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Title: Les Misérables, v. 5/5: Jean Valjean

Author: Victor Hugo

Translator: Sir Lascelles Wraxall

Release date: April 18, 2015 [eBook #48735]
Most recently updated: October 24, 2024

Language: English

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LES
MISÉRABLES, V. 5/5: JEAN VALJEAN ***

LES MISÉRABLES.

BY

VICTOR HUGO.
PART FIFTH.

JEAN VALJEAN.

AUTHORIZED TRANSLATION BY SIR LASCELLES WRAXALL.

BOSTON:

LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY.

1887

THE DEATH OF JEAN VALJEAN

TABLE OF CONTENTS.

JEAN VALJEAN.

BOOK I.
THE WAR WITHIN FOUR WALLS.

THE CHARYBDIS OF THE FAUBOURG ST. ANTOINE AND
I.
THE SCYLLA OF THE FAUBOURG DU TEMPLE
II. NOTHING TO DO IN THE ABYSS BUT TALK
III. CLEARING AND CLOUDING
IV. FIVE LESS AND ONE MORE
V. THE HORIZON ONE SEES FROM THE BARRICADE'S SUMMIT
VI. MARIUS HAGGARD, JAVERT LACONIC
VII. THE SITUATION BECOMES AGGRAVATED
VIII. THE ARTILLERY SETS TO WORK IN EARNEST
EMPLOYMENT OF THE POACHER'S OLD SKILL AND HIS
UNERRING
IX.
SHOT, WHICH HAD AND INFLUENCE ON THE
CONDEMNATION IN 1796
X. DAWN
THE SHOT WHICH DOES NOT MISS AND WHICH KILLS
XI.
NOBODY
XII. DISORDER THE PARTISAN OF ORDER
XIII. GLEAMS WHICH FADE
IN WHICH WE READ THE NAME OF THE MISTRESS OF
XIV.
ENJOLRAS
XV. GAVROCHE OUTSIDE
XVI. HOW A BROTHER BECOMES A FATHER
XVII. MORTUUS PATER FILIUM MORITURUM EXPECTAT
XVIII. THE VULTURE BECOMES PREY
XIX. JEAN VALJEAN REVENGES HIMSELF
XX. THE DEAD ARE RIGHT AND THE LIVING ARE NOT WRONG
XXI. THE HEROES
XXII. STEP BY STEP
XXIII. ORESTES SOBER AND PYLADES DRUNK
XXIV. PRISONER!

BOOK II.
THE INTESTINE OF LEVIATHAN.

I. THE EARTH IMPOVERISHED BY THE SEA
II. THE OLD HISTORY OF THE SEWER
III. BRUNESEAU
IV. CONCEALED DETAILS
V. PRESENT PROGRESS
VI. FUTURE PROGRESS

BOOK III.

MUD, BUT SOUL.

I. THE CLOACA AND ITS SURPRISES
II. EXPLANATION
III. THE TRACKED MAN
IV. HE TOO BEARS HIS CROSS
V. SAND, LIKE WOMAN, HAS A FINENESS THAT IS PERFIDIOUS
VI. THE FONTIS
VII. SOMETIMES ONE IS STRANDED WHERE HE THINKS TO LAND
VIII. THE TOM COAT-SKIRT
IX. MARIUS APPEARS DEAD TO A CONNOISSEUR
X. RETURN OF THE SON PRODIGAL OF HIS LIFE
XI. A SHAKING IN THE ABSOLUTE
XII. THE GRANDFATHER

BOOK IV.
JAVERT DERAILED.

BOOK V.
GRANDSON AND GRANDFATHER.

I. WHERE WE AGAIN MEET THE TREE WITH THE ZINC PATCH
MARIUS, LEAVING CIVIL WAR, PREPARES FOR A DOMESTIC
II.
WAR
III. MARIUS ATTACKS
IV. MLLE. GILLENORMAND HAS NO OBJECTIONS TO THE MATCH
DEPOSIT YOUR MONEY IN A FOREST RATHER THAN WITH A
V.
NOTARY
THE TWO OLD MEN, EACH IN HIS FASHION, DO EVERYTHING
VI.
FOR COSETTE'S HAPPINESS
VII. THE EFFECTS OF DREAMING BLENDED WITH HAPPINESS
VIII. TWO MEN IMPOSSIBLE TO FIND

BOOK VI.
THE SLEEPLESS NIGHT.

I. FEBRUARY 16, 1833
II. JEAN VALJEAN STILL HAS HIS ARM IN A SLING
III. THE INSEPARABLE
IV. IMMORTALE JECUR

BOOK VII.
THE LAST DROP IN THE BITTER CUP.

I. THE SEVENTH CIRCLE AND THE EIGHTH HEAVEN
II. THE OBSCURITY WHICH A REVELATION MAY CONTAIN

BOOK VIII.
TWILIGHT DECLINES.

I. THE GROUND-FLOOR ROOM
II. OTHER BACKWARD STEPS
III. THEY REMEMBER THE GARDEN IN THE RUE PLUMET
IV. ATTRACTION AND EXTINCTION

BOOK IX.
SUPREME DARKNESS, SUPREME DAWN.

I. PITY THE UNHAPPY, BUT BE INDULGENT TO THE HAPPY
II. THE LAST FLUTTERINGS OF THE LAMP WITHOUT OIL
A PEN IS TOO HEAVY FOR THE MAN WHO LIFTED
III.
FAUCHELEVENT'S CART
IV. A BOTTLE OF INK WHICH ONLY WHITENS
V. A NIGHT BEHIND WHICH IS DAY
VI. THE GRASS HIDES, AND THE RAIN EFFACES

ILLUSTRATIONS.
THE DEATH OF VALJEAN Vol. V. Frontispiece
Drawn by G. Jeanniot.

THE DEATH OF GAVROCHE
Drawn by G. Jeanniot.

JEAN VALJEAN.

BOOK I.

THE WAR WITHIN FOUR WALLS.

CHAPTER I.

THE CHARYBDIS OF THE FAUBOURG ST. ANTOINE AND
THE SCYLLA OF THE FAUBOURG DU TEMPLE.

The two most memorable barricades which the observer of social diseases
can mention do not belong to the period in which the action of this book is
laid. These two barricades, both symbols under different aspects of a
formidable situation, emerged from the earth during the fatal insurrection of
June, 1848, the greatest street-war which history has seen. It happens
sometimes that the canaille, that great despairing crowd, contrary to
principles, even contrary to liberty, equality, and fraternity, even contrary to
the universal vote, the government of all by all, protests, in the depths of its
agony, its discouragement, its destitution, its fevers, its distresses, its
miasmas, its ignorance, and its darkness, and the populace offers battle to
the people. The beggars attack the common right, the ochlocracy rises in
insurrection against the demos. Those are mournful days; for there is always
a certain amount of right even in this mania, there is suicide in this duel,
and these words, intended to be insults, such as beggars, canaille,
ochlocracy, and populace, prove, alas! rather the fault of those who reign
than the fault of those who suffer; rather the fault of the privileged than the
fault of the disinherited. For our part, we never pronounce these words
without grief and respect, for when philosophy probes the facts with which
they correspond it often finds much grandeur by the side of misery. Athens
was an ochlocracy; the beggars produced Holland; the populace more than
once saved Rome; and the canaille followed the Saviour. There is no thinker
who has not at times contemplated the magnificence below. Saint Jerome
doubtless thought of this canaille, of all these poor people, all these
vagabonds, and all the wretches whence the apostles and martyrs issued,
when he uttered the mysterious words,—"Fex urbis, lux orbis."
The exasperations of this mob, which suffers and which bleeds, its
unwilling violence against the principles which are its life, its assaults upon
the right, are popular coups d'état, and must be repressed. The just man
devotes himself, and through love for this very mob, combats it. But how
excusable he finds it while resisting it; how he venerates it, even while

opposing it! It is one of those rare moments in which a man while doing his
duty feels something that disconcerts him, and almost dissuades him from
going further; he persists, and must do so, but the satisfied conscience is
sad, and the accomplishment of the duty is complicated by a contraction of
the heart. June, 1848, was, let us hasten to say, a separate fact, and almost
impossible to classify in the philosophy of history. All the words we have
uttered must be laid aside when we have to deal with this extraordinary riot,
in which the holy anxiety of labor claiming its right was felt. It must be
combated, and it was a duty to do so, for it attacked the Republic; but, in
reality, what was June, 1848? A revolt of the people against itself. When the
subject is not left out of sight there is no digression, and hence we may be
permitted to concentrate the reader's attention momentarily upon the two
absolutely unique barricades to which we have alluded, and which
characterized this insurrection. The one blocked up the entrance to the
Faubourg St. Antoine, the other defended the approaches to the Faubourg
du Temple; those before whom these two frightful masterpieces of civil war
were raised in the dazzling June sun will never forget them.
The St. Antoine barricade was monstrous; it was three stories high and
seven hundred feet in width. It barred from one corner to the other the vast
mouth of the faubourg, that is to say, three streets; ravined, slashed,
serrated, surmounted by an immense jagged line, supported by masses
which were themselves bastions, pushing out capes here and there, and
powerfully reinforced by the two great promontories of the houses of the
faubourg, it rose like a Cyclopean wall at the back of the formidable square
which had seen July 14. There were nineteen barricades erected in the
streets behind the mother barricade; but, on seeing it, you felt in the
faubourg the immense agonizing suffering which had reached that extreme
stage in which misery desires to come to a catastrophe. Of what was this
barricade made? Of the tumbling in of three six-storied houses demolished
on purpose, say some; of the prodigy of all the passions, say others. It
possessed the lamentable aspect of all the buildings of hatred, ruin. You
might ask who built this, and you might also ask who destroyed this. It was
the improvisation of the ebullition. Here with that door, that grating, that
awning, that chimney, that broken stove, that cracked stewpan! Give us
anything! Throw everything in! Push, roll, pick, dismantle, overthrow, and
pull down everything! It was a collaboration of the pavement-stones,
beams, iron bars, planks, broken windows, unseated chairs, cabbage-stalks,

rags, tatters, and curses. It was great and it was little; it was the abyss
parodied on the square by the hurly-burly. It was the mass side by side with
the atom, a pulled-down wall and a broken pipkin, a menacing
fraternization of all fragments, into which Sisyphus had cast his rock and
Job his potsherds. Altogether it was terrible,—it was the acropolis of the
barefooted. Overturned carts studded the slope; an immense wagon spread
out across it, with its wheels to the sky, and looked like a scar on this
tumultuous façade; an omnibus gayly hoisted by strength of arm to the very
top of the pile, as if the architects of this savage edifice had wished to add
mockery to the horror, offered its bare pole to the horses of the air. This
gigantic mound, the alluvium of the riot, represented to the mind an Ossa
upon Pelion of all revolutions,—'93 upon '89, the 9th Thermidor upon the
10th August, the 18th Brumaire upon January 21st, Vendémiaire upon
Prairial, 1848 upon 1830. The place was worth the trouble, and this
barricade was worthy of appearing upon the very spot whence the Bastille
had disappeared. If the ocean made dykes it would build them in this way,
and the fury of the tide was stamped on this shapeless encumbrance. What
tide? The multitude. You fancied that you saw a petrified riot, and heard the
enormous dark bees of violent progress humming about this barricade as if
they had their hive there. Was it a thicket? Was it a Bacchanalian feast? Was
it a fortress? Vertigo seemed to have built it with the flapping of its wings!
There was a sewer in this redoubt, and something Olympian in this mass.
You saw there in a confused heap, full of desperation, gables of roofs,
pieces of garrets with their painted paper, window-frames with all their
panes planted in the rubbish and awaiting the cannon, pulled-down
mantelpieces, chests of drawers, tables, benches, a howling topsy-turvy, and
those thousand wretched things cast away even by a beggar which contain
at once fury and nothingness. It may be said that it was the rags of a people,
rags of wood, of iron, of bronze, of stone; that the Faubourg St. Antoine had
swept them to their door with a gigantic broom, and made a barricade of
their misery. Logs resembling executioners' blocks, disjointed chains, anvil-
frames of the shape of gallows, horizontal wheels emerging from the heap,
produced on this edifice of anarchy the representation of the old punishment
suffered by the people. The St. Antoine barricade made a weapon of
everything. All that civil war can throw at the head of society came from it;
it was not a fight but a paroxysm: the muskets which defended this redoubt,
among which were several blunderbusses, discharged stones, bones, coat-

buttons, and even the casters of night-commodes, very dangerous owing to
the copper. This barricade was furious; it hurled an indescribable clamor
into the clouds; at certain moments when challenging the army it was
covered with a crowd and a tempest; it had a prickly crest of guns, sabres,
sticks, axes, pikes, and bayonets; a mighty red flag fluttered upon it in the
breeze, and the cries of command, the songs of attack, the rolling of the
drum, the sobs of women, and the sardonic laughter of men dying of
starvation could be heard there. It was immeasurable and living, and a flash
of lightning issued from it as from the back of an electric animal. The spirit
of revolution covered with its cloud this summit, where that voice of the
people which resembles the voice of God was growling, and a strange
majesty was disengaged from this Titanic mass of stones. It was a
dungheap, and it was Sinai.
As we said above, it attacked in the name of the revolution—what? The
revolution. It, this barricade, an accident, a disorder, a misunderstanding, an
unknown thing, had, facing it, the constituent assembly, the sovereignty of
the people, universal suffrage, the nation, the republic: and it was the
Carmagnole defying the Marseillaise. A mad defiance, but heroic, for this
old faubourg is a hero. The faubourg and its redoubt supported each other;
the faubourg rested on the redoubt, and the redoubt backed against the
faubourg. The vast barricade was like a cliff against which the strategy of
the African generals was broken. Its caverns, its excrescences, its warts, its
humps, made grimaces, if we may employ the expression, and grinned
behind the smoke. The grape-shot vanished in the shapeless heap; shells
buried themselves in it and were swallowed up; cannon-balls only
succeeded in forming holes, for of what use is it bombarding chaos? And
the regiments, accustomed to the sternest visions of war, gazed with
anxious eye at this species of wild-beast redoubt, which was a boar through
its bristling and a mountain through its enormity.
A quarter of a league farther on, at the corner of the Rue du Temple, which
debouches on the boulevard near the Chateau d'Eau, if you boldly advanced
your head beyond the point formed by the projection of the magazine
Dallemagne, you could see in the distance across the canal, and at the
highest point of the ascent to Belleville, a strange wall rising to the second
floor and forming a sort of connecting link between the houses on the right
and those on the left, as if the street had folded back its highest wall in order

to close itself up. This was built of paving-stones; it was tall, straight,
correct, cold, perpendicular, and levelled with the plumb-line and the
square; of course there was no cement, but, as in some Roman walls, this in
no way disturbed its rigid architecture. From its height, its thickness could
be guessed, for the entablature was mathematically parallel to the basement
At regular distances almost invisible loopholes, resembling black threads,
could be distinguished in the gray wall, separated from each other by equal
intervals. This street was deserted throughout its length, and all the
windows and doors were closed. In the background rose this bar, which
converted the street into a blind alley; it was a motionless and tranquil wall;
no one was seen, nothing was heard, not a cry, nor a sound, nor a breath. It
was a sepulchre. The dazzling June sun inundated this terrible thing with
light,—it was the barricade of the Faubourg du Temple. So soon as you
reached the ground and perceived it, it was impossible even for the boldest
not to become pensive in the presence of this mysterious apparition. It was
adjusted, clamped, imbricated, rectilinear, symmetrical, and funereal;
science and darkness were there. You felt that the chief of this barricade was
a geometrician or a spectre, and as you gazed you spoke in a whisper. From
time to time if any one—private, officer, or representative of the people—
ventured to cross the solitary road, a shrill faint whistling was heard, and
the passer-by fell wounded or dead; or, if he escaped, a bullet could be seen
to bury itself in some shutter, or the stucco of the wall. Sometimes it was a
grape-shot, for the man of the barricade had made out of gas-pipes, stopped
up at one end with tow and clay, two small cannon. There was no useless
expenditure of gunpowder, and nearly every shot told. There were a few
corpses here and there, and patches of blood on the pavement. I remember a
white butterfly that fluttered up and down the street; summer does not
abdicate. All the gateways in the vicinity were crowded with corpses, and
you felt in this street that you were covered by some one you could not see,
and that the whole street was under the marksman's aim.
The soldiers of the attacking column, massed behind the species of ridge
which the canal bridge forms at the entrance of the Faubourg du Temple,
watched gravely and thoughtfully this mournful redoubt, this immobility,
this impassiveness, from which death issued. Some crawled on their
stomachs to the top of the pitch of the bridge, while careful not to let their
shakos pass beyond it. Brave Colonel Monteynard admired this barricade
with a tremor. "How it is built," he said to a representative; "not a single

paving-stone projects beyond the other. It is made of porcelain." At this
moment a bullet smashed the cross on his chest and he fell. "The cowards!"
the troops shouted, "Why do they not show themselves? They dare not!
They hide!" The barricade of the Faubourg du Temple, defended by eighty
men and attacked by ten thousand, held out for three days, and on the fourth
day the troops acted as they had done at Zaatcha and Constantine,—they
broke through houses, passed along roofs, and the barricade was taken. Not
one of the eighty cowards dreamed of flying; all were killed with the
exception of Barthélemy, the chief, to whom we shall allude directly. The
barricade of St. Antoine was the tumult of the thunder; the barricade of the
Temple was the silence. There was between the two barricades the same
difference as exists between the formidable and the sinister. The one
seemed a throat, the other a mask. Admitting that the gigantic and dark
insurrection of June was composed of a fury and an enigma, the dragon was
seen in the first barricade and the sphinx behind the second.
These two fortresses were built by two men, Cournet and Barthélemy:
Cournet made the St. Antoine barricade, Barthélemy the Temple barricade,
and each of them was the image of the man who built it. Cournet was a man
of tall stature; he had wide shoulders, a red face, a smashing fist, a brave
heart, a loyal soul, a sincere and terrible eye. He was intrepid, energetic,
irascible, and stormy; the most cordial of men, and the most formidable of
combatants. War, contest, medley were the air he breathed, and put him in
good temper. He had been an officer in the navy, and from his gestures and
his voice it could be divined that he issued from the ocean and came from
the tempest; he continued the hurricane in battle. Omitting the genius, there
was in Cournet something of Danton, as, omitting the divinity, there was in
Danton something of Hercules. Barthélemy, thin, weak, pale, and taciturn,
was a species of tragical gamin, who, having been struck by a policeman,
watched for him, waited for him, and killed him, and at the age of seventeen
was sent to the galleys. He came out and built this barricade. At a later date,
when both were exiles in London, Barthélemy killed Cournet: it was a
melancholy duel. Some time after that, Barthélemy, caught in the cog-
wheels of one of those mysterious adventures in which passion is mingled,
catastrophes in which French justice sees extenuating circumstances and
English justice only sees death, was hanged. The gloomy social edifice is so
built that, owing to maternal denudation and moral darkness, this wretched
being, who had had an intellect, certainly firm and possibly great, began

with the galleys in France and ended with the gibbet in England.
Barthélemy only hoisted one flag,—it was the black one.

CHAPTER II.

NOTHING TO DO IN THE ABYSS BUT TALK.

Sixteen years count in the subterranean education of revolt, and June, 1848,
knew a great deal more than June, 1832. Hence the barricade in the Rue de
la Chanvrerie was only a sketch and an embryo when compared with the
two colossal barricades which we have just described; but for the period it
was formidable. The insurgents, under the eye of Enjolras,—for Marius no
longer looked at anything,—had turned the night to good account: the
barricade had not only been repaired but increased. It had been raised two
feet, and iron bars planted in the paving-stones resembled lances in rest. All
sorts of rubbish, added and brought from all sides, complicated the external
confusion, and the redoubt had been cleverly converted into a wall inside
and a thicket outside. The staircase of paving-stones, which allowed the top
of the barricade to be reached, was restored, the ground-floor of the room of
the inn was cleared out, the kitchen converted into an infirmary, the wounds
were dressed, the powder scattered about the tables and floor was collected,
bullets were cast, cartridges manufactured, lint plucked, the fallen arms
distributed; the dead were carried off and laid in a heap in the Mondétour
Lane, of which they were still masters. The pavement remained for a long
time red at that spot. Among the dead were four suburban National Guards,
and Enjolras ordered their uniforms to be laid on one side. Enjolras had
advised two hours' sleep, and his advice was an order; still, only three or
four took advantage of it, and Feuilly employed the two hours in engraving
this inscription on the wall facing the wine-shop,—
"LONG LIVE THE PEOPLES."

These four words, carved in the stone with a nail, could still be read on this
wall in 1848. The three women took advantage of the respite to disappear
entirely, which allowed the insurgents to breathe more at their ease; and
they contrived to find refuge in some neighboring house. Most of the

wounded could and would still fight. There were, on a pile of mattresses
and trusses of straw laid in the kitchen converted into an infirmary, five
men seriously wounded, of whom two were Municipal Guards; the wounds
of the latter were dressed first. No one remained in the ground-floor room
save Mabœuf under his black cere-cloth, and Javert fastened to the post.
"This is the charnel-house," said Enjolras.
In the interior of this room, which was scarce lighted by a solitary candle,
the mortuary table at the end being behind the post like a horizontal bar, a
sort of large vague cross resulted from Javert standing and Mabœuf lying
down. Although the pole of the omnibus was mutilated by the bullets,
sufficient remained for a flag to be attached to it. Enjolras, who possessed
that quality of a chief of always doing what he said, fastened to it the bullet-
pierced and blood-stained coat of the killed old man. No meal was possible,
for there was neither bread nor meat. The fifty men during the sixteen hours
they had stood at the barricade speedily exhausted the scanty provisions of
the inn. At a given moment every barricade that holds out becomes the raft
of the Méduse, and the combatants must resign themselves to hunger. They
had reached the early hours of that Spartan day, June 6, when at the
barricade of St. Merry, Jeanne, surrounded by insurgents who cried for
bread, answered, "What for? It is three o'clock; at four we shall be dead."
As they could no longer eat, Enjolras prohibited drinking; he put the wine
under an interdict, and served out the spirits. Some fifteen full bottles,
hermetically sealed, were found in the cellar, which Enjolras and
Combeferre examined. Combeferre on coming up again said, "It belongs to
Father Hucheloup's stock at the time when he was a grocer." "It must be real
wine," Bossuet observed; "it is lucky that Grantaire is asleep, for if he were
up, we should have a difficulty in saving those bottles." Enjolras, in spite of
the murmurs, put his veto on the fifteen bottles, and in order that no one
might touch them, and that they should be to some extent sacred, he had
placed them under the table on which Father Mabœuf lay.
At about two in the morning they counted their strength; there were still
thirty-seven. Day was beginning to appear, and the torch, which had been
returned to its stone lantern, was extinguished. The interior of the barricade,
that species of small yard taken from the street, was bathed in darkness, and
resembled, through the vague twilight horror, the deck of a dismasted ship.
The combatants moved about like black forms. Above this frightful nest of

gloom the floors of the silent houses stood out lividly, and above them
again the chimney-pots were assuming a roseate hue. The sky had that
charming tint which may be white and may be blue, and the birds flew
about in it with twitterings of joy. The tall house which formed the
background of the barricade looked to the east, and had a pink reflection on
its roof. At the third-floor window the morning breeze blew about the gray
hair on the head of the dead man.
"I am delighted that the torch is put out," Courfeyrac said to Feuilly. "That
flame flickering in the breeze annoyed me, for it seemed to be frightened.
The light of torches resembles the wisdom of cowards; it illumines badly
because it trembles."
The dawn arouses minds like birds, and all were talking. Joly, seeing a cat
stalking along a gutter, extracted this philosophy from the fact.
"What is the cat?" he exclaimed. "It is a correction. Le bon Dieu having
made a mouse, said to himself, 'Hilloh! I have done a foolish trick,' and he
made the cat, which is the erratum of the mouse. The mouse plus the cat is
the revised and corrected proof of creation."
Combeferre, surrounded by students and workmen, was talking of the dead,
of Jean Prouvaire, of Bahorel, of Mabœuf, and even of Cabuc, and the stern
sorrow of Enjolras. He said,—
"Harmodius and Aristogiton, Brutus, Chereas, Stephanus, Cromwell,
Charlotte Corday, Sand, all had their moment of agony after the blow was
struck. Our heart is so quivering, and human life such a mystery, that even
in a civic murder, even in a liberating murder, if there be such a thing, the
remorse at having struck a man exceeds the joy of having benefited the
human race."
And, such are the meanderings of interchanged words, a moment later, by a
transition which came from Jean Prouvaire's verses, Combeferre was
comparing together the translators of the Georgics, Raux with Cournand,
Cournand with Delille, and pointing out the few passages translated by
Malfilâtre, especially the wonders of the death of Cæsar, and at that name
the conversation reverted to Brutus.
"Cæsar," said Combeferre, "fell justly. Cicero was severe to Cæsar, and was
in the right, for such severity is not a diatribe. When Zoïlus insults Homer,

when Mævius insults Virgil, when Visé insults Molière, when Pope insults
Shakspeare, when Fréron insults Voltaire, it is an old law of envy and hatred
being carried out; for genius attracts insult, and great men are all barked at
more or less. But Zoïlus and Cicero are different. Cicero is a justiciary with
thought in the same way as Brutus is a justiciary with the sword. For my
part, I blame that last justice, the glaive; antiquity allowed it. Cæsar, the
violator of the Rubicon, conferring, as if coming from him, dignities that
came from the people, and not rising on the entrance of the senate, behaved,
as Eutropius said, like a king, and almost like a tyrant, regiâ ac pene
tyrannica. He was a great man; all the worse or all the better, the lesson is
the more elevated. His three-and-twenty wounds affect me less than the
spitting on the brow of Christ. Cæsar is stabbed by the senators, Christ is
buffeted by soldiers. God is felt in the greater outrage."
Bossuet, standing on a pile of stones, and commanding the speaker,
exclaimed, gun in hand,—
"O Cydathenæum! O Myrrhinus! O Probalynthus! O graces of Æanthus!
Oh, who will inspire me to pronounce the verses of Homer like a Greek of
Laureum or Edapteon!"

CHAPTER III.

CLEARING AND CLOUDING.

Enjolras had gone out to reconnoitre, and had left by the Mondétour Lane,
keeping in the shadow of the houses. The insurgents, we must state, were
full of hope: the way in which they had repulsed the night attack almost
made them disdain beforehand the attack at daybreak. They waited for it
and smiled at it, and no more doubted of their success than of their cause;
moreover, help was evidently going to reach them, and they reckoned on it.
With that facility of triumphant prophecy which is a part of the strength of
the French fighter, they divided into three certain phases the opening day,—
at six in the morning a regiment, which had been worked upon, would turn;
at mid-day insurrection all over Paris; at sunset the revolution. The tocsin of

St. Merry, which had not ceased once since the previous evening, could be
heard, and this was a proof that the other barricade, the great one, Jeanne's,
still held out. All these hopes were interchanged by the groups with a
species of gay and formidable buzzing which resemble the war-hum of a
swarm of bees. Enjolras reappeared returning from his gloomy walk in the
external darkness. He listened for a moment to all this joy with his arms
folded, and then said, fresh and rosy in the growing light of dawn,—
"The whole army of Paris is out, and one third of that army is preparing to
attack the barricade behind which you now are. There is, too, the National
Guard. I distinguished the shakos of the fifth line regiment and the colors of
the sixth legion. You will be attacked in an hour; as for the people, they
were in a state of ferment yesterday, but this morning do not stir. There is
nothing to wait for, nothing to hope; no more a faubourg than a regiment
You are abandoned."
These words fell on the buzzing groups, and produced the same effect as the
first drops of a storm do on a swarm. All remained dumb, and there was a
moment of inexpressible silence, in which death might have been heard
flying past This moment was short, and a voice shouted to Enjolras from the
thickest of the crowd,—
"Be it so. Let us raise the barricade to a height of twenty feet, and all fall
upon it. Citizens, let us offer the protest of corpses, and show that if the
people abandon the republicans, the republicans do not abandon the
people."
These words disengaged the thoughts of all from the painful cloud of
individual anxieties, and an enthusiastic shout greeted them. The name of
the man who spoke thus was never known; he was Rome unknown blouse-
wearer, an unknown man, a forgotten man, a passing hero, that great
anonymous always mixed up in human crises and social Geneses, who at
the given moment utters the decisive word in a supreme fashion, and who
fades away into darkness after having represented for a minute, in the light
of a flash, the people and God. This inexorable resolution was so strongly in
the air of June 6, 1832, that almost at the same hour the insurgents of the St.
Merry barricade uttered this cry, which became historical,—"Whether they
come to our help, or whether they do not, what matter! Let us all fall here,

to the last man!" As we see, the two barricades, though materially isolated,
communicated.

CHAPTER IV.

FIVE LESS AND ONE MORE.

After the man, whoever he aright be, who decreed the "protest of corpses,"
had spokes, sad given the formula of the common soul, a strangely satisfied
and terrible cry issued from every mouth, funereal in its meaning and
triumphal in its accent.
"Long live death! Let us all remain here."
"Why all?" Enjolras asked.
"All, all!"
Enjolras continued,—
"The position is good and the barricade fine. Thirty men are sufficient, then
why sacrifice forty?"
They replied,—
"Because not one of us will go away."
"Citizens," Enjolras cried, and there was in his voice an almost irritated
vibration, "the republic is not rich enough in men to make an unnecessary
outlay. If it be the duty of some to go away, that duty must be performed
like any other."
Enjolras, the man-principle, had over his co-religionists that kind of
omnipotence which is evolved from the absolute. Still, however great that
omnipotence might be, they murmured. A chief to the tips of his fingers,
Enjolras, on seeing that they murmured, insisted. He continued haughtily,—
"Let those who are afraid to be only thirty say so."
The murmurs were redoubled.

"Besides," a voice in the throng remarked, "it is easy to say, 'Go away,' but
the barricade is surrounded."
"Not on the side of the markets," said Enjolras. "The Rue Mondétour is
free, and the Marché des Innocents can be reached by the Rue des
Prêcheurs."
"And then," another voice in the group remarked, "we should be caught by
falling in with some grand rounds of the line or the National Guard. They
will see a man passing in blouse and cap: 'Where do you come from? Don't
you belong to the barricade?' and they will look at your hands; you smell of
powder, and will be shot."
Enjolras, without answering, touched Combeferre's shoulder, and both
entered the ground-floor room. They came out again a moment after,
Enjolras holding in his outstretched hands the four uniforms which he had
laid on one side, and Combeferre followed him carrying the cross-belts and
shakos.
"In this uniform," Enjolras said, "it is easy to enter the ranks and escape.
Here are four at any rate."
And he threw the four uniforms on the unpaved ground; but as no one
moved in the stoical audience, Combeferre resolved to make an appeal.
"Come," he said, "you must show a little pity. Do you know what the
question is here? It is about women. Look you, are there wives,—yes or no?
Are there children,—yes or no? Are these nothing, who rock a cradle with
their foot, and have a heap of children around them? Let him among you
who has never seen a nurse's breast hold up his hand. Ah! you wish to be
killed. I wish it too, I who am addressing you; but I do not wish to feel the
ghosts of women twining their arms around me. Die,—very good; but do
not cause people to die. Suicides like the one which is about to take place
here are sublime; but suicide is restricted, and does not allow of extension,
and so soon as it affects your relations, suicide is called murder. Think of
the little fair heads, and think too of the white hair. Listen to me! Enjolras
tells me that just now he saw at the corner of the Rue du Cygne a candle at
a poor window on the fifth floor, and on the panes the shaking shadow of an
old woman who appeared to have spent the night in watching at the
window; she is perhaps the mother of one of you. Well, let that man go, and

hasten to say to his mother, 'Mother, here I am!' Let him be easy in his
mind, for the work will be done here all the same. When a man supports his
relatives by his toil, he has no longer any right to sacrifice himself, for that
is deserting his family. And then, too, those who have daughters, and those
who have sisters! Only think of them. You let yourselves be killed, you are
dead, very good; and to-morrow? It is terrible when girls have no bread, for
man begs, but woman sells. Oh, those charming, graceful, and gentle
creatures with flowers in their caps, who fill the house with chastity, who
sing, who prattle, who are like a living perfume, who prove the existence of
angels in heaven by the purity of virgins on earth; that Jeanne, that Lise,
that Mimi, those adorable and honest creatures, who are your blessing and
your pride,—ah, my God! they will starve. What would you have me say to
you? There is a human flesh-market, and you will not prevent them entering
it with your shadowy hands trembling around them. Think of the street;
think of the pavement covered with strollers; think of the shops before
which women in low-necked dresses come and go in the mud. Those
women, too, were pure. Think of your sisters, you who have any; misery,
prostitution, the police. St Lazare, that is what these delicate maidens, these
fragile marvels of chastity, modesty, and beauty, fresher than the lilies in
May, will fall to. Ah, you have let yourselves be killed! Ah, you are no
longer there! That is,—very good,—you have wished to withdraw the
people from royalty, and you give your daughters to the police. My friends,
take care and have compassion; we are not wont to think much about
women, hapless women; we trust to the fact that women have not received
the education of men. They are prevented reading, thinking, or occupying
themselves with politics; but will you prevent them going to-night to the
Morgue and recognizing your corpses? Come, those who have families
must be good fellows, and shake our hand and go away, leaving us to do the
job here all alone. I am well aware that courage is needed to go away, and
that it is difficult; but the more difficult the more meritorious it is. Ton say,
'I have a gun and am at the barricade; all the worse, I remain.' 'All the
worse' is easily said. My friends, there is a morrow, and that morrow you
will not see; but your families will see it. And what sufferings! Stay; do you
know what becomes of a healthy child with cheeks like an apple, who
chatters, prattles, laughs, and smiles as fresh as a kiss, when he is
abandoned? I saw one, quite little, about so high; his father was dead, and
poor people had taken him in through charity; but they had not bread for

themselves. The child was always hungry; it was winter-time, but though he
was always hungry he did not cry. He was seen to go close to the stove,
whose pipe was covered with yellow earth. The boy detached with his
fingers a piece of this earth and ate it; his breathing was hoarse, his face
livid, his legs soft, and his stomach swollen. He said nothing, and when
spoken to made no answer. He is dead, and was brought to die at the Necker
Hospital, where I saw him, for I was a student there. Now, if there be any
fathers among you, fathers who delight in taking a walk on Sunday, holding
in their powerful hand a child's small fingers, let each of these fathers fancy
this lad his own. The poor brat I can remember perfectly; I fancy I see him
now, and when he lay on the dissecting table, his bones stood out under his
skin like the tombs under the grass of a cemetery. We found a sort of mud in
his stomach, and he had ashes between his teeth. Come, let us examine our
conscience and take the advice of our heart; statistics prove that the
mortality among deserted children is fifty-five per cent. I repeat, it is a
question of wives, of mothers, of daughters, and babes. Am I saying
anything about you? I know very well what you are. I know that you are all
brave. I know that you have all in your hearts the joy and glory of laying
down your lives for the great cause. I know very well that you feel
yourselves chosen to die usefully and magnificently, and that each of you
clings to his share of the triumph. Very good. But you are not alone in this
world, and there are other beings of whom you must think; you should not
be selfish."
All hung their heads with a gloomy air. Strange contradictions of the human
heart in the sublimest moments! Combeferre, who spoke thus, was not an
orphan; he remembered the mothers of others and forgot his own; he was
going to let himself be killed, and was "selfish." Marius, fasting and
feverish, who had successively given up all hope, cast ashore on grief, the
most mournful of shipwrecks, saturated with violent emotions, and feeling
the end coming, had buried himself deeper and deeper in that visionary
stupor which ever precedes the fatal and voluntarily accepted hour. A
physiologist might have studied in him the growing symptoms of that
febrile absorption which is known and classified by science, and which is to
suffering what voluptuousness is to pleasure, for despair also has its ecstasy.
Marius had attained that stage; as we have said, things which occurred
before him appeared to him remote, he distinguished the ensemble, but did
not perceive the details. He saw people coming and going before him in a

flash, and he heard voices speaking as if from the bottom of an abyss. Still
this affected him, for there was in this scene a point which pierced to him
and aroused him. He had but one idea, to die, and he did not wish to avert
his attention from it; but he thought in his gloomy somnambulism that in
destroying himself he was not prohibited from saving somebody. He raked
his voice,—
"Enjolras and Combeferre are right," he said: "let us have no useless
sacrifice. I join them, and we must make haste. Combeferre has told you
decisive things: there are men among you who have families, mothers,
sisters, wives, and children. Such must leave the ranks."
Not a soul stirred.
"Married men and supporters of families will leave the ranks," Marius
repeated.
His authority was great, for though Enjolras was really the chief of the
barricade, Marius was its savior.
"I order it," Enjolras cried.
"I implore it," Marius said.
Then these heme men, stirred up by Combeferre's speech, shaken by
Enjolras's order, and moved by Marius's entreaty, began denouncing one
another. "It is true," a young man said to a grown-up man, "you are a father
of a family: begone!" "No! you ought to do so rather," the man replied, "for
you have two sisters to support;" and an extraordinary contest broke out, in
which each struggled not to be thrust out of the tomb.
"Make haste," said Combeferre; "in a quarter of an hour there will no longer
be time."
"Citizens," Enjolras added, "we have a republic here, and universal suffrage
reigns. Point out yourselves the men who are to leave us."
They obeyed, and at the end of a few minutes five were unanimously
pointed out and left the ranks.
"There are five of them!" Marius exclaimed.
There were only four uniforms.

"Well," the five replied, "one will have to remain behind."
And then came who should remain, and who should find reasons for others
not to remain. The generous quarrel began again.
"You have a wife who loves you.—You have your old mother.—You have
neither father nor mother; what will become of your three little brothers?—
You are the father of five children.—You have a right to live, for you are
only seventeen, and it is too early to die."
These great revolutionary barricades were meeting-places of heroisms. The
improbable was simple there, and these men did not astonish one another.
"Make haste," Courfeyrac repeated.
Cries to Marius came from the groups.
"You must point out the one who is to remain."
"Yes," the five said; "do you choose, and we will obey you."
Marius did not believe himself capable of any emotion; still, at this idea of
choosing a man for death all the blood flowed back to his heart, and he
would have tamed pale could he have grown paler. He walked up to the
five, who smiled upon him, and each, with his eye full of that great flame
which gleams through history on Thermopylae, cried to him,—
"I! I! I!"
And Marius stupidly counted them. There were still five! Then his eyes
settled on the four uniforms. All at once a fifth uniform fell, as if from
heaven, on the other four; the fifth man was saved. Marius raised his eyes,
and recognized M. Fauchelevent.
Jean Valjean had just entered the barricade; either through information he
had obtained, through instinct, or through accident, he arrived by the
Mondétour Lane, and, thanks to his National Guard uniform, passed
without difficulty. The vedette stationed by the insurgents in the Rue
Mondétour had no cause to give the alarm-signal for a single National
Guard, and had let him enter the street, saying to himself, "He is probably a
reinforcement, or at the worst a prisoner." The moment was too serious for a
sentry to turn away from his duty or his post of observation. At the moment
when Jean Valjean entered the redoubt, no one noticed him, for all eyes

were fixed on the five chosen men and the four uniforms. Jean Valjean,
however, had seen and heard, and silently took off his coat and threw it on
the pile formed by the other coats. The emotion was indescribable.
"Who is this man?" Bossuet asked.
"He is a man," Combeferre replied, "who saves his fellow-man."
Marius added in a grave voice,—
"I know him."
This bail was sufficient for all, and Enjolras turned to Jean Valjean.
"Citizen, you are welcome."
And he added,—
"You are aware that you will die."
Jean Valjean, without answering, helped the man he was saving to put on
his uniform.

CHAPTER V.

THE HORIZON ONE SEES FROM BARRICADE'S SUMMIT.

The situation of the whole party in this fatal hour, and at this inexorable
spot, had as result and pinnacle the supreme melancholy of Enjolras.
Enjolras had within him the plenitude of the revolution; he was imperfect,
however, so far as the absolute can be so,—he had too much of St. Just and
not enough of Anacharsis Clootz; still his mind in the society of the Friends
of the A. B. C. had eventually received a certain magnetism of Combeferre's
ideas. For some time past he had been gradually emerging from the narrow
form of dogmatism and yielding to the expansion of progress, and in the
end he had accepted, as the definitive and magnificent evolution, the
transformation of the great French republic into the immense human
republic. As for the immediate means, a violent situation being given, he
was willing to be violent; in that he did not vary, and he still belonged to

that epic and formidable school which is resumed in the words "'93."
Enjolras was standing on the paving-stone steps, with one of his elbows on
the muzzle of his gun. He was thinking; he trembled, as men do when a
blast passes, for spots where death lurks produce this tripod effect. A sort of
stifled fire issued from beneath his eyelashes, which were full of the
internal glance. All at once he raised his head, his light hair fell back like
that of the angel on the dark quadriga composed of stars, and he cried:—
"Citizens, do you represent the future to yourselves? The streets of towns
inundated with light, green branches on the thresholds, nations sisters, men
just, old men blessing children, the past loving the present, men thinking at
perfect liberty, believers enjoying perfect equality, for religion the heaven,
God, the direct priest, the human conscience converted into an altar, no
more hatred, the fraternity of the workshop and the school, notoriety the
sole punishment and reward, work for all, right for all, peace for all, no
more bloodshed, no more wars, and happy mothers! To subdue the matter is
the first step, to realize the ideal is the second. Reflect on what progress has
already done; formerly the first human races saw with terror the hydra that
breathed upon the waters, the dragon that vomited fire, the griffin which
was the monster of the air, and which flew with the wings of an eagle and
the claws of a tiger, pass before their eyes,—frightful beasts which were
below man. Man, however, set his snares, the sacred snares of intellect, and
ended by catching the monsters in them. We have subdued the hydra, and it
is called the steamer; we have tamed the dragon, and it is called the
locomotive; we are on the point of taming the griffin, we hold it already,
and it is called the balloon. The day on which that Promethean task is
terminated and man has definitively attached to his will the triple antique
chimera, the dragon, the hydra, and the griffin, he will be master of water,
fire, and air, and he will be to the rest of animated creation what the ancient
gods were formerly to him. Courage, and forward! Citizens, whither are we
going? To science made government, to the strength of things converted
into the sole public strength, to the natural law having its sanction and
penalty in itself and promulgating itself by evidence, and to a dawn of truth
corresponding with the dawn of day. We are proceeding to a union of the
peoples; we are proceeding to a unity of man. No more fictions, no more
parasites. The real governed by the true is our object. Civilization will hold
its assize on the summit of Europe, and eventually in the centre of the
continent, in a great Parliament of intellect. Something like this has been

seen already; the Amphictyons held two sessions a year, one at Delphi, the
place of the gods, the other at Thermopylæ, the place of heroes. Europe will
have her Amphictyons, the globe will have its Amphictyons, France bears
the sublime future within her, and this is the gestation of the 19th century.
What Greece sketched out is worthy of being finished by France. Hearken
to me, Feuilly, valiant workman, man of the people, man of the people. I
venerate thee; yes, thou seest clearly future times; yes, thou art right. Thou
hast neither father nor mother, Feuilly, and thou hast adopted humanity as
thy mother and right as thy father. Thou art about to die here, that is to say,
to triumph. Citizens, whatever may happen to-day, we are about to make a
revolution, by our defeat as well as by our victory. In the same way as fires
light up a whole city, revolutions light up the whole human race. And what
a revolution shall we make? I have just told you, the revolution of the True.
From the political point of view, there is but one principle, the sovereignty
of man over himself. This sovereignty of me over me is called liberty, and
where two or three of these liberties are associated the State begins. But in
this association there is no abdication, and each sovereignty concedes a
certain amount of itself to form the common right. This quality is the same
for all, and this identity of concession which each makes to all is called
Equality. The common right is nought but the protection of all radiating
over the right of each. This protection of all over each is termed Fraternity.
The point of intersection of all aggregated societies is called Society, and
this intersection being a junction, the point is a knot. Hence comes what is
called the social tie; some say the social contract, which is the same thing,
as the word contract is etymologically formed with the idea of a tie. Let us
come to an understanding about equality; for if liberty be the summit,
equality is the base. Equality, citizens, is not all vegetation on a level, a
society of tall blades of grass and small oaks, or a neighborhood of
entangled jealousies; it is, civilly, every aptitude having the same opening,
politically, all votes having the same weight, and religiously, all consciences
having the same right. Equality has an organ in gratuitous and compulsory
education, and it should begin with the right to the alphabet. The primary
school imposed on all, the secondary school offered to all, such is the law,
and from the identical school issues equal instruction. Yes, instruction!
Light, light! Everything comes from light and everything returns to it
Citizens, the 19th century is great, but the 20th century will be happy. Then
there will be nothing left resembling ancient history, there will be no cause

to fear, as at the present day, a conquest, an invasion, usurpation, an armed
rivalry of nations, an interruption of civilization depending on a marriage of
kings, a birth in hereditary tyrannies, a division of peoples by Congress, a
dismemberment by the collapse of dynasties, a combat of two religions,
clashing, like two goats of the darkness, on the bridge of infinity; there will
be no cause longer to fear famine, exhaustion, prostitution through destiny,
misery through stoppage of work, and the scaffold, and the sword, and
battles, and all the brigandage of accident in the forest of events; we might
almost say there will be no more events, we shall be happy; the human race
will accomplish its law as the terrestrial globe does its law; harmony will be
restored between the soul and the planet, and the soul will gravitate round
the truth as the planet does round light. Friends, the hour we are now
standing in is a gloomy hour, but there are such terrible purchases of the
future. Oh, the human race will be delivered, relieved, and consoled! We
affirm it on this barricade, and where should the cry of love be raised if not
on the summit of the sacrifice? Oh, my brothers, this is the point of junction
between those who think and those who suffer. This barricade is not made
of paving-stones, beams, and iron bars; it is made of two masses,—a mass
of ideas and a mass of sorrows. Misery meets then the ideal; day embraces
the night there, and says to it, 'I am about to die with thee, and thou wilt be
born again with me.' Faith springs from the embrace of all the desolations;
sufferings bring hither their agony, and ideas their immortality. This agony
and this immortality are about to be mingled and compose one death.
Brothers, the man who dies here dies in the radiance of the future, and we
shall enter a tomb all filled with dawn."
Enjolras interrupted himself rather than was silent; his lips moved silently
as if he were talking to himself, which attracted attention, and in order still
to try to hear him they held their tongues. There was no applause, but they
whispered together for a long time. Language being breath, the rustling of
intellects resembles the rustling of leaves.

CHAPTER VI.

MARIUS HAGGARD, JAVERT LACONIC.

Let us describe what was going on in Marius's thoughts. Our readers will
remember his state of mind, for, as we just now said, everything was only a
vision to him. His appreciation was troubled, for he was (we urge the fact)
beneath the shadow of the great gloomy wings opened above the dying. He
felt that he had entered the tomb, he fancied that he was already on the
other side of the wall, and he only saw the faces of the living with the eyes
of a dead man. How was M. Fauchelevent present? Why was he here, and
what did he come to do? Marius did not ask himself all these questions.
Moreover, as our despair has the peculiar thing about it that it envelops
others as it does ourselves, it appeared to him logical that everybody should
die. Still he thought of Cosette with a contraction of the heart. However, M.
Fauchelevent did not speak to him, did not look at him, and did not even
seem to hear Marius when he raised his voice, saying, "I know him." As for
Marius, this attitude of M. Fauchelevent relieved him, and if such a word
were permissible for such impressions, we might say that it pleased him. He
had ever felt an absolute impossibility in addressing this enigmatical man,
who was at once equivocal and imposing to him. It was a very long time too
since he had seen him; and this augmented the impossibility for a timid and
reserved nature like Marius's.
The five men selected left the barricade by the Mondétour Lane, perfectly
resembling National Guards. One of them wept as he went away, and before
doing so they embraced those who remained. When the five men sent back
to life had left, Enjolras thought of the one condemned to death. He went to
the ground-floor room, where Javert, tied to the post, was reflecting.
"Do you want anything?" Enjolras asked him.
Javert answered,—
"When will you kill me?"
"Wait. We require all our cartridges at this moment."
"In that case, give me some drink," Javert said.
Enjolras himself held out to him a glass of water, and, as Javert was bound,
helped him to drink.
"Is that all?" Enjolras resumed.

"I feel uncomfortable at this post," Javert replied; "you did not act kindly in
leaving me fastened to it the whole night. Bind me as you please, but you
might surely lay me on a table, like the other man."
And with a nod of the head he pointed to M. Mabœuf's corpse. It will be
remembered that there was at the end of the room a long, wide table on
which bullets had been run and cartridges made. All the cartridges being
made, and all the powder expended, this table was free. By Enjolras's order,
four insurgents unfastened Javert from the post, and while they did so a fifth
held a bayonet to his chest. His hands remained fastened behind his back, a
thin strong cord was attached to his feet, which enabled him to step fifteen
inches, like those who are going to ascend the scaffold, and he was forced
to walk to the table at the end of the room, on which they laid him, securely
fastened round the waist. For greater security, a system of knotting was
employed by means of a cord fastened to the neck, which rendered any
escape impossible; it was the sort of fastening called in prisons a
martingale, which starts from the nape, of the neck, is crossed on the
stomach, and is turned round the hands after passing between the legs.
While Javert was being bound, a man standing in the doorway regarded him
with singular attention, and the shadow this man cast caused Javert to turn
his head. He raised his eyes and recognized Jean Valjean, but he did not
even start; he merely looked down haughtily, and restricted himself to
saying, "It is all plain."

CHAPTER VII.

THE SITUATION BECOMES AGGRAVATED.

Day grew rapidly, but not a window opened, not a door was ajar; it was the
dawn, not an awaking. The end of the Rue de la Chanvrerie opposed to the
barricade had been evacuated by the troops, as we stated; it appeared to be
free and open for passers-by with sinister tranquillity. The Rue St. Denis
was dumb as the Avenue of the Sphinxes at Thebes; there was not a living
being on the square, which a sunbeam whitened. Nothing is so melancholy
as this brightness of deserted streets; nothing could be seen, but something

could be heard, and there was a mysterious movement at a certain distance
off. It was evident that the critical moment was arriving, and, as on the
previous evening, the vedettes fell back, but this time all of them did so.
The barricade was stronger than at the prior attack, for since the departure
of the five it had been heightened. By the advice of the vedette who had
been watching the region of the Halles, Enjolras, through fear of a surprise
in the rear, formed a serious resolution. He barricaded the small passage of
the Mondétour Lane, which had hitherto remained free, and for this purpose
a further portion of the street was unpaved. In this way the barricade, walled
in on three sides,—in front by the Rue de la Chanvrerie, on the left by the
Rue du Cygne, and on the right by the Rue Mondétour,—was truly almost
impregnable, but it is true that they were fatally enclosed within it. It had
three fronts but no issue, it was a fortress but a mouse-trap, as Courfeyrac
said with a smile. Enjolras had some thirty paving-stones piled up by the
door of the inn. "They dug up more than enough," said Bossuet. The silence
was now so profound in the direction whence the attack must come, that
Enjolras ordered all his men to return to their fighting-posts, and a ration of
brandy was distributed to each man.
Nothing is more curious than a barricade preparing for an assault; every
man chooses his place, as at the theatre. They crowd, elbow, and shoulder
one another, and some make stalls of paving-stones. Here an angle of the
wall is in the way, and it is avoided; there is a redan which may offer
protection, and they seek shelter in it. Left-handed men are precious, for
they take places inconvenient for others. Many arrange so as to fight seated,
for they wish to be at their ease to kill, and comfortable in dying. In the
fatal war of June, 1848, an insurgent, who was a wonderful marksman, and
who fought from a terraced roof, had a Voltaire easy-chair carried there, and
was knocked over in it by a volley of grape-shot. So soon as the chief has
given the signal for action all disorderly movements cease; there is no
longer any sharp-shooting, any conversations or asides: all that minds
contain converges, and is changed into the expectation of the assailant. A
barricade before danger is a chaos, in danger discipline, for peril produces
order. So soon as Enjolras had taken his double-barrelled gun, and placed
himself at a species of parapet which he reserved for himself, all were
silent; a quick, sharp crackling ran confusedly along the wall of paving-
stones; it was the muskets being cocked. However, the attitudes were
haughtier and more confident than ever, for an excess of sacrifice is a

consolidation, and though they no longer had hope, they had despair,—
despair, that last weapon, which at times gives victory, as Virgil tells us.
Supreme resources issue from extreme resolutions. To embark on death is at
times the means of escaping the shipwreck, and the cover of the coffin
becomes a plank of salvation. As on the previous evening, all their attention
was turned upon the end of the street, which was now lighted up and
visible. They had not long to wait ere the movement began again, distinctly
in the direction of St. Leu, but it did not resemble the sound of the first
attack. A rattling of chains, the alarming rolling of a heavy weight, a clang
of bronze leaping on the pavement, and a species of solemn noise,
announced that a sinister engine was approaching; there was a tremor in the
entrails of these old peaceful streets, pierced and built for the fruitful
circulation of interests and ideas, and which are not made for the monstrous
rolling of the wheels of war. The fixity of the eyes turned toward the end of
the street became stern, as a cannon appeared. The gunners pushed the gun
on; the limber was detached, and two men supported the carriage, while
four were at the wheels; others followed with the tumbril, and the lighted
match could be seen smoking.
"Fire!" shouted Enjolras.
The whole barricade burst into a flame, and the detonation was frightful; an
avalanche of smoke covered and concealed the gun and the men. A few
seconds after the cloud was dispersed, and the gun and the men reappeared;
the gunners were bringing it up to the front of the barricade, slowly,
correctly, and without hurry; not one had been wounded. Then the captain
of the gun, hanging with his whole weight on the breech to elevate the
muzzle, began pointing the gun with the gravity of an astronomer setting a
telescope.
"Bravo for the artillery!" cried Bossuet.
And all the men at the barricade clapped their hands. A moment after the
gun, standing in the very centre of the street across the gutter, was in
position, and a formidable mouth yawned at the barricade.
"Come, we are going to be gay," said Courfeyrac. "Here is the brutality;
after the fillip the blow with the fist The army is extending its heavy paw
toward us, and the barricade is going to be seriously shaken. The musketry-
fire feels, and the cannon takes."

