainted with this little trap, and had taken his precautions by sending one of
his men to guard the exit. These conjectures, so like certainties, whirled about wildly in Jean
Valjean's troubled brain, as a handful of dust flies before a sudden blast. He scrutinised the
Cul-de-sac Genrot; there were high walls. He scrutinised the Petite Rue Picpus; them was a sen-
tinel. He saw the dark form repeated in black upon the white pavement flooded with the moonlight.
To advance, was to fall upon that man. To go back, was to throw himself into Jared's hands. Jean
Valjean felt as if caught by a chain that was slowly winding up. He looked up into the sky in
despair.



IV. GROPING FOR ESCAPE



IN order to understand what follows, it is necessary to form an exact idea of the little Rue
Droit Mur, and particularly the corner which it makes at the left as you leave the Rue Polonceau
to enter this alley. The little Rue Molt Mur was almost' entirely lined on the right, as far as
the Petite Rue Picpus, by houses of poor appearance; on the left by a single building of severe
outline, com-posed of several structures which rose gradually a story or two, one above another,
as they approached the Petite Rue Picpus, so that the building, very high on the side of the Pe-
tite Rue Ricpus, was quite low on the side of the Rue Polonceau. There, at the corner of which
he have spoken, it became so low as to be nothing more than a wall. This wall did not abut square-
ly on the corner, which was cut off diagonally, leaving' a Considerable space that was shielded
by the two angles thus formed from observers at a distance in either the Rne Polonceau, or the
Rue Droit Mur.

From these two angles of the truncated corner, the wall extended along the Rue Polonceau as far
as a house numbered 49, and along the Rue Droit Mur, where its height was much less, to the som-
bre-looking building of which we have spoken, cutting its gable, and thus making a new re-entering
angle in the street. This gable had a gloomy aspect; there was but one window to be seen, or ra-
ther twb shutters covered with a sheet of zinc, and always closed.

The situation of the places which we describe here is rigorously exact, and we certainly awaken
a very precise remembrance in the minds of the old inhabitants of the locality.

This truncated corner was entirely filled by a thing which seemed like a colossal and miserable
door. It was a vast shapeless assemblage of perpendicular planks, broader above than below, bound
together by long transverse iron bands. At the side there was a porte-cochere of the ordinary
dimensions, which had evidently been cut in within the last fifty years.

A lime-tree lifted its branches above this corner, and the wall was covered with ivy towards the
Rue Polonceau.

In the imminent peril of Jean Valjean, this sombre building had a solitary and uninhabited appear-
ance which attracted him. He glanced over it rapidly. He thought if he could only succeed in get-
ting into it, he would perhaps be safe. Hope came to him with the idea.

Midway of the front of this building on the Rue Droit Mur, there were at all the windows of the
different stories old leaden waste-pipes. The varied branchings of the tubing which was continued
from a central conduit to each of these waste-pipes, outlined on the facade a sort of tree. These
ramifications of the pipes with their hundred elbows seemed like those old closely-pruned grape-
vines which twist about over the front of ancient farm-houses.

This grotesque espalier, with its sheet-iron branches, was the first object which Jean Valjean
saw. He seated Cosette with her back against a post. and, telling her to be quiet, ran to the
spot where the conduit came to the pavement. Perhaps there was some means of scaling the wall
by that and entering the house. But the conduit was dilapidated and out of use, and scarcely
held by its fastening. Besides, all the windows of this silent house were protected by thick bars
of iron, even the dormer windows. And then the moon shone full upon this facade, and the man who
was watching from the end of the street would have seen Jean Valjean making the escalade.
And then what should he do with Cosette? How could he raise her to the top of a three-story
house?

He gave up climbing by the conduit, and crept along the wall to the Rue Polonceau.

When he reached this flattened corner where he had left Cosette, he noticed that there no one could
see him. He escaped, as we have just explained, all observation from every side. Besides, he was in
the shade. Then there were two doors. Perhaps they might be forced. The wall, above which he saw the
lime and the ivy, evidently surrounded a garden, where he could at least conceal himself, although
there were no leaves on the trees yet, and pass the rest of the night.
Time was passing. He must act quickly.

He tried the carriage door, and found at once that it was fastened within and without.

He approached the other large door with more hope. It was frightfully decrepit, its immense size
even rendering it less 'solid; the planks were rotten, the iron fastenings, of which there were
three, were rusted. It seemed possible to pierce this worm-eaten structure.

On examining it, he saw that this door was not a door. It bad neither hinges, braces. lock, nor
crack in the middle. The iron bands crossed from one side to the other without a break. Through
the crevices of the planks he saw the rubble-work and stones, roughly cemented, which passers-by
could have seen within the last ten years. He was compelled to admit with consternation that this
appearance of a door was simply an ornamentation in wood of a wall, upon which it was placed. It
was easy to tear off a board, but then he would find himself face to face with a wall.



V. WHICH WOULD BE IMPOSSIBLE WERE THE STREETS LIGHTED WITH GAS



Ar this moment a muffled and regular sound began to make" itself heard at some distance. Jean Val-
jean ventured to thrust his head a little way around the corner of the street. Seven or eight.
soldiers. formed in platoon. had just turned into the Rue Polon: ceau. He.saw the gleam of their
bayonets. They were coming towords him.

The soldiers, a whose head he distinguished the tall form of Javert, advanced slowly and with
precaution. They stopped fre-quently. It was plain they were exploring all the recesses of the
walls and all the entrances of doors and alleys.

It was--and here conjecture could not be deceived--some patrol which Javert had met and
which he had put in requisition. Javert's two assistants marched in the ranks.

At the rate at which they were marching, and the stops they were making, it would take them
about a quarter of an hour to arrive at the spot where Jean Valjean was. It was a frightful mo-
ment. A few minutes separated Jean Valjean from that awful precipice which was opening before
him for the third time. And the galleys now were no longer simply the galleys, they were Cosette
lost for ever; that is to say, a life in death.

There was now only one thing possible.

Jean Valjean had this peculiarity, that he might be said to carry two knapsacks; in one he had
the thoughts of a saint, in the other the formidable talents of a convict. He helped himself from
one or the other as occasion required.

Among other resources, thanks to his numerous escapes from the galleys at Toulon, he had, it
will be remembered, become master of that incredible art of raising himself, in the right angle
of a wall, if need to be to the height of a sixth story; an art without ladders or props, by mere
musclar strength, supporting himself by the back of his neck, his shoulders, his hips, and his
knees, hardly making use of the few projections of the stone, which rendered so terrible and
so celebrated the corner of the yard of the Conciergerie of Paris by which, some twenty
years ago, the convict Battemolle made his escape.

Jean Valjean measured with his eyes the wall above which he saw the lime tree. It was
about eighteen feet high. The angle that it made with the gable of the great building
was filled in its lower part with a pile of masonry of triangular shape, probably in-
tended to preserve this too convenient recess from a too public use. This preventive
filling-up of the corners of a wall is very common in Paris.

This pile was about five feet high. From its top the space to climb to get upon the
wall was hardly more than fourteen feet.

The wall was capped by a flat stone without any projection.

The difficulty was Cosette. Cosette did not know how to scale a wall. Abandon her? Jean
Valjean did not think of it. To carry her was impossible. The whole strength of a man
is necessary to accomplish these strange ascents. The least burden would make him lose
his centre of gravity and he would fall.

He needed a cord. Jean Valjean had none. Where could he find a cord, at midnight, in
the Rue Po1onceau? Truly at that instant, if Jean Valjean had had a kingdom, he would
have given it for a rope. All extreme situations have their flashes which sometimes make
us blind, sometimes illuminate us.

The despairing gaze of Jean Valjean encountered the lamp-post in the Cul-de-sac Genrot.

At this epoch there were no gas-lights in the streets of Paris. At nightfall they lighted the
streets lamps, which were placed at intervals, and were raised and lowered by means of a rope
traversing the street from end to end, running through the grooves of posts. The reel on which
this rope was wound was inclosed below the lantern in a little iron box, the key of which was
kept by the lamp-lighter, and the rope itself was protected by a casing of metal.

Jean Valjean, with the energy of a final struggle, crossed the street at a bound, entered the
cul-de-sac, sprang the bolt of the little box with the point of his knife, and an instant after
was back at the side of Cosette. He had a rope. These desperate inventors of expedients, in their
struggles with fatality, move electrically in case of need.

We have explained that the street lamps had not been lighted that night. The lamp in the Cul-
de-sac Genrot was then, as a matter of course, extinguished like the rest, and one might pass
by without even noticing that it was not in its place.

Meanwhile the hour, the place, the darkness, the preoccupation of Jean Valjean, his singular
actions, his going to and fro, all this began to disturb Cosette. Any other child would have
uttered loud cries long before. She contented herself with pulling Jean Valjeati by the skirt
of his coat. The sound of the approaching patrol was constantly becoming more and more distinct.

"Father," said she, in a whisper, "I am afraid. Who is it that is coming?"

"Hush!" answered the unhappy man, "it is the Thenardiess." Cosette shuddered. He added:

"Don't say a word: I'll take care of her. If you cry, if you make any noise, the Thenardiess
will hear you. She is coming to catch you."

Then, without any haste, but without doing anything a second time, with a firm and rapid decision,
so much the more remarkable at such a moment when the patrol and Javert might come upon him
at any instant, he took off his cravat, passed it around Cosette's body under the arms, taking care
that it should not hurt the child, attached this cravat to an end of the rope by means of the knot
which seamen call a swallow-knot, took the other end of the rope in his teeth, took off his shoes
and stockings and threw them over the wall, climbed upon the pile of masonry and began to raise
himself in the angle of the wall and the gable with as much solidity and certainty as if he had
the rounds of a ladder under his heels and his elbows. Half a minute had not passed before he was
on his knees on the wall.

Cosette watched him, stupefied, without saying a word. Jean Valjean's charge and the name of the
Thenardiess had made her dumb.

All at once, she heard Jean Valjean's voice calling to her in a low whisper;

"Put your back against the wall."

She obeyed.

"Don't speak, and don't be afraid," added Jean Valjean. And she felt herself lifted from the ground.

Before she had time to think where she was she was at the top of the wall.

Jean Valjean seized her, put her on his back, took her two little hands in his left hand, lay down
fiat and crawled along the top of wall as far as the cut-off corner. As he had supposed, there was
a building there, the roof of which sloped from the top of the wooden casing we have mentioned very
nearly to the ground, with a gentle inclination, and just reaching to the lime-tree.

A fortunate circumstance, for the wall was much higher on this side than on the street. Jean Valjean
saw the ground beneath him at a great depth.

He had just reached the inclined plane of the roof, and had not yet left the crest of the wall, when
a violent uproar proclaimed the arrival of the patrol. He heard the thundering voice of Javert:

"Search the cul-de-sac! The Rue Droit Mur is guarded, the Petite Rue Picpus also. I'll answer for
it if he is in the cul-de-sac." The soldiers rushed into the Cul-de-sac Genrot.

Jean Valjean slid down the roof, keeping hold of Cosette, reached the lime-tree, and jumped to the
ground. Whether from terror, or from courage. Cosette had not uttered a whisper. Her hands were a
little scraped.



VI. COMMENCEMENT OF AN ENIGMA



JEAN Valjean found himself in a sort of garden, very large and of a singular appearance; one of those
gloomy gardens which scent made to be seen in the winter and at night. This garden was oblong, with
a row of large poplars at the further end, some tall forest trees in the corners, and a clear space
in the centre, where stood a very 'large isolated tree, then a few fruit trees, contorted and shaggy,
like big bushes, some vegetable beds, a melon patch the glass covers of which shone in the moonlight.
and an old well. There were here and there stone benches which seemed black with moss. The walks
were bordered with sorry little shrubs perfectly straight. The grass covered half of them, and a green
moss covered the rest.

Jean Valjean had on one side the building, down the roof of which he had come, a wood-pile, and be-
hind the wood, against the wall, a stone statue, the mutilated face of which was now nothing but a
shapeless mask which was seen dimly through the obscurity.

The building was in ruins, but some dismantled rooms could be dis-tinguished in it, one of which was
well filled, and appeared to serve as a shed.

The large building of the Rue Droit Mur which ran back on the Petite Rue Picpus, presented upon this
garden two square facades. These inside facades were still more gloomy than those on the outside. All
the windows were grated. No light was to be seen. On the upper stories there were shut-ters as in
prisons. The shadow of one of these facades was projected upon the other, and fell on the garden like
an immense black pall.

No other house could be seen. The further end of the garden was lost in mist and in darkness. Still,
he could make out walls intersecting, as if there were other cultivated grounds beyond, as well as
the low roofs of the Rue Polonceau.

Nothing can be imagined more wild and more solitary than this garden. There was no one there, which
was very natural on account of the hour; but it did not seem as if the place were made for anybody to
walk in, even in broad noon.

Jean Valjean's first care had been to find his shoes, and put them on; then he entered the shed with
Cosette. A man trying to escape never thinks himself sufficiently concealed. The child, thinking con-
stantly of the Thenardiess, shared his instinct, and cowered down as closely as she could.

Cosette trembled, and pressed closely to his side. They heard the tumultuous clamour of the patrol
ransacking the cul-de-sac and the street, the clatter of their muskets against the stones, the calls
of Javerts to the watchmen he had stationed, and his imprecations mingled with words which they could
not distinguish.

At the end of a quarter of an hour it seemed as though this stormy rumbling began to recede. Jean Val-
jean did not breathe.

He had placed his hand gently upon Cosette's mouth.

But the solitude about him was so strangely calm that that frightful din, so furious and so near, did
not even cast over it a shadow of disturbance. It seemed as if these walls were built of the deaf
stones spoken of in Scripture.

Suddenly, in the midst of this deep calm, a new sound arose; a celestial, divine, ineffable sound, as
ravishing as the other was horrible. It was a hymn which came forth from the darkness, a bewildering
mingling of prayer and harmony in the obscure and fearful silence of the night; voices of women, but
voices with the pure accents of virgins, and artless accents of children; those voices which are not
of earth, and which resemble those that the new-born still hear, and the dying hear already. This song
came from the gloomy building which overlooked the garden. At the moment when the uproar of the
demons receded, one would have said, it was a choir of angels approaching in the darkness.

Cosette and Jean Valjean fell on their knees.

They knew not what it was; they knew not where they were; but they both felt, the man and the child,
the penitent and the innocent, that they ought to be on their knees.

These voices had this strange effect; they did not prevent the building from appearing deserted. It
was like a supernatural song in an uninhabited dwelling.

While these voices were singing Jean Valjean was entirely absorbed in them. He no longer saw the night,
he saw a blue sky. He seemed to feel the spreading of these wings which we all have within us.

The chant ceased. Perhaps it had lasted a long time. Jean Valjean could not have told. Hours of ecstasy
are never more than a moment.

All had again relapsed into silence. There was nothing more in the street, nothing more in the garden.
That which threatened, that which reassured, all had vanished. The wind rattled the dry grass on the
top of the wall, which made a low, soft, and mournful noise.



VII. THE ENIGMA CONTINUED



THE night wind had risen, which indicated that it must be between one and two o'clock in the morning.
Poor Cosette did not speak. As she had sat down at his side and leaned her head on him, Jean Valjean
thought that she was asleep. He bent over and looked at her. Her eyes were wide open, and she had a
look that gave Jean Valjean pain.

She was still trembling.

"Are you sleepy?" said Jean Valjean.

"I am very cold," she answered.

A moment after she added:

"Is she there yet?"

"Who?" said Jean Valjean.

"Madame Thenardier."

Jean Valjean had already forgotten the means he had employed to secure Cosette's silence.

"Oh!" said he. "She has gone. Don't he afraid any longer."

The child sighed as if a weight were lifted from her breast.

The ground was damp, the shed open on all sides, the wind freshened every moment. The goodman
took off his coat and wrapped Cosette in it.

"Are you warmer, so?"

"Oh! yes, father!"

"Well, wait here a moment for me. I shall soon be back."

He went out of the ruin, and along by the large building, in search of some better shelter. He
found doors, but they were all closed. An the windows of the ground-floor were barred.

As he passed the interior angle of the building, he noticed several arched windows before him,
where he perceived some light. He rose on tiptoe and looked in at one of these windows. They all
opened into a large ball, paved with broad slabs, and intersected by arches and pillars, be could
distinguish nothing but. a slight glimmer in the deep obscurity. This glimmer came from a night-
lamp burning in a corner. The hall was deserted; everything was motionless. However, by dint of
looking, he thought he saw something, stretched out on the pavement, which appeared to be covered
with a shroud, and which resembled a human form. It was lying with the face downwards, the arms
crossed, in the immobility of death. One would have said, from a sort of serpent which trailed
along the pavement, that this ill-omened figure had a rope about its neck.

The whole hall was enveloped in that mist peculiar to dimly-lighted places, which always increases
horror.

Jean Vaijean has often said since that, although in the course of his life he had seen many fune-
real sights, never had he seen anything more freezing and more terrible than this enigmatical
figure fulfilling some strange mystery, he knew not what, in that gloomy place, and thus dimly
seen in the night. It was terrifying to suppose that it was perhaps dead, and still more terri-
fying to think that it might be alive.

He had the courage to press his forehead against the glass, and watch to see if the thing would
move. He remained what seemed to him a long time in vain: the prostrate form made no movement.
Suddenly be was seized with an inexpressible dismay, and he fled. Me ran towards the shed without
daring to look behind him. It seemed to him that if he should turn his head he would seethe fig-
ure walking behind him with rapid strides and shaking its arms.

He reached the ruin breathless. His knees gave way; a cold sweat oozed out from every pore.

Where was he? who would ever have imagined anything equal to this species of sepulchre in the
midst of Paris? what was this strange house?A budding full of
nocturnal mystery, calling to souls in the shade with the voice of angels, and, when they came,
abruptly presenting to them this frightful vision--promising to open the radiant gate of 'leaven
and opening the horrible door of the tomb. And that was in fact a building, a house which had
its number in a street? It was not a dream? He had to touch the walls to believe it.

The cold, the anxiety, the agitation, the anguish of the night, were giving him a veritable
fever, and all his ideas were jostling in his brain.

He went to Cosette. She was sleeping.



VIII. THE ENIGMA REDOUBLES



THE child had laid her head upon a stone and gone to sleep.

He sat down near her and looked at her. Little by little, as he beheld her, he grew calm, and
regained possession of his clearness of mind.

He plainly perceived this truth, the basis of his life henceforth, that so long as she should
be alive, so long as he should have her with him, he should need nothing except for her, and
fear nothing save on her account. He did not even realise that he was very cold, having taken
off his coat to cover her.

Meanwhile, through the reverie into which he bad fallen, he had heard for some time a singular
noise. It sounded like a little bell that some one was shaking. This noise was in the garden.
It was heard distinctly, though feebly. It resembled the dimly heard tinkling of cow-bells in
the pastures at night.

This noise made Jean Valjean turn.

He looked, and saw that there was some one in the garden.

Something which resembled a man was walking among the glass cases of the melon patch, rising up,
stooping down, stopping, with a regular motion, as if he were drawing or stretching something
upon the ground. This being appeared to limp.

Jean Valjean shuddered with the continual tremor of the outcast. To them everything is hostile
and suspicious. They distrust the day because it helps to discover them, and the night because
it helps to surprise them. Just now be was shuddering because the garden was empty, now he shud-
dered because there was some one in it.

He fell again from chimerical terrors into real terrors. He said to himself that perhaps Javert
and his spies had not gone away, that they had doubtless left somebody on the watch in the street;
that, if this man should discover him in the garden, he would cry thief, and would deliver him up.
He took the sleeping Cosette gently in his arms and carried her into the furthest corner of the
shed behind a heap of old furniture that was out of use. Cosette did not stir.

From there he watched the strange motions of the man in the melon patch. It seemed very singular,
but the sound of the bell followed every movement of the man. When the man approached, the sound
approached; when he moved away, the sound moved away; if he made some sudden motion. a trill ac-
companied the motion; when he stopped, the noise ceased. It seemed evident it was fastened to This
man; but then what could that mean? what was this man to whom a bell was hung as to a ram or a
cow?

While he was revolving these questions, he touched Cosette's bands. They were icy.

"Oh! God!" said he.

He called to her in a low voice:

"Cosette!"

She did not open her eyes.

He shook her smartly.

She did not wake.

"Could she be dead?" said he, and he sprang up, shuddering from head to foot.

The most frightful thoughts rushed through his mind in 'confusion. There are moments when hideous
suppositions besiege us like a throng of furies and violently force the portals of our brain. When
those whom we love are in danger, our solicitude invents all sorts of follies. He remembered that
sleep may be fatal in the open air in a cold night.

Cosette was pallid; she had fallen prostrate on the ground at his feet, making no sign.

He listened for her breathing; she was breathing; but with a respiration that appeared feeble and
about to stop.

How should he get her warm again? how rouse her? All else was banished from his thoughts. He rush-
ed desperately out of the ruin. It was absolutely necessary that in less than a quarter of an hour
Cosette should be in bed and before a fire.



IX. THE MAN WITH THE BELL



HE walked straight to the man whom he saw in the garden. He had taken in his hand the roll of mo-
ney which was in his vest-pocket.

This man had his head down, and did not see him coming. A few strides, jean Valjean was at his side.

Jean Valjean approached him, exclaiming:

"A hundred francs!"

The man started and raised his eyes.

"A hundred francs for you," continued Jean Valjean, "if you will give me refuge to-night."

The moon shone full in Jean Valjean's bewildered face.

"What, it is you, Father Madeleine!" said the man.

This name, thus pronounced, at this dark hour, in this unknown place. by this unknown man, made Jean
Valjean start back.

He was ready for anything but that. The speaker was an old man, bent and lame, dressed much like a
peasant, who had on his left knee a leather knee-cap from which hung a bell. His face was in the shade,
and could not be distinguished.

Meanwhile the goodman had taken off his cap, and was exclaiming tremulously:

"Ah! my God! how did you come here, Father Madeleine? How did you get in, O Lord? Did you fall
from the sky? There is no doubt, if you ever do fall, you will fall from there. And what has hap-
pened to you? You have no cravat, you have no hat, you have no coat? Do you know that you would
have frightened anybody who did not know you? No coat? Merciful heavens! are the saints all crazy
now? But how did you get in?"

One word did not wait for another. The old man spoke with a rustic volubility in which there was
nothing disquieting. All this was said with a mixture of astonishment, and frank good nature.

"Who are you? and what is this house!" asked Jean Valjean.

"Oh! indeed, that is good now," exclaimed the old man. "I am the one you got the place for here,
and this house is the one you got me the place in. What! you don't remember me?"

"No,' said Jean Valjean. "And how does it happen that you know me?"

"You saved my life," said the man.

He turned, a ray of the moon lighted up his side face, and Jean Valjean recognised old Fauchele-
vent.

"Ah!" said Jean Valjean, "it is you? yes, I remember you."

"That is very fortunate!" said the old man, in a reproachful tone.

"And what are you doing here?" added Jean Valjean.

"Oh! I am covering my melons."

Old Fauchelevent had in his hand, indeed, at the moment when Jean Valjean accosted him, the end
of a piece of awning which he was stretching out over the melon patch. He had already spread out
several in this way during the hour he had been in the garden. It was this work which made him go
through the peculiar motions observed by Jean Valjean from the shed.

He continued:

"I said to myself: the moon is bright, there is going to be a frost. Suppose I put their jackets
on my melons? And," added he, looking at Jean Valjean, with a loud laugh, "you would have done
well to do as much for yourself? but how did you come here?"

Jean Valjean, finding that he was known by this man, at least under his name of Madeleine: went
no further with his precautions. He multiplied questions. Oddly enough their parts seemed rev-
ersed. It was he, the intruder, who put questions.

"And what is this bell you have on your knee?"

"That!" answered. Fauthelevent, "that is so that they may keep away from me."

"How! keep away from you?"

Old Fauchelevent winked in an indescribable manner.

"Ah! Bless me! there's nothing but women in this house; plenty of young girls. It seems that I
am dangerous to meet. The bell warns them. When I come they go away."

"What is this house?"

"Why, you know very well."

"No. I don't."

"Why, you got me this place here as gardener."

"Answer me as if I didn't know."

"It is the Convent of the Petit Picpus, then."

Jean Valjean remembered. Chance, that is to say, Providence, had thrown him precisely into this
convent of the Quartier Saint Antoine, to which old Fauchelevent, crippled by his fall from his cart,
had been admitted, upon his recommendation, two years before. He repeated as if he were talking
to himself:

"The Convent of the Petit Picpus!"

"But now, really," resumed Fauchelevent, "how the deuce did you manage to get in, you, Father
Madeleine? It is.no use for you to be a saint, you are a man; and no men come in here."

"But you are here."

"There is none but me."

"But," resumed Jean Valjean, "I must stay here."

"Oh! my God," exclaimed Fauchelevent.

Jean Valjean approached the old man, and said to him in a grave voice:

"Father Fauchelevent, I saved your lift."

"I was first to remember it," answered Fauchelevent.

"Well, you can now do for me what I once did for you."

Fauchelevent grasped in his old wrinkled and trembling hands the robust hands of Jean Valjean,
and it was some seconds before be could speak; at last he exclaimed:

"Ohl that would be a blessing of God if I could do something for you, in return for that! I
save your life! Monsieur Mayor, the old man is at your disposal."

A wonderful joy had, as it were, transfigured the old gardener. A radiance seemed to shine
forth from his face.

"What do you want me to do?" he added.

"I will explain. You have a room?"

"I have a solitary shanty, over there, behind the ruins of the old convent. in a corner that no-
body ever sees. There are three rooms."

The shanty was in fact so well concealed behind the ruins, and so well arranged, that no one
should see it--that Jean Valjean had not seen it.

"Good," said Jean Valjean. "Now I ask of you two things." "What are they, Monsieur Madeleine?"

"First, that you will not tell anybody what you know about me. Second, that you will not attempt
to learn anything more."

"As you please. I know that you can do nothing dishonourable, and that you have always been a man
of God. And then, besides, it was you that put me here. It is your place, I am yours."

"Very well. But now come with me. We will go for the child."

"Ah!" said Fauchelevent, "there is a child!"

He said not a word more, but followed Jean Valjean as a dog follows his master.

