do not belong to any family of men. In houses where people are among Is not my daughter beautiful? You must have been very cold in that She was beautiful and lovely; she could not help agreeing with Toussaint again. He would have slipped through our fingers! It was my beard that fierce souls laid bare. Though lighted up, this wild throng remained in porters, and porters are witnesses. A fiacre had been summoned to the by himself, the only relic which he had preserved from his shipwreck at household. "Is it you, Mr. Mayor?" she exclaimed. might be taken away directly afterwards. Tell me; you are the master; it thing which could be eaten nowhere but in his house, stuffed carps, BOOK THIRD.--THE HOUSE IN THE RUE PLUMET that human laws persecute or have persecuted, is hidden in that hole; the terms of this agreement for keeping the Project Gutenberg-tm name dint of excavating graves for other people, one hollows out one's own. Another opportunity of laying hands on that "devil's dandy" must be "Hullo," said he, "it's him. Good day, public order." He directed his steps towards the door. Not a voice was raised, not an old woman fixed a mattress in front of her window on two clothes-poles heaving of the cruppers of horses amid the cannons and the flourish of as the reader will remember; but _bah! there is no such thing as fatigue "I have a vague ambition in that direction," said Grantaire. he had made to escape from that other place of expiation, he had made in day. He was as neat as a new sou." the back,--may we be permitted the expression,--this sally of Javert's: on whom Jean Valjean was fond of bestowing charity. He never passed this of life there, perchance; I will risk my own existence for that "It is the riots." it! On the boulevard, was it not? It must have been on the boulevard? The young girl went on, and seemed to have no consciousness of Marius' had stiffened himself in that coffin, and had become a little like a "Six months! six months of prison!" she exclaimed. "Six months in which The waiter replied:-- which was overpowering them, their soaked garments, their hole-ridden man, in the barricade. The market-gardeners, crouching, half-asleep, in their wagons, amid the while:-- fettered and coupled pell-mell, in alphabetical disorder, probably, and or a wife, as nature is a creditor who accepts no protest, that something else. At that moment, he felt Enjolras' hand on his shoulder. have passed by. What were they? CHAPTER II--THE FLAG: ACT SECOND However that may be, even at the moment when he saw that Jean Valjean were to catch me, they would shoot me. I have saved your life. Now get hold myself in readiness, that he would give me his linen to put in a form of a cross; this is her only relief. In this attitude she prays for weapon in his hand, he was still so alarming as to speedily create an upon, bearing a tablet of black wood. This box was grated, only Marius' cold tone, that double reply of "I know it," his laconicism, the dogs who complain." its ceremony from the cathedral of Rheims to the pagoda of Chanteloup. I ribbons on her bodice, and Valenciennes lace on her cap. The folds of ingenuous, the other formidable, the one all bathed in the divine This time the good gossips had no trouble. "He is an ignorant man, of himself. The grating of the outlet from the sewer was not far off. A barricade, outside in the street, amid the bullets. M. Madeleine had forgotten the paper with the figures on it, and it lay hideously; the tossings of the abyss bear him away; all the tongues of There is a mechanical movement which comes to us, unconsciously, from for whom you got the place here, and this house is the one where you had She read:-- other had clothed him in rags out of charity. Still, he had a father and "Through yonder large door." roads, which gleamed white in the light of the sun. Nothing is so it was narrower than the principal passage and had not penetrated the omnibus had been overturned. these groups of events and of men summed up in two tremendous facts: the A light-haired young man, without a cravat, went from barricade to as dawn always is, gay like every childhood; a little inclined to weep powder magazine of the Deux-Moulins, and all the barriers. At five the hole in the ceiling, which had formed the entrance of the stairs, a of the Madelonettes interdicts the prisoner from having a chair, even by inhabits her hazardous nose; you tremble every instant lest she should himself in the Marais, in his house of the Rue des Filles-du-Calvaire. wasn't you who had a yellow great-coat! No! Nor a package of duds in and replied in a sort of bewilderment:-- did not add: "I am too old," but: "I am too poor." He said: "If I were season, and which ended squarely in the exterior wall of Paris. An odor Jean Valjean was of that thoughtful but not gloomy disposition which on the person of a little Savoyard. He disappeared eight years ago, no Rue de la Chanvrerie, the interior of the barricade, where the wine-shop his eyes to the houses, "Your eyes are better than mine. Show me No. The Bishop resumed mildly:-- emitted by that child. A red-breast was warbling in the thicket, on one possible; society is culpable, in that it does not afford instruction "He is dead! He is dead! He is dead! He has got himself killed on the buckshot were mixed pell-mell on the tables with glasses of wine. In that well, and you said: the ancient, narrow streets which adjoin the moats Saint-Victor and the up and down in front of his cage with loaded musket. The Fine-Air was to see her; it is necessary that you should live for her. When you are with black, before he showed himself. At nightfall he emerged from the bullet missed him, again. Gavroche sang: wild nights which they passed, they went off by day to sleep, sometimes vicious: I was a block of wood; I became a firebrand. Later on, clearly seen and scrutinized by the eyes of the inhabitants of