"It is an eight-pounder of the new pattern in bronze," Combeferre added.
"Those guns, if the proportion of ten parts of tin to one hundred of copper is
exceeded, are liable to burst, for the excess of tin renders them too soft. It
thus happens that have holes and cavities in the vent, and in order to obviate
this danger and be able to load, it would perhaps be advisable to revert to
the process of the 14th century, circling and reinforcing the gun with a
series of steel rings, without any welding from the breech to the trunnions.
In the mean while they remedy the defect as well as they can, and they
manage to discover where the holes are in the vent of the gun by means of a
searcher; but there is a better method in Gribeauval's movable star."
"In the 16th century," Bossuet observed, "guns were rifled."
"Yes," Combeferre replied; "that augments the ballistic force, but lessens
the correctness of aim. At short distances the trajectory has not all the
desirable rigidness, the parabola is exaggerated, the path of the projectile is
not sufficiently rectilinear for it to hit intermediate objects, though that is a
condition of fighting whose importance grows with the proximity of the
enemy and the precipitation of the firing. This defective tension of the curve
of the projectile in rifled cannon of the 16th century emanated from the
weakness of the charge; weak charges for such engines are imposed by the
ballistic necessities, such, for instance, as the preservation of the carriage.
After all, the cannon, that despot, cannot do all that it wishes, and strength
is a great weakness. A cannon-ball goes only six hundred leagues an hour,
while light covers seventy thousand leagues per second. This is the
superiority of Jesus Christ over Napoleon."
"Reload your guns," said Enjolras.
In what manner would the revetment of the barricade behave against a
cannon-ball? Would a breach be formed? That was the question. While the
insurgents were reloading their guns the artillerymen loaded the cannon.
The anxiety within the redoubt was profound; the shot was fired, and the
detonation burst forth.
"Present!" a joyous voice cried.
And at the same time as the cannon-ball struck the barricade, Gavroche
bounded inside it. He came from the direction of the Rue du Cygne, and
actively clambered over the accessory barricade which fronted the labyrinth

of the Little Truanderie. Gavroche produced greater effect at the barricade
than the cannon-ball did; for the latter was lost in the heap of rubbish. It had
broken a wheel of the omnibus, and finished the old truck, on seeing which
the insurgents burst into a laugh.
"Persevere!" cried Bossuet to the gunners.

CHAPTER VIII.

THE ARTILLERY SETS TO WORK IN EARNEST.

Gavroche was surrounded, but he had no time to report anything, as Marius,
shuddering, drew him on one side.
"What have you come to do here?"
"What a question?" the boy said; "and you, pray?"
And he gazed fixedly at Marius with his epic effrontery: his eyes were
dilated by the proud brightness which they contained. It was with a stern
accent that Marius continued,—
"Who told you to return? I only trust that you have delivered my letter at its
address."
Gavroche felt some degree of remorse in the matter of the letter; for, in his
hurry to return to the barricade, he had got rid of it rather than delivered it.
He was forced to confess to himself that he had confided somewhat too
lightly in this stranger, whose face he had not even been able to distinguish.
It is true that this man was bareheaded, but that was not enough. In short, he
reproached himself quietly for his conduct, and feared Marius's reproaches.
He took the simplest process to get out of the scrape,—he told an
abominable falsehood.
"Citizen, I delivered the letter to the porter. The lady was asleep, and she
will have the letter when she wakes."
Marius had two objects in sending the letter,—to bid Cosette farewell and
save Gavroche. He was obliged to satisfy himself with one half of what he

wanted. The connection between the Bending of the letter and M.
Fauchelevent's presence at the barricade occurred to his mind, and he
pointed him out to Gavroche.
"Do you know that man?"
"No," said Gavroche.
Gavroche, in truth, as we know, had only seen Jean Valjean by night. The
troubled and sickly conjectures formed in Marius's mind were dissipated.
Did he know M. Fauchelevent's opinions? Perhaps he was a republican;
hence his presence in the action would be perfectly simple. In the mean
while Gavroche had run to the other end of the barricade, crying, "My gun!"
and Courfeyrac ordered it to be given to him. Gavroche warned "his
comrades," as he called them, that the barricade was invested, and he had
found great difficulty in reaching it. A battalion of the line, with their arms
piled in the Little Truanderie, was observing on the side of the Rue du Petit
Cygne; on the opposite side the Municipal Guard occupied the Rue des
Prêcheurs; while in front of them they had the main body of the army. This
information given, Gavroche added,—
"I authorize you to give them a famous pill."
Enjolras was in the mean while watching at his loop-hole with open ears;
for the assailants, doubtless little satisfied with the gun-shot, had not
repeated it. A company of line infantry had come up to occupy the
extremity of the street behind the gun. The soldiers unpaved the street, and
erected with the stones a small low wall, a species of epaulement, only
eighteen inches high, and facing the barricade. At the left-hand angle of this
work could be seen the head of a suburban column, massed in the Rue St.
Denis. Enjolras, from his post, fancied he could hear the peculiar sound
produced by canister when taken out of its box, and he saw the captain of
the gun change his aim and turn the gun's muzzle slightly to the left. Then
the gunners began loading, and the captain of the gun himself took the port-
fire and walked up to the vent.
"Fall on your knees all along the barricade," Enjolras shouted.
The insurgents, scattered in front of the wine-shop, and who had left their
posts on Gavroche's arrival, rushed pell-mell toward the barricade; but ere
Enjolras's order was executed, the discharge took place with the frightful

rattle of a round of grape-shot; it was one, in fact. The shot was aimed at the
opening in the redoubt, and ricochetted against the wall, killing two men
and wounding three. If this continued, the barricade would be no longer
tenable, for the grape-shot entered it. There was a murmur of consternation.
"Let us stop a second round," Enjolras said: and levelling his carbine he
aimed at the captain of the gun, who was leaning over the breech and
rectifying the aim. He was a handsome young sergeant of artillery, fair,
gentle-faced, and having the intelligent look peculiar to that predestined and
formidable arm which, owing to its constant improvement, must end by
killing war. Combeferre, who was standing by Enjolras's side, gazed at this
young man.
"What a pity!" said Combeferre. "What a hideous thing such butchery is!
Well, when there are no kings left there will be no war. Enjolras, you aim at
that sergeant, but do not notice him. Just reflect that he is a handsome
young man; he is intrepid. You can see that he is a thinker, and these young
artillerymen are well educated; he has a father, mother, and family; he is
probably in love; he is but twenty-five years of age at the most, and might
be your brother."
"He is so," said Enjolras.
"Yes," Combeferre added, "and mine too. Do not kill him."
"Let me alone. It must be."
And a tear slowly coursed down Enjolras's marble cheek. At the same time
he pulled the trigger and the fire flashed forth. The artilleryman turned
twice on his heel, with his arms stretched out before him, and his head
raised as if to breathe the air, and then fell across the cannon motionless.
His back could be seen, from the middle of which a jet of blood gushed
forth; the bullet had gone right through his chest, and he was dead. It was
necessary to bear him away and fill up his place, and thus a few minutes
were gained.

CHAPTER IX.

EMPLOYMENT OF THE POACHER'S OLD SKILL AND
HIS UNERRING SHOT, WHICH HAD AN INFLUENCE
ON THE CONDEMNATION IN 1796.

Opinions varied in the barricade, for the firing of the piece was going to
begin again, and the barricade could not hold out for a quarter of an hour
under the grape-shot; it was absolutely necessary to abate the firing.
Enjolras gave the command.
"We must have a mattress here."
"We have none," said Combeferre; "the wounded are lying on them."
Jean Valjean, seated apart on a bench, near the corner of the wine-shop,
with his gun between his legs, had not up to the present taken any part in
what was going on. He did not seem to hear the combatants saying around
him, "There is a gun that does nothing." On hearing the order given by
Enjolras, he rose. It will be remembered that on the arrival of the insurgents
in the Rue de la Chanvrerie, an old woman, in her terror of the bullets,
placed her mattress in front of her window. This window, a garret window,
was on the roof of a six-storied house, a little beyond the barricade. The
mattress, placed across it, leaning at the bottom upon two clothes-props,
was held above by two ropes, which, at a distance, seemed two pieces of
pack-thread, and were fastened to nails driven into the frames of the roof.
These cords could be distinctly seen on the sky, like hairs.
"Can any one lend me a double-barrelled gun?" Jean Valjean asked.
Enjolras, who had just reloaded his, handed it to him. Jean Valjean aimed at
the garret window and fired; one of the two cords of the mattress was cut
asunder, and it hung by only one thread. Jean Valjean fired the second shot,
and the second cord lashed the garret window; the mattress glided between
the two poles and fell into the street The insurgents applauded, and every
voice cried,—
"There is a mattress."
"Yes," said Combeferre, "but who will go and fetch it?"
The mattress, in truth, had fallen outside the barricade, between the
besiegers and besieged. Now, as the death of the sergeant of artillery had

exasperated the troops, for some time past they had been lying flat behind
the pile of paving-stones which they had raised; and in order to make up for
the enforced silence of the gun, they had opened fire on the barricade. The
insurgents, wishing to save their ammunition, did not return this musketry:
the fusillade broke against the barricade, but the street which it filled with
bullets was terrible. Jean Valjean stepped out of the gap, entered the street,
traversed the hail of bullets, went to the mattress, picked it up, placed it on
his back, and re-entering the barricade, himself placed the mattress in the
gap, and fixed it against the wall, so that the gunners should not see it. This
done, they waited for the next round, which was soon fired. The gun
belched forth its canister with a hoarse roar, but there was no ricochet, and
the grape-shot was checked by the mattress. The expected result was
obtained, and the barricade saved.
"Citizen," Enjolras said to Jean Valjean, "the republic thanks you."
Bossuet admired, and laughingly said,—
"It is immoral for a mattress to have so much power: it is the triumph of that
which yields over that which thunders. But no matter, glory to the mattress
that annuls a cannon!"

CHAPTER X.

DAWN.

At this moment Cosette awoke: her bed-room was narrow, clean,
circumspect, with a long window on the east side looking out into the court-
yard of the house. Cosette knew nothing of what was going on in Paris, for
she had returned to her bed-room at the time when Toussaint said, "There is
a row." Cosette had slept but a few hours, though well. She had had sweet
dreams, which resulted perhaps from the fact that her small bed was very
white. Somebody, who was Marius, appeared to her in light; and she rose
with the sun in her eyes, which at first produced the effect of a continuation
of her dream upon her. Her first thought on coming out of the dream was of
a smiling nature, and she felt quite reassured. Like Jean Valjean a few hours

before, she was passing through that reaction of the soul which absolutely
desires no misfortune. She began hoping with all her strength, without
knowing why, and then suffered from a contraction of the heart. She had not
seen Marius for three days; but she said to herself that he must have
received her letter, that he knew where she was, that he was clever and
would find means to get to her,—certainly to-day, and perhaps that very
morning. It was bright day, but the sunbeam was nearly horizontal, and so
she thought that it must be early, but that she ought to rise in order to
receive Marius. She felt that she could not live without Marius, and that
consequently was sufficient, and Marius would come. No objection was
admissible; all this was certain. It was monstrous enough to have suffered
for three days: Marius absent for three days, that was horrible on the part of
le bon Dieu. Now this cruel suspense sent from on high was a trial passed
through; Marius was about to come and bring good news. Thus is youth
constituted: it wipes away its tears quickly, and finding sorrow useless, does
not accept it. Youth is the smile of the future of an unknown thing, which is
itself: it is natural for it to be happy, and it seems as if its breath were made
of hope.
However, Cosette could not succeed in recalling to mind what Marius had
said to her on the subject of this absence, which was only to last one day,
and what explanation he had given her about it. Every one will have noticed
with what skill a coin let fall on the ground runs to hide itself, and what art
it has in rendering itself invisible. There are thoughts which play us the
same trick; they conceal themselves in a corner of our brain: it is all over,
they are lost, and it is impossible to recall them to memory. Cosette felt
somewhat vexed at the little useless effort her memory made, and said to
herself that it was very wrong and culpable of her to forget words
pronounced by Marius. She left her bed, and performed the two ablutions of
the soul and the body, her prayers and her toilette.
We may, if absolutely required, introduce a reader into a nuptial chamber,
but not into a virgin's room. Verse could hardly venture it, prose ought not.
It is the interior of a still closed flower, a whiteness in the gloaming, the
inner cell of a closed lily, which must not be gazed at by man till it has been
gazed at by the sun. Woman in the bud is sacred: this innocent bud which
discovers itself, this adorable semi-nudity which is afraid of itself, this
white foot which takes refuge in a slipper, this throat which veils itself

before a mirror as if the mirror were an eye, this chemise which hurriedly
rises and covers the shoulder at the sound of a piece of furniture creaking or
a passing vehicle, these knotted strings, this stay-lace, this tremor, this
shudder of cold and shame, this exquisite shyness in every movement, this
almost winged anxiety when there is nothing to fear, the successive phases
of the apparel, which are as charming as the clouds of dawn,—it is not
befitting that all this should be described, and it is too much to have merely
indicated it. The eye of man must to even more religious before the rising of
a maiden than before the rising of a star. The possibility of attaining ought
to be turned into augmented respect. The down of the peach, the first bloom
of the plum, the crystal radiate of the snow, the butterfly's wing Powdered
with feathers, are but coarse things by the side of this chastity, which does
not know itself that it is chaste. The maiden is only the flash of the dream,
and is not yet a statue; her alcove is concealed in the dim part of the ideal,
and the indiscreet touch of the eye brutalizes this vague twilight. In this
case contemplation is profanation. We will therefore say nothing about the
sweet awaking and rising of Cosette. An Eastern fable tells us that the rose
was made white by God, but that Adam having looked at it for a moment
when it opened, it felt ashamed, and turned pink. We are of those who feel
themselves abashed in the presence of maidens and flowers, for we find
them worthy of veneration.
Cosette dressed herself very rapidly, and combed and dressed her hair,
which was very simple at that day, when women did not swell their ringlets
and plaits with cushions and pads, and placed no crinoline in their hair.
Then she opened the window and looked all around, hoping to discern a
little of the street, an angle of the house, or a corner of the pavement, to
watch for Marius. But nothing could be seen of the outside: the court-yard
was surrounded by rather lofty walls, and was bounded by other gardens.
Cosette declared these gardens hideous, and for the first time in her life
considered flowers ugly. The paltriest street gutter would have suited her
purpose better; and she resolved to look up to heaven, as if she thought that
Marius might possibly come thence. Suddenly she burst into tears, not
through any fickleness of temperament, but her situation consisted of hopes
dashed with despondency. She confusedly felt something horrible; that it
was really in the air. She said to herself that she was sure of nothing, that
letting herself out of sight was losing herself; and the idea that Marius
might return to her from heaven appeared to her no longer charming but

lugubrious. Then—for such these clouds are—calmness returned, and hope,
and a species of smile, unconscious, but trusting in God.
Everybody was still asleep in the house, and a provincial silence prevailed.
No shutter was opened, and the porter's lodge was still closed. Toussaint
was not up, and Cosette naturally thought that her father was asleep. She
must have suffered greatly, and must still be suffering, for she said to
herself that her father had been unkind, but she reckoned on Marius. The
eclipse of such a light was decidedly impossible. At moments she heard
some distance off a sort of heavy shock, and thought how singular it was
that gates were opened and shut at so early an hour; it was the sound of the
cannon-balls battering the barricade. There was a martin's nest a few feet
below Cosette's window in the old smoke-blackened cornice, and the mouth
of the nest projected a little beyond the cornice, so that the interior of this
little Paradise could be seen from above. The mother was there expanding
her wings like a fan over her brood; the male bird fluttered round, went
away, and then returned, bringing in his bill food and kisses. The rising day
gilded this happy thing; the great law, increase and multiply, was there
smiling and august; and the sweet mystery was unfolded in the glory of the
morn. Cosette, with her hair in the sunshine, her soul in flames, enlightened
by love within and the dawn without, bent forward as if mechanically, and,
almost without daring to confess to herself that she was thinking at the same
time of Marius, she began looking at these birds, this family, this male and
female, this mother and her little ones, with all the profound agitation which
the sight of a nest occasions a virgin.

CHAPTER XI.

THE SHOT WHICH DOES NOT MISS AND WHICH KILLS
NOBODY.

The fire of the assailants continued, and the musketry and grape-shot
alternated, though without producing much mischief. The upper part of
Corinth alone suffered, and the first-floor and garret windows, pierced by
slugs and bullets, gradually lost their shape. The combatants posted there

were compelled to withdraw; but, in fact, such are the tactics of an attack on
a barricade,—to skirmish for a long time and exhaust the ammunition of the
insurgents, if they commit the error of returning the fire. When it is
discovered by the slackening of their fire that they have no powder or ball
left, the assault is made. Enjolras had not fallen into this trap, and the
barricade did not reply. At each platoon fire Gavroche thrust his tongue into
his cheek, a sign of supreme disdain.
"That's good," he said; "tear up the linen, for we require lint."
Courfeyrac addressed the grape-shot on its want of effect, and said to the
cannon,—
"You are becoming diffuse, my good fellow."
In battle, intrigues take place as at a ball; and it is probable that the silence
of the redoubt was beginning to render the assailants anxious, and make
them fear lest some unexpected incident had occurred. They felt a need of
seeing clearly through this pile of paving-stones, and what was going on
behind this impassive wall, which received shots without answering them.
The insurgents suddenly perceived a helmet glistening in the sun upon an
adjoining roof: a sapper was leaning against a tall chimney-pot and
apparently a sentry there. He looked down into the barricade.
"That's a troublesome spy," said Enjolras.
Jean had returned Enjolras his fowling-piece, but still had his own musket.
Without saying a word he aimed at the sapper, and a second later the
helmet, struck by a bullet, fell noisily into the street. The soldier
disappeared with all possible haste. A second watchman took his place, and
it was an officer. Jean Valjean, who had reloaded his musket, aimed at the
new-comer, and sent the officer's helmet to join the private's. The officer
was not obstinate, but withdrew very quickly. This time the hint was
understood, and no one again appeared on the roof.
"Why did you not kill the man?" Bossuet asked Jean Valjean, who,
however, made no reply.

CHAPTER XII.

DISORDER THE PARTISAN OF ORDER.

Bossuet muttered in Combeferre's ear,—
"He has not answered my question."
"He is a man who does kind actions with musket-shots," said Combeferre.
Those who have any recollection of this now distant epoch know that the
suburban National Guards were valiant against the insurrection, and they
were peculiarly brave and obstinate in the days of June, 1832. Any worthy
landlord, whose establishment the insurrection injured, became leonine on
seeing his dancing-room deserted, and let himself be killed in order to save
order represented by the suburban public-house. At this time, which was at
once heroic and bourgeois, in the presence of ideas which had their knights,
interests had their Paladins, and the prosaic nature of the motive took away
none of the bravery of the movement. The decrease of a pile of crowns
made bankers sing the Marseillaise, men lyrically shed their blood for the
till, and defended with Lacedæmonian enthusiasm the shop, that immense
diminutive of the country. Altogether there was a good deal that was very
serious in all this; social interests were entering into a contest, while
awaiting the day when they would enter a state of equilibrium. Another sign
of this time was the anarchy mingled with the governmentalism (a
barbarous name of the correct party), and men were for order without
discipline. The drums played unexpectedly fancy calls, at the command of
some colonel of the National Guard: one captain went under fire through
inspiration, while some National Guards fought "for the idea," and on their
own account. In critical moments during the riots men followed the advice
of their chiefs less than their own instincts, and there were in the army of
order real Guerilleros, some of the sword like Fannicot, and others of the
pen like Henry Fonfrède. Civilization, unhappily represented at this period
more by an aggregation of interests than by a group of principles, was, or
believed itself to be, in danger; it uttered the alarm cry, and every man,
constituting himself a centre, defended, succored, and protected it in his
own way, and the first comer took on himself to save society.
Zeal sometimes went as far as extermination; a platoon of National Guards
constituted themselves of their own authority a council of war, and tried and
executed in five minutes an insurgent prisoner. It was an improvisation of

this nature which killed Jean Prouvaire. It is that ferocious Lynch law with
which no party has the right to reproach another, for it is applied by the
Republic in America as by monarchy in Europe. This Lynch law was
complicated by mistakes. On a day of riot a young poet of the name of Paul
Aimé Garnier was pursued on the Place Royale at the bayonet's point, and
only escaped by taking shelter under the gateway at No. 6. "There's another
of those Saint Simonians," they shouted, and wished to kill him. Now, he
had under his arm a volume of the Memoirs of the Duc de Saint Simon; a
National Guard read on the back the words "Saint Simon," and shouted,
"Death to him!" On June 6, 1832, a company of suburban National Guards,
commanded by Captain Fannicot, to whom we have already referred,
decimated the Rue de la Chanvrerie for his own good pleasure, and on his
own authority. This fact, singular though it is, was proved by the judicial
report drawn up in consequence of the insurrection of 1832. Captain
Fannicot, an impatient and bold bourgeois, a species of condottiere of order,
and a fanatical and insubmissive governmentalist, could not resist the
attraction of firing prematurely, and taking the barricade all by himself, that
is to say, with his company. Exasperated at the successive apparition of the
red flag and the old coat, which he took for the black flag, he loudly blamed
the generals and commanders of corps, who were holding councils, as they
did not think the decisive moment for assault had arrived, but were "letting
the insurrection stew in its own gravy," according to a celebrated expression
of one of them. As for him, he thought the barricade ripe, and as everything
that is ripe is bound to fall, he made the attempt.
He commanded men as resolute as himself. "Mad-men," a witness called
them. His company, the same which had shot Jean Prouvaire, was the first
of the battalion posted at the street corner. At the moment when it was least
expected the captain dashed his men at the barricade; but this movement,
executed with more good-will than strategy, cost Fannicot's company
dearly. Before it had covered two thirds of the street a general discharge
from the barricade greeted it; four, the boldest men of all, running at the
head, were shot down in point-blank range at the very foot of the barricade,
and this courageous mob of National Guards, very brave men, but not
possessing the military tenacity, was compelled to fall back after a few
moments, leaving fifteen corpses in the street. The momentary hesitation
gave the insurgents time to reload, and a second and most deadly discharge
assailed the company before the men were able to regain their shelter at the

corner of the street. In a moment they were caught between two fires, and
received the volley from the cannon, which, having no orders to the
contrary, did not cease firing. The intrepid and imprudent Fannicot was one
of those killed by this round of grape-shot; he was laid low by the cannon.
This attack, which was more furious than serious, irritated Enjolras.
"The asses!" he said, "they have their men killed and expend our
ammunition for nothing."
Enjolras spoke like the true general of the riot that he was: insurrection and
repression do not fight with equal arms; for the insurrection, which can be
soon exhausted, has only a certain number of rounds to fire and of
combatants to expend. An expended cartouche-box and a killed man cannot
have their place filled up. Repression, on the other hand, having the army,
does not count men, and having Vincennes, does not count rounds.
Repression has as many regiments as the barricade has men, and as many
arsenals as the barricade has cartouche-boxes. Hence these are always
contests of one man against a hundred, which ever end by the destruction of
the barricade, unless revolution, suddenly dashing up, casts into the balance
its flashing archangel's glaive. Such things happen, and then everything
rises, paving-stones get into a state of ebullition, and popular redoubts
swarm. Paris has a sovereign tremor, the quid divinum is evolved; there is
an August 10 or a July 29 in the air, a prodigious light appears, the yawning
throat of force recoils, and the army, that lion, sees before it, standing erect
and tranquil, that prophet, France.

CHAPTER XIII.

GLEAMS WHICH FADE.

In the chaos of feelings and passions which defend a barricade there is
everything,—bravery, youth, the point of honor, enthusiasm, the ideal,
conviction, the obstinacy of the gambler, and above all intermitting gleams
of hope. One of these intermittences, one of these vague quiverings of hope,

suddenly ran along the Chanvrerie barricade at the most unexpected
moment.
"Listen," Enjolras, who was ever on the watch, exclaimed. "I fancy that
Paris is waking up."
It is certain that on the morning of June 6 the insurrection had for an hour or
two a certain reanimation. The obstinacy of the tocsin of St. Merry aroused
a few slight desires, and barricades were begun in the Rue du Poirier and in
the Rue des Gravilliers. In front of the Porte St. Martin, a young man armed
with a gun attacked a squadron of cavalry alone, unprotected, and on the
open boulevard he knelt down, raised his gun, fired and killed the Major,
and then turned away, saying, "There's another who will do us no more
mischief." He was cut down. In the Rue St. Denis a woman fired at the
National Guard from behind a Venetian shutter, and the wooden laths could
be seen to tremble every moment. A boy of fourteen was arrested in the Rue
de la Cossonnerie with his pockets full of cartridges, and several guard-
houses were attacked. At the entrance of the Rue Bertin Poirée a very sharp
and quite unexpected fusillade greeted a regiment of cuirassiers, at the head
of which rode General Cavaignac de Barague. In the Rue Planche Mibray
old crockery and household utensils were thrown from the roofs down on
the troops; this was a bad sign, and when Marshal Soult was informed of
the fact, Napoleon's old lieutenant became pensive, for he remembered
Suchet's remark at Saragossa: "We are lost when old women empty their
pots de chambre on our heads." These general symptoms manifested at a
moment when the riots were supposed to be localized, this fever of anger
which regained the upper hand, these will-o'-the-wisps flying here and there
over the profound masses of combustible matter which are called the
faubourgs of Paris, and all the accompanying facts, rendered the chiefs
anxious, and they hastened to extinguish the beginnings of the
conflagration. Until these sparks were quenched, the attacks on the
barricades Maubuée, de la Chanvrerie, and St. Merry were deferred, so that
all might be finished at one blow. Columns of troops were sent through the
streets in a state of fermentation, clearing the large streets and searching the
smaller ones, on the right and on the left, at one moment slowly and
cautiously, at another at quick march. The troops broke open the doors of
the houses whence firing was heard, and at the same time cavalry
manœuvres dispersed the groups on the boulevards. This repression was not

effected without turmoil, and that tumultuous noise peculiar to collisions
between the army and the people, and it was this that had attracted
Enjolras's attention in the intervals between the cannonading and the
platoon fire. Moreover, he had seen wounded men carried along the end of
the street on litters, and said to Courfeyrac, "Those wounded are not our
handiwork."
The hope lasted but a short time, and the gleam was quickly eclipsed. In
less than half an hour what there was in the air vanished; it was like a flash
of lightning without thunder, and the insurgents felt that leaden pall, which
the indifference of the people casts upon abandoned obstinate men, fall
upon them again. The general movement, which seemed to have been
obscurely designed, failed, and the attention of the Minister of War and the
strategy of the generals could now be concentrated on the three or four
barricades that remained standing. The sun rose on the horizon, and an
insurgent addressed Enjolras,—
"We are hungry here. Are we really going to die like this, without eating?"
Enjolras, still leaning at his parapet, made a nod of affirmation, without
taking his eyes off the end of the street.

CHAPTER XIV.

IN WHICH WE READ THE NAME OF THE MISTRESS OF
ENJOLRAS.

Courfeyrac, seated on a stone by the side of Enjolras, continued to insult the
cannon, and each time that the gloomy shower of projectiles which is called
a grape-shot passed with its monstrous noise he greeted it with an ironical
remark.
"You are wasting your breath, my poor old brute, and I feel sorry for you, as
your row is thrown away. That is not thunder, but a cough."
And those around him laughed Courfeyrac and Bossuet, whose valiant
good-humor increased with danger, made up for the want of food, like

Madame Scarron, by jests, and as wine was short, poured out gayety for all.
"I admire Enjolras," said Bossuet. "His temerity astonishes me. He lives
alone, which, perhaps, renders him a little sad; and Enjolras is to be pitied
for his greatness, which attaches him to widowhood. We fellows have all,
more or less, mistresses, who make us mad, that is to say brave, and when a
man is as full of love as a tiger the least he can do is to fight like a lion.
That is a way of avenging ourselves for the tricks which our grisettes play
us. Roland lets himself be killed to vex Angelique, and all our heroism
comes from our women. A man without a woman is like a pistol without a
hammer, and it is the woman who makes the man go off. Well, Enjolras has
no woman, he is not in love, and finds means to be intrepid. It is
extraordinary that a man can be cold as ice and daring as fire."
Enjolras did not appear to listen; but any one who had been near him might
have heard him murmur, in a low voice, Patria. Bossuet laughed again,
when Courfeyrac shouted, "Here's something fresh."
And assuming the voice of a groom of the chambers who announces a
visitor, he added,—"Mr. Eight-Pounder."
In fact, a new character had come on the stage; it was a second piece of
artillery. The gunners rapidly got it into position by the side of the first one,
and this was the beginning of the end. A few minutes later both guns, being
actively served, were at work against the barricade, and the platoon fire of
the line and the suburban National Guards supported the artillery. Another
cannonade was audible some distance off. At the same time that the two
guns were furiously assaulting the redoubt in the Rue de la Chanvrerie, two
other pieces placed in position, one in the Rue St. Denis, the other in the
Rue Aubry le Boucher, were pounding the St. Merry barricade. The four
guns formed a lugubrious echo to one another, the barks of the grim dogs of
war answered one another. Of the two guns now opened on the barricade of
the Rue de la Chanvrerie, one fired shell, the other solid shot. The gun
which fired the latter was pointed at a slight elevation, and the firing was so
calculated that the ball struck the extreme edge of the crest of the
barricades, and hurled the broken paying-stones on the heads of the
insurgents. This mode of fire was intended to drive the combatants from the
top of the redoubt, and compel them to close up in the interior; that is to
say, it announced the assault. Once the combatants were driven from the top

of the barricade by the cannon, and from the windows of the public-house
by the canister, the columns of attack could venture into the street without
being aimed at, perhaps without even being seen, suddenly escalade the
barricade, as on the previous evening, and take it by surprise.
"The annoyance of these guns must be reduced," said Enjolras; and he
shouted, "Fire at the artillerymen!"
All were ready: the barricade, which had so long been silent, was belted
with flame; seven or eight rounds succeeded one another with a sort of rage
and joy; the street was filled with a blinding smoke, and at the expiration of
a few minutes there might be confusedly seen through the mist, all striped
with flame, two thirds of the artillerymen lying under the gun-wheels.
Those who remained standing continued to serve the guns with a stern
tranquillity, but the fire was reduced.
"Things are going well," said Bossuet to Enjolras; "that is a success."
Enjolras shook his head, and replied,—
"Another quarter of an hour of that success, and there will not be ten
cartridges left in the barricade."
It appears that Gavroche heard the remark.

CHAPTER XV.

GAVROCHE OUTSIDE.

Courfeyrac all at once perceived somebody in the street, at the foot of the
barricade, amid the shower of bullets. Gavroche had fetched a hamper from
the pot-house, passed through the gap, and was quickly engaged in
emptying into it the full cartouche-boxes of the National Guards killed on
the slope of the barricade.
"What are you doing there?" Courfeyrac said.
Gavroche looked up.

"Citizen, I am filling my hamper."
"Do you not see the grape-shot?"
Gavroche replied,—
"Well, it is raining; what then?"
Courfeyrac cried, "Come in."
"Directly," said Gavroche.
And with one bound he reached the street. It will be borne in mind that
Fannicot's company, in retiring, left behind it a number of corpses; some
twenty dead lay here and there all along the pavement of the street. That
made twenty cartouche-boxes for Gavroche, and a stock of cartridges for
the barricade. The smoke lay in the street like a fog; any one who has seen a
cloud in a mountain gorge, between two precipitous escarpments, can form
an idea of this smoke, contracted, and as it were rendered denser, by the two
dark lines of tall houses. It rose slowly, and was incessantly renewed;
whence came a gradual obscurity, which dulled even the bright daylight.
The combatants could scarce see one another from either end of the street,
which was, however, very short. This darkness, probably desired and
calculated on by the chiefs who were about to direct the assault on the
barricade, was useful for Gavroche. Under the cloak of this smoke, and
thanks to his shortness, he was enabled to advance a considerable distance
along the street unnoticed, and he plundered the first seven or eight
cartouche-boxes without any great danger. He crawled on his stomach,
galloped on all fours, took his hamper in his teeth, writhed, glided,
undulated, wound from one corpse to another, and emptied the cartouche-
box as a monkey opens a nut. They did not cry to him from the barricade, to
which he was still rather close, to return, for fear of attracting attention to
him. On one corpse, which was a corporal's, he found a powder-flask.
"For thirst," he said, as he put it in his pocket.
While moving forward, he at length reached the point where the fog of the
fire became transparent, so that the sharp-shooters of the line, drawn up
behind their parapet of paving-stones, and the National Guard at the corner
of the street, all at once pointed out to one another something stirring in the
street. At the moment when Gavroche was taking the cartridges from a
sergeant lying near a post, a bullet struck the corpse.

"Oh, for shame!" said Gavroche; "they are killing my dead for me."
A second bullet caused the stones to strike fire close to him, while a third
upset his hamper. Gavroche looked and saw that it came from the National
Guards. He stood upright, with his hair floating in the breeze, his hands on
his hips, and his eyes fixed on the National Guards who were firing, and he
sang,—
"On est laid à Nanterre,
C'est la faute à Voltaire,
Et bête à Palaiseau,
C'est la faute à Rousseau."
Then he picked up his hamper, put into it the cartridges scattered around
without missing one, and walked toward the firing party, to despoil another
cartouche-box. Then a fourth bullet missed him. Gavroche sang,—
"Je ne suis pas notaire,
C'est la faute à Voltaire;
Je suis petit oiseau,
C'est la faute à Rousseau."
A fifth bullet only succeeded so far as to draw a third couplet from him,—
"Joie est mon caractère,
C'est la faute à Voltaire;
Misère est mon trousseau,
C'est la faute à Rousseau."
They went on for some time longer, and the sight was at once terrific and
charming; Gavroche, while fired at, ridiculed the firing, and appeared to be
greatly amused. He was like a sparrow deriding the sportsmen, and
answered each discharge by a verse. The troops aimed at him incessantly,
and constantly missed him, and the National Guards and the soldiers
laughed while covering him. He lay down, then rose again, hid himself in a
doorway, then bounded, disappeared, reappeared, ran off, came back,
replied to the grape-shot by putting his fingers to his nose, and all the while
plundered cartridges, emptied boxes, and filled his hamper. The insurgents
watched him, as they panted with anxiety, but while the barricade trembled
he sang. He was not a child, he was not a man, he was a strange goblin
gamin, and he resembled the invulnerable dwarf of the combat. The bullets

ran after him, but he was more active than they; he played a frightful game
of hide-and-seek with death: and each time that the snub-nosed face of the
spectre approached the gamin gave it a fillip. One bullet, however, better
aimed or more treacherous than the rest, at length struck the will-o'-the-
wisp lad; Gavroche was seen to totter and then sink. The whole barricade
uttered a cry, but there was an Antæus in this pygmy: for a gamin to touch
the pavement is like the giant touching the earth; and Gavroche had only
fallen to rise again. He remained in a sitting posture, a long jet of blood ran
down his face, he raised both arms in the air, looked in the direction whence
the shot had come, and began singing,—
"Je suis tombé par terre,
C'est la faute à Voltaire;
Le nez dans le ruisseau,
C'est la faute à—"
He did not finish, for a second shot from the same marksman stopped him
short. This time he lay with his face on the pavement, and did not stir again.
This little great soul had flown away.

DEATH OF GAVROCHE.

CHAPTER XVI.

HOW A BROTHER BECOMES A FATHER.

There were at this very moment in the Luxembourg garden—for the eye of
the drama must be everywhere present—two lads holding each other's hand.
One might be seven, the other five, years of age. As they were wet through
with the rain they walked along sunshiny paths; the elder led the younger,
both were in rags and pale, and they looked like wild birds. The younger
said, "I am very hungry." The elder, who had already a protecting air, led his
brother with the left hand, and had a switch in his right. They were alone in
the garden, which was deserted, as the gates were closed by police order on
account of the insurrection. The troops who had bivouacked there had
issued forth for the exigences of the combat. How were these children here?
Perhaps they had escaped from some guard-room where the door was left
ajar; perhaps in the vicinity, at the Barrière d'Enfer, on the esplanade of the
Observatory, or in the neighboring square overshadowed by the cornice, on
which may be read, Invenerunt parvulum pannis involutum, there was some
mountebank's booth from which they had fled; perhaps they had on the
previous evening kept out of sight of the garden inspectors at the hour of
closing, and had spent the night in one of those summer-houses in which
people read the papers: the fact is, that they were wandering about, and
seemed to be free. To be a wanderer, and to appear free, is to be lost, and
these poor little creatures were really lost The two lads were the same about
whom Gavroche had been in trouble, and whom the reader will remember,
sons of Thénardier, let out to Magnon, attributed to M. Gillenormand, and
now leaves fallen from all these rootless branches, and rolled along the
ground by the wind.
Their clothes, clean in the time of Magnon, and which served her as a
prospectus to M. Gillenormand, had become rags; and these beings
henceforth belonged to the statistics of "deserted children," whom the
police pick up, lose, and find again on the pavement of Paris. It needed the
confusion of such a day as this for these two poor little wretches to be in
this garden. If the inspectors had noticed these rags they would have
expelled them, for poor little lads do not enter public gardens, and yet it
ought to be remembered that as children they have a right to flowers. They
were here, thanks to the locked gates, and were committing an offence; they
had stepped into the garden and remained there. Though locked gates do not

give a holiday to the keepers, and their surveillance is supposed to continue,
it grows weaker and rests; and the inspectors, also affected by the public
affairs, and more busied about the outside than the inside, did not look at
the garden, and had not seen the two delinquents. It had rained on the
previous evening, and even slightly on this morning, but in June, showers
are of no great consequence. People hardly perceive, an hour after a storm,
that this fair beauteous day has wept, for the earth dries up as rapidly as a
child's cheek. At this moment of the solstice the midday light is, so to
speak, poignant, and it seizes everything. It clings to and spreads itself over
the earth with a sort of suction, and we might say that the sun is thirsty. A
shower is a glass of water, and rain is at once drunk up. In the morning
everything glistens, in the afternoon everything is dusty. Nothing is so
admirable as verdure cleansed by the rain and dried by the sun; it is warm
freshness. Gardens and fields, having water in their roots and sunshine in
their flowers, become censers of incense, and smoke with all their perfumes
at once. Everything laughs, sings, and offers itself, and we feel softly
intoxicated: summer is a temporary Paradise, and the sun helps man to be
patient.
There are beings who ask no more,—living creatures who, having the azure
of heaven, say it is enough; dreamers absorbed in the prodigy, drawing from
the idolatry of nature indifference to good and evil; contemplators of the
Cosmos, radiantly distracted from man, who do not understand how people
can trouble themselves about the hunger of one person, the thirst of another,
the nudity of the poor man in winter, the lymphatic curvature of a small
backbone, the truck-bed, the garret, the cell, and the rags of young shivering
girls, when they can dream under the trees: they are peaceful and terrible
minds, pitilessly satisfied, and, strange to say, infinitude suffices them. They
ignore that great want of man, the finite which admits of an embrace, and
do not dream of the finite which admits of progress, that sublime toil. The
indefinite, which springs from the divine and human combination of the
infinite and the finite, escapes them, and provided that they can be face to
face with immensity, they smile. They never feel joy, but always ecstasy,
and their life is one of abstraction. The history of humanity is to them but a
grand detail: the All is not in it, the All remains outside of it. Of what use is
it to trouble one's self about that item, man? Man suffers, it is possible, but
just look at Aldebaran rising! The mother has no milk left, the new-born
babe is dying. I know nothing of all that, but just look at the marvellous

rose made by a sprig of hawthorn when looked at through a microscope;
just compare the finest Mechlin lace with that! These thinkers forget to
love, and the zodiac has such an attraction over them that it prevents them
seeing the weeping child. God eclipses their soul, and they are a family of
minds at once great and little. Homer belonged to it; so did Goethe, and
possibly Lafontaine, magnificent egotists of the infinite, calm spectators of
sorrow, who do not see Nero if the weather be fine; from whom the sun
hides the pyre; who would look at a guillotining to seek a light effect in it;
who hear neither cries nor sobs, nor the death-rattle nor the tocsin; for
whom everything is good, since there is the month of May; who so long as
they have clouds of purple and gold above their heads declare themselves
satisfied; and who are determined to be happy until the radiance of the stars
and the song of birds are exhausted.
These are darkly radiant, and they do not suspect that they are to be pitied.
But they are certainly so, for the man who does not weep does not see. We
must admire and pity them, as we would pity and admire a being at once
night and day, who had no eyes under his brows, but a star in the centre of
his forehead. The indifference of these thinkers is, according to some, a
grand philosophy. Be it so; but in this superiority there is infirmity. A man
may be immortal and limp, as witness Vulcan, and he may be more than
man and less than man; there is immense incompleteness in nature, and who
knows whether the sun be not blind? But in that case, whom to trust? Solem
quis dicere falsum audeat? Hence, certain geniuses, certain human deities,
star-men, might be mistaken? What is above at the summit, at the zenith,
which pours so much light on the earth, might see little, see badly, not see at
all? Is not that desperate? No: but what is there above the sun? God.
On June 6, 1832, at about eleven in the forenoon, the Luxembourg, solitary
and depopulated, was delicious. The quincunxes and flower-beds sent balm
and dazzlement into the light, and the branches, wild in the brilliancy of
midday, seemed trying to embrace one another. There was in the sycamores
a twittering of linnets, the sparrows were triumphal, and the woodpeckers
crept along the chestnut, gently tapping holes in the bark. The beds accepted
the legitimate royalty of the lilies, for the most august of perfumes is that
which issues from whiteness. The sharp odor of the carnations was inhaled,
and the old rooks of Marie de Medicis made love on the lofty trees. The sun
gilded, purpled, and illumined the tulips, which are nothing but all the

varieties of flame made into flowers. All around the tulip-beds hummed the
bees, the flashes of these fire-flowers. All was grace and gayety, even the
coming shower, for that relapse by which the lilies of the valley and
honeysuckles would profit had nothing alarming about it, and the swallows
made the delicious menace of flying low. What was there inhaled
happiness: life smelt pleasantly, and all this nature exhaled candor, help,
assistance, paternity, caresses, and dawn. The thoughts that fell from heaven
were as soft as a babe's little hand that we kiss. The statues under the trees,
nude and white, were robed in dresses of shadow shot with light; these
goddesses were all ragged with sunshine, and beams hung from them on all
sides. Around the great basin the earth was already so dry as to be parched,
and there was a breeze sufficiently strong to create here and there small
riots of dust. A few yellow leaves remaining from the last autumn joyously
pursued one another, and seemed to be sporting.
The abundance of light had something strangely reassuring about it; life,
sap, heat, and exhalations overflowed, and the greatness of the source could
be felt beneath creation. In all these blasts penetrated with love, in this
movement of reflections and gleams, in this prodigious expenditure of
beams, and in this indefinite outpouring of fluid gold, the prodigality of the
inexhaustible could be felt; and behind this splendor, as behind a curtain of
flames, glimpses of God, that millionnaire of the stars, could be caught.
Thanks to the sand, there was not a speck of mud; and, thanks to the rain,
there was not a grain of dust The bouquets had just performed their
ablutions, and all the velvets, all the satins, all the varnish, and all the gold
which issue from the earth in the shape of flowers, were irreproachable.
This magnificence was clean, and the grand silence of happy nature filled
the garden,—a heavenly silence, compatible with a thousand strains of
music, the fondling tones from the nests, the buzzing of the swarms, and the
palpitations of the wind. All the harmony of the season was blended into a
graceful whole, the entrances and exits of spring took place in the desired
order, the lilacs were finishing, and the jessamine beginning, a few flowers
were behindhand, a few insects before their time, and the vanguard of the
red butterflies of June fraternized with the rearguard of the white butterflies
of May. The plane-trees were putting on a fresh skin, and the breeze formed
undulations in the magnificent enormity of the chest-nut-trees. It was
splendid. A veteran from the adjoining barracks who was looking through
the railings said, "Spring presents arms in full dress."

All nature was breakfasting; the creation was at table; it was the hour: the
great blue cloth was laid in heaven, and the great green one on earth, while
the sun gave an à giorno illumination. God was serving His universal meal,
and each being had its pasture or its pasty. The wood-pigeon found
hempseed, the chaffinch found millet, the goldfinch found chickweed, the
redbreast found worms, the bee found flowers, the fly found infusoria, and
the greenfinch found flies. They certainly devoured one another to some
extent, which is the mystery of evil mingled with good, but not a single
animal had an empty stomach. The two poor abandoned boys had got near
the great basin, and somewhat confused by all this light, tried to hide
themselves, which is the instinct of the poor and the weak in the presence of
magnificence, even when it is impersonal, and they kept behind the swan's
house. Now and then, at intervals when the wind blew, confused shouts, a
rumbling, a sort of tumultuous death-rattle which was musketry, and dull
blows which were cannon-shots, could be heard. There was smoke above
the roofs in the direction of the markets, and a bell which seemed to be
summoning sounded in the distance. The children did not seem to notice the
noises, and the younger lad repeated every now and then in a low voice, "I
am hungry."
Almost simultaneously with the two boys another couple approached the
basin, consisting of a man of about fifty, leading by the hand a boy of six
years of age. It was doubtless a father with his son. The younger of the two
had a cake in his hand. At this period certain contiguous houses in the Rue
Madame and the Rue d'Enfer had keys to the Luxembourg, by which the
lodgers could let themselves in when the gates were locked; but this
permission has since been withdrawn. This father and son evidently came
from one of these houses. The two poor little creatures saw "this
gentleman" coming, and hid themselves a little more. He was a citizen, and
perhaps the same whom Marius during his love-fever had one day heard
near the same great basin counselling his son "to avoid excesses." He had
an affable and haughty look, and a mouth which, as it did not close, always
smiled. This mechanical smile, produced by too much jaw and too little
skin, shows the teeth rather than the soul. The boy with the bitten cake
which he had not finished, seemed glutted; the boy was dressed in a
National Guard's uniform, on account of the riots, and the father remained
in civilian garb for the sake of prudence. Father and son had halted near the
great basin, in which the two swans were disporting. This bourgeois

appeared to have a special admiration for the swans, and resembled them in
the sense that he walked like them. At this moment the swans were
swimming, which is their principal talent, and were superb. Had the two
little fellows listened, and been of an age to comprehend, they might have
overheard the remarks of a serious man; the father was saying to his son,—
"The sage lives contented with little; look at me, my son, I do not care for
luxury. You never see me in a coat glistening with gold and precious stones;
I leave that false lustre to badly-organized minds."
Here the deep shouts which came from the direction of the Halles broke
out, with a redoublement of hells and noise.
"What is that?" the lad asked.
The father replied,—
"That is the saturnalia."
All at once he perceived the two little ragged boys standing motionless
behind the swan's green house.
"Here is the beginning," he said.
And after a silence he added,—
"Anarchy enters this garden."
In the mean while the boy bit the cake, spat it out again, and suddenly
began crying.
"Why are you crying?" the father asked.
"I am no longer hungry," said the boy.
The father's smile became more marked than ever.
"You need not be hungry to eat a cake."
"I am tired of cake; it is so filling."
"Don't you want any more?"
"No."
The father showed him the swans.
"Throw it to those palmipeds."

The boy hesitated, for if he did not want any more cake that was no reason
to give it away.
The father continued,—
"Be humane: you ought to have pity on animals."
And, taking the cake from his son, he threw it into the basin, where it fell
rather near the bank. The swans were some distance off, near the centre of
the basin, and engaged with some prey: they had seen neither the citizen nor
the cake. The citizen, feeling that the cake ran a risk of being lost, and
affected by this useless shipwreck, began a telegraphic agitation which
eventually attracted the attention of the swans. They noticed something
floating on the surface, tacked, like the vessels they are, and came towards
the cake slowly, with the majesty that befits white beasts.
"Swans understand signs," said the bourgeois, pleased at his own
cleverness.
At this moment the distant tumult of the city was suddenly swollen. This
time it was sinister, and there are some puffs of wind which speak more
distinctly than others. The one which blew at this moment distinctly brought
up the rolling of drums, shouts, platoon fires, and the mournful replies of
the tocsin, and the cannon. This coincided with a black cloud which
suddenly veiled the sky. The swans had not yet reached the cake.
"Let us go home," the father said; "they are attacking the Tuileries,"
He seized his son's hand again, and then continued,—
"From the Tuileries to the Luxembourg there is only the distance which
separates the royalty from the peerage; and that is not far. It is going to rain
musketry."
He looked at the cloud,—
"And perhaps we shall have rain of the other sort too; heaven is interfering:
the younger branch is condemned. Let us make haste home."
"I should like to see the swans eat the cake," said the boy.
"It would be imprudent," the father answered; and he led away his little
bourgeois. The son, regretting the swans, turned his head toward the basin,
until a bend in the quincunxes concealed it from him. The two little

vagabonds had in the mean while approached the cake simultaneously with
the swans. It was floating on the water; the smaller boy looked at the cake;
the other looked at the citizen, who was going off. Father and son entered
the labyrinth of trees that runs to the grand staircase of the clump of trees in
the direction of the Rue Madame. When they were no longer in sight, the
elder hurriedly lay down full length on the rounded bank of the basin, and
holding by his left hand, while bending over the water, till he all but fell in,
he stretched out his switch toward the cake with the other. The swans,
seeing the enemy, hastened up, and in hastening their breasts produced an
effect useful to the little fisher: the water flowed back in front of the swans,
and one of the gentle, concentric undulations slightly impelled the cake
toward the boy's switch. When the swans came up, the stick was touching
the cake; the lad gave a quick blow, startled the swans, seized the cake, and
arose. The cake was soaking, but they were hungry and thirsty. The elder
boy divided the cake into two parts, a large one and a small one, kept the
small one for himself, and gave the larger piece to his brother, saying,—
"Shove that into your gun."

CHAPTER XVII.

MORTUUS PATER FILIUM MORITURUM EXPECTAT.

