The Works of Victor Hugo
Translated by Isabel F. Hapgood
CONTENTS
VOLUME I
BOOK FIRST.--A JUST MAN
CHAPTER
I. M. Myriel
II. M. Myriel becomes M. Welcome
III. A Hard Bishopric for a Good Bishop
IV. Works corresponding to Words
V. Monseigneur Bienvenu made his Cassocks last too long
VI. Who guarded his House for him
VII. Cravatte
VIII. Philosophy after Drinking
IX. The Brother as depicted by the Sister
X. The Bishop in the Presence of an Unknown Light
XI. A Restriction
XII. The Solitude of Monseigneur Welcome
XIII. What he believed
XIV. What he thought
BOOK SECOND.--THE FALL
I. The Evening of a Day of Walking
II. Prudence counselled to Wisdom
III. The Heroism of Passive Obedience
IV. Details concerning the Cheese-Dairies of Pontarlier
V. Tranquillity
VI. Jean Valjean
VII. The Interior of Despair
VIII. Billows and Shadows
IX. New Troubles
X. The Man aroused
XI. What he does
XII. The Bishop works
XIII. Little Gervais
BOOK THIRD.--IN THE YEAR 1817
I. The Year 1817
II. A Double Quartette
III. Four and Four
IV. Tholomyes is so Merry that he sings a Spanish Ditty
V. At Bombardas
VI. A Chapter in which they adore Each Other
VII. The Wisdom of Tholomyes
VIII. The Death of a Horse
IX. A Merry End to Mirth
BOOK FOURTH.--TO CONFIDE IS SOMETIMES TO DELIVER INTO A PERSON'S POWER
I. One Mother meets Another Mother
II. First Sketch of Two Unprepossessing Figures
III. The Lark
BOOK FIFTH.-- THE DESCENT
I. The History of a Progress in Black Glass Trinkets
II. Madeleine
III. Sums deposited with Laffitte
IV. M. Madeleine in Mourning
V. Vague Flashes on the Horizon
VI. Father Fauchelevent
VII. Fauchelevent becomes a Gardener in Paris
VIII. Madame Victurnien expends Thirty Francs on Morality
IX. Madame Victurnien's Success
X. Result of the Success
XI. Christus nos Liberavit
XII. M. Bamatabois's Inactivity
XIII. The Solution of Some Questions connected with the
Municipal Police
BOOK SIXTH.--JAVERT
I. The Beginning of Repose
II. How Jean may become Champ
BOOK SEVENTH.--THE CHAMPMATHIEU AFFAIR
I. Sister Simplice
II. The Perspicacity of Master Scaufflaire
III. A Tempest in a Skull
IV. Forms assumed by Suffering during Sleep
V. Hindrances
VI. Sister Simplice put to the Proof
VII. The Traveller on his Arrival takes Precautions
for Departure
VIII. An Entrance by Favor
IX. A Place where Convictions are in Process of Formation
X. The System of Denials
XI. Champmathieu more and more Astonished
BOOK EIGHTH.--A COUNTER-BLOW
I. In what Mirror M. Madeleine contemplates his Hair
II. Fantine Happy
III. Javert Satisfied
IV. Authority reasserts its Rights
V. A Suitable Tomb
VOLUME II
BOOK FIRST.--WATERLOO
CHAPTER
I. What is met with on the Way from Nivelles
II. Hougomont
III. The Eighteenth of June, 1815
IV. A
V. The Quid Obscurum of Battles
VI. Four o'clock in the Afternoon
VII. Napoleon in a Good Humor
VIII. The Emperor puts a Question to the Guide Lacoste
IX. The Unexpected
X. The Plateau of Mont-Saint-Jean
XI. A Bad Guide to Napoleon; a Good Guide to Bulow
XII. The Guard
XIII. The Catastrophe
XIV. The Last Square
XV. Cambronne
XVI. Quot Libras in Duce?
XVII. Is Waterloo to be considered Good?
XVIII. A Recrudescence of Divine Right
XIX. The Battle-Field at Night
BOOK SECOND.--THE SHIP ORION
I. Number 24,601 becomes Number 9,430
II. In which the reader will peruse Two Verses which are
of the Devil's Composition possibly
III. The Ankle-Chain must have undergone a Certain Preparatory
Manipulation to be thus broken with a Blow from a Hammer
BOOK THIRD.--ACCOMPLISHMENT OF THE PROMISE MADE TO THE DEAD WOMAN
I. The Water Question at Montfermeil
II. Two Complete Portraits
III. Men must have Wine, and Horses must have Water
IV. Entrance on the Scene of a Doll
V. The Little One All Alone
VI. Which possibly proves Boulatruelle's Intelligence
VII. Cosette Side by Side with the Stranger in the Dark
VIII. The Unpleasantness of receiving into One's House a Poor
Man who may be a Rich Man
IX. Thenardier at his Manoeuvres
X. He who seeks to better himself may render his Situation Worse
XI. Number 9,430 reappears, and Cosette wins it in the Lottery
BOOK FOURTH.--THE GORBEAU HOVEL
I. Master Gorbeau
II. A Nest for Owl and a Warbler
III. Two Misfortunes make One Piece of Good Fortune
IV. The Remarks of the Principal Tenant
V. A Five-Franc Piece falls on the Ground and produces a Tumult
BOOK FIFTH.--FOR A BLACK HUNT, A MUTE PACK
I. The Zigzags of Strategy
II. It is Lucky that the Pont d'Austerlitz bears
Carriages
III. To Wit, the Plan of Paris in 1727
IV. The Gropings of Flight
V. Which would be Impossible with Gas Lanterns
VI. The Beginning of an Enigma
VII. Continuation of the Enigma
VIII. The Enigma becomes Doubly Mysterious
IX. The Man with the Bell
X. Which explains how Javert got on the Scent
BOOK SIXTH.--LE PETIT-PICPUS
I. Number 62 Rue Petit-Picpus
II. The Obedience of Martin Verga
III. Austerities
IV. Gayeties
V. Distractions
VI. The Little Convent
VII. Some Silhouettes of this Darkness
VIII. Post Corda Lapides
IX. A Century under a Guimpe
X. Origin of the Perpetual Adoration
XI. End of the Petit-Picpus
BOOK SEVENTH.--PARENTHESIS
I. The Convent as an Abstract Idea
II. The Convent as an Historical Fact
III. On What Conditions One can respect the Past
IV. The Convent from the Point of View of Principles
V. Prayer
VI. The Absolute Goodness of Prayer
VII. Precautions to be observed in Blame
VIII. Faith, Law
BOOK EIGHTH.--CEMETERIES TAKE THAT WHICH IS COMMITTED THEM
I. Which treats of the Manner of entering a Convent
II. Fauchelevent in the Presence of a Difficulty
III. Mother Innocente
IV. In which Jean Valjean has quite the Air of having read
Austin Castillejo
V. It is not Necessary to be Drunk in order to be Immortal
VI. Between Four Planks
VII. In which will be found the Origin of the Saying: Don't
lose the Card
VIII. A Successful Interrogatory
IX. Cloistered
VOLUME III
BOOK FIRST.--PARIS STUDIED IN ITS ATOM
I. Parvulus
II. Some of his Particular Characteristics
III. He is Agreeable
IV. He may be of Use
V. His Frontiers
VI. A Bit of History
VII. The Gamin should have his Place in the Classifications
of India
VIII. In which the Reader will find a Charming Saying of the
Last King
IX. The Old Soul of Gaul
X. Ecce Paris, ecce Homo
XI. To Scoff, to Reign
XII. The Future Latent in the People
XIII. Little Gavroche
BOOK SECOND.--THE GREAT BOURGEOIS
I. Ninety Years and Thirty-two Teeth
II. Like Master, Like House
III. Luc-Esprit
IV. A Centenarian Aspirant
V. Basque and Nicolette
VI. In which Magnon and her Two Children are seen
VII. Rule: Receive No One except in the Evening
VIII. Two do not make a Pair
BOOK THIRD.--THE GRANDFATHER AND THE GRANDSON
I. An Ancient Salon
II. One of the Red Spectres of that Epoch
III. Requiescant
IV. End of the Brigand
V. The Utility of going to Mass, in order to become a
Revolutionist
VI. The Consequences of having met a Warden
VII. Some Petticoat
VIII. Marble against Granite
BOOK FOURTH.--THE FRIENDS OF THE ABC
I. A Group which barely missed becoming Historic
II. Blondeau's Funeral Oration by Bossuet
III. Marius' Astonishments
IV. The Back Room of the Cafe Musain
V. Enlargement of Horizon
VI. Res Angusta
BOOK FIFTH.--THE EXCELLENCE OF MISFORTUNE
I. Marius Indigent
II. Marius Poor
III. Marius Grown Up
IV. M. Mabeuf
V. Poverty a Good Neighbor for Misery
VI. The Substitute
BOOK SIXTH.--THE CONJUNCTION OF TWO STARS
I. The Sobriquet; Mode of Formation of Family Names
II. Lux Facta Est
III. Effect of the Spring
IV. Beginning of a Great Malady
V. Divers Claps of Thunder fall on Ma'am Bougon
VI. Taken Prisoner
VII. Adventures of the Letter U delivered over to Conjectures
VIII. The Veterans themselves can be Happy
IX. Eclipse
BOOK SEVENTH.--PATRON MINETTE
I. Mines and Miners
II. The Lowest Depths
III. Babet, Gueulemer, Claquesous, and Montparnasse
IV. Composition of the Troupe
BOOK EIGHTH.--THE WICKED POOR MAN
I. Marius, while seeking a Girl in a Bonnet encounters a
Man in a Cap
II. Treasure Trove
III. Quadrifrons
IV. A Rose in Misery
V. A Providential Peep-Hole
VI. The Wild Man in his Lair
VII. Strategy and Tactics
VIII. The Ray of Light in the Hovel
IX. Jondrette comes near Weeping
X. Tariff of Licensed Cabs, Two Francs an Hour
XI. Offers of Service from Misery to Wretchedness
XII. The Use made of M. Leblanc's Five-Franc Piece
XIII. Solus cum Solo, in Loco Remoto, non cogitabuntur
orare Pater Noster
XIV. In which a Police Agent bestows Two Fistfuls on a Lawyer
XV. Jondrette makes his Purchases
XVI. In which will be found the Words to an English Air
which was in Fashion in 1832
XVII. The Use made of Marius' Five-Franc Piece
XVIII. Marius' Two Chairs form a Vis-a-Vis
XIX. Occupying One's Self with Obscure Depths
XX. The Trap
XXI. One should always begin by arresting the Victims
XXII. The Little One who was crying in Volume Two
VOLUME IV
BOOK FIRST.--A FEW PAGES OF HISTORY
I. Well Cut
II. Badly Sewed
III. Louis Philippe
IV. Cracks beneath the Foundation
V. Facts whence History springs and which History ignores
VI. Enjolras and his Lieutenants
BOOK SECOND.--EPONINE
I. The Lark's Meadow
II. Embryonic Formation of Crimes in the Incubation of Prisons
III. Apparition to Father Mabeuf
IV. An Apparition to Marius
BOOK THIRD.--THE HOUSE IN THE RUE PLUMET
I. The House with a Secret
II. Jean Valjean as a National Guard
III. Foliis ac Frondibus
IV. Change of Gate
V. The Rose perceives that it is an Engine of War
VI. The Battle Begun
VII. To One Sadness oppose a Sadness and a Half
VIII. The Chain-Gang
BOOK FOURTH.--SUCCOR FROM BELOW MAY TURN OUT TO BE SUCCOR FROM ON HIGH
I. A Wound without, Healing within
II. Mother Plutarque finds no Difficulty in explaining a Phenomenon
BOOK FIFTH.--THE END OF WHICH DOES NOT RESEMBLE THE BEGINNING
I. Solitude and Barracks Combined
II. Cosette's Apprehensions
III. Enriched with Commentaries by Toussaint
IV. A Heart beneath a Stone
V. Cosette after the Letter
VI. Old People are made to go out opportunely
BOOK SIXTH.--LITTLE GAVROCHE
I. The Malicious Playfulness of the Wind
II. In which Little Gavroche extracts Profit from Napoleon the Great
III. The Vicissitudes of Flight
BOOK SEVENTH.--SLANG
I. Origin
II. Roots
III. Slang which weeps and Slang which laughs
IV. The Two Duties: To Watch and to Hope
BOOK EIGHTH.--ENCHANTMENTS AND DESOLATIONS
I. Full Light
II. The Bewilderment of Perfect Happiness
III. The Beginning of Shadow
IV. A Cab runs in English and barks in Slang
V. Things of the Night
VI. Marius becomes Practical once more to the Extent of
Giving Cosette his Address
VII. The Old Heart and the Young Heart in the Presence
of Each Other
BOOK NINTH.--WHITHER ARE THEY GOING?
I. Jean Valjean
II. Marius
III. M. Mabeuf
BOOK TENTH.--THE 5TH OF JUNE, 1832
I. The Surface of the Question
II. The Root of the Matter
III. A Burial; an Occasion to be born again
IV. The Ebullitions of Former Days
V. Originality of Paris
BOOK ELEVENTH.--THE ATOM FRATERNIZES WITH THE HURRICANE
I. Some Explanations with Regard to the Origin of Gavroche's
Poetry. The Influence of an Academician on this Poetry
II. Gavroche on the March
III. Just Indignation of a Hair-dresser
IV. The Child is amazed at the Old Man
V. The Old Man
VI. Recruits
BOOK TWELFTH.--CORINTHE
I. History of Corinthe from its Foundation
II. Preliminary Gayeties
III. Night begins to descend upon Grantaire
IV. An Attempt to console the Widow Hucheloup
V. Preparations
VI. Waiting
VII. The Man recruited in the Rue des Billettes
VIII. Many Interrogation Points with Regard to a Certain
Le Cabuc, whose Name may not have been Le Cabuc
BOOK THIRTEENTH.--MARIUS ENTERS THE SHADOW
I. From the Rue Plumet to the Quartier Saint-Denis
II. An Owl's View of Paris
III. The Extreme Edge
BOOK FOURTEENTH.--THE GRANDEURS OF DESPAIR
I. The Flag: Act First
II. The Flag: Act Second
III. Gavroche would have done better to accept Enjolras' Carbine
IV. The Barrel of Powder
V. End of the Verses of Jean Prouvaire
VI. The Agony of Death after the Agony of Life
VII. Gavroche as a Profound Calculator of Distances
BOOK FIFTEENTH.--THE RUE DE L'HOMME ARME
I. A Drinker is a Babbler
II. The Street Urchin an Enemy of Light
III. While Cosette and Toussaint are Asleep
IV. Gavroche's Excess of Zeal
VOLUME V
BOOK FIRST.--THE WAR BETWEEN FOUR WALLS
I. The Charybdis of the Faubourg Saint-Antoine and the
Scylla of the Faubourg du Temple
II. What Is to Be Done in the Abyss if One Does Not Converse
III. Light and Shadow
IV. Minus Five, Plus One
V. The Horizon Which One Beholds from the Summit of a Barricade
VI. Marius Haggard, Javert Laconic
VII. The Situation Becomes Aggravated
VIII. The Artillery-men Compel People to Take Them Seriously
IX. Employment of the Old Talents of a Poacher and That
Infallible Marksmanship Which Influenced the
Condemnation of 1796
X. Dawn
XI. The Shot Which Misses Nothing and Kills No One
XII. Disorder a Partisan of Order
XIII. Passing Gleams
XIV. Wherein Will Appear the Name of Enjolras' Mistress
XV. Gavroche Outside
XVI. How from a Brother One Becomes a Father
XVII. Mortuus Pater Filium Moriturum Expectat
XVIII. The Vulture Becomes Prey
XIX. Jean Valjean Takes His Revenge
XX. The Dead Are in the Right and the Living Are Not in the Wrong
XXI. The Heroes
XXII. Foot to Foot
XXIII. Orestes Fasting and Pylades Drunk
XXIV. Prisoner
BOOK SECOND.--THE INTESTINE OF THE LEVIATHAN
I. The Land Impoverished by the Sea
II. Ancient History of the Sewer
III. Bruneseau
IV.
V. Present Progress
VI. Future Progress
BOOK THIRD.--MUD BUT THE SOUL
I. The Sewer and Its Surprises
II. Explanation
III. The "Spun" Man
IV. He Also Bears His Cross
V. In the Case of Sand, as in That of Woman, There Is a
Fineness Which Is Treacherous
VI. The Fontis
VII. One Sometimes Runs Aground When One Fancies That
One Is Disembarking
VIII. The Torn Coat-Tail
IX. Marius Produces on Some One Who Is a Judge of the
Matter, the Effect of Being Dead
X. Return of the Son Who Was Prodigal of His Life
XI. Concussion in the Absolute
XII. The Grandfather
BOOK FOURTH.--JAVERT DERAILED
I.
BOOK FIFTH.--GRANDSON AND GRANDFATHER
I. In Which the Tree with the Zinc Plaster Appears Again
II. Marius, Emerging from Civil War, Makes Ready for
Domestic War
III. Marius Attacked
IV. Mademoiselle Gillenormand Ends by No Longer Thinking
It a Bad Thing That M. Fauchelevent Should Have
Entered With Something Under His Arm
V. Deposit Your Money in a Forest Rather than with a Notary
VI. The Two Old Men Do Everything, Each One After His
Own Fashion, to Render Cosette Happy
VII. The Effects of Dreams Mingled with Happiness
VIII. Two Men Impossible to Find
BOOK SIXTH.--THE SLEEPLESS NIGHT
I. The 16th of February, 1833
II. Jean Valjean Still Wears His Arm in a Sling
III. The Inseparable
IV. The Immortal Liver
BOOK SEVENTH.--THE LAST DRAUGHT FROM THE CUP
I. The Seventh Circle and the Eighth Heaven
II. The Obscurities Which a Revelation Can Contain
BOOK EIGHTH.--FADING AWAY OF THE TWILIGHT
I. The Lower Chamber
II. Another Step Backwards
III. They Recall the Garden of the Rue Plumet
IV. Attraction and Extinction
BOOK NINTH.--SUPREME SHADOW, SUPREME DAWN
I. Pity for the Unhappy, but Indulgence for the Happy
II. Last Flickerings of a Lamp Without Oil
III. A Pen Is Heavy to the Man Who Lifted the
Fauchelevent's Cart
IV. A Bottle of Ink Which Only Succeeded in Whitening
V. A Night Behind Which There Is Day
VI. The Grass Covers and the Rain Effaces
Les Miserables
VOLUME I.
FANTINE.
PREFACE
So long as there shall exist, by virtue of law and custom, decrees of
damnation pronounced by society, artificially creating hells amid
the civilization of earth, and adding the element of human fate to
divine destiny; so long as the three great problems of the century--
the degradation of man through pauperism, the corruption of woman
through hunger, the crippling of children through lack of light--
are unsolved; so long as social asphyxia is possible in any part
of the world;--in other words, and with a still wider significance,
so long as ignorance and poverty exist on earth, books of the nature
of Les Miserables cannot fail to be of use.
HAUTEVILLE HOUSE, 1862.
FANTINE
BOOK FIRST--A JUST MAN
CHAPTER I
M. MYRIEL
In 1815, M. Charles-Francois-Bienvenu Myriel was Bishop of D----
He was an old man of about seventy-five years of age; he had occupied
the see of D---- since 1806.
Although this detail has no connection whatever with the real
substance of what we are about to relate, it will not be superfluous,
if merely for the sake of exactness in all points, to mention here
the various rumors and remarks which had been in circulation about him
from the very moment when he arrived in the diocese. True or false,
that which is said of men often occupies as important a place in
their lives, and above all in their destinies, as that which they do.
M. Myriel was the son of a councillor of the Parliament of Aix;
hence he belonged to the nobility of the bar. It was said that
his father, destining him to be the heir of his own post, had married
him at a very early age, eighteen or twenty, in accordance with a
custom which is rather widely prevalent in parliamentary families.
In spite of this marriage, however, it was said that Charles Myriel
created a great deal of talk. He was well formed, though rather short
in stature, elegant, graceful, intelligent; the whole of the first
portion of his life had been devoted to the world and to gallantry.
The Revolution came; events succeeded each other with precipitation;
the parliamentary families, decimated, pursued, hunted down,
were dispersed. M. Charles Myriel emigrated to Italy at the very
beginning of the Revolution. There his wife died of a malady of
the chest, from which she had long suffered. He had no children.
What took place next in the fate of M. Myriel? The ruin of the French
society of the olden days, the fall of his own family, the tragic
spectacles of '93, which were, perhaps, even more alarming to the
emigrants who viewed them from a distance, with the magnifying powers
of terror,--did these cause the ideas of renunciation and solitude
to germinate in him? Was he, in the midst of these distractions,
these affections which absorbed his life, suddenly smitten with one
of those mysterious and terrible blows which sometimes overwhelm,
by striking to his heart, a man whom public catastrophes would
not shake, by striking at his existence and his fortune? No one
could have told: all that was known was, that when he returned
from Italy he was a priest.
In 1804, M. Myriel was the Cure of B---- [Brignolles]. He was already
advanced in years, and lived in a very retired manner.
About the epoch of the coronation, some petty affair connected
with his curacy--just what, is not precisely known--took him
to Paris. Among other powerful persons to whom he went to solicit
aid for his parishioners was M. le Cardinal Fesch. One day,
when the Emperor had come to visit his uncle, the worthy Cure,
who was waiting in the anteroom, found himself present when His
Majesty passed. Napoleon, on finding himself observed with a certain
curiosity by this old man, turned round and said abruptly:--
"Who is this good man who is staring at me?"
"Sire," said M. Myriel, "you are looking at a good man, and I
at a great man. Each of us can profit by it."
That very evening, the Emperor asked the Cardinal the name of the Cure,
and some time afterwards M. Myriel was utterly astonished to learn
that he had been appointed Bishop of D----
What truth was there, after all, in the stories which were invented
as to the early portion of M. Myriel's life? No one knew.
Very few families had been acquainted with the Myriel family before
the Revolution.
M. Myriel had to undergo the fate of every newcomer in a little town,
where there are many mouths which talk, and very few heads which think.
He was obliged to undergo it although he was a bishop, and because he
was a bishop. But after all, the rumors with which his name was
connected were rumors only,--noise, sayings, words; less than words--
palabres, as the energetic language of the South expresses it.
However that may be, after nine years of episcopal power and of
residence in D----, all the stories and subjects of conversation
which engross petty towns and petty people at the outset had fallen
into profound oblivion. No one would have dared to mention them;
no one would have dared to recall them.
M. Myriel had arrived at D---- accompanied by an elderly spinster,
Mademoiselle Baptistine, who was his sister, and ten years his junior.
Their only domestic was a female servant of the same age
as Mademoiselle Baptistine, and named Madame Magloire, who,
after having been the servant of M. le Cure, now assumed
the double title of maid to Mademoiselle and housekeeper to Monseigneur.
Mademoiselle Baptistine was a long, pale, thin, gentle creature;
she realized the ideal expressed by the word "respectable"; for it
seems that a woman must needs be a mother in order to be venerable.
She had never been pretty; her whole life, which had been nothing
but a succession of holy deeds, had finally conferred upon her
a sort of pallor and transparency; and as she advanced in years
she had acquired what may be called the beauty of goodness.
What had been leanness in her youth had become transparency in
her maturity; and this diaphaneity allowed the angel to be seen.
She was a soul rather than a virgin. Her person seemed made
of a shadow; there was hardly sufficient body to provide for sex;
a little matter enclosing a light; large eyes forever drooping;--
a mere pretext for a soul's remaining on the earth.
Madame Magloire was a little, fat, white old woman, corpulent
and bustling; always out of breath,--in the first place,
because of her activity, and in the next, because of her asthma.
On his arrival, M. Myriel was installed in the episcopal palace with
the honors required by the Imperial decrees, which class a bishop
immediately after a major-general. The mayor and the president
paid the first call on him, and he, in turn, paid the first call
on the general and the prefect.
The installation over, the town waited to see its bishop at work.
CHAPTER II
M. MYRIEL BECOMES M. WELCOME
The episcopal palace of D---- adjoins the hospital.
The episcopal palace was a huge and beautiful house, built of stone
at the beginning of the last century by M. Henri Puget, Doctor of
Theology of the Faculty of Paris, Abbe of Simore, who had been Bishop
of D---- in 1712. This palace was a genuine seignorial residence.
Everything about it had a grand air,--the apartments of the Bishop,
the drawing-rooms, the chambers, the principal courtyard, which was
very large, with walks encircling it under arcades in the old
Florentine fashion, and gardens planted with magnificent trees.
In the dining-room, a long and superb gallery which was situated
on the ground-floor and opened on the gardens, M. Henri Puget had
entertained in state, on July 29, 1714, My Lords Charles Brulart
de Genlis, archbishop; Prince d'Embrun; Antoine de Mesgrigny,
the capuchin, Bishop of Grasse; Philippe de Vendome, Grand Prior
of France, Abbe of Saint Honore de Lerins; Francois de Berton
de Crillon, bishop, Baron de Vence; Cesar de Sabran de Forcalquier,
bishop, Seignor of Glandeve; and Jean Soanen, Priest of the Oratory,
preacher in ordinary to the king, bishop, Seignor of Senez.
The portraits of these seven reverend personages decorated this apartment;
and this memorable date, the 29th of July, 1714, was there engraved
in letters of gold on a table of white marble.
The hospital was a low and narrow building of a single story,
with a small garden.
Three days after his arrival, the Bishop visited the hospital.
The visit ended, he had the director requested to be so good as to
come to his house.
"Monsieur the director of the hospital," said he to him, "how many
sick people have you at the present moment?"
"Twenty-six, Monseigneur."
"That was the number which I counted," said the Bishop.
"The beds," pursued the director, "are very much crowded against
each other."
"That is what I observed."
"The halls are nothing but rooms, and it is with difficulty
that the air can be changed in them."
"So it seems to me."
"And then, when there is a ray of sun, the garden is very small
for the convalescents."
"That was what I said to myself."
"In case of epidemics,--we have had the typhus fever this year;
we had the sweating sickness two years ago, and a hundred patients
at times,--we know not what to do."
"That is the thought which occurred to me."
"What would you have, Monseigneur?" said the director. "One must
resign one's self."
This conversation took place in the gallery dining-room on the
ground-floor.
The Bishop remained silent for a moment; then he turned abruptly
to the director of the hospital.
"Monsieur," said he, "how many beds do you think this hall alone
would hold?"
"Monseigneur's dining-room?" exclaimed the stupefied director.
The Bishop cast a glance round the apartment, and seemed to be
taking measures and calculations with his eyes.
"It would hold full twenty beds," said he, as though speaking
to himself. Then, raising his voice:--
"Hold, Monsieur the director of the hospital, I will tell you something.
There is evidently a mistake here. There are thirty-six of you,
in five or six small rooms. There are three of us here,
and we have room for sixty. There is some mistake, I tell you;
you have my house, and I have yours. Give me back my house;
you are at home here."
On the following day the thirty-six patients were installed
in the Bishop's palace, and the Bishop was settled in the hospital.
M. Myriel had no property, his family having been ruined by
the Revolution. His sister was in receipt of a yearly income
of five hundred francs, which sufficed for her personal wants at
the vicarage. M. Myriel received from the State, in his quality
of bishop, a salary of fifteen thousand francs. On the very day
when he took up his abode in the hospital, M. Myriel settled on
the disposition of this sum once for all, in the following manner.
We transcribe here a note made by his own hand:--
NOTE ON THE REGULATION OF MY HOUSEHOLD EXPENSES.
For the little seminary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1,500 livres
Society of the mission . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 100 "
For the Lazarists of Montdidier . . . . . . . . . . 100 "
Seminary for foreign missions in Paris . . . . . . 200 "
Congregation of the Holy Spirit . . . . . . . . . . 150 "
Religious establishments of the Holy Land . . . . . 100 "
Charitable maternity societies . . . . . . . . . . 300 "
Extra, for that of Arles . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50 "
Work for the amelioration of prisons . . . . . . . 400 "
Work for the relief and delivery of prisoners . . . 500 "
To liberate fathers of families incarcerated for debt 1,000 "
Addition to the salary of the poor teachers of the
diocese . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2,000 "
Public granary of the Hautes-Alpes . . . . . . . . 100 "
Congregation of the ladies of D----, of Manosque, and of
Sisteron, for the gratuitous instruction of poor
girls . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1,500 "
For the poor . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6,000 "
My personal expenses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1,000 "
------
Total . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15,000 "
M. Myriel made no change in this arrangement during the entire
period that he occupied the see of D---- As has been seen, he called
it regulating his household expenses.
This arrangement was accepted with absolute submission by
Mademoiselle Baptistine. This holy woman regarded Monseigneur of D----
as at one and the same time her brother and her bishop, her friend
according to the flesh and her superior according to the Church.
She simply loved and venerated him. When he spoke, she bowed;
when he acted, she yielded her adherence. Their only servant,
Madame Magloire, grumbled a little. It will be observed that
Monsieur the Bishop had reserved for himself only one thousand
livres, which, added to the pension of Mademoiselle Baptistine,
made fifteen hundred francs a year. On these fifteen hundred
francs these two old women and the old man subsisted.
And when a village curate came to D----, the Bishop still found means
to entertain him, thanks to the severe economy of Madame Magloire,
and to the intelligent administration of Mademoiselle Baptistine.
One day, after he had been in D---- about three months, the Bishop said:--
"And still I am quite cramped with it all!"
"I should think so!" exclaimed Madame Magloire. "Monseigneur has
not even claimed the allowance which the department owes him
for the expense of his carriage in town, and for his journeys
about the diocese. It was customary for bishops in former days."
"Hold!" cried the Bishop, "you are quite right, Madame Magloire."
And he made his demand.
Some time afterwards the General Council took this demand under
consideration, and voted him an annual sum of three thousand francs,
under this heading: Allowance to M. the Bishop for expenses
of carriage, expenses of posting, and expenses of pastoral visits.
This provoked a great outcry among the local burgesses;
and a senator of the Empire, a former member of the Council
of the Five Hundred which favored the 18 Brumaire, and who was
provided with a magnificent senatorial office in the vicinity
of the town of D----, wrote to M. Bigot de Preameneu,
the minister of public worship, a very angry and confidential
note on the subject, from which we extract these authentic lines:--
"Expenses of carriage? What can be done with it in a town of less
than four thousand inhabitants? Expenses of journeys? What is the
use of these trips, in the first place? Next, how can the posting
be accomplished in these mountainous parts? There are no roads.
No one travels otherwise than on horseback. Even the bridge
between Durance and Chateau-Arnoux can barely support ox-teams.
These priests are all thus, greedy and avaricious. This man played
the good priest when he first came. Now he does like the rest;
he must have a carriage and a posting-chaise, he must have luxuries,
like the bishops of the olden days. Oh, all this priesthood!
Things will not go well, M. le Comte, until the Emperor has freed us
from these black-capped rascals. Down with the Pope! [Matters were
getting embroiled with Rome.] For my part, I am for Caesar alone."
Etc., etc.
On the other hand, this affair afforded great delight to Madame Magloire.
"Good," said she to Mademoiselle Baptistine; "Monseigneur began with
other people, but he has had to wind up with himself, after all.
He has regulated all his charities. Now here are three thousand
francs for us! At last!"
That same evening the Bishop wrote out and handed to his sister
a memorandum conceived in the following terms:--
EXPENSES OF CARRIAGE AND CIRCUIT.
For furnishing meat soup to the patients in the hospital. 1,500 livres
For the maternity charitable society of Aix . . . . . . . 250 "
For the maternity charitable society of Draguignan . . . 250 "
For foundlings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 500 "
For orphans . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 500 "
-----
Total . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3,000 "
Such was M. Myriel's budget.
As for the chance episcopal perquisites, the fees for marriage bans,
dispensations, private baptisms, sermons, benedictions, of churches
or chapels, marriages, etc., the Bishop levied them on the wealthy
with all the more asperity, since he bestowed them on the needy.
After a time, offerings of money flowed in. Those who had and
those who lacked knocked at M. Myriel's door,--the latter in search
of the alms which the former came to deposit. In less than a year
the Bishop had become the treasurer of all benevolence and the cashier
of all those in distress. Considerable sums of money passed through
his hands, but nothing could induce him to make any change whatever
in his mode of life, or add anything superfluous to his bare necessities.
Far from it. As there is always more wretchedness below than there
is brotherhood above, all was given away, so to speak, before it
was received. It was like water on dry soil; no matter how much
money he received, he never had any. Then he stripped himself.
The usage being that bishops shall announce their baptismal
names at the head of their charges and their pastoral letters,
the poor people of the country-side had selected, with a sort of
affectionate instinct, among the names and prenomens of their bishop,
that which had a meaning for them; and they never called him
anything except Monseigneur Bienvenu [Welcome]. We will follow
their example, and will also call him thus when we have occasion
to name him. Moreover, this appellation pleased him.
"I like that name," said he. "Bienvenu makes up for the Monseigneur."
We do not claim that the portrait herewith presented is probable;
we confine ourselves to stating that it resembles the original.
CHAPTER III
A HARD BISHOPRIC FOR A GOOD BISHOP
The Bishop did not omit his pastoral visits because he had converted
his carriage into alms. The diocese of D---- is a fatiguing one.
There are very few plains and a great many mountains; hardly any roads,
as we have just seen; thirty-two curacies, forty-one vicarships,
and two hundred and eighty-five auxiliary chapels. To visit all
these is quite a task.
The Bishop managed to do it. He went on foot when it was in
the neighborhood, in a tilted spring-cart when it was on the plain,
and on a donkey in the mountains. The two old women accompanied him.
When the trip was too hard for them, he went alone.
One day he arrived at Senez, which is an ancient episcopal city.
He was mounted on an ass. His purse, which was very dry at that moment,
did not permit him any other equipage. The mayor of the town came
to receive him at the gate of the town, and watched him dismount
from his ass, with scandalized eyes. Some of the citizens were
laughing around him. "Monsieur the Mayor," said the Bishop,
"and Messieurs Citizens, I perceive that I shock you. You think
it very arrogant in a poor priest to ride an animal which was used
by Jesus Christ. I have done so from necessity, I assure you,
and not from vanity."
In the course of these trips he was kind and indulgent, and talked
rather than preached. He never went far in search of his arguments
and his examples. He quoted to the inhabitants of one district
the example of a neighboring district. In the cantons where they
were harsh to the poor, he said: "Look at the people of Briancon!
They have conferred on the poor, on widows and orphans, the right
to have their meadows mown three days in advance of every one else.
They rebuild their houses for them gratuitously when they are ruined.
Therefore it is a country which is blessed by God. For a whole century,
there has not been a single murderer among them."
In villages which were greedy for profit and harvest, he said:
"Look at the people of Embrun! If, at the harvest season, the father
of a family has his son away on service in the army, and his daughters
at service in the town, and if he is ill and incapacitated, the cure
recommends him to the prayers of the congregation; and on Sunday,
after the mass, all the inhabitants of the village--men, women,
and children--go to the poor man's field and do his harvesting
for him, and carry his straw and his grain to his granary."
To families divided by questions of money and inheritance he said:
"Look at the mountaineers of Devolny, a country so wild that the
nightingale is not heard there once in fifty years. Well, when the
father of a family dies, the boys go off to seek their fortunes,
leaving the property to the girls, so that they may find husbands."
To the cantons which had a taste for lawsuits, and where the farmers
ruined themselves in stamped paper, he said: "Look at those good peasants
in the valley of Queyras! There are three thousand souls of them.
Mon Dieu! it is like a little republic. Neither judge nor bailiff
is known there. The mayor does everything. He allots the imposts,
taxes each person conscientiously, judges quarrels for nothing,
divides inheritances without charge, pronounces sentences gratuitously;
and he is obeyed, because he is a just man among simple men."
To villages where he found no schoolmaster, he quoted once more the
people of Queyras: "Do you know how they manage?" he said. "Since a
little country of a dozen or fifteen hearths cannot always support
a teacher, they have school-masters who are paid by the whole valley,
who make the round of the villages, spending a week in this one,
ten days in that, and instruct them. These teachers go to the fairs.
I have seen them there. They are to be recognized by the quill
pens which they wear in the cord of their hat. Those who teach
reading only have one pen; those who teach reading and reckoning
have two pens; those who teach reading, reckoning, and Latin have
three pens. But what a disgrace to be ignorant! Do like the people
of Queyras!"
Thus he discoursed gravely and paternally; in default of examples,
he invented parables, going directly to the point, with few phrases
and many images, which characteristic formed the real eloquence
of Jesus Christ. And being convinced himself, he was persuasive.
CHAPTER IV
WORKS CORRESPONDING TO WORDS
His conversation was gay and affable. He put himself on a level
with the two old women who had passed their lives beside him.
When he laughed, it was the laugh of a schoolboy. Madame Magloire
liked to call him Your Grace [Votre Grandeur]. One day he rose
from his arm-chair, and went to his library in search of a book.
This book was on one of the upper shelves. As the bishop was rather
short of stature, he could not reach it. "Madame Magloire," said he,
"fetch me a chair. My greatness [grandeur] does not reach as far as
that shelf."
One of his distant relatives, Madame la Comtesse de Lo, rarely
allowed an opportunity to escape of enumerating, in his presence,
what she designated as "the expectations" of her three sons.
