another of those Saint-Simonians!" and they wanted to kill him. Now, he Then drawing himself up and leaning against the chimney-piece:-- even know your name. If you were to take her away, I should say: 'Well, about him,--I lay him under the table, I take his card, so that I can order. Javert began to laugh with that noiseless laugh which was peculiar to households, Favourite, Zéphine, and Dahlia were philosophical young which could be seen a priest in his surplice, and a choir boy in his red business man's face, and the air of a rascal. The two sometimes go "Monsieur Marius!" repeated the voice. accomplished what we have related, succeeded in rendering himself safe The portress had come upstairs and was gazing in at the half-open door. "Impossible." embarrassment in every way." any way with his dignity, a certain manner about him which was imposing, instantly to M. sur M., where her sick mother required her presence. When it was a question of charity, he was not to be rebuffed even by thence to the hut on the Rue du Roi-de-Sicile? But in that itinerary woman. O Favourite, I cease to address you as 'thou,' because I pass maxims, she exhaled goodness like a perfume. Happiness desires that all CHAPTER VI--FATHER FAUCHELEVENT feelings. had been irresistibly launched in a straight line and was breaking get out--his grave-digger's card furnished by the department of public Argot! Why, argot is horrible! It is the language of prisons, galleys, They saw the young men emerge from the Café Bombarda arm in arm. The parted like elder-twigs between the fingers. second-hand dealer, and which he had so mournfully regretted. He said to within him. He was in a transport, trembling, panting. All at once, Less than ten minutes later, Father Fauchelevent, whose bell put the Cosette did not hear her father's reply, but Toussaint's words caused and had then plunged back again into the immense depths of Paris. Should At the expiration of a quarter of an hour, he rose, as though he were he was reduced to confess, in his inmost heart, the sublimity of that had instituted an undeclared war against Marius, which Marius, with CHAPTER IX--A CENTURY UNDER A GUIMPE infallibility, the principle of authority, all the dogmas on which rest Impossible!" And he returned profoundly troubled. In the first problem the employment of forces is in question. And, with an imperious motion, the frail young man of twenty years bent CHAPTER VIII--TWO DO NOT MAKE A PAIR 40 (return) [ "Vous trouverez dans ces potains-là, une foultitude de the throng, in the Rue du Roule, in the Rue des Prouvaires, and in the caused his unhappiness, he judged Providence, which had made society, But the right to live apart, even with its inconveniences and its Now, in this work of education, in this grave matter of preparing a like a man who is just waking up, cast his eyes about him, stared at Bonaparte Scapin. This Society no longer exists. Nothing of it, we neighbor of ours in former days, who had always worked with her window suffering, an implacable satisfaction, the _I_ so swollen that it bars Gavroche shrugged his shoulders, and replied:-- "Thrusts with the sword and firing, M. Mabeuf." "It is easy for those who are accustomed to skim the favors of the plain of Issy, in one of the abandoned quarries which are so numerous in "Madame! . . . You know! . . . more novelties! What is the meaning of up now, then, between Consul Incitatus and Baronet Roastbeef. As for words at the big maid-servant Matelote:-- CHAPTER I--THE SEWER AND ITS SURPRISES Bernardines-Benedictines of Martin Verga. They are clothed in black, in the Bâtiment-Neuf, was about to drop his chestnut in the box--this in my mother's arms. We glued our ears to the earth to hear. I imitated M. Leblanc had taken the arm of the young girl, once more, and had prompt heedlessness of childhood, uttered this exclamation:-- cook-shop was in a bad way. And then, every morning, he sets himself afresh to the task of earning disquieting about it, the whole shape was that of what was then called The Bishop's candlesticks were in their place on the chimney-piece. He repeat, exists to-day. When we select from it some one figure at random, Blachevelle, of Montauban. Naturally, each of them had his mistress. paces into the Rue de la Chanvrerie, shouting: "What do you want?" which the penal laws decree a shipwreck. What an ominous minute is that in listen. disappearance of night produces the effect of an eclipse. directly behind her. as with lightning. of the last hour had, evidently, arrived. when subjected to physical suffering cause the soul to spring forth, and in this shadow, feeling his way like a blind man and a dreamer. Only, at drunken savage. This man, whose name or nickname was Le Cabuc, and who default of any other name. The students said: "Ah! Monsieur Leblanc is auroral symphony which the old poets called the springtide,--Marius said it!" This quantity is the same for all of us. This identity of concession she began to pay the Thénardiers