In half an hour Cosette, again become rosy before a good fire, was asleep in the old gardener's
bed. Jean VaUm had put on his cravat and coat; his hat, which he had thrown over the wall, had
been found and brought in. While Jean Vaijean was putting on his coat, Fauchelevent had taken
off his knee-cap with the bell attached, which now, hanging on a nail near a shutter, decorated
the wall. The two men were warming themselves, with their elbows on a table, on which Fauchelevent
had set a piece of cheese, some brown bread, a bottle of wine, and two glasses, and the old man
said to Jean Val jean, putting his hand on his knee:

"Ah! Father Madeleine! you didn't know me at first? You save people's lives and then you forget
them? Ohl that's bad; they remember you. You are ungrateful!"



X. IN WHICH IS EXPLAINED HOW JAVERT LOST THE GAME



THE events, the reverse of which, so to speak, we have just seen, had been brought about under
the simplest conditions.

When Jean Valjettn, on the night of the very day that Javert arrested him at the death-bed of
Fantine. escaped from the municipal prison of M-- sur M--, the police supposed that the escaped
convict would start for Paris. Paris is a maelstrom in which everything is lost; and everything
disappears in this whirlpool of the world as in the whirlpool of the sea. No forest conceals a
man like this multitude. Fugitives of all kinds know this. They go to Paris to be swallowed up;
there are swallowings-up which save. The police know it also, and it is in Paris that they search
for what they have lost elsewhere. They searched there for the ex-mayor of M-- sur M--. Javert
was summoned to Paris to aid in the investigation. Javert, in fact, was of great aid in the recapture
of Jean Valjean. The zeal and intelligence of _Invert on this occasion were remarked by M. Chabo-
uillet, Secretary of the Prefecture, under Count Angles. M. Chabouillet, who had already inter-
ested himself in Javert. secured the transfer of the inspector of to the police of Paris. There
Javert rendered Idzwel riots ways, and, let us say, although the word seems untistil!"for such
service, honourably, useful.

He thought no more of Jean Valjean--with these hounds always upon the scent, the wolf of today
banishes the memory of the wolf of yesterday--when, in December, 1823, he read a newspaper, he
who never react the newspapers; but Javert, as a monarchist, made a point of knowing the details
of the triumphal entry of the "Prince generalissimo" into Bayonne. Just as he finished the art-
icle which interested him, a name--the name of Jean Valjean--at the bottom of the page attracted
his attention. The newspaper announced that the convict Jean Valjean was dead, and published the
fact in terms so explicit, that Javert had no doubt of it. He merely said: "That settles it."
Then he threw aside the paper, and thought no more of it.

Some time afterwards it happened that a police notice was trans-mined by the Prefecture of Seine-
et-Oise to the Prefecture of Police of Paris in relation to the kidnapping of a child, which had
taken place, it was said, under peculiar circumstances, in the commune of Montfermeil. A little
girl, seven or eight years old, the notice said, who had been confided by her mother to an inn-
keeper of the country, had been stolen by an unknown man; this little girl answered to the name
of Cosette, and was the child of a young woman named Fantine, who had died at the Hospital, no-
body knew when or where. This notice came under the eyes of Javert, and set him to thinking.

The name of Fantine was well known to him. He remembered that Jean Valjean had actually made
him--Javert--laugh aloud by asking of him a respite of three days, in order to go for the child of
this creature. He recalled the fact that Jean Valjean had been arrested at Paris, at the moment
he was getting into the Montfermeil diligence. Some indications had even led him to think then
that it was the second time that he was entering this diligence, and that he had already, the
night previous, made another excursion to the environs of this village, for he had not been seen
in the village itself. What was he doing in this region of Montfermeil? Nobody could divine. Jav-
ert understood it. The daughter of Fantine was there. Jean Valjean was going after her. Now this
child had been stolen by an unknown man! Who could this man be? Could it be Jean Valjean? But
Jean Valjean was dead. Javert, without saying .a word to any one, took the diligence at the Plat
d'Etain, cul-de-sac de Planchette, and took a trip to Monfermeil..

He expected to find great developments there; he found great obscurity.

For the first few days, the Thenardiers, in their spite, had blabbed the story about. 'The disa-
ppearance of the Lark bad made sonic noise in the village. There were soon several versions of
the story, which ended by becoming a case of kidnapping. Hence the police notice. However,
when the first ebullition was over, Thenardier, with admirable instinct, very soon arrived at the
conclusion that it is never useful to set in motion the Procureur du Roi; that the first result
of his complaints in regard to the kidnapping of Cos-cue would be to fix upon himself, and on
many business troubles which he had, the keen eye of justice. The last thing that owls wish is
a candle. And first of all, how should he explain the fifteen hundred, francs he had received?
He stopped short, and enjoined secrecy upon his wife, and professed to be astonished when any-
body spoke to him of the stolen child. He knew nothing about it; undoubtedly he had made some
complaint at the time that the dear little girl should be "taken away" so suddenly; he would
have liked, for affection's sake, to keep her two or three days; but it was her "grandfather"
who had come for her, the most natural thing in the world. He had added the grandfather, which
sounded well. It was upon this story that Javert fell on reaching Montfermeil. The grandfather
put Jean Valjean out of the question.

Javert. however, dropped a few questions like plummets into Thenardier's story. Who was this
grandfather, and what was his name? Thu nardier answered with simplicity: "He is a rich farmer,
I saw his passport. I believe his name is M. Guillaume Lambert."

Lambert is a very respectable reassuring name. Javert returned to Paris.

"Jean Valjean is really dead," said he, "and I am a fool."

He had begun to forget all this story, when, in the month of March, 1824, he heard an odd person
spoken of who lived in the parish of Saint Millard, and who was called "the beggar who gives
alms." This person was, it was said, a man living on his income, whose name nobody knew exactly,
and who lived alone with a little girl eight years old, who knew nothing of herself except that
she came from Mont fermeil. Mont fermeil! This name constantly recurring., excited Javert's at-
tention anew. An old begging police spy,. formerly a beadle, to whom this person had extended
his charity. added some other details. "This man was very unsociable, never going out except at
night, speaking to nobody, except to the poor sometimes, and allowing nob* to get acquainted with
him. He wore a horrible old yellow coat which was worth millions, being lined n11 over with bank
hills." This decidedly piqued Javeres curiosity. That he might get a near view of this fantastic
rich man without frightening him away, he borrowed one day of the beadle his old frock, and the
place where the old spy squatted every night droning out his orisons aml playing the spy as he
prayed.


"The suspicious individua!" (lid indeed come to Javert thus disi:thed, and gave him alms: at
that mullein invert raised his head, and the shoe{ which Jean Valjean received, thinking that
he recognised Javert, Javert received, thinking that be recognised Jean Valjean.

However, the obscurity might have deceived him, the death of Jean Va!jean was officially cert-
ified; Javert had still serious doubts; and in case of doubt, Javert, scrupulous as he was,
never seized any man by the collar.

He followed the old man to Gorbeatt House, and set "the old woman" talking, which was not at
all difficult. The old woman con-firmed the story of the coat lined with millions, and related
to him the episode of the thousand-franc note. She had seen it! site bad touched it! Javert
hired a room. That very night he installed himself in it. He listened at the door of the mys-
terious lodger, hoping to bear the sound of his voice, but Jean Valjean perceived his candle
through the key-hole and baulked the spy by keeping silence.

The next day Jean Valjean decamped. But the noise of the five-franc piece which he dropped was
noticed by the old woman, who hearing money moving, suspected that he was going to move, and
hastened to forewarn Javert. At night, when Jean Valjean went out, Javert was waiting for him
behind the trees of the
boulevard with two men.

Javert had called for assistance from the Prefecture, but he had not given the name of the per-
son he hoped to seize. That was his secret; and he kept it for three reasons; first, because
the least indiscretion might give the alarm to Jean Valjean next, because the arrest of an
old escaped convict who was reputed dead, a criminal whom the records of justice had already
classed for ever among malefactors of the most dangerous kind, would be a magnificent success
which the old members of the Parisian police certainly would never leave to a new-comer like
Javert, and he feared they would take his galley-slave away from him; finally, because Javert,
being an artist, had a liking for surprises. He hated these boasted successes which are de-
flowered by talking of them long in advance. He liked to elaborate his masterpieces in the
shade, and then to unveil them suddenly afterwards.

Javert had followed Jean Valjean from tree to tree, then front street corner to street corner,
and had not lost sight of him a single instant; even in the moments when Jean Valjean felt him-
self most secure, the eye of Javert was upon him. Why did not invert arrest Jean Valjean? Be-
cause he was still in doubt. It must he remembered that at that time the police was not exactly
at its ease; it was cramped by a free press. Some arbitrary arrests, denounced by the news-
papers, had been re-echoed even in the Chambers, and rendered the Prefecture timid. To attack
individual liberty was a serious thing. The officers were afraid of making mistakes: the Pre-
fect held them responsible; an error was the loss of their place. Imagine the effect which
this brief paragraph repeated in twenty papers, would have produced in Paris. "fester day,
an old white-haired grandsire, a respectable person living on his income, who was taking a
walk with his granddaughter, eight years old, was arrested and taken to the Station of the
Prefecture as an escaped convict!"

Let us say, in addition, that Javert bad his own personal scruples; the injunctions of his
conscience were added to the injunctions of the Prefect. He was really in doubt.

Jean Valjean turned his back, and walked away in the darkness.

Sadness, trouble, anxiety, weight of cares, this new sorrow of be. ing obliged to fly by
night, and to seek a chance asylum in Paris for Cosette and himself, the necessity of ad-
apting his pace to the pace of a child, all this, without his knowing it even, had changed
Jean Valjean's gait, and impressed upon his carriage such an appearance of old age that the
police itself, incarnated in Javert, could be deceived. The impossibility of approaching
too near, his dress of an old preceptor of the emigration, the declaration of Thetiardier,
who made him a grandfather; finally, the belief in his death at the galleys, added yet more
to the uncertainty which was increasing in Javert's mind.

For a moment be had an idea of asking him abruptly for his papers. But if the man were not
Jean Valjean, and if the man were not a good old honest man of means, he was probably some
sharper profoundly and skilfully adept in the obscure web of Parisian crime, some.dangerous
chief of bandits, giving alms to conceal his other talents, an old trick. He had comrades,
accomplices, retreats on all hands, in which lie would take refuge without doubt. All these
windings which he was making in the streets seemed to indicate that he was not a simple hon-
est man. To arrest him too soon would be "to kill the goose that laid the golden eggs." What
inconvenience was there in waiting? Javert was very sure that he would not escape.

lie walked on, therefore, in some perplexity, questioning himself continually in regard to
this mysterious personage.

It was not until quite late, in the Rue de Pontoise, that, thanks to the bright light which
streamed from a bar-room, he decidedly recognised Jean Valjean.There are in this world two
beings who can be deeply thrilled: the mother, who finds her child, and the tiger, who finds
his prey. Jayert felt this profound
thrill.

As soon as be bad positively recognised Jean Valjean, the formidable convict, he perceived
that there were only three of them, and sent to the commissary of police, of the Rue de Pon-
toise, for additional abl. Before grasping a thorny stick, men put on gloves.

This delay and stopping at the Rollin square to arrange with his men made him lose the scent,
However, he had very soon imessed that jean Va.ljean's first wish would be to put the river
between his pursuers and himself. He bowed his head and reflected, like a hound who put his
nose to the ground to be sure of the way. Javert, with his straightforward power of instinct,
went directly to the bridge of Austerlitz. A word to the toll-keeper set him right "Have you
seen a man with a little girl:" "I made him pay two sous," answered the tollman. Javert reach-
ed the bridge in time to see Jean Val-jean on the other side of the river leading Cosette a-
cross the space lighted by the moon. He saw him enter the Rue de Chemin Vert Saint Antoine,
he thought of the Cul-de-sac Genrot placed there like a trap, and of the only outlet from
the Rue Droit Mur into the Petite Rue Picpus. He put out beaters, as hunters say; he sent
one of his men hastily by a detour to guard that outlet. A patrol passing, on its return to
the station at the arsenal, he put it in requisition and took it along with him. In such
games soldiers are trumps. Moreover, it is a maxim that, to take the boar requires the
science of the hunter, and the strength of the dogs. These combinations being effected,
feeling that Jean Valjean was caught between the Cul-de-sac Genrot on the right, his offi-
cer on the left, and himself, Javert, in the rear, he took a pinch of snuff.

Then he began to play. He enjoyed a ravishing and infernal moment; he let his man go be-
fore him, knowing that he had him, but desiring to put off as long as possible the moment
of arresting him, delighting to feel that he was caught, and to see him free, fondly gazing
upon him with the rapture of the spider which lets the fly buzz, or the cat which lets the
mouse run. The paw and the talon find a monstrous pleasure in the quivering of the animal
imprisoned in their grasp. What delight there is in this suffocation!

Javert was rejoicing. The links of his chain were solidly welded. He was sure of success;
he had now only to close his hand.

Accompanied as he was, the very idea of resistance was impossible, however energetic, how-
ever vigorous, and however desperate Jean Valjean might be.

Javert advanced slowly, sounding and ransacking on his way all the recesses, of the streets
as he would the pockets of a thief.

When he reached the centre of the web, the fly was no longer there.

Imagine his exasperation.

He questioned his sentinel at the corner of the Rue Droit liar and Rue Piepus; this officer,
who had remained motionless at his po;:, had not seen the man
pass.

It happens sometimes that a stag breaks with the head covered, that is to say escapes, al-
though the hound is upon him; then the oldest of hunters know not what to say. Davivier, Lig-
niville. and Desprez are at fault. On the occasion of a mishap of this sort, Artorige exclaimed:
It is not a stag, is a sorcerer

Javert would fain have uttered the same cry.

His disappointment had a moment of despair and fury.

It is certain that Napoleon blundered in the campaign in Russia, that Alexander blundered
in the war in India, that Caesar blundered in the African war, that Cyrus blundered in the
war in Scythia, and that Javert blundered in this campaign against Jean Valjean. He did wrong
perhaps in hesitating to recognise the old galley slave. The first glance should have been e-
nough for him. He did wrong in not seizing him without ceremony in the old building. He did
wrong in not arresting him when he positively recognised him in the Rue de Pontoise. He did
wrong to hold a council with his aides, in full moonlight, in the Rollin square. Certainly
advice is useful, and it is well to know and to question those of the dogs which are worthy
of credit; but the hunter cannot take too many precautions when he is chasing restless ani-
mals, like the wolf and the convict. Javert, by too much forethought in setting his blood-
hounds on the track, alarmed his prey by giving him wind of the pursuit, and allowed him the
start. He did wrong, above all, when he had regained the scent at the bridge of Austerlitz,
to play the formidable and puerile game of holding such a man at the end of a thread. He
thought himself stronger than he was, and believed he could play mouse with a lion. At the
same time, be esteemed himself too weak when he deemed it necessary to obtain a reinforce-
ment. Fatal precaution, loss of precious time. Javert made all these blunders, and yet he
was none the less one of the wisest and most correct detectives that ever existed. He was,
in the full force of the term, what in venery is called a gentle dog. But who is perfect?

Great strategists have their eclipses.

Great blunders are often made, like large ropes, of a multitude of fibres. Take the cable
thread by thread, take separately all the little determining motives. you break them out af-
ter another, and you say: that is all. Wind them and twist them together they become an en-
ormity; Attila hesitating between Marcian in the East and Valentinian in the West; Hannibal
delaying at Capua; Damon falling to sleep at Arcis stir Aube.

However this may be, even at the moment when he perceived that Jean Valjean bad escaped him,
Javert did not lose his presence of mind. Sure that the convict who had broken his ban could
not be far away, he set watches, arranged traps and ambushes, and beat the quarter the night
through. The first thing that he saw was the displacement of the lamp, the rope of which was
cut. Precious indication, which led him astray, however, by directing all his researches towards
The Cul-de-sac Genrot. There are in that cul-de-sac some rather low walls which face upon
gardens the limits of which extend to some very large uncultivated grounds. Jean Valjeau evi-
dently must have fled that way, The fact is that, if he had penetrated into the Cul-de-sac
Genrot a little further, he would have done so, and would have been lost. Javert explored
these gardens and these grounds, as if he were searching for a needle.

At daybreak, he left two intelligent men on the watch, and returned to the Prefecture of
Police, crestfallen as a spy who has been caught by a thief.




　　　　　　　　BOOK SIXTH
　　　　　PETIT PICPUS



I. PETITE RUE PICPUS, NO. 62.



Nothing resembled more closely. half a century ago, the commonest port-cochere of the time than
the porte-cochere of No. 62 Petite Rue Picpus. This door was usually half open in the most attract-
ive manner, disclosing two things which have nothing very funreal about them--a court surrounded
with walls bedecked with vines, and the face of a lounging porter. Above the rear wall large trees
could be seen. When a beam of sunshine enlivened the court, when a glass of wine enlivened the
porter, it was difficult to pass by No. 62 Petite Rue Picpus, without. carrying away a pleasant
idea. It was, however, a gloomy place of which you had had a glimpse.

The door smiled; the house prayed and wept.

If you succeeded, which was not easy, in passing the porter--which for almost everybody was even
impossible, for there was anopen Strom. which you must know;--if, having passed the porter, you
entered on the right a little vestibule which led to a stairway shut in between two walls, and so
narrow that but one person could pass at a time; if you did not allow yourself to be frightened
by the yellow wall paper with the chocolate surbase that extended along the stairs, if you ven-
tured to go up, you passed by a first broad stair, then a second, and reached the second story in
a hall where the yellow hue and the chocolate plinth followed you with a peaceful persistency.
Staircase and hall were lighted by two handsome windows. The hall made a sudden turn and became
dark. If you doubled that cape, you came, in a few steps, to a door, all the more mysterious that
it was not quite closed. You pushed it open. and found yourself in a little room about six feet
square, the floor tiled, scoured, neat and cold, and the walls hung with fifteen-cent paper. nan-
keen-coloured paper with green flowers. A dull white light came from a large window with small
panes which was at the left, and which took up the whole width of the room. You looked, you saw
no one: you listened, you heard no step and no human sound. The wall was bare; the room had no
furniture, not even a chair.

You looked again, and you saw in the wall opposite the door a quadrangular opening akin a foot
square, covered with a grate of iron bars crossing one another, black, knotted, solid, which formed
squares, I had almost said meshes, less than an inch across. The little green flowers on the nankeen
paper cane calmly and in order to these iron bars, without being frightened or scattered by the dis-
mal contact. In case any living being had been so marvellously slender as to attempt to get in or
out by the square hole, this grate would have prevented it. It did not let the body pass, but it
did let the eyes pass, that is to say, the mind. This seemed to have been cared for, for it had
been doubled by a sheet of tin inserted in the wall a little behind it, and pierced with a thou-
sand holes more microscopic than those of a skimmer. At the bottom of this plate there was an
opening cut exactly like the mouth of a letter-box. A piece of broad tape attached to a bell
hung at the right of the grated opening.

If you pulled this tape, a bell tinkled and a voice was heard, very near you, which startled you.

"Who is there?" asked the voice.

It was a woman's voice, a gentle voice, so gentle that it was mournful.

Here again there was a magic word which you must know. If you did not know it, the voice was heard
no more, and the wall again became silent as if the wild obscurity of the sepulchre had been on the
other side.

If you knew the word, the voice added:

"Enter at the right."

You then noticed at your right, opposite the window, a glazed door surmounted by a glazed sash and
painted grey. You lifted the latch, you passed through the door, and you felt exactly the same im-
pression as when you enter a grated box at the theatre before the grate is lowered and the lights
are lit. You were in fact irra sort of theatre box, hardly made visible by the dim light of the
glass door, narrow, furnished with two old chairs and a piece of tattered straw matting--a genuine
box with its front to lean upon, upon which was a tablet of black wood. This box was grated, but
it was not a grate of gilded wood as at the Opera; it was a monstrous trellis of iron bars fright-
fully tangled together, and bolted to the wall by enormous bolts which resembled clenched fists.

After a few minutes, when your eyes began to get accustomed to this cavernous light, you tried to
look through the grate, but could not see more than six inches beyond. There you saw a barrier of
black shutters, secured and strengthened by wooden cross-bars painted gingerbread colour. These
shutters were jointed, divided into long slender strips, and covered the whole length of the grate'
They were always closed.

In a few moments, you heard a voice calling to you from behind these shutters and saying:

"I am here. What do you want of me?"

It was a loved voice, perhaps sometimes an adored one. You saw nobody. You hardly heard a breath.
It seemed as if it were a ghostly voice speaking to you across the portal of the tomb.

If you appeared under certain necessary conditions, very rare, the narrow strip of one of these
shutters opened in front of you, and the ghostly voice became an apparition. Behind the grate, be-
hind the shutter, you perceived, as well as the grate permitted, a head, of which you saw only the
mouth and chin; the rest was covered with a black veil. You caught a glimpse of a black guimp and
an ill-defined form covered with a black shroud. This head spoke to you, but did not look at you
and never smiled at you.

The light which came from behind you was disposed in such wise that you saw her in the light, and
she saw you in the shade. This light was symbolic.

Meantime your eyes gazed eagerly, through this aperture thus opened, into this place closed against
all observation.

A deep obscurity enveloped this form thus clad in mourning. Your eyes strained into this obscurity
and sought to distinguish what was about the apparition. In a little while you perceived that you
saw nothing. What you saw was night, void, darkness. a wintry mist mingled with a sepulchral vapour,
a sort of terrifying quiet, a silence from which you distinguished nothing, not even sighs--a shade
in which you discerned nothing, not even phantoms.

What you saw was the interior of a cloister.

It was the interior of that stern and gloomy house that was called the convent of the Bernardines
of the Perpetual Adoration. This box where you were was the parlour. This voice, the first that
spoke to you, was the voice of the portress, who was always seated, motionless and silent, on the
other side of the wall, near the square aperture, defended by the iron grate and the plate with the
thousand holes, as by a double visor.

The obscurity in which the grated box was sunk arose from this, that the Memory, which had a window
on the side towards the outside world, had none on the convent side. Profane eyes must see nothing
of this sacred place.

There was something, however, beyond this shade, there was a light; there was a life within this
death. Although this convent was more inaccessible than any other, we shall endeavour to penetrate
it, and to take the reader with us, and to relate, as fully as we may. something which storytellers
have never seen, and consequently have never related.



II. THE OBEDIENCE OF MARTIN VERGA



THIS convent, which in 1824 had existed for long years in the Petite Rue Picpus, was a community
of Bernardines of the Obedience of Martin Verge.

These Bernardino, consequently, were attached, not to Clawvaux, like other Bernardines, but to
Citeaux, like the Benedictines. In other words, they were subjects, not of Saint Bernard, but of
Saint Benedict.

Whoever is at all familiar with old folios, knows that Martin Verga founded in 1425 a congregation
of Bernardino-Benedictines, having their chief convent at Salamanca and an affiliation at Alcala.

This congregation had put out branches in all the Catholic court-tries of Europe.

These grafts of one order upon another are not unusual in the Latin church. To speak only of a
single order of St. Benedict, which is here in question--to this order are attached, without count-
ing the Obedience of Martin Verga, four congregations; two in Italy, Monte Cassino and Santa Gius-
tina of Padua, two in France, Cluny and Saint Maur; and nine orders, Vallombrosa, Grammont, the
todestines, the Comaldules. the Carthusian, the Ilumiliati, the Olivetans, the Sylvestrines, and
finally Citeaux; for Citeaux itself, the trunk of other orders, is only an off-shoot from Saint
Benedict. Citeaux dates from St. Robert, Abbe of Molesme, in the diocese of Langres in 1098. Now
it was in 529 that the devil, who had retired to the desert of Salida (he was old; had he become
a hermit?), was driven fmm the ancient temple of Apollo where he was living with St. Benedict,
then seventeen years old.

Next to the rules of the Carmelites, who go barefoot, wear a withie about their throat, and never
sit down, the most severe rules are those of the Bernardine-Benedictines of Martin Verga. They are
clothed with a black guimp which, according to the express command of Saint Benedict, comes up to
the chin. A serge dress with wide sleeves, a large woollen veil, the guimp which rises to the chin,
cut square across the breast, and the fillet which comes down to the eyes, constitute their dress.
It is all black, except the fillet, which is white. The novices wear the sante dress, all in white.
The professed nuns have in addition a rosary by their side.

The Bernardine-Benedictines of Martin Verga perform the devotion of the Perpetual Adoration, as
do the Benedictines called Ladies of the Holy Sacrament, who, at the commencement of this century,
had at Paris two houses, one at the Temple, the other in the Rue Neuve Sainte Gentalive. In other
respects the Bernardine-Benedictines of the Petit Pirpus, of whom we are speaking, were an entirely
separate order from the Ladies of the Holy Sacrament. whose cloisters were in the Rue Xeuve Sainte
Genevieve and at the Temple. There were many differences in their rules, there were some in their
costume. The Bernardino-Benedictines of the Petit Picpus wore a black guimp, and the Benedictines
of the Holy Sacrament and of the Rue Neuve Sainte Genevieve were a white one. and had moreover
upon their breast a crucifix about three inches long in silver or copper gilt. The nuns of the
Petit Picpus did not wear this crucifix. The devotion of the Perpetual Adoration, common to the
house of the Petit Piepus and in the house of the Temple, left the two orders perfectly distinct.
There is a similarity only in this respect between the Ladies of the Holy Sacrament and the Bern-
ardines of Martin Verge, even as there is a similitude, in the study and the glorification of all
the mysteries relative in the infancy, the life and the death of Jesus Christ, and to the Virgin,
between two orders widely separated and ottasionally inimical; the Oratory of Italy. established
at Florence by Philip di Neri, and the Oratory of France, established at Paris by Pierre de Beadle.
The Oratory of Paris claims the precedence, Philip di Xeri being only a saint, and Birulle being
a cardinal.

Let us return to the severe Spanish rules of Manin Verge.