She had numerous relatives, who were very old and near to death,
and of whom her sons were the natural heirs. The youngest of the
three was to receive from a grand-aunt a good hundred thousand
livres of income; the second was the heir by entail to the title
of the Duke, his uncle; the eldest was to succeed to the peerage
of his grandfather. The Bishop was accustomed to listen in silence
to these innocent and pardonable maternal boasts. On one occasion,
however, he appeared to be more thoughtful than usual, while Madame
de Lo was relating once again the details of all these inheritances
and all these "expectations." She interrupted herself impatiently:
"Mon Dieu, cousin! What are you thinking about?" "I am thinking,"
replied the Bishop, "of a singular remark, which is to be found,
I believe, in St. Augustine,--`Place your hopes in the man from whom
you do not inherit.'"
At another time, on receiving a notification of the decease of
a gentleman of the country-side, wherein not only the dignities
of the dead man, but also the feudal and noble qualifications
of all his relatives, spread over an entire page: "What a stout
back Death has!" he exclaimed. "What a strange burden of titles
is cheerfully imposed on him, and how much wit must men have,
in order thus to press the tomb into the service of vanity!"
He was gifted, on occasion, with a gentle raillery, which almost
always concealed a serious meaning. In the course of one Lent,
a youthful vicar came to D----, and preached in the cathedral.
He was tolerably eloquent. The subject of his sermon was charity.
He urged the rich to give to the poor, in order to avoid hell,
which he depicted in the most frightful manner of which he was capable,
and to win paradise, which he represented as charming and desirable.
Among the audience there was a wealthy retired merchant, who was
somewhat of a usurer, named M. Geborand, who had amassed two millions
in the manufacture of coarse cloth, serges, and woollen galloons.
Never in his whole life had M. Geborand bestowed alms on any poor wretch.
After the delivery of that sermon, it was observed that he gave a sou
every Sunday to the poor old beggar-women at the door of the cathedral.
There were six of them to share it. One day the Bishop caught sight
of him in the act of bestowing this charity, and said to his sister,
with a smile, "There is M. Geborand purchasing paradise for
a sou."
When it was a question of charity, he was not to be rebuffed even
by a refusal, and on such occasions he gave utterance to remarks
which induced reflection. Once he was begging for the poor in a
drawing-room of the town; there was present the Marquis de Champtercier,
a wealthy and avaricious old man, who contrived to be, at one
and the same time, an ultra-royalist and an ultra-Voltairian. This
variety of man has actually existed. When the Bishop came to him,
he touched his arm, "You must give me something, M. le Marquis."
The Marquis turned round and answered dryly, "I have poor people
of my own, Monseigneur." "Give them to me," replied the Bishop.
One day he preached the following sermon in the cathedral:--
"My very dear brethren, my good friends, there are thirteen hundred
and twenty thousand peasants' dwellings in France which have but
three openings; eighteen hundred and seventeen thousand hovels which
have but two openings, the door and one window; and three hundred
and forty-six thousand cabins besides which have but one opening,
the door. And this arises from a thing which is called the tax
on doors and windows. Just put poor families, old women and little
children, in those buildings, and behold the fevers and maladies
which result! Alas! God gives air to men; the law sells it to them.
I do not blame the law, but I bless God. In the department
of the Isere, in the Var, in the two departments of the Alpes,
the Hautes, and the Basses, the peasants have not even wheelbarrows;
they transport their manure on the backs of men; they have no candles,
and they burn resinous sticks, and bits of rope dipped in pitch.
That is the state of affairs throughout the whole of the hilly
country of Dauphine. They make bread for six months at one time;
they bake it with dried cow-dung. In the winter they break this
bread up with an axe, and they soak it for twenty-four hours,
in order to render it eatable. My brethren, have pity! behold
the suffering on all sides of you!"
Born a Provencal, he easily familiarized himself with the dialect of
the south. He said, "En be! moussu, ses sage?" as in lower Languedoc;
"Onte anaras passa?" as in the Basses-Alpes; "Puerte un bouen moutu
embe un bouen fromage grase," as in upper Dauphine. This pleased
the people extremely, and contributed not a little to win him
access to all spirits. He was perfectly at home in the thatched
cottage and in the mountains. He understood how to say the grandest
things in the most vulgar of idioms. As he spoke all tongues,
he entered into all hearts.
Moreover, he was the same towards people of the world and towards
the lower classes. He condemned nothing in haste and without
taking circumstances into account. He said, "Examine the road
over which the fault has passed."
Being, as he described himself with a smile, an ex-sinner, he had none
of the asperities of austerity, and he professed, with a good deal
of distinctness, and without the frown of the ferociously virtuous,
a doctrine which may be summed up as follows:--
"Man has upon him his flesh, which is at once his burden
and his temptation. He drags it with him and yields to it.
He must watch it, cheek it, repress it, and obey it only at the
last extremity. There may be some fault even in this obedience;
but the fault thus committed is venial; it is a fall, but a fall
on the knees which may terminate in prayer.
"To be a saint is the exception; to be an upright man is the rule.
Err, fall, sin if you will, but be upright.
"The least possible sin is the law of man. No sin at all is the
dream of the angel. All which is terrestrial is subject to sin.
Sin is a gravitation."
When he saw everyone exclaiming very loudly, and growing angry
very quickly, "Oh! oh!" he said, with a smile; "to all appearance,
this is a great crime which all the world commits. These are
hypocrisies which have taken fright, and are in haste to make
protest and to put themselves under shelter."
He was indulgent towards women and poor people, on whom the burden
of human society rest. He said, "The faults of women, of children,
of the feeble, the indigent, and the ignorant, are the fault
of the husbands, the fathers, the masters, the strong, the rich,
and the wise."
He said, moreover, "Teach those who are ignorant as many things
as possible; society is culpable, in that it does not afford
instruction gratis; it is responsible for the night which it produces.
This soul is full of shadow; sin is therein committed. The guilty
one is not the person who has committed the sin, but the person
who has created the shadow."
It will be perceived that he had a peculiar manner of his own
of judging things: I suspect that he obtained it from the Gospel.
One day he heard a criminal case, which was in preparation and on
the point of trial, discussed in a drawing-room. A wretched man,
being at the end of his resources, had coined counterfeit money,
out of love for a woman, and for the child which he had had by her.
Counterfeiting was still punishable with death at that epoch.
The woman had been arrested in the act of passing the first false
piece made by the man. She was held, but there were no proofs
except against her. She alone could accuse her lover, and destroy
him by her confession. She denied; they insisted. She persisted in
her denial. Thereupon an idea occurred to the attorney for the crown.
He invented an infidelity on the part of the lover, and succeeded,
by means of fragments of letters cunningly presented, in persuading
the unfortunate woman that she had a rival, and that the man was
deceiving her. Thereupon, exasperated by jealousy, she denounced
her lover, confessed all, proved all.
The man was ruined. He was shortly to be tried at Aix with
his accomplice. They were relating the matter, and each one was
expressing enthusiasm over the cleverness of the magistrate.
By bringing jealousy into play, he had caused the truth to burst
forth in wrath, he had educed the justice of revenge. The Bishop
listened to all this in silence. When they had finished, he inquired,--
"Where are this man and woman to be tried?"
"At the Court of Assizes."
He went on, "And where will the advocate of the crown be tried?"
A tragic 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 writer
for the public. The town took a great interest in the trial.
On the eve of the day fixed for the execution of the condemned man,
the chaplain of the prison fell ill. A priest was needed to attend
the criminal in his last moments. They sent for the cure.
It seems that he refused to come, saying, "That is no affair
of mine. I have nothing to do with that unpleasant task, and with
that mountebank: I, too, am ill; and besides, it is not my place."
This reply was reported to the Bishop, who said, "Monsieur le Cure
is right: it is not his place; it is mine."
He went instantly to the prison, descended to the cell of the
"mountebank," called him by name, took him by the hand, and spoke to him.
He passed the entire day with him, forgetful of food and sleep,
praying to God for the soul of the condemned man, and praying the
condemned man for his own. He told him the best truths, which are
also the most simple. He was father, brother, friend; he was bishop
only to bless. He taught him everything, encouraged and consoled him.
The man was on the point of dying in despair. Death was an abyss to him.
As he stood trembling on its mournful brink, he recoiled with horror.
He was not sufficiently ignorant to be absolutely indifferent.
His condemnation, which had been a profound shock, had, in a manner,
broken through, here and there, that wall which separates us
from the mystery of things, and which we call life. He gazed
incessantly beyond this world through these fatal breaches,
and beheld only darkness. The Bishop made him see light.
On the following day, when they came to fetch the unhappy wretch,
the Bishop was still there. He followed him, and exhibited himself
to the eyes of the crowd in his purple camail and with his episcopal
cross upon his neck, side by side with the criminal bound with cords.
He mounted the tumbril with him, he mounted the scaffold with him.
The sufferer, who had been so gloomy and cast down on the preceding day,
was radiant. He felt that his soul was reconciled, and he hoped
in God. The Bishop embraced him, and at the moment when the knife
was about to fall, he said to him: "God raises from the dead him
whom man slays; he whom his brothers have rejected finds his Father
once more. Pray, believe, enter into life: the Father is there."
When he descended from the scaffold, there was something in his look
which made the people draw aside to let him pass. They did not know
which was most worthy of admiration, his pallor or his serenity.
On his return to the humble dwelling, which he designated,
with a smile, as his palace, he said to his sister, "I have just
officiated pontifically."
Since the most sublime things are often those which are the
least understood, there were people in the town who said,
when commenting on this conduct of the Bishop, "It is affectation."
This, however, was a remark which was confined to the drawing-rooms.
The populace, which perceives no jest in holy deeds, was touched,
and admired him.
As for the Bishop, it was a shock to him to have beheld the guillotine,
and it was a long time before he recovered from it.
In fact, when the scaffold is there, all erected and prepared,
it has something about it which produces hallucination.
One may feel a certain indifference to the death penalty,
one may refrain from pronouncing upon it, from saying yes or no,
so long as one has not seen a guillotine with one's own eyes:
but if one encounters one of them, the shock is violent;
one is forced to decide, and to take part for or against.
Some admire it, like de Maistre; others execrate it, like Beccaria.
The guillotine is the concretion of the law; it is called vindicte;
it is not neutral, and it does not permit you to remain neutral.
He who sees it shivers with the most mysterious of shivers.
All social problems erect their interrogation point around
this chopping-knife. The scaffold is a vision. The scaffold
is not a piece of carpentry; the scaffold is not a machine;
the scaffold is not an inert bit of mechanism constructed of wood,
iron and cords.
It seems as though it were a being, possessed of I know not what
sombre initiative; one would say that this piece of carpenter's
work saw, that this machine heard, that this mechanism understood,
that this wood, this iron, and these cords were possessed of will.
In the frightful meditation into which its presence casts the soul
the scaffold appears in terrible guise, and as though taking part in
what is going on. The scaffold is the accomplice of the executioner;
it devours, it eats flesh, it drinks blood; the scaffold is a sort
of monster fabricated by the judge and the carpenter, a spectre
which seems to live with a horrible vitality composed of all the death
which it has inflicted.
Therefore, the impression was terrible and profound; on the day
following the execution, and on many succeeding days, the Bishop
appeared to be crushed. The almost violent serenity of the
funereal moment had disappeared; the phantom of social justice
tormented him. He, who generally returned from all his deeds
with a radiant satisfaction, seemed to be reproaching himself.
At times he talked to himself, and stammered lugubrious monologues
in a low voice. This is one which his sister overheard one evening
and preserved: "I did not think that it was so monstrous.
It is wrong to become absorbed in the divine law to such a degree
as not to perceive human law. Death belongs to God alone.
By what right do men touch that unknown thing?"
In course of time these impressions weakened and probably vanished.
Nevertheless, it was observed that the Bishop thenceforth avoided
passing the place of execution.
M. Myriel could be summoned at any hour to the bedside of the sick
and dying. He did not ignore the fact that therein lay his greatest
duty and his greatest labor. Widowed and orphaned families had
no need to summon him; he came of his own accord. He understood
how to sit down and hold his peace for long hours beside the man
who had lost the wife of his love, of the mother who had lost
her child. As he knew the moment for silence he knew also the moment
for speech. Oh, admirable consoler! He sought not to efface sorrow
by forgetfulness, but to magnify and dignify it by hope. He said:--
"Have a care of the manner in which you turn towards the dead.
Think not of that which perishes. Gaze steadily. You will perceive
the living light of your well-beloved dead in the depths of heaven."
He knew that faith is wholesome. He sought to counsel and calm
the despairing man, by pointing out to him the resigned man,
and to transform the grief which gazes upon a grave by showing him
the grief which fixes its gaze upon a star.
CHAPTER V
MONSEIGNEUR BIENVENU MADE HIS CASSOCKS LAST TOO LONG
The private life of M. Myriel was filled with the same thoughts
as his public life. The voluntary poverty in which the Bishop
of D---- lived, would have been a solemn and charming sight
for any one who could have viewed it close at hand.
Like all old men, and like the majority of thinkers, he slept little.
This brief slumber was profound. In the morning he meditated for an hour,
then he said his mass, either at the cathedral or in his own house.
His mass said, he broke his fast 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 every day receive the
secretary of the bishopric, who is generally a canon, and nearly
every day his vicars-general. He has congregations to reprove,
privileges to grant, a whole ecclesiastical library to examine,--
prayer-books, diocesan catechisms, books of hours, etc.,--charges
to write, sermons to authorize, cures and mayors to reconcile,
a clerical correspondence, an administrative correspondence;
on one side the State, on the other the Holy See; and a thousand
matters of business.
What time was left to him, after these thousand details of business,
and his offices and his breviary, he bestowed first on the necessitous,
the sick, and the afflicted; the time which was left to him from
the afflicted, the sick, and the necessitous, he devoted to work.
Sometimes he dug in his garden; again, he read or wrote. He had
but one word for both these kinds of toil; he called them gardening.
"The mind is a garden," said he.
Towards mid-day, when the weather was fine, he went forth and took
a stroll in the country or in town, often entering lowly dwellings.
He was seen walking alone, buried in his own thoughts, his eyes
cast down, supporting himself on his long cane, clad in his wadded
purple garment of silk, which was very warm, wearing purple stockings
inside his coarse shoes, and surmounted by a flat hat which allowed
three golden tassels of large bullion to droop from its three points.
It was a perfect festival wherever he appeared. One would have said
that his presence had something warming and luminous about it.
The children and the old people came out to the doorsteps for the Bishop
as for the sun. He bestowed his blessing, and they blessed him.
They pointed out his house to any one who was in need of anything.
Here and there he halted, accosted the little boys and girls,
and smiled upon the mothers. He visited the poor so long as he
had any money; when he no longer had any, he visited the rich.
As he made his cassocks last a long while, and did not wish to
have it noticed, he never went out in the town without his wadded
purple cloak. This inconvenienced him somewhat in summer.
On his return, he dined. The dinner resembled his breakfast.
At half-past eight in the evening he supped with his sister,
Madame Magloire standing behind them and serving them at table.
Nothing could be more frugal than this repast. If, however, the Bishop
had one of his cures to supper, Madame Magloire took advantage
of the opportunity to serve Monseigneur with some excellent fish
from the lake, or with some fine game from the mountains. Every cure
furnished the pretext for a good meal: the Bishop did not interfere.
With that exception, his ordinary diet consisted only of vegetables
boiled in water, and oil soup. Thus it was said in the town,
when the Bishop does not indulge in the cheer of a cure, he indulges
in the cheer of a trappist.
After supper he conversed for half an hour with Mademoiselle Baptistine
and Madame Magloire; then he retired to his own room and set to writing,
sometimes on loose sheets, and again on the margin of some folio.
He was a man of letters and rather learned. He left behind him
five or six very curious manuscripts; among others, a dissertation
on this verse in Genesis, In the beginning, the spirit of God
floated upon the waters. With this verse he compares three texts:
the Arabic verse which says, The winds of God blew; Flavius Josephus
who says, A wind from above was precipitated upon the earth;
and finally, the Chaldaic paraphrase of Onkelos, which renders it,
A wind coming from God blew upon the face of the waters.
In another dissertation, he examines the theological works of Hugo,
Bishop of Ptolemais, great-grand-uncle to the writer of this book,
and establishes the fact, that to this bishop must be attributed
the divers little works published during the last century, under the
pseudonym of Barleycourt.
Sometimes, in the midst of his reading, no matter what the book
might be which he had in his hand, he would suddenly fall into
a profound meditation, whence he only emerged to write a few
lines on the pages of the volume itself. These lines have often
no connection whatever with the book which contains them. We now
have under our eyes a note written by him on the margin of a quarto
entitled Correspondence of Lord Germain with Generals Clinton,
Cornwallis, and the Admirals on the American station. Versailles,
Poincot, book-seller; and Paris, Pissot, bookseller, Quai des Augustins.
Here is the note:--
"Oh, you who are!
"Ecclesiastes calls you the All-powerful; the Maccabees call you
the Creator; the Epistle to the Ephesians calls you liberty;
Baruch calls you Immensity; the Psalms call you Wisdom and Truth;
John calls you Light; the Books of Kings call you Lord; Exodus calls
you Providence; Leviticus, Sanctity; Esdras, Justice; the creation
calls you God; man calls you Father; but Solomon calls you Compassion,
and that is the most beautiful of all your names."
Toward nine o'clock in the evening the two women retired and betook
themselves to their chambers on the first floor, leaving him alone
until morning on the ground floor.
It is necessary that we should, in this place, give an exact idea
of the dwelling of the Bishop of D----
CHAPTER VI
WHO GUARDED HIS HOUSE FOR HIM
The house in which he lived consisted, as we have said, of a ground floor,
and one story above; three rooms on the ground floor, three chambers
on the first, and an attic above. Behind the house was a garden,
a quarter of an acre in extent. The two women occupied the first floor;
the Bishop was lodged below. The first room, opening on the street,
served him as dining-room, the second was his bedroom, and the
third his oratory. There was no exit possible from this oratory,
except by passing through the bedroom, nor from the bedroom,
without passing through the dining-room. At the end of the suite,
in the oratory, there was a detached alcove with a bed, for use
in cases of hospitality. The Bishop offered this bed to country
curates whom business or the requirements of their parishes brought
to D----
The pharmacy of the hospital, a small building which had been added
to the house, and abutted on the garden, had been transformed into
a kitchen and cellar. In addition to this, there was in the garden
a stable, which had formerly been the kitchen of the hospital,
and in which the Bishop kept two cows. No matter what the quantity
of milk they gave, he invariably sent half of it every morning
to the sick people in the hospital. "I am paying my tithes,"
he said.
His bedroom was tolerably large, and rather difficult to warm
in bad weather. As wood is extremely dear at D----, he hit upon
the idea of having a compartment of boards constructed in the
cow-shed. Here he passed his evenings during seasons of severe cold:
he called it his winter salon.
In this winter salon, as in the dining-room, there was no other furniture
than a square table in white wood, and four straw-seated chairs.
In addition to this the dining-room was ornamented with an
antique sideboard, painted pink, in water colors. Out of a similar
sideboard, properly draped with white napery and imitation lace,
the Bishop had constructed the altar which decorated his oratory.
His wealthy penitents and the sainted women of D---- had more than
once assessed themselves to raise the money for a new altar for
Monseigneur's oratory; on each occasion he had taken the money and
had given it to the poor. "The most beautiful of altars," he said,
"is the soul of an unhappy creature consoled and thanking God."
In his oratory there were two straw prie-Dieu, and there was
an arm-chair, also in straw, in his bedroom. When, by chance,
he received seven or eight persons at one time, the prefect,
or the general, or the staff of the regiment in garrison, or several
pupils from the little seminary, the chairs had to be fetched from
the winter salon in the stable, the prie-Dieu from the oratory,
and the arm-chair from the bedroom: in this way as many as eleven
chairs could be collected for the visitors. A room was dismantled
for each new guest.
It sometimes happened that there were twelve in the party;
the Bishop then relieved the embarrassment of the situation by
standing in front of the chimney if it was winter, or by strolling
in the garden if it was summer.
There was still another chair in the detached alcove, but the straw
was half gone from it, and it had but three legs, so that it was of
service only when propped against the wall. Mademoiselle Baptistine
had also in her own room a very large easy-chair of wood, which had
formerly been gilded, and which was covered with flowered pekin;
but they had been obliged to hoist this bergere up to the first story
through the window, as the staircase was too narrow; it could not,
therefore, be reckoned among the possibilities in the way of furniture.
Mademoiselle Baptistine's ambition had been to be able to purchase
a set of drawing-room furniture in yellow Utrecht velvet,
stamped with a rose pattern, and with mahogany in swan's neck style,
with a sofa. But this would have cost five hundred francs at least,
and in view of the fact that she had only been able to lay by forty-two
francs and ten sous for this purpose in the course of five years,
she had ended by renouncing the idea. However, who is there who has
attained his ideal?
Nothing is more easy to present to the imagination than the Bishop's
bedchamber. A glazed door opened on the garden; opposite this was
the bed,--a hospital bed of iron, with a canopy of green serge; in the
shadow of the bed, behind a curtain, were the utensils of the toilet,
which still betrayed the elegant habits of the man of the world:
there were two doors, one near the chimney, opening into the oratory;
the other near the bookcase, opening into the dining-room. The bookcase
was a large cupboard with glass doors filled with books; the chimney
was of wood painted to represent marble, and habitually without fire.
In the chimney stood a pair of firedogs of iron, ornamented above
with two garlanded vases, and flutings which had formerly been
silvered with silver leaf, which was a sort of episcopal luxury;
above the chimney-piece hung a crucifix of copper, with the silver
worn off, fixed on a background of threadbare velvet in a wooden
frame from which the gilding had fallen; near the glass door
a large table with an inkstand, loaded with a confusion of papers
and with huge volumes; before the table an arm-chair of straw;
in front of the bed a prie-Dieu, borrowed from the oratory.
Two portraits in oval frames were fastened to the wall on each side
of the bed. Small gilt inscriptions on the plain surface of the cloth
at the side of these figures indicated that the portraits represented,
one the Abbe of Chaliot, bishop of Saint Claude; the other, the Abbe
Tourteau, vicar-general of Agde, abbe of Grand-Champ, order of Citeaux,
diocese of Chartres. When the Bishop succeeded to this apartment,
after the hospital patients, he had found these portraits there,
and had left them. They were priests, and probably donors--two reasons
for respecting them. All that he knew about these two persons was,
that they had been appointed by the king, the one to his bishopric,
the other to his benefice, on the same day, the 27th of April,
1785. Madame Magloire having taken the pictures down to dust,
the Bishop had discovered these particulars written in whitish
ink on a little square of paper, yellowed by time, and attached
to the back of the portrait of the Abbe of Grand-Champ with four wafers.
At his window he had an antique curtain of a coarse woollen stuff,
which finally became so old, that, in order to avoid the expense
of a new one, Madame Magloire was forced to take a large seam
in the very middle of it. This seam took the form of a cross.
The Bishop often called attention to it: "How delightful that is!"
he said.
All the rooms in the house, without exception, those on the ground
floor as well as those on the first floor, were white-washed,
which is a fashion in barracks and hospitals.
However, in their latter years, Madame Magloire discovered beneath
the paper which had been washed over, paintings, ornamenting the
apartment of Mademoiselle Baptistine, as we shall see further on.
Before becoming a hospital, this house had been the ancient
parliament house of the Bourgeois. Hence this decoration.
The chambers were paved in red bricks, which were washed every week,
with straw mats in front of all the beds. Altogether, this dwelling,
which was attended to by the two women, was exquisitely clean from top
to bottom. This was the sole luxury which the Bishop permitted.
He said, "That takes nothing from the poor."
It must be confessed, however, that he still retained from his
former possessions six silver knives and forks and a soup-ladle,
which Madame Magloire contemplated every day with delight,
as they glistened splendidly upon the coarse linen cloth.
And since we are now painting the Bishop of D---- as he was in reality,
we must add that he had said more than once, "I find it difficult
to renounce eating from silver dishes."
To this silverware must be added two large candlesticks of
massive silver, which he had inherited from a great-aunt. These
candlesticks held two wax candles, and usually figured on the Bishop's
chimney-piece. When he had any one to dinner, Madame Magloire
lighted the two candles and set the candlesticks on the table.
In the Bishop's own chamber, at the head of his bed, there was
a small cupboard, in which Madame Magloire locked up the six
silver knives and forks and the big spoon every night.
But it is necessary to add, that the key was never removed.
The garden, which had been rather spoiled by the ugly buildings
which we have mentioned, was composed of four alleys in cross-form,
radiating from a tank. Another walk made the circuit of the garden,
and skirted the white wall which enclosed it. These alleys left
behind them four square plots rimmed with box. In three of these,
Madame Magloire cultivated vegetables; in the fourth, the Bishop
had planted some flowers; here and there stood a few fruit-trees.
Madame Magloire had once remarked, with a sort of gentle malice:
"Monseigneur, you who turn everything to account, have, nevertheless, one
useless plot. It would be better to grow salads there than bouquets."
"Madame Magloire," retorted the Bishop, "you are mistaken.
The beautiful is as useful as the useful." He added after a pause,
"More so, perhaps."
This plot, consisting of three or four beds, occupied the Bishop almost
as much as did his books. He liked to pass an hour or two there,
trimming, hoeing, and making holes here and there in the earth,
into which he dropped seeds. He was not as hostile to insects
as a gardener could have wished to see him. Moreover, he made no
pretensions to botany; he ignored groups and consistency; he made not
the slightest effort to decide between Tournefort and the natural method;
he took part neither with the buds against the cotyledons, nor with
Jussieu against Linnaeus. He did not study plants; he loved flowers.
He respected learned men greatly; he respected the ignorant still more;
and, without ever failing in these two respects, he watered his
flower-beds every summer evening with a tin watering-pot painted green.
The house had not a single door which could be locked. The door
of the dining-room, which, as we have said, opened directly on the
cathedral square, had formerly been ornamented with locks and bolts
like the door of a prison. The Bishop had had all this ironwork removed,
and this door was never fastened, either by night or by day,
with anything except the latch. All that the first passerby had
to do at any hour, was to give it a push. At first, the two women
had been very much tried by this door, which was never fastened,
but Monsieur de D---- had said to them, "Have bolts put on your rooms,
if that will please you." They had ended by sharing his confidence,
or by at least acting as though they shared it. Madame Magloire
alone had frights from time to time. As for the Bishop, his thought
can be found explained, or at least indicated, in the three lines
which he wrote on the margin of a Bible, "This is the shade
of difference: the door of the physician should never be shut,
the door of the priest should always be open."
On another book, entitled Philosophy of the Medical Science,
he had written this other note: "Am not I a physician like them?
I also have my patients, and then, too, I have some whom I call
my unfortunates."
Again he wrote: "Do not inquire the name of him who asks a shelter
of you. The very man who is embarrassed by his name is the one
who needs shelter."
It chanced that a worthy cure, I know not whether it was the cure
of Couloubroux or the cure of Pompierry, took it into his head
to ask him one day, probably at the instigation of Madame Magloire,
whether Monsieur was sure that he was not committing an indiscretion,
to a certain extent, in leaving his door unfastened day and night,
at the mercy of any one who should choose to enter, and whether,
in short, he did not fear lest some misfortune might occur
in a house so little guarded. The Bishop touched his shoulder,
with gentle gravity, and said to him, "Nisi Dominus custodierit domum,
in vanum vigilant qui custodiunt eam," Unless the Lord guard the house,
in vain do they watch who guard it.
Then he spoke of something else.
He was fond of saying, "There is a bravery of the priest as well
as the bravery of a colonel of dragoons,--only," he added,
"ours must be tranquil."
CHAPTER VII
CRAVATTE
It is here that a fact falls naturally into place, which we must
not omit, because it is one of the sort which show us best what sort
of a man the Bishop of D---- was.
After the destruction of the band of Gaspard Bes, who had infested
the gorges of Ollioules, one of his lieutenants, Cravatte, took refuge
in the mountains. He concealed himself for some time with his bandits,
the remnant of Gaspard Bes's troop, in the county of Nice;
then he made his way to Piedmont, and suddenly reappeared in France,
in the vicinity of Barcelonette. He was first seen at Jauziers,
then at Tuiles. He hid himself in the caverns of the Joug-de-l'Aigle,
and thence he descended towards the hamlets and villages through
the ravines of Ubaye and Ubayette.
He even pushed as far as Embrun, entered the cathedral one night,
and despoiled the sacristy. His highway robberies laid waste the
country-side. The gendarmes were set on his track, but in vain.
He always escaped; sometimes he resisted by main force. He was a
bold wretch. In the midst of all this terror the Bishop arrived.
He was making his circuit to Chastelar. The mayor came to meet him,
and urged him to retrace his steps. Cravatte was in possession
of the mountains as far as Arche, and beyond; there was danger even
with an escort; it merely exposed three or four unfortunate gendarmes
to no purpose.
"Therefore," said the Bishop, "I intend to go without escort."
"You do not really mean that, Monseigneur!" exclaimed the mayor.
"I do mean it so thoroughly that I absolutely refuse any gendarmes,
and shall set out in an hour."
"Set out?"
"Set out."
"Alone?"
"Alone."
"Monseigneur, you will not do that!"
"There exists yonder in the mountains," said the Bishop, a tiny
community no bigger than that, which I have not seen for three years.
They are my good friends, those gentle and honest shepherds. They own
one goat out of every thirty that they tend. They make very pretty
woollen cords of various colors, and they play the mountain airs
on little flutes with six holes. They need to be told of the good
God now and then. What would they say to a bishop who was afraid?
What would they say if I did not go?"
"But the brigands, Monseigneur?"
"Hold," said the Bishop, "I must think of that. You are right.
I may meet them. They, too, need to be told of the good God."
"But, Monseigneur, there is a band of them! A flock of wolves!"
"Monsieur le maire, it may be that it is of this very flock
of wolves that Jesus has constituted me the shepherd. Who knows
the ways of Providence?"
"They will rob you, Monseigneur."
"I have nothing."
"They will kill you."
"An old goodman of a priest, who passes along mumbling his prayers?
Bah! To what purpose?"
"Oh, mon Dieu! what if you should meet them!"
"I should beg alms of them for my poor."
"Do not go, Monseigneur. In the name of Heaven! You are risking
your life!"
"Monsieur le maire," said the Bishop, "is that really all?
I am not in the world to guard my own life, but to guard souls."
They had to allow him to do as he pleased. He set out, accompanied
only by a child who offered to serve as a guide. His obstinacy
was bruited about the country-side, and caused great consternation.
He would take neither his sister nor Madame Magloire. He traversed
the mountain on mule-back, encountered no one, and arrived safe
and sound at the residence of his "good friends," the shepherds.
He remained there for a fortnight, preaching, administering the sacrament,
teaching, exhorting. When the time of his departure approached,
he resolved to chant a Te Deum pontifically. He mentioned it to
the cure. But what was to be done? There were no episcopal ornaments.
They could only place at his disposal a wretched village sacristy, with
a few ancient chasubles of threadbare damask adorned with imitation lace.
"Bah!" said the Bishop. "Let us announce our Te Deum from the pulpit,
nevertheless, Monsieur le Cure. Things will arrange themselves."
They instituted a search in the churches of the neighborhood.
All the magnificence of these humble parishes combined would not have
sufficed to clothe the chorister of a cathedral properly.
While they were thus embarrassed, a large chest was brought and
deposited in the presbytery for the Bishop, by two unknown horsemen,
who departed on the instant. The chest was opened; it contained
a cope of cloth of gold, a mitre ornamented with diamonds,
an archbishop's cross, a magnificent crosier,--all the pontifical
vestments which had been stolen a month previously from the treasury
of Notre Dame d'Embrun. In the chest was a paper, on which
these words were written, "From Cravatte to Monseigneur Bienvenu."
"Did not I say that things would come right of themselves?" said
the Bishop. Then he added, with a smile, "To him who contents himself
with the surplice of a curate, God sends the cope of an archbishop."
"Monseigneur," murmured the cure, throwing back his head with a smile.
"God--or the Devil."
The Bishop looked steadily at the cure, and repeated
with authority, "God!"
When he returned to Chastelar, the people came out to stare at him
as at a curiosity, all along the road. At the priest's house in
Chastelar he rejoined Mademoiselle Baptistine and Madame Magloire,
who were waiting for him, and he said to his sister: "Well! was
I in the right? The poor priest went to his poor mountaineers
with empty hands, and he returns from them with his hands full.
I set out bearing only my faith in God; I have brought back the
treasure of a cathedral."
That evening, before he went to bed, he said again: "Let us
never fear robbers nor murderers. Those are dangers from without,
petty dangers. Let us fear ourselves. Prejudices are the real robbers;
vices are the real murderers. The great dangers lie within ourselves.
What matters it what threatens our head or our purse! Let us think
only of that which threatens our soul."
Then, turning to his sister: "Sister, never a precaution on the part
of the priest, against his fellow-man. That which his fellow does,
God permits. Let us confine ourselves to prayer, when we think
that a danger is approaching us. Let us pray, not for ourselves,
but that our brother may not fall into sin on our account."
However, such incidents were rare in his life. We relate those
of which we know; but generally he passed his life in doing the
same things at the same moment. One month of his year resembled
one hour of his day.
As to what became of "the treasure" of the cathedral of Embrun,
we should be embarrassed by any inquiry in that direction.
It consisted of very handsome things, very tempting things,
and things which were very well adapted to be stolen for the benefit
of the unfortunate. Stolen they had already been elsewhere.
Half of the adventure was completed; it only remained to impart
a new direction to the theft, and to cause it to take a short trip
in the direction of the poor. However, we make no assertions
on this point. Only, a rather obscure note was found among
the Bishop's papers, which may bear some relation to this matter,
and which is couched in these terms, "The question is, to decide
whether this should be turned over to the cathedral or to the hospital."
CHAPTER VIII
PHILOSOPHY AFTER DRINKING
The senator above mentioned was a clever man, who had made
his own way, heedless of those things which present obstacles,
and which are called conscience, sworn faith, justice, duty: he had
marched straight to his goal, without once flinching in the line
of his advancement and his interest. He was an old attorney,
softened by success; not a bad man by any means, who rendered
all the small services in his power to his sons, his sons-in-law,
his relations, and even to his friends, having wisely seized upon,
in life, good sides, good opportunities, good windfalls.
Everything else seemed to him very stupid. He was intelligent,
and just sufficiently educated to think himself a disciple of Epicurus;
while he was, in reality, only a product of Pigault-Lebrun. He
laughed willingly and pleasantly over infinite and eternal things,
and at the "Crotchets of that good old fellow the Bishop."
He even sometimes laughed at him with an amiable authority in the
presence of M. Myriel himself, who listened to him.
On some semi-official occasion or other, I do not recollect what,
Count*** [this senator] and M. Myriel were to dine with the prefect.
At dessert, the senator, who was slightly exhilarated, though still
perfectly dignified, exclaimed:--
"Egad, Bishop, let's have a discussion. It is hard for a senator and
a bishop to look at each other without winking. We are two augurs.
I am going to make a confession to you. I have a philosophy of my own."
"And you are right," replied the Bishop. "As one makes one's philosophy,
so one lies on it. You are on the bed of purple, senator."
The senator was encouraged, and went on:--
"Let us be good fellows."
"Good devils even," said the Bishop.
"I declare to you," continued the senator, "that the Marquis
d'Argens, Pyrrhon, Hobbes, and M. Naigeon are no rascals.
I have all the philosophers in my library gilded on the edges."
"Like yourself, Count," interposed the Bishop.
The senator resumed:--
"I hate Diderot; he is an ideologist, a declaimer, and a revolutionist,
a believer in God at bottom, and more bigoted than Voltaire.
Voltaire made sport of Needham, and he was wrong, for Needham's
eels prove that God is useless. A drop of vinegar in a spoonful
of flour paste supplies the fiat lux. Suppose the drop to be larger
and the spoonful bigger; you have the world. Man is the eel.
Then what is the good of the Eternal Father? The Jehovah hypothesis
tires me, Bishop. It is good for nothing but to produce shallow people,
whose reasoning is hollow. Down with that great All, which torments me!
Hurrah for Zero which leaves me in peace! Between you and me,
and in order to empty my sack, and make confession to my pastor,
as it behooves me to do, I will admit to you that I have good sense.
I am not enthusiastic over your Jesus, who preaches renunciation and
sacrifice to the last extremity. 'Tis the counsel of an avaricious
man to beggars. Renunciation; why? Sacrifice; to what end?
I do not see one wolf immolating himself for the happiness of
another wolf. Let us stick to nature, then. We are at the top;
let us have a superior philosophy. What is the advantage of
being at the top, if one sees no further than the end of other
people's noses? Let us live merrily. Life is all. That man has
another future elsewhere, on high, below, anywhere, I don't believe;
not one single word of it. Ah! sacrifice and renunciation are
recommended to me; I must take heed to everything I do; I must
cudgel my brains over good and evil, over the just and the unjust,
over the fas and the nefas. Why? Because I shall have to render
an account of my actions. When? After death. What a fine dream!
After my death it will be a very clever person who can catch me.
Have a handful of dust seized by a shadow-hand, if you can.
Let us tell the truth, we who are initiated, and who have raised
the veil of Isis: there is no such thing as either good or evil;
there is vegetation. Let us seek the real. Let us get to the bottom
of it. Let us go into it thoroughly. What the deuce! let us go
to the bottom of it! We must scent out the truth; dig in the
earth for it, and seize it. Then it gives you exquisite joys.
Then you grow strong, and you laugh. I am square on the bottom,
I am. Immortality, Bishop, is a chance, a waiting for dead
men's shoes. Ah! what a charming promise! trust to it, if you like!
What a fine lot Adam has! We are souls, and we shall be angels,
with blue wings on our shoulder-blades. Do come to my assistance:
is it not Tertullian who says that the blessed shall travel from star
to star? Very well. We shall be the grasshoppers of the stars.
