OceanofPDF.com

Victor Hugo

THE WRETCHED

Translated and with Notes by

CHRISTINE DONOUGHER

with an Introduction by

ROBERT TOMBS

OceanofPDF.com

Contents

Note on the Translation

Introduction

THE WRETCHED

Part One: Fantine

1 A Good Man

2 The Fall

3 In the Year 1817

4 Entrusting Sometimes Means Giving Away

5 The Descent

6 Javert

7 The Champmathieu Affair

8 After-Effect

Part Two: Cosette

1 Waterloo

2 The Ship Orion

3 A Deathbed Promise Is Honoured

4 The Gorbeau Tenement

5 Silent Stalkers in the Dark

6 Petit-Picpus

7 Parenthesis

8 Cemeteries Take What They Are Given

Part Three: Marius

1 Paris Through the Study of One of Its Atoms

2 The Consumate Bourgeois

3 Grandfather and Grandson

4 Friends of the ABC

5 Virtue in Adversity

6 The Conjunction of Two Stars

7 Patron-Minette

8 The Villainous Pauper

Part Four: The Rue Plumet Idyll and the Rue St-Denis Epic

1 A Few Pages of History

2 Éponine

3 The House in Rue Plumet

4 Help From Below May Be Help From on High

5 Which Does Not End the Way It Began

6 Young Gavroche

7 Slang

8 Enchantment and Despair

9 Where Are They Going?

10 The Fifth of June 1832

11 The Atom Embraces the Storm

12 Corinthe

13 Marius Enters Into Darkness

14 The Grandeurs of Despair

15 Rue de l’Homme-Armé

Part Five: Jean Valjean

1 The War Within Four Walls

2 The Bowels of Leviathan

3 The Mire, Yet the Soul

4 Javert Derailed

5 Grandfather and Grandson

6 The Sleepless Night

7 The Last Drop in the Chalice

8 The Waning Twilight

9 Ultimate Darkness, Ultimate Dawn

Notes

Further Reading

Chronology

Follow Penguin

OceanofPDF.com

Note on the Translation

As Professor Tombs has pointed out in his introduction, there are two key words associated with this novel that pose particular problems for the translator: the title itself, Les Misérables, and the dread prison sentence, le bagne.

The publishers have taken the view that we should depart from the

traditional practice of leaving the title in French and commit ourselves to an English rendering, and as a translator I was in favour of this. The Wretched is the title that was chosen. This may prove to be a controversial decision, but the hope is that it will challenge assumptions, encourage debate and help us to look afresh at this magnificent work.

The bagne was not only a place – the arsenal prison, and in particular, in

the case of The Wretched, the one at Toulon – but also a brutal regime of punishment. Prisoners were condemned to hard labour, kept in chains from the beginning to the end of their sentence, and subjected to extremely harsh treatment and appalling living conditions. They were housed, when the arsenal prisons first came into being in 1748, on decommissioned galleys and, later, on other vessels.

Although the need for land-based accommodation at Toulon was

addressed by the authorities as early as 1777, prison hulks continued to be used until the arsenal prison was finally closed down in 1873. In 1783, only thirteen years before Jean Valjean would have been sent there, sixty per cent of the prisoners were housed on the hulks. (A fascinating and detailed account of this subject, based on archive documents, is given by the Académie du Var in Le Bagne de Toulon 1748–1873, published by Éditions Autres Temps, 2010.)

It is for this reason, and because of the English term’s naval associations

and the similarly fearsome resonance it has in the popular imagination, that I have chosen to translate le bagne as ‘the prison hulks’. (See also my note on the account that Jean Valjean gives of himself to the bishop of Digne, under the entry I’m an ex-convict … from Toulon, p. 1312).

The Wretched is one of the great crusading novels for social reform,

inspired by a deep sense of social injustice, a missionary zeal to expose that injustice, and a huge energy to advocate the benefits of righting wrong and of cultivating the fulfilment of human potential. It is addressed to all and speaks in a language intended to be understood by all. It combines rhetorical grandeur and poetic lyricism, such as might be found in parts of the Bible, with the heart-stopping suspense narrative of the action-packed mass-market thriller, and even the farcical humour of the sitcom.

First published in 1862, and rooted in one of the most turbulent periods

of French history, when the country occupied a central position on the world stage, it remains contemporary and universal in its message. This translation attempts to convey both that historical particularity and that contemporary relevance, that ‘Frenchness’ and that universality, while striving to avoid both unconvincing pastiche and modern intrusions.

Central to the themes of The Wretched is the dignity of the individual.

Embedded in the French language and in the French idiom, to a far greater extent than in English, is a recognition of that dignity in the way that the individual is addressed. For this reason I have retained formal titles in French: monsieur l’abbé, monsieur le président etc., and I have footnoted key moments in the text when the formal ‘vous’ or the informal ‘tu’ form of the verb are used to dramatic effect.

I have also footnoted other points of linguistic significance – puns,

quotations and literary references – while glosses on the historical background and other references are to be found in the endnotes.

Hugo himself footnoted his own text, largely in the section devoted to

‘slang’, and in some instances quite extensively, presenting the slang used by the criminal fraternity as a grotesquely arcane language foreign to the ordinary French citizen. Having considered how early-nineteenth-century

Parisian slang might be translated to achieve the same effect without introducing unwanted echoes of a different culture and without seeming unnecessarily contrived, I decided, in the end, that the most authentic solution was also to treat it as a foreign language, and to translate only Hugo’s footnote ‘translation’, which is included so that readers – even those without any knowledge of French – can see the gulf between the two.

Where characters speak in slang or in dialect, it is invariably signalled by

Hugo; otherwise they speak in standard French, not in a substandard or class-distinctive form of the language. This seems to me central to the educative aspirations of this novel and important to preserve in the translation.

The extent to which Hugo wove reality into his work is remarkable,

lending a documentary authority to his fiction, and the endnotes will, I hope, illuminate this aspect of Hugo’s writing. In this respect the resources of the internet have proved invaluable, and I am immensely grateful to the countless contributors of information to the web who have enormously facilitated the task of the translator and annotator of such a work as this. I am sure that Hugo would have greatly approved of this democratization of knowledge.

I imagine, too, he would in the same spirit have embraced today’s

abbreviated modes of communication, if the story of an exchange of telegrams with his English publisher is to be believed. Wishing to know how sales of the translation of this novel were going, he is supposed to have sent the message: ‘?’ – to which came the equally pithy reply: ‘!’

Finally, I am very grateful to Sue Phillpott for the close attention with

which she copyedited my translation and for the many useful suggestions that she made, and to Stephen Ryan for his meticulous proofreading.

Christine Donougher, 2013

OceanofPDF.com

As long as through the workings of laws and customs there exists a damnation-by-society artificially creating hells in the very midst of civilization and complicating destiny, which is divine, with a man-made fate; as long as the three problems of the age are not resolved: the debasement of men through proletarianization, the moral degradation of women through hunger, and the blighting of children by keeping them in darkness; as long as in certain strata social suffocation is possible; in other words and from an even broader perspective, as long as there are ignorance and poverty on earth, books of this kind may serve some purpose.

Victor Hugo, Hauteville House, 1 January 1862

OceanofPDF.com

Introduction

I want to destroy human inevitability; I condemn slavery, I chase out poverty, I instruct ignorance, I treat illness, I light up the night, I hate hatred. That is what I am and that is why I have written The Wretched. As I see it, The Wretched is nothing other than a book having fraternity as its foundation and progress as its summit.

Victor Hugo, 18621

On 4 March 1861, the world’s most famous political exile boarded the ferry from St Peter’s Port, Guernsey, to Weymouth with the voluminous and nearly completed manuscript of Les Misérables (The Wretched) in a waterproof bag. Victor-Marie Hugo was on the way to the battlefield of Waterloo to finish the book. He was one of those bushy-bearded nineteenth-century monsters of egotism, energy and creativity. Several contemporaries compared him with that other domineering genius, Wagner. Tolstoy bracketed him with Dostoevsky. In British terms, we would have to think of him as Dickens, Tennyson and Carlyle rolled into one: the greatest popular novelist, the greatest modern poet (‘Alas!’ said André Gide), and the irrepressible conscience of the nation. But there is no English equivalent of the political career he added to this, as a crusading enemy of the death penalty, an implacable opponent of tyranny, a parliamentarian under three different regimes and a patriotic bard. He tried out every permutation of nineteenth-century French politics, starting as an arch-conservative and finishing as a left-wing hero. Romantic artists saw themselves as the prophets and guides of humanity: none more so than Hugo. Like some of the other geniuses with whom he was compared – perhaps more comprehensively than most – he was a danger to those around him, blighting the lives of most of his family, and an incorrigible and insatiable

sex-pest specializing in vulnerable women amenable to his fame, money and patriarchal authority.

Born in 1802, he was the third son of the daughter of a Breton sea captain

and of a tough soldier in Napoleon’s army, who was doing very well out of the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars, ending a general and a count.

Victor was brought up largely by his mother, who, like most French people, finally came to prefer a restored Bourbon dynasty to the endless upheavals of revolution and war. In 1814, as Allied armies marched on Paris, Napoleon abdicated, and the Bourbon King Louis XVIII (brother of the guillotined Louis XVI) returned. But the ex-emperor soon tired of his little realm on the island of Elba, where spies reported he was putting on weight.

He sailed with 900 men and landed near Cannes on 1 March 1815. He was acclaimed by the army and a large minority – perhaps one in three – of the country, especially the bureaucracy and the army, including Hugo’s father.

But the Allied powers had learned that they could not trust Napoleon, and prepared to fight. Napoleon’s chief of police predicted that he would win two battles and lose the third. He did win – or partially win – at Ligny, against the Prussians, and at Quatre-Bras, against Wellington’s Anglo-Dutch army. The third was Waterloo, a turning point in French and European history – and fundamental to the plot of The Wretched. So Louis XVIII returned to reign over a bitterly divided country, and was duly succeeded by his brother Charles X in 1825. Hugo evokes these touchy years of division: ‘Whether one said “regicides” or “voters”, “enemies” or “allies”, “Napoleon” or “Buonaparte” – this could divide two men more than any abyss’ (p. 109).

Victor Hugo came to prominence during the 1820s as a brilliant young

royalist poet, proclaiming that poetry required ‘monarchist ideas and religious beliefs’, and happy to turn out odes on royal occasions and denounce ‘Buonaparte’ in verse. As a leading figure in the new French Romantic movement and yet one loyal to the Bourbons, he was in favour with the government. Romanticism, however, brought notoriety and friction with a conservative artistic establishment. Hugo wrote disturbing and controversial novels. He proclaimed himself a great admirer of – and

perhaps by implication successor to – Shakespeare, ‘the leading poet of all time’, who had transcended the ‘absurd pseudo-Aristotelian’ traditions of the French classical theatre, of which patriots were so proud. Shakespeare’s boundless imagination and willingness to ignore convention were, for Hugo, ‘the torrent that has burst its banks’, the precursor of modern Romanticism.2 Hugo’s own torrential work would also break literary boundaries. His collision with the establishment came in the political as well as the artistic realm. In 1827 he wrote a floridly patriotic ode: ‘À la Colonne de la Place Vendôme’ – Napoleon’s memorial column in Paris. In this he seemed to threaten a new ‘dawning of the sun of Austerlitz’ to re-establish France’s greatness. Although the poem was careful not to criticize the Bourbons directly, any praise of Napoleon was provocative. Hugo’s new-found admiration for Napoleon was linked to his rediscovery of his estranged father after his mother’s death, and of his family’s claim to nobility, conferred by the emperor – all fictionalized (and, like so much in The Wretched, idealized) in the story of Marius Pontmercy.

Sharper clashes with the establishment came over his plays. Marion de

Lorme (1829) was banned, largely for its hostile portrayal of Louis XIII.

Hugo had a personal audience with Charles X, who refused to allow its performance but tried to buy him off with an increased royal pension, which he disdainfully and publicly refused.3 Hugo’s next innovation, Hernani, was described by critics as an amalgam of Spanish Romanticism and Shakespeare (it had echoes of Romeo and Juliet). It opened at the Théâtre Français, the prestigious state theatre, in March 1830. The first week became a battle between defenders of the French classical tradition of Corneille and Racine, who jeered and blew whistles, and Hugo’s friends (he issued wads of free tickets), who cheered his lines and heckled the hecklers.

Critics hated Hugo’s ostentatious flouting of classical proprieties: unorthodox versification, unpoetic language, vulgar characters and violence on stage. A female character calls her lover ‘my lion’ (the actress insisted on changing it to ‘my lord’); bandits are put on stage; disrespectful words are addressed to a king; a noblewoman is portrayed ‘without dignity or modesty’; and dialogue is naturalistic. As Hugo saw it, classicists wanted

art to improve and idealize reality, while he insisted it should ‘paint life’, with its confusion of the good, the bad and the absurd.4 In retrospect, this clash took on political significance as a cultural rebellion against the Bourbon regime, only months before it was overthrown by a popular revolution in the streets of Paris in July 1830. This revolution delayed the completion of Hugo’s first great popular success as a novelist, Notre-Dame de Paris (1831) – The Hunchback of Notre-Dame.

The revolution brought to power the compromise ‘July Monarchy’ of

King Louis-Philippe, a parliamentary system on British lines, with a limited electorate. It won the support of many leading intellectuals. They included the political philosopher Alexis de Tocqueville, the painter Eugène Delacroix, the historian François Guizot (who became its dominant political figure) and Hugo. He gives a sympathetic if critical pen-portrait of Louis-Philippe, with whom he was on excellent terms, in The Wretched. He would, wrote Hugo, have been ‘ranked among the most illustrious rulers in history if he had cared a little for glory … His great failing was this: he was modest in the name of France’ (pp. 748, 749). Yet the king’s caution in foreign policy, if it brought him the hatred of nationalists, won the support of much of the public, who feared a return to the turmoil of the Revolutionary and Napoleonic years. At the time, Hugo himself, now a tax-paying, property-owning father of four, seems to have shared these views.

But, for its first five years, the July Monarchy had to fight for survival against both left and right, in a Europe which seemed on the verge of another cataclysm.5 Revolts broke out in Belgium, Poland and Italy, which French Republicans, Bonapartists and socialists (overlapping categories) supported enthusiastically and wanted France to join in with. Some were willing to use insurrection and assassination to reignite the revolution begun in 1830. Louis-Philippe was the target of eight attempts on his life. Some revolutionaries aimed at another international conflagration, like the Revolutionary Wars of the 1790s, in which French armies would forcibly liberate the peoples of Europe. The left, proclaimed one of its leading spokesmen, ‘have no fear of a European war’. This was the feverish atmosphere of the Republican underground, which Hugo portrayed in the

‘Friends of the ABC’, led by the clear-eyed fanatic Enjolras, ‘a charming young man, capable of being fearsome. Of angelic beauty, he … had a sacerdotal and warlike nature, at odds with his boyishness’ (p. 585).

A terrible cholera outbreak in 1832 killed 18,000 people in Paris,

including the tough prime minister, Casimir Périer, and an opposition leader, the former Napoleonic hero, General Maximilien Lamarque. The latter’s funeral procession on 5 June 1832 provided the occasion for a rebellion planned by Republican secret societies, possibly with support from Bonapartists and ‘Carlists’ (supporters of the ex-king Charles X).6

When the shooting started, thousands of young Parisian workers joined in, and about 200 barricades were thrown up. The rising was eventually defeated by the army and the part-time National Guard, who lost at least

150 men, while the insurgents lost roughly the same.7 Hugo disapproved of this ‘riot’, as did several leading Republicans – ‘Follies drowned in blood,’ he noted. ‘We shall have a republic one day, and when it comes of its own volition, it will be good … We must be patient [and] not permit ruffians to daub our flag with red … They make the republic a bogeyman … we should speak a little less of Robespierre and a little more of Washington.’8 But three decades later he was to rehabilitate and immortalize this minor tragedy in one of the climactic scenes in The Wretched.

This then was the turbulent period – between 1815 and 1833 – within

which The Wretched was set. Now begins the period during which it was written. The first hint may go back to 1839, when Hugo visited the bagne at Toulon as part of his interest in the treatment of criminals. He was, by this time, a celebrated and successful poet, playwright and novelist. He was elected in 1841 to the Académie Française, the pinnacle of the intellectual establishment, and in 1845 given a peerage by Louis-Philippe, with a seat in the upper chamber. The 1840s was a decade for socially conscious literature in France, as in England: works by George Sand, Balzac, Eugène Sue and Félix Pyat match those by Dickens, Charlotte Brontë, Disraeli, Carlyle and Elizabeth Gaskell. Hugo began writing his own social novel, provisionally titled Jean Tréjean (later Vlajean, and finally Valjean), on 17 November 1845, and retitled Les Misères by 1848, when most of the book was in draft.

Hugo had earlier sketched out the main story round Valjean, Cosette and Marius, and then added depth, detail and secondary characters, usually working on several episodes at once.9 Masses of classical and historical allusions give this humble contemporary story a universal significance as part of the great spiritual drama of history, in which humanity moves towards fulfilment – a central Romantic vision. Completion, however, was decisively delayed in the aftermath of another revolution, and, in consequence, the final version was to take on a very different form. In February 1848, the July Monarchy was suddenly overthrown in the streets of Paris, as part of the ‘Springtime of the Peoples’ that brought regimes crashing down across Europe at a time of severe economic and political crisis. Hugo vainly urged a regency to try to save the monarchy, but the Parisian crowd demanded a democratic republic. This Second Republic was to be racked by economic and political conflict, in which Hugo was caught up.

He was elected to the new National Constituent Assembly in June 1848

as a representative for Paris. Almost at once, tensions erupted in the capital’s worst violence yet, the ‘June Days’, which began as demonstrations by unemployed workers and grew into a full-scale insurrection, with half the city barricaded. The rising was eventually crushed by the full force of the army, with thousands of deaths and mass arrests. Hugo’s private jottings clearly show his ideas concerning what he would later call les misérables. They were, in some circumstances, the ‘noble and worthy people’, but they could be ‘perverted and misled’ by extremists and turned into a destructive and anarchic mob. During the February Revolution they had been ‘ardent, good, generous, full of respectful love for every noble thing’, but by June ‘the same people’ had become ‘bitter, discontented, unjust, suspicious’, some of them ‘dreaming of pillage, massacre and arson’. They had been demoralized, he thought, by ‘inactivity, laziness, organized fecklessness … Handouts that corrupt the heart rather than wages that satisfy it.’ Hugo actively opposed the June rebellion as an Assembly ‘Representative of the People’, going so far as to accompany the military in attacking a barricade. In his private notebooks,

he tells a story of young prostitutes standing on top of barricades, lifting up their skirts to taunt the soldiers, and being shot down – for him a potent symbol of the depravity and cruelty on both sides. During the fighting, a soldier was killed in the courtyard of his house. He summed up the struggle as ‘on one side, the despair of the people, on the other, the despair of society’. But he had no doubt about which side he was on: ‘Saving civilization, as Paris did in June, could almost be said to have saved the life of the human race.’ As always, he consoled himself with a vision of Progress: ‘we are living in a furnace [but] the statue of the Future will emerge, and it needed such a conflagration to cast such a bronze.’10 It has been plausibly argued that the psychological stress of the June violence, and his own part in it, was a turning point in his life.11 Nevertheless, the appearance of Les Misères was announced as imminent by his son in July.

In fact, there was to be a gap of twelve years before writing resumed.

The June Days signalled the failure of Republicanism, whose support

was limited to an urban minority in a largely rural society. When a president was elected in December 1848, the Republicans were trounced by Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte, the emperor’s nephew, who won more than three times as many votes as all the other candidates combined. Hugo, who had family and intellectual links to the Bonapartist tradition, was at first warily hopeful, but he soon turned against Louis-Napoleon as a threat to freedom and the Republic. Both critics and admirers of Hugo have suspected a mixture of motives, including disappointed ambition. Hugo was not alone among politicians in expecting that Louis-Napoleon, an adept flatterer, intended to listen to their advice, and who felt both personal resentment and political outrage when he followed his own populist strategy. This culminated in a military coup in December 1851, in which the established political class – royalist and Republican, and including, of course, Representative Hugo – was forcibly and contemptuously ejected from power. Failing in various fumbling attempts to rouse resistance, Assembly members found themselves under temporary arrest or expelled from France.

Hugo left for Brussels. Popular resistance in the countryside was crushed, and thousands arrested and transported. The final blow was that the

electorate overwhelmingly endorsed the coup in a plebiscite, and Bonaparte explained that he had ‘acted illegally to ensure justice’. The Republic was formally replaced by the Second Empire of Napoleon III in 1852 – endorsed by another plebiscite – as the economy grew and Napoleon increased both his power and his popularity. In the eyes of Hugo and other exiles, the corrupted people had proved unworthy of their destiny:

Great nation, at this time you can enjoy, While in the dark men suffer, weep and die, … Illuminations, games and fun galore:

Your wages as this wretched fellow’s whore!12

The 1851 coup transformed Hugo’s life and his political role. From defender of law and order against the mob in June 1848, he became an upholder of Republicanism as a sacred creed, a denouncer of dictatorship, and an implacable, even hysterical, enemy of Napoleon III personally. He went into exile and rejected an amnesty, remaining outside France, mainly in the Channel Islands, until the Second Empire collapsed, in September 1870, due to a disastrous war against Prussia. Hugo pilloried the new emperor in two works of literary and political fury, a book-length pamphlet, Napoléon-le-Petit (1852), and a volume of savage political verses, Les Châtiments (1853) – ‘punishments’. These were international best-sellers and circulated illegally in France.

Hugo spent eighteen of his most superhumanly productive years in exile,

and became a world-wide celebrity. Another great poet, Tennyson, later paid a brotherly tribute to

Victor in Drama, Victor in Romance, Cloud-weaver of phantasmal hopes and fears, French of the French, and Lord of human tears …

As yet unbroken, Stormy voice of France!13

He invented a new religion (still practised in Vietnam), and experimented with spiritualism, in order to communicate with other great men (Napoleon I indicated his approval of Hugo’s opposition to his nephew, and Shakespeare dictated a new play). He also shared many of the Anglophobic prejudices common in France, refused to learn English and visited as little

of Britain as possible. About 100 of the most militant exiles – ‘hairy, hunchbacked and obtuse’, according to Hugo’s long-suffering lover Juliette Drouet14 – gathered round him in Jersey, under the surveillance of the French vice-consul and the Royal Navy. But after one exile published rude remarks about Queen Victoria, several dozen were expelled, really as a sop to the French government, by now Britain’s ally in the Crimean War. Hugo simply moved to Guernsey. ‘I find exile better and better,’ he wrote in November 1855. ‘I shall perhaps die in exile, but I shall die greater.’15

He wrote vast quantities of poetry and visionary literature, and two

novels, one set in the Channel Islands, the other in a fantasy Britain inhabited by characters such as Gwynplaine, Dea and Lord Linnaeus Clancharlie. Meanwhile, his son François-Victor translated the complete works of Shakespeare, to which Hugo contributed a book-length introduction. Hugo, like most of the disillusioned French left, backed away from militaristic nationalism, which had been hijacked by Napoleon III. He turned to pacifism, continued to campaign against the death penalty and dreamed of a united Europe that would inevitably have Paris as its capital – ‘Before it has a people, Europe has a city.’ Above all, he remained as the ‘unbroken voice’ of resistance to Napoleon III:

If we’re but a thousand, count me in, If only a hundred, there I’ll be.

If ten stand firm, I’ll be the tenth

And if there’s only one, it will be me!16

Work on The Wretched was delayed by other writings and by tough financial negotiations with publishers. It was resumed on 27 April 1860: ‘Today I have taken The Wretched out of the manuscript box.’ It took two weeks to reread the text, and seven months to ‘penetrate the work with meditation and light’ and create ‘absolute unity between what I wrote thirteen years ago and what I am going to write today’.17 On 30 December the final writing began. Now were added the great digressive sections to give breadth and what Hugo saw as the huge untidy complexity of reality – what he called the ‘foliage’ – to the basic narrative branches: the fresco of the year 1817, the analyses of Paris, its criminal underworld and its sewers,

the Revolutionary ‘Friends of the ABC’, the battle of Waterloo, and even more episodes not used in the final version. Also, Part Five was written, which included the dramatic climax of the barricade and Marius’s rescue by Jean Valjean.18 The myth-making description of the barricade, drawing on history but otherwise entirely a product of Hugo’s imagination, dramatized a new form of urban fighting, for barricades had only become familiar in Paris in the late 1820s. In The Wretched, the barricade of 1832, described both as a symbolic object and as the group of people defending it, provides the link between the battle of Waterloo and the future revolution of 1848, whose barricades are evoked in the novel as having drawn on lessons learned in 1832.19

The book was almost finished when Hugo left Guernsey in March 1861

to do his final piece of research at Waterloo: ‘I shall say no more than a word on the subject in my book, but I want that word to be accurate.’20 The subject was the battle itself, and he wanted to go and experience the very place where, as he saw it, the march of Progress had temporarily gone astray before resuming in a new direction. He stumbled on the bullet-scarred farm of Hougoumont, resonant of his own name:

Hougomont was a fateful place, the initial obstruction, the first resistance encountered at Waterloo by that great tree-feller of Europe whose name was Napoleon: the first knot under the fall of his axe …

The tumult of battle is still in this courtyard; the horror is visible; the confusion of the

fighting is frozen here; it lives on, the dying continues; it was yesterday. (p. 278)

This was not his first literary excursion to what, in a famous poem in Les Châtiments, ‘The Expiation’, he had called the ‘morne plaine’, the ‘dismal plain’, of Waterloo. That had been part of his bitter attack on Bonapartism, presenting Napoleon’s defeat as punishment for his seizure of power in 1799, with, as his final humiliation, the vulgar exploitation of his heroic legend by his crooked nephew and his cronies. Now, in The Wretched, his ‘word’ on the subject of Waterloo ran to more than fifty pages. It was this section that had the greatest immediate impact on the public, and created a legendary version of the battle that dominated the French popular memory thereafter.21 In the novel, it also acts as a vital link in the story of Marius

and Cosette. Hugo knew that a bravura battle scene would boost the prospects of publishing success. In June, the month of the battle, he wrote the final words at Waterloo itself, and then celebrated in his accustomed manner with a maidservant at the inn, named Hélène, who made him think of a Rubens: ‘Helena nuda … Anniversary of Waterloo. Battle won.’22

He had ‘won’ Waterloo in two ways. First, he portrayed it as a moral

victory for the French: defeat had been nothing but the consequence of circumstances, from rain that delayed victory over Wellington and allowed the arrival of the Prussians, to the existence of a hidden sunken lane that destroyed a French cavalry charge. For Hugo, such circumstances were providential: God had ended the reign of the individual genius.23 The ‘undistinguished’ British victory was ridiculed by General Cambronne’s immortal (and perhaps apocryphal) shout of ‘Merde!’ ‘The man who won the battle of Waterloo was Cambronne,’ insists Hugo. ‘To hurl such a verbal thunderbolt at the bombshells that are killing you is to be victorious!’ Second, Hugo ‘won’ Waterloo by detaching it from the Bonapartist legend, and attaching it to the Revolution and the Republic, whose soldiers, he insisted, had fought and died heroically there. Cambronne hurls his ‘word of titanic disdain … not only at Europe in the name of the Empire – that would be of little consequence – he hurls it at the past in the name of the Revolution’ (p. 313). This was important for Hugo, because of his fundamental belief in the onward march of Progress, and also because he thought it was vital for the Republican party to show its patriotism, and not allow Napoleon III a monopoly of nationalism. Some Republican writers had tried to debunk Waterloo: ‘What a mistake for a party to denationalize itself!’ he wrote. ‘That is a mistake I shall never make.’24 The glorious defeat of Waterloo begins, for Hugo, a new historical era, in which Republican revolution, of which the barricade of 1832 is a prophetic sign, will one day triumph.

The circumstances in which he began The Wretched in Paris were in most

ways very different from those in which he finished it sixteen years later at Waterloo, but in one way similar: he began and ended with sexual adventure, a constant part of his life. In July 1845 he had been caught in

flagrante delicto with Léonie Biard by a commissaire of police sent by her husband. Hugo became the butt of indignant or derisive comment, and Léonie was imprisoned for adultery. Her enforced absence gave him both time to write and a theme: society’s cruelty to vulnerable women, in the character of Fantine.25

Most of the story had been written before it acquired, in about 1853, its

final strange and significant title: Les Misérables. Hugo considered this untranslatable, and it was kept for the first and subsequent English editions, until now. The closest English rendering is ‘the wretches’ or ‘the wretched’, conveying both pity and condemnation: ‘there is a point where the poor and the wicked become mixed up and lumped together in the one fateful word: the wretched. Whose fault is this?’ (p. 671).

This duality was a central theme of the book, and a crucial issue in

political and social debate of the 1840s. Those on the left – of whom Hugo was broadly speaking one – saw future progress as linked with the emancipation of the People. Liberty, Equality and Fraternity had been the watchwords of their version of French history since 1789, the year of the fall of the Bastille and the Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen.

But the Revolution had spun out of control into civil war, violence and persecution, and France was still living in the shadow of that other Revolution, that of the Terror of the 1790s – ‘the savage beast’, in Louis-Philippe’s words, that liked to ‘dip its muzzle in blood’.26 Even convinced Republicans, such as the great historian Jules Michelet, were well aware of the burden: ‘Human blood has a terrible power against those who have spilt it … The terrorists have done us immense and lasting harm. Were you to go to the last cottage in the furthest country of Europe, you would meet that memory and that curse.’27

So there was no more urgent question than revolution. When was it

legitimate to use violence in an ‘insurrection’ that was not merely a destructive ‘riot’? How could revolution be made to serve Civilization rather than Barbarism? When would ‘the people’ be its noble, patriotic self, rather than a debased and destructive ‘mob’ which is ‘traitor to the people’? (p. 945). And how could one tell which was which? We have seen how

Hugo was confronted painfully with this dilemma in June 1848, when he had sided with ‘Civilization’ against the mob. The problem, and the words used to analyse it, are discussed obsessively by Hugo in The Wretched, as they were by contemporaries. One 1840s sociologist defined ‘the labouring classes’ and the ‘dangerous classes’ as different entities. Phrenologists saw criminal tendencies as biological. A leading politician, Adolphe Thiers, made a notorious distinction in 1851 between ‘the People’ and ‘the vile multitude’ that has ‘delivered over to every tyrant the liberty of every Republic’.28 For Hugo, with his genuine compassion for the downtrodden, sweeping dismissals of the masses were unacceptable. Yet, in his mind, there seemed to be no clear divide between ‘people’ and ‘mob’ but a mere linguistic distinction: ‘Clear-sighted today, the instinct of the masses may be blurred tomorrow’ (p. 945). All that distinguished ‘insurrection’ from ‘riot’ was the outcome – insurrection was ‘forward-moving’ (p. 946). This was hardly a clear road-map to the enlightened future.

Hugo’s solution relates not to sociology or ideology but to morality.

When inspired and educated to do good, they were ‘the people’; when debased and corrupted, they were ‘the mob’. This is one of the fundamental themes of The Wretched, which he described as ‘a sort of social epic’. Hugo struggled for years with the problem of popular vice and virtue. He was criticized in a left-wing newspaper in 1841 for using the term populace, derogatory in French, in his acceptance speech to the Académie, and he had responded with some embarrassment by insisting that ‘there is a gilded populace as well as a ragged populace’, the former marked by ‘selfishness and idleness’, the latter by ‘envy and fecklessness’ – a comment he would paraphrase in The Wretched. In a debate in the National Assembly in July 1849, in the aftermath of the terrible June 1848 revolt, he struggled again with the meaning of misère and misérable: ‘La misère is not suffering; it is not merely poverty; it is a nameless thing that I have tried to define … Suffering cannot disappear, but la misère must disappear. There will always be unfortunates, but it is possible that there will be no more misérables.’29

The problem for Hugo, and for many of his contemporaries, was in diagnosing and treating what seemed a new, and above all an urban,

malady: poverty, instability, and social breakdown, creating an uncertain and constantly changing frontier between poverty and crime, in which the real misérables were those who became predatory and dangerous to society.

Hugo personifies the distinction in the contrast between Jean Valjean, the redeemed convict, and the elder Thénardiers, irredeemable because cruel and vicious by choice.

In the background is the looming nightmare of the bagne, presented as

the epitome of the brutality both of the misérable and of the state, an institution whose cruelty aggravates the viciousness it punishes. It was the descendant of the Old Regime’s galley slavery – the slaves remained, without the galleys – in which the worst criminals who escaped a death sentence, identified by their red tunics, were sentenced to forced labour in the main naval ports under military discipline. The bagne was an old-fashioned punishment, with no ambition to make prisoners repent, as nineteenth-century reformers hoped to do by exhortation and solitary confinement: ‘at Toulon we worked hard, that’s true’, recalled one old lag, ‘but we drank a lot, and we could talk and laugh to our heart’s content.’30

Jean Valjean spends nineteen years in the bagne at Toulon for stealing a loaf – the proverbial crime of the poor – and then for trying to escape. He is turned from a victim to a brute by his treatment, and by his stigmatization as released galérien, forced to carry a yellow passport, and shunned by the law-abiding. Society, in the person of the policeman Javert, tries obsessively to thrust him back into that horror. When he and the innocent Cosette are walking in Paris, they see a chain gang of condemned men being dragged off to the bagne, ‘the seven circles of hell in procession’, of which Hugo gives a long description mingling pity and disgust at men whose lack of remorse is treated only by indiscriminate beating. ‘Father, are they men?’ asks Cosette. ‘Sometimes,’ answers Valjean, knowing that his own humanity had been saved only by a chance encounter with the saintly bishop of Digne, who treated him as a brother, but knowing, too, that the taint of the bagne is indelible, that he was ‘dragging the invisible but heavy chain of perpetual infamy’ (p. 803).

The contrast between Hugo’s visceral opposition to the June 1848 revolt

and his romanticization of the 1832 revolt in The Wretched seems flagrant.

It is usually explained by his move to the left following the Bonapartist overthrow of the Republic in 1851 – he had, after all, supported the regime against which the 1832 revolt had been aimed. Yet there are clear consistencies in his view throughout. The core idea is of misérables who can either be inspired to heroism (as in February 1848) or fall into depravity (as in June 1848): ‘This multitude can be made sublime … These bare feet, bare arms, rags, this benightedness, degradation, darkness may be used for the conquest of the ideal’ (p. 535). Moreover, as we have seen, he justifies revolt by its outcome – whether it was ‘forward-moving’. Identical actions, whether by rebels or by governments, are therefore good or bad according to their progressive potential: ‘The same cannon aimed at the crowd, on the tenth of August is in the wrong, and on the fourteenth of Vendémiaire in the right’ (p. 945).31 But ultimately, even failed and illegitimate conflict can advance the march of History and cast that bronze statue of the Future. And, of course, Hugo’s barricade heroes are middle-class idealists, not a hungry mob – though, in fact, those who fought on the barricades in 1832 were overwhelmingly young workers.32

The Wretched was not, of course, merely a fictionalized political treatise,

even though critics as distinguished as Gustave Flaubert criticized Hugo’s characters as artificial mouthpieces for his ideas, and his dialogue as stagey.

But a treatise could never have had the lasting popular success of The Wretched. Hugo put into the story a passion that came from his deep personal involvement in the eventful history of the time – ‘I am a son of this century.’33 Intimate autobiographical elements run through the story at many levels. Some are obvious. Marius Pontmercy’s life – son of a Bonapartist officer, brought up by a Legitimist family, converted to Bonapartism and Republicanism – parallels that of the son of General Hugo. The brave young revolutionaries of the ‘Friends of the ABC’ provide Hugo with the wonderful opportunity of ‘describing himself seven times over’.34 He puts into Jean Valjean, a different alter ego, his humanitarian

impulses, and perhaps a vague desire for escape into obscurity and self-sacrifice. There are many hidden personal clues too: names, places, dates – such as 16 February 1833 – ‘Marius and Cosette’s wedding night’ (p. 1219) – which was the date of Hugo’s first night with the actress Juliette Drouet, when ‘I awoke to love’, and which began a liaison that lasted for fifty years.

On 7 September 1832, Jean Valjean is asked to give away his beloved adopted daughter Cosette in marriage; on 7 September 1843 Hugo had learned that his daughter Léopoldine had been drowned. At one level, the novel is a vast attempt by Hugo to make sense of his own life and its passing, in a Paris that was disappearing during his exile, as he often emphasizes. The final words, at Valjean’s anonymous grave, with its fading inscription, poignantly sum up this transience. The mingling of individual stories and great historical events, with Hugo’s massive ego at the centre, gives the book its power.

From the time of its publication, if not even before, it was a huge best-

seller, building on Hugo’s literary and political fame: 150,000 volumes were sold in France alone in a year. Its impact had been prepared by an international advertising campaign, which he, a keen man of business, had fed with press releases, announcing ‘the social and historical drama of the nineteenth century’, and spurred on by tricks of the trade, such as dividing the initial print-run into several ‘editions’, to suggest runaway sales. Within a few months there were also dozens of pirated editions. His biggest market was, of course, in France, whose government would take a dim view of one of its most prominent enemies praising revolt on the barricades. Yet the barricade was, for Hugo, ‘the heart of the subject’, and he expected it would be a large part of the book’s attraction. So, to prevent ‘the present abominable regime’ from banning the book, he told his Belgian publisher to ‘emphasize Waterloo’: ‘Bring out the national aspect of the book, pluck at French heart-strings … make it impossible for them to seize it by saying that it’s the battle of Waterloo now won by France, etc.’35 In Britain, where patriotic sentiment was less obviously a motive, Hugo’s defiance of Napoleon III, who was regarded as a potential enemy as well as a domestic oppressor, must have provided a substitute. The London Evening Star

reported within days of publication of the first part (Fantine) that ‘The Miserables of Victor Hugo [is] in the hands of all those who are able to purchase it and little circulating libraries have taken as many as fifty copies each.’36

Yet the political, historical and patriotic messages of The Wretched are

only a small part of its attraction. The ‘Lord of human tears’ was at least the equal of his contemporary Dickens as an impresario of emotion. Cosette’s sufferings at the hands of the Thénardiers – nastier than Fagin – are at least as harrowing as Oliver Twist’s ordeal in the workhouse. Fantine’s fate is as horrible as that of Nancy. Javert is as grimly representative of a heartless society as Quilp or Bumble. Jean Valjean is as movingly selfless as Mr Peggoty and his death is as pathetic as that of Little Nell. Gavroche is as indomitable as the Artful Dodger, and much funnier. Hugo had a similar emotional impact on generations of readers as Dickens, and Cosette became as familiar to generations of French children as a character in a fairy tale.

Like that of Dickens, Hugo’s solution to wickedness and cruelty is

humanitarian, not administrative – they shared a suspicion of reformers.

Both believed in inevitable Progress, but, in the meantime, their remedy for social evils is simple goodness. Both have drawn the fire of critics impatient with what they see as self-indulgent sentimentality. One contemporary joked that Dickens put his trust in ‘the immense spiritual power of the Christmas turkey’.37 Hugo’s trust is in the redeeming power of love, both charitable and erotic. Jean Valjean is redeemed by an act of Christian charity, in turn rescues Cosette by human kindness, and saves Marius for love of Cosette. The misérable, once corrupted by the inhumanity of the bagne, is no longer a brute, but a saint: ‘No doubt, in the shadows, some immense angel stood with wings outspread, awaiting his soul’ (p. 1304).

Marius and Cosette, too, are saved by their love for each other: ‘If at this point in her life Cosette had fallen in love with a dissolute and not very scrupulous man it would have been her ruin … There is no half way with love. It means either ruin or salvation … Of all things God has made, the human heart is the one that sheds the most light and alas! the most darkness.

God willed that the love Cosette encountered was a love that saves’ (p.

903). Even poor Éponine Thénardier is partly redeemed by her infatuation for Marius, which costs her her life. Much of the message of The Wretched is therefore broadly Christian – that of the non-sectarian Romantic religiosity of the first half of the nineteenth century, which after 1848 came to seem increasingly old-fashioned, indeed pernicious, among the avant-garde, though clearly not among the reading public. The book was banned by the Vatican and burned in Spain, which Hugo believed was because there was ‘a bishop who is kind, sincere, humble, fraternal, who has wit as well as gentleness … that is why The Wretched is an infamous book’.38 Jean Valjean, by experiencing love and discovering his conscience, points the way for Everyman.

Given Hugo’s sexual proclivities, his idealization of the asexual love of a

serious young man and a naive young woman – ‘that ineffable first embrace between two virginities in the realm of the ideal. Two swans meeting on the Jungfrau’ (p. 904) – is not the least oddity of the novel. In reading his rhapsodies to purity, his declarations of respect for the modesty of young girls, his awe at the conjugal bedroom (‘The soul goes into spiritual contemplation before this sanctuary where the celebration of love occurs’), it would take a heart of stone not to laugh, as Oscar Wilde might have said. ‘The down on the peach, the bloom on the plum, the prismatic snow crystal, the powdery butterfly-wing, are coarse things beside that chastity that does not even know it is chaste’ (p. 1081). But real hypocrisy has a clear conscience, and there is no reason to doubt the authenticity of Hugo’s emotions.

More serious is the dangerous vacuity of his political Romanticism. He

was aware, as we have seen, of the horrors of civil war, and of the dangers of popular violence. Yet all this is wiped away by insisting on the long-term beneficence of Revolution, Progress and Providence: ‘Revolutions have a strong arm and a good hand, they strike hard and have the luck of the draw.

Even incomplete, even bastardized and mongrelized and reduced to the state of minor revolution like the 1830 Revolution, they are nearly always left with enough providential far-sightedness to make it impossible they should ever come amiss.’ All revolutionaries, and all revolutions, are

unconsciously working together towards making ‘a paradise … of this world’, and aiming ‘through fear and trembling if need be, to force the human race towards paradise’ (p. 767). Then Hugo allows himself an easy let-out: ‘Neither despotism nor terrorism. We want the gentle incline towards progress. God sees to that’ (p. 768).

In 1870, Napoleon III became a prisoner of the Prussians after the

disastrous battle of Sedan, and his regime collapsed. Hugo returned in triumph to France, his long and stubborn dissidence vindicated at a stroke by the military defeat of another Napoleon, and by another Republican revolution in Paris. The capital was soon besieged by the German armies, and Hugo, dressed in a military shako, became a hero to some and an irritation to others with his grandiose proclamations of Republican patriotism, his long-winded addresses to the German People, urging them to go away, his unrealistic calls to win a war that was irretrievably lost, and his predictions of Europe-wide revolution. One of his many female votaries was a militant schoolmistress and poet, Louise Michel, inspired by The Wretched to call herself ‘Enjolras’: he doubtless admired the implacable dedication of a woman who would later fight for the Paris Commune, survive a penal colony and be named ‘the Red Virgin’; and she consented to take her clothes off for the master.39 Thus he whiled away the tedium of being under siege. In January 1871, Paris finally surrendered when its food stocks (eked out by horsemeat, animals from the zoo and even rats) finally reached the verge of famine. In February, Hugo was elected by the Parisians, alongside other Republican heroes, to a new National Assembly, with over 200,000 votes. But he walked out in March as a patriotic protest against acceptance of defeat.

Albert Camus, who saw as much conflict as Hugo, said: ‘I abhor

comfortable violence. I abhor those whose words go further than their deeds.’40 Hugo’s crowd-pleasing heroics in 1870, and his glorification in the 1860s of a futile insurrection he had condemned in 1832, fit this bill.

His was feeding a Romantic patriotic culture of revolt, what has been called the ‘revolutionary passion play’, with its familiar rituals of barricade-building and grandiose oratory. No other work of literature gives such an

important place to the barricade as The Wretched, gives it such a leading role, or more completely replaces reality with myth.41 It all came to a disastrous end in May 1871, ‘like some appalling level-crossing accident that occurs at the end of a school outing to the seaside’.42 The revolutionary Paris Commune was crushed in a week of barricade fighting, destruction, arson and slaughter. This was the culmination of what Hugo aptly called l’année terrible. He kept out of the fight, like all the leading Republican figures, and remained a powerless onlooker from the safety of Brussels. It was a struggle between two parties he could neither identify with or even understand: a radical workers’ insurrection and a conservative National Assembly determined to stamp it out: ‘this Commune is as stupid as the Assembly is vicious.’43 His response was a series of poems, stuffed with erudite allusions, lamenting the violence and barbarism committed by both sides ‘in this hurricane that passes / Mixing up everything, good, evil, heroes, bandits’. One of the most famous of these poems recalls the bravado of Gavroche: a boy of twelve about to be summarily executed with a group of rebels, who asks the soldiers to let him go and give his watch to his mother; but, to their astonishment, he returns voluntarily to face the firing squad: ‘Stupid death was ashamed and the officer spared him.’44 Hugo’s courageous sympathy for Communard refugees caused trouble: a Brussels mob attacked his house shouting (he noted) ‘Death to Victor Hugo! Death to Jean Valjean!’ He shouted back ‘Vous êtes des misérables!’45

Arguably, the catastrophe of 1871 removed the romance of the barricades

from politics and confined it to fantasy: ‘the last great uprising … the one which created the most fear and shed the most blood … formed the ultimate exorcism of a violence which had been an inseparable part of French public life since the eighteenth century … In this Paris in flames, the French Revolution bade farewell to history.’ The reign of the orators ended.46 Yet the myth of insurrection, the intoxication of courageous revolt against the odds, aiming to sweep away injustice in a day, still retains its magnetism, whether as escapism (as in the musical version of ‘Les Mis’) or even in

reality, as in the ‘Arab Spring’, so reminiscent of the ‘Springtime of the Peoples’ of 1848.

Hugo was now one of the father figures of the Republican party, which

finally won power peacefully during the course of the 1870s as ‘the government that divides us least’. He became a senator in 1876. His defence of liberty, and perhaps above all his defiance of Napoleon III, ensured his place, literally, in the Republican Panthéon, where his body now lies. He died on 22 May 1885. His state funeral, attended by huge crowds of Parisians, was one of the great public ceremonies of the later nineteenth century, and itself a source of myth – such as a supposed explosion of what a Catholic newspaper called ‘abominable outrages’ behind the bushes in the Avenue Victor Hugo.47 Hugo had insisted on being carried on a pauper’s hearse – a quintessential Hugolian gesture that summed up his life: for his admirers, it identified him eternally with les misérables; for his critics, it was a final piece of sanctimonious gesture politics.

His real memorial, almost as controversial, is his mighty literary oeuvre,

a third of it published posthumously. Some found his death a kind of release. The poet Stéphane Mallarmé thought it meant that French poetry could now evolve: and he wrote a great, if ambivalent, tribute to Hugo’s importance: ‘Hugo, in his mysterious task, boiled all of prose, philosophy, eloquence, history down to verse, and, since he was verse, personally, he confiscated from anyone who thinks, discourses, or narrates almost the right to speak.’48 The Wretched epitomizes this boiling down of philosophy, history and politics into poetry. It stands as a massive monolith, the greatest as well as the biggest of French Romantic novels, containing one of the longest sentences and some of the longest digressions in French fiction, as if, notes Graham Robb, Hugo (who was worried by illness and premonitions of death) felt that this was ‘his last chance to say everything’.49 It is greatly exceeded in size among classic works only by Proust’s À la Recherche du temps perdu, almost its opposite as social observation. As a fresco of post-Revolutionary France, The Wretched far outdistances earlier models, such as Eugène Sue’s Les Mystères de Paris

(1842–3), in literary power, intellectual sophistication and subtlety of observation. It provides an intimate view of how people saw and experienced their society not only by what Hugo deliberately described, but also for what he could not help but describe unconsciously, and even by what he failed to understand.50 Yet it is not its value as a historical document that makes The Wretched still compelling enough to be the core of one the most popular modern musicals, attracting thousands who are uninterested in the ideas and politics of the nineteenth century. For millions of readers in many languages over 150 years, and now for thousands of film- and theatre-goers, the attraction of The Wretched lies in the emotional power of its story of love, redemption and sacrifice.

Robert Tombs, 2013

NOTES

All translations, except those taken from the main text or otherwise referenced, are the introducer’s

own.

1. Letter, 1862, in Hubert de Phalèse, Dictionnaire des Misérables (Paris: Nizet, 1994), p. 88

2. Victor Hugo, Oeuvres Complètes: théâtre: vol. 1 (Paris: Albin Michel, 1922), pp. 19, 20, 25, 32,

50

3. Graham Robb, Victor Hugo (London: Picador, 1997), pp. 144–5

4. Hugo, Oeuvres Complètes: théâtre: vol. 1, pp. 714, 719, 726, 15, 20

5. See Munro Price, The Perilous Crown: France between Revolutions, 1814–1848 (London:

Macmillan, 2007)

6. Jeanne Gilmore, La République clandestine, 1818–1848 (Paris: Aubier, 1997), pp. 168–70

7. Thomas Bouchet, Le Roi et les barricades: une histoire des 5 et 6 juin 1832 (Paris: Seli Arslan,

2000), pp. 34, 68–9

8. Victor Hugo, Choses vues: souvenirs, journaux, cahiers, 1830–1846, ed. H. Juin (Paris:

Gallimard, 1972), pp. 133–4

9. René Journet, Introduction to Les Misérables (Paris: Garnier-Flammarion, 1967), vol. I, pp. 16–

17; Jean-Bertrand Barrère, ed., Un Carnet des Misérables, octobre–décembre 1860 (Paris: Minard, 1965), p. 20

10. Victor Hugo, Choses vues: souvenirs, journaux, cahiers, 1847–1848, ed. H. Juin (Paris:

Gallimard, 1972), pp. 332–3, 336, 344, 346, 347

11. Robb, Victor Hugo, pp. 269–76

12. ‘Applaudissement’, Les Châtiments (1853)

13. Alfred Tennyson, ‘To Victor Hugo’, Ballads and Other Poems (London: C. Kegan Paul & Co.,

1880), p. 165 (a sonnet first published in 1877 in a slightly different version)

14. Robb, Victor Hugo, p. 330

15. Jean-Bertrand Barrère, Victor Hugo à l’oeuvre: le poète en exil et en voyage (Paris: Klincksieck,

1965), p. 23

16. ‘Ultima verba’, Les Châtiments

17. Barrère, Un Carnet, pp. 5–6

18. Journet, Introduction, p. 17; and see Bernard Leuilliot, Victor Hugo publie Les Misérables (Paris:

Klincksieck, 1970)

19. Thomas Bouchet, ‘La Barricade des Misérables’, in Alain Corbin and Jean-Marie Mayeur, eds.,

La Barricade (Paris: Publications de la Sorbonne, 1997), pp. 125–35

20. Robb, Victor Hugo, p. 374

21. Jean-Marc Largeaud, Napoléon et Waterloo: la défaite glorieuse de 1815 à nos jours (Paris:

Boutique de l’Histoire, 2006), pp. 308–9

22. Robb, Victor Hugo, p. 375

23. Barrère, Un Carnet, p. 9

24. Largeaud, Napoléon et Waterloo, p. 306

25. Ibid., pp. 253–4

26. Guy Antonetti, Louis-Philippe (Paris: Fayard, 1994), p. 897

27. François Furet, Revolutionary France, 1770–1880 (Oxford: Blackwell, 1992), p 374

28. J. P. T. Bury and R. P. Tombs, Thiers 1797–1877: A Political Life (London: Allen & Unwin,

1986), p. 126

29. Louis Chevalier, Classes laborieuses et classes dangereuses à Paris pendant la première moitié

du XIXe siècle (Paris: Plon, 1958), pp. 92, 94, 96–7

30. Michelle Perrot, Les Ombres de l’histoire: Crime et châtiment au XIXe siècle (Paris: Flammarion,

2001), p. 166

31. The reference is to the 10 August 1792 overthrow of the monarchy, and the failed Vendémiaire

(October 1795) royalist uprising against the Republic.

32. Bouchet, Le Roi et les barricades, pp. 69–72

33. ‘Amis, un dernier mot!’, Les Feuilles d’ automne

34. Robb, Victor Hugo, p. 69

35. Leuilliot, Victor Hugo publie, pp. 302–3

36. Robb, Victor Hugo, p. 378

37. [Margaret Oliphant], ‘Charles Dickens’, Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine, June 1871, p. 677

38. Phalèse, Dictionnaire, p. 91

39. Victor Hugo, Choses vues: souvenirs, journaux, cahiers, 1870–1885, ed. H. Juin (Paris:

Gallimard, 1972), pp. 87, 88, 466

40. Albert Camus, ‘Première réponse à Emmanuel d’Astier de la Vigerie’, quoted in Renee

Winegarten, ‘Victor Hugo: On the Legacy of Myth’, Encounter (Sept.–Oct. 1987), p. 35

41. Bouchet, ‘La Barricade des Misérables’, p. 125

42. Richard Cobb, Tour de France (London: Duckworth, 1976), p. 129

43. Choses vues: 1870–1885, p. 164

44. ‘Juin, XI: Sur une barricade au milieu des pavés’, L’Année terrible (written 27 June 1871)

45. Choses vues: 1870–1885, p. 176

46. Furet, Revolutionary France, p. 506; Martin P. Johnson, The Paradise of Association: Political

Culture and Popular Organizations in the Paris Commune of 1871 (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1996), p. 287

47. Robb, Victor Hugo, p. 528

48. Denis Hollier, ed., A New History of French Literature (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University

Press, 1989), p. 798

49. Robb, Victor Hugo, p. 374

50. Chevalier, Classes laborieuses et classes dangereuses, pp. 88–91

OceanofPDF.com

OceanofPDF.com

Part One

FANTINE

OceanofPDF.com

Book One

A Good Man

I

Monsieur Myriel

In 1815, Charles-François-Bienvenu Myriel was bishop of Digne. He was an old man of about seventy-five. He had been bishop of Digne since 1806.

If only for the sake of being accurate in every particular, although this

circumstance in no way impinges on the basic substance of what we are about to relate, it may be worth mentioning here the rumours and gossip circulating about him at the time of his arrival in the diocese. True or false, what is said about men often figures as large in their lives, and above all in the fate that befalls them, as what they do. Monsieur Myriel was the son of a councillor in the parliament at Aix – judicial aristocracy. It was reported that his father, intending that his son should inherit his position, had married him off very young, aged eighteen or twenty, a fairly common practice among parliamentary families. This marriage, it was said, did not prevent Charles Myriel from being much talked about. He was good-looking, though rather short in stature, elegant, charming, witty. His entire early life was devoted to fashionable society and amorous intrigue. The Revolution came. Events moved fast. Decimated, driven out, hunted down, the parliamentary families scattered. During the very first days of the Revolution, Monsieur Charles Myriel emigrated to Italy. There, his wife died of a chest ailment that had long afflicted her. They had no children. What then happened to Monsieur Myriel? The collapse in France of the old world, the downfall of his own family, the tragic spectacles of ’93, perhaps even more terrifying for the

émigrés watching from afar with magnifying horror – did these give rise in him to thoughts of renunciation and solitude? Was he, in the midst of one of those distractions and attachments that filled his existence, suddenly dealt one of those mysterious and terrible blows that by striking at the heart sometimes fell a man who would be left unshaken by public catastrophes that strike at his way of life and his fortune? No one could have said. All anyone knew was that when he returned from Italy he was a priest.

In 1804 Monsieur Myriel was parish priest of Brignolles. He was already

old, and lived a very secluded life.

Around the time of the coronation some parish matter, no one quite knows

what any more, took him to Paris. Among other influential individuals that he applied to on behalf of his parishioners was Cardinal Fesch. The worthy priest happened to be waiting in the antechamber one day when the emperor had come to visit his uncle. As Napoleon was on his way out, realizing he was being observed with some curiosity by this elderly gentleman, his majesty turned round and said abruptly, ‘What good fellow is this, staring at me?’

‘Sire,’ said Monsieur Myriel, ‘in this fellow you see goodness, in the man

before me I see greatness. There’s advantage to both of us.’

That same evening the emperor enquired of the cardinal the name of the

priest, and some time afterwards Monsieur Myriel was very surprised to learn he had been appointed bishop of Digne.

Anyway, what truth was there in the stories told of Monsieur Myriel’s early

life? No one could tell. Few families had known the Myriel family before the Revolution.

Monsieur Myriel had to undergo the fate of every newcomer to a small

town where there are plenty of tongues given to wagging and very few minds given to reflection. He had to be subjected to it although he was a bishop and because he was a bishop. But the rumours his name was associated with were after all perhaps just that: rumours, idle gossip, talk, empty words, not even words – palabres, in the muscular language of the south.

Be that as it may, after Monsieur Myriel had been living in Digne and

serving as bishop for nine years, all this tittle-tattle, these topics of

conversation that give small towns and small-minded people something to talk about, had been thoroughly forgotten. No one would have dared mention them, no one would even have dared call them to mind.

Monsieur Myriel had arrived in Digne accompanied by a spinster,

Mademoiselle Baptistine, who was his sister and ten years his junior.

Their only domestic help was a woman of the same age as Mademoiselle

Baptistine called Madame Magloire, who, having been ‘monsieur le curé’s servant’, now acquired the dual status of Mademoiselle’s maid and Monseigneur’s housekeeper.*

Mademoiselle Baptistine was long, pale, slight and meek. She was the

perfect incarnation of the word ‘respectable’, for apparently a woman must be motherly to be venerable. She had never been pretty. Her whole life, which had been simply a succession of good deeds, had ultimately conferred on her a sort of paleness and brightness, and with advancing years she had gained what might be called the beauty of goodness. What had been thinness in her youth became transparency in her maturity, and this diaphanous quality revealed the angel. She was more of an essence than a virgin. Physically, she seemed to be made of shadow with hardly enough of a body to have any sexual identity: a little substance containing a glimmer of light, her big eyes always downcast, an excuse for a soul to remain on earth.

Madame Magloire was a busy, fat, round, little white-haired old woman,

always out of breath, firstly because of her busyness and then because of her asthma.

On his arrival, Monsieur Myriel was installed in the episcopal palace with

the honours dictated by imperial decree whereby a bishop ranks immediately below a brigadier. The mayor and the president of the local judiciary first called on him, and he in turn made his first call on the general and the police chief.

His installation complete, the town waited to see what the bishop would

do.

II

Monsieur Myriel Becomes Monseigneur Bienvenu

The episcopal palace of Digne was next door to the hospital.

The palace was an immense and handsome residence, built of stone at the

beginning of the last century by Monseigneur Henri Puget, doctor of theology at the Faculty of Paris and abbot of Simore, who had been bishop of Digne in

1712. A veritable baronial hall, was this palace. Everything about it was grand: the bishop’s apartments, the drawing rooms, the bedchambers, the very spacious court of honour with covered walks and arcades in the old Florentine style, the gardens planted with magnificent trees. In the dining room, a long and splendid gallery on the ground floor looking out over the gardens, Monseigneur Henri Puget had on the twenty-ninth of July 1714 held a ceremonial banquet for Monseigneurs Charles Brûlart de Genlis, prince-archbishop of Embrun; Antoine de Mesgrigny of the Capuchin Order, bishop of Grasse; Philippe de Vendôme, grand prior of France, abbot of St-Honoré de Lérins; François de Berton de Crillon, baron-bishop of Vence; César de Sabran de Forcalquier, seigneur-bishop of Glandève; and Jean Soanen, Oratorian priest, chaplain in ordinary to the king, seigneur-bishop of Senez.

The portraits of these seven reverend figures adorned this room, and that memorable date, the twenty-ninth of July 1714, was engraved in letters of gold on a white marble table.

The hospital was a single-storey, low, narrow building with a small garden.

Three days after his arrival the bishop visited the hospital. At the end of his

visit he left an invitation for the director to call on him.

‘Monsieur le directeur de l’hôpital, how many patients have you at

present?’ he said.

‘Twenty-six, Monseigneur.’ ‘That was the number I counted,’ said the bishop. ‘The beds are very close to each other,’ the director added. ‘That’s what I observed.’ ‘The wards are no bigger than small bedrooms, and it’s hard to keep them

aired.’

‘That’s what I would think.’

‘And then, when there is a ray of sunshine, the garden’s very small for

those convalescing.’

‘That’s what I said to myself.’ ‘In the event of an epidemic – we’ve had typhus this year, we had miliary

fever two years ago, a hundred patients sometimes – we just don’t know what to do.’

‘That was the thought that occurred to me.’ ‘There’s no point in complaining, Monseigneur,’ said the director. ‘We

must accept things as they are.’

This conversation took place in the gallery dining room on the ground

floor. The bishop remained silent for a moment, then suddenly turned to the director of the hospital.

‘Monsieur,’ he said, ‘how many beds do you think would fit into this room

alone?’

‘Monseigneur’s dining room?’ exclaimed the director in amazement.

The bishop glanced around the room and appeared to be estimating

measurements and making calculations.

‘Twenty beds easily!’ he said as though talking to himself. Then raising his

voice, ‘Now, I tell you what, monsieur le directeur de l’hôpital, obviously something’s wrong here. You have twenty-six people in five or six small rooms. There are three of us here and we have room for sixty. Something’s wrong, I tell you. You’re in my house and I’m in yours. You give me back my house. This is where you belong.’

The following day the twenty-six paupers were moved into the bishop’s

palace and the bishop was installed in the hospital.

Monsieur Myriel was not a man of means, his family having been ruined

by the Revolution. His sister had a life annuity of five hundred francs, which was enough to meet her personal expenses at the presbytery. As bishop, Monsieur Myriel received from the state a salary of fifteen thousand francs.

On the very day he took up residence in the hospital building, he determined once and for all the way in which this sum was to be used. We transcribe here a note made in his own hand:

Note to regulate my household expenditure:

For the seminary school: 1,500 franc

Congregation of the Mission:

100 francs

For the Lazarists of Montdidier:

100 francs

Seminary of Foreign Missions of Paris:

200 francs

Congregation of the Holy Spirit:

150 francs

Religious foundations in the Holy Land:

100 francs

Societies for Maternal Charity:

300 francs

An extra payment, for that of Arles:

50 francs

In aid of the improvement of prisons:

400 francs

In aid of the comfort and release of prisoners:

500 francs

To obtain the release of family men imprisoned for debt: 1,000 franc

To supplement the salary of diocesan teachers in need: 2,000 franc

Public granary of the Hautes-Alpes:

100 francs

Congregation of the Ladies of Digne, Manosque and Sisteron, for the free education of

girls in need: 1,500 franc

For the poor: 6,000 franc

My personal expenses: 1,000 franc

Total:

15,000 francs

Throughout the entire time that he occupied the see of Digne, Monsieur Myriel made no alteration to this arrangement. As we have seen, he referred to it as ‘regulating his household expenditure’.

The arrangement was accepted with total acquiescence by Mademoiselle

Baptistine. For this saintly spinster, the Monseigneur of Digne was both brother and bishop, naturally dear to her and ecclesiastically her superior. She quite simply loved and venerated him. When he spoke, she deferred. When he acted, she approved. Their only servant, Madame Magloire, grumbled a little. The bishop had set aside for himself, it may have been noticed, only one thousand francs, which, added to Mademoiselle Baptistine’s income, amounted to a total of fifteen hundred francs a year. Both old women and the old man lived on these fifteen hundred francs.

And thanks to Madame Magloire’s unfailing thrift and Mademoiselle

Baptistine’s clever management, whenever a village priest came to Digne the

bishop still found the means to entertain him.

One day after he had been in Digne some three months the bishop said,

‘And with all that I still haven’t enough!’

‘I dare say you haven’t!’ exclaimed Madame Magloire. ‘Monseigneur

hasn’t even claimed the allowance the département* owes him for the expense of a carriage in town and of visiting the diocese. That’s what bishops used to do in the past.’

‘Well, I declare!’ said the bishop. ‘You’re quite right, Madame Magloire.’ And he submitted his claim.

Some time afterwards the general council, taking his request into

consideration, voted him an annual sum of three thousand francs that was registered as ‘Allowance awarded to the bishop for carriage expenses, mail-coach expenses, and the expense of pastoral visits’.

This provoked a great outcry among the local bourgeoisie, and at the time

a senator of the Empire, former member of the Council of Five Hundred who had supported the 18th Brumaire and been given a magnificent senatorial estate near the town of Digne, privately wrote to Monsieur Bigot de Préameneu, the minister of public worship, an angry note on the subject, from which we quote the following lines verbatim:

‘Carriage expenses? What for in a town of fewer than four thousand

inhabitants? The expense of pastoral visits? What good are these visits in the first place? And how can a mail-coach get about in these mountainous parts?

There are no roads. You can only travel on horseback. Even the bridge over the Durance at Château-Arnoux can barely support ox-carts. These priests are all the same: greedy and miserly. This one pretended to be the good apostle when he first came here. Now he behaves just like the rest. He has to have a carriage and travel by post-chaise. He has to have luxury like the bishops of old. Oh, this priestly rabble! Things will be put right, Your Excellency, only when the emperor has delivered us from the clergy. Down with the pope!’ (Relations with Rome were not good.) ‘For my part, I am all for Caesar.’ Et cetera, et cetera.

Madame Magloire, on the other hand, was delighted. ‘Well,’ said she to

Mademoiselle Baptistine, ‘Monseigneur put everyone else first but he had to

come round to himself eventually. He’s taken care of all his charities. These three thousand francs are for us! At last!’

That same evening the bishop wrote out and handed to his sister a

memorandum worded as follows:

Carriage allowance and allowance for pastoral visits:

To provide meat broth for the hospital patients: 1,500 francs

For the Society for Maternal Charity of Aix:

250 francs

For the Society for Maternal Charity of Draguignan:

250 francs

For the benefit of foundlings:

500 francs

For the benefit of orphans:

500 francs

Total: 3,000 francs

Such was Monsieur Myriel’s budget.

As for episcopal emoluments – fees for marriage banns, dispensations,

private baptisms, sermons, benedictions of churches and chapels, marriages, et cetera – the bishop was all the more assiduous in extracting them from the wealthy because he gave them to the poor.

After a while, offerings of money poured in. The haves and the have-nots

came knocking at Monsieur Myriel’s door, the latter in search of the alms brought to him by the former. In less than a year the bishop had become the treasurer for all charitable donations and the dispenser of funds for all cases of financial distress. Considerable sums of money passed through his hands but nothing could induce him to make any change in his lifestyle or to add the least extra to his barest needs.

Far from it. As there is always more poverty below than fellow feeling

above, everything was given away, so to speak, in advance of receipt. It was like water on dry ground: no matter how much money he received, he never had any. So he would stint himself.

It being the custom for bishops to state their baptismal names at the head

of their episcopal decrees and pastoral letters, the local poor, with a kind of affectionate instinct, had selected from the bishop’s various names and first names the one that held some meaning for them, and they never called him

anything but Monseigneur Bienvenu*. We will follow their example, and thus refer to him where appropriate. Besides, this designation pleased him.

‘I like the name,’ he said. ‘Bienvenu compensates for Monseigneur.’ We would not say that the portrait we have presented here is one that

seems very likely; all we say is that it is very like.

III

For a Good Bishop, a Demanding Bishopric

Even though he had converted his carriage into alms, the bishop made his pastoral visits nonetheless. The diocese of Digne is a punishing one. There are very few plains, a great many mountains, hardly any roads, as we saw earlier. Thirty-two parishes, forty-one vicariates and two hundred and eighty-five chapels of ease. To visit all these is quite a task. The bishop managed it.

He went on foot to places nearby, travelled by cart on the plain, and on a donkey in the mountains. The two elderly women accompanied him. When the trip was too much for them, he went alone.

One day he arrived in Senez, an ancient episcopal town, riding an ass. His

resources, which were very depleted at that time, did not allow him any better turn-out. The mayor came to welcome him at the gates of the town and watched, scandalized, as he dismounted from his ass. Some of the townsfolk around him were laughing. ‘Monsieur le maire,’ said the bishop, ‘and honourable citizens, I see I shock you. You think it very arrogant of a poor priest to ride on a mount which was that of Jesus Christ. I have done so out of necessity, I assure you, and not vanity.’

On his visits he was kind and indulgent, and did not so much preach as

chat. He placed no virtue beyond reach. He never went looking very far for his arguments and his exemplars. To the inhabitants of one village he would cite the example of the neighbouring one.

In districts where they treated the destitute harshly he would say, ‘Look at

the people of Briançon! They’ve granted to the poor, to widows and orphans the right to mow their meadows three days before everyone else. When their houses are falling down they rebuild them at no cost. Consequently, it’s a

place blessed by God. There’s not been a single person guilty of murder for a whole century.’

To the villages bent on gain and on bringing in the harvest he said, ‘Look

at the people of Embrun! If at harvest time the father of a family has his sons serving in the army and his daughters in service in town, and he happens to be ill and unable to work, the parish priest asks the congregation to pray for him. And after mass on Sunday all the people in the village – men, women and children – go to the poor man’s field and do his harvesting for him, and bring back the straw and the grain to his granary.’

To families divided by questions of money and inheritance he said, ‘Look

at the mountain folk of Dévoluy, a landscape so wild that not once in fifty years has the nightingale been heard. Well, when the father of a family dies, the boys go off to seek their fortunes, leaving the property to the girls that they may find husbands.’

To those areas that were inclined to go to law and where the farmers ruined

themselves paying duty on legal documents he said, ‘Look at the good countryfolk of the Queyras valley! They number three thousand souls. My God! It’s like a little republic. Both judge and bailiff are unknown there. The mayor does everything. He shares out the tax levy, taxes each person fairly, settles disputes free of charge, divides estates without remuneration, gives judgements at no cost. And he’s obeyed, because he’s a good man among simple folk.’

To villages where he found no schoolmaster, again he cited the people of

Queyras. ‘Do you know what they do?’ he said. ‘Since a little village of a dozen or so dwellings can’t always support a teacher, they have schoolmasters paid by the whole valley who make the round of the villages, spending a week in this one, ten days in that, giving instruction. These teachers go to the country markets, where I’ve seen them. You can tell them by the quill pens they wear in their hat bands. Those who teach just reading have one quill. Those who teach reading and arithmetic have two. And those who teach reading, arithmetic and Latin have three quills. But what a shame to be uneducated! Do what the people of Queyras do!’

This is the way he talked, seriously and like a father, inventing parables in

the absence of examples, going directly to the point with few fine words and many illustrations, which was Jesus Christ’s eloquence exactly, assured and persuasive.

IV

Deeds to Match Words

His conversation was affable and cheerful. He was sociable with the two old women who spent their lives with him. When he laughed it was the laugh of a schoolboy.

Madame Magloire liked to call him ‘Your Highness’. One day he rose

from his armchair and went to his bookcase to fetch a book. This book was on one of the top shelves. As the bishop was rather small in stature he could not reach it. ‘Madame Magloire,’ he said, ‘bring me a chair. My Highness falls short of that shelf.’

One of his distant relatives, Madame la Comtesse de Lô, rarely let pass an

opportunity when he was present to run through the list of what she called ‘the expectations’ of her three sons. She had several very elderly relatives close to death, and her sons were their natural heirs. The youngest of the three was to come into a good hundred thousand francs a year from his great-aunt, the second was to inherit the title of duke from his uncle, the eldest was to succeed to his grandfather’s peerage. The bishop usually listened in silence to this harmless and forgivable maternal swanking. On one occasion, however, he appeared to be more thoughtful than usual as Madame de Lô rehearsed once again the details of all these inheritances and all these ‘expectations’.

She broke off, saying impatiently, ‘For heaven’s sake, cousin! What is it

you’re thinking about?’

‘I’m thinking,’ replied the bishop, ‘of something curious to be found, I

believe, in St Augustine: “Place your hope in him who has no successor.” ’

On another occasion, when he received a letter announcing the death of a

local dignitary that included a full-page list of not only the dead man’s credentials but also the feudal and noble qualifications of all his relatives, he

exclaimed, ‘What a broad back death has! What a remarkable load of titles is blithely heaped on it, and what a sense of humour men must have to use the grave like this to flatter themselves!’

He was sometimes capable of gentle mockery that almost always had a

serious significance. Once, during Lent, a young vicar came to Digne and preached in the cathedral. He was quite eloquent. The subject of his sermon was charity. He urged the rich to give to the poor so as to avoid going to hell, which he depicted in the most dreadful terms he could, and to get to paradise, which he represented as desirable and delightful. Among his audience was a somewhat tight-fisted retired wealthy merchant named Monsieur Géborand, who had amassed half a million in the manufacture of coarse cloth, serge, caddis and felt caps. Monsieur Géborand had never in his life been charitable to any poor unfortunate. After that sermon it was noticed he gave one sou every Sunday to the old beggar-women at the cathedral door. They had to share it between six of them. One day the bishop saw him making his donation and said to his sister with a smile, ‘There’s Monsieur Géborand buying one sou’s worth of paradise.’

When charity was at stake he was not to be discouraged even by a refusal,

and on such occasions he found words that gave pause for thought. Once he was collecting for the poor in one of the town’s salons. The Marquis de Champtercier was there. A rich and mean old man, he contrived to be both ultra-royalist and ultra-Voltairian. Such a type did exist. When the bishop came to him, touching his arm, he said, ‘Monsieur le marquis, you must give me something.’

The marquis turned round and responded drily, ‘Monseigneur, I have my

own poor.’

‘Give them to me,’ replied the bishop.

One day he preached the following sermon in the cathedral: ‘Beloved brethren, my good friends, there are thirteen hundred and twenty

thousand peasant dwellings in France that have only three openings, eighteen hundred and seventeen thousand that have but two, the door and one window, and finally three hundred and forty-six thousand hovels that have just the one – the door. And this is because of something called “the door and window

tax”. Put poor families, old women and young children in those buildings, and see the fevers and illnesses you get! Alas! While God gives men fresh air, the law sells it to them! I’m not accusing the law but I thank God. In Isère, in the Var, in the two Alpes – Hautes and Basses – the peasants don’t even have wheelbarrows, the men carry the manure on their backs. They have no candles, they burn resinous sticks and bits of rope dipped in pitch. That’s the state of affairs throughout the Dauphiné highlands. They make bread for six months at a time. They bake it with dried cow dung. In the winter they break this bread with an axe and soak it for twenty-four hours in order to be able to eat it.

‘My brethren, have pity! See the suffering around you!’ Born a Provençal, he had readily familiarized himself with all the southern

dialects. He would say, ‘Eh bé! moussu, sès sagé?’* as in the lower Languedoc, ‘Onté anaras passa?’† as in the lower Alps, ‘Puerte un bouen moutu embe un bouen froumage grase’,‡ as in the upper Dauphiné. This pleased people and had contributed in no small way to his gaining acceptance by all. Both in a thatched cottage and up in the mountains he was perfectly at home. He could say the most noble things in the most unrefined language.

Speaking everyone’s language, he found his way into everyone’s soul.

Furthermore, he was the same with everybody, whatever their social status.

He would not condemn anything without due consideration or without

taking circumstances into account. He would say, ‘Let’s see how the wrong-doing was arrived at.’

Being, as he described himself with a smile, an ex-sinner, there was

nothing off-puttingly doctrinaire about him, and he professed quite openly, and without the frown of the ferociously virtuous, beliefs that may be summed up thus:

‘Man exists in the flesh, which is at once his burden and his temptation. He

drags it around with him and gives in to it.

‘He must be vigilant, keep it in check, repress it, and yield to it only in the

last extremity. Yielding to it may still be wrong but in that case the wrong-doing is venial. In so falling he falls on his knees, and it may end in prayer.

‘To be a saint is the exception. To be a good man is the rule. Err, weaken

and sin, but be among the good.

‘To sin as little as possible, that is the law of mankind. Not to sin at all is

the angel’s dream. Everything earthly is subject to sin. Sin is a gravitational force.’

When he saw everyone condemning very loudly and being very quick to

express indignation, ‘Oh my,’ he would say with a smile, ‘this looks like being a great crime that everyone commits. Here we have hypocrisies in fright, hurrying to protest and to take cover.’

He was forbearing towards women and the poor on whom the burden of

human society falls. He said, ‘The failings of women, children and servants, of the feeble, the destitute and the ignorant, are the fault of their husbands, fathers and masters, of the strong, the rich and the learned.’

He also said, ‘Teach those who are ignorant as much as you can. Society is

to blame for not giving free education. It’s responsible for the darkness it produces. In any benighted soul – that’s where sin will be committed. It’s not he who commits the sin that’s to blame but he who causes the darkness to prevail.’

As we can see, he had his own peculiar way of judging things. I suspect he

had taken it from the Gospels.

One day he heard in a salon the story of a criminal case that was going to

come to trial. Some poor wretch in desperate straits, out of love for a woman and the child she had borne him, had coined counterfeit money. At that time counterfeiting was still punishable by death. The woman had been caught passing off the first fake coin made by the man. She was detained, but there was evidence only against her. She alone could incriminate her lover and ruin him by confessing. She denied the accusation. She was pressed. She persisted in her denial. At this point the crown prosecutor had an idea. He alleged an infidelity on the part of the lover and by means of cunningly presented fragments of letters succeeded in persuading the poor woman she had a rival and that this man was deceiving her. Provoked by jealousy she denounced her lover, confessed all, proved all. It was the man’s undoing. He was shortly to be tried at Aix with his accomplice. It was this that was being talked of, and

everyone was marvelling at the magistrate’s ingenuity. By bringing jealousy into play he had used anger to elicit the truth. He had brought about the justice of revenge. The bishop listened to all of this in silence.

When the discussion came to a close he asked, ‘Where are this man and

woman to face judgement?’

‘At the court of assizes.’ He went on, ‘And where will the crown prosecutor face judgement?’ A tragic incident occurred at Digne. A man was condemned to death for

murder. Not really educated but not completely uneducated, this poor wretch had been a fairground entertainer and a public letter-writer. The trial was the talk of the town. On the eve of the day set for the condemned man’s execution the prison chaplain fell ill. A priest was needed to attend the criminal in his final moments. They sent for the parish priest. Apparently he refused to come, saying, ‘It’s nothing to do with me. I can’t take on the responsibility of dealing with that charlatan, I too am unwell. In any case it’s not my job.’

This response was reported to the bishop, who said, ‘Monsieur le curé is

right. It’s not his job. It’s mine.’

He went straight to the prison and down into the ‘charlatan’s’ cell, called

him by name, took him by the hand, and spoke to him. He spent the whole day and the whole night with him, forgetting about food and sleep, praying to God for the condemned man’s soul, and asking the man to pray for his. He told him the best truths, which are the simplest ones. He was father, brother, friend to him, bishop only in blessing him. He taught him everything, sustaining and comforting him. This man was about to die in despair. Death was an abyss to him. As he stood trembling on that macabre threshold he recoiled in horror. He was not ignorant enough to be totally unaffected.

Deeply traumatic, his condemnation had, as it were, rent here and there the screen dividing us from the mystery of things and what we call life. He kept looking beyond this world through these fateful chinks and saw only darkness. The bishop enabled him to see light.

When they came to fetch the poor man the following day the bishop was

there. He went with him. He appeared before the crowd in his purple

mozzetta with his episcopal cross round his neck, alongside that trussed-up criminal.

He climbed into the tumbril with him, he climbed on to the scaffold with

him.