Marius rushed out of the barricade, and Combeferre followed him; but it
was too late, and Gavroche was dead. Combeferre brought in the hamper of
cartridges, and Marius the boy. Alas! he thought he was requiting the son
for what the father had done for his father; but Thénardier had brought in
his father alive, while he brought in the lad dead. When Marius re-entered
the barricade with Gavroche in his arms, his face was deluged with blood,
like the boy's; for at the very instant when he stooped to pick up Gavroche,
a bullet had grazed his skull, but he had not noticed it. Courfeyrac took off
his neckcloth and bound Marius's forehead; Gavroche was deposited on the
same table with Mabœuf, and the black shawl was spread over both bodies;
it was large enough for the old man and the child. Combeferre distributed
the cartridges which he had brought in, and they gave each man fifteen

rounds to fire. Jean Valjean was still at the same spot, motionless on his
bench. When Combeferre offered him his fifteen cartridges he shook his
head.
"That is a strange eccentric," Combeferre said in a whisper to Enjolras. "He
manages not to fight inside this barricade."
"Which does not prevent him from defending it," Enjolras answered.
"Heroism has its original characters," Combeferre resumed.
And Courfeyrac, who overheard him, said,—
"He is a different sort from Father Mabœuf."
It is a thing worth mentioning, that the fire which struck the barricade
scarce disturbed the interior. Those who have never passed the tornado of a
warfare of this nature cannot form any idea of the singular moments of
calmness mingled with these convulsions. Men come and go, they talk, they
jest, they idle. A friend of ours heard a combatant say to him, in the midst of
the grape-shot, "It is like being at a bachelor's breakfast here." The redoubt
in the Rue de la Chanvrerie, we repeat, appeared internally most calm; and
all the incidents and phases were, or would shortly be, exhausted. The
position had become from critical menacing, and from menacing was
probably about to become desperate. In proportion as the situation grew
darker an heroic gleam more and more purpled the barricade. Enjolras
commanded it in the attitude of a young Spartan, devoting his bare sword to
the gloomy genius, Epidotas. Combeferre, with an apron tied round him,
was dressing the wounded. Bossuet and Feuilly were making cartridges
with the powder-flask found by Gavroche on the dead corporal, and Bossuet
was saying to Feuilly, "We are soon going to take the diligence for another
planet." Courfeyrac, seated on the few paving-stones which he had set aside
near Enjolras, was preparing and arranging an entire arsenal—his sword-
cane, his gun, two hostler-pistols, and a club— with the ease of a girl
setting a small what-not in order. Jean Valjean was silently looking at the
wall facing him, and a workman was fastening on his head, with a piece of
string, a broad-brimmed straw bonnet of Mother Hucheloup's, "for fear of
sun-strokes," as he said. The young men of the Aix Cougourde were gayly
chatting together, as if desirous to talk patois for the last time: Joly, who had
taken down Widow Hucbeloup's mirror, was examining his tongue in it;

while a few combatants, who had discovered some nearly mouldering crusts
of bread in a drawer, were eating them greedily. Marius was anxious about
what his father would say to him.

CHAPTER XVIII.

THE VULTURE BECOMES PREY.

We must lay a stress upon a psychological fact peculiar to barricades, for
nothing which characterizes this surprising war of streets ought to be
omitted. Whatever the internal tranquillity to which we have just referred
may be, the barricade does not the less remain a vision for those who are
inside it There is an apocalypse in a civil war, all the darkness of the
unknown world is mingled with these stern flashes, revolutions are
sphinxes, and any one who has stood behind a barricade believes that he has
gone through a dream. What is felt at these spots, as we have shown in the
matter of Marius, and whose consequences we shall see, is more and less
than life. On leaving a barricade, a man no longer knows what he has seen;
he may have been terrible, but he is ignorant of the fact. He has been
surrounded there by combating ideas which possessed human faces, and
had his head in the light of futurity. There were corpses laid low and
phantoms standing upright; and the hours were colossal, and seemed hours
of eternity. A man has lived in death, and shadows have passed. What was
it? He has seen hands on which was blood; it was a deafening din, but at the
same time a startling silence: there were open mouths that cried, and other
open mouths which were silent, and men were in smoke, perhaps in night.
A man fancies he has touched the sinister dripping of unknown depths, and
he looks at something red which he has in his nails, but he no longer
recollects anything.
Let us return to the Rue de la Chanvrerie. Suddenly, between two
discharges, the distant sound of a clock striking was heard.
"It is midday," said Combeferre.

The twelve strokes had not died out ere Enjolras drew himself up to his full
height and hurled the loud cry from the top of the barricade,—
"Take up the paving-stones into the house, and line the windows with them.
One half of you to the stones, the other half to the muskets. There is not a
moment to lose."
A party of sappers, with their axes on their shoulders, had just appeared in
battle-array at the end of the street. This could only be the head of a
column; and of what column? Evidently the column of attack; for the
sappers ordered to demolish the barricade always precede the troops
appointed to escalade it. It was plain that the moment was at hand which M.
Clermont Tonnerre called in 1822 "a strong pull."
Enjolras's order was carried out with that correct speed peculiar to ships and
barricades, the only two battle-fields whence escape is impossible. In less
than a minute two thirds of the paving-stones which Enjolras had ordered to
be piled up against the door of Corinth were carried to the first-floor and
attic, and before a second minute had passed these paving-stones,
artistically laid on one another, walled up one half of the window. A few
spaces carefully arranged by Feuilly, the chief constructor, allowed the gun-
barrels to pass through. This armament of the windows was the more easily
effected because the grape-shot had ceased. The two cannon were now
firing solid shot at the centre of the barricade, in order to make a hole, and
if possible a breach, for the assault. When the stones intended for the final
assault were in their places, Enjolras carried to the first-floor the bottles he
had placed under the table on which Mabœuf lay.
"Who will drink that?" Bossuet asked him.
"They will," Enjolras answered.
Then the ground-floor window was also barricaded, and the iron bars which
closed the door at night were held in readiness. The fortress was complete;
the barricade was the rampart, and the wine-shop the keep. With the paving-
stones left over the gap was stopped up. As the defenders of a barricade are
always obliged to save their ammunition, and the besiegers are aware of the
fact, the latter combine their arrangements with a sort of irritating leisure,
expose themselves before the time to the fire, though more apparently than
in reality, and take their ease. The preparations for the attack are always

made with a certain methodical slowness, and after that comes the thunder.
This slowness enabled Enjolras to revise and render everything perfect. He
felt that since such men were about to die, their death must be a
masterpiece. He said to Marius,—
"We are the two chiefs. I am going to give the final orders inside, while you
remain outside and watch."
Marius posted himself in observation on the crest of the barricade, while
Enjolras had the door of the kitchen, which it will be remembered served as
ambulance, nailed up.
"No splashing on the wounded," he said.
He gave his final instructions in the ground-floor room in a sharp but
wonderfully calm voice, and Feuilly listened and answered in the name of
all.
"At the first-floor hold axes ready to cut down the stairs. Have you them?"
"Yes," Feuilly answered.
"How many?"
"Two axes and a crowbar."
"Very good. In all, twenty-six fighting men left. How many guns are there?"
"Thirty-four."
"Eight too many. Keep those guns loaded like the others, and within reach.
Place your sabres and pistols in your belts. Twenty men to the barricade.
Six will ambush themselves in the garret and at the first-floor window, to
fire on the assailants through the loop-holes in the paving-stones. There
must not be an idle workman here. Presently, when the drummer sounds the
charge, the twenty men below will rush to the barricade, and the first to
arrive will be the best placed."
These arrangements made, he turned to Javert, and said to him,—
"I have not forgotten you."
And laying a pistol on the table he added,—
"The last man to leave here will blow out this spy's brains."

"Here?" a voice answered.
"No, let us not have this corpse near ours. It is easy to stride over the small
barricade in Mondétour Lane, as it is only four feet high. This man is
securely bound, so lead him there and execute him."
Some one was at this moment even more stoical than Enjolras; it was
Javert. Here Jean Valjean appeared; he was mixed up with the group of
insurgents, but stepped forward and said to Enjolras,—
"Are you the commander?"
"Yes."
"You thanked me just now."
"In the name of the Republic. The barricade has two saviors,—Marius
Pontmercy and yourself."
"Do you think that I deserve a reward?"
"Certainly."
"Well, then, I ask one."
"What is it?"
"To let me blow out that man's brains myself."
Javert raised his head, saw Jean Valjean, gave an imperceptible start, and
said, "It is fair."
As for Enjolras, he was reloading his gun. He looked around him.
"Is there no objection?"
And he turned to Jean Valjean.
"Take the spy."
Jean Valjean took possession of Javert by seating himself on the end of the
table. He seized the pistol, and a faint clink showed that he had cocked it.
Almost at the same moment the bugle-call was heard.
"Mind yourselves!" Marius shouted from the top of the barricade.
Javert began laughing that noiseless laugh peculiar to him, and, looking
intently at the insurgents, said to them,—

"You are no healthier than I am."
"All outside," Enjolras cried.
The insurgents rushed tumultuously forth, and as they passed, Javert smote
them on the back, so to speak, with the expression, "We shall meet again
soon."

CHAPTER XIX.

JEAN VALJEAN REVENGES HIMSELF.

So soon as Jean Valjean was alone with Javert he undid the rope which
fastened the prisoner round the waist, the knot of which was under the table.
After this, he made him a signal to rise. Javert obeyed with that indefinable
smile in which the supremacy of enchained authority is condensed. Jean
Valjean seized Javert by the martingale, as he would have taken an ox by its
halter, and dragging him after him, quitted the wine-shop slowly, for Javert,
having his feet hobbled, could only take very short steps. Jean Valjean held
the pistol in his hand, and they thus crossed the inner trapeze of the
barricade; the insurgents, prepared for the imminent attack, turned their
backs.
Marius alone, placed at the left extremity of the barricade, saw them pass.
This group of the victim and the executioner was illumined by the
sepulchral gleams which he had in his soul. Jean Valjean forced Javert to
climb over the barricade with some difficulty, but did not loosen the cord.
When they had crossed the bar, they found themselves alone in the lane, and
no one could now see them, for the elbow formed by the houses hid them
from the insurgents. The corpses removed from the barricade formed a
horrible pile a few paces from them. Among the dead could be
distinguished a livid face, dishevelled hair, a pierced hand, and a half-naked
female bosom; it was Éponine. Javert looked askance at this dead girl, and
said with profound calmness,—
"It seems to me I know that girl."

Then he turned to Jean Valjean, who placed the pistol under his arm, and
fixed on Javert a glance which had no need of words to say, "Javert, it is I."
Javert answered, "Take your revenge."
Jean Valjean took a knife from his pocket and opened it.
"A clasp-knife," Javert exclaimed. "You are right, that suits you better."
Jean Valjean cut the martingale which Javert had round his neck, then he cut
the ropes on his wrists, and stooping down, those on his feet; then rising
again, he said, "You are free."
It was not easy to astonish Javert, still, master though he was of himself, he
could not suppress his emotion; he stood gaping and motionless, while Jean
Valjean continued,—
"I do not believe that I shall leave this place. Still, if by accident I do, I live
under the name of Fauchelevent, at No. 7, Rue de l'Homme Armé."
Javert gave a tigerish frown, which opened a corner of his mouth, and
muttered between his teeth,—
"Take care!"
"Begone!" said Jean Valjean.
Javert added,—
"You said Fauchelevent, Rue de l'Homme Armé?"
"No. 7."
Javert repeated in a low voice,—"No. 7."
He rebuttoned his frock-coat, restored his military stiffness between his
shoulders, made a half turn, crossed his arms while supporting his chin with
one of his hands, and walked off in the direction of the markets. Jean
Valjean looked after him. After going a few yards Javert turned and said,—
"You annoy me. I would sooner be killed by you."
Javert did not even notice that he no longer addressed Jean Valjean with
familiarity.
"Begone!" said Jean Valjean.

Javert retired slowly, and a moment after turned the corner of the Rue des
Prêcheurs. When Javert had disappeared, Jean Valjean discharged the pistol
in the air, and then returned to the barricade, saying,—
"It is all over."
This is what had taken place in the mean while. Marius, more occupied with
the outside than the inside, had not hitherto attentively regarded the spy
fastened up at the darkened end of the ground-floor room. When he saw
him in the open daylight bestriding the barricade, he recognized him, and a
sudden hope entered his mind. He remembered the inspector of the Rue de
Pontoise, and the two pistols he had given him, which he, Marius, had
employed at this very barricade, and he not only remembered his face but
his name.
This recollection, however, was foggy and disturbed, like all his ideas. It
was not an affirmation he made so much as a question which he asked
himself. "Is that not the Police Inspector, who told me that his name was
Javert?" Marius shouted to Enjolras, who had just stationed himself at the
other end of the barricade,—
"Enjolras?"
"Well?"
"What is that man's name?"
"Which man?"
"The police agent. Do you know his name?"
"Of course I do, for he told it to us."
"What is it?"
"Javert."
Marius started, but at this moment a pistol-shot was heard, and Jean Valjean
reappeared, saying, "It is all over." A dark chill crossed Marius's heart.

CHAPTER XX.

THE DEAD ARE RIGHT AND THE LIVING ARE NOT WRONG.

The death-struggles of the barricade were about to begin, and everything
added to the tragical majesty of this supreme moment,—a thousand
mysterious sounds in the air, the breathing of armed masses set in motion in
streets which could not be seen, the intermittent gallop of cavalry, the heavy
rumor of artillery, the platoon firing and the cannonade crossing each other
in the labyrinth of Paris, the smoke of the battle rising all golden above the
roofs, distant and vaguely terrible cries, flashes of menace everywhere, the
tocsin of St. Merry, which now had the sound of a sob, the mildness of the
season, the splendor of the sky full of sunshine and clouds, the beauty of the
day, and the fearful silence of the houses. For since the previous evening the
two rows of houses in the Rue de la Chanvrerie had become two walls,—
ferocious walls with closed doors, closed windows, and closed shutters.
At that day, so different from the present time, when the hour arrived in
which the people wished to be done with a situation which had lasted too
long, with a conceded charter or a restricted suffrage, when the universal
wrath was diffused in the atmosphere, when the city consented to an
upheaving of paving-stones, when the insurrection made the bourgeoisie
smile by whispering its watchword in their ear, then the inhabitant,
impregnated with riot, so to speak, was the auxiliary of the combatant, and
the house fraternized with the improvised fortress which it supported. When
the situation was not ripe, when the insurrection was not decidedly
accepted, when the masses disavowed the movement, it was all over with
the combatants, the town was changed into a desert round the revolt, minds
were chilled, the asylums were walled up, and the street became converted
into a defile to help the army in taking the barricade. A people cannot be
forced to move faster than it wishes by a surprise, and woe to the man who
tries to compel it; a people will not put up with it, and then it abandons the
insurrection to itself. The insurgents become lepers; a house is an
escarpment, a door is a refusal, and a façade is a wall. This wall sees, hears,
and will not; it might open and save you, but no, the wall is a judge, and it
looks at you and condemns you. What gloomy things are these closed
houses! They seem dead though they are alive, and life, which is, as it were,
suspended, clings to them. No one has come out for the last four-and-twenty
hours, but no one is absent. In the interior of this rock people come and go,

retire to bed and rise again; they are in the bosom of their family, they eat
and drink, and are afraid, terrible to say. Fear excuses this formidable
inhospitality, and the alarm offers extenuating circumstanced. At times
even, and this has been witnessed, the fear becomes a passion, and terror
may be changed into fury, and prudence into rage; hence the profound
remark, "The enraged moderates." There are flashes of supreme terror, from
which passion issues like a mournful smoke. "What do these people want?
They are never satisfied; they compromise peaceable men. As if we had not
had revolutions of that nature! What have they come to do here? Let them
get out of it as they can. All the worse for them, it is their fault, and they
have only what they deserve. That does not concern us. Look at our poor
street torn to pieces by cannon: they are a heap of scamps; above all do not
open the door." And the house assumes the aspect of a tomb: the insurgent
dies a lingering death before their door; he sees the grape-shot and naked
sabres arrive; if he cries out, he knows there are people who hear him but
will not help him; there are walls which might protect him, and men who
might save him, and these walls have ears of flesh, and these men have
entrails of stone.
Whom should we accuse? Nobody and everybody,—the imperfect times in
which we live. It is always at its own risk and peril that the Utopia converts
itself into an insurrection, and becomes an armed protest instead of a
philosophic protest,—a Pallas and no longer a Minerva. The Utopia which
grows impatient and becomes a riot knows what awaits it, and it nearly
always arrives too soon. In that case it resigns itself, and stoically accepts
the catastrophe in lieu of a triumph. It serves, without complaining, and
almost exculpating them, those who deny it, and its magnanimity is to
consent to abandonment. It is indomitable against obstacles, and gentle
toward ingratitude. Is it ingratitude after all? Yes, from the human point of
view; no, from the individual point of view. Progress is the fashion of man;
the general life of the human race is called progress; and the collective step
of the human race is also called progress. Progress marches; it makes the
great human and earthly journey toward the celestial and divine; it has its
halts where it rallies the straying flock; it has its stations where it meditates,
in the presence of some splendid Canaan suddenly unveiling its horizon; it
has its nights when it sleeps; and it is one of the poignant anxieties of the
thinker to see the shadow on the human soul, and to feel in the darkness
sleeping progress, without being able to awaken it.

"God is perhaps dead," Gérard de Nerval said one day to the writer of these
lines, confounding progress with God, and taking the interruption of the
movement for the death of the Being. The man who despairs is wrong:
progress infallibly reawakens, and we might say that it moves even when
sleeping, for it has grown. When we see it upright again we find that it is
taller. To be ever peaceful depends no more on progress than on the river;
do not raise a bar, or throw in a rock, for the obstacle makes the water foam,
and humanity boil. Hence come troubles; but after these troubles we notice
that way has been made. Until order, which is nought else than universal
peace, is established, until harmony and unity reign, progress will have
revolutions for its halting-places. What, then, is progress? We have just
said, the permanent life of the peoples. Now, it happens at times that the
momentary life of individuals offers a resistance to the eternal life of the
human race.
Let us avow without bitterness that the individual has his distinct interest,
and can without felony stipulate for that interest and defend it; the present
has its excusable amount of egotism, momentary right has its claims, and
cannot be expected to sacrifice itself incessantly to the future. The
generation which at the present moment is passing over the earth is not
forced to abridge it for the generations, its equals, after all, whose turn will
come at a later date. "I exist," murmurs that some one, who is everybody. "I
am young and in love, I am old and wish to rest, I am father of a family, I
work, I prosper, I do a good business, I have houses to let, I have money in
the funds, I am happy, I have wife and children, I like all that, I wish to live,
and so leave us at peace." Hence at certain hours a profound coldness falls
on the magnanimous vanguard of the human race. Utopia, moreover, we
confess it, emerges from its radiant sphere in waging war. It, the truth of to-
morrow, borrows its process, battle, from the falsehood of yesterday. It, the
future, acts like the past; it, the pure idea, becomes an assault. It
complicates its heroism with a violence for which it is but fair that it should
answer,—a violence of opportunity and expediency, contrary to principles,
and for which it is fatally punished. The Utopia, when in a state of
insurrection, combats with the old military code in its hand; it shoots spies,
executes traitors, suppresses living beings and hurls them into unknown
darkness. It makes use of death, a serious thing. It seems that the Utopia no
longer pats faith in the radiance, which is its irresistible and incorruptible
strength. It strikes with the sword, but no sword is simple; every sword has

two edges, and the man who wounds with one wounds himself with the
other.
This reservation made, and made with all severity, it is impossible for us not
to admire, whether they succeed or no, the glorious combatants of the
future, the confessors of the Utopia. Even when they fail they are venerable,
and it is perhaps in ill-success that they possess most majesty. Victory, when
in accordance with progress, deserves the applause of the peoples, but an
heroic defeat merits their tenderness. The one is magnificent, the other
sublime. With us who prefer martyrdom to success, John Brown is greater
than Washington, and Pisacane greater than Garibaldi. There should be
somebody to take the part of the conquered, and people are unjust to these
great assayers of the future when they foil. Revolutionists are accused of
sowing terror, and every barricade appears an attack. Their theory is
incriminated, their object is suspected, their after-thought is apprehended,
and their conscience is denounced. They are reproached with elevating and
erecting against the reigning social fact a pile of miseries, griefs, iniquities,
and despair, and with pulling down in order to barricade themselves behind
the ruins and combat. People shout to them, "You are unpaving hell!" And
they might answer, "That is the reason why our barricade is made of good
intentions." The best thing is certainly the pacific solution; after all, let us
allow, when people see the pavement, they think of the bear, and it is a good
will by which society is alarmed. But it depends on society to save itself,
and we appeal to its own good-will. No violent remedy is necessary: study
the evil amicably, and then cure it,—that is all we desire.
However this may be, those men, even when they have fallen, and
especially then, are august, who at all points of the universe, with their eyes
fixed on France, are struggling for the great work with the inflexible logic
of the ideal; they give their life as a pure gift for progress, they accomplish
the will of Providence, and perform a religious act. At the appointed hour,
with as much disinterestedness as an actor who takes up his cue, they enter
the tomb in obedience to the divine scenario, and they accept this hopeless
combat and this stoical disappearance in order to lead to its splendid and
superior universal consequences. The magnificent human movement
irresistibly began on July 14. These soldiers are priests, and the French
revolution is a gesture of God. Moreover, there are—and it is proper to add
this distinction to the distinctions already indicated in another chapter,—

there are accepted insurrections which are called revolutions; and there are
rejected revolutions which are called riots. An insurrection which breaks out
is an idea which passes its examination in the presence of the people. If the
people drops its blackball, the idea is dry fruit, and the insurrection is a
street-riot. Waging war at every appeal and each time that the Utopia desires
it is not the fact of the peoples; for nations have not always, and at all hours,
the temperament of heroes and martyrs. They are positive; a priori
insurrection is repulsive to them, in the first place, because it frequently has
a catastrophe for result, and, secondly, because it always has an abstraction
as its starting-point.
For, and this is a grand fact, those who devote themselves do so for the
ideal, and the ideal alone. An insurrection is an enthusiasm, and enthusiasm
may become a fury, whence comes an upraising of muskets. But every
insurrection which aims at a government or a regime aims higher. Hence,
for instance, we will dwell on the fact that what the chiefs of the
insurrection of 1832, and especially the young enthusiasts of the Rue de la
Chanvrerie, combated was not precisely Louis Philippe. The majority,
speaking candidly, did justice to the qualities of this king who stood
between monarchy and revolution, and not one of them hated him. But they
attacked the younger branch of the right divine in Louis Philippe, as they
had attacked the elder branch in Charles X., and what they wished to
overthrow in overthrowing the Monarchy in France was, as we have
explained, the usurpation of man over man, and the privilege opposing right
throughout the universe. Paris without a king has as its counterstroke the
world without despots. They reasoned in this way. Their object was far off
without doubt, vague perhaps, and retreating before the effort, but grand.
So it is. And men sacrifice themselves for these visions, which are for the
sacrificed nearly always illusions, but illusions with which the whole of
human certainty is mingled. The insurgent poetizes and gilds the
insurrection, and men hurl themselves into these tragical things,
intoxicating themselves upon what they are about to do. Who knows?
Perhaps they will succeed; they are the minority; they have against them an
entire army; but they are defending the right, natural law, the sovereignty of
each over himself, which allows of no possible abdication, justice, and
truth, and, if necessary, they die like the three hundred Spartans. They do
not think of Don Quixote, but of Leonidas, and they go onward, and once

the battle has begun they do not recoil, but dash forward head down-wards,
having for hope an extraordinary victory, the revolution completed,
progress restored to liberty, the aggrandizement of the human race,
universal deliverance, and at the worst a Thermopylæ. These combats for
progress frequently fail, and we have explained the cause. The mob is
restive against the impulse of the Paladins; the heavy masses, the
multitudes, fragile on account of their very heaviness, fear adventures, and
there is adventure in the ideal. Moreover, it must not be forgotten that these
are interests which are no great friends of the ideal and the sentimental.
Sometimes the stomach paralyzes the heart. The greatness and beauty of
France are, that she does not grow so stout as other nations, and knots the
rope round her hips with greater facility. She is the first to wake and the last
to fall asleep; she goes onward. She is seeking.
The reason of this is because she is artistic. The ideal is nought else than the
culminating point of logic, in the same way as the beautiful is only the
summit of the true. Artistic peoples are also consistent peoples; loving
beauty is to see light. The result of this is, that the torch of Europe, that is to
say of civilization, was first borne by Greece, who passed it to Italy, who
passed it to France. Divine enlightening nations! Vita lampada tradunt. It is
an admirable thing that the poetry of a people is the element of its progress,
and the amount of civilization is measured by the amount of imagination.
Still, a civilizing people must remain masculine; Corinth yes, but Sybaris
no, for the man who grows effeminate is bastardized. A man must be neither
dilettante nor virtuoso, but he should be artistic. In the matter of
civilization, there must not be refinement, but sublimation, and on that
condition the pattern of the ideal is given to the human race. The modern
ideal has its type in art and its means in science. It is by science that the
august vision of the poet, the social beauty, will be realized, and Eden will
be remade by A + B. At the point which civilization has reached exactitude
is a necessary element of the splendid, and the artistic feeling is not only
served but completed by the scientific organ; the dream must calculate. Art,
which is the conqueror, ought to have science, which is the mover, as its
base. The strength of the steed is an imported factor, and the modern mind
is the genius of Greece, having for vehicle the genius of India,—Alexander
mounted on an elephant. Races petrified in dogma or demoralized by time
are unsuited to act as guides to civilization. Genuflection before the idol or
the crown-piece ruins the muscle which moves and the will that goes.

Hieratic or mercantile absorption reduces the radiance of a people, lowers
its horizon by lowering its level, and withdraws from it that both human and
divine intelligence of the universal object which renders nations
missionaries. Babylon has no ideal, nor has Carthage while Athens and
Rome have, and retain, even through all the nocturnal density of ages, a
halo of civilization.
France is of the same quality, as a people, as Greece and Rome; she is
Athenian through the beautiful, and Roman through her grandeur. Besides,
she is good, and is more often than other nations in the humor for devotion
and sacrifice. Still, this humor takes her and leaves her; and this is the great
danger for those who run when she merely wishes to walk, or who walk
when she wishes to halt. France has her relapses into materialism, and at
seasons the ideas which obstruct this sublime brain have nothing that recalls
French grandeur, and are of the dimensions of a Missouri or a South
Carolina. What is to be done? The giantess plays the dwarf, and immense
France feels a fancy for littleness. That is all. To this nothing can be said,
for peoples like planets have the right to be eclipsed. And that is well,
provided that light return and the eclipse does not degenerate into night.
Dawn and resurrection are synonymous, and the reappearance of light is
synonymous with the existence of the Ego. Let us state these facts calmly.
Death on a barricade, or a tomb in exile, is an acceptable occasion for
devotion, for the real name of devotion is disinterestedness. Let the
abandoned be abandoned, let the exiles be exiled, and let us confine
ourselves to imploring great nations not to recoil too far when they do
recoil. Under the pretext of returning to reason, it is not necessary to go too
far down the incline. Matter exists, the moment exists, interests exist, the
stomach exists, but the stomach must not to the sole wisdom. Momentary
life has its rights, we admit, but permanent life has them also. Alas! To have
mounted does not prevent falling, and we see this in history more frequently
than we wish; a nation is illustrious, it tastes of the ideal, then it bites into
the mud and finds it good, and when we ask it why it abandons Socrates for
Falstaff, it replies, "Because I like statesmen."
One word before returning to the barricade. A battle like the one which we
are describing at this moment is only a convulsion toward the ideal.
Impeded progress is sickly, and has such tragic attacks of epilepsy. This
malady of progress, civil war, we have met as we passed along, and it is one

of the social phases, at once an act and an interlude of that drama whose
pivot is a social condemnation, and whose veritable title is "Progress."
Progress! This cry, which we raise so frequently, is our entire thought, and
at the point of our drama which we We reached, as the idea which it
contains has still more than one trial to undergo, we may be permitted, even
if we do not raise the veil, to let its gleams pierce through clearly. The book
which the reader has before him at this moment is, from one end to the
other, in its entirety and its details, whatever the intermittences, exceptions,
and short-comings may be, the progress from evil to good, from injustice to
justice, from falsehood to truth, from night to day, from appetite to
conscience, from corruption to life, from bestiality to duty, from hell to
heaven, and from nothingness to God. The starting-point is matter, the
terminus the soul; the hydra at the commencement, the angel at the end.

CHAPTER XXI.

THE HEROES.

Suddenly the drum beat the charge, and the attack was a hurricane. On the
previous evening the barricade had been silently approached in the darkness
as by a boa; but at present, in broad daylight, within this gutted street,
surprise was impossible; besides, the armed force was unmasked, the
cannon had begun the roaring, and the troops rushed upon the barricade.
Fury was now skill. A powerful column of line infantry, intersected at
regular intervals by National Guards and dismounted Municipal Guards,
and supported by heavy masses that could be heard if not seen, debouched
into the street at a running step, with drums beating, bugles braying,
bayonets levelled, and sappers in front, and imperturbable under the shower
of projectiles dashed straight at the barricade with all the weight of a bronze
battering-ram. But the wall held out firmly, and the insurgents fired
impetuously; the escaladed barricade displayed a flashing mane. The attack
was so violent that it was in a moment inundated by assailants; but it shook
off the soldiers as the lion does the dogs, and it was only covered with

besiegers as the cliff is with foam, to reappear a minute later scarped, black,
and formidable.
The columns, compelled to fall back, remained massed in the street,
exposed but terrible, and answered the redoubt by a tremendous musketry-
fire. Any one who has seen fireworks will remember the piece composed of
a cross-fire of lightnings, which is called a bouquet. Imagine this bouquet,
no longer vertical but horizontal, and bearing at the end of each jet a bullet,
slugs, or iron balls, and scattering death. The barricade was beneath it. On
either side was equal resolution. The bravery was almost barbarous, and
was complicated by a species of heroic ferocity which began with self-
sacrifice. It was the epoch when a National Guard fought like a Zouave.
The troops desired an end, and the insurrection wished to wrestle. The
acceptance of death in the height of youth and health converts intrepidity
into a frenzy, and each man in this action had the grandeur of the last hour.
The street was covered with corpses. The barricade had Marius at one of its
ends and Enjolras at the other. Enjolras, who carried the whole barricade in
his head, reserved and concealed himself. Three soldiers fell under his loop-
hole without even seeing him, while Marius displayed himself openly, and
made himself a mark. More than once half his body rose above the
barricade. There is no more violent prodigal than a miser who takes the bit
between his teeth, and no man more startling in action than a dreamer.
Marius was formidable and pensive, and in the battle was like a dream. He
looked like a ghost firing. The cartridges of the besieged were exhausted,
but not their sarcasms; and they laughed in the tornado of the tomb in which
they stood. Courfeyrac was bareheaded.
"What have you done with your hat?" Bossuet asked him; and Courfeyrac
answered,—
"They carried it away at last with cannon-balls."
Or else they made haughty remarks.
"Can you understand," Feuilly exclaimed bitterly, "those men,"—and he
mentioned names, well-known and even celebrated names that belonged to
the old army,—"who promised to join us and pledged their honor to aid us,
and who are generals, and abandon us?"
And Combeferre restricted himself to replying with a grave smile,—

"They are people who observe the rules of honor as they do the stars,—a
long distance off."
The interior of the barricade was so sown with torn cartridges that it seemed
as if there had been a snow-storm. The assailants had the numbers and the
insurgents the position. They were behind a wall, and crushed at point-
blank range the soldiers who were stumbling over the dead and wounded.
This barricade, built as it was, and admirably strengthened, was really one
of those situations in which a handful of men holds a legion in check. Still,
constantly recruited and growing beneath the shower of bullets, foe column
of attack inexorably approached, and little by little, step by step, but with
certainty, the army squeezed the barricade as the screw does the press.
The assaults succeeded each other, and the horror became constantly
greater. Then there broke out on this pile of paving-stones, in this Rue de la
Chanvrerie, a struggle worthy of the wall of Troy. These sallow, ragged, and
exhausted men, who had not eaten for four-and-twenty hours, who had not
slept, who had only a few rounds more to fire, who felt their empty pockets
for cartridges,—these men, nearly all wounded, with head or arm bound
round with a blood-stained blackish rag, having holes in their coat from
which the blood flowed, scarce armed with bad guns and old rusty sabres,
became Titans. The barricade was ten times approached, assaulted,
escaladed, and never captured. To form an idea of the contest it would be
necessary to imagine a heap of terrible courages set on fire, and that you are
watching the flames. It was not a combat, but the interior of a furnace;
mouths breathed flames there, and the faces were extraordinary. The human
form seemed impossible there, the combatants flashed, and it was a
formidable sight to see these salamanders of the mêlée flitting about in this
red smoke. The successive and simultaneous scenes of this butchery are
beyond our power to depict, for the epic alone has the right to fill twelve
thousand verses with a battle. It might have been called that Inferno of
Brahminism, the most formidable of the seventeen abysses, which the Veda
calls the Forest of Swords. They fought foot to foot, body to body, with
pistol-shots, sabre-cuts, and fists, close by, at a distance, above, below, on
all sides, from the roof of the house, from the wine-shop, and even from the
traps of the cellars into which some had slipped. The odds were sixty to
one, and the frontage of Corinth half demolished was hideous. The window,
pock-marked with grape-shot, had lost glass and frame, and was only a

shapeless hole tumultuously stopped up with paving-stones. Bossuet was
killed. Feuilly was killed, Courfeyrac was killed, Joly was killed.
Combeferre, traversed by three bayonet stabs in the breast at the moment
when he was raising a wounded soldier, had only time to look up to heaven,
and expired. Marius, still fighting, had received so many wounds, especially
in the head, that his face disappeared in blood and looked as if it were
covered by a red handkerchief. Enjolras alone was not wounded; when he
had no weapon he held out his arm to the right or left, and an insurgent
placed some instrument in his hand. He had only four broken sword-blades
left,—one more than Francis I. had at Marignano.
Homer says: "Diomed slew Axylus, the son of Teuthras, who dwelt in well-
built Arisba; Euryalus, son of Mecisteus, slew Dresus and Opheltius,
Æsepus and Pedasus, whom the Naiad Abarbarea brought forth to blameless
Bucolion; Ulysses killed Percosian Pidytes; Antilochus, Ablerus;
Polypœtes, Astyalus; Polydamas, Otus of Cyllene; and Teucer, Aretaus.
Meganthius fell by the spear of Euripilus; Agamemnon, king of heroes,
struck down Elatus, born in the walled town which the sounding river
Satniois washes."
In our old poems of the Gesta, Esplandian attacks with a flaming falchion
Swantibore, the giant margins, who defends himself by storming the knight
with towers which he uproots. Our old mural frescos show us the two
Dukes of Brittany and Bourbon armed for war and mounted, and
approaching each other, axe in hand, masked with steel, shod with steel,
gloved with steel, one caparisoned with ermine and the other draped in
azure; Brittany with his lion between the two horns of his crown, and
Bourbon with an enormous fleur-de-lys at his visor. But in order to be
superb it is not necessary to wear, like Yvon, the ducal morion, or to have in
one hand a living flame like Esplandian; it is sufficient to lay down one's
life for a conviction or a loyal deed. This little simple soldier, yesterday a
peasant of Bearne or the Limousin, who prowls about, cabbage-cutter by his
side, round the nursemaids in the Luxembourg, this young, pale student
bowed over an anatomical study or book, a fair-haired boy who shaves
himself with a pair of scissors,—take them both, breathe duty into them, put
them face to face in the Carrefour Boucherat or the Planche Mibray blind
alley, and let one fight for his flag and the other combat for his ideal, and let
them both imagine that they are contending for their country, and the

struggle will be colossal; and the shadow cast by these two contending lads
on the great epic field where humanity is struggling will be equal to that
thrown by Megarion, King of Lycia, abounding in tigers, as he wrestles
with the immense Ajax, the equal of the gods.

CHAPTER XXII.

STEP BY STEP.

When there were no chiefs left but Enjolras and Marius at the two ends of
the barricade, the centre, which had so long been supported by Courfeyrac,
Bossuet, Joly, Feuilly, and Combeferre, yielded. The cannon, without
making a practicable breach, had severely injured the centre of the redoubt,
then the crest of the wall had disappeared under the balls and fallen down,
and the fragments which had collected both inside and out had in the end
formed two slopes, the outer one of which offered an inclined plane by
which to attack. A final assault was attempted thus, and this assault was
successful; the bristling mass of bayonets, hurled forward at a run, came up
irresistibly, and the dense line of the attacking column appeared in the
smoke on the top of the scarp. This time it was all over, and the band of
insurgents defending the centre recoiled pell-mell.
Then the gloomy love of life was rekindled in some; covered by this forest
of muskets, several did not wish to die. It is the moment when the spirit of
self-preservation utters yells, and when the beast reappears in man. They
were drawn up against the six-storied house at the back of the barricade,
and this house might be their salvation. This house was barricaded, as it
were walled up from top to bottom, but before the troops reached the
interior of the redoubt, a door would have time to open and shut, and it
would be life for these desperate men; for at the back of this house were
streets, possible flight, and space. They began kicking and knocking at the
door, while calling, crying, imploring, and clasping their hands. But no one
opened. The dead head looked down on them from the third-floor window.
But Marius and Enjolras, and seven or eight men who rallied round them,
had rushed forward to protect them. Enjolras shouted to the soldiers, "Do

not advance," and as an officer declined to obey he killed the officer. He
was in the inner yard of the redoubt, close to Corinth, with his sword in one
hand and carbine in the other, holding open the door of the wine-shop,
which he barred against the assailants. He shouted to the desperate men,
"There is only one door open, and it is this one;" and covering them with his
person, and alone facing a battalion, he made them pass behind him. All
rushed in, and Enjolras, whirling his musket round his head, drove back the
bayonets and entered the last, and there was a frightful moment, during
which the troops tried to enter and the insurgents to bar the door. The latter
was closed with such violence that the five fingers of a soldier who had
caught hold of a doorpost were cut off clean, and remained in the crevice.
Marius remained outside; a bullet broke his collar-bone, and he felt himself
fainting and falling. At this moment, when his eyes were already closed, he
felt the shock of a powerful hand seizing him, and his fainting-fit scarce left
him time for this thought, blended with the supreme recollection of Cosette,
"I am made prisoner and shall be shot."
Enjolras, not seeing Marius among those who had sought shelter in the
house, had the same idea, but they had reached that moment when each
could only think of his own death. Enjolras put the bar on the door, bolted
and locked it, while the soldiers beat it with musket-butts, and the sappers
attacked it with their axes outside. The assailants were grouped round this
door, and the siege of the wine-shop now began. The soldiers, let us add,
were full of fury; the death of the sergeant of artillery had irritated them,
and then, more mournful still, during the few hours that preceded the attack
a whisper ran along the ranks that the insurgents were mutilating their
prisoners, and that there was the headless body of a soldier in the cellar.
This species of fatal rumor is the general accompaniment of civil wars, and
it was a false report of the same nature which at a later date produced the
catastrophe of the Rue Transnonain. When the door was secured, Enjolras
said to the others,—
"Let us sell our lives dearly."
Then he went up to the table on which Mabœuf and Gavroche were lying;
under the black cloth two forms could be seen straight and livid, one tall,
the other short, and the two faces were vaguely designed under the cold
folds of the winding-sheet. A hand emerged from under it, and hung toward
the ground; it was that of the old man. Enjolras bent down and kissed this

venerable hand, in the same way as he had done the forehead on the
previous evening. They were the only two kisses he had ever given in his
life.
Let us abridge. The barricade had resisted like a gate of Thebes, and the
wine-shop resisted like a house of Saragossa. Such resistances are violent,
and there is no quarter, and a flag of truce is impossible; people are willing
to die provided that they can kill. When Suchet says "capitulate," Palafox
answers, "After the war with cannon, the war with the knife." Nothing was
wanting in the attack on the Hucheloup wine-shop: neither paving-stone
showering from the window and roof on the assailants, and exasperating the
troops by the frightful damage they committed, nor shots from the attics and
cellar, nor the fury of the attack, nor the rage of the defence, nor, finally,
when the door gave way, the frenzied mania of extermination. When the
assailants rushed into the wine-shop, their feet entangled in the panels of the
broken door which lay on the ground, they did not find a single combatant.
The winding staircase, cut away with axes, lay in the middle of the ground-
floor room, a few wounded men were on the point of dying, all who were
not killed were on the first-floor, and a terrific fire was discharged thence
through the hole in the ceiling which had been the entrance to the
restaurant. These were the last cartridges, and when they were expended
and nobody had any powder or balls left, each man took up two of the
bottles reserved by Enjolras, and defended the stairs with these frightfully
fragile weapons. They were bottles of aquafortis. We describe the gloomy
things of carnage exactly as they are: the besieged, alas! makes a weapon of
everything. Greek fire did not dishonor Archimedes, boiling pitch did not
dishonor Bayard; every war is a horror, and there is no choice. The
musketry-fire of the assailants, though impeded and discharged from below,
was murderous; and the brink of the hole was soon lined with dead heads,
whence dripped long red and steaming jets. The noise was indescribable,
and a compressed burning smoke almost threw night over the combat.
Words fail to describe horror when it has reached this stage. There were no
longer men in this now infernal struggle, no longer giants contending
against Titans. It resembled Milton and Dante more than Homer, for
demons attacked and spectres resisted. It was a monster heroism.

CHAPTER XXIII.

ORESTES SOBER AND PYLADES DRUNK.

At length, by employing the skeleton of the staircase, by climbing up the
walls, clinging to the ceiling, and killing on the very edge of the trap the last
who resisted, some twenty assailants, soldiers, National and Municipal
Guards, mostly disfigured by wounds in the face received in this formidable
ascent, blinded by blood, furious and savage, burst into the first-floor room.
There was only one man standing there,—Enjolras; without cartridges or
sword, he only held in his hand the barrel of his carbine, whose butt he had
broken on the heads of those who entered. He had placed the billiard-table
between himself and his assailants, he had fallen back to the end of the
room, and there, with flashing eye and head erect, holding the piece of a
weapon in his hand, he was still sufficiently alarming for a space to be
formed round him. A cry was raised,—
"It is the chief; it was he who killed the artilleryman; as he has placed
himself there, we will let him remain there. Shoot him on the spot!"
"Shoot me!" Enjolras said.
And throwing away his weapon and folding his arms, he offered his chest.
The boldness of dying bravely always moves men. So soon as Enjolras
folded his arms, accepting the end, the din of the struggle ceased in the
room, and the chaos was suddenly appeased in a species of sepulchral
solemnity. It seemed as if the menacing majesty of Enjolras, disarmed and
motionless, produced an effect on the tumult, and that merely by the
authority of his tranquil glance, this young man, who alone was
unwounded, superb, blood-stained, charming, and indifferent like one
invulnerable, constrained this sinister mob to kill him respectfully. His
beauty, heightened at this moment by his haughtiness, was dazzling, and as
if he could be no more fatigued than wounded after the frightful four-and-
twenty hours which had elapsed, he was fresh and rosy. It was to him that
the witness referred when he said at a later date before the court-martial,
"There was an insurgent whom I heard called Apollo." A National Guard
who aimed at Enjolras lowered his musket, saying, "I feel as if I were going
to kill a flower." Twelve men formed into a platoon in the corner opposite to

the one in which Enjolras stood, and got their muskets ready in silence.
Then a sergeant shouted, "Present!"
An officer interposed.
"Wait a minute."
And, addressing Enjolras,—
"Do you wish to have your eyes bandaged?"
"No."
"It was really you who killed the sergeant of artillery?"
"Yes."
Grantaire had been awake for some minutes past. Grantaire, it will be
remembered, had been sleeping since the past evening in the upper room,
with his head lying on a table. He realized in all its energy the old metaphor,
dead drunk. The hideous philter of absinthe, stout, and alcohol, had thrown
him into a lethargic state, and, as his table was small, and of no use at the
barricade, they had left it him. He was still in the same posture, with his
chest upon the table, his head reeling on his arms, and surrounded by
glasses and bottles. He was sleeping the deadly sleep of the hibernating bear
or the filled leech. Nothing had roused him,—neither the platoon fire, nor
the cannon-balls, nor the canister which penetrated through the window into
the room where he was, nor the prodigious noise of the assault. Still, he at
times responded to the cannon by a snore. He seemed to be waiting for a
bullet to save him the trouble of waking; several corpses lay around him,
and at the first glance nothing distinguished him from these deep sleepers of
death.
Noise does not wake a drunkard, but silence arouses him, and this
peculiarity has been more than once observed. The fall of anything near him
increased Grantaire's lethargy, and noise lulled him. The species of halt
which the tumult made before Enjolras was a shock for this heavy sleep. It
is the effect of a galloping coach which stops short. Grantaire started up,
stretched out his arms, rubbed his eyes, looked, yawned, and understood.
Intoxication wearing off resembles a curtain that is rent, and a man sees at
once, and at a single glance, all that it concealed. Everything presents itself
suddenly to the memory, and the drunkard, who knows nothing of what has

happened during the last twenty-four hours, has scarce opened his eyes ere
he understands it all. Ideas return with a sudden lucidity; the species of suds
that blinded the brain is dispersed, and makes way for a clear and
distinctive apprehension of the reality.
Concealed, as he was, in a corner, and sheltered, so to speak, by the billiard-
table, the soldiers, who had their eyes fixed on Enjolras, had not even
perceived Grantaire, and the sergeant was preparing to repeat the order to
fire, when all at once they heard a powerful voice crying at their side,—
"Long live the Republic! I belong to it."
Grantaire had risen; and the immense gleam of all the combat which he had
missed appeared in the flashing glance of the transfigured drunkard. He
repeated, "Long live the Republic!" crossed the room with a firm step, and
placed himself before the muskets by Enjolras's side.
"Kill us both at once," he said.
And turning gently to Enjolras, he asked him,—
"Do you permit it?"
Enjolras pressed his hand with a smile, and this smile had not passed away
ere the detonation took place. Enjolras, pierced by eight bullets, remained
leaning against the wall as if nailed to it; he merely hung his head. Grantaire
was lying stark dead at his feet. A few minutes later the soldiers dislodged
the last insurgents who had taken refuge at the top of the house, and were
firing through a partition in the garret. They fought desperately, and threw
bodies out of windows, some still alive. Two voltigeurs, who were trying to
raise the smashed omnibus, were killed by two shots from the attics; a man
in a blouse rushed out of them, with a bayonet thrust in his stomach, and lay
on the ground expiring. A private and insurgent slipped together down the
tiles of the roof, and as they would not loosen their hold fell into the street,
holding each other in a ferocious embrace. There was a similar struggle in
the cellar,—cries, shots, and a fierce clashing,—then a silence. The
barricade was captured, and the soldiers began searching the adjacent
houses and pursuing the fugitives.

CHAPTER XXIV.

PRISONER!

Marius was really a prisoner;—prisoner to Jean Valjean.
The hand which had clutched him behind at the moment when he was
falling, and of which he felt the pressure as he lost his senses, was that of
Jean Valjean.
Jean Valjean had taken no other part in the struggle than that of exposing
himself. Had it not been for him, in the supreme moment of agony no one
would have thought of the wounded. Thanks to him, who was everywhere
present in the carnage like a Providence, those who fell were picked up,
carried to the ground-floor room, and had their wounds dressed, and in the
intervals he repaired the barricade. But nothing that could resemble a blow,
an attack, or even personal defence, could be seen with him, and he kept
quiet and succored. However, he had only a few scratches, and the bullets
had no billet for him. If suicide formed part of what he dreamed of when he
came to this sepulchre, he had not been successful; but we doubt whether he
thought of suicide, which is an irreligious act. Jean Valjean did not appear
to see Marius in the thick of the combat; but in truth he did not take his eyes
off him. When a bullet laid Marius low, Jean Valjean leaped upon him with
the agility of a tiger, dashed upon him as on a prey, and carried him off.
The whirlwind of the attack was at this moment so violently concentrated
on Enjolras and the door of the wine-shop, that no one saw Jean Valjean,
supporting the fainting Marius in his arms, cross the unpaved ground of the
barricade and disappear round the corner of Corinth. Our readers will
remember this corner, which formed a sort of cape in the street, and
protected a few square feet of ground from bullets and grape-shot, and from
glances as well. There is thus at times in fires a room which does not burn,
and in the most raging seas, beyond a promontory, or at the end of a reef, a
little quiet nook. It was in this corner of the inner trapeze of the barricade
that Éponine drew her last breath. Here Jean Valjean stopped, let Marius
slip to the ground, leaned against a wall, and looked around him.
The situation was frightful; for the instant, for two or three minutes perhaps,
this piece of wall was a shelter, but how to get out of this massacre? He

recalled the agony he had felt in the Rue Polonceau, eight years previously,
and in what way he had succeeded in escaping; it was difficult then, but
now it was impossible. He had in front of him that implacable and silent
six-storied house, which only seemed inhabited by the dead man leaning
out of his window; he had on his right the low barricade which closed the
Petite Truanderie; to climb over this obstacle appeared easy, but a row of
bayonet-points could be seen over the crest of the barricade; they were line
troops posted beyond the barricade and on the watch. It was evident that
crossing the barricade was seeking a platoon fire, and that any head which
appeared above the wall of paving-stones would serve as a mark for sixty
muskets. He had on his left the battle-field, and death was behind the corner
of the wall.
What was he to do? A bird alone could have escaped from this place. And
he must decide at once, find an expedient, and make up his mind. They
were fighting a few paces from him, but fortunately all were obstinately
engaged at one point, the wine-shop door; but if a single soldier had the
idea of turning the house or attacking it on the flank all would be over. Jean
Valjean looked at the house opposite to him, he looked at the barricade by
his side, and then looked on the ground, with the violence of supreme
extremity, wildly, and as if he would have liked to dig a hole with his eyes.
By much looking, something vaguely discernible in such an agony became
perceptible, and assumed a shape at his feet, as if the eyes had the power to
produce the thing demanded. He perceived a few paces from him, at the
foot of the small barricade so pitilessly guarded and watched from without,
and beneath a pile of paving-stones which almost concealed it, an iron
grating, laid flat and flush with the ground. This grating made of strong
cross-bars was about two feet square, and the framework of paving-stones
which supported it had been torn out, and it was as it were dismounted.
Through the bars a glimpse could be caught of an obscure opening,
something like a chimney-pot or the cylinder of a cistern. Jean Valjean
dashed up, and his old skill in escapes rose to his brain like a beam of light.
To remove the paving-stones, tear up the grating, take Marius, who was
inert as a dead body, on his shoulders, descend with this burden on his loins,
helping himself with his elbows and knees, into this sort of well which was
fortunately of no great depth, to let the grating fall again over his head, to
set foot on a paved surface, about ten feet below the earth,—all this was
executed like something done in delirium, with a giant's strength and the

rapidity of an eagle: this occupied but a few minutes. Jean Valjean found
himself with the still fainting Marius in a sort of long subterranean corridor,
where there was profound peace, absolute silence, and night. The
impression which he had formerly felt in falling out of the street into the
convent recurred to him; still, what he now carried was not Cosette, but
Marius.
He had scarce heard above his head like a vague murmur the formidable
tumult of the wine-shop being taken by assault.

BOOK II.

THE INTESTINE OF LEVIATHAN.

CHAPTER I.

THE EARTH IMPOVERISHED BY THE SEA.