And then, besides, we shall see God. Ta, ta, ta! What twaddle all
these paradises are! God is a nonsensical monster. I would not say
that in the Moniteur, egad! but I may whisper it among friends.
Inter pocula. To sacrifice the world to paradise is to let
slip the prey for the shadow. Be the dupe of the infinite!
I'm not such a fool. I am a nought. I call myself Monsieur le
Comte Nought, senator. Did I exist before my birth? No. Shall I exist
after death? No. What am I? A little dust collected in an organism.
What am I to do on this earth? The choice rests with me:
suffer or enjoy. Whither will suffering lead me? To nothingness;
but I shall have suffered. Whither will enjoyment lead me?
To nothingness; but I shall have enjoyed myself. My choice is made.
One must eat or be eaten. I shall eat. It is better to be the tooth
than the grass. Such is my wisdom. After which, go whither I
push thee, the grave-digger is there; the Pantheon for some of us:
all falls into the great hole. End. Finis. Total liquidation.
This is the vanishing-point. Death is death, believe me.
I laugh at the idea of there being any one who has anything to tell
me on that subject. Fables of nurses; bugaboo for children;
Jehovah for men. No; our to-morrow is the night. Beyond the tomb
there is nothing but equal nothingness. You have been Sardanapalus,
you have been Vincent de Paul--it makes no difference. That is
the truth. Then live your life, above all things. Make use of
your _I_ while you have it. In truth, Bishop, I tell you that I
have a philosophy of my own, and I have my philosophers. I don't
let myself be taken in with that nonsense. Of course, there must
be something for those who are down,--for the barefooted beggars,
knife-grinders, and miserable wretches. Legends, chimeras, the soul,
immortality, paradise, the stars, are provided for them to swallow.
They gobble it down. They spread it on their dry bread.
He who has nothing else has the good. God. That is the least
he can have. I oppose no objection to that; but I reserve
Monsieur Naigeon for myself. The good God is good for the
populace."
The Bishop clapped his hands.
"That's talking!" he exclaimed. "What an excellent and really
marvellous thing is this materialism! Not every one who wants it
can have it. Ah! when one does have it, one is no longer a dupe,
one does not stupidly allow one's self to be exiled like Cato,
nor stoned like Stephen, nor burned alive like Jeanne d'Arc. Those
who have succeeded in procuring this admirable materialism have the joy
of feeling themselves irresponsible, and of thinking that they can devour
everything without uneasiness,--places, sinecures, dignities, power,
whether well or ill acquired, lucrative recantations, useful treacheries,
savory capitulations of conscience,--and that they shall enter
the tomb with their digestion accomplished. How agreeable that is!
I do not say that with reference to you, senator. Nevertheless, it is
impossible for me to refrain from congratulating you. You great
lords have, so you say, a philosophy of your own, and for yourselves,
which is exquisite, refined, accessible to the rich alone,
good for all sauces, and which seasons the voluptuousness of
life admirably. This philosophy has been extracted from the depths,
and unearthed by special seekers. But you are good-natured princes,
and you do not think it a bad thing that belief in the good
God should constitute the philosophy of the people, very much
as the goose stuffed with chestnuts is the truffled turkey of the poor."
CHAPTER IX
THE BROTHER AS DEPICTED BY THE SISTER
In order to furnish an idea of the private establishment of the Bishop
of D----, and of the manner in which those two sainted women subordinated
their actions, their thoughts, their feminine instincts even,
which are easily alarmed, to the habits and purposes of the Bishop,
without his even taking the trouble of speaking in order to explain them,
we cannot do better than transcribe in this place a letter from
Mademoiselle Baptistine to Madame the Vicomtess de Boischevron,
the friend of her childhood. This letter is in our possession.
D----, Dec. 16, 18--.
MY GOOD MADAM: Not a day passes without our speaking of you.
It is our established custom; but there is another reason besides.
Just imagine, while washing and dusting the ceilings and walls,
Madam Magloire has made some discoveries; now our two chambers hung
with antique paper whitewashed over, would not discredit a chateau
in the style of yours. Madam Magloire has pulled off all the paper.
There were things beneath. My drawing-room, which contains no furniture,
and which we use for spreading out the linen after washing,
is fifteen feet in height, eighteen square, with a ceiling which
was formerly painted and gilded, and with beams, as in yours.
This was covered with a cloth while this was the hospital.
And the woodwork was of the era of our grandmothers. But my room
is the one you ought to see. Madam Magloire has discovered,
under at least ten thicknesses of paper pasted on top, some paintings,
which without being good are very tolerable. The subject is
Telemachus being knighted by Minerva in some gardens, the name
of which escapes me. In short, where the Roman ladies repaired
on one single night. What shall I say to you? I have Romans,
and Roman ladies [here occurs an illegible word], and the whole train.
Madam Magloire has cleaned it all off; this summer she is going
to have some small injuries repaired, and the whole revarnished,
and my chamber will be a regular museum. She has also found in a
corner of the attic two wooden pier-tables of ancient fashion.
They asked us two crowns of six francs each to regild them,
but it is much better to give the money to the poor; and they
are very ugly besides, and I should much prefer a round table
of mahogany.
I am always very happy. My brother is so good. He gives all he
has to the poor and sick. We are very much cramped. The country
is trying in the winter, and we really must do something for those
who are in need. We are almost comfortably lighted and warmed.
You see that these are great treats.
My brother has ways of his own. When he talks, he says that a bishop
ought to be so. Just imagine! the door of our house is never fastened.
Whoever chooses to enter finds himself at once in my brother's room.
He fears nothing, even at night. That is his sort of bravery,
he says.
He does not wish me or Madame Magloire feel any fear for him.
He exposes himself to all sorts of dangers, and he does not like to
have us even seem to notice it. One must know how to understand him.
He goes out in the rain, he walks in the water, he travels in winter.
He fears neither suspicious roads nor dangerous encounters,
nor night.
Last year he went quite alone into a country of robbers. He would
not take us. He was absent for a fortnight. On his return nothing
had happened to him; he was thought to be dead, but was perfectly well,
and said, "This is the way I have been robbed!" And then he opened
a trunk full of jewels, all the jewels of the cathedral of Embrun,
which the thieves had given him.
When he returned on that occasion, I could not refrain from
scolding him a little, taking care, however, not to speak except
when the carriage was making a noise, so that no one might hear me.
At first I used to say to myself, "There are no dangers which will
stop him; he is terrible." Now I have ended by getting used to it.
I make a sign to Madam Magloire that she is not to oppose him.
He risks himself as he sees fit. I carry off Madam Magloire,
I enter my chamber, I pray for him and fall asleep. I am at ease,
because I know that if anything were to happen to him, it would
be the end of me. I should go to the good God with my brother
and my bishop. It has cost Madam Magloire more trouble than it did
me to accustom herself to what she terms his imprudences. But now
the habit has been acquired. We pray together, we tremble together,
and we fall asleep. If the devil were to enter this house,
he would be allowed to do so. After all, what is there for us
to fear in this house? There is always some one with us who is
stronger than we. The devil may pass through it, but the good God
dwells here.
This suffices me. My brother has no longer any need of saying
a word to me. I understand him without his speaking, and we
abandon ourselves to the care of Providence. That is the way
one has to do with a man who possesses grandeur of soul.
I have interrogated my brother with regard to the information
which you desire on the subject of the Faux family. You are aware
that he knows everything, and that he has memories, because he
is still a very good royalist. They really are a very ancient
Norman family of the generalship of Caen. Five hundred years ago
there was a Raoul de Faux, a Jean de Faux, and a Thomas de Faux,
who were gentlemen, and one of whom was a seigneur de Rochefort.
The last was Guy-Etienne-Alexandre, and was commander of a regiment,
and something in the light horse of Bretagne. His daughter,
Marie-Louise, married Adrien-Charles de Gramont, son of the Duke
Louis de Gramont, peer of France, colonel of the French guards,
and lieutenant-general of the army. It is written Faux, Fauq,
and Faoucq.
Good Madame, recommend us to the prayers of your sainted relative,
Monsieur the Cardinal. As for your dear Sylvanie, she has done well
in not wasting the few moments which she passes with you in writing
to me. She is well, works as you would wish, and loves me.
That is all that I desire. The souvenir which she sent through you
reached me safely, and it makes me very happy. My health is not
so very bad, and yet I grow thinner every day. Farewell; my paper
is at an end, and this forces me to leave you. A thousand good wishes.
BAPTISTINE.
P.S. Your grand nephew is charming. Do you know that he will soon
be five years old? Yesterday he saw some one riding by on horseback
who had on knee-caps, and he said, "What has he got on his knees?"
He is a charming child! His little brother is dragging an old broom
about the room, like a carriage, and saying, "Hu!"
As will be perceived from this letter, these two women understood
how to mould themselves to the Bishop's ways with that special feminine
genius which comprehends the man better than he comprehends himself.
The Bishop of D----, in spite of the gentle and candid air which
never deserted him, sometimes did things that were grand, bold,
and magnificent, without seeming to have even a suspicion of the fact.
They trembled, but they let him alone. Sometimes Madame Magloire essayed
a remonstrance in advance, but never at the time, nor afterwards.
They never interfered with him by so much as a word or sign,
in any action once entered upon. At certain moments, without his
having occasion to mention it, when he was not even conscious
of it himself in all probability, so perfect was his simplicity,
they vaguely felt that he was acting as a bishop; then they were
nothing more than two shadows in the house. They served him passively;
and if obedience consisted in disappearing, they disappeared.
They understood, with an admirable delicacy of instinct, that certain
cares may be put under constraint. Thus, even when believing
him to be in peril, they understood, I will not say his thought,
but his nature, to such a degree that they no longer watched over him.
They confided him to God.
Moreover, Baptistine said, as we have just read, that her brother's
end would prove her own. Madame Magloire did not say this,
but she knew it.
CHAPTER X
THE BISHOP IN THE PRESENCE OF AN UNKNOWN LIGHT
At an epoch a little later than the date of the letter cited
in the preceding pages, he did a thing which, if the whole town
was to be believed, was even more hazardous than his trip across
the mountains infested with bandits.
In the country near D---- a man lived quite alone. This man,
we will state at once, was a former member of the Convention.
His name was G----
Member of the Convention, G---- was mentioned with a sort of horror
in the little world of D---- A member of the Convention--can you
imagine such a thing? That existed from the time when people
called each other thou, and when they said "citizen." This man
was almost a monster. He had not voted for the death of the king,
but almost. He was a quasi-regicide. He had been a terrible man.
How did it happen that such a man had not been brought before
a provost's court, on the return of the legitimate princes?
They need not have cut off his head, if you please; clemency must
be exercised, agreed; but a good banishment for life. An example,
in short, etc. Besides, he was an atheist, like all the rest of
those people. Gossip of the geese about the vulture.
Was G---- a vulture after all? Yes; if he were to be judged by the
element of ferocity in this solitude of his. As he had not voted
for the death of the king, he had not been included in the decrees
of exile, and had been able to remain in France.
He dwelt at a distance of three-quarters of an hour from the city,
far from any hamlet, far from any road, in some hidden turn
of a very wild valley, no one knew exactly where. He had there,
it was said, a sort of field, a hole, a lair. There were no neighbors,
not even passers-by. Since he had dwelt in that valley, the path
which led thither had disappeared under a growth of grass.
The locality was spoken of as though it had been the dwelling of
a hangman.
Nevertheless, the Bishop meditated on the subject, and from time
to time he gazed at the horizon at a point where a clump of trees
marked the valley of the former member of the Convention, and he said,
"There is a soul yonder which is lonely."
And he added, deep in his own mind, "I owe him a visit."
But, let us avow it, this idea, which seemed natural at the first blush,
appeared to him after a moment's reflection, as strange, impossible,
and almost repulsive. For, at bottom, he shared the general impression,
and the old member of the Convention inspired him, without his being
clearly conscious of the fact himself, with that sentiment which
borders on hate, and which is so well expressed by the word estrangement.
Still, should the scab of the sheep cause the shepherd to recoil?
No. But what a sheep!
The good Bishop was perplexed. Sometimes he set out in that direction;
then he returned.
Finally, the rumor one day spread through the town that a sort of
young shepherd, who served the member of the Convention in his hovel,
had come in quest of a doctor; that the old wretch was dying,
that paralysis was gaining on him, and that he would not live over
night.--"Thank God!" some added.
The Bishop took his staff, put on his cloak, on account of his too
threadbare cassock, as we have mentioned, and because of the evening
breeze which was sure to rise soon, and set out.
The sun was setting, and had almost touched the horizon when the
Bishop arrived at the excommunicated spot. With a certain beating
of the heart, he recognized the fact that he was near the lair.
He strode over a ditch, leaped a hedge, made his way through a fence
of dead boughs, entered a neglected paddock, took a few steps
with a good deal of boldness, and suddenly, at the extremity of the
waste land, and behind lofty brambles, he caught sight of the cavern.
It was a very low hut, poor, small, and clean, with a vine nailed
against the outside.
Near the door, in an old wheel-chair, the arm-chair of the peasants,
there was a white-haired man, smiling at the sun.
Near the seated man stood a young boy, the shepherd lad.
He was offering the old man a jar of milk.
While the Bishop was watching him, the old man spoke: "Thank you,"
he said, "I need nothing." And his smile quitted the sun to rest
upon the child.
The Bishop stepped forward. At the sound which he made in walking,
the old man turned his head, and his face expressed the sum total
of the surprise which a man can still feel after a long life.
"This is the first time since I have been here," said he, "that any
one has entered here. Who are you, sir?"
The Bishop answered:--
"My name is Bienvenu Myriel."
"Bienvenu Myriel? I have heard that name. Are you the man whom
the people call Monseigneur Welcome?"
"I am."
The old man resumed with a half-smile
"In that case, you are my bishop?"
"Something of that sort."
"Enter, sir."
The member of the Convention extended his hand to the Bishop,
but the Bishop did not take it. The Bishop confined himself
to the remark:--
"I am pleased to see that I have been misinformed. You certainly
do not seem to me to be ill."
"Monsieur," replied the old man, "I am going to recover."
He paused, and then said:--
"I shall die three hours hence."
Then he continued:--
"I am something of a doctor; I know in what fashion the last hour
draws on. Yesterday, only my feet were cold; to-day, the chill
has ascended to my knees; now I feel it mounting to my waist;
when it reaches the heart, I shall stop. The sun is beautiful,
is it not? I had myself wheeled out here to take a last look
at things. You can talk to me; it does not fatigue me. You have
done well to come and look at a man who is on the point of death.
It is well that there should be witnesses at that moment. One has
one's caprices; I should have liked to last until the dawn, but I
know that I shall hardly live three hours. It will be night then.
What does it matter, after all? Dying is a simple affair.
One has no need of the light for that. So be it. I shall die
by starlight."
The old man turned to the shepherd lad:--
"Go to thy bed; thou wert awake all last night; thou art tired."
The child entered the hut.
The old man followed him with his eyes, and added, as though
speaking to himself:--
"I shall die while he sleeps. The two slumbers may be good neighbors."
The Bishop was not touched as it seems that he should have been.
He did not think he discerned God in this manner of dying; let us
say the whole, for these petty contradictions of great hearts must
be indicated like the rest: he, who on occasion, was so fond of
laughing at "His Grace," was rather shocked at not being addressed
as Monseigneur, and he was almost tempted to retort "citizen."
He was assailed by a fancy for peevish familiarity, common enough
to doctors and priests, but which was not habitual with him.
This man, after all, this member of the Convention, this representative
of the people, had been one of the powerful ones of the earth;
for the first time in his life, probably, the Bishop felt in a mood to
be severe.
Meanwhile, the member of the Convention had been
surveying him with a modest cordiality, in which one
could have distinguished, possibly, that humility
which is so fitting when one is on the verge of returning to dust.
The Bishop, on his side, although he generally restrained his curiosity,
which, in his opinion, bordered on a fault, could not refrain from
examining the member of the Convention with an attention which,
as it did not have its course in sympathy, would have served his
conscience as a matter of reproach, in connection with any other man.
A member of the Convention produced on him somewhat the effect of being
outside the pale of the law, even of the law of charity. G----, calm,
his body almost upright, his voice vibrating, was one of those
octogenarians who form the subject of astonishment to the physiologist.
The Revolution had many of these men, proportioned to the epoch.
In this old man one was conscious of a man put to the proof.
Though so near to his end, he preserved all the gestures of health.
In his clear glance, in his firm tone, in the robust movement of
his shoulders, there was something calculated to disconcert death.
Azrael, the Mohammedan angel of the sepulchre, would have turned back,
and thought that he had mistaken the door. G---- seemed to be dying
because he willed it so. There was freedom in his agony. His legs
alone were motionless. It was there that the shadows held him fast.
His feet were cold and dead, but his head survived with all the power
of life, and seemed full of light. G----, at this solemn moment,
resembled the king in that tale of the Orient who was flesh above
and marble below.
There was a stone there. The Bishop sat down. The exordium
was abrupt.
"I congratulate you," said he, in the tone which one uses for
a reprimand. "You did not vote for the death of the king, after all."
The old member of the Convention did not appear to notice the
bitter meaning underlying the words "after all." He replied.
The smile had quite disappeared from his face.
"Do not congratulate me too much, sir. I did vote for the death
of the tyrant."
It was the tone of austerity answering the tone of severity.
"What do you mean to say?" resumed the Bishop.
"I mean to say that man has a tyrant,--ignorance. I voted for the death
of that tyrant. That tyrant engendered royalty, which is authority
falsely understood, while science is authority rightly understood.
Man should be governed only by science."
"And conscience," added the Bishop.
"It is the same thing. Conscience is the quantity of innate science
which we have within us."
Monseigneur Bienvenu listened in some astonishment to this language,
which was very new to him.
The member of the Convention resumed:--
"So far as Louis XVI. was concerned, I said `no.' I did not think
that I had the right to kill a man; but I felt it my duty to
exterminate evil. I voted the end of the tyrant, that is to say,
the end of prostitution for woman, the end of slavery for man,
the end of night for the child. In voting for the Republic,
I voted for that. I voted for fraternity, concord, the dawn.
I have aided in the overthrow of prejudices and errors. The crumbling
away of prejudices and errors causes light. We have caused the
fall of the old world, and the old world, that vase of miseries,
has become, through its upsetting upon the human race, an urn
of joy."
"Mixed joy," said the Bishop.
"You may say troubled joy, and to-day, after that fatal return
of the past, which is called 1814, joy which has disappeared!
Alas! The work was incomplete, I admit: we demolished the ancient
regime in deeds; we were not able to suppress it entirely in ideas.
To destroy abuses is not sufficient; customs must be modified.
The mill is there no longer; the wind is still there."
"You have demolished. It may be of use to demolish, but I distrust
a demolition complicated with wrath."
"Right has its wrath, Bishop; and the wrath of right is an element
of progress. In any case, and in spite of whatever may be said,
the French Revolution is the most important step of the human race
since the advent of Christ. Incomplete, it may be, but sublime.
It set free all the unknown social quantities; it softened spirits,
it calmed, appeased, enlightened; it caused the waves of civilization
to flow over the earth. It was a good thing. The French Revolution is
the consecration of humanity."
The Bishop could not refrain from murmuring:--
"Yes? '93!"
The member of the Convention straightened himself up in his
chair with an almost lugubrious solemnity, and exclaimed,
so far as a dying man is capable of exclamation:--
"Ah, there you go; '93! I was expecting that word. A cloud had
been forming for the space of fifteen hundred years; at the end
of fifteen hundred years it burst. You are putting the thunderbolt
on its trial."
The Bishop felt, without, perhaps, confessing it, that something
within him had suffered extinction. Nevertheless, he put a good
face on the matter. He replied:--
"The judge speaks in the name of justice; the priest speaks
in the name of pity, which is nothing but a more lofty justice.
A thunderbolt should commit no error." And he added, regarding the
member of the Convention steadily the while, "Louis XVII.?"
The conventionary stretched forth his hand and grasped the Bishop's arm.
"Louis XVII.! let us see. For whom do you mourn? is it for
the innocent child? very good; in that case I mourn with you.
Is it for the royal child? I demand time for reflection.
To me, the brother of Cartouche, an innocent child who was hung
up by the armpits in the Place de Greve, until death ensued,
for the sole crime of having been the brother of Cartouche, is no
less painful than the grandson of Louis XV., an innocent child,
martyred in the tower of the Temple, for the sole crime of having
been grandson of Louis XV."
"Monsieur," said the Bishop, "I like not this conjunction of names."
"Cartouche? Louis XV.? To which of the two do you object?"
A momentary silence ensued. The Bishop almost regretted having come,
and yet he felt vaguely and strangely shaken.
The conventionary resumed:--
"Ah, Monsieur Priest, you love not the crudities of the true.
Christ loved them. He seized a rod and cleared out the Temple.
His scourge, full of lightnings, was a harsh speaker of truths.
When he cried, `Sinite parvulos,' he made no distinction between the
little children. It would not have embarrassed him to bring together
the Dauphin of Barabbas and the Dauphin of Herod. Innocence, Monsieur,
is its own crown. Innocence has no need to be a highness.
It is as august in rags as in fleurs de lys."
"That is true," said the Bishop in a low voice.
"I persist," continued the conventionary G---- "You have mentioned
Louis XVII. to me. Let us come to an understanding. Shall we
weep for all the innocent, all martyrs, all children, the lowly
as well as the exalted? I agree to that. But in that case, as I
have told you, we must go back further than '93, and our tears must
begin before Louis XVII. I will weep with you over the children
of kings, provided that you will weep with me over the children
of the people."
"I weep for all," said the Bishop.
"Equally!" exclaimed conventionary G----; "and if the balance
must incline, let it be on the side of the people. They have been
suffering longer."
Another silence ensued. The conventionary was the first to break it.
He raised himself on one elbow, took a bit of his cheek between
his thumb and his forefinger, as one does mechanically when one
interrogates and judges, and appealed to the Bishop with a gaze full
of all the forces of the death agony. It was almost an explosion.
"Yes, sir, the people have been suffering a long while. And hold!
that is not all, either; why have you just questioned me and talked
to me about Louis XVII.? I know you not. Ever since I have been
in these parts I have dwelt in this enclosure alone, never setting
foot outside, and seeing no one but that child who helps me.
Your name has reached me in a confused manner, it is true, and very
badly pronounced, I must admit; but that signifies nothing: clever men
have so many ways of imposing on that honest goodman, the people.
By the way, I did not hear the sound of your carriage; you have left
it yonder, behind the coppice at the fork of the roads, no doubt.
I do not know you, I tell you. You have told me that you are the Bishop;
but that affords me no information as to your moral personality.
In short, I repeat my question. Who are you? You are a bishop;
that is to say, a prince of the church, one of those gilded men
with heraldic bearings and revenues, who have vast prebends,--
the bishopric of D---- fifteen thousand francs settled income,
ten thousand in perquisites; total, twenty-five thousand francs,--
who have kitchens, who have liveries, who make good cheer,
who eat moor-hens on Friday, who strut about, a lackey before,
a lackey behind, in a gala coach, and who have palaces, and who roll
in their carriages in the name of Jesus Christ who went barefoot!
You are a prelate,--revenues, palace, horses, servants, good table,
all the sensualities of life; you have this like the rest,
and like the rest, you enjoy it; it is well; but this says
either too much or too little; this does not enlighten me upon
the intrinsic and essential value of the man who comes with the
probable intention of bringing wisdom to me. To whom do I speak?
Who are you?"
The Bishop hung his head and replied, "Vermis sum--I am a worm."
"A worm of the earth in a carriage?" growled the conventionary.
It was the conventionary's turn to be arrogant, and the Bishop's
to be humble.
The Bishop resumed mildly:--
"So be it, sir. But explain to me how my carriage, which is a few
paces off behind the trees yonder, how my good table and the moor-hens
which I eat on Friday, how my twenty-five thousand francs income,
how my palace and my lackeys prove that clemency is not a duty,
and that '93 was not inexorable.
The conventionary passed his hand across his brow, as though
to sweep away a cloud.
"Before replying to you," he said, "I beseech you to pardon me.
I have just committed a wrong, sir. You are at my house, you are
my guest, I owe you courtesy. You discuss my ideas, and it becomes
me to confine myself to combating your arguments. Your riches and
your pleasures are advantages which I hold over you in the debate;
but good taste dictates that I shall not make use of them. I promise
you to make no use of them in the future."
"I thank you," said the Bishop.
G---- resumed.
"Let us return to the explanation which you have asked of me.
Where were we? What were you saying to me? That '93 was inexorable?"
"Inexorable; yes," said the Bishop. "What think you of Marat
clapping his hands at the guillotine?"
"What think you of Bossuet chanting the Te Deum over the dragonnades?"
The retort was a harsh one, but it attained its mark with the
directness of a point of steel. The Bishop quivered under it;
no reply occurred to him; but he was offended by this mode of alluding
to Bossuet. The best of minds will have their fetiches, and they
sometimes feel vaguely wounded by the want of respect of logic.
The conventionary began to pant; the asthma of the agony
which is mingled with the last breaths interrupted his voice;
still, there was a perfect lucidity of soul in his eyes. He went on:--
"Let me say a few words more in this and that direction;
I am willing. Apart from the Revolution, which, taken as a whole,
is an immense human affirmation, '93 is, alas! a rejoinder.
You think it inexorable, sir; but what of the whole monarchy, sir?
Carrier is a bandit; but what name do you give to Montrevel?
Fouquier-Tainville is a rascal; but what is your opinion as to
Lamoignon-Baville? Maillard is terrible; but Saulx-Tavannes,
if you please? Duchene senior is ferocious; but what epithet
will you allow me for the elder Letellier? Jourdan-Coupe-Tete is
a monster; but not so great a one as M. the Marquis de Louvois.
Sir, sir, I am sorry for Marie Antoinette, archduchess and queen;
but I am also sorry for that poor Huguenot woman, who, in 1685,
under Louis the Great, sir, while with a nursing infant, was bound,
naked to the waist, to a stake, and the child kept at a distance;
her breast swelled with milk and her heart with anguish;
the little one, hungry and pale, beheld that breast and cried
and agonized; the executioner said to the woman, a mother and a nurse,
`Abjure!' giving her her choice between the death of her infant
and the death of her conscience. What say you to that torture
of Tantalus as applied to a mother? Bear this well in mind sir:
the French Revolution had its reasons for existence; its wrath will
be absolved by the future; its result is the world made better.
From its most terrible blows there comes forth a caress for the
human race. I abridge, I stop, I have too much the advantage;
moreover, I am dying."
And ceasing to gaze at the Bishop, the conventionary concluded
his thoughts in these tranquil words:--
"Yes, the brutalities of progress are called revolutions.
When they are over, this fact is recognized,--that the human race
has been treated harshly, but that it has progressed."
The conventionary doubted not that he had successively conquered
all the inmost intrenchments of the Bishop. One remained, however,
and from this intrenchment, the last resource of Monseigneur
Bienvenu's resistance, came forth this reply, wherein appeared
nearly all the harshness of the beginning:--
"Progress should believe in God. Good cannot have an impious servitor.
He who is an atheist is but a bad leader for the human race."
The former representative of the people made no reply. He was seized
with a fit of trembling. He looked towards heaven, and in his glance
a tear gathered slowly. When the eyelid was full, the tear trickled
down his livid cheek, and he said, almost in a stammer, quite low,
and to himself, while his eyes were plunged in the depths:--
"O thou! O ideal! Thou alone existest!"
The Bishop experienced an indescribable shock.
After a pause, the old man raised a finger heavenward and said:--
"The infinite is. He is there. If the infinite had no person,
person would be without limit; it would not be infinite;
in other words, it would not exist. There is, then, an _I_.
That _I_ of the infinite is God."
The dying man had pronounced these last words in a loud voice,
and with the shiver of ecstasy, as though he beheld some one.
When he had spoken, his eyes closed. The effort had exhausted him.
It was evident that he had just lived through in a moment the
few hours which had been left to him. That which he had said
brought him nearer to him who is in death. The supreme moment
was approaching.
The Bishop understood this; time pressed; it was as a priest that
he had come: from extreme coldness he had passed by degrees to
extreme emotion; he gazed at those closed eyes, he took that wrinkled,
aged and ice-cold hand in his, and bent over the dying man.
"This hour is the hour of God. Do you not think that it would
be regrettable if we had met in vain?"
The conventionary opened his eyes again. A gravity mingled
with gloom was imprinted on his countenance.
"Bishop," said he, with a slowness which probably arose more
from his dignity of soul than from the failing of his strength,
"I have passed my life in meditation, study, and contemplation.
I was sixty years of age when my country called me and commanded
me to concern myself with its affairs. I obeyed. Abuses existed,
I combated them; tyrannies existed, I destroyed them; rights and
principles existed, I proclaimed and confessed them. Our territory
was invaded, I defended it; France was menaced, I offered my breast.
I was not rich; I am poor. I have been one of the masters of
the state; the vaults of the treasury were encumbered with specie
to such a degree that we were forced to shore up the walls,
which were on the point of bursting beneath the weight of gold
and silver; I dined in Dead Tree Street, at twenty-two sous.
I have succored the oppressed, I have comforted the suffering.
I tore the cloth from the altar, it is true; but it was to bind up
the wounds of my country. I have always upheld the march forward
of the human race, forward towards the light, and I have sometimes
resisted progress without pity. I have, when the occasion offered,
protected my own adversaries, men of your profession. And there
is at Peteghem, in Flanders, at the very spot where the Merovingian
kings had their summer palace, a convent of Urbanists, the Abbey
of Sainte Claire en Beaulieu, which I saved in 1793. I have done
my duty according to my powers, and all the good that I was able.
After which, I was hunted down, pursued, persecuted, blackened,
jeered at, scorned, cursed, proscribed. For many years past,
I with my white hair have been conscious that many people think they
have the right to despise me; to the poor ignorant masses I present
the visage of one damned. And I accept this isolation of hatred,
without hating any one myself. Now I am eighty-six years old;
I am on the point of death. What is it that you have come to ask
of me?"
"Your blessing," said the Bishop.
And he knelt down.
When the Bishop raised his head again, the face of the conventionary
had become august. He had just expired.
The Bishop returned home, deeply absorbed in thoughts which
cannot be known to us. He passed the whole night in prayer.
On the following morning some bold and curious persons attempted
to speak to him about member of the Convention G----; he contented
himself with pointing heavenward.
From that moment he redoubled his tenderness and brotherly feeling
towards all children and sufferers.
Any allusion to "that old wretch of a G----" caused him to fall
into a singular preoccupation. No one could say that the passage
of that soul before his, and the reflection of that grand conscience
upon his, did not count for something in his approach to perfection.
This "pastoral visit" naturally furnished an occasion for a murmur
of comment in all the little local coteries.
"Was the bedside of such a dying man as that the proper place
for a bishop? There was evidently no conversion to be expected.
All those revolutionists are backsliders. Then why go there?
What was there to be seen there? He must have been very curious indeed
to see a soul carried off by the devil."
One day a dowager of the impertinent variety who thinks
herself spiritual, addressed this sally to him, "Monseigneur,
people are inquiring when Your Greatness will receive the red
cap!"--"Oh! oh! that's a coarse color," replied the Bishop.
"It is lucky that those who despise it in a cap revere it in a hat."
CHAPTER XI
A RESTRICTION
We should incur a great risk of deceiving ourselves, were we to conclude
from this that Monseigneur Welcome was "a philosophical bishop,"
or a "patriotic cure." His meeting, which may almost be designated
as his union, with conventionary G----, left behind it in his mind
a sort of astonishment, which rendered him still more gentle.
That is all.
Although Monseigneur Bienvenu was far from being a politician,
this is, perhaps, the place to indicate very briefly what his
attitude was in the events of that epoch, supposing that Monseigneur
Bienvenu ever dreamed of having an attitude.
Let us, then, go back a few years.
Some time after the elevation of M. Myriel to the episcopate,
the Emperor had made him a baron of the Empire, in company with many
other bishops. The arrest of the Pope took place, as every one knows,
on the night of the 5th to the 6th of July, 1809; on this occasion,
M. Myriel was summoned by Napoleon to the synod of the bishops
of France and Italy convened at Paris. This synod was held at
Notre-Dame, and assembled for the first time on the 15th of June,
1811, under the presidency of Cardinal Fesch. M. Myriel was one
of the ninety-five bishops who attended it. But he was present
only at one sitting and at three or four private conferences.
Bishop of a mountain diocese, living so very close to nature,
in rusticity and deprivation, it appeared that he imported among
these eminent personages, ideas which altered the temperature
of the assembly. He very soon returned to D---- He was interrogated
as to this speedy return, and he replied: "I embarrassed them.
The outside air penetrated to them through me. I produced on them
the effect of an open door."
On another occasion he said, "What would you have? Those gentlemen
are princes. I am only a poor peasant bishop."
The fact is that he displeased them. Among other strange things,
it is said that he chanced to remark one evening, when he found
himself at the house of one of his most notable colleagues: "What
beautiful clocks! What beautiful carpets! What beautiful liveries!
They must be a great trouble. I would not have all those superfluities,
crying incessantly in my ears: `There are people who are hungry!
There are people who are cold! There are poor people! There are
poor people!'"
Let us remark, by the way, that the hatred of luxury is not
an intelligent hatred. This hatred would involve the hatred of
the arts. Nevertheless, in churchmen, luxury is wrong, except in
connection with representations and ceremonies. It seems to reveal
habits which have very little that is charitable about them.
An opulent priest is a contradiction. The priest must keep close
to the poor. Now, can one come in contact incessantly night and day
with all this distress, all these misfortunes, and this poverty,
without having about one's own person a little of that misery,
like the dust of labor? Is it possible to imagine a man near a brazier
who is not warm? Can one imagine a workman who is working near
a furnace, and who has neither a singed hair, nor blackened nails,
nor a drop of sweat, nor a speck of ashes on his face? The first
proof of charity in the priest, in the bishop especially, is poverty.
This is, no doubt, what the Bishop of D---- thought.
It must not be supposed, however, that he shared what we call the "ideas
of the century" on certain delicate points. He took very little part
in the theological quarrels of the moment, and maintained silence
on questions in which Church and State were implicated; but if he
had been strongly pressed, it seems that he would have been found
to be an ultramontane rather than a gallican. Since we are making
a portrait, and since we do not wish to conceal anything, we are
forced to add that he was glacial towards Napoleon in his decline.
Beginning with 1813, he gave in his adherence to or applauded all
hostile manifestations. He refused to see him, as he passed through
on his return from the island of Elba, and he abstained from ordering
public prayers for the Emperor in his diocese during the Hundred Days.
Besides his sister, Mademoiselle Baptistine, he had two brothers,
one a general, the other a prefect. He wrote to both with tolerable
frequency. He was harsh for a time towards the former, because,
holding a command in Provence at the epoch of the disembarkation
at Cannes, the general had put himself at the head of twelve hundred
men and had pursued the Emperor as though the latter had been a person
whom one is desirous of allowing to escape. His correspondence
with the other brother, the ex-prefect, a fine, worthy man who
lived in retirement at Paris, Rue Cassette, remained more affectionate.
Thus Monseigneur Bienvenu also had his hour of party spirit, his hour
of bitterness, his cloud. The shadow of the passions of the moment
traversed this grand and gentle spirit occupied with eternal things.
Certainly, such a man would have done well not to entertain any
political opinions. Let there be no mistake as to our meaning:
we are not confounding what is called "political opinions" with the
grand aspiration for progress, with the sublime faith, patriotic,
democratic, humane, which in our day should be the very foundation
of every generous intellect. Without going deeply into questions
which are only indirectly connected with the subject of this book,
we will simply say this: It would have been well if Monseigneur
Bienvenu had not been a Royalist, and if his glance had never been,
for a single instant, turned away from that serene contemplation
in which is distinctly discernible, above the fictions and the hatreds
of this world, above the stormy vicissitudes of human things,
the beaming of those three pure radiances, truth, justice, and charity.
While admitting that it was not for a political office that God
created Monseigneur Welcome, we should have understood and admired
his protest in the name of right and liberty, his proud opposition,
his just but perilous resistance to the all-powerful Napoleon.
But that which pleases us in people who are rising pleases us less
in the case of people who are falling. We only love the fray
so long as there is danger, and in any case, the combatants
of the first hour have alone the right to be the exterminators
of the last. He who has not been a stubborn accuser in prosperity
should hold his peace in the face of ruin. The denunciator
of success is the only legitimate executioner of the fall.
As for us, when Providence intervenes and strikes, we let it work.
1812 commenced to disarm us. In 1813 the cowardly breach of silence
of that taciturn legislative body, emboldened by catastrophe,
possessed only traits which aroused indignation. And it was a crime
to applaud, in 1814, in the presence of those marshals who betrayed;
in the presence of that senate which passed from one dunghill
to another, insulting after having deified; in the presence of that
idolatry which was loosing its footing and spitting on its idol,--
it was a duty to turn aside the head. In 1815, when the supreme
disasters filled the air, when France was seized with a shiver
at their sinister approach, when Waterloo could be dimly discerned
opening before Napoleon, the mournful acclamation of the army
and the people to the condemned of destiny had nothing laughable
in it, and, after making all allowance for the despot, a heart
like that of the Bishop of D----, ought not perhaps to have failed
to recognize the august and touching features presented by the embrace
of a great nation and a great man on the brink of the abyss.
With this exception, he was in all things just, true, equitable,
intelligent, humble and dignified, beneficent and kindly,
which is only another sort of benevolence. He was a priest,
a sage, and a man. It must be admitted, that even in the political
views with which we have just reproached him, and which we are
disposed to judge almost with severity, he was tolerant and easy,
more so, perhaps, than we who are speaking here. The porter of
the town-hall had been placed there by the Emperor. He was an old
non-commissioned officer of the old guard, a member of the Legion
of Honor at Austerlitz, as much of a Bonapartist as the eagle.
