I. THE 16TH OF FEBRUARY, 1883



THE NIGHT of the 16th of February, 1833, was a blessed night. Above its
shade the heavens were opened. It was the wedding night of Marius and
Cosette.

The day had been adorable.

It had not been the sky-blue festival dreamed by the grandfather, a
fairy scene with a confusion of cherubs and cupids above the heads of the
married pair, a marriage worthy of a frieze panel; but it had been sweet
and mirthful.

The fashion of marriage was not in 1833 what it is to-day. France had
not yet borrowed from England that supreme delicacy of eloping with
one's wife, of making one's escape on leaving the church, of hiding one's
self ashamed of one's happiness, and of combining the behaviour of a
bankrupt with the transports of Solomon's Song. They had not yet learned
all that there is chaste, exquisite, and decent, in jolting one's paradise
in a post-chaise, in intersecting one's mystery with click-clacks, in taking
a tavern bed for a nuptial bed, and in leaving behind, in the common alcove
at so much a night, the most sacred of life's memories pell-mell with the
interviews between the diligence conductor and the servant girl of the tav-
ern.

In this second half of the nineteenth century in which we live, the mayor
and his scarf, the priest and his chasuble, the law and God, are not enough;
we must complete them with the Longjumeau postillion; blue waistcoat with
red facings and bell-buttons, a plate for a vambrace, breeches of green
leather, oaths at Norman horses with knotted tails, imitation galloon,
tarpaulin hat, coarse powdered hair, enormous whip, and heavy boots.
France does not yet push elegance so far as to have, like the English
nobility, a hailstorm of slippers down at the heel and old shoes, beat-
ing upon the bridal post-chaise, in memory of Churchill, afterwards
Marlborough, or Malbrouck, who was assailed on the day of his marriage
by the anger of an aunt who brought him good luck. The old shoes and the
slippers do not yet form a part of our nuptial celebrations; but patience,
good taste continuing to spread, we shall come to it.

In 1833, a hundred years ago, marriage was not performed at full trot.

It was still imagined at that day, strange to tell, that a marriage is an
intimate and social festival, that a patriarchal banquet does not spoil a
domestic solemnity, that gaiety, even excessive, provided it be seemly, does
no harm to happiness, and finally that it is venerable and good that the
fusion of these two destinies whence a family is to arise, should commence
in the house, and that the household should have the nuptial chamber for
a witness henceforth.

And they have the shamelessness to be married at home.

The marriage took place, therefore, according to that now obsolete
fashion, at M. Gillenormand's.

Natural and ordinary as this matter of marriage may be, the banns to be
published, the deeds to be drawn up, the mairie, the church, always render
it somewhat complex. They could not be ready before the 16th of February.

Now, we mention this circumstance for the pure satisfaction of being exact,
it happened that the 16th was Mardi Gras. Hesitations, scruples, particularly
from Aunt Gillenormand.

"Mardi Gras!" exclaimed the grandfather. "So much the better. There
is a proverb:

Mariage un Mardi Gras,
N'aura point d'enfants ingrats.

Let us go on. Here goes for the 16th! Do you want to put it off, you, Marius?"

"Certainly not!" answered the lover.

"Let us get married," said the grandfather.

So the marriage took place on the 16th, notwithstanding the public gaiety.
It rained that day, but there is always a little patch of blue in the sky
at the service of happiness, which lovers see, even though the rest of crea-
tion be under an umbrella.

On the previous evening, Jean Valjean had handed to Marius, in presence
of M. Gillenormand, the five hundred and eighty-four thousand francs.
The marriage being performed under the law of community, the deeds
were simple.

Toussaint was henceforth useless to Jean Valjean; Cosette had inherited
her and had promoted her to the rank of waiting-maid.

As for Jean Valjean, there was a beautiful room in the Gillenormand house
furnished expressly for him, and Cosette had said to him so irresistibly:
"Father, I pray you," that she had made him almost promise that he would
come and occupy it.

A few days before the day fixed for the marriage, an accident happened to
Jean Valjean; he slighdy bruised the thumb of his right hand. It was not
serious; and he had allowed nobody to take any trouble about it, nor to
dress it, nor even to see his hurt, not even Cosette. It compelled him,
however, to muffle his hand in a bandage, and to carry his arm in a sling,
and prevented his signing anything. M. Gillenormand, as Cosette's over-
seeing guardian, took his place.

We shall take the reader neither to the mairie nor to the church. We hardly
follow two lovers as far as that, and we generally turn our backs upon
the drama as soon as it puts its bridegroom's bouquet into his buttonhole.
We shall merely mention an incident which, although unnoticed by the
wedding party, marked its progress from the Rue des Filles du Calvaire to
Saint Paul's.

They were repaving, at that time, the northern extremity of the Rue Saint
Louis. It was fenced off where it leaves the Rue du Parc Royal. It was
impossible for the wedding carriages to go directly to Saint Paul's. It was
necessary to change the route, and the shortest way was to turn off by the
boulevard. One of the guests observed that it was Mardi Gras, and that the
boulevard would be encumbered with carriages. "Why?" asked M. Gillenormand.
"On account of the masks." "Capital!" said the grandfather; "let us go that
way. These young folks are marrying; they are going to enter upon the serious
things of life. It will prepare them for it to see a bit of masquerade."

They went by the boulevard. The first of the wedding carriages contained
Cosette and Aunt Gillenormand, M. Gillenormand, and Jean Valjean. Marius,
still separated from his betrothed, according to the custom, did not come
till the second. The nuptial cortege, on leaving the Rue des Filles du
Calvaire, was involved in the long procession of carriages which made an
endless chain from the Madeleine to the Bastille and from the Bastille to
the Madeleine.

Masks abounded on the boulevard. It was of no avail that it rained at
intervals; Pantaloon and Harlequin were obstinate. In the good-humour
of that winter of 1833, Paris had disguised herself as Venice. We see no
such Mardi Gras nowadays. Everything being an expanded carnival, there
is no longer any carnival.

The cross-alleys were choked with passengers, and the windows with the
curious. The terraces which crown the peristyles of the theatres were
lined with spectators. Besides the masks, they beheld that row, peculiar
to Mardi Gras as well as to Longchamps, of vehicles of all sorts, hackney
coaches, spring carts, carrioles, cabriolets, moving in order, rigorously
riveted to one another by the regulations of the police, and, as it were,
running in grooves. Whoever is in one of these vehicles is, at the same time,
spectator and spectacle. Sergents de ville kept those two interminable par-
allel files on the lower sides of the boulevard moving with a contrary
motion, and watched, so that nothing should hinder their double current,
over those two streams of carriages flowing, the one down, the other up,
the one towards the Chaussee d'Antin, the other towards the Faubourg
Saint Antoine. The emblazoned carriages of the peers of France, and the
ambassadors, kept the middle of the roadway, going and coming freely.
Certain magnificent and joyous corteges, especially the Fat Ox, had the
same privilege. In this gaiety of Paris, England cracked her whip; the
postchaise of Lord Seymour, teased with a nickname by the populace,
passed along with a great noise.

In the double file, along which galloped some Municipal Guards like
shepherds' dogs, honest family carry-alls, loaded down with great-aunts
and grandmothers, exhibited at their doors fresh groups of disguised chil-
dren, clowns of seven, clownesses of six, charming little creatures, feeling
that they were officially a portion of the public mirth, penetrated with the
dignity of their harlequinade, and displaying the gravity of functionaries.

From time to time, there was a bloc somewhere in the procession of vehi-
cles; one or the other of the two lateral files stopped until the knot was
disentangled; one carriage obstructed was enough to paralyse the whole
line. Then they resumed their course.

The wedding carriages were in the file going towards the Bastille, and
moving along the right side of the boulevard. At the Rue du Pont aux
Choux, there was a stop for a time. Almost at the same instant, on the
other side, the other file, which was going towards the Madeleine, also
stopped. There was at this point of that file, a carriage-load of masks.
These carriages, or, to speak more correctly, these cart-loads of masks,
are well known to the Parisians. If they failed on a Mardi Gras, or a Mid-
Lent, people suspected something, and would they say: "there is something at
the bottom of that. Probably the ministry is going to change." A heaping up
of Cassandras, Harlequins and Columbines, jolted above the passers-by, every
possible grotesqueness from the Turk to the savage, Hercules supporting
marchionesses, jades who would make Rabelais stop his ears even as the
Bacchantes made Aristophanes cast down his eyes; flax wigs, rosy swaddling-
bands, coxcombs' hats, cross-eyed spectacles, Janot cocked hats, teased
by a butterfly, shouts thrown to the foot-passengers, arms akimbo, bold
postures, naked shoulders, masked faces, unmuzzled shamelessness; a chaos
of effrontery marshalled by a driver crowned with flowers; such is this
institution.

Greece required the chariot of Thespis, France requires the fiacre of
Vade.

Everything may be parodied, even parody. The saturnalia, that grimace
of the ancient beauty, has gradually grown to Mardi Gras, and the bacchanal,
formerly crowned with vine branches, inundated with sunlight, showing
bosoms of marble in a divine half-nudity, to-day grown flabby under the
soaking rags of the north, has ended by calling herself the chie-en-lit.

The tradition of the carriages of masks goes back to the oldest times of
the monarchy. The accounts of Louis XI. allow to the bailiff of the palace
"twenty sous tournois for three masquerade coaches at the street corners."
In our days, these noisy crowds of creatures are commonly carted by some
ancient van, the top of which they load down, or overwhelm with their
tumultuous group an excise cart whose cover is broken in. There are twenty
of them in a carriage for six. They are on the seat, on the stool, on the
bows of the cover, on the pole. They even got astride of the carriage lan-
terns. They are standing, lying, sitting, feet curled up, legs hanging. The
women occupy the knees of the men. Their mad pyramid can be seen from a
distance above the swarming heads. These carriage-loads make mountains of
mirth in the midst of the mob. Colle, Panard, and Piron, flow from them,
enriched with argot. They spit the Billingsgate catechism down upon the
people. This fiacre, become measureless by its load, has an air of conquest.
Uproar is in front, tohubohu is in the rear. They vociferate, they vocalise,
they howl, they burst, they writhe with happiness; gaiety bellows, sarcasm
flames, joviality spreads itself as if it were purple; two harridans lead on
the farce which expands into apotheosis; it is the triumphal car of Laughter.

Laughter too cynical to be free. And, in fact, this laughter is suspicious.
This laughter has a mission. Its business is to prove the carnival to the
Parisians.

These Billingsgate waggons, in which we feel an indefinable darkness,
make the philosopher think. There is something of government therein.
In them we lay our finger upon a mysterious affinity between public men
and public women.

That turpitudes heaped up should give a total of gaiety, that by piling
ignominy upon opprobrium, a people is decoyed; that espionage serving
as a caryatid to prostitution, amuses the crowds while insulting them; that
the mob loves to see pass along on the four wheels of a fiacre, this mon-
strous living heap, rag-tinsel, half ordure and half light, barking and
singing; that people should clap their hands at this glory made up of every
shame; that there should be no festival for the multitudes unless the police
exhibit among them this sort of twenty-headed hydra of joy, certainly it is
sad! But what is to be done? These tumbrils of beribboned and beflowered
slime are insulted and forgiven by the public laughter. The laughter of all
is the accomplice of the universal degradation. Certain unwholesome festivals
disintegrate the people, and make it a populace. And for populaces as well
as for tyrants, buffoons are needed. The king has Roquelaure, the people
has Harlequin. Paris is the great foolish town, whenever she is not the great
sublime city. The carnival is a part of her politics. Paris, we must admit,
willingly supplies herself with comedy through infamy. She demands of her
masters--when she has masters--but one thing: "Varnish me the mud!" Rome
was of the same humour. She loved Nero. Nero was a titanic lighterman.

Chance determined, as we have just said, that one of these shapeless
bunches of masked women and men, drawn along in a huge calash, stopped
on the left of the boulevard while the wedding cortege was stopping on
the right. From one side of the boulevard to the other, the carriage in
which the masks were, looked into the carriage opposite, in which was the
bride.

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

"A sham wedding," replied another. "We are the genuine."

And, too far off to be able to accost the wedding party, fearing more-
over the call of the sergents de ville, the two masks looked elsewhere.

The whole carriage-load of masks had enough to do a moment afterwards,
the multitude began to hoot at it, which is the caress of the populace
to the maskers, and the two masks which had just spoken were obliged to
make front to the street with their comrades and had none too many of all
the weapons from the storehouse of the markets, to answer the enormous
jaw of the people. A frightful exchange of metaphors was carried on
between the masks and the crowd.

Meanwhile, two other masks in the same carriage, a huge-nosed Spaniard
with an oldish air and enormous black moustaches, and a puny jade, a very
young girl, with a black velvet mask, had also noticed the wedding party,
and, while their companions and the passers-by were lampooning one another,
carried on a dialogue in a low tone.

Their aside was covered by the tumult and lost in it. The gusts of rain
had soaked the carriage, which was thrown wide open; the February wind is
not warm; even while answering the Spaniard, the girl, with her low-necked
dress, shivered, laughed, and coughed.

This was the dialogue:

"Say, now."

"What, daron?"1

"Do you see that old fellow?"

"What old fellow?"

"There, in the first roulotte2 of the wedding party by our side."

"Who has his arm hooked into a black cravat?"

"Yes."

"Well?"

"I am sure I know him."

"Ah!"

"I wish that somebody may faucher my colabre and have never in my vioc
said vousaille, tonorgue, nor mezig, if I don't know that pantinois."3

"To-day Paris is Pantin."

"Can you see the bride by stooping over?"

"No."

"And the groom?"

"There is no groom in that roulotte."

"Pshaw!"

"Unless it may be the other old fellow."

"Bend forward well and try to see the bride."

"I can't."

"It's all the same, that old fellow who has something the matter with
his paw, I am sure I know him."

"And what good does it do you to know him?"

"Nobody knows. Sometimes!"

"I don't get much amusement out of old men, for my part."

"I know him."

"Know him to your heart's content."

"How the devil is he at the wedding?"

"We are at it, too, ourselves."

"Where does this wedding party come from?"

"How do I know?"

"Listen."

"What?"

"You must do something."

"What?"

"Get out of our roulotte and filer4 that wedding party."

"What for?"

"To know where it goes and what it is. Make haste to get out, run, my
fee, you are young."

"I can't leave the carriage."

"Why not?"

"I am rented."

"Ah, the deuce!"

"I owe my day to the prefecture."

"That is true."

"If I leave the carriage, the first officer who sees me arrests me. You
know very well."

"Yes, I know."

"To-day I am bought by Pharos."5

"It is all the same. That old fellow worries me."

"Old men worry you. You are not a young girl, however."

"He is in the first carriage."

"Well?"

"In the bride's roulotte."

"What then?"

"Then he is the father."

"What is that to me?"

"I tell you that he is the father."

"There isn't any other father."

"Listen."

"What?"

"For my part, I can hardly go out unless I am masked. Here, I am hidden,
nobody knows that I am here. But to-morrow, there are no more masks. It
is Ash-Wednesday. I risk falling.6 I must get back to my hole. You are
free."

"Not too much so."

"More than I, still."

"Well, what then?"

"You must try to find out where this wedding party have gone."

"Where it is going?"

"Yes."

"I know that."

"Where is it going, then?"

"To the Cadran Bleu."

"In the first place, it is not in that direction."

"Well! to the Rapee."

"Or somewhere else."

"It is free. Weddings are free."

"That isn't all. I tell you that you must try to let me know what that
wedding party is, that this old fellow belongs to, and where that wedding
party lives."

"Not often! that will be funny. It is convenient to find, a week afterwards,
a wedding party which passed by in Paris on Mardi Gras. A tiquante7 in a
haystack! Is it possible!"

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

The two files resumed their movement in opposite directions on the
two sides of the boulevard, and the carriage of the masks lost sight of the
bride's "roulotte."



II, JEAN VALJEAN STILL HAS HIS ARM IN A SLING



TO REALISE his dream. To whom is that given? There must be elections
for that in heaven; we are all unconscious candidates; the angels vote.
Cosette and Marius had been elected.

Cosette, at the mairie and in the church, was brilliant and touching.
Toussaint, aided by Nicolette, had dressed her.

Cosette wore her dress of Binche guipure over a skirt of white taffetas,
a veil of English point, a necklace of fine pearls, a crown of orange
flowers; all this was white, and, in this whiteness, she was radiant. It
was an exquisite candour, dilating and transfiguring itself into lumi-
nousness. One would have said she was a virgin in process of becoming a
goddess. Marius' beautiful hair was perfumed and lustrous; here and there
might be discerned, under the thickness of the locks, pallid lines, which
were the scars of the barricade.

The grandfather, superb, his head held high, uniting more than ever in
his toilet and manners all the elegances of the time of Barras, conducted
Cosette. He took the place of Jean Valjean, who, as his arm was in a sling,
could not give his hand to the bride.

Jean Valjean, in black, followed and smiled.

"Monsieur Fauchelevent," said the grandfather to him, "this is a happy
day. I vote for the end of afflictions and sorrows. There must no longer be
any sadness anywhere henceforth. By Jove! I decree joy! Evil has no right to
be. That there should be unfortunate men--in truth, it is a shame to the
blue sky. Evil does not come from man, who, in reality, is good. All human
miseries have for their chief seat and central government Hell, otherwise
called the Tuileries of the devil. Good, here am I saying demagogical words
now! As for me, I no longer have any political opinions; that all men may be
rich, that is to say, happy, that is all I ask for."

When, at the completion of all the ceremonies, after having pronounced
before the mayor and the priest every possible yes, after having
signed the registers at the municipality and at the sacristy, after having
exchanged their rings, after having been on their knees elbow to elbow
under the canopy of white moire in the smoke of the censer, hand in hand,
admired and envied by all, Marius in black, she in white, preceded by the
usher in colonel's epaulettes, striking the pavement with his halberd,
between two hedges of marvelling spectators, they arrived under the portal
of the church where the folding-doors were both open, ready to get into
the carriage again, and all was over, Cosette could not yet believe it. She
looked at Marius, she looked at the throng, she looked at the sky; it seemed
as if she were afraid of awaking. Her astonished and bewildered air rendered
her unspeakably bewitching. To return, they got into the same
carriage, Marius by Cosette's side; M. Gillenormand and Jean Valjean sat
opposite. Aunt Gillenormand had drawn back one degree, and was in the
second carriage. "My children," said the grandfather, "here you are Monsieur
the Baron and Madame the Baroness, with thirty thousand francs a
year." And Cosette, leaning close up to Marius, caressed his ear with this
angelic whisper: "It is true, then. My name is Marius. I am Madame You."

These two beings were resplendent. They were at the irrevocable and
undiscoverable hour, at the dazzling point of intersection of all youth and
of all joy. They realised Jean Prouvaire's rhymes; together they could not
count forty years. It was marriage sublimated; these two children were two
lilies. They did not see each other, they contemplated each other. Cosette
beheld Marius in a glory; Marius beheld Cosette upon an altar. And upon
that altar and in that glory, the two apotheoses mingling, in the background,
mysteriously, behind a cloud to Cosette, in flashing flame to Marius, there
was the ideal, the real, the rendezvous of the kiss and the
dream, the nuptial pillow.

Every torment which they had experienced was returned by them in
intoxication. It seemed to them that the griefs, the sleeplessness, the tears,
the anguish, the dismay, the despair, become caresses and radiance, rendered
still more enchanting the enchanting hour which was approaching;
and that their sorrows were so many servants making the toilet of their joy.
To have suffered, how good it is! Their grief made a halo about their happiness.
The long agony of their love terminated in an ascension.

There was in these two souls the same enchantment, shaded with
anticipation in Marius and with modesty in Cosette. They said to each
other in a whisper: "We will go and see our little garden in the Rue Plumet
again." The folds of Cosette's dress were over Marius.

Such a day is an ineffable mixture of dream and of certainty. You possess
and you suppose. You still have some time before you for imagination. It is
an unspeakable emotion on that day to be at noon and to think of midnight.
The delight of these two hearts overflowed upon the throng and
gave joy to the passers-by.

People stopped in the Rue Saint Antoine in front of Saint Paul's to see,
through the carriage window, the orange flowers trembling upon Cosette's
head.

Then they returned to the Rue des Filles du Calvaire, to their home.
Marius, side by side with Cosette, ascended, triumphant and radiant, that
staircase up which he had been carried dying. The poor gathered before
the door, and, sharing their purses, they blessed them. There were flowers
everywhere. The house was not less perfumed than the church; after
incense, roses. They thought they heard voices singing in the infinite; they
had God in their hearts; destiny appeared to them like a ceiling of stars;
they saw above their heads a gleam of sunrise. Suddenly the clock struck.
Marius looked at Cosette's bewitching bare arm and the rosy things which
he dimly perceived through the lace of her corsage, and Cosette, seeing
Marius look, began to blush even to the tips of her ears.

A good number of the old friends of the Gillenormand family had been
invited; they pressed eagerly about Cosette. They vied with each other in
calling her Madame the Baroness.

The officer Theodule Gillenormand, now a captain, had come from
Chartres, where he was now in garrison, to attend the wedding of his
cousin Pontmercy. Cosette did not recognise him.

He, for his part, accustomed to being thought handsome by the
women, remembered Cosette no more than any other.

"I was right in not believing that lancer's story!" said Grandfather
Gillenormand to himself.

Cosette had never been more tender towards Jean Valjean. She was in
unison with Grandfather Gillenormand; while he embodied joy in aphorisms
and in maxims, she exhaled love and kindness like a perfume.Happiness
wishes everybody happy.

She went back, in speaking to Jean Valjean, to the tones of voice of the
time when she was a little girl. She caressed him with smiles.

A banquet had been prepared in the dining-room.

