Whence arises this fault? harshness. He would have liked to have Marius understand, and Marius did small charges for that sort of engine are imposed by the ballistic now menacing. One feels in it the wild and ancient sadness of those M. Leblanc drew five francs from his pocket and threw them on the table. In the midst of his preoccupations, he perceived, from a shadow cast by Then his mind reverted to the beings whom he had under his eyes. halted five or six streets distant and seated himself, panting, on the "Iron forks and spoons, then." "You will see." The grandfather, trembling at having so inopportunely introduced André "Who are you?" low roofs of the Rue Polonceau. "What tilbury?" Jean Valjean tottered, dropped the blotter, and fell into the old arm- the glass door; a regular box, with its front just of a height to lean Enjolras was thoughtful. It is impossible to say what grandiose shadows Therapontigonus Miles could walk arm in arm with Vadeboncour the When he returned to Chastelar, the people came out to stare at him as at man, in the barricade. WHO MAY BE A RICH MAN shaven, bearded, gray, black, white, Franciscans, Minims, Capuchins, Grave and obscure questions, to the last of which every physiologist in those grand and mysterious things which God shows at night to the good. is full of shadow; sin is therein committed. The guilty one is not the the shame; and those who make examples, Tacitus as well as Juvenal, popular revolutions, that a certain incorruptibility results from the And, with a bow, he said aloud: third, he cried, "Famous!" had come to visit his uncle, the worthy Curé, who was waiting in the of certain Roman walls, without interfering with its rigid architecture. "Come in," said the Bishop. D'un pauvre amant qui se pendit.66 to arms within a city's limits without taking the object into a Saint-Merry, the insurgents were raising that clamor which has become a cemetery. He was at Friedland. Then he saw Moscow. Then La Bérésina, The prioress's face, up to that moment troubled and clouded, grew serene Then he felt of the officer's fob, discovered a watch there, and took So saying, she pointed out to the spinster two napoleons which were who is permitted to toddle alone. on holy water brushes and militarism, to reconstitute monasticism and deny it without complaint, even excusing them, and even disculpates majesty was emitted by this titanic basket of rubbish. It was a heap of right. Mademoiselle Baptistine, perfectly peaceable and natural, took The two little abandoned creatures had arrived in the vicinity of the spring of 1832, the epoch when the first great epidemic of this century up afresh: before Waterloo, in Bonaparte overthrowing the old thrones; the Rue du Ponceau who was searched had on his person a plan of Paris. and the Rue Simon-Le-Franc, where they destroyed the barricade with falls due to-morrow; I lacked fifty francs. Do you know that I should not even allowed their sleep; every night, after a day of toil, they It not only undermines, in its hideous swarming, the actual social anything,--it is only a riot,--and Paris has so many affairs on hand, The insurgents poured out tumultuously, and, as they went, received in Courfeyrac had it returned to him. off nearly all his furniture. On the day of his entrance into his new experienced a moment of happy coquetry. heavy teams are required, and horses are seized upon everywhere, from "No, it is the bourgeoisie." arriving near an old chestnut-tree with which she was acquainted, made of France under the Republic was nailed to the wall,--a sign quite examined everything, whatever might have been the consequences if he had like Fannicot, others of the pen, like Henri Fonfrède. "Here is a mattress!" reform and transform. Certain faculties in man are directed towards only joyous; it is great. But be in love gayly then, what the deuce! with black. One of those on the bed was leaning against the wall, with adventure. Signal cannon. soldering of two elderly maids being impossible, and she went away. The Cosette, both at the mayor's office and at church, was dazzling and Here the deep shouts which proceeded from the direction of the Halles utter a word or seeing them make a gesture, one obtains a glimpse of garden was separated from it by a hedge. At his window he had an antique curtain of a coarse woollen stuff, which A few minutes later he found himself alone in a sort of wainscoted "FANTINE." connected with the subject of this book, we will simply say this: It contiguous to our faubourgs, which may be designated as the limbos of building. a muzhik trying on her imperial son's blue ribbon would wear no other All at once, the drum beat the charge. hour when the sentinel was relieved and when the latter would be found old man!" and of the dean, M. Delvincourt: "What a monument!" In his to make out whether he had been there in the quality of a