So crushed and despondent the previous day, the man facing death was

radiant. He felt his soul had been reconciled and his trust was in God. The bishop embraced him and as the blade was about to drop said to him, ‘He whom man slays God restores to life. He who is cast out by his brothers returns to the Father. Pray, believe, enter into life! The Father is there.’

When he came down from the scaffold there was something in his

expression that made the crowd draw aside. It could not be said which gave greater cause for wonder, his pallor or his serenity. Coming home to the humble dwelling he would refer to with a smile as his palace, he said to his sister, ‘I have just been officiating as bishop.’

As the most sublime things are often those least understood, there were

people in town who, commenting on the bishop’s conduct, said, ‘It’s affectation.’ Actually, it was only in the salons this was said. The ordinary people, who see no harm in saintly deeds, were touched and felt admiration.

As for the bishop, it was a shock to him to have seen the guillotine, and it

took him a long time to get over it.

There is something nightmarish about the scaffold when it is standing there

ready. It is possible to feel a certain indifference about the death penalty, not to declare yourself, to say yes and no, so long as you have not seen a guillotine with your own eyes. But if you do come across one, it has a violent impact. You are forced to make a decision, to take sides, for or against. Some, like de Maistre, admire it. For others, like Beccaria, it is abhorrent. The guillotine is the law made concrete. Its name is retribution. It is not neutral and does not allow you to remain neutral. Whoever sees it shudders with the most mysterious of shudders. All social problems raise question marks around this blade. The scaffold is not a structure. The scaffold is not a machine. The scaffold is not an inert contraption made of wood, iron and rope. It is as though it were some kind of being with its own sinister initiative. To all appearances this wooden construction can see, this machine

can hear, this contraption can understand, this wood, this iron and this rope have a will of their own. Its presence casts the soul into a ghastly trance in which the scaffold appears terrifying and involved in what it is doing. The scaffold is the executioner’s accomplice. It devours. It eats flesh. It drinks blood. The scaffold is a kind of monster put together by the judge and the carpenter, a spectre that seems to live by some dreadful life force created out of all the death it has inflicted.

So it left a deep and horrible impression. The day after the execution and

for many days afterwards the bishop seemed devastated. Gone was that almost fierce serenity he had had at the fateful moment. The phantom of social justice haunted him. He who generally returned from everything he did with such radiant satisfaction seemed to reproach himself. At times he talked to himself and muttered lugubrious monologues under his breath.

This is one which his sister overheard one evening and recorded: ‘I didn’t realize it was so monstrous. It’s wrong to be so deeply absorbed in

divine law that you become unaware of human law. Death depends on God alone. By what right do men meddle with this matter of destiny?’

With the passage of time these impressions diminished and probably faded

away. Nevertheless, it was observed that from then on the bishop avoided crossing the square on which executions took place.

Monsieur Myriel could be summoned at any hour to the bedside of the sick

and the dying. He was not unaware that this was his most important duty and his most important work. Widowed and orphaned families had no need to ask, he came of his own accord. He had the understanding to sit quietly with the man who had lost the wife he loved, with the mother who had lost her child. Just as he knew when to remain silent, so also he knew when to speak.

O wonderful comforter! He did not try to blot out sorrow through oblivion but to magnify and dignify it through hope. He said, ‘Mind which way you look at the dead. Don’t think of what perishes. Look hard. You’ll see the living light of your dear departed up there in heaven.’ He knew that faith is healing. He sought to counsel and calm the disconsolate by pointing to the resigned, and to transform the grief that dwells on the grave by teaching the grief that dwells on a star.

V

Monseigneur Bienvenu Made His Cassocks Last Far Too Long

Monsieur Myriel’s private life was filled with the same thoughts as his public life. To anyone able to see it at close hand the voluntary poverty in which the bishop of Digne lived would have been a dignified and charming spectacle.

Like all old men and most thinkers, he slept little. This brief sleep was a

deep sleep. In the morning he meditated for an hour, then said mass, either at the cathedral or in his private chapel. Once he had said mass, he breakfasted on rye bread dipped in milk from his own cows. Then he worked.

A bishop is a very busy man. Every day he has to see the diocesan

secretary, generally a canon, and nearly every day his vicars-general. He has congregations to supervise, privileges to grant, a whole library full of ecclesiastical publications to study – prayer books, diocesan catechisms, books of hours, et cetera – newsletters to write, sermons to approve, parish priests and mayors to bring together, a clerical correspondence, an administrative correspondence, with the state on the one hand and the holy see on the other, countless matters to be dealt with.

Whatever time was left to him by these countless matters, his religious

services and his breviary, he gave first of all to the needy, the sick and the bereaved. Whatever time was left to him by the bereaved, the sick and the needy, he devoted to work. Sometimes he dug the soil in his garden, sometimes he read or wrote. For both these kinds of work he had just one word: he called this ‘gardening’. ‘The mind is a garden,’ he used to say.

At midday he had his lunch. Lunch was the same as breakfast.

At around two o’clock, when the weather was fine, he would go for a walk

in the countryside or in town, often entering the humblest dwellings. He was to be seen walking by himself entirely absorbed in his thoughts, with his eyes on the ground, leaning on his long walking-stick, dressed in his very warm purple quilted coat, purple stockings and heavy shoes, and wearing his flat hat with three gold-braided tassels dangling from its three corners.

There was celebration wherever he appeared. He seemed to bring

something bright and warming with him as he went by. Children and old folk

came out on the doorstep for the bishop as if for the sun. He gave his blessing and they blessed him. Anyone in need of anything was directed to his house.

He would stop here and there, talk to the little boys and girls and smile at

their mothers. As long as he had money he visited the poor. When he had none left he visited the rich.

Since he made his cassocks last a very long time and did not want anyone

to notice, he never went into town without his purple quilted coat. This was a little uncomfortable in summer.

At half-past eight in the evening he had supper with his sister, with

Madame Magloire standing behind them and serving them at table. Nothing could be more frugal than this meal. If, however, the bishop had one of his parish priests to supper Madame Magloire took advantage of the opportunity to serve Monseigneur some excellent lake-water fish or some choice game from the mountains. Every parish priest was an excuse for a good meal. The bishop did not interfere. Otherwise, his usual meal consisted only of boiled vegetables and soup with oil. Consequently it was said in town: ‘When the bishop does not dine like a parish priest, he dines like a Trappist monk.’

After supper he would chat for half an hour with Mademoiselle Baptistine

and Madame Magloire, then retire to his own room and begin writing again, sometimes on loose pages, sometimes in the margin of a folio volume. He was well read and somewhat erudite. He has left five or six rather curious manuscripts – among others, a dissertation on the verse from Genesis: ‘In the beginning the spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.’ He compares this verse with three texts: the Arabic version that says, ‘The winds of God blew’; Flavius Josephus, who says, ‘A wind from on high came down upon the earth’; and finally Onkelos paraphrased it in Chaldaic as ‘A wind emanating from God blew upon the face of the waters.’ In another dissertation he examines the theological works of Hugo, bishop of Ptolemais, great-great-uncle of the author of this book, and establishes that the various tracts published during the last century under the pseudonym of Barleycourt are to be attributed to this bishop.

Sometimes in the middle of reading, no matter what the book he had in his

hand might be, he would suddenly fall into a deep meditation, emerging from

it only to write a few lines on the actual pages of the book. These lines often have no connection whatsoever with the book that contains them. We have now before our eyes a note written by him in the margin of a quarto volume entitled Correspondence of Lord Germain with Generals Clinton, Cornwallis and the Admirals of the American Station (Versailles, Poinçot, Bookseller, and Paris, Pissot, Bookseller, Quai des Augustins).

This is the note: ‘Oh, you who are! ‘Ecclesiastes names you Almighty, the Maccabees name you Creator, the

Epistle to the Ephesians names you Freedom, Baruch names you Immensity, the Psalms name you Wisdom and Truth, John names you Light, the Book of Kings names you Lord, Exodus names you Providence. Leviticus, Sanctity.

Esdras, Justice. Creation names you God. Mankind names you Father. But Solomon names you Mercy, and of all your names this is the most beautiful.’

About nine o’clock in the evening the two women would retire and go up

to their rooms on the first floor, leaving him alone on the ground floor until morning.

At this point we need to give an accurate idea of the bishop of Digne’s

accommodation.

VI

Under Whose Protection He Placed His House

The house where he lived consisted, as we have said, of a ground floor and a first floor – three rooms on the ground floor, three on the first, with an attic above. Behind the house was a garden of some quarter of an acre. The two women occupied the first floor. The bishop slept downstairs. The first room, which opened on to the street, served as his dining room, the second was his bedroom, and the third his private chapel. There was no way out of this chapel except through the bedroom, or out of the bedroom except through the dining room. At the far end of the chapel was a separate alcove with a bed in it for the use of guests. The bishop would offer this bed to priests brought to Digne by the needs of their rural parishes or on other business.

The hospital pharmacy, a small building added to the house and extending

into the garden, had been turned into a kitchen and storeroom.

There was also in the garden an outbuilding, formerly the old hospital

kitchen, where the bishop kept two cows. However much milk they gave, he invariably sent half of it every morning to the patients in the hospital. ‘I’m paying my tithes,’ he said.

His bedroom was quite big and quite difficult to heat in winter. As wood is

extremely expensive in Digne he came up with the idea of having a wooden partition installed in the cowshed to create a separate closet. Here he spent his evenings when it was very cold. He called it his winter drawing room.

This drawing room had no other furniture than a square whitewood table

and four straw-bottomed chairs, as in the dining room. The dining room also boasted an old sideboard painted with pink distemper. Out of a similar sideboard, appropriately draped with white cloths and imitation lace, the bishop had fashioned the altar that graced his chapel.

His wealthy penitents and the pious women of Digne had often contributed

to a fund to pay for the expense of a new altar for Monseigneur’s chapel.

Every time this happened he had taken the money and given it to the poor. ‘The most beautiful of altars,’ he said, ‘is the soul of one comforted in their distress who thanks God.’

There were two straw-bottomed chairs with kneelers in his chapel, and an

armchair, also straw-bottomed, in his bedroom. When he happened to have seven or eight guests at the same time – the prefect, or the general, or the officers of the regiment in garrison, or several pupils from the seminary school – someone had to go and fetch the chairs from the winter drawing room in the cowshed, the chairs with kneelers from the chapel and the armchair from the bedroom. As many as eleven chairs could be thus assembled for visitors. With every new arrival a room was emptied of furniture.

It sometimes happened they were twelve in all. The bishop then disguised

the awkwardness of the situation by standing in front of the chimney if it was winter or suggesting a stroll in the garden if it was summer.

There was yet another chair in the alcove but the straw bottom was half

giving way and it was balanced on only three legs, which meant it could only be used propped up against the wall. Mademoiselle Baptistine also had in her room a very large bergère of wood that had once been gilt, and upholstered in a flower-patterned Peking silk. But this bergère had to be brought up to the first floor through the window as the staircase was too narrow. So it could not be included among the furniture available when needed.

Mademoiselle Baptistine’s ambition had been to buy a suite of drawing-

room furniture, including a sofa, in yellow rose-patterned Utrecht velvet and mahogany, with swan-neck carving. But this would have cost five hundred francs at least, and seeing that she had been able to save up only forty-two francs and ten sous in five years, she eventually gave up the idea. Anyway, who ever attains their ideal?

Nothing could be simpler to visualize than the bishop’s bedroom. A french

window opening on to the garden, with the bed facing it, a hospital bed, iron-framed with a green serge canopy. Close to the bed, behind a curtain, the toilet articles that still betrayed the old stylish ways of the man of the world.

Two doors, one by the fireplace leading to the chapel, the other by the bookcase leading to the dining room. The bookcase, a large glass-fronted cabinet full of books. The fireplace, with a wooden mantel painted to look like marble, usually without a fire. In the fireplace a pair of andirons decorated with two garlanded vases and flutings once silver-plated, which was a kind of episcopal luxury. Above, where a mirror would normally be hung, a crucifix made of copper with the silver plating worn off, set against threadbare black velvet in a wooden frame that had lost its gilt. By the french window, a large table with an inkstand laden with a jumble of papers and some thick volumes. In front of the table, the straw-bottomed armchair. In front of the bed, a chair with kneeler, borrowed from the chapel.

Hanging on the wall on either side of the bed were two portraits in oval

frames. Small gilt inscriptions on the plain cloth background, beside these heads, indicated that one of the portraits was of Abbé de Chaliot, bishop of St-Claude; the other of Abbé Tourteau, vicar-general of Agde, abbot of Grand-Champ of the Cistercian Order in the diocese of Chartres. When the

bishop took over this room from the hospital patients he found these portraits in it and had left them there. They were priests, probably benefactors – two reasons why he should respect them. All he knew about these two individuals was that they had been appointed – the one to his bishopric, the other to his living – by the king, on the same day, the twenty-seventh of April 1785. The bishop discovered this information, written in faded ink on a little square of paper yellowed with age and attached with four blobs of sealing-wax to the back of the portrait of the abbot of Grand-Champ, when Madame Magloire took the pictures down to shake the dust off them.

He had a very old window curtain of coarse woollen cloth that eventually

became so old that to avoid the expense of a new one Madame Magloire was obliged to sew a large patch right in the middle of it. This patch was in the shape of a cross. The bishop often remarked on it. ‘How well that looks!’ he would say.

All the rooms in the house without exception, on the ground floor as well

as the first floor, were whitewashed, which is a common practice in barracks and hospitals.

However, as we shall see, underneath the whitewashed paper Madame

Magloire had recently discovered paintings that decorated Mademoiselle Baptistine’s room. Before it was a hospital this house had been the town council building. Hence the decoration. The bedroom floors were of red brick, washed every week, with a woven straw mat before every bed. Indeed, this place, looked after by two women, was immaculately clean from top to bottom. This was the sole luxury the bishop allowed. He said, ‘It takes nothing from the poor.’

It must be acknowledged, though, that of his former possessions he was

still left with six silver forks and spoons and a large soup ladle that for Madame Magloire were a daily joy to see gleaming splendidly on the white linen tablecloth. And as we are painting a portrait of the bishop of Digne just as he was, we must add that he had more than once been heard to say, ‘It would be hard to give up eating off silver.’

To this silverware must be added two large candlesticks of solid silver that

he had inherited from a great-aunt. These candlesticks held two wax candles

and usually stood on the bishop’s mantelpiece. When he had someone to dinner Madame Magloire would light the two candles and set the candlesticks on the table.

In the bishop’s own bedroom, at the head of his bed, was a small cupboard

in which Madame Magloire locked away the six silver forks and spoons and the large ladle every evening. It has to be said, the key was never removed.

A little spoiled by the rather ugly outhouses mentioned above, the garden

consisted of four paths that formed a cross radiating from a drainage well.

Another path ran all the way round the garden and along the white wall that enclosed it. These paths marked out four square plots edged with box. In three of these Madame Magloire grew vegetables. In the fourth the bishop had planted flowers. Here and there were a few fruit trees.

Madame Magloire had once said to him with a sort of gentle mockery,

‘Monseigneur is always one for putting everything to good use but this is a waste of a plot. It would be more useful to have salads here than bunches of flowers.’

‘Madame Magloire,’ replied the bishop, ‘you’re mistaken. The beautiful is

just as useful as the useful.’ He added after a pause, ‘Perhaps more so.’

This plot, consisting of three or four flowerbeds, occupied the bishop

almost as much as his books. He would gladly spend an hour or two at them, pruning, weeding and making holes in the ground here and there, in which he put seeds. He was not as hostile to insects as a gardener might have wished.

Indeed, he had no botanical pretensions at all. He knew nothing of groups and solidism. He was not in the least concerned with deciding between Tournefort and the natural method. He did not favour utricles over cotyledons, or Jussieu over Linnaeus. He did not study plants. He loved flowers. He had a great deal of respect for the learned. He had even more respect for the uneducated. And without ever failing in his respect for both, he watered his flowerbeds every summer evening with a green tin watering-can.

The house had not a single door that could be locked. The door of the

dining room which, as we have said, opened directly on to the cathedral square had formerly been fitted with locks and bolts like a prison door. The

bishop had all these iron fittings removed, and day or night this door was always left on the latch. No matter what time it was, anyone that called by had only to push it open. At first the two women had fretted greatly about this door that was never locked, but the bishop of Digne said to them, ‘Have bolts fitted to your rooms if you like.’ They ended up sharing his trustfulness, or at least behaving as if they did. Madame Magloire alone had frights from time to time. As for the bishop, an explanation of his thinking, or at least a clue to it, can be found in a few lines he wrote in the margin of a bible. ‘There is a subtle distinction to be made: the doctor’s door should never be shut, the priest’s door should always be open.’

On another book, entitled Philosophy of Medical Science, he had written

this note: ‘Am not I a physician like them? I too have my patients. In the first place, I have theirs, whom they call the sick. And then I have mine, whom I call those in distress.’

Elsewhere he wrote: ‘Don’t ask the name of anyone that asks you for

shelter. It is especially the person whose name is a burden to him that has need of shelter.’

It so happened that a well-meaning priest – the parish priest of

Couloubroux or Pompierry, I don’t remember which – one day took it upon himself, probably at Madame Magloire’s instigation, to ask whether Monseigneur was quite sure he was not acting a little unwisely in leaving his door open day and night to anyone that might choose to enter, and whether he did not after all fear some harm might come to those in a house so poorly guarded. The bishop touched him on the shoulder with gentle solemnity and said, ‘Nisi Dominus custodierit domum, in vanum vigilant qui custodiunt eam.’* Then he spoke of something else.

He was fond of saying, ‘There’s the bravery of the priest as well as the

bravery of a colonel of dragoons. Only,’ he added, ‘ours must be a bravery of peace.’

VII

Cravatte

This is the right place to recount an event we must not fail to mention, because it is one of those that best illustrate what kind of man the bishop of Digne was.

After the rout of Gaspard Bès’s gang that had infested the Ollioules gorges,

one of his lieutenants, Cravatte, took refuge in the mountains. With his outlaws, the remnants of Gaspard Bès’s band, he went into hiding for a while in the county of Nice, then made his way to Piedmont, and suddenly reappeared in France in the vicinity of Barcelonnette. He was first seen at Jauziers, then at Tuiles. He hid in the caves of Joug-de-l’Aigle, and from there would descend on the hamlets and villages following the course of the Ubaye and the Ubayette. He even ventured as far as Embrun, entered the cathedral one night and ransacked the sacristy. His depredations were the despair of the locality. The gendarmerie were sent after him, but to no avail.

He always escaped. Sometimes he put up a fight. He was a bold wretch. The bishop turned up on his pastoral round in the middle of this terror. At Chastelar the mayor came out to meet him and urged him to turn back.

Cravatte had control of the mountains as far as Arche and beyond. It was dangerous even with an escort, which only meant needlessly putting three or four poor gendarmes at risk.

‘Which is why,’ said the bishop, ‘I intend to go without an escort.’ ‘Are you serious, Monseigneur?’ exclaimed the mayor. ‘So serious that I don’t want a single gendarme and I’m leaving within the

hour.’

‘Leaving?’ ‘Leaving.’ ‘Alone?’ ‘Alone.’ ‘Monseigneur! You can’t do that.’ ‘Up in the mountains,’ said the bishop, ‘is the smallest of humble

communities, which I haven’t visited for three years. They’re my dear friends. Gentle and honest shepherds. They own one goat out of every thirty

they tend. They make very pretty woollen cords of various colours, and they play mountain airs on little six-hole flutes. They need someone to tell them about the good Lord from time to time. What would they think of a bishop who was scared? What would they think if I didn’t go to them?’

‘But the brigands, Monseigneur! What if you were to run into the

brigands!’

‘Well,’ said the bishop, ‘I’ve been thinking about that. You’re right. I may

run into them. They too need someone to tell them about the good Lord.’

‘But Monseigneur, they’re a gang! A pack of wolves!’ ‘Monsieur le maire, it may be that this very pack of wolves is the flock

Jesus is placing in my pastoral care. Who understands the ways of providence?’

‘Monseigneur, they’ll rob you.’ ‘I have nothing.’ ‘They’ll kill you.’ ‘A harmless old priest mumbling his prayers as he goes by? Bah! What

for?’

‘Oh, my goodness! If you were to run into them!’ ‘I’d ask them to give to my poor.’ ‘For heaven’s sake, don’t go, Monseigneur! You’re endangering your life!’ ‘But if that’s the only objection, monsieur le maire,’ said the bishop, ‘I’m

not in this world to protect my life but to protect souls.’

There was no way of stopping him. He set out, accompanied only by a

child who offered to serve as his guide. His stubborn determination caused a stir among the local people and greatly alarmed them.

He would take with him neither his sister nor Madame Magloire. He

crossed the mountain on a mule, encountered no one, and came safe and sound to his ‘good friends’ the shepherds. He remained with them for a fortnight, preaching, administering the sacraments, teaching, edifying. When he was soon to depart he resolved to sing a solemn Te Deum. He told the parish priest. But how was it to be done? No episcopal vestments! All that could be placed at his disposal was a lowly village sacristy with a few old chasubles of threadbare damask trimmed with imitation braid.

‘Bah!’ said the bishop. ‘Let’s proclaim our Te Deum from the pulpit

anyway. Something will turn up.’

A search of the local churches was made. All the finery of these humble

parishes put together would not have provided suitable vestments for one cathedral chorister.

While they were in this quandary a large chest was brought and left in the

presbytery for the bishop by two unknown horsemen who immediately rode off again. 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 stolen a month previously from the treasury of Notre-Dame d’Embrun. In the chest was a piece of paper with these words written on it: ‘From Cravatte to Monseigneur Bienvenu.’

‘Did I not say something would turn up?’ said the bishop. Then he added

with a smile, ‘To him who is satisfied with a priest’s surplice, God sends the cope of an archbishop.’

‘Monseigneur,’ murmured the parish priest, nodding with a smile, ‘God …

or the devil.’

The bishop looked steadily at the priest and corrected him with authority,

‘God!’

When he returned to Chastelar, and all along the way, people came to see

him out of curiosity. He found Mademoiselle Baptistine and Madame Magloire waiting for him at the presbytery in Chastelar, and he said to his sister, ‘Well, I was right, wasn’t I? The poor priest went to visit those poor mountain-dwellers empty-handed, and he comes home with his hands full. I set out with only my trust in God. I’m bringing back a cathedral’s treasury.’

And that evening before he went to bed he said, ‘Never fear robbers or

murderers. Those are dangers that come from without. Small dangers. Let us fear ourselves. Prejudices are the real robbers. Vices are the real murderers.

The great dangers are within us. Never mind what endangers our life or our purse! Let’s be mindful only of what endangers our soul.’

Then turning to his sister, ‘Sister, no priest should ever guard himself

against his fellow man. Whatever his fellow man does, God allows it. Let us

simply pray to God when we believe some danger threatens us. And pray not for ourselves but that our brother may not fall into sin on our account.’

That apart, his life was usually uneventful. We relate what we know of, but

generally he spent his life always doing the same things at the same time of day. One month of his year was like one hour of his day.

As to what became of the cathedral of Embrun ‘treasure’, being questioned

on that subject would embarrass us. Very handsome indeed were those things, very tempting, and very good to steal for the benefit of the poor. Anyway, they were already stolen. The job was half done. The theft only needed to be redirected and helped a little on its way to reach the poor. However, we are not making any assertions in this regard. Only a rather obscure note was found among the bishop’s papers that may have some bearing on the matter.

It is worded as follows: ‘The question is, whether it should revert to the cathedral or the hospital.’

VIII

After-Drinking Philosophy

The senator we have spoken of earlier was a calculating man who had made his way regardless of all those obstacles he would have encountered that we call conscience, solemn oath, justice, duty. He had moved straight towards his goal without once faltering in the pursuit of his career and his self-interest.

He was a former prosecutor, with a weakness for success, not at all a wicked man, doing all the little favours he could for his sons, sons-in-law, relations, even friends, having wisely taken from life its good aspects, its good opportunities, its strokes of good luck. Anything else seemed rather foolish to him. He was witty and just sufficiently well read to consider himself a disciple of Epicurus while in reality being only a product of Pigault-Lebrun.

He joked readily and pleasantly about things infinite and everlasting, and about ‘the dear bishop’s nonsense’. Sometimes he even joked about these, with a kindly authority, when Monsieur Myriel himself was there listening.

Some semi-official ceremony or other meant that Comte *** (this senator)

and Monsieur Myriel were both dinner guests of the prefect. When it came to dessert, the senator, a little merry though still dignified, cried, ‘Dash it,

monsieur l’évêque, let’s have a chat! It’s hard for a senator and a bishop to look at each other without winking. We’re both augurs. I’m going to be honest with you: I have my philosophy.’

‘Quite right too,’ replied the bishop. ‘As you make your philosophical bed,

so must you lie in it. Yours is the bed of purple, monsieur le sénateur.’

Encouraged, the senator went on, ‘Let’s be good-natured about this.’ ‘Devilish good-natured, even,’ said the bishop. ‘I tell you,’ continued the senator, ‘the Marquis d’Argens, Pyrrho, Hobbes

and Monsieur Naigeon are no scoundrels. All the philosophers I have in my library are gilt-edged.’

‘Like yourself, monsieur le comte,’ the bishop interposed.

The senator went on: ‘I hate Diderot. He’s an ideologue, a ranter and a

revolutionary, who basically believes in God and is more sanctimonious than Voltaire. Voltaire scoffed at Needham, and he was wrong. For Needham’s eels prove that God is unnecessary. A drop of vinegar in a spoonful of flour paste replaces the fiat lux*. Suppose the drop were larger and the spoonful bigger, and there you have the world. Man is the eel. So what use is the Eternal Father? The Jehovah hypothesis bores me, monsieur l’évêque. All it can do is produce people of no substance, who ring hollow. Down with the great Whole that drives me to distraction! Long live Nothingness that leaves me alone! Between you and me, and to come clean and confess to my pastor as one should, I admit I have common sense. I’m not mad about this Jesus of yours who’s constantly preaching self-denial and sacrifice. A miser’s counsel to the poverty-stricken. Self-denial! Why? Sacrifice! For what? I don’t see any wolf sacrificing itself for the sake of another wolf’s happiness. So let’s stick with nature. We hold pride of place. Let’s have the superior philosophy.

What’s the point of being on top if you can’t see further than the end of other people’s noses? Let’s enjoy life. Life is all. The idea that man has another future elsewhere, up above, down below, wherever – I don’t believe a single word of it. Oh! I’m told to make sacrifices and be self-denying, I must beware of everything I do, I have to worry about good and evil, right and wrong, the fas and the nefas†. Why? Because I shall be called to account for my actions. When? After my death. What a charming fantasy! After my death

it will take a lot of cunning to nab me. Just you make a disembodied hand grab a handful of dust. Let’s speak the truth, we who are among the initiated and have lifted Isis’ skirt: there is neither good nor evil, there’s vegetation.

Let us seek out reality, delve deep, dig to the bottom, damn it! You have to sniff out the truth, burrow underground and snatch it up. Then it gives you exquisite pleasure. Then you become strong and you laugh. I’ve got my feet on the ground. Monsieur l’évêque, the immortality of man is wishful thinking. Oh! what a delightful promise! Believe it if you will! What an assurance Adam has been given! We’re souls, we’re going to become angels, we’ll have blue wings on our shoulder blades. Help me out here: isn’t it Tertullian who says that the blessed will migrate from star to star? Very well.

We shall be grasshoppers among the stars. And then we shall see God. Blah, blah, blah. All these paradises are just twaddle! God is a monstrous piece of nonsense. I wouldn’t say so in Le Moniteur, of course, but I whisper it among friends. Inter pocula.* To sacrifice the world for paradise is to let go the substance for the shadow. Be taken in by the everlasting? I’m not such a fool!

I’m nothing. I call myself Monsieur le Comte of Nothingness, senator. Did I exist before my birth? No. Shall I exist after my death? No. What am I? A little dust bound together by an organism. What am I to do on this earth? I have the choice: to suffer, or to enjoy myself. Where will suffering get me?

To non-existence. But I shall have suffered. Where will enjoyment get me?

To non-existence. But I shall have enjoyed myself. My choice is made. Of necessity, it is either eat or be eaten. I shall eat. Better to be the tooth than the grass. Such is my wisdom. After that, however long you manage to keep going, the grave-digger is there, the Panthéon for some of us, but all end up in the great hole in the ground. The End. Finis. Total elimination. This is the vanishing-point. Death is final, believe me. I laugh at the idea of there being anyone who has anything to tell me on this subject. Nursery make-believe – the bogeyman for children, Jehovah for adults. No, our future is darkness.

Beyond the tomb there’s nothing but equal non-existences. Whether you were Sardanapalus or Vincent de Paul, it makes no difference. That’s the truth of the matter. So above all, live your life. Make use of your self while it’s yours.

Monsieur l’évêque, I tell you truly, I have my philosophy and I have my

philosophers. I don’t allow myself to be inveigled by humbug. Of course, there must be something for those at the bottom of society, the barefoot tramps, the ones living on a pittance, the wretched poor. They’re given legends to swallow, chimeras, the soul, immortality, paradise, the stars. They chew on that. They put it on their dry crusts. Whoever has nothing has the good Lord. That’s the very least he deserves. I’ve no objection to that but I keep Monsieur Naigeon for myself. The good Lord is good enough for the populace.’

The bishop clapped his hands. ‘Well said!’ he exclaimed. ‘What an excellent and truly marvellous thing

that kind of materialism is! It takes more than wanting to come by it. But when you do, ah, you’re no longer fooled. You don’t stupidly allow yourself to be exiled like Cato, or stoned like Stephen, or burned alive like Joan of Arc. Those that do manage to avail themselves of this admirable materialism have the pleasure of feeling irresponsible and of thinking they can gobble up everything without worrying – positions, sinecures, distinctions, power whether honestly or dishonestly come by, lucrative retractions, advantageous betrayals, delectable compromises with their conscience – and that they shall go to their graves having digested the lot. How satisfying! I don’t say this for your sake, monsieur le sénateur. However, I can only congratulate you. You fine gentlemen, as you say, have a philosophy of your own, for yourselves.

An exquisite, refined philosophy available only to the rich, to be served up in all kinds of ways, wonderfully adding relish to the pleasures of life. This philosophy is extracted from the hidden depths and unearthed by expert seekers. But you are kindly princes and you don’t mind that belief in God should be the philosophy of the people, rather in the same way that goose stuffed with chestnuts is the truffled turkey of the poor.’

IX

The Brother as Described by His Sister

To give some idea of the bishop of Digne’s domestic arrangements and of the way those two saintly women subordinated their actions, thoughts, even their instincts, easily frightened as they were, to the habits and wishes of the

bishop without his even having to take the trouble to say anything to convey them, we can do no better than to transcribe at this point a letter from Mademoiselle Baptistine to her childhood friend Madame la Vicomtesse de Boischevron. We have the letter in our hands.

Digne, 16th December, 18—

My dear madame,

Not a day passes that we do not speak of you. This is something of a habit of ours but

there is yet another reason for it. Just imagine, while washing and dusting the ceilings and walls, Madame Magloire has made some discoveries. Our two bedrooms with old whitewashed paper on the walls would now not discredit a château like yours. Madame Magloire has pulled off all the paper. There was something underneath. My drawing room, containing no furniture, that we use for hanging out the linen after it has been washed, is fifteen foot high by eighteen foot square, with what was once a painted gilded ceiling with beams like yours. It was concealed under baize from the days when this was the hospital.

Would you believe, wooden coffering from our grandmothers’ day. But you should see my room! Under at least ten layers of paper pasted over them, Madame Magloire has discovered some paintings that without being good are passable. Of Telemachus being knighted by Minerva, and of him again in the gardens. The name escapes me. You know, where Roman ladies would go, on just one night. What shall I say? I have Romans, men, women [an illegible word here]*, and all the rest. Madame Magloire has cleaned it all up, and this summer she is going to have some slight damage repaired, and the whole thing revarnished, and the room will be a veritable museum. She has also found in a corner of the attic two old-fashioned wooden console tables. It would have cost us twelve francs to have them regilded but it is much better to give the money to the poor. In any case they are very ugly, and I would far rather have a round mahogany table.

I am just as happy as ever. My brother is so good. He gives all he has to the poor and the

sick. Life is very difficult. The winters are hard in this part of the world, and we really have to do something for those in need. We are fairly well provided with heat and lighting. You see, such things are great luxuries.

My brother has his own ways. In conversation, he says this is how a bishop should be.

Would you believe, the door of our house is never locked. Anyone can walk in, straight into my brother’s rooms. He is not afraid of anything, even at night. That is his form of bravery, he says.

He does not want me or Madame Magloire to fear for his safety. He exposes himself to

all kinds of danger and he does not even want us to look as if we notice. We must be understanding.

He goes out in the rain, walks in the wet, travels in winter. He is not afraid of the dark or

of dangerous roads or of whom he might encounter.

Last year he went off by himself into a region of robbers. He would not take us with him.

He was away for a fortnight. When he came back nothing had happened to him. We thought he was dead, and he was in fine fettle. And he said, ‘Look how I’ve been robbed!’ And he opened up a trunk full of all the treasure belonging to the cathedral of Embrun, which the robbers had given him.

Coming home on that occasion, after I had gone five miles out of town with some of his

other friends to meet him, I could not help scolding him a little, taking care to speak only when the carriage was rattling so no one else could hear.

At first I used to say to myself, ‘There is no danger that deters him, he’s impossible.’ I

have ended up getting used to it now. I gesture to Madame Magloire not to cross him. He takes whatever risks he wants to. I go off with Madame Magloire, retire to my room, pray for him and fall asleep. My mind’s at rest because I know if anything were to happen to him that would be the end of me. I would be on my way to the good Lord with my brother and my bishop. It was much more difficult for Madame Magloire to come to terms with what she calls his recklessness. But now we have got into the habit of it. We both pray, the two of us are frightened, and we fall asleep. The devil could enter this house and no one would stop him. After all, what do we fear in this house? There is always someone with us whose strength is greatest. The devil may visit us but the good Lord dwells here.

For me that is enough. My brother has no need even to say a word to me now. I

understand him without his speaking, and we place ourselves in the hands of Providence.

That is how it must be with a man who has greatness of spirit.

I asked my brother for the information you wanted about the De Faux family. You know

how he knows everything and remembers things, because he is still a true royalist. They really are a very old Norman family from the Caen district. Going back five hundred years, there was a Raoul de Faux, a Jean de Faux and a Thomas de Faux, who were noblemen, one of them the seigneur de Rochefort. The last of them was Guy-Étienne-Alexandre, who was a regimental commander and something or other in the Brittany light cavalry. His daughter Marie-Louise married Adrien-Charles de Gramont, son of Louis Duc de Gramont, peer of France, colonel of the French guards and lieutenant-general of the armed forces. The name is written Faux, Fauq and Faoucq.

Dear madame, commend us to the prayers of your saintly relative the cardinal. As for

your dear Sylvanie, she is quite right not to use up any of the brief time she spends with you in writing to me. She is in good health, works as you will have her do, and still loves me.

That is all I want. You have conveyed her kind regards. That gives me pleasure. My health is not too bad and yet I grow thinner every day. Farewell, I’ve run out of paper and so must leave you. With very best wishes,

Baptistine

P.S. Your sister-in-law is still here with her young family. Your great-nephew is

charming. Do you know he will soon be five years old? Yesterday he saw a horse go by that had had knee-guards put on, and he said, ‘What’s wrong with his knees?’ That child is so sweet!

His little brother pulls an old broom round the house like a cart and says, ‘Gee up!’

As can be seen from this letter, with that special genius that women have of understanding a man better than he understands himself these two women were able to conform to the bishop’s ways.

Despite his unfailingly gentle and ingenuous manner, the bishop of Digne

sometimes did things that were grand, bold and magnificent without

appearing to be at all aware of it. It made them fearful, but they did not interfere. Sometimes Madame Magloire tried to remonstrate beforehand but never during or afterwards. They never by so much as a gesture intervened in any action once he had embarked on it. At certain times, without needing to be told, when he was probably not even conscious of it himself – so completely unpretentious was he – in some way they sensed he was acting as a bishop. Then they were no more than two shadows in the house. They served him self-effacingly, and if to obey meant to disappear, they disappeared. With an admirable delicacy of instinct they realized that some shows of concern may be unwelcome. So even when believing him to be in danger, they understood, I will not say his thinking, but his nature, to the extent that they no longer sought to protect him. They entrusted him to God.

Moreover, as we have just read, Baptistine used to say the death of her

brother would be the death of her. Madame Magloire did not say so, but she knew it.

X

The Bishop in the Presence of an Unknown Light

Shortly after the date of the letter cited in the pages above he did something even more dangerous, as the whole town would have it, than his mountain excursion through bandit territory.

In the countryside near Digne lived a man all by himself. This man was –

let us straight away utter the dread word – a former member of the Convention. His name was G.

In the little world of Digne, Member of the Convention G was spoken of

with a kind of horror. A member of the Convention! Can you imagine! That went back to the days when all forms of respect were abandoned and everyone was addressed as ‘citizen’. This man was almost a monster. He did not vote for the king’s death, but little short of it. He was all but a regicide.

He had done terrible things. How was it that on the return of our lawful rulers the man had not been prosecuted by a criminal court? He need not have had his head cut off, if you like, there must be clemency, agreed – but a good

lifelong banishment, as an example, for goodness’ sake! Et cetera, et cetera.

Besides, he was an atheist like all the rest of those people.

The cackling of geese with regard to the vulture!

But was G actually a vulture? Yes, to judge by the unsociable nature of his

solitude. Not having voted for the death of the king, he had not been included in the edicts of exile and had been able to remain in France.

He dwelt at three-quarters of an hour’s distance from the town, far from

any hamlet, far from any road, in a remote spot, heaven knows where, in a very wild valley. It was said he had some kind of smallholding there, a bolt-hole, a retreat. No neighbours, not even passers-by. Since he had been living in this valley the path that led there had become overgrown. People spoke about that place as if it were the home of an executioner.

However, the bishop would reflect and from time to time gaze at the

horizon where a clump of trees marked the old member of the Convention’s valley, and he would say, ‘There’s an isolated soul out there.’

And deep in his own mind he added, ‘I owe him a visit.’ But let us admit, this idea, on the face of it a natural one, after a moment’s

reflection appeared to him outlandish and impossible, almost repellent. For he basically shared the general impression, and the member of the Convention inspired in him, without his being clearly conscious of it, that feeling bordering as it were on hatred and so well expressed by the word ‘aversion’.

Still, should his sheep’s scab cause the shepherd to recoil? No. But what a

sheep!

The good bishop felt confused. Sometimes he would start off in that

direction, then return.

Finally there came a day when news spread through town that some sort of

young shepherd who made himself useful to the member of the Convention in his lair had come to fetch a doctor: the old villain was dying, he had creeping paralysis, and would not survive the night. ‘Thank God!’ some people added.

The bishop took his staff, put on his overcoat because of his rather too

threadbare cassock we have already referred to, and also because of the

evening breeze that was bound to freshen before long, and set out.

The sun was sinking and almost touching the horizon when the bishop

arrived in that shunned place. He realized with a certain pounding of his heart that he was close to the den. He strode across a ditch, came through a fence, lifted a barrier, entered an ill-tended vegetable garden, advanced a few steps quite boldly and all at once on the far side of the neglected plot behind some tall brambles he saw the lair.

It was a very low-built hut, stark, small and clean, with a vine attached to

the front of it.

In front of the door in an old chair on wheels, the peasant’s armchair, sat a

man with white hair smiling at the sun.

By the old man stood a young boy, the shepherd lad. He was offering the

old man a bowl of milk.

While the bishop watched, the old man spoke aloud. ‘Thank you,’ he said,

‘I don’t need anything more.’ And his smile turned from the sun to rest on the child.

The bishop moved forward. At the sound of his footsteps the seated old

man looked round and his face expressed all the surprise a man is capable of after a long life.

‘This is the first time since I’ve been here,’ he said, ‘that anyone has come

to my house. Who are you, monsieur?’

The bishop answered, ‘My name is Bienvenu Myriel.’ ‘Bienvenu Myriel? I’ve heard that name. Are you the man the people call

Monseigneur Bienvenu?’

‘I am.’ The old man resumed with a half-smile, ‘In that case you’re my bishop?’ ‘Indeed.’ ‘Come in, monsieur.’ The member of the Convention offered his hand to the bishop but the

bishop did not take it. All he said was, ‘I’m glad to see I was misinformed.

You certainly don’t look ill to me.’

‘Monsieur,’ replied the old man, ‘I’m going to get better.’ He paused and

said, ‘I shall be dead in three hours’ time.’ Then he went on, ‘I’m something

of a doctor. I know how the end comes. Yesterday only my feet were cold.

Today the chill is in my knees. Now I feel it rising to my waist. When it reaches my heart, I shall cease to be. Isn’t the sun splendid? I had myself wheeled out here to take a last look at things. You can talk to me, it doesn’t tire me. You do well to come and watch a man who’s going to die. It’s right there should be witnesses to that moment. We all have our own little fancies – I’d like to have lasted till dawn. But I know I have barely three hours left.

It’ll be dark. Anyway, what difference does it make! Dying is a simple matter.

There’s no need for daylight. Very well then. I shall die by starlight.’

The old man turned to the shepherd. ‘You get to bed. You stayed up with me all last night. You’re tired.’ The young lad went inside.

The old man’s eyes followed him, and as though talking to himself he

added, ‘While he sleeps I shall die. Our two forms of rest can be good company for each other.’

The bishop was not affected by this as might have been expected. He did

not think there was any sense of God in this manner of dying. To tell the whole truth, for the little inconsistencies of the great-hearted need to be signalled like everything else: he who was so quick to laugh at His Highness, when the occasion arose, was rather shocked not to be addressed as Monseigneur and was almost tempted to reply ‘citizen’. He had an inclination to be ungraciously familiar, which was common enough in doctors and priests but not typical of him. After all, this man, this member of the Convention, this representative of the people, had been one of the mighty of this world. For perhaps the first time in his life the bishop felt in the mood to be stern.

Meanwhile, the member of the Convention had been looking at him with

unassuming friendliness in which might have been discerned the appropriate humility in one so close to his return to dust.

Although he generally guarded against curiosity – as he saw it, bordering

on sin – the bishop for his part could not help studying the member of the Convention with an attentiveness that, seeing it did not spring from sympathy, his conscience would probably have reproached him for had it

been directed at any other man. A member of the Convention struck him as being something of an outlaw, beyond even the laws of charity.

Composed, almost straight-backed, with a ringing voice, G was one of

those great octogenarians that leave the physiologist amazed. The Revolution produced many of these men suited to the age. You could sense that this old man was a man who had stood the test. So near to his end, he had preserved all the signs of good health. In his clear gaze, his firm voice, the robust movement of his shoulders there was cause enough to perplex death. Azrael, the Mohammedan angel of the sepulchre, would have turned back and thought he had come to the wrong door. G seemed to be dying because that was what he wanted. There was freedom in his dying. Only his legs were immobile. By them the shades held fast to him. His feet were lifeless and cold, and his head was alive with all the power of life and appeared in full brightness. At this solemn moment G resembled the king in that oriental tale who is made of flesh above and of marble below.

There was a rock. The bishop sat on it. He began without preamble. ‘I congratulate you,’ he said in a tone of reproof. ‘At least you didn’t vote

for the king’s death.’

The member of the Convention did not seem to notice the bitter

implication underlying the words ‘at least’. He answered. The smile had completely disappeared from his face.

‘Don’t congratulate me unduly, monsieur. I did vote for the end of the

tyrant.’

This was austereness of tone confronting sternness of tone. ‘What do you mean?’ said the bishop. ‘I mean, man has a tyrant. Ignorance. I voted for the end of that tyrant.

That tyrant begot 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’s the same thing. Conscience is the quantity of innate science we have

within us.’

Monseigneur Bienvenu listened, somewhat surprised, to this language that

was very new to him.

The member of the Convention went on, ‘So far as Louis XVI was

concerned, I said no. I didn’t think I had the right to kill a man but I felt it my duty to exterminate evil. I voted for the end of the tyrant. That’s to say, the end of prostitution for women, the end of slavery for men, the end of benightedness for children. In voting for the Republic, that’s what I voted for.

I voted for fraternity, reconciliation, a new dawn. I assisted in the overthrow of prejudice and error. The collapse of prejudice and error creates light. We brought down the old world, and the old world, that vessel of misery, in being overturned on the human race, has become an urn of joy.’

‘Not unmixed joy,’ said the bishop. ‘You could say clouded joy, and now after that disastrous return of the past

called 1814, vanished joy! Alas! the work wasn’t finished, I admit: we destroyed the old order in its deeds, we were not able entirely to abolish it in its thoughts. To put an end to abuses is not enough, attitudes must change.

The mill has gone, the wind is still there.’

‘You’ve brought about destruction. Destruction can be useful but I distrust

destruction compounded with anger.’

‘Justice has its anger, monsieur l’évêque, and the anger of justice is an

element of progress. In any case, and whatever anyone may say, the French Revolution is the greatest step forward taken by the human race since the advent of Christ. Unfinished, maybe, but sublime. It has worked out all the unknowns in the social equation. It has tempered minds, calmed, appeased, enlightened. It has sent tides of civilization sweeping across the earth. It has been a good thing. The French Revolution is the consecration of humanity.’

The bishop could not refrain from murmuring, ‘Oh yes? And 1793!’ The member of the Convention straightened up in his chair with almost

lugubrious solemnity, and in so far as a dying man is capable of crying out, he cried out, ‘Ah, there you are! 1793! I was expecting to hear that. A cloud gathered for fifteen hundred years. At the end of fifteen centuries it burst.

And you put the thunderbolt on trial.’

Without perhaps admitting it to himself, the bishop felt that something

within him was extinguished. Nevertheless, he put on a brave face. He replied, ‘The judge speaks in the name of justice. The priest speaks in the

name of pity, which is nothing but a higher form of justice. A thunderbolt must not be misplaced.’ And gazing steadily at the member of the Convention he added, ‘Louis XVII?’

The Convention member reached out his hand and seized the bishop by the

arm. ‘Louis XVII! Come now! Who is it that you mourn? Is it the innocent child? In that case, very well, I mourn with you. Is it the royal child? I need to think about that. For me, Cartouche’s brother, an innocent child hanged by the arms until dead in Place de Grève for the sole crime of being the brother of Cartouche, is no less cause for sorrow than Louis XV’s grandson, an innocent child martyred in the tower of the Temple prison for the sole crime of being the grandson of Louis XV.’

‘Monsieur,’ said the bishop, ‘I don’t like this association of these names.’ ‘Cartouche? Louis XV? Which of them do you speak for?’ There was a moment’s silence. The bishop almost regretted having come

and yet he felt vaguely and strangely unsettled.

The member of the Convention went on: ‘Ah, monsieur le prêtre, you

don’t like the plainness of truth. Christ did. He seized a rod and cleared the Temple. His scourge replete with flashes of lightning was a rough speaker of truths. When he cried Sinite parvulos*, he made no distinction between little children. He’d have had no misgiving in seeing a kinship between the heir of Barabbas and the heir of Herod. Innocence, monsieur, is its own crown.

Innocence has nothing to do with being royal. It’s just as majestic in rags as in the fleur-de-lys.’

‘That’s true,’ said the bishop in a quiet voice. ‘I cannot let the matter drop,’ continued Member of the Convention G.

‘You mentioned Louis XVII. Let’s be clear. Shall we weep for every innocent, every martyr, every child, the lowly as well as the exalted? I’m with you. But then, as I said, we must go back further than ’93 and our tears must start before Louis XVII. I’ll weep with you over the children of kings as long as you weep with me over the youngsters of the people.’

‘I weep for all,’ said the bishop. ‘Equally!’ cried G. ‘And if the balance must tip one way or the other, let it

be on the side of the people. They’ve been suffering for longer.’

There was another silence. It was the member of the Convention who

broke it. He raised himself on one elbow, pinched his cheek between his thumb and his crooked forefinger, as you unconsciously do when you question and judge, and with his eyes filled with all the energies of a man close to death, he challenged the bishop. It was like an explosion.

‘Yes, monsieur, it’s a long time that the people have been suffering. And

besides, that’s not all – why do you come here to question me and talk to me about Louis XVII? I don’t know you. Ever since I’ve been in this part of the world I’ve lived alone in this enclave, never setting foot outside, seeing no one but that child who helps me. It’s true, your name has vaguely come to my knowledge, spoken of not too badly, I have to say, but that doesn’t mean anything. Clever individuals have so many ways of deceiving the honest man of the people. By the way, I didn’t hear the sound of your carriage, you no doubt left it over there, behind the trees where the road divides. I just don’t know you. You told me you were the bishop, but that doesn’t tell me anything about your moral character. So I repeat my question. Who are you? You’re a bishop. That’s to say, a prince of the Church, one of those gilded, emblazoned men of means who have fat stipends – the bishopric of Digne, fifteen thousand francs fixed salary, ten thousand in additional income, total: twenty-five thousand francs – who have kitchens, who have liveried servants, who live well, who eat moorhen on Friday, who go parading around in a ceremonial coach with a footman in front, a footman behind, who have palaces, who keep their own carriage in the name of Jesus Christ who went barefoot! You’re a cleric; revenues, palaces, horses, servants, a good table, all the pleasures of life – you have that just like the rest of them. And like the rest of them, you enjoy it, well and good, but that’s either saying too much or not enough. It doesn’t shed any light for me on the intrinsic and essential worth of someone who comes to me with the probable intention of bringing me wisdom. Who am I speaking to? Who are you?’

The bishop hung his head and replied, ‘Vermis sum*.’ ‘An earthworm in a carriage?’ muttered the member of the Convention.

It was the turn of the member of the Convention to be human and of the

bishop to be humble.

The bishop replied quietly, ‘Maybe so. But explain to me how my carriage,

standing near by behind those trees, my good table and the moorhens I eat on Fridays, my twenty-five thousand francs’ income, my palace and my footmen prove that we are not bound to be merciful and that ’93 was not pitiless.’

The member of the Convention wiped his hand across his brow as though

to brush away a cloud.

‘Before answering,’ he said, ‘I beg your pardon. I behaved badly just now.

You’re in my home, you’re my guest. I owe it to you to be courteous. You’re debating my ideas and I should confine myself to attacking your arguments.

Your wealth and your pleasures are advantages I hold against you in the debate, but it’s good manners not to exploit them. I promise not to resort to doing so again.’

‘Thank you,’ said the bishop.

G continued: ‘Let’s return to that explanation you were asking for. Where

were we? What were you saying? That ’93 was pitiless?’

‘Pitiless, yes,’ said the bishop. ‘What do you think of Marat clapping his

hands at the guillotine?’

‘What do you think of Bossuet singing the Te Deum to celebrate the

dragonnades?’

The retort was a harsh one, but it found its mark with the sureness of a

steel-tipped blade. The bishop winced. He had no answer but he was offended by this reference to Bossuet. The best of minds have their idols and sometimes feel vaguely hurt by logic’s want of respect.

The member of the Convention began to pant. The asthma that affects the

man close to death, mingling with his last gasps, broke his voice. Yet there was still a perfect lucidity of spirit in his eyes. He went on: ‘Let’s say a few more words about this and that, by all means. Leaving aside the Revolution, which taken as a whole is a tremendous assertion of humanity, ’93 is, alas! a response. You consider it pitiless – but what of the entire monarchy, monsieur? Carrier is a villain, but what do you call Montrevel? Fouquier-Tinville is a scoundrel, but what’s your opinion of Lamoignon-Bâville?

Maillard is dreadful, but Saulx-Tavannes, if you please? Père Duchêne is vicious, but how would you describe Père Letellier? Jourdan-Coupe-Tête is a

monster, but a lesser one than the Marquis de Louvois. Monsieur, monsieur, I feel sorry for archduchess and queen Marie-Antoinette, but I also feel sorry for that poor Huguenot woman who, in 1685, under Louis the Great, monsieur, while nursing her child was tied to a stake, naked to the waist, and the child taken from her. Her breast was swollen with milk and her heart with anguish. Pale and famished, the child close to dying saw that breast and cried.

And giving the woman the choice between the death of her child and the death of her conscience the executioner said to that nursing mother, “Recant!” What do you say to that Tantalus torture being applied to a mother? Just remember this, monsieur, the French Revolution had its reasons.

Its anger will be forgiven by the future. It has resulted in a better world. Out of its most terrible deeds comes a cherishing of humankind. I won’t go on.

I’ll stop there, I have the winning hand. Besides, I’m dying.’

And ceasing to gaze at the bishop, the member of the Convention

concluded his argument with these few calm words: ‘Yes, the brutalities of progress are called revolutions. When they are over, what we recognize is this: the human race has had a rough time, but it has advanced.’

The member of the Convention did not suspect that he had taken by storm

the bishop’s every successive inner retrenchment, one after the other.

However, there remained yet one more, and from this retrenchment, the last redoubt of Monseigneur Bienvenu’s resistance, came this reply in which nearly all his original asperity returned.

‘Progress must believe in God. Good cannot be served by the ungodly. The

atheist is a bad guide for the human race.’

The old representative of the people did not reply. A tremor went through

him. He looked up at the sky and a tear slowly gathered in that upturned gaze.

The tear, filling his eye, trickled down his pallid cheek, and talking to himself in an undertone, his gaze lost in the remote depths, he said almost stammering, ‘O you the ideal! You alone exist!’

The bishop experienced a sort of inexpressible turmoil.

After a pause the old man raised a finger skywards and said, ‘The infinite

exists. It is there. If the infinite had no selfhood, selfhood would set a limit

upon it; it would not be infinite. In other words there would be no such thing.

Yet exist it does. So it has a self. That selfhood of the infinite is God.’

The dying man delivered these last words in a loud voice and with a shiver

of ecstasy, as if he could see someone. After he had spoken, his eyes closed.

The effort had exhausted him. It was obvious he had just lived the few hours of life left to him within the space of a minute. What he had just said had brought him closer to the presence of death. His end was near.

The bishop realized this; time was running out, it was as a priest that he

had come. From extreme coldness he had passed by degrees to extreme emotion. He looked at those closed eyes, he took that icy wrinkled old hand in his and bent over the dying man.

‘This moment belongs to God. Do you not think it would be a pity if we

were to have met in vain?’

The member of the Convention opened his eyes again. A gravity in which

there was sorrow was imprinted on his countenance.

‘Monsieur l’évêque,’ said he with a slowness that perhaps owed more to

his dignity of soul than his failing strength, ‘I’ve spent my life in meditation, study and contemplation. I was sixty years of age when my country called me and bid me become involved in its affairs. I obeyed. There were abuses, I fought against them. There were tyrannies, I destroyed them. There were rights and principles, I proclaimed and upheld them. The territory was invaded, I defended it. France was threatened, I was prepared to die for her. I was not rich. I am poor. I was one of the rulers of the state: the vaults of the treasury were so full of coin, its walls, about to burst with the pressure of gold and silver, had to be reinforced; I used to dine in Rue de l’Arbre-Sec for twenty-two sous. I’ve helped the oppressed, I’ve comforted those who were suffering. I’ve torn the cloth from the altar, it’s true, but I did so to bind the wounds of my country. I’ve always supported the onward march of the human race towards the light, and I’ve sometimes resisted ruthless progress. I have on occasion protected my own adversaries, your people. And there is at Peteghem, in Flanders, at the very spot where the Merovingian kings had their summer palace, an Urbanist convent, the abbey of Ste-Claire de Beaulieu, which I saved in 1793. I’ve done my duty to the best of my ability

and whatever good I was able to do. After which I was pursued, hounded, persecuted, vilified, mocked, decried, cursed, ostracized. For quite some years now, white-haired as I am, I’ve been conscious that a great many people think they have the right to despise me. The poor ignorant mob sees me as damned. And I accept without hating anyone this isolation of hatred.

I’m now eighty-six years old. I’m about to die. What is it you want of me?’

‘Your blessing,’ said the bishop. And he knelt down.

When the bishop looked up again the member of the Convention’s

expression had become majestic. He had just breathed his last.

The bishop returned home, deeply absorbed in who knows what thoughts.

He spent the whole night in prayer. The next day a few good people of an inquisitive nature attempted to speak to him about Member of the Convention G. He simply pointed heavenward. From then on, his kindness towards the humble and the unfortunate and his fellow-feeling for them increased.

Any reference to ‘that old villain G’ caused him to fall into a peculiar

abstraction. No one could say that the passing of that soul before his own, and the reflection of that great conscience on his own, did not somehow contribute to his approach to perfection.

That ‘pastoral visit’ naturally gave rise to a good deal of murmuring among

all the little local cliques.

‘Was that the proper place for a bishop, at the bedside of a dying man such

as he? There was obviously no prospect of any conversion. All those Revolutionaries are relapsed heretics. So why go there? What did he go to see? He must have been very curious to witness a soul carried off by the devil.’

One day a dowager of that impertinent breed that considers itself witty

came out with this sarcastic remark, ‘Monseigneur, people are wondering when Your Grace will be wearing the red cap!’

‘Oh! now there’s a colour that covers a multitude of sins,’ replied the

bishop. ‘Fortunately those who despise it in a cap respect it in a hat.’

XI

One Reservation

We would be in great danger of deceiving ourselves if we were to conclude from this that Monseigneur Bienvenu was ‘a philosopher bishop’ or ‘a patriot parish priest’. His encounter, we might almost call it a convergence, with Member of the Convention G left him with a sort of wonder that made him yet more kindly. That is all.

Although Monseigneur Bienvenu could not have been less of a politician,

this is perhaps the place to outline very briefly what his position was with regard to the events of that time, assuming that Monseigneur Bienvenu ever thought of having a position.

So let us go back a few years.

Some time after Monsieur Myriel was raised to the episcopacy the emperor

had made him a baron of the Empire, at the same time as several other bishops. The arrest of the pope took place, as we all know, on the night of the fifth to the sixth of July 1809. Monsieur Myriel was summoned by Napoleon to the synod of bishops of France and Italy, convened in Paris thereafter. This synod was held at Notre-Dame and met for the first time on the fifteenth of June 1811, under the presidency of Cardinal Fesch. Monsieur 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 discussions. Bishop of a mountain diocese, living in rural simplicity so close to nature, he apparently introduced among these eminent men ideas that altered the temperature of the assembly. He very soon came back to Digne. He was asked about his speedy return and he replied, ‘I disturbed them. The air from outside reached them through me. I had the effect of an open door on them.’

On another occasion he said, ‘What can you expect? Those gentlemen are

princes. I’m just a poor country bishop.’

The fact is that he caused offence. Among other strange things, one

evening when he was at the house of one of his most distinguished colleagues he is supposed to have let slip the remark: ‘Such beautiful clocks! Such beautiful carpets! Such beautiful liveries! They must be very disturbing. Oh, I wouldn’t want to have all these luxuries crying constantly 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 say, by the way, that hatred of luxury would not be an intelligent

hatred. It is a hatred that would imply hatred of the arts. Nevertheless, other than for official and ceremonial purposes, luxury among churchmen is a transgression. It would seem to reveal habits of little true charitableness. A wealthy priest is a contradiction in terms. The priest ought to remain close to the poor. Now, is it possible to be constantly in contact, night and day, with every hardship, every adversity, every want, without getting a little of that saintly poverty on oneself, like the dust of honest toil? Is it imaginable for a man to be near a brazier and not be warm? Is it imaginable for a workman to be labouring constantly at a furnace and to have neither a singed hair, nor a blackened nail, nor a drop of sweat, nor a speck of ash on his face? The first proof of charity in a priest, in a bishop especially, is poverty.

This is no doubt what the bishop of Digne thought.

It would be mistaken to think, however, that on certain delicate issues he

shared what we shall call the ‘ideas of the century’. He was little involved in the theological quarrels of the day and remained silent on matters regarding the Church and the state. But had he been strongly pressed, we probably would have found he was rather more ultramontane than Gallican. Since we are presenting a portrait and do not wish to conceal anything, we are compelled to add that he had no sympathy for Napoleon in his decline. From

1813 he supported or applauded every demonstration of opposition. The bishop refused to see him on his way through France after his return from the island of Elba, and declined to ordain that public prayers be said for the emperor in his diocese during the Hundred Days.

Apart from his sister, Mademoiselle Baptistine, the bishop had two

brothers, one a general, the other a prefect. He wrote quite frequently to both of them. He was for a while censorious towards the former, because while holding a command in Provence at the time of the landing at Cannes the general had led twelve hundred men in pursuit of the emperor like someone who wanted to let him escape. His correspondence remained more

affectionate with the other brother, the former prefect, an honest and decent man who lived in retirement in Paris, on Rue Cassette.

So Monseigneur Bienvenu too had his hour of partisan feeling, his hour of

bitterness, his dark cloud. The passions of the day created a passing shadow in this noble and gentle spirit devoted to things eternal. Certainly, such a man would have done well not to have any political opinions. Let there be no misunderstanding of what we think: we do not confuse what are called ‘political opinions’ with the grand aspiration for progress, with the sublime, patriotic, democratic, humane faith, which today ought to be the very foundation of all generous understanding. Without delving into questions only indirectly connected with the subject of this book, we simply say this: it would have been a fine thing if Monseigneur Bienvenu had not been a royalist and if his gaze had never for one moment been directed away from that serene contemplation of those three pure lights – truth, justice and charity – that are distinctly visible shining above the stormy comings and goings of human affairs.

While granting it was not for political office that God created Monseigneur

Bienvenu, we might have understood and admired in him protest in the name of legality and liberty, proud opposition, legitimate but perilous resistance to the all-powerful Napoleon. But what pleases us in the treatment of those on their way up is less pleasing in the treatment of those on their way down. We approve of fighting only so long as there is danger, and in any case only those who fought in the first instance have the right to be exterminators at the last.

He who has not been a persistent opponent in times of prosperity should remain silent when the downfall comes. Challenging success gives the only legitimacy to prosecuting failure. For our own part, when Providence intervenes, let it strike where it will. The year 1812 starts to disarm us. In

1813 the cowardly breach of silence on the part of a reticent legislative body emboldened by catastrophe was worthy of nothing but indignation, and it was wrong to applaud it. In 1814, confronted with those treacherous marshals, with that Senate going from one baseness to the next, disparaging the once deified, with that idolatry in retreat spitting on its idol, it was a moral obligation to avert one’s gaze. In 1815, when ultimate disaster was in the air,

when France shuddered at its sinister approach, when Waterloo could be dimly discerned lying in wait for Napoleon, there was nothing derisory about the mournful cheers from the army and from the people for the man destined to fall. And with all due reservation with regard to the despot, a man of such sensibility as the bishop of Digne should not perhaps have failed to recognize what was noble and affecting in the close embrace of a great nation and a great man on the brink of ruin.

With this one shortcoming, he was in all things just, sincere, fair,

intelligent, humble and worthy, doing good and being kind, which is another way of doing good. He was a priest, a man of wisdom and humanity. It must be said that even in that political opinion for which we have just criticized him, and which we are inclined to judge almost severely, he was tolerant and easy-going, more so perhaps than the person who writes these words.

The doorkeeper at the town hall had been given this position by the

emperor. He was an elderly non-commissioned officer of the Old Guard, awarded the Legion of Honour at Austerlitz, as Bonapartist as the eagle. This poor fellow occasionally came out with some ill-considered remarks that the law of the day deemed seditious talk. After the imperial profile disappeared from the Legion of Honour he never wore his ‘regimentals’, as he used to say, so that he would not have to wear his cross. He had himself solemnly removed the imperial effigy from the cross Napoleon had given him, which left a hole, and he would not put anything in its place. ‘I’d sooner die,’ he said, ‘than wear the three toads over my heart!’ He had a readiness to mock Louis XVIII aloud. ‘Gouty old man in his English gaiters! Let him go to Prussia in his pigtailed wig!’ he would say, delighted to unite in the same denunciation the two things he most detested, Prussia and England. As a result he ended up losing his position. There he was, with no livelihood, out on the street with his wife and children. The bishop sent for him, mildly scolded him and made him verger of the cathedral.

Monsieur Myriel was a true pastor, a friend to everyone in the diocese.

Over the course of nine years Monseigneur Bienvenu had by his saintly

deeds and kindly ways filled the town of Digne with a sort of affectionate and filial veneration. Even his attitude towards Napoleon had been accepted and

tacitly pardoned, so to speak, by the people, his flock of frail good-hearted souls who adored their emperor but loved their bishop.

XII

Monseigneur Bienvenu’s Isolation

A bishop is nearly always surrounded by a troop of minor clerics, like a bunch of young officers around a general. They are what the delightful St Francis of Sales calls somewhere ‘beardless boy-priests’. Every profession has its aspiring apprentices who form the retinue of those who have already risen. No power is without its entourage, no fortune without its courtiers.

Those seeking a future flurry around present splendour. Every archbishop has his general staff. Every bishop of the slightest influence has about him his patrol squad of cherubim-seminarists that do their rounds of the episcopal palace, maintaining order, and mount guard around Monseigneur’s smile. To please a bishop is to get your foot on the ladder for a subdeaconry. A man must make his way. An apostle is not above a sinecure.

Just as elsewhere there are bigwigs, in the Church there are big mitres.

These are the bishops who enjoy royal favour, who are astute, wealthy, with a good income and a place in society, who doubtless know how to pray but also how to crave favours. None too scrupulous about turning the whole diocese, represented in their person, into a hanger-on, point of contact between the sacristy and the Church’s higher echelons, they are more holders of church livings than priests, more ecclesiastical dignitaries than bishops. Happy those who come within their orbit! Being persons of influence, they shower on those around them, on the zealous and the favoured, and on all that youthful willingness to please, rich parishes, prebends, archdeaconries, chaplaincies and cathedral appointments in the expectation of episcopal honours. As they advance themselves, they cause their satellites to progress also. It is an entire solar system on the move. Their radiance spreads its purple glow over their suite. Their prosperity is dispersed in nice little preferments to those in its orbit. The larger the patron’s diocese, the richer his favourite’s living. And then, there is Rome. A bishop who manages to become an archbishop, an archbishop who manages to become a cardinal, takes you along with him as a

conclavist. You are admitted to the Rota, you receive the pallium, and then you are an auditor, then a chamberlain, then a monsignor; and from Your Grace to Your Eminence is only one step, and between Your Eminence and Your Holiness there is but the smoke of a ballot. Every skullcap may dream of the papal crown. Nowadays the priest is the only man who may properly become king. And what a king! The supreme king. So what a hotbed of aspirations is a seminary! How many blushing choristers, how many young priests, like Perrette with her pot of milk, build castles in the air! How quick ambition is to call itself vocation, in good faith perhaps, deceiving itself in its sanctimonious complacency – who can tell?

Humble, poor, untypical, Monseigneur Bienvenu was not one of the big

mitres. This was obvious from the complete absence of young priests about him. We have seen that he ‘did not get on’ in Paris. Not one clerical future dreamed of grafting itself on to this solitary old man. Not a single sprouting ambition was so foolish as to grow in his shade. His canons and vicars-general were good-hearted old men, of rather humble origin like him, like him cut off in this diocese that led to no cardinalship – with this difference in their resemblance to their bishop: they were finished, he was fulfilled. So well did they sense the impossibility of prospering with Monseigneur Bienvenu that no sooner had the young men ordained by him left the seminary than they would obtain a recommendation to the archbishop of Aix or of Auch and be off very quickly. For after all, we say it again, a man wants to be brought on. A saint who lives an excessively self-denying life makes a dangerous neighbour. He might pass on to you through infectiousness an incurable poverty, a stiffening of those joints useful for self-advancement, and in short more self-denial than you want. And people flee this contagious virtue. Hence the isolation of Monseigneur Bienvenu. We live in a dismal society. Succeed – that is the lesson drip-dripping down from the corruption at the top.

Let it be said in passing, success is a fairly hideous thing. Its false

resemblance to merit deceives men. For the masses, success has almost the same profile as supremacy. Success, talent’s seeming double, has a dupe: history. Juvenal and Tacitus alone decry it. In our day, a more or less official

philosophy has joined its household staff, wears the livery of success, and runs its antechamber. Principle of success: prosperity implies capability. Win the lottery and you are a clever man. Whoever wins is respected. Be born lucky, that is all. If luck is yours, the rest will follow. Be fortunate and you will be thought great. Leaving aside five or six outstanding exceptions who are the glory of their age, contemporary admiration is mere short-sightedness.

Gilding is gold. Being a nonentity is no obstacle, as long as you make a name for yourself. The undistinguished is an old Narcissus who adores himself and celebrates the undistinguished. The great genius that makes a man a Moses, an Aeschylus, a Dante, a Michelangelo or a Napoleon, the multitude is quick to recognize by acclamation in any Tom, Dick or Harry who achieves whatever his goal might be. Let a notary transform himself into a deputy, let a spurious Corneille write Tiridate, let a eunuch manage to acquire a harem, let a military Prudhomme accidentally win the decisive battle of an era, let an apothecary invent cardboard soles for the Sambre-et-Meuse army and out of this cardboard sold as leather build up for himself an income of four hundred thousand francs, let a pedlar espouse usury and beget seven or eight millions, of which he is the father and usury the mother; let a preacher become bishop by virtue of droning on, let the steward of a good family be so rich on retiring from service that he is made minister of finance – men call this Genius, just as they call Mousqueton’s face Beauty and Claudius’ bull neck Majesty. They mistake for the constellations in the infinity of space the star-shaped footprints left by ducks in the soft wetland mud.

XIII

What He Believed

We need not go into the bishop of Digne’s orthodoxy in terms of Church doctrine. In the presence of such a soul, we are inclined to feel nothing but respect. The good man’s conscience must be taken at his word. In any case we recognize that, given a certain disposition, all the glories of human virtue may develop in a person with beliefs different from our own.

What did he think of this dogma, or that mystery? These secrets of the

inner self are known only to the grave, where souls go bared. What we are

sure of is that for him the difficulties of faith were never resolved by hypocrisy. There is no possibility of corruption in a diamond. He believed as much as he could. Credo in patrem*! he often exclaimed. And he drew from good works all the satisfaction that conscience needs, a satisfaction that whispers to you, ‘You’re with God!’

What we do feel bound to point out is that outside, as it were, and beyond

his faith the bishop possessed a surfeit of love. It was because of this, quia multum amavit†, that he was criticized by ‘serious-minded men’, ‘responsible individuals’ and ‘reasonable people’, favourite expressions in our sad world where egotism takes its cue from pedantry. What was this surfeit of love? It was a serene benevolence, flowing over mankind as we have already mentioned, and on occasion extending even to things. He lived without scorn.

He was kind to God’s creation. Every man, even the best of men, has within him a thoughtless callousness reserved for animals. The bishop of Digne did not have this callousness, typical in fact of many priests. He did not go as far as the Brahmin, but he seemed to have meditated on this text from Ecclesiastes: ‘Who knows where the spirit of the beast goes?’ Physical unsightlinesses, aberrations of instinct, did not disturb him and did not offend him. He was moved almost to pity by them. He seemed thoughtfully to seek the cause, explanation or excuse for them beyond the visible world. At times it seemed as if he were asking God to go easier on them. He examined without anger, and with the eye of a linguist deciphering a palimpsest, the great chaos that still exists in nature. This study sometimes elicited strange words from him. He was in his garden one morning. He thought he was alone but his sister was walking behind him and he did not see her. All of a sudden he paused and gazed at something on the ground. It was a horrible large, black, hairy spider. His sister heard him say, ‘Poor creature! It’s not to blame!’

Why not relate these childish expressions of almost divine goodness?

Infantile if you will, but these sublime infantilisms were those of St Francis of Assisi and Marcus Aurelius. One day he sprained his ankle trying not to step on an ant.

Such was the life of this good man. Sometimes he fell asleep in his garden

and then he was as venerable as could be.

If the stories told about him in his youth and even in his maturity were to

be believed, Monseigneur Bienvenu had in the past been a passionate, perhaps violent man. His universal kindness was not so much a natural instinct as the result of a strong conviction that had penetrated his heart through the filter of life, a conviction slowly instilled in him, thought by thought. For as drops of water may wear holes in a rock, so it is with character. These grooves are indelible. These formations are indestructible.

In 1815, as we have already said, he was close on seventy-five but looked

no more than sixty. He was not tall. He was a little overweight, and to combat this he gladly went on long walks. He was sure-footed and only very slightly stooped, not that we presume to draw any conclusion from this detail.

Gregory XVI at the age of eighty was upright and smiling, which did not prevent him from being a bad bishop. Monseigneur Bienvenu was what in common parlance is called a ‘good-looking man’, but his face was so kindly people forgot about his good looks.

When he chatted with that childish gaiety that was one of his charms and

of which we have already spoken, people felt at ease in his company. His entire being seemed to exude joy. His fresh, ruddy complexion, the full set of fine white teeth he still had, which showed when he smiled, gave him that open and easy-going manner which, in a grown man, prompts the remark, ‘He’s a good lad’, and in an old man, ‘He’s a good fellow.’ This, it will be recalled, was the effect he produced on Napoleon. To begin with, and to anyone seeing him for the first time, he was not much more than that, a ‘good fellow’. But if you were to remain for a few hours in his company, and ever saw him pensive, the ‘good fellow’ was gradually transfigured, becoming somehow imposing. His broad, earnest forehead to which his white hair lent nobility was ennobled also by reflection. Majesty emanated from this goodness, while the goodness radiated without ceasing. You experienced something of the emotion you might feel if you saw a smiling angel slowly unfold its wings without ceasing to smile. Respect, an ineffable respect, gradually overcame you and made your heart swell, and you felt that you had

before you one of those strong, proven, forgiving souls whose magnanimity is so great it cannot be other than gentle.

As we have seen, every day of his life was filled with prayer, celebrating

religious rites, alms-giving, consoling the afflicted, cultivating a patch of land, fraternity, frugality, hospitality, self-denial, trust, study, work. And ‘filled’ is the appropriate word. The bishop’s day was indeed quite full to the brim – of good thoughts, good words and good deeds. Nevertheless, it was not complete if cold or rainy weather prevented him from spending an hour or two in his garden before going to bed at night, after the two women had retired. It seemed to be a kind of ritual for him to prepare for sleep with some contemplative thought in the presence of the spectacular wonders of the nocturnal sky. Sometimes, even quite late at night, if the two elderly women were not asleep they would hear him strolling along the garden paths. There he was, by himself, meditative, peaceful, worshipful, comparing the serenity of his heart with the serenity of the heavens, stirred in the darkness by the visible splendour of the constellations and the invisible splendour of God, opening his soul to thoughts descending from the Unknown. At such moments, offering up his heart when nocturnal flowers offer up their perfume, like a lighted lamp in the middle of the starry night, shining in ecstasy amid the universal radiance of creation, he himself probably could not have said what was happening in his spirit. He felt something soar out of him and something descend upon him. Mysterious exchanges between the chasms of the soul and the chasms of the universe!

He thought of the greatness and presence of God; of the strange mystery of

eternity to come and, stranger still, the mystery of past eternity; of all the infinities reaching out before his eyes in every direction. And without seeking to comprehend the incomprehensible, he gazed on it. He did not study God, he yielded to the radiance of God. He considered these magnificent conjunctions of atoms that lend appearances to matter, reveal forces by putting them into effect, create individuality within unity, proportion within the continuum of space, the numberless within the infinite; and produce beauty through light. There is a continuous binding and loosening of these conjunctions. Hence, life and death.

He would sit on a wooden bench with his back against a ramshackle trellis

and gaze at the stars through the silhouetted shapes of his puny and stunted fruit trees. He cherished this quarter of an acre, so poorly planted, so cluttered with sheds and tumbledown outhouses, and was content with it.

What further need had this old man who divided the little free time there

was in his life between gardening during the day and contemplation at night?

Was not this small enclosure, with the heavens for a ceiling, enough for him to be able to worship God in his most delightful works and his most sublime works, each in turn? Was not all here, in fact – what more could anyone wish for? A little garden in which to stroll and boundless space for dreaming. At his feet, what a man may grow and pick, and above his head, what he may study and meditate on: a few flowers in the ground and all the stars in the firmament.

XIV

What He Thought

One last word.

Since details of this kind might give the bishop of Digne, particularly at the

present time, a somewhat ‘pantheistic’ cast, to use a currently fashionable term, and lead to the belief, whether to his credit or discredit, that he entertained one of those personal philosophies peculiar to our century that sometimes germinate in solitary spirits, developing and growing until they replace religion, this we insist on: not one of those who knew Monseigneur Bienvenu would have considered themselves entitled to think anything of the sort. What illuminated this man was the heart. His wisdom was constituted of the light that comes from there.

No abstract theories, many practical deeds. Abstruse speculations have

something dizzying about them. Nothing suggests that he ventured into apocalyptic speculations. The apostle may be bold but the bishop must be timid. He would probably have had qualms about exploring too deeply certain problems reserved, as it were, for great revolutionary minds. There is an inviolable horror at the portals of the enigma. Those dark openings stand there gaping, but something tells you, one of life’s passers-by, not to enter.

Woe to whoever goes in there! Geniuses, in the uncharted depths of abstraction and pure speculation, placed so to speak above all doctrines, propose their ideas to God. Their prayer daringly invites discussion. Their adoration is questioning. This is direct religion, full of anxiety and responsibility for whoever attempts its challenges.

Human thought knows no boundary. At its peril it analyses and explores its

own bedazzlement. One might almost say that in a splendid reaction, of sorts, it thereby dazzles nature. The mysterious world that surrounds us returns what it receives. The contemplators are probably contemplated. However that may be, there are on earth men – are they men? – who perceive distinctly, on dreamings’ far horizons, the heights of the Absolute and behold the awesome sight of the infinite mountain. Monseigneur Bienvenu was not one of these men. Monseigneur Bienvenu was no genius. He would have feared those sublime peaks from which some, even the very great among them such as Swedenborg and Pascal, have slipped into insanity. Certainly, these powerful conceits have their moral usefulness and by these arduous paths one may approach ideal perfection. But he took the shorter path: the Gospel.

He did not attempt to impart to his chasuble the folds of Elijah’s mantle.

He cast no future light on the mysterious uncertainty of events. He did not seek to condense the lustre of things into a burning flame. There was nothing of the prophet and nothing of the mage about him. This humble soul loved, that’s all.

It is probable he invested in prayer a superhuman level of aspiration, but it

is no more possible to pray too much than it is to love too much; and if it were a heresy to pray beyond the texts, St Teresa and St Jerome would be heretics.

He felt for whatever suffers and expiates. The universe seemed to him an

immense sickness. He was aware of fever everywhere, everywhere he heard the sound of suffering, and without seeking to understand the mystery he strove to dress the wound. The fearful spectacle of created things fostered compassion in him. His sole concern was to find for himself and to inspire in others the best way to pity and comfort. What exists was for this good and exceptional priest a permanent cause of a sorrow seeking to console.

There are men who toil to extract gold. He toiled to extract pity. Universal

wretchedness was his mine. Suffering everywhere was but an opportunity for kindness always. ‘Love one another’: he declared this to be wholly sufficient, wished for nothing more, and herein lay his entire doctrine.