The Bernardino-Benedictines of this Obedlience abstain from meat all the year round, fast during
Lent and many other days peculiar to them, rise out of their first sleep at one o'clock in the morn-
ing to read their breviary and chant matins until three, sleep in coarse woollen sheets at all
seasons and upon straw, use no baths, never light any fire, scourge themselves every Friday, ob-
serve the rule of silence, speak to one another only at recreations, which are very short, and
wear haircloth chemises for six months, from the fourteenth of September, the Exaltation of the
Holy Cross, until Easter. These six months are a moderation--the rules say all the year; but this
haircloth chemise, insupportable in the heat of summer, produced fevers and nervous spasms. It be-
came necessary to limit its use. Even with this mitigation after the fourteenth of September, when
the nuns put on this chemise, they have three or four days of fever. Obedience. poverty. chastity,
continuance in cloister; such are their vows, rendered much more difficult of fulfilment by the
rules.

The prioress is elected for three years by the mothers, who are called vocal mothers, because they
have a voice in the chapter. A prioress can be re-elected but twice, which fixes the longest pos-
sible reign of a prioress at nine vears.

They never see the officiating priest, who is always coneed from them by a woollen curtain time
feet high. During when the preacher is in the chapel, they drop their veil over face; they must
always speak low, walk with their eye on the ground and their head bowed down. But one man can
enter the convent, the archbishop of the diocese.

There is indeed one other, the gardener; but he is always an old man, and ht order that he may be
perpetually alone in the prden and that the nuns may be warned to avoid him, a bell is attached
to his knee.

They are subject to the prioress with an absolute and passive submission. It is canonical sub-
jection in all its abnegation. As at the voice of Christ, ut voci Christi, at a nod, at the first
signal, ad nutum, ad primum signum, promptly, with pleasure, with perserverence, with a certain
blind obedience, prompte, hilariter, perserveranter, et coeca quadam obedientia, like the file in
the workman's hands, quasi limam in manibus, fabri, forbidden to read or write without express per-
mission, legere vel scribere non addiscerit sine expressa superioris licentia.

Each one of them in turn performed what they call the reparation. The Reparation is prayer for
all sins, for all faults, for all disorders, for all violations, for all iniquities, for all the crime which
are committed upon the earth. During twelve consecutive hours, from for o'clock in the afternoon
till four o'clock in the morning, or from four o'clock in the morning till four o'clock in the afternoon,
the sister who performs the reparation remains on her knees upon the stone before the holy
sacrament, her hands clasped and a rope around her neck. When fatigue becomes insupportable.
she prostrates herself, her face against the marble and her hands crossed; this is all her relief.
In this attitude, she prays for all the guilty in the universe. This is grand even to sublimity.

As this act is performed before a post on the top of which a taper is burning, they say indiscrim-
inately, to perform the reparation or to be at the post. The even prefer, from humility, this
latter exprestion. which involves an idea of punishment and of abasement.

The performance of the reparation is a process in which the whole soul is absorbed. The sister at
the post would not turn were a thunderbolt to fall behind her.

Moreover, there is always a nun on her knees before the holy sacrament. They remain for an hour.
They are relieved like soldiers standing sentry. That is the Perpetual Adoration.

The prioresses and the mothers almost always have names of peculiar solemnity, recalling not the
saints and the martyrs, but momenta in the life of Christ, like Mother Nativity, Mother Conception,
Mother Presentation, Mother Passion. The names of saints. however, are not prohibited.

When you see them, you see only their mouth.

They all have yellow teeth. Never did a tooth-brush enter the convent. To brush the teeth is the
top round of a ladder, the bottom round of which is--to lose the soul.

They never say my or mine. They have nothing of their own, and must cherish nothing. They say
our of everything; thus: our veil, our chaplet; if they speak of their chemise, they say our chemise.
Sometimes they become attached to some little object, to a prayer-book, a relic, or a sacred medal.
As soon as they perceive that they are beginning to cherish this object, they must give it up.
They remember the reply of Saint Theresa, to whom a great lady, at the moment of entering her or-
der, said: permit me, mother, to send for a holy Bible which I cherish very much. "Ah! you cherish
something! In that ease, do not enter our house."

None are allowed to shut themselves up, and to have a home, a room. They live in open cells. When
they meet one another, one says: Praise and adoration to the most holy sacrament of the altar! The
other responds: Forever. The same ceremony when one knocks at another's door. Hardly is the door
touched when a gentle voice is heard from the other side hastily saying, Forever. Like all rituals, this
becomes mechanical from habit; and one sometimes says forever before the other has had time to
say, what is indeed rather lengthy, Praise and adoration to the most holy sacrament of the altar!

Among the Visitandines, the one who comes in says: Ave Maria, and the one to whose cell she comes
says: Gratia plena. This is their good day, which is, in fact, "graceful."

At each hour of the day, three supplementary strokes sound from the bell of the convent church.
At this signal, prioress, mothers. professed nuns, sister servants, novices, postulants, all break off
from what they are saying, doing, or thinking, and say at once, if it is five o'clock, for example:
At five o'clock and at all times, praise and adoration to the most holy sacrament of the altar! If
it is eight o'clock: At eight and at all times, etc., and so on, according to whatever hour it may be.

This custom, which is intended to interrupt the thoughts, and to lead them back constantly to God,
exists in many communities: the formula only, varies. Thus. at the Infant Jesus, they say: At the
present hour and at all hours may the love of Jesus enkindle my heart!

The Bernardine-Benedictines of Martin Verga, cloistered fifty years ago in the Petit Mims, chant
the offices in a grave loalmody, pre plain-amt, and always in a loud voice for the whole duration
of the office. Wherever there is an asterisk in the missal, they make a pause and say in a law tone:
Iesas--Mary--lorrth. For the office for the dead, they mite so low a pitch, that it is difficult for
female toices to melt it. The effect is thrilling and tragical.

Those of the Petit Picups had had a vault made under their high altar fur the burial of their commun-
ity. The government, at they call it, does not permit corpses to be deposited in the vault. They
therefore were taken from the convent when they died. This was an affliction to them, and horrified
them as if it were a violation.

They had obtained--small consolation--the privilege of being buried at a special hour and in a spec-
ial place in the old V. onward Cemetery, which was located in ground formerly belonging to the com-
munity.

On Thursday these nuns heard high mass, vespers, and all the offices the same as on Sunday. They
moreover scrupulously observed all the little feast days, unknown to the people of the world, of which
the church was formerly lavish in France, and is still lavish in Spain and Italy. Their attendance
at chapel is interminable. As to the number and duration of their prayers, we cannot give a better
idea than by quoting the frank words of one of themselves: The prayers of the postulants are fright-
ful, the prayers of the novices worse, and the prayers of the professed mans still worse.

Once a week the chapter assembles; the prioress presides, the mothers attend. Each sister tomes in
her turn, kneels upon the stone, and confesses aloud, before all, the faults and sins which she has
committed during the week. The mothers consult together after each confession, and announce the
penalty aloud.

In addition to open confession, for which they reserve all serious faults, they have for venial
faults what they call the coulpe. To perform the coulpe is to prostrate yourself on your face dur-
ing the office, before the prioress until she, who is never spoken of except as our mother, indi-
cates to the sufferer, by a gentle rap upon the ante of her stall, that she may rise. The coulpe
is performed for very petty things; a glass broken, a veil torn, an involuntary delay of a few sec-
onds at an office, a false note in church, etc..--these are enough for the coulpe. The coulpe is
entirely spontaneous; it is the culpaple herself (this word is here etymologically in its place) who
Judges herself and who inflicts it upon herself. On feast-days and Sundays there are four chorister
mothers who sing the offices before a large desk with four music stands. One day a mother chorister
intoned a psalm which commenced by Etre, and, instead of Erre, she pronounced in a loud voice these
three notes: sot, si, rot; for this absence of mind she underwent a coulpe which lasted through the
whole office. What rendered the fault peculiarly enor-mous was, that the chapter laughed.

When a nun is called to the locutory, be it even the prioress, she drops her veil, it will be rem-
embered, in such a way as to show nothing but her mouth.

The prioress alone can communicate with strangers. The others can see only their immediate family,
and that very rarelyothersfebrys chance persons from without present themselves to ice a nun whom
they have known or loved in the world, a formal negotiation is necessary. if it he a woman, perm-
ission may be sometimes accordal; the nun comes and k spoken to through the shutters, which are
never opened except for a mother or sister. It is unnecessary to say that permission is always refused
to men.

Such are the rules of St. Benedict, rendered more severe by Martin Verge.

These nuns are not joyous, rosy, and cheerful, as are often the daughters of other orders. They are
pale and serious. Between 1825 and 1830 three became insane.



III. SEVERITIES


A POSTULANCY of at least two years is required, often four; a novitiate of four years. It is rare
that the final vows can be pronounced under twenty-three or twenty-four year.. The Bernanfine. Ben-
edictines of Martin Verga admit no widows into their order.

They subject themselves in their cells to many unknown self-morlifications of which they must
never speak.

The day on which a lattice makes her profession she is dressed in her finest attire, with her head
decked with white roses, and her hair glossy and curled; then she prostrates herself; a great
black veil is spread over her, and the office for the dead is chanted. The nuns then divide into two
files, one file passes near her, saying in plaintive accents: Our sister is dead, and the other file
reponds in ringing tones: living in Jesus Christ!

At the period to which this history relates, a boarding-school was attached to the convent. A school
of noble young girls, for the most part rich, among whom were noticeable Mademoiselles De Sainte
Aulaire and De Bili.cen, and an Eneliat girl bearing the illustrious Catholic name of Talbot. These
young girls, reared by these nuns between four walls, grew up in horror of the world and of the age.
One of them said to us one day: to see the pavement of the street made me shiver from head to foot
They were dressed in blue with a white cap, and a Holy Spirit, in silver or copper gilt, upon their
breast. On certain grand feast-days, particularly on St Martha's day, they were allowed. as a high
favour and a supreme pleasure, to dress as nuns and perform tho offices and the ritual of St. Benedict
for a whole day. At first the professed nuns lent them their black garments. That appeared profane,
and the prioress forbade it. This loan was permitted only to novice. It is remarkable that these
representations, undoubtedly tolerated and encouraged in the convent by a secret spirit of proselytism,
and to give these children some foretaste of the holy dress, were a real pleasure and a genuine rec-
reation for the scholars. They simply amused themselves. It was new; it was a change. Candid rea-
sons of childhood, which do not succeed, however in making us, mundane people, the felicity of hold-
ing a holy sprinkler in the hand, and remaining standing entire hours singing in quartette before a
desk.

The pupils, austerities excepted, conformed to all the ritual of the convent. There are young
women who, returned to the world, and after several years of marriage, have not yet succeeded in
breaking off the habit of saying hastily, whenever there is a knock at the door: Forever! Like the
nuns, the boarders saw their relatives only In the locutory. Even their mothers were not permitted
to embrace them. Strictness upon this point was carried to the following extent: One day a young
girl was visited by her mother accompanied by a little sister three years old. The young girl wept,
for she wished very much to kiss her sister. Impossible. She begged that the child should at least
be permitted to pass her little hand through the bars that she might kiss it. This was refused al-
most with indignation.



IV. GAIETIES



These young girls have none the less filled this solemn house with charming reminiscences.

At certain hours, childhood sparkled in this cloister. The hour of recreation struck. A door turned
upon its hinges. The birds said good! here are the children! An irruption of youth inundated this
garden, which was cut by walks in the form of a cross, like a shroud. Radiant faces, white foreheads,
frank eyes full of cheerful light, auroras of all sorts scattered through this darkness. After the
chants, the bellringing, the knells, and the offices, all at once this hum of little girls burst forth
sweeter than the hum of bees. The hive of joy opened, and each one brought her honey. They played,
they called to one another, they formed groups, they ran; pretty little white teeth chatted in the cor-
ners; veils from a distance watched over the laughter, shadows spying the sunshine; but what matter!
They sparkled and they laughed. These four dismal walls had their moments of bewilderment. They too
shared, dimly lighted up by the reflection of so much joy, in this sweet and swarming whirl. It was like
a shower of roses upon this mourning. The young girls frolicked under the eyes of the nuns; the gaze
of sinlessness does not disturb innocence. Thanks to these children, among so many hours of austerity,
there was one hour of artlessness. The little girls skipped, the larger ones danced. In this cloister,
play was mingled with haven. Nothing was so transporting and superb, as all these fresh, blooming
souls. Homer might have laughed there with Perrault and there were, in this dark garden, enough of
youth, health, murmurs, cries, uproar, pleasure and happiness, to smooth the wrinkles from off all
grandames, those of the epic as well as the tale, those of the throne as well as the hut, from Hecuba
to Mother Goose.

In this house, more than anywhere else, perhaps, have been heard these children's sayings, which have
so much grace, and which make one laugh with a laugh full of Thought. It was within these four forbid-
ding walls that a child of five years exclaimed one day: "Mother, a great girl has just told me that
I have only nine years and ten months more to stay here. How glad I am!"

Here, also, that this memorable dialogue occurred:

A MOTHER.--"What are you crying for, my child?"

THE CHILD--(six years old), sobbing.--"I told Alice I knew my French history. She says I don't
know it, and I do know it."

ALICE, larger (nine years)--"No, she. doesn't know it."

A MOTHER.--.--"How is that, my child?"

ALICE--"She told me to open the book anywhere and ask her any question there was in the book,
and she could answer it."

"Well?"

"She didn't answer it."

"Let us me. What did you ask her?"

"I opened the book anywhere, just as she said, and I asked her the first question I found."

"And what was the question?"

"It was What happened next?"

Here this profound observation was made about a rather dainty parrot, which belonged to a lady
boarder:

"Isn't she genteel., she picks off the top of her tart, like a lady."

From one of the tiles of the cloister, the following confession was picked up, written beforehand,
so as not to be forgotten, by a little sinner seven years old.

"Father, I accuse myself of having been avaricious.

"Father, I accuse myself of letting been adulterous.

"Father. I accuse myself of having raised my eyes towards the gentlemen."

Upon one of the grassy banks of this garden, the following story was improvised by a rosy mouth
six years old, and listened to by blue eyes four and five years old:

"There were three little chickens who lived in a country where there were a good many flowers.
They picked the flowers and they put them in their pockets After that, they picked the leans,
and they put them in their playthings. There was a wolf in the country, and there was a goal
many. wools; and the wolf was in the woods; and he ate up the little chickens."

And again. this other poem:

"There was a blow with a stick.

"It was Punchinello who struck the cat.

"That didn't do him any good; it did her harm.

"Then a lady put Punchinello in prison."

There, also, these sweet and heartrending words were said by a little foundling that the convent
was rearing through charity. She heard the others talking about their mothers, and she murmured
in her little place:

"For my part, my mother was not there when I was born."

There was a fat prioress, who was always to be seen hurrying about the corridors with her bunch of
keys, and whose name was Sister Agatha. The great big girls,--over ten, called her Agathocles.

The refectory, a large oblong room, which received light only from a cloister window with a fluted
arch opening on a level with the garden, was dark and damp, and, as the children said--full of
beasts. All the surrounding places furnished it their contingent of insects. Each of its four corners
had received in the language of the pupils, a peculiar and expressive name. There was the
Spiders' corner, the Caterpillars' corner, the Woodlice's corner, and the Crickets' corner. The
crickets' corner was near the kitchen, and was highly esteemed. It was not so cold as the others.
From the'refectory the names had passed to the school-room, and served to dis tinguish there, as
at the old Mazarin College, four nations. Each pupil belonged to one of these four nations accord-
ing to the corner of the refectory in which she sat at meals. One day, the archbishop, making his
pastoral visit, saw enter the class which he was passing, a pretty little blushing girl with beau-
tiful fair hair; and he asked another scholar, a charming fresh-checked brunette, who was near him:

"What is this little girl?"

"She is a spider, monseigneur."

"Pshaw!--and this other one?"

"She is a cricket."

"And that one?"

"She is a caterpillar."

"Indeed I And what are you?"

"I am a wood-louse, monseigneur."

Every house of this kind has its peculiarities. At the commencement of this century, Ecouen was one
of those serene and graceful places where, in a shade which was almost august, the childhood of young
girls was passed. At Ecouen, by way of rank in the procession of the Holy Sacrament, they made a dis-
tinction between the virgins and the florists, There were also "the canopies," and the "censers," the
former earning the cords of the canopy, the latter swinging censers before the Holy Sacrament. The
flowers returned of right to the florists. Four "virgins" walked at the head of the procession. On
the morning of the great day, it was not uncommon to hear the question in the dormitory.

"Who is a virgin?"

Madame Cowman relates this saying of a "little gir!" seven years old to a "great gir!" of sixteen
who took the head of the pro. cession, while she, the little one, remained in the rear. "You're a
virgin, you are; but I am not."



V. DISTRACTIONS



Above the door of the refectory was written in large black letters this prayer, which was called
the white Paternoster, and which possessed the virtue of leading people straight in to Paradise

"Little white paternoster, which God made, which God said, which God laid in Paradise. At night,
on going to bed, I finded (sic) three angels lying on my bed, one at the foot, two at the head,
the good Virgin Mary in the middle, who to me said that I should went to bed, and nothing sus-
pected. The good God is my father, the Holy Virgin is my mother, the three apostles are my bro-
thers, the three virgins are my sisters. The chemise in which God was born, my body is enveloped
in; the cross of Saint Marguerite on my breast is writ; Madame the Virgin goes away through the
fields, weeping for God, meeted Monsieur Saint John. Monsieur Saint John, where do you come
from? I come from Ave Salus. You have not seen the good God, have you? He is on the tree of the
cross, his feet hanging, his hands nailing, a little hat of white thorns upon his head. Whoever
shall say this three times at night, three times in the morning, will win Paradise in the end."

In 1827, this characteristic orison had disappeared from the wall under a triple layer of paper.
It is fading away to this hour in the memory of some young girls of that day, old ladies now.

A large crucifix hanging upon the wall completed the decoration of this refectory, the only door
of which, as we believe we have said, opened upon the garden. Two narrow tables, at the sides
of each of which were two Wooden benches, extended along the refectory in parallel lines from one
end to the other. The walls were white, and the tables black: these two mourning odours are the
only variety in convents, The meals were coarse, and the diet of even the children strict. A
single plate, meat and vegetables together, or salt fish, constituted the fare. This brief bill of
fare was, however, an exception, reserved for the scholars alone. The children ate in silence,
under the watchful eyes of the mother for the week, who, from time to time, if a fly ventured
to hum or to buzz contrary to rule, noisily opened and shut a wooden book. This silence was
seasoned with the Lives of the Saints, read in a loud voice from a little reading desk placed at
the foot of a crucifix. The reader was a large pupil, selected for the week. There were placed at
intervals along the bare table, glazed earthen bowls, in which each pupil washed her cup and dish
herself, and sometimes threw refuse bits, tough meat or tainted fish; this was punished. These
bowls were called water basins.

A child who broke the silence made a "cross with her tongue." Where? On the floor. She licked the
tiles. Dust, that end of all joys, was made to chastise these poor little rosebuds, when guilty of
prattling.

There was a book in the convent, which is the only copy ever printed, and which it is forbidden
to read. It is the Rules of St. Benedict; arcana into which no profane eye must penetrate. Nemo
regulas, sine constitutiones nostros, externis communicabit.

The scholars succeeded one day in purloining this book, and began to read it eagerly, a reading
often interrupted by fears of being caught, which made them close the volume very suddenly. But
from this great risk they derived small pleasure. A few unintelligible pages about the sins of
young boys, were what they thought "most interesting."

They played in one walk of the garden, along which were a few puny fruit trees. In spite of the
close watch and the severity of the punishments, when the wind had shaken the trees, they some-
times succeeded in furtively picking up a green apple, a half-rotten apricot, or a worm-eaten
pear. But I will let a letter speak, which I have at hand; a letter written twenty-five years
ago by a former pupil, now Madame the Duchess of --, one of the most elegant women of Paris. I
quote verbatim: --"We hide our pear or our apple as we can. When we go up to spread the covers on
our beds before supper, we put them under our pillows, and at night eat them in bed, and when we
cannot do that, we eat them in the closets." This was one of their most vivid pleasures.

At another time, also an the occasion of a visit of the archbishop to the convent, one of the
young girls, Mademoiselle Bouchard, a descendant of the Montmorencies, wagered that she would
ask leave of absence for a day, a dreadful thing in a community so austere. The wager was accepted.
but no one of those who took it believed she would dare do it. When the opportunity came as the
archbishop was passing before the scholars, Mademoiselle Bouchard, to the indescribable dismay
of her companions, left the rank, and said: "Monseigneur. leave of absence for a day.":Mademoi-
selle Bouchard was tall and fresh-looking, with the prettiest little rosy face in the world.
M. De Quelen smiled and said: "How now, my dear child, leave of absence for a day! Three days.
if you like: I grant you three days." The prioress could do nothing; the archbishop had spoken. A
scandal to the convent, yet a joyful thing for the school. Imagine the effect.

This rigid cloister was not, however, so well walled in, that the life of the passions of the
outside world, that drama. that romance even, did not penetrate it. To prove this, we will mere-
ly state briefly an actual, incontestable fact, which, however, has in itself no relation to our
story. not being attached to it even by a thread. We mention this merely to complete the picture
of the convent in the mind of the reader.

This woman, hardly thirty years old, a beautiful brunette, stared wildly with her large black
eyes. Was she looking at anything? It was doubtful. She glided along rather than walked; she
never spoke; it was not quite certain that she breathed. Her nostrils were as thin and livid
as if she had heaved her last sigh. To touch her hand was like touching snow. She had a strange
spectral grace. Wherever she came, all were cold. One day, a sister seeing her pass, said to
another, "She passes for dead." "Perhaps she is," answered the other.

Many stories were told about Madame Albertine. She was the eternal subject of curiosity of the
boarders. There was in the chapel a gallery, which ich was called l'Oeil-de-Boeuf. In this gal-
lery, which had only a circular openiing, an oeil-de-boeuf, Madame Albertine attended the of-
fices. She was usually alone there, because from this gallery, which was elevated, the preacher
or the officiating priest could be seen, which was forbidden to the nuns One day, the pulpit was
occupied by a young priest of high rank, the Duke de Rohan, peer of France, who was an officer
of the Mousquetaires Rouges in 1815 when he was Prince de Leon, and who died afterwards in 1830,
a cardinal and Archbishop of Besancon. This was the first time that M. de Rohan had preached
in the convent of the Petit Picpus. Madame Albertine ordinarily attended the sermons and the
offices with perfect calmness and complete silence. On that day, as soon as she saw M. de Rohan,
she half rose, and in all the stillness of the chapel, exclaimed: "What? Auguste?" The whole
community were astounded, and turned their heads; the preacher raised his eyes, but Madame
Albertine had fallen back into her motionless silence. A breath from the world without, a glimmer
of life, vanished, had passed for a moment over that dead and icy form, then all had vanished,
and the lunatic had again become a corpse.

These two words, however, set everybody in the convent who could speak to chattering. How
many things there were in that What? Auguste? How many revelations! M. de Rohan's name was,
in fact, Auguste. It was clear that Madame Albertine came from the highest society, since she
knew M. de Rohan; that she had occupied a high position herself, since she spoke of so great a
noble so familiarly; and that she had some connection with him, of relationship perhaps, but beyond
all doubt very intimate, since she knew his "pet name."

Two very severe duchesses, Mesdames de Choiseul and de Serent, often visited the community, to
which they doubtless were admitted by virtue of the privilege of Magnates mulieres, greatly to the terror
of the school. When the two old ladies passed, all the poor young girls trembled and lowered their
eyes.

M. de Rohan was, moreover, without knowing it, the object of the attention of the school-girls. He
had just at that time been made, while waiting for the episcopacy, grand-vicar of the Archbishop of
Paris. He was in the habit of coming rather. frequentlyto chant the offices in the chapel of the nuns
of the Petit Picpus. None of the young recluses could see him, on account of the serge curtain, but
he had a gentle, penetrating voice, which they came to recognise and distinguish. He had been a
mousquetaire, and then he was said to be very agreeable, with beautiful chestnut hair, which he wore
in curls, and a large girdle of magnificent moire, while his black cassock was of the most elegant
cut in the world. All these girlish imaginations were very much occupied with him.

No sound from without penetrated the convent. There was, however, one year when the sound of a flute
was heard. This was an event, and the pupils of the time remember it yet.

It was a flute on which somebody in the neighbourhood was playing. This flute always played the same
air, an air long since forgotten: My Zetulba, come reign o'er any soul, and they heard it two or three
times a day. The young girls passed hours in listening, the mothers were distracted, heads grew giddy,
punishments were exhausted. This lasted for several months. The pupils were all more or less in love
with the unknown musician. Each one imagined herself Zetulba. The sound of the flute came from the
direction of the Rue Droit Mur; they would have given everything, sacrificed everything, dared ever-
ything to see, were it only for a second, to catch a glimpse of the "young man" who played so delici-
ously on that flute, and who, without suspecting it, was playing at the same time upon all their hearts.
There were some who escaped by a back door, and climbed up to the third story on the Rue Droit
Mur, incurring days of suffering in the endeavour to see him. Impossible. One went so far as to
reach her arm above her head through the grate and wave her white handkerchief. Two were bolder
still. They found means to climb to the top of a roof, and risking themselves there, they finally suc-
ceeded in seeing the "young man." He was an old gentlemah of the emigration, ruined and blind,
who was playing upon the flute in his garret to while away the time.



VI. THE LITTLE CONVENT



THERE WERE in this inclosure of the Petit Picpus three perfectly distinct buildings, the Great Convent,
in which the nuns lived, the school building, in which the pupils lodged, and finally what was called
the Little Convent. This was a detached building with a garden, in which dwelt in common many old nuns
of various orders, remnants of cloisters destroyed by the revolution; a gathering of all shades black,
grey, and white, from all the communities and of all the varieties possible; what might be called, if
such a coupling of names were not disrespectful, a sort of motley convent.

From the time of the empire, all these poor scattered and desolate maidens had been permitted to take
shelter under the wings of the Benedictine-Bernardines. The government made them a small allowance;
the ladies of the Petit Picpus had received them with eagerness. It was a grotesque mixture. Each fol-
lowed her own rules. The school-girls were sometimes permitted, as a great recreation, to make them a
visit; so that these young memories have retained among others a reminiscence of holy Mother Bazile, of
holy Mother Scholastique, and of Mother Jacob.