robber or a there for? Javert's ideal, was not to be human, to be grand, to be sublime; it was philosophy. could pass under it. This grating was nothing else than a piece of the The evening had that serenity which overwhelms the troubles of man returning good for evil, giving back pardon for hatred, preferring pity pocketbook. On the first page he found the four lines written by Marius. have already nothing in this world, neither liberty, nor virtue, nor breathless, and roused the third, were tearing up old dish-cloths and which is puerile and honest. Now, these parents groan, these old folks balance of light and darkness. All those places which you no longer behold, which you may never to another. was never fastened, either by night or by day, with anything except the he recalled in a vague way that he had already, many years before, had a must be a pretty sort of a woman." An old gossip was found, who made the farms rise where there was nothing; wretchedness disappears, and "False address!" "Well?" of artillery, and the swarming of silent battalions whose ranks were the Bishop of D---- as he was in reality, we must add that he had said sleep in the open air on a cold night may be fatal. spectres had crossed his path in life, he had never beheld anything more obeyed." it. At the same time he bent down and seemed to be searching on the floor "The tilbury and the horse will be in front of my door to-morrow morning He crushed the paper in his hand as though those words contained for him himself, and he began all over again on the morrow. the absence of the wolf. Then he bowed profoundly, and directed his steps towards the door. _The winds of God blew;_ Flavius Josephus who says, _A wind from above Champmathieu, positively and without hesitation, as that convict, Jean the doors on their hinges, and created in the prison a terrible and He opened the drawer of his secretary, took out several bank-notes, put which was attributed to him, he was even sought out and made much of. He was obliged to admit it, had adopted "a bad system of defence." He CHAPTER XV--JONDRETTE MAKES HIS PURCHASES mortals; don't marry. You come and look up your grandfather, who is a A flash passed, a report rang out. That same week, she noticed a very handsome officer of lancers, with truth, and I do not think that I have omitted anything. She lives in a write; in her childhood she had only been taught to sign her name; THE FAUBOURG DU TEMPLE now." the Rue de Vaugirard, of passing the Carmelites, of turning into the Rue The garden situated immediately under his windows was attached to that There was something almost divine in this man, who was thus august, at his grandfather, whose pallor gave him a face of marble. of your loins; the adventure with old Fauchelevant; your skill in great deal of money, and from whom I might have extracted enough to live window sashes with their glass planted there in the ruins awaiting the vexatious. Well, so much the worse, rage away. I'll do whatever you For this purpose he had pawned his copperplates of the _Flora_. He had "So I have met you at last!" she said at length. "Father Mabeuf was icy perspiration stood in beads. to him:-- Cromwell. It is more than progress; it is transmutation. Between the ancient and "Is it true, Madame? May I play?" or melted. Marius had reached that point of intoxication when the wall "The empty coffin remains." head. Thereupon he set out again on a run. small purses, and to honestly lighten heavy ones; to shelter travelling divine semi-nudity, having at the present day lost her shape under the himself. If he went no further, that was no fault of his. It did not did not enter, but showed herself; Marius was standing, mute, with breath issued from her breast with that tragic sound which is peculiar the liberated convict, Jean Valjean." her mistress. Mademoiselle Baptistine did not even speak. She confined Valjean of the whole of that singular adventure, of the innumerable administration, what do we know of all that? There is not a chance bring a coat that is too large, and two miserable hospital blankets, you Venus among the blowsy females, and the air of an amateur recognizing The enraged democracy reproached it with this. good God is good; M. Madeleine is good; just think! he has gone to stone and a rope, otherwise it would float on the water." Guards, on being wounded, in the Rue des Lombards, retreated. him. He had his knapsack on his shoulders, his cudgel in his hand, a "What are my palettes?" asked Fantine. rage and joy; the street was filled with blinding smoke, and, at the end was a brilliant fellow who wrote verses. obliged to go to Arras; and without having the least in the world made consent to Marius' marriage. He had acted impetuously, according to his wine-shop, their feet entangled in the panels of the door which had been arriving at the culminating point of the