An illumination a giorno is the necessary attendant of a great joy. Dusk
and obscurity are not accepted by the happy. They do not consent to be
dark. Night, yes; darkness, no. If there is no sun, one must be made.
The dining-room was a furnace of cheerful things. In the centre above
the white and glittering table, a Venetian lustre with flat drops, with all
sorts of coloured birds, blue, violet, red, green, perched in the midst of the
candles; about the lustre girandoles, upon the wall reflectors with triple and
quintuple branches; glasses, crystals, glassware, vessels, porcelains, Faenza-
ware, pottery, gold and silver ware, all sparkled and rejoiced. The spaces
between the candelabra were filled with bouquets, so that, wherever there
was not a light, there was a flower.

In the antechamber three violins and a flute played some of Haydn's
quartettes in softened strains.

Jean Valjean sat in a chair in the parlour, behind the door, which shut back
upon him in such a way as almost to hide him. A few moments before they took
their seats at the table, Cosette came, as if from a sudden impulse, and made
him a low curtsey, spreading out her bridal dress with both hands, and, with
a tenderly frolicsome look, she asked him:

"Father, are you pleased?"

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

"Well, then, laugh."

Jean Valjean began to laugh.

A few moments afterwards, Basque announced dinner.

The guests, preceded by M. Gillenormand giving his arm to Cosette, entered
the dining-room, and took their places, according to the appointed order,
about the table.

Two large arm-chairs were placed, on the right and on the left of the
bride, the first for M. Gillenormand, the second for Jean Valjean. M.
Gillenormand took his seat. The other arm-chair remained empty.

All eyes sought "Monsieur Fauchelevent."

He was not there.

M. Gillenormand called Basque.

"Do you know where Monsieur Fauchelevent is?"

"Monsieur," answered Basque. "Exactly. Monsieur Fauchelevent told me to
say to monsieur that he was suffering a little from his sore hand, and
could not dine with Monsieur the Baron and Madame the Baroness. That
he begged they would excuse him, that he would come to-morrow morning.
He has just gone away."

This empty arm-chair chilled for a moment the effusion of the nuptial re-
past. But, M. Fauchelevent absent, M. Gillenormand was there, and the
grandfather was brilliant enough for two. He declared that M. Fauchele-
vent did well to go to bed early, if he was suffering, but that it was
only a "scratch." This declaration was enough. Besides, what is one dark
corner in such a deluge of joy? Cosette and Marius were in one of those
selfish and blessed moments when we have no faculty save for the percep-
tion of happiness. And then, M. Gillenormand had an idea. "By Jove, this
arm-chair is empty. Come here, Marius. Your aunt, although she has a right
to you, will allow it. This arm-chair is for you. It is legal, and it is
proper. ‘Fortunatus beside Fortunata.'" Applause from the whole table.
Marius took Jean Valjean's place at Cosette's side; and things arranged
themselves in such a way that Cosette, at first saddened by Jean Valjean's
absence, was finally satisfied with it. From the moment that Marius was the
substitute, Cosette would not have regretted God. She put her soft little
foot encased in white satin upon Marius' foot.

The arm-chair occupied, M. Fauchelevent was effaced; and nothing was missed.
And, five minutes later, the whole table was laughing from one end to the
other with all the spirit of forgetfulness.

At the dessert, M. Gillenormand standing, a glass of champagne in his hand,
filled half full so that the trembling of his ninety-two years should not
spill it, gave the health of the married pair.

"You shall not escape two sermons," exclaimed he. "This morning you had
the cure's, to-night you shall have the grandfather's. Listen to me; I
am going to give you a piece of advice: Adore one another. I don't make a
heap of flourishes. I go to the end, be happy. The only sages in creation
are the turtle-doves. The philosophers say: Moderate your joys. I say: Give
them the rein. Be enamoured like devils. Be rabid. The philosophers dote.
I would like to cram their philosophy back into their throats. Can there
be too many perfumes, too many open rosebuds, too many nightingales
singing, too many green leaves, too much aurora in life? can you love each
other too much? can you please each other too much? Take care, Estelle,
you are too pretty! Take care, Nemorin, you are too handsome! The rare
absurdity! Can you enchant each other too much, pet each other too much,
charm each other too much? can you be too much alive? can you be too
happy? Moderate your joys. Ah, pshaw! Down with the philosophers! Wisdom
is jubilation. Jubilate, jubilate. Are we happy because we are good: or
are we good because we are happy? Is the Sancy called the Sancy because
it belonged to Harlay de Sancy, or because it weighs cent-six [a hundred
and six] carats? I know nothing about it; life is full of such problems;
the important thing is to have the Sancy, and happiness. Be happy without
quibbling. Obey the sun blindly. What is the sun? It is love. Who says love,
says woman. Ah, ha! There is an omnipotence; it is woman. Ask this demagogue
of a Marius if he be not the slave of this little tyrant of a Cosette, and
with his full consent, the coward. Woman! There is no Robespierre who holds
out, woman reigns. I am no longer a royalist except for that royalty. What
is Adam? He is the realm of Eve. No '89 for Eve. There was the royal sceptre
surmounted by a fleur de lys; there was the imperial sceptre surmounted
by a globe; there was the sceptre of Charlemagne, which was of iron; there
was the sceptre of Louis XIV., which was of gold, the revolution twisted
them between his thumb and finger like half-penny wisps of straw; they are
finished, they are broken, they are on the ground, there is no longer a
sceptre; but get me up some revolutions now against this little embroidered
handkerchief which smells of patchouly! I would like to see you at it. Try.
Why is it immovable? Because it is a rag. Ah! you are the nineteenth century!
Well, what then? We were the eighteenth! and we were as stupid as
you. Don't imagine that you have changed any great thing in the universe
because your stoop-galant is called the cholera morbus, and because your
boree is called the cachucha. At heart you must always love women. I defy
you to get away from that. These devilesses are our angels. Yes, love, wo-
man, the kiss, that is a circle which I defy you to get out of; and, as for
myself, I would like very well to get back into it. Which of you has seen
rising into the infinite, calming all beneath her, gazing upon the waves
like a woman, the star Venus, the great coquette of the abyss, the Celimene
of the ocean? The ocean is a rude Alceste. Well, he scolds in vain; Venus
appears, he is obliged to smile. That brute beast submits. We are all so.
Wrath, tempest, thunderbolts, foam to the sky. A woman enters on the
scene, a star rises; flat on your face! Marius was fighting six months ago;
he is marrying to-day. Well done. Yes, Marius, yes, Cosette, you are right.
Live boldly for one another, my-love one another, make us die with rage
that we cannot do as much, idolatrise each other. Take in your two beaks all
the little straws of felicity on earth, and build yourselves a nest for life.
By Jove, to love, to be loved, the admirable miracle when one is young! Don't
imagine that you have invented it. I, too, I have had my dream, my vision,
my sighs; I, too, have had a moonlight soul. Love is a child six thousand
years old. Love has a right to a long white beard. Methuselah is a gamin
beside Cupid. For sixty centuries, man and woman have got out of the
scrape by loving. The devil, who is malicious, took to hating man; man,
who is more malicious, took to loving woman. In this way he has done him-
self more good than the devil has done him harm. This trick was discovered
at the time of the earthly paradise. My friends, the invention is old, but
it is quite new. Profit by it. Be Daphnis and Chloe, while you are waiting
to be Philemon and Baucis. So act that, when you are with each other, there
shall be nothing wanting, and that Cosette may be the sun to Marius, and
that Marius may be the universe to Cosette. Cosette, let your fine weather
be the smile of your husband: Marius! let your rain be the tears of your
wife. And may it never rain in your household. You have filched the good
number in the lottery, a love-match; you have the highest prize, take good
care of it, put it under lock and key, don't squander it, worship each other,
and snap your fingers at the rest. Believe what I tell you. It is good sense.
Good sense cannot lie. Be a religion to each other. Every one has his own
way of worshipping God. Zounds! the best way to worship God is to love your
wife. I love you! that is my catechism. Whoever loves is orthodox. Henry
IV.'s oath puts sanctity between gluttony and drunkenness. Ventresaint-
gris! I am not of the religion of that oath. Woman is forgotten in it.
That astonishes me on the part of Henry IV.'s oath. My friends, long live
woman! I am old, they say; it is astonishing how I feel myself growing
young again. I would like to go and listen to the bagpipes in the woods.
These children who are so fortunate as to be beautiful and happy, that
fuddles me. I would get married myself if anybody wished. It is impossible
to imagine that God has made us for anything but this: to idolise, to coo,
to plume, to be pigeons, to be cocks, to bill with our loves from morning to
night, to take pride in our little wives, to be vain, to be triumphant, to
put on airs; that is the aim of life. That is, without offence to you, what
we thought, we old fellows, in our times when we were the young folks. Ah!
odswinkers! what charming women there were in those days, and pretty
faces, and lasses! There's where I made my ravages. Then love each other.
If people did not love one another, I really don't see what use there would
be in having any spring; and, for my part, I should pray the good God to
pack up all the pretty things which he shows us, and take them away from
us, and to put the flowers, the birds, and the pretty girls, back into his
box. My children, receive the benediction of the old goodman."

The evening was lively, gay, delightful. The sovereign good-humour of the
grandfather gave the key-note to the whole festival, and everybody regu-
lated himself by this almost centenarian cordiality. They danced a little,
they laughed much; it was a good childlike wedding. They might have invited
the goodman formerly. Indeed, he was there in the person of Grandfather
Gillenormand.

There was tumult, then silence.

The bride and groom disappeared.

A little after midnight the Gillenormand house became a temple.

Here we stop. Upon the threshold of wedding-nights stands an angel
smiling, his finger on his lip.

The soul enters into contemplation before this sanctuary, in which is
held the celebration of love.

There must be gleams of light above those houses. The joy which they
contain must escape in light through the stones of the walls, and shine
dimly into the darkness. It is impossible that this sacred festival of
destiny should not send a celestial radiation to the infinite. Love is the
sublime crucible in which is consummated the fusion of man and woman; the
one being, the triple being, the final being, the human trinity springs from it.
This birth of two souls into one must be an emotion for space. The lover
is priest; the rapt maiden is affrighted. Something of this joy goes to God.
Where there is really marriage, that is where there is love, the ideal is
mingled with it. A nuptial bed makes a halo in the darkness. Were it given to
the eye of flesh to perceive the fearful and enchanting sights of the superior
life, it is probable that we should see the forms of night, the winged stran-
gers, the blue travellers of the invisible, bending, a throng of shadowy
heads, over the luminous house, pleased, blessing, showing to one another
the sweetly startled maiden bride, and wearing the reflection of the human
felicity upon their divine countenances. If, at that supreme hour, the wedded
pair, bewildered with pleasure, and believing themselves alone, were to
listen, they would hear in their chamber a rustling of confused wings. Perfect
happiness implies the solidarity of the angels. That little obscure alcove
has for its ceiling the whole heavens. When two mouths, made sacred by love,
draw near each other to create, it is impossible that above that ineffable
kiss there should not be a thrill in the immense mystery of the stars.

These are the true felicities. No joy beyond these joys. Love is the only
ecstasy, everything else weeps.

To love or to have loved, that is enough. Ask nothing further. There is no
other pearl to be found in the dark folds of life. To love is a consummation.



III. THE INSEPARABLE



WHAT had become of Jean Valjean?

Immediately after having laughed, upon Cosette's playful injunction, no-
body observing him, Jean Valjean had left his seat, got up, and, unper-
ceived, had reached the antechamber. It was that same room which eight
months before he had entered, black with mire, blood, and powder, bring-
ing the grandson home to the grandfather. The old woodwork was
garlanded with leaves and flowers; the musicians were seated on the couch
upon which they had placed Marius. Basque, in a black coat, short breeches,
white stockings, and white gloves, was arranging crowns of roses about
each of the dishes which was to be served up. Jean Valjean had shown him
his arm in a sling, charged him to explain his absence, and gone away.

The windows of the dining-room looked upon the street. Jean Valjean
stood for some minutes motionless in the obscurity under those radiant
windows. He listened. The confused sounds of the banquet reached him.
He heard the loud and authoritative words of the grandfather, the violins,
the clatter of the plates and glasses, the bursts of laughter, and through
all that gay uproar he distinguished Cosette's sweet joyous voice.

He left the Rue des Filles du Calvaire and returned to the Rue de
l'Homme Arme.

To return, he went by the Rue Saint Louis, the Rue Culture Sainte
Catherine, and the Blancs Manteaux; it was a little longer, but it was the
way by which, for three months, to avoid the obstructions and the mud of
the Rue Vieille du Temple, he had been accustomed to come every day,
from the Rue de l'Homme Arme to the Rue des Filles du Calvaire, with
Cosette.

This way over which Cosette had passed excluded for him every other
road.

Jean Valjean returned home. He lighted his candle and went upstairs. The
apartment was empty. Toussaint herself was no longer there. Jean Valjean's
step made more noise than usual in the rooms. All the closets were
open. He went into Cosette's room. There were no sheets on the bed. The
pillow, without a pillow-case and without laces, was laid upon the cover-
lets folded at the foot of the mattress of which the ticking was to be
seen and on which nobody should sleep henceforth. All the little feminine
objects to which Cosette clung had been carried away; there remained only
the heavy furniture and the four walls. Toussaint's bed was also stripped.
A single bed was made and seemed waiting for somebody, that was Jean
Valjean's.

Jean Valjean looked at the walls, shut some closet doors, went and
came from one room to the other.

Then he found himself again in his own room, and he put his candle
on the table.

He had released his arm from the sling, and he helped himself with his
right hand as if he did not suffer from it.

He approached his bed, and his eye fell, was it by chance? was it with
intention? upon the inseparable, of which Cosette had been jealous, upon
the little trunk which never left him. On the 4th of June, on arriving in
the Rue de l'Homme Arme, he had placed it upon a candle-stand at the head of
his bed. He went to this stand with a sort of vivacity, took a key from his
pocket, and opened the valise.

He took out slowly the garments in which, ten years before, Cosette had left
Montfermeil, first the little dress, then the black scarf, then the great
heavy child's shoes which Cosette could have almost put on still, so small
a foot she had, then the bodice of very thick fustian, then the knitskirt,
then the apron with pockets, then the woollen stockings. Those stockings,
on which the shape of a little leg was still gracefully marked, were hard-
ly longer than Jean Valjean's hand. These were all black. He had carried
these garments for her to Montfermeil. As he took them out of the valise,
he laid them on the bed. He was thinking. He remembered. It was in winter,
a very cold December, she shivered half-naked in rags, her poor little feet
all red in her wooden shoes. He, Jean Valjean, he had taken her away from
those rags to clothe her in this mourning garb. The mother must have been
pleased in her tomb to see her daughter wear mourning for her, and espec-
ially to see that she was clad, and that she was warm. He thought of that
forest of Montfermeil; they had crossed it together, Cosette and he; he
thought of the weather, of the trees without leaves, of the forest without
birds, of the sky without sun; it is all the same, it was charming. He
arranged the little things upon the bed, the scarf next the skirt, the
stockings beside the shoes, the bodice beside the dress, and he looked at
them one after another. She was no higher than that, she had her great doll
in her arms, she had put her louis d'or in the pocket of this apron, she
laughed, they walked holding each other by the hand, she had nobody but
him in the world.

Then his venerable white head fell upon the bed, this old stoical heart
broke, his face was swallowed up, so to speak, in Cosette's garments, and
anybody who had passed along the staircase at that moment, would have
heard fearful sobs.



IV. IMMORTALE JECUR



THE FORMIDABLE old struggle, several phases of which we have already
seen, recommenced.

Jacob wrestled with the angel but one night. Alas! how many times
have we seen Jean Valjean clenched, body to body, in the darkness with his
conscience, and wrestling desperately against it.

Unparalleled struggle! At certain moments, the foot slips; at others,
the ground gives way. How many times had that conscience furious for the
right, grasped and overwhelmed him! How many times had truth, inexorable,
planted her knee upon his breast! How many times, thrown to the
ground by the light, had he cried to it for mercy! How many times had that
implacable light, kindled in him and over him by the bishop, irresistibly
dazzled him when he desired to be blinded! How many times had he risen
up in the combat, bound to the rock, supported by sophism, dragged in the
dust, sometimes bearing down his conscience beneath him, sometimes
borne down by it! How many times, after an equivocation, after a treacherous
and specious reasoning of selfishness, had he heard his outraged
conscience cry in his ear: "A trip! wretch!" How many times had his refractory
thought writhed convulsively under the evidence of duty. Resistance to
God. Agonising sweats. How many secret wounds, which he alone felt
bleed! How many chafings of his miserable existence! How many times had
he risen up bleeding, bruised, lacerated, illuminated, despair in his heart,
serenity in his soul! and, conquered, felt himself conqueror. And, after having
racked, torn, and broken him, his conscience, standing above him,
formidable, luminous, tranquil, said to him: "Now, go in peace!"

But, on coming out of so gloomy a struggle, what dreary peace, alas!
That night, however, Jean Valjean felt that he was giving his last battle.
A poignant question presented itself.

Predestinations are not all straight; they do not develop themselves in
a rectilinear avenue before the predestinated; they are blind alleys, coecums,
obscure windings, embarrassing cross-roads offering several paths. Jean
Valjean was halting at this moment at the most perilous of these crossroads.
He had reached the last crossing of good and evil. He had that dark
intersection before his eyes. This time again, as it had already happened to
him in other sorrowful crises, two roads opened before him; the one tempting,
the other terrible. Which should he take?

The one which terrified him was advised by the mysterious indicating
finger which we all perceive whenever we fix our eyes upon the shadow.

Jean Valjean had, once again, the choice between the terrible haven
and the smiling ambush.

It is true, then? the soul may be cured, but not the lot. Fearful thing! an
incurable destiny!

The question which presented itself was this:

In what manner should Jean Valjean comport himself in regard to the
happiness of Cosette and Marius? This happiness, it was he who had willed
it, it was he who had made it; he had thrust it into his own heart, and at
this hour, looking upon it, he might have the same satisfaction that an
armourer would have, who should recognise his own mark upon a blade, on
withdrawing it all reeking from his breast.

Cosette had Marius, Marius possessed Cosette. They had everything,
even riches. And it was his work.

But this happiness, now that it existed, now that it was here, what was
he to do with it, he, Jean Valjean? Should he impose himself upon this
happiness? Should he treat it as belonging to him? Unquestionably, Cosette
was another's; but should he, Jean Valjean, retain all of Cosette that he
could retain? Should he remain the kind of father, scarcely seen, but
respected, which he had been hitherto? Should he introduce himself quietly
into Cosette's house? Should he bring, without saying a word, his past to
this future? Should he present himself there as having a right, and should
he come and take his seat, veiled, at that luminous hearth? Should he take,
smiling upon them, the hands of those innocent beings into his two tragical
hands? Should he place upon the peaceful andirons of the Gillenormand
parlour, his feet which dragged after them the infamous shadow of the
law? Should he enter upon a participation of chances with Cosette and
Marius? Should he thicken the obscurity upon his head and the cloud
upon theirs? Should he put in his catastrophe as a companion for their two
felicities? Should he continue to keep silence? In a word, should he be, by
the side of these two happy beings, the ominous mute of destiny?

We must be accustomed to fatality and its encounter, to dare to raise
our eyes when certain questions appear to us in their horrible nakedness.
Good or evil are behind this severe interrogation point. "What are you
going to do?" demands the sphynx.

This familiarity with trial Jean Valjean had. He looked fixedly upon
the sphynx.

He examined the pitiless problem under all its phases.

Cosette, that charming existence, was the raft of this shipwreck. What
was he to do? Cling on, or let go his hold?

If he clung to it, he escaped disaster, he rose again into the sunshine,
he let the bitter water drip from his garments and his hair, he was saved,
he lived.

If he loosed his hold?

Then, the abyss.

Thus bitterly he held counsel with his thoughts, or, to speak more
truthfully, he struggled; he rushed, furious, within himself, sometimes
against his will, sometimes against his conviction.

It was a good thing for Jean Valjean that he had been able to weep. It
gave him light, perhaps. For all that, the beginning was wild. A tempest,
more furious than that which had formerly driven him towards Arras, broke
loose within him. The past came back to him face to face with the present;
he compared and he sobbed. The sluice of tears once opened, the despairing
man writhed.

He felt that he was stopped.

Alas! in this unrelenting pugilism between our selfishness and our duty,
when we thus recoil step by step before our immutable ideal, bewildered,
enraged, exasperated at yielding, disputing the ground, hoping for poss-
ible flight, seeking some outlet, how abrupt and ominous is the resistance
of the wall behind us!

To feel the sacred shadow which bars the way.

The inexorable invisible, what an obsession!

We are never done with conscience. Choose your course by it, Brutus; choose
your course by it, Cato. It is bottomless, being God. We cast into this pit
the labour of our whole life, we cast in our fortune, we cast in our riches,
we cast in our success, we cast in our liberty or our country, we cast in
our well-being, we cast in our repose, we cast in our happiness. More!
more! more! Empty the vase! turn out the urn! We must at last cast in our
heart.

There is somewhere in the mist of the old hells a vessel like that.

Is it not pardonable to refuse at last? Can the inexhaustible have a
claim? Are not endless chains above human strength? Who then would
blame Sisyphus and Jean Valjean for saying: "it is enough!"

The obedience of matter is limited by friction; is there no limit to the
obedience of the soul? If perpetual motion is impossible, is perpetual devotion
demandable?

The first step is nothing; it is the last which is difficult. What was the
Champmathieu affair compared with Cosette's marriage and all that it in-
volved? What is this: to return to the galleys, compared with this: to enter
into nothingness?

Oh, first step of descent, how gloomy thou art! Oh, second step, how
black thou art!

How should he not turn away his head this time?

Martyrdom is a sublimation, a corrosive sublimation. It is a torture of
consecration. You consent to it the first hour; you sit upon the throne of
red-hot iron, you put upon your brow the crown of red-hot iron, you receive
the globe of red-hot iron, you take the sceptre of red-hot iron, but you
have yet to put on the mantle of flame, and is there no moment when the
wretched flesh revolts, and when you abdicate the torture?

At last Jean Valjean entered the calmness of despair.

He weighed, he thought, he considered the alternatives of the mysterious
balance of light and shade.