One of these refugees found herself again almost in her own home. She was a nun of Sainte Aure, the only
one of her order who survived. The ancient convent of the Ladies of Sainte Aure occupied at the beginning
of the eighteenth century this same house of the Petit Picpus which after-wards belonged to the Benedict-
ines of Martin Verga. This holy maiden, too poor to wear the magnificent dress of her order, which was a
white robe with a scarlet scapular, had piously clothed a little image with it, which she showed compla-
cently, and which at her death she bequeathed to the house. In 1824, there remained of this order only
one nun; today there remains only a doll.

In addition to these worthy mothers, a few old women of fashion had obtained permission of the prioress,
as had Madame Albertine, to retire into the Little Convent. Among the number were Madame de Beaufort,
d'Hautpoul, and Madame la Marquise Dufresne. Another was known in the convent only by the horrible noise
she made in blowing her nose. The pupils called her Racketini.

About 1820 or 1821, Madame de Geniis, who at that time was editing a little magazine called the Intrepide,
asked permission to occupy a room at the convent of the Petit Picpus. Monsieur the Duke of Orleans recom-
mended her. A buzzing in the hive; the mothers were all in a tremor; Madame de Genlis had written romances;
but she declared that she was the first to detest them, and then she had arrived at her phase of fierce
devotion. God aiding, and the prince also, she entered.

She went away at the end of six or eight months, giving as a reason that the garden had no shade. The
nuns were in raptures. Although very old, she still played on the harp, and that very well.

On going away, she left her mark on her cell. Madame de Geniis was superstitious and fond of Latin. These
two terms give a very good outline of her. There could still be seen a few years ago, pasted up in a little
closet in her cell, in which she locked up her money and jewellery, these five Latin lines written in her
hand with red ink upon yellow paper, and which, in her opinion, possessed the virtue of frightening away
thieves:

Imparibus meritis pendent trig corpora ramis:
Dismas et Gesmas, media est diving potestas;
Alta petit Dismas, infelix, infima, Gesmas;
Nos et res nostras conservet summa potestas,
Hos versus dicas, ne to furto tug perdas.

These lines in Latin of the Sixth Century, raise the question as to whether the mimes of the two thieves of
Calvary were, as is commonly believed. Dimas and Gestas, or Dismas and Gesmas. The latter orthography would
make against the pretensions which the Vicomte de Gestas put forth, in the last century, to be a descendant
of the unrepentant thief. The convenient virtue attributed to these lines was, moreover, an article of faith
in the order of the Hosphallers.

The church of the convent, which was built in such a manner as to separate as much as possible the Great
Convent from the school, was, of course, common to the school, the Great Convent and the Little Convent. The
public even were admitted there by a beggarly entrance opening from the street. But everything was arranged
in such a way that none of the inmates of the cloister could see a face from without. Imagine a church, the
choir of which should be seized by a gigantic hand, and bent round in such a way as to form, not, as in or-
dinary churches, a prolongation behind the altar, but a sort of room or obscure cavern at the right of the
priest: imagine this room closed by the curtain seven feet high of which we have already spoken; heap toge-
ther in the shade of this curtain. on wooded stalls, the nuns of the choir at the left, the pupils at the
right. the shier servants and the novices in the ran:, and you will have some idea of the nuns of the Petit
Piq,us, attending elkint service. This cavern, which was called the choir, communicated with the cloister by
a narrow passage. The church received light from the garden. When the nuns were attending offices in which
their rules commanded silence, the public was advised of their presence only by the sound of the rising and
falling stall-seats.



VII. A FEW OUTLINES IN THIS SHADE



DURING the six years which separate 1819 from 1825, the prioress of the Petit Picpus was Mademoiselle De
Blemeur, whose religious name was Mother Innocent. She was of the family of Marguerite De Blemeur, author
of the Lives of the Saints of the Order of St. Benedict. She had been re-elected. A woman of about sixty,
short, fat, "chanting like a cracked kettle," says the letter from which we have already quoted; but an
excellent woman, the only one who was cheerful in the whole convent, and on that account adored.

Mother Innocent resembled her ancestor Marguerite, the Dacier of the Order. She was well-read, erudite,
learned, skilful, curious in history, stuffed with Latin, crammed with Greek, full of Hebrew, and rather
a monk than a nun.

The sub-prioress was an old Spanish nun almost blind Mother Cineres.

The most esteemed among the mothers were Mother Sainte Honorine, the treasurer, Mother Sainte Gertrude,
first mistress of the novices, Mother Sainte Ange, second mistress, Mother Annunciation, sacristan, Mother
Sainte Augustin, nurse, the only nun in the convent who was ill-natured; then Mother Sainte Mechthilde
(Mlle. Gauvain), quite young and having a wonderful voice; Mother Des Anges (Mlle. Drouet), who had been
in the Convent of the Filles-Dieu and in the convent of the Tresor, between Sainte Magny; Mother Sainte
Joseph (Mlle. de Cogolludo), Mother Saint Adelaide (Mlle. D'Auverney), Mother Mercy (Mile. de Cifuentes),
who could not endure the austerities, Mother Compassion (Mlle. De la Militiere, received at sixty in spite of
the rules, very rich); Mother Providence Mile. de Laudiniere) Mother Presentation (Mile. de Siguenza),
was prioress in 1847; finally, Mother Sainte Celigne (sister of the sculptor Ceracchi), since insane, Mother
Sainte Chantal (Mile. de Suzon), since insane.

There was still among the prettiest a charming girl of twenty-three from the Isle of Bourbon, a descendant
of the Chevalier Roze, who was called in the world Mademoiselle Roze, and who called herself Mother Assump-
tion.

Mother Sainte Mechthilde, who had charge of the singing and si hvee, choir, gladly availed herself of the
pupils. She usually took a complete gamut of them, that is to say, seven, from ten years old to sixteen
inclusive, of graduated voice and stature, and had them sing, standing in a row, ranged according to their
age from the smallest to the largest. This presented to the sight something like a harp of young girls,
a sort of living pipe of Pan made of angels.

Those of the servant sisters whom the pupils liked best were Sister Sainte Euphrasie, Sister Sainte Mar-
guerite, Sister Sainte Marthe, who was in her dotage, and Sister Sainte Michael, whose long nose made them
laugh.

All these women were gentle to all these children. The nuns were severe only to themselves. The only fires
were in the school building, and the fare, compared with that of the convent, was choice. Besides that, they
received a thousand little attentions. Only when a child passed near a nun and spoke to her, the nun never
answered.

This rule of silence had had this effect that, in the whole convent, speech was withdrawn from human crea-
tures and given to inanimate objects. Sometimes it was the church-bell that spoke, sometimes the gar-dener's.
A very sonorous bell, placed beside the portress and which was heard all over the house, indicated by its
variations, which were a kind of acoustic telegraph, all the acts of material life to be performed, and
called to the locutory, if need were, this or that inhabitant of the house. Each person and each thing had
its special ring. The prioress had one and one; the sub-prioress one and two. Six-five announced the reci-
tation, so that the pupils never said going to recitation, but going to six-five. Four-four was Madame de
Geniis' signal. It was heard very often. It is the four deuce, said the uncharitable. Nineteen strokes an-
nounced a great event. It was the opening of the close door, a fearful iron plate bristling with bolts which
turned upon its hinges only before the archbishop.

He and the gardener excepted, as we have said, no man entered the convent. The pupils saw two others, one
the almoner, the Abbe Banes old and ugly, whom they had the privilege of contemplating through a grate
in the choir; the other, the drawing-master, M. Ansiaux, whom the letter from which we have already quoted a
few lines, calls M. Anciot, and describes as a horrid old hunchback.

We see that all the men were select.

Such was this rare house.



VIII. POST CORDA LAPIDES



After sketching its moral features, it may not he useless to point out in a few words its material configura-
tion. The reader his already some idea of it.

The convent of the Petit Picpus Saint Antoine almost entirely filled the large trapezium which was formed by
the intersection of the Rue Polonceau, the Rue Droit Mur, the Petite Rue Picpus, and the built-up alley called
in the old plans Rue Aumarais. These four streets surrounded this trapezium like a ditch. The convent was com-
posed of several buildings and agarden. The principal building, taken as a whole, was an aggregation of hybrid
constructions which, in a bird's-eye view, presented with considerable accuracy the form of a gibbet laid down
on the ground.

The long arm of the gibbet extended along the whole portion of the Rue Droit Mur comprised between the Petite
Rue Picpus and the Rue Polonceau; the short arm was a high, grey, severe, grated facade which overlooked the
Petite Rue Picpus; the porte-cochere, No. 62, marked the end of it. Towards the middle of this facade, the dust
and ashes had whitened an old low-arched door where the spiders made their webs, and which was opened only
for an hour or two on Sunday and on the rare occasions when the corpse of a nun was taken out of the con-
vent. It was the public entrance of the church. The elbow of the gibbet was a square hall which served as gantry,
and which the nuns called the expense. In the long arm were the cells with mothers, sisters and novices. In the
short arm were the kitchens, the refectory lined with cells, and the church. Between the door, No. 62, and
the corner of the closed alley Aumarais, was the school, which could not be seen fwhich was outside. The rest
of the trapezium formed the garden, which was much lower than the level of the Rue Polonceau, so that the
walls were onsiderably higher on the inside than on the outside. The garden, which was slightly convex, had
in the centre, on the top of a a knoll, a beautiful fir, pointed and conical, from which parted, as from the cen-
tre of a buckler, four broad walks and, arranged two by two between the broad walks eight narrow ones, so
that, if the inclosure had been circular, the metrical plan of the walks would have resembled a cross placed
over a wheel. The walks, all extending to the very irregular walls of the garden, were of unequal length. They
were bordered with gooseberry bushes. At the further end ot the garden a row of large poplars extended
from the ruins of the old convent, which was at the corner of the Rue Droit Mur, to the house of the Little
Convent, which was at the corner of the alley Aumarais. Before the Little Convent, was what was called
the Littele Garden. Add to this outline a courtyard, all manner of angles made by detached buildings, prison
walls, no prospect and no neighbourhood, but the long black line of roofs which ran along the other side of
the Rue Polonceau, and you can form a complete image of what was, forty-five years ago, the house of the
Bernardines of the Petit Picpus. This holy house had been built on the exact site of a famous tennis-court,
which existed from the fourteenth to the sixteenth Century, and which was called the court of the eleven
thousand devils.

All these streets, moreover, were among the most ancient in Paris. These names, Droit Mur and Aumarais,
are very old; the streets which bear them are much older still. The alley Aumarais was called the alley
Maugout; the Rue Droit Mur was called the Rue des Eglantiers, for God opened the flowers before man cut
stone.



IX. A CENTURY UNDER A GUIMP



SINCE we are dealing with the details of what was formerly the convent of the Petit Picpus, and have dared
to open a window upon that secluded asylum, the reader wilt pardon us another little digression, foreign
to the object of this book, but characteristic and usful, as it latches us that the cloister itself has its
original characters.

There was in the Little Convent a centenarian who came from the Abbey of Fontevrault. Before the revolution
she had even been in society. She talked much of M. de Miromesnil, keeper of the seals under Louis XVI.,
and of the lady of a President Dupiat whom she had known very well. It was her pleasure and her vanity to
bring forward these names on all occasions. She told wonders of the Abbey of Fentevrault, that it was like
a city, and that there were streets within the convent.

She spoke with a Picardy accent which delighted the pupils. Every year she solemnly renewed her vows, and,
at the moment of taking. the oath, she would say to the priest: Monseigneur St. Francis gave it to Monsei-
gneur St. Julian, Monseigneur St. Julian gave it to Monseigneur St. Eusebius, Monseigneur St. Eusebius gave
it to Monseigneur St. Procopius, etc., etc.; so I give it to you, my father. And the pupils would laugh,
not in their sleeves, but in their veils, joyous little stifled laughs which made the mothers frown.

At one time, the centenarian was telling stories, she said that in her youth the Bernardins did not yield
the precedence to the Moutquetaires. It was a century which was speaking, but it was the eighteenth century.
She told of the custom in Champagne and Burgundy before the revolution, of the four wines. When a great
personage, a marshal of France, a prince, a duke or peer, pawn through a city of Burgundy or Champagne,
the corporation of the city waited on him, delivered an address, and presented him with four silver gob-
lets in which were four different wines. Upon the first goblet he read this inscription: Monkey wine,
upon the second: lion wine, upon the third: sheep wine, upon the fourth: swine wine. These four inscrip-
tions expressed the four descending degrees of drunkenness: the first, that which enlivens; the second,
that which irritates; the third, that which stupefies; finally the last, that which brutalises.

She had in a closet, under key, a mysterious object, which she cherished very highly. The rules of Font-
evrault did not prohibit it. She would not show this object to anybody. She shut herself up, which her
rules permitted, and hid herself whenever she wished to look at it. If she heard a step in the hall,
she shut the closet as quick as she could with her old hands. As soon as anybody spoke to her about this,
she was silent, although she was so fond of talking. The most curious were foiled by her silence, and
the most perservering by her obstinacy. This also was a subject of comment for all who were idle or list-
less in the convent. What then could this thing be, so secret and so precious, which was the treasure of
the centenarian? Doubtless, some sacred book, or some unique chaplet? or some proven relic? They lost
themselves in conjecture. On the death of the poor old woman they ran to the closet sooner, perhaps, than
was seemly, and opened it. The object of their curiosity was found under triple cloths, like a blessed
patine. It was a Faenza plate, representing Loves in flight, pursued by apothecaries' boys, armed with
enormous syringes. The pursuit is full of grimaces and comic postures. One of the charming little Loves
is already spitted. He struggles, shakes his little wings, and still tries to fly away, but the lad
capering about, laughs with a Satanic laughter. Moral:--love conquered by cholic. This plate, very cur-
ious, moreover, and which had the honour, perhaps, of giving an idea to Moliere, was still in existence
in September, 1845; it was for sale in a second-hand store in the Boulevard Beaumarchais.

This good old woman would receive no visit from the outside world, because, said she, the locutory is
too gloomy.



X. ORIGIN OF THE PERPETUAL ADORATION



THAT ALMOST SEPULCHRAL locutory, of which we have endeavoured to give an idea, is an entirely local
feature, which is not reproduced with the same severity in other convents. At the convent of the Rue du
Temple in particular, which, indeed, was of another order, the black shutters were replaced by brown
curtains, and the locutory itself was a nicely-floored parlour, the windows of which were draped with
white muslin, while the walls admitted a variety of pictures, a portrait of a Benedictine nun, with
uncovered face, flower-pieces, and even a Turk's head.

It was in the garden of the convent of the Rue du Temple, that that horse-chestnut tree stood, which
passed for the most beautiful and the largest in France, and which, among the good people of the eight-
eenth century, had the name of being the father of all the horse-chestnuts in the kingdom.

As we have said, this convent of the Temple was occupied fry the Benedictines of the Perpetual Adoration,
Benedictines quite distinct from those who spring from Citcaux. This order of the Perpetual Adoration is
not very ancient, and does not date back more than two hundred years. In 1649, the Holy Sacrament
was profaned twice, within a few days, in two churches in Paris, at Saint Sulpice, and at Saint Jean en
Greve--a rare and terrible sacrilege, which shocked the whole city. The Prior Grand-vicar of Saint Ger-
main des Pri's ordained a solemn procession of all his clergy, in which the Papal Nuncio officiated.
But this expiation was not sufficient for two noble women, Madame Courtin, Marquise de Bouts, and the
Countess of Chittouvieux. This outrage, committed before the "most august sacrament of the altar," al-
though transient, did not pass away from these two holy souls, and it seemed to them that it could be
atoned for only by a "Perpetual Adoration" in some convent. They both, one in 1652, the other in 1653,
made donations of considerable sums to Mother Catharine de Bar, surnamed of the Holy Sacrament, a Bene-
dictine nun, to enable her to found, with that pious object, a monastery of the order of Saint Benedict;
the first permission for this foundation was given to Mother Catharine de Bar,by M. de Metz, Abbe of
Saint Germainrwith the stipulation that no maiden shall be received unless she brings three hundred
livres of income, which is six thousand livres of principal." After the Abbe of Saint Germain, the
king granted letters patent, and the whole, abbatial charter and letters royal, was confirmed in 1654,
by the Chamber of Accounts and by the Parlement.

Such is the origin and the legal consecration of the establishment of Benedictines of the Perpetual
Adoration of the Holy Sacrament at Paris. Their first convent was "built new," Rue Cassette, with the
money of Mesdames de Bouts and de Chatouvieux.

This order, as we see, is not to be confounded with the Berm ditto called Cistercians. It sprang from
the Abbe of Saint Germain des Frig, in the same manlier as the Ladies of the Sacred Heart spring from
the General of the Jesuits and the Sisters of Charity from the General of the Lanrists.

It is also entirely different from the Bernardines of the Petit Picpus, whose interior life we have
been exhibiting. In 1657, Pope Alexander VII., by special bull, authorised the Bernardines of the
Petit Picpus to practise the Perpetual Adoration like the Benedictines of the Holy Sacrament. But
the two orders, none the less, remained distinct.



XI. END OF THE PETIT PICPUS



FROM THE TIME of the restoration, the convent of the Petit Picpus had been dwindling away; this was
a portion of the general death of the order, which, since the eighteenth century, has been going the
way of all religious orders. Meditation is, as well as prayer, a necessity of humanity; but, like
everything which the revolution has touched, it will transform itself, and, from being hostile to
social progress, will become favourable to it.

The house of the petit Picpus dwindled rapidly. In 1840, the little convent had disappeared; the
school had disappeared. There were no longer either the old women, or the young girls; the former
were dead, the latter had gone away. Volaverunt.

The rules of the Perpetual Adoration are so rigid that they inspire dismay; inclinations recoil,
the order gets no recruits. In 1845, it still gathered here and there a few sister servants; but
no nuns of the choir. Forty years ago there were nearly a hundred nuns, fifteen years ago there
were only twenty-eight. How many are there today? In 1847 the prioress was young, a sign that the
opportunity for choice was limited. She was not forty. As the number diminishes the fatigue in-
creases; the service of each becomes more difficult, thenceforth they saw the moment approaching
when there should be only a dozen sorrowful and bowed shoulders to bear the hard rules of Saint
Benedict. The burden is inflexible, and remains the same for the few as for the many. It weighs
down, it crushes. Thus they died. Since the author of this book lived in Paris, two have died.
One was twenty-five, the other twenty-three. The latter might say with Julia Alpinula: Hic jaceo,
Vixi annos viginti et tres. It was on account of this decay that the convent abandoned the edu-
cation of girls.

We could not pass by this extraordinary, unknown, obscure house without entering and leading in
those who accompany us, and who listen as we relate, for the benefit of some, perhaps, the mel-
ancholy history of Jean Valjean. We have penetrated into that community full of its old practices
which seem so novel today. It is the closed garden. Hortus conclusus. We have spoken of this
singular place with minuteness, but with respect, as much at least as respect and minuteness
are reconcilable. We do not comprehend everything, but we insult nothing. We are equally dis-
tant from the hosannahs of Joseph De Maistre, who goes so far as to sanctify the executioner,
and the mockery of Voltaire, who goes so far as to rail at the crucifix.

Illogicalness of Voltaire, be it said by the way; for Voltaire would have defended Jesus as he
defended Calas; and, for those even who deny the superhuman incarnation, what does the crucifix
represent? The assassinated sage.

In the nineteenth century the religious idea is undergoing a crisis. We are unlearning certain
things, and we do well, provided that while unlearning one thing we are learning another. No
vacuum in the human heart! Certain forms are torn down, and it is well that they should he,
but on condition that they are followed by reconstructions.

In the meantime let us study the things which are no more. It is necessary to understand them,
were it only to avoid than.. The counterfeits of the past take assumed names, and are fond of
calling themselves the future. That spectre, the past, not infrequently falsifies its pass-
port. Let us be ready for the snare. Let us beware. The past has a fare, superstition, and a
mask, hypocrisy. Let us denounce the face and tear off the mask.

As to convents, they present a complex question. A question of civilisation, which condemns
them; a question of liberty, which protects them.




　　　　　　　　BOOK SEVEN
　　　　　A PARENTHESIS



I. THE CONVENT AS AN ABSTRACT IDEA



THIS BOOK is a drama the first character of which is the Infinite.

Man is the second.

This being the case, when a convent was found on our path, we were compelled to penetrate it.
Why so? Because the convent, which is common to the East as well to the West, to ancient, as
well as to modern times, to Paganism as well as to Buddhism, to Mahometanism as well as to
Christianity, is one of the optical appliances turned by man upon the Infinite.

This is not the place for the development at length of certain ideas; however, while rigidly
maintaining our reservations, our limits of expression, and even our impulses of indignation;
whenever we meet with the Infinite in man, whether well or ill understood, we are seized with
an involuntary feeling of respect. There in the synagogue, in the mosque, a hideous side that
we detest, and in the pagoda and in the wigwam, a sublime aspect that we adore. What a subject
of meditation for the mind and what a limitless source of reverie is this reflection of God
upon the human wall!



II. THE CONVENT AS A HISTORICAL FACT



In the light of history, reason, and truth, monastic life stands condemned.

Monasteries, when they are numerous in a country, are knots in the circulation; encumbrances, cen-
tres of indolence where there should be centres of industry. Monastic communities are to the great
community what the ivy is to the oak, what the wart is to the human body. There propsperity and fat-
ness are impoverishment of the country. The monastic system, useful as it is in the dawn of civili-
sation, in effecting the abatement of brutality by the development of the spiritual, is injurious in
the manhood of nations. Especially when it relaxes and enters upon its period of disorganization,
the period in which we now see it, does it become harmful, for every reason that made it salutary
in its period of purity.

These withdrawals into convents and morasteries have had the day. Cloisters, although beneficial in
the first training of modem civilisation, cramped its growth, and are injurious to its develop-ment.
Regarded as an institution, and as a method of culture for man, monasteries, good in the tenth century,
were open to discussion in the fifteenth, and are detestable in the nineteenth. The leprosy of mona-
sticism has gnawed, almost to a skeleton, two admirable nations, Italy and Spain, one the light, and
the other the glory of Europe, for centuries; and, in our time, the cure of these two illustrious peo-
ples is beginning, thanks only to the sound and vigorous hygiene of 1789.

The convent, the old style convent especially, such as it appeared on the threshold of this century,
in Italy, Austria, and Spain, is one of the gloomiest concretions of the Middle Ages. The cloister,
the cloister as there beheld, was the intersecting point of multiplied horrors. The Catholic cloister,
properly so-called, is filled with the black effulgence of death.

The Spanish convent is dismal above all the rest. There, rise in the obscurity. beneath vaults fill-
ed with mist, beneath domes dim with thick shadow, massive Babel-like altars, lofty as cathedrals; there,
hang by chains in the deep gloom, immense white emblems of the crucifixion; there, are extended, naked
on the ebon wood, huge ivory images of Christ--more than bloody, bleeding--hideous and magnificent, their
bones protruding from the elbows, their knee-pads disclosing the strained integuments, their wounds re-
vealing the raw flesh--crowned with thorns of silver, nailed with nails of gold, with drops of blood in
rubies on their brows, and tears of diamonds in their eyes. The diamonds and the rubies seem real moist-
ure; and down below there, in the shadow, make veiled ones weep, whose loins are scratched and torn with
haircloth, and scourges set thick with iron points, whose breasts are bruised with wicker pads, and whose
knees are lacerated by the continual attitude of prayer; women who deem themselves wives; spectres that
fancy thernselms seraphim. Do these women think? No. Have they a will? No. Do they love? No. Do they
live? No. Their nerves have become bone; their bones have become rock. Their veil is the enwoven night.
Their breath, beneath that veil, is like some indescribable, tragic respiration of death itself. The
abbess, a phantom. sanctifies and terrifies them, The immaculate is there, austere to behold. Such are
the old convents of Spain--dens of terrible devotion, lairs inhabited by virgins, will and savage places.

Catholic Spain was more Roman than Rome herself. The Spanish was the model of the Catholic convent.
The air was redolent of the East. The archbishop as officiating kislaraga of heaven, locked in, and zeal-
ously watch'ed this seraglio of souls set apart for God. The nun was the odalisque, the priest was the
eunuch. The fervently devout were, in their dreams, the chosen ones, and were possessed of Christ. At
night, the lovely naked youth descended from the cross, and became the rapture of the cell. Lofty walls
guarded from all the distractions of real life the mystic Sultana, who had the Crucified for Sultan. A
single glance without was an act of perfidy. The in pace took the place of the leather sack. What they
threw into the sea in the East, they threw into the earth in the West. On either side. poor women wrung
their hands; the waves to those--to these the pit; there the drowned and here the buried alive. Monstrous
parallelism!

In our day, the champions of the Past, unable to deny these things, have adopted the alternative of smil-
ing at them. It has become the fashion, a convenient and a strange one, to suppress the revelations of
history, to invalidate the comments of philosophy, and to draw the pen across all unpleasant facts
and all gloomy inquiries. "Topics for declamation," throw in the skillful, "Declamation," echo the silly.
Jean Jacques, a declaimer: Diderot, a declaimer; Voltaire on Calas, Labarre. and Sirven, a declaimer! I
forget who it is who has lately made out Tacitus, too, a declaimer, Nero a victim, and "that poor Holo-
phernes," a man really to he pitied.

Facts, however, are stubborn, and hard to baffle. The author of this boo has seen, with his own eyes,
about twenty miles from Brussels, a specimen of the Middle Ages, within everybody's reach, at the Abbey
of Villars--the orifices of the secret dungeons in the middle of the meadow which was once the courtyard
of the cloister and, on the banks of the Dyle, four stone cells, half underground and half under water.
These were in pace. Each of these dungeons has a remnant of an iron wicket, a closet, and a barred
skylight, which, on the outside, is two feet above the surface of the river, and from the inside is six
feet above the ground. Four feet in depth of the river flows along the outer face of the wall; the
ground near by is constantly wet. This saturated soil was the only bed of the in pace occupant. In
one of these dungeons there remains the stump of an iron collar fixed in the wall; in another may be
seen a kind of square box, formed of four slabs of granite, too short for a human being to lie down
in, too low to stand in erect. Now, in this was placed a creature like ourselves, and then a lid of
stone was closed above her head. There it is. You can see it; you can touch it. These in pace; these
dungeons; these iron hinges; these metal collars; this lofty skylight, on a level with which the river
runs; this box of stone, covered by its lid of granite, like a sepulchre, with this difference, that
it shut in the living and not the dead; this soil of mud, this cess-pool; these oozing walls. Oh!
what declaimers!