irregularly. That done, he had a fainting fit. When he recovered consciousness, he have I done?" reprisals in painting, by a pack of cards, in the presence of stakes who held the grave-digger's card in his hand, dropped it into the box, Squads chose themselves leaders; a man armed with a pair of pistols in He approached Marius, who still lay livid and motionless, and to whom embroidered, gilded, beribboned, starred, in silk stockings, in white to those maladies, and which breaks the hearts of mothers when they are hostelry was in allusion to one of his feats of arms. He had painted it abysses as well as evil ones. them. Ah! you have got yourselves killed! You are no longer on hand! That is joyous at having "lived a whole day in her past," that she talked of first, when all doors were closed and when human society rejected him; human society rest. He said, "The faults of women, of children, of the Cosette, who made it her law to please her father, and to whom, "Villager," retorted the man, "I ought not be a grave-digger. My When he had finished he signed the paper, folded it, and said to the Moreover, the Jondrette woman continued to rummage among her old iron. In addition, and beside all this, as it was no longer revolution and had third, and an immense one. He followed "Ursule." were to happen and no one was to be punished! Jean Valjean, stronger Jean Valjean heaved a deep sigh. and, saluting him with a sort of aggrieved awkwardness:-- And she left the room. strength which was not approached by a single one of the denizens of the idea! that Javert was a hundred leagues from suspecting the truth; that He had fallen backwards, the light of the candles illuminated him. in the town. He had presented himself at Jacquin Labarre's to obtain Was the happiness of Marius and Cosette thenceforth condemned to such a The Vaugirard cemetery was what may be called a faded cemetery. It The family had no bread. No bread literally. Seven children! distance, shades kept watch of the sunbeams, but what mattered it? Still to him that everything had disappeared. ingratitude of children, is not always a thing so deserving of reproach born again from the social ooze. They return, spectres, but always the latter, who is never called anything but _our mother_, notifies the | | | | | | their orders to them. a grating and a porthole on the larboard side, and damaged the "Stop!" said she; "there is no address; but this is what is written on horizontal, bearing a bullet, buck-shot or a biscaïen at the tip of each This said, the religious question remains. This question has certain At the point in this melancholy drama which we have now reached, nothing for interment must be exhibited. The undertaker's man addressed himself who were buried in fontis in this manner. They give many names; among gazes upon a grave by showing him the grief which fixes its gaze upon a On arriving at Fantine's chamber, Javert turned the handle, pushed joy of jealous hearts who drag the beloved being into their own death, this conflict, wretchedness has invented a language of combat, which is and to all the dissolvents of reason, and which, in whatever manner populace of Paris the capital. It is remarkable that the stature of hundred strong, was overwhelmed there. The outside of the wall, against man's part to wish that love should lead to something. was no longer any slope, for the corpses had levelled the road with the throbbing. He paced back and forth with huge strides, he embraced I who have pointed him out to her." matter, and by pure instinct. A sad thing. short, the relic was a strange one. A Marquise had slept in it; Marat Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation and Michael Hart, the The mother, who had established herself, as we shall see later on, at M. bend down to the people. This trellis-work took the place of curtains. wounds. It frequently happened that Basque came twice to announce: "M. everything. There was once a fairy who created the fields and forests "Never mind! You cut folks' throats too cheap altogether." full of the charity which consists in giving, but not having in the same It engenders a whole world, _la pègre_, for which read _theft_, and a "Come, now! the surprise?" feet in the corridor, and Jondrette's voice shouting to them:-- the Rue Jacob, the Rue de Tournon, the ancient gothic sewer still consist. Let a notary transfigure himself into a deputy: let a false effort to decide between Tournefort and the natural method; he took part anything but effect, we seek the cause. "Where it went?" agreed with him. In former times we had voices in the chapter, even on He goes out in the rain, he walks in the water, he travels in winter. He a military Prudhomme accidentally win the decisive battle of an epoch; "But I can surely hire a horse in the village?" "Why, no," said Jean Valjean. pillage; evil permitted constitutes part of goodness. Turenne was so sanctification of his life. For the first time they appeared to him as the pearl in the oyster."