Paris casts twenty-five millions of francs annually into the sea; and we
assert this without any metaphor. How so, and in what way? By day and
night. For what object? For no object. With what thought? Without
thinking. What to do? Nothing. By means of what organ? Its intestines.
What are its intestines? Its sewers. Twenty-five millions are the most
moderate of the approximative amounts given by the estimates of modern
science. Science, after groping for a long time, knows now that the most
fertilizing and effective of manures is human manure. The Chinese, let us
say it to our shame, knew this before we did; not a Chinese peasant—it is
Eckeberg who states the fact—who goes to the city, but brings at either end
of his bamboo a bucket full of what we call filth. Thanks to the human
manure, the soil in China is still as youthful as in the days of Abraham, and
Chinese wheat yields just one hundred and twenty fold the sowing. There is
no guano comparable in fertility to the detritus of a capital, and a large city

is the strongest of stercoraries. To employ the town in manuring the plain
would be certain success; for if gold be dung, on the other hand our dung is
gold.
What is done with this golden dung? It is swept into the gulf. We send at a
great expense fleets of ships to collect at the southern pole the guano of
petrels and penguins, and cast into the sea the incalculable element of
wealth which we have under our hand. All the human and animal manure
which the world loses, if returned to the land instead of being thrown into
the sea, would suffice to nourish the world. Do you know what those piles
of ordure are, collected at the corners of streets, those carts of mud carried
off at night from the streets, the frightful barrels of the night-man, and the
fetid streams of subterranean mud which the pavement conceals from you?
All this is a flowering field, it is green grass, it is mint and thyme and sage,
it is game, it is cattle, it is the satisfied lowing of heavy kine at night, it is
perfumed hay, it is gilded wheat, it is bread on your table, it is warm blood
in your veins, it is health, it is joy, it is life. So desires that mysterious
creation, which is transformation on earth and transfiguration in heaven;
restore this to the great crucible, and your abundance will issue from it, for
the nutrition of the plains produces the nourishment of men. You are at
liberty to lose this wealth and consider me ridiculous into the bargain; it
would be the masterpiece of your ignorance. Statistics have calculated that
France alone pours every year into the Atlantic a sum of half a milliard.
Note this; with these five hundred millions one quarter of the expenses of
the budget would be paid. The cleverness of man is so great that he prefers
to get rid of these five hundred millions in the gutter. The very substance of
the people is borne away, here drop by drop, and there in streams, by the
wretched vomiting of our sewers into the rivers, and the gigantic vomiting
of our rivers into the ocean. Each eructation of our cloacas costs us one
thousand francs, and this has two results,—the earth impoverished and the
water poisoned; hunger issuing from the furrow and illness from the river. It
is notorious that at this very hour the Thames poisons London; and as
regards Paris, it has been found necessary to remove most of the mouths of
the sewers down the river below the last bridge.
A double tubular apparatus supplied with valves and flood-gates, a system
of elementary drainage as simple as the human lungs, and which is already
in full work in several English parishes, would suffice to bring into bur

towns the pure water of the fields and send to the fields the rich water of the
towns; and this easy ebb and flow, the most simple in the world, would
retain among us the five hundred millions thrown away. But people are
thinking of other things. The present process does mischief while meaning
well. The intention is good, but the result is sorrowful; they believe they are
draining the city, while they are destroying the population. A sewer is a
misunderstanding; and when drainage, with its double functions, restoring
what it takes, is everywhere substituted for the sewer, that simple and
impoverishing washing, and is also combined with the data of a new social
economy, the produce of the soil will be increased tenfold, and the problem
of misery will be singularly attenuated. Add the suppression of parasitisms,
and it will be solved. In the mean while the public wealth goes to the river,
and a sinking takes place,—sinking is the right word, for Europe is being
ruined in this way by exhaustion. As for France, we have mentioned the
figures. Now, as Paris contains one twenty-fifth of the whole French
population, and the Parisian guano is the richest of all, we are beneath the
truth when we estimate at twenty-five millions the share of Paris in the half-
milliard which France annually refuses. These twenty-five millions,
employed in assistance and enjoyment, would double the splendor of Paris,
and the city expends them in sewers. So that we may say, the great
prodigality of Paris, its marvellous fête, its Folie Beaujon, its orgie, its
lavishing of gold, its luxury, splendor, and magnificence, is its sewerage. It
is in this way that in the blindness of a bad political economy people allow
the comfort of all to be drowned and wasted in the water; there ought to be
St. Cloud nets to catch the public fortunes.
Economically regarded, the fact may be thus summarized: Paris is a regular
spendthrift. Paris, that model city, that pattern of well-conducted capitals, of
which every people strives to have a copy, that metropolis of the ideal, that
august home of initiative, impulse, and experiment, that centre and
gathering-place of minds, that nation city, that beehive of the future, that
marvellous composite of Babylon and Corinth, would make a peasant of
Fo-Kian shrug his shoulders, from our present point of view. Imitate Paris,
and you will ruin yourself; moreover, Paris imitates itself particularly in this
immemorial and insensate squandering. These surprising follies are not
new; it is no youthful nonsense. The ancients acted like the moderns. "The
cloacas of Rome," says Liebig, "absorbed the entire welfare of the Roman
peasant." When the Campagna of Rome was ruined by the Roman sewer,

Rome exhausted Italy; and when it had placed Italy in its cloaca, it poured
into it Sicily, and then Sardinia, and then Africa. The sewer of Rome
swallowed up the world. This cloaca offered its tunnels to the city and to
the world. Urbi et orbi. Eternal city and unfathomable drain.
For these things, as for others, Rome gives the example, and this example
Paris follows with all the folly peculiar to witty cities. For the requirements
of the operation which we have been explaining, Paris has beneath it
another Paris, a Paris of sewers, which has its streets, squares, lanes,
arteries, and circulation, which is mud, with the human forces at least. For
nothing must be flattered, not even a great people. Where there is
everything, there is ignominy by the side of sublimity; and if Paris contain
Athens the city of light, Tyre the city of power, Sparta the city of virtue,
Nineveh the city of prodigies, it also contains Lutetia the city of mud.
Moreover, the stamp of its power is there too, and the Titanic sewer of Paris
realizes among monuments the strange ideal realized in humanity by a few
men like Machiavelli, Bacon, and Mirabeau,—the grand abject. The subsoil
of Paris, if the eye could pierce the surface, would offer the aspect of a
gigantic madrepore; a sponge has not more passages and holes than the
piece of ground, six leagues in circumference, upon which the old great city
rests. Without alluding to the catacombs, which are a separate cellar,
without speaking of the inextricable net of gas-pipes, without referring to
the vast tubular system for the distribution of running water, the drains
alone form on either bank of the river a prodigious dark ramification, a
labyrinth which has its incline for its clew. In the damp mist of this
labyrinth is seen the rat, which seems the produce of the accouchement of
Paris.

CHAPTER II.

THE OLD HISTORY OF THE SEWER.

If we imagine Paris removed like a cover, the subterranean network of
sewers, regarded from a birds'-eye view, would represent on either bank a
sort of large branch grafted upon the river. On the right bank the encircling

sewer will be the trunk of this branch, the secondary tubes the branches, and
the blind alleys the twigs. This figure is only summary and half correct, as
the right angle, which is the usual angle in subterranean ramifications of
this nature, is very rare in vegetation. Our readers will form a better likeness
of this strange geometric plan by supposing that they see lying on a bed of
darkness some strange Oriental alphabet as confused as a thicket, and
whose shapeless letters are welded to each other in an apparent confusion,
and as if accidentally, here by their angles and there by their ends. The
sewers and drains played a great part in the Middle Ages, under the Lower
Empire and in the old East. Plague sprang from them and despots died of it.
The multitudes regarded almost with a religious awe these beds of
corruption, these monstrous cradles of death. The vermin-ditch at Benares is
not more fearful than the Lion's den at Babylon. Tiglath-Pileser, according
to the rabbinical books, swore by the sink of Nineveh. It was from the drain
of Munster that John of Leyden produced his false moon, and it was from
the cesspool-well of Kekhscheb that his Oriental menæchmus, Mokanna,
the veiled prophet of Khorassan, brought his false sun.
The history of men is reflected in the history of the sewers, and the
Gemoniæ narrated the story of Rome. The sewer of Paris is an old
formidable thing, it has been a sepulchre, and it has been an asylum. Crime,
intellect, the social protest, liberty of conscience, thought, robbery, all that
human laws pursue or have pursued, have concealed themselves in this den,
—the Maillotins in the fourteenth century, the cloak-stealers in the fifteenth,
the Huguenots in the sixteenth, the illuminés of Morin in the seventeenth,
and the Chauffeurs in the eighteenth. One hundred years ago the nocturnal
dagger-issued from it, and the rogue in danger glided into it; the wood had
the cave and Paris had the drain. The Truanderie, that Gallic picareria,
accepted the drain as an annex of the Court of Miracles, and at night,
cunning and ferocious, entered beneath the Maubuée vomitory as into an
alcove. It was very simple that those who had for their place of daily toil the
Vide-Gousset lane, or the Rue Coupe-Gorge, should have for their nightly
abode the ponceau of the Chemin-Vert or the Hure-poix cagnard. Hence
comes a swarm of recollections, all sorts of phantoms haunt these long
solitary corridors, on all sides are putridity and miasma, and here and there
is a trap through which Villon inside converses with Rabelais outside.

The sewer in old Paris is the meeting-place of all exhaustions and of all
experiments; political economy sees there a detritus, and social philosophy
a residuum. The sewer is the conscience of the city, and everything
converges and is confronted there. In this livid spot there is darkness, but
there are no secrets. Each thing has its true form, or at least its definitive
form. The pile of ordure has this in its favor, that it tells no falsehood, and
simplicity has taken refuge there. Basile's mask is found there, but you see
the pasteboard, the threads, the inside and out, and it is marked with honest
filth. Scapin's false nose is lying close by. All the uncleanlinesses of
civilization, where no longer of service, fall into this pit of truth; they are
swallowed up, but display themselves in it. This pell-mell is a confession:
there no false appearance nor any plastering is possible, order takes off its
shirt, there is an absolute nudity, a rout of illusions and mirage, and there
nothing but what is assuming the gloomy face of what is finishing. Reality
and disappearance. There a bottle-heel confesses intoxication, and a basket-
handle talks about domesticity; there, the apple-core which has had literary
opinions becomes once again the apple-core, the effigy on the double son
grows frankly vert-de-grised, the saliva of Caiaphas meets the vomit of
Falstaff, the louis-d'or which comes from the gambling-hell dashes against
the nail whence hangs the end of the suicide's rope, a livid fœtus rolls along
wrapped in spangles, which danced last Shrove Tuesday at the opera, a wig
which has judged men wallows by the side of a rottenness which was
Margotton's petticoat: it is more than fraternity, it is the extremest
familiarity. All that painted itself is bedaubed, and the last veil is torn away.
The sewer is a cynic and says everything. This sincerity of uncleanliness
pleases us and reposes the mind. When a man has spent his time upon the
earth in enduring the great airs assumed by state reasons, the oath, political
wisdom, human justice, professional probity, the austerities of the situation,
and incorruptible robes, it relieves him to enter a sewer and see there the
mire which suits it.
It is instructive at the same time, for, as we said just now, history passes
through the sewer. St. Bartholomew filters there drop by drop through the
paving-stones, and great public assassinations, political and religious
butcheries, traverse this subterranean way of civilization, and thrust their
corpses into it. For the eye of the dreamer all historical murderers are there,
in the hideous gloom, on their knees, with a bit of their winding-sheet for an
apron, and mournfully sponging their task. Louis XI. is there with Tristan,

Francis I. is there with Duprat, Charles IX. is there with his mother,
Richelieu is there with Louis XIII., Louvois is there, Letellier is there,
Hubert and Maillard are there, scratching the stones, and trying to efface the
trace of their deeds. The brooms of these spectres can be heard under these
vaults, and the enormous fetidness of social catastrophes is breathed there.
You see in corners red flashes, and a terrible water flows there in which
blood-stained hands have been washed.
The social observer should enter these shadows, for they form part of his
laboratory. Philosophy is the microscope of thought; everything strives to
fly from it, but nothing escapes it. Tergiversation is useless, for what side of
himself does a man show in tergiversating? His ashamed side. Philosophy
pursues evil with its upright glance, and does not allow it to escape into
nothingness. It recognizes everything in the effacement of disappearing
things, and in the diminution of vanishing things. It reconstructs the purple
after the rags, and the woman after the tatters. With the sewer it re-makes
the town; with the mud it re-makes manners. It judges from the potsherds
whether it were an amphora or an earthenware jar. It recognizes by a nail-
mark on a parchment the difference which separates the Jewry of the Juden-
gasse from the Jewry of the Ghetto. It finds again in what is left what has
been,—the good, the bad, the false, the true, the patch of blood in the
palace, the ink-stain of the cavern, the tallow-drop of the brothel, trials
undergone, temptations welcome, orgies vomited up, the wrinkle which
characters have formed in abasing themselves, the traces of prostitution in
the souls whose coarseness rendered them capable of it, and on the jacket of
the street-porters of Rome the mark of the nudge of Messalina.

CHAPTER III.

BRUNESEAU.

The sewer of Paris in the Middle Ages was legendary. In the sixteenth
century Henry II. attempted soundings which failed, and not a hundred
years ago, as Mercier testifies, the cloaca was abandoned to itself, and
became what it could. Such was that ancient Paris, handed over to quarrels,

indecisions, and groping. It was for a long time thus stupid, and a later
period, '89, showed how cities acquire sense. But in the good old times the
capital had but little head; it did not know how to transact its business either
morally or materially, and could no more sweep away its ordure than its
abuses. Everything was an obstacle, everything raised a question. The
sewer, for instance, was refractory to any itinerary, and people could no
more get on under the city than they did in it; above, everything was
unintelligible; below, inextricable; beneath the confusion of tongues was the
confusion of cellars, and Dædalus duplicated Babel. At times the sewer of
Paris thought proper to overflow, as if this misunderstood Nile had
suddenly fallen into a passion. There were, infamous to relate, inundations
of the sewer. At moments this stomach of civilization digested badly, the
sewer flowed back into the throat of the city, and Paris bad the after-taste of
its ordure. These resemblances of the drain to remorse had some good about
them, for they were warnings, very badly taken however; for the city was
indignant that its mud should have so much boldness, and did not admit that
the ordure should return. Discharge it better.
The inundation of 1802 is in the memory of Parisians of eighty years of age.
The mud spread across the Place des Victoires, on which is the statue of
Louis XIV.; it entered Rue St. Honoré by the two mouths of the sewer of the
Champs Élysées, Rue St. Florentin by the St. Florentin sewer, Rue Pierre à
Poisson by the sewer of the Sonnerie, Rue Popincourt by the Chemin-Vert
sewer, and Rue de la Roquette by the Rue de Lappe sewer; it covered the
level of the Rue des Champs Élysées to a height of fourteen inches, and in
the south, owing to the vomitory of the Seine performing its duties
contrariwise, it entered Rue Mazarine, Rue de l'Échaudé, and Rue des
Marais, where it stopped after running on a hundred and twenty yards, just a
few yards from the house which Racine had inhabited, respecting, in the
seventeenth century, the poet more than the king. It reached its maximum
depth in the Rue St. Pierre, where it rose three feet above the gutter, and its
maximum extent in the Rue St. Sabin, where it extended over a length of
two hundred and fifty yards.
At the beginning of the present century the sewer of Paris was still a
mysterious spot. Mud can never be well famed, but here the ill reputation
extended almost to terror. Paris knew confusedly that it had beneath it a
grewsome cave; people talked about it as of that monstrous mud-bed of

Thebes, in which centipedes fifteen feet in length swarmed, and which
could have served as a bathing-place for Behemoth. The great boots of the
sewers-men never ventured beyond certain known points. It was still very
close to the time when the scavengers' carts, from the top of which St. Foix
fraternized with the Marquis de Créqui, were simply unloaded into the
sewer. As for the cleansing, the duty was intrusted to the showers, which
choked up rather than swept away. Rome allowed some poetry to her
cloaca, and called it the Gemoniæ, but Paris insulted its own, and called it
the stench-hole. Science and superstition were agreed as to the horror, and
the stench-hole was quite as repugnant to hygiene as to the legend. The
goblin was hatched under the fetid arches of the Mouffetard sewer: the
corpses of the Marmousets were thrown into the Barillerie sewer: Fagot
attributed the malignant fever of 1685 to the great opening of the Marais
sewer, which remained yawning until 1833 in the Rue St. Louis, nearly
opposite the sign of the Messager Galant. The mouth of the sewer in the
Rue de la Mortellerie was celebrated for the pestilences which issued from
it; with its iron-pointed grating that resembled a row of teeth it yawned in
this fatal street like the throat of a dragon breathing hell on mankind. The
popular imagination seasoned the gloomy Parisian sewer with some hideous
mixture of infinitude: the sewer was bottomless, the sewer was a
Barathrum, and the idea of exploring these leprous regions never even
occurred to the police. Who would have dared to cast a sound into this
darkness, and go on a journey of discovery in this abyss? It was frightful,
and yet some one presented himself at last. The cloaca had its Christopher
Columbus.
One day in 1805, during one of the rare apparitions which the Emperor
made in Paris, the Minister of the Interior attended at his master's petit lever.
In the court-yard could be heard the clanging sabres of all the extraordinary
soldiers of the great Republic and the great Empire; there was a swarm of
heroes at Napoleon's gates; men of the Rhine, the Schelde, the Adage, and
the Nile; comrades of Joubert, of Desaix, of Marceau, Hoche, and Kléber,
aeronauts of Fleurus, grenadiers of Mayence, pontooners of Genoa, hussars
whom the Pyramids had gazed at, artillerymen who had bespattered Junot's
cannon-balls, cuirassiers who had taken by assault the fleet anchored in the
Zuyderzee; some had followed Bonaparte upon the bridge of Lodi, others
had accompanied Murat to the trenches of Mantua, while others had
outstripped Lannes in the hollow way of Montebello. The whole army of

that day was in the court of the Tuileries, represented by a squadron or a
company, and guarding Napoleon, then resting; and it was the splendid
period when the great army had Marengo behind it and Austerlitz before it.
"Sire," said the Minister of the Interior to Napoleon, "I have seen to-day the
most intrepid man of your Empire." "Who is the man?" the Emperor asked
sharply, "and what has he done?" "He wishes to do something, Sire." "What
is it?" "To visit the sewers of Paris." This man existed, and his name was
Bruneseau.

CHAPTER IV.

CONCEALED DETAILS.

The visit took place, and was a formidable campaign,—a nocturnal battle
against asphyxia and plague. It was at the same time a voyage of discovery,
and one of the survivors of the exploration, an intelligent workman, very
young at that time, used to recount a few years ago the curious details
which Bruneseau thought it right to omit in his report to the Prefect of
Police, as unworthy of the administrative style. Disinfecting processes were
very rudimentary at that day, and Bruneseau had scarce passed the first
articulations of the subterranean network ere eight workmen out of twenty
refused to go farther. The operation was complicated, for the visit entailed
cleansing: it was, therefore, requisite to cleanse and at the same time take
measurements; note the water entrances, count the traps and mouths, detail
the branches, indicate the currents, recognize the respective dimensions of
the different basins, sound the small sewers grafted on the main, measure
the height under the key-stone of each passage, and the width both at the
bottom and the top, in order to determine the ordinates for levelling at the
right of each entrance of water. They advanced with difficulty, and it was
not rare for the ladders to sink into three feet of mud. The lanterns would
scarce burn in the mephitic atmosphere, and from time to time a sewer-man
was carried away in a fainting state. At certain spots there was a precipice;
the soil had given way, the stones were swallowed up, and the drain was
converted into a lost well; nothing solid could be found, and they had great
difficulty in dragging out a man who suddenly disappeared. By the advice
of Fourcroy large cages filled with tow saturated with resin were set fire to
at regular distances. The wall was covered in spots with shapeless fungi,
which might have been called tumors, and the stone itself seemed diseased
in this unbreathable medium.
Bruneseau, in his exploration, proceeded down-hill. At the point where the
two water-pipes of the Grand Hurleur separate he deciphered on a
projecting stone the date 1550; this stone indicated the limit where Philibert
Delorme, instructed by Henri II. to inspect the subways of Paris, stopped.
This stone was the mark of the sixteenth century in the drain, and
Bruneseau found the handiwork of the seventeenth in the Ponceau conduit
and that of the Rue Vieille du Temple, which were arched between 1600
and 1650, and the mark of the eighteenth in the west section of the
collecting canal, enclosed and arched in 1740. These two arches, especially
the younger one, that of 1740, were more decrepit and cracked than the

masonry of the begirding drain, which dated from 1412, the period when
the Menilmontant stream of running water was raised to the dignity of the
Great Sewer of Paris, a promotion analogous to that of a peasant who
became first valet to the king; something like Gros Jean transformed into
Lébel.
They fancied they recognized here and there, especially under the Palais du
Justice, the form of old dungeons formed in the sewer itself, hideous in
pace. An iron collar hung in one of these cells, and they were all bricked up.
A few of the things found were peculiar; among others the skeleton of an
ourang-outang, which disappeared from the Jardin des Plantes in 1800, a
disappearance probably connected with the famous and incontestable
apparition of the devil in the Rue des Bernardins in the last year of the
eighteenth century. The poor animal eventually drowned itself in the sewer.
Under the long vaulted passage leading to the Arche Marion a rag-picker's
hotte in a perfect state of preservation caused the admiration of
connoisseurs. Everywhere the mud, which the sewer-men had come to
handle intrepidly, abounded in precious objects; gold and silver, jewelry,
precious stones, and coin. A giant who had filtered this cloaca would have
found in his sieve the wealth of centuries. At the point where the two
branches of the Rue du Temple and the Rue Sainte Avoye divide, a singular
copper Huguenot medal was picked up, bearing on one side a pig wearing a
cardinals hat, and on the other a wolf with the tiara on its head.
The most surprising discovery was at the entrance of the Great Sewer. This
entrance had been formerly closed by a gate, of which only the hinges now
remained. From one of these hinges hung a filthy shapeless rag, which
doubtless caught there as it passed, floated in the shadow, and was
gradually mouldering away. Bruneseau raised his lantern and examined this
fragment; it was of very fine linen, and at one of the corners less gnawed
than the rest could be distinguished an heraldic crown embroidered above
these seven letters, LAVBESP. The crown was a Marquis's crown, and the
seven letters signified Laubespine. What they had under their eyes was no
less than a piece of Marat's winding-sheet. Marat, in his youth, had had
amours, at the time when he was attached to the household of the Comte
d'Artois in the capacity of physician to the stables. Of these amours with a
great lady, which are historically notorious, this sheet had remained to him
as a waif or a souvenir; on his death, as it was the only fine linen at his

lodgings, he was buried in it. Old women wrapped up the tragic friend of
the people for the tomb in this sheet which had known voluptuousness.
Bruneseau passed on; the strip was left where it was. Was it through
contempt or respect? Marat deserved both. And then destiny was so
impressed on it that a hesitation was felt about touching it. Moreover, things
of the sepulchre should be left at the place which they select. Altogether the
relic was a strange one: a Marquise had slept in it, Marat had rotted in it;
and it had passed through the Panthéon to reach the sewer-rats. This rag
from an alcove, every crease in which Watteau in former days would
joyously have painted, ended by becoming worthy of the intent glance of
Dante.
The visit to the subways of Paris lasted for seven years,—from 1805 to
1812. While going along, Bruneseau designed, directed, and carried out
considerable operations. In 1808 he lowered the Ponceau sewer, and
everywhere pushing out new lines, carried the sewer in 1809 under the Rue
St. Denis to the Fountain of the Innocents; in 1810 under the Rue
Froidmanteau and the Salpêtrière; in 1811 under the Rue Neuve des Petits
Pères, under the Rue du Mail, the Rue de l'Écharpe and the Place Royal; in
1812 under the Rue de la Paix and the Chaussée d'Antin. At the same time
he disinfected and cleansed the entire network, and in the second year
called his son-in-law Nargaud to his assistance. It is thus that at the
beginning of this century the old society flushed its subway and performed
the toilette of its sewer. It was so much cleaned at any rate. Winding,
cracked, unpaved, full of pits, broken by strange elbows, ascending and
descending illogically, fetid, savage, ferocious, submerged in darkness, with
cicatrices on its stones and scars on its walls, and grewsome,—such was the
old sewer of Paris, retrospectively regarded. Ramifications in all directions,
crossings of trenches, branches, dials and stars as in saps, blind guts and
alleys, arches covered with saltpetre, infected pits, scabby exudations on the
walls, drops falling from the roof, and darkness, nothing equalled the horror
of this old excremental crypt,—the digestive apparatus of Babylon, a den, a
trench, a gulf pierced with streets, a Titanic mole-hill, in which the mind
fancies that it sees crawling through the shadow, amid the ordure which had
been splendor, that enormous blind mole, the Past.
Such, we repeat, was the sewer of the olden time.

CHAPTER V.

PRESENT PROGRESS.

At the present day the sewer is clean, cold, straight, and correct, and almost
realizes the ideal of what is understood in England by the word
"respectable." It is neat and gray, built with the plumb-line,—we might
almost say coquettishly. It resembles a contractor who has become a
Councillor of State. You almost see clearly in it, and the mud behaves itself
decently. At the first glance you might be inclined to take it for one of those
subterranean passages so common formerly, and so useful for the flights of
monarchs and princes in the good old times "when the people loved its
kings." The present sewer is a handsome sewer; the pure style prevails
there,—the classic rectilinear Alexandrine, which, expelled from poetry,
appears to have taken refuge in architecture, seems blended with all the
stones of this long, dark, and white vault; each vomitory is an arcade, and
the Rue de Rivoli sets the fashion even in the cloaca. However, if the
geometric line be anywhere in its place, it is assuredly so in the
stercoraceous trench of a great city, where everything must be subordinated
to the shortest road. The sewer has at the present day assumed a certain
official aspect, and the police reports of which it is sometimes the object are
no longer deficient in respect to it. The words which characterize it in the
administrative language are lofty and dignified; what used to be called a gut
is now called a gallery, and what used to be a hole is now a "look." Villon
would no longer recognize the ancient lodgings he used for emergencies.
This network of cellars still has its population of rodents, pullulating more
than ever; from time to time a rat, an old veteran, ventures his head at the
window of the drain and examines the Parisians: but even these vermin are
growing tame, as they are satisfied with their subterranean palace. The
cloaca no longer retains its primitive ferocity, and the rain which sullied the
sewer of olden times, washes that of the present day. Still, do not trust to it
too entirely, for miasmas yet inhabit it, and it is rather hypocritical than
irreproachable. In spite of all the préfecture of police and the Board of
Health have done, it exhales a vague suspicious odor, like Tartuffe after
confession. Still, we must allow that, take it all together, sweeping is an

homage which the sewer pays to civilization, and as from this point of view
Tartuffe's conscience is a progress upon the Augean stable, it is certain that
the sewer of Paris has been improved. It is more than a progress, it is a
transmutation; between the old and the present sewer there is a revolution.
Who effected this revolution? The man whom every one forgets, and whom
we have named,—Bruneseau.

CHAPTER VI.

FUTURE PROGRESS.

Digging the sewerage of Paris was no small task. The last ten centuries have
toiled at it without being able to finish, any more than they could finish
Paris. The sewer, in fact, receives all the counterstrokes of the growth of
Paris. It is in the ground a species of dark polypus with a thousand antennæ,
which grows below, equally with the city above. Each time that the city
forms a street, the sewer stretches out an arm. The old monarchy only
constructed twenty-three thousand three hundred metres of sewers, and
Paris had reached that point on Jan. 1, 1806. From this period, to which we
shall presently revert, the work has been usefully and energetically taken up
and continued. Napoleon built—and the figures are curious—four thousand
eight hundred and four metres; Charles X., ten thousand eight hundred and
thirty-six; Louis Philippe, eighty-nine thousand and twenty; the Republic of
1848, twenty-three thousand three hundred and eighty-one; the present
government, seventy thousand five hundred: all together two hundred and
twenty-six thousand six hundred metres, or sixty leagues, of sewer,—the
enormous entrails of Paris,—an obscure ramification constantly at work, an
unknown and immense construction. As we see, the subterranean labyrinth
of Paris is, at the present day, more than tenfold what it was at the
beginning of the century. It would be difficult to imagine all the
perseverance and efforts required to raise this cloaca to the point of relative
perfection at which it now is. It was with great trouble that the old
monarchical Provostry, and in the last ten years of the eighteenth century
the revolutionary Mayoralty, succeeded in boring the five leagues of sewers

which existed prior to 1806. All sorts of obstacles impeded this operation;
some peculiar to the nature of the soil, others inherent in the prejudices of
the working population of Paris. Paris is built on a stratum strangely
rebellious to the pick, the spade, the borer, and human manipulation.
Nothing is more difficult to pierce and penetrate than this geological
formation on which the marvellous historical formation called Paris is
superposed. So soon as labor in any shape ventures into this layer of
alluvium, subterranean resistances abound. They are liquid clay, running
springs, hard rocks, and that soft and deep mud which the special science
calls "mustard." The pick advances laboriously in the calcareous layers
alternating with very thin veins of clay and schistose strata incrusted with
oyster-shells, which are contemporaries of the Pre-Adamite oceans. At
times a stream suddenly bursts into a tunnel just commenced, and inundates
the workmen, or a slip of chalk takes place and rushes forward with the fury
of a cataract, breaking like glass the largest supporting shores. Very recently
at La Villette, when it was found necessary to carry the collecting sewer
under the St. Martin canal without stopping the navigation or letting off the
water, a fissure formed in the bed of the canal, and the water poured into the
tunnel deriding the efforts of the draining-pumps. It was found necessary to
employ a diver to seek for the fissure which was in the mouth of the great
basin, and it was only stopped up with great difficulty. Elsewhere, near the
Seine, and even at some distance from the river, as, for instance, at
Belleville, Grande Rue, and Passage Lunière, bottomless sands are found,
in which men have been swallowed up. Add asphyxia by miasmas,
interment by slips and sudden breaking in of the soil; add typhus, too, with
which the workmen are slowly impregnated. In our days, after having
hollowed the gallery of Clichy with a banquette to convey the mainwater
conduit of the Ourque, a work performed by trenches ten metres in depth;
after having arched the Bièvre from the Boulevard de l'Hôpital to the Seine,
in the midst of earth-slips and by the help of trenching often through putrid
matter, and of shores; after having, in order to deliver Paris from the torrent-
like waters of the Montmartre, and give an outlet to the fluviatic pond of
twenty-three acres which stagnated near the Barrière des Martyrs; after
having, we say, constructed the line of sewers from the Barrière Blanche to
the Aubervilliers road, in four months, by working day and night at a depth
of eleven metres; after having—a thing unknown before—executed
subterraneously a sewer in the Rue Barre du Bec, without trench, at a depth

of six metres, the surveyor Monnot died. After arching three thousand
metres of sewer in all parts of the city, from the Rue Traversière St. Antoine
to the Rue de l'Ourcine; after having, by the Arbalète branch, freed the
Censier-Mouffetard square from pluvial inundations; after having
constructed the St. George sewer through liquid sand upon rubble and
béton, and after having lowered the formidable pitch of the Nôtre Dame de
Nazareth branch, the engineer Duleau died. There are no bulletins for such
acts of bravery, which are more useful, however, than the brutal butchery of
battle-fields.
The sewers of Paris were in 1832 far from being what they are now.
Bruneseau gave the impulse, but it required the cholera to determine the
vast reconstruction which has taken place since. It is surprising to say, for
instance, that in 1821 a portion of the begirding sewer, called the Grand
Canal, as at Venice, still stagnated in the open air, in the Rue des Gourdes. It
was not till 1823 that the city of Paris found in its pocket the twenty-six
thousand six hundred and eighty francs, six centimes, needed for covering
this turpitude. The three absorbing wells of the Combat, la Cunette, and St.
Mandé, with their disgorging apparatus, draining-wells, and deodorizing
branches, merely date from 1836. The intestine canal of Paris has been re-
made, and, as we said, augmented more than tenfold during the last quarter
of a century. Thirty years ago, at the period of the insurrection of June 5 and
6, it was still in many parts almost the old sewer. A great number of streets,
now convex, were at that time broken causeways. There could be frequently
seen at the bottom of the water-sheds of streets and squares, large square
gratings, whose iron glistened from the constant passage of the crowd,
dangerous and slippery for vehicles, and throwing horses down. The official
language of the department of the roads and bridges gave these gratings the
expressive name of Cassis. In 1832 in a number of streets,—Rue de l'Étoile,
Rue St. Louis, Rue du Temple, Rue Vieille du Temple, Rue Nôtre Dame de
Nazareth, Rue Folie Méricourt, Quai aux Fleurs, Rue du Petit Muse, Rue de
Normandie, Rue Pont aux Biches, Rue des Marais, Faubourg St. Martin,
Rue Nôtre Dame des Victoires, Faubourg Montmartre, Rue Grange
Batelière, at the Champs Élysées, the Rue Jacob, and the Rue de Tournon,
the old Gothic cloaca still cynically displayed its throats. They were
enormous stone orifices, sometimes surrounded with posts, with a
monumental effrontery. Paris in 1806 was much in the same state as regards
sewers as in May, 1663,—five thousand three hundred and twenty-eight

toises. After Bruneseau, on Jan. 1, 1832, there were forty thousand three
hundred metres. From 1806 to 1831 seven hundred and fifty metres were on
the average constructed annually; since then eight and even ten thousand
metres have been made every year in brick-work, with a coating of concrete
on a foundation of b£ton. At two hundred francs the metre, the sixty leagues
of drainage in the Paris of to-day represent forty-eight million francs.
In addition to the economic progress to which we alluded at the outset,
serious considerations as to the public health are attached to this immense
question,—the drainage of Paris. Paris is situated between two sheets,—a
sheet of water and a sheet of air. The sheet of water, lying at a very great
depth, but already tapped by two borings, is supplied by the stratum of
green sandstone situated between the chalk and the Jurassic limestone; this
stratum may be represented by a disc with a radius of twenty-five leagues; a
multitude of rivers and streams drip into it, and the Seine, the Marne, the
Yonne, the Oisin, the Aisne, the Cher, the Vienne, and the Loire are drunk in
a glass of water from the Grenelle well. The sheet of water is salubrious, for
it comes from the sky first, and then from the earth; but the sheet of air is
unhealthy, for it comes from the sewer. All the miasmas of the cloaca are
mingled with the breathing of the city; hence this bad breath. The
atmosphere taken from above a dungheap, it has been proved scientifically,
is purer than the atmosphere taken from over Paris. Within a given time, by
the aid of progress, improvements in machinery, and enlightenment, the
sheet of water will be employed to purify the sheet of air, that is to say, to
wash the sewer. It is known that by washing the sewer we mean restoring
the ordure to the earth by sending dung to the arable lands and manure to
the grass lands. Through this simple fact there will be for the whole social
community a diminution of wretchedness and an augmentation of health. At
the present hour the radiation of the diseases of Paris extends for fifty
leagues round the Louvre, taken as the axle of this pestilential wheel.
We might say that for the last ten centuries the cloaca has been the misery
of Paris, and the sewer is the viciousness which the city has in its blood.
The popular instinct has never been deceived, and the trade of the sewer-
man was formerly almost as dangerous and almost as repulsive to the
people as that of the horse-slaughterer, which so long was regarded with
horror and left to the hangman. Great wages were required to induce a
bricklayer to disappear in this fetid sap; the ladder of the well-digger

hesitated to plunge into it. It was said proverbially, "Going into the sewer is
entering the tomb;" and all sorts of hideous legends, as we said, covered
this colossal cesspool with terrors. It is a formidable fosse which bears
traces of the revolutions of the globe as well as the revolutions of men; and
vestiges may be found there of every cataclysm from the shells of the
Deluge to the ragged sheet of Marat.

BOOK III.

MUD, BUT SOUL.

CHAPTER I.

THE CLOACA AND THE SURPRISES.

It was in the sewer of Paris that Jean Valjean found himself. This is a further
resemblance of Paris with the sea, as in the ocean the diver can disappear
there. It was an extraordinary transition, in the very heart of the city. Jean
Valjean had left the city, and in a twinkling, the time required to lift a trap
and let it fall again, he had passed from broad daylight to complete
darkness, from midday to midnight, from noise to silence, from the uproar
of thunder to the stagnation of the tomb, and, by an incident far more
prodigious even than that of the Rue Polonceau, from the extremest peril to
the most absolute security. A sudden fall into a cellar, disappearance in the
oubliette of Paris, leaving this street where death was all around for this
species of sepulchre in which was life,—it was a strange moment. He stood
for some minutes as if stunned, listening and amazed. The trap-door of
safety had suddenly opened beneath him, and the Celestial Goodness had to
some extent taken him by treachery. Admirable ambuscades of Providence!
Still, the wounded man did not stir, and Jean Valjean did not know whether
what he was carrying in this pit were alive or dead.

His first sensation was blindness, for he all at once could see nothing. He
felt too that in a moment he had become deaf, for he could hear nothing
more. The frenzied storm of murder maintained a few yards above him only
reached him confusedly and indistinctly, and like a noise from a depth. He
felt that he had something solid under his feet, but that was all; still, it was
sufficient. He stretched out one arm, then the other; he touched the wall on
both sides and understood that the passage was narrow; his foot slipped, and
he understood that the pavement was damp. He advanced one foot
cautiously, fearing a hole, a cesspool, or some gulf, and satisfied himself
that the pavement went onwards. A fetid gust warned him of the spot where
he was. At the expiration of a few minutes he was no longer blind, a little
light fell through the trap by which he descended, and his eye grew used to
this vault He began to distinguish something. The passage in which he had
run to earth—no other word expresses the situation better—was walled up
behind him; it was one of those blind alleys called in the professional
language branches. Before him he had another wall,—a wall of night. The
light of the trap expired ten or twelve feet from the spot where Jean Valjean
was, and scarce produced a livid whiteness on a few yards of the damp wall
of the sewer. Beyond that the opaqueness was massive; to pierce it appeared
horrible, and to enter it seemed like being swallowed up. Yet it was possible
to bury one's self in this wall of fog, and it must be done; and must even be
done quickly. Jean Valjean thought that the grating which he had noticed in
the street might also be noticed by the troops, and that all depended on
chance. They might also come down into the well and search, so he had not
a minute to lose. He had laid Marius on the ground and now picked him up,
—that is again the right expression,—took him on his shoulders, and set
out. He resolutely entered the darkness.
The truth is, that they were less saved than Jean Valjean believed; perils of
another nature, but equally great, awaited them. After the flashing
whirlwind of the combat came the cavern of miasmas and snares; after the
chaos, the cloaca. Jean Valjean had passed from one circle of the Inferno
into another. When he had gone fifty yards he was obliged to stop, for a
question occurred to him; the passage ran into another, which it intersected,
and two roads offered themselves. Which should he take? Ought he to turn
to the left, or right? How was he to find his way in this black labyrinth?
This labyrinth, we have said, has a clew in its slope, and following the slope
leads to the river. Jean Valjean understood this immediately; he said to

himself that he was probably in the sewer of the markets; that if he turned to
the left and followed the incline he would arrive in a quarter of an hour at
some opening on the Seine between the Pont au Change and the Pont Neuf,
that is to say, appear in broad daylight in the busiest part of Paris. Perhaps
he might come out at some street opening, and passers-by would be
stupefied at seeing two blood-stained men emerge from the ground at their
feet. The police would come up and they would be carried off to the nearest
guard-room; they would be prisoners before they had come out. It would be
better, therefore, to bury himself in the labyrinth, confide in the darkness,
and leave the issue to Providence.
He went up the incline and turned to the right; when he had gone round the
corner of the gallery the distant light from the trap disappeared, the curtain
of darkness fell on him again, and he became blind once more. For all that
he advanced as rapidly as he could; Marius's arms were passed round life
neck, and his feet hung down behind. He held the two arms with one hand
and felt the wall with the other. Marius's cheek touched his and was glued to
it, as it was bloody, and he felt a warm stream which came from Marius drip
on him and penetrate his clothing. Still, a warm breath in his ear, which
touched the wounded man's mouth, indicated respiration, and consequently
life. The passage in which Jean Valjean was now walking was not so narrow
as the former, and he advanced with some difficulty. The rain of the
previous night had not yet passed off, and formed a small torrent in the
centre, and he was forced to hug the wall in order not to lave his feet in the
water. He went on thus darkly, like a creature of the night groping in the
invisible, and subterraneously lost in the veins of gloom. Still, by degrees,
either that a distant grating sent a little floating light into this opaque mist,
or that his eyes grew accustomed to the obscurity, he regained some vague
vision, and began to notice confusedly, at one moment the wall he was
touching, at another the vault under which he was passing. The pupil is
dilated at night and eventually finds daylight in it, in the same way as the
soul is dilated in misfortune and eventually finds God in it.
To direct himself was difficult, for the sewers represent, so to speak, the
outline of the streets standing over them. There were in the Paris of that day
two thousand two hundred streets, and imagine beneath them that forest of
dark branches called the sewer. The system of sewers existing at that day, if
placed end on end, would have given a length of eleven leagues. We have

already said that the present network, owing to the special activity of the
last thirty years, is no less than sixty leagues. Jean Valjean began by
deceiving himself; he fancied that he was under the Rue St. Denis, and it
was unlucky that he was not so. There is under that street an old stone drain,
dating from Louis XIII., which runs straight to the collecting sewer, called
the Great Sewer, with only one turn on the right, by the old Cour des
Miracles, and a single branch, the St. Martin sewer, whose four arms cut
each other at right angles. But the passage of the Little Truanderie, whose
entrance was near the Corinth wine-shop, never communicated with the
sewer of the Rue St. Denis; it falls into the Montmartre sewer, and that is
where Jean Valjean now was. There opportunities for losing himself were
abundant, for the Montmartre drain is one of the most labyrinthian of the
old network. Luckily Jean Valjean had left behind him the sewer of the
markets, whose geometrical plan represents a number of entangled top-
gallant-masts; but he had before him more than one embarrassing
encounter, and more than one street corner—for they are streets—offering
itself in the obscurity as a note of interrogation. In the first place on his left,
the vast Plâtrière sewer, a sort of Chinese puzzle, thrusting forth and
intermingling its chaos of T and Z under the Post Office, and the rotunda of
the grain-markets, as far as the Seine, where it terminates in Y; secondly, on
his right the curved passage of the Rue du Cadran, with its three teeth,
which are so many blind alleys; thirdly, on his left the Mail branch,
complicated almost at the entrance by a species of fork, and running with
repeated zigzags to the great cesspool of the Louvre, which ramifies in
every direction; and lastly, on his right the blind alley of the Rue des
Jeûneurs, without counting other pitfalls, ere he reached the engirdling
sewer, which alone could lead him to some issue sufficiently distant to be
safe.
Had Jean Valjean had any notion of all we have just stated he would have
quickly perceived, merely by feeling the wall, that he was not in the
subterranean gallery of the Rue St. Denis. Instead of the old freestone,
instead of the old architecture, haughty and royal even in the sewer, with its
arches and continuous courses of granite, which cost eight hundred livres
the fathom, he would feel under his hand modern cheapness, the economic
expedient, brick-work supported on a layer of béton, which costs two
hundred francs the metre,—that bourgeois masonry known as à petits
matériaux; but he knew nothing of all this. He advanced anxiously but

calmly, seeing nothing, hearing nothing, plunged into chance, that is to say,
swallowed up in Providence. By degrees, however, we are bound to state
that a certain amount of horror beset him, and the shadow which enveloped
him entered his mind. He was walking in an enigma. This aqueduct of the
cloaca is formidable, for it intersects itself in a vertiginous manner, and it is
a mournful thing to be caught in this Paris of darkness. Jean Valjean was
obliged to find, and almost invent, his road without seeing it. In this
unknown region each step that he ventured might be his last. How was he to
get out of it? Would he find an issue? Would he find it in time? Could he
pierce and penetrate this colossal subterranean sponge with its passages of
stone? Would he meet there some unexpected knot of darkness? Would he
arrive at something inextricable and impassable? Would Marius die of
hemorrhage, and himself of hunger? Would they both end by being lost
there, and form two skeletons in a corner of this night? He did not know; he
asked himself all this and could not find an answer. The intestines of Paris
are a precipice, and like the prophet he was in the monster's belly.
He suddenly had a surprise; at the most unexpected moment, and without
ceasing to walk in a straight line, he perceived that he was no longer
ascending; the water of the gutter plashed against his heels instead of
coming to his toes. The sewer was now descending; why? Was he about to
reach the Seine suddenly? That danger was great, but the peril of turning
back was greater still, and he continued to advance. He was not proceeding
toward the Seine; the shelving ridge which the soil of Paris makes on the
right bank empties one of its water-sheds into the Seine and the other into
the Great Sewer. The crest of this ridge, which determines the division of
the waters, designs a most capricious line; the highest point is in the Sainte
Avoye sewer, beyond the Rue Michel-le-comte, in the Louvre sewer, near
the boulevards, and in the Montmartre drain, near the markets. This highest
point Jean Valjean had reached, and he was proceeding toward the
engirdling sewer, or in the right direction, but he knew it not. Each time that
he reached a branch he felt the corners, and if he found the opening
narrower than the passage in which he was he did not enter, but continued
his march, correctly judging that any narrower way must end in a blind
alley, and could only take him from his object, that is to say, an outlet. He
thus avoided the fourfold snare laid for him in the darkness by the four
labyrinths which we have enumerated. At a certain moment he recognized
that he was getting from under that part of Paris petrified by the riot, where

the barricades had suppressed circulation, and returning under living and
normal Paris. He suddenly heard above his head a sound like thunder,
distant but continuous; it was the rolling of vehicles.
He had been walking about half an hour, at least that was the calculation he
made, and had not thought of resting; he had merely changed the hand
which held Marius up. The darkness was more profound than ever, but this
darkness reassured him. All at once he saw his shadow before him; it stood
out upon a faint and almost indistinct redness, which vaguely impurpled the
roadway at his feet and the vault above his head, and glided along the
greasy walls of the passage. Stupefied, he turned around.
Behind him, in the part of the passage he had come from, at a distance
which appeared immense, shone a sort of horrible star, obliterating the dark
density, which seemed to be looking at him. It was the gloomy police star
rising in the sewer. Behind this star there moved confusedly nine or ten
black, upright, indistinct, and terrible forms.

CHAPTER II.

EXPLANATION.

On the day of June 6 a battue of the sewers was ordered, for it was feared
lest the conquered should fly to them as a refuge, and Prefect Gisquet
ordered occult Paris to be searched, while General Bugeaud swept public
Paris,—a double connected operation, which required a double strategy of
the public force, represented above by the army and beneath by the police.
Three squads of agents and sewer-men explored the subway of Paris,—the
first the right bank, the second the left bank, and the third the Cité. The
agents were armed with carbines, bludgeons, swords, and daggers, and what
was at this moment pointed at Jean Valjean was the lantern of the round of
the right bank. This round had just inspected the winding gallery and three
blind alleys which are under the Rue du Cadran. While the lantern was
moved about at the bottom of these blind alleys, Jean Valjean in his
progress came to the entrance of the gallery, found it narrower than the

main gallery, and had not entered it. The police, on coming out of the
Cadran gallery, fancied that they could hear the sound of footsteps in the
direction of the engirdling sewer, and they were really Jean Valjean's
footsteps. The head sergeant of the round raised his lantern, and the squad
began peering into the mist in the direction whence the noise had come.
It was an indescribable moment for Jean Valjean; luckily, if he saw the
lantern well the lantern saw him badly, for it was the light and he was the
darkness. He was too far off, and blended with the blackness of the spot, so
he drew himself up against the wall and stopped. However, he did not
explain to himself what was moving behind him, want of sleep and food
and emotion having made him pass into a visionary state. He saw a flash,
and round this flash, spectres. What was it? He did not understand. When
Jean Valjean stopped the noise ceased; the police listened and heard
nothing, they looked and saw nothing, and hence consulted together. There
was at that period at that point in the Montmartre sewer a sort of square
called de service, which has since been done away with, owing to the small
internal lake which the torrents of rain formed there, and the squad
assembled on this square. Jean Valjean saw them make a sort of circle, and
then bull-dog heads came together and whispered. The result of this council
held by the watch-dogs was that they were mistaken, that there had been no
noise, that there was nobody there, that it was useless to enter the
surrounding sewer, that it would be time wasted, but that they must hasten
to the St. Merry drain; for if there were anything to be done and any
"boussingot" to track, it would be there. From time to time parties new-sole
their old insults. In 1832 the word "boussingot" formed the transition
between the word "jacobin," no longer current, and the word "demagogue,"
at that time almost unused, and which has since done such excellent service.
The sergeant gave orders to left-wheel toward the watershed of the Seine.
Had they thought of dividing into two squads and going in both directions,
Jean Valjean would have been caught. It is probable that the instructions of
the Préfecture, fearing the chance of a fight with a large body of insurgents,
forbade the round from dividing. The squad set out again, leaving Jean
Valjean behind; and in all this movement he perceived nothing except the
eclipse of the lantern, which was suddenly turned away.
Before starting, the sergeant, to satisfy his police conscience, discharged his
carbine in the direction where Jean Valjean was. The detonation rolled

echoing along the crypt, like the rumbling of these Titanic bowels. A piece
of plaster which fell into the gutter and plashed up the water a few yards
from Jean Valjean warned him that the bullet had struck the vault above his
head. Measured and slow steps echoed for some time along the wooden
causeway, growing more and more deadened by the growing distance; the
group of black forms disappeared; a light oscillated and floated, forming on
the vault a ruddy circle, which decreased and disappeared; the silence again
became profound, the obscurity again became complete, and blindness and
deafness again took possession of the gloom; Jean Valjean, not daring yet to
stir, remained leaning for a long time against the wall, with outstretched ear
and dilated eyeballs, watching the vanishing of this patrol of phantoms.

CHAPTER III

THE TRACKED MAN.

