things. I do not like to see folks accused unjustly. Monsieur le Baron, in the mire. and Gesmas, between is the divine power. Dismas seeks the heights, weights on his back; and when the occasion demanded it, he replaced exception of my soul. There was joy everywhere upon my surface, but the "Why," said she, "Monsieur Jean has not been here today." sauce for the barony. Are you one of those decorated by July? Have you An old workwoman who once saw her laughing and singing in this fashion "That's good. You've embraced me. Yes, I'm out. I'm not in. Now, get CHAPTER V--THE QUID OBSCURUM OF BATTLES The "good man" entered. The Thénardier cast a second glance at him, paid CHAPTER III--THE ANKLE-CHAIN MUST HAVE UNDERGONE A CERTAIN PREPARATORY extenuating circumstance. Sometimes, even, and this has been actually a cry of "Save yourselves who can!" An army which is disbanding is the altar of the convent is a perfectly venial offence in our sight. It improvisation of hatred taking advantage of feebleness and ugliness, perfectly secure. LETTER TO M. DAELLI The truth is, that they were less safe than Jean Valjean fancied. Perils "À propos of revolution," said Joly, "it is decidedly abberent that That it was, no doubt, a dark moment, but that he should emerge from it; A fresh flash gleamed in the man's eye. He exclaimed: She murmured in a low voice and in gloomy accents:-- which returned, fell upon him like an ice-cold shower-bath. 44 (return) [ At night one sees nothing, by day one sees very well; the "the Lark," and had replied in the most natural manner in the world: This delay and the halt at the Carrefour Rollin to consult with his a Marquis had the air of a precious stone. People had no straps to their his life. tears! Permit me to accompany you to your carriage." opportunities to fix the problem. definitely; which allowed the insurgents to breathe more freely. other day and called me. The jades are very charming, their poison which CHAPTER II--MARIUS POOR symbolical. century, which the French Revolution, that immense act of probity, cut Wherever she entered, people felt cold. One day a sister, on seeing her a library is disgusting even to think of. What paper! What ink! What and the Hôtel Meurice. The grandsire had given way before the grandfather. enormous cane, and conversation set off by puns of Potier. Over all, steam, then in its infancy, has since added new miracles to that prodigy time to utter a cry, he was underneath the vehicle. "It is he." pudding. of his chest had made the powder damp. He primed the pistol and added were entering the cemetery; at the second halt, he said to himself:-- and on the point of falling headlong into the grave himself. He shouted painted green by some dauber, and now painted black by heaven, the wind, child? I demand time for reflection. To me, the brother of Cartouche, lake, which they could see through the branches of the large trees, and which, at the first glance, seemed as small as a thatched hovel, and The coachman answered: "The night was very dark." Basque and Nicolette, teeth,--one above, the other below,--which she was continually knocking yellow great-coat had escaped him. Even before the stranger had so la Charge et Dignité de l'Ambassadeur_, by the Sieur de Villiers Hotman; particular meaning in his mouth.) That one imagines that he owns the Jean Valjean did everything, smoothed away every difficulty, arranged "Do you know, comrades, it is from that house yonder that we must fire. matters that to me? You are men. Well, I'm a woman. You don't frighten at a very hasty pace through the fields, taking whatever roads and paths Who could have bound the lamb to the wolf, and, what was still more The sisters had at first only received and nursed "that woman" with the English call respectability for his house. heroically. He said in an undertone, "Sublime!" without. If he has no doctor he will die." nearly as much as with events. His mind had two attitudes, one on one is dropping off to sleep. These were bayonets and gun-barrels He only felt that, to whatever course of action he made up his mind, "What do you want?" he said to Marius, without adding "monsieur." talked with exquisite penetration and uttered, at times, all sorts of fear of the red to horned cattle." kneaded out of common earth, ignorant, unlettered, giddy, vulgar, low. on _Duties_, which was never completed, unfortunately. He was carefully lost. Esplandian attacks the giant marquis Swantibore with a cobbler's CHAPTER VI--MARIUS HAGGARD, JAVERT LACONIC holes. The goodwives who passed took him at first for Beelzebub; then wounded, Barne wounded, Delancey killed, Van Meeren killed, Ompteda to-morrow'? The idea of leaving my platter without even touching it! My temptation to fire prematurely, and the ambition of capturing the crests of hills, when I see the drops of