Les Miserables by Victor Hugo

He said, "No, Madame."

"But," resumed the dowager, "you are wearing mourning for him."

He replied, "It is because I was a servant in his family in my youth."

Another thing which was remarked, was, that every time that he
encountered in the town a young Savoyard who was roaming about the
country and seeking chimneys to sweep, the mayor had him summoned,
inquired his name, and gave him money. The little Savoyards told
each other about it: a great many of them passed that way.

CHAPTER V

VAGUE FLASHES ON THE HORIZON

Little by little, and in the course of time, all this opposition
subsided. There had at first been exercised against M. Madeleine,
in virtue of a sort of law which all those who rise must submit to,
blackening and calumnies; then they grew to be nothing more
than ill-nature, then merely malicious remarks, then even this
entirely disappeared; respect became complete, unanimous, cordial,
and towards 1821 the moment arrived when the word "Monsieur le Maire"
was pronounced at M. sur M. with almost the same accent as "Monseigneur
the Bishop" had been pronounced in D---- in 1815. People came from
a distance of ten leagues around to consult M. Madeleine. He put
an end to differences, he prevented lawsuits, he reconciled enemies.
Every one took him for the judge, and with good reason.
It seemed as though he had for a soul the book of the natural law.
It was like an epidemic of veneration, which in the course
of six or seven years gradually took possession of the whole district.

One single man in the town, in the arrondissement, absolutely escaped
this contagion, and, whatever Father Madeleine did, remained his
opponent as though a sort of incorruptible and imperturbable
instinct kept him on the alert and uneasy. It seems, in fact,
as though there existed in certain men a veritable bestial instinct,
though pure and upright, like all instincts, which creates antipathies
and sympathies, which fatally separates one nature from another nature,
which does not hesitate, which feels no disquiet, which does not hold
its peace, and which never belies itself, clear in its obscurity,
infallible, imperious, intractable, stubborn to all counsels of the
intelligence and to all the dissolvents of reason, and which, in whatever
manner destinies are arranged, secretly warns the man-dog of the
presence of the man-cat, and the man-fox of the presence of the man-lion.

It frequently happened that when M. Madeleine was passing along
a street, calm, affectionate, surrounded by the blessings of all,
a man of lofty stature, clad in an iron-gray frock-coat, armed
with a heavy cane, and wearing a battered hat, turned round abruptly
behind him, and followed him with his eyes until he disappeared,
with folded arms and a slow shake of the head, and his upper lip
raised in company with his lower to his nose, a sort of significant
grimace which might be translated by: "What is that man, after all?
I certainly have seen him somewhere. In any case, I am not
his dupe."

This person, grave with a gravity which was almost menacing,
was one of those men who, even when only seen by a rapid glimpse,
arrest the spectator's attention.

His name was Javert, and he belonged to the police.

At M. sur M. he exercised the unpleasant but useful functions of
an inspector. He had not seen Madeleine's beginnings. Javert owed
the post which he occupied to the protection of M. Chabouillet,
the secretary of the Minister of State, Comte Angeles, then prefect
of police at Paris. When Javert arrived at M. sur M. the fortune
of the great manufacturer was already made, and Father Madeleine
had become Monsieur Madeleine.

Certain police officers have a peculiar physiognomy, which is
complicated with an air of baseness mingled with an air of authority.
Javert possessed this physiognomy minus the baseness.

It is our conviction that if souls were visible to the eyes,
we should be able to see distinctly that strange thing that each one
individual of the human race corresponds to some one of the species
of the animal creation; and we could easily recognize this truth,
hardly perceived by the thinker, that from the oyster to the eagle,
from the pig to the tiger, all animals exist in man, and that each
one of them is in a man. Sometimes even several of them at a time.

Animals are nothing else than the figures of our virtues and our vices,
straying before our eyes, the visible phantoms of our souls.
God shows them to us in order to induce us to reflect. Only since
animals are mere shadows, God has not made them capable of education
in the full sense of the word; what is the use? On the contrary,
our souls being realities and having a goal which is appropriate
to them, God has bestowed on them intelligence; that is to say,
the possibility of education. Social education, when well done,
can always draw from a soul, of whatever sort it may be, the utility
which it contains.

This, be it said, is of course from the restricted point of view
of the terrestrial life which is apparent, and without prejudging
the profound question of the anterior or ulterior personality of
the beings which are not man. The visible _I_ in nowise authorizes
the thinker to deny the latent _I_. Having made this reservation,
let us pass on.

Now, if the reader will admit, for a moment, with us, that in every
man there is one of the animal species of creation, it will be easy
for us to say what there was in Police Officer Javert.

The peasants of Asturias are convinced that in every litter of
wolves there is one dog, which is killed by the mother because,
otherwise, as he grew up, he would devour the other little ones.

Give to this dog-son of a wolf a human face, and the result will
be Javert.

Javert had been born in prison, of a fortune-teller, whose husband
was in the galleys. As he grew up, he thought that he was outside
the pale of society, and he despaired of ever re-entering it.
He observed that society unpardoningly excludes two classes of men,--
those who attack it and those who guard it; he had no choice except
between these two classes; at the same time, he was conscious of
an indescribable foundation of rigidity, regularity, and probity,
complicated with an inexpressible hatred for the race of bohemians
whence he was sprung. He entered the police; he succeeded there.
At forty years of age he was an inspector.

During his youth he had been employed in the convict establishments
of the South.

Before proceeding further, let us come to an understanding
as to the words, "human face," which we have just applied to Javert.

The human face of Javert consisted of a flat nose, with two deep
nostrils, towards which enormous whiskers ascended on his cheeks.
One felt ill at ease when he saw these two forests and these two
caverns for the first time. When Javert laughed,--and his laugh
was rare and terrible,--his thin lips parted and revealed to view
not only his teeth, but his gums, and around his nose there formed
a flattened and savage fold, as on the muzzle of a wild beast.
Javert, serious, was a watchdog; when he laughed, he was a tiger.
As for the rest, he had very little skull and a great deal of jaw;
his hair concealed his forehead and fell over his eyebrows;
between his eyes there was a permanent, central frown, like an imprint
of wrath; his gaze was obscure; his mouth pursed up and terrible;
his air that of ferocious command.

This man was composed of two very simple and two very good
sentiments, comparatively; but he rendered them almost bad, by dint
of exaggerating them,--respect for authority, hatred of rebellion;
and in his eyes, murder, robbery, all crimes, are only forms
of rebellion. He enveloped in a blind and profound faith every
one who had a function in the state, from the prime minister to
the rural policeman. He covered with scorn, aversion, and disgust
every one who had once crossed the legal threshold of evil.
He was absolute, and admitted no exceptions. On the one hand,
he said, "The functionary can make no mistake; the magistrate
is never the wrong." On the other hand, he said, "These men are
irremediably lost. Nothing good can come from them." He fully
shared the opinion of those extreme minds which attribute to human
law I know not what power of making, or, if the reader will have
it so, of authenticating, demons, and who place a Styx at the base
of society. He was stoical, serious, austere; a melancholy dreamer,
humble and haughty, like fanatics. His glance was like a gimlet,
cold and piercing. His whole life hung on these two words:
watchfulness and supervision. He had introduced a straight line
into what is the most crooked thing in the world; he possessed
the conscience of his usefulness, the religion of his functions,
and he was a spy as other men are priests. Woe to the man who fell
into his hands! He would have arrested his own father, if the latter
had escaped from the galleys, and would have denounced his mother,
if she had broken her ban. And he would have done it with that sort
of inward satisfaction which is conferred by virtue. And, withal,
a life of privation, isolation, abnegation, chastity, with never
a diversion. It was implacable duty; the police understood,
as the Spartans understood Sparta, a pitiless lying in wait,
a ferocious honesty, a marble informer, Brutus in Vidocq.

Javert's whole person was expressive of the man who spies and
who withdraws himself from observation. The mystical school
of Joseph de Maistre, which at that epoch seasoned with lofty
cosmogony those things which were called the ultra newspapers,
would not have failed to declare that Javert was a symbol.
His brow was not visible; it disappeared beneath his hat:
his eyes were not visible, since they were lost under his eyebrows:
his chin was not visible, for it was plunged in his cravat:
his hands were not visible; they were drawn up in his sleeves:
and his cane was not visible; he carried it under his coat.
But when the occasion presented itself, there was suddenly seen
to emerge from all this shadow, as from an ambuscade, a narrow and
angular forehead, a baleful glance, a threatening chin, enormous hands,
and a monstrous cudgel.

In his leisure moments, which were far from frequent, he read,
although he hated books; this caused him to be not wholly illiterate.
This could be recognized by some emphasis in his speech.

As we have said, he had no vices. When he was pleased with himself,
he permitted himself a pinch of snuff. Therein lay his connection
with humanity.

The reader will have no difficulty in understanding that Javert
was the terror of that whole class which the annual statistics
of the Ministry of Justice designates under the rubric, Vagrants.
The name of Javert routed them by its mere utterance; the face
of Javert petrified them at sight.

Such was this formidable man.

Javert was like an eye constantly fixed on M. Madeleine. An eye full
of suspicion and conjecture. M. Madeleine had finally perceived
the fact; but it seemed to be of no importance to him. He did not
even put a question to Javert; he neither sought nor avoided him;
he bore that embarrassing and almost oppressive gaze without
appearing to notice it. He treated Javert with ease and courtesy,
as he did all the rest of the world.

It was divined, from some words which escaped Javert, that he had
secretly investigated, with that curiosity which belongs to the race,
and into which there enters as much instinct as will, all the
anterior traces which Father Madeleine might have left elsewhere.
He seemed to know, and he sometimes said in covert words,
that some one had gleaned certain information in a certain
district about a family which had disappeared. Once he chanced
to say, as he was talking to himself, "I think I have him!"
Then he remained pensive for three days, and uttered not a word.
It seemed that the thread which he thought he held had broken.

Moreover, and this furnishes the necessary corrective for the too
absolute sense which certain words might present, there can be
nothing really infallible in a human creature, and the peculiarity
of instinct is that it can become confused, thrown off the track,
and defeated. Otherwise, it would be superior to intelligence,
and the beast would be found to be provided with a better light
than man.

Javert was evidently somewhat disconcerted by the perfect naturalness
and tranquillity of M. Madeleine.

One day, nevertheless, his strange manner appeared to produce
an impression on M. Madeleine. It was on the following occasion.

CHAPTER VI

FATHER FAUCHELEVENT

One morning M. Madeleine was passing through an unpaved alley of
M. sur M.; he heard a noise, and saw a group some distance away.
He approached. An old man named Father Fauchelevent had just fallen
beneath his cart, his horse having tumbled down.

This Fauchelevent was one of the few enemies whom M. Madeleine had at
that time. When Madeleine arrived in the neighborhood, Fauchelevent,
an ex-notary and a peasant who was almost educated, had a business
which was beginning to be in a bad way. Fauchelevent had seen this
simple workman grow rich, while he, a lawyer, was being ruined.
This had filled him with jealousy, and he had done all he could,
on every occasion, to injure Madeleine. Then bankruptcy had come;
and as the old man had nothing left but a cart and a horse,
and neither family nor children, he had turned carter.

The horse had two broken legs and could not rise. The old man was
caught in the wheels. The fall had been so unlucky that the whole
weight of the vehicle rested on his breast. The cart was quite
heavily laden. Father Fauchelevent was rattling in the throat
in the most lamentable manner. They had tried, but in vain,
to drag him out. An unmethodical effort, aid awkwardly given,
a wrong shake, might kill him. It was impossible to disengage him
otherwise than by lifting the vehicle off of him. Javert, who had
come up at the moment of the accident, had sent for a jack-screw.

M. Madeleine arrived. People stood aside respectfully.

"Help!" cried old Fauchelevent. "Who will be good and save
the old man?"

M.Madeleine turned towards those present:--

"Is there a jack-screw to be had?"

"One has been sent for," answered the peasant.

"How long will it take to get it?"

"They have gone for the nearest, to Flachot's place, where there
is a farrier; but it makes no difference; it will take a good
quarter of an hour."

"A quarter of an hour!" exclaimed Madeleine.

It had rained on the preceding night; the soil was soaked.

The cart was sinking deeper into the earth every moment,
and crushing the old carter's breast more and more.
It was evident that his ribs would be broken in five minutes more.

"It is impossible to wait another quarter of an hour," said Madeleine
to the peasants, who were staring at him.

"We must!"

"But it will be too late then! Don't you see that the cart is sinking?"

"Well!"

"Listen," resumed Madeleine; "there is still room enough under the
cart to allow a man to crawl beneath it and raise it with his back.
Only half a minute, and the poor man can be taken out. Is there
any one here who has stout loins and heart? There are five louis
d'or to be earned!"

Not a man in the group stirred.

"Ten louis," said Madeleine.

The persons present dropped their eyes. One of them muttered:
"A man would need to be devilish strong. And then he runs the risk
of getting crushed!"

"Come," began Madeleine again, "twenty louis."

The same silence.

"It is not the will which is lacking," said a voice.

M. Madeleine turned round, and recognized Javert. He had not
noticed him on his arrival.

Javert went on:--

"It is strength. One would have to be a terrible man to do such
a thing as lift a cart like that on his back."

Then, gazing fixedly at M. Madeleine, he went on, emphasizing every
word that he uttered:--

"Monsieur Madeleine, I have never known but one man capable of doing
what you ask."

Madeleine shuddered.

Javert added, with an air of indifference, but without removing
his eyes from Madeleine:--

"He was a convict."

"Ah!" said Madeleine.

"In the galleys at Toulon."

Madeleine turned pale.

Meanwhile, the cart continued to sink slowly. Father Fauchelevent
rattled in the throat, and shrieked:--

"I am strangling! My ribs are breaking! a screw! something! Ah!"

Madeleine glanced about him.

"Is there, then, no one who wishes to earn twenty louis and save
the life of this poor old man?"

No one stirred. Javert resumed:--

"I have never known but one man who could take the place of a screw,
and he was that convict."

"Ah! It is crushing me!" cried the old man.

Madeleine raised his head, met Javert's falcon eye still fixed
upon him, looked at the motionless peasants, and smiled sadly.
Then, without saying a word, he fell on his knees, and before the
crowd had even had time to utter a cry, he was underneath the vehicle.

A terrible moment of expectation and silence ensued.

They beheld Madeleine, almost flat on his stomach beneath that
terrible weight, make two vain efforts to bring his knees and his
elbows together. They shouted to him, "Father Madeleine, come out!"
Old Fauchelevent himself said to him, "Monsieur Madeleine, go away!
You see that I am fated to die! Leave me! You will get yourself
crushed also!" Madeleine made no reply.

All the spectators were panting. The wheels had continued to sink,
and it had become almost impossible for Madeleine to make his way
from under the vehicle.

Suddenly the enormous mass was seen to quiver, the cart rose slowly,
the wheels half emerged from the ruts. They heard a stifled
voice crying, "Make haste! Help!" It was Madeleine, who had just
made a final effort.

They rushed forwards. The devotion of a single man had given
force and courage to all. The cart was raised by twenty arms.
Old Fauchelevent was saved.

Madeleine rose. He was pale, though dripping with perspiration.
His clothes were torn and covered with mud. All wept. The old
man kissed his knees and called him the good God. As for him,
he bore upon his countenance an indescribable expression of happy
and celestial suffering, and he fixed his tranquil eye on Javert,
who was still staring at him.

CHAPTER VII

FAUCHELEVENT BECOMES A GARDENER IN PARIS

Fauchelevent had dislocated his kneepan in his fall. Father Madeleine
had him conveyed to an infirmary which he had established for his
workmen in the factory building itself, and which was served by two
sisters of charity. On the following morning the old man found
a thousand-franc bank-note on his night-stand, with these words
in Father Madeleine's writing: "I purchase your horse and cart."
The cart was broken, and the horse was dead. Fauchelevent recovered,
but his knee remained stiff. M. Madeleine, on the recommendation
of the sisters of charity and of his priest, got the good man a place
as gardener in a female convent in the Rue Saint-Antoine in Paris.

Some time afterwards, M. Madeleine was appointed mayor. The first
time that Javert beheld M. Madeleine clothed in the scarf which gave
him authority over the town, he felt the sort of shudder which a
watch-dog might experience on smelling a wolf in his master's clothes.
From that time forth he avoided him as much as he possibly could.
When the requirements of the service imperatively demanded it,
and he could not do otherwise than meet the mayor, he addressed him
with profound respect.

This prosperity created at M. sur M. by Father Madeleine had,
besides the visible signs which we have mentioned, another symptom
which was none the less significant for not being visible.
This never deceives. When the population suffers, when work
is lacking, when there is no commerce, the tax-payer resists imposts
through penury, he exhausts and oversteps his respite, and the
state expends a great deal of money in the charges for compelling
and collection. When work is abundant, when the country is rich
and happy, the taxes are paid easily and cost the state nothing.
It may be said, that there is one infallible thermometer of the
public misery and riches,--the cost of collecting the taxes.
In the course of seven years the expense of collecting the taxes
had diminished three-fourths in the arrondissement of M. sur M.,
and this led to this arrondissement being frequently cited from all
the rest by M. de Villele, then Minister of Finance.

Such was the condition of the country when Fantine returned thither.
No one remembered her. Fortunately, the door of M. Madeleine's
factory was like the face of a friend. She presented herself there,
and was admitted to the women's workroom. The trade was entirely
new to Fantine; she could not be very skilful at it, and she
therefore earned but little by her day's work; but it was sufficient;
the problem was solved; she was earning her living.

CHAPTER VIII

MADAME VICTURNIEN EXPENDS THIRTY FRANCS ON MORALITY

When Fantine saw that she was making her living, she felt joyful
for a moment. To live honestly by her own labor, what mercy
from heaven! The taste for work had really returned to her.
She bought a looking-glass, took pleasure in surveying in it her youth,
her beautiful hair, her fine teeth; she forgot many things; she thought
only of Cosette and of the possible future, and was almost happy.
She hired a little room and furnished on credit on the strength
of her future work--a lingering trace of her improvident ways.
As she was not able to say that she was married she took good care,
as we have seen, not to mention her little girl.

At first, as the reader has seen, she paid the Thenardiers promptly.
As she only knew how to sign her name, she was obliged to write
through a public letter-writer.

She wrote often, and this was noticed. It began to be said in
an undertone, in the women's workroom, that Fantine "wrote letters"
and that "she had ways about her."

There is no one for spying on people's actions like those who are
not concerned in them. Why does that gentleman never come except
at nightfall? Why does Mr. So-and-So never hang his key on its
nail on Tuesday? Why does he always take the narrow streets?
Why does Madame always descend from her hackney-coach before
reaching her house? Why does she send out to purchase six sheets
of note paper, when she has a "whole stationer's shop full of it?"
etc. There exist beings who, for the sake of obtaining the key
to these enigmas, which are, moreover, of no consequence whatever
to them, spend more money, waste more time, take more trouble,
than would be required for ten good actions, and that gratuitously,
for their own pleasure, without receiving any other payment
for their curiosity than curiosity. They will follow up such
and such a man or woman for whole days; they will do sentry duty
for hours at a time on the corners of the streets, under alley-way
doors at night, in cold and rain; they will bribe errand-porters,
they will make the drivers of hackney-coaches and lackeys tipsy,
buy a waiting-maid, suborn a porter. Why? For no reason.
A pure passion for seeing, knowing, and penetrating into things.
A pure itch for talking. And often these secrets once known,
these mysteries made public, these enigmas illuminated by the
light of day, bring on catastrophies, duels, failures, the ruin
of families, and broken lives, to the great joy of those who have
"found out everything," without any interest in the matter,
and by pure instinct. A sad thing.

Certain persons are malicious solely through a necessity for talking.
Their conversation, the chat of the drawing-room, gossip of
the anteroom, is like those chimneys which consume wood rapidly;
they need a great amount of combustibles; and their combustibles
are furnished by their neighbors.

So Fantine was watched.

In addition, many a one was jealous of her golden hair and of her
white teeth.

It was remarked that in the workroom she often turned aside,
in the midst of the rest, to wipe away a tear. These were the
moments when she was thinking of her child; perhaps, also, of the
man whom she had loved.

Breaking the gloomy bonds of the past is a mournful task.

It was observed that she wrote twice a month at least, and that she
paid the carriage on the letter. They managed to obtain the address:
Monsieur, Monsieur Thenardier, inn-keeper at Montfermeil.
The public writer, a good old man who could not fill his stomach
with red wine without emptying his pocket of secrets, was made to talk
in the wine-shop. In short, it was discovered that Fantine had a child.
"She must be a pretty sort of a woman." An old gossip was found,
who made the trip to Montfermeil, talked to the Thenardiers, and said
on her return: "For my five and thirty francs I have freed my mind.
I have seen the child."

The gossip who did this thing was a gorgon named Madame Victurnien,
the guardian and door-keeper of every one's virtue.
Madame Victurnien was fifty-six, and re-enforced the mask of ugliness
with the mask of age. A quavering voice, a whimsical mind.
This old dame had once been young--astonishing fact! In her youth,
in '93, she had married a monk who had fled from his cloister
in a red cap, and passed from the Bernardines to the Jacobins.
She was dry, rough, peevish, sharp, captious, almost venomous;
all this in memory of her monk, whose widow she was, and who
had ruled over her masterfully and bent her to his will.
She was a nettle in which the rustle of the cassock was visible.
At the Restoration she had turned bigot, and that with so much energy
that the priests had forgiven her her monk. She had a small property,
which she bequeathed with much ostentation to a religious community.
She was in high favor at the episcopal palace of Arras. So this
Madame Victurnien went to Montfermeil, and returned with the remark,
"I have seen the child."

All this took time. Fantine had been at the factory for more than
a year, when, one morning, the superintendent of the workroom handed
her fifty francs from the mayor, told her that she was no longer
employed in the shop, and requested her, in the mayor's name,
to leave the neighborhood.

This was the very month when the Thenardiers, after having demanded
twelve francs instead of six, had just exacted fifteen francs
instead of twelve.

Fantine was overwhelmed. She could not leave the neighborhood;
she was in debt for her rent and furniture. Fifty francs was not
sufficient to cancel this debt. She stammered a few supplicating words.
The superintendent ordered her to leave the shop on the instant.
Besides, Fantine was only a moderately good workwoman.
Overcome with shame, even more than with despair, she quitted the shop,
and returned to her room. So her fault was now known to every one.

She no longer felt strong enough to say a word. She was advised to see
the mayor; she did not dare. The mayor had given her fifty francs
because he was good, and had dismissed her because he was just.
She bowed before the decision.

CHAPTER IX

MADAME VICTURNIEN'S SUCCESS

So the monk's widow was good for something.

But M. Madeleine had heard nothing of all this. Life is full
of just such combinations of events. M. Madeleine was in the habit
of almost never entering the women's workroom.

At the head of this room he had placed an elderly spinster,
whom the priest had provided for him, and he had full confidence
in this superintendent,--a truly respectable person, firm, equitable,
upright, full of the charity which consists in giving, but not having
in the same degree that charity which consists in understanding and
in forgiving. M. Madeleine relied wholly on her. The best men are
often obliged to delegate their authority. It was with this full power,
and the conviction that she was doing right, that the superintendent
had instituted the suit, judged, condemned, and executed Fantine.

As regards the fifty francs, she had given them from a fund
which M. Madeleine had intrusted to her for charitable purposes,
and for giving assistance to the workwomen, and of which she
rendered no account.

Fantine tried to obtain a situation as a servant in the neighborhood;
she went from house to house. No one would have her. She could
not leave town. The second-hand dealer, to whom she was in debt
for her furniture--and what furniture!--said to her, "If you leave,
I will have you arrested as a thief." The householder, whom she
owed for her rent, said to her, "You are young and pretty;
you can pay." She divided the fifty francs between the landlord
and the furniture-dealer, returned to the latter three-quarters
of his goods, kept only necessaries, and found herself without work,
without a trade, with nothing but her bed, and still about fifty
francs in debt.

She began to make coarse shirts for soldiers of the garrison,
and earned twelve sous a day. Her daughter cost her ten. It was
at this point that she began to pay the Thenardiers irregularly.

However, the old woman who lighted her candle for her when she
returned at night, taught her the art of living in misery.
Back of living on little, there is the living on nothing.
These are the two chambers; the first is dark, the second is black.

Fantine learned how to live without fire entirely in the winter;
how to give up a bird which eats a half a farthing's worth of
millet every two days; how to make a coverlet of one's petticoat,
and a petticoat of one's coverlet; how to save one's candle,
by taking one's meals by the light of the opposite window.
No one knows all that certain feeble creatures, who have grown old
in privation and honesty, can get out of a sou. It ends by being
a talent. Fantine acquired this sublime talent, and regained a
little courage.

At this epoch she said to a neighbor, "Bah! I say to myself, by only
sleeping five hours, and working all the rest of the time at my sewing,
I shall always manage to nearly earn my bread. And, then, when one
is sad, one eats less. Well, sufferings, uneasiness, a little
bread on one hand, trouble on the other,--all this will support me."

It would have been a great happiness to have her little girl with her
in this distress. She thought of having her come. But what then!
Make her share her own destitution! And then, she was in debt
to the Thenardiers! How could she pay them? And the journey!
How pay for that?

The old woman who had given her lessons in what may be called
the life of indigence, was a sainted spinster named Marguerite,
who was pious with a true piety, poor and charitable towards the poor,
and even towards the rich, knowing how to write just sufficiently
to sign herself Marguerite, and believing in God, which is science.

There are many such virtuous people in this lower world; some day
they will be in the world above. This life has a morrow.

At first, Fantine had been so ashamed that she had not dared to go out.

When she was in the street, she divined that people turned round
behind her, and pointed at her; every one stared at her and no one
greeted her; the cold and bitter scorn of the passers-by penetrated
her very flesh and soul like a north wind.

It seems as though an unfortunate woman were utterly bare beneath
the sarcasm and the curiosity of all in small towns. In Paris,
at least, no one knows you, and this obscurity is a garment.
Oh! how she would have liked to betake herself to Paris! Impossible!

She was obliged to accustom herself to disrepute, as she had accustomed
herself to indigence. Gradually she decided on her course.
At the expiration of two or three months she shook off her shame,
and began to go about as though there were nothing the matter.
"It is all the same to me," she said.

She went and came, bearing her head well up, with a bitter smile,
and was conscious that she was becoming brazen-faced.

Madame Victurnien sometimes saw her passing, from her window,
noticed the distress of "that creature" who, "thanks to her,"
had been "put back in her proper place," and congratulated herself.
The happiness of the evil-minded is black.

Excess of toil wore out Fantine, and the little dry cough which
troubled her increased. She sometimes said to her neighbor,
Marguerite, "Just feel how hot my hands are!"

Nevertheless, when she combed her beautiful hair in the morning
with an old broken comb, and it flowed about her like floss silk,
she experienced a moment of happy coquetry.

CHAPTER X

RESULT OF THE SUCCESS

She had been dismissed towards the end of the winter; the summer passed,
but winter came again. Short days, less work. Winter: no warmth,
no light, no noonday, the evening joining on to the morning,
fogs, twilight; the window is gray; it is impossible to see
clearly at it. The sky is but a vent-hole. The whole day is
a cavern. The sun has the air of a beggar. A frightful season!
Winter changes the water of heaven and the heart of man into a stone.
Her creditors harrassed her.

Fantine earned too little. Her debts had increased. The Thenardiers,
who were not promptly paid, wrote to her constantly letters whose
contents drove her to despair, and whose carriage ruined her.
One day they wrote to her that her little Cosette was entirely
naked in that cold weather, that she needed a woollen skirt,
and that her mother must send at least ten francs for this.
She received the letter, and crushed it in her hands all day long.
That evening she went into a barber's shop at the corner of the street,
and pulled out her comb. Her admirable golden hair fell to
her knees.

"What splendid hair!" exclaimed the barber.

"How much will you give me for it?" said she.

"Ten francs."

"Cut it off."

She purchased a knitted petticoat and sent it to the Thenardiers.
This petticoat made the Thenardiers furious. It was the money that
they wanted. They gave the petticoat to Eponine. The poor Lark
continued to shiver.

Fantine thought: "My child is no longer cold. I have clothed
her with my hair." She put on little round caps which concealed
her shorn head, and in which she was still pretty.

Dark thoughts held possession of Fantine's heart.

When she saw that she could no longer dress her hair, she began
to hate every one about her. She had long shared the universal
veneration for Father Madeleine; yet, by dint of repeating to herself
that it was he who had discharged her, that he was the cause
of her unhappiness, she came to hate him also, and most of all.
When she passed the factory in working hours, when the workpeople
were at the door, she affected to laugh and sing.

An old workwoman who once saw her laughing and singing in this
fashion said, "There's a girl who will come to a bad end.

She took a lover, the first who offered, a man whom she did not love,
out of bravado and with rage in her heart. He was a miserable scamp,
a sort of mendicant musician, a lazy beggar, who beat her, and who
abandoned her as she had taken him, in disgust.

She adored her child.

The lower she descended, the darker everything grew about her,
the more radiant shone that little angel at the bottom of her heart.
She said, "When I get rich, I will have my Cosette with me;"
and she laughed. Her cough did not leave her, and she had sweats on
her back.

One day she received from the Thenardiers a letter couched in the
following terms: "Cosette is ill with a malady which is going
the rounds of the neighborhood. A miliary fever, they call it.
Expensive drugs are required. This is ruining us, and we can no
longer pay for them. If you do not send us forty francs before
the week is out, the little one will be dead."

She burst out laughing, and said to her old neighbor: "Ah! they
are good! Forty francs! the idea! That makes two napoleons!
Where do they think I am to get them? These peasants are stupid, truly."

Nevertheless she went to a dormer window in the staircase and read
the letter once more. Then she descended the stairs and emerged,
running and leaping and still laughing.

Some one met her and said to her, "What makes you so gay?"

She replied: "A fine piece of stupidity that some country people
have written to me. They demand forty francs of me. So much for you,
you peasants!"

As she crossed the square, she saw a great many people collected
around a carriage of eccentric shape, upon the top of which stood
a man dressed in red, who was holding forth. He was a quack
dentist on his rounds, who was offering to the public full sets
of teeth, opiates, powders and elixirs.

Fantine mingled in the group, and began to laugh with the rest
at the harangue, which contained slang for the populace and jargon
for respectable people. The tooth-puller espied the lovely,
laughing girl, and suddenly exclaimed: "You have beautiful teeth,
you girl there, who are laughing; if you want to sell me your palettes,
I will give you a gold napoleon apiece for them."

"What are my palettes?" asked Fantine.

"The palettes," replied the dental professor, "are the front teeth,
the two upper ones."

"How horrible!" exclaimed Fantine.

"Two napoleons!" grumbled a toothless old woman who was present.
"Here's a lucky girl!"

Fantine fled and stopped her ears that she might not hear the hoarse
voice of the man shouting to her: "Reflect, my beauty! two napoleons;
they may prove of service. If your heart bids you, come this
evening to the inn of the Tillac d'Argent; you will find me there."

Fantine returned home. She was furious, and related the occurrence
to her good neighbor Marguerite: "Can you understand such a thing?
Is he not an abominable man? How can they allow such people to go about
the country! Pull out my two front teeth! Why, I should be horrible!
My hair will grow again, but my teeth! Ah! what a monster of a man!
I should prefer to throw myself head first on the pavement from the
fifth story! He told me that he should be at the Tillac d'Argent
this evening."

"And what did he offer?" asked Marguerite.

"Two napoleons."

"That makes forty francs."

"Yes," said Fantine; "that makes forty francs."

She remained thoughtful, and began her work. At the expiration
of a quarter of an hour she left her sewing and went to read
the Thenardiers' letter once more on the staircase.

On her return, she said to Marguerite, who was at work beside her:--

"What is a miliary fever? Do you know?"

"Yes," answered the old spinster; "it is a disease."

"Does it require many drugs?"

"Oh! terrible drugs."

"How does one get it?"

"It is a malady that one gets without knowing how."

"Then it attacks children?"

"Children in particular."

"Do people die of it?"

"They may," said Marguerite.

Fantine left the room and went to read her letter once more on
the staircase.

That evening she went out, and was seen to turn her steps in the
direction of the Rue de Paris, where the inns are situated.

The next morning, when Marguerite entered Fantine's room
before daylight,--for they always worked together, and in this
manner used only one candle for the two,--she found Fantine
seated on her bed, pale and frozen. She had not lain down.
Her cap had fallen on her knees. Her candle had burned all night,
and was almost entirely consumed. Marguerite halted on the threshold,
petrified at this tremendous wastefulness, and exclaimed:--

"Lord! the candle is all burned out! Something has happened."

Then she looked at Fantine, who turned toward her her head bereft
of its hair.

Fantine had grown ten years older since the preceding night.

"Jesus!" said Marguerite, "what is the matter with you, Fantine?"

"Nothing," replied Fantine. "Quite the contrary. My child will
not die of that frightful malady, for lack of succor. I am content."

So saying, she pointed out to the spinster two napoleons which were
glittering on the table.

"Ah! Jesus God!" cried Marguerite. "Why, it is a fortune!
Where did you get those louis d'or?"

"I got them," replied Fantine.

At the same time she smiled. The candle illuminated her countenance.
It was a bloody smile. A reddish saliva soiled the corners of her lips,
and she had a black hole in her mouth.

The two teeth had been extracted.

She sent the forty francs to Montfermeil.

After all it was a ruse of the Thenardiers to obtain money.
Cosette was not ill.

Fantine threw her mirror out of the window. She had long since
quitted her cell on the second floor for an attic with only a latch
to fasten it, next the roof; one of those attics whose extremity forms
an angle with the floor, and knocks you on the head every instant.
The poor occupant can reach the end of his chamber as he can
the end of his destiny, only by bending over more and more.

She had no longer a bed; a rag which she called her coverlet,
a mattress on the floor, and a seatless chair still remained.
A little rosebush which she had, had dried up, forgotten, in one corner.
In the other corner was a butter-pot to hold water, which froze
in winter, and in which the various levels of the water remained
long marked by these circles of ice. She had lost her shame;
she lost her coquetry. A final sign. She went out, with dirty caps.
Whether from lack of time or from indifference, she no longer mended
her linen. As the heels wore out, she dragged her stockings down
into her shoes. This was evident from the perpendicular wrinkles.
She patched her bodice, which was old and worn out, with scraps
of calico which tore at the slightest movement. The people
to whom she was indebted made "scenes" and gave her no peace.
She found them in the street, she found them again on her staircase.
She passed many a night weeping and thinking. Her eyes were
very bright, and she felt a steady pain in her shoulder towards
the top of the left shoulder-blade. She coughed a great deal.
She deeply hated Father Madeleine, but made no complaint. She sewed
seventeen hours a day; but a contractor for the work of prisons,
who made the prisoners work at a discount, suddenly made prices fall,
which reduced the daily earnings of working-women to nine sous.
Seventeen hours of toil, and nine sous a day! Her creditors were more
pitiless than ever. The second-hand dealer, who had taken back nearly
all his furniture, said to her incessantly, "When will you pay me,
you hussy?" What did they want of her, good God! She felt that she
was being hunted, and something of the wild beast developed in her.
About the same time, Thenardier wrote to her that he had waited
with decidedly too much amiability and that he must have a hundred
francs at once; otherwise he would turn little Cosette out of doors,
convalescent as she was from her heavy illness, into the cold
and the streets, and that she might do what she liked with herself,
and die if she chose. "A hundred francs," thought Fantine.
"But in what trade can one earn a hundred sous a day?"

"Come!" said she, "let us sell what is left."

The unfortunate girl became a woman of the town.

CHAPTER XI

CHRISTUS NOS LIBERAVIT

What is this history of Fantine? It is society purchasing a slave.

From whom? From misery.

From hunger, cold, isolation, destitution. A dolorous bargain.
A soul for a morsel of bread. Misery offers; society accepts.

The sacred law of Jesus Christ governs our civilization, but it
does not, as yet, permeate it; it is said that slavery has disappeared
from European civilization. This is a mistake. It still exists;
but it weighs only upon the woman, and it is called prostitution.

It weighs upon the woman, that is to say, upon grace, weakness,
beauty, maternity. This is not one of the least of man's disgraces.

At the point in this melancholy drama which we have now reached,
nothing is left to Fantine of that which she had formerly been.

She has become marble in becoming mire. Whoever touches her feels cold.
She passes; she endures you; she ignores you; she is the severe
and dishonored figure. Life and the social order have said their
last word for her. All has happened to her that will happen to her.
She has felt everything, borne everything, experienced everything,
suffered everything, lost everything, mourned everything.
She is resigned, with that resignation which resembles indifference,
as death resembles sleep. She no longer avoids anything.
Let all the clouds fall upon her, and all the ocean sweep over her!
What matters it to her? She is a sponge that is soaked.

At least, she believes it to be so; but it is an error to imagine
that fate can be exhausted, and that one has reached the bottom
of anything whatever.

Alas! What are all these fates, driven on pell-mell? Whither
are they going? Why are they thus?

He who knows that sees the whole of the shadow.