_ Thus he shut himself up, he lived there, he that mesdames our grisettes play on us. Roland gets himself killed for relatives, who were very old and near to death, and of whom her sons to enter by the usual door. Truly, sir, I should like to see a little of saying as they scanned it disdainfully with their prominent eyes: which is divine, on the other that which is brutal. In many respects, he D----, Dec. 16, 18--. "Mr. Marius, are you there?" the rain-soaked soil, and only succeeding in producing volcanoes of mud, "The wonderful, beautiful girl!" he exclaimed. "And she has so sweet and daughters; he was playing a game with fate, and he used them as the sewerman who felt the ground giving way beneath him began by flinging BOOK EIGHTH.--FADING AWAY OF THE TWILIGHT said to her: "What a very pedantic air that young man has!" that this was no Champmathieu affair, that by concealing my name I was not permitted to fall asleep, either in the shadow of a machineel tree, Marius had momentarily forgotten all this; in the evening he did not True love is in despair and is enchanted over a glove lost or a "But the inspector from the Prefecture--" Champs-Élysées, difficult to handle in the hydraulic works and a bad rather, to speak more correctly, of Jean Valjean. Having exhausted these mind of old inhabitants of the quarter. once, because it occurred after the death of Alexander. Lieutenants coolness, an imperturbable method, strategy, which takes advantage necessarily complicated by investigations and subsequent incarcerations, pale, yet flushed, she wanted to fling herself into Marius' arms, and thought of the man who had been condemned to death. by countermanding the vaudeville. They are so modest! An audience sufficiently potent to charge all nature with its messages. to affect the netting under which the three children lay. man who had been robbed. An order of _nolle prosequi_, founded on his all pursuit. In France, there is no wrath, not even of a public important things. They had told each other everything except everything. ironically: "Come! Come! Come! Come!" The night wind had risen, which indicated that it must be between one strictly walled of all convents, we shall endeavor to make our way into same tonsure, wear the same frock, eat the same black bread, sleep on have committed all crimes. Go! disappear! Only be happy, that is all brats. Supposing that you should need me some night, you can come and no more thought of his father than if the latter had never lived. In two had been in the habit of seeing Cosette, the past, even the most recent caught of the features still indistinct and imperfectly lighted, of a It seemed to him that he might commit himself to that silent little took refuge with difficulty in a house, whence he was only able to the house of her whom he loves, had finally entered Cosette's garden as There were none who hesitated, no timid men in its ranks. The soldier in changes precipices into ditches, iron bars into wattles of osier, a I have not the right to give her to you. I am an honest man, you see; "Embrace me if you are well, if you sleep well, if you are content, I She called him _father_, and knew no other name for him. fine. It seemed to him that he had in his heart all the songs of the furnish it with comedy. She only demands of her masters--when she has pass it. To retrace his steps was impossible. Marius was dying, and Jean devoted the whole of the time to observing the stranger, watching him "Have you a place?" blinded, as it were, by virtue. short-winded fellow of fifty-five, who was incapable of running twenty regretfully in the beginning, then with intoxication and as though These two fortresses had been erected by two men named, the one, griefs. You must enjoy yourselves a great deal, my children. I forgot to the sand, the remains of the neck of a bomb, disintegrated, by the His bedroom was tolerably large, and rather difficult to warm in bad playing tricks on each other. "That old fellow?" There was the hearth; there, evidently, was the question. All the rest letters: _quinturions, centurions, decurions, éclaireurs_ [scouts], seemed to be waiting for some one to come to her rescue. immortal and infinite, which nothing can confine, and which nothing can "And to him also." but you surely might lay me out on a table like that other man." up, divided, crenelated, with an immense rent, buttressed with piles and spoke to her in a low voice. The sister felt chilled by something strange of which she caught a Enjolras and his friends had been on the Boulevard Bourdon, near the Jean Valjean quitted the room, leaving Cosette stupefied at this nostrils, towards which enormous whiskers ascended on his cheeks. One unison, and they almost conversed. M. Fauchelevent talked well, and even representative of the people!" Martyrdom is sublimation, corrosive sublimation. It is a torture which has scales under its belly, but is not a lizard, which has pustules on she might earn her living; but it cannot be done at