This poor fellow occasionally let slip inconsiderate remarks,
which the law then stigmatized as seditious speeches. After the
imperial profile disappeared from the Legion of Honor, he never
dressed himself in his regimentals, as he said, so that he should
not be obliged to wear his cross. He had himself devoutly removed
the imperial effigy from the cross which Napoleon had given him;
this made a hole, and he would not put anything in its place.
"I will die," he said, "rather than wear the three frogs upon
my heart!" He liked to scoff aloud at Louis XVIII. "The gouty
old creature in English gaiters!" he said; "let him take himself
off to Prussia with that queue of his." He was happy to combine
in the same imprecation the two things which he most detested,
Prussia and England. He did it so often that he lost his place.
There he was, turned out of the house, with his wife and children,
and without bread. The Bishop sent for him, reproved him gently,
and appointed him beadle in the cathedral.
In the course of nine years Monseigneur Bienvenu had, by dint
of holy deeds and gentle manners, filled the town of D----
with a sort of tender and filial reverence. Even his conduct
towards Napoleon had been accepted and tacitly pardoned, as it were,
by the people, the good and weakly flock who adored their emperor,
but loved their bishop.
CHAPTER XII
THE SOLITUDE OF MONSEIGNEUR WELCOME
A bishop is almost always surrounded by a full squadron of
little abbes, just as a general is by a covey of young officers.
This is what that charming Saint Francois de Sales calls somewhere "les
pretres blancs-becs," callow priests. Every career has its aspirants,
who form a train for those who have attained eminence in it.
There is no power which has not its dependents. There is no fortune
which has not its court. The seekers of the future eddy around
the splendid present. Every metropolis has its staff of officials.
Every bishop who possesses the least influence has about him
his patrol of cherubim from the seminary, which goes the round,
and maintains good order in the episcopal palace, and mounts guard
over monseigneur's smile. To please a bishop is equivalent to getting
one's foot in the stirrup for a sub-diaconate. It is necessary to walk
one's path discreetly; the apostleship does not disdain the canonship.
Just as there are bigwigs elsewhere, there are big mitres in the Church.
These are the bishops who stand well at Court, who are rich,
well endowed, skilful, accepted by the world, who know how to pray,
no doubt, but who know also how to beg, who feel little scruple
at making a whole diocese dance attendance in their person,
who are connecting links between the sacristy and diplomacy,
who are abbes rather than priests, prelates rather than bishops.
Happy those who approach them! Being persons of influence,
they create a shower about them, upon the assiduous and the favored,
and upon all the young men who understand the art of pleasing,
of large parishes, prebends, archidiaconates, chaplaincies,
and cathedral posts, while awaiting episcopal honors. As they
advance themselves, they cause their satellites to progress also;
it is a whole solar system on the march. Their radiance casts a gleam
of purple over their suite. Their prosperity is crumbled up behind
the scenes, into nice little promotions. The larger the diocese
of the patron, the fatter the curacy for the favorite. And then,
there is Rome. A bishop who understands how to become an archbishop,
an archbishop who knows how to become a cardinal, carries you
with him as conclavist; you enter a court of papal jurisdiction,
you receive the pallium, and behold! you are an auditor, then a
papal chamberlain, then monsignor, and from a Grace to an Eminence
is only a step, and between the Eminence and the Holiness there is
but the smoke of a ballot. Every skull-cap may dream of the tiara.
The priest is nowadays the only man who can become a king in a
regular manner; and what a king! the supreme king. Then what a
nursery of aspirations is a seminary! How many blushing choristers,
how many youthful abbes bear on their heads Perrette's pot of milk!
Who knows how easy it is for ambition to call itself vocation?
in good faith, perchance, and deceiving itself, devotee that
it is.
Monseigneur Bienvenu, poor, humble, retiring, was not accounted
among the big mitres. This was plain from the complete absence
of young priests about him. We have seen that he "did not take"
in Paris. Not a single future dreamed of engrafting itself on
this solitary old man. Not a single sprouting ambition committed
the folly of putting forth its foliage in his shadow. His canons
and grand-vicars were good old men, rather vulgar like himself,
walled up like him in this diocese, without exit to a cardinalship,
and who resembled their bishop, with this difference, that they
were finished and he was completed. The impossibility of growing
great under Monseigneur Bienvenu was so well understood, that no
sooner had the young men whom he ordained left the seminary than they
got themselves recommended to the archbishops of Aix or of Auch,
and went off in a great hurry. For, in short, we repeat it,
men wish to be pushed. A saint who dwells in a paroxysm of abnegation
is a dangerous neighbor; he might communicate to you, by contagion,
an incurable poverty, an anchylosis of the joints, which are useful
in advancement, and in short, more renunciation than you desire;
and this infectious virtue is avoided. Hence the isolation of
Monseigneur Bienvenu. We live in the midst of a gloomy society.
Success; that is the lesson which falls drop by drop from the slope
of corruption.
Be it said in passing, that success is a very hideous thing. Its false
resemblance to merit deceives men. For the masses, success has almost
the same profile as supremacy. Success, that Menaechmus of talent,
has one dupe,--history. Juvenal and Tacitus alone grumble at it.
In our day, a philosophy which is almost official has entered into
its service, wears the livery of success, and performs the service
of its antechamber. Succeed: theory. Prosperity argues capacity.
Win in the lottery, and behold! you are a clever man. He who
triumphs is venerated. Be born with a silver spoon in your mouth!
everything lies in that. Be lucky, and you will have all the rest;
be happy, and people will think you great. Outside of five or six
immense exceptions, which compose the splendor of a century,
contemporary admiration is nothing but short-sightedness. Gilding
is gold. It does no harm to be the first arrival by pure chance,
so long as you do arrive. The common herd is an old Narcissus who
adores himself, and who applauds the vulgar herd. That enormous ability
by virtue of which one is Moses, Aeschylus, Dante, Michael Angelo,
or Napoleon, the multitude awards on the spot, and by acclamation,
to whomsoever attains his object, in whatsoever it may consist.
Let a notary transfigure himself into a deputy: let a false
Corneille compose Tiridate; let a eunuch come to possess a harem;
let a military Prudhomme accidentally win the decisive battle of
an epoch; let an apothecary invent cardboard shoe-soles for the army
of the Sambre-and-Meuse, and construct for himself, out of this
cardboard, sold as leather, four hundred thousand francs of income;
let a pork-packer espouse usury, and cause it to bring forth seven
or eight millions, of which he is the father and of which it is
the mother; let a preacher become a bishop by force of his nasal drawl;
let the steward of a fine family be so rich on retiring from service
that he is made minister of finances,--and men call that Genius,
just as they call the face of Mousqueton Beauty, and the mien
of Claude Majesty. With the constellations of space they confound
the stars of the abyss which are made in the soft mire of the puddle
by the feet of ducks.
CHAPTER XIII
WHAT HE BELIEVED
We are not obliged to sound the Bishop of D---- on the score
of orthodoxy. In the presence of such a soul we feel ourselves
in no mood but respect. The conscience of the just man should
be accepted on his word. Moreover, certain natures being given,
we admit the possible development of all beauties of human virtue
in a belief that differs from our own.
What did he think of this dogma, or of that mystery? These secrets
of the inner tribunal of the conscience are known only to the tomb,
where souls enter naked. The point on which we are certain is,
that the difficulties of faith never resolved themselves into
hypocrisy in his case. No decay is possible to the diamond.
He believed to the extent of his powers. "Credo in Patrem,"
he often exclaimed. Moreover, he drew from good works that amount
of satisfaction which suffices to the conscience, and which whispers
to a man, "Thou art with God!"
The point which we consider it our duty to note is, that outside
of and beyond his faith, as it were, the Bishop possessed an excess
of love. In was in that quarter, quia multum amavit,--because he
loved much--that he was regarded as vulnerable by "serious men,"
"grave persons" and "reasonable people"; favorite locutions of our
sad world where egotism takes its word of command from pedantry.
What was this excess of love? It was a serene benevolence
which overflowed men, as we have already pointed out, and which,
on occasion, extended even to things. He lived without disdain.
He was indulgent towards God's creation. Every man, even the best,
has within him a thoughtless harshness which he reserves for animals.
The Bishop of D---- had none of that harshness, which is peculiar
to many priests, nevertheless. He did not go as far as the Brahmin,
but he seemed to have weighed this saying of Ecclesiastes: "Who knoweth
whither the soul of the animal goeth?" Hideousness of aspect,
deformity of instinct, troubled him not, and did not arouse
his indignation. He was touched, almost softened by them.
It seemed as though he went thoughtfully away to seek beyond
the bounds of life which is apparent, the cause, the explanation,
or the excuse for them. He seemed at times to be asking God to
commute these penalties. He examined without wrath, and with the
eye of a linguist who is deciphering a palimpsest, that portion
of chaos which still exists in nature. This revery sometimes
caused him to utter odd sayings. One morning he was in his garden,
and thought himself alone, but his sister was walking behind him,
unseen by him: suddenly he paused and gazed at something on the ground;
it was a large, black, hairy, frightful spider. His sister heard
him say:--
"Poor beast! It is not its fault!"
Why not mention these almost divinely childish sayings of kindness?
Puerile they may be; but these sublime puerilities were peculiar
to Saint Francis d'Assisi and of Marcus Aurelius. One day he
sprained his ankle in his effort to avoid stepping on an ant.
Thus lived this just man. Sometimes he fell asleep in his garden,
and then there was nothing more venerable possible.
Monseigneur Bienvenu had formerly been, if the stories anent
his youth, and even in regard to his manhood, were to be believed,
a passionate, and, possibly, a violent man. His universal suavity
was less an instinct of nature than the result of a grand conviction
which had filtered into his heart through the medium of life,
and had trickled there slowly, thought by thought; for, in a character,
as in a rock, there may exist apertures made by drops of water.
These hollows are uneffaceable; these formations are indestructible.
In 1815, as we think we have already said, he reached his seventy-fifth
birthday, but he did not appear to be more than sixty. He was
not tall; he was rather plump; and, in order to combat this tendency,
he was fond of taking long strolls on foot; his step was firm,
and his form was but slightly bent, a detail from which we do not
pretend to draw any conclusion. Gregory XVI., at the age of eighty,
held himself erect and smiling, which did not prevent him from
being a bad bishop. Monseigneur Welcome had what the people term
a "fine head," but so amiable was he that they forgot that it was fine.
When he conversed with that infantile gayety which was one of his charms,
and of which we have already spoken, people felt at their ease with him,
and joy seemed to radiate from his whole person. His fresh and
ruddy complexion, his very white teeth, all of which he had preserved,
and which were displayed by his smile, gave him that open and easy
air which cause the remark to be made of a man, "He's a good fellow";
and of an old man, "He is a fine man." That, it will be recalled,
was the effect which he produced upon Napoleon. On the first encounter,
and to one who saw him for the first time, he was nothing, in fact,
but a fine man. But if one remained near him for a few hours,
and beheld him in the least degree pensive, the fine man became
gradually transfigured, and took on some imposing quality,
I know not what; his broad and serious brow, rendered august
by his white locks, became august also by virtue of meditation;
majesty radiated from his goodness, though his goodness ceased not
to be radiant; one experienced something of the emotion which one
would feel on beholding a smiling angel slowly unfold his wings,
without ceasing to smile. Respect, an unutterable respect,
penetrated you by degrees and mounted to your heart, and one felt
that one had before him one of those strong, thoroughly tried,
and indulgent souls where thought is so grand that it can no longer
be anything but gentle.
As we have seen, prayer, the celebration of the offices of religion,
alms-giving, the consolation of the afflicted, the cultivation
of a bit of land, fraternity, frugality, hospitality, renunciation,
confidence, study, work, filled every day of his life. Filled is
exactly the word; certainly the Bishop's day was quite full to the brim,
of good words and good deeds. Nevertheless, it was not complete
if cold or rainy weather prevented his passing an hour or two in his
garden before going to bed, and after the two women had retired.
It seemed to be a sort of rite with him, to prepare himself for
slumber by meditation in the presence of the grand spectacles of the
nocturnal heavens. Sometimes, if the two old women were not asleep,
they heard him pacing slowly along the walks at a very advanced
hour of the night. He was there alone, communing with himself,
peaceful, adoring, comparing the serenity of his heart with the
serenity of the ether, moved amid the darkness by the visible
splendor of the constellations and the invisible splendor of God,
opening his heart to the thoughts which fall from the Unknown.
At such moments, while he offered his heart at the hour when
nocturnal flowers offer their perfume, illuminated like a lamp amid
the starry night, as he poured himself out in ecstasy in the midst
of the universal radiance of creation, he could not have told himself,
probably, what was passing in his spirit; he felt something take
its flight from him, and something descend into him. Mysterious
exchange of the abysses of the soul with the abysses of the universe!
He thought of the grandeur and presence of God; of the future eternity,
that strange mystery; of the eternity past, a mystery still
more strange; of all the infinities, which pierced their way into
all his senses, beneath his eyes; and, without seeking to comprehend
the incomprehensible, he gazed upon it. He did not study God;
he was dazzled by him. He considered those magnificent conjunctions
of atoms, which communicate aspects to matter, reveal forces by
verifying them, create individualities in unity, proportions in extent,
the innumerable in the infinite, and, through light, produce beauty.
These conjunctions are formed and dissolved incessantly;
hence life and death.
He seated himself on a wooden bench, with his back against a
decrepit vine; he gazed at the stars, past the puny and stunted
silhouettes of his fruit-trees. This quarter of an acre,
so poorly planted, so encumbered with mean buildings and sheds,
was dear to him, and satisfied his wants.
What more was needed by this old man, who divided the leisure
of his life, where there was so little leisure, between gardening
in the daytime and contemplation at night? Was not this narrow
enclosure, with the heavens for a ceiling, sufficient to enable
him to adore God in his most divine works, in turn? Does not this
comprehend all, in fact? and what is there left to desire beyond it?
A little garden in which to walk, and immensity in which to dream.
At one's feet that which can be cultivated and plucked; over head
that which one can study and meditate upon: some flowers on earth,
and all the stars in the sky.
CHAPTER XIV
WHAT HE THOUGHT
One last word.
Since this sort of details might, particularly at the present moment,
and to use an expression now in fashion, give to the Bishop of D----
a certain "pantheistical" physiognomy, and induce the belief,
either to his credit or discredit, that he entertained one of
those personal philosophies which are peculiar to our century,
which sometimes spring up in solitary spirits, and there take on a form
and grow until they usurp the place of religion, we insist upon it,
that not one of those persons who knew Monseigneur Welcome would
have thought himself authorized to think anything of the sort.
That which enlightened this man was his heart. His wisdom was made
of the light which comes from there.
No systems; many works. Abstruse speculations contain vertigo; no,
there is nothing to indicate that he risked his mind in apocalypses.
The apostle may be daring, but the bishop must be timid. He would
probably have felt a scruple at sounding too far in advance certain
problems which are, in a manner, reserved for terrible great minds.
There is a sacred horror beneath the porches of the enigma;
those gloomy openings stand yawning there, but something
tells you, you, a passer-by in life, that you must not enter.
Woe to him who penetrates thither!
Geniuses in the impenetrable depths of abstraction and pure
speculation, situated, so to speak, above all dogmas, propose their
ideas to God. Their prayer audaciously offers discussion.
Their adoration interrogates. This is direct religion, which is
full of anxiety and responsibility for him who attempts its steep cliffs.
Human meditation has no limits. At his own risk and peril, it analyzes
and digs deep into its own bedazzlement. One might almost say,
that by a sort of splendid reaction, it with it dazzles nature;
the mysterious world which surrounds us renders back what it
has received; it is probable that the contemplators are contemplated.
However that may be, there are on earth men who--are they men?--
perceive distinctly at the verge of the horizons of revery the
heights of the absolute, and who have the terrible vision of the
infinite mountain. Monseigneur Welcome was one of these men;
Monseigneur Welcome was not a genius. He would have feared those
sublimities whence some very great men even, like Swedenborg and Pascal,
have slipped into insanity. Certainly, these powerful reveries
have their moral utility, and by these arduous paths one approaches
to ideal perfection. As for him, he took the path which shortens,--
the Gospel's.
He did not attempt to impart to his chasuble the folds of Elijah's mantle;
he projected no ray of future upon the dark groundswell of events;
he did not see to condense in flame the light of things; he had
nothing of the prophet and nothing of the magician about him.
This humble soul loved, and that was all.
That he carried prayer to the pitch of a superhuman aspiration
is probable: but one can no more pray too much than one can
love too much; and if it is a heresy to pray beyond the texts,
Saint Theresa and Saint Jerome would be heretics.
He inclined towards all that groans and all that expiates.
The universe appeared to him like an immense malady; everywhere he
felt fever, everywhere he heard the sound of suffering, and,
without seeking to solve the enigma, he strove to dress the wound.
The terrible spectacle of created things developed tenderness in him;
he was occupied only in finding for himself, and in inspiring others
with the best way to compassionate and relieve. That which exists
was for this good and rare priest a permanent subject of sadness
which sought consolation.
There are men who toil at extracting gold; he toiled at the extraction
of pity. Universal misery was his mine. The sadness which reigned
everywhere was but an excuse for unfailing kindness. Love each other;
he declared this to be complete, desired nothing further, and that was
the whole of his doctrine. One day, that man who believed himself
to be a "philosopher," the senator who has already been alluded to,
said to the Bishop: "Just survey the spectacle of the world:
all war against all; the strongest has the most wit. Your love
each other is nonsense."--"Well," replied Monseigneur Welcome,
without contesting the point, "if it is nonsense, the soul should shut
itself up in it, as the pearl in the oyster." Thus he shut himself up,
he lived there, he was absolutely satisfied with it, leaving on one side
the prodigious questions which attract and terrify, the fathomless
perspectives of abstraction, the precipices of metaphysics--all those
profundities which converge, for the apostle in God, for the atheist
in nothingness; destiny, good and evil, the way of being against being,
the conscience of man, the thoughtful somnambulism of the animal,
the transformation in death, the recapitulation of existences
which the tomb contains, the incomprehensible grafting of successive
loves on the persistent _I_, the essence, the substance, the Nile,
and the Ens, the soul, nature, liberty, necessity; perpendicular problems,
sinister obscurities, where lean the gigantic archangels of the
human mind; formidable abysses, which Lucretius, Manou, Saint Paul,
Dante, contemplate with eyes flashing lightning, which seems
by its steady gaze on the infinite to cause stars to blaze forth there.
Monseigneur Bienvenu was simply a man who took note of the exterior
of mysterious questions without scrutinizing them, and without
troubling his own mind with them, and who cherished in his own
soul a grave respect for darkness.
BOOK SECOND--THE FALL
CHAPTER I
THE EVENING OF A DAY OF WALKING
Early in the month of October, 1815, about an hour before sunset,
a man who was travelling on foot entered the little town of D----
The few inhabitants who were at their windows or on their thresholds
at the moment stared at this traveller with a sort of uneasiness.
It was difficult to encounter a wayfarer of more wretched appearance.
He was a man of medium stature, thickset and robust, in the prime
of life. He might have been forty-six or forty-eight years old.
A cap with a drooping leather visor partly concealed his face,
burned and tanned by sun and wind, and dripping with perspiration.
His shirt of coarse yellow linen, fastened at the neck by a small
silver anchor, permitted a view of his hairy breast: he had a cravat
twisted into a string; trousers of blue drilling, worn and threadbare,
white on one knee and torn on the other; an old gray, tattered blouse,
patched on one of the elbows with a bit of green cloth sewed on
with twine; a tightly packed soldier knapsack, well buckled and
perfectly new, on his back; an enormous, knotty stick in his hand;
iron-shod shoes on his stockingless feet; a shaved head and a long
beard.
The sweat, the heat, the journey on foot, the dust, added I know
not what sordid quality to this dilapidated whole. His hair was
closely cut, yet bristling, for it had begun to grow a little,
and did not seem to have been cut for some time.
No one knew him. He was evidently only a chance passer-by. Whence
came he? From the south; from the seashore, perhaps, for he made his
entrance into D---- by the same street which, seven months previously,
had witnessed the passage of the Emperor Napoleon on his way
from Cannes to Paris. This man must have been walking all day.
He seemed very much fatigued. Some women of the ancient market town
which is situated below the city had seen him pause beneath the trees
of the boulevard Gassendi, and drink at the fountain which stands
at the end of the promenade. He must have been very thirsty:
for the children who followed him saw him stop again for a drink,
two hundred paces further on, at the fountain in the market-place.
On arriving at the corner of the Rue Poichevert, he turned to the left,
and directed his steps toward the town-hall. He entered, then came
out a quarter of an hour later. A gendarme was seated near the door,
on the stone bench which General Drouot had mounted on the 4th
of March to read to the frightened throng of the inhabitants of D----
the proclamation of the Gulf Juan. The man pulled off his cap
and humbly saluted the gendarme.
The gendarme, without replying to his salute, stared attentively
at him, followed him for a while with his eyes, and then entered
the town-hall.
There then existed at D---- a fine inn at the sign of the Cross
of Colbas. This inn had for a landlord a certain Jacquin Labarre,
a man of consideration in the town on account of his relationship
to another Labarre, who kept the inn of the Three Dauphins in Grenoble,
and had served in the Guides. At the time of the Emperor's landing,
many rumors had circulated throughout the country with regard to this
inn of the Three Dauphins. It was said that General Bertrand,
disguised as a carter, had made frequent trips thither in the month
of January, and that he had distributed crosses of honor to the
soldiers and handfuls of gold to the citizens. The truth is,
that when the Emperor entered Grenoble he had refused to install
himself at the hotel of the prefecture; he had thanked the mayor,
saying, "I am going to the house of a brave man of my acquaintance";
and he had betaken himself to the Three Dauphins. This glory
of the Labarre of the Three Dauphins was reflected upon the Labarre
of the Cross of Colbas, at a distance of five and twenty leagues.
It was said of him in the town, "That is the cousin of the man
of Grenoble."
The man bent his steps towards this inn, which was the best in
the country-side. He entered the kitchen, which opened on a level
with the street. All the stoves were lighted; a huge fire blazed
gayly in the fireplace. The host, who was also the chief cook,
was going from one stew-pan to another, very busily superintending
an excellent dinner designed for the wagoners, whose loud talking,
conversation, and laughter were audible from an adjoining apartment.
Any one who has travelled knows that there is no one who indulges
in better cheer than wagoners. A fat marmot, flanked by white
partridges and heather-cocks, was turning on a long spit before
the fire; on the stove, two huge carps from Lake Lauzet and a trout
from Lake Alloz were cooking.
The host, hearing the door open and seeing a newcomer enter,
said, without raising his eyes from his stoves:--
"What do you wish, sir?"
"Food and lodging," said the man.
"Nothing easier," replied the host. At that moment he turned his head,
took in the traveller's appearance with a single glance, and added,
"By paying for it."
The man drew a large leather purse from the pocket of his blouse,
and answered, "I have money."
"In that case, we are at your service," said the host.
The man put his purse back in his pocket, removed his knapsack from
his back, put it on the ground near the door, retained his stick
in his hand, and seated himself on a low stool close to the fire.
D---- is in the mountains. The evenings are cold there in October.
But as the host went back and forth, he scrutinized the traveller.
"Will dinner be ready soon?" said the man.
"Immediately," replied the landlord.
While the newcomer was warming himself before the fire, with his back
turned, the worthy host, Jacquin Labarre, drew a pencil from his pocket,
then tore off the corner of an old newspaper which was lying on a small
table near the window. On the white margin he wrote a line or two,
folded it without sealing, and then intrusted this scrap of paper
to a child who seemed to serve him in the capacity both of scullion
and lackey. The landlord whispered a word in the scullion's ear,
and the child set off on a run in the direction of the town-hall.
The traveller saw nothing of all this.
Once more he inquired, "Will dinner be ready soon?"
"Immediately," responded the host.
The child returned. He brought back the paper. The host unfolded
it eagerly, like a person who is expecting a reply. He seemed to
read it attentively, then tossed his head, and remained thoughtful
for a moment. Then he took a step in the direction of the traveller,
who appeared to be immersed in reflections which were not very serene.
"I cannot receive you, sir," said he.
The man half rose.
"What! Are you afraid that I will not pay you? Do you want me
to pay you in advance? I have money, I tell you."
"It is not that."
"What then?"
"You have money--"
"Yes," said the man.
"And I," said the host, "have no room."
The man resumed tranquilly, "Put me in the stable."
"I cannot."
"Why?"
"The horses take up all the space."
"Very well!" retorted the man; "a corner of the loft then, a truss
of straw. We will see about that after dinner."
"I cannot give you any dinner."
This declaration, made in a measured but firm tone, struck the
stranger as grave. He rose.
"Ah! bah! But I am dying of hunger. I have been walking since sunrise.
I have travelled twelve leagues. I pay. I wish to eat."
"I have nothing," said the landlord.
The man burst out laughing, and turned towards the fireplace
and the stoves: "Nothing! and all that?"
"All that is engaged."
"By whom?"
"By messieurs the wagoners."
"How many are there of them?"
"Twelve."
"There is enough food there for twenty."
"They have engaged the whole of it and paid for it in advance."
The man seated himself again, and said, without raising his voice,
"I am at an inn; I am hungry, and I shall remain."
Then the host bent down to his ear, and said in a tone which made
him start, "Go away!"
At that moment the traveller was bending forward and thrusting
some brands into the fire with the iron-shod tip of his staff;
he turned quickly round, and as he opened his mouth to reply,
the host gazed steadily at him and added, still in a low voice:
"Stop! there's enough of that sort of talk. Do you want me to tell
you your name? Your name is Jean Valjean. Now do you want me to tell
you who you are? When I saw you come in I suspected something;
I sent to the town-hall, and this was the reply that was sent to me.
Can you read?"
So saying, he held out to the stranger, fully unfolded, the paper
which had just travelled from the inn to the town-hall, and from
the town-hall to the inn. The man cast a glance upon it.
The landlord resumed after a pause.
"I am in the habit of being polite to every one. Go away!"
The man dropped his head, picked up the knapsack which he had
deposited on the ground, and took his departure.
He chose the principal street. He walked straight on at a venture,
keeping close to the houses like a sad and humiliated man.
He did not turn round a single time. Had he done so, he would have
seen the host of the Cross of Colbas standing on his threshold,
surrounded by all the guests of his inn, and all the passers-by in
the street, talking vivaciously, and pointing him out with his finger;
and, from the glances of terror and distrust cast by the group,
he might have divined that his arrival would speedily become an event
for the whole town.
He saw nothing of all this. People who are crushed do not look
behind them. They know but too well the evil fate which follows them.
Thus he proceeded for some time, walking on without ceasing,
traversing at random streets of which he knew nothing, forgetful of
his fatigue, as is often the case when a man is sad. All at once
he felt the pangs of hunger sharply. Night was drawing near.
He glanced about him, to see whether he could not discover some shelter.
The fine hostelry was closed to him; he was seeking some very humble
public house, some hovel, however lowly.
Just then a light flashed up at the end of the streets; a pine
branch suspended from a cross-beam of iron was outlined against
the white sky of the twilight. He proceeded thither.
It proved to be, in fact, a public house. The public house
which is in the Rue de Chaffaut.
The wayfarer halted for a moment, and peeped through the window into
the interior of the low-studded room of the public house, illuminated by
a small lamp on a table and by a large fire on the hearth. Some men
were engaged in drinking there. The landlord was warming himself.
An iron pot, suspended from a crane, bubbled over the flame.
The entrance to this public house, which is also a sort of an inn,
is by two doors. One opens on the street, the other upon a small yard
filled with manure. The traveller dare not enter by the street door.
He slipped into the yard, halted again, then raised the latch timidly
and opened the door.
"Who goes there?" said the master.
"Some one who wants supper and bed."
"Good. We furnish supper and bed here."
He entered. All the men who were drinking turned round.
The lamp illuminated him on one side, the firelight on the other.
They examined him for some time while he was taking off his knapsack.
The host said to him, "There is the fire. The supper is cooking
in the pot. Come and warm yourself, comrade."
He approached and seated himself near the hearth. He stretched
out his feet, which were exhausted with fatigue, to the fire;
a fine odor was emitted by the pot. All that could be distinguished
of his face, beneath his cap, which was well pulled down,
assumed a vague appearance of comfort, mingled with that other
poignant aspect which habitual suffering bestows.
It was, moreover, a firm, energetic, and melancholy profile.
This physiognomy was strangely composed; it began by seeming humble,
and ended by seeming severe. The eye shone beneath its lashes
like a fire beneath brushwood.
One of the men seated at the table, however, was a fishmonger who,
before entering the public house of the Rue de Chaffaut,
had been to stable his horse at Labarre's. It chanced that he
had that very morning encountered this unprepossessing stranger
on the road between Bras d'Asse and--I have forgotten the name.
I think it was Escoublon. Now, when he met him, the man, who then
seemed already extremely weary, had requested him to take him
on his crupper; to which the fishmonger had made no reply except
by redoubling his gait. This fishmonger had been a member half
an hour previously of the group which surrounded Jacquin Labarre,
and had himself related his disagreeable encounter of the morning
to the people at the Cross of Colbas. From where he sat he made
an imperceptible sign to the tavern-keeper. The tavern-keeper went
to him. They exchanged a few words in a low tone. The man had
again become absorbed in his reflections.
The tavern-keeper returned to the fireplace, laid his hand abruptly
on the shoulder of the man, and said to him:--
"You are going to get out of here."
The stranger turned round and replied gently, "Ah! You know?--"
"Yes."
"I was sent away from the other inn."
"And you are to be turned out of this one."
"Where would you have me go?"
"Elsewhere."
The man took his stick and his knapsack and departed.
As he went out, some children who had followed him from the Cross
of Colbas, and who seemed to be lying in wait for him, threw stones
at him. He retraced his steps in anger, and threatened them
with his stick: the children dispersed like a flock of birds.
He passed before the prison. At the door hung an iron chain
attached to a bell. He rang.
The wicket opened.
"Turnkey," said he, removing his cap politely, "will you have
the kindness to admit me, and give me a lodging for the night?"
A voice replied:--
"The prison is not an inn. Get yourself arrested, and you will
be admitted."
The wicket closed again.
He entered a little street in which there were many gardens.
Some of them are enclosed only by hedges, which lends a cheerful
aspect to the street. In the midst of these gardens and hedges
he caught sight of a small house of a single story, the window
of which was lighted up. He peered through the pane as he had
done at the public house. Within was a large whitewashed room,
with a bed draped in printed cotton stuff, and a cradle in one corner,
a few wooden chairs, and a double-barrelled gun hanging on the wall.
A table was spread in the centre of the room. A copper lamp
illuminated the tablecloth of coarse white linen, the pewter
jug shining like silver, and filled with wine, and the brown,
smoking soup-tureen. At this table sat a man of about forty,
with a merry and open countenance, who was dandling a little child
on his knees. Close by a very young woman was nursing another child.
The father was laughing, the child was laughing, the mother
was smiling.
The stranger paused a moment in revery before this tender
and calming spectacle. What was taking place within him?
He alone could have told. It is probable that he thought that
this joyous house would be hospitable, and that, in a place
where he beheld so much happiness, he would find perhaps a little pity.
He tapped on the pane with a very small and feeble knock.
They did not hear him.
He tapped again.
He heard the woman say, "It seems to me, husband, that some one
is knocking."
"No," replied the husband.
He tapped a third time.
The husband rose, took the lamp, and went to the door, which he opened.
He was a man of lofty stature, half peasant, half artisan.
He wore a huge leather apron, which reached to his left shoulder,
and which a hammer, a red handkerchief, a powder-horn, and all
sorts of objects which were upheld by the girdle, as in a pocket,
caused to bulge out. He carried his head thrown backwards;
his shirt, widely opened and turned back, displayed his bull neck,
white and bare. He had thick eyelashes, enormous black whiskers,
prominent eyes, the lower part of his face like a snout;
and besides all this, that air of being on his own ground,
which is indescribable.
"Pardon me, sir," said the wayfarer, "Could you, in consideration
of payment, give me a plate of soup and a corner of that shed
yonder in the garden, in which to sleep? Tell me; can you?
For money?"
"Who are you?" demanded the master of the house.
The man replied: "I have just come from Puy-Moisson. I have
walked all day long. I have travelled twelve leagues. Can you?--
if I pay?"
"I would not refuse," said the peasant, "to lodge any respectable
man who would pay me. But why do you not go to the inn?"
"There is no room."
"Bah! Impossible. This is neither a fair nor a market day.
Have you been to Labarre?"
"Yes."
"Well?"
The traveller replied with embarrassment: "I do not know.
He did not receive me."
"Have you been to What's-his-name's, in the Rue Chaffaut?"
The stranger's embarrassment increased; he stammered, "He did
not receive me either."
The peasant's countenance assumed an expression of distrust;
he surveyed the newcomer from head to feet, and suddenly exclaimed,
with a sort of shudder:--
"Are you the man?--"
He cast a fresh glance upon the stranger, took three steps backwards,
placed the lamp on the table, and took his gun down from the wall.
Meanwhile, at the words, Are you the man? the woman had risen,
had clasped her two children in her arms, and had taken refuge
precipitately behind her husband, staring in terror at the stranger,
with her bosom uncovered, and with frightened eyes, as she murmured
in a low tone, "Tso-maraude."[1]
[1] Patois of the French Alps: chat de maraude, rascally marauder.
All this took place in less time than it requires to picture it
to one's self. After having scrutinized the man for several moments,
as one scrutinizes a viper, the master of the house returned
to the door and said:--
"Clear out!"
"For pity's sake, a glass of water," said the man.
"A shot from my gun!" said the peasant.
Then he closed the door violently, and the man heard him shoot
two large bolts. A moment later, the window-shutter was closed,
and the sound of a bar of iron which was placed against it was
audible outside.
Night continued to fall. A cold wind from the Alps was blowing.
By the light of the expiring day the stranger perceived,
in one of the gardens which bordered the street, a sort of hut,
which seemed to him to be built of sods. He climbed over the wooden
fence resolutely, and found himself in the garden. He approached
the hut; its door consisted of a very low and narrow aperture,
and it resembled those buildings which road-laborers construct for
themselves along the roads. He thought without doubt, that it was,
in fact, the dwelling of a road-laborer; he was suffering from cold
and hunger, but this was, at least, a shelter from the cold.
This sort of dwelling is not usually occupied at night. He threw
himself flat on his face, and crawled into the hut. It was warm there,
and he found a tolerably good bed of straw. He lay, for a moment,
stretched out on this bed, without the power to make a movement,
so fatigued was he. Then, as the knapsack on his back was in
his way, and as it furnished, moreover, a pillow ready to his hand,
he set about unbuckling one of the straps. At that moment,
a ferocious growl became audible. He raised his eyes. The head
of an enormous dog was outlined in the darkness at the entrance of
the hut.
It was a dog's kennel.
He was himself vigorous and formidable; he armed himself with his staff,
made a shield of his knapsack, and made his way out of the kennel
in the best way he could, not without enlarging the rents in his rags.
He left the garden in the same manner, but backwards, being obliged,
in order to keep the dog respectful, to have recourse to that
manoeuvre with his stick which masters in that sort of fencing
designate as la rose couverte.
When he had, not without difficulty, repassed the fence, and found
himself once more in the street, alone, without refuge, without shelter,
without a roof over his head, chased even from that bed of straw
and from that miserable kennel, he dropped rather than seated himself
on a stone, and it appears that a passer-by heard him exclaim,
"I am not even a dog!"
He soon rose again and resumed his march. He went out of the town,
hoping to find some tree or haystack in the fields which would afford
him shelter.
He walked thus for some time, with his head still drooping.
When he felt himself far from every human habitation, he raised
his eyes and gazed searchingly about him. He was in a field.
Before him was one of those low hills covered with close-cut stubble,
which, after the harvest, resemble shaved heads.
The horizon was perfectly black. This was not alone the obscurity
of night; it was caused by very low-hanging clouds which seemed
to rest upon the hill itself, and which were mounting and filling
the whole sky. Meanwhile, as the moon was about to rise, and as
there was still floating in the zenith a remnant of the brightness
of twilight, these clouds formed at the summit of the sky a sort
of whitish arch, whence a gleam of light fell upon the earth.
The earth was thus better lighted than the sky, which produces
a particularly sinister effect, and the hill, whose contour was poor
and mean, was outlined vague and wan against the gloomy horizon.
The whole effect was hideous, petty, lugubrious, and narrow.
There was nothing in the field or on the hill except a deformed tree,
which writhed and shivered a few paces distant from the wayfarer.
This man was evidently very far from having those delicate habits
of intelligence and spirit which render one sensible to the mysterious
aspects of things; nevertheless, there was something in that sky,
in that hill, in that plain, in that tree, which was so profoundly
desolate, that after a moment of immobility and revery he turned
back abruptly. There are instants when nature seems hostile.
He retraced his steps; the gates of D---- were closed. D----, which had
sustained sieges during the wars of religion, was still surrounded
in 1815 by ancient walls flanked by square towers which have been
demolished since. He passed through a breach and entered the town again.
It might have been eight o'clock in the evening. As he was not
acquainted with the streets, he recommenced his walk at random.
In this way he came to the prefecture, then to the seminary.
As he passed through the Cathedral Square, he shook his fist at
the church.
At the corner of this square there is a printing establishment.
It is there that the proclamations of the Emperor and of the Imperial
Guard to the army, brought from the Island of Elba and dictated
by Napoleon himself, were printed for the first time.