III. UPON WHAT CONDITIONS WE CAN RESPECT THE PAST



MONASTICISM. such as it was in Spain, and such as it is in Thibet, is for civilisation a
kind of consumption. It stops life short. It, in one word, deimpulates. Monastic incarcera-
tion is castration. In Europe, it has been a scourge. Add to that, the violence so often done
to conscience; the ecclesiastical calling so frequently compulsory; the feudal system lean-
ing on the cloister; primogeniture emptying into the monastery the surplus of the family; the
ferocious cruelties which we have just described; the in pace; mouths closed, brains walled-up,
so many hapless intellects incarcerated in the dungeons of eternal vows; the assumption of the
gown, the burial of souls alive. Add these individual torments to the national degradation,
and, whoever you may be, you will find yourself shuddering at the sight of the frock and the
veil, those two winding sheets of human invention.

However, on certain points and in certain places, in spite of philosophy, and in spite of pro-
gress, the monastic spirit perseveres in the full blare of the nineteenth century, and a sing-
ular revival of asceticism, at this very moment, amazes the civilised world. The persistence of
superannuated institutions in striving to perpetuate themselves is like the obstinacy of a
rancid odour clinging to the hair; the pretension of spoiled fish that insists on being eaten,
the tenacious folly of a child's garment trying to clothe a man, or the tenderness of a corpse
returning to embrace the living.

"Ingrates!" exclaims the garment. "I shielded you in weakness. Why do you reject me now?"
"I come front the depths of the sois, says the fish; "I was once a rose," cries the odour; "I
loved you," murmurs the corpse; "I civilized you," says the convent.

To this there is but one reply, "In the past."

To dream of the indefinite prolongation of things dead and the government of mankind by em-
balming; to restore dilapidated dogmas, regild the shrines, replaster the cloisters, reconse-
crate the reliquaries, revamp old superstitions, replenish fading fanaticism, put new handles
in worn-out sprinkling brushes, reconstitute monasticism; to believe in the salvation of
society by the multiplication of parasites; to foist the past upon the present, all this seems
strange. There are, however, advocates for such theories as theseThey.e thesnists, men
of mind too, in other things, have a vol. simple process; they apply to the past a coating
of what. they term divine right, respect for our forefathers, time-honoured autbority, sacred
tradition, legitimacy; and they go about. shouting, "Here! take this, good people!" This
hind of logic was familiar to the ancients. Their soothsayers practiced it. Rubbing over a
black heifer with chalk, they would exclaim, "She is White." Bos cretatus.

As for ourselves, we distribute our respect, here and there, and spare the past entirely,
provided it will but consent to be dead. But, if it insist upon being alive, we attack it
and endeavour to kill it.

Superstitions, bigotries, hypocrisies, prejudices, these phantoms, phantoms though they be,
are tenacious of life; they have teeth and nails in their Shadowy substance, and we must
grapple with them, body to body, and make war upon them and that, too, without cessation;
for it is one of the fatalities of humanity to be condemned to eternal struggle with phan-
toms. A shadow is hard to seize by the throat and dash upon the ground.

A convent in France, in the high noon of the nineteenth century, is a college of owls
confronting the day. A cloister in the open act of asceticism in the full face of the city,
of '89, of 1830 and of 1848, Rome blooming forth in Paris, is an anachronism. In ordinary
times, to disperse an anachronism and cause it to vanish, one has only to make it spell
the year of our Lord. But, we do not live in ordinary times.

Let us attack, then.

Let us attack, but let us distinguish. The characteristic of truth is never to run into
excess. What need has she of exaggeration? Some things must be destroyed, and some things
must be merely cleared up and investigated. What power there is in a courteous and seri-
ous examination! Let us not therefore carry flame where light alone will suffice.

Well, then, assuming that we are in the nineteenth century, we are opposed, as a general
proposition, and in every nation, in Asia as well as in ,Europe, in Judea as well as in
Turkey, to ascetic seclusion in monasteries. He who says "convent" says "marsh." Their
putrescence is apparent, their stagnation is baleful, their fermentation fevers and in-
fects the nations, and their increase becomes an Egyptian plague. We cannot, without a
shudder, think of those countries where Fakirs, Bonzes, Santpns, Caloyers, Marabouts,
and Talapoins multiply in swarms, like vermin.

Having said this much, the religious question still remains. This question has some
mysterious aspects, and we must ask leave to look it steadily in the face.



IV. THE CONVENT VIEWED IN THE LIGHT OF PRINCIPLE



MEN COME TOGETHER and live in common. By what right? By virtue of the right of as-
sociation.

They shut themselves up. By what right? every man has to open or to shut his door.

They do not go out. By what right? By virtue of the right to go and come which implies
the right to stay at home. And what are they doing there, at home?

They speak in low tones; they keep their eyes fixed on the ground; they work. They give
up the world, cities, sensual enjoyments, pleasures, vanities, pride, interest. They
go clad in coarse woollen or coarse linen. Not one of them possesses any property what-
ever. Upon entering, he who was rich becomes poor, What he had, he gives to all. He
who was what is called a nobleman, a man of rank, a lord, is the equal of him who was
a peasant. The cell is the same for all, All undergo the same tonsure, wear the same
frock, eat the same black bread, sleep on the same straw, and die on the same ashes.
The same sack-cloth is on every back, the same rope about every waist. If it be the
rule to go bare-footed, all go with naked feet. There may be a prince among them; the
prince is a shadow like all the rest. Titles there are none. Family names even have
disappeared. They answer only to Christian names. All are bowed beneath the equality
of their baptismal names. They have dissolved the family of the flesh, and have formed,
in their community, the family of the spirit. They have no other relatives than all
mankind. They succour the poor, they tend the sick. They choose out those whom they
are to obey, and they address one another by the title: "Brother!"

You stop me, exclaiming: "But, that is the ideal monastery!"

It enough that it is a possible monastery, for me to take it into consideration.

Hence it is that, in the preceding book, I spoke of a convent with respect. The Mid-
dle Ages aside, Asia aside, and the historical and political question reserved, in
the purely philosophical point of view, beyond the necessities of militant polemics,
on condition that the monastery be absolutely voluntary and contain none but willing
devotees, I should always look upon the monastic community with a certain serious,
and, in some respects, deferential attention. Where community exists, there likewise
exists the true body politic, and where the latter is, there too is justice. The mon-
astery is the product of the formula: "Equality, Fraternity." Ohl how great is lib-
erty! And how glorious the transfiguration! Liberty suffices to transform the mon-
astery into a republic!

Let us proceed.

These men or women who live within those four walls, and dress in haircloth, are
equal in condition and call each other brother and sister. It is well, but do they
do aught else?

Yes.

What?

They gaze into the gloom, they kneel, and they join their hands.

What does that mean?



V. PRAYER



THEY PRAY.

To whom?

To God.

Pray to God, what is meant by that?

Is there an infinite outside of us? Is this infinite, one, inherent, permanent;
necessarily substantial, because it is infinite, and because, if matter were
wanting to it, it would in that respect be limited; necessarily intelligent,
because it is infinite, and because if it lacked intelligence, it would be
to that extent, finite? Does this infinite awaken in us the idea of essence,
while we are able to attribute to ourselves the idea of existence only? In
other words, is it not the absolute of which we are the relative?

At the same time, while there is an infinite outside of us, is there not an
infinite within us? These two infinites (fearful plural!) do they not rest
super-posed on one another? Does not the second infinite underlie the first,
so to speak? Is it not the mirror, the reflection, the echo of the first, an
abyss concentric with another abyss? Is this second infinite, intelligent also?
Does it think? Does it love? Does it will? If the two infinites be intelligent,
each one of them has a will principle, and there is a "me" in the infinite
above, as there is a "me" in the infinite below. The "me" below is the soul;
the "me" above is God.

To place, by process of thought, the infinite below in contact with the in-
finite above, is called "prayer."

Let us not take anything away from the human mind; suppression is evil. We
must reform and transform. Certain faculties of man are directed towards the
Unknown; thought, meditation, prayer. The Unknown is an Ocean. What is con-
science? It is the compass of the Unknown. Thought, meditation, prayer, these
are the great, mysterious pointings of the needle. Let us respect them.
Whither tend these majestic irradiations of the soul? into the shadow, that
is, towards the light.

The grandeur of democracy is that it denies nothing and renounces
nothing of humanity. Close by the rights of Man, side by side with them, at
least are the rights of the Soul.

To crush out fanaticisms and revere the Infinite, such is the law. Let us
not confine ourselves to falling prostrate beneath the tree of Creation and
contemplating its vast ramifications full of stars. We have a duty to per-
form, to cultivate the human soul, to defend mystery against miracle, to
adore the incomprehensible and reject the absurd; to admit nothing that is
inexplicable excepting what is necessary, to purify faith and obliterate
superstition from the face of religion, to remove the vermin from the gar-
den of God.



VI. ABSOLUTE EXCELLENCE OF PRAYER



As to methods of prayer, all are good, if they be but sincere. Turn your book
over and be in the infinite.

There is we are aware, a philosophy that denies the infinite: There is also
a philosophy, classed pathologically, which denies the sun; this philosophy
is called blindness.

To set up a sense we lack as a source of truth, is a fine piece of blind
man's assurance.

And the rarity of it consists in the haughty air of superiority and compas-
sion which is assumed towards the philosophy that sees God, by this philos-
ophy that has to grope its way. Jrmakes' one think of a mole exclaiming:
"How they excite my pity With their prate about a sun!"

There are, we know, illustrious and mighty atheists. These men, in fact,
led round again towards truth by their very power, are not absolutely
sure of being atheists; with them, the matter is nothing but a question
of definitions, and, at all events, if they do not believe in God, being
great minds, they prove God.

We hail, in them, philosophers, while, at the same time, inexorably dis-
puting their philosophy.

But, let us proceed.

An admirable thing, too, is the facility of settling everything to one's
satisfaction with words. A metaphysical school at the North, slightly
impregnated with the fogs, has imagined that it effected revolution in
the human understanding by substituting for the word "Force" the word
"Will."

To say, "the plant wills," instead of "the plant grows," would be indeed
pregnant with meaning if you were to add, "the universe wills." Why? Be-
cause this would flow from it: the plant wills, then it has a "me;"
the universe wills, then it has a God.

To us, however, who, in direct opposition to this school, reject nothing
a priori, a will in the plant, which is accepted by this school, appears
more difficult to admit, than a will in the universe,
which it denies.

To deny the will of the infinite, that is to say God, can be done only
on condition of denying the infinite itself. We have demonstrated that.

Denial of the infinite leads directly to nihilism. Everything becomes
"a conception of the mind,"

With nihilism no discussion is possible. For the logical nihilist doubts
the existence of his interlocuter, and is not quite sure he exists him-
self.

From his point of view it is possible that he may be to himself only a
"conception of his mind."

However, he does not perceive that all he has denied he admits in a
mass by merely pronouncing the word "mind."

To sum up, no path is left open for thought by a philosophy that makes
everything come to but one conclusion, the monosyllable "No."

To "No," there is but one reply: "Yes."

Nihilism has no scope. There is no nothing. Zero does not exist. Everything
is something. Nothing is nothing.

Man lives by affirmation even more than he does by bread.

To behold and to show forth, even these will not suffice. Philosophy
should be an energy; it should find its aim and its effect in the ameliora-
tion of mankind. Socrates should enter into Adam and produce Marcus
Aurelius--in other words, bring forth from the man of enjoyment, the man
of wisdom--and change Eden into the Lyceum. Science should be a cor-
dial, Enjoyment! What wretched aim, and what pitiful ambition! The brute
enjoys. Thought, this is the true triumph of the soul. To proffer thought to
the thirst of men, to give to all, as an elixir, the idea of God, to cause con-
science and science to fraternise in them, and to make them good men by
this mysterious confrontation--such is the province of true philosophy.
Morality is truth in full bloom. Contemplation leads to action. The abso-
lute should be practical. The ideal must be made air and food and drink to
the human mind. It is the ideal which has the right to say: Take of it, this is
my flesh, this is any blood. Wisdom is a sacred communion. It is upon that
condition that it ceases to be a sterile love of science, and becomes the one
and supreme method by which to rally humanity; from philosophy it is pro-
moted to religion.

Philosophy should not be a mere watch-tower, built upon mystery, from
which to gaze at ease upon it with no other result than to be a conveni-
ence for the curious.

For ourselves, postponing the development of our thought to some other oc-
casion, we will only say that we do not comprehend either man as a starting-
point, or progress as the goal, without those two forces which are the two
great motors, faith and love.

Progress is the aim, the ideal is the model.

What is the ideal? It is God.

Ideal, absolute, perfection, the infinite--these are identical words.



VII. PRECAUTIONS TO BE TAKEN IN CENSURE



HISTORY and philosophy have eternal duties, which are, at thg same time, sim-
ple duties--to oppose Caiaphas as bishop, Draco as judge, Trimalcion as legi-
slator, and Tiberius as emperor. This is clear, direct, and limpid, and pres-
ents no obscurity. But the right to live apart, even with its inconveniences
and abuses, must be verified and dealt with carefully. The life of the cenobite
is a human problem.

When we speak of convents, those scats of error but of inno-cence, of mistaken
views but of good intentions, of ignorance but of devotion, of torment but of
martyrdom, we must nearly always have "Yes" and "No" upon our lips.

A convent is a contradiction,--its object salvation, its means self-sacrifice.
The convent is supreme egotism resulting in supreme self-denial.

"Abdicate that you may reign" seems to be the device of monasticism.

In the cloister they suffer that they may enjoy--they draw a bill of exchange
on death--they discount the celestial splendour in terrestrial night. In the
cloister, hell is accepted as the charge made in advance on the future inheri-
tance of heaven.

The assumption of the veil or the frock is a suicide reimbursed by an eternity.

It seems to us that, in treating such a subject, raillery would be quite out
of place. Everything relating to it is serious, the good as well as the evil.

The good man knits his brows, but never smiles with the had man s smile. We
can understand anger but not malignity.



VIII. FAITH--LAW



A FEW words more.

We blame the Church when it is saturated with intrigues; We despise the spiri-
tual when it is harshly austere to the temporal; hat we honour everywhere, the
thoughtful man.

We bow to the man who kneels.

A faith is a necessity to man. Woe to him who believes nothing. A man is not
idle, because he is absorbed in thought. There is a visible labour and there
is an invisible labour.

To meditate is to labour; to think is to act.

Folded hands work, closed hands perform, a gaze fixed on heaven is a toil.

To meditate is to labour; to think is to act.

Folded arms work, closed hands perform, a gaze fixed on heaven is a toil.

Thales remained motionless for four years. He founded philosophy. In our eyes,
cenobites are not idlers, nor is the recluse a sluggard.

To think of the Gloom is a serious thing.

Without at all invalidating what we have just said, we believe that a perpetual
remembrance of the tomb is proper for the living. On this point, the priest and
the philosopher agree: We must die. The Abbe of La Trappe answers Horace.

To mingle with one's life a certain presence of the sepulchre is the law of the
wise man, and it is the law of the ascetic. In this relation, the ascetic and
the sage tend towards a common centre

There is a material advancement; we desire it. There is, also, a moral grandeur;
we hold fast to it.

Unreflecting, headlong minds say:

"of what use are those motionless figures by the side of mystery? What purpose
do they serve? What do they effect?"

Alas! in the presence of that obscurity which surrounds us and awaits us, not
knowing what the vast dispersion of all things will do with us, we answer:
There is, perhaps, no work more sublime than that which is accomplished by
these souls; and we add, There is no labour, perhaps, more useful.

Those who pray always are necessary to those who never pray.

In our view, the whole question is in the amount of thought that is mingled with
prayer.

Leibnitz, praying, is something grand; Voltaire, worshipping, is some-thing beau-
tiful. Deo erexit Voltaire.

We are for religion against the religions.

We are of those who believe in the pitifulness of orisons, and in the sublimity
of prayer.

Besides, in this moment through which we are passing, a moment which happily will
not leave its stamp upon the nineteenth century; in this hour which finds so many
with their brows abased so low and their souls so little uplifted, among so many of
the living whose motto is happiness, and who are occupied with the brief, mis-
shapen things of matter, whoever is self-exiled seems venerable to us. The mona-
stery is a renunciation. Self-sacrifice, even when misdirected, is still self-sac-
rifice. To assume as duty error has itspeculiar grandeur.

Considered in itself, ideally, and holding it up to truth, until it is impartially
and exhaustively examined in all its aspects, the monastery, and particularly
the convent--for woman suffers most under our system of society, and in this
exile of the cloister there is an element of protest--the convent, we repeat, has,
unquestionably, a certain majesty.

This monastic existence, austere and gloomy as it is, of which we have deline-
ated a few characteristics, is not life, is not liberty, for it is not the grave, for it
is not completion: it is that singular place, front which, as from the summit of a
lofty mountain, we perceive, on one side, the abyss in which we are, and, on the
other, the abyss wherein we are to be: it is a narrow and misty boundary; that
separates two worlds, at once illuminated and obscured by both, where .the en-
feebled ray of life commingles with the uncertain ray of death; it is the twilight
of the tomb.

For ourselves, we, who do not believe what these women believe, but live, like
them, by faith, never could look without a species of tender and religious awe, a
kind of pity still of envy, upon those devoted beings, trembling yet confident--
those humble yet august souls, who dare to live upon the very confines of the great
mystery, waiting between the world closed to them and heaven not yet opened; turned
towards the daylight not yet seen, with only the happiness of thinking that they
know where it is; their aspirations directed towards the abyss and the unknown,
their gaze fixed on the motionless gloom, kneeling, dismayed, stupefied, shudder-
ing, and half borne away at certain times by the deep pulsations of Eternity.




　　　　　　　　BOOK EIGHT
CEMETERIES TAKE WHAT IS GIVEN THEM



I. WHICH TREATS OF THE MANNER OF ENTERING THE CONVENT



INTO THIS HOUSE it was that Jean Valjean had, as Fauchelevent said, "fallen
from heaven."

He had crossed the garden wall at the corner of the Rue Polonceau.
That angels' hymn which he had heard in the middle of the night, was the
nuns chanting matins; that hall of which he had caught a glimpse in the
obscurity, was the chapel; that phantom which he had seen extended on the
floor was the sister performing the reparation; that bell the sound of which
had so strangely surprised him was the gardener's bell fastened to old
Fauchelevent's knee.

When Cosette had been put to bed, Jean Valjean and Fauchelevent
had, as we have seen, taken a glass of wine and a piece of cheese before a
blazing fire; then, the only bed in the shanty being occupied by Cosette,
they had thrown themselves each upon a bundle of straw. Before closing his
eyes, Jean Valjean had said: "Henceforth I must remain here." These words
were chasing one another through Fauchelevent's head the whole night.
To tell the truth, neither of them had slept.

Jean Valjean, feeling that he was discovered and Javert was upon his
track, knew full well that he and Cosette were lost should they return into
the city. Since the new blast which had burst upon him had thrown him
into this cloister, Jean Valjean had but one thought, to remain there. Now,
for one in his unfortunate position, this convent was at once the safest and
the most dangerous place, the most dangerous, for, no man being allowed
to enter, if he should be discovered, it was a flagrant crime, and Jean Val-
Jean would take but one step from the convent to prison; the safest, for if
he succeeded in getting permission to remain, who would come there to look
for him? To live in an impossible place; that would be safety.

For his part, Fauchelevent was racking his brains. He began by deciding that
he was utterly bewildered. How did Monsieur Madeleine come there, with such
walls! The walls of a cloister are not so easily crossed. tiw did he happen
to be with a child? A man does not scale a steep wall with a child in his
arm-s. Who was this child? Where did they both come Since Fauchelevent had
been in the convent, he had not heard a not scale a steep wall with a child
in his arms. Who was this child? Where did they both come from? Since Fauche-
levent had been in the convent, he had not heard a word from stir M--, and he
knew nothing of what had taken place. Father Madeleine wore that air which
discourages questions; and moreover Fauchelevcnt said to himself: "One does
not question a saint." To him Monsieur Madeleine had preserved all his pres-
tige. From some words that escaped from Jean Valjean, however, the gardener
thought he might conclude that Monsieur Madeleine had probably faded on ac-
count of the hard times, and that he was pursued by his creditors: or it
might be that he was compromised in some political affair and was concealing
himself; which did not at all displease Fauchelevent, who, like many of our
peasants of the north, had an old Bonapartist heart. Being in concealment,
Monsieur Madeleine had taken the convent for an asylum, and it was natural
that he should wish to remain there. But the mystery to which Fauchelevent
constantly returned and over which he was racking his brains.was, that Mon-
sieur Madeleine should be there, and that this little girl should be with him.
Fauchelevent saw them, touched them, spoke to them, and yet did not believe
it. An incomprehensibility had made its way into Fauchelevent's hut. Fauchel-
event was groping amid conjectures, but saw nothing clearly except this: Mon-
sieur l‘tadekme has saved my life. This single certainty was sufficient, and
determined him. He mid aside to himself: It is my turn now. He added in his
conscience: Monsieur Madeleine did not deliberate so long when the question was
about squeezing himself under the waggon to draw me out. He decided that he
would save Monsieur Madeleine.

He however put several questions to himself and made several answers: "After
what he has done for me, if he were a thief, would I save him? just the same.
If he were an assassin, would I save him? just the same. Since he is a saint,
shall I save him? just the same.

But to have him remain in the convent, what a problem was that! Before that
almost chimerical attempt, Fauchelevent did not recoil: this poor Picardy pea-
sant, with no other ladder than his devotion, his goodwill; a little of that
old country cunning, engaged for once in the. service of a generous intention,
undertook to scale the burs; sdnlittes of the cloister and the craggy escarp-
ments of the rules of St. Benedict. Fauchelevent was an old man who had been
selfish throughout his life, and who, near the end of his days. crippled. in-
firm, liming no interest longer in the world, found it sweet to It grateful,
and seeing a virtuous action to he done, threw himself into it like a man who,
at the moment of death, finding at hand a glad of some good wine which he had
never tasted, should drink it greedily. We might add that the air which he had
been breathing now for several years in this convent had destroyed his per-
sonality, and had at last rendered some good action necessary to him.

He formed his resolution then: to devote himself to Monsieur Madeleine.

We have just described him as a poor Picardy peasant. The description is
true, but incomplete. At the point of this story at which we now are, a
closer acquaintance with Fauchelevent becomes necessary. He was a peas-
ant, but he had been a notary, which added craft to his cunning, and
penetration to his simplicity. Having, from various causes, failed in his
business, from a notary he had fallen to a cartman and labourer. But, in
spite of the oaths and blows which seem necessary with horses, he had
retained something of the notary. He had some natural wit; he said neither
I is nor I has; he could carry on a conversation, a rare thing in a village;
and the other peasants said of him: he talks almost like a gentleman.
Fauchelevent belonged in fact to that class which the flippant and imperti-
nent vocabulary of the last century termed half-yeoman, half-clown; and
which the metaphors falling from the castle to the hovel, label in the dis-
tribution of the commonalty: half-rustic, half-citizen, pepper-and-salt.
Fauchelevent, although sorely tried and sorely used by Fortune; a sort of
poor old soul worn threadbare, was nevertheless an impulsive man, and had
a very willing heart; a precious quality, which prevents one from ever being
wicked. His faults and his vices, for such he had, were superficial; and fin-
ally, his physiognomy was one of those which attract the observer. That old
face had none of those ugly wrinkles in the upper part of the forehead which
indicate wickedness or stupidity.

At daybreak, having dreamed enormously, old Fauchelevent opened his eyes, and
saw Monsieur Madeleine, who, seated upon his bunch of straw, was looking at
Cosette as she slept. Fauchelevent half arose, and said:

"Now that you are here, how are you going to manage to come in?" This question
summed up the situation, and wakened Jean Valjean from his reverie.

The two men took counsel.

"To begin with," said Fauchelevent, "you will not set foot outside of this room,
neither the little girl nor you. One step in the garden, we are ruined."

"That is true."

"Monsieur Madeleine," resumed Fauchelevent, you have arrived at a very good
time; I mean to say very bad; there is one of these ladies dangerously sick.
On that account they do not look this way much. She must be dying. They are
saying the forty-hour prayers. The whole community is in derangement. That
takes up their attention. She who is about departing is a saint. in fact, we
are are all saints here; all the difference between them and me is, that they
say: our cell, and I say: my shanty. They are going to have the orison for the
dying, and then the orison for the dead. For today we shall be quiet here; and
I do not answer for to-morrow.

"However," observed Jean Valjean, "this shanty is under the corner of the wall;
it is hidden by a sort of ruin; there are trees, they cannot see it from the con-
vent."

"And I add, that the nuns never come near it."

"Well?" said jean Valjean.

The interrogation point which followed that well, meant: it seems to me that we can
remain here concealed. This interrogation point Fauchelevent answered

"There are the little girls."

"What little girls?" asked Jean Valjean.

As Fauchelevent opened his mouth to explain the words he had just tittered, a sing-
le stroke of a bell was heard.

The nun is dead," said he. "There is the knell."

And he motioned to Jean Valjean to listen.

The bell sounded a second time.

"It is the knell, Monsieur Madeleine. The bell will strike every minute, for twenty-
four hours, until the body goes out of the church. You see they play. In their recre-
ations, if a ball roll here, that is enough for them to come after it, in spite of
the rules, and rummage all about here. Those cherubs are little devils."

"Who?" asked Jean Valjean.

"The little girls. You would be found out very soon. They would cry, "What! a man!"
But there is no danger today. There will be no recreation. The day will he all pray-
ers. You hear the bell. As I told you, a stroke every minute. It is the knell."

"I understand, Father Fauchelevent. There are boarding scholars."

And Jean Valjean thought within himself:--

"Here, then, Cosette can be educated, too."

Fauchelevent exclaimed:--

"Zounds! they are the little girls for you! And how they would scream at sight of you!
and how they would run! Here, to he a man. is to have the plague. You see how they fast-
en a bell to my leg, as they would to a wild beast."