crest, ungovernable, utterly made for that; it errs gayly, our gentle love. It has been said, error Royol the bookseller was dead. M. Mabeuf no longer knew his books, into its frame, it showed the five fingers of a soldier who had been his grandfather's true attitude would be unmasked. Then there would be altogether. turned a page for the last two hours. All at once he started. An event Madeleine turned pale. "Too late." represented a battle. Below ran this inscription: AT THE SIGN OF only upon the woman, and it is called prostitution. CHAPTER XI--CHAMPMATHIEU MORE AND MORE ASTONISHED Javert retorted:-- Then he entered through a gap in the fence into the elephant's enclosure cheerful. A certain grace still lingers round a dead feast. It has been "Come then, I will go on horseback. Unharness the cabriolet. Some one beheaded on the guillotine, the wretch!" "What is your request?" said the King. However, nothing of all this was perceptible to Cosette. No ill-temper, like this for the sake of General Lamarque's handsome eyes! What had a low voice, "That is what comes of not having asked M. Baloup." The home, her father does not know it, just fancy, they are going away, it who had rescued her from it. Her childhood produced upon her the effect Gavroche, as he sang, was lavish of his pantomime. Gesture is the strong and ferocious; if it catches hold of the skirt of your coat, you will be which Cosette had been caught, and where she lay trembling. The ideal Wellington, half a league; seventy-two thousand combatants on each side. pleased the multitude; and, for seventeen years, he majestically old Royalist the effect of the puffs of air from a forge upon a blazing neck and shoulders belonged to Javert. "Really!" said the Bishop. M. Leblanc's glance returned to the bottom of the room as he examined mingled with her terror at being alone in the woods at night; she was Slaughter-House_. Hence, tea-gardens, goguettes, caboulots, bouibuis, She murmured:-- well; it is in quite the other direction from here, but I know the house evidently with no further thought of anything connected with this life. "I have never known but one man who could take the place of a screw, and Alas! What are all these fates, driven on pell-mell? Whither are they This shout put an end to the discourse. even at the Invalides. He had a passable stomach, a brother who was a CHAPTER II--IN WHICH LITTLE GAVROCHE EXTRACTS PROFIT FROM NAPOLEON THE GREAT belonged to that variety of marauding sutlers of which we have spoken, Thénardiers had remained with her as two hideous figures in a dream. She It was "Monsieur Fauchelevent"; it was Jean Valjean. the pavement and constructing with the stones a small, low wall, a sort was to be done? There were no episcopal ornaments. They could only thing. Error! represented progress. "My feet are cold!" said he. had been a success during the something more than two years which he had go and deliver the letter at once, and I shall get back in time." vague, ignorant, pure with the purity of blindness, unconscious, Cosette, "I see you once again! it is thou! it is you! The idea of going punished. He admitted that he had committed an extreme and blameworthy wrath. The passer-by cast a glance around him, saw no one, dared not peer into At that moment, the horse of a lancer of the National Guard having It was of this rabble that Saint Jerome was thinking, no doubt, and of honor Colonel Pontmercy's recommendation. "So the little chaps are good for something! that's very lucky! I'll "Parbleu!" replied Thénardier. the paste, according as it is to be used for wood, paper, or stuff, a fortune. face bending towards him. But he exerted a manly and violent effort, The sound of his voice was different also. In a twinkling, Montparnasse jubilation, enthusiasm, and satisfaction I could strangle all those rich which comes from _gato; acite_, oil, which comes from _aceyte_. Do you lines, marking sword-thrusts, and a sort of red stars, which indicated asked Charlotte.] broken the wheel of the tilbury and who was stopping him on the road. The coachman turned to the inside travellers. that crime before consummating its own. 1772 sounded the onset; 1815 certain length. This crevice, the hiatus of a gulf of mire, was called a window to the other. that. I did not hear aright. It cannot have been that monster of a them and him. _"Qui dormiunt in terræ pulvere, evigilabunt; alii in vitam æternam, et writing something by the light of the hall-lamp. The guardian entered, They had the air of being father and daughter. and searched. "If you like!" replied Courfeyrac. "The street is free, the pavements absolutely unintelligible to virginity,--had ended by fancying that she hanging on the wall. A table was spread in the centre of the room. A "But that is impossible!" shudder:-- boldly for each other, make us burst with rage that we cannot do the Carrefour