He is alone. His name is God.

CHAPTER XII

M. BAMATABOIS'S INACTIVITY

There is in all small towns, and there was at M. sur M. in particular,
a class of young men who nibble away an income of fifteen hundred
francs with the same air with which their prototypes devour
two hundred thousand francs a year in Paris. These are beings
of the great neuter species: impotent men, parasites, cyphers,
who have a little land, a little folly, a little wit; who would
be rustics in a drawing-room, and who think themselves gentlemen
in the dram-shop; who say, "My fields, my peasants, my woods";
who hiss actresses at the theatre to prove that they are persons
of taste; quarrel with the officers of the garrison to prove that
they are men of war; hunt, smoke, yawn, drink, smell of tobacco,
play billiards, stare at travellers as they descend from the diligence,
live at the cafe, dine at the inn, have a dog which eats the bones
under the table, and a mistress who eats the dishes on the table;
who stick at a sou, exaggerate the fashions, admire tragedy,
despise women, wear out their old boots, copy London through Paris,
and Paris through the medium of Pont-A-Mousson, grow old as dullards,
never work, serve no use, and do no great harm.

M. Felix Tholomyes, had he remained in his own province and never
beheld Paris, would have been one of these men.

If they were richer, one would say, "They are dandies;" if they
were poorer, one would say, "They are idlers." They are simply
men without employment. Among these unemployed there are bores,
the bored, dreamers, and some knaves.

At that period a dandy was composed of a tall collar, a big cravat,
a watch with trinkets, three vests of different colors, worn one
on top of the other--the red and blue inside; of a short-waisted
olive coat, with a codfish tail, a double row of silver buttons
set close to each other and running up to the shoulder; and a pair
of trousers of a lighter shade of olive, ornamented on the two
seams with an indefinite, but always uneven, number of lines,
varying from one to eleven--a limit which was never exceeded.
Add to this, high shoes with little irons on the heels, a tall
hat with a narrow brim, hair worn in a tuft, an enormous cane,
and conversation set off by puns of Potier. Over all, spurs and
a mustache. At that epoch mustaches indicated the bourgeois,
and spurs the pedestrian.

The provincial dandy wore the longest of spurs and the fiercest
of mustaches.

It was the period of the conflict of the republics of South
America with the King of Spain, of Bolivar against Morillo.
Narrow-brimmed hats were royalist, and were called morillos;
liberals wore hats with wide brims, which were called bolivars.

Eight or ten months, then, after that which is related in the
preceding pages, towards the first of January, 1823, on a snowy evening,
one of these dandies, one of these unemployed, a "right thinker,"
for he wore a morillo, and was, moreover, warmly enveloped in one
of those large cloaks which completed the fashionable costume
in cold weather, was amusing himself by tormenting a creature
who was prowling about in a ball-dress, with neck uncovered and
flowers in her hair, in front of the officers' cafe. This dandy
was smoking, for he was decidedly fashionable.

Each time that the woman passed in front of him, he bestowed on her,
together with a puff from his cigar, some apostrophe which he
considered witty and mirthful, such as, "How ugly you are!--
Will you get out of my sight?--You have no teeth!" etc., etc.
This gentleman was known as M. Bamatabois. The woman, a melancholy,
decorated spectre which went and came through the snow,
made him no reply, did not even glance at him, and nevertheless
continued her promenade in silence, and with a sombre regularity,
which brought her every five minutes within reach of this sarcasm,
like the condemned soldier who returns under the rods. The small
effect which he produced no doubt piqued the lounger; and taking
advantage of a moment when her back was turned, he crept up behind
her with the gait of a wolf, and stifling his laugh, bent down,
picked up a handful of snow from the pavement, and thrust it abruptly
into her back, between her bare shoulders. The woman uttered a roar,
whirled round, gave a leap like a panther, and hurled herself upon
the man, burying her nails in his face, with the most frightful words
which could fall from the guard-room into the gutter. These insults,
poured forth in a voice roughened by brandy, did, indeed, proceed in
hideous wise from a mouth which lacked its two front teeth.
It was Fantine.

At the noise thus produced, the officers ran out in throngs from
the cafe, passers-by collected, and a large and merry circle,
hooting and applauding, was formed around this whirlwind composed
of two beings, whom there was some difficulty in recognizing
as a man and a woman: the man struggling, his hat on the ground;
the woman striking out with feet and fists, bareheaded, howling,
minus hair and teeth, livid with wrath, horrible.

Suddenly a man of lofty stature emerged vivaciously from the crowd,
seized the woman by her satin bodice, which was covered with mud,
and said to her, "Follow me!"

The woman raised her head; her furious voice suddenly died away.
Her eyes were glassy; she turned pale instead of livid, and she
trembled with a quiver of terror. She had recognized Javert.

The dandy took advantage of the incident to make his escape.

CHAPTER XIII

THE SOLUTION OF SOME QUESTIONS CONNECTED WITH THE MUNICIPAL POLICE

Javert thrust aside the spectators, broke the circle, and set out
with long strides towards the police station, which is situated at
the extremity of the square, dragging the wretched woman after him.
She yielded mechanically. Neither he nor she uttered a word.
The cloud of spectators followed, jesting, in a paroxysm of delight.
Supreme misery an occasion for obscenity.

On arriving at the police station, which was a low room, warmed by
a stove, with a glazed and grated door opening on the street, and guarded
by a detachment, Javert opened the door, entered with Fantine, and shut
the door behind him, to the great disappointment of the curious,
who raised themselves on tiptoe, and craned their necks in front
of the thick glass of the station-house, in their effort to see.
Curiosity is a sort of gluttony. To see is to devour.

On entering, Fantine fell down in a corner, motionless and mute,
crouching down like a terrified dog.

The sergeant of the guard brought a lighted candle to the table.
Javert seated himself, drew a sheet of stamped paper from his pocket,
and began to write.

This class of women is consigned by our laws entirely to the discretion
of the police. The latter do what they please, punish them,
as seems good to them, and confiscate at their will those two
sorry things which they entitle their industry and their liberty.
Javert was impassive; his grave face betrayed no emotion whatever.
Nevertheless, he was seriously and deeply preoccupied. It was
one of those moments when he was exercising without control,
but subject to all the scruples of a severe conscience, his redoubtable
discretionary power. At that moment he was conscious that his
police agent's stool was a tribunal. He was entering judgment.
He judged and condemned. He summoned all the ideas which could
possibly exist in his mind, around the great thing which he was doing.
The more he examined the deed of this woman, the more shocked he felt.
It was evident that he had just witnessed the commission of a crime.
He had just beheld, yonder, in the street, society, in the person
of a freeholder and an elector, insulted and attacked by a creature
who was outside all pales. A prostitute had made an attempt on
the life of a citizen. He had seen that, he, Javert. He wrote
in silence.

When he had finished he signed the paper, folded it, and said
to the sergeant of the guard, as he handed it to him, "Take three
men and conduct this creature to jail."

Then, turning to Fantine, "You are to have six months of it."
The unhappy woman shuddered.

"Six months! six months of prison!" she exclaimed. "Six months
in which to earn seven sous a day! But what will become of Cosette?
My daughter! my daughter! But I still owe the Thenardiers over a
hundred francs; do you know that, Monsieur Inspector?"

She dragged herself across the damp floor, among the muddy boots
of all those men, without rising, with clasped hands, and taking
great strides on her knees.

"Monsieur Javert," said she, "I beseech your mercy. I assure
you that I was not in the wrong. If you had seen the beginning,
you would have seen. I swear to you by the good God that I was
not to blame! That gentleman, the bourgeois, whom I do not know,
put snow in my back. Has any one the right to put snow down our backs
when we are walking along peaceably, and doing no harm to any one?
I am rather ill, as you see. And then, he had been saying impertinent
things to me for a long time: `You are ugly! you have no teeth!'
I know well that I have no longer those teeth. I did nothing;
I said to myself, `The gentleman is amusing himself.' I was
honest with him; I did not speak to him. It was at that moment
that he put the snow down my back. Monsieur Javert, good Monsieur
Inspector! is there not some person here who saw it and can tell
you that this is quite true? Perhaps I did wrong to get angry.
You know that one is not master of one's self at the first moment.
One gives way to vivacity; and then, when some one puts something
cold down your back just when you are not expecting it! I did wrong
to spoil that gentleman's hat. Why did he go away? I would ask
his pardon. Oh, my God! It makes no difference to me whether I ask
his pardon. Do me the favor to-day, for this once, Monsieur Javert.
Hold! you do not know that in prison one can earn only seven sous a day;
it is not the government's fault, but seven sous is one's earnings;
and just fancy, I must pay one hundred francs, or my little girl
will be sent to me. Oh, my God! I cannot have her with me.
What I do is so vile! Oh, my Cosette! Oh, my little angel of the Holy
Virgin! what will become of her, poor creature? I will tell you:
it is the Thenardiers, inn-keepers, peasants; and such people
are unreasonable. They want money. Don't put me in prison!
You see, there is a little girl who will be turned out into the street
to get along as best she may, in the very heart of the winter;
and you must have pity on such a being, my good Monsieur Javert.
If she were older, she might earn her living; but it cannot be done
at that age. I am not a bad woman at bottom. It is not cowardliness
and gluttony that have made me what I am. If I have drunk brandy,
it was out of misery. I do not love it; but it benumbs the senses.
When I was happy, it was only necessary to glance into my closets,
and it would have been evident that I was not a coquettish and
untidy woman. I had linen, a great deal of linen. Have pity on me,
Monsieur Javert!"

She spoke thus, rent in twain, shaken with sobs, blinded with tears,
her neck bare, wringing her hands, and coughing with a dry,
short cough, stammering softly with a voice of agony. Great sorrow
is a divine and terrible ray, which transfigures the unhappy.
At that moment Fantine had become beautiful once more. From time
to time she paused, and tenderly kissed the police agent's coat.
She would have softened a heart of granite; but a heart of wood cannot
be softened.

"Come!" said Javert, "I have heard you out. Have you entirely finished?
You will get six months. Now march! The Eternal Father in person
could do nothing more."

At these solemn words, "the Eternal Father in person could
do nothing more," she understood that her fate was sealed.
She sank down, murmuring, "Mercy!"

Javert turned his back.

The soldiers seized her by the arms.

A few moments earlier a man had entered, but no one had paid
any heed to him. He shut the door, leaned his back against it,
and listened to Fantine's despairing supplications.

At the instant when the soldiers laid their hands upon the
unfortunate woman, who would not rise, he emerged from the shadow,
and said:--

"One moment, if you please."

Javert raised his eyes and recognized M. Madeleine. He removed
his hat, and, saluting him with a sort of aggrieved awkwardness:--

"Excuse me, Mr. Mayor--"

The words "Mr. Mayor" produced a curious effect upon Fantine.
She rose to her feet with one bound, like a spectre springing from
the earth, thrust aside the soldiers with both arms, walked straight
up to M. Madeleine before any one could prevent her, and gazing
intently at him, with a bewildered air, she cried:--

"Ah! so it is you who are M. le Maire!"

Then she burst into a laugh, and spit in his face.

M. Madeleine wiped his face, and said:--

"Inspector Javert, set this woman at liberty."

Javert felt that he was on the verge of going mad. He experienced
at that moment, blow upon blow and almost simultaneously, the most
violent emotions which he had ever undergone in all his life.
To see a woman of the town spit in the mayor's face was a
thing so monstrous that, in his most daring flights of fancy,
he would have regarded it as a sacrilege to believe it possible.
On the other hand, at the very bottom of his thought, he made
a hideous comparison as to what this woman was, and as to what this
mayor might be; and then he, with horror, caught a glimpse of I
know not what simple explanation of this prodigious attack.
But when he beheld that mayor, that magistrate, calmly wipe his
face and say, "Set this woman at liberty," he underwent a sort
of intoxication of amazement; thought and word failed him equally;
the sum total of possible astonishment had been exceeded in his case.
He remained mute.

The words had produced no less strange an effect on Fantine.
She raised her bare arm, and clung to the damper of the stove,
like a person who is reeling. Nevertheless, she glanced about her,
and began to speak in a low voice, as though talking to herself:--

"At liberty! I am to be allowed to go! I am not to go to prison
for six months! Who said that? It is not possible that any one
could have said that. I did not hear aright. It cannot have been
that monster of a mayor! Was it you, my good Monsieur Javert,
who said that I was to be set free? Oh, see here! I will tell
you about it, and you will let me go. That monster of a mayor,
that old blackguard of a mayor, is the cause of all. Just imagine,
Monsieur Javert, he turned me out! all because of a pack of
rascally women, who gossip in the workroom. If that is not a horror,
what is? To dismiss a poor girl who is doing her work honestly!
Then I could no longer earn enough, and all this misery followed.
In the first place, there is one improvement which these gentlemen
of the police ought to make, and that is, to prevent prison
contractors from wronging poor people. I will explain it to you,
you see: you are earning twelve sous at shirt-making, the
price falls to nine sous; and it is not enough to live on.
Then one has to become whatever one can. As for me, I had my
little Cosette, and I was actually forced to become a bad woman.
Now you understand how it is that that blackguard of a mayor caused
all the mischief. After that I stamped on that gentleman's hat
in front of the officers' cafe; but he had spoiled my whole dress
with snow. We women have but one silk dress for evening wear.
You see that I did not do wrong deliberately--truly, Monsieur Javert;
and everywhere I behold women who are far more wicked than I,
and who are much happier. O Monsieur Javert! it was you who gave
orders that I am to be set free, was it not? Make inquiries,
speak to my landlord; I am paying my rent now; they will tell
you that I am perfectly honest. Ah! my God! I beg your pardon;
I have unintentionally touched the damper of the stove, and it has made
it smoke."

M. Madeleine listened to her with profound attention. While she
was speaking, he fumbled in his waistcoat, drew out his purse
and opened it. It was empty. He put it back in his pocket.
He said to Fantine, "How much did you say that you owed?"

Fantine, who was looking at Javert only, turned towards him:--

"Was I speaking to you?"

Then, addressing the soldiers:--

"Say, you fellows, did you see how I spit in his face?
Ah! you old wretch of a mayor, you came here to frighten me,
but I'm not afraid of you. I am afraid of Monsieur Javert.
I am afraid of my good Monsieur Javert!"

So saying, she turned to the inspector again:--

"And yet, you see, Mr. Inspector, it is necessary to be just.
I understand that you are just, Mr. Inspector; in fact, it is
perfectly simple: a man amuses himself by putting snow down a
woman's back, and that makes the officers laugh; one must divert
themselves in some way; and we--well, we are here for them to amuse
themselves with, of course! And then, you, you come; you are
certainly obliged to preserve order, you lead off the woman who is
in the wrong; but on reflection, since you are a good man, you say
that I am to be set at liberty; it is for the sake of the little one,
for six months in prison would prevent my supporting my child.
`Only, don't do it again, you hussy!' Oh! I won't do it again,
Monsieur Javert! They may do whatever they please to me now;
I will not stir. But to-day, you see, I cried because it hurt me.
I was not expecting that snow from the gentleman at all; and then
as I told you, I am not well; I have a cough; I seem to have a
burning ball in my stomach, and the doctor tells me, `Take care
of yourself.' Here, feel, give me your hand; don't be afraid--
it is here."

She no longer wept, her voice was caressing; she placed Javert's
coarse hand on her delicate, white throat and looked smilingly
at him.

All at once she rapidly adjusted her disordered garments, dropped the
folds of her skirt, which had been pushed up as she dragged herself along,
almost to the height of her knee, and stepped towards the door,
saying to the soldiers in a low voice, and with a friendly nod:--

"Children, Monsieur l'Inspecteur has said that I am to be released,
and I am going."

She laid her hand on the latch of the door. One step more and she
would be in the street.

Javert up to that moment had remained erect, motionless, with his
eyes fixed on the ground, cast athwart this scene like some
displaced statue, which is waiting to be put away somewhere.

The sound of the latch roused him. He raised his head with an
expression of sovereign authority, an expression all the more
alarming in proportion as the authority rests on a low level,
ferocious in the wild beast, atrocious in the man of no estate.

"Sergeant!" he cried, "don't you see that that jade is walking off!
Who bade you let her go?"

"I," said Madeleine.

Fantine trembled at the sound of Javert's voice, and let go of the
latch as a thief relinquishes the article which he has stolen.
At the sound of Madeleine's voice she turned around, and from that moment
forth she uttered no word, nor dared so much as to breathe freely,
but her glance strayed from Madeleine to Javert, and from Javert
to Madeleine in turn, according to which was speaking.

It was evident that Javert must have been exasperated beyond
measure before he would permit himself to apostrophize the sergeant
as he had done, after the mayor's suggestion that Fantine should
be set at liberty. Had he reached the point of forgetting the
mayor's presence? Had he finally declared to himself that it was
impossible that any "authority" should have given such an order,
and that the mayor must certainly have said one thing by mistake
for another, without intending it? Or, in view of the enormities
of which he had been a witness for the past two hours, did he say
to himself, that it was necessary to recur to supreme resolutions,
that it was indispensable that the small should be made great,
that the police spy should transform himself into a magistrate,
that the policeman should become a dispenser of justice, and that,
in this prodigious extremity, order, law, morality, government,
society in its entirety, was personified in him, Javert?

However that may be, when M. Madeleine uttered that word, _I_, as we
have just heard, Police Inspector Javert was seen to turn toward
the mayor, pale, cold, with blue lips, and a look of despair,
his whole body agitated by an imperceptible quiver and an unprecedented
occurrence, and say to him, with downcast eyes but a firm voice:--

"Mr. Mayor, that cannot be."

"Why not?" said M. Madeleine.

"This miserable woman has insulted a citizen."

"Inspector Javert," replied the mayor, in a calm and conciliating
tone, "listen. You are an honest man, and I feel no hesitation
in explaining matters to you. Here is the true state of the case:
I was passing through the square just as you were leading this
woman away; there were still groups of people standing about,
and I made inquiries and learned everything; it was the townsman
who was in the wrong and who should have been arrested by properly
conducted police."

Javert retorted:--

"This wretch has just insulted Monsieur le Maire."

"That concerns me," said M. Madeleine. "My own insult belongs to me,
I think. I can do what I please about it."

"I beg Monsieur le Maire's pardon. The insult is not to him
but to the law."

"Inspector Javert," replied M. Madeleine, "the highest law
is conscience. I have heard this woman; I know what I am doing."

"And I, Mr. Mayor, do not know what I see."

"Then content yourself with obeying."

"I am obeying my duty. My duty demands that this woman shall serve
six months in prison."

M. Madeleine replied gently:--

"Heed this well; she will not serve a single day."

At this decisive word, Javert ventured to fix a searching look
on the mayor and to say, but in a tone of voice that was still
profoundly respectful:--

"I am sorry to oppose Monsieur le Maire; it is for the first time
in my life, but he will permit me to remark that I am within the
bounds of my authority. I confine myself, since Monsieur le Maire
desires it, to the question of the gentleman. I was present.
This woman flung herself on Monsieur Bamatabnois, who is an
elector and the proprietor of that handsome house with a balcony,
which forms the corner of the esplanade, three stories high and
entirely of cut stone. Such things as there are in the world!
In any case, Monsieur le Maire, this is a question of police
regulations in the streets, and concerns me, and I shall detain
this woman Fantine."

Then M. Madeleine folded his arms, and said in a severe voice
which no one in the town had heard hitherto:--

"The matter to which you refer is one connected with the
municipal police. According to the terms of articles nine,
eleven, fifteen, and sixty-six of the code of criminal examination,
I am the judge. I order that this woman shall be set at liberty."

Javert ventured to make a final effort.

"But, Mr. Mayor--"

"I refer you to article eighty-one of the law of the 13th
of December, 1799, in regard to arbitrary detention."

"Monsieur le Maire, permit me--"

"Not another word."

"But--"

"Leave the room," said M. Madeleine.

Javert received the blow erect, full in the face, in his breast,
like a Russian soldier. He bowed to the very earth before the mayor
and left the room.

Fantine stood aside from the door and stared at him in amazement
as he passed.

Nevertheless, she also was the prey to a strange confusion. She had
just seen herself a subject of dispute between two opposing powers.
She had seen two men who held in their hands her liberty, her life,
her soul, her child, in combat before her very eyes; one of these men
was drawing her towards darkness, the other was leading her back
towards the light. In this conflict, viewed through the exaggerations
of terror, these two men had appeared to her like two giants;
the one spoke like her demon, the other like her good angel.
The angel had conquered the demon, and, strange to say, that which
made her shudder from head to foot was the fact that this angel,
this liberator, was the very man whom she abhorred, that mayor whom she
had so long regarded as the author of all her woes, that Madeleine!
And at the very moment when she had insulted him in so hideous
a fashion, he had saved her! Had she, then, been mistaken?
Must she change her whole soul? She did not know; she trembled.
She listened in bewilderment, she looked on in affright, and at every
word uttered by M. Madeleine she felt the frightful shades of hatred
crumble and melt within her, and something warm and ineffable,
indescribable, which was both joy, confidence and love, dawn in
her heart.

When Javert had taken his departure, M. Madeleine turned to her
and said to her in a deliberate voice, like a serious man who does
not wish to weep and who finds some difficulty in speaking:--

"I have heard you. I knew nothing about what you have mentioned.
I believe that it is true, and I feel that it is true. I was even
ignorant of the fact that you had left my shop. Why did you not apply
to me? But here; I will pay your debts, I will send for your child,
or you shall go to her. You shall live here, in Paris, or where
you please. I undertake the care of your child and yourself. You shall
not work any longer if you do not like. I will give all the money
you require. You shall be honest and happy once more. And listen!
I declare to you that if all is as you say,--and I do not doubt it,--
you have never ceased to be virtuous and holy in the sight of God.
Oh! poor woman."

This was more than Fantine could bear. To have Cosette! To leave this
life of infamy. To live free, rich, happy, respectable with Cosette;
to see all these realities of paradise blossom of a sudden in the
midst of her misery. She stared stupidly at this man who was talking
to her, and could only give vent to two or three sobs, "Oh! Oh! Oh!"

Her limbs gave way beneath her, she knelt in front of M. Madeleine,
and before he could prevent her he felt her grasp his hand and press
her lips to it.

Then she fainted.

BOOK SIXTH.--JAVERT

CHAPTER I

THE BEGINNING OF REPOSE

M. Madeleine had Fantine removed to that infirmary which he had
established in his own house. He confided her to the sisters,
who put her to bed. A burning fever had come on. She passed a part
of the night in delirium and raving. At length, however, she fell asleep.

On the morrow, towards midday, Fantine awoke. She heard some one
breathing close to her bed; she drew aside the curtain and saw
M. Madeleine standing there and looking at something over her head.
His gaze was full of pity, anguish, and supplication. She followed
its direction, and saw that it was fixed on a crucifix which was
nailed to the wall.

Thenceforth, M. Madeleine was transfigured in Fantine's eyes. He seemed
to her to be clothed in light. He was absorbed in a sort of prayer.
She gazed at him for a long time without daring to interrupt him.
At last she said timidly:--

"What are you doing?"

M. Madeleine had been there for an hour. He had been waiting
for Fantine to awake. He took her hand, felt of her pulse,
and replied:--

"How do you feel?"

"Well, I have slept," she replied; "I think that I am better,
It is nothing."

He answered, responding to the first question which she had put
to him as though he had just heard it:--

"I was praying to the martyr there on high."

And he added in his own mind, "For the martyr here below."

M. Madeleine had passed the night and the
morning in making inquiries. He knew all now.
He knew Fantine's history in all its heart-rending details. He went on:--

"You have suffered much, poor mother. Oh! do not complain; you now
have the dowry of the elect. It is thus that men are transformed
into angels. It is not their fault they do not know how to go to
work otherwise. You see this hell from which you have just emerged
is the first form of heaven. It was necessary to begin there."

He sighed deeply. But she smiled on him with that sublime smile
in which two teeth were lacking.

That same night, Javert wrote a letter. The next morning be posted
it himself at the office of M. sur M. It was addressed to Paris,
and the superscription ran: To Monsieur Chabouillet, Secretary of
Monsieur le Prefet of Police. As the affair in the station-house
had been bruited about, the post-mistress and some other persons
who saw the letter before it was sent off, and who recognized
Javert's handwriting on the cover, thought that he was sending
in his resignation.

M.Madeleine made haste to write to the Thenardiers. Fantine owed them
one hundred and twenty francs. He sent them three hundred francs,
telling them to pay themselves from that sum, and to fetch the child
instantly to M. sur M., where her sick mother required her presence.

This dazzled Thenardier. "The devil!" said the man to his wife;
"don't let's allow the child to go. This lark is going to turn
into a milch cow. I see through it. Some ninny has taken a fancy
to the mother."

He replied with a very well drawn-up bill for five hundred and some
odd francs. In this memorandum two indisputable items figured up
over three hundred francs,--one for the doctor, the other for the
apothecary who had attended and physicked Eponine and Azelma through two
long illnesses. Cosette, as we have already said, had not been ill.
It was only a question of a trifling substitution of names.
At the foot of the memorandum Thenardier wrote, Received on account,
three hundred francs.

M. Madeleine immediately sent three hundred francs more, and wrote,
"Make haste to bring Cosette."

"Christi!" said Thenardier, "let's not give up the child."

In the meantime, Fantine did not recover. She still remained
in the infirmary.

The sisters had at first only received and nursed "that woman"
with repugnance. Those who have seen the bas-reliefs of Rheims
will recall the inflation of the lower lip of the wise virgins
as they survey the foolish virgins. The ancient scorn of the
vestals for the ambubajae is one of the most profound instincts
of feminine dignity; the sisters felt it with the double force
contributed by religion. But in a few days Fantine disarmed them.
She said all kinds of humble and gentle things, and the mother
in her provoked tenderness. One day the sisters heard her say
amid her fever: "I have been a sinner; but when I have my
child beside me, it will be a sign that God has pardoned me.
While I was leading a bad life, I should not have liked to have my
Cosette with me; I could not have borne her sad, astonished eyes.
It was for her sake that I did evil, and that is why God pardons me.
I shall feel the benediction of the good God when Cosette is here.
I shall gaze at her; it will do me good to see that innocent creature.
She knows nothing at all. She is an angel, you see, my sisters.
At that age the wings have not fallen off."

M. Madeleine went to see her twice a day, and each time she asked him:--

"Shall I see my Cosette soon?"

He answered:--

"To-morrow, perhaps. She may arrive at any moment. I am expecting her."

And the mother's pale face grew radiant.

"Oh!" she said, "how happy I am going to be!"

We have just said that she did not recover her health. On the contrary,
her condition seemed to become more grave from week to week.
That handful of snow applied to her bare skin between her
shoulder-blades had brought about a sudden suppression of perspiration,
as a consequence of which the malady which had been smouldering
within her for many years was violently developed at last.
At that time people were beginning to follow the fine Laennec's
fine suggestions in the study and treatment of chest maladies.
The doctor sounded Fantine's chest and shook his head.

M. Madeleine said to the doctor:--

"Well?"

"Has she not a child which she desires to see?" said the doctor.

"Yes."

"Well! Make haste and get it here!"

M. Madeleine shuddered.

Fantine inquired:--

"What did the doctor say?"

M. Madeleine forced himself to smile.

"He said that your child was to be brought speedily. That that
would restore your health."

"Oh!" she rejoined, "he is right! But what do those Thenardiers
mean by keeping my Cosette from me! Oh! she is coming. At last I
behold happiness close beside me!"

In the meantime Thenardier did not "let go of the child," and gave
a hundred insufficient reasons for it. Cosette was not quite well
enough to take a journey in the winter. And then, there still
remained some petty but pressing debts in the neighborhood,
and they were collecting the bills for them, etc., etc.

"I shall send some one to fetch Cosette!" said Father Madeleine.
"If necessary, I will go myself."

He wrote the following letter to Fantine's dictation, and made
her sign it:--

"MONSIEUR THENARDIER:--
          You will deliver Cosette to this person.
          You will be paid for all the little things.
          I have the honor to salute you with respect.
                                                  "FANTINE."

In the meantime a serious incident occurred. Carve as we will
the mysterious block of which our life is made, the black vein
of destiny constantly reappears in it.

CHAPTER II

HOW JEAN MAY BECOME CHAMP

One morning M. Madeleine was in his study, occupied in arranging
in advance some pressing matters connected with the mayor's office,
in case he should decide to take the trip to Montfermeil, when he
was informed that Police Inspector Javert was desirous of speaking
with him. Madeleine could not refrain from a disagreeable impression
on hearing this name. Javert had avoided him more than ever since
the affair of the police-station, and M. Madeleine had not seen him.

"Admit him," he said.

Javert entered.

M. Madeleine had retained his seat near the fire, pen in hand,
his eyes fixed on the docket which he was turning over and annotating,
and which contained the trials of the commission on highways for
the infraction of police regulations. He did not disturb himself
on Javert's account. He could not help thinking of poor Fantine,
and it suited him to be glacial in his manner.

Javert bestowed a respectful salute on the mayor, whose back
was turned to him. The mayor did not look at him, but went
on annotating this docket.

Javert advanced two or three paces into the study, and halted,
without breaking the silence.

If any physiognomist who had been familiar with Javert,
and who had made a lengthy study of this savage in the service
of civilization, this singular composite of the Roman, the Spartan,
the monk, and the corporal, this spy who was incapable of a lie,
this unspotted police agent--if any physiognomist had known his
secret and long-cherished aversion for M. Madeleine, his conflict
with the mayor on the subject of Fantine, and had examined Javert at
that moment, he would have said to himself, "What has taken place?"
It was evident to any one acquainted with that clear, upright, sincere,
honest, austere, and ferocious conscience, that Javert had but just
gone through some great interior struggle. Javert had nothing
in his soul which he had not also in his countenance. Like violent
people in general, he was subject to abrupt changes of opinion.
His physiognomy had never been more peculiar and startling.
On entering he bowed to M. Madeleine with a look in which there was
neither rancor, anger, nor distrust; he halted a few paces in the
rear of the mayor's arm-chair, and there he stood, perfectly erect,
in an attitude almost of discipline, with the cold, ingenuous roughness
of a man who has never been gentle and who has always been patient;
he waited without uttering a word, without making a movement,
in genuine humility and tranquil resignation, calm, serious, hat in
hand, with eyes cast down, and an expression which was half-way between
that of a soldier in the presence of his officer and a criminal
in the presence of his judge, until it should please the mayor
to turn round. All the sentiments as well as all the memories
which one might have attributed to him had disappeared. That face,
as impenetrable and simple as granite, no longer bore any trace
of anything but a melancholy depression. His whole person breathed
lowliness and firmness and an indescribable courageous despondency.

At last the mayor laid down his pen and turned half round.

"Well! What is it? What is the matter, Javert?"

Javert remained silent for an instant as though collecting
his ideas, then raised his voice with a sort of sad solemnity,
which did not, however, preclude simplicity.

"This is the matter, Mr. Mayor; a culpable act has been committed."

"What act?"

"An inferior agent of the authorities has failed in respect,
and in the gravest manner, towards a magistrate. I have come
to bring the fact to your knowledge, as it is my duty to do."

"Who is the agent?" asked M. Madeleine.

"I," said Javert.

"You?"

"I."

"And who is the magistrate who has reason to complain of the agent?"

"You, Mr. Mayor."

M. Madeleine sat erect in his arm-chair. Javert went on, with a
severe air and his eyes still cast down.

"Mr. Mayor, I have come to request you to instigate the authorities
to dismiss me."

M. Madeleine opened his mouth in amazement. Javert interrupted him:--

"You will say that I might have handed in my resignation, but that
does not suffice. Handing in one's resignation is honorable.
I have failed in my duty; I ought to be punished; I must be turned out."

And after a pause he added:--

"Mr. Mayor, you were severe with me the other day, and unjustly.
Be so to-day, with justice."

"Come, now! Why?" exclaimed M. Madeleine. "What nonsense is this?
What is the meaning of this? What culpable act have you been guilty
of towards me? What have you done to me? What are your wrongs
with regard to me? You accuse yourself; you wish to be superseded--"

"Turned out," said Javert.

"Turned out; so it be, then. That is well. I do not understand."

"You shall understand, Mr. Mayor."

Javert sighed from the very bottom of his chest, and resumed,
still coldly and sadly:--

"Mr. Mayor, six weeks ago, in consequence of the scene over that woman,
I was furious, and I informed against you."

"Informed against me!"

"At the Prefecture of Police in Paris."

M. Madeleine, who was not in the habit of laughing much oftener
than Javert himself, burst out laughing now:--

"As a mayor who had encroached on the province of the police?"

"As an ex-convict."

The mayor turned livid.

Javert, who had not raised his eyes, went on:--

"I thought it was so. I had had an idea for a long time;
a resemblance; inquiries which you had caused to be made at Faverolles;
the strength of your loins; the adventure with old Fauchelevant;
your skill in marksmanship; your leg, which you drag a little;--
I hardly know what all,--absurdities! But, at all events, I took you
for a certain Jean Valjean."

"A certain--What did you say the name was?"

"Jean Valjean. He was a convict whom I was in the habit of seeing
twenty years ago, when I was adjutant-guard of convicts at Toulon.
On leaving the galleys, this Jean Valjean, as it appears, robbed a bishop;
then he committed another theft, accompanied with violence, on a public
highway on the person of a little Savoyard. He disappeared eight
years ago, no one knows how, and he has been sought, I fancied.
In short, I did this thing! Wrath impelled me; I denounced you
at the Prefecture!"

M. Madeleine, who had taken up the docket again several moments
before this, resumed with an air of perfect indifference:--

"And what reply did you receive?"

"That I was mad."

"Well?"

"Well, they were right."

"It is lucky that you recognize the fact."

"I am forced to do so, since the real Jean Valjean has been found."

The sheet of paper which M. Madeleine was holding dropped from
his hand; he raised his head, gazed fixedly at Javert, and said
with his indescribable accent:--

"Ah!"

Javert continued:--

"This is the way it is, Mr. Mayor. It seems that there was in
the neighborhood near Ailly-le-Haut-Clocher an old fellow who was
called Father Champmathieu. He was a very wretched creature.
No one paid any attention to him. No one knows what such people
subsist on. Lately, last autumn, Father Champmathieu was arrested
for the theft of some cider apples from--Well, no matter, a theft
had been committed, a wall scaled, branches of trees broken.
My Champmathieu was arrested. He still had the branch of apple-tree
in his hand. The scamp is locked up. Up to this point it was merely
an affair of a misdemeanor. But here is where Providence intervened.

"The jail being in a bad condition, the examining magistrate finds it
convenient to transfer Champmathieu to Arras, where the departmental
prison is situated. In this prison at Arras there is an ex-convict
named Brevet, who is detained for I know not what, and who has
been appointed turnkey of the house, because of good behavior.
Mr. Mayor, no sooner had Champmathieu arrived than Brevet exclaims:
`Eh! Why, I know that man! He is a fagot![4] Take a good look at me,
my good man! You are Jean Valjean!' `Jean Valjean! who's Jean Valjean?'
Champmathieu feigns astonishment. `Don't play the innocent dodge,'
says Brevet. `You are Jean Valjean! You have been in the galleys
of Toulon; it was twenty years ago; we were there together.'
Champmathieu denies it. Parbleu! You understand. The case
is investigated. The thing was well ventilated for me. This is
what they discovered: This Champmathieu had been, thirty years ago,
a pruner of trees in various localities, notably at Faverolles.
There all trace of him was lost. A long time afterwards he was seen
again in Auvergne; then in Paris, where he is said to have been
a wheelwright, and to have had a daughter, who was a laundress;
but that has not been proved. Now, before going to the galleys for theft,
what was Jean Valjean? A pruner of trees. Where? At Faverolles.
Another fact. This Valjean's Christian name was Jean, and his
mother's surname was Mathieu. What more natural to suppose than that,
on emerging from the galleys, he should have taken his mother's
name for the purpose of concealing himself, and have called himself
Jean Mathieu? He goes to Auvergne. The local pronunciation turns Jean
into Chan--he is called Chan Mathieu. Our man offers no opposition,
and behold him transformed into Champmathieu. You follow me,
do you not? Inquiries were made at Faverolles. The family of Jean
Valjean is no longer there. It is not known where they have gone.
You know that among those classes a family often disappears.
Search was made, and nothing was found. When such people are not mud,
they are dust. And then, as the beginning of the story dates thirty
years back, there is no longer any one at Faverolles who knew
Jean Valjean. Inquiries were made at Toulon. Besides Brevet,
there are only two convicts in existence who have seen Jean Valjean;
they are Cochepaille and Chenildieu, and are sentenced for life.
They are taken from the galleys and confronted with the
pretended Champmathieu. They do not hesitate; he is Jean Valjean
for them as well as for Brevet. The same age,--he is fifty-four,--
the same height, the same air, the same man; in short, it is he.
It was precisely at this moment that I forwarded my denunciation
to the Prefecture in Paris. I was told that I had lost my reason,
and that Jean Valjean is at Arras, in the power of the authorities.
You can imagine whether this surprised me, when I thought that I
had that same Jean Valjean here. I write to the examining judge;
he sends for me; Champmathieu is conducted to me--"

[4] An ex-convict.