Worn out with fatigue, and no longer entertaining any hope,
he lay down on a stone bench which stands at the doorway of this
printing office.
At that moment an old woman came out of the church. She saw the man
stretched out in the shadow. "What are you doing there, my friend?"
said she.
He answered harshly and angrily: "As you see, my good woman,
I am sleeping." The good woman, who was well worthy the name,
in fact, was the Marquise de R----
"On this bench?" she went on.
"I have had a mattress of wood for nineteen years," said the man;
"to-day I have a mattress of stone."
"You have been a soldier?"
"Yes, my good woman, a soldier."
"Why do you not go to the inn?"
"Because I have no money."
"Alas!" said Madame de R----, "I have only four sous in my purse."
"Give it to me all the same."
The man took the four sous. Madame de R---- continued: "You cannot
obtain lodgings in an inn for so small a sum. But have you tried?
It is impossible for you to pass the night thus. You are cold
and hungry, no doubt. Some one might have given you a lodging out
of charity."
"I have knocked at all doors."
"Well?"
"I have been driven away everywhere."
The "good woman" touched the man's arm, and pointed out to him
on the other side of the street a small, low house, which stood
beside the Bishop's palace.
"You have knocked at all doors?"
"Yes."
"Have you knocked at that one?"
"No."
"Knock there."
CHAPTER II
PRUDENCE COUNSELLED TO WISDOM.
That evening, the Bishop of D----, after his promenade through the town,
remained shut up rather late in his room. He was busy over a great
work on Duties, which was never completed, unfortunately. He was
carefully compiling everything that the Fathers and the doctors
have said on this important subject. His book was divided into
two parts: firstly, the duties of all; secondly, the duties
of each individual, according to the class to which he belongs.
The duties of all are the great duties. There are four of these.
Saint Matthew points them out: duties towards God (Matt. vi.);
duties towards one's self (Matt. v. 29, 30); duties towards one's
neighbor (Matt. vii. 12); duties towards animals (Matt. vi.
20, 25). As for the other duties the Bishop found them pointed out
and prescribed elsewhere: to sovereigns and subjects, in the Epistle
to the Romans; to magistrates, to wives, to mothers, to young men,
by Saint Peter; to husbands, fathers, children and servants,
in the Epistle to the Ephesians; to the faithful, in the Epistle
to the Hebrews; to virgins, in the Epistle to the Corinthians.
Out of these precepts he was laboriously constructing a harmonious whole,
which he desired to present to souls.
At eight o'clock he was still at work, writing with a good deal
of inconvenience upon little squares of paper, with a big book open
on his knees, when Madame Magloire entered, according to her wont,
to get the silver-ware from the cupboard near his bed. A moment later,
the Bishop, knowing that the table was set, and that his sister
was probably waiting for him, shut his book, rose from his table,
and entered the dining-room.
The dining-room was an oblong apartment, with a fireplace,
which had a door opening on the street (as we have said),
and a window opening on the garden.
Madame Magloire was, in fact, just putting the last touches
to the table.
As she performed this service, she was conversing
with Mademoiselle Baptistine.
A lamp stood on the table; the table was near the fireplace.
A wood fire was burning there.
One can easily picture to one's self these two women, both of whom
were over sixty years of age. Madame Magloire small, plump, vivacious;
Mademoiselle Baptistine gentle, slender, frail, somewhat taller
than her brother, dressed in a gown of puce-colored silk, of the
fashion of 1806, which she had purchased at that date in Paris,
and which had lasted ever since. To borrow vulgar phrases,
which possess the merit of giving utterance in a single word to an idea
which a whole page would hardly suffice to express, Madame Magloire
had the air of a peasant, and Mademoiselle Baptistine that of a lady.
Madame Magloire wore a white quilted cap, a gold Jeannette cross
on a velvet ribbon upon her neck, the only bit of feminine jewelry
that there was in the house, a very white fichu puffing out from a gown
of coarse black woollen stuff, with large, short sleeves, an apron
of cotton cloth in red and green checks, knotted round the waist
with a green ribbon, with a stomacher of the same attached by two pins
at the upper corners, coarse shoes on her feet, and yellow stockings,
like the women of Marseilles. Mademoiselle Baptistine's gown
was cut on the patterns of 1806, with a short waist, a narrow,
sheath-like skirt, puffed sleeves, with flaps and buttons.
She concealed her gray hair under a frizzed wig known as the baby wig.
Madame Magloire had an intelligent, vivacious, and kindly air;
the two corners of her mouth unequally raised, and her upper lip,
which was larger than the lower, imparted to her a rather crabbed
and imperious look. So long as Monseigneur held his peace,
she talked to him resolutely with a mixture of respect and freedom;
but as soon as Monseigneur began to speak, as we have seen,
she obeyed passively like her mistress. Mademoiselle Baptistine did
not even speak. She confined herself to obeying and pleasing him.
She had never been pretty, even when she was young; she had large,
blue, prominent eyes, and a long arched nose; but her whole visage,
her whole person, breathed forth an ineffable goodness, as we stated
in the beginning. She had always been predestined to gentleness;
but faith, charity, hope, those three virtues which mildly warm the soul,
had gradually elevated that gentleness to sanctity. Nature had made
her a lamb, religion had made her an angel. Poor sainted virgin!
Sweet memory which has vanished!
Mademoiselle Baptistine has so often narrated what passed at
the episcopal residence that evening, that there are many people
now living who still recall the most minute details.
At the moment when the Bishop entered, Madame Magloire was talking
with considerable vivacity. She was haranguing Mademoiselle Baptistine
on a subject which was familiar to her and to which the Bishop was
also accustomed. The question concerned the lock upon the entrance door.
It appears that while procuring some provisions for supper,
Madame Magloire had heard things in divers places. People had spoken
of a prowler of evil appearance; a suspicious vagabond had arrived
who must be somewhere about the town, and those who should take it
into their heads to return home late that night might be subjected
to unpleasant encounters. The police was very badly organized,
moreover, because there was no love lost between the Prefect and
the Mayor, who sought to injure each other by making things happen.
It behooved wise people to play the part of their own police,
and to guard themselves well, and care must be taken to duly close,
bar and barricade their houses, and to fasten the doors well.
Madame Magloire emphasized these last words; but the Bishop had just
come from his room, where it was rather cold. He seated himself
in front of the fire, and warmed himself, and then fell to thinking
of other things. He did not take up the remark dropped with design
by Madame Magloire. She repeated it. Then Mademoiselle Baptistine,
desirous of satisfying Madame Magloire without displeasing her brother,
ventured to say timidly:--
"Did you hear what Madame Magloire is saying, brother?"
"I have heard something of it in a vague way," replied the Bishop.
Then half-turning in his chair, placing his hands on his knees,
and raising towards the old servant woman his cordial face,
which so easily grew joyous, and which was illuminated from below
by the firelight,--"Come, what is the matter? What is the matter?
Are we in any great danger?"
Then Madame Magloire began the whole story afresh, exaggerating it
a little without being aware of the fact. It appeared that
a Bohemian, a bare-footed vagabond, a sort of dangerous mendicant,
was at that moment in the town. He had presented himself at Jacquin
Labarre's to obtain lodgings, but the latter had not been willing
to take him in. He had been seen to arrive by the way of the
boulevard Gassendi and roam about the streets in the gloaming.
A gallows-bird with a terrible face.
"Really!" said the Bishop.
This willingness to interrogate encouraged Madame Magloire;
it seemed to her to indicate that the Bishop was on the point
of becoming alarmed; she pursued triumphantly:--
"Yes, Monseigneur. That is how it is. There will be some sort
of catastrophe in this town to-night. Every one says so. And withal,
the police is so badly regulated" (a useful repetition). "The idea
of living in a mountainous country, and not even having lights
in the streets at night! One goes out. Black as ovens, indeed!
And I say, Monseigneur, and Mademoiselle there says with me--"
"I," interrupted his sister, "say nothing. What my brother does
is well done."
Madame Magloire continued as though there had been no protest:--
"We say that this house is not safe at all; that if Monseigneur
will permit, I will go and tell Paulin Musebois, the locksmith,
to come and replace the ancient locks on the doors; we have them,
and it is only the work of a moment; for I say that nothing is more
terrible than a door which can be opened from the outside with a latch
by the first passer-by; and I say that we need bolts, Monseigneur,
if only for this night; moreover, Monseigneur has the habit of always
saying `come in'; and besides, even in the middle of the night,
O mon Dieu! there is no need to ask permission."
At that moment there came a tolerably violent knock on the door.
"Come in," said the Bishop.
CHAPTER III
THE HEROISM OF PASSIVE OBEDIENCE.
The door opened.
It opened wide with a rapid movement, as though some one had given
it an energetic and resolute push.
A man entered.
We already know the man. It was the wayfarer whom we have seen
wandering about in search of shelter.
He entered, advanced a step, and halted, leaving the door open
behind him. He had his knapsack on his shoulders, his cudgel
in his hand, a rough, audacious, weary, and violent expression in
his eyes. The fire on the hearth lighted him up. He was hideous.
It was a sinister apparition.
Madame Magloire had not even the strength to utter a cry.
She trembled, and stood with her mouth wide open.
Mademoiselle Baptistine turned round, beheld the man entering,
and half started up in terror; then, turning her head by degrees
towards the fireplace again, she began to observe her brother,
and her face became once more profoundly calm and serene.
The Bishop fixed a tranquil eye on the man.
As he opened his mouth, doubtless to ask the new-comer what he desired,
the man rested both hands on his staff, directed his gaze at the old
man and the two women, and without waiting for the Bishop to speak,
he said, in a loud voice:--
"See here. My name is Jean Valjean. I am a convict from the galleys.
I have passed nineteen years in the galleys. I was liberated four
days ago, and am on my way to Pontarlier, which is my destination.
I have been walking for four days since I left Toulon. I have
travelled a dozen leagues to-day on foot. This evening, when I
arrived in these parts, I went to an inn, and they turned me out,
because of my yellow passport, which I had shown at the town-hall.
I had to do it. I went to an inn. They said to me, `Be off,'
at both places. No one would take me. I went to the prison;
the jailer would not admit me. I went into a dog's kennel;
the dog bit me and chased me off, as though he had been a man.
One would have said that he knew who I was. I went into the fields,
intending to sleep in the open air, beneath the stars. There were
no stars. I thought it was going to rain, and I re-entered
the town, to seek the recess of a doorway. Yonder, in the square,
I meant to sleep on a stone bench. A good woman pointed out your
house to me, and said to me, `Knock there!' I have knocked.
What is this place? Do you keep an inn? I have money--savings.
One hundred and nine francs fifteen sous, which I earned
in the galleys by my labor, in the course of nineteen years.
I will pay. What is that to me? I have money. I am very weary;
twelve leagues on foot; I am very hungry. Are you willing that I
should remain?"
"Madame Magloire," said the Bishop, "you will set another place."
The man advanced three paces, and approached the lamp which was on
the table. "Stop," he resumed, as though he had not quite understood;
"that's not it. Did you hear? I am a galley-slave; a convict.
I come from the galleys." He drew from his pocket a large sheet
of yellow paper, which he unfolded. "Here's my passport. Yellow,
as you see. This serves to expel me from every place where I go.
Will you read it? I know how to read. I learned in the galleys.
There is a school there for those who choose to learn. Hold, this is
what they put on this passport: `Jean Valjean, discharged convict,
native of'--that is nothing to you--`has been nineteen years
in the galleys: five years for house-breaking and burglary;
fourteen years for having attempted to escape on four occasions.
He is a very dangerous man.' There! Every one has cast me out.
Are you willing to receive me? Is this an inn? Will you give me
something to eat and a bed? Have you a stable?"
"Madame Magloire," said the Bishop, "you will put white sheets on
the bed in the alcove." We have already explained the character
of the two women's obedience.
Madame Magloire retired to execute these orders.
The Bishop turned to the man.
"Sit down, sir, and warm yourself. We are going to sup
in a few moments, and your bed will be prepared while you are supping."
At this point the man suddenly comprehended. The expression
of his face, up to that time sombre and harsh, bore the imprint
of stupefaction, of doubt, of joy, and became extraordinary.
He began stammering like a crazy man:--
"Really? What! You will keep me? You do not drive me forth?
A convict! You call me sir! You do not address me as thou?
`Get out of here, you dog!' is what people always say to me. I felt sure
that you would expel me, so I told you at once who I am. Oh, what a
good woman that was who directed me hither! I am going to sup!
A bed with a mattress and sheets, like the rest of the world! a bed!
It is nineteen years since I have slept in a bed! You actually do
not want me to go! You are good people. Besides, I have money.
I will pay well. Pardon me, monsieur the inn-keeper, but what is
your name? I will pay anything you ask. You are a fine man.
You are an inn-keeper, are you not?"
"I am," replied the Bishop, "a priest who lives here."
"A priest!" said the man. "Oh, what a fine priest! Then you are
not going to demand any money of me? You are the cure, are you
not? the cure of this big church? Well! I am a fool, truly!
I had not perceived your skull-cap."
As he spoke, he deposited his knapsack and his cudgel in a corner,
replaced his passport in his pocket, and seated himself.
Mademoiselle Baptistine gazed mildly at him. He continued:
"You are humane, Monsieur le Cure; you have not scorned me.
A good priest is a very good thing. Then you do not require me
to pay?"
"No," said the Bishop; "keep your money. How much have you?
Did you not tell me one hundred and nine francs?"
"And fifteen sous," added the man.
"One hundred and nine francs fifteen sous. And how long did it
take you to earn that?"
"Nineteen years."
"Nineteen years!"
The Bishop sighed deeply.
The man continued: "I have still the whole of my money.
In four days I have spent only twenty-five sous, which I earned
by helping unload some wagons at Grasse. Since you are an abbe,
I will tell you that we had a chaplain in the galleys. And one day
I saw a bishop there. Monseigneur is what they call him. He was
the Bishop of Majore at Marseilles. He is the cure who rules over
the other cures, you understand. Pardon me, I say that very badly;
but it is such a far-off thing to me! You understand what we are!
He said mass in the middle of the galleys, on an altar. He had a
pointed thing, made of gold, on his head; it glittered in the bright
light of midday. We were all ranged in lines on the three sides,
with cannons with lighted matches facing us. We could not see
very well. He spoke; but he was too far off, and we did not hear.
That is what a bishop is like."
While he was speaking, the Bishop had gone and shut the door,
which had remained wide open.
Madame Magloire returned. She brought a silver fork and spoon,
which she placed on the table.
"Madame Magloire," said the Bishop, "place those things as near
the fire as possible." And turning to his guest: "The night wind
is harsh on the Alps. You must be cold, sir."
Each time that he uttered the word sir, in his voice which was so gently
grave and polished, the man's face lighted up. Monsieur to a convict
is like a glass of water to one of the shipwrecked of the Medusa.
Ignominy thirsts for consideration.
"This lamp gives a very bad light," said the Bishop.
Madame Magloire understood him, and went to get the two silver
candlesticks from the chimney-piece in Monseigneur's bed-chamber,
and placed them, lighted, on the table.
"Monsieur le Cure," said the man, "you are good; you do not despise me.
You receive me into your house. You light your candles for me.
Yet I have not concealed from you whence I come and that I am an
unfortunate man."
The Bishop, who was sitting close to him, gently touched his hand.
"You could not help telling me who you were. This is not my house;
it is the house of Jesus Christ. This door does not demand of him
who enters whether he has a name, but whether he has a grief.
You suffer, you are hungry and thirsty; you are welcome.
And do not thank me; do not say that I receive you in my house.
No one is at home here, except the man who needs a refuge.
I say to you, who are passing by, that you are much more at home
here than I am myself. Everything here is yours. What need have I
to know your name? Besides, before you told me you had one which
I knew."
The man opened his eyes in astonishment.
"Really? You knew what I was called?"
"Yes," replied the Bishop, "you are called my brother."
"Stop, Monsieur le Cure," exclaimed the man. "I was very hungry
when I entered here; but you are so good, that I no longer know
what has happened to me."
The Bishop looked at him, and said,--
"You have suffered much?"
"Oh, the red coat, the ball on the ankle, a plank to sleep on,
heat, cold, toil, the convicts, the thrashings, the double
chain for nothing, the cell for one word; even sick and in bed,
still the chain! Dogs, dogs are happier! Nineteen years! I am
forty-six. Now there is the yellow passport. That is what it is like."
"Yes," resumed the Bishop, "you have come from a very sad place.
Listen. There will be more joy in heaven over the tear-bathed face
of a repentant sinner than over the white robes of a hundred just men.
If you emerge from that sad place with thoughts of hatred and of wrath
against mankind, you are deserving of pity; if you emerge with thoughts
of good-will and of peace, you are more worthy than any one of us."
In the meantime, Madame Magloire had served supper: soup, made with
water, oil, bread, and salt; a little bacon, a bit of mutton, figs, a
fresh cheese, and a large loaf of rye bread. She had, of her own accord,
added to the Bishop's ordinary fare a bottle of his old Mauves wine.
The Bishop's face at once assumed that expression of gayety which is
peculiar to hospitable natures. "To table!" he cried vivaciously.
As was his custom when a stranger supped with him, he made the man
sit on his right. Mademoiselle Baptistine, perfectly peaceable
and natural, took her seat at his left.
The Bishop asked a blessing; then helped the soup himself,
according to his custom. The man began to eat with avidity.
All at once the Bishop said: "It strikes me there is something
missing on this table."
Madame Magloire had, in fact, only placed the three sets of forks
and spoons which were absolutely necessary. Now, it was the usage
of the house, when the Bishop had any one to supper, to lay out the
whole six sets of silver on the table-cloth--an innocent ostentation.
This graceful semblance of luxury was a kind of child's play,
which was full of charm in that gentle and severe household,
which raised poverty into dignity.
Madame Magloire understood the remark, went out without saying a word,
and a moment later the three sets of silver forks and spoons demanded
by the Bishop were glittering upon the cloth, symmetrically arranged
before the three persons seated at the table.
CHAPTER IV
DETAILS CONCERNING THE CHEESE-DAIRIES OF PONTARLIER.
Now, in order to convey an idea of what passed at that table,
we cannot do better than to transcribe here a passage from one
of Mademoiselle Baptistine's letters to Madame Boischevron,
wherein the conversation between the convict and the Bishop
is described with ingenious minuteness.
". . . This man paid no attention to any one. He ate with the
voracity of a starving man. However, after supper he said:
"`Monsieur le Cure of the good God, all this is far too good for me;
but I must say that the carters who would not allow me to eat with
them keep a better table than you do.'
"Between ourselves, the remark rather shocked me. My brother replied:--
"`They are more fatigued than I.'
"`No,' returned the man, `they have more money. You are poor;
I see that plainly. You cannot be even a curate. Are you really
a cure? Ah, if the good God were but just, you certainly ought
to be a cure!'
"`The good God is more than just,' said my brother.
"A moment later he added:--
"`Monsieur Jean Valjean, is it to Pontarlier that you are going?'
"`With my road marked out for me.'
"I think that is what the man said. Then he went on:--
"`I must be on my way by daybreak to-morrow. Travelling is hard.
If the nights are cold, the days are hot.'
"`You are going to a good country,' said my brother. `During the
Revolution my family was ruined. I took refuge in Franche-Comte
at first, and there I lived for some time by the toil of my hands.
My will was good. I found plenty to occupy me. One has only to choose.
There are paper mills, tanneries, distilleries, oil factories,
watch factories on a large scale, steel mills, copper works,
twenty iron foundries at least, four of which, situated at Lods,
at Chatillon, at Audincourt, and at Beure, are tolerably large.'
"I think I am not mistaken in saying that those are the names which
my brother mentioned. Then he interrupted himself and addressed me:--
"`Have we not some relatives in those parts, my dear sister?'
"I replied,--
"`We did have some; among others, M. de Lucenet, who was captain
of the gates at Pontarlier under the old regime.'
"`Yes,' resumed my brother; `but in '93, one had no longer
any relatives, one had only one's arms. I worked. They have,
in the country of Pontarlier, whither you are going, Monsieur Valjean,
a truly patriarchal and truly charming industry, my sister.
It is their cheese-dairies, which they call fruitieres.'
"Then my brother, while urging the man to eat, explained to him,
with great minuteness, what these fruitieres of Pontarlier were;
that they were divided into two classes: the big barns which belong
to the rich, and where there are forty or fifty cows which produce
from seven to eight thousand cheeses each summer, and the associated
fruitieres, which belong to the poor; these are the peasants of
mid-mountain, who hold their cows in common, and share the proceeds.
`They engage the services of a cheese-maker, whom they call the grurin;
the grurin receives the milk of the associates three times a day,
and marks the quantity on a double tally. It is towards the end
of April that the work of the cheese-dairies begins; it is towards
the middle of June that the cheese-makers drive their cows to
the mountains.'
"The man recovered his animation as he ate. My brother made him
drink that good Mauves wine, which he does not drink himself,
because he says that wine is expensive. My brother imparted all these
details with that easy gayety of his with which you are acquainted,
interspersing his words with graceful attentions to me. He recurred
frequently to that comfortable trade of grurin, as though he wished
the man to understand, without advising him directly and harshly,
that this would afford him a refuge. One thing struck me.
This man was what I have told you. Well, neither during supper,
nor during the entire evening, did my brother utter a single word,
with the exception of a few words about Jesus when he entered,
which could remind the man of what he was, nor of what my brother was.
To all appearances, it was an occasion for preaching him a little sermon,
and of impressing the Bishop on the convict, so that a mark of the
passage might remain behind. This might have appeared to any one else
who had this, unfortunate man in his hands to afford a chance to nourish
his soul as well as his body, and to bestow upon him some reproach,
seasoned with moralizing and advice, or a little commiseration,
with an exhortation to conduct himself better in the future.
My brother did not even ask him from what country he came,
nor what was his history. For in his history there is a fault,
and my brother seemed to avoid everything which could remind him
of it. To such a point did he carry it, that at one time, when my
brother was speaking of the mountaineers of Pontarlier, who exercise
a gentle labor near heaven, and who, he added, are happy because
they are innocent, he stopped short, fearing lest in this remark
there might have escaped him something which might wound the man.
By dint of reflection, I think I have comprehended what was passing
in my brother's heart. He was thinking, no doubt, that this man,
whose name is Jean Valjean, had his misfortune only too vividly
present in his mind; that the best thing was to divert him from it,
and to make him believe, if only momentarily, that he was a person
like any other, by treating him just in his ordinary way. Is not
this indeed, to understand charity well? Is there not, dear Madame,
something truly evangelical in this delicacy which abstains from sermon,
from moralizing, from allusions? and is not the truest pity,
when a man has a sore point, not to touch it at all? It has seemed
to me that this might have been my brother's private thought.
In any case, what I can say is that, if he entertained all these ideas,
he gave no sign of them; from beginning to end, even to me he
was the same as he is every evening, and he supped with this Jean
Valjean with the same air and in the same manner in which he would
have supped with M. Gedeon le Provost, or with the curate of
the parish.
"Towards the end, when he had reached the figs, there came a knock
at the door. It was Mother Gerbaud, with her little one in her arms.
My brother kissed the child on the brow, and borrowed fifteen sous
which I had about me to give to Mother Gerbaud. The man was not paying
much heed to anything then. He was no longer talking, and he seemed
very much fatigued. After poor old Gerbaud had taken her departure,
my brother said grace; then he turned to the man and said to him,
`You must be in great need of your bed.' Madame Magloire cleared
the table very promptly. I understood that we must retire,
in order to allow this traveller to go to sleep, and we both went
up stairs. Nevertheless, I sent Madame Magloire down a moment later,
to carry to the man's bed a goat skin from the Black Forest,
which was in my room. The nights are frigid, and that keeps one warm.
It is a pity that this skin is old; all the hair is falling out.
My brother bought it while he was in Germany, at Tottlingen, near the
sources of the Danube, as well as the little ivory-handled knife
which I use at table.
"Madame Magloire returned immediately. We said our prayers in the
drawing-room, where we hang up the linen, and then we each retired
to our own chambers, without saying a word to each other."
CHAPTER V
TRANQUILLITY
After bidding his sister good night, Monseigneur Bienvenu took
one of the two silver candlesticks from the table, handed the
other to his guest, and said to him,--
"Monsieur, I will conduct you to your room."
The man followed him.
As might have been observed from what has been said above,
the house was so arranged that in order to pass into the oratory
where the alcove was situated, or to get out of it, it was necessary
to traverse the Bishop's bedroom.
At the moment when he was crossing this apartment, Madame Magloire was
putting away the silverware in the cupboard near the head of the bed.
This was her last care every evening before she went to bed.
The Bishop installed his guest in the alcove. A fresh white bed had
been prepared there. The man set the candle down on a small table.
"Well," said the Bishop, "may you pass a good night. To-morrow morning,
before you set out, you shall drink a cup of warm milk from our cows."
"Thanks, Monsieur l'Abbe," said the man.
Hardly had he pronounced these words full of peace, when all
of a sudden, and without transition, he made a strange movement,
which would have frozen the two sainted women with horror,
had they witnessed it. Even at this day it is difficult for us
to explain what inspired him at that moment. Did he intend to
convey a warning or to throw out a menace? Was he simply obeying
a sort of instinctive impulse which was obscure even to himself?
He turned abruptly to the old man, folded his arms, and bending
upon his host a savage gaze, he exclaimed in a hoarse voice:--
"Ah! really! You lodge me in your house, close to yourself like this?"
He broke off, and added with a laugh in which there lurked
something monstrous:--
"Have you really reflected well? How do you know that I have not
been an assassin?"
The Bishop replied:--
"That is the concern of the good God."
Then gravely, and moving his lips like one who is praying or talking
to himself, he raised two fingers of his right hand and bestowed
his benediction on the man, who did not bow, and without turning
his head or looking behind him, he returned to his bedroom.
When the alcove was in use, a large serge curtain drawn from
wall to wall concealed the altar. The Bishop knelt before this
curtain as he passed and said a brief prayer. A moment later he
was in his garden, walking, meditating, conteplating, his heart
and soul wholly absorbed in those grand and mysterious things
which God shows at night to the eyes which remain open.
As for the man, he was actually so fatigued that he did not even profit
by the nice white sheets. Snuffing out his candle with his nostrils
after the manner of convicts, he dropped, all dressed as he was,
upon the bed, where he immediately fell into a profound sleep.
Midnight struck as the Bishop returned from his garden to his apartment.
A few minutes later all were asleep in the little house.
CHAPTER VI
JEAN VALJEAN
Towards the middle of the night Jean Valjean woke.
Jean Valjean came from a poor peasant family of Brie. He had not learned
to read in his childhood. When he reached man's estate, be became
a tree-pruner at Faverolles. His mother was named Jeanne Mathieu;
his father was called Jean Valjean or Vlajean, probably a sobriquet,
and a contraction of viola Jean, "here's Jean."
Jean Valjean was of that thoughtful but not gloomy disposition
which constitutes the peculiarity of affectionate natures.
On the whole, however, there was something decidedly sluggish
and insignificant about Jean Valjean in appearance, at least.
He had lost his father and mother at a very early age. His mother
had died of a milk fever, which had not been properly attended to.
His father, a tree-pruner, like himself, had been killed by a fall
from a tree. All that remained to Jean Valjean was a sister older
than himself,--a widow with seven children, boys and girls.
This sister had brought up Jean Valjean, and so long as she had a
husband she lodged and fed her young brother.
The husband died. The eldest of the seven children was eight
years old. The youngest, one.
Jean Valjean had just attained his twenty-fifth year. He took
the father's place, and, in his turn, supported the sister who had
brought him up. This was done simply as a duty and even a little
churlishly on the part of Jean Valjean. Thus his youth had been spent
in rude and ill-paid toil. He had never known a "kind woman friend"
in his native parts. He had not had the time to fall in love.
He returned at night weary, and ate his broth without uttering a word.
His sister, mother Jeanne, often took the best part of his repast
from his bowl while he was eating,--a bit of meat, a slice of bacon,
the heart of the cabbage,--to give to one of her children.
As he went on eating, with his head bent over the table and almost
into his soup, his long hair falling about his bowl and concealing
his eyes, he had the air of perceiving nothing and allowing it.
There was at Faverolles, not far from the Valjean thatched cottage,
on the other side of the lane, a farmer's wife named Marie-Claude;
the Valjean children, habitually famished, sometimes went to borrow
from Marie-Claude a pint of milk, in their mother's name, which they
drank behind a hedge or in some alley corner, snatching the jug
from each other so hastily that the little girls spilled it on
their aprons and down their necks. If their mother had known of
this marauding, she would have punished the delinquents severely.
Jean Valjean gruffly and grumblingly paid Marie-Claude for the
pint of milk behind their mother's back, and the children were
not punished.
In pruning season he earned eighteen sous a day; then he hired out
as a hay-maker, as laborer, as neat-herd on a farm, as a drudge.
He did whatever he could. His sister worked also but what could she
do with seven little children? It was a sad group enveloped in misery,
which was being gradually annihilated. A very hard winter came.
Jean had no work. The family had no bread. No bread literally.
Seven children!
One Sunday evening, Maubert Isabeau, the baker on the Church
Square at Faverolles, was preparing to go to bed, when he heard
a violent blow on the grated front of his shop. He arrived in time
to see an arm passed through a hole made by a blow from a fist,
through the grating and the glass. The arm seized a loaf of bread
and carried it off. Isabeau ran out in haste; the robber fled at
the full speed of his legs. Isabeau ran after him and stopped him.
The thief had flung away the loaf, but his arm was still bleeding.
It was Jean Valjean.
This took place in 1795. Jean Valjean was taken before the tribunals
of the time for theft and breaking and entering an inhabited
house at night. He had a gun which he used better than any one
else in the world, he was a bit of a poacher, and this injured
his case. There exists a legitimate prejudice against poachers.
The poacher, like the smuggler, smacks too strongly of the brigand.
Nevertheless, we will remark cursorily, there is still an abyss
between these races of men and the hideous assassin of the towns.
The poacher lives in the forest, the smuggler lives in the mountains
or on the sea. The cities make ferocious men because they make
corrupt men. The mountain, the sea, the forest, make savage men;
they develop the fierce side, but often without destroying the
humane side.
Jean Valjean was pronounced guilty. The terms of the Code
were explicit. There occur formidable hours in our civilization;
there are moments when the penal laws decree a shipwreck.
What an ominous minute is that in which society draws back and
consummates the irreparable abandonment of a sentient being!
Jean Valjean was condemned to five years in the galleys.
On the 22d of April, 1796, the victory of Montenotte, won by the
general-in-chief of the army of Italy, whom the message of the
Directory to the Five Hundred, of the 2d of Floreal, year IV., calls
Buona-Parte, was announced in Paris; on that same day a great gang
of galley-slaves was put in chains at Bicetre. Jean Valjean formed
a part of that gang. An old turnkey of the prison, who is now nearly
eighty years old, still recalls perfectly that unfortunate wretch
who was chained to the end of the fourth line, in the north angle
of the courtyard. He was seated on the ground like the others.
He did not seem to comprehend his position, except that it was horrible.
It is probable that he, also, was disentangling from amid the vague
ideas of a poor man, ignorant of everything, something excessive.
While the bolt of his iron collar was being riveted behind his head
with heavy blows from the hammer, he wept, his tears stifled him,
they impeded his speech; he only managed to say from time to time,
"I was a tree-pruner at Faverolles." Then still sobbing, he raised
his right hand and lowered it gradually seven times, as though
he were touching in succession seven heads of unequal heights,
and from this gesture it was divined that the thing which he had done,
whatever it was, he had done for the sake of clothing and nourishing
seven little children.
He set out for Toulon. He arrived there, after a journey of
twenty-seven days, on a cart, with a chain on his neck. At Toulon
he was clothed in the red cassock. All that had constituted
his life, even to his name, was effaced; he was no longer even
Jean Valjean; he was number 24,601. What became of his sister?
What became of the seven children? Who troubled himself about that?
What becomes of the handful of leaves from the young tree which
is sawed off at the root?
It is always the same story. These poor living beings,
these creatures of God, henceforth without support, without guide,
without refuge, wandered away at random,--who even knows?--
each in his own direction perhaps, and little by little buried
themselves in that cold mist which engulfs solitary destinies;
gloomy shades, into which disappear in succession so many unlucky heads,
in the sombre march of the human race. They quitted the country.
The clock-tower of what had been their village forgot them; the boundary
line of what had been their field forgot them; after a few years'
residence in the galleys, Jean Valjean himself forgot them.
In that heart, where there had been a wound, there was a scar.
That is all. Only once, during all the time which he spent at Toulon,
did he hear his sister mentioned. This happened, I think,
towards the end of the fourth year of his captivity. I know not
through what channels the news reached him. Some one who had known
them in their own country had seen his sister. She was in Paris.
She lived in a poor street Rear Saint-Sulpice, in the Rue du Gindre.
She had with her only one child, a little boy, the youngest.
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 was obliged to be there
at six o'clock in the morning--long before daylight in winter.
In the same building with the printing office there was a school,
and to this school she took her little boy, who was seven years old.
But as she entered the printing office at six, and the school only
opened at seven, the child had to wait in the courtyard, for the school
to open, for an hour--one hour of a winter night in the open air!
They would not allow the child to come into the printing office,
because he was in the way, they said. When the workmen passed in
the morning, they beheld this poor little being seated on the pavement,
overcome with drowsiness, and often fast asleep in the shadow,
crouched down and doubled up over his basket. When it rained,
an old woman, the portress, took pity on him; she took him into her den,
where there was a pallet, a spinning-wheel, and two wooden chairs,
and the little one slumbered in a corner, pressing himself close
to the cat that he might suffer less from cold. At seven o'clock
the school opened, and he entered. That is what was told to Jean
Valjean.
They talked to him about it for one day; it was a moment, a flash,
as though a window had suddenly been opened upon the destiny of
those things whom he had loved; then all closed again. He heard
nothing more forever. Nothing from them ever reached him again;
he never beheld them; he never met them again; and in the continuation
of this mournful history they will not be met with any more.
Towards the end of this fourth year Jean Valjean's turn to escape
arrived. His comrades assisted him, as is the custom in that sad place.
He escaped. He wandered for two days in the fields at liberty,
if being at liberty is to be hunted, to turn the head every instant,
to quake at the slightest noise, to be afraid of everything,--of a
smoking roof, of a passing man, of a barking dog, of a galloping horse,
of a striking clock, of the day because one can see, of the night
because one cannot see, of the highway, of the path, of a bush,
of sleep. On the evening of the second day he was captured.
He had neither eaten nor slept for thirty-six hours. The maritime
tribunal condemned him, for this crime, to a prolongation of his
term for three years, which made eight years. In the sixth year
his turn to escape occurred again; he availed himself of it,
but could not accomplish his flight fully. He was missing at
roll-call. The cannon were fired, and at night the patrol found
him hidden under the keel of a vessel in process of construction;
he resisted the galley guards who seized him. Escape and rebellion.
This case, provided for by a special code, was punished by an addition
of five years, two of them in the double chain. Thirteen years.
In the tenth year his turn came round again; he again profited by it;
he succeeded no better. Three years for this fresh attempt.
Sixteen years. Finally, I think it was during his thirteenth year,
he made a last attempt, and only succeeded in getting retaken at
the end of four hours of absence. Three years for those four hours.
Nineteen years. In October, 1815, he was released; he had entered
there in 1796, for having broken a pane of glass and taken a loaf
of bread.
Room for a brief parenthesis. This is the second time,
during his studies on the penal question and damnation by law,
that the author of this book has come across the theft of a loaf
of bread as the point of departure for the disaster of a destiny.
Claude Gaux had stolen a loaf; Jean Valjean had stolen a loaf.
English statistics prove the fact that four thefts out of five in
London have hunger for their immediate cause.
Jean Valjean had entered the galleys sobbing and shuddering;
he emerged impassive. He had entered in despair; he emerged gloomy.
What had taken place in that soul?
CHAPTER VII
THE INTERIOR OF DESPAIR
Let us try to say it.
It is necessary that society should look at these things, because it
is itself which creates them.
He was, as we have said, an ignorant man, but he was not a fool.
The light of nature was ignited in him. Unhappiness, which also
possesses a clearness of vision of its own, augmented the small
amount of daylight which existed in this mind. Beneath the cudgel,
beneath the chain, in the cell, in hardship, beneath the burning sun
of the galleys, upon the plank bed of the convict, he withdrew into
his own consciousness and meditated.
He constituted himself the tribunal.
He began by putting himself on trial.
He recognized the fact that he was not an innocent man unjustly punished.
He admitted that he had committed an extreme and blameworthy act;
that that loaf of bread would probably not have been refused to him
had he asked for it; that, in any case, it would have been better
to wait until he could get it through compassion or through work;
that it is not an unanswerable argument to say, "Can one wait when one
is hungry?" That, in the first place, it is very rare for any one to die
of hunger, literally; and next, that, fortunately or unfortunately,
man is so constituted that he can suffer long and much, both morally
and physically, without dying; that it is therefore necessary to
have patience; that that would even have been better for those poor
little children; that it had been an act of madness for him, a miserable,
unfortunate wretch, to take society at large violently by the collar,
and to imagine that one can escape from misery through theft;
that that is in any case a poor door through which to escape from
misery through which infamy enters; in short, that he was in the wrong.
Then he asked himself--
Whether he had been the only one in fault in his fatal history.