One day the man who considered himself a ‘philosopher’, that senator

mentioned above, said to the bishop, ‘Just look at the spectacle the world presents: everyone at war with everyone else; the mightiest is the most canny.

Your “Love one another” is an absurdity.’

‘Well,’ replied Monseigneur Bienvenu without arguing, ‘if it is an

absurdity, the soul ought to wrap itself up inside it like the pearl in the oyster.’ So did he wrap himself up in it, and lived his life there, absolutely content to do so, leaving aside the stupendous questions that lure and appal, the limitless perspectives of abstraction, the precipices of metaphysics; all those profundities converging, for the apostle, in God; for the atheist, in nothingness: destiny, good and evil, the warring of human beings against each other, man’s consciousness, the pensive somnambulism of animals, transformation by death, the compendium of existences contained in the tomb, the incomprehensible grafting of successive loves on the enduring self, essence, substance, Being and Non-being, the soul, nature, freedom, necessity. Unscalable problems, dangerous obscurities on which the gigantic archangels of the human mind turn their attention. Dreadful abysses that Lucretius, Manu, St Paul and Dante contemplate with that blazing eye, gazing intently on the infinite, and there seeming to bring stars into being.

Monseigneur Bienvenu was simply a man who noted the mysterious

questions from the outside, but without studying them, without debating them and without troubling his own mind over them, and who had in his soul a serious respect for the unknown.

OceanofPDF.com

Book Two

The Fall

I

The Evening after a Day’s Walking

Early in the month of October 1815, about an hour before sunset, a man travelling on foot entered the little town of Digne. The few inhabitants who were at their windows or at the doors of their houses at the time viewed this wayfarer with a kind of unease. It would be hard to come across a more wretched-looking passer-by. He was a man of average height, stocky and robust, in the prime of life. He might have been forty-six or forty-eight years old. A cap with its leather peak pulled down partly concealed his weather-beaten face streaming with sweat. His shirt of coarse yellow cloth, fastened at the neck with a small silver anchor, revealed a glimpse of his hairy chest. He wore a rolled-up neckerchief, threadbare blue drill trousers with one knee faded to white and a hole in the other, a ragged old grey overall patched on one elbow with a bit of green cloth sewn on with twine, a soldier’s knapsack on his back that was stuffed full, firmly buckled and brand-new; a huge knotted stick in his hand, hobnailed shoes on his stockingless feet, a shaven head and a long beard.

The sweat, the heat, the journey on foot, the dust, added an indefinable

disreputability to this shabby outfit.

His head was shaven yet bristling, for his hair had begun to grow a little

and looked as if it had not been cut for some time.

No one knew him. He was obviously just someone passing through.

Where did he come from? The south. The coast, perhaps. For he came into Digne by the same route that seven months earlier had witnessed the passage of the emperor Napoleon on his way from Cannes to Paris. This man must have been walking all day. He looked very tired. Some women down in the old part of town had seen him stop under the trees on Boulevard Gassendi and drink at the fountain that stands at the end of the parade. He must have been very thirsty, for the children who followed him saw him stop again two hundred paces further on to drink at the fountain in the market-place.

When he came to the corner of Rue Poichevert he turned left and made

for the town hall. He went inside, then emerged a quarter of an hour later. A gendarme was seated near the doorway on the stone bench that General Drouot had climbed on to, on the fourth of March, to read out to the dismayed crowd of Digne’s inhabitants the Gulf of Juan proclamation. The man pulled off his cap and bowed humbly to the gendarme.

Without responding to his bow, the gendarme watched him closely,

following him with his gaze for a while, then entered the town hall.

In those days there was at Digne a fine inn called the Croix-de-Colbas.

The landlord of this inn was a certain Jacquin Labarre, a man respected in the town for being related to another Labarre who was innkeeper of the Trois-Dauphins at Grenoble and had served in the Guides corps. At the time of the emperor’s landing there were many rumours circulating locally about this Trois-Dauphins inn. The story was that General Bertrand, disguised as a carter, had made frequent trips there during the month of January, distributing Legion of Honour crosses to soldiers and fistfuls of gold napoleons to respectable citizens. The fact is that when the emperor entered Grenoble he refused to be put up in the prefectural residence. He thanked the mayor, saying, ‘I’m going to stay with a good man I know.’ And he had gone to the Trois-Dauphins. The glory of this Labarre of the Trois-Dauphins was reflected on to the Labarre of the Croix-de-Colbas a hundred miles away. People in the town said of him, ‘He’s the cousin of the one at Grenoble.’

The man made his way towards this inn, which was the best there was in

that part of the world. He entered the kitchen, which gave directly on to the street. All the ovens were lit. A huge fire blazed cheerfully in the fireplace.

The host, who was also the cook, was very busy, to-ing and fro-ing between the hearth and his saucepans, overseeing an excellent dinner intended for some carters who could be heard laughing and talking loudly in an adjoining room. Anyone who has ever travelled knows that none enjoy better fare than carters. A fat marmot, flanked by white partridges and black grouse, was turning on a long spit in front of the fire. Cooking on the range were two large carp from Lake Lauzet and a trout from Lake Alloz.

Hearing the door open and a newcomer enter, the host said without

looking up from his cooking range, ‘What would monsieur be wanting?’

‘Food and lodging,’ said the man. ‘Nothing easier,’ replied the host. At that moment he looked round, took

in the traveller’s appearance with a single glance and added, ‘– if it’s paid for.’

The man drew a large leather purse from the pocket of his overall and

replied, ‘I have money.’

‘In that case we’re at your service,’ said the host.

The man put his purse back in his pocket, removed his knapsack, put it

on the ground by the door, kept his stick in his hand, and went and sat on a low stool close to the fire. Digne is in the mountains. October evenings are cold there.

Meanwhile, the host went back and forth, observing the traveller. ‘Will dinner be ready soon?’ said the man. ‘Shortly,’ replied the landlord.

While the newcomer was warming himself with his back turned, the

worthy host Jacquin Labarre drew a pencil from his pocket, then tore off the corner of an old newspaper left lying on a small table by the window. In the blank margin he wrote a line or two, folded it without sealing it and handed this scrap of paper to a youngster who apparently served him as both kitchen help and errand boy. The landlord whispered a word in the kitchen

lad’s ear and the youngster went running off in the direction of the town hall.

The traveller had seen nothing of all this.

Once again he enquired, ‘Will dinner be ready soon?’ ‘Shortly,’ said the host.

The child returned. He brought back the piece of paper. The host

unfolded it eagerly, like someone expecting a reply. He appeared to read with close attention, then nodded, and remained thoughtful for a moment.

Eventually he took a step towards the traveller, who looked deep in somewhat troubled thought.

‘Monsieur,’ he said, ‘I can’t give you a room.’ The man half rose from his seat. ‘What! Are you afraid I won’t pay? Do you want me to pay in advance? I

have money, I tell you.’

‘It’s not that.’ ‘What then?’ ‘You have money—’ ‘Yes,’ said the man. ‘But I,’ said the host, ‘have no room.’ The man answered calmly, ‘Put me in the stable.’ ‘I can’t.’ ‘Why not?’ ‘The horses take up all the space.’ ‘Very well,’ replied the man, ‘a corner in the loft then. A bale of hay.

We’ll see about it after dinner.’

‘I can’t serve you dinner.’ This declaration, made in a measured but firm tone, sounded serious to

the stranger. He stood up.

‘But I’m starving. I’ve been on the road since sunrise. I’ve walked thirty

miles. I can pay. I want to eat.’

‘I have nothing,’ said the landlord.

The man burst out laughing and turned towards the fireplace and the

cooking range. ‘Nothing! And what’s all that?’

‘I’ve already taken orders for all that.’ ‘From whom?’ ‘The carters.’ ‘How many are they?’ ‘Twelve.’ ‘There’s enough food there for twenty.’ ‘They’ve ordered the whole lot and paid for it in advance.’ The man sat down again and said without raising his voice, ‘I’m here at

the inn, I’m hungry, and I’m staying.’

Then the host bent down to his ear and said in a tone that made him start,

‘Be on your way!’

The traveller was leaning forward at that moment and poking some

brands in the fire with the iron tip of his staff. He whipped round and as he opened his mouth to reply the host gazed steadily at him and added, still in a low voice, ‘Look, enough of this talk. Do you want me to tell you what your name is? Your name’s Jean Valjean. Now do you want me to tell you who you are? When I saw you come in I suspected something. I sent a message to the town hall and this was the reply I received. Can you read?’

So saying, he held out to the stranger the piece of paper, now unfolded,

that had just made the journey from the inn to the town hall, and from the town hall back to the inn. The man glanced at it.

After a pause the landlord went on, ‘I make a habit of being polite to

everyone. Be on your way!’*

The man bowed his head, picked up the knapsack he had set on the

ground and went away.

He followed the main street. He walked on aimlessly, keeping close to

the houses, like a man humiliated and dejected. Not once did he turn round.

Had he done so he would have seen the innkeeper of the Croix-de-Colbas standing on his threshold, surrounded by all the travellers at his inn and all the passers-by in the street, talking animatedly and pointing at him, and he could have told from the group’s expressions of suspicion and fear that before long his arrival would be the talk of the whole town.

He saw nothing of all this. The oppressed do not look behind them. They

know only too well the ill fate that dogs them.

He kept walking like this for some time, on and on, following at random

streets unknown to him, forgetting his weariness, as is the way with those who are despondent. Suddenly he felt extremely hungry. Darkness was falling. He looked about him to see if he could not find some shelter.

The grand hotel had closed its doors to him. He sought some very

humble tavern, some very lowly doss-house.

As it happened there was a light shining at the end of the street. A pine

branch hanging from an iron bracket was outlined against the pale twilight sky. He made his way there.

It was indeed a tavern. The tavern in Rue de Chaffaut.

The traveller paused for a moment and looked through the window into

the tavern’s low-ceilinged room, lit by a small lamp on a table and by a big fire in the hearth. A few men were drinking around it. The landlord was warming himself at it. Above the flames simmered an iron pot, suspended from a hook.

There are two doors to this tavern, which is also an inn of sorts. One

opens on to the street, the other on to a small yard filled with manure. The traveller dared not enter by the street door. He slipped into the yard, paused again, then raised the latch timidly and pushed open the door.

‘Who goes there?’ said the master. ‘Someone who’d like some supper and a bed.’ ‘You’ve come to the right place. There’s supper and a bed here.’ He entered. All the people drinking turned round. The lamp lit him from

one side, the fire from the other. They studied him for a while as he took off his knapsack.

The host said to him, ‘There’s a fire here. Supper’s cooking in the pot.

Come and warm yourself, comrade.’

He went and sat close to the hearth. He stretched out his feet, aching with

tiredness, in front of the fire. An appetizing smell came from the pot. All that could be seen of his face under his pulled-down cap took on a vague air

of well-being, mingled with that other very poignant expression imparted by the habit of suffering.

Moreover, this was a strong, determined, sad face, with a strange cast of

countenance. It started off looking humble and ended up seeming hard. His eyes gleamed beneath his eyebrows like fire in the undergrowth.

However, one of the men sitting at a table was a fishmonger who before

coming into the tavern in Rue de Chaffaut had been to stable his horse at Labarre’s. As chance would have it he had that very morning encountered this sinister-looking stranger on the road between Bras d’Asse and – I have forgotten the name … I think it was Escoublon. Now, as he passed by, the man, who already looked very tired, had asked the fishmonger to let him ride behind him on his horse. To which the fishmonger’s only reply had been to quicken his pace. This fishmonger had half an hour earlier been among the group in the company of Jacquin Labarre and had himself related to the people at the Croix-de-Colbas his unpleasant encounter of that morning. From where he sat he signalled discreetly to the tavern-keeper.

The tavern-keeper went over to him. They exchanged a few quiet words.

Once again the man had become deeply absorbed.

The tavern-keeper returned to the fireplace, clapped his hand on the

man’s shoulder and said to him, ‘You’re going to make yourself scarce!’*

The stranger turned round and replied quietly, ‘Ah! You know?’ ‘Yes.’ ‘I was turned away from the other inn.’ ‘And you’re being thrown out of this one.’ ‘Where do you expect me to go?’ ‘Somewhere else.’ The man took his stick and his knapsack and left.

As he came out some children who had followed him from the Croix-de-

Colbas, and who seemed to be waiting for him, threw stones at him. He turned round angrily and threatened them with his stick. The children scattered like a flock of birds.

He passed in front of the prison. At the door there was an iron chain

hanging down, attached to a bell. He rang the bell.

A grille opened. ‘Turnkey,’ he said, respectfully removing his cap, ‘would you kindly let

me in and give me a lodging for the night?’

A voice replied, ‘A prison’s not a hotel. Get yourself arrested. Then

you’ll be let in.’

The grille closed again.

He came into a little street where there are many gardens. Some have

only hedges around them, which makes the street more attractive. Among these gardens and hedges he saw a small single-storey house with a light in the window. He looked through the window as he had at the tavern. Inside was a large whitewashed room that had a bed with a chintz bedspread over it and a cradle in one corner, a few wooden chairs, and a double-barrelled gun hanging on the wall. A table was laid in the centre of the room. A copper lamp shed light on the coarse white linen tablecloth, the pewter jug gleaming like silver and filled with wine, and the steaming brown soup tureen. At this table sat a man of about forty with an open and cheerful face, dandling a small 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 stood musing for a moment before this heart-warming and

comforting scene. What was going on inside him? Only he could have said.

It is likely that he thought this happy home would be hospitable, and that in a place where he saw so much well-being he would find perhaps a little pity.

He gave a faint little tap on the window-pane.

No one heard.

He knocked again.

He heard the woman say, ‘Husband, I think someone’s knocking.’ ‘No,’ replied the husband.

He knocked a third time.

The husband rose, took the lamp, went to the door and opened it.

He was a tall man, half peasant-farmer, half artisan. He wore a huge

leather apron that came right up to his left shoulder, and bulging round his

middle with a hammer, a red handkerchief, a powder-horn, all kinds of objects tucked into the belt used as a pocket. He tilted his head back, with his shirt spread wide open baring his white bull neck. He had thick eyebrows, enormous black whiskers, prominent eyes, a muzzle-like jaw, and overlying all this that air of being a man in his own home, which is something no words can convey.

‘Forgive me, monsieur,’ said the traveller. ‘In exchange for payment,

could you give me a plate of soup and a corner where I could sleep in that shed there in the garden? Could you, monsieur? In exchange for payment?’

‘Who are you?’ asked the master of the house.

The man replied, ‘I’ve come from Puy-Moisson. I’ve been walking all

day. I’ve done thirty-six miles. Could you? For payment?’

‘I wouldn’t refuse lodging to any respectable person who would pay me,’

said the peasant. ‘But why don’t you go to an inn?’

‘There’s no room.’ ‘Bah! Impossible. There’s no fair today, and it’s not market day. Have

you been to Labarre?’

‘Yes.’ ‘Well?’ The traveller replied with confusion, ‘I don’t know, he had no room for

me.’

‘Have you been to what’s-his-name in Rue de Chaffaut?’ The stranger’s confusion increased. He stammered, ‘He had no room for

me either.’

The peasant’s face took on an expression of suspicion. He looked the

newcomer up and down, and abruptly exclaimed with a kind of shudder, ‘Would you be the man?’

He took another look at the stranger, stepped back three paces, placed the

lamp on the table, and took down his gun from the wall.

Meanwhile, at the words the peasant had spoken – ‘Would you be the

man?’ – the woman had risen, picked up both children in her arms and rushed to take refuge behind her husband, staring at the stranger in terror,

her bosom uncovered and with fear in her eyes, murmuring quietly, ‘Tso-maraude*.’

All this happened in less time than it takes to imagine it. Having stared at

the man for a few moments the way you stare at a viper, the master of the house came to the door again and said, ‘Clear off!’

‘For pity’s sake, a glass of water,’ said the man. ‘Over my dead body!’ said the peasant.

Then he slammed the door and the man heard him slide two large bolts. A

moment later the window shutter closed and the sound of an iron bar being inserted was audible from outside.

It was getting darker. The cold Alpine wind was blowing. In the fading

daylight the stranger noticed in one of the gardens that lined the street a kind of hut that seemed to be made of clods of turf. He walked resolutely through a wooden gate and found himself in the garden. He went over to the hut. It had a very low, narrow opening for a doorway, and it looked like those sheds that road labourers build for themselves by the side of the road.

No doubt he thought it was actually a road-mender’s hut. He was suffering from cold and hunger. Hunger he was resigned to, but this at least was shelter from the cold. This sort of shed is not usually occupied at night. He threw himself flat on his stomach and crept into the hut. It was warm inside and he found a reasonably good bed of straw. He lay for a moment stretched out on this bed, incapable of any movement, so exhausted was he. Then, as the knapsack on his back felt uncomfortable and as it would do for a pillow, he started unbuckling one of the straps. At that moment he heard a ferocious growl. He looked up. The head of an enormous mastiff loomed out of the darkness in the entrance to the hut.

It was a dog’s kennel.

He was himself strong and fearsome. He armed himself with his stick,

used his knapsack for a shield, and exited from the kennel as best he could, not without worsening the tears in his ragged clothes.

He also exited from the garden, but backwards, obliged to keep the dog at

bay by resorting to that manoeuvre with his stick that masters of this type of fencing call ‘the covered rose’.

When he had got through the gate, not without difficulty, and found

himself in the street again, alone, homeless, with no roof over his head, no shelter, driven out even from that bed of straw and that miserable kennel, he collapsed on a stone rather than sat on it, and apparently a passer-by heard him cry out, ‘I’m not even a dog!’

Soon he stood up and started walking again. He left the town, hoping to

find some tree or haystack in the fields where he could take shelter.

So for a while he trudged on, the whole time with his head bowed. When

he felt that he was far from all human habitation he looked up and gazed around him. He was in a field. Before him was one of those low hills covered with close-cropped stubble that after the harvest look like shaved heads.

The horizon was pitch-black. It was not only the darkness of night but

very low cloud that seemed to rest on the hill itself and, mounting, to fill the whole sky. However, as the moon was about to rise and there still remained a lingering glow of twilight overhead, these clouds formed a kind of pale vault high in the sky that cast a luminous reflection on to the earth.

So the earth was lighter than the sky, which is a peculiarly sinister effect,

and the hill, squat and dwarfish in shape, appeared indistinct and pallid against the gloomy horizon. The whole effect was ugly, small, dismal and closed-in. Nothing in the field or on the hill but a misshapen tree, rustling in its writhings a few steps away from the traveller.

This man was obviously very far from having those discerning habits of

mind and soul that make a person sensitive to the mysterious aspects of things. Nevertheless, there was something in that sky, that hill, that plain and that tree, something so profoundly desolate that after standing there motionless for a moment, lost in thought, he suddenly turned round and walked back. There are moments when nature seems hostile.

He retraced his steps. The gates of Digne were closed. Digne, which had

withstood sieges during the wars of religion, was still surrounded in 1815 by ancient walls flanked by square towers that have since been demolished.

He slipped through a gap and re-entered the town.

It might have been eight o’clock in the evening. Since the streets were

unfamiliar to him, he resumed his aimless wandering.

This brought him to the Prefecture, then to the seminary. As he walked

past the cathedral, crossing the square in front of it, he shook his fist at it.

At the corner of this square is a printing works. Here were first printed

the proclamations to the army issued by the emperor and the Imperial Guard, which were brought from the island of Elba and dictated by Napoleon himself.

Utterly worn out and his hopes exhausted, he lay down on the stone

bench that stands at the door of this printing house.

At that moment an old lady came out of the church. She saw the man

lying in the dark. ‘What are you doing there, my friend?’ she said.

He answered harshly and angrily, ‘As you can see, good lady, I’m going

to sleep here.’

The good lady in question, who fully deserved to be so called, was

Madame la Marquise de R.

‘On this bench?’ she said. ‘I’ve had a wooden mattress for nineteen years,’ said the man. ‘Now I

have a stone mattress.’

‘You were a soldier?’ ‘Yes, good lady. A soldier.’ ‘Why don’t you go to an inn?’ ‘Because I have no money.’ ‘Unfortunately,’ said Madame de R, ‘I have only four sous in my purse.’ ‘Give them to me anyway.’ The man took the four sous.

Madame de R continued, ‘You can’t pay for lodgings at an inn with so

little. But have you actually tried? You can’t possibly spend the night here.

You must be cold and hungry. Someone might give you a bed out of charity.’

‘I’ve knocked at every door.’ ‘Well?’ ‘I’ve been turned away everywhere.’

The ‘good lady’ touched the man’s arm and pointed out to him on the far

side of the square a small, low-roofed house that stood beside the episcopal palace.

‘You’ve knocked at every door?’ she said. ‘Yes.’ ‘Have you knocked at that one?’ ‘No.’ ‘Knock there.’

II

Wisdom Is Advised to Be Prudent

That evening, after he had taken a walk in town, the bishop of Digne remained closeted in his room until rather late. He was busy at his great work on ‘Duty’, which sadly was never completed. He was carefully analysing everything the Church Fathers and Doctors have said on this important subject. His book was divided into two parts: first, the duties of all, second, the duties of the individual, each according to his station. The duties of all are the highest duties, of which there are four. St Matthew identifies them: duties to God (Matthew 6), to oneself (5:29, 30), to one’s neighbour (7:12), to animals (6:20, 25). As for the other duties, the bishop had found them identified and laid down elsewhere: to sovereigns and subjects, in the Epistle to the Romans; to magistrates, wives, mothers and young men, by St 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. He was laboriously combining all these precepts into a harmonious spiritual ensemble that he wanted to offer his readers.

At eight o’clock he was still at work, writing rather awkwardly on little

squares of paper with a large book open on his lap, when Madame Magloire came in as usual to get the silverware from the cupboard by his bed. A moment later, aware that the table was set and that he might be keeping his

sister waiting, the bishop closed his book, rose from his desk, and went into the dining room.

The dining room was rectangular, with a fireplace and (as we have said) a

door opening on to the street and a window overlooking the garden.

Madame Magloire had indeed almost finished setting the table.

While busy at her task she chatted to Mademoiselle Baptistine.

A lamp stood on the table. The table was close to the hearth. Quite a good

fire was going.

You can easily picture these two women, both over sixty years of age:

Madame Magloire, small, plump, bright; Mademoiselle Baptistine, gentle, slight, frail, a little taller than her brother, dressed in a silk gown of brownish purple, a colour fashionable in 1806 when she bought it in Paris, that she was still getting some wear out of. To put it crudely, in terms that have the merit of conveying in a word an idea hardly to be expressed in less than a page, Madame Magloire looked like a peasant and Mademoiselle Baptistine like a lady. Madame Magloire wore a white ruched cap, a small gold cross round her neck, the only piece of women’s jewellery in the house; a very white shawl tucked into a gown of homespun black cloth with short wide sleeves, a red-and-green chequered apron tied round the waist with a green ribbon, and a bib of the same fabric attached at the upper corners with two pins; heavy shoes and yellow stockings on her feet, like the women of Marseille. Mademoiselle Baptistine’s gown was cut to the patterns of 1806, with a high waist, narrow skirt, shoulder-capped sleeves, tape ties and buttons. She concealed her grey hair under a curled wig in the so-called à l’enfant style*. Madame Magloire looked intelligent, brisk and good-hearted. The unequally upturned corners of her mouth and an upper lip that was fuller than the lower one gave a suggestion of brusqueness and bossiness to her appearance. So long as Monseigneur remained silent she spoke to him firmly with a mixture of respect and boldness, but as soon as Monseigneur began to speak, as we have seen, she meekly obeyed like her mistress. Mademoiselle Baptistine did not even speak. She confined herself to obeying and trying to please him. She had never been pretty, even when young. She had big, bulging blue eyes and a long hooked nose, but as we

said at the beginning her whole face, her whole person, emanated an ineffable goodness. She was always destined for goodness, but faith, hope and charity, those three virtues that gently nurture the soul, had gradually promoted goodness to saintliness. She was but a lamb by nature; religion had made an angel of her. Poor sainted virgin! Now fondly remembered!

Mademoiselle Baptistine so often related what happened at the bishop’s

residence that evening that there are several people still alive who remember her account of it in every detail.

When the bishop came in, Madame Magloire was talking with some

animation. She was speaking to Mademoiselle Baptistine about a favourite topic of hers, one with which the bishop was familiar. And that was the front-door latch.

Apparently, while doing a little shopping for supper, Madame Magloire

had heard rumours in various places. There was talk of some sinister-looking individual prowling around; according to which, some suspicious vagrant had turned up, he was bound to be somewhere in the town, and there could well be some nasty encounters in store for those who might take it into their heads to go home late that night. And the police were not to be relied on, given that the prefect and the mayor did not get on and tried to discredit each other by provoking incidents. So it was up to law-abiding folk to do the work of the police and to protect themselves, and they should make sure they closed up properly, and bolted and barred their houses, and locked their doors securely.

Madame Magloire emphasized those last words. But the bishop had been

rather cold in his room and when he came in he sat down in front of the fireplace to warm himself, and in any case he was thinking of something else. He did not respond to the pointed remark Madame Magloire had just made. She repeated it. Then, wanting to satisfy Madame Magloire without upsetting her brother, Mademoiselle Baptistine timidly ventured, ‘Did you hear what Madame Magloire was saying, brother?’

‘I did vaguely hear something,’ replied the bishop. Then half turning in

his chair, placing both hands on his knees and with his amiable and readily cheerful face lit from below by the fire, looking up at the old servant he

said, ‘Now then, what’s the matter? What’s the matter? We’re in some great danger, are we?’

So Madame Magloire told the whole story all over again, unintentionally

exaggerating a little. It would seem that a gypsy, a tramp, some sort of dangerous beggar, was at this moment in town. He had turned up at the inn looking for lodgings but Jacquin Labarre had sent him away. He was seen coming along Boulevard Gassendi and roaming the streets at dusk. A desperado with a terrible face.

‘Really?’ said the bishop.

This willingness to question her encouraged Madame Magloire. She

thought it suggested the bishop was about to become alarmed. She continued triumphantly, ‘Yes, Monseigneur. That’s the way it is. Something terrible will happen in town tonight. Everyone says so. What with the police not to be relied on’ (something worth repeating). ‘Honestly, living up here in the mountains and not even having streetlights at night! You go out – well, it’s pitch-black! And, Monseigneur, I say and Mademoiselle here too says—’

‘I say nothing,’ his sister broke in. ‘Whatever my brother does is done as

it should be.’

Madame Magloire carried on as if no protest had been made. ‘We say this

house isn’t at all safe, that with Monseigneur’s permission I’ll go and tell Paulin Musebois the locksmith to come and put the old bolts back on the door – we have them right here, it’ll only take a minute – and I say bolts are needed, Monseigneur, if only for tonight, for nothing’s more terrible, I say, than a door with a latch that can be opened from the outside by anyone that happens to pass by, what with it being Monseigneur’s habit always to say come in – not that anyone needs to ask permission, God help us, even in the middle of the night!’

At that moment someone rapped at the door quite violently. ‘Come in,’ said the bishop.

III

The Heroism of Passive Obedience

The door opened.

It burst wide open as though someone had pushed it with energy and

determination.

A man came in.

We already know the man. He was the traveller we saw earlier,

wandering about in search of shelter.

He entered, took one step forward, and halted, leaving the door open

behind him. He had his knapsack on his shoulder, his staff in his hand, a boorish, insolent, weary and violent expression in his eyes. The fire in the hearth lighted him. He looked dreadful. This was a sinister apparition.

Madame Magloire had not even the strength to utter a cry. She trembled

and stood there gaping. Mademoiselle Baptistine turned round, saw the man who came in, and half started up in terror, then slowly turning her head back towards the hearth she began to observe her brother and her face became once more profoundly calm and serene.

The bishop eyed the man with tranquillity.

As he opened his mouth – no doubt to ask the newcomer what he wanted

– the man rested both hands on his staff, took stock of the old man and the two women in turn, and without waiting for the bishop to speak said in a loud voice, ‘Listen. My name’s Jean Valjean. I’m an ex-convict. I’ve spent nineteen years in chains. I was freed four days ago and I’m on my way to Pontarlier, which is my destination. Four days I’ve been walking from Toulon. I’ve done thirty-six miles on foot today. When I arrived here this evening, I went to an inn. They turned me away because of my yellow passport that I’d shown at the town hall – I had to. I went to another inn.

They said to me: “Clear off!” The same everywhere. No one would have me. I went to the prison, the turnkey wouldn’t let me in. I was in a dog kennel. The dog bit me and chased me away as if it were a man. It seemed to know who I was. I went out into the countryside to sleep under the stars.

There were no stars. I thought it would rain, and there was no good Lord to

prevent the rain. I came back into town to shelter in a doorway. Out there, in the square, I was lying down to sleep on a stone bench. A woman pointed out your house and told me, “Knock there!” I knocked. What is this place?

Is it an inn? I have money, my savings. One hundred and nine francs fifteen sous that I earned for the nineteen years’ work I did on the chain gang. I’ll pay. Why shouldn’t I? I have money. I’m very tired, thirty-six miles on foot, and I’m hungry. Will you let me stay?’

‘Madame Magloire,’ said the bishop, ‘will you set another place.’ The man took three steps and moved towards the lamp that was on the

table. ‘Wait,’ he said, as if he had not properly understood, ‘you’ve got me wrong. Did you hear? I’m an ex-convict. Sentenced to hard labour. I come from the prison hulks.’

He drew from his pocket a large sheet of yellow paper, which he

unfolded. ‘Here’s my passport. Yellow, as you see. It serves to get me driven out everywhere I go. Do you want to read it? I can read. I learned in the hulks. They have a school there for those that want to learn. Listen, this is what they put on my passport: “Jean Valjean, freed convict, native of—” – that’s of no interest to you – “has served nineteen years in chains. Five years for theft with breaking and entering. Fourteen years for trying to escape four times. This man is very dangerous.” There! Everyone has thrown me out. Will you people let me stay? Is this an inn? Will you give me something to eat and a place to sleep? Have you a stable?’

‘Madame Magloire,’ said the bishop, ‘you will put clean sheets on the

bed in the alcove.’

We have already described the nature of both women’s obedience.

Madame Magloire left the room to carry out these instructions.

The bishop turned to the man. ‘Sit down, monsieur, and warm yourself.

We’re going to have supper in a while and a bed will be made up for you while you eat.’

Now the man understood completely. The expression on his face, till now

sullen and obdurate, reflected stupefaction, doubt, joy, and became extraordinary. He began stammering like a lunatic.

‘Really? You mean you’re letting me stay? You’re not turning me away?

An ex-convict! You call me monsieur! You treat me with respect! “Clear off, you dog!” is what I’m always told. I thought you would surely turn me away. That’s why I told you at once who I am. Oh, she was a good soul, that woman who directed me here! I’m going to eat tonight! A bed! A bed with a mattress and sheets! Like everyone else! A bed! It’s nineteen years since I slept in a bed! You really don’t want me to go! What fine people you are! In any case, I have money. I’ll pay well. Forgive me, innkeeper, what’s your name? I’ll pay anything you ask. You’re a good man. You’re an innkeeper, aren’t you?’

‘I’m a priest who lives here,’ replied the bishop. ‘A priest!’ said the man. ‘Oh, a good honest priest! So you’re not asking

any money of me? The parish priest, are you? Of this big church? Well, how stupid of me! Of course! I hadn’t noticed your skull-cap.’

While speaking, he had dropped his knapsack and staff in a corner, then

put his passport back in his pocket, and sat down. Mademoiselle Baptistine observed him kindly.

He continued. ‘You’re human, monsieur le curé. You’ve no contempt. A

good priest, that’s a very good thing. So there’s no need for me to pay you?’

‘No,’ said the bishop, ‘keep your money. You have how much? Did you

not say one hundred and nine francs?’

‘And fifteen sous,’ the man added. ‘One hundred and nine francs and fifteen sous. And how long did it take

you to earn that?’

‘Nineteen years.’ ‘Nineteen years!’ The bishop sighed deeply.

The man went on, ‘I still have all my money. In the past four days I’ve

spent only twenty-five sous, which I earned by helping unload some wagons at Grasse. Seeing as you’re a churchman, I’m going to tell you, we had a chaplain in the hulks. And one day I saw a bishop. Monseigneur is what they call him. He was the bishop of La Majore at Marseille. He’s the priest who’s above the parish priests. You know, I’m sorry, I put it badly, but for me it’s so remote! You understand, for the likes of us! He said mass

in the middle of the hulks, on an altar, he had a pointed thing, made of gold, on his head. It glittered in the midday sun. We were lined up on three sides, with cannons facing us, fuses lit. We couldn’t see very well. He spoke but he was too far away, we couldn’t hear. That’s what a bishop is.’

While he was speaking the bishop went and shut the door that had been

left wide open.

Madame Magloire returned. She brought a place setting that she put on

the table.

‘Madame Magloire,’ said the bishop, ‘put that place setting as near the

fire as possible.’ And turning to his guest, ‘The night wind is bitter in the Alps. You must be cold, monsieur.’

Each time he uttered that word ‘monsieur’, in his mildly serious and

educated voice, the man’s face lit up. ‘Monsieur’ to a convict is like a glass of water to one of the shipwrecked survivors of the Medusa. Ignominy thirsts for respect.

‘This lamp doesn’t give much light,’ said the bishop.

Madame Magloire understood, and went to fetch the two silver

candlesticks from the mantelpiece in Monseigneur’s bedroom and placed the lighted candles on the table.

‘Monsieur le curé,’ said the man, ‘you’re good-hearted. You don’t treat

me with contempt. You invite me into your home. You light your candles for me. Yet I’ve made no secret of where I come from and what a wretch I am.’

The bishop, sitting beside him, gently touched his hand. ‘You didn’t have

to tell me who you were. This isn’t my house, it’s the house of Jesus Christ.

This door does not ask whoever enters whether he has a name but whether he is in distress. You’re in distress, you’re hungry and thirsty: you’re welcome here. And don’t thank me, don’t say I’m inviting you into my home. No one is at home here except whoever needs a refuge. I tell you, a passing visitor, this is your home more than mine. Everything here is yours.

Why should I need to know your name? Besides, even before you told me, I already knew your name.’

The man eyes widened in astonishment. ‘Really? You knew me by

name?’

‘Yes,’ replied the bishop, ‘by the name of “Brother”.’ ‘Listen, monsieur le curé,’ exclaimed the man, ‘I was very hungry when I

first came in, but you’re so good I don’t know what state I’m in now. My hunger’s gone.’

The bishop looked at him and said, ‘You’ve suffered a great deal?’ ‘Oh, the red jacket, the ball and chain, a plank to sleep on, the heat, the

cold, the hard labour, the chain gang, the beatings! The double-chain punishment for no reason. Solitary confinement for one wrong word. Even sick in bed with the chain! Dogs, dogs are better off! Nineteen years! I’m forty-six. And now a yellow passport. There you have it.’

‘Yes,’ said the bishop, ‘you come from a place of sorrow. Listen. There

will be more joy in heaven over the tearful face of a repentant sinner than over the white robes of a hundred virtuous men. If you come away from that place of sorrow with thoughts of hatred and anger against mankind, you’re deserving of pity. If you come away with benevolent thoughts, of kindness and peace, you’re worth more than any of us.’

In the meantime Madame Magloire had served supper: soup made with

water, oil, bread and salt, a little bacon, a piece of mutton, some figs, fresh cheese, and a large loaf of rye bread. She had on her own initiative added to the bishop’s ordinary fare a bottle of aged Mauves wine.

The bishop’s face suddenly took on that expression of geniality typical of

those of a hospitable nature. ‘Take your seats!’ he said cheerfully. As was his custom when he had a guest at his evening meal, he sat the man on his right. Mademoiselle Baptistine sat on his left, perfectly calm and natural.

The bishop said grace, then as usual served the soup himself.

The man began to eat voraciously.

All at once the bishop said, ‘But I think there’s something missing from

this table.’

Madame Magloire had indeed put out only the three place settings that

were absolutely necessary. Now, it was the custom of the house when the bishop had anyone to supper to lay out on the tablecloth, in innocent

display, all six sets of silverware. This gracious semblance of luxury was a kind of childishness full of charm in that sweetly austere household where poverty was elevated to the level of dignity.

Madame Magloire understood his remark, left the room without a word,

and a moment later the three sets of silverware requested by the bishop were gleaming on the tablecloth, symmetrically arranged before each of the three at table.

IV

About the Cheese Dairies of Pontarlier

Now to give an idea of what occurred at that table, we could do no better than to transcribe here a passage from one of Mademoiselle Baptistine’s letters to Madame de Boischevron, in which the conversation between the ex-convict and the bishop is related in ingenuous detail.

… This man paid no attention to anyone. He ate ravenously. However, after supper he said, ‘Monsieur le curé, all this is still far too good for me, yet I must say the carters who wouldn’t let me eat with them keep a better table than the good Lord’s servant does.’

Between ourselves, this remark rather shocked me.

My brother replied, ‘Their work is harder than mine.’ ‘No,’ replied the man, ‘they have more money. You’re poor. I can see that. You may not

even have your own parish. Do you actually have a parish? Now, if the good Lord were just, you certainly ought to!’

‘The good Lord is more than just,’ said my brother. A moment later he added,

‘Monsieur Jean Valjean, it’s Pontarlier you’re headed for?’

‘Under obligation to follow a fixed route.’ I think that’s what the man said. Then he

went on, ‘I must be on my way by daybreak tomorrow. It’s no easy journey. While the nights are cold, the days are hot.’

‘That’s a good place you’re going to,’ said my brother. ‘During the Revolution my

family lost everything. I took refuge in Franche-Comté at first and for a while earned my living there by the sweat of my brow. I was willing enough. I found plenty of work. It’s only a matter of choosing. There are paper mills, tanneries, distilleries, big watch-making factories, steel mills, copper works, at least twenty iron foundries, four of which – at Lods, Châtillon, Audincourt and Beure – are of a very considerable size …’

I think I am not mistaken in saying those are the names my brother mentioned, then he

broke off and addressed me.

‘My dear sister, have we not relatives in those parts?’ I replied, ‘We did have some, among them Monsieur de Lucenet, who was captain of

the gates at Pontarlier before the Revolution.’

‘Yes,’ replied my brother, ‘but in ’93 a man no longer had relatives, he had only his

own pair of hands. I worked. In the Pontarlier region where you’re going, Monsieur Valjean, they have an industry that goes back a very long way, and is quite fascinating, sister. It’s their cheese dairies, which they call fruitières.’

Then, while encouraging the man to eat, my brother explained to him in great detail

what these fruitières of Pontarlier were like. That there were two types: the big estates that belong to the rich, and where there are forty or fifty cows that produce seven or eight thousand cheeses every summer, and the co-operative fruitières that belong to the poor.

These are the peasant-farmers at medium altitude who farm their cows jointly and share their produce. They hire a cheese-maker, whom they call the grurin. The grurin collects the milk from the joint contributors three times a day, and marks the quantities on a double-entry tally. It’s towards the end of April that the work of the cheese dairies begins.

And it’s towards the middle of June that the cheese-makers take their cows up to the mountain pastures.

The man’s spirits revived as he ate. My brother served him that good Mauves wine he

does not drink himself because he says it is an expensive wine. My brother told him all these details with that relaxed cheerfulness you know he has, combining his words with thoughtfulness towards me. He kept coming back to this honest job of grurin, as if, without saying so directly and without forcing this advice on him, he hoped the man would understand that it would offer him sanctuary. One thing struck me. This man was what I have told you. Well, apart from a few remarks about Jesus when he came in, my brother did not say a single word throughout the whole meal, or the entire evening, that might remind the man of what he was, or impress on him who my brother was. It was certainly an opportunity, on the face of it, for a bit of a sermon and for the bishop to impress himself on the ex-convict and leave his mark. It might have seemed to anyone else that now was the time, when he had the poor wretch right there, to nourish his soul as well as his body, and to voice either some censure leavened with moral instruction and advice, or a little pity with an exhortation to behave better in the future. My brother did not even ask him where he came from or about his past. For in his past lay his wrong-doing, and my brother seemed to avoid anything that might remind him of it. So much so that at one point, when my brother was talking about the mountain-dwellers of Pontarlier who have pleasant work close to heaven – and are happy, he added, because they are innocent – he stopped short, fearing there might be something to cause the man offence in this remark he had let slip. Having reflected on it, I believe I understand what was in my brother’s heart. Doubtless he thought this man, who is called Jean Valjean, was only too well aware of his wretchedness. That the best thing was to distract him from it and, by behaving normally towards him, to make him think, if only for a moment, that he was like any other person. Is that not a real understanding of charity? Is there not, dear madame, something truly evangelical in such delicacy that refrains from sermonizing, moralizing and criticizing? And when a man has a sore point, is not the ultimate pity not to touch on it at all? It seemed to me this might have been my brother’s inward thought.

In any case, what I can say is that if he did have all these thoughts there was no way of telling, even for me. He was throughout no different from the way he is every evening, and he took his supper with this Jean Valjean in the same spirit and in the same manner as

he would have taken his supper with Monsieur Gédéon Le Prévost or our local parish priest.

Towards the end of the meal, when we were eating the figs, there was a knock at the

door. It was Madame Gerbaud with her little one in her arms. My brother kissed the child on the forehead and borrowed fifteen sous that I had on me to give to Madame Gerbaud.

The man did not pay much attention in the meantime. He had stopped talking and looked very tired. Once poor old Madame Gerbaud had left, my brother said grace, then he turned to the man and said, ‘You must be in much need of your bed.’ Madame Magloire very quickly cleared the table. I understood we were supposed to retire to let this traveller sleep, and we both went upstairs. However, a moment later I sent Madame Magloire to take down for the man’s bed a roe-deer skin from the Black Forest that I have in my room. The nights are freezing and it keeps you warm. It’s a pity the skin is an old one, it’s losing all its fur. My brother bought it while he was in Germany, at Tottlingen, close to the source of the Danube, as well as the little ivory-handled knife I use at table.

Madame Magloire came back upstairs almost immediately. We said our prayers in the

room where we hang the laundry to dry, and then we went each to her own room without exchanging another word.

V

Tranquillity

After bidding his sister goodnight, Monseigneur Bienvenu took one of the two silver candlesticks from the table, handed the other to his guest and said to him, ‘I’ll show you to your room, monsieur.’

The man followed him.

As may have been noted from what was said above, the house was so

arranged that to get to and from the chapel, where the alcove was, you had to pass through the bishop’s bedroom.

Just as they passed through it, Madame Magloire was putting away the

silverware in the bedside cupboard. This was the last task she performed every evening before going to bed.

The bishop installed his guest in the alcove. A bed had been made up

there with clean white sheets. The man set the candlestick down on the small table.

‘Well, I wish you goodnight,’ said the bishop. ‘Tomorrow morning before

you set out, you shall have a cup of warm milk straight from our own cows.’

‘Thank you, monsieur l’abbé,’ said the man.

Hardly had he uttered these peaceful words than all of a sudden and

without transition something strange came over him that, had they witnessed it, would have chilled the two sainted women with horror. Even to this day it is difficult for us to explain what was prompting him at that moment. Did he mean to convey a warning or issue a threat? Was he simply obeying an instinctive impulse of some sort, obscure even to himself? He turned abruptly to the old man, folded his arms and fixing his host with a fierce gaze he cried in a hoarse voice, ‘I don’t believe it! You take me in and give me a bed, right next to you, like this!’

He broke off, and added with a laugh that had something monstrous

about it, ‘Have you really given this proper consideration? How do you know I’m not a murderer?’

The bishop looked up at the ceiling and replied, ‘That’s the concern of

the good Lord.’

Then solemnly, and moving his lips like someone praying or talking to

himself, he raised the two fingers of his right hand and blessed the man, who did not bow, and without turning his head and without looking back, he went to his room.

When the alcove was in use a big serge curtain, drawn across from one

side of the chapel to the other, concealed the altar. The bishop knelt as he passed in front of this curtain and said a brief prayer. A moment later he was in his garden, strolling, musing, contemplating, his heart and soul wholly absorbed in those great mysterious things that God reveals at night to eyes that remain open.

As for the man, he truly was so tired that he did not even make the most

of those clean white sheets. He snuffed out his candle with his nostril, the way convicts do, and dropping on to the bed fully dressed, immediately fell into a deep sleep.

Midnight struck as the bishop returned from the garden to his room.

A few minutes later the entire little household was asleep.

VI

Jean Valjean

In the middle of the night Jean Valjean woke up.

Jean Valjean came from a poor peasant family in Brie. As a child he had

not learned to read. When he reached manhood he became a tree-pruner at Faverolles. His mother’s name was Jeanne Mathieu. His father was called Jean Valjean or Vlajean – a nickname, probably, and a contraction of ‘Voilà Jean’*.

Jean Valjean was a thoughtful individual without being gloomy, which is

typical of those who are by nature affectionate. On the whole, however, Jean Valjean was, in appearance at least, a rather dozy and unremarkable creature. He had lost his father and mother at a very early age. His mother had died of milk fever that was not properly treated. His father, a tree-pruner like himself, was killed falling from a tree. Jean Valjean was left with only a widowed sister older than himself, who had seven children, boys and girls. This sister had brought up Jean Valjean and as long as she still had her husband she housed and fed her younger brother. The husband died. The eldest of the seven children was eight years old, the youngest, one.

Jean Valjean had just reached the age of twenty-five. He took the father’s

place, and he in turn supported the sister who had brought him up. This was done as a matter of course, as a duty, even a little churlishly, on the part of Jean Valjean. And so his youth was spent doing hard and ill-paid work. He was never known to have had any local ‘sweetheart’. He had no time for being in love.

He would come home tired in the evening and eat his soup without

uttering a word. His sister, mother Jeanne, often took the best part of his meal from his bowl as he ate – the piece of meat, the slice of bacon, the heart of the cabbage – to give to one of her children. Hunched over the table with his head almost in his soup, his long hair falling around his bowl and covering his eyes while he ate, he appeared not to notice and did nothing to stop her.

There was at Faverolles not far from the Valjeans’ cottage, on the other

side of the lane, a farmer’s wife named Marie-Claude. The Valjean children, who were always hungry, sometimes used to go to Marie-Claude to ask for a pint of milk, supposedly for their mother, which they would drink behind a hedge or in some corner of the street, snatching the jug from each other, and they drank so quickly the little girls would spill it on their pinafores and down their little necks. If their mother had known about this cadging, she would have punished the culprits severely. Gruff and grumbling, Jean Valjean paid Marie-Claude for the pint of milk behind their mother’s back, and the children were not punished.

He earned twenty-four sous a day in the pruning season and also hired

himself out as hay-maker, labourer, farmhand, odd-job man. He did whatever he could. His sister worked also, but how to manage with seven young children? A sorry band they were, little by little engulfed, crushed, by poverty. Then came one hard winter. Jean had no work. The family had no bread. No bread. Literally. And seven children!

One Sunday evening Maubert Isabeau, baker on the church square at

Faverolles, was getting ready for bed when he heard a violent smashing of his shuttered shop window. He arrived in time to see an arm reach inside a hole punched through the shutter and the window-pane. The arm grabbed a loaf of bread and made off with it. Isabeau rushed outside. The thief was running away as fast as his legs could carry him. Isabeau ran after him and caught him. The thief had thrown away the loaf but his arm was still bleeding. It was Jean Valjean.

This took place in 1795. Jean Valjean was brought before the law courts

of the day for ‘theft with breaking and entering an occupied house at night’.

He had a shotgun and was a better shot with it than any marksman in the world, for he was a bit of a poacher. This went against him. There is a legitimate prejudice against poachers. The poacher, like the smuggler, is very much akin to the brigand. However, let us say in passing, there is still a gulf between this breed of men and the hideous urban murderer. The poacher lives in the forest, the smuggler lives in the mountains or on the sea. Towns produce vicious men because they produce corrupted men. The

mountains, the sea, the forest produce men of the wild; they develop the wildness in them, but often without destroying their humanity.

Jean Valjean was found guilty. The terms of the Penal Code were

mandatory. There are in our civilization dread moments; these are the times when the ruling of the penal system spells perdition. What a fateful moment it is when society distances itself and irredeemably casts adrift a thinking being! Jean Valjean was condemned to five years’ hard labour.

On the twenty-second of April 1796 there were celebrations in Paris for

the victory at Montenotte, won by the general-in-chief of the army in Italy who, in the message dated the second of Floréal in the year IV, sent by the Directory to the Five Hundred, is named as Buona-Parte. On that same day a great chain gang was put in irons at Bicêtre. Jean Valjean was part of that gang. A former turnkey at the prison, now close on ninety, still recalls perfectly the wretch who was chained to the end of the fourth line in the north corner of the courtyard. He was sitting on the ground like all the others. He seemed to have no understanding of his situation except that it was horrible. It is likely that amid the confused notions of a poor man knowing nothing, he also discerned something excessive in it. As the bolt was riveted into his iron collar with heavy hammer blows behind his head, he wept; his tears choked him, they prevented him from speaking, all he managed to say every now and then was ‘I was a tree-pruner at Faverolles.’ Then, still sobbing, he would raise his right hand and lower it seven times in progression, as though touching seven heads of unequal height one after the other, and from this gesture it was surmised that whatever he had done, he had done to clothe and feed seven young children.

He left for Toulon. He arrived there after twenty-seven days travelling on

a cart with a chain round his neck. At Toulon he was clothed in the red jacket. Everything that had been his life till then was obliterated, his name included. He was not even Jean Valjean any more, he was number 24601.

What became of his sister? What became of the seven children? Who is responsible for them? What becomes of the handful of leaves on the young tree sawn off at the base?

It is always the same story. Those poor mortals, those creatures of God,

left with no means of support, no guide, no refuge, wandered off aimlessly – who knows? perhaps went their separate ways – and eventually disappeared in that cold fog where lone destinies founder, those dismal shadows where so many unfortunate individuals come to grief in the doleful progress of mankind. They left the area. The clock-tower of what had been their village forgot them. The boundary of what had been their land forgot them. After a few years in prison Jean Valjean himself forgot them. In that heart where there had been an open wound there was now a scar. That is all.

In all the time he spent at Toulon he only once heard any word of his sister.

It was, I believe, towards the end of the fourth year of his captivity. How the news reached him, I do not know. Someone who had known them back home had seen his sister. She was in Paris. She lived in a back street near St-Sulpice, Rue du Gindre. She had only one child with her, a little boy, the youngest. Where were the other six? She herself may not have known.

Every morning she went to a printing works at 3 Rue du Sabot where she was a sheet-folder and -stitcher. She had to be there at six in the morning, well before daylight in winter. In the same building as the print shop was a school and to this school she took her little boy, who was seven years old.

But as she started at the printer’s at six and the school did not open until seven, the child had to wait an hour in the courtyard for the school to open – an hour out in the open in winter! They would not let the child come into the print shop because he got in the way, they said. Those on their way to work in the morning would see this poor little creature sitting on the pavement, unable to stay awake, and often sleeping in the dark, hunkered down and bent over his lunch-box. When it rained an old woman, the doorkeeper, would take pity on him and let him into her cubicle that contained only a pallet, a spinning-wheel and two wooden chairs, and the little one would sleep there in a corner, hugging the cat for warmth. At seven o’clock the school opened and he would go in. This is what Jean Valjean was told. Someone spoke of it one day: it was momentary, a brief flash, like a window suddenly opened on the fate of his loved ones, then everything closed up again. That was the last he ever heard of them. No

further news ever reached him. He never again saw them, or met them. Nor shall we again encounter them throughout the rest of this sad story.

Towards the end of that fourth year it was Jean Valjean’s turn to escape.

His comrades helped him, as is the way in that woeful place. He escaped.

For two days he roamed the countryside in freedom, if it can be called freedom to be hunted, to be constantly looking over your shoulder, starting at the slightest sound, afraid of everything – a smoking chimney, a man going by, a dog barking, a galloping horse, the striking of the hour, daylight because the eye can see, darkness because it cannot, the highway, the path, a bush, sleep. On the evening of the second day he was recaptured. He had neither eaten nor slept for thirty-six hours. The naval court condemned him for this offence to an additional three years, which made eight. In the sixth year it was again his turn to escape. He took his turn but could not make good his escape. He had failed to turn up at roll-call. The cannon was fired, and at night the patrol found him hiding under the keel of a vessel under construction. He resisted the guards who seized him. Escape and rebellion.

This infraction under the terms of the special code incurred an additional five years, with two years of the double chain. Thirteen years. In the tenth year his turn came round again, and again he tried. He was no more successful than before. Three years for this fresh attempt. Sixteen years.

Finally, it was, I think, during his thirteenth year that he made his last attempt and succeeded only in getting caught after four hours’ absence.

Three years for those four hours. Nineteen years. In October 1815 he was released. He had gone in there in 1796 for breaking a pane of glass and stealing a loaf of bread.

A brief parenthesis here. This is the second time in his studies of the

penal issue and the doom meted out by the law that the author of this book has come across the theft of a loaf of bread as the starting-point in ruining a life. Claude Gueux stole a loaf of bread. Jean Valjean stole a loaf of bread.

According to one English statistic, the primary cause of four out of five thefts in London is hunger.

Jean Valjean went into the prison hulks sobbing and trembling. He came

out emotionless. He went in despairing. He came out dour.

What had happened inside that soul?

VII

Inside Despair

Let us try to describe it.

It is surely incumbent on society to examine these things, since it is

society that creates them.

He was, as we have said, an uneducated man, but he was no fool. There

was the light of natural intelligence in him. Hardship, which sheds a light of its own, increased the little illumination there was in that soul. Under the rod, in chains, in solitary confinement, in exhaustion, under the burning sun of penal servitude, on the convict’s plank bed, he turned in on himself and reflected.

He set himself up as a court of justice.

He began by sitting in judgement on himself.

He recognized that he was not an innocent man unjustly punished. He

admitted that he had committed a drastic and reprehensible deed. That he probably would not have been refused the loaf of bread, had he asked for it.

That in any case it would have been better to wait, and rely on pity or work to obtain it. That it is not an utterly conclusive argument to say, ‘Can hunger be kept waiting?’ That in the first place it is very rare for anyone literally to die of hunger, and anyway, regrettably or not, human beings are so constituted that they are capable of suffering a great deal for a long time, morally and physically, without dying. That patience was necessary. That it would have been better even for those poor little children. That it was an act of madness for a miserable wretch such as he to take on the whole of society and to imagine that theft was a way out of poverty. That under any circumstances the gateway that led to criminality was a bad escape route from poverty. In short, he had done wrong.

Then he asked himself the following: Whether he was the only one at fault in his fateful story. Whether, firstly,

it was not a serious matter that, hard-working as he was, he had no work,

conscientious as he was, he had no bread. And whether, after he confessed to the crime he had committed, the punishment had not been harsh and disproportionate. Whether there had not been greater wrong perpetrated by the law through the penalty inflicted than by the culprit through his offence.

Whether one of the scalepans had not been overladen, the one that weighed expiation. Whether the excessively heavy penalty did not cancel out the offence, and did not result in reversing the situation, in replacing the delinquent’s offence with the offence of repression, in making the guilty man the victim, and the debtor the creditor, and in ultimately vindicating the one who had broken the law. Whether this penalty, compounded with successive supplementary sentences for the attempted escapes, did not end up becoming some kind of assault of the strong against the weak, a crime of society against the individual, a crime that recommenced every day, a crime that went on for nineteen years.

He wondered whether human society could possibly be entitled to inflict

on its members both its unconscionable improvidence on the one hand and its ruthless providence on the other; and to trap a poor man for ever between want and excess, want of work and excess of punishment.

Whether it was not outrageous that society should treat in this manner

precisely those least favoured by the chance distribution of assets, and consequently those most deserving of care.

Having raised and answered these questions, he passed judgement on

society, and condemned it.

He condemned it to his hatred.

He held it responsible for the fate he suffered and told himself that he

might not hesitate to make it answerable one day. He determined that there was no proportionality between the wrong he had done and the wrong done to him. Lastly, he concluded that his punishment was not strictly speaking a miscarriage of justice, but it was most certainly iniquitous.

Anger may be foolish and absurd. It is possible to be unjustifiably

incensed. A man is outraged only when, one way or another, he is basically in the right. Jean Valjean felt outraged.

After all, human society had done him nothing but harm. This angry face

that it calls Justice, and that it presents to those it smites, was the only one he had ever seen. The only reason other people had ever laid a finger on him was to hurt him. He had had no physical contact with anyone that had not been a blow struck against him. Never, since childhood, since his mother, his sister, had he ever encountered a friendly word, a look of kindness. With every succeeding injury, he had gradually come to the firm belief that life is a war, and in this war he was the vanquished. He had no other weapon than his hatred. He resolved to hone it in prison and take it with him when he left.

There was at Toulon a school for convicts run by the Ignorantine friars,

where the basics were taught to any of those poor wretches willing to learn.

He was one of the willing. He went to school at the age of forty and learned to read, write and count. He felt that to strengthen his intelligence was to strengthen his hatred. In certain cases, education and enlightenment may serve to extend the scope of evil.

It is sad to say that, having passed judgement on the society that had been

his undoing, he passed judgement on the providence that had created that society, and this providence too he condemned.

So during those nineteen years of torture and slavery, this soul both rose

and fell. Light penetrated it on the one side, darkness on the other.

As we have seen, Jean Valjean was not a bad person by nature. He was

still good when he arrived at the prison. There, he condemned society and felt he was becoming wicked. There, he condemned providence and felt he was becoming ungodly.

At this point it is hard not to pause for reflection.

Does human nature change so thoroughly and so radically? Can the

human being created good by God be made wicked by man? Can the soul be completely remade by fate and, being ill-fated, become ill-natured? Can the heart grow deformed and develop incurable uglinesses and infirmities under the pressure of inordinate misfortune, like the spine under too low a vault? Is there not in every human soul, was there not in the soul of Jean Valjean in particular, an original spark, a divine element, incorruptible in

this world, immortal in the next, which goodness is capable of nurturing, stoking, kindling, fanning into a glorious blaze of brilliance, and which evil can never wholly extinguish?

Grave and perplexing questions, to the latter of which any physiologist

would probably have answered no, without hesitation, had he seen this sullen convict in Toulon at moments of rest, which for Jean Valjean were moments for rumination: seated, with his arms folded on the bar of some capstan and the end of his chain stuffed into his pocket to prevent it from dragging; serious, silent and thoughtful, one ostracized by the legal system who looked with anger on his fellow men; one doomed by civilization who looked with rancour on heaven.

Certainly – and we would not wish to disguise the fact – the physiologist

observing this would have seen before him a wretchedness beyond salvation. He might perhaps have pitied this sick man of the law’s making, but he would not even have attempted any treatment. He would have averted his gaze from the cavernous depths he had glimpsed in this soul; and the word ‘Hope!’, albeit written by the finger of God on the brow of every man, he, like Dante at the portals of hell, would have banished from this existence.

Was the state of his soul, which we have tried to analyse, as perfectly

plain to Jean Valjean as we have tried to portray it to our readers? Did Jean Valjean see distinctly after their development, and had he seen distinctly as they developed, all the elements of which his moral wretchedness consisted? Had this rough and uneducated man a true understanding of the chain of thought that had led him step by step, up and down, to the dismal prospect that had for so many years already constituted the inner horizon of his spirit? Was he fully conscious of everything that had gone on inside him and everything stirring within him? This we would not dare to say. Indeed, we believe not. There was too much ignorance in Jean Valjean for there not to remain a great deal of confusion, even after so much misery. At times he did not rightly know what he felt. Jean Valjean was in darkness. He suffered in darkness. He hated in darkness. He might be said to have made his way by hatred. He was used to living in this darkness, groping like a blind man,

a dreamer. Only, every now and again there came all at once, from within him or from without, a surge of anger, an intensification of suffering, a pale flash of lightning that lit up his whole soul and suddenly made visible all around him, in front and behind, by the glimmerings of a ghastly brightness, the frightful precipices and bleak perspectives of his destiny.

After the lightning, darkness would fall again. And where was he? He

could no longer tell.

It is in the nature of such punishment – in which what prevails is the

pitiless, in other words, the brutalizing – to transform a man little by little, by a kind of stupid transfiguration, into a wild beast, sometimes a ferocious beast.

Jean Valjean’s persistent attempts at escape alone would suffice to prove

this strange working of the law on the human soul. Completely useless and foolish as these attempts were, Jean Valjean would have kept on making them as often as the opportunity presented itself without for one moment considering the outcome or his previous experience. He escaped impetuously like the wolf that finds the cage open. Instinct told him, ‘Flee!’ Reason would have said, ‘Stay!’ But in the face of so strong a temptation, reason disappeared. All that remained was instinct. The beast alone acted.

When he was recaptured the further punishments inflicted on him only served to make him wilder still.

One detail we must not fail to mention is that he possessed a physical

strength far exceeding that any of other inmate of the prison hulks. Paying out a cable or winding a capstan, Jean Valjean could take the strain of four men. He sometimes lifted and supported enormous weights on his back and in cases of necessity acted as a substitute for that implement known as a cric*, in the past called an orgueil, from which incidentally the name of Rue Montorgueil, near the central market in Paris, derives. His comrades had nicknamed him Jean-le-Cric. Once, when repairs were being made to the balcony of Toulon’s city hall, one of Puget’s splendid caryatids that support the balcony became dislodged and almost fell. Jean Valjean, who happened to be there, took the caryatid’s weight on his shoulder, giving the workmen time to get there.

His litheness was even greater than his robustness. Certain convicts,

perpetually dreaming of escape, in the end become truly expert in combining strength and agility. It is an expertise in the muscles. A whole mysterious discipline of statics is daily practised by prisoners, those who are eternally envious of flies and birds. To climb a sheer surface and find purchase where it was almost impossible to see any protrusion was child’s play to Jean Valjean. Given the corner of a wall, by tensing his back and his thighs, fitting his elbows and heels into any unevenness in the stone, he could hoist himself as if by magic to the third floor. Sometimes he climbed right up on to the roof of the prison in this way.

He did not say much. He did not laugh. It took some very strong emotion

to wring from him once or twice a year that lugubrious laughter of the convict that sounds like an echo of the devil’s laughter. By the look of him, his gaze seemed forever to dwell on something terrible.

He was indeed preoccupied.

Through the morbid perceptions of a deficient nature and a defeated

mind, he had an obscure feeling that some monstrous thing bore down on him. In that dim and pallid half-light in which he skulked, every time he craned his neck and tried to look up he perceived with terror and rage combined, stacked in layer upon layer above him, rising with dreadful steepness as far as the eye could see, a frightful accumulation, as it were, of things, laws, prejudices, men and deeds, whose contours he could not distinguish, whose mass terrified him, and which was nothing other than that monumental pyramid we call ‘civilization’. In this swarming shapeless mass he could pick out here and there, now close to him, now far away on inaccessible levels, some grouping, some brightly illuminated detail: here, the prison warder and his rod; there, the gendarme and his sabre; beyond, the mitred archbishop; right at the top, like a sort of sun, the crowned and dazzling emperor. It seemed to him that these distant splendours, far from dispelling his darkness, made it blacker and more dismal. Laws, prejudices, deeds, men, things – all this came and went above him, observing the complicated and mysterious movement God imparts to civilization, trampling and crushing him with an indefinable calm in its cruelty and an

inexorability in its indifference. Souls foundering in the worst possible plight, poor wretches lost in the lowest depths of this limbo where no one looks any more, the law’s outcasts feel individually burdened with the whole weight of this human society, so forbidding to anyone outside it, so appalling to anyone at the bottom of it.

In this situation Jean Valjean pondered. What could be the nature of his

reflections?

If the grain of millet beneath the millstone were capable of thinking, it

would no doubt have thought as Jean Valjean did.

All these things, realities full of phantasma, phantasmagoria full of

realities, had eventually created in him an inner state of a kind that was almost indescribable.

At times in the midst of his penal labour, he would pause, then fall to

thinking. His reason, at once more mature and more confused than in the past, would rebel. Everything that had happened to him seemed absurd.

Everything that surrounded him seemed impossible. He said to himself, ‘This is a dream.’ He would gaze at the prison warder standing a few paces away; the prison warder seemed a spectre. Suddenly the spectre would beat him with his rod.

The natural world hardly existed for him. It would almost be true to say

that for Jean Valjean there was no sun, no fine summer days, or radiant sky, or fresh April dawns. It was some basement dinginess that normally lit his soul.

In conclusion, to sum up what can be summed up and translated into

concrete results in all that we have just mentioned, we shall simply remark that thanks to the way prison had moulded him Jean Valjean, the inoffensive tree-pruner from Faverolles, the dreadful felon of Toulon, had after nineteen years become capable of two kinds of misdeed. First, a swift unthinking kind, full of impulsiveness, entirely instinctive, a reprisal of sorts for the wrong done to him. Second, a grave and serious kind, consciously considered and planned with the mistaken notions such adversity can instil.

His premeditations went through three successive phases, a progress of which only natures of a certain quality are capable: rationalization, resolve,

determination. His motives were outrage that had become a habit of mind, the bitterness in his heart, a deep sense of the iniquities he had suffered, the impulse to react, even against the good, the innocent and the just, if there be any. The point of departure and of arrival in all his thinking was his hatred of human law; a hatred that if not arrested in its development by some providential occurrence becomes within a given time hatred of society, then hatred of the human race, then hatred of creation, and is reflected in an ill-defined, constant and brutal desire to inflict harm on no matter whom, on any living creature.

As we can see, it was not without reason that Jean Valjean’s passport

described him as a very dangerous man.

Year by year, this soul had hardened slowly but inexorably. The hard-

hearted are dry-eyed. When he left prison he had not shed a tear for nineteen years.

VIII

The Deep and the Dark

Man overboard!

So what? The ship does not stop. The wind blows, this woeful vessel has

a course it is compelled to keep. It passes on.

The man disappears, then reappears, he sinks and rises to the surface

again, he calls for help, his arms reach out. No one hears. The ship, shuddering under the gale, is entirely concentrated on its handling, the crew and the passengers do not even see the man in the water. His pathetic head is but a speck in the enormity of the waves.

He utters desperate cries in the troughs. What a ghostly vision that

retreating sail is! He watches and watches in panic. It grows distant, it dims, it dwindles. He was there only a moment ago, he was one of the crew, he went to and fro on the deck with the others, he had his share of fresh air and sunlight, he was alive. Now what has happened? He has slipped, he has fallen, it is gone.

He is in the monstrous waters. He has nothing underfoot any more but

shifting and treacherousness. The billows torn and chopped by the wind surround him hideously, the heavings of the deep overwhelm him, all the watery raggedness thrashes round his head; a mob of waves spews over him, blurred openings half devour him. Every time he goes under he glimpses precipices filled with darkness, frightful alien vegetations seize him, bind his feet, draw him towards them. He feels that he is becoming the deep, he is part of the spume, the waves toss him from one to another, he drinks bitterness, the craven ocean is furiously intent on drowning him, hugeness toys with him as he perishes. It seems as if all this water were hatred.

Nevertheless he puts up a fight. He tries to defend himself. He tries to

keep above the water, he strives, he swims. He, this puny force, immediately exhausted, combats the inexhaustible.

Where, then, is the ship? Over there. Barely visible in the pale obscurity

of the horizon.

The wind gusts. All the spray beats down on him. He looks up and sees

only the lividness of the clouds. He is a dying witness to the immense frenzy of the sea. He is tormented by this craziness. He hears noises unknown to man that seem to come from beyond the earth and from some dreadful untold outer region.

There are birds in the clouds, just as there are angels above human

tribulations. But what can they do for him? They fly, sing and soar, while he draws his dying breath.

He feels simultaneously buried by those two infinities, the ocean and the

sky: the one is a tomb, the other a shroud.

Darkness falls. He has been swimming for hours, he has no strength left.

That ship, that distant thing in which there were men, has vanished. He is alone in the tremendous twilight chasm; he sinks, he stiffens, he writhes, he senses beneath him the huge undulations of the invisible, he calls out.

Of men there are none. Where is God?

He shouts. Someone! Someone! He keeps on shouting. Nothing on the

horizon. Nothing in the heavens.

He implores the expanse, the waves, the seaweed, the rocks. They are

deaf. He beseeches the tempest. The insensate tempest obeys only the infinite.

Around him darkness, mist, loneliness, churning and mindless tumult, the

endless billowing of untamed waters. Within him horror and weariness.

Beneath him the downward drop. Nothing to hold on to. He imagines the corpse’s murky fortunes in the unbounded gloom. The bottomless cold paralyses him. His hands clench and close and seize on nothing. Unavailing winds, clouds, waterspouts, breezes, stars! What can he do? The despairing man gives up, he who is weary opts to die, he relinquishes, he surrenders, he lets go, and there he is for evermore, buffeted in the dismal depths of perdition.

O implacable march of human societies! The men and souls lost along

the way! Ocean in which all who are dropped by the law sink! Dire failure of rescue! O moral death!

The sea is the inexorable social darkness into which the penal system

casts its damned. The sea is immense wretchedness.

The soul cut adrift in these fathomless deeps may become a corpse. Who

will resuscitate it?

IX

New Woes

When the time came to leave the prison hulks, when Jean Valjean heard in his ear those strange words, ‘You’re free!’ – it was an improbable and unbelievable moment. A brilliant ray of light, real light, the light of the living, suddenly penetrated him. But it was not long before this ray dimmed. Jean Valjean had been dazzled by the idea of liberty. He had believed in a new life. He very quickly saw what kind of liberty it was to which a yellow passport is given.

And with this realization came much bitterness. He had calculated that

his earnings during his time in the prison hulks ought to have amounted to one hundred and seventy-one francs. It is fair to add that he had forgotten to

include in his calculations the compulsory days of rest on Sundays and public holidays that over nineteen years resulted in a reduction of about twenty-four francs. Be that as it may, his earnings had been reduced by various local levies to the sum of one hundred and nine francs fifteen sous, which was counted out to him on his release.

He did not understand any of this and believed he had been wronged. Let

us say the word: robbed.

The day after he was freed he saw some men unloading bales outside an

orange-flower distillery in Grasse. He offered his services. The job needed to be done quickly, he was accepted. He set to work. He was quick-witted, robust and deft. He gave of his best. The foreman seemed pleased. While he was working a gendarme came by, noticed him, and asked for his papers.

He had to show the yellow passport. Jean Valjean then went back to work. A little earlier he had asked one of the workmen what their daily rate for this job was. The reply was ‘Thirty sous.’ Come evening, as he had to be on his way again the following day, he presented himself to the foreman of the distillery and asked to be paid. Without a word the foreman gave him twenty-five sous. He protested. ‘That’s good enough for you,’ he was told.

He insisted. The foreman looked him straight in the eye and said, ‘You want to end up back in clink?’

Again he felt robbed.

By reducing his savings, society, the state, had robbed him in a big way.

Now it was the turn of the individual to rob him in a small way.

Release is not freedom. You are let out of prison, but you continue to

serve your sentence.

That is what happened to him at Grasse. We have seen what sort of

reception he got at Digne.

X

The Man Awakened

So as the cathedral clock struck two in the morning, Jean Valjean awoke.

What wakened him was that his bed was too comfortable. It was nearly

twenty years since he had lain in a bed, and although he had not undressed it was too novel a sensation not to disturb his sleep.

He had slept more than four hours. His tiredness had passed. He was not

used to taking many hours’ rest.

He opened his eyes and stared for a moment into the darkness around

him, then closed them again to go back to sleep.

When it has been a hectic day with many varied sensations, when things

are on your mind, you fall asleep, but you do not go back to sleep. 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 in his mind were

unclear. There was a kind of indistinct welter in his brain. His old memories and his very recent memories swirled in a jumble and overlapped chaotically, losing their formal identity, becoming disproportionately magnified, then suddenly disappearing altogether, as in disturbed and muddy waters. Many thoughts occurred to him, but there was one that kept coming to the fore and driving out all the others. What that thought was, we shall say at once: he had noticed the six sets of silverware and the ladle that Madame Magloire had placed on the table.

Those six sets of silver preyed on him. They were right there. A few

paces away. Just as he was passing through the next room to reach the one where he was now, the old servant had been putting them away in a small cupboard at the head of the bed. He had taken careful note of that cupboard.

On the right, as you entered from the dining room. They were solid silver.

Antique silverware. With the ladle they would fetch at least two hundred francs. Double what he had earned in nineteen years. It is true he would have earned more if ‘the authorities hadn’t robbed him’.

He wavered for a whole hour, and there was certainly some element of

conflict in his vacillations. Three o’clock struck. He opened his eyes again, suddenly sat bolt upright, reached out his arm and felt for his knapsack which he had thrown into the corner of the alcove, then swung his legs over

and put his feet on the ground. And so, almost without knowing how, he found himself sitting on the side of his bed.

He remained for a while brooding in this position, which might have

suggested something sinister to anyone seeing him like this in the dark, the only soul awake in that sleeping household. All at once he bent down, took off his shoes and quietly placed them on the mat beside the bed. Then he resumed his pensive attitude and once again sat motionless.

Throughout these dreadful ruminations the thoughts we referred to above

were in constant ferment in his brain, coming and going and returning again, and in a way oppressing him. And then without knowing why, and with the involuntary obsessiveness of idle fancy, he thought too about a convict named Brevet, whom he had known in the prison hulks and whose trousers had been held up by a single brace of knitted cotton. The chequered pattern of that brace kept coming back into his mind.

He remained in this quandary and might have remained so indefinitely

until daybreak had the clock not struck – the quarter-hour or the half-hour.

It was as if that stroke said to him, ‘Get on with it!’

He stood up, hesitated yet a moment, and listened. All was quiet in the

house. Then walking gingerly he went directly to the window, which he could see. It was not a very dark night. There was a full moon with large clouds driven by the wind coursing across it. This created alternating darkness and light outside, eclipses then brightnesses, and inside a kind of half-light. This half-light, sufficient for a person to find his way by, and intermittent on account of the clouds, was like that sort of leaden wanness that comes in through a basement window with passers-by coming and going in front of it. When he reached the window Jean Valjean examined it.

There were no bars on it, it opened on to the garden and was simply fastened with a small latch, according to local custom. He opened it, but as a rush of biting cold air came into the room he immediately shut it again.

He observed the garden with that attentive gaze that does not so much look as study. The garden was enclosed by a fairly low white wall, easy to climb.

Beyond the wall at the bottom of the garden he could discern regularly

spaced-out tree-tops, which indicated that the wall separated the garden from a tree-lined avenue or lane.

Having taken this quick glance, he shook himself like a man who has

made up his mind, strode to his alcove, grabbed his knapsack, opened it, rummaged in it, pulled out something that he placed on the bed, stuffed his shoes into one of the pockets, closed it all up again, shouldered the knapsack; put on his cap and pulled the peak down over his eyes, felt for his staff, went and placed it in the corner by the window; then returned to the bed, and resolutely seized the object he had laid on it. It looked like a short iron bar sharpened at one end like a spear.

It would have been hard to determine in the darkness for what purpose

that length of iron could have been designed. Perhaps it was a lever?

Perhaps it was a club?

In the daytime it would have been recognizable as none other than a

miner’s candlestick. At that time convicts were sometimes employed in quarrying stone from the high hills around Toulon, and it was not unusual for them to have miners’ tools at their disposal. Miners’ candlesticks are of solid iron with the lower end tapering to a point by means of which they are jammed into the rock.

He took this candlestick in his right hand and, holding his breath and

softening his footsteps, made for the door to the adjoining room, the bishop’s room, as we know. When he reached this door he found it ajar. The bishop had not closed it.

XI

What He Does

Jean Valjean listened. Not a sound.

He pushed the door.

He pushed it gently with his finger, with that furtive and circumspect

delicacy of a cat that wants to come in.

The door yielded to the pressure with a scarcely perceptible and silent

movement, which enlarged the opening a little.

He waited a moment, then pushed the door a second time, more boldly.

It continued to yield in silence. The opening was now wide enough for

him to get through. But there was a little table near the door, at an awkward angle to it, barring the way.

Jean Valjean saw the difficulty. It was absolutely imperative for the

opening to be made even wider.

He steeled himself and pushed the door a third time, more energetically

than before. This time a hinge that needed oiling emitted a sudden lengthy screech in the darkness.

Jean Valjean quailed. The noise of that hinge rang in his ear with

something of the tremendous stridency of the trumpet on the Day of Judgement.

In his fanciful exaggerations of that first instant he almost imagined the

hinge had become animate and all at once acquired a dreadful life force, and that it was barking like a dog to alert everyone and waken those who were asleep.

He paused, trembling, panic-stricken, and from tip-toe dropped flat on his

feet. He heard the arteries in his temples thudding like two sledgehammers and the breath expelled from his chest sounded to him like wind issuing from a cave. He thought it impossible that the horrible din of that grating hinge would not have disturbed the whole household, like an earthquake tremor. The door he had pushed had taken fright and called out. The old man was going to get up, the two old women were going to cry for help, people would come running. Within a quarter of an hour the town would be in uproar and the gendarmerie mobilized. For a moment he thought he was doomed.

He stood where he was, petrified, like the statue of salt, not daring to

move. Several minutes went by. The door was now wide open. He ventured to peer into the room. Nothing had stirred. He listened. All was still in the house. The noise of the rusty hinge had not wakened anyone.

The first danger was past, but there was still a frightful tumult inside him.

Yet he did not retreat. Even when he thought he was doomed, he had not

retreated. His one concern now was to get it over with quickly. He took a step forward and entered the room.

In this room there was perfect calm. Discernible here and there were ill-

defined, vague forms that in daylight were papers scattered on a table, open folios, volumes piled on a stool, an armchair heaped with clothing, a kneeler, but at that hour were no more than shadowy corners and pale patches. Jean Valjean advanced cautiously, taking care not to bump into the furniture. He could hear at the far end of the room the sleeping bishop’s calm and regular breathing.

He came to a sudden halt. He was by the bed. He had reached it sooner

than he expected.

Nature sometimes marries her dramatic effects and visual displays to our

actions with a kind of sombre, intelligent appropriateness, as if wanting to make us think. For nearly half an hour a large cloud had covered the sky. At the very moment that Jean Valjean paused at the foot of the bed, that cloud parted as though on purpose and a shaft of moonlight shining through the long window suddenly illuminated the bishop’s pale face. He was sleeping peacefully. Because of the cold nights in the Basses-Alpes he was in bed almost fully clothed, in a brown woollen garment that covered his arms to the wrists. His head rested on the pillow in the abandon of sleep. His hand on which he wore the pastoral ring, a hand that was the author of so many good deeds and saintly acts, was left dangling over the side of the bed. His whole face was lit up with an indefinable expression of satisfaction, hope and bliss. More than a smile, it was almost a radiance. There was on his brow the mystical reflection of an unseen light. In sleep the souls of the just contemplate a mysterious heaven.

A reflection of that heaven fell on the bishop.

It was at the same time a luminous transparency, for that heaven was

within him. That heaven was his conscience.

When the moonbeam superimposed itself, so to speak, on that inward

radiance the sleeping bishop appeared as if in glory. Yet it was a vision that remained soft and veiled in an ineffable half-light. That moon in the sky, that hush upon nature, that undisturbed garden and that great peacefulness

in the house, the hour, the moment, the silence, added some solemn and inexpressible quality to this sage’s venerable repose, and surrounded with a kind of serene and majestic aureole that white hair and those closed eyes, that face in which all was hope and all was trustfulness, that old man’s head in childlike sleep.

