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Title: Les Misérables, v. 1/5: Fantine

Author: Victor Hugo

Translator: Sir Lascelles Wraxall

Release date: April 18, 2015 [eBook #48731]
Most recently updated: October 24, 2024

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/48731

Credits: Produced by Annemie Arnst, Ingrid González Reyes & Marc
D'Hooghe

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LES
MISÉRABLES, V. 1/5: FANTINE ***

LES MISÉRABLES

BY

VICTOR HUGO
PART PREMIER

FANTINE

AUTHORIZED TRANSLATION BY LASCELLES WRAXALL.

BOSTON:

LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY.

1887

VICTOR HUGO (1828)

PUBLISHERS' PREFACE.

The present edition of "LES MISÉRABLES," in five volumes, has been made
with the special object of supplying the work in a proper form for library
use, embodying the two great requisites, clear type and handy size. It is in
the main a reprint of the English translation, in three volumes, by Sir
Lascelles Wraxall, which was made with the sanction and advice of the
author. Chapters and passages omitted in the English edition have been
specially translated for the present issue; numerous errors of the press, etc.,
have been corrected; and the author's own arrangement of the work in five
parts, and his subdivisions into books and chapters, have been restored.
BOSTON, Sept. 1, 1887.

PREFACE

So long as, by the effect of laws and of customs, social degradation shall
continue in the midst of civilization, making artificial hells, and subjecting
to the complications of chance the divine destiny of man; so long as the
three problems of the age,—the debasement of man by the proletariat, the
ruin of woman by the force of hunger, the destruction of children in the
darkness,—shall not be solved; so long as anywhere social syncope shall be
possible: in other words, and from a still broader point of view, so long as
ignorance and misery shall remain on earth, books like this cannot fail to be
useful.
HAUTEVILLE-HOUSE, 1862.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

FANTINE.

BOOK I.
A JUST MAN.

I. M. MYRIEL
II. M. MYRIEL BECOMES MONSEIGNEUR WELCOME
III. A GOOD BISHOP AND A HARD BISHOPRIC
IV. WORKS RESEMBLING WORDS
V. MONSEIGNEUR'S CASSOCKS LAST TOO LONG
VI. BY WHOM THE HOUSE WAS GUARDED
VII. CRAVATTE
VIII. PHILOSOPHY AFTER DRINKING
IX. THE BROTHER DESCRIBED BY THE SISTER
X. THE BISHOP FACES A NEW LIGHT
XI. A RESTRICTION
XII. MONSEIGNEUR'S SOLITUDE
XIII. WHAT HE BELIEVED
XIV. WHAT HE THOUGHT

BOOK II.
THE FALL.

I. THE CLOSE OF A DAY'S MARCH
II. PRUDENCE RECOMMENDED TO WISDOM
III. THE HEROISM OF PASSIVE OBEDIENCE
IV. CHEESEMAKING AT PONTARLIER
V. TRANQUILLITY
VI. JEAN VALJEAN
VII. A DESPERATE MAN'S HEART
VIII. THE WAVE AND THE DARKNESS
IX. NEW WRONGS
X. THE MAN AWAKE
XI. WHAT HE DID
XII. THE BISHOP AT WORK
XIII. LITTLE GERVAIS

BOOK III.
IN THE YEAR 1817.

I. THE YEAR 1817
II. A DOUBLE QUARTETTE
III. FOUR TO FOUR
IV. THOLOMYÈS SINGS A SPANISH SONG
V. AT BOMBARDA'S
VI. IN WHICH PEOPLE ADORE EACH OTHER
VII. THE WISDOM OF THOLOMYÈS
VIII. THE DEATH OF A HORSE
IX. THE JOYOUS END OF JOY

BOOK IV.

TO CONFIDE IS SOMETIMES TO ABANDON.

I. TWO MOTHERS MEET
II. A SKETCH OF TWO UGLY FACES
III. THE LARK

BOOK V.
THE DESCENT.

I. PROGRESS IN BLACK-BEAD MAKING
II. MADELEINE
III. SUMS LODGED AT LAFITTE'S
IV. M. MADELEINE GOES INTO MOURNING
V. VAGUE FLASHES ON THE HORIZON
VI. FATHER FAUCHELEVENT
VII. FAUCHELEVENT BECOMES A GARDENER AT PARIS
MADAME VICTURNIEN SPENDS THIRTY FRANCS
VIII.
ON MORALITY
IX. SUCCESS OF MADAME VICTURNIEN
X. RESULT OF HER SUCCESS
XI. CHRISTUS NOS LIBERA VIT
XII. M. BAMATABOIS' IDLENESS
XIII. THE POLICE OFFICE

BOOK VI.
JAVERT.

I. THE COMMENCEMENT OF REPOSE
II. HOW "JEAN" MAY BECOME "CHAMP"

BOOK VII.
THE CHAMPMATHIEU AFFAIR.

I. SISTER SIMPLICE
II. SCAUFFLAIRE'S PERSPICACITY
III. A TEMPEST IN A BRAIN
IV. SUFFERINGS IN SLEEP
V. OBSTACLES
VI. SISTER SIMPLICE IS SORELY TRIED
THE TRAVELLER TAKES PRECAUTIONS
VII.
FOR RETURNING
VIII. INSIDE THE COURT
IX. THE TRIAL
X. THE SYSTEM OF DENIAL
XI. CHAMPMATHIEU IS ASTOUNDED

BOOK VIII.
THE COUNTERSTROKE.

I. M. MADELEINE LOOKS AT HIS HAIR
II. FANTINE IS HAPPY
III. JAVERT IS SATISFIED
IV. AUTHORITY RESUMES ITS RIGHTS
V. A VERY PROPER TOMB

ILLUSTRATIONS.
VICTOR HUGO (1828) Vol. I. Frontispiece.

"'YOUR BLESSING,' SAID THE BISHOP, AND KNELT DOWN"
Drawn by G. Jeanniot.

FATHER FAUCHELEVENT
Drawn by G. Jeanniot.

FAUCHELEVENT AND THE GRAVE-DIGGER, Vol. II. Frontispiece
Drawn by G. Jeanniot.

"SHE GLIDED ALONG RATHER THAN WALKED"
Drawn by G. Jeanniot.

MARIUS Vol. III. Frontispiece
Drawn by G. Jeanniot.

BEGINNING OF A GREAT MALADY
Drawn by G. Jeanniot.

"ONE MORNING WHEN THE SUN WAS SHINING, AND BOTH
WERE ON THE GARDEN STEPS" Vol. IV. Frontispiece
Drawn by G. Jeanniot.

RECRUITS
Drawn by G. Jeanniot.

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

THE DEATH OF GAVROCHE
Drawn by G. Jeanniot.

FANTINE.

BOOK I.

A JUST MAN.

CHAPTER I.

M. MYRIEL.

In 1815 M. Charles François Bienvenu Myriel was Bishop of D——. He
was a man of about seventy-five years of age, and had held the see of D
—— since 1806. Although the following details in no way affect our
narrative, it may not be useless to quote the rumors that were current about
him at the moment when he came to the diocese, for what is said of men,
whether it be true or false, often occupies as much space in their life, and
especially in their destiny, as what they do. M. Myriel was the son of a
councillor of the Aix Parliament. It was said that his father, who intended
that he should be his successor, married him at the age of eighteen or
twenty, according to a not uncommon custom in parliamentary families.
Charles Myriel, in spite of this marriage (so people said), had been the
cause of much tattle. He was well built, though of short stature, elegant,
graceful, and witty; and the earlier part of his life was devoted to the world
and to gallantry. The Revolution came, events hurried on, and the
parliamentary families, decimated and hunted down, became dispersed. M.
Charles Myriel emigrated to Italy in the early part of the Revolution, and
his wife, who had been long suffering from a chest complaint, died there,
leaving no children. What next took place in M. Myriel's destiny? Did the
overthrow of the old French society, the fall of his own family, and the
tragic spectacles of '93, more frightful perhaps to the emigrés who saw them

from a distance with the magnifying power of terror, cause ideas of
renunciation and solitude to germinate in him? Was he, in the midst of one
of the distractions and affections which occupied his life, suddenly assailed
by one of those mysterious and terrible blows which often prostrate, by
striking at his heart, a man whom public catastrophes could not overthrow
by attacking him in his existence and his fortune? No one could have
answered these questions; all that was known was that when he returned
from Italy he was a priest.
In 1804 M. Myriel was Curé of B—— (Brignolles). He was already aged,
and lived in great retirement. Towards the period of the coronation a small
matter connected with his curacy, no one remembers what, took him to
Paris. Among other powerful persons he applied to Cardinal Fesch on
behalf of his parishioners. One day, when the Emperor was paying a visit to
his uncle, the worthy curé, who was waiting in the ante-room, saw his
Majesty pass. Napoleon, noticing this old man regard him with some degree
of curiosity, turned and asked sharply,—
"Who is this good man who is staring at me?"
"Sire," M. Myriel said, "you are looking at a good man and I at a great man.
We may both profit by it."
The Emperor, on the same evening, asked the Cardinal the curé's name, and
some time after M. Myriel, to his great surprise, learned that he was
nominated Bishop of D——. What truth, by the way, was there in the
stories about M. Myriel's early life? No one knew, for few persons had been
acquainted with his family before the Revolution. M. Myriel was fated to
undergo the lot of every new comer to a little town, where there are many
mouths that speak, and but few heads that think. He was obliged to undergo
it, though he was bishop, and because he was bishop. But, after all, the
stories in which his name was mingled were only stories, rumors, words,
remarks, less than words, mere palabres, to use a term borrowed from the
energetic language of the South. Whatever they might be, after ten years of
episcopacy and residence at D——, all this gossip, which at the outset
affords matter of conversation for little towns and little people, had fallen
into deep oblivion. No one would have dared to speak of it, no one have
dared to remember it.

M. Myriel had arrived at D——, accompanied by an old maid, Mlle.
Baptistine, who was his sister, and ten years younger than himself. Their
only servant was a female of the same age as Mademoiselle, of the name of
Madame Magloire, who, after having been the servant of M. le Curé, now
assumed the double title of waiting-woman to Mademoiselle, and house-
keeper to Monseigneur. Mlle. Baptistine was a tall, pale, slim, gentle
person; she realized the ideal of what the word "respectable" expresses, for
it seems necessary for a woman to be a mother in order to be venerable. She
had never been pretty, but her whole life, which had been but a succession
of pious works, had eventually cast over her a species of whiteness and
brightness, and in growing older she had acquired what may be called the
beauty of goodness. What had been thinness in her youth had become in her
maturity transparency, and through this transparency the angel could be
seen. She seemed to be a shadow, there was hardly enough body for a sex to
exist; she was a little quantity of matter containing a light—an excuse for a
soul to remain upon the earth. Madame Magloire was a fair, plump, busy
little body, always short of breath,—in the first place, through her activity,
and, secondly, in consequence of an asthma.
On his arrival M. Myriel was installed in his episcopal palace with all the
honors allotted by the imperial decrees which classify the Bishop
immediately after a Major-General. The Mayor and the President paid him
the first visit, and he on his side paid the first visit to the General and the
Prefect. When the installation was ended the town waited to see its bishop
at work.

CHAPTER II.

M. MYRIEL BECOMES MONSEIGNEUR WELCOME.

The Episcopal Palace of D—— adjoined the hospital. It was a spacious,
handsome mansion, built at the beginning of the last century by
Monseigneur Henri Puget, Doctor in Theology of the Faculty of Paris, and
Abbé of Simore, who was Bishop of D—— in 1712. This palace was a true
seigneurial residence: everything had a noble air in it,—the episcopal

apartments, the reception rooms, the bed-rooms, the court of honor, which
was very wide, with arcades after the old Florentine fashion, and the
gardens planted with magnificent trees. In the dining-room, a long and
superb gallery on the ground floor, Monseigneur Henri Puget had given a
state dinner on July 29, 1714, to Messeigneurs Charles Brûlart de Genlis,
Archbishop, Prince of Embrun; Antoine de Mesgrigny, Capuchin and
Bishop of Grasse; Philip de Vendôme, Grand Prior of France and Abbé of
St. Honoré de Lérins; François de Berton de Grillon, Baron and Bishop of
Vence; Cæsar de Sabran de Forcalquier, Bishop and Lord of Glandève, and
Jean Soanen, priest of the oratory, preacher in ordinary to the King, and
Bishop and Lord of Senez. The portraits of these seven reverend personages
decorated the dining-room, and the memorable date, JULY 29, 1714, was
engraved in golden letters on a white marble tablet.
The hospital was a small, single-storeyed house with a little garden. Three
days after his arrival the Bishop visited it, and when his visit was over
asked the Director to be kind enough to come to his house.
"How many patients have you at this moment?" he asked.
"Twenty-six, Monseigneur."
"The number I counted," said the Bishop.
"The beds are very close together," the Director continued.
"I noticed it."
"The wards are only bed-rooms, and difficult to ventilate."
"I thought so."
"And then, when the sun shines, the garden is very small for the
convalescents."
"I said so to myself."
"During epidemics, and we have had the typhus this year, and had miliary
fever two years ago, we have as many as one hundred patients, and do not
know what to do with them."
"That thought occurred to me."

"What would you have, Monseigneur!" the Director said, "we must put up
with it."
This conversation had taken place in the dining-hall on the ground floor.
The Bishop was silent for a moment, and then turned smartly to the
Director.
"How many beds," he asked him, "do you think that this room alone would
hold?"
"Monseigneur's dining-room?" the stupefied Director asked.
The Bishop looked round the room, and seemed to be estimating its
capacity.
"It would hold twenty beds," he said, as if speaking to himself, and then,
raising his voice, he added,—
"Come, Director, I will tell you what it is. There is evidently a mistake. You
have twenty-six persons in five or six small rooms. There are only three of
us, and we have room for fifty. There is a mistake, I repeat; you have my
house and I have yours. Restore me mine; this is yours."
The next day the twenty-six poor patients were installed in the Bishop's
palace, and the Bishop was in the hospital. M. Myriel had no property, as
his family had been ruined by the Revolution. His sister had an annuity of
500 francs, which had sufficed at the curacy for personal expenses. M.
Myriel, as Bishop, received from the State 15,000 francs a year. On the
same day that he removed to the hospital, M. Myriel settled the
employment of that sum once for all in the following way. We copy here a
note in his own handwriting.
NOTE FOR REGULATING MY HOUSEHOLD EXPENSES.

For the little seminary 1500
francs.
Congregation of the mission 100
-
For the lazarists of Montdidier 100
-
Seminary of foreign missions at Paris 200
-
Congregation of Saint Esprit 150

-
Religious establishments in the Holy Land 100
-
Societies of maternal charity 300
-
Additional for the one at Aries 50
-
Works for improvement of prisons 400
-
Relief and deliverance of prisoners 500
-
For liberation of fathers of family imprisoned for debt 1000
-
Addition to the salary of poor schoolmasters in
the diocese 2000
-
Distribution of grain in the Upper Alps 100
-
Ladies' Society for gratuitous instruction of poor
girls at D----, Manosque, and Sisteron 1500
-
For the poor 6000
-
Personal expenses 1000
-

Total 15,000
francs

During the whole time he held the see of D——, M. Myriel made no
change in this arrangement. He called this, as we see, regulating his
household expenses. The arrangement was accepted with a smile by Mlle.
Baptistine, for that sainted woman regarded M. Myriel at once as her
brother and her bishop; her friend according to nature, her superior
according to the Church. She loved and venerated him in the simplest way.
When he spoke she bowed, when he acted she assented. The servant alone,
Madame Magloire, murmured a little. The Bishop, it will have been
noticed, only reserved 1000 francs, and on this sum, with Mlle. Baptistine's
pension, these two old women and old man lived. And when a village curé
came to D-, the Bishop managed to regale him, thanks to the strict economy
of Madame Magloire and the sensible management of Mlle. Baptistine. One
day, when he had been at D—— about three months, the Bishop said,—
"For all that, I am dreadfully pressed."

"I should think so," exclaimed Madame Magloire. "Monseigneur has not
even claimed the allowance which the department is bound to pay for
keeping up his carriage in town, and for his visitations. That was the custom
with bishops in other times."
"True," said the Bishop, "you are right, Madame Magloire." He made his
claim, and shortly after the Council-general, taking the demand into
consideration, voted him the annual sum of 3000 francs, under the heading,
"Allowance to the Bishop for maintenance of carriage, posting charges, and
outlay in visitations."
This caused an uproar among the cits of the town, and on this occasion a
Senator of the Empire, ex-member of the Council of the Five Hundred,
favourable to the 18th Brumaire, and holding a magnificent appointment
near D——, wrote to the Minister of Worship, M. Bigot de Préameneu, a
short, angry, and confidential letter, from which we extract these authentic
lines:
"——Maintenance of carriage! what can he want one for in a town of less
than 4000 inhabitants? Visitation charges! in the first place, what is the
good of visitations at all? and, secondly, how can he travel post in this
mountainous country, where there are no roads, and people must travel on
horseback? The very bridge over the Durance at Château Arnoux can hardly
bear the weight of a cart drawn by oxen. These priests are all the same,
greedy and avaricious! This one played the good apostle when he arrived,
but now he is like the rest, and must have his carriage and post-chaise. He
wishes to be as luxurious as the old bishops. Oh this priesthood! My Lord,
matters will never go on well till the Emperor has delivered us from the
skullcaps. Down with the Pope! (there was a quarrel at the time with
Rome). As for me, I am for Cæsar and Cæsar alone, etc., etc., etc."
The affair, on the other hand, greatly gladdened Madame Magloire.
"Come," she said to Mlle. Baptistine, "Monseigneur began with others, but
he was obliged to finish with himself. He has regulated all his charities, and
here are 3000 francs for us at last!"
The same evening the Bishop wrote, and gave his sister, a note conceived
thus:—
CARRIAGE AND TRAVELLING EXPENSES.

To provide the hospital patients with broth 1500 francs.
The society of maternal charity at Aix 250 -
The society of maternal charity at Draguignan 250 -
For foundlings 500 -
For orphans 500 -
Total 3000 -

Such was M. Myriel's budget. As for the accidental receipts, such as fees for
bans, christenings, consecrating churches or chapels, marriages, &c., the
Bishop collected them from the rich with so much the more eagerness
because he distributed them to the poor. In a short time the monetary
offerings became augmented. Those who have and those who want tapped
at M. Myriel's door, the last coming to seek the alms which the former had
just deposited. The Bishop in less than a year became the treasurer of all
charity and the cashier of all distress. Considerable sums passed through his
hands, but nothing could induce him to make any change in his mode of
life, or add the slightest superfluity to his expenditure.
Far from it, as there is always more wretchedness at the bottom than
paternity above, all was given, so to speak, before being received; it was
like water on dry ground: however much he might receive he had never a
farthing. At such times he stripped himself. It being the custom for the
bishops to place their Christian names at the head of their mandates and
pastoral letters, the poor people of the country had selected the one among
them which conveyed a meaning, and called him Monseigneur Welcome
(Bienvenu). We will do like them, and call him so when occasion serves.
Moreover, the name pleased him. "I like that name," he would say. "The
Welcome corrects the Monseigneur."
We do not assert that the portrait we are here drawing is probably as far as
fiction goes: we confine ourselves to saying that it bears a likeness to the
reality.

CHAPTER III.

A GOOD BISHOP AND A HARD BISHOPRIC.

The Bishop, though he had converted his coach into alms, did not the less
make his visitations. The diocese of D—— is fatiguing; there are few plains
and many mountains, and hardly any roads, as we saw just now: twenty-two
curacies, forty-one vicarages, and two hundred and eighty-five chapels of
ease. It was a task to visit all these, but the Bishop managed it. He went on
foot when the place was near, in a carriage when it was in the plain, and on
a mule when it was in the mountains. The two old females generally
accompanied him, but when the journey was too wearying for them he went
alone.
One day he arrived at Senez, which is an old Episcopal town, mounted on a
donkey; his purse, which was very light at the time, had not allowed him
any other equipage. The Mayor of the city came to receive him at the door
of the Bishop's Palace, and saw him dismount with scandalized eyes. A few
cits were laughing round him. "M. Mayor and gentlemen," the Bishop said,
"I see what it is that scandalizes you. You consider it great pride for a poor
priest to ride an animal which our Saviour once upon a time bestrode. I did
so through necessity, I assure you, and not through vanity."
On his tours the Bishop was indulgent and gentle, and preached less than he
conversed. His reasonings and models were never far-fetched, and to the
inhabitants of one country he quoted the example of an adjacent country. In
those cantons where people were harsh to the needy he would say, "Look at
the people of Briançon. They have given the indigent, the widows, and the
orphans, the right of mowing their fields three days before all the rest. They
rebuild their houses gratuitously when they are in ruins. Hence it is a
country blessed of GOD. For one hundred years not a single murder has
been committed there." To those eager for grain and good crops, he said,
"Look at the people of Embrun. If a father of a family at harvest-time has
his sons in the army, his daughters serving in the town, or if he be ill or
prevented from toil, the Curé recommends him in his sermon; and on
Sunday after Mass all the villagers, men, women, and children, go into his
field, and cut and carry home his crop." To families divided by questions of
money or inheritance he said, "Look at the Highlanders of Devolny, a
country so wild that the nightingale is not heard once in fifty years. Well,
when the father of a family dies there the boys go off to seek their fortune,
and leave the property to the girls, so that they may obtain husbands." In
those parts where the farmers are fond of lawsuits, and ruin themselves in

writs, he would say, "Look at those good peasants of the valley of Queyras.
There are three thousand souls there. Why, it is like a little republic. Neither
judge nor bailiff is known there, and the Mayor does everything. He divides
the imposts, taxes everybody conscientiously, settles quarrels gratis, allots
patrimonies without fees, gives sentences without costs, and is obeyed
because he is a just man among simple men." In villages where there was
no schoolmaster he again quoted the people of Queyras. "Do you know
what they do? As a small place, containing only twelve or fifteen hearths,
cannot always support a master, they have schoolmasters paid by the whole
valley, who go from village to village, spending a week in one, ten days in
another, and teaching. These masters go the fairs, where I have seen them.
They can be recognized by the pens they carry in their hat-band. Those who
only teach reading have but one pen: those who teach reading and
arithmetic have two: those who teach reading, arithmetic, and Latin, have
three. But what a disgrace it is to be ignorant! Do like the people of
Queyras."
He spoke thus, gravely and paternally. When examples failed him he
invented parables, going straight to the point, with few phrases and a good
deal of imagery. His was the eloquence of the Apostles, convincing and
persuading.

CHAPTER IV.

WORKS RESEMBLING WORDS.

The Bishop's conversation was affable and lively. He condescended to the
level of the two old females who spent their life near him, and when he
laughed it was a schoolboy's laugh. Madame Magloire was fond of calling
him "Your Grandeur." One day he rose from his easy chair and went to
fetch a book from his library: as it was on one of the top shelves, and as the
Bishop was short, he could not reach it "Madame Magloire," he said, "bring
me a chair, for my Grandeur does not rise to that shelf."

One of his distant relatives, the Countess de Lô, rarely let an opportunity
slip to enumerate in his presence what she called the "hopes" of her three
sons. She had several very old relatives close to death's door, of whom her
sons were the natural heirs. The youngest of the three would inherit from a
great-aunt 100,000 francs a year; the second would succeed to his uncle's
dukedom, the third to his grandfather's peerage. The Bishop generally
listened in silence to this innocent and pardonable maternal display. Once,
however, he seemed more dreamy than usual, while Madame de Lô was
repeating all the details of their successions and "hopes." She broke off
somewhat impatiently. "Good gracious, cousin," she said, "what are you
thinking, about?" "I am thinking," said the Bishop, "of something singular,
which, if my memory is right, is in St. Augustine. Place your hopes in the
man to whom it is impossible to succeed."
On another occasion, receiving a letter announcing the death of a country
gentleman, in which, in addition to the dignities of the defunct, all the
feudal and noble titles of all his relatives were recorded,—"What a back
death has! what an admirable burthen of titles he is made lightly to bear," he
exclaimed, "and what sense men must possess thus to employ the tomb in
satisfying their vanity."
He displayed at times a gentle raillery, which nearly always contained a
serious meaning. During one Lent a young vicar came to D—— and
preached at the cathedral. He was rather eloquent, and the subject of his
sermon was charity. He invited the rich to give to the needy in order to
escape hell, which he painted in the most frightful way he could, and reach
paradise, which he made desirable and charming. There was among the
congregation a rich, retired merchant, somewhat of a usurer, who had
acquired two million francs by manufacturing coarse cloths, serges, and
caddis. In his whole life-time M. Géborand had never given alms to a
beggar, but after this sermon it was remarked that he gave every Sunday a
sou to the old women begging at the cathedral gate. There were six of them
to share it. One day the Bishop saw him bestowing his charity, and said to
his sister, with a smile, "Look at M. Géborand buying heaven for a sou."
When it was a question of charity he would not let himself be rebuffed even
by a refusal, and at such times made remarks which caused people to
reflect. Once he was collecting for the poor in a drawing-room of the town.
The Marquis de Champtercier was present, a rich old avaricious man, who

contrived to be at once ultra-Royalist and ultra-Voltairian. This variety has
existed. The Bishop on reaching him touched his arm, "Monsieur le
Marquis, you must give me something." The Marquis turned and answered
dryly: "I have my own poor, Monseigneur." "Give them to me," said the
Bishop. One day he delivered the following sermon at the cathedral:—
"My very dear brethren, my good friends, there are in France thirteen
hundred and twenty thousand peasants' houses which have only three
openings; eighteen hundred and seventeen thousand which have only two
openings, the door and the window; and, lastly, three hundred and forty-six
thousand cabins which have only one opening, the door, and this is because
of a thing called the door and window tax. Just place poor families, aged
women and little children, in these houses, and then see the fevers and
maladies! Alas! God gives men fresh air, and the law sells it to them. I do
not accuse the law, but I bless God. In the Isère, in the Var, in the two Alps,
Upper and Lower, the peasants have not even trucks, but carry manure on
their backs: they have no candles, and burn resinous logs and pieces of rope
steeped in pitch. It is the same through all the high parts of Dauphiné. They
make bread for six months, and bake it with dried cow-dung. In winter they
break this bread with axes and steep it in water for four-and-twenty hours
before they can eat it. Brethren, have pity, see how people suffer around
you!"
A Provençal by birth, he easily accustomed himself to all the dialects of the
South: this greatly pleased the people, and had done no little in securing
him admission to all minds. He was, as it were, at home in the hut and on
the mountain. He could say the grandest things in the most vulgar idioms,
and as he spoke all languages he entered all hearts. However, he was the
same to people of fashion as to the lower classes.
He never condemned anything hastily or without taking the circumstances
into calculation. He would say, Let us look at the road by which the fault
has come. Being, as he called himself with a smile, an ex-sinner, he had
none of the intrenchments of rigorism, and, careless of the frowns of the
unco' good, professed loudly a doctrine which might be summed up nearly
as follows,—
"Man has upon him the flesh which is at once his burden and his
temptation. He carries it with him and yields to it. He must watch, restrain,

and repress it, and only obey it in the last extremity. In this obedience there
may still be a fault: but the fault thus committed is venial. It is a fall, but a
fall on the knees, which may end in prayer. To be a saint is the exception, to
be a just man is the rule. Err, fail, sin, but be just. The least possible amount
of sin is the law of man: no sin at all is the dream of angels. All that is
earthly is subjected to sin, for sin is a gravitation."
When he saw everybody cry out and grow indignant, all of a sudden, he
would say with a smile, "Oh! oh, it seems as if this is a great crime which
all the world is committing. Look at the startled hypocrites, hastening to
protest and place themselves under cover."
He was indulgent to the women and the poor on whom the weight of human
society presses. He would say, "The faults of women, children, servants, the
weak, the indigent, and the ignorant are the fault of husbands, fathers,
masters, the strong, the rich, and the learned." He also said, "Teach the
ignorant as much as you possibly can: society is culpable for not giving
instruction gratis, and is responsible for the night it produces. This soul is
full of darkness, and sin is committed, but the guilty person is not the man
who commits the sin, but he who produces the darkness."
As we see, he had a strange manner, peculiarly his own, of judging things. I
suspect that he obtained it from the Gospels. He one day heard in a
drawing-room the story of a trial which was shortly to take place. A
wretched man, through love of a woman and a child he had by her, having
exhausted his resources, coined false money, which at that period was an
offence punished by death. The woman was arrested while issuing the first
false piece manufactured by the man. She was detained, but there was no
proof against her. She alone could accuse her lover and ruin him by
confessing. She denied. They pressed her, but she adhered to her denial.
Upon this, the attorney for the crown had an idea: he feigned infidelity on
the lover's part, and contrived, by cleverly presenting the woman with
fragments of letters, to persuade her that she had a rival, and that the man
was deceiving her. Then, exasperated by jealousy, she denounced her lover,
confessed everything, proved everything. The man was ruined, and would
shortly be tried with his accomplice at Aix. The story was told, and
everybody was delighted at the magistrate's cleverness. By bringing
jealousy into play he brought out the truth through passion, and obtained
justice through revenge. The Bishop listened to all this in silence, and when

it was ended he asked: "Where will this man and woman be tried?" "At the
assizes." Then he continued, "And where will the attorney for the crown be
tried?"
A tragical event occurred at D——. A man was condemned to death for
murder. He was a wretched fellow, not exactly educated, not exactly
ignorant, who had been a mountebank at fairs and a public writer. The trial
attracted the attention of the towns-people. On the eve of the day fixed for
the execution the prison chaplain was taken ill, and a priest was wanted to
assist the sufferer in his last moments. The Curé was sent for, and it seems
that he refused, saying, "It is no business of mine, I have nothing to do with
the mountebank, I am ill too, and besides, that is not my place." This
answer was carried to the Bishop, who said, "The Curé is right, it is not his
place, it is mine." He went straight to the prison, entered the mountebank's
cell, called him by name, took his hand, and spoke to him. He spent the
whole day with him, forgetting sleep and food while praying to God for the
soul of the condemned man. He told him the best truths, which are the most
simple. He was father, brother, friend—bishop only to bless. He taught him
everything, while reassuring and consoling him. This man was about to die
in desperation: death was to him like an abyss, and he shuddered as he
stood on its gloomy brink. He was not ignorant enough to be completely
indifferent, and his condemnation, which was a profound shock, had here
and there broken through that partition which separates us from the mystery
of things, and which we call life. He peered incessantly out of this world
through these crevices, and only saw darkness; but the Bishop showed him
a light.
On the morrow, when they came to fetch the condemned man, the Bishop
was with him. He followed him, and showed himself to the mob in his
purple cassock, and with the episcopal cross round his neck, side by side
with this rope-bound wretch. He entered the cart with him, he mounted the
scaffold with him. The sufferer, so gloomy and crushed on the previous day,
was radiant; he felt that his soul was reconciled, and he hoped for heaven.
The Bishop embraced him, and at the moment when the knife was about to
fall, said: "The man whom his fellow-men kill, God resuscitates. He whom
his brothers expel finds the Father again. Pray, believe, enter into life! The
Father is there!" When he descended from the scaffold there was something
in his glance which made the people open a path for him; it was impossible

to say whether his pallor or his serenity were the more admirable. On
returning to the humble abode, which he called smilingly his palace, he said
to his sister: "I have just been officiating pontifically."
As the most sublime things are often those least understood, there were
persons in the town who said, in commenting on the Bishop's conduct, "It is
affectation." This, however, was only the talk of drawing-rooms; the people
who do not regard holy actions with suspicion were affected, and admired.
As for the Bishop, the sight of the guillotine was a shock to him, and it was
long ere he recovered from it.
The scaffold, in fact, when it stands erect before you, has something about it
that hallucinates. We may feel a certain amount of indifference about the
punishment of death, not express an opinion, and say yes or no, so long as
we have never seen a guillotine; but when we have come across one the
shock is violent, and we must decide either for or against. Some admire it,
like De Maistre, others execrate it, like Beccaria. The guillotine is the
concretion of the law, it calls itself vindicta; it is not neutral, and does not
allow you to remain neutral. The person who perceives it shudders with the
most mysterious of shudders. All the social questions raise their notes of
interrogation round this cutter. The scaffold is a vision, it is not carpenter's
work, it is not a machine, it is not a lifeless mechanism made of wood, steel,
and ropes. It seems to be a species of being possessing a gloomy intuition;
you might say that the wood-work lives, that the machine hears, that the
mechanism understands, that the wood, the steel, and the ropes, have a
volition. In the frightful reverie into which its presence casts the mind the
scaffold appears terrible, and mixed up with what it does. The scaffold is
the accomplice of the executioner; it devours, it eats flesh and drinks blood.
The scaffold is a species of monster, manufactured by the judge and the
carpenter, a spectre that seems to live a sort of horrible life made up of all
the death it has produced. Hence the impression was terrible and deep; on
the day after the execution, and for many days beyond, the Bishop appeared
crushed. The almost violent serenity of the mournful moment had departed;
the phantom of social justice haunted him. He who usually returned from all
his duties with such radiant satisfaction seemed to be reproaching himself.
At times he soliloquized, and stammered unconnected sentences in a low
voice. Here is one which his sister overheard and treasured up: "I did not
believe that it was so monstrous. It is wrong to absorb oneself in the divine

law so greatly as no longer to perceive the human law. Death belongs to
God alone. By what right do men touch that unknown thing?"
With time these impressions were attenuated, and perhaps effaced. Still it
was noticed that from this period the Bishop avoided crossing the execution
square.
M. Myriel might be called at any hour to the bedside of the sick and the
dying. He was not ignorant that his greatest duty and greatest labor lay
there. Widowed or orphaned families had no occasion to send for him, for
he came of himself. He had the art of sitting down and holding his tongue
for hours by the side of a man who had lost the wife he loved, or of a
mother bereaved of her child. As he knew the time to be silent, he also
knew the time to speak. What an admirable consoler he was! he did not try
to efface grief by oblivion, but to aggrandize and dignify it by hope. He
would say: "Take care of the way in which you turn to the dead. Do not
think of that which perishes. Look fixedly, and you will perceive the living
light of your beloved dead in heaven." He knew that belief is healthy, and
he sought to counsel and calm the desperate man by pointing out to him the
resigned man, and to transform the grief that gazes at a grave by showing it
the grief that looks at a star.

CHAPTER V.

MONSEIGNEUR'S CASSOCKS LAST TOO LONG.

M. Myriel's domestic life was full of the same thoughts as his public life. To
any one who could inspect it closely, the voluntary poverty in which the
Bishop lived would have been a solemn and charming spectacle. Like all
old men, and like most thinkers, he slept little, but that short sleep was
deep. In the morning he remained in contemplation for an hour, and then
read mass either at the cathedral or in his house. Mass over, he breakfasted
on rye bread dipped in the milk of his own cows. Then he set to work.
A bishop is a very busy man. He must daily receive the secretary to the
bishopric, who is generally a canon, and almost every day his grand vicars.

He has congregations to control, permissions to grant, a whole ecclesiastical
library to examine, in the shape of diocesan catechisms, books of hours,
etc.; mandates to write, sermons to authorize, curés and mayors to
reconcile, a clerical correspondence, an administrative correspondence, on
one side the State, on the other the Holy See; in a word, a thousand tasks.
The time which these thousand tasks, his offices, and his breviary left him,
he gave first to the needy, the sick, and the afflicted; the time which the
afflicted, the sick, and the needy left him he gave to work. Sometimes he
hoed in his garden, at others he read and wrote. He had only one name for
both sorts of labor, he called them gardening. "The mind is a garden," he
would say.
Toward mid-day, when the weather was fine, he went out and walked in the
country or the town, frequently entering the cottages. He could be seen
walking alone in deep thought, looking down, leaning on his long cane,
dressed in his violet wadded and warm great coat, with his violet stockings
thrust into clumsy shoes, and wearing his flat hat, through each corner of
which were passed three golden acorns as tassels. It was a festival wherever
he appeared, it seemed as if his passing had something warming and
luminous about it; old men and children came to the door to greet the
Bishop as they did the sun. He blessed them and they blessed him, and his
house was pointed out to anybody who was in want of anything. Now and
then he stopped, spoke to the little boys and girls, and smiled on their
mothers. He visited the poor so long as he had any money; when he had
none he visited the rich. As he made his cassocks last a long time, and he
did not wish the fact to be noticed, he never went into town save in his
wadded violet coat. This was rather tiresome in summer.
On returning home he dined. The dinner resembled the breakfast. At half-
past eight in the evening he supped with his sister, Madame Magloire
standing behind them and waiting on them. Nothing could be more frugal
than this meal; but if the Bishop had a curé to supper, Madame Magloire
would take advantage of it to serve Monseigneur with some excellent fish
from the lake, or famous game from the mountain. Every curé was the
excuse for a good meal, and the Bishop held his tongue. On other occasions
his repast only consisted of vegetables boiled in water and soup made with
oil. Hence it was said in the town: "When the Bishop does not fare like a
curé he fares like a trappist."

After supper he conversed for half an hour with Mlle. Baptistine and
Madame Magloire; then he returned to his room and began writing again,
either on loose leaves or on the margin of some folio. He was well read, and
a bit of a savant, and has left five or six curious MSS. on theological
subjects, among others a dissertation on the verse from Genesis, "In the
beginning the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters." He
compared this verse with three texts,—the Arabic, which says, "The winds
of God breathed;" Flavius Josephus, who said, "A wind from on high fell
upon the earth;" and lastly the Chaldaic of Onkelos, "A wind coming from
God breathed on the face of the waters." In another dissertation he
examines the works of Hugo, Bishop of Ptolemaïs, great-grand-uncle of
him who writes this book, and he proves that to this bishop must be
attributed the various opuscules published in the last century under the
pseudonym of Barleycourt. At times, in the midst of his reading, no matter
what book he held in his hands, he would suddenly fall into a deep
meditation, from which he only emerged to write a few lines on the pages
of the book. These lines have frequently no connection with the book that
contains them. We have before us a note written by him on the margin of a
quarto entitled, "Correspondence of Lord Germain with Generals Clinton
and Cornwallis, and the Admirals of the American Station. Versailles,
Prinçot; and Paris, Pissot, Quai des Augustins." Here is the note.
"O thou who art! Ecclesiastes calls you Omnipotence; the Maccabees call
you Creator; the Epistle to the Ephesians calls you Liberty; Baruch calls
you Immensity; the Psalms call you Wisdom and Truth; St. John calls you
Light; the Book of Kings calls you Lord; Exodus calls you Providence;
Leviticus, Holiness; Esdras, Justice; Creation calls you God; man calls you
the Father; but Solomon calls you Mercy, and that is the fairest of all your
names."
About nine o'clock the two females withdrew and went up to their bed-
rooms on the first floor, leaving him alone till morning on the ground floor.
Here it is necessary that we should give an exact idea of the Bishop's
residence.

CHAPTER VI.

BY WHOM THE HOUSE WAS GUARDED.

The house the Bishop resided in consisted, as we have said, of a ground
floor and one above it, three rooms on the ground, three bed-rooms on the
first floor, and above them a store-room. Behind the house was a quarter of
an acre of garden. The two females occupied the first floor, and the Bishop
lodged below. The first room, which opened on the street, served him as
dining-room, the second as bed-room, the third as oratory. You could not
get out of the oratory without passing through the bed-room, or out of the
bed-room without passing through the sitting-room. At the end of the
oratory was a closed alcove with a bed, for any one who stayed the night,
and the Bishop offered this bed to country curés whom business or the calls
of their parish brought to D——.
The hospital surgery, a small building added to the house and built on a part
of the garden, had been transformed into kitchen and cellar. There was also
in the garden a stable, which had been the old hospital kitchen, and in
which the Bishop kept two cows. Whatever the quantity of milk they
yielded, he invariably sent one half every morning to the hospital patients.
"I am paying my tithes," he was wont to say.
His room was rather spacious, and very difficult to heat in the cold weather.
As wood is excessively dear at D——, he hit on the idea of partitioning off
with planks a portion of the cow-house. Here he spent his evenings during
the great frosts, and called it his "winter drawing-room." In this room, as in
the dining-room, there was no other furniture but a square deal table and
four straw chairs. The dining-room was also adorned with an old buffet
stained to imitate rosewood. The Bishop had made the altar which
decorated his oratory out of a similar buffet, suitably covered with white
cloths and imitation lace. His rich penitents and the religious ladies of D
—— had often subscribed to pay for a handsome new altar for
Monseigneur's oratory; each time he took the money and gave it to the poor.
"The finest of all altars," he would say, "is the soul of an unhappy man who
is consoled and thanks God."
There were in his oratory two straw priedieus, and an arm-chair, also of
straw, in his bed-room. When he by chance received seven or eight persons
at the same time, the Prefect, the General, the staff of the regiment
quartered in the town, or some pupils of the Lower Seminary, it was

necessary to fetch the chairs from the winter drawing-room, the priedieus
from the oratory, and the easy chair from the bed-room: in this way as many
as eleven seats could be collected for the visitors. At each new visit a room
was unfurnished. It happened at times that there would be twelve; in such a
case the Bishop concealed the embarrassing nature of the situation by
standing before the chimney if it were winter, or walking up and down the
room were it summer.
There was also another chair in the alcove, but it was half robbed of the
straw, and had only three legs to stand on, so that it could only be used
when resting against a wall. Mlle. Baptistine also had in her bed-room a
very large settee of wood, which had once been gilt and covered with
flowered chintz, but it had been necessary to raise this settee to the first
floor through the window, owing to the narrowness of the stairs: and hence
it could not be reckoned on in any emergency. It had been Mlle. Baptistine's
ambition to buy drawing-room furniture of mahogany and covered with
yellow Utrecht velvet, but this would have cost at least 500 francs, and
seeing that she had only succeeded in saving for this object 42 francs 5 sous
in five years, she gave up the idea. Besides, who is there that ever attains
his ideal?
Nothing more simple can be imagined than the Bishop's bed-room. A long
window opening on the garden; opposite the bed, an iron hospital bed with
a canopy of green serge; in the shadow of the bed, behind a curtain, toilet
articles, still revealing the old elegant habits of the man of fashion; two
doors, one near the chimney leading to the oratory, the other near the library
leading to the dining-room. The library was a large glass case full of books;
the chimney of wood, painted to imitate marble, was habitually fireless; in
the chimney were a pair of iron andirons ornamented with two vases,
displaying garlands and grooves which had once been silvered, which was a
species of episcopal luxury; over the chimney a crucifix of unsilvered
copper fastened to threadbare black velvet, in a frame which had lost its
gilding; near the window was a large table with an inkstand, loaded with
irregularly arranged papers and heavy tomes; before the table the straw
arm-chair; in front of the bed a priedieu borrowed from the oratory.
Two portraits, in oval frames, hung on the wall on either side of the bed.
Small gilded inscriptions on the neutral tinted ground of the canvas by the
side of the figures indicated that the portraits represented, one the Abbé de

Chaliot, Bishop of St. Claude; the other the Abbé Tourteau, Vicar-general of
Agde, and Abbé of Grand Champs, belonging to the Cistertian order in the
diocese of Chartres. The Bishop, on succeeding to the hospital infirmary,
found the pictures there and left them. They were priests, probably donors,
—two motives for him to respect them. All he knew of the two personages
was that they had been nominated by the King, the one to his bishopric, the
other to his benefice, on the same day, April 27, 1785. Madame Magloire
having unhooked the portraits to remove the dust, the Bishop found this
circumstance recorded in faded ink on a small square of paper which time
had turned yellow, and fastened by four wafers behind the portrait of the
Abbé of Grand Champs.
He had at his window an antique curtain of heavy woollen stuff, which had
grown so old that Madame Magloire, in order to avoid the expense of a new
one, was obliged to make a large seam in the very middle of it. The seam
formed a cross, and the Bishop often drew attention to it. "How pleasant
that is," he would say. All the rooms in the house, ground floor and first
floor, were white-washed, which is a barrack and hospital fashion. Still,
some years later, Madame Magloire discovered, as we shall see further on,
paintings under the white-washed paper, in Mlle. Baptistine's bed-room.
The rooms were paved with red bricks which were washed every week, and
there were straw mats in front of all the beds. This house, moreover,
managed by two females, was exquisitely clean from top to bottom. This
was the only luxury the Bishop allowed himself, for, as he said, "It takes
nothing from the poor." We must allow, however, that of the old property
there still remained six silver spoons and forks and a soup-ladle, which
Madame Magloire daily saw with delight shining splendidly on the coarse
white table-cloth. And as we are here depicting the Bishop of D—— as he
was, we must add that he had said, more than once, "I do not think I could
give up eating with silver." To this plate must be added two heavy
candlesticks of massive silver, which the Bishop inherited from a great-
aunt. These branched candlesticks each held two wax candles, and usually
figured on the Bishop's chimney. When he had any one to dinner, Madame
Magloire lit the candles and placed the two candlesticks on the table. There
was in the Bishop's bed-room, at the head of his bed, a small cupboard in
the wall, in which Madame Magloire each night placed the plate and the
large ladle. I am bound to add that the key was never taken out.

The garden, spoiled to some extent by the ugly buildings to which we have
referred, was composed of four walks, radiating round a cesspool; another
walk ran all round the garden close to the surrounding white wall. Between
these walks were four box-bordered squares. In three of them Madame
Magloire grew vegetables; in the fourth the Bishop had placed flowers; here
and there were a few fruit-trees. Once Madame Magloire had said, with a
sort of gentle malice, "Monseigneur, although you turn everything to use,
here is an unemployed plot. It would be better to have lettuces there than
bouquets." "Madame Magloire," the Bishop answered, "you are mistaken;
the beautiful is as useful as the useful." He added, after a moment's silence,
"More so, perhaps."
This square, composed of three or four borders, occupied the Bishop almost
as much as his books did. He liked to spend an hour or two there, cutting,
raking, and digging holes in which he placed seeds. He was not so hostile to
insects as a gardener would have liked. However, he made no pretensions to
botany; he was ignorant of groups and solidism; he did not make the
slightest attempt to decide between Tournefort and the natural method; he
was not a partisan either of Jussieu or Linnæus. He did not study plants, but
he loved flowers. He greatly respected the professors, but he respected the
ignorant even more; and without ever failing in this respect, he watered his
borders every summer evening with a green-painted tin pot.
The house had not a single door that locked. The door of the dining-room,
which, as we said, opened right on the cathedral square, had formerly been
adorned with bolts and locks like a prison gate. The Bishop had all this iron
removed, and the door was only hasped either night or day: the first passer-
by, no matter the hour, had only to push it. At the outset the two females had
been greatly alarmed by this never-closed door; but the Bishop said to them,
"Have bolts placed on the doors of your rooms if you like." In the end they
shared his confidence, or at least affected to do so: Madame Magloire alone
was from time to time alarmed. As regards the Bishop, his idea is explained,
or at least indicated, by these three lines, which he wrote on the margin of a
Bible: "This is the distinction: the physician's doors must never be closed,
the priest's door must always be open." On another book, entitled
"Philosophy of Medical Science," he wrote this other note: "Am I not a
physician like them? I also have my patients: in the first place, I have theirs,
whom they call the sick, and then I have my own, whom I call the

unhappy." Elsewhere he also wrote: "Do not ask the name of the man who
seeks a bed from you, for it is before all the man whom his name
embarrasses that needs an asylum."
It came about that a worthy curé—I forget whether it were he of
Couloubroux or he of Pompierry—thought proper to ask him one day,
probably at the instigation of Madame Magloire, whether Monseigneur was
quite certain that he was not acting to some extent imprudently by leaving
his door open day and night for any who liked to enter, and if he did not
fear lest some misfortune might happen in a house so poorly guarded. The
Bishop tapped his shoulder with gentle gravity, and said to him, "Nisi
Dominus custodierit domum, in vanum vigilant qui custodiunt eam."
Then he spoke of something else. He was fond of saying too, "There is the
Priest's bravery as well as that of the Colonel of Dragoons. The only thing is
that ours must be quiet."

CHAPTER VII.

CRAVATTE.

Here naturally comes a fact which we must not omit, for it is one of those
which will enable us to see what manner of man the Bishop of D—— was.
After the destruction of the band of Gaspard Bès, which had infested the
gorges of Ollioules, Cravatte, one of his lieutenants, took refuge in the
mountains. He concealed himself for a while with his brigands, the remnant
of Bès' band, in the county of Nice, then went to Piedmont, and suddenly
re-appeared in France, via Barcelonnette. He was seen first at Jauziers, and
next at Tuiles; he concealed himself in the caverns of the Joug de l'Aigle,
and descended thence on the hamlets and villages by the ravines of the
Ubaye. He pushed on even as far as Embrun, entered the church one night
and plundered the sacristy. His brigandage desolated the country, and the
gendarmes were in vain placed on his track. He constantly escaped, and at
times even offered resistance, for he was a bold scoundrel. In the midst of
all this terror the Bishop arrived on his visitation, and the Mayor came to

him and urged him to turn back. Cravatte held the mountain as far as Arche
and beyond, and there was danger, even with an escort. It would be
uselessly exposing three or four unhappy gendarmes.
"For that reason," said the Bishop, "I intend to go without escort."
"Can you mean it, Monseigneur?" the Mayor exclaimed.
"I mean it so fully that I absolutely refuse gendarmes, and intend to start in
an hour."
"Monseigneur, you will not do that!"
"There is in the mountain," the Bishop continued, "a humble little parish,
which I have not visited for three years. They are good friends of mine, and
quiet and honest shepherds. They are the owners of one goat out of every
thirty they guard; they make very pretty woollen ropes of different colors,
and they play mountain airs on small six-holed flutes. They want to hear
about heaven every now and then, and what would they think of a bishop
who was afraid? What would they say if I did not go?"
"But, Monseigneur, the brigands."
"Ah," said the Bishop, "you are right; I may meet them. They too must want
to hear about heaven."
"But this band is a flock of wolves."
"Monsieur Mayor, it may be that this is precisely the flock of which Christ
has made me the shepherd. Who knows the ways of Providence?"
"Monseigneur, they will plunder you."
"I have nothing."
"They will kill you."
"A poor old priest who passes by, muttering his mummery? Nonsense, what
good would that do them?"
"Oh, good gracious, if you were to meet them!"
"I would ask them for alms for my poor."
"Monseigneur, do not go. In Heaven's name do not, for you expose your
life."