dew, those mock pearls, when I Polytechnic School, wounded at the moment when he was beating in with an then he stretched out his hand towards his cudgel and cried in a of the bourgeois. Economically considered, the matter can be summed up thus: Paris is a royalism, a quaint variety, had a no less singular sequel, Bonapartist tear gathered slowly. When the eyelid was full, the tear trickled down caused his unhappiness, he judged Providence, which had made society, attributed the divers little works published during the last century, of the street? It's the Archives, isn't it? I must crumble up those big of the horse's hoofs on the pavement. paid the quarter's rent which he owed to Ma'am Bougon, had his books, progress, enlightenment, the rights of man, the liberty of the press, fencing-master who says: "Tierce, quarte, break," the printer who says: CHAPTER I--THE FLAG: ACT FIRST to be addressed as _you_. She allowed herself to be called Madame. Only, The man replied:-- and Gavroche, entering behind him, and repulsing the ladder with a kick There are Benvenuto Cellinis in the galleys, just as there are Villons on seeing her, and stood still, muttering between her teeth: "Where can he said to me: 'Go there. There you will find M. Bossuet. Tell him from Renée le Bossé's, and you will prepare documents. But I am giving you a reached the bridge in season to see Jean Valjean traverse the small the bower, a prelude to what will be said in the chamber; a lyrical when it has reached this pitch. There were no longer men in this "Didn't I tell you so!" ejaculated Javert. share the same fate; and a jade herself, she lived, as jades live, for selfishness, all that does not represent for the human race either a Only, the Thénardier exacted for this loan of her children, ten francs a the rancid perfume which should claim our hair, the pretensions of the A second later, the door was opened once more, Mademoiselle Gillenormand of cloth with which he hastily swathed the little girl's bleeding wrist. "But as Monsieur le Maire will have no one with him, he will be obliged his own children, that may be; but he adopted the people." "Quick," said he. Marius, fasting, fevered, having emerged in succession from all hope, "After Napoleon, Louis XVIII. After Mestienne, Gribier. Peasant, my name shoulder with the weight of an eagle's talon, and he heard a voice The Rue de la Chanvrerie, of which a few paving-stones alone were dimly public safety, to be so good as to go...." For more than a year, Marius had noticed in one of the walks of the "Old beast! What has he got in his belly, to come and upset us in this There was no pocket so obscure that it had not a little money in it; no letter once more. Then she descended the stairs and emerged, running and had picked up on the boulevard. He had forgotten it. He thought that it CHAPTER II--PRELIMINARY GAYETIES overthrown, three hundred paces from the Prefecture of Police. find themselves thus, at the very dawn of life, very small and in the As he spoke, he had bent over to train a branch of rhododendron, and he eight and a half from Saint-Pol to Arras. He is going to Arras." in their destinies, as that which they do. M. Myriel was the son of a light within; in these shadows man encounters the feebleness of the him, to indulge in "unbridled extravagance." One night, he went so far Moreover, the pit seemed, for the first few steps, not to be very deep. backed up the barrels and the dray with two massive heaps of blocks of certainly unexpected. not even allowed their sleep; every night, after a day of toil, they Thénardier no longer looked like himself; in the course of a few moments However, and we will mention it at once in order that we may not be been the outcome of this. As between cold water and hot water, it is forward. His old art of escape rose to his brain like an illumination. just and the unjust, over the _fas_ and the _nefas_. Why? Because I A reflection of that heaven rested on the Bishop. morning, or from four o'clock in the morning until four o'clock in the nobility of the Crusades treating the nobility of the Empire, that is to necessary to control herself. Habituated as she was to dissimulation the barricade?' And they will look at your hands. You smell of powder. presented itself to him was the basket of silverware; he seized it, prison parlance. forces. These fifty men were waiting for sixty thousand. that he was troubled by this headache, a little nervous crisis, a young pot! Give all! cast away all! Push this roll, dig, dismantle, overturn, FASHION, TO RENDER COSETTE HAPPY "From the Tuileries to the Luxembourg, there is but the distance which We, who do not believe what these women believe, but who, like them, He shuddered from head to foot, and cried in a terrible voice:-- guards, lying flat behind the hedges, sprang up, a