There was almost something divine about this man in his unconscious

awesomeness.

Jean Valjean meanwhile was in shadow, standing motionless with his iron

candlestick in his hand, terrified of this radiant elder. He had never seen anything like it. This trustfulness appalled him. The moral world has no greater spectacle than this: a troubled and uneasy conscience on the brink of an evil action, contemplating the sleep of a good man.

There was in that sleep, in that separateness, with one such as he near by,

an element of the sublime of which he was vaguely but compellingly aware.

No one could have said what was going on inside him, not even he

himself. To try to conceive of it, we have to imagine that which is most violent in the presence of that which is most gentle. Even on his face nothing could be discerned with certainty. It was a sort of haggard amazement. He saw. That was all. But what was he thinking? It was impossible to tell. What was obvious was that he was emotionally affected and confused. But what was the nature of his emotion?

He did not take his eyes off the old man. The only thing clearly evident

from his attitude and the expression on his face was a strange indecision.

He seemed to be hovering between two abysses – that of perdition and that of salvation. He looked as if he were about to crush that skull or kiss that hand.

After a few minutes his left arm rose slowly to his brow and he took off

his cap, then just as slowly his arm fell again and Jean Valjean resumed his contemplation with his cap in his left hand, his candlestick in his right, the hair on his feral head bristling.

The bishop slept on in profound peacefulness beneath that terrifying

gaze.

A reflection of the moon picked out faintly above the fireplace the

crucifix, which seemed to open its arms to both of them, with a blessing for one, forgiveness for the other.

Jean Valjean abruptly replaced his cap on his head, then without looking

at the bishop walked rapidly past the bed straight to the cupboard he saw, indistinctly, standing by the head of it. He raised his iron candlestick as though to force the lock. The key was in it. He opened the cupboard. The first thing that met his eyes was the basket of silverware. He took it, and throwing caution to the wind strode across the room not worrying about the noise, reached the door, re-entered the chapel, opened the window, seized his staff, climbed over the ground-floor window-sill, put the silver into his knapsack, threw away the basket, crossed the garden, leapt over the wall like a tiger, and fled.

XII

The Bishop at Work

The next day at sunrise Monseigneur Bienvenu was strolling in his garden.

Madame Magloire came running up to him in a frenzy.

‘Monseigneur, Monseigneur!’ she exclaimed. ‘Does Your Highness know

where the silverware basket is?’

‘Yes,’ replied the bishop. ‘Blessed be the Lord Jesus!’ she said. ‘I didn’t know what had become of

it.’

The bishop had just found the basket in a flowerbed. He handed it to

Madame Magloire.

‘Here it is.’ ‘Well?’ she said. ‘It’s empty! What about the silverware?’ ‘Ah,’ replied the bishop. ‘So it’s the silverware you’re worried about? I

don’t know where that is.’

‘Good Lord Almighty! It’s been stolen! The man who was here last night

has stolen it!’

In a twinkling, with all that spirited old girl’s spryness, Madame

Magloire ran to the chapel, entered the alcove and returned to the bishop.

The bishop had just bent down and was woefully examining a plant, a Guillons cochlearia, which the basket had damaged as it fell into the flowerbed. He straightened up at Madame Magloire’s cry.

‘Monseigneur, the man’s gone! The silver’s been stolen!’ As she uttered this exclamation, her eyes fell on a corner of the garden

where there were signs of the wall having been climbed. The coping was damaged.

‘Look! That’s how he got out. He jumped down into Ruelle Cochefilet.

Oh, the wicked fellow! He’s stolen our silver!’

The bishop remained silent for a moment, then raised his solemn gaze

and said quietly to Madame Magloire, ‘Now was that silver ours in the first place?’

Madame Magloire was left speechless. There was another silence, then

the bishop went on, ‘Madame Magloire, I’ve been wrongfully keeping that silver for a long time. It belonged to the poor. And what was that man?

Obviously one of the poor.’

‘Dear Jesus!’ said Madame Magloire. ‘It’s not for me, or Mademoiselle.

It makes no difference to us. But it’s for Monseigneur. What’s Monseigneur to eat with now?’

The bishop gazed at her with an expression of amazement. ‘Ah, come

now! Haven’t we some pewter cutlery?’

Madame Magloire shrugged. ‘Pewter has a smell.’ ‘Tin cutlery, then.’ Madame Magloire gave a meaningful grimace. ‘Tin leaves a taste in your mouth.’ ‘Very well,’ said the bishop, ‘wooden cutlery.’ A few moments later he was having breakfast at the very table where

Jean Valjean had sat the previous evening. As he breakfasted Monseigneur Bienvenu remarked cheerfully to his sister, who said nothing, and to Madame Magloire, who muttered to herself, that there is absolutely no need even for a wooden fork or spoon to dip a piece of bread in a cup of milk.

‘Really, the very idea’, Madame Magloire was saying as she bustled

about, ‘of allowing a man like that into your house! And letting him stay the night with you! It’s lucky all he did was steal! Lord! it makes you shudder to think of it!’

As brother and sister were about to leave the table there was a knock at

the door.

‘Come in,’ said the bishop.

The door opened. An extraordinary, violent group appeared on the

threshold. Three men were holding a fourth by the scruff of his neck. The three men were gendarmes, the other was Jean Valjean.

A sergeant of the gendarmerie, who seemed to be in command of the

group, stood close to the door. He entered and approached the bishop, giving a military salute.

‘Monseigneur,’ he said.

At this word Jean Valjean, glum and dejected-looking, lifted his head in

amazement.

‘Monseigneur?’ he murmured. ‘So he’s not the parish priest?’ ‘Silence!’ said the gendarme. ‘This is Monseigneur, the bishop.’ In the meantime Monseigneur Bienvenu had stepped forward as quickly

as his great age allowed.

‘Ah! There you are!’ he exclaimed, looking at Jean Valjean. ‘I’m glad to

see you. Now, look here, I gave you those candlesticks as well, they’re silver like the rest and you’ll certainly be able to get two hundred francs for them. Why didn’t you take them with your forks and spoons?’

Jean Valjean’s eyes widened, and he stared at the venerable bishop with

an expression no human tongue can describe.

‘Monseigneur,’ said the sergeant, ‘what this man said is true, then? We

ran into him. He looked like someone leaving town. We stopped him to see.

He had this silver …’

‘And he told you,’ the bishop broke in with a smile, ‘that it was given to

him by an old buffer of a priest in whose house he’d spent the night? I see the situation. And you brought him back here? There’s been a misunderstanding.’

‘You mean, we can let him go?’ said the sergeant. ‘Undoubtedly,’ replied the bishop.

The gendarmes released Jean Valjean, who backed away. ‘Is it true they’re letting me go?’ he said in an almost inarticulate voice

and as if he were talking in his sleep.

‘Yes, we’re letting you go, didn’t you hear?’ said one of the gendarmes. ‘My friend,’ said the bishop, ‘before you go, here are your candlesticks.

Take them.’

He went over to the fireplace, took the two silver candlesticks, and

brought them to Jean Valjean. The two women watched him without a word, without making a move, without a glance that might upset the bishop.

Jean Valjean trembled in every limb. He took the two candlesticks

automatically, looking bewildered.

‘Now,’ said the bishop, ‘go in peace. By the way, if ever you come back,

my friend, there’s no need to pass through the garden. You can always enter and leave by the street door. It’s left on the latch day and night.’

Then turning to the gendarmes he said, ‘You may go, gentlemen.’ The gendarmes left.

Jean Valjean was like a man about to faint.

The bishop went up to him and said quietly, ‘Don’t forget, never forget,

you promised to use this money to become an honest man.’

Jean Valjean, who had no recollection of having made any promise,

remained dumbfounded. The bishop had dwelled on these words as he said them. He went on with a kind of solemnity, ‘Jean Valjean, my brother, you’re no longer owned by evil but by good. It’s your soul I’m buying. I’m redeeming it from dark thoughts and the spirit of perdition, and I’m giving it to God.’

XIII

Petit-Gervais

Jean Valjean left the town as though he were escaping. He set off through the countryside walking as fast as he could, following the roads and paths

that appeared in front of him without noticing that he kept retracing his steps. He wandered about like this all morning, without having eaten and without feeling hungry. He was prey to a host of new sensations. He felt a kind of rage, he knew not against whom. He would have been unable to say whether he felt touched or humiliated. He was overcome at times with an unfamiliar susceptibility to emotion, which he fought against, resisting it with the hardening of his heart over the last twenty years. Being in this state tired him. He saw with dismay the disintegration within him of that sort of appalling calm that the injustice of his misfortune had bestowed on him. He wondered what would replace it. At times he truly would have preferred to be in prison with the gendarmes, and for things not to have turned out like this. It would have been less disturbing. Although the season was fairly far advanced, here and there in the hedgerows were still a few late flowers, whose scent as he walked past them brought back childhood memories. It was so long since he was last visited by them that these memories were almost unbearable.

Inexpressible thoughts gathered inside him like this, all day long.

As the sun set in the evening, casting a long shadow on the ground even

from the smallest pebble, Jean Valjean was sitting behind a bush on a vast russet plain that was absolutely deserted. There was nothing on the horizon except the Alps. Not even the spire of a distant village. Jean Valjean was probably some nine miles from Digne. A path that cut across the plain passed within a few paces of the bush.

In the midst of these reflections that would have contributed in no small

way to making his raggedness look terrifying to anyone who might have encountered him, he heard a joyful sound.

He looked round and saw coming along the path a little Savoyard, about

ten years old, singing, with his hurdy-gurdy at his side and his marmot cage on his back. One of those sweet, blithe little lads who go from place to place, with their knees showing through the holes in their trousers.

Singing all the while, the young lad interrupted his progress from time to

time to play knuckle-bones with a few coins he had in his hand – probably his entire fortune. This small change included one forty-sou piece.

The child drew up beside the bush without noticing Jean Valjean and

tossed up his handful of coins, all of which he had until then caught quite deftly on the back of his hand.

This time the forty-sou piece escaped him, and went rolling into the

undergrowth till it reached Jean Valjean.

Jean Valjean put his foot over it.

The child meanwhile had been watching where his coin went, and saw

this.

Unabashed, he walked straight up to the man.

It was a totally isolated spot. As far as the eye could see, there was no

one either on the plain or on the path. The only sound to be heard were the faint little cries of a flock of migratory birds flying through the sky at an immense height. The child stood with his back to the sun, which threaded his hair with gold, and with a blood-red glow dyed crimson the savage face of Jean Valjean.

‘Monsieur, my coin?’ said the little Savoyard with that childish

trustfulness that is a blend of ignorance and innocence.

‘What’s your name?’ said Jean Valjean. ‘Petit-Gervais, monsieur.’ ‘Go away,’ said Jean Valjean. ‘Monsieur,’ said the child, ‘give me back my coin.’ Jean Valjean lowered his head and said nothing.

The child repeated, ‘My coin, monsieur!’ Jean Valjean’s eyes remained fixed on the ground. ‘My coin!’ cried the child. ‘My silver coin! My money!’ Jean Valjean seemed not to hear. The child grasped him by the collar of

his shirt and shook him. And at the same time he did his utmost to shift the big hobnailed shoe standing on his treasure.

‘I want my coin! My forty-sou coin!’ The child wept. Jean Valjean lifted his head. He was still seated. He was

bleary-eyed. He observed the child with a kind of amazement, then he reached for his staff and cried in a terrible voice, ‘Who is it?’

‘Me, monsieur,’ replied the child. ‘Petit-Gervais! Me! Me! Please give

me back my forty sous! Please move your foot, monsieur!’ Then, though very small, annoyed, and becoming almost threatening: ‘I say, will you move your foot? Go on, move your foot, will you!’

‘Ah! You again!’ said Jean Valjean. And suddenly rising to his full height

with his foot still covering the silver coin, he added, ‘Get lost, will you!’

The terrified child stared at him, then began to tremble from head to foot,

and after a few seconds of stupefied paralysis took to his heels, running away as fast as his legs could carry him, not daring to look back or to cry out.

However, some way off he was forced to stop for want of breath, and in

his distractedness Jean Valjean heard the child sobbing.

A few moments later the child had vanished.

The sun had set.

Darkness gathered round Jean Valjean. He had eaten nothing all day. He

was probably feverish.

He remained standing, his position unchanged since the child fled. At

long and irregular intervals his chest rose with his indrawn breath. His gaze, focused ten or twelve paces in front of him, seemed to be studying intently the shape of an old blue earthenware shard lying in the grass. All at once he shuddered, suddenly aware of the evening chill.

He settled his cap more firmly on his brow, unconsciously pulled his shirt

closed and buttoned it up, took a step forward and bent down to pick up his staff.

At that moment he caught sight of the forty-sou coin, which his foot had

half buried in the ground, glinting among the stones. The effect was seismic.

‘What’s that?’ he said to himself.

He fell back three paces, then stopped, unable to tear his gaze from that

spot his foot had been trampling a moment before, as though the thing gleaming there in the dusk were an eye riveted on him.

After a few moments he darted towards the silver coin, seized it, and

straightening up again began to gaze into the distance across the plain,

looking towards the horizon in every direction, standing there quivering like a frightened wild animal seeking a refuge.

He saw nothing. Darkness was falling, the plain was cold and indistinct,

great purple mists were rising in the twilight glow.

‘Ah!’ he said and struck out rapidly in a certain direction, the one taken

by the child when he disappeared. After about thirty paces he paused, looked about him and saw nothing.

Then he shouted with all his might, ‘Petit-Gervais! Petit-Gervais!’ He fell silent and waited.

There was no reply.

The landscape was bleak and deserted. He was surrounded by unbounded

space. There was nothing around him but a shadowy darkness in which his gaze was lost, and a silence in which his voice was lost.

An icy north wind blew and gave a sort of lugubrious vitality to things

around him. The bushes flailed their skinny little limbs with incredible fury.

They looked threatening, as if they were pursuing someone.

He set off again, walking, then began to run, and from time to time he

stopped and shouted into that solitude in the most rending and most disconsolate voice ever to be heard: ‘Petit-Gervais! Petit-Gervais!’

If the child had heard it he would surely have been frightened and have

taken good care not to show himself. But the child was no doubt already far away.

He met a priest on horseback. He went up to him and said, ‘Monsieur le

curé, have you seen a child go by?’

‘No,’ said the priest. ‘One by the name of Petit-Gervais?’ ‘I’ve not seen anyone.’ He drew two five-franc pieces from his purse and handed them to the

priest.

‘Monsieur le curé, take this for your poor. Monsieur le curé, he’s a little

lad, about ten years old, with a marmot, I think, and a hurdy-gurdy. One of those wandering Savoyards, you know?’

‘I haven’t seen him.’

‘Petit-Gervais? He’s not from one of the villages hereabouts? Can you

tell me?’

‘From what you say, my friend, the child’s a little stranger. They pass

through. We don’t know them.’

Jean Valjean seized another two five-franc coins and thrust them at the

priest.

‘For your poor,’ he said. Then he added wildly, ‘Monsieur l’abbé, have

me arrested. I’m a thief.’

The priest dug in his spurs and rode off, very scared.

Jean Valjean started running again in the direction he had first taken.

And so he went on for quite a long way, looking round, calling, shouting,

but he met no one. Two or three times he ran across the plain towards something that looked like a person lying down or crouching but turned out to be just low-lying shrubs or rocks. Eventually, at a place where three paths met, he came to a halt. The moon had risen. He peered into the distance and called out one last time, ‘Petit-Gervais! Petit-Gervais!’ His cry died in the mist without even raising an echo. He murmured again, but in a faint and almost inarticulate voice, ‘Petit-Gervais!’ That was his final effort. His legs suddenly gave way beneath him as though all at once some invisible power had crushed him with the weight of his own bad conscience. He collapsed on a large stone, exhausted, with his hands in his hair and his face in his lap, and he cried, ‘I’m a wretch!’

Then his heart burst and he began to weep. It was the first time he had

wept in nineteen years.

When Jean Valjean left the bishop’s house he was, as we have seen, in

what was to him an entirely different mental universe. He could not understand what was going on inside him. He hardened himself against the old man’s angelic deed and gentle words.

‘You promised to become an honest man. I’m buying your soul. I’m

redeeming it from the spirit of iniquity and giving it to the good Lord.’

This kept coming back to him. This heavenly kindness he countered with

pride – the fortress of evil, as it were, within us. He had the indistinct feeling that this priest’s forgiveness was the greatest assault and most

tremendous attack he had ever experienced. That if he resisted this clemency the hardening of his heart would be definitive. That if he yielded he would be obliged to renounce that hatred with which the deeds of other men had filled his soul over so many years, a hatred he relished. That this time he had to vanquish or be vanquished, and that the battle had been joined, a colossal and decisive battle, between his own wickedness and that man’s goodness.

Among all these glimmers of understanding he reeled like a drunken

man. As he walked on wild-eyed, had he any clear perception of what his experience in Digne might lead to? Did he hear all those mysterious murmurs that caution or badger the spirit at certain moments in life? Did a voice whisper in his ear that what he had just lived through was the key moment of his existence? For him there was no middle ground any more: after this, if he were not to be the best of men, he would be the worst. To put it another way, he would now have to rise higher than the bishop or fall lower than the convict. If he wished to become good, he would have to be an angel. If he wished to remain wicked, he would have to be a monster.

Here again those questions need to be asked that we have already raised

elsewhere: did he amid the confusion of his thoughts have any inkling of all this? Certainly, as we have said, understanding is schooled by adversity.

However, it is doubtful that Jean Valjean was capable of unravelling all that we are suggesting. If these ideas occurred to him he glimpsed rather than saw them, and they succeeded only in casting him into a state of unbearable and almost painful perplexity. As too bright a light would have hurt his eyes on emerging from the dark, so the bishop hurt his soul when he came out of that perverse place of darkness called penal servitude. The future life, the potential life, now offered to him filled him with trepidation and anxiety. He did not really know where he was any more. Like an owl that might suddenly see the sun rise, the convict had been dazzled and, so to speak, blinded by virtue.

What was certain, what he was sure of, was that he was no longer the

same man, he was completely changed within, it was no longer in his power to act as though the bishop had not spoken to him, had not touched him.

In this state of mind he had encountered Petit-Gervais and robbed him of

his forty sous. Why? He could certainly not have explained it. Was it a lingering effect and a final exertion, as it were, of the evil thoughts he had brought with him from prison, a residual impulse, the result of what in statics is called momentum? It was that, and it was also perhaps not even so much as that. Let us put it in simple terms: it was not he who stole. It was not the man; it was the beast that out of habit and instinct had stupidly put his foot on that money while the thinking mind was grappling with so many new and unprecedented obsessions.

When the thinking mind came to its senses again and saw what the brute

had done, Jean Valjean recoiled in anguish and uttered a cry of horror.

This was because by stealing money from that child he had done

something of which he was no longer capable – a strange phenomenon that was possible only in his present situation.

Be that as it may, this last bad deed had a decisive effect on him. It cut

through the chaos in his mind and dispersed it, setting the dark impenetrabilities on one side and light on the other, and it acted on his soul in the state it was then as certain chemical agents act on a cloudy solution by precipitating one element and clarifying the other.

First of all, even before any self-searching or reflection, in a panic, like

someone trying to run away, he did his utmost to find the child to give him back his money. Then when he realized this was futile, impossible, he halted in despair. The moment when he cried out, ‘I’m a wretch!’ he had just seen himself for what he was. And already he was so divorced from himself that he felt that he was no more than a ghost. And that standing there before him, in flesh and blood, with that shirt on his back, with his staff in his hand, with the knapsack he was carrying packed with stolen objects, with his face grim and determined and his mind filled with heinous plans, was the ghastly convicted felon Jean Valjean.

Overwhelming affliction, we have noted, had made him something of a

visionary. This, then, was in the nature of a vision. He actually saw this Jean Valjean, this sinister face, before him. He was almost starting to wonder who the man was, and was horrified by him.

His brain was experiencing one of those turbulent and yet dreadfully

calm moments when introspection is so profound that it absorbs reality. You no longer see the objects around you, and you see the images in your mind as if they were outside yourself.

So he beheld himself, as it were, face to face, and at the same time he

saw in mysterious depth beyond this hallucination a kind of light which he initially took for a blazing torch. Looking more closely at this light that appeared to his conscience, he realized it had a human form, and that this torch was the bishop.

His conscience considered in turn each of the two men placed before it:

the bishop and Jean Valjean. It took no less a person than the former to be the undoing of the latter. By one of those singular effects peculiar to transports of this kind, as his trance-like delirium continued, in his eyes the bishop grew in stature and brilliance while Jean Valjean shrank and faded.

There came a point when he was no more than a shadow. All of a sudden he vanished. The bishop alone remained. He filled this wretched man’s entire soul with a magnificent radiance.

Jean Valjean wept for a long time. He wept burning tears, he sobbed,

more defenceless than a woman, more frightened than a child.

As he wept his mind was flooded with light, an extraordinary light, a

light at once ravishing and terrible. His past life, his first misdeed, his long expiation, his outward brutalization, his inward hardening, his release celebrated with so many plans of vengeance, what had happened to him at the bishop’s house, the latest thing he had done – stealing forty sous from a child, a crime all the more craven and all the more monstrous coming after the bishop’s pardon – all this came back to him, he saw it clearly, and with a clarity such as he had never seen before. He beheld his life and it looked horrible, he beheld his soul and it looked dreadful. Yet this life and this soul were bathed in a gentle light. He thought he saw Satan by the light of Paradise.

How long did he weep like this? What did he do after he had wept?

Where did he go? This was never known. One thing only seems to have been established: that same night, the coach driver who did the Grenoble

post run in those days and arrived in Digne at about three o’clock in the morning, as he came down the street where the bishop lived, saw a man who looked as if he was praying, kneeling on the ground in the darkness at Monseigneur Bienvenu’s front door.

OceanofPDF.com

Book Three

In the Year 1817

I

The Year 1817

Eighteen hundred and seventeen is the year that Louis XVIII described, with a royal self-assurance not lacking in pride, as the twenty-second of his reign. It is the year when Monsieur Bruguière de Sorsum was famous. All the wig-makers’ shops, hoping that the ‘royal bird’ style of powdered wig would make a comeback, were painted blue with the fleur-de-lys. It was the time when, as churchwarden, Comte Lynch sat in the front pew of St-Germain-des-Prés every Sunday wearing the robes of the French peerage, with his Legion of Honour and his long nose, and that majesty of profile characteristic of a man who has performed a brilliant deed. The brilliant deed performed by Monsieur Lynch was this: having as mayor of Bordeaux, on the twelfth of March 1814, surrendered the city a little too promptly to Monsieur le Duc d’Angoulême. Hence his peerage. In 1817 it was the fashion for little boys of between four and six years of age to be enveloped in huge morocco-leather caps with ear-flaps, quite similar to Eskimo headwear. The French army was dressed in white, Austrian-style; regiments were called legions, and instead of numbers they bore the names of départements. Napoleon was on St Helena, and as England refused to provide him with green cloth he was having his old coats turned. In 1817 Pellegrini sang, Mademoiselle Bigottini danced, Potier ruled the stage, Odry did not yet exist. Madame Saqui was stepping into the shoes of

Forioso. There were still Prussians in France, Monsieur Delalot was a prominent figure. Legitimacy had recently asserted itself by cutting off the hand, then the head, of Pleignier, Carbonneau and Tolleron. Grand Chamberlain Prince de Talleyrand and minister of finance designate Abbé Louis laughed like two soothsayers catching each other’s eye: on the fourteenth of July 1790, both of them had celebrated mass in the Champ de Mars for the Feast of the Federation, Talleyrand officiating as bishop and Louis serving as deacon. In 1817, in the side avenues of this same Champ de Mars, great wooden pillars, painted blue with traces of gilded eagles and bees on them, were to be seen lying in the rain, rotting in the grass. These were the columns that two years earlier had supported the emperor’s dais in the Champ de Mai. They were blackened in places, scorched by the camp fires of the Austrians bivouacked near the Gros-Caillou district of Paris.

Two or three of these columns had disappeared in their camp fires and warmed the kaiserlicks’ big hands. The remarkable thing about the Champ de Mai was that it was held in the month of June in the Champ de Mars. In the year 1817 two things were popular: the Touquet edition of Voltaire and the Charter-engraved snuff-box. The latest sensation in Paris was the murder committed by Dautun, who had thrown his brother’s head into the fountain at the Marché aux Fleurs. The Ministry of Naval Affairs had opened an investigation into the doomed frigate Medusa, which was to cover Chaumareix with shame and Géricault with glory. Colonel Selves went to Egypt, there to become Suleiman Pasha. The Palais des Thermes, in Rue de La Harpe, was used as a cooper’s shop. The little wooden cabin that had served Messier, the naval astronomer under Louis XVI, as an observatory could still be seen on the flat roof of the Hôtel de Cluny’s octagonal tower. In her boudoir furnished with sky-blue satin stools the Duchesse de Duras read to three or four friends her unpublished Ourika.

The Ns were scraped off the Louvre. The Pont d’Austerlitz abdicated and took the name Pont du Jardin du Roi – a twofold riddle, disguising both the Pont d’Austerlitz and the Jardin des Plantes. Bringing to his close reading of Horace a particular interest in heroes who become emperors and clog-makers who become dauphins, Louis XVIII had two causes for concern:

Napoleon and Mathurin Bruneau. The French Academy set as the subject for its prize competition ‘The Happiness to be Attained through Study’.

Monsieur Bellart was professionally eloquent. Seen preparing to follow in his footsteps was advocate-general-to-be de Broë, destined to be lampooned by Paul-Louis Courier. There was a pseudo-Chateaubriand named Marchangy, anticipating a pseudo-Marchangy named d’Arlincourt. Claire d’Albe and Malek-Adel were literary masterpieces, and Madame Cottin was declared the leading writer of the age. The Institute allowed the Academician Napoleon Bonaparte to be struck off its list of members. A royal decree established Angoulême as the site of a naval academy, for with the Duc d’Angoulême being grand admiral, obviously the city of Angoulême was entitled as a matter of course to all the distinctions of a seaport; otherwise, the monarchic principle would have been undermined.

The question was raised in the Council of Ministers whether the vignettes of acrobatics that adorned Franconi’s advertising posters and attracted throngs of street urchins should be tolerated. Monsieur Paer, author of Agnese, a fellow with a square face and a wart on his cheek, directed the Marquise de Sassenay’s small private concerts in Rue de la Ville-l’Évêque.

All young girls sang ‘L’Ermite de St-Avelle’, words by Edmond Géraud. Le Nain Jaune became Le Miroir. The Café Lemblin favoured the emperor, as opposed to the Café Valois which favoured the Bourbons. Already watched from the shadows by Louvel, the Duc de Berry had just been married to a princess of Sicily. It had been a year since Madame de Staël died.

Mademoiselle Mars was booed by members of the royal guard. Newspapers of substance were all very lightweight. Their format was small but they had great freedom of expression. Le Constitutionnel was constitutional. La Minerve called Chateaubriand ‘Chateaubriant’. That prompted much laughter among the bourgeoisie at the expense of the great writer. In suborned newspapers time-serving journalists jeered at those exiled in 1815: David was now devoid of talent, Arnault of wit, Carnot of integrity; Soult had not won a single battle. It is true that Napoleon had lost his military genius. Everybody knows that letters sent to an exile through the post rarely reach their destination, with the police making it their sacred

duty to intercept them. This is nothing new. Descartes complained of it during his banishment. Now, when David in a Belgian newspaper expressed some vexation at not having received letters that had been written to him, this was seen as cause for amusement by the royalist rags, which took the opportunity to mock the exile. Whether one said ‘regicides’ or ‘voters’, ‘enemies’ or ‘allies’, ‘Napoleon’ or ‘Buonaparte’ – this could divide two men more than any abyss. All right-minded people agreed that King Louis XVIII, hailed as ‘the immortal author of the Charter’, had put an end for ever to the era of revolutions. In the open space on the Pont-Neuf the word ‘Redivivus’* was carved on the pedestal awaiting the statue of Henri IV. At

4 Rue Thérèse, Monsieur Piet launched his secret conclave dedicated to consolidating the monarchy. In moments of crisis the leaders of the right would say, ‘We must write to Bacot.’ Messieurs Canuel, O’Mahony and De Chappedelaine were devising – not without the approval of Monsieur – what was later to become ‘the Riverside Conspiracy’. The Black Pin had a conspiracy of its own. Delaverderie made contact with Trogoff. Monsieur Decazes, who was something of a liberal, held sway. At 27 Rue St-Dominique, Chateaubriand stood at his window every morning in leggings and slippers, his grey hair in a madras head scarf, staring into a mirror and with a complete set of dentist’s instruments laid out before him cleaning his splendid teeth while dictating to his secretary Monsieur Pilorge drafts of ‘The Monarchy according to the Charter’. The leading critics rated Lafon above Talma. Monsieur de Féletz signed himself ‘A’. Monsieur Hoffmann signed himself ‘Z’. Charles Nodier wrote Thérèse Aubert. Divorce was abolished. The lycées were called ‘colleges’. College students, their collars trimmed with a gold fleur-de-lys, came to blows over the king of Rome.

The palace’s police spies reported to Her Royal Highness Madame the ubiquitously displayed portrait of Monsieur le Duc d’Orléans, in which – very unfortunately – he cut a better figure in his uniform as colonel-general of the hussars than Monsieur le Duc de Berry in his uniform as colonel-general of the dragoons. The city of Paris had the dome of Les Invalides regilded at its own expense. Serious-minded men wondered what Monsieur de Trinquelague would do in this or that event. Monsieur Clausel de

Montals was at odds with Monsieur Clausel de Coussergues on a number of points. Monsieur de Salaberry was not pleased. The actor Picard, who was a member of the Academy to which the actor Molière had not been able to gain membership, had Les Deux Philibert staged at the Odéon on the front of which ‘THE EMPRESS THEATRE’ was still clearly legible, although the letters had been stripped off. People took sides for or against Cugnet de Montarlot. Fabvier was seditious, Bavoux revolutionary. The bookseller Pélicier published an edition of Voltaire under the title Works by Voltaire of the French Academy. ‘It attracts buyers,’ said this candid editor. The general opinion was that Monsieur Charles Loyson would be the genius of the century. He was beginning to be the subject of envy – an indication of success. And these lines were written about him: ‘Even when Loyson flies, you can tell he has feet.’*

As Cardinal Fesch refused to resign, Monsieur de Pins, archbishop of

Amasie, administered the diocese of Lyon. The dispute between Switzerland and France over the valley of Dappes was sparked by a report by Captain, later General, Dufour. Unrecognized, Saint-Simon was working on his sublime dream. At the Academy of Sciences there was a famous Fourier who has been forgotten by posterity, and in some garret or other a little-known Fourier whom future generations will remember. Lord Byron was beginning to make his name. A note to a poem by Millevoye introduced him to France as ‘a certain Lord Baron’. David d’Angers was demonstrating his skill at working in marble. Abbé Carron was singing the praises, to a small gathering of seminarists in Cul-de-sac des Feuillantines, of an unknown priest named Félicité-Robert, later to become Lamennais. A thing that emitted smoke and splashed about on the Seine, making a noise like a dog paddling, went to and fro past the windows of the Tuileries, between the Pont Royal and the Pont Louis XV. It was a contraption of not much use, some sort of plaything, the fantasy of an impractical inventor, a chimera – a steamboat. Parisians stared at this piece of futility with indifference. Monsieur de Vaublanc, reformer of the Institut by coup d’état, royal decree and change of guard, and distinguished creator of several Academicians – having created them, failed to become one himself. The

Faubourg St-Germain and the Pavillon de Marsan wanted Monsieur Delavau for prefect of police because of his loyalty. Dupuytren and Récamier had an argument in the amphitheatre at the School of Medicine and threatened to come to blows over the divinity of Jesus Christ. With one eye on Genesis and the other on nature, Cuvier did his best to please religious reactionaries by reconciling fossils with biblical texts and using mastodons to give credit to Moses. Monsieur François de Neufchâteau, admirable promoter of Parmentier’s memory, made countless efforts to have pomme de terre pronounced parmentière, and was utterly unsuccessful.

Abbé Grégoire, former bishop, former member of the Convention, former senator, in the royalist polemical vocabulary had been downgraded to ‘infamous Grégoire’. That word ‘downgraded’ was denounced as a neologism by Monsieur Royer-Collard.

Under the third arch of the Pont d’Iéna you could still distinguish by its

whiteness the new stone used to fill the hole for explosives that Blücher had made two years earlier to blow up the bridge. The law prosecuted a man who at the sight of the Comte d’Artois entering Notre-Dame had said out loud, ‘Oh, for the days when I used to see Bonaparte and Talma going into the Bal-Sauvage arm in arm!’ Seditious talk. Six months in prison. Traitors were brazen. Men who had defected to the enemy on the eve of battle made no secret of their reward, and went about shamelessly in the light of day with their cynically acquired riches and honours. In the indecency of their paid abjectness deserters from Ligny and Quatre-Bras nakedly displayed their devotion to the monarchy, forgetting what is written on the wall in public conveniences in England: ‘Please adjust your dress before leaving.’

This, in no particular order, is what confusedly survives of that now

forgotten year 1817. History neglects nearly all these details, and cannot do otherwise: it would be overwhelmed by their infinitude. Yet these details, wrongly called trivial – there is no trivial fact in the affairs of man, no trivial leaf in the vegetable world – do serve a purpose. The features of the years are what the face of the century is composed of.

It was in this year, 1817, that four young Parisians ‘had a great lark’.

II

Two Foursomes

One of these Parisians came from Toulouse, another from Limoges, the third from Cahors and the fourth from Montauban. But they were students, and to say student is another way of saying Parisian: to study in Paris is to be born in Paris.

They were unexceptional young men – everyone has seen their type: four

average specimens, neither good nor bad, learned nor ignorant, geniuses nor fools, with the handsome looks of that delightful springtime we call the age of twenty. They were four ordinary Oscars, for at that time Arthurs did not yet exist. ‘Burn for him the perfumes of Araby!’ exclaimed the love song. ‘Oscar approaches, Oscar, I shall see him!’ Ossian had left his mark, the fashionable was Scandinavian and Caledonian. The pure English style would not prevail until later, and the first of the Arthurs, Wellington, had only just won the battle of Waterloo.

The names of these particular Oscars were Félix Tholomyès, from

Toulouse, Listolier from Cahors, Fameuil from Limoges, and lastly Blachevelle from 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 as her nom de guerre the name of a flower. Fameuil idolized Zéphine, short for Joséphine. Tholomyès had Fantine, known as the Blonde because of her beautiful hair, the colour of sunlight.

Favourite, Dahlia, Zéphine and Fantine were four lovely young women,

sweet-smelling and radiant, still with an air of the seamstress about them, not having entirely forsaken their sewing-needles, giddy with their love affairs but still with a lingering serenity of work on their faces, and in their souls that bloom of innocence that survives a woman’s first fall. There was one of the four they called ‘the baby’ because she was the youngest, and one they called ‘the old lady’. The old lady was twenty-three. To be quite candid, the first three were more experienced, more reckless and more

pitched into the tumult of life than Fantine the Blonde, who was still cherishing her first illusion.

Dahlia, Zéphine, and especially Favourite, could not have said the same.

There was already more than one episode in their stories, which had only just begun, and the lover whose name was Adolph in the first chapter turned out to be Alphonse in the second and Gustave in the third. Poverty and love of finery are two disastrous counsellors. One scolds and the other flatters, and beautiful young girls of humble origin have both whispering in their ears, one on either side. These ill-protected souls pay heed. That is how they come to be fallen women and to have stones thrown at them. They are oppressed by the splendour of all that is snow-white and unattainable. Alas! what if the Jungfrau were hungry?

Dahlia and Zéphine were admirers of Favourite because she had been to

England. She was living on her own very early in life. Her father was a churlish old mathematics teacher, full of himself, unmarried, running round town giving private lessons despite his age. As a young man this teacher had one day seen a chambermaid catch her dress on a fender. He fell in love as a consequence of that chance incident. Favourite was the result. She would run into her father from time to time, who would nod to her. One morning a nunnish-looking old woman came to see her at home and said, ‘You don’t know me, mademoiselle?’ ‘No.’ ‘I’m your mother.’ Then the old woman helped herself to food and drink, had a mattress she owned delivered there, and moved in. This peevish and sanctimonious mother never spoke to Favourite, let hours go by without uttering a word, ate enough to feed four, morning, noon and night, and would go down to chat in the porter’s lodge, where she spoke ill of her daughter.

What had drawn Dahlia to Listolier, and possibly to others, to idleness,

was having excessively pretty pink nails. How could she put nails like that to work? The girl who wants to remain virtuous must have no pity for her hands. As for Zéphine, she had conquered Fameuil by the saucily caressive way she had of saying, ‘Yes, monsieur.’

The young men were chums, the young girls were friends. Such loves are

always matched by such friendships.

It is one thing to be virtuous and another to be philosophical. The proof

of this being that, with all due reservations about such irregular relationships, Favourite, Zéphine and Dahlia were philosophical young women and Fantine a virtuous one.

Virtuous? some will say. And what about Tholomyès? Solomon would

reply that love constitutes virtue. We will confine ourselves to saying that Fantine’s love was a first love, an exclusive love, a true love.

She alone of the four was on intimate terms with one man only.* Fantine was one of those creatures born, so to speak, of the common

people. She emerged from the most unfathomable depths of social obscurity, bearing on her brow the mark of anonymity and of unknown origins. She was born at Montreuil-sur-Mer. Of what parents? Who can say? She had never been known to have father or mother. She was called Fantine. Why Fantine? She had never been called by any other name. At the time of her birth the Directory was still in existence. No family name, since she had no family; and no baptismal name, since the Church was gone. She was called whatever took the fancy of whoever it was that first came across her as a very small child, running barefoot in the street. She accepted a name the way she accepted moisture from the clouds on her forehead when it rained. She was called ‘little Fantine’. That is all anyone knew about her.

Such was this human being’s start in life. At the age of ten Fantine left town and went into domestic service with some local farmers. At fifteen she came to Paris ‘to seek her fortune’. Fantine was beautiful, and remained chaste as long as she could. She was a lovely blonde with splendid teeth. She had gold and pearls for her dowry, but her gold was her head of hair and her pearls were in her mouth.

She worked to keep herself alive. Then, also to keep herself alive, she

loved, for the heart has its own hunger.

She loved Tholomyès.

A conquest for him, for her the love of her life. The streets of the Latin

quarter, thronged with students and grisettes, saw the beginning of this liaison. In that maze of streets on the Panthéon hill, the scene of the making and unmaking of so many intrigues, Fantine had long evaded Tholomyès

but in such a way as to keep running into him. There is a way of avoiding someone that is very like seeking that person out. In short, the shepherd won his shepherdess.

Blachevelle, Listolier and Fameuil formed a kind of group of which

Tholomyès was the leader. He was the joker.

Tholomyès was the classic perpetual student. He was rich. He had an

income of four thousand francs. Four thousand francs! A glorious scandal on Mont Ste-Geneviève! Tholomyès was a thirty-year-old pleasure-seeker, and badly preserved. He was wrinkled and toothless, and he was beginning to show signs of baldness, he himself saying of it unsentimentally, ‘Cock-of-the-walk at thirty, coot at forty.’ His digestion was poor, and one of his eyes had started watering. But as his youthfulness burned out, his light-heartedness was ignited. He replaced his teeth with buffooneries, his hair with mirth, his health with irony, and in his weeping eye there was always laughter. He was a wreck, but flourishing. Upping sticks long before its time, his youth beat an orderly retreat with gales of laughter, and no one noticed. He had a play rejected at the Vaudeville. He wrote the odd undistinguished poem. Moreover, he was sceptical about everything in a superior way – a great strength in the eyes of the weak. So, being ironic and bald, he was their leader. Is it possible that irony comes from the English word ‘iron’?

One day Tholomyès took the other three aside, made sure he had their

full attention and said, ‘Fantine, Dahlia, Zéphine and Favourite have been asking us for nearly a year to give them a surprise. We’ve made a solemn promise to do so. They’re always talking about it, especially to me. Just as the old women in Naples cry to St Januarius, “Faccia gialluta, fa o miracolo!” – “Yellow face, perform your miracle!” – so our beauties keep saying, “Tholomyès, when are you going to deliver your surprise?” At the same time our parents keep writing to us. Attacked on both sides. I think the time has come. Let’s talk.’

At this point Tholomyès lowered his voice and mysteriously described

something so amusing that a huge enthusiastic guffaw emerged

simultaneously from the mouths of all four of them and Blachevelle cried, ‘That’s a great idea!’

Finding themselves outside a smoke-filled bar, they went inside, and the

rest of their confabulations were shrouded in obscurity.

The result of this shadowy conspiracy was a brilliant outing that took

place the following Sunday, to which the four young men invited the four young women.

III

Haphazard Pairings

It is hard nowadays to picture what a country outing for students and grisettes was like forty-five years ago. Paris no longer has the same surroundings. The face of what might be called outer-Parisian life has completely changed in the last half-century. Where there was once the coucou*, there is now the railway carriage. Where there was once the old barge, there is now the steamboat. Today people talk of Fécamp as in the past they spoke of St-Cloud. Paris of 1862 is a city with all of France for its outskirts.

The four couples conscientiously performed all the country-excursion

rituals possible at that time. The holiday season was just beginning and it was a warm, bright summer’s day. Favourite, the only one of the girls who knew how to write, in the name of all four had written the following to Tholomyès the day before: ‘An early start is a good start.’ That is why they rose at five o’clock in the morning. Then they took the passenger barge to St-Cloud, looked at the dry fountain and cried, ‘It must look splendid when there’s water!’ They breakfasted at the Tête-Noire, before Castaing had yet been there. They treated themselves to a game of ring-throwing among the rows of trees by the large pond, went up the Lantern of Diogenes, played roulette for macaroons on the Pont de Sèvres, picked flowers at Puteaux, bought reed-pipes at Neuilly, ate apple turnovers wherever they went, were perfectly happy.

The young girls chirruped and chattered like fugitive songbirds. It was

bliss. Now and again they gave the young men little slaps. Morning-of-life’s ecstasy! Delightful years! Dragonflies’ wings all aquiver! Oh, no matter who you may be, don’t you remember? Have you walked through the bushes, holding aside the branches for the pretty face following behind you? Have you slid, on a slope wet with rain, laughing, with a woman you love catching you by the hand and crying, ‘Oh, my brand-new ankle-boots!

Just look at the state of them!’

Let us say at once, this good-humoured party was spared the vexatious

joy of a shower, although Favourite, sounding authoritative and maternal, had said as they set out, ‘The slugs are out on the paths – a sign of rain, my dears.’

All four were exceedingly pretty. Monsieur le Chevalier de Labouïsse,

famous at that time as a good old classic poet who had his Éléonore, was strolling under the chestnut trees of St-Cloud that day when he saw them pass by at about ten o’clock in the morning and exclaimed, ‘There’s one too many,’ thinking of the Graces. Favourite, Blachevelle’s girl, the twenty-three-year-old, the old lady, ran ahead beneath the great green boughs, jumping ditches, deliriously leaping over bushes, and presided over this merry-making with the spiritedness of a young faun. Zéphine and Dahlia, whose beauty happened to be such that they set each other off to advantage and complemented each other, were never apart, more out of flirtatious instinct than friendship; and clinging to each other, they struck English poses. The first keepsakes had just started to appear; melancholy was the incoming fashion for women as, later, Byronism was for men, and hairstyles for the tender sex were beginning to have a weeping look about them. Zéphine and Dahlia had their hair dressed in ringlets. Listolier and Fameuil, engaged in a discussion about their professors, explained to Fantine the difference between Monsieur Delvincourt and Monsieur Blondeau.

Blachevelle looked as if he had been created for the sole purpose of

carrying on his arm, that Sunday, Favourite’s Ternaux shawl, patterned at one end only.

Tholomyès followed behind, dominating the group. He was very cheerful

but you could sense the controlling force in him. There was dictatorship in his jollity. His principal ornament was a pair of nankeen bell-bottomed trousers with footstraps of braided copper. He had in his hand a strong cane walking-stick that had cost two hundred francs and, since he denied himself nothing, a strange thing called a cigar in his mouth. Holding nothing sacred, he smoked.

‘That Tholomyès is amazing!’ said the others, in awe. ‘What trousers!

What energy!’

As for Fantine, she was the essence of joy. Her splendid teeth had

evidently been provided by God for a purpose – laughter. She preferred to carry in her hand her little straw hat with its long white ribbons, rather than wear it on her head. Her thick blonde hair, inclined to fan out and easily falling loose, and which she had to keep pinning up again, seemed made for Galatea’s flight under the willows. Her rosy lips babbled with delight. The voluptuously turned-up corners of her mouth, as in the ancient masks of Erigone, seemed to encourage the bold. But above this exuberance in the lower part of her face her long shadowy eyelashes were discreetly cast down, like a call to order. There was something ineffably charming and resplendent about her entire outfit. She wore a dress of mauve barège*, little reddish-brown shoes cross-laced over her fine, white lacy stockings; and that Marseille invention, a type of muslin spencer whose name, canezou, a corruption of the words quinze août as pronounced on the Canebière, evokes sunny weather, a hot climate, and the south. The other three, less bashful as we have already said, were simply bare-fleshed in low-cut dresses, which in summer, beneath flower-covered hats, looks very charming and flirtatious. But beside their provocative attire, blonde Fantine’s canezou, with its transparencies, its suggestiveness and its modesty, at once concealing and revealing, seemed an alluring contrivance of decency; and the famous Court of Love, presided over by the Vicomtesse de Cette with her sea-green eyes, might have awarded the prize for flirtatiousness to this canezou, competing for modesty. The simplest is sometimes the canniest. It can happen.

Stunning to look at, with a delicate profile, eyes of deep blue, fleshy

eyelids, small arched feet, beautifully turned wrists and ankles, a white complexion showing here and there the azure-tinted branching of the veins, fresh young cheeks, the sturdy neck of Aeginetan Junos, strong and supple in the nape; shoulders that might have been modelled by Coustou, with a voluptuous dimple in the middle visible through the muslin; gaiety tempered with dreaminess, sculptural and exquisite – such was Fantine.

And discernible beneath these trappings and ribbons was a statue, and within this statue a soul.

Fantine was beautiful without really being aware of it. Those rare

visionaries, mysterious high priests of the beautiful who silently compare everything with perfection, would have glimpsed in this young working girl, through the transparency of her Parisian grace, the sacred euphony of antiquity. This child of obscurity was an aristocrat. She was beautiful in both aspects, style and rhythm. Style is the form the ideal takes, and rhythm its movement.

We have said that Fantine was joyfulness. Fantine was also demureness.

To any observer who might have studied her closely, what emanated from

her through all that giddiness of youth, of the season and of her love affair, was an invincible expression of reserve and modesty. She remained a little astonished. This chaste astonishment is the subtle difference that distinguishes Psyche from Venus. Fantine had the long, slender white fingers of the vestal virgin who stirs the ashes of the sacred fire with a golden pin. Although she would have refused Tholomyès nothing, as we shall see only too clearly, her face in repose was supremely virginal. A grave and almost austere dignity suddenly overcame her at certain times, and there was nothing more singular and disturbing than to see her gaiety so quickly subside and introversion succeed her exuberance, without any transition. This abrupt seriousness, sometimes of a pronounced severity, resembled the disdain of a goddess. Her brow, nose and chin presented that balance of line, quite distinct from balance of proportion, from which the harmony of the face derives. In that very telling space that separates the base of the nose from the upper lip, she had a slight and charming hollow,

the mysterious sign of chastity that made Barbarossa fall in love with a Diana found in the excavations at Iconium.

Love may very well be a transgression. Fantine was the innocence that

survives transgression.

IV

Tholomyès Is So Happy, He Sings a Spanish Song

That whole day was dawn, from morning till night. All nature seemed to be on holiday and filled with gladness. The flowerbeds of St-Cloud perfumed the air. The breeze on the Seine softly stirred the leaves. Branches waved in the wind. Bees plundered the jasmine. A whole artistic colony of butterflies frolicked among the yarrow, clover and wild oats. In the king of France’s majestic park there were vagabonds aplenty: the birds.

The four joyous couples revelled in the sunshine, amid these fields,

flowers, trees.

And in this shared paradise, talking, singing, running, dancing, chasing

butterflies, gathering bindweed, getting their pink lacy stockings wet in the tall grass, radiant, flighty, meaning no harm, every girl received a little randomly the kisses of every man, with the exception of Fantine. Remote in her abstracted, shy, dreamy resistance, she was in love.

‘You always have that look about you,’ said Favourite.

Such is true joy. This gallivanting of happy couples has a deep affinity

with life and with nature, and elicits from everything fondness and light.

Once upon a time there was a fairy who created the fields and forests specially for those in love. Hence the eternal truancy of lovers, who are forever escaping to the countryside and will go on doing so as long as lovers and countryside continue to exist. Hence the popularity of springtime among thinkers. The nobleman and the lowly paid worker, duke and upstart, courtiers and townsfolk, as they used to say in the old days, all are vassals of this fairy. People laugh, they seek each other out, and there is in the air a sublime brilliance. What a difference being in love makes! Notaries’ clerks are gods. And the little shrieks, the chasing through the grass, the chance to

put an arm around a waist, those sweet nothings that are music to the ear, the adoration declared in the way a single syllable is uttered, those cherries plucked from one mouth to another – all this becomes part of the coruscating heavenly radiance. Beautiful young women are sweetly lavish of themselves. They think this will never end. Philosophers, poets, painters, observe these raptures and do not know what to make of them, so bedazzled are they. ‘The departure for Cythera!’ cries Watteau. Lancret, painter of the lower classes, observes his commoners going off into the blue. Diderot opens his arms to all these dalliances, and d’Urfé introduces Druids among them.

After breakfast the four couples went to what was then called the King’s

Square to see a plant recently arrived from India, whose name escapes us at present, which at that time was drawing the whole of Paris to St-Cloud. It was a bizarre yet attractive long-stemmed shrub with countless branches of thread-like slenderness, tangled and leafless, and covered with a million tiny white rosettes, which made the shrub look like a head of hair spangled with flowers. There was always an admiring crowd around it.

After viewing the shrub Tholomyès exclaimed, ‘Donkey-rides on me!’

And having agreed a price with the owner of the donkeys, they rode back by way of Vanves and Issy. At Issy an incident occurred. By chance the park, confiscated land at that time owned by the army supplier Bourguin, happened to be wide open. They went through the gates, visited the model of an anchorite in his grotto, tried the mysterious distorting effects of the famous chamber of mirrors, a lewd trap worthy of some millionaire satyr or Turcaret metamorphosed into Priapus. Vigorously they set in motion the big net swing attached to the two chestnut trees extolled by Abbé de Bernis.

And while swinging the girls in it, one after the other, which amid general laughter created all the billowing skirts Greuze might have wished to see, Tholomyès from Toulouse, who had a touch of the Spaniard about him (Toulouse being related to Tolosa), sang to a melancholy tune the old Galician song probably inspired by some lovely maiden flying through the air on a rope hung between two trees:

Soy de Badajoz,

Amor me llama, Toda mi alma, Es en mi ojos, Porque enseñas, A tus piernas.

Fantine alone refused to go on the swing.

‘I don’t like people putting on airs like that,’ Favourite muttered tartly.

Their donkeys gave way to a fresh delight: they crossed the Seine in a

boat, and from Passy arrived at the Étoile gate on foot. Let us not forget they had been up since five o’clock that morning, but – Bah! ‘There’s no such thing as tiredness on Sundays,’ as Favourite would say, ‘on Sundays tiredness has the day off.’ At about three o’clock the four gleefully terrified couples were rattling down on the coaster ride, a curious structure which then stood on the Beaujon heights and whose serpentine loops could be seen outlined above the trees on the Champs-Élysées.

From time to time Favourite cried out, ‘What about the surprise? I want

the surprise.’

‘Patience,’ replied Tholomyès.

V

At Bombarda’s

When they had exhausted the delights of the coaster ride, their thoughts turned to eating. And the radiant party of eight, somewhat tired at last, fetched up at Bombarda’s tavern, a subsidiary establishment set up on the Champs-Élysées by Bombarda, the owner of the famous restaurant whose sign then hung in the Rue de Rivoli, near the Passage Delorme.

A large but ugly room with an alcove containing a bed at the back of it

(given how crowded the tavern was on a Sunday, they had no choice but to accept this accommodation); two windows affording a view of the embankment and the river through the elm trees; a magnificent August sunbeam glancing across the windows; two tables: on one, a triumphant pile of posies mingled with ladies’ and gents’ hats; at the other, the four couples seated round a festive clutter of dishes, plates, glasses and bottles, jugs of

beer along with flasks of wine. Not much orderliness on the table, some disorderliness underneath it.

‘The noise they made under the table, / drumming their feet – a terrible

din! It was unbearable,’ says Molière.

This was where the pastoral idyll that began at five o’clock in the

morning had got to by half-past four in the afternoon. The sun was setting, appetites had been satisfied.

Thronging and full of sunshine, the Champs-Élysées were all light and

dust, two things that constitute Elysian glory. Those whinnying marbles the Marly horses reared up in a golden cloud. There was a to-ing and fro-ing of carriages. A detachment of magnificent lifeguards, led by a bugler, descended Avenue de Neuilly. The white flag, faintly pink in the sunset, fluttered above the dome of the Tuileries. Place de la Concorde, which had become once more Place Louis XV, was teeming with happy pedestrians.

Many wore the silver fleur-de-lys on the moire ribbon that in 1817 had not yet entirely disappeared from buttonholes. Here and there, among applauding passers-by who gathered around them, little girls danced in a ring to a then well known Bourbon rhyme destined to spell the end of the Hundred Days, which had as its refrain, ‘Give us back our père de Gand*, Give us back our père.’

Scattered groups of suburban folk, dressed in their Sunday best,

sometimes even wearing the fleur-de-lys like city-dwellers, played the ring game and went round on the wooden carousel horses in the spacious Carré Marigny. Others drank. A few – printers’ apprentices – wore paper caps.

They could be heard laughing. Everything was radiant. It was a time of undeniable peace and the utmost royalist security. It was the period when a special private report from Prefect of Police Anglès to the king about the suburbs of Paris concluded with these lines:

‘All things considered, sire, there is nothing to be feared from these

people. They are as easy-going and indolent as cats. The populace is restless in the provinces, not in Paris. All these men are small fry. It would take two of them, one standing on the other, sire, to match one of your grenadiers.

There is nothing to be feared from the capital’s populace. It is remarkable

that the average height of this population has fallen in the last fifty years.

And the people of Paris’s suburbs are smaller than before the Revolution.

They are not dangerous. In short, they are harmless riff-raff.’

Police prefects do not believe a cat can possibly turn into a lion. Yet it

can, and that is the miracle of the Paris populace. Moreover, the cat so despised by Comte Anglès was held in esteem by the republics of antiquity.

It embodied freedom, in their eyes; and as though to serve as a pendant to the Wingless Minerva of Piraeus, there stood on the public square in Corinth the bronze colossus of a cat. The naive police of the Restoration took too ‘favourable’ a view of the people of Paris. They are not such ‘harmless riff-raff’ as 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 downright frivolous and lazy, no one more apparently forgetful. Yet in this he is not to be trusted. He is prone to indolence of every sort, but when there is glory at stake he is a wonder, capable of all kinds of fury. Give him a pike, he will deliver the tenth of August. Give him a gun, you will have Austerlitz. He is Napoleon’s mainstay and Danton’s powerbase. Is his country at stake? He enlists. Is liberty at stake? He rips up the cobblestones.

Beware! His hair bristles with epic rage, his shirt hangs about him like the chlamys. Watch out! He will make Caudine Forks of any Rue Greneta. If the hour strikes, this working-class Parisian will grow in stature. This little man will rise up and his gaze will be terrible and his breath will become a hurricane, and from that poor puny chest will issue wind enough to reshape the contours of the Alps. It is thanks to the working-class Parisian that the Revolution, taken to the army, conquers Europe. He sings. That is his pleasure. Give him a song to match his nature, and you will see! As long as he has only the ‘Carmagnole’ to sing, all he does is overthrow Louis XVI.

Have him sing the ‘Marseillaise’, and he will free the world.

With this note written in the margin of Anglès’s report, we return to our

four couples. The meal, as we said, was drawing to a close.

VI

Chapter in which Lovers Adore

Table talk, lovers’ talk – both are equally elusive. Lovers’ talk is castle-building, table talk is pipe-dreaming.

Fameuil and Dahlia were humming, Tholomyès drinking, Zéphine

laughing, Fantine smiling. Listolier was blowing a wooden trumpet he had bought at St-Cloud. Favourite gazed tenderly at Blachevelle and said, ‘Blachevelle, I adore you.’

This prompted Blachevelle to ask, ‘What would you do, Favourite, if I

stopped loving you?’

‘What would I do!’ cried Favourite. ‘Oh, don’t say that even as a joke! If

you stopped loving me, I’d come after you, I’d scratch and claw you, I’d throw water over you, I’d have you arrested.’

Blachevelle smiled with the voluptuous self-conceit of a man whose

vanity is flattered.

Favourite went on, ‘Yes, I’d send the police after you! Oh, I’d make no

end of a fuss! You scoundrel!’

Blachevelle threw himself back in his chair in ecstasy and proudly closed

his eyes.

As she ate, Dahlia said quietly to Favourite amid the uproar, ‘So you

really worship your Blachevelle, do you?’

‘I detest him,’ replied Favourite in a similar undertone, picking up her

fork again. ‘He’s stingy. It’s the lad who lives opposite me I love. He’s very well mannered, that young man – you know the one? You can see he’s got the makings of an actor. I love actors. As soon as he comes home, his mother says, “Oh Lord! That’s the end of my peace and quiet! Now he’s going to start shouting. My dear boy, you drive me crazy!” Because he goes right up to the top of the house, climbs up to some rat-ridden attic, some dark poky corner, and then sings and recites – don’t ask me what – and you can hear him all the way downstairs! He earns twenty sous a day writing pettifogging documents for some lawyer. He’s the son of a former choirmaster at St-Jacques-du-Haut-Pas. Oh, he’s a real gentleman! He

adores me so much that one day when he saw me making pancake batter he said to me, “Mam’selle, make your gloves into fritters and I’ll eat them.” Only an artist would say something like that. Oh, he’s such a gentleman.

I’m falling madly in love with that boy. All the same, I tell Blachevelle I adore him. What a liar I am! Eh? What a liar!’

Favourite paused, then went on, ‘You see, Dahlia, I feel miserable. It’s

done nothing but rain all summer, the wind’s always blowing, it gets on my nerves, Blachevelle’s very tight-fisted, there are hardly any peas in the market, you don’t know what to eat. I’m down in the dumps, as the English say, butter’s so expensive, and look, here we are eating in a room with a bed in it. It’s disgusting! It makes me fed up with life.’

VII

Tholomyès’s Wisdom

In the meantime, a few of them sang while the others engaged in rowdy conversation, all speaking at once. In the end it was just noise. Tholomyès intervened.

‘Let’s not speak too quickly or without reflecting!’ he exclaimed. ‘Let’s

think first, if we want to be brilliant. Too much spontaneity simply empties the mind. Spilled beer gathers no froth. Slow down, gentlemen. Let’s bring some dignity to the banquet. Let’s eat thoughtfully, feast slowly. Let’s not be in any hurry. Consider the springtime. If it arrives too soon it’s blasted, that’s to say, frostbitten. Overeagerness spells the ruin of peach and apricot trees. Overeagerness kills the graciousness and pleasure of a good dinner party. “No overeagerness, gentlemen!” Grimod de la Reynière agrees with Talleyrand on that.’

A murmur of rebellion rumbled within the group. ‘Leave us alone, Tholomyès,’ said Blachevelle. ‘Down with the tyrant!’ said Fameuil. ‘Bombarda, Bombance and Bamboche!’* cried Listolier. ‘A Sunday’s a Sunday,’ Fameuil declared. ‘We’re sober,’ added Listolier.

‘Tholomyès,’ remarked Blachevelle, ‘observe my calm.’ ‘You’re the marquis of that estate,’ retorted Tholomyès.

This feeble play on words – the Marquis de Montcalm† was a renowned

royalist – had the same effect as a stone thrown into a pond. All the frogs fell silent.

‘Friends!’ cried Tholomyès in the voice of a man reasserting his

authority. ‘Pull yourselves together. This unexpected pun shouldn’t be greeted with too much amazement. Not everything that comes out of the blue is necessarily worthy of admiration and respect. Puns are the droppings of the mind on the wing. The joke lands wherever it falls, and after excreting a joke the mind soars. A white splodge splattered on a rock does not prevent the condor from scaling the heights. Far be it from me to belittle the pun! I have a due respect for its merits, nothing more. The most noble, the most sublime, the most delightful of humankind, and perhaps other than humankind, have played on words. Jesus Christ made a pun about St Peter, Moses about Isaac, Aeschylus about Polynices, Cleopatra about Octavian.

And note that Cleopatra’s pun preceded the battle of Actium and without it no one would remember the city of Toryne, a name that sounds like a Greek word meaning ladle. That said, I go back to my exhortation. I repeat, brothers, no overeagerness, no hurly-burly, no excess, even in witticisms, jollifications, high spirits, or quips. Listen to me – I have Amphiaraus’ prudence and Caesar’s baldness. There must be a limit, even to rebuses. Est modus in rebus.‡ There must be a limit, even to meals. You’re fond of apple turnovers, ladies. Don’t overindulge your fondness. Even in the matter of turnovers, good sense and artfulness are required. Gluttony punishes the glutton, Gula punit gulax. The good Lord has given indigestion the task of teaching our stomachs a lesson. And remember this: every one of our passions, even love, has a stomach that mustn’t be overfed. In all things the word finis must be written in good time. We must keep ourselves in check, and when it becomes a matter of urgency draw the bolt on our appetite, lock up our cravings and put ourselves behind bars. The wise man is he who knows how to put himself under arrest at any given moment. Trust me a little. Just because I’ve studied a bit of law, so my exam results say, and

because I know the difference between a mooted case and a sub judice case, and because I’ve defended a thesis in Latin on the way torture was administered in Rome during the period when Munatius Demens was the Parricide’s magistrate who investigated murder, and because, it would seem, I’m going to qualify as a doctor, it doesn’t necessarily follow that I’m an idiot. I advise you to observe moderation in your desires. As sure as my name is Félix Tholomyès, what I say is right. Happy the man who, when the time comes, shows a hero’s resolve and abdicates like Sulla, or Origen.’

Favourite listened with close attention. ‘Félix,’ she said, ‘what a pretty

word! I love that name. It’s Latin. It means the same as Prosper.’

Tholomyès went on. ‘Quirites*, gentlemen, caballeros†, my friends. Do

you wish to feel no itch, to spare yourself the nuptial bed and defy love?

Nothing simpler. Here’s the recipe: lemonade, strenuous exercise, hard labour. Tire yourself out, haul boulders, don’t sleep, stay awake, sate yourself with gassy drinks and lotus tea, savour emulsions of poppyseed and agnus castus, with the added spice of a strict diet, starve yourself, and combine this with cold baths, girdles of herbs, the application of a lead plaque, lotions made with Goulard’s extract and poultices made with vinegar and water.’

‘I’d rather have a woman,’ said Listolier. ‘Beware of women!’ Tholomyès responded. ‘Woe to the man who

surrenders himself to the fickle heart of a woman! A woman is scheming and perfidious. She hates the serpent out of professional jealousy. The serpent is the shop across the way.’

‘Tholomyès!’ cried Blachevelle. ‘You’re drunk!’ ‘Of course I am!’ said Tholomyès. ‘Be cheerful then,’ said Blachevelle. ‘Agreed,’ replied Tholomyès.

And refilling his glass, he rose to his feet. ‘Glory be to wine! Nunc te,

Bacche, canam!‡ Forgive me, ladies, that’s Spanish. And the proof, señoras, is this: such being the people, such is the cask. The arroba of Castile contains sixteen litres, the cántaro of Alicante, twelve, the almude of the Canaries, twenty-five, the cuartin of the Balearic Isles, twenty-six, Tsar

Peter’s barrel, thirty. Long live that great tsar and long live his barrel, which was greater still! Ladies, a word of friendly advice: take the man sitting on the wrong side of you for your lover, if you so please. It’s in the nature of love to err. Romance isn’t meant to make life a brutalizing misery for itself, like an English housemaid with calluses on her knees from scrubbing floors. Sweet romance isn’t meant for that – it gladly roves! It has been said that to err is human; I say, to err is to be amorous. Ladies, I adore you all.

‘O Zéphine, O Joséphine, with your more than unconventional prettiness

you’d be attractive if you weren’t crumpled. You look like a pretty face that someone has sat on by mistake.

‘As for Favourite, O nymphs and muses! Blachevelle was stepping over

the gutter in Rue Guérin-Boisseau one day when he saw a beautiful girl in smooth white stockings, showing off her legs. This prelude was to his liking, and Blachevelle fell in love. The girl he loved was Favourite. O Favourite, you have Ionian lips. There was a Greek painter called Euphorion, nicknamed “the painter of lips”. That Greek alone would have been worthy to paint your mouth. Listen, before you there was no creature worthy of that name. You were made to win the apple, like Venus, or to eat it, like Eve. Beauty begins with you. I’ve just mentioned Eve. It was you that created her. You deserve the patent for the invention of the beautiful woman. O Favourite, I’ll now stop addressing you in familiar terms because I’m switching from poetry to prose.* You spoke of my name a little while ago. I was touched. But whoever we may be, let us distrust names. They can be misleading. My name’s Félix, but I’m not happy. Words are liars. Let’s not blindly accept the suggestions they give us. It would be a mistake to write to Liège for corks and to Pau for leather gloves.†

‘Miss Dahlia, in your place I’d call myself Rosa. A flower should smell

sweet and a woman should have some wit.

‘I say nothing of Fantine. She’s a star-gazer, a dreamy, pensive, sensitive

soul. She’s a phantom in the form of a nymph, with the modesty of a nun, astray in the life of the Parisian grisette but taking refuge in her illusions, singing and praying and gazing into the blue without really knowing what she’s seeing or what she’s doing, and who, with eyes turned heavenwards,

wanders about in a garden where there are more birds than actually exist. O Fantine, let me tell you this: I, Tholomyès, am an illusion. But she doesn’t even hear me, this fair maid of fancy! Besides, everything about her is freshness, softness, youth, sweet morning light. O Fantine, a girl who deserves to be called marguerite or pearl*, you’re a woman of the most lustrous beauty.

‘Ladies, a second piece of advice: do not marry. Marriage is a form of

grafting. It can take well or badly. Avoid that risk. But why bother telling you this? I’m wasting my breath. Girls are incurable when it comes to marriage. And whatever we sensible chaps may say won’t prevent the waistcoat-makers and shoe-stitchers from dreaming of husbands with diamonds galore. Well, that’s as may be, but remember this, my dears: you eat too much sugar. You have but one fault, O women, and that’s nibbling sugar. O rodent sex, your pretty little white teeth adore sugar. Now, listen carefully, sugar is a salt. All salts cause dehydration. Sugar is the most dehydrating of all salts. It draws the blood fluids out of the veins. Hence, coagulation, then solidification of the blood. Hence, tubercles in the lungs.

Hence, death. That’s why diabetes is little short of consumption. So don’t crunch sugar and you’ll live!

‘I now turn to the men. Gentlemen, make conquests. Steal your darlings

from each other without remorse. Change partners. There are no friends in matters of love. Wherever there’s a pretty woman there’s open hostility. No quarter given, all-out war! A pretty woman is a casus belli. A pretty woman is flagrant provocation. All the invasions of history have been brought about by petticoats. Woman is man’s entitlement. Romulus carried off the Sabines, William carried off the Saxons’ womenfolk, Caesar carried off the Romans’. The man who isn’t loved hovers like a vulture over other men’s mistresses. And as for myself, to all those poor unfortunates who are widowers I give you Bonaparte’s sublime address to the army of Italy: “Soldiers, you have nothing; the enemy has it all.” ’

Tholomyès paused. ‘Catch your breath, Tholomyès,’ said Blachevelle.

At that point Blachevelle, accompanied by Listolier and Fameuil,

launched into one of those art-student songs, sung to a plaintive tune, composed of the first words that spring to mind, extravagantly rhymed or not at all, as devoid of meaning as the swaying of a tree or the sound of the wind; words born out of pipe smoke, and dispersing with it as it clears. This is the verse with which the group responded to Tholomyès’s tirade:

The simple Simons paid a fee To an intermediary For Sire Clermont-Tonnerre To be made abbot on St John’s Day.

But abbot he could never be For no anointed monk was he; So their intermediary Resentfully returned their fee.

This was no way to dampen Tholomyès’s exuberances. He drained his glass, refilled it and resumed.

‘Down with wisdom! Forget everything I said. Let’s be neither prudish

nor prudent, nor pompous asses. I propose a toast to merriment. Let’s be merry. Let’s complete our law studies with food and folly! Indigestion and digest. Let Justinian be lord of Misrule and Revelry be his mistress! Joy in the lower depths! Live, O creation! The world is a great diamond. I’m happy. The birds are amazing. What jollity everywhere! The nightingale is an Elleviou who sings gratis. Summer, I salute you! O Luxembourg! O Georgics of Rue Madame and Allée de l’Observatoire! O romantic soldier boys! O all those lovely nursemaids who have nothing better to think of while minding children than having children of their own! The pampas of America would attract me, had I not the arcades around the Odéon. My soul soars over virgin forests and savannahs. Everything is beautiful. Flies are buzzing in the sunbeams. The sun has with a sneeze produced the hummingbird. Kiss me, Fantine!’

He got the wrong girl, and kissed Favourite.

VIII

Death of a Horse

‘The food’s better at Edon than at Bombarda,’ exclaimed Zéphine.

‘I prefer Bombarda to Edon,’ declared Blachevelle. ‘It’s more luxurious.

More oriental. Look at the room downstairs. There are mirrors on the walls.’

‘I prefer ices on my plate,’* said Favourite.

Blachevelle was insistent. ‘Look at the knives. Bombarda’s have silver

handles, the ones at Edon are bone. Well, silver’s more valuable than bone.’

‘Except for those who have a silver chin,’ observed Tholomyès.

At that moment he was looking at the dome of Les Invalides, visible

from Bombarda’s windows.

There was a pause. ‘Tholomyès,’ exclaimed Fameuil, ‘Listolier and I were having a

discussion just now.’

‘A discussion’s good,’ replied Tholomyès, ‘a quarrel’s better.’ ‘We were having a philosophical argument.’ ‘Well?’ ‘Which do you prefer, Descartes or Spinoza?’ ‘Désaugiers,’ said Tholomyès. Having delivered this verdict, he drank

and went on: ‘I consent to live. It’s not all over yet for this earth, since we can still rave. For this I give thanks to the immortal gods. We lie but we laugh. We affirm but we doubt. The unexpected springs from the syllogism.

That’s wonderful. There are still human beings on earth capable of gleefully opening and closing the jack-in-the-box of paradox. What you’re thoughtlessly consuming, ladies, is Madeira wine, I’ll have you know, from the Coural das Freiras vineyard, which is eighteen hundred feet above sea level. Consider what you’re drinking! Eighteen hundred feet! And Monsieur Bombarda, the magnificent proprietor of this restaurant, gives you those eighteen hundred for four francs and fifty centimes.’

Fameuil again broke in. ‘Tholomyès, your opinions inspire confidence.

Who’s your favourite author?’

‘Ber …’ ‘… quin?’ ‘No … choux.’ And Tholomyès went on. ‘All honour to Bombarda! If he could procure

me an oriental dancing-girl he would be the equal of Munophis of Elephanta, and of Thygelion of Chaeronea if he could bring me a Greek courtesan. For, O mesdames, there were Bombardas in Greece and Egypt.

Apuleius tells us so. Alas! It’s always the same, there’s nothing new.

Nothing we haven’t already seen in the Creator’s creation! Nil sub sole novum, says Solomon.* Amor omnibus idem, says Virgil.† And Carabine joins Carabin‡ on the river boat to St-Cloud, just as Aspasia joined Pericles with the fleet at Samos. One last word. Do you know who Aspasia was, ladies? Although she lived at a time when women did not yet have a soul, she was a moving spirit. A spirit of a rosy and crimson hue, fierier than fire, fresher than the dawn. Aspasia was a creature in whom the two extremes of womanhood met; the harlot-goddess. Socrates combined with Manon Lescaut. Aspasia was created in case Prometheus needed a whore.’

Now in full flight, Tholomyès would have found it difficult to stop had

not a horse dropped dead on the embankment at that very moment.

Shocked, cart and speaker were pulled up short. It was a mare from the Beauce region, old and thin and fit for the knacker’s yard, pulling a very heavy cart. Just in front of Bombarda’s the defeated, worn-out beast refused to go any further. The incident attracted a crowd. Cursing and indignant, the carter hardly had time to utter with appropriate energy the fateful words ‘Damn you!’, backed up with a ruthless lash of the whip, than the nag collapsed, never to rise again. At the outcry from the passers-by Tholomyès’s cheerful audience looked round, and he took the opportunity to end his homily with this doleful verse:

It belonged to a world where coaches and carriages Share the same fate; And being a nag, it lived as nags do, But the space of a ‘damn you’!*

‘Poor horse!’ sighed Fantine.

And Dahlia exclaimed, ‘There goes Fantine feeling sorry for horses now!

How can anyone be so stupid!’

Folding her arms and tossing her head, Favourite at that moment gave

Tholomyès a determined look and said, ‘Now then, what about this surprise?’

‘Well may you ask. The moment has arrived,’ replied Tholomyès.

‘Gentlemen, it’s now time to surprise these ladies. Ladies, give us a moment.’

‘It begins with a kiss,’ said Blachevelle. ‘On the forehead,’ added Tholomyès.

Each solemnly planted a kiss on his mistress’s forehead. Then, placing a

finger to their lips, all four headed for the door, one after the other.

Favourite clapped her hands as they left. ‘This is already good fun,’ she

said.

‘Don’t be gone too long,’ murmured Fantine. ‘We’ll be waiting for you.’

IX

A Merry End to Mirth

Left by themselves, the young girls, two at each window, rested their elbows on the window-sills, chatting, leaning out and talking from one casement to the other.

They saw the young men emerge arm in arm from the Bombarda tavern.

Their lovers turned round, waved to them, laughing, and disappeared into the dusty Sunday throng that invades the Champs-Élysées every week.

‘Don’t be gone long!’ cried Fantine. ‘What are they going to bring us?’ said Zéphine. ‘Something pretty, for sure,’ said Dahlia. ‘Something gold for me,’ said Favourite.

They were soon distracted by the activity on the riverside, which they

could discern through the branches of the tall trees and which kept them very entertained. It was the time of day when the mail-coaches and stage-coaches set off. Nearly all the mail-coaches en route for the south and west

passed along the Champs-Élysées. Most of them followed the embankment and went through the Passy gate. Every minute some huge carriage, painted yellow and black, heavily loaded, noisily harnessed, its shape distorted with trunks, tarpaulins and cases, filled with passengers who immediately disappeared from sight, came hurtling through the crowd in apparent fury, pulverizing the roadway, turning all the cobbles into flint-stones, sending sparks flying, for all the world like a blacksmith’s forge, with dust for smoke. This commotion delighted the young women.

Favourite exclaimed, ‘What a din! It sounds like a pile of chains flying

off.’

Now one of these vehicles, which was not very clearly visible through

the thick foliage of the elm trees, happened to stop for a moment, then set off again at a gallop. This surprised Fantine.

‘That’s odd!’ she said. ‘I thought the stage-coach never stopped.’ Favourite shrugged. ‘She’s amazing, this Fantine. A curiosity worth

coming to see in her own right. She marvels at the simplest things. Suppose I’m a traveller. I say to the stage-coach, “I’m going on ahead. You can pick me up on the embankment as you come by.” The stage-coach comes by, sees me, stops and picks me up. It happens every day. You know nothing of life, my dear.’

A certain amount of time went by in this way. All at once Favourite

seemed to wake up.

‘Well now,’ said she, ‘what about that surprise?’ ‘Yes, you’re right,’ said Dahlia, ‘where’s the famous surprise?’ ‘They’re taking a very long time!’ said Fantine.

As Fantine concluded this wistful remark, the waiter who had served

their meal came in. He held in his hand something that looked like a letter.

‘What’s that?’ asked Favourite.

The waiter replied, ‘It’s a note those gentlemen left for you ladies.’ ‘Why didn’t you bring it straight away?’ ‘Because,’ said the waiter, ‘the gentlemen told me not to deliver it to you

ladies before an hour had gone by.’

Favourite snatched the piece of paper from the waiter’s hand. It was

indeed a letter.

‘Strange!’ she said. ‘There’s no address. But look what’s written on it:

“THIS IS THE SURPRISE.” ’

She hurriedly unsealed the letter, opened it and read (she could read):

O loving mistresses!

We would have you know that we have parents. Parents are not something you are very

familiar with. In the civil code for respectable children, they are called fathers and mothers. Now, these parents are complaining, these old folk are appealing to us, these good men and women are calling us prodigal sons, they want us to come home, and are offering to kill calves for us. Being dutiful, we are obeying them. By the time you read this, five spirited horses will be taking us back to our papas and mamas. We are decamping, as Bossuet puts it.* We are leaving. We have left. We are fleeing in the arms of Laffitte and on the wings of Caillard. The Toulouse stage-coach wrests us from the abyss, and the abyss is you, O our beautiful darlings! We are returning to order, to duty, to society, at a brisk pace, at the speed of eight miles an hour. It is important for the country that like everyone else we should be prefects, family men, rural police officers and state councillors. Respect us. We are sacrificing ourselves. Lament us briefly and replace us rapidly. If this letter distresses you, tear it to pieces. Farewell.

For nearly two years we have made you happy. Do not hold it against us.

Signed: Blachevelle.

Fameuil.

Listolier.

Félix Tholomyès.

P.S. The meal is paid for.

The four young women looked at each other.

Favourite was the first to break the silence. ‘Well, anyway,’ she

exclaimed, ‘it’s a good joke!’

‘It’s very funny,’ said Zéphine. ‘It must have been Blachevelle who thought of it,’ said Favourite. ‘I love

him for it. Absence makes the heart grow fonder. That’s life.’

‘No,’ said Dahlia, ‘it’s one of Tholomyès’s ideas. It’s just like him.’ ‘In that case,’ retorted Favourite, ‘down with Blachevelle and long live

Tholomyès!’

‘Long live Tholomyès!’ cried Dahlia and Zéphine. And they burst out

laughing.

Fantine laughed with them.

An hour later, back in her room, she wept. He was, as we said, her first

love – she had given herself to this Tholomyès as to a husband. And the poor girl had a child.

OceanofPDF.com

Book Four

Entrusting Sometimes Means Giving Away

I

One Mother Meets Another

There was at Montfermeil near Paris during the first quarter of this century an inn of sorts, which no longer exists. This place was run by people called Thénardier, husband and wife. It was located in Ruelle du Boulanger.