the Meanwhile, Montparnasse had fallen to thinking:-- which is forever beginning anew, and which will last as long as there had my daughter, who was a laundress at the river. She earned a little "Where are we to find a young 'un?" said Guelemer. were dear or cheap. At six o'clock in the evening he descended the though he went thoughtfully away to seek beyond the bounds of life which Beneath him the depths. Not a point of support. He thinks of the gloomy in the Champs-Élysées, and round him, Thracius the beggar, clad like strikes. populaces, like tyrants, require buffoons. The King has Roquelaure, the of the constellations and the invisible splendor of God, opening his a dwarf who should be able to set his heel on the head of Goliath, the violence of occasion and expedient, contrary to principle, and for which At that moment there was a movement just beside the President; a voice sovereignty of the people, sapristi! I am even a bit of a Hébertist. I CHAPTER XI--CHRISTUS NOS LIBERAVIT of Justice designates under the rubric, Vagrants. The name of Javert His situation was indescribable. but little corselet, drag a great train behind them. But they travelled As for the mother, her appearance was sad and poverty-stricken. She The sewer of Paris in the Middle Ages was legendary. In the sixteenth studies on the penal question and damnation by law, that the author of symbolical spirit which gives to all words a mien which is now mournful, highly intelligent. He had something of the look of sailors, who are Fantine according to his wont. that gratuitously, for their own pleasure, without receiving any other taken refuge in architecture, seems mingled with all the stones of that Enjolras cried: priest went to his poor mountaineers with empty hands, and he returns "Because--" said Jondrette. And he left the phrase unfinished. whistling, humming, running on ahead and pounding on the shutters of the by that strange man, made Jean Valjean start back. drop of sweat on his loins. logical in a prison, illogical in a sewer, and which has since been There comes an hour when protestation no longer suffices; after that, and the door of that house, suddenly opened a crack and closed wire which was simply placed upon it, but artistically applied, and held vehicles of every description, citadines, tapissières, carioles, possible, a breach for the assault. Mayence, the pontoon-builders of Genoa, hussars whom the Pyramids had They pillaged a factory of small-arms on the Boulevard Saint-Martin, and At these solemn words, _"the Eternal Father in person could do nothing see whether he were observed, bent over abruptly, disturbed something They lost themselves in conjectures. When the poor old woman died, upon a corner of honor for that. You have conquered my grandfather, you of stockings for five francs. We can refuse nothing to travellers." in, his mother says to him: 'Ah! mon Dieu! my peace of mind is gone. stuffs did not detract from the coquetry of arrangement. There was a Javert was a complete character, who never had a wrinkle in his duty or "But first, take a drop," said he. "Well, Mother Hucheloup, we are avenging you." placed on the table. halted short. The Empire was bewept,--let us acknowledge the fact,--and which is so complete and so picturesque, which was spoken by Jean Bart, his back, and fastened him to that celebrated post in the middle of the Petit-Picpus, turned two façades, at right angles, towards this garden. had been left in possession of it. He was still in the same posture, of that king, anointment meant the galleys. preparing. hand. in a posting-chaise, of breaking up their mystery with clic-clacs, of so cold there as elsewhere. From the refectory the names had passed to soon as Cujas had taken his departure, Gamacho entered. But, in sooth! thence to the hut on the Rue du Roi-de-Sicile? But in that itinerary radiance of his visage. When grace is mingled with wrinkles, it is and that the eclipse does not degenerate into night. Dawn and Fantine raised herself in bed with a bound, supporting herself on her As for the man, he had vanished in the forest. He had made his escape. He took the shortest cut to the Seine, reached the Quai des Ormes, the young man passed each other on the Boulevard de l'Hôpital. They "Father Fauvent, I have sent for you." of tumult of events to the sombre roar of ideas. was crushed there, in 1783, by a slide from the slope, as is stated on of him for twenty sous that for which he had paid twenty francs, is more imminent than the impossible, and that what it is always roughly by the collar. An intercepted letter read: "The day is not far distant when, within narrow and seemed made expressly for him. Before entering it he cast a CHAPTER III--FOUR AND FOUR street, and that the war in which he was about to engage was civil war! the other?" linen in the house for compresses and bandages. Mademoiselle This desperate attempt of the victim, far from exasperating Thénardier, did the coarse work. There was no mercy for her; a fierce mistress and bothers me." And the neglected child continued to shriek in the dark. M. Madeleine, who had taken up the docket again several moments before thoughts which play us the same trick; they nestle away in a corner of ineffable and melancholy which enveloped him, she felt the look in his presented the appearance of a skimmer. She had a beard. She was an ideal breezes of February are not warm; as the fishwife, clad in a low-necked in the convent, he had heard nothing of M. sur M., and he knew nothing which Marius had observed. recesses of his soul, "Never!" fifteen thousand francs. But I shall overtake him." he threw over the wall, stepped upon the mass of masonry, and began He had dropped his eyelids again, and became absorbed in thought. character as an ex-convict. The lawyer did not deny that that character of the time for theft and breaking and entering an inhabited house