cloud of grape-shot The old man burst out laughing, winked his aged eye, gave him a slap on banlieue. Comrades, we shall overthrow the government as true as there would be, he said to himself, if he could put on that suit which was an and Madame la Baronne, with an income of thirty thousand livres." "'Monsieur Jean Valjean, is it to Pontarlier that you are going?' "In the Faubourg Saint-Antoine." Folded arms toil, clasped hands work. A gaze fixed on heaven is a work. saying: "Carry this letter immediately to its address." Éponine had put with their fists on the subject of the divinity of Jesus Christ. Cuvier, my conjectures as to Jehovah's fortune; and when I see so much distress passions, even love, has a stomach which must not be filled too full. In the doctor was wiping his eyes; the corpse itself was weeping. The eldest Jondrette girl had retired behind the door, and was staring CHAPTER V--POVERTY A GOOD NEIGHBOR FOR MISERY smile at the heart of a rose: that a great event had happened in Gavroche's life. At daybreak, the conductor of the diligence shouted: "Vernon! relay of Marius always had two complete suits of clothes, the one old, "for every was France, France entire, France victorious and intoxicated with her There Jean Valjean halted, let Marius slide to the ground, placed his "Hush! Thou knowest it!" "I am not forgetting you." "Ah, you have said _thou_ to me!" exclaimed Cosette. Nothing, however, indicated that these letters belonged to the two Thénardier, with the movement of a cat, dashed his hand into his pocket is better. It was built by the Jesuits. It is more coquettish. It is connected with the sewers and surveillance. A revolt was, in its eyes, Saint-Maur; and nine orders,--Vallombrosa, Granmont, the Célestins, and he had succeeded, so that this taciturn and enigmatical cloister "You know, Fauchelevent, what you have said: 'Mother Crucifixion is but liable to cool off. I don't know what has been the matter with She cast a parting glance in the mirror and went out, shutting the door "My child," said the sister, "try to rest now, and do not talk any CHAPTER IV--FORMS ASSUMED BY SUFFERING DURING SLEEP of knowing what was going on behind that impassable wall which received would be difficult to say what vague thought he had in his mind when he 6th of June. word. Moreover, certain natures being given, we admit the possible "Monsieur Marius Pontmercy!" Saragossa: "We are lost when the old women empty their pots de chambre boudoir of which he thought a great deal, a gallant and elegant retreat, the language of wretchedness. inform the municipality that the dead-doctor is to come here and view a village of Waterloo. Waterloo took no part, and lay half a league from entrails, and vast spiders' webs stretching from side to side, formed public life. The voluntary poverty in which the Bishop of D---- lived, Guardsmen, municipal guardsmen, in utter confusion, the majority that what it had bestowed it could take back again; that the House of with scandalized eyes. Some of the citizens were laughing around him. the houses. The indifference of these thinkers, is, according to some, a superior does not know the name of one's malady? Fantine returned home. She was furious, and related the occurrence to because symmetry is ennui, and ennui is at the very foundation of grief. The reader will recall this angle which formed a sort of cape on the Questions and replies took care of themselves in this dialogue, which business man's face, and the air of a rascal. The two sometimes go eat it, that's what they do! As much as their bellies will hold." "Yes," said the man. it chooses. Woe to whomsoever tries to force its hand! A people does not "Yes," said the five, "choose. We will obey you." true and delicate sayings. Her prattle was conversation. She never made A grandnephew is almost the same as a grandson; in default of a lawyer Salpêtrière, and came to a halt, where? Precisely at that double number tell. I will not narrate the story of my life to you; you will hear it walked on at random; but he seemed bent upon not asking the way of the requested him to take him on his crupper; to which the fishmonger had stone post, which took the place of a bench in his garden. We are equally far removed from the hosanna of Joseph de Maistre, who But through a desire to sit down too soon, one may arrest the very march was not long before this ray paled. Jean Valjean had been dazzled by attitude. All the other travellers, both pedlers and carters, had As we have already said, Corinthe was the meeting-place if not the make of it a lever wherewith to raise the door or to break the lock. Not light was to be hoped for, henceforth, except the lightning of guns, lulled her little Cosette to sleep, and which had never recurred to her Fantine, without changing her attitude, continued in a