To impose his galleys upon these two dazzling children, or to consummate
by himself his irremediable engulfment. On the one side the sacrifice
of Cosette, on the other of himself.

At what solution did he stop?

What determination did he take? What was, within himself, his final an-
swer to the incorruptible demand of fatality? What door did he decide to
open? Which side of his life did he resolve to close and to condemn?
Between all these unfathomable precipices which surrounded him, what
was his choice? What extremity did he accept? To which of these gulfs did
he bow his head?

His giddy reverie lasted all night.

He remained there until dawn, in the same attitude, doubled over on
the bed, prostrated under the enormity of fate, crushed perhaps, alas! his
fists clenched, his arms extended at a right angle, like one taken from the
cross and thrown down with his face to the ground. He remained twelve
hours, the twelve hours of a long winter night, chilled, without lifting his
head, and without uttering a word. He was as motionless as a corpse, while
his thought writhed upon the ground and flew away, now like the hydra,
now like the eagle. To see him thus without motion, one would have said
he was dead; suddenly he thrilled convulsively, and his mouth, fixed upon
Cosette’s garments, kissed them; then one saw that he was alive.
What one? since Jean Valjean was alone, and there was nobody there?

The One who is in the darkness.




　　　　BOOK SEVENTH
THE LAST DROP IN THE CHALICE



I. THE SEVENTH CIRCLE AND THE EIGHTH HEAVEN



THE DAY AFTER a wedding is solitary. The privacy of the happy is re-
spected. And thus their slumber is a little belated. The tumult of visits
and felicitations does not commence until later. On the morning of the
17th of February, it was a little after noon, when Basque, his napkin and
duster under his arm, busy "doing his antechamber," heard a light rap at
the door. There was no ring, which is considerate on such a day. Basque
opened and saw M. Fauchelevent. He introduced him into the parlour, still
cumbered and topsy-turvy, and which had the appearance of the battlefield
of the evening's festivities.

"Faith, monsieur," observed Basque, "we are waking up late."

"Has your master risen?" inquired Jean Valjean.

"How is monsieur's arm?" answered Basque.

"Better. Has your master risen?"

"Which? the old or the new one?"

"Monsieur Pontmercy."

"Monsieur the Baron?" said Basque, drawing himself up.

One is baron to his domestics above all. Something of it is reflected
upon them; they have what a philosopher would call the spattering of the
title, and it flatters them. Marius, to speak of it in passing, a republican militant,
and he had proved it, was now a baron in spite of himself. A slight
revolution had taken place in the family in regard to this tide. At present it
was M. Gillenormand who clung to it and Marius who made light of it. But
Colonel Pontmercy had written: My son will bear my title. Marius obeyed.
And then Cosette, in whom the woman was beginning to dawn, was in raptures
at being a baroness.

"Monsieur the Baron?" repeated Basque. "I will go and see. I will tell
him that Monsieur Fauchelevent is here."

"No. Do not tell him that it is I. Tell him that somebody asks to speak
with him in private, and do not give him any name."

"Ah!" said Basque.

"I wish to give him a surprise."

"Ah!" resumed Basque, giving himself his second ah! as an explanation
of the first.

And he went out.

Jean Valjean remained alone.

The parlour, as we have just said, was all in disorder. It seemed that
by lending the ear the vague rumour of the wedding might still have been
heard. There were all sorts of flowers, which had fallen from garlands and
head-dresses, upon the floor. The candles, burned to the socket, added stal-
actites of wax to the pendents of the lustres. Not a piece of furniture was
in its place. In the corners, three or four arm-chairs drawn up and forming
a circle, had the appearance of continuing a conversation. Altogether it was
joyous. There is still a certain grace in a dead festival. It has been happy.
Upon those chairs in disarray, among those flowers which are withering,
under those extinguished lights, there have been thoughts of joy. The sun
succeeded to the chandelier, and entered cheerfully into the parlour.

A few minutes elapsed. Jean Valjean was motionless in the spot where
Basque had left him. He was very pale. His eyes were hollow, and so sunken
in their sockets from want of sleep that they could hardly be seen. His black
coat had the weary folds of a garment which has passed the night. The
elbows were whitened with that down which is left upon cloth by the chafing
of linen. Jean Valjean was looking at the window marked out by the sun
upon the floor at his feet.

There was a noise at the door, he raised his eyes.

Marius entered, his head erect, his mouth smiling, an indescribable light
upon his face, his forehead radiant, his eye triumphant. He also had not
slept.

"It is you, father!" exclaimed he on perceiving Jean Valjean, "that idiot
of a Basque with his mysterious air! But you come too early. It is only half
an hour after noon yet. Cosette is asleep."

That word: Father, said to M. Fauchelevent by Marius, signified: Supreme
felicity. There had always been, as we know, barrier, coldness, and con-
straint between them; ice to break or to melt. Marius had reached that
degree of intoxication where the barrier was falling, the ice was dissol-
ving, and M. Fauchelevent was to him, as to Cosette, a father.

He continued; words overflowed from him, which is characteristic of
these divine paroxysms of joy:

"How glad I am to see you! If you knew how we missed you yesterday!

Good morning, father. How is your hand? Better, is it not?"

And, satisfied with the good answer which he made to himself, he went
on:

"We have both of us talked much about you. Cosette loves you so much!
You will not forget that your room is here. We will have no more of the
Rue de l'Homme Arme. We will have no more of it at all. How could you
go to live in a street like that, which is sickly, which is scowling, which
is ugly, which has a barrier at one end, where you are cold, and where you
cannot get in? you will come and install yourself here. And that to-day. Or
you will have a bone to pick with Cosette. She intends to lead us all by the
nose, I warn you. You have seen your room, it is close by ours, it looks upon
the gardens; the lock has been fixed, the bed is made, it is all ready; you
have nothing to do but to come. Cosette has put a great old easy chair of
Utrecht velvet beside your bed, to which she said: stretch out your arms
for him. Every spring, in the clump of acacias which is in front of your
windows, there comes a nightingale, you will have her in two months. You
will have her nest at your left and ours at your right. By night she will
sing, and by day Cosette will talk. Your room is full in the south. Cosette
will arrange your books there for you, your voyage of Captain Cook, and the
other, Vancouver's, all your things. There is, I believe, a little valise
which you treasure, I have selected a place of honour for it. You have con-
quered my grandfather, you suit him. We will live together. Do you know whist?
you will overjoy my grandfather, if you know whist. You will take Cosette to
walk on my court-days, you will give her your arm, you know, as at the
Luxembourg, formerly. We have absolutely decided to be very happy. And
you are part of our happiness, do you understand, father? Come now, you
breakfast with us to-day?"

"Monsieur," said Jean Valjean, "I have one thing to tell you. I am an
old convict."

The limit of perceptible acute sounds may be passed quite as easily for
the mind as for the ear. Those words: I am an old convict, coming from M.
Fauchelevent's mouth and entering Marius' ear, went beyond the possible.
Marius did not hear. It seemed to him that something had just been said
to him; but he knew not what. He stood aghast.

He then perceived that the man who was talking to him was terrible.
Excited as he was, he had not until this moment noticed that frightful pallor.

Jean Valjean untied the black cravat which sustained his right arm,
took off the cloth wound about his head, laid his thumb bare, and showed it
to Marius.

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

Marius looked at the thumb.

"There has never been anything the matter with it," continued Jean
Valjean.

There was, in fact, no trace of a wound.

Jean Valjean pursued:

"It was best that I should be absent from your marriage. I absented
myself as much as I could. I feigned this wound so as not to commit a
forgery, not to introduce a nullity into the marriage acts, to be excused
from signing."

Marius stammered out:

"What does this mean?"

"It means," answered Jean Valjean, "that I have been in the galleys."

"You drive me mad!" exclaimed Marius in dismay.

"Monsieur Pontmercy," said Jean Valjean, "I was nineteen years in the
galleys. For robbery. Then I was sentenced for life. For robbery. For a
second offence. At this hour I am in breach of ban."

It was useless for Marius to recoil before the reality, to refuse the fact,
to resist the evidence; he was compelled to yield. He began to comprehend,
and as always happens in such a case, he comprehended beyond the truth.
He felt the shiver of a horrible interior flash; an idea which made him
shudder, crossed his mind. He caught a glimpse in the future of a hideous
destiny for himself.

"Tell all, tell all!" cried he. "You are Cosette's father!"

And he took two steps backward with an expression of unspeakable
horror.

Jean Valjean raised his head with such a majesty of attitude that he
seemed to rise to the ceiling.

"It is necessary that you believe me in this, monsieur; although the
oath of such as I be not received."

Here he made a pause; then, with a sort of sovereign and sepulchral
authority, he added, articulating slowly and emphasising his syllables:

"----You will believe me. I, the father of Cosette! before God, no. Mon-
sieur Baron Pontmercy, I am a peasant of Faverolles. I earned my living
by pruning trees. My name is not Fauchelevent, my name is Jean Valjean.
I am nothing to Cosette. Compose yourself."

Marius faltered:

"Who proves it to me----"

"I. Since I say so."

Marius looked at this man. He was mournful, yet self-possessed. No lie
could come out of such a calmness. That which is frozen is sincere. We
feel the truth in that sepulchral coldness.

"I believe you," said Marius.

Jean Valjean inclined his head as if making oath, and continued:

"What am I to Cosette? a passer. Ten years ago, I did not know that she
existed. I love her, it is true. A child whom one has seen when little,
being himself already old, he loves. When a man is old, he feels like a
grandfather towards all little children. You can, it seems to me, suppose
that I have something which resembles a heart. She was an orphan. Without
father or mother. She had need of me. That is why I began to love her.
Children are so weak, that anybody, even a man like me, may be their pro-
tector. I performed that duty with regard to Cosette. I do not think that
one could truly call so little a thing a good deed; but if it is a good
deed; well, set it down that I have done it. Record that mitigating cir-
cumstance. Today Cosette leaves my life; our two roads separate. Hence-
forth I can do nothing more for her. She is Madame Pontmercy. Her protector
is changed. And Cosette gains by the change. All is well. As for the six
hundred thousand francs, you have not spoken of them to me, but I anticipate
your thought; that is a trust. How did this trust come into my hands? What
matters it? I make over the trust. Nothing more can be asked of me. I com-
plete the restitution by telling my real name. This again concerns me. I
desire, myself, that you should know who I am."

And Jean Valjean looked Marius in the face.

All that Marius felt was tumultuous and incoherent. Certain blasts of
destiny make such waves in our soul.

We have all had such moments of trouble, in which everything within
us is dispersed; we say the first things that come to mind, which are not
always precisely those that we should say. There are sudden revelations
which we cannot bear, and which intoxicate like a noxious wine. Marius was
so stupefied at the new condition of affairs which opened before him that he
spoke to this man almost as though he were angry with him for his avowal.

"But after all," exclaimed he, "why do you tell me all this? What com-
pels you to do so? You could have kept the secret to yourself. You are
neither denounced, nor pursued, nor hunted. You have some reason for
making, from mere wantonness, such a revelation. Finish it. There is
something else. In connection with what do you make this avowal? From
what motive?"

"From what motive?" answered Jean Valjean, in a voice so low and so
hollow that one would have said it was to himself he was speaking rather
than to Marius. "From what motive, indeed, does this convict come and say:
I am a convict? Well, yes! the motive is strange. It is from honour. Yes,
my misfortune is a cord which I have here in my heart and which holds me
fast. When one is old these cords are strong. The whole life wastes away
about them; they hold fast. If I had been able to tear out this cord, to break
it, to untie the knot, or to cut it, to go far away, I had been saved, I had
only to depart; there are diligences in the Rue du Bouloy; you are happy, I go
away. I have tried to break this cord, I have pulled upon it, it held firmly,
it did not snap, I was tearing my heart out with it. Then I said I cannot live
away from here. I must stay. Well, yes; but you are right, I am a fool, why
not just simply stay? You offer me a room in the house, Madame Pontmercy
loves me well, she says to that arm-chair: Stretch out your arms for him,
your grandfather asks nothing better than to have me, I suit him, we shall
all live together, eat in common, I will give my arm to Cosette--to Madame
Pontmercy, pardon me, it is from habit--we will have but one roof, but one
table, but one fire, the same chimney corner in winter, the same promenade
in summer, that is joy, that is happiness, that, it is everything. We will
live as one family, one family!"

At this word Jean Valjean grew wild. He folded his arms, gazed at the
floor at his feet as if he wished to hollow out an abyss in it, and his voice
suddenly became piercing.

"One family! no. I am of no family. I am not of yours. I am not of the fam-
ily of men. In houses where people are at home I am an incumbrance. There
are families, but they are not for me. I am the unfortunate; I am outside.
Had I a father and a mother? I almost doubt it. The day that I married that
child it was all over, I saw that she was happy, and that she was with the
man whom she loved, and that there was a good old man here, a household
of two angels, all joys in this house, and that it was well, I said to myself:
Enter thou not. I could have lied, it is true, have deceived you all, have
remained Monsieur Fauchelevent. As long as it was for her, I could lie; but
now it would be for myself, I must not do it. It was enough to remain silent,
it is true, and everything would continue. You ask me what forces me to
speak? a strange thing; my conscience. To remain silent was, however, very
easy. I have passed the night in trying to persuade myself to do so; you are
confessing me, and what I come to tell you is so strange that you have a
right to do so; well, yes, I have passed the night in giving myself reasons,
I have given myself very good reasons, I have done what I could, it was of no
use. But there are two things in which I did not succeed; neither in breaking
the cord which holds me by the heart fixed, riveted, and sealed here, nor
in silencing some one who speaks low to me when I am alone. That is why I
have come to confess all to you this morning. All, or almost all. It is
useless to tell what concerns only myself; I keep it for myself. The essen-
tial you know. So I have taken my mystery, and brought it to you. And I
have ripped open my secret under your eyes. It was not an easy resolution
to form. All night I have struggled with myself. Ah! you think I have not
said to myself that this is not the Champmathieu affair, that in conceal-
ing my name I do no harm to anybody, that the name of Fauchelevent was
given to me by Fauchelevent himself in gratitude for a service rendered,
and I could very well keep it, and that I should be happy in this room which
you offer me, that I should interfere with nothing, that I should be in my
little corner, and that, while you would have Cosette, I should have the
idea of being in the same house with her. Each one would have had his due
share of happiness. To continue to be Monsieur Fauchelevent, smoothed
the way for everything. Yes, except for my soul. There was joy everywhere
about me, the depths of my soul were still black. It is not enough to be
happy, we must be satisfied with ourselves. Thus I should have remained
Monsieur Fauchelevent, thus I should have concealed my real face, thus,
in presence of your cheerfulness, I should have borne an enigma, thus, in
the midst of your broad day, I should have been darkness, thus, without
openly crying beware, I should have introduced the galleys at your hearth,
I should have sat down at your table with the thought that, if you knew who
I was, you would drive me away, I should have let myself be served by
domestics who, if they had known, would have said: How horrible! I should
have touched you with my elbow which you have a right to shrink from, I
should have filched the grasp of your hand! There would have been in your
house a division of respect between venerable white hairs and dishonoured
white hairs; at your most intimate hours, when all hearts would have
thought themselves open to each other to the bottom, when we should
have been all four together, your grandfather, you two, and myself; there
would have been a stranger there! I should have been side by side with you
in your existence, having but one care, never to displace the covering of
my terrible pit. Thus I, a dead man, should have imposed myself upon you,
who are alive. Her I should have condemned to myself for ever. You,
Cosette, and I, we should have been three heads in the green cap! Do you
not shudder? I am only the most depressed of men, I should have been the
most monstrous. And this crime I should have committed every day! And
this lie I should have acted every day! And this face of night I should have
worn every day! And of my disgrace, I should have given to you your part
every day! every day! to You, my loved ones, you, my children, you, my
innocents! To be quiet is nothing? to keep silence is simple? No, it is not
simple. There is a silence which lies. And my lie, and my fraud, and my
unworthiness, and my cowardice, and my treachery, and my crime, I should
have drunk drop by drop, I should have spit it out, then drunk again, I
should have finished at midnight and recommenced at noon, and my good-
morning would have lied, and my good-night would have lied, and I should
have slept upon it, and I should have eaten it with my bread, and I should
have looked Cosette in the face, and I should have answered the smile of
the angel with the smile of the damned, and I should have been a detestable
impostor! What for? to be happy. To be happy, I! Have I the right to be
happy? I am outside of life, monsieur."

Jean Valjean stopped. Marius listened. Such a chain of ideas and of
pangs cannot be interrupted. Jean Valjean lowered his voice anew, but it
was no longer a hollow voice, it was an ominous voice.

"You ask why I speak? I am neither informed against, nor pursued, nor
hunted, say you. Yes! I am informed against! yes! I am pursued! yes! I am
hunted? By whom? by myself. It is I myself who bar the way before myself,
and I drag myself, and I urge myself, and I check myself, and I exert
myself, and when one holds himself he is well held."

And seizing his own coat in his clenched hand and drawing it towards
Marius:

"Look at this hand, now," continued he. "Don't you think that it holds this
collar in such a way as not to let go? Well! conscience has quite another
grasp! If we wish to be happy, monsieur, we must never comprehend duty;
for, as soon as we comprehend it, it is implacable. One would say that it
punishes you for comprehending it; but no, it rewards you for it; for it puts
you into a hell where you feel God at your side. Your heart is not so soon
lacerated when you are at peace with yourself."

And, with a bitter emphasis, he added:

"Monsieur Pontmercy, this is not common sense, but I am an honest man.
It is by degrading myself in your eyes that I elevate myself in my own.
This has already happened to me once, but it was less grievous then; it was
nothing. Yes, an honest man. I should not be one if you had, by my fault,
continued to esteem me; now that you despise me, I am one. I have this
fatality upon me that, being forever unable to have any but stolen consid-
eration, that consideration humiliates me and depresses me inwardly, and
in order that I may respect myself, I must be despised. Then I hold myself
erect. I am a galley slave who obeys his conscience. I know well that is
improbable. But what would you have me do? it is so. I have assumed en-
gagements towards myself; I keep them. There are accidents which bind
us, there are chances which drag us into duties. You see, Monsieur Pont-
mercy, some things have happened to me in my life?"

Jean Valjean paused again, swallowing his saliva with effort, as if his
words had a bitter after-taste, and resumed:

"When one has such a horror over him, he has no right to make others
share it without their knowledge, he has no right to communicate his
pestilence to them, he has no right to make them slip down his precipice
without warning of it, he has no right to let his red cap be drawn upon
them, he has no right craftily to encumber the happiness of others with
his own misery. To approach those who are well, and to touch them in the
shadow with his invisible ulcer, that is horrible. Fauchelevent lent me his
name in vain. I had no right to make use of it; he could give it to me, I
could not take it. A name is a Me. You see, monsieur, I have thought a lit-
tle, I have read a little, although I am a peasant; and you see that I ex-
press myself tolerably. I form my own idea of things. I have given myself
an education of my own. Well, yes, to purloin a name, and to put yourself
under it, is dishonest. The letters of the alphabet may be stolen as well
as a purse or a watch. To be a false signature in flesh and blood, to be a
living false key, to enter the houses of honest people by picking their locks,
never to look again, always to squint, to be infamous within myself, no! no!
no! no! It is better to suffer, to bleed, to weep, to tear the skin from the
flesh with the nails, to pass the nights in writhing, in anguish, to gnaw
away body and soul. That is why I come to tell you all this. In mere wanton-
ness, as you say."

He breathed with difficulty, and forced out these final words:

"To live, once I stole a loaf of bread; to-day, to live, I will not steal a
name."

"To live!" interrupted Marius. "You have no need of that name to live!"

"Ah! I understand," answered Jean Valjean, raising and lowering his
head several times in succession.

There was a pause. Both were silent, each sunk in an abyss of thought.
Marius had seated himself beside a table, and was resting the corner of his
mouth on one of his bent fingers. Jean Valjean was walking back and forth.
He stopped before a glass and stood motionless. Then, as if answering
some inward reasoning, he said, looking at that glass in which he did not
see himself:

"While at present, I am relieved!"

He resumed his walk and went to the other end of the parlour. Just as
he began to turn, he perceived that Marius was noticing his walk. He said to
him with an inexpressible accent:

"I drag one leg a little. You understand why now."

Then he turned quite round towards Marius:

"And now, monsieur, picture this to yourself: I have said nothing, I
have remained Monsieur Fauchelevent, I have taken my place in your house,
I am one of you, I am in my room, I come to breakfast in the morning in
slippers, at night we all three go to the theatre, I accompany Madame
Pontmercy to the Tuileries and to the Place Royale, we are together, you
suppose me your equal; some fine day I am there, you are there, we are
chatting, we are laughing, suddenly you hear a voice shout this name: Jean
Valjean! and you see that appalling hand, the police, spring out of the
shadow and abruptly tear off my mask!"

He ceased again; Marius had risen with a shudder. Jean Valjean
resumed:

"What say you?"

Marius' silence answered.

Jean Valjean continued:

"You see very well that I am right in not keeping quiet. Go on, be hap-
py, be in heaven, be an angel of an angel, be in the sunshine, and be
contented with it, and do not trouble yourself about the way which a
poor condemned man takes to open his heart and do his duty; you have a
wretched man before you, monsieur."

Marius crossed the parlour slowly, and, when he was near Jean Valjean,
extended him his hand.

But Marius had to take that hand which did not offer itself, Jean Valjean
was passive, and it seemed to Marius that he was grasping a hand of
marble.

"My grandfather has friends," said Marius. "I will procure your pardon."

"It is useless," answered Jean Valjean. "They think me dead, that is
enough. The dead are not subjected to surveillance. They are supposed
to moulder tranquilly. Death is the same thing as pardon."

And, disengaging his hand, which Marius held, he added with a sort
of inexorable dignity:

"Besides, to do my duty, that is the friend to which I have recourse;
and I need pardon of but one, that is my conscience."