"Well?" interposed M. Madeleine.

Javert replied, his face incorruptible, and as melancholy as ever:--

"Mr. Mayor, the truth is the truth. I am sorry; but that man
is Jean Valjean. I recognized him also."

M. Madeleine resumed in, a very low voice:--

"You are sure?"

Javert began to laugh, with that mournful laugh which comes from
profound conviction.

"O! Sure!"

He stood there thoughtfully for a moment, mechanically taking
pinches of powdered wood for blotting ink from the wooden bowl
which stood on the table, and he added:--

"And even now that I have seen the real Jean Valjean, I do not see
how I could have thought otherwise. I beg your pardon, Mr. Mayor."

Javert, as he addressed these grave and supplicating words to the man,
who six weeks before had humiliated him in the presence of the whole
station-house, and bade him "leave the room,"--Javert, that haughty man,
was unconsciously full of simplicity and dignity,--M. Madeleine
made no other reply to his prayer than the abrupt question:--

"And what does this man say?"

"Ah! Indeed, Mr. Mayor, it's a bad business. If he is Jean Valjean,
he has his previous conviction against him. To climb a wall, to break
a branch, to purloin apples, is a mischievous trick in a child;
for a man it is a misdemeanor; for a convict it is a crime.
Robbing and housebreaking--it is all there. It is no longer a question
of correctional police; it is a matter for the Court of Assizes.
It is no longer a matter of a few days in prison; it is the galleys
for life. And then, there is the affair with the little Savoyard,
who will return, I hope. The deuce! there is plenty to dispute
in the matter, is there not? Yes, for any one but Jean Valjean.
But Jean Valjean is a sly dog. That is the way I recognized him.
Any other man would have felt that things were getting hot for him;
he would struggle, he would cry out--the kettle sings before the fire;
he would not be Jean Valjean, et cetera. But he has not the appearance
of understanding; he says, `I am Champmathieu, and I won't depart
from that!' He has an astonished air, he pretends to be stupid;
it is far better. Oh! the rogue is clever! But it makes no difference.
The proofs are there. He has been recognized by four persons;
the old scamp will be condemned. The case has been taken to the
Assizes at Arras. I shall go there to give my testimony. I have
been summoned."

M. Madeleine had turned to his desk again, and taken up his docket,
and was turning over the leaves tranquilly, reading and writing
by turns, like a busy man. He turned to Javert:--

"That will do, Javert. In truth, all these details interest me
but little. We are wasting our time, and we have pressing business
on hand. Javert, you will betake yourself at once to the house
of the woman Buseaupied, who sells herbs at the corner of the Rue
Saint-Saulve. You will tell her that she must enter her complaint
against carter Pierre Chesnelong. The man is a brute, who came near
crushing this woman and her child. He must be punished. You will
then go to M. Charcellay, Rue Montre-de-Champigny. He complained that
there is a gutter on the adjoining house which discharges rain-water
on his premises, and is undermining the foundations of his house.
After that, you will verify the infractions of police regulations
which have been reported to me in the Rue Guibourg, at Widow Doris's,
and Rue du Garraud-Blanc, at Madame Renee le Bosse's, and you will
prepare documents. But I am giving you a great deal of work.
Are you not to be absent? Did you not tell me that you were going
to Arras on that matter in a week or ten days?"

"Sooner than that, Mr. Mayor."

"On what day, then?"

"Why, I thought that I had said to Monsieur le Maire that the case
was to be tried to-morrow, and that I am to set out by diligence to-night."

M. Madeleine made an imperceptible movement.

"And how long will the case last?"

"One day, at the most. The judgment will be pronounced to-morrow evening
at latest. But I shall not wait for the sentence, which is certain;
I shall return here as soon as my deposition has been taken."

"That is well," said M. Madeleine.

And he dismissed Javert with a wave of the hand.

Javert did not withdraw.

"Excuse me, Mr. Mayor," said he.

"What is it now?" demanded M. Madeleine.

"Mr. Mayor, there is still something of which I must remind you."

"What is it?"

"That I must be dismissed."

M. Madeleine rose.

"Javert, you are a man of honor, and I esteem you. You exaggerate
your fault. Moreover, this is an offence which concerns me.
Javert, you deserve promotion instead of degradation. I wish
you to retain your post."

Javert gazed at M. Madeleine with his candid eyes, in whose depths
his not very enlightened but pure and rigid conscience seemed visible,
and said in a tranquil voice:--

"Mr. Mayor, I cannot grant you that."

"I repeat," replied M. Madeleine, "that the matter concerns me."

But Javert, heeding his own thought only, continued:--

"So far as exaggeration is concerned, I am not exaggerating. This is
the way I reason: I have suspected you unjustly. That is nothing.
It is our right to cherish suspicion, although suspicion directed
above ourselves is an abuse. But without proofs, in a fit of rage,
with the object of wreaking my vengeance, I have denounced you
as a convict, you, a respectable man, a mayor, a magistrate!
That is serious, very serious. I have insulted authority in your person,
I, an agent of the authorities! If one of my subordinates had done
what I have done, I should have declared him unworthy of the service,
and have expelled him. Well? Stop, Mr. Mayor; one word more.
I have often been severe in the course of my life towards others.
That is just. I have done well. Now, if I were not severe towards
myself, all the justice that I have done would become injustice.
Ought I to spare myself more than others? No! What! I should be good
for nothing but to chastise others, and not myself! Why, I should
be a blackguard! Those who say, `That blackguard of a Javert!'
would be in the right. Mr. Mayor, I do not desire that you should
treat me kindly; your kindness roused sufficient bad blood in me
when it was directed to others. I want none of it for myself.
The kindness which consists in upholding a woman of the town against
a citizen, the police agent against the mayor, the man who is down
against the man who is up in the world, is what I call false kindness.
That is the sort of kindness which disorganizes society. Good God!
it is very easy to be kind; the difficulty lies in being just.
Come! if you had been what I thought you, I should not have been kind
to you, not I! You would have seen! Mr. Mayor, I must treat myself
as I would treat any other man. When I have subdued malefactors,
when I have proceeded with vigor against rascals, I have often said
to myself, `If you flinch, if I ever catch you in fault, you may rest
at your ease!' I have flinched, I have caught myself in a fault.
So much the worse! Come, discharged, cashiered, expelled! That is well.
I have arms. I will till the soil; it makes no difference to me.
Mr. Mayor, the good of the service demands an example. I simply
require the discharge of Inspector Javert."

All this was uttered in a proud, humble, despairing, yet convinced tone,
which lent indescribable grandeur to this singular, honest man.

"We shall see," said M. Madeleine.

And he offered him his hand.

Javert recoiled, and said in a wild voice:--

"Excuse me, Mr. Mayor, but this must not be. A mayor does not offer
his hand to a police spy."

He added between his teeth:--

"A police spy, yes; from the moment when I have misused the police.
I am no more than a police spy."

Then he bowed profoundly, and directed his steps towards the door.

There he wheeled round, and with eyes still downcast:--

"Mr. Mayor," he said, "I shall continue to serve until I am superseded."

He withdrew. M. Madeleine remained thoughtfully listening to the firm,
sure step, which died away on the pavement of the corridor.

BOOK SEVENTH.--THE CHAMPMATHIEU AFFAIR

CHAPTER I

SISTER SIMPLICE

The incidents the reader is about to peruse were not all known
at M. sur M. But the small portion of them which became known left
such a memory in that town that a serious gap would exist in this
book if we did not narrate them in their most minute details.
Among these details the reader will encounter two or three improbable
circumstances, which we preserve out of respect for the truth.

On the afternoon following the visit of Javert, M. Madeleine went
to see Fantine according to his wont.

Before entering Fantine's room, he had Sister Simplice summoned.

The two nuns who performed the services of nurse in the infirmary,
Lazariste ladies, like all sisters of charity, bore the names of
Sister Perpetue and Sister Simplice.

Sister Perpetue was an ordinary villager, a sister of charity
in a coarse style, who had entered the service of God as one enters
any other service. She was a nun as other women are cooks.
This type is not so very rare. The monastic orders gladly accept this
heavy peasant earthenware, which is easily fashioned into a Capuchin
or an Ursuline. These rustics are utilized for the rough work
of devotion. The transition from a drover to a Carmelite is not in
the least violent; the one turns into the other without much effort;
the fund of ignorance common to the village and the cloister is
a preparation ready at hand, and places the boor at once on the
same footing as the monk: a little more amplitude in the smock,
and it becomes a frock. Sister Perpetue was a robust nun from
Marines near Pontoise, who chattered her patois, droned, grumbled,
sugared the potion according to the bigotry or the hypocrisy of
the invalid, treated her patients abruptly, roughly, was crabbed
with the dying, almost flung God in their faces, stoned their
death agony with prayers mumbled in a rage; was bold, honest, and ruddy.

Sister Simplice was white, with a waxen pallor. Beside Sister Perpetue,
she was the taper beside the candle. Vincent de Paul has divinely
traced the features of the Sister of Charity in these admirable words,
in which he mingles as much freedom as servitude: "They shall have for
their convent only the house of the sick; for cell only a hired room;
for chapel only their parish church; for cloister only the streets of
the town and the wards of the hospitals; for enclosure only obedience;
for gratings only the fear of God; for veil only modesty." This ideal
was realized in the living person of Sister Simplice: she had never
been young, and it seemed as though she would never grow old.
No one could have told Sister Simplice's age. She was a person--
we dare not say a woman--who was gentle, austere, well-bred, cold,
and who had never lied. She was so gentle that she appeared fragile;
but she was more solid than granite. She touched the unhappy
with fingers that were charmingly pure and fine. There was,
so to speak, silence in her speech; she said just what was necessary,
and she possessed a tone of voice which would have equally edified
a confessional or enchanted a drawing-room. This delicacy accommodated
itself to the serge gown, finding in this harsh contact a continual
reminder of heaven and of God. Let us emphasize one detail.
Never to have lied, never to have said, for any interest whatever,
even in indifference, any single thing which was not the truth,
the sacred truth, was Sister Simplice's distinctive trait;
it was the accent of her virtue. She was almost renowned in the
congregation for this imperturbable veracity. The Abbe Sicard
speaks of Sister Simplice in a letter to the deaf-mute Massieu.
However pure and sincere we may be, we all bear upon our candor
the crack of the little, innocent lie. She did not. Little lie,
innocent lie--does such a thing exist? To lie is the absolute
form of evil. To lie a little is not possible: he who lies,
lies the whole lie. To lie is the very face of the demon. Satan has
two names; he is called Satan and Lying. That is what she thought;
and as she thought, so she did. The result was the whiteness which
we have mentioned--a whiteness which covered even her lips and her
eyes with radiance. Her smile was white, her glance was white.
There was not a single spider's web, not a grain of dust, on the glass
window of that conscience. On entering the order of Saint Vincent
de Paul, she had taken the name of Simplice by special choice.
Simplice of Sicily, as we know, is the saint who preferred to
allow both her breasts to be torn off rather than to say that she
had been born at Segesta when she had been born at Syracuse--
a lie which would have saved her. This patron saint suited
this soul.

Sister Simplice, on her entrance into the order, had had two
faults which she had gradually corrected: she had a taste
for dainties, and she liked to receive letters. She never read
anything but a book of prayers printed in Latin, in coarse type.
She did not understand Latin, but she understood the book.

This pious woman had conceived an affection for Fantine,
probably feeling a latent virtue there, and she had devoted
herself almost exclusively to her care.

M. Madeleine took Sister Simplice apart and recommended Fantine
to her in a singular tone, which the sister recalled later on.

On leaving the sister, he approached Fantine.

Fantine awaited M. Madeleine's appearance every day as one awaits
a ray of warmth and joy. She said to the sisters, "I only live
when Monsieur le Maire is here."

She had a great deal of fever that day. As soon as she saw
M. Madeleine she asked him:--

"And Cosette?"

He replied with a smile:--

"Soon."

M. Madeleine was the same as usual with Fantine. Only he remained
an hour instead of half an hour, to Fantine's great delight.
He urged every one repeatedly not to allow the invalid to want
for anything. It was noticed that there was a moment when his
countenance became very sombre. But this was explained when it became
known that the doctor had bent down to his ear and said to him,
"She is losing ground fast."

Then he returned to the town-hall, and the clerk observed him
attentively examining a road map of France which hung in his study.
He wrote a few figures on a bit of paper with a pencil.

CHAPTER II

THE PERSPICACITY OF MASTER SCAUFFLAIRE

From the town-hall he betook himself to the extremity of the town,
to a Fleming named Master Scaufflaer, French Scaufflaire, who let
out "horses and cabriolets as desired."

In order to reach this Scaufflaire, the shortest way was to take
the little-frequented street in which was situated the parsonage
of the parish in which M. Madeleine resided. The cure was,
it was said, a worthy, respectable, and sensible man. At the moment
when M. Madeleine arrived in front of the parsonage there was but one
passer-by in the street, and this person noticed this: After the
mayor had passed the priest's house he halted, stood motionless,
then turned about, and retraced his steps to the door of the parsonage,
which had an iron knocker. He laid his hand quickly on the knocker
and lifted it; then he paused again and stopped short, as though
in thought, and after the lapse of a few seconds, instead of allowing
the knocker to fall abruptly, he placed it gently, and resumed
his way with a sort of haste which had not been apparent previously.

M. Madeleine found Master Scaufflaire at home, engaged in stitching
a harness over.

"Master Scaufflaire," he inquired, "have you a good horse?"

"Mr. Mayor," said the Fleming, "all my horses are good. What do
you mean by a good horse?"

"I mean a horse which can travel twenty leagues in a day."

"The deuce!" said the Fleming. "Twenty leagues!"

"Yes."

"Hitched to a cabriolet?"

"Yes."

"And how long can he rest at the end of his journey?"

"He must be able to set out again on the next day if necessary."

"To traverse the same road?"

"Yes."

"The deuce! the deuce! And it is twenty leagues?"

M. Madeleine drew from his pocket the paper on which he had
pencilled some figures. He showed it to the Fleming. The figures
were 5, 6, 8 1/2.

"You see," he said, "total, nineteen and a half; as well say
twenty leagues."

"Mr. Mayor," returned the Fleming, "I have just what you want.
My little white horse--you may have seen him pass occasionally;
he is a small beast from Lower Boulonnais. He is full of fire.
They wanted to make a saddle-horse of him at first. Bah! He reared,
he kicked, he laid everybody flat on the ground. He was thought
to be vicious, and no one knew what to do with him. I bought him.
I harnessed him to a carriage. That is what he wanted, sir; he is
as gentle as a girl; he goes like the wind. Ah! indeed he must not
be mounted. It does not suit his ideas to be a saddle-horse. Every
one has his ambition. `Draw? Yes. Carry? No.' We must suppose that
is what he said to himself."

"And he will accomplish the trip?"

"Your twenty leagues all at a full trot, and in less than eight hours.
But here are the conditions."

"State them."

"In the first place. you will give him half an hour's breathing
spell midway of the road; he will eat; and some one must be by while
he is eating to prevent the stable boy of the inn from stealing
his oats; for I have noticed that in inns the oats are more often
drunk by the stable men than eaten by the horses."

"Some one will be by."

"In the second place--is the cabriolet for Monsieur le Maire?"

"Yes."

"Does Monsieur le Maire know how to drive?"

"Yes."

"Well, Monsieur le Maire will travel alone and without baggage,
in order not to overload the horse?"

"Agreed."

"But as Monsieur le Maire will have no one with him, he will be obliged
to take the trouble himself of seeing that the oats are not stolen."

"That is understood."

"I am to have thirty francs a day. The days of rest to be paid
for also--not a farthing less; and the beast's food to be at
Monsieur le Maire's expense."

M. Madeleine drew three napoleons from his purse and laid them
on the table.

"Here is the pay for two days in advance."

"Fourthly, for such a journey a cabriolet would be too heavy,
and would fatigue the horse. Monsieur le Maire must consent
to travel in a little tilbury that I own."

"I consent to that."

"It is light, but it has no cover."

"That makes no difference to me."

"Has Monsieur le Maire reflected that we are in the middle of winter?"

M. Madeleine did not reply. The Fleming resumed:--

"That it is very cold?"

M. Madeleine preserved silence.

Master Scaufflaire continued:--

"That it may rain?"

M. Madeleine raised his head and said:--

"The tilbury and the horse will be in front of my door to-morrow
morning at half-past four o'clock."

"Of course, Monsieur le Maire," replied Scaufflaire; then,
scratching a speck in the wood of the table with his thumb-nail,
he resumed with that careless air which the Flemings understand
so well how to mingle with their shrewdness:--

"But this is what I am thinking of now: Monsieur le Maire has
not told me where he is going. Where is Monsieur le Maire going?"

He had been thinking of nothing else
since the beginning of the conversation,
but he did not know why he had not dared to put the question.

"Are your horse's forelegs good?" said M. Madeleine.

"Yes, Monsieur le Maire. You must hold him in a little when going
down hill. Are there many descends between here and the place
whither you are going?"

"Do not forget to be at my door at precisely half-past four o'clock
to-morrow morning," replied M. Madeleine; and he took his departure.

The Fleming remained "utterly stupid," as he himself said some
time afterwards.

The mayor had been gone two or three minutes when the door opened again;
it was the mayor once more.

He still wore the same impassive and preoccupied air.

"Monsieur Scaufflaire," said he, "at what sum do you estimate
the value of the horse and tilbury which you are to let to me,--
the one bearing the other?"

"The one dragging the other, Monsieur le Maire," said the Fleming,
with a broad smile.

"So be it. Well?"

"Does Monsieur le Maire wish to purchase them or me?"

"No; but I wish to guarantee you in any case. You shall give me
back the sum at my return. At what value do you estimate your horse
and cabriolet?"

"Five hundred francs, Monsieur le Maire."

"Here it is."

M. Madeleine laid a bank-bill on the table, then left the room;
and this time he did not return.

Master Scaufflaire experienced a frightful regret that he had not
said a thousand francs. Besides the horse and tilbury together
were worth but a hundred crowns.

The Fleming called his wife, and related the affair to her.
"Where the devil could Monsieur le Maire be going?" They held
counsel together. "He is going to Paris," said the wife. "I don't
believe it," said the husband.

M. Madeleine had forgotten the paper with the figures on it, and it
lay on the chimney-piece. The Fleming picked it up and studied it.
"Five, six, eight and a half? That must designate the posting relays."
He turned to his wife:--

"I have found out."

"What?"

"It is five leagues from here to Hesdin, six from Hesdin to Saint-Pol,
eight and a half from Saint-Pol to Arras. He is going to Arras."

Meanwhile, M. Madeleine had returned home. He had taken the longest way
to return from Master Scaufflaire's, as though the parsonage door had
been a temptation for him, and he had wished to avoid it. He ascended
to his room, and there he shut himself up, which was a very simple act,
since he liked to go to bed early. Nevertheless, the portress of
the factory, who was, at the same time, M. Madeleine's only servant,
noticed that the latter's light was extinguished at half-past eight,
and she mentioned it to the cashier when he came home, adding:--

"Is Monsieur le Maire ill? I thought he had a rather singular air."

This cashier occupied a room situated directly under M. Madeleine's
chamber. He paid no heed to the portress's words, but went
to bed and to sleep. Towards midnight he woke up with a start;
in his sleep he had heard a noise above his head. He listened;
it was a footstep pacing back and forth, as though some one were
walking in the room above him. He listened more attentively,
and recognized M. Madeleine's step. This struck him as strange;
usually, there was no noise in M. Madeleine's chamber until he rose
in the morning. A moment later the cashier heard a noise which
resembled that of a cupboard being opened, and then shut again;
then a piece of furniture was disarranged; then a pause ensued;
then the step began again. The cashier sat up in bed, quite awake now,
and staring; and through his window-panes he saw the reddish
gleam of a lighted window reflected on the opposite wall;
from the direction of the rays, it could only come from the window
of M. Madeleine's chamber. The reflection wavered, as though it
came rather from a fire which had been lighted than from a candle.
The shadow of the window-frame was not shown, which indicated
that the window was wide open. The fact that this window was open
in such cold weather was surprising. The cashier fell asleep again.
An hour or two later he waked again. The same step was still
passing slowly and regularly back and forth overhead.

The reflection was still visible on the wall, but now it was pale
and peaceful, like the reflection of a lamp or of a candle.
The window was still open.

This is what had taken place in M. Madeleine's room.

CHAPTER III

A TEMPEST IN A SKULL

The reader has, no doubt, already divined that M. Madeleine
is no other than Jean Valjean.

We have already gazed into the depths of this conscience;
the moment has now come when we must take another look into it.
We do so not without emotion and trepidation. There is nothing
more terrible in existence than this sort of contemplation.
The eye of the spirit can nowhere find more dazzling brilliance
and more shadow than in man; it can fix itself on no other thing
which is more formidable, more complicated, more mysterious,
and more infinite. There is a spectacle more grand than the sea;
it is heaven: there is a spectacle more grand than heaven; it is the
inmost recesses of the soul.

To make the poem of the human conscience, were it only with reference
to a single man, were it only in connection with the basest of men,
would be to blend all epics into one superior and definitive epic.
Conscience is the chaos of chimeras, of lusts, and of temptations;
the furnace of dreams; the lair of ideas of which we are ashamed;
it is the pandemonium of sophisms; it is the battlefield of the passions.
Penetrate, at certain hours, past the livid face of a human being
who is engaged in reflection, and look behind, gaze into that soul,
gaze into that obscurity. There, beneath that external silence,
battles of giants, like those recorded in Homer, are in progress;
skirmishes of dragons and hydras and swarms of phantoms, as in Milton;
visionary circles, as in Dante. What a solemn thing is this
infinity which every man bears within him, and which he measures
with despair against the caprices of his brain and the actions of
his life!

Alighieri one day met with a sinister-looking door, before which
he hesitated. Here is one before us, upon whose threshold we hesitate.
Let us enter, nevertheless.

We have but little to add to what the reader already knows of what had
happened to Jean Valjean after the adventure with Little Gervais.
From that moment forth he was, as we have seen, a totally different man.
What the Bishop had wished to make of him, that he carried out.
It was more than a transformation; it was a transfiguration.

He succeeded in disappearing, sold the Bishop's silver, reserving only
the candlesticks as a souvenir, crept from town to town, traversed France,
came to M. sur M., conceived the idea which we have mentioned,
accomplished what we have related, succeeded in rendering himself
safe from seizure and inaccessible, and, thenceforth, established at
M. sur M., happy in feeling his conscience saddened by the past and
the first half of his existence belied by the last, he lived in peace,
reassured and hopeful, having henceforth only two thoughts,--to conceal
his name and to sanctify his life; to escape men and to return to God.

These two thoughts were so closely intertwined in his mind that
they formed but a single one there; both were equally absorbing
and imperative and ruled his slightest actions. In general,
they conspired to regulate the conduct of his life; they turned
him towards the gloom; they rendered him kindly and simple;
they counselled him to the same things. Sometimes, however,
they conflicted. In that case, as the reader will remember,
the man whom all the country of M. sur M. called M. Madeleine did
not hesitate to sacrifice the first to the second--his security to
his virtue. Thus, in spite of all his reserve and all his prudence,
he had preserved the Bishop's candlesticks, worn mourning for him,
summoned and interrogated all the little Savoyards who passed
that way, collected information regarding the families at Faverolles,
and saved old Fauchelevent's life, despite the disquieting
insinuations of Javert. It seemed, as we have already remarked,
as though he thought, following the example of all those who have
been wise, holy, and just, that his first duty was not towards himself.

At the same time, it must be confessed, nothing just like this
had yet presented itself.

Never had the two ideas which governed the unhappy man whose
sufferings we are narrating, engaged in so serious a struggle.
He understood this confusedly but profoundly at the very first words
pronounced by Javert, when the latter entered his study. At the
moment when that name, which he had buried beneath so many layers,
was so strangely articulated, he was struck with stupor, and as
though intoxicated with the sinister eccentricity of his destiny;
and through this stupor he felt that shudder which precedes
great shocks. He bent like an oak at the approach of a storm,
like a soldier at the approach of an assault. He felt shadows
filled with thunders and lightnings descending upon his head.
As he listened to Javert, the first thought which occurred to him
was to go, to run and denounce himself, to take that Champmathieu
out of prison and place himself there; this was as painful and as
poignant as an incision in the living flesh. Then it passed away,
and he said to himself, "We will see! We will see!" He repressed
this first, generous instinct, and recoiled before heroism.

It would be beautiful, no doubt, after the Bishop's holy words,
after so many years of repentance and abnegation, in the midst
of a penitence admirably begun, if this man had not flinched for
an instant, even in the presence of so terrible a conjecture, but had
continued to walk with the same step towards this yawning precipice,
at the bottom of which lay heaven; that would have been beautiful;
but it was not thus. We must render an account of the things which
went on in this soul, and we can only tell what there was there.
He was carried away, at first, by the instinct of self-preservation;
he rallied all his ideas in haste, stifled his emotions, took into
consideration Javert's presence, that great danger, postponed all
decision with the firmness of terror, shook off thought as to
what he had to do, and resumed his calmness as a warrior picks up
his buckler.

He remained in this state during the rest of the day, a whirlwind within,
a profound tranquillity without. He took no "preservative measures,"
as they may be called. Everything was still confused, and jostling
together in his brain. His trouble was so great that he could not
perceive the form of a single idea distinctly, and he could have
told nothing about himself, except that he had received a great blow.

He repaired to Fantine's bed of suffering, as usual, and prolonged
his visit, through a kindly instinct, telling himself that he must
behave thus, and recommend her well to the sisters, in case he should
be obliged to be absent himself. He had a vague feeling that he
might be obliged to go to Arras; and without having the least in the
world made up his mind to this trip, he said to himself that being,
as he was, beyond the shadow of any suspicion, there could be nothing
out of the way in being a witness to what was to take place, and he
engaged the tilbury from Scaufflaire in order to be prepared in any event.

He dined with a good deal of appetite.

On returning to his room, he communed with himself.

He examined the situation, and found it unprecedented;
so unprecedented that in the midst of his revery he rose from
his chair, moved by some inexplicable impulse of anxiety,
and bolted his door. He feared lest something more should enter.
He was barricading himself against possibilities.

A moment later he extinguished his light; it embarrassed him.

lt seemed to him as though he might be seen.

By whom?

Alas! That on which he desired to close the door had already entered;
that which he desired to blind was staring him in the face,--
his conscience.

His conscience; that is to say, God.

Nevertheless, he deluded himself at first; he had a feeling of security
and of solitude; the bolt once drawn, he thought himself impregnable;
the candle extinguished, he felt himself invisible. Then he
took possession of himself: he set his elbows on the table,
leaned his head on his hand, and began to meditate in the dark.

"Where do I stand? Am not I dreaming? What have I heard? Is it
really true that I have seen that Javert, and that he spoke to me
in that manner? Who can that Champmathieu be? So he resembles me!
Is it possible? When I reflect that yesterday I was so tranquil,
and so far from suspecting anything! What was I doing yesterday at
this hour? What is there in this incident? What will the end be?
What is to be done?"

This was the torment in which he found himself. His brain
had lost its power of retaining ideas; they passed like waves,
and he clutched his brow in both hands to arrest them.

Nothing but anguish extricated itself from this tumult which
overwhelmed his will and his reason, and from which he sought
to draw proof and resolution.

His head was burning. He went to the window and threw it wide open.
There were no stars in the sky. He returned and seated himself at
the table.

The first hour passed in this manner.

Gradually, however, vague outlines began to take form and to fix
themselves in his meditation, and he was able to catch a glimpse
with precision of the reality,--not the whole situation,
but some of the details. He began by recognizing the fact that,
critical and extraordinary as was this situation, he was completely
master of it.

This only caused an increase of his stupor.

Independently of the severe and religious aim which he had assigned
to his actions, all that he had made up to that day had been
nothing but a hole in which to bury his name. That which he had
always feared most of all in his hours of self-communion, during
his sleepless nights, was to ever hear that name pronounced;
he had said to himself, that that would be the end of all things
for him; that on the day when that name made its reappearance it
would cause his new life to vanish from about him, and--who knows?--
perhaps even his new soul within him, also. He shuddered at the
very thought that this was possible. Assuredly, if any one had said
to him at such moments that the hour would come when that name
would ring in his ears, when the hideous words, Jean Valjean,
would suddenly emerge from the darkness and rise in front of him,
when that formidable light, capable of dissipating the mystery
in which he had enveloped himself, would suddenly blaze forth above
his head, and that that name would not menace him, that that light
would but produce an obscurity more dense, that this rent veil
would but increase the mystery, that this earthquake would solidify
his edifice, that this prodigious incident would have no other result,
so far as he was concerned, if so it seemed good to him, than that
of rendering his existence at once clearer and more impenetrable,
and that, out of his confrontation with the phantom of Jean Valjean,
the good and worthy citizen Monsieur Madeleine would emerge more honored,
more peaceful, and more respected than ever--if any one had told
him that, he would have tossed his head and regarded the words
as those of a madman. Well, all this was precisely what had just
come to pass; all that accumulation of impossibilities was a fact,
and God had permitted these wild fancies to become real things!

His revery continued to grow clearer. He came more and more
to an understanding of his position.

It seemed to him that he had but just waked up from some inexplicable
dream, and that he found himself slipping down a declivity in the
middle of the night, erect, shivering, holding back all in vain,
on the very brink of the abyss. He distinctly perceived in the
darkness a stranger, a man unknown to him, whom destiny had mistaken
for him, and whom she was thrusting into the gulf in his stead;
in order that the gulf might close once more, it was necessary
that some one, himself or that other man, should fall into it:
he had only let things take their course.

The light became complete, and he acknowledged this to himself:
That his place was empty in the galleys; that do what he would,
it was still awaiting him; that the theft from little Gervais had led
him back to it; that this vacant place would await him, and draw him
on until he filled it; that this was inevitable and fatal; and then
he said to himself, "that, at this moment, be had a substitute;
that it appeared that a certain Champmathieu had that ill luck,
and that, as regards himself, being present in the galleys in the
person of that Champmathieu, present in society under the name
of M. Madeleine, he had nothing more to fear, provided that he did
not prevent men from sealing over the head of that Champmathieu this
stone of infamy which, like the stone of the sepulchre, falls once,
never to rise again."

All this was so strange and so violent, that there suddenly took
place in him that indescribable movement, which no man feels
more than two or three times in the course of his life, a sort of
convulsion of the conscience which stirs up all that there is doubtful
in the heart, which is composed of irony, of joy, and of despair,
and which may be called an outburst of inward laughter.

He hastily relighted his candle.

"Well, what then?" he said to himself; "what am I afraid of?
What is there in all that for me to think about? I am safe;
all is over. I had but one partly open door through which my past
might invade my life, and behold that door is walled up forever!
That Javert, who has been annoying me so long; that terrible
instinct which seemed to have divined me, which had divined me--
good God! and which followed me everywhere; that frightful
hunting-dog, always making a point at me, is thrown off the scent,
engaged elsewhere, absolutely turned from the trail: henceforth he
is satisfied; he will leave me in peace; he has his Jean Valjean.
Who knows? it is even probable that he will wish to leave town!
And all this has been brought about without any aid from me, and I
count for nothing in it! Ah! but where is the misfortune in this?
Upon my honor, people would think, to see me, that some catastrophe
had happened to me! After all, if it does bring harm to some one,
that is not my fault in the least: it is Providence which has done
it all; it is because it wishes it so to be, evidently. Have I
the right to disarrange what it has arranged? What do I ask now?
Why should I meddle? It does not concern me; what! I am not satisfied:
but what more do I want? The goal to which I have aspired for
so many years, the dream of my nights, the object of my prayers
to Heaven,--security,--I have now attained; it is God who wills it;
I can do nothing against the will of God, and why does God will it?
In order that I may continue what I have begun, that I may do good,
that I may one day be a grand and encouraging example, that it
may be said at last, that a little happiness has been attached
to the penance which I have undergone, and to that virtue to which I
have returned. Really, I do not understand why I was afraid,
a little while ago, to enter the house of that good cure, and to
ask his advice; this is evidently what he would have said to me:
It is settled; let things take their course; let the good God do as he
likes!"

Thus did he address himself in the depths of his own conscience,
bending over what may be called his own abyss; he rose from his chair,
and began to pace the room: "Come," said he, "let us think no more
about it; my resolve is taken!" but he felt no joy.

Quite the reverse.

One can no more prevent thought from recurring to an idea than one can
the sea from returning to the shore: the sailor calls it the tide;
the guilty man calls it remorse; God upheaves the soul as he does
the ocean.

After the expiration of a few moments, do what he would,
he resumed the gloomy dialogue in which it was he who spoke and he
who listened, saying that which he would have preferred to ignore,
and listened to that which he would have preferred not to hear,
yielding to that mysterious power which said to him: "Think!" as it
said to another condemned man, two thousand years ago, "March on!"

Before proceeding further, and in order to make ourselves
fully understood, let us insist upon one necessary observation.

It is certain that people do talk to themselves; there is no living
being who has not done it. It may even be said that the word is
never a more magnificent mystery than when it goes from thought
to conscience within a man, and when it returns from conscience
to thought; it is in this sense only that the words so often
employed in this chapter, he said, he exclaimed, must be understood;
one speaks to one's self, talks to one's self, exclaims to one's
self without breaking the external silence; there is a great tumult;
everything about us talks except the mouth. The realities of the
soul are none the less realities because they are not visible
and palpable.

So he asked himself where he stood. He interrogated himself upon that
"settled resolve." He confessed to himself that all that he had just
arranged in his mind was monstrous, that "to let things take their course,
to let the good God do as he liked," was simply horrible; to allow
this error of fate and of men to be carried out, not to hinder it,
to lend himself to it through his silence, to do nothing, in short,
was to do everything! that this was hypocritical baseness in the last
degree! that it was a base, cowardly, sneaking, abject, hideous crime!

For the first time in eight years, the wretched man had just tasted
the bitter savor of an evil thought and of an evil action.

He spit it out with disgust.

He continued to question himself. He asked himself severely
what he had meant by this, "My object is attained!" He declared
to himself that his life really had an object; but what object?
To conceal his name? To deceive the police? Was it for so petty
a thing that he had done all that he had done? Had he not another
and a grand object, which was the true one--to save, not his person,
but his soul; to become honest and good once more; to be a just man?
Was it not that above all, that alone, which he had always desired,
which the Bishop had enjoined upon him--to shut the door on his past?
But he was not shutting it! great God! he was re-opening it by
committing an infamous action! He was becoming a thief once more,
and the most odious of thieves! He was robbing another of
his existence, his life, his peace, his place in the sunshine.
He was becoming an assassin. He was murdering, morally murdering,
a wretched man. He was inflicting on him that frightful living death,
that death beneath the open sky, which is called the galleys.
On the other hand, to surrender himself to save that man,
struck down with so melancholy an error, to resume his own name,
to become once more, out of duty, the convict Jean Valjean, that was,
in truth, to achieve his resurrection, and to close forever that
hell whence he had just emerged; to fall back there in appearance
was to escape from it in reality. This must be done! He had done
nothing if he did not do all this; his whole life was useless;
all his penitence was wasted. There was no longer any need
of saying, "What is the use?" He felt that the Bishop was there,
that the Bishop was present all the more because he was dead, that the
Bishop was gazing fixedly at him, that henceforth Mayor Madeleine,
with all his virtues, would be abominable to him, and that the
convict Jean Valjean would be pure and admirable in his sight;
that men beheld his mask, but that the Bishop saw his face;
that men saw his life, but that the Bishop beheld his conscience.
So he must go to Arras, deliver the false Jean Valjean, and denounce
the real one. Alas! that was the greatest of sacrifices, the most
poignant of victories, the last step to take; but it must be done.
Sad fate! he would enter into sanctity only in the eyes of God
when he returned to infamy in the eyes of men.

"Well, said he, "let us decide upon this; let us do our duty; let us
save this man." He uttered these words aloud, without perceiving
that he was speaking aloud.

He took his books, verified them, and put them in order.
He flung in the fire a bundle of bills which he had against
petty and embarrassed tradesmen. He wrote and sealed a letter,
and on the envelope it might have been read, had there been
any one in his chamber at the moment, To Monsieur Laffitte,
Banker, Rue d'Artois, Paris. He drew from his secretary a
pocket-book which contained several bank-notes and the passport
of which he had made use that same year when he went to the elections.

Any one who had seen him during the execution of these various acts,
into which there entered such grave thought, would have had no
suspicion of what was going on within him. Only occasionally did
his lips move; at other times he raised his head and fixed his gaze
upon some point of the wall, as though there existed at that point
something which he wished to elucidate or interrogate.

When he had finished the letter to M. Laffitte, he put it into
his pocket, together with the pocket-book, and began his walk once more.

His revery had not swerved from its course. He continued to see his
duty clearly, written in luminous letters, which flamed before his
eyes and changed its place as he altered the direction of his glance:--

"Go! Tell your name! Denounce yourself!"