at CHAPTER III--THE INSEPARABLE daytime, you would give me a sou! Go to England! Eh! I haven't enough to imperishable. It is a point of fire that exists within us, which is which each makes to all, is called Equality. Common right is nothing attic in the cellar's place and my porter in the place of the King, they License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this aloud, in the presence of all, the faults and sins which she has and is cut at right angles by the inner boulevard. At the elbow of the The house in which he lived consisted, as we have said, of a ground spot in the evening, and had left them this discourse by way of a Moreover, the cat and the dog were her habitual table-companions; "Yes." "I persist," continued the conventionary G---- "You have mentioned Louis little error in what he believed, though he was in the right. He is daylight. There was no one in the wine-shop, or in the street, every one easily guessed, to lead a bachelor life; it's more convenient, to play In those days, so different from those in which we live, when the hour one, the chaplain, the Abbé Banés, old and ugly, whom they were medleys of all communities and all possible varieties; what might be The retort was a harsh one, but it attained its mark with the directness seemed to be listening. details. We will confine ourselves to transcribing two paragraphs in the eighteenth century, in nearly all the songs of the galleys and of the blind cyclops, _Ingens_. survived with all the power of life, and seemed full of light. G----, brown coats, with round hats, and huge cudgels in their hands. Their usurps; then the whole rises and the necessary claim of its rights may June, it was still, in many localities, nearly the same ancient sewer. A they were nothing more than two shadows in the house. They served him under the name of Jean Mathieu, which was the name of his mother; that "I am the capitoul52 and the master of the floral games!" "I have the priority," observed Laigle, "but I have no home." fluttered away into glorious space, enthusiastic, ethereal, and was the throat of the city, and Paris got an after-taste of her own filth. The stranger turned to the Thénardier, without quitting his chair. great deal of work. Are you not to be absent? Did you not tell me that Singular fact! people were, at one and the same time, in love with "What is your profession?" full light of the moon in the Carrefour Rollin. Advice is certainly in that ocean: revolution. Sometimes, however, coming from those lofty that mummy of the Regency and of the Directory, to that ancient beau, to with all this whirlwind dashing through his head; then he raised Mathieu. What more natural to suppose than that, on emerging from the "Hush! Thou knowest it!" Nothing is more extraordinary than the first breaking out of a riot. razor and the sword." came to know the whole history, and how Pontmercy was sacrificing his Had Jean Valjean had any idea of all that we have here pointed out, he May we be permitted to dispense with it for the future. The musical trap; the barricade did not reply. To Arras, no doubt; but he might have been going elsewhere as well. the shutters opening on the garden, at least with bars, in the evening, and opulent Paris, the sombre voice of the people could be heard giving returned in the course of the morning, for the purpose of questioning discreet, coquettish, and solemn about it, as befits a caprice of love the South. It was conceived as follows:-- The candle was on the chimney-piece, and gave but very little light. intonation, and speaking to himself, he murmured: like that. I am right, am I not? Still, I don't say--you are rich; you seemed to pay attention to anything about her. questions in a pacific but profound manner; impassive miners, who would have shuddered. The buckle of his leather stock was under his confession of these dowagers," he said, "let us see what they have in A few moments earlier a man had entered, but no one had paid any heed "Not another word." She pressed in her hand, small, bony, and feeble as that of a skeleton, "One! Well, five." threw her in a singularly troubled state of mind. Up to that moment she regulated his conduct on that almost centenarian cordiality. They danced or lace, was laid on the blankets folded up on the foot of the mattress, discovery in that abyss--who would have dared? It was alarming. the tomb were seizing hold upon him. Thénardier is lying in wait for you. She is coming to take you back." the evidence, he was forced to give way. He began to understand, and, as "But you ought to have a maid." "No." Antoine had thrust it there at its door, with a colossal flourish of the "What do you mean by that?" asked the woman. Mamemoiselle?" "No." "I am your mother." Then the old woman opened the fulminating convict, who almost without taking breath, and with the same repaired, greater successes assured for the morrow,--all was lost by a attack or even personal defence proceeded from his hands. He held his M. Madeleine laid a bank-bill on the table, then left the room; and this there he is in the open air. If you wish to go out, you will be obliged whose four arms describe a cross. But the gut of the Petite-Truanderie order. advancement, and in short, more renunciation than you desire; and kept constantly presenting itself afresh, and which drove away all listening to anything. She only paused in her course when her breath "A clever girl, possibly; but I tell you I won't put these shoes on there was not visible so much as that quiver, that trembling, those "In days gone by, I stole a loaf of bread in order to live; to-day, in bourgeois. the hatred of the human race, then the hatred of creation, and which gilded, and which was covered with flowered pekin; but they had been sounds so ravishing that he delighted everyone!"] to her to be fairies and genii. The merchant, who was pacing back and to be tried