"My good sir," said the Bishop, "is that all? I am not in this world to save
my life, but to save souls."
There was no help for it, and he set out only accompanied by a lad, who
offered to act as his guide. His obstinacy created a sensation in the country,
and caused considerable alarm. He would not take either his sister or
Madame Magloire with him. He crossed the mountain on a mule, met
nobody, and reached his good friends the goat-herds safe and sound. He
remained with them a fortnight, preaching, administering the sacraments,
teaching, and moralizing. When he was ready to start for home he resolved
to sing a Te Deum pontifically, and spoke about it to the Curé. But what
was to be done? There were no episcopal ornaments. All that could be
placed at his disposal was a poor village sacristy, with a few old faded and
pinchbeck covered chasubles.
"Pooh!" said the Bishop; "announce the Te Deum in your sermon for all
that. It will come right in the end."
Inquiries were made in the surrounding churches: but all the magnificence
of these united humble parishes would not have been sufficient decently to
equip a cathedral chorister. While they were in this embarrassment a large
chest was brought and left at the curacy for the Bishop by two strange
horse-men, who started again at once. The chest was opened and found to
contain a cope of cloth of gold, a mitre adorned with diamonds, an
archiepiscopal cross, a magnificent crozier, and all the pontifical robes
stolen a month back from the treasury of our Lady of Embrun. In the chest
was a paper on which were written these words: "Cravatte to Monseigneur
Welcome."
"Did I not tell you that it would be all right?" the Bishop said; then he added
with a smile, "God sends an archbishop's cope to a man who is contented
with a curé's surplice."
"Monseigneur," the Curé muttered, with a gentle shake of his head, "God—
or the devil."
The Bishop looked fixedly at the Curé and repeated authoritatively, "God!"
When he returned to Chastelon, and all along the road, he was regarded
curiously. He found at the Presbytery of that town Mlle. Baptistine and
Madame Magloire waiting for him, and he said to his sister, "Well, was I

right? The poor priest went among these poor mountaineers with empty
hands, and returns with his hands full. I started only taking with me my
confidence in Heaven, and I bring back the treasures of a cathedral."
The same evening before retiring he said too, "Never let us fear robbers or
murderers. These are external and small dangers; let us fear ourselves;
prejudices are the real robbers, vices the true murderers. The great dangers
are within ourselves. Let us not trouble about what threatens our head or
purse, and only think of what threatens our soul." Then, turning to his sister,
he added, "Sister, a priest ought never to take precautions against his
neighbor. What his neighbor does God permits, so let us confine ourselves
to praying to God when we believe that a danger is impending over us. Let
us pray, not for ourselves, but that our brother may not fall into error on our
account."
Events, however, were rare in his existence. We relate those we know, but
ordinarily he spent his life in always doing the same things at the same
moment. A month of his year resembled an hour of his day. As to what
became of the treasure of Embrun Cathedral, we should be greatly
embarrassed if questioned on that head. There were many fine things, very
tempting and famous to steal on behalf of the poor. Stolen they were
already, one moiety of the adventure was accomplished: the only thing left
to do was to change the direction of the robbery, and make it turn slightly
towards the poor. Still, we affirm nothing on the subject; we merely
mention that among the Bishop's papers a rather obscure note was found,
which probably refers to this question, and was thus conceived: "The
question is to know whether it ought to go to the cathedral or the hospital."

CHAPTER VIII.

PHILOSOPHY AFTER DRINKING.

The Senator, to whom we have already alluded, was a skilful man, who had
made his way with a rectitude that paid no attention to all those things
which constitute obstacles, and are called conscience, plighted word, right,

and duty: he had gone straight to his object without once swerving from the
line of his promotions and his interest. He was an ex-procureur, softened by
success, anything but a wicked man, doing all the little services in his
power for his sons, his sons-in-law, his relatives, and even his friends: he
had selected the best opportunities, and the rest seemed to him something
absurd. He was witty, and just sufficiently lettered to believe himself a
disciple of Epicurus, while probably only a product of Pigault Lebrun. He
was fond of laughing pleasantly at things infinite and eternal, and at the
crotchets "of our worthy Bishop." He even laughed at them with amiable
authority in M. Myriel's presence. On some semi-official occasion the
Count—(this Senator) and M. Myriel met at the Prefect's table. At the
dessert the Senator, who was merry but quite sober, said,—
"Come, Bishop, let us have a chat. A senator and a bishop can hardly meet
without winking at each other, for we are two augurs, and I am about to
make a confession to you. I have my system of philosophy."
"And you are right," the Bishop answered; "as you make your philosophy,
so you must lie on it. You are on the bed of purple."
The Senator, thus encouraged, continued,—"Let us be candid."
"Decidedly."
"I declare to you," the Senator went on, "that the Marquis d'Argens, Pyrrho,
Hobbes, and Naigeon are no impostors. I have in my library all my
philosophers with gilt backs."
"Like yourself, Count," the Bishop interrupted him.
The Senator proceeded,—
"I hate Diderot; he is an ideologist, a declaimer, and a revolutionist,
believing in his heart in Deity, and more bigoted than Voltaire. The latter
ridiculed Needham, and was wrong, for Needham's eels prove that God is
unnecessary. A drop of vinegar in a spoonful of flour supplies the fiat lux;
suppose the drop larger, and the spoonful bigger, and you have the world.
Man is the eel; then, of what use is the Eternal Father? My dear Bishop, the
Jehovah hypothesis wearies me; it is only fitted to produce thin people who
think hollow. Down with the great All which annoys me! Long live Zero,
who leaves me at peace! Between ourselves, and in order to confess to my
pastor, as is right and proper, I confess to you that I possess common sense.

I am not wild about your Saviour, who continually preaches abnegation and
sacrifice. It is advice offered by a miser to beggars. Abnegation, why?
Sacrifice, for what object? I do not see that one wolf sacrifices itself to
cause the happiness of another wolf. Let us, therefore, remain in nature. We
are at the summit, so let us have the supreme philosophy. What is the use of
being at the top, if you cannot see further than the end of other people's
noses? Let us live gayly, for life is all in all. As for man having a future
elsewhere, up there, down there, somewhere, I do not believe a syllable of
it. Oh yes! recommend sacrifices and abnegation to me. I must take care of
all I do. I must rack my brains about good and evil, justice and injustice, fas
et nefas. Why so? because I shall have to give account for my actions.
When? after my death. What a fine dream! after death! He will be a clever
fellow who catches me. Just think of a lump of ashes seized by a shadowy
hand. Let us speak the truth, we who are initiated and have raised the skirt
of Isis; there is no good, no evil, but there is vegetation. Let us seek reality
and go to the bottom; hang it all, we must scent the truth, dig into the
ground for it and seize it. Then it offers you exquisite delights; then you
become strong and laugh. I am square at the base, my dear Bishop, and
human immortality is a thing which anybody who likes may listen to. Oh!
what a charming prospect! What a fine billet Adam has! You are a soul, you
will be an angel, and have blue wings on your shoulder-blades. Come, help
me, is it not Tertullian who says that the blessed will go from one planet to
the other? Very good; they will be the grasshoppers of the planets. And then
they will see God; Ta, ta, ta. These paradises are all nonsense, and God is a
monstrous fable. I would not say so in the Moniteur, of course, but I
whisper it between friends, inter pocula. Sacrificing the earth for paradise is
giving up the substance for the shadow. I am not such an ass as to be the
dupe of the Infinite. I am nothing, my name is Count Nothing, Senator. Did
I exist before my birth? no; shall I exist after my death? no. What am I? a
little dust aggregated by an organism. What have I to do on this earth? I
have the choice between suffering and enjoyment. To what will suffering
lead me? to nothingness, but I shall have suffered. To what will enjoyment
lead me? to nothingness, but I shall have enjoyed. My choice is made; a
man must either eat or be eaten, and so I eat, for it is better to be the tooth
than the grass. That is my wisdom; after which go on as I impel you; the
grave-digger is there, the Pantheon for such as us, and all fall into the large
hole. Finis, and total liquidation, that is the vanishing point Death is dead,

take my word for it; and I laugh at the idea of any one present affirming the
contrary. It is an invention of nurses, old Bogey for children, Jehovah for
men. No, our morrow is night; behind the tomb there is nothing but equal
nothings. You may have been Sardanapalus, you may have been St. Vincent
de Paul: it all comes to the same—nothing. That is the truth, so live above
all else; make use of your me, so long as you hold it. In truth, I tell you, my
dear Bishop, I have my philosophy, and I have my philosophers, and I do
not let myself be deluded by fables. After all, something must be offered
persons who are down in the world,—the barefooted, the strugglers for
existence and the wretched: and so they are offered pure legends—chimeras
—the soul—immortality—paradise—the stars—to swallow. They chew that
and put it on their dry bread. The man who has nothing has God, and that is
something at any rate. I do not oppose it, but I keep M. Naigeon for myself;
God is good for the plebs."
The Bishop clapped his hands.
"That is what I call speaking," he exclaimed. "Ah, what an excellent and
truly wonderful thing this materialism is! it is not every man who wishes
that can have it. Ah! when a man has reached that point, he is no longer a
dupe; he does not let himself be stupidly exiled, like Cato; or stoned, like
St. Stephen; or burnt, like Joan of Arc. Those who have succeeded in
acquiring this materialism have the joy of feeling themselves irresponsible,
and thinking that they can devour everything without anxiety, places,
sinecures, power well or badly gained, dignities, lucrative tergiversations,
useful treachery, folly, capitulations with their consciences, and that they
will go down to the tomb after digesting it all properly. How agreeable this
is! I am not referring to you, my dear Senator, still I cannot refrain from
congratulating you. You great gentlemen have, as you say, a philosophy of
your own, and for yourselves, exquisite, refined, accessible to the rich
alone, good with any sauce, and admirably seasoning the joys of life. This
philosophy is drawn from the profundities, and dug up by special searchers.
But you are kind fellows, and think it no harm that belief in God should be
the philosophy of the populace, much in the same way as a goose stuffed
with chestnuts is the truffled turkey of the poor."

CHAPTER IX.

THE BROTHER DESCRIBED BY THE SISTER.

To give an idea of the domestic life of the Bishop of D——, and the manner
in which these two saintly women subordinated their actions, their thoughts,
even their feminine instincts, which were easily startled, to the habits and
intentions of the Bishop, before he required to express them in words, we
cannot do better than copy here a letter from Mlle Baptistine to the
Viscountess de Boischevron, her friend of childhood. This letter is in our
possession.
"D——, 16th Dec., 18——.
"MY DEAR MADAME,—Not a day passes in which we do not talk about you.
That is our general habit, but there is an extra reason at present. Just
imagine that, in washing and dusting the ceilings and walls, Madame
Magloire has made a discovery, and now our two rooms papered with old
white-washed paper would not disgrace a chateau like yours. Madame
Magloire has torn down all the paper, and there are things under it. My
sitting-room, in which there was no furniture, and in which we used to hang
up the linen to dry, is fifteen feet in height, eighteen wide, and has a ceiling
which was once gilded, and rafters, as in your house. It was covered with
canvas during the time this mansion was an hospital. But it is my bed-room,
you should see; Madame Magloire has discovered, under at least ten layers
of paper, paintings which, though not excellent, are endurable. There is
Telemachus dubbed a knight by Minerva; and there he is again in the
gardens: I forget their names, but where the Roman ladies only went for a
single night. What can I tell you? I have Roman ladies (here an illegible
word), and so on. Madame Magloire has got it all straight. This summer she
intends to repair a little damage, re-varnish it all, and my bed-room will be
a real museum. She has also found in a corner of the garret two consoles in
the old fashion; they want twelve francs to regild them, but it is better to
give that sum to the poor: besides, they are frightfully ugly, and I should
prefer a round mahogany table.
"I am very happy, for my brother is so good; he gives all he has to the sick
and the poor, and we are often greatly pressed. The country is hard in
winter, and something must be done for those who are in want. We are

almost lighted and warmed, and, as you can see, that is a great comfort. My
brother has peculiar habits; when he does talk, he says 'that a bishop should
be so.' Just imagine that the house door is never closed: any one who likes
can come in, and is at once in my brother's presence. He fears nothing, not
even night; and he says that is his way of showing his bravery. He does not
wish me to feel alarmed for him, or for Madame Magloire to do so; he
exposes himself to all dangers, and does not wish us to appear as if we even
noticed it. We must understand him. He goes out in the rain, he wades
through the water, and travels in winter. He is not afraid of the night,
suspicious roads, or encounters. Last year he went all alone into a country
of robbers, for he would not take us with him. He stayed away a whole
fortnight, and folk thought him dead, but he came back all right, and said,
'Here's the way in which I was robbed,' and he opened a chest full of all the
treasures of Embrun Cathedral, which the robbers had given him. That time
I could not refrain from scolding him a little, but was careful only to speak
when the wheels made a noise, so that no one could hear me.
"At first I said to myself; there is no danger that checks him, and he is
terrible; but at present I have grown accustomed to it. I make Madame
Magloire a sign not to annoy him, and he risks his life as he pleases. I carry
off Magloire, go to my bed-room, pray for him, and fall asleep. I am
tranquil because I know that if any harm happened to him it would be the
death of me. I shall go to heaven with my brother and my bishop. Madame
Magloire has had greater difficulty than myself in accustoming herself to
what she calls his imprudence, but at present she has learned to put up with
it. We both pray; we are terrified together, and fall asleep. If the Fiend were
to enter the house no one would try to stop him, and after all what have we
to fear in this house? There is always some one with us who is the stronger,
the demon may pass by, but our Lord lives in it. That is enough for me, and
my brother no longer requires to say a word to me. I understand him
without his speaking, and we leave ourselves in the hands of Providence,
for that is the way in which you must behave to a man who has grandeur in
his soul.
"I have questioned my brother about the information you require
concerning the De Faux family. You are aware that he knows everything,
and what a memory he has, for he is still a good Royalist. It is really a very
old Norman family belonging to the Generalty of Caen. Five hundred years

ago there were a Raoul, a John, and a Thomas de Faux, who were
gentlemen, and one of them Seigneur of Rochefort. The last was Guy
Stephen Alexander, who was Major-general, and something in the Brittany
Light Horse: his daughter, Maria Louisa, married Adrian Charles de
Gramont, son of Duke Louis de Gramont, Peer of France, Colonel of the
French Guards, and Lieutenant-general in the army. The name is written
Faux, Fauq, and Faouq.
"My dear madam, recommend us to the prayers of your holy relative the
Cardinal. As for your dear Sylvanie, she has done well in not wasting the
few moments she passes by your side in writing to me. She is well, works
according to your wishes, and loves me still: that is all I desire. Her
souvenir sent me through you safely reached me, and I am delighted at it.
My health is not bad, and yet I grow thinner every day. Good-by, my paper
is running out and compels me to break off. A thousand kind regards from
your Baptistine.
"P.S. Your little nephew is delightful: do you know that he is nearly five
years of age? Yesterday he saw a horse pass with knee-caps on, and he said,
'What has he got on his knees?' He is such a dear child. His little brother
drags an old broom about the room like a coach, and cries, 'Hu!'"
As may be seen from this letter, the two women managed to yield to the
Bishop's ways, with the genius peculiar to woman, who comprehends a man
better than he does himself. The Bishop of D——, beneath the candid,
gentle air which never broke down, at times did grand, bold, and
magnificent things, without even appearing to suspect the fact. They
trembled, but let him alone. At times Madame Magloire would hazard a
remonstrance beforehand, but never during or after the deed. They never
troubled him either by word or sign when he had once begun an affair. At
certain moments, without his needing to mention the fact, or perhaps when
he was not conscious of it, so perfect was his simplicity, they vaguely felt
that he was acting episcopally, and at such times they were only two
shadows in the house. They served him passively, and if disappearance
were obedience, they disappeared. They knew, with an admirable intuitive
delicacy, that certain attentions might vex him, and hence, though they
might believe him in peril, they understood, I will not say his thoughts, but
his nature, and no longer watched over him. They intrusted him to God.

Moreover, Baptistine said, as we have just read, that her brother's death
would be her death. Madame Magloire did not say so, but she knew it.

CHAPTER X.

THE BISHOP FACES A NEW LIGHT.

At a period rather later than the date of the letter just quoted he did a thing
which the whole town declared to be even more venturesome than his trip
in the mountains among the bandits. A man lived alone in the country near
D——: this man, let us out with the great word at once, was an ex-
conventionalist, of the name of G——. People talked about him in the little
world of D—— with a species of horror. A conventionalist, only think of
that! Those men existed at the time when people "thou-ed" one another and
were called citizens. This man was almost a monster: he had not voted for
the King's death, but had done all but that, and was a quasi-regicide. How
was it that this man had not been tried by court-martial, on the return of the
legitimate princes? They need not have cut his head off, for clemency is all
right and proper, but banishment for life would have been an example, and
so on. Moreover, he was an atheist, like all those men. It was the gossip of
geese round a vulture.
And was this G—— a vulture? Yes, if he might be judged by his ferocious
solitude. As he had not voted the King's death, he was not comprised in the
decree of exile, and was enabled to remain in France. He lived about three
miles from the town, far from every village, every road, in a nook of a very
wild valley. He had there, so it was said, a field, a hut, a den. He had no
neighbors, not even passers-by; since he had lived in the valley the path
leading to it had become overgrown with grass. People talked of the spot as
of the hangman's house. Yet the Bishop thought of it, and from time to time
gazed at a spot on the horizon where a clump of trees pointed out the old
conventionalist's valley, and said "There is a soul there alone," and he added
to himself, "I owe him a visit."

But, let us confess it, this idea, which at the first blush was natural, seemed
to him after a moment's reflection strange and impossible, almost repulsive.
For, in his heart, he shared the general impression, and the conventionalist
inspired him, without his being able to account for it, with that feeling
which is the border line of hatred, and which is so well expressed by the
word "estrangement."
Still the shepherd ought not to keep aloof from a scabby sheep; but then
what a sheep it was! The good Bishop was perplexed; at times he started in
that direction, but turned back. One day a rumor spread in the town, that a
shepherd boy who waited on G—— in his den, had come to fetch a doctor:
the old villain was dying, paralysis was overpowering him, and he could not
last out the night. Happy release! some added.
The Bishop took his stick, put on his overcoat to hide his well-worn
cassock, as well as to protect him against the night breeze which would
soon rise, and set out. The sun had almost attained the horizon when the
Bishop reached the excommunicated spot. He perceived with a certain
heart-beating that he was close to the wild beast's den. He strode across a
ditch, clambered over a hedge, entered a neglected garden, and suddenly
perceived the cavern behind some shrubs. It was a low, poor-looking hut,
small and clean, with a vine nailed over the front.
In front of the door an old white-haired man, seated in a worn-out wheel-
chair, was smiling in the sun. By his side stood a boy, who handed him a pot
of milk. While the Bishop was looking at him the old man uplifted his
voice. "Thanks," he said, "I want nothing further," and his smile was turned
from the sun to rest on the boy.
The Bishop stepped forward, and at the noise of his footsteps the seated
man turned his head, and his face expressed all the surprise it is possible to
feel after a long life.
"Since I have lived here," he said, "you are the first person who has come to
me. Who may you be, sir?"
The Bishop answered, "My name is Bienvenu Myriel."
"I have heard that name uttered. Are you not he whom the peasants call
Monseigneur Welcome?"
"I am."

The old man continued, with a half-smile, "In that case you are my
Bishop?"
"A little."
"Come in, sir."
The conventionalist offered his hand to the Bishop, but the Bishop did not
take it—he confined himself to saying,—
"I am pleased to see that I was deceived. You certainly do not look ill."
"I am about to be cured, sir," the old man said; then after a pause he added,
"I shall be dead in three hours. I am a bit of a physician, and know in what
way the last hour comes. Yesterday only my feet were cold; to-day the chill
reached my knees; now I can feel it ascending to my waist, and when it
reaches the heart I shall stop. The sun is glorious, is it not? I had myself
wheeled out in order to take a farewell glance at things. You can talk to me,
for it does not weary me. You have done well to come and look at a dying
man, for it is proper that there should be witnesses. People have their
fancies, and I should have liked to go on till dawn. But I know that I can
hardly last three hours. It will be night, but, after all, what matter? Finishing
is a simple affair, and daylight is not necessary for it. Be it so, I will die by
star-light."
Then he turned to the lad:
"Go to bed. You sat up the other night, and must be tired."
The boy went into the cabin; the old man looked after him, and added, as if
speaking to himself,—
"While he is sleeping I shall die; the two slumbers can keep each other
company."
The Bishop was not so moved as we might imagine he would be. He did not
think that he saw God in this way of dying: and—let us out with it, as the
small contradictions of great hearts must also be indicated—he, who at
times laughed so heartily at his grandeur, was somewhat annoyed at not
being called Monseigneur, and was almost tempted to reply, Citizen. He felt
an inclination for coarse familiarity, common enough with doctors and
priests, but to which he was not accustomed. This man after all, this
conventionalist, this representative of the people, had been a mighty one of

the earth: for the first time in his life, perhaps, the Bishop felt disposed to
sternness.
The Republican, in the mean while, regarded him with modest cordiality, in
which, perhaps, could be traced that humility which is so becoming in a
man who is on the point of returning to the dust. The Bishop, on his side,
though he generally guarded against curiosity, which according to him was
akin to insult, could not refrain from examining the conventionalist with an
attention which, as it did not emanate from sympathy, would have pricked
his conscience in the case of any other man. The conventionalist produced
the effect upon him of being beyond the pale of the law, even the law of
charity.
G——, calm, almost upright, and possessing a sonorous voice, was one of
those grand octogenarians who are the amazement of the physiologist. The
Revolution possessed many such men, proportioned to the age. The
thoroughly tried man could be seen in him, and, though so near his end, he
had retained all the signs of health. There was something which would
disconcert death in his bright glance, his firm accent, and the robust
movement of his shoulders: Azrael, the Mohammedan angel of the tomb,
would have turned back fancying that he had mistaken the door. G——
seemed to be dying because he wished to do so; there was liberty in his
agony, and his legs alone, by which the shadows clutched him, were
motionless. While the feet were dead and cold, the head lived with all the
power of life and appeared in full light. G—— at this awful moment
resembled the king in the Oriental legend, flesh above and marble below.
The Bishop sat down on a stone and began rather abruptly:—
"I congratulate you," he said, in the tone people employ to reprimand; "at
least you did not vote the King's death."
The Republican did not seem to notice the covert bitterness of this remark,
at least; he replied, without a smile on his face,—
"Do not congratulate me, sir: I voted the death of the tyrant." It was the
accent of austerity opposed to that of sternness.
"What do you mean?" the Bishop continued.
"I mean that man has a tyrant, Ignorance, and I voted for the end of that
tyrant which engendered royalty, which is the false authority, while

knowledge is the true authority. Man must only be governed by
knowledge."
"And by his conscience," the Bishop added.
"That is the same thing. Conscience is the amount of innate knowledge we
have in us."
Monseigneur Welcome listened in some surprise to this language, which
was very novel to him. The Republican continued,—
"As for Louis XVI. I said No. I do not believe that I have the right to kill a
man, but I feel the duty of exterminating a tyrant, and I voted for the end of
the tyrant. That is to say, for the end of prostitution for women; the end of
slavery for men; and the end of night for children. In voting for the
Republic I voted for all this: I voted for fraternity, concord, the Dawn! I
aided in the overthrow of errors and prejudices, and such an overthrow
produces light; we hurled down the old world, and that vase of
wretchedness, by being poured over the human race, became an urn of joy."
"Mingled joy," said the Bishop.
"You might call it a troubled joy, and now, after that fatal return of the past
which is called 1814, a departed joy. Alas! the work was incomplete, I
grant; we demolished the ancient régime in facts, but were not able to
suppress it completely in ideas. It is not sufficient to destroy abuses, but
morals must also be modified. Though the mill no longer exists, the wind
still blows."
"You demolished: it may be useful, but I distrust a demolition complicated
with passion."
"Right has its passion, Sir Bishop, and that passion is an element of
progress. No matter what may be said, the French Revolution is the most
powerful step taken by the human race since the advent of Christ. It may be
incomplete, but it was sublime. It softened minds, it calmed, appeased, and
enlightened, and it spread civilization over the world. The French
Revolution was good, for it was the consecration of humanity."
The Bishop could not refrain from muttering,—"Yes? '93!"
The Republican drew himself up with almost mournful solemnity, and
shouted, as well as a dying man could shout,—

"Ah! there we have it! I have been waiting for that. A cloud had been
collecting for fifteen hundred years, and at the end of that period it burst:
you are condemning the thunder-clap."
The Bishop, without perhaps confessing it to himself, felt that the blow had
gone home; still he kept a good countenance, and answered,—
"The judge speaks in the name of justice; the priest speaks in that of pity,
which is only a higher form of justice. A thunder-clap must not deceive
itself."
And he added as he looked fixedly at the conventionalist,—
"And Louis XVII.?"
The Republican stretched forth his hand and seized the Bishop's arm.
"Louis XVII. Let us consider. Whom do you weep for? Is it the innocent
child? in that case I weep with you. Is it the royal child? in that case I must
ask leave to reflect. For me, the thought of the brother of Cartouche, an
innocent lad, hung up under the armpits in the Place de Grève until death
ensued, for the sole crime of being Cartouche's brother, is not less painful
than the grandson of Louis XV., the innocent boy martyrized in the Temple
Tower for the sole crime of being the grandson of Louis XV."
"I do not like such an association of names, sir," said the Bishop.
"Louis XV.? Cartouche? On behalf of which do you protest?"
There was a moment's silence; the Bishop almost regretted having come,
and yet felt himself vaguely and strangely shaken. The conventionalist
continued,—
"Ah! sir priest, you do not like the crudities of truth, but Christ loved them;
he took a scourge and swept the temple. His lightning lash was a rough
discourser of truths. When he exclaimed, 'Suffer little children to come unto
me,' he made no distinction among them. He made no difference between
the dauphin of Barabbas and the dauphin of Herod. Innocence is its own
crown, and does not require to be a Highness; it is as august in rags as when
crowned with fleurs de lis."
"That is true," said the Bishop in a low voice.

"You have named Louis XVII.," the conventionalist continued; "let us
understand each other. Shall we weep for all the innocents, martyrs, and
children of the lowest as of the highest rank? I am with you there, but as I
said, in that case we must go back beyond '93, and begin our tears before
Louis XVII. I will weep over the children of the kings with you, provided
that you weep with me over the children of the people."
"I weep for all," said the Bishop.
"Equally!" G—— exclaimed; "and if the balance must be uneven, let it be
on the side of the people, as they have suffered the longest."
There was again a silence, which the Republican broke. He rose on his
elbow, held his chin with his thumb and forefinger, as a man does
mechanically when he is interrogating and judging, and fixed on the Bishop
a glance full of all the energy of approaching death. It was almost an
explosion.
"Yes, sir; the people have suffered for a long time. But let me ask why you
have come to question and speak to me about Louis XVII.? I do not know
you. Ever since I have been in this country I have lived here alone, never
setting my foot across the threshold, and seeing no one but the boy who
attends to me. Your name, it is true, has vaguely reached me, and I am
bound to say that it was pronounced affectionately, but that means nothing,
for clever people have so many ways of making the worthy, simple folk
believe in them. By the bye, I did not hear the sound of your coach; you
doubtless left it down there behind that clump of trees at the cross roads. I
do not know you, I tell you; you have informed me that you are the Bishop,
but that teaches me nothing as to your moral character. In a word—I repeat
my question, Who are you? You are a bishop, that is to say, a prince of the
Church, one of those gilded, escutcheoned annuitants who have fat
prebends—the Bishopric of D——, with 15,000 francs income, 10,000
francs fees, or a total of 25,000 francs,—who have kitchens, liveries, keep a
good table, and eat water-fowl on a Friday; who go about, with lackeys
before and behind, in a gilded coach, in the name of the Saviour who
walked barefoot! You are a prelate; you have, like all the rest, income,
palace, horses, valets, a good table, and like all the rest you enjoy them: that
is all very well, but it says either too much or too little; it does not enlighten
me as to your intrinsic and essential value when you come with the

probable intention of bringing me wisdom. To whom am I speaking—who
are you?"
The Bishop bowed his head, and answered, "I am a worm."
"A worm in a carriage!" the Republican growled.
It was his turn to be haughty, the Bishop's to be humble; the latter continued
gently,—
"Be it so, sir. But explain to me how my coach, which is a little way off
behind the trees, my good table, and the water-fowl I eat on Friday, my
palace, my income, and my footmen, prove that pity is not a virtue, that
clemency is not a duty, and that '93 was not inexorable."
The Republican passed his hand over his forehead, as if to remove a cloud.
"Before answering you," he said, "I must ask you to forgive me. I was in the
wrong, sir, for you are in my house and my guest. You discuss my ideas,
and I must restrict myself to combating your reasoning. Your wealth and
enjoyments are advantages which I have over you in the debate, but
courtesy bids me not employ them. I promise not to do so again."
"I thank you," said the Bishop.
G—— continued: "Let us return to the explanation you asked of me. Where
were we? What was it you said, that '93 was inexorable?"
"Yes, inexorable," the Bishop said; "what do you think of Marat clapping
his hands at the guillotine?"
"What do you think of Bossuet singing a Te Deum over the Dragonnades?"
The response was harsh, but went to its mark with the rigidity of a Minié
bullet. The Bishop started, and could not parry it, but he was hurt by this
way of mentioning Bossuet. The best minds have their fetishes, and at times
feel vaguely wounded by any want of respect on the part of logic. The
conventionalist was beginning to gasp; that asthma which is mingled with
the last breath affected his voice; still he retained perfect mental clearness in
his eyes. He continued,—
"Let us say a few words more on this head. Beyond the Revolution, which,
taken in its entirety, is an immense human affirmation, '93, alas, is a reply.
You consider it inexorable, but what was the whole monarchy? Carrier is a

bandit, but what name do you give to Montrevel? Fouquier Tainville is a
scoundrel, but what is your opinion about Lamoignon-Bâville? Maillard is
frightful, but what of Saulx-Tavannes, if you please? Father Duchêne is
ferocious, but what epithet will you allow me for Père Letellier? Jourdan
Coupe-Tête is a monster, but less so than the Marquis de Louvois. I pity
Marie Antoinette, Archduchess and Queen, but I also pity the poor
Huguenot woman who, in 1685, while suckling her child, was fastened,
naked to the waist, to a stake, while her infant was held at a distance. Her
breast was swollen with milk, her heart with agony; the babe, hungry and
pale, saw that breast and screamed for it, and the hangman said to the wife,
mother, and nurse, 'Abjure!' giving her the choice between the death of her
infant and the death of her conscience. What do you say of this punishment
of Tantalus adapted to a woman? Remember this carefully, sir, the French
Revolution had its reasons, and its wrath will be absolved by the future. Its
result is a better world; and a caress for the human race issues from its most
terrible blows. I must stop, for the game is all in my favor—besides, I am
dying."
And ceasing to regard the Bishop, the Republican finished his thought with
the following few calm words,—
"Yes, the brutalities of progress are called revolutions, but when they are
ended, this fact is recognized; the human race has been chastised, but it has
moved onwards."
The Republican did not suspect that he had carried in turn every one of the
Bishop's internal intrenchments. One still remained, however, and from this,
the last resource of Monseigneur's resistance, came this remark, in which all
the roughness of the commencement was perceptible.
"Progress must believe in God, and the good cannot have impious servants.
A man who is an atheist is a bad guide for the human race."
The ex-representative of the people did not reply. He trembled, looked up to
the sky, and a tear slowly collected in his eye. When the lid was full the tear
ran down his livid cheek, and he said in a low, shaking voice, as if speaking
to himself,—
"Oh thou! oh ideal! thou alone existest!"

The Bishop had a sort of inexpressible commotion; after a silence the old
man raised a finger to heaven and said,—
"The infinite is. It is there. If the infinite had not a me, the I would be its
limit; it would not be infinite; in other words, it would not be. But it is.
Hence it has a me. This I of the infinite is God."
The dying man uttered these words in a loud voice, and with a shudder of
ecstasy as if he saw some one. When he had spoken his eyes closed, for the
effort had exhausted him. It was evident that he had lived in one minute the
few hours left him. The supreme moment was at hand. The Bishop
understood it; he had come here as a priest, and had gradually passed from
extreme coldness to extreme emotion; he looked at these closed eyes, he
took this wrinkled and chilly hand and bent down over the dying man.
"This hour is God's. Would you not consider it matter of regret if we had
met in vain?"
The Republican opened his eyes again; a gravity which suggested the
shadow of death was imprinted on his countenance.

"YOUR BLESSING!" SAID THE BISHOP, AND KNELT DOWN.

"Monsieur le Bishop," he said, with a slowness produced perhaps more by
the dignity of the soul than by failing of his strength, "I have spent my life

in meditation, contemplation, and study. I was sixty years of age when my
country summoned me and ordered me to interfere in its affairs. I obeyed.
There were abuses, and I combated them; tyranny, and I destroyed it; rights
and principles, and I proclaimed and confessed them; the territory was
invaded, and I defended it; France was menaced, and I offered her my
chest; I was not rich, and I am poor. I was one of the masters of the State;
the bank cellars were so filled with specie that it was necessary to prop up
the walls, which were ready to burst through the weight of gold and silver,
but I dined in the Rue de l'Arbre Sec, at two-and-twenty sous a head. I
succored the oppressed. I relieved the suffering. I tore up the altar cloth, it is
true, but it was to stanch the wounds of the country. I ever supported the
onward march of the human race towards light, and I at times resisted
pitiless progress. When opportunity served, I protected my adversaries, men
of your class. And there is at Peteghem in Flanders, on the same site where
the Merovingian Kings had their summer palace, a monastery of Urbanists,
the Abbey of St. Claire en Beaulieu, which I saved in 1793. I did my duty
according to my strength, and what good I could. After which I was driven
out, tracked, pursued, persecuted, maligned, mocked, spat upon, accursed,
and proscribed. For many years I have felt that persons believed they had a
right to despise me. My face has been held accursed by the poor ignorant
mob, and, while hating no one, I accepted the isolation of hatred. Now, I am
eighty-six years of age and on the point of death; what have you come to
ask of me?"
"Your blessing!" said the Bishop, and knelt down. When the Bishop raised
his head again, the conventionalist's countenance had become august: he
had just expired. The Bishop returned home absorbed in the strangest
thoughts, and spent the whole night in prayer. On the morrow curious
worthies tried to make him talk about G—— the Republican, but he only
pointed to heaven. From this moment he redoubled his tenderness and
fraternity for the little ones and the suffering.
Any allusion to "that old villain of a G——" made him fall into a singular
reverie; no one could say that the passing of that mind before his, and the
reflection that great conscience cast upon his, had not something to do with
this approach to perfection. This "pastoral visit" nearly created a stir among
the small local coteries.

"Was it a bishop's place to visit the death-bed of such a man? It was plain
that he had no conversion to hope for, for all these Revolutionists are
relapsed! Then why go? what had he to see there? He must have been very
curious to see the fiend carry off a soul."
One day a Dowager, of the impertinent breed which believes itself witty,
asked him this question, "Monseigneur, people are asking when your
Grandeur will have the red cap?" "Oh, oh!" the Bishop answered, "that is an
ominous color. Fortunately those who despise it in a cap venerate it in a
hat."

CHAPTER XI.

A RESTRICTION.

We should run a strong risk of making a mistake were we to conclude from
this that Monseigneur Welcome was "a philosophic bishop," or "a patriotic
curé." His meeting, which might almost be called his conjunction, with the
conventionalist G—— produced in him a sort of amazement, which
rendered him more gentle than ever. That was all.
Though Monseigneur was anything rather than a politician, this is perhaps
the place to indicate briefly what was his attitude in the events of that
period, supposing that Monseigneur ever dreamed of having an attitude. We
will, therefore, go back for a few years. A short time after M. Myriel's
elevation to the Episcopate, the Emperor made him a Baron, simultaneously
with some other bishops. The arrest of the Pope took place, as is well
known, on the night of July 5, 1809, at which time M. Myriel was called by
Napoleon to the Synod of French and Italian Bishops convened at Paris.
This Synod was held at Notre Dame and assembled for the first time on
June 15, 1811, under the Presidency of Cardinal Fesch. M. Myriel was one
of the ninety-five bishops convened, but he was only present at one session
and three or four private conferences. As bishop of a mountain diocese,
living so near to nature in rusticity and poverty, it seems that he introduced
among these eminent personages ideas which changed the temperature of

the assembly. He went back very soon to D——, and when questioned
about this hurried return, he replied, "I was troublesome to them. The
external air came in with me and I produced the effect of an open door upon
them." Another time he said, "What would you have? those Messeigneurs
are princes, while I am only a poor peasant bishop."
The fact is, that he displeased: among other strange things he let the
following remarks slip out, one evening when he was visiting one of his
most influential colleagues: "What fine clocks! What splendid carpets!
What magnificent liveries! You must find all that very troublesome? Oh! I
should not like to have such superfluities to yell incessantly in my ears:
there are people who are hungry; there are people who are cold; there are
poor, there are poor."
Let us remark parenthetically, that a hatred of luxury would not be an
intelligent hatred, for it would imply a hatred of the arts. Still in churchmen
any luxury beyond that connected with their sacred office is wrong, for it
seems to reveal habits which are not truly charitable. An opulent priest is a
paradox, for he is bound to live with the poor. Now, can a man incessantly
both night and day come in contact with distress, misfortune, and want,
without having about him a little of that holy wretchedness, like the dust of
toil? Can we imagine a man sitting close to a stove and not feeling hot? Can
we imagine a workman constantly toiling at a furnace, and have neither a
hair burned, a nail blackened, nor a drop of perspiration, nor grain of soot
on his face? The first proof of charity in a priest, in a bishop especially, is
poverty. This was doubtless the opinion of the Bishop of D——.
We must not believe either that he shared what we might call the "ideas of
the age" on certain delicate, points; he mingled but slightly in the
theological questions of the moment, in which Church and State are
compromised; but had he been greatly pressed we fancy he would have
been found to be Ultramontane rather than Gallican. As we are drawing a
portrait, and do not wish to conceal anything, we are forced to add that he
was frigid toward the setting Napoleon. From 1813 he adhered to or
applauded all hostile demonstrations, he refused to see him when he passed
through on his return from Elba, and abstained from ordering public prayers
for the Emperor during the Hundred Days.

Besides his sister, Mlle. Baptistine, he had two brothers, one a general, the
other a prefect. He wrote very frequently to both of them. For some time he
owed the former a grudge, because the General, who at the time of the
landing at Cannes held a command in Provence, put himself at the head of
twelve hundred men and pursued the Emperor as if he wished to let him
escape. His correspondence was more affectionate with the other brother,
the ex-prefect, a worthy, honest man, who lived retired at Paris.
Monseigneur Welcome, therefore, also had his hour of partisan spirit, his
hour of bitterness, his cloud. The shadow of the passions of the moment fell
athwart this gentle and great mind, which was occupied by things eternal.
Certainly such a man would have deserved to have no political opinions.
Pray let there be no mistake as to our meaning: we do not confound what
are called "political opinions" with the grand aspiration for progress, with
that sublime, patriotic, democratic and human faith, which in our days must
be the foundation of all generous intelligence. Without entering into
questions which only indirectly affect the subject of this book, we say, it
would have been better had Monseigneur Welcome not been a Royalist, and
if his eye had not turned away, even for a moment, from that serene
contemplation, in which the three pure lights of Truth, Justice, and Charity
are seen beaming above the fictions and hatreds of this world, and above
the stormy ebb and flow of human affairs.
While allowing that GOD had not created Monseigneur Welcome for
political functions, we could have understood and admired a protest in the
name of justice and liberty, a proud opposition, a perilous and just
resistance offered to Napoleon, all-powerful. But conduct which pleases us
towards those who are rising, pleases us less towards those who are falling.
We only like the contest so long as there is danger; and, in any case, only
the combatants from the beginning have a right to be the exterminators at
the end. A man who has not been an obstinate accuser during prosperity
must be silent when the crash comes; the denouncer of success is the sole
legitimate judge of the fell. For our part, when Providence interferes and
strikes we let it do so. 1812 begins to disarm us; in 1813 the cowardly
rupture of silence by the taciturn legislative corps, emboldened by
catastrophes, could only arouse indignation; in 1814, in the presence of the
traitor Marshals, in the presence of that senate, passing from one atrocity to
another, and insulting after deifying, and before the idolaters kicking their

idol and spitting on it, it was a duty to turn one's head away; in 1815, as
supreme disasters were in the air, as France had a shudder of their sinister
approach, as Waterloo, already open before Napoleon could be vaguely
distinguished, the dolorous acclamation offered by the army and the people
had nothing laughable about it, and—leaving the despot out of the question
—a heart like the Bishop of D——'s ought not to have misunderstood how
much there was august and affecting in this close embrace between a great
nation and a great man on the verge of an abyss.
With this exception, the Bishop was in all things just, true, equitable,
intelligent, humble, and worthy; beneficent, and benevolent, which is
another form of beneficence. He was a priest, a sage, and a man. Even in
the political opinions with which we have reproached him, and which we
are inclined to judge almost severely, we are bound to add that he was
tolerant and facile, more so perhaps than the writer of these lines. The
porter of the Town Hall had been appointed by the Emperor; he was an ex-
non-commissioned officer of the old guard, a legionary of Austerlitz, and as
Bonapartist as the eagle. This poor fellow now and then made thoughtless
remarks, which the law of that day qualified as seditious. From the moment
when the Imperial profile disappeared from the Legion of Honor, he never
put on his uniform again, that he might not be obliged, as he said, to bear
his cross. He had himself devotedly removed the Imperial effigy from the
cross which Napoleon had given him with his own hands, and though this
made a hole he would not let anything be put in its place. "Sooner die," he
would say, "than wear the three frogs on my heart." He was fond of
ridiculing Louis XVIII. aloud. "The old gouty fellow with his English
gaiters, let him be off to Prussia with his salsifies." It delighted him thus to
combine in one imprecation the two things he hated most, England and
Prussia. He went on thus till he lost his place, and then he was starving in
the street with wife and children. The Bishop sent for him, gave him a
gentle lecturing, and appointed him Beadle to the cathedral.
In nine years, through his good deeds and gentle manners, Monseigneur
Welcome had filled the town of D—— with a sort of tender and filial
veneration. Even his conduct to Napoleon had been accepted, and, as it
were, tacitly pardoned, by the people, an honest weak flock of sheep, who
adored their Emperor but loved their Bishop.

CHAPTER XII.

MONSEIGNEUR'S SOLITUDE.

There is nearly always round a bishop a squad of little abbés, as there is a
swarm of young officers round a general. They are what that delightful St.
Francis de Sales calls somewhere "sucking priests." Every career has its
aspirants, who pay their respects to those who have reached the goal; there
is not a power without its following, not a fortune without its court. The
seekers for a future buzz round the splendid present. Every metropolitan has
his staff: every bishop who is at all influential has his patrol of Seminarist
Cherubim, who go the rounds, maintain order in the episcopal palace, and
mount guard round Monseigneur's smile. Pleasing a bishop is a foot in the
stirrup for a sub-deaconry; after all, a man must make his way, and apostles
do not despise canonries.
In the same way as there are "gros bonnets," otherwhere, there are large
mitres in the Church. They are bishops who stand well with the Court, well
endowed, clever, favorites of society, who doubtless know how to pray, but
also how to solicit, not scrupulous about having a whole diocese waiting in
their ante-rooms, connecting links between the sacristy and diplomacy,
more abbés than priests, rather prelates than bishops. Happy the man who
approaches them! As they stand in good credit they shower around them, on
the obsequious and their favored, and on all the youth who know the art of
pleasing, fat livings, prebends, archdeaconries, chaplaincies, and cathedral
appointments, while waiting for episcopal dignities. While themselves
advancing, they cause their satellites to progress, and it is an entire solar
system moving onwards. Their beams throw a purple hue over their suite,
and their prosperity is showered over the actors behind the scenes in nice
little bits of promotions. The larger the patron's diocese, the larger the
favorite's living. And then there is Rome. A bishop who contrives to become
an archbishop, an archbishop who manages to become a cardinal, takes you
with him as a Conclavist; you enter the rota, you have the pallium, you are
an auditor, a chamberlain, a Monsignore, and from Grandeur to Eminence
there is but a step, and between Eminence and Holiness there is only the
smoke of the balloting tickets. Every cassock can dream of the tiara. The

priest is in our days the only man who can regularly become a king, and
what a king! The supreme king! Hence what a hotbed of longings is a
seminary! How many blushing choristers, how many young abbés, have on
their head Perrette's milk-jar! how easily ambition calls itself a profession!
and perhaps it does so in good faith and in self-deception, for it is so
unworldly.
Monseigneur Welcome, humble, poor, and out of the world, was not
counted among the large mitres. This was visible in the utter absence of
young priests around him. We have seen that at Paris "he did not take," and
not an aspirant tried to cling to this solitary old man; not the most youthful
ambition tried to flourish in his shade. His canons and vicars were good old
men, walled up like him in this diocese which had no issue to the Cardinal's
hat, and who resembled their bishop with this difference, that they were
finished while he was completed. The impossibility of growing up near
Monseigneur Welcome was so well felt, that young priests whom he
ordained at once obtained letters commendatory to the Archbishop of Aix,
or Auch, and went off at score. For, after all, we repeat, men wish to be
pushed upward. A saint who lives in a state of excessive self-denial is a
dangerous neighbor, he might possibly communicate to you by contagion
an incurable poverty, a stiffening of the joints useful for advancement, and,
in a word, more renunciation than you care for: and such scabby virtue is
shunned. Hence came the isolation of Monseigneur Welcome. We live in
the midst of a gloomy society. Succeed,—such is the teaching which falls
drop by drop from the corruption hanging over us.
Success is a very hideous thing, and its resemblance with merit deceives
men. For the herd, success has nearly the same profile as supremacy.
Success, that twin brother of talent, has a dupe,—history. Tacitus and
Juvenal alone grumble at it. In our days an almost official philosophy wears
the livery of success, and waits in its ante-room. Succeed, that is the theory,
for prosperity presupposes capacity. Win in the lottery and you are a clever
man, for he who triumphs is revered. All you want is to be born under a
fortunate star. Have luck and you will have the rest, be fortunate and you
will be thought a great man; leaving out five or six immense exceptions,
which form the lustre of an age, contemporary admiration is blear-eyedness.
Gilding is gold, and it does you no harm to be any one so long as you are
the parvenu. The mob is an old Narcissus, adoring itself and applauding the

mob. That enormous faculty by which a man is a Moses, Æschylus, Dante,
Michael Angelo, or Napoleon, the multitude decrees broadcast and by
acclamation to any one who attains his object, no matter in what. Let a
notary transfigure himself into a deputy; a false Corneille produce Tiridates;
an eunuch contrive to possess a harem; a military Prudhomme accidentally
gain the decisive battle of an age; an apothecary invent cardboard soles for
the army of the Sambre-et-Meuse, and make out of the cardboard sold for
leather an income of 400,000 francs a year; a pedler espouse usury and put
it to bed with seven or eight millions, of which he is the father and she the
mother; a preacher become a bishop by his nasal twang; let the steward of a
good family be so rich on leaving service that he is made Chancellor of the
Exchequer—and men will call it genius, in the same way as they call
Mousqueton's face beauty and Claude's mien majesty. They confound with
the constellations of profundity the stars which the duck's feet make in the
soft mud of the pond.

CHAPTER XIII.

WHAT HE BELIEVED.

It is not our business to gauge the Bishop of D—— from an orthodox point
of view. In the presence of such a soul we only feel inclined to respect. The
conscience of the just man must be believed on its word; besides, certain
natures granted, we admit the possibility of the development of all the
beauties of human virtue in a creed differing from our own. What did he
think of this dogma or that mystery? These heart-secrets are only known to
the tomb which souls enter in a state of nudity. What we are certain of is,
that he never solved difficulties of faith by hypocrisy. It is impossible for
the diamond to rot. He believed as much as he possibly could, and would
frequently exclaim, "I believe in the Father." He also derived from his good
deeds that amount of satisfaction which suffices the conscience, and which
whispers to you, "You are with God."
What we think it our duty to note is that, beyond his faith, he had an excess
of love. It was through this, quia multum amavit, that he was considered

vulnerable by "serious men," "grave persons," and "reasonable people,"
those favorite phrases of our melancholy world in which selfishness is
under the guidance of pedantry. What was this excess of love. It was a
serene benevolence, spreading over men, as we have already indicated, and
on occasion extending even to things. He loved without disdain, and was
indulgent to God's creation. Every man, even the best, has in him an
unreflecting harshness, which he reserves for animals, but the Bishop of D
—— had not this harshness, which is, however, peculiar to many priests.
He did not go so far as the Brahmin, but seemed to have meditated on the
words of Ecclesiastes—"Who knoweth the spirit of the beast that goeth
downward to the earth?" An ugly appearance, a deformity of instinct, did
not trouble him or render him indignant; he was moved, almost softened, by
them. It seemed as if he thoughtfully sought, beyond apparent life, for the
cause, the explanation, or the excuse. He examined without anger, and with
the eye of a linguist deciphering a palimpsest, the amount of chaos which
still exists in nature. This reverie at times caused strange remarks to escape
from him. One morning he was in his garden and fancied himself alone; but
his sister was walking behind, though unseen by him. He stopped and
looked at something on the ground. It was a large black, hairy, horrible
spider. His sister heard him mutter, "Poor brute, it is not thy fault." Why
should we not repeat this almost divine childishness of goodness? It may be
puerile, but of such were the puerilities of St. Francis d'Assisi and Marcus
Aurelius. One day he sprained himself because he did not wish to crush an
ant.
Such was the way in which this just man lived: at times he fell asleep in his
garden, and then nothing could be more venerable. Monseigneur Welcome
had been formerly, if we may believe the stories about his youth and even
his manhood, a passionate, perhaps violent man. His universal mansuetude
was less a natural instinct than the result of a grand conviction, which had
filtered through life into his heart, and slowly dropped into it thought by
thought, for in a character, as in a rock, there may be waterholes. Such
hollows, however, are ineffaceable, such formations indestructible. In 1815,
as we think we have said, he reached his seventy-fifth year, but did not
seem sixty. He was not tall, and had a tendency to stoutness, which he
strove to combat by long walks; he stood firmly, and was but very slightly
built. But these are details from which we will not attempt to draw any
conclusion, for Gregory XVI. at the age of eighty was erect and smiling,

which did not prevent him being a bad priest. Monseigneur Welcome had
what people call "a fine head," which was so amiable that its beauty was
forgotten. When he talked with that infantine gayety which was one of his
graces you felt at your ease by his side, and joy seemed to emanate from his
whole person. His fresh, ruddy complexion, and all his white teeth, which
he had preserved and displayed when he laughed, gave him that open facile
air which makes you say of an aged man, "He is a worthy person." That, it
will be remembered, was the effect he produced on Napoleon. At the first
glance, and when you saw him for the first time, he was in reality only a
worthy man, but if you remained some hours in his company, and saw him
in thought, he became gradually transfigured and assumed something
imposing; his wide and serious brow, already august through the white hair,
became also august through meditation; majesty was evolved from the
goodness; though the latter did not cease to gleam, you felt the same sort of
emotion as you would if you saw a smiling angel slowly unfold his wings
without ceasing to smile. An inexpressible respect gradually penetrated you
and ascended to your head, and you felt that you had before you one of
those powerful, well-bred, and indulgent souls whose thoughts are so great
that they cannot but be gentle.
As we have seen, prayer, celebration of the Mass, almsgiving, consoling the
afflicted, tilling a patch of ground, frugality, hospitality, self-denial,
confidence, study, and labor, filled every day of his life. Filled is the exact
word, and certainly the Bishop's day was full of good thoughts, good words,
and good actions. Still, it was not complete. If cold or wet weather
prevented him from spending an hour or two in the garden before going to
bed after the two females had retired, it seemed as it were a species of rite
of his to prepare himself for sleep by meditation, in the presence of the
grand spectacle of the heavens by night. At times, even at an advanced hour
of night, if the women were not asleep, they heard him slowly pacing the
walks. He was then alone with himself, contemplative, peaceful, adoring,
comparing the serenity of his heart with that of ether, affected in the
darkness by the visible splendor of the constellations, and the invisible
splendor of God, and opening his soul to thoughts which fall from the
unknown. At such moments, offering up his heart at the hour when the
nocturnal flowers offer up their perfumes, he could not have said himself,
possibly, what was passing in his mind; but he felt something fly out of him
and something descend into him.