Just then, at the other end of the parlour, the door was softly opened
a little way, and Cosette's head made its appearance. They saw only her
sweet face, her hair was in charming disorder, her eyelids were still swollen
with sleep. She made the movement of a bird passing its head out of its
nest, looked first at her husband, then at Jean Valjean, and called to them
with a laugh, you would have thought you saw a smile at the bottom of a
rose:

"I'll wager that you're talking politics. How stupid that is, instead of
being with me!"

Jean Valjean shuddered.

"Cosette," faltered Marius--and he stopped. One would have said that
they were two culprits.

Cosette, radiant, continued to look at them both. The frolic of paradise
was in her eyes.

"I catch you in the very act," said Cosette. "I just heard my father Fau-
chelevent say, through the door: ‘Conscience--Do his duty.'--It is politics,
that is. I will not have it. You ought not to talk politics the very next
day. It is not right."

"You are mistaken, Cosette," answered Marius. "We were talking business.
We are talking of the best investment for your six hundred thousand
francs----"

"It is not all that," interrupted Cosette. "I am coming. Do you want
me here?"

And, passing resolutely through the door, she came into the parlour.
She was dressed in a full white morning gown, with a thousand folds and
with wide sleeves which, starting from the neck, fell to her feet. There are
in the golden skies of old Gothic pictures such charming robes for angels to
wear.

She viewed herself from head to foot in a large glass, then exclaimed
with an explosion of ineffable ecstasy:

"Once there was a king and a queen. Oh! how happy I am!"

So saying, she made a reverence to Marius and to Jean Valjean.

"There," said she, "I am going to install myself by you in an arm-chair;
we breakfast in half an hour, you shall say all you wish to; I know very
well that men must talk, I shall be very good."

Marius took her arm, and said to her lovingly:

"We are talking business."

"By the way," answered Cosette, "I have opened my window, a flock of
pierrots [sparrows or masks] have just arrived in the garden. Birds,
not masks. It is Ash Wednesday to-day; but not for the birds."

"I tell you that we are talking business; go, my darling Cosette, leave
us a moment. We are talking figures. It will tire you."

"You have put on a charming cravat this morning, Marius. You are
very coquettish, monsieur. It will not tire me."

"I assure you that it will tire you."

"No. Because it is you. I shall not understand you, but I will listen to
you. When we hear voices that we love, we need not understand the words
they say. To be here together is all that I want. I shall stay with you;
pshaw!"

"You are my darling Cosette! Impossible."

"Impossible!"

"Yes."

"Very well," replied Cosette. "I would have told you the news. I would have
told you that grandfather is still asleep, that your aunt is at mass, that
the chimney in my father Fauchelevent's room smokes, that Nicolette has
sent for the sweep, that Toussaint and Nicolette have had a quarrel already,
that Nicolette makes fun of Toussaint's stuttering. Well, you shall know
nothing. Ah! it is impossible! I too, in my turn, you shall see, monsieur, I
will say: it is impossible. Then who will be caught? I pray you, my darling
Marius, let me stay here with you two."

"I swear to you that we must be alone."

"Well, am I anybody?"

Jean Valjean did not utter a word. Cosette turned towards him. "In the
first place, father, I want you to come and kiss me. What are you doing
there, saying nothing, instead of taking my part? who gave me such a father
as that? You see plainly that I am very unfortunate in my domestic affairs.
My husband beats me. Come, kiss me this instant."

Jean Valjean approached.

Cosette turned towards Marius.

"You, sir, I make faces at you."

Then she offered her forehead to Jean Valjean.

Jean Valjean took a step towards her.

Cosette drew back.

"Father, you are pale. Does your arm hurt you?"

"It is well," said Jean Valjean.

"Have you slept badly?"

"No."

"Are you sad?"

"No."

"Kiss me. If you are well, if you sleep well, if you are happy, I will
not scold you."

And again she offered him her forehead.

Jean Valjean kissed that forehead, upon which there was a celestial
reflection.

"Smile."

Jean Valjean obeyed. It was the smile of a spectre.

"Now defend me against my husband."

"Cosette!--" said Marius.

"Get angry, father. Tell him that I must stay. You can surely talk
before me. So you think me very silly. It is very astonishing then what you
are saying! business, putting money in a bank, that is a great affair. Men
play the mysterious for nothing. I want to stay. I am very pretty this morning.
Look at me, Marius."

And with an adorable shrug of the shoulders and an inexpressibly
exquisite pout, she looked at Marius. It was like a flash between these two
beings. That somebody was there mattered little.

"I love you!" said Marius.

"I adore you!" said Cosette.

And they fell irresistibly into each other's arms.

"Now," resumed Cosette, readjusting a fold of her gown with a little
triumphant pout, "I shall stay."

"What, no," answered Marius, in a tone of entreaty, "we have something
to finish."

"No, still?"

Marius assumed a grave tone of voice:

"I assure you, Cosette, that it is impossible."

"Ah! you put on your man's voice, monsieur. Very well, I'll go. You,
father, you have not sustained me. Monsieur my husband, monsieur my
papa, you are tyrants. I am going to tell grandfather of you. If you think
that I shall come back and talk nonsense to you, you are mistaken. I am
proud. I wait for you now, you will see that it is you who will get tired
without me. I am going away, very well."

And she went out.

Two seconds later, the door opened again, her fresh rosy face passed
once more between the two folding doors, and she cried to them:

"I am very angry."

The door closed again and the darkness returned.

It was like a stray sunbeam which, without suspecting it, should have
suddenly traversed the night.

Marius made sure that the door was well closed.

"Poor Cosette!" murmured he, "when she knows----"

At these words, Jean Valjean trembled in every limb. He fixed upon
Marius a bewildered eye.

"Cosette! Oh, yes, it is true, you will tell this to Cosette. That is right.
Stop, I had not thought of that. People have the strength for some things,
but not for others. Monsieur, I beseech you, I entreat you, Monsieur, give
me your most sacred word, do not tell her. Is it not enough that you know
it yourself? I could have told it of myself without being forced to it, I would
have told it to the universe, to all the world, that would be nothing to me.
But she, she doesn't know what it is, it would appall her. A convict, why!
you would have to explain it to her, to tell her: It is a man who has been in
the galleys. She saw the chain pass by one day. Oh, my God!"

He sank into an arm-chair and hid his face in both hands. He could not
be heard, but by the shaking of his shoulders it could be seen that he
was weeping. Silent tears, terrible tears.

There is a stifling in the sob. A sort of convulsion seized him, he bent
over upon the back of the arm-chair as if to breathe, letting his arms hang
down and allowing Marius to see his face bathed in tears, and Marius heard
him murmur so low that his voice seemed to come from a bottomless
depth: "Oh! would that I could die!"

"Be calm," said Marius, "I will keep your secret for myself alone."

And, less softened perhaps than he should have been, but obliged for an
hour past to familiarise himself with a fearful surprise, seeing by degrees
a convict superimposed before his eyes upon M. Fauchelevent, possessed lit-
tle by little of this dismal reality, and led by the natural tendency of
the position to determine the distance which had just been put between this
man and himself, Marius added:

"It is impossible that I should not say a word to you of the trust which you
have so faithfully and so honestly restored. That is an act of probity. It
is just that a recompense should be given you. Fix the sum yourself, it shall
be counted out to you. Do not be afraid to fix it very high."

"I thank you, monsieur," answered Jean Valjean gently.

He remained thoughtful a moment, passing the end of his forefinger
over his thumb-nail mechanically, then he raised his voice:

"It is all nearly finished. There is one thing left----"

"What?"

Jean Valjean had as it were a supreme hesitation, and, voiceless, almost
breathless, he faltered out rather than said:

"Now that you know, do you think, monsieur, you who are the master,
that I ought not to see Cosette again?"

"I think that would be best," answered Marius coldly.

"I shall not see her again," murmured Jean Valjean.

And he walked towards the door.

He placed his hand upon the knob, the latch yielded, the door started,
Jean Valjean opened it wide enough to enable him to pass out, stopped
a second motionless, then shut the door, and turned towards Marius.

He was no longer pale, he was livid. There were no longer tears in his
eyes, but a sort of tragical flame. His voice had again become strangely
calm.

"But, monsieur," said he, "if you are willing, I will come and see her. I
assure you that I desire it very much. If I had not clung to seeing Cosette,
I should not have made the avowal which I have made, I should have gone
away; but wishing to stay in the place where Cosette is and to continue to
see her, I was compelled in honour to tell you all. You follow my reasoning,
do you not? that is a thing which explains itself. You see, for nine years
past, I have had her near me. We lived first in that ruin on the boulevard,
then in the convent, then near the Luxembourg. It was there that you saw her
for the first time. You remember her blue plush hat. We were afterwards in
the quartier of the Invalides where there was a grating and a garden. Rue
Plumet. I lived in a little back-yard where I heard her piano. That was my
life. We never left each other. That lasted nine years and some months. I
was like her father, and she was my child. I don't know whether you under-
stand me, Monsieur Pontmercy, but from the present time, to see her no
more, to speak to her no more, to have nothing more, that would be hard.
If you do not think it wrong, I will come from time to time to see Cosette.
I should not come often. I would not stay long. You might say I should be
received in the little low room. On the ground floor. I would willingly
come in by the back door, which is for the servants, but that would excite
wonder, perhaps. It is better, I suppose, that I should enter by the usual
door. Monsieur, indeed, I would really like to see Cosette a little still.
As rarely as you please. Put yourself in my place, it is all that I have.
And then, we must take care. If I should not come at all, it would have a
bad effect, it would be thought singular. For instance, what I can do, is
to come in the evening, at nightfall."

"You will come every evening," said Marius, "and Cosette will expect
you."

"You are kind, monsieur," said Jean Valjean.

Marius bowed to Jean Valjean, happiness conducted despair to the
door, and these two men separated.



II. THE OBSCURITIES WHICH A REVELATION MAY CONTAIN



MARIUS was completely unhinged.

The kind of repulsion which he had always felt for the man with whom
he saw Cosette was now explained. There was something strangely enigmatic
in this person, of which his instinct had warned him. This enigma was
the most hideous of disgraces, the galleys. This M. Fauchelevent was
the convict Jean Valjean.

To suddenly find such a secret in the midst of one's happiness is like
the discovery of a scorpion in a nest of turtle-doves.

Was the happiness of Marius and Cosette condemned henceforth to this
fellowship? Was that a foregone conclusion? Did the acceptance of this
man form a part of the marriage which had been consummated? Was there
nothing more to be done?

Had Marius espoused the convict also?

It is of no avail to be crowned with light and with joy; it is of no avail
to be revelling in the royal purple hour of life, happy love; such shocks
would compel even the archangel in his ecstasy, even the demi-god in his
glory, to shudder.

As always happens in changes of view of this kind, Marius questioned
himself whether he had not some fault to find with himself? Had he been
wanting in perception? Had he been wanting in prudence? Had he been
involuntarily stupefied? A little, perhaps. Had he entered, without enough
precaution in clearing up its surroundings, upon this love adventure which
had ended in his marriage with Cosette? He determined--it is thus, by a
succession of determinations by ourselves in regard to ourselves, that life
improves us little by little--he determined the chimerical and visionary
side of his nature, a sort of interior cloud peculiar to many organisations,
and which, in paroxysms of passion and grief, dilates, the temperature of
the soul changing, and pervades the entire man, to such an extent as to
make him nothing more than a consciousness steeped in a fog. We have
more than once indicated this characteristic element of Marius' individuality.
He recollected that, in the infatuation of his love, in the Rue Plumet,
during those six or seven ecstatic weeks, he had not even spoken to Cosette
of that drama of the Gorbeau den in which the victim had taken the very
strange course of silence during the struggle, and of escape after it. How
had he managed not to speak of it to Cosette? Yet it was so near and so
frightful. How had he managed not even to name the Thenardiers to her,
and, particularly, the day that he met Eponine? He had great difficulty
now in explaining to himself his former silence. He did account for it,
however. He recalled his stupor, his intoxication for Cosette, love ab-
sorbing everything, that uplifting of one by the other into the ideal, and
perhaps also, as the imperceptible quantity of reason mingled with this vio-
lent and charming state of the soul, a vague and dull instinct to hide and
to abolish in his memory that terrible affair with which he dreaded contact,
in which he wished to play no part, which he shunned, and in regard to which
he could be neither narrator nor witness without being accuser. Besides,
those few weeks had been but a flash; they had had time for nothing, except
to love. Finally, everything being weighed, turned over, and examined, if
he had told the story of the Gorbeau ambuscade to Cosette, if he had named
the Thenardiers to her, what would have been the consequences, if he had
even discovered Jean Valjean was a convict, would that have changed him,
Marius? Would that have changed her, Cosette? Would he have shrunk back?
Would he have adored her less? Would he the less have married her? No.
Would it have changed anything in what had taken place? No. Nothing then
to regret, nothing to reproach himself with. All was well. There is a
God for these drunkards who are called lovers. Blind, Marius had follow-
ed the route which he would have chosen had he seen clearly. Love had
bandaged his eyes, to lead him where? To Paradise.

But this paradise was henceforth complicated with an infernal accompan-
iment.

The former repulsion of Marius towards this man, towards this Fauche-
levent become Jean Valjean, was now mingled with horror. In this horror,
we must say, there was some pity, and also a certain astonishment.

This robber, this twice-convicted robber, had restored a trust. And what
a trust? Six hundred thousand francs. He was alone in the secret of the
trust. He might have kept all, he had given up all.

Moreover, he had revealed his condition of his own accord. Nothing
obliged him to do so. If it were known who he was, it was through himself.
There was more in that avowal than the acceptance of humiliation, there
was the acceptance of peril. To a condemned man a mask is not a mask, but
a shelter. He had renounced that shelter. A false name is security; he had
thrown away this false name. He could, he, a galley-slave, have hidden himself
for ever in an honourable family; he had resisted this temptation. And
from what motive? from conscientious scruples. He had explained it himself
with the irresistible accent of reality. In short, whatever this Jean
Valjean might be, he had incontestably an awakened conscience. There was
in him some mysterious regeneration begun; and, according to all appearance,
for a long time already the scruple had been master of the man. Such
paroxysms of justice and goodness do not belong to vulgar natures. An
awakening of conscience is greatness of soul.

Jean Valjean was sincere. This sincerity, visible, palpable, unquestionable,
evident even by the grief which it caused him, rendered investigation
useless and gave authority to all that this man said. Here, for Marius, a
strange inversion of situations. What came from M. Fauchelevent? distrust.
What flowed from Jean Valjean? confidence.

In the mysterious account which Marius thoughtfully drew up concerning
this Jean Valjean, he verified the credit, he verified the debit, he
attempted to arrive at a balance. But it was all as it were in a storm. Marius,
endeavouring to get a clear idea of this man, and pursuing, so to speak,
Jean Valjean in the depths of his thought, lost him and found him again in
a fatal mist.

The trust honestly surrendered, the probity of the avowal, that was
good. It was like a break in the cloud, but the cloud again became black.
Confused as Marius' recollections were, some shadow of them returned
to him.

What was the exact nature of that affair in the Jondrette garret? Why,
on the arrival of the police, did this man, instead of making his complaint,
make his escape? Here Marius found the answer. Because this man was a
fugitive from justice in breach of ban.

Another question: Why had this man come into the barricade? For now Marius
saw that reminiscence again distinctly, reappearing in these emotions like
sympathetic ink before the fire. This man was in the barricade. He did not
fight there. What did he come there for? Before this question a spectre
arose, and made response. Javert. Marius recalled perfectly to mind at
this hour the fatal sight of Jean Valjean dragging Javert bound outside
the barricade, and he again heard the frightful pistol-shot behind the
corner of the little Rue Mondetour. There was, probably, hatred between
the spy and this galley-slave. The one cramped the other. Jean Valjean
had gone to the barricade to avenge himself. He had arrived late. He
knew probably that Javert was a prisoner there. The Corsican vendetta
has penetrated into certain lower depths and is their law; it is so
natural that it does not astonish souls half turned back towards the
good; and these hearts are so constituted that a criminal, in the path
of repentance, may be scrupulous in regard to robbery and not be so in
regard to vengeance. Jean Valjean had killed Javert. At least, that
seemed evident.

Finally, a last question: but to this no answer. This question Marius
felt like a sting. How did it happen that Jean Valjean's existence had
touched Cosette's so long? What was this gloomy game of providence
which had placed this child in contact with this man? Are coupling chains
then forged on high also, and does it please God to pair the angel with the
demon? Can then a crime and an innocence be room-mates in the mysterious
galleys of misery? In this strait of the condemned, which is called human
destiny, can two foreheads pass close to one another, the one childlike,
the other terrible, the one all bathed in the divine whiteness of the
dawn, the other for ever pallid with the glare of an eternal lightning?
Who could have determined this inexplicable fellowship? In what manner,
through what prodigy, could community of life have been established
between this celestial child and this old wretch? Who had been able to bind
the lamb to the wolf, and, a thing still more incomprehensible, attach the
wolf to the lamb? For the wolf loved the lamb, for the savage being adored
the frail being, for, during nine years, the angel had had the monster for a
support. Cosette's childhood and youth, her coming to the day, her maidenly
growth towards life and light, had been protected by this monstrous
devotion. Here, the questions exfoliated, so to speak, into innumerable
enigmas, abyss opened at the bottom of abysm, and Marius could no
longer bend over Jean Valjean without dizziness. What then was this man
precipice?

The old Genesiac symbols are eternal; in human society, such as it is
and will be, until the day when a greater light shall change it, there are
always two men, one superior, the other subterranean; he who follows good
is Abel; he who follows evil is Cain. What was this remorseful Cain? What
was this bandit religiously absorbed in the adoration of a virgin, watching
over her, bringing her up, guarding her, dignifying her, and enveloping
her, himself impure, with purity? What was this cloaca which had venerated
this innocence to such an extent as to leave it immaculate? What was
this Jean Valjean watching over the education of Cosette? What was this
figure of darkness, whose only care was to preserve from all shadow and
from all cloud the rising of a star?

In this was the secret of Jean Valjean; in this was also the secret of God.

Before this double secret, Marius recoiled The one in some sort reassured
him in regard to the other. God was as visible in this as Jean Valjean.
God has his instruments. He uses what tool He pleases. He is not respon-
sible to man. Do we know the ways of God? Jean Valjean had laboured upon
Cosette. He had, to some extent, formed that soul. That was incontestable.
Well, what then? The workman was horrible; but the work admirable. God
performs His miracles as seems good to Himself. He had constructed this
enchanting Cosette, and he had employed Jean Valjean on the work. It had
pleased Him to choose this strange co-worker. What reckoning have we to
ask of Him? Is it the first time that the dunghill has aided the spring
to make the rose?

Marius made these answers to himself, and declared that they were good.
On all the points which we have just indicated, he had not dared to
press Jean Valjean, without avowing to himself that he dared not. He
adored Cosette, he possessed Cosette. Cosette was resplendently pure.
That was enough for him. What explanation did he need? Cosette was a
light. Does light need to be explained? He had all; what could he desire?
All, is not that enough? The personal affairs of Jean Valjean did not
concern him. In bending over the fatal shade of this man, he clung to
this solemn declaration of the miserable being: "I am nothing to Cosette.
Ten years ago, I did not know of her existence."

Jean Valjean was a passer. He had said so, himself. Well, he was passing
away. Whatever he might be, his part was finished. Henceforth Marius
was to perform the functions of Providence for Cosette. Cosette had come
forth to find in the azure her mate, her lover, her husband, her celestial
male. In taking flight, Cosette winged and transfigured, left behind her on
the ground, empty and hideous, her chrysalis, Jean Valjean.

In whatever circle of ideas Marius turned, he always came back from it to
a certain horror of Jean Valjean. A sacred horror, perhaps, for, as we have
just indicated, he felt a quid divinum in this man. But, whatever he did,
and whatever mitigation he sought, he was always obliged to fall back upon
this: he was a convict; that is, the creature who, on the social ladder, has
no place, being below the lowest round. After the lowest of men, comes the
convict. The convict is no longer, so to speak, the fellow of the living.
The law has deprived him of all the humanity which it can take from a man.
Marius, upon penal questions, although a democrat, still adhered to the
inexorable system, and he had, in regard to those whom the law smites, all
the ideas of the law. He had not yet, let us say, adopted all the ideas of
progress. He had not yet come to distinguish between what is written by
man and what is written by God, between law and right. He had not examined
and weighed the right which man assumes to dispose of the irrevocable and
the irreparable. He had not revolted from the word vengeance. He thought
it natural that certain infractions of the written law should be followed
by eternal penalties, and he accepted social damnation as growing out of
civilisation. He was still at that point, infallibly to advance in time,
his nature being good, and in reality entirely composed of latent progress.

Through the medium of these ideas, Jean Valjean appeared to him deformed
and repulsive. He was the outcast. He was the convict. This word was for
him like a sound of the last trumpet; and, after having considered Jean
Valjean long, his final action was to turn away his head. Vade retro.

Marius, we must remember, and even insist upon it, though he had
questioned Jean Valjean to such an extent, that Jean Valjean had said to
him: You are confessing me, had not, however, put to him two or three decisive
questions. Not that they had not presented themselves to his mind, but
he was afraid of them. The Jondrette garret? The barricade? Javert? Who
knows where the revelations would have stopped? Jean Valjean did not
seem the man to shrink, and who knows whether Marius, after having
urged him on, would not have desired to restrain him? In certain supreme
conjunctures, has it not happened to all of us, after having put a question, to
stop our ears that we might not hear the response? We have this cowardice
especially when we love. It is not prudent to question untoward situations
to the last degree, especially when the indissoluble portion of our own life
is fatally interwoven with them. From Jean Valjean's despairing explanations,
some appalling light might have sprung, and who knows but that
hideous brilliancy might have been thrown even upon Cosette? Who
knows but a sort of infernal glare would have remained upon the brow of
this angel? The spatterings of a flash are still lightning. Fatality has such
solidarities, whereby innocence itself is impressed with crime by the
gloomy law of colouring reflections. The purest faces may preserve for ever
the reverberations of a horrible surrounding. Wrongly or rightly Marius
had been afraid. He knew too much already. He sought rather to blind than
to enlighten himself. In desperation, he carried off Cosette in his arms,
closing his eyes upon Jean Valjean.