Jean Valjean was studying more and more deeply. "The convent would save us." murmured he.
Then he raised his voice: , "Yes, the difficulty is in remaining."

"No." said Fauchelevent, "it is to get out."

Jean Valjean felt his blood run cold.

"To get out?"

"Yes. Monsieur Madeleine, in order to come in, it is necessary that you should get out."

And, after waiting for a sound from the tolling bell to die away, Fauchelevent pursued:

"It would not do to have you found here like this. Whence do you come? for me you have
fallen from heaven, because I know you; but for the nuns, you must come in at the door."

Suddenly they heard a complicated ringing upon another bell.

"Oh!" said Fauchclevent, "that is the ring for the mothers. They are going to the chap-
ter. They always hold a chapter when anybody dies. She died at daybreak. It is usually
at daybreak that people die. But cannot you go out the way you came in? Let us sec; this
is not touestion you, but where did you come in?"

Jean Valjean became pale; the bare idea of climbing down again into that formidable
street. made him shudder. Make your way out of a forest full of tigers, and when out.
fancy yourself advised by a friend to return. Jean Valjean imagined all the police still
swarming in the quarter, officers on the watch. sentries everywhere, frightful fists
stretched out towards his collar,--Javert, perhaps, at the corner of the square.

"Impossible," said he. "Father Fauchelevent, let it go that I fell from on high."

"Ah! I believe it, I believe it," replied Fauchelevent, "You have no need to tell me
so. God must have taken you into his hand, to have a close look at you, and then put
you down. Only he meant to put you into a monastery; he made a mistake. Hark! another
ring; that is to warn the porter to go and notify the m nn so that they may go and no-
tify the death-physician. so that he may come and see that there is really a dead woman.
All that is the ceremony of dying. These good ladies do not like this visit very much.
A physician believes in nothing. He lifts the veil. lie even lifts something else, sometimes.
How soon they have notified the inspector, this time! What can be the matter? Your
little one is asleep yet. What is her name?'

"Cosette."

"She is your girl? that is to say: you should be her grandfather?"

"Yes."

"For her, to get out will be easy. I have my door, which opens into the court. I
knack; the porter opens. I have my basket on my back; the little girl is inside; I
go out. Father Fauchelevent goes out with his basket--that is all simple. You will
tell the little girl to keep very still. She will. be under cover. I will leave her
as soon as I can, with a good old friend of mine, a fruiteress, in the Rue du Che-
min Vert, who is deaf, and who has a little bed. I will scream into the fruiteress's
ear that she is my niece, and she must keep her for me till tomorrow, Then the lit-
tle girl will come back with you; for I shall bring you back. It must be done. But
how are you going to manage to get out?"

Jean Valjean shook his head.

"Let nobody see me, that is all, Father Fauchthent. Find some means to get me out,
like Cosette, in a basket, and under cover.'

Fauchekent scratched the tip of his car with the middle finger of his left hand--a
sign of serious embarrassment.

A third ring made a diversion.

"That is the death-physician going away." said Fauchelevent. "He has looked, and said
she is dead; it is right. When the inspector has vised the passport for paradise, the
undertaker sends a coffin. If it is a mother, the mothers lay her out if it is a sister,
the sisters lay her out. After which, I nail it up. That's a part of my gardening. A
gardener is something of a gravedigger. They put her in a low room in the church which
communkates with the street, and where no num can enter crept the death-physician. I do
not count the bearers and myself for men In that room I nail the coffin. The bearers
come and take her, and whip-up, driver: that is the way they go to heaven. They bring
in a box with nothing in it, they carry it away with something inside. 'That is what
all interment is. De profundis."

A ray of the rising sun beamed upon the face of the sleeping Cosette, who half-opened
her mouth dreamilv, seeming like an angel drinking in the light. Jean Valjean was look-
ing at her. He no longer heard Fauchtlevent.

Not being heard is no reason for silence. The brave old gardener quietly continued his
garrulous rehearsal.

"The grave is at the Vaugirard cemetary They pretend that this Vaugirard cemetery is
going to be suppressed. It is an ancient cemetery, which is not according to the regu-
lations, which does not wear the uniform, and which is going to be retired. I am sorry
for it, for it is inconvenient. I have a friend there--Father Mestienne, the grave-digger.
The nuns here have the privilege of being carried to that cemetery at nightfall. There
is an order of the Prefecture. expressly for them. But what events since yesterday?
Mother Crucifixion is dead, and Father Madeleine"---

"Is buried," said Jean Valienn sadly smiling.

Faucheletent echoed the word.

"Really, if you were here for good, it would he a genuine buria!"

A fourth time the bell rang out. Fauchelevent quickly took down the knee-piece and bell
from the nail, and buckled it on his knee.

"This time, it is for me. The mother prioress wants me. Well! I am pricking myself with
the tongue of my buckle. Monsieur Madeleine, do not stir, but wait for me. There is some-
thing new. If you are hungry, there is the wine, and bread and cheese."

And he went out of the hut, saying: "I am coming, I am coming."

Jean Valjean saw him hasten across the garden, as fast as his crooked leg would let him,
with side glances at his melons the while.

In less than ten minutes, Father Fauchelevent, whose bell put the nuns to flight as he
went along, rapped softly at a door, and a gentle voice answered--Forever, Forever! that
is to say, Come in.

This door was that of the parlour allotted to the gardener, for use when it was necessary
to communicate with him. This parlour was near the hail of the chapter. The prioress,
seated in the only chair in the parlour, was waiting for Fauchelevent.



II. FAUCHELEVENT FACING THE DIFFICULTY



A SERIOUS and troubled bearing is peculiar, on critical occasions, to certain characters
and certain professions, especially priests and monastics. At the moment when Fauchelevent
entered, this double sign of preoccupation marked the countenance of the prioress, the
charming and learned Mademoiselle de Blemeur, Mother Innocent, who was ordinarily cheerful.

The gardener made a timid bow, and stopped at the threshold of the cell. The prioress, who
was saying her rosary, raised her eyes and said:

"Ah! it is you, Father Fauvent."

This abbreviation had been adopted in the convent.

Fauchelevent again began his bow.

"Father Fauvent, I have called you."

"I am here, reverend mother."

"I wish to speak to you."

"And I, for my part," said Fauchelevent, with a boldness at which he was alarmed himself,
"I have something to say to the most reverend mother."

The prioress looked at him.

"Ah, you have a communication to make to me."

"A petition!"

"Well, what is it?"

Goodman Fauchelevent, ex-notary, belonged to that class of peasants who are never discon-
certed. A certain combination of ignorance and skill is very effective; you do not suspect
it, and you accede to it. Within little more than two years that he had lived in the con-
vent, Fauchelevent had achieved a success in the community. Always alone, and even while
attending to his garden, he had hardly anything to do but to be curious. Being, as he was,
at a distance from all these veiled women, going to and fro, he saw before him hardly more
than a fluttering of shadows. By dint of attention and penetration, he had succeeded in
clothing all these phantoms with flesh, and these dead were alive to him. He was like a
deaf man whose sight is extended, and like a blind man whose hearing is sharpened. He had
applied himself to unravelling the meaning of the various rings, and had made them out;
so that in this enigmatic and taciturn cloister, nothing was hidden from him; this sphynx
blabbed all her secrets in his ear. Fauchelevent, knowing everything, concealed everything.
That was his art. The whole convent thought him stupid--a great merit in religion. The
mothers prized Fauchelevent. He was a rare mute. He inspired confidence. Moreover, he
was regular in his habits, and never went out except when it was clearly necessary on
account of the orchard and the garden. This discretion in his conduct was counted to
his credit. He had, nevertheless, learned the secrets of two men; the porter of the
convent, who knew the peculiarities of the parlour, and the grave-digger of the ceme-
tery, who knew the singularities of burial: in this manner, he had a double-light in
regard to these nuns--one upon their life, the other upon their death. But he did not
abuse it. The congregation thought much of him, old, lame, seeing nothing, probably a
little deaf--how many good qualities! It would have been difficult to replace him.

The goodman, with the assurance of one who feels that he is appreciated, began before
the reverend prioress a rustic harangue, quite diffuse and very profound. He spoke at
length of his age, his infirmities, of the weight of years henceforth doubly heavy
upon him, of the growing demands of his work, of the size of the garden, of the nights
to be spent, like last night for example, when he had to put awnings over the melons
on account of the moon; and finally ended with this: "that he had a brother--(the pri-
oress gave a start)--a brother not young--(second start of the prioress, but a reas-
sured start)--that if it was desired, this brother could come and live with him and
help him; that he was an excellent gardener; that the community would get good ser-
vices from him, better than his own; that, otherwise if his brother were not admitted,
as he, the oldest, felt that he was broken down, and unequal to the labour, he would
be obliged to leave, though with much regret; and that his brother had a little girl
that he would bring with him, who would be reared under God in the house, and who,
perhaps,--who knows?--would someday become a nun.

When he had finished, the prioress stopped the sliding of her rosary through her fing-
ers, and said:

"Can you, between now and night, procure a strong iron bar?"

"For what work?"

"To he used as a lever?"

"Yes, reverend mother," answered Fauchelevent.

The prioress, without adding a word, arose, and went into the next room, which was the
halt of the chapter, where the vocal mothers were probably assembled: Fauclielevent
remained alone.



III. MOTHER INNOCENT



ABOUT a quarter of an hour elapsed. The prioress returned and her seat.

Both seemed preoccupied. We report as well as we can the that followed.

"Father Fauvent?"

"Reverend mother?"

"You are familiar with the chapel?"

"I have a little box there to go to mass, and the offices."

"And you have been in the choir about your work?"

"Two or three times."

"A stone is to be raised."

"Heavy?"

"The slab of the pavement at the side of the altar."

"The stone that covers the vault?"

"Yes."

"That is a piece of work where it would be well to have two men."

"Mother Ascension, who is as strong as a man, will help you."

"A woman is never a man."

"We have only a woman to help you. Everybody does what he can. Because Dom Mabillon
gives four hundred and seventeen epistles of St. Bernard, and Merlonus Horstius gives
only three hundred and sixty-seven, I do not despise Merlonus Horstius."

"Nor I either."

"Merit consists in work according to our strength. A cloister is not a ship-yard."

"And a woman is not a man. My brother is very strong."

"And then you will have a lever."

"That is the only kind of key that fits that kind of door."

"There is a ring in the stone."

"I will pass the lever through it."

"And the stone is arranged to turn on a pivot."

"Very well, reverend mother, I will open the vault."

"And the four mother choristers will assist you."

"And when the vault is opened?"

"It must be shut again."

"Is that all?"

"No."

"Give me your orders, most reverend mother."

"Fauvent, we have confidence in you."

"I am here to do everything."

"And to keep silent about everything."

"Yes, reverend mother."

"When the vault is opened

"I will shut it again."

"But before--"

"What, reverend mother?"

"Something must be let down."

There was silence. The prioress, after a quivering of the under-lip which resembled hes-
itation, spoke:

"Father Fauvent?"

"Reverend mother?"

"You know that a mother died this morning."

"No."

"You have not heard the bell then?"

"Nothing is heard at the further end of the garden."

"Really?"

"I can hardly distinguish my ring."

"She died at daybreak."

"And then, this morning, the wind didn't blow my way."

"It is Mother Crucifixion. One of the blest."

The prioress was silent, moved her lips a moment as in a mental orison, and resumed:

"Three years ago, merely from having seen Mother Crucifixion at prayer, a Jansenist,
Madame de Bethune, became orthodox."

"Ah! yes, I hear the knell now, reverend mother."

"The mothers have carried her into the room of the dead, which opens into the church."

"I know."

"No other man than you can or must enter that room. Be watchful. It would not look well
for a man to enter the room of the dead!"

"Oftener."

"Eh?"

'Oftener?"

"What do you say?"

"I say oftener."

"Oftener than what?"

"Reverend mother, I don't say oftener than what; I say oftener."

"I do not understand you. Why do you say oftener?"

"To say as you do, reverend mother."

"But I did not say oftener."

"You did not say it; but I said it to say as you did."

The clock struck nine.

"At nine o'clock in the morning, and at all hours, praise and adoration to the most
holy sacrament of the altar," said the prioress.

"Amen!" said Fauelmlevent.

The clock struck in good time. It cut short that Oftener. It is proable, that without
it the prioress and Fauchelevent would never have got out of the snarl.

Fauchelevent wiped his forehead.

The prioress again made a little low murmur, probably sacred, then raised her voice.

"During her life, Mother Crucifixion worked conversions; after her death, she will
work miracles."

"She will!" answered Fauchelevent, correcting his step, and mak-ing an effort not to
blunder again.

"Father Fauvent, the community has been blessed in Mother Crucifixion. Doubtless, it
is not given to everybody to die like Cardinal de Benin; saying the holy mass, and to
breathe out his soul to God, pronouncing these words: Hanc igitur oblationem. But with-
out attaining to so great happiness, Mother Crucifixion had a very precious death. She
had her conscio-usness to the last. She spoke to us, then she spoke to the angels. She
gave us her last commands. If you had a little more faith, and if you could have been
in her cell, she would have cured your leg by touching it. She smiled. We felt that
she was returning to life in God. There was something of Paradise in that death."

Fauchelevent thought that he had been listening to a prayer. "Amen!" said be.

"Father Fauvent, we must do what the dead wish."

The prioress counted a few beads on her chaplet. Fauchelevent `vas silent. She contin-
ued:

"I have consulted upon this question several ecclesiastics labouring in Our Lord, who
are engaged in the exercise of clerical functions, and with admirable results."

"Reverend mother, we hear the knell much better here than in the garden."

"Furthermore, she is more than a departed one: she is a saint." "Like you, reverend mo-
ther."

"She slept in her coffin for twenty years, by the express permission of our Holy Father,
Pius VII."

"He who crowned the Bonaparte."

For a shrewd man like Fauchdevent, the reminiscence was unto-ward. Luckily. the prioress,
absorbed in her thought... did not hear him. She continued:

"Father Fauvent?"

"Reverend mother?"

"St. Diaodoris, Archbishop of Cappadocia. desired That this single word might be written
upon his tomb::Icarus, which signifies a worm of the dust; that was done. Is it true'?"

"Yes, reverend mother."

"The blessed Mezzocane, Abbe of Aquila, desired in be buried under the gibbet; that was
done."

"It is true."

"St. Terence, Bishop of Ostia, at the mouth of the Tiber, requested to have engraved upon
his tomb the mark which was put upon the graves of parricides, in the hope that travellers
would spit upon his grave. That was done. We must obey the dead."

"So be it."

"The body of Bernard Guidonis, who was born in Prance near Roche Abate; was, as he has or-
dered, and in spite of the king of Castile, brought to the church of the Dominicans at
Limoges, although Guidonis was Bishop of Tuy, in Spain. Can this be denied?"

The fact is attested by Plantavit de la Posse.

"No, indeed, reverend mother."

A few beads of her chaplet were told over silently. The prioress went on: -

"Father Foment, Mother Crucifixion will be buried in the coffin in which she has slept for
twenty years."

"That is right."

"It is a continuation of sleep."

"I shall have to nail her up then in that coffin."

"Yes."

"And we will put aside the undertaker's coffin r

"Precisely."

."I am at the disposal of the most reverend community." "The four mother choristers will
help you."

"To nail up the coffin I don't need them."

"No. To let it down."

"Where?"

"Into the vault."

"What vault?"

"Under the altar."

Fauchelevent gave a start.

"The vault under the altar!"

"Under the altar,"

"But--"

"You will have an iron bar."

"Yes, but--"

"You will lift the stone with the bar by means of the ring."

"But--"

"We must obey the dead. To he buried in the vault under the altar of the chapel; not to go
into profane ground, to remain in death where she prayed in life; this was the last request
of Mother Crucifixion. She has asked it, that is to say, commanded it."

"But it is forbidden."

"Forbidden by men, enjoined by God."

"If it should come to be known?"

"We have confidence in you."

"Oh! as for me, l am like a stone in your wall."

"The chapter has assembled. The vocal mothers, whom I have just consulted again and who are
now deliberating, have decided that Mother Crucifixion should be, according to her desire,
buried in her Coffin under our altar. Think, Father Fauyent, if there should be miracles per-
formed here! what glory under God for the community! Miracles spring from tombs."

"But, reverend Mother, if the agent of the Health Commission--" "St. Benedict II., in the
matter of burial, resisted Constantine Pogonatus."

"However, the Commissary of Police--"

"Chonodemaire, one of the seven German kings who entered Gaul in the reign of Constantin.
expressly recognised the right of conventuals to be inhumed in religion, that is to say,
under the altar."

But the Inspector of the Prefecture--"

"The world is nothing before the cross. Martin, eleventh general of the Carthusian, gave to
his order this device: Stat crux dum volvitur orbis."

"Amen," said Pauchelevent, imperturbable in this method of extricating himself whenever he
heard any Latin.

Any audience whatever is sufficient for one who has been too long silent. On the day that
the rhetorician Gymnastoras came out of prison, full of suppressed dilemmas and syllogisms,
he stopped before the first tree he met with, harangued it, and put forth very great efforts
to convince it. The prioress, habitually subject to the constraint of silence, and having a
surplus in her reservoir, rose, and exclaimed with the loquacity of an opened mill-sluice:

"I have on my right Benedict, and on my left Bernard. What is Bernard? he is the first Abbot
of Clainnux. Pontaines in Burgundy is blessed for having been his birthplace. His father's
name was Tecefin, and his mother's Alethe. He began at Citcaux, and ended at Clairvaux; he
was ordained abbot by the Bishop of Chalons-surSaone. Guillaume dc Champcaux; he had seven
hundred novices, and founded a hundred and sixty monasteries; he overthrew Abellard at the
Council of Sens in 1140, and Peter de Bruys and Henry his disciple, and another heterodox
set called the Apostolicals; he confounded Arnold of Brescia, struck monk Ralph dumb, the
slayer of .the Jews, presided in 1148 over the Council of Rheims, caused Gilbert dela Pint,
Bishop of Poitiers, to be condemned, caused Eon de l'Etoile to be condemned, arranged the
differences of princes, advised the King, Louis the Young, counselled Pope Eugenius regula-
ted the' emple, preached the Crusade, performed two hundred and fifty miracles in his life-
time, and as many as thirty-nine in one day. What is Benedict? he is die patriarch of Monte
Cassino; he is the second founder of the Claustral Holiness, he is the Basil of the West.
His order has produced forty popes. two hundred cardinals, fifty patriarchs, sixteen hundred
archbishops, four thousand six hundred bishops, four emperors, twelve empresses, forty-six
kings. forty-one queens, three thousand six hundred canonised saints, and has existed for
fourteen hundred years. On one side, St. Bernard; on the other the agent of the Health Com-
mission! On one side, St. Benedict; on the other the sanitary inspector! The state, Health
Department, funeral regulations, rules, the administration, do we recognise these things? Any-
body would be indignant to see how we are treated. We have not even the right to give our
dust to Jesus Christ! Your sanitary commission is an invention of the revolution. God sub-
ordinated to the commissary of police; such is this age. Silence, Fauvent!"

Fauchelevent, beneath this douche, was not quite at ease. The prioress continued:

The right of the convent to burial cannot be doubted by anybody. There are none to deny it
save fanatics and those who have gone astray. We live in times of terrible confusion. Peo-
ple are ignorant of what they ought to know, and know those things of which they ought to
be ignorant. They are gross and impious. There are people in these days who do not disting-
uish between the great St. Bernard and the Bernard entitled des Pauvres Catholiques, a cer-
tain good ecclesiastic who lived in the thirteenth century. Others blaspheme so far as to
couple the scaffold of Louis XVI. with the cross of Jesus Christ. Louis XVI. was only a king.
Let us then take heed for God! There are no longer either just or unjust. Voltaire's name
is known, and the name of Cesar de Bus is not known. Nevertheless Caesar de Bus is in bliss
and Voltaire is in torment. The last archbishop, the Cardinal of Perigord, did not even know
that Charles de Gondren sue. eeeded B6rulle, and Francis Bourgoin, Gondren, and Jean
Franet:ds Senault, Bourgoin, and Father de Sainte-if aithe, Jean Francois &mutt. The name
of Father Cotton is known, not because he was one of the three who laboured in the founda-
tion of the OratorY, but because be was the subject of an oath for the Huguenot King Henry
IV. St. Francois de Saks is popular with the world, because he cheated at play. And then
religion is attacked. Why? Because there have been wicked priests, because Sagittaire,
Bishop of Gap, was at brother of Salon°, Bishop of Embrun, and both were followers °'
Mammon. What does that amount to? Does that prevent Martin de Tours from being a saint
and having given hall his cloak to a poor man? The saints are persecuted. Men shut their
eyes to the truth. Darkness becomes habitual. The most savage beasts are blind beasts. Nobo-
dy thinks of hell in earnest. Oh! the wicked people! By the king, now means. by the revo-
lution. Men no longer know what is due to the living or the dead. Holy death is forbidden.
The sepulchre is a civil affair. This is horrible. St. Leo II. wrote two letters expressly,
one to Peter Notaire, the other to the King of the Visigoths, to combat and overthrow,
upon questions touching the dead, the authority and the supremacy of the emperor. Waiter,
Bishop of Chalons, in this matter made opposition to Otho, Duke of Burgundy. The ancient
magistracy acceded to it. Formerly we had votes in the chapter concerning secular af-
fairs. The Abbot of Citeaux, general of the order, was hereditary counsellor of the
Parlement of Burgundy. We do with our dead as we please. Is not the body of St. Bene-
dict himself in France in the Abbey of Fleury, called St. Benedict sur Loire, though
he died in Italy, at Monte Cassino, on a Saturday, the 21st of the month of March in
the year 543! All this is incontestable. I abhor the Psallants, I hate the Prayers,
I execrate heretics, but I should detest still more whoever might sustain the contrary
of what I have said. You have only to read Arnold Wion Gabriel Bucelin, Trithemius,
Maurolicus, and Dom Luke d'Achery."

The prioress drew breath, then turning towards Fauchelevent:

"Father Fauvent, is it settled?"

"It is settled, reverend mother."

"Can we count upon you?"

"I shall obey."

"It is well."

"I am entirely devoted to the convent."

"It is understood, you will close the coffin. The sisters will carry it into the
chapel. The office for the dead will be said. Then they will return to the cloister.
Between eleven o'clock and midnight, you will come with your iron bar. All will be
done with the greatest secrecy. There will be in the chapel only the four mother
choristers, Mother Ascension, and you."

"And the sister who will be at the post."

"She will not turn."

"But she will hear."

"She will not listen; moreover, what the cloister knows the world does not know."

There was a pause again. The prioress continued:

"You will take off your bell. It is needless that the sister at the post should per-
ceive that you are there."

"Reverend mother?"

"What, Father Fauvent?"

"Has the death-physician made his visit?"

"He is going to make it at four o'clock today. The bell has been sounded which sum-
mons the death-physician. But you do not hear any ring then?"

"I only pay attention to my own."

"That is right, Father Fauvent."

"Reverend mother, I shall need a lever at least six feet long."

"Where will you get it?"

"Where there are gratings there are always iron bars. I have my heap of old iron at
the back of the garden."

"About three-quarters of an hour before midnight; do not forget."

"Reverend mother?"

"What?"

"if you should ever have any other work like this, my brother is very strong. A Turk"

"You will do it as quickly as possible."

"I cannot go very fast. I am infirm; it ikon that account I need help. I limp?

To limp is not a crime, and it may be a blessing. The Emperor Henry IL, who fought the
Antipope Gregory, and re-etsablished Benedict VIII., has two surnames: the Saint and
the Lame."

"Two surtouts are very good," murmured Fauchelevent, who, in reality, was a little hard
of hearing.

"Father Fauvent, now I think of it, we will take a whole hour. It is not too much. Beat
the high altar with the iron bar at eleven o'clock. The office commences at midnight.
It must all be finished a good quarter of an hour before."

"I will do everything to prove my zeal for the community. This is the arrangement. I
shall nail up the coffin. At eleven o'clock precisely I will be in the chapel. The moth-
er choristers will be there. Mother Ascension will be there. Two men would be better.
But no muted I shall have my lever. We shall open the vault, let down the coffin, and
dose the vault again. After which, there will be no trace of any thing. The government
will suspect nothing. Reverend mother, is this all so?"

"No."

"What more is there, then?"

"There is still the empty coffin."

This brought them to a stand. Faudielevent pondered. The prioress pondered.

"Father Fauvent, what shall be done with the coffin?"

"It will be put in the ground."

"Empty?"

Another silence, Fauchelevent made with his left hand that peculiar gesture, which
dismisses an unpleasant question.

"Reverend mother, I nail up the coffin in the lower room in the church, and nobody can
come in there except me, and I will cover the coffin with the pall."

"Yes, but the bearers, in putting it into the hearse and in letting it down into the
grave, will surely perceive that there is nothing inside.'

"Ah! the de--!" exclaimed Fauchelevent.

The prioress began to cross herself, and looked fixedly at the gardener. Vil stuck in
his throat.

He made haste to think of an expedient to make her forget the oath.

"Reverend mother, I will put some earth into the coffin. That will have the effect of a
body."

"You are right. Earth is the same thing as man. So you will prepare the empty coffin?'

"I will attend to that."

The face of the prioress, till then dark and anxious, became again serene. She made him
the sign of a superior dismissing an inferior. Fauchelevent moved towards the door. As
he was going out, the prioress gently raised her voice.

"Father Fauvent, I am satisfied svith you; to-morrow after the burial, bring your bro-
ther to me, and tell him to bring his daughter."



IV. IN WHICH JEAN Valjean HAS QUITE THE APPEARANCE OF HAVING READ AUSTIN CASTIUSJO



The strides of the lame are like the glances of the one-eyed: they do not speedily reach
their aim. Furthermore, Fauchelevent was perplexed. It took him nearly a quarter of an
hour to get back to the shanty in the garden. Cosette was awake. Jean Valjean had seated
her near the fire. At the moment when Fauchelevent entered. Jean Valjean was showing
her the gardener's basket hanging on the wall and saying to her:

"Listen attentively to me, my little Cosette. We must go away from this house, but we
shall come back, and we shall be very well off here. The good man here will carry you out
on his back inside there. You will wait for me at a lady's. I shall come and find you.
Above all, if you do not want the Thenardiess to take you back, obey and say nothing."