Above the door was a board nailed flat against the wall. On this board was painted something that looked like a man carrying on his back another man who wore the big gilt epaulettes of a general, with large silver stars on them. Red splotches represented blood. The rest of the picture was all smoke and probably depicted a battle. Underneath were written these words: ‘THE SERGEANT OF WATERLOO’.

Nothing is more commonplace than a wagon or cart at the door of an inn.

Nevertheless, the vehicle, or to be more accurate the segment of a vehicle, that one evening in the spring of 1818 blocked the street in front of the Sergeant of Waterloo by its massive presence would surely have attracted the attention of any painter who happened to be passing that way.

It was the front section of one of those trailers commonly used in

woodland regions, and which serve to transport timber beams and tree trunks. This front section consisted of a massive swivelling iron axle, fitted with a heavy shaft, supported on two huge wheels. The whole thing was bulky, imposing and misshapen. It looked like the mounting of a gigantic cannon. Ruts had left on the wheels, rims, hub, axle and shaft a layer of

mud, a hideous jaundiced coating quite similar to that which is apt to be used for the embellishment of our cathedrals. The wood was hidden under the mud and the iron under the rust. Draped under the axle was a huge chain worthy of a fettered Goliath. This chain conjured up not the wooden beams it was meant to haul but the mastodons and mammoths it might have harnessed. There was something suggestive of the forced-labour camp about it, but a forced-labour camp on a Herculean and superhuman scale; it looked like the loosed chain of some monster. Homer would have tethered Polyphemus with it, and Shakespeare, Caliban.

Why was that trailer front section standing there in the street? First, to

block the street. Then, also, to rust away completely. There is a host of institutions in the old social order that are to be found similarly left in the way, out in the open, and which have no other reason for being there.

The centre of the chain hung quite close to the ground beneath the axle,

and on that particular evening, sitting coupled in the curve of it, as on the rope of a swing, were two little girls exquisitely entwined, one about two and a half years old, the other eighteen months, the younger in the arms of the elder. A cleverly knotted neckerchief prevented them from falling off. A mother had seen this dreadful chain and said, ‘Now, there’s something for my children to play on.’

The two children, charmingly dressed moreover, and with some care,

were radiant. They looked like two roses on a scrap heap. Their eyes were glorious, their fresh cheeks glowing with happiness. One had chestnut hair, the other, brown. Their innocent faces were two pictures of wonder and delight. Scents wafting from a nearby flowering shrub seemed to passers-by to emanate from them. The eighteen-month-old displayed her sweet bare little tummy with that chaste immodesty of infancy. Above and around these two delicate creatures, basking in happiness and infused with light, the gigantic trailer section, black with rust, almost fearsome, a tangled snarl of curves and sharp angles, looked like the rounded entrance to a cave. A few paces away, squatting on the doorstep of the inn, the mother, not in fact a very prepossessing woman though an affecting sight at that moment, was swinging the two children by means of a long rope, watching over them for

fear of any accident with that animal-like and sublime expression typical of motherhood. With every movement back and forth the hideous links emitted a strident noise that sounded like a screech of anger. The little girls were ecstatic. The setting sun commingled with this joy, and there was nothing to match the charm of this capriccio of chance that had made a cherubim’s swing of a Titan’s chain.

As she swung her two little ones, the mother hummed in a discordant

voice a then well known ballad: ‘A warrior so bold and a virgin so bright

…’

Her song and the contemplation of her daughters prevented her from

hearing and seeing what was going on in the street.

In the meantime, someone had approached her as she began the first

couplet of the ballad, and suddenly she heard a voice saying very close to her ear, ‘You have two lovely children there, madame.’

‘… Alonzo the brave was the name of the knight, the maid’s was the fair

Imogine,’ responded the mother, continuing with her ballad. Then she looked round.

A woman stood before her a few steps away. This woman too had a child,

which she carried in her arms.

She was also carrying quite a big travelling-bag that looked very heavy.

This woman’s child was one of the most divine creatures anyone might

hope to see. It was a little girl aged two or three. She could have vied with the other two youngsters in the prettiness of her clothing. She wore a frilled cap of fine linen, with ribbons on her sleeved top and Valenciennes lace on her bonnet. Her rucked-up skirt revealed her firm, white, chubby thigh. She was wonderfully pink and healthy. You felt like biting into the lovely little darling’s apple cheeks. Nothing could be said about her eyes except that they must be very big, and they had magnificent eyelashes. She was asleep.

She was sleeping that totally trustful sleep of children of that age.

Mothers’ arms are created out of tenderness, children sleep deeply in them.

As for the mother, she was a poor and sorry sight. She was dressed like a

seamstress reverting to peasant again. She was young. Was she beautiful?

Maybe, but the way she was dressed it was hard to tell. Her hair looked

very thick but was austerely hidden under an ugly, thick-woven, close-fitting coif tied under the chin, with one blonde lock escaping. Laughter shows off beautiful teeth if you have them, but she did not laugh. Her eyes looked as if they had not been dry for a very long time. She was pale. She seemed very weary and a little unwell. She gazed at her daughter sleeping in her arms with that distinctive look of a mother who has nursed her child.

A large blue handkerchief, such as war veterans use for blowing their noses, folded into a fichu, unflatteringly concealed her figure. She had weathered hands all covered with freckles, a forefinger hardened and roughened by the needle, a cloak of coarse brown woollen stuff, a calico gown and heavy shoes. It was Fantine.

It was Fantine. Not easily recognizable. Nevertheless, on close

examination she still retained her beauty. A dejected line that looked like the beginnings of irony creased her right cheek. As for her clothes, that ethereal outfit of muslin and ribbons, seemingly fashioned of mirth, frivolity and music, all tinkling bells and the scent of lilac, had vanished like those beautiful glittering frosts mistaken for diamonds in the sunshine; they melt away and leave the branch completely black.

Ten months had elapsed since the ‘great lark’.

What had happened in those ten months? We can guess.

After abandonment came hardship. Fantine had immediately lost contact

with Favourite, Zéphine and Dahlia. The bond, once broken on the men’s side, unravelled between the women. They would have been greatly astonished a fortnight later had anyone said they were friends. There was no reason to be any more. Fantine was left on her own. With the father of her child gone – alas! such partings are irrevocable – she found herself totally isolated, minus the habit of work and plus the taste for pleasure. Led by her relationship with Tholomyès to disdain the modest trade she knew, she had neglected any openings. They were now closed to her. Nothing to fall back on. Fantine could hardly read and could not write. She had been taught as a child only to sign her name. She got a public letter-writer to write to Tholomyès, a first letter, then a second, then a third. Tholomyès had not replied to any of them. One day Fantine heard some gossiping women say,

while looking at her daughter, ‘Does anyone take these children seriously!

Everyone shrugs their shoulders at such children!’ Then she thought of Tholomyès who shrugged off his child and did not take this innocent creature seriously. And her feelings darkened towards that man. But what was she to do? She was at a loss to know who to turn to now. She had done wrong but she was by nature, let us remember, fundamentally modest and virtuous. She vaguely sensed she was on the brink of falling into destitution and sliding towards the very worst. Courage was needed. Courage she had, and she steeled herself. It occurred to her to return to her home town of Montreuil-sur-Mer. There might be someone there who knew her and would give her work. Yes, but she would have to conceal her wrong-doing. And in a confused way she foresaw the need for a separation even more painful than the first. It wrung her heart, but she made her decision. Fantine, as we shall see, had the fierce bravery of life itself.

Valiantly, she had already given up all finery, dressing herself in calico,

and had put all her silks, all her trimmings, ribbons and lace, on her daughter, her sole remaining vanity, and a saintly one at that. She sold everything she had, which yielded two hundred francs. Having paid off her modest debts, she had only about eighty francs remaining. At the age of twenty-two, on a beautiful spring morning, she left Paris carrying her child on her back. Anyone seeing the two of them pass by would have felt pity for them. This woman had no one else in the world but her child, and the child no one else in the world but this woman. Fantine had nursed her child.

This strained her chest and she was coughing a little.

We shall have no further occasion to speak of Monsieur Félix

Tholomyès. All we wish to say is that twenty years later, under King Louis-Philippe, he was a well established provincial lawyer, wealthy and influential, a sound voter and a very severe magistrate; still a man of pleasure.

Having taken a ride now and then – at roughly one or two sous per mile,

with what was then known as the Petites Voitures coach company serving the outlying areas of Paris – to give herself a rest, Fantine found herself towards the middle of the day at Montfermeil, in Ruelle du Boulanger.

As she passed the Thénardier inn the two little girls delighting in their

monster swing had, as it were, dazzled her, and she stopped in front of that vision of joy.

There are such things as spells. These two little girls acted as a spell on

this mother.

She observed them, overcome with emotion. Paradise is heralded by the

presence of angels. She thought she could see above this inn the mysterious here of providence. These two little ones were so obviously happy! She gazed at them, she marvelled at them, with such feeling that as their mother drew breath between two lines of her song she could not help saying to her those few words you have just read: ‘You have two lovely children there, madame.’

The most ferocious of creatures is disarmed by the petting of its young.

The mother looked up and thanked her, and invited the wayfarer to sit on

the bench by the door, she herself being on the doorstep. The two women chatted together.

‘My name’s Madame Thénardier,’ said the mother of the two little girls.

‘We’re the keepers of this inn.’

Then, continuing with the same ballad, she sang in an undertone: ‘…

tomorrow I go / To fight in a far distant land …’

This Madame Thénardier was a brawny and angular sandy-haired

woman, the archetypal soldier’s wife in all her charmlessness. And, bizarrely, with an introspective air that she owed to her penchant for romances. She was simpering yet mannish. Old-fashioned love stories that have rubbed off on the imaginations of canteen cooks have that effect. She was still young, barely thirty. Being very tall and built like a walking colossus such as you might expect to find in a fairground, this woman, who was squatting down, had she stood upright might perhaps have scared the traveller from the outset, undermined her trustfulness and forestalled what we have to relate. Someone sitting instead of standing – destinies hang on this.

The traveller told her story with some slight alteration.

That she was a seamstress. That her husband was dead. That there was no

work for her in Paris and she was going to look for some elsewhere, back home where she came from. That she had left Paris that morning on foot.

That, as she was carrying her child and felt tired, when the Villemomble coach had come by, she had taken it. That from Villemomble to Montfermeil she had walked. That her little one had walked a bit of the way but not much, being so young. And that she had to pick her up and carry her, and the precious darling had fallen asleep.

Whereupon she gave her daughter a fervent kiss that woke her. The child

opened her eyes, big blue eyes like her mother’s, and looked at – what?

Nothing. Everything. With that serious and sometimes stern expression of young children, which is a mystery of their luminous innocence in the face of our twilight virtues. It is as if they feel like angels and know us to be men. Then the child began to laugh, and although her mother held her she slipped to the ground with the untameable energy of a young creature that wants to run free. All of a sudden she caught sight of the other two on their swing, came to a standstill and stuck out her tongue, a sign of awe.

Madame Thénardier released her daughters, helped them down from the

swing, and said, ‘You three play together.’

At that age children are quick to socialize and after a minute the little

Thénardiers were playing with the newcomer, digging holes in the ground together with great delight.

This newcomer was very cheerful. You can tell a mother’s goodness from

the cheerfulness of her toddler. She had found a stick that served her as a spade and she was energetically digging a hole big enough for a fly. What the grave-digger does becomes amusing when done by a child.

The two women went on chatting. ‘What’s your little one’s name?’ ‘Cosette.’ For Cosette, read Euphrasie. The child’s name was Euphrasie. But with

that endearing and charming instinct that mothers and the populace have, by which Josefa is turned into Pepita and Françoise into Sillette, Euphrasie became Cosette to her mother. This is the kind of derivation that confuses

and confounds all the learning of etymologists. We know of one grandmother who managed to turn Théodore into ‘Gnon’.

‘How old is she?’ ‘She’s going on three.’ ‘The same as my eldest.’ In the meantime the three little girls were clustered in an attitude of deep

anxiety and rapture. Something had happened. A big worm had emerged from the ground. And they were scared and entranced.

With their radiant foreheads touching, it was as if their three heads were

surrounded by a single halo.

‘Children make friends in no time!’ exclaimed Madame Thénardier.

‘Seeing them together like that, you’d swear they were three sisters!’

This remark was the spur the other mother had probably been waiting for.

She seized the Thénardier woman’s hand, looked at her intently, and said, ‘Will you look after my child for me?’

The Thénardier woman gave one of those starts of surprise that are

neither assent nor refusal.

Cosette’s mother went on, ‘You see, I can’t take my daughter with me.

Working won’t allow it. You can’t get a job with a child. They’re so ridiculous in that part of the world. It was the good Lord that guided me to your inn. When I saw your little ones looking so pretty and so clean and so happy, my heart turned over. I said to myself: Here’s a good mother. For sure, they’ll be like three sisters. And then it won’t be long before I return.

Will you look after my child for me?’

‘We’d have to see,’ replied the Thénardier woman. ‘I’d pay six francs a month.’ At this point a man’s voice called out from inside the inn, ‘Not for less

than seven francs. And six months paid in advance.’

‘Six sevens, forty-two,’ said the Thénardier woman. ‘I’ll pay it,’ said the mother. ‘And fifteen francs extra for initial expenses,’ the man’s voice added. ‘Fifty-seven francs total,’ said Madame Thénardier. And throughout these

calculations she hummed vaguely: ‘… tomorrow I go / To fight in a far

distant land …’

‘I’ll pay it,’ said the mother. ‘I have eighty francs. I’ll have enough left

over to get home. If I walk. I’ll earn some money there, and as soon as I have a little I’ll come back to fetch my little angel.’

The man’s voice spoke again, ‘The child has clothes?’ ‘That’s my husband,’ said the Thénardier woman. ‘Certainly she has clothes, poor precious darling. Of course I realized it

was your husband. And lovely clothes too! A real extravagance. A dozen of everything. And silk gowns like a lady. They’re all here in my bag.’

‘You’ll give those to us,’ said the man’s voice. ‘I should think so too,’ said the mother. ‘It would be a very odd thing

indeed if I were to leave my daughter without a stitch!’

The master’s face appeared. ‘That’s fine,’ he said.

The deal was concluded. The mother spent the night at the inn, handed

over the money and left her child, refastened her travelling-bag, now lightened with the child’s things taken out, and set out the following morning, intending to return soon. Such departures are easily arranged, but they are harrowing!

A neighbour of the Thénardiers met the mother as she was walking away,

and came back saying, ‘I’ve just seen a woman crying in the street, it was heart-rending.’

When Cosette’s mother had gone the man said to the woman, ‘That’ll pay

off my debt for a hundred and ten francs that falls due tomorrow. I was fifty francs short. You know, I’d have had the bailiff on to me with a warrant?

That was a clever mouse-trap you laid there with your babes.’

‘Without realizing it,’ said the woman.

II

First Sketch of Two Shady Characters

It was a very poor mouse that had been caught, but the cat is happy even with a scraggy mouse.

Who were these Thénardiers?

Let us say a few words about them right now. We will complete the

sketch later.

These individuals belonged to that bastard class between the so-called

middle class and the so-called lower class, which is made up of crass people who have come up in the world and clever people who have gone down, and combines some of the faults of the latter with nearly all the vices of the former without having the generous impulse of the working man or the law-abiding decency of the solid citizen.

They were of that stunted nature that easily turns monstrous if some dark

passion is by chance kindled in them. There was in the woman the essence of a bully and in the man the makings of a scoundrel. Both were most highly susceptible to the sort of hideous progress that occurs in the development of evil. There are souls like lobsters, continually retreating into the shadows, retrogressing rather than advancing through life, using experience to add to their monstrosity, becoming ever more wicked and ever more imbued with an intensifying foulness. This man and this woman were such souls.

Thénardier in particular gave the physiognomist pause. You have only to

look at some men to distrust them. You sense a shadiness in their lives, at both ends. Behind them is a restlessness, taken forward with menace. They have something of the unknown in them. You can no more answer for what they have done than for what they will do. The darkness they have in their eyes betrays them. You have only to hear them say one word, or see them make one gesture, to glimpse sinister secrets in their past and sinister mysteries in their future.

If he was to be believed, this fellow Thénardier had been a soldier, a

sergeant, he said. He had probably taken part in the campaign of 1815, and had even acquitted himself quite bravely, it would seem. We shall see later what the truth of this was. His inn sign was an allusion to one of his feats of arms. He had painted it himself, for he knew how to do a little of everything, badly.

It was the age when the classic period novel – that having once been

Clélie was now a mere Lodoïska, still high-minded but increasingly vulgar, reduced from Mademoiselle de Scudéry to Madame Barthélémy-Hadot, and from Madame de Lafayette to Madame Bournon-Malarme – inflamed the lovesick souls of Paris’s doorkeepers and even wreaked a little havoc in the suburbs. Madame Thénardier was just intelligent enough to read books of this kind. They were her staple diet. She steeped in them what brain she possessed. This had given her, when she was very young and even a little later, a kind of pensiveness in the company of her husband, a rascal of a certain knowingness, a literate ruffian but no grammarian, at once coarse and shrewd, but as regards sentiment a reader of Pigault-Lebrun; and as for ‘anything to do with sex’, as his own turn of phrase would have it, an absolute thoroughgoing lout. His wife was twelve or fifteen years younger than he was. Later, when her Romantically cascading hair began to turn grey, when out of Pamela emerged Megaera, the Thénardier woman was just a nasty fat woman with a taste for silly novels. Now, nonsense cannot be read with impunity. The result was that her elder daughter’s name was Éponine. As for the younger, the poor little thing was very nearly named Gulnare. She owed it to who knows what happy distraction afforded by one of Ducray-Duminil’s novels only to be called Azelma.

By the way, the fact is that not everything about that curious era we are

alluding to here, which might be called one of first-name anarchy, is absurd and superficial. Alongside this Romantic element we have just referred to there is the social factor. It is not uncommon nowadays for the young cowherd to be called Arthur, Alfred or Alphonse, and for the vicomte – if there are any vicomtes left – to be called Thomas, Pierre or Jacques. This displacement whereby the ‘distinguished’ name is given to the common man and the rustic name to the aristocrat is nothing other than the stirrings of egalitarianism. The irresistible penetration of the new spirit is in this as in everything else. Behind this apparent discrepancy there is something great and profound: the French Revolution.

III

The Lark

Just being wicked is not enough to prosper. Business was bad at the inn.

Thanks to the traveller’s fifty-seven francs, Thénardier managed to avoid

a protest for non-payment and to honour what he had put his signature to.

The following month they were again in need of money. The woman took Cosette’s clothes to Paris and pawned them for sixty francs. Once that sum was spent, the Thénardiers came to regard the little girl as no more than a child they had taken in out of charity, and treated her accordingly. As she no longer had any clothes of her own they dressed her in the little Thénardier girls’ cast-off petticoats and chemises, that is to say, in rags. They fed her on everyone’s scraps – a little better than the dog, a little worse than the cat. In fact the cat and the dog were her habitual dining companions. Cosette ate with them under the table, from a wooden bowl like theirs.

Her mother, who had settled in Montreuil-sur-Mer, as we shall see, wrote

a letter every month, or to be more accurate had someone else write, asking for news of her child. The Thénardiers invariably replied, ‘Cosette is thriving.’

At the end of the first six months the mother sent seven francs for the

seventh month, and continued sending her payments quite punctually month by month. Before the year was over Thénardier said, ‘A fine favour she’s doing us! How does she expect us to manage on her seven francs?’ And he wrote demanding twelve francs. Led by them to believe that her child was happy ‘and doing well’, the mother submitted to the demand and sent the twelve francs.

Certain natures are incapable of loving on the one hand without hating on

the other. Madame Thénardier loved her two daughters passionately, which meant she hated the outsider.

It is sad to think that a mother’s love can have ugly aspects to it. No

matter how little space Cosette took up in her home, she felt it was space taken from her own children and that this little girl reduced the air her daughters breathed. This woman, like many women of her kind, had a

certain quantity of endearments and a certain quantity of blows and harsh words to dispense each day. For all that they were idolized, her daughters would have undoubtedly got the lot if she had not had Cosette there. But the outsider did them the service of diverting the blows on to herself. For her daughters, she had only endearments. Cosette could not make a single move that did not bring down on her a hailstorm of violent and undeserved punishments. Sweet defenceless creature, to whom this world and God must have been a complete mystery, incessantly punished, scolded, ill-used and beaten, seeing beside her two little creatures just like her who lived within the glow of a kindly light!

Madame Thénardier was cruel to Cosette. Éponine and Azelma were

cruel. Children at that age are simply copies of their mother. They come in a smaller size, that is all.

A year went by, then another.

It was said in the village, ‘Those Thénardiers are good people. They’re

not rich and yet they’re bringing up a poor abandoned child they were left with!’

It was thought Cosette had been forgotten by her mother.

Meanwhile, having learned by who knows what obscure channels that the

child was probably illegitimate and that the mother could not acknowledge her as her own, Thénardier demanded fifteen francs a month, saying ‘the creature’ was growing up and ‘eating’, and threatening to turn her out. ‘She’d better not give me any trouble!’ he shouted. ‘I’ll send her brat back to her and her little secrets will blow up in her face. I must have more.’

The mother paid the fifteen francs.

As the child grew, year by year, so did her wretchedness.

As long as Cosette was very small, she was the two other children’s

scapegoat. As soon as she got a little bigger, that is to say, before she was even five, she became the household servant.

Five years old, the reader will say, that is incredible. Alas! it is true.

Social suffering begins at all ages. Have we not recently seen the trial of a certain Dumollard by name, an orphan turned bandit, who from the age of

five, official documents state, being all alone in the world, ‘worked for his living and stole’?

Cosette was made to run errands, sweep the rooms, the courtyard and the

street, wash the dishes, even to carry heavy loads. The Thénardiers considered themselves all the more entitled to behave in this way since the mother, who was still at Montreuil-sur-Mer, began to fall behind with her payments. She was some months in arrears.

If this mother had returned to Montfermeil at the end of those three years,

she would not have recognized her child. So pretty and fresh when she first came to that house, Cosette was now thin and pale. She had an indefinably anxious look. ‘Sly,’ said the Thénardiers.

Injustice had made her resentful and misery had made her ugly. All that

was left of her prettiness were those lovely eyes that were pitiful to behold because, huge as they were, the sadness that was visible in them appeared so much the greater.

It was a heart-breaking thing to see in winter, this poor child, not yet six

years old, shivering in her tattered old rags of coarse cloth, sweeping the street before daylight with an enormous broom in her tiny red hands and a teardrop in those big eyes.

Locally, they called her Alouette*. The common people, who like

figurative images, had chosen to give this name to this tiny creature, no bigger than a bird, trembling, frightened and shivering, the first one awake every morning, in the house and in the village, always out on the street or in the fields before daybreak.

Only, poor Alouette never sang.

OceanofPDF.com

Book Five

The Descent

I

Story of an Advance in the Manufacture of Black Glass Jewellery

What had become of that mother in the meantime, who according to the people of Montfermeil appeared to have abandoned her child? Where was she? What was she doing?

After leaving her little Cosette with the Thénardiers she had continued on

her way and arrived at Montreuil-sur-Mer.

This, remember, was in 1818.

Fantine had left her provincial home some ten years earlier. Montreuil-

sur-Mer had changed. While Fantine’s fortunes were slowly declining, her native town had prospered.

About two years previously there had been one of those industrial

developments that have a great impact on small places.

This detail is significant and one we think worth while expanding on –

we would almost say, emphasizing.

From time immemorial Montreuil-sur-Mer’s specialized industry had

been the imitation of English jet jewellery and of the black glass jewellery of Germany. This industry had always languished because of the high price of the raw materials, which affected the workers’ pay. When Fantine returned to Montreuil-sur-Mer an amazing transformation had taken place in this production of ‘black ware’. Towards the end of 1815 a man, a stranger, had come and set up business in the town, and had the idea of

substituting shellac for resin in the manufacturing process and, for bracelets in particular, using metal clasp links that were simply pinched together instead of soldered. This very small change had been a revolution.

This very small change had in fact dramatically reduced the cost of the

raw materials, which made it possible firstly for the labour costs to rise to the benefit of the local community, secondly to improve the workmanship, an advantage for the consumer, and thirdly to sell more cheaply while at the same time trebling profits, by which the manufacturer gained.

So three positive results from one idea.

In less than three years the inventor of this process had become rich,

which is good, and made everyone around him rich, which is better. He came from outside the département. Nothing at all was known about his background, very little about his early career.

The story was that he had come to the town with very little money, a few

hundred francs at most.

It was from this limited capital, used to implement an ingenious idea and

systematically and thoughtfully husbanded, that he had built up his fortune and the fortunes of the whole community.

When he first arrived in Montreuil-sur-Mer the clothes he wore, his

bearing and his language were no more than those of a labourer.

Apparently on the very day he made his obscure entry into the small

town of Montreuil-sur-Mer, at nightfall one December evening, with his knapsack on his back and a hawthorn staff in his hand, a serious fire had just broken out in the town hall. This man had rushed into the blaze and at the risk of his own life saved two children, who turned out to belong to the captain of the gendarmerie. As a result no one had thought to ask him for his passport. Since then his name had come to be common knowledge. He was called Père Madeleine.

II

Madeleine

He was a man of about fifty who looked as if he had something on his mind, and was kind-hearted. That was all that could be said about him.

Thanks to the rapid development of the industry he had so admirably

restructured, Montreuil-sur-Mer became an important centre of commerce.

Spain, which buys a great deal of black jet, placed huge orders there every year. Montreuil-sur-Mer almost rivalled London and Berlin in this trade.

Père Madeleine’s profits were such that by the second year he was able to build a large factory in which there were two huge workrooms, one for men and the other for women. Anyone who was hungry could go there and be sure of finding work and being fed. Père Madeleine expected willingness of the men, respectability of the women, and honesty of everybody. He had divided the workrooms to keep the two sexes apart and so that the girls and the women might remain virtuous. On this point he was adamant. It was the only thing about which he was in any way intolerant. He was all the more justified in this strictness because, Montreuil-sur-Mer being a garrison town, opportunities for depravity were rife. In any event, his coming had been a boon and his presence was a godsend. Before Père Madeleine’s arrival the whole place was languishing. Now everything there was sustained by the wholesomeness of the working life. A strong circulation is entirely beneficial and reaches everywhere. Unemployment and poverty were unknown. There was no pocket so obscure that it had not a little money in it, no home so poor that it had not a little gladness in it.

Père Madeleine would employ anyone. He insisted on one thing only: Be

an honest man! Be an honest woman!

As we have said, out of this activity of which he was the prime mover

and linchpin, Père Madeleine made his fortune. But rather curiously in a simple man of business, this was not apparently his chief concern. He seemed to give a great deal of thought to others and little to himself. In

1820 he was known to have a sum of six hundred and thirty thousand francs to his name invested with Laffitte. But before setting aside these six

hundred and thirty thousand francs he had spent more than a million on the town and its poor.

The hospital was ill-funded. He financed ten beds there. Montreuil-sur-

Mer is divided into the upper town and the lower town. The lower town, where he lived, had but one school, a miserable hovel that was falling into ruin. He built two, one for the girls, the other for the boys. Out of his own pocket he paid the two schoolteachers an additional allowance, doubling their meagre official salary, and one day he said to someone who wondered at this, ‘The state’s two most important servants are the woman at whose breast the child is nurtured and the schoolmaster.’ He created at his own expense a nursery, something almost unknown in France at that time, and a welfare fund for old and infirm workers. His factory being a central point, a new neighbourhood with a great many poor families rapidly sprang up around it. He set up a free pharmacy here.

In the early days, watching him start out, charitable souls said, ‘He’s a

self-seeker who wants to become rich.’ When they saw him enriching the community before he enriched himself, the same charitable souls said, ‘He’s an ambitious fellow.’ This seemed all the more probable as the man was religious, and even to some extent religiously observant, something very favourably looked on at that time. He regularly attended low mass every Sunday. Before long the local deputy, who suspected rivals everywhere, began to fret about this religion. The deputy, who had been a member of the Legislative Corps under the Empire, shared the religious views of an Oratorian father known by the name of Fouché, Duc d’Otrante, whose creature and friend he had been. Behind closed doors he quietly made fun of God. But when he saw the wealthy manufacturer Madeleine going to low mass at seven o’clock, he detected in him a likely candidate and resolved to outdo him. He took a Jesuit confessor and attended high mass and vespers. At that time ambition was literally a steeplechase. The poor as well as the good Lord profited by his dread, for the honourable deputy also funded two beds in the hospital, which made a total of twelve.

Nevertheless, in 1819 the rumour went around town one morning that as

a result of representations made by the prefect, and in consideration of his

services to the town, Père Madeleine was to be appointed mayor of Montreuil-sur-Mer by the king. Those who had declared the newcomer to be ‘an ambitious fellow’ seized with delight on this opportunity that everybody longs for to exclaim, ‘There! What did we tell you!’ The whole of Montreuil-sur-Mer was in ferment. The rumour was well founded.

Several days later the appointment appeared in Le Moniteur. The next day Père Madeleine declined the appointment.

In this same year of 1819 the products of the new process invented by

Madeleine featured in the industrial exhibition. On the recommendation of the jury the king named the inventor a knight of the Legion of Honour.

Fresh rumblings in the small town. Well then! It was the cross he wanted!

Père Madeleine refused the cross.

No doubt about it, the man was an enigma. The charitable souls defended

themselves by saying, ‘After all, he’s some sort of adventurer.’

We have seen that the community owed him a great deal, the poor owed

him everything. He was so useful, it was inevitable that he should eventually be honoured, and he was so kind-hearted it was inevitable that he should eventually be loved. His workers in particular adored him, and he bore this adoration with a sort of melancholy gravity. When his wealth was established, ‘society people’ greeted him, and in town he was called Monsieur Madeleine. His workers and the children continued to call him Père Madeleine, and this was the thing best able to make him smile. As his stock rose, he was showered with invitations. ‘Society’ clamoured for him.

The prim little drawing rooms of Montreuil-sur-Mer, at first closed of course to the artisan, were opened wide to the millionaire. Countless overtures were made to him. He declined them all.

This time, again, the charitable souls were quite unabashed. ‘He’s an

ignorant man of little education. God knows what his background is. He wouldn’t know how to behave in society. There’s no proof at all that he can read.’

When he was seen making money they said, ‘He’s a tradesman.’ When he

was seen distributing his money they said, ‘He’s an ambitious fellow.’

When he was seen rejecting honours they said, ‘He’s an adventurer.’ When he was seen rejecting society they said, ‘He’s a crass ignoramus.’

In 1820, five years after his arrival in Montreuil-sur-Mer, the services he

had rendered to the community were so outstanding, the will of the entire region so unanimous, that the king again appointed him mayor of the town.

Again he declined. But the prefect would not accept his refusal, all the dignitaries came to entreat him, the people in the street implored him. So intense was their insistence that in the end he accepted. It was noted that what seemed especially to make up his mind was the almost angry rebuke of an old woman, one of the common people, who called out to him crossly from her doorstep: ‘A good mayor can be useful. Why shrink from doing good?’

This was the third phase of his ascent. Père Madeleine had become

Monsieur Madeleine. Monsieur Madeleine became monsieur le maire.

III

Sums Deposited with Laffitte

Nevertheless, he remained as unassuming as he was on the first day. He had grey hair, a serious gaze, the weathered complexion of a labourer, the pensive face of a philosopher. He usually wore a broad-brimmed hat and a long frock-coat of coarse cloth buttoned to the chin. He fulfilled his duties as mayor, but aside from that he lived a solitary life. He spoke to few people. He would sidestep social pleasantries, pay his respects in passing and quickly slip away; smile by way of apology for not chatting, give by way of apology for not smiling. Women said of him, ‘What a kindly old bear!’ His pleasure was to go walking in the countryside.

He always took his meals alone, with a book open in front of him that he

would be reading. He had a small but well selected library. He loved books.

Books are cold and dependable friends. With wealth came leisure, which he seemed increasingly to take advantage of to cultivate his mind. It was observed that since he had been in Montreuil-sur-Mer his language had year by year grown more refined, more carefully chosen, gentler. He liked to

carry a shotgun with him on his walks but he rarely made use of it.

Whenever he happened to do so, his shooting was fearsomely accurate. He never killed a harmless animal. He never shot a small bird.

Although he was not a young man any more, stories were told of his

remarkable strength. He would lend a hand to anyone in need of it, lift a horse, push a wheel stuck in the mud, or stop a runaway bull by the horns.

His pockets were always full of money when he went out, and empty when he came home. Whenever he passed through a village, ragged urchins ran gleefully after him and surrounded him like a swarm of gnats.

People thought they could tell he must have once lived a country life

since he knew all sorts of useful secrets, which he passed on to the peasants.

He taught them how to destroy corn moth by spraying the granary and dousing cracks in the floorboards with a solution of common salt, and how to ward off weevils by hanging flowering orviot everywhere, on the walls and in the rafters, in the barns and inside the houses.

He had ‘recipes’ for ridding a field of yellow vetchling, corncockle,

vetch, cow wheat, meadow foxtail, all the parasitic weeds that choke the wheat crop. He would protect a rabbit hutch against rats just by the smell of a small guinea-pig he put inside it.

One day he saw some local country folk very busy pulling up nettles. He

looked at their pile of uprooted and already dried-out plants and said, ‘That’s all dead. Yet it would be a good thing if you knew how to make use of it. When the nettle’s young the leaf makes an excellent vegetable. When it ages it has filaments and fibres like hemp and flax. Cloth made from nettles is as good as linen cloth. Chopped up, nettles are good for poultry.

Pounded, they’re good for horned livestock. The seed of the nettle mixed with fodder gives a shine to animals’ coats. The root mixed with salt produces a beautiful yellow colour. Also, it makes an excellent hay that can be harvested twice. And what does the nettle need? A little soil, no tending, no cultivation. Only, the seeds fall as they ripen and they’re difficult to harvest. That’s all. With even the minimum of care, the nettle would be useful. Neglected, it becomes a nuisance. So we kill it. How like the nettle are so many men!’ He added after a pause, ‘My friends, remember this:

there are no such things as bad plants or bad men. There are only bad farmers.’

Children also loved him because he could make delightful little toys out

of straw and coconuts.

Whenever he saw the church door draped in black he would go in. He

sought out funerals as others seek out christenings. Widowhood and the grief of others attracted him because of his great kindness. He would mingle with friends in mourning, families dressed in black, priests murmuring round a coffin. He seemed to take readily as subject for his thoughts those funeral chantings filled with the vision of another world. With his eyes turned heavenward, with a kind of yearning towards all the mysteries of infinity, he listened to those sad voices singing at the edge of death’s dark abyss.

He performed a host of good deeds in the same way that others do bad:

by stealth. He would slip into houses surreptitiously in the evening, and furtively climb the stairs. Some poor devil coming home to his attic would find that during his absence his door had been opened, sometimes even forced. The poor man would cry out: ‘Some burglar has got in!’ He would go inside and the first thing he would see was a gold coin left lying on a piece of furniture. The ‘burglar’ who had got in was Père Madeleine.

He was affable, and sad. The common people said, ‘There’s a rich man

who doesn’t give himself airs. There’s a fortunate man who doesn’t look happy.’

Some people held the view that he was a mysterious character and said

that no one ever went into his bedroom, which was a veritable anchorite’s cell, furnished with winged hour-glasses and ornamented with skulls and cross-bones! There was so much talk of this that some sly, sophisticated young women of Montreuil-sur-Mer came to him one day and asked, ‘Monsieur le maire, do show us your room. It’s said to be a grotto.’ He smiled, and showed them into his ‘grotto’ there and then. They got their just deserts for their curiosity. It was a very ordinary room with rather ugly mahogany furniture like all furniture of that kind, and papered with inexpensive wallpaper. They could see nothing remarkable about it except

two candlesticks of an old-fashioned design that stood on the mantelpiece and appeared to be of silver, ‘from the way they were treasured’. A thoroughly small-town witticism.

It continued to be said, regardless, that no one was ever let into this room

and that it was a hermit’s cave, a mysterious retreat, a cubby-hole, a tomb.

It was also whispered that he had ‘immense’ sums deposited with Laffitte

on the specific condition that the money was always immediately available to him; which meant, it was added, that Monsieur Madeleine could turn up at Laffitte’s one morning, and in ten minutes sign a receipt and carry off his two or three million. In reality, these ‘two or three million’, as we have said, amounted to no more than six hundred and thirty or forty thousand francs.

IV

Monsieur Madeleine in Mourning

At the beginning of 1821 the newspapers announced the death of Monsieur Myriel, bishop of Digne, better known as ‘Monseigneur Bienvenu’, who had passed away in the odour of sanctity at the age of eighty-two.

To add here a detail that the papers omitted, when the bishop of Digne

died he had for many years been blind, and contentedly blind, having his sister with him.

Incidentally, let us say that on this earth where nothing is perfect, to be

blind and to be loved is in fact one of the most strangely exquisite forms of happiness. To have continually at your side a wife, a daughter, a sister, a delightful human being who is there because you need her and because she cannot do without you, to know you are indispensable to a person who is necessary to you, to be able constantly to measure her affection by how much of her presence she grants you and to say to yourself, ‘Since she devotes all of her time to me, I must have all of her love’; to see the mind though you cannot see the face, to be able to count on the loyalty of one person when the world is eclipsed; to perceive in the rustle of a gown the fluttering of wings, to hear her to-ing and fro-ing, going out, coming home, talking, singing, and to think that you are at the centre of these footsteps, of

this talking and singing; to demonstrate at every moment your own magnetic power, to feel all the more powerful the more infirm you are, to become in the darkness and by means of the darkness the star round which this angel gravitates – few joys equal this. The supreme happiness of life is the conviction that you are loved, loved for yourself, better still, loved despite yourself. This conviction the blind man has. In his plight, to be assisted is to be cherished. Does he lack anything? No. There is no loss of light in having love. And what love! A love that is all goodness. There is no blindness where there is certainty. Soul gropes for soul, and finds it. And the soul found and tested is a woman. A hand supports you, it is hers. Lips brush your forehead, they are her lips. You hear someone breathing right beside you, it is she. To have all of her, from her devotion to her pity, never to be left alone, to have that sweet frailty helping you, to lean on that sturdy reed, to touch providence with your hands and to be able to take it in your arms. God made tangible – what rapture! The heart, that obscure celestial flower, comes into mysterious bloom. You would not exchange this darkness for any brightness! The angel soul is there, ever there. If she goes away, it is only to return again. She vanishes like a dream and reappears as reality. You feel a warmth approaching, here she is. Your serenity, cheerfulness and bliss are abounding, you are a radiance in the dark. And so much care and consideration. Little things that count enormously in that void. The most ineffable tones of the female voice devoted to soothing you and making up for the vanished universe. You are spiritually cherished. You see nothing, but you feel adored. It is a dark paradise.

It was from this paradise that Monseigneur Bienvenu had passed on to

the next.

The announcement of his death was reported by Montreuil-sur-Mer’s

local newspaper. The following day Monsieur Madeleine appeared dressed entirely in black with a mourning band on his hat.

These mourning clothes were noticed in town and set tongues wagging. It

seemed to throw a light on Monsieur Madeleine’s origins. The conclusion was drawn that he had some relationship with the venerable bishop. ‘He’s wearing mourning for the bishop of Digne,’ was the word in the drawing

rooms. This greatly enhanced Monsieur Madeleine’s standing and immediately gained him a certain respect among Montreuil-sur-Mer’s nobility. The local miniature Faubourg St-Germain decided to end their exclusion of Monsieur Madeleine, assumed to be related to a bishop.

Monsieur Madeleine was alerted to the advancement he had obtained by more bows of respect from the older women and more smiles from the younger ones. One evening, curious by right of seniority, a doyenne of that small, grand world ventured to ask him, ‘Monsieur le maire is doubtless a cousin of the late bishop of Digne?’

‘No, madame,’ he said. ‘But you’re wearing mourning for him,’ the dowager persisted.

He replied, ‘That’s because in my youth I was a servant in his family.’ It was also noted that every time a young Savoyard, roaming around the

area looking for chimneys to sweep, came into town monsieur le maire would send for him, ask him his name and give him money. The little Savoyards told each other about this and a great many of them came by.

V

Vague Glimmerings on the Horizon

Little by little over the course of time, all opposition to him fell away. By virtue of a sort of law to which those who better themselves are always subject, there had at first been slanders and calumnies against Monsieur Madeleine, then there were just malicious comments, then just rude remarks, then that was the end of it. Respect for him was total, unanimous and cordial, and there came a time around 1821 when the words ‘monsieur le maire’ were uttered at Montreuil-sur-Mer with almost the same expression as the words ‘Monseigneur l’évêque’ had been uttered at Digne in 1815. People came from twenty-five miles around to consult Monsieur Madeleine. He ended disagreements, prevented lawsuits, reconciled enemies. Everyone recognized his authority as judge. It was as if he were animated by the book of natural law. It was like a contagion of respect that

over six or seven years was passed on from one to another and infected the whole area.

One man alone in the town and its surroundings totally escaped this

contagion, and no matter what Père Madeleine did, he remained resistant, as if some sort of incorruptible and imperturbable instinct kept him alert and uneasy. It would seem to be the case that there exists in certain men a real animal instinct – like all instincts pure and true to itself, one that creates antipathies and sympathies, that inevitably separates one type of person from another, that does not waver, is never perplexed, never silenced and never failing, an instinct clear in its obscurity, infallible, compelling, intractable to all counsel of the intellect and all powers of reasoning against it; an instinct that, however destinies may be shaped, secretly warns the dog-man of the presence of the cat-man and the fox-man of the presence of the lion-man.

Often when Monsieur Madeleine went by in the street, peaceable, loving,

with the blessings of everyone around him, a tall man dressed in an iron-grey frock-coat, armed with a stout walking-stick and wearing his hat pulled down, would swing round behind him and follow him with his eyes until he was out of sight, folding his arms, slowly shaking his head and pursing his upper and lower lips towards his nose, a sort of meaningful grimace that might be translated as ‘Now who on earth is that man? I’m sure I’ve seen him somewhere before … Anyhow, I’m not in the least taken in by him.’

This person whose gravity was almost menacing was one of those men

who even when only fleetingly glimpsed arrest the viewer’s attention.

His name was Javert, and he was with the police.

At Montreuil-sur-Mer he had the invidious but useful job of inspector. He

had not witnessed Madeleine’s career from the outset. Javert owed the position he held to the protection of Monsieur Chabouillet, secretary to the minister of state Comte Anglès, then prefect of police in Paris. When Javert arrived at Montreuil-sur-Mer the great manufacturer’s fortune was already made, and Père Madeleine had become Monsieur Madeleine.

Certain police officers have a distinctive physiognomy, one in which an

air of baseness is combined with an air of authority. Javert had this physiognomy without the baseness.

It is our firm belief that if souls were visible to the eye we should clearly

see that strange thing whereby every single member of the human species corresponds to some species of the animal world. And we would easily be able to recognize that truth barely apprehended by the philosopher, which is that, from the oyster to the eagle, from the pig to the tiger, all animals are to be found in mankind, and each one of them is to be found in some man.

Sometimes even several at a time.

Animals are nothing other than the physical representation of our virtues

and vices, wandering about before our eyes, the visible spectres of our souls. God lets us see them so as to make us think. However, since animals are mere shadows, God has made them capable only of being trained, not educated. What good would it serve? By contrast, our souls being realities and having a purpose of their own, God has given them intelligence, that is to say the capability to be educated. A good social education can always elicit from any soul whatsoever the usefulness it contains.

This of course is said from the limited viewpoint of visible earthly life,

without prejudice to the profound question of the prior and ulterior personality of living beings other than man. The visible self in no way authorizes the philosopher to deny the hidden self. With this reservation, let us continue.

Now, if the reader will grant for a moment that there is in every man one

of the animal species in creation, it will be easy for us to say which of them resided in police officer Javert.

The peasants of Asturias are convinced that in every she-wolf’s litter

there is one dog, which is killed by the mother because otherwise as it grew up it would eat the rest of her young.

Give this son-of-a-wolf dog a human face, and you have Javert.

Javert was born in prison of a fortune-teller whose husband was a

convicted felon. As he grew up, he believed he was on the outside of society and had no hope of ever being let in. He observed that society

unforgivingly kept out two classes of men, those who attack it and those who guard it. He had the choice between these two classes only. At the same time he was conscious of some underlying inflexibility, steadiness and probity within him, compounded by an inexpressible hatred for that gypsy race to which he belonged. He joined the police.

He made his mark. By the age of forty he was an inspector.

As a young man he worked with the chain gangs in the south.

Before going any further, let us be clear about the term ‘human face’ that

we have just applied to Javert.

Javert’s human face consisted of a flat nose with two deep nostrils and

enormous whiskers growing up his cheeks towards them. The first time you saw those two forests and those two cavernous holes, you felt unnerved.

When Javert laughed, which was rare and dreadful, his thin lips parted and revealed not only his teeth but his gums, and a ferocious, flattened crease formed round his nose as on the muzzle of a wild beast. Javert in serious mood was a mastiff. When he laughed he was a tiger. Besides which, a low brow, a full jaw, his hair concealing his forehead and falling over his eyebrows, between his eyes a permanent central furrow like a blaze of anger, an impenetrable gaze, a tight-lipped and fearsome mouth, a fierce air of command.

This man was made up of two very simple sentiments, and within reason

very good ones, which he rendered almost bad by taking them to extremes: respect for authority and hatred of rebellion. And in his eyes theft, murder, any crime, was simply a form of rebellion. He looked on any state official, from the prime minister to the rural policeman, with a deep-seated blind faith. On anyone who had once crossed the legal threshold of wrong-doing he heaped scorn, loathing and disgust. He was uncompromising, and he allowed of no exceptions. On the one hand he said, ‘The state official is incapable of making a mistake. The magistrate is never wrong.’ On the other he said, ‘These people are lost beyond redemption. Nothing good can come of them.’ He fully shared the view held by those extremists who attribute to human law some extraordinary power of creating or, if you will, of recognizing outcasts, and who place a Styx at the bottom of society. A

melancholy dreamer, he was stoical, serious, austere; and like fanatics, humble and haughty. He was gimlet-eyed, his gaze cold and piercing. His whole life was contained in these two words: watchfulness, vigilance. He had introduced a straight line into what is most tortuous in the world.

Conscientious in his usefulness, he made a religion of his duties, and he was a spy as other men are priests. Woe betide the man who fell into his hands!

He would have arrested his father for escaping from prison and denounced his mother for contravening the terms of her release from gaol. And he would have done so with that kind of inward satisfaction conferred by virtuousness. To accompany this, a life of privation, isolation, abnegation, chastity, never a moment’s recreation. This was implacable duty, an understanding of the police like the Spartans’ understanding of Sparta, pitiless surveillance, ferocious honesty, a sleuth of marble-like coldness, Brutus in Vidocq.

Javert’s entire person was an expression of the man who spies and keeps

out of sight. Joseph de Maistre’s mystical school of thought, which at that time was spicing up with high-flown cosmogony what were called the ‘ultra’ newspapers, would surely have said that Javert was a symbol. You could not see his forehead, which disappeared under his hat. You could not see his eyes that lurked beneath his eyebrows. You could not see his chin that sank into his cravat. You could not see his hands that vanished up his sleeves. You could not see his cane that he carried under his coat. But when the occasion arose, suddenly emerging from all this shadow as from an ambush, you could see a narrow angular forehead, a baleful glance, a threatening chin, huge hands and a monstrous truncheon.

Even though he hated books, in his moments of leisure, which were few

and far between, he read, with the result that he was not completely uneducated. This was made evident in a certain pomposity in his manner of speaking.

As we have said, he had no vices. When he was pleased with himself, he

allowed himself a pinch of snuff. This was his link with humanity.

It will not be hard to understand that Javert was the terror of that whole

class referred to in the annual report of the Ministry of Justice under the

heading: Vagrants. At the mention of Javert’s name they would make themselves scarce. An appearance by Javert himself would petrify them.

Such was this formidable man.

Javert was like an eye constantly fixed on Monsieur Madeleine. An eye

full of suspicion and conjecture. Monsieur Madeleine eventually noticed, but it appeared that this was of no interest to him. He did not even question Javert. He neither sought him out nor avoided him. And he bore that intrusive and almost oppressive gaze without appearing to pay any attention to it. He treated Javert the same way he treated everybody, with unassuming kindness.

From a few words Javert let drop, it was clear that with that curiosity

bred in the bone, in which instinct plays as great a part as willpower, he had secretly investigated all previous traces Père Madeleine might have left elsewhere. He seemed to know, and sometimes he said cryptically, that someone had made certain inquiries in a certain place about a certain family that had disappeared. Talking to himself, he once happened to remark, ‘I think I’ve got him!’ Then he remained preoccupied for three days without uttering a word. It seemed the lead he thought he had, had come to nothing.

In any case – and this is the necessary corrective to any

oversimplification that certain words might have implied – there can be nothing truly infallible about any human being and it is precisely in the nature of instinct that it can become confused, thrown off the scent and led astray. Otherwise, instinct would be superior to intelligence and beasts would turn out to have a better understanding than man.

Javert was evidently somewhat disconcerted by Monsieur Madeleine’s

complete naturalness and calm.

One day, however, his strange manner seemed to make an impression on

Monsieur Madeleine. This was the occasion.

VI

Père Fauchelevent

One morning Monsieur Madeleine was walking along an unpaved side street in Montreuil-sur-Mer. He heard a noise and saw a group of people some way off. He approached them. An old man called Père Fauchelevent had just fallen under his cart when his horse had pitched to the ground.

This Fauchelevent was one of the few enemies Monsieur Madeleine still

had at that time. When Madeleine first came to the town Fauchelevent, a former copyist, of peasant stock and almost literate, had a business that was beginning to go badly. Fauchelevent had seen this ordinary labourer grow rich, while he, a skilled tradesman, was being ruined. This had filled him with jealousy and he had done all he could on every occasion to discredit Madeleine. Then came bankruptcy, and the old man, left with nothing but a horse and cart, with no family and no children, had turned carter to earn a living.

The horse had two broken haunches and could not get up again. The old

man was trapped between the wheels. So calamitous was the collapse of the vehicle that the whole weight of it was resting on his chest. The cart was quite heavily laden. Père Fauchelevent was wheezing pitifully. People had tried to pull him out, but to no avail. One reckless move, one clumsy intervention, one inadvertent jolt might finish him off. It was impossible to free him other than by lifting the cart off him. Javert, who had turned up just as the accident occurred, sent for a jack.

Monsieur Madeleine arrived. People stood aside respectfully. ‘Help!’ cried old Fauchelevent. ‘What kindly lad will save this old man?’ Monsieur Madeleine turned to those gathered round. ‘Has anyone got a

jack?’

‘Someone’s gone to fetch one,’ replied a peasant. ‘How long will that take?’ ‘They’ve gone to the nearest place where there’s a farrier, which is

Flachot, but all the same it’ll take a good quarter of an hour.’

‘A quarter of an hour!’ exclaimed Madeleine.

It had rained the day before, the ground was wet. With every moment the

cart was settling deeper into the ground and compressing the old carter’s chest more and more. It was obvious that within five minutes his ribs would be broken.

‘We can’t wait a quarter of an hour,’ said Madeleine to the peasants, who

were staring at him.

‘We’ll have to!’ ‘But it’ll be too late by then! Can’t you see the cart is sinking?’ ‘It can’t be helped!’ ‘Listen,’ said Madeleine, ‘there’s still room enough under the cart to

allow a man to crawl under it and lift it on his back – for just half a minute – and the poor man can be pulled out. Is there anyone here who has the strength and the courage? For five gold louis!’

No one in the group moved. ‘Ten louis,’ said Madeleine.

Those present lowered their eyes. One of them muttered, ‘A man would

need to be devilish strong. And then he runs the risk of getting crushed!’

‘Come on,’ said Madeleine. ‘Twenty louis.’ The same silence. ‘It’s not willingness they lack,’ said a voice.

Monsieur Madeleine turned round and recognized Javert, whom he had

not noticed on his arrival.

Javert went on, ‘It’s strength. It would take an extraordinary man to do

such a thing as lift a cart like that on his back.’

Then, staring intently at Monsieur Madeleine, he went on, dwelling on

every word he uttered, ‘Monsieur Madeleine, I’ve never known but one man capable of doing what you ask.’

Madeleine flinched.

Javert added with an air of indifference but without taking his eyes off

Madeleine, ‘He was a convict.’

‘Ah!’ said Madeleine. ‘Serving a penal sentence at Toulon.’ Madeleine turned pale.

Meanwhile, the cart continued to sink slowly. Père Fauchelevent

wheezed and shrieked, ‘I can’t breathe! It’s breaking my ribs! A jack!

Something! Ah!’

Madeleine looked round. ‘Is there no one, then, who wants to earn twenty

louis and save the life of this poor old man?’

None of those present stirred.

Javert spoke again. ‘I’ve never known more than one man who could

substitute for a jack. It was that convict.’

‘Ah! It’s crushing me!’ cried the old man.

Madeleine looked up, met Javert’s hawk eye still fixed on him, gazed at

the motionless peasants and smiled sadly. Then without a word he fell on his knees, and before the crowd had time even to utter a cry he was underneath the cart.

There was a dreadful moment of expectation and silence.

They saw Madeleine, almost flat on his stomach under that tremendous

weight, make two vain efforts to draw his elbows closer to his knees. They shouted to him, ‘Père Madeleine, come out from under there!’ Old Fauchelevent himself said to him, ‘Monsieur Madeleine! Get out! Don’t you see, it can’t be helped, I’m going to die! Just leave me! You’re going to get crushed as well!’

Madeleine did not reply.

The spectators gasped. The wheels had continued to sink, and already it

had become almost impossible for Madeleine to get out from under the vehicle.

Suddenly the enormous mass was seen to quiver, the cart rose slowly, the

wheels half emerged from the ruts. They heard a choked voice crying, ‘Quick! Help!’ It was Madeleine, who had just made one last effort.

They rushed forward. The self-sacrifice of a single man had given

strength and courage to all. The cart was lifted by twenty men. Old Fauchelevent was saved.

Madeleine stood up. He was pale though dripping with sweat. His clothes

were torn and covered with mud. Everyone was tearful. The old man kissed his knees and called him the good Lord. He himself had on his face an

indescribable expression of blissful and heavenly suffering, and he fixed his calm gaze on Javert, who was still staring at him.

VII

Fauchelevent Becomes a Gardener in Paris

Fauchelevent had dislocated his kneecap in falling. Père Madeleine had him conveyed to an infirmary that he had established for his workers in the factory building itself, and which was staffed by two Sisters of Charity. The next morning the old man found a thousand-franc banknote on his bedside table with this note in Père Madeleine’s handwriting: ‘For the purchase of your horse and cart.’ The cart was a wreck and the horse was dead.

Fauchelevent recovered, but his knee remained stiff. On the recommendation of the Sisters of Charity and of his parish priest, Monsieur Madeleine got the old boy a position as gardener at a convent in Rue St-Antoine in Paris.

Some time afterwards, Monsieur Madeleine was appointed mayor. The

first time Javert saw Monsieur Madeleine wearing the sash that gave him full authority over the town, he felt a shudder of the kind a watch-dog might feel on smelling a wolf in his master’s clothes. From then on he avoided him as much as he could. When his duties made it absolutely necessary and he had no alternative but to be with monsieur le maire, he addressed him with profound respect.

Besides the visible signs we have mentioned of this prosperity created at

Montreuil-sur-Mer by Père Madeleine, there was another indicator nonetheless significant for not being visible. Always a sure sign, this. When the population is hard-pressed, when there is a shortage of work, when business is disastrous, the taxpayer, being short of money, is reluctant to pay taxes, delays as much as possible and then exceeds the respite granted, and the state spends a great deal of money on the costs of enforcement and collection. When there is plenty of work, when the country is happy and wealthy, taxes are paid willingly at little cost to the state. It may be said this is one infallible gauge of public wealth and poverty: the cost of collecting

taxes. In seven years the cost of collecting taxes had dropped by seventy-five per cent in the arrondissement* of Montreuil-sur-Mer, which led to this arrondissement being frequently cited above all others by Monsieur de Villèle, then minister of finance.

These were the local circumstances when Fantine returned. No one

remembered her. Fortunately, the door of Monsieur Madeleine’s factory was like a friendly face. She applied there and was taken on in the women’s workshop. The work being entirely new to Fantine, she could not be very adept at it. So she made very little money for her day’s work, but still it was enough. The problem was solved. She was earning her living.

VIII

Madame Victurnien Spends Thirty-five Francs for the Sake of Morality

When Fantine saw that she was making her living she enjoyed a moment of happiness. To live honestly by the work she did – what a blessing! She truly regained a liking for work. She bought a looking-glass and took pleasure in seeing in it her youth, her beautiful hair, her fine teeth. She forgot many things. She thought only of Cosette and the possibilities of the future, and was almost happy. She rented a small room and furnished it on credit against her future earnings – a vestige of her improvident ways.

Not being able to say she was married, she had been very careful, as we

have already indicated, not to talk about her little girl.

In these early days, as we have seen, she paid the Thénardiers promptly.

As all she could do was sign her name she was obliged to write to them using a public letter-writer.

She wrote often. This was noticed. There started to be mutterings in the

women’s workroom that Fantine ‘wrote letters’ and that ‘she put on airs and graces’.

There is nothing like those for whom it is none of their business, for

spying on other people’s actions. Why is it that gentleman only ever comes at dusk? Why does Monsieur So-and-so never hang his key on the hook on Thursdays? Why does he always go down the back streets? Why does

madame always get out of her cab before she reaches the house? Why does she send out for a pad of writing-paper when she has ‘a whole writing-case full of it’? et cetera, et cetera. There are people who to find out the answer to these mysteries, which in any case are absolutely no concern of theirs, spend more money, waste more time, take more trouble than it would take to do ten good deeds. And all this for nothing, just for the pleasure of it, with no other reward for their curiosity except curiosity. They will follow this man or that woman for days on end, keeping watch for hours on street corners, in gateways, at night, in the cold and rain. They will grease the palms of errand boys, get cab drivers and lackeys drunk, bribe a chambermaid, offer inducements to a doorkeeper. Why? For no reason.

Sheer desperation to see, to know, and to find out. Sheer compulsion to gossip. And often, to the great joy of those who have ‘uncovered all’, with nothing to be gained by it, out of sheer instinct, these secrets once found out and these mysteries made public, these enigmas exposed to the light of day lead to catastrophes, duels, bankruptcies, ruined families, devastated lives.

A sorry state of affairs.

Certain individuals are malicious solely because of their need to talk.

Their conversation, drawing-room chatter, boudoir gossip, is like those chimneys that burn wood fast. They need a great deal of fuel, and their fuel is their fellow human being.

So Fantine was watched.

Besides which, more than one woman was jealous of her golden hair and

her white teeth.

It was noted that in the workroom, among the others, she often turned

aside to wipe away a tear. These were the moments when she was thinking of her child, perhaps also of the man she had loved.

Severing unhappy ties with the past is a painful and arduous process.

It was noted that she wrote at least twice a month, always to the same

address, and that she paid for the postage. A way was found to obtain the address: Monsieur, Monsieur Thénardier, Innkeeper, at Montfermeil. The public letter-writer, an old fellow who could not fill his stomach with red wine without emptying his bag of secrets, was encouraged to blab in the

tavern. In short, it came to be known that Fantine had a child. ‘She must have been some kind of prostitute.’ There was one old busybody who made the trip to Montfermeil, talked to the Thénardiers, and said on her return, ‘For my thirty-five francs I’ve got to the bottom of it. I’ve seen the child.’

The busybody who did this was a gorgon named Madame Victurnien,

guardian and doorkeeper of everyone’s virtue. Madame Victurnien was fifty-six and her mask of ugliness was overlaid with the mask of old age.

Quavering voice, crotchety mind. Hard to believe, this old woman had once been young. In her youth, when ’93 was in full spate, she married a monk who fled the cloister wearing the Revolutionary’s red cap, switching from the Bernardines to the Jacobins. She was unfeeling, unpleasant, unapproachable, peevish, prickly, almost poisonous; and now widowed, still harbouring the memory of the monk who had thoroughly subdued her and bent her to his will. She was a nettle that you could see had been crushed by the cassock.* With the Restoration she became devout, and so zealously that the priests forgave her her monk. She had a small property that she made a great fuss about bequeathing to a religious community. She was very highly regarded at the episcopal palace of Arras. So this Madame Victurnien went to Montfermeil and returned saying, ‘I’ve seen the child.’

All this took time. Fantine had been at the factory for over a year when

one morning the workshop supervisor gave her fifty francs on behalf of monsieur le maire, telling her she no longer had a job at the workshop and urging her on behalf of monsieur le maire to leave town.

It was the very same month that the Thénardiers, having asked for twelve

francs instead of six, had just demanded fifteen francs instead of twelve.

Fantine was devastated. She could not leave town, she owed money for

her rent and her furniture. Fifty francs was not enough to pay off this debt.

She stammered out a few pleading words. The supervisor made clear to her she must leave the workshop immediately. Besides, Fantine was not an especially good worker. Overcome with shame even more than despair, she left the workshop and returned to her room. So her offence was now known to all!

She felt she had not the strength left to say another word. She was

advised to go and see monsieur le maire. She did not dare. Monsieur le maire gave her fifty francs because he was kind and sacked her because he was just. She submitted to that judgement.

IX

Success for Madame Victurnien

So the monk’s widow was good for something. But Monsieur Madeleine knew nothing of all this. It was one of those combinations of circumstances that life is full of. As a rule Monsieur Madeleine almost never went into the women’s workshop. He had placed in charge of this workshop an elderly spinster provided by the parish priest, and he had full confidence in this supervisor, a truly respectable person, firm, fair-minded, full of the charity that consists in donating but not so much of the charity that consists in understanding and forgiving. Monsieur Madeleine left everything to her.

The best of men are often obliged to delegate their authority. It was invested with this full power and in the conviction she was doing the right thing that the supervisor tried, judged, condemned and executed Fantine.

As for the fifty francs, she donated them out of a fund Monsieur

Madeleine had entrusted to her for the benefit and assistance of the working women, and for which she did not have to account.

Fantine sought work locally as a servant. She went from house to house.

No one would have her. She could not leave town. The second-hand dealer to whom she was in debt for her furniture, such as it was, said to her, ‘If you leave, I’ll have you arrested as a thief.’ The landlord to whom she owed rent said to her, ‘You’re young and pretty, you can pay.’ She divided the fifty francs between the landlord and the furniture dealer, returned to the latter three-quarters of his goods, kept only the bare minimum, and found herself with no work, with no place in society, left with only her bed, and still owing about fifty francs.

She began to make plain shirts for the soldiers of the garrison and earned

twelve sous a day. Her daughter cost her ten. It was at this point that she

began to fall behind with her payments to the Thénardiers.

However, an old woman who lighted her candle for her when she came

home at night taught her the art of living in poverty. Beyond living on little, there is living on nothing. They are two rooms. The first is dark, the second is pitch-black.

Fantine learned how to go without any fire at all in winter, how to give

up a bird that eats a quarter of a sou’s worth of millet every two days, how to make a coverlet of your underskirt and an underskirt of your coverlet, how to save your candle by taking your meals by the light from the window opposite. We do not know how much some poor creatures who have grown old in honest destitution can get out of one sou. It eventually becomes a talent. Fantine acquired this sublime talent, and again took heart a little.

At this period she said to a neighbour, ‘Puh! I tell myself, with only five

hours’ sleep and working all the rest of the time at my sewing, I’ll always be able to earn just about enough to live on. And anyway, when you’re sad you eat less. Oh well, some hardship, some worries, a little bread on the one hand and heartache on the other, all that will keep me going.’

In this predicament it would have been a peculiar joy to have her little

girl with her. She thought of fetching her. But what? Make her share this hardship! And besides, she owed money to the Thénardiers! How was she to settle her debt? And the journey! How was she to pay for that?

The old woman who had given her what might be called lessons in a life

of poverty was a saintly spinster called Marguerite, a woman of true devoutness, poor, and charitable towards the poor and even towards the rich, able to write just well enough to sign her name ‘Margeritte’, and believing in God, which is true knowledge.

There are many of these saints here below. Some day they will have their

place on high. This life has a tomorrow.

At first Fantine felt so ashamed, she dared not go out.

When she was in the street, she sensed that people turned round behind

her and pointed. Everyone stared at her and no one greeted her. The cold, bitter scorn of passers-by penetrated her, body and soul, like a north wind.

In small towns an unmarried mother might as well be exposed naked to

everyone’s taunts and prying. At least in Paris no one knows you, and this obscurity clothes you. Oh! how she must have yearned to come to Paris!

Impossible!

She had to get used to disrepute just as she had to get used to penury.

Gradually she resigned herself to it. After two or three months she shook off her shame and began to go about as though nothing bothered her. ‘It’s all the same to me,’ she would say.

She came and went with head held high and a bitter smile, and felt she

was becoming brazen.

From her window Madame Victurnien sometimes saw her passing,

observed the plight of ‘that creature’ who ‘thanks to her’ had been ‘put in her rightful place’, and congratulated herself. The wicked have a cruel happiness.

Fantine was exhausted by overwork, and the little dry cough she had,

worsened. She sometimes said to her neighbour Marguerite, ‘Just feel how hot my hands are!’

Still, when in the morning with an old broken comb she combed her

beautiful hair, like cascades of floss-silk, she took a moment’s pleasure in her appearance.

X

The Consequences of Her Success

Fantine had been sacked towards the end of winter. Then it was summer, but winter came again. Short days, less work. Winter: no warmth, no light, no middle of the day, evening following on morning, fog, twilight, the window grey, the light so bad you cannot see. The sky is a basement window, the whole day a cellar. The sun looks like a pauper. What a dreadful time of year! Winter turns to stone both the rain from heaven and the heart of man. Her creditors harried her.

Fantine earned too little. Her debts had grown. Not getting their money,

the Thénardiers were constantly writing her letters whose contents upset her

terribly, and the cost of their delivery was ruining her. One day they wrote saying that her little Cosette was going stark-naked in that cold weather, that she needed a woollen skirt, and the least her mother could do was to send ten francs for it. She received the letter and crumpled it in her hands all day long. That evening she went into a barber’s shop at the corner of the street and pulled out her hair pin. Her lovely golden hair fell to below her waist.

‘What beautiful hair!’ exclaimed the barber. ‘How much will you give me for it?’ she said. ‘Ten francs.’ ‘Cut it off.’ She bought a knitted skirt and sent it to the Thénardiers.

This skirt infuriated the Thénardiers. It was the money they wanted. They

gave the skirt to Éponine. Poor Alouette continued to shiver.

Fantine thought, ‘My child’s not cold now. I’ve clothed her with my hair.’

She wore little round caps that concealed her shorn head, and she still looked pretty in them.

A sinister process was at work in Fantine’s heart. When she saw she

could no longer dress her hair she began to feel hatred for everything around her. She had long shared everyone’s reverence for Père Madeleine.

Yet by telling herself over and over again that it was he who had sacked her, that he was the cause of her unhappiness, she came to hate him too, him especially. If she passed by the factory at times when the workers were at the gate, she put on a show of laughing and singing.

An old woman working there, who once saw her laughing and singing

like that, said, ‘There’s a girl who’ll come to a bad end.’

She took a lover, just anybody, a man she did not love, out of bravado,

with rage in her heart. He was a scoundrel, some sort of beggar musician, a lazy tramp, who beat her and left her as she had taken him, in disgust.

She adored her child.

The further she fell and the darker everything around her became, the

more brightly shone that sweet little angel deep in her soul. She said, ‘When

I’m rich, I’ll have my Cosette with me.’ And she laughed. She could not get rid of her cough and she had sweats down her back.

One day she received from the Thénardiers a letter that read as follows:

‘Cosette is ill with a local sickness. A miliary fever, they call it. She needs expensive drugs. This is ruining us and we cannot pay out any more. If you do not send us forty francs before the week is out, the little one will die.’

She burst out laughing and said to her old neighbour, ‘Oh! Very funny!

Forty francs! Is that all? That’s two napoleons! Where do they expect me to find them? Are they stupid, these peasants?’

Yet she went out on to the staircase and reread the letter by a skylight.

Then she carried on down the stairs and went out, running and skipping, still laughing.

Somebody who met her said, ‘What have you got to be so cheerful

about?’

She replied, ‘There are some people in the country who have just written

me a very silly letter. They want forty francs from me. That’s peasants for you!’

As she crossed the square she saw a number of people gathered round a

bizarre-shaped carriage with a man dressed in red standing on top of it, holding forth. He was a travelling mountebank dentist who was offering the public full sets of dentures, opiates, powders and elixirs.

Fantine mingled with the crowd and began to laugh like everyone else at

this harangue, which included slang for the riff-raff and scientific jargon for respectable folk. The tooth-puller saw this pretty girl laughing and suddenly cried out, ‘You, the girl there laughing, you have pretty teeth! If you want to sell me your two gnashers I’ll give you a gold napoleon for each of them.’

‘What are my gnashers?’ asked Fantine. ‘Your gnashers’, replied the dental professor, ‘are your front teeth, the

two top ones.’

‘How horrible!’ exclaimed Fantine. ‘Two napoleons!’ mumbled a toothless old crone standing there. ‘Well,

there’s a lucky girl!’

Fantine fled and blocked her ears so as not to hear the hoarse voice of the

man shouting after her, ‘Think about it, pretty girl! Two napoleons can come in handy! If you fancy it, come to the Tillac d’Argent inn this evening, you’ll find me there.’

Fantine returned home. She was furious and recounted the incident to her

good neighbour Marguerite. ‘Can you imagine? My God, what a dreadful man! How can such people be allowed to go about the place! Pull out my two front teeth! Why, I’d look horrible! Hair grows again, but teeth! Uh!

The man’s a monster! I’d rather throw myself head first into the street from the fifth floor! He told me he’d be at the Tillac d’Argent this evening.’

‘And what did he offer?’ asked Marguerite. ‘Two napoleons.’ ‘That’s forty francs.’ ‘Yes,’ said Fantine, ‘that’s forty francs.’ She remained pensive and took up her sewing. After a quarter of an hour

she left her sewing and went out on to the staircase to reread the Thénardiers’ letter.

Coming back into the room she said to Marguerite, who was working

with her, ‘What is this miliary fever? Do you know?’

‘Yes,’ replied the old maid, ‘it’s a sickness.’ ‘So it calls for a lot of drugs?’ ‘Oh! an awful lot of drugs.’ ‘How do you get it?’ ‘It is a sickness that just comes over you.’ ‘So it attacks children?’ ‘Especially children.’ ‘Do people die of it?’ ‘Very easily,’ said Marguerite.

Fantine went out on to the staircase again to reread her letter.

That evening she came downstairs and was seen heading in the direction

of Rue de Paris, where the inns are.

The next morning when Marguerite went into Fantine’s room before

daylight, for they always worked together and so lit just one candle between

the two of them, she found Fantine sitting on her bed, looking pale, cold as ice. She had not laid her head on the pillow. Her bonnet had dropped into her lap. Her candle had been burning all night and was almost entirely consumed.

Marguerite stopped in the doorway, paralysed by this enormous disarray,

and cried, ‘Lord! the candle’s burned right down! Something’s happened.’

Then she looked at Fantine, who turned her shorn head towards her.

Fantine had aged ten years since the day before. ‘Dear Jesus!’ said Marguerite. ‘What’s wrong with you, Fantine?’ ‘Nothing’s wrong,’ replied Fantine. ‘Quite the contrary. My child won’t

die of that awful sickness for want of help. I’m pleased.’

So saying, she showed the old maid two napoleons glinting on the table. ‘Good Lord!’ cried Marguerite. ‘Why, that’s a fortune! Where did you get

those gold louis?’

‘Got them, I did!’ replied Fantine.

At the same time she smiled. The candle lit her face. It was a bloody

smile. Red-tinged saliva stained the corners of her mouth and there was a black hole between her lips.

The two teeth had been pulled out. She sent the forty francs to

Montfermeil. It was actually a ruse on the part of the Thénardiers to get money out of her. Cosette was not ill.

Fantine threw her mirror out of the window. She had long since left her

small cell on the second floor for a garret with a latch door under the roof, one of those attic spaces with the ceiling sloping down to the floor that you keep banging your head against. The poor can no more reach the end of their room than the end of their life without having to stoop lower and lower.

Her bed was gone. All she had left was a rag she called her coverlet, a

mattress on the floor and a broken-down chair. Now standing withered in a corner, forgotten, was a little rosebush she had. In the other corner was a butter-cooler to hold water, which froze in winter, rings of ice leaving long-lasting marks indicating the different water levels. She had lost her shame, she now lost her vanity. Sign of ultimate despair. She went out wearing

dirty bonnets. Whether for want of time or out of indifference, she no longer mended her clothes. As the heels wore out she pulled her stockings down into her shoes. This was evident from the vertical wrinkles. She patched her bodice, which was old and worn, with scraps of calico that tore at the slightest movement. The people she owed money to ‘made scenes’ and gave her no peace. She found them in the street, she found them again on her staircase. She spent nights weeping and thinking. Her eyes were very bright, and she felt a constant pain in her shoulder, near the top of her left shoulder blade. She coughed a great deal. She hated Père Madeleine intensely, but did not complain. She sewed seventeen hours a day. But a prison-labour contractor, who made the prisoners work for less, brought prices down all of a sudden, which reduced the daily earnings of ordinary working women to nine sous. Seventeen hours of toil and nine sous a day!

Her creditors were more pitiless than ever. The second-hand dealer, who had taken back nearly all his furniture, kept on at her, ‘When will you pay me, you hussy?’* In God’s name, what did they want of her! She felt hunted, and something of the wild beast developed in her. About the same time Thénardier wrote to her saying that, really, he had been far too good about waiting and he must have a hundred francs immediately. Otherwise, he would turn little Cosette, just convalescing from her serious illness, out of the house, into the cold and on to the street, and she’d have to look after herself as best she could. And that she would die, if that’s what her mother wanted. ‘A hundred francs,’ thought Fantine. ‘But where’s there a job that will pay a hundred sous a day?’

‘Well,’ she said, ‘let’s get on with it and sell the rest.’ The poor girl became registered as a common prostitute.

XI

Christus Nos Liberavit†

What is this story of Fantine about? It is about society buying a slave.

From whom? From wretchedness.

From hunger, cold, isolation, neglect, destitution. A hard bargain. A soul

for a morsel of bread. Society accepts what wretchedness offers.

The sacred law of Jesus Christ governs our civilization but does not yet

pervade it. It is said that slavery has disappeared from European civilization. This is false. It still exists, but only women suffer this oppression now, and its name is prostitution.

It oppresses women, that is to say feminine charm, weakness, beauty,

motherhood. This is not one of the least of man’s reasons to be ashamed.

At the point we have now reached in this painful tragedy, there is nothing

left of the Fantine she once was. Sinking into the mire, she has hardened into stone. Anyone who touches her feels cold. She passes by, enduring you, ignoring you. She is the stern figure of disgrace. Life and the social order have said all they have to say to her. Everything that will happen to her has happened. She has been through everything, borne everything, sustained everything, suffered everything, lost everything, mourned everything. She is resigned with a resignation that resembles indifference as death resembles sleep. There is nothing more she shrinks from, nothing more she fears. Let the whole rain-cloud come down on her and the entire ocean sweep over her! What does she care? She is a saturated sponge.

This at least is what she believes, but it is a mistake to imagine that fate

has no more in store and that there is a limit to everything.

Alas! What are all these lives, driven on in such confusion? Where are

they going? Why are they like this?

He who knows this sees the full extent of the darkness.

There is none but he. His name is God.

XII

Monsieur Bamatabois’s Idleness

There is in all small towns, and there was in Montreuil-sur-Mer in particular, a class of young men who nibble on an income of fifteen hundred francs much as others like them gobble up two hundred thousand francs a year in Paris. These are creatures of the great neuter species:

geldings, parasites, nonentities, who have a little land, a little foolishness and a little wit, who would be boors in a salon and think themselves gentlemen in the tavern. Who say, ‘My fields, my peasants, my woods.’ Who boo actresses at the theatre to prove they are men of taste, and quarrel with officers of the garrison to prove they are men of war. Who hunt, smoke, yawn, drink, smell of tobacco, play billiards, stare at the travellers that arrive by stage-coach, live at the café, dine at the inn, have a dog that eats the bones under the table and a mistress who puts the dishes on the table. Who count every sou, take fashion to extremes, admire tragedy, despise women, wear out their old boots, copy London from Paris and Paris from Pont-à-Mousson, become gaga old men, never work, serve no purpose and do no great harm.

Monsieur Félix Tholomyès, had he remained in the country and never

seen Paris, would have been one of these men.

If they were richer you would say: they are dandies. If they were poorer

you would say: they are good-for-nothings. They are simply idlers. Among these idlers are the boring, the bored, the daydreamers and a few wags.

In those days a dandy consisted of a big collar, a big cravat, a watch with

watch charms attached to it, three waistcoats of different colours worn one on top of the other with the red and the blue underneath, a short-waisted olive swallow-tail coat with a double row of close-set silver buttons running up to the shoulder, trousers of a lighter shade of olive decorated on the two seams with rows of piping, the number of rows varying but always uneven, ranging between one and eleven, a limit that was never exceeded. Add to this, ankle-boots with little metal heel-plates, a narrow-brimmed top hat, hair worn in a quiff, an enormous cane, and conversation spiced with Potier’s puns. On top of all that, spurs and a moustache. At that time a moustache signified respectability, and spurs, one who got about on foot.

The provincial dandy wore the longest of spurs and the bushiest of

moustaches.

It was the period when the republics of South America were fighting

against the king of Spain, Bolívar against Morillo. Narrow-brimmed hats

were royalist and called ‘morillos’. Liberals wore hats with wide brims, called ‘bolivars’.

Now, eight or ten months after what has been recounted in the preceding

pages, sometime about the beginning of January 1823, on an evening when snow had fallen, one of these dandies, one of these idlers – a ‘right-minded’ fellow, for he wore a morillo, as well as being warmly wrapped in one of those big cloaks that in cold weather completed the fashionable outfit – was having fun tormenting a creature who was loitering in front of the window of the officers’ café in a dance dress, with her neck and shoulders bare and with flowers on her head. This dandy was smoking, for that was very much the fashion.

Each time this woman passed in front of him he directed at her, along

with a puff from his cigar, some insult he considered witty and amusing, such as ‘How ugly you are!’ ‘Spare me the sight of you!’ ‘You’ve no teeth!’ et cetera, et cetera. This gentleman’s name was Monsieur Bamatabois. The woman, a sorry-looking dolled-up spectre, walking back and forth in the snow, did not respond, did not even glance at him, and in silence, with sombre regularity, carried on regardless with her perambulations which every five minutes brought her back to this taunting, like the soldier condemned to a flogging who keeps regaining consciousness. Making so little impression on her no doubt piqued the idler, and taking advantage of a moment when her back was turned he crept up behind her and, stifling his laughter, bent down, picked up a handful of snow from the pavement, and suddenly thrust it down her back between her bare shoulders. The trollop howled, turned, leapt like a panther and hurled herself at the man, sinking her fingernails into his face with the most dreadful oaths that could possibly spill out of the barrack-room into the gutter. These foul words, disgorged in a voice thickened by alcohol, issued hideously from a mouth in which, sure enough, the two front teeth were missing. It was Fantine.