Whether it was not a serious thing, that he, a laborer, out of work,
that he, an industrious man, should have lacked bread. And whether,
the fault once committed and confessed, the chastisement had not been
ferocious and disproportioned. Whether there had not been more abuse
on the part of the law, in respect to the penalty, than there had been
on the part of the culprit in respect to his fault. Whether there
had not been an excess of weights in one balance of the scale,
in the one which contains expiation. Whether the over-weight
of the penalty was not equivalent to the annihilation of the crime,
and did not result in reversing the situation, of replacing the fault
of the delinquent by the fault of the repression, of converting
the guilty man into the victim, and the debtor into the creditor,
and of ranging the law definitely on the side of the man who had
violated it.
Whether this penalty, complicated by successive aggravations for
attempts at escape, had not ended in becoming a sort of outrage
perpetrated by the stronger upon the feebler, a crime of society
against the individual, a crime which was being committed afresh
every day, a crime which had lasted nineteen years.
He asked himself whether human society could have the right to force
its members to suffer equally in one case for its own unreasonable
lack of foresight, and in the other case for its pitiless foresight;
and to seize a poor man forever between a defect and an excess,
a default of work and an excess of punishment.
Whether it was not outrageous for society to treat thus precisely
those of its members who were the least well endowed in the division
of goods made by chance, and consequently the most deserving
of consideration.
These questions put and answered, he judged society and condemned it.
He condemned it to his hatred.
He made it responsible for the fate which he was suffering, and he said
to himself that it might be that one day he should not hesitate to call
it to account. He declared to himself that there was no equilibrium
between the harm which he had caused and the harm which was being
done to him; he finally arrived at the conclusion that his punishment
was not, in truth, unjust, but that it most assuredly was iniquitous.
Anger may be both foolish and absurd; one can be irritated wrongfully;
one is exasperated only when there is some show of right on one's
side at bottom. Jean Valjean felt himself exasperated.
And besides, human society had done him nothing but harm; he had never
seen anything of it save that angry face which it calls Justice,
and which it shows to those whom it strikes. Men had only touched
him to bruise him. Every contact with them had been a blow.
Never, since his infancy, since the days of his mother, of his sister,
had he ever encountered a friendly word and a kindly glance.
From suffering to suffering, he had gradually arrived at the conviction
that life is a war; and that in this war he was the conquered.
He had no other weapon than his hate. He resolved to whet it
in the galleys and to bear it away with him when he departed.
There was at Toulon a school for the convicts, kept by the
Ignorantin friars, where the most necessary branches were taught
to those of the unfortunate men who had a mind for them. He was of
the number who had a mind. He went to school at the age of forty,
and learned to read, to write, to cipher. He felt that to fortify
his intelligence was to fortify his hate. In certain cases,
education and enlightenment can serve to eke out evil.
This is a sad thing to say; after having judged society, which had
caused his unhappiness, he judged Providence, which had made society,
and he condemned it also.
Thus during nineteen years of torture and slavery, this soul
mounted and at the same time fell. Light entered it on one side,
and darkness on the other.
Jean Valjean had not, as we have seen, an evil nature. He was still
good when he arrived at the galleys. He there condemned society,
and felt that he was becoming wicked; he there condemned Providence,
and was conscious that he was becoming impious.
It is difficult not to indulge in meditation at this point.
Does human nature thus change utterly and from top to bottom?
Can the man created good by God be rendered wicked by man?
Can the soul be completely made over by fate, and become evil,
fate being evil? Can the heart become misshapen and contract
incurable deformities and infirmities under the oppression of a
disproportionate unhappiness, as the vertebral column beneath
too low a vault? Is there not in every human soul, was there
not in the soul of Jean Valjean in particular, a first spark,
a divine element, incorruptible in this world, immortal in the other,
which good can develop, fan, ignite, and make to glow with splendor,
and which evil can never wholly extinguish?
Grave and obscure questions, to the last of which every physiologist
would probably have responded no, and that without hesitation,
had he beheld at Toulon, during the hours of repose, which were
for Jean Valjean hours of revery, this gloomy galley-slave, seated
with folded arms upon the bar of some capstan, with the end of his
chain thrust into his pocket to prevent its dragging, serious, silent,
and thoughtful, a pariah of the laws which regarded the man with wrath,
condemned by civilization, and regarding heaven with severity.
Certainly,--and we make no attempt to dissimulate the fact,--
the observing physiologist would have beheld an irremediable misery;
he would, perchance, have pitied this sick man, of the law's making;
but he would not have even essayed any treatment; he would have
turned aside his gaze from the caverns of which he would have caught
a glimpse within this soul, and, like Dante at the portals of hell,
he would have effaced from this existence the word which the finger
of God has, nevertheless, inscribed upon 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
for those who read us? Did Jean Valjean distinctly perceive,
after their formation, and had he seen distinctly during the process
of their formation, all the elements of which his moral misery
was composed? Had this rough and unlettered man gathered a perfectly
clear perception of the succession of ideas through which he had,
by degrees, mounted and descended to the lugubrious aspects which had,
for so many years, formed the inner horizon of his spirit?
Was he conscious of all that passed within him, and of all that was
working there? That is something which we do not presume to state;
it is something which we do not even believe. There was too much
ignorance in Jean Valjean, even after his misfortune, to prevent much
vagueness from still lingering there. At times he did not rightly know
himself what he felt. Jean Valjean was in the shadows; he suffered
in the shadows; he hated in the shadows; one might have said that he
hated in advance of himself. He dwelt habitually in this shadow,
feeling his way like a blind man and a dreamer. Only, at intervals,
there suddenly came to him, from without and from within, an access
of wrath, a surcharge of suffering, a livid and rapid flash which
illuminated his whole soul, and caused to appear abruptly all
around him, in front, behind, amid the gleams of a frightful light,
the hideous precipices and the sombre perspective of his destiny.
The flash passed, the night closed in again; and where was he?
He no longer knew. The peculiarity of pains of this nature,
in which that which is pitiless--that is to say, that which
is brutalizing--predominates, is to transform a man, little by
little, by a sort of stupid transfiguration, into a wild beast;
sometimes into a ferocious beast.
Jean Valjean's successive and obstinate attempts at escape would
alone suffice to prove this strange working of the law upon
the human soul. Jean Valjean would have renewed these attempts,
utterly useless and foolish as they were, as often as the opportunity
had presented itself, without reflecting for an instant on the result,
nor on the experiences which he had already gone through.
He escaped impetuously, like the wolf who finds his cage open.
Instinct said to him, "Flee!" Reason would have said, "Remain!"
But in the presence of so violent a temptation, reason vanished;
nothing remained but instinct. The beast alone acted. When he
was recaptured, the fresh severities inflicted on him only served
to render him still more wild.
One detail, which we must not omit, is that he possessed a physical
strength which was not approached by a single one of the denizens of
the galleys. At work, at paying out a cable or winding up a capstan,
Jean Valjean was worth four men. He sometimes lifted and sustained
enormous weights on his back; and when the occasion demanded it,
he replaced that implement which is called a jack-screw, and was
formerly called orgueil [pride], whence, we may remark in passing,
is derived the name of the Rue Montorgueil, near the Halles [Fishmarket]
in Paris. His comrades had nicknamed him Jean the Jack-screw. Once,
when they were repairing the balcony of the town-hall at Toulon,
one of those admirable caryatids of Puget, which support the balcony,
became loosened, and was on the point of falling. Jean Valjean,
who was present, supported the caryatid with his shoulder, and gave
the workmen time to arrive.
His suppleness even exceeded his strength. Certain convicts
who were forever dreaming of escape, ended by making a veritable
science of force and skill combined. It is the science of muscles.
An entire system of mysterious statics is daily practised
by prisoners, men who are forever envious of the flies and birds.
To climb a vertical surface, and to find points of support
where hardly a projection was visible, was play to Jean Valjean.
An angle of the wall being given, with the tension of his back
and legs, with his elbows and his heels fitted into the unevenness
of the stone, he raised himself as if by magic to the third story.
He sometimes mounted thus even to the roof of the galley prison.
He spoke but little. He laughed not at all. An excessive emotion
was required to wring from him, once or twice a year, that lugubrious
laugh of the convict, which is like the echo of the laugh of a demon.
To all appearance, he seemed to be occupied in the constant
contemplation of something terrible.
He was absorbed, in fact.
Athwart the unhealthy perceptions of an incomplete nature and
a crushed intelligence, he was confusedly conscious that some
monstrous thing was resting on him. In that obscure and wan
shadow within which he crawled, each time that he turned his
neck and essayed to raise his glance, he perceived with terror,
mingled with rage, a sort of frightful accumulation of things,
collecting and mounting above him, beyond the range of his vision,--
laws, prejudices, men, and deeds,--whose outlines escaped him,
whose mass terrified him, and which was nothing else than that
prodigious pyramid which we call civilization. He distinguished,
here and there in that swarming and formless mass, now near him,
now afar off and on inaccessible table-lands, some group, some detail,
vividly illuminated; here the galley-sergeant and his cudgel;
there the gendarme and his sword; yonder the mitred archbishop;
away at the top, like a sort of sun, the Emperor, crowned and dazzling.
It seemed to him that these distant splendors, far from dissipating
his night, rendered it more funereal and more black. All this--
laws, prejudices, deeds, men, things--went and came above him,
over his head, in accordance with the complicated and mysterious movement
which God imparts to civilization, walking over him and crushing him
with I know not what peacefulness in its cruelty and inexorability
in its indifference. Souls which have fallen to the bottom of all
possible misfortune, unhappy men lost in the lowest of those limbos at
which no one any longer looks, the reproved of the law, feel the whole
weight of this human society, so formidable for him who is without,
so frightful for him who is beneath, resting upon their heads.
In this situation Jean Valjean meditated; and what could
be the nature of his meditation?
If the grain of millet beneath the millstone had thoughts,
it would, doubtless, think that same thing which Jean Valjean thought.
All these things, realities full of spectres, phantasmagories full
of realities, had eventually created for him a sort of interior
state which is almost indescribable.
At times, amid his convict toil, he paused. He fell to thinking.
His reason, at one and the same time riper and more troubled
than of yore, rose in revolt. Everything which had happened
to him seemed to him absurd; everything that surrounded him
seemed to him impossible. He said to himself, "It is a dream."
He gazed at the galley-sergeant standing a few paces from him;
the galley-sergeant seemed a phantom to him. All of a sudden the
phantom dealt him a blow with his cudgel.
Visible nature hardly existed for him. It would almost be
true to say that there existed for Jean Valjean neither sun,
nor fine summer days, nor radiant sky, nor fresh April dawns.
I know not what vent-hole daylight habitually illumined his soul.
To sum up, in conclusion, that which can be summed up and translated
into positive results in all that we have just pointed out,
we will confine ourselves to the statement that, in the course
of nineteen years, Jean Valjean, the inoffensive tree-pruner
of Faverolles, the formidable convict of Toulon, had become capable,
thanks to the manner in which the galleys had moulded him, of two
sorts of evil action: firstly, of evil action which was rapid,
unpremeditated, dashing, entirely instinctive, in the nature of
reprisals for the evil which he had undergone; secondly, of evil action
which was serious, grave, consciously argued out and premeditated,
with the false ideas which such a misfortune can furnish. His deliberate
deeds passed through three successive phases, which natures of a
certain stamp can alone traverse,--reasoning, will, perseverance.
He had for moving causes his habitual wrath, bitterness of soul,
a profound sense of indignities suffered, the reaction even against
the good, the innocent, and the just, if there are any such.
The point of departure, like the point of arrival, for 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, the hatred of society, then the hatred of the human race,
then the hatred of creation, and which manifests itself by a vague,
incessant, and brutal desire to do harm to some living being,
no matter whom. It will be perceived that it was not without
reason that Jean Valjean's passport described him as a very dangerous man.
From year to year this soul had dried away slowly, but with fatal
sureness. When the heart is dry, the eye is dry. On his departure
from the galleys it had been nineteen years since he had shed a tear.
CHAPTER VIII
BILLOWS AND SHADOWS
A man overboard!
What matters it? The vessel does not halt. The wind blows.
That sombre ship has a path which it is forced to pursue.
It passes on.
The man disappears, then reappears; he plunges, he rises again to
the surface; he calls, he stretches out his arms; he is not heard.
The vessel, trembling under the hurricane, is wholly absorbed in its
own workings; the passengers and sailors do not even see the drowning man;
his miserable head is but a speck amid the immensity of the waves.
He gives vent to desperate cries from out of the depths. What a spectre
is that retreating sail! He gazes and gazes at it frantically.
It retreats, it grows dim, it diminishes in size. He was there
but just now, he was one of the crew, he went and came along
the deck with the rest, he had his part of breath and of sunlight,
he was a living man. Now, what has taken place? He has slipped,
he has fallen; all is at an end.
He is in the tremendous sea. Under foot he has nothing but what
flees and crumbles. The billows, torn and lashed by the wind,
encompass him hideously; the tossings of the abyss bear him away;
all the tongues of water dash over his head; a populace of waves
spits upon him; confused openings half devour him; every time
that he sinks, he catches glimpses of precipices filled with night;
frightful and unknown vegetations seize him, knot about his feet,
draw him to them; he is conscious that he is becoming an abyss,
that he forms part of the foam; the waves toss him from one to another;
he drinks in the bitterness; the cowardly ocean attacks him furiously,
to drown him; the enormity plays with his agony. It seems as though all
that water were hate.
Nevertheless, he struggles.
He tries to defend himself; he tries to sustain himself; he makes
an effort; he swims. He, his petty strength all exhausted instantly,
combats the inexhaustible.
Where, then, is the ship? Yonder. Barely visible in the pale
shadows of the horizon.
The wind blows in gusts; all the foam overwhelms him.
He raises his eyes and beholds only the lividness of the clouds.
He witnesses, amid his death-pangs, the immense madness of the sea.
He is tortured by this madness; he hears noises strange to man,
which seem to come from beyond the limits of the earth, and from one
knows not what frightful region beyond.
There are birds in the clouds, just as there are angels above
human distresses; but what can they do for him? They sing and fly
and float, and he, he rattles in the death agony.
He feels himself buried in those two infinities, the ocean and the sky,
at one and the same time: the one is a tomb; the other is a shroud.
Night descends; he has been swimming for hours; his strength
is exhausted; that ship, that distant thing in which there were men,
has vanished; he is alone in the formidable twilight gulf;
he sinks, he stiffens himself, he twists himself; he feels under
him the monstrous billows of the invisible; he shouts.
There are no more men. Where is God?
He shouts. Help! Help! He still shouts on.
Nothing on the horizon; nothing in heaven.
He implores the expanse, the waves, the seaweed, the reef;
they are deaf. He beseeches the tempest; the imperturbable tempest
obeys only the infinite.
Around him darkness, fog, solitude, the stormy and nonsentient tumult,
the undefined curling of those wild waters. In him horror and fatigue.
Beneath him the depths. Not a point of support. He thinks
of the gloomy adventures of the corpse in the limitless shadow.
The bottomless cold paralyzes him. His hands contract convulsively;
they close, and grasp nothingness. Winds, clouds, whirlwinds, gusts,
useless stars! What is to be done? The desperate man gives up;
he is weary, he chooses the alternative of death; he resists not;
he lets himself go; he abandons his grip; and then he tosses forevermore
in the lugubrious dreary depths of engulfment.
Oh, implacable march of human societies! Oh, losses of men and of
souls on the way! Ocean into which falls all that the law lets slip!
Disastrous absence of help! Oh, moral death!
The sea is the inexorable social night into which the penal laws
fling their condemned. The sea is the immensity of wretchedness.
The soul, going down stream in this gulf, may become a corpse.
Who shall resuscitate it?
CHAPTER IX
NEW TROUBLES
When the hour came for him to take his departure from the galleys,
when Jean Valjean heard in his ear the strange words, Thou art free!
the moment seemed improbable and unprecedented; a ray of vivid light,
a ray of the true light of the living, suddenly penetrated within him.
But it was not long before this ray paled. Jean Valjean had been
dazzled by the idea of liberty. He had believed in a new life.
He very speedily perceived what sort of liberty it is to which a yellow
passport is provided.
And this was encompassed with much bitterness. He had calculated
that his earnings, during his sojourn in the galleys, ought to amount
to a hundred and seventy-one francs. It is but just to add that he had
forgotten to include in his calculations the forced repose of Sundays
and festival days during nineteen years, which entailed a diminution
of about eighty francs. At all events, his hoard had been reduced
by various local levies to the sum of one hundred and nine francs
fifteen sous, which had been counted out to him on his departure.
He had understood nothing of this, and had thought himself wronged.
Let us say the word--robbed.
On the day following his liberation, he saw, at Grasse, in front
of an orange-flower distillery, some men engaged in unloading bales.
He offered his services. Business was pressing; they were accepted.
He set to work. He was intelligent, robust, adroit; he did his best;
the master seemed pleased. While he was at work, a gendarme passed,
observed him, and demanded his papers. It was necessary to show him
the yellow passport. That done, Jean Valjean resumed his labor.
A little while before he had questioned one of the workmen
as to the amount which they earned each day at this occupation;
he had been told thirty sous. When evening arrived, as he was
forced to set out again on the following day, he presented himself
to the owner of the distillery and requested to be paid. The owner
did not utter a word, but handed him fifteen sous. He objected.
He was told, "That is enough for thee." He persisted. The master
looked him straight between the eyes, and said to him "Beware of
the prison."
There, again, he considered that he had been robbed.
Society, the State, by diminishing his hoard, had robbed him wholesale.
Now it was the individual who was robbing him at retail.
Liberation is not deliverance. One gets free from the galleys,
but not from the sentence.
That is what happened to him at Grasse. We have seen in what manner
he was received at D----
CHAPTER X
THE MAN AROUSED
As the Cathedral clock struck two in the morning, Jean Valjean awoke.
What woke him was that his bed was too good. It was nearly twenty
years since he had slept in a bed, and, although he had not undressed,
the sensation was too novel not to disturb his slumbers.
He had slept more than four hours. His fatigue had passed away.
He was accustomed not to devote many hours to repose.
He opened his eyes and stared into the gloom which surrounded him;
then he closed them again, with the intention of going to sleep
once more.
When many varied sensations have agitated the day, when various matters
preoccupy the mind, one falls asleep once, but not a second time.
Sleep comes more easily than it returns. This is what happened
to Jean Valjean. He could not get to sleep again, and he fell
to thinking.
He was at one of those moments when the thoughts which one has in one's
mind are troubled. There was a sort of dark confusion in his brain.
His memories of the olden time and of the immediate present floated
there pell-mell and mingled confusedly, losing their proper forms,
becoming disproportionately large, then suddenly disappearing,
as in a muddy and perturbed pool. Many thoughts occurred to him;
but there was one which kept constantly presenting itself afresh,
and which drove away all others. We will mention this thought at once:
he had observed the six sets of silver forks and spoons and the ladle
which Madame Magloire had placed on the table.
Those six sets of silver haunted him.--They were there.--A few
paces distant.--Just as he was traversing the adjoining room to reach
the one in which he then was, the old servant-woman had been in the
act of placing them in a little cupboard near the head of the bed.--
He had taken careful note of this cupboard.--On the right, as you
entered from the dining-room.--They were solid.--And old silver.--
From the ladle one could get at least two hundred francs.--
Double what he had earned in nineteen years.--It is true that he
would have earned more if "the administration had not robbed him."
His mind wavered for a whole hour in fluctuations with which there
was certainly mingled some struggle. Three o'clock struck. He opened
his eyes again, drew himself up abruptly into a sitting posture,
stretched out his arm and felt of his knapsack, which he had thrown
down on a corner of the alcove; then he hung his legs over the edge
of the bed, and placed his feet on the floor, and thus found himself,
almost without knowing it, seated on his bed.
He remained for a time thoughtfully in this attitude, which would
have been suggestive of something sinister for any one who had seen
him thus in the dark, the only person awake in that house where all
were sleeping. All of a sudden he stooped down, removed his shoes
and placed them softly on the mat beside the bed; then he resumed
his thoughtful attitude, and became motionless once more.
Throughout this hideous meditation, the thoughts which we have above
indicated moved incessantly through his brain; entered, withdrew,
re-entered, and in a manner oppressed him; and then he thought, also,
without knowing why, and with the mechanical persistence of revery,
of a convict named Brevet, whom he had known in the galleys, and whose
trousers had been upheld by a single suspender of knitted cotton.
The checkered pattern of that suspender recurred incessantly to his mind.
He remained in this situation, and would have so remained indefinitely,
even until daybreak, had not the clock struck one--the half
or quarter hour. It seemed to him that that stroke said to him,
"Come on!"
He rose to his feet, hesitated still another moment, and listened;
all was quiet in the house; then he walked straight ahead,
with short steps, to the window, of which he caught a glimpse.
The night was not very dark; there was a full moon, across which
coursed large clouds driven by the wind. This created, outdoors,
alternate shadow and gleams of light, eclipses, then bright openings
of the clouds; and indoors a sort of twilight. This twilight,
sufficient to enable a person to see his way, intermittent on
account of the clouds, resembled the sort of livid light which falls
through an air-hole in a cellar, before which the passersby come
and go. On arriving at the window, Jean Valjean examined it.
It had no grating; it opened in the garden and was fastened,
according to the fashion of the country, only by a small pin.
He opened it; but as a rush of cold and piercing air penetrated
the room abruptly, he closed it again immediately. He scrutinized
the garden with that attentive gaze which studies rather than looks.
The garden was enclosed by a tolerably low white wall, easy to climb.
Far away, at the extremity, he perceived tops of trees, spaced at
regular intervals, which indicated that the wall separated the garden
from an avenue or lane planted with trees.
Having taken this survey, he executed a movement like that of a man
who has made up his mind, strode to his alcove, grasped his knapsack,
opened it, fumbled in it, pulled out of it something which he placed
on the bed, put his shoes into one of his pockets, shut the whole
thing up again, threw the knapsack on his shoulders, put on his cap,
drew the visor down over his eyes, felt for his cudgel, went and
placed it in the angle of the window; then returned to the bed,
and resolutely seized the object which he had deposited there.
It resembled a short bar of iron, pointed like a pike at one end.
It would have been difficult to distinguish in that darkness
for what employment that bit of iron could have been designed.
Perhaps it was a lever; possibly it was a club.
In the daytime it would have been possible to recognize it as nothing
more than a miner's candlestick. Convicts were, at that period,
sometimes employed in quarrying stone from the lofty hills which
environ Toulon, and it was not rare for them to have miners' tools at
their command. These miners' candlesticks are of massive iron,
terminated at the lower extremity by a point, by means of which
they are stuck into the rock.
He took the candlestick in his right hand; holding his breath
and trying to deaden the sound of his tread, he directed his
steps to the door of the adjoining room, occupied by the Bishop,
as we already know.
On arriving at this door, he found it ajar. The Bishop had not
closed it.
CHAPTER XI
WHAT HE DOES
Jean Valjean listened. Not a sound.
He gave the door a push.
He pushed it gently with the tip of his finger, lightly, with the
furtive and uneasy gentleness of a cat which is desirous of entering.
The door yielded to this pressure, and made an imperceptible
and silent movement, which enlarged the opening a little.
He waited a moment; then gave the door a second and a bolder push.
It continued to yield in silence. The opening was now large enough
to allow him to pass. But near the door there stood a little table,
which formed an embarrassing angle with it, and barred the entrance.
Jean Valjean recognized the difficulty. It was necessary, at any cost,
to enlarge the aperture still further.
He decided on his course of action, and gave the door a third push,
more energetic than the two preceding. This time a badly oiled hinge
suddenly emitted amid the silence a hoarse and prolonged cry.
Jean Valjean shuddered. The noise of the hinge rang in his ears
with something of the piercing and formidable sound of the trump
of the Day of Judgment.
In the fantastic exaggerations of the first moment he almost imagined
that that hinge had just become animated, and had suddenly assumed
a terrible life, and that it was barking like a dog to arouse every one,
and warn and to wake those who were asleep. He halted, shuddering,
bewildered, and fell back from the tips of his toes upon his heels.
He heard the arteries in his temples beating like two forge hammers,
and it seemed to him that his breath issued from his breast with
the roar of the wind issuing from a cavern. It seemed impossible
to him that the horrible clamor of that irritated hinge should not
have disturbed the entire household, like the shock of an earthquake;
the door, pushed by him, had taken the alarm, and had shouted;
the old man would rise at once; the two old women would shriek out;
people would come to their assistance; in less than a quarter of an
hour the town would be in an uproar, and the gendarmerie on hand.
For a moment he thought himself lost.
He remained where he was, petrified like the statue of salt,
not daring to make a movement. Several minutes elapsed. The door
had fallen wide open. He ventured to peep into the next room.
Nothing had stirred there. He lent an ear. Nothing was moving
in the house. The noise made by the rusty hinge had not awakened
any one.
This first danger was past; but there still reigned a frightful
tumult within him. Nevertheless, he did not retreat. Even when he
had thought himself lost, he had not drawn back. His only thought
now was to finish as soon as possible. He took a step and entered
the room.
This room was in a state of perfect calm. Here and there vague
and confused forms were distinguishable, which in the daylight were
papers scattered on a table, open folios, volumes piled upon a stool,
an arm-chair heaped with clothing, a prie-Dieu, and which at that hour
were only shadowy corners and whitish spots. Jean Valjean advanced
with precaution, taking care not to knock against the furniture.
He could hear, at the extremity of the room, the even and tranquil
breathing of the sleeping Bishop.
He suddenly came to a halt. He was near the bed. He had arrived
there sooner than he had thought for.
Nature sometimes mingles her effects and her spectacles with our
actions with sombre and intelligent appropriateness, as though she
desired to make us reflect. For the last half-hour a large cloud
had covered the heavens. At the moment when Jean Valjean paused
in front of the bed, this cloud parted, as though on purpose,
and a ray of light, traversing the long window, suddenly illuminated
the Bishop's pale face. He was sleeping peacefully. He lay in
his bed almost completely dressed, on account of the cold of the
Basses-Alps, in a garment of brown wool, which covered his arms to
the wrists. His head was thrown back on the pillow, in the careless
attitude of repose; his hand, adorned with the pastoral ring,
and whence had fallen so many good deeds and so many holy actions,
was hanging over the edge of the bed. His whole face was illumined
with a vague expression of satisfaction, of hope, and of felicity.
It was more than a smile, and almost a radiance. He bore upon his
brow the indescribable reflection of a light which was invisible.
The soul of the just contemplates in sleep a mysterious heaven.
A reflection of that heaven rested on the Bishop.
It was, at the same time, a luminous transparency, for that heaven
was within him. That heaven was his conscience.
At the moment when the ray of moonlight superposed itself, so to speak,
upon that inward radiance, the sleeping Bishop seemed as in a glory.
It remained, however, gentle and veiled in an ineffable half-light. That
moon in the sky, that slumbering nature, that garden without a quiver,
that house which was so calm, the hour, the moment, the silence,
added some solemn and unspeakable quality to the venerable repose
of this man, and enveloped in a sort of serene and majestic aureole
that white hair, those closed eyes, that face in which all was hope
and all was confidence, that head of an old man, and that slumber
of an infant.
There was something almost divine in this man, who was thus august,
without being himself aware of it.
Jean Valjean was in the shadow, and stood motionless, with his iron
candlestick in his hand, frightened by this luminous old man.
Never had he beheld anything like this. This confidence terrified him.
The moral world has no grander spectacle than this: a troubled and
uneasy conscience, which has arrived on the brink of an evil action,
contemplating the slumber of the just.
That slumber in that isolation, and with a neighbor like himself,
had about it something sublime, of which he was vaguely but
imperiously conscious.
No one could have told what was passing within him, not even himself.
In order to attempt to form an idea of it, it is necessary to think
of the most violent of things in the presence of the most gentle.
Even on his visage it would have been impossible to distinguish
anything with certainty. It was a sort of haggard astonishment.
He gazed at it, and that was all. But what was his thought?
It would have been impossible to divine it. What was evident was,
that he was touched and astounded. But what was the nature of this
emotion?
His eye never quitted the old man. The only thing which was clearly to be
inferred from his attitude and his physiognomy was a strange indecision.
One would have said that he was hesitating between the two abysses,--
the one in which one loses one's self and that in which one saves
one's self. He seemed prepared to crush that skull or to kiss that hand.
At the expiration of a few minutes his left arm rose slowly towards
his brow, and he took off his cap; then his arm fell back with the
same deliberation, and Jean Valjean fell to meditating once more,
his cap in his left hand, his club in his right hand, his hair
bristling all over his savage head.
The Bishop continued to sleep in profound peace beneath that
terrifying gaze.
The gleam of the moon rendered confusedly visible the crucifix
over the chimney-piece, which seemed to be extending its arms
to both of them, with a benediction for one and pardon for the other.
Suddenly Jean Valjean replaced his cap on his brow; then stepped
rapidly past the bed, without glancing at the Bishop, straight to
the cupboard, which he saw near the head; he raised his iron
candlestick as though to force the lock; the key was there;
he opened it; the first thing which presented itself to him was
the basket of silverware; he seized it, traversed the chamber with
long strides, without taking any precautions and without troubling
himself about the noise, gained the door, re-entered the oratory,
opened the window, seized his cudgel, bestrode the window-sill
of the ground-floor, put the silver into his knapsack, threw away
the basket, crossed the garden, leaped over the wall like a tiger,
and fled.
CHAPTER XII
THE BISHOP WORKS
The next morning at sunrise Monseigneur Bienvenu was strolling
in his garden. Madame Magloire ran up to him in utter consternation.
"Monseigneur, Monseigneur!" she exclaimed, "does your Grace know
where the basket of silver is?"
"Yes," replied the Bishop.
"Jesus the Lord be blessed!" she resumed; "I did not know what had
become of it."
The Bishop had just picked up the basket in a flower-bed. He
presented it to Madame Magloire.
"Here it is."
"Well!" said she. "Nothing in it! And the silver?"
"Ah," returned the Bishop, "so it is the silver which troubles you?
I don't know where it is."
"Great, good God! It is stolen! That man who was here last night
has stolen it."
In a twinkling, with all the vivacity of an alert old woman,
Madame Magloire had rushed to the oratory, entered the alcove,
and returned to the Bishop. The Bishop had just bent down,
and was sighing as he examined a plant of cochlearia des Guillons,
which the basket had broken as it fell across the bed. He rose up
at Madame Magloire's cry.
"Monseigneur, the man is gone! The silver has been stolen!"
As she uttered this exclamation, her eyes fell upon a corner of
the garden, where traces of the wall having been scaled were visible.
The coping of the wall had been torn away.
"Stay! yonder is the way he went. He jumped over into
Cochefilet Lane. Ah, the abomination! He has stolen our silver!"
The Bishop remained silent for a moment; then he raised his grave eyes,
and said gently to Madame Magloire:--
"And, in the first place, was that silver ours?"
Madame Magloire was speechless. Another silence ensued; then the
Bishop went on:--
"Madame Magloire, I have for a long time detained that silver wrongfully.
It belonged to the poor. Who was that man? A poor man, evidently."
"Alas! Jesus!" returned Madame Magloire. "It is not for my sake,
nor for Mademoiselle's. It makes no difference to us. But it is
for the sake of Monseigneur. What is Monseigneur to eat with now?"
The Bishop gazed at her with an air of amazement.
"Ah, come! Are there no such things as pewter forks and spoons?"
Madame Magloire shrugged her shoulders.
"Pewter has an odor."
"Iron forks and spoons, then."
Madame Magloire made an expressive grimace.
"Iron has a taste."
"Very well," said the Bishop; "wooden ones then."
A few moments later he was breakfasting at the very table at which Jean
Valjean had sat on the previous evening. As he ate his breakfast,
Monseigneur Welcome remarked gayly to his sister, who said nothing,
and to Madame Magloire, who was grumbling under her breath,
that one really does not need either fork or spoon, even of wood,
in order to dip a bit of bread in a cup of milk.
"A pretty idea, truly," said Madame Magloire to herself, as she
went and came, "to take in a man like that! and to lodge him close
to one's self! And how fortunate that he did nothing but steal!
Ah, mon Dieu! it makes one shudder to think of it!"
As the brother and sister were about to rise from the table,
there came a knock at the door.
"Come in," said the Bishop.
The door opened. A singular and violent group made its appearance
on the threshold. Three men were holding a fourth man by the collar.
The three men were gendarmes; the other was Jean Valjean.
A brigadier of gendarmes, who seemed to be in command of the group,
was standing near the door. He entered and advanced to the Bishop,
making a military salute.
"Monseigneur--" said he.
At this word, Jean Valjean, who was dejected and seemed overwhelmed,
raised his head with an air of stupefaction.
"Monseigneur!" he murmured. "So he is not the cure?"
"Silence!" said the gendarme. "He is Monseigneur the Bishop."
In the meantime, Monseigneur Bienvenu had advanced as quickly
as his great age permitted.
"Ah! here you are!" he exclaimed, looking at Jean Valjean.
"I am glad to see you. Well, but how is this? I gave you
the candlesticks too, which are of silver like the rest,
and for which you can certainly get two hundred francs.
Why did you not carry them away with your forks and spoons?"
Jean Valjean opened his eyes wide, and stared at the venerable Bishop
with an expression which no human tongue can render any account of.
"Monseigneur," said the brigadier of gendarmes, "so what this man
said is true, then? We came across him. He was walking like a man
who is running away. We stopped him to look into the matter.
He had this silver--"
"And he told you," interposed the Bishop with a smile, "that it
had been given to him by a kind old fellow of a priest with whom
he had passed the night? I see how the matter stands. And you
have brought him back here? It is a mistake."
"In that case," replied the brigadier, "we can let him go?"
"Certainly," replied the Bishop.
The gendarmes released Jean Valjean, who recoiled.
"Is it true that I am to be released?" he said, in an almost
inarticulate voice, and as though he were talking in his sleep.
"Yes, thou art released; dost thou not understand?" said one
of the gendarmes.
"My friend," resumed the Bishop, "before you go, here are
your candlesticks. Take them."
He stepped to the chimney-piece, took the two silver candlesticks,
and brought them to Jean Valjean. The two women looked on without
uttering a word, without a gesture, without a look which could
disconcert the Bishop.
Jean Valjean was trembling in every limb. He took the two
candlesticks mechanically, and with a bewildered air.
"Now," said the Bishop, "go in peace. By the way, when you return,
my friend, it is not necessary to pass through the garden.
You can always enter and depart through the street door. It is never
fastened with anything but a latch, either by day or by night."
Then, turning to the gendarmes:--
"You may retire, gentlemen."
The gendarmes retired.
Jean Valjean was like a man on the point of fainting.
The Bishop drew near to him, and said in a low voice:--
"Do not forget, never forget, that you have promised to use this
money in becoming an honest man."
Jean Valjean, who had no recollection of ever having promised anything,
remained speechless. The Bishop had emphasized the words when he
uttered them. He resumed with solemnity:--
"Jean Valjean, my brother, you no longer belong to evil, but to good.
It is your soul that I buy from you; I withdraw it from black
thoughts and the spirit of perdition, and I give it to God."
CHAPTER XIII
LITTLE GERVAIS
Jean Valjean left the town as though he were fleeing from it.
He set out at a very hasty pace through the fields, taking whatever
roads and paths presented themselves to him, without perceiving
that he was incessantly retracing his steps. He wandered thus the
whole morning, without having eaten anything and without feeling hungry.
He was the prey of a throng of novel sensations. He was conscious
of a sort of rage; he did not know against whom it was directed.
He could not have told whether he was touched or humiliated.
There came over him at moments a strange emotion which he resisted
and to which he opposed the hardness acquired during the last twenty
years of his life. This state of mind fatigued him. He perceived
with dismay that the sort of frightful calm which the injustice
of his misfortune had conferred upon him was giving way within him.
He asked himself what would replace this. At times he would have
actually preferred to be in prison with the gendarmes, and that things
should not have happened in this way; it would have agitated him less.
Although the season was tolerably far advanced, there were still
a few late flowers in the hedge-rows here and there, whose odor
as he passed through them in his march recalled to him memories
of his childhood. These memories were almost intolerable to him,
it was so long since they had recurred to him.
Unutterable thoughts assembled within him in this manner all day long.
As the sun declined to its setting, casting long shadows athwart the soil
from every pebble, Jean Valjean sat down behind a bush upon a large
ruddy plain, which was absolutely deserted. There was nothing on the
horizon except the Alps. Not even the spire of a distant village.
Jean Valjean might have been three leagues distant from D----
A path which intersected the plain passed a few paces from the bush.
In the middle of this meditation, which would have contributed
not a little to render his rags terrifying to any one who might
have encountered him, a joyous sound became audible.
He turned his head and saw a little Savoyard, about ten years
of age, coming up the path and singing, his hurdy-gurdy on his hip,
and his marmot-box on his back,
One of those gay and gentle children, who go from land to land
affording a view of their knees through the holes in their trousers.
Without stopping his song, the lad halted in his march from time
to time, and played at knuckle-bones with some coins which he
had in his hand--his whole fortune, probably.
Among this money there was one forty-sou piece.
The child halted beside the bush, without perceiving Jean Valjean,
and tossed up his handful of sous, which, up to that time, he had
caught with a good deal of adroitness on the back of his hand.
This time the forty-sou piece escaped him, and went rolling towards
the brushwood until it reached Jean Valjean.
Jean Valjean set his foot upon it.
In the meantime, the child had looked after his coin and had caught
sight of him.
He showed no astonishment, but walked straight up to the man.
The spot was absolutely solitary. As far as the eye could see
there was not a person on the plain or on the path. The only
sound was the tiny, feeble cries of a flock of birds of passage,
which was traversing the heavens at an immense height. The child
was standing with his back to the sun, which cast threads of gold
in his hair and empurpled with its blood-red gleam the savage face
of Jean Valjean.
"Sir," said the little Savoyard, with that childish confidence
which is composed of ignorance and innocence, "my money."