He dreamed of the grandeur and presence of God; of future eternity, that
strange mystery; of past eternity, that even stranger mystery; of all the
infinities which buried themselves before his eyes in all directions: and
without seeking to comprehend the incomprehensible, he gazed at it. He did
not study God; he was dazzled by Him. He considered this magnificent
concourse of atoms which reveals forces, creates individualities in unity,
proportions in space, innumerability in the Infinite, and through light
produces beauty. Such a concourse incessantly takes place, and is dissolved
again, and hence come life and death.
He would sit down on a wood bench with his back against a rickety trellis,
and gaze at the stars through the stunted sickly profiles of his fruit trees.
This quarter of an acre, so poorly planted, and so encumbered with sheds
and out-houses, was dear to him, and was sufficient for him. What more
was wanting to this aged man, who divided the leisure of his life, which
knew so little leisure, between gardening by day and contemplation by
night? Was not this limited enclosure with the sky for its roof sufficient for
him to be able to adore God by turns in His most delicious and most
sublime works? Was not this everything, in fact? and what could be desired
beyond? A small garden to walk about in, and immensity to dream in; at his
feet, what can be cultivated and gathered; over his head, what can be
studied and meditated; a few flowers on the earth, and all the stars in the
heavens.

CHAPTER XIV.

WHAT HE THOUGHT.

One last word.
As these details might, especially at the present day, and to employ an
expression which is now fashionable, give the Bishop of D—— a certain
"Pantheistic" physiognomy, and cause it to be believed, either to his praise
or blame, that he had in him one of those personal philosophies peculiar to
our age, which germinate sometimes in solitary minds, and grow until they

take the place of religion, we must lay stress on the fact that not one of the
persons who knew Monseigneur Welcome believed himself authorized in
thinking anything of the sort. What enlightened this man was his heart, and
his wisdom was the product of the light which emanates from it.
He had no systems, but abundance of deeds. Abstruse speculations contain
vertigo, and nothing indicates that he ventured his mind amid the
Apocalypses. The apostle may be bold, but the bishop must be timid. He
probably refrained from going too deep into certain problems reserved to
some extent for great and terrible minds. There is a sacred horror beneath
the portals of the enigma; the dark chasms gape before you, but something
tells you that you must not enter: woe to him who penetrates. Geniuses, in
the profundities of abstraction and pure speculation, being situated, so to
speak, above dogmas, propose their ideas to God; their prayer audaciously
offers a discussion, and their adoration interrogates. This is direct religion,
full of anxiety and responsibility for the man who attempts to carry the
escarpment by storm.
Human meditation has no limits; at its own risk and peril it analyzes and
produces its own bedazzlement; we might almost say that, through a species
of splendid reaction, it dazzles nature with it. The mysterious world around
us gives back what it receives, and it is probable that the contemplators are
contemplated. However this may be, there are in the world men—are they
men?—who distinctly perceive on the horizon of dreamland the heights of
the Absolute, and have the terrible vision of the mountain of the Infinite.
Monseigneur Welcome was not one of these men, for he was not a genius.
He would have feared these sublimities, on which even very great men, like
Swedenborg and Pascal, fell in their insanity. Assuredly, such powerful
reveries have their utility, and by these arduous routes ideal perfection is
approached, but he took a short-cut,—the Gospel. He did not attempt to
convert his chasuble into Elijah's cloak, he cast no beam of the future over
the gloomy heaving of events; there was nothing of the prophet or the
Magus about him. This humble soul loved, that was all.
It is probable that he expanded prayer into a superhuman aspiration; but a
man can no more pray too much than he can love too much, and if it were a
heresy to pray further than the text, St Theresa and St Jérôme would be
heretics. He bent down over all that groaned and all that expiated; the
universe appeared to him an immense malady; he felt a fever everywhere;

he heard the panting of suffering all around him, and without trying to solve
the enigma, he sought to heal the wound. The formidable spectacle of
created things developed tenderness in him; he was solely engaged in
finding for himself and arousing in others the best way of pitying and
relieving. Existence was to this good and rare priest a permanent subject of
sorrow seeking for consolation.
There are some men who toil to extract gold, but he labored to extract pity;
the universal wretchedness was his mine. Sorrow all around was only an
opportunity for constant kindness. "Love one another" he declared to be
complete; he wished for nothing more, and that was his entire doctrine. One
day the Senator, who believed himself a "philosopher," said to the Bishop:
"Just look at the spectacle of the world; all are fighting, and the strongest
man is the cleverest. Your 'love one another' is nonsense." "Well,"
Monseigneur Welcome replied, without discussion, "if it be nonsense, the
soul must shut itself up in it like the pearl in the oyster." He consequently
shut himself up in it, lived in it, was absolutely satisfied with it, leaving on
one side those prodigious questions which attract and terrify, the
unfathomable perspectives of the abstract, the precipices of metaphysics, all
those depths which for the apostle converge in God, for the atheist in
nothingness: destiny, good, and evil, the war of being against being, human
consciousness, the pensive somnambulism of the animal, transformation
through death, the recapitulation of existences which the grave contains, the
incomprehensible grafting of successive loves on the enduring Me, essence,
substance, the Nil and Ens nature, liberty, necessity; in a word, he avoided
all the gloomy precipices over which the gigantic archangels of the human
mind bend, the formidable abysses which Lucretius, Manou, St. Paul, and
Dante contemplate with that flashing eye which seems, in regarding
Infinity, to make stars sparkle in it.
Monseigneur Welcome was simply a man who accepted mysterious
questions without scrutinizing, disturbing them, or troubling his own mind,
and who had in his soul a grave respect for the shadow.

BOOK II.

THE FALL.

CHAPTER I.

THE CLOSE OF A DAY'S MARCH.

At the beginning of October, 1815, and about an hour before sunset, a man
travelling on foot entered the little town of D——. The few inhabitants,
who were at the moment at their windows or doors, regarded this traveller
with a species of inquietude. It would be difficult to meet a wayfarer of
more wretched appearance; he was a man of middle height, muscular and
robust, and in the full vigor of life. He might be forty-six to forty-eight
years of age. A cap with a leather peak partly concealed his sunburnt face,
down which the perspiration streamed. His shirt of coarse yellow calico,
fastened at the neck by a small silver anchor, allowed his hairy chest to be
seen; he had on a neck-cloth twisted like a rope, trousers of blue ticking
worn and threadbare, white at one knee and torn at the other; an old gray
ragged blouse patched at one elbow with a rag of green cloth; on his back a
large new well-filled and well-buckled knapsack, and a large knotty stick in
his hand. His stockingless feet were thrust into iron-shod shoes, his hair was
clipped, and his beard long. Perspiration, heat, travelling on foot, and the
dust, added something sordid to his wretched appearance. His hair was cut
close and yet was bristling, for it was beginning to grow a little, and did not
seem to have been cut for some time.
No one knew him; he was evidently passing through the town. Where did
he come from? The South perhaps, the sea-board, for he made his entrance
into D—— by the same road Napoleon had driven along seven months
previously when going from Cannes to Paris. The man must have been
walking all day, for he seemed very tired. Some women in the old suburb at
the lower part of the town had seen him halt under the trees on the Gassendi
Boulevard, and drink from the fountain at the end of the walk. He must
have been very thirsty, for the children that followed him saw him stop and
drink again at the fountain on the Market-place. On reaching the corner of
the Rue Poichevert, he turned to the left and proceeded to the Mayor's

office. He went in and came out again a quarter of an hour after. A
gendarme was sitting on the stone bench near the door, on which General
Drouot had mounted on March 4th, to read to the startled town-folk of D
—— the proclamation of the gulf of Juan. The man doffed his cap and
bowed humbly to the gendarme; the latter, without returning his salute,
looked at him attentively, and then entered the office.
There was at that time at D—— a capital inn, with the sign of the Cross of
Colbas. This inn was kept by a certain Jacquin Labarre, a man highly
respected in the town for his relationship to another Labarre, who kept the
Three Dolphins at Grenoble, and had served in the Guides. When the
Emperor landed, many rumors were current in the country about the Three
Dolphins; it was said that General Bertrand, in the disguise of a wagoner,
had stopped there several times in the month of January, and distributed
crosses of honor to the soldiers, and handsful of napoleons to the towns-
people. The fact was that the Emperor on entering Grenoble refused to take
up his quarters at the Prefecture; he thanked the Mayor, and said, "I am
going to a worthy man whom I know," and he went to the Three Dolphins.
The glory of the Grenoble Labarre was reflected for a distance of five-and-
twenty leagues on the Labarre of the Cross of Colbas. The towns-people
said of him, "He is cousin to the one at Grenoble."
The man proceeded to this inn, which was the best in the town, and entered
the kitchen, the door of which opened on the street. All the ovens were
heated, and a large fire blazed cheerily in the chimney. The host, who was at
the same time head-cook, went from the hearth to the stew-pans, very busy
in attending to a dinner intended for the carriers, who could be heard
singing and talking noisily in an adjoining room. Any one who has travelled
knows that no people feed so well as carriers. A fat marmot, flanked by
white-legged partridges and grouse, was turning on a long spit before the
fire; while two large carp from Lake Lauzet and an Alloz trout were baking
in the ovens. The landlord, on hearing the door open and a stranger enter,
said, without raising his eyes from his stew-pans,—
"What do you want, sir?"
"Supper and a bed," the man replied.
"Nothing easier," said mine host. At this moment he looked up, took in the
stranger's appearance at a glance, and added, "On paying."

The man drew a heavy leathern purse from the pocket of his blouse, and
replied,—
"I have money."
"In that case I am at your service," said the host.
The man returned the purse to his pocket, took off his knapsack, placed it
on the ground near the door, kept his stick in his hand, and sat down on a
low stool near the fire. D—— is in the mountains, and the evenings there
are cold in October. While going backwards and forwards the landlord still
inspected his guest.
"Will supper be ready soon?" the man asked.
"Directly."
While the new-comer had his back turned to warm himself, the worthy
landlord took a pencil from his pocket, and then tore off the corner of an old
newspaper which lay on a small table near the window. On the white
margin he wrote a line or two, folded up the paper, and handed it to a lad
who seemed to serve both as turnspit and page. The landlord whispered a
word in the boy's ear, and he ran off in the direction of the Mayor's house.
The traveller had seen nothing of all this, and he asked again whether
supper would be ready soon. The boy came back with the paper in his hand,
and the landlord eagerly unfolded it, like a man who is expecting an answer.
He read it carefully, then shook his head, and remained thoughtful for a
moment. At last he walked up to the traveller, who seemed plunged in
anything but a pleasant reverie.
"I cannot make room for you, sir," he said.
The man half turned on his stool.
"What do you mean? Are you afraid I shall bilk you? Do you want me to
pay you in advance? I have money, I tell you."
"It is not that"
"What is it, then?"
"You have money."
"Yes," said the man.

"But I have not a spare bed-room."
The man continued quietly: "Put me in the stables."
"I cannot."
"Why?"
"The horses take up all the room."
"Well," the man continued, "a corner in the loft and a truss of straw: we will
see to that after supper."
"I cannot give you any supper."
This declaration, made in a measured but firm tone, seemed to the stranger
serious. He rose.
"Nonsense, I am dying of hunger. I have been on my legs since sunrise, and
have walked twelve leagues. I can pay, and demand food."
"I have none," said the landlord.
The man burst into a laugh, and turned to the chimney and the oven.
"Nothing! Why, what is all this?"
"All this is ordered."
"By whom?"
"By the carriers."
"How many are there of them?"
"Twelve."
"There is enough food here for twenty."
The man sat down again, and said without raising his voice,—
"I am at an inn, I am hungry, and so shall remain."
The landlord then stooped down, and whispered with an accent which made
him start, "Be off with you!"
The stranger at this moment was thrusting some logs into the fire with the
ferule of his stick, but he turned quickly, and as he was opening his mouth
to reply, the landlord continued in the same low voice: "Come, enough of

this. Do you wish me to tell you your name? It is Jean Valjean. Now, do you
wish me to tell you who you are? On seeing you come in I suspected
something, so I sent to the police office, and this is the answer I received.
Can you read?"
While saying this, he handed the stranger the paper which had travelled
from the inn to the office and back again. The man took a glance at it, and
mine host continued after a moment's silence,—
"I am accustomed to be polite with everybody. Be off."
The man stooped, picked up his knapsack, and went off. He walked along
the high street hap-hazard, keeping close to the houses like a sad and
humiliated man. He did not look back once; had he done so he would have
seen the landlord of the Cross of Colbas in his doorway surrounded by all
his guests and the passers-by, talking eagerly and pointing to him: and
judging from the looks of suspicion and terror, he might have guessed that
ere long his arrival would be the event of the whole town. He saw nothing
of all this, for men who are oppressed do not look back, as they know only
too well that an evil destiny is following them.
He walked on thus for a long time, turning down streets he did not know,
and forgetting his fatigue, as happens in sorrow. All at once he was sharply
assailed by hunger: night was approaching, and he looked round to see
whether he could not discover a shelter. The best inn was closed against
him, and he sought some very humble pot-house, some wretched den. At
this moment a lamp was lit at the end of the street, and a fir-branch hanging
from an iron bar stood out on the white twilight sky. He went towards it: it
was really a pot-house. The stranger stopped for a moment and looked
through the window into the low tap-room, which was lighted up by a small
lamp on the table and a large fire on the hearth. Some men were drinking,
and the landlord was warming himself; over the flames bubbled a caldron
hanging from an iron hook. This pot-house, which is also a sort of inn, has
two entrances, one on the street, the other opening on a small yard full of
manure. The traveller did not dare enter by the street door: he slipped into
the yard, stopped once again, and then timidly raised the latch and opened
the door.
"Who's there?" the landlord asked.

"Some one who wants a supper and bed."
"Very good. They are to be had here."
He went in, and all the topers turned to look at him; they examined him for
some time while he was taking off his knapsack. Said the landlord to him,
"Here is a fire; supper is boiling in the pot: come and warm yourself,
comrade."
He sat down in the ingle and stretched out his feet, which were swollen with
fatigue. A pleasant smell issued from the caldron. All that could be
distinguished of his face under his cap-peak assumed a vague appearance of
comfort blended with the other wretched appearance which the habit of
suffering produces. It was, moreover, a firm, energetic, and sad profile; the
face was strangely composed, for it began by appearing humble and ended
by becoming severe. His eyes gleamed under his brows, like a fire under
brushwood. One of the men seated at the table was a fishmonger, who,
before entering the pot-house, had gone to put up his horse in Labarre's
stables. Accident willed it, that on the same morning he had met this ill-
looking stranger walking between Bras d'Asse and—(I have forgotten the
name, but I fancy it is Escoublon). Now, on meeting him, the man, who
appeared very fatigued, had asked the fishmonger to give him a lift, which
had only made him go the faster. This fishmonger had been half an hour
previously one of the party surrounding Jacquin Labarre, and had told his
unpleasant encounter in the morning to the people at the Cross of Colbas.
He made an imperceptible sign to the landlord from his seat, and the latter
went up to him, and they exchanged a few whispered words. The man had
fallen back into his reverie.
The landlord went up to the chimney, laid his hand sharply on the man's
shoulder, and said to him,—
"You must be off from here."
The stranger turned and replied gently, "Ah, you know?"
"Yes."
"I was turned out of the other inn."
"And so you will be out of this."
"Where would you have me go?"

"Somewhere else."
The man took his knapsack and stick and went away. As he stepped out,
some boys who had followed him from the Cross of Colbas, and seemed to
have been waiting for him, threw stones at him. He turned savagely, and
threatened them with his stick, and the boys dispersed like a flock of birds.
He passed in front of the prison, and pulled the iron bell-handle; a wicket
was opened.
"Mr. Jailer," he said, as he humbly doffed his cap, "would you be kind
enough to open the door and give me a nights lodging?"
A voice answered, "A prison is not an inn; get yourself arrested, and then I
will open the door."
The man entered a small street, in which there are numerous gardens, some
of them being merely enclosed with hedges, which enliven the street.
Among these gardens and hedges he saw a single-storeyed house, whose
window was illuminated, and he looked through the panes as he had done at
the pot-house. It was a large white-washed room, with a bed with printed
chintz curtains, and a cradle in a corner, a few chairs, and a double-barrelled
gun hanging on the wall. A table was laid for supper in the middle of the
room; a copper lamp lit up the coarse white cloth, the tin mug glistening
like silver and full of wine, and the brown smoking soup-tureen. At this
table was seated a man of about forty years of age, with a hearty, open face,
who was riding a child on his knee. By his side a woman, still young, was
suckling another child. The father was laughing, the children were laughing,
and the mother was smiling. The stranger stood for a moment pensively
before this gentle and calming spectacle; what was going on within him? It
would be impossible to say, but it is probable that he thought that this
joyous house would prove hospitable, and that where he saw so much
happiness he might find a little pity. He tapped very slightly on a window
pane, but was not heard; he tapped a second time, and he heard the woman
say, "Husband, I fancy I can hear some one knocking."
"No," the husband answered.
He tapped a third time. The husband rose, took the lamp, and walked to the
front door. He was a tall man, half peasant, half artisan; he wore a huge,
leathern apron, which came up to his left shoulder, and on which he carried

a hammer, a red handkerchief, a powder-flask, and all sorts of things, which
his belt held like a pocket. As he threw back his head, his turned-down
shirt-collar displayed his full neck, white and bare. He had thick eye-brows,
enormous black whiskers, eyes flush with his head, a bull-dog lower jaw,
and over all this that air of being at home, which is inexpressible.
"I beg your pardon, sir," the traveller said, "but would you, for payment,
give me a plateful of soup and a corner to sleep in in your garden
outhouse?"
"Who are you?" the owner of the cottage asked.
The man answered, "I have come from Puy Moisson, I have walked the
whole day. Could you do it,—for payment of course?"
"I would not refuse," the peasant answered, "to lodge any respectable
person who paid. But why do you not go to the inn?"
"There is no room there."
"Nonsense! that is impossible; it is neither market nor fair day. Have you
been to Labarre's?"
"Yes."
"Well?"
The traveller continued, with some hesitation, "I do not know why, but he
refused to take me in."
"Have you been to what is his name, in the Rue de Chauffaut?"
The stranger's embarrassment increased; he stammered, "He would not take
me in either."
The peasant's face assumed a suspicious look, he surveyed the new comer
from head to foot, and all at once exclaimed with a sort of shudder,—
"Can you be the man?..."
He took another look at the stranger, placed the lamp on the table, and took
down his gun. On hearing the peasant say "Can you be the man?" his wife
had risen, taken her two children in her arms, and hurriedly sought refuge
behind her husband, and looked in horror at the stranger as she muttered,
"The villain!" All this took place in less time than is needed to imagine it.

After examining the man for some minutes as if he had been a viper, the
peasant returned to the door and said: "Be off!"
"For mercy's sake," the man continued,—"a glass of water."
"A charge of shot!" the peasant said.
Then he violently closed the door, and the stranger heard two bolts fastened.
A moment after the window shutters were closed, and the sound of the iron
bar being put in reached his ear. Night was coming on apace: the cold wind
of the Alps was blowing. By the light of the expiring day the stranger
noticed in one of the gardens a sort of hut which seemed to him to be made
of sods of turf. He boldly clambered over a railing and found himself in the
garden; he approached the hut, which had as entrance a narrow, extremely
low door, and resembled the tenements which road-menders construct by
the side of the highway. He doubtless thought it was such: he was suffering
from cold and hunger, and though he had made up his mind to starve, it was
at any rate a shelter against the cold. As this sort of residence is not usually
occupied at night, he lay down on his stomach and crawled into the hut: it
was warm, and he found a rather good straw litter in it. He lay for a moment
motionless on this bed as his fatigue was so great: but as his knapsack hurt
his back and was a ready-made pillow, he began unbuckling one of the
thongs. At this moment a hoarse growl was audible: he raised his eyes, and
the head of an enormous mastiff stood out in the shadow at the opening of
the hut, which was its kennel. The dog itself was strong and formidable,
hence he raised his stick, employed his knapsack as a shield, and left the
kennel as he best could, though not without enlarging the rents in his rags.
He also left the garden, but backwards, and compelled to twirl his stick in
order to keep the dog at a respectful distance. When he, not without
difficulty, had leaped the fence again, and found himself once more in the
street, alone, without a bed, roof, or shelter, and expelled even from the bed
of straw and the kennel, he fell rather than sat on a stone, and a passer-by
heard him exclaim, "I am not even a dog." He soon rose and recommenced
his walk. He left the town hoping to find some tree or mill in the fields
which would afford him shelter. He walked on thus for some time with
hanging head; when he found himself far from all human habitations, he
raised his eyes and looked around him. He was in a field, and had in front
of him one of those low hills with close-cut stubble, which after harvest

resemble cropped heads. The horizon was perfectly black, but it was not
solely the gloom of night, but low clouds, which seemed to be resting on
the hill itself, rose and filled the whole sky. Still, as the moon was about to
rise shortly, and a remnant of twilight still hovered in the zenith, these
clouds formed a species of whitish vault whence a gleam of light was
thrown on the earth.
The ground was therefore more illumined than the sky, which produces a
peculiarly sinister effect, and the hill with its paltry outlines stood out
vaguely and dully on the gloomy horizon. The whole scene was hideous,
mean, mournful, and confined; there was nothing in the field or on the hill
but a stunted tree, which writhed and trembled a few yards from the
traveller. This man was evidently far from possessing those delicate habits
of mind which render persons sensible of the mysterious aspects of things,
still there was in the sky, this hill, this plain, and this tree, something so
profoundly desolate, that after standing motionless and thoughtful for a
while he suddenly turned back. There are instants in which nature seems to
be hostile.
He went back and found the gates of the town closed. D——, which
sustained sieges in the religious wars, was still begirt in 1815 by old walls
flanked by square towers, which have since been demolished. He passed
through a breach, and re-entered the town. It might be about eight o'clock in
the evening, and as he did not know the streets he wandered about without
purpose. He thus reached the prefecture and then the seminary; on passing
through the Cathedral Square he shook his fist at the church. There is at the
corner of this Square a printing-office, where the proclamations of the
Emperor and the Imperial Guard to the army, brought from Elba, and drawn
up by Napoleon himself, were first printed. Worn out with fatigue, and
hopeless, he sat down on the stone bench at the door of this printing-office.
An old lady who was leaving the church at the moment saw the man
stretched out in the darkness.
"What are you doing there, my friend?" she said.
He answered, harshly and savagely, "You can see, my good woman, that I
am going to sleep."
The good woman, who was really worthy of the name, was the Marchioness
de R——.

"On that bench?" she continued.
"I have had for nineteen years a wooden mattress," the man said, "and now
I have a stone one."
"Have you been a soldier?"
"Yes, my good woman."
"Why do you not go to the inn?"
"Because I have no money."
"Alas!" said Madame de R——, "I have only two-pence in my purse."
"You can give them to me all the same."
The man took the money, and Madame de R—— continued, "You cannot
lodge at an inn for so small a sum, still you should make the attempt, for
you cannot possibly spend the night here. Doubtless you are cold and
hungry, and some one might take you in for charity."
"I have knocked at every door."
"Well?"
"And was turned away at all."
The "good woman" touched the man's arm and pointed to a small house
next to the Bishop's Palace.
"You have," she continued, "knocked at every door. Have you done so
there?"
"No."
"Then do it."

CHAPTER II.

PRUDENCE RECOMMENDED TO WISDOM.

On this evening, the Bishop of D——, after his walk in the town, had
remained in his bed-room till a late hour. He was engaged on a heavy work
on the "duties," which he unfortunately has left incomplete. He was still
working at eight o'clock, writing rather uncomfortably on small squares of
paper, with a large book open on his knees, when Madame Magloire came
in as usual to fetch the plate from the wall-cupboard near the bed. A
moment after, the Bishop, feeling that supper was ready, and that his sister
might be waiting, closed his book, rose from the table, and walked into the
dining-room. It was an oblong apartment, as we have said, with a door
opening on the street, and a window looking on the garden. Madame
Magloire had laid the table, and while attending to her duties, was chatting
with Mademoiselle Baptistine. A lamp was on the table, which was close to
the chimney, in which a tolerable fire was lighted.
We can easily figure to ourselves the two females, who had both passed
their sixtieth year: Madame Magloire, short, stout, and quick: Mademoiselle
Baptistine, gentle, thin, and frail, somewhat taller than her brother, dressed
in a puce-colored silk gown, the fashionable color in 1806, which she had
bought in Paris in that year and which still held out. Madame Magloire
wore a white cap, on her neck a gold jeannette, the only piece of feminine
jewelry in the house, a very white handkerchief emerging from a black stuff
gown with wide and short sleeves, a calico red and puce checked apron,
fastened round the waist with a green ribbon, with a stomacher of the same
stuff fastened with two pins at the top corners, heavy shoes and yellow
stockings, like the Marseilles women. Mademoiselle Baptistine's gown was
cut after the fashion of 1806, short-waisted, with epaulettes on the sleeves,
flaps and buttons, and she concealed her gray hair by a curling front called
à l'enfant. Madame Magloire had an intelligent, quick, and kindly air,
though the unevenly raised corners of her mouth and the upper lip, thicker
than the lower, gave her a somewhat rough and imperious air. So long as
Monseigneur was silent, she spoke to him boldly with a mingled respect
and liberty, but so soon as he spoke she passively obeyed, like
Mademoiselle, who no longer replied, but restricted herself to obeying and
enduring. Even when she was young the latter was not pretty; she had large
blue eyes, flush with her head, and a long peaked nose; but all her face, all
her person, as we said at the outset, breathed ineffable kindness. She had
always been predestined to gentleness, but faith, hope, and charity, those
three virtues that softly warm the soul, had gradually elevated that

gentleness to sanctity. Nature had only made her a lamb, and religion had
made her an angel. Poor holy woman! sweet departed recollection!
Mademoiselle afterwards narrated so many times what took place at the
Bishopric on this evening that several persons still living remember the
slightest details. At the moment when the Bishop entered Madame Magloire
was talking with some vivacity; she was conversing with Mademoiselle on
a subject that was familiar to her, and to which the Bishop was accustomed
—it was the matter of the frontdoor latch. It appears that while going to
purchase something for supper, Madame Magloire had heard things spoken
of in certain quarters; people were talking of an ill-looking prowler, that a
suspicious vagabond had arrived, who must be somewhere in the town, and
that it would possibly be an unpleasant thing for any one out late to meet
him. The police were very badly managed because the Prefect and the
Mayor were not friendly, and tried to injure each other by allowing things to
happen. Hence wise people would be their own police, and be careful to
close their houses and lock their doors.
Madame Magloire italicized the last sentence, but the Bishop had come
from his room where it was rather cold, and was warming himself at the fire
while thinking of other matters; in fact, he did not pick up the words which
Madame Magloire had just let drop. She repeated them, and then
Mademoiselle, who wished to satisfy Madame Magloire without
displeasing her brother, ventured to say timidly,—
"Brother, do you hear what Madame Magloire is saying?"
"I vaguely heard something," the Bishop answered; then he half turned his
chair, placed his hand on his knees, and looked up at the old servant with
his cordial and easily-pleased face, which the fire illumined from below:
"Well, what is it? what is it? are we in any great danger?"
Then Madame Magloire told her story over again, while exaggerating it
slightly, though unsuspicious of the fact. It would seem that a gypsy, a
barefooted fellow, a sort of dangerous beggar, was in the town at the
moment. He had tried to get a lodging at Jacquin Labarre's, who had refused
to take him in. He had been seen prowling about the streets at nightfall, and
was evidently a gallows bird, with his frightful face.
"Is he really?" said the Bishop.

This cross-questioning encouraged Madame Magloire; it seemed to indicate
that the Bishop was beginning to grow alarmed, and hence she continued
triumphantly,—
"Yes, Monseigneur, it is so, and some misfortune will occur in the town this
night: everybody says so, and then the police are so badly managed [useful
repetition]. Fancy living in a mountain town, and not even having lanterns
in the streets at nights! You go out and find yourself in pitch darkness. I say,
Monseigneur, and Mademoiselle says—"
"I," the sister interrupted, "say nothing; whatever my brother does is right."
Madame Magloire continued, as if no protest had been made,—
"We say that this house is not at all safe, and that if Monseigneur permits I
will go to Paulin Musebois, the locksmith, and tell him to put the old bolts
on the door again; I have them by me, and it will not take a minute; and I
say, Monseigneur, that we ought to have bolts if it were only for this night,
for I say that a door which can be opened from the outside by the first
passer-by is most terrible: besides, Monseigneur is always accustomed to
say "Come in," and in the middle of the night, oh, my gracious! there is no
occasion to ask for permission."
At this moment there was a rather loud rap at the front door.
"Come in," said the Bishop.

CHAPTER III.

THE HEROISM OF PASSIVE OBEDIENCE.

The door was thrown open wide, as if some one were pushing it
energetically and resolutely. A man entered whom we already know; it was
the traveller whom we saw just now wandering about in search of a shelter.
He entered and stopped, leaving the door open behind him. He had his
knapsack on his shoulder, his stick in his hand, and a rough, bold, wearied,
and violent expression in his eyes. The fire-light fell on him; he was
hideous; it was a sinister apparition.

Madame Magloire had not even the strength to utter a cry, she shivered and
stood with widely-open mouth. Mademoiselle Baptistine turned, perceived
the man who entered, and half started up in terror; then, gradually turning
her head to the chimney, she began looking at her brother, and her face
became again calm and serene. The Bishop fixed a quiet eye on the man, as
he opened his mouth, doubtless to ask the new-comer what he wanted. The
man leaned both his hands on his stick, looked in turn at the two aged
females and the old man, and, not waiting for the Bishop to speak, said in a
loud voice,—
"Look here! My name is Jean Valjean. I am a galley-slave, and have spent
nineteen years in the bagne. I was liberated four days ago, and started for
Pontarlier, which is my destination. I have been walking for four days since
I left Toulon, and to-day I have marched twelve leagues. This evening on
coming into the town I went to the inn, but was sent away in consequence
of my yellow passport, which I had shown at the police office. I went to
another inn, and the landlord said to me, "Be off!" It was the same
everywhere, and no one would have any dealings with me. I went to the
prison, but the jailer would not take me in. I got into a dogs kennel, but the
dog bit me and drove me off, as if it had been a man; it seemed to know
who I was. I went into the fields to sleep in the star-light, but there were no
stars. I thought it would rain, and as there was no God to prevent it from
raining, I came back to the town to sleep in a doorway. I was lying down on
a stone in the square, when a good woman pointed to your house, and said,
"Go and knock there." What sort of a house is this? Do you keep an inn? I
have money, 109 francs 15 sous, which I earned at the bagne by my
nineteen years' toil. I will pay, for what do I care for that, as I have money! I
am very tired and frightfully hungry; will you let me stay here?"
"Madame Magloire," said the Bishop, "you will lay another knife and fork."
The man advanced three paces, and approached the lamp which was on the
table. "Wait a minute," he continued, as if he had not comprehended, "that
will not do. Did you not hear me say that I was a galley-slave, a convict,
and have just come from the bagne?" He took from his pocket a large
yellow paper, which he unfolded. "Here is my passport, yellow as you see,
which turns me out wherever I go. Will you read it? I can read it, for I
learned to do so at the bagne, where there is a school for those who like to
attend it. This is what is written in my passport: 'Jean Valjean, a liberated

convict, native of'—but that does not concern you—'has remained nineteen
years at the galleys. Five years for robbery with house-breaking, fourteen
years for having tried to escape four times. The man is very dangerous.' All
the world has turned me out, and are you willing to receive me? Is this an
inn? Will you give me some food and a bed? Have you a stable?"
"Madame Magloire," said the Bishop, "you will put clean sheets on the bed
in the alcove."
We have already explained of what nature was the obedience of the two
females. Madame Magloire left the room to carry out the orders. The
Bishop turned to the man.
"Sit down and warm yourself, sir. We shall sup directly, and your bed will
be got ready while we are supping."
The man understood this at once. The expression of his face, which had
hitherto been gloomy and harsh, was marked with stupefaction, joy, doubt,
and became extraordinary. He began stammering like a lunatic.
"Is it true? what? You will let me stay, you will not turn me out, a convict?
You call me Sir, you do not 'thou' me. 'Get out, dog!' that is what is always
said to me; I really believed that you would turn me out, and hence told you
at once who I am. Oh! what a worthy woman she was who sent me here! I
shall have supper, a bed with mattresses and sheets, like everybody else. For
nineteen years I have not slept in a bed! You really mean that I am to stay.
You are worthy people; besides, I have money, and will pay handsomely.
By the way, what is your name, Mr. Landlord? I will pay anything you
please, for you are a worthy man. You keep an inn, do you not?"
"I am," said the Bishop, "a priest living in this house."
"A priest!" the man continued. "Oh! what a worthy priest! I suppose you
will not ask me for money. The Curé, I suppose,—the Curé of that big
church? Oh yes, what an ass I am! I did not notice your cassock."
While speaking he deposited his knapsack and stick in a corner, returned his
passport to his pocket, and sat down. While Mademoiselle Baptistine
regarded him gently, he went on,—
"You are humane, sir, and do not feel contempt. A good priest is very good.
Then you do not want me to pay?"

"No," said the Bishop, "keep your money. How long did you take in earning
these 109 francs?"
"Nineteen years."
"Nineteen years!" The Bishop gave a deep sigh.
The man went on: "I have all my money still; in four days I have only spent
25 sous, which I earned by helping to unload carts at Grasse. As you are an
abbé I will tell you: we had a chaplain at the bagne, and one day I saw a
bishop, Monseigneur, as they call him. He is the curé over the curés, you
know. Pardon, I express it badly; but it is so far above me, a poor convict,
you see. He said mass in the middle of the bagne at an altar, and had a
pointed gold thing on his head, which glistened in the bright sunshine; we
were drawn up on three sides of a square, with guns and lighted matches
facing us. He spoke, but was too far off, and we did not hear him. That is
what a bishop is."
While he was speaking the Bishop had gone to close the door, which had
been left open. Madame Magloire came in, bringing a silver spoon and fork,
which she placed on the table.
"Madame Magloire," said the Bishop, "lay them as near as you can to the
fire;" and turning to his guest, he said, "The night breeze is sharp on the
Alps, and you must be cold, sir."
Each time he said the word Sir with his gentle grave voice the man's face
was illumined. Sir to a convict is the glass of water to the shipwrecked
sailor of the Méduse. Ignominy thirsts for respect.
"This lamp gives a very bad light," the Bishop continued. Madame
Magloire understood, and fetched from the chimney of Monseigneur's bed-
room the two silver candlesticks, which she placed on the table ready
lighted.
"Monsieur le Curé," said the man, "you are good, and do not despise me.
You receive me as a friend and light your wax candles for me, and yet I
have not hidden from you whence I come, and that I am an unfortunate
fellow."
The Bishop, who was seated by his side, gently touched his hand. "You
need not have told me who you were; this is not my house, but the house of

Christ. This door does not ask a man who enters whether he has a name, but
if he has a sorrow; you are suffering, you are hungry and thirsty, and so be
welcome. And do not thank me, or say that I am receiving you in my house,
for no one is at home here excepting the man who has need of an asylum. I
tell you, who are a passer-by, that you are more at home here than I am
myself, and all there is here is yours. Why do I want to know your name?
besides, before you told it to me you had one which I knew."
The man opened his eyes in amazement.
"Is that true? you know my name?"
"Yes," the Bishop answered, "you are my brother."
"Monsieur le Curé," the man exclaimed, "I was very hungry when I came
in, but you are so kind that I do not know at present what I feel; it has
passed over."
The Bishop looked at him and said,—
"You have suffered greatly?"
"Oh! the red jacket, the cannon ball on your foot, a plank to sleep on, heat,
cold, labor, the set of men, the blows, the double chain for a nothing, a
dungeon for a word, even when you are ill in bed, and the chain-gang. The
very dogs are happier. Nineteen years! and now I am forty-six; and at
present, the yellow passport! There it is!"
"Yes," said the Bishop, "you have come from a place of sorrow. Listen to
me; there will be more joy in heaven over the tearful face of a repentant
sinner than over the white robes of one hundred just men. If you leave that
mournful place with thoughts of hatred and anger against your fellow-men
you are worthy of pity; if you leave it with thoughts of kindliness,
gentleness, and peace, you are worth more than any of us."
In the meanwhile Madame Magloire had served the soup: it was made of
water, oil, bread, and salt, and a little bacon, and the rest of the supper
consisted of a piece of mutton, figs, a fresh cheese, and a loaf of rye bread.
She had herself added a bottle of old Mauves wine. The Bishop's face
suddenly assumed the expression of gayety peculiar to hospitable natures.
"To table," he said eagerly, as he was wont to do when any stranger supped
with him; and he bade the man sit down on his right hand, while Mlle.

Baptistine, perfectly peaceful and natural, took her seat on his left. The
Bishop said grace, and then served the soup himself, according to his wont.
The man began eating greedily. All at once the Bishop said,—
"It strikes me that there is something wanting on the table."
Madame Magloire, truth to tell, had only laid the absolutely necessary
silver. Now it was the custom in this house, when the Bishop had any one to
supper, to arrange the whole stock of plate on the table, as an innocent
display. This graceful semblance of luxury was a species of childishness full
of charm in this gentle and strict house, which elevated poverty to dignity.
Madame Magloire took the hint, went out without a word, and a moment
after the remaining spoons and forks glittered on the cloth, symmetrically
arranged before each of the guests.

CHAPTER IV.

CHEESEMAKING AT PONTARLIER.

And now, in order to give an idea of what took place at table, we cannot do
better than transcribe a passage of a letter written by Mademoiselle
Baptistine to Madame Boischevron, in which the conversation between the
convict and the Bishop is recorded with simple minuteness.

"The man paid no attention to any one; he ate with frightful voracity, but
after supper he said,—
"Monsieur le Curé, all this is much too good for me; but I am bound to say
that the carriers who would not let me sup with them have better cheer than
you."
"Between ourselves, this remark slightly offended me, but my brother
answered,—
"They are harder worked than I am."

"No," the man continued, "they have more money. You are poor, as I can
plainly see; perhaps you are not even curé. Ah, if Heaven were just you
ought to be a curé."
"Heaven is more than just," said my brother. A moment after he added,—
"Monsieur Jean Valjean, I think you said you were going to Pontarlier?"
"I am compelled to go there." Then he continued, "I must be off by sunrise
to-morrow morning; it is a tough journey, for if the nights are cold the days
are hot."
"You are going to an excellent part of the country," my brother resumed.
"When the Revolution ruined my family I sought shelter first in Franche
Comté, and lived there for some time by the labor of my arms. I had a good
will, and found plenty to do, as I need only choose. There are paper-mills,
tanneries, distilleries, oil-mills, wholesale manufactories of clocks, steel
works, copper works, and at least twenty iron foundries, of which the four
at Lods, Chatillon, Audincourt, and Beure are very large."
"I am pretty sure I am not mistaken, and that they are the names my brother
mentioned; then he broke off and addressed me.
"My dear sister, have we not some relatives in those parts?"
"My answer was, 'We used to have some; among others Monsieur de
Lucinet, who was Captain of the gates at Pontarlier, under the ancient
régime."
"Yes," my brother continued, "but in '93 people had no relatives, but only
their arms, and so I worked. In the country to which you are going,
Monsieur Valjean, there is a truly patriarchal and pleasing trade. My dear
sister, I mean their cheese manufactures, which they call fruitières."
"Then my brother, while pressing this man to eat, explained in their fullest
details the fruitières of Pontarlier, which were divided into two classes—the
large farms which belong to the rich, and where there are forty or fifty
cows, which produce seven to eight thousand cheeses in the summer, and
the partnership fruitières, which belong to the poor. The peasants of the
central mountain district keep their cows in common and divide the
produce. They have a cheese-maker, who is called the grurin; he receives
the milk from the partners thrice a day, and enters the quantities in a book.

The cheese-making begins about the middle of April, and the dairy farmers
lead their cows to the mountains toward midsummer.
"The man grew animated while eating, and my brother made him drink that
excellent Mauves wine, which he does not drink himself because he says
that it is expensive. My brother gave him all these details with that easy
gayety of his which you know, mingling his remarks with graceful appeals
to myself. He dwelt a good deal on the comfortable position of the grurin,
as if wishful that this man should understand, without advising him directly
and harshly, that it would be a refuge for him. One thing struck me: the man
was as I have described him to you; well, my brother, during the whole of
supper, and indeed of the evening, did not utter a word which could remind
this man of what he was, or tell him who my brother was. It was apparently
a good opportunity to give him a little lecture, and let the Bishop produce a
permanent effect on the galley-slave. It might have seemed to any one else
that having this wretched man in hand it would be right to feed his mind at
the same time as his body, and address to him some reproaches seasoned
with morality and advice, or at any rate a little commiseration, with an
exhortation to behave better in future. My brother did not even ask him
where he came from, or his history, for his fault is contained in his history,
and my brother appeared to avoid everything which might call it to his
mind. This was carried to such a point that at a certain moment, when my
brother was talking about the mountaineers of Pontarlier, 'who had a
pleasant task near heaven,' and who, he added, 'are happy because they are
innocent,' he stopped short, fearing lest there might be in the remark
something which might unpleasantly affect this man. After considerable
reflection, I believe I can understand what was going on in my brother's
heart: he doubtless thought that this Jean Valjean had his misery ever
present to his mind, that the best thing was to distract his attention, and
make him believe, were it only momentarily, that he was a man like the rest,
by behaving to him as he would to others. Was not this really charity? Is
there not, my dear lady, something truly evangelical in this delicacy, which
abstains from all lecturing and allusions, and is it not the best pity, when a
man has a sore point, not to touch it at all? It seemed to me that this might
be my brother's innermost thought: in any case, what I can safely say is, that
if he had all these ideas, he did not let any of them be visible, even to me;
he was from beginning to end the same man he is every night, and he

supped with Jean Valjean with the same air and in the same way as if he had
been supping with M. Gedeon le Prevost, or with the parish curate.
"Toward the end, when we had come to the figs, there was a knock at the
door. It was Mother Gerbaud with her little baby in her arms. My brother
kissed the child's forehead, and borrowed from me 15 sous which I
happened to have about me, to give them to the mother. The man, while this
was going on, did not seem to pay great attention: he said nothing, and
seemed very tired. When poor old Mother Gerbaud left, my brother said
grace, and then said to this man: 'You must need your bed.' Madame
Magloire hastily removed the plate. I understood that we must retire in
order to let this traveller sleep, and we both went up-stairs. I, however, sent
Madame Magloire to lay on the man's bed a roebuck's hide from the Black
Forest, which was in my room, for the nights are very cold, and that keeps
you wann. It is a pity that this skin is old and the hair is wearing off. My
brother bought it when he was in Germany, at Tottlingen, near the source of
the Danube, as well as the small ivory-handled knife which I use at meals.
"Madame Magloire came up again almost immediately. We said our prayers
in the room where the clothes are hung up to dry, and then retired to our
bed-rooms without saying a word to each other."

CHAPTER V.

TRANQUILLITY.

After bidding his sister good-night, Monseigneur Welcome took up one of
the silver candlesticks, handed the other to his guest, and said,—
"I will lead you to your room, sir."
The man followed him. The reader will remember, from our description,
that the rooms were so arranged that in order to reach the oratory where the
alcove was it was necessary to pass through the Bishop's bed-room. At the
moment when he went through this room Madame Magloire was putting
away the plate in the cupboard over the bed-head: it was the last job she did
every night before retiring. The Bishop led his guest to the alcove, where a

clean bed was prepared for him; the man placed the branched candlestick
on a small table.
"I trust you will pass a good night," said the Bishop. "To-morrow morning,
before starting, you will drink a glass of milk fresh from our cows."
"Thank you, Monsieur l'Abbé," the man said. He had hardly uttered these
peaceful words when, suddenly and without any transition, he had a strange
emotion, which would have frightened the two old females to death had
they witnessed it. Even at the present day it is difficult to account for what
urged him at the moment. Did he wish to warn or to threaten? was he
simply obeying a species of instinctive impulse which was obscure to
himself? He suddenly turned to the old gentleman, folded his arms, and,
fixing on him a savage glance, he exclaimed hoarsely,—
"What! you really lodge me so close to you as that?" He broke off and
added with a laugh, in which there was something monstrous,—
"Have you reflected fully? who tells you that I have not committed a
murder?"
The Bishop answered: "That concerns God."
Then gravely moving his lips, like a man who is praying and speaking to
himself, he stretched out two fingers of his right hand and blessed the man,
who did not bow his head, and returned to his bed-room, without turning his
head or looking behind him. When the alcove was occupied, a large serge
curtain drawn right across the oratory concealed the altar. The Bishop knelt
down as he passed before this curtain, and offered up a short prayer; a
moment after he was in his garden, walking, dreaming, contemplating, his
soul and thoughts entirely occupied by those grand mysteries which God
displays at night to eyes that remain open.
As for the man, he was really so wearied that he did not even take
advantage of the nice white sheets. He blew out the candle with his nostrils,
after the fashion of convicts, and threw himself in his clothes upon the bed,
where he at once fell into a deep sleep. Midnight was striking as the Bishop
returned from the garden to his room, and a few minutes later everybody
was asleep in the small house.

CHAPTER VI.

JEAN VALJEAN.