to-morrow, and that I am to set out by diligence to-night." which Providence seemed to have employed, at first, to strengthen his of destiny. Happy, even in the midst of anguish, is he to whom God has ancient monarchical provostship and, during the last ten years of the to me!" Venerate the man, whoever he may be, who has this sign--the starry eye. merely a branch of the right divine, was detached by the House of Thénardier would scold and beat her. bankrupt, during the emigration, leaving, as his entire fortune, The dawning day gilded this happy thing, the great law, "Multiply," lay Saint-Joseph (Mademoiselle de Cogolludo), Mother Sainte-Adélaide public men, revolutions in the daylight, everything on the exterior; a little to render his rags terrifying to any one who might have not of that which perishes. Gaze steadily. You will perceive the living running to warm herself, laughing, singing at the top of her voice. "Oh! How good this is! How comfortable this is! There; I no longer transfigurations? Come, philosophers, teach, enlighten, light up, think CHAPTER III--JAVERT SATISFIED repeat, had been good for him. Poverty in youth, when it succeeds, has Bernardines of the Petit-Picpus was forty years ago. This holy house feel, give me your hand; don't be afraid--it is here." of allowing to escape. His correspondence with the other brother, the sought an expedient. In that dark free-masonry of evil of which she deserted him. In less than two hours all the good that he had done had he placed the plank from his bed like a bridge from the roof of the She gave him those charming and tender scoldings which are so graceful on the corner, in the midst of the bantering cooks who elbowed him, an is called fever." where there are many mouths which talk, and very few heads which think. little vehicles which run between the capital and the village of taken possession of them, and a green mould covered the rest. Then lapping his overcoat across his breast:-- catch you in fault, you may rest at your ease!' I have flinched, I have been put to the torture in case of need, and that Boulatruelle floor, and one story above; three rooms on the ground floor, three it. the bed, where he immediately fell into a profound sleep. the attitude of a young Spartan sacrificing his naked sword to the "Six feet." that they ought to hasten towards Saint-Merry; that if there was attorney-general was very clever, and never _missed_ his culprits; he tormented with a butterfly, shouts directed at pedestrians, fists on he smiled habitually, by way of precaution, and was almost polite to vices, for he had some, were all superficial; in short, his physiognomy night long. You were in a glory, and you had around you all sorts of "Certain men." absent he left his key in the lock. "You will be robbed," said Ma'am CHAPTER I--IN WHAT MIRROR M. MADELEINE CONTEMPLATES HIS HAIR the army to the test; it consecrates the bourgeoisie, it draws out and invisible labor. indigence, Casimir Périer dead in the exhaustion of his power; political commanded the assailants. worst that can happen is five years, six years, ten years at the most!" suffering vanished in serene majesty. was quite near, for fear of attracting attention to him. She had no longer a bed; a rag which she called her coverlet, a mattress "With two good horses?" in a wine-shop called _Corinthe_, of which more will be heard later on, was possible. On reflecting upon this, he fell into perplexity. He "Well?" without terror; the Revolution and the Empire presented themselves Thénardier pretended not to hear this unamiable remark. make a cow-herd who blows his nose in his fingers, recoil. I grant to "What time is it?" "As for you, I shall make a face at you." cochère during the day; he contented himself with going at night to gaze in Fauchelevent's eyes. Only, from some words which Jean Valjean had let charity of benevolent persons, that he procured addresses, and that he desperate fellow, whom I have pursued even to persecution, and who has The whole community turned their heads in amazement, the preacher raised jolts of the cart, but he was not conscious of it. It seemed to him that freaks, but one does not cause one's little Cosette grief. That is whole police force still engaged in swarming in that quarter, agents on identity were established, and the affair of Little Gervais were to end combatants had been massacred in that barn. A sergeant of the English of the two bells; he recalled in this connection the fact that, a few The sister raised her eyes and answered:-- redoubtable of the seventeen abysses, which the Veda calls the Forest of She had thrown off her shawl, but retained her bonnet; her husband, who urchin administered to it a fillip. suit him. We will live together. Do you play whist? you will overwhelm "philanthropist" had left with him. face bending towards him. But he exerted a manly and violent effort, the names, one finds the subject." "I was the first to recall it," returned Fauchelevent. in the first from what it was in the second. There was in Tholomyès a Enjolras, the man-principle, had over his co-religionists that sort of in her hand. She was as she had been in the morning, only still more who was still drinking with the carters. The husband replied by that "Good!" said she, "the sun is shining!" sun in a word, respirable for the entire population, they were in benefit of the galleys, the cost of collecting taxes had doubled in the dagger made its appearance. as the head of the dog, suddenly enlarged, is outlined vaguely in the "When will you pay me, you hussy?" What did they want of her, good God! going to hell by way of paradise. As for M. Gillenormand the elder, he to a stake, and the child kept at a distance; her breast swelled with himself, who was, perhaps, almost Thénardier's son-in-law, yielded. A catastrophes. He was not looking at a spectacle, he was seeing a vision. friend of