We must do the police of that day the justice of saying that even in the
gravest public conjunctures they imperturbably accomplished their duties of
watching the highways and of inspectorship. A riot was not in their eyes a
pretext to leave the bridle to malefactors, and to neglect society for the
reason that the Government was in danger. The ordinary duties were
performed correctly in addition to the extraordinary duties, and were in no
way disturbed. In the midst of an incalculable political event, under the
pressure of a possible revolution, an agent, not allowing himself to be
affected by the insurrection and the barricade, would track a robber.
Something very like this occurred on the afternoon of June 6, on the right
bank of the Seine, a little beyond the Pont des Invalides. There is no bank
there at the present day, and the appearance of the spot has been altered. On
this slope two men, a certain distance apart, were observing each other; the
one in front seemed to be trying to get away, while the one behind wanted
to catch him up. It was like a game of chess played at a distance and
silently; neither of them seemed to be in a hurry, and both walked slowly, as
if they were afraid that increased speed on the part of one would be imitated

by the other. It might have been called an appetite following a prey, without
appearing to do so purposely; the prey was crafty, and kept on guard.
The proportions required between the tracked marten and the tracking dog
were observed. The one trying to escape was thin and mean looking; the
one trying to capture was a tall determined fellow, of rugged aspect, and a
rough one to meet. The first, feeling himself the weaker, avoided the
second, but did so in a deeply furious way; any one who could have
observed him would have seen in his eyes the gloomy hostility of flight,
and all the threat which there is in fear; the slope was deserted, there were
no passers-by, not even a boatman or raftsman in the boats moored here and
there. They could only be noticed easily from the opposite quay, and any
one who had watched them at that distance would have seen that the man in
front appeared a bristling, ragged, and shambling fellow, anxious and
shivering under a torn blouse, while the other was a classic and official
personage, wearing the frock-coat of authority buttoned up to the chin. The
reader would probably recognize these two men, were he to see them more
closely. What was the object of the last one? Probably he wished to clothe
the other man more warmly. When a man dressed by the State pursues a
man in rags, it is in order to make him also a man dressed by the State. The
difference of color is the sole question; to be dressed in blue is glorious, to
be dressed in red is disagreeable, for there is a purple of the lower classes. It
was probably some disagreeable thing, and some purple of this sort, which
the first man desired to avoid.
If the other allowed him to go on ahead, and did not yet arrest him, it was,
in all appearance, in the hope of seeing him arrive at some significative
rendezvous and some group worth capturing. This delicate operation is
called tracking. What renders this conjecture highly probable, is the fact
that the buttoned-up man, perceiving from the slope an empty fiacre
passing, made a sign to the driver; the driver understood, evidently
perceived with whom he had to deal, turned round, and began following the
two men along the quay. This was not perceived by the ragged, shambling
fellow in front. The hackney coach rolled along under the trees of the
Champs Élysées, and over the parapet could be seen the bust of the driver,
whip in hand. One of the secret instructions of the police to the agents is,
"Always have a hackney coach at hand in case of need." While each of
these men manœuvred with irreproachable strategy, they approached an

incline in the quay, which allowed drivers coming from Passy to water their
horses in the river. This incline has since been suppressed for the sake of
symmetry,—horses die of thirst, but the eye is gratified. It was probable that
the man in the blouse would ascend by this incline in order to try to escape
in the Champs Élysées, a place adorned with trees, but, in return, much
frequented by police agents, where the other could easily procure
assistance. This point of the quay is a very little distance from the house
brought from Moret to Paris in 1824 by Colonel Brack, and called the house
of Francis I. A guard is at hand there. To the great surprise of his watcher,
the tracked man did not turn up the road to the watering-place, but
continued to advance along the bank parallel with the quay. His position
was evidently becoming critical, for unless he threw himself into the Seine,
what could he do?
There were no means now left him of returning to the quay, no incline and
no steps, and they were close to the spot marked by the turn in the Seine,
near the Pont de Jéna, where the bank, gradually contracting, ended in a
narrow strip, and was lost in the water. There he must inevitably find
himself blockaded between the tall wall on his right, the river on his left and
facing him, and authority at his heels. It is true that this termination of the
bank was masked from sight by a pile of rubbish seven feet high, the result
of some demolition. But did this man hope to conceal himself profitably
behind this heap? The expedient would have been puerile. He evidently did
not dream of that, for the innocence of robbers does not go so far. The pile
of rubbish formed on the water-side a sort of eminence extending in a
promontory to the quay wall; the pursued man reached this small mound
and went round it, so that he was no longer seen by the other. The latter, not
seeing, was not seen, and he took advantage of this to give up all
dissimulation and walk very fast. In a few minutes he reached the heap and
turned it, but there stood stupefied. The man he was pursuing was not there;
it was a total eclipse of the man in the blouse. The bank did not run more
than thirty yards beyond the heap, and then plunged under the water which
washed the quay wall. The fugitive could not have thrown himself into the
Seine, or have climbed up the quay wall, without being seen by his pursuer.
What had become of him?
The man in the buttoned-up coat walked to the end of the bank and stood
there for a moment, thoughtfully, with clenched fists and scowling eye. All

at once he smote his forehead; he had just perceived, at the point where the
ground ended and the water began, a wide, low, arched iron grating,
provided with a heavy lock and three massive hinges. This grating, a sort of
gate pierced at the bottom of the quay, opened on the river as much as on
the bank, and a black stream poured from under it into the Seine. Beyond
the heavy rusty bars could be distinguished a sort of arched and dark
passage. The man folded his arms and looked at the grating reproachfully,
and this look not being sufficient, he tried to push it open, he shook it, but it
offered a sturdy resistance. It was probable that it had just been opened,
although no sound had been heard,-a singular thing with so rusty a gate,—
but it was certain that it had been closed again. This indicated that the man
who had opened the gate had not a pick-lock but a key. This evidence at
once burst on the mind of the man who was trying to open the grating, and
drew from him this indignant apostrophe,—
"That is strong! A government key!"
Then calming himself immediately, he expressed a whole internal world of
ideas by this outburst of monosyllables, marked by an almost ironical
accent,—
"Well! Well! Well! Well!"
This said, hoping we know not what, either to see the man come out or
others enter, he posted himself on the watch behind the heap of rubbish,
with the patient rage of a yard-mastiff. On its side, the hackney coach,
which regulated itself by all his movements, stopped above him near the
parapet. The driver, foreseeing a long halt, put on his horses the nose-bag
full of damp oats so well known to the Parisians, upon whom the
Government, we may remark parenthetically, sometimes puts it. The few
passers over the Pont de Jéna, before going on, turned their heads to look
for a moment at these motionless objects,—the man on the bank and the
hackney coach on the quay.

CHAPTER IV.

HE TOO BEARS HIS CROSS.

Jean Valjean had resumed his march, and had not stopped again. This march
grew more and more laborious, for the level of these passages varies; the
average height is about five feet six inches, and was calculated for a man's
stature. Jean Valjean was compelled to stoop so as not to dash Marius
against the roof, and was forced at each moment to bend down, then draw
himself up and incessantly feel the wall. The dampness of the stones and of
the flooring rendered them bad supports, either for the hand or the foot, and
he tottered in the hideous dungheap of the city. The intermittent flashes of
the street gratings only appeared at lengthened intervals, and were so faint
that the bright sunshine seemed to be moonlight; all the rest was fog,
miasma, opaqueness, and blackness. Jean Valjean was hungry and thirsty,
the latter most, and it was like the sea; there was "water, water everywhere,
but not a drop to drink." His strength, which, as we know, was prodigious,
and but slightly diminished by age, owing to his chaste and sober life, was,
however, beginning to give way; fatigue assailed him, and his decreasing
strength increased the weight of his burden. Marius, who was perhaps dead,
was heavy, like all inert bodies; but Jean Valjean held him so that his chest
was not affected, and he could breathe as easily as possible. He felt between
his legs the rapid gliding of rats, and one was so startled as to bite him.
From time to time a gush of fresh air came through the gratings, which
revived him.
It might be about 3 P.M. when he reached the engirdling sewer, and he was at
first amazed by the sudden widening. He unexpectedly found himself in a
gallery whose two walk his outstretched arms did not reach, and under an
arch which his head did not touch. The Great Sewer, in fact, is eight feet in
width by seven high. At the point where the Montmartre drain joins the
Great Sewer two other subterranean galleries, that of the Rue de Provence
and that of the Abattoir, form cross-roads. Between these four ways a less
sagacious man would have been undecided; but Jean Valjean selected the
widest, that is to say, the engirdling sewer. But here the question came back
again, "Should he ascend or descend?" He thought that the situation was
pressing, and that he must at all risks now reach the Seine, in other words,
descend, so he turned to the left. It was fortunate that he did so, for it would
be an error to suppose that the engirdling sewer has two issues, one toward
Bercy, the other toward Passy, and that it is, as its name indicates, the
subterranean belt of Paris on the right bank. The Great Sewer, which is
nought else, it must be borne in mind, than the old Menilmontant stream,

leads, if you ascend it, to a blind alley, that is to say, to its old starting-point,
a spring at the foot of the Menilmontant mound. It has no direct
communication with the branch which collects the waters of Paris after
leaving the Popincourt quarter, and which falls into the Seine by the Amelot
sewer above the old isle of Louviers. This branch, which completes the
collecting sewer, is separated from it under the Rue Menilmontant by
masonry-work, which marks the point of the division of the waters into up-
stream and down-stream. If Jean Valjean had remounted the gallery he
would have arrived, exhausted by fatigue and dying, at a wall; he would
have been lost.
Strictly speaking, by going back a little way, entering the passage of the
Filles du Calvaire, on condition that he did not hesitate at the subterranean
point of junction of the Boucherat cross-roads, by taking the St. Louis
passage, then on the left the St. Gilles trench, then by turning to the right
and avoiding the St. Sebastian gallery, Jean Valjean might have reached the
Amelot sewer; and then if he did not lose his way in the species of F which
is under the Bastille, he would have reached the outlet on the Seine near the
Arsenal. But for that he must have thoroughly known, in all its
ramifications and piercings, the enormous madrepore of the sewer. Now, we
dwell on the fact that he knew nothing of this frightful labyrinth in which he
was marching, and had he been asked where he was he would have replied,
"In night." His instinct served him well; going down, in fact, was the only
salvation possible. He left on his right the two passages which ramify in the
shape of a claw under the Rues Laffitte and St. Georges, and the long
bifurcate corridor of the Chaussée d'Antin. A little beyond an affluent,
which was likely the Madeleine branch, he stopped, for he was very weary.
A large grating, probably the one in the Rue d'Anjou, produced an almost
bright light. Jean Valjean, with the gentle movements which a brother
would bestow on a wounded brother, laid Marius on the banquette of the
sewer, and his white face gleamed under the white light of the air-hole as
from the bottom of a tomb. His eyes were closed, his hair stuck to his
forehead like paint-brushes on which the red paint had dried, his hands were
hanging and dead, his limbs cold, and blood was clotted at the corner of his
lips. Coagulated blood had collected in his cravat knot, his shirt entered the
wounds, and the cloth of his coat rubbed the gaping edges of the quivering
flesh. Jean Valjean, removing the clothes with the tips of his fingers, laid his
hand on his chest; the heart still beat. Jean Valjean tore up his shirt,

bandaged the wounds as well as he could, and stopped the blood that was
flowing; then, stooping down in this half daylight over Marius, who was
still unconscious and almost breathless, he looked at him with indescribable
hatred.
In moving Marius's clothes he had found in his pockets two things,—the
loaf, which he had forgotten the previous evening, and his pocket-book. He
ate the bread and opened the pocket-book. On the first page he read the
lines written by Marius, as will be remembered,—
"My name is Marius Pontmercy. Carry my body to my grandfather, M.
Gillenormand, No. 6, Rue des Filles du Calvaire, in the Marais."
Jean Valjean read by the light of the grating these lines, and remained for a
time as it were absorbed in himself, and repeating in a low voice, M.
Gillenormand, No. 6, Rue des Filles du Calvaire. He returned the portfolio
to Marius's pocket; he had eaten, and his strength had come back to him. He
raised Marius again, carefully laid his head on his right shoulder, and began
descending the sewer. The Great Sewer, running along the roadway of the
valley of Menilmontant, is nearly two leagues in length, and is paved for a
considerable portion of the distance. This torch of names of Paris streets,
with which we enlighten for the reader Jean Valjean's subterranean march,
he did not possess. Nothing informed him what zone of the city he was
traversing, nor what distance he had gone; still, the growing paleness of the
flakes of light which he met from time to time indicated to him that the sun
was retiring from the pavement, and that day would be soon ended, and the
rolling of vehicles over his head, which had become intermittent instead of
continuous, and then almost ceased, proved to him that he was no longer
under central Paris, and was approaching some solitary region, near the
external boulevards or most distant quays, where there are fewer houses and
streets, and the drain has fewer gratings. The obscurity thickened around
Jean Valjean; still he continued to advance, groping his way in the shadow.
This shadow suddenly became terrible.

CHAPTER V.

SAND, LIKE WOMAN, AS A FINENESS THAT IS PERFIDIOUS.

He felt that he was entering water, and that he had under his feet no longer
stone but mud. It often happens on certain coasts of Brittany or Scotland
that a man, whether traveller or fisherman, walking at low tide on the sand,
some distance from the shore, suddenly perceives that during the last few
minutes he has found some difficulty in walking. The shore beneath his feet
is like pitch, his heels are attached to it, it is no longer sand but bird-lime;
the sand is perfectly dry, but at every step taken, so soon as the foot is
raised the imprint it leaves fills with water. The eye, however, has perceived
no change, the immense expanse is smooth and calm, all the sand seems
alike, nothing distinguishes the soil which is solid from that which is no
longer so, and the little merry swarm of water-fleas continue to leap
tumultuously round the feet of the wayfarer. The man follows his road,
turns toward the land, and tries to approach the coast, not that he is alarmed;
alarmed at what? Still, he feels as if the heaviness of his feet increased at
every step that he takes; all at once he sinks in, sinks in two or three inches.
He is decidedly not on the right road, and stops to look about him. Suddenly
he looks at his feet, but they have disappeared, the sand covers them. He
draws his feet out of the sand and tries to turn back, but he sinks in deeper
still. The sand comes up to his ankle; he pulls it out and turns to his left,
when the sand comes to his knee; he turns to the right, and the sand comes
up to his thigh; then he recognizes with indescribable terror that he is
caught in a quicksand, and has under him the frightful medium in which a
man can no more walk than a fish can swim. He throws away his load, if he
have one, and lightens himself like a ship in distress; but it is too late, for
the sand is already above his knees. He calls out, waves his hat or
handkerchief, but the sand gains on him more and more. If the shore is
deserted, if land is too distant, if the sand-bank is too ill-famed, if there is
no hero in the vicinity, it is all over with him, and he is condemned to be
swallowed by the quicksands. He is doomed to that long, awful, implacable
interment, impossible to delay or hasten, which lasts hours; which never
ends; which seizes you when erect, free, and in perfect health; which drags
you by the feet; which, at every effort you attempt, every cry you utter,
drags you a little deeper; which seems to punish you for your resistance by
a redoubled clutch; which makes a man slowly enter the ground while
allowing him ample time to regard the houses, the trees, the green fields,

the smoke from the villages on the plain, the sails of the vessels on the sea,
the birds that fly and sing, the sun, and the sky. A quicksand is a sepulchre
that converts itself into a tide, and ascends from the bottom of the earth
toward a living man. Each moment inexorably wraps grave-clothes about
him. The wretch tries to sit, to lie down, to walk, to crawl; all the
movements that he makes bury him; he draws himself up, and only sinks
deeper; he feels himself being swallowed up; he yells, implores, cries to the
clouds, writhes his arms, and grows desperate. Then he is in the sand up to
his waist; the sand reaches his chest, he is but a bust. He raises his hands,
utters furious groans, digs his nails into the sand, tries to hold by this dust,
raises himself on his elbows to tear himself from this soft sheath, and sobs
frenziedly. The sand mounts, the sand reaches his shoulders, the sand
reaches his neck, the face alone is visible now. The mouth cries, the sand
fills it; silence. The eyes still look, the sand closes them; night. Then the
forehead sinks, and a little hair waves above the sand; a hand emerges, digs
up the sand, is waved, and disappears,—a sinister effacement of a man.
At times the rider is swallowed up with his horse, at times the carter with
his cart. It is a shipwreck otherwhere than in the water; it is the land
drowning man. The land penetrated by the ocean becomes a snare; it offers
itself as a plain, and opens like a wave. The abyss has its acts of treachery.
Such a mournful adventure, always possible on some seashore, was also
possible some thirty years ago in the sewer of Paris. Before the important
works began in 1833 the subway of Paris was subject to sudden breakings-
in. The water filtered through a subjacent and peculiarly friable soil; and the
roadway, if made of paving-stones, as in the old drains, or of concrete upon
béton, as in the new galleries, having no support, bent. A bend in a planking
of this nature is a crevice, and a crevice is a bursting-in. The roadway broke
away for a certain length, and such a gap, a gulf of mud, was called in
professional language fontis. What is a fontis? It is the quicksand of the
seashore suddenly met with underground; it is the strand of Mont St. Michel
in a sewer. The moistened soil is in a state of fusion, all its particles are held
in suspense in a shifting medium; it is not land and it is not water. The depth
is at times very great. Nothing can be more formidable than meeting with
such a thing; if water predominate death is quick, for a man is drowned; if
earth predominate death is slow, for he is sucked down.

Can our readers imagine such a death? If it be frightful to sink in the sea-
strand, what is it in a cloaca? Instead of fresh air, daylight, a clear horizon,
vast sounds, the free clouds from which life rains, the barque perceived in
the distance, that hope under every form, of possible passers-by, of possible
help up to the last minute,—instead of all this, deafness, blindness, a black
archway, the interior of a tomb already made, death in the mud under a
tombstone! Slow asphyxia by uncleanliness, a sarcophagus where asphyxia
opens its claws in the filth and clutches you by the throat; fetidness mingled
with the death-rattle, mud instead of the sand, sulphuretted hydrogen in lieu
of the hurricane, ordure instead of the ocean! And to call and gnash the
teeth, and writhe and struggle and expire, with this enormous city which
knows nothing of it above one's head.
Inexpressible the horror of dying thus! Death sometimes expiates its
atrocity by a certain terrible dignity. On the pyre, in shipwreck, a man may
be great; in the flames, as in the foam, a superb attitude is possible, and a
man transfigures himself. But in this case it is not so, for the death is
unclean. It is humiliating to expire in such a way, and the last floating
visions are abject. Mud is the synonym of shame, and is little, ugly, and
infamous. To die in a butt of Malmsey like Clarence,—very well; but in a
sewer like d'Escoubleau is horrible. To struggle in it is hideous, for at the
same time as a man is dying, he is dabbling. There is enough darkness for it
to be Hell, and enough mud for it to be merely a slough, and the dying man
does not know whether he is about to become a spectre or a frog.
Everywhere else the sepulchre is sinister, but here it is deformed.
The depth of the fontis varied, as did the length and density, according to
the nature of the subsoil. At times a fontis was three or four feet deep, at
times eight or ten, and sometimes it was bottomless. In one the mud was
almost solid, in another nearly liquid. In the Lunière fontis, a man would
have taken a day in disappearing, while he would have been devoured in
five minutes by the Phélippeaux slough. The mud bears more or less well
according to its degree of density, and a lad escapes where a man is lost.
The first law of safety is to throw away every sort of loading, and every
sewer-man who felt the ground giving way under him began by getting rid
of his basket of tools. The fontis had various causes,—friability of soil,
some convulsion at a depth beyond a man's reach, violent summer showers,
the incessant winter rain, and long drizzling rains. At times the weight of

the surrounding houses upon a marshy or sandy soil broke the roofs of the
subterranean galleries and made them shrink, or else it happened that the
roadway broke and slit up under the terrific pressure. The pile of the
Panthéon destroyed in this way about a century ago a portion of the cellars
in Mont Sainte Geneviève. When a sewer gave way under the weight of the
houses, the disorder was expressed above in the street by a sort of saw-
toothed parting between the paving-stones. This rent was developed in a
serpentine line, along the whole length of the cracked vault, and in such a
case, the evil being visible, the remedy might be prompt. It often happened
also that the internal ravage was not revealed by any scar outside, and in
that case, woe to the sewer-men. Entering the injured drain incautiously,
they might be lost in it The old registers mention several night-men buried
in this manner in the fontis. They mention several names, among others that
of the sewer-man swallowed up in a slough under the opening on the Rue
Carême Prenant, of the name of Blaise Poutrain; this Blaise was brother of
Nicholas Poutrain, who was the last sexton of the cemetery called the
Charnier des Innocents in 1785, when that cemetery expired. There was
also the young and charming Vicomte d'Escoubleau, to whom we have
alluded, one of the heroes of the siege of Lerida, where the assault was
made in silk stockings and with violins at their head. D'Escoubleau,
surprised one night with his cousin, the Duchesse de Sourdis, drowned
himself in a cesspool of the Beautreillis sewer, where he had taken refuge to
escape the Duc. Madame de Sourdis, when told the story of this death,
asked for her smelling-bottle, and forgot to weep through inhaling her salts.
In such a case there is no love that holds out; the cloaca extinguishes it.
Hero refuses to wash the corpse of Leander. Thisbe holds her nose in the
presence of Pyramus, and says, Pah!

CHAPTER VI.

THE FONTIS.

Jean Valjean found himself in presence of a fontis: this sort of breaking-in
was frequent at that day in the subsoil of the Champs Élysées, which was

difficult to manage in hydraulic works, and not preservative of subterranean
constructions, owing to its extreme fluidity. This fluidity exceeds even the
inconsistency of the sands of the Quartier St. Georges, which could only be
overcome by laying rubble on béton, and of the gas-infected clay strata in
the Quartier des Martyrs, which are so liquid that a passage could be
effected under the gallery only by means of an iron tube. When in 1836 the
authorities demolished and rebuilt under the Faubourg St. Honoré the old
stone sewer in which Jean Valjean is now engaged, the shifting sand which
is the subsoil of the Champs Élysées as far as the Seine offered such an
obstacle that the operation lasted six months, to the great annoyance of
those living on the water-side, especially such as had mansions and
coaches. The works were more than difficult, they were dangerous; but we
must allow that it rained for four and a half months, and the Seine
overflowed thrice. The fontis which Jean Valjean came across was
occasioned by the shower of the previous evening. A giving way of the
pavement, which was badly supported by the subjacent sand, had produced
a deposit of rain-water, and when the filtering had taken place the ground
broke in, and the roadway, being dislocated, fell into the mud. How far? It
was impossible to say, for the darkness was denser there than anywhere
else; it was a slough of mud in a cavern of night. Jean Valjean felt the
pavement depart from under him as he entered the slough; there was water
at top and mud underneath. He must pass it, for it was impossible to turn
back; Marius was dying, and Jean Valjean worn out. Where else could he
go? Jean Valjean advanced; the slough appeared but of slight depth at the
first few steps, but as he advanced his legs sank in. He soon had mud up to
the middle of the leg, and water up to the middle of the knee. He walked
along, raising Marius with both arms as high as he could above the surface
of the water; the mud now came up to his knees and the water to his waist.
He could no longer draw back, and he sank in deeper and deeper. This mud,
dense enough for the weight of one man, could not evidently bear two;
Marius and Jean Valjean might have had a chance of getting out separately;
but, for all that, Jean Valjean continued to advance, bearing the dying man,
who was perhaps a corpse. The water came up to his armpits, and he felt
himself drowning; he could scarce move in the depth of mud in which he
was standing, for the density which was the support was also the obstacle.
He still kept Marius up, and advanced with an extraordinary expenditure of
strength, but he was sinking. He had only his head out of water and his two

arms sustaining Marius. In the old paintings of the Deluge there is a mother
holding her child in the same way. As he still sank he threw back his face to
escape the water and be able to breathe; any one who saw him in this
darkness would have fancied he saw a mask floating on the gloomy waters;
he vaguely perceived above him Marius's hanging head and livid face; he
made a desperate effort and advanced his foot, which struck against
something solid,—a resting-place. It was high time.
He drew himself up, and writhed and rooted himself with a species of fury
upon this support. It produced on him the effect of the first step of a
staircase reascending to life. This support, met with in the mud at the
supreme moment, was the beginning of the other side of the roadway,
which had fallen in without breaking, and bent under the water like a plank
in a single piece. A well-constructed pavement forms a curve, and possesses
such firmness. This fragment of roadway, partly submerged, but solid, was a
real incline, and once upon it they were saved. Jean Valjean ascended it, and
attained the other side of the slough. On leaving the water his foot caught
against a stone and he fell on his knees. He found that this was just, and
remained on them for some time, with his soul absorbed in words addressed
to God.
He rose, shivering, chilled, polluted, bent beneath the dying man he carried,
all dripping with filth, but with his soul full of a strange brightness.

CHAPTER VII.

SOMETIMES ONE IS STRANDED WHERE HE THINKS TO LAND.

He set out once again; still, if he had not left his life in the fontis, he seemed
to have left his strength there. This supreme effort had exhausted him, and
his fatigue was now so great that he was obliged to rest every three or four
paces to take breath, and leaned against the wall. Once he was obliged to sit
down on the banquette in order to alter Marius's position, and believed that
he should remain there. But if his vigor were dead his energy was not so,
and he rose again. He walked desperately, almost quickly, went thus one

hundred yards without raising his head, almost without breathing, and all at
once ran against the wall. He had reached an elbow of the drain, and on
arriving head down at the turning, came against the wall. He raised his eyes,
and at the end of the passage down there, far, very far away, perceived a
light. But this time it was no terrible light, but white, fair light. It was
daylight. Jean Valjean saw the outlet. A condemned soul that suddenly saw
from the middle of the furnace the issue from Gehenna would feel what
Jean Valjean felt. It would fly wildly with the stumps of its burnt wings
toward the radiant gate. Jean Valjean no longer felt fatigue, he no longer felt
Marius's weight, he found again his muscles of steel, and ran rather than
walked. As he drew nearer, the outlet became more distinctly designed; it
was an arch, not so tall as the roof, which gradually contracted, and not so
wide as the gallery, which grew narrower at the same time as the roof
became lowered. The tunnel finished inside in the shape of a funnel,—a
faulty reduction, imitated from the wickets of houses of correction, logical
in a prison, but illogical in a drain, and which has since been corrected.
Jean Valjean reached the issue and then stopped; it was certainly the outlet,
but they could not get out. The arch was closed by a strong grating, and this
grating, which apparently rarely turned on its oxidized hinges, was fastened
to the stone wall by a heavy lock, which, red with rust, seemed an enormous
brick. The key-hole was visible, as well as the bolt deeply plunged into its
iron box. It was one of those Bastille locks of which ancient Paris was so
prodigal. Beyond the grating were the open air, the river, daylight, the bank,
—very narrow but sufficient to depart,—the distant quays, Paris,—that gulf
in which a man hides himself so easily,—the wide horizon, and liberty. On
the right could be distinguished, down the river, the Pont de Jéna, and at the
left, up stream, the Pont des Invalides; the spot would have been a favorable
one to await night and escape. It was one of the most solitary points in
Paris, the bank facing the Gros-Caillou. The flies went in and out through
the grating bars. It might be about half-past eight in the evening, and day
was drawing in: Jean Valjean laid Marius along the wall on the dry part of
the way, then walked up to the grating and seized the bars with both hands;
the shock was frenzied, but the effect nil. The grating did not stir. Jean
Valjean seized the bars one after the other, hoping he might be able to break
out the least substantial one and employ it as a lever to lift, the gate off the
hinges or break the lock, but not a bar stirred. A tiger's teeth are not more

solidly set in their sockets. Without a lever it was impossible to open the
grating, and the obstacle was invincible.
Must he finish, then, there? What should he do? What would become of
him? He had not the strength to turn back and recommence the frightful
journey which he had already made. Moreover, how was he to cross again
that slough from which he had only escaped by a miracle? And after the
slough, was there not the police squad, which he assuredly would not
escape twice; and then where should he go, and what direction take?
Following the slope would not lead to his object, for if he reached another
outlet he would find it obstructed by an iron plate or a grating. All the issues
were indubitably closed in that way; accident had left the grating by which
they entered open, but it was plain that all the other mouths of the sewer
were closed. They had only succeeded in escaping into a prison.
It was all over, and all that Jean Valjean had done was useless: God opposed
it. They were both caught in the dark and immense web of death, and Jean
Valjean felt the fearful spider already running along the black threads in the
darkness. He turned his hack to the grating and fell on the pavement near
Marius, who was still motionless, and whose head had fallen between his
knees. There was no outlet; that was the last drop of agony. Of whom did he
think in this profound despondency? Neither of himself nor of Marius! He
thought of Cosette.

CHAPTER VIII.

THE TORN COAT-SKIRT.

In the midst of his annihilation a hand was laid on his shoulder, and a low
voice said,—
"Half shares."
Some one in this shadow? As nothing so resembles a dream as despair, Jean
Valjean fancied that he was dreaming. He had not heard a footstep. Was it
possible? He raised his eyes, and a man was standing before him. This man
was dressed in a blouse, his feet were naked, and he held his shoes in his

hand; he had evidently taken them off in order to be able to reach Jean
Valjean without letting his footsteps be heard. Jean Valjean had not a
moment's hesitation: however unexpected the meeting might be, the man
was known to him: it was Thénardier. Although, so to speak, aroused with a
start, Jean Valjean, accustomed to alarms and to unexpected blows which it
is necessary to parry quickly, at once regained possession of all his presence
of mind. Besides, the situation could not be worse; a certain degree of
distress is not capable of any crescendo, and Thénardier himself could not
add any blackness to this night. There was a moment's expectation.
Thénardier, raising his right hand to the level of his forehead, made a screen
of it; then he drew his eyebrows together with a wink, which, with a slight
pinching of the lips, characterizes the sagacious attention of a man who is
striving to recognize another. He did not succeed. Jean Valjean, as we said,
was turning his back to the light, and was besides so disfigured, so filthy,
and blood-stained that he could not have been recognized in broad daylight.
On the other hand, Thénardier, with his face lit up by the light from the
grating,—a cellar brightness, it is true,—livid but precise in his lividness,
leaped at once into Jean Valjean's eyes, to employ the energetic popular
metaphor. This inequality of conditions sufficed to insure some advantage
to Jean Valjean in the mysterious duel which was about to begin between
the two situations and the two men. The meeting took place between Jean
Valjean masked and Thénardier unmasked. Jean Valjean at once perceived
that Thénardier did not recognize him; and they looked at each other
silently in this gloom, as if taking each other's measure. Thénardier was the
first to break the silence.
"How do you mean to get out?"
Jean Valjean not replying, Thénardier continued:
"It is impossible to pick the lock: and yet you must get out of here."
"That is true," said Jean Valjean.
"Well, then, half shares."
"What do you mean?"
"You have killed the man; very good, and I have the key."
Thénardier pointed to Marius, and continued,—

"I do not know you, but you must be a friend, and I wish to help you."
Jean Valjean began to understand. Thénardier took him for an assassin. The
latter continued,—
"Listen, mate; you did not kill this man without looking to see what he had
in his pockets. Give me my half and I open the gate."
And half drawing a heavy key from under his ragged blouse, he added,—
"Would you like to see how the key to liberty is made? Look here."
Jean Valjean was so dazed that he doubted whether what he saw was real. It
was Providence appearing in a horrible form, and the good angel issuing
from the ground in the shape of Thénardier. The latter thrust his hand into a
wide pocket hidden under his blouse, drew out a rope, and handed it to Jean
Valjean.
"There," he said, "I give you the rope into the bargain."
"What am I to do with the rope?"
"You also want a stone, but you will find that outside, as there is a heap of
them."
"What am I to do with a stone?"
"Why, you ass, as you are going to throw the stiff into the river, you want a
rope and a stone, or else the body will float on the water."
Jean Valjean took the rope mechanically, and Thénardier snapped his
fingers as if a sudden idea had occurred to him.
"Hilloh, mate! how did you manage to get through that slough? I did not
dare venture into it. Peuh! you do not smell pleasant."
After a pause he added,—
"I ask you questions, but you are right not to answer: it is an apprenticeship
for the examining magistrate's ugly quarter of an hour. And then, by not
speaking at all a man runs no risk of speaking too loud. No matter, though I
cannot see your face and do not know your name, you would do wrong in
supposing that I do not know who you are and what you want. I know all
about it: you have rather split this gentleman, and now want to get rid of
him somewhere. You prefer the river, that great nonsense-hider, and I will

help you out of the hobble. It is my delight to aid a good fellow when in
trouble."
While commending Jean Valjean for his silence it was plain that he was
trying to make him speak. He pushed his shoulder, so as to be able to see
his profile, and exclaimed, though without raising the pitch of his voice,—
"Talking of the slough, you are a precious ass. Why did you not throw the
man into it?"
Jean Valjean preserved silence. Thénardier continued, raising his rag of a
cravat to the Adam's apple,—a gesture which completes the capable air of a
serious man.
"Really, you may have acted sensibly, for the workmen who will come to-
morrow to stop up the hole would certainly have found the swell, and your
trail would be followed up. Some one has passed through the sewer. Who?
How did he get out? Was he seen to do so? The police are full of sense; the
drain is a traitor, and denounces you. Such a find is a rarity; it attracts
attention; for few people employ the sewer for their little business, while
the river belongs to everybody, and is the real grave. At the end of a month
your man is fished up at the nets of St. Cloud. Well, who troubles himself
about that? It's carrion, that's all. Who killed the man? Paris. And justice
makes no inquiries. You acted wisely."
The more loquacious Thénardier became, the more silent Jean Valjean was.
Thénardier shook his shoulder again.
"And now, let's settle our business. You have Been my key, so show me
your money."
Thénardier was haggard, firm, slightly menacing, but remarkably friendly.
There was one strange fact: Thénardier's manner was not simple; he did not
appear entirely at his ease. While not affecting any mysterious air, he spoke
in a low voice. From time to time he laid his finger on his lip, and muttered
"Chut!" It was difficult to guess why, for there were only themselves
present. Jean Valjean thought that other bandits were probably hidden in
some corner no great distance off, and that Thénardier was not anxious to
share with them. The latter continued,—
"Now for a finish. How much had the swell about him?"

Jean Valjean felt in his pockets. It was, as will be remembered, always his
rule to have money about him for the gloomy life of expedients to which he
was condemned rendered it a law for him. This time, however, he was
unprovided. In putting on upon the previous evening his National Guard
uniform, he forgot, mournfully absorbed as he was, to take out his pocket-
book, and he had only some change in his waistcoat-pocket. He turned out
his pocket, which was saturated with slime, and laid on the banquette a
louis d'or, two five-franc pieces, and five or six double sous. Thénardier
thrust out his lower lip with a significant twist of the neck.
"You did not kill him for much," he said.
He began most familiarly feeling in Jean Valjean and Marius's pockets, and
Jean Valjean, who was most anxious to keep his back to the light, allowed
him to do so. While feeling in Marius's coat, Thénardier, with the dexterity
of a conjurer, managed to tear off, without Jean Valjean perceiving the fact,
a strip, which he concealed under his blouse; probably thinking that this
piece of cloth might help him to recognize hereafter the assassinated man
and the assassin. However, he found no more than the thirty francs.
"It is true," he said; "one with the other, you have no more than that."
And forgetting his phrase, half-shares, he took all. He hesitated a little at the
double sous, but on reflection he took them too, while grumbling, "I don't
care, it is killing people too cheaply."
This done, he again took the key from under his blouse.
"Now, my friend, you must be off. It is here as at the fairs; you pay when
you go out. You have paid, so you can go."
And he began laughing. We may be permitted to doubt whether he had the
pure and disinterested intention of saving an assassin, when he gave a
stranger the help of this key, and allowed any one but himself to pass
through this gate. Thénardier helped Jean Valjean to replace Marius on his
back, and then proceeded to the grating on the tips of his naked feet. After
making Jean Valjean a sign to follow him, he placed his finger on his lip,
and remained for some seconds as if in suspense; but when the inspection
was over he put the key in the lock. The bolt slid, and the gate turned on its
hinges without either grinding or creaking. It was plain that this grating and
these hinges, carefully oiled, opened more frequently than might be

supposed. This smoothness was ill-omened; it spoke of furtive comings and
goings, of the mysterious entrances and exits of night-men, and the crafty
foot-fall of crime. The sewer was evidently an accomplice of some dark
band, and this taciturn grating was a receiver. Thénardier held the door ajar,
left just room for Jean Valjean to pass, relocked the gate, and plunged back
into the darkness, making no more noise than a breath; he seemed to walk
with the velvety pads of a tiger. A moment later this hideous providence had
disappeared, and Jean Valjean was outside.

CHAPTER IX.

MARIUS APPEARS DEAD TO A CONNAISSEUR.

He let Marius slip down on to the bank. They were outside: the miasmas,
the darkness, the horror, were behind him; the healthy, pure, living, joyous,
freely respirable air inundated him. All around him was silence, but it was
the charming silence of the sun setting in the full azure. Twilight was
passing, and night, the great liberator, the friend of all those who need a
cloak of darkness to escape from an agony, was at hand. The sky presented
itself on all sides like an enormous calm, and the river rippled up to his feet
with the sound of a kiss. The aerial dialogue of the nests bidding each other
good-night in the elms of the Champs Élysées was audible. A few stars,
faintly studding the pale blue of the zenith, formed in the immensity little
imperceptible flashes. Night unfolded over Jean Valjean's head all the
sweetness of infinitude. It was the undecided and exquisite hour which says
neither yes nor no. There was already sufficient night for a man to lose
himself in it a short distance off, and yet sufficient daylight to recognize any
one close by. Jean Valjean was for a few seconds irresistibly overcome by
all this august and caressing serenity. There are minutes of oblivion in
which suffering gives up harassing the wretch; all is eclipsed in the thought;
peace covers the dreamer like night, and under the gleaming twilight the
soul is lit with stars in imitation of the sky which is becoming illumined.
Jean Valjean could not refrain from contemplating the vast clear night
above him, and pensively took a bath of ecstasy and prayer in the majestic

silence of the eternal heavens. Then, as if the feeling of duty returned to
him, he eagerly bent down over Marius, and lifting some water in the
hollow of his hand, softly threw a few drops into his face. Marius's eyelids
did not move, but he still breathed through his parted lips. Jean Valjean was
again about to plunge his hand into the river, when he suddenly felt an
indescribable uneasiness, as when we feel there is some one behind us
without seeing him. He turned round, and there was really some one behind
him, as there had been just before.
A man of tall stature, dressed in a long coat, with folded arms, and carrying
in his right hand a "life-preserver," whose leaden knob could be seen, was
standing a few paces behind Jean Valjean, who was leaning over Marius. It
was with the help of the darkness a species of apparition; a simple man
would have been frightened at it owing to the twilight, and a thoughtful one
on account of the bludgeon. Jean Valjean recognized Javert. The reader has
doubtless guessed that the tracker of Thénardier was no other than Javert.
Javert, after his unhoped-for escape from the barricade, went to the
Préfecture of Police, made a verbal report to the prefect in person in a short
audience, and then immediately returned to duty, which implied—the note
found on him will be remembered—a certain surveillance of the right bank
of the river at the Champs Élysées, which had for some time past attracted
the attention of the police. There he perceived Thénardier and followed him.
The rest is known.
It will be also understood that the grating so obligingly opened for Jean
Valjean was a clever trick on the part of Thénardier. He felt that Javert was
still there,—the watched man has a scent which never deceives him,—and it
was necessary to throw a bone to this greyhound. An assassin,—what a
chance! he could not let it slip. Thénardier, on putting Jean Valjean outside
in his place, offered a prey to the policeman, made him loose his hold,
caused himself to be forgotten in a greater adventure, recompensed Javert
for his loss of time,—which always flatters a spy,—gained thirty francs, and
fully intended for his own part to escape by the help of this diversion.
Jean Valjean had passed from one reef to another.
These two meetings one upon the other, felling from Thénardier on Javert,
were rude. Javert did not recognize Jean Valjean, who, as we have said, no
longer resembled himself. He did not unfold his arms, but made sure his

"life-preserver" by an imperceptible movement, and said, in a sharp, calm
voice,—
"Who are you?"
"Myself."
"What do you mean?"
"I am Jean Valjean."
Javert placed his life-preserver between his teeth, bent his knees, bowed his
back, laid his two powerful hands on Jean Valjean's shoulders, which they
held as in two vises, examined and recognized him. Their faces almost
touched, and Javert's glance was terrific. Jean Valjean remained inert under
Javert's gripe, like a lion enduring the claw of a lynx.
"Inspector Javert," he said, "you have me. Besides, since this morning I
have considered myself your prisoner. I did not give you my address in
order to try to escape you. Take me, but grant me one thing."
Javert did not seem to hear, but kept his eyeballs fixed on Jean Valjean. His
wrinkled chin thrust up his lips toward his nose, a sign of stern reverie. At
length he loosed his hold of Jean Valjean, drew himself up, clutched his
cudgel, and, as if in a dream, muttered rather than asked this question,—
"What are you doing here, and who is that man?"
Jean Valjean replied, and the sound of his voice seemed to awaken Javert,—
"It is of him that I wished to speak. Do with me as you please, but help me
first to carry him home. I only ask this of you."
Javert's face was contracted in the same way as it always was when any one
believed him capable of a concession; still he did not say no. He stopped
again, took from his pocket a handkerchief, which he dipped in the water,
and wiped Marius's ensanguined forehead.
"This man was at the barricade," he said in a low voice, and as if speaking
to himself; "he was the one whom they called Marius."
He was a first-class spy, who had observed everything, listened to
everything, heard everything, and picked up everything, when he believed
himself a dead man; who spied even in his death agony, and, standing on

the first step of the sepulchre, took notes. He seized Marius's hand, and felt
his pulse.
"He is wounded," said Jean Valjean.
"He is a dead man," said Javert.
Jean Valjean replied,—
"No; not yet."
"Then you brought him from the barricade here?" Javert observed.
His preoccupation must have been great for him not to dwell on this
alarming escape through the sewers, and not even remark Jean Valjean's
silence after his question. Jean Valjean, on his side, seemed to have a sole
thought; he continued,—
"He lives in the Marais, in the Rue des Filles du Calvaire, with his
grandfather. I do not know his name."
Jean Valjean felt in Marius's pocket, took out the portfolio, opened it at the
page on which Marius had written in pencil, and offered it to Javert. There
was still sufficient floating light in the air to be able to read, and Javert,
besides, had in his eyes the feline phosphorescence of night-birds. He
deciphered the few lines written by Marius, and growled, "Gillenormand,
No. 6, Rue des Filles du Calvaire." Then he cried, "Driver!"
Our readers will remember the coachman waiting above in case of need. A
moment after the hackney, which came down the incline leading to the
watering-place, was on the bank. Marius was deposited on the back seat,
and Javert sat down by Jean Valjean's side on the front one. When the door
was closed the fiacre started off rapidly along the quays in the direction of
the Bastille. They quitted the quay and turned into the streets; and the
driver, a black outline on his seat, lashed his lean horses. There was an icy
silence in the hackney coach; Marius motionless, with his body reclining in
one corner, his head on his chest, his arms pendent, and his legs stiff,
appeared to be only waiting for a coffin. Jean Valjean seemed made of
gloom, and Javert of stone; and in this fiacre full of night, whose interior,
each time that it passed a lamp, seemed to be lividly lit up as if by an
intermittent flash, accident united and appeared to confront the three
immobilities of tragedy,—the corpse, the spectre, and the statue.

CHAPTER X.

RETURN OF THE SON PRODIGAL OF HIS LIFE.

At each jolt over the pavement a drop of blood fell from Marius's hair. It
was quite night when the hackney coach reached No. 6, Rue des Filles du
Calvaire. Javert got out first, examined at a glance the number over the
gateway, and raising the heavy knocker of hammered steel, embellished in
the old style with a goat and a satyr contending, gave a violent knock. The
folding-door opened slightly, and Javert pushed it open. The porter half
showed himself, yawning, and scarce awake, candle in hand. All were
asleep in the house, for people go to bed early at the Marais, especially on
days of rioting. This good old district, terrified by the revolution, takes
refuge in sleep, like children who, when they hear "old Bogey coming,"
quickly hide their heads under the counterpane. In the mean while Jean
Valjean and the driver removed Marius from the hackney coach, Valjean
holding him under the armpits and the coachman under the knees. While
carrying Marius in this way Jean Valjean passed his hands under his clothes,
which were terribly torn, felt his chest, and assured himself that his heart
still beat. It even beat a little less feebly, as if the motion of the vehicle had
produced a certain renewal of vitality. Javert addressed the porter in the
tone which becomes the government in the presence of the porter of a
factionist.
"Any one live here of the name of Gillenormand?"
"It is here. What do you want with him?"
"We bring him his son."
"His son?" the porter asked in amazement.
"He is dead."
Jean Valjean, who came up ragged and filthy behind Javert, and whom the
porter regarded with some horror, made him a sign that it was not so. The
porter seemed neither to understand Javert's remark nor Jean Valjean's sign.
Javert continued,—

"He has been to the barricade, and here he is."
"To the barricade!" the porter exclaimed.
"He has been killed. Go and wake his father."
The porter did not stir.
"Be off!" Javert continued; and added, "There will be a funeral here to-
morrow."
For Javert, the ordinary incidents of the streets were classified categorically,
which is the commencement of foresight and surveillance, and each
eventuality had its compartment; the possible facts were to some extent kept
in drawers, whence they issued on occasions, in variable quantities; there
were in the streets, disturbance, riot, carnival, and interments.
The porter limited himself to awaking Basque; Basque awoke Nicolette;
Nicolette awoke Aunt Gillenormand. As for the grandfather, he was left to
sleep, as it was thought that he would know the affair quite soon enough as
it was. Marius was carried to the first-floor, no one being acquainted with
the fact in the rest of the house, and he was laid on an old sofa in M.
Gillenormand's ante-room, and while Basque went to fetch a physician and
Nicolette opened the linen-presses, Jean Valjean felt Javert touch his
shoulder. He understood, and went down, Javert following close at his
heels. The porter saw them depart, as he had seen them arrive, with a
startled sleepiness. They got into the hackney coach, and the driver on his
box.
"Inspector Javert," Jean Valjean said, "grant me one thing more."
"What is it?" Javert answered roughly.
"Let me go home for a moment, and you can then do with me what you
please."
Javert remained silent for a few moments with his chin thrust into the collar
of his great-coat, and then let down the front window.
"Driver," he said, "No. 7, Rue de l'Homme Armé."

CHAPTER XI.

A SHAKING IN THE ABSOLUTE.

They did not speak during the entire ride. What did Jean Valjean want? To
finish what he had begun; to warn Cosette, tell her where Marius was, give
her perhaps some other useful information, and make, if he could, certain
final arrangements. For his own part, as regarded what concerned him
personally, it was all over; he had been arrested by Javert, and did not resist.
Any other than he, in such a situation, would perhaps have thought vaguely
of the rope which Thénardier had given him, and the bars of the first cell he
entered; but since his meeting with the Bishop, Jean Valjean had within him
a profound religious hesitation against every assault, even on himself.
Suicide, that mysterious attack on the unknown, which may contain to a
certain extent the death of the soul, was impossible to Jean Valjean.
On entering the Rue de l'Homme Armé the coach stopped, as the street was
too narrow for vehicles to pass along it. Jean Valjean and Javert got out. The
driver humbly represented to "Mr. Inspector" that the Utrecht velvet of his
coach was quite spoiled by the blood of the assassinated man and the filth
of the assassin,—that is how he understood the affair,—and he added that
an indemnity was due to him. At the same time taking his license-book
from his pocket, he begged Mr. Inspector to have the kindness to write him
a little bit of a certificate. Javert thrust back the book which the driver
offered him and said,—
"How much do you want, including the time you waited and the journey?"
"It's seven hours and a quarter," the driver answered, "and my velvet was
brand new. Eighty francs, Mr. Inspector."
Javert took from his pocket four Napoleons, and dismissed the hackney
coach. Jean Valjean thought that it was Javert's intention to take him on foot
to the Blancs Manteaux post, or that of the Archives, which were close by.
They entered the street, which was as usual deserted. Javert followed Jean
Valjean, and, on reaching No. 7, the latter rapped, and the gate opened.
"Very good," said Javert; "go up."

He added, with a strange expression, and as if making an effort to speak in
this way,—
"I will wait for you here."
Jean Valjean looked at Javert, for this style of conduct was not at all a habit
of Javert's. Still, it could not surprise him greatly that Javert should now
place in him a sort of haughty confidence,—the confidence of the cat which
grants the mouse liberty to the length of its claw, determined as Jean
Valjean was to give himself up and make an end of it. He thrust open the
gate, entered the house, shouted to the porter, who was lying down and had
pulled the string from his bed, "It is I," and mounted the staircase. On
reaching the first story he paused, for every Via Dolorosa has its stations.
The window at the head of the stairs, a sash-window, was open. As is the
case in many old houses, the staircase obtained light from, and looked out
on, the street. The street lantern, situated precisely opposite, threw some
little light on the stairs, which caused a saving of a lamp. Jean Valjean,
either to breathe or mechanically, thrust his head out of this window and
looked down into the street. It is short, and the lamp lit it from one end to
the other. Jean Valjean had a bedazzlement of stupor: there was no one in it.
Javert had gone away.

CHAPTER XII.

THE GRANDFATHER.

Basque and the porter had carried Marius, who was still lying motionless on
the sofa on which he had been laid on arriving, into the drawing-room. The
physician, who had been sent for, hurried in, and Aunt Gillenormand had
risen. Aunt Gillenormand came and went, horrified, clasping her hands, and
incapable of doing anything but saying, "Can it be possible?" She added at
intervals, "Everything will be stained with blood." When the first horror had
passed away a certain philosophy of the situation appeared even in her
mind, and was translated by the exclamation, "It must end in that way." She

did not go so far, though, as "Did I not say so?" which is usual on occasions
of this nature.
By the surgeon's orders a folding-bed was put up near the sofa. He
examined Marius, and after satisfying himself that the pulse still beat, that
the patient had no penetrating wound in the chest, and that the blood at the
corners of the lips came from the nostrils, he had him laid flat on the bed,
without a pillow, the head level with the body, and even a little lower, the
chest bare, in order to facilitate the breathing. Mademoiselle Gillenormand,
seeing that Marius was being undressed, withdrew, and told her beads in her
bed-room. The body had received no internal injury; a ball, deadened by the
pocket-book, had deviated, and passed round the ribs with a frightful gash,
but as it was not deep, it was therefore not dangerous. The long
subterranean march had completed the dislocation of the collar-bone, and
there were serious injuries there. The arms were covered with sabre-cuts; no
scar disfigured the face, but the head was cut all over with gashes. What
would be the state of these wounds on the head,—did they stop at the scalp,
or did they reach the brain? It was impossible to say yet. It was a serious
symptom that they had caused the faintness. And men do not always awake
from such fainting-fits; the hemorrhage, moreover, had exhausted the
wounded man. From the waist downward the lower part of the body had
been protected by the barricade.
Basque and Nicolette tore up linen and prepared bandages: Nicolette sewed
them and Basque rolled them. As they had no lint, the physician had
temporarily checked the effusion of blood with cakes of wadding. By the
side of the bed three candles burned on the table on which the surgeon's
pocket-book lay open. He washed Marius's face and hair with cold water,
and a bucketful was red in an instant. The porter, candle in hand, lighted
him. The surgeon seemed to be thinking sadly: from time to time he gave a
negative shake of the head, as if answering some question which he
mentally addressed to himself. Such mysterious dialogues of the physician
with himself are a bad sign for the patient. At the moment when the surgeon
was wiping the face and gently touching with his finger the still closed
eyelids, a door opened at the end of the room, and a tall, pale figure
appeared: it was the grandfather. The riot during the last two days had
greatly agitated, offended, and occupied M. Gillenormand; he had not been
able to sleep on the previous night, and he had been feverish all day. At

night he went to bed at a very early hour, bidding his people bar up the
house, and had fallen asleep through weariness.
Old men have a fragile sleep. M. Gillenormand's bed-room joined the
drawing-room, and whatever precautions had been taken, the noise awoke
him. Surprised by the crack of light which he saw in his door, he had got
out of bed and groped his way to the door. He was standing on the
threshold, with one hand on the door-handle, his head slightly bent forward
and shaking, his body enfolded in a white dressing-gown as straight and
creaseless as a winding-sheet: he was surprised, and looked like a ghost
peering into a tomb. He noticed the bed, and on the mattress this young
bleeding man, of the whiteness of wax, with closed eyes, open mouth, livid
cheeks, naked to the waist, marked all over with vermilion, wounded,
motionless, and brightly illumined.
The grandfather had from head to foot that shudder which ossified limbs
can have. His eyes, whose cornea was yellow owing to their great age, were
veiled by a sort of glassy stare; his entire face assumed in an instant the
earthly angles of a skeleton's head; his arms fell pendent as if a spring had
been broken in them, and his stupor was displayed by the outspreading of
all the fingers of his two old trembling hands. His knees formed a salient
angle, displaying through the opening of his dressing-gown his poor naked
legs bristling with white hairs, and he murmured,—
"Marius!"
"He has just been brought here, sir," said Basque; "he went to the barricade,
and—"
"He is dead," the old gentleman exclaimed in a terrible voice. "Oh, the
brigand!"
Then a sort of sepulchral transfiguration drew up this centenarian as straight
as a young man.
"You are the surgeon, sir," he said; "begin by telling me one thing. He is
dead, is he not?"
The surgeon, who was frightfully anxious, maintained silence, and M.
Gillenormand wrung his hands with a burst of terrifying laughter.