At the rumpus this created, the officers flocked out of the café, passers-by

gathered, and a big circle, laughing, hooting and clapping, formed round this frenzied whirl consisting of two creatures that it was difficult to recognize as a man and a woman: the man trying to defend himself, his hat

on the ground; the woman kicking and punching, bareheaded, screaming, toothless and shorn, livid with anger, horrible.

Suddenly a tall man burst through the crowd, grabbed the woman by her

muddied satin bodice and said to her, ‘Follow me!’

The woman looked up. Her furious voice suddenly died away. Her eyes

were dull, from livid she turned ashen, and she trembled, terror-stricken.

She had recognized Javert.

The dandy took advantage of this turn of events to make his escape.

XIII

Resolving Some Questions of Municipal Policing

Javert moved the bystanders aside, broke up the circle and strode off towards the police station, which is on the far side of the square, dragging the poor wretch after him. With no will of her own, she offered no resistance. Neither he nor she said a word. Beside themselves with joy, the crowd of spectators followed after them, jeering. Utter wretchedness prompting obscenities.

On arriving at the police station, a low-ceilinged room heated by a stove

with an armed guard and a barred glazed door opening on to the street, Javert opened the door, entered with Fantine, and shut the door behind him to the great disappointment of the curious onlookers, who stood on tip-toe and craned their necks in front of the dingy window of the station house, trying to see. Curiosity is a form of gluttony. To see is to devour.

Inside, Fantine went and collapsed in a corner, still and silent, cowering

there like a frightened dog.

The sergeant of the guard brought a lighted candle to the table. Javert sat

down, drew a sheet of official paper from his pocket, and began to write.

Under our laws women of this social category are placed entirely in the

hands of the police. The latter do with them what they please, punish them as they see fit and confiscate at will those two sad things the women call their trade and their freedom. Javert was impassive. His solemn face betrayed no emotion. Yet he was seriously and deeply preoccupied. It was

one of those moments when he was exercising his formidable discretionary powers, with no one to answer to but with all the scruples of an exacting conscience. At that moment, he felt, the policeman’s stool he sat on was a judge’s bench. He was sitting in judgement. He was sitting in judgement, and he was passing sentence. He summoned up every conceivable thought he might have about the great thing he was doing. The more he considered this woman’s deed, the more outraged he felt. It was evident he had just witnessed a crime being committed. He had just seen society, represented by an enfranchised property owner, insulted and attacked out there in the street by a creature totally beyond the pale. A prostitute had assaulted a respectable citizen. He, Javert, had seen this. He wrote in silence.

When he had finished he signed the paper, folded it, and said to the

sergeant of the guard as he handed it to him, ‘Take three men and conduct this whore to the cells.’ Then turning to Fantine, ‘You’ve got six months.’

The poor creature gave a start. ‘Six months! Six months in prison!’ she cried. ‘Six months earning seven

sous a day! But what will become of Cosette? My daughter! My daughter!

But I still owe the Thénardiers more than a hundred francs – do you know that, monsieur l’inspecteur?’

She dragged herself across the floor that was wet from the muddy boots

of all those men, without getting to her feet, with her hands joined, taking great strides on her knees.

‘Monsieur Javert,’ she said, ‘I beg you for mercy. I assure you I’m not to

blame. If you’d seen how it started, you’d have seen that. I swear by the good Lord I’m not to blame! It was that gentleman, someone I don’t know, who put snow down my back. Do people have the right to put snow down our backs when we’re just walking past quietly doing no one any harm? It gave me a turn. I’m not very well, you see. And he’d already been having a go at me for a while. “You’re ugly! You’ve no teeth!” I know full well I haven’t got my teeth any more. I didn’t do anything. I thought, he’s a gentleman having his fun. I behaved myself, I didn’t speak to him. It was at that moment he put the snow down my back. Monsieur Javert, my dear monsieur l’inspecteur! Isn’t there someone who might have seen it and

could tell you this is the absolute truth? Perhaps I was wrong to get angry.

You know, in that first instant you’re not in control of yourself. You overreact. And then having something cold put down your back just when you are not expecting it! I was wrong to ruin the gentleman’s hat. Why did he go away? I’d beg his forgiveness. Oh, God! I wouldn’t mind at all begging his forgiveness. Spare me today, for this once, Monsieur Javert.

Listen, this is something you don’t know – in prison you can only earn seven sous a day, it’s not the government’s fault but you earn seven sous and, can you imagine, I have to pay a hundred francs or my little girl will be sent back to me. Oh, my God! I can’t have her with me. It’s so sordid, what I do! Oh, my Cosette, my little angel of the dear Blessed Virgin, what will become of her, poor darling? I’ll tell you, it’s the Thénardiers, they’re innkeepers, peasants, there’s no reasoning with them. They must be paid.

Don’t put me in prison! You see, it would mean a little girl being abandoned on the high road to fend for herself, in the depths of winter, that’s the thing you must have pity on, my dear Monsieur Javert. If she were older she’d earn her living but they can’t at that age. I’m not a wicked woman at heart.

It’s not indolence and greed that have made me like this. I drink spirits out of misery. I don’t like it but it’s deadening. In happier times you’d only have had to look in my closets to see I wasn’t a wanton hussy. I had decent underclothes, lots of decent underclothes. Have pity on me, Monsieur Javert!’

She went on like this, utterly dashed, shaken with sobs, blinded with

tears, her shoulders and neck bare, wringing her hands, coughing with a short dry cough and mumbling quietly in a voice of anguish. Great grief is a terrible divine illumination that transfigures the wretched. At that point Fantine had become beautiful again. At certain moments she paused and tenderly kissed the hem of the policeman’s coat. She would have softened a heart of granite, but the heart of a man without feeling cannot be softened.

‘Right!’ said Javert. ‘I’ve listened to you. Have you nothing more to say?

Now get moving! You’ve got your six months! The Eternal Father himself wouldn’t be able to do anything about it.’

At those solemn words – ‘The Eternal Father himself wouldn’t be able to

do anything about it’ – she understood that her fate had been decided. She collapsed in a heap, murmuring, ‘Mercy!’

Javert turned his back on her.

The soldiers grabbed her by the arms.

A few moments earlier a man had entered, unobserved. He shut the door,

leaned his back against it, and listened to Fantine’s despairing entreaties.

Just as the soldiers laid hands on the poor wretch, who would not get up,

he took a step forward, emerged from the shadows and said, ‘One moment, please.’

Javert looked up and recognized Monsieur Madeleine. He removed his

hat, and bowing with a kind of aggrieved awkwardness, he said, ‘Excuse me, monsieur le maire—’

Those words, ‘monsieur le maire’, had a curious effect on Fantine. She

stood up all at once like a spectre rising from the earth, thrust aside the soldiers with both arms, walked straight up to Monsieur Madeleine before anyone could prevent her, and staring at him wildly she cried, ‘Ah! so you’re monsieur le maire!’

Then she burst out laughing and spat in his face.

Monsieur Madeleine wiped his face and said, ‘Inspector Javert, set this

woman free.’

Javert felt he was about to go mad. At that moment he underwent in rapid

succession and almost all at once the most violent emotions he had ever experienced in his life. To see a common prostitute spit in the face of a mayor – this was something so monstrous that in his most dreadful imaginings he would have regarded it as sacrilege to believe it were possible. On the other hand, obscurely, at the back of his mind, he made a hideous comparison between what this woman was and what this mayor might be, and then he had an inkling of something very simple about this extraordinary attack that appalled him. But when he saw this mayor, this magistrate, calmly wipe his face and say, ‘Set this woman free’, he was stunned, thoughts and words failed him equally. His capacity for astonishment was exceeded. He remained speechless.

These words had an impact on Fantine no less strange. She raised her

bare arm and clung to the damper of the stove like a person reeling.

Meanwhile, she looked all around her and began to speak in a low voice as though talking to herself.

‘Set free! I’m to be let go! I’m not to be put in prison for six months!

Who said that? It’s impossible anyone could have said that. I misheard. It can’t have been this monster of a mayor! Was it you, my dear Monsieur Javert, who said I was to be set free? Oh, listen, I’ll tell you, and you’ll let me go. This monster, this old villain of a mayor, he’s the one responsible for everything. Just imagine, Monsieur Javert, he sacked me! Because of a bunch of shrews gossiping in the workroom. Isn’t that a dreadful thing to do! To sack a poor girl who’s doing her job honestly! Then I couldn’t earn enough and that’s when everything went wrong. For a start, there’s one thing these gentlemen of the police certainly ought to do to make things better, that’s to stop prison contractors cheating poor people. Listen, I’ll explain it to you: you’re earning twelve sous making shirts, it drops to nine sous, you can’t make a living any more. Then you have to do the best you can. I had my little Cosette, I was forced to become a bad woman. You can see now, it’s that wretched mayor who did all the harm. Afterwards I stamped on that gentleman’s hat in front of the officers’ café. But with that snow he completely spoiled my dress. Women like me have only one silk dress for the evenings. You see, truly, Monsieur Javert, I’ve never deliberately done anything wrong, and I see women everywhere, far more wicked than I am, who are much better off. Oh, Monsieur Javert, it was you that gave orders I was to be set free, wasn’t it? Make inquiries, speak to my landlord, I’m up to date with my rent now, people will tell you, I pay my way. Oh God! I’m sorry, without minding what I was doing I’ve moved the damper on the stove, and now it’s smoking.’

Monsieur Madeleine listened to her intently. While she was speaking he

fumbled in his waistcoat, drew out his purse and opened it. It was empty.

He put it back in his pocket. He said to Fantine, ‘How much did you say you owed?’

Fantine, who had been looking at no one else but Javert, turned to him. ‘I

wasn’t speaking to you!’

Then addressing the soldiers, ‘Now, you there, did you see how I spat in

his face? Ah! you villainous old mayor, you’re here to frighten me but I’m not afraid of you. I’m afraid of Monsieur Javert. I’m afraid of my dear Monsieur Javert!’

As she said this she turned back to the inspector. ‘You see, at the same

time, monsieur l’inspecteur, you have to be fair. I realize that you are fair, monsieur l’inspecteur. Indeed, it’s quite simple: a man putting snow down a woman’s back for fun, that made the officers laugh, they have to amuse themselves somehow, and that’s what women like me are here for, of course! And then you come along, you’ve no choice but to restore order, you take away the woman who’s to blame, but on reflection, seeing as you’re kind-hearted, you say I’m to be set free. It’s for the sake of the little one, because, spending six months in prison, that would mean I couldn’t support my child. Only, don’t do it again, you hussy! Oh! I won’t do it again, Monsieur Javert! Whatever anyone does to me now, I won’t react in any way. But you see, today I yelled because it hurt, I wasn’t at all expecting that snow from the gentleman, and besides, as I told you, I’m not well, I cough, I have what feels like a lump in my stomach, which hurts, and the doctor tells me, “Take care of yourself.” Here, feel, give me your hand, don’t be afraid, it’s here.’

She was no longer weeping, her voice was caressing. She placed Javert’s

huge hand on her delicate white chest and gazed at him, smiling.

Briskly, she tidied the disarray of her clothes, smoothed down the folds

of her skirt that in dragging herself along had ridden almost up to her knee, and walked towards the door, saying to the soldiers in a subdued voice and with a friendly nod, ‘Monsieur l’inspecteur said I was to be released, lads, I’ll be on my way.’

She laid her hand on the door latch. One more step and she was in the

street.

Up to that moment Javert had stood stock still, staring at the ground, out

of place in the midst of this scene like some statue left in the way, waiting

to be put somewhere.

The sound of the latch roused him. He raised his head with an expression

of supreme authority, an expression that is always the more frightening the lower the level at which power is invested, ferocious in the wild beast, atrocious in the man of no account.

‘Sergeant!’ he cried. ‘Can’t you see that minx is walking out of here!

Who told you to let her go?’

‘I did,’ said Madeleine.

At the sound of Javert’s voice Fantine trembled and let go of the latch

like a thief dropping the stolen article. At the sound of Madeleine’s voice she turned round, and from that moment on, without her uttering a word, without her so much as daring to breathe freely, her eyes travelled back and forth, from Madeleine to Javert and from Javert to Madeleine, depending on which of them was speaking.

It was obvious that Javert must have been ‘thrown out of kilter’, as they

say, to allow himself to address the sergeant the way he did after the mayor’s request that Fantine should be set free. Could he have forgotten monsieur le maire’s presence? Had he in the end convinced himself it was impossible that any ‘authority’ could have given such an order, and that surely monsieur le maire must have said one thing instead of another without meaning to? Or in view of the outrages he had witnessed over the past two hours, did he tell himself it was necessary to act with the utmost resolve, that the humble must assume greatness, the sleuth must turn himself into a judge, the police agent must become the agent of justice, and that in this exceptional extremity he, Javert, was the personification of law, order, morality, government, the whole of society?

In any case, when Monsieur Madeleine uttered the words we have just

heard, ‘I did’, Police Inspector Javert, pale, cold, with blue lips and a look of despair, his whole body quivering almost imperceptibly, was seen to turn to the mayor and – what was incredible – say to him with downcast eyes but in a firm voice, ‘Monsieur le maire, that cannot be.’

‘Why not?’ said Monsieur Madeleine. ‘This wretch has insulted a gentleman.’

‘Inspector Javert,’ replied the mayor in a calm and conciliatory tone,

‘listen. You’re an honest man, and I’ve no objection to explaining myself to you. This is the truth of the matter: I was passing through the square as you were taking this woman away, there were still some stragglers, I made inquiries, I got the whole story. The gentleman was to blame and by rights it was he who should have been arrested by the police.’

Javert retorted, ‘This wretch has just insulted monsieur le maire.’ ‘That’s my concern,’ said Monsieur Madeleine. ‘The insult to me is mine,

you know. I can do what I like about it.’

‘I beg monsieur le maire’s pardon. The insult is not to him but to the rule

of law.’

‘Inspector Javert,’ replied Monsieur Madeleine, ‘the highest law is

conscience. I heard this woman. I know what I’m doing.’

‘And I don’t understand what I’m seeing, monsieur le maire.’ ‘Then be satisfied with obeying.’ ‘I’m obeying my duty. My duty demands that this woman serve six

months in prison.’

Monsieur Madeleine replied quietly, ‘Listen carefully to what I say. She

will not serve a single day.’

At this peremptory statement Javert dared to gaze intently at the mayor

and to say, but in a still profoundly respectful tone of voice, ‘I deeply regret opposing monsieur le maire, this is the first time in my life, but he will be so good as to allow me to point out that I am acting within the scope of my authority. Since monsieur le maire so wishes, I restrict myself to the incident involving the gentleman. I was there. This woman hurled herself at Monsieur Bamatabois, who is the enfranchised owner of that handsome three-storey freestone house with a balcony that stands on the corner of the parade. After all, there are some undeniable facts in this world! In any case, monsieur le maire, this is a matter of policing the streets, which is my concern, and I am detaining this woman Fantine.’

Then Monsieur Madeleine folded his arms and said in a stern voice that

no one in the town had heard up till now, ‘The matter to which you refer is a municipal police matter, of which according to the terms of Articles 9, 15

and 66 of the Criminal Procedures Code I am the judge. I order this woman to be set free.’

Javert was determined to make one last effort. ‘But monsieur le maire—’ ‘I would remind you, monsieur, of Article 81 of the law passed on the

thirteenth of December 1799, regarding arbitrary detention.’

‘Monsieur le maire, allow—’ ‘Not another word.’ ‘But—’ ‘Go,’ said Monsieur Madeleine.

Javert took the blow like a Russian soldier, upright, facing it and full in

the chest. He gave the deepest of bows to monsieur le maire and left.

Fantine moved away from the door and stared in amazement as he passed

in front of her.

However, she too was thrown into a strange confusion. She had just seen

herself in some way fought over by two opposing powers. Before her very eyes she had seen the battle between two men holding in their hands her freedom, her life, her soul, her child. One of these men was dragging her towards darkness, the other leading her back to the light. In this conflict, seen magnified by terror, these two men appeared to her as two giants. One spoke like her demon, the other like her good angel. The angel had conquered the demon, and what made her shudder from head to foot was that this angel, this liberator, was precisely the man she abhorred, that same mayor she had so long regarded as the author of all her woes, that Madeleine! And at the very moment when she had just insulted him in a hideous manner, he saved her! Had she, then, been mistaken? Must she, then, have a complete change of heart? She did not know. She trembled.

She listened in bewilderment, she watched in dismay, and at every word that Monsieur Madeleine said she felt the dissolution and dispersal inside her of the frightful shades of hatred, and the birth in her heart of something beyond expression, an indefinable warmth that was joy, trust, love.

When Javert had gone Monsieur Madeleine turned to her and said in a

deliberate voice, having difficulty speaking, like a serious-minded person who does not want to give way to tears, ‘I heard you.* I knew nothing of

what you said. I believe it’s true, and I feel that it’s true. I didn’t even know you’d left my factory. Why didn’t you come to me? But listen, I’ll pay your debts, I’ll send for your child, or you shall go to her. You shall live here, in Paris, wherever you like. I’ll take care of you and your child. If you want, you shan’t work again. I’ll give you all the money you need. In regaining your happiness you’ll regain respectability. And listen, let me tell you right now: if everything is as you say, and I don’t doubt it, you’ve never ceased to be virtuous and holy in the sight of God. Oh, poor woman!’

This was more than Fantine could bear. To have Cosette! To leave behind

this life of degradation. To live free, rich, happy and respectable. With Cosette! To see the sudden unfolding in the midst of her misery of all this paradise come true. She stared as though stupefied at this man who was talking to her, and she could only give vent to two or three sobs, ‘Oh! Oh!

Oh!’ Her legs buckled. She knelt before Monsieur Madeleine and before he could prevent her he felt her take his hand and press her lips to it.

Then she fainted.

OceanofPDF.com

Book Six

Javert

I

An Initial Rest

Monsieur Madeleine had Fantine taken to the infirmary he had in his own factory. He entrusted her to the care of the sisters, who put her to bed. She had developed a burning fever. She spent part of the night delirious and talking out loud. However, she eventually fell asleep.

Towards noon the next day Fantine woke up, heard someone breathing

very close to her bed, drew aside the curtain and saw Monsieur Madeleine standing there, looking at something above her head. His gaze was full of pity and anguish, and imploring. She followed it and saw that it was directed at a crucifix hanging on the wall.

Monsieur Madeleine was now transfigured in Fantine’s eyes. To her, he

appeared enveloped in light. He was absorbed in some kind of prayer. She observed him for a long time without daring to interrupt. At last she said timidly, ‘What are you doing here?’

Monsieur Madeleine had been standing there for an hour. He was waiting

for Fantine to wake up. He took her hand, felt her pulse and replied, ‘How are you feeling?’

‘Fine,’ she replied, ‘I slept, I think I’m better. It’s probably nothing.’ He went on, responding to the question she had originally put to him as

though he had only just heard it. ‘I was praying to the martyr up above.’

And mentally he added, ‘For this martyred woman here below.’

Monsieur Madeleine had spent the night and that morning making

inquiries. He was now fully informed. Fantine’s story was known to him in all its heart-breaking detail. He continued, ‘Poor mother, you’ve suffered a great deal. Oh! don’t be sorry, now you have a dowry, the dowry of the chosen. Such is the way that men create angels. It’s not their fault. They don’t know how to go about it any differently. You see, the hell that is behind you now is the first form of heaven. You had to start there.’

He sighed deeply. But she smiled on him with that sublime smile with

two teeth missing.

That same night Javert wrote a letter. The next morning he took it himself

to Montreuil-sur-Mer’s post office. It was to go to Paris and was addressed to Monsieur Chabouillet, secretary to the prefect of police. As word had spread about the incident at the police station, the post-mistress and a few other people who saw the letter before it went off, and who recognized Javert’s handwriting from the address, thought it was his resignation he was sending in.

Monsieur Madeleine lost no time in writing to the Thénardiers. Fantine

owed them one hundred and twenty francs. He sent them three hundred francs, telling them to pay themselves out of that sum and to bring the child immediately to Montreuil-sur-Mer where her sick mother was anxious to see her.

Thénardier was dazzled by this. ‘I’ll be damned!’ he said to his wife.

‘We’re not giving up that child. This little songbird’s going to turn into a milch cow. I can imagine what’s happened. Some fool’s taken a fancy to the mother.’

He sent back a very neatly drawn up account for five hundred-odd francs.

In this account were two indisputable bills amounting to over three hundred francs, one from a doctor, the other from a pharmacist, who had attended and treated Éponine and Azelma through two long illnesses. Cosette, as we have already said, had not been ill. It was a matter of the mere substitution of names. At the bottom of the account Thénardier wrote, ‘Received on account, three hundred francs’.

Monsieur Madeleine immediately sent another three hundred francs and

wrote, ‘Hurry. Bring Cosette.’

‘By heaven!’ said Thénardier. ‘We’re not giving up that child.’ In the meantime, Fantine was getting no better. She was still in the

infirmary.

The sisters had at first only reluctantly accepted and nursed ‘that

woman’. Those who have seen the bas-reliefs at Reims will recall the protruding lower lips of the wise virgins at the sight of the foolish virgins.

That ancient scorn of the vestal virgins for the ambubaiae* is one of the most deep-rooted instincts of feminine self-regard. The sisters felt it with the added intensity of religion. But within a few days Fantine had disarmed them. She said all kinds of meek and humble things, and the mother in her softened their hearts. One day the sisters heard her say in her feverishness, ‘I’ve been a sinner but when I have my child beside me it will mean that God has forgiven me. While I was leading a bad life I wouldn’t have wanted to have my Cosette with me. I wouldn’t have been able to bear her sad staring eyes. Yet it was for her sake I was leading a bad life, and that’s why God forgives me. I shall feel the good Lord’s blessing when Cosette is here. I shall look on her, it will do me good to see that innocent creature.

She knows nothing at all. You see, sisters, she’s an angel. At that age they’ve not yet lost their wings.’

Monsieur Madeleine went to see her twice a day and she asked him every

time, ‘Will I be seeing my Cosette soon?’

He answered, ‘Tomorrow, perhaps. I’m expecting her to arrive at any

moment.’

And the mother’s pale face grew radiant. ‘Oh!’ she said. ‘How happy I’m

going to be!’

As we have mentioned, she was getting no better. On the contrary, her

condition seemed to worsen week by week. That handful of snow between the shoulder blades on her bare skin had caused a sudden suppression of perspiration, as a result of which the illness for which she had been sickening for many years finally declared itself with a vengeance. At that time, people were beginning to follow Laennec’s admirable lead in the

study and treatment of chest ailments. The doctor sounded Fantine’s chest and shook his head.

Monsieur Madeleine said to the doctor, ‘Well?’ ‘Does she not have a child she wants to see?’ said the doctor. ‘Yes.’ ‘Well, lose no time in getting the child here!’ Monsieur Madeleine shuddered.

Fantine asked, ‘What did the doctor say?’ Monsieur Madeleine forced a smile. ‘He said to get your child to come

very quickly. And that will restore your health.’

‘Oh!’ she responded. ‘He’s right! But what do those Thénardiers mean by

keeping my Cosette from me! Oh! she’s coming. At last I see happiness almost within reach!’

Thénardier, however, was ‘not giving up that child’, and gave countless

bogus excuses. Cosette was not quite well enough to travel in winter. And then there were some small pressing debts outstanding for which he was gathering together the bills from local creditors, et cetera.

‘I’ll send someone to fetch Cosette!’ said Père Madeleine. ‘If necessary,

I’ll go myself.’

He wrote the following letter at Fantine’s dictation and got her to sign it:

Monsieur Thénardier,

You are to hand Cosette over to this person.

You will be paid whatever small amounts are owing.

Yours respectfully, Fantine.

In the meantime a serious incident occurred. Though we shape to the best of our ability the mysterious block of which our life is made, the black vein of destiny is ever reappearing.

II

How Jean May Become Champ

Monsieur Madeleine was in his office one morning, dealing in advance – should he decide to make the journey to Montfermeil – with some urgent

municipal business, when he was informed that Police Inspector Javert wished to speak to him. At the mention of this name Monsieur Madeleine could not help forming a disagreeable impression. Javert had avoided him more than ever since the unexpected turn of events at the police station, and Monsieur Madeleine had not seen him since.

‘Send him in,’ he said.

Javert entered.

Monsieur Madeleine remained seated by the fire, pen in hand, his eyes on

a file he was leafing through and annotating, which contained reports of offences against highway regulations. He did not bother to acknowledge Javert. He could not help thinking of poor Fantine and it suited him to be frosty.

Javert bowed respectfully to monsieur le maire, who had his back turned

to him. Monsieur le maire did not look at him and went on annotating his file.

Javert took two or three steps into the study, and stood there without

breaking the silence.

A physiognomist who might have been familiar with Javert’s character,

and who might have been studying for a long time this savage in the service of civilization, this bizarre combination of the Roman, the Spartan, the monk and the corporal, this spy who was incapable of a lie, this untarnished sleuth, a physiognomist who might have known of his secret and long-standing aversion to Monsieur Madeleine, his conflict with the mayor on the subject of Fantine, and who might have observed Javert at that moment, would have said to himself, ‘What has happened?’ It was obvious to anyone acquainted with that scrupulous, clear, genuine, upright, austere, fierce conscience that Javert had been through some great inner cataclysm. Javert had nothing in his soul that would not also have shown on his face. He was, in the way of violent people, given to abrupt changes of feeling. His physiognomy had never been more peculiar or more unexpected. On entering he bowed to Monsieur Madeleine with no resentment, anger or mistrust in his gaze. He halted a few paces behind the mayor’s armchair, and there he stood, in an almost chastened attitude, with the cold, naive

boorishness of a man who has never been agreeable and has always been patient. Until it should please monsieur le maire to turn round, he waited in total silence, in total immobility, in genuine humility and tranquil resignation, calm, serious, with hat in hand, eyes downcast, and an expression that was something between that of a soldier in the presence of his officer and a criminal in the presence of his judge. All the sentiments and all the memories that it might have been supposed he harboured had disappeared. There was nothing now but a mournful sadness on that face as impenetrable and simple as granite. His whole person emanated abjection and determination, and some suggestion of brave defeat.

At last monsieur le maire laid down his pen and half turned round. ‘Well!

What is it? What have you to say, Javert?’

Javert remained silent for a moment as though collecting his thoughts,

then spoke up with a sort of sad solemnity that did not, however, preclude simplicity. ‘What I have to say, monsieur le maire, is that an unpardonable offence has been committed.’

‘What offence?’ ‘A subordinate police officer has in the gravest manner shown lack of

respect towards a magistrate. I’ve come to inform you of this fact as it is my duty to do so.’

‘Who is this police officer?’ asked Monsieur Madeleine. ‘It is I,’ said Javert. ‘You?’

‘I.’ ‘And which magistrate would have reason to complain of the officer?’ ‘You, monsieur le maire.’ Monsieur Madeleine straightened up in his armchair.

Looking stern, his eyes still lowered, Javert went on, ‘Monsieur le maire,

I’ve come to ask if you would be so good as to start proceedings to have me dismissed from the police.’

In his astonishment Monsieur Madeleine opened his mouth.

Javert interrupted him. ‘You’ll say I could have handed in my

resignation, but that’s not adequate. Resigning is honourable. I’ve done

wrong, I should be punished. I must be sacked.’

And after a pause he added, ‘Monsieur le maire, you were unjustly hard

on me the other day. Be justly hard today.’

‘But why?’ exclaimed Monsieur Madeleine. ‘What is this gibberish?

What’s the meaning of it? What offence have you committed against me?

What have you done to me? In what way have you wronged me? You accuse yourself, you want to be replaced—’

‘Sacked,’ said Javert. ‘Sacked, then. That’s all very well. I don’t understand.’ ‘You will, monsieur le maire.’ Javert gave the deepest of sighs and

resumed, still coldly and sadly. ‘Monsieur le maire, six weeks ago, after that row about that woman, I was furious and I denounced you.’

‘Denounced me!’ ‘To police headquarters in Paris.’ Monsieur Madeleine, who was not much more frequently given to

laughter than Javert, began to laugh. ‘As a mayor who had encroached on police authority?’

‘As an ex-convict.’ The mayor paled.

Javert, who had not looked up, went on. ‘I believed it. I had my

suspicions for a long time. Don’t ask me why! Absurdities! A resemblance, some inquiries made at Faverolles on your behalf, your physical strength, the incident with old Fauchelevent, your shooting skills, your leg being a little lame – I don’t know, all sorts of ridiculous things. But the fact is I took you for a certain Jean Valjean.’

‘A certain – what did you say the name was?’ ‘Jean Valjean. He was a convict I saw twenty years ago when I was

assistant warder of the chain gangs at Toulon. After his release this Jean Valjean apparently robbed a bishop, then committed armed robbery on a public highway against a young Savoyard. He’s been lying low for the past eight years, no one knows how, and he was a wanted man … I had a notion … Anyway, that’s what I did! It was anger that decided me: I denounced you to police headquarters!’

Monsieur Madeleine, who had picked up the file again a few moments

earlier, spoke with an air of perfect indifference. ‘And what was their response?’

‘That I was mad.’ ‘Well?’ ‘Well, they were right.’ ‘It’s a good thing you admit it.’ ‘I’m bound to, since the real Jean Valjean has been found.’ The sheet of paper Monsieur Madeleine was holding slipped from his

hand. He looked up, stared intently at Javert, and said in an indescribable tone of voice, ‘Ah!’

Javert continued. ‘It’s like this, monsieur le maire. It seems there was in

these parts, over towards Ailly-le-Haut-Clocher, some old fellow who went by the name of Père Champmathieu. A pitiful wretch. No one took any notice of him. People like that – who knows how they keep themselves alive. Recently, last autumn, Père Champmathieu was arrested for the theft of some cider apples from – well, never mind that! There was a theft, a wall scaled, branches of a tree broken. My Champmathieu was arrested. He still had the apple branch in his hand. The rascal gets put inside. So far, what we’re dealing with is not much more than a minor offence. But now providence intervenes. The gaol being in a poor state of repair, the examining magistrate considers it appropriate to have Champmathieu transferred to Arras, where the département’s central prison is. In this prison at Arras there’s an ex-convict named Brevet, why he’s being held there I don’t know, and because of his good behaviour he has been put in charge of the dormitory. Monsieur le maire, Champmathieu no sooner turns up than Brevet exclaims, “Hey! I know that man! He’s a fagot*! Look at me, man!

You’re Jean Valjean!” “Jean Valjean? Who’s Jean Valjean?” Champmathieu pretends to be surprised. “Don’t play the sinvre†,” says Brevet. “You’re Jean Valjean! You were in the prison hulks at Toulon. Twenty years ago it was. We were there together.”

‘Champmathieu denies it. Of course he does! Further inquiries are made.

The case is thoroughly investigated. These are the findings: some thirty

years ago this Champmathieu was a tree-pruner in various localities, Faverolles among others. Then all trace of him is lost. A long time afterwards he’s seen again in the Auvergne, then in Paris where he is said to have been a cartwright and to have had a daughter who was a laundress. But there’s no proof of that. Now, before serving time with the chain gang for aggravated theft, what was Jean Valjean? A pruner of trees. Where? At Faverolles. Another fact. This Valjean’s Christian name was Jean and his mother’s maiden name was Mathieu. What could be more reasonable than to imagine that when he left prison he took his mother’s name in order to conceal his identity and called himself Jean Mathieu? He goes to the Auvergne. The local pronunciation turns “Jean” into “Chan”, he’s called Chan Mathieu. Our man offers no objection and there he is, transformed into Champmathieu. You follow me, don’t you? Inquiries are made at Faverolles. Jean Valjean’s family’s no longer there. It’s not known where they’ve gone. You know, in that class of society, families are often disappearing like that. Look for them, and you find there’s nothing left of them. People like that, if they’re not dirt, they’re dust. And then, seeing as it’s thirty years since this whole story began there’s no one at Faverolles any more who knew Jean Valjean. Inquiries are made at Toulon. Apart from Brevet, there are only two convicts remaining who’ve seen Jean Valjean.

They’re Cochepaille and Chenildieu, serving life sentences. They’re hauled out of the prison hulks and brought to Arras. They’re brought face to face with the so-called Champmathieu. They don’t hesitate. For them, just as for Brevet, he’s Jean Valjean. The same age – he’s fifty-four – same height, same manner, in short the same man, it’s him. It was precisely at this point that I sent my denunciation to Paris police headquarters. I’m told I’m out of my mind, that Jean Valjean’s at Arras in the hands of the judiciary. You can imagine my surprise, when there was I thinking I had that same Jean Valjean here. I write to the examining judge. He sends for me, Champmathieu is brought before me—’

‘And?’ Monsieur Madeleine interposed.

Javert replied with his sad and incorruptible face, ‘Monsieur le maire, the

truth’s the truth. I’m sorry but that man is Jean Valjean. I too recognized

him.’

Monsieur Madeleine said in a very low voice, ‘You’re sure?’ Javert began to laugh with that mournful laugh let out by deep

conviction. ‘Oh! Absolutely!’

He remained thoughtful for a moment, absent-mindedly taking pinches of

sawdust, used for blotting ink, from the wooden bowl on the table, and added, ‘And indeed, now that I’ve seen the real Jean Valjean, I don’t understand how I could have thought otherwise. I beg your pardon, monsieur le maire.’

As he addressed these grave words of entreaty to the man who six weeks

earlier had publicly humiliated him at the police station and told him ‘Go!’, this proud man Javert was unwittingly full of simplicity and dignity.

Monsieur Madeleine’s only reply to his entreaty was to ask this abrupt

question: ‘And what does this man say?’

‘Ah, well, monsieur le maire, he’s in serious trouble. If he is Jean

Valjean, he’s guilty of re-offending. Climbing a wall, breaking a branch, pilfering apples, for a child, is an act of mischief. For a man, it’s a misdemeanour. For an ex-convict it’s a crime. Trespass and robbery, that’s what we’re talking about. It’s no longer a minor offence, it’s a matter for the court of assizes. It’s no longer a few days in prison, it’s penal servitude for life. And then there’s the matter of the young Savoyard, who I very much hope will turn up again. Hang it! There’s good reason to put up a fight, isn’t there? Yes, for anyone but Jean Valjean. But Jean Valjean’s a cunning one.

It’s there again that I recognize him. Any other man would have started to feel the heat. He’d kick up a fuss, he’d shout. The kettle sings on the fire.

He wouldn’t want to be Jean Valjean, et cetera. But this fellow appears not to understand. He says, “I’m Champmathieu, that’s all I’ve got to say!” He looks bewildered, he pretends to be a simpleton, that’s far better. Oh, he’s a crafty rogue! But it makes no difference, the evidence is there. He’s been recognized by four people. The old villain will be found guilty. It’s been referred to the assizes at Arras. I’m going there to testify. I’ve been served a summons.’

Monsieur Madeleine had gone back to his desk, picked up his file again,

and was calmly leafing through it, reading and writing by turns like a busy man. He turned to Javert.

‘That’s enough, Javert. All these details are in fact of very little interest to

me. We’re wasting time and we have urgent matters to deal with. Javert, you’re to go at once to the house of Madame Buseaupied, who sells herbs down on the corner of Rue St-Saulve. Tell her to lodge an official complaint against the carter Pierre Chesnelong. The man’s a ruffian who almost ran over this woman and her child. He must be punished. You will then go to Monsieur Charcellay, Rue Montre-de-Champigny. He’s made a complaint about a gutter on the house next door that is pouring rainwater on to his premises and undermining the foundations of his house. After that, check on reported violations of police regulations in Rue Guibourg at the widow Doris’s place and in Rue du Garraud-Blanc at Madame Renée Le Bossé’s, and take down particulars. But I’m giving you a great deal of work there.

Aren’t you going to be away? Didn’t you say you were going to Arras for that trial in a week or so?’

‘Sooner than that, monsieur le maire.’ ‘What day would that be?’ ‘Why, I thought I told monsieur le maire the case was to be tried

tomorrow and that I’m taking the coach tonight.’

Monsieur Madeleine gave a slight start. ‘And how long will the case go

on for?’

‘One day at the most. The judgement will be delivered no later than

tomorrow evening. But I shan’t wait for the judgement, which is bound to be a guilty verdict. As soon as I’ve testified I’ll be coming back here.’

‘Very well,’ said Monsieur Madeleine. And he dismissed Javert with a

wave of his hand.

Javert did not go away. ‘Excuse me, monsieur le maire,’ he said. ‘What is it now?’ asked Monsieur Madeleine. ‘Monsieur le maire, there’s still one thing I must remind you of.’ ‘What’s that?’ ‘I must be relieved of my duties.’

Monsieur Madeleine rose. ‘Javert, you’re a man of honour and I respect

you. You exaggerate your misconduct. Besides, this is another offence relating to me. Javert, you deserve to rise, not fall. I intend to keep you in your post.’

Looking at Monsieur Madeleine with that unenlightened but pure and

inflexible conscience seemingly visible in the depths of his candid gaze, Javert said to him in a calm voice, ‘Monsieur le maire, I cannot agree to that.’

‘I repeat,’ replied Monsieur Madeleine, ‘I’m the one affected by this, it’s

for me to decide.’

But Javert single-mindedly kept on. ‘As for exaggerating, I don’t

exaggerate at all. This is my reasoning: I suspected you unjustly. In itself, that’s nothing. It’s within our rights for the likes of us to be suspicious, although to suspect your betters is to overstep the mark. But with no proof, in a fit of rage, with the aim of gaining revenge, I denounced you as a convict – you, a respectable man, a mayor, a magistrate! This is serious.

Very serious. I insulted the authority invested in your person, I, an agent of that authority! If one of my subordinates had done what I did, I’d have declared him unworthy of his job and sacked him. Well then?

‘Listen, monsieur le maire, one word more. I’ve often been harsh in my

life. With others. It was just. I did the right thing. Now, if I were not harsh on myself, everything I did that was once just would become unjust. Should I spare myself more than others? No! What? I’d only be capable of disciplining others and not myself! But that would make me despicable!

And those who say “that skunk Javert” would be right. Monsieur le maire, I’ve no wish for you to treat me kindly. I found your kindness galling enough when it was extended to others. I want none of it for myself. The kindness that consists in favouring a common prostitute over a gentleman, a policeman over the mayor, the man of low estate over the man of high estate, is what I call pernicious kindness. It’s kindness like that that creates disorder in society. Good Lord! It’s very easy to be kind, the difficult thing is to be just. Believe me, if you’d been what I thought you were, I certainly wouldn’t have been kind to you! You can be sure of that! Monsieur le

maire, I must treat myself the same way I would treat anyone else. When I pursued criminals, when I dealt harshly with offenders, I often said to myself, “If ever you stumble, if ever I catch you doing wrong, you know what’s coming to you!” I stumbled, I’ve caught myself doing wrong, too bad! So let’s get on with it – dismissed, demoted, sacked! That’s fine. I’m able-bodied, I’ll work on the land, I don’t mind. Monsieur le maire, an example needs to be made for the good of the police force. I simply ask for Inspector Javert’s dismissal.’

All this was delivered in a humble, proud, hopeless and earnest tone of

voice, which lent some sort of bizarre grandeur to this strange honest man.

‘We’ll see,’ said Monsieur Madeleine. And he held out his hand.

Javert recoiled and said grimly, ‘Forgive me, monsieur le maire, but that

cannot be allowed. A mayor does not offer his hand to a nark.’ He muttered, ‘A nark, yes. Seeing as I’ve played false with the police, I’ve become no more than a nark.’ Then he bowed deeply and made for the door.

There he turned and with his eyes still lowered he said, ‘Monsieur le

maire, I shall continue to serve in office until I’m replaced.’

He made his exit. Monsieur Madeleine was left listening thoughtfully to

that firm and confident footstep receding down the corridor.

OceanofPDF.com

Book Seven

The Champmathieu Affair

I

Soeur Simplice

Not all the incidents that are to be read about here were generally known in Montreuil-sur-Mer, but the little that did come to public knowledge left such a lasting memory in that town that it would constitute a serious lacuna in this book if we did not relate them in the smallest detail.

Among these details the reader will encounter two or three improbable

circumstances that we preserve out of respect for the truth.

On the afternoon following Javert’s visit, Monsieur Madeleine went as

usual to visit Fantine.

Before going in to see Fantine he asked for Soeur Simplice. The two nuns

who ran the infirmary, Lazarists like all Sisters of Charity, bore the names of Soeur Perpétue and Soeur Simplice.

Soeur Perpétue was an ordinary countrywoman, a Sister of Charity in a

rough-and-ready way, who had entered the service of God as others go into domestic service. She was a nun as other women are cooks. This type is not unusual. The monastic orders gladly accept this heavy peasant clay, easily moulded into a Capuchin or Ursuline. These rustics are used for piety’s heavy work. The transition from cowherd to Carmelite is nothing if not smooth. The one becomes the other without great exertion. The substratum of ignorance shared by the village and the cloister is ready-prepared ground, immediately placing the peasant on an equal footing with the monk. A little

extra fullness in the smock, and you have the habit. Soeur Perpétue was a stout nun from Les Marines near Pontoise, patois-speaking, prayer-reciting, grumbling, sugaring the invalids’ tea according to their sanctimoniousness or their hypocrisy, chivvying the sick, gruff with the dying, almost throwing God in their faces, pelting their mortal agony with angry prayers, bluff, well-meaning and ruddy-faced.

Soeur Simplice was the clear white of candlewax. Compared with Soeur

Perpétue, she was the taper beside the tallow candle. Vincent de Paul has with divine inspiration defined the figure of the Sister of Charity in these marvellous words, combining so much freedom with so much servitude: ‘They shall have no convent but the homes of the sick, no cell but a rented room, no chapel but the parish church, no cloister but the streets of the town or the hospital ward, no enclosure but obedience, no grille but the fear of God, no veil but modesty.’ Soeur Simplice was the living embodiment of this ideal. No one could have said what age Soeur Simplice was: she had never been young and she seemed destined never to grow old. She was a calm, austere, well-bred, cold person – we dare not say a woman – who had never lied. She was so gentle she seemed fragile, though actually more solid than granite. The needy she touched with lovely, slender, delicate fingers.

There was, as it were, silence in her speech. She said no more than was strictly necessary, and the sound of her voice would have both favourably impressed a confessional and enchanted a drawing room. This fineness was content to wear the serge gown, finding in the feel of its roughness a continual reminder of heaven and of God. Let us stress one detail. Never to have lied, never, for whatever reason, even a disinterested reason, to have said a single thing that was not the truth, the sacred truth, was Soeur Simplice’s distinctive characteristic. It was the hallmark of her virtue. She was almost famous in the order for this imperturbable truthfulness. Abbé Sicard speaks of Soeur Simplice in a letter to the deaf-mute Massieu.

However sincere, frank and honest we may be, all of us have at least the flaw of the little white lie in our candour. Not she. A little lie, a white lie – does such a thing exist? To lie is an absolute evil. It is not possible to lie a little. The liar tells an indivisible falsehood. Lying is the very face of the

devil. Satan has two names, he is called Satan and he is called Falsehood.

That is what she thought. And she put into practice what she thought. The result was the clear white we have mentioned – a whiteness that bathed in its radiance even her lips and eyes. Her smile was clear, her gaze was clear.

There was not one cobweb, not a speck of dust, on the clear glass of that conscience. When she joined the order of St Vincent de Paul she had specially chosen to take the name of Simplice.

Simplice of Sicily, as we know, is the saint who preferred to have both

breasts ripped off rather than say she was born at Segesta when she was

actually born at Syracuse, a lie that would have saved her. She was the appropriate patron of this soul.

On entering the order Soeur Simplice had two shortcomings that she

gradually corrected: she had a sweet tooth and she liked to receive letters.

The only thing she ever read was a book of prayers set in large type, in Latin. She did not understand Latin but she understood the book.

This pious woman had grown fond of Fantine, probably detecting the

latent virtue in her, and she had devoted herself almost exclusively to her care. Monsieur Madeleine took Soeur Simplice aside and asked her to look after Fantine in a peculiar tone of voice the nun later recalled. When he left the nun he went to Fantine.

Fantine awaited Monsieur Madeleine’s appearance every day as one

awaiting a ray of warmth and happiness. She said to the sisters, ‘I’m alive only when monsieur le maire is here.’

She was very feverish that day. As soon as she saw Monsieur Madeleine

she asked him, ‘And Cosette?’

He replied with a smile, ‘Soon.’ Monsieur Madeleine was the same as ever with Fantine. Only, to

Fantine’s great delight, he remained an hour instead of half an hour. He kept telling everyone the sick woman should want for nothing. There was a moment, it was observed, when his face became very sombre. But this was explained when it was learned that the doctor had leaned towards him and said in his ear, ‘She’s fading fast.’

Then he returned to the town hall and the clerk saw him closely studying

a road map of France that hung in his study. He pencilled a few figures on a piece of paper.

II

Maître Scaufflaire’s Shrewdness

He went from the town hall to the edge of town, to a Belgian from Flanders named Maître Scaufflaer, Gallicized as Scaufflaire, who rented out horses and offered ‘gigs for hire’.

To reach Scaufflaire’s place, the shortest route to take was down a quiet

street in which the house of Monsieur Madeleine’s parish priest was located. This parish priest was, so people said, an honourable, respectable and sensible man. When Monsieur Madeleine reached the priest’s house there was only one passer-by in the street, and this person noticed the following: having walked past the priest’s house Monsieur Madeleine stopped, stood still, then turned and retraced his steps to the door of the house, which was a modest entrance with an iron knocker. He briskly laid his hand on the knocker and lifted it. Then he stopped again and remained suspended in the act, as if thinking, and after a few seconds, instead of allowing the knocker to fall with a clatter, he quietly replaced it and continued on his way with a degree of haste he had not shown before.

Monsieur Madeleine found Maître Scaufflaire at his premises, busy

mending a harness.

‘Maître Scaufflaire, have you a good horse?’ he asked. ‘Monsieur le maire,’ said the Fleming, ‘all my horses are good. What do

you mean by a good horse?’

‘I mean a horse capable of doing fifty miles in a day.’ ‘By God!’ said the Fleming. ‘Fifty miles!’ ‘Yes.’ ‘Harnessed to a gig?’ ‘Yes.’ ‘And how much rest will it have after making that journey?’

‘It must be able to set off again the next day if necessary.’ ‘To make the return journey?’ ‘Yes.’ ‘By God! By God! And it’s fifty miles?’ Monsieur Madeleine drew from his pocket the paper on which he had

pencilled some figures. He showed it to the Fleming. The figures were 12½,

15, 21.

‘You see,’ he said. ‘Total, forty-eight and a half – we might as well say

fifty.’

‘Monsieur le maire,’ said the Fleming, ‘I have just what you need. My

little white horse. You may have seen it go by occasionally. It’s a small beast of Lower Boulonnais stock. Full of mettle. They tried to make a saddle-horse out of it at first. Bah! It bucked, it unseated everyone. It was thought to be vicious and no one knew what to do with it. I bought it. I put it to drawing a gig. Monsieur, that’s what it wanted. It’s as meek as a young girl, it goes like the wind. Ah, it’s certainly not to be mounted. It has no intention of being a saddle-horse. Each to his own ambition. A carriage horse? Yes. A mount? No. We must assume that’s what it said to itself.’

‘And it will stay the course?’ ‘Your fifty miles. At a smart pace all the way, and in less than eight

hours. But there are conditions.’

‘State them.’ ‘In the first place, you’re to give it an hour’s breather halfway. It’s to be

fed, and someone will be there while it’s feeding to prevent the stable-boy at the inn from stealing the oats, for I’ve noticed that at inns the oats are more often drunk by the stable-boys than eaten by the horses.’

‘Someone will be there.’ ‘In the second place – is the gig for monsieur le maire?’ ‘Yes.’ ‘Does monsieur le maire know how to drive?’ ‘Yes.’ ‘Well, monsieur le maire will travel alone and without baggage so as not

to put too much strain on the horse.’

‘Agreed.’ ‘But as monsieur le maire will have no one with him, he’ll have to take it

on himself to see that the oats aren’t stolen.’

‘You have my word.’ ‘I’ll need thirty francs a day. With rest days also paid for. Not a quarter of

a sou less, and the beast’s feed at monsieur le maire’s expense.’

Monsieur Madeleine drew three napoleons from his purse and laid them

on the table.

‘That’s two days in advance.’ ‘Fourthly, a cabriolet would be too heavy for a journey like this and

would tire the horse. Monsieur le maire must agree to travel in a little tilbury I have.’

‘I agree.’ ‘It’s light but uncovered.’ ‘I don’t mind that.’ ‘Has monsieur le maire taken into consideration that it’s winter?’ Monsieur Madeleine did not reply.

The Fleming went on, ‘That it’s very cold?’ Monsieur Madeleine remained silent.

Maître Scaufflaire continued, ‘That it may rain?’ Monsieur Madeleine raised his head and said, ‘The tilbury and the horse

are to be outside my door at half-past four tomorrow morning.’

‘Very well, monsieur le maire,’ replied Scaufflaire. Then, scratching with

his thumbnail at a stain in the wood of the table, he added in that casual manner the Flemings are so adept at combining with their shrewdness, ‘But it’s just now occurred to me, monsieur le maire hasn’t told me where he’s going. Where is monsieur le maire going?’

He had been thinking of nothing else since the beginning of the

conversation, but he did not know why he had not dared put this question.

‘Has your horse got strong forelegs?’ said Monsieur Madeleine. ‘Yes, monsieur le maire. Best hold him in a little, on the downhill. Are

there many downhill stretches between here and where you are going?’

‘Don’t forget to be outside my door tomorrow morning at half-past four

precisely,’ replied Monsieur Madeleine. And he departed.

The Fleming was left ‘completely baffled’, as he himself said some time

afterwards.

The mayor had been gone two or three minutes when the door opened

again. It was monsieur le maire.

He still had the same impassive and preoccupied air. ‘Monsieur Scaufflaire,’ he said, ‘how much would you say the horse that

you’ll be hiring out to me is worth, on top of the tilbury?’

‘In front of the tilbury, monsieur le maire,’ said the Fleming, with a

guffaw.

‘If you say so. Well?’ ‘Does monsieur le maire want to buy them from me?’ ‘No, but I want to indemnify you should anything happen to them. You

can pay back the money on my return. How much do you think your horse and gig are worth?’

‘Five hundred francs, monsieur le maire.’ ‘Here you are.’ Monsieur Madeleine laid a banknote on the table, then left, and this time

he did not return.

Maître Scaufflaire bitterly regretted not having said a thousand francs. As

it was, the horse and tilbury together were worth only three hundred.

The Fleming called his wife and told her what had happened. Where the

devil could monsieur le maire be going? They debated the matter.

‘He’s going to Paris,’ said the wife. ‘I don’t think so,’ said the husband.

Monsieur Madeleine had left behind on the mantelpiece the piece of

paper with the figures he had written on it. The Fleming picked it up and studied it.

‘Twelve and a half, fifteen, twenty-one? They must be the distances

between staging posts.’ He turned to his wife. ‘I’ve worked it out.’

‘How?’

‘It’s twelve and a half miles from here to Hesdin, fifteen from Hesdin to

St-Pol, twenty-one from St-Pol to Arras. He is going to Arras.’

Meanwhile, Monsieur Madeleine had returned home.

Coming back from Maître Scaufflaire’s he had taken the long way round,

as if the priest’s front door had been a temptation to him and he wanted to avoid it. He went up to his room and remained closeted there, which was in no way out of the ordinary as he liked to go to bed early. Yet the caretaker of the factory, who was also Monsieur Madeleine’s only servant, noticed that his light went out at half-past eight, and she mentioned it to the cashier as he came in, adding, ‘Is monsieur le maire ill? I thought he looked a little strange.’

The cashier occupied a room directly below Monsieur Madeleine’s room.

He paid no attention to what the caretaker said, went to bed and fell asleep.

Towards midnight he suddenly woke up. In his sleep he had heard a noise above his head. He listened. It was footsteps going back and forth, as if someone were walking about in the room above him. He listened more closely and recognized Monsieur Madeleine’s footstep. This struck him as odd. Usually there was no noise from Monsieur Madeleine’s room until he got up in the morning. A moment later the cashier heard something that sounded like a wardrobe being opened then shut again. Then a piece of furniture was moved. There was a pause, and the pacing resumed. The cashier sat up in bed, fully awakened, stared, and through the window-panes he saw on the wall opposite the reddish reflection of a lighted window. From the direction of the rays of light, it must have been the window of Monsieur Madeleine’s room. The reflection flickered as if it came from a lighted fire rather than a candle. There was no shadow cast by the frames of the window-panes, which meant the window was wide open.

In such cold weather the open window was surprising. The cashier went back to sleep. An hour or two later he woke again. The same slow and regular footstep was still pacing back and forth overhead.

The reflection was still visible on the wall but now it was pale and steady,

like the reflection of a lamp or a candle. The window was still open.

This is what was going on in Monsieur Madeleine’s room.

III

A Storm in the Mind

The reader has no doubt guessed that Monsieur Madeleine is none other than Jean Valjean.

We have already gazed into the depths of that conscience. The moment

has come to take another look. We do so not without emotion and trepidation. There is nothing more terrifying than a contemplation of this kind. The mind’s eye can nowhere find more brilliant splendour and more tenebrous gloom than in man. It cannot set its gaze on anything more fearsome, more complicated, more mysterious and infinite. There is a spectacle greater than the sea: that is the sky. There is a spectacle greater than the sky: that is the inner soul.

To create a poem about the human conscience, were it only with regard to

a single man, only to the least of men, would be to amalgamate all epics in one superior and definitive epic. Conscience is a confusion of chimeras, of desires and temptations, the furnace of dreams, the retreat of thoughts that shame us. It is a pandemonium of sophisms, it is the battleground of the passions. Probe, at certain moments, the ghastly pale face of a human being immersed in thought, and look behind it, look into that soul, look into that obscurity. There, beneath the outward silence, are battling giants, as in Homer, tumultuous dragons and hydras and phantom hosts, as in Milton, visionary vortices, as in Dante. What a solemn thing is this infinity that every man bears within him and against which he measures with despair the wishes of his brain and the actions of his life!

One day Alighieri came to a sinister-looking door at which he hesitated.

Here is another before us, on whose threshold we hesitate. Yet let us enter.

We have very little to add to what the reader already knows of the fate

that befell Jean Valjean after his encounter with Petit-Gervais. From that moment on he was, as we have seen, a totally different man. What the bishop wanted to achieve in him, he fulfilled. It was more than a transformation, it was a transfiguration.

He managed to disappear, sold the bishop’s silver, keeping only the

candlesticks as a memento, sneaked from town to town, crossed France, came to Montreuil-sur-Mer, had the idea that we have mentioned, accomplished what we have related, succeeded in making himself elusive and inaccessible; and now, having settled at Montreuil-sur-Mer, happy in the awareness that his conscience was saddened by his past and that the first half of his life was belied by the latter half, he lived peacefully, heartened and hopeful, left with only two intentions: to conceal his name and to sanctify his life, to escape men and to return to God.

These two intentions were so closely associated in his mind that they

formed but one. Both were equally preoccupying and imperative, and ruled his slightest actions. In general, they worked in accord to govern the conduct of his life. They disposed him to be retiring, they made him kindly and simple, they counselled the same things. Sometimes, however, they conflicted with each other. In that case, let us remember, the man the entire population of Montreuil-sur-Mer called Monsieur Madeleine did not hesitate to sacrifice the former to the latter, his safety to his virtue. So, contrary to all caution and all prudence, he kept the bishop’s candlesticks, wore mourning for him, summoned and questioned all the little Savoyards who came along, made inquiries about families at Faverolles and saved old Fauchelevent’s life, notwithstanding Javert’s disquieting insinuations. As we have already observed, it seemed that, following the example of all those who have been wise, saintly and just, he thought his first duty was not to himself.

However, it must be said, nothing like this had ever arisen before. Never

had the two precepts that governed the unfortunate man whose tribulations we are recounting come into such serious contention. He was vaguely but profoundly aware of this from the very first words that Javert uttered on entering his office. The moment that name which he had buried beneath such deep layers was so strangely mentioned, he was seized with amazement and as though befuddled by the sinister whimsicality of his destiny, and amid his amazement he felt the tremor that precedes great upheavals. He bent like an oak at the approach of a storm, like a soldier at

an oncoming assault. He sensed shadows filled with thunder and lightning gathering overhead. As he listened to Javert his first thought was to go running off and denounce himself, to drag that Champmathieu out of prison and take his place. This was as painful and agonizing as an incision in living flesh. Then it passed, and he said to himself, ‘Come, now! Come, now!’ He repressed this first generous instinct and recoiled before heroism.

It would doubtless have been noble, after the bishop’s saintly words, after

so many years of repentance and abnegation, in the middle of a penance so admirably begun, if this man even though facing so terrible a predicament had not wavered for an instant but had continued to walk steadily towards that yawning precipice at the bottom of which lay heaven. It would have been noble, but it did not happen like that. After all, we have to give account of what was happening in that soul, and we can only report what that was. What got the better of him at first was the instinct of self-preservation. He hastily rallied his thoughts, stifled his emotions, took heed of the presence of that great peril Javert, with the firmness of terror deferred any decision, mindlessly got on with whatever he had to attend to, and resumed his calm as a warrior picks up his shield.

For the rest of the day he was in this state of tumult within, of profound

tranquillity without. He did not take what might be called ‘self-preserving measures’. Everything was still confused and warring in his brain. So great was the confusion he could distinguish no clear idea of any form, and he had nothing to say for himself except that he had just suffered a great blow.

He turned up as usual to see Fantine in her sickbed and prolonged his visit out of an instinct of kindness, telling himself this is what he must do, urging the sisters to look after her in the event that he should have to absent himself. He had a vague feeling he might be obliged to go to Arras, and without having in the least made up his mind about this trip he told himself that since he was entirely above suspicion there could be no harm in being present to see what happened, and he hired the tilbury from Scaufflaire in order to be prepared for all eventualities.

He dined with a fair appetite.

Back in his room, he fell to thinking.

He considered the situation and found it extraordinary, so extraordinary

that, prompted by some impulse of almost inexplicable anxiety, in the midst of his introspection he rose from his chair and bolted the door. He was afraid something else might come in. He barricaded himself against any possibility.

A moment later, he extinguished his light. It made him uneasy.

He had the feeling that someone could see him.

Someone? Who?

Alas! What he wanted to shut out had already entered. What he wanted to

strike blind was staring at him. His conscience.

His conscience, that is to say, God.

Nevertheless, at first he deluded himself. He had a sense of security and

of solitude. Having bolted the door, he felt impregnable. Having blown out the candle, he felt invisible. Then he took hold of himself. He set his elbows on the table, rested his head on his hand, and began to ponder in the dark.

‘Where do I stand? Am I not dreaming? What was I told? Is it really true

that I saw Javert and he said those things to me? Who can this Champmathieu be? So he looks like me? Is that possible? When I think that yesterday I had such peace of mind and was so far from suspecting any of this! What was I doing this time yesterday? What’s to be made of this incident? How will it be resolved? What am I to do?’

Such was the turmoil he was in. His brain had lost the power to retain its

thoughts. They washed through it like waves, and he clutched his brow in both hands to arrest them.

Out of this tumult that undermined his willpower and his reason, and

from which he tried to extract some clarity and resolution, nothing emerged but anguish.

His head was boiling. He went to the window and threw it wide open.

There were no stars in the sky. He came back and sat down at the table.

So the first hour went by.

Gradually, however, in his reflections vague features began to take shape

and gain definition, and he was able to envisage with the precision of reality not the whole situation but some of the details.

He began by recognizing that, extraordinary and momentous as this

situation was, he had complete control over it.

This only increased his amazement.

Irrespective of the austere religious purpose his actions were intended to

serve, everything he had done up until that day was nothing but a hole he had been digging in which to bury his name. What he had always feared most, during his hours of introspection, during his sleepless nights, was ever to hear that name pronounced. He told himself that if he did, it would spell the end of everything for him. That the day that name resurfaced it would cause his new life to vanish, and even perhaps – who knows? – the new soul within him. He shuddered at the very thought that this was possible. Certainly, if anyone had told him during those moments that the time would come when that name would ring in his ears, when the hideous words ‘Jean Valjean’ would suddenly emerge from the darkness and loom before him, when that formidable light destined to dissipate the mystery in which he had shrouded himself would suddenly shine on him, and this name would not threaten him, this light would create only denser obscurity, this rent veil would increase the mystery, this earthquake would consolidate his edifice, this extraordinary incident would have no other result, if it was what he wanted, than to make his existence at once more transparent and more impenetrable, and out of his confrontation with the ghost of Jean Valjean the good and worthy gentleman Monsieur Madeleine would emerge more honoured, more at peace and more respected than ever – if anyone had told him this he would have shaken his head and regarded those words as insane. Well, all this was precisely what had just come to pass. This whole accumulation of impossibilities was a fact, and God had allowed these mad things to become realities!

His ruminations continued to gain clarity. He came to understand his

position more and more.

He felt as if he had just woken from some sort of dream and had found

himself sliding down a slope in the middle of the night, standing, shivering, backing away in vain, on the very brink of an abyss. He distinctly perceived in the gloom a man he did not know, a stranger that destiny mistook for him

and was pushing into the chasm in his place. In order for the chasm to close up again someone had to fall in, he or that other man.

He had only to let events take their course.

All became clear, and he admitted this to himself: that his place in the

prison hulks was empty, that whatever he did it was still waiting for him, that robbing Petit-Gervais led him back to it, that this vacant place awaited him and would keep drawing him back to it until he returned, that this was inevitable. And then he said to himself that now he had a substitute, that apparently someone by the name of Champmathieu had that misfortune, and that as far as he himself was concerned, being present in the prison hulks in the person of Champmathieu and being present in society under the name of Monsieur Madeleine, he had nothing more to fear provided he did not prevent his fellow men from sealing Champmathieu’s life with the stone of infamy which, like the stone of the sepulchre, once put in place is never to be removed.

All this was so tumultuous and so strange that there suddenly came over

him that sort of indescribable impulse no man experiences more than two or three times in his life, a convulsion of the conscience, as it were, that stirs up all the heart’s uncertainty, a combination of irony, joy and despair that might be called a burst of inward laughter.

He quickly relit his candle. ‘Well,’ he said to himself. ‘What am I afraid of? Why should I be

thinking like this? I’m safe now. It’s all over. I had only one door still standing ajar through which my past might come bursting into my life. That door is now walled up. For ever! This Javert who has been worrying me for so long, this terrible instinct that seemed to have found me out – which had indeed found me out, by God, and followed me everywhere – this dreadful hunting-dog that was always pointing me is now on a different track, nosing around elsewhere, completely thrown off the scent! Now he’s satisfied, he’ll leave me alone. He has his Jean Valjean. In fact, who knows, he’ll probably want to leave town! And all this has happened without me. I’ve had nothing to do with it! Well now, where’s the misfortune in that? On my word of honour, anyone who saw me would think some catastrophe had befallen

me! After all, if there’s anyone harmed by it, it’s not my fault at all.

Providence alone is responsible. Apparently that’s what it wants. Do I have any right to upset its arrangements? What is it I want now? Why should I start to meddle? It’s none of my business. What! I’m not satisfied? What more do I want? The goal I’ve aspired to for so many years, what I dream of at night, the object of my prayers to heaven, security, is now within my reach. It’s God’s will. I can do nothing against the will of God. And why is it God’s will? So that I may continue what I’ve begun, that I may do good, that I may one day be a great and inspiring example, that it may be said there was at last a little happiness attached to the penance I’ve endured and the virtue I’ve returned to. I really don’t understand why I was afraid a little while ago to call on that good priest and tell him everything as I would to a confessor, and ask his advice; that’s obviously what he would have told me.

It’s settled, we’ll leave well alone and not interfere with the ways of the good Lord!’

So he talked to himself in the depths of his own conscience, looking into

what might be called his own abyss. He rose from his chair and began to pace the room.

‘Now then,’ he said, ‘let’s not think about it any more. The decision’s

made!’

But he felt no joy. On the contrary.

The mind is no more to be prevented from returning to an idea than the

sea from returning to the shore. For the sailor, this is called the tide. For the guilty man, it is called remorse. God stirs the soul as he causes the ocean to swell.

After a few moments he could not help but resume the grim dialogue in

which it was he who spoke and he who listened, saying what he wanted to leave unsaid, and listening to what he did not want to hear, yielding to that mysterious power that said to him, ‘Think!’ as it had said to another condemned man two thousand years earlier, ‘Onward!’

Before going any further, and so as to be fully understood, let us make

one observation that needs underlining.

It is certain that people talk to themselves. There is no being capable of

thought who has no experience of this. It might even be said that the word is a mystery never more magnificent than when it passes inwardly from a man’s mind to his conscience and returns from his conscience to his mind.

It is in this sense only that the words often employed in this chapter – ‘he said’, ‘he exclaimed’ – are to be understood. We tell ourselves, talk to ourselves, exclaim to ourselves, while the outward silence remains unbroken. There is a great hubbub. Everything inside us talks except our mouths. The realities of the soul, though not visible and not palpable, are nonetheless realities.

So he asked himself where he stood. He questioned himself about that

‘decision made’. He admitted to himself that everything he had just settled in his mind was monstrous, that ‘leaving well alone and not interfering with the ways of the good Lord’ was simply horrible. To allow this mistake to be made by fate and by men, not to prevent it, to be a party to it through his silence – to do nothing, in short – was to do everything! It was the ultimate hypocritical infamy! It was a vile, cowardly, sly, abject, hideous crime!

For the first time in eight years this poor man had just experienced the

bitter taste of a wicked deed.

He spat it out in disgust.

He continued to question himself. He sternly asked himself what he had

meant by this: ‘I’ve reached my goal!’ He told himself that his life indeed had a goal. But what goal? To conceal his name? To deceive the police?

Was it for so petty a thing he had done all that he had done? Did he not have another goal, the one true noble goal? To save not his physical being but his soul? To become once more honest and good? To be righteous? Was it not that above all, that alone, he had always wanted and the bishop had demanded of him? Shut the door on his past? But, dear God, he wasn’t shutting it, he was reopening it by doing something despicable! He was becoming a thief again, and the most abominable of thieves! He was robbing another man of his existence, his life, his peace, his place in the sun. He was becoming an assassin. He was killing a poor wretch, morally killing him. He was inflicting on him that frightful living death, that death

beneath the open skies which is called penal servitude. On the contrary, to give himself up, to save that man, the victim of such a dire misapprehension, to resume his own name, out of a sense of duty to become the convict Jean Valjean again, that was truly to achieve his resurrection and to seal off for ever the hell he had left behind! Apparently to fall back into it was actually to escape it. This is what he must do! He had done nothing if he did not do this. His whole life was pointless, his whole penance wasted, and there was nothing else to say but ‘What’s the good of it?’ He felt that the bishop was there, that the bishop was all the more present for being dead, that the bishop was gazing steadily at him, that from now on Mayor Madeleine with all his virtues would be abhorrent to him, and the convict Jean Valjean would be pure and admirable in his sight. That men saw his mask, but the bishop saw his face. That men saw his life, but the bishop saw his conscience.

So he must go to Arras, rescue the false Jean Valjean and denounce the

real one. Alas! that was the greatest of sacrifices, the most poignant of victories, the last step to be taken. But it must be done. A grievous fate! He would acquire saintliness in the eyes of God only if he regained infamy in the eyes of men.

‘Well,’ he said, ‘let’s take this course! Let’s do our duty! Let’s save this

man.’

He uttered these words aloud without noticing that he was actually

voicing them. He took his books, checked them, and put them in order. He threw on the fire a bundle of credit notes for monies owed to him by some small shopkeepers in financial difficulties. He wrote a letter, which he sealed, and had there been anyone in his room at the time, that individual might have read on the envelope: ‘To Monsieur Laffitte, Banker, Rue d’Artois, Paris’.

He drew from a writing-desk a wallet containing several banknotes and

the passport he had used that same year to vote in the elections. Anyone who had seen him while he was doing these various things that involved such serious contemplation would have had no suspicion of what was going on inside him. Only, occasionally his lips moved. At other times he looked

up and stared at some point or other on the wall as if there were in precisely that place something he wished to elucidate or query.

When the letter to Monsieur Laffitte was completed he put it in his

pocket together with the wallet, and began pacing again.

There was no deviation in his thinking. He continued to see his duty

clearly written in luminous characters that blazed before his eyes wherever he directed his gaze: ‘Go! Give your name! Denounce yourself!’

Similarly, he saw, as if they moved before him in visible form, the two

notions that had till now been the twofold rule of his life: to hide his name, to sanctify his soul. For the first time they appeared absolutely distinct to him and he saw the difference between them. He recognized that one of these notions was inevitably good while the other could turn bad. That one was self-sacrifice and the other individualism. That one said ‘my neighbour’, and the other said ‘myself’. That one originated from light and the other from darkness.

They fought against each other. He saw them fight. As he continued to

ponder, they had grown bigger in his mind’s eye. They were now of colossal stature. And it seemed to him that he could see within himself, in that infinity we mentioned earlier, among shadows and glimmerings of light, a goddess and a giant in combat.

He was filled with terror, but it looked to him as if the good intention was

triumphing. He felt he had come to the next decisive moment for his conscience and his destiny. That the bishop had marked the first phase of his new life and that Champmathieu marked the second. After the great crisis, the great test.

But the fever that had subsided for a while gradually returned. A

thousand thoughts ran through his mind but they continued to strengthen him in his resolve.

At one moment he said to himself, perhaps he was overreacting. After all,

this Champmathieu was no saint. He had actually stolen. He responded inwardly: Very well, if this man has stolen a few apples, that’s a month in prison. There’s a great difference between that and the chain gang. And even then, who knows? Did he steal? Has it been proven? The name of Jean

Valjean damns him and seems to make proof dispensable. Don’t crown prosecutors always behave like that? He’s believed to be a thief because he’s known to be a convict.

A moment later the idea struck him that when he denounced himself the

heroism of his deed, and his honest life for the last seven years, and what he had done for the area, might perhaps be taken into consideration, and he would be pardoned.

But this notion faded very quickly, and he smiled bitterly, reflecting that

the theft of forty sous from Petit-Gervais made him guilty of re-offending, that this incident would surely be raised again, and under the terms laid down by the law would make him liable to penal servitude for life.

He turned his back on any illusion, detached himself more and more from

this world, and sought consolation and strength elsewhere. He told himself he must do his duty. That maybe he would be no worse off after doing his duty than after shirking it. That if he didn’t interfere, if he stayed in Montreuil-sur-Mer, his prestige, his good name, his good works, the respect and veneration in which he was held, his charity, his wealth, his popularity, his virtue, would be dependent on a crime. And how could his pleasure in all these blessed things not be tainted by their association with this hideous thing? Whereas if he made his sacrifice it would bring to the prison hulks, to the pillory post, to the iron collar, to the green cap, to the unceasing toil and the pitiless shame, a touch of the sublime.

Finally he told himself it could not be helped, such was his destiny, he

had no authority to upset the arrangements made on high, that in any case there was a choice to be made: outward virtue and inward loathing, or inward saintliness and outward ignominy.

Though his courage did not falter, brooding over such dismal thoughts

tired him. In spite of himself he began to think of other things, unimportant things.

The veins in his temples throbbed violently. He went on pacing to and

fro. Midnight struck, first at the parish church, then at the town hall. He counted the twelve strokes of the two clocks and compared the sounds of the two bells. He was reminded that a few days previously he had seen an

old clock for sale, at a scrap merchant’s, on which was written the name ‘Antoine-Albin de Romainville’.

He felt cold. He lit a small fire. It did not occur to him to close the

window. In the meantime he had relapsed into his stupor. He had to make quite an effort to remember what he had been thinking about before midnight struck. Finally it came back to him.

‘Ah! yes,’ he said to himself, ‘I’d made up my mind to denounce myself.’ And then all at once he thought of Fantine. ‘Wait!’ said he. ‘What about that poor woman?’ Now a new feverishness erupted.

Fantine, suddenly coming to mind, was like an unexpected ray of light. It

seemed to him that everything around him looked different. He exclaimed, ‘But I’ve only considered myself till now! Whether I should remain silent or denounce myself, hide myself or save my soul, be a contemptible and respected magistrate or a vile and venerable convict. It’s just me, me, me, all the time! But, good God, either way it’s egotism! Different forms of egotism, but egotism all the same. Suppose I gave some thought to others?

The supreme godliness is to think of others. Now, let’s consider the matter.

If I’m removed, excluded, forgotten, what will happen as a result? Suppose I denounce myself. I’m arrested, this Champmathieu is released, I’m sent back to the prison hulks, that’s fine. And what then? What happens here?

Ah! here, we have a community, a town, factories, an industry, workers, men and women, aged grandfathers, children, poor folk! I’ve created all this, I sustain all this. Wherever there’s a smoking chimney, it is I who have put the log on the fire and the meat in the pot. I’ve created wealth, commerce, credit. Before me there was nothing. I’ve improved, revitalized, regenerated, invigorated, stimulated, enriched the whole countryside. With me gone, the moving spirit’s gone. Remove myself, and everything dies.

And this woman who’s suffered so much, whose merits in her downfall are so great, and I the unwitting cause of all her misery! And the child I meant to go and fetch, as I promised her mother. Don’t I owe this woman something too, in reparation for the harm I’ve done her? If I disappear, what

will happen? The mother dies. The child’s left to fend for itself. That’s what happens if I denounce myself.

‘What if I don’t denounce myself? Well, suppose I don’t?’ After putting this question to himself, he paused. He had, as it were, a

moment’s hesitation and trepidation. But this moment did not last long and he responded calmly: ‘Well, this man will join the chain gang, that’s true, but he’s stolen, damn it! It’s no use saying he hasn’t, because he has!

Meanwhile I stay here and carry on. In ten years I’ll have made ten million, I redirect it into the community, I keep nothing for myself, what is it to me?

I’m not doing it for myself. General prosperity continues to increase, industries start up and develop, factories and shops multiply, families, dozens of families, hundreds of families, are happy. The region’s population grows, villages spring up where before there were only farms, farms spring up where there was nothing. Poverty disappears and, along with poverty, debauchery, prostitution, theft, murder, all vices, all crimes! And this poor mother raises her child! And a whole community becomes wealthy and respectable! Honestly! I was out of my mind! I was being absurd! Why on earth was I talking about denouncing myself? Really, I must be careful, and not do anything hasty. What! Because I wanted to play the brave, noble-hearted soul – after all, that’s so melodramatic! – because I was just thinking of myself, and no one else. In order to save from punishment – a little excessive, maybe, but basically justified – some unknown person, a thief, an obvious good-for-nothing, a whole region must perish! A poor woman must die in hospital! A poor little girl must die in the street! Like dogs! But this is appalling! And without the mother even seeing her child again! And the child almost not having known her mother. And all for the sake of that apple-thieving old rogue who surely deserves to be sentenced to hard labour for something else, if not for that. Fine scruples that save a criminal and sacrifice the innocent; that save an old vagrant – with only a few more years to live, after all, who will hardly be any worse off in the prison hulks than in his own hovel – and sacrifice a whole population, mothers, wives, children. Poor little Cosette who has no one in the world but me and is no doubt blue with cold right now in those Thénardiers’ doss-

house. There’s another bad lot! And I’d be prepared to neglect my responsibilities to all these poor creatures! And I’d go off and denounce myself! And I’d do something so downright stupid! Let’s assume the worst: suppose there is some wickedness on my part in all this and my conscience one day reproaches me for it. Resigning myself, for the sake of others, to those reproaches weighing only against me and to this wicked deed that imperils no one else’s soul but mine – that’s self-sacrifice, that’s virtue.’

He rose and started pacing again. This time he thought he was satisfied.

Diamonds are found only in the darkness of the earth. Truths are found

only in the depths of the mind. It seemed to him that having descended into those depths, having long groped in the pitch-black of that darkness, he had at last found one of those diamonds, one of those truths, and he now held it in his hand. And he was dazzled by the sight of it.

‘Yes,’ he thought, ‘that’s the answer. I’m doing the right thing. I have the

solution. In the end some decision has to be reached. I’ve made up my mind. Leave well alone. No more shilly-shallying, no more backsliding.

This is in everybody’s interests, not mine. I am Madeleine, Madeleine I remain. Whoever Jean Valjean is, let him perish! He’s not myself any more.

I don’t know that man, he’s nothing to do with me now. If there happens to be someone called Jean Valjean at this moment, that’s his lookout! It’s not my concern. It’s a fateful name hovering about in the dark. If it stops and swoops down on someone, that’s just too bad!’

He looked at himself in the little mirror on his mantelpiece, and said,

‘Well! It’s a relief to have come to a decision. I feel much better now.’

He took another few steps, then stopped in his tracks. ‘Come now!’ he said. ‘There must be no faint-heartedness over any of the

consequences of this decision. There are still links connecting me with that Jean Valjean. They must be destroyed. There are objects here in this very room that would betray me, things that cannot speak that would testify against me. Well then, all these things must disappear.’

He fumbled in his pocket, drew out his purse, opened it, and took out a

small key. He inserted this key into a keyhole that could hardly be seen, camouflaged as it was in the darkest hues of the patterned wallpaper. A

hiding-place opened, a kind of false cupboard constructed in the angle between the wall and the chimney-breast. There was nothing but a few bits of rubbish in this hiding-place, a blue overall, an old pair of trousers, an old knapsack, and a big hawthorn stick ferruled at both ends. Those who had seen Jean Valjean when he passed through Digne in October 1815 would easily have recognized all the elements of this miserable outfit.

He had kept them as he had kept the silver candlesticks, to remind

himself always of where he had started from. Only, he concealed these things that came from the prison hulks and displayed the candlesticks that came from the bishop.

He cast a furtive glance towards the door as if he feared it would open,

despite being bolted. Then, without even glancing at these things that he had kept so religiously and at such great peril all these years, with a sudden brisk movement he swept them up in a single armful and threw the whole lot, rags, stick and knapsack, on to the fire.

He closed the secret cupboard, and taking extra precautions, no longer

necessary since it was now empty, he concealed the door behind a piece of heavy furniture that he pushed in front of it.

After a few seconds the room and the opposite wall were lit up with a

fierce red wavering glow. Everything was ablaze. The hawthorn stick crackled and threw sparks reaching the middle of the room.

As the knapsack burned away, along with the hideous rags it contained,

something shiny was left lying in the ashes. Anyone who took a closer look would easily have recognized it as a silver coin. No doubt the forty-sou piece stolen from the little chimney-sweep.

He did not look at the fire, but kept steadily pacing back and forth. All at

once his eyes fell on the two silver candlesticks dimly gleaming on the mantelpiece in the reflected glow.