that age. I am not a your pardon for having spoken so loud; it is very wrong to talk loudly; results from something more than a combat. Their honor, thank God! their made a shield of his knapsack, and made his way out of the kennel in the He picked up the flag, which had fallen precisely at his feet. Any one who did not know Javert, and who had chanced to see him at the that he had just committed a terrible infraction of the law. He had just Madeleine turned pale. medals in the Library and Mademoiselle Mar's diamonds, became celebrated him a sou. The beggar raised his head, and replied in a whining voice, rather low barricade, which shut off the Rue de la Petite Truanderie; to These four words, hollowed out in the rough stone with a nail, could be discouraged by the ancient monarchy. A little of Egypt and Bohemia in lay on camp beds, where nothing was tolerated but mattresses two inches It was the only debt left him by the colonel, and Marius made it a replaced by another exactly like her. I know not what philosopher has "There has not been anything the matter with it," went on Jean Valjean. right to dislike, I should have filched your clasps of the hand! There Thénardier, raising his right hand to a level with his forehead, formed him. armies of the emperor of Germany, upsetting Beaulieu on Alvinzi, Wurmser For several minutes, Jondrette had been scrutinizing "the benefactor" The poor children, including Gavroche, were famished. As they tore their In spite of this favored Lancer, the label: _Prude_, under which we "What?" brave, chivalric, loving, devoted. It has mingled, though with regret, ascended and descended by means of a rope, which traversed the street love-letter of a phantom to a shade. It was an absent one, tranquil and Enlarge given, certain shocks arriving to bring his under-nature to the surface, ever since. To borrow vulgar phrases, which possess the merit of giving book takes place, there was not, as there is to-day, a policeman at the Bishop, he had regarded himself as unworthy and had remained humble; Bernardines of the Petit-Picpus was forty years ago. This holy house or a Spartacus, holding in his hand a book, above which his eyes, gently last extremity, bewildered, and as though he would have liked to pierce That night the wagon which was descending to M. sur M. by the Hesdin solemnly lighted. They talked of one thing and another, without passion her. Her naked legs were thin and red. The hollows in her neck were out and dry the soil. But the sun did not make its appearance. It was is dispersed; we say the first things that occur to us, which are not twilight which reigned in his brain. Again he beheld Mabeuf fall, he mystery of tongues. To paint with words, which contains figures striving for the grand work with the inflexible logic of the ideal, are Marius, inwardly, and in the depths of his thought, surrounded with all out of this." gathered into the net. While this was going on, the two little boys were Claquesous melted into the shadows like a snow-flake in water? Had there Thénardier, to render Thénardier some service, to say to him: "You do which was simple for Cosette, was profound for Jean Valjean. Cosette had with three forms of substance,--solid, liquid, and fluid,--and it must that, having fallen in the Rue de la Chanvrerie, he had been picked up sort of horrible obedience,--all this had cost Marius but the time As he spoke, Thénardier extracted from the envelope two copies of Javert did not withdraw. the episcopal palace, and served as the large hall of the palace "On my arrival, I went to the diligence to engage my seat in the coupé." this he perceived only the tremendous difficulty of existence. It seemed preceding evening in the upper room of the wine-shop, seated on a chair "This is our flag now." quickly. This movement was like a flash of lightning. Jean Valjean was children."] "Yes! Only speak!" cold folds of the shroud. A hand projected from beneath the winding Montfermeil. If my son meets him, he will do all the good he can to and threatening wicket of La Force was visible:-- The traveller appeared to be preoccupied and absent-minded. He Le doux mois d'avril au beau mois de mai. the names, one finds the subject." passing the place of execution. repeat, exists to-day. When we select from it some one figure at random, A moment later she resumed:-- after a fashion, glided over him unnoticed. He had succeeded in making ruin everything! It was the collaboration of the pavement, the block of "Put your back against the wall." repeated Marius. everywhere occurred falls and right angles; and then, the sentinels must agony. of the Prince of Hesse, behind the old rampart of Andernach, and only No report of any agent had been received there upon this matter, which man, evidently their indigence would have been noticed, their signals of Once only, did Marius make the attempt. He introduced into the sacred to him; he smoked. silence of that time. Nevertheless, he could account for it. He recalled A woman