"He is dead, he is dead! He has let himself be killed at the barricade through
hatred of me; it was against me that he did it! Ah, the blood-drinker, that is
the way in which he returns to me! Woe of my life, he is dead!"
He went to a window, opened it quite wide, as if he were stifling, and
standing there began speaking to the night in the street.
"Stabbed, sabred, massacred, exterminated, slashed, cut to pieces! Do you
see that, the beggar! He knew very well that I expected him, and that I had
his room ready, and that I had placed at my bed-head his portrait when he
was a child! He knew very well that he need only return, and that for years I
had been recalling him, and that I sat at night by my fire-side with my
hands on my knees, not knowing what to do, and that I was crazy about
him! You knew that very well; you had only to return and say, 'It is I,' and
you would be the master of the house, and I would obey you, and you could
do anything you liked with your old ass of a grandfather! You knew it very
well, and said, 'No, he is a royalist, I will not go!' and you went to the
barricades, and have let yourself be killed out of spite, in order to revenge
yourself for what I said on the subject of Monsieur le Due de Berry! Is not
that infamous! Go to bed and sleep quietly, for he is dead. This is my
awaking."
The surgeon, who was beginning to be anxious for both, left Marius, and
going up to M. Gillenormand, took his arm. The grandfather turned, looked
at him with eyes that seemed dilated and bloodshot, and said calmly,—
"I thank you sir, I am calm. I am a man. I saw the death of Louis XVI., and
can endure events. There is one thing that is terrible,—it is the thought that
it is your newspapers which do all the mischief. You have scribblers,
speakers, lawyers, orators, tribunes, discussions, progress, lights, rights of
man, liberty of the press, and that is the way in which your children are
brought back to your houses. Oh, Marius, it is abominable! Killed! dead
before me! a barricade! Oh, the bandit! Doctor, you live in the quarter, I
believe? Oh yes, I know you well. I have seen your cab pass from my
window. Well, I will tell you. You are wrong if you think that I am in a
passion, for people do not get in a passion with a dead man, it would be
stupid. That is a boy I brought up; I was old when he was still quite little.
He played in the Tuileries with his little spade and his little chair, and, in
order that the inspectors should not scold, I used to fill up with my cane the

holes which he made with his spade. One day he cried, 'Down with Louis
XVIII.!' and went off. It is not my fault. He was all pink and white, and his
mother is dead: have you noticed that all little children are light-haired? He
is a son of one of those brigands of the Loire, but children are innocent of
their fathers' crimes. I remember him when he was so high, and he could
never manage to pronounce a d. He spoke so sweetly and incomprehensibly
that you might have fancied him a bird. I remember one day that a circle
was formed in front of the Farnese Hercules to admire that child, he was so
lovely. He had a head such as you see in pictures. I used to speak loud to
him, and threaten him with my cane; but he knew very well that it was a
joke. In the morning, when he entered my room, I scolded; but it produced
the effect of sunshine upon me. It is not possible to defend yourself against
these brats, for they take you, and hold you, and do not let you go again. It
is the fact that there never was a Cupid like that child. And now what do
you say of your Lafayette, your Benjamin Constant, and your Tirecuir de
Corcelles, who kill him for me? Oh, it cannot pass away like that!"
He went up to Marius, who was still livid and motionless, and began
wringing his hands again. The old gentleman's white lips moved as it were
mechanically, and allowed indistinct sentences to pass, which were scarce
audible. "Ah, heartless! ah, clubbist! ah, scoundrel! ah, Septembrizer!"—
reproaches uttered in a low voice by a dying man to a corpse. By degrees,
as such internal eruptions must always burst forth, the flood of words
returned; but the grandfather seemed no longer to have the strength to utter
them; his voice was so hollow and choked that it seemed to come from the
other brink of an abyss.
"I do not care a bit; I will die too. And then to think there is not a wench in
Paris who would not be happy to produce the happiness of that scoundrel,—
a scamp, who, instead of amusing himself and enjoying life, went to fight,
and let himself be shot like a brute! And for whom, and for what? For the
republic, instead of going to dance at the Chaumière, as is the duty of young
men! It is really worth while being twenty years of age. The republic,—a
fine absurdity! Poor mothers bring pretty boys into the world for that! Well,
he is dead; that will make two hearses under the gateway. So you have got
yourself served in that way for love of General Lamarque! What did
General Lamarque do for you? A sabrer! a chatterer! to get one's self killed
for a dead man! Is it not enough to drive one mad? Can you understand

that? At twenty! and without turning his head to see whether he left
anything behind him! Now, see the poor old fellows who are obliged to die
all alone. Rot in your corner, owl! Well, after all, that is what I hoped for,
and is for the best, as it will kill me right off. I am too old; I am one
hundred; I am a hundred thousand, and I had a right to be dead long ago.
Well, this blow settles it. It is all over. What happiness! What is the use of
making him inhale ammonia and all that pile of drugs? You ass of a doctor,
you are wasting your time. There, he's dead, quite dead! I know it, for I am
dead too. He did not do the thing by halves. Yes, the present age is
infamous, infamous, infamous! And that is what I think of you, your ideas,
your systems, your masters, your oracles, your doctors, your scamps of
writers, your rogues of philosophers, and all the revolutions which have
startled the Tuileries ravens during the last sixty years. And since you were
pitiless in letting yourself be killed so, I will not even feel sorry at your
death. Do your hear, assassin?"
At this moment Marius slowly opened his eyes, and his glance, still veiled
by lethargic surprise, settled on M. Gillenormand.
"Marius!" the old man cried; "Marius, my little Marius! My child! My
beloved son! You open your eyes! You look at me! You are alive! Thanks!"
And he fell down in a fainting fit.

BOOK IV.

JAVERT DERAILED.

Javert retired slowly from the Rue de l'Homme Armé. He walked with
drooping head for the first time in his life, and equally for the first time in
his life with his hands behind his back. Up to that day Javert had only
assumed, of Napoleon's two attitudes, the one which expresses resolution,
the arms folded on the chest; the one indicating uncertainty, the arms behind
the back, was unknown to him. Now a change had taken place, and his
whole person, slow and sombre, was stamped with anxiety. He buried
himself in the silent streets, but followed a certain direction. He went by the

shortest road to the Seine, reached the Quai des Ormes, walked along it,
passed the Grêve, and stopped, a little distance from the Place du Châtelet,
at the corner of the Pont Nôtre Dame. The Seine makes there, between that
bridge and the Pont au Change on one side, and the Quai de la Mégisserie
and the Quai aux Fleurs on the other, a species of square hike traversed by a
rapid. This point of the Seine is feared by sailors; nothing can be more
dangerous than this rapid, at that period contracted and irrigated by the piles
of the mill bridge, since demolished. The two bridges, so close to each
other, heighten the danger, for the water hurries formidably through the
arches. It rolls in broad, terrible waves, it increases, and is heaped up; the
flood strives to root out the piles of the bridge with thick liquid cords. Men
who fall in there do not reappear, and the best swimmers are drowned.
Javert leaned his elbows on the parapet, his chin on his hand, and while his
hands mechanically closed on his thick whiskers, he reflected. A novelty, a
revolution, a catastrophe had just taken place within him, and he must
examine into it. Javert was suffering horribly, and for some hours past
Javert had ceased to be simple. He was troubled; this brain, so limpid in its
blindness, had lost its transparency, and there was a cloud in this crystal.
Javert felt in his conscience duty doubled, and he could not hide the fact
from himself. When he met Jean Valjean so unexpectedly on the Seine
bank, he had something within him of the wolf that recaptures its prey and
the dog that finds its master again. He saw before him two roads, both
equally straight; but he saw two of them, and this terrified him, as he had
never known in his life but one straight line. And, poignant agony! these
two roads were contrary, and one of these right lines excluded the other.
Which of the two was the true one? His situation was indescribable; to owe
his life to a malefactor, to accept this debt and repay him; to be, in spite of
himself, on the same footing with an escaped convict, and requite one
service with another service; to let it be said to him, "Be off!" and to say in
his turn, "Be free!" to sacrifice to personal motives duty, that general
obligation, and to feel in these personal motives something general too, and
perhaps superior; to betray society in order to remain faithful to his
conscience,—that all these absurdities should be realized, and accumulated
upon him, was what startled him. One thing had astonished him,—that Jean
Valjean had shown him mercy; and one thing had petrified him,—that he,
Javert, had shown mercy to Jean Valjean.

Where was he? He sought and no longer found himself. What was he to do
now? To give up Jean Valjean was bad, to leave Jean Valjean at liberty was
bad. In the former case, the man of authority fell lower than the man of the
galleys; in the second, a convict rose higher than the law, and set his foot
upon it. In either case, dishonor for him, Javert. Whatever resolution he
might form, there was a fall, for destiny has certain extremities projecting
over the impossible, beyond which life is only a precipice. Javert had
reached one of these extremities: one of his anxieties was to be constrained
to think, and the very violence of all these contradictory emotions
compelled him to do so. Now, thought was an unusual thing for him, and
singularly painful. There is always in thought a certain amount of internal
rebellion, and he was irritated at having that within him. Thought, no matter
on what subject beyond the narrow circle of his destiny, would have been to
him in any case useless and wearisome; but thinking about the day which
had just passed was a torture. And yet he must after such shocks look into
his conscience, and give himself an account of himself. What he had done
caused him to shudder; he, Javert, had thought fit to decide—against all
police regulations, against all social and judicial organization, and against
the entire codes—a discharge: that had suited him. He had substituted his
own affairs for public affairs; was not that unjustifiable? Each time that he
stood facing the nameless action which he had committed, he trembled
from head to foot. What should he resolve on? Only one resource was left
him,—to return at full speed to the Rue de l'Homme Armé and lock up Jean
Valjean. It was clear that this was what he ought to do, but he could not do
it. Something barred the way on that side. What! is there anything in the
world besides sentences, the police, and the authorities? Javert was
overwhelmed.
A sacred galley-slave! a convict impregnable by justice, and that through
the deed of Javert! Was it not frightful that Javert and Jean Valjean, the man
made to punish and the man made to endure,—that these two men, who
were both the property of the law, should have reached the point of placing
themselves both above the law? What! such enormities could happen and
no one be punished? Jean Valjean, stronger than the whole social order,
would be free, and he, Javert, would continue to eat the bread of the
Government! His reverie gradually became terrible: he might through this
reverie have reproached himself slightly on the subject of the insurgent
carried home to the Rue des Filles du Calvaire, but he did not think of it.

The slighter fault was lost in the greater; and besides, this insurgent was
evidently a dead man, and, legally, death checks persecution. Jean Valjean,
—that was the weight which he had on his mind. Jean Valjean disconcerted
him. All the axioms which had been the support of his whole life crumbled
away before this man, and the generosity of Jean Valjean to him, Javert,
overwhelmed him. Other facts which he remembered, and which he had
formerly treated as falsehoods and folly, now returned to his mind as
realities. M. Madeleine reappeared behind Jean Valjean, and the two figures
were blended into one, which was venerable. Javert felt that something
horrible, admiration for a convict, was entering his soul. Respect for a
galley-slave, is it possible? He shuddered at it, and could not escape from it,
although he struggled. He was reduced to confess in his soul the sublimity
of this villain, and this was odious. A benevolent malefactor, a
compassionate, gentle, helping, and merciful convict,—repaying good for
evil, pardon for hatred, preferring pity to vengeance, ready to destroy
himself sooner than his enemy, saving the man who had struck him,
kneeling on the pinnacle of virtue, and nearer to the angels than to man.
Javert was constrained to confess to himself that such a monster existed.
This could not last. Assuredly—and we lay stress on the fact—he had not
yielded without resistance to this monster, to this infamous angel, to this
hideous hero, at whom he felt almost as indignant as stupefied. Twenty
times while in that hackney coach face to face with Jean Valjean the legal
tiger had roared within him. Twenty times he had felt tempted to hurl
himself on Jean Valjean, to seize and devour him,—that is to say, arrest
him. What more simple, in fact,—shout to the nearest post before which he
passed, "Here is a convict who has broken his ban!" and then go away,
leave the condemned man there, be ignorant of the rest, and interfere no
further? This man is eternally the prisoner of the law, and the law will do
what it pleases with him. What was fairer? Javert had said all this to
himself; he had wished to go further,—to act, apprehend the man,—and
then, as now, had been unable; and each time that his hand was
convulsively raised to Jean Valjean's collar, it fell back as if under an
enormous weight, and he heard in the bottom of his heart a voice, a strange
voice, crying to him, "That is well. Give up your saviour, then send for
Pontius Pilate's basin, and wash your hands in it!"

Then his thoughts reverted to himself, and by the side of Jean Valjean
aggrandized he saw himself degraded. A convict was his benefactor, but
why had he allowed that man to let him live? He had the right of being
killed at that barricade, and should have employed that right. It would have
been better to call the other insurgents to his aid against Jean Valjean, and
have himself shot by force. His supreme agony was the disappearance of
certainty, and he felt himself uprooted. The code was now only a stump in
his hand, and he had to deal with scruples of an unknown species. There
was within him a sentimental revelation entirely distinct from the legal
affirmation, his sole measure hitherto, and it was not sufficient to remain in
his old honesty. A whole order of unexpected facts arose and subjugated
him, an entire new world appeared to his soul; benefits accepted and
returned, devotion, mercy, indulgence, violence done by pity to austerity, no
more definitive condemnation, no more damnation, the possibility of a tear
in the eye of the law, and perhaps some justice according to God acting in
an inverse ratio to justice according to man. He perceived in the darkness
the rising of an unknown moral sun, and he was horrified and dazzled. He
was an owl forced to look like the eagle.
He said to himself that it was true, then, that there were exceptions, that
authority might be disconcerted, that the rule might fall short in the
presence of a fact, that everything was not contained in the text of a code,
that the unforeseen made itself obeyed, that the virtue of a convict might set
a snare for the virtue of a functionary, that the monstrous might be divine,
that destiny had such ambuscades; and he thought with despair that he had
himself not been protected from a surprise. He was compelled to recognize
that goodness existed; this galley-slave had been good, and he,
extraordinary to say, had been good also. Hence he was becoming depraved.
He felt that he was a coward, and it horrified him. The ideal for Javert was
not to be human, grand, or sublime; it was to be irreproachable,—and now
he had broken down. How had he reached this stage? How had all this
happened? He could not have told himself. He took his head between his
hands; but whatever he might do, he could not succeed in explaining it. He
certainly had had the intention of delivering Jean Valjean over to the law, of
which Jean Valjean was the captive and of which he was the slave. He had
not confessed to himself for a single instant, while he held him, that he had
a thought of letting him go; it was to some extent unconsciously that his
hand had opened and allowed him to escape.

All sorts of enigmatic novelties passed before his eyes. He asked himself
questions and gave himself answers, and his answers terrified him. He
asked himself, "What has this convict, this desperate man, whom I followed
to persecution, and who had me under his heel, and could have avenged
himself, and ought to have acted so, both for his rancor and his security,
done in leaving me my life and showing me mercy,—his duty? No,
something more. And what have I done in showing him mercy in my turn,
—my duty? No, something more. Is there, then, something more than
duty?" Here he was terrified, he was thrown off his balance,—one of the
scales fell into the abyss, the other ascended to heaven; and Javert felt no
less horror at the one above than at the one below. Without being the least in
the world what is termed a Voltairian, or philosopher, or incredulous man,
respectful, on the contrary, instinctively to the Established Church, he only
knew it as an august fragment of the social ensemble; order was his dogma,
and sufficient for him. Since he had attained man's age and office, he had
set nearly all his religion in the police, being,—and we employ the words
without the slightest irony, and in their most serious acceptation,—being, as
we have said, a spy, as another man is a priest He had a superior, M.
Gisquet; but he had never thought up to this day of that other superior, God.
He felt the presence of this new Chief unexpectedly, and was troubled by
Him. He was thrown out of gear by this person; he knew not what to do
with this Superior, for he was not ignorant that the subordinate is bound
always to bow the head, that he must neither disobey, nor blame, nor
discuss, and that when facing a superior who astonishes him too much, the
inferior has no other resource but his resignation. But how could he manage
to give in his resignation to God?
However this might be, one fact to which he constantly returned, and which
ruled everything else, was that he had just committed a frightful infraction
of the law. He had closed his eyes to a relapsed convict who had broken his
ban; he had set a galley-slave at liberty. He had stolen from the laws a man
who belonged to them. He had done this, and no longer understood himself.
He was not certain of being himself. The very reasons of his deed escaped
him, and he only felt the dizziness it produced. He had lived up to this
moment in that blind faith which engenders a dark probity; and this faith
was leaving him, this probity had failed him. All that he had believed was
dissipated, and truths which he did not desire inexorably besieged him. He
must henceforth be another man, and he suffered the strange pain of a

conscience suddenly operated on for cataract. He saw what it was repulsive
to him to see, and felt himself spent, useless, dislocated from his past life,
discharged and dissolved. Authority was dead within him, and he no longer
had a reason for living. Terrible situation! to be moved. To be made of
granite, and doubt! To be the statue of punishment cast all of one piece in
the mould of the law, and suddenly to perceive that you have under your
bronze bosom something absurd and disobedient, which almost resembles a
heart! To have requited good for good, though you have said to yourself up
to this day that such good is evil! To be the watch-dog, and fawn! To be ice,
and melt! To be a pair of pincers, and become a hand! suddenly to feel your
fingers opening! To lose your hold. Oh, what a frightful thing! The man
projectile, no longer knowing his road, and recoiling! To be obliged to
confess this: infallibility is not infallible; there may be an error in the
dogma; all is not said when a code has spoken, society is not perfect,
authority is complicated with vacillation, a crack in the immutable is
possible, judges are men, the law may be deceived, the courts may make a
mistake! To see a flaw in the immense blue window-glass of the firmament.
What was taking place in Javert was the Fampoux of a rectilinear
conscience, the overthrow of a mind, the crushing of a probity irresistibly
hurled in a straight line and breaking itself against God. It was certainly
strange that the fireman of order, the engineer of authority, mounted on the
blind iron horse, could be unsaddled by a beam of light! That the
incommutable, the direct, the correct, the geometrical, the passive, the
perfect, could bend; that there should be for the locomotive a road to
Damascus! God, ever within man, and Himself the true conscience,
refractory to the false conscience; the spark forbidden to expire, the ray
ordered to remember the sun, the mind enjoined to recognize the true
absolute when it confronts itself with the fictitious absolute, a humanity that
cannot be lost; the human heart inadmissible,—did Javert comprehend this
splendid phenomenon, the most glorious, perhaps, of our internal prodigies?
Did he penetrate it? Did he explain it to himself? Evidently no. But under
the pressure of this incomprehensible incontestability he felt his brain
cracking. He was less transfigured than the victim of this prodigy: he
endured it with exasperation, and only saw in all this an immense difficulty
of living. It seemed to him as if henceforth his breathing was eternally
impeded. He was not accustomed to have anything unknown over his head;
hitherto everything he had above him had been to his eye a clear, simple,

limpid surface; there was nothing unknown or obscure,—nothing but what
was definite, co-ordinated, enchained, precise, exact, circumscribed,
limited, and closed. Everything foreseen, authority was a flat surface; there
was no fall in it or dizziness before it. Javert had never seen anything
unknown except below him. Irregularity, unexpected things, the disorderly
opening of the chaos, and a possible fall over a precipice,—all this was the
doing of the lower regions, of the rebels, the wicked and the wretched. How
Javert threw himself back, and was suddenly startled by this extraordinary
apparition,—a gulf above him!
What then! the world was dismantled from top to bottom and absolutely
disconcerted! In what could men trust, when what they felt convinced of
was crumbling away! What! the flaw in the cuirass of society could be
formed by a magnanimous scoundrel! What! an honest servant of the law
could find himself caught between two crimes,—the crime of letting a man
escape and the crime of arresting him! All was not certain, then, in the
orders given by the State to the official! There could be blind alleys in duty!
What then? all this was real! Was it true that an ex-bandit, bowed under
condemnations, could draw himself up, and end by being in the right? Was
this credible? Were there, then, cases in which the law must retire before
transfigured crime, and stammer its apologies? Yes, it was so! and Javert
saw it, and Javert touched it! And not only could he not deny it, but he had a
share in it. These were realities, and it was abominable that real facts could
attain such a deformity. If facts did their duty they would restrict themselves
to bring proofs of the law, for facts are sent by God. Was, then, anarchy
about to descend from on high? Thus, both in the exaggeration of agony and
the optical illusion of consternation, everything which might have restricted
and corrected his impression faded away, and society, the human race, and
the universe henceforth were contained for his eyes in a simple and hideous
outline. Punishment, the thing tried, the strength due to the legislature, the
decrees of sovereign courts, the magistracy, the government, prevention and
repression, official wisdom, legal infallibility, the principle of authority, all
the dogmas on which political and civil security, the sovereignty, justice,
logic flowing from the code and public truth, were a heap of ruins, chaos.
He himself, Javert, the watcher of order, incorruptibility in the service of the
police, the trusty mastiff of society, conquered and hurled to the ground;
and on the summit of all this ruin stood a man in a green cap, and with a
glory round his brow,—such was the state of overthrow he had reached,

such the frightful vision which he had in his mind. Was this endurable? No,
it was a violent state, were there ever one, and there were only two ways of
escaping from it: one was to go resolutely to Jean Valjean and restore to the
dungeon the man of the galleys; the other—
Javert left the parapet, and with head erect this time walked firmly toward
the guard-room indicated by a lantern at one of the corners of the Place du
Châtelet. On reaching it he saw through the window a policeman, and went
in. The police recognize each other merely by the way in which they push
open the door of a guard-room. Javert mentioned his name, showed his card
to the sergeant, and sat down at the table on which a candle was burning.
There were also on the table a pen, a leaden inkstand, and paper, ready for
contingent reports and the records of the night patrols. This table, always
completed by a straw chair, is an institution; it exists in all police offices; it
is always adorned with a boxwood saucer full of sawdust, and a box of red
wafers, and it is the lower stage of the official style. It is here that the State
literature commences. Javert took the pen and a sheet of paper and began
writing. This is what he wrote:—
"A FEW REMARKS FOR THE GOOD OF THE SERVICE.

"1. I beg M. le Préfet to cast his eyes on this.
"2. Prisoners when they return from examination at the magistrate's office
take off their shoes and remain barefoot on the slabs while they are being
searched. Some cough on re-entering prison. This entails infirmary
expenses.
"3. Tracking is good, with relays of agents at regular distances; but on
important occasions two agents at the least should not let each other out of
sight, because if for any reason one agent were to fail in his duty, the other
would watch him and take his place.
"4. There is no explanation why the special rules of the prison of the
Madelonnettes prohibit a prisoner from having a chair, even if he pay for it.
"5. At the Madelonnettes there are only two gratings to the canteen, which
allows the canteen woman to let the prisoners touch her hand.
"6. The prisoners called 'barkers,' who call the other prisoners to the visitors'
room, demand two sous from each prisoner for crying his name distinctly.
This is a robbery.

"7. Ten sous are kept back from the pay of a prisoner working in the
weaving room for a running thread: this is an abuse on the part of the
manager, as the cloth is not the less good.
"8. It is annoying that visitors to La Force are obliged to pass through the
boys court in proceeding to the speaking-room of Sainte Marie Égyptienne.
"9. It is certain that gendarmes are daily heard repeating, in the court-yard
of the Préfecture, the examination of prisoners by the magistrates. For a
gendarme, who ought to be consecrated, to repeat what he has heard in the
examination room is a serious breach of duty.
"10. Madame Henry is an honest woman, her canteen is very clean; but it is
wrong for a woman to hold the key of the secret cells. This is not worthy of
the Conciergerie of a great civilization."
Javert wrote these lines in his calmest and most correct handwriting, not
omitting to cross a t, and making the paper creak firmly beneath his pen.
Under the last line he signed,—
"JAVERT, Inspector of the first class.
"At the post of the Place du Châtelet,
about one in the morning, June 7, 1832."
Javert dried the ink on the paper, folded it like a letter, sealed it, wrote on
the back, "Note for the Administration," left it on the table, and quitted the
guard-room. The glass door fell back after him. He again diagonally crossed
the Place du Châtelet, reached the quay again, and went back with
automatic precision to the same spot which he had left a quarter of an hour
previously; he bent down and found himself again in the same attitude on
the same parapet slab; it seemed as if he had not stirred. The darkness was
complete, for it was the sepulchral moment which follows midnight; a
ceiling of clouds hid the stars; the houses in the Cité did not display a single
light, no one passed, all the streets and quays that could be seen were
deserted, and Nôtre Dame and the towers of the Palace of Justice appeared
lineaments of the night. A lamp reddened the edge of the quay, and the
shadows of the bridges looked ghostly one behind the other. Rains had
swelled the river. The spot where Javert was leaning was, it will be
remembered, precisely above the rapids of the Seine and that formidable
whirlpool which unrolls itself and rolls itself up again like an endless screw.

Javert stooped down and looked; all was dark, and nothing could be
distinguished. A sound of spray was audible, but the river was invisible. At
moments in this dizzy depth a flash appeared and undulated, for water has
the power, even on the darkest night, of obtaining light, no one knows
whence, and changing itself into a lizard. The glimmer vanished and all
became indistinct again. Immensity seemed open there, and what was
beneath was not water, but the gulf. The quay-wall, abrupt, confused,
mingled with the vapor, hidden immediately, produced the effect of a
precipice of infinitude.
Nothing could be seen but the hostile coldness of the water, and the sickly
smell of the damp stones could be felt. A ferocious breath rose from this
abyss; and the swelling of the river, divined rather than perceived, the tragic
muttering of the water, the mournful immensity of the bridge arches, a
possible fall into this gloomy vacuum,—all this shadow was full of horror.
Javert remained for some moments motionless, gazing at this opening of the
darkness, and considered the invisible with an intentness which resembled
attention. All at once he took off his hat and placed it on the brink of the
quay. A moment after a tall black figure, which any belated passer-by might
have taken at a distance for a ghost, appeared standing on the parapet,
stooped toward the Seine, then drew itself up, and fell straight into the
darkness. There was a dull plash, and the shadows alone were in the secret
of this obscure form which had disappeared beneath the waters.

BOOK V.

GRANDSON AND GRANDFATHER.

CHAPTER I.

WHERE WE AGAIN MEET THE TREE WITH THE ZINC PATCH.

Some time after the events which we have just recorded, the Sieur
Boulatruelle had a lively emotion. The Sieur Boulatruelle is the road-
mender of Montfermeil of whom we have already caught a glimpse in the
dark portions of this book. Boulatruelle, it will possibly be remembered,
was a man occupied with troubled and various things. He broke stones and
plundered travellers on the highway. Road-mender and robber, he had a
dream: he believed in the treasures buried in the forest of Montfermeil. He
hoped some day to find money in the ground at the foot of a tree, and in the
mean while willingly fished for it in the pockets of passers-by. Still, for the
present he was prudent, for he had just had a narrow escape. He was, as we
know, picked up with the other ruffians in Jondrette's garret. There is some
usefulness in a vice, for his drunkenness saved him, and it never could be
cleared up whether he were there as a robber or as a robbed man. He was
set at liberty on account of his proved intoxication on the night of the
attack, and returned to the woods. He went back to his road from Gagny to
Lagny, to break stones for the State, under surveillance, with hanging head
and very thoughtful, slightly chilled by the robbery which had almost
ruined him, but turning with all the more tenderness to the wine which had
saved him.
As for the lively emotion which he had a short time after his return beneath
the turf-roof of his road-mender's cabin, it was this: One morning
Boulatruelle, while going as usual to work and to his lurking-place, possibly
a little before daybreak, perceived among the branches a man whose back
he could alone see, but whose shape, so he fancied, through the mist and
darkness, was not entirely unknown to him. Boulatruelle, though a
drunkard, had a correct and lucid memory, an indispensable defensive
weapon for any man who is at all on bad terms with legal order.
"Where the devil have I seen some one like that man?" he asked.
But he could give himself no reply, save that he resembled somebody of
whom he had a confused recollection. Boulatruelle, however, made his
comparisons and calculations, though he was unable to settle the identity.
This man did not belong to those parts, and bad come there evidently afoot,
as no public vehicle passed through Montfermeil at that hour. He must have
been walking all night Where did he come from? No great distance, for he
had neither haversack nor bundle. Doubtless from Paris. Why was he in this
wood? Why was lie there at such an hour? What did he want there?

Boulatruelle thought of the treasure. By dint of racking his memory he
vaguely remembered having had, several years previously, a similar alarm
on the subject of a man who might very well be this man. While meditating
he had, under the very weight of his meditation, hung his head, a natural but
not clever thing. When he raised it again the man had disappeared in the
forest and the mist.
"By the deuce!" said Boulatruelle, "I will find him again, and discover to
what parish that parishioner belongs. This walker of Patron-Minette has a
motive, and I will know it. No one must have a secret in my forest without
my being mixed up in it."
He took up his pick, which was very sharp. "Here's something," he growled,
"to search the ground and a man."
And as one thread is attached to another thread, covering the steps as well
as he could in the direction which the man must have pursued, he began
marching through the coppice. When he had gone about a hundred yards,
day, which was beginning to break, aided him. Footsteps on the sand here
and there, trampled grass, broken heather, young branches bent into the
shrubs and rising with a graceful slowness, like the arms of a pretty woman
who stretches herself on waking, gave him a species of trail. He followed it
and then lost it, and time slipped away; he got deeper into the wood and
reached a species of eminence. An early sportsman passing at a distance
along a path, and whistling the air of Guillery, gave him the idea of
climbing up a tree, and though old, he was active. There was on the mound
a very large beech, worthy of Tityrus and Boulatruelle, and he climbed up
the tree as high as he could. The idea was a good one; for while exploring
the solitude on the side where the wood is most entangled, Boulatruelle
suddenly perceived the man, but had no sooner seen him than he lost him
out of sight again. The man entered, or rather glided, into a rather distant
clearing, masked by large trees, but which Boulatruelle knew very well,
because he had noticed near a large heap of stones a sick chestnut-tree
bandaged with a zinc plate nailed upon it. This clearing is what was
formerly called the Blaru-bottom, and the pile of stones, intended no one
knows for what purpose, which could be seen there thirty years ago, is
doubtless there still. Nothing equals the longevity of a heap of stones,
except that of a plank paling. It is there temporarily; what a reason for
lasting!

Boulatruelle, with the rapidity of joy, tumbled off the tree rather than came
down it. The lair was found, and now he had only to seize the animal. The
famous treasure he had dreamed of was probably there. It was no small
undertaking to reach the clearing by beaten paths which make a thousand
annoying windings; it would take a good quarter of an hour. In a straight
line through the wood, which is at that spot singularly dense, very thorny,
and most aggressive, it would take half an hour at least This is what
Boulatruelle was wrong in not understanding; he believed in the straight
line,—a respectable optical illusion which has ruined many men. The wood,
bristling though it was, appeared to him the right road.
"Let us go by the Rue de Rivoli of the wolves," he said.
Boulatruelle, accustomed to crooked paths, this time committed the error of
going straight, and resolutely cast himself among the shrubs. He had to
contend with holly, nettles, hawthorns, eglantines, thistles, and most
irascible roots, and was fearfully scratched. At the bottom of the ravine he
came to a stream which he was obliged to cross, and at last reached the
Blaru clearing after forty minutes, perspiring, wet through, blowing, and
ferocious. There was no one in the clearing. Boulatruelle hurried to the heap
of stones; it was still in its place, and had not been carried off. As for the
man, he had vanished in the forest. He had escaped. Where? In which
direction? Into which clump of trees? It were impossible to guess. And,
most crushing thing of all, there was behind the heap of stones and in front
of the zinc-banded tree a pick, forgotten or abandoned, and a hole; but the
hole was empty.
"Robber!" Boulatruelle cried, shaking his fists at heaven.

CHAPTER II.

MARIUS LEAVING CIVIL WAR PREPARES FOR A DOMESTIC
WAR.

Marius was for a long time neither dead nor alive. He had for several weeks
a fever accompanied by delirium, and very serious brain symptoms caused

by the shocks of the wounds in the head rather than the wounds themselves.
He repeated Cosette's name for whole nights with the lugubrious loquacity
of fever and the gloomy obstinacy of agony. The width of certain wounds
was a serious danger, for the suppuration of wide wounds may always be
absorbed into the system, and consequently kill the patient under certain
atmospheric influences; and at each change in the weather, at the slightest
storm, the physician became anxious. "Mind that the patient suffers from no
emotion," he repeated. The dressings were complicated and difficult, for the
fixing of bandages and lint by the sparadrap had not been imagined at that
period. Nicolette expended in lint a sheet "as large as a ceiling," she said;
and it was not without difficulty that the chloruretted lotions and nitrate of
silver reached the end of the gangrene. So long as there was danger, M.
Gillenormand, broken-hearted by the bedside of his grandson, was like
Marius, neither dead nor alive.
Every day, and sometimes twice a day, a white-haired and well-dressed
gentleman,—such was the description given by the porter,—came to inquire
after the wounded man, and left a large parcel of lint for the dressings. At
length, on September 7th, four months, day by day, from the painful night
on which he had been brought home dying to his grandfather, the physician
declared that he could answer for him, and that convalescence was setting
in. Marius, however, would be obliged to lie for two months longer on a
couch, owing to the accidents produced by the fracture of the collar-bone.
There is always a last wound like that which will not close, and eternizes
the dressings, to the great annoyance of the patient. This long illness and
lengthened convalescence, however, saved him from prosecution: in France
there is no anger, even public, which six months do not extinguish. Riots, in
the present state of society, are so much everybody's fault, that they are
followed by a certain necessity of closing the eyes. Let us add that Gisquet's
unjustifiable decree which ordered physicians to denounce their patients
having out-raged opinion, and not merely opinion, but the king first of all,
the wounded were covered and protected by this indignation, and, with the
exception of those taken prisoners in the act of fighting, the courts-martial
did not dare to molest any one. Hence Marius was left undisturbed.
M. Gillenormand first passed through every form of agony, and then
through every form of ecstasy. Much difficulty was found in keeping him
from passing the whole night by Marius's side; he had his large easy-chair

brought to the bed, and he insisted on his daughter taking the finest linen in
the house to make compresses and bandages. Mademoiselle Gillenormand,
as a sensible and elderly lady, managed to save the fine linen, while making
her father believe that he was obeyed. M. Gillenormand would not listen to
any explanation, that for the purpose of making lint fine linen is not so good
as coarse, or new so good as worn. He was present at all the dressings, from
which Mademoiselle Gillenormand modestly absented herself. When the
dead flesh was cut away with scissors he said, "Aïe, aïe!" Nothing was so
touching as to see him hand the wounded man a cup of broth with his gentle
senile trembling. He overwhelmed the surgeon with questions, and did not
perceive that he constantly repeated the same. On the day when the
physician informed him that Marius was out of danger he was beside
himself. He gave his porter three louis d'or, and at night, when he went to
his bed-room, danced a gavotte, making castagnettes of his thumb and
forefinger, and sang a song something like this:—
"Jeanne est née à Fougère,
Vrai nid d'une bergère;
J'adore son jupon
Fripon.

"Amour, tu vis en elle;
Car c'est dans sa prunelle
Que tu mets ton carquois,
Narquois!

"Moi, je la chante, et j'aime,
Plus que Diane même,
Jeanne et ses dure tetons
Bretons."
Then he knelt on a chair, and Basque, who was watching him through the
crack of the door, felt certain that he was praying. Up to that day he had
never believed in God. At each new phase in the improvement of the
patient, which went on steadily, the grandfather was extravagant. He
performed a multitude of mechanical actions full of delight: he went up and
down stairs without knowing why. A neighbor's wife, who was very pretty,
by the way, was stupefied at receiving one morning a large bouquet: it was

M. Gillenormand who sent it to her, and her husband got up a jealous scene.
M. Gillenormand tried to draw Nicolette on his knees: he called Marius
Monsieur le Baron, and shouted, "Long live the Republic!" Every moment
he asked the medical man, "There is no danger now, is there?" He looked at
Marius with a grandmother's eyes, and gloated over him when he slept. He
no longer knew himself, no longer took himself into account. Marius was
the master of the house; there was abdication in his joy, and he was the
grandson of his grandson. In his present state of merriment he was the most
venerable of children: through fear of wearying or annoying the
convalescent he would place himself behind him in order to smile upon
him. He was satisfied, joyous, ravished, charming and young, and his white
hair added a gentle majesty to the gay light which he had on his face. When
grace is mingled with wrinkles it is adorable; and there is a peculiar dawn in
expansive old age.
As for Marius, while letting himself be nursed and petted, he had one fixed
idea,—Cosette. Since the fever and delirium had left him he no longer
pronounced this name, and it might be supposed that he had forgotten it; but
he was silent precisely because his soul was there. He knew not what had
become of Cosette: the whole affair of the Rue de la Chanvrerie was like a
cloud in his memory; shadows almost indistinct floated through his spirit.
Éponine, Gavroche, Mabœuf, the Thénardiers, and all his friends
mournfully mingled with the smoke of the barricade; the strange passage of
M. Fauchelevent through that blood-stained adventure produced upon him
the effect of an enigma in a tempest: he understood nothing of his own life,
he knew not how or by whom he had been saved, and no one about knew it
either: all they were able to tell him was that he had been brought there at
night in a hackney coach. Past, present, future,—all this was to him like the
mist of a vague idea; but there was in this mist one immovable point, a clear
and precise lineament, something made of granite, a resolution, a will,—to
find Cosette again. For him the idea of life was not distinct from the idea of
Cosette: he had decreed in his heart that he would not receive one without
the other, and he unalterably determined to demand of his grandfather, of
destiny, of fate, of Hades itself, the restitution of his lost Eden.
He did not conceal the obstacles from himself. Here let us underline one
fact: he was not won or greatly affected by all the anxiety and all the
tenderness of his grandfather. In the first place he was not in the secret of

them all, and next, in his sick man's reveries, which were perhaps still
feverish, he distrusted this gentleness as a strange and new thing intended to
subdue him. He remained cold to it, and the poor grandfather lavished his
smiles in pure loss. Marius said to himself that it was all very well so long
as he did not speak and let matters rest; but when he came to Cosette, he
should find another face, and his grandfathers real attitude would be
unmasked. Then he would be rough; a warming up of family questions, a
comparison of positions, every possible sarcasm and objection at once.
Fauchelevent, Coupelevent, fortune, poverty, wretchedness, the stone on the
neck, the future a violent resistance, and the conclusion—a refusal. Marius
stiffened himself against it beforehand. And then, in proportion as he
regained life, his old wrongs reappeared, the old ulcers of his memory
reopened, he thought again of the past. Colonel Pontmercy placed himself
once more between M. Gillenormand and him, Marius, and he said to
himself that he had no real kindness to hope for from a man who had been
so unjust and harsh to his father. And with health came back a sort of
bitterness against his grandfather, from which the old man gently suffered.
M. Gillenormand, without letting it be seen, noticed that Marius, since he
had been brought home and regained consciousness, had never once called
him father. He did not say Sir, it is true, but he managed to say neither one
nor the other, by a certain way of turning his sentences.
A crisis was evidently approaching, and, as nearly always happens in such
cases, Marius, in order to try himself, skirmished before offering battle; this
is called feeling the ground. One morning it happened that M.
Gillenormand, alluding to a newspaper which he had come across, spoke
lightly of the Convention, and darted a Royalist epigram at Danton, St. Just,
and Robespierre. "The men of '93 were giants," Marius said sternly; the old
man was silent, and did not utter another syllable all the day. Marius, who
had the inflexible grandfather of his early years ever present to his mind,
saw in this silence a profound concentration of anger, augured from it an
obstinate struggle, and augmented his preparations for the contest in the
most hidden corners of his mind. He determined that in case of refusal he
would tear off his bandages, dislocate his collar-bone, expose all the
wounds still unhealed, and refuse all food. His wounds were his
ammunition; he must have Cosette or die. He awaited the favorable moment
with the crafty patience of sick persons, and the moment arrived.

CHAPTER III.

MARIUS ATTACKS.

One day M. Gillenormand, while his daughter was arranging the phials and
cups on the marble slab of the sideboard, leaned over Marius, and said in
his most tender accent,—
"Look you, my little Marius, in your place I would rather eat meat than fish;
a fried sole is excellent at the beginning of a convalescence; but a good
cutlet is necessary to put the patient on his legs."
Marius, whose strength had nearly quite returned, sat up, rested his two
clenched fists on his sheet, looked his grandfather in the face, assumed a
terrible air, and said,—
"That induces me to say one thing to you."
"What is it?"
"That I wish to marry."
"Foreseen," said the grandfather, bursting into a laugh.
"How foreseen?"
"Yes, foreseen. You shall have your little maid."
Marius, stupefied and dazzled, trembled in all his limbs, and M.
Gillenormand continued,—
"Yes, you shall have the pretty little dear. She comes every day in the form
of an old gentleman to ask after you. Ever since you have been wounded
she has spent her time in crying and making lint. I made inquiries; she lives
at No. 7, Rue de l'Homme Armé. Ah, there we are! Ah, you want her, do
you? Well, you shall have her. You're tricked this time; you had made your
little plot, and had said to yourself, 'I will tell it point-blank to that
grandfather, that mummy of the Regency and the Directory, that old beau,
that Dorante who has become Géronte; he has had his frolics too, and his
amourettes, and his grisettes, and his Cosettes; he has had his fling, he has
had his wings, and he has eaten the bread of spring; he must surely

remember it, we shall see. Battle!' Ah, you take the cock-chafer by the
horns; very good. I offer you a cutlet, and you answer me, 'By the bye, I
wish to marry,' By Jupiter! Here's a transition! Ah, you made up your mind
for a quarrel, but you did not know that I was an old coward. What do you
say to that? You are done; you did not expect to find your grandfather more
stupid than yourself. You have lost the speech you intended to make me,
master lawyer, and that is annoying. Well, all the worse, rage away; I do
what you want, and that stops you, stupid! Listen! I have made my
inquiries, for I too am cunning; she is charming, she is virtuous; the Lancer
does not speak the truth, she made heaps of lint. She is a jewel; she adores
you; if you had died there would have been three of us, and her coffin
would have accompanied mine. I had the idea as soon as you were better of
planting her there by your bedside; but it is only in romances that girls are
introduced to the beds of handsome young wounded men in whom they
take an interest. That would not do, for what would your aunt say? You
were quite naked three parts of the time, sir; ask Nicolette, who never left
you for a moment, whether it were possible for a female to be here? And
then, what would the doctor have said? for a pretty girl does not cure a
fever. Well, say no more about it; it is settled and done; take her. Such is my
fury. Look you, I saw that you did not love me, and I said, 'What can I do to
make that animal love me?' I said, 'Stay, I have my little Cosette ready to
hand. I will give her to him, and then he must love me a little, or tell me the
reason why.' Ah! you believed that the old man would storm, talk big, cry
no, and lift his cane against all this dawn. Not at all. Cosette, very good;
love, very good. I ask for nothing better; take the trouble, sir, to marry; be
happy, my beloved child!"
After saying this the old man burst into sobs. He took Marius's head and
pressed it to his old bosom, and both began weeping. That is one of the
forms of supreme happiness.
"My father!" Marius exclaimed.
"Ah, you love me, then!" the old man said.
There was an ineffable moment; they were choking and could not speak. At
length the old man stammered,—
"Come! the stopper is taken out of him; he called me father."

Marius disengaged his head from his grandfather's arms, and said gently,—
"Now that I am better, father, I fancy I could see her."
"Foreseen, too; you will see her to-morrow."
"Father?"
"Well, what?"
"Why not to-day?"
"Well, to-day; done for to-day. You have called me father thrice, and it's
worth that. I will see about it, and she shall be brought here. Foreseen, I tell
you. That has already been put in verse, and it is the denouement of André
Chénier's elegy, the 'Jeune Malade,'—André Chénier, who was butchered
by the scound—by the giants of '93."
M. Gillenormand fancied he could see a slight frown on Marius's face,
though, truth to tell, he was not listening, as he had flown away into ecstasy,
and was thinking much more of Cosette than of 1793. The grandfather,
trembling at haying introduced André Chénier so inopportunely, hurriedly
continued,—
"Butchered is not the word. The fact is that the great revolutionary geniuses
who were not wicked, that is incontestable, who were heroes, Pardi, found
that André Chénier was slightly in their way, and they had him guillo—that
is to say, these great men on the 7th Thermidor, in the interest of the public
safety, begged André Chénier to be kind enough to go—"
M. Gillenormand, garroted by his own sentence, could not continue. Unable
to terminate it or retract it, the old man rushed, with all the speed which his
age allowed, out of the bed-room, shut the door after him, and purple,
choking, and foaming, with his eyes out of his head, found himself nose to
nose with honest Basque, who was cleaning boots in the anteroom. He
seized Basque by the collar and furiously shouted into his face, "By the
hundred thousand Javottes of the devil, those brigands assassinated him!"
"Whom, sir?"
"André Chénier."
"Yes, sir," said the horrified Basque,

CHAPTER IV.

MLLE. GILLENORMAND HAS NO OBJECTIONS TO THE
MATCH.

Cosette and Marius saw each other again. We will not attempt to describe
the interview, for there are things which we must not attempt to paint: the
sun is of the number. The whole family, Basque and Nicolette included,
were assembled in Marius's chamber at the moment when Cosette entered.
She appeared in the doorway, and seemed to be surrounded by a halo:
precisely at this moment the grandfather was going to blow his nose, but he
stopped short, holding his nose in his handkerchief and looking over it.
"Adorable!" he cried.
And then he blew a sonorous blast. Cosette was intoxicated, ravished,
startled, in heaven. She was as timid as a person can be through happiness;
she stammered, turned pale and then pink, and wished to throw herself into
Marius's arms, but dared not. She was ashamed of loving before so many
people; for the world is merciless to happy lovers, and always remains at
the very moment when they most long to be alone. And yet they do not
want these people at, all. With Cosette, and behind her, had entered a white-
haired man, serious, but still smiling, though the smile was wandering and
poignant. It was "Monsieur Fauchelevent,"—it was Jean Valjean. He was
well-dressed, as the porter had said, in a new black suit and a white cravat.
The porter was a thousand leagues from recognizing in this correct citizen,
this probable notary, the frightful corpse-bearer who had arrived at the gate
on the night of June 7, ragged, filthy, hideous, and haggard, with a mask of
blood and mud on his face, supporting in his arms the unconscious Marius;
still his porter's instincts were aroused. When M. Fauchelevent arrived with
Cosette, the porter could not refrain from confiding this aside to his wife, "I
don't know why, but I fancy that I have seen that face before." M.
Fauchelevent remained standing by the door of Marius's room, as if afraid;
he held under his arm a packet rather like an octavo volume wrapped in
paper. The paper was green, apparently from mildew.

"Has this gentleman always got books under his arm like that?"
Mademoiselle Gillenormand, who was not fond of books, asked Nicolette
in a whisper.
"Well," M. Gillenormand, who had heard her, answered in the same key,
"he is a savant; is that his fault? Monsieur Boulard, whom I knew, never
went out without a book either, and like him had always had an old book
near his heart."
Then bowing, he said in a loud voice,—
"M. Tranchelevent."
Father Gillenormand did not do it purposely, but an inattention to proper
names was an aristocratic way of his.
"Monsieur Tranchelevent, I have the honor of requesting this lady's hand for
my grandson, M. le Baron Marius Pontmercy."
Monsieur "Tranchelevent" bowed.
"All right," the grandfather said.
And turning to Marius and Cosette, with both arms extended in benediction,
he cried,—
"You have leave to adore each other."
They did not let it be said twice, and the prattling began. They talked in a
whisper, Marius reclining on his couch and Cosette standing by his side.
"Oh, Heaven!" Cosette murmured, "I see you again: it is you. To go and
fight like that! But why? It is horrible. For four months I have been dead.
Oh, how wicked it was of you to have been at that battle! What had I done
to you? I forgive you, but you will not do it again. Just now, when they
came to tell me to come to you, I thought again that I was going to die, but
it was of joy. I was so sad! I did not take the time to dress myself, and I
must look frightful; what will your relation say at seeing me in a tumbled
collar? But speak! you let me speak all alone. We are still in the Rue de
l'Homme Armé. It seems that your shoulder was terrible, and I was told that
I could have put my hand in it, and that your flesh was as if it had been cut
with scissors. How frightful that is! I wept so that I have no eyes left. It is
strange that a person can suffer like that Your grandfather has a very kind
look. Do not disturb yourself, do not rest on your elbow like that, or you

will hurt yourself. Oh, how happy I am! So our misfortunes are all ended! I
am quite foolish. There were things I wanted to say to you which I have
quite forgotten. Do you love me still? We live in the Rue de l'Homme Armé.
There is no garden there. I made lint the whole time; look here, sir, it is your
fault, my fingers are quite rough."
"Angel!" said Marius.
Angel is the only word in the language which cannot be worn out; no other
word would resist the pitiless use which lovers make of it. Then, as there
was company present, they broke off, and did not say a word more,
contenting themselves with softly clasping hands. M. Gillenormand turned
to all the rest in the room, and cried,—
"Speak loudly, good people; make a noise, will you? Come, a little row,
hang it all! so that these children may prattle at their ease."
And going up to Marius and Cosette, he whispered to them,—
"Go on; don't put yourselves out of the way."
Aunt Gillenormand witnessed with stupor this irruption of light into her
antiquated house. This stupor had nothing aggressive about it; it was not at
all the scandalized and envious glance cast by an owl at two ring-doves: it
was the stupid eye of a poor innocent of the age of fifty-seven; it was a
spoiled life looking at that triumph, love.
"Mademoiselle Gillenormand the elder," her father said to her, "I told you
that this would happen." He remained silent for a moment, and added,—
"Look at the happiness of others."
Then he turned to Cosette.
"How pretty she is! how pretty she is! she is a Greuze! So you are going to
have all that for yourself, scamp? Ah, my boy, you have had a lucky escape
from me; for if I were not fifteen years too old we would fight with swords
and see who should have her. There, I am in love with you, Mademoiselle;
but it is very natural, it is your right. What a famous, charming little
wedding we will have! St. Denis du Saint-Sacrament is our parish; but I
will procure a dispensation, so that you may be married at St. Paul, for the
church is better. It was built for the Jesuits, and more coquettish. It is
opposite Cardinal Birague's fountain. The masterpiece of Jesuit architecture

is at Namur, and is called St. Loup; you should go and see that when you
are married, for it is worth the journey. Mademoiselle, I am entirely of your
opinion; I wish girls to marry, for they are made for it. There is a certain
Sainte Catharine whom I would always like to see with hair disordered. To
remain a maid is fine, but it is cold. Multiply, says the Bible. To save the
people a Joan of Arc is wanted; but to make a people we want Mother
Gigogne. So marry, my darlings; I really do not see the use of remaining a
maid. I know very well that they have a separate chapel in church, and join
the confraternity of the Virgin; but, sapristi! a good-looking young husband,
and at the end of a year a plump bantling, who sucks at you bravely, and
who has rolls of fat on his thighs, and who clutches your bosom with his
pink little paws, are a good deal better than holding a candle at vespers and
singing Turris Eburnea."
The grandfather pirouetted on his nonagenarian heels, and began speaking
again, like a spring which had been wound up:—
"Ainsi, bornant le cours de tes rêvasseries,
Alcippe, il est donc vrai, dans peu tu te maries."
"By the bye?"
"What, father?"
"Had you not an intimate friend?"
"Yes, Courfeyrac."
"What has become of him?"
"He is dead."
"That is well."
He sat down by their side, made Cosette take a chair, and took their four
hands in his old wrinkled hands.
"This darling is exquisite! This Cosette is a masterpiece! She is a very little
girl and a very great lady. She will be only a baroness, and that is a
derogation, for she is born to be a marchioness. What eyelashes she has!
My children, drive it well into your pates that you are on the right road.
Love one another; be foolish over it, for love is the stupidity of men and the
cleverness of God. So adore one another. Still," he added, suddenly growing

sad, "what a misfortune! More than half I possess is sunk in annuities; so
long as I live it will be all right, but when I am dead, twenty years hence,
ah! my poor children, you will not have a farthing! Your pretty white hands,
Madame la Baronne, will be wrinkled by work."
Here a serious and calm voice was heard saying:
"Mademoiselle Euphrasie Fauchelevent has six hundred thousand francs."
It was Jean Valjean's voice. He had not yet uttered a syllable; no one
seemed to remember that he was present, and he stood motionless behind
all these happy people.
"Who is the Mademoiselle Euphrasie in question?" the startled grandfather
asked.
"Myself," said Cosette.
"Six hundred thousand francs!" M. Gillenormand repeated.
"Less fourteen or fifteen thousand, perhaps," Jean Valjean said.
And he laid on the table the parcel which Aunt Gillenormand had taken for
a book. Jean Valjean himself opened the packet; it was a bundle of bank-
notes. They were turned over and counted; there were six hundred bank-
notes for a thousand francs, and one hundred and sixty-eight for five
hundred, forming a total of five hundred and eighty-four thousand francs.
"That's a famous book," said M. Gillenormand.
"Five hundred and eighty-four thousand francs!" the aunt murmured.
"That arranges a good many things, does it not, Mademoiselle
Gillenormand the elder?" the grandfather continued. "That devil of a Marius
has found a millionnaire grisette upon the tree of dreams! Now trust to the
amourettes of young people! Students find studentesses with six hundred
thousand francs. Cherubin works better than Rothschild."
"Five hundred and eighty-four thousand francs!" Mademoiselle
Gillenormand repeated; "five hundred and eighty-four thousand francs! We
may as well say six hundred thousand."
As for Marius and Cosette, they were looking at each other during this
period, and hardly paid any attention to this detail.