Toward the middle of the night Jean Valjean awoke. He belonged to a poor
peasant family of La Brie. In his childhood he had not been taught to read,
and when he was of man's age he was a wood-lopper at Faverolles. His
mother's name was Jeanne Mathieu, his father's Jean Valjean or Vlajean,
probably a sobriquet and a contraction of Voilà Jean. Jean Valjean
possessed a pensive but not melancholy character, which is peculiar to
affectionate natures; but altogether he was a dull, insignificant fellow, at
least apparently. He had lost father and mother when still very young: the
latter died of a badly-managed milk fever; the former, a pruner like himself,
was killed by a fall from a tree. All that was left Jean Valjean was a sister
older than himself, a widow with seven children, boys and girls. This sister
brought Jean Valjean up, and so long as her husband was alive she
supported her brother. When the husband died, the oldest of the seven
children was eight years of age, the youngest, one, while Jean Valjean had
just reached his twenty-fifth year; he took the place of the father, and in his
turn supported the sister who had reared him. This was done simply as a
duty, and even rather roughly by Jean Valjean; and his youth was thus
expended in hard and ill-paid toil. He was never known to have had a
sweetheart, for he had no time for love-making.
At night he came home tired, and ate his soup without saying a word. His
sister, mother Jeanne, while he was eating, often took out of his porringer
the best part of his meal, the piece of meat, the slice of bacon, or the heart
of the cabbage, to give it to one of her children; he, still eating, bent over
the table with his head almost in the soup, and his long hair falling round
his porringer and hiding his eyes, pretended not to see it, and let her do as
she pleased. There was at Faverolles, not far from the Valjeans' cottage, on
the other side of the lane, a farmer's wife called Marie Claude. The young
Valjeans, who were habitually starving, would go at times and borrow in
their mother's name a pint of milk from Marie Claude, which they drank
behind a hedge or in some corner, tearing the vessel from each other so
eagerly that the little girls spilt the milk over their aprons. Their mother, had
she been aware of this fraud, would have severely corrected the delinquents,

but Jean Valjean, coarse and rough though he was, paid Marie Claude for
the milk behind his sister's back, and the children were not punished.
He earned in the pruning season eighteen sous a day, and besides hired
himself out as reaper, laborer, neat-herd, and odd man. He did what he
could; his sister worked too, but what could she do with seven children? It
was a sad group, which wretchedness gradually enveloped and choked. One
winter was hard, and Jean had no work to do, and the family had no bread.
No bread, literally none, and seven children!
One Sunday evening, Maubert Isabeau, the baker in the church square at
Faverolles, was just going to bed when he heard a violent blow dealt the
grating in front of his shop. He arrived in time to see an arm passed through
a hole made by a fist through the grating and window pane; the arm seized a
loaf, and carried it off. Isabeau ran out hastily; the thief ran away at his
hardest, but the baker caught him and stopped him. The thief had thrown
away the loaf, but his arm was still bleeding; it was Jean Valjean.
This took place in 1795. Jean Valjean was brought before the courts of the
day, charged "with burglary committed with violence at night, in an
inhabited house." He had a gun, was a splendid shot, and a bit of a poacher,
and this injured him. There is a legitimate prejudice against poachers, for,
like smugglers, they trench very closely on brigandage. Still we must
remark that there is an abyss between these classes and the hideous
assassins of our cities: the poacher lives in the forest; the smuggler in the
mountains and on the sea. Cities produce ferocious men, because they
produce corrupted men; the forest, the mountain, and the sea produce
savage men, but while they develop their ferocious side, they do not always
destroy their human part. Jean Valjean was found guilty, and the terms of
the code were precise. There are in our civilization formidable hours; they
are those moments in which penal justice pronounces a shipwreck. What a
mournful minute is that in which society withdraws and consummates the
irreparable abandonment of a thinking being! Jean Valjean was sentenced to
five years at the galleys.
On April 22d, 1796, men were crying in the streets of Paris the victory of
Montenotte, gained by the General-in-chief of the army of Italy, whom the
message of the Directory to the Five Hundred, of the 2 Floréal, year IV.,
calls Buona-Parte; and on the same day a heavy gang was put in chains at

Bicetre, and Jean Valjean formed part of the chain. An ex-jailer of the
prison, who is now nearly ninety years of age, perfectly remembers the
wretched man, who was chained at the end of the fourth cordon, in the
north angle of the court-yard. He was seated on the ground like the rest, and
seemed not at all to understand his position, except that it was horrible. It is
probable that he also saw something excessive through the vague ideas of
an utterly ignorant man. While the bolt of his iron collar was being riveted
with heavy hammer-blows behind his head, he wept, tears choked him, and
prevented him from speaking, and he could only manage to say from time
to time: "I was a wood-cutter at Faverolles." Then, while still continuing to
sob, he raised his right hand, and lowered it gradually seven times, as if
touching seven uneven heads in turn, and from this gesture it could be
guessed that whatever the crime he had committed, he had done it to feed
and clothe seven children.
He started for Toulon, and arrived there after a journey of twenty-seven
days in a cart, with the chain on his neck. At Toulon he was dressed in the
red jacket. All that had hitherto been his life, even to his name, was effaced.
He was no longer Jean Valjean, but No. 24,601. What became of his sister?
What became of the seven children? Who troubles himself about that? What
becomes of the spray of leaves when the stem of the young tree has been
cut at the foot? It is always the same story. These poor living beings, these
creatures of God, henceforth without support, guide, or shelter, went off
hap-hazard, and gradually buried themselves in that cold fog in which
solitary destinies are swallowed up, that mournful gloom in which so many
unfortunates disappear during the sullen progress of the human race. They
left their country; what had once been their steeple forgot them; what had
once been their hedge-row forgot them; and after a few years' stay in the
bagne, Jean Valjean himself forgot them. In that heart where there had once
been a wound there was now a scar: that was all. He only heard about his
sister once during the whole time he spent at Toulon; it was, I believe,
toward the end of the fourth year of his captivity, though I have forgotten in
what way the information reached him. She was in Paris, living in the Rue
du Geindre, a poor street, near St. Sulpice, and had only one child with her,
the youngest, a boy. Where were the other six? Perhaps she did not know
herself. Every morning she went to a printing-office, No. 3, Rue du Sabot,
where she was a folder and stitcher; she had to be there at six in the
morning, long before daylight in winter. In the same house as the printing-

office there was a day-school, to which she took the little boy, who was
seven years of age, but as she went to work at six and the school did not
open till seven o'clock, the boy was compelled to wait in the yard for an
hour, in winter,—an hour of night in the open air. The boy was not allowed
to enter the printing-office, because it was said that he would be in the way.
The workmen as they passed in the morning saw the poor little fellow
seated on the pavement, and often sleeping in the darkness, with his head on
his satchel. When it rained, an old woman, the portress, took pity on him;
she invited him into her den, where there were only a bed, a spinning-
wheel, and two chairs, when the little fellow fell asleep in a corner, clinging
to the cat, to keep him warm. This is what Jean Valjean was told; it was a
momentary flash, as it were a window suddenly opened in the destiny of the
beings he had loved, and then all was closed again; he never heard about
them more. Nothing reached him from them; he never saw them again,
never met them, and we shall not come across them in the course of this
melancholy narrative.
Toward the end of this fourth year, Jean Valjean's turn to escape arrived, and
his comrades aided him as they always do in this sorrowful place. He
escaped and wandered about the fields at liberty for two days: if it is liberty
to be hunted down; to turn ones head at every moment; to start at the
slightest sound; to be afraid of everything,—of a chimney that smokes, a
man who passes, a barking dog, a galloping horse, the striking of the hour,
of day because people see, of night because they do not see, of the highway,
the path, the thicket, and even sleep. On the evening of the second day he
was recaptured; he had not eaten or slept for six-and-thirty hours. The
maritime tribunal added three years to his sentence for his crime, which
made it eight years. In the sixth year, it was again his turn to escape; he
tried, but could not succeed. He was missing at roll-call, the gun was fired,
and at night the watchman found him hidden under the keel of a ship that
was building, and he resisted the garde chiourme, who seized him. Escape
and rebellion: this fact, foreseen by the special code, was punished by an
addition of five years, of which two would be spent in double chains.
Thirteen years. In his tenth year his turn came again, and he took advantage
of it, but succeeded no better: three years for this new attempt, or sixteen
years in all. Finally, I think it was during his thirteenth year that he made a
last attempt, and only succeeded so far as to be recaptured in four hours:
three years for these four hours, and a total of nineteen years. In October,

1815, he was liberated; he had gone in in 1796 for breaking a window and
stealing a loaf.
Let us make room for a short parenthesis. This is the second time that,
during his essays on the penal question and condemnation by the law, the
author of this book has come across a loaf as the starting point of the
disaster of a destiny. Claude Gueux stole a loaf, and so did Jean Valjean,
and English statistics prove that in London four robberies out of five have
hunger as their immediate cause. Jean Valjean entered the bagne sobbing
and shuddering: he left it stoically. He entered it in despair: he came out of
it gloomy. What had taken place in this soul?

CHAPTER VII.

A DESPERATE MAN'S HEART.

Society must necessarily look at these things, because they are created by it.
He was, as we have said, an ignorant man, but he was not weak-minded.
The natural light was kindled within him, and misfortune, which also has its
brightness, increased the little daylight there was in this mind. Under the
stick and the chain in the dungeon, when at work, beneath the torrid sun of
the bagne, or when lying on the convict's plank, he reflected. He constituted
himself a court, and began by trying himself. He recognized that he was not
an innocent man unjustly punished; he confessed to himself that he had
committed an extreme and blamable action; that the loaf would probably
not have been refused him had he asked for it; that in any case it would
have been better to wait for it, either from pity or from labor, and that it was
not a thoroughly unanswerable argument to say, "Can a man wait when he
is hungry?" That, in the first place, it is very rare for a man to die literally of
hunger; next, that, unhappily or happily, man is so made that he can suffer
for a long time and severely, morally and physically, without dying; that
hence he should have been patient; that it would have been better for the
poor little children; that it was an act of madness for him, a wretched weak
man, violently to collar society and to imagine that a man can escape from
wretchedness by theft; that in any case the door by which a man enters

infamy is a bad one by which to escape from wretchedness; and, in short,
that he had been in the wrong.
Then he asked himself if he were the only person who had been in the
wrong in his fatal history? whether, in the first place, it was not a serious
thing that he, a workman, should want for work; that he, laborious as he
was, should want for bread? whether, next, when the fault was committed
and confessed, the punishment had not been ferocious and excessive, and
whether there were not more abuse on the side of the law in the penalty than
there was on the side of the culprit in the crime? whether there had not been
an excessive weight in one of the scales, that one in which expiation lies?
whether the excess of punishment were not the effacement of the crime, and
led to the result of making a victim of the culprit, a creditor of the debtor,
and definitively placing the right on the side of the man who had violated
it? whether this penalty, complicated by excessive aggravations for
attempted escapes, did not eventually become a sort of attack made by the
stronger on the weaker, a crime of society committed on the individual, a
crime which was renewed every day, and had lasted for nineteen years? He
asked himself if human society could have the right to make its members
equally undergo, on one side, its unreasonable improvidence, on the other
its pitiless foresight, and to hold a man eternally between a want and an
excess, want of work and excess of punishment? whether it were not
exorbitant that society should treat thus its members who were worst
endowed in that division of property which is made by chance, and
consequently the most worthy of indulgence?
These questions asked and solved, he passed sentence on society and
condemned it—to his hatred. He made it responsible for the fate he
underwent, and said to himself that he would not hesitate to call it to
account some day. He declared that there was no equilibrium between the
damage he had caused and the damage caused him; and he came to the
conclusion that his punishment was not an injustice, but most assuredly an
iniquity. Wrath may be wild and absurd; a man may be wrongly irritated;
but he is only indignant when he has some show of reason somewhere. Jean
Valjean felt indignant. And then, again, human society had never done him
aught but harm, he had only seen its wrathful face, which is called its
justice, and shows itself to those whom it strikes. Men had only laid hands
on him to injure him, and any contact with them had been a blow to him.

Never, since his infancy, since his mother and his sister, had he heard a kind
word or met a friendly look. From suffering after suffering, he gradually
attained the conviction that life was war, and that in this war he was the
vanquished. As he had no other weapon but his hatred, he resolved to
sharpen it in the bagne and take it with him when he left.
There was at Toulon a school for the chain-gang, kept by the Ignorantin
Brethren, who imparted elementary instruction to those wretches who were
willing to learn. He was one of the number, and went to school at the age of
forty, where he learned reading, writing, and arithmetic; he felt that
strengthening his mind was strengthening his hatred. In certain cases,
instruction and education may serve as allies to evil. It is sad to say, that
after trying society which had caused his misfortunes, he tried Providence,
who had made society, and condemned it also. Hence, during these nineteen
years of torture and slavery, this soul ascended and descended at the same
time; light entered on one side and darkness on the other. As we have seen,
Jean Valjean was not naturally bad, he was still good when he arrived at the
bagne. He condemned society then, and felt that he was growing wicked; he
condemned Providence, and felt that he was growing impious.
Here it is difficult not to meditate for a moment. Is human nature thus
utterly transformed? Can man, who is created good by God, be made bad by
man? Can the soul be entirely remade by destiny, and become evil if the
destiny be evil? Can the heart be deformed, and contract incurable ugliness
and infirmity under the pressure of disproportionate misfortune, like the
spine beneath too low a vault? Is there not in every human soul, was there
not in that of Jean Valjean especially, a primary spark, a divine element,
incorruptible in this world, and immortal for the other, which good can
develop, illumine, and cause to glisten splendidly, and which evil can never
entirely extinguish?
These are grave and obscure questions, the last of which every physiologist
would unhesitatingly have answered in the negative, had he seen at Toulon,
in those hours of repose which were for Jean Valjean hours of reverie, this
gloomy, stern, silent, and pensive galley-slave—the pariah of the law which
regarded men passionately—the condemned of civilization, who regarded
Heaven with severity—seated with folded arms on a capstan bar, with the
end of his chain thrust into his pocket to prevent it from dragging. We
assuredly do not deny that the physiological observer would have seen there

an irremediable misery; he would probably have pitied this patient of the
law, but he would not have even attempted a cure: he would have turned
away from the caverns he noticed in this soul, and, like Dante at the gates of
the Inferno, he would have effaced from this existence that word which
GOD, however, has written on the brow of every man: hope!
Was this state of his soul, which we have attempted to analyze, as perfectly
clear to Jean Valjean as we have tried to render it to our readers? Did Jean
Valjean see after their formation, and had he seen distinctly as they were
formed, all the elements of which his moral wretchedness was composed?
Had this rude and unlettered man clearly comprehended the succession of
ideas by which he had step by step ascended and descended to the gloomy
views which had for so many years been the inner horizon of his mind? Was
he really conscious of all that had taken place in him and all that was
stirring in him? This we should not like to assert, and, indeed, we are not
inclined to believe it. There was too much ignorance in Jean Valjean for a
considerable amount of vagueness not to remain, even after so much
misfortune; at times he did not even know exactly what he experienced.
Jean Valjean was in darkness; he suffered in darkness, and he hated in
darkness. He lived habitually in this shadow, groping like a blind man and a
dreamer; at times he was attacked, both internally and externally, by a shock
of passion, a surcharge of suffering, a pale and rapid flash which illumined
his whole soul, and suddenly made him see all around, both before and
behind him, in the glare of a frightful light, the hideous precipices and
gloomy perspective of his destiny. When the flash had passed, night
encompassed him again, and where was he? He no longer knew.
The peculiarity of punishments of this nature, in which nought but what is
pitiless, that is to say brutalizing, prevails, is gradually, and by a species of
stupid transfiguration, to transform a man into a wild beast, at times a
ferocious beast. Jean Valjean's attempted escapes, successive and obstinate,
would be sufficient to prove the strange work carried on by the law upon a
human soul; he would have renewed these attempts, so utterly useless and
mad, as many times as the opportunity offered itself, without dreaming for a
moment of the result, or the experiments already made. He escaped
impetuously like the wolf that finds its cage open. Instinct said to him, "Run
away;" reasoning would have said to him, "Remain;" but in the presence of
so violent a temptation, reason disappeared and instinct alone was left. The

brute alone acted, and when he was recaptured the new severities inflicted
on him only served to render him more wild.
One fact we must not omit mentioning is that he possessed a physical
strength with which no one in the bagne could compete. In turning a
capstan, Jean Valjean was equal to four men; he frequently raised and held
on his back enormous weights, and took the place at times of that
instrument which is called a jack, and was formerly called orgueil, from
which, by the way, the Rue Montorgueil derived its name. His comrades
surnamed him Jean the Jack. Once when the balcony of the Town Hall at
Toulon was being repaired, one of those admirable caryatides of Puget's
which support the balcony, became loose and almost fell. Jean Valjean, who
was on the spot, supported the statue with his shoulder, and thus gave the
workmen time to come up.
His suppleness even exceeded his vigor. Some convicts, who perpetually
dream of escaping, eventually make a real science of combined skill and
strength; it is the science of the muscles. A full course of mysterious statics
is daily practised by the prisoners, those eternal enviers of flies and birds.
Swarming up a perpendicular, and finding a resting-place where a
projection is scarcely visible, was child's play for Jean Valjean. Given a
corner of a wall, with the tension of his back and hams, with his elbows and
heels clinging to the rough stone, he would hoist himself as if by magic to a
third story, and at times would ascend to the very roof of the bagne. He
spoke little and never laughed; it needed some extreme emotion to draw
from him, once or twice a year, that mournful convict laugh, which is, as it
were, the echo of fiendish laughter. To look at him, he seemed engaged in
continually gazing at something terrible. He was, in fact, absorbed. Through
the sickly perceptions of an incomplete nature and a crushed intellect, he
saw confusedly that a monstrous thing was hanging over him. In this
obscure and dull gloom through which he crawled, wherever he turned his
head and essayed to raise his eye, he saw, with a terror blended with rage,
built up above him, with frightfully scarped sides, a species of terrific pile
of things, laws, prejudices, men, and facts, whose outline escaped him,
whose mass terrified him, and which was nothing else but that prodigious
pyramid which we call civilization. He distinguished here and there in this
heaving and shapeless conglomeration—at one moment close to him, at
another on distant and inaccessible plateaux—some highly illumined group;

—here the jailer and his stick, there the gendarme and his sabre, down
below the mitred archbishop, and on the summit, in a species of sun, the
crowned and dazzling Emperor. It seemed to him as if this distant splendor,
far from dissipating his night, only rendered it more gloomy and black. All
these laws, prejudices, facts, men, and things, came and went above him, in
accordance with the complicated and mysterious movement which God
imprints on civilization, marching over him, and crushing him with
something painful in its cruelty and inexorable in its indifférence. Souls
which have fallen into the abyss of possible misfortune, hapless men lost in
the depths of those limbos into which people no longer look, and the
reprobates of the law, feel on their heads the whole weight of the human
society which is so formidable for those outside it, so terrific for those
beneath it.
In this situation, Jean Valjean thought, and what could be the nature of his
reverie? If the grain of corn had its thoughts, when ground by the mill-
stone, it would doubtless think as did Jean Valjean. All these things, realities
full of spectres, phantasmagorias full of reality, ended by creating for him a
sort of internal condition which is almost inexpressible. At times, in the
midst of his galley-slave toil, he stopped and began thinking; his reason, at
once riper and more troubled than of yore, revolted. All that had happened
appeared to him absurd; all that surrounded him seemed to him impossible.
He said to himself that it was a dream; he looked at the overseer standing a
few yards from him, and he appeared to him a phantom, until the phantom
suddenly dealt him a blow with a stick. Visible nature scarce existed for
him; we might almost say with truth, that for Jean Valjean there was no sun,
no glorious summer-day, no brilliant sky, no fresh April dawn; we cannot
describe the gloomy light which illumined his soul.
In conclusion, to sum up all that can be summed up in what we have
indicated, we will confine ourselves to establishing the fact that in nineteen
years, Jean Valjean, the inoffensive wood-cutter of Faverolles, and the
formidable galley-slave of Toulon, had become, thanks to the manner in
which the bagne had fashioned him, capable of two sorts of bad actions:
first, a rapid, unreflecting bad deed, entirely instinctive, and a species of
reprisal for the evil he had suffered; and, secondly, of a grave, serious evil
deed, discussed conscientiously and meditated with the false ideas which
such a misfortune can produce. His premeditations passed through the three

successive phases which natures of a certain temperament can alone
undergo,—reasoning, will, and obstinacy. He had for his motives habitual
indignation, bitterness of soul, the profound feeling of iniquities endured,
and reaction even against the good, the innocent, and the just, if such exist.
The starting-point, like the goal, of all his thoughts, was hatred of human
law; that hatred, which, if it be not arrested in its development by some
providential incident, becomes within a given time a hatred of society, then
a hatred of the human race, next a hatred of creation, and which is
expressed by a vague, incessant, and brutal desire to injure some one, no
matter whom. As we see, it was not unfairly that the passport described Jean
Valjean as a highly dangerous man. Year by year this soul had become more
and more withered, slowly but fatally. A dry soul must have a dry eye, and
on leaving the bagne, nineteen years had elapsed since he had shed a tear.

CHAPTER VIII.

THE WAVE AND THE DARKNESS.

Man overboard!
What of it? The ship does not stop. The wind is blowing, and this dark ship
has a course which she must keep. She goes right on.
The man disappears, then appears again. He goes down and again comes up
to the surface; he shouts, he holds up his arms, but they do not hear him.
The ship, shivering under the storm, has all she can do to take care of
herself. The sailors and the passengers can no longer even see the drowning
man; his luckless head is only a speck in the vastness of the waves.
His cries of despair sound through the depths. What a phantom that is,—
that sail, fast disappearing from view! He gazes after it; his eyes are fixed
upon it with frenzy. It is disappearing, it is fading from sight, it is growing
smaller and smaller. Only just now he was there; he was one of the crew; he
was going and coming on the deck with the rest; he had his share of air and
sun; he was a living man. What, then, has happened? He has slipped, he has
fallen; it is all over with him.

He is in the huge waves. There is nothing now under his feet but death and
sinking. The fearful waves, torn and frayed by the wind, surround him; the
swells of the abyss sweep him along; all the crests of the waves are blown
about his head; a crowd of waves spit upon him; uncertain gulfs half
swallow him; every time he plunges down he catches a glimpse of
precipices black as night; frightful, unknown seaweeds seize him, tie his
feet, drag him down to them. He feels that he is becoming a part of the
abyss, of the foam; the waves throw him from one to another; he tastes the
bitterness; the cowardly ocean has given itself up to drowning him; the
vastness sports with his agony. All this water seems to be hate.
Still he struggles.
He tries to save himself, to keep himself up; he strikes out, he swims. He,
this pitiful force, at once exhausted, is matched against the inexhaustible.
Where is the ship now? Way down there, barely visible in the pale obscurity
of the horizon. The squalls hum about him, the wave-crests wash over him.
He raises his eyes, and sees only the lividness of the clouds. In his death
struggle he takes part in the madness of the sea. He is tortured by this
madness. He hears sounds, strange to man, which seem to come from
beyond the earth, and from some terrible world outside.
There are birds in the clouds, just as there are angels above human griefs,
but what can they do for him? There is one, flying, singing, and hovering,
while he has the death-rattle in his throat.
He feels himself buried at the same time by these two Infinites, the ocean
and the heavens; the one a tomb, the other a shroud.
Night falls; he has been swimming now for hours; his strength has reached
its end; this ship, this far-off thing where there were men, is blotted from his
sight; he is alone in the fearful gulf of twilight; he sinks, he braces himself,
he writhes, he feels below him the roving monsters of the invisible. He cries
aloud.
"There are no longer any men here." "Where is God?"
He calls "Somebody!" "Somebody!" He keeps on calling.
Nothing on the horizon; nothing in heaven.

He implores the waste of waters, the wave, the seaweed, the rock; it is deaf.
He supplicates the tempest; the pitiless tempest obeys only the Infinite.
Around him is darkness, mist, solitude, the stormy and unreasoning tumult,
the boundless rolling of the wild waters. In him is horror and weariness.
Under him the abyss. There is nothing to rest on. He thinks of what will
happen to his body in the boundless shades. The infinite cold benumbs him.
His hands shrivel; they clutch and find nothing. Winds, clouds, whirlwinds,
puffs, useless stars. What is he to do? In despair, he gives up. Worn out as
he is, he makes up his mind to die, he abandons himself, he lets himself go,
he relaxes himself, and there he is rolling forever into the dismal depths in
which he is swallowed up.
Oh, implacable course of human society! What a loss of men and of souls
on the way! Ocean into which falls all that the law lets fall. Wicked
vanishing of help! Oh, moral death!
The sea is the pitiless social night into which the penal law thrusts its
condemned; the sea is boundless wretchedness.
The soul, swept with the stream into this gulf, may be drowned. Who will
bring it to life again?

CHAPTER IX.

NEW WRONGS.

When the hour for quitting the bagne arrived, when Jean Valjean heard in
his ear the unfamiliar words "You are free," the moment seemed improbable
and extraordinary, and a ray of bright light, of the light of the living,
penetrated to him; but it soon grew pale. Jean Valjean had been dazzled by
the idea of liberty, and had believed in a new life, but he soon saw that it is
a liberty to which a yellow passport is granted. And around this there was
much bitterness; he had calculated that his earnings, during his stay at the
bagne, should have amounted to 171 francs. We are bound to add that he
had omitted to take into his calculations the forced rest of Sundays and
holidays, which, during nineteen years, entailed a diminution of about 24

francs. However this might be, the sum was reduced, through various local
stoppages, to 109 francs, 15 sous, which were paid to him when he left the
bagne. He did not understand it all, and fancied that he had been robbed.
On the day after his liberation, he saw at Grasse men in front of a distillery
of orange-flower water,—men unloading bales; he offered his services, and
as the work was of a pressing nature, they were accepted. He set to work; he
was intelligent, powerful, and skilful, and his master appeared satisfied.
While he was at work a gendarme passed, noticed him, asked for his paper,
and he was compelled to show his yellow pass. This done, Jean Valjean
resumed his toil. A little while previously he had asked one of the workmen
what he earned for his day's work, and the answer was 30 sous. At night, as
he was compelled to start again the next morning, he went to the master of
the distillery and asked for payment; the master did not say a word, but
gave him 15 sous, and when he protested, the answer was, "That is enough
for you." He became pressing, the master looked him in the face and said,
"Mind you don't get into prison."
Here again he regarded himself as robbed; society, the state, by diminishing
his earnings, had robbed him wholesale; now it was the turn of the
individual to commit retail robbery. Liberation is not deliverance; a man
may leave the bagne, but not condemnation. We have seen what happened
to him at Grasse, and we know how he was treated at D——.

CHAPTER X.

THE MAN AWAKE.

As two o'clock pealed from the cathedral bell, Jean Valjean awoke. What
aroused him was that the bed was too comfortable, for close on twenty
years he had not slept in a bed, and though he had not undressed, the
sensation was too novel not to disturb his sleep. He had been asleep for
more than four hours, and his weariness had worn off; and he was
accustomed not to grant many hours to repose. He opened his eyes and
looked into the surrounding darkness, and then he closed them again to go

to sleep once more. When many diverse sensations have agitated a day, and
when matters preoccupy the mind, a man may sleep, but he cannot go to
sleep again. Sleep comes more easily than it returns, and this happened to
Jean Valjean. As he could not go to sleep again, he began thinking.
It was one of those moments in which the ideas that occupy the mind are
troubled, and there was a species of obscure oscillation in his brain. His old
recollections and immediate recollections crossed each other, and floated
confusedly, losing their shape, growing enormously, and then disappearing
suddenly, as if in troubled and muddy water. Many thoughts occurred to
him, but there was one which constantly reverted and expelled all the rest.
This thought we will at once describe; he had noticed the six silver forks
and spoons and the great ladle which Madame Magloire put on the table.
This plate overwhelmed him; it was there, a few yards from him. When he
crossed the adjoining room to reach the one in which he now was, the old
servant was putting it in a small cupboard at the bed-head,—he had
carefully noticed this cupboard; it was on the right as you came in from the
dining-room. The plate was heavy and old, the big soup-ladle was worth at
least 200 francs, or double what he had earned in nineteen years, though it
was true that he would have earned more had not the officials robbed him.
His mind oscillated for a good hour, in these fluctuations with which a
struggle was most assuredly blended. When three o'clock struck he opened
his eyes, suddenly sat up, stretched out his arms, and felt for his knapsack
which he had thrown into a corner of the alcove, then let his legs hang, and
felt himself seated on the bed-side almost without knowing how. He
remained for a while thoughtfully in this attitude, which would have had
something sinister about it, for any one who had seen him, the only wakeful
person in the house. All at once he stooped, took off his shoes, then
resumed his thoughtful posture, and remained motionless. In the midst of
this hideous meditation, the ideas which we have indicated incessantly
crossed his brain, entered, went out, returned, and weighed upon him; and
then he thought, without knowing why, and with the mechanical obstinacy
of reverie, of a convict he had known at the bagne, of the name of Brevet,
whose trousers were only held up by a single knitted brace. The draught-
board design of that brace incessantly returned to his mind. He remained in
this situation, and would have probably remained so till sunrise, had not the
clock struck the quarter or the half-hour. It seemed as if this stroke said to

him, To work! He rose, hesitated for a moment and listened; all was silent
in the house, and he went on tip-toe to the window, through which he
peered. The night was not very dark; there was a full moon, across which
heavy clouds were chased by the wind. This produced alternations of light
and shade, and a species of twilight in the room; this twilight, sufficient to
guide him, but intermittent in consequence of the clouds, resembled that
livid hue produced by the grating of a cellar over which people are
continually passing. On reaching the window, Jean Valjean examined it; it
was without bars, looked on the garden, and was only closed, according to
the fashion of the country, by a small peg. He opened it, but as a cold sharp
breeze suddenly entered the room, he closed it again directly. He gazed into
the garden with that attentive glance which studies rather than looks, and
found that it was enclosed by a white-washed wall, easy to climb over.
Beyond it he noticed the tops of trees standing at regular distances, which
proved that this wall separated the garden from a public walk.
After taking this glance, he walked boldly to the alcove, opened his
knapsack, took out something which he laid on the bed, put his shoes in one
of the pouches, placed the knapsack on his shoulders, put on his cap, the
peak of which he pulled over his eyes, groped for his stick, which he placed
in the window nook, and then returned to the bed, and took up the object he
had laid on it. It resembled a short iron bar, sharpened at one of its ends. It
would have been difficult to distinguish in the darkness for what purpose
this piece of iron had been fashioned; perhaps it was a lever, perhaps it was
a club. By daylight it could have been seen that it was nothing but a miners
candlestick. The convicts at that day were sometimes employed in
extracting rock from the lofty hills that surround Toulon, and it was not
infrequent for them to have mining tools at their disposal. The miner's
candlesticks are made of massive steel, and have a point at the lower end,
by which they are dug into the rock. He took the bar in his right hand, and
holding his breath and deadening his footsteps he walked towards the door
of the adjoining room, the Bishop's as we know. On reaching this door he
found it ajar—the Bishop had not shut it.

CHAPTER XI.

WHAT HE DID.

Jean Valjean listened, but there was not a sound; he pushed the door with
the tip of his finger lightly, and with the furtive restless gentleness of a cat
that wants to get in. The door yielded to the pressure, and made an almost
imperceptible and silent movement, which slightly widened the opening. He
waited for a moment, and then pushed the door again more boldly. It
continued to yield silently, and the opening was soon large enough for him
to pass through. But there was near the door a small table which formed an
awkward angle with it, and barred the entrance.
Jean Valjean noticed the difficulty: the opening must be increased at all
hazards. He made up his mind, and pushed the door a third time, more
energetically still. This time there was a badly-oiled hinge, which suddenly
uttered a hoarse prolonged cry in the darkness. Jean Valjean started; the
sound of the hinge smote his ear startlingly and formidably, as if it had been
the trumpet of the day of judgment. In the fantastic exaggerations of the
first minute, he almost imagined that this hinge had become animated, and
suddenly obtained a terrible vitality and barked like a dog to warn and
awaken the sleepers. He stopped, shuddering and dismayed, and fell back
from tip-toes on his heels. He felt the arteries in his temples beat like two
forge hammers, and it seemed to him that his breath issued from his lungs
with the noise of the wind roaring out of a cavern. He fancied that the
horrible clamor of this irritated hinge must have startled the whole house
like the shock of an earthquake; the door he opened had been alarmed and
cried for help; the old man would rise, the two aged females would shriek,
and assistance would arrive within a quarter of an hour, the town would be
astir, and the gendarmerie turned out. For a moment he believed himself
lost.
He remained where he was, petrified like the pillar of salt, and not daring to
make a movement. A few minutes passed, during which the door remained
wide open. He ventured to look into the room, and found that nothing had
stirred. He listened; no one was moving in the house, the creaking of the
rusty hinge had not awakened any one. The first danger had passed, but still
there was fearful tumult within him. But he did not recoil, he had not done
so even when he thought himself lost; he only thought of finishing the job
as speedily as possible, and entered the bed-room. The room was in a state

of perfect calmness; here and there might be distinguished confused and
vague forms, which by day were papers scattered over the table, open
folios, books piled on a sofa, an easy-chair covered with clothes, and a
priedieu, all of which were at this moment only dark nooks and patches of
white. Jean Valjean advanced cautiously and carefully, and avoided coming
into collision with the furniture. He heard from the end of the room the
calm and regular breathing of the sleeping Bishop. Suddenly he stopped, for
he was close to the bed; he had reached it sooner than he anticipated.
Nature at times blends her effects and scenes with our actions, with a
species of gloomy and intelligent design, as if wishing to make us reflect.
For nearly half an hour a heavy cloud had covered the sky, but at the
moment when Jean Valjean stopped at the foot of the bed, this cloud was
rent asunder as if expressly, and a moonbeam passing through the tall
window suddenly illumined the Bishop's pale face. He was sleeping
peacefully, and was wrapped up in a long garment of brown wool, which
covered his arms down to the wrists. His head was thrown back on the
pillow in the easy attitude of repose, and his hand, adorned with the pastoral
ring, and which had done so many good deeds, hung out of bed. His entire
face was lit up by a vague expression of satisfaction, hope, and beatitude—
it was more than a smile and almost a radiance. He had on his forehead the
inexpressible reflection of an invisible light, for the soul of a just man
contemplates a mysterious heaven during sleep. A reflection of this heaven
was cast over the Bishop, but it was at the same time a luminous
transparency, for the heaven was within him, and was conscience.
At the moment when the moonbeam was cast over this internal light, the
sleeping Bishop seemed to be surrounded by a glory, which was veiled,
however, by an ineffable semi-light. The moon in the heavens, the
slumbering landscape, the quiet house, the hour, the silence, the moment,
added something solemn and indescribable to this man's venerable repose,
and cast a majestic and serene halo round his white hair and closed eyes, his
face in which all was hope and confidence, his aged head, and his infantine
slumbers. There was almost a divinity in this unconsciously august man.
Jean Valjean was standing in the shadow with his crow-bar in his hand,
motionless and terrified by this luminous old man. He had never seen
anything like this before, and such confidence horrified him. The moral
world has no greater spectacle than this,—a troubled, restless conscience,

which is on the point of committing a bad action, contemplating the sleep of
a just man.
This sleep in such isolation, and with a neighbor like himself, possessed a
species of sublimity which he felt vaguely, but imperiously. No one could
have said what was going on within him, not even himself. In order to form
any idea of it we must imagine what is the most violent in the presence of
what is gentlest. Even in his face nothing could have been distinguished
with certainty, for it displayed a sort of haggard astonishment. He looked at
the Bishop, that was all, but what his thoughts were it would be impossible
to divine; what was evident was, that he was moved and shaken, but of
what nature was this emotion? His eye was not once removed from the old
man, and the only thing clearly revealed by his attitude and countenance
was a strange indecision. It seemed as if he were hesitating between two
abysses, the one that saves and the one that destroys; he was ready to dash
out the Bishop's brains or kiss his hand. At the expiration of a few minutes
his left arm slowly rose to his cap, which he took off; then his arm fell again
with the same slowness, and Jean Valjean recommenced his contemplation,
with his cap in his left hand, his crow-bar in his right, and his hair standing
erect on his savage head.
The Bishop continued to sleep peacefully beneath this terrific glance. A
moonbeam rendered the crucifix over the mantel-piece dimly visible, which
seemed to open its arms for both, with a blessing for one and a pardon for
the other. All at once Jean Valjean put on his cap again, then walked rapidly
along the bed, without looking at the Bishop, and went straight to the
cupboard. He raised his crow-bar to force the lock, but as the key was in it,
he opened it, and the first thing he saw was the plate-basket, which he
seized. He hurried across the room, not caring for the noise he made, re-
entered the oratory, opened the window, seized his stick, put the silver in his
pocket, threw away the basket, leaped into the garden, bounded over the
wall like a tiger, and fled.

CHAPTER XII.

THE BISHOP AT WORK.

The next morning at sunrise Monseigneur Welcome was walking about the
garden, when Madame Magloire came running toward him in a state of
great alarm.
"Monseigneur, Monseigneur!" she screamed, "does your Grandeur know
where the plate-basket is?"
"Yes," said the Bishop.
"The Lord be praised," she continued; "I did not know what had become of
it."
The Bishop had just picked up the basket in a flower-bed, and now handed
it to Madame Magloire. "Here it is," he said.
"Well!" she said, "there is nothing in it; where is the plate?"
"Ah!" the Bishop replied, "it is the plate that troubles your mind. Well, I do
not know where that is."
"Good Lord! it is stolen, and that man who came last night is the robber."
In a twinkling Madame Magloire had run to the oratory, entered the alcove,
and returned to the Bishop. He was stooping down and looking sorrowfully
at a cochlearia, whose stem the basket had broken. He raised himself on
hearing Madame Magloire scream,—
"Monseigneur, the man has gone! the plate is stolen!"
While uttering this exclamation her eyes fell on a corner of the garden,
where there were signs of climbing; the coping of the wall had been torn
away.
"That is the way he went! He leaped into Cochefilet lane. Oh, what an
outrage! He has stolen our plate."
The Bishop remained silent for a moment, then raised his earnest eyes, and
said gently to Madame Magloire,—
"By the way, was that plate ours?"
Madame Magloire was speechless; there was another interval of silence,
after which the Bishop continued,—

"Madame Magloire, I had wrongfully held back this silver, which belonged
to the poor. Who was this person? Evidently a poor man."
"Good gracious!" Madame Magloire continued; "I do not care for it, nor
does Mademoiselle, but we feel for Monseigneur. With what will
Monseigneur eat now?"
The Bishop looked at her in amazement. "Why, are there not pewter forks to
be had?"
Madame Magloire shrugged her shoulders. "Pewter smells!"
"Then iron!"
Madame Magloire made an expressive grimace. "Iron tastes."
"Well, then," said the Bishop, "wood!"
A few minutes later he was breakfasting at the same table at which Jean
Valjean sat on the previous evening. While breakfasting Monseigneur
Welcome gayly remarked to his sister, who said nothing, and to Madame
Magloire, who growled in a low voice, that spoon and fork, even of wood,
are not required to dip a piece of bread in a cup of milk.
"What an idea!" Madame Magloire said, as she went backwards and
forwards, "to receive a man like that, and lodge him by one's side. And what
a blessing it is that he only stole! Oh, Lord! the mere thought makes a body
shudder."
As the brother and sister were leaving the table there was a knock at the
door.
"Come in," said the Bishop.
The door opened, and a strange and violent group appeared on the
threshold. Three men were holding a fourth by the collar. The three men
were gendarmes, the fourth was Jean Valjean. A corporal, who apparently
commanded the party, came in and walked up to the Bishop with a military
salute.
"Monseigneur," he said.
At this word Jean Valjean, who was gloomy and crushed, raised his head
with a stupefied air.

"'Monseigneur,'" he muttered; "then he is not the Curé."
"Silence!" said a gendarme. "This gentleman is Monseigneur the Bishop."
In the mean while Monseigneur Welcome had advanced as rapidly as his
great age permitted.
"Ah! there you are," he said, looking at Jean Valjean. "I am glad to see you.
Why, I gave you the candlesticks too, which are also silver, and will fetch
you 200 francs. Why did you not take them away with the rest of the plate?"
Jean Valjean opened his eyes, and looked at the Bishop with an expression
which no human language could render.
"Monseigneur," the corporal said; "what this man told us was true then? We
met him, and as he looked as if he were running away, we arrested him. He
had this plate—"
"And he told you," the Bishop interrupted, with a smile, "that it was given
to him by an old priest at whose house he passed the night? I see it all. And
you brought him back here? That is a mistake."
"In that case," the corporal continued, "we can let him go?"
"Of course," the Bishop answered.
The gendarmes loosed their hold of Jean Valjean, who tottered back.
"Is it true that I am at liberty?" he said, in an almost inarticulate voice, and
as if speaking in his sleep.
"Yes, you are let go; don't you understand?" said a gendarme.
"My friend," the Bishop continued, "before you go take your candlesticks."
He went to the mantel-piece, fetched the two candlesticks, and handed them
to Jean Valjean. The two females watched him do so without a word,
without a sign, without a look that could disturb the Bishop. Jean Valjean
was trembling in all his limbs; he took the candlesticks mechanically, and
with wandering looks.
"Now," said the Bishop, "go in peace. By the bye, when you return, my
friend, it is unnecessary to pass through the garden, for you can always
enter, day and night, by the front door, which is only latched."

Then, turning to the gendarmes, he said,—
"Gentlemen, you can retire."
They did so. Jean Valjean looked as if he were on the point of fainting; the
Bishop walked up to him, and said in a low voice,—
"Never forget that you have promised me to employ this money in
becoming an honest man."
Jean Valjean, who had no recollection of having promised anything, stood
silent. The Bishop, who had laid a stress on these words, continued
solemnly,—
"Jean Valjean, my brother, you no longer belong to evil, but to good. I have
bought your soul of you. I withdraw it from black thoughts and the spirit of
perdition, and give it to God."

CHAPTER XIII.

LITTLE GERVAIS.

Jean Valjean left the town as if running away; he walked hastily across the
fields, taking the roads and paths that offered themselves, without
perceiving that he was going round and round. He wandered thus the entire
morning, and though he had eaten nothing, he did not feel hungry. He was
attacked by a multitude of novel sensations; he felt a sort of passion, but he
did not know with whom. He could not have said whether he was affected
or humiliated; at times a strange softening came over him, against which he
strove, and to which he opposed the hardening of the last twenty years. This
condition offended him, and he saw with alarm that the species of frightful
calmness, which the injustice of his misfortune had produced, was shaken
within him. He asked himself what would take its place; at times he would
have preferred being in prison and with the gendarmes, and that things had
not happened thus; for that would have agitated him less. Although the
season was advanced, there were still here and there in the hedges a few
laggard flowers, whose smell recalled childhood's memories as he passed

them. These recollections were almost unendurable, for it was so long since
they had recurred to him.
Indescribable thoughts were thus congregated within him the whole day
through. When the sun was setting, and lengthening on the ground the
shadow of the smallest pebble, Jean Valjean was sitting behind a bush in a
large tawny and utterly-deserted plain. There were only the Alps on the
horizon, there was not even the steeple of a distant village. Jean Valjean
might be about three leagues from D——, and a path that crossed the plain
ran a few paces from the bushes. In the midst of this meditation, which
would have contributed no little in rendering his rags startling to any one
who saw him, he heard a sound of mirth. He turned his head and saw a little
Savoyard about ten years of age coming along the path, with his hurdy-
gurdy at his side and his dormouse-box on his back. He was one of those
gentle, merry lads who go about from place to place, displaying their knees
through the holes in their trousers.
While singing the lad stopped every now and then to play at pitch and toss
with some coins he held in his hand, which were probably his entire
fortune. Among these coins was a two-franc piece. The lad stopped by the
side of the bushes without seeing Jean Valjean, and threw up the handful of
sous, all of which he had hitherto always caught on the back of his hand.
This time the two-franc piece fell, and rolled up to Jean Valjean, who placed
his foot upon it. But the boy had looked after the coin, and seen him do it;
he did not seem surprised, but walked straight up to the man. It was an
utterly deserted spot; as far as eye could extend there was no one on the
plain or the path. Nothing was audible, save the faint cries of a swarm of
birds of passage passing through the sky, at an immense height. The boy
had his back turned to the sun, which wove golden threads in his hair, and
suffused Jean Valjean's face with a purpled, blood-red hue.
"Sir," the little Savoyard said, with that childish confidence which is
composed of ignorance and innocence, "my coin?"
"What is your name?" Jean Valjean said.
"Little Gervais, sir."
"Be off," said Jean Valjean.
"Give me my coin, if you please, sir."

Jean Valjean hung his head, but said nothing.
The boy began again,—
"My two-franc piece, sir."
Jean Valjean's eye remained fixed on the ground.
"My coin," the boy cried, "my silver piece, my money."
It seemed as if Jean Valjean did not hear him, for the boy seized the collar
of his blouse and shook him, and at the same time made an effort to remove
the iron-shod shoe placed on his coin.
"I want my money, my forty-sous piece."
The boy began crying, and Jean Valjean raised his head. He was still sitting
on the ground, and his eyes were misty. He looked at the lad with a sort of
amazement, then stretched forth his hand to his stick, and shouted in a
terrible voice, "Who is there?"
"I, sir," the boy replied. "Little Gervais; give me back my two francs, if you
please. Take away your foot, sir, if you please." Then he grew irritated,
though so little, and almost threatening.
"Come, will you lift your foot? Lift it, I say!"
"Ah, it is you still," said Jean Valjean, and springing up, with his foot still
held on the coin, he added, "Will you be off or not?"
The startled boy looked at him, then began trembling from head to foot, and
after a few moments of stupor ran off at full speed, without daring to look
back or utter a cry. Still, when he had got a certain distance, want of breath
forced him to stop, and Jean Valjean could hear him sobbing. In a few
minutes the boy had disappeared. The sun had set, and darkness collected
around Jean Valjean. He had eaten nothing all day, and was probably in a
fever. He had remained standing and not changed his attitude since the boy
ran off. His breath heaved his chest at long and unequal intervals, his eye,
fixed ten or twelve yards ahead, seemed to be studying with profound
attention the shape of an old fragment of blue earthenware which had fallen
in the grass. Suddenly he started, for he felt the night chill; he pulled his cap
over his forehead, mechanically tried to cross and button his blouse, made a
step, and stooped to pick up his stick.

At this moment he perceived the two-franc piece, which his foot had half
buried in the turf, and which glistened among the pebbles. It had the effect
of a galvanic shock upon him. "What is this?" he muttered. He fell back
three paces, then stopped, unable to take his eye from the spot his foot had
trodden a moment before, as if the thing glistening there in the darkness had
an open eye fixed upon him. In a few moments he dashed convulsively at
the coin, picked it up, and began looking out into the plain, while
shuddering like a straying wild beast which is seeking shelter.
He saw nothing, night was falling, the plain was cold and indistinct, and
heavy purple mists rose in the twilight. He set out rapidly in a certain
direction, the one in which the lad had gone. After going some thirty yards
he stopped, looked and saw nothing; then he shouted with all his strength,
"little Gervais, Little Gervais!" He was silent, and waited, but there was no
response. The country was deserted and gloomy, and he was surrounded by
space. There was nothing but a gloom in which his gaze was lost, and a
stillness in which his voice was lost. An icy breeze was blowing, and
imparted to things around a sort of mournful life. The bushes shook their
little thin arms with incredible fury; they seemed to be threatening and
pursuing some one.
He walked onwards and then began running, but from time to time he
stopped, and shouted in the solitude with a voice the most formidable and
agonizing that can be imagined: "Little Gervais, Little Gervais!" Assuredly,
if the boy had heard him, he would have felt frightened, and not have
shown himself; but the lad was doubtless a long way off by this time. The
convict met a priest on horseback, to whom he went up and said,—
"Monsieur le Curé, have you seen a lad pass?"
"No," the priest replied.
"A lad of the name of 'Little Gervais?'"
"I have seen nobody."
The convict took two five-franc pieces from his pouch and handed them to
the Priest.
"Monsieur le Curé, this is for your poor. He was a boy of about ten years of
age, with a dormouse, I think, and a hurdy-gurdy,—a Savoyard, you know."

"I did not see him."
"Can you tell me if there is any one of the name of Little Gervais in the
villages about here?"
"If it is as you say, my good fellow, the lad is a stranger. Many of them pass
this way."
Jean Valjean violently took out two other five-franc pieces, which he gave
the priest.
"For your poor," he said; then added wildly, "Monsieur l'Abbé, have me
arrested: I am a robber."
The priest urged on his horse, and rode away in great alarm, while Jean
Valjean set off running in the direction he had first taken. He went on for a
long distance, looking, calling, and shouting, but he met no one else. Twice
or thrice he ran across the plain to something that appeared to him to be a
person lying or sitting down; but he only found heather, or rocks level with
the ground. At last he stopped at a spot where three paths met; the moon
had risen; he gazed afar, and called out for the last time, "Little Gervais,
Little Gervais, Little Gervais!" His shout died away in the mist, without
even awakening an echo. He muttered again, "Little Gervais," in a weak
and almost inarticulate voice, but it was his last effort. His knees suddenly
gave way under him as if an invisible power were crushing him beneath the
weight of a bad conscience. He fell exhausted on a large stone, with his
hand tearing his hair, his face between his knees, and shrieked: "I am a
scoundrel!" Then his heart melted, and he began to weep; it was the first
time for nineteen years.
When Jean Valjean quitted the Bishop's house he was lifted out of his
former thoughts, and could not account for what was going on within him.
He stiffened himself against the angelic deeds and gentle words of the old
man: "You have promised me to become an honest man. I purchase your
soul; I withdraw it from the spirit of perverseness and give it to God." This
incessantly recurred to him, and he opposed to this celestial indulgence that
pride which is within us as the fortress of evil. He felt indistinctly that this
priest's forgiveness was the greatest and most formidable assault by which
he had yet been shaken; that his hardening would be permanent if he
resisted this clemency; that if he yielded he must renounce that hatred with

which the actions of other men had filled his soul during so many years, and
which pleased him; that this time he must either conquer or be vanquished,
and that the struggle, a colossal and final struggle, had begun between his
wickedness and that man's goodness.
In the presence of all these gleams he walked on like a drunken man. While
he went on thus with haggard eye, had he any distinct perception of what
the result of his adventure at D—— might be? Did he hear all that
mysterious buzzing which warns or disturbs the mind at certain moments of
life? Did a voice whisper in his ear that he had just gone through the solemn
hour of his destiny, that no middle way was now left him, and that if he
were not henceforth the best of men he would be the worst; that he must
now ascend higher than the bishop, or sink lower than the galley-slave; that
if he wished to be good he must become an angel, and if he wished to
remain wicked that he must become a monster?
Here we must ask again the question we previously asked, Did he
confusedly receive any shadow of all this into his mind? Assuredly, as we
said, misfortune educates the intellect, still it is doubtful whether Jean
Valjean was in a state to draw the conclusions we have formed. If these
ideas reached him, he had a glimpse of them rather than saw them, and they
only succeeded in throwing him into an indescribable and almost painful
trouble. On leaving that shapeless black thing which is called the bagne the
Bishop had hurt his soul, in the same way as a too brilliant light would have
hurt his eyes on coming out of darkness. The future life, the possible life,
which presented itself to him, all pure and radiant, filled him with tremor
and anxiety, and he really no longer knew how matters were. Like an owl
that suddenly witnessed a sunrise the convict had been dazzled and, as it
were, blinded by virtue.
One thing which he did not suspect is certain, however, that he was no
longer the same man; all was changed in him, and it was no longer in his
power to get rid of the fact that the Bishop had spoken to him and taken his
hand. While in this mental condition he met Little Gervais, and robbed him
of his two francs: why did he so? Assuredly he could not explain it. Was it a
final, and as it were supreme, effort of the evil thought he had brought from
the bagne, a remainder of impulse, a result of what is called in Statics
"acquired force"? It was so, and was perhaps also even less than that. Let us
say it simply, it was not he who robbed, it was not the man, but the brute

beast that through habit and instinct stupidly placed its foot on the coin,
while the intellect was struggling with such novel and extraordinary
sensations. When the intellect woke again and saw this brutish action, Jean
Valjean recoiled with agony and uttered a cry of horror. It was a curious
phenomenon, and one only possible in his situation, that, in robbing the boy
of that money, he committed a deed of which he was no longer capable.
However this may be, this last bad action had a decisive effect upon him: it
suddenly darted through the chaos which filled his mind and dissipated it,
placed on one side the dark mists, on the other the light, and acted on his
soul, in its present condition, as certain chemical re-agents act upon a
troubled mixture, by precipitating one element and clarifying another. At
first, before even examining himself or reflecting, he wildly strove to find
the boy again and return him his money; then, when he perceived that this
was useless and impossible, he stopped in despair. At the moment when he
exclaimed, "I am a scoundrel!" he had seen himself as he really was, and
was already so separated from himself that he fancied himself merely a
phantom, and that he had there before him, in flesh and blood, his blouse
fastened round his hips, his knapsack full of stolen objects on his back, with
his resolute and gloomy face and his mind full of hideous schemes, the
frightful galley-slave, Jean Valjean.
As we have remarked, excessive misfortune had made him to some extent a
visionary, and this therefore was a species of vision. He really saw that Jean
Valjean with his sinister face before him, and almost asked himself who this
man who so horrified him was. His brain was in that violent and yet
frightfully calm stage when the reverie is so deep that it absorbs reality. He
contemplated himself, so to speak, face to face, and at the same time he saw
through this hallucination a species of light which he at first took for a
torch. On looking more attentively at this light which appeared to his
conscience, he perceived that it had a human shape and was the Bishop. His
conscience examined in turn the two men standing before him, the Bishop
and Jean Valjean. By one of those singular effects peculiar to an ecstasy of
this nature, the more his reverie was prolonged, the taller and more brilliant
the Bishop appeared, while Jean Valjean grew less and faded out of sight.
At length he disappeared and the Bishop alone remained, who filled the
wretched man's soul with a magnificent radiance.