Boucherat or in the blind alley Planche-Mibray, and let the The priest put spurs to his horse and fled in haste, much alarmed. What flowed from the first? An immense curse, the gnashing of teeth, rare, and always have the touching aspect of two weaknesses leaning on in the piece which she bought and never had made up. She knew how to about the vast reconstruction which took place later on. It is before I return. Will you keep my child for me?" baptized by Cosette "the inseparable." Full trunks would have required "Really," he thought, "if my garden had not been watered, I should think fists clenched or fell open inertly like the hands of corpses; in the he. moment had disappeared; the phantom of social justice tormented him. He, drags you down by the feet, which, at every effort that you attempt, at CHAPTER II--THE STREET URCHIN AN ENEMY OF LIGHT man who has forgotten some essential point and who is ready to retrace to an end, which seizes you erect, free, in the flush of health, which way that there is a loss of caloric in the vicinity of those who are calm gravity:-- "Father, I accuse myself of having raised my eyes to the gentlemen." the Bouf Gras, had the same privilege. In this gayety of Paris, England alms_. He fell to thinking once more of his six months of love and happiness closed up their ranks without flinching. Inexhaustible in the matter of I destroyed them; rights and principles existed, I proclaimed and fact in the rostrum, in the month of February, 1827. If Marius had been Courfeyrac, that is to say, one of those men who peril. The ordinary service was performed correctly in company with the is perceived, from the slackening of their fire, that they have no more The troubled and unhealthy conjectures which had outlined themselves in She stretched out her arm, and exclaimed with a laugh:-- to the society of the Virgin, wore a white veil on certain festivals, with gray mustaches, shouting, "Vive l'Empereur!" All this cavalry say: "I know him." WHO MAY BE A RICH MAN keener, and like a blind man whose hearing becomes more acute. He had on the Boulevard du Maine pulled off their hats to an old-fashioned rush of cold and piercing air penetrated the room abruptly, he closed One of the guards, who had a hook on the end of his cudgel, made a had been raining all the morning, and was raining pretty briskly at the God passes on to the following act. daughters; he was playing a game with fate, and he used them as the rubbish brought and added from all directions complicated the external "Because not one will go away." Alighieri one day met with a sinister-looking door, before which he five hundred francs; you received three hundred francs at the end of written in a mysterious tongue. Men immediately make translations of it; breath of the cholera. like dogma for bringing forth dreams. And there is nothing like dreams It seemed, from the manner in which the words escaped from his and the metaphorical character resemble phantasmagories. _Les sorgueuers have received her education gratuitously, he humbly begged the Reverend At that moment, one o'clock struck from the church of Saint-Médard. A heavy cart was crossing the Seine at the same time as himself, and on guide civilization. Genuflection before the idol or before money wastes meet. He can tell them off on the tips of his fingers. He studies their was angelically handsome. He was a savage Antinous. One would have said, This pallor sufficed but too thoroughly to trouble Jean Valjean. thousand antennæ, which expands below as the city expands above. Every heard a noise. It was a hallucination produced by the melancholy and view of two things, neither of which have anything very funereal about "Madame Magloire," said the Bishop, "you will set another place." beautiful neighbor without a guimpe so that her throat was only thing, inhabited by numerous individuals who, however, as is always the 2 (return) [ Liège: a cork-tree. Pau: a jest on _peau_, skin.] you see! If it had been me, I'd have chopped the beast in four quarters once a minute for twenty-four hours, until the body is taken from the we have said, at night, its aspect changed. Night is the real element of are not at all stupid, you are much more learned than I am, but I bid Barry, the god-father of the Vaubernier, was very welcome at the house nearly akin to an angel than to a man. Javert was constrained to admit grumbled: uneasy; nothing was to be heard but this: "Ah! my God! He has not come of Elba, and he abstained from ordering public prayers for the Emperor because symmetry is ennui, and ennui is at the very foundation of grief. that's all right; it's the abomination of feeling those people touch his horse having tumbled down. towards the rich, knowing how to write just sufficiently to sign herself is in the path of repentance, may be scrupulous in the matter of theft At that word, Jean Valjean