‘Now wait!’ he thought. ‘There is still everything of Jean Valjean in

those. They too must be destroyed.’

He seized the two candlesticks. There was enough of a blaze to be able to

quickly distort them and make some sort of unrecognizable metal bar out of them.

He bent over the hearth and warmed himself for a moment. It gave him a

real sense of well-being. ‘How good to be warm!’ he said.

He stirred the embers with one of the two candlesticks. A minute later

and they would have been in the fire.

At that moment he thought he heard a voice cry out within him: ‘Jean

Valjean! Jean Valjean!’

His hair stood on end. He became like a man listening to something

terrifying.

‘Yes, go on, do it!’ said the voice. ‘Finish what you’re about! Destroy

those candlesticks! Obliterate that memory! Forget the bishop! Forget everything! Ruin that Champmathieu! Go on! That’s fine! Congratulate yourself! And so it’s settled, resolved, decided: there’s a man, an old man, who doesn’t know what lies in store for him, who’s done nothing wrong perhaps, an innocent man, to whom your name has brought total disaster, who’s burdened with your name as with a crime, who’s going to be mistaken for you, who’s going to be convicted, who will end his days in abject horror. That’s fine! You yourself, be an honest man. Continue as monsieur le maire. Continue to be respectable and respected. Enrich the town. Feed the poor. Give orphans an upbringing. Live happy, virtuous and admired. And in the meantime, while you’re here enjoying happiness and light, there’ll be someone wearing your red jacket, bearing your name in ignominy and dragging your chain in prison. Yes, that’s a fine arrangement.

Ah, you wretch!’

Sweat trickled from his brow. He stared wild-eyed at the candlesticks.

But that which spoke within him had not finished. The voice went on: ‘Jean Valjean, there will be many voices around you that will make a great deal of noise, that will talk very loudly and bless you, and only one voice that no one will hear, a voice that will curse you in the shadows. Well, listen, vile impostor! All those blessings will fall back to earth again before reaching heaven, and only the curse will rise up to God.’

This voice, very faint at first and coming from the darkest depths of his

conscience, had gradually become loud and formidable, and he now heard it in his ear. It seemed to him it had escaped from inside him and now spoke

from without. He thought he heard those last words so distinctly that he looked around the room with a kind of terror.

‘Is there anyone here?’ he asked out loud, and utterly distraught.

Then, with a laugh like the laugh of an idiot, he said, ‘How stupid of me!

There can’t be anybody!’

There was somebody, but the somebody who was there was not one of

those the human eye is capable of seeing.

He put the candlesticks back on the mantelpiece.

Then he resumed that monotonous and gloomy pacing that disturbed the

dreams of the sleeping man below and woke him with a start.

This pacing calmed and at the same time agitated him. It seems that

sometimes, at the most critical moments, we move about so as to seek the advice of everything we may encounter in bestirring ourselves. After a few moments he no longer knew what to do.

He now recoiled with equal horror before the two decisions he had come

to in turn. Both ideas that suggested themselves seemed no less deplorable one than the other. What a quirk of fate! What a freak of chance that Champmathieu should have been mistaken for him. To be ruined by precisely the means providence seemed at first to have employed to safeguard him!

There was a moment when he considered the future. Good God!

Denounce himself! Give himself up! He envisaged with immense despair everything he would have to leave behind, everything he would have to return to. He would have to say goodbye to this life, a life so good, so pure, so radiant, to this respect from everyone, to honour, to freedom. Never again would he go walking in the countryside, never again hear the birds sing in the month of May, never again give money to the little children. He would never again experience the sweetness of meeting those gazes filled with gratitude and love. He would leave this house he had built, this room, this dear room! Everything seemed delightful to him at that moment. Never again would he read these books, never again would he write at this dear pinewood table. His old caretaker, the only servant he had, would never again bring him his coffee in the morning. Good God! Instead of this, the

convict gang, the iron collar, the red jacket, the chain round his ankle, exhaustion, the cell, the camp bed, all those familiar horrors! At his age, having been what he was now! If he were still young, at least! But to be old, and to be shown no respect by anyone, to be searched by the warder, beaten by the galley-sergeant, to wear hobnailed shoes on his bare feet and allow the shackles on his leg to be checked morning and night by the guard on patrol with his hammer, to endure the curiosity of strangers who would be told: ‘That one there is the famous Jean Valjean, who was mayor of Montreuil-sur-Mer!’ And in the evening, dripping with sweat, overwhelmed with weariness, the green cap pulled down over his eyes, to climb the ladder on to the prison hulks, in pairs, under the sergeant’s whip. Oh, what misery!

Can destiny, then, be as vicious as an intelligent being and become as monstrous as the human heart?

And whatever he did, he kept coming back to this agonizing dilemma

that underlay his reflections: Remain in paradise and become a demon!

Return to hell and become an angel!

What should he do? God Almighty! What should he do?

The turmoil he had with so much difficulty put behind him once more

raged within him. His thoughts started to become confused again. They took on that somehow bewildered and mechanical aspect typical of despair.

The name of Romainville kept coming back into his mind with two lines of a song that he had once heard. He remembered that Romainville was a little forest close to Paris where young lovers went to gather lilacs in the month of April.

He reeled outwardly as well as inwardly. He tottered like a small child

left to walk on its own.

At certain moments, struggling against weariness, he strove to retake

command of his intellect. He tried to confront once and for all the problem over which he had, as it were, collapsed with exhaustion. Should he denounce himself? Should he remain silent? He could see nothing with any clarity. The vague aspects of all the lines of reasoning sketched out by his ruminations flickered and went up in smoke one after the other. Yet he felt that whatever he decided, some part of him was bound to die, and there was

no possibility of avoiding this. That either way he was entering a tomb.

That he was in the throes of death, the death of his happiness or the death of his virtue.

Alas! all his indecision had got the better of him again. He was no further

advanced than to begin with.

Thus did this poor soul struggle in its anguish. Eighteen hundred years

before this ill-fated man, the mysterious being in whom are concentrated all the saintliness and all the sufferings of humanity had also refused for a long time the terrible chalice, streaming with darkness and brimming with shadows, that appeared to him in the star-filled depths while the olive trees shook in the fierce blast of the infinite.

IV

Forms That Suffering Takes in Sleep

Three o’clock in the morning had just struck and he had been pacing like this for five hours, almost without interruption, when he dropped on to his chair.

There he fell asleep and had a dream.

This dream, like most dreams, related to the situation only in that there

was something vaguely sinister and disturbing about it, but it made an impression on him. So struck was he by this nightmare that he later wrote it down. It is one of the papers written in his own hand that he has left. Here we think we ought to transcribe this thing word for word.

Whatever the dream, the story of this night would be incomplete if we

were to omit it. It is the grim experience of a sick soul.

Here it is. We find this line written on the envelope: ‘The dream I had

that night’.

I was in the countryside. Bleak open countryside where there was no grass growing. It did not seem to me to be either light or dark.

I was walking with my brother, the brother of my childhood years, the brother that, I

have to say, I never think about and I can scarcely remember now.

We were chatting, and we encountered some passers-by. We were talking about a

neighbour we had in the past who always worked with her window on to the street open

all the time that she lived there. Even as we chatted we felt cold because of that open window.

There were no trees in the countryside.

We saw a man who passed close by. He was stark-naked, ashen-hued, mounted on an

earthen-hued horse. The man had no hair. We could see his skull and the veins on his skull. In his hand he held a switch as pliant as a vine shoot and as heavy as iron. This horseman passed by and said nothing to us.

My brother said to me, ‘Let’s take the sunken road.’ There was a sunken road where not a bush or a patch of moss was to be seen.

Everything was earth-coloured, even the sky. After a few paces there was now no reply when I spoke. I realized my brother was not with me any more.

I entered a village that I saw. I thought it must be Romainville (why Romainville?)*.

The first street I entered was deserted. I turned into a second street. Round the corner

where the two streets met, there was a man standing against the wall. I said to this man, ‘What village is this? Where am I?’ The man did not reply. I saw a house with the door open, I went inside.

The first room was deserted. I went into the second. Behind the door of this room, a

man was standing against the wall. I asked this man, ‘Whose house is this? Where am I?’ The man did not reply. The house had a garden.

I left the house and went into the garden. The garden was deserted. Behind the first tree

I found a man standing there. I said to this man, ‘What is this garden? Where am I?’ The man did not reply.

I wandered through the village and realized it was a town. All the streets were deserted,

all the doors were open. Not a living soul walked in the streets, moved about the rooms or strolled in the gardens. But behind every corner, behind every door, behind every tree, stood a man who did not speak. There was never more than one of them to be seen at any one time. These men watched me go by.

I left the town and began to walk through the fields.

After some time I turned round and saw a large crowd coming after me. I recognized

all the men I had seen in the town. They had strange expressions. They did not seem to be hurrying and yet they walked faster than I did. They made no sound as they walked.

Within an instant this crowd caught up with me and surrounded me. The faces of these men were earth-coloured.

Then the first one I had seen and questioned on entering the town said to me, ‘Where

are you going! Don’t you know that you’ve long been dead?’

I opened my mouth to reply, and I saw there was no one around.

He woke up. He felt frozen. A cold wind like the morning wind made the casements that had been left open swing on their hinges. The fire had gone out. The candle was almost burned right down. It was still pitch-black.

He rose and went to the window. There were still no stars in the sky.

The yard of the house and the street could be seen from the window.

A sharp, harsh sound, a sudden clattering on the ground, made him look

down.

He saw below him two red stars whose rays bizarrely lengthened and

shortened in the darkness.

His mind still half submerged in the fog of dreams, ‘Look at that!’ he

thought. ‘There are none in the sky. They’re on earth now.’

However, this fog cleared, a second sound like the first wakened him

completely. He looked again and realized the two stars were carriage lanterns. By the light they cast he was able to make out the shape of that carriage. It was a tilbury harnessed to a small white horse. The noise he heard was that of the horse’s hoofs striking the paving.

‘What’s that carriage doing here?’ he said to himself. ‘Now who would

be arriving so early in the morning?’

At that moment there was a tap at the door of his room.

He shuddered from head to foot and cried out in a terrible voice, ‘Who is

it?’

Someone replied, ‘Monsieur le maire, it’s me.’ He recognized the voice of the old woman, his doorkeeper. ‘Well,’ he

replied, ‘what is it?’

‘Monsieur le maire, it’ll soon be five o’clock in the morning.’ ‘What’s that to me?’ ‘It’s the gig, monsieur le maire.’ ‘What gig?’ ‘The tilbury.’ ‘What tilbury?’ ‘Did monsieur le maire not order a tilbury?’ ‘No,’ he said. ‘The coachman says he’s come for monsieur le maire.’ ‘What coachman?’ ‘Monsieur Scaufflaire’s coachman.’ ‘Monsieur Scaufflaire?’ This name made him start, as if a streak of lightning had flashed in front

of him.

‘Ah! yes,’ he said. ‘Monsieur Scaufflaire!’ If the old woman could have seen him at that moment she would have

been terror-stricken.

There was quite a long silence. He stared stupidly at the candle flame,

then from round the wick he took some of the molten wax, which he rolled between his fingers. The old woman was waiting.

Yet she ventured to raise her voice once more: ‘Monsieur le maire, what

am I to reply?’

‘Tell him, very well, I’m coming.’

V

Spokes in the Wheels

The post service from Arras to Montreuil-sur-Mer was still operated at that time by small mail-coaches dating back to the Empire. These coaches were two-wheeled cabriolets, upholstered on the inside in buff leather, with spring suspension and only two seats, one for the postman, the other for a passenger. The wheels were mounted on those aggressive protruding axle arms that keep other vehicles at bay and are still to be seen on the roads in Germany. The dispatch box, a huge oblong coffer, was positioned at the back of the cabriolet and formed an integral part of it. This coffer was painted black and the cabriolet yellow.

These vehicles, unlike anything today, had something of a distorted,

hunchbacked look about them, and when seen going by in the distance, climbing some road to the horizon, they resembled those insects, called termites, I believe, with a small thorax and a large abdomen trailing behind.

Moreover, they went very fast. The mail-coach that set out from Arras every night at one o’clock, after the Paris mail had been through, arrived at Montreuil-sur-Mer a little before five in the morning.

That night, just as it was entering the town, the coach going down to

Montreuil-sur-Mer on the Hesdin road collided at a street corner with a little tilbury drawn by a white horse coming from the opposite direction, which had just one person in it, a man wrapped in a cloak. The wheel of the tilbury

took quite a severe knock. The postman cried out to this man to stop, but the traveller did not listen and continued on his way at a fast trot.

‘There’s a man in a devilish hurry!’ said the postman.

The man in such a hurry was the one we have just seen floundering in

paroxysms and surely deserving of pity. Where was he going? He could not have said. Why was he hurrying? He did not know. He headed on blindly.

Where to? Arras, no doubt. But maybe he was also heading elsewhere. Now and then he felt this, and shuddered.

He plunged into that darkness as into an abyss. Something drove him,

something drew him. What was going on inside him none could say, all will understand. What man has not at least once in his life entered that dark cavern of the unknown?

Besides, he had resolved on nothing, decided on nothing, settled on

nothing, done nothing. None of the edicts of his conscience had been definitive. He was more than ever in the same predicament as in the very first instance.

Why was he going to Arras?

He kept repeating what he had already said to himself when he hired

Scaufflaire’s cabriolet: that whatever the outcome might be, there was no harm in seeing for himself and reaching his own judgement about things. In fact this was prudent, he needed to know what happened. It was impossible to make a decision without having watched and observed. From a distance, you got everything out of proportion. After all, once he had seen this Champmathieu, his conscience would probably be greatly relieved to let such an insignificant wretch take his place in the prison hulks. True, Javert would be there, and those fellows Brevet, Chenildieu and Cochepaille, former convicts who had known him. But they certainly would not recognize him. Bah! the very idea! And Javert wouldn’t even dream of it.

All conjectures and assumptions were focused on this Champmathieu, and nothing is so stubborn as assumptions and conjectures. So there was no danger.

It was certainly a dark moment, but he would come through it. After all,

his fate, however bad it might be, was in his own hands. He was master of

it. He clung to this idea.

Deep down, to be quite frank, he would have preferred not to go to Arras.

Nevertheless, that was where he was going.

Letting his thoughts run on, he whipped his horse, which kept up that

good, steady, even pace to cover six and a half miles an hour. As the tilbury advanced, he felt something inside him receding.

At daybreak he was in open countryside. The town of Montreuil-sur-Mer

lay some distance behind him. He beheld the whitening horizon. Unseeing, he beheld all the frigid features of a winter’s dawn pass before his eyes. The morning has its spectres, as well as the evening. He did not see them, but without his being aware of it and by a kind of almost physical penetration, these black silhouettes of trees and hills added something vaguely gloomy and ominous to his tumultuous state of mind.

Every time he passed one of those isolated houses bordering the road, he

said to himself, ‘And yet there are people asleep in that house!’

The trotting of the horse, the bells on the harness, the wheels on the

paving, produced a subdued and monotonous sound. Such things are delightful when you are happy, and mournful when you are sad.

It was broad daylight when he arrived at Hesdin. He stopped in front of

an inn to give the horse a breather and feed it some oats.

As Scaufflaire had said, the horse was of that small Boulonnais breed,

which is too heavy in the head, too big in the belly and too short in the neck and shoulders, but with a full chest, a broad rump, lean slender legs and a firm foot: an ugly but robust and healthy breed. This excellent beast had covered twelve and a half miles in two hours and had not a drop of sweat on its rump.

He had not descended from the tilbury. The stable-hand who brought the

oats suddenly bent down and examined the left wheel.

‘Are you going far like that?’ said this man.

Almost without emerging from his introspection, he replied, ‘Why?’ ‘Have you come far?’ the man went on. ‘Twelve and a half miles.’ ‘Ah!’

‘Why do you say “Ah”?’ The stable-lad bent down once more, remained silent for a moment,

staring at the wheel, then straightened up and said, ‘Because that’s a wheel that, like as not, has just done twelve and a half miles but isn’t going to do another half-mile, for sure.’

He jumped down from the tilbury. ‘What are you saying, my friend?’ ‘I’m saying it’s a miracle that you’ve come twelve and a half miles

without overturning, you and your horse, in some ditch on the highway.

Look!’

The wheel was indeed seriously damaged. The collision with the mail-

coach had split two spokes and gouged the hub so that the axle nut was no longer holding.

‘My friend,’ he said to the groom, ‘is there a wheelwright in this place?’ ‘Certainly, monsieur.’ ‘Be so good as to go and fetch him.’ ‘He’s right here. Hey! Maître Bourgaillard!’ Maître Bourgaillard, the wheelwright, was standing on his doorstep. He

came and examined the wheel, and made a face like a surgeon who thinks a limb is broken.

‘Can you repair this wheel immediately?’ ‘Yes, monsieur.’ ‘When will I be able to set off again?’ ‘Tomorrow.’ ‘Tomorrow!’ ‘It’ll take a full day’s work. Is monsieur in a hurry?’ ‘A very great hurry. I must be on my way in no more than an hour.’ ‘Impossible, monsieur.’ ‘I’ll pay anything you like.’ ‘Impossible.’ ‘Well, in two hours, then.’ ‘Today’s impossible. Two spokes and a hub need to be remade. Monsieur

will not be able to set off again before tomorrow.’

‘What I have to do can’t wait till tomorrow. What if you were to replace

this wheel instead of repairing it?’

‘What do you mean?’ ‘You’re a wheelwright?’ ‘Certainly, monsieur.’ ‘Haven’t you got a wheel you could sell me? Then I could set off again at

once.’

‘A spare wheel?’ ‘Yes.’ ‘I haven’t got a ready-made wheel to fit your gig. Wheels go in matching

pairs. Wheels aren’t paired at random.’

‘In that case, sell me a pair of wheels.’ ‘All wheels don’t fit all axles, monsieur.’ ‘Try, at least.’ ‘It’s no good, monsieur. I’ve nothing but cartwheels to sell. This is just a

small place.’

‘Would you have a gig to hire out to me?’ The wheelwright had realized at first glance that the tilbury was a hired

vehicle. He shrugged.

‘A fine way you have of treating the gigs you hire! Even if I had one I

wouldn’t hire it out to you!’

‘Well, one to sell, then.’ ‘No, I haven’t.’ ‘What! Not even a trap? I’m not particular, as you see.’ ‘This is just a small place. I’ve got an old calash in the shed there,’ added

the wheelwright, ‘which belongs to a gentleman in town who’s given it to me to look after and only uses it once in a blue moon. I’d happily hire that out to you, what do I care? But the gentleman mustn’t see it go by. And besides, it’s a calash, it would need two horses.’

‘I’ll take post-horses.’ ‘Where is monsieur going?’ ‘To Arras.’ ‘And monsieur wants to get there today?’

‘Yes, I tell you.’ ‘With post-horses?’ ‘Why not?’ ‘Is it all the same to monsieur if he arrives at four o’clock in the

morning?’

‘Certainly not.’ ‘Well, you see, one thing that needs to be said, with post-horses – has

monsieur got his passport with him?’

‘Yes.’ ‘Well, with post-horses, monsieur won’t get to Arras before tomorrow.

We’re on a cross-route. The relay stations are badly supplied, the horses are in the fields. It’s the start of the ploughing season, strong draught animals are needed, and horses are taken from all quarters, from the post like everywhere else. Monsieur will be waiting at least three or four hours at every relay. And then you’ll be going at walking pace. There are a lot of hills to climb.’

‘Very well, I’ll go on horseback. Unhitch the gig. Someone in the locality

will surely sell me a saddle.’

‘No doubt. But does this horse accept the saddle?’ ‘That’s true, you’ve reminded me. No, it doesn’t.’ ‘Well then—’ ‘But surely I’ll find a horse to hire in the village?’ ‘A horse to go all the way to Arras without a break?’ ‘Yes.’ ‘You’d need a horse of a kind we haven’t got in these parts. In any case

you’d have to buy it because no one knows you. But you won’t find one – not for sale or for hire, not for five hundred francs or a thousand.’

‘What’s to be done?’ ‘Look, the best and most sensible thing is for me to repair the wheel and

for you to delay your journey until tomorrow.’

‘Tomorrow will be too late.’ ‘Dear me!’

‘What about the mail-coach that goes to Arras? When does that come

by?’

‘Tonight. Both mail-coaches do the run at night, the one going there as

well as the one coming back.’

‘So it will take you a day to mend this wheel?’ ‘And a good long day at that.’ ‘With two men working on it?’ ‘With ten men working on it!’ ‘What about binding the spokes with twine?’ ‘The spokes, yes, the hub, no. And anyway, the rim’s in a bad state, too.’ ‘Is there anyone in town who hires out carriages?’ ‘No.’ ‘Is there another wheelwright?’ The stable-hand and the wheelwright responded simultaneously by

shaking their heads. ‘No.’

He felt an immense joy.

It was obvious that providence was intervening. It was providence that

had broken the wheel of the tilbury and was preventing him from continuing his journey. He had not given in at the first challenge, as it were.

He had made every possible effort to continue his journey. He had honestly and scrupulously exhausted every alternative. He had not balked at winter weather, tiredness or expense. He had nothing with which to reproach himself. If he went no further, he could not be blamed any more. It was not his fault, it was the doing not of his conscience but of providence.

He breathed again. He breathed freely and deeply for the first time since

Javert’s visit. He felt as if he had just been released from the iron grip that had squeezed his heart for the past twenty hours.

It seemed to him that God was now on his side and was coming out in his

favour.

He told himself that he had done everything within his power, and all he

could do now was to go home quietly.

If his conversation with the wheelwright had taken place in a room inside

the inn there would have been no witnesses, no one would have heard him,

things would have gone no further, and we probably would not have had to relate any of the events of which you are going to read. But this conversation had taken place in the street. Any discussion in the street inevitably attracts a circle of onlookers. There are always people only too willing to be spectators. While he was questioning the wheelwright, some passers-by had stopped and gathered round them. After listening for a few minutes, a young lad no one had noticed broke away from the group and ran off.

Just as the traveller was deciding to turn back, after the inward

deliberations we have described above, this child returned. He was accompanied by an old woman.

‘Monsieur,’ said the woman, ‘my boy tells me you wish to hire a gig.’ These simple words uttered by an old woman led by a child made the

sweat trickle down his back. He fancied he saw the hand that had released him reappear in the shadows behind him, ready to recapture him.

He replied, ‘Yes, my good woman, I’m trying to find a gig for hire.’ And

he hastened to add, ‘But there’s none to be had here.’

‘Yes, there is,’ said the old woman. ‘Where from then?’ said the wheelwright. ‘From me,’ replied the old woman.

He shuddered. The fateful hand had seized hold of him again.

The old woman did indeed have a kind of wicker carriole. Dismayed that

the traveller should escape them, the wheelwright and the stable-hand spoke out: it was a frightful rattletrap, it was unsprung, resting directly on the axle – admittedly the seats were suspended inside with leather thongs – it let the rain in, the wheels were rusted and corroded with damp, it would not go much further than the tilbury, a real boneshaker! This gentleman would be very unwise to go anywhere in it, et cetera.

All this was true, but this rattletrap, this boneshaker, this thing whatever

it was, had two wheels and was mobile, and could go to Arras.

He paid the price asked, left the tilbury with the wheelwright to be

repaired so he could pick it up on his return, had the white horse harnessed

to the cart, climbed in, and resumed the journey on which he had set out that morning.

As the cart moved off, he confessed to himself that he had felt a certain

joy a moment earlier at the thought that he would not be going where he was going. He considered this joy with a sort of anger, and found it absurd.

Why feel joyful at turning back? After all, he was making this journey of his own free will. No one was forcing him to make it. And certainly nothing would happen that was not something he wanted.

As he left Hesdin he heard a voice shouting, ‘Stop! Stop!’ He stopped the

cart with a jerk, which had a vague feverishness and convulsiveness about it, resembling hope.

It was the old woman’s little boy. ‘Monsieur,’ said the lad, ‘it was I who

found you the cart.’

‘Well?’ ‘You’ve not given me anything.’ He who gave to all, and so readily, found this claim unreasonable, almost

outrageous.

‘Ah! you, young man,’ said he, ‘you shall have nothing.’ He whipped the horse and set off at a fast trot.

He had lost a lot of time at Hesdin. He wanted to make it up. The little

horse was plucky and pulled as well as two, but it was the month of February, it had been raining, the roads were bad. And besides, it was no longer the tilbury. The cart was solid and very heavy. And what is more, there were numerous climbs.

It took him nearly four hours to get from Hesdin to St-Pol. Four hours to

cover twelve and a half miles*.

At St-Pol, he had the horse unharnessed and taken to the stable at the first

inn he came to. As he had promised Scaufflaire, he stood by the fodder rack while the horse was feeding. The thoughts on his mind were gloomy and confused.

The innkeeper’s wife came into the stable. ‘Does monsieur not want to eat?’ ‘Ah, indeed I do,’ he said, ‘in fact I’ve got a hearty appetite.’

He followed this woman, who had a bright and cheerful face. She led him

to a low-ceilinged room where there were tables with oilcloth coverings for tablecloths.

‘Be quick!’ he said. ‘I must be on my way. I’m in a hurry.’ A plump Flemish serving-girl swiftly laid him a place. He watched the

girl with a sense of well-being.

‘That’s what was wrong with me,’ he thought. ‘I hadn’t eaten.’ His food came. He fell on the bread, took a bite, and then slowly put it

back on the table and did not touch it again.

A carter was eating at another table. He said to this man, ‘Why is their

bread so bitter here?’

The carter was German and did not understand.

He returned to the horse in the stable.

An hour later he had left St-Pol and was heading for Tinques, which is

only twelve and a half miles from Arras.

What did he do during this journey? What did he think about? As in the

morning, he watched the trees, the thatched roofs, the tilled fields going by, and the disappearing landscape, displaced at every bend in the road. This is contemplation of a kind that is sometimes sufficient for the soul and almost relieves it of thought. What could be more melancholy and profound than seeing a thousand objects for the first and last time? To travel is to be born and die at every instant. Perhaps in the haziest region of his mind he drew parallels between these shifting horizons and human existence. All things in life are perpetually fleeing before you. Brightness and dark intermingle: after radiance, an eclipse. You watch, you hurry, you reach out to seize what is passing. Every event is a bend in the road. And all of a sudden you are old. You feel a kind of jolt, all is darkness, you make out a dim doorway, the lugubrious horse of life that was drawing you comes to a halt, and you see a muffled stranger in the shadows unharness it.

Twilight was falling when some children coming out of school saw this

traveller drive in to Tinques. It is true the days were still short at that time of year. He did not stop in Tinques. As he came out of the village a road-

mender laying stones on the road looked up and said, ‘That’s a very tired horse.’

Indeed, the poor beast was going at no more than a walking pace. ‘Is it Arras you’re going to?’ added the road-mender. ‘Yes.’ ‘You won’t make very good time at that rate.’ He stopped the horse and asked the road-mender, ‘How much further is it

from here to Arras?’

‘Near enough a good seventeen miles.’ ‘How so? In the post book it’s marked as only thirteen.’ ‘Ah!’ replied the road-mender. ‘Don’t you know the road’s under repair?

You’ll find it blocked a quarter of an hour from here. Impossible to go any further.’

‘Really?’ ‘Take the turning on the left, which goes to Carency, cross the river, and

when you get to Camblin, turn right. That’s the Mont-St-Éloy road to Arras.’

‘But it’s getting dark, I’ll lose my way.’ ‘You don’t come from these parts?’ ‘No.’ ‘And what’s more, it’s all cross-country. Listen, monsieur,’ the road-

mender went on, ‘do you want my advice? Your horse is tired. Go back to Tinques. You’ll find a good inn there. Stay the night. Go to Arras tomorrow.’

‘I must be there this evening.’ ‘That’s different. Then go to the inn in any case and hire a trace horse

there. The tracer will guide you cross-country.’

He followed the road-mender’s advice, went back, and half an hour later

drove past the same spot but this time at a fast trot with a good trace horse.

The horse-handler, who called himself a postilion, sat on the cart shaft.

All the same, he felt he was running out of time. It was completely dark

now.

They turned into the country lane. The roadway became terrible. The cart

lurched from one rut to another. He said to the postilion, ‘Keep going at a trot, and I’ll double your tip.’

A jolt, and the swingle-bar broke. ‘Monsieur, that’s the swingle-bar broken,’ said the postilion. ‘I don’t

know how to harness my horse now. This road’s very bad at night. If you’d only go back and sleep at Tinques, we could be in Arras early tomorrow morning.’

He replied, ‘Have you a piece of string and a knife?’ ‘Yes, monsieur.’ He cut a branch from a tree and made a swingle-bar out of it.

This was another twenty minutes’ delay, but they set off again at a gallop.

The plain was shadowy. Dark low-lying patches of fog crept up the hills

and broke away from them like smoke. There were pale glimmerings in the clouds. A strong wind blowing in from the sea made a noise in the sky all around like furniture being moved. Everything glimpsed was caught in an attitude of terror. What a multitude of things shudder in these vast exhalations of the night!

The cold penetrated him. He had eaten nothing since the night before. He

vaguely recalled his other night-time wayfaring on the great plain outside Digne. That was eight years ago, and it seemed like only yesterday.

The hour struck in some distant bell-tower. He asked the boy, ‘What time

is it?’

‘Seven o’clock, monsieur. We’ll be at Arras by eight. We’ve only another

seven and a half miles to go.’

At that moment it occurred to him for the first time – he found it odd that

it had not occurred to him sooner – that all the trouble he was taking might well prove useless. He did not even know what time the trial was. He should at least have enquired about that. It was absurd to keep pressing on like this without knowing whether it would serve any purpose. Then he made a few rough calculations in his head. Usually the sittings of the court of assizes began at nine o’clock in the morning. It could not take too long, this case: the theft of the apples, that would be very brief, then it would just

be a question of identification, four or five statements, not much for the lawyers to say. He was going to arrive after it was all over.

The postilion whipped the horses. They had crossed the river and left

Mont-St-Éloy behind them.

It was getting darker and darker.

VI

Soeur Simplice Is Put to the Test

Meanwhile, at that very moment, Fantine was full of joy.

She had had a very bad night. Terrible coughing, her fever worse than

ever; she had had nightmares. In the morning when the doctor came, she was delirious. He looked alarmed and asked to be informed as soon as Monsieur Madeleine arrived.

All morning she was dejected, said little, plucked at her sheets,

murmuring in a low voice what sounded like calculations of distances. Her eyes were sunken and staring. They seemed almost lifeless, then now and again they lit up and shone like stars. Seemingly, at the approach of a certain dark hour the light of heaven fills those whom the earth’s light is deserting.

Every time Soeur Simplice asked her how she felt, she invariably replied,

‘Fine. I’d like to see Monsieur Madeleine.’

A few months earlier, when Fantine had just lost the last of her modesty,

the last of her shame, the last of her joy, she was the mere shadow of herself. Now she was the ghost of herself. Physical malady had completed the work of moral malady. This creature of twenty-five had a lined brow, wasted cheeks, pinched nostrils, loose teeth, a leaden complexion, a scraggy neck, prominent shoulder blades, weak limbs, a sallow complexion, and her blonde hair now grew sprinkled with grey. Alas! how illness contrives to imitate old age!

At midday the doctor returned, issued some instructions, enquired

whether monsieur le maire had turned up at the infirmary, and shook his head.

Monsieur Madeleine usually came to see the patient at three o’clock. As

promptness was a kindness, he was prompt.

At about half-past two Fantine began to fret. In the space of twenty

minutes she asked the nun more than ten times, ‘What time is it, sister?’

Three o’clock struck. At the third stroke Fantine sat bolt upright – she

who as a rule could barely move in her bed – and in a convulsive gesture joined together her two bony yellow hands, and the nun heard emerging from her chest one of those deep sighs that seem to throw off the weight of despondency. Then Fantine turned and gazed at the door.

No one came in. The door did not open.

She remained like this for a quarter of an hour, her eyes riveted on the

door, motionless and as if holding her breath. The nun dared not speak to her. The clock struck a quarter-past three. Fantine sank back on her pillow.

She said nothing and began to pluck at her sheet again.

Half an hour passed, then an hour. No one came. Every time the clock

struck, Fantine sat up and looked towards the door, then fell back again.

It was clear what she was thinking but she mentioned no name, made no

complaint, voiced no criticism. But she coughed mournfully. It seemed as though something dark was descending on her. She was ghastly pale and her lips were blue. Occasionally she smiled.

Five o’clock struck. Then the nun heard her say very quietly and softly,

‘But it’s wrong of him not to come today, since I’ll be gone tomorrow.’

Soeur Simplice herself was surprised at Monsieur Madeleine’s delay.

In the meantime, Fantine was staring up at the canopy above her bed. She

seemed to be trying to recall something. All at once she began to sing in a voice as faint as a whisper. The nun listened. This is what Fantine was singing:

We shall buy such pretty things As we stroll down the avenues, Roses are red, cornflowers are blue, Cornflowers are blue, my heart is true.

Yesterday the Virgin Mary by my stove In her embroidered mantle stood.

You one day prayed for a child to love,

I have it hidden beneath my veil, she said.

Run to town and fetch some cloth, Buy some thread, and buy a thimble.

We shall buy such pretty things As we stroll down the avenues.

Dear Blessed Virgin, beside my stove I’ve placed a beribboned cradle.

Though God were to give me his loveliest star The child you have given me is better by far.

What’s to be done with this cloth, ma’am?

Use it to dress my new-born babe.

Roses are red, cornflowers are blue, Cornflowers are blue, my heart is true.

Wash this cloth. Where? In the stream.

Do not spoil it, keep it clean, And make a pretty skirt and vest of it.

With flowers all over I’ll embroider it.

The child’s no more. What now, ma’am?

Use it for my winding sheet.

We shall buy such pretty things As we stroll down the avenues, Roses are red, cornflowers are blue, Cornflowers are blue, my heart is true.

This song was an old lullaby with which she once used to sing her little Cosette to sleep, and it had not come to mind in all the five years she had been parted from her child. She sang it in so sad a voice and to so sweet a tune it was enough to make even a nun cry. Inured to austerity, the sister felt a tear welling in her eye.

The clock struck six. Fantine seemed not to hear. She seemed no longer

to be paying attention to anything around her.

Soeur Simplice sent a ward maid to enquire of the factory doorkeeper

whether the mayor had returned, and if he would not be coming up to the infirmary soon. The girl was back within a few minutes.

Fantine was still lying motionless, and seemed absorbed in her own

thoughts.

The ward maid very quietly told Soeur Simplice that monsieur le maire

had left before six that morning in a little tilbury harnessed to a white horse, in this cold weather, that he had gone alone without even a driver, that no one knew what road he had taken – some people said they had seen him take the turning for the road to Arras, and others insisted they had passed him on the road to Paris. That when he left he had been very mild-mannered as usual, and he had merely told the doorkeeper not to expect him back tonight.

While the two women stood whispering with their backs turned to

Fantine’s bed, the nun questioning, the maid surmising, Fantine, with the feverish animation of certain organic diseases that combines good health’s freedom of movement with the frightful emaciation of death, had got into a kneeling position on her bed, her two clenched fists resting on the bolster; and with her head poking through the opening in the curtains, she listened.

She cried out suddenly, ‘You’re talking about Monsieur Madeleine! Why

are you whispering? What’s he doing? Why doesn’t he come?’

Her voice was so abrupt and harsh, the two women thought it was a

man’s voice they heard. They turned round in alarm.

‘Go on, answer me!’ cried Fantine.

The maid stammered, ‘The doorkeeper told me he couldn’t come today.’ ‘My child,’ said the nun, ‘calm yourself, lie down.’ Without changing her position, Fantine continued to speak loudly and in

a tone of voice at once imperious and heart-rending, ‘He can’t come? Why not? You know the reason. You’re whispering about it to each other. I want to be told.’

The maid quickly said in the nun’s ear, ‘Tell her he’s busy with the city

council.’

Soeur Simplice flushed a little. What the maid suggested was a lie. On

the other hand, it seemed clear to her that telling this sick woman the truth would surely be a terrible blow to her, and this was of serious consequence in Fantine’s present state. That flush did not last long. With her calm, sad gaze the sister looked up at Fantine and said, ‘Monsieur le maire has gone.’

Fantine straightened up and sat back on her heels. Her eyes sparkled.

Sublime joy illuminated that tragic face.

‘Gone!’ she cried. ‘He’s gone to fetch Cosette.’ Then she raised her arms to heaven and her whole face became

indescribable. Her lips moved: she was praying under her breath.

When she had finished her prayer she said, ‘I’ll lie down now, sister, I’ll

do whatever I’m asked to. I behaved badly just now, I’m sorry I shouted like that, it’s very wrong to shout, I know full well, my dear sister, but you see, I am very happy. The good Lord is kind, Monsieur Madeleine is kind.

Just think! He’s gone to Montfermeil to fetch my little Cosette.’

She lay down again, helped the nun to arrange the pillow, and kissed the

little silver cross that she wore round her neck and that Soeur Simplice had given her.

‘My child,’ said the nun, ‘try to rest now, and don’t talk any more.’ Fantine took the nun’s hand in her own clammy hands, and it pained the

nun to feel this sweat on her.

‘He set out this morning for Paris. Actually he doesn’t even need to go

through Paris. Montfermeil lies a little to the left on the way here. Do you remember how he said to me yesterday, when I was talking to him about Cosette, “Soon, soon”? He wants it to be a surprise for me. You know, he made me sign a letter to get her back from the Thénardiers. They won’t have any objection, will they? They’ll give her back. Since they’ve been paid. The authorities wouldn’t allow anyone to keep a child, once they’ve been paid off. Don’t shush me, sister! I’m extremely happy. I feel very well, I’m not at all in pain now, I’m going to see Cosette again, I even feel quite hungry. It’s nearly five years since I last saw her. You can’t imagine, sister, how much they mean to you, children! And then she’ll be so pretty, you’ll see! I tell you, she has such lovely little pink fingers! For a start she’ll have very beautiful hands. At the age of one she had tiny hands. Like that! She must be tall now. Seven years old, if you please. She’s a young lady. I call her Cosette, but her name’s Euphrasie. You know, this morning I was looking at the dust on the chimneypiece and I just had this wonderful feeling I’d be seeing Cosette again soon. God! what a mistake to go years

without seeing your children! We really ought to bear in mind that life’s not eternal! Oh, how kind of monsieur le maire to have gone! It’s true, it’s very cold! Had he his cloak, at least? He’ll be here tomorrow, won’t he?

Tomorrow will be a day of celebration. Tomorrow morning, sister, you must remind me to put on my little cap with the lace trim. It’s a village, Montfermeil. I made that journey on foot once. It was a very long way for me. But the coaches go very quickly! He’ll be here tomorrow with Cosette.

How far is it from here to Montfermeil?’

The sister, who had no idea of distances, replied, ‘Oh, I should think he

might be here by tomorrow.’

‘Tomorrow! Tomorrow!’ said Fantine. ‘I’ll see Cosette tomorrow! You

see, sister, the dear Lord’s dear sister, I’m not ill any more. I’m so excited. I could dance if anyone wanted.’

Whoever had seen her a quarter of an hour earlier would have been at a

complete loss to understand. She was now looking quite rosy, she spoke in a bright and natural voice, her face was one big smile. Now and then she laughed, murmuring quietly to herself. Maternal joy is almost childlike joy.

‘Well,’ said the nun, ‘now you’re happy, do as I say, and no more

talking.’

Fantine laid her head on the pillow and said in a subdued voice, ‘Yes, lie

down again, be good since you’re going to be with your child again. Soeur Simplice is right. Everyone here is right.’

And then without stirring, without moving her head, she began to look all

around her with eyes wide open and an expression of delight, and said not another word.

The nun closed the curtains around her, hoping she would doze off.

Between seven and eight o’clock the doctor came. Not hearing a sound,

and thinking Fantine was asleep, he came in quietly and went over to her bed on tip-toe. He parted the curtains, and by the glow of the night-light he saw Fantine’s big, calm eyes staring at him.

She said, ‘Monsieur, she will be allowed to sleep beside me in a little

bed, won’t she?’

The doctor thought she was raving.

She added, ‘Well, look, there’s just enough room.’ The doctor took Soeur Simplice aside, and she explained the situation:

that Monsieur Madeleine was away for a day or two, and without knowing for sure they thought they should not disabuse the patient, who believed monsieur le maire had gone to Montfermeil. After all, it was possible she had guessed correctly. The doctor agreed.

He returned to Fantine’s bedside.

She continued, ‘You see, when she wakes up in the morning, I’ll say

good morning to the poor little pet, and when I can’t sleep at night, I’ll hear her sleeping. It’ll do me good, the lovely sweet sound of her breathing.’

‘Give me your hand,’ said the doctor.

She held out her arm and exclaimed, laughing, ‘Ah, now, of course, it’s

true, you don’t know. The thing is, I’m cured! Cosette will be here tomorrow.’

The doctor was surprised. She was better. She was breathing more easily.

Her pulse was stronger. Some kind of unexpected vitality all of sudden reanimated this poor exhausted creature.

‘Doctor,’ she went on, ‘did sister tell you that monsieur le maire has gone

to fetch the little mite?’

The doctor advised silence and the avoidance of any emotional distress.

He prescribed an infusion of cinchona and a calmative draught in the event of a recurrence of fever during the night.

As he was leaving he said to the nun, ‘She’s doing better. If by some

good fortune the mayor were to turn up tomorrow with the child, who knows? There are some truly astonishing recoveries, great joys have been known to arrest illnesses. Of course I know this is an organic disease and far advanced, but it’s all such a mystery! We may yet save her.’

VII

The Traveller on Arrival Makes Sure of Being Able to Leave

It was nearly eight o’clock in the evening when the cart we left en route entered the gateway of the Hôtel de la Poste in Arras. The man we have

been following till now climbed down, responded in a distracted way to the eagerness of the staff at the inn to be helpful, sent back the extra horse, and personally led the little white horse to the stable. Then he pushed open the door of a billiard room on the ground floor, sat down, and rested his elbows on the table. It had taken him fourteen hours to make this journey that he had expected to complete in six. He did not blame himself, it was not his fault, but in his heart of hearts he was not sorry.

The landlady of the hotel came in. ‘Is monsieur staying the night? Will monsieur be having supper?’ He shook his head. ‘The groom says monsieur’s horse is very tired!’ At this point he broke his silence. ‘Will the horse not be able to set off

again tomorrow morning?’

‘Oh, monsieur, that horse needs at least two days’ rest!’ He asked, ‘Isn’t this the post house?’ ‘Yes, monsieur.’ The landlady took him to the office. He showed his passport and

enquired whether it was possible to return that same night to Montreuil-sur-Mer by the mail-coach. It so happened that the seat beside the postman was free. He booked it and paid for it.

‘Monsieur,’ said the clerk, ‘be here without fail, ready to leave punctually

at one o’clock in the morning.’

This done, he left the hotel and began to walk through the town.

He was not familiar with Arras, the streets were dark and he did not know

where he was going. Yet he seemed determined not to ask directions of any passer-by. He crossed the little River Crinchon and found himself in a labyrinth of narrow lanes, where he lost his way.

A townsman was walking along with a lantern. After some hesitation he

made up his mind to speak to this man, not without having first looked ahead and behind, as though afraid someone might hear the question he was about to ask.

‘Monsieur,’ he said, ‘where are the law courts, if you please?’

‘You’re a stranger to the town, monsieur?’ replied the gentleman, who

was quite elderly. ‘Well, follow me. I’m actually going in the direction of the law courts, that’s to say in the direction of the prefectural building.

Because the law courts are under repair at the moment, and in the meantime trials are being held at the Prefecture.’

‘Is it there the assizes are held?’ he asked. ‘Indeed, monsieur. You see, where the Prefecture is today was the

bishop’s palace before the Revolution. Monsieur de Conzié, who was bishop in ’82, had a great hall built there. It’s in that great hall that the court sits.’

The man said to him as they walked along, ‘If it’s a trial that monsieur

wants to watch, it’s rather late. Usually the sittings end at six o’clock.’

However, when they came to the main square the man pointed out to him

four long lighted windows in the façade of a huge dark building.

‘Upon my word, monsieur, you’re not too late, you’re in luck. Do you

see those four windows? That’s the court of assizes. It’s lit up. So it’s not over. The case must have dragged on and they’re having an evening hearing. Have you an interest in this case? Is it a criminal trial? Are you a witness?’

He replied, ‘I haven’t come for any trial, I just need to speak to a lawyer.’ ‘That’s different,’ said the man. ‘Look, monsieur, that’s the door there.

Where the sentry’s standing. You just have to go up the main staircase.’

He followed the man’s directions and a few minutes later he was in a

crowded hall where groups of people, along with robed lawyers, were whispering together here and there.

It is always intimidating to see these congregations of men clad in black,

murmuring among themselves in low voices outside the chambers of justice. Rarely do charity or pity result from all this talk. What result more often than not are convictions decided in advance. To the passing and fanciful observer all these groups are like so many forbidding hives where buzzing spirits, of some sort or other, co-operate in the construction of all manner of sinister edifices.

This spacious hall, illuminated by a single lamp, was formerly an

antechamber of the episcopal palace and now served as the waiting hall. A double-panelled door, presently closed, separated it from the main hall in which the court was sitting.

It was so ill-lit he was not afraid to address the first lawyer he

encountered.

‘Monsieur, what stage are they at?’ he asked. ‘It’s over,’ said the lawyer. ‘Over!’ This word was repeated in such a tone of voice that the lawyer turned

round.

‘Forgive me, monsieur, are you perhaps a relative?’ ‘No. I don’t know anyone here. Has sentence been passed?’ ‘Indeed. It was almost inevitable.’ ‘Penal servitude?’ ‘For life.’ He continued in a voice so weak it was barely audible, ‘Identification

was made then?’

‘What identification?’ replied the lawyer. ‘There was no identification to

be made. The case was straightforward. The woman killed her child, infanticide was proven, the jury ruled out premeditation, she was sentenced to life imprisonment.’

‘Then it’s a woman?’ he said. ‘But of course. The woman from Limoges. What is it you’re talking

about, then?’

‘Nothing. But if it’s all over, why would the hall still be lit up?’ ‘For the other case that began about two hours ago.’ ‘What other case?’ ‘Oh, that one’s also straightforward. Some sort of ruffian, a re-offender, a

convicted felon, up for stealing. I don’t remember quite what his name is.

Now there’s someone who looks like a villain! Just for having a face like that, I’d clap him in chains.’

‘Monsieur, is there any chance of getting into the court room?’ he said.

‘I really don’t think so. It’s very crowded. However, the hearing’s been

adjourned. There were some people who came out. When the hearing resumes you could try.’

‘Where’s the entrance?’ ‘That big door over there.’ The lawyer left him. Within a few moments he had experienced every

possible emotion, almost simultaneously, almost conflated. This indifferent bystander’s words had pierced his heart like icicles one moment, like jets of flame the next. When he saw that nothing was over, he breathed again. But he could not have said whether it was satisfaction or pain that he felt.

He went and stood close to several groups and listened to what was being

said. With a very full court roll, the presiding judge had selected for that same day two simple, straightforward cases. They had begun with the infanticide and now they were dealing with the ex-convict, the re-offender, the ‘old lag’. This man had stolen some apples, though apparently this had not been proved conclusively. What had been proved was that he had already served a penal sentence at Toulon. This was what made things look bad for him. The questioning of the defendant was now ended and the witnesses had testified, but still to come was the defence counsel and public prosecutor’s summing-up. It was unlikely to be over before midnight. The man would probably be found guilty. The public prosecutor was very able and did not fail to secure convictions. He was a witty fellow, who wrote verse.

An usher stood by the door leading into the assize court.

He enquired of this usher, ‘Monsieur, is the door going to open soon?’ ‘It isn’t going to open,’ said the usher. ‘What do you mean? Won’t it open when the hearing resumes? Isn’t the

hearing adjourned?’

‘The hearing has just resumed,’ replied the usher, ‘but the door’s not

going to open again.’

‘Why not?’ ‘Because the court room is full.’ ‘What! There isn’t a single seat left?’

‘Not one. The door’s closed. No one else can go in.’ ‘Of course,’ the usher added after a pause, ‘there are still two or three

places behind monsieur le président, but monsieur le président only lets public officials sit there.’

Having said this, the usher turned his back on him.

He walked away with his head bowed, crossed the antechamber, and

slowly descended the staircase as though hesitating at every step. He was probably debating with himself. The violent conflict that had been raging inside him since the day before was not yet over, and at every moment he went through some new crisis. When he got to the landing halfway down the stairs he leaned back against the banister and crossed his arms. All of a sudden he opened his frock-coat, found his wallet, took out a pencil, tore out a sheet of paper, and on that sheet of paper, by the lamp-light, scribbled down this line: ‘Monsieur Madeleine, mayor of Montreuil-sur-Mer’. Then he strode back upstairs, forced his way through the crowd, walked straight up to the usher, handed him the note, and said with authority, ‘Take this to monsieur le président.’

The usher took the note, glanced at it, and obeyed.

VIII

Privileged Access

Though he was entirely unaware of it, the mayor of Montreuil-sur-Mer enjoyed a kind of celebrity. After seven years in which the reputation of his goodness filled the whole of Lower Boulonnais, it had eventually crossed the boundaries of a small community and spread into two or three neighbouring départements. Aside from the considerable service he had rendered the chief town of Montreuil-sur-Mer itself by reviving the black-glass industry, there was not one out of the one hundred and forty-one local municipalities in the arrondissement that did not owe some benefit to him.

He had even succeeded in helping to foster where necessary the industries of other arrondissements. So it was that he had at one time or another supported with his credit and his funding the Boulogne tulle factory,

Frévent’s mechanized linen mill, and the hydraulically powered looms at Boubers-sur-Canche. Monsieur Madeleine was a name everywhere mentioned with great esteem. Arras and Douai envied the fortunate little town of Montreuil-sur-Mer its mayor.

Douai’s Royal Court judge, who was presiding over this session of the

assizes at Arras, was no less familiar than anyone else with this name that was so profoundly and universally respected. When the usher, discreetly opening the door that connected the council chamber with the court room, bowed behind the judge’s chair and handed him the piece of paper on which was written the line we have just read, adding, ‘This gentleman wishes to attend the hearing’, the judge gave a deferential start, snatched up a pen, wrote a few words on the bottom of the piece of paper and returned it to the usher, saying, ‘Show him in.’

The poor man whose history we are relating had remained at the door of

the hall in exactly the same place and in exactly the same stance as the usher had left him. In the midst of his musings he heard someone say to him, ‘Would monsieur kindly do me the honour of following me?’ It was this same usher who had turned his back on him only a moment earlier and who was now bowing and scraping before him. At the same time, the usher handed him the piece of paper. He unfolded it and, happening to be near the lamp, he was able to read it.

‘The Presiding Judge of the Court of Assizes presents his respects to

Monsieur Madeleine.’

He crushed the paper in his hand as if these words might have had for

him a strange and bitter aftertaste.

He followed the usher.

A few minutes later he found himself alone in an austere-looking

panelled room, lit by two candles set on a green baize table. He could still hear the last words spoken by the usher who had just left him: ‘Monsieur, you are now in the council chamber. You have only to turn the brass handle of that door and you’ll find yourself in the court room behind monsieur le président’s chair.’ These words mingled in his thoughts with a vague

memory of narrow corridors and dark staircases that he had just passed through.

The usher had left him on his own. The final moment had come. He tried

to gather his thoughts, but without succeeding. It is especially at those times when they most need to be attached to the painful realities of life that the threads of thought all break in the mind. He was in the very place where the judges deliberate and reach a verdict. With a dazed tranquillity he surveyed this quiet and forbidding room where so many lives had been destroyed, where his name was soon to reverberate, and through which his fate was now taking him. He stared at the wall, then stared at himself, wondering at this chamber and wondering at his being here.

He had eaten nothing for more than twenty-four hours, he was exhausted

by the jolting of the cart, but he did not feel it. It seemed to him that he did not feel anything.

He approached a black frame that hung on the wall and contained, under

glass, an old autograph letter of Jean-Nicolas Pache, minister and mayor of Paris, dated, no doubt mistakenly, 9 June year II, in which Pache sent the Commune the list of ministers and deputies under house arrest. Anyone who might have seen him and observed him at that moment would probably have imagined that he found this letter very intriguing, for he did not take his eyes off it, and read it two or three times. He read it unknowingly, without paying any attention to it. He was thinking of Fantine and Cosette.

While musing, he turned round, and his eyes fell on the brass handle of

the door that separated him from the assizes court room. He had almost forgotten about this door. His gaze, at first calm, settled on it, remained fastened on that brass handle, then became scared and intent, and little by little was stamped with terror.

Beads of sweat seeped through his hair and trickled down his temples. At

a certain moment, with a kind of authority mixed with rebellion, he made that indescribable gesture that expresses its meaning very well: ‘Damn it!

Who’s forcing me to do this?’ Then he wheeled round, saw before him the door he had come in by, went over to it, opened it, and walked out. He was no longer in that chamber, he was outside in a corridor, a long narrow

corridor, intersected with steps and passageways, turning this way and that, lighted here and there by lamps similar to the night-lights of the sick: the corridor that had brought him here. He inhaled, he listened: not a sound behind him, not a sound ahead of him. Then he fled as if he were being chased.

When he had turned several corners along this corridor he listened again.

There was still the same silence and the same gloom around him. He was breathless. He was reeling. He leaned against the wall. The stone was cold.

His sweat was icy on his brow. He drew himself up with a shiver.

Then, standing there alone in the darkness, trembling with cold, and

something else as well perhaps, he pondered.

He had been pondering the whole night. He had been pondering the

whole day. All he could hear within him now was a voice that said, ‘Alas!’

A quarter of an hour went by like this. Finally he bowed his head, sighed

with anguish, let his arms drop, and retraced his steps. He walked slowly and as though crushed. It was as if someone had caught up with him as he fled and was bringing him back.

He re-entered the chamber. The first thing he saw was the door knob.

That round knob of polished brass shone for him like some terrible star. He stared at it as a lamb would stare into the eyes of a tiger. He could not tear his gaze away from it.

From time to time he took a step forward and moved closer to the door.

Had he listened, he might have heard the sound, a kind of vague murmur,

that came from the next room. But he did not listen and he did not hear.

Without knowing how, he suddenly found himself at the door. He

grabbed the knob convulsively. The door opened.

He was inside the court room.

IX

Where Convictions Take Shape

He took a step forward, unconsciously closed the door behind him, and stood there, taking stock of what he saw.

It was quite a spacious and dimly lit interior, now full of uproar, now full

of silence, where all the ritual of a criminal trial was played out with shabby and dismal gravity in the midst of the crowd.

At one end of the room, the one where he was standing, listless-looking

magistrates in threadbare robes, biting their fingernails or closing their eyes; at the other end, a ragged throng; lawyers striking all sorts of attitudes, soldiers with stern but honest faces, old stained wood-panelling, a dirty ceiling, tables covered with serge more yellowed than green, finger-blackened doors; on nails driven into the panelling, tap-room lamps giving off more smoke than light; on the tables, candles in brass candlesticks.

Gloom, ugliness, dreariness. And all this created an austere and imposing impression, for there was a sense here of that great human thing called the law and of that great divine thing called justice.

No one in this crowd paid any attention to him. All eyes were focused on

a single object, a wooden bench set against a small door in the wall to the left of the presiding judge. On this bench, illuminated by several candles, was a man sitting between two gendarmes.

This man was the man. He did not look for him. He saw him. His eyes

went to him naturally as if they knew in advance where that figure was.

He thought he saw himself, aged, with not exactly the same features, to

be sure, but identical in attitude and appearance, with that bristling hair, those wary brown eyes, that smock, just as he was the day he arrived at Digne, full of hatred and concealing in his heart that hideous hoard of dreadful thoughts he had spent nineteen years accumulating in the chain gang.

He said to himself with a shudder, ‘God! Will I become like that again?’ This creature looked at least sixty. There was something coarse, stupid

and bewildered about him.

Hearing the door open, people had moved aside to make room for him,

the judge had looked round, and realizing that the individual who had just entered was the mayor of Montreuil-sur-Mer he had acknowledged him.

The public prosecutor, who had seen Monsieur Madeleine at Montreuil-sur-Mer where he had been called more than once to act in his official capacity,

recognized him and acknowledged him also. He barely noticed. He was in the grip of a kind of hallucination. He kept looking.

Magistrates, a clerk, gendarmes, a crowd of cruelly curious faces, he had

seen this once already, in days gone by, twenty-seven years ago. These ominous things he was re-experiencing – they were here, they were astir, they existed. This was no longer an effort of memory, no mental illusion, these were real gendarmes and real magistrates, a real crowd and real men of flesh and blood. The worst had happened: he saw around him the monstrous aspects of his past, reappearing, reviving, with all the fearsomeness of reality.

All this yawned before him. He was horrified, he closed his eyes, and

cried out in the deepest recesses of his soul: Never!

And by a tragic twist of fate that made all his thoughts quake and almost

drove him mad, it was another incarnation of himself who sat there! The man being tried, everybody called Jean Valjean.

He had before his eyes an extraordinary vision, a kind of re-enactment of

the most horrible moment of his life, played by his ghost.

It was all there: the same trappings, the same late hour, almost the same

faces of magistrates, soldiers and spectators. Only, above the judge’s head there was a crucifix, something that was missing from the courts at the time of his conviction. When he was tried, God was absent.

There was a chair behind him. He dropped into it, terrified at the thought

that he could be seen. When he was seated he took advantage of a stack of files that lay on the magistrates’ desk to conceal his face from the whole room. He could now see without being seen. Little by little he recovered.

He fully regained his sense of reality. He reached that stage of composure where it is possible to listen.

Monsieur Bamatabois was one of the jurors.

He looked for Javert but did not see him. The witness bench was hidden

from him by the clerk’s table. And besides, as we have just said, the room was dimly lit.

When he had come in, the defendant’s lawyer was just finishing his

speech. Everyone’s attention was as taut as could be; the trial had been

going on for three hours. For three hours this crowd had been watching a man, a nobody, a miserable specimen of humanity, either extremely stupid or extremely crafty, gradually sag beneath the burden of a terrible likeness.

This man, as we already know, was a vagrant who had been found in a field carrying away a branch laden with ripe apples, broken off an apple tree in a nearby orchard, called the Pierron orchard. Who was this man? An investigation had been conducted. Witnesses had just been heard, they were unanimous, some light had emerged from all the proceedings. The prosecution said, ‘We have here not only a fruit thief, a petty pilferer, we have here a ruffian, a re-offender in breach of the terms of his release, an ex-convict, a most dangerous villain, a criminal named Jean Valjean, long sought by the law, and who eight years ago on leaving the prison hulks at Toulon committed highway robbery with threat of violence on the person of a Savoyard child named Petit-Gervais, a felony under Article 383 of the Penal Code, for which we reserve the right to try him subsequently when his identity has been legally established. He has now committed another theft. We’re dealing here with a repeat offender. Convict him for the recent offence. He will be tried for the previous offence later.’

In the face of this charge, in the face of the unanimity of the witnesses,

the accused seemed mostly surprised. He made signs and gestures of negation, or else he stared up at the ceiling. Words did not come easily to him, his replies were confused, but his whole person, from head to foot, expressed denial. He was like an idiot in the presence of all these intellects lined up around him ready to do battle, and like a stranger in the midst of this society that detained him. Yet there was for him the most ominous future at stake, one that every moment became increasingly likely, and the entire audience regarded with greater apprehension than he himself this ruinous sentence looming closer and closer. There was even a possibility of not just penal servitude, but a death sentence, to be envisaged if this identity were to be established and the Petit-Gervais incident were subsequently to lead to a conviction. What manner of man was this? What was the nature of his unconcern? Was it imbecility or craftiness? Did he understand too well or did he not understand at all? Questions that divided the crowd and

seemed to set the jury at odds. There was in this trial elements of both the terrifying and the intriguing: the drama was not only dark, it was obscure.

The defence lawyer had argued his case quite well in that provincial

language that has long constituted the eloquence of the bar, and which was formerly used by all lawyers, in Paris as well as at Romorantin or at Montbrison. Now become antiquated, it is today hardly spoken at all any more except by barristers in court, being suited to them by its solemn ring and majestic style. A language in which a husband is called ‘a spouse’, and a wife ‘a consort’; Paris, ‘the centre of art and civilization’; the king, ‘the monarch’; Monseigneur the bishop, ‘a saintly pontiff’; the public prosecutor, ‘the eloquent voice of the prosecution’; the summing-up, ‘the arguments we have just heard’; the age of Louis XIV, ‘the great age’; a theatre, ‘the temple of Melpomene’; the ruling family, ‘the august dynasty of our royal sovereigns’; a concert, ‘a display of musicianship’; monsieur le général, commanding officer of the département, ‘the illustrious warrior who …’; seminary students, ‘these young Levites’; errors imputed to newspapers, ‘the deceit that distils its poison in the columns of these organs’, et cetera. So the lawyer had begun by expounding on the apple theft – no easy task, in grandiose style – but Bénigne Bossuet himself was obliged in the middle of a funeral oration to allude to a chicken, and he acquitted himself magnificently. The lawyer had established the fact that the apple theft was not actually proven.

His client, whom he persisted in his capacity as defence counsel in

calling Champmathieu, had not been seen, by anyone, climbing the wall or breaking off the branch. He had been apprehended in possession of that branch (which the lawyer more readily called a ‘bough’), but he said he had found it on the ground and picked it up. Where was the proof to the contrary? This branch had undoubtedly been broken off and stolen after the wall had been climbed, then thrown down by the frightened thief.

Undoubtedly there was a thief. But what proved that Champmathieu was that thief? One thing only: the fact that he was a convicted felon. The lawyer did not deny that, unfortunately, this fact seemed to be well established: the accused had been resident at Faverolles; the accused had

been a tree-pruner there; the name of Champmathieu might well have been Jean Mathieu in origin. All this was true. After all, four witnesses without hesitation positively identified Champmathieu as the convicted felon Jean Valjean. To counter these arguments, these testimonies, the lawyer could offer only his client’s denial, a self-interested denial. But supposing he was the convicted felon Jean Valjean, did that prove he was the apple thief? That was a presumption at most, not a proof. True – and ‘in good faith’ the defence counsel had to admit it – the prisoner had adopted ‘a poor line of defence’. He persisted in denying everything, the theft and the fact that he was a convicted felon. An admission on this last point would surely have been better, and would have gained him the leniency of the bench. This was what his lawyer had advised him but the accused had obstinately refused, thinking no doubt to save everything by admitting nothing. This was wrong.

But should not the paucity of his intelligence be taken into consideration?

The man was obviously stupid. Interminable misery in prison, interminable hardship out of prison, had addled his wits, et cetera. He defended himself badly. Was that any reason to convict him? As for the Petit-Gervais incident, the lawyer had no need to address that. It was not relevant to this case. The lawyer concluded by entreating the court and the jury – if it seemed to them Jean Valjean’s identity had been proven – to apply the legal penalties pertaining to a breach of parole and not the appalling punishment imposed on the convicted felon who re-offends.

The public prosecutor responded to the defence counsel. He was fierce

and florid, as public prosecutors usually are.

He congratulated the defence counsel on his ‘fairness’, and skilfully

exploited this fairness. With every concession made by his lawyer, he struck a blow against the defendant. The lawyer seemed to admit the defendant was Jean Valjean. He took cognizance of the fact. So this man was Jean Valjean. The point had been conceded to the prosecution and could no longer be disputed. Here, in an adroit use of a rhetorical device, in tracing back the sources and causes of crime the public prosecutor thundered against the immorality of the then budding Romantic school, referring to it as ‘the satanic school’, a term used by the critics of L’Oriflamme and La

Quotidienne; not wholly unreasonably, he attributed to the influence of this perverse literature the crime of Champmathieu, or to be more accurate, of Jean Valjean. Having exhausted these reflections, he moved on to Jean Valjean himself. Who was this Jean Valjean? Description of Jean Valjean: a spewed-up monster, and so on. The model for descriptions of this sort is contained in Théramène’s speech, which is of no use to tragedy but every day renders great service to judicial eloquence. The court and the jury ‘shuddered’. His description concluded, the public prosecutor went on with an oratorial flourish calculated to excite the utmost enthusiasm in next morning’s Journal de la Préfecture:

‘And it is such a man – a vagrant, a beggar, with no means of existence

… inured by a life of crime and little reformed by his sentence of penal servitude, as proved by the offence committed against Petit-Gervais … caught red-handed on the public highway, committing theft, a few paces from a scaled wall, still clutching the stolen object – it is such a man who denies the obvious crime, the theft, the climbing of the wall, denies everything, denies even his own name, denies his identity! In addition to countless other proofs that we shall not hark back to, four witnesses recognize him – Javert, the upright inspector of police Javert, and three of his former companions in ignominy, the convicts Brevet, Chenildieu and Cochepaille. How does he counter this damning unanimity? With denial.

What a hardened criminal! You will deal justly, gentlemen of the jury …’

While the public prosecutor spoke, the accused listened open-mouthed

with a kind of amazement in which there was a considerable element of admiration. He was obviously surprised that a man should be capable of talking like this. From time to time, at the most vigorous moments of the prosecutor’s indictment, at those moments when eloquence, unable to contain itself, spills over in a flood of withering epithets and invests the accused like a storm, he slowly moved his head from left to right and from right to left, a sad and silent form of protest with which he had contented himself since the start of the proceedings.

Two or three times the spectators seated nearest to him heard him say to

himself, ‘This is what comes of not having asked Monsieur Baloup.’ The

public prosecutor directed the attention of the jury to this vacant attitude, which was obviously calculated and an indication not of imbecility but of guile, cunning, the habit of eluding justice, and revealing in all its clarity the ‘profound perversity’ of this man. He concluded by reserving the right to press charges relating to the Petit-Gervais incident and demanding a harsh sentence.

This was, for the time being, remember, penal servitude for life.

The defence counsel rose, began by complimenting ‘monsieur l’avocat-

général’ on his ‘admirable speech’, then responded as best he could, but he was weakening. The ground was evidently being cut from under him.

X

Systematic Denials

It was time to bring the proceedings to a close. The presiding judge asked the defendant to rise and put the customary question to him, ‘Have you anything to add to your defence?’

Standing there, twisting a hideous cap that he had in his hands, the man

apparently did not hear. The judge repeated the question.

This time the man heard. He seemed to understand, he stirred like

someone waking up, looked round, stared at the public, the gendarmes, his lawyer, the jury, the court, placed his huge fist on the edge of the wood panelling in front of his bench, looked round again, and fixing his eyes on the public prosecutor all of a sudden he began to speak. It was like an eruption. From the way in which the words burst from his mouth – incoherent, impetuous, jumbled, pell-mell – it sounded as though they were all rushing to get out at the same time.

He said, ‘I have this to say. That I was a cartwright in Paris, in fact it was

with Monsieur Baloup. It’s a hard occupation. As a cartwright you’re always working in the open air, in courtyards – under open sheds, with good masters – never in closed workshops, because you need space, you see. In winter you get so cold you slap your arms to get warmed up. But the masters are against that, they say it’s time-wasting. It’s punishing handling

iron when there’s ice between the paving-stones. It wears a man down fast.

You get old very young in that trade. At forty years old a man’s finished. I was fifty-three, I found it really hard. And then, workmen, they’re so cruel!

When a fellow isn’t young any more they’re always calling him an old fool, an old idiot! I was earning no more than thirty sous a day, the masters took advantage of my age, they paid me as little as they could. Besides that, I had my daughter working as a washerwoman at the river. She earned a bit as well. With the two of us, we managed. It was hard for her too. Up to her waist in a tub all day long, in the rain, and the snow, with the wind cutting into your face when it’s freezing, it makes no difference, the washing still has to be done. There are people who haven’t much linen and need to have it back. If you didn’t do the washing you’d lose customers. The planks are badly joined and you get drops of water falling all over you. Your skirts and petticoats are all wet, you get soaked right through. She also worked at the Enfants-Rouges laundry-house where the water comes out of taps. You’re not standing in the tub there. You do your washing at the tap in front of you and rinse in the basin behind you. As it’s closed in, you’re not so cold. But there’s the steam from the hot water that’s terrible and ruins your eyes. She used to get home at seven in the evening and went to bed very soon after, she was so tired. Her husband used to beat her. She died. We’ve not been very lucky. She was a good girl, didn’t go out dancing, very steady. I remember one Mardi Gras when she went to bed at eight o’clock. There.

I’m telling the truth. Ask anybody. Oh, of course, you may well ask! How stupid of me! Paris is an abyss. Who’s ever heard of Père Champmathieu?

But I tell you, there’s Monsieur Baloup. Go and look up Monsieur Baloup. I don’t know what more you want of me.’

The man fell silent and just stood there. He had said all this in a loud,

rapid, raw, harsh, hoarse voice with a kind of cross and primitive ingenuousness. Once, he broke off to greet someone in the crowd. The statements, such as they were, that he seemed to toss out at random erupted from him like hiccups, and to each of them he added the gesture of a woodcutter splitting wood. When he had finished, the audience burst out

laughing. He stared at the public, and seeing everyone laughing and not understanding why, he began to laugh himself.

It was sinister.

The presiding judge, a scrupulous and well-meaning man, raised his

voice. He reminded ‘members of the jury’ that ‘the gentleman by the name of Baloup’, the former master-wheelwright the accused claimed to have worked for, had been cited to no purpose. He had gone bankrupt and was not to be found.

Then, turning to the accused, he urged him to listen to what he was about

to say, adding, ‘You are in a situation in which you need to think carefully.

The most serious allegations are hanging over you and could entail consequences of the utmost gravity. Prisoner at the bar, for one last time, in your own interest I call on you to explain yourself clearly on two points.

First, did you climb over the wall of the Pierron orchard, break off the branch and steal the apples, that is to say, commit the crime of theft aggravated by trepass, yes or no? Second, are you the freed convicted felon Jean Valjean, yes or no?’

The accused shook his head with a capable air, like a man who has well

understood and knows what he is going to reply. He opened his mouth, turned to the presiding judge, and said, ‘First of all—’

Then he stared at his cap, stared at the ceiling and remained silent. ‘Prisoner at the bar,’ said the public prosecutor in a stern voice, ‘beware.

You do not reply to anything you are asked. Your confusion condemns you.

It is obvious that your name is not Champmathieu, that you are the convicted felon Jean Valjean originally hiding under the name of Jean Mathieu, which was his mother’s name, that you went to the Auvergne, that you were born at Faverolles where you were a tree-pruner. It is obvious that you have trespassed and stolen ripe apples from the Pierron orchard. The gentlemen of the jury will reach the same conclusion.’

The accused had eventually sat down again. He leapt up when the public

prosecutor had finished, and shouted, ‘You’re very wicked, you are! This is what I wanted to say. It didn’t come to me at first. I haven’t stolen anything.

I’m a man that doesn’t eat every day. I was coming from Ailly. I was

walking across country after a downpour that had made the whole countryside yellow, even the ponds had flooded, and there were just little blades of grass sticking out of the grit by the roadside. I found a broken branch lying on the ground, with apples on it, I picked up the branch without knowing it would get me into trouble. It’s three months now I’ve been in prison and getting pushed around. More than that, I can’t say.

People speak out against me, they tell me, “Answer!” The gendarme, who’s a decent lad, nudges my elbow and whispers to me, “Go on, answer!” I’m no good with words, I didn’t go to school, I’m a poor man. That’s where people are making a mistake, in not understanding that. I didn’t steal, I picked up things that were lying on the ground. You say, Jean Valjean, Jean Mathieu! I don’t know these people. They’re country folk. I worked for Monsieur Baloup, Boulevard de l’Hôpital. My name is Champmathieu. It’s very clever of you to tell me where I was born. I don’t know myself. It’s not everybody has a house to live in when they come into the world. That would be too easy. I think my father and mother were travelling people. I don’t actually know. When I was a child I was called Lad, now I’m called Old Man. Those are my Christian names. Make of that what you will. I was in the Auvergne, I was at Faverolles, by God. Well? Can’t a man have been in the Auvergne and at Faverolles without having been in a chain gang? I tell you, I didn’t steal, and I’m Père Champmathieu. I worked for Monsieur Baloup, that was my fixed abode. I’m beginning to get tired of this nonsense of yours! Why are other people hounding me like this?’

The public prosecutor had remained standing. He addressed the presiding

judge: ‘Monsieur le président, in view of the confused but extremely crafty denials of the accused, who would like to pass himself off as an idiot but will not succeed in so doing, we give him warning of this – if it please you and if it please the court, we request that the convicts Brevet, Cochepaille and Chenildieu, and Police Inspector Javert, be recalled and questioned one last time with regard to their identification of the prisoner as the convicted felon Jean Valjean.’

The judge said, ‘I draw monsieur l’avocat général’s attention to the fact

that Police Inspector Javert, recalled by his duties to the chief town of a

neighbouring arrondissement, left the court room, indeed left town, as soon as he had made his statement. We gave him permission to do so with the consent of both monsieur l’avocat général and the defence counsel.’

‘Quite so, monsieur le président,’ replied the public prosecutor. ‘In the

absence of Monsieur Javert, I believe it to be incumbent on me to remind the gentlemen of the jury of what he said in this very place a few hours ago.

Javert is a respected man who by his unrelenting and rigorous integrity does credit to lesser but important duties. His statement was made in these terms: “I have no need even of any of the moral arguments and material evidence that contradict the denials of the accused. I recognize him full well. This man’s name is not Champmathieu. He is a very wicked and very dangerous ex-convict named Jean Valjean. He was released at the end of his sentence only with extreme misgivings. He served nineteen years of hard labour for aggravated theft. He attempted to escape five or six times. Besides the Petit-Gervais robbery and the Pierron theft, I also suspect him of a theft committed at the home of His Grace the late bishop of Digne. I often saw him during the time I was assistant warder of the chain gangs at Toulon. I repeat, I recognize him full well.” ’

This very emphatic statement appeared to make a strong impression on

the public and on the jury. The public prosecutor concluded by insisting that despite the absence of Javert the three witnesses Brevet, Chenildieu and Cochepaille should be heard again and formally questioned.

The judge conveyed an order to an usher, and a moment later the door to

the witnesses’ room opened. Accompanied by a gendarme ready to lend armed assistance, the usher led in the convict Brevet. The court was on tenterhooks, and all hearts were beating as one.

The ex-convict Brevet wore the black and grey jacket of the maison

centrale prisons*. Brevet was a person of some sixty years of age, who had a kind of businessman’s face and the air of a crook. The two sometimes go together. In the prison where his fresh misdeeds had brought him, he had become something in the nature of a turnkey. He was a man of whom his superiors said, ‘He tries to make himself useful.’ The chaplains testified

favourably as to his religious observances. It must not be forgotten, this was happening during the Restoration.

‘Brevet,’ said the presiding judge, ‘as a convicted felon, you have lost

your civil rights and you cannot take the oath.’

Brevet lowered his gaze. ‘Nevertheless,’ the judge went on, ‘if divine mercy be so willing, even in

the man whom the law has stripped of his civil rights there may remain a sense of honour and of justice. It is to this sense that I appeal at this critical hour. If it still exists in you, and I hope it does, reflect before you answer.

Consider on the one hand this man: a word from you may ruin him; on the other hand, justice: a word from you may enlighten it. This is a solemn moment, and there is still time to retract if you think you were mistaken.

Prisoner at the bar, rise. Brevet, take a good look at the accused, summon up your memories and tell us in all good faith if you persist in recognizing this man as your former fellow convict, Jean Valjean.’

Brevet looked at the accused, then turned to the court. ‘Yes, monsieur le président. It was I who first recognized him, and I do

persist. That man is Jean Valjean. Who came to Toulon in 1796 and left in

1815. I left a year later. He has the air of a dolt now, so it must be age that has dulled him. He was cunning in prison. I recognize him without the shadow of a doubt.’

‘Go and sit down,’ said the judge. ‘Prisoner at the bar, remain standing.’ A convict serving a life sentence of hard labour, as indicated by his red

tunic and green cap, Chenildieu was brought in. He was serving his sentence in the prison hulks at Toulon, from where he had been plucked for this trial. He was a small man of about fifty, alert, wrinkled, puny, yellow, brazen, excitable, who had a kind of sickly feebleness in his every limb and about his whole person, and an immense forcefulness in his gaze. His companions in the prison hulks had nicknamed him ‘Je-nie-Dieu’*.

The judge said to him more or less what he had said to Brevet. At the

point when he reminded him that his criminal status deprived him of the right to take an oath, Chenildieu looked up and stared directly at the crowd.

The judge invited him to think carefully, and asked him as he had asked Brevet if he persisted in recognizing the prisoner.

Chenildieu burst out laughing. ‘By God! Do I recognize him! We were chained together for five years.

Afraid of what’s coming to you, old boy?’

‘Go and sit down,’ said the judge.

The usher brought in Cochepaille. This other lifer, who like Chenildieu

came from the prison hulks and was dressed in red, was a peasant from Lourdes, a bear-man of the Pyrenees. He had guarded flocks in the mountains, and from being a shepherd he had slipped into brigandage.

Cochepaille was no less primitive and seemed even more stupid than the accused. He was one of those unfortunate men that nature rough-casts as wild beasts and society finishes off as convicted felons.

The presiding judge tried to inspire him with some solemn and stirring

words, and asked him as he had asked the other two if he persisted in recognizing unhesitatingly and unequivocally the man standing before him.

‘That is Jean Valjean,’ said Cochepaille. ‘Indeed, he was called Jean-le-

Cric because he was so strong.’

Each of these statements from these three men, evidently sincere and

made in good faith, had raised in the audience a murmur that boded ill for the accused, a murmur that grew louder and lasted longer each time a fresh declaration was added to the previous one. The accused, meanwhile, had listened to them with that amazement on his face that according to the prosecution was his main method of defence. At the first declaration, the gendarmes next to him had heard him mutter under his breath, ‘Well, he’s a fine one!’ After the second, he said a little louder with an almost satisfied air, ‘Right!’ At the third, he cried, ‘Terrific!’

The presiding judge addressed him. ‘Prisoner at the bar, you have heard

these men. What have you to say?’

He replied, ‘I say: Terrific!’ A clamour broke out in the public gallery and almost spread to the jury. It

was obvious the man was doomed.

‘Ushers,’ said the judge, ‘call for silence. I am going to close the

proceedings.’

At that moment there was a stir very close to the judge. A voice was

heard to cry out, ‘Brevet! Chenildieu! Cochepaille! Look over here!’

All who heard that voice felt chilled, so mournful and terrible was it. All

eyes turned to the place it came from. A man who had been among the privileged spectators seated behind the bench had just got to his feet, pushed open the breast-high door that separated the bench from the floor of the court, and was standing in the middle of the chamber.

The judge, the public prosecutor, Monsieur Bamatabois, two dozen

people recognized him and cried out in unison, ‘Monsieur Madeleine!’

XI

Champmathieu Is Ever More Amazed

He it was indeed. The clerk’s lamp lit his face. He held his hat in his hand, there was no disarray in his clothing, his frock-coat was carefully buttoned.