"What is your name?" said Jean Valjean.
"Little Gervais, sir."
"Go away," said Jean Valjean.
"Sir," resumed the child, "give me back my money."
Jean Valjean dropped his head, and made no reply.
The child began again, "My money, sir."
Jean Valjean's eyes remained fixed on the earth.
"My piece of money!" cried the child, "my white piece! my silver!"
It seemed as though Jean Valjean did not hear him. The child grasped
him by the collar of his blouse and shook him. At the same time
he made an effort to displace the big iron-shod shoe which rested
on his treasure.
"I want my piece of money! my piece of forty sous!"
The child wept. Jean Valjean raised his head. He still
remained seated. His eyes were troubled. He gazed at
the child, in a sort of amazement, then he stretched out
his hand towards his cudgel and cried in a terrible voice, "Who's there?"
"I, sir," replied the child. "Little Gervais! I! Give me back my
forty sous, if you please! Take your foot away, sir, if you please!"
Then irritated, though he was so small, and becoming almost menacing:--
"Come now, will you take your foot away? Take your foot away,
or we'll see!"
"Ah! It's still you!" said Jean Valjean, and rising abruptly
to his feet, his foot still resting on the silver piece, he added:--
"Will you take yourself off!"
The frightened child looked at him, then began to tremble from
head to foot, and after a few moments of stupor he set out,
running at the top of his speed, without daring to turn his neck
or to utter a cry.
Nevertheless, lack of breath forced him to halt after a certain distance,
and Jean Valjean heard him sobbing, in the midst of his own revery.
At the end of a few moments the child had disappeared.
The sun had set.
The shadows were descending around Jean Valjean. He had eaten
nothing all day; it is probable that he was feverish.
He had remained standing and had not changed his attitude after the
child's flight. The breath heaved his chest at long and irregular
intervals. His gaze, fixed ten or twelve paces in front of him,
seemed to be scrutinizing with profound attention the shape of an
ancient fragment of blue earthenware which had fallen in the grass.
All at once he shivered; he had just begun to feel the chill of evening.
He settled his cap more firmly on his brow, sought mechanically
to cross and button his blouse, advanced a step and stopped to pick
up his cudgel.
At that moment he caught sight of the forty-sou piece, which his
foot had half ground into the earth, and which was shining among
the pebbles. It was as though he had received a galvanic shock.
"What is this?" he muttered between his teeth. He recoiled
three paces, then halted, without being able to detach his gaze
from the spot which his foot had trodden but an instant before,
as though the thing which lay glittering there in the gloom had been
an open eye riveted upon him.
At the expiration of a few moments he darted convulsively towards
the silver coin, seized it, and straightened himself up again
and began to gaze afar off over the plain, at the same time casting
his eyes towards all points of the horizon, as he stood there erect
and shivering, like a terrified wild animal which is seeking refuge.
He saw nothing. Night was falling, the plain was cold and vague,
great banks of violet haze were rising in the gleam of the twilight.
He said, "Ah!" and set out rapidly in the direction in which
the child had disappeared. After about thirty paces he paused,
looked about him and saw nothing.
Then he shouted with all his might:--
"Little Gervais! Little Gervais!"
He paused and waited.
There was no reply.
The landscape was gloomy and deserted. He was encompassed by space.
There was nothing around him but an obscurity in which his gaze
was lost, and a silence which engulfed his voice.
An icy north wind was blowing, and imparted to things around him
a sort of lugubrious life. The bushes shook their thin little
arms with incredible fury. One would have said that they were
threatening and pursuing some one.
He set out on his march again, then he began to run; and from time
to time he halted and shouted into that solitude, with a voice
which was the most formidable and the most disconsolate that it
was possible to hear, "Little Gervais! Little Gervais!"
Assuredly, if the child had heard him, he would have been alarmed
and would have taken good care not to show himself. But the child
was no doubt already far away.
He encountered a priest on horseback. He stepped up to him and said:--
"Monsieur le Cure, have you seen a child pass?"
"No," said the priest.
"One named Little Gervais?"
"I have seen no one."
He drew two five-franc pieces from his money-bag and handed them
to the priest.
"Monsieur le Cure, this is for your poor people. Monsieur le Cure,
he was a little lad, about ten years old, with a marmot, I think,
and a hurdy-gurdy. One of those Savoyards, you know?"
"I have not seen him."
"Little Gervais? There are no villages here? Can you tell me?"
"If he is like what you say, my friend, he is a little stranger.
Such persons pass through these parts. We know nothing of them."
Jean Valjean seized two more coins of five francs each with violence,
and gave them to the priest.
"For your poor," he said.
Then he added, wildly:--
"Monsieur l'Abbe, have me arrested. I am a thief."
The priest put spurs to his horse and fled in haste, much alarmed.
Jean Valjean set out on a run, in the direction which he had
first taken.
In this way he traversed a tolerably long distance, gazing,
calling, shouting, but he met no one. Two or three times he ran
across the plain towards something which conveyed to him the effect
of a human being reclining or crouching down; it turned out to be
nothing but brushwood or rocks nearly on a level with the earth.
At length, at a spot where three paths intersected each other,
he stopped. The moon had risen. He sent his gaze into the distance
and shouted for the last time, "Little Gervais! Little Gervais!
Little Gervais!" His shout died away in the mist, without even
awakening an echo. He murmured yet once more, "Little Gervais!"
but in a feeble and almost inarticulate voice. It was his last effort;
his legs gave way abruptly under him, as though an invisible power
had suddenly overwhelmed him with the weight of his evil conscience;
he fell exhausted, on a large stone, his fists clenched in his hair
and his face on his knees, and he cried, "I am a wretch!"
Then his heart burst, and he began to cry. It was the first time
that he had wept in nineteen years.
When Jean Valjean left the Bishop's house, he was, as we have seen,
quite thrown out of everything that had been his thought hitherto.
He could not yield to the evidence of what was going on within him.
He hardened himself against the angelic action and the gentle words
of the old man. "You have promised me to become an honest man.
I buy your soul. I take it away from the spirit of perversity;
I give it to the good God."
This recurred to his mind unceasingly. To this celestial kindness
he opposed pride, which is the fortress of evil within us.
He was indistinctly conscious that the pardon of this priest
was the greatest assault and the most formidable attack which
had moved him yet; that his obduracy was finally settled if he
resisted this clemency; that if he yielded, he should be obliged
to renounce that hatred with which the actions of other men had
filled his soul through so many years, and which pleased him;
that this time it was necessary to conquer or to be conquered;
and that a struggle, a colossal and final struggle, had been begun
between his viciousness and the goodness of that man.
In the presence of these lights, he proceeded like a man who
is intoxicated. As he walked thus with haggard eyes, did he
have a distinct perception of what might result to him from his
adventure at D----? Did he understand all those mysterious murmurs
which warn or importune the spirit at certain moments of life?
Did a voice whisper in his ear that he had just passed the solemn
hour of his destiny; that there no longer remained a middle
course for him; that if he were not henceforth the best of men,
he would be the worst; that it behooved him now, so to speak,
to mount higher than the Bishop, or fall lower than the convict;
that if he wished to become good be must become an angel; that if he
wished to remain evil, he must become a monster?
Here, again, some questions must be put, which we have already put
to ourselves elsewhere: did he catch some shadow of all this in
his thought, in a confused way? Misfortune certainly, as we have said,
does form the education of the intelligence; nevertheless, it is
doubtful whether Jean Valjean was in a condition to disentangle
all that we have here indicated. If these ideas occurred to him,
he but caught glimpses of, rather than saw them, and they only
succeeded in throwing him into an unutterable and almost painful
state of emotion. On emerging from that black and deformed
thing which is called the galleys, the Bishop had hurt his soul,
as too vivid a light would have hurt his eyes on emerging from
the dark. The future life, the possible life which offered itself
to him henceforth, all pure and radiant, filled him with tremors
and anxiety. He no longer knew where he really was. Like an owl,
who should suddenly see the sun rise, the convict had been dazzled
and blinded, as it were, by virtue.
That which was certain, that which he did not doubt, was that he
was no longer the same man, that everything about him was changed,
that it was no longer in his power to make it as though the Bishop
had not spoken to him and had not touched him.
In this state of mind he had encountered little Gervais, and had robbed
him of his forty sous. Why? He certainly could not have explained it;
was this the last effect and the supreme effort, as it were,
of the evil thoughts which he had brought away from the galleys,--
a remnant of impulse, a result of what is called in statics,
acquired force? It was that, and it was also, perhaps, even less
than that. Let us say it simply, it was not he who stole;
it was not the man; it was the beast, who, by habit and instinct,
had simply placed his foot upon that money, while the intelligence
was struggling amid so many novel and hitherto unheard-of thoughts
besetting it.
When intelligence re-awakened and beheld that action of the brute,
Jean Valjean recoiled with anguish and uttered a cry of terror.
It was because,--strange phenomenon, and one which was possible only
in the situation in which he found himself,--in stealing the money
from that child, he had done a thing of which he was no longer capable.
However that may be, this last evil action had a decisive effect
on him; it abruptly traversed that chaos which he bore in his mind,
and dispersed it, placed on one side the thick obscurity, and on
the other the light, and acted on his soul, in the state in which it
then was, as certain chemical reagents act upon a troubled mixture
by precipitating one element and clarifying the other.
First of all, even before examining himself and reflecting,
all bewildered, like one who seeks to save himself, he tried to
find the child in order to return his money to him; then, when he
recognized the fact that this was impossible, he halted in despair.
At the moment when he exclaimed "I am a wretch!" he had just
perceived what he was, and he was already separated from himself
to such a degree, that he seemed to himself to be no longer
anything more than a phantom, and as if he had, there before him,
in flesh and blood, the hideous galley-convict, Jean Valjean,
cudgel in hand, his blouse on his hips, his knapsack filled with
stolen objects on his back, with his resolute and gloomy visage,
with his thoughts filled with abominable projects.
Excess of unhappiness had, as we have remarked, made him in some
sort a visionary. This, then, was in the nature of a vision.
He actually saw that Jean Valjean, that sinister face, before him.
He had almost reached the point of asking himself who that man was,
and he was horrified by him.
His brain was going through one of those violent and yet perfectly
calm moments in which revery is so profound that it absorbs reality.
One no longer beholds the object which one has before one, and one sees,
as though apart from one's self, the figures which one has in one's
own mind.
Thus he contemplated himself, so to speak, face to face,
and at the same time, athwart this hallucination, he perceived
in a mysterious depth a sort of light which he at first took
for a torch. On scrutinizing this light which appeared
to his conscience with more attention, he recognized the
fact that it possessed a human form and that this torch was the Bishop.
His conscience weighed in turn these two men thus placed before it,--
the Bishop and Jean Valjean. Nothing less than the first was
required to soften the second. By one of those singular effects,
which are peculiar to this sort of ecstasies, in proportion as his
revery continued, as the Bishop grew great and resplendent in his eyes,
so did Jean Valjean grow less and vanish. After a certain time he
was no longer anything more than a shade. All at once he disappeared.
The Bishop alone remained; he filled the whole soul of this wretched
man with a magnificent radiance.
Jean Valjean wept for a long time. He wept burning tears, he sobbed
with more weakness than a woman, with more fright than a child.
As he wept, daylight penetrated more and more clearly into his soul;
an extraordinary light; a light at once ravishing and terrible.
His past life, his first fault, his long expiation, his external
brutishness, his internal hardness, his dismissal to liberty,
rejoicing in manifold plans of vengeance, what had happened to him
at the Bishop's, the last thing that he had done, that theft of forty
sous from a child, a crime all the more cowardly, and all the more
monstrous since it had come after the Bishop's pardon,--all this
recurred to his mind and appeared clearly to him, but with a clearness
which he had never hitherto witnessed. He examined his life, and it
seemed horrible to him; his soul, and it seemed frightful to him.
In the meantime a gentle light rested over this life and this soul.
It seemed to him that he beheld Satan by the light of Paradise.
How many hours did he weep thus? What did he do after he had wept?
Whither did he go! No one ever knew. The only thing which seems
to be authenticated is that that same night the carrier who served
Grenoble at that epoch, and who arrived at D---- about three o'clock
in the morning, saw, as he traversed the street in which the
Bishop's residence was situated, a man in the attitude of prayer,
kneeling on the pavement in the shadow, in front of the door
of Monseigneur Welcome.
BOOK THIRD.--IN THE YEAR 1817
CHAPTER I
THE YEAR 1817
1817 is the year which Louis XVIII., with a certain royal assurance
which was not wanting in pride, entitled the twenty-second of his reign.
It is the year in which M. Bruguiere de Sorsum was celebrated.
All the hairdressers' shops, hoping for powder and the return of the
royal bird, were besmeared with azure and decked with fleurs-de-lys.
It was the candid time at which Count Lynch sat every Sunday as
church-warden in the church-warden's pew of Saint-Germain-des-Pres,
in his costume of a peer of France, with his red ribbon and his
long nose and the majesty of profile peculiar to a man who has
performed a brilliant action. The brilliant action performed
by M. Lynch was this: being mayor of Bordeaux, on the 12th
of March, 1814, he had surrendered the city a little too promptly
to M. the Duke d'Angouleme. Hence his peerage. In 1817 fashion
swallowed up little boys of from four to six years of age in vast
caps of morocco leather with ear-tabs resembling Esquimaux mitres.
The French army was dressed in white, after the mode of the Austrian;
the regiments were called legions; instead of numbers they bore the
names of departments; Napoleon was at St. Helena; and since England
refused him green cloth, he was having his old coats turned.
In 1817 Pelligrini sang; Mademoiselle Bigottini danced; Potier reigned;
Odry did not yet exist. Madame Saqui had succeeded to Forioso.
There were still Prussians in France. M. Delalot was a personage.
Legitimacy had just asserted itself by cutting off the hand,
then the head, of Pleignier, of Carbonneau, and of Tolleron.
The Prince de Talleyrand, grand chamberlain, and the Abbe Louis,
appointed minister of finance, laughed as they looked at each other,
with the laugh of the two augurs; both of them had celebrated,
on the 14th of July, 1790, the mass of federation in the Champ de Mars;
Talleyrand had said it as bishop, Louis had served it in the capacity
of deacon. In 1817, in the side-alleys of this same Champ de Mars,
two great cylinders of wood might have been seen lying in the rain,
rotting amid the grass, painted blue, with traces of eagles and bees,
from which the gilding was falling. These were the columns which two
years before had upheld the Emperor's platform in the Champ de Mai.
They were blackened here and there with the scorches of the bivouac
of Austrians encamped near Gros-Caillou. Two or three of these
columns had disappeared in these bivouac fires, and had warmed
the large hands of the Imperial troops. The Field of May had this
remarkable point: that it had been held in the month of June
and in the Field of March (Mars). In this year, 1817, two things
were popular: the Voltaire-Touquet and the snuff-box a la Charter.
The most recent Parisian sensation was the crime of Dautun,
who had thrown his brother's head into the fountain of the
Flower-Market.
They had begun to feel anxious at the Naval Department, on account
of the lack of news from that fatal frigate, The Medusa, which was
destined to cover Chaumareix with infamy and Gericault with glory.
Colonel Selves was going to Egypt to become Soliman-Pasha. The palace
of 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,
the little shed of boards, which had served as an observatory to Messier,
the naval astronomer under Louis XVI., was still to be seen.
The Duchesse de Duras read to three or four friends her unpublished
Ourika, in her boudoir furnished by X. in sky-blue satin. The N's
were scratched off the Louvre. The bridge of Austerlitz had abdicated,
and was entitled the bridge of the King's Garden [du Jardin du Roi],
a double enigma, which disguised the bridge of Austerlitz and the
Jardin des Plantes at one stroke. Louis XVIII., much preoccupied
while annotating Horace with the corner of his finger-nail, heroes
who have become emperors, and makers of wooden shoes who have
become dauphins, had two anxieties,--Napoleon and Mathurin Bruneau.
The French Academy had given for its prize subject, The Happiness
procured through Study. M. Bellart was officially eloquent.
In his shadow could be seen germinating that future advocate-general
of Broe, dedicated to the sarcasms of Paul-Louis Courier.
There was a false Chateaubriand, named Marchangy, in the interim,
until there should be a false Marchangy, named d'Arlincourt.
Claire d'Albe and Malek-Adel were masterpieces; Madame Cottin
was proclaimed the chief writer of the epoch. The Institute
had the academician, Napoleon Bonaparte, stricken from its list
of members. A royal ordinance erected Angouleme into a naval school;
for the Duc d'Angouleme, being lord high admiral, it was evident
that the city of Angouleme had all the qualities of a seaport;
otherwise the monarchical principle would have received a wound.
In the Council of Ministers the question was agitated whether
vignettes representing slack-rope performances, which adorned
Franconi's advertising posters, and which attracted throngs of
street urchins, should be tolerated. M. Paer, the author of Agnese,
a good sort of fellow, with a square face and a wart on his cheek,
directed the little private concerts of the Marquise de Sasenaye
in the Rue Ville l'Eveque. All the young girls were singing the
Hermit of Saint-Avelle, with words by Edmond Geraud. The Yellow
Dwarf was transferred into Mirror. The Cafe Lemblin stood up for
the Emperor, against the Cafe Valois, which upheld the Bourbons.
The Duc de Berri, already surveyed from the shadow by Louvel,
had just been married to a princess of Sicily. Madame de Stael had
died a year previously. The body-guard hissed Mademoiselle Mars.
The grand newspapers were all very small. Their form was restricted,
but their liberty was great. The Constitutionnel was constitutional.
La Minerve called Chateaubriand Chateaubriant. That t made the good
middle-class people laugh heartily at the expense of the great writer.
In journals which sold themselves, prostituted journalists,
insulted the exiles of 1815. David had no longer any talent,
Arnault had no longer any wit, Carnot was no longer honest, Soult had
won no battles; it is true that Napoleon had no longer any genius.
No one is ignorant of the fact that letters sent to an exile by post
very rarely reached him, as the police made it their religious
duty to intercept them. This is no new fact; Descartes complained
of it in his exile. Now David, having, in a Belgian publication,
shown some displeasure at not receiving letters which had been
written to him, it struck the royalist journals as amusing;
and they derided the prescribed man well on this occasion.
What separated two men more than an abyss was to say, the regicides,
or to say the voters; to say the enemies, or to say the allies;
to say Napoleon, or to say Buonaparte. All sensible people were
agreed that the era of revolution had been closed forever by King
Louis XVIII., surnamed "The Immortal Author of the Charter."
On the platform of the Pont-Neuf, the word Redivivus was carved
on the pedestal that awaited the statue of Henry IV. M. Piet,
in the Rue Therese, No. 4, was making the rough draft of his privy
assembly to consolidate the monarchy. The leaders of the Right
said at grave conjunctures, "We must write to Bacot." MM. Canuel,
O'Mahoney, and De Chappedelaine were preparing the sketch,
to some extent with Monsieur's approval, of what was to become
later on "The Conspiracy of the Bord de l'Eau"--of the waterside.
L'Epingle Noire was already plotting in his own quarter.
Delaverderie was conferring with Trogoff. M. Decazes, who was
liberal to a degree, reigned. Chateaubriand stood every morning at
his window at No. 27 Rue Saint-Dominique, clad in footed trousers,
and slippers, with a madras kerchief knotted over his gray hair,
with his eyes fixed on a mirror, a complete set of dentist's instruments
spread out before him, cleaning his teeth, which were charming,
while he dictated The Monarchy according to the Charter to M. Pilorge,
his secretary. Criticism, assuming an authoritative tone,
preferred Lafon to Talma. M. de Feletez signed himself A.;
M. Hoffmann signed himself Z. Charles Nodier wrote Therese Aubert.
Divorce was abolished. Lyceums called themselves colleges.
The collegians, decorated on the collar with a golden fleur-de-lys,
fought each other apropos of the King of Rome. The counter-police
of the chateau had denounced to her Royal Highness Madame, the portrait,
everywhere exhibited, of M. the Duc d'Orleans, who made a better
appearance in his uniform of a colonel-general of hussars than
M. the Duc de Berri, in his uniform of colonel-general of dragoons--
a serious inconvenience. The city of Paris was having the dome
of the Invalides regilded at its own expense. Serious men asked
themselves what M. de Trinquelague would do on such or such an occasion;
M. Clausel de Montals differed on divers points from M. Clausel
de Coussergues; M. de Salaberry was not satisfied. The comedian Picard,
who belonged to the Academy, which the comedian Moliere had not been
able to do, had The Two Philiberts played at the Odeon, upon whose
pediment the removal of the letters still allowed THEATRE OF THE
EMPRESS to be plainly read. People took part for or against Cugnet
de Montarlot. Fabvier was factious; Bavoux was revolutionary.
The Liberal, Pelicier, published an edition of Voltaire, with the
following title: Works of Voltaire, of the French Academy.
"That will attract purchasers," said the ingenious editor. The general
opinion was that M. Charles Loyson would be the genius of the century;
envy was beginning to gnaw at him--a sign of glory; and this verse was
composed on him:--
"Even when Loyson steals, one feels that he has paws."
As Cardinal Fesch refused to resign, M. de Pins, Archbishop of Amasie,
administered the diocese of Lyons. The quarrel over the valley
of Dappes was begun between Switzerland and France by a memoir
from Captain, afterwards General Dufour. Saint-Simon, ignored,
was erecting his sublime dream. There was a celebrated Fourier
at the Academy of Science, whom posterity has forgotten; and in
some garret an obscure Fourier, whom the future will recall.
Lord Byron was beginning to make his mark; a note to a poem
by Millevoye introduced him to France in these terms: a certain
Lord Baron. David d'Angers was trying to work in marble. The Abbe
Caron was speaking, in terms of praise, to a private gathering of
seminarists in the blind alley of Feuillantines, of an unknown priest,
named Felicite-Robert, who, at a latter date, became Lamennais.
A thing which smoked and clattered on the Seine with the noise of
a swimming dog went and came beneath the windows of the Tuileries,
from the Pont Royal to the Pont Louis XV.; it was a piece of mechanism
which was not good for much; a sort of plaything, the idle dream
of a dream-ridden inventor; an utopia--a steamboat. The Parisians
stared indifferently at this useless thing. M. de Vaublanc,
the reformer of the Institute by a coup d'etat, the distinguished
author of numerous academicians, ordinances, and batches of members,
after having created them, could not succeed in becoming one himself.
The Faubourg Saint-Germain and the pavilion de Marsan wished to
have M. Delaveau for prefect of police, on account of his piety.
Dupuytren and Recamier entered into a quarrel in the amphitheatre
of the School of Medicine, and threatened each other with their fists
on the subject of the divinity of Jesus Christ. Cuvier, with one
eye on Genesis and the other on nature, tried to please bigoted
reaction by reconciling fossils with texts and by making mastodons
flatter Moses.
M. Francois de Neufchateau, the praiseworthy cultivator of the memory
of Parmentier, made a thousand efforts to have pomme de terre
[potato] pronounced parmentiere, and succeeded therein not at all.
The Abbe Gregoire, ex-bishop, ex-conventionary, ex-senator, had passed,
in the royalist polemics, to the state of "Infamous Gregoire."
The locution of which we have made use--passed to the state of--has been
condemned as a neologism by M. Royer Collard. Under the third arch
of the Pont de Jena, the new stone with which, the two years previously,
the mining aperture made by Blucher to blow up the bridge had been
stopped up, was still recognizable on account of its whiteness.
Justice summoned to its bar a man who, on seeing the Comte d'Artois
enter Notre Dame, had said aloud: "Sapristi! I regret the time
when I saw Bonaparte and Talma enter the Bel Sauvage, arm in arm."
A seditious utterance. Six months in prison. Traitors showed
themselves unbuttoned; men who had gone over to the enemy on the eve
of battle made no secret of their recompense, and strutted immodestly
in the light of day, in the cynicism of riches and dignities;
deserters from Ligny and Quatre-Bras, in the brazenness of their
well-paid turpitude, exhibited their devotion to the monarchy in the
most barefaced manner.
This is what floats up confusedly, pell-mell, for the year 1817,
and is now forgotten. History neglects nearly all these particulars,
and cannot do otherwise; the infinity would overwhelm it.
Nevertheless, these details, which are wrongly called trivial,--
there are no trivial facts in humanity, nor little leaves
in vegetation,--are useful. It is of the physiognomy of the
years that the physiognomy of the centuries is composed.
In this year of 1817 four young Parisians arranged "a fine farce."
CHAPTER II
A DOUBLE QUARTETTE
These Parisians came, one from Toulouse, another from Limoges,
the third from Cahors, and the fourth from Montauban; but they
were students; and when one says student, one says Parisian:
to study in Paris is to be born in Paris.
These young men were insignificant; every one has seen such faces;
four specimens of humanity taken at random; neither good nor bad,
neither wise nor ignorant, neither geniuses nor fools; handsome,
with that charming April which is called twenty years. They were
four Oscars; for, at that epoch, Arthurs did not yet exist.
Burn for him the perfumes of Araby! exclaimed romance.
Oscar advances. Oscar, I shall behold him! People had just
emerged from Ossian; elegance was Scandinavian and Caledonian;
the pure English style was only to prevail later, and the first
of the Arthurs, Wellington, had but just won the battle of Waterloo.
These Oscars bore the names, one of Felix Tholomyes, of Toulouse;
the second, Listolier, of Cahors; the next, Fameuil, of Limoges;
the last, Blachevelle, of Montauban. Naturally, each of them
had his mistress. Blachevelle loved Favourite, so named because
she had been in England; Listolier adored Dahlia, who had taken
for her nickname the name of a flower; Fameuil idolized Zephine,
an abridgment of Josephine; Tholomyes had Fantine, called the Blonde,
because of her beautiful, sunny hair.
Favourite, Dahlia, Zephine, and Fantine were four ravishing young women,
perfumed and radiant, still a little like working-women, and not yet
entirely divorced from their needles; somewhat disturbed by intrigues,
but still retaining on their faces something of the serenity
of toil, and in their souls that flower of honesty which survives
the first fall in woman. One of the four was called the young,
because she was the youngest of them, and one was called the old;
the old one was twenty-three. Not to conceal anything, the three
first were more experienced, more heedless, and more emancipated
into the tumult of life than Fantine the Blonde, who was still
in her first illusions.
Dahlia, Zephine, and especially Favourite, could not have said as much.
There had already been more than one episode in their romance,
though hardly begun; and the lover who had borne the name of Adolph
in the first chapter had turned out to be Alphonse in the second,
and Gustave in the third. Poverty and coquetry are two fatal counsellors;
one scolds and the other flatters, and the beautiful daughters
of the people have both of them whispering in their ear, each on
its own side. These badly guarded souls listen. Hence the falls
which they accomplish, and the stones which are thrown at them.
They are overwhelmed with splendor of all that is immaculate
and inaccessible. Alas! what if the Jungfrau were hungry?
Favourite having been in England, was admired by Dahlia and Zephine.
She had had an establishment of her own very early in life.
Her father was an old unmarried professor of mathematics, a brutal man
and a braggart, who went out to give lessons in spite of his age.
This professor, when he was a young man, had one day seen a chambermaid's
gown catch on a fender; he had fallen in love in consequence of
this accident. The result had been Favourite. She met her father
from time to time, and he bowed to her. One morning an old woman
with the air of a devotee, had entered her apartments, and had said
to her, "You do not know me, Mamemoiselle?" "No." "I am your mother."
Then the old woman opened the sideboard, and ate and drank,
had a mattress which she owned brought in, and installed herself.
This cross and pious old mother never spoke to Favourite, remained hours
without uttering a word, breakfasted, dined, and supped for four,
and went down to the porter's quarters for company, where she spoke
ill of her daughter.
It was having rosy nails that were too pretty which had drawn
Dahlia to Listolier, to others perhaps, to idleness. How could
she make such nails work? She who wishes to remain virtuous must
not have pity on her hands. As for Zephine, she had conquered
Fameuil by her roguish and caressing little way of saying "Yes, sir."
The young men were comrades; the young girls were friends.
Such loves are always accompanied by such friendships.
Goodness and philosophy are two distinct things; the proof
of this is that, after making all due allowances for these
little irregular households, Favourite, Zephine, and Dahlia
were philosophical young women, while Fantine was a good girl.
Good! some one will exclaim; and Tholomyes? Solomon would reply
that love forms a part of wisdom. We will confine ourselves
to saying that the love of Fantine was a first love, a sole love,
a faithful love.
She alone, of all the four, was not called "thou" by a single
one of them.
Fantine was one of those beings who blossom, so to speak,
from the dregs of the people. Though she had emerged from the most
unfathomable depths of social shadow, she bore on her brow the sign
of the anonymous and the unknown. She was born at M. sur M. Of
what parents? Who can say? She had never known father or mother.
She was called Fantine. Why Fantine? She had never borne any
other name. At the epoch of her birth the Directory still existed.
She had no family name; she had no family; no baptismal name;
the Church no longer existed. She bore the name which pleased the first
random passer-by, who had encountered her, when a very small child,
running bare-legged in the street. She received the name as she
received the water from the clouds upon her brow when it rained.
She was called little Fantine. No one knew more than that. This human
creature had entered life in just this way. At the age of ten,
Fantine quitted the town and went to service with some farmers in
the neighborhood. At fifteen she came to Paris "to seek her fortune."
Fantine was beautiful, and remained pure as long as she could.
She was a lovely blonde, with fine teeth. She had gold and pearls
for her dowry; but her gold was on her head, and her pearls were in
her mouth.
She worked for her living; then, still for the sake of her living,--
for the heart, also, has its hunger,--she loved.
She loved Tholomyes.
An amour for him; passion for her. The streets of the Latin quarter,
filled with throngs of students and grisettes, saw the beginning
of their dream. Fantine had long evaded Tholomyes in the mazes
of the hill of the Pantheon, where so many adventurers twine
and untwine, but in such a way as constantly to encounter him again.
There is a way of avoiding which resembles seeking. In short,
the eclogue took place.
Blachevelle, Listolier, and Fameuil formed a sort of group
of which Tholomyes was the head. It was he who possessed the wit.
Tholomyes was the antique old student; he was rich; he had an income
of four thousand francs; four thousand francs! a splendid scandal
on Mount Sainte-Genevieve. Tholomyes was a fast man of thirty,
and badly preserved. He was wrinkled and toothless, and he had
the beginning of a bald spot, of which he himself said with sadness,
the skull at thirty, the knee at forty. His digestion was mediocre,
and he had been attacked by a watering in one eye. But in proportion
as his youth disappeared, gayety was kindled; he replaced his teeth
with buffooneries, his hair with mirth, his health with irony, his weeping
eye laughed incessantly. He was dilapidated but still in flower.
His youth, which was packing up for departure long before its time,
beat a retreat in good order, bursting with laughter, and no one saw
anything but fire. He had had a piece rejected at the Vaudeville.
He made a few verses now and then. In addition to this he doubted
everything to the last degree, which is a vast force in the eyes
of the weak. Being thus ironical and bald, he was the leader.
Iron is an English word. Is it possible that irony is derived
from it?
One day Tholomyes took the three others aside, with the gesture
of an oracle, and said to them:--
"Fantine, Dahlia, Zephine, and Favourite have been teasing us
for nearly a year to give them a surprise. We have promised them
solemnly that we would. They are forever talking about it to us, to me
in particular, just as the old women in Naples cry to Saint Januarius,
`Faccia gialluta, fa o miracolo, Yellow face, perform thy miracle,'
so our beauties say to me incessantly, `Tholomyes, when will you bring
forth your surprise?' At the same time our parents keep writing to us.
Pressure on both sides. The moment has arrived, it seems to me;
let us discuss the question."
Thereupon, Tholomyes lowered his voice and articulated something
so mirthful, that a vast and enthusiastic grin broke out upon the four
mouths simultaneously, and Blachevelle exclaimed, "That is an idea."
A smoky tap-room presented itself; they entered, and the remainder
of their confidential colloquy was lost in shadow.
The result of these shades was a dazzling pleasure party which took
place on the following Sunday, the four young men inviting the four
young girls.
CHAPTER III
FOUR AND FOUR
It is hard nowadays to picture to one's self what a pleasure-trip of
students and grisettes to the country was like, forty-five years ago.
The suburbs of Paris are no longer the same; the physiognomy of what
may be called circumparisian life has changed completely in the
last half-century; where there was the cuckoo, there is the railway car;
where there was a tender-boat, there is now the steamboat; people speak
of Fecamp nowadays as they spoke of Saint-Cloud in those days.
The Paris of 1862 is a city which has France for its outskirts.
The four couples conscientiously went through with all the country
follies possible at that time. The vacation was beginning, and it
was a warm, bright, summer day. On the preceding day, Favourite,
the only one who knew how to write, had written the following
to Tholomyes in the name of the four: "It is a good hour to emerge
from happiness." That is why they rose at five o'clock in the morning.
Then they went to Saint-Cloud by the coach, looked at the dry cascade
and exclaimed, "This must be very beautiful when there is water!"
They breakfasted at the Tete-Noir, where Castaing had not yet been;
they treated themselves to a game of ring-throwing under the
quincunx of trees of the grand fountain; they ascended Diogenes'
lantern, they gambled for macaroons at the roulette establishment
of the Pont de Sevres, picked bouquets at Pateaux, bought reed-pipes
at Neuilly, ate apple tarts everywhere, and were perfectly happy.
The young girls rustled and chatted like warblers escaped from
their cage. It was a perfect delirium. From time to time they
bestowed little taps on the young men. Matutinal intoxication of life!
adorable years! the wings of the dragonfly quiver. Oh, whoever you
may be, do you not remember? Have you rambled through the brushwood,
holding aside the branches, on account of the charming head
which is coming on behind you? Have you slid, laughing, down a
slope all wet with rain, with a beloved woman holding your hand,
and crying, "Ah, my new boots! what a state they are in!"
Let us say at once that that merry obstacle, a shower, was lacking
in the case of this good-humored party, although Favourite had said
as they set out, with a magisterial and maternal tone, "The slugs
are crawling in the paths,--a sign of rain, children."
All four were madly pretty. A good old classic poet, then famous,
a good fellow who had an Eleonore, M. le Chevalier de Labouisse,
as he strolled that day beneath the chestnut-trees of Saint-Cloud,
saw them pass about ten o'clock in the morning, and exclaimed,
"There is one too many of them," as he thought of the Graces.
Favourite, Blachevelle's friend, the one aged three and twenty,
the old one, ran on in front under the great green boughs,
jumped the ditches, stalked distractedly over bushes, and presided
over this merry-making with the spirit of a young female faun.
Zephine and Dahlia, whom chance had made beautiful in such a way
that they set each off when they were together, and completed
each other, never left each other, more from an instinct of coquetry
than from friendship, and clinging to each other, they assumed
English poses; the first keepsakes had just made their appearance,
melancholy was dawning for women, as later on, Byronism dawned for men;
and the hair of the tender sex began to droop dolefully. Zephine and
Dahlia had their hair dressed in rolls. Listolier and Fameuil,
who were engaged in discussing their professors, explained to Fantine
the difference that existed between M. Delvincourt and M. Blondeau.
Blachevelle seemed to have been created expressly to carry Favourite's
single-bordered, imitation India shawl of Ternaux's manufacture,
on his arm on Sundays.
Tholomyes followed, dominating the group. He was very gay, but one felt
the force of government in him; there was dictation in his joviality;
his principal ornament was a pair of trousers of elephant-leg pattern
of nankeen, with straps of braided copper wire; he carried a stout
rattan worth two hundred francs in his hand, and, as he treated
himself to everything, a strange thing called a cigar in his mouth.
Nothing was sacred to him; he smoked.
"That Tholomyes is astounding!" said the others, with veneration.
"What trousers! What energy!"
As for Fantine, she was a joy to behold. Her splendid teeth had
evidently received an office from God,--laughter. She preferred
to carry her little hat of sewed straw, with its long white strings,
in her hand rather than on her head. Her thick blond hair,
which was inclined to wave, and which easily uncoiled, and which it
was necessary to fasten up incessantly, seemed made for the flight
of Galatea under the willows. Her rosy lips babbled enchantingly.
The corners of her mouth voluptuously turned up, as in the antique masks
of Erigone, had an air of encouraging the audacious; but her long,
shadowy lashes drooped discreetly over the jollity of the lower
part of the face as though to call a halt. There was something
indescribably harmonious and striking about her entire dress.
She wore a gown of mauve barege, little reddish brown buskins,
whose ribbons traced an X on her fine, white, open-worked stockings,
and that sort of muslin spencer, a Marseilles invention, whose name,
canezou, a corruption of the words quinze aout, pronounced after the
fashion of the Canebiere, signifies fine weather, heat, and midday.
The three others, less timid, as we have already said, wore low-necked
dresses without disguise, which in summer, beneath flower-adorned
hats, are very graceful and enticing; but by the side of these
audacious outfits, blond Fantine's canezou, with its transparencies,
its indiscretion, and its reticence, concealing and displaying
at one and the same time, seemed an alluring godsend of decency,
and the famous Court of Love, presided over by the Vicomtesse de Cette,
with the sea-green eyes, would, perhaps, have awarded the prize for
coquetry to this canezou, in the contest for the prize of modesty.
The most ingenious is, at times, the wisest. This does happen.
Brilliant of face, delicate of profile, with eyes of a deep blue,
heavy lids, feet arched and small, wrists and ankles admirably formed,
a white skin which, here and there allowed the azure branching
of the veins to be seen, joy, a cheek that was young and fresh,
the robust throat of the Juno of AEgina, a strong and supple nape
of the neck, shoulders modelled as though by Coustou, with a
voluptuous dimple in the middle, visible through the muslin; a gayety
cooled by dreaminess; sculptural and exquisite--such was Fantine;
and beneath these feminine adornments and these ribbons one could
divine a statue, and in that statue a soul.