Cosette nodded her head with a serious look.

At the sound of Fauchelevent opening the door, Jean Valjean turned.

"Well?"

"All is arranged, and nothing is," said Faucheleyent. "I have permission to bring you
in: but before bringing you in, it is necessary to get you out. That is where the cart
is blocked! For the little girl, it is easy enough."

"You will carry her out?"

"And she will keep quiet?"

"I will answer for it."

"But you, Father Madeleine?"

And, after an anxious silence, Fauchelevent exclaimed:

"But why not go out the way you came in?"

Jean Valjean, as before, merely answered: "Impossible."

Fauchelevent, talking more to himself than to Jean Valjean, grumbled:

"There is another thing that torments me. I said I would put in some earth. But I
think that earth inside, instead of a body, will not be like it; that will not do,
it will shake about; it will move. The men will feel it. You understand, Father Mad-
eleine, the government will find it out."

Jean Valjean stared at him, and thought that he was raving. Fauchelevent resumed:

"How the d--ickens are you going to get out? For all this' must be done to-morrow.
Tomorrow I am to bring you in. The prIoness expects you."

Then he explained to Jean Valjean that this was a reward for a service that he, Fauch-
elevent, was rendering to the community. That it was a part of his duties to assist
in burials, that he nailed up the coffins, and attended the grave-digger at the cem-
etery. That the nun who died that morning had requested to be buried in the coffin
which she had used as a bed, and interred in the vault under the altar of the chapel.
That this was forbidden by the regulations of the police, but that she was one of
those departed ones to whom nothing is refused. That the prioress and the vocal mo-
thers intended to carry out the will of the deceased. So much the worse for the gov-
ernment. That he. Fauchelevent, would nail up the coffin in the cell, raise the
stone in the chapel, and let down the body into the vault. And that, in return for
this, the prioress would admit his brother into the house as gardener and his niece
as boarder. That his brother was M. Madeleine, and that his niece was Cosette That
the prioress had told him to bring his brother the next evening, after the ficti-
tious burial at the cemetery. But that he could not bring M. Madeleine from the out-
side, if M. Madeleine were not outside. That that was the first difficulty. And
then that he had another difficulty; the empty coffin:,

"What is the empty coffin asked Jean Valjean.

Fauchelevent responded:

"The coffin from the administration."

"What coffin? and what administration?"

"A nun dies. The municipality physician comes and says: there is a nun dead. The
government sends a coffin. The next day it sends a hearse and some bearers to take
the coffin and carry it to the cemetery. The bearers will come and take up the
coffin there will be nothing in it."

"Put somebody in it."

"A dead body? I have none."

"No."

"What then?"

"A living body."

"What living body?"

"Me," said Jean Valjean.

Fauchelevent, who had taken a seat, sprang up as if a cracker had burst under his
chair.

"You!"

"Why not?"

Jean Valjean had one of those rare smiles which came over him like the aurora in a
winter sky.

"You know, Fauchelevent, that you said: Mother Crucifixion is dead, and that I added:
and Father Madeleine is buried. It will be so."

"Ah! good, you are laughing, you are not talking seriously."

"Very seriously. I must get out!"

'Undoubtedly."

"And I told you to find a basket and a cover for me also."

"Well!"

"The basket will be of pine, and the cover will be of black cloth." "In the first
place, a white cloth. The nuns are buried in white." "Well, a white cloth."

"You are not like other men, Father Madeleine."

To see such devices, which are nothing more than the savage and foolhardy inventions
of the galleys, appear in the midst of the peaceful things that surrounded him and
mingled with what he called the "little jog-jog of the convent," was to Fauchelevent
an astonishment comparable to that of a person who should see a seamew fishing in the
brook in the Rue St. Denis.

Jean Valjean continued:

"The question is, how to get out without being seen. This is the MOMS. But in the
first place tell me, how is it done? where is this coffin?"

"The empty one?"

"Yes."

"Down in what is called the dead-room. It is on two trestles and under the pall."

"What is the length of the coffin?"

"Six feet."

"What is the dead-room?"

"It is a room on the ground floor, with a grated window towards the garden, closed
on the outside with a shutter, and two doors; one leading to the convent. the other
to the church."

"What church?"

"The church on the street, the church for everybody?"

'Have you the keys of those two doors?'

"No. I have the key of the door that opens into the convent; the porter has the key
of the door that opens into the church."

"When does the porter open that door?"

"Only to let in the bearers, who come after the coffin; as soon as the coffin goes out,
the door is closed again."

Who nails up the coffin?"

"I do."

"Who puts the cloth on it?"

"I do."

"Are you alone?"

"No other man, except the police physician, can enter the dead-room. That is even written
upon the wall."

"Could you, tonight, when all are asleep in the convent, hide me in that room?"

"No. But I can hide you in a little dark closet which opens into the ead-room, where I
keep my burial tools, and of which I have the care and the key."

"At what hour will the hearse come after the coffin to-morrow?" "About three o'clock in
the afternoon. The burial takes place at the Vaugirard cemetery, a little before night.
It is not very near."

"I shall remain hidden in your tool-closet all night and all the morning. d about eating?
I shall be hungry."

"I will bring you something."

"You can come and nail me up in the coffin at two o'clock." Fauchelevent started back,
and began to snap his fingers.

"But it is impossible!"

"Pshaw! to take a hammer and drive some nails into a board?"

What seemed unheard-of to Fauchelevent was, we repeat, simple to Jean Valjean. Jean Val-
jean had been in worse straits. He who has been a prisoner knows the art of making himself
small according to the dimensions of the place for escape. The prisoner is subject to flight
as the sick man is to the crisis which cures or kills him. An escape is a cure. What does
not one undergo to be cured? To be nailed up and carried out in a chest like a bundle, to
live a long time in a box, to find air where there is none, to economise the breath for
entire hours, to know how to be stifled without dying--that was one of the gloomy talents
of Jean Valjean.

Moreover, a coffin in which there is a living being, that convict's expedient, is also an
emperor's expedient. If we can believe the monk Austin Castillejo, this was the means which
Charles V, desiring after his abdication to see La Plombes again a last time, employed to
bring her into the monastery of St. Juste and to take her out again.

Fauchelevent, recovering a little, exclaimed:

But how will you manage to breathe?"

"I shall breathe."

"In that box? Only to think of it suffocates me."

"You surely have a gimlet, you can make a few little holes about the mouth here and
there, and you can nail it without drawing the upper board tight."

"Good! But if you happen to cough or sneeze?"

"He who is escaping never coughs and never sneezes." And Jean Valjean added:

"Father Fauchelevent, I must decide: either to be taken here, or to be willing to go out
in the hearse."

Everybody has noticed the taste which cats have for stopping and loitering in a half-open
door. Who has not said to a cat: Why don't you come in? There are men who, with an opportu-
nity half-open before them, have a similar tendency to remain undecided between two resolu-
tions, at the risk of being crushed by destiny abruptly closing the opportunity. The over
prudent, cats as they are, and because they are cats, sometimes run more danger than the
bold. Fauchelevent was of this hesitating nature. However, Jean Valjean's coolness won him
over in spite of himself, He grumbled:

"It is true, there is no other way."

Jean Valjean resumed:

"The only thing that I am anxious about, is what will be done at the cemetery."

"That is just what does not embarrass me," exclaimed Fauchelevent. "If you are sure of get-
ting yourself out of the coffin, I am sure of getting you out of the grave. The gravedigger
is a drunkard and a friend of mine. He is Father Mectienne. An old son of the old vine.
The gravedigger puts the dead in the grave, and I put the gravedigger in my pocket. I will
tell you what will take place. We shall arrive a little before dusk, three-quarters of an
hour before the cemetery gates are closed. The hearse will go to the grave. I shall follow:
that is my business. I will have a hammer, a chisel, and some pincers in my pocket. The
hearse stops, the hearers tic a rope around your coffin and let you down. The priest says
the prayers, makes the sign of the cross, sprinkles the holy water, and is off. I remain
alone with Father Mestiettne. He is my friend, I tell you. One of two things; either he
will be drunk, or he will not be drunk. If he is not drunk, I say to him: come and take a
drink before the Good Quire is shut. I get him away, I fuddle him: Father Mediettne is
not long in getting fuddled, he is always half way. I lay him under the table, I take his
card from him to return to the cemetery with, and I come back without him. You will have
only me to deal with. If he is drunk, I say to him: be off. I'll do your work. He goes
away, and I pull you out of the hole."

Jean Valjean extended his hand, upon which Fauchelevent threw himself with a rustic out-
burst of touching devotion.

"II is settled, Father Fauchelevent. All will go wen."

"Provided nothing goes amiss," thought Fauchelevent. "How terrible that would be!"



V. IT IS NOT ENOUGH TO BE A DRUNKARD TO BE IMMORTAL



NEXT DAY, as the sun was declining, the scattered passers on the Boulevard du Maine
took off their hats at the passage of an old-fashioned hearse, adorned with death's-head
cross-bones and teardrops. In this hearse there was a coffin covered with a white cloth
upon which was large black cross like a displayed a great dummy with hanging arms.
A draped carriage, in which might be seen a priest in a surplice, and a choir-boy in
a red calotte, followed. Two bearers in grey uniform with black trimmings walked on
the right and left of the hearse. In the rear came an old man dressed like a labourer,
who limped. The procession moved towards the Vaugirard cemetery.

Sticking out of the man's pocket were the handle of a hammer, the blade of a cold
chisel, and the double handles of a pair of pincers.

The Vaugirard cemetery was an exception among the cemeteries of Paris. It had its
peculiar usages, so far that it had its porte-cochere, and its small 'door which,
in the quarter, old people tenacious of old words, called the cavalier door, and
the pedestrian door. The Bernardine-Benedictines of the Petit Picpus had obtained
the right, as we have said, to be buried in a corner apart and at night, this ground
having formerly belonged to their community. The gravediggers, having thus to work
in the cemetery in the evening in summer, and at night in winter, were subject to
a peculiar discipline. The gates of the cemeteries of Paris closed at that epoch at
sunset, and, this being a measure of municipal order, the Vaugirard cemetery was sub-
ject to it like the rest. The cavalier door and the pedestrian door were two contig-
uous gratings; near which was a pavilion built by the architect Perronet, in which
the door-keeper of the cemetery lived. These gratings therefore inexorably turned
upon their hinges the instant the sun disappeared behind the dome of the Invalides.
If any gravedigger, at that moment, was belated in the cemetery his only resource
for getting out was his gravedigger's card, given him by the administration of
funeral ceremonies. A sort of letterbox was arranged in the shutter of the gate-
keeper's window. The gravedigger dropped his card into this box, the gate-keeper
heard it fall, pulled the string, and the pedestrian door opened. If the grave-
digger did not have his card, he gave his name; the gatekeeper, sometimes in bed
and asleep, got up, went to identify the gravedigger and open the door with the
key; the gravedigger went out, but paid fifteen francs fine.

This cemetery, with its peculiarities over breaking the rules, disturbed the sym-
metry of the administration. It was suppressed shortly after 1830. The Mont Par-
nasse Cemetery, called the Cemetery of the East, has succeeded it, and has inher-
ited this famous drinking house let into the Vaugirard cemetery, which was sur-
mounted by a quince painted on a board, which looked on one side upon the tables
of the drinkers, and on the other upon graves, with this inscription: The Good
Quince. '

The Vaugirard cemetery was what might be called a decayed cemetery. It was fall-
ing into disuse. Mould was invading it, flowers were leaving it. The well-to-do
citizens little cared to be buried at Vaugirard; it sounded poor. Pere Lachaise
is very fine! to be buried in Pere Lachaise is like having mahogany furniture.
Elegance is understood by that. The Vaugirard cemetery was a venerable inclosure,
laid out like an old French garden. Straight walks, box, evergreens, hollies,
old tombs under old yews, very high grass. Night there was terrible. There were
some very dismal outlines there.

The sun had not yet set when the hearse with the white pall and the black cross
entered the avenue of the Vaugirard cemetery. The lame man who followed it was
no other than Fauchelevent.

The burial of Mother Crucifixion in the vault under the altar, the departure of
Cosette, the introduction ofJean Valjean into the dead-room, all had been car-
ried out without obstruction, and nothing had gone wrong.

We will say, by the way, the inhumation of Mother Crucifixion under the convent altar
is, to us, a perfectly venial thing. It is one of those faults which resemble a duty. The
nuns had accomplished it, not only without discomposure, but with an approving con-
science. In the cloister, what is called the "government" is only an interference with
authority, an interference which is always questionable. First the rules; as to the
code, we will see. Men, make as many laws as you please, but keep them for yourselves.
The tribute to Caesar is never more than the remnant of the tribute to God. A prince
is nothing in presence of a principle.

Fauchelevent limped behind the hearse, very well satisfied. His two twin plots, one
with the nuns, the other with M. Madeleine, one for the convent, the other against it
had succeeded equally well. Jean Valjean's calmness had that powerful tranquillity
which is contagious. Fauchelevent had now no doubt of success. What remained to be
done was nothing. Within two years he had fuddled the gravedigger ten times, good
Father Mestienne, a rubicund old fellow. Father Mestienne was play for him. He did
what he liked with him. He got him drunk at will and at his fancy. Mestienne saw
through Fauchelevent's eyes. Fauchelevent's security was complete.

At the moment the convoy entered the avenue leading to the cemetery, Fauchelevent,
happy, looked at the hearse and rubbed his big hands together, saying in an under-
tone:

"Here's a farce!"

Suddenly the hearse stopped; they were at the gate. It was necessary to exhibit
the burial permit. The undertaker whispered with the porter of the cemetery. Dur-
ing this colloquy, which always causes a delay of a minute or two, somebody, an
unknown man, came and placed himself behind the hearse at Fauchelevent's side.
He was a working-man, who wore a vest with large pockets, and had a pick under
his arm.

Fauchelevent looked at this unknown man.

"Who are you?" he asked. The man answered:

"The gravedigger."

Should a man survive a cannon-shot through his breast, he would present the ap-
pearance that Fauchelevent did.

"The gravedigger?"

"Yes."

"You!"

"me.”

"The gravedigger is Father Mestienne."

"He was."

"Howl he was?"

"He is dead."

Fauchelevent was ready for anything but this, that a gravedigger could die. It is,
however, true; gravediggers themselves die. By dint of digging graves for others,
they open their own.

Fauchelevent remained speechless. He had hardly the strength to stammer out:

But it's not possible!"

"It is so."

"But," repeated he, feebly, "the gravedigger is Father Mestienne."

"After Napoleon, Louis XVIII. After Mestienne, Gribier. Peasant, my name is Gribier."

Fauchelevent grew pale; he stared at Gribier.

He was a long, thin, livid man, perfectly funereal. He had the appearance of a broken-
down doctor turned gravedigger.

Fauchelevent burst out laughing.

"Ah! what droll things happen! Father Mestienne is dead. Little Father Mestienne is dead,
but hurrah for little Father Lenoir! You know what little Father Lenoir is? It is the mug
of red for a six spot. It is the mug of Surene, zounds! real Paris Serene. So he is dead,
old Mestienne! I am sorry for it; he was a jolly fellow. But you too, you are a jolly
fellow. Isn't that so, comrade? we will go and take a drink together, right away."

The man answered: "I have studied, I have graduated. I never drink."

The hearse had started, and was rolling along the main avenue of the cemetery.

Fauchelevent had slackened his pace. He limped still more from anxiety than from infirmity.

The gravedigger walked before him.

Fauchelevent again scrutinised the unexpected Gribier.

He was one of those men who, though young, have an old appearance, and who, though thin,
are very strong.

"Comrade!" cried Fauchelevent.

The man turned.

"I am the gravedigger of the convent."

"My colleague," said the man.

Fauchelevent, illiterate, but very keen, understood that he had to do with a very formid-
able species, a good talker.

He mumbled out:

"Is it so, Father Mestienne is dead?"

The man answered:

"Perfectly. The good God consulted his list of bills payable. It was Father Mestienne's
turn. Father Mestienne is dead."

Fauchelevent repeated mechanically.

"The good God."

"The good God," said the man authoritatively. "What the philosophers call the Eternal Fath-
er; the Jacobins, the Supreme Being."

"Are we not going to make each other's acquaintance?" stammered Fauchelevent.

"It is made. You are a peasant, I am a Parisian."

"We are not acquainted as long as we have not drunk to ether. He who empties his glass emp-
ties his heart. Come and drink with me. You can't refuse."

"Business first."

They were now only a few rods from the path that led to the nuns corner.

The gravedigger continued:

"Peasant, I have seven youngsters that I must feed. As they must eat, I must not drink."

And he added with the satisfaction of a serious being who is making a sententious phrase:

"Their hunger is the enemy of my thirst."

The hearse turned a huge cypress, left the main path, took a Halt one, entered upon the
grounds, and was lost in a thicket. This indicated the immediate proximity of the grave.
Fauchelevent slackened his pace, but could not slacken that of the hearse. Luckily the
mellow soil, wet by the winter rains, stuck to the wheels, and made the track heavy.

He approached the gravedigger.

"They have such a good little Argenteuil wine," suggested Fanchelevent.

"Villager," continued the man, "I ought not to be a gravedigger. My father was porter at
the Prytanee. He intended me for literature. but he was unfortunate. He met with losses
at the Bourse, I was ob.. ged to renounce the condition of an author. However, I ant still
a public scribe."

"But then you are not the gravedigger?" replied Fauchelevent, atching at a straw, feeble
as it was.

"One does not prevent the other. I cumulate."

Fauchelevent did not understand this last word.

"Let us go and drink," said he.

Here an observation is necessary. Fauchelevent, whatever was his anguish, proposed to
drink, but did not explain himself on one point; who should pay? Ordinarily Fauchelevent
proposed, and Father Mestienne paid. A proposal to drink resulted evidently from the new
situation produced by the fact of the new gravedigger, and this proposal he must make;
but the old gardener left, not unintentionally, the proverbial quarter of an hour of Rab-
elais in the shade. As for him, Fauchelevent, however excited he was, he did not care a-
bout paying.

The gravedigger went on, with a smite of superiority:

"We must live. I accepted the succession of Father Mestienne. When one has almost finished
his classes, he is a philosopher. To the labour of my hand, I have added the labour of my
arm. I have my little writer's shop at the Market in the Rue de Sevre. You know? the market
of the Parapluics. All the cooks of the Croix Rouge come to me; I patch up their declara-
tions to their true loves. In the morning I patch love letters; in the evening I dig graves.
Such is life, countryman."

The hearse advanced; Fauchelevent, full of anxiety, looked about him on all sides. Great
drops of sweat were falling from his forehead.

"However." continued the gravedigger, "one cannot serve two mistresses: I must choose be-
tween the pen and the pick. The pick hurts my hand."

The hearse stopped.

The choir-boy got out of the mourning carriage, then the priest. One of the forward wheels
of the hearse mounted on a little heap of earth, beyond which was seen an open grave.

"Here is a farce!" repeated Fauchelevent in consternation.



VI. IN THE NARROW HOUSE



WHO was in the coffin? We know. Jean Valjean.

Jean Valjean had arranged it so that he could live in it, and could breathe a very little.

It is a strange thing to what extent an easy conscience gives calmness in other respects.
The entire combination prearranged by Jean Valjean had been executed, and executed well,
since the night before. He counted, as did Fauchelevent, upon Father Mestienne. He had no
doubt of the result. Never was a situation more critical, never calmness more complete.

The four boards of the coffin exhaled a kind of terrible peace. It seemed as if something
of the repose of the dead had entered into the tranquillity of Jean Valjean.

From within that coffin he had been able to follow, and he had followed, all the phases of
the fearful drama which he was playing with Death.

Soon after Fauchelevent had finished nailing down the upper board, Jean Valjean had felt
himself carried out, then wheeled along. By the diminished jolting, he had felt that he
was passing from the pavement to the hard ground; that is to say, that he was leaving the
streets and entering upon the boulevards. By a dull sound, be had divined that they were
crossing the bridge of Austerlitz. At the first stop he had comprehended that they were
entering the cemetery; at the second stop he had said: here is the grave.

He felt that hands hastily seized the coffin, then a harsh scraping upon the boards; he
concluded that that was a rope which they were tying around the coffin to let it down into
the excavation.

Then he felt a kind of dizziness.

Probably the bearer and the gravedigger had tipped the coffin and let the head down before
the feet. He returned fully to himself on feeling that he was horizontal and motionless.
He had touched the bottom.

He felt a certain chill.

A voice arose above him, icy and solemn. He heard pass away, some Latin words which he did
not understand, pronounced so slowly that he could catch them one after another:

"Qui dormiunt in terrae pulvere, evigilabunt; alii in vitam eternam, et alii in opprobrium, ut
videant semper."

A child's voice said:

"De profundis."

The deep voice recommenced:

"Requiem eternam dona ei, Domine."

The child's voice responded:

"Et lux perpetua luceat ei"

He heard upon the board which covered him something like the gentle patter of a few drops
of rain. It was probably the holy water.

He thought: "This will soon be finished. A little more patience. The priest is going away.
Fauchelevent will take Mestienne away to drink. They will leave me. Then Pauchelevent will
come back alone, and I shall get out. That will take a good hour."

The deep voice resumed.

"Requiescat in pace."

And the child's voice said:

"Amen."

Jean Valjean, intently listening, perceived something like recrding steps.

"Now there they go," thought he. "I am alone."

All at once he heard a sound above his head which seemed to him like a clap of thunder.

It was a spadeful of earth falling upon the coffin.

A second spadeful of earth fell.

One of the holes by which he breathed was stopped up.

A third spadeful of earth fell.

Then a fourth.

There are things stronger than the strongest man. Jean Valjean lost consciousness.




VII. IN WHICH WILL BE FOUND THE ORIGIN OF THE SAYING: DON'T LOSE YOUR CARD



Ler us see whet occurred over the coffin in which jean Valjean lay.

When the hearse had departed and the priest and the choir-boy had got into the carriage,
and were gone, Fauchelevent, who had never taken his eyes off the gravedigger, saw him
stoop, and grasp his spade, which was standing upright in the heap of earth.

Hereupon, Fauchelevent formed a supreme resolve.

Placing himself between the grave and the gravedigger, and folding his arms, be said:

"I'll pay for it!"

The gravedigger eyed him with amazement, and replied: "What, peasant?"

Fauchelevent repeated:

"Ill pay for it"

"For what?"

"For the wine."

"What wine?"

"The Argenteuil."

"Where's the Argenteuil?"

"At the Good Quince."

"Go to the devil!" said the gravedigger.

And he threw a spadeful of earth upon the coffin.

The can gave kick a hollow sound. Fauchelevent felt himSdt stagger, and nearly fell into
the grist. In a voice in which the strangling sound of the death-rattle he began to be heard
he cried:

"Come, comrade, before the Good Quince closes!"

The gravedigger took up another spadeful of earth. Fauchelevent continued:

"I'll pay," and he seized the gravedigger by the arm.

"Hark ye, comrade," he said, "I am the gravedigger of the convent, and have come to help
you. It's a job we can do at night. Let us take a drink first."

And as he spoke, even while clinging desperately to this urgent effort, he asked himself,
with some misgiving: "And even should he drink--will he get tipsy?'

"Good rustic," said the gravedigger, "if you insist, I consent. We'll have a drink, but
after my work, never before it."

And be tossed his spade again. Fauchelevent held him,

"It is Argenteuil at six sous the pint!"

"Ah, bah!" said the gravedigger, "you're a bore. Ding-dong, ding-dong, the same thing
over and over again; that's all you can say. Be off, about your business."

And he threw in the second spadeful.

Fauchclevent had reached that point where a man knows no longer what he is saying.

"Oh! come on, and take a glass, since I'm the one to pay," he again repeated.

"When we've put the child to bed." said the gravedigger.

He tossed in the third spadeful: then, plunging his spade into the earth, he added:

"You see, now, it's going to be cold to-night. and the deadotte would cry out after us,
if we were to plant her there without good covering."

At this moment, in the act of filling his spade, the gravedigger stooped low, and the
pocket of his vest gaped open.

The bewildered eye of Fauchelevent rested mechanically on this pocket, and remained fixed.

The sun was not yet hidden behind the horizon, and there was still light enough to distin-
guish something white in the gaping pocket.

All the lightning which the eye of a Picardy
peasant can contain flashed into the pupils of Fauchelevent. A new idea had struck him.

Without thegravedigger, who was occupied with his spadeful of earth, perceiving him, he
slipped his hand from behind into the pocket, and took from him the white object it con-
tained. The gravedigger flung into the grave the fourth spadeful.

Just as he was turning to take the fifth, Fauchelevent, looking at him with imperturbable
calmness, asked:

"By the way, my new friend, have you your card?"

The gravedigger stopped.

"What card?"

"Tlw sun is setting."

"Well, let him put on his night-cap."

"The cemetery-gate will be closed."

'Well, what then?"

"Have you your card?"

"Oh I my card!" said the gravedigger, and he felt in his pocket. Having rummaged one
pocket, he tried another. From these, be proceeded to try his watch-lobs, exploring the
first, and turning the second inside out.

"No!" said he, "no! I haven't got my card. I must have forgotten it."

"Fifteen francs fine!" said Fauchelvent.

The gravedigger turned green. Green is the paleness of people naturally livid.

"Oh, good-gracious God, what a fool I am!" he exclaimed. "Fifteen francs fine!"

"Three hundred-sou pieces," said Fauchelevent.

The gravedigger dropped his spade.

Fauchelevent's turn had come.

"Come! come, recruit," said Fauchelevent, "never despair; there's nothing to kill oneself
about, and feed the worms. Fifteen francs are fifteen francs, and besides, you may not have
them to full. I am an old hand, and you a new one. I know all the tricks and traps and turns
and twists of the business. I'll give you a friends advice. One thing is clear--the sun is
setting--and the graveyard will be closed in five minutes."

"That's true," replied the gravedigger.

"Five minutes is not time enough for you to fill the grave--it's as deep as the very devil--
and get out of this before the gate is shut."

"You're right."

"In that case, there is fifteen francs fine."