Jean Valjean wept for a long time, and sobbed with more weakness than a
woman, more terror than a child. While he wept the light grew brighter in
his brain,—an extraordinary light, at once ravishing and terrible. His past
life, his first fault, his long expiation, his external brutalization, his internal
hardening, his liberation, accompanied by so many plans of vengeance,
what had happened at the Bishop's, the last thing he had done, the robbery
of the boy, a crime the more cowardly and monstrous because it took place
after the Bishop's forgiveness, —all this recurred to him, but in a light
which he had never before seen. He looked at his life, and it appeared to
him horrible; at his soul, and it appeared to him frightful. Still a soft light
was shed over both, and he fancied that he saw Satan by the light of
Paradise.
How many hours did he weep thus? what did he do afterwards? whither did
he go? No one ever knew. It was stated, however, that on this very night the
mail carrier from Grenoble, who arrived at D—— at about three o'clock in
the morning, while passing through the street where the Bishop's Palace
stood, saw a man kneeling on the pavement in the attitude of prayer in front
of Monseigneur Welcome's door.

BOOK III

IN THE YEAR 1817.

CHAPTER I.

THE YEAR 1817.

1817 is the year which Louis XVIII., with a certain royal coolness which
was not deficient in pride, entitled the twenty-second of his reign. It is the
year in which M. Bruguière de Sorsum was celebrated. All the wig-makers'
shops, hoping for powder and the return of the royal bird, were covered

with azure and fleurs de lys. It was the candid time when Count Lynch sat
every Sunday as churchwarden at St. Germain-des-Près in the coat of a peer
of France, with his red ribbon, his long nose, and that majestic profile
peculiar to a man who has done a brilliant deed. The brilliant deed done by
M. Lynch was having, when Mayor of Bordeaux, surrendered the town
rather prematurely on March 12, 1814, to the Duc d'Angoulême; hence his
peerage. In 1817 fashion buried little boys of the age of six and seven
beneath vast morocco leather caps with earflaps, much resembling
Esquimaux fur-bonnets. The French army was dressed in white, like the
Austrian; the regiments were called Legions, and bore the names of the
departments instead of numbers. Napoleon was at St Helena, and as
England refused him green cloth he had his old coats turned. In 1817
Pellegrini sang, and Mlle. Bigottini danced, Potier reigned, and Odry was
not as yet. Madame Saqui succeeded Forioso. There were still Prussians in
France. M. Delalot was a personage. Legitimacy had just strengthened itself
by cutting off the hand and then the head of Pleignier, Carbonneau, and
Tolleron. Prince de Talleyrand, Lord High Chamberlain, and the Abbé
Louis, Minister Designate of Finance, looked at each other with the laugh
of two augurs. Both had celebrated on July 14, 1790, the Mass of the
confederation in the Champ de Mars. Talleyrand had read it as bishop,
Louis had served it as deacon. In 1817, in the side walks of the same
Champ de Mars, could be seen large wooden cylinders, lying in the wet and
rotting in the grass, painted blue, with traces of eagles and bees which had
lost their gilding. These were the columns which two years previously
supported the Emperor's balcony at the Champ de Mai. They were partly
blackened by the bivouac fires of the Austrians encamped near Gros
Caillou, and two or three of the columns had disappeared in the bivouac
fires, and warmed the coarse hands of the Kaiserlichs. The Champ de Mai
had this remarkable thing about it, that it was held in the month of June, and
on the Champ de Mars. In this year, 1817, two things were popular,—the
Voltaire Touquet and the snuff-box à la charte. The latest Parisian sensation
was the crime of Dautun, who threw his brother's head into the basin on the
Flower Market. People were beginning to grow anxious at the Admiralty
that no news arrived about that fatal frigate la Méduse, which was destined
to cover Chaumareix with shame and Géricault with glory. Colonel Selves
proceeded to Egypt to become Soliman Pacha there. The palace of the
Thermes, in the Rue de la Harpe, served as a shop for a cooper. On the

platform of the octagonal tower of the Hotel de Cluny, could still be seen
the little wooden house, which had served as an observatory for Messier,
astronomer to the Admiralty under Louis XVI. The Duchesse de Duras was
reading to three or four friends in her boudoir furnished with sky-blue satin
X's, her unpublished romance of Ourika. The N's were scratched off the
Louvre. The Austerlitz bridge was forsworn, and called the Kings' Gardens'
bridge,—a double enigma which at once disguised the Austerlitz bridge and
the Jardin des Plantes. Louis XVIII., while annotating Horace with his nail,
was troubled by heroes who make themselves emperors and cobblers who
make themselves dauphins; he had two objects of anxiety,—Napoleon and
Mathurin Bruneau. The French Academy offered as subject for the prize
essay the happiness produced by study. M. Billart was officially eloquent;
and in his shadow could be seen growing up that future Advocate-General
de Broë, promised to the sarcasms of Paul Louis Courier. There was a false
Châteaubriand called Marchangy, while waiting till there should be a false
Marchangy, called d'Arlincourt. "Claire d'Albe" and "Malek-Adel" were
master-pieces; and Madame Cottin was declared the first writer of the age.
The Institute erased from its lists the Academician Napoleon Bonaparte. A
royal decree constituted Angoulême a naval school, for, as the Duc
d'Angoulême was Lord High Admiral, it was evident that the city from
which he derived his title possessed de jure all the qualifications of a
seaport; if not, the monarchical principle would be encroached on. In the
cabinet-council the question was discussed whether the wood-cuts
representing tumblers, which seasoned Franconi's bills and caused the street
scamps to congregate, should be tolerated. M. Paër, author of l'Agnese, a
square-faced man with a carbuncle on his chin, directed the private concerts
of the Marchioness de Sassenaye in the Rue de la Ville'd'Evêque. All the
young ladies were singing, "L'ermite de Saint Avelle," words by Edmond
Géraud. The Yellow Dwarf was transformed into the Mirror. The Café
Lemblin stood up for the Emperor against the Café Valois, which supported
the Bourbons. The Duc de Berry, whom Louvel was already gazing at from
the darkness, had just been married to a princess of Sicily. It was a year
since Madame de Staël had died. The Life Guards hissed Mademoiselle
Mars. The large papers were all small; their size was limited, but the liberty
was great. The Constitutionnel was constitutional, and the Minerva called
Châteaubriand, Châteaubriant; this t made the city laugh heartily, at the
expense of the great writer. Prostituted journalists insulted in sold journals

the proscripts of 1815. David had no longer talent, Arnault wit, Carnot
probity. Soult never had won a battle. It is true that Napoleon no longer had
genius. Everybody knows that it is rare for letters sent by post to reach an
exile, for the police make it a religious duty to intercept them. The fact is
not new, for Descartes when banished complained of it. David having
displayed some temper in a Belgian paper at not receiving letters written to
him, this appeared very amusing to the Royalist journals, which ridiculed
the proscribed man. The use of the words regicides or voters, enemies or
allies, Napoleon or Buonaparte, separated two men more than an abyss. All
persons of common sense were agreed that the era of revolutions was
eternally closed by Louis XVIII., surnamed "the immortal author of the
Charter." On the platform of the Pont Neuf the word "Redivivus" was
carved on the pedestal which was awaiting the statue of Henri IV. M. Piet
was excogitating at No. 4 Rue Thérèse his council to consolidate the
monarchy. The leaders of the Right said in grave complications, "Bacot
must be written to." Messieurs Canuel, O'Mahony, and de Chappedelaine,
were sketching under the covert approval of Monsieur what was destined to
be at a later date "the conspiracy du Bord de l'eau." The "Black Pin" was
plotting on its side. Delaverderie was coming to an understanding with
Trogoff. M. Decazes, a rather liberally-minded man, was in the ascendant.
Châteaubriand, standing each morning at his No. 27 Rue Saint Dominique,
in trousers and slippers, with his gray hair fastened by a handkerchief, with
his eyes fixed on a mirror, and a case of dentist's instruments open before
him,—was cleaning his teeth, which were splendid, while dictating "the
Monarchy according to the Charter" to M. Pilorge, his secretary.
Authoritative critics preferred Lafon to Talma. M. de Feletz signed A; M.
Hoffman signed Z. Charles Nodier was writing "Thérèse Aubert." Divorce
was abolished. The lyceums were called colleges. The collegians, with a
gold fleur de lys on their collar, were fighting about the King of Rome. The
counter-police of the Château denounced to her Royal Highness Madame,
the universally exposed portrait of the Duc d'Orléans, who looked much
handsomer in his uniform of Colonel General of Hussars than the Duc de
Berry did in his uniform as Colonel General of Dragoons, which was a
serious annoyance. The city of Paris was having the dome of the Invalides
regilt at its own cost. Serious-minded men asked themselves what M. de
Trinquelague would do in such and such a case. M. Clausel de Montais
diverged on certain points from M. Clausel de Coussergues; M. de

Salaberry was not satisfied. Picard the comedian, who belonged to the
Academy of which Molière was not a member, was playing the two
Philiberts at the Odéon, on the façade of which could still be distinctly read:
THÉÂTRE DE L'IMPÉRATRICE, although the letters had been torn down. People
were taking sides for or against Cugnet de Montarlot. Fabvier was factious;
Bavoux was revolutionary; Pelicier the publisher brought out an edition of
Voltaire with the title "The Works of Voltaire, of the Académie Française."
"That catches purchasers," the simple publisher said. It was the general
opinion that M. Charles Loyson would be the genius of the age; envy was
beginning to snap at him, which is a sign of glory, and the following line
was written about him.
"Même quand Loyson vole, on sent qu'il a des pattes."
As Cardinal Fesch refused to resign, M. de Pins, Archbishop of Amasia,
was administering the diocese of Lyons. The quarrel about the Dappes
valley began between Switzerland and France, through a memorial of
Captain Dufour, who has since become a general. Saint Simon, utterly
ignored, was building up his sublime dream. There were in the Academy of
Sciences a celebrated Fourier whom posterity has forgotten, and in some
obscure garret a Fourier whom the future will remember. Lord Byron was
beginning to culminate; a note to a poem of Millevoye's announced him to
France in these terms, "un certain Lord Baron." David d'Angers was trying
to mould marble. The Abbé Caron spoke in terms of praise to a select
audience in the Alley of the Feuillantines of an unknown priest called
Félicité Robert, who was at a later date Lamennais. A thing that smoked and
plashed on the Seine with the noise of a swimming dog, went under the
Tuileries windows from the Pont Royal to the Pont Louis XV.; it was a
mechanism not worth much, a sort of plaything, a reverie of a dreamy
inventor, an Utopia: a steamboat. The Parisians looked at this useless thing
with indifference. M. de Vaublanc, reformer of the Institute by coup d'état,
and distinguished author of several academicians, after making them, could
not succeed in becoming one himself. The Faubourg St Germain and the
Pavilion Marson desired to have M. Delvau as Prefect of police on account
of his devotion. Dupuytren and Récamier quarrelled in the theatre of the
School of Medicine, and were going to fight about the divinity of the
Saviour. Cuvier, with one eye on Genesis and the other on nature, was
striving to please the bigoted reaction by placing forms in harmony with

texts, and letting Moses be flattered by the Mastodons. M. François de
Neufchâteau, the praiseworthy cultivator of the memory of Parmentier, was
making a thousand efforts to have "pommes de terre" pronounced
"parmentière," but did not succeed. The Abbé Grégoire, ex-bishop, ex-
conventionalist, and ex-senator, had reached in the royal polemics the state
of the "infamous Grégoire," which was denounced as a neologism by M.
Royer-Collard. In the third arch of the Pont de Jéna, the new stone could
still be distinguished through its whiteness, with which two years
previously the mine formed by Blucher to blow up the bridge was stopped
up. Justice summoned to her bar a man who, on seeing the Comte d'Artois
enter Notre Dame, said aloud: "Sapristi! I regret the days when I saw
Napoleon and Talma enter the Bal Sauvage arm in arm," seditious remarks
punished with six months' imprisonment.
Traitors displayed themselves unblushingly; some, who had passed over to
the enemy on the eve of a battle, did not conceal their reward, but walked
immodestly in the sunshine with the cynicism of wealth and dignities; the
deserters at Ligny and Quatre Bras, well rewarded for their turpitude,
openly displayed their monarchical devotion.
Such are a few recollections of the year 1817, which is now forgotten.
History neglects nearly all these details, and cannot do otherwise, as the
infinity would crush it. Still these details, wrongly called little,—there are
no little facts in humanity or little leaves in vegetation,—are useful, for the
face of ages is composed of the physiognomy of years.
In this year 1817 four young Parisians played a capital joke.

CHAPTER II.

A DOUBLE QUARTETTE.

These Parisians came, one from Toulouse, the second from Limoges, the
third from Cahors, the fourth from Montauban, but they were students, and
thus Parisians; for studying in Paris is being born in Paris. These young men
were insignificant, four every-day specimens, neither good nor bad, wise

nor ignorant, geniuses nor idiots, and handsome with that charming Aprilia
which is called twenty years. They were four Oscars, for at that period
Arthurs did not yet exist. "Burn for him the perfumes of Arabia," the
romance said; "Oscar is advancing, I am about to see him." People had just
emerged from Ossian: the elegant world was Scandinavian and Caledonian,
the English style was not destined to prevail till a later date, and the first of
the Arthurs, Wellington, had only just won the battle of Waterloo.
The names of these Oscars were Félix Tholomyès, of Toulouse; Listolier, of
Cahors; Fameuil, of Limoges; and Blachevelle, of Montauban. Of course
each had a mistress; Blachevelle loved Favourite, so called because she had
been to England; Listolier adored Dahlia, who had taken the name of a
flower for her nom de guerre; Fameuil idolized Zéphine, an abridgment of
Josephine; while Tholomyès had Fantine, called the Blonde, owing to her
magnificent suncolored hair. Favourite, Dahlia, Zéphine, and Fantine were
four exquisitely pretty girls, still to some extent workwomen. They had not
entirely laid down the needle, and though unsettled by their amourettes,
they still had in their faces a remnant of the serenity of toil, and in their
souls that flower of honesty, which in a woman survives the first fall. One
of the four was called the young one, because she was the youngest, and
one called the old one, who was only three-and-twenty. To conceal nothing,
the three first were more experienced, more reckless, and had flown further
into the noise of life than Fantine the Blonde, who was still occupied with
her first illusion.
Dahlia, Zéphine, and especially Favourite, could not have said the same.
There was already more than one episode in their scarce-begun romance,
and the lover who was called Adolphe in the first chapter, became Alphonse
in the second, and Gustave in the third. Poverty and coquettishness are two
fatal counsellors: one scolds, the other flatters, and the poor girls of the
lower classes have them whispering in both ears. Badly-guarded souls
listen, and hence come the falls they make, and the stones hurled at them.
They are crushed with the splendor of all that is immaculate and
inaccessible. Alas! what if the Jungfrau had hunger? Favourite, who had
been to England, was admired by Zéphine and Dahlia. She had a home of
her own from an early age. Her father was an old brutal and boasting
professor of mathematics, unmarried, and still giving lessons in spite of his
age. This professor, when a young man, had one day seen a lady's maid's

gown caught in a fender; he fell in love with this accident, and Favourite
was the result. She met her father from time to time, and he bowed to her.
One morning, an old woman with a hypocritical look came into her room
and said, "Do you not know me, Miss?" "No." "I am your mother." Then the
old woman opened the cupboard, ate and drank, sent for a mattress she had,
and installed herself. This mother, who was grumbling and proud, never
spoke to Favourite, sat for hours without saying a word, breakfasted, dined,
and supped for half a dozen, and spent her evenings in the porter's lodge,
where she abused her daughter. What drew Dahlia toward Listolier, towards
others perhaps, towards idleness, was having too pretty pink nails. How
could she employ such nails in working? A girl who wishes to remain
virtuous must not have pity on her hands. As for Zéphine, she had
conquered Fameuil by her little saucy and coaxing way of saying "Yes, Sir."
The young men were comrades, the girls friends. Such amours are always
doubled by such friendships.
A sage and a philosopher are two persons; and what proves it is that, after
making all reservations for these little irregular households, Favourite,
Zéphine, and Dahlia were philosophic girls, and Fantine a prudent girl.
Prudent, it will be said, and Tholomyès? Solomon would reply, that love
forms part of wisdom. We confine ourselves to saying that Fantine's love
was a first love, a single love, a faithful love. She was the only one of the
four who was addressed familiarly by one man alone.
Fantine was one of those beings who spring up from the dregs of the
people; issuing from the lowest depths of the social darkness, she had on
her forehead the stamp of the anonymous and the unknown. She was born
at M. sur M.; of what parents, who could say? She had never known either
father or mother. She called herself Fantine, and why Fantine? She was
never known by any other name. At the period of her birth, the Directory
was still in existence. She had no family name, as she had no family; and no
Christian name, as the Church was abolished. She accepted the name given
her by the first passer-by, who saw her running barefooted about the streets.
She was called little Fantine, and no one knew any more. This human
creature came into the world in that way. At the age of ten, Fantine left the
town, and went into service with farmers in the neighborhood. At the age of
fifteen she went to Paris, "to seek her fortune." Fantine was pretty and
remained pure as long as she could. She was a charming blonde, with

handsome teeth; she had gold and pearls for her dower, but the gold was on
her head, and the pearls in her mouth.
She worked for a livelihood; and then she loved, still for the sake of living,
for the heart is hungry too. She loved Tholomyès; it was a pastime for him,
but a passion with her. The streets of the Quartier Latin, which are thronged
with students and grisettes, saw the beginning of this dream. Fantine, in the
labyrinth of the Pantheon Hill, where so many adventures are fastened and
unfastened, long shunned Tholomyès, but in such a way as to meet him
constantly. There is a manner of avoiding which resembles seeking,—in a
word, the eclogue was played.
Blachevelle, Listolier, and Fameuil formed a sort of group, of which
Tholomyès was the head, for it was he who had the wit. Tholomyès was the
antique old student; he was rich, for he had an income of 4000 francs a year,
a splendid scandal on the Montagne St. Geneviève. Tholomyès was a man
of the world, thirty years of age, and in a bad state of preservation. He was
wrinkled and had lost teeth, and he had an incipient baldness, of which he
himself said without sorrow: "The skull at thirty, the knee at forty." He had
but a poor digestion, and one of his eyes was permanently watery. But in
proportion as his youth was extinguished, his gayety became brighter; he
substituted jests for his teeth, joy for his hair, irony for his health, and his
weeping eye laughed incessantly. He was battered, but still flowering. His
youth had beaten an orderly retreat, and only the fire was visible. He had
had a piece refused at the Vaudeville Theatre, and wrote occasional verses
now and then. In addition, he doubted everything in a superior way, which
is a great strength in the eyes of the weak. Hence, being ironical and bald,
he was the leader. We wonder whether irony, is derived from the English
word "iron"? One day Tholomyès took the other three aside, made an
oracular gesture, and said,—
"It is nearly a year that Fantine, Dahlia, Zéphine, and Favorite have been
asking us to give them a surprise, and we promised solemnly to do so. They
are always talking about it, especially to me. In the same way as the old
women of Naples cry to Saint Januarius, "Yellow face, perform your
miracle!" our beauties incessantly say to me, "Tholomyès, when will you be
delivered of your surprise?" At the same time our parents are writing to us,
so let us kill two birds with one stone. The moment appears to me to have
arrived, so let us talk it over."

Upon this, Tholomyès lowered his voice, and mysteriously uttered
something so amusing that a mighty and enthusiastic laugh burst from four
mouths simultaneously, and Blacheville exclaimed "That is an idea!" An
estaminet full of smoke presenting itself, they went in, and the remainder of
their conference was lost in the tobacco clouds. The result of the gloom was
a brilliant pleasure excursion, that took place on the following Sunday, to
which the four young men invited the girls.

CHAPTER III.

FOUR TO FOUR.

It is difficult to form an idea at the present day of what a pleasure party of
students and grisettes was four-and-forty years ago. Paris has no longer the
same environs; the face of what may be termed circum-Parisian life has
completely changed during half a century; where there was the old-
fashioned coach, there is a railway-carriage; where there was the fly-boat,
there is now the steamer; people talk of Fécamp as people did in those days
of St. Cloud. Paris of 1862 is a city which has France for its suburbs.
The four couples conscientiously accomplished all the rustic follies possible
at that day. It was a bright warm summer day; they rose at five o'clock; then
they went to St. Cloud in the stage-coach, looked at the dry cascade, and
exclaimed, "That must be grand when there is water;" breakfasted at the
Tête Noire, where Castaing had not yet put up, ran at the ring in the
Quincunx of the great basin, ascended into the Diogenes lantern, gambled
for macaroons at the roulette board by the Sêvres bridge, culled posies at
Puteaux, bought reed-pipes at Neuilly, ate apple tarts everywhere, and were
perfectly happy. The girls prattled and chattered like escaped linnets; they
were quite wild, and every now and then gave the young men little taps. Oh,
youthful intoxication of life! adorable years! the wing of the dragon-fly
rustles. Oh, whoever you may be, do you remember? have you ever walked
in the woods, removing the branches for the sake of the pretty head that
comes behind you? have you laughingly stepped on a damp slope, with a
beloved woman who holds your hand, and cries, "Oh, my boots, what a

state they are in!" Let us say at once, that the merry annoyance of a shower
was spared the happy party, although Favourite had said on starting, with a
magisterial and maternal air, "The slugs are walking about the paths; that is
a sign of rain, children."
All four were pretty madcaps. A good old classic poet, then renowned, M. le
Chevalier de Labouisse, a worthy man who had an Eléanore, wandering that
day under the chestnut-trees of St. Cloud, saw them pass at about ten in the
morning, and exclaimed, "There is one too many," thinking of the Graces.
Favourite, the girl who was three-and-twenty and the old one, ran in front
under the large green branches, leaped over ditches, strode madly across
bushes, and presided over the gayety with the spirit of a young fawn.
Zéphine and Dahlia, whom accident had created as a couple necessary to
enhance each other's beauty by contrast, did not separate, though more
through a coquettish instinct than through friendship, and leaning on one
another, assumed English attitudes; the first "Keepsakes" had just come out,
melancholy was culminating for women, as Byronism did at a later date for
men, and the hair of the tender sex was beginning to become dishevelled.
Zéphine and Dahlia had their hair in rolls. Listolier and Fameuil, who were
engaged in a discussion about their professors, were explaining to Fantine
the difference there was between M. Delvincourt and M. Blondeau.
Blachevelle seemed to have been created expressly to carry Favourite's
faded shabby shawl on Sundays.
Tholomyès came last; he was very gay, but there was something
commanding in his joviality; his principal ornament was nankeen trousers,
cut in the shape of elephant's legs, with leathern straps; he had a mighty
rattan worth 200 francs in his hand, and, as he was quite reckless, a strange
thing called a cigar in his mouth; nothing being sacred to him, he smoked.
"That Tholomyès is astounding," the others were wont to say with
veneration. "What trousers! what energy!"
As for Fantine she was the personification of joy. Her splendid teeth had
evidently been made for laughter by nature. She carried in her hand, more
willingly than on her head, her little straw bonnet, with its long streamers.
Her thick, light hair, inclined to float, and which had to be done up
continually, seemed made for the flight of Galatea under the willows. Her
rosy lips prattled enchantingly; the corners of her mouth voluptuously
raised, as in the antique masks of Erigone, seemed to encourage boldness;

but her long eyelashes, full of shade, were discreetly lowered upon the
seductiveness of the lower part of the face, as if to command respect. Her
whole toilet had something of song and sunshine about it; she had on a
dress of mauve barége, little buskin slippers, whose strings formed an X on
her fine, open-worked stockings, and that sort of muslin spencer, a
Marseillais invention, whose name of canezou, a corrupted pronunciation of
quinze Août at the Cannebière, signifies fine weather and heat. The three
others, who were less timid, as we said, bravely wore low-necked dresses,
which in summer are very graceful and attractive, under bonnets covered
with flowers; but by the side of this bold dress, Fantine's canezou, with its
transparency, indiscretion, and reticences, at once concealing and
displaying, seemed a provocative invention of decency; and the famous
Court of Love, presided over by the Vicomtesse de Cette with the sea-green
eyes, would have probably bestowed the prize for coquettishness on this
canezou, which competed for that of chastity. The simplest things are
frequently the cleverest.
Dazzling from a front view, delicate from a side view, with dark blue eyes,
heavy eye-lids, arched and small feet, wrists and ankles admirably set on,
the white skin displaying here and there the azure arborescences of the
veins, with a childish fresh cheek, the robust neck of the Æginetan Juno
shoulders, apparently modelled by Couston, and having in their centre a
voluptuous dimple, visible through the muslin; a gayety tempered by
reverie; a sculptural and exquisite being,—such was Fantine; you could
trace beneath the ribbons and finery a statue, and inside the statue a soul.
Fantine was beautiful, without being exactly conscious of it. Those rare
dreamers, the mysterious priests of the beautiful, who silently confront
everything with perfection, would have seen in this little work-girl the
ancient sacred euphony, through the transparency of Parisian grace! This
girl had blood in her, and had those two descriptions of beauty which are
the style and the rhythm. The style is the form of the ideal; the rhythm is its
movement.
We have said that Fantine was joy itself; she was also modesty. Any one
who watched her closely would have seen through all this intoxication of
youth, the season, and love, an invincible expression of restraint and
modesty. She remained slightly astonished, and this chaste astonishment
distinguishes Psyche from Venus. Fantine had the long white delicate

fingers of the Vestal, who stirs up the sacred fire with a golden bodkin.
Though she had refused nothing, as we shall soon see, to Tholomyès, her
face, when in repose, was supremely virginal; a species of stern and almost
austere dignity suddenly invaded it at certain hours, and nothing was so
singular and affecting as to see gayety so rapidly extinguished on it, and
contemplation succeed cheerfulness without any transition. This sudden
gravity, which was at times sternly marked, resembled the disdain of a
goddess. Her forehead, nose, and chin offered that equilibrium of outline
which is very distinct from the equilibrium of proportion, and produces the
harmony of the face; in the characteristic space between the base of the
nose and the upper lip, she had that imperceptible and charming curve, that
mysterious sign of chastity, which made Barbarossa fall in love with a
Diana found in the ruins of Iconium. Love is a fault; be it so; but Fantine
was innocence floating on the surface of the fault.

CHAPTER IV.

THOLOMYÈS SINGS A SPANISH SONG.

The whole of this day seemed to be composed of dawn; all nature seemed
to be having a holiday, and laughing. The pastures of St. Cloud exhaled
perfumes; the breeze from the Seine vaguely stirred the leaves; the branches
gesticulated in the wind; the bees were plundering the jessamine; a madcap
swarm of butterflies settled down on the ragwort, the clover, and the wild
oats; there was in the august park of the King of France a pack of
vagabonds, the birds. The four happy couples enjoyed the sun, the fields,
the flowers, and the trees. And in this community of Paradise, the girls,
singing, talking, dancing, chasing butterflies, picking bind-weed, wetting
their stockings in the tall grass, fresh, madcap, not bad, all received kisses
from all the men, every now and then, save Fantine, enveloped in her vague
resistance, dreamy and shy, and who was in love. "You always look
strange," Favourite said to her.
Such passings-by of happy couples are a profound appeal to life and nature,
and bring caresses and light out of everything. Once upon a time there was

a fairy, who made fields and trees expressly for lovers; hence the eternal
hedge-school of lovers, which incessantly recommences, and will last so
long as there are bushes and scholars. Hence the popularity of spring among
thinkers; the patrician and the knifegrinder, the duke and the limb of the
law, people of the court and people of the city, as they were called formerly,
are all subjects of this fairy. People laugh and seek each other; there is the
brilliancy of an apotheosis in the air, for what a transfiguration is loving!
Notary's clerks are gods. And then the little shrieks, pursuits in the grass,
waists caught hold of, that chattering which is so melodious, that adoration
which breaks out in the way of uttering a word, cherries torn from lips,—all
this is glorious! People believe that it will never end; philosophers, poets,
artists, regard these ecstasies, and know not what to do, as they are so
dazzled by them. The departure for Cythera! exclaims Watteau; Lancret, the
painter of the middle classes, regards his cits flying away in the blue sky;
Diderot stretches out his arms to all these amourettes, and d'Urfé mixes up
Druids with them.
After breakfast the four couples went to see, in what was then called the
King's Square, a plant newly arrived from the Indies, whose name we have
forgotten, but which at that time attracted all Paris to St. Cloud; it was a
strange and pretty shrub, whose numerous branches, fine as threads and
leafless, were covered with a million of small white flowers giving it the
appearance of a head of hair swarming with flowers; there was always a
crowd round it, admiring it. After inspecting the shrub, Tholomyès
exclaimed, "I will pay for donkeys;" and after making a bargain with the
donkey-man, they returned by Vauvres and Issy. At the latter place an
incident occurred; the park, a national estate held at this time by Bourguin
the contractor, was accidentally open. They passed through the gates,
visited the wax hermit in his grotto, and tried the mysterious effect of the
famous cabinet of mirrors, a lascivious trap, worthy of a satyr who had
become a millionnaire. They bravely pulled the large swing, fastened to the
two chestnut-trees celebrated by the Abbé de Bernis. While swinging the
ladies in turn, which produced, amid general laughter, a flying of skirts by
which Greuze would have profited, the Toulousian Tholomyès, who was
somewhat of a Spaniard, as Toulouse is the cousin of Tolosa, sang to a
melancholy tune the old gallega, which was probably inspired by the sight
of a pretty girl swinging between two trees,—

"Soy tie Badajoz
Amor me llama
Toda mi alma
Es en mis ojos
Porque enseflas
A tus piernas."
Fantine alone declined to swing.
"I do not like people to be so affected," Favourite muttered rather sharply.
On giving up the donkeys there was fresh pleasure; the Seine was crossed in
a boat, and from Passy they walked to the Barrière de l'Étoile. They had
been afoot since five in the morning; but no matter! "There is no such thing
as weariness on Sunday," said Favourite; "on Sundays fatigue does not
work." At about three o'clock, the four couples, wild with delight, turned
into the Montagnes Busses, a singular building, which at that time occupied
the heights of Beaujon, and whose winding line could be seen over the trees
of the Champs Élysées. From time to time Favourite exclaimed,—
"Where's the surprise? I insist on the surprise."
"Have patience," Tholomyès answered.

CHAPTER V.

AT BOMBARDA'S.

The Russian mountain exhausted, they thought about dinner, and the radiant
eight, at length somewhat weary, put into the Cabaret Bombarda, an
offshoot established in the Champs Élysées by that famous restaurateur
Bombarda, whose sign could be seen at that time at the Rue de Rivoli by
the side of the Delorme passage.
A large but ugly room, with an alcove and a bed at the end (owing to the
crowded state of the houses on Sundays they were compelled to put up with
it); two windows from which the quay and river could be contemplated
through the elm-trees; a magnificent autumn sun illumining the windows;

two tables, on one of them a triumphal mountain of bottles, mixed up with
hats and bonnets, at the other four couples joyously seated round a mass of
dishes, plates, bottles, and glasses, pitchers of beer, mingled with wine-
bottles; but little order on the table, and some amount of disorder under it.
"Ils faisaient sous la table
Un bruit, un trique-trac de pieds épouvantable,"
as Molière says. Such was the state of the pastoral which began at 5 A.M.; at
half-past 4 P.M. the sun was declining and appetite was satisfied.
The Champs Élysées, full of sunshine and crowd, were nought but light and
dust, two things of which glory is composed. The horses of Marly, those
neighing marbles, reared amid a golden cloud. Carriages continually passed
along; a squadron of splendid guards, with the trumpeter at their head, rode
down the Neuilly avenue; the white flag, tinged with pink by the setting
sun, floated above the dome of the Tuileries. The Place de la Concorde,
which had again become the Place Louis XV., was crowded with merry
promenaders. Many wore a silver fleur de lys hanging from a black moiré
ribbon, which, in 1817, had not entirely disappeared from the buttonholes.
Here and there, in the midst of applauding crowds, little girls were singing a
royalist bourrée, very celebrated at that time, intended to crush the hundred
days, and which had a chorus of,—
"Rendez nous notre père de Gand,
Rendez vous notre père."
Heaps of suburbans, dressed in their Sunday clothes, and some wearing
fleur de lys like the cits, were scattered over the squares, playing at quintain
or riding in roundabouts; others were drinking; some who were printers'
apprentices wore paper caps, and their laughter was the loudest. All was
radiant; it was a time of undeniable peace, and of profound royalist security;
it was a period when a private and special report of Anglès, prefect of police
to the King, terminated with these lines: "All things duly considered, Sire,
there is nothing to fear from these people. They are as careless and indolent
as cats, and though the lower classes in the provinces are stirring, those in
Paris are not so. They are all little men, Sire, and it would take two of them
to make one of your grenadiers. There is nothing to fear from the populace
of the capital. It is remarkable that their height has decreased during the last
fifty years, and the people of the suburbs of Paris are shorter than they were

before the Revolution. They are not dangerous, and, in a word, are good-
tempered canaille."
Prefects of police do not believe it possible that a cat can be changed into a
lion; it is so, however, and that is the miracle of the people of Paris. The cat,
so despised by Count Anglès, possessed the esteem of the old Republics; it
was the incarnation of liberty in their eyes, and as if to serve as a pendant to
the Minerva Apteros of the Piræus, there was on the public square of
Corinth a colossal bronze statue of a cat. The simple police of the
restoration had too favorable an opinion of the people of Paris, and they
were not such good-tempered canaille as they were supposed to be. The
Parisian is to the French-man what the Athenian is to the Greek; no one
sleeps sounder than he; no one is more frankly frivolous and idle than he;
no one can pretend to forget so well as he,—but he must not be trusted; he
is suited for every species of nonchalance, but when there is a glory as the
result, he is admirable for every sort of fury. Give him a pike and he will
make August 10; give him a musket, and you will have Austerlitz. He is the
support of Napoleon, and the resource of Danton. If the country is in
danger, he enlists; if liberty is imperilled, he tears up the pavement. His
hair, full of wrath, is epical, his blouse assumes the folds of a chlamys. Take
care; for of the first Rue Grenétat he comes to be will make Caudine forks.
If the hour strikes, this suburban grows, the little man looks in a terrible
manner, his breath becomes a tempest, and from his weak chest issues a
blast strong enough to uproot the Alps. It was through the Parisian suburban
that the Revolution, joined with armies, conquered Europe. He sings, and
that forms his delight; proportion his song to his nature, and you shall see!
So long as he has no burden but the Carmagnole, he will merely overthrow
Louis XVI.; but make him sing the Marseillaise, and he will deliver the
world.
After writing this note on the margin of Count Anglès' report, we will return
to our four couples. The dinner, as we said, was drawing to a close.

CHAPTER VI.

IN WHICH PEOPLE ADORE EACH OTHER.

Love talk and table talk are equally indescribable, for the first is a cloud, the
second smoke. Fantine and Dahlia were humming a tune, Tholomyès was
drinking, Zéphine laughing, Fantine smiling, Listolier was blowing a penny
trumpet bought at St. Cloud, Favourite was looking tenderly at Blachevelle
and saying,—
"Blachevelle, I adore you."
This led to Blachevelle asking,—
"What would you do, Favourite, if I ceased to love you?"
"I?" Favourite exclaimed, "oh, do not say that, even in fun! If you ceased to
love me I would run after you, claw you, throw water over you, and have
you arrested."
Blachevelle smiled with the voluptuous fatuity of a man whose self-esteem
is tickled. Dahlia, while still eating, whispered to Favourite through the
noise,—
"You seem to be very fond of your Blachevelle?"
"I detest him," Favourite answered in the same key, as she seized her fork
again. "He is miserly, and I prefer the little fellow who lives opposite to me.
He is a very good-looking young man; do you know him? It is easy to see
that he wants to be an actor, and I am fond of actors. So soon as he comes
in, his mother says,—'Oh, good heavens! my tranquillity is destroyed: he is
going to begin to shout; my dear boy, you give me a headache;' because he
goes about the house, into the garrets as high as he can get, and sings and
declaims, so that he can be heard from the streets! He already earns 20 sous
a day in a lawyer's office. He is the son of an ex-chorister at St. Jacques du
Haut Pas. Ah! he adores me to such a pitch that one day when he saw me
making batter for pancakes, he said to me, 'Mamselle, make fritters of your
gloves, and I will eat them.' Only artists are able to say things like that. Ah!
he is very good-looking, and I feel as if I am about to fall madly in love
with the little fellow. No matter, I tell Blachevelle that I adore him: what a
falsehood, eh, what a falsehood!"
After a pause, Favourite continued,—
"Dahlia, look you, I am sad. It has done nothing but rain all the summer: the
wind annoys me, Blachevelle is excessively mean, there are hardly any

green peas in the market, one does not know what to eat; I have the spleen,
as the English say, for butter is so dear; and then it is horrifying that we are
dining in a room with a bed in it, and that disgusts me with life."

CHAPTER VII.

THE WISDOM OF THOLOMYÈS.

At length, when all were singing noisily, or talking all together, Tholomyès
interfered.
"Let us not talk hap-hazard or too quickly," he exclaimed; "we must
meditate if we desire to be striking; too much improvisation stupidly
empties the mind. Gentlemen, no haste; let us mingle majesty with our
gayety, eat contemplatively, and let festina lente be our rule. We must not
hurry. Look at the Spring; if it goes ahead too fast it is floored, that is to say,
nipped by frost. Excessive zeal ruins the peach and apricot trees; excessive
zeal kills the grace and joy of good dinners. No zeal, gentlemen; Grimaud
de la Reynière is of the same opinion as Talleyrand."
A dull rebellion broke out in the party.
"Tholomyès, leave us at peace," said Blachevelle.
"Down with the tyrant!" said Fameuil.
"Sunday exists," Listolier added.
"We are sober," Fameuil remarked again.
"Tholomyès," said Blachevelle, "contemplate my calmness" (mon calme.)
"You are the Marquis of that ilk," Tholomyès replied. This poor pun
produced the effect of a stone thrown into a pond. The Marquis de
Montcalm was a celebrated Royalist at that day. All the frogs were silent.
"My friends," Tholomyès shouted with the accent of a man who is
recapturing his empire, "recover yourselves: too great stupor should not
greet this pun which has fallen from the clouds, for everything that falls in

such a manner is not necessarily worthy of enthusiasm and respect. Far be
from me to insult puns: I honor them according to their deserts, and no
more. All the most august, sublime, and charming in humanity and perhaps
beyond humanity have played upon words. Christ made a pun on Saint
Peter, Moses on Isaac, Æschylus on Polynices, and Cleopatra on Octavius.
And note the fact that Cleopatra's pun preceded the battle of Actium, and
that, were it not for that pun, no one would know the town of Toryne, a
Greek word signifying a potladle. This granted, I return to my exhortation.
Brethren, I repeat, no zeal, no row, no excess, even in witticisms, gayeties,
merriments, and playing upon words. Listen to me, for I possess the
prudence of Amphiaralis and the baldness of Cæsar; there should be a limit
even to the rebus. Est modus in rebus. There should be a limit even to
dinners; you are fond of apple-puffs, ladies, but no abuse; even in the matter
of apple-puffs, good sense and art are needed. Gluttony chastises the
glutton. Gula punit gulax. Indigestion was sent into the world to read a
lecture to our stomachs; and, bear this in mind, each of our passions, even
love, has a stomach which must not be filled too full. In all things, we must
write betimes the word finis, we must restrain ourselves when it becomes
urgent, put a bolt on our appetites, lock up our fancy, and place ourselves
under arrest. The wise man is he who knows how, at a given moment, to
arrest himself. Place some confidence in me: it does not follow because I
know a little law, as my examinations prove; because I have supported a
thesis in Latin as to the mode in which torture was applied at Rome at the
time when Munatius Demens was quæstor parricidæ; and because I am
going to be a Doctor at Law, as it seems,—it does not necessarily follow, I
say, that I am an ass. I recommend to you moderation in your desires. As
truly as my name is Félix Tholomyès, I am speaking the truth. Happy the
man who, when the hour has struck, forms an heroic resolve, and abdicates
like Sylla or Origen."
Favourite was listening with profound attention. "Félix!" she said, "what a
pretty name; I like it. It is Latin, and means happy."
Tholomyès continued,—
"Gentlemen, be suspicious of women; woe to the man who surrenders
himself to a woman's fickle heart; woman is perfidious and tortuous, and
detests the serpent from professional jealousy. It is the shop opposite."

"Tholomyès," Blachevelle shouted, "you are drunk."
"I hope so!"
"Then be jolly."
"I am agreeable," Tholomyès answered. And filling his glass, he rose.
"Glory to wine! nunc te, Bacche, canam! Pardon, ladies, that is Spanish,
and the proof, Señoras, is this: as the country is, so is the measure. The
arroba of Castille contains sixteen quarts, the cantaro of Alicante twelve, the
almuda of the Canary Isles twenty-five, the cuartino of the Balearic Isles
twenty-six, and Czar Peter's boot thirty. Long live the Czar who was great,
and his boot which was greater still! Ladies, take a friend's advice; deceive
your neighbor, if you think proper. The peculiarity of love is to wander, and
it is not made to crouch like an English servant girl who has stiff knees
from scrubbing. It is said that error is human; but I say, error is amorous.
Ladies, I idolize you all. O Zéphine, you with your seductive face, you
would be charming were you not all askew; your face looks for all the
world as if it had been sat upon by mistake. As for Favourite, O ye Nymphs
and Muses! one day when Blachevelle was crossing the gutter in the Rue
Guérin-Boisseau, he saw a pretty girl with white, well-drawn-up stockings,
who displayed her legs. The prologue was pleasing, and Blachevelle fell in
love; the girl he loved was Favourite. O Favourite, you have Ionian lips;
there was a Greek painter of the name of Euphorion, who was christened
the painter of lips, and this Greek alone would be worthy to paint your
mouth. Listen to me: before you there was not a creature deserving of the
name; you are made to receive the apple like Venus, or to eat it like Eve.
Beauty begins with you, and you deserve a patent for inventing a pretty
woman. You alluded to my name just now; it affected me deeply, but we
must be distrustful of names, for they may be deceptive. My name is Félix,
and yet I am not happy. Let us not blindly accept the indications they give
us; it would be a mistake to write to Liège for corks, or to Pau for gloves.[1]
Miss Dahlia, in your place I would call myself Rose, for a flower ought to
smell agreeably, and a woman have spirit. I say nothing of Fantine, for she
is a dreamer, pensive and sensitive; she is a phantom, having the form of a
nymph, and the modesty of a nun, who has strayed into the life of a grisette,
but takes shelter in illusions, and who sings, prays, and looks at the blue
sky, without exactly knowing what she sees or what she does, and who,

with her eyes fixed on heaven, wanders about a garden in which there are
more birds than ever existed. O Fantine, be aware of this fact: I, Tholomyès,
am an illusion—why, the fair girl of chimeræ is not even listening to me!
All about her is freshness, suavity, youth, and sweet morning brightness. O
Fantine, girl worthy to be called Margaret or Pearl, you are a woman of the
fairest East. Ladies, here is a second piece of advice; do not marry, for
marriage is a risk, and you had better shun it. But nonsense! I am wasting
my words! girls are incurable about wedlock; and all that we sages may say
will not prevent waistcoat-makers and shoebinders from dreaming of
husbands loaded with diamonds. Well, beauties, be it so: but bear this in
mind, you eat too much sugar. You have only one fault, O women, and that
is nibbling sugar. O rodent sex, your pretty little white teeth adore sugar.
Now, listen to this: sugar is a salt, and salts are of a drying nature, and sugar
is the most drying of all salts. It pumps out the fluidity of the blood through
the veins; this produces first coagulation and then solidifying of the blood;
from this come tubercles in the lungs, and thence death. Hence do not
nibble sugar, and you will live. I now turn to my male hearers: Gentlemen,
make conquests. Rob one another of your well-beloved ones remorselessly;
change partners, for, in love there are no friends. Whenever there is a pretty
woman, hostilities are opened; there is no quarter, but war to the knife! a
pretty woman is a casus belli and a flagrant offence. All the invasions of
history were produced by petticoats; for woman is the lawful prey of man.
Romulus carried off the Sabine women, William the Saxon women, and
Cæsar the Roman women. A man who is not loved soars like a vulture over
the mistresses of other men: and for my part, I offer all these unfortunate
widowers, Bonaparte's sublime proclamation to the army of Italy: 'Soldiers,
you want for everything; the enemy possesses it.'"
Here Tholomyès broke off.
"Take a breather, my boy," said Blachevelle.
At the same time the other three gentlemen struck up to a doleful air one of
those studio-songs, as destitute of sense as the motion of a tree or the sound
of the wind, which are composed extemporaneously, either in rhyme or
prose, which spring up from the smoke of pipes, and fly away with it. The
song was not adapted to calm Tholomyès' inspiration; hence he emptied his
glass, filled it again, and began once more.

"Down with wisdom! forget all I have said to you. Be neither prudish, nor
prudent, nor prud'hommes. I drink the health of jollity: so let us be jolly. Let
us complete our legal studies by folly and good food, for indigestion should
run in a curricle with digests. Let Justinian be the male and merriment the
female! Live, O creation; the world is one large diamond; I am happy, and
the birds are astounding. What a festival all around us; the nightingale is a
gratis Elleviou. Summer, I salute thee. O Luxembourg! O ye Georgics of
the Rue Madame and the Allée de l'Observatoire! O ye dreaming soldiers!
O ye delicious nurses, who, while taking care of children, fancy what your
own will be like! the Pampas of America would please me if I had not the
arcades of the Odéon. My soul is flying away to the Virgin forests and the
savannas. All is glorious: the flies are buzzing in the light; the sun has
sneezed forth the humming-bird. Kiss me, Fantine!"
He made a mistake and kissed Favourite.
[1] An untranslatable pun based on chêne-liège and peau.

CHAPTER VIII.

THE DEATH OF A HORSE.

"It is a better dinner at Édon's than at Bombarda's," Zéphine exclaimed.
"I prefer Bombarda," Blachevelle declared; "there is more luxury: it is more
Asiatic. Just look at the dining-room with its mirrors: look at the knives,
they are silver-handled here and bone at Édon's; now, silver is more
precious than bone."
"Excepting for those persons who have a silver chin," Tholomyès observed.
He was looking at this moment at the dome of the Invalides which was
visible from Bombardas window. There was a pause.
"Tholomyès," cried Fameuil, "just now, Listolier and I had a discussion."
"A discussion is good," replied Tholomyès; "a quarrel is better."
"We discussed philosophy; which do you prefer, Descartes or Spinoza?"

"Désangiers," said Tholomyès.
This judgment rendered, he continued,—
"I consent to live: all is not finished in the world. Since men can still be
unreasonable, I return thanks to the immortal gods. Men lie, but they laugh:
they affirm, but they doubt: and something unexpected issues from the
syllogism. This is grand: there are still in the world human beings who can
joyously open and shut the puzzle-box of paradox. This wine, ladies, which
you are drinking so calmly, is Madeira, you must know, grown at Coural
das Freiras, which is three hundred and seventeen toises above the sea level.
Attention while drinking! three hundred and seventeen toises, and M.
Bombarda, the magnificent restaurateur, lets you have these three hundred
and seventeen toises for four francs, fifty centimes."
Tholomyès drained his glass and then continued:
"Honor to Bombarda! he would be equal to Memphis of Elephanta if he
could ladle me up an Almeh, and to Thygelion of Cheronea if he could
procure me an Hetæra! for, ladies, there were Bombardas in Greece and
Egypt, as Apuleius teaches us. Alas! ever the same thing and nothing new:
nothing is left unpublished in the creation of the Creator. 'Nothing new
under the sun,' says Solomon: amor omnibus idem, and Carabine gets into
the St. Cloud fly-boat with Carabin, just as Aspasia embarked with Pericles
aboard the Samos fleet. One last word: Do you know who Aspasia was,
ladies? Although she lived at a time when women had no soul, she was a
soul: a soul of a pink and purple hue, hotter than fire, and fresher than the
dawn. Aspasia was a creature in whom the two extremes of woman met.
She was a prostituted goddess: Socrates plus Manon Lescaut."
Tholomyès, when started, would hardly have been checked, had not a horse
fallen in the street at this very moment. Through the shock, cart and orator
stopped short. It was a Beauce mare, old and lean and worthy of the
knacker, dragging a very heavy cart. On getting in front of Bombarda's, the
beast, exhausted and worn out, refused to go any further, and this incident
produced a crowd. The carter, swearing and indignant, had scarce time to
utter with the suitable energy the sacramental word, "Rascal!" backed up by
a pitiless lash, ere the poor beast fell, never to rise again. Tholomyès' gay
hearers turned their heads away on noticing the confusion, while he wound
up his speech by the following sad strophe,—

"Elle était de ce monde où coucous et carrosses,
Ont le même destin,
Et, rosse, elle a vécu ce que vivent les rosses,
L'espace d'un: Mâtin!"
"Poor horse!" Fantine said with a sigh; and Dahlia shouted,—
"Why, here is Fantine beginning to feel pity for horses: how can she be such
a fool!"
At this moment, Favourite crossed her arms and threw her head back; she
then looked boldly at Tholomyès, and said,—
"Well, how about the surprise?"
"That is true, the hour has arrived," Tholomyès answered. "Gentlemen, it is
time to surprise the ladies. Pray wait for us a moment."
"It begins with a kiss," said Blacheve.
"On the forehead," Tholomyès added.
Each solemnly kissed the forehead of his mistress: then they proceeded to
the door in Indian file, with a finger on their lip. Favourite clapped her
hands as they went out.
"It is amusing already," she said.
"Do not be long," Fantine murmured, "we are waiting for you."

CHAPTER IX.

THE JOYOUS END OF JOY.

The girls, when left alone, leaned out of the windows, two by two, talking,
looking out, and wondering. They watched the young men leave the
Bombarda cabaret arm in arm; they turned round, made laughing signs, and
disappeared in that dusty Sunday mob which once a week invaded the
Champs Élysées.