This man was of the night, of the living and terrible night. How should
he dare to probe it to the bottom? It is appalling to question the shadow.
Who knows what answer it will make? The dawn might be blackened by it
for ever.

In this frame of mind it was a bitter perplexity to Marius to think that
this man should have henceforth any contact whatever with Cosette. These
fearful questions, before which he had shrunk, and from which an implacable
and definitive decision might have sprung, he now reproached
himself almost, for not having put. He thought himself too good, too mild,
let us say the word, too weak. This weakness had led him to an imprudent
concession. He had allowed himself to be moved. He had done wrong. He
should have merely and simply cast off Jean Valjean. Jean Valjean was the
Jonah, he should have done it, and relieved his house of this man. He was
vexed with himself; he was vexed with the abruptness of that whirl of emotions
which had deafened, blinded, and drawn him on. He was displeased
with himself.

What should be done now? Jean Valjean's visits were very repugnant
to him. Of what use was this man in his house? What should he do? Here
he shook off his thoughts; he was unwilling to probe, he was unwilling to
go deeper; he was unwilling to fathom himself. He had promised, he had
allowed himself to be led into a promise; Jean Valjean had his promise; even
to a convict, especially to a convict, a man should keep his word. Still, his
first duty was towards Cosette. In short, a repulsion, which predominated
over all else, possessed him.

Marius turned all this assemblage of ideas over in his mind confusedly,
passing from one to another, and excited by all. Hence a deep commotion.
It was not easy for him to hide this commotion from Cosette, but love is a
talent, and Marius succeeded.

Besides, he put without apparent object, some questions to Cosette,
who, as candid as a dove is white, suspected nothing; he talked with her of
her childhood and her youth, and he convinced himself more and more
that all a man can be that is good, paternal, and venerable, this convict had
been to Cosette. All that Marius had dimly seen and conjectured was real.
This darkly mysterious nettle had loved and protected this lily.




　　BOOK EIGHTH
THE TWILIGHT WANE



I. THE BASEMENT ROOM



THE NEXT DAY, at nightfall, Jean Valjean knocked at the M. Gillenormand
porte-cochere. Basque received him. Basque happened to be in the courtyard
very conveniently, and as if he had had orders. It sometimes happens that
one says to a servant: "You will be on the watch for Monsieur So-andso,
when he comes."

Basque, without waiting for Jean Valjean to come up to him, addressed
him as follows:

"Monsieur the Baron told me to ask monsieur whether he desires to go
upstairs or to remain below?"

"To remain below," answered Jean Valjean.

Basque, who was moreover absolutely respectful, opened the door of
the basement room and said: "I will inform madame."

The room which Jean Valjean entered was an arched and damp basement,
used as a cellar when necessary, looking upon the street paved with
red tiles, and dimly lighted by a window with an iron grating.

The room was not of those which are harassed by the brush, the duster,
and the broom. In it the dust was tranquil. There the persecution of
the spiders had not been organised. A fine web, broadly spread out, very
black, adorned with dead flies, ornamented one of the window-panes. The
room, small and low, was furnished with a pile of empty bottles heaped
up in one corner. The wall had been washed with a wash of yellow ochre,
which was scaling off in large flakes. At the end was a wooden mantel,
painted black, with a narrow shelf. A fire was kindled, which indicated
that somebody had anticipated Jean Valjean's answer: To remain below.

Two arm-chairs were placed at the corners of the fireplace. Between
the chairs was spread, in guise of a carpet, an old bed-side rug, showing
more warp than wool.

The room was lighted by the fire in the fireplace and the twilight from
the window.

Jean Valjean was fatigued. For some days he had neither eaten nor
slept. He let himself fall into one of the arm-chairs.

Basque returned, set a lighted candle upon the mantel, and retired.

Jean Valjean, his head bent down and his chin upon his breast, noticed
neither Basque nor the candle.

Suddenly he started up. Cosette was behind him.

He had not seen her come in, but he had felt that she was coming.

He turned. He gazed at her. She was adorably beautiful. But what he
looked upon with that deep look, was not her beauty but her soul.

"Ah, well!" exclaimed Cosette, "father, I knew that you were singular,
but I should never have thought this. What an idea! Marius tells me that
it is you who wish me to receive you here."

"Yes, it is I."

"I expected the answer. Well, I warn you that I am going to make a
scene. Let us begin at the beginning. Father, kiss me."

And she offered her cheek.

Jean Valjean remained motionless.

"You do not stir. I see it. You act guilty. But it is all the same, I
forgive you. Jesus Christ said: ‘Offer the other cheek.' Here it is."

And she offered the other cheek.

Jean Valjean did not move. It seemed as if his feet were nailed to the
floor.

"This is getting serious," said Cosette. "What have I done to you? I
declare I am confounded. You owe me amends. You will dine with us."

"I have dined."

"That is not true. I will have Monsieur Gillenormand scold you.

Grandfathers are made to scold fathers. Come. Go up to the parlour with
me. Immediately."

"Impossible."

Cosette here lost ground a little. She ceased to order and passed to
questions.

"But why not? and you choose the ugliest room in the house to see me
in. It is horrible here."

"You know, madame, I am peculiar, I have my whims."

Cosette clapped her little hands together.

"Madame! Still again! What does this mean?"

Jean Valjean fixed upon her that distressing smile to which he sometimes
had recourse:

"You have wished to be madame. You are so."

"Not to you, father."

"Don't call me father any more."

"What."

"Call me Monsieur Jean. Jean, if you will."

"You are no longer father? I am no longer Cosette? Monsieur Jean?
What does this mean? but these are revolutions, these are! what then has
happened? look me in the face now. And you will not live with us! And you
will not have my room! What have I done to you? what have I done to you?
Is there anything the matter?"

"Nothing."

"Well then?"

"All is as usual."

"Why do you change your name?"

"You have certainly changed yours."

He smiled again with that same smile and added:

"Since you are Madame Pontmercy I can surely be Monsieur Jean."

"I don't understand anything about it. It is all nonsense; I shall ask my
husband's permission for you to be Monsieur Jean. I hope that he will not
consent to it. You make me a great deal of trouble. You may have whims,
but you must not grieve your darling Cosette. It is wrong. You have no
right to be naughty, you are too good."

He made no answer.

She seized both his hands hastily and, with an irresistible impulse, rais-
ing them towards her face, she pressed them against her neck under her
chin, which is a deep token of affection.

"Oh!" said she to him, "be good!"

And she continued:

"This is what I call being good: being nice, coming to stay here, there
are birds here as well as in the Rue Plumet, living with us, leaving that
hole in the Rue de l'Homme Arme, not giving us riddles to guess, being like
other people, dining with us, breakfasting with us, being my father."

He disengaged his hands.

"You have no more need of a father, you have a husband."

Cosette could not contain herself.

"I no more need of a father! To things like that which have no common
sense, one really doesn't know what to say!"

"If Toussaint was here," replied Jean Valjean, like one who is in search
of authorities and who catches at every straw, "she would be the first to
acknowledge that it is true that I always had my peculiar ways. There is
nothing new in this. I have always liked my dark corner."

"But it is cold here. We can't see clearly. It is horrid, too, to want to
be Monsieur Jean. I don't want you to talk so to me."

"Just now, on my way here," answered Jean Valjean, "I saw a piece of
furniture in the Rue Saint Louis. At a cabinet maker's. If I were a pretty
woman, I should make myself a present of that piece of furniture. A very
fine toilet table; in the present style. What you call rosewood, I think.
It is inlaid. A pretty large glass. There are drawers in it. It is handsome."

"Oh! the ugly bear!" replied Cosette.

And with a bewitching sauciness, pressing her teeth together and separating
her lips, she blew upon Jean Valjean. It was a Grace copying a kitten.

"I am furious," she said. "Since yesterday, you all make me rage.
Everybody spites me. I don't understand. You don't defend me against
Marius. Marius doesn't uphold me against you, I am all alone. I arrange a
room handsomely. If I could have put the good God into it, I would have
done it. You leave me my room upon my hands. My tenant bankrupts me. I
order Nicolette to have a nice little dinner. Nobody wants your dinner,
madame. And my father Fauchelevent, wishes me to call him Monsieur
Jean, and to receive him in a hideous, old, ugly, mouldy cellar, where the
walls have a beard, and where there are empty bottles for vases, and spiders'
webs for curtains. You are singular, I admit, that is your way, but a
truce is granted to people who get married. You should not have gone back
to being singular immediately. So you are going to be well satisfied with
your horrid Rue de l'Homme Arme. I was very forlorn there, myself! What
have you against me? You give me a great deal of trouble. Fie!"

And, growing suddenly serious, she looked fixedly at Jean Valjean, and
added:

"So you don't like it that I am happy?"

Artlessness, unconsciously, sometimes penetrates very deep. This ques-
tion, simple to Cosette, was severe to Jean Valjean. Cosette wished to
scratch; she tore.

Jean Valjean grew pale. For a moment he did not answer, then, with an
indescribable accent and talking to himself, he murmured:

"Her happiness was the aim of my life. Now, God may beckon me away.
Cosette, you are happy; my time is full."

"Ah, you have called me Cosette!" exclaimed she.

And she sprang upon his neck.

Jean Valjean, in desperation, clasped her to his breast wildly. It seemed
to him almost as if he were taking her back.

"Thank you, father!" said Cosette to him.

The transport was becoming poignant to Jean Valjean. He gently put
away Cosette's arms, and took his hat.

"Well?" said Cosette.

Jean Valjean answered:

"I will leave you, madame; they are waiting for you."

And, from the door, he added:

"I called you Cosette. Tell your husband that that shall not happen
again. Pardon me."

Jean Valjean went out, leaving Cosette astounded at that enigmatic
farewell.



II. OTHER STEPS BACKWARD



THE FOLLOWING DAY, at the same hour, Jean Valjean came.

Cosette put no questions to him, was no longer astonished, no longer
exclaimed that she was cold, no longer talked of the parlour, she avoided
saying either father or Monsieur Jean. She let him speak as he would. She
allowed herself to be called madame. Only she betrayed a certain diminution
of joy. She would have been sad, if sadness had been possible for her.
It is probable that she had had one of those conversations with Marius,
in which the beloved man says what he pleases, explains nothing, and sat-
isfies the beloved woman. The curiosity of lovers does not go very far
beyond their love.

The basement room had made its toilet a little. Basque had suppressed
the bottles, and Nicolette the spiders.

Every succeeding morrow brought Jean Valjean at the same hour. He came
every day, not having the strength to take Marius' words otherwise than
to the letter. Marius made his arrangements, so as to be absent at the
hours when Jean Valjean came. The house became accustomed to M. Fauch-
elevent's new mode of life. Toussaint aided: "Monsieur always was just
so," she repeated. The grandfather issued this decree: "He is an original!"
and all was said. Besides, at ninety, no further tie is possible; all is
juxtaposition; a new-corner is an annoyance. There is no more room; all
the habits are formed. M. Fauchelevent, M. Tranchelevent, Grandfather
Gillenormand asked nothing better than to be relieved of "that gentleman."
He added: "Nothing is more common than these originals. They do all sorts
of odd things. No motive. The Marquis de Canaples was worse. He bought a
palace to live in the barn. They are fantastic appearances which people
put on."

Nobody caught a glimpse of the nether gloom. Who could have guessed
such a thing, moreover? There are such marshes in India; the water
seems strange, inexplicable, quivering when there is no wind; agitated
where it should be calm. You see upon the surface this causeless boil-
ing; you do not perceive the Hydra crawling at the bottom.

Many men have thus a secret monster, a disease which they feed, a dra-
gon which gnaws them, a despair which inhabits their night. Such a man
resembles other people, goes, comes. Nobody knows that he has within
him a fearful parasitic pain, with a thousand teeth, which lives in the
miserable man, who is dying of it. Nobody knows that this man is a gulf.
It is stagnant, but deep. From time to time, a troubling, of which we
understand nothing, shows itself on its surface. A mysterious wrinkle
comes along, then vanishes, then reappears; a bubble of air rises and
bursts. It is a little thing, it is terrible. It is the breathing of the unknown
monster.

Certain strange habits, coming at the time when others are gone, shrink-
ing away while others make a display, wearing on all occasions what might
be called the wall-coloured mantle, seeking the solitary path, preferring
the deserted street, not mingling in conversations, avoiding gatherings
and festivals, seeming at one's ease and living poorly, having, though
rich, one's key in his pocket and his candle at the porter's, coming
in by the side door, going up the back stairs, all these insignificant
peculiarities, wrinkles, air bubbles, fugitive folds on the surface,
often come from a formidable deep.

Several weeks passed thus. A new life gradually took possession of Cos-
ette; the relations which marriage creates, the visits, the care of the
house, the pleasures, those grand affairs. Cosette's pleasures were not
costly; they consisted in a single one: being with Marius. Going out with
him, staying at home with him, this was the great occupation of her life. It
was a joy to them for ever new, to go out arm in arm, in the face of the sun,
in the open street, without hiding, in sight of everybody, all alone with each
other. Cosette had one vexation. Toussaint could not agree with Nicolette,
the wedding of two old maids being impossible, and went away. The grand-
father was in good health; Marius argued a few cases now and then; Aunt
Gillenormand peacefully led by the side of the new household, that lateral
life which was enough for her. Jean Valjean came every day.

The disappearance of familiarity, the madame, the Monsieur Jean, all
this made him different to Cosette. The care which he had taken to detach
her from him, succeeded with her. She became more and more cheerful,
and less and less affectionate. However, she still loved him very much, and
he felt it. One day she suddenly said to him, "You were my father, you are
no longer my father, you were my uncle, you are no longer my uncle, you
were Monsieur Fauchelevent, you are Jean. Who are you then? I don't like
all that. If I did not know you were so good, I should be afraid of you."

He still lived in the Rue de l'Homme Arme, unable to resolve to move
further from the quartier in which Cosette dwelt.

At first he stayed with Cosette only a few minutes, then went away.

Little by little he got into the habit of making his visits longer. One
would have said that he took advantage of the example of the days which
were growing longer: he came earlier and went away later.

One day Cosette inadvertently said to him: "Father." A flash of joy illuminated
Jean Valjean's gloomy old face. He replied to her: "Say Jean." "Ah!
true," she answered with a burst of laughter, "Monsieur Jean." "That is
right," said he, and he turned away that she might not see him wipe his eyes.



III. THEY REMEMBER THE GARDEN IN THE RUE PLUMET



THAT WAS the last time. From that last gleam onward, there was complete
extinction. No more familiarity, no more good-day with a kiss, never again
that word so intensely sweet: Father! he was, upon his own demand and
through his own complicity, driven in succession from every happiness; and
he had this misery, that after having lost Cosette wholly in one day, he had
been obliged afterwards to lose her again little by little.

The eye at last becomes accustomed to the light of a cellar. In short, to
have a vision of Cosette every day sufficed him. His whole life was concen-
trated in that hour. He sat by her side, he looked at her in silence, or
rather he talked to her of the years long gone, of her childhood, of the
convent, of her friends of those days.

One afternoon--it was one of the early days of April, already warm, still
fresh, the season of the great cheerfulness of the sunshine, the gardens
which lay about Marius' and Cosette's windows felt the emotion of awakening,
the hawthorn was beginning to peep, a jewelled array of gilliflowers dis-
played themselves upon the old walls, the rosy wolf-mouths gaped in the
cracks of the stones, there was a charming beginning of daisies and butter-
cups in the grass, the white butterflies of the year made their first
appearance, the wind, that minstrel of the eternal wedding, essayed in the
trees the first notes of that grand auroral symphony which the old poets
called the renouveau--Marius said to Cosette: "We have said that we would
go to see our garden in the Rue Plumet again. Let us go. We must not be
ungrateful." And they flew away like two swallows towards the spring. This
garden in the Rue Plumet had the effect of the dawn upon them. They had
behind them in life already something which was like the spring time of
their love. The house in the Rue Plumet being taken on a lease, still
belonged to Cosette. They went to this garden and this house. In it they
found themselves again; they forgot themselves. At night, at the usual hour,
Jean Valjean came to the Rue des Filles du Calvaire. "Madame has gone
out with monsieur, and has not returned yet," said Basque to him. He sat
down in silence, and waited an hour. Cosette did not return. He bowed his
head and went away.

Cosette was so intoxicated with her walk to "the garden," and so happy
over having "lived a whole day in her past," that she did not speak of
anything else the next day. It did not occur to her that she had not seen
Jean Valjean.

"How did you go there?" Jean Valjean asked her.

"We walked."

"And how did you return?"

"In a fiacre."

For some time Jean Valjean had noticed the frugal life which the young
couple led. He was annoyed at it. Marius' economy was severe, and the
word to Jean Valjean had its absolute sense. He ventured a question:
"Why have you no carriage of your own? A pretty brougham would
cost you only five hundred francs a month. You are rich."

"I don't know," answered Cosette.

"So with Toussaint," continued Jean Valjean. "She has gone away. You
have not replaced her. Why not?"

"Nicolette is enough."

"But you must have a waiting maid."

"Have not I Marius?"

"You ought to have a house of your own, servants of your own, a carriage,
a box at the theatre. There is nothing too good for you. Why not have
the advantages of being rich? Riches add to happiness."

Cosette made no answer.

Jean Valjean's visits did not grow shorter. Far from it. When the heart
is slipping we do not stop on the descent.

When Jean Valjean desired to prolong his visit, and to make the hours
pass unnoticed, he eulogised Marius; he thought him beautiful, noble,
courageous, intellectual, eloquent, good. Cosette surpassed him. Jean
Valjean began again. They were never silent. Marius, this word was
inexhaustible; there were volumes in these six letters. In this way Jean
Valjean succeeded in staying a long time. To see Cosette, to forget at
her side, it was so sweet to him. It was the staunching of his wound.

It happened several times that Basque came down twice to say: "Monsieur
Gillenormand sends me to remind Madame the Baroness that dinner is served."

On those days, Jean Valjean returned home very thoughtful.

Was there, then, some truth in that comparison of the chrysalis which
had presented itself to Marius' mind? Was Jean Valjean indeed a chrysalis
who was obstinate, and who came to make visits to his butterfly?

One day he stayed longer than usual. The next day, he noticed that
there was no fire in the fireplace. "What!" thought he. "No fire." And he
made the explanation to himself: "It is a matter of course. We are in April.
The cold weather is over."

"Goodness! how cold it is here!" exclaimed Cosette as she came in.

"Why no," said Jean Valjean.

"So it is you who told Basque not to make a fire?"

"Yes. We are close upon May."

"But we have fire until the month of June. In this cellar, it is needed
the year round."

"I thought that the fire was unnecessary."

"That is just one of your ideas!" replied Cosette.

The next day there was a fire. But the two arm-chairs were placed at
the other end of the room, near the door. "What does that mean?" thought
Jean Valjean.

He went for the arm-chairs, and put them back in their usual place
near the chimney.

This fire being kindled again encouraged him, however. He continued
the conversation still longer than usual. As he was getting up to go
away, Cosette said to him:

"My husband said a funny thing to me yesterday."

"What was it?"

"He said: ‘Cosette, we have an income of thirty thousand francs.
Twenty-seven that you have, three that my grandfather allows me.' I
answered: ‘That makes thirty.' ‘Would you have the courage to live on
three thousand?' I answered: ‘Yes, on nothing. Provided it be with you.'
And then I asked: ‘Why do you say this?' He answered: ‘To know.'"

Jean Valjean did not say a word. Cosette probably expected some
explanation from him; he listened to her in a mournful silence. He went
back to the Rue de l'Homme Arme; he was so deeply absorbed that he mistook
the door, and instead of entering his own house, he entered the next
one. Not until he had gone up almost to the second story did he perceive
his mistake, and go down again.

His mind was racked with conjectures. It was evident that Marius had
doubts in regard to the origin of these six hundred thousand francs, that
he feared some impure source, who knows? that he had perhaps discovered
that this money came from him, Jean Valjean, that he hesitated before this
suspicious fortune, and disliked to take it as his own, preferring to remain
poor, himself and Cosette, than to be rich with a doubtful wealth.
Besides, vaguely, Jean Valjean began to feel that the door was shown
him.

The next day, he received, on entering the basement room, something
like a shock. The arm-chairs had disappeared. There was not even a chair
of any kind.

"Ah now," exclaimed Cosette as she came in, "no chairs! Where are
the arm-chairs, then?"

"They are gone," answered Jean Valjean.

"That is a pretty business!"

Jean Valjean stammered:

"I told Basque to take them away."

"And what for?"

"I shall stay only a few minutes to-day."

"Staying a little while is no reason for standing while you do stay."

"I believe that Basque needed some arm-chairs for the parlour."

"What for?"

"You doubtless have company this evening."

"We have nobody."

Jean Valjean could not say a word more.

Cosette shrugged her shoulders.

"To have the chairs carried away! The other day you had the fire put
out. How singular you are!"

"Good-bye," murmured Jean Valjean.

He did not say: "Good-bye, Cosette." But he had not the strength to
say: "Good-bye, madame."

He went away overwhelmed.

This time he had understood.

The next day he did not come. Cosette did not notice it until night.

"Why," said she, "Monsieur Jean has not come to-day."

She felt something like a slight oppression of the heart, but she
hardly perceived it, being immediately diverted by a kiss from Marius.
The next day he did not come.

Cosette paid no attention to it, passed the evening and slept as usual,
and thought of it only on awaking. She was so happy! She sent Nicolette
very quickly to Monsieur Jean's to know if he were sick, and why he had
not come the day before. Nicolette brought back Monsieur Jean's answer.
He was not sick. He was busy. He would come very soon. As soon as he
could. However, he was going to make a little journey. Madame must
remember that he was in the habit of making journeys from time to time.
Let there be no anxiety. Let them not be troubled about him.

Nicolette, on entering Monsieur Jean's house, had repeated to him the
very words of her mistress. That madame sent to know "why Monsieur
Jean had not come the day before." "It is two days that I have not been
there," said Jean Valjean mildly.