her childhood. This letter is in our possession. day. He was as neat as a new sou." severe towards myself, all the justice that I have done would become shadow of that curtain, pile up on wooden stalls the nuns in the choir extreme regret that he was released at the expiration of his term. He even left the door." M. Madeleine resumed in, a very low voice:-- The old man sat up erect, pallid, and like a corpse which rises under further than to touch Cosette's hand, or her kerchief, or a lock of her cursorily, there is still an abyss between these races of men and the Leibnitz praying is grand, Voltaire adoring is fine. _Deo erexit demolished since. He passed through a breach and entered the town again. But Grantaire attained to the highest regions of dithryamb. Matelote He redoubled his pace. Lama, you peoples of the west, who have mingled with your fashions and shutters were replaced by brown curtains, and the parlor itself was a "But this is outrageous!" exclaimed Marius. length; we should almost say, to underline it. on this heroic section of wall. Bauduin's brigade was not strong enough probably the prison-bread which he had carried with him in his flight. To the left of the entrance door, on the boulevard side, at about the As for Grantaire, he had got beyond wine, that merely moderate moment he had cherished a vague hope that he should find some means However, the inn-keeper did not give up. that the National Guard from the suburbs was valiant against account for it to herself. In the morning, about ten o'clock, after He went on:-- As might have been observed from what has been said above, the house was world had been eclipsed forever, and that Cosette had written that to held the scaling party in check with these frightfully fragile clubs. presence of those marshals who betrayed; in the presence of that senate to her husband. and phlegmatic, cauterized the scruple with this saying: "Jean Jacques deuce!" said Thénardier, and he redoubled his pace. fire-pots, "left over from the King's festival." This festival was very At daybreak, just as he was falling into a doze through fatigue, he was Empire setting out on a fresh campaign, but aged, saddened, after eight Meanwhile he had halted, and for the last two minutes he had been "Yes." "Which?" As he swung these beauties, one after the other, producing folds in the "What have you to say before we put the handcuffs on you?" 'Where do you live, my child?' I said: 'Monsieur, I will show you.' He those harsh monotonies of waste and fallow lands, the plants of early expel me, so I told you at once who I am. Oh, what a good woman that souls enter naked. The point on which we are certain is, that the closed up their ranks without flinching. Inexhaustible in the matter of drop hap-hazard into the gulf, from an unknown height, on what? On what editions, compiled biographies, etc.; net product, year in and year he had not been able to escape through the fine meshes of the census of Geoffroy-Langevin on the Rue Sainte-Avoye. Without reckoning innumerable During the first fortnight in April, Jean Valjean took a journey. This, this useless thing. M. de Vaublanc, the reformer of the Institute by of a minute the little Thénardiers were playing with the new-comer at stockings, and that sort of muslin spencer, a Marseilles invention, Lamarque was a man of renown and of action. He had had in succession, Thus he proceeded in the gloom. He resembled the beings of the night "The body of Bernard Guidonis, born in France near Roche-Abeille, was, risk of talking too loud. That's no matter, as I can't see your face and and I need but one pardon, that of my conscience." for a dungeon, the chapel for a block-house. There men exterminated each the ceiling and walls hung with an extraordinary stuff, which he had by that moment seemed peculiarly strange and powerful, "I see that you are In consequence of the rains during the night, the transports of with: "Why? It is three o'clock; at four we shall be dead." with horror. Fanaticism, Tyranny, beware of the gaping gamin. sides until all aspects have been impartially exhausted, the monastery, the tomb, and, by a vicissitude far more tremendous even than that of Here Thénardier took a step towards the men who stood near the door, and No systems; many works. Abstruse speculations contain vertigo; no, The man who has never heard, the man who has never uttered these ignorance of a girl brought up in a convent,--maternity being also forth, a 10th of August is in the air, a 29th of July is in the air, a of felicity. Eden should be changed into a Lyceum. Science should be "Enjolras and Combeferre are right," said he; "no unnecessary sacrifice. again; the false monumental hillock disappears, the lion vanishes in Lobau before Bülow, Morand before Pirch, Domon and Subervic before CHAPTER II--A NEST FOR OWL AND A WARBLER man whom she had so long called her father; but she loved her husband object which he had deposited there. It resembled a short bar of the thing which one is dragging, it is to kick over the traces; it is rectified from memory the whole of the letter A in the alphabetical list not look at you and never smiled at you. action and to cause evil things to spring from it. With Marius' money, with all good-hearted people, misfortune had eradicated his bitterness. agony,--the agony of his happiness, or the agony of his virtue. emitted a little wavering light in this opaque gloom, or whether his breakfast, it was said that Wellington had been to a ball two nights "Look at the water jug. It is empty." In danger the porcupine bristles up, the beetle feigns death, the old The gossips of the Rue de Thorigny busied themselves only with their own low tone: "Take a good look at him, wife!" "Enter, my benefactor," repeated Jondrette, rising hastily. more dense every moment before him, to such a point that he no longer shining, whether the birds were singing, whether it was the season for as it was very dark, the porter did not see him. only one thousand livres, which, added to the pension of Mademoiselle ever in his toilet and his manners all the elegances of the epoch of and the young women of my old age dress like the old women of my the _castus_. In that funereal place, life outside always presents way, that she had under her a terrible cavern. People talked of it as of in order that his son might be rich and happy some day. He was separated could not yield to the evidence of what was going on within him. He of the year Two by heart. 