"Do not be long," Fantine cried.
"What will they bring us?" said Zéphine.
"I am certain it will be pretty," said Dahlia.
"For my part," Favourite added, "I hope it will be set in gold."
They were soon distracted by the movement on the quay, which they could
notice through the branches of the lofty trees, and which greatly amused
them. It was the hour for the mail-carts and stages to start, and nearly all
those bound for the South and West at that time passed through the Champs
Élysées. Most of them followed the quay and went out by the Passy barrier.
Every moment some heavy vehicle, painted yellow and black, heavily
loaded and rendered shapeless by trunks and valises, dashed through the
crowd with the sparks of a forge, the dust representing the smoke. This
confusion amused the girls.
"What a racket!" exclaimed Favourite; "one might say a pile of chairs was
flying about."
One of these vehicles, which could hardly be distinguished through the
branches, stopped for a moment, and then started again at a gallop. This
surprised Fantine.
"That is strange," she said; "I fancied that the diligence never stopped."
Favourite shrugged her shoulders.
"This Fantine is really amazing, and is surprised at the simplest things. Let
us suppose that I am a traveller and say to the guard of the stage-coach, "I
will walk on and you can pick me up on the quay as you pass." The coach
passes, sees me, stops and takes me in. That is done every day; you are
ignorant of life, my dear."
Some time elapsed; all at once Favourite started as if waking from sleep.
"Well," she said, "where is the surprise?"
"Oh yes," Dahlia continued, "the famous surprise."
"They are a long time," said Fantine.
Just as Fantine had ended this sigh, the waiter who had served the dinner
came in; he held in his hand something that resembled a letter.

"What is that?" Favourite asked.
The waiter answered,—
"It is a paper which the gentlemen left for you, ladies."
"Why did you not bring it to us at once?"
"Because the gentlemen," the waiter went on, "ordered that it should not be
delivered to you for an hour."
Favourite snatched the paper from the waiter's hands; it was really a letter.
"Stay," she said; "there is no address, but the following words are written on
it: THIS IS THE SURPRISE." She quickly opened the letter and read (she could
read):—
"WELL-BELOVED,—Know that we have relatives: perhaps you are not
perfectly cognizant what they are; it means fathers and mothers in the civil,
puerile, and honest code. Well, these relatives are groaning; these old
people claim us as their own; these worthy men and women call us prodigal
sons. They desire our return home, and offer to kill the fatted calf. We obey
them, as we are virtuous; at the hour when you read this, five impetuous
steeds will be conveying us back to our papas and mammas. 'We decamp,'
as Bossuet said; "we are going, gone." We are flying away in the arms of
Laffitte and on the wings of Gaillard. The Toulouse coach is dragging us
away from the abyss, and that abyss is yourselves, pretty dears. We are re-
entering society, duty, and order, at a sharp trot, and at the rate of nine miles
an hour. It is important for our country that we should become, like
everybody else, Prefects, fathers of a family, game-keepers, and councillors
of state. Revere us, for we are sacrificing ourselves. Dry up your tears for us
rapidly, and get a substitute speedily. If this letter lacerates your hearts, treat
it in the same fashion. Good-by. For nearly two years we rendered you
happy, so do not owe us any grudge.
(Signed)
BLACHEVELLE.
FAMEUIL.
LISTOLIER.
FELIX THOLOMYÈS.

"P.S. The dinner is paid for."

The four girls looked at each other, and Favourite was the first to break the
silence.
"I don't care," she said, "it is a capital joke."
"It is very funny," Zéphine remarked.
"It must have been Blachevelle who had that idea," Favourite continued; "it
makes me in love with him. So soon as he has left me I am beginning to
grow fond of him; the old story."
"No," said Dahlia, "that is an idea of Tholomyès. That can be easily seen."
"In that case," Favourite retorted, "down with Blachevelle and long live
Tholomyès!"
And they burst into a laugh, in which Fantine joined.
An hour later though, when she returned to her bed-room, she wept: this
was, as we have said, her first love; she had yielded to Tholomyès as to a
husband, and the poor girl had a child.

BOOK IV.

TO CONFIDE IS SOMETIMES TO ABANDON.

CHAPTER I.

TWO MOTHERS MEET.

There was in the first quarter of this century a sort of pot-house at
Montfermeil, near Paris, which no longer exists. It was kept by a couple of
the name of Thénardier, and was situated in the Rue du Boulanger. Over the
door a board was nailed to the wall, and on this board was painted
something resembling a man carrying on his back another man, who wore
large gilt general's epaulettes with silver stars; red dabs represented blood,

and the rest of the painting was smoke, probably representing a battle. At
the bottom could be read the inscription: THE SERGEANT OF WATERLOO.
Though nothing is more common than a cart at a pot-house door, the
vehicle, or rather fragment of a vehicle, which blocked up the street in front
of the Sergeant of Waterloo, one spring evening in 1818, would have
certainly attracted the attention of any painter who had passed that way. It
was the forepart of one of those wains used in wood countries for dragging
planks and trunks of trees; it was composed of a massive iron axle-tree, in
which a heavy pole was imbedded and supported by two enormous wheels.
The whole thing was sturdy, crushing, and ugly, and it might have passed
for the carriage of a monster gun. The ruts had given the wheels, felloes,
spokes, axle-tree, and pole a coating of mud, a hideous yellow plaster, much
like that with which cathedrals are so often adorned. The wood-work was
hidden by mud and the iron by rust. Under the axle-tree was festooned a
heavy chain suited for a convict Goliath. This chain made you think, not of
the wood it was intended to secure, but of the mastodons and mammoths for
which it would have served as harness; it had the air of a cyclopean and
superhuman bagne, and seemed removed from some monster. Homer would
have bound Polyphemus with it, and Shakespeare, Caliban.
Why was this thing at this place in the street? First, to block it up; secondly,
to finish the rusting process. There is in the old social order a multitude of
institutions which may be found in the same way in the open air, and which
have no other reasons for being there. The centre of the chain hung rather
close to the ground, and on the curve, as on the rope of a swing, two little
girls were seated on this evening, in an exquisite embrace, one about two
years and a half, the other eighteen months; the younger being in the arms
of the elder. An artfully-tied handkerchief prevented them from falling, for a
mother had seen this frightful chain, and said, "What a famous plaything for
my children!" The two children, who were prettily dressed and with some
taste, were radiant; they looked like two roses among old iron; their eyes
were a triumph, their healthy cheeks laughed; one had auburn hair, the other
was a brunette; their innocent faces had a look of surprise; a flowering
shrub a little distance off sent to passers-by a perfume which seemed to
come from them; and the younger displayed her nudity with the chaste
indecency of childhood. Above and around their two delicate heads,
moulded in happiness and bathed in light, the gigantic wheels, black with

rust, almost terrible, and bristling with curves and savage angles, formed
the porch of a cavern, as it were. A few yards off, and seated in the inn door,
the mother, a woman of no very pleasing appearance, but touching at this
moment, was swinging the children by the help of a long cord, and
devouring them with her eyes, for fear of an accident, with that animal and
heavenly expression peculiar to maternity. At each oscillation the hideous
links produced a sharp sound, resembling a cry of anger. The little girls
were delighted; the setting sun mingled with the joy, and nothing could be
so charming as this caprice of accident which had made of a Titanic chain a
cherub's swing. While playing with her little ones, the mother sang, terribly
out of tune, a romance, very celebrated at that day,—
"Il le faut, disait un guerrier."
Her song and contemplation of her daughters prevented her hearing and
seeing what took place in the street. Some one, however, had approached
her, as she began the first couplets of the romance, and suddenly she heard a
voice saying close to her ear,—
"You have two pretty children, Madame."
"—à la belle et tendre Imogène,"
the mother answered, continuing her song, and then turned her head. A
woman was standing a few paces from her, who also had a child, which she
was carrying in her arms. She also carried a heavy bag. This woman's child
was one of the most divine creatures possible to behold; she was a girl
between two and three years of age, and could have vied with the two other
little ones in the coquettishness of her dress. She had on a hood of fine
linen, ribbons at her shoulders, and Valenciennes lace in her cap. Her raised
petticoats displayed her white, dimpled, fine thigh; it was admirably pink
and healthy, and her cheeks made one long to bite them. Nothing could be
said of her eyes, except that they were very large, and that she had
magnificent lashes, for she was asleep. She was sleeping with the absolute
confidence peculiar to her age; a mother's arms are made of tenderness, and
children sleep soundly in them. As for the mother, she looked grave and
sorrowful, and was dressed like a work-girl who was trying to become a
country-woman again. She was young; was she pretty? Perhaps so; but in
this dress she did not appear so. Her hair, a light lock of which peeped out,
seemed very thick, but was completely hidden beneath a nun's hood; ugly,

tight, and fastened under her chin. Laughter displays fine teeth, when a
person happens to possess them; but she did not laugh. Her eyes looked as
if they had not been dry for a long time; she had a fatigued and rather sickly
air, and she looked at the child sleeping in her arms in the manner peculiar
to a mother who has suckled her babe. A large blue handkerchief, like those
served out to the invalids, folded like a shawl, clumsily hid her shape. Her
hands were rough and covered with red spots, and her forefinger was
hardened and torn by the needle. She had on a brown cloth cloak, a cotton
gown, and heavy shoes. It was Fantine.
It was difficult to recognize her, but, after an attentive examination, she still
possessed her beauty. As for her toilette,—that aerian toilette of muslin and
ribbons which seemed made of gayety, folly, and music, to be full of bells,
and perfumed with lilacs,—it had faded away like the dazzling hoar-frost
which looks like diamonds in the sun; it melts, and leaves the branch quite
black.
Ten months had elapsed Bince the "good joke." What had taken place
during these ten months? We can guess. After desertion, want. Fantine at
once lost sight of Favourite, Zéphine, and Dahlia, for this tie broken on the
side of the men separated the women. They would have been greatly
surprised a fortnight after had they been told that they were friends, for
there was no reason for it. Fantine remained alone when the father of her
child had gone away—alas! such ruptures are irrevocable. She found herself
absolutely isolated; she had lost her habit of working, and had gained a taste
for pleasure. Led away by her liaison with Tholomyès to despise the little
trade she knew, she had neglected her connection, and it was lost. She had
no resource. Fantine could hardly read, and could not write; she had been
merely taught in childhood to sign her name, and she had sent a letter to
Tholomyès, then a second, then a third, through a public writer, but
Tholomyès did not answer one of them. One day Fantine heard the gossips
say, while looking at her daughter, "Children like that are not regarded
seriously, people shrug their shoulders at them." Then she thought of
Tholomyès who shrugged his shoulders at her child, and did not regard the
innocent creature seriously, and her heart turned away from this man. What
was she to do now? She knew not where to turn. She had committed a fault,
but the foundation of her nature, we must remember, was modesty and
virtue. She felt vaguely that she was on the eve of falling into distress, and

gliding into worse. She needed courage, and she had it. The idea occurred to
her of returning to her native town M. sur M. There some one might know
her, and give her work; but she must hide her fault. And she vaguely
glimpsed at the possible necessity of a separation more painful still than the
first; her heart was contracted, but she formed her resolution. Fantine, as we
shall see, possessed the stern bravery of life. She had already valiantly
given up dress; she dressed in calico, and had put all her silk ribbons and
laces upon her daughter, the only vanity left her, and it was a holy one. She
sold all she possessed, which brought her in 200 francs; and when she had
paid her little debts, she had only about 80 francs left. At the age of two-
and-twenty, on a fine Spring morning, she left Paris, carrying her child on
her back. Any one who had seen them pass would have felt pity for them;
the woman had nothing in the world but her child, and the child nothing but
her mother in her world. Fantine had suckled her child; this had strained her
chest, and she was coughing a little.
We shall have no further occasion to speak of M. Félix Tholomyès. We will
merely say that twenty years later, in the reign of Louis Philippe, he was a
stout country lawyer, influential and rich, a sensible elector, and a very
strict juror, but always a man of pleasure.
About mid-day, after resting herself now and then by travelling from time to
time, at the rate of three or four leagues an hour, in what were then called
the "little vehicles of the suburbs of Paris," Fantine found herself at
Montfermeil, in the Ruelle Boulanger. As she passed the Sergeant of
Waterloo, the two little girls in their monster swing had dazzled her, and she
stopped before this vision of joy. There are charms in life, and these two
little girls were one for this mother. She looked at them with great emotion,
for the presence of angels is an announcement of Paradise. She thought she
saw over this inn the mysterious HERE of Providence. These two little
creatures were evidently happy! She looked then, and admired them with
such tenderness that at the moment when the mother was drawing breath
between two verses of her song, she could not refrain from saying to her
what we have already recorded.
"You have two pretty children, Madame."
The most ferocious creatures are disarmed by a caress given to their little
ones. The mother raised her head, thanked her, and bade her sit down on the

door bench. The two women began talking.
"My name is Madame Thénardier," the mother of the little ones said; "we
keep this inn."
Then returning to her romance, she went on humming,—
"Il le faut, je suis chevalier,
Et je pars pour la Palestine."
This Madame Thénardier was a red-headed, thin, angular woman, the
soldier's wife in all its ugliness, and, strange to say, with a languishing air
which she owed to reading romances. She was a sort of lackadaisical male-
woman. Old romances, working on the imaginations of landladies, produce
that effect. She was still young, scarce thirty. If this woman, now sitting,
had been standing up, perhaps her height and colossal proportions, fitting
for a show, would have at once startled the traveller, destroyed her
confidence, and prevented what we have to record. A person sitting instead
of standing up—destinies hang on this.
The woman told her story with some modification. She was a work-girl, her
husband was dead; she could get no work in Paris, and was going to seek it
elsewhere, in her native town. She had left Paris that very morning on foot;
as she felt tired from carrying her child, she had travelled by the stage-
coach to Villemomble, from that place she walked to Montfermeil. The little
one had walked a little, but not much, for she was so young, and so she had
been obliged to cany her, and the darling had gone to sleep,—and as she
said this she gave her daughter a passionate kiss, which awoke her. The
babe opened her eyes, large blue eyes like her mother's, and gazed at what?
Nothing, everything, with that serious and at times stern air of infants,
which is a mystery of their luminous innocence in the presence of our
twilight virtues. We might say that they feel themselves to be angels, and
know us to be men. Then the child began laughing, and, though its mother
had to check it, slipped down to the ground with the undauntable energy of
a little creature wishing to run. All at once, she noticed the other two
children in their swing, stopped short, and put out her tongue as a sign of
admiration. Mother Thénardier unfastened her children, took them out of
the swing, and said,—
"Play about, all three."

Children soon get familiar, and in a minute the little Thénardiers were
playing with the new-comer at making holes in the ground, which was an
immense pleasure. The stranger child was very merry; the goodness of the
mother is written in the gayety of the baby. She had picked up a piece of
wood which she used as a spade, and was energetically digging a grave
large enough for a fly. The two went on talking.
"What 's the name of your bantling?"
"Cosette."
For Cosette read Euphrasie, for that was the child's real name; but the
mother had converted Euphrasie into Cosette, through that gentle, graceful
instinct peculiar to mothers and the people, which changes Josefa into
Pépita, and Françoise into Sellette. It is a species of derivation which
deranges and disconcerts the entire science of etymologists. We know a
grandmother who contrived to make out of Theodore, Gnon.
"What is her age?"
"Going on to three."
"Just the same age as my eldest."
In the mean time the children were grouped in a posture of profound
anxiety and blessedness; an event had occurred. A large worm crept out of
the ground, and they were frightened, and were in ecstasy; their radiant
brows touched each other; and they looked like three heads in a halo.
"How soon children get to know one another," Mother Thénardier
exclaimed; "why, they might be taken for three sisters."
The word was probably the spark which the other mother had been waiting
for; she seized the speaker's hand, looked at her fixedly, and said,—
"Will you take charge of my child for me?"
The woman gave one of those starts of surprise which are neither assent nor
refusal. Fantine continued,—
"Look you, I cannot take the child with me to my town, for when a woman
has a baby, it is a hard matter for her to get a situation. People are so foolish
in our part. It was Heaven that made me pass in front of your inn; when I
saw your little ones so pretty, so clean, so happy, it gave me a turn. I said to

myself, "She is a kind mother." It is so; they will be three sisters. Then I
shall not be long before I come back. Will you take care of my child?"
"We will see, said Mother Thénardier.
"I would pay six francs a month."
Here a man's voice cried from the back of the tap-room,—
"Can't be done under seven, and six months paid in advance."
"Six times seven are forty-two," said the landlady.
"I will pay it," said the mother.
"And seventeen francs in addition for extra expenses," the man's voice
added.
"Total fifty-seven francs," said Madame Thénardier; and through these
figures she sang vaguely,—
"Il le faut, disait un guerrier."
"I will pay it," the mother said; "I have eighty francs, and shall have enough
left to get home on foot. I shall earn money there, and so soon as I have a
little I will come and fetch my darling."
The man's voice continued,—
"Has the little one a stock of clothing?"
"It is my husband," said Mother Thénardier.
"Of course she has clothes, poor little treasure. I saw it was your husband;
and a fine stock of clothes too, a wonderful stock, a dozen of everything,
and silk frocks like a lady. The things are in my bag."
"They must be handed over," the man's voice remarked.
"Of course they must," said the mother; "it would be funny if I left my child
naked."
The master's face appeared.
"All right," he said.
The bargain was concluded, the mother spent the night at the inn, paid her
money and left her child, fastened up her bag, which was now light, and

started the next morning with the intention of returning soon. Such
departures are arranged calmly, but they entail despair. A neighbor's wife
saw the mother going away, and went home saying,—
"I have just seen a woman crying in the street as if her heart was broken."
When Cosette's mother had gone, the man said to his wife,—
"That money will meet my bill for one hundred and ten francs, which falls
due to-morrow, and I was fifty francs short. It would have been protested,
and I should have had a bailiff put in. You set a famous mouse-trap with
your young ones."
"Without suspecting it," said the woman.

CHAPTER II.

A SKETCH OF TWO UGLY FACES.

The captured mouse was very small, but the cat is pleased even with a thin
mouse. Who were the Thénardiers? We will say one word about them for
the present, and complete the sketch hereafter. These beings belonged to the
bastard class, composed of coarse parvenus, and of degraded people of
intellect, which stands between the classes called the middle and the lower,
and combines some of the faults of the second with nearly all the vices of
the first, though without possessing the generous impulse of the
workingman or the honest regularity of the tradesman.
Theirs were those dwarf natures which easily become monstrous when any
gloomy fire accidentally warms them. There was in the woman the basis of
a witch, in the man the stuff for a beggar. Both were in the highest degree
susceptible of that sort of hideous progress which is made in the direction of
evil. There are crab-like souls which constantly recoil toward darkness,
retrograde in life rather than advance, employ experience to augment their
deformity, incessantly grow worse, and grow more and more covered with
an increasing blackness. This man and this woman had souls of this sort.

Thénardier was peculiarly troublesome to the physiognomist: there are
some men whom you need only look at to distrust them, for they are restless
behind and threatening in front. There is something of the unknown in
them. We can no more answer for what they have done than for what they
will do. The shadow they have in their glance denounces them. Merely by
hearing them say a word or seeing them make a gesture, we get a glimpse
of dark secrets in their past, dark mysteries in their future. This Thénardier,
could he be believed, had been a soldier—sergeant, he said; he had
probably gone through the campaign of 1815, and had even behaved rather
bravely, as it seems. We shall see presently how the matter really stood. The
sign of his inn was an allusion to one of his exploits, and he had painted it
himself, for he could do a little of everything—badly. It was the epoch
when the old classical romance—which after being Clélie, had now become
Lodoiska, and though still noble, was daily growing more vulgar, and had
fallen from Mademoiselle de Scudéri to Madame Bournon Malarme, and
from Madame de Lafayette to Madame Barthélémy Hadot—was inflaming
the loving soul of the porters' wives in Paris, and even extended its ravages
into the suburbs. Madame Thénardier was just intelligent enough to read
books of this nature, and lived on them. She thus drowned any brains she
possessed, and, so long as she remained young and a little beyond, it gave
her a sort of pensive attitude by the side of her husband, who was a scamp
of some depth, an almost grammatical ruffian, coarse and delicate at the
same time, but who, in matters of sentimentalism, read Pigault Lebrun, and,
in "all that concerned the sex," as he said in his jargon, was a correct and
unadulterated booby. His wife was some twelve or fifteen years younger
than he, and when her romantically flowing locks began to grow gray, when
the Megæra was disengaged from the Pamela, she was only a stout wicked
woman, who had been pampered with foolish romances. As such
absurdities cannot be read with impunity, the result was that her eldest
daughter was christened Éponine; as for the younger, the poor girl was all
but named Gulnare, and owed it to a fortunate diversion made by a romance
of Ducray Duminil's, that she was only christened Azelma.
By the way, all is not ridiculous and superficial in the curious epoch to
which we are alluding, and which might be called the anarchy of baptismal
names. By the side of the romantic element, which we have just pointed
out, there was the social symptom. It is not rare at the present day for a
drover's son to be called Arthur, Alfred, or Alphonse, and for the Viscount—

if there are any Viscounts left—to be called Thomas, Pierre, or Jacques.
This displacement which gives the "elegant" name to the plebeian, and the
rustic name to the aristocrat, is nothing else than an eddy of equality. The
irresistible penetration of the new breeze is visible in this as in everything
else. Beneath this apparent discord there is a grand and deep thing, the
French Revolution.

CHAPTER III.

THE LARK.

It is not enough to be bad in order to prosper: and the pot-house was a
failure. Thanks to the fifty-seven francs, Thénardier had been able to avoid
a protest, and honor his signature; but the next month they wanted money
again, and his wife took Cosette's outfit to Paris and pledged it for sixty
francs. So soon as this sum was spent, the Thénardiers grew accustomed to
see in the little girl a child they had taken in through charity, and treated her
accordingly. As she had no clothes, she was dressed in the left-off chemises
and petticoats of the little Thénardiers, that is to say, in rags. She was fed on
the leavings of everybody, a little better than the dog, and a little worse than
the cat. Dog and cat were her usual company at dinner: for Cosette ate with
them under the table off a wooden trencher like theirs.
The mother, who had settled, as we shall see hereafter, at M. sur M., wrote,
or, to speak more correctly, had letters written every month to inquire after
her child. The Thénardiers invariably replied that Cosette was getting on
famously. When the first six months had passed, the mother sent seven
francs for the seventh month, and continued to send the money punctually
month by month. The year had not ended before Thénardier said, "A fine
thing that! what does she expect us to do with seven francs!" and he wrote
to demand twelve. The mother, whom they persuaded that her child was
happy and healthy, submitted, and sent the twelve francs.
Some natures cannot love on one side without hating on the other. Mother
Thénardier passionately loved her own two daughters, which made her

detest the stranger. It is sad to think that a mother's love can look so ugly.
Though Cosette occupied so little room, it seemed to her as if her children
were robbed of it, and that the little one diminished the air her daughters
breathed. This woman, like many women of her class, had a certain amount
of caresses and another of blows and insults to expend daily. If she had not
had Cosette, it is certain that her daughters, though they were idolized,
would have received the entire amount; but the strange child did the service
of diverting the blows on herself, while the daughters received only the
caresses. Cosette did not make a movement that did not bring down on her
head a hailstorm of violent and unmerited chastisement. The poor weak
child, unnecessarily punished, scolded, cuffed, and beaten, saw by her side
two little creatures like herself who lived in radiant happiness.
As Madame Thénardier was unkind to Cosette, Éponine and Azelma were
the same; for children, at that age, are copies of their mother; the form is
smaller, that is all. A year passed, then another, and people said in the
village,—
"Those Thénardiers are worthy people. They are not well off, and yet they
bring up a poor child left on their hands."
Cosette was supposed to be deserted by her mother; Thénardier, however,
having learned in some obscure way that the child was probably
illegitimate, and that the mother could not confess it, insisted on fifteen
francs a month, saying that the creature was growing and eating, and
threatening to send her back. "She must not play the fool with me," he
shouted, "or I'll let her brat fall like a bomb-shell into her hiding-place. I
must have an increase." The mother paid the fifteen francs. Year by year the
child grew, and so did her wretchedness: so long as Cosette was little, she
was the scape-goat of the two other children; so soon as she began to be
developed a little, that is to say, even before she was five years old, she
became the servant of the house. At five years, the reader will say, that is
improbable; but, alas! it is true. Social suffering begins at any age. Have we
not recently seen the trial of a certain Dumollard, an orphan, who turned
bandit, and who from the age of five, as the official documents tell us, was
alone in the world and "worked for a living and stole"? Cosette was made to
go on messages, sweep the rooms, the yard, the street, wash the dishes, and
even carry heavy bundles. The Thénardiers considered themselves the more

justified in acting thus, because the mother, who was still at M. sur M., was
beginning to pay badly, and was several months in arrear.
If the mother had returned to Montfermeil at the end of three years, she
would not have recognized her child. Cosette, so pretty and ruddy on her
arrival in this house, was now thin and sickly. She had a timid look about
her; "It's cunning!" said the Thénardiers. Injustice had made her sulky and
wretchedness had made her ugly. Nothing was left her but her fine eyes,
which were painful to look at, because, as they were so large, it seemed as if
a greater amount of sadness was visible in them. It was a heart-rending
sight to see this poor child, scarce six years of age, shivering in winter
under her calico rags, and sweeping the street before day-break, with an
enormous broom in her small red hands and a tear in her large eyes.
The country people called her "the lark;" the lower classes, who are fond of
metaphors, had given the name to the poor little creature, who was no larger
than a bird, trembling, frightened, and starting, who was always the first
awake in the house and the village, and ever in the street or the fields by
day-break.
There was this difference, however,—this poor lark never sung.

BOOK V.

THE DESCENT.

CHAPTER I.

PROGRESS IN BLACK-BEAD MAKING.

What had become of the mother, who, according to the people of
Montfermeil, appeared to have deserted her child? Where was she; what
was she doing? After leaving her little Cosette with the Thénardiers, she had

continued her journey and arrived at M. sur M. Fantine had been away from
her province for ten years, and while she had been slowly descending from
misery to misery, her native town had prospered. About two years before,
one of those industrial facts which are the events of small towns had taken
place. The details are important, and we think it useful to develop them; we
might almost say, to understand them.
From time immemorial M. sur M. had as a special trade the imitation of
English jet and German black beads. This trade had hitherto only vegetated,
owing to the dearness of the material, which reacted on the artisan. At the
moment when Fantine returned to M. sur M. an extraordinary
transformation had taken place in the production of "black articles." Toward
the close of 1815, a man, a stranger, had settled in the town, and had the
idea of substituting in this trade gum lac for rosin, and in bracelets
particularly, scraps of bent plate for welded plate. This slight change was a
revolution: it prodigiously reduced the cost of the material, which, in the
first place, allowed the wages to be raised, a benefit for the town; secondly,
improved the manufacture, an advantage for the consumer; and, thirdly,
allowed the goods to be sold cheap, while tripling them the profit, an
advantage for the manufacturer.
In less than three years the inventor of the process had become rich, which
is a good thing, and had made all rich about him, which is better. He was a
stranger in the department; no one knew anything about his origin, and but
little about his start. It was said that he had entered the town with but very
little money, a few hundred francs at the most; but with this small capital,
placed at the service of an ingenious idea, and fertilized by regularity and
thought, he made his own fortune and that of the town. On his arrival at M.
sur M. he had the dress, manners, and language of a workingman. It appears
that on the very December night when he obscurely entered M. sur M. with
his knapsack on his back, and a knotted stick in his hand, a great fire broke
out in the Town Hall. This man rushed into the midst of the flames, and at
the risk of his life saved two children who happened to belong to the
captain of gendarmes; hence no one dreamed of asking for his passport. On
this occasion his name was learned; he called himself Father Madeleine.

CHAPTER II.

MADELEINE.

He was a man of about fifty, with a preoccupied air, and he was good-
hearted. That was all that could be said of him.
Thanks to the rapid progress of this trade which he had so admirably
remodelled, M. sur M. had become a place of considerable trade. Spain,
which consumes an immense amount of jet, gave large orders for it
annually, and in this trade M. sur M. almost rivalled London and Berlin.
Father Madeleine's profits were so great, that after the second year he was
able to build a large factory, in which were two spacious workshops, one for
men, the other for women. Any one who was hungry need only to come,
and was sure to find there employment and bread. Father Madeleine
expected from the men good-will, from the women purity, and from all
probity. He had divided the workshops in order to separate the sexes, and
enable the women and girls to remain virtuous. On this point he was
inflexible, and it was the only one in which he was at all intolerant. This
sternness was the more justifiable because M. sur M. was a garrison town,
and opportunities for corruption abounded. Altogether his arrival had been a
benefit, and his presence was a providence. Before Father Madeleine came
everything was languishing, and now all led the healthy life of work. A
powerful circulation warmed and penetrated everything; stagnation and
wretchedness were unknown. There was not a pocket, however obscure, in
which there was not a little money, nor a lodging so poor in which there
was not a little joy.
Father Madeleine employed every one. He only insisted on one thing,—be
an honest man, a good girl!
As we have said, in the midst of this activity, of which he was the cause and
the pivot, Father Madeleine made his fortune, but, singularly enough in a
plain man of business, this did not appear to be his chief care; he seemed to
think a great deal of others and but little of himself. In 1820, he was known
to have a sum of 630,000 francs in Lafitte's bank; but before he put that
amount on one side he had spent more than a million for the town and the
poor. The hospital was badly endowed, and he added ten beds. M. sur M. is
divided into an upper and a lower town; the latter, in which he lived, had

only one school, a poor tenement falling in ruins, and he built two, one for
boys and one for girls. He paid the two teachers double the amount of their
poor official salary, and to some one who expressed surprise, he said, "The
first two functionaries of the State are the nurse and the schoolmaster." He
had established at his own charges an infant-school, a thing at that time
almost unknown in France, and a charitable fund for old and infirm
workmen. As his factory was a centre, a new district, in which there was a
large number of indigent families, rapidly sprang up around it, and he
opened there a free dispensary.
At the beginning, kind souls said, "He is a man who wants to grow rich:"
when it was seen that he enriched the town before enriching himself, the
same charitable souls said, "He is ambitious." This seemed the more likely
because he was religious, and even practised to a certain extent a course
which was admired in those days. He went regularly to hear Low Mass on
Sundays, and the local deputy, who scented rivalry everywhere, soon
became alarmed about this religion. This deputy, who had been a member
of the legislative council of the Empire, shared the religious ideas of a
Father of the Oratory, known by the name of Fouché, Duc d'Otranto, whose
creature and friend he had been. But when he saw the rich manufacturer
Madeleine go to seven o'clock Low Mass, he scented a possible candidate,
and resolved to go beyond him; he chose a Jesuit confessor, and went to
High Mass and vespers. Ambition at that time was, in the true sense of the
term, a steeple-chase. The poor profited by the alarm, for the honorable
deputy founded two beds at the hospital, which made twelve.
In 1819, the report spread one morning through the town that, on the
recommendation of the Prefect, and in consideration of services rendered
the town, Father Madeleine was about to be nominated by the king, Mayor
of M——. Those who had declared the new-comer an ambitious man,
eagerly seized this opportunity to exclaim: "Did we not say so?" All M——
was in an uproar; for the rumor was well founded. A few days after, the
appointment appeared in the Moniteur, and the next day Father Madeleine
declined the honor. In the same year, the new processes worked by him
were shown at the Industrial Exhibition; and on the report of the jury, the
King made the inventor a Chevalier of the Legion of Honor. There was a
fresh commotion in the little town; "Well, it was the cross he wanted," but
Father Madeleine declined the cross. Decidedly the man was an enigma, but

charitable souls got out of the difficulty by saying, "After all, he is a sort of
adventurer."
As we have seen, the country owed him much, and the poor owed him
everything; he was so useful that he could not help being honored, and so
gentle that people could not help loving him; his work-people especially
adored him, and he bore this adoration with a sort of melancholy gravity.
When he was known to be rich, "people in society" bowed to him, and he
was called in the town Monsieur Madeleine; but his workmen and the
children continued to call him Father Madeleine, and this caused him his
happiest smile. In proportion as he ascended, invitations showered upon
him; and society claimed him as its own. The little formal drawing-rooms,
which had of course been at first closed to the artisan, opened their doors
wide to the millionnaire. A thousand advances were made to him, but he
refused them. This time again charitable souls were not thrown out: "He is
an ignorant man of poor education. No one knows where he comes from.
He could not pass muster in society, and it is doubtful whether he can read."
When he was seen to be earning money, they said, "He is a tradesman;"
when he scattered his money, they said, "He is ambitious;" when he rejected
honor, they said, "He is an adventurer;" and when he repulsed society, they
said, "He is a brute."
In 1820, five years after his arrival at M., the services he had rendered the
town were so brilliant, the will of the whole country was so unanimous, that
the King again nominated him Mayor of the Town. He refused again, but
the Prefect would not accept his refusal; all the notables came to beg, the
people supplicated him in the open streets, and the pressure was so great,
that he eventually assented. It was noticed that what appeared specially to
determine him was the almost angry remark of an old woman, who cried to
him from her door: "A good Mayor is useful; a man should not recoil before
the good he may be able to do." This was the third phase of his ascent;
Father Madeleine had become Monsieur Madeleine, and Monsieur
Madeleine became Monsieur le Maire.

CHAPTER III.

SUMS LODGED AT LAFITTE'S.

Father Madeleine remained as simple as he had been on the first day: he
had gray hair, a serious eye, the bronzed face of a workingman, and the
thoughtful face of a philosopher. He habitually wore a broad-brimmed hat,
and a long coat of coarse cloth buttoned up to the chin. He performed his
duties as Mayor, but beyond that lived solitary; he spoke to few persons,
shunned compliments, smiled to save himself from talking, and gave to
save himself from smiling. The women said of him, "What a good bear!"
and his great pleasure was to walk about the fields. He always took his
meals with an open book before him, and he had a well-selected library. He
was fond of books, for they are calm and sure friends. In proportion as
leisure came with fortune, he seemed to employ it in cultivating his mind: it
was noticed that with each year he spent in M—— his language became
more polite, chosen, and gentle.
He was fond of taking a gun with him on his walks, but rarely fired; when
he did so by accident, he had an infallible aim, which was almost terrific.
He never killed an inoffensive animal or a small bird. Though he was no
longer young, he was said to possess prodigious strength: he lent a hand to
any one who needed it, raised a fallen horse, put his shoulder to a wheel
stuck in the mud, or stopped a runaway bull by the horns. His pockets were
always full of half-pence when he went out, and empty when he came
home; whenever he passed through a village, the ragged children ran
merrily after him, and surrounded him like a swarm of gnats. It was
supposed that he must have formerly lived a rustic life, for he had all sorts
of useful secrets which he taught the peasants. He showed them how to
destroy blight in wheat by sprinkling the granary and pouring into the
cracks of the boards a solution of common salt, and to get rid of weevils by
hanging up everywhere, on the walls and roots, flowering orviot. He had
recipes to extirpate from arable land tares and other parasitic plants which
injure wheat, and would defend a rabbit hutch from rats by the mere smell
of a little Guinea pig, which he placed in it.
One day he saw some countrymen very busy in tearing up nettles; he looked
at the pile of uprooted and already withered plants and said: "They are dead,
and yet they are good if you know how to use them. When nettles are
young, the tops are an excellent vegetable. When they are old, they have

threads and fibre like hemp and flax. When chopped up, nettles are good for
fowls; when pounded, excellent for horned cattle. Nettle-seed mixed with
the food renders the coats of cattle shining, and the root mixed with salt
produces a fine yellow color. The nettle is also excellent hay, which can be
mown twice; and what does it require? A little earth, no care, and no
cultivation. The only thing is that the seed falls as it ripens, and is difficult
to garner. If a little care were taken, the nettle would be useful; but, being
neglected, it becomes injurious, and is then killed. How men resemble
nettles!" He added after a moment's silence: "My friends, remember this,—
there are no bad herbs or bad men; there are only bad cultivators."
The children also loved him, because he could make them pretty little toys
of straw and cocoa-nut shells. When he saw a church door hung with black,
he went in; he went after a funeral as other persons do after a christening.
The misfortunes of others attracted him, owing to his great gentleness; he
mingled with friends in mourning, and with the priests round a coffin. He
seemed to be fond of hearing those mournful psalms which are full of the
vision of another world. With his eye fixed on heaven, he listened, with a
species of aspiration toward all the mysteries of Infinitude, to the sad voice
singing on the brink of the obscure abyss of death. He did a number of good
actions, while as careful to hide them as if they were bad. He would quietly
at night enter houses, and furtively ascend the stairs. A poor fellow, on
returning to his garret, would find that his door had been opened, at times
forced, during his absence; the man would cry that a robber had been there,
but when he entered, the first thing he saw was a gold coin left on the table.
The robber who had been there was Father Madeleine.
He was affable and sad: people said, "There is a rich man who does not
look proud: a lucky man who does not look happy." Some persons asserted
that he was a mysterious character, and declared that no one ever entered
his bed-room, which was a real anchorite's cell, furnished with winged
hour-glasses and embellished with cross-bones and death's-heads. This was
so often repeated that some elegant and spiteful ladies of M—— came to
him one day, and said, "Monsieur le Maire, do show us your bed-room, for
people say that it is a grotto." He smiled and led them straightway to the
"grotto;" they were terribly punished for their curiosity, as it was a bed-
room merely containing mahogany furniture as ugly as all furniture of that
sort, and hung with a paper at twelve sous a roll. They could not notice

anything but two double-branched candlesticks of an antiquated pattern,
standing on the mantel-piece, and seeming to be silver, "because they were
Hall-marked,"—a remark full of the wit of small towns. People did not the
less continue to repeat, however, that no one ever entered this bed-room,
and that it was a hermitage, a hole, a tomb. They also whispered that he had
immense sums lodged with Lafitte, and with this peculiarity that things
were always at his immediate disposal, "so that," they added, "M.
Madeleine could go any morning to Lafitte's, sign a receipt, and carry off
his two or three millions of francs in ten minutes." In reality, these "two or
three millions" were reduced, as we have said, to six hundred and thirty or
forty thousand francs.

CHAPTER IV.

M. MADELEINE GOES INTO MOURNING.

At the beginning of 1821, the papers announced the decease of M. Myriel,
Bishop of D——, "surnamed Monseigneur Welcome," who had died in the
odor of sanctity at the age of eighty-two. The Bishop of D——, to add here
a detail omitted by the papers, had been blind for several years, and was
satisfied to be blind as his sister was by his side.
Let us say parenthetically that to be blind and to be loved is one of the most
strangely exquisite forms of happiness upon this earth, where nothing is
perfect. To have continually at your side a wife, a sister, a daughter, a
charming being, who is there because you have need of her, and because
she cannot do without you; to know yourself indispensable to a woman who
is necessary to you; to be able constantly to gauge her affection by the
amount of her presence which she gives you, and to say to yourself: "She
devotes all her time to me because I possess her entire heart;" to see her
thoughts in default of her face; to prove the fidelity of a being in the eclipse
of the world; to catch the rustling of a dress like the sound of wings; to hear
her come and go, leave the room, return, talk, sing, and then to dream that
you are the centre of those steps, those words, those songs; to manifest at
every moment your own attraction, and feel yourself powerful in proportion

to your weakness; to become in darkness and through darkness the planet
round which this angel gravitates,—but few felicities equal this. The
supreme happiness of life is the conviction of being loved for yourself, or,
more correctly speaking, loved in spite of yourself; and this conviction the
blind man has. In this distress to be served is to be caressed. Does he want
for anything? No. When you possess love, you have not lost the light. And
what a love! a love entirely made of virtues. There is no blindness where
there is certainty: the groping soul seeks a soul and finds it, and this found
and tried soul is a woman. A hand supports you, it is hers; a mouth touches
your forehead, it is hers; you hear a breathing close to you, it is she.
To have everything she has, from her worship to her pity, to be never left, to
have this gentle weakness to succor you, to lean on this unbending reed, to
touch providence with her hands, and be able to take her in your arms: oh!
what heavenly rapture is this! The heart, that obscure celestial flower,
begins to expand mysteriously, and you would not exchange this shadow
for all the light! The angel soul is thus necessarily there; if she go away, it is
to return; she disappears like a dream, and reappears like reality. You feel
heat approaching you, it is she. You overflow with serenity, ecstasy, and
gayety; you are a sunbeam in the night. And then the thousand little
attentions, the nothings which are so enormous in this vacuum! The most
ineffable accents of the human voice employed to lull you, and taking the
place of the vanished universe. You are caressed with the soul: you see
nothing, but you feel yourself adored; it is a paradise of darkness.
It was from this paradise that Monseigneur Welcome had passed to the
other. The announcement of his death was copied by the local paper of M
——, and on the next day Monsieur Madeleine appeared dressed in black,
with crape on his hat. The mourning was noticed in the town, and people
gossiped about it, for it seemed to throw a gleam, over M. Madeleine's
origin. It was concluded that he was somehow connected with the Bishop.
"He is in mourning for the Bishop," was said in drawing-rooms; this added
inches to M. Madeleine's stature, and suddenly gave him a certain
consideration in the noble world of M——. The microscopic Faubourg St.
Germain of the town thought about putting an end to the Coventry of M.
Madeleine, the probable relation of a bishop, and M. Madeleine remarked
the promotion he had obtained in the increased love of the old ladies, and
the greater amount of smiles from the young. One evening a lady belonging

to this little great world, curious by right of seniority, ventured to say, "M.
le Maire is doubtless a cousin of the late Bishop of D——?"
He answered, "No, Madame."
"But," the dowager went on, "you wear mourning for him."
"In my youth I was a footman in his family," was the answer.
Another thing noticed was, that when a young Savoyard passed through the
town, looking for chimneys to sweep, the Mayor sent for him, asked his
name, and gave him money. The Savoyard boys told each other of this, and
a great many passed through M——.

CHAPTER V.

VAGUE FLASHES ON THE HORIZON.

By degrees and with time all the opposition died out; at first there had been
calumnies against M. Madeleine,—a species of law which all rising men
undergo; then it was only backbiting; then it was only malice; and
eventually all this faded away. The respect felt for him was complete,
unanimous, and cordial, and the moment arrived in 1821 when the name of
the Mayor was uttered at M—— with nearly the same accent as
"Monseigneur the Bishop" had been said at D—— in 1815. People came
for ten leagues round to consult M. Madeleine; he settled disputes,
prevented lawsuits, and reconciled enemies. Everybody was willing to
accept him as arbiter, and it seemed as if he had the book of natural law for
his soul. It was a sort of contagious veneration, which in six or seven years
spread all over the country-side.
Only one man in the town and bailiwick resisted this contagion, and
whatever M. Madeleine might do, remained rebellious to it, as if a sort of
incorruptible and imperturbable instinct kept him on his guard. It would
appear, in fact, as if there is in certain men a veritable bestial instinct,
though pure and honest as all instincts are, which creates sympathies and
antipathies; which fatally separates one nature from another; which never

hesitates; which is not troubled, is never silent, and never contradicts itself;
which is clear in its obscurity, infallible, imperious; refractory to all the
counsels of intelligence and all the solvents of the reason, and which,
whatever the way in which destinies are made, surely warns the man-dog of
the man-cat, and the man-fox of the presence of the man-lion. It often
happened when M. Madeleine passed along a street, calmly, kindly, and
greeted by the blessings of all, that a tall man, dressed in an iron-gray great-
coat, armed with a thick cane, and wearing a hat with turned-down brim,
turned suddenly and looked after him till he disappeared; folding his arms,
shaking his head, and raising his upper lip with the lower as high as his
nose, a sort of significant grimace, which may be translated,—"Who is that
man? I am certain that I have seen him somewhere. At any rate, I am not his
dupe."
This person, who was grave, with an almost menacing gravity, was one of
those men who, though only noticed for a moment, preoccupy the observer.
His name was Javert, and he belonged to the police, and performed at M
—— the laborious but useful duties of an inspector. He had not seen
Madeleine's beginning, for he was indebted for the post he occupied to the
Secretary of Count Angle, at that time Prefect of Police at Paris. When
Javert arrived at M——, the great manufacturer's fortune was made, and
Father Madeleine had become Monsieur Madeleine. Some police officers
have a peculiar face, which is complicated by an air of baseness, blended
with an air of authority. Javert had this face, less the baseness. In our
conviction, if souls were visible, we should distinctly see the strange fact
that every individual of the human species corresponds to some one of the
species of animal creation; and we might occurred to the thinker, that, from
the oyster to the eagle, from the hog to the tiger, all animals are in man, and
that each of them is in a man; at times several of them at once. Animals are
nothing else than the figures of our virtues and our vices, wandering before
our eyes, the visible phantoms of our souls. God shows these to us in order
to make us reflect; but, as animals are only shadows, God has not made
them capable of education in the complete sense of the term, for of what use
would it be? On the other hand, our souls being realities and having an end
of their own, God has endowed them with intelligence; that is to say,
possible education. Social education, properly carried out, can always draw
out of a soul, no matter its nature, the utility which it contains.

Now, if the reader will admit with me for a moment that in every man there
is one of the animal species of creation, it will be easy for us to say what
Javert the policeman was. The Asturian peasants are convinced that in every
litter of wolves there is a dog which is killed by the mother, for, otherwise,
when it grew it would devour the other whelps. Give a human face to this
dog-son of a she-wolf, and we shall have Javert. He was born in prison; his
mother was a fortune-teller, whose husband was at the galleys. When he
grew up he thought that he was beyond the pale of society, and despaired of
ever entering it. He noticed that society inexorably keeps at bay two classes
of men,—those who attack it, and those who guard it; he had only a choice
between these two classes, and at the same time felt within him a rigidness,
regularity, and probity, combined with an inexpressible hatred of the race of
Bohemians to which he belonged. He entered the police, got on, and at the
age of forty was an inspector. In his youth he was engaged in the Southern
Bagnes.
Before going further, let us explain the words "human face" which we
applied just now to Javert. His human face consisted of a stub-nose, with
two enormous nostrils, toward which enormous whiskers mounted on his
cheeks. You felt uncomfortable the first time that you saw these two forests
and these two caverns. When Javert laughed, which was rare and terrible,
his thin lips parted, and displayed, not only his teeth, but his gums, and a
savage flat curl formed round his nose, such as is seen on the muzzle of a
wild beast. Javert when serious was a bull-dog; when he laughed he was a
tiger. To sum up, he had but little skull and plenty of jaw; his hair hid his
forehead and fell over his brows; he had between his eyes a central and
permanent frown, like a star of anger, an obscure glance, a pinched-up and
formidable mouth, and an air of ferocious command.
This man was made up of two very simple and relatively excellent feelings,
but which he almost rendered bad by exaggerating them,—respect for
authority and hatred of rebellion; and in his eyes, robbery, murder, and
every crime were only forms of rebellion. He enveloped in a species of
blind faith everybody in the service of the State, from the Prime Minister
down to the game-keeper. He covered with contempt, aversion, and disgust,
every one who had once crossed the legal threshold of evil. He was
absolute, and admitted of no exceptions; on one side he said: "A functionary
cannot be mistaken, a magistrate can do no wrong;" on the other he said:

"They are irremediably lost: no good can come of them." He fully shared
the opinion of those extreme minds that attribute to the human law some
power of making or verifying demons, and that place a Styx at the bottom
of society. He was stoical, stern, and austere; a sad dreamer, and humble yet
haughty, like all fanatics. His glance was a gimlet, for it was cold and
piercing. His whole life was composed in the two words, watching and
overlooking. He had introduced the straight line into what is the most
tortuous thing in the world; he was conscious of his usefulness, had
religious respect for his duties, and was a spy as well as another is a priest.
Woe to the wretch who came into his clutches! he would have arrested his
father if escaping from prison, and denounced his mother had she broken
her ban. And he would have done it with that sort of inner satisfaction
which virtue produces. With all this he spent a life of privation, isolation,
self-denial, chastity. He was the implacable duty, the police comprehended
as the Spartans comprehended Sparta, a pitiless watchman, a savage
integrity, a marble-hearted spy, a Brutus contained in a Vidocq.
Javert's entire person expressed the man who spies and hides himself. The
mystic school of Joseph de Maîstre, which at this epoch was seasoning with
high cosmogony what were called the ultra journals, would not have failed
to say that Javert was a symbol. His forehead could not be seen, for it was
hidden by his hat; his eyes could not be seen, because they were lost under
his eye-brows; his chin was plunged into his cravat, his hands were covered
by his cuffs, and his cane was carried under his coat. But when the
opportunity arrived, there could be seen suddenly emerging from all this
shadow, as from an ambush, an angular, narrow forehead, a fatal glance, a
menacing chin, enormous hands, and a monstrous rattan. In his leisure
moments, which were few, he read, though he hated books, and this caused
him not to be utterly ignorant, as could be noticed through a certain
emphasis in his language. As we have said, he had no vice; when satisfied
with himself, he indulged in a pinch of snuff, and that was his connecting
link with humanity. Our readers will readily understand that Javert was the
terror of all that class whom the yearly statistics of the minister of justice
designate under the rubric—vagabonds. The name of Javert, if uttered, set
them to flight; the face of Javert, if seen, petrified them. Such was this
formidable man.

Javert was like an eye ever fixed on M. Madeleine, an eye fall of suspicion
and conjectures. M. Madeleine noticed it in the end; but he considered it a
matter of insignificance. He did not even ask Javert his motive, he neither
sought nor shunned him, and endured his annoying glance without
appearing to notice it. He treated Javert like every one else, easily and
kindly. From some remarks that dropped from Javert, it was supposed that
he had secretly sought, with that curiosity belonging to the breed, and in
which there is as much instinct as will, all the previous traces which Father
Madeleine might have left. He appeared to know, and sometimes said
covertly, that some one had obtained certain information in a certain district
about a certain family which had disappeared. Once he happened to say,
talking to himself, "I believe that I have got him;" then he remained
thoughtful for three days without saying a word. It seems that the thread
which he fancied he held was broken. However, there cannot be any theory
really infallible in a human creature, and it is the peculiarity of instinct that
it can be troubled, thrown out, and routed. If not, it would be superior to
intelligence, and the brute would have a better light than man. Javert was
evidently somewhat disconcerted by M. Madeleine's complete naturalness
and calmness. One day, however, his strange manner seemed to produce an
impression on M. Madeleine. The occasion was as follows.

CHAPTER VI.

FATHER FAUCHELEVENT.