CHAPTER V.

DEPOSIT YOUR MONEY IN A FOREST RATHER THAN WITH A
NOTARY.

Of course our readers have understood, and no lengthened explanation will
be required, that Jean Valjean after the Champmathieu affair was enabled by
his escape for a few days to come to Paris, and withdraw in time from
Laffitte's the sum he had gained under the name of M. Madeleine at M.-sur-
M.; and that, afraid of being recaptured, which in fact happened to him
shortly after, he buried this sum in the forest of Montfermeil, at the spot
called the Blaru bottom. This sum, six hundred and thirty thousand francs,
all in bank-notes, occupied but little space, and was contained in a box; but
in order to protect the box from damp he placed it in an oak coffer filled
with chips of chestnut-wood. In the same coffer he placed his other treasure,
the Bishop's candlesticks. It will be remembered that he carried off these
candlesticks in his escape from M.-sur-M. The man seen on one previous
evening by Boulatruelle was Jean Valjean, and afterwards, whenever Jean
Valjean required money, he fetched it from the Blaru clearing, and hence his
absences to which we have referred. He had a pick concealed somewhere in
the shrubs, in a hiding-place known to himself alone. When he found
Marius to be convalescent, feeling that the hour was at hand when this
money might be useful, he went to fetch it; and it was also he whom
Boulatruelle saw in the wood, but this time in the morning, and not at night.
Boulatruelle inherited the pick.
The real sum was five hundred and eighty-four thousand five hundred
francs, but Jean Valjean kept back the five hundred francs for himself. "We
will see afterwards," he thought. The difference between this sum and the
six hundred and thirty thousand francs withdrawn from Laffitte's
represented the expenditure of ten years from 1823 to 1833. The five years'
residence in the convent had cost only five thousand francs. Jean Valjean
placed the two silver candlesticks on the mantel-piece, where they
glistened, to the great admiration of Toussaint. Moreover, Jean Valjean
knew himself freed from Javert; it had been stated in his presence, and he
verified the fact in the Moniteur which had published it, that an Inspector of

Police of the name of Javert had been found drowned under a washer-
woman's boat between the Pont-au-change and the Pont-Neuf, and that a
letter left by this man, hitherto irreproachable and highly esteemed by his
chiefs, led to the belief in an attack of dementia and suicide. "In truth,"
thought Jean Valjean, "since he let me go when he had hold of me, he must
have been mad at that time."

CHAPTER VI.

THE TWO OLD MEN, EACH IN HIS FASHION,
DO EVERYTHING FOR COSETTE'S HAPPINESS.

All preparations were made for the marriage, and the physician, on being
consulted, declared that it might take place in February. It was now
December; and a few ravishing weeks of perfect happiness slipped away.
The least happy man was not the grandfather: he sat for a whole quarter of
an hour contemplating Cosette.
"The admirably pretty girl!" he would exclaim, "and she has so soft and
kind an air! She is the most charming creature I have ever seen in my life.
Presently she will have virtues with a violet scent. She is one of the Graces,
on my faith! A man can only live nobly with such a creature. Marius, my
lad, you are a baron, you are rich; so do not be a pettifogger, I implore you."
Cosette and Marius had suddenly passed from the sepulchre into paradise:
the transition had not been prepared, and they would have been stunned if
they had not been dazzled.
"Do you understand anything of all this?" Marius would say to Cosette.
"No," Cosette answered; "but it seems to me as if the good God were
looking at us."
Jean Valjean did everything, smoothed everything, conciliated everything,
and rendered everything easy. He hurried toward Cosette's happiness with
as much eagerness and apparently with as much joy as Cosette herself. As
he had been Mayor, he was called to solve a delicate problem, the secret of

which he alone possessed,—the civil status of Cosette. To tell her origin
openly might have prevented the marriage; but he got Cosette out of all the
difficulties. He arranged for her a family of dead people, a sure method of
not incurring any inquiry. Cosette was the only one left of an extinct family.
Cosette was not his daughter, but the daughter of another Fauchelevent.
Two brothers Fauchelevent had been gardeners at the convent of the Little
Picpus. They proceeded to this convent; the best testimonials and most
satisfactory character were given; for the good nuns, little suited and but
little inclined to solve questions of paternity, had never known exactly of
which of the two Fauchelevents Cosette was the daughter. They said what
was wanted, and said it zealously. An instrument was drawn up by a notary
and Cosette became by law Mademoiselle Euphrasie Fauchelevent, and was
declared an orphan both on the father's and mother's side. Jean Valjean
managed so as to be designated, under the name of Fauchelevent, as
guardian of Cosette, with M. Gillenormand as supervising guardian. As for
the five hundred and eighty-four thousand francs, they were a legacy left to
Cosette by a dead person who wished to remain unknown. The original
legacy had been five hundred and ninety-four thousand francs, but ten
thousand had been spent in the education of Mademoiselle Euphrasie, five
thousand of which had been paid to the convent. This legacy, deposited in
the hands of a third party, was to be handed over to Cosette upon her
majority, or at the period of her marriage. All this was highly acceptable, as
we see, especially when backed up by more than half a million francs.
There were certainly a few singular points here and there, but they were not
seen, for one of the persons interested had his eyes bandaged by love, and
the others by the six hundred thousand francs.
Cosette learned that she was not the daughter of the old man whom she had
so long called father; he was only a relation, and another Fauchelevent was
her real father. At another moment this would have grieved her, but in the
ineffable hour she had now reached it was only a slight shadow, a passing
cloud; and she had so much joy that this cloud lasted but a short time. She
had Marius. The young man came; the old man disappeared: life is so. And
then, Cosette had been accustomed for many long years to see enigmas
around her; every being who has had a mysterious childhood is ever ready
for certain renunciations. Still she continued to call Jean Valjean "father."
Cosette, who was among the angels, was enthusiastic about Father
Gillenormand; it is true that he overwhelmed her with madrigals and

presents. While Jean Valjean was constructing for Cosette an unassailable
position in society, M. Gillenormand attended to the wedding trousseau.
Nothing amused him so much as to be magnificent; and he had given
Cosette a gown of Binche guipure, which he inherited from his own
grandmother. "These fashions spring up again," he said; "antiquities are the
great demand, and the young ladies of my old days dress themselves like
the old ladies of my youth." He plundered his respectable round-bellied
commodes of Coromandel lacquer, which had not been opened for years.
"Let us shrive these dowagers," he said, "and see what they have in their
paunch." He noisily violated drawers full of the dresses of all his wives, all
his mistresses, and all his female ancestry. He lavished on Cosette Chinese
satins, damasks, lampas, painted moires, gros de Naples dresses, Indian
handkerchiefs embroidered with gold that can be washed, Genoa and
Alençon point lace, sets of old jewelry, ivory bonbon boxes adorned with
microscopic battles, laces, and ribbons. Cosette, astounded, wild with love
for Marius and with gratitude to M. Gillenormand, dreamed of an
unbounded happiness, dressed in satin and velvet. Her wedding-basket
seemed to her supported by seraphim, and her soul floated in ether with
wings of Mechlin lace. The intoxication of the lovers was only equalled, as
we stated, by the ecstasy of the grandfather, and there was something like a
flourish of trumpets in the Rue des Filles du Calvaire. Each morning there
was a new offering of bric-à-brac from the grandfather to Cosette, and all
sorts of ornaments were spread out splendidly around her. One day Marius,
who not unfrequently talked gravely through his happiness, said, with
reference to some incident which I have forgotten,—
"The men of the revolution are so great that they already possess the
prestige of centuries, like Cato and like Phocion, and each of them seems a
mémoire antique."
"Moire antique!" exclaimed the old gentleman; "thank you, Marius, that is
the very idea which I was seeking for."
And on the morrow a splendid tea-colored moire antique dress was added to
Cosette's outfit. The grandfather extracted a wisdom from this frippery:—
"Love is all very well, but this is required with it. Something useless is
required in happiness; happiness is only what is absolutely necessary, but
season it, say I, with an enormous amount of superfluity. A palace and her

heart; her heart and the Louvre. Give me my shepherdess, and try that she
be a duchess. Bring me Phillis crowned with corn-flowers, and add to her
one thousand francs a year. Open for me an endless Bucolic under a marble
colonnade. I consent to the Bucolic and also to the fairy scene in marble and
gold. Dry happiness resembles dry bread; you eat it, but you do not dine. I
wish for superfluity, for the useless, for extravagance, for that which is of
no use. I remember to to have seen in Strasburg Cathedral a clock as tall as
a three-storied house, which marked the hour, which had the kindness to
mark the hour, but did not look as if it was made for the purpose; and
which, after striking midday or midnight,—midday, the hour of the sun, and
midnight, the hour of love, or any other hour you please,—gave you the
moon and the stars, earth and sea, birds and fishes, Phœbus and Phœbe, and
a heap of things that came out of a corner, and the twelve apostles, and the
Emperor Charles V., and Éponine and Sabinus, and a number of little gilt
men who played the trumpet into the bargain, without counting the
ravishing chimes which it scattered in the air on every possible occasion,
without your knowing why. Is a wretched, naked clock, which only marks
the hours, worth that? I am of the opinion of the great clock of Strasburg,
and prefer it to the Black Forest cuckoo clock."
M. Gillenormand talked all sorts of nonsense about the marriage, and all the
ideas of the eighteenth century passed pell-mell into his dithyrambs.
"You are ignorant of the art of festivals, and do not know how to get up a
day's pleasure in these times," he exclaimed. "Your nineteenth century is
soft, and is deficient in excess: it is ignorant of what is rich and noble. In
everything it is close-shorn. Your third estate is insipid and has no color,
smell, or shape. The dream of your bourgeoises, who establish themselves,
as they call it, is a pretty boudoir freshly decorated with mahogany and
calico. Make way, there! The Sieur Grigou marries the Demoiselle
Grippesou. Sumptuousness and splendor. A louis d'or has been stuck to a
wax candle. Such is the age. I insist on flying beyond the Sarmatians. Ah,
so far back as 1787 I predicted that all was lost on the day when I saw the
Due de Rohan, Prince de Léon, Duc de Chabot, Duc de Montbazon,
Marquis de Soubise, Vicomte de Thouars, Peer of France, go to
Longchamps in a tapecul: that bore its fruits. In this century men have a
business, gamble on the Stock Exchange, win money, and are mean. They
take care of and varnish their surface: they are carefully dressed, washed,

soaped, shaved, combed, rubbed, brushed, and cleaned externally,
irreproachable, as polished as a pebble, discreet, trim, and at the same time,
—virtue of my soul!—they have at the bottom of their conscience
dungheaps and cess-pools, at which a milkmaid who blows her nose with
her fingers would recoil. I grant the present age this motto,—dirty
cleanliness. Marius, do not be annoyed; grant me the permission to speak,
for I have been saying no harm of the people, you see. I have my mouth full
of your people, but do let me give the bourgeoisie a pill. I tell you point-
blank that at the present day people marry, but no longer know how to
marry. Ah, it is true, I regret the gentility of the old manners; I regret it all,
—that elegance, that chivalry, that courteous and dainty manner, that
rejoicing luxury which every one possessed, the music forming part of the
wedding, symphony above and drums beating below stairs, the joyous faces
seated at table, the spicy madrigals, the songs, the fireworks, the hearty
laugh, the devil and his train, and the large ribbon bows. I regret the bride's
garter, for it is first cousin of the girdle of Venus. On what does the siege of
Troy turn? Parbleu! on Helen's garter. Why do men fight? Why does the
divine Diomedes smash on the head of Merioneus that grand brass helmet
with the ten points? Why do Achilles and Hector tickle each other with
lances? Because Helen let Paris take her garter. With Cosette's garter Homer
would write the Iliad; he would place in his poem an old chatterer like
myself, and call him Nestor. My friends, in former times, in those amiable
former times, people married learnedly: they made a good contract and then
a good merry-making. So soon as Cujas had gone out, Gamacho came in.
Hang it all! the stomach is an agreeable beast, that demands its due, and
wishes to hold its wedding too. We supped well, and had at table a pretty
neighbor without a neckerchief, who only concealed her throat moderately.
Oh, the wide laughing mouths, and how gay people were in those days!
Youth was a bouquet, every young man finished with a branch of lilac or a
posy of roses; if he were a warrior, he was a shepherd, and if by chance he
were a captain of dragoons, he managed to call himself Florian. All were
anxious to be pretty fellows, and they wore embroidery and rouge. A
bourgeois looked like a flower, and a marquis like a precious stone. They
did not wear straps, they did not wear boots; they were flashing, lustrous,
gilt, light, dainty, and coquettish, but it did not prevent them wearing a
sword by their side; they were humming-birds with beak and nails. It was
the time of the Indes galantes. One of the sides of that age was delicate, the

other magnificent; and, by the vertu-choux! people amused themselves. At
the present day they are serious; the bourgeois is miserly, the bourgeoise
prudish,—your age is out of shape. The Graces would be expelled because
their dresses were cut too low in the neck. Alas! beauty is concealed as an
ugliness. Since the revolution all wear trousers, even the ballet girls; a ballet
girl must be serious, and your rigadoons are doctrinaire. A man must be
majestic, and would feel very much annoyed at not having his chin in his
cravat. The idea of a scamp of twenty, who is about to marry, is to resemble
Monsieur Royer-Collard. And do you know what people reach by this
majesty? They are little. Learn this fact: joy is not merely joyous, it is
grand. Be gayly in love; though, hang it all! marry, when you do marry,
with fever and amazement and tumult, and a hurly-burly of happiness.
Gravity at church, if you will; but so soon as the mass is ended, sarpejeu!
you ought to make a dream whirl round your wife. A marriage ought to be
royal and chimerical, and parade its ceremony from the Cathedral of
Rheims to the Pagoda of Chante-loup. I have a horror of a scrubby
marriage. Ventre-goulette! Be in Olympus at least upon that day. Be gods.
Ah, people might be sylphs, jests and smiles, Argyraspides, but they are
scrubs! My friends, every newly-married man ought to be Prince
Aldobrandini. Take advantage of this unique moment of life to fly into the
Empyrean with the swans and the eagles, even if you fall back to-morrow
into the bourgeoisie of frogs. Do not save upon the hymeneal rites; do not
nibble at this splendor, nor split farthings on the day when you are radiant.
A wedding is not housekeeping. Oh, if I had my way it should be a gallant
affair, and violins should be heard in the trees. Here is my programme: sky-
blue and silver. I would mingle in the fête the rustic divinities, and convene
the Dryads and the Nereids. The wedding of Amphitrite, a pink cloud,
nymphs with their hair carefully dressed and quite nude, an academician
offering quatrains to the Deess, a car drawn by marine monsters.
'Triton trottait devant, et tirait de sa conque,
Des sons si ravissants qu'il ravissait quiconque!'
There is a programme for a fête, or I'm no judge, sac à papier!"
While the grandfather, in the heat of his lyric effusion, was listening to
himself, Cosette and Marius were intoxicating themselves by looking freely
at each other. Aunt Gillenormand regarded all this with her imperturbable
placidity; she had, during the last five or six months, a certain amount of

emotions; Marius returned, Marius brought back bleeding, Marius brought
from a barricade, Marius dead, then living, Marius reconciled, Marius
affianced, Marius marrying a poor girl, Marius marrying a millionnaire. The
six hundred thousand francs had been her last surprise, and then the
indifference of a leading communicant returned to her. She went regularly
to her mass, told her beads, read her euchology, whispered in one corner of
the house her Aves, while "I love you" was being whispered in another, and
saw Marius and Cosette vaguely like two shadows. The shadow was
herself. There is a certain state of inert asceticism in which the mind,
neutralized by torpor, and a stranger to what might be called the business of
living, does not perceive, with the exception of earthquakes and
catastrophes, any human impressions, either pleasant or painful. "This
devotion," Father Gillenormand would say to his daughter, "resembles a
cold in the head; you smell nothing of life, neither a good odor nor a bad
one." However, the six hundred thousand francs had settled the old maid's
indecision. Her father was accustomed to take her so little into account that
he had not consulted her as to the consent to Marius's marriage. He had
acted impetuously, according to his wont, having, as a despot who had
become a slave, but one thought, that of satisfying Marius. As for the aunt,
he had scarce remembered that the aunt existed, and that she might have an
opinion of her own, and, sheep though she was, this had offended her.
Somewhat roused internally, but externally impassive, she said to herself,
"My father settles the marriage question without me, and I will settle the
question of the inheritance without him." She was rich, in fact, and her
father was not so, and it is probable that if the marriage had been poor she
would have left it poor. "All the worse for my nephew! If he chose to marry
a beggar, he may be a beggar too." But Cosette's half a million of francs
pleased the aunt and changed her feelings with respect to the loving couple;
consideration is due to six hundred thousand francs, and it was evident that
she could not do otherwise than leave her fortune to these young people,
because they no longer required it.
It was arranged that the couple should reside at M. Gillenormand's, and the
grandfather insisted on giving them his bed-room, the finest room in the
house. "It will make me younger," he declared. "It is an old place. I always
had the idea that the wedding should take place in my room." He furnished
this room with a heap of old articles of gallantry; he had it hung with an
extraordinary fabric which he had in the piece, and believed to be Utrecht, a

gold satin ground with velvet auriculas. "It was with that stuff," he said,
"that the bed of the Duchess d'Anville à la Rocheguyon was hung." He
placed on the mantel-piece a figure in Saxon porcelain carrying a muff on
its naked stomach. M. Gillenormand's library became the office which
Marius required; for an office, it will be borne in mind, is insisted upon by
the council of the order.

CHAPTER VII.

THE EFFECTS OF DREAMING BLENDED WITH HAPPINESS.

The lovers saw each other daily, and Cosette came with M. Fauchelevent.
"It is turning things topsy-turvy," said Mademoiselle Gillenormand, "that
the lady should come to the gentleman's house to have court paid to her in
that way." But Marius's convalescence had caused the adoption of the habit,
and the easy-chairs of the Rue des Filles du Calvaire, more convenient for a
tête-à-tête than the straw-bottomed chairs of the Rue de l'Homme Armé,
had decided it. Marius and M. Fauchelevent saw each other, but did not
speak, and this seemed to be agreed on. Every girl needs a chaperon, and
Cosette could not have come without M. Fauchelevent; and for Marius, M.
Fauchelevent was the condition of Cosette, and he accepted him. In
discussing vaguely, and without any precision, political matters as
connected with the improvement of all, they managed to say a little more
than Yes and No. Once, on the subject of instruction, which Marius wished
to be gratuitous and obligatory, multiplied in every form, lavished upon all
like light and air, and, in a word, respirable by the entire people, they were
agreed, and almost talked. Marius remarked on this occasion that M.
Fauchelevent spoke well, and even with a certain elevation of language,
though something was wanting. M. Fauchelevent had something less than a
man of the world, and something more. Marius, in his innermost thoughts,
surrounded with all sorts of questions this M. Fauchelevent, who was to
him simple, well-wishing, and cold. At times doubts occurred to him as to
his own recollections; he had a hole in his memory, a black spot, an abyss
dug by four months of agony. Many things were lost in it, and he was

beginning to ask himself whether it was the fact that he had seen M.
Fauchelevent, a man so serious and so calm, at the barricade.
This was, however, not the sole stupor which the appearances and
disappearances of the past had left in his mind. We must not believe that he
was delivered from all those promptings of memory which compel us, even
when happy and satisfied, to take a melancholy backward glance. The head
which does not turn to effaced horizons contains neither thought nor love.
At moments Marius buried his face in his hands, and the tumultuous and
vague past traversed the fog which he had in his brain. He saw Mabœuf fall
again, he heard Gavroche singing under the grape-shot, and he felt on his
lips the coldness of Éponine's forehead; Enjolras, Courfeyrac, Jean
Prouvaire, Combeferre, Bossuet, Grantaire, all his friends rose before him,
and then disappeared. Were they all dreams, these dear, sorrowful, valiant,
charming, and tragic beings? Had they really existed? The riot had robed
everything in its smoke, and these great fevers have great dreams. He
questioned himself, he felt himself, and had a dizziness from all these
vanished realities. Where were they all, then? Was it really true that
everything was dead? A fall into the darkness had carried away everything
except himself; all this had disappeared as it were behind the curtain of a
theatre. There are such curtains which drop on life, and God passes on to
the next act. In himself was he really the same man? He, poor, was rich; he,
the abandoned man, had a family; he, the desperate man, was going to
marry Cosette. He seemed to have passed through a tomb, and to have gone
in black and come out white. And in this tomb the others had remained. At
certain times all these beings of the past, returning and present, formed a
circle round him, and rendered him gloomy. Then he thought of Cosette,
and became serene again, but it required no less than this felicity to efface
this catastrophe. M. Fauchelevent had almost a place among these vanished
beings. Marius hesitated to believe that the Fauchelevent of the barricade
was the same as that Fauchelevent in flesh and bone so gravely seated by
the side of Cosette. The first was probably one of those nightmares brought
to him and carried away by his hours of delirium. However, as their two
natures were so far apart, it was impossible for Marius to ask any question
of M. Fauchelevent. The idea had not even occurred to him; we have
already indicated this characteristic detail. Two men who have a common
secret, and who, by a sort of tacit agreement, do not exchange a syllable on
the subject, are not so rare as may be supposed. Once, however, Marius

made an effort; he turned the conversation on the Rue de la Chanvrerie, and
turning to M. Fauchelevent, he said to him,—
"Do you know that street well?"
"What street?"
"The Rue de la Chanvrerie."
"I have never heard the name of that street," M. Fauchelevent said, in the
most natural tone in the world.
The answer, which related to the name of the street, and not to the street
itself, seemed to Marius more conclusive than it really was.
"Decidedly," he thought, "I must have been dreaming. I had an
hallucination. It was some one that resembled him, and M. Fauchelevent
was not there."

CHAPTER VIII.

TWO MEN IMPOSSIBLE TO FIND.

The enchantment, great though it was, did not efface other thoughts from
Marius's mind. While the marriage arrangements were being made, and the
fixed period was waited for, he made some troublesome and scrupulous
retrospective researches. He owed gratitude in several quarters; he owed it
for his father, and he owed it for himself. There was Thénardier, and there
was the stranger who had brought him back to M. Gillenormand's. Marius
was anxious to find these two men again, as he did not wish to marry, be
happy, and forget them, and feared lest these unpaid debts of honor might
cast a shadow over his life, which would henceforth be so luminous. It was
impossible for him to leave all these arrears suffering behind him, and he
wished, ere he entered joyously into the future, to obtain a receipt from the
past. That Thénardier was a villain took nothing from the fact that he had
saved Colonel Pontmercy. Thénardier was a bandit for all the world
excepting for Marius. And Marius, ignorant of the real scene on the battle-
field of Waterloo, did not know this peculiarity, that his father stood to

Thénardier in the strange situation of owing him life without owing him
gratitude. Not one of the agents whom Marius employed could find
Thénardier's trail, and the disappearance seemed complete on that side.
Mother Thénardier had died in prison before trial, and Thénardier and his
daughter Azelma, the only two left of this lamentable group, had plunged
again into the shadow. The gulf of the social unknown had silently closed
again upon these beings. No longer could be seen on the surface that
quivering, that tremor, and those obscure concentric circles which announce
that something has fallen there, and that a grappling-iron may be thrown in.
Mother Thénardier being dead, Boulatruelle being out of the question,
Claquesous having disappeared, and the principal accused having escaped
from prison, the trial for the trap in the Gorbeau attic had pretty nearly
failed. The affair had remained rather dark, and the assize court had been
compelled to satisfy itself with two subalterns, Panchaud, alias Printanier,
alias Bigrenaille, and Demi-Liard, alias Deux Milliards, who had been
condemned, after hearing both parties, to ten years at the galleys. Penal
servitude for life was passed against their accomplices who had escaped;
Thénardier, as chief and promoter, was condemned to death, also in default.
This condemnation was the only thing that remained of Thénardier, casting
on this buried name its sinister gleam, like a candle by the side of a coffin.
However, this condemnation, by thrusting Thénardier back into the lowest
depths through the fear of being recaptured, added to the dense gloom
which covered this man.
As for the other, the unknown man who had saved Marius, the researches
had at first some result, and then stopped short. They succeeded in finding
again the hackney coach which had brought Marius to the Rue des Filles du
Calvaire on the night of June 6. The driver declared that on the 6th of June,
by the order of a police agent, he had stopped from three P.M. till nightfall on
the quay of the Champs Élysées, above the opening of the Great Sewer; that
at about nine in the evening the gate of the sewer which looks upon the
river-bank opened; that a man came out, bearing on his shoulders another
man, who appeared to be dead; that the agent, who was watching at this
point, had arrested the living man and seized the dead man; that he, the
coachman, had taken "all these people" into his hackney coach; that they
drove first to the Rue des Filles du Calvaire and deposited the dead man
there; that the dead man was M. Marius, and that he, the coachman,

recognized him thoroughly, though he was alive this time; that afterwards
they got into his coach again, and a few yards from the gate of the Archives
he was ordered to stop; that he was paid in the street and discharged, and
the agent took away the other man; that he knew nothing more, and that the
night was very dark. Marius, as we said, remembered nothing. He merely
remembered that he had been seized from behind by a powerful hand at the
moment when he fell backwards from the barricade, and then all was
effaced for him. He had only regained his senses when he was at M.
Gillenormand's.
He lost himself in conjectures; he could not doubt as to his own identity, but
how was it that he, who had fallen in the Rue de la Chanvrerie, had been
picked up by the police agent on the bank of the Seine, near the bridge of
the Invalides? Some one had brought him from the market district to the
Champs Élysées, and how,—by the sewer? Extraordinary devotion! Some
one? Who? It was the man whom Marius was seeking. Of this man, who
was his saviour, he could find nothing, not a trace, not the slightest sign.
Marius, though compelled on this side to exercise a great reserve, pushed
on his inquiries as far as the Préfecture of Police, but there the information
which he obtained led to no better result than elsewhere. The Préfecture
knew less about the matter than the driver of the hackney coach; they had
no knowledge of any arrest having taken place at the outlet of the great
drain on June 6; they had received no report from the agent about this fact
which, at the Préfecture, was regarded as a fable. The invention of this fable
was attributed to the driver; for a driver anxious for drink-money is capable
of anything, even imagination. The fact, however, was certain, and Marius
could not doubt it, unless he doubted his own identity, as we have just said.
Everything in this strange enigma was inexplicable; this man, this
mysterious man, whom the driver had seen come out of the grating of the
great drain, bearing the fainting Marius on his back, and whom the police
agent caught in the act of saving an insurgent,—what had become of him?
What had become of the agent himself? Why had this agent kept silence?
Had the man succeeded in escaping? Had be corrupted the agent? Why did
this man give no sign of life to Marius, who owed everything to him? The
disinterestedness was no less prodigious than the devotion. Why did this
man not reappear? Perhaps he was above reward, but no man is above
gratitude. Was he dead? Who was the man? What was he like? No one was
able to say: the driver replied, "The night was very dark." Basque and

Nicolette in their start had only looked at their young master, who was all
bloody. The porter, whose candle had lit up Marius's tragic arrival, had
alone remarked the man in question, and this was the description he gave of
him: "The man was frightful."
In the hope of deriving some advantage from them for his researches,
Marius kept his blood-stained clothes which he wore when he was brought
to his grandfather's. On examining the coat it was noticed that the skirt was
strangely torn, and a piece was missing. One evening Marius was speaking
in the presence of Cosette and Jean Valjean about all this singular
adventure, the countless inquiries he had made, and the inutility of his
efforts; Monsieur Fauchelevent's cold face offended him, and he exclaimed
with a vivacity which had almost the vibration of anger,—
"Yes, that man, whoever he may be, was sublime. Do you know what he
did, sir? He intervened like an archangel. He was obliged to throw himself
into the midst of the contest, carry me away, open the sewer, drag me off,
and carry me. He must have gone more than a league and a half through
frightful subterranean galleries, bent and bowed in the darkness, in the
sewer, for more than half a league, sir, with a corpse on his back! And for
what object? For the sole object of saving that corpse; and that corpse was
myself. He said to himself, 'There is, perhaps, a gleam of life left here, and I
will risk my existence for this wretched spark!' and he did not risk his
existence once, but twenty times! And each step was a danger, and the proof
is, that on leaving the sewer he was arrested. Do you know, sir, that this
man did all that? And he had no reward to expect. What was I? An
insurgent. What was I? A conquered man. Oh! if Cosette's six thousand
francs were mine—"
"They are yours," Jean Valjean interrupted.
"Well, then," Marius continued, "I would give them to find that man again."
Jean Valjean was silent.

BOOK VI.

THE SLEEPLESS NIGHT.

CHAPTER I.

FEBRUARY 16, 1833.

The night of February 16 was a blessed night, for it had above its shadow
the open sky. It was the wedding-night of Marius and Cosette.
The day had been adorable; it was not the blue festival dreamed of by the
grandfather, a fairy scene, with a confusion of cherubim and cupids above
the head of the married couple, a marriage worthy of being represented over
a door, but it had been sweet and smiling. The fashion of marrying in 1833
was not at all as it is now. France had not yet borrowed from England that
supreme delicacy of carrying off a wife, of flying on leaving the church,
hiding one's self as if ashamed of one's happiness, and combining the
manœuvres of a bankrupt with the ravishment of the Song of Songs. We had
not yet understood how chaste, exquisite, and decent it is to jolt one's
paradise in a postchaise; to vary the mystery with click-clacks of the whip;
to select an inn bed as the nuptial couch, and to leave behind one, at the
conventional alcove at so much per night, the most sacred recollection of
life, jumbled with the tête-à-têtes of the guard of the diligence and the
chamber-maid. In the second half of the nineteenth century, in which we
now are, the mayor and his scarf, the priest and his chasuble, the law and
God, are no longer sufficient; they must be complemented by the postilion
of Lonjumeau; blue jacket with red facings and bell buttons, a leather-
bound plate, green leather breeches, oaths to the Norman horses with their
knotted tails, imitation gold lace, oil-skin hat, heavy, dusty horses, an
enormous whip, and strong boots. France does not carry the elegance to
such an extent as to shower on the postchaise, as the English nobility do,
old shoes and battered slippers, in memory of Churchill, afterwards
Marlborough or Malbrouck, who was assailed on his wedding-day by the
anger of an aunt which brought him good luck. Shoes and slippers do not
yet form part of our nuptial celebrations; but, patience, with the spread of
good taste we shall yet come to it.

In 1833,—it is a century since then,—marriage was not performed at a
smart trot; people still supposed at that epoch, whimsically enough, that a
marriage is a private and social festival, that a patriarchal banquet does not
spoil a domestic solemnity; that gayety, even if it be excessive, so long as it
is decent, does no harm to happiness; and finally, that it is venerable and
good for the fusion of these two destinies from which a family will issue, to
begin in the house, and that the household may have in future the nuptial
chamber as a witness; and people were so immodest as to many at home.
The wedding took place, then, according to this fashion which is now
antiquated, at M. Gillenormand's; and though this affair of marrying is so
simple and natural, the publication of the banns, drawing up the deeds, the
mayoralty, and the church always cause some complication, and they could
not be ready before February 16. Now—we note this detail for the pure
satisfaction of being exact—it happened that the 16th was Mardi Gras.
There were hesitations and scruples, especially on the part of Aunt
Gillenormand.
"A Mardi Gras!" the grandfather exclaimed; "all the better. There is a
proverb that,—
'Mariage un Mardi gras
N'aura point d'enfants ingrats.'
All right. Done for the 16th. Do you wish to put it off, Marius?"
"Certainly not," said the amorous youth.
"We'll marry then," said the grandfather.
The marriage, therefore, took place on the 16th, in spite of the public
gayety. It rained on that day, but there is always in the sky a little blue patch
at the service of happiness, which lovers see, even when the rest of creation
are under their umbrellas. On the previous day Jean Valjean had handed to
Marius, in the presence of M. Gillenormand, the five hundred and eighty-
four thousand francs. As the marriage took place in the ordinary way, the
deeds were very simple. Toussaint was henceforth useless to Jean Valjean,
so Cosette inherited her, and promoted her to the rank of lady's-maid. As for
Jean Valjean, a nice room was furnished expressly for him at M.
Gillenormand's, and Cosette had said to him so irresistibly, "Father, I
implore you," that she had almost made him promise that he would come

and occupy it. A few days before that fixed for the marriage an accident
happened to Jean Valjean; he slightly injured the thumb of his right hand. It
was not serious, and he had not allowed any one to poultice it, or even see
it, not even Cosette. Still, it compelled him to wrap up his hand in a
bandage and wear his arm in a sling, and this, of course, prevented him
from signing anything. M. Gillenormand, as supervising guardian to
Cosette, took his place. We will not take the reader either to the mayoralty
or to church. Two lovers are not usually followed so far, and we are wont to
turn our back on the drama so soon as it puts a bridegroom's bouquet in its
button-hole. We will restrict ourselves to noting an incident which, though
unnoticed by the bridal party, marked the drive from the Rue des Filles du
Calvaire to St. Paul's Church.
The Rue St. Louis was being repaired at the time, and it was blocked from
the Rue du Parc Royal, hence it was impossible for the carriage to go direct
to St. Paul's. As they were obliged to change their course, the most simple
plan was to turn into the boulevard. One of the guests drew attention to the
fact that, as it was Mardi Gras, there would be a block of vehicles. "Why
so?" M. Gillenormand asked. "On account of the masks." "Famous," said
the grandfather; "we will go that way. These young people are going to
marry and see the serious side of life, and seeing the masquerade will be a
slight preparation for it." They turned into the boulevard: the first of the
wedding carriages contained Cosette and Aunt Gillenormand, M.
Gillenormand, and Jean Valjean. Marius, still separated from his bride,
according to custom, was in the second. The nuptial procession, on turning
out of the Rue des Filles du Calvaire, joined the long file of vehicles
making an endless chain from the Madeleine to the Bastille, and from the
Bastille to the Madeleine. Masks were abundant on the boulevard: and
though it rained every now and then, Paillasse, Pantalon, and Gille were
obstinate. In the good humor of that winter of 1833 Paris had disguised
itself as Venus. We do not see a Mardi Gras like this now-a-days, for as
everything existing is a wide-spread carnival, there is no carnival left. The
sidewalks were thronged with pedestrians, and the windows with gazers;
and the terraces crowning the peristyles of the theatres were covered with
spectators. In addition to the masks, they look at the file—peculiar to Mardi
Gras as to Longchamp—of vehicles of every description, citadines, carts,
curricles, and cabs, marching in order rigorously riveted to each other by
police regulations, and, as it were, running on rails. Any one who happens

to be in one of these vehicles is at once spectator and spectacle. Policemen
standing by the side of the boulevard kept in place these two interminable
files moving in a contrary direction, and watched that nothing should
impede the double current of these two streams, one running up, the other
down, one towards the Chaussée d'Antin, the other towards the Faubourg
St. Antoine. The escutcheoned carriages of the Peers of France and
Ambassadors held the crown of the causeway, coming and going freely; and
certain magnificent and gorgeous processions, notably the Bœuf Gras, had
the same privilege. In this Parisian gayety England clacked his whip, for the
post-chaise of Lord Seymour, at which a popular sobriquet was hurled,
passed with a great noise.
In the double file, along which Municipal Guards galloped like watch-dogs,
honest family arks, crowded with great-aunts and grandmothers, displayed
at windows healthy groups of disguised children, Pierrots of seven and
Pierrettes of six, ravishing little creatures, feeling that they officially formed
part of the public merriment, penetrated with the dignity of their
Harlequinade, and displaying the gravity of functionaries. From time to
time a block occurred somewhere in the procession of vehicles; one or other
of the two side files stopped until the knot was untied, one impeded vehicle
sufficing to block the whole line. Then they started again. The wedding
carriages were in the file, going towards the Bastille on the right-hand side
of the boulevard. Opposite the Rue du Pont-aux-Choux there was a
stoppage, and almost at the same moment the file on the other side
proceeding towards the Madeleine stopped too. At this point of the
procession there was a carriage of masks. These carnages, or, to speak more
correctly, these cartloads of masks, are well known to the Parisians; if they
failed on Mardi Gras or at mid-Lent, people would say, "There's something
behind it. Probably we are going to have a change of Ministry." A heap of
Harlequins, Columbines, and Pantaloons jolted above the heads of the
passers-by,—all possible grotesques, from the Turk to the savage. Hercules
supporting Marquises, fish-fags who would make Rabelais stop his ears, as
well as Mænads who would make Aristophanes look down, tow perukes,
pink fleshings, three-cornered hats, pantaloons, spectacles, cries given to
the pedestrians, hands on hips, bold postures, naked shoulders, masked
faces, and unmuzzled immodesty; a chaos of effronteries driven by a
coachman in a head-dress of flowers,—such is this institution. Greece felt
the want of Thespis' cart, and France needs Vadé's fiacre. All may be

parodied, even parody. The Saturnalia, that grimace of antique beauty, by
swelling and swelling becomes the Mardi Gras: and the Bacchanal,
formerly crowned with vine-leaves, inundated by sunshine, and displaying
marble breasts in a divine semi-nudity, is now flabby under the drenched
rags of the North, has ended by being called a chie-en-lit.
The tradition of the coaches of masks dates back to the oldest times of the
Monarchy. The accounts of Louis XI. allow the Palace steward "twenty
sous tournois for three coaches of masquerades." In our time these noisy
piles of creatures generally ride in some old coucou the roof of which they
encumber, or cover with their tumultuous group a landau the hood of which
is thrown back. There are twenty in a carriage intended for six. You see
them on the seat, on the front stool, on the springs of the hood, and on the
pole, and they even straddle across the lamps. They are standing, lying
down, or seated, cross-legged, or with pendent legs. The women occupy the
knees of the men, and this wild pyramid is seen for a long distance over the
heads of the crowd. These vehicles form mountains of merriment in the
midst of the mob, and Collé, Panard, and Piron flow from them enriched
with slang, and the fish-fag's catechism is expectorated from above upon
the people. This fiacre, which has grown enormous through its burden, has
an air of conquest; Hubbub is in front and Hurly-burly behind. People shout
in it, sing in it, yell in it, and writhe with happiness in it; gayety roars there,
sarcasm flashes, and joviality is displayed like a purple robe; two jades drag
in it farce expanded into an apotheosis, and it is the triumphal car of
laughter,—a laughter, though, too cynical to be frank, and in truth this
laughter is suspicious. It has a mission,—that of verifying the carnival to
the Parisians. These fish-fag vehicles, in which some strange darkness is
perceptible, cause the philosopher to reflect; there is something of the
government in them, and you lay your finger there on a curious affinity
between public men and public women. It is certainly a sorry thought, that
heaped-up turpitudes give a sum-total of gayety; that a people can be
amused by building up ignominy on opprobrium; that spying, acting as a
caryatid to prostitution, amuses the mob while affronting it; that the crowd
is pleased to see pass on four wheels this monstrous living pile of beings,
spangled rags, one half ordure, one half light, who bark and sing; that they
should clap their hands at all this shame, and that no festival is possible for
the multitude unless the police promenade in its midst these twenty-headed
hydras of joy. Most sad this certainly is, but what is to be done? These

tumbrels of beribboned and flowered filth are insulted and pardoned by the
public laughter, and the laughter of all is the accomplice of the universal
degradation. Certain unhealthy festivals disintegrate the people and convert
them into populace; but a populace, like tyrants, requires buffoons. The
king has Roquelaure, and the people has Paillasse. Paris is the great mad
city wherever it is not the great sublime city, and the carnival there is
political. Paris, let us confess it, willingly allows infamy to play a farce for
its amusement, and only asks of its masters—when it has masters—one
thing, "paint the mud for me." Rome was of the same humor; she loved
Nero, and Nero was a Titanic débardeur.
Accident willed it, as we have just said, that one of the shapeless groups of
masked men and women collected in a vast barouche stopped on the left of
the boulevard while the wedding party stopped on the right. The carriage in
which the masks were, noticed opposite to it the carriage in which was the
bride.
"Hilloh!" said a mask, "a wedding."
"A false wedding," another retorted, "we are the true one."
And, as they were too far off to address the wedding party, and as they also
feared the interference of the police, the two masks looked elsewhere. The
whole vehicle-load of masquers had plenty of work a moment after, for the
mob began hissing it, which is the caress given by the mob to masquerades,
and the two masks who had just spoken were obliged to face the crowd with
their comrades, and found all the missiles of the market repertory scarce
sufficient to reply to the atrocious jaw-lashing from the people. A frightful
exchange of metaphors took place between the masks and the crowd. In the
mean while two other masks in the same carriage, a Spaniard with an
exaggerated nose, an oldish look, and enormous black moustaches, and a
thin and very youthful fish-girl, wearing a half-mask, had noticed the
wedding also, and while their companions and the spectators were insulting
each other, held a conversation in a low voice. Their aside was covered by
the tumult and was lost in it. The showers had drenched the open carriage;
the February wind is not warm, and so the fish-girl while answering the
Spaniard shivered, laughed, and coughed. This was the dialogue, which we
translate from the original slang:—
"Look here."

"What is it, pa?"
"Do you see that old man?"
"What old man?"
"There, in the wedding coach, with his arm in a sling."
"Yes. Well?"
"I feel sure that I know him."
"Ah!"
"May my neck be cut, and I never said you, thou, or I, in my life, if I do not
know that Parisian."
"To-day Paris is Pantin."
"Can you see the bride by stooping?"
"No."
"And the bridegroom?"
"There is no bridegroom in that coach."
"Nonsense."
"Unless it be the other old man."
"Come, try and get a look at the bride by stooping."
"I can't."
"No matter, that old fellow who has something the matter with his paw, I
feel certain I know him."
"And what good will it do you, your knowing him?"
"I don't know. Sometimes!"
"I don't care a curse for old fellows."
"I know him."
"Know him as much as you like."
"How the deuce is he at the wedding?"

"Why, we are there too."
"Where does the wedding come from?"
"How do I know?"
"Listen."
"Well, what is it?"
"You must do something."
"What is it?"
"Get out of our trap and follow that wedding."
"What to do?"
"To know where it goes and what it is. Make haste and get down; run, my
daughter, for you are young."
"I can't leave the carriage."
"Why not?"
"I am hired."
"Oh, the devil!"
"I owe the Préfecture my day's work."
"That's true."
"If I leave the carriage, the first inspector who sees me will arrest me. You
know that."
"Yes, I know it."
"To-day I am bought by Pharos" (the government).
"No matter, that old fellow bothers me."
"All old men bother you, and yet you ain't a chicken yourself."
"He is in the first carriage."
"Well, what then?"
"In the bride's carriage."

"What next?"
"So he is the father."
"How does that concern me?"
"I tell you he is the father."
"You do nothing but talk about that father."
"Listen."
"Well, what?"
"I can only go away masked, for I am hidden here, and no one knows I am
here. But to-morrow there will be no masks, for it is Ash Wednesday, and I
run a risk of being nailed. I shall be obliged to go back to my hole, but you
are free."
"Not quite."
"Well, more so than I am."
"Well, what then?"
"You must try to find out where that wedding party is going to."
"Going to?"
"Yes."
"Oh, I know."
"Where to, then?"
"To the Cadran Bleu."
"But that is not the direction."
"Well, then! to La Rapée."
"Or elsewhere."
"They can do as they like, for weddings are free."
"That is not the thing. I tell you that you must try to find out for me what
that wedding is, and where it comes from."

"Of course! that would be funny. It's so jolly easy to find out a week after
where a wedding party has gone to that passed during the Mardi Gras. A pin
in a bundle of hay. Is it possible?"
"No matter, you must try. Do you hear, Azelma?"
The two files recommenced their opposite movement on the boulevard, and
the carriage of masks lost out of sight that which contained the bride.

CHAPTER II.

JEAN VALJEAN STILL HAS HIS ARM IN A SLING.

To realize one's dream—to whom is this granted? There must be elections
for this in heaven; we are the unconscious candidates, and the angels vote.
Cosette and Marius had been elected. Cosette, both at the mayoralty and at
church, was brilliant and touching. Toussaint, helped by Nicolette, had
dressed her. Cosette wore over a skirt of white taffetas her dress of Binche
lace, a veil of English point, a necklace of fine pearls, and a crown of
orange-flowers; all this was white, and in this whiteness she was radiant. It
was an exquisite candor expanding and becoming transfigured in light; she
looked like a virgin on the point of becoming a goddess. Marius's fine hair
was shining and perfumed, and here and there a glimpse could be caught,
under the thick curls, of pale lines, which were the scars of the barricade.
The grandfather, superb, with head erect, amalgamating in his toilette and
manners all the elegances of the time of Barras, gave his arm to Cosette. He
took the place of Jean Valjean, who, owing to his wound, could not give his
hand to the bride. Jean Valjean, dressed all in black, followed and smiled.
"Monsieur Fauchelevent," the grandfather said to him, "this is a glorious
day, and I vote the end of afflictions and cares. Henceforth there must be no
sorrow anywhere. By Heaven! I decree joy! misfortune has no right to exist,
and it is a disgrace for the azure of heaven that there are unfortunate men.
Evil does not come from man, who, at the bottom, is good; but all human
miseries have their capital and central government in hell, otherwise called
the Tuileries of the devil. There, I am making demagogic remarks at

present! For my part I have no political opinions left; and all I stick to is
that men should be rich, that is to say, joyous."
When, at the end of all the ceremonies,—after pronouncing before the
mayor and before the priest every yes that is possible, after signing the
register at the municipality and in the sacristy, after exchanging rings, after
kneeling side by side under the canopy of white moire in the smoke of the
censer,—they arrived holding each other by the hand, admired and envied
by all. Marius in black, she in white, preceded by the beadle in the colonel's
epaulettes, striking the flag-stones with his halbert, between two rows of
dazzled spectators, at the church doors which were thrown wide open, ready
to get into their carriage, —and then all was over. Cosette could not yet
believe it. She looked at Marius, she looked at the crowd, she looked at
heaven; it seemed as if she were afraid of awaking. Her astonished and
anxious air imparted something strangely enchanting to her. In returning
they both rode in the same carriage, Marius seated by Cosette's side, and M.
Gillenormand and Jean Valjean forming their vis-à-vis. Aunt Gillenormand
had fallen back a step and was in the second carriage. "My children," the
grandfather said, "you are now M. le Baron and Madame la Baronne with
thirty thousand francs a year." And Cosette, nuzzling against Marius,
caressed his ear with the angelic whisper, "It is true, then, my name is
Marius and I am Madame Thou." These two beings were resplendent; they
had reached the irrevocable and irrecoverable moment, the dazzling point of
intersection of all youth and all joy. They realized Jean Prouvaire's line;
together they did not number forty years. It was marriage sublimated, and
these two children were two lilies. They did not see each other, but
contemplated each other. Cosette perceived Marius in a glory, and Marius
perceived Cosette upon an altar. And upon this altar, and in this glory, the
two apotheoses blending behind a cloud for Cosette and a flashing for
Marius, there was the ideal thing, the real thing, the meeting-place of kisses
and of sleep, the nuptial pillow.

All the torments they had gone through returned to them in intoxication; it
appeared to them as if the griefs, the sleeplessness, the tears, the anguish,
the terrors, and the despair, by being converted into caresses and sunbeams,
rendered more charming still the charming hour which was approaching;
and that their sorrows were so many handmaidens who performed the
toilette of joy. How good it is to have suffered! Their misfortunes made a
halo for their happiness, and the long agony of their love ended in an
ascension. There was in these two souls the same enchantment, tinged with
voluptuousness in Marius and with modesty in Cosette. They said to each
other in a whisper, "We will go and see again our little garden in the Rue
Plumet." The folds of Cosette's dress were upon Marius. Such a day is an
ineffable blending of dream and certainty: you possess and you suppose,
and you still have time before you to divine. It is an indescribable emotion
on that day to be at midday and think of midnight. The delight of these two
hearts overflowed upon the crowd, and imparted merriment to the passers-
by. People stopped in the Rue St. Antoine, in front of St. Paul's, to look
through the carriage-window,—the orange flowers trembling on Cosette's
head. Then they returned to the Rue des Filles du Calvaire,—home. Marius,
side by side with Cosette, ascended, triumphantly and radiantly, that
staircase up which he had been dragged in a dying state. The beggars,
collected before the gate and dividing the contents of their purses, blessed
them. There were flowers everywhere, and the house was no less fragrant
than the church: after the incense the rose. They fancied they could hear
voices singing in infinitude; they had God in their hearts; destiny appeared
to them like a ceiling of stars; they saw above their heads the flashing of the
rising sun. Marius gazed at Cosette's charming bare arm and the pink things
which could be vaguely seen through the lace of the stomacher, and
Cosette, catching Marius's glance, blushed to the white of her eyes. A good
many old friends of the Gillenormand family had been invited, and they
thronged round Cosette, outvying one another in calling her Madame la
Baronne. The officer, Théodule Gillenormand, now captain, had come from
Chartres, where he was stationed, to be present at his cousin's marriage:
Cosette did not recognize him. He, on his side, accustomed to be thought a
pretty fellow by the women, remembered Cosette no more than any other.
"How right I was in not believing that story of the lancer!" Father
Gillenormand said to himself aside.

Cosette had never been more affectionate to Jean Valjean, and she was in
unison with Father Gillenormand; while he built up joy in aphorisms and
maxims, she exhaled love and beauty like a perfume. Happiness wishes
everybody to be happy. She found again in speaking to Jean Valjean
inflections of her voice of the time when she was a little girl, and caressed
him with a smile. A banquet had been prepared in the dining-room; an
illumination à giorno is the necessary seasoning of a great joy, and mist and
darkness are not accepted by the happy. They do not consent to be black:
night, yes; darkness, no; and if there be no sun, one must be made. The
dining-room was a furnace of gay things; in the centre, above the white
glistening tables, hung a Venetian chandelier, with all sorts of colored birds,
blue, violet, red, and green, perched among the candles; round the
chandelier were girandoles, and on the walls were mirrors with three and
four branches; glasses, crystal, plate, china, crockery, gold, and silver, all
flashed and rejoiced. The spaces between the candelabra were filled up with
bouquets, so that where there was not a light there was a flower. In the
anteroom three violins and a flute played some of Haydn's quartettes. Jean
Valjean had seated himself on a chair in the drawing-room, behind the door,
which, being thrown back, almost concealed him. A few minutes before
they sat down to table Cosette gave him a deep courtesy, while spreading
out her wedding-dress with both hands, and with a tenderly mocking look
asked him,—
"Father, are you satisfied?"
"Yes," said Jean Valjean, "I am satisfied."
"Well, then, laugh."
Jean Valjean began laughing. A few minutes later Basque came in to
announce that dinner was on the table. The guests, preceded by M.
Gillenormand, who gave his arm to Cosette, entered the dining-room, and
collected round the table in the prescribed order. There was a large easy-
chair on either side of the bride, one for M. Gillenormand, the other for Jean
Valjean. M. Gillenormand seated himself, but the other chair remained
empty. All looked round for Monsieur Fauchelevent, but he was no longer
there, and M. Gillenormand hailed Basque:
"Do you know where M. Fauchelevent is?"