But the remark escaped the notice of Nicolette, who reported nothing
of it to Cosette.



IV. ATTRACTION AND EXTINCTION



DURING the last months of the spring and the first months of the summer
of 1833, the scattered wayfarers in the Marais, the storekeepers, the idlers
upon the doorsteps, noticed an old man neatly dressed in black, every day,
about the same hour, at nightfall, come out of the Rue de l'Homme Arme,
in the direction of the Rue Sainte Croix de la Bretonnerie, pass by the
Blancs Manteaux, to the Rue Culture Sainte Catherine, and, reaching the
Rue de l'Echarpe, turn to the left, and enter the Rue Saint Louis.

There he walked with slow steps, his head bent forward, seeing nothing,
hearing nothing, his eye immovably fixed upon one point, always the
same, which seemed studded with stars to him, and which was nothing
more nor less than the corner of the Rue des Filles du Calvaire. As he
approached the corner of that street, his face lighted up; a kind of joy
illuminated his eye like an interior halo, he had a fascinated and softened
expression, his lips moved vaguely, as if he were speaking to some one
whom he did not see, he smiled faintly, and he advanced as slowly as he
could. You would have said that even while wishing to reach some destina-
tion, he dreaded the moment when he should be near it. When there were
but a few houses left between him and that street which appeared to at-
tract him, his pace became so slow, that at times you might have supposed
he had ceased to move. The vacillation of his head and the fixedness of his
eye reminded you of the needle seeking the pole. However long he succeeded
in deferring it, he must arrive at last; he reached the Rue des Filles
du Calvaire; then he stopped, he trembled, he put his head with a kind of
gloomy timidity beyond the corner of the last house, and he looked into
that street, and there was in that tragical look something which resembled
the bewilderment of the impossible, and the reflection of a forbidden para-
dise. Then a tear, which had gradually gathered in the corner of his eye,
grown large enough to fall, glided over his cheek, and sometimes stopped at
his mouth. The old man tasted its bitterness. He remained thus a few minutes,
as if he had been stone; then he returned by the same route and at the
same pace; and, in proportion as he receded, that look was extinguished.

Little by little, this old man ceased to go as far as the corner of the Rue
des Filles du Calvaire; he stopped half way down the Rue Saint Louis;
sometimes a little further, sometimes a little nearer. One day, he stopped at
the corner of the Rue Culture Sainte Catherine, and looked at the Rue des
Filles du Calvaire from the distance. Then he silently moved his head from
right to left as if he were refusing himself something, and retraced his steps.

Very soon he no longer came even as far as the Rue Saint Louis. He
reached the Rue Pavee, shook his head, and went back; then he no longer
went beyond the Rue des Trois Pavilions; then he no longer passed the
Blancs Manteaux. You would have said a pendulum which has not been
wound up, and the oscillations of which are growing shorter ere they stop.

Every day, he came out of his house at the same hour, he commenced the
same walk, but he did not finish it, and, perhaps unconsciously, he con-
tinually shortened it. His whole countenance expressed this single idea;
What is the use? The eye was dull; no more radiance. The tear also was
gone; it no longer gathered at the corner of the lids; that thoughtful eye
was dry. The old man's head was still bent forward; his chin quivered at
times; the wrinkles of his thin neck were painful to behold. Sometimes,
when the weather was bad, he carried an umbrella under his arm, which he
never opened. The good women of the quarrier said: "He is a natural." The
children followed him laughing.




　　　　BOOK NINTH
SUPREME SHADOW, SUPREME DAWN



I. PITY FOR THE UNHAPPY, BUT INDULGENCE FOR THE HAPPY



IT IS a terrible thing to be happy! How pleased we are with it! How all-
sufficient we think it! How, being in possession of the false aim of life,
happiness, we forget the true aim, duty!

We must say, however, that it would be unjust to blame Marius.

Marius as we have explained, before his marriage, had put no questions
to M. Fauchelevent, and, since, he had feared to put any to Jean Valjean.
He had regretted the promise into which he had allowed himself to be led.
He had reiterated to himself many times that he had done wrong in making
that concession to despair. He did nothing more than gradually to banish
Jean Valjean from his house, and to obliterate him as much as possible from
Cosette's mind. He had in some sort constantly placed himself between
Cosette and Jean Valjean, sure that in that way she would not notice him,
and would never think of him. It was more than obliteration, it was eclipse.

Marius did what he deemed necessary and just. He supposed he had, for
discarding Jean Valjean, without harshness, but without weakness, serious
reasons, which we have already seen, and still others which we shall see
further on. Having chanced to meet, in a cause in which he was engaged, an
old clerk of the house of Laffitte, he had obtained, without seeking it, some
mysterious information which he could not, in truth, probe to the bottom,
from respect for the secret which he had promised to keep, and from care
for Jean Valjean's perilous situation. He believed, at that very time, that
he had a solemn duty to perform, the restitution of the six hundred thousand
francs to somebody whom he was seeking as cautiously as possible. In the
meantime, he abstained from using that money.

As for Cosette, she was in none of these secrets; but it would be hard to
condemn her also.

There was an all-powerful magnetism flowing from Marius to her, which
compelled her to do, instinctively and almost mechanically, what Marius
wished. She felt, in regard to "Monsieur Jean," a will from Marius;
she conformed to it. Her husband had had nothing to say to her; she ex-
perienced the vague, but clear pressure of his unspoken wishes, and obeyed
blindly. Her obedience in this consisted in not remembering what Marius
forgot. She had to make no effort for that. Without knowing why herself,
and without affording any grounds for censure, her soul had so thoroughly
become her husband's soul, that whatever was covered with shadow in
Marius' thought, was obscured in hers.

We must not go too far, however; in what concerns Jean Valjean, this
forgetfulness and this obliteration were only superficial. She was rather
thoughtless than forgetful. At heart, she really loved him whom she had so
long called father. But she loved her husband still more. It was that which
had somewhat swayed the balance of this heart, inclined in a single direction.

It sometimes happened that Cosette spoke of Jean Valjean, and wondered.
Then Marius calmed her: "He is absent, I think. Didn't he say that
he was going away on a journey?" "That is true," thought Cosette. "He was
in the habit of disappearing in this way. But not for so long." Two or three
times she sent Nicolette to inquire in the Rue de l'Homme Arme if Monsieur
Jean had returned from his journey. Jean Valjean had the answer
returned that he had not.

Cosette did not inquire further, having but one need on earth, Marius.

We must also say that, on their part, Marius and Cosette had been
absent. They had been to Vernon. Marius had taken Cosette to his father's
grave.

Marius had little by little withdrawn Cosette from Jean Valjean.
Cosette was passive.

Moreover, what is called much too harshly, in certain cases, the ingratitude
of children, is not always as blameworthy a thing as is supposed. It is
the ingratitude of nature. Nature, as we have said elsewhere, "looks forward."
Nature divides living beings into the coming and the going. The
going are turned towards the shadow, the coming towards the light. Hence
a separation, which, on the part of the old, is a fatality, and, on the part of
the young, involuntary. This separation, at first insensible, gradually
increases, like every separation of branches. The limbs, without parting
from the trunk, recede from it. It is not their fault. Youth goes where joy is,
to festivals, to brilliant lights, to loves. Old age goes to its end. They do
not lose sight of each other, but the ties are loosened. The affection of the
young is chilled by life; that of the old by the grave. We must not blame
these poor children.



II. THE LAST FLICKERINGS OF THE EXHAUSTED LAMP



ONE DAY Jean Valjean went down stairs, took three steps into the street,
sat down upon a stone block, upon that same block where Gavroche, on the
night of the 5th of June, had found him musing; he remained there a few
minutes, then went upstairs again. This was the last oscillation of the
pendulum.The next day, he did not leave his room. The day after he did
not leave his bed.

His portress, who prepared his frugal meal, some cabbage, a few potatoes
with a little pork, looked into the brown earthen plate, and exclaimed:

"Why, you didn't eat anything yesterday, poor dear man!"

"Yes, I did," answered Jean Valjean.

"The plate is all full."

"Look at the water-pitcher. That is empty."

"That shows that you have drunk; it don't show that you have eaten."

"Well," said Jean Valjean, "suppose I have only been hungry for
water?"

"That is called thirst, and, when people don't eat at the same time, it
is called fever."

"I will eat to-morrow."

"Or at Christmas. Why not eat to-day? Do people say: I will eat tomorrow!
To leave me my whole plateful without touching it! My cole slaw, which
was so good!"

Jean Valjean took the old woman's hand:

"I promise to eat it," said he to her in his benevolent voice.

"I am not satisfied with you," answered the portress.

Jean Valjean scarcely ever saw any other human being than this good
woman. There are streets in Paris in which nobody walks, and houses into
which nobody comes. He was in one of those streets, and in one of those
houses.

While he still went out, he had bought of a brazier for a few sous a litde
copper crucifix, which he had hung upon a nail before his bed. The cross
is always good to look upon.

A week elapsed, and Jean Valjean had not taken a step in his room. He
was still in bed. The portress said to her husband: "The goodman upstairs
does not get up any more, he does not eat any more, he won't last long. He
has trouble, he has. Nobody can get it out of my head that his daughter has
made a bad match."

The porter replied, with the accent of the marital sovereignty:

"If he is rich, let him have a doctor. If he is not rich, let him not have
any. If he doesn't have a doctor, he will die."

"And if he does have one?"

"He will die," said the porter.

The portress began to dig up with an old knife some grass which was
sprouting in what she called her pavement, and, while she was pulling
up the grass, she muttered:

"It is a pity. An old man who is so nice! He is white as a chicken."

She saw a physician of the quartier passing at the end of the street;
she took it upon herself to beg him to go up.

"It is on the second floor," said she to him. "You will have nothing to
do but go in. As the goodman does not stir from his bed now, the key is
in the door all the time."

The physician saw Jean Valjean, and spoke with him.

When he came down, the portress questioned him:

"Well, doctor?"

"Your sick man is very sick."

"What is the matter with him?"

"Everything and nothing. He is a man who, to all appearance, has lost
some dear friend. People die of that."

"What did he tell you?"

"He told me that he was well."

"Will you come again, doctor?"

"Yes," answered the physician. "But another than I must come again."



III. A PEN IS HEAVY TO HIM WHO LIFTED FAUCHELEVENT'S CART



ONE EVENING Jean Valjean had difficulty in raising himself upon his elbow;
he felt his wrist and found no pulse; his breathing was short, and stopped
at intervals; he realised that he was weaker than he had been before. Then,
undoubtedly under the pressure of some supreme desire, he made an effort,
sat up in bed, and dressed himself. He put on his old working-man's garb.
As he went out no longer, he had returned to it, and he preferred it. He
was obliged to stop several times while dressing; the mere effort of put-
ting on his waistcoat, made the sweat roll down his forehead.

Since he had been alone, he had made his bed in the ante-room, so as
to occupy this desolate tenement as little as possible.

He opened the valise and took out Cosette's suit.

He spread it out upon his bed.

The bishop's candlesticks were in their place, on the mantel. He took
two wax tapers from a drawer, and put them into the candlesticks. Then,
although it was still broad daylight, it was in summer, he lighted them.
We sometimes see torches lighted thus in broad day, in rooms where the
dead lie.

Each step that he took in going from one piece of furniture to another,
exhausted him, and he was obliged to sit down. It was not ordinary fatigue
which spends the strength that it may be renewed; it was the remnant of
possible motion; it was exhausted life pressed out drop by drop in over-
whelming efforts, never to be made again.

One of the chairs upon which he sank, was standing before that mirror, so
fatal for him, so providential for Marius, in which he had read Cosette's
note, reversed on the blotter. He saw himself in this mirror, and did not
recognise himself. He was eighty years old; before Marius' marriage, one
would hardly have thought him fifty; this year had counted thirty. What
was now upon his forehead was not the wrinkle of age, it was the mysterious
mark of death. You perceived on it the impress of the relentless talon.
His cheeks were sunken; the skin of his face was of that colour which sug-
gests the idea of earth already above it; the corners of his mouth were
depressed as in that mask which the ancients sculptured upon tombs, he
looked at the hollowness with a look of reproach; you would have said it
was one of those grand tragic beings who rise in judgment.

He was in that condition, the last phase of dejection, in which sorrow no
longer flows; it is, so to speak, coagulated; the soul is covered as if with
a clot of despair.

Night had come. With much labour he drew a table and an old armchair near
the fireplace, and put upon the table pen, ink, and paper.

Then he fainted. When he regained consciousness he was thirsty.
Being unable to lift the water-pitcher, with great effort he tipped it
towards his mouth, and drank a swallow.

Then he turned to the bed, and, still sitting, for he could stand but a
moment, he looked at the little black dress, and all those dear objects.
Such contemplations last for hours which seem minutes. Suddenly he shiv-
ered, he felt that the chill was coming, he leaned upon the table which
was lighted by the bishop's candlesticks, and took the pen.

As neither the pen nor the ink had been used for a long time, the tip
of the pen was bent back, the ink was dried, he was obliged to get up and
put a few drops of water into the ink, which he could not do without stop-
ping and sitting down two or three times, and he was compelled to write
with the back of the pen. He wiped his forehead from time to time.
His hand trembled. He slowly wrote the few lines which follow:

"Cosette, I bless you. I am going to make an explanation to you. Your
husband was quite right in giving me to understand that I ought to leave;
still there is some mistake in what he believed, but he was right. He is
very good. Always love him well when I am dead. Monsieur Pontmercy, always
love my darling child. Cosette, this paper will be found, this is what I want
to tell you, you shall see the figures, if I have the strength to recall them,
listen well, this money is really your own. This is the whole story: The white
jet comes from Norway, the black jet comes from England, the black glass-
imitation comes from Germany. The jet is lighter, more precious, more cost-
ly. We can make imitations in France as well as in Germany. It requires
a little anvil two inches square, and a spirit-lamp to soften the wax. The
wax was formerly made with resin and lamp-black, and cost four francs a
pound. I hit upon making it with gum lac and turpentine. This costs only
thirty sous, and it is much better. The buckles are made of violet glass,
which is fastened by means of this wax to a narrow rim of black iron. The
glass should be violet for iron trinkets, and the black for gold trinkets.
Spain purchases many of them. That is the country of jet----"

Here he stopped, the pen fell from his fingers, he gave way to one of those
despairing sobs which rose at times from the depths of his being, the poor
man clasped his head with both hands, and reflected.

"Oh!" exclaimed he within himself (pitiful cries, heard by God alone),
"it is all over. I shall never see her more She is a smile which has passed
over me. I am going to enter into the night without even seeing her again.
Oh! a minute, an instant, to hear her voice, to touch her dress, to look at
her, the angel! and then to die! It is nothing to die, but it is dreadful to die
without seeing her. She would smile upon me, she would say a word to me.
Would that harm anybody? No, it is over, forever. Here I am, all alone.
My God! my God! I shall never see her again."

At this moment there was a rap at his door.



IV. A BOTTLE OF INK WHICH SERVES ONLY TO WHITEN



THAT VERY DAY, or rather that very evening, just as Marius had left the
table and retired into his office, having a bundle of papers to study over,
Basque had handed him a letter, saying: "the person who wrote the letter
is in the antechamber."

Cosette had taken grandfather's arm, and was walking in the garden.
A letter, as well as a man, may have a forbidding appearance. Coarse
paper, clumsy fold, the mere sight of certain missives displeases. The
letter which Basque brought was of this kind.

Marius took it. It smelt of tobacco. Nothing awakens a reminiscence like
an odour. Marius recognised this tobacco. He looked at the address: To
Monsieur, Monsieur the Baron Pommerci. In his hotel. The recognition of
the tobacco made him recognise the handwriting. We might say that aston-
ishment has its flashes. Marius was, as it were, illuminated by one of
those flashes.

The scent, the mysterious aid-memory, revived a whole world within him.
Here was the very paper, the manner of folding, the paleness of the
ink; here was, indeed, the well-known handwriting; above all, here was
the tobacco. The Jondrette garret appeared before him.

Thus, strange freak of chance! one of the two traces which he had
sought so long, the one which he had again recently made so many efforts
to gain, and which he believed forever lost, came of itself to him.

He broke the seal eagerly, and read:----


"Monsieur Baron,--If the Supreme Being had given me the talents for
it, I could have been Baron Thenard, member of the Institute (Academy
of Ciences), but I am not so. I merely bear the same name that he does,
happy if this remembrance commends me to the excellence of your boun-
ties. The benefit with which you honour me will be reciprocal. I am in
possession of a secret conserning an individual. This individual conserns
you. I hold the secret at your disposition, desiring to have the honour of
being yuseful to you. I will give you the simple means of drivving from
your honourable family this individual who has no right in it, Madame the
Baroness being of high birth. The sanctuary of virtue could not coabit
longer with crime without abdicating.

"I atend in the entichamber the orders of Monsieur the Baron. With
respect."


The letter was signed "THeNARD."

This signature was not a false one. It was only a little abridged.

Besides the rigmarole and the orthography completed the revelation.
The certificate of origin was perfect. There was no doubt possible.

The emotion of Marius was deep. After the feeling of surprise, he had
a feeling of happiness. Let him now find the other man whom he sought,
the man who had saved him, Marius, and he would have nothing more to
wish.

He opened one of his secretary drawers, took out some bank-notes,
put them in his pockets, closed the secretary, and rang. Basque appeared.

"Show him in," said Marius.

Basque announced:

"Monsieur Thenard."

A man entered.

A new surprise for Marius. The man who came in was perfectly unknown to
him.

This man, old withal, had a large nose, his chin in his cravat, green
spectacles, with double shade of green silk over his eyes, his hair polished
and smoothed down, his forehead close to the eyebrows, like the wigs of
English coachmen in high life. His hair was grey. He was dressed in black
from head to foot, in a well worn but tidy black; a bunch of trinkets, hanging
from his fob, suggested a watch. He held an old hat in his hand. He walked
with a stoop, and the crook of his back increased the lowliness of his bow.

What was striking at first sight was, that this person's coat, too full,
although carefully buttoned, did not seem to have been made for him. Here
a short digression is necessary.

There was in Paris, at that period, in an old shanty, in the Rue
Beautreillis, near the Arsenal, an ingenious Jew, whose business it was to
change a rascal into an honest man. Not for too long a time, which might
have been uncomfortable for the rascal. The change was made at sight, for
a day or two, at the rate of thirty sous a day, by means of a costume, re-
sembling, Bas closely as possible, that of honest people generally. This
renter of costumes was called the Changer; the Parisian thieves had given
him this name, and knew him by no other. He had a tolerably complete wardrobe.
The rags with which he tricked out his people were almost respectable. He
had specialties and categories; upon each nail in his shop, hung, worn and
rumpled, a social condition; here the magistrate's dress, there the cure's
dress, there the banker's dress, in one corner the retired soldier's dress,
in another the literary man's dress, further on the statesman's dress. This
man was the costumer of the immense drama which knavery plays in Paris. His
hut was the greenroom whence robbery came forth, and whither swindling
returned. A ragged rogue came to this wardrobe, laid down thirty sous, and
chose, according to the part which he wished to play that day, the dress
which suited him, and, when he returned to the street, the rogue was
somebody. The next day the clothes were faithfully brought back, and the
Changer, who trusted everything to the robbers, was never robbed. These
garments had one inconvenience, they "were not a fit;" not having been
made for those who wore them, they were tight for this man, baggy for
that, and fitted nobody. Every thief who exceeded the human average in
smallness or in bigness, was ill at ease in the costumes of the Changer.
He must be neither too fat nor too lean. The Changer had provided only
for ordinary men. He had taken the measure of the species in the person
of the first chance vagabond, who was neither thick nor thin, neither
tall nor short. Hence adaptations, sometimes difficult, with which the
Changer's customers got along as well as they could. So much the worse
for the exceptions! The Statesman's dress, for instance, black from top
to toe, and consequently suitable, would have been too large for Pitt and
too small for Castelcicala. The Statesman's suit was described as follows
in the Changer's catalogue; we copy: "A black cloth coat, pantaloons of
black doublemilled cassimere, a silk waistcoat, boots, and linen." There
was in the margin: "Ancient ambassador," and a note which we also tran-
scribe; "In a separate box, a wig neatly frizzled, green spectacles, trin-
kets, and two little quill tubes an inch in length wrapped in cotton."
This all went with the Statesman, ancient ambassador. This entire costume
was, if we may use the word, emaciated; the seams were turning white, an
undefined buttonhole was appearing at one of the elbows; moreover a button
was missing on the breast of the coat; but this was a slight matter; as the
Stateman's hand ought always to be within the coat and upon the heart, its
function was to conceal the absent button.

If Marius had been familiar with the occult institutions of Paris, he
would have recognised immediately, on the back of the visitor whom
Basque had just introduced, the Statesman's coat borrowed from the
Unhook-me-that of the Changer.

Marius' disappointment, on seeing another man enter than the one he
was expecting, turned into dislike towards the new-comer. He examined
him from head to foot, while the personage bowed without measure, and
asked him in a sharp tone:

"What do you want?"

The man answered with an amiable grin of which the caressing smile
of a crocodile would give some idea:

"It seems to me impossible that I have not already had the honour of
seeing Monsieur the Baron in society. I really think that I met him privately
some years ago, at Madame the Princess Bagration's and in the salons of his
lordship the Viscount Dambray, peer of France."

It is always good tactics in rascality to pretend to recognise one whom
you do not know.

Marius listened attentively to the voice of this man. He watched for
the tone and gesture eagerly, but his disappointment increased; it was a
whining pronunciation, entirely different from the sharp and dry sound of
the voice which he expected. He was completely bewildered.

"I don't know," said he, "either Madame Bagration or M. Dambray. I have
never in my life set foot in the house of either the one or the other."