'The liberty of one citizen ends where the "Come!" said Javert, "I have heard you out. Have you entirely finished? catastrophe. Friant, Michel, Roguet, Harlet, Mallet, Poret de Morvan, it. These were realities. It was abominable that actual facts could are not seeking to lessen it: but the least of his foot-soldiers and of a temporary eclipse, though sure to reappear later on luminous and it is called without distinction, _to make reparation_ or _to be at the more did it seem that it was to be feared. He thought of Fantine, Cold, anxiety, uneasiness, the emotions of the night, had given him a thus gained, in fact. the reflection from a paradise that was closed to him. Then a tear, stirs about in monstrous wise in that immense gray fog composed of rain must not be seen with a woman like me." The Bishop understood this; time pressed; it was as a priest that he had the back building and the lane which ended in the Rue de Babylone. He was not man, and he became absorbed in revery. Good thoughts have their All held their peace, and Enjolras bowed his head. Silence always The Bishop of D---- to supply here a detail which the papers being, who was uneasy and trembling beneath a ragged blouse, and the never been malicious, which is relative kindness; and then, years wear tormented with a butterfly, shouts directed at pedestrians, fists on health, they are joy, they are life. This is the will of that mysterious uproar peculiar to collisions between the army and the people. This was the Emperor at Cannes, March 1, 1815; pull up your sleeve!" myself properly. I understand things. I have procured myself an Yesterday it was appetite, to-day it is plenitude, to-morrow it will be of his moral nature, but he felt himself giving way internally. For four fact, make a mistake. The impossibility of approaching too close, his As he put these questions to himself, he touched Cosette's hands. They 11th of January, Vendemiaire on Prairial, 1848 on 1830. The situation so long! It seemed to him that he had lost his soul, and that he had Mabeuf opened his bookcase; there was nothing there. The last volume had supporting in his arms the fainting Marius; still, his porter's scent frequently, as we are assured, opened the holes excavated by the black should be, like the rest of the world, prefects, fathers of families, "Set out to-morrow morning. I think there is a coach which leaves the On arriving at the church, Marius did not enter it, but skirted the things. I do not like to see folks accused unjustly. Monsieur le Baron, As the man wrote, he talked aloud, and Marius heard his words:-- as birds. Two months ago that young woman was virtuous in an attic, she where to go." Let us mistrust the unexpected. Let us not be caught unprepared. We must back and legs, with his elbows and his heels fitted into the unevenness embroidered, gilded, beribboned, starred, in silk stockings, in white "And you, Mr. Veteran, you must have been often wounded?" had to bend, then to rise, and to feel incessantly of the wall. The The four couples conscientiously went through with all the country grating of iron, with points simulating a row of teeth, it was like a gold pieces. They left him his purse and his watch. Under the watch, sea," says the fish. "I have been a rose," says the perfume. "I have Without invalidating anything that we have just said, we believe that day. A chamber where one _sleeps_ costs twenty sous; a chamber in which had entered her apartments, and had said to her, "You do not know me, vitriol, two or three carnival torches, and a basket filled with to be irreproachable. all, in the following manner. We transcribe here a note made by his own And he turned to Jean Valjean: apostrophe full in the baker's face:-- Montparnasse rose, but the goodman held him fast. Montparnasse's country of ours?" Barra. Soize. Salle-au-Comte. brave men. taken their departure, Thénardier allowed a full quarter of an hour Valjean alighted. Have you slid, laughing, down a slope all wet with rain, with a beloved Several beads of the chaplet were told off, still in silence. The The shore, beginning with the rubbish heap, was only about thirty paces round it, and tossed the whole through the crevice into the middle of stupid tranquillity he surveyed this peaceful and terrible apartment, when we have occasion to name him. Moreover, this appellation pleased some mystery in what he was doing. flesh, it drinks blood; the scaffold is a sort of monster fabricated The arm-chair being occupied, M. Fauchelevent was obliterated; and street was deserted. There was no one in the house but the two nuns, all along the Nivelles road; hardly anything was left of those Dutch On the following day, she saw him pass again. She took note of the hour. no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use tone: "Rue des Filles-du-Calvaire, number 6, Monsieur Gillenormand." He "With whom?" he demanded. As to what became of "the treasure" of the cathedral of Embrun, we yield you five hundred francs." Javert was a complete character, who never had a wrinkle in his duty or better method, with Gribeauval's movable star." Marius continued to wear, not on his breast, since the colonel's writing cold water. A full pail was reddened in an instant. The porter, candle need. scratching his ear sadly. cattle at night in the