"Yes, sir, I do," Basque replied. "Monsieur Fauchelevent requested me to
tell you, sir, that his hand pained him, and that he could not dine with M. le
Baron and Madame la Baronne. He therefore begged to be excused, but
would call to-morrow. He has just left."
This empty chair momentarily chilled the effusion of the wedding feast; but
though M. Fauchelevent was absent M. Gillenormand was there, and the
grandfather shone for two. He declared that M. Fauchelevent acted rightly
in going to bed early if he were in pain, but that it was only a small hurt.
This declaration was sufficient; besides, what is a dark corner in such a
submersion of joy? Cosette and Marius were in one of those egotistic and
blessed moments when people possess no other faculty than that of
perceiving joy; and then M. Gillenormand had an idea, "By Jupiter! this
chair is empty; come hither, Marius; your aunt, though she has a right to it,
will permit you; this chair is for you; it is legal, and it is pretty,—Fortunatus
by the side of Fortunata." The whole of the guests applauded. Marius took
Jean Valjean's place by Cosette's side, and things were so arranged that
Cosette, who had at first been saddened by the absence of Jean Valjean,
ended by being pleased at it. From the moment when Marius was the
substitute, Cosette would not have regretted God. She placed her little
white-satin-slippered foot upon Marius's foot. When the easy-chair was
occuppied, M. Fauchelevent was effaced, and nothing was wanting. Five
minutes later all the guests were laughing from one end of the table to the
other, with all the forgetfulness of humor. At dessert M. Gillenormand rose,
with a glass of champagne in his hand, only half full, so that the trembling
of ninety-two years might not upset it, and proposed the health of the new-
married couple.
"You will not escape from two sermons," he exclaimed: "this morning you
had the curé's, and this evening you will have grandpapa's. Listen to me, for
I am going to give you some advice: Adore each other. I do not beat round
the bush, but go straight to the point; be happy. There are no other sages in
creation but the turtle-doves. Philosophers say, Moderate your joys; but I
say, Throw the bridle on the neck of your joys. Love like fiends, be furious.
The philosophers babble, and I should like to thrust their philosophy down
their throats for them. Can we have too many perfumes, too many open
rose-buds, too many singing nightingales, too many green leaves, and too
much dawn in life? Can we love too much? Can we please one another too

much? Take care, Estelle, you are too pretty! Take care, Némorin, you are
too handsome! What jolly nonsense! Can people enchant each other, tease
each other, and charm each other too much? Can they be too loving? Can
they be too happy? Moderate your joys,—oh, stuff! Down with the
philosophers, for wisdom is jubilation. Do you jubilate? Let us jubilate; are
we happy because we are good, or are we good because we are happy? Is
the Sancy diamond called the Sancy because it belonged to Harlay de
Sancy, or because it weighs one hundred and six carats? I do not know; and
life is full of such problems: the important thing is to have the Sancy and
happiness. Let us be happy without quibbling. Let us blindly obey the sun.
What is the sun? It is love; and when I say love, I mean woman. Ah, ah!
woman is an omnipotence. Ask that demagogue, Marius, if he is not the
slave of that little she-tyrant, Cosette, and willingly so, the coward?
Woman! There is not a Robespierre who can stand; but woman reigns. I am
now only a royalist of that royalty. What is Adam? The royalty of Eve.
There is no '89 for Eve. There was the royal sceptre surmounted by the
fleur-de-lys, there was the imperial sceptre surmounted by a globe, there
was Charlemagne's sceptre of iron, and the sceptre of Louis the Great,
which was of gold. The Revolution twisted them between its thumb and
forefinger like straws. It is finished, it is broken, it lies on the ground,—
there is no sceptre left. But just make a revolution against that little
embroidered handkerchief which smells of patchouli! I should like to see
you at it. Try it. Why is it solid? Because it is a rag. Ah! you are the
nineteenth century. Well, what then? We were the eighteenth, and were as
foolish as you. Do not suppose that you have made any tremendous change
in the world because your gallant-trusser is called cholera-morbus, and your
bourrée the cachucha. After all, woman must always be loved, and I defy
you to get out of that. These she-devils are our angels. Yes, love, woman,
and a kiss form a circle from which I defy you to issue, and for my own part
I should be very glad to enter it again. Who among you has seen the star
Venus, the great coquette of the abyss, the Celimène of ocean, rise in
infinite space, appeasing everything below her, and looking at the waves
like a woman? The ocean is a rude Alcestis; and yet, however much he may
growl, when Venus appears he is forced to smile. That brute-beast submits,
and we are all thus. Anger, tempest, thunder-bolts, foam up to the ceiling. A
woman comes upon the stage, a star rises, and you crawl in the dust. Marius
was fighting six months ago, and is marrying to-day, and that is well done.

Yes, Marius, yes, Cosette, you are right. Exist bravely one for the other,
make us burst with rage because we cannot do the same, and idolize each
other. Take in both your beaks the little straws of felicity which lie on the
ground, and make of them a nest for life. By Jove! to love, to be loved,—
what a great miracle when a man is young! Do not suppose that you
invented it. I too have dreamed, and thought, and sighed. I too have had a
moonlit soul. Love is a child six thousand years of age, and has a right to a
long white beard. Methuselah is a baby by the side of Cupid. Sixty centuries
back man and woman got out of the scrape by loving. The devil, who is
cunning, took to hating man; but man, who is more cunning still, took to
loving woman. In this way he did himself more good than the devil did him
harm. That trick was discovered simultaneously with the terrestrial
paradise. My friends, the invention is old, but it is brand new. Take
advantage of it; be Daphnis and Chloe while waiting till you are Baucis and
Philemon. Manage so that when you are together you may want for nothing,
and that Cosette may be the sun for Marius, and Marius the universe for
Cosette. Cosette, let your fine weather be your husband's smiles. Marius, let
your wife's tears be the rain, and mind that it never does rain in your
household. You have drawn the good number in the lottery, love in the
sacrament. You have the prize number, so keep it carefully under lock and
key. Do not squander it. Adore each other, and a fig for the rest. Believe
what I tell you, then, for it is good sense, and good sense cannot deceive. Be
to one another a religion, for each man has his own way of adoring God.
Saperlotte! the best way of adoring God is to love one's wife. I love you!
that is my catechism; and whoever loves is orthodox. The oath of Henri IV.
places sanctity between guttling and intoxication. Ventre Saint Gris! I do
not belong to the religion of that oath, for woman is forgotten in it, and that
surprises me on the part of Henri IV.'s oath. My friends, long live woman! I
am old, so people say; but it is amazing how disposed I feel to be young. I
should like to go and listen to the bagpipes in the woods. These children,
who succeed in being beautiful and satisfied, intoxicate me. I am quite
willing to marry if anybody will have me. It is impossible to imagine that
God has made us for anything else than this,—to idolize, to purr, to strut, to
be a pigeon, to be a cock, to caress our lovers from morning till night, to
admire ourselves in our little wife, to be proud, to be triumphant, and to
swell. Such is the object of life. That, without offence, is what we thought
in our time, when we were young men. Ah! vertu-bamboche! what

charming women there were in those days! what ducks! I made my ravages
among them. Then love each other. If men and women did not love, I really
do not see what use there would be in having a spring. And for my part, I
would pray the good God to lock up all the fine things he shows us and take
them back from us, and to return to his box the flowers, the birds, and the
pretty girls. My children, receive an old man's blessing."
The evening was lively, gay, and pleasant; the sovereign good-humor of the
grandfather gave the tone to the whole festivity, and each was regulated by
this almost centenary heartiness. There was a little dancing and a good deal
of laughter; it was a merry wedding, to which that worthy old fellow "Once
on a time" might have been invited; however, he was present in the person
of Father Gillenormand. There was a tumult and then a silence; the married
couple disappeared. A little after midnight the Gillenormand mansion
became a temple. Here we stop, for an angel stands on the threshold of
wedding-nights, smiling, and with finger on lip; the mind becomes
contemplative before this sanctuary in which the celebration of love is held.
There must be rays of light above such houses, and the joy which they
contain must pass through the walls in brilliancy, and vaguely irradiate the
darkness. It is impossible for this sacred and fatal festival not to send a
celestial radiance to infinitude. Love is the sublime crucible in which the
fusion of man and woman takes place; the one being, the triple being, the
final being, the human trinity issue from it. This birth of two souls in one
must have emotion for the shadows. The lover is the priest, and the
transported virgin feels an awe. A portion of this joy ascends to God. When
there is really marriage, that is to say, when there is love, the ideal is
mingled with it, and a nuptial couch forms in the darkness a corner of the
dawn. If it was given to the mental eye to perceive the formidable and
charming visions of higher life, it is probable that it would see the forms of
night, the unknown winged beings, the blue wayfarers of the invisible,
bending down round the luminous house, satisfied and blessing, pointing
out to each other the virgin bride, who is gently startled, and having the
reflection of human felicity on their divine countenances. If, at this supreme
hour, the pair, dazzled with pleasure, and who believe themselves alone,
were to listen, they would hear in their chamber a confused rustling of
wings, for perfect happiness implies the guarantee of angels. This little
obscure alcove has an entire heaven for its ceiling. When two mouths,
which have become sacred by love, approach each other in order to create,

it is impossible but that there is a tremor in the immense mystery of the
stars above this ineffable kiss. These felicities are the real ones, there is no
joy beyond their joys; love is the sole ecstasy, and all the rest weeps. To
love or to have loved is sufficient; ask nothing more after that. There is no
other pearl to be found in the dark folds of life, for love is a consummation.

CHAPTER III.

THE INSEPARABLE.

What had become of Jean Valjean? Directly after he had laughed in
accordance with Cosette's request, as no one was paying any attention to
him, Jean Valjean rose, and unnoticed reached the anteroom. It was the
same room which he had entered eight months previously, black with mud
and blood and gunpowder, bringing back the grandson to the grandfather.
The old panelling was garlanded with flowers and leaves, the musicians
were seated on the sofa upon which Marius had been deposited. Basque, in
black coat, knee-breeches, white cravat, and white gloves, was placing
wreaths of roses round each of the dishes which was going to be served up.
Jean Valjean showed him his arm in the sling, requested him to explain his
absence, and quitted the house. The windows of the dining-room looked out
on the street, and Valjean stood for some minutes motionless in the
obscurity of those radiant windows. He listened, and the confused sound of
the banquet reached his ears; he heard the grandfather's loud and dictatorial
voice, the violins, the rattling of plates and glasses, the bursts of laughter,
and amid all these gay sounds he distinguished Cosette's soft, happy voice.
He left the Rue des Filles du Calvaire and returned to the Rue de l'Homme
Armé. In going home he went along the Rue St. Louis, the Rue Culture-
Sainte-Catherine, and the Blancs Manteaux; it was a little longer, but it was
the road by which he had been accustomed to come with Cosette during the
last three months, in order to avoid the crowd and mud of the Rue Vieille du
Temple. This road, which Cosette had passed along, excluded the idea of
any other itinerary for him. Jean Valjean returned home, lit his candle, and
went upstairs. The apartments were empty; not even Toussaint was in there

now. Jean Valjean's footsteps made more noise in the rooms than usual. All
the wardrobes were open; he entered Cosette's room, and there were no
sheets on the bed. The pillow, without a case or lace, was laid on the
blankets folded at the foot of the bed, in which no one was going to sleep
again. All the small feminine articles to which Cosette clung had been
removed; only the heavy furniture and the four walls remained. Toussaint's
bed was also unmade, and the only one made which seemed to be expecting
somebody was Jean Valjean's. Jean Valjean looked at the walls, closed some
of the wardrobe drawers, and walked in and out of the rooms. Then he
returned to his own room and placed his candle on the table; he had taken
his arm out of the sling, and used it as if he were suffering no pain in it. He
went up to his bed and his eyes fell—was it by accident or was it
purposely?—on the inseparable of which Cosette had been jealous, the
little valise which never left him. On June 4, when he arrived at the Rue de
l'Homme Armé, he laid it on a table; he now walked up to this table with
some eagerness, took the key out of his pocket, and opened the
portmanteau. He slowly drew out the clothes in which, ten years previously,
Cosette had left Montfermeil; first, the little black dress, then the black
handkerchief, then the stout shoes, which Cosette could almost have worn
still, so small was her foot; next the petticoat, then the apron, and lastly, the
woollen stockings. These stockings, in which the shape of a little leg was
gracefully marked, were no longer than Jean Valjean's hand. All these
articles were black, and it was he who took them for her to Montfermeil. He
laid each article on the bed as he took it out, and he thought and
remembered. It was in winter, a very cold December; she was shivering
under her rags, and her poor feet were quite red in her wooden shoes. He,
Jean Valjean, had made her take off these rags and put on this mourning
garb; the mother must have been pleased in her tomb to see her daughter
wearing mourning for her, and above all, to see that she was well clothed
and was warm. He thought of that forest of Montfermeil, he thought what
the weather was, of the trees without leaves, of the wood without birds and
the sky without sun; but no matter, it was charming. He arranged the little
clothes on the bed, the handkerchief near the petticoat, the stockings along
with the shoes, the apron by the side of the dress, and he looked at them one
after the other. She was not much taller than that, she had her large doll in
her arms, she had put her louis d'or in the pocket of this apron, she laughed,

they walked along holding each other's hand, and she had no one but him in
the world.
Then his venerable white head fell on the bed, his old stoical heart broke,
his face was buried in Cosette's clothes, and had any one passed upstairs at
that moment he would have heard frightful sobs.

CHAPTER IV.

IMMORTALE JECUR.

The old formidable struggle, of which we have already seen several phases,
began again. Jacob only wrestled with the angel for one night. Alas! how
many times have we seen Jean Valjean caught round the waist in the
darkness by his conscience, and struggling frantically against it. An
extraordinary struggle! At certain moments the foot slips, at others the
ground gives way. How many times had that conscience, clinging to the
right, strangled and crushed him! How many times had inexorable truth set
its foot on his chest! How many times had he, felled by the light, cried for
mercy! How many times had that implacable light, illumined within and
over him by the Bishop, dazzled him when he wished to be blinded! How
many times had he risen again in the contest, clung to the rock, supported
himself by sophistry, and been dragged through the dust, at one moment
throwing his conscience under him, at another thrown by it! How many
times, after an equivocation, after the treacherous and specious reasoning of
egotism, had he heard his irritated conscience cry in his ears, "Trickster!
wretch!" How many times had his refractory thoughts groaned convulsively
under the evidence of duty! What secret wounds he had, which he alone felt
bleeding! What excoriations there were in his lamentable existence! How
many times had he risen, bleeding, mutilated, crushed, enlightened, with
despair in his heart and serenity in his soul! And though vanquished, he felt
himself the victor, and after having dislocated, tortured, and broken him, his
conscience, erect before him, luminous and tranquil, would say to him,
—"Now go in peace!" What a mournful peace, alas! after issuing from such
a contest.

This night, however, Jean Valjean felt that he was fighting his last battle. A
crushing question presented itself; predestinations are not all straight; they
do not develop themselves in a rectilinear avenue before the predestined
man; they have blind alleys, zigzags, awkward corners, and perplexing
cross-roads. Jean Valjean was halting at this moment at the most dangerous
of these cross-roads. He had reached the supreme crossing of good and evil,
and had that gloomy intersection before his eyes. This time again, as had
already happened in other painful interludes, two roads presented
themselves before him, one tempting, the other terrifying; which should he
take? The one which frightened him was counselled by the mysterious
pointing hand which we all perceive every time that we fix our eyes upon
the darkness. Jean Valjean had once again a choice between the terrible
haven and the smiling snare. Is it true, then? The soul may be cured, but not
destiny. What a frightful thing,—an incurable destiny! The question which
presented itself was this: In what way was Jean Valjean going to behave to
the happiness of Cosette and Marius? That happiness he had willed, he had
made; and at this hour, in gazing upon it, he could have the species of
satisfaction which a cutler would have who recognized his trade-mark upon
a knife when he drew it all smoking from his chest. Cosette had Marius,
Marius possessed Cosette; they possessed everything, even wealth, and it
was his doing. But now that this happiness existed and was there, how was
he, Jean Valjean, to treat it? Should he force himself upon it and treat it as if
belonging to himself? Doubtless Cosette was another man's; but should he,
Jean Valjean, retain of Cosette all that he could retain? Should he remain the
sort of father, scarce seen but respected, which he had hitherto been?
Should he introduce himself quietly into Cosette's house? Should he carry
his past to this future without saying a word? Should he present himself
there as one having a right, and should he sit down, veiled, at this luminous
hearth? Should he smilingly take the hands of these two innocent creatures
in his tragic hands? Should he place on the andirons of the Gillenormand
drawing-room his feet, which dragged after them the degrading shadow of
the law? Should he render the obscurity on his brow and the cloud on theirs
denser? Should he join his catastrophe to their two felicities? Should he
continue to be silent? In a word, should he be the sinister dumb man of
destiny by the side of these two happy beings? We must be accustomed to
fatality and to meeting it, to raise our eyes when certain questions appear to
us in their terrible nudity. Good and evil are behind this stern note of

interrogation. What are you going to do? the Sphinx asks. This habit of trial
Jean Valjean had, and he looked at the Sphinx fixedly, and examined the
pitiless problem from all sides. Cosette, that charming existence, was the
raft of this shipwrecked man; what should he do, cling to it, or let it go? If
he clung to it, he issued from disaster, he remounted to the sunshine, he let
the bitter water drip off his clothes and hair, he was saved and lived.
Suppose he let it go? Then there was an abyss. He thus dolorously held
counsel with his thoughts, or, to speak more correctly, he combated; he
rushed furiously within himself, at one moment against his will, at another
against his convictions. It was fortunate for Jean Valjean that he had been
able to weep, for that enlightened him, perhaps. Still, the beginning was
stern; a tempest, more furious than that which had formerly forced him to
Arras, was let loose within him. The past returned to him in the face of the
present; he compared and sobbed. Once the sluice of tears was opened, the
despairing man writhed. He felt himself arrested, alas! in the deadly fight
between one egotism and one duty. When we thus recoil inch by inch before
our ideal, wildly, obstinately, exasperated at yielding, disputing the ground,
hoping for a possible flight, and seeking an issue, what a sudden and
sinister resistance behind us is the foot of the wall! To feel the holy shadow
standing in the way! The inexorable, invisible,—what a pressure!
Hence we have never finished with our conscience. Make up your mind,
Brutus; make up your mind, Cato. It is bottomless, for it is God. You cast
into this pit the labor of your whole life,—your fortune, your wealth, your
success, your liberty, or your country, your comfort, your repose, your joy.
More, more, more! Empty the vase, tread over the urn, you must, end by
throwing in your heart. There is a barrel like this somewhere in the Hades
of old. Is it not pardonable to refuse at last? Can that which is inexhaustible
have any claim? Are not endless chains beyond human strength? Who then
would blame Sisyphus and Jean Valjean for saying, It is enough! The
obedience of matter is limited by friction: is there not a limit to the
obedience of the soul? If perpetual motion be impossible, why is perpetual
devotion demanded? The first step is nothing, it is the last that is difficult.
What was the Champmathieu affair by the side of Cosette's marriage? What
did it bring with it? What is returning to the hulks by the side of entering
nothingness? Oh, first step to descend, how gloomy thou art! oh, second
step, how black thou art! How could he help turning his head away this
time? Martyrdom is a sublimation, a corrosive sublimation, it is a torture

which consecrates. A man may consent to it for the first hour; he sits on the
throne of red-hot iron, the crown of red-hot iron is placed on his head,—he
accepts the red-hot globe, he takes the red-hot sceptre, but he still has to
don the mantle of flame, and is there not a moment when the miserable
flesh revolts and he flies from the punishment? At length Jean Valjean
entered the calmness of prostration; he wished, thought over, and
considered the alternations, the mysterious balance of light and shadow.
Should he force his galleys on these two dazzling children, or consummate
his own irremediable destruction? On one side was the sacrifice of Cosette,
on the other his own.
On which solution did he decide? What determination did he form? What
was in his inner self the definitive reply to the incorruptible interrogatory of
fatality? What door did he resolve on opening? Which side of his life did he
make up his mind to close and condemn? Amid all those unfathomable
precipices that surrounded him, which was his choice? What extremity did
he accept? To which of these gulfs did he nod his head? His confusing
reverie lasted all night; he remained till daybreak in the same position,
leaning over the bed, prostrate beneath the enormity of fate, perhaps
crushed, alas! with hands convulsed, and arms extended at a right angle like
an unnailed crucified man thrown with his face on the ground. He remained
thus for twelve hours,—the twelve hours of a long winter's night, frozen,
without raising his head or uttering a syllable. He was motionless as a
corpse, while his thoughts rolled on the ground or fled away; sometimes
like a hydra, sometimes like the eagle. To see him thus you would have
thought him a dead man; but all at once he started convulsively, and his
mouth pressed to Cosette's clothes, kissed them; then one saw that he was
alive.
What One, since Jean Valjean was alone and nobody was there?
The One who is in the darkness.

BOOK VII.

THE LAST DROP IN THE BITTER CUP.

CHAPTER I.

THE SEVENTH CIRCLE AND THE EIGHT HEAVEN.

The day after a wedding is solitary, for people respect the retirement of the
happy, and to some extent their lengthened slumbers. The confusion of
visits and congratulations does not begin again till a later date. On the
morning of Feb. 17 it was a little past midday when Basque, with napkin
and feather-brush under his arm, dusting the anteroom, heard a low tap at
the door. There had not been a ring, which is discreet on such a day. Basque
opened and saw M. Fauchelevent; he conducted him to the drawing-room,
which was still topsy-turvy, and looked like the battle-field of the previous
day's joys.
"Really, sir," observed Basque, "we woke late."
"Is your master up?" Jean Valjean asked.
"How is your hand, sir?" Basque replied.
"Better. Is your master up?"
"Which one, the old or the new?"
"Monsieur Pontmercy."
"Monsieur le Baron!" said Basque, drawing himself up.
A baron is before all a baron to his servants; a portion of it comes to them,
and they have what a philosopher would call the spray of the title, and that
flatters them. Marius, we may mention in passing, a militant republican as
he had proved, was now a baron in spite of himself. A little revolution had
taken place in the family with reference to this title; it was M. Gillenormand
who was attached to it, and Marius who had fallen away from it. But
Colonel Pontmercy had written, "My son will bear my title," and Marius
obeyed. And then Cosette, in whom the woman was beginning to
germinate, was delighted at being a baroness.
"Monsieur le Baron?" repeated Basque; "I will go and see. I will tell him
that Monsieur Fauchelevent is here."

"No, do not tell him it is I. Tell him that some one wishes to speak to him
privately, and do not mention my name."
"Ah!" said Basque.
"I wish to surprise him."
"Ah!" Basque repeated, giving himself his second "Ah!" as an explanation
of the first.
And he left the room, and Jean Valjean remained alone. The drawing-room,
as we said, was all in disorder, and it seemed as if you could still hear the
vague sounds of the wedding. On the floor were all sorts of flowers, which
had fallen from garlands and head-dresses, and the candles burned down to
the socket added wax stalactites to the crystal of the lustres. Not an article
of furniture was in its place; in the corner three or four easy-chairs, drawn
close together, and forming a circle, looked as if they were continuing a
conversation. The ensemble was laughing, for there is a certain grace left in
a dead festival, for it has been happy. Upon those disarranged chairs, amid
those fading flowers and under those extinguished lamps, persons have
thought of joy. The sun succeeded the chandelier, and gayly entered the
drawing-room. A few moments passed, during which Jean Valjean remained
motionless at the spot where Basque left him. His eyes were hollow, and so
sunk in their sockets by sleeplessness that they almost disappeared. His
black coat displayed the fatigued creases of a coat which has been up all
night, and the elbows were white with that down which friction with linen
leaves on cloth. Jean Valjean looked at the window designed on the floor at
his feet by the sun. There was a noise at the door, and he raised his eyes.
Marius came in with head erect, laughing mouth, a peculiar light over his
face, a smooth forehead, and a flashing eye. He, too, had not slept.
"It is you, father!" he exclaimed, on perceiving Jean Valjean; "why, that ass
Basque affected the mysterious. But you have come too early; it is only
half-past twelve, and Cosette is asleep."
That word, father, addressed to M. Fauchelevent by Marius, signified
supreme felicity. There had always been, as we know, a cliff, a coldness and
constraint between them; ice to melt or break. Marius was so intoxicated
that the cliff sank, the ice dissolved, and M. Fauchelevent was for him, as

for Cosette, a father. He continued, the words overflowed with him, which
is peculiar to these divine paroxysms of joy,—
"How delighted I am to see you! If you only knew how we missed you
yesterday! Good-day, father. How is your hand? Better, is it not?"
And, satisfied with the favorable answer which he gave himself, he went
on,—
"We both spoke about you, for Cosette loves you so dearly. You will not
forget that you have a room here, for we will not hear a word about the Rue
de l'Homme Armé. I do not know how you were able to live in that street,
which is sick, and mean, and poor, which has a barrier at one end, where
you feel cold, and which no one can enter! You will come and install
yourself here, and from to-day, or else you will have to settle with Cosette.
She intends to lead us both by the nose, I warn you. You have seen your
room; it is close to ours, and looks out on the gardens. We have had the lock
mended; the bed is made; it is all ready, and you have only to move in.
Cosette has placed close to your bed a large old easy-chair, of Utrecht
velvet, to which she said, 'Hold out your arms to him!' Every spring a
nightingale comes to the clump of acacias which faces your windows, and
you will have it in two months. You will have its nest on your left, and ours
on your right; at night it will sing, and by day Cosette will talk. Your room
faces due south; Cosette will arrange, your books in it; the Travels of
Captain Cook, and the other, Vancouver's Travels, and all your matters.
There is, I believe, a valise to which you are attached, and I have arranged a
corner of honor for it. You have won my grandfather, for you suit him. We
will live together. Do you know whist? You will over-whelm my
grandfather if you are acquainted with whist. You will take Cosette for a
walk on the day when I go to the Courts; you will give her your arm, as you
used to do, you remember, formerly at the Luxembourg. We are absolutely
determined to be very happy, and you will share in our happiness, do you
hear, father? By the bye, you will breakfast with us this morning?"
"Sir!" said Jean Valjean, "I have one thing to say to you. I am an ex-
convict."
The limit of the perceptible acute sounds may be as well exceeded for the
mind as for the ear. These words, "I am an ex-convict," coming from M.
Fauchelevent's mouth and entering Marius's ear went beyond possibility.

Marius did not hear. It seemed to him as if something had been just said to
him, but he knew not what. He stood with gaping mouth. Jean Valjean
unfastened the black handkerchief that supported his right arm, undid the
linen rolled round his hand, bared his thumb, and showed it to Marius.
"I have nothing the matter with my hand," he said.
Marius looked at the thumb.
"There was never anything the matter with it," Jean Valjean added.
There was, in fact, no sign of a wound. Jean Valjean continued,—
"It was proper that I should be absent from your marriage, and I was so as
far as I could be. I feigned this wound in order not to commit a forgery, and
render the marriage-deeds null and void."
Marius stammered,—
"What does this mean?"
"It means," Jean Valjean replied, "that I have been to the galleys."
"You are driving me mad!" said the horrified Marius.
"Monsieur Pontmercy," said Jean Valjean, "I was nineteen years at the
galleys for robbery. Then I was sentenced to them for life; for robbery and a
second offence. At the present moment I am an escaped convict."
Although Marius recoiled before the reality, refused the facts, and resisted
the evidence, he was obliged to yield to it. He was beginning to understand,
and as always happens in such a case, he understood too much. He had the
shudder of a hideous internal flash, and an idea that made him shudder
crossed his mind. He foresaw a frightful destiny for himself in the future.
"Say all, say all," he exclaimed; "you are Cosette's father!"
And he fell back two steps, with a movement of indescribable horror. Jean
Valjean threw up his head with such a majestic attitude that he seemed to
rise to the ceiling.
"It is necessary that you should believe me here, sir, although the oath of
men like us is not taken in a court of justice—"

Here there was a silence, and then with a sort of sovereign and sepulchral
authority he added, speaking slowly and laying a stress on the syllables,—
"You will believe me. I, Cosette's father! Before Heaven, no, Monsieur le
Baron Pontmercy. I am a peasant of Faverolles, and earned my livelihood
by pruning trees. My name is not Fauchelevent, but Jean Valjean. I am
nothing to Cosette, so reassure yourself."
Marius stammered,—
"Who proves it to me?"
"I do, since I say it."
Marius looked at this man: he was mournful and calm, and no falsehood
could issue from such calmness. What is frozen is sincere, and the truth
could be felt in this coldness of the tomb.
"I do believe you," said Marius.
Jean Valjean bowed his head, as if to note the fact, and continued,—
"What am I to Cosette? A passer-by. Ten years ago I did not know that she
existed. I love her, it is true, for men love a child which they have seen little
when old themselves; when a man is old he feels like a grandfather to all
little children. You can, I suppose, imagine that I have something which
resembles a heart. She was an orphan, without father or mother, and needed
me, and that is why I came to love her. Children are so weak that the first
comer, even a man like myself, may be their protector. I performed this duty
to Cosette. I cannot suppose that so small a thing can be called a good
action: but if it be one, well, assume that I did it. Record that extenuating
fact. To-day Cosette leaves my life, and our two roads separate. Henceforth
I can do no more for her; she is Madame Pontmercy; her providence has
changed, and she has gained by the change, so all is well. As for the six
hundred thousand francs, you say nothing of them, but I will meet your
thought half-way: they are a deposit. How was it placed in my hands? No
matter. I give up the deposit, and there is nothing more to ask of me. I
complete the restitution by stating my real name, and this too concerns
myself, for I am anxious that you should know who I am."
And Jean Valjean looked Marius in the face. All that Marius experienced
was tumultuous and incoherent, for certain blasts of the wind of destiny

produce such waves in our soul. We have all had such moments of trouble
in which everything is dispersed within us: we say the first things that occur
to us, which are not always precisely those which we ought to say. There
are sudden revelations which we cannot bear, and which intoxicate like a
potent wine. Marius was stupefied by the new situation which appeared to
him, and spoke to this man almost as if he were angry at the avowal.
"But why," he exclaimed, "do you tell me all this? Who forces you to do so?
You might have kept your secret to yourself. You are neither denounced, nor
pursued, nor tracked. You have a motive for making the revelation so
voluntarily. Continue; there is something else: for what purpose do you
make this confession? For what motive?"
"For what motive?" Jean Valjean answered in a voice so low and dull that it
seemed as if he were speaking to himself rather than Marius. "For what
motive, in truth, does this convict come here to say, 'I am a convict'? Well,
yes, the motive is a strange one: it is through honesty. The misfortune is that
I have a thread in my heart which holds me fast, and it is especially when a
man is old that these threads are most solid. The whole of life is undone
around, but they resist. Had I been enabled to tear away that thread, break
it, unfasten or cut the knot, and go a long way off, I would be saved and
needed only to start. There are diligences in the Hue du Bouloy; you are
happy, and I am off. I tried to break that thread. I pulled at it, it held out, it
did not break, and I pulled out my heart with it. Then I said, I cannot live
anywhere else, and must remain. Well, yes, but you are right. I am a fool;
why not remain simply? You offer me a bed-room in the house. Madame
Pontmercy loves me dearly, she said to that fauteuil, 'Hold out your arms to
him;' your grandfather asks nothing better than to have me. I suit him, we
will live all together, have our meals in common, I will give my arm to
Cosette,—to Madame Pontmercy, forgive me, but it is habit,—we will have
only one roof, one table, one fire, the same chimney-corner in winter, the
same walk in summer: that is joy, that is happiness, that is everything. We
will live in one family."
At this word Jean Valjean became fierce. He folded his arms, looked at the
board at his feet, as if he wished to dig a pit in it, and his voice suddenly
became loud.

"In one family? No. I belong to no family; I do not belong to yours, I do not
even belong to the human family. In houses where people are together I am
in the way. There are families, but none for me; I am the unhappy man, I am
outside. Had I a father and mother? I almost doubt it. On the day when I
gave you that child in marriage, it was all ended; I saw her happy, and that
she was with the man she loved, that there is a kind old gentleman here, a
household of two angels, and every joy in this house, and I said to myself,
Do not enter. I could lie, it is true, deceive you all, and remain Monsieur
Fauchelevent; so long as it was for her, I was able to lie, but now that it
would be for myself I ought not to do so. I only required to be silent, it is
true, and all would have gone on. You ask me what compels me to speak? A
strange sort of thing, my conscience. It would have been very easy,
however, to hold my tongue; I spent the night in trying to persuade myself
into it. You are shriving me, and what I have just told you is so
extraordinary that you have the right to do so. Well, yes, I spent the night in
giving myself reasons. I gave myself excellent reasons, I did what I could.
But there are two things in which I could not succeed; I could neither break
the string which holds me by the heart, fixed, sealed, and riveted here, nor
silence some one who speaks to me in a low voice when I am alone. That is
why I have come to confess all to you this morning,—all, or nearly all, for
it is useless to tell what only concerns myself, and that I keep to myself.
You know the essential thing. I took my mystery, then, and brought it to you
and ripped it up before your eyes. It was not an easy resolution to form, and
I debated the point the whole night. Ah! you may fancy that I did not say to
myself that this was not the Champmathieu affair, that in hiding my name I
did no one any harm, that the name of Fauchelevent was given me by
Fauchelevent himself in gratitude for a service rendered, and that I might
fairly keep it, and that I should be happy in this room which you offer me,
that I should net be at all in the way, that I should be in my little corner, and
that while you had Cosette I should have the idea of being in the same
house with her; each would have his proportioned happiness. Continuing to
be Monsieur Fauchelevent arranged everything. Yes, except my soul; there
would be joy all over me, but the bottom of my soul would remain black.
Thus I should have remained Monsieur Fauchelevent. I should have hidden
my real face in the presence of your happiness; I should have had an
enigma, and in the midst of your broad sunshine I should have had
darkness; thus, without crying 'Look out,' I should have introduced the

hulks to your hearth, I should have sat down at your table with the thought
that if you knew who I was you would expel me, and let myself be served
by the servants who, had they known, would have said, 'What a horror!' I
should have touched you with my elbow, which you have a right to feel
offended at, and swindled you out of shakes of the hand. There would have
been in your house a divided respect between venerable gray hairs and
branded gray hairs; in your most intimate hours, when all hearts formed
themselves to each other, when we were all four together, the grandfather,
you two, and I, there would have been a stranger there. Hence I, a dead
man, would have imposed myself on you who are living, and I should have
sentenced her for life. You, Cosette, and I would have been three heads in
the green cap! Do you not shudder? I am only the most crushed of men, but
I should have been the most monstrous. And this crime I should have
committed every day, and this falsehood I should have told every day, and
this face of night I should have worn every day, and to you I should have
given a portion of my stain everyday,—to you, my beloved, to you, my
children, to you, my innocents! Holding one's tongue is nothing? Keeping
silence is simple? No, it is not simple, for there is a silence which lies; and
my falsehood, and my fraud, and my indignity, and my cowardice, and my
treachery, and my crime I should have drunk drop by drop; I should have
spat it out, and then drunk it again; I should have ended at midnight and
begun again at midday, and my good day would have lied, and my good
night would have lied, and I should have slept upon it, and eaten it with my
bread; and I should have looked at Cosette, and responded to the smile of
the angel with the smile of the condemned man; and I should have been an
abominable scoundrel, and for what purpose? To be happy. I, happy! Have I
the right to be happy? I am out of life, sir."
Jean Valjean stopped, and Marius listened, for such enchainments of ideas
and agonies cannot be interrupted. Jean Valjean lowered his voice again, yet
it was no longer the dull voice, but the sinister voice.
"You ask why I speak? I am neither denounced, nor pursued, nor tracked,
you say. Yes, I am denounced! Yes, I am pursued! Yes, I am tracked! By
whom? By myself. It is I who bar my own passage, and I drag myself
along, and I push myself, and I arrest myself, and execute myself, and when
a man holds himself he is securely held."
And, seizing his own collar, and dragging it toward Marius, he continued,—

"Look at this fist. Do you not think that it holds this collar so as not to let it
go? Well, conscience is a very different hand! If you wish to be happy, sir,
you must never understand duty; for so soon as you have understood it, it is
implacable. People may say that it punishes you for understanding it; but
no, it rewards you for it, for it places you in a hell where you feel God by
your side. A man has no sooner torn his entrails than he is at peace with
himself."
And with an indescribable accent he added,—
"Monsieur Pontmercy, that has no common-sense. I am an honest man. It is
by degrading myself in your eyes that I raise myself in my own. This has
happened to me once before, but it was less painful; it was nothing. Yes, an
honest man. I should not be one if you had, through my fault, continued to
esteem me; but now that you despise me I am so. I have this fatality upon
me, that as I am never able to have any but stolen consideration, this
consideration humiliates and crushes me internally, and in order that I may
respect myself people must despise me. Then I draw myself up. I am a
galley-slave who obeys his conscience. I know very well that this is not
likely; but what would you have me do? It is so. I have made engagements
with myself and keep them. There are meetings which bind us; there are
accidents which drag us into duty. Look you, Monsieur Pontmercy, things
have happened to me in my life."
Jean Valjean made another pause, swallowing his saliva with an effort, as if
his words had a bitter after-taste, and he continued,—
"When a man has such a horror upon him; he has no right to make others
share it unconsciously; he has no right to communicate his plague to them;
he has no right to make them slip over his precipice without their perceiving
it; he has no right to drag his red cap over them, and no right craftily to
encumber the happiness of another man with his misery. To approach those
who are healthy and touch them in the darkness with his invisible ulcer is
hideous. Fauchelevent may have lent me his name, but I have no right to
use it: he may have given it to me, but I was unable to take it. A name is a
self. Look you, sir, I have thought a little and read a little, though I am a
peasant, and you see that I express myself properly. I explain things to
myself, and have carried out my own education. Well, yes; to abstract a
name and place one's self under it is dishonest. The letters of the alphabet

may be filched like a purse or a watch. To be a false signature in flesh and
blood, to be a living false key, to enter among honest folk by picking their
lock, never to look, but always to squint, to be internally infamous,—no!
no! no! no! It is better to suffer, bleed, weep, tear one's flesh with one's
nails, pass the nights writhing in agony, and gnaw one's stomach and soul
That is why I have come to tell you all this,—voluntarily, as you remarked."
He breathed painfully, and uttered this last remark,—
"Formerly I stole a loaf in order to live; to-day I will not steal a name in
order to live."
"To live!" Marius interrupted; "you do not require that name to live."
"Ah! I understand myself," Jean Valjean replied, raising and drooping his
head several times in succession. There was a stillness; both remained
silent, sunk as they were in a gulf of thought. Marius was sitting near a
table, and supporting the corner of his mouth on one of his fingers. Jean
Valjean walked backwards and forwards; he stopped before a glass and
remained motionless. Then, as if answering some internal reasoning, he
said, as he looked in this glass, in which he did not see himself,—
"While at present I am relieved."
He began walking again, and went to the other end of the room. At the
moment when he turned he perceived that Marius was watching his walk,
and he said to him, with an indescribable accent,—
"I drag my leg a little. You understand why, now."
Then he turned round full to Marius.
"And now, sir, imagine this. I have said nothing. I have remained Monsieur
Fauchelevent. I have taken my place in your house. I am one of your family.
I am in my room. I come down to breakfast in my slippers; at night we go
to the play, all three. I accompany Madame Pontmercy to the Tuileries and
to the Place Royale; we are together, and you believe me your equal. One
fine day I am here, you are there. We are talking and laughing, and you hear
a voice cry this name,—Jean Valjean! and then that fearful hand, the police,
issues from the shadow and suddenly tears off my mask!"
He was silent again. Marius had risen with a shudder and Jean Valjean
continued,—

"What do you say to that?"
Marius's silence replied, and Jean Valjean continued:—
"You see very well that I did right in not holding my tongue. Be happy, be
in heaven, be the angel of an angel, be in the sunshine and content yourself
with it, and do not trouble yourself as to the way in which a poor
condemned man opens his heart and does his duty; you have a wretched
man before you, sir."
Marius slowly crossed the room, and when he was by Jean Valjean's side
offered him his hand. But Marius was compelled to take this hand which
did not offer itself. Jean Valjean let him do so, and it seemed to Marius that
he was pressing a hand of marble.
"My grandfather has friends" said Marius. "I will obtain your pardon."
"It is useless," Jean Valjean replied; "I am supposed to be dead, and that is
sufficient. The dead are not subjected to surveillance, and are supposed to
rot quietly. Death is the same thing as pardon."
And liberating the hand which Marius held, he added with a sort of
inexorable dignity,—
"Moreover, duty, my duty, is the friend to whom I have recourse; and I only
need one pardon, that of my conscience."
At this moment the door opened gently at the other end of the drawing-
room, and Cosette's head appeared in the crevice. Only her sweet face was
visible. Her hair was in admirable confusion, and her eyelids were still
swollen with sleep. She made the movement of a bird thrusting its head out
of the nest, looked first at her husband, then at Jean Valjean, and cried to
them laughingly,—it looked like a smile issuing from a rose,—
"I will bet that you are talking politics. How stupid that is, instead of being
with me!"
Jean Valjean started.
"Cosette," Marius stammered, and he stopped. They looked like two
culprits; Cosette, radiant, continued to look at them both, and there were in
her eyes gleams of Paradise.

"I have caught you in the act," Cosette said; "I just heard through this,
Father Fauchelevent saying, 'Conscience, doing one's duty.' That is politics,
and I will have none of it. People must not talk politics on the very next
day; it is not right."
"You are mistaken, Cosette;" Marius replied, "we are talking of business.
We are talking about the best way of investing your six hundred thousand
francs."
"I am coming," Cosette interrupted. "Do you want me here?"
And resolutely passing through the door, she entered the drawing-room. She
was dressed in a large combing gown with a thousand folds and large
sleeves, which descended from her neck to her feet. There are in the golden
skies of old Gothic paintings, these charming bags to place an angel in. She
contemplated herself from head to foot in a large mirror, and then
exclaimed with an ineffable outburst of ecstasy,—
"There was once upon a time a king and queen. Oh, how delighted I am!"
This said, she courtesied to Marius and Jean Valjean.
"Then," she said, "I am going to install myself near you in an easy-chair; we
shall breakfast in half an hour. You will say all you like, for I know very
well that gentlemen must talk, and I will be very good."
Marius took her by the arm and said to her lovingly,—
"We are talking about business."
"By the way," Cosette answered, "I have opened my window, and a number
of sparrows [pierrots] have just entered the garden. Birds, not masks. To-
day is Ash Wednesday, but not for the birds."
"I tell you that we are talking of business, so go, my little Cosette; leave us
for a moment. We are talking figures, and they would only annoy you."
"You have put on a charming cravat this morning, Marius. You are very
coquettish, Monseigneur. No, they will not annoy me."
"I assure you that they will."
"No, since it is you, I shall not understand you, but I shall hear you. When a
woman hears voices she loves, she does not require to understand the words

they say. To be together is all I want, and I shall stay with you,—there!"
"You are my beloved Cosette! Impossible."
"Impossible?"
"Yes."
"Very good," Cosette remarked; "I should have told you some news. I
should have told you that grandpapa is still asleep, that your aunt is at Mass,
that the chimney of my papa Fauchelevent's room smokes, that Nicolette
has sent for the chimney-sweep, that Nicolette and Toussaint have already
quarrelled, and that Nicolette ridicules Toussaint's stammering. Well, you
shall know nothing. Ah, it is impossible? You shall see, sir, that in my turn I
shall say, 'It is impossible.' Who will be caught then? I implore you, my
little Marius, to let me stay with you two."
"I assure you that we must be alone."
"Well, am I anybody?"
Jean Valjean did not utter a word, and Cosette turned to him.
"In the first place, father, I insist on your coming and kissing me. What do
you mean by saying nothing, instead of taking my part? Did one ever see a
father like that? That will show you how unhappy my marriage is, for my
husband beats me. Come and kiss me at once."
Jean Valjean approached her, and Cosette turned to Marius.
"I make a face at you."
Then she offered her forehead to Jean Valjean, who moved a step towards
her. All at once Cosette recoiled.
"Father, you are pale; does your arm pain you?"
"It is cured," said Jean Valjean.
"Have you slept badly?"
"No."
"Are you sad?"
"No."

"Kiss me. If you are well, if you sleep soundly, if you are happy, I will not
scold you."
And she again offered him her forehead, and Jean Valjean set a kiss on this
forehead, upon which there was a heavenly reflection.
"Smile."
Jean Valjean obeyed, but it was the smile of a ghost.
"Now, defend me against my husband."
"Cosette—" said Marius.
"Be angry, father, and tell him I am to remain. You can talk before me. You
must think me very foolish. What you are saying is very astonishing, then!
Business,—placing money in a bank,—that is a great thing. Men make
mysteries of nothing. I mean to say I am very pretty this morning. Marius,
look at me."
And with an adorable shrug of the shoulders and an exquisite pout she
looked at Marius. Something like a flash passed between these two beings,
and they cared little about a third party being present.
"I love you," said Marius.
"I adore you," said Cosette.
And they irresistibly fell into each other's arms.
"And now," Cosette continued, as she smoothed a crease in her dressing-
gown, with a little triumphant pout, "I remain."
"No," Marius replied imploringly, "we have something to finish."
"Again, no?"
Marius assumed a serious tone.
"I assure you, Cosette, that it is impossible."
"Ah, you are putting on your man's voice, sir; very good, I will go. You did
not support me, father; and so you, my hard husband, and you, my dear
papa, are tyrants. I shall go and tell grandpapa. If you believe that I intend
to return and talk platitudes to you, you are mistaken. I am proud, and I

intend to wait for you at present. You will see how wearisome it will be
without me. I am going, very good."
And she left the room, but two seconds after the door opened again, her
fresh, rosy face passed once again between the two folding-doors, and she
cried to them,—
"I am very angry."
The door closed again, and darkness returned. It was like a straggling
sunbeam, which, without suspecting it, had suddenly traversed the night.
Marius assured himself that the door was really closed.
"Poor Cosette!" he muttered, "when she learns—"
At these words Jean Valjean trembled all over, and he fixed his haggard
eyes on Marius.
"Cosette! Oh, yes, it is true. You will tell Cosette about it. It is fair.—Stay, I
did not think of that. A man has strength for one thing, but not for another. I
implore you, sir, I conjure you, sir, give me your most sacred word,—do not
tell her. Is it not sufficient for you to know it? I was able to tell it of my own
accord, without being compelled. I would have told it to the universe, to the
whole world, and I should not have cared; but she,—she does not know
what it is, and it would horrify her. A convict. What! You would be obliged
to explain to her, tell her it is a man who has been to the galleys. She saw
the chain-gang once. Oh, my God!"
He sank into a chair and buried his face in his hands; it could not be heard,
but from the heaving of his shoulders it could be seen that he was weeping.
They were silent tears, terrible tears. There is a choking in a sob; a species
of convulsion seized on him, he threw himself back in the chair, letting his
arms hang, and displaying to Marius his face bathed in tears, and Marius
heard him mutter so low that his voice seemed to come from a bottomless
abyss, "Oh! I would like to die!"
"Be at your ease," Marius said; "I will keep your secret to myself."
And, less affected than perhaps he ought to have been, but compelled for
more than an hour to listen to unexpected horrors, gradually seeing a
convict taking M. Fauchelevent's place, gradually overcome by this

mournful reality, and led by the natural state of the situation to notice the
gap which bad formed between himself and this man, Marius added,—
"It is impossible for me not to say a word about the trust money which you
have so faithfully and honestly given up. That is an act of probity, and it is
but fair that a reward should be given you; fix the sum yourself, and it shall
be paid you. Do not fear to fix it very high."
"I thank you, sir," Jean Valjean replied gently.
He remained pensive for a moment, mechanically passing the end of his
forefinger over his thumb-nail, and then raised his voice,—
"All is nearly finished; there is only one thing left me."
"What is it?"
Jean Valjean had a species of supreme agitation, and voicelessly, almost
breathlessly, he stammered, rather than said,—
"Now that you know, do you, sir, who are the master, believe that I ought
not to see Cosette again?"
"I believe that it would be better," Marius replied coldly.
"I will not see her again," Jean Valjean murmured. He walked toward the
door; he placed his hand upon the handle, the door opened, Jean Valjean
was going to pass out, when he suddenly closed it again, then opened the
door again and returned to Marius. He was no longer pale, but livid, and in
his eyes was a sort of tragic flame instead of tears. His voice bad grows
strangely calm again.
"Stay, sir," he said; "if you are wilting, I will come to see her, for I assure
you that I desire it greatly. If I had not longed to see Cosette I should not
have made you the confession I have done, but have gone away; but
wishing to remain at the spot where Cosette is, and continue to see her, I
was obliged to tell you everything honestly. You follow my reasoning, do
you not? It is a thing easy to understand. Look you, I have had her with me
for nine years: we lived at first in that hovel on the boulevard, then in the
convent, and then near the Luxembourg. It was there that you saw her for
the first time, and you remember her blue plush bonnet. Next we went to
the district of the Invalides, where there were a railway and a garden, the
Rue Plumet. I lived in a little back yard where I could hear her pianoforte.

Such was my life, and we never separated. That lasted nine years and seven
months; I was like her father, and she was my child. I do not know whether
you understand me, M. Pontmercy, but it would be difficult to go away
now, see her no more, speak to her no more, and have nothing left. If you
have no objection, I will come and see Cosette every now and then, but not
too often, and I will not remain long. You can tell them to show me into the
little room on the ground-floor; I would certainly come in by the back door,
which is used by the servants, but that might cause surprise, so it is better, I
think, for me to come by the front door. Really, sir, I should like to see
Cosette a little, but as rarely as you please. Put yourself in my place. I have
only that left. And then, again, we must be careful, and if I did not come at
all it would have a bad effect, and appear singular. For instance, what I can
do is to come in the evening, when it is beginning to grow dark."
"You can come every evening," said Marius, "and Cosette will expect you."
"You are kind, sir," said Jean Valjean.
Marius bowed to Jean Valjean, happiness accompanied despair to the door,
and these two men parted.

CHAPTER II.

THE OBSCURITY WHICH A REVELATION MAY CONTAIN.

Marius was overwhelmed; the sort of estrangement which he had ever felt
for the man with whom he saw Cosette was henceforth explained. There
was in this person something enigmatic, against which his instinct warned
him. This enigma was the most hideous of shames, the galleys. This M.
Fauchelevent was Jean Valjean the convict. To find suddenly such a secret
in the midst of his happiness is like discovering a scorpion in a turtle-dove's
nest. Was the happiness of Marius and Cosette in future condensed to this
proximity? Was it an accomplished fact? Did the acceptance of this man
form part of the consummated marriage? Could nothing else be done? Had
Marius also married the convict? Although a man may be crowned with
light and joy, though he be enjoying the grand hour of life's purple, happy

love, such shocks would compel even the archangel in his ecstasy, even the
demi-god in his glory, to shudder.
As ever happens in sudden transformation-scenes of this nature, Marius
asked himself whether he ought not to reproach himself? Had he failed in
divination? Had he been deficient in prudence? Had he voluntarily been
headstrong? Slightly so, perhaps. Had he entered upon this love-adventure,
which resulted in his marriage with Cosette, without taking sufficient
precaution to throw light upon the surroundings? He verified,—it is thus, by
a series of verifications of ourselves on ourselves, that life is gradually
corrected,—he verified, we say, the visionary and chimerical side of his
nature, a sort of internal cloud peculiar to many organizations, and which in
the paroxysms of passion and grief expands, as the temperature of the soul
changes, and invades the entire man to such an extent that he merely
becomes a conscience enveloped in a fog. We have more than once
indicated this characteristic element in Marius's individuality. He
remembered that during the intoxication of his love in the Rue Plumet,
during those six or seven ecstatic weeks, he had not even spoken to Cosette
about the drama in the Gorbeau hovel, during which the victim was so
strangely silent both in the struggle and eventual escape. How was it that he
had not spoken to Cosette about it, and yet it was so close and so frightful?
How was it that he had not even mentioned the Thénardiers, and especially
on the day when he met Éponine? He found almost a difficulty in
explaining to himself now his silence at that period, but he was able to
account for it. He remembered his confusion, his intoxication for Cosette,
his love absorbing everything, the carrying off of one by the other into the
ideal world, and perhaps, too, as the imperceptible amount of reason
mingled with that violent and charming state of the mind, a vague and dull
instinct to hide and efface from his memory that formidable adventure with
which he feared contact, in which he wished to play no part, from which he
stood aloof, and of which he could not be narrator or witness without being
an accuser. Moreover, these few weeks had been a lightning flash; he had
not had time for anything except to love. In short, when all was revolved,
and everything examined, supposing that he had described the Gorbeau trap
to Cosette, had mentioned the Thénardiers to her, what would have been the
consequence, even if he had discovered that Jean Valjean was a convict;
would that have changed him, Marius, or his Cosette? Would he have drawn
back? Would he have loved her less? Would he have refused to marry her?