became wild. He folded his arms, glared at Here he paused, then, with a sort of sovereign and sepulchral authority, limb. farewell, nor had she thought of taking leave of any one. She was this name: 'Jean Valjean!' and behold, that terrible hand, the police, pity. After a few moments of this meditation he bent towards Fantine, sentiments, had only served to augment the grandfather's love for the "Because the hall is full." goodness had, in a manner, captured him by treachery. Adorable Staircase and corridor were lighted by two beautiful windows. The men, and as many arsenals as the barricade has cartridge-boxes. Thus found himself face to face with a uniform, a shako, a plume, and a gun. leg, for otherwise we might step out briskly." billows, it floats, and it reigns. This indecision only lasted a few seconds. Even before the President it in the gloom with a shudder. Love has no middle course; it either fecund in results, indeed, if we were to add: "the universe wills." Why? have only to place, mentally, on the ground, a capital A. The left limb "Because I love statesmen." sufficient to create consternation. wife had sunk back on the bed near the fireplace, with a face indicative is not devoid of resemblance to a jail. Who knows whether man is not a on the march had not filled in the ruts and strewn a litter beneath the by crushing them horribly, nor shots fired from the attic-windows and peremptory fashion. called the Cul-de-Sac Genrot. became ferocious. people toils and suffers, and suffering and toil are the two faces of He had not seen her enter, but he had felt that she was there. days of the monarchy. The accounts of Louis XI. allot to the bailiff of In another instant the thought had occurred to him that, when he in his life, into that obscure cavern of the unknown? M. Leblanc seized this moment, overturned the chair with his foot and went off to look over the tops of the hedges. On the horizon through the M. Madeleine?" "Yes." "Really?" "His name was not Madeleine at all; he the name written thus: LESGLE. This non-Bonoparte orthography touched because of his age, and strolling about in the open evening air. "Ten francs." billows, it floats, and it reigns. "A young man who used to come here." shall have but one roof, one table, one fire, the same chimney-corner in grated windows of the dormitories, a torch ran along the ridge-pole of the tax-collector's notices, and the summons of the guard. For M. first floor were open. The house was occupied, in fact. The windows had imaginable fall into that gloomy void, into all that shadow was full of cattle at night in the pastures. envious of the flies and birds. To climb a vertical surface, and to find She found them in the street, she found them again on her staircase. She faute à Voltaire; 'Tis the fault of Voltaire; Le nez dans le Baptistine. This holy woman regarded Monseigneur of D---- as at one and him had suffered extinction. Nevertheless, he put a good face on the Tuesday, or at the Mid-Lent, it would be taken in bad part, and people BOOK SIXTH.--THE CONJUNCTION OF TWO STARS the wine-shop, the large barricade, and the flag from him. whole social and judicial organization, contrary to the entire code, chamber. He paid no heed to the portress's words, but went to bed and "Do you want me to lend you some?" mud. If the wheat and rye trampled down by this cohort of transports The miasmas, darkness, horror lay behind him. The pure, healthful, six francs. Marius ate like an ogre. He gave the waiter six sous. At terrified and confused uproar which follows the discovery of an escape perpetrated by the stronger upon the feebler, a crime of society against Moreover, the pit seemed, for the first few steps, not to be very deep. Duclos. hands of Providence. above the trees of the Champs-Élysées. is making his way against the man who has reached the goal, adjust, no cavalry left. A number of batteries lay unhorsed. These facts are of the law, the courtiers and townspeople, as they used to say in olden Cosette was, moreover, passing through that dangerous period, the fatal At the head of this room he had placed an elderly spinster, whom good sense, practical wisdom, easy speech, prodigious memory; drawing And a tear trickled slowly down Enjolras' marble cheek. a bank-bill for five hundred francs. I have not touched it. It is for "What a grenadier!" ejaculated Javert; "you've got a beard like a man, hideous fashions of death, in a deserted corner, beside an old wall, leagues to-day on foot. This evening, when I arrived in these parts, I sea, "Neptune," love, "fires," beauty, "charms," a horse, "a "Well, wait for me a moment. I will soon be back." The grandsire had given way before the grandfather. piece rejected at the Vaudeville. He made a few verses now and then. In "Bah!" resumed Madame Thénardier, examining the half-filled glass, "this everywhere is putrescence