In the same way he beheld, as though they had passed before him
in visible forms, the two ideas which had, up to that time,
formed the double rule of his soul,--the concealment of his name,
the sanctification of his life. For the first time they appeared
to him as absolutely distinct, and he perceived the distance
which separated them. He recognized the fact that one of these
ideas was, necessarily, good, while the other might become bad;
that the first was self-devotion, and that the other was personality;
that the one said, my neighbor, and that the other said, myself;
that one emanated from the light, and the other from darkness.

They were antagonistic. He saw them in conflict. In proportion
as he meditated, they grew before the eyes of his spirit.
They had now attained colossal statures, and it seemed to him
that he beheld within himself, in that infinity of which we were
recently speaking, in the midst of the darkness and the lights,
a goddess and a giant contending.

He was filled with terror; but it seemed to him that the good
thought was getting the upper hand.

He felt that he was on the brink of the second decisive crisis of his
conscience and of his destiny; that the Bishop had marked the first
phase of his new life, and that Champmathieu marked the second.
After the grand crisis, the grand test.

But the fever, allayed for an instant, gradually resumed possession
of him. A thousand thoughts traversed his mind, but they continued
to fortify him in his resolution.

One moment he said to himself that he was, perhaps, taking the matter
too keenly; that, after all, this Champmathieu was not interesting,
and that he had actually been guilty of theft.

He answered himself: "If this man has, indeed, stolen a few apples,
that means a month in prison. It is a long way from that to the galleys.
And who knows? Did he steal? Has it been proved? The name of
Jean Valjean overwhelms him, and seems to dispense with proofs.
Do not the attorneys for the Crown always proceed in this manner?
He is supposed to be a thief because he is known to be a convict."

In another instant the thought had occurred to him that, when he
denounced himself, the heroism of his deed might, perhaps, be taken
into consideration, and his honest life for the last seven years,
and what he had done for the district, and that they would have mercy
on him.

But this supposition vanished very quickly, and he smiled bitterly as he
remembered that the theft of the forty sous from little Gervais put him
in the position of a man guilty of a second offence after conviction,
that this affair would certainly come up, and, according to the precise
terms of the law, would render him liable to penal servitude for life.

He turned aside from all illusions, detached himself more and
more from earth, and sought strength and consolation elsewhere.
He told himself that he must do his duty; that perhaps he should not
be more unhappy after doing his duty than after having avoided it;
that if he allowed things to take their own course, if he remained
at M. sur M., his consideration, his good name, his good works,
the deference and veneration paid to him, his charity, his wealth,
his popularity, his virtue, would be seasoned with a crime.
And what would be the taste of all these holy things when bound up
with this hideous thing? while, if he accomplished his sacrifice,
a celestial idea would be mingled with the galleys, the post,
the iron necklet, the green cap, unceasing toil, and pitiless shame.

At length he told himself that it must be so, that his destiny was
thus allotted, that he had not authority to alter the arrangements made
on high, that, in any case, he must make his choice: virtue without
and abomination within, or holiness within and infamy without.

The stirring up of these lugubrious ideas did not cause his courage
to fail, but his brain grow weary. He began to think of other things,
of indifferent matters, in spite of himself.

The veins in his temples throbbed violently; he still paced to and fro;
midnight sounded first from the parish church, then from the town-hall;
he counted the twelve strokes of the two clocks, and compared
the sounds of the two bells; he recalled in this connection the
fact that, a few days previously, he had seen in an ironmonger's
shop an ancient clock for sale, upon which was written the name,
Antoine-Albin de Romainville.

He was cold; he lighted a small fire; it did not occur to him
to close the window.

In the meantime he had relapsed into his stupor; he was obliged
to make a tolerably vigorous effort to recall what had been the
subject of his thoughts before midnight had struck; he finally
succeeded in doing this.

"Ah! yes," he said to himself, "I had resolved to inform against myself."

And then, all of a sudden, he thought of Fantine.

"Hold!" said he, "and what about that poor woman?"

Here a fresh crisis declared itself.

Fantine, by appearing thus abruptly in his revery, produced the effect
of an unexpected ray of light; it seemed to him as though everything
about him were undergoing a change of aspect: he exclaimed:--

"Ah! but I have hitherto considered no one but myself; it is proper
for me to hold my tongue or to denounce myself, to conceal my person
or to save my soul, to be a despicable and respected magistrate,
or an infamous and venerable convict; it is I, it is always I
and nothing but I: but, good God! all this is egotism; these are
diverse forms of egotism, but it is egotism all the same.
What if I were to think a little about others? The highest
holiness is to think of others; come, let us examine the matter.
The _I_ excepted, the _I_ effaced, the _I_ forgotten, what would be
the result of all this? What if I denounce myself? I am arrested;
this Champmathieu is released; I am put back in the galleys; that is well--
and what then? What is going on here? Ah! here is a country,
a town, here are factories, an industry, workers, both men and women,
aged grandsires, children, poor people! All this I have created;
all these I provide with their living; everywhere where there is
a smoking chimney, it is I who have placed the brand on the hearth
and meat in the pot; I have created ease, circulation, credit;
before me there was nothing; I have elevated, vivified, informed
with life, fecundated, stimulated, enriched the whole country-side;
lacking me, the soul is lacking; I take myself off, everything dies:
and this woman, who has suffered so much, who possesses so many
merits in spite of her fall; the cause of all whose misery I have
unwittingly been! And that child whom I meant to go in search of,
whom I have promised to her mother; do I not also owe something
to this woman, in reparation for the evil which I have done her?
If I disappear, what happens? The mother dies; the child becomes
what it can; that is what will take place, if I denounce myself.
If I do not denounce myself? come, let us see how it will be if I do not
denounce myself."

After putting this question to himself, he paused; he seemed to undergo
a momentary hesitation and trepidation; but it did not last long,
and he answered himself calmly:--

"Well, this man is going to the galleys; it is true, but what the
deuce! he has stolen! There is no use in my saying that he has
not been guilty of theft, for he has! I remain here; I go on:
in ten years I shall have made ten millions; I scatter them
over the country; I have nothing of my own; what is that to me?
It is not for myself that I am doing it; the prosperity of
all goes on augmenting; industries are aroused and animated;
factories and shops are multiplied; families, a hundred families,
a thousand families, are happy; the district becomes populated;
villages spring up where there were only farms before;
farms rise where there was nothing; wretchedness disappears,
and with wretchedness debauchery, prostitution, theft, murder;
all vices disappear, all crimes: and this poor mother rears her child;
and behold a whole country rich and honest! Ah! I was a fool!
I was absurd! what was that I was saying about denouncing myself?
I really must pay attention and not be precipitate about anything.
What! because it would have pleased me to play the grand and generous;
this is melodrama, after all; because I should have thought of no
one but myself, the idea! for the sake of saving from a punishment,
a trifle exaggerated, perhaps, but just at bottom, no one knows whom,
a thief, a good-for-nothing, evidently, a whole country-side must
perish! a poor woman must die in the hospital! a poor little
girl must die in the street! like dogs; ah, this is abominable!
And without the mother even having seen her child once more,
almost without the child's having known her mother; and all that for
the sake of an old wretch of an apple-thief who, most assuredly,
has deserved the galleys for something else, if not for that;
fine scruples, indeed, which save a guilty man and sacrifice the innocent,
which save an old vagabond who has only a few years to live at most,
and who will not be more unhappy in the galleys than in his hovel,
and which sacrifice a whole population, mothers, wives, children.
This poor little Cosette who has no one in the world but me,
and who is, no doubt, blue with cold at this moment in the den
of those Thenardiers; those peoples are rascals; and I was going to
neglect my duty towards all these poor creatures; and I was going off
to denounce myself; and I was about to commit that unspeakable folly!
Let us put it at the worst: suppose that there is a wrong action
on my part in this, and that my conscience will reproach me for it
some day, to accept, for the good of others, these reproaches
which weigh only on myself; this evil action which compromises
my soul alone; in that lies self-sacrifice; in that alone there
is virtue."

He rose and resumed his march; this time, he seemed to be content.

Diamonds are found only in the dark places of the earth;
truths are found only in the depths of thought. It seemed
to him, that, after having descended into these depths,
after having long groped among the darkest of these shadows,
he had at last found one of these diamonds, one of these truths, and
that he now held it in his hand, and he was dazzled as he gazed upon it.

"Yes," he thought, "this is right; I am on the right road; I have
the solution; I must end by holding fast to something; my resolve
is taken; let things take their course; let us no longer vacillate;
let us no longer hang back; this is for the interest of all,
not for my own; I am Madeleine, and Madeleine I remain. Woe to the
man who is Jean Valjean! I am no longer he; I do not know that man;
I no longer know anything; it turns out that some one is Jean
Valjean at the present moment; let him look out for himself;
that does not concern me; it is a fatal name which was floating
abroad in the night; if it halts and descends on a head, so much
the worse for that head."

He looked into the little mirror which hung above his chimney-piece,
and said:--

"Hold! it has relieved me to come to a decision; I am quite another
man now."

He proceeded a few paces further, then he stopped short.

"Come!" he said, "I must not flinch before any of the consequences
of the resolution which I have once adopted; there are still
threads which attach me to that Jean Valjean; they must be broken;
in this very room there are objects which would betray me,
dumb things which would bear witness against me; it is settled;
all these things must disappear."

He fumbled in his pocket, drew out his purse, opened it, and took
out a small key; he inserted the key in a lock whose aperture could
hardly be seen, so hidden was it in the most sombre tones of the
design which covered the wall-paper; a secret receptacle opened,
a sort of false cupboard constructed in the angle between the wall
and the chimney-piece; in this hiding-place there were some rags--
a blue linen blouse, an old pair of trousers, an old knapsack,
and a huge thorn cudgel shod with iron at both ends. Those who
had seen Jean Valjean at the epoch when he passed through D----
in October, 1815, could easily have recognized all the pieces of this
miserable outfit.

He had preserved them as he had preserved the silver candlesticks,
in order to remind himself continually of his starting-point, but he
had concealed all that came from the galleys, and he had allowed
the candlesticks which came from the Bishop to be seen.

He cast a furtive glance towards the door, as though he feared that
it would open in spite of the bolt which fastened it; then, with a
quick and abrupt movement, he took the whole in his arms at once,
without bestowing so much as a glance on the things which he
had so religiously and so perilously preserved for so many years,
and flung them all, rags, cudgel, knapsack, into the fire.

He closed the false cupboard again, and with redoubled precautions,
henceforth unnecessary, since it was now empty, he concealed the
door behind a heavy piece of furniture, which he pushed in front
of it.

After the lapse of a few seconds, the room and the opposite wall
were lighted up with a fierce, red, tremulous glow. Everything was
on fire; the thorn cudgel snapped and threw out sparks to the middle
of the chamber.

As the knapsack was consumed, together with the hideous rags which
it contained, it revealed something which sparkled in the ashes.
By bending over, one could have readily recognized a coin,--no doubt
the forty-sou piece stolen from the little Savoyard.

He did not look at the fire, but paced back and forth with the
same step.

All at once his eye fell on the two silver candlesticks, which shone
vaguely on the chimney-piece, through the glow.

"Hold!" he thought; "the whole of Jean Valjean is still in them.
They must be destroyed also."

He seized the two candlesticks.

There was still fire enough to allow of their being put out of shape,
and converted into a sort of unrecognizable bar of metal.

He bent over the hearth and warmed himself for a moment. He felt
a sense of real comfort. "How good warmth is!" said he.

He stirred the live coals with one of the candlesticks.

A minute more, and they were both in the fire.

At that moment it seemed to him that he heard a voice within
him shouting: "Jean Valjean! Jean Valjean!"

His hair rose upright: he became like a man who is listening
to some terrible thing.

"Yes, that's it! finish!" said the voice. "Complete what you
are about! Destroy these candlesticks! Annihilate this souvenir!
Forget the Bishop! Forget everything! Destroy this Champmathieu, do!
That is right! Applaud yourself! So it is settled, resolved,
fixed, agreed: here is an old man who does not know what is
wanted of him, who has, perhaps, done nothing, an innocent man,
whose whole misfortune lies in your name, upon whom your name weighs
like a crime, who is about to be taken for you, who will be condemned,
who will finish his days in abjectness and horror. That is good!
Be an honest man yourself; remain Monsieur le Maire; remain honorable
and honored; enrich the town; nourish the indigent; rear the orphan;
live happy, virtuous, and admired; and, during this time, while you are
here in the midst of joy and light, there will be a man who will wear
your red blouse, who will bear your name in ignominy, and who will drag
your chain in the galleys. Yes, it is well arranged thus. Ah, wretch!"

The perspiration streamed from his brow. He fixed a haggard
eye on the candlesticks. But that within him which had spoken
had not finished. The voice continued:--

"Jean Valjean, there will be around you many voices, which will make
a great noise, which will talk very loud, and which will bless you,
and only one which no one will hear, and which will curse you
in the dark. Well! listen, infamous man! All those benedictions
will fall back before they reach heaven, and only the malediction
will ascend to God."

This voice, feeble at first, and which had proceeded from the most
obscure depths of his conscience, had gradually become startling
and formidable, and he now heard it in his very ear. It seemed
to him that it had detached itself from him, and that it was now
speaking outside of him. He thought that he heard the last words
so distinctly, that he glanced around the room in a sort of terror.

"Is there any one here?" he demanded aloud, in utter bewilderment.

Then he resumed, with a laugh which resembled that of an idiot:--

"How stupid I am! There can be no one!"

There was some one; but the person who was there was of those whom
the human eye cannot see.

He placed the candlesticks on the chimney-piece.

Then he resumed his monotonous and lugubrious tramp, which troubled
the dreams of the sleeping man beneath him, and awoke him with a start.

This tramping to and fro soothed and at the same time intoxicated him.
It sometimes seems, on supreme occasions, as though people moved
about for the purpose of asking advice of everything that they may
encounter by change of place. After the lapse of a few minutes he
no longer knew his position.

He now recoiled in equal terror before both the resolutions at which he
had arrived in turn. The two ideas which counselled him appeared
to him equally fatal. What a fatality! What conjunction that that
Champmathieu should have been taken for him; to be overwhelmed
by precisely the means which Providence seemed to have employed,
at first, to strengthen his position!

There was a moment when he reflected on the future. Denounce himself,
great God! Deliver himself up! With immense despair he faced all
that he should be obliged to leave, all that he should be obliged
to take up once more. He should have to bid farewell to that existence
which was so good, so pure, so radiant, to the respect of all,
to honor, to liberty. He should never more stroll in the fields;
he should never more hear the birds sing in the month of May;
he should never more bestow alms on the little children;
he should never more experience the sweetness of having glances
of gratitude and love fixed upon him; he should quit that house
which he had built, that little chamber! Everything seemed charming
to him at that moment. Never again should he read those books;
never more should he write on that little table of white wood;
his old portress, the only servant whom he kept, would never more
bring him his coffee in the morning. Great God! instead of that,
the convict gang, the iron necklet, the red waistcoat, the chain
on his ankle, fatigue, the cell, the camp bed all those horrors
which he knew so well! At his age, after having been what he was!
If he were only young again! but to be addressed in his old age as
"thou" by any one who pleased; to be searched by the convict-guard;
to receive the galley-sergeant's cudgellings; to wear iron-bound
shoes on his bare feet; to have to stretch out his leg night
and morning to the hammer of the roundsman who visits the gang;
to submit to the curiosity of strangers, who would be told: "That man
yonder is the famous Jean Valjean, who was mayor of M. sur M.";
and at night, dripping with perspiration, overwhelmed with lassitude,
their green caps drawn over their eyes, to remount, two by two,
the ladder staircase of the galleys beneath the sergeant's whip.
Oh, what misery! Can destiny, then, be as malicious as an intelligent
being, and become as monstrous as the human heart?

And do what he would, he always fell back upon the heartrending
dilemma which lay at the foundation of his revery: "Should he
remain in paradise and become a demon? Should he return to hell
and become an angel?"

What was to be done? Great God! what was to be done?

The torment from which he had escaped with so much difficulty
was unchained afresh within him. His ideas began to grow confused
once more; they assumed a kind of stupefied and mechanical quality
which is peculiar to despair. The name of Romainville recurred
incessantly to his mind, with the two verses of a song which he had
heard in the past. He thought that Romainville was a little grove
near Paris, where young lovers go to pluck lilacs in the month of April.

He wavered outwardly as well as inwardly. He walked like a little
child who is permitted to toddle alone.

At intervals, as he combated his lassitude, he made an effort
to recover the mastery of his mind. He tried to put to himself,
for the last time, and definitely, the problem over which he had,
in a manner, fallen prostrate with fatigue: Ought he to
denounce himself? Ought he to hold his peace? He could not manage
to see anything distinctly. The vague aspects of all the courses
of reasoning which had been sketched out by his meditations quivered
and vanished, one after the other, into smoke. He only felt that,
to whatever course of action he made up his mind, something in him
must die, and that of necessity, and without his being able to
escape the fact; that he was entering a sepulchre on the right hand
as much as on the left; that he was passing through a death agony,--
the agony of his happiness, or the agony of his virtue.

Alas! all his resolution had again taken possession of him.
He was no further advanced than at the beginning.

Thus did this unhappy soul struggle in its anguish.
Eighteen hundred years before this unfortunate man, the mysterious
Being in whom are summed up all the sanctities and all the
sufferings of humanity had also long thrust aside with his hand,
while the olive-trees quivered in the wild wind of the infinite,
the terrible cup which appeared to Him dripping with darkness
and overflowing with shadows in the depths all studded with stars.

CHAPTER IV

FORMS ASSUMED BY SUFFERING DURING SLEEP

Three o'clock in the morning had just struck, and he had been
walking thus for five hours, almost uninterruptedly, when he
at length allowed himself to drop into his chair.

There he fell asleep and had a dream.

This dream, like the majority of dreams, bore no relation to
the situation, except by its painful and heart-rending character,
but it made an impression on him. This nightmare struck him so
forcibly that he wrote it down later on. It is one of the papers
in his own handwriting which he has bequeathed to us. We think
that we have here reproduced the thing in strict accordance with the text.

Of whatever nature this dream may be, the history of this night
would be incomplete if we were to omit it: it is the gloomy
adventure of an ailing soul.

Here it is. On the envelope we find this line inscribed, "The Dream
I had that Night."

"I was in a plain; a vast, gloomy plain, where there was no grass.
It did not seem to me to be daylight nor yet night.

"I was walking with my brother, the brother of my childish years,
the brother of whom, I must say, I never think, and whom I now
hardly remember.

"We were conversing and we met some passers-by. We were talking
of a neighbor of ours in former days, who had always worked with her
window open from the time when she came to live on the street.
As we talked we felt cold because of that open window.

"There were no trees in the plain. We saw a man passing close to us.
He was entirely nude, of the hue of ashes, and mounted on a horse
which was earth color. The man had no hair; we could see his skull
and the veins on it. In his hand he held a switch which was as
supple as a vine-shoot and as heavy as iron. This horseman passed
and said nothing to us.

"My brother said to me, `Let us take to the hollow road.'

"There existed a hollow way wherein one saw neither a single shrub
nor a spear of moss. Everything was dirt-colored, even the sky.
After proceeding a few paces, I received no reply when I spoke:
I perceived that my brother was no longer with me.

"I entered a village which I espied. I reflected that it must
be Romainville. (Why Romainville?)[5]

[5] This parenthesis is due to Jean Valjean.

"The first street that I entered was deserted. I entered
a second street. Behind the angle formed by the two streets,
a man was standing erect against the wall. I said to this Man:--

"`What country is this? Where am I?' The man made no reply.
I saw the door of a house open, and I entered.

"The first chamber was deserted. I entered the second. Behind the
door of this chamber a man was standing erect against the wall.
I inquired of this man, `Whose house is this? Where am I?'
The man replied not.

"The house had a garden. I quitted the house and entered the garden.
The garden was deserted. Behind the first tree I found a man
standing upright. I said to this man, `What garden is this?
Where am I?' The man did not answer.

"I strolled into the village, and perceived that it was a town.
All the streets were deserted, all the doors were open. Not a single
living being was passing in the streets, walking through the chambers
or strolling in the gardens. But behind each angle of the walls,
behind each door, behind each tree, stood a silent man. Only one was
to be seen at a time. These men watched me pass.

"I left the town and began to ramble about the fields.

"After the lapse of some time I turned back and saw a great crowd coming
up behind me. I recognized all the men whom I had seen in that town.
They had strange heads. They did not seem to be in a hurry, yet they
walked faster than I did. They made no noise as they walked.
In an instant this crowd had overtaken and surrounded me.
The faces of these men were earthen in hue.

"Then the first one whom I had seen and questioned on entering
the town said to me:--

"`Whither are you going! Do you not know that you have been dead
this long time?'

"I opened my mouth to reply, and I perceived that there was no
one near me."

He woke. He was icy cold. A wind which was chill like the breeze
of dawn was rattling the leaves of the window, which had been left
open on their hinges. The fire was out. The candle was nearing
its end. It was still black night.

He rose, he went to the window. There were no stars in the sky
even yet.

From his window the yard of the house and the street were visible.
A sharp, harsh noise, which made him drop his eyes, resounded from
the earth.

Below him he perceived two red stars, whose rays lengthened
and shortened in a singular manner through the darkness.

As his thoughts were still half immersed in the mists of sleep,
"Hold!" said he, "there are no stars in the sky. They are on
earth now."

But this confusion vanished; a second sound similar to the first
roused him thoroughly; he looked and recognized the fact that these
two stars were the lanterns of a carriage. By the light which
they cast he was able to distinguish the form of this vehicle.
It was a tilbury harnessed to a small white horse. The noise which
he had heard was the trampling of the horse's hoofs on the pavement.

"What vehicle is this?" he said to himself. "Who is coming here
so early in the morning?"

At that moment there came a light tap on the door of his chamber.

He shuddered from head to foot, and cried in a terrible voice:--

"Who is there?"

Some one said:--

"I, Monsieur le Maire."

He recognized the voice of the old woman who was his portress.

"Well!" he replied, "what is it?"

"Monsieur le Maire, it is just five o'clock in the morning."

"What is that to me?"

"The cabriolet is here, Monsieur le Maire."

"What cabriolet?"

"The tilbury."

"What tilbury?"

"Did not Monsieur le Maire order a tilbury?"

"No," said he.

"The coachman says that he has come for Monsieur le Maire."

"What coachman?"

"M. Scaufflaire's coachman."

"M. Scaufflaire?"

That name sent a shudder over him, as though a flash of lightning
had passed in front of his face.

"Ah! yes," he resumed; "M. Scaufflaire!"

If the old woman could have seen him at that moment, she would
have been frightened.

A tolerably long silence ensued. He examined the flame of the candle
with a stupid air, and from around the wick he took some of the
burning wax, which he rolled between his fingers. The old woman
waited for him. She even ventured to uplift her voice once more:--

"What am I to say, Monsieur le Maire?"

"Say that it is well, and that I am coming down."

CHAPTER V

HINDRANCES

The posting service from Arras to M. sur M. was still operated
at this period by small mail-wagons of the time of the Empire.
These mail-wagons were two-wheeled cabriolets, upholstered inside
with fawn-colored leather, hung on springs, and having but two seats,
one for the postboy, the other for the traveller. The wheels were
armed with those long, offensive axles which keep other vehicles
at a distance, and which may still be seen on the road in Germany.
The despatch box, an immense oblong coffer, was placed behind the
vehicle and formed a part of it. This coffer was painted black,
and the cabriolet yellow.

These vehicles, which have no counterparts nowadays, had something
distorted and hunchbacked about them; and when one saw them passing
in the distance, and climbing up some road to the horizon, they
resembled the insects which are called, I think, termites, and which,
though with but little corselet, drag a great train behind them.
But they travelled at a very rapid rate. The post-wagon which set out
from Arras at one o'clock every night, after the mail from Paris had
passed, arrived at M. sur M. a little before five o'clock in the morning.

That night the wagon which was descending to M. sur M. by the Hesdin road,
collided at the corner of a street, just as it was entering the town,
with a little tilbury harnessed to a white horse, which was going
in the opposite direction, and in which there was but one person,
a man enveloped in a mantle. The wheel of the tilbury received
quite a violent shock. The postman shouted to the man to stop,
but the traveller paid no heed and pursued his road at full gallop.

"That man is in a devilish hurry!" said the postman.

The man thus hastening on was the one whom we have just seen
struggling in convulsions which are certainly deserving of pity.

Whither was he going? He could not have told. Why was he hastening?
He did not know. He was driving at random, straight ahead. Whither?
To Arras, no doubt; but he might have been going elsewhere as well.
At times he was conscious of it, and he shuddered. He plunged into
the night as into a gulf. Something urged him forward; something drew
him on. No one could have told what was taking place within him;
every one will understand it. What man is there who has not entered,
at least once in his life, into that obscure cavern of the unknown?

However, he had resolved on nothing, decided nothing, formed no plan,
done nothing. None of the actions of his conscience had been decisive.
He was, more than ever, as he had been at the first moment.

Why was he going to Arras?

He repeated what he had already said to himself when he had hired
Scaufflaire's cabriolet: that, whatever the result was to be,
there was no reason why he should not see with his own eyes,
and judge of matters for himself; that this was even prudent;
that he must know what took place; that no decision could be arrived
at without having observed and scrutinized; that one made mountains
out of everything from a distance; that, at any rate, when he
should have seen that Champmathieu, some wretch, his conscience
would probably be greatly relieved to allow him to go to the galleys
in his stead; that Javert would indeed be there; and that Brevet,
that Chenildieu, that Cochepaille, old convicts who had known him;
but they certainly would not recognize him;--bah! what an idea!
that Javert was a hundred leagues from suspecting the truth;
that all conjectures and all suppositions were fixed on Champmathieu,
and that there is nothing so headstrong as suppositions and conjectures;
that accordingly there was no danger.

That it was, no doubt, a dark moment, but that he should emerge
from it; that, after all, he held his destiny, however bad it might be,
in his own hand; that he was master of it. He clung to this thought.

At bottom, to tell the whole truth, he would have preferred not
to go to Arras.

Nevertheless, he was going thither.

As he meditated, he whipped up his horse, which was proceeding at
that fine, regular, and even trot which accomplishes two leagues
and a half an hour.

In proportion as the cabriolet advanced, he felt something within
him draw back.

At daybreak he was in the open country; the town of M. sur M. lay
far behind him. He watched the horizon grow white; he stared at all
the chilly figures of a winter's dawn as they passed before his eyes,
but without seeing them. The morning has its spectres as well as
the evening. He did not see them; but without his being aware of it,
and by means of a sort of penetration which was almost physical,
these black silhouettes of trees and of hills added some gloomy
and sinister quality to the violent state of his soul.

Each time that he passed one of those isolated dwellings which
sometimes border on the highway, he said to himself, "And yet
there are people there within who are sleeping!"

The trot of the horse, the bells on the harness, the wheels
on the road, produced a gentle, monotonous noise. These things
are charming when one is joyous, and lugubrious when one is sad.

It was broad daylight when he arrived at Hesdin. He halted in front
of the inn, to allow the horse a breathing spell, and to have him
given some oats.

The horse belonged, as Scaufflaire had said, to that small race
of the Boulonnais, which has too much head, too much belly,
and not enough neck and shoulders, but which has a broad chest,
a large crupper, thin, fine legs, and solid hoofs--a homely,
but a robust and healthy race. The excellent beast had travelled
five leagues in two hours, and had not a drop of sweat on his loins.

He did not get out of the tilbury. The stableman who brought
the oats suddenly bent down and examined the left wheel.

"Are you going far in this condition?" said the man.

He replied, with an air of not having roused himself from his revery:--

"Why?"

"Have you come from a great distance?" went on the man.

"Five leagues."

"Ah!"

"Why do you say, `Ah?'"

The man bent down once more, was silent for a moment, with his eyes
fixed on the wheel; then he rose erect and said:--

"Because, though this wheel has travelled five leagues, it certainly
will not travel another quarter of a league."

He sprang out of the tilbury.

"What is that you say, my friend?"

"I say that it is a miracle that you should have travelled five leagues
without you and your horse rolling into some ditch on the highway.
Just see here!"

The wheel really had suffered serious damage. The shock administered
by the mail-wagon had split two spokes and strained the hub,
so that the nut no longer held firm.

"My friend," he said to the stableman, "is there a wheelwright here?"

"Certainly, sir."

"Do me the service to go and fetch him."

"He is only a step from here. Hey! Master Bourgaillard!"

Master Bourgaillard, the wheelwright, was standing on his own threshold.
He came, examined the wheel and made a grimace like a surgeon
when the latter thinks a limb is broken.

"Can you repair this wheel immediately?"

"Yes, sir."

"When can I set out again?"

"To-morrow."

"To-morrow!"

"There is a long day's work on it. Are you in a hurry, sir?"

"In a very great hurry. I must set out again in an hour at the latest."

"Impossible, sir."

"I will pay whatever you ask."

"Impossible."

"Well, in two hours, then."

"Impossible to-day. Two new spokes and a hub must be made.
Monsieur will not be able to start before to-morrow morning."

"The matter cannot wait until to-morrow. What if you were to replace
this wheel instead of repairing it?"

"How so?"

"You are a wheelwright?"

"Certainly, sir."

"Have you not a wheel that you can sell me? Then I could start
again at once."

"A spare wheel?"

"Yes."

"I have no wheel on hand that would fit your cabriolet. Two wheels
make a pair. Two wheels cannot be put together hap-hazard."

"In that case, sell me a pair of wheels."

"Not all wheels fit all axles, sir."

"Try, nevertheless."

"It is useless, sir. I have nothing to sell but cart-wheels. We
are but a poor country here."

"Have you a cabriolet that you can let me have?"

The wheelwright had seen at the first glance that the tilbury
was a hired vehicle. He shrugged his shoulders.

"You treat the cabriolets that people let you so well! If I had one,
I would not let it to you!"

"Well, sell it to me, then."

"I have none."

"What! not even a spring-cart? I am not hard to please, as you see."

"We live in a poor country. There is, in truth," added the wheelwright,
"an old calash under the shed yonder, which belongs to a bourgeois
of the town, who gave it to me to take care of, and who only uses it
on the thirty-sixth of the month--never, that is to say. I might
let that to you, for what matters it to me? But the bourgeois must
not see it pass--and then, it is a calash; it would require two horses."

"I will take two post-horses."

"Where is Monsieur going?"

"To Arras."

"And Monsieur wishes to reach there to-day?"

"Yes, of course."

"By taking two post-horses?"

"Why not?"

"Does it make any difference whether Monsieur arrives at four
o'clock to-morrow morning?"

"Certainly not."

"There is one thing to be said about that, you see, by taking post-horses--
Monsieur has his passport?"

"Yes."

"Well, by taking post-horses, Monsieur cannot reach Arras before
to-morrow. We are on a cross-road. The relays are badly served,
the horses are in the fields. The season for ploughing is
just beginning; heavy teams are required, and horses are seized
upon everywhere, from the post as well as elsewhere. Monsieur will
have to wait three or four hours at the least at every relay.
And, then, they drive at a walk. There are many hills to ascend."

"Come then, I will go on horseback. Unharness the cabriolet.
Some one can surely sell me a saddle in the neighborhood."

"Without doubt. But will this horse bear the saddle?"

"That is true; you remind me of that; he will not bear it."

"Then--"

"But I can surely hire a horse in the village?"

"A horse to travel to Arras at one stretch?"

"Yes."

"That would require such a horse as does not exist in these parts.
You would have to buy it to begin with, because no one knows you.
But you will not find one for sale nor to let, for five hundred francs,
or for a thousand."

"What am I to do?"

"The best thing is to let me repair the wheel like an honest man,
and set out on your journey to-morrow."

"To-morrow will be too late."

"The deuce!"

"Is there not a mail-wagon which runs to Arras? When will it pass?"

"To-night. Both the posts pass at night; the one going as well
as the one coming."

"What! It will take you a day to mend this wheel?"

"A day, and a good long one."

"If you set two men to work?"

"If I set ten men to work."

"What if the spokes were to be tied together with ropes?"

"That could be done with the spokes, not with the hub; and the felly
is in a bad state, too."

"Is there any one in this village who lets out teams?"

"No."

"Is there another wheelwright?"

The stableman and the wheelwright replied in concert, with a toss
of the head

"No."

He felt an immense joy.

It was evident that Providence was intervening. That it was it
who had broken the wheel of the tilbury and who was stopping him
on the road. He had not yielded to this sort of first summons;
he had just made every possible effort to continue the journey;
he had loyally and scrupulously exhausted all means; he had been
deterred neither by the season, nor fatigue, nor by the expense;
he had nothing with which to reproach himself. If he went no further,
that was no fault of his. It did not concern him further.
It was no longer his fault. It was not the act of his own conscience,
but the act of Providence.

He breathed again. He breathed freely and to the full extent
of his lungs for the first time since Javert's visit. It seemed
to him that the hand of iron which had held his heart in its grasp
for the last twenty hours had just released him.

It seemed to him that God was for him now, and was manifesting Himself.

He said himself that he had done all he could, and that now he
had nothing to do but retrace his steps quietly.

If his conversation with the wheelwright had taken place in a chamber
of the inn, it would have had no witnesses, no one would have heard him,
things would have rested there, and it is probable that we should not
have had to relate any of the occurrences which the reader is about
to peruse; but this conversation had taken place in the street.
Any colloquy in the street inevitably attracts a crowd. There are
always people who ask nothing better than to become spectators.
While he was questioning the wheelwright, some people who were
passing back and forth halted around them. After listening
for a few minutes, a young lad, to whom no one had paid any heed,
detached himself from the group and ran off.

At the moment when the traveller, after the inward deliberation
which we have just described, resolved to retrace his steps,
this child returned. He was accompanied by an old woman.

"Monsieur," said the woman, "my boy tells me that you wish to hire
a cabriolet."

These simple words uttered by an old woman led by a child made
the perspiration trickle down his limbs. He thought that he beheld
the hand which had relaxed its grasp reappear in the darkness
behind him, ready to seize him once more.

He answered:--

"Yes, my good woman; I am in search of a cabriolet which I can hire."

And he hastened to add:--

"But there is none in the place."

"Certainly there is," said the old woman.

"Where?" interpolated the wheelwright.

"At my house," replied the old woman.

He shuddered. The fatal hand had grasped him again.

The old woman really had in her shed a sort of basket spring-cart.
The wheelwright and the stable-man, in despair at the prospect
of the traveller escaping their clutches, interfered.

"It was a frightful old trap; it rests flat on the axle; it is an
actual fact that the seats were suspended inside it by leather thongs;
the rain came into it; the wheels were rusted and eaten with moisture;
it would not go much further than the tilbury; a regular ramshackle
old stage-wagon; the gentleman would make a great mistake if he
trusted himself to it," etc., etc.

All this was true; but this trap, this ramshackle old vehicle,
this thing, whatever it was, ran on its two wheels and could go
to Arras.

He paid what was asked, left the tilbury with the wheelwright
to be repaired, intending to reclaim it on his return,
had the white horse put to the cart, climbed into it, and resumed
the road which he had been travelling since morning.

At the moment when the cart moved off, he admitted that he had felt,
a moment previously, a certain joy in the thought that he should not
go whither he was now proceeding. He examined this joy with a sort
of wrath, and found it absurd. Why should he feel joy at turning back?
After all, he was taking this trip of his own free will.
No one was forcing him to it.

And assuredly nothing would happen except what he should choose.

As he left Hesdin, he heard a voice shouting to him: "Stop! Stop!"
He halted the cart with a vigorous movement which contained
a feverish and convulsive element resembling hope.

It was the old woman's little boy.

"Monsieur," said the latter, "it was I who got the cart for you."

"Well?"

"You have not given me anything."

He who gave to all so readily thought this demand exorbitant
and almost odious.

"Ah! it's you, you scamp?" said he; "you shall have nothing."

He whipped up his horse and set off at full speed.

He had lost a great deal of time at Hesdin. He wanted to make it good.
The little horse was courageous, and pulled for two; but it was
the month of February, there had been rain; the roads were bad.
And then, it was no longer the tilbury. The cart was very heavy,
and in addition, there were many ascents.

He took nearly four hours to go from Hesdin to Saint-Pol; four hours
for five leagues.

At Saint-Pol he had the horse unharnessed at the first inn he
came to and led to the stable; as he had promised Scaufflaire,
he stood beside the manger while the horse was eating; he thought
of sad and confusing things.

The inn-keeper's wife came to the stable.

"Does not Monsieur wish to breakfast?"

"Come, that is true; I even have a good appetite."

He followed the woman, who had a rosy, cheerful face; she led him
to the public room where there were tables covered with waxed cloth.

"Make haste!" said he; "I must start again; I am in a hurry."

A big Flemish servant-maid placed his knife and fork in all haste;
he looked at the girl with a sensation of comfort.

"That is what ailed me," he thought; "I had not breakfasted."

His breakfast was served; he seized the bread, took a mouthful,
and then slowly replaced it on the table, and did not touch it again.