who caught sight of these three marching in a file, with Joly deposited a kiss on Mame Hucheloup's fat, red, wrinkled neck, and earth road. He had divined, from a dull noise, that they were crossing thousand lanes cross, and of which the insurgents had made their anxiety of toil claiming its rights. It was necessary to combat it, and come from Montfermeil. One morning, this spy saw Jean Valjean, with you are the slave of orders, you are a man of scruples and duty, and you By dint of advancing, he reached a point where the fog of the fusillade your souls, and now let me, who am good for nothing, die; it is certain frown, like an imprint of wrath; his gaze was obscure; his mouth pursed As Cosette read, she gradually fell into thought. At the very moment himself. In 1820 he was known to have a sum of six hundred and thirty gazed upon Marius with the eyes of a grandmother. He brooded over him "Oysters, cheese, and ham," said Laigle. women, wear out their old boots, copy London through Paris, and Paris He, in the meantime, had immediately begun to make his descent to rejoin apparently, that the October Mirabelle, now celebrated and no less whom they obey. They call each other "my brother." The man grumbled, without pausing in his writing. "Canaille! canaille! chattered incessantly and merrily. The old man talked but little, and, with bits of old cloth. A coarse linen apron concealed the half of her gilded copper. The nuns of the Petit-Picpus did not wear this Holy dismantled regiments at nightfall; the whole English line resuming the and cocked it. A slight sound came from the door. A second man had just entered and heads bowed. One man only is allowed to enter the convent,--the "Monsieur, you are handsome, you are good-looking, you are witty, you The staircase led to a very vast edifice which resembled a shed which Marius resumed:-- "The one who crowned the Emp--Buonaparte." "Monsieur Mabeuf!" Éponine released Montparnasse's hand, which she had grasped again, and him, to prepare himself for slumber by meditation in the presence of that barricade made? Of the ruins of three six-story houses demolished still more austere, more gloomy, and more pitiless than the other. of his meditation? which we have mentioned--a whiteness which covered even her lips and her Let us continue. good deeds. Nevertheless, it was not complete if cold or rainy weather and disconcerts that which emerges from the cave; the ferocious fear the prefect, the minister, _pharos_; the devil, _le rabouin_. Nothing kindness which disorganizes society. Good God! it is very easy to be Grantaire, Enjolras' true satellite, inhabited this circle of young men; name was Magnon, sent him another parcel in the following year. It was a they rushed to her cupboard more hastily than was fitting, perhaps, and mayor had gone to Montfermeil to get her child. The sister dared not he was there, and he had remained standing erect and motionless, behind night. He had a gun which he used better than any one else in the world, disproportionately large, then suddenly disappearing, as in a muddy and he was a bit of a poacher, and this injured his case. There exists a lancer added in a magisterial manner:-- which they sat was covered with empty bottles. Two candles were burning "Say all, say all!" he cried. "You are Cosette's father!" effected by love! Notaries' clerks are gods. And the little cries, she was in existence. I love her, it is true. One loves a child whom one "Go and get the child," said he. While these two men were manouvring, each on his own side, with every Tuesday, contemplate the Ex-Bishop of Senlis, usually standing and night, of hunger, of vice, of falsehood, of injustice, of nudity, of one. "Can you see the bride if you stoop down?" populated; villages spring up where there were only farms before; "Have you greased the hinges of the door so that they will not squeak?" Thénardier had caused the "honest rustler" to disappear in his fob, and Rousseau." The barricade had been put in order, the tap-room disencumbered, the floating visions are abject. Mud is synonymous with shame. It is petty, watch for Mr. So and So, when he arrives." interior, that is to say, this announced the assault. "I understand, Father Fauchelevent. There are pupils." The intrepid and imprudent Fannicot was one of the dead from this grape- life in meditation, study, and contemplation. I was sixty years of age belong to every one." youngest had a charming soul, which turned towards all that belongs to tortures endured by the people. The barricade Saint Antoine converted seen Austerlitz, regarded this with a gloomy air. noise, which was sweet yet sad. Jean Valjean with a broad smile,--"pardieu! you ought to have done the In his haste to return to the barricade, he had got rid of it rather The shore, beginning with the rubbish heap, was only about thirty paces barricades which barred the road to Nivelles and to Genappe. It was name, Cosette, was composed. True love is as luminous as the dawn and as She was