The answer was testy. The person, gracious notwithstanding, persisted:

"Then it must be at Chateaubriand's that I have seen monsieur? I
know Chateaubriand well. He is very affable. He says to me sometimes:
‘Thenard, my friend, won't you drink a glass of wine with me?' "

Marius' brow grew more and more severe:

"I have never had the honour of being received at Monsieur de
Chateaubriand's. Come to the point. What is it you wish?"

The man, in view of the harsher voice, made a lower bow.

"Monsieur Baron, deign to listen to me. There is in America, in a region
which is near Panama, a village called La Joya. This village is composed
of a single house. A large, square, three-story adobe house, each side
of the square five hundred feet long, each story set back twelve feet from
the story below, so as to leave in front a terrace which runs round the
building, in the centre an interior court in which are provisions and am-
munition, no windows, loopholes, no door, ladders, ladders to mount from the
ground to the first terrace, and from the first to the second, and from the
second to the third, ladders to descend into the interior court, no doors to
the rooms, hatchways, no stairs to the rooms, ladders; at night the hatchways
are closed, the ladders drawn in: swivels and carbines are aimed through the
port-holes; no means of entering; a house by day, a citadel by night, eight
hundred inhabitants, such is this village. Why so much precaution? because
the country is dangerous; it is full of anthropophagi. Then why do people
go there? because that country is wonderful; gold is found there."

"What are you coming to?" Marius interrupted, who from disappointment
was passing to impatience.

"To this, Monsieur Baron. I am an old weary diplomatist. The old
civilisation has used me up. I wish to try the savages."

"What then?"

"Monsieur Baron, selfishness is the law of the world. The proletarian
country-woman who works by the day, turns round when the diligence
passes, the proprietary country-woman who works in her own field, does
not turn round. The poor man's dog barks at the rich man, the rich man's
dog barks at the poor man. Every one for himself. Interest is the motive of
men. Gold is the loadstone."

"What then? Conclude."

"I would like to go and establish myself at La Joya. There are three of
us. I have my spouse and my young lady; a girl who is very beautiful. The
voyage is long and dear. I must have a little money."

"How does that concern me?" inquired Marius.

The stranger stretched his neck out of his cravat, a movement characteristic
of the vulture, and replied, with redoubled smiles:

"Then Monsieur the Baron has not read my letter?"

That was not far from true. The fact is, that the contents of the epistle
had glanced off from Marius. He had seen the handwriting rather than
read the letter. He scarcely remembered it. Within a moment a new clue
had been given him. He had noticed this remark: My spouse and my young
lady. He fixed a searching eye upon the stranger. An examining judge could
not have done better. He seemed to be lying in ambush for him. He answered:

"Explain."

The stranger thrust his hands into his fobs, raised his head without
straightening his backbone, but scrutinising Marius in his turn with the
green gaze of his spectacles.

"Certainly, Monsieur the Baron. I will explain. I have a secret to sell
you."

"A secret?"

"A secret."

"Which concerns me?"

"Somewhat."

"What is this secret?"

Marius examined the man more and more closely, while listening to
him.

"I commence gratis," said the stranger. "You will see that I am interesting."

"Go on."

"Monsieur Baron, you have in your house a robber and an assassin."

Marius shuddered.

"In my house? no," said he.

The stranger, imperturbable, brushed his hat with his sleeve, and continued:

"Assassin and robber. Observe, Monsieur Baron, that I do not speak here of
acts, old, by-gone, and withered, which may be cancelled by prescription
in the eye of the law, and by repentance in the eye of God. I speak of recent
acts, present acts, acts yet unknown to justice at this hour. I will proceed.
This man has glided into your confidence, and almost into your family, under
a false name. I am going to tell you his true name. And to tell it to you for
nothing."

"I am listening."

"His name is Jean Valjean."

"I know it."

"I am going to tell you, also for nothing, who he is."

"Say on."

"He is an old convict."

"I know it."

"You know it since I have had the honour of telling you."

"No. I knew it before."

Marius' cool tone, that double reply, I know it, his laconic method of
speech, embarrassing to conversation, excited some suppressed anger in the
stranger. He shot furtively at Marius a furious look, which was immediately
extinguished. Quick as it was, this look was one of those which are recog-
nised after they have once been seen; it did not escape Marius. Certain
flames can only come from certain souls; the eye, that window of the
thought, blazes with it; spectacles hide nothing; you might as well put a
glass over hell.

The stranger resumed with a smile:

"I do not permit myself to contradict Monsieur the Baron. At all events,
you must see that I am informed. Now, what I have to acquaint you with,
is known to myself alone. It concerns the fortune of Madame the Baroness.
It is an extraordinary secret. It is for sale. I offer it to you first.
Cheap. Twenty thousand francs."

"I know that secret as well as the others," said Marius.

The person felt the necessity of lowering his price a little.

"Monsieur Baron, say ten thousand francs, and I will go on."

"I repeat, that you have nothing to acquaint me with. I know what you
wish to tell me."

There was a new flash in the man's eye. He exclaimed:

"Still I must dine to-day. It is an extraordinary secret, I tell you. Monsieur
the Baron, I am going to speak. I will speak. Give me twenty francs."

Marius looked at him steadily:

"I know your extraordinary secret; just as I knew Jean Valjean's name:
just as I know your name."

"My name?"

"Yes."

"That is not difficult, Monsieur Baron. I have had the honour of writing
it to you and telling it to you. Thenard."

"Dier."

"Eh?"

"Thenardier."

"Who is that?"

In danger the porcupine bristles, the beetle feigns death, the Old
Guard forms a square; this man began to laugh.

Then, with a fillip, he brushed a speck of dust from his coat-sleeve.

Marius continued:

"You are also the working-man Jondrette, the comedian Fabantou, the
poet Genflot, the Spaniard Don Alvares, and the woman Balizard."

"The woman what?"

"And you have kept a chop-house at Montfermeil."

"A chop-house! never."

"And I tell you that you are Thenardier."

"I deny it."

"And that you are a scoundrel. Here."

And Marius, taking a bank-note from his pocket, threw it in his face.

"Thanks! pardon! five hundred francs! Monsieur Baron!"

And the man, bewildered, bowing, catching the note, examined it.

"Five hundred francs!" he repeated in astonishment. And he stammered
out in an undertone: "A serious fafiot!"

Then bluntly:

"Well, so be it," exclaimed he. "Let us make ourselves comfortable."

And, with the agility of a monkey, throwing his hair off backwards, pull-
ing off his spectacles, taking out of his nose and pocketing the two quill
tubes of which we have just spoken, and which we have already seen elsewhere
on another page of this book, he took off his countenance as one takes off
his hat.

His eye kindled; his forehead, uneven, ravined, humped in spots, hideously
wrinkled at the top, emerged; his nose became as sharp as a beak; the fierce
and cunning profile of the man of prey appeared again.

"Monsieur the Baron is infallible," said he in a clear voice from which
all nasality has disappeared, "I am Thenardier."

And he straightened his bent back.

Thenardier, for it was indeed he, was strangely surprised; he would have
been disconcerted if he could have been. He had come to bring astonishment,
and he himself received it This humiliation had been compensated by five
hundred francs, and, all things considered, he accepted it; but he was
none the less astounded.

He saw this Baron Pontmercy for the first time, and in spite of his dis-
guise, this Baron Pontmercy recognised him and recognised him thoroughly.
And not only was this baron fully informed, in regard to Thenardier, but
he seemed fully informed in regard to Jean Valjean. Who was this almost
beardless young man, so icy and so generous, who knew people's names,
who knew all their names, and who opened his purse to them, who abused
rogues like a judge and who paid them like a dupe? Thenardier, it will
be remembered, although he had been a neighbour of Marius, had never
seen him, which is frequent in Paris; he had once heard some talk of
his daughters about a very poor young man named Marius who lived in the
house. He had written to him, without knowing him, the letter which we
have seen. No connection was possible in his mind between that Marius
and M. the Baron Pontmercy.

Through his daughter Azelma, however, whom he had put upon the track
of the couple married on the 16th of February, and through his own
researches, he had succeeded in finding out many things and, from the
depth of his darkness, he had been able to seize more than one mysterious
clue. He had, by dint of industry, discovered, or, at least, by dint of
induction, guessed who the man was whom he had met on a certain day in
the Grand Sewer. From the man, he had easily arrived at the name. He knew
that Madame the Baroness Pontmercy was Cosette. But, in that respect,
he intended to be prudent. Who was Cosette? He did not know exactly
himself. He suspected indeed some illegitimacy. Fantine's story had always
seemed to him ambiguous; but why speak of it? to get paid for his silence?
He had, or thought he had, something better to sell than that. And to all
appearances, to come and make, without any proof, this revelation to Baron
Pontmercy: Your wife is a bastard, would only have attracted the husband's
boot towards the revelator's back.

In Thenardier's opinion, the conversation with Marius had not yet
commenced. He had been obliged to retreat, to modify his strategy, to
abandon a position, to change his base; but nothing essential was yet lost,
and he had five hundred francs in his pocket. Moreover, he had something
decisive to say, and even against this Baron Pontmercy, so well informed
and so well armed, he felt himself strong. To men of Thenardier's nature,
every dialogue is a battle. In that which was about to be commenced what
was his situation? He did not know to whom he was speaking, but he knew
about what he was speaking. He rapidly made this interior review of his
forces, and after saying: "I am Thenardier," he waited.

Marius remained absorbed in thought. At last, then, he had caught
Thenardier; this man, whom he had so much desired to find again, was
before him: so he would be able to do honour to Colonel Pontmercy's
injunction. He was humiliated that that hero should owe anything to this
bandit, and that the bill of exchange drawn by his father from the depth of
the grave upon him, Marius, should have been protested until this day. It
appeared to him, also, in the complex position of his mind with regard to
Thenardier, that here was an opportunity to avenge the colonel for the
misfortune of having been saved by such a rascal. However that might be,
he was pleased. He was about to deliver the colonel's shade at last from his
unworthy creditor, and it seemed to him that he was about to release his
father's memory from imprisonment for debt.

Besides this duty, he had another, to clear up, if he could, the source of
Cosette's fortune. The opportunity seemed to present itself. Thenardier
knew something, perhaps. It might be useful to probe this man to the bottom.
He began with that.

Thenardier had slipped the "serious fafiot" into his fob, and was looking
at Marius with an almost affectionate humility.

Marius interrupted the silence.

"Thenardier, I have told you your name. Now your secret, what you
came to make known to me, do you want me to tell you that? I too have
my means of information. You shall see that I know more about it than you
do. Jean Valjean, as you have said, is an assassin and a robber. A robber,
because he robbed a rich manufacturer, M. Madeleine, whose ruin he
caused. An assassin, because he assassinated the police-officer, Javert."

"I don't understand, Monsieur Baron," said Thenardier.

"I will make myself understood. Listen. There was, in an arrondissement
of the Pas-de-Calais, about 1822, a man who had had some old difficulty
with justice, and who, under the name of M. Madeleine, had reformed and
re-established himself. He had become in the full force of the term an
upright man. By means of a manufacture, that of black glass trinkets, he
had made the fortune of an entire city. As for his own personal fortune,
he had made it also, but secondarily, and, in some sort, incidentally.
He was the foster-father of the poor. He founded hospitals, opened
schools, visited the sick, endowed daughters, supported widows, adopted
orphans; he was, as it were, the guardian of the country. He had refused
the Cross, he had been appointed mayor. A liberated convict knew the
secret of a penalty once incurred by this man; he informed against him and
had him arrested, and took advantage of the arrest to come to Paris and
draw from the banker, Laffitte--I have the fact from the cashier himself--
by means of a false signature, a sum of more than half a million which
belonged to M. Madeleine. This convict who robbed M. Madeleine is Jean
Valjean. As to the other act, you have just as little to tell me. Jean
Valjean killed the officer Javert; he killed him with a pistol. I, who
am now speaking to you, I was present."

Thenardier cast upon Marius the sovereign glance of a beaten man, who
lays hold on victory again, and who has just recovered in one minute
all the ground which he had lost. But the smile returned immediately;
the inferior before the superior can only have a skulking triumph, and
Thenardier merely said to Marius:

"Monsieur Baron, we are on the wrong track."

And he emphasised this phrase by giving his bunch of trinkets an
expressive twirl.

"What!" replied Marius, "do you deny that? These are facts."

"They are chimeras. The confidence with which Monsieur the Baron hon-
ours me makes it my duty to tell him so. Before all things, truth and
justice. I do not like to see people accused unjustly. Monsieur Baron,
Jean Valjean never robbed Monsieur Madeleine, and Jean Valjean never
killed Javert."

"You speak strongly! how is that?"

"For two reasons."

"What are they? tell me."

"The first is this: he did not rob Monsieur Madeleine, since it is Jean
Valjean himself who was Monsieur Madeleine."

"What is that you are telling me?"

"And the second is this: he did not assassinate Javert, since Javert himself
killed Javert."

"What do you mean?"

"That Javert committed suicide."

"Prove it! prove it!" cried Marius, beside himself.

Thenardier resumed, scanning his phrase in the fashion of an ancient
Alexandrine:

"The--police--of--ficer--Ja--vert--was--found--drowned--under--a--boat--
by--the--Pont--au--Change."

"But prove it now!"

Thenardier took from his pocket a large envelope of grey paper, which
seemed to contain folded sheets of different sizes.

"I have my documents," said he, with calmness.

And he added:

"Monsieur Baron, in your interest, I wished to find out Jean Valjean to
the bottom. I say that Jean Valjean and Madeleine are the same man; and I
say that Javert had no other assassin than Javert; and when I speak I have
the proofs. Not manuscript proofs; writing is suspicious; writing is com-
plaisant, but proofs in print."

While speaking, Thenardier took out of the envelope two newspapers, yellow,
faded, and strongly saturated with tobacco. One of these two newspapers,
broken at all the folds, and falling in square pieces, seemed much
older than the other.

"Two facts, two proofs," said Thenardier. And unfolding the two papers,
he handed them to Marius.

With these two newspapers the reader is acquainted. One, the oldest, a
copy of the Drapeau Blanc, of the 25th of July, 1823, the text of which can
be found on page 313 of this book, established the identity of M. Madeleine
and Jean Valjean. The other, a Moniteur of the 15th of June, 1832, verified
the suicide of Javert, adding that it appeared from a verbal report made by
Javert to the prefect that, taken prisoner in the barricade of the Rue de la
Chanvrerie, he had owed his life to the magnanimity of an insurgent who,
though he had him at the muzzle of his pistol, instead of blowing out his
brains, had fired into the air.

Marius read. There was evidence, certain date, unquestionable proof; these
two newspapers had not been printed expressly to support Thenardier's words.
The note published in the Moniteur was an official communication from the
prefecture of police. Marius could not doubt. The information derived from
the cashier was false, and he himself was mistaken. Jean Valjean, suddenly
growing grand, arose from the cloud. Marius could not restrain a cry of joy:

"Well, then, this unhappy man is a wonderful man! all that fortune was
really his own! he is Madeleine, the providence of a whole region! he is
Jean Valjean, the saviour of Javert! he is a hero! he is a saint!"

"He is not a saint, and he is not a hero," said Thenardier. "He is an
assassin and a robber."

And he added with the tone of a man who begins to feel some authority
in himself: "Let us be calm."

Robber, assassin; these words, which Marius supposed were gone, yet
which came back, fell upon him like a shower of ice.

"Again," said he.

"Still," said Thenardier. "Jean Valjean did not rob Madeleine, but he is
a robber. He did not kill Javert, but he is a murderer."

"Will you speak," resumed Marius, "of that petty theft of forty years
ago, expiated, as appears from your newspapers themselves, by a whole life
of repentance, abnegation, and virtue?"

"I said assassination and robbery, Monsieur Baron. And I repeat that I
speak of recent facts. What I have to reveal to you is absolutely unknown.
It belongs to the unpublished. And perhaps you will find in it the source of
the fortune adroitly presented by Jean Valjean to Madame the Baroness. I
say adroitly, for, by a donation of this kind, to glide into an honourable
house, the comforts of which he will share, and, by the same stroke, to
conceal his crime to enjoy his robbery, to bury his name, and to create
himself a family, that would not be very unskilful."

"I might interrupt you here," observed Marius; "but continue."

"Monsieur Baron, I will tell you all, leaving the recompense to your gener-
osity. This secret is worth a pile of gold. You will say to me: why have
you not gone to Jean Valjean? For a very simple reason: I know that he has
dispossessed himself, and dispossessed in your favour, and I think the con-
trivance ingenious; but he has not a sou left, he would show me his empty
hands, and, since I need some money for my voyage to La Joya, I prefer
you, who have all, to him who has nothing. I am somewhat fatigued; allow
me to take a chair."

Marius sat down, and made sign to him to sit down.

Thenardier installed himself in a cappadine chair, took up the two news-
papers, thrust them back into the envelope, and muttered, striking the
Drapeau Blanc with his nail: "It cost me some hard work to get this one."
This done, he crossed his legs and lay back in his chair, an attitude
characteristic of people who are sure of what they are saying, then
entered into the subject seriously, and emphasising his words:

"Monsieur Baron, on the 6th of June, 1832, about a year ago, the day of
the emeute, a man was in the Grand Sewer of Paris, near where the sewer
empties into the Seine, between the Pont des Invalides and the Pont d'Iena."

Marius suddenly drew his chair near Thenardier's. Thenardier noticed
this movement, and continued with the deliberation of a speaker who holds
his interlocutor fast, and who feels the palpitation of his adversary beneath
his words:

"This man, compelled to conceal himself, for reasons foreign to politics,
however, had taken the sewer for his dwelling, and had a key to it. It
was, I repeat it, the 6th of June; it might have been eight o'clock in the
evening. The man heard a noise in the sewer. Very much surprised, he hid
himself, and watched. It was a sound of steps, somebody was walking in the
darkness; somebody was coming in his direction. Strange to say, there was
another man in the sewer beside him. The grating of the outlet of the sewer
was not far off. A little light which came from it enabled him to recognise
the new-corner, and to see that this man was carrying something on his
back. He walked bent over. The man who was walking bent over was an old
convict, and what he was carrying upon his shoulders was a corpse. Assas-
sination in flagrante delicto, if ever there was such a thing. As for the
robbery, it follows of course; nobody kills a man for nothing. This convict
was going to throw his corpse into the river. It is a noteworthy fact, that
before reaching the grating of the outlet, this convict, who came from a
distance in the sewer, had been compelled to pass through a horrible quagmire
in which it would seem that he might have left the corpse; but, the sewermen
working upon the quagmire might, the very next day, have found the assas-
sinated man, and that was not the assassin's game. He preferred to go
through the quagmire with his load, and his efforts must have been terrible;
it is impossible to put one's life in greater peril; I do not understand how
he came out of it alive."

Marius' chair drew still nearer. Thenardier took advantage of it to draw
a long breath. He continued:

"Monsieur Baron, a sewer is not the Champ de Mars. One lacks everything
there, even room. When two men are in a sewer, they must meet each other.
That is what happened. The resident and the traveller were compelled to
say good-day to each other, to their mutual regret. The traveller said
to the resident: "You see what I have on my back, I must get out, you
have the key, give it to me." This convict was a man of terrible strength.
There was no refusing him. Still he who had the key parleyed, merely to
gain time. He examined the dead man, but he could see nothing, except
that he was young, well dressed, apparently a rich man, and all disfigured
with blood. While he was talking, he found means to cut and tear off from
behind, without the assassin perceiving it, a piece of the assassinated
man's coat. A piece of evidence, you understand; means of getting trace
of the affair, and proving the crime upon the criminal. He put this piece
of evidence in his pocket. After which he opened the grating, let the man
out with his incumbrance on his back, shut the grating again and escaped,
little caring to be mixed up with the remainder of the adventure, and
especially desiring not to be present when the assassin should throw the
assassinated man into the river. You understand now. He who was carrying
the corpse was Jean Valjean; he who had the key is now speaking to you,
and the piece of the coat----"

Thenardier finished the phrase by drawing from his pocket and holding
up, on a level with his eyes, between his thumbs and his forefingers, a
strip of ragged black cloth, covered with dark stains.

Marius had risen, pale, hardly breathing, his eye fixed upon the scrap
of black cloth, and, without uttering a word, without losing sight of this
rag, he retreated to the wall, and, with his right hand stretched behind him,
groped about for a key which was in the lock of a closet near the chimney.
He found this key, opened the closet, and thrust his arm into it without
looking, and without removing his startled eyes from the fragment that
Thenardier held up.

Meanwhile Thenardier continued:

"Monsieur Baron, I have the strongest reasons to believe that the assas-
sinated young man was an opulent stranger drawn into a snare by Jean
Valjean, and the bearer of an enormous sum."

"The young man was myself, and there is the coat!" cried Marius, and
he threw an old black coat covered with blood upon the carpet.

Then, snatching the fragment from Thenardier's hands, he bent down
over the coat, and applied the piece to the cut skirt. The edges
fitted exactly, and the strip completed the coat.

Thenardier was petrified. He thought this: "I am floored."

Marius rose up, quivering, desperate, flashing.

He felt in his pocket, and walked, furious, towards Thenardier, offering
him and almost pushing into his face his fist full of five hundred and a
thousand franc notes.

"You are a wretch! you are a liar, a slanderer, a scoundrel. You came to
accuse this man, you have justified him; you wanted to destroy him, you
have succeeded only in glorifying him. And it is you who are a robber! and
it is you who are an assassin. I saw you, Thenardier, Jondrette, in that den
on the Boulevard de l'Hopital. I know enough about you to send you to the
galleys, and further even, if I wished. Here, there are a thousand francs,
braggart that you are!"

And he threw a bill for a thousand francs to Thenardier.

"Ah! Jondrette, Thenardier, vile knave! let this be a lesson to you, pedlar
of secrets, trader in mysteries, fumbler in the dark, wretch! Take these
five hundred francs, and leave this place! Waterloo protects you."

"Waterloo!" muttered Thenardier, pocketing the five hundred francs
with the thousand francs.

"Yes, assassin! you saved the life of a colonel there----"

"Of a general," said Thenardier, raising his head.