When M. Madeleine was passing one morning through an unpaved lane in
the town, he heard a noise and saw a group at some distance, to which he
walked up. An old man, known as Father Fauchelevent, had fallen under his
cart, and his horse was lying on the ground. This Fauchelevent was one of
the few enemies M. Madeleine still had at this time. When Madeleine came
to these parts, Fauchelevent, a tolerably well-educated peasant, was doing
badly in business; and he saw the simple workman grow rich, while he, a
master, was being ruined. This filled him with jealousy, and he had done all
in his power, on every possible occasion, to injure Madeleine. Then

bankruptcy came, and in his old days, having only a horse and cart left, and
no family, he turned carter to earn a living.
The horse had both legs broken and could not get up, while the old man was
entangled between the wheels. The fall had been so unfortunate, that the
whole weight of the cart was pressing on his chest, and it was heavily
loaded. Fauchelevent uttered lamentable groans, and attempts had been
made, though in vain, to draw him out; any irregular effort, any clumsy help
or shock, might kill him. It was impossible to extricate him except by
raising the cart from below, and Javert, who came up at the moment of the
accident, had sent to fetch a jack. When M. Madeleine approached, the mob
made way respectfully.
"Help!" old Fauchelevent cried; "is there no good soul who will save an old
man?"
M. Madeleine turned to the spectators.
"Have you a jack?"
"They have gone to fetch one," a peasant answered.
"How soon will it be here?"
"Well, the nearest is at Flachot the blacksmith's, but it cannot be brought
here under a good quarter of an hour."
"A quarter of an hour!" Madeleine exclaimed.
It had rained on the previous night, the ground was soft, the cart sunk
deeper into it every moment, and more and more pressed the old man's
chest. It was evident that his ribs would be broken within five minutes.
"It is impossible to wait a quarter of an hour," said M. Madeleine to the
peasants who were looking on.
"We must."
"But do you not see that the cart is sinking into the ground?"
"Hang it! so it is."
"Listen to me," Madeleine continued; "there is still room enough for a man
to slip under the cart and raise it with his back. It will only take half a

minute, and the poor man can be drawn out. Is there any one here who has
strong loins? There are five louis to be earned."
No one stirred.
"Ten louis," Madeleine said.
His hearers looked down, and one of them muttered, "A man would have to
be deucedly strong, and, besides, he would run a risk of being smashed."
"Come," Madeleine began again, "twenty louis." The same silence.
"It is not the good-will they are deficient in," a voice cried.
M. Madeleine turned and recognized Javert: he had noticed him when he
came up. Javert continued,—
"It is the strength. A man would have to be tremendously strong to lift a cart
like that with his back."
Then, looking fixedly at M. Madeleine, he continued, laying a marked
stress on every word he uttered,—
"Monsieur Madeleine, I never knew but one man capable of doing what you
ask."
Madeleine started, but Javert continued carelessly, though without taking
his eyes off Madeleine,—
"He was a galley-slave."
"Indeed!" said Madeleine.
"At the Toulon Bagne."
Madeleine turned pale; all this while the cart was slowly settling down, and
Father Fauchelevent was screaming,—
"I am choking: it is breaking my ribs: a jack! something—oh!"
Madeleine looked around him.
"Is there no one here willing to earn twenty louis and save this poor old
man's life?"
No one stirred, and Javert repeated,—

"I never knew but one man capable of acting as a jack, and it was that
convict."
"Oh, it is crushing me!" the old man yelled.
Madeleine raised his head, met Javert's falcon eye still fixed on him, gazed
at the peasants, and sighed sorrowfully. Then, without saying a word, he fell
on his knees, and, ere the crowd had time to utter a cry, was under the cart.
There was a frightful moment of expectation and silence. Madeleine almost
lying flat under the tremendous weight, twice tried in vain to bring his
elbows up to his knees. The peasants shouted: "Father Madeleine, come
out!" And old Fauchelevent himself said: "Monsieur Madeleine, go away! I
must die, so leave me; you will be killed too."
Madeleine made no answer; the spectators gasped; the wheels had sunk
deeper, and it was now almost impossible for him to get out from under the
cart. All at once the enormous mass shook, the cart slowly rose, and the
wheels half emerged from the rut. A stifled voice could be heard crying,
"Make haste, help!" It was Madeleine, who had made a last effort. They
rushed forward, for the devotion of one man had restored strength and
courage to all. The cart was lifted by twenty arms, and old Fauchelevent
was saved. Madeleine rose; he was livid, although dripping with
perspiration: his clothes were torn and covered with mud. The old man
kissed his knees, and called him his savior, while Madeleine had on his face
a strange expression of happy and celestial suffering, and turned his placid
eye on Javert, who was still looking at him.

FATHER FAUCHELEVENT.

CHAPTER VII.

FAUCHELEVENT BECOMES A GARDENER AT PARIS.

Fauchelevent had put out his knee-cap in his fall, and Father Madeleine had
him carried to an infirmary he had established for his workmen in his
factory, and which was managed by two sisters of charity. The next morning
the old man found a thousand-franc note by his bed-side, with a line in M.
Madeleine's handwriting, "Payment for your cart and horse, which I have
bought:" the cart was smashed and the horse dead. Fauchelevent recovered,
but his leg remained stiff, and, hence M. Madeleine, by the
recommendation of the sisters and his curé, procured him a situation as
gardener at a convent in the St. Antoine quarter of Paris.
Some time after, M. Madeleine was appointed Mayor; the first time Javert
saw him wearing the scarf which gave him all authority in the town, he felt
that sort of excitement a dog would feel that scented a wolf in its master's
clothes. From this moment he avoided him as much as he could, and when
duty imperiously compelled him, and he could not do otherwise than appear
before the Mayor, he addressed him with profound respect.
The prosperity created in M—— by Father Madeleine had, in addition to
the visible signs we have indicated, another symptom, which, though not
visible, was not the less significant, for it is one that never deceives: when
the population is suffering, when work is scarce and trade bad, tax-payers
exhaust and exceed the time granted them, and the State spends a good deal
of money in enforcing payment. When work abounds, when the country is
happy and rich, the taxes are paid cheerfully, and cost the State little. We
may say that wretchedness and the public exchequer have an infallible
thermometer in the cost of collecting the taxes. In seven years these costs
had been reduced three-fourths in the arrondissement of M——, which
caused it to be frequently quoted by M. de Villele, at that time Minister of
Finances.
Such was the state of the town when Fantine returned to it. No one
remembered her, but luckily the door of M. Madeleine's factory was like a
friendly face; she presented herself at it, and was admitted to the female
shop. As the trade was quite new to Fantine, she was awkward at it and
earned but small wages; but that was enough, for she had solved the
problem,—she was earning her livelihood.

CHAPTER VIII.

MADAME VICTURNIEN SPENDS THIRTY FRANCS ON
MORALITY.

When Fantine saw that she could earn her own living, she had a moment of
joy. To live honestly by her own toil, what a favor of Heaven! A taste for
work really came back to her: she bought a looking-glass, delighted in
seeing in it her youth, her fine hair and fine teeth; forgot many things, only
thought of Cosette, and her possible future, and was almost happy. She
hired a small room and furnished it, on credit, to be paid for out of her
future earnings,—this was a relic of her irregular habits.
Not being able to say that she was married, she was very careful not to drop
a word about her child. At the outset, as we have seen, she punctually paid
the Thénardiers; and as she could only sign her name, she was compelled to
write to them through the agency of a public writer. It was noticed that she
wrote frequently. It was beginning to be whispered in the shop that Fantine
"wrote letters," and was "carrying on."
No one spies the actions of persons so much as those whom they do not
concern. Why does this gentleman never come till nightfall? Why does So-
and-So never hang up his key on Thursdays? Why does he always take back
streets? Why does Madame always get out of her hackney coach before
reaching her house? Why does she send out to buy a quire of note-paper,
when she has a desk full? and so on. There are people who, in order to solve
these inquiries, which are matters of utter indifference to them, spend more
money, lavish more time, and take more trouble, than would be required for
ten good deeds: and they do it gratuitously for the pleasure, and they are
only paid for their curiosity with curiosity. They will follow a gentleman or
a lady for whole days, will stand sentry at the corner of a street or in a
gateway at night in the cold and rain; corrupt messengers, intoxicate
hackney coachmen and footmen, buy a lady's-maid, and make a purchase of
a porter,—why? For nothing; for a pure desire to see, know, and find out—
it is a simple itch for talking. And frequently these secrets, when made
known, these mysteries published, these enigmas brought to daylight, entail

catastrophes, duels, bankruptcies, ruin of families, to the great delight of
those who found it all out, without any personal motives, through pure
instinct. It is a sad thing. Some persons are wicked solely through a desire
to talk, and this conversation, which is gossip in the drawing-room, scandal
in the ante-room, is like those chimneys which consume wood rapidly; they
require a great deal of combustible, and this combustible is their neighbor.
Fantine was observed then, and besides, more than one girl was jealous of
her light hair and white teeth. It was noticed that she often wiped away a
tear in the shop; it was when she was thinking of her child, perhaps of the
man she had loved. It is a painful labor to break off all the gloomy
connecting links with the past. It was a fact that she wrote, at least twice a
month, and always to the same address, and paid the postage. They
managed to obtain the address: "Monsieur Thénardier, Publican,
Montfermeil." The public writer, who could not fill his stomach with wine
without emptying his pocket of secrets, was made to talk at the wine-shop;
and, in short, it was known that Fantine had a child. A gossip undertook a
journey to Montfermeil, spoke to the Thénardiers, and on her return said, "I
do not begrudge my thirty francs, for I have seen the child."
The gossip who did this was a Gorgon of the name of Madame Victurnien,
guardian and portress of everybody's virtue. She was fifty-six years of age,
and covered the mask of ugliness with the mask of old age. Astounding to
say, this old woman had once been young; in her youth, in '93, she had
married a monk, who escaped from the cloisters in a red cap, and passed
over from the Bernardines to the Jacobins. She was dry, crabbed, sharp,
thorny, and almost venomous, while remembering the monk whose widow
she was and who had considerably tamed her. At the Restoration she had
turned bigot, and so energetically, that the priests forgave her her monk. She
had a small estate which she left with considerable pallor to a religious
community, and she was very welcome at the Episcopal Palace of Arras.
This Madame Victurnien, then, went to Montfermeil, and when she
returned, said, "I have seen the child."
All this took time, and Fantine had been more than a year at the factory,
when one morning the forewoman handed her 50 francs in the Mayor's
name, and told her that she was no longer engaged, and had better leave the
town, so the Mayor said. It was in this very month that the Thénardiers,
after asking for 12 francs instead of 7, raised a claim for 15 instead of 12.

Fantine was startled; she could not leave the town, for she owed her rent
and for her furniture, and 50 francs would not pay those debts. She
stammered a few words of entreaty, but the forewoman intimated to her that
she must leave the shop at once; moreover, Fantine was but an indifferent
workwoman. Crushed by shame more than disgrace, she left the factory,
and returned to her room: her fault then was now known to all! She did not
feel the strength in her to say a word; she was advised to see the Mayor, but
did not dare do so. The Mayor gave her 50 francs because he was kind, and
discharged her because he was just; and she bowed her head to the sentence.

CHAPTER IX.

SUCCESS OF MADAME VICTURNIEN.

The monk's widow, then, was good for something. M. Madeleine, however,
knew nothing of all this; and they were combinations of events of which the
world is fall. M. Madeleine made it a rule hardly, ever to enter the female
work-room; he had placed at its head an old maid, whom the curé had given
him, and he had entire confidence in her. She was really a respectable, firm,
equitable, and just person, fall of that charity which consists in giving, but
not possessing to the same extent the charity which comprehends and
pardons. M. Madeleine trusted to her in everything, for the best men are
often forced to delegate their authority, and it was with this fall power, and
in the conviction she was acting rightly, that the forewoman tried,
condemned, and executed Fantine. As for the 50 francs, she had given them
out of a sum M. Madeleine had given her for alms and helping the
workwomen, and which she did not account for.
Fantine tried to get a servant's place in the town, and went from house to
house, but no one would have anything to do with her. She could not leave
the town, for the broker to whom she was in debt for her furniture—what
furniture!—said to her, "If you go away, I will have you arrested as a thief."
The landlord to whom she owed her rent, said to her, "You are young and
pretty, you can pay." She divided the 50 francs between the landlord and the
broker, gave back to the latter three-fourths of the goods, only retaining

what was absolutely necessary, and found herself without work, without a
trade, with only a bed, and still owing about 100 francs. She set to work
making coarse shirts for the troops, and earned at this sixpence a day, her
daughter costing her fourpence. It was at this moment she began to fall in
arrears with the Thénardiers. An old woman, however, who lit her candle
for her when she came in at nights, taught her the way to live in
wretchedness. Behind living on little, there is living on nothing: there are
two chambers,—the first is obscure, the second quite dark.
Fantine learned how she could do entirely without fire in winter, how she
must get rid of a bird that cost her a halfpenny every two days, how she
could make a petticoat of her blanket and a blanket of her petticoat, and
how candle can be saved by taking your meals by the light of the window
opposite. We do not know all that certain weak beings, who have grown old
in want and honesty, can get out of a halfpenny, and in the end it becomes a
talent. Fantine acquired this sublime talent, and regained a little courage. At
this period she said to a neighbor, "Nonsense, I say to myself; by only
sleeping for five hours and working all the others at my needle, I shall
always manage to earn bread, at any rate. And then, when you are sad, you
eat less. Well! suffering, anxiety, a little bread on one side and sorrow on
the other, all will support me."
In this distress, it would have been a strange happiness to have had her
daughter with her, and she thought of sending for her. But, what! make her
share her poverty? And then she owed money to the Thénardiers! how was
she to pay it and the travelling expenses? The old woman who had given
her lessons in what may be called indigent life, was a pious creature, poor,
and charitable to the poor and even to the rich, who could just write her
name, "Marguerite," and believed in God, which is knowledge. There are
many such virtues down here, and one day they will be up above, for this
life has a morrow.
At the beginning Fantine had been so ashamed that she did not dare go out.
When she was in the streets, she perceived that people turned round to look
at her and pointed to her. Every one stared at her, and no one bowed to her;
the cold bitter contempt of the passers-by passed through her flesh and her
mind like an east wind. In small towns an unhappy girl seems to be naked
beneath the sarcasm and curiosity of all. In Paris, at least no one knows you,
and that obscurity is a garment. Oh! how glad she would have been to be

back in Paris. She must grow accustomed to disrespect, as she had done to
poverty. Gradually she made up her mind, and after two or three months
shook off her shame, and went as if nothing had occurred. "It is no matter to
me," she said. She came and went, with head erect and with a bitter smile,
and felt that she was growing impudent. Madame Victurnien sometimes
saw her pass from her window; she noticed the distress of "the creature
whom she had made know her place," and congratulated herself. The
wicked have a black happiness. Excessive labor fatigued Fantine, and the
little dry cough she had grew worse. She sometimes said to her neighbor,
"Marguerite, just feel how hot my hands are!" Still, in the morning, when
she passed an old broken comb through her glorious hair, which shone like
floss silk, she had a minute of happy coquettishness.

CHAPTER X.

RESULT OF HER SUCCESS.

She had been discharged toward the end of winter; the next summer passed
away, and winter returned. Short days and less work; in winter there is no
warmth, no light, no mid-day, for the evening is joined to the morning;
there is fog, twilight, the window is gray, and you cannot see clearly. The
sky is like a dark vault, and the sun has the look of a poor man. It is a
frightful season; winter changes into stone the water of heaven and the heart
of man. Her creditors pressed her, for Fantine was earning too little, and her
debts had increased. The Thénardiers, being irregularly paid, constantly
wrote her letters, whose contents afflicted her, and postage ruined her. One
day they wrote her that little Cosette was quite naked, that she wanted a
flannel skirt, and that the mother must send at least ten francs for the
purpose. She crumpled the letter in her hands all day, and at nightfall went
to a barber's at the corner of the street, and removed her comb. Her splendid
light hair fell down to her hips.
"What fine hair!" the barber exclaimed.
"What will you give me for it?" she asked.

"Ten francs."
"Cut it off."
She bought a skirt and sent to the Thénardiers; it made them furious, for
they wanted the money. They gave it to Éponine, and the poor lark
continued to shiver. Fantine thought, "My child is no longer cold, for I have
dressed her in my hair." She wore small round caps which hid her shorn
head, and she still looked pretty in them.
A dark change took place in Fantine's heart. When she found that she could
no longer dress her hair, she began to hate all around her. She had long
shared the universal veneration for Father Madeleine: but, through the
constant iteration that he had discharged her and was the cause of her
misfortune, she grew to hate him too, and worse than the rest. When she
passed the factory she pretended to laugh and sing. An old workwoman who
once saw her doing so, said, "That's a girl who will come to a bad end." She
took a lover, the first who offered, a man she did not love, through bravado
and with rage in her heart. He was a scoundrel, a sort of mendicant
musician, an idle scamp, who beat her, and left her, as she had chosen him,
in disgust. She adored her child. The lower she sank, the darker the gloom
became around her, the more did this sweet little angel gleam in her soul.
She said: "When I am rich, I shall have my Cosette with me;" and she
laughed. She did not get rid of her cough, and she felt a cold perspiration in
her back. One day she received from the Thénardiers a letter to the
following effect: "Cosette is ill with a complaint which is very prevalent in
the country. It is called miliary fever. She must have expensive drugs, and
that ruins us, and we cannot pay for them any longer. If you do not send us
forty francs within a week, the little one will be dead." She burst into a loud
laugh, and said to her old neighbor, "Oh, what funny people! they want
forty francs; where do they expect me to get them? What fools those
peasants are!" Still, she went to a staircase window and read the letter
again; then she went out into the street, still laughing and singing. Some one
who met her said, "What has made you so merry?" and she answered, "It is
a piece of stupidity some country folk have written; they want forty francs
of me—the asses."
As she passed across the market-place she saw a crowd surrounding a
vehicle of a strange shape, on the box of which a man dressed in red was

haranguing. He was a dentist going his rounds, who offered the public
complete sets of teeth, opiates, powders, and elixirs. Fantine joined the
crowd and began laughing like the rest at this harangue, in which there was
slang for the mob, and scientific jargon for respectable persons. The
extractor of teeth saw the pretty girl laughing, and suddenly exclaimed,—
"You have fine teeth, my laughing beauty. If you like to sell me your two
top front teeth, I will give you a napoleon apiece for them."
"What a horrible idea!" Fantine exclaimed.
"Two napoleons!" an old toothless woman by her side grumbled; "there's a
lucky girl."
Fantine ran away and stopped her ears not to hear the hoarse voice of the
man, who shouted,—
"Think it over, my dear: two napoleons may be useful. If your heart says
Yes, come to-night to the Tillac d'Argent, where you will find me."
Fantine, when she reached home, was furious, and told her good neighbor
Marguerite what had happened. "Can you understand it? Is he not an
abominable man? How can people like that be allowed to go about the
country? Pull out my two front teeth! Why, I should look horrible; hair
grows again, but teeth! oh, the monster! I would sooner throw myself head
first out of a fifth-floor window on to the pavement."
"And what did he offer you?" Marguerite asked.
"Two napoleons."
"That makes forty francs."
"Yes," said Fantine, "that makes forty francs."
She became thoughtful and sat down to her work. At the end of a quarter of
an hour, she left the room and read Thénardier's letter again on the staircase.
When she returned, she said to Marguerite,—
"Do you know what a miliary fever is?"
"Yes," said the old woman, "it is an illness."
"Does it require much medicine?"

"Oh, an awful lot!"
"Does it attack children?"
"More than anybody."
"Do they die of it?"
"Plenty," said Marguerite.
Fantine went out and read the letter once again on the staircase. At night she
went out, and could be seen proceeding in the direction of the Rue de Paris,
where the inns are. The next morning, when Marguerite entered Fantine's
room before day-break, for they worked together, and they made one candle
do for them both, she found her sitting on her bed, pale and chill. Her cap
had fallen on her knees, and the candle had been burning all night, and was
nearly consumed. Marguerite stopped in the doorway, horrified by this
enormous extravagance, and exclaimed,—
"Oh, Lord! the candle nearly burnt out! something must have happened."
Then she looked at Fantine, who turned her close-shaven head towards her,
and seemed to have grown ten years older since the previous day.
"Gracious Heaven!" said Marguerite, "what is the matter with you,
Fantine?"
"Nothing," the girl answered; "I am all right. My child will not die of that
frightful disease for want of assistance, and I am satisfied."
As she said this, she pointed to two napoleons that glistened on the table.
"Oh, Lord!" said Marguerite; "why,'t is a fortune; where ever did you get
them from?"
"I had them by me," Fantine answered.
At the same time she smiled, the candle lit up her face, and it was a fearful
smile. A reddish saliva stained the corner of her lips, and she had a black
hole in her mouth; the two teeth were pulled out. She sent the forty francs to
Montfermeil. It had only been a trick of the Thénardiers to get money, for
Cosette was not ill.
Fantine threw her looking-glass out of the window; she had long before left
her cell on the second floor for a garret under the roof,—one of those

tenements in which the ceiling forms an angle with the floor, and you knock
your head at every step. The poor man can only go to the end of his room,
as to the end of his destiny, by stooping more and more. She had no bed
left; she had only a rag she called a blanket, a mattress on the ground, and a
bottomless chair; a little rose-tree she had had withered away, forgotten in a
corner. In another corner she had a pail to hold water, which froze in winter,
and in which the different levels of the water remained marked for a long
time by rings of ice. She had lost her shame, and now lost her coquetry; the
last sign was, that she went out with dirty caps. Either through want of time
or carelessness, she no longer mended her linen, and as the heels of her
stockings wore out, she tucked them into her shoes. She mended her worn-
out gown with rags of calico, which tore away at the slightest movement.
The people to whom she owed money made "scenes," and allowed her no
rest; she met them in the street, she met them again on the stairs. Her eyes
were very bright, and she felt a settled pain at the top of her left shoulder-
blade, while she coughed frequently. She deeply hated Father Madeleine,
and sewed for seventeen hours a day; but a speculator hired all the female
prisoners, and reduced the prices of the free workmen to nine sous a day.
Seventeen hours' work for nine sous! Her creditors were more pitiless than
ever, and the broker, who had got back nearly all her furniture, incessantly
said to her, "When are you going to pay me, you cheat?" What did they
want of her, good Heavens! She felt herself tracked, and something of the
wild beast was aroused in her. About the same time Thénardier wrote to her,
that he had decidedly waited too patiently, and that unless he received one
hundred francs at once, he would turn poor Cosette, who had scarce
recovered, out of doors into the cold, and she must do what she could or
die. "One hundred francs!" Fantine thought; "but where is the trade in
which I can earn one hundred sous a day? Well! I will sell all that is left!"
And the unfortunate girl went on the streets.

CHAPTER XI.

CHRISTUS NOS LIBERAVIT.

What is this story of Fantine? It is society buying a slave.
Of whom? Of misery, of hunger, of cold, of loneliness, of desertion, of
destitution. Cursed bargain! A soul for a morsel of bread. Misery offers its
wares, and society accepts.
The holy law of Jesus Christ governs our civilization, but it does not yet
pervade it. They say that slavery has disappeared from European
civilization. That's a mistake. It still exists; but it weighs now only on
woman, and its name is prostitution.
It weighs on woman; that is, on grace, on helplessness, on beauty, on
motherhood. This is not one of the least reproaches upon man.
At the point which we have reached in this painful drama, there is nothing
left in Fantine of her former self. She became marble when she became
mud. Whoever touches her is chilled. She is handed along, she submits to
you, but she forgets your presence. She is the type of dishonor and rigidity.
Life and social order have said to her their last word. Everything that can
happen to her, has already happened. She has felt all, borne all, endured all,
suffered all, lost all, wept for all. She is resigned with a resignation which is
as like indifference as death is like sleep. She shuns nothing now. She fears
nothing now. Let the whole sky fall on her, let the whole ocean pass over
her! What does she care? She is a sponge soaked full.
At least she thinks so; but it is never safe to think that you have drained the
cup of misfortune, or that you have reached the end of anything.
Alas! what are all these destinies driven along thus helter-skelter? Where
are they going? Why are they what they are?
He who knows this sees the whole shadow. He is one alone. His name is
God.

CHAPTER XII.

M. BAMATABOIS' IDLENESS.

There is in all small towns, and there was at M—— in particular, a class of
young men, who squander fifteen hundred francs a year in the provinces
with the same air as those of the same set in Paris devour two hundred
thousand. They are beings of the great neutral species; geldings, parasites,
nobodies, who possess a little land, a little folly, and a little wit, who would
be rustics in a drawing-room, and believe themselves gentlemen in a pot-
house. They talk about my fields, my woods, my peasants, horses, the
actresses, to prove themselves men of taste; quarrel with the officers, to
prove themselves men of war; shoot, smoke, yawn, drink, smell of tobacco,
play at billiards, watch the travellers get out of the stage-coach, live at the
café, dine at the inn, have a dog that gnaws bones under the table, and a
mistress who places the dishes upon it; haggle over a son, exaggerate the
fashions, admire tragedy, despise women, wear out their old boots, copy
London through Paris, and Paris through Pont-à-Mousson; grow stupidly
old, do not work, are of no use, and do no great harm. Had M. Félix
Tholomyès remained in his province and not seen Paris, he would have
been one of them. If they were richer, people would say they are dandies; if
poorer, they are loafers; but they are simply men without occupation.
Among them there are bores and bored, dreamers, and a few scamps.
At that day, a dandy was composed of a tall collar, a large cravat, a watch
and seals, three waist-coats over one another, blue and red inside, a short-
waisted olive-colored coat, with a swallow tail, and a double row of silver
buttons, sewn on close together, and ascending to the shoulders, and
trousers of a lighter olive, adorned on the seams with an undetermined but
always uneven number of ribs, varying from one to eleven, a limit which
was never exceeded. Add to this, slipper-boots with iron-capped heels, a
tall, narrow-brimmed hat, hair in a tuft, an enormous cane, and a
conversation improved by Potier's puns; over and above all these were spurs
and moustachios, for at that period moustachios indicated the civilian, and
spurs the pedestrian. The provincial dandy wore longer spurs and more
ferocious moustachios. It was the period of the struggle of the South
American Republics against the King of Spain, of Bolivar against Morillo.
Narrow-brimmed hats were Royalist, and called Morillos, while the
Liberals wore broad brims, which were called Bolivars.
Eight or ten months after the events we have described in the previous
chapter, toward the beginning of January, and on a night when snow had

fallen, one of these dandies—a man of "right sentiments," for he wore a
Morillo, and was also warmly wrapped up in one of the large Spanish
cloaks which at that time completed the fashionable costume in cold
weather—was amusing himself by annoying a creature who was prowling
about in a low-neck balldress, and with flowers in her hair, before the
window of the officers' café. This dandy was smoking, as that was a
decided mark of fashion. Each time this woman passed him, he made some
remark to her, which he fancied witty and amusing, as: "How ugly you are!
—Why don't you go to kennel?—You have no teeth," etc., etc. This
gentleman's name was Monsieur Bamatabois. The woman, a sad-dressed
phantom walking backwards and forwards in the snow, made him no
answer, did not even look at him, but still continued silently and with a
gloomy regularity her walk, which, every few minutes, brought her under
his sarcasms, like the condemned soldier running the gauntlet. The slight
effect produced doubtless annoyed the idler, for taking advantage of her
back being turned, he crept up behind her, stooped to pick up a handful of
snow, and suddenly plunged it between her bare shoulders. The girl uttered
a yell, turned, leaped like a panther on the man, and dug her nails into his
face with the most frightful language that could fall from a guard-room into
the gutter. These insults, vomited by a voice rendered hoarse by brandy,
hideously issued from a mouth in which the two front teeth were really
missing. It was Fantine.
At the noise, the officers left the café in a throng, the passers-by stopped,
and a laughing, yelling, applauding circle was made round these two
beings, in whom it was difficult to recognize a man and a woman,—the
man struggling, his hat on the ground, the woman striking with feet and
fists, bareheaded, yelling, without teeth or hair, livid with passion, and
horrible. All at once a tall man quickly broke through the crowd, seized the
woman's satin dress, which was covered with mud, and said: "Follow me."
The woman raised her hand, and her passionate voice suddenly died out.
Her eyes were glassy, she grew pale instead of being livid, and trembled
with fear. She had recognized Javert. The dandy profited by this incident to
make his escape.

CHAPTER XIII.

THE POLICE OFFICE.

Javert broke through the circle and began walking with long strides toward
the police office, which is at the other end of the market-place, dragging the
wretched girl after him. She allowed him to do so mechanically, and neither
he nor she said a word. The crowd of spectators, in a paroxysm of delight,
followed them with coarse jokes, for supreme misery is an occasion for
obscenities. On reaching the police office, which was a low room, heated by
a stove, and guarded by a sentry, and having a barred glass door opening on
the street, Javert walked in with Fantine, and shut the door after him, to the
great disappointment of the curious, who stood on tip-toe, and stretched out
their necks in front of the dirty window trying to see. Curiosity is gluttony,
and seeing is devouring.
On entering, Fantine crouched down motionless in a corner like a
frightened dog. The sergeant on duty brought in a candle. Javert sat down at
a table, took a sheet of stamped paper from his pocket, and began writing.
Women of this class are by the French laws left entirely at the discretion of
the police: they do what they like with them, punish them as they think
proper, and confiscate the two sad things which they call their trade and
their liberty. Javert was stoical: his grave face displayed no emotion, and
yet he was seriously and deeply preoccupied. It was one of those moments
in which he exercised without control, but with all the scruples of a strict
conscience, his formidable discretionary power. At this instant he felt that
his high stool was a tribunal, and himself the judge. He tried and he
condemned: he summoned all the ideas he had in his mind round the great
thing he was doing. The more he examined the girl's deed, the more
outraged he felt: for it was evident that he had just seen a crime committed.
He had seen in the street, society, represented by a householder and elector,
insulted and attacked by a creature beyond the pale of everything. A
prostitute had assaulted a citizen, and he, Javert, had witnessed it. He wrote
on silently. When he had finished, he affixed his signature, folded up the
paper, and said to the sergeant as he handed it to him: "Take these men and
lead this girl to prison." Then he turned to Fantine, "You will have six
months for it."

The wretched girl started.
"Six months, six months' imprisonment!" she cried; "six months! and only
earn seven sous a day! Why, what will become of Cosette, my child, my
child! Why, I owe more than one hundred francs to Thénardier, M.
Inspector; do you know that?"
She dragged herself across the floor, dirtied by the muddy boots of all these
men, without rising, with clasped hands and taking long strides with her
knees.
"Monsieur Javert," she said, "I ask for mercy. I assure you that I was not in
the wrong; if you had seen the beginning, you would say so; I swear by our
Saviour that I was not to blame. That gentleman, who was a stranger to me,
put snow down my back. Had he any right to do that when I was passing
gently, and doing nobody a harm? It sent me wild, for you must know I am
not very well, and besides he had been abusing me—"You are ugly, you
have no teeth." I am well aware that I have lost my teeth. I did nothing, and
said to myself, "This gentleman is amusing himself." I was civil to him, and
said nothing, and it was at this moment he put the snow down my back. My
good M. Javert, is there no one who saw it to tell you that this is the truth? I
was, perhaps, wrong to get into a passion, but at the moment, as you are
aware, people are not masters of themselves, and I am quick-tempered. And
then, something so cold put down your back, at a moment when you are
least expecting it! It was; wrong to destroy the gentleman's hat, but why has
he gone away? I would ask his pardon. Oh! I would willingly do so. Let me
off this time. M. Javert, perhaps you do not know that in prison you can
only earn seven sous a day; it is not the fault of Government, but you only
earn seven sous; and just fancy! I have one hundred francs to pay, or my
child will be turned into the street. Oh! I cannot have her with me, for my
mode of life is so bad! Oh, my Cosette, oh, my little angel, what ever will
become of you, poor darling! I must tell you that the Thénardiers are inn-
keepers, peasants, and unreasonable; they insist on having their money. Oh,
do not send me to prison! Look you, the little thing will be turned into the
streets in the middle of winter to go where she likes, and you must take pity
on that, my kind M. Javert. If she were older she could earn her living, but
at her age it is impossible. I am not a bad woman at heart, it is not
cowardice and gluttony that have made me what I am. If I drink brandy, it is
through wretchedness; I do not like it, but it makes me reckless. In happier

times you need only have looked into my chest of drawers, and you would
have seen that I was not a disorderly woman, for I had linen, plenty of
linen. Take pity on me, M. Javert!"
She spoke thus, crushed, shaken by sobs, blinded by tears, wringing her
hands, interrupted by a sharp dry cough, and stammering softly, with death
imprinted on her voice. Great sorrow is a divine and terrible ray which
transfigures the wretched, and at this moment Fantine became lovely again.
From time to time she stopped, and tenderly kissed the skirt of the
policeman's coat. She would have melted a heart of granite,—but a wooden
heart cannot be moved.
"Well," said Javert, "I have listened to you. Have you said all? Be off now;
you have six months. The Eternal Father in person could not alter it."
On hearing this solemn phrase, she understood that sentence was passed;
she fell all of a heap, murmuring, "Mercy!" But Javert turned his back, and
the soldiers seized her arm. Some minutes previously a man had entered
unnoticed; he had closed the door, leaned against it, and heard Fantine's
desperate entreaties. At the moment when the soldiers laid hold of the
unhappy girl, who would not rise, he emerged from the gloom, and said,—
"Wait a minute, if you please."
Javert raised his eyes, and recognized M. Madeleine; he took off his hat,
and bowed with a sort of vexed awkwardness.
"I beg your pardon, M. le Maire—"
The words "M. le Maire" produced a strange effect on Fantine; she sprang
up like a spectre emerging from the ground, thrust back the soldiers, walked
straight up to M. Madeleine before she could be prevented, and, looking at
him wildly, she exclaimed,—
"So you are the Mayor?"
Then she burst into a laugh, and spat in his face. M. Madeleine wiped his
face, and said,—
"Inspector Javert, set this woman at liberty."
Javert felt for a moment as if he were going mad; he experienced at this
instant the most violent emotions he had ever felt in his life, following each

other in rapid succession, and almost mingled. To see a girl of the town spit
in the Mayor's face was so monstrous a thing that he would have regarded it
as sacrilege even to believe it possible. On the other side, he confusedly
made a hideous approximation in his mind between what this woman was
and what this Mayor might be, and then he saw with horror something
perfectly simple in this prodigious assault. But when he saw this Mayor,
this magistrate, calmly wipe his face, and say, "Set this woman at liberty,"
he had a bedazzlement of stupor, so to speak; thought and language failed
him equally, for he had passed the limits of possible amazement. He
remained dumb. His sentence had produced an equally strange effect on
Fantine; she raised her bare arm, and clung to the chimney-key of the stove
like a tottering person. She looked around, and began saying in a low voice,
as if speaking to herself,—
"At liberty! I am to be let go! I shall not be sent to prison for six months!
Who said that? It is impossible that any one said it. I must have heard
badly; it cannot be that monster of a Mayor. Was it you, my kind M. Javert,
who said that I was to be set at liberty? Well, I will tell you all about it, and
you will let me go. That monster of a Mayor, that old villain of a Mayor, is
the cause of it all. Just imagine, M. Javert, he discharged me on account of a
parcel of sluts gossiping in the shop. Was not that horrible,—to discharge a
poor girl who is doing her work fairly! After that I did not earn enough, and
all this misfortune came. In the first place, there is an improvement which
the police gentry ought to make, and that is to prevent persons in prison
injuring poor people. I will explain this to you; you earn twelve sous for
making a shirt, but it falls to seven, and then you can no longer live, and are
obliged to do what you can. As I had my little Cosette I was forced to
become a bad woman. You can now understand how it was that beggar of a
Mayor who did all the mischief. My present offence is that I trampled on
the gentleman's hat before the officers' café, but he had ruined my dress
with snow; and our sort have only one silk dress for night. Indeed, M.
Javert, I never did any harm purposely, and I see everywhere much worse
women than myself who are much more fortunate. Oh, Monsieur Javert,
you said that I was to be set at liberty, did you not? Make inquiries, speak to
my landlord; I pay my rent now, and you will hear that I am honest. Oh,
good gracious! I ask your pardon, but I have touched the damper of the
stove without noticing it, and made a smoke."

M. Madeleine listened to her with deep attention: while she was talking, he
took out his purse, but as he found it empty on opening it, he returned it to
his pocket. He now said to Fantine,—
"How much did you say that you owed?"
Fantine, who was looking at Javert, turned round to him,—
"Am I speaking to you?"
Then she said to the soldiers,—
"Tell me, men, did you see how I spat in his face? Ah, you old villain of a
Mayor! you have come here to frighten me, but I am not afraid of you; I am
only afraid of M. Javert, my kind Monsieur Javert."
While saying this, she turned again to the Inspector,—
"After all, people should be just. I can understand that you are a just man,
M. Javert; in fact, it is quite simple; a man who played at putting snow
down a woman's back, made the officers laugh; they must have some
amusement, and we girls are sent into the world for them to make fun of.
And then you came up: you are compelled to restore order; you remove the
woman who was in the wrong, but, on reflection, as you are kind-hearted,
you order me to be set at liberty, for the sake of my little girl, for six
months' imprisonment would prevent my supporting her. Only don't come
here again, fagot! Oh, I will not come here again, M. Javert; they can do
what they like to me in future, and I will not stir. Still I cried out to-night
because it hurt me; I did not at all expect that gentleman's snow; and then
besides, as I told you; I am not very well,—I cough, I have something like a
ball in my stomach which burns, and the doctor says: "Take care of
yourself." Here, feel, give me your hand; do not be frightened."
She no longer cried, her voice was caressing; she laid Javert's large coarse
hand on her white, delicate throat, and looked up at him smilingly. All at
once she hurriedly repaired the disorder in her clothes, let the folds of her
dress fall, which had been almost dragged up to her knee, and walked
toward the door, saying to the soldiers with a friendly nod,—
"My lads, M. Javert says I may go, so I will be off."
She laid her hand on the hasp; one step further, and she would be in the
street. Up to this moment Javert had stood motionless, with his eyes fixed

on the ground, appearing in the centre of this scene like a statue waiting to
be put up in its proper place. The sound of the hasp aroused him: he raised
his head with an expression of sovereign authority,—an expression the
more frightful, the lower the man in power stands; it is ferocity in the wild
beast, atrocity in the nobody.
"Sergeant," he shouted, "do you not see that the wench is bolting? Who told
you to let her go?"
"I did," said Madeleine.
Fantine, at the sound of Javert's voice, trembled, and let go the hasp, as a
detected thief lets fall the stolen article. At Madeleine's voice she turned,
and from this moment, without uttering a word, without even daring to
breathe freely, her eye wandered from Madeleine to Javert, and from Javert
to Madeleine, according as each spoke. It was evident that Javert must have
been "lifted off the hinges," as people say, when he ventured to address the
sergeant as he had done, after the Mayor's request that Fantine should be set
at liberty. Had he gone so far as to forget the Mayor's presence? Did he
eventually declare to himself that it was impossible for "an authority" to
have given such an order, and that the Mayor must certainly have said one
thing for another without meaning it? Or was it that, in the presence of all
the enormities he had witnessed during the last two hours, he said to
himself that he must have recourse to a supreme resolution, that the little
must become great, the detective be transformed into the magistrate, and
that, in this prodigious extremity, order, law, morality, government, and
society were personified in him, Javert? However this may be, when M.
Madeleine said "I did," the Inspector of Police could be seen to turn to the
Mayor, pale, cold, with blue lips, with a desperate glance, and an
imperceptible tremor all over him, and—extraordinary circumstance!—to
say to him, with downcast eye, but in a fierce voice,—
"Monsieur le Maire, that cannot be."
"Why so?"
"This creature has insulted a gentleman."
"Inspector Javert," M. Madeleine replied with a conciliating and calm
accent, "listen to me. You are an honest man, and I shall have no difficulty
in coming to an explanation with you. The truth is as follows: I was

crossing the market-place at the time you were leading this girl away; a
crowd was still assembled; I inquired, and know all. The man was in the
wrong, and, in common justice, ought to have been arrested instead of her."
Javert objected,—
"The wretched creature has just insulted M. le Maire."
"That concerns myself," M. Madeleine said; "my insult is, perhaps, my
own, and I can do what I like with it."
"I ask your pardon, sir; the insult does not belong to you, but to the Judicial
Court."
"Inspector Javert," Madeleine replied, "conscience is the highest of all
courts. I have heard the woman, and know what I am doing."
"And I, Monsieur le Maire, do not know what I am seeing."
"In that case, be content with obeying."
"I obey my duty; my duty orders that this woman should go to prison for six
months."
M. Madeleine answered gently,—
"Listen to this carefully; she will not go for a single day."
On hearing these decided words, Javert ventured to look fixedly at the
Mayor, and said to him, though still with a respectful accent,—
"I bitterly regret being compelled to resist you. Monsieur le Maire, it is the
first time in my life, but you will deign to let me observe that I am within
the limits of my authority. As you wish it, sir, I will confine myself to the
affair with the gentleman. I was present; this girl attacked M. Bamatabois,
who is an elector and owner of that fine three-storied house, built of hewn
stone, which forms the corner of the Esplanade. Well, there are things in
this world! However this may be, M. le Maire, this is a matter of the street
police which concerns me, and I intend to punish the woman Fantine."
M. Madeleine upon this folded his arms, and said in a stern voice, which no
one in the town had ever heard before,—
"The affair to which you allude belongs to the Borough police; and by the
terms of articles nine, eleven, fifteen, and sixty-six of the Criminal Code, I

try it. I order that this woman be set at liberty."
Javert tried a final effort.
"But, Monsieur le Maire—"
"I call your attention to article eighty-one of the law of Dec. 13th, 1799,
upon arbitrary detention."
"Permit me, sir—"
"Not a word!"
"Still—"
"Leave the room!" said M. Madeleine.
Javert received the blow right in his chest like a Russian soldier; he bowed
down to the ground to the Mayor, and went out. Fantine stood up against
the door, and watched him pass by her in stupor. She too was suffering from
a strange perturbation: for she had seen herself, so to speak, contended for
by two opposite powers. She had seen two men struggling in her presence,
who held in their hands her liberty, her life, her soul, her child. One of these
men dragged her towards the gloom, the other restored her to the light. In
this struggle, which she gazed at through the exaggeration of terror, the two
men seemed to her giants,—one spoke like a demon, the other like her good
angel. The angel had vanquished the demon, and the thing which made her
shudder from head to foot was that this angel, this liberator, was the very
man whom she abhorred, the Mayor whom she had so long regarded as the
cause of all her woes; and at the very moment when she had insulted him in
such a hideous way, he saved her. Could she be mistaken? Must she change
her whole soul? She did not know, but she trembled; she listened wildly, she
looked on with terror, and at every word that M. Madeleine said, she felt the
darkness of hatred fade away in her heart, and something glowing and
ineffable spring up in its place, which was composed of joy, confidence,
and love. When Javert had left the room, M. Madeleine turned to her, and
said in a slow voice, like a serious man who is making an effort to restrain
his tears,—
"I have heard your story. I knew nothing about what you have said, but I
believe, I feel, that it is true. I was even ignorant that you had left the
factory, but why did you not apply to me? This is what I will do for you; I

will pay your debts and send for your child, or you can go to it. You can live
here, in Paris, or wherever you please, and I will provide for your child and
yourself. I will give you all the money you require, and you will become
respectable again in becoming happy; and I will say more than that: if all be
as you say, and I do not doubt it, you have never ceased to be virtuous and
holy in the sight of God! Poor woman!"
This was more than poor Fantine could endure. To have her Cosette! to
leave this infamous life! to live free, rich, happy, and respectable with
Cosette! to see all these realities of Paradise suddenly burst into flower, in
the midst of her wretchedness! She looked as if stunned at the person who
was speaking, and could only sob two or three times: "Oh, oh, oh!" Her legs
gave way, she fell on her knees before M. Madeleine, and before he could
prevent it, he felt her seize his hand and press her lips to it.
Then she fainted.

BOOK VI.

JAVERT.

CHAPTER I.

THE COMMENCEMENT OF REPOSE.

M. Madeleine had Fantine conveyed to the infirmary he had established in
his own house, and intrusted her to the sisters, who put her to bed. A violent
fever had broken out; she spent a part of the night in raving and talking
aloud, but at length fell asleep. On the morrow, at about mid-day, Fantine
woke, and hearing a breathing close to her bed, she drew the curtain aside,
and noticed M. Madeleine gazing at something above her head. His glance
was full of pity and agony, and supplicated: she followed its direction, and
saw that it was fixed on a crucifix nailed to the wall. M. Madeleine was

now transfigured in Fantine's eyes, and seemed to her surrounded by light.
He was absorbed in a species of prayer, and she looked at him for some
time without daring to interrupt him, but at length said, timidly,—
"What are you doing there?"
M. Madeleine had been standing at this spot for an hour, waiting till Fantine
should wake. He took her hand, felt her pulse, and answered,—
"How are you?"
"Very comfortable; I have slept, and fancy I am better. It will be nothing."
He continued answering the question she had asked him first, and as if he
had only just heard it,—
"I was praying to the martyr up there;" and he mentally added, "for the
martyr down here."
M. Madeleine had spent the night and morning in making inquiries, and had
learned everything; he knew all the poignant details of Fantine's history. He
continued,—
"You have suffered deeply, poor mother. Oh! do not complain, for you have
at present the dowry of the elect: it is in this way that human beings become
angels. It is not their fault; they do not know what to do otherwise. The hell
you have now left is the ante-room to heaven, and you were obliged to
begin with that."
He breathed a deep sigh, but she smiled upon him with the sublime smile in
which two teeth were wanting. Javert had written a letter during the past
night, and posted it himself the next morning. It was for Paris, and the
address was: "Monsieur Chabouillet, Secretary to the Prefect of Police." As
a rumor had spread about the affair in the police office, the lady-manager of
the post, and some other persons who saw the letter before it was sent off
and recognized Javert's handwriting, supposed that he was sending in his
resignation. M. Madeleine hastened to write to the Thénardiers. Fantine
owed them over 120 francs, and he sent them 300, bidding them pay
themselves out of the amount, and bring the child at once to M——, where
a sick mother was awaiting it. This dazzled Thénardier. "Hang it all!" he
said to his wife, "we must not let the brat go, for the lark will become a
milch cow for us. I see it all; some fellow has fallen in love with the

mother." He replied by sending a bill for 500 and odd francs very well
drawn up. In this bill two undeniable amounts figure, one from a physician,
the other from an apothecary, who had attended Éponine and Azelma in a
long illness. Cosette, as we said, had not been ill, and hence it was merely a
little substitution of names. At the bottom of the bill Thénardier gave credit
for 300 francs received on account. M. Madeleine at once sent 300 francs
more, and wrote, "Make haste and bring Cosette."
"Christi!" said Thénardier, "we must not let the child go."
In the mean while Fantine did not recover, and still remained in the
infirmary. The sisters had at first received and nursed "this girl" with some
repugnance; any one who has seen the bas-relief at Rheims will remember
the pouting lower lip of the wise virgins looking at the foolish virgins. This
ancient contempt of Vestals for Ambubaïæ is one of the deepest instincts of
the feminine dignity, and the sisters had experienced it, with the increased
dislike which religion adds. But in a few days Fantine disarmed them; she
had all sorts of humble and gentle words, and the mother within her was
touching. One day the sisters heard her say in the paroxysm of fever, "I
have been a sinner, but when I have my child by my side, that will show
that God has forgiven me. While I was living badly, I should not have liked
to have Cosette with me, for I could not have endured her sad and
astonished eyes. And yet it was for her sake that I did wrong, and for that
reason God pardons me. I shall feel the blessing of Heaven when Cosette is
here; I shall look at her, and it will do me good to see the innocent creature.
She knows nothing, as she is an angel. My sisters, at her age the wings have
not yet dropped off."
M. Madeleine went to see her twice a day, and every time she asked him,
"Shall I see my Cosette soon?"
He would answer,—
"To-morrow, perhaps; she may arrive at any moment, for I am expecting
her."
And the mother's pale face would grow radiant.
"Oh!" she said, "how happy I shall be!"
We have said that she did not improve; on the contrary, her condition
seemed to grow worse week by week. The handful of snow placed between

her naked shoulder-blades produced a sudden check of perspiration, which
caused the illness that had smouldered in her for years suddenly to break
out. Larmier's fine method for studying and healing diseases of the lungs
was just beginning to be employed; the physician placed the stethoscope to
Fantine's chest, and shook his head. M. Madeleine said to him,—
"Well?"
"Has she not a child that she wishes to see?" asked the doctor.
"Yes."
"Well, make haste to send for her."
Madeleine gave a start, and Fantine asked him,—
"What did the doctor say to you?"
M. Madeleine forced a smile.
"He said that your child must come at once, for that would cure you."
"Oh," she replied, "he is right; but what do those Thénardiers mean by
keeping my Cosette? Oh, she will come, and then I shall see happiness
close to me."
Thénardier, however, would not let the child go, and alleged a hundred poor
excuses. Cosette was ailing, and it would be dangerous for her to travel in
winter; and then there were some small debts still to pay, which he was
collecting, &c.
"I will send some one to fetch Cosette," said Father Madeleine; "if
necessary, I will go myself."
He wrote to Fantine's dictation the following letter, which she signed.
"M. THÉNARDIER,—" You will hand over Cosette to the bearer, who will pay
up all little matters. "Yours, FANTINE."
About this time a great incident happened. However cleverly we may have
carved the mysterious block of which our life is made, the black vein of
destiny ever reappears in it.

CHAPTER II.

HOW "JEAN" MAY BECOME "CHAMP."