Fantine was beautiful, without being too conscious of it.
Those rare dreamers, mysterious priests of the beautiful who silently
confront everything with perfection, would have caught a glimpse
in this little working-woman, through the transparency of her
Parisian grace, of the ancient sacred euphony. This daughter of
the shadows was thoroughbred. She was beautiful in the two ways--
style and rhythm. Style is the form of the ideal; rhythm is its movement.
We have said that Fantine was joy; she was also modesty.
To an observer who studied her attentively, that which breathed from
her athwart all the intoxication of her age, the season, and her
love affair, was an invincible expression of reserve and modesty.
She remained a little astonished. This chaste astonishment
is the shade of difference which separates Psyche from Venus.
Fantine had the long, white, fine fingers of the vestal virgin who
stirs the ashes of the sacred fire with a golden pin. Although she
would have refused nothing to Tholomyes, as we shall have more than
ample opportunity to see, her face in repose was supremely virginal;
a sort of serious and almost austere dignity suddenly overwhelmed
her at certain times, and there was nothing more singular and
disturbing than to see gayety become so suddenly extinct there,
and meditation succeed to cheerfulness without any transition state.
This sudden and sometimes severely accentuated gravity resembled the
disdain of a goddess. Her brow, her nose, her chin, presented that
equilibrium of outline which is quite distinct from equilibrium
of proportion, and from which harmony of countenance results;
in the very characteristic interval which separates the base of the nose
from the upper lip, she had that imperceptible and charming fold,
a mysterious sign of chastity, which makes Barberousse fall in love
with a Diana found in the treasures of Iconia.
Love is a fault; so be it. Fantine was innocence floating high
over fault.
CHAPTER IV
THOLOMYES IS SO MERRY THAT HE SINGS A SPANISH DITTY
That day was composed of dawn, from one end to the other.
All nature seemed to be having a holiday, and to be laughing.
The flower-beds of Saint-Cloud perfumed the air; the breath of the Seine
rustled the leaves vaguely; the branches gesticulated in the wind,
bees pillaged the jasmines; a whole bohemia of butterflies swooped
down upon the yarrow, the clover, and the sterile oats; in the
august park of the King of France there was a pack of vagabonds,
the birds.
The four merry couples, mingled with the sun, the fields, the flowers,
the trees, were resplendent.
And in this community of Paradise, talking, singing, running, dancing,
chasing butterflies, plucking convolvulus, wetting their pink,
open-work stockings in the tall grass, fresh, wild, without malice,
all received, to some extent, the kisses of all, with the exception
of Fantine, who was hedged about with that vague resistance of
hers composed of dreaminess and wildness, and who was in love.
"You always have a queer look about you," said Favourite to her.
Such things are joys. These passages of happy couples are a
profound appeal to life and nature, and make a caress and light
spring forth from everything. There was once a fairy who created
the fields and forests expressly for those in love,--in that
eternal hedge-school of lovers, which is forever beginning anew,
and which will last as long as there are hedges and scholars.
Hence the popularity of spring among thinkers. The patrician
and the knife-grinder, the duke and the peer, the limb of the law,
the courtiers and townspeople, as they used to say in olden times,
all are subjects of this fairy. They laugh and hunt, and there is
in the air the brilliance of an apotheosis--what a transfiguration
effected by love! Notaries' clerks are gods. And the little cries,
the pursuits through the grass, the waists embraced on the fly,
those jargons which are melodies, those adorations which burst
forth in the manner of pronouncing a syllable, those cherries
torn from one mouth by another,--all this blazes forth and takes
its place among the celestial glories. Beautiful women waste
themselves sweetly. They think that this will never come to an end.
Philosophers, poets, painters, observe these ecstasies and know not
what to make of it, so greatly are they dazzled by it. The departure
for Cythera! exclaims Watteau; Lancret, the painter of plebeians,
contemplates his bourgeois, who have flitted away into the azure sky;
Diderot stretches out his arms to all these love idyls, and d'Urfe
mingles druids with them.
After breakfast the four couples went to what was then called the King's
Square to see a newly arrived plant from India, whose name escapes
our memory at this moment, and which, at that epoch, was attracting
all Paris to Saint-Cloud. It was an odd and charming shrub with a
long stem, whose numerous branches, bristling and leafless and as
fine as threads, were covered with a million tiny white rosettes;
this gave the shrub the air of a head of hair studded with flowers.
There was always an admiring crowd about it.
After viewing the shrub, Tholomyes exclaimed, "I offer you asses!"
and having agreed upon a price with the owner of the asses, they
returned by way of Vanvres and Issy. At Issy an incident occurred.
The truly national park, at that time owned by Bourguin the contractor,
happened to be wide open. They passed the gates, visited the manikin
anchorite in his grotto, tried the mysterious little effects of
the famous cabinet of mirrors, the wanton trap worthy of a satyr
become a millionaire or of Turcaret metamorphosed into a Priapus.
They had stoutly shaken the swing attached to the two chestnut-trees
celebrated by the Abbe de Bernis. As he swung these beauties,
one after the other, producing folds in the fluttering skirts
which Greuze would have found to his taste, amid peals of laughter,
the Toulousan Tholomyes, who was somewhat of a Spaniard,
Toulouse being the cousin of Tolosa, sang, to a melancholy chant,
the old ballad gallega, probably inspired by some lovely maid dashing
in full flight upon a rope between two trees:--
"Soy de Badajoz, "Badajoz is my home,
Amor me llama, And Love is my name;
Toda mi alma, To my eyes in flame,
Es en mi ojos, All my soul doth come;
Porque ensenas, For instruction meet
A tuas piernas. I receive at thy feet"
Fantine alone refused to swing.
"I don't like to have people put on airs like that," muttered Favourite,
with a good deal of acrimony.
After leaving the asses there was a fresh delight; they crossed the
Seine in a boat, and proceeding from Passy on foot they reached the
barrier of l'Etoile. They had been up since five o'clock that morning,
as the reader will remember; but bah! there is no such thing
as fatigue on Sunday, said Favourite; on Sunday fatigue does not work.
About three o'clock the four couples, frightened at their happiness,
were sliding down the Russian mountains, a singular edifice which
then occupied the heights of Beaujon, and whose undulating line
was visible above the trees of the Champs Elysees.
From time to time Favourite exclaimed:--
"And the surprise? I claim the surprise."
"Patience," replied Tholomyes.
CHAPTER V
AT BOMBARDA'S
The Russian mountains having been exhausted, they began to think about
dinner; and the radiant party of eight, somewhat weary at last, became
stranded in Bombarda's public house, a branch establishment which had been
set up in the Champs-Elysees by that famous restaurant-keeper, Bombarda,
whose sign could then be seen in the Rue de Rivoli, near Delorme Alley.
A large but ugly room, with an alcove and a bed at the end (they
had been obliged to put up with this accommodation in view of the
Sunday crowd); two windows whence they could survey beyond the elms,
the quay and the river; a magnificent August sunlight lightly
touching the panes; two tables; upon one of them a triumphant
mountain of bouquets, mingled with the hats of men and women;
at the other the four couples seated round a merry confusion
of platters, dishes, glasses, and bottles; jugs of beer mingled
with flasks of wine; very little order on the table, some disorder
beneath it;
"They made beneath the table
A noise, a clatter of the feet that was abominable,"
says Moliere.
This was the state which the shepherd idyl, begun at five o'clock
in the morning, had reached at half-past four in the afternoon.
The sun was setting; their appetites were satisfied.
The Champs-Elysees, filled with sunshine and with people, were nothing
but light and dust, the two things of which glory is composed.
The horses of Marly, those neighing marbles, were prancing in
a cloud of gold. Carriages were going and coming. A squadron
of magnificent body-guards, with their clarions at their head,
were descending the Avenue de Neuilly; the white flag, showing faintly
rosy in the setting sun, floated over the dome of the Tuileries.
The Place de la Concorde, which had become the Place Louis XV.
once more, was choked with happy promenaders. Many wore the silver
fleur-de-lys suspended from the white-watered ribbon, which had
not yet wholly disappeared from button-holes in the year 1817.
Here and there choruses of little girls threw to the winds,
amid the passersby, who formed into circles and applauded, the then
celebrated Bourbon air, which was destined to strike the Hundred
Days with lightning, and which had for its refrain:--
"Rendez-nous notre pere de Gand,
Rendez-nous notre pere."
"Give us back our father from Ghent,
Give us back our father."
Groups of dwellers in the suburbs, in Sunday array, sometimes even
decorated with the fleur-de-lys, like the bourgeois, scattered over
the large square and the Marigny square, were playing at rings
and revolving on the wooden horses; others were engaged in drinking;
some journeyman printers had on paper caps; their laughter was audible.
Every thing was radiant. It was a time of undisputed peace
and profound royalist security; it was the epoch when a special
and private report of Chief of Police Angeles to the King,
on the subject of the suburbs of Paris, terminated with these lines:--
"Taking all things into consideration, Sire, there is nothing to be
feared from these people. They are as heedless and as indolent as cats.
The populace is restless in the provinces; it is not in Paris.
These are very pretty men, Sire. It would take all of two of them
to make one of your grenadiers. There is nothing to be feared on
the part of the populace of Paris the capital. It is remarkable
that the stature of this population should have diminished in the
last fifty years; and the populace of the suburbs is still more
puny than at the time of the Revolution. It is not dangerous.
In short, it is an amiable rabble."
Prefects of the police do not deem it possible that a cat can transform
itself into a lion; that does happen, however, and in that lies
the miracle wrought by the populace of Paris. Moreover, the cat so
despised by Count Angles possessed the esteem of the republics of old.
In their eyes it was liberty incarnate; and as though to serve
as pendant to the Minerva Aptera of the Piraeus, there stood on
the public square in Corinth the colossal bronze figure of a cat.
The ingenuous police of the Restoration beheld the populace of Paris
in too "rose-colored" a light; it is not so much of "an amiable rabble"
as it is thought. The Parisian is to the Frenchman what the Athenian
was to the Greek: no one sleeps more soundly than he, no one is
more frankly frivolous and lazy than he, no one can better assume
the air of forgetfulness; let him not be trusted nevertheless;
he is ready for any sort of cool deed; but when there is glory at
the end of it, he is worthy of admiration in every sort of fury.
Give him a pike, he will produce the 10th of August; give him a gun,
you will have Austerlitz. He is Napoleon's stay and Danton's resource.
Is it a question of country, he enlists; is it a question of liberty,
he tears up the pavements. Beware! his hair filled with wrath, is epic;
his blouse drapes itself like the folds of a chlamys. Take care! he
will make of the first Rue Grenetat which comes to hand Caudine Forks.
When the hour strikes, this man of the faubourgs will grow in stature;
this little man will arise, and his gaze will be terrible, and his
breath will become a tempest, and there will issue forth from that
slender chest enough wind to disarrange the folds of the Alps.
It is, thanks to the suburban man of Paris, that the Revolution,
mixed with arms, conquers Europe. He sings; it is his delight.
Proportion his song to his nature, and you will see! As long as he
has for refrain nothing but la Carmagnole, he only overthrows
Louis XVI.; make him sing the Marseillaise, and he will free
the world.
This note jotted down on the margin of Angles' report, we will return
to our four couples. The dinner, as we have said, was drawing
to its close.
CHAPTER VI
A CHAPTER IN WHICH THEY ADORE EACH OTHER
Chat at table, the chat of love; it is as impossible to reproduce
one as the other; the chat of love is a cloud; the chat at table
is smoke.
Fameuil and Dahlia were humming. Tholomyes was drinking.
Zephine was laughing, Fantine smiling, Listolier blowing a wooden
trumpet which he had purchased at Saint-Cloud.
Favourite gazed tenderly at Blachevelle and said:--
"Blachevelle, I adore you."
This called forth a question from Blachevelle:--
"What would you do, Favourite, if I were to cease to love you?"
"I!" cried Favourite. "Ah! Do not say that even in jest!
If you were to cease to love me, I would spring after you, I would
scratch you, I should rend you, I would throw you into the water,
I would have you arrested."
Blachevelle smiled with the voluptuous self-conceit of a man
who is tickled in his self-love. Favourite resumed:--
"Yes, I would scream to the police! Ah! I should not restrain myself,
not at all! Rabble!"
Blachevelle threw himself back in his chair, in an ecstasy,
and closed both eyes proudly.
Dahlia, as she ate, said in a low voice to Favourite, amid the uproar:--
"So you really idolize him deeply, that Blachevelle of yours?"
"I? I detest him," replied Favourite in the same tone, seizing her
fork again. "He is avaricious. I love the little fellow opposite
me in my house. He is very nice, that young man; do you know him?
One can see that he is an actor by profession. I love actors.
As soon as he comes in, his mother says to him: `Ah! mon Dieu! my
peace of mind is gone. There he goes with his shouting. But, my dear,
you are splitting my head!' So he goes up to rat-ridden garrets,
to black holes, as high as he can mount, and there he sets to singing,
declaiming, how do I know what? so that he can be heard down stairs!
He earns twenty sous a day at an attorney's by penning quibbles.
He is the son of a former precentor of Saint-Jacques-du-Haut-Pas.
Ah! he is very nice. He idolizes me so, that one day when he saw
me making batter for some pancakes, he said to me: `Mamselle, make
your gloves into fritters, and I will eat them.' It is only
artists who can say such things as that. Ah! he is very nice.
I am in a fair way to go out of my head over that little fellow.
Never mind; I tell Blachevelle that I adore him--how I lie! Hey! How I
do lie!"
Favourite paused, and then went on:--
"I am sad, you see, Dahlia. It has done nothing but rain all summer;
the wind irritates me; the wind does not abate. Blachevelle is
very stingy; there are hardly any green peas in the market;
one does not know what to eat. I have the spleen, as the English say,
butter is so dear! and then you see it is horrible, here we are
dining in a room with a bed in it, and that disgusts me with life."
CHAPTER VII
THE WISDOM OF THOLOMYES
In the meantime, while some sang, the rest talked together
tumultuously all at once; it was no longer anything but noise.
Tholomyes intervened.
"Let us not talk at random nor too fast," he exclaimed.
"Let us reflect, if we wish to be brilliant. Too much improvisation
empties the mind in a stupid way. Running beer gathers no froth.
No haste, gentlemen. Let us mingle majesty with the feast. Let us
eat with meditation; let us make haste slowly. Let us not hurry.
Consider the springtime; if it makes haste, it is done for;
that is to say, it gets frozen. Excess of zeal ruins peach-trees
and apricot-trees. Excess of zeal kills the grace and the mirth
of good dinners. No zeal, gentlemen! Grimod de la Reyniere agrees
with Talleyrand."
A hollow sound of rebellion rumbled through the group.
"Leave us in peace, Tholomyes," said Blachevelle.
"Down with the tyrant!" said Fameuil.
"Bombarda, Bombance, and Bambochel!" cried Listolier.
"Sunday exists," resumed Fameuil.
"We are sober," added Listolier.
"Tholomyes," remarked Blachevelle, "contemplate my calmness [mon calme]."
"You are the Marquis of that," retorted Tholomyes.
This mediocre play upon words produced the effect of a stone in a pool.
The Marquis de Montcalm was at that time a celebrated royalist.
All the frogs held their peace.
"Friends," cried Tholomyes, with the accent of a man who had
recovered his empire, "Come to yourselves. This pun which has
fallen from the skies must not be received with too much stupor.
Everything which falls in that way is not necessarily worthy of
enthusiasm and respect. The pun is the dung of the mind which soars.
The jest falls, no matter where; and the mind after producing a piece
of stupidity plunges into the azure depths. A whitish speck flattened
against the rock does not prevent the condor from soaring aloft.
Far be it from me to insult the pun! I honor it in proportion
to its merits; nothing more. All the most august, the most sublime,
the most charming of humanity, and perhaps outside of humanity,
have made puns. Jesus Christ made a pun on St. Peter, Moses on Isaac,
AEschylus on Polynices, Cleopatra on Octavius. And observe that
Cleopatra's pun preceded the battle of Actium, and that had it
not been for it, no one would have remembered the city of Toryne,
a Greek name which signifies a ladle. That once conceded, I return
to my exhortation. I repeat, brothers, I repeat, no zeal, no hubbub,
no excess; even in witticisms, gayety, jollities, or plays on words.
Listen to me. I have the prudence of Amphiaraus and the baldness
of Caesar. There must be a limit, even to rebuses. Est modus
in rebus.
"There must be a limit, even to dinners. You are fond of
apple turnovers, ladies; do not indulge in them to excess.
Even in the matter of turnovers, good sense and art are requisite.
Gluttony chastises the glutton, Gula punit Gulax. Indigestion is
charged by the good God with preaching morality to stomachs.
And remember this: each one of our passions, even love, has a stomach
which must not be filled too full. In all things the word finis
must be written in good season; self-control must be exercised
when the matter becomes urgent; the bolt must be drawn on appetite;
one must set one's own fantasy to the violin, and carry one's self
to the post. The sage is the man who knows how, at a given moment,
to effect his own arrest. Have some confidence in me, for I have
succeeded to some extent in my study of the law, according to the
verdict of my examinations, for I know the difference between the
question put and the question pending, for I have sustained a thesis
in Latin upon the manner in which torture was administered at Rome
at the epoch when Munatius Demens was quaestor of the Parricide;
because I am going to be a doctor, apparently it does not follow
that it is absolutely necessary that I should be an imbecile.
I recommend you to moderation in your desires. It is true that my
name is Felix Tholomyes; I speak well. Happy is he who, when the
hour strikes, takes a heroic resolve, and abdicates like Sylla
or Origenes."
Favourite listened with profound attention.
"Felix," said she, "what a pretty word! I love that name.
It is Latin; it means prosper."
Tholomyes went on:--
"Quirites, gentlemen, caballeros, my friends. Do you wish never to
feel the prick, to do without the nuptial bed, and to brave love?
Nothing more simple. Here is the receipt: lemonade, excessive exercise,
hard labor; work yourself to death, drag blocks, sleep not, hold vigil,
gorge yourself with nitrous beverages, and potions of nymphaeas;
drink emulsions of poppies and agnus castus; season this with
a strict diet, starve yourself, and add thereto cold baths,
girdles of herbs, the application of a plate of lead, lotions made
with the subacetate of lead, and fomentations of oxycrat."
"I prefer a woman," said Listolier.
"Woman," resumed Tholomyes; "distrust her. Woe to him who yields
himself to the unstable heart of woman! Woman is perfidious
and disingenuous. She detests the serpent from professional jealousy.
The serpent is the shop over the way."
"Tholomyes!" cried Blachevelle, "you are drunk!"
"Pardieu," said Tholomyes.
"Then be gay," resumed Blachevelle.
"I agree to that," responded Tholomyes.
And, refilling his glass, he rose.
"Glory to wine! Nunc te, Bacche, canam! Pardon me ladies;
that is Spanish. And the proof of it, senoras, is this: like people,
like cask. The arrobe of Castile contains sixteen litres; the cantaro
of Alicante, twelve; the almude of the Canaries, twenty-five;
the cuartin of the Balearic Isles, twenty-six; the boot of
Tzar Peter, thirty. Long live that Tzar who was great, and long
live his boot, which was still greater! Ladies, take the advice
of a friend; make a mistake in your neighbor if you see fit.
The property of love is to err. A love affair is not made to crouch
down and brutalize itself like an English serving-maid who has
callouses on her knees from scrubbing. It is not made for that;
it errs gayly, our gentle love. It has been said, error is human;
I say, error is love. Ladies, I idolize you all. O Zephine,
O Josephine, face more than irregular, you would be charming were you
not all askew. You have the air of a pretty face upon which some one
has sat down by mistake. As for Favourite, O nymphs and muses! one day
when Blachevelle was crossing the gutter in the Rue Guerin-Boisseau,
he espied a beautiful girl with white stockings well drawn up,
which displayed her legs. This prologue pleased him, and Blachevelle
fell in love. The one he loved was Favourite. O Favourite,
thou hast Ionian lips. There was a Greek painter named Euphorion,
who was surnamed the painter of the lips. That Greek alone would
have been worthy to paint thy mouth. Listen! before thee, there was
never a creature worthy of the name. Thou wert made to receive the
apple like Venus, or to eat it like Eve; beauty begins with thee.
I have just referred to Eve; it is thou who hast created her.
Thou deservest the letters-patent of the beautiful woman. O Favourite,
I cease to address you as `thou,' because I pass from poetry to prose.
You were speaking of my name a little while ago. That touched me;
but let us, whoever we may be, distrust names. They may delude us.
I am called Felix, and I am not happy. Words are liars. Let us
not blindly accept the indications which they afford us. It would
be a mistake to write to Liege[2] for corks, and to Pau for gloves.
Miss Dahlia, were I in your place, I would call myself Rosa.
A flower should smell sweet, and woman should have wit. I say nothing
of Fantine; she is a dreamer, a musing, thoughtful, pensive person;
she is a phantom possessed of the form of a nymph and the modesty
of a nun, who has strayed into the life of a grisette, but who takes
refuge in illusions, and who sings and prays and gazes into the
azure without very well knowing what she sees or what she is doing,
and who, with her eyes fixed on heaven, wanders in a garden where
there are more birds than are in existence. O Fantine, know this:
I, Tholomyes, I am all illusion; but she does not even hear me,
that blond maid of Chimeras! as for the rest, everything about her
is freshness, suavity, youth, sweet morning light. O Fantine,
maid worthy of being called Marguerite or Pearl, you are a woman
from the beauteous Orient. Ladies, a second piece of advice:
do not marry; marriage is a graft; it takes well or ill;
avoid that risk. But bah! what am I saying? I am wasting my words.
Girls are incurable on the subject of marriage, and all that we
wise men can say will not prevent the waistcoat-makers and the
shoe-stitchers from dreaming of husbands studded with diamonds.
Well, so be it; but, my beauties, remember this, you eat too much sugar.
You have but one fault, O woman, and that is nibbling sugar.
O nibbling sex, your pretty little white teeth adore sugar.
Now, heed me well, sugar is a salt. All salts are withering.
Sugar is the most desiccating of all salts; it sucks the liquids
of the blood through the veins; hence the coagulation, and then the
solidification of the blood; hence tubercles in the lungs, hence death.
That is why diabetes borders on consumption. Then, do not crunch sugar,
and you will live. I turn to the men: gentlemen, make conquest,
rob each other of your well-beloved without remorse. Chassez across.
In love there are no friends. Everywhere where there is a pretty
woman hostility is open. No quarter, war to the death! a pretty
woman is a casus belli; a pretty woman is flagrant misdemeanor.
All the invasions of history have been determined by petticoats.
Woman is man's right. Romulus carried off the Sabines; William carried
off the Saxon women; Caesar carried off the Roman women. The man
who is not loved soars like a vulture over the mistresses of other men;
and for my own part, to all those unfortunate men who are widowers,
I throw the sublime proclamation of Bonaparte to the army of Italy:
"Soldiers, you are in need of everything; the enemy has it."
[2] Liege: a cork-tree. Pau: a jest on peau, skin.
Tholomyes paused.
"Take breath, Tholomyes," said Blachevelle.
At the same moment Blachevelle, supported by Listolier and Fameuil,
struck up to a plaintive air, one of those studio songs composed
of the first words which come to hand, rhymed richly and not at all,
as destitute of sense as the gesture of the tree and the sound
of the wind, which have their birth in the vapor of pipes, and are
dissipated and take their flight with them. This is the couplet
by which the group replied to Tholomyes' harangue:--
"The father turkey-cocks so grave
Some money to an agent gave,
That master good Clermont-Tonnerre
Might be made pope on Saint Johns' day fair.
But this good Clermont could not be
Made pope, because no priest was he;
And then their agent, whose wrath burned,
With all their money back returned."
This was not calculated to calm Tholomyes' improvisation; he emptied
his glass, filled, refilled it, and began again:--
"Down with wisdom! Forget all that I have said. Let us be neither
prudes nor prudent men nor prudhommes. I propose a toast to mirth;
be merry. Let us complete our course of law by folly and eating!
Indigestion and the digest. Let Justinian be the male, and Feasting,
the female! Joy in the depths! Live, O creation! The world
is a great diamond. I am happy. The birds are astonishing.
What a festival everywhere! The nightingale is a gratuitous Elleviou.
Summer, I salute thee! O Luxembourg! O Georgics of the Rue Madame,
and of the Allee de l'Observatoire! O pensive infantry soldiers!
O all those charming nurses who, while they guard the children,
amuse themselves! The pampas of America would please me if I had not
the arcades of the Odeon. My soul flits away into the virgin forests
and to the savannas. All is beautiful. The flies buzz in the sun.
The sun has sneezed out the humming bird. Embrace me, Fantine!"
He made a mistake and embraced Favourite.
CHAPTER VIII
THE DEATH OF A HORSE
"The dinners are better at Edon's than at Bombarda's," exclaimed Zephine.
"I prefer Bombarda to Edon," declared Blachevelle. "There is
more luxury. It is more Asiatic. Look at the room downstairs;
there are mirrors [glaces] on the walls."
"I prefer them [glaces, ices] on my plate," said Favourite.
Blachevelle persisted:--
"Look at the knives. The handles are of silver at Bombarda's
and of bone at Edon's. Now, silver is more valuable than bone."
"Except for those who have a silver chin," observed Tholomyes.
He was looking at the dome of the Invalides, which was visible
from Bombarda's windows.
A pause ensued.
"Tholomyes," exclaimed Fameuil, "Listolier and I were having
a discussion just now."
"A discussion is a good thing," replied Tholomyes; "a quarrel
is better."
"We were disputing about philosophy."
"Well?"
"Which do you prefer, Descartes or Spinoza?"
"Desaugiers," said Tholomyes.
This decree pronounced, he took a drink, and went on:--
"I consent to live. All is not at an end on earth since we can still
talk nonsense. For that I return thanks to the immortal gods.
We lie. One lies, but one laughs. One affirms, but one doubts.
The unexpected bursts forth from the syllogism. That is fine.
There are still human beings here below who know how to open
and close the surprise box of the paradox merrily. This, ladies,
which you are drinking with so tranquil an air is Madeira wine,
you must know, from the vineyard of Coural das Freiras, which is
three hundred and seventeen fathoms above the level of the sea.
Attention while you drink! three hundred and seventeen fathoms!
and Monsieur Bombarda, the magnificent eating-house keeper, gives you
those three hundred and seventeen fathoms for four francs and
fifty centimes."
Again Fameuil interrupted him:--
"Tholomyes, your opinions fix the law. Who is your favorite author?"
"Ber--"
"Quin?"
"No; Choux."
And Tholomyes continued:--
"Honor to Bombarda! He would equal Munophis of Elephanta if he
could but get me an Indian dancing-girl, and Thygelion of Chaeronea
if he could bring me a Greek courtesan; for, oh, ladies! there
were Bombardas in Greece and in Egypt. Apuleius tells us of them.
Alas! always the same, and nothing new; nothing more unpublished
by the creator in creation! Nil sub sole novum, says Solomon;
amor omnibus idem, says Virgil; and Carabine mounts with Carabin into
the bark at Saint-Cloud, as Aspasia embarked with Pericles upon the
fleet at Samos. One last word. Do you know what Aspasia was, ladies?
Although she lived at an epoch when women had, as yet, no soul,
she was a soul; a soul of a rosy and purple hue, more ardent hued
than fire, fresher than the dawn. Aspasia was a creature in whom
two extremes of womanhood met; she was the goddess prostitute;
Socrates plus Manon Lescaut. Aspasia was created in case a mistress
should be needed for Prometheus."
Tholomyes, once started, would have found some difficulty in stopping,
had not a horse fallen down upon the quay just at that moment.
The shock caused the cart and the orator to come to a dead halt.
It was a Beauceron mare, old and thin, and one fit for the knacker,
which was dragging a very heavy cart. On arriving in front of Bombarda's,
the worn-out, exhausted beast had refused to proceed any further.
This incident attracted a crowd. Hardly had the cursing and indignant
carter had time to utter with proper energy the sacramental word,
Matin (the jade), backed up with a pitiless cut of the whip,
when the jade fell, never to rise again. On hearing the hubbub made
by the passersby, Tholomyes' merry auditors turned their heads,
and Tholomyes took advantage of the opportunity to bring his allocution
to a close with this melancholy strophe:--
"Elle etait de ce monde ou coucous et carrosses[3]
Ont le meme destin;
Et, rosse, elle a vecu ce que vivant les rosses,
L'espace d'un matin!"
[3] She belonged to that circle where cuckoos and carriages share
the same fate; and a jade herself, she lived, as jades live,
for the space of a morning (or jade).
"Poor horse!" sighed Fantine.
And Dahlia exclaimed:--
"There is Fantine on the point of crying over horses. How can
one be such a pitiful fool as that!"
At that moment Favourite, folding her arms and throwing her head back,
looked resolutely at Tholomyes and said:--
"Come, now! the surprise?"
"Exactly. The moment has arrived," replied Tholomyes.
"Gentlemen, the hour for giving these ladies a surprise has struck.
Wait for us a moment, ladies."
"It begins with a kiss," said Blachevelle.
"On the brow," added Tholomyes.
Each gravely bestowed a kiss on his mistress's brow; then all four
filed out through the door, with their fingers on their lips.
Favourite clapped her hands on their departure.
"It is beginning to be amusing already," said she.
"Don't be too long," murmured Fantine; "we are waiting for you."
CHAPTER IX
A MERRY END TO MIRTH
When the young girls were left alone, they leaned two by two on
the window-sills, chatting, craning out their heads, and talking
from one window to the other.
They saw the young men emerge from the Cafe Bombarda arm in arm.
The latter turned round, made signs to them, smiled, and disappeared
in that dusty Sunday throng which makes a weekly invasion into the
Champs-Elysees.
"Don't be long!" cried Fantine.
"What are they going to bring us?" said Zephine.
"It will certainly be something pretty," said Dahlia.
"For my part," said Favourite, "I want it to be of gold."
Their attention was soon distracted by the movements on the shore
of the lake, which they could see through the branches of the
large trees, and which diverted them greatly.
It was the hour for the departure of the mail-coaches and diligences.
Nearly all the stage-coaches for the south and west passed through
the Champs-Elysees. The majority followed the quay and went through
the Passy Barrier. From moment to moment, some huge vehicle,
painted yellow and black, heavily loaded, noisily harnessed,
rendered shapeless by trunks, tarpaulins, and valises, full of heads
which immediately disappeared, rushed through the crowd with all
the sparks of a forge, with dust for smoke, and an air of fury,
grinding the pavements, changing all the paving-stones into steels.
This uproar delighted the young girls. Favourite exclaimed:--
"What a row! One would say that it was a pile of chains flying away."
It chanced that one of these vehicles, which they could only see
with difficulty through the thick elms, halted for a moment,
then set out again at a gallop. This surprised Fantine.
"That's odd!" said she. "I thought the diligence never stopped."
Favourite shrugged her shoulders.
"This Fantine is surprising. I am coming to take a look at her out
of curiosity. She is dazzled by the simplest things. Suppose a case:
I am a traveller; I say to the diligence, `I will go on in advance;
you shall pick me up on the quay as you pass.' The diligence passes,
sees me, halts, and takes me. That is done every day. You do not
know life, my dear."
In this manner a certain time elapsed. All at once Favourite made
a movement, like a person who is just waking up.
"Well," said she, "and the surprise?"
"Yes, by the way," joined in Dahlia, "the famous surprise?"
"They are a very long time about it!" said Fantine.
As Fantine concluded this sigh, the waiter who had served them
at dinner entered. He held in his hand something which resembled
a letter.
"What is that?" demanded Favourite.
The waiter replied:--
"It is a paper that those gentlemen left for these ladies."
"Why did you not bring it at once?"
"Because," said the waiter, "the gentlemen ordered me not to deliver
it to the ladies for an hour."
Favourite snatched the paper from the waiter's hand. It was,
in fact, a letter.
"Stop!" said she; "there is no address; but this is what is written
on it--"
"THIS IS THE SURPRISE."
She tore the letter open hastily, opened it, and read [she knew
how to read]:--
"OUR BELOVED:--
"You must know that we have parents. Parents--you do not know much
about such things. They are called fathers and mothers by the
civil code, which is puerile and honest. Now, these parents groan,
these old folks implore us, these good men and these good women call us
prodigal sons; they desire our return, and offer to kill calves for us.
Being virtuous, we obey them. At the hour when you read this,
five fiery horses will be bearing us to our papas and mammas. We are
pulling up our stakes, as Bossuet says. We are going; we are gone.
We flee in the arms of Lafitte and on the wings of Caillard.
The Toulouse diligence tears us from the abyss, and the abyss
is you, O our little beauties! We return to society, to duty,
to respectability, at full trot, at the rate of three leagues an hour.
It is necessary for the good of the country that we should be,
like the rest of the world, prefects, fathers of families, rural police,
and councillors of state. Venerate us. We are sacrificing ourselves.
Mourn for us in haste, and replace us with speed. If this letter
lacerates you, do the same by it. Adieu.
"For the space of nearly two years we have made you happy.
We bear you no grudge for that.
"Signed:
BLACHEVELLE.
FAMUEIL.
LISTOLIER.
FELIX THOLOMYES.
"Postscriptum. The dinner is paid for."
The four young women looked at each other.
Favourite was the first to break the silence.
"Well!" she exclaimed, "it's a very pretty farce, all the same."
"It is very droll," said Zephine.
"That must have been Blachevelle's idea," resumed Favourite.
"It makes me in love with him. No sooner is he gone than he is loved.
This is an adventure, indeed."
"No," said Dahlia; "it was one of Tholomyes' ideas. That is evident.
"In that case," retorted Favourite, "death to Blachevelle, and long
live Tholomyes!"
"Long live Tholomyes!" exclaimed Dahlia and Zephine.
And they burst out laughing.
Fantine laughed with the rest.
An hour later, when she had returned to her room, she wept.
It was her first love affair, as we have said; she had given herself
to this Tholomyes as to a husband, and the poor girl had a child.
BOOK FOURTH.--TO CONFIDE IS SOMETIMES TO DELIVER INTO A PERSON'S
POWER
CHAPTER I
ONE MOTHER MEETS ANOTHER MOTHER
There was, at Montfermeil, near Paris, during the first quarter
of this century, a sort of cook-shop which no longer exists.
This cook-shop was kept by some people named Thenardier,
husband and wife. It was situated in Boulanger Lane. Over the door
there was a board nailed flat against the wall. Upon this board
was painted something which resembled a man carrying another man on
his back, the latter wearing the big gilt epaulettes of a general,
with large silver stars; red spots represented blood; the rest of
the picture consisted of smoke, and probably represented a battle.
Below ran this inscription: AT THE SIGN OF SERGEANT OF WATERLOO
(Au Sargent de Waterloo).
Nothing is more common than a cart or a truck at the door of
a hostelry. Nevertheless, the vehicle, or, to speak more accurately,
the fragment of a vehicle, which encumbered the street in front
of the cook-shop of the Sergeant of Waterloo, one evening in the
spring of 1818, would certainly have attracted, by its mass,
the attention of any painter who had passed that way.
It was the fore-carriage of one of those trucks which are used
in wooded tracts of country, and which serve to transport thick
planks and the trunks of trees. This fore-carriage was composed
of a massive iron axle-tree with a pivot, into which was fitted
a heavy shaft, and which was supported by two huge wheels.
The whole thing was compact, overwhelming, and misshapen.
It seemed like the gun-carriage of an enormous cannon. The ruts of
the road had bestowed on the wheels, the fellies, the hub, the axle,
and the shaft, a layer of mud, a hideous yellowish daubing hue,
tolerably like that with which people are fond of ornamenting cathedrals.
The wood was disappearing under mud, and the iron beneath rust.
Under the axle-tree hung, like drapery, a huge chain, worthy of
some Goliath of a convict. This chain suggested, not the beams,
which it was its office to transport, but the mastodons and mammoths
which it might have served to harness; it had the air of the galleys,
but of cyclopean and superhuman galleys, and it seemed to have been
detached from some monster. Homer would have bound Polyphemus with it,
and Shakespeare, Caliban.
Why was that fore-carriage of a truck in that place in the street?
In the first place, to encumber the street; next, in order
that it might finish the process of rusting. There is a throng
of institutions in the old social order, which one comes across
in this fashion as one walks about outdoors, and which have
no other reasons for existence than the above.
The centre of the chain swung very near the ground in the middle,
and in the loop, as in the rope of a swing, there were seated
and grouped, on that particular evening, in exquisite interlacement,
two little girls; one about two years and a half old, the other,
eighteen months; the younger in the arms of the other. A handkerchief,
cleverly knotted about them, prevented their falling out.
A mother had caught sight of that frightful chain, and had said,
"Come! there's a plaything for my children."
The two children, who were dressed prettily and with some elegance,
were radiant with pleasure; one would have said that they were two
roses amid old iron; their eyes were a triumph; their fresh cheeks
were full of laughter. One had chestnut hair; the other, brown.
Their innocent faces were two delighted surprises; a blossoming
shrub which grew near wafted to the passers-by perfumes which seemed
to emanate from them; the child of eighteen months displayed her
pretty little bare stomach with the chaste indecency of childhood.
Above and around these two delicate heads, all made of happiness
and steeped in light, the gigantic fore-carriage, black with rust,
almost terrible, all entangled in curves and wild angles,
rose in a vault, like the entrance of a cavern. A few paces apart,
crouching down upon the threshold of the hostelry, the mother,
not a very prepossessing woman, by the way, though touching at
that moment, was swinging the two children by means of a long cord