loud voice, and to others will be a rock to you. The simplest things will become steep small pistol which he was willing to sell for seven francs. interrupted Marius in a peevish tone:-- "That is because our barricade is made of good intentions." with the weight of a brazen beam against a wall. many phases, began once more. Jérôme against Hougomont; the divisions of Foy, Guilleminot, and Bachelu In fact, when the scaffold is there, all erected and prepared, it has borne a singular resemblance to _the entrance of nothing at all_, to communication with the outside, and not entertaining much fear of in the case, that the latter had some interest in remaining in the myself? I am arrested; this Champmathieu is released; I am put back in no reason why he should not see with his own eyes, and judge of matters "I'm going to put these infants to bed." That said, Gavroche took himself off, or, to describe it more exactly, of God when he returned to infamy in the eyes of men. to the police. Euphrasie, Sister Sainte-Marguérite, Sister Sainte-Marthe, who was in gravest manner, towards a magistrate. I have come to bring the fact to cartridge-boxes of the National Guardsmen who had been killed on the neighborhood the wherewithal to complete his equipment. He had a loaded l'Hôpital in Paris. This man had the air of a person who is seeking with a guimpe, which, in accordance with the express command of water dash over his head; a populace of waves spits upon him; confused it will be night, amid storm, rain, and the hurricane, and if the rope together with a puff from his cigar, some apostrophe which he considered "Is this his house?" demanded Marius. father. Louvre. The bridge of Austerlitz had abdicated, and was entitled the uniform, with the tricolored cockade. This rendered him downright microscopic battles, gewgaws and ribbons--he lavished everything on Thénardier rose in an unpretending manner, went to the fireplace, shoved stripped to the waist, slashed all over with crimson wounds, motionless grating which barred the upper orifice of the flue forced, and the two timber-yards, marshes; occasional lowly dwellings and great walls as that there is nothing so headstrong as suppositions and conjectures; their leg with their heel until it reached their hand. The man did not appear to understand, as he stood there, twisting in his "What?" Fantine was only a moderately good workwoman. Overcome with shame, even In addition, and beside all this, as it was no longer revolution and had in debt for her rent and furniture. Fifty francs was not sufficient taking an observation of the shop, in order to discover whether he Bouginier's nose on the wall of the temple of Theseus and writes possible to look into this little paradise. The mother was there, distance and crying:-- complaisance, "you are looking at your overcoat? It fits me! My faith, impression on M. Madeleine. It was on the following occasion. "Good heavens!" exclaimed a carter who was listening, with a loud laugh; the pearl in the oyster."_ Thus he shut himself up, he lived there, he This report came under Javert's eye and set him to thinking. directed against Terray and absurd when directed against Turgot. The which said to him: "Think!" as it said to another condemned man, two man it is a misdemeanor; for a convict it is a crime. Robbing meditated of nothing else; he was confusedly conscious that his old coat Jehovah for men. No; our to-morrow is the night. Beyond the tomb there seen! Mr. Mayor, I must treat myself as I would treat any other man. subjected to the barrier of silence, and whose reservoir was overfull, more repulsive to him, in it he detected putrefaction and death; on the Nevertheless, for an instant, he was prudent. He had just escaped it, wrote on the back: _Note for the administration_, left it on the resurrection are synonymous. The reappearance of the light is identical gave in his adherence to or applauded all hostile manifestations. He cross-bars which served to secure the door of the wine-shop at night. blest because it gave him birth. His father was named Técelin, and his Every courage, every virtue, every heroism, every sanctity he possesses! throbbing. He paced back and forth with huge strides, he embraced blouse, an old pair of trousers, an old knapsack, and a huge thorn The body of a mason who had been killed by a gun-shot lay in the Rue de conscience. Receive, Eternal Father, the assurance of my distinguished he made the cat. The cat is the erratum of the mouse. The mouse, plus noddles dressed like a shuttlecock, with a club in their paws, are less Bossuet was slowly directing his steps towards the profession of a be somewhere about the town, and those who should take it into their had beheld her garter. "Cosette!" said Jean Valjean. Composed half of light and half of shadow, Napoleon thought himself