He was very pale and slightly trembling. His hair, still grey when he arrived in Arras, was now completely white. It had turned white during the hour he had been there.

All heads were raised. The sensation caused was indescribable. There

was a momentary uncertainty in the court. The voice had been so harrowing. The man who stood there appeared so calm that at first people did not understand. They wondered who had cried out. They could not believe it was this unruffled man who had uttered that ghastly cry.

This uncertainty lasted only a few seconds. Even before the judge and the

public prosecutor could utter a word, before the ushers and the gendarmes could make a move, the man whom all at that moment still called Monsieur Madeleine stepped towards the witnesses Cochepaille, Brevet and Chenildieu.

‘You don’t recognize me?’ he said.

All three remained dumbfounded and indicated by a shake of the head

that they did not know him. Feeling intimidated, Cochepaille gave a

military salute.

Monsieur Madeleine turned to the jury and the court, and said in a quiet

voice, ‘Gentlemen of the jury, let the defendant go free! Monsieur le président, have me arrested. That is not the man you seek. I am. I am Jean Valjean.’

Not a soul breathed. After the initial hubbub of amazement a sepulchral

silence followed. In the court room there was a feeling of that kind of religious terror that grips the masses when something of great magnitude occurs.

Meanwhile, the face of the judge filled with sympathy and sadness. He

had exchanged a rapid nod with the public prosecutor and a few words in a low voice with the legal counsellors. He turned to the public and asked in a tone that was understood by all, ‘Is there a doctor present?’

The public prosecutor then spoke. ‘Gentlemen of the jury, strange and

unexpected as it is, the incident that disrupts this hearing only inspires us, as it does you, with a sentiment we need not put into words. You are all familiar, by reputation at least, with the honourable Monsieur Madeleine, mayor of Montreuil-sur-Mer. If there is a doctor in the court room, we join monsieur le président in asking him to be good enough to attend to Monsieur Madeleine and take him home.’

Monsieur Madeleine did not allow the public prosecutor to finish. He

interrupted him in a tone full of indulgence and authority. These are the words he used, exactly as they were written down immediately after the trial by one of the witnesses of this scene, and as they now ring in the ears of those who heard them nearly forty years ago today:

‘Thank you, monsieur l’avocat général, but I am not mad. You shall see.

You were on the point of committing a grave mistake. Release that man.

I’m doing what I have to. I am that wretched felon. I’m the only one here who understands the situation clearly, and I’m telling you the truth. What I’m doing at this moment God is watching from above, and that’s enough.

You can take me into custody, here I am. Yet I did the best I could. I hid behind an assumed name. I became rich. I became mayor. I wanted to return among honest folk. It seems that cannot be. Anyway, there are many things

I can’t express, I’m not going to tell the story of my life, one day it will become known. I robbed Monseigneur l’évêque, that’s true; I robbed Petit-Gervais, that’s true. What you were told was right, Jean Valjean is a very wicked wretch. It may not have been entirely his fault. Listen, messieurs les juges, a man who has sunk as low as I is in no position to chide providence or to give advice to society, but you see, the infamy from which I tried to escape is a harmful thing. Harsh prisons make hardened criminals. Reflect on that, if you will. Before I was in the prison hulks I was a poor peasant and not very bright, something of a dolt. The prison hulks changed me. I was stupid, I became wicked. I was a blockhead, I became a firebrand.

Later on, kindness and goodness saved me, as harshness had been the ruin of me. But, forgive me, you can’t understand what I’m saying. You’ll find at my house among the ashes in the fireplace the forty-sou coin I stole from Petit-Gervais seven years ago. I’ve nothing more to add. Arrest me. My God! Monsieur l’avocat général shakes his head. Monsieur Madeleine has taken leave of his senses, you say! You don’t believe me! Now that’s distressing. Don’t convict this man, at least! What! These men don’t recognize me! I wish Javert were here. He would certainly recognize me.’

Nothing could convey what sombre and kindly melancholy marked the

tone of voice that accompanied these words.

He turned to the three convicts and said, ‘Well, I recognize you. Brevet!

Do you remember—’

He paused, hesitated for a moment, and said, ‘Do you* remember those

chequered knitted braces you had in the prison hulks?’

Brevet gave, as it were, a start of surprise, and looked him up and down

in a fearful manner.

He went on: ‘Chenildieu, who gave yourself the nickname “Je-nie-Dieu”,

the whole of your right shoulder is badly burned because one day you lay with your shoulder on a chafing-dish full of hot coals in order to efface the three letters TFP†, which for all that are still visible. Answer, is this true?’

‘It is true,’ said Chenildieu.

He turned to Cochepaille. ‘Cochepaille, near the crook of your left arm

you have a date in blue letters burned into your flesh with gunpowder. That

date is the day the emperor landed at Cannes, the first of March 1815. Pull up your sleeve!’

Cochepaille pulled up his sleeve, all eyes around him focused on his bare

arm. A gendarme held a lamp to it. There was the date.

The poor man turned to the spectators and the judges with a smile that

when they think of it still grieves those who saw it. It was the smile of triumph, it was also the smile of despair.

‘You can see now,’ he said, ‘that I am Jean Valjean.’ In that court room there were no longer judges, prosecutors or

gendarmes. There were only riveted gazes and aching hearts. No one was mindful any longer of the role that each might have to play. The public prosecutor forgot he was there to seek a conviction, the presiding judge that he was there to preside, the defence counsel that he was there to defend.

Remarkably, no question was asked, no authority intervened. It is in the nature of sublime spectacles that they capture all souls and turn all witnesses into spectators. Probably no one could have explained what he felt. Probably no one said to himself that he saw a great light shining there.

Inwardly all felt dazzled.

It was obvious they had Jean Valjean before their eyes. It was radiantly

clear. The appearance of this man was enough to bring abounding light to this affair that but a moment earlier had been so obscure. Without any further explanation being necessary, as if by a kind of electric exposure, this whole crowd understood immediately and at a single glance the simple and magnificent story of a man who was giving himself up so that another man might not be condemned in his place. The details, the waverings, the small resistances there might have been, disappeared in that immense luminous fact.

A fleeting impression, but overwhelming at the time. ‘I don’t want to disturb the hearing any further,’ said Jean Valjean. ‘I’m

going, since no one’s arresting me. I have several things to do. The public prosecutor knows who I am, he knows where I’m going, he can have me arrested when he pleases.’

He made his way towards the door. Not a voice was raised, not an arm

extended to prevent him. Everyone stood aside. There was at that moment something divine about him, something that causes multitudes to fall back and make way for one man. He walked through the crowd slowly. It was never known who opened the door but it is certain the door was open when he reached it.

At the door he turned and said, ‘Monsieur l’avocat général, I remain at

your disposal.’

Then he addressed the assembly. ‘All of you here, you all think I am to

be pitied, don’t you? My God! When I think of what I was about to do, I think I’m to be envied. All the same, I would rather that none of this had happened.’

He went out, and the door closed behind him as it had been opened, for

those who do certain majestic things are always sure of being served by someone in the crowd.

Less than an hour later the jury’s verdict cleared the man named

Champmathieu of all charges. And Champmathieu, immediately released, went away astounded, thinking all men were crazy and understanding nothing of what he had seen.

OceanofPDF.com

Book Eight

After-Effect

I

The Mirror in Which Monsieur Madeleine Sees His Hair

It was beginning to grow light. Fantine had had a feverish and sleepless night, and one full of happy visions. At dawn she fell asleep. Soeur Simplice, who had sat up with her, took advantage of this sleep to go and prepare another dose of cinchona. The worthy nun had been in the infirmary’s laboratory a few moments, bent over her drugs and phials and peering closely because of the indistinctness the dawning light imparts to objects. Suddenly she looked round and gave a little cry. Monsieur Madeleine stood before her. He had just entered silently.

‘It’s you, monsieur le maire!’ she exclaimed.

He responded quietly, ‘How is that poor woman?’ ‘Not so bad right now. But we have been very worried, believe me!’ She explained to him what had happened, that Fantine had been very

poorly the day before, and that she was better now because she thought that monsieur le maire had gone to Montfermeil to fetch her child. The nun dared not question monsieur le maire, but from the way he looked she could see quite clearly that was not where he had come from.

‘That’s just as good,’ he said. ‘You were quite right not to disillusion her.’ ‘Yes,’ replied the nun, ‘but now, monsieur le maire, she’s going to see

you and she won’t see her child. What shall we tell her?’

He remained pensive for a moment. ‘God will inspire us,’ he said.

‘We wouldn’t be able to lie, though,’ the nun murmured quietly.

It had grown fully light in the room. And the light fell on Monsieur

Madeleine’s face, opposite her. The nun happened to look up.

‘My goodness, monsieur!’ she exclaimed. ‘Whatever has happened to

you? Your hair’s completely white!’

‘White!’ he said.

Soeur Simplice had no looking-glass. She rummaged in a box and pulled

out the little mirror the infirmary doctor used to check that a patient was dead and no longer breathing. Monsieur Madeleine took the mirror, looked at his hair, and said, ‘Well now!’

He uttered this with indifference and as though he were thinking of

something else.

The nun felt chilled by something unknown that she vaguely sensed in all

this.

‘Can I see her?’ he asked. ‘Will monsieur le maire not have her child fetched?’ said the nun, hardly

daring to hazard a question.

‘Of course, but it will take two or three days at least.’ ‘If she were not to see monsieur le maire between now and then,’ the nun

went on timidly, ‘she wouldn’t know that monsieur le maire had returned, it would be easy to urge her to have patience, and when the child arrived she would naturally think monsieur le maire came with the child. We wouldn’t have to tell any lies.’

Monsieur Madeleine seemed to reflect for a few moments, then with his

calm gravity he said, ‘No, sister, I must see her. I may not have much time.’

The nun seemed not to notice the words ‘may not’, which gave an

obscure and peculiar connotation to monsieur le maire’s words. Lowering her gaze and her voice respectfully, she replied, ‘In that case, she’s resting, but monsieur le maire may enter.’

He made some comment about a door that did not close properly, whose

noise might wake the patient, then entered Fantine’s room, went over to the bed and drew the curtains aside. She was asleep. Her breath issued from her chest with that tragic sound characteristic of these illnesses, one that breaks

poor mothers’ hearts when they sit up at night with their doomed and sleeping child. But this laboured breathing hardly disturbed a kind of ineffable serenity that suffused her face, transfiguring her in her sleep. Her wanness had become a whiteness, her cheeks were crimson. Her long fair eyelashes, sole remnant of the beauty of her virginal youth, fluttered though remaining lowered and closed. Her whole being trembled with some suggested unfolding of wings about to spread and carry her away, wings whose quivering could be sensed though not seen. Seeing her like this, no one would ever have believed this was a sick person at death’s door. She looked more like something about to fly away than to die.

The branch thrills when a hand approaches it to pick a flower, and seems

at once to draw back and to offer itself. The human body has something of this thrill at that moment when the mysterious fingers of Death are about to pluck the soul.

Monsieur Madeleine remained for some time motionless beside that bed,

gazing in turn at the sick woman and at the crucifix as he had done two months earlier, the day he came to see her for the first time in this hospital.

They were both still there in the same attitudes – she sleeping, he praying.

Only now, after those two months had passed, her hair was grey and his was white.

The nun had not entered the room with him. He stood beside the bed with

his finger to his lips as though there were someone in the room to hush.

She opened her eyes, saw him, and said calmly with a smile, ‘And

Cosette?’

II

Fantine Happy

She gave no start of surprise or expression of joy. She was joy itself. That simple question ‘And Cosette?’ was put with such profound faith, such certainty, such a complete absence of anxiety and doubt, he was left speechless.

She went on, ‘I knew you were here. I was asleep but I was watching

you. I’ve been watching you for a long time. My eyes have been following you all night. You were in a halo of light and you had all kinds of heavenly figures around you.’

He looked up at the crucifix. ‘But tell me now,’ she said, ‘where’s Cosette? Why didn’t you put her on

my bed to be there when I woke up?’

Responding instinctively, he gave some reply he was never afterwards

able to recall. Fortunately, having been told of his arrival, the doctor had turned up. He came to Monsieur Madeleine’s aid.

‘My child,’ said the doctor, ‘calm yourself. Your child is here.’ Fantine’s eyes lit up, brightening her whole face. She clasped her hands

with an expression containing at once all the most violent and most tender feelings of which entreaty is capable.

‘Oh!’ she exclaimed, ‘bring me my little baby!’ A mother’s pathetic delusion! For her Cosette was still a babe-in-arms. ‘Not yet,’ said the doctor, ‘not right now. You still have a lingering fever.

Seeing your child would excite you and be bad for you. You must get better first.’

She interrupted him vehemently, ‘But I am better! I tell you I am better!

Is he a fool, this doctor? Honestly! I want to see my child!’

‘You see how worked up you’re getting,’ said the doctor. ‘So long as

you’re like this I won’t allow you to have your child. It isn’t enough to see her, you have to live for her. When you behave sensibly I’ll bring her to you myself.’

The poor mother bowed her head. ‘I’m sorry, doctor, I’m truly sorry. In

the past I would never have spoken the way I did just now. I’ve suffered so many setbacks I don’t know what I’m saying sometimes. I understand, you’re afraid of it being too much for me. I’ll wait as long as you like but I swear to you it wouldn’t have done me any harm to see my daughter. I can see her, I’ve not taken my eyes off her since yesterday evening. You know, if she were brought to me now I’d just talk to her quietly. That’s all. Isn’t it perfectly natural I should want to see my child that someone’s gone

specially to fetch from Montfermeil? I’m not angry. I know I’m going to be happy. All through the night I saw these white things and people smiling at me. The doctor will bring my Cosette to me when he wants to. I haven’t any fever because I’m better now. I feel sure there’s nothing at all the matter with me any more, but just to please these good women I’m going to behave as if I were ill and lie still. Once they see I’m quite calm, they’ll say, “She must be allowed to have her child.” ’

Monsieur Madeleine sat on a chair beside the bed. She turned to him,

visibly striving to appear calm and ‘well behaved’, as she put it, in that state of weakness resembling infancy to which she was reduced by illness, so that, seeing she was so quiet, there would be no objection to having Cosette brought to her. However, even as she held herself in check, she could not help asking Monsieur Madeleine countless questions.

‘Did you have a good journey, monsieur le maire? Oh, how kind of you

to go and fetch her for me! Just tell me how she is. Was the travelling not too much for her? Oh dear! she won’t recognize me. After all this time she’ll have forgotten me, poor little mite! Children don’t remember. They’re like birds. They see one thing today and another thing tomorrow, and they don’t remember anything. Did she have some clean clothes at least? Did those Thénardiers look after her properly? How did they feed her? Oh, if you only knew how much I’ve suffered wondering about all these things during the bad times I’ve had. That’s in the past now! I’m overjoyed! Oh, how I should like to see her! Monsieur le maire, did you find her pretty?

Isn’t she beautiful, my daughter? You must have been very cold in that coach! Couldn’t she be brought to me just for a moment? They could take her away straight after. You tell them! Being the mayor, you could if you wanted to!’

He took her hand. ‘Cosette is beautiful,’ he said, ‘Cosette is in good

health. You’ll see her soon. But calm down. You’re getting too excited, and besides you’re not keeping your arms covered and that’s making you cough.’

Indeed, fits of coughing interrupted Fantine at almost every word.

Fantine did not grumble, she was afraid of having jeopardized with a few

over-impassioned complaints the trust she wanted to inspire, and she started prattling.

‘Montfermeil’s quite pretty, isn’t it? People go there on outings in the

summer. Do those Thénardiers do good business? Not many people pass through their part of the world. It’s a bit run-down, that inn of theirs.’

Monsieur Madeleine was still holding her hand and observing her with

anxiety. It was evident he had come to tell her things he was now in two minds about mentioning. His visit over, the doctor had left. Soeur Simplice remained alone with them.

But in the midst of this pause Fantine exclaimed, ‘I can hear her! My

God, I can hear her!’

She stretched out her arm to stop them talking, held her breath, and began

to listen, enraptured.

There was a child playing in the yard, the child of the doorkeeper or one

of the women workers. It was one of those coincidences you keep coming across that seem to form part of the mysterious staging of woeful events.

The child, a little girl, was running to and fro to keep warm, laughing, singing at the top of her voice. Children’s games get mixed up with everything else, more’s the pity! It was this little girl that Fantine heard singing.

‘Oh!’ she said. ‘It’s my Cosette! I recognize her voice.’ Then the child was off again, and her voice died away.

Fantine listened for a while longer, then her face clouded over, and

Monsieur Madeleine heard her say quietly, ‘How cruel that doctor is not to let me see my daughter! He has a nasty face, that man.’

But the underlying gladness of her thoughts came to the surface again.

With her head resting on the pillow, she continued to talk to herself.

‘How happy we’re going to be! For a start, we’ll have a little garden.

Monsieur Madeleine promised me. My daughter will play in the garden.

She must have learned her letters by now. I’ll teach her to spell. She’ll run through the grass chasing butterflies. I’ll watch her. Then she’ll make her first communion. Now let’s see, when will she make her first communion?’

She began to count on her fingers. ‘One, two, three, four … she’s seven

years old. In five years’ time. She’ll have a white veil and lace stockings.

She’ll look like a little lady. Oh my dear sister, you don’t know how foolish I am, I was just thinking of my daughter’s first communion!’ And she started laughing.

He had let go of Fantine’s hand. He listened to these words as if listening

to the wind blowing, with his eyes on the ground, his mind deep in fathomless thoughts. All at once she stopped talking and this automatically made him raise his head. Fantine now looked ghastly.

She did not speak, she did not breathe. She was half sitting up. Her thin

shoulder emerged from her nightdress. Her face, radiant the moment before, was deathly pale, and with eyes widened in terror she seemed to be staring at something appalling in front of her on the other side of the room.

‘My God!’ he exclaimed. ‘Fantine, what’s wrong?’ She did not reply. She did not take her eyes off whatever it was she

thought she saw. She touched his arm with one hand and with the other pointed behind him.

He turned and saw Javert.

III

Javert Satisfied

This is what had happened.

Half-past midnight had just struck when Monsieur Madeleine left the

court of assizes in Arras. He returned to his inn just in time to set out again by the mail-coach, in which it will be remembered he had reserved his seat.

A little before six in the morning he had arrived at Montreuil-sur-Mer, and his first concern had been to drop his letter to Monsieur Laffitte in the post, then go to the infirmary and see Fantine.

However, he had hardly left the court room when the public prosecutor,

recovering from his initial shock, had taken the floor to deplore the honourable mayor of Montreuil-sur-Mer’s act of insanity, to declare that his own convictions were in no way altered by this bizarre incident that would

later be elucidated, and to demand in the meantime the conviction of this Champmathieu, clearly the real Jean Valjean. The public prosecutor’s persistence was obviously at odds with everyone else’s feeling, that of the public, the court and the jury. The defence counsel had little difficulty in refuting this argument and establishing that the revelations made by Monsieur Madeleine, that is to say, by the real Jean Valjean, put a completely different complexion on the case, and all that the jury now had standing before them was an innocent man. The lawyer had drawn from this a few sententious and unfortunately not unfamiliar conclusions regarding judicial errors, and suchlike. The presiding judge in his summing up had aligned himself with the defence counsel, and within a few minutes the jury had cleared Champmathieu of any wrong-doing.

Nevertheless, the public prosecutor had to have a Jean Valjean, and not

having Champmathieu any more, he took Madeleine.

Immediately after Champmathieu had been released, the public

prosecutor closeted himself with the presiding judge. They conferred ‘as to the necessity of the taking into custody of the person of monsieur le maire of Montreuil-sur-Mer’. This phrase, in which there were a great many ‘of’s, was monsieur l’avocat général’s, penned entirely by the public prosecutor in his report to the public prosecutor-in-chief. His initial sympathy having dissipated, the presiding judge raised few objections. After all, justice must take its course. And then, all things considered, although the judge was a decent and fairly intelligent man, he was at the same time a strong and almost ardent royalist and had been shocked to hear the mayor of Montreuil-sur-Mer refer to ‘the emperor’ and not ‘Bonaparte’ when speaking of the landing at Cannes.

The arrest warrant was accordingly issued. The public prosecutor sent it

by special messenger, riding as fast as he could go, to Montreuil-sur-Mer, instructing Police Inspector Javert to implement it.

As we know, Javert had returned to Montreuil-sur-Mer immediately after

having made his statement.

Javert was just getting up when the messenger delivered the arrest

warrant and summons. The messenger was also a very capable policeman,

who succinctly informed Javert of what had taken place at Arras. The arrest warrant, signed by the public prosecutor, was worded as follows: ‘Inspector Javert will arrest Sieur Madeleine, mayor of Montreuil-sur-Mer, who in this day’s court hearing was identified as the convicted felon freed on parole, Jean Valjean.’

Anyone who did not know Javert and had seen him as he came through

the entrance hall to the infirmary could have had no idea of what was going on and would have thought he was just his usual self. He was cold, calm, serious, his grey hair perfectly smooth over his temples, and he had just climbed the stairs with his usual deliberation. Anyone who knew him well and observed him closely would have quaked. Instead of being at the nape of his neck, the buckle on his leather collar was below his left ear. This betrayed unprecedented agitation.

Javert was a consistent character, allowing no flaw in the execution of his

duty or in his uniform, rigorous with villains, uncompromising with his coat buttons. For him to have buckled his collar awry there must have been one of those emotional upheavals inside him that might be called inner earthquakes.

He had come without any fuss, had requisitioned from the nearby guard-

house a corporal and four soldiers, left the soldiers in the courtyard, and asked the unsuspecting doorkeeper, accustomed as she was to seeing armed men ask for the mayor, to be directed to Fantine’s room.

When he came to Fantine’s room Javert turned the handle, pushed the

door open as softly as a sick-nurse or a police spy, and entered.

Strictly speaking, he did not enter. He stood in the half-open doorway, his

hat on his head and his left hand inside his coat that was buttoned up to the chin. In the crook of his arm could be seen the metal knob of his enormous cane, which disappeared behind him.

So he remained for almost a minute without anyone noticing his

presence. All at once Fantine looked up, saw him, and made Monsieur Madeleine turn round.

The instant Madeleine’s eyes met Javert’s, Javert, without moving,

without stirring, without stepping closer, became atrocious. No human

sentiment can be quite as appalling as joy.

It was the face of a demon on retrieving one of his damned.

The certainty that at last he had Jean Valjean in his grasp revealed in his

countenance everything that was in his soul. The stirred depths rose to the surface. The humiliation of having lost the trail for a while and having been briefly mistaken about that Champmathieu was blotted out by his pride in having so shrewdly suspected in the first place, and in having had for so long the right instinct. Javert’s contentment was blatant in his lordly attitude. Warped triumph illuminated that narrow brow. It was a display of the full horror that a satisfied face can present.

Javert was in seventh heaven at that moment. Without being distinctly

aware of it, yet with a vague intuition of his indispensability and his success, he, Javert, personified justice, light and truth in their heavenly capacity for crushing evil. Behind and around him, reaching to infinite depths, he had authority, reason, a definitive verdict, legal integrity, the vindication of public morality, every star in his favour. He was protecting order, delivering the law’s thunderbolt, avenging society; he was the enforcer of the absolute. He rode on a cloud of glory. There was in his victory a trace of defiance and challenge. Standing proud and resplendent, he paraded in the azure heavens the superhuman bestiality of a ferocious archangel. The terrible shadow of the deed he was doing revealed the dim gleam of society’s sword in his clenched fist. Rejoicing and indignant, under his heel he crushed crime, vice, rebellion, damnation, hell. He blazed, he exterminated, he smiled, and there was an incontestable grandeur in this monstrous St Michael.

There was nothing ignoble about Javert in his frightfulness.

Probity, sincerity, forthrightness, conviction, the concept of duty, are

things that may grow hideous when misguided but, even hideous, remain grand. Intrinsic to the human conscience, their majesty persists even in horror. They are virtues that have one vice: delusion. The ruthless and true joy of a fanatic in perpetrating atrocity retains a certain bleakly venerable radiance. Unaware of it himself, Javert in his fearsome gladness, like every benighted individual who triumphs, was to be pitied. There was nothing so

poignant and terrible as this face, displaying what might be called all the evil of goodness.

IV

Authority Reasserts Its Rights

Fantine had not seen Javert since the day the mayor had rescued her from this man. Though nothing made sense to her sick brain, she had no doubt he had come back for her. She could not bear that terrible face, she felt she was dying, she hid her face in both hands and cried in anguish, ‘Monsieur Madeleine, save me!’

Jean Valjean – from now on we shall not refer to him otherwise – had

stood up. He said to Fantine in his gentlest and calmest voice, ‘Don’t worry.

It’s not you that he’s come for.’

Then he turned to Javert and said, ‘I know what you want.’ Javert replied, ‘Let’s get a move on!’ There was in the modulation of the voice that accompanied these words

something indescribably fierce and frenzied. Javert did not say, ‘Let’s get a move on!’ He said, ‘Lessghehmwuhahn!’ No spelling can do justice to the way in which it was uttered: it was no longer human speech, it was an animal roar.

He did not behave as usual, he did not explain the situation, he did not

produce any arrest warrant. In his eyes Jean Valjean was a kind of mysterious and elusive combatant, a sinister opponent with whom he had been wrestling for the past five years without ever being able to fell him.

This arrest was not a beginning, but an end. He merely said, ‘Let’s get a move on!’

He remained exactly where he was as he said this. He cast a glance at

Jean Valjean, that violently compelling glance, like a grappling-hook, by which he was accustomed to draw scoundrels to him. It was this glance by which Fantine had felt pierced to the core two months earlier.

At Javert’s cry Fantine opened her eyes again. But monsieur le maire was

here. What could she possibly have to fear? Javert stepped into the middle

of the room and shouted, ‘Now get moving!’

The poor woman looked around. There was no one other than the nun

and the mayor. Who could be the object of this contemptuous familiarity?

Only herself. She shuddered.

Then she saw something unbelievable, so unbelievable that nothing to

equal it had appeared to her even in the darkest of her feverish fits of delirium. She saw the police detective Javert seize monsieur le maire by the collar. She saw monsieur le maire bow his head. To her, it was as if the world had been turned upside-down.

Javert had indeed grabbed Jean Valjean by the collar. ‘Monsieur le maire!’ shrieked Fantine.

Javert burst into laughter, that frightful laughter with all his teeth bared.

‘There’s no monsieur le maire here any more!’

Jean Valjean made no attempt to remove the hand on his coat collar. He

said, ‘Javert—’

Javert cut him short. ‘Call me monsieur l’inspecteur.’ ‘Monsieur,’ said Jean Valjean, ‘I should like to have a word with you in

private.’

‘Out loud! Speak out loud!’ replied Javert. ‘Anyone who has anything to

say to me speaks out loud.’

Jean Valjean continued, keeping his voice low. ‘It’s a favour I have to ask

of you—’

‘Speak out loud, I tell you!’ ‘But it’s something only you should hear.’ ‘What do I care? I’m not listening.’ Jean Valjean turned to him and said rapidly in a very low voice, ‘Grant

me three days’ grace! Three days in which to go and fetch this poor woman’s child. I’ll pay whatever’s necessary. You can accompany me if you wish.’

‘You’re joking!’ cried Javert. ‘Honestly! I didn’t take you for a fool!

You’re asking me to let you go away for three days! You say it’s to go and fetch this whore’s child! Hah-hah! That’s good! That’s really good!’

Fantine trembled.

‘My child!’ she cried. ‘Fetch my child! She’s not here, then! Sister,

answer me, where’s Cosette? I want my child! Monsieur Madeleine!

Monsieur le maire!’

Javert stamped his foot. ‘Now the other one! Shut up, you hussy! The

degeneracy of this place, where convicted felons are magistrates and prostitutes are treated like duchesses! But all that’s going to change. And high time too!’

He gazed intently at Fantine, and once again grabbing hold of Jean

Valjean’s cravat, shirt and collar he added, ‘I tell you there’s no Monsieur Madeleine and no monsieur le maire. There’s a thief, a ruffian, a convicted felon named Jean Valjean! And I have him here! That’s what there is!’

Fantine sat bolt upright, her arms stiff and both hands supporting her. She

stared at Jean Valjean, she stared at Javert, she stared at the nun. She opened her mouth as though to speak. A rattle issued from deep in her throat, her teeth chattered, she stretched out her arms in anguish, opening her hands convulsively and groping about her like someone drowning. Then she suddenly fell back on her pillow. Her head struck the bed frame and dropped forward on to her chest, her mouth gaping, her eyes open and dull.

She was dead.

Jean Valjean laid his own hand on Javert’s restraining hand and prised it

open as he would have prised open the hand of a baby. Then he said to Javert, ‘You killed that woman.’

‘Enough!’ shouted Javert in a fury. ‘I’m not here to argue with you. We

haven’t time for all this. The guard’s downstairs. Now move, or I’ll have you in thumb-cuffs!’

In a corner of the room there was an old iron bed in quite a poor state that

served the nuns as a camp-bed when they were keeping vigil. Jean Valjean went over to this bed, in a split second dismantled the already very dilapidated bedstead, no obstacle to muscles like his, seized the main strut in his clenched fist, and eyed Javert. Javert retreated towards the door.

With the iron strut in his hand Jean Valjean walked slowly over to

Fantine’s bed. When he reached it he turned and said to Javert in a barely audible voice, ‘I advise you not to disturb me just now.’

One thing is certain: Javert was trembling.

He thought of going to summon the guard, but Jean Valjean might take

advantage of that one moment to escape. So he stayed, grasped his cane by the thinner end, and backed up against the door frame without taking his eyes off Jean Valjean.

Jean Valjean rested his elbow on the knob of the bedstead and his

forehead on his hand, and fell to gazing at Fantine, lying there motionless.

So he remained, absorbed, silent, and obviously no longer thinking of anything to do with this life. There was nothing but inexpressible pity now on his face and in his attitude. After a few moments of this meditating he bent down and spoke to Fantine in a whisper.

What did he say to her? What could this man, social outcast that he was,

possibly have to say to that woman who was dead? What were those words?

Not a living soul heard them. Did the dead woman hear them? There are some touching illusions that may perhaps be sublime realities. What is beyond doubt is that Soeur Simplice, sole witness to what happened, often said that at the moment Jean Valjean whispered in Fantine’s ear she distinctly saw an ineffable smile appear on those pale lips and in those vacant eyes filled with the terror of death.

Jean Valjean took Fantine’s head in both hands and settled it straight on

the pillow as a mother might have done to her child. He retied the fastening of her nightdress, and tidied her hair under her cap. Having done that, he closed her eyes.

Fantine’s face seemed strangely illuminated at that moment. Death is the

entrance to the supreme light.

Fantine’s hand was hanging out of the bed. Jean Valjean knelt down

before that hand, gently raised it, and kissed it.

Then he stood up again and turned to Javert. ‘Now, I’m at your disposal,’

he said.

V

A Suitable Grave

Javert put Jean Valjean in the town gaol.

The arrest of Monsieur Madeleine caused a sensation, or rather, had an

extraordinary impact on Montreuil-sur-Mer. Sadly, we cannot ignore the fact that at that simple statement ‘He was a convicted felon’, almost everyone deserted him. In less than two hours all the good he had done was forgotten, and he was nothing but ‘a convicted felon’. It is true to say that the details of what had happened at Arras were not yet known.

Conversations like the following were to be heard all day long in every part of town:

‘You don’t know? He was a freed convict!’ ‘Who?’ ‘The mayor.’ ‘No!

Monsieur Madeleine?’ ‘Yes.’ ‘Really?’ ‘Madeleine wasn’t his real name, he has some frightful name, Béjean, Bojean, Boujean.’ ‘Oh my God!’ ‘He’s been arrested.’ ‘Arrested!’ ‘In prison, in the town gaol, waiting to be transferred.’ ‘Transferred! He’s going to be transferred! Where are they transferring him?’ ‘He’s going to face trial for a highway robbery he committed some time ago.’ ‘Well! I suspected as much. That man was too good, too perfect, too sanctimonious. He refused the Legion of Honour. He gave money to every little guttersnipe he came across. I always thought there was some unsavoury story at the bottom of it all.’

The ‘best circles’, especially, were very much of this opinion. One old

lady, a subscriber to Le Drapeau Blanc, made the following unfathomably deep remark: ‘I’m not sorry. That will teach the Buonapartists!’

So it was that the ghost who had called himself Monsieur Madeleine

vanished from Montreuil-sur-Mer. Only three or four individuals in the whole town remained faithful to his memory. The old doorkeeper who had worked for him was one of them.

The evening of that same day this worthy old woman was sitting in her

lodge, still thoroughly shocked, and sadly pondering the matter. The factory had been closed all day, the main entrance was locked, the street was

deserted. There was no one in the house but the two nuns, Soeur Perpétue and Soeur Simplice, who were keeping vigil over Fantine’s body.

Towards the time Monsieur Madeleine usually came home, the honest

doorkeeper automatically got up, took out of a drawer the key to Monsieur Madeleine’s room and picked up the candle-holder he used every evening to go up to his quarters, then she hung the key on the nail from where he would take it, and placed the candle-holder near by, as if she was expecting him. Then she sat down in her chair again, and returned to her thoughts.

The poor kind-hearted old woman had done all this without being conscious of it.

It was not until more than two hours later that she emerged from her

musings and exclaimed, ‘Oh goodness me! My sweet Lord Jesus! And there was I hanging his key on the nail!’

At that moment the small window in her lodge opened, a hand passed

through the opening, took the key and the candle-holder, and lit the candle from the burning rush-light. The doorkeeper looked up and was left open-mouthed with a cry in her throat that she stifled. She knew that hand, that arm, the sleeve of that coat.

It was Monsieur Madeleine.

It was several seconds before she could speak, stunned as she was, as she

said herself when later recounting her adventure.

‘My God, monsieur le maire!’ she cried at last. ‘I thought you were—’ She broke off. The end of her sentence would have been disrespectful to

the beginning of it. Jean Valjean was still monsieur le maire to her.

He completed the thought that was in her mind. ‘In prison,’ he said. ‘I was. I broke a bar in one of the windows. I jumped

down from a rooftop, and here I am. I’m going up to my room. Go and fetch Soeur Simplice for me. She’s probably with that poor woman.’

The old woman rushed to obey.

He gave her no other instructions. He was quite sure she would protect

him better than he would protect himself.

No one ever found out how he managed to get into the courtyard without

the main gate being opened. He had, and always carried with him, a pass-

key that opened a little side door. But he must have been searched and his pass-key taken from him. This point was never explained.

He climbed the staircase that led to his room. When he got to the top, he

left his candle on the stairs, opened his door almost without a sound, and, feeling his way, went over and closed his window and the shutter, then returned for the candle and came back into the room.

It was a necessary precaution. Remember, his window could be seen

from the street.

He glanced around, at his table, his chair, his bed which had not been

slept in for three days. There was no trace of the disorder of the night before last. The doorkeeper had tidied his room. She had, moreover, picked out of the ashes and placed neatly on the table the two ferrules of his staff and the forty-sou piece blackened by the fire.

He took a sheet of paper on which he wrote: ‘These are the two ferrules

of my staff and the forty-sou piece stolen from Petit-Gervais that I mentioned at the court of assizes.’ And he laid on this piece of paper the coin and the two bits of metal so that this would be the first thing anyone would see on entering the room. He pulled out of a cupboard one of his old shirts, which he tore up. This gave him some pieces of cloth in which he wrapped the two silver candlesticks. Moreover, he was neither hurried nor agitated, and as he wrapped up the bishop’s candlesticks he bit into a piece of black bread. It was probably the prison bread he had brought with him when escaping.

This was indicated by the crumbs found on the bedroom floor when the

legal authorities later searched the premises.

There were two little taps at the door. ‘Come in,’ he said.

It was Soeur Simplice.

She was pale, her eyes were red, the rush-light she was holding shook in

her hand. It is a characteristic of the vicissitudes of fate that, no matter how cool and collected we may be, they wrest from our entrails our human nature and force it to reappear on the surface. In the emotional turmoil of

that day the nun had become a woman once more. She had been weeping and she was trembling.

Jean Valjean had just finished writing a few lines on a piece of paper

which he held out to the nun, saying, ‘Sister, will you give this to monsieur le curé?’

The piece of paper was not folded over. She glanced at it. ‘You may read it,’ he said.

She read the following: ‘I ask monsieur le curé to look after everything I

am leaving here, from which he will kindly deduct the expenses of my trial and the burial of the woman who died yesterday. The rest is for the poor.’

The sister tried to speak, but could scarcely stammer out a few

inarticulate sounds. However, she did manage to say, ‘Does monsieur le maire not want to see that poor unfortunate woman one last time?’

‘No,’ he said, ‘they’ll be coming after me, I’d only have to be arrested in

her room, and that would disturb her peace.’

He had hardly finished when there was a great commotion on the

staircase. They heard a thundering of footsteps coming up and the old doorkeeper saying in her loudest and most piercing voice, ‘My good monsieur, I swear to God, no one’s entered this house all day and all evening, and I haven’t once left the door unattended.’

A man responded, ‘Yet there’s a light in that room.’ They recognized Javert’s voice.

The room was so arranged that when the door opened it screened the

right-hand corner. Jean Valjean blew out the candle and went and stood in this corner. Soeur Simplice fell to her knees by the table.

The door opened. Javert entered.

The whisperings of several men and the protests of the doorkeeper could

be heard coming from the corridor. The nun did not raise her eyes. She was praying.

The rush-light was on the mantelpiece and gave only very little light.

Javert saw the nun and stopped, taken aback.

Remember, Javert’s very essence, his natural element, the medium in

which he could breathe, was veneration for all authority. He was

uncompromising and would allow no objections or reservations. For him, of course, ecclesiastical authority was the highest of all. On this issue as on all others he was zealous, superficial and punctilious. In his eyes a priest was an unerring spirit; a nun, a creature incapable of sin. They were souls walled off from this world with only one connecting door that never opened except to let the truth come out.

On seeing the nun his first instinct was to withdraw.

However, there was another duty that also bound him, an overriding duty

that drove him in the opposite direction. His second instinct was to stay and venture at least one question.

This was Soeur Simplice, who never in her life had lied. Javert knew this

and specially venerated her because of it.

‘Sister,’ he said, ‘are you alone in this room?’ There was a dreadful moment in which the poor doorkeeper felt faint.

The nun looked up and replied, ‘Yes.’

‘Then,’ Javert went on, ‘forgive me for pressing you, it’s my duty to do

so – you haven’t seen a certain individual, a man, this evening? He has escaped. We’re looking for him – this man by the name of Jean Valjean, you’ve not seen him?’

The nun replied, ‘No.’ She lied. She lied twice in succession, without hesitation, with the

swiftness of self-sacrifice.

‘Pardon me,’ said Javert, and retired with a deep bow.

O sainted woman! You’ve been gone from this world for many years.

You have rejoined your virgin sisters and angel brothers in the light. May this untruthfulness be counted in your favour in paradise!

The nun’s affirmation was for Javert something so conclusive that he did

not even notice the peculiarity of that candle, which had only just been blown out and was still smoking on the table.

An hour later a man was walking through the mist and the trees, hurrying

away from Montreuil-sur-Mer in the direction of Paris. That man was Jean Valjean. It has been established through the testimony of two or three carters who met him that he was carrying a bundle and was dressed in a

smock. Where had he obtained that smock? It was never found out. But an old workman had died in the factory’s infirmary a few days before, leaving only his smock. Perhaps it was that one.

One last word about Fantine.

We all have a mother: the earth. Fantine was returned to that mother.

The parish priest thought he was doing the right thing, and perhaps he

was, in preserving for the poor as much money as possible from what Jean Valjean had left. After all, who were these people? A convicted felon and a common prostitute. That is why he kept Fantine’s burial simple, and reduced it to that bare minimum called a pauper’s grave.

So Fantine was buried in that free corner of the cemetery that belongs to

everybody and to nobody, in which the poor are doomed to disappear.

Fortunately, God knows where to find the soul. Fantine was laid in darkness among the bones of anonymous others. She suffered the promiscuous fate of ashes. She was thrown into the common grave. Her last resting-place was like her bed.

OceanofPDF.com

OceanofPDF.com

Part Two

COSETTE

OceanofPDF.com

Book One

Waterloo

I

On the Way from Nivelles

Last year (1861), one beautiful May morning, a traveller, the person telling this story, was coming from Nivelles on his way to La Hulpe. He was on foot. He was following a broad paved road undulating between two rows of trees over rolling hills that carry the road up and down again, creating the effect of enormous waves. He had passed Lillois and Bois-Seigneur-Isaac.

He could see to the west the slate-roofed bell-tower of Braine-l’Alleud, which has the shape of an upturned vase. He had just left behind him a wood that stood on higher ground and, at the corner of a crossroads, by the side of a kind of decrepit gallows bearing the inscription ‘Former toll-gate no. 4’, a tavern with this sign on the front of it: ‘Aux Quatre Vents. Échabeau, privately owned café’.

Some five hundred yards beyond this tavern he came to the bottom of a

little valley, where water flows in a vaulted drain built into the road embankment. The sparse but very green cluster of trees that fills the valley on one side of the road disperses in the meadows on the other side, and trails off gracefully and as though in disarray in the direction of Braine-l’Alleud.

On the right, by the roadside, was an inn, with a four-wheeled cart in

front of the door, a large bundle of hop-poles, a plough, a heap of dried brushwood by a quickset hedge, lime smoking in a square pit, a ladder lying

beside an old shed with straw partitioning. A young girl was hoeing in a field where a big yellow poster, probably for a travelling show at some village fair, fluttered in the wind. At the corner of the inn, beside a pond on which sailed a flotilla of ducks, an ill-paved path plunged into the undergrowth. This wayfarer took that path.

Some one hundred yards along it, after skirting a fifteenth-century wall

capped with pitched coping of crenellated brick, he found himself in the presence of a big stone gateway with a lintel in the sober style of Louis XIV, flanked by two flat medallions. An austere façade rose above this gateway. A wall perpendicular to the façade came almost up to the gateway at an abrupt right-angle just to one side of it. In the grass in front of the gateway lay three harrows with all the May flowers growing haphazardly among them. The gateway was closed. The gates themselves were two dilapidated panels bearing a rusty old knocker.

The sunshine was delightful. There was that gentle rustling of the

branches in Maytime that seems to come even more from nests than from the wind. A bonny little bird, probably in love, was singing its heart out in a big tree.

The traveller bent down to examine a rather large circular hollow that

looked like the indentation made by some spherical object in the stone at the foot of the left-hand gatepost. At that moment the gates opened and a peasant woman came out.

She saw the traveller and realized what he was looking at. ‘It was a French cannon-ball that did that,’ she said to him. And she

added, ‘What you see higher up there, in the gate, close to a nail, is the hole made by a big biscayen bullet. The bullet didn’t go right through the wood.’

‘What’s the name of this place?’ asked the traveller. ‘Hougomont,’ said the peasant woman.

The traveller stood up. He took a few steps and went to look beyond the

hedges. He saw on the horizon through the trees a kind of hillock, and on this hillock something that from a distance looked like a lion.

He was on the battlefield of Waterloo.

II

Hougomont

Hougomont was a fateful place, the initial obstruction, the first resistance encountered at Waterloo by that great tree-feller of Europe whose name was Napoleon: the first knot under the fall of his axe.

It was a manor house then, it is just a farm now. Hougomont, for the

antiquarian, is ‘Hugomons’. This manor was built by Hugo, Sire de Somerel, he who endowed the sixth chaplaincy of Villers Abbey.

The traveller pushed open the gate, brushed past an old calash under the

porch, and entered the courtyard.

The first thing that struck him in this inner courtyard was a sixteenth-

century doorway pretending to be an arch, everything else having collapsed around it. A monumental appearance is often born of ruin. In a wall near the arch is another arched doorway, dating from Henri IV, through which the trees of an orchard can be seen. Beside this door is a manure pit, some pickaxes, shovels, a few handcarts, an old well with its flagstone and iron winch, a skittish colt, a strutting turkey, a chapel with a small bell-tower, a pear tree in blossom espaliered against the chapel wall: this is the courtyard that it was Napoleon’s ambition to capture. Had he been able to take it, this patch of ground might perhaps have given him the world. Chickens scatter the dust with their beaks. A growl is heard: it is, in lieu of the English, a huge dog baring its teeth.

The English were admirable here. Cooke’s four companies of Guards

held out for seven hours against the onslaught of an army.

Viewed on a planimetric map, Hougomont, its buildings and enclosures

included, forms a kind of irregular rectangle with one corner indented. It is at this corner that the southern gate stands, guarded by the wall that comes at it from point-blank range. Hougomont has two gates: the south gate, leading to the manor house, and the north gate, leading to the farm.

Napoleon dispatched his brother Jerome against Hougomont; divisions led by Guilleminot, Foy and Bachelu assaulted it, nearly the whole of Reille’s corps was deployed against it and came to grief here; Kellermann’s cannon-

balls were exhausted on this heroic section of wall. Only a few of Bauduin’s brigade succeeded in storming Hougomont to the north, and Soye’s brigade could only make a breach to the south, without taking it.

Farm buildings border the courtyard to the south. A piece of the north

gate, hacked off by the French, hangs on the wall. It consists of four planks nailed to two cross-beams, on which the scars of the attack are discernible.

The north gate, which the French broke through and which has been

patched up to replace the panel hanging on the wall, stands half open at the far end of the yard. It is actually cut into a wall, stone-built below with brick on top, that encloses the courtyard on the north side. It is a simple cart entrance of the kind to be found on all tenant farms, huge double doors made of rough planks: beyond lie the meadows. The fight for this gate was furious. Long afterwards all kinds of bloody hand-prints were visible on the gateposts. It was here that Bauduin was killed.

The tumult of battle is still in this courtyard; the horror is visible; the

confusion of the fighting is frozen here; it lives on, the dying continues; it was yesterday. Walls agonize, stones fall, breaches yell; holes are wounds; the leaning and quivering trees look as if they are straining to run away.

This courtyard was more built up in 1815 than it is today. Buildings that

have since been pulled down then formed salients and corners and right-angles.

The English barricaded themselves here. The French got in but could not

hold their position. Beside the chapel, one wing of the house, all that is left of Hougomont manor, stands in ruins, gutted, you might say. The manor served as a keep, the chapel served as a blockhouse. There was mutual extermination here. Shot at from all sides, from behind the walls, from up in the granaries, from down in the cellars, through every casement, every basement window, every chink between the stones, the French brought bundles of wood and set fire to walls and men. Bullets were answered with flames.

In the ruined wing the demolished rooms of a brick building are

discernible through windows fitted with iron bars. The English Guards were positioned in these rooms. The spiral staircase, cleft from the ground floor

to the roof, looks like the inside of a broken seashell. The staircase connects two floors. Besieged on the staircase and massed on the higher steps, the English had removed the lower steps. Those are the large slabs of blue stone heaped in the nettles. About a dozen steps are still attached to the wall; on the first is etched the image of a trident. These inaccessible steps remain firmly in place. All the rest resembles a toothless jaw. There are two old trees here: one is dead, the other has a foot wound and comes into leaf again in April. Since 1815 it has started growing across the staircase.

The two sides massacred each other in the chapel. The interior, now quiet

again, is strange. Mass has not been said in it since the carnage. Yet the altar is still here, a crudely fashioned wooden altar backed up against rough-hewn stone. Four whitewashed walls, a door opposite the altar, two small arched windows, a large wooden crucifix on the door, above the crucifix a square transom window blocked up with a truss of hay, on the ground in one corner an old broken window-frame – such is the chapel. Fixed in place by the altar is a fifteenth-century wooden statue of St Anne; the Baby Jesus’s head was blown off by a biscayen bullet. The French, who held the chapel for a while and were then driven out, set fire to it. Flames filled this coop, it was a furnace. The door burned, the floor burned, the wooden Christ did not burn. The fire consumed his feet – all you can see now are the blackened stumps – then stopped. A miracle, the local people call it.

Decapitated, the Baby Jesus was not as lucky as Christ.

The walls are covered with inscriptions. Near Christ’s feet this name can

be read: ‘Henquinez’. Then these others: ‘Conde de Rio Maior’, ‘Marques y Marquesa de Almagro (Habana)’. There are French names with exclamation marks, signs of anger. The wall was whitewashed again in 1849. Nations used to insult each other on it.

It was at the door to this chapel that a body was found holding an axe in

its hand. That was the body of Sous-Lieutenant Legros.

You come out of the chapel and on the right you see a well. There are two

in this courtyard. You ask, Why does this one have no bucket and pulley?

The reason is, water is no longer drawn here. Why is water no longer drawn here? Because it is full of skeletons.

The last person who drew water from this well was named Guillaume

van Kylsom. He was a peasant who lived at Hougomont and worked as the gardener there. On the eighteenth of June 1815, his family fled and went into hiding in the woods.

The forest surrounding Villers Abbey sheltered all those poor scattered

people for several days and nights. Even today certain recognizable traces, such as charred old tree trunks, mark the location of those wretched quaking campsites deep in the thickets.

Guillaume van Kylsom remained at Hougomont ‘to guard the manor’,

and hid in the cellar. The English discovered him there. He was dragged out of his hiding-place, and whacking him with the flat of their swords the soldiers forced this terrified man to serve them. They were thirsty. This Guillaume brought them water. It was from this well that he drew it. Many drank their last draught here. This well, where so many of the dead drank, was itself to die.

After the battle there was a rush to do one thing: bury the corpses. Death

has its own way of harrying victory, and brings pestilence in the wake of glory. Typhus is a concomitant of triumph. This well was deep. It was turned into a tomb. Three hundred dead were thrown into it. Perhaps too hastily. Were all of them dead? Legend says not. It seems that on the night after the burial, feeble voices were heard calling from the well.

This well stands alone in the middle of the courtyard. Three walls, half

stone, half brick, like the panels of a folding screen set up like a square turret, surround it on three sides. The fourth side is open. It is from here that water was drawn. The wall opposite has a kind of misshapen bull’s-eye window in it, possibly a shell hole. This turret had a roof of which only the beams remain. The iron bracing on the right-hand wall is cross-shaped.

Lean over, and the eye plumbs the depths of a deep brick shaft filled with a gathering of shadows. All around the well the foot of the walls disappears into the nettles.

This well does not have in front of it that large blue flagstone that serves

as an apron to all wells in Belgium. The blue flagstone has here been replaced by a plank, with five or six gnarled and knotted wooden logs that

look like huge bones resting on it. It no longer has a bucket, chain or pulley, but it still has the stone basin that served to catch the spillage. Rainwater collects here, and from time to time a bird from the neighbouring forests comes to drink from it and flies away again.

One house in this ruin, the farmhouse, is still inhabited. The door opens

on to the courtyard. Set askew on this door, beside a pretty Gothic lock-plate, is an iron trefoil door handle. When the Hanoverian Lieutenant Wilda seized this handle to take refuge in the farm, a French sapper chopped off his hand with an axe.

The old gardener van Kylsom, now long dead, was the grandfather of the

family now living in the house. A grey-haired woman tells you, ‘I was there. I was three years old. My older sister was frightened, and wept. They took us into the woods. I was in my mother’s arms. We pressed our ears to the ground to listen. I imitated the cannon, going boom, boom!’

As mentioned above, a door on the left leads from the courtyard into the

orchard.

The orchard is dreadful.

It is in three sections, you might almost say, three acts. The first section is

a garden, the second the orchard itself, the third is a wood. These three sections all lie within the same enclosure: on the entrance side, the manor and farm buildings, on the left, a hedge, on the right, a wall, at the far end, a wall. The wall on the right is brick, the far wall stone. You come into the garden first. It is on a lower level, planted with currant bushes, choked with wild vegetation and closed off by a dressed-stone-faced terrace with double-bellied balusters. It was a seigneurial garden in that early French style that predated Le Nôtre. All ruin and brambles today. The pilasters are topped with orbs that look like stone cannon-balls. The number of balusters still standing on their pedestals is forty-three. The others are lying in the grass.

Almost all of them bear marks of rifle-fire. One fragmented baluster stands on its stem like a broken leg.

It was in this garden, below the orchard, that six skirmishers of the

French 1st Light Infantry, having got in and not being able to get out again, trapped and run to earth like bears in a pit, took on two Hanoverian

companies, one of which was armed with carbines. The Hanoverians lined up along the balustrade and fired from above. Countering from below, six against two hundred, those undaunted skirmishers with only the currant bushes for cover took a quarter of an hour to die.

You climb a few steps and pass from the garden into the orchard proper.

There, within those few square yards, fifteen hundred men fell in less than an hour. The wall looks ready for renewed fighting. The thirty-eight loopholes, pierced by the English at irregular heights, are there still. In front of the sixteenth lie two granite tombs of English dead. There are loopholes only in the south wall – the main attack came from that direction. This wall is concealed on the outside by a tall quickset hedge. The French arrived thinking they had only the hedge to tackle, got through it and met with this wall, both an obstacle and an ambush, with the English Guards behind it, all thirty-eight loopholes firing at once, a hail of grapeshot and bullets. And here Soye’s brigade were dashed to pieces. So began Waterloo.

Nevertheless, the orchard was taken. As they had no ladders, the French

clawed their way over it. There was hand-to-hand fighting under the trees.

All this grass was soaked with blood. A Nassau battalion, seven hundred strong, was obliterated here. The outside of the wall, targeted by Kellermann’s two batteries, is pitted with grapeshot.

This orchard is as susceptible to the month of May as any other. It has its

buttercups and daisies, the grass here is high, cart-horses graze, horse-hair ropes with washing hung out to dry on them are suspended between the trees, forcing passers-by to duck, and walking over this untended ground your foot sinks into mole-holes. You notice an uprooted tree bole coming into leaf lying in the middle of the grass. Major Blackman rested against it as he died. Under a big tree close by fell the German general Duplat, descended from a French family that fled abroad when the Edict of Nantes was revoked. Just beside it leans an ailing old apple tree, dressed with a bandage of straw and clayey loam. Nearly all the apple trees are decrepit with age. There is not one that does not have its bullet or biscayen ball. The skeletons of dead trees abound in this orchard. Crows fly in their branches, and at the far end is a wood full of violets.

Bauduin killed, Foy wounded, fire, massacre, carnage, a stream of

English blood, French blood, German blood, mingled in fury; a well crammed with corpses, the Nassau regiment and the Brunswick regiment destroyed, Duplat killed, Blackman killed, the English Guards slaughtered, twenty French battalions out of the forty in Reille’s corps decimated; three thousand men in that single farmstead at Hougomont cut down, slashed to pieces, butchered, shot, burned. And all this so that today a peasant can say to the traveller: ‘Monsieur, give me three francs – if you like, I’ll explain to you what happened at Waterloo!’

III

The Eighteenth of June 1815

Let us go back now – it is one of the narrator’s privileges – and return to the year 1815, in fact shortly before the period when the story related in the first part of this book begins.

If it had not rained during the night of the seventeenth to the eighteenth

of June 1815, the future of Europe would have been very different. A few drops of water more or less decided Napoleon’s fate. For Waterloo to be the end of Austerlitz, providence needed only a little rain, and an unseasonal cloud in the sky was enough to bring a world to ruin.

The battle of Waterloo could not begin – and this gave Blücher time to

get there – until half-past eleven. Why? Because the ground was wet. This meant waiting until it became a little firmer so that the artillery could be deployed.

Napoleon was an artillery officer, and that left its mark on him. This

remarkable leader was at heart the man who in his report on Aboukir to the Directory said: ‘One of our cannon-balls killed six men.’ All his battle plans are designed for artillery fire. Concentrating the artillery on a given point – that was his key to victory. He treated the enemy general’s strategy like a citadel and battered it to create a breach. He pounded the weak point with grapeshot. He fought battles and won them with the cannon. He had a genius for firepower. To break squares, pulverize regiments, rout lines,

crush and disperse mass formations, for him everything lay in this, to strike and strike and keep on striking, and he entrusted this task to the cannon-ball. An awesome method and, combined with genius, one that made invincible for fifteen years this forbidding exponent of a pugilist’s war.

On the eighteenth of June 1815, he expected all the more of his artillery

because he had the greater strength of numbers. Wellington had only one hundred and fifty-nine guns, Napoleon had two hundred and forty.

Suppose the ground had been dry, with the artillery able to move freely,

the action would have begun at six o’clock in the morning. The battle would have been won and over by two o’clock, three hours before the fateful Prussian intervention.

How much blame lies with Napoleon for the loss of this battle? Is the

shipwreck attributable to the helmsman?

Was Napoleon’s obvious physical decline further complicated at that time

by a certain diminishing of his inner capabilities? Had the twenty years of war taken their toll on the sword as well as on the scabbard, the spirit as well as the body? Was the veteran intrusively making himself felt in the leader? In a word, was this genius, as many eminent historians have thought, now failing? Was he frenetically trying to hide from himself his debilitation? Was he beginning to falter, confounded by the winds of chance? Was he becoming oblivious to danger – a matter of serious consequence in a general? In this category of men of great physical capability, who might be called giants of action, is there an age when their genius develops myopia? Old age has no effect on intellectual geniuses. For the Dantes and Michelangelos, to grow old is to grow in stature. For the Hannibals and Bonapartes, is it to shrink? Had Napoleon lost his sense for victory? Was he now unable to recognize the reef, to suspect the pitfall, to discern the crumbling edge of the abyss? Had he no instinct for catastrophes? Was he, who in the past knew all the roads to triumph and who from the lofty heights of his chariot of lightning with a sovereign finger would point the way, now in dire confusion riding his thunderous harnessed legions to destruction? Was he seized at the age of forty-six with

a supreme madness? Was this titanic charioteer of destiny no more than a colossal daredevil?

We think not.

His battle plan was, it is universally acknowledged, a masterpiece. To

target the centre of the Allied line, open a gap and cut the enemy in two, drive the British half back on Hal and the Prussian half back on Tongres, separate Wellington and Blücher, carry Mont-St-Jean, capture Brussels, drive the German into the Rhine and the Englishman into the sea. For Napoleon, all of this was in this battle. What came next remained to be seen.

It goes without saying, we have no intention of writing the history of

Waterloo in these pages. One of the formative scenes of the story we are telling is connected with this battle but the history of Waterloo is not our theme. In any case that history has already been written, and authoritatively so, from one point of view by Napoleon, and from the other point of view by a whole host of historians.* For our own part, we leave the historians to their task. We are but a remote witness, a passer-by on the plain, one seeking to learn from that soil composted with human flesh, perhaps mistaking appearances for realities. We have no right to challenge in the name of science a set of circumstances in which there is surely something of the mirage. We have neither the military experience nor the strategic expertise to validate some theoretical construction. In our view, the two leaders at Waterloo are ruled by a concatenation of accidents. And where that mysterious culprit destiny is involved, we share the verdict of that naive judge, the people.

IV A

Those who wish to visualize clearly the battle of Waterloo have only to lay on the ground in their mind’s eye a capital A. The left leg of the A is the road to Nivelles, the right leg the road to Genappe, the bar across the A is the sunken road from Ohain to Braine-l’Alleud. The apex of the A is Mont-

St-Jean, where Wellington is. The left foot is Hougomont, where Reille is, with Jerome Bonaparte. The right foot is La Belle-Alliance, where Napoleon is. Just above the point where the bar across the A meets and intersects with the right leg is La Haie-Sainte. In the middle of the bar is exactly where the last word of the battle was spoken. It was here that the lion was placed, the unintentional symbol of the supreme heroism of the Imperial Guard.

The triangle contained in the upper part of the A, between the two legs

and the bar, is the plateau of Mont-St-Jean. The entire battle consisted of the fight for this plateau.

The flanks of the two armies extend to the right and left of the two roads

to Genappe and Nivelles, with d’Erlon facing Picton, and Reille facing Hill.

Behind the tip of the A, behind the plateau of Mont-St-Jean, is the forest

of Soignes.

As for the plain itself, picture a vast undulating expanse. Each fold in the

ground is higher than the next, and all the undulations rise towards Mont-St-Jean, and end there at the forest.

Two enemy forces on a battlefield are two wrestlers. They grapple with

each other. Both seek to bring down the other. They clutch at anything: a bush lends support; a corner of a wall offers protection; for want of a shack to lean back on, a regiment gives ground; a depression in the plain, a break in the landscape, a side path in the right place, a grove, a gully, can stay the heel of that colossus called an army and prevent its retreat. He who quits the field is beaten. Hence the responsible leader’s need to scrutinize the least clump of trees and investigate the slightest irregularity of terrain.

The two generals had carefully studied the Mont-St-Jean plain, now

called the plain of Waterloo. With far-sighted shrewdness Wellington had already examined it the year before as the possible site of a major engagement. On this terrain and for this duel, on the eighteenth of June, Wellington occupied the better position, Napoleon the worse. The English army being on higher ground, the French army below.

It is almost superfluous to sketch here Napoleon’s appearance, on

horseback, with his field-glasses in his hand, on the heights of Rossomme,

at dawn on the eighteenth of June 1815. There is no need, everyone has seen him. That calm profile under the small Brienne Academy hat, that green uniform, the white revers hiding his plaque, the grey coat hiding his epaulettes, the corner of red sash under his waistcoat, the leather breeches, the white horse with its saddle-cloth of purple velvet bearing in the corners crowned Ns and eagles, the riding-boots over silk stockings, the silver spurs, the Marengo sword – the complete figure of this last of the Caesars stands in the mind’s eye, acclaimed by some, severely judged by others.

This figure was for a long time all brightness. This was owing to a kind

of obfuscation that emanates from most legendary heroes and that always obscures the truth for a longer or shorter while. But history and the light of day prevail.

This clarity, history, is unforgiving. What is strange and divine about it is

that, though it brings light, and precisely because it brings light, it often casts a shadow in places where brightness used to be seen. It creates two different phantoms of the same man, and the one attacks the other and exposes him for what he is, and the shadows of the despot contend with the brilliancy of the leader. This gives a truer measure for the people’s final assessment. Babylon plundered diminishes Alexander, Rome enchained diminishes Caesar, Jerusalem slain diminishes Titus. Tyranny follows the tyrant. It is a tragedy for a man to leave behind him darkness in his own image.

V

The Quid Obscurum* of Battles

Everyone is familiar with the first phase of this battle; a confused, uncertain start, hesitant, ominous for both armies but more so for the English than for the French.

It had rained all night. The ground was rutted by the downpour. Here and

there water had gathered in depressions on the plain as if in bowls. In certain places the supply and munitions carts were mired up to their axles, the girth straps on the harnessings dripped with liquid mud. If the wheat and

rye trampled down by this vast throng on the move had not filled in the ruts and laid a bedding beneath the wheels, all movement would have been impossible, particularly in the vales around Papelotte.

The whole thing got off to a late start. Napoleon, as we have already

explained, was in the habit of holding all the artillery in his hand like a pistol, aiming it now at one point of the battlefield, now at another, and he preferred to wait until the horse batteries could manoeuvre and gallop freely. For this, the sun needed to come out and dry the soil. But the sun did not come out. This was no repetition of the Austerlitz experience. When the first cannon was fired the English general Colville looked at his watch and noted that it was eleven thirty-five.

The action began with a furious attack, more furious perhaps than the

emperor would have wished, by the French flank on Hougomont. At the same time Napoleon attacked the centre by hurling Quiot’s brigade at La Haie-Sainte, and Ney pushed the French right flank forward against the English left flank, which was anchored on Papelotte.

The attack on Hougomont was something of a feint. The plan was to lure

Wellington, to draw him to the left. This plan might have succeeded had the four companies of English Guards and the brave Belgians of Perponcher’s division not stoutly defended the position, and Wellington, instead of massing his troops there, was able to send no more than an additional four companies of Guards and one Brunswick battalion as sole reinforcements.

The attack on Papelotte by the French right flank was completely

genuine. Overwhelm the English left flank, cut off the road to Brussels, bar the way against any Prussians who might turn up, storm Mont-St-Jean, drive Wellington back on Hougomont, then Braine-l’Alleud, then Hal, nothing could be more clear-cut. Apart from a few hitches, this attack succeeded. Papelotte was taken. La Haie-Sainte was stormed.

One noteworthy detail. There were in the English infantry, particularly in

Kempt’s brigade, a great many raw recruits. In the face of our redoubtable infantry these young soldiers were valiant. Their inexperience proved dauntless, in particular they provided excellent service as sharpshooters: as sharpshooter, left somewhat to himself, the soldier becomes, so to speak,

his own general. These recruits displayed something of the French ingenuity and fury. This novice infantry had spirit. It was not to Wellington’s liking.

After the taking of La Haie-Sainte, the battle fluctuated.

There is in the course of this day an obscure period, between noon and

four o’clock. The midpoint of this battle is almost a blur and shares the murkiness of the fray. A semi-darkness sets in. Discernible in this fog are vast movements to and fro, a dizzying mirage, contemporary accoutrements of war almost unknown today – busbies and busby bags, flying sabretaches, cross-belts, grenade pouches, hussars’ dolmans, red boots with countless creases in them, heavy shakos trimmed with braid of gold or silver; the almost black infantry of Brunswick intermingled with the scarlet infantry of England, the English soldiers with thick white padded rolls round the armholes for epaulettes, the Hanoverian light horse with their oblong leather helmets with strips of brass and tails of red horse-hair, the Scotsmen with their bare knees and tartan kilts, the tall white gaiters of our grenadiers, belonging to paintings not to strategic lines, what Salvator Rosa needs, not what Gribeauval needs.

There is always a certain amount of turmoil that enters into a battle. Quid

obscurum, quid divinum.* Every historian tends to see what he wants to see in this muddle. Whatever the generals’ scheme might be, the clash of armed multitudes has incalculable repercussions. In action, the two plans of the two leaders impinge on each other and are distorted by each other. A certain part of the battlefield will devour more combatants than another, in the same way as more or less pervious soils will more or less quickly soak up water thrown on them. This means having to pour in more soldiers than you would have wanted to. An unforeseen drain on resources. Ribbon-like, the battle line wavers and winds, streams of blood follow illogical courses, the battlefronts are in constant flux, the regiments coming up or falling back forming promontories or inlets. All these reefs are continually moving in front of each other. Where the infantry was, the artillery arrives, where the artillery was, the cavalry rides up. Battalions are insubstantial vapours.

There was something there – look for it, and it is gone. Clear patches shift,

dark troughs advance and retreat, a kind of sepulchral wind drives on, forces back, swells, and disperses these tragic multitudes. What is a conflict? Oscillation. The fixity of a mathematical plan expresses a minute, not a day. To depict a battle, one of those powerful painters with a sense of chaos in their brush-stroke is needed. Rembrandt is better than van der Meulen. Accurate at noon, at three o’clock van der Meulen lies. Geometry is misleading. The hurricane alone is truthful. That is what gives Folard the right to contradict Polybius. Let us add, there is always a certain moment when the battle degenerates into fighting, loses cohesion and breaks up into countless individual incidents that, to borrow the expression of Napoleon himself, ‘belong rather to the biography of regiments than to the history of the army’. In this circumstance the historian obviously has the right to summarize. He can only capture the main outlines of the conflict, and it is not given to any one narrator, however conscientious he may be, to determine absolutely the shape of that dreadful cloud that we call a battle.

This, which is true of all great armed clashes, is particularly relevant to

Waterloo.

Nevertheless, at a certain moment in the afternoon the battle became

clear.

VI

Four o’Clock in the Afternoon

Around four o’clock the situation for the English army was serious. The Prince of Orange commanded the centre, Hill the right wing, Picton the left.

Fervent and intrepid, the Prince of Orange shouted to the Dutch-Belgians, ‘Nassau! Brunswick! Never retreat!’ Weakened, Hill had rallied to Wellington. Picton was dead. At the very moment the British captured from the French the colours of the 105th Line Infantry, the French killed General Picton with a bullet through the head. For Wellington, the battle had two key positions, Hougomont and La Haie-Sainte. Hougomont still held out but was in flames; La Haie-Sainte was taken. Of the German battalion defending it, only forty-two men survived. All but five officers were dead or

captured. Three thousand combatants had been massacred in that barnyard.

A sergeant of the English Guards, the foremost boxer in England, reputed by his companions to be invulnerable, was killed there by a little French drummer-boy. Baring was dislodged, Alten sabred. Several flags had been lost, one from Alten’s division and one from the Lüneburg battalion that was being carried by a prince of the Deux-Ponts family. The Scots Greys were no more; Ponsonby’s heavy dragoons had been hacked to pieces. That valiant cavalry were overwhelmed by Bro’s lancers and Travers’s cuirassiers; of twelve hundred horses six hundred were left; of three lieutenant-colonels two had been brought down, Hamilton wounded, Mater slain. Ponsonby had fallen, stuck through with a lance seven times. Gordon was dead. Marsh was dead. Two divisions, the fifth and the sixth, were destroyed.

Hougomont breached, La Haie-Sainte taken, there now existed but one

focal point, the centre. That point still held firm. Wellington reinforced it.

He summoned Hill, who was at Merbe-Braine, he summoned Chassé, who was at Braine-l’Alleud.

The centre of the English army, curved slightly inwards, very dense and

very compact, was strongly positioned. It occupied the plateau of Mont-St-Jean, with the village behind and the slope, at that time quite steep, in front of it. It was protected from the rear by the solid stone house, which in those days belonged to the Nivelles estate and marks where the roads intersect, a sixteenth-century pile so sturdy that cannon-balls rebounded off it without breaching it. All over the plateau the English had here and there hewn the hedges, cut embrasures in the hawthorn trees, placed the barrel of a cannon between two branches, crenellated bushes. Their artillery lay in ambush beneath the scrub. This Punic labour, undeniably sanctioned by war that permits ruse, was so well executed that Haxo, sent by the emperor at nine o’clock in the morning to reconnoitre enemy batteries, saw nothing and returned to tell Napoleon that there was no obstacle except for the two barricades blocking the roads to Nivelles and Genappe. It was just that time of year when the cereal crops are high. On the edge of the plateau a battalion of Kempt’s brigade, the 95th, lay in the rye, armed with carbines.

Thus protected and buttressed, the centre of the Anglo-Dutch army was

well positioned.

The risk in this position was the forest of Soignes, then bordering the

battlefield, with the Groenendael and Boitsfort lakes cutting across it. An army could not draw back into it without dispersing. Regiments would have disbanded immediately. The artillery would have come to grief in the boggy ground. In the opinion of a number of experts, disputed by others, any retreat here would have been a rout.

Wellington added to this centre one of Chassé’s brigades, brought in from

the right wing, and one of Vincke’s brigades, brought in from the left, plus Clinton’s division. To his English troops, Halkett’s regiments, Mitchell’s brigades, Maitland’s Guards, he gave as bulwarks and reinforcements the Brunswick infantry, Nassau’s contingent, Kielmansegge’s Hanoverians and Ompteda’s Germans. This gave him twenty-six battalions. ‘The right wing,’ as Charras says, ‘was brought in behind the centre.’ On the spot where now stands what is called ‘the Museum of Waterloo’ an enormous battery was screened behind sacks of earth. And in a dip in the terrain Wellington had Somerset’s Dragoon Guards, some fourteen hundred horse. It was the other half of that English cavalry, so justly renowned. With Ponsonby destroyed, there remained Somerset.

The battery position, which would have been almost a redoubt if

completed, was ranged behind a very low garden wall, hastily reinforced with sandbags and a big earth embankment. These defence works were unfinished; there was no time to stockade them.

Anxious but impassive, Wellington was mounted on horseback and

remained so the whole day, in the same position, a little to the fore of the old Mont-St-Jean windmill, which still exists, under an elm tree since bought for two hundred francs by an enthusiastic vandal of an Englishman who cut it down and carried it away. Here, Wellington was coldly heroic.

Bullets rained down. His aide-de-camp, Gordon, had just fallen at his side.

Pointing to an exploding shell, Lord Hill said to him, ‘My lord, what are your instructions, and what orders do you leave us, if you are killed?’ ‘To do as I do,’ replied Wellington. To Clinton he said laconically, ‘Hold this

place to the last man.’ The day was obviously turning out badly. Wellington exhorted his old companions of Talavera, Vitoria and Salamanca. ‘Boys, are we to give ground? Think of old England!’

Around four o’clock the English line fell back. All of a sudden only

artillery and sharpshooters were to be seen on the ridge of the plateau, the rest disappeared. Repulsed by French shells and bullets, the regiments retired to where the track leading to Mont-St-Jean farm still passes today, there was a withdrawal, the English battlefront disappeared, Wellington dropped back. ‘They’re starting to retreat!’ cried Napoleon.

VII

Napoleon in Good Humour

Though ill and uncomfortable on horseback because of a painful indisposition, the emperor had never been in such good humour as on that day. Ever since morning his had been a smiling inscrutability. On the eighteenth of June that deep, marmoreally masked soul beamed blindly. The man who had been grim at Austerlitz was cheerful at Waterloo. Those with the greatest destinies to fulfil often make these mistakes. Our joys are illusory. The supreme smile belongs to God.

‘Ridet Caesar, Pompeius flebit,’* said the soldiers of the Fulminata

legion. Pompey was not to weep this time, but Caesar certainly laughed.

Even the night before, at one o’clock, riding out with Bertrand in rain and

storm to reconnoitre the hills around Rossomme, he was satisfied to see the long line of English camp fires illuminating the horizon all the way from Frischemont to Braine-l’Alleud, and felt that destiny, summoned to meet him on this field at Waterloo, was keeping its appointment. He had halted his horse and remained for some time motionless, gazing at the lightning, listening to the thunder, and this fatalist was heard to blurt out in the darkness these mysterious words, ‘We are in accord.’ Napoleon was mistaken. They were no longer in accord.

Not one moment’s sleep had he snatched. For him every second of that

night had been marked by joy. He went all along the picket line, stopping

here and there to speak to the sentries. At half-past two, close to Hougomont wood, he heard the tread of a column on the march. For a moment he thought it was Wellington retreating. He said to Bertrand, ‘It’s the English rear-guard starting to decamp. I shall take prisoner the six thousand Englishmen who have just arrived at Ostend.’ He talked expansively. He had regained the zest of that first of March landing when he showed off to the grand-marshal the enthusiastic peasant in the Juan Gulf, crying, ‘You see, Bertrand, reinforcements already!’ On the night of the seventeenth to the eighteenth of June he railed against Wellington. ‘That poor Englishman needs to be taught a lesson,’ said Napoleon. The rain intensified. Thunder rolled as the emperor spoke.

At half-past three in the morning he lost one illusion: officers sent out on

reconnaissance told him the enemy was not engaged in any movement.

Nothing stirred. Not one camp fire had gone out. The English army was sleeping. The silence on earth was profound. The only sound was in the heavens. At four o’clock a peasant was brought to him by the scouts. This peasant had served as guide to a brigade of English cavalry, probably Vivian’s brigade, on its way to take up position in the village of Ohain on the far left. At five o’clock two Belgian deserters informed him they had just left their regiment and the English army was waiting to do battle. ‘So much the better!’ exclaimed Napoleon. ‘I’d rather trounce them than drive them back.’

In the morning he dismounted in the mud on the slope at the corner of the

Plancenoit road and had a kitchen table and a straw-bottomed chair brought to him from Rossomme farm, sat down with a truss of hay for a carpet and spread out on the table his map of the battlefield, saying to Soult, ‘A pretty chequerboard!’

After the rains during the night the supply convoys, mired in the rutted

roads, failed to arrive in the morning. The French soldier had not slept, was wet and hungry. This did not prevent Napoleon from declaring cheerfully to Ney, ‘The chances are ninety per cent in our favour.’ At eight o’clock the emperor’s breakfast was brought to him. He had invited a number of generals. During breakfast it was said that Wellington had been at a ball

held in Brussels by the Duchess of Richmond the night before last, and Soult, the tough man of war with the face of an archbishop, said, ‘The ball’s today.’ The emperor had bantered with Ney, who said, ‘Wellington won’t be so foolish as to wait for Your Majesty.’ This was in any case his usual way. ‘He joked readily,’ says Fleury de Chaboulon. ‘He was essentially playful by nature,’ says Gourgaud. ‘He was full of quips, more droll than witty,’ says Benjamin Constant. It is worth insisting on this giant’s light-heartedness. It was he who called his grenadiers ‘the grousers’; he pinched their ears; he pulled their moustaches. ‘The emperor did nothing but play pranks on us,’ one of them commented. On the twenty-seventh of February during the clandestine crossing from the island of Elba to France, the French brig-of-war Le Zéphyr met on the open sea the brig L’Inconstant on which Napoleon was hiding, and asked L’Inconstant for news of Napoleon.

Still wearing in his hat the white and purple cockade with a bee motif that he had adopted on the isle of Elba, the emperor laughingly seized the loud-hailer, and answered for himself, ‘The emperor is in fine fettle.’ A man who laughs like that is on familiar terms with history in the making. Napoleon had several of these bouts of laughter during his breakfast at Waterloo. After the meal he ruminated for some quarter of an hour, then two generals sat on the truss of straw, pen in hand and sheet of paper on their knees, and the emperor dictated to them the order of battle.

At nine o’clock when the French army deployed – five columns moving

forward in staggered formation, the divisions in two lines and the artillery between the brigades, with music leading the march into battle and setting the pace with drum rolls and trumpet blasts, a mighty, vast, joyous sea of helmets, sabres and bayonets along the skyline – the emperor was stirred and twice exclaimed, ‘Magnificent! Magnificent!’

Between nine o’clock and half-past ten the entire army, incredible as it

may seem, took up position. They were drawn up in six lines, creating ‘the figure of six Vs’, to quote the emperor. A few moments after the formation of the battlefront, amid that profound silence before the storm that precedes engagements, the emperor saw the three batteries of twelve-pounders, detached on his orders from the three corps of d’Erlon, Reille and Lobau,

go rolling by, destined to begin the action by pounding Mont-St-Jean where the Nivelles and Genappe roads intersect; and tapping Haxo on the shoulder, he said to him, ‘There go twenty-four beauties, general.’

Confident of the outcome, he had encouraged with a smile, as they

passed before him, the 1st Corps company of sappers, detailed by him to barricade Mont-St-Jean as soon as the village was taken. All this serenity only gave way to an expression of superior pity: seeing on his left, at a spot where a large tomb now stands, those admirable Scots Greys massing with their superb horses, he said, ‘What a shame!’

Then he mounted his own horse, rode up in front of Rossomme, and

chose for his observation post a narrow grassy ridge to the right of the Genappe–Brussels road, his second position during the battle. The third position, taken up at seven o’clock in the evening, between La Belle-Alliance and La Haie-Sainte, was a dangerous one. It was on quite a high hillock, which still exists, and behind which the Guard was massed in a dip in the plain. Around this hillock, cannon-balls ricocheted off the paved road right up to Napoleon. As at Brienne, he had bullets and grapeshot whistling over his head. From almost the very spot where his horse’s hoofs had been, pitted cannon-balls, old sabre blades and shapeless projectiles consumed with rust have been retrieved. Scabra rubigine.* A few years ago a sixty-pound bombshell was unearthed, still charged with explosive, with its fuse broken off flush with the shell’s surface. It was in this last position that the emperor said to his guide Lacoste, a resentful and terrified peasant strapped to a hussar’s saddle