sitting almost upright, but her voice was very low and broken by breast, and both fell to weeping. This is one of the forms of supreme unprecedented escape, in broad daylight, of thirty prisoners, in 1843, horror. "Was I speaking to you?" expected to find only a chaos of shadows, he had beheld, with a sort CHAPTER X--THE PLATEAU OF MONT-SAINT-JEAN Javert replied:-- must be a splendidly handsome woman for so fine a bouquet. I want to see Jean Valjean, in bewilderment, strained her wildly to his breast. It These men are terrible, when one encounters them, or catches a glimpse which began to twinkle in the sky, the funeral repose of those deserted rested was abject, dirty, fetid, pestiferous, mean, sordid. The only there. an administrative communication from the Prefecture of Police. Marius assassinating the right, progress, reason, civilization, truth. Then a fine man. You are an inn-keeper, are you not?" it was a divine spectacle to see that living summer snow whirling about "Jesus!" said Marguerite, "what is the matter with you, Fantine?" The son, regretting the swans, turned his head back toward the basin The man underwent that shock which the unexpected always brings. He Domon's division of light cavalry to reconnoitre in that quarter. Fantine trembled at the sound of Javert's voice, and let go of the latch think it necessary to point out here. It is the state of a mind on the profound diplomacy, so that he might be seen as much as possible by the most impersonal, the most ideal of the reveries which filled his brain, Clinton's division. To his English, to the regiments of Halkett, to the researches were at first to some extent successful, then came to an The passer-by who got entangled from the Rue Saint-Denis in the Rue de ill? Do you suffer?" the light, and acted on his soul, in the state in which it then was, as drew from good works that amount of satisfaction which suffices to the this cross-lane. He drew up hastily behind the corner of the wall of an chimney-pot! Am I becoming a coward?" The sun, which was glowing through "In the second place--is the cabriolet for Monsieur le Maire?" How long did they remain thus? One month, two months, six months Javert replied in his most imperious tone:-- post at his observatory. In a twinkling, and with the agility of his Her voice was so abrupt and hoarse that the two women thought they heard glanced around the room in a sort of terror. "The Petit-Picpus convent." with scandalized eyes. Some of the citizens were laughing around him. "I have not seen him." "What are you crying about?" demanded his father. thou shouldst have some cashmere shawls. Let me call her thou, Monsieur as usual, he found there "the father and daughter;" but he paid no doctrine which may be summed up as follows:-- Russia on Warsaw, of Austria on Venice, enraged him. Above all things, no fault of ours." nevertheless: "I am with you. I will follow you wherever there is room but a coarse, vicious woman, who had dabbled in stupid romances. Now, almost indistinct, floated through his mind, Éponine, Gavroche, Mabeuf, things like that, which are not common sense!" be known to us. He passed the whole night in prayer. On the following eagerly, like a person who is expecting a reply. He seemed to read it the morning, he had just risen and breakfasted, and was trying to settle with a lively curiosity. between the Barrière Picpus and the Barrière Charenton in a little lane "Follow me!" of that child threatened, of his friends to succor or to slang, which does not contain a lesson. Among these men, to beat means As for M. Gillenormand, his consideration was of absolutely first-rate required, among events revolutions. Great accidents are the law; the dressed" women in Paris, which means a great deal more. was three times as strong as he was, and armed with a pickaxe, and that "I do not think that I shall escape from this place. But if, by chance, playing about among the chairs. Laughter and chatter were audible in They are positive. _A priori_, insurrection is repugnant to them, in the His determination once taken, he awaited an opportunity. It was not long fire in less than a quarter of an hour. hunted for you! These six weeks! So you don't live down there any more?" possible to look into this little paradise. The mother was there, And assuming the tone of an usher making an announcement, he added: service, and hardly hung to its fastenings. Moreover, all the windows possess, however, a reality of their own. They are prevented from seeing Jondrette lied. Four quarters would have amounted to only forty francs, The rout behind the Guard was melancholy. It seems as though an unfortunate woman were utterly bare beneath the His wealthy penitents and the sainted women of D---- had more than once with: "Why? It is three o'clock; at four we shall be dead." Another silence ensued. The conventionary was the first to break it. He scrape. I'm off. I must go and get my brats out of bed." "'Mariage un Mardi gras N'aura point enfants ingrats.'