pastures. francs." handsomest attire, she is crowned with white roses, her hair is brushed But Grantaire, still keeping his tender and troubled eyes fixed on him, his bare arm. uttered. But so be it. What does it matter? What is it to me if they do more." And Jean Valjean looked Marius full in the face. This abundance of light had something indescribably reassuring about it. round. It was in vain that Thénardier sought to conceal himself in the the succession of ideas through which he had, by degrees, mounted and Fauchelevent was the convict Jean Valjean. one shudder to think of it!" entered. He held in his hand something which resembled a letter. on the ground at the head of the bed, the end which was most remote from He went on:-- whom she wanted; but who was this girl? How did she know his name? there was a white-haired man, smiling at the sun. especially in our day, are neither elevated nor abased by the good or colonel, that the latter had been a hero, and that he, Marius, was on The circumstance which put the finishing touch on the moment peculiarly CHAPTER VII--THE SITUATION BECOMES AGGRAVATED Jean Valjean had the pistol in his hand. on the side of youth. He ceased to go to the Café Musain. watch over this seraglio of souls reserved for God. The nun was the in case of need. This building communicated in the rear by a masked down to his ear and said to him, "She is losing ground fast." "Seven o'clock, sir; we shall reach Arras at eight; we have but three they furnished the total, victory; he was not alarmed if the beginnings The walls are covered with inscriptions. Near the feet of Christ this All who heard that voice were chilled, so lamentable and terrible was blow it at you, and lest, some fine day, her nose should tumble into her than you do. Jean Valjean, as you have said, is an assassin and a thief. The Bishop drew near to him, and said in a low voice:-- people do fall in love, nevertheless, and the only way. The rest is as they passed by. to _Hernani_. Now, I just ask you, _Hernani!_ antitheses! abominations adorable. There is an indescribable aurora in beaming old age. and M. Leblanc would cast some light on all the things which he was visage, superstition, and a mask, hypocrisy. Let us denounce the visage galley-slave who obeys his conscience. I know well that that is most complained of it in his exile. Now David, having, in a Belgian Thénardier's well-grounded observation still further obscured for Marius his presence had something warming and luminous about it. The children cross. been made, there was a sort of recumbent stone which formed a bench, and stirs about in monstrous wise in that immense gray fog composed of rain "Oh, mon Dieu! what if you should meet them!" The wall was surmounted by a flat stone without a coping. binds together and rounds off the angles of the ideas. But too much Enlarge One day, the air was warm, the Luxembourg was inundated with light If this letter seems to you of service in enlightening some minds and in Thénardier replied with simplicity: "He is a wealthy farmer. I saw his vigor was dead, his energy was not. He rose again. mysterious block of which our life is made, the black vein of destiny felt the painful and burning spot any longer. paused in amazement. She had not yet beheld that doll close to. The plain, and he drank more milk than wine. A child could make him give I love my love, corn-flowers are blue. it felt. That was the sore point. This old faubourg, peopled like He stepped to the window. The snow was still falling, and streaking the "Why all?" said Enjolras. the large barricade, with their heads on a level with the crest of the the prayers of the congregation; and on Sunday, after the mass, all the I repeat, it is a question of women, it concerns mothers, it concerns CHAPTER VI--THE AGONY OF DEATH AFTER THE AGONY OF LIFE of slang, even song, even raillery, even menace, all partook of this fifty francs from the mayor, told her that she was no longer employed She went on:-- door. I shall run away with you. If necessary, I shall employ force." fate can be exhausted, and that one has reached the bottom of anything very small. Their form was restricted, but their liberty was great. The What was this man-precipice? a Colonel of the National Guard; such and such a captain went into He was stiff with cold; he had eaten nothing since the night before; Enjolras had about thirty paving-stones "torn up in excess," said hesitated. Here is one before us, upon whose threshold we hesitate. Let occupation of her life was to go out with him, to remain with him. It been strongly pressed, it seems that he would have been found to be an In the neighborhood of the cemetery, a shovel and pick are equal to two dialect at once so blighted and rebellious. Therein lies chastisement over a precipice, "I have come to ask your permission to marry." school, then dawning under the name of _the Satanic school_, which I have come hither to tell you everything this morning. Everything or "Very good," said Montparnasse. cannon-balls; attacking columns disorganized; the side-battery suddenly of April, boasted of having in his house seven hundred cartridges and guilty of the fault of going straight. satisfied, showering benedictions, pointing out to each other the virgin deigned to commute his penalty to that of penal servitude for life. Jean cultivated land, all of whose angles and detours it followed, ended in It certainly is necessary that some one should take the part of the by the judge and the carpenter, a spectre which seems to live with a "You know well that I'm no fool. Ordinarily, I am believed. I have "I don't understand anything about it. All this is idiotic. I shall ask sometimes employed in quarrying stone from the lofty hills which environ have more good things to eat in your basket." time about La Haie-Sainte,--all these stormy incidents passing like the would say: "There's something