"Of a colonel!" replied Marius with a burst of passion. "I would not give
a farthing for a general. And you came here to act out your infamy! I tell
you that you have committed every crime. Go! out of my sight! Be happy only,
that is all that I desire. Ah! monster! there are three thousand francs more.
Take them. You will start to-morrow for America, with your daughter, for
your wife is dead, abominable liar. I will see to your departure, bandit,
and I will count out to you then twenty thousand francs. Go and get hung
elsewhere!"

"Monsieur Baron," answered Thenardier, bowing to the ground, "eternal
gratitude."

And Thenardier went out, comprehending nothing, astounded and transported
with this sweet crushing under sacks of gold and with this thunderbolt
bursting upon his head in bank-notes.

Thunderstruck he was, but happy also; and he would have been very
sorry to have had a lightning rod against that thunderbolt.

Let us finish with this man at once. Two days after the events which
we are now relating, he left, through Marius' care, for America, under
a false name, with his daughter Azelma, provided with a draft upon New
York for twenty thousand francs. Thenardier, the moral misery of Then-
ardier, the brokendown bourgeois, was irremediable; he was in America
what he had been in Europe. The touch of a wicked man is often enough
to corrupt a good deed and to make an evil result spring from it. With
Marius'money, Thenardier became a slaver.

As soon as Thenardier was out of doors, Marius ran to the garden where
Cosette was still walking:

"Cosette! Cosette!" cried he. "Come! come quick! Let us go. Basque, a
fiacre! Cosette, come. Oh! my God! It was he who saved my life! Let us
not lose a minute! Put on your shawl."

Cosette thought him mad, and obeyed.

He did not breathe, he put his hand upon his heart to repress its beating.
He walked to and fro with rapid strides, he embraced Cosette: "Oh! Cosette!
I am an unhappy man!" said he.

Marius was in amaze. He began to see in this Jean Valjean a strangely
lofty and saddened form. An unparalleled virtue appeared before him,
supreme and mild, humble in its immensity. The convict was transfigured
into Christ. Marius was bewildered by this marvel. He did not know exactly
what he saw, but it was grand.

In a moment, a fiacre was at the door.

Marius helped Cosette in and sprang in himself.

"Driver," said he, "Rue de l'Homme Arme, Number 7."

The fiacre started.

"Oh! what happiness!" said Cosette. "Rue de l'Homme Arme! I dared not
speak to you of it again. We are going to see Monsieur Jean."

"Your father! Cosette, your father more than ever. Cosette, I see it.
You told me that you never received the letter which I sent you by
Gavroche. It must have fallen into his hands. Cosette, he went to the barricade
to save me. As it is a necessity for him to be an angel, on the way, he
saved others; he saved Javert. He snatched me out of that gulf to give me
to you. He carried me on his back in that frightful sewer. Oh! I am an
unnatural ingrate. Cosette, after having been your providence, he was
mine. Only think that there was a horrible quagmire, enough to drown him
a hundred times, to drown him in the mire, Cosette! he carried me through
that. I had fainted; I saw nothing, I heard nothing, I could know nothing
of my own fate. We are going to bring him back, take him with us, whether
he will or no, he shall never leave us again. If he is only at home! If we only
find him! I will pass the rest of my life in venerating him. Yes, that must be
it, do you see, Cosette? Gavroche must have handed my letter to him. It is
all explained. You understand."

Cosette did not understand a word.

"You are right," said she to him.

Meanwhile the fiacre rolled on.



V. NIGHT BEHIND WHICH IS DAWN



AT THE KNOCK which he heard at his door, Jean Valjean turned his head.
"Come in," said he feebly.

The door opened. Cosette and Marius appeared.

Cosette rushed into the room.

Marius remained upon the threshold, leaning against the casing of the
door.

"Cosette!" said Jean Valjean, and he rose in his chair, his arms stretched
out and trembling, haggard, livid, terrible, with immense joy in his eyes.
Cosette stifled with emotion, fell upon Jean Valjean's breast.

"Father!" said she.

Jean Valjean, beside himself, stammered:

"Cosette! she? you, madame? it is you, Cosette? Oh, my God!" And, clasped
in Cosette's arms, he exclaimed:

"It is you, Cosette? you are here? You forgive me then!"

Marius, dropping his eyelids that the tears might not fall, stepped forward
and murmured between his lips which were contracted convulsively to check
the sobs:

"Father!"

"And you too, you forgive me!" said Jean Valjean.

Marius could not utter a word, and Jean Valjean added: "Thanks."

Cosette took off her shawl and threw her hat upon the bed.

"They are in my way," said she.

And, seating herself upon the old man's knees, she stroked away his
white hair with an adorable grace, and kissed his forehead.

Jean Valjean, bewildered, offered no resistance.

Cosette, who had but a very confused understanding of all this, redoubled
her caresses, as if she would pay Marius' debt.

Jean Valjean faltered:

"How foolish we are! I thought I should never see her again. Only think,
Monsieur Pontmercy, that at the moment you came in, I was saying to myself:
It is over. There is her little dress, I am a miserable man, I shall never
see Cosette again, I was saying that at the very moment you were coming up
the stairs. Was I not silly? I was as silly as that! But we reckon without
God. God said: You think that you are going to be abandoned, dolt? No. No,
it shall not come to pass like that. Come, here is a poor goodman who has
need of an angel. And the angel comes; and I see my Cosette again! and I
see my darling Cosette again! Oh! I was very miserable!"

For a moment he could not speak, then he continued:

"I really needed to see Cosette a little while from time to time. A heart
does want a bone to gnaw. Still I felt plainly that I was in the way. I gave
myself reasons: they have no need of you, stay in your corner, you have no
right to continue for ever. Oh! bless God, I see her again! Do you know,
Cosette, that your husband is very handsome? Ah, you have a pretty embroi-
dered collar, yes, yes. I like that pattern. Your husband chose it, did
not he? And then, Cosette, you must have cashmeres. Monsieur Pontmercy,
let me call her Cosette. It will not be very long."

And Cosette continued again:

"How naughty to have left us in this way! Where have you been? why were
you away so long? Your journeys did not used to last more than three
or four days. I sent Nicolette, the answer always was: He is absent. How
long since you returned? Why did not you let us know? Do you know that
you are very much changed. Oh! the naughty father! he has been sick,
and we did not know it! Here, Marius, feel his hand, how cold it is!"

"So you are here, Monsieur Pontmercy, you forgive me!" repeated
Jean Valjean.

At these words, which Jean Valjean now said for the second time, all
that was swelling in Marius' heart found an outlet, he broke forth:

"Cosette, do you hear? that is the way with him! he begs my pardon,
and do you know what he has done for me, Cosette? he has saved my life.
He has done more. He has given you to me. And, after having saved me,
and after having given you to me, Cosette, what did he do with himself?
he sacrificed himself. There is the man. And, to me the ungrateful, to me
the forgetful, to me the pitiless, to me the guilty, he says: Thanks! Cosette,
my whole life passed at the feet of this man would be too little. That barri-
cade, that sewer, that furnace, that cloaca, he went through everything for
me, for you, Cosette! He bore me through death in every form which he put
aside from me, and which he accepted for himself. All courage, all virtue,
all heroism, all sanctity, he has it all, Cosette, that man is an angel!"

"Hush! hush!" said Jean Valjean in a whisper. "Why tell all that?"

"But you!" exclaimed Marius, with a passion in which veneration was mingled,
"why have not you told it? It is your fault, too. You save people's lives,
and you hide it from them! You do more, under pretence of unmasking yourself,
you calumniate yourself. It is frightful."

"I told the truth," answered Jean Valjean.

"No," replied Marius, "the truth is the whole truth; and you did not tell
it. You were Monsieur Madeleine, why not have said so? You had saved
Javert, why not have said so? I owe my life to you, why not have said so?"

"Because I thought as you did. I felt that you were right. It was neces-
sary that I should go away. If you had known that affair of the sewer, you
would have made me stay with you. I should then have had to keep silent. If
I had spoken, it would have embarrassed all."

"Embarrassed what? embarrassed whom?" replied Marius. "Do you suppose you
are going to stay here? We are going to carry you back. Oh! my God! when
I think it was by accident that I learned it all! We are going to carry
you back. You are a part of us. You are her father and mine. You shall
not spend another day in this horrid house. Do not imagine that you
will be here to-morrow."

"To-morrow," said Jean Valjean, "I shall not be here, but I shall not be
at your house."

"What do you mean?" replied Marius. "Ah now, we shall allow no more
journeys. You shall never leave us again. You belong to us. We will
not let you go."

"This time, it is for good," added Cosette. "We have a carriage below.
I am going to carry you off. If necessary, I shall use force."

And laughing, she made as if she would lift the old man in her arms.

"Your room is still in our house," she continued. "If you knew how
pretty the garden is now. The azalias are growing finely. The paths are
sanded with river sand: there are some little violet shells. You shall
eat some of my strawberries. I water them myself. And no more madame,
and no more Monsieur Jean, we are a republic, are we not, Marius? The
programme is changed. If you knew, father, I have had some trouble, there
was a red-breast which had made her nest in a hole in the wall, a horrid
cat ate her up for me. My poor pretty little red-breast who put her head
out at her window and looked at me! I cried over it. I would have killed
the cat! But now, nobody cries any more. Everybody laughs, everybody is
happy. You are coming with us. How glad grandfather will be! You shall
have your bed in the garden, you shall tend it, and we will see if your
strawberries are as fine as mine. And then, I will do what ever you wish,
and then, you will obey me."

Jean Valjean listened to her without hearing her. He heard the music
of her voice rather than the meaning of her words; one of those big tears
which are the gloomy pearls of the soul, gathered slowly in his eye. He
murmured:

"The proof that God is good is that she is here."

"Father!" cried Cosette.

Jean Valjean continued:

"It is very true that it would be charming to live together. They have
their trees full of birds. I would walk with Cosette. To be with people who
live, who bid each other good morning, who call each other into the gar
den, would be sweet. We would see each other as soon as it was morning.
We would each cultivate our little corner. She would have me eat her
strawberries. I would have her pick my roses. It would be charming.
Only----"

He paused and said mildly:

"It is a pity."

The tear did not fall, it went back, and Jean Valjean replaced it with a
smile.

Cosette took both the old man's hands in her own.

"My God!" said she, "your hands are colder yet. Are you sick? Are you
suffering?"

"No," answered Jean Valjean. "I am very well. Only----"

He stopped.

"Only what?"

"I shall die in a few minutes."

Cosette and Marius shuddered.

"Die!" exclaimed Marius.

"Yes, but that is nothing," said Jean Valjean.

He breathed, smiled, and continued.

"Cosette, you are speaking to me, go on, speak again, your little redbreast
is dead then, speak, let me hear your voice!"

Marius, petrified, gazed upon the old man.

Cosette uttered a piercing cry:

"Father! my father! you shall live. You are going to live. I will have you
live, do you hear!"

Jean Valjean raised his head towards her with adoration.

"Oh yes, forbid me to die. Who knows? I shall obey perhaps. I was just
dying when you came. That stopped me, it seemed to me that I was born
again."

"You are full of strength and life," exclaimed Marius. "Do you think
people die like that? You have had trouble, you shall have no more. I ask
your pardon now, and that on my knees! You shall live, and live with us,
and live long. We will take you back. Both of us here will have but one
thought henceforth, your happiness!"

"You see," added Cosette in tears, "that Marius says you will not die."
Jean Valjean continued to smile.

"If you should take me back, Monsieur Pontmercy, would that make me
different from what I am? No; God thought as you and I did, and he
has not changed his mind; it is best that I should go away. Death is a
good arrangement. God knows better than we do what we need. That you are
happy, that Monsieur Pontmercy has Cosette, that youth espouses morning,
that there are about you, my children, lilacs and nightingales, that your
life is a beautiful lawn in the sunshine, that all the enchantments of heaven
fill your souls, and now, that I who am good for nothing, that I die; surely
all this is well. Look you, be reasonable, there is nothing else possible now,
I am sure that it is all over. An hour ago I had a fainting fit. And then,
last night, I drank that pitcher full of water. How good your husband is,
Cosette! You are much better off than with me."

There was a noise at the door. It was the physician coming in.

"Good day and good-by, doctor," said Jean Valjean. "Here are my poor
children."

Marius approached the physician. He addressed this single word to him:
"Monsieur?" but in the manner of pronouncing it, there was a complete
question.

The physician answered the question by an expressive glance.

"Because things are unpleasant," said Jean Valjean, "that is no reason
for being unjust towards God."

There was a silence. All hearts were oppressed.

Jean Valjean turned towards Cosette. He began to gaze at her as if he
would take a look which should endure through eternity. At the depth of
shadow to which he had already descended, ecstasy was still possible to him
while beholding Cosette. The reflection of that sweet countenance illumined
his pale face. The sepulchre may have its enchantments.

The physician felt his pulse.

"Ah! it was you he needed!" murmured he, looking at Cosette and
Marius.

And, bending towards Marius' ear he added very low:

"Too late."

Jean Valjean, almost without ceasing to gaze upon Cosette, turned upon
Marius and the physician a look of serenity. They heard these almost
inarticulate words come from his lips:

"It is nothing to die; it is frightful not to live."

Suddenly he arose. These returns of strength are sometimes a sign of the
death-struggle. He walked with a firm step to the wall, put aside Marius
and the physician, who offered to assist him, took down from the wall the
little copper crucifix which hung there, came back, and sat down with all
the freedom of motion of perfect health, and said in a loud voice, laying
the crucifix on the table:

"Behold the great martyr."

Then his breast sank in, his head wavered, as if the dizziness of the
tomb seized him, and his hands resting upon his knees, began to clutch as
his pantaloons.

Cosette supported his shoulders, and sobbed, and attempted to speak
to him, but could not. There could be distinguished, among the words
mingled with that mournful saliva which accompanies tears, sentences like
this: "Father! do not leave us. Is it possible that we have found you again
only to lose you?"

The agony of death may be said to meander. It goes, comes, advances
towards the grave, and returns towards life. There is some groping in
the act of dying.

Jean Valjean, after this semi-syncope, gathered strength, shook his
forehead as if to throw off the darkness, and became almost completely
lucid once more. He took a fold of Cosette's sleeve, and kissed it.
"He is reviving! doctor, he is reviving!" cried Marius.

"You are both kind," said Jean Valjean. "I will tell you what has given
me pain. What has given me pain, Monsieur Pontmercy, was that you have
been unwilling to touch that money. That money really belongs to your
wife. I will explain it to you, my children, on that account I am glad to see
you. The black jet comes from EngIand, the white jet comes from Norway.
All this is in the paper you see there, which you will read. For bracelets, I
invented the substitution of clasps made by bending the metal, for clasps
made by soldering the metal. They are handsomer, better, and cheaper. You
understand how much money can be made. So Cosette's fortune is really
her own. I give you these particulars so that your minds may be at rest."

The portress had come up, and was looking through the half-open
door. The physician motioned her away, but he could not prevent that
good, zealous woman from crying to the dying man before she went:

"Do you want a priest?"

"I have one," answered Jean Valjean.

And, with his finger, he seemed to designate a point above his head,
where, you would have said, he saw some one.

It is probable that the Bishop was indeed a witness of this death-agony.
Cosette slipped a pillow under his back gently.

Jean Valjean resumed:

"Monsieur Pontmercy, have no fear, I conjure you. The six hundred thousand
francs are really Cosette's. I shall have lost my life if you do not enjoy
it! We succeeded very well in making glasswork. We rivalled what is called
Berlin jewellery. Indeed, the German black glass cannot be compared with it.
A gross, which contains twelve hundred grains very well cut, costs only
three francs."

When a being who is dear to us is about to die, we look at him with a
look which clings to him, and which would hold him back. Both, dumb
with anguish, knowing not what to say to death, despairing and trembling,
they stood before him, Marius holding Cosette's hand.

From moment to moment, Jean Valjean grew weaker. He was sinking;
he was approaching the dark horizon. His breath had become intermittent;
it was interrupted by a slight rattle. He had difficulty in moving his wrist,
his feet had lost all motion, and, at the same time that the distress of the
limbs and the exhaustion of the body increased, all the majesty of the soul
rose and displayed itself upon his forehead. The light of the unknown
world was already visible in his eye.

His face grew pale, and at the same time smiled. Life was no longer
present, there was something else. His breath died away, his look grew
grand. It was a corpse on which you felt wings.

He motioned to Cosette to approach, then to Marius; it was evidently the
last minute of the last hour, and he began to speak to them in a voice
so faint it seemed to come from afar, and you would have said that there
was already a wall between them and him.

"Come closer, come closer, both of you. I love you dearly. Oh! it is
good to die so! You too, you love me, my Cosette. I knew very well that
you still had some affection for your old goodman. How kind you are to
put this cushion under my back! You will weep for me a little, will you not?
Not too much. I do not wish you to have any deep grief. You must amuse
yourselves a great deal, my children. I forgot to tell you that on buckles
without tongues still more is made than on anything else. A gross, twelve
dozen, costs ten francs, and sells for sixty. That is really a good business.
So you need not be astonished at the six hundred thousand francs, Monsieur
Pontmercy. It is honest money. You can be rich without concern. You must
have a carriage, from time to time a box at the theatres, beautiful ball
dresses, my Cosette, and then give good dinners to your friends, be very
happy. I was writing just now to Cosette. She will find my letter. To her I
bequeath the two candlesticks which are on the mantel. They are silver;
but to me they are gold, they are diamond; they change the candles which
are put into them, into consecrated tapers. I do not know whether he who
gave them to me is satisfied with me in heaven. I have done what I could.
My children, you will not forget that I am a poor man, you will have me
buried in the most convenient piece of ground under a stone to mark the
spot. That is my wish. No name on the stone. If Cosette will come for a
little while sometimes, it will give me a pleasure. You too, Monsieur
Pontmercy. I must confess to you that I have not always loved you; I ask
your pardon. Now, she and you are but one to me. I am very grateful to you.
I feel that you make Cosette happy. If you knew, Monsieur Pontmercy, her
beautiful rosy cheeks were my joy; when I saw her a little pale, I was sad.
There is a five hundred franc bill in the bureau. I have not touched it. It
is for the poor. Cosette, do you see your little dress, there on the bed?
do you recognise it? Yet it was only ten years ago. How time passes! We have
been very happy. It is over. My children, do not weep, I am not going very
far, I shall see you from there. You will only have to look when it is night,
you will see me smile. Cosette, do you remember Montfermeil? You were in
the wood, you were very much frightened; do you remember when I took the
handle of the water-bucket? That was the first time I touched your poor
little hand. It was so cold! Ah! you had red hands in those days, mademoi-
selle, your hands are very white now. And the great doll! do you remember?
you called her Catharine. You regretted that you did not carry her to the
convent. How you made me laugh sometimes, my sweet angel! When it had
rained you launched spears of straw in the gutters, and you watched them.
One day, I gave you a willow battledore, and a shuttlecock with yellow,
blue, and green feathers. You have forgotten it. You were so cunning
when you were little! You played. You put cherries in your ears. Those
are things of the past. The forests through which we have passed with our
child, the trees under which we have walked, the convents in which we have
hidden, the games, the free laughter of childhood, all is in shadow. I
imagined that all that belonged to me. There was my folly. Those Then-
ardiers were wicked. We must forgive them. Cosette, the time has come to
tell you the name of your mother. Her name was Fantine. Remember that
name: Fantine. Fall on your knees whenever you pronounce it. She suffered
much. And loved you much. Her measure of unhappiness was as full as
yours of happiness. Such are the distributions of God. He is on high, he
sees us all, and he knows what he does in the midst of his great stars.
So I am going away, my children. Love each other dearly always. There is
scarcely anything else in the world but that: to love one another. You will
think sometimes of the poor old man who died here. O my Cosette! it is
not my fault, indeed, if I have not seen you all this time, it broke my heart;
I went as far as the corner of the street, I must have seemed strange to the
people who saw me pass, I looked like a crazy man, once I went out with no
hat. My children, I do not see very clearly now, I had some more things to
say, but it makes no difference. Think of me a little. You are blessed
creatures. I do not know what is the matter with me, I see a light. Come
nearer. I die happy. Let me put my hands upon your dear beloved heads."

Cosette and Marius fell on their knees, overwhelmed, choked with
tears, each grasping one of Jean Valjean's hands. Those august hands
moved no more.

He had fallen backwards, the light from the candlesticks fell upon him;
his white face looked up towards heaven, he let Cosette and Marius cover
his hands with kisses; he was dead.

The night was starless and very dark. Without doubt, in the gloom
some mighty angel was standing, with outstretched wings, awaiting the
soul.



VI. GRASS HIDES AND RAIN BLOTS OUT



THERE IS, in the cemetery of Pere Lachaise, in the neighbourhood of the
Potters' field, far from the elegant quartier of that city of sepulchres,
far from all those fantastic tombs which display in presence of eternity
the hideous fashions of death, in a deserted corner, beside an old wall,
beneath a great yew on which the bindweed climbs, among the dog-grass and
the mosses, a stone. This stone is exempt no more than the rest from the
leprosy of time, from the mould, the lichen, and the droppings of the birds.
The air turns it black, the water green. It is near no path, and people do
not like to go in that direction, because the grass is high, and they would
wet their feet. When there is a little sunshine, the lizards come out. There
is, all about, a rustling of wild oats. In the spring, the linnets sing in the
tree.

This stone is entirely blank. The only thought in cutting it was of the
essentials of the grave, and there was no other care than to make this stone
long enough and narrow enough to cover a man.

No name can be read there.

Only many years ago, a hand wrote upon it in pencil these four lines
which have become gradually illegible under the rain and the dust, and
which are probably effaced:

Il dort. Quoique le sort fut pour lui bien etrange,
Il vivait. Il mourut quand il n'eut plus son ange.
La chose simplement d elle-meme arriva,
Comme la nuit se fait lorsque le jour s'en va.

He is asleep. Though his mettle was sorely tried,
He lived, and when he lost his angel, died.
It happened calmly, on its own.
The way night comes when day is done.

BOOK SIXTH:
THE WHITE NIGHT