A carter was eating at another table; he said to this man:--

"Why is their bread so bitter here?"

The carter was a German and did not understand him.

He returned to the stable and remained near the horse.

An hour later he had quitted Saint-Pol and was directing his course
towards Tinques, which is only five leagues from Arras.

What did he do during this journey? Of what was he thinking?
As in the morning, he watched the trees, the thatched roofs,
the tilled fields pass by, and the way in which the landscape,
broken at every turn of the road, vanished; this is a sort of
contemplation which sometimes suffices to the soul, and almost
relieves it from thought. What is more melancholy and more profound
than to see a thousand objects for the first and the last time?
To travel is to be born and to die at every instant; perhaps, in the
vaguest region of his mind, be did make comparisons between the
shifting horizon and our human existence: all the things of life
are perpetually fleeing before us; the dark and bright intervals
are intermingled; after a dazzling moment, an eclipse; we look,
we hasten, we stretch out our hands to grasp what is passing;
each event is a turn in the road, and, all at once, we are old;
we feel a shock; all is black; we distinguish an obscure door;
the gloomy horse of life, which has been drawing us halts, and we see a
veiled and unknown person unharnessing amid the shadows.

Twilight was falling when the children who were coming out of school
beheld this traveller enter Tinques; it is true that the days
were still short; he did not halt at Tinques; as he emerged from
the village, a laborer, who was mending the road with stones,
raised his head and said to him:--

"That horse is very much fatigued."

The poor beast was, in fact, going at a walk.

"Are you going to Arras?" added the road-mender.

"Yes."

"If you go on at that rate you will not arrive very early."

He stopped his horse, and asked the laborer:--

"How far is it from here to Arras?"

"Nearly seven good leagues."

"How is that? the posting guide only says five leagues and a quarter."

"Ah!" returned the road-mender, "so you don't know that the road
is under repair? You will find it barred a quarter of an hour
further on; there is no way to proceed further."

"Really?"

"You will take the road on the left, leading to Carency; you will
cross the river; when you reach Camblin, you will turn to the right;
that is the road to Mont-Saint-Eloy which leads to Arras."

"But it is night, and I shall lose my way."

"You do not belong in these parts?"

"No."

"And, besides, it is all cross-roads; stop! sir," resumed the road-mender;
"shall I give you a piece of advice? your horse is tired;
return to Tinques; there is a good inn there; sleep there;
you can reach Arras to-morrow."

"I must be there this evening."

"That is different; but go to the inn all the same, and get an
extra horse; the stable-boy will guide you through the cross-roads."

He followed the road-mender's advice, retraced his steps, and,
half an hour later, he passed the same spot again, but this time
at full speed, with a good horse to aid; a stable-boy, who called
himself a postilion, was seated on the shaft of the cariole.

Still, he felt that he had lost time.

Night had fully come.

They turned into the cross-road; the way became frightfully bad;
the cart lurched from one rut to the other; he said to the postilion:--

"Keep at a trot, and you shall have a double fee."

In one of the jolts, the whiffle-tree broke.

"There's the whiffle-tree broken, sir," said the postilion; "I don't
know how to harness my horse now; this road is very bad at night;
if you wish to return and sleep at Tinques, we could be in Arras
early to-morrow morning."

He replied, "Have you a bit of rope and a knife?"

"Yes, sir."

He cut a branch from a tree and made a whiffle-tree of it.

This caused another loss of twenty minutes; but they set out again
at a gallop.

The plain was gloomy; low-hanging, black, crisp fogs crept over the hills
and wrenched themselves away like smoke: there were whitish gleams
in the clouds; a strong breeze which blew in from the sea produced
a sound in all quarters of the horizon, as of some one moving furniture;
everything that could be seen assumed attitudes of terror.
How many things shiver beneath these vast breaths of the night!

He was stiff with cold; he had eaten nothing since the night before;
he vaguely recalled his other nocturnal trip in the vast plain
in the neighborhood of D----, eight years previously, and it seemed
but yesterday.

The hour struck from a distant tower; he asked the boy:--

"What time is it?"

"Seven o'clock, sir; we shall reach Arras at eight; we have
but three leagues still to go."

At that moment, he for the first time indulged in this reflection,
thinking it odd the while that it had not occurred to him sooner:
that all this trouble which he was taking was, perhaps, useless;
that he did not know so much as the hour of the trial; that he should,
at least, have informed himself of that; that he was foolish to go
thus straight ahead without knowing whether he would be of any
service or not; then he sketched out some calculations in his mind:
that, ordinarily, the sittings of the Court of Assizes began at
nine o'clock in the morning; that it could not be a long affair;
that the theft of the apples would be very brief; that there would
then remain only a question of identity, four or five depositions,
and very little for the lawyers to say; that he should arrive after
all was over.

The postilion whipped up the horses; they had crossed the river
and left Mont-Saint-Eloy behind them.

The night grew more profound.

CHAPTER VI

SISTER SIMPLICE PUT TO THE PROOF

But at that moment Fantine was joyous.

She had passed a very bad night; her cough was frightful; her fever
had doubled in intensity; she had had dreams: in the morning,
when the doctor paid his visit, she was delirious; he assumed
an alarmed look, and ordered that he should be informed as soon
as M. Madeleine arrived.

All the morning she was melancholy, said but little, and laid
plaits in her sheets, murmuring the while, in a low voice,
calculations which seemed to be calculations of distances.
Her eyes were hollow and staring. They seemed almost extinguished
at intervals, then lighted up again and shone like stars.
It seems as though, at the approach of a certain dark hour,
the light of heaven fills those who are quitting the light of earth.

Each time that Sister Simplice asked her how she felt,
she replied invariably, "Well. I should like to see M. Madeleine."

Some months before this, at the moment when Fantine had just lost
her last modesty, her last shame, and her last joy, she was the shadow
of herself; now she was the spectre of herself. Physical suffering
had completed the work of moral suffering. This creature of five
and twenty had a wrinkled brow, flabby cheeks, pinched nostrils,
teeth from which the gums had receded, a leaden complexion,
a bony neck, prominent shoulder-blades, frail limbs, a clayey skin,
and her golden hair was growing out sprinkled with gray.
Alas! how illness improvises old-age!

At mid-day the physician returned, gave some directions,
inquired whether the mayor had made his appearance at the infirmary,
and shook his head.

M. Madeleine usually came to see the invalid at three o'clock. As
exactness is kindness, he was exact.

About half-past two, Fantine began to be restless. In the course
of twenty minutes, she asked the nun more than ten times, "What time
is it, sister?"

Three o'clock struck. At the third stroke, Fantine sat up in bed;
she who could, in general, hardly turn over, joined her yellow,
fleshless hands in a sort of convulsive clasp, and the nun heard her
utter one of those profound sighs which seem to throw off dejection.
Then Fantine turned and looked at the door.

No one entered; the door did not open.

She remained thus for a quarter of an hour, her eyes riveted on
the door, motionless and apparently holding her breath. The sister
dared not speak to her. The clock struck a quarter past three.
Fantine fell back on her pillow.

She said nothing, but began to plait the sheets once more.

Half an hour passed, then an hour, no one came; every time the
clock struck, Fantine started up and looked towards the door,
then fell back again.

Her thought was clearly perceptible, but she uttered no name, she made
no complaint, she blamed no one. But she coughed in a melancholy way.
One would have said that something dark was descending upon her.
She was livid and her lips were blue. She smiled now and then.

Five o'clock struck. Then the sister heard her say, very low and gently,
"He is wrong not to come to-day, since I am going away to-morrow."

Sister Simplice herself was surprised at M. Madeleine's delay.

In the meantime, Fantine was staring at the tester of her bed.
She seemed to be endeavoring to recall something. All at once she
began to sing in a voice as feeble as a breath. The nun listened.
This is what Fantine was singing:--

          "Lovely things we will buy
           As we stroll the faubourgs through.
           Roses are pink, corn-flowers are blue,
           I love my love, corn-flowers are blue.

"Yestere'en the Virgin Mary came near my stove, in a broidered
mantle clad, and said to me, `Here, hide 'neath my veil the child
whom you one day begged from me. Haste to the city, buy linen,
buy a needle, buy thread.'

"Lovely things we will buy
As we stroll the faubourgs through.

"Dear Holy Virgin, beside my stove I have set a cradle
with ribbons decked. God may give me his loveliest star;
I prefer the child thou hast granted me. `Madame, what shall
I do with this linen fine?'--`Make of it clothes for thy new-born babe.'

"Roses are pink and corn-flowers are blue,
I love my love, and corn-flowers are blue.

"`Wash this linen.'--`Where?'--`In the stream. Make of it,
soiling not, spoiling not, a petticoat fair with its bodice fine,
which I will embroider and fill with flowers.'--`Madame, the
child is no longer here; what is to be done?'--`Then make of it
a winding-sheet in which to bury me.'

          "Lovely things we will buy
           As we stroll the faubourgs through,
           Roses are pink, corn-flowers are blue,
           I love my love, corn-flowers are blue."

This song was an old cradle romance with which she had, in former days,
lulled her little Cosette to sleep, and which had never recurred
to her mind in all the five years during which she had been parted
from her child. She sang it in so sad a voice, and to so sweet an air,
that it was enough to make any one, even a nun, weep. The sister,
accustomed as she was to austerities, felt a tear spring to her eyes.

The clock struck six. Fantine did not seem to hear it. She no
longer seemed to pay attention to anything about her.

Sister Simplice sent a serving-maid to inquire of the portress
of the factory, whether the mayor had returned, and if he would
not come to the infirmary soon. The girl returned in a few minutes.

Fantine was still motionless and seemed absorbed in her own thoughts.

The servant informed Sister Simplice in a very low tone, that the mayor
had set out that morning before six o'clock, in a little tilbury harnessed
to a white horse, cold as the weather was; that he had gone alone,
without even a driver; that no one knew what road he had taken;
that people said he had been seen to turn into the road to Arras;
that others asserted that they had met him on the road to Paris.
That when he went away he had been very gentle, as usual, and that he
had merely told the portress not to expect him that night.

While the two women were whispering together, with their backs turned
to Fantine's bed, the sister interrogating, the servant conjecturing,
Fantine, with the feverish vivacity of certain organic maladies,
which unite the free movements of health with the frightful
emaciation of death, had raised herself to her knees in bed,
with her shrivelled hands resting on the bolster, and her head
thrust through the opening of the curtains, and was listening.
All at once she cried:--

"You are speaking of M. Madeleine! Why are you talking so low?
What is he doing? Why does he not come?"

Her voice was so abrupt and hoarse that the two women thought they
heard the voice of a man; they wheeled round in affright.

"Answer me!" cried Fantine.

The servant stammered:--

"The portress told me that he could not come to-day."

"Be calm, my child," said the sister; "lie down again."

Fantine, without changing her attitude, continued in a loud voice,
and with an accent that was both imperious and heart-rending:--

"He cannot come? Why not? You know the reason. You are whispering
it to each other there. I want to know it."

The servant-maid hastened to say in the nun's ear, "Say that he
is busy with the city council."

Sister Simplice blushed faintly, for it was a lie that the maid
had proposed to her.

On the other hand, it seemed to her that the mere communication of the
truth to the invalid would, without doubt, deal her a terrible blow,
and that this was a serious matter in Fantine's present state.
Her flush did not last long; the sister raised her calm, sad eyes
to Fantine, and said, "Monsieur le Maire has gone away."

Fantine raised herself and crouched on her heels in the bed:
her eyes sparkled; indescribable joy beamed from that melancholy face.

"Gone!" she cried; "he has gone to get Cosette."

Then she raised her arms to heaven, and her white face became ineffable;
her lips moved; she was praying in a low voice.

When her prayer was finished, "Sister," she said, "I am willing to lie
down again; I will do anything you wish; I was naughty just now;
I beg your pardon for having spoken so loud; it is very wrong
to talk loudly; I know that well, my good sister, but, you see,
I am very happy: the good God is good; M. Madeleine is good;
just think! he has gone to Montfermeil to get my little Cosette."

She lay down again, with the nun's assistance, helped the nun
to arrange her pillow, and kissed the little silver cross which she
wore on her neck, and which Sister Simplice had given her.

"My child," said the sister, "try to rest now, and do not talk
any more."

Fantine took the sister's hand in her moist hands, and the latter
was pained to feel that perspiration.

"He set out this morning for Paris; in fact, he need not even go
through Paris; Montfermeil is a little to the left as you come thence.
Do you remember how he said to me yesterday, when I spoke
to him of Cosette, Soon, soon? He wants to give me a surprise,
you know! he made me sign a letter so that she could be taken from
the Thenardiers; they cannot say anything, can they? they will give
back Cosette, for they have been paid; the authorities will not
allow them to keep the child since they have received their pay.
Do not make signs to me that I must not talk, sister! I am
extremely happy; I am doing well; I am not ill at all any more;
I am going to see Cosette again; I am even quite hungry; it is
nearly five years since I saw her last; you cannot imagine how much
attached one gets to children, and then, she will be so pretty;
you will see! If you only knew what pretty little rosy fingers
she had! In the first place, she will have very beautiful hands;
she had ridiculous hands when she was only a year old; like this!
she must be a big girl now; she is seven years old; she is quite
a young lady; I call her Cosette, but her name is really Euphrasie.
Stop! this morning I was looking at the dust on the chimney-piece,
and I had a sort of idea come across me, like that, that I should
see Cosette again soon. Mon Dieu! how wrong it is not to see one's
children for years! One ought to reflect that life is not eternal.
Oh, how good M. le Maire is to go! it is very cold! it is true;
he had on his cloak, at least? he will be here to-morrow, will he
not? to-morrow will be a festival day; to-morrow morning, sister,
you must remind me to put on my little cap that has lace on it.
What a place that Montfermeil is! I took that journey on foot once;
it was very long for me, but the diligences go very quickly! he
will be here to-morrow with Cosette: how far is it from here
to Montfermeil?"

The sister, who had no idea of distances, replied, "Oh, I think
that be will be here to-morrow."

"To-morrow! to-morrow!" said Fantine, "I shall see Cosette to-morrow!
you see, good sister of the good God, that I am no longer ill;
I am mad; I could dance if any one wished it."

A person who had seen her a quarter of an hour previously would
not have understood the change; she was all rosy now; she spoke
in a lively and natural voice; her whole face was one smile;
now and then she talked, she laughed softly; the joy of a mother
is almost infantile.

"Well," resumed the nun, "now that you are happy, mind me,
and do not talk any more."

Fantine laid her head on her pillow and said in a low voice:
"Yes, lie down again; be good, for you are going to have your child;
Sister Simplice is right; every one here is right."

And then, without stirring, without even moving her head, she began
to stare all about her with wide-open eyes and a joyous air,
and she said nothing more.

The sister drew the curtains together again, hoping that she would
fall into a doze. Between seven and eight o'clock the doctor came;
not hearing any sound, he thought Fantine was asleep, entered softly,
and approached the bed on tiptoe; he opened the curtains a little,
and, by the light of the taper, he saw Fantine's big eyes gazing
at him.

She said to him, "She will be allowed to sleep beside
me in a little bed, will she not, sir?"

The doctor thought that she was delirious. She added:--

"See! there is just room."

The doctor took Sister Simplice aside, and she explained
matters to him; that M. Madeleine was absent for a day or two,
and that in their doubt they had not thought it well to undeceive
the invalid, who believed that the mayor had gone to Montfermeil;
that it was possible, after all, that her guess was correct:
the doctor approved.

He returned to Fantine's bed, and she went on:--

"You see, when she wakes up in the morning, I shall be able to say
good morning to her, poor kitten, and when I cannot sleep at night,
I can hear her asleep; her little gentle breathing will do me good."

"Give me your hand," said the doctor.

She stretched out her arm, and exclaimed with a laugh:--

"Ah, hold! in truth, you did not know it; I am cured; Cosette will
arrive to-morrow."

The doctor was surprised; she was better; the pressure on her chest
had decreased; her pulse had regained its strength; a sort of life
had suddenly supervened and reanimated this poor, worn-out creature.

"Doctor," she went on, "did the sister tell you that M. le Maire
has gone to get that mite of a child?"

The doctor recommended silence, and that all painful emotions should
be avoided; he prescribed an infusion of pure chinchona, and, in case
the fever should increase again during the night, a calming potion.
As he took his departure, he said to the sister:--

"She is doing better; if good luck willed that the mayor should
actually arrive to-morrow with the child, who knows? there are
crises so astounding; great joy has been known to arrest maladies;
I know well that this is an organic disease, and in an advanced state,
but all those things are such mysteries: we may be able to save her."

CHAPTER VII

THE TRAVELLER ON HIS ARRIVAL TAKES PRECAUTIONS FOR DEPARTURE

It was nearly eight o'clock in the evening when the cart, which we
left on the road, entered the porte-cochere of the Hotel de la Poste
in Arras; the man whom we have been following up to this moment
alighted from it, responded with an abstracted air to the attentions
of the people of the inn, sent back the extra horse, and with his
own hands led the little white horse to the stable; then he opened
the door of a billiard-room which was situated on the ground floor,
sat down there, and leaned his elbows on a table; he had taken
fourteen hours for the journey which he had counted on making in six;
he did himself the justice to acknowledge that it was not his fault,
but at bottom, he was not sorry.

The landlady of the hotel entered.

"Does Monsieur wish a bed? Does Monsieur require supper?"

He made a sign of the head in the negative.

"The stableman says that Monsieur's horse is extremely fatigued."

Here he broke his silence.

"Will not the horse be in a condition to set out again to-morrow morning?"

"Oh, Monsieur! he must rest for two days at least."

He inquired:--

"Is not the posting-station located here?"

"Yes, sir."

The hostess conducted him to the office; he showed his passport,
and inquired whether there was any way of returning that same night
to M. sur M. by the mail-wagon; the seat beside the post-boy chanced
to be vacant; he engaged it and paid for it. "Monsieur," said
the clerk, "do not fail to be here ready to start at precisely
one o'clock in the morning."

This done, he left the hotel and began to wander about the town.

He was not acquainted with Arras; the streets were dark, and he
walked on at random; but he seemed bent upon not asking the way
of the passers-by. He crossed the little river Crinchon, and found
himself in a labyrinth of narrow alleys where he lost his way.
A citizen was passing along with a lantern. After some hesitation,
he decided to apply to this man, not without having first glanced
behind and in front of him, as though he feared lest some one should
hear the question which he was about to put.

"Monsieur," said he, "where is the court-house, if you please."

"You do not belong in town, sir?" replied the bourgeois,
who was an oldish man; "well, follow me. I happen to be
going in the direction of the court-house, that is to say,
in the direction of the hotel of the prefecture; for the
court-house is undergoing repairs just at this moment, and
the courts are holding their sittings provisionally in the prefecture."

"Is it there that the Assizes are held?" he asked.

"Certainly, sir; you see, the prefecture of to-day was the bishop's
palace before the Revolution. M. de Conzie, who was bishop in '82,
built a grand hall there. It is in this grand hall that the court
is held."

On the way, the bourgeois said to him:--

"If Monsieur desires to witness a case, it is rather late.
The sittings generally close at six o'clock."

When they arrived on the grand square, however, the man pointed
out to him four long windows all lighted up, in the front of a vast
and gloomy building.

"Upon my word, sir, you are in luck; you have arrived in season.
Do you see those four windows? That is the Court of Assizes.
There is light there, so they are not through. The matter must have
been greatly protracted, and they are holding an evening session.
Do you take an interest in this affair? Is it a criminal case?
Are you a witness?"

He replied:--

"I have not come on any business; I only wish to speak to one
of the lawyers."

"That is different," said the bourgeois. "Stop, sir; here is the door
where the sentry stands. You have only to ascend the grand staircase."

He conformed to the bourgeois's directions, and a few minutes
later he was in a hall containing many people, and where groups,
intermingled with lawyers in their gowns, were whispering together
here and there.

It is always a heart-breaking thing to see these congregations
of men robed in black, murmuring together in low voices,
on the threshold of the halls of justice. It is rare that charity
and pity are the outcome of these words. Condemnations pronounced
in advance are more likely to be the result. All these groups
seem to the passing and thoughtful observer so many sombre hives
where buzzing spirits construct in concert all sorts of dark edifices.

This spacious hall, illuminated by a single lamp, was the old hall
of the episcopal palace, and served as the large hall of the palace
of justice. A double-leaved door, which was closed at that moment,
separated it from the large apartment where the court was sitting.

The obscurity was such that he did not fear to accost the first
lawyer whom he met.

"What stage have they reached, sir?" he asked.

"It is finished," said the lawyer.

"Finished!"

This word was repeated in such accents that the lawyer turned round.

"Excuse me sir; perhaps you are a relative?"

"No; I know no one here. Has judgment been pronounced?"

"Of course. Nothing else was possible."

"To penal servitude?"

"For life."

He continued, in a voice so weak that it was barely audible:--

"Then his identity was established?"

"What identity?" replied the lawyer. "There was no identity
to be established. The matter was very simple. The woman had
murdered her child; the infanticide was proved; the jury threw
out the question of premeditation, and she was condemned for life."

"So it was a woman?" said he.

"Why, certainly. The Limosin woman. Of what are you speaking?"

"Nothing. But since it is all over, how comes it that the hall
is still lighted?"

"For another case, which was begun about two hours ago.

"What other case?"

"Oh! this one is a clear case also. It is about a sort of blackguard;
a man arrested for a second offence; a convict who has been guilty
of theft. I don't know his name exactly. There's a bandit's
phiz for you! I'd send him to the galleys on the strength of his
face alone."

"Is there any way of getting into the court-room, sir?" said he.

"I really think that there is not. There is a great crowd.
However, the hearing has been suspended. Some people have gone out,
and when the hearing is resumed, you might make an effort."

"Where is the entrance?"

"Through yonder large door."

The lawyer left him. In the course of a few moments he had experienced,
almost simultaneously, almost intermingled with each other,
all possible emotions. The words of this indifferent spectator had,
in turn, pierced his heart like needles of ice and like blades of fire.
When he saw that nothing was settled, he breathed freely once more;
but he could not have told whether what he felt was pain or pleasure.

He drew near to many groups and listened to what they were saying.
The docket of the session was very heavy; the president had
appointed for the same day two short and simple cases. They had
begun with the infanticide, and now they had reached the convict,
the old offender, the "return horse." This man had stolen apples,
but that did not appear to be entirely proved; what had been
proved was, that he had already been in the galleys at Toulon.
It was that which lent a bad aspect to his case. However, the man's
examination and the depositions of the witnesses had been completed,
but the lawyer's plea, and the speech of the public prosecutor were
still to come; it could not be finished before midnight. The man
would probably be condemned; the attorney-general was very clever,
and never missed his culprits; he was a brilliant fellow who
wrote verses.

An usher stood at the door communicating with the hall of the Assizes.
He inquired of this usher:--

"Will the door be opened soon, sir?"

"It will not be opened at all," replied the usher.

"What! It will not be opened when the hearing is resumed?
Is not the hearing suspended?"

"The hearing has just been begun again," replied the usher,
"but the door will not be opened again."

"Why?"

"Because the hall is full."

"What! There is not room for one more?"

"Not another one. The door is closed. No one can enter now."

The usher added after a pause: "There are, to tell the truth,
two or three extra places behind Monsieur le President, but Monsieur
le President only admits public functionaries to them."

So saying, the usher turned his back.

He retired with bowed head, traversed the antechamber, and slowly
descended the stairs, as though hesitating at every step.
It is probable that he was holding counsel with himself.
The violent conflict which had been going on within him since the
preceding evening was not yet ended; and every moment he encountered
some new phase of it. On reaching the landing-place, he leaned
his back against the balusters and folded his arms. All at once he
opened his coat, drew out his pocket-book, took from it a pencil,
tore out a leaf, and upon that leaf he wrote rapidly, by the light
of the street lantern, this line: M. Madeleine, Mayor of M. sur M.;
then he ascended the stairs once more with great strides,
made his way through the crowd, walked straight up to the usher,
handed him the paper, and said in an authoritative manner:--

"Take this to Monsieur le President."

The usher took the paper, cast a glance upon it, and obeyed.

CHAPTER VIII

AN ENTRANCE BY FAVOR

Although he did not suspect the fact, the mayor of M. sur M. enjoyed
a sort of celebrity. For the space of seven years his reputation
for virtue had filled the whole of Bas Boulonnais; it had eventually
passed the confines of a small district and had been spread abroad
through two or three neighboring departments. Besides the service
which he had rendered to the chief town by resuscitating the black
jet industry, there was not one out of the hundred and forty communes
of the arrondissement of M. sur M. which was not indebted to him
for some benefit. He had even at need contrived to aid and multiply
the industries of other arrondissements. It was thus that he had,
when occasion offered, supported with his credit and his funds the
linen factory at Boulogne, the flax-spinning industry at Frevent,
and the hydraulic manufacture of cloth at Boubers-sur-Canche.
Everywhere the name of M. Madeleine was pronounced with veneration.
Arras and Douai envied the happy little town of M. sur M. its mayor.

The Councillor of the Royal Court of Douai, who was presiding over
this session of the Assizes at Arras, was acquainted, in common
with the rest of the world, with this name which was so profoundly
and universally honored. When the usher, discreetly opening the door
which connected the council-chamber with the court-room, bent over the
back of the President's arm-chair and handed him the paper on which was
inscribed the line which we have just perused, adding: "The gentleman
desires to be present at the trial," the President, with a quick
and deferential movement, seized a pen and wrote a few words at
the bottom of the paper and returned it to the usher, saying, "Admit him."

The unhappy man whose history we are relating had remained near
the door of the hall, in the same place and the same attitude in
which the usher had left him. In the midst of his revery he heard
some one saying to him, "Will Monsieur do me the honor to follow me?"
It was the same usher who had turned his back upon him but a
moment previously, and who was now bowing to the earth before him.
At the same time, the usher handed him the paper. He unfolded it,
and as he chanced to be near the light, he could read it.

"The President of the Court of Assizes presents his respects
to M. Madeleine."

He crushed the paper in his hand as though those words contained
for him a strange and bitter aftertaste.

He followed the usher.

A few minutes later he found himself alone in a sort of wainscoted
cabinet of severe aspect, lighted by two wax candles, placed upon a table
with a green cloth. The last words of the usher who had just quitted him
still rang in his ears: "Monsieur, you are now in the council-chamber;
you have only to turn the copper handle of yonder door, and you will
find yourself in the court-room, behind the President's chair."
These words were mingled in his thoughts with a vague memory
of narrow corridors and dark staircases which he had recently traversed.

The usher had left him alone. The supreme moment had arrived.
He sought to collect his faculties, but could not. It is chiefly
at the moment when there is the greatest need for attaching them
to the painful realities of life, that the threads of thought
snap within the brain. He was in the very place where the judges
deliberated and condemned. With stupid tranquillity he surveyed this
peaceful and terrible apartment, where so many lives had been broken,
which was soon to ring with his name, and which his fate was at that
moment traversing. He stared at the wall, then he looked at himself,
wondering that it should be that chamber and that it should be he.

He had eaten nothing for four and twenty hours; he was worn
out by the jolts of the cart, but he was not conscious of it.
It seemed to him that he felt nothing.

He approached a black frame which was suspended on the wall,
and which contained, under glass, an ancient autograph letter
of Jean Nicolas Pache, mayor of Paris and minister, and dated,
through an error, no doubt, the 9th of June, of the year II., and
in which Pache forwarded to the commune the list of ministers and
deputies held in arrest by them. Any spectator who had chanced to see
him at that moment, and who had watched him, would have imagined,
doubtless, that this letter struck him as very curious, for he did
not take his eyes from it, and he read it two or three times.
He read it without paying any attention to it, and unconsciously.
He was thinking of Fantine and Cosette.

As he dreamed, he turned round, and his eyes fell upon the brass
knob of the door which separated him from the Court of Assizes.
He had almost forgotten that door. His glance, calm at first,
paused there, remained fixed on that brass handle, then grew terrified,
and little by little became impregnated with fear. Beads of
perspiration burst forth among his hair and trickled down upon
his temples.

At a certain moment he made that indescribable gesture of a sort
of authority mingled with rebellion, which is intended to convey,
and which does so well convey, "Pardieu! who compels me to this?"
Then he wheeled briskly round, caught sight of the door through which he
had entered in front of him, went to it, opened it, and passed out.
He was no longer in that chamber; he was outside in a corridor, a long,
narrow corridor, broken by steps and gratings, making all sorts
of angles, lighted here and there by lanterns similar to the night
taper of invalids, the corridor through which he had approached.
He breathed, he listened; not a sound in front, not a sound behind him,
and he fled as though pursued.

When he had turned many angles in this corridor, he still listened.
The same silence reigned, and there was the same darkness around him.
He was out of breath; he staggered; he leaned against the wall.
The stone was cold; the perspiration lay ice-cold on his brow;
he straightened himself up with a shiver.

Then, there alone in the darkness, trembling with cold and with
something else, too, perchance, he meditated.

He had meditated all night long; he had meditated all the day:
he heard within him but one voice, which said, "Alas!"

A quarter of an hour passed thus. At length he bowed his head,
sighed with agony, dropped his arms, and retraced his steps.
He walked slowly, and as though crushed. It seemed as though some one
had overtaken him in his flight and was leading him back.

He re-entered the council-chamber. The first thing he caught
sight of was the knob of the door. This knob, which was round
and of polished brass, shone like a terrible star for him.
He gazed at it as a lamb might gaze into the eye of a tiger.

He could not take his eyes from it. From time to time he advanced
a step and approached the door.

Had he listened, he would have heard the sound of the adjoining
hall like a sort of confused murmur; but he did not listen, and he
did not hear.

Suddenly, without himself knowing how it happened, he found himself
near the door; he grasped the knob convulsively; the door opened.

He was in the court-room.

CHAPTER IX

A PLACE WHERE CONVICTIONS ARE IN PROCESS OF FORMATION

He advanced a pace, closed the door mechanically behind him,
and remained standing, contemplating what he saw.

It was a vast and badly lighted apartment, now full of uproar,
now full of silence, where all the apparatus of a criminal case,
with its petty and mournful gravity in the midst of the throng,
was in process of development.

At the one end of the hall, the one where he was, were judges,
with abstracted air, in threadbare robes, who were gnawing their
nails or closing their eyelids; at the other end, a ragged crowd;
lawyers in all sorts of attitudes; soldiers with hard but honest
faces; ancient, spotted woodwork, a dirty ceiling, tables covered
with serge that was yellow rather than green; doors blackened
by handmarks; tap-room lamps which emitted more smoke than light,
suspended from nails in the wainscot; on the tables candles
in brass candlesticks; darkness, ugliness, sadness; and from
all this there was disengaged an austere and august impression,
for one there felt that grand human thing which is called the law,
and that grand divine thing which is called justice.

No one in all that throng paid any attention to him; all glances
were directed towards a single point, a wooden bench placed against
a small door, in the stretch of wall on the President's left;
on this bench, illuminated by several candles, sat a man between
two gendarmes.

This man was the man.

He did not seek him; he saw him; his eyes went thither naturally,
as though they had known beforehand where that figure was.

He thought he was looking at himself, grown old; not absolutely the
same in face, of course, but exactly similar in attitude and aspect,
with his bristling hair, with that wild and uneasy eye, with that blouse,
just as it was on the day when he entered D----, full of hatred,
concealing his soul in that hideous mass of frightful thoughts which
he had spent nineteen years in collecting on the floor of the prison.

He said to himself with a shudder, "Good God! shall I become
like that again?"

This creature seemed to be at least sixty; there was something
indescribably coarse, stupid, and frightened about him.

At the sound made by the opening door, people had drawn aside to make
way for him; the President had turned his head, and, understanding that
the personage who had just entered was the mayor of M. sur M., he had
bowed to him; the attorney-general, who had seen M. Madeleine at M. sur
M., whither the duties of his office had called him more than once,
recognized him and saluted him also: he had hardly perceived it;
he was the victim of a sort of hallucination; he was watching.

Judges, clerks, gendarmes, a throng of cruelly curious heads, all these he
had already beheld once, in days gone by, twenty-seven years before;
he had encountered those fatal things once more; there they were;
they moved; they existed; it was no longer an effort of his memory,
a mirage of his thought; they were real gendarmes and real judges,
a real crowd, and real men of flesh and blood: it was all over;
he beheld the monstrous aspects of his past reappear and live once
more around him, with all that there is formidable in reality.

All this was yawning before him.

He was horrified by it; he shut his eyes, and exclaimed in the
deepest recesses of his soul, "Never!"

And by a tragic play of destiny which made all his ideas tremble,
and rendered him nearly mad, it was another self of his that was
there! all called that man who was being tried Jean Valjean.

Under his very eyes, unheard-of vision, he had a sort of representation
of the most horrible moment of his life, enacted by his spectre.

Everything was there; the apparatus was the same, the hour of the night,
the faces of the judges, of soldiers, and of spectators; all were
the same, only above the President's head there hung a crucifix,
something which the courts had lacked at the time of his condemnation:
God had been absent when he had been judged.

There was a chair behind him; he dropped into it, terrified at
the thought that he might be seen; when he was seated,
he took advantage of a pile of cardboard boxes, which stood
on the judge's desk, to conceal his face from the whole room;
he could now see without being seen; he had fully regained
consciousness of the reality of things; gradually he recovered;
he attained that phase of composure where it is possible to listen.

M. Bamatabois was one of the jurors.

He looked for Javert, but did not see him; the seat of the
witnesses was hidden from him by the clerk's table, and then,
as we have just said, the hall was sparely lighted.

At the moment of this entrance, the defendant's lawyer had just
finished his plea.

The attention of all was excited to the highest pitch; the affair had
lasted for three hours: for three hours that crowd had been watching
a strange man, a miserable specimen of humanity, either profoundly
stupid or profoundly subtle, gradually bending beneath the weight
of a terrible likeness. This man, as the reader already knows,
was a vagabond who had been found in a field carrying a branch
laden with ripe apples, broken in the orchard of a neighbor,
called the Pierron orchard. Who was this man? an examination
had been made; witnesses had been heard, and they were unanimous;
light had abounded throughout the entire debate; the accusation said:
"We have in our grasp not only a marauder, a stealer of fruit;
we have here, in our hands, a bandit, an old offender who has broken
his ban, an ex-convict, a miscreant of the most dangerous description,
a malefactor named Jean Valjean, whom justice has long been in
search of, and who, eight years ago, on emerging from the galleys
at Toulon, committed a highway robbery, accompanied by violence,
on the person of a child, a Savoyard named Little Gervais; a crime
provided for by article 383 of the Penal Code, the right to try
him for which we reserve hereafter, when his identity shall have
been judicially established. He has just committed a fresh theft;
it is a case of a second offence; condemn him for the fresh deed;
later on he will be judged for the old crime." In the face of
this accusation, in the face of the unanimity of the witnesses,
the accused appeared to be astonished more than anything else;
he made signs and gestures which were meant to convey No,
or else he stared at the ceiling: he spoke with difficulty,
replied with embarrassment, but his whole person, from head to foot,
was a denial; he was an idiot in the presence of all these minds
ranged in order of battle around him, and like a stranger
in the midst of this society which was seizing fast upon him;
nevertheless, it was a question of the most menacing future for him;
the likeness increased every moment, and the entire crowd surveyed,
with more anxiety than he did himself, that sentence freighted
with calamity, which descended ever closer over his head; there was
even a glimpse of a possibility afforded; besides the galleys,
a possible death penalty, in case his identity were established,
and the affair of Little Gervais were to end thereafter in condemnation.
Who was this man? what was the nature of his apathy? was it
imbecility or craft? Did he understand too well, or did he not
understand at all? these were questions which divided the crowd,
and seemed to divide the jury; there was something both terrible
and puzzling in this case: the drama was not only melancholy; it was
also obscure.