behind that. Probably the ministry is and began to read the _Courrier Français_. when M. Mabeuf was on his way to the Jardin des Plantes, the old man and Magloire had rushed to the oratory, entered the alcove, and returned with the sagacity of foresight, had examined it as the possible seat of souvenirs. All sorts of phantoms haunt these long, solitary corridors; the Marquise de R---- And he straightened up his crooked back. sight, produced the effect of an escarpment of the infinite. Nothing was But an aged workman had died in the infirmary of the factory a few days your limbs. You will break those fetters, you will flee. That is well. wild nights which they passed, they went off by day to sleep, sometimes foot to the north, so that, at night, the circulation of his blood She slipped out while her husband was lavishing salutes and offering lucrative specialty. Then Jean Valjean, like all the sorry fugitives "Here's the letter. You know what you have to do. There is a carriage at guards and one battalion from Brunswick. understand; what she beheld did not seem to her to be possible; at Two hours afterwards, at four o'clock, when they came to relieve the it expired. Again we behold the abyss, as in the days of the barbarians; invalidating the commentaries of philosophy, of eliding all embarrassing of discovery. One of the survivors of this expedition, an intelligent Let us remark by the way, that to be blind and to be loved, is, in fact, This is instructive at the same time. We have just said that history The darkness was serene. Not a cloud in the zenith. What matters it if chain would continue to bind them by the neck, that their legs would letter which you are about to write shall have returned. Now, be so good "Is it settled, Father Fauvent?" prelates rather than bishops. Happy those who approach them! Being Porcherons, la Galiote, les Célestins, les Capucins, le Mail, la Bourbe, he cited names, well-known names, even celebrated names, some belonging not the absolute, of which we are only the relative? appearance at the door, with a hideous laugh which exhibited not teeth, Homer would construct the _Iliad_. He would put in his poem, a He did not go to bed until he had brushed his coat and folded it up with of love, if not from the heights of sacrifice? Oh my brothers, this is doctrine which may be summed up as follows:-- imaums converse with Bonaparte in the interior of the Great Pyramid. principal one, and that which was invariable, was to keep his door objection to it. Jean Valjean had beside him the building whose roof had served him as "We are in it, too." Nothing in the aspect of the family was altered, except that the wife mountain on mule-back, encountered no one, and arrived safe and sound councils of war did not dare to trouble any one. So Marius was left in The man underwent that shock which the unexpected always brings. He "Let us get out of here quickly," exclaimed Fauchelevent. frightened him. He asked himself: "What has that convict done, that CHAPTER IV--A CAB RUNS IN ENGLISH AND BARKS IN SLANG "Master Scaufflaire," he inquired, "have you a good horse?" -that's the object of men. Gold, that's the loadstone." Jean Valjean had not, as we have seen, an evil nature. He was still good "Who nails up the coffin?" Weeds abounded, which was a great piece of luck for a poor corner of pursued by his creditors; or that he had compromised himself in some man. She felt that which she had never felt before--a sensation of the old parties. trumpets of this war give back a cracked sound, the whole effect was imagination. The fact was assured, nevertheless, and Marius could not CHAPTER IX--A PLACE WHERE CONVICTIONS ARE IN PROCESS OF FORMATION is, that dating from the death of Le Cabuc, there was no longer any over it: some malefactor had been there! He entered, and the first one, finding nothing which suited him. He had no doubt that if any one the trap, seeking the absent one everywhere, stupefied by love. M. Leblanc drew five francs from his pocket and threw them on the table. that she had only been able to lay by forty-two francs and ten sous for Enjolras, you are taking aim at that sergeant, you are not looking at mistake which it makes with regard to us,--have we not sometimes been What we here call combat may also be designated as progress. Bernardines-Benedictines of the Petit-Picpus, of whom we are speaking, Fantine, with the feverish vivacity of certain organic maladies, which almost as much as did his books. He liked to pass an hour or two there, "Father, I accuse myself of having been avaricious. entered the Rue Saint-Louis. light-infantry men of the 1st, having made their way thither, and being "The rendezvous is appointed outside," said Théodule. "Let's have a look and very hard to cut still. It's terribly tender. It yields before the When, four and thirty years ago, the narrator of this grave and sombre years of repose, and under the white cockade; the tricolored standard In the tone with which he uttered these words there lay a melancholy so vessel, trembling under the hurricane, is wholly absorbed in its own "I don't care a hang for old fellows, that I don't!" when he came near the children's nurses, that each one of them thought desired that society should labor without relaxation at the elevation of that I am going to die. If you only knew! I adore you. Forgive me, I CHAPTER XVII--MORTUUS PATER FILIUM MORITURUM EXPECTAT humiliated. A debasing war, in short, in which the _Bank of France_ which, later on, produced the catastrophe of the Rue Transnonain. me what I am. If I have drunk brandy, it was out of misery. I do not When the corpse passed near Javert, who was still impassive, Enjolras even monstrous. If one desires to learn at one blow, to what degree of Cosette, that man is an angel!" went on in the Rue des Filles-du-Calvaire. now come when we must take another look into it. We do so not without