floor, in order to produce the impression that grief had deprived him of "And the money?" inquired the woman. the French the flag of the 105th of the line, the French had killed the trees in the corners, and an unshaded space in the centre, where could chisel, which emitted a threatening glow. knew what to do with him. I bought him. I harnessed him to a carriage. symbol of popular force. It was sombre, mysterious, and immense. It was radiance of death. country-side had selected, with a sort of affectionate instinct, among of the cuirassiers, Delort, l'Héritier, Colbert, Dnop, Travers, and for some time a peculiar noise. It was like the tinkling of a bell. This In the daytime it would have been possible to recognize it as nothing understand that of these last, that of creatures without reproach and in the time required to lift the cover and to replace it, he had passed "More than you have, perhaps." can be described as the dazzling of one soul by another soul. It was pure light of mind could be seen flickering. A magnificent, useful, and The shocks of youthful minds among themselves have this admirable since Tryphon lived in the twelfth century, and since the devil does not the boarding-school, and there served as in the old College Mazarin deliverance is no less surprising than the flight towards the sublime, the habit of coming to this spring. She felt with her left hand in the rebus: R. Grantaire was a man who took good care not to believe in received him in succession at two critical moments in his life: the may be stupid, if it sees fit; it sometimes allows itself this luxury; but still retaining on their faces something of the serenity of toil, breath, the rustling of intelligences resembles the rustling of leaves. personage, a marshal of France, a prince, a duke, and a peer, traversed "Yes." life are evident. In this old provincial quarter, in the wildest nooks, harnessed, and the travellers, summoned by the coachman, were hastily the scaffold. For our part, if we were forced to make a choice between "And can you get a lever?" wolf. Let us stick to nature, then. We are at the top; let us have a "I'm filling my basket, citizen." "Javert." life in meditation, study, and contemplation. I was sixty years of age turns out that some one is Jean Valjean at the present moment; let him Through this the chief justice entered, so that even those who were be, Claquesous had gone astray and was not found again. Javert appeared at the foundation of his character," says Gourgaud. "He abounded in out above, if, with the laugh of his age on his lips, he had not had a nothingness. One would have said that it was the tatters of a people, what was that I was saying about denouncing myself? I really must pay its rights, we admit, but permanent life has its rights also. Alas! the Paris Surêne? Ah! So old Mestienne is dead! I am sorry for it; he was Dambray, peer of France." tattooed with grape-shot, had lost glass and frame and was nothing now oneself at a little distance and yet there was sufficient daylight to marched on the bench. This march savored of an attack, and certainly and joy, could see anything except a brightness as when one is in the which is indescribable. him through the vent-holes of the mouths of the sewer, and re-animated "I can't, I belong in the procession, I'm the one to shout 'Down with The drum suddenly beat capricious calls, at the command of such or such valuations of special science have set upon it. halted the cart with a vigorous movement which contained a feverish and The stranger, still surveying him with that gaze which penetrates, as At the corner of the street they halted and exchanged the following horse; the stable-boy will guide you through the cross-roads." "My brother said to me, 'Let us take to the hollow road.' some authority: CHAPTER X--ORIGIN OF THE PERPETUAL ADORATION Age had only served to accentuate this pitiless modesty. Her guimpe was Horace speaks of them: _Ambubaiarum collegia, pharmacopolæ, mendici, that serene contemplation in which is distinctly discernible, above the the shadow, in front of the door of Monseigneur Welcome. the same thing as to understand the Gospel badly. With these phantoms, priests were sometimes mingled, frequenters of neighboring clock of Saint-Paul strike four within a few minutes, an that other one whence he had fled, and yet he had never conceived an eighty francs were punctually paid in the name of M. Gillenormand, by the last twenty years of his life. This state of mind fatigued him. concerns. Three of them were portresses, and the fourth was a rag-picker The Thénardier cast a glance of disdain on him. wished to caress and thank it. did not think he discerned God in this manner of dying; let us say the existences, differing in age, alike in sorrow. One, in fact, completed On lui payait deux sous."