"Fifteen francs!"

"But you have time... Where do you live?"

"Just by the barriere. Fifteen minutes' walk. Ntimber 87 Rue de Vangirara."

"You have time, if you will hang your togger about your neck, to get out at once."

"That's true."

"Once outside of the gate, you scamper home, get your ord. come Inck. and the gatekeeper will
let you in again. Having your card. there's nothing to pay. Then you can bury your dead man.
I'II stay here, and watch him while you're gone, to see that he doesn't run away.

"I owe you my life, peasant!"

"Be off, then, quick!" said Fauchelevent.

The gravedigger, overcome with gratitude, shook his 'minds. and started at a run.

Then the gravedigger had disappeared through the bushes,

Fauchelevent listened until his footsteps died away, and then, bending over the grave, called
out in a low voice:

"Father Madeleine!"

No answer.

Fauchelevent shuddered. He dropped rather than clambered down into the grave, threw himself u-
pon the head of the coffin, and cried out:

"Are you there?"

Silence in the coffin.

Fauchelevent, no longer able to breathe for the shiver that was on him, took his cold chisel
and hammer, and wrenched off the top board. The face of of Jean Valjcan could be seen in the
twilight, his eyes closed and his cheeks colourless.

Fauchelevent's hair stood erect with alarm; he rose to his feet, and then tottered with his
back against the side of the grave, ready to sink down upon the coffin. He looked upon Jean
Valjean.

Jean Valjean lay there pallid and motionless.

Fauchelevent murmured in a voice low as a whisper:

"He is dead!"

Then straightening himself, and crossing his arms so violently that his clenched fists sounded
against his shoulders, he exclaimed: "This is the way I have saved him!"

Then the poor old man began to sob, talking aloud to himself the while, for it is a mistake to
think that talking to one's self is not natural. Powerful emotions often speak aloud.

"It's Father Mestienne's fault. What did he die for, the fool? What was the use of going off in
that way, just when no one expected it? It was he who killed poor M. Madeleine. Father Made-
leine! He is in the coffin. He's settled. There's an end of it. Now, wines the sense of such
things? Good God he's dead! Yes, and his little girl--what am I to do with her? What will the
fruit-woman say? That such a man could die in that way. Good Heaven, is it possible! When I
think that he put himself under my cart! ... Father Madeleine! Father Madeleine! Mercy, he's
suffocated, I said so--but. he wouldn't believe me. Now, here's a pretty piece of business! He's
dead--one of the very best men God ever made; aye, the best, the very best! And his little girl!
I'm not going back there again. I'm going to stay here. To have done such a thing as this! It's
well worth while to be two old greybeards, in order to be two old fools. But, to begin with,
how did he manage to get into the convent--that's where it started. Such things shouldn't he
done. Father Madeleine! Father Madeleine! Father Madeleine! Madeleine! Monsieur Madeleine! Mon-
sieur Mavor!He doesn't hear me. Get yourself out of this now, if you please."

And he tore his hair.

At a distance, through the trees, a harsh grating sound was heard. It was the gate of the ceme-
tery closing.

Fauchelevent again bent over Jean Valjean, but suddenly started back with all the recoil that
was possible in a grave. Jean Valjean's eyes were open, and gazing at him.

To behold death is terrifying, and to see a sudden restoration is nearly as much so. Fauchelevent
became cold and white as a stone. haggard and utterly disconcerted by all these powerful emotions,
and not knowing whether he had the dead or the living to deal with. stared at Jean Valjcan, who
in turn stared at him.

"I was falling asleep," said Jean Valjean.

And he rose to a sitting posture.

Fauchelevent dropped on his knees.

"Oh, blessed Virgin! How you frightened me!"

Then, springing again to his feet, he cried:

"Thank you, Father Madeleine!"

Jean Valjean had merely swooned. The open air had revived him. Joy is the reflex of terror. Fau-
chelevent had nearly as much difficulty as Jean Valjean in coming to himself.

"Then you're not dead! Oh, what good sense you have! I called you so loudly that you got over it.
When I saw you with your eyes shut, I said, 'Well, there now! he's suffocated!' I should have gone
raving mad--mad enough for a strait-jacket. They'd have put me in the Bketre. What would you have
had me do, if you had been dead? And your little girl! the fruit-woman would have understood nothing
about it!A child plumped into her lap, and its grandfather dead! What a story to tell /By all the
saints in heaven, what a story! Ahl but you're alive--that's the best of it."

"I am cold," said Jean Valjean.

These words recalled Fauchelevent completely to the real state of affairs, which were urgent. These
two men, even when restored, feh, without knowing it, a peculiar agitation and a strange inward
trouble, which was but the sinister bewilderment of the place.

"Let us get away from here at once," said Fauchelevent.

He thrust his hand into his pocket, and drew from it a flask with which he was provided.

"But a drop of this firsr!" said he.

The flask completed what the open air had begun. lean Valjean took a swallow of brandy, and felt
thoroughly restored.

He got not of the coffin, and assisted Fauchelevent to nail down the lid again. Three minutes after-
wards. they were out of the grave.

After this, Fanehelevent was calm enough. He took his time. The cemetery was closed. There was no
fear of the return of Grihier the gravedigger. Thu recruit was at home hunting up his "card." and
rather unlikely to find it, as it was in Fauchelevent's pocket. Without his card, he could not get back
into the cemetery.

Fauchelevent took the spade and Jean Valjean the pick, and together they buried the.empty coffin.

When the grave was filled, Fauchelevent said to Jean Valjean: "Come, let us go; I'll keep the spade,
and you take the pick." Night was coming on rapidly.

Jean Valjean found it hard to move and walk. In the coffin he bad stiffened considerably, somewhat
in reality like a corpse. The anchylosis of death had seized him in that narrow wooden box. He had,
in some sort, to thaw himself out of the sepulchre.

"You are benumbed," said Fauchelevent; "and what a pity that I'm bandy-legged, or we'd run a bit."

"No matter!" replied Jean Valjean, "a few steps will put my legs into walking order."

They went out by the avenues the hearse bad followed. When they reached the closed gate and the por-
ter's lodge, Fauchelevent, who had the gravedigger's card in his hand, dropped it into the box, the
porter drew the cord, the gate opened, and they went through.

"How well everything goes!' said Fauchelevent; "what a good plan that was of yours, Father Made
leine!"

They passed the Barriere Vaugirard in the easiest way in the world. In the neighbourhood of a grave-
yard, a pick and spade are two passports.

The Rue de Vaugirard was deserted.

"Father Madeleine," said Fauchelevent, as he went along, looking up at the houses, "you have bet-
ter eyes than mine--which is number 87?"

"Here it is, now," said Jean Valjean.

"There's no one in the street," resumed Fauchelevent. "Give me the pick, and wait for me a couple
of minutes."

Fauchelevent went in at number $7, ascended to the topmost flight, guided by the instinct which al-
ways leads the poor to the garret, and knocked; in the dark, at the door of a little attic room. A
voice called:

"Come in!"

It was Gribier's voice.

Fauchelevent pushed open the door. The lodging of the grave-digger was, like all these shelters of
the needy, an unfurnished but much littered lot t. Apacking-case of some kind--a coffin, perhaps--
supplied the place of a bureau, a straw pallet the place of a bed, a butter-pot the place of water-
cooler, and the floor served alike for chairs and table. In one corner, on a ragged old scrap, of
carpet, was a haggard woman, and a number of children were huddled together. The whole of this
wretched interior bore the traces of recent overturn. One would have said that there had been an
earthquake served up there "for one." The coverlets were displaced, the lagged garments scattered
ahout,thc pitcher broken, the mmlwr had been weeping, and the children probably beaten; all traces
of a headlong and violent search. It was plain that the gravedigger had been looking. wildly, for
his card, and had made everything in the attic, from his pitcher to his wife, responsible for the
loss. He had a desperate appearance.

But Fauchelevent was in too great a hurry for the end of his adventure, to notice this gloomy side
of his triumph.

As he come in, he said

"I've brought your spade and pick."

Gribier looked at him with stupefaction.

"What, it is you, peasant?"

"And, tomorrow morning, you will find your card with the gatekeeper of the cemetery."

And he set down the pick and the spade on the floor.

'What does all this mean?" asked Gribier.

"Why, it means that you let your and drop out of your pocket that I found it on the ground when you
had gone; that I buried the corpse; that I idled in the grave; that I finished your job; that the
porter will give you your card, and that you will not have to pay the fifteen francs. That s what
it means, recruit!"

"Thanks, villager!" exclaimed Gribier, in amazement. "The next time I will treat."



VIII. SUCCESSFUL EXAMINATION



AN hour later, in the depth of night, two men and and a child stood in front of No.62, Petite Rue
Piens. The elder of the men lifted the knocker and rapped.

It was Fauchelevent, Jean Valjean, and Cosette.

The two men had gone to look for Cosette at the shop of the fruiterers of the Rue de Chemi Vert,
where Fauchelevent had left her on the preceding evening. Cosette had passed the twenty-four hours
wondering what it all meant and trembling in silence. She trembled so much that she had not wept,
nor had she tasted food nor slept. The worthy fruit-woman had asked her a thousand questions wit-
hout obtaining any other answer than a sad look that never varied. Cosette did not let a word of
all she had heard and seen, in the last two days, escape her. She divined that a crisis had come.
She felt, in her very heart, that she must be "good." Who has not experienced the supreme effect
of these two words pronounced in a certain tone in the ear of some little frightened creature,
"Don't speak!" Fear is mute. Besides, no one ever keeps a secret so well as a child.

But when, after those mournful four-and-twenty hours. she again saw Jean Valjean, she uttered
such a cry of joy that any thoughtful person hearing her would have divined in it an escape from
some yawning gulf.

Fauchelevent belonged to the convent and knew all the pass-words. Every door opened before him.

Thus was that doubly fearful problem solved of getting out and getting in again.

The porter, who had his instructions, opened the little side door which served to communicate be-
tween the court and the garden, and which, twenty years ago, could still be seen from the street,
in the wall at the extremity of the court, facing the pone-cochire. The porter admitted all three
by this door, and from that point they went to this private inner parlour, where Fauchelevent had,
on the previous evening, received the orders of the prioress.

The prioress, rosary in hand, was awaiting them. A mother, with her veil down, stood near her. A
modest taper lighted, or one might almost say, pretended to light up the parlour.

The prioress scrutinised Jean Valjean. Nothing scans so careful as a downcast eye. she proceeded
to question: "You are the brother?"

"Yes, reverend mother," replied Fauchelevent.

"What is your name?"

Fauchelevent replied:

"Ultimus Fauchelevent!"

He had, in reality, had a brother named Ultimus, who was dead.

"From what part of the country are you?"

Fauchelevent answered:

"From Piequigny, near Amiens."

"What is your age?"

Fauchelevent answered:

"Fifty."

"What is your business?"

Fauchelevent answered:

"Gardener."

"Are you a true Christian?"

Fauchelevent answered:

"All of our family are such."

"Is this your little girl?'

Fauchelevent answered:

"Yes, reverend mother."

"You are her father?"

Fattehelevent answered:

"Her grandfather."

The mother said to the prioress in an undertone:

"He answers well."

Jean Valjean had not spoken a word.

The prioress looked at Cosette attentively, and then said, aside to the mother-

"She will be homely."

The two mothers talked together very low for a few minutes in a corner of the parlour, and then the
prioress turned and said--

"Father Fauvent, you will have another knee-cap and bell. We need two, now."

So, next morning, two little bells wercheard tinkling intbegarden, and the nuns could not keep from
lifting a corner of their veils. They saw two men digging side by side, in the lower part of the gar-
den under the trees--Fauvent and another. Immense event! The silence was broken, so far as to say--

"It's an assistant-gardener!"

The mothers added:

"He is Father Fauvent's brother."

In fact, Jean Valjean was regularly installed; he had the leather knee-cap and the bell; henceforth he
had his commission. His name was Ultimas Fauehelevent.

The strongest recommendation for Cosette's admission had been the remark of the prioress: She will be
homely.

The prioress having uttered this prediction, immediately took Cosette into her friendship and gave
her a place in the school building as a charity pupil.

There is nothing not entirely logical in this.

It is all in vain to have no mirrors in convents; women are conscious of their own appearance; young
girls who know that they are pretty do not readily become nuns; the inclination to the calling being in
inverse proportion to good looks. more is expected from the homely than from the handsome ones.
Hence a marked preference for the homely.

This whole affair elevated good old Faucbelevent greatly; he had achieved a triple success;--in the
eyes of Jean Valjean whom he had rescued and sheltered; with the gravedigger, Gribier, who said he had
saved him from a fine:and, at the convent, which, thanks to him, in retaining the coffin of Mother Cru-
cifixion under the altar, eluded Cesar and satisfied God. There was a coffin with a body in it at the
Petit Picpus, and a coffin without a body in the Vaugirard cemetery. Public order was greatly disturbed
thereby, undoubtedly, but nobody perceived it. As for the convent its gratitude to Faucheloent was deep.
Fanchelevent became thebest of servantsand themes' precious of gardeners.

At the next visit of the archbishop the prioress related the affair to his grace, half by way of a con-
fession, and half as a boast.

The archbishop. on returning from the convent, spoke of it with commendation and very quietly to M. de
bail, the confessor of Monsieur. and, subsequently, Archbishop of Rheims and a cardina.h 'Ibis twaise
and admiration for Fauthelevent travellod far for g went to Rome. We have seen a note addressed by the
then reigning pope, Leo XII., to one of his relatives, Monsignore of the Papal Embassy at Paris, who
bore the saint name as his own, Della Conga. It contained these lines: "It seems that there is in a
convent in Paris, an excellent gardener who is a holy man, named Pauvent." Not a whisper of all this
fame reached Pauchclevent in his shanty: he continued to weed and graft and cover his melon-beds wit-
hout being, in the least, aware of his excellence and holiness. He had no more suspicion of his splendid
reputation than any Durham or Surrey ox whose picture is published in the London Illustrated News with
this inscription: "The ox which won the premium at the cattle show."



IX.THE CLOSE



COSETTE, at the convent, still kept silent. She very naturally thought herself Jean Valjean's daughter.
Moreover, knowing nothing, there was nothing she could tell, and then, in any case, she would not have
told anything. As we have remarked, nothing habituates children to silence like misfortune. Cosette had
suffered so much that she was afraid of everything, even to speak, even to breathe. A single word had so
often brought down an avalanche on her head I She had hardly begun to feel re-assured since she had been
with Jean Winn, She soon became accustomed. to the convent. Still, she longed for Catharine, Inn dared
not say so. One day, however, she said to Jean Valjean, "If I had known it, father, I would have brought
her with me.

Cosette, in becoming a pupil at the convent. had to assume the dress of the school girls. jean Valjean
succeeded in having the garments which she laid aside given to him. It was the same mourning suit he had
carried for her to put on when she left the Thenardiers. It was not much worn. Jean Valjean rolled up
these garments, as well as the woollen stockings and shoes, with much camphor and other aromatic sub-
stances of which there is such an abundance in convents, and packed them in a small valise which he man-
aged to procure. He put this valise in a chair near his bed, and always kept the key of it in his pocket.

"Father," Cosette one day asked him, "what is that box there that smells so good?"

Father Fauchelevent, besides the "glory" we have just described, and of which he was unconscious, was
recompensed for his good deed; in the first place it made him happy, and then he had less work to dn, as
it was divided. Finally, as he was very fond of tobacco, be found the presence of M. Madeleine advantage-
ous in another point of view; he took three times as much tobacco as before, and that too in a almoner
infinitely more voluptuous, since M. Madeleine paid for it. The nuns did not adopt the name of Ultimus;
they called Jean Valjean the other Fauvent.

If those holy women had possessed aught of the discrimination of Javert, they might have remarked, in
course of time, that whin there was any little errand to run outside for on account of the garden, it
was always the elder Fauchelevent, old, infirm, and lame as he was, who went, and never the other; but,
whether it be that eyes continually fixed upon God cannot play the spy, or whether they were too con-
stantly employed in watching one another, they noticed nothing.

However, Jean Valjean was well satisfied to keep quiet and still. Javert watched the quarter for a good
long month.

The convent was to Jean Valjean like an island surrounded by wide waters. These four walls were, hence-
forth, the world to him. Within them he could see enough of the sky to be calm, and enough of Cosette to
be happy.

A very pleasant life began again for him.

He lived with Fauchelevent in the out-building at the foot of the garden. This petty structure, built of
rubbish, which was still standing in 1845, consisted, as we have already stated, of three rooms, all of
which were bare to the very walls. The principal one had been forcibly pressed upon M. Madeleine by Fau-
chelevent, for Jean Valjean had resisted in vain. The wall of this room, besides the two nails used for
hanging up the knee-leather and the hoe, was decorated with a royalist specimen of paper-mone of '93,
pasted above the fireplace, of which the following is a counterpart:



This Vendean assignat had been tacked to the wall by the putt' ing gardener. a former member of the Cho-
tan party, who had died at the convent, and whom Fauchelevent had succeeded.

Jean Valjean worked every day in the garden, and was very useful there. He had formerly been a pruner,
and now found it quite in his way to be a gardener. It may be remembered that he knew all kinds of re-
ceipts and secrets of field-work. These he turned to account. Nearly all the orchard trees were wild
stock; he grafted them and made them bear excellent fruit.

Cosette was allowed to come every day, and pass an hour with him. As the sisters were melancholy, and
he was kind, the child compared him with them, and worshipped him. Every day, at the hour ap-pointed,
she would hurry to the little building. When she entered the old place, she filled it with Paradise.
Jjean Valjean basked in her presence and felt his own happiness increase by reason of the happiness he
conferred on Cosette. The delight we inspire in others has this enchanting peculiarity that, far from
being diminished like every other reflection, it returns to us more radiant than ever. At the hours of
recreation, Jean Valjean from a distance watched her playing and romping, and he could distinguish her
laughter from the laughter of the rest.

For, now, Cosette laughed.

Even Cosette's countenance had, in a measure, changed. The gloomy cast had disappeared. Laughter is sun-
shine; it chases winter from the human face.

When the recreation was over and Cosette went in. Jean Valjean watched the windows of her schoolroom,
and, at night, would rise from his bed to take a look at the windows of the room in which she slept.

God has his own ways. The convent contributed, like Cosette, to confirm and complete, in Jean Valjean,
the work of the bishop. It cannot be denied that one of virtue's phases ends in pride. Therein is a
bridge built by the Evil One. Jean Valjean was, perhaps, without knowing it, near that very phase of
virtue, and that very bridge, when Providence flung him into the convent of the Petit Picpus. So long
as lie compared himself only with the bishop, he found himself unworthy and remained humble; but.for
some time past, he had been comparing himself with the rest of men, and pride was springing up in him.
Who knows? He might have finished by going gradually back to hate.

The convent stopped him on this descent.

It was the second place of captivity he had seen. In his youth, in what had been for him the commence-
ment of life, and, later, quite recently too, he had seen another, a frightful place, a terrible place,
the severities of which had always seemed to him to be the iniquity of public justice and the crime of
the law. Now, after having seen the galleys, he saw the cloister, and reflecting that he had been an
inmate of the galleys, and that he now was, so to speak, a spectator of the cloister, he anxiously com-
pared than in his meditations with anxiety.

Sometimes he would lean upon his spade and descend slowly along ' the endless rounds of reverie.

He recalled his former companions, and how wretched they were. They rose at dawn and toiled until night.
Scarcely allowed to sleep, they lay on camp-beds, and were permitted to have mattresses but two inches
thick in halls which were warmed only during the most inclement months. They were attired in hideous
red sacks, and had given to them, as a favour, a pair of canvas pantaloons in the heats of midsummer,
and a square of woollen stuff to throw over their shoulders, during the bitterest frosts of winter.
They had no wine to drink, no meat for food excepting when sent upon "extra hard work." They lived
without names, distinguished solely by numbers, and reduced, as it were, to ciphers, lowering their
eyes, lowering their voices, with their hair cropped close, under the rod, and plunged in shame.

Then, his thoughts reverted to the beings before his eyes.

These beings, also, lived with their hair cut close, their eyes bent down, their voices hushed, not
in shame indeed, but amid the scoffs of the world; not with their backs bruised by the gaoler's staff,
but with their shoulders lacerated by self-inflicted penance. Their names, too, had perished from among
men, and they now existed under austere designations alone. They never ate meat and never drank wine;
they often remained until evening without food. They were attired not in red sacks, but in black habits
of woollen, heavy in summer, light in winter, unable to increase or diminish them, without even the
privilege, according to the season, of substituting a linen dress or a woollen cloak, and then, for six
months in the year, they wore underclothing of serge which fevered than. They dwelt not in dormitories
warmed only in the bitterest frost of winter, but in cells where fire was never kindled. They slept not
on matresses two inches thick, but upon straw. Moreover, they were not even allowed to sleep, for, every
night, after a day of labour, they were, when: whelmed beneath the weight of the first sleep, the moment
when they were just beginning to slumber, and, with difficulty, to collect a little warmth, required to
waken, rise and assemble for prayers in an icy-cold and gloomy chapel, with their knees on the stone
pavement.

On certain days, each one of these beings, in her turn, had to remain twelve hours in succession kneel-
ing upon the flags, or prostrate on her face, with her arms crossed.

The others were men. these were women. What had these men done? They had robbed, ravished, plunder-
ed, killed, assassinated. They were highwaymen, forgers, poisoners, incendiaries. n ers. parricides. What
had these women done? They had nothing.

On one side. robbery, fraud, imposition, violence, lust, homicide. every species of sacrilege every descrip-
tion of offence; on the other, one thing only,--innocence.

A perfect innocence almost borne upwards in a mysterious Assumption, clinging still to Earth through vir-
tue, already touching Heaven through holiness.

On the one hand, the mutual avowal of crimes detailed with bated breath; on the other, faults confessed
aloud. And ohl what crimes! and oh! what faults!

On one side foul miasma, on the other, ineffable perfume. On the one side, a moral pestilence, watched
day and night, held in subjection at the cannon's mouth, and slowly consuming its infected victims; on
the other, chaste kindling of every soul together on the same hearthstone. There, utter gloom; here, the
shadow, but a shadow full of light, and the light full of glowing radiations.

Two seats of slavery; but, in the former, rescue possible, a legal limit always in view, and, then, es-
cape. In the second, perpetuity, the only hope at the most distant boundary of the future, that gleam of
liberty which men call death.

In the former, the captives were enchained by chains only; in the other, they were enchained by faith a-
lone.

What resulted from the first? One vast curse, the gnashing of teeth, hatred, desperate depravity, a cry of
rage against human society, sarcasm against heaven.

What issued from the second? Benediction and love.

And, in these two places, so alike and yet so different, these two species of beings so dissimilar were
performing the same work of expiation.

Jean Valjean thoroughly comprehended the expiation of the first; personal expiation, expiation for one-
self. But. he did not understand that of the others, of these blameless, spotless creatures, and he asked
himself with a tremor: "Expiation of what? What expiation?"

A voice responded in his conscience: the most divine of all human generosity, expiation for others.

Here we withhold all theories of our own: we are but the narrator; at Jean Valjem's point of view we place
ourselves and we merely reproduce his impressions.

He had before his eyes the sublime summit of self-denial, the loftiest possible height of virtue; inno-
cence forgiving men their sins and expiating them in their stead; servitude endured, torture accepted,
chastisement and misery invoked by souls that had not sinned in order that these might not fall upon
souls which had; the love of humanity losing itself in the love of God, but remaining there, distinct
and suppliant; sweet, feeble beings supporting all the torments of those who are punished, yet retaining
the smile of those who are rewarded. And then he remembered that he had dared to complain.

Often, in the middle of the night he would rise from his bed to!men to the grateful anthem of that in-
nocent beings thus overwhelmed with austerities, and he felt the blood run cold in his veins as he re-
flected that they who were justly punished never raised their voices towards Heaven excepting to blas-
pheme, and that he, wretch that he was, had uplifted his clenched fist against God.

Another strange thing which made him muse and meditate profoundly seemed like an intimation whispered
in his ear by Providence itself: the scaling of walls, the climbing over inclosures, the risk taken in
defiance of danger or death, the difficult and painful ascent--all those very efforts that he had made
to escape from the other place of expiation, he had made to enter this one Was this an emblem of his
destiny?

This house, also, was a prison, and bore dismal resemblance to the other from which he had fled, and
yet he had never conceived anything like it.

He once more saw gratings, bolts and bars of iron--to shut in whom? Angels.

Those lofty walls which he had seen surrounding tigers, he now saw encircling lambs.

It was a place of expiation, not of punishment; and yet it was still more austere, more sombre and
more pitiless than the other. These virgins were more harshly bent down than the convicts. A harsh,
cold blast, the blast that had frozen his youth, careered across that grated moat and manacled the
vultures; but a wind still more biting and more cruel beat upon the dove cage.

And why?

When he thought of these things, all that was in him gave way before this mystery of sublimity. In
these meditations, pride vanished. He reverted, again and again, to himself; he felt his own pitiful
unworthiness, and of ten wept. All that had occurred in his existence, for the last six months, led
him back towards the holy in-junctions of the bishop; Cosette through love, the convent through hum-
ility.

Sometimes, in the evening, about dusk, at the hour when the garden was solitary. be was seen kneeling,
in the middle of the walk that ran along the chapel, before the window through which he had looked,
on the night of his first arrival, turned towards the spot where he knew that the sister who was per-
forming the reparation was Prostrate in prayer. Thus he prayed kneeling before this sister.

It seemed as though lie dared not kneel directly before God.

Everything around him, this quiet garden, these balmy flowers, these children, shouting with joy, these
meek and simple women, this silent cloister, gradually entered into all his being, and, little by lit-
tle, his soul subsided into silence like this cloister, into fragrance like these flowers, into peace
like this garden, into simplicity like these women, into joy like these children. And then he reflect-
ed that two houses of God hut received him in succession at the two critical moments of his life, the
first when every door was closed and human society repelled him; the second, when human society again
howled upon his track, and the galleys once more gaped for him; and that, had it not been for the first,
he should have fallen thick into crime, and had it not been for the second, into punishment.

His whole heart melted in gratitude, and he loved more and more.

Several years passed thus. Cosette was growing.