One morning M. Madeleine was in his study, engaged in settling some
pressing mayoralty matters, in case he decided on the journey to
Montfermeil, when he was told that Inspector Javert wished to speak with
him. On hearing this name pronounced, M. Madeleine could not refrain
from a disagreeable impression. Since the guard-room adventure Javert had
avoided him more than ever, and M. Madeleine had not seen him again.
"Show him in," he said.
Javert entered. M. Madeleine remained at his table near the fire-place with a
pen in his hand and his eyes fixed on a bundle of papers, which he ran
through and annotated. He did not put himself out of the way for Javert, for
he could not refrain from thinking of poor Fantine. Javert bowed
respectfully to the Mayor, who had his back turned to him; the Mayor did
not look at him, but continued to make his notes. Javert walked a little way
into the study, and then halted without a word. A physiognomist familiar
with Javert's nature, and who had studied for any length of time this savage
in the service of civilization,—this strange composite of the Roman, the
Spartan, the monk, and the corporal, this spy incapable of falsehood, this
virgin detective,—a physiognomist aware of his secret and old aversion to
M. Madeleine, and his conflict with him about Fantine, and who regarded
Javert at this moment, would have asked himself, What has happened? It
was evident to any one who knew this upright, clear, sincere, honest,
austere, and ferocious conscience, that Javert had just emerged from some
great internal struggle. Javert had nothing in his mind which he did not also
have in his face, and, like all violent men, he was subject to sudden
changes. Never had his face been stranger or more surprising. On entering,
he bowed to M. Madeleine with a look in which there was neither rancor,
anger, nor suspicion; he had halted a few yards behind the Mayor's chair,
and was now standing there in an almost military attitude, with the simple
cold rudeness of a man who has never been gentle and has ever been
patient. He was waiting, without saying a word, without making a
movement, in a true humility and tranquil resignation, till the Mayor might
think proper to turn round,—calm, serious, hat in hand, and with an

expression which was half-way between the private before his officer and
the culprit before the judge. All the feelings as well as all the resolutions he
might be supposed to possess had disappeared: there was nothing but a
gloomy sadness on this face, which was impenetrable and simple as granite.
His whole person displayed humiliation and firmness, and a sort of
courageous despondency. At length the Mayor laid down his pen and half
turned round.
"Well, what is the matter, Javert?"
Javert remained silent for a moment, as if reflecting, and then raised his
voice with a sad solemnity, which, however, did not exclude simplicity.
"A culpable deed has been committed, sir."
"What deed?"
"An inferior agent of authority has failed in his respect to a magistrate in the
gravest matter. I have come, as is my duty, to bring the fact to your
knowledge."
"Who is this agent?" M. Madeleine asked
"Myself."
"And who is the magistrate who has cause to complain of the agent?"
"You, Monsieur le Maire."
M. Madeleine sat up, and Javert continued with a stern air and still looking
down,—
"Monsieur le Maire, I have come to request that you will procure my
dismissal from the service."
M. Madeleine in his stupefaction opened his mouth, but Javert interrupted
him,—
"You will say that I could have sent in my resignation, but that is not
enough. Such a course is honorable, but I have done wrong, and deserve
punishment. I must be dismissed."
And after a pause he added,—

"Monsieur le Maire, you were severe to me the other day unjustly, be so to-
day justly."
"What is the meaning of all this nonsense?" M. Madeleine exclaimed.
"What is the culpable act you have committed? What have you done to me?
You accuse yourself, you wish to be removed—"
"Dismissed," said Javert.
"Very good, dismissed. I do not understand it."
"You shall do so, sir."
Javert heaved a deep sigh, and continued still coldly and sadly,—
"Six weeks ago, M. le Maire, after the scene about that girl, I was furious,
and denounced you."
"Denounced me?"
"To the Prefect of Police at Paris."
M. Madeleine, who did not laugh much oftener than Javert, burst into a
laugh.
"As a Mayor who had encroached on the police?"
"As an ex-galley slave."
The Mayor turned livid, but Javert, who had not raised his eyes, continued,
—
"I thought you were so, and have had these notions for a long time. A
resemblance, information you sought at Faverolles, the strength of your
loins, the adventures with old Fauchelevent, your skill in firing, your leg
which halts a little—and so on. It was very absurd, but I took you for a man
of the name of Jean Valjean."
"What name did you say?"
"Jean Valjean; he is a convict I saw twenty years ago when I was assistant
keeper at the Toulon bagne. On leaving the galley, this Valjean, as it
appears, robbed a bishop, and then committed a highway robbery on a little
Savoyard. For eight years he has been out of the way and could not be

found, and I imagined—in a word, I did as I said. Passion decided me, and I
denounced you to the Prefect."
M. Madeleine, who had taken up the charge-book again, said with a
careless accent,—
"And what was the answer you received?"
"That I was mad!"
"Well?"
"They were right."
"It is fortunate that you allow it."
"I must do so, for the real Jean Valjean has been found."
The book M. Madeleine was holding fell from his grasp, he raised his head,
looked searchingly at Javert, said with an indescribable accent,—
"Ah!"
Javert continued,—
"The facts are these, M. le Maire. It seems that there was over at Ailly le
Haut Clocher, an old fellow who was called Father Champmathieu. He was
very wretched, and no attention was paid to him, for no one knows how
such people live. This autumn Father Champmathieu was arrested for
stealing cider apples: there was a robbery, a wall climbed over, and
branches broken. This Champmathieu was arrested with the branch still in
his hand, and was locked up. Up to this point it is only a matter for a police
court, but here Providence interposes. As the lock-up was under repair, the
magistrates ordered that Champmathieu should be taken to the departmental
prison at Arras. In this prison there is an ex-convict of the name of Brevet,
under imprisonment for some offence, and he has been made room-turnkey
for his good behavior. Champmathieu no sooner arrived than Brevet cries
out, "Why, I know this man: he is an ex-convict. Look at me, old fellow:
you are Jean Valjean." "What do you mean?" says Champmathieu, affecting
surprise. "Don't play the humbug with me," says Brevet; "you are Jean
Valjean. You were at the Toulon bagne twenty years ago, and I was there
too." Champmathieu denied identity, and, as you may suppose, the affair
was thoroughly investigated, with the following result. This Champmathieu

about thirty years ago was a journeyman wood-cutter at several places,
especially at Faverolles, where his trail is lost. A long time after he is found
again in Auvergne, and then in Paris, where he says he was a blacksmith,
and had a daughter a washer-woman,—though there is no evidence of this,
—and lastly, he turned up in these parts. Now, before being sent to the
galleys, what was Jean Valjean? A wood-cutter. Where? At Faverolles. And
here is another fact: this Valjean's Christian name was Jean, and his
mother's family name Mathieu. What is more natural to suppose than that
on leaving the bagne he assumed his mother's name as a disguise, and
called himself Jean Mathieu? He went to Auvergne, where Jean is
pronounced Chan, and thus he was transformed into Champmathieu. You
are following me, I suppose? Inquiries have been made at Faverolles, but
Jean Valjean's family is no longer there, and no one knows where it has
gone. As you are aware, in those places families frequently disappear in
such a way; these people, if they are not mud, are dust. And then, again, as
the beginning of this story dates back thirty years, there is no one in
Faverolles who knew Jean Valjean: and beside Brevet, there are only two
convicts who remember him. These two were brought from the bagne and
confronted with the pretended Champmathieu, and they did not hesitate for
a moment. The same age,— fifty-four,—the same height, the same look, the
same man, in short. It was at this very moment that I sent my denunciation
to Paris, and the answer I received was that I had lost my senses, for Jean
Valjean was in the hands of justice at Arras. You can conceive that this
surprised me, as I fancied that I held my Jean Valjean here. I wrote to the
magistrates, who sent for me, and Champmathieu was brought in."
"Well?" M. Madeleine interrupted him.
Javert answered with his incorruptible and sad face,—
"Monsieur le Maire, truth is truth: I am sorry, but that man is Jean Valjean: I
recognized him too."
M. Madeleine said in a very low voice,—
"Are you sure?"
Javert burst into that sorrowful laugh which escapes from a profound
conviction,—
"Oh! certain."

He stood for a moment pensive, mechanically taking pinches of saw-dust
out of the sprinkler in the inkstand, and added,—
"And now that I have seen the real Jean Valjean, I cannot understand how I
could have believed anything else. I ask your pardon, M. le Maire."
While addressing these supplicating words to the person who six weeks
previously had humiliated him so deeply and bidden him leave the room,
this haughty man was unconsciously full of dignity and simplicity. M.
Madeleine merely answered his entreaty with the hurried question,—
"And what does this man say?"
"Well, Monsieur le Maire, it is an ugly business, for if he is Jean Valjean, he
is an escaped convict. Scaling a wall, breaking a branch, and stealing apples
is a peccadillo with a child, an offence in a man, but a crime in a convict. It
is no longer a matter for the police courts, but for the assizes; it is no longer
imprisonment for a few days, but the galleys for life. And there is the matter
with the Savoyard, which, I trust, will be brought up again. There is enough
to settle a man, is there not? But Jean Valjean is artful, and in that I
recognize him too. Any other man would find it warm; he would struggle,
cry out, refuse to be Jean Valjean, and so on. He pretends though not to
understand, and says, "I am Champmathieu, and I shall stick to it." He has a
look of amazement, and plays the brute-beast, which is better. Oh! he is a
clever scoundrel! But no matter, the proofs are ready to hand; he has been
recognized by four persons, and the old scoundrel will be found guilty. He
is to be tried at Arras assizes, and I have been summoned as a witness."
M. Madeleine had turned round to his desk again, taken up his papers, and
was quietly turning over the leaves, and busily reading and writing in turn.
He now said to the Inspector,—
"Enough, Javert; after all, these details interest me but very slightly; we are
losing our time, and have a deal of work before us. Javert, you will go at
one to Mother Busaupied, who sells vegetables at the corner of the Rue St.
Saulve, and tell her to take out a summons against Pierre the carter; he is a
brutal fellow, who almost drove over this woman and her child, and he must
be punished. You will then go to M. Charcillay in the Rue Champigny; he
complains that there is a gutter next door which leaks, and is shaking the
foundation of his house. But I am giving you a deal to do, and I think you

said you were going away. Did you not state you were going to Arras on
this matter in a week or ten days?"
"Sooner than that, sir."
"On what day, then?"
"I fancied I told you that the trial comes off to-morrow, and that I should
start by to-night's coach."
"And how long will the trial last?"
"A day at the most, and sentence will be passed to-morrow night at the
latest. But I shall not wait for that, but return so soon as I have given my
evidence."
"Very good," said M. Madeleine; and he dismissed Javert with a wave of his
hand. But he did not go.
"I beg your pardon, M. le Maire," he said.
"What's the matter now?" M. Madeleine asked.
"I have one thing to remind you of, sir."
"What is it?"
"That I must be discharged."
M. Madeleine rose.
"Javert, you are a man of honor, and I esteem you; you exaggerate your
fault, and besides, it is another insult which concerns me. Javert, you are
worthy of rising, not of sinking, and I insist on your keeping your
situation."
Javert looked at M. Madeleine with his bright eyes, in which it seemed as if
his unenlightened but rigid and chaste conscience could be seen, and he said
quietly,—
"M. le Maire, I cannot allow it."
"I repeat," M. Madeleine replied, "that the affair concerns myself."
But Javert, only attending to his own thoughts, continued,—

"As for exaggerating, I am not doing so, for this is how I reason. I suspected
you unjustly; that is nothing: it is the duty of men like myself to suspect,
though there is an abuse in suspecting those above us. But, without proofs,
in a moment of passion and for the purpose of revenge, I denounced you, a
respectable man, a mayor and a magistrate; this is serious, very serious,—I,
an agent of the authority, insulted that authority in your person. Had any of
my subordinates done what I have done, I should have declared him
unworthy of the service and discharged him. Stay, Monsieur le Maire, one
word more. I have often been severe in my life to others, for it was just, and
I was doing my duty, and if I were not severe to myself now, all the justice I
have done would become injustice. Ought I to spare myself more than
others? No. What! I have been only good to punish others and not myself?
Why, I should be a scoundrel, and the people who call me that rogue of a
Javert, would be in the right! M. le Maire, I do not wish you to treat me
with kindness, for your kindness caused me sufficient ill-blood when dealt
to others, and I want none for myself. The kindness that consists in
defending the street-walker against the gentleman, the police agent against
the Mayor, the lower classes against the higher, is what I call bad kindness,
and it is such kindness that disorganizes society. Good Lord! it is easy
enough to be good, but the difficulty is to be just. Come! if you had been
what I believed you, I should not have been kind to you, as you would have
seen. M. le Maire, I am bound to treat myself as I would treat another man;
when I repressed malefactors, when I was severe with scamps, I often said
to myself, "If you ever catch yourself tripping, look out," I have tripped, I
have committed a fault, and all the worse for me. I have strong arms and
will turn laborer. M. le Maire, the good of the service requires an example. I
simply demand the discharge of Inspector Javert."
All this was said with a humble, proud, despairing, and convinced accent,
which gave a peculiar grandeur to this strangely honest man.
"We will see," said M. Madeleine, and he offered him his hand; but Javert
fell back, and said sternly,—
"Pardon me, sir, but that must not be; a mayor ought not to give his hand to
a spy."
He added between his teeth,—

"Yes, a spy; from the moment when I misused my authority, I have been
only a spy."
Then he bowed deeply and walked to the door. When he reached it he
turned round and said, with eyes still bent on the ground,—
"M. le Maire, I will continue on duty till my place is filled up."
He went out. M. Madeleine thoughtfully listened to his firm, sure step as he
walked along the paved passage.

BOOK VII

THE CHAMPMATHIEU AFFAIR.

CHAPTER I.

SISTER SIMPLICE.

The incidents we are about to record were only partially known at M——,
but the few which were known left such a memory in that town, that it
would be a serious gap in this book if we did not tell them in their smallest
details. In these details the reader will notice two or three improbable
circumstances, which we retain through respect for truth. In the afternoon
that followed Javert's visit, M. Madeleine went to see Fantine as usual; but
before going to her, he asked for Sister Simplice. The two nuns who
managed the infirmary, who were Lazarets, like all sisters of charity, were
known by the names of Sisters Perpetua and Simplice. Sister Perpetua was
an ordinary village girl, a clumsy sister of charity, who had entered the
service of Heaven just as she would have taken a cook's place. This type is
not rare, for the monastic orders gladly accept this clumsy peasant clay,
which can be easily fashioned into a Capuchin friar or an Ursuline nun; and
these rusticities are employed in the heavy work of devotion. The transition

from a drover to a Carmelite is no hard task; the common substratum of
village and cloister ignorance is a ready-made preparation, and at once
places the countryman on a level with the monk. Widen the blouse a little
and you have a gown. Sister Perpetua was a strong nun belonging to
Marnies near Pantoise, who talked with a country accent, sang psalms to
match, sugared the tisane according to the bigotry or hypocrisy of the
patient, was rough with the sick, and harsh with the dying, almost throwing
God in their faces, and storming their last moments with angry prayer.
Withal she was bold, honest, and red-faced.
Sister Simplice was pale, and looked like a wax taper by the side of Sister
Perpetua, who was a tallow candle in comparison. St. Vincent de Paul has
divinely described the sister of charity in those admirable words in which so
much liberty is blended with slavery: "They will have no other convent but
the hospital, no other cell but a hired room, no chapel but the parish church,
no cloister beyond the streets or the hospital wards, no walls but obedience,
no grating but the fear of God, and no veil but modesty." Sister Simplice
was the living ideal of this: no one could have told her age, for she had
never been young, and seemed as if she would never grow old. She was a
gentle, austere, well-nurtured, cold person—we dare not say a woman—
who had never told a falsehood; she was so gentle that she appeared fragile,
but she was more solid than granite. She touched the wretched with her
delicate and pure fingers. There was, so to speak, silence in her language;
she only said what was necessary, and possessed an intonation of voice
which would at once have edified a confessional and delighted a drawing-
room. This delicacy harmonized with the rough gown, for it formed in this
rough contact a continual reminder of heaven. Let us dwell on one detail;
never to have told a falsehood, never to have said, for any advantage or
even indifferently, a thing which was not the truth, the holy truth, was the
characteristic feature of Sister Simplice. She was almost celebrated in the
congregation for this imperturbable veracity, and the Abbé Suard alludes to
Sister Simplice in a letter to the deaf, mute Massieu. However sincere and
pure we may be, we have all the brand of a little white lie on our candor, but
she had not. Can there be such a thing as a white lie, an innocent lie? Lying
is the absolute of evil. Lying a little is not possible; the man who lies tells
the whole lie; lying is the face of the fiend, and Satan has two names,—he
is called Satan and Lying. That is what she thought, and she practised as she
thought. The result was the whiteness to which we have alluded, a

whiteness which even covered with its radiance her lips and eyes, for her
smile was white, her glance was white. There was not a spider's web nor a
grain of dust on the window of this conscience; on entering the obedience
of St. Vincent de Paul she took the name of Simplice through special
choice. Simplice of Sicily, our readers will remember, is the saint who
sooner let her bosom be plucked out than say she was a native of Segeste,
as she was born at Syracuse, though the falsehood would have saved her.
Such a patron saint suited this soul.
Simplice on entering the order had two faults, of which she had gradually
corrected herself; she had a taste for dainties and was fond of receiving
letters. Now she never read anything but a Prayer-book in large type and in
Latin; though she did not understand the language, she understood the book.
This pious woman felt an affection for Fantine, as she probably noticed the
latent virtue in her, and nearly entirely devoted herself to nursing her. M.
Madeleine took Sister Simplice on one side and recommended Fantine to
her with a singular accent, which the sister remembered afterwards. On
leaving the sister he went to Fantine. The patient daily awaited the
appearance of M. Madeleine, as if he brought her warmth and light; she said
to the sisters, "I only live when M. le Maire is here." This day she was very
feverish, and so soon as she saw M. Madeleine she asked him,—
"Where is Cosette?"
He replied with a smile, "She will be here soon."
M. Madeleine behaved to Fantine as usual, except that he remained with her
an hour instead of half an hour, to her great delight. He pressed everybody
not to allow the patient to want for anything, and it was noticed at one
moment that his face became very dark, but this was explained when it was
learned that the physician had bent down to his ear and said, "She is rapidly
sinking." Then he returned to the Mayoralty, and the office clerk saw him
attentively examining a road-map of France which hung in his room, and
write a few figures in pencil on a piece of paper.

CHAPTER II.

SCAUFFLAIRE'S PERSPICACITY.

From the Mayoralty M. Madeleine proceeded to the end of the town, to a
Fleming called Master Scaufflaer, gallicized into Scaufflaire, who let out
horses and gigs by the day. To reach his yard the nearest way was through
an unfrequented street, in which stood the house of the parish priest. The
Curé was said to be a worthy and respectable man, who gave good advice.
At the moment when M. Madeleine came in front of his house there was
only one person in the street, and he noticed the following circumstances:
M. le Maire, after passing the house, stopped for a moment, then turned
back and walked up to the Curé's door, which had an iron knocker. He
quickly seized the knocker and lifted it; then he stopped again as if in deep
thought, and, after a few seconds, instead of knocking, he softly let the
knocker fall back in its place and continued his way with a haste which he
had not displayed before.
M. Madeleine found Master Scaufflaire at home and engaged in mending a
set of harness.
"Master Scaufflaire", he inquired, "have you a good horse?"
"M. le Maire," the Fleming replied, "all my horses are good. What do you
mean by a good horse?"
"I mean a horse that can cover twenty leagues of ground in a day."
"Harnessed in a gig?"
"Yes."
"And how long will it rest after the journey?"
"It must be in a condition to start again the next morning if necessary."
"To return the same distance?"
"Yes."
"Hang it all! and it is twenty leagues?"
M. Madeleine took from his pocket the paper on which he had pencilled the
figures; they were "5, 6, 8 1/2."
"You see," he said, "total, nineteen and a half, or call them twenty leagues."

"M. le Maire," the Fleming continued, "I can suit you. My little white horse
—you may have seen it pass sometimes—is an animal from the Bas
Boulonnais, and full of fire. They tried at first to make a saddle-horse of it,
but it reared and threw everybody that got on its back. It was supposed to be
vicious, and they did not know what to do with it; I bought it and put it in a
gig. That was just what it wanted; it is as gentle as a maid and goes like the
wind. But you must not try to get on its back, for it has no notion of being a
saddle-horse. Everybody has his ambition, and it appears as if the horse had
said to itself,—Draw, yes; carry, no."
"And it will go the distance?"
"At a trot, and under eight hours, but on certain conditions."
"What are they?"
"In the first place, you will let it breathe for an hour half way; it will feed,
and you must be present while it is doing so, to prevent the ostler stealing
the oats, for I have noticed that at inns oats are more frequently drunk by
the stable-boys than eaten by the horses."
"I will be there."
"In the next place, is the gig for yourself, sir?"
"Yes."
"Do you know how to drive?"
"Yes."
"Well, you must travel alone and without luggage, in order not to
overweight the horse."
"Agreed."
"I shall expect thirty francs a day, and the days of rest paid for as well,—not
a farthing less; and you will pay for the horse's keep."
M. Madeleine took three napoleons from his purse and laid them on the
table.
"There are two days in advance."

"In the fourth place, a cabriolet would be too heavy for such a journey, and
tire the horse. You must oblige me by travelling in a little tilbury I have."
"I consent."
"It is light, but it is open."
"I do not care."
"Have you thought, sir, that it is now winter?"
M. Madeleine made no answer, and the Fleming continued,—
"That it is very cold?"
Monsieur Madeleine was still silent.
"That it may rain?"
The Mayor raised his head and said,—
"The tilbury and the horse will be before my door at half-past four to-
morrow morning."
"Very good, sir," Scaufflaire answered; then scratching with his thumb-nail
a stain in the wood of his table, he continued, with that careless air with
which the Flemings so cleverly conceal their craft,—
"Good gracious! I have not thought of asking where you are going? Be kind
enough to tell me, sir."
He had thought of nothing else since the beginning of the conversation, but
somehow he had not dared to ask the question.
"Has your horse good legs?" said M. Madeleine.
"Yes, M. le Maire; you will hold it up a little in going down-hill. Are there
many hills between here and the place you are going to?"
"Do not forget to be at my door at half-past four exactly," M. Madeleine
answered, and went away.
The Fleming stood "like a fool," as he said himself a little while after. M. le
Maire had been gone some two or three minutes when the door opened
again; it was M. le Maire. He still wore the same impassive and
preoccupied air.

"M. Scaufflaire," he said, "at how much do you value the tilbury and horse
you are going to let me, one with the other?"
"Do you wish to buy them of me, sir?"
"No, but I should like to guarantee them against any accident, and when I
come back you can return me the amount. What is the estimated value?"
"Five hundred francs, M. le Maire."
"Here they are."
M. Madeleine laid a bank note on the table, then went out, and this time did
not come back. Master Scaufflaire regretted frightfully that he had not said
a thousand francs, though tilbury and horse, at a fair valuation, were worth
just three hundred. The Fleming called his wife and told her what had
occurred. "Where the deuce can the Mayor be going?" They held a council.
"He is going to Paris," said the wife. "I don't believe it," said the husband.
M. Madeleine had left on the table the paper on which he had written the
figures; the Fleming took it up and examined it. "'5, 6, 8 1/2;' why, that must
mean post stations." He turned to his wife: "I have found it out." "How?" "It
is five leagues from here to Hesdin, six from there to St. Pol, and eight and
a half from St. Pol to Arras. He is going to Arras."
In the mean while the Mayor had returned home, and had taken the longest
road, as if the gate of the priest's house were a temptation to him which he
wished to avoid. He went up to his bed-room and locked himself in, which
was not unusual, for he was fond of going to bed at an early hour. Still the
factory portress, who was at the same time M. Madeleine's only servant,
remarked that his candle was extinguished at a quarter-past eight, and
mentioned the fact to the cashier when he came in, adding,—
"Can master be ill? I thought he looked very strange to-day." The cashier
occupied a room exactly under M. Madeleine's; he paid no attention to the
remarks of the portress, but went to bed and fell asleep. About midnight he
woke with a start, for he heard in his sleep a noise above his head. He
listened; it was a footfall coming and going, as if some one were walking
about the room above him. He listened more attentively, and recognized M.
Madeleine's step; and this seemed to him strange, for usually no sound
could be heard from the Mayor's room till he rose. A moment later the
cashier heard something like a wardrobe open and shut; a piece of furniture

was moved, there was a silence, and the walking began again. The cashier
sat up in bed, wide awake, looked out, and through his window noticed on a
wall opposite, the red reflection of a lighted window; from the direction of
the rays it could only be the window of M. Madeleine's bed-room. The
reflection flickered as if it came from a fire rather than a candle, while the
shadow of the framework could not be traced, which proved that the
window was wide open, and this was a curious fact, considering the cold.
The cashier fell asleep and woke again some two hours after; the same slow
and regular footfall was still audible above his head. The reflection was still
cast on the wall, but was now pale and quiet, as if it came from a lamp or a
candle. The window was still open. This is what was occurring in M.
Madeleine's bed-room.

CHAPTER III.

A TEMPEST IN A BRAIN.

The reader has, of course, guessed that M. Madeleine is Jean Valjean. We
have already looked into the depths of this conscience, and the moment has
arrived to look into them again. We do not do this without emotion or
tremor, for there is nothing more terrifying than this species of
contemplation. The mental eye can nowhere find greater brilliancy or
greater darkness than within man; it cannot dwell on anything which is
more formidable, complicated, mysterious, or infinite. There is a spectacle
grander than the sea, and that is the sky; there is a spectacle grander than
the sky, and it is the interior of the soul. To write the poem of the human
conscience, were the subject only one man, and he the lowest of men,
would be to resolve all epic poems into one supreme and final epic.
Conscience is the chaos of chimeras, envies, and attempts, the furnace of
dreams, the lurking-place of ideas we are ashamed of; it is the
pandemonium of sophistry, the battlefield of the passions. At certain hours
look through the livid face of a reflecting man, look into his soul, peer into
the darkness. Beneath the external silence, combats of giants are going on
there, such as we read of in Homer; mêlées of dragons and hydras and

clouds of phantoms, such as we find in Milton; and visionary spirals, as in
Dante. A sombre thing is the infinitude which every man bears within him,
and by which he desperately measures the volitions of his brain and the
actions of his life. Alighieri one day came to a gloomy gate, before which
he hesitated; we have one before us, on the threshold of which we also
hesitate, but we will enter.
We have but little to add to what the reader already knows as having
happened to Jean Valjean since his adventure with Little Gervais. From this
moment, as we have seen, he became another man, and he made himself
what the Bishop wished to make him. It was more than a transformation, it
was a transfiguration. He succeeded in disappearing, sold the Bishop's plate,
only keeping the candlesticks as a souvenir, passed through France, reached
M——, had the idea we have described, accomplished what we have
narrated, managed to make himself unseizable and inaccessible, and
henceforth settled at M——, happy at feeling his conscience saddened by
the past, and the first half of his existence contradicted by the last half; he
lived peacefully, reassured and trusting, and having but two thoughts,—to
hide his name and sanctify his life; escape from men and return to God.
These two thoughts were so closely blended in his mind, that they only
formed one; they were both equally absorbing and imperious, and governed
his slightest actions. Usually they agreed to regulate the conduct of his life;
they turned him toward the shadow; they rendered him beneficent and
simple, and they counselled him the same things. At times, however, there
was a conflict between them, and in such cases the man whom the whole
town of M—— called Monsieur Madeleine did not hesitate to sacrifice the
first to the second,—his security to his virtue. Hence, despite all his caution
and prudence, he had kept the Bishop's candlesticks, worn mourning for
him, questioned all the little Savoyards who passed through the town,
inquired after the family at Faverolles, and saved the life of old
Fauchelevent, in spite of the alarming insinuations of Javert. It seemed, as
we have already remarked, that he thought, after the example of all those
who have been wise, holy, and just, that his first duty was not toward
himself.
Still, we are bound to say, nothing like the present had before occurred;
never had the two ideas which governed the unhappy man whose sufferings
we are describing, entered upon so serious a struggle. He comprehended

confusedly, but deeply, from the first words which Javert uttered on
entering his study. At the moment when the name which he had buried so
deeply was so strangely pronounced, he was struck with stupor, and, as it
were, intoxicated by the sinister peculiarity of his destiny. And through this
stupor he felt that quivering which precedes great storms; he bowed like an
oak at the approach of a storm, like a soldier before a coming assault. He
felt the shadows full of thunder and lightning collecting over his head:
while listening to Javert he had a thought of running off, denouncing
himself, taking Champmathieu out of prison, and taking his place. This was
painful, like an incision in the flesh; but it passed away, and he said to
himself, "We will see!" he repressed this first generous movement, and
recoiled before his heroism.
It would doubtless be grand if, after the Bishop's holy remarks, after so
many years of repentance and self-denial, in the midst of a penitence so
admirably commenced, this man, even in the presence of such a terrible
conjuncture, had not failed for a moment, but continued to march at the
same pace toward this open abyss, at the bottom of which heaven was: this
would be grand, but it did not take place. We are bound to describe all the
things that took place in this mind, and cannot say that this was one of
them. What carried him away first was the instinct of self-preservation. He
hastily collected his ideas, stifled his emotion, deferred any resolution with
the firmness of terror, deadened himself against what he had to do, and
resumed his calmness as a gladiator puts up his buckler. For the remainder
of the day he was in the same state,—a hurricane within, a deep tranquillity
outside,—and he only took what may be called "conservative measures."
All was still confused and jumbled in his brain; the trouble in it was so great
that he did not see distinctly the outline of any idea, and he could have said
nothing about himself, save that he had received a heavy blow. He went as
usual to Fantine's bed of pain, and prolonged his visit, with a kindly
instinct, saying to himself that he must act thus, and recommend her to the
sisters in the event of his being obliged to go away. He felt vaguely that he
must perhaps go to Arras; and, though not the least in the world decided
about the journey, he said to himself that, safe from suspicion as he was,
there would be no harm in being witness of what might take place, and he
hired Scaufflaire's tilbury, in order to be ready for any event.

He dined with considerable appetite, and, on returning to his bed-room,
reflected. He examined his situation, and found it extraordinary,—so
extraordinary that, in the midst of his reverie, through some almost
inexplicable impulse of anxiety, he rose from his chair and bolted his door.
He was afraid lest something might enter, and he barricaded himself against
the possible. A moment after, he blew out his light, for it annoyed him, and
he fancied that he might be overseen. By whom? Alas! what he wanted to
keep out had entered; what he wished to blind was looking at him. It was
his conscience, that is to say, God. Still, at the first moment, he deceived
himself; he had a feeling of security and solitude. When he put in the bolt,
he thought himself impregnable; when the candle was out, he felt himself
invisible. He then regained his self-possession; and he put his elbows on the
table, leaned his head on his hand, and began dreaming in the darkness.
"Where am I? Am I not dreaming? What was I told? Is it really true that I
saw that Javert, and that he spoke to me so? Who can this Champmathieu
be? It seems he resembles me. Is it possible? When I think that I was so
tranquil yesterday, and so far from suspecting anything! What was I doing
yesterday at this hour? What will be the result of this event? What am I to
do?"
Such was the trouble he was in that his brain had not the strength to retain
ideas. They passed like waves, and he clutched his forehead with both
hands to stop them. From this tumult which overthrew his wits and reason,
and from which he sought to draw an evidence and a resolution, nothing
issued but agony. His head was burning; and he went by the window and
threw it wide open. There were no stars in the heavens, and he went back to
the table and sat down by it. The first hour passed away thus, but gradually
vague features began to shape themselves, and become fixed in his
thoughts, and he could observe with the precision of reality some details of
the situation, if not its entirety. He began by noticing that however critical
and extraordinary his situation might be, he was utterly the master of it, and
his stupor was only augmented.
Independently of the stern and religious object he proposed to himself in his
actions, all that he had done up to this day was only a hole he dug in which
to bury his name. What he had always most feared, in his hours of reflection
as in his sleepless nights, was ever to hear that name pronounced. He said
to himself that this would be to him the end of everything; that on the day

when that name re-appeared, it would cause his new life to fade away, and
possibly the new soul he had within him. He shuddered at the mere thought
that this could happen. Assuredly if any one had told him at such moments
that the hour would arrive in which this name would echo in his ear, when
the hideous name of Jean Valjean would suddenly emerge from the night
and rise before him, when this formidable light which dissipated the
mystery with which he surrounded himself would suddenly shine above his
head, and that the name would no longer menace him; that the light would
produce only a denser gloom; that this rent veil would increase the mystery;
that the earthquake would consolidate his edifice; that this prodigious
incident would have no other result, if he thought proper, but to render his
existence clearer and yet more impenetrable, and that from his
confrontation with the phantom of Jean Valjean, the good and worthy M.
Madeleine would come forth more honored, more peaceful, and more
respected than ever,—if any one had told him this, he would have shaken
his head, and considered such talk insane. And yet all this had really
happened, and this heap of impossibilities was a fact, and Heaven had
permitted all these wild things to become real.
His reverie continued to grow clearer, and each moment he comprehended
his position better. It seemed to him that he had just awakened from a
dream, and that he was descending an incline in the middle of the night,
shuddering and recoiling in vain from the brink of an abyss. He distinctly
saw in the shadows an unknown man, a stranger, whom destiny took for
him, and thrust into the gulf in his place. In order that the gulf should close,
either he or another must fall in. He had no necessity to do anything, the
clearness became complete, and he confessed to himself—that his place
was vacant at the galleys; that, whatever he might do, it constantly expected
him, that the robbery of Little Gervais led him back to it, that this vacant
place would wait for him and attract him until he filled it, and that this was
inevitable and fatal. And then he said to himself that at this moment he had
a substitute,—that it seemed a man of the name of Champmathieu had this
ill-luck; and that, in future, himself at the bagne in the person of this
Champmathieu, and present in society under the name of M. Madeleine,
would have nothing more to fear, provided that he did not prevent justice
from laying over the head of this Champmathieu the stone of infamy which,
like the tombstone, falls once and is never raised again.

All this was so violent and so strange, that he suddenly felt within him that
species of indescribable movement which no man experiences more than
twice or thrice in his life,—a sort of convulsion of the conscience, which
disturbs everything doubtful in the heart, which is composed of irony, joy,
and despair, and what might be called an internal burst of laughter. He
suddenly relit his candle.
"Well, what am I afraid of?" he said to himself; "what reason have I to have
such thoughts? I am saved, and all is settled. There was only one open door
through which my past could burst in upon my life: and that door is now
walled up forever. That Javert, who has so long annoyed me, the formidable
instinct which seemed to have scented me, and by Heavens! had scented
me, the frightful dog ever making a point at me, is routed, engaged
elsewhere, and absolutely thrown out! He is henceforth satisfied, he will
leave me at peace, for he has got his Jean Valjean! It is possible that he may
wish to leave the town too. And all this has taken place without my
interference, and so, what is there so unlucky in it all? On my word, any
people who saw me would believe that a catastrophe had befallen me. After
all, if some people are rendered unhappy, it is no fault of mine. Providence
has done it all, and apparently decrees it. Have I the right to derange what
He arranges? What is it that I am going to interfere in? It does not concern
me. What! I am not satisfied? Why! what else can I want? I have attained
the object to which I have been aspiring for so many years, the dream of my
nights, the matter of my prayers,—security. It is Heaven that wills it, and I
have done nothing contrary to God's desire. And why has Heaven decreed
it? That I may continue what I have begun; that I may do good; that I may
one day be a grand and encouraging example; that it may be said that there
is after all a little happiness attaching to the penance I have undergone. I
really cannot understand why I was so afraid just now about visiting that
worthy Curé, telling all to him as to a confessor, and asking his advice, for
this is certainly what he would have advised me. It is settled; I will let
matters take their course, and leave the decision to Heaven."
He spoke this in the depths of his conscience, while leaning over what
might be called his own abyss. He got up from his chair and walked about
the room. "Come," he said, "I will think no more of it; I have made up my
mind;" but he felt no joy. It is no more possible to prevent thought from
reverting to an idea than the sea from returning to the shore. With the sailor

this is called the tide, with the culprit it is called remorse; God heaves the
soul like the ocean. After a few moments, whatever he might do, he
resumed the gloomy dialogue in which it was he who spoke and he who
listened, saying what he wished to be silent about, listening to what he did
not desire to hear, and yielding to that mysterious power which said to him
"Think," as it did, two thousand years ago, to another condemned man, "Go
on."
Before going further, and in order to be fully understood, let us dwell on a
necessary observation. It is certain that men talk to themselves; and there is
not a thinking being who has not realized the fact. It is only in this sense
that the words frequently employed in this chapter, he said, he exclaimed,
must be understood; men talk to themselves, speak to themselves, cry out
within themselves, but the external silence is not interrupted. There is a
grand tumult; everything speaks to us, excepting the mouth. The realities of
the soul, for all that they are not visible and palpable, are not the less
realities. He asked himself then, what he had arrived at, and cross-
questioned himself about the resolution he had formed. He confessed to
himself that all he had arranged in his mind was monstrous, and that leaving
"God to act" was simply horrible. To allow this mistake of destiny and of
men to be accomplished, not to prevent it, to lend himself to it, do nothing,
in short, was to do everything; it was the last stage of hypocritical indignity!
It was a low, cowardly, cunning, abject, hideous crime. For the first time
during eight years this hapless man had the taste of a bad thought and a bad
action, and he spat it out in disgust.
He continued to cross-question himself. He asked himself what he had
meant by the words, "my object is attained"? He allowed that his life had an
object, but what was its nature?—Conceal his name! deceive the police.
Was it for so paltry a thing that he had done all that he had effected? Had he
not another object which was the great and true one,—to save not his
person, but his soul; to become once again honest and good? To be a just
man! was it not that he craved solely, and that the Bishop had ordered him?
Close the door on his past? But, great Heaven, he opened it again by
committing an infamous action. He was becoming a robber once more, and
the most odious of robbers! He was robbing another man of his existence,
his livelihood, his peace, and his place in the sunshine. He was becoming an
assassin, he was killing, morally killing, a wretched man; he was inflicting

on him the frightful living death, the open-air death, which is called the
galleys. On the other hand, if he gave himself up, freed this man who was
suffering from so grievous an error, resumed his name, became through
duty the convict Jean Valjean, that would be really completing his
resurrection, and eternally closing the hell from which he was emerging!
Falling back into it apparently would be leaving it in reality! He must do
this: he would have done nothing unless he did this; all his life would be
useless, all his penitence wasted. He felt that the Bishop was here, that he
was the more present because he was dead, that the Bishop was steadfastly
looking at him, and that henceforth Madeleine the Mayor would be an
abomination to him, and Jean Valjean the convict admirable and pure in his
sight. Men saw his mask, but the Bishop saw his face; men saw his life, but
the Bishop saw his conscience. He must consequently go to Arras, deliver
the false Jean Valjean, and denounce the true one. Alas! this was the
greatest of sacrifices, the most poignant of victories, the last step to take;
but he must take it. Frightful destiny his! he could not obtain sanctity in the
sight of Heaven unless he returned to infamy in the sight of man.
"Well," he said, "I will make up my mind to this. I will do my duty and save
this man."
He uttered those words aloud without noticing he had raised his voice. He
fetched his books, verified and put them in order. He threw into the fire a
number of claims he had upon embarrassed tradesmen, and wrote a letter,
which he addressed "To M. Lafitte, banker, Rue d'Artois, Paris." He then
took from his desk a pocket-book, which contained a few bank-notes and
the passport he had employed just previously to go to the elections. Any one
who had seen him while he was accomplishing these various acts, with
which such grave meditation was mingled, would not have suspected what
was taking place in him. At moments his lips moved, at others he raised his
head and looked at a part of the wall, as if there were something there
which he desired to clear up or question.
When the letter to M. Lafitte was finished, he put it into his portfolio, and
began his walk once more. His reverie had not deviated; he continued to see
his duty clearly written in luminous letters which flashed before his eyes,
and moved about with his glance, Name yourself, denounce yourself! He
could also see the two ideas which had hitherto been the double rule of his
life—to hide his name and sanctify his life—moving before him as it were

in a tangible shape. For the first time they seemed to him absolutely
distinct, and he saw the difference that separated them. He recognized that
one of these ideas was necessarily good, while the other might become bad;
that the former was self-sacrifice, the latter selfishness; that one said, "My
neighbor," the other "Myself;" that one came from the light and the other
from darkness. They strove with each other, and he could see them doing
so. While he was thinking, they had grown before his mental eye, and they
had now colossal forms, and he fancied he could see a god and a giant
wrestling within him, in the infinitude to which we just now alluded, and in
the midst of obscurity and flashes of light. It was a horrible sight, but it
seemed to him as if the good thought gained the victory. He felt that he was
approaching the second decisive moment of his life; that the Bishop marked
the first phase of his new life, and that this Champmathieu marked the
second; after the great crisis came the great trial.
The fever, appeased for a moment, gradually returned, however. A thousand
thoughts crossed his mind, but they continued to strengthen him in his
resolution. At one moment he said to himself that he perhaps regarded the
matter too seriously; that, after all, this Champmathieu did not concern him,
and in any case was a thief. He answered himself: If this man has really
stolen apples, he will have a month's imprisonment, but that is a long way
from the galleys. And then, again, is it proved that he has committed a
robbery? The name of Jean Valjean is crushing him, and seems to dispense
with proofs. Do not public prosecutors habitually act in this way? A man is
believed to be a thief because he is known to be a convict. At another
moment the idea occurred to him that, when he had denounced himself, the
heroism of his deed might perhaps be taken into consideration, as well as
his life of honesty during the last seven years, and the good he had done the
town, and that he would be pardoned. But this supposition soon vanished,
and he smiled bitterly at the thought that the robbery of the 40 sous from
Gervais rendered him a relapsed convict; that this affair would certainly be
brought forward, and, by the precise terms of the law, sentence him to the
galleys for life.
He turned away from all illusions, detached himself more and more from
earth, and sought consolation and strength elsewhere. He said to himself
that he must do his duty: that, perhaps, he would not be more wretched after
doing it than he would have been had he eluded it: that, if he let matters

take their course and remained at M——, his good name, good deeds,
charity, wealth, popularity, and virtue would be tainted by a crime; and what
flavor would all these sacred things have, when attached to this hideous
thought; while, if he accomplished his sacrifice, he would mingle a
heavenly idea with the galleys, the chain, the green cap, the unrelaxing toil,
and the pitiless shame. At last he said to himself that it was a necessity, that
his destiny was thus shaped, that he had no power to derange the
arrangements of Heaven, and that in any case he must choose either
external virtue and internal abomination, or holiness within and infamy
outside him. His courage did not fail him in revolving so many mournful
ideas, but his brain grew weary. He began thinking involuntarily of other
and indifferent matters. His arteries beat violently in his temples, and he
was still walking up and down; midnight struck, first from the parish
church, and then from the Town Hall: he counted the twelve strokes of the
two clocks, and compared the sound of the two bells. They reminded him
that a few days before he had seen an old bell at a marine store, on which
was engraved the name Antoine Albier, Romainville.
As he felt cold, he lit a fire, but did not dream of closing the window. Then
he fell back into his stupor, obliged to make a mighty effort to remember
what he had been thinking of before midnight struck. At last he succeeded.
"Ah, yes," he said to himself, "I had formed the resolution to denounce
myself."
And then he suddenly began thinking of Fantine.
"Stay," he said; "and that poor woman!"
Here a fresh crisis broke out: Fantine, suddenly appearing in the midst of
his reverie, was like a ray of unexpected light. He fancied that all changed
around him, and exclaimed,—
"Wait a minute! Hitherto, I have thought of myself and consulted my own
convenience. Whether it suits me to be silent or denounce myself—hide my
person or save my soul—be a contemptible and respected Magistrate, or an
infamous and venerable convict—it is always self, nought but self. Good
heavens! all this is egotism; under different shapes, 't is true, but still
egotism. Suppose I were to think a little about others! It is the first duty of a
Christian to think of his neighbor. Well, let me examine: when I am effaced

and forgotten, what will become of all this? If I denounce myself, that
Champmathieu will be set at liberty. I shall be sent back to the galleys, and
what then? What will occur here? Here are a town, factories, a trade, work-
people, men, women, old grandfathers, children, and poor people: I have
created all this. I keep it all alive: wherever there is a chimney smoking, I
placed the brand in the fire and the meat in the pot: I have produced easy
circumstances, circulation, and credit. Before I came there was nothing of
all this; I revived, animated, fertilized, stimulated, and enriched the whole
district. When I am gone the soul will be gone; if I withdraw all will die;
and then, this woman, who has suffered so greatly, who has so much merit
in her fall, and whose misfortune I unwittingly caused, and the child which
I intended to go and fetch, and restore to the mother—Do not I also owe
something to this woman in reparation of the wrong which I have done her?
If I disappear, what will happen? The mother dies, and the child will
become what it can. This will happen if I denounce myself. If I do not
denounce myself? Come, let me see."
After asking himself this question, he hesitated, and trembled slightly; but
this emotion lasted but a short time, and he answered himself calmly:—
"Well, this man will go to the galleys, it is true, but, hang it all! he has
stolen. Although I may say to myself that he has not stolen, he has done so!
I remain here and continue my operations: in ten years I shall have gained
ten millions. I spread them over the country. I keep nothing for myself; but
what do I care? I am not doing this for myself. The prosperity of all is
increased; trades are revived, factories and forges are multiplied, and
thousands of families are happy; the district is populated; villages spring up
where there are only farms, and farms where there is nothing; wretchedness
disappears, and with it debauchery, prostitution, robbery, murder, all the
vices, all the crimes—and this poor mother brings up her child. Why, I was
mad, absurd, when I talked about denouncing myself, and I must guard
against precipitation. What! because it pleases me to play the grand and the
generous—it is pure melodrama after all—because I only thought of
myself, and in order to save from a perhaps exaggerated though
substantially just punishment a stranger, a thief, and an apparent scoundrel
—a whole department must perish, a poor woman die in the hospital, and a
poor child starve in the streets, like dogs! Why, it is abominable! without
the mother seeing her child again, or the child knowing her mother! and all

this on behalf of an old scamp of an apple-stealer, who has assuredly
deserved the galleys for something else, if not for that. These are fine
scruples that save a culprit and sacrifice the innocent; that save an old
vagabond who has not many years to live, and will not be more unhappy at
the galleys than in his hovel, and destroy an entire population,—mothers,
wives, and children. That poor little Cosette, who has only me in the world,
and is doubtless at this moment shivering with cold in the den of those
Thénardiers. There is another pair of wretches. And I would fail in my
duties to all these poor creatures, and commit such a folly as to denounce
myself! Let us put things at the worst: suppose that I am committing a bad
action in this, and that my conscience reproaches me with it some day; there
will be devotion and virtue in accepting, for the good of my neighbor, these
reproaches, which only weigh on me, and this bad action, which only
compromises my own soul."
He got up and began walking up and down again: this time he seemed to be
satisfied with himself. Diamonds are only found in the darkness of the
earth; truths are only found in the depths of thought. It seemed to him that
after descending into these depths, after groping for some time in the
densest of this darkness, he had found one of these diamonds, one of these
truths, which he held in his hand and which dazzled his eyes when he
looked at it.
"Yes," he thought, "I am on the right track and hold the solution of the
problem. A man must in the end hold on to something, and my mind is
made up. I will let matters take their course, so no more vacillation or
backsliding. It is for the interest of all, not of myself. I am Madeleine, and
remain Madeleine, and woe to the man who is Jean Valjean. I am no longer
he. I do not know that man, and if any one happen to be Jean Valjean at this
moment, he must look out for himself, for it does not concern me. It is a
fatal name that floats in the night, and if it stop and settle on a head, all the
worse for that head."
He looked into the small looking-glass over the mantel-piece, and said to
himself,—
"How greatly has forming a resolution relieved me! I am quite a different
man at present."

He walked a little way and then stopped short. "Come," he said, "I must not
hesitate before any of the consequences of the resolution I have formed.
There are threads which still attach me to Jean Valjean which must be
broken. There are in this very room objects which would accuse me,—
dumb things which would serve as witnesses, and they must all disappear."
He took his purse from his pocket, and drew a small key out of it. He put
this key in a lock, the hole of which could scarcely be seen, for it was
hidden in the darkest part of the design on the paper that covered the walls.
A sort of false cupboard made between the corner of the wall and the
mantel-piece was visible. In this hiding-place there were only a few rags,—
a blue blouse, worn trousers, an old knapsack, and a large thorn-stick shod
with iron at both ends. Any one who saw Jean Valjean pass through D——
in October, 1815, would easily have recognized all these wretched articles.
He had preserved them, as he had done the candlesticks, that they might
constantly remind him of his starting-point; still he hid what came from the
galleys, and displayed the candlesticks which came from the Bishop. He
took a furtive glance at the door, as if afraid that it might open in spite of
the bolt; and then with a rapid movement he made but one armful of the
things he had so religiously and perilously kept for so many years, and
threw them all—rags, stick, and knapsack—into the fire. He closed the
cupboard, and, redoubling his precautions, which were now useless since it
was empty, dragged a heavy piece of furniture in front of it. In a few
seconds, the room and opposite wall were lit up with a large red and
flickering glow; all was burning, and the thorn-stick crackled and threw out
sparks into the middle of the room. From the knapsack, as it burned with all
the rags it contained, fell something that glistened in the ashes. On stooping
it could be easily recognized as a coin; it was doubtless the little Savoyard's
two-franc piece. He did not look at the fire, and continued his walk
backwards and forwards. All at once his eye fell on the two candlesticks
which the fire-light caused to shine vaguely on the mantel-piece.
"Stay," he thought, "all Jean Valjean is in them, and they must be destroyed
too."
He seized the candlesticks—there was a fire large enough to destroy their
shape, and convert them into unrecognizable ingots. He leaned over the
hearth and wanned his hands for a moment; it was a great comfort to him.

He stirred up the ashes with one of the candlesticks, and in a moment they
were both in the fire. All at once he fancied he heard a voice cry within him,
"Jean Valjean! Jean Valjean!" His hair stood erect, and he became like a
man who is listening to a terrible thing.
"Yes, that is right; finish!" the voice said: "complete what you are about;
destroy those candlesticks, annihilate that reminiscence! forget the Bishop!
forget everything! rain that Champmathieu; that is right. Applaud yourself;
come, all is settled and resolved on. This old man, who does not know what
they want with him, who is perhaps innocent, whose whole misfortune your
name causes, on whom your name weighs like a crime, is going to be taken
for you, sentenced, and will end his days in abjectness and horror. That is
excellent! Be an honest man yourself; remain Mayor, honorable and
honored, enrich the town, assist the indigent, bring up orphans, live happy,
virtuous, and applauded; and during this time, while you are here in joy and
light, there will be somebody who wears your red jacket, bears your name
in ignominy, and drags along your chain at the galleys. Yes, that is
excellently arranged. Oh, you scoundrel!"
The perspiration beaded on his forehead, and he fixed his haggard eye upon
the candlesticks. The voice within him, however, had not ended yet.
"Jean Valjean! there will be around you many voices making a great noise,
speaking very loud and blessing you, and one which no one will hear, and
which will curse you in the darkness. Well, listen, infamous man! all these
blessings will fall back on the ground before reaching Heaven, and the
curse alone will ascend to God!"
This voice, at first very faint, and which spoke from the obscurest nook of
his conscience, had gradually become sonorous and formidable, and he now
heard it in his ear. He fancied that it was not his own voice, and he seemed
to hear the last words so distinctly that he looked round the room with a
species of terror.
"Is there any one here?" he asked, in a loud voice and wildly.
Then he continued with a laugh, which seemed almost idiotic,—
"What a fool I am! there can be nobody."
There was somebody, but not of those whom the human eye can see. He
placed the candlesticks on the mantel-piece, and then resumed that