The counsel for the defence had spoken tolerably well, in that
provincial tongue which has long constituted the eloquence of the bar,
and which was formerly employed by all advocates, at Paris as well as at
Romorantin or at Montbrison, and which to-day, having become classic,
is no longer spoken except by the official orators of magistracy,
to whom it is suited on account of its grave sonorousness and its
majestic stride; a tongue in which a husband is called a consort,
and a woman a spouse; Paris, the centre of art and civilization;
the king, the monarch; Monseigneur the Bishop, a sainted pontiff;
the district-attorney, the eloquent interpreter of public prosecution;
the arguments, the accents which we have just listened to; the age
of Louis XIV., the grand age; a theatre, the temple of Melpomene;
the reigning family, the august blood of our kings; a concert,
a musical solemnity; the General Commandant of the province,
the illustrious warrior, who, etc.; the pupils in the seminary,
these tender levities; errors imputed to newspapers, the imposture
which distills its venom through the columns of those organs; etc.
The lawyer had, accordingly, begun with an explanation as to the
theft of the apples,--an awkward matter couched in fine style;
but Benigne Bossuet himself was obliged to allude to a chicken
in the midst of a funeral oration, and he extricated himself from
the situation in stately fashion. The lawyer established the fact
that the theft of the apples had not been circumstantially proved.
His client, whom he, in his character of counsel, persisted in
calling Champmathieu, had not been seen scaling that wall nor
breaking that branch by any one. He had been taken with that branch
(which the lawyer preferred to call a bough) in his possession;
but he said that he had found it broken off and lying on the ground,
and had picked it up. Where was there any proof to the contrary?
No doubt that branch had been broken off and concealed after the
scaling of the wall, then thrown away by the alarmed marauder;
there was no doubt that there had been a thief in the case.
But what proof was there that that thief had been Champmathieu?
One thing only. His character as an ex-convict. The lawyer did not
deny that that character appeared to be, unhappily, well attested;
the accused had resided at Faverolles; the accused had exercised
the calling of a tree-pruner there; the name of Champmathieu might
well have had its origin in Jean Mathieu; all that was true,--
in short, four witnesses recognize Champmathieu, positively and
without hesitation, as that convict, Jean Valjean; to these signs,
to this testimony, the counsel could oppose nothing but the denial
of his client, the denial of an interested party; but supposing that he
was the convict Jean Valjean, did that prove that he was the thief
of the apples? that was a presumption at the most, not a proof.
The prisoner, it was true, and his counsel, "in good faith,"
was obliged to admit it, had adopted "a bad system of defence."
He obstinately denied everything, the theft and his character of convict.
An admission upon this last point would certainly have been better,
and would have won for him the indulgence of his judges; the counsel
had advised him to do this; but the accused had obstinately refused,
thinking, no doubt, that he would save everything by admitting nothing.
It was an error; but ought not the paucity of this intelligence
to be taken into consideration? This man was visibly stupid.
Long-continued wretchedness in the galleys, long misery outside
the galleys, had brutalized him, etc. He defended himself badly;
was that a reason for condemning him? As for the affair with
Little Gervais, the counsel need not discuss it; it did not enter
into the case. The lawyer wound up by beseeching the jury and
the court, if the identity of Jean Valjean appeared to them to
be evident, to apply to him the police penalties which are provided
for a criminal who has broken his ban, and not the frightful
chastisement which descends upon the convict guilty of a second
offence.

The district-attorney answered the counsel for the defence.
He was violent and florid, as district-attorneys usually are.

He congratulated the counsel for the defence on his "loyalty," and
skilfully took advantage of this loyalty. He reached the accused
through all the concessions made by his lawyer. The advocate had seemed
to admit that the prisoner was Jean Valjean. He took note of this.
So this man was Jean Valjean. This point had been conceded to the
accusation and could no longer be disputed. Here, by means of a clever
autonomasia which went back to the sources and causes of crime,
the district-attorney thundered against the immorality of the
romantic school, then dawning under the name of the Satanic school,
which had been bestowed upon it by the critics of the Quotidienne
and the Oriflamme; he attributed, not without some probability,
to the influence of this perverse literature the crime of Champmathieu,
or rather, to speak more correctly, of Jean Valjean. Having exhausted
these considerations, he passed on to Jean Valjean himself.
Who was this Jean Valjean? Description of Jean Valjean: a monster
spewed forth, etc. The model for this sort of description is
contained in the tale of Theramene, which is not useful to tragedy,
but which every day renders great services to judicial eloquence.
The audience and the jury "shuddered." The description finished,
the district-attorney resumed with an oratorical turn calculated
to raise the enthusiasm of the journal of the prefecture to
the highest pitch on the following day: And it is such a man,
etc., etc., etc., vagabond, beggar, without means of existence,
etc., etc., inured by his past life to culpable deeds, and but little
reformed by his sojourn in the galleys, as was proved by the crime
committed against Little Gervais, etc., etc.; it is such a man,
caught upon the highway in the very act of theft, a few paces
from a wall that had been scaled, still holding in his hand
the object stolen, who denies the crime, the theft, the climbing
the wall; denies everything; denies even his own identity!
In addition to a hundred other proofs, to which we will not recur,
four witnesses recognize him--Javert, the upright inspector
of police; Javert, and three of his former companions in infamy,
the convicts Brevet, Chenildieu, and Cochepaille. What does he
offer in opposition to this overwhelming unanimity? His denial.
What obduracy! You will do justice, gentlemen of the jury, etc., etc.
While the district-attorney was speaking, the accused listened to him
open-mouthed, with a sort of amazement in which some admiration
was assuredly blended. He was evidently surprised that a man could
talk like that. From time to time, at those "energetic" moments
of the prosecutor's speech, when eloquence which cannot contain itself
overflows in a flood of withering epithets and envelops the accused
like a storm, he moved his head slowly from right to left and from
left to right in the sort of mute and melancholy protest with which
he had contented himself since the beginning of the argument.
Two or three times the spectators who were nearest to him heard him say
in a low voice, "That is what comes of not having asked M. Baloup."
The district-attorney directed the attention of the jury to this
stupid attitude, evidently deliberate, which denoted not imbecility,
but craft, skill, a habit of deceiving justice, and which set
forth in all its nakedness the "profound perversity" of this man.
He ended by making his reserves on the affair of Little Gervais and
demanding a severe sentence.

At that time, as the reader will remember, it was penal servitude
for life.

The counsel for the defence rose, began by complimenting Monsieur
l'Avocat-General on his "admirable speech," then replied as best
he could; but he weakened; the ground was evidently slipping away
from under his feet.

CHAPTER X

THE SYSTEM OF DENIALS

The moment for closing the debate had arrived. The President had
the accused stand up, and addressed to him the customary question,
"Have you anything to add to your defence?"

The man did not appear to understand, as he stood there,
twisting in his hands a terrible cap which he had.

The President repeated the question.

This time the man heard it. He seemed to understand. He made
a motion like a man who is just waking up, cast his eyes about him,
stared at the audience, the gendarmes, his counsel, the jury, the court,
laid his monstrous fist on the rim of woodwork in front of his bench,
took another look, and all at once, fixing his glance upon the
district-attorney, he began to speak. It was like an eruption.
It seemed, from the manner in which the words escaped from his mouth,--
incoherent, impetuous, pell-mell, tumbling over each other,--
as though they were all pressing forward to issue forth at once.
He said:--

"This is what I have to say. That I have been a wheelwright in Paris,
and that it was with Monsieur Baloup. It is a hard trade.
In the wheelwright's trade one works always in the open air,
in courtyards, under sheds when the masters are good, never in
closed workshops, because space is required, you see. In winter
one gets so cold that one beats one's arms together to warm
one's self; but the masters don't like it; they say it wastes time.
Handling iron when there is ice between the paving-stones is hard work.
That wears a man out quickly One is old while he is still quite young
in that trade. At forty a man is done for. I was fifty-three. I
was in a bad state. And then, workmen are so mean! When a man is
no longer young, they call him nothing but an old bird, old beast!
I was not earning more than thirty sous a day. They paid me
as little as possible. The masters took advantage of my age--
and then I had my daughter, who was a laundress at the river.
She earned a little also. It sufficed for us two. She had trouble,
also; all day long up to her waist in a tub, in rain, in snow.
When the wind cuts your face, when it freezes, it is all the same;
you must still wash. There are people who have not much linen,
and wait until late; if you do not wash, you lose your custom.
The planks are badly joined, and water drops on you from everywhere;
you have your petticoats all damp above and below. That penetrates.
She has also worked at the laundry of the Enfants-Rouges, where
the water comes through faucets. You are not in the tub there;
you wash at the faucet in front of you, and rinse in a basin
behind you. As it is enclosed, you are not so cold; but there
is that hot steam, which is terrible, and which ruins your eyes.
She came home at seven o'clock in the evening, and went to bed
at once, she was so tired. Her husband beat her. She is dead.
We have not been very happy. She was a good girl, who did not go
to the ball, and who was very peaceable. I remember one Shrove-Tuesday
when she went to bed at eight o'clock. There, I am telling the truth;
you have only to ask. Ah, yes! how stupid I am! Paris is a gulf.
Who knows Father Champmathieu there? But M. Baloup does, I tell you.
Go see at M. Baloup's; and after all, I don't know what is wanted of
me."

The man ceased speaking, and remained standing. He had said these
things in a loud, rapid, hoarse voice, with a sort of irritated and
savage ingenuousness. Once he paused to salute some one in the crowd.
The sort of affirmations which he seemed to fling out before him
at random came like hiccoughs, and to each he added the gesture
of a wood-cutter who is splitting wood. When he had finished,
the audience burst into a laugh. He stared at the public, and,
perceiving that they were laughing, and not understanding why,
he began to laugh himself.

It was inauspicious.

The President, an attentive and benevolent man, raised his voice.

He reminded "the gentlemen of the jury" that "the sieur Baloup,
formerly a master-wheelwright, with whom the accused stated that he
had served, had been summoned in vain. He had become bankrupt,
and was not to be found." Then turning to the accused, he enjoined
him to listen to what he was about to say, and added: "You are in
a position where reflection is necessary. The gravest presumptions
rest upon you, and may induce vital results. Prisoner, in your
own interests, I summon you for the last time to explain yourself
clearly on two points. In the first place, did you or did you not
climb the wall of the Pierron orchard, break the branch, and steal
the apples; that is to say, commit the crime of breaking in and theft?
In the second place, are you the discharged convict, Jean Valjean--
yes or no?"

The prisoner shook his head with a capable air, like a man who has
thoroughly understood, and who knows what answer he is going to make.
He opened his mouth, turned towards the President, and said:--

"In the first place--"

Then he stared at his cap, stared at the ceiling, and held his peace.

"Prisoner," said the district-attorney, in a severe voice;
"pay attention. You are not answering anything that has been
asked of you. Your embarrassment condemns you. It is evident
that your name is not Champmathieu; that you are the convict,
Jean Valjean, concealed first under the name of Jean Mathieu,
which was the name of his mother; that you went to Auvergne;
that you were born at Faverolles, where you were a pruner of trees.
It is evident that you have been guilty of entering, and of the theft
of ripe apples from the Pierron orchard. The gentlemen of the jury
will form their own opinion."

The prisoner had finally resumed his seat; he arose abruptly
when the district-attorney had finished, and exclaimed:--

"You are very wicked; that you are! This what I wanted to say;
I could not find words for it at first. I have stolen nothing.
I am a man who does not have something to eat every day.
I was coming from Ailly; I was walking through the country after
a shower, which had made the whole country yellow: even the ponds
were overflowed, and nothing sprang from the sand any more but
the little blades of grass at the wayside. I found a broken
branch with apples on the ground; I picked up the branch without
knowing that it would get me into trouble. I have been in prison,
and they have been dragging me about for the last three months;
more than that I cannot say; people talk against me, they tell me,
`Answer!' The gendarme, who is a good fellow, nudges my elbow,
and says to me in a low voice, `Come, answer!' I don't know how
to explain; I have no education; I am a poor man; that is where
they wrong me, because they do not see this. I have not stolen;
I picked up from the ground things that were lying there.
You say, Jean Valjean, Jean Mathieu! I don't know those persons;
they are villagers. I worked for M. Baloup, Boulevard de l'Hopital;
my name is Champmathieu. You are very clever to tell me where I
was born; I don't know myself: it's not everybody who has a house
in which to come into the world; that would be too convenient.
I think that my father and mother were people who strolled along
the highways; I know nothing different. When I was a child,
they called me young fellow; now they call me old fellow; those are
my baptismal names; take that as you like. I have been in Auvergne;
I have been at Faverolles. Pardi. Well! can't a man have been
in Auvergne, or at Faverolles, without having been in the galleys?
I tell you that I have not stolen, and that I am Father Champmathieu;
I have been with M. Baloup; I have had a settled residence.
You worry me with your nonsense, there! Why is everybody pursuing me so
furiously?"

The district-attorney had remained standing; he addressed the President:--

"Monsieur le President, in view of the confused but exceedingly
clever denials of the prisoner, who would like to pass himself
off as an idiot, but who will not succeed in so doing,--
we shall attend to that,--we demand that it shall please you
and that it shall please the court to summon once more into
this place the convicts Brevet, Cochepaille, and Chenildieu,
and Police-Inspector Javert, and question them for the last
time as to the identity of the prisoner with the convict Jean Valjean."

"I would remind the district-attorney," said the President,
"that Police-Inspector Javert, recalled by his duties to the capital
of a neighboring arrondissement, left the court-room and the town
as soon as he had made his deposition; we have accorded him permission,
with the consent of the district-attorney and of the counsel
for the prisoner."

"That is true, Mr. President," responded the district-attorney.
"In the absence of sieur Javert, I think it my duty to remind
the gentlemen of the jury of what he said here a few hours ago.
Javert is an estimable man, who does honor by his rigorous and strict
probity to inferior but important functions. These are the terms
of his deposition: `I do not even stand in need of circumstantial
proofs and moral presumptions to give the lie to the prisoner's denial.
I recognize him perfectly. The name of this man is not Champmathieu;
he is an ex-convict named Jean Valjean, and is very vicious and much
to be feared. It is only with extreme regret that he was released
at the expiration of his term. He underwent nineteen years of penal
servitude for theft. He made five or six attempts to escape.
Besides the theft from Little Gervais, and from the Pierron orchard,
I suspect him of a theft committed in the house of His Grace the late
Bishop of D---- I often saw him at the time when I was adjutant of
the galley-guard at the prison in Toulon. I repeat that I recognize
him perfectly.'"

This extremely precise statement appeared to produce a vivid
impression on the public and on the jury. The district-attorney
concluded by insisting, that in default of Javert, the three
witnesses Brevet, Chenildieu, and Cochepaille should be heard
once more and solemnly interrogated.

The President transmitted the order to an usher, and, a moment
later, the door of the witnesses' room opened. The usher,
accompanied by a gendarme ready to lend him armed assistance,
introduced the convict Brevet. The audience was in suspense;
and all breasts heaved as though they had contained but one soul.

The ex-convict Brevet wore the black and gray waistcoat of
the central prisons. Brevet was a person sixty years of age,
who had a sort of business man's face, and the air of a rascal.
The two sometimes go together. In prison, whither fresh misdeeds
had led him, he had become something in the nature of a turnkey.
He was a man of whom his superiors said, "He tries to make himself
of use." The chaplains bore good testimony as to his religious habits.
It must not be forgotten that this passed under the Restoration.

"Brevet," said the President, "you have undergone an ignominious
sentence, and you cannot take an oath."

Brevet dropped his eyes.

"Nevertheless," continued the President, "even in the man whom
the law has degraded, there may remain, when the divine mercy
permits it, a sentiment of honor and of equity. It is to this
sentiment that I appeal at this decisive hour. If it still exists
in you,--and I hope it does,--reflect before replying to me:
consider on the one hand, this man, whom a word from you may ruin;
on the other hand, justice, which a word from you may enlighten.
The instant is solemn; there is still time to retract if you think
you have been mistaken. Rise, prisoner. Brevet, take a good look
at the accused, recall your souvenirs, and tell us on your soul
and conscience, if you persist in recognizing this man as your former
companion in the galleys, Jean Valjean?"

Brevet looked at the prisoner, then turned towards the court.

"Yes, Mr. President, I was the first to recognize him, and I stick to it;
that man is Jean Valjean, who entered at Toulon in 1796, and left
in 1815. I left a year later. He has the air of a brute now; but it
must be because age has brutalized him; he was sly at the galleys:
I recognize him positively."

"Take your seat," said the President. "Prisoner, remain standing."

Chenildieu was brought in, a prisoner for life, as was indicated
by his red cassock and his green cap. He was serving out his sentence
at the galleys of Toulon, whence he had been brought for this case.
He was a small man of about fifty, brisk, wrinkled, frail, yellow,
brazen-faced, feverish, who had a sort of sickly feebleness about all
his limbs and his whole person, and an immense force in his glance.
His companions in the galleys had nicknamed him I-deny-God (Je-nie Dieu,
Chenildieu).

The President addressed him in nearly the same words which he had
used to Brevet. At the moment when he reminded him of his infamy
which deprived him of the right to take an oath, Chenildieu raised
his head and looked the crowd in the face. The President invited
him to reflection, and asked him as he had asked Brevet, if he
persisted in recognition of the prisoner.

Chenildieu burst out laughing.

"Pardieu, as if I didn't recognize him! We were attached to the
same chain for five years. So you are sulking, old fellow?"

"Go take your seat," said the President.

The usher brought in Cochepaille. He was another convict for life,
who had come from the galleys, and was dressed in red, like Chenildieu,
was a peasant from Lourdes, and a half-bear of the Pyrenees.
He had guarded the flocks among the mountains, and from a shepherd
he had slipped into a brigand. Cochepaille was no less savage
and seemed even more stupid than the prisoner. He was one of
those wretched men whom nature has sketched out for wild beasts,
and on whom society puts the finishing touches as convicts in
the galleys.

The President tried to touch him with some grave and pathetic words,
and asked him, as he had asked the other two, if he persisted,
without hesitation or trouble, in recognizing the man who was standing
before him.

"He is Jean Valjean," said Cochepaille. "He was even called
Jean-the-Screw, because he was so strong."

Each of these affirmations from these three men, evidently sincere
and in good faith, had raised in the audience a murmur of bad augury
for the prisoner,--a murmur which increased and lasted longer
each time that a fresh declaration was added to the proceeding.

The prisoner had listened to them, with that astounded face which was,
according to the accusation, his principal means of defence;
at the first, the gendarmes, his neighbors, had heard him mutter between
his teeth: "Ah, well, he's a nice one!" after the second, he said,
a little louder, with an air that was almost that of satisfaction,
"Good!" at the third, he cried, "Famous!"

The President addressed him:--

"Have you heard, prisoner? What have you to say?"

He replied:--

"I say, `Famous!'"

An uproar broke out among the audience, and was communicated
to the jury; it was evident that the man was lost.

"Ushers," said the President, "enforce silence! I am going to sum
up the arguments."

At that moment there was a movement just beside the President;
a voice was heard crying:--

"Brevet! Chenildieu! Cochepaille! look here!"

All who heard that voice were chilled, so lamentable and terrible
was it; all eyes were turned to the point whence it had proceeded.
A man, placed among the privileged spectators who were seated behind
the court, had just risen, had pushed open the half-door which separated
the tribunal from the audience, and was standing in the middle
of the hall; the President, the district-attorney, M. Bamatabois,
twenty persons, recognized him, and exclaimed in concert:--

"M. Madeleine!"

CHAPTER XI

CHAMPMATHIEU MORE AND MORE ASTONISHED

It was he, in fact. The clerk's lamp illumined his countenance.
He held his hat in his hand; there was no disorder in his clothing;
his coat was carefully buttoned; he was very pale, and he trembled
slightly; his hair, which had still been gray on his arrival in Arras,
was now entirely white: it had turned white during the hour he
had sat there.

All heads were raised: the sensation was indescribable;
there was a momentary hesitation in the audience, the voice had
been so heart-rending; the man who stood there appeared so calm
that they did not understand at first. They asked themselves
whether he had indeed uttered that cry; they could not believe
that that tranquil man had been the one to give that terrible outcry.

This indecision only lasted a few seconds. Even before
the President and the district-attorney could utter a word,
before the ushers and the gendarmes could make a gesture,
the man whom all still called, at that moment, M. Madeleine,
had advanced towards the witnesses Cochepaille, Brevet, and Chenildieu.

"Do you not recognize me?" said he.

All three remained speechless, and indicated by a sign of the head
that they did not know him. Cochepaille, who was intimidated,
made a military salute. M. Madeleine turned towards the jury
and the court, and said in a gentle voice:--

"Gentlemen of the jury, order the prisoner to be released!
Mr. President, have me arrested. He is not the man whom you are
in search of; it is I: I am Jean Valjean."

Not a mouth breathed; the first commotion of astonishment had been
followed by a silence like that of the grave; those within the hall
experienced that sort of religious terror which seizes the masses
when something grand has been done.

In the meantime, the face of the President was stamped with sympathy
and sadness; he had exchanged a rapid sign with the district-attorney
and a few low-toned words with the assistant judges; he addressed
the public, and asked in accents which all understood:--

"Is there a physician present?"

The district-attorney took the word:--

"Gentlemen of the jury, the very strange and unexpected incident
which disturbs the audience inspires us, like yourselves,
only with a sentiment which it is unnecessary for us to express.
You all know, by reputation at least, the honorable M. Madeleine,
mayor of M. sur M.; if there is a physician in the audience,
we join the President in requesting him to attend to M. Madeleine,
and to conduct him to his home."

M.Madeleine did not allow the district-attorney to finish;
he interrupted him in accents full of suavity and authority.
These are the words which he uttered; here they are literally,
as they were written down, immediately after the trial by one
of the witnesses to this scene, and as they now ring in the ears
of those who heard them nearly forty years ago:--

"I thank you, Mr. District-Attorney, but I am not mad; you shall see;
you were on the point of committing a great error; release this man!
I am fulfilling a duty; I am that miserable criminal. I am the
only one here who sees the matter clearly, and I am telling you
the truth. God, who is on high, looks down on what I am doing at
this moment, and that suffices. You can take me, for here I am:
but I have done my best; I concealed myself under another name;
I have become rich; I have become a mayor; I have tried to re-enter
the ranks of the honest. It seems that that is not to be done.
In short, there are many things which I cannot tell. I will not narrate
the story of my life to you; you will hear it one of these days.
I robbed Monseigneur the Bishop, it is true; it is true that I
robbed Little Gervais; they were right in telling you that Jean
Valjean was a very vicious wretch. Perhaps it was not altogether
his fault. Listen, honorable judges! a man who has been so greatly
humbled as I have has neither any remonstrances to make to Providence,
nor any advice to give to society; but, you see, the infamy from
which I have tried to escape is an injurious thing; the galleys
make the convict what he is; reflect upon that, if you please.
Before going to the galleys, I was a poor peasant, with very
little intelligence, a sort of idiot; the galleys wrought a change
in me. I was stupid; I became vicious: I was a block of wood;
I became a firebrand. Later on, indulgence and kindness saved me,
as severity had ruined me. But, pardon me, you cannot understand
what I am saying. You will find at my house, among the ashes in
the fireplace, the forty-sou piece which I stole, seven years ago,
from little Gervais. I have nothing farther to add; take me.
Good God! the district-attorney shakes his head; you say, 'M. Madeleine
has gone mad!' you do not believe me! that is distressing. Do not,
at least, condemn this man! What! these men do not recognize me!
I wish Javert were here; he would recognize me."

Nothing can reproduce the sombre and kindly melancholy of tone
which accompanied these words.

He turned to the three convicts, and said:--

"Well, I recognize you; do you remember, Brevet?"

He paused, hesitated for an instant, and said:--

"Do you remember the knitted suspenders with a checked pattern
which you wore in the galleys?"

Brevet gave a start of surprise, and surveyed him from head to foot
with a frightened air. He continued:--

"Chenildieu, you who conferred on yourself the name of
`Jenie-Dieu,' your whole right shoulder bears a deep burn,
because you one day laid your shoulder against the chafing-dish
full of coals, in order to efface the three letters T. F. P.,
which are still visible, nevertheless; answer, is this true?"

"It is true," said Chenildieu.

He addressed himself to Cochepaille:--

"Cochepaille, you have, near the bend in your left arm, a date stamped
in blue letters with burnt powder; the date is that of the landing
of the Emperor at Cannes, March 1, 1815; pull up your sleeve!"

Cochepaille pushed up his sleeve; all eyes were focused on him
and on his bare arm.

A gendarme held a light close to it; there was the date.

The unhappy man turned to the spectators and the judges with a smile
which still rends the hearts of all who saw it whenever they think
of it. It was a smile of triumph; it was also a smile of despair.

"You see plainly," he said, "that I am Jean Valjean."

In that chamber there were no longer either judges, accusers,
nor gendarmes; there was nothing but staring eyes and sympathizing
hearts. No one recalled any longer the part that each might be
called upon to play; the district-attorney forgot he was there
for the purpose of prosecuting, the President that he was there
to preside, the counsel for the defence that he was there to defend.
It was a striking circumstance that no question was put, that no
authority intervened. The peculiarity of sublime spectacles is,
that they capture all souls and turn witnesses into spectators.
No one, probably, could have explained what he felt; no one,
probably, said to himself that he was witnessing the splendid
outburst of a grand light: all felt themselves inwardly dazzled.

It was evident that they had Jean Valjean before their eyes.
That was clear. The appearance of this man had sufficed to suffuse
with light that matter which had been so obscure but a moment previously,
without any further explanation: the whole crowd, as by a sort
of electric revelation, understood instantly and at a single glance
the simple and magnificent history of a man who was delivering
himself up so that another man might not be condemned in his stead.
The details, the hesitations, little possible oppositions,
were swallowed up in that vast and luminous fact.

It was an impression which vanished speedily, but which was
irresistible at the moment.

"I do not wish to disturb the court further," resumed Jean Valjean.
"I shall withdraw, since you do not arrest me. I have many things to do.
The district-attorney knows who I am; he knows whither I am going;
he can have me arrested when he likes."

He directed his steps towards the door. Not a voice was raised,
not an arm extended to hinder him. All stood aside. At that moment
there was about him that divine something which causes multitudes
to stand aside and make way for a man. He traversed the crowd slowly.
It was never known who opened the door, but it is certain that he
found the door open when he reached it. On arriving there he turned
round and said:--

"I am at your command, Mr. District-Attorney."

Then he addressed the audience:--

"All of you, all who are present--consider me worthy of pity,
do you not? Good God! When I think of what I was on the point
of doing, I consider that I am to be envied. Nevertheless, I should
have preferred not to have had this occur."

He withdrew, and the door closed behind him as it had opened,
for those who do certain sovereign things are always sure of being
served by some one in the crowd.

Less than an hour after this, the verdict of the jury freed
the said Champmathieu from all accusations; and Champmathieu,
being at once released, went off in a state of stupefaction, thinking
that all men were fools, and comprehending nothing of this vision.

BOOK EIGHTH.--A COUNTER-BLOW

CHAPTER I

IN WHAT MIRROR M. MADELEINE CONTEMPLATES HIS HAIR

The day had begun to dawn. Fantine had passed a sleepless and
feverish night, filled with happy visions; at daybreak she fell asleep.
Sister Simplice, who had been watching with her, availed herself
of this slumber to go and prepare a new potion of chinchona.
The worthy sister had been in the laboratory of the infirmary but
a few moments, bending over her drugs and phials, and scrutinizing
things very closely, on account of the dimness which the half-light
of dawn spreads over all objects. Suddenly she raised her head
and uttered a faint shriek. M. Madeleine stood before her;
he had just entered silently.

"Is it you, Mr. Mayor?" she exclaimed.

He replied in a low voice:--

"How is that poor woman?"

"Not so bad just now; but we have been very uneasy."

She explained to him what had passed: that Fantine had been
very ill the day before, and that she was better now, because she
thought that the mayor had gone to Montfermeil to get her child.
The sister dared not question the mayor; but she perceived plainly
from his air that he had not come from there.

"All that is good," said he; "you were right not to undeceive her."

"Yes," responded the sister; "but now, Mr. Mayor, she will see you
and will not see her child. What shall we say to her?"

He reflected for a moment.

"God will inspire us," said he.

"But we cannot tell a lie," murmured the sister, half aloud.

It was broad daylight in the room. The light fell full
on M. Madeleine's face. The sister chanced to raise her eyes to it.

"Good God, sir!" she exclaimed; "what has happened to you?
Your hair is perfectly white!"

"White!" said he.

Sister Simplice had no mirror. She rummaged in a drawer, and pulled
out the little glass which the doctor of the infirmary used to see
whether a patient was dead and whether he no longer breathed.
M. Madeleine took the mirror, looked at his hair, and said:--

"Well!"

He uttered the word indifferently, and as though his mind were
on something else.

The sister felt chilled by something strange of which she caught
a glimpse in all this.

He inquired:--

"Can I see her?"

"Is not Monsieur le Maire going to have her child brought back to her?"
said the sister, hardly venturing to put the question.

"Of course; but it will take two or three days at least."

"If she were not to see Monsieur le Maire until that time," went on
the sister, timidly, "she would not know that Monsieur le Maire
had returned, and it would be easy to inspire her with patience;
and when the child arrived, she would naturally think Monsieur le
Maire had just come with the child. We should not have to enact
a lie."

M. Madeleine seemed to reflect for a few moments; then he said
with his calm gravity:--

"No, sister, I must see her. I may, perhaps, be in haste."

The nun did not appear to notice this word "perhaps," which communicated
an obscure and singular sense to the words of the mayor's speech.
She replied, lowering her eyes and her voice respectfully:--

"In that case, she is asleep; but Monsieur le Maire may enter."

He made some remarks about a door which shut badly, and the noise of
which might awaken the sick woman; then he entered Fantine's chamber,
approached the bed and drew aside the curtains. She was asleep.
Her breath issued from her breast with that tragic sound which is
peculiar to those maladies, and which breaks the hearts of mothers
when they are watching through the night beside their sleeping
child who is condemned to death. But this painful respiration
hardly troubled a sort of ineffable serenity which overspread
her countenance, and which transfigured her in her sleep.
Her pallor had become whiteness; her cheeks were crimson; her long
golden lashes, the only beauty of her youth and her virginity
which remained to her, palpitated, though they remained closed
and drooping. Her whole person was trembling with an indescribable
unfolding of wings, all ready to open wide and bear her away,
which could be felt as they rustled, though they could not be seen.
To see her thus, one would never have dreamed that she was an invalid
whose life was almost despaired of. She resembled rather something
on the point of soaring away than something on the point of dying.

The branch trembles when a hand approaches it to pluck a flower,
and seems to both withdraw and to offer itself at one and the same time.
The human body has something of this tremor when the instant arrives
in which the mysterious fingers of Death are about to pluck the soul.

M. Madeleine remained for some time motionless beside that bed,
gazing in turn upon the sick woman and the crucifix, as he had done
two months before, on the day when he had come for the first time to see
her in that asylum. They were both still there in the same attitude--
she sleeping, he praying; only now, after the lapse of two months,
her hair was gray and his was white.

The sister had not entered with him. He stood beside the bed,
with his finger on his lips, as though there were some one in the
chamber whom he must enjoin to silence.

She opened her eyes, saw him, and said quietly, with a smile:--

"And Cosette?"

CHAPTER II

FANTINE HAPPY

She made no movement of either surprise or of joy; she was joy itself.
That simple question, "And Cosette?" was put with so profound
a faith, with so much certainty, with such a complete absence
of disquiet and of doubt, that he found not a word of reply.
She continued:--

"I knew that you were there. I was asleep, but I saw you.
I have seen you for a long, long time. I have been following you
with my eyes all night long. You were in a glory, and you had around
you all sorts of celestial forms."

He raised his glance to the crucifix.

"But," she resumed, "tell me where Cosette is. Why did not you
place her on my bed against the moment of my waking?"

He made some mechanical reply which he was never afterwards able
to recall.

Fortunately, the doctor had been warned, and he now made his appearance.
He came to the aid of M. Madeleine.

"Calm yourself, my child," said the doctor; "your child is here."

Fantine's eyes beamed and filled her whole face with light.
She clasped her hands with an expression which contained all that is
possible to prayer in the way of violence and tenderness.

"Oh!" she exclaimed, "bring her to me!"

Touching illusion of a mother! Cosette was, for her, still the
little child who is carried.

"Not yet," said the doctor, "not just now. You still have some fever.
The sight of your child would agitate you and do you harm.
You must be cured first."

She interrupted him impetuously:--

"But I am cured! Oh, I tell you that I am cured! What an ass
that doctor is! The idea! I want to see my child!"

"You see," said the doctor, "how excited you become. So long as you
are in this state I shall oppose your having your child. It is not
enough to see her; it is necessary that you should live for her.
When you are reasonable, I will bring her to you myself."

The poor mother bowed her head.

"I beg your pardon, doctor, I really beg your pardon. Formerly I
should never have spoken as I have just done; so many misfortunes
have happened to me, that I sometimes do not know what I am saying.
I understand you; you fear the emotion. I will wait as long
as you like, but I swear to you that it would not have harmed
me to see my daughter. I have been seeing her; I have not
taken my eyes from her since yesterday evening. Do you know?
If she were brought to me now, I should talk to her very gently.
That is all. Is it not quite natural that I should desire to see
my daughter, who has been brought to me expressly from Montfermeil?
I am not angry. I know well that I am about to be happy. All night
long I have seen white things, and persons who smiled at me.
When Monsieur le Docteur pleases, he shall bring me Cosette.
I have no longer any fever; I am well. I am perfectly conscious that
there is nothing the matter with me any more; but I am going to behave
as though I were ill, and not stir, to please these ladies here.
When it is seen that I am very calm, they will say, `She must have
her child.'"

M. Madeleine was sitting on a chair beside the bed. She turned
towards him; she was making a visible effort to be calm and "very good,"
as she expressed it in the feebleness of illness which resembles
infancy, in order that, seeing her so peaceable, they might make
no difficulty about bringing Cosette to her. But while she
controlled herself she could not refrain from questioning M. Madeleine.

"Did you have a pleasant trip, Monsieur le Maire? Oh! how good
you were to go and get her for me! Only tell me how she is.
Did she stand the journey well? Alas! she will not recognize me.
She must have forgotten me by this time, poor darling! Children have
no memories. They are like birds. A child sees one thing to-day
and another thing to-morrow, and thinks of nothing any longer.
And did she have white linen? Did those Thenardiers keep her clean?
How have they fed her? Oh! if you only knew how I have suffered,
putting such questions as that to myself during all the time of
my wretchedness. Now, it is all past. I am happy. Oh, how I should
like to see her! Do you think her pretty, Monsieur le Maire? Is not my
daughter beautiful? You must have been very cold in that diligence!
Could she not be brought for just one little instant? She might
be taken away directly afterwards. Tell me; you are the master;
it could be so if you chose!"

He took her hand. "Cosette is beautiful," he said, "Cosette is well.
You shall see her soon; but calm yourself; you are talking with
too much vivacity, and you are throwing your arms out from under
the clothes, and that makes you cough."

In fact, fits of coughing interrupted Fantine at nearly every word.

Fantine did not murmur; she feared that she had injured by her
too passionate lamentations the confidence which she was desirous
of inspiring, and she began to talk of indifferent things.

"Montfermeil is quite pretty, is it not? People go there on
pleasure parties in summer. Are the Thenardiers prosperous?
There are not many travellers in their parts. That inn of theirs
is a sort of a cook-shop."

M. Madeleine was still holding her hand, and gazing at her
with anxiety; it was evident that he had come to tell her things
before which his mind now hesitated. The doctor, having finished
his visit, retired. Sister Simplice remained alone with them.

But in the midst of this pause Fantine exclaimed:--

"I hear her! mon Dieu, I hear her!"

She stretched out her arm to enjoin silence about her, held her breath,
and began to listen with rapture.

There was a child playing in the yard--the child of the portress
or of some work-woman. It was one of those accidents which are
always occurring, and which seem to form a part of the mysterious
stage-setting of mournful scenes. The child--a little girl--
was going and coming, running to warm herself, laughing, singing at
the top of her voice. Alas! in what are the plays of children
not intermingled. It was this little girl whom Fantine heard singing.

"Oh!" she resumed, "it is my Cosette! I recognize her voice."

The child retreated as it had come; the voice died away.
Fantine listened for a while longer, then her face clouded over,
and M. Madeleine heard her say, in a low voice: "How wicked
that doctor is not to allow me to see my daughter! That man has
an evil countenance, that he has."

But the smiling background of her thoughts came to the front again.
She continued to talk to herself, with her head resting on the pillow:
"How happy we are going to be! We shall have a little garden the
very first thing; M. Madeleine has promised it to me. My daughter
will play in the garden. She must know her letters by this time.
I will make her spell. She will run over the grass after butterflies.
I will watch her. Then she will take her first communion. Ah! when
will she take her first communion?"

She began to reckon on her fingers.

"One, two, three, four--she is seven years old. In five years
she will have a white veil, and openwork stockings; she will look
like a little woman. O my good sister, you do not know how foolish
I become when I think of my daughter's first communion!"

She began to laugh.

He had released Fantine's hand. He listened to her words as one
listens to the sighing of the breeze, with his eyes on the ground,
his mind absorbed in reflection which had no bottom. All at once she
ceased speaking, and this caused him to raise his head mechanically.
Fantine had become terrible.

She no longer spoke, she no longer breathed; she had raised herself
to a sitting posture, her thin shoulder emerged from her chemise;
her face, which had been radiant but a moment before, was ghastly,
and she seemed to have fixed her eyes, rendered large with terror,
on something alarming at the other extremity of the room.

"Good God!" he exclaimed; "what ails you, Fantine?"

She made no reply; she did not remove her eyes from the object
which she seemed to see. She removed one hand from his arm,
and with the other made him a sign to look behind him.

He turned, and beheld Javert.

CHAPTER III

JAVERT SATISFIED

This is what had taken place.

The half-hour after midnight had just struck when M. Madeleine quitted
the Hall of Assizes in Arras. He regained his inn just in time to set
out again by the mail-wagon, in which he had engaged his place.
A little before six o'clock in the morning he had arrived at M. sur
M., and his first care had been to post a letter to M. Laffitte,
then to enter the infirmary and see Fantine.