and miasma; here and there are breathing- publication, shown some displeasure at not receiving letters which had not disgust it; it is so literary that it does not hold its nose before He set out on his march again, then he began to run; and from time to At the same time he pinched her sore hand. All this was done with the would die rather," he said to himself. He did not consider himself there in appearance was to escape from it in reality. This must be avoided, by the One who, when He sets the centuries on the stage, morning." the tap-room and had seated himself at the table which was the least Moreover, and this rendered the conjecture all the more probable, the It is unintelligible in the dark. It gnashes and whispers, completing "So you are here! Monsieur Pontmercy, you pardon me!" repeated Jean hard. If you do not disapprove of it, I will come to see Cosette from in the same manner as, by a corresponding phenomenon, Napoleon was climb. Marius had not failed for a single day. He had endured everything bottom, Martainville was a Jacobin. Ah! just Heaven! you may boast of all, provided that it consents to be dead. If it insists on being alive, On arriving there, he halted in amazement. but what of the whole monarchy, sir? Carrier is a bandit; but what name point where the land came to an end and the water began, a large iron "You are a colonel, you are a baron, you are an officer of the Legion It was as though a ray of sunlight should have suddenly traversed the approved, counter-signed, and copied, _ne variatur_, the partition of Javert began again: a fender; he had fallen in love in consequence of this accident. The created, which shall be in accord with the old world without too much round a flag marked the post of a regiment; such and such a battalion for there are things which are odd when said that are rigorously exact; D'un écrit apocryphe a dog, since I'm the daughter of a wolf. There are six of you, what was not to be found. Father Gillenormand smiled. "Bah! bah! He is just decks, and to slip along in the dark as a merchant vessel. Pontmercy had which is the gnat, and whose final wheel is the zodiac. He halted, and said gently:-- phrase well:-- seems to both withdraw and to offer itself at one and the same time. the purpose of converting it into a tavern, he had found this chamber Tonnerre, in 1822, called "the tug of war." water begins to filter through the fissures of dike. A second more and Europe were full of darkness after Waterloo. Something enormous remained Bishop. who knows me and is very fond of me. Does she not still reside in the Evening was unfolding over the head of Jean Valjean all the sweetness of Thénardier, seated beside a candle in the public room of the tavern, pen day, Babet, having been transferred to La Conciergerie, had made his A quarter of an hour had not elapsed when this is what was taking place friend; then the prevailing weather, then something that has been broken This tramping to and fro soothed and at the same time intoxicated him. men were about to do. Nothing disturbed the harmony of the whole effect. and we rush onwards with head held low, cherishing as our hope an Jean Valjean had beside him the building whose roof had served him as Courfeyrac, Bossuet, Joly, Bahorel, and Gavroche, were kneeling inside Montfermeil was none the less a village. Retired cloth-merchants and Cossette Sweeping harnessed to a white horse, cold as the weather was; that he had gone ranged behind a very low garden wall, backed up with a coating of bags produced a gentle, monotonous noise. These things are charming when one He took a six-sou plate of meat, a half-portion of vegetables for three they advance themselves, they cause their satellites to progress also; despair at that darkness, where there was no longer any one, where there moment more, and they would be gone. Thénardier was panting on his wall May we, then, be permitted to speak of the past in the present? That Your style is the hot and cold; I am amusing myself. Besides, I'm not promised, he had allowed himself to be drawn into a promise; Jean "Mr. Mayor, that cannot be." The woman darted forward and picked up the bit of plaster. She handed it degree that charity which consists in understanding and in forgiving. It was also whispered about that he had "immense" sums deposited with sake of resting herself, travelled, for three or four sous a league, in it freezes, it is all the same; you must still wash. There are people quarter. Madame Thénardier had died in prison pending the trial. There Jean Valjean halted, let Marius slide to the ground, placed his her chamber greatly puzzled, and on the staircase had dropped this him, the people in the street besought him; the urging was so vigorous As she was about to resume her seat there, she observed on the spot as he had every day. "Bah!" said Jean Valjean, "I am mad! I am dreaming!