However, he had hardly quitted the audience hall of the Court of Assizes,
when the district-attorney, recovering from his first shock,
had taken the word to deplore the mad deed of the honorable
mayor of M. sur M., to declare that his convictions had not been
in the least modified by that curious incident, which would be
explained thereafter, and to demand, in the meantime, the condemnation
of that Champmathieu, who was evidently the real Jean Valjean.
The district-attorney's persistence was visibly at variance
with the sentiments of every one, of the public, of the court,
and of the jury. The counsel for the defence had some difficulty
in refuting this harangue and in establishing that, in consequence
of the revelations of M. Madeleine, that is to say, of the real
Jean Valjean, the aspect of the matter had been thoroughly altered,
and that the jury had before their eyes now only an innocent man.
Thence the lawyer had drawn some epiphonemas, not very fresh,
unfortunately, upon judicial errors, etc., etc.; the President,
in his summing up, had joined the counsel for the defence,
and in a few minutes the jury had thrown Champmathieu out of the case.

Nevertheless, the district-attorney was bent on having a Jean Valjean;
and as he had no longer Champmathieu, he took Madeleine.

Immediately after Champmathieu had been set at liberty,
the district-attorney shut himself up with the President.
They conferred "as to the necessity of seizing the person of M. le
Maire of M. sur M." This phrase, in which there was a great deal
of of, is the district-attorney's, written with his own hand,
on the minutes of his report to the attorney-general. His first emotion
having passed off, the President did not offer many objections.
Justice must, after all, take its course. And then, when all was said,
although the President was a kindly and a tolerably intelligent man,
he was, at the same time, a devoted and almost an ardent royalist,
and he had been shocked to hear the Mayor of M. sur M. say the Emperor,
and not Bonaparte, when alluding to the landing at Cannes.

The order for his arrest was accordingly despatched.
The district-attorney forwarded it to M. sur M. by a special messenger,
at full speed, and entrusted its execution to Police Inspector Javert.

The reader knows that Javert had returned to M. sur M. immediately
after having given his deposition.

Javert was just getting out of bed when the messenger handed him
the order of arrest and the command to produce the prisoner.

The messenger himself was a very clever member of the police, who,
in two words, informed Javert of what had taken place at Arras.
The order of arrest, signed by the district-attorney, was couched
in these words: "Inspector Javert will apprehend the body of the
Sieur Madeleine, mayor of M. sur M., who, in this day's session
of the court, was recognized as the liberated convict, Jean Valjean."

Any one who did not know Javert, and who had chanced to see him
at the moment when he penetrated the antechamber of the infirmary,
could have divined nothing of what had taken place, and would
have thought his air the most ordinary in the world. He was cool,
calm, grave, his gray hair was perfectly smooth upon his temples,
and he had just mounted the stairs with his habitual deliberation.
Any one who was thoroughly acquainted with him, and who had examined
him attentively at the moment, would have shuddered. The buckle
of his leather stock was under his left ear instead of at the nape
of his neck. This betrayed unwonted agitation.

Javert was a complete character, who never had a wrinkle in his
duty or in his uniform; methodical with malefactors, rigid with
the buttons of his coat.

That he should have set the buckle of his stock awry,
it was indispensable that there should have taken place in him
one of those emotions which may be designated as internal earthquakes.

He had come in a simple way, had made a requisition on the
neighboring post for a corporal and four soldiers, had left
the soldiers in the courtyard, had had Fantine's room pointed
out to him by the portress, who was utterly unsuspicious,
accustomed as she was to seeing armed men inquiring for the mayor.

On arriving at Fantine's chamber, Javert turned the handle,
pushed the door open with the gentleness of a sick-nurse
or a police spy, and entered.

Properly speaking, he did not enter. He stood erect in the half-open
door, his hat on his head and his left hand thrust into his coat,
which was buttoned up to the chin. In the bend of his elbow
the leaden head of his enormous cane, which was hidden behind him,
could be seen.

Thus he remained for nearly a minute, without his presence
being perceived. All at once Fantine raised her eyes, saw him,
and made M. Madeleine turn round.

The instant that Madeleine's glance encountered Javert's glance, Javert,
without stirring, without moving from his post, without approaching
him, became terrible. No human sentiment can be as terrible as joy.

It was the visage of a demon who has just found his damned soul.

The satisfaction of at last getting hold of Jean Valjean caused all
that was in his soul to appear in his countenance. The depths having
been stirred up, mounted to the surface. The humiliation of having,
in some slight degree, lost the scent, and of having indulged,
for a few moments, in an error with regard to Champmathieu,
was effaced by pride at having so well and accurately divined in the
first place, and of having for so long cherished a just instinct.
Javert's content shone forth in his sovereign attitude. The deformity
of triumph overspread that narrow brow. All the demonstrations
of horror which a satisfied face can afford were there.

Javert was in heaven at that moment. Without putting the thing
clearly to himself, but with a confused intuition of the necessity
of his presence and of his success, he, Javert, personified justice,
light, and truth in their celestial function of crushing out evil.
Behind him and around him, at an infinite distance, he had authority,
reason, the case judged, the legal conscience, the public prosecution,
all the stars; he was protecting order, he was causing the law
to yield up its thunders, he was avenging society, he was lending
a helping hand to the absolute, he was standing erect in the midst
of a glory. There existed in his victory a remnant of defiance
and of combat. Erect, haughty, brilliant, he flaunted abroad
in open day the superhuman bestiality of a ferocious archangel.
The terrible shadow of the action which he was accomplishing caused
the vague flash of the social sword to be visible in his clenched fist;
happy and indignant, he held his heel upon crime, vice, rebellion,
perdition, hell; he was radiant, he exterminated, he smiled,
and there was an incontestable grandeur in this monstrous Saint Michael.

Javert, though frightful, had nothing ignoble about him.

Probity, sincerity, candor, conviction, the sense of duty,
are things which may become hideous when wrongly directed;
but which, even when hideous, remain grand: their majesty,
the majesty peculiar to the human conscience, clings to them in the
midst of horror; they are virtues which have one vice,--error.
The honest, pitiless joy of a fanatic in the full flood of his
atrocity preserves a certain lugubriously venerable radiance.
Without himself suspecting the fact, Javert in his formidable
happiness was to be pitied, as is every ignorant man who triumphs.
Nothing could be so poignant and so terrible as this face,
wherein was displayed all that may be designated as the evil of the good.

CHAPTER IV

AUTHORITY REASSERTS ITS RIGHTS

Fantine had not seen Javert since the day on which the mayor had torn
her from the man. Her ailing brain comprehended nothing, but the
only thing which she did not doubt was that he had come to get her.
She could not endure that terrible face; she felt her life quitting her;
she hid her face in both hands, and shrieked in her anguish:--

"Monsieur Madeleine, save me!"

Jean Valjean--we shall henceforth not speak of him otherwise--
had risen. He said to Fantine in the gentlest and calmest of voices:--

"Be at ease; it is not for you that he is come."

Then he addressed Javert, and said:--

"I know what you want."

Javert replied:--

"Be quick about it!"

There lay in the inflection of voice which accompanied these words
something indescribably fierce and frenzied. Javert did not say,
"Be quick about it!" he said "Bequiabouit."

No orthography can do justice to the accent with which it was uttered:
it was no longer a human word: it was a roar.

He did not proceed according to his custom, he did not enter
into the matter, he exhibited no warrant of arrest. In his eyes,
Jean Valjean was a sort of mysterious combatant, who was not to be
laid hands upon, a wrestler in the dark whom he had had in his
grasp for the last five years, without being able to throw him.
This arrest was not a beginning, but an end. He confined himself
to saying, "Be quick about it!"

As he spoke thus, he did not advance a single step; he hurled at
Jean Valjean a glance which he threw out like a grappling-hook,
and with which he was accustomed to draw wretches violently to him.

It was this glance which Fantine had felt penetrating to the very
marrow of her bones two months previously.

At Javert's exclamation, Fantine opened her eyes once more.
But the mayor was there; what had she to fear?

Javert advanced to the middle of the room, and cried:--

"See here now! Art thou coming?"

The unhappy woman glanced about her. No one was present excepting
the nun and the mayor. To whom could that abject use of "thou"
be addressed? To her only. She shuddered.

Then she beheld a most unprecedented thing, a thing so unprecedented
that nothing equal to it had appeared to her even in the blackest
deliriums of fever.

She beheld Javert, the police spy, seize the mayor by the collar;
she saw the mayor bow his head. It seemed to her that the world was
coming to an end.

Javert had, in fact, grasped Jean Valjean by the collar.

"Monsieur le Maire!" shrieked Fantine.

Javert burst out laughing with that frightful laugh which displayed
all his gums.

"There is no longer any Monsieur le Maire here!"

Jean Valjean made no attempt to disengage the hand which grasped
the collar of his coat. He said:--

"Javert--"

Javert interrupted him: "Call me Mr. Inspector."

"Monsieur," said Jean Valjean, "I should like to say a word to you
in private."

"Aloud! Say it aloud!" replied Javert; "people are in the habit
of talking aloud to me."

Jean Valjean went on in a lower tone:--

"I have a request to make of you--"

"I tell you to speak loud."

"But you alone should hear it--"

"What difference does that make to me? I shall not listen."

Jean Valjean turned towards him and said very rapidly
and in a very low voice:--

"Grant me three days' grace! three days in which to go and fetch
the child of this unhappy woman. I will pay whatever is necessary.
You shall accompany me if you choose."

"You are making sport of me!" cried Javert. "Come now, I did
not think you such a fool! You ask me to give you three days in
which to run away! You say that it is for the purpose of fetching
that creature's child! Ah! Ah! That's good! That's really capital!"

Fantine was seized with a fit of trembling.

"My child!" she cried, "to go and fetch my child! She is not here,
then! Answer me, sister; where is Cosette? I want my child!
Monsieur Madeleine! Monsieur le Maire!"

Javert stamped his foot.

"And now there's the other one! Will you hold your tongue, you hussy?
It's a pretty sort of a place where convicts are magistrates,
and where women of the town are cared for like countesses! Ah! But we
are going to change all that; it is high time!"

He stared intently at Fantine, and added, once more taking into
his grasp Jean Valjean's cravat, shirt and collar:--

"I tell you that there is no Monsieur Madeleine and that there is
no Monsieur le Maire. There is a thief, a brigand, a convict named
Jean Valjean! And I have him in my grasp! That's what there is!"

Fantine raised herself in bed with a bound, supporting herself on
her stiffened arms and on both hands: she gazed at Jean Valjean,
she gazed at Javert, she gazed at the nun, she opened her mouth
as though to speak; a rattle proceeded from the depths of her throat,
her teeth chattered; she stretched out her arms in her agony,
opening her hands convulsively, and fumbling about her like a
drowning person; then suddenly fell back on her pillow.

Her head struck the head-board of the bed and fell forwards
on her breast, with gaping mouth and staring, sightless eyes.

She was dead.

Jean Valjean laid his hand upon the detaining hand of Javert,
and opened it as he would have opened the hand of a baby; then he
said to Javert:--

"You have murdered that woman."

"Let's have an end of this!" shouted Javert, in a fury; "I am not
here to listen to argument. Let us economize all that; the guard
is below; march on instantly, or you'll get the thumb-screws!"

In the corner of the room stood an old iron bedstead, which was in a
decidedly decrepit state, and which served the sisters as a camp-bed
when they were watching with the sick. Jean Valjean stepped up
to this bed, in a twinkling wrenched off the head-piece, which was
already in a dilapidated condition, an easy matter to muscles like his,
grasped the principal rod like a bludgeon, and glanced at Javert.
Javert retreated towards the door. Jean Valjean, armed with his bar
of iron, walked slowly up to Fantine's couch. When he arrived there
he turned and said to Javert, in a voice that was barely audible:--

"I advise you not to disturb me at this moment."

One thing is certain, and that is, that Javert trembled.

It did occur to him to summon the guard, but Jean Valjean might
avail himself of that moment to effect his escape; so he remained,
grasped his cane by the small end, and leaned against the door-post,
without removing his eyes from Jean Valjean.

Jean Valjean rested his elbow on the knob at the head of the bed,
and his brow on his hand, and began to contemplate the motionless
body of Fantine, which lay extended there. He remained thus,
mute, absorbed, evidently with no further thought of anything
connected with this life. Upon his face and in his attitude there
was nothing but inexpressible pity. After a few moments of this
meditation he bent towards Fantine, and spoke to her in a low voice.

What did he say to her? What could this man, who was reproved,
say to that woman, who was dead? What words were those? No one
on earth heard them. Did the dead woman hear them? There are
some touching illusions which are, perhaps, sublime realities.
The point as to which there exists no doubt is, that Sister Simplice,
the sole witness of the incident, often said that at the moment
that Jean Valjean whispered in Fantine's ear, she distinctly beheld
an ineffable smile dawn on those pale lips, and in those dim eyes,
filled with the amazement of the tomb.

Jean Valjean took Fantine's head in both his hands, and arranged it
on the pillow as a mother might have done for her child; then he tied
the string of her chemise, and smoothed her hair back under her cap.
That done, he closed her eyes.

Fantine's face seemed strangely illuminated at that moment.

Death, that signifies entrance into the great light.

Fantine's hand was hanging over the side of the bed. Jean Valjean
knelt down before that hand, lifted it gently, and kissed it.

Then he rose, and turned to Javert.

"Now," said he, "I am at your disposal."

CHAPTER V

A SUITABLE TOMB

Javert deposited Jean Valjean in the city prison.

The arrest of M. Madeleine occasioned a sensation, or rather,
an extraordinary commotion in M. sur M. We are sorry that we cannot
conceal the fact, that at the single word, "He was a convict,"
nearly every one deserted him. In less than two hours all the good
that he had done had been forgotten, and he was nothing but a "convict
from the galleys." It is just to add that the details of what had
taken place at Arras were not yet known. All day long conversations
like the following were to be heard in all quarters of the town:--

"You don't know? He was a liberated convict!"  "Who?"  "The mayor."
"Bah! M. Madeleine?"  "Yes."  "Really?"  "His name was not Madeleine
at all; he had a frightful name, Bejean, Bojean, Boujean."  "Ah!
Good God!"  "He has been arrested."  "Arrested!"  "In prison,
in the city prison, while waiting to be transferred."  "Until he
is transferred!"  "He is to be transferred!"  "Where is he to
be taken?"  "He will be tried at the Assizes for a highway robbery
which he committed long ago."  "Well! I suspected as much.
That man was too good, too perfect, too affected. He refused
the cross; he bestowed sous on all the little scamps he came across.
I always thought there was some evil history back of all that."

The "drawing-rooms" particularly abounded in remarks of this nature.

One old lady, a subscriber to the Drapeau Blanc, made the
following remark, the depth of which it is impossible to fathom:--

"I am not sorry. It will be a lesson to the Bonapartists!"

It was thus that the phantom which had been called M. Madeleine
vanished from M. sur M. Only three or four persons in all the town
remained faithful to his memory. The old portress who had served
him was among the number.

On the evening of that day the worthy old woman was sitting in her lodge,
still in a thorough fright, and absorbed in sad reflections.
The factory had been closed all day, the carriage gate was bolted,
the street was deserted. There was no one in the house but the
two nuns, Sister Perpetue and Sister Simplice, who were watching
beside the body of Fantine.

Towards the hour when M. Madeleine was accustomed to return home,
the good portress rose mechanically, took from a drawer the key
of M. Madeleine's chamber, and the flat candlestick which he used
every evening to go up to his quarters; then she hung the key on
the nail whence he was accustomed to take it, and set the candlestick
on one side, as though she was expecting him. Then she sat down
again on her chair, and became absorbed in thought once more.
The poor, good old woman bad done all this without being conscious
of it.

It was only at the expiration of two hours that she roused herself
from her revery, and exclaimed, "Hold! My good God Jesus!
And I hung his key on the nail!"

At that moment the small window in the lodge opened, a hand
passed through, seized the key and the candlestick, and lighted
the taper at the candle which was burning there.

The portress raised her eyes, and stood there with gaping mouth,
and a shriek which she confined to her throat.

She knew that hand, that arm, the sleeve of that coat.

It was M. Madeleine.

It was several seconds before she could speak; she had a seizure,
as she said herself, when she related the adventure afterwards.

"Good God, Monsieur le Maire," she cried at last, "I thought you were--"

She stopped; the conclusion of her sentence would have been lacking
in respect towards the beginning. Jean Valjean was still Monsieur
le Maire to her.

He finished her thought.

"In prison," said he. "I was there; I broke a bar of one of
the windows; I let myself drop from the top of a roof, and here I am.
I am going up to my room; go and find Sister Simplice for me.
She is with that poor woman, no doubt."

The old woman obeyed in all haste.

He gave her no orders; he was quite sure that she would guard him
better than he should guard himself.

No one ever found out how he had managed to get into the courtyard
without opening the big gates. He had, and always carried about him,
a pass-key which opened a little side-door; but he must have
been searched, and his latch-key must have been taken from him.
This point was never explained.

He ascended the staircase leading to his chamber. On arriving at the top,
he left his candle on the top step of his stairs, opened his door
with very little noise, went and closed his window and his shutters
by feeling, then returned for his candle and re-entered his room.

It was a useful precaution; it will be recollected that his window
could be seen from the street.

He cast a glance about him, at his table, at his chair, at his bed
which had not been disturbed for three days. No trace of the disorder
of the night before last remained. The portress had "done up"
his room; only she had picked out of the ashes and placed neatly
on the table the two iron ends of the cudgel and the forty-sou
piece which had been blackened by the fire.

He took a sheet of paper, on which he wrote: "These are the
two tips of my iron-shod cudgel and the forty-sou piece stolen
from Little Gervais, which I mentioned at the Court of Assizes,"
and he arranged this piece of paper, the bits of iron, and the
coin in such a way that they were the first things to be seen
on entering the room. From a cupboard he pulled out one of his
old shirts, which he tore in pieces. In the strips of linen thus
prepared he wrapped the two silver candlesticks. He betrayed
neither haste nor agitation; and while he was wrapping up the
Bishop's candlesticks, he nibbled at a piece of black bread. It was
probably the prison-bread which he had carried with him in his flight.

This was proved by the crumbs which were found on the floor
of the room when the authorities made an examination later on.

There came two taps at the door.

"Come in," said he.

It was Sister Simplice.

She was pale; her eyes were red; the candle which she carried trembled
in her hand. The peculiar feature of the violences of destiny is,
that however polished or cool we may be, they wring human nature
from our very bowels, and force it to reappear on the surface.
The emotions of that day had turned the nun into a woman once more.
She had wept, and she was trembling.

Jean Valjean had just finished writing a few lines on a paper,
which he handed to the nun, saying, "Sister, you will give this
to Monsieur le Cure."

The paper was not folded. She cast a glance upon it.

"You can read it," said he.

She read:--

"I beg Monsieur le Cure to keep an eye on all that I leave behind me.
He will be so good as to pay out of it the expenses of my trial,
and of the funeral of the woman who died yesterday. The rest is for
the poor."

The sister tried to speak, but she only managed to stammer a few
inarticulate sounds. She succeeded in saying, however:--

"Does not Monsieur le Maire desire to take a last look at that poor,
unhappy woman?"

"No," said he; "I am pursued; it would only end in their arresting
me in that room, and that would disturb her."

He had hardly finished when a loud noise became audible on the staircase.
They heard a tumult of ascending footsteps, and the old portress
saying in her loudest and most piercing tones:--

"My good sir, I swear to you by the good God, that not a soul
has entered this house all day, nor all the evening, and that I
have not even left the door."

A man responded:--

"But there is a light in that room, nevertheless."

They recognized Javert's voice.

The chamber was so arranged that the door in opening masked the corner
of the wall on the right. Jean Valjean blew out the light and placed
himself in this angle. Sister Simplice fell on her knees near the table.

The door opened.

Javert entered.

The whispers of many men and the protestations of the portress
were audible in the corridor.

The nun did not raise her eyes. She was praying.

The candle was on the chimney-piece, and gave but very little light.

Javert caught sight of the nun and halted in amazement.

It will be remembered that the fundamental point in Javert, his element,
the very air he breathed, was veneration for all authority.
This was impregnable, and admitted of neither objection nor restriction.
In his eyes, of course, the ecclesiastical authority was the chief
of all; he was religious, superficial and correct on this point
as on all others. In his eyes, a priest was a mind, who never makes
a mistake; a nun was a creature who never sins; they were souls
walled in from this world, with a single door which never opened
except to allow the truth to pass through.

On perceiving the sister, his first movement was to retire.

But there was also another duty which bound him and impelled
him imperiously in the opposite direction. His second movement
was to remain and to venture on at least one question.

This was Sister Simplice, who had never told a lie in her life.
Javert knew it, and held her in special veneration in consequence.

"Sister," said he, "are you alone in this room?"

A terrible moment ensued, during which the poor portress felt
as though she should faint.

The sister raised her eyes and answered:--

"Yes."

"Then," resumed Javert, "you will excuse me if I persist; it is
my duty; you have not seen a certain person--a man--this evening?
He has escaped; we are in search of him--that Jean Valjean;
you have not seen him?"

The sister replied:--

"No."

She lied. She had lied twice in succession, one after the other,
without hesitation, promptly, as a person does when sacrificing herself.

"Pardon me," said Javert, and he retired with a deep bow.

O sainted maid! you left this world many years ago; you have
rejoined your sisters, the virgins, and your brothers, the angels,
in the light; may this lie be counted to your credit in paradise!

The sister's affirmation was for Javert so decisive a thing that he
did not even observe the singularity of that candle which had but
just been extinguished, and which was still smoking on the table.

An hour later, a man, marching amid trees and mists, was rapidly
departing from M. sur M. in the direction of Paris. That man
was Jean Valjean. It has been established by the testimony of
two or three carters who met him, that he was carrying a bundle;
that he was dressed in a blouse. Where had he obtained that blouse?
No one ever found out. But an aged workman had died in the infirmary
of the factory a few days before, leaving behind him nothing
but his blouse. Perhaps that was the one.

One last word about Fantine.

We all have a mother,--the earth. Fantine was given back to that mother.

The cure thought that he was doing right, and perhaps he really was,
in reserving as much money as possible from what Jean Valjean
had left for the poor. Who was concerned, after all? A convict
and a woman of the town. That is why he had a very simple funeral
for Fantine, and reduced it to that strictly necessary form known
as the pauper's grave.

So Fantine was buried in the free corner of the cemetery
which belongs to anybody and everybody, and where the poor
are lost. Fortunately, God knows where to find the soul again.
Fantine was laid in the shade, among the first bones that came
to hand; she was subjected to the promiscuousness of ashes.
She was thrown into the public grave. Her grave resembled her bed.

[The end of Volume I. "Fantine"]

VOLUME II.

COSETTE

BOOK FIRST.--WATERLOO

CHAPTER I

WHAT IS MET WITH ON THE WAY FROM NIVELLES

Last year (1861), on a beautiful May morning, a traveller, the person
who is telling this story, was coming from Nivelles, and directing
his course towards La Hulpe. He was on foot. He was pursuing
a broad paved road, which undulated between two rows of trees,
over the hills which succeed each other, raise the road and let it
fall again, and produce something in the nature of enormous waves.

He had passed Lillois and Bois-Seigneur-Isaac. In the west he
perceived the slate-roofed tower of Braine-l'Alleud, which has
the form of a reversed vase. He had just left behind a wood upon
an eminence; and at the angle of the cross-road, by the side
of a sort of mouldy gibbet bearing the inscription Ancient
Barrier No. 4, a public house, bearing on its front this sign:
At the Four Winds (Aux Quatre Vents). Echabeau, Private Cafe.

A quarter of a league further on, he arrived at the bottom of a
little valley, where there is water which passes beneath an arch
made through the embankment of the road. The clump of sparsely
planted but very green trees, which fills the valley on one side of
the road, is dispersed over the meadows on the other, and disappears
gracefully and as in order in the direction of Braine-l'Alleud.

On the right, close to the road, was an inn, with a four-wheeled cart
at the door, a large bundle of hop-poles, a plough, a heap of dried
brushwood near a flourishing hedge, lime smoking in a square hole,
and a ladder suspended along an old penthouse with straw partitions.
A young girl was weeding in a field, where a huge yellow poster,
probably of some outside spectacle, such as a parish festival,
was fluttering in the wind. At one corner of the inn, beside a pool
in which a flotilla of ducks was navigating, a badly paved path plunged
into the bushes. The wayfarer struck into this.

After traversing a hundred paces, skirting a wall of the
fifteenth century, surmounted by a pointed gable, with bricks set
in contrast, he found himself before a large door of arched stone,
with a rectilinear impost, in the sombre style of Louis XIV., flanked
by two flat medallions. A severe facade rose above this door;
a wall, perpendicular to the facade, almost touched the door,
and flanked it with an abrupt right angle. In the meadow
before the door lay three harrows, through which, in disorder,
grew all the flowers of May. The door was closed. The two decrepit
leaves which barred it were ornamented with an old rusty knocker.

The sun was charming; the branches had that soft shivering of May,
which seems to proceed rather from the nests than from the wind.
A brave little bird, probably a lover, was carolling in a distracted
manner in a large tree.

The wayfarer bent over and examined a rather large circular excavation,
resembling the hollow of a sphere, in the stone on the left,
at the foot of the pier of the door.

At this moment the leaves of the door parted, and a peasant
woman emerged.

She saw the wayfarer, and perceived what he was looking at.

"It was a French cannon-ball which made that," she said to him.
And she added:--

"That which you see there, higher up in the door, near a nail,
is the hole of a big iron bullet as large as an egg. The bullet did
not pierce the wood."

"What is the name of this place?" inquired the wayfarer.

"Hougomont," said the peasant woman.

The traveller straightened himself up. He walked on a few paces,
and went off to look over the tops of the hedges. On the horizon
through the trees, he perceived a sort of little elevation,
and on this elevation something which at that distance resembled
a lion.

He was on the battle-field of Waterloo.

CHAPTER II

HOUGOMONT

Hougomont,--this was a funereal spot, the beginning of the obstacle,
the first resistance, which that great wood-cutter of Europe,
called Napoleon, encountered at Waterloo, the first knot under the
blows of his axe.

It was a chateau; it is no longer anything but a farm. For the antiquary,
Hougomont is Hugomons. This manor was built by Hugo, Sire of Somerel,
the same who endowed the sixth chaplaincy of the Abbey of Villiers.

The traveller pushed open the door, elbowed an ancient calash
under the porch, and entered the courtyard.

The first thing which struck him in this paddock was a door of the
sixteenth century, which here simulates an arcade, everything else
having fallen prostrate around it. A monumental aspect often has its
birth in ruin. In a wall near the arcade opens another arched door,
of the time of Henry IV., permitting a glimpse of the trees
of an orchard; beside this door, a manure-hole, some pickaxes,
some shovels, some carts, an old well, with its flagstone and its
iron reel, a chicken jumping, and a turkey spreading its tail,
a chapel surmounted by a small bell-tower, a blossoming pear-tree
trained in espalier against the wall of the chapel--behold the court,
the conquest of which was one of Napoleon's dreams. This corner
of earth, could he but have seized it, would, perhaps, have given
him the world likewise. Chickens are scattering its dust abroad
with their beaks. A growl is audible; it is a huge dog, who shows
his teeth and replaces the English.

The English behaved admirably there. Cooke's four companies
of guards there held out for seven hours against the fury of an army.

Hougomont viewed on the map, as a geometrical plan, comprising
buildings and enclosures, presents a sort of irregular rectangle,
one angle of which is nicked out. It is this angle which contains
the southern door, guarded by this wall, which commands it only
a gun's length away. Hougomont has two doors,--the southern door,
that of the chateau; and the northern door, belonging to the farm.
Napoleon sent his brother Jerome against Hougomont; the divisions
of Foy, Guilleminot, and Bachelu hurled themselves against it;
nearly the entire corps of Reille was employed against it, and miscarried;
Kellermann's balls were exhausted on this heroic section of wall.
Bauduin's brigade was not strong enough to force Hougomont on the north,
and the brigade of Soye could not do more than effect the beginning
of a breach on the south, but without taking it.

The farm buildings border the courtyard on the south. A bit of the
north door, broken by the French, hangs suspended to the wall.
It consists of four planks nailed to two cross-beams, on which the
scars of the attack are visible.

The northern door, which was beaten in by the French, and which has
had a piece applied to it to replace the panel suspended on the wall,
stands half-open at the bottom of the paddock; it is cut squarely
in the wall, built of stone below, of brick above which closes in the
courtyard on the north. It is a simple door for carts, such as exist
in all farms, with the two large leaves made of rustic planks:
beyond lie the meadows. The dispute over this entrance was furious.
For a long time, all sorts of imprints of bloody hands were visible
on the door-posts. It was there that Bauduin was killed.

The storm of the combat still lingers in this courtyard; its horror
is visible there; the confusion of the fray was petrified there;
it lives and it dies there; it was only yesterday. The walls
are in the death agony, the stones fall; the breaches cry aloud;
the holes are wounds; the drooping, quivering trees seem to be making
an effort to flee.

This courtyard was more built up in 1815 than it is to-day. Buildings
which have since been pulled down then formed redans and angles.

The English barricaded themselves there; the French made their way in,
but could not stand their ground. Beside the chapel, one wing of
the chateau, the only ruin now remaining of the manor of Hougomont,
rises in a crumbling state,--disembowelled, one might say.
The chateau served for a dungeon, the chapel for a block-house.
There men exterminated each other. The French, fired on from
every point,--from behind the walls, from the summits of the garrets,
from the depths of the cellars, through all the casements,
through all the air-holes, through every crack in the stones,--
fetched fagots and set fire to walls and men; the reply to the
grape-shot was a conflagration.

In the ruined wing, through windows garnished with bars of iron,
the dismantled chambers of the main building of brick are visible;
the English guards were in ambush in these rooms; the spiral
of the staircase, cracked from the ground floor to the very roof,
appears like the inside of a broken shell. The staircase has two stories;
the English, besieged on the staircase, and massed on its upper steps,
had cut off the lower steps. These consisted of large slabs
of blue stone, which form a heap among the nettles. Half a score
of steps still cling to the wall; on the first is cut the figure
of a trident. These inaccessible steps are solid in their niches.
All the rest resembles a jaw which has been denuded of its teeth.
There are two old trees there: one is dead; the other is wounded
at its base, and is clothed with verdure in April. Since 1815 it has
taken to growing through the staircase.

A massacre took place in the chapel. The interior, which has
recovered its calm, is singular. The mass has not been said there
since the carnage. Nevertheless, the altar has been left there--
an altar of unpolished wood, placed against a background of
roughhewn stone. Four whitewashed walls, a door opposite the altar,
two small arched windows; over the door a large wooden crucifix,
below the crucifix a square air-hole stopped up with a bundle of hay;
on the ground, in one corner, an old window-frame with the glass
all broken to pieces--such is the chapel. Near the altar there is
nailed up a wooden statue of Saint Anne, of the fifteenth century;
the head of the infant Jesus has been carried off by a large ball.
The French, who were masters of the chapel for a moment, and were
then dislodged, set fire to it. The flames filled this building;
it was a perfect furnace; the door was burned, the floor was burned,
the wooden Christ was not burned. The fire preyed upon his feet,
of which only the blackened stumps are now to be seen; then it stopped,--
a miracle, according to the assertion of the people of the neighborhood.
The infant Jesus, decapitated, was less fortunate than the Christ.

The walls are covered with inscriptions. Near the feet of Christ
this name is to be read: Henquinez. Then these others:
Conde de Rio Maior Marques y Marquesa de Almagro (Habana). There
are French names with exclamation points,--a sign of wrath.
The wall was freshly whitewashed in 1849. The nations insulted
each other there.

It was at the door of this chapel that the corpse was picked up
which held an axe in its hand; this corpse was Sub-Lieutenant Legros.

On emerging from the chapel, a well is visible on the left.
There are two in this courtyard. One inquires, Why is there no bucket
and pulley to this? It is because water is no longer drawn there.
Why is water not drawn there? Because it is full of skeletons.

The last person who drew water from the well was named
Guillaume van Kylsom. He was a peasant who lived at Hougomont,
and was gardener there. On the 18th of June, 1815, his family
fled and concealed themselves in the woods.

The forest surrounding the Abbey of Villiers sheltered these unfortunate
people who had been scattered abroad, for many days and nights.
There are at this day certain traces recognizable, such as old
boles of burned trees, which mark the site of these poor bivouacs
trembling in the depths of the thickets.

Guillaume van Kylsom remained at Hougomont, "to guard the chateau,"
and concealed himself in the cellar. The English discovered
him there. They tore him from his hiding-place, and the combatants
forced this frightened man to serve them, by administering blows
with the flats of their swords. They were thirsty; this Guillaume
brought them water. It was from this well that he drew it.
Many drank there their last draught. This well where drank so many
of the dead was destined to die itself.

After the engagement, they were in haste to bury the dead bodies.
Death has a fashion of harassing victory, and she causes the pest
to follow glory. The typhus is a concomitant of triumph.
This well was deep, and it was turned into a sepulchre. Three hundred
dead bodies were cast into it. With too much haste perhaps.
Were they all dead? Legend says they were not. It seems that on
the night succeeding the interment, feeble voices were heard calling
from the well.

This well is isolated in the middle of the courtyard. Three walls,
part stone, part brick, and simulating a small, square tower,
and folded like the leaves of a screen, surround it on all sides.
The fourth side is open. It is there that the water was drawn.
The wall at the bottom has a sort of shapeless loophole,
possibly the hole made by a shell. This little tower had a platform,
of which only the beams remain. The iron supports of the well on
the right form a cross. On leaning over, the eye is lost in a deep
cylinder of brick which is filled with a heaped-up mass of shadows.
The base of the walls all about the well is concealed in a growth
of nettles.

This well has not in front of it that large blue slab which forms
the table for all wells in Belgium. The slab has here been
replaced by a cross-beam, against which lean five or six shapeless
fragments of knotty and petrified wood which resemble huge bones.
There is no longer either pail, chain, or pulley; but there is
still the stone basin which served the overflow. The rain-water
collects there, and from time to time a bird of the neighboring
forests comes thither to drink, and then flies away. One house
in this ruin, the farmhouse, is still inhabited. The door of this
house opens on the courtyard. Upon this door, beside a pretty Gothic
lock-plate, there is an iron handle with trefoils placed slanting.
At the moment when the Hanoverian lieutenant, Wilda, grasped this
handle in order to take refuge in the farm, a French sapper hewed
off his hand with an axe.

The family who occupy the house had for their grandfather Guillaume
van Kylsom, the old gardener, dead long since. A woman with gray
hair said to us: "I was there. I was three years old. My sister,
who was older, was terrified and wept. They carried us off to
the woods. I went there in my mother's arms. We glued our ears
to the earth to hear. I imitated the cannon, and went boum! boum!"

A door opening from the courtyard on the left led into the orchard,
so we were told. The orchard is terrible.

It is in three parts; one might almost say, in three acts.
The first part is a garden, the second is an orchard, the third
is a wood. These three parts have a common enclosure: on the
side of the entrance, the buildings of the chateau and the farm;
on the left, a hedge; on the right, a wall; and at the end, a wall.
The wall on the right is of brick, the wall at the bottom is of stone.
One enters the garden first. It slopes downwards, is planted
with gooseberry bushes, choked with a wild growth of vegetation,
and terminated by a monumental terrace of cut stone, with balustrade
with a double curve.

It was a seignorial garden in the first French style which
preceded Le Notre; to-day it is ruins and briars. The pilasters
are surmounted by globes which resemble cannon-balls of stone.
Forty-three balusters can still be counted on their sockets; the rest
lie prostrate in the grass. Almost all bear scratches of bullets.
One broken baluster is placed on the pediment like a fractured leg.

It was in this garden, further down than the orchard, that six
light-infantry men of the 1st, having made their way thither,
and being unable to escape, hunted down and caught like bears
in their dens, accepted the combat with two Hanoverian companies,
one of which was armed with carbines. The Hanoverians lined
this balustrade and fired from above. The infantry men,
replying from below, six against two hundred, intrepid and with
no shelter save the currant-bushes, took a quarter of an hour to die.

One mounts a few steps and passes from the garden into the orchard,
properly speaking. There, within the limits of those few
square fathoms, fifteen hundred men fell in less than an hour.
The wall seems ready to renew the combat. Thirty-eight loopholes,
pierced by the English at irregular heights, are there still.
In front of the sixth are placed two English tombs of granite.
There are loopholes only in the south wall, as the principal attack came
from that quarter. The wall is hidden on the outside by a tall hedge;
the French came up, thinking that they had to deal only with a hedge,
crossed it, and found the wall both an obstacle and an ambuscade,
with the English guards behind it, the thirty-eight loopholes firing
at once a shower of grape-shot and balls, and Soye's brigade was broken
against it. Thus Waterloo began.

Nevertheless, the orchard was taken. As they had no ladders,
the French scaled it with their nails. They fought hand to hand
amid the trees. All this grass has been soaked in blood.
A battalion of Nassau, seven hundred strong, was overwhelmed there.
The outside of the wall, against which Kellermann's two batteries
were trained, is gnawed by grape-shot.

This orchard is sentient, like others, in the month of May.
It has its buttercups and its daisies; the grass is tall there;
the cart-horses browse there; cords of hair, on which linen
is drying, traverse the spaces between the trees and force the
passer-by to bend his head; one walks over this uncultivated land,
and one's foot dives into mole-holes. In the middle of the grass
one observes an uprooted tree-bole which lies there all verdant.
Major Blackmann leaned against it to die. Beneath a great tree
in the neighborhood fell the German general, Duplat, descended from
a French family which fled on the revocation of the Edict of Nantes.
An aged and falling apple-tree leans far over to one side,
its wound dressed with a bandage of straw and of clayey loam.
Nearly all the apple-trees are falling with age. There is not one
which has not had its bullet or its biscayan.[6] The skeletons of dead
trees abound in this orchard. Crows fly through their branches,
and at the end of it is a wood full of violets.

[6] A bullet as large as an egg.

Bauduin, killed, Foy wounded, conflagration, massacre, carnage,
a rivulet formed of English blood, French blood, German blood
mingled in fury, a well crammed with corpses, the regiment of
Nassau and the regiment of Brunswick destroyed, Duplat killed,
Blackmann killed, the English Guards mutilated, twenty French battalions,
besides the forty from Reille's corps, decimated, three thousand
men in that hovel of Hougomont alone cut down, slashed to pieces,
shot, burned, with their throats cut,--and all this so that a peasant
can say to-day to the traveller: Monsieur, give me three francs,
and if you like, I will explain to you the affair of Waterloo!

CHAPTER III

THE EIGHTEENTH OF JUNE, 1815

Let us turn back,--that is one of the story-teller's rights,--
and put ourselves once more in the year 1815, and even a little
earlier than the epoch when the action narrated in the first part
of this book took place.

If it had not rained in the night between the 17th and the 18th
of June, 1815, the fate of Europe would have been different.
A few drops of water, more or less, decided the downfall of Napoleon.
All that Providence required in order to make Waterloo the end
of Austerlitz was a little more rain, and a cloud traversing the sky
out of season sufficed to make a world crumble.

The battle of Waterloo could not be begun until half-past eleven
o'clock, and that gave Blucher time to come up. Why? Because the
ground was wet. The artillery had to wait until it became a little
firmer before they could manoeuvre.

Napoleon was an artillery officer, and felt the effects of this.
The foundation of this wonderful captain was the man who, in the report
to the Directory on Aboukir, said: Such a one of our balls killed
six men. All his plans of battle were arranged for projectiles.
The key to his victory was to make the artillery converge on one point.
He treated the strategy of the hostile general like a citadel,
and made a breach in it. He overwhelmed the weak point with grape-shot;
he joined and dissolved battles with cannon. There was something
of the sharpshooter in his genius. To beat in squares, to pulverize
regiments, to break lines, to crush and disperse masses,--for him
everything lay in this, to strike, strike, strike incessantly,--
and he intrusted this task to the cannon-ball. A redoubtable method,
and one which, united with genius, rendered this gloomy athlete
of the pugilism of war invincible for the space of fifteen years.

On the 18th of June, 1815, he relied all the more on his artillery,
because he had numbers on his side. Wellington had only one hundred
and fifty-nine mouths of fire; Napoleon had two hundred and forty.

Suppose the soil dry, and the artillery capable of moving,
the action would have begun at six o'clock in the morning.
The battle would have been won and ended at two o'clock, three
hours before the change of fortune in favor of the Prussians.
What amount of blame attaches to Napoleon for the loss of this battle?
Is the shipwreck due to the pilot?

Was it the evident physical decline of Napoleon that complicated
this epoch by an inward diminution of force? Had the twenty years
of war worn out the blade as it had worn the scabbard, the soul
as well as the body? Did the veteran make himself disastrously
felt in the leader? In a word, was this genius, as many historians
of note have thought, suffering from an eclipse? Did he go into
a frenzy in order to disguise his weakened powers from himself?
Did he begin to waver under the delusion of a breath of adventure?
Had he become--a grave matter in a general--unconscious of peril?
Is there an age, in this class of material great men, who may be
called the giants of action, when genius grows short-sighted? Old
age has no hold on the geniuses of the ideal; for the Dantes and
Michael Angelos to grow old is to grow in greatness; is it to grow
less for the Hannibals and the Bonapartes? Had Napoleon lost the
direct sense of victory? Had he reached the point where he could
no longer recognize the reef, could no longer divine the snare,
no longer discern the crumbling brink of abysses? Had he lost
his power of scenting out catastrophes? He who had in former days
known all the roads to triumph, and who, from the summit of his
chariot of lightning, pointed them out with a sovereign finger,
had he now reached that state of sinister amazement when he could
lead his tumultuous legions harnessed to it, to the precipice?
Was he seized at the age of forty-six with a supreme madness?
Was that titanic charioteer of destiny no longer anything more than
an immense dare-devil?

We do not think so.

His plan of battle was, by the confession of all, a masterpiece.
To go straight to the centre of the Allies' line, to make a breach
in the enemy, to cut them in two, to drive the British half back on Hal,
and the Prussian half on Tongres, to make two shattered fragments
of Wellington and Blucher, to carry Mont-Saint-Jean, to seize Brussels,
to hurl the German into the Rhine, and the Englishman into the sea.
All this was contained in that battle, according to Napoleon.
Afterwards people would see.

Of course, we do not here pretend to furnish a history of the battle
of Waterloo; one of the scenes of the foundation of the story which
we are relating is connected with this battle, but this history
is not our subject; this history, moreover, has been finished,
and finished in a masterly manner, from one point of view by Napoleon,
and from another point of view by a whole pleiad of historians.[7]

[7] Walter Scott, Lamartine, Vaulabelle, Charras, Quinet, Thiers.

As for us, we leave the historians at loggerheads; we are but a
distant witness, a passer-by on the plain, a seeker bending over
that soil all made of human flesh, taking appearances for realities,
perchance; we have no right to oppose, in the name of science,
a collection of facts which contain illusions, no doubt; we possess
neither military practice nor strategic ability which authorize
a system; in our opinion, a chain of accidents dominated the two
leaders at Waterloo; and when it becomes a question of destiny,
that mysterious culprit, we judge like that ingenious judge,
the populace.

CHAPTER IV

Those persons who wish to gain a clear idea of the battle of Waterloo
have only to place, mentally, on the ground, a capital A. The left limb
of the A is the road to Nivelles, the right limb is the road to Genappe,
the tie of the A is the hollow road to Ohain from Braine-l'Alleud. The
top of the A is Mont-Saint-Jean, where Wellington is; the lower left
tip is Hougomont, where Reille is stationed with Jerome Bonaparte;
the right tip is the Belle-Alliance, where Napoleon was. At the
centre of this chord is the precise point where the final word of the
battle was pronounced. It was there that the lion has been placed,
the involuntary symbol of the supreme heroism of the Imperial Guard.

The triangle included in the top of the A, between the two limbs
and the tie, is the plateau of Mont-Saint-Jean. The dispute over
this plateau constituted the whole battle. The wings of the two
armies extended to the right and left of the two roads to Genappe
and Nivelles; d'Erlon facing Picton, Reille facing Hill.

Behind the tip of the A, behind the plateau of Mont-Saint-Jean,
is the forest of Soignes.

As for the plain itself, let the reader picture to himself a vast
undulating sweep of ground; each rise commands the next rise,
and all the undulations mount towards Mont-Saint-Jean, and there
end in the forest.

Two hostile troops on a field of battle are two wrestlers. It is
a question of seizing the opponent round the waist. The one seeks
to trip up the other. They clutch at everything: a bush is a point
of support; an angle of the wall offers them a rest to the shoulder;
for the lack of a hovel under whose cover they can draw up,
a regiment yields its ground; an unevenness in the ground, a chance
turn in the landscape, a cross-path encountered at the right moment,
a grove, a ravine, can stay the heel of that colossus which is
called an army, and prevent its retreat. He who quits the field
is beaten; hence the necessity devolving on the responsible leader,
of examining the most insignificant clump of trees, and of studying
deeply the slightest relief in the ground.

The two generals had attentively studied the plain of Mont-Saint-Jean,
now called the plain of Waterloo. In the preceding year, Wellington,
with the sagacity of foresight, had examined it as the possible seat
of a great battle. Upon this spot, and for this duel, on the 18th
of June, Wellington had the good post, Napoleon the bad post.
The English army was stationed above, the French army below.

It is almost superfluous here to sketch the appearance of Napoleon
on horseback, glass in hand, upon the heights of Rossomme,
at daybreak, on June 18, 1815. All the world has seen him before we
can show him. That calm profile under the little three-cornered
hat of the school of Brienne, that green uniform, the white revers
concealing the star of the Legion of Honor, his great coat hiding
his epaulets, the corner of red ribbon peeping from beneath his vest,
his leather trousers, the white horse with the saddle-cloth of purple
velvet bearing on the corners crowned N's and eagles, Hessian boots
over silk stockings, silver spurs, the sword of Marengo,--that whole
figure of the last of the Caesars is present to all imaginations,
saluted with acclamations by some, severely regarded by others.

That figure stood for a long time wholly in the light; this arose
from a certain legendary dimness evolved by the majority of heroes,
and which always veils the truth for a longer or shorter time;
but to-day history and daylight have arrived.

That light called history is pitiless; it possesses this peculiar and
divine quality, that, pure light as it is, and precisely because it is
wholly light, it often casts a shadow in places where people had hitherto
beheld rays; from the same man it constructs two different phantoms,
and the one attacks the other and executes justice on it, and the
shadows of the despot contend with the brilliancy of the leader.
Hence arises a truer measure in the definitive judgments of nations.
Babylon violated lessens Alexander, Rome enchained lessens Caesar,
Jerusalem murdered lessens Titus, tyranny follows the tyrant.
It is a misfortune for a man to leave behind him the night which
bears his form.

CHAPTER V

THE QUID OBSCURUM OF BATTLES

Every one is acquainted with the first phase of this battle;
a beginning which was troubled, uncertain, hesitating, menacing to
both armies, but still more so for the English than for the French.

It had rained all night, the earth had been cut up by the downpour,
the water had accumulated here and there in the hollows of the plain
as if in casks; at some points the gear of the artillery carriages
was buried up to the axles, the circingles of the horses were dripping
with liquid mud. If the wheat and rye trampled down by this cohort
of transports on the march had not filled in the ruts and strewn a
litter beneath the wheels, all movement, particularly in the valleys,
in the direction of Papelotte would have been impossible.

The affair began late. Napoleon, as we have already explained,
was in the habit of keeping all his artillery well in hand,
like a pistol, aiming it now at one point, now at another,
of the battle; and it had been his wish to wait until the horse
batteries could move and gallop freely. In order to do that it
was necessary that the sun should come out and dry the soil.
But the sun did not make its appearance. It was no longer
the rendezvous of Austerlitz. When the first cannon was fired,
the English general, Colville, looked at his watch, and noted
that it was thirty-five minutes past eleven.

The action was begun furiously, with more fury, perhaps, than the
Emperor would have wished, by the left wing of the French resting
on Hougomont. At the same time Napoleon attacked the centre by
hurling Quiot's brigade on La Haie-Sainte, and Ney pushed forward
the right wing of the French against the left wing of the English,
which rested on Papelotte.

The attack on Hougomont was something of a feint; the plan was
to draw Wellington thither, and to make him swerve to the left.
This plan would have succeeded if the four companies of the English
guards and the brave Belgians of Perponcher's division had not held the
position solidly, and Wellington, instead of massing his troops there,
could confine himself to despatching thither, as reinforcements,
only four more companies of guards and one battalion from Brunswick.

The attack of the right wing of the French on Papelotte was calculated,
in fact, to overthrow the English left, to cut off the road
to Brussels, to bar the passage against possible Prussians,
to force Mont-Saint-Jean, to turn Wellington back on Hougomont,
thence on Braine-l'Alleud, thence on Hal; nothing easier.
With the exception of a few incidents this attack succeeded
Papelotte was taken; La Haie-Sainte was carried.

A detail to be noted. There was in the English infantry,
particularly in Kempt's brigade, a great many raw recruits. These young
soldiers were valiant in the presence of our redoubtable infantry;
their inexperience extricated them intrepidly from the dilemma;
they performed particularly excellent service as skirmishers:
the soldier skirmisher, left somewhat to himself, becomes, so to speak,
his own general. These recruits displayed some of the French
ingenuity and fury. This novice of an infantry had dash.
This displeased Wellington.

After the taking of La Haie-Sainte the battle wavered.

There is in this day an obscure interval, from mid-day to four o'clock;
the middle portion of this battle is almost indistinct, and participates
in the sombreness of the hand-to-hand conflict. Twilight reigns
over it. We perceive vast fluctuations in that fog, a dizzy mirage,
paraphernalia of war almost unknown to-day, pendant colbacks,
floating sabre-taches, cross-belts, cartridge-boxes for grenades,
hussar dolmans, red boots with a thousand wrinkles, heavy shakos
garlanded with torsades, the almost black infantry of Brunswick mingled
with the scarlet infantry of England, the English soldiers with great,
white circular pads on the slopes of their shoulders for epaulets,
the Hanoverian light-horse with their oblong casques of leather,
with brass hands and red horse-tails, the Scotch with their bare
knees and plaids, the great white gaiters of our grenadiers;
pictures, not strategic lines--what Salvator Rosa requires,
not what is suited to the needs of Gribeauval.

A certain amount of tempest is always mingled with a battle.
Quid obscurum, quid divinum. Each historian traces, to some extent,
the particular feature which pleases him amid this pellmell.
Whatever may be the combinations of the generals, the shock of armed
masses has an incalculable ebb. During the action the plans of
the two leaders enter into each other and become mutually thrown
out of shape. Such a point of the field of battle devours more
combatants than such another, just as more or less spongy soils
soak up more or less quickly the water which is poured on them.
It becomes necessary to pour out more soldiers than one would like;
a series of expenditures which are the unforeseen. The line of battle
waves and undulates like a thread, the trails of blood gush illogically,
the fronts of the armies waver, the regiments form capes and gulfs
as they enter and withdraw; all these reefs are continually moving
in front of each other. Where the infantry stood the artillery arrives,
the cavalry rushes in where the artillery was, the battalions are
like smoke. There was something there; seek it. It has disappeared;
the open spots change place, the sombre folds advance and retreat,
a sort of wind from the sepulchre pushes forward, hurls back,
distends, and disperses these tragic multitudes. What is a fray?
an oscillation? The immobility of a mathematical plan expresses
a minute, not a day. In order to depict a battle, there is required
one of those powerful painters who have chaos in their brushes.
Rembrandt is better than Vandermeulen; Vandermeulen, exact at noon,
lies at three o'clock. Geometry is deceptive; the hurricane alone
is trustworthy. That is what confers on Folard the right to
contradict Polybius. Let us add, that there is a certain instant
when the battle degenerates into a combat, becomes specialized,
and disperses into innumerable detailed feats, which, to borrow
the expression of Napoleon himself, "belong rather to the biography
of the regiments than to the history of the army." The historian has,
in this case, the evident right to sum up the whole. He cannot
do more than seize the principal outlines of the struggle, and it
is not given to any one narrator, however conscientious he may be,
to fix, absolutely, the form of that horrible cloud which is called
a battle.

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

Nevertheless, at a certain moment in the afternoon the battle came
to a point.

CHAPTER VI

FOUR O'CLOCK IN THE AFTERNOON

Towards four o'clock the condition of the English army was serious.
The Prince of Orange was in command of the centre, Hill of the
right wing, Picton of the left wing. The Prince of Orange,
desperate and intrepid, shouted to the Hollando-Belgians: "Nassau!
Brunswick! Never retreat!" Hill, having been weakened, had come up
to the support of Wellington; Picton was dead. At the very moment
when the English had captured from the French the flag of the 105th
of the line, the French had killed the English general, Picton, with a
bullet through the head. The battle had, for Wellington, two bases
of action, Hougomont and La Haie-Sainte; Hougomont still held out,
but was on fire; La Haie-Sainte was taken. Of the German battalion
which defended it, only forty-two men survived; all the officers,
except five, were either dead or captured. Three thousand combatants
had been massacred in that barn. A sergeant of the English Guards,
the foremost boxer in England, reputed invulnerable by his companions,
had been killed there by a little French drummer-boy. Baring had
been dislodged, Alten put to the sword. Many flags had been lost,
one from Alten's division, and one from the battalion of Lunenburg,
carried by a prince of the house of Deux-Ponts. The Scotch Grays no
longer existed; Ponsonby's great dragoons had been hacked to pieces.
That valiant cavalry had bent beneath the lancers of Bro and
beneath the cuirassiers of Travers; out of twelve hundred horses,
six hundred remained; out of three lieutenant-colonels, two lay
on the earth,--Hamilton wounded, Mater slain. Ponsonby had fallen,
riddled by seven lance-thrusts. Gordon was dead. Marsh was dead.
Two divisions, the fifth and the sixth, had been annihilated.

Hougomont injured, La Haie-Sainte taken, there now existed but
one rallying-point, the centre. That point still held firm.
Wellington reinforced it. He summoned thither Hill, who was
at Merle-Braine; he summoned Chasse, who was at Braine-l'Alleud.

The centre of the English army, rather concave, very dense,
and very compact, was strongly posted. It occupied the plateau
of Mont-Saint-Jean, having behind it the village, and in front of it
the slope, which was tolerably steep then. It rested on that stout
stone dwelling which at that time belonged to the domain of Nivelles,
and which marks the intersection of the roads--a pile of the
sixteenth century, and so robust that the cannon-balls rebounded from
it without injuring it. All about the plateau the English had cut
the hedges here and there, made embrasures in the hawthorn-trees, thrust
the throat of a cannon between two branches, embattled the shrubs.
There artillery was ambushed in the brushwood. This punic labor,
incontestably authorized by war, which permits traps, was so well done,
that Haxo, who had been despatched by the Emperor at nine o'clock
in the morning to reconnoitre the enemy's batteries, had discovered
nothing of it, and had returned and reported to Napoleon that there
were no obstacles except the two barricades which barred the road
to Nivelles and to Genappe. It was at the season when the grain
is tall; on the edge of the plateau a battalion of Kempt's brigade,
the 95th, armed with carabines, was concealed in the tall wheat.

Thus assured and buttressed, the centre of the Anglo-Dutch army was
well posted. The peril of this position lay in the forest of Soignes,
then adjoining the field of battle, and intersected by the ponds
of Groenendael and Boitsfort. An army could not retreat thither
without dissolving; the regiments would have broken up immediately there.
The artillery would have been lost among the morasses. The retreat,
according to many a man versed in the art,--though it is disputed
by others,--would have been a disorganized flight.

To this centre, Wellington added one of Chasse's brigades taken
from the right wing, and one of Wincke's brigades taken from the
left wing, plus Clinton's division. To his English, to the regiments
of Halkett, to the brigades of Mitchell, to the guards of Maitland,
he gave as reinforcements and aids, the infantry of Brunswick,
Nassau's contingent, Kielmansegg's Hanoverians, and Ompteda's
Germans. This placed twenty-six battalions under his hand.
The right wing, as Charras says, was thrown back on the centre.
An enormous battery was masked by sacks of earth at the spot
where there now stands what is called the "Museum of Waterloo."
Besides this, Wellington had, behind a rise in the ground,
Somerset's Dragoon Guards, fourteen hundred horse strong.
It was the remaining half of the justly celebrated English cavalry.
Ponsonby destroyed, Somerset remained.

The battery, which, if completed, would have been almost a redoubt,
was ranged behind a very low garden wall, backed up with a coating
of bags of sand and a large slope of earth. This work was not finished;
there had been no time to make a palisade for it.

Wellington, uneasy but impassive, was on horseback, and there
remained the whole day in the same attitude, a little in advance
of the old mill of Mont-Saint-Jean, which is still in existence,
beneath an elm, which an Englishman, an enthusiastic vandal,
purchased later on for two hundred francs, cut down, and carried off.
Wellington was coldly heroic. The bullets rained about him.
His aide-de-camp, Gordon, fell at his side. Lord Hill, pointing to a
shell which had burst, said to him: "My lord, what are your orders
in case you are killed?" "To do like me," replied Wellington.
To Clinton he said laconically, "To hold this spot to the last man."
The day was evidently turning out ill. Wellington shouted to his
old companions of Talavera, of Vittoria, of Salamanca: "Boys, can
retreat be thought of? Think of old England!"

Towards four o'clock, the English line drew back. Suddenly nothing
was visible on the crest of the plateau except the artillery
and the sharpshooters; the rest had disappeared: the regiments,
dislodged by the shells and the French bullets, retreated into the bottom,
now intersected by the back road of the farm of Mont-Saint-Jean;
a retrograde movement took place, the English front hid itself,
Wellington drew back. "The beginning of retreat!" cried Napoleon.

CHAPTER VII

NAPOLEON IN A GOOD HUMOR

The Emperor, though ill and discommoded on horseback by a
local trouble, had never been in a better humor than on that day.
His impenetrability had been smiling ever since the morning. On the
18th of June, that profound soul masked by marble beamed blindly.
The man who had been gloomy at Austerlitz was gay at Waterloo.
The greatest favorites of destiny make mistakes. Our joys are
composed of shadow. The supreme smile is God's alone.

Ridet Caesar, Pompeius flebit, said the legionaries of the
Fulminatrix Legion. Pompey was not destined to weep on that occasion,
but it is certain that Caesar laughed. While exploring on horseback
at one o'clock on the preceding night, in storm and rain, in company
with Bertrand, the communes in the neighborhood of Rossomme,
satisfied at the sight of the long line of the English camp-fires
illuminating the whole horizon from Frischemont to Braine-l'Alleud,
it had seemed to him that fate, to whom he had assigned a day on the
field of Waterloo, was exact to the appointment; he stopped his horse,
and remained for some time motionless, gazing at the lightning
and listening to the thunder; and this fatalist was heard to cast
into the darkness this mysterious saying, "We are in accord."
Napoleon was mistaken. They were no longer in accord.

He took not a moment for sleep; every instant of that night was marked
by a joy for him. He traversed the line of the principal outposts,
halting here and there to talk to the sentinels. At half-past two,
near the wood of Hougomont, he heard the tread of a column on
the march; he thought at the moment that it was a retreat on the part
of Wellington. He said: "It is the rear-guard of the English
getting under way for the purpose of decamping. I will take
prisoners the six thousand English who have just arrived at Ostend."
He conversed expansively; he regained the animation which he had
shown at his landing on the first of March, when he pointed out
to the Grand-Marshal the enthusiastic peasant of the Gulf Juan,
and cried, "Well, Bertrand, here is a reinforcement already!"
On the night of the 17th to the 18th of June he rallied Wellington.
"That little Englishman needs a lesson," said Napoleon. The rain
redoubled in violence; the thunder rolled while the Emperor
was speaking.

At half-past three o'clock in the morning, he lost one illusion;
officers who had been despatched to reconnoitre announced to him
that the enemy was not making any movement. Nothing was stirring;
not a bivouac-fire had been extinguished; the English army was asleep.
The silence on earth was profound; the only noise was in the heavens.
At four o'clock, a peasant was brought in to him by the scouts;
this peasant had served as guide to a brigade of English cavalry,
probably Vivian's brigade, which was on its way to take up a position
in the village of Ohain, at the extreme left. At five o'clock,
two Belgian deserters reported to him that they had just quitted
their regiment, and that the English army was ready for battle.
"So much the better!" exclaimed Napoleon. "I prefer to overthrow them
rather than to drive them back."

In the morning he dismounted in the mud on the slope which forms
an angle with the Plancenoit road, had a kitchen table and a peasant's
chair brought to him from the farm of Rossomme, seated himself,
with a truss of straw for a carpet, and spread out on the table
the chart of the battle-field, saying to Soult as he did so,
"A pretty checker-board."

In consequence of the rains during the night, the transports
of provisions, embedded in the soft roads, had not been able
to arrive by morning; the soldiers had had no sleep; they were
wet and fasting. This did not prevent Napoleon from exclaiming
cheerfully to Ney, "We have ninety chances out of a hundred."
At eight o'clock the Emperor's breakfast was brought to him.
He invited many generals to it. During breakfast, it was said
that Wellington had been to a ball two nights before, in Brussels,
at the Duchess of Richmond's; and Soult, a rough man of war,
with a face of an archbishop, said, "The ball takes place to-day."
The Emperor jested with Ney, who said, "Wellington will not be so
simple as to wait for Your Majesty." That was his way, however.
"He was fond of jesting," says Fleury de Chaboulon. "A merry
humor was at the foundation of his character," says Gourgaud.
"He abounded in pleasantries, which were more peculiar than witty,"
says Benjamin Constant. These gayeties of a giant are worthy
of insistence. It was he who called his grenadiers "his grumblers";
he pinched their ears; he pulled their mustaches. "The Emperor
did nothing but play pranks on us," is the remark of one of them.
During the mysterious trip from the island of Elba to France,
on the 27th of February, on the open sea, the French brig of war,
Le Zephyr, having encountered the brig L'Inconstant, on which Napoleon
was concealed, and having asked the news of Napoleon from L'Inconstant,
the Emperor, who still wore in his hat the white and amaranthine
cockade sown with bees, which he had adopted at the isle of Elba,
laughingly seized the speaking-trumpet, and answered for himself,
"The Emperor is well." A man who laughs like that is on familiar
terms with events. Napoleon indulged in many fits of this laughter
during the breakfast at Waterloo. After breakfast he meditated
for a quarter of an hour; then two generals seated themselves on
the truss of straw, pen in hand and their paper on their knees,
and the Emperor dictated to them the order of battle.

At nine o'clock, at the instant when the French army, ranged in
echelons and set in motion in five columns, had deployed--
the divisions in two lines, the artillery between the brigades,
the music at their head; as they beat the march, with rolls on the drums
and the blasts of trumpets, mighty, vast, joyous, a sea of casques,
of sabres, and of bayonets on the horizon, the Emperor was touched,
and twice exclaimed, "Magnificent! Magnificent!"

Between nine o'clock and half-past ten the whole army, incredible as it
may appear, had taken up its position and ranged itself in six lines,
forming, to repeat the Emperor's expression, "the figure of six V's."
A few moments after the formation of the battle-array, in the midst
of that profound silence, like that which heralds the beginning
of a storm, which precedes engagements, the Emperor tapped Haxo on
the shoulder, as he beheld the three batteries of twelve-pounders,
detached by his orders from the corps of Erlon, Reille, and Lobau,
and destined to begin the action by taking Mont-Saint-Jean, which was
situated at the intersection of the Nivelles and the Genappe roads,
and said to him, "There are four and twenty handsome maids, General."

Sure of the issue, he encouraged with a smile, as they passed
before him, the company of sappers of the first corps, which he
had appointed to barricade Mont-Saint-Jean as soon as the village
should be carried. All this serenity had been traversed by but
a single word of haughty pity; perceiving on his left, at a spot
where there now stands a large tomb, those admirable Scotch Grays,
with their superb horses, massing themselves, he said, "It is a pity."

Then he mounted his horse, advanced beyond Rossomme, and selected
for his post of observation a contracted elevation of turf to the right
of the road from Genappe to Brussels, which was his second station
during the battle. The third station, the one adopted at seven
o'clock in the evening, between La Belle-Alliance and La Haie-Sainte,
is formidable; it is a rather elevated knoll, which still exists,
and behind which the guard was massed on a slope of the plain.
Around this knoll the balls rebounded from the pavements of
the road, up to Napoleon himself. As at Brienne, he had over
his head the shriek of the bullets and of the heavy artillery.
Mouldy cannon-balls, old sword-blades, and shapeless projectiles,
eaten up with rust, were picked up at the spot where his horse'
feet stood. Scabra rubigine. A few years ago, a shell of sixty pounds,
still charged, and with its fuse broken off level with the bomb,
was unearthed. It was at this last post that the Emperor said
to his guide, Lacoste, a hostile and terrified peasant, who was
attached to the saddle of a hussar, and who turned round at every
discharge of canister and tried to hide behind Napoleon: "Fool, it
is shameful! You'll get yourself killed with a ball in the back."
He who writes these lines has himself found, in the friable soil
of this knoll, on turning over the sand, the remains of the neck
of a bomb, disintegrated, by the oxidization of six and forty years,
and old fragments of iron which parted like elder-twigs between
the fingers.

Every one is aware that the variously inclined undulations of the plains,
where the engagement between Napoleon and Wellington took place,
are no longer what they were on June 18, 1815. By taking from this
mournful field the wherewithal to make a monument to it, its real
relief has been taken away, and history, disconcerted, no longer
finds her bearings there. It has been disfigured for the sake
of glorifying it. Wellington, when he beheld Waterloo once more,
two years later, exclaimed, "They have altered my field of battle!"
Where the great pyramid of earth, surmounted by the lion,
rises to-day, there was a hillock which descended in an easy slope
towards the Nivelles road, but which was almost an escarpment
on the side of the highway to Genappe. The elevation of this
escarpment can still be measured by the height of the two knolls
of the two great sepulchres which enclose the road from Genappe
to Brussels: one, the English tomb, is on the left; the other,
the German tomb, is on the right. There is no French tomb. The whole
of that plain is a sepulchre for France. Thanks to the thousands
upon thousands of cartloads of earth employed in the hillock one
hundred and fifty feet in height and half a mile in circumference,
the plateau of Mont-Saint-Jean is now accessible by an easy slope.
On the day of battle, particularly on the side of La Haie-Sainte,
it was abrupt and difficult of approach. The slope there is so
steep that the English cannon could not see the farm, situated in
the bottom of the valley, which was the centre of the combat.
On the 18th of June, 1815, the rains had still farther increased
this acclivity, the mud complicated the problem of the ascent,
and the men not only slipped back, but stuck fast in the mire.
Along the crest of the plateau ran a sort of trench whose presence it
was impossible for the distant observer to divine.

What was this trench? Let us explain. Braine-l'Alleud is a
Belgian village; Ohain is another. These villages, both of them
concealed in curves of the landscape, are connected by a road about
a league and a half in length, which traverses the plain along its
undulating level, and often enters and buries itself in the hills
like a furrow, which makes a ravine of this road in some places.
In 1815, as at the present day, this road cut the crest of the plateau
of Mont-Saint-Jean between the two highways from Genappe and Nivelles;
only, it is now on a level with the plain; it was then a hollow way.
Its two slopes have been appropriated for the monumental hillock.
This road was, and still is, a trench throughout the greater portion
of its course; a hollow trench, sometimes a dozen feet in depth,
and whose banks, being too steep, crumbled away here and there,
particularly in winter, under driving rains. Accidents happened here.
The road was so narrow at the Braine-l'Alleud entrance that a
passer-by was crushed by a cart, as is proved by a stone cross
which stands near the cemetery, and which gives the name of the dead,
Monsieur Bernard Debrye, Merchant of Brussels, and the date of
the accident, February, 1637.[8] It was so deep on the table-land
of Mont-Saint-Jean that a peasant, Mathieu Nicaise, was crushed there,
in 1783, by a slide from the slope, as is stated on another stone cross,
the top of which has disappeared in the process of clearing the ground,
but whose overturned pedestal is still visible on the grassy slope
to the left of the highway between La Haie-Sainte and the farm
of Mont-Saint-Jean.

[8] This is the inscription:--
                       D. O. M.
                    CY A ETE ECRASE
                       PAR MALHEUR
                    SOUS UN CHARIOT,
                    MONSIEUR BERNARD
                    DE BRYE MARCHAND
               A BRUXELLE LE [Illegible]
                      FEVRIER 1637.

On the day of battle, this hollow road whose existence was in no
way indicated, bordering the crest of Mont-Saint-Jean, a trench
at the summit of the escarpment, a rut concealed in the soil,
was invisible; that is to say, terrible.

CHAPTER VIII

THE EMPEROR PUTS A QUESTION TO THE GUIDE LACOSTE

So, on the morning of Waterloo, Napoleon was content.

He was right; the plan of battle conceived by him was, as we have seen,
really admirable.

The battle once begun, its very various changes,--the resistance
of Hougomont; the tenacity of La Haie-Sainte; the killing of Bauduin;
the disabling of Foy; the unexpected wall against which Soye's
brigade was shattered; Guilleminot's fatal heedlessness when he
had neither petard nor powder sacks; the miring of the batteries;
the fifteen unescorted pieces overwhelmed in a hollow way by Uxbridge;
the small effect of the bombs falling in the English lines, and there
embedding themselves in the rain-soaked soil, and only succeeding
in producing volcanoes of mud, so that the canister was turned into
a splash; the uselessness of Pire's demonstration on Braine-l'Alleud;
all that cavalry, fifteen squadrons, almost exterminated; the right
wing of the English badly alarmed, the left wing badly cut into;
Ney's strange mistake in massing, instead of echelonning the four
divisions of the first corps; men delivered over to grape-shot,
arranged in ranks twenty-seven deep and with a frontage of two hundred;
the frightful holes made in these masses by the cannon-balls;
attacking columns disorganized; the side-battery suddenly unmasked on
their flank; Bourgeois, Donzelot, and Durutte compromised; Quiot repulsed;
Lieutenant Vieux, that Hercules graduated at the Polytechnic School,
wounded at the moment when he was beating in with an axe the door
of La Haie-Sainte under the downright fire of the English barricade
which barred the angle of the road from Genappe to Brussels;
Marcognet's division caught between the infantry and the cavalry,
shot down at the very muzzle of the guns amid the grain by Best
and Pack, put to the sword by Ponsonby; his battery of seven
pieces spiked; the Prince of Saxe-Weimar holding and guarding,
in spite of the Comte d'Erlon, both Frischemont and Smohain;
the flag of the 105th taken, the flag of the 45th captured; that black
Prussian hussar stopped by runners of the flying column of three
hundred light cavalry on the scout between Wavre and Plancenoit;
the alarming things that had been said by prisoners; Grouchy's delay;
fifteen hundred men killed in the orchard of Hougomont in less
than an hour; eighteen hundred men overthrown in a still shorter
time about La Haie-Sainte,--all these stormy incidents passing
like the clouds of battle before Napoleon, had hardly troubled
his gaze and had not overshadowed that face of imperial certainty.
Napoleon was accustomed to gaze steadily at war; he never added
up the heart-rending details, cipher by cipher; ciphers mattered
little to him, provided that they furnished the total, victory;
he was not alarmed if the beginnings did go astray, since he
thought himself the master and the possessor at the end; he knew
how to wait, supposing himself to be out of the question, and he
treated destiny as his equal: he seemed to say to fate, Thou wilt
not dare.

Composed half of light and half of shadow, Napoleon thought himself
protected in good and tolerated in evil. He had, or thought
that he had, a connivance, one might almost say a complicity,
of events in his favor, which was equivalent to the invulnerability
of antiquity.

Nevertheless, when one has Beresina, Leipzig, and Fontainebleau
behind one, it seems as though one might distrust Waterloo.
A mysterious frown becomes perceptible in the depths of the heavens.

At the moment when Wellington retreated, Napoleon shuddered.
He suddenly beheld the table-land of Mont-Saint-Jean cleared,
and the van of the English army disappear. It was rallying,
but hiding itself. The Emperor half rose in his stirrups.
The lightning of victory flashed from his eyes.

Wellington, driven into a corner at the forest of Soignes
and destroyed--that was the definitive conquest of England by France;
it was Crecy, Poitiers, Malplaquet, and Ramillies avenged.
The man of Marengo was wiping out Agincourt.

So the Emperor, meditating on this terrible turn of fortune,
swept his glass for the last time over all the points of the field
of battle. His guard, standing behind him with grounded arms,
watched him from below with a sort of religion. He pondered;
he examined the slopes, noted the declivities, scrutinized the
clumps of trees, the square of rye, the path; he seemed to be
counting each bush. He gazed with some intentness at the English
barricades of the two highways,--two large abatis of trees, that on
the road to Genappe above La Haie-Sainte, armed with two cannon,
the only ones out of all the English artillery which commanded the
extremity of the field of battle, and that on the road to Nivelles
where gleamed the Dutch bayonets of Chasse's brigade. Near this
barricade he observed the old chapel of Saint Nicholas, painted white,
which stands at the angle of the cross-road near Braine-l'Alleud;
he bent down and spoke in a low voice to the guide Lacoste. The guide
made a negative sign with his head, which was probably perfidious.

The Emperor straightened himself up and fell to thinking.

Wellington had drawn back.

All that remained to do was to complete this retreat by crushing him.

Napoleon turning round abruptly, despatched an express at full
speed to

Les Miserables by Victor Hugo Hypertext Meanings and Commentaries from the Encyclopedia of the Self by Mark ZimmermanGo to Part 3 of 8Return to Part 1 of 8

Les Miserables
by Victor Hugo
Hypertext Meanings and Commentaries
from the Encyclopedia of the Self
by Mark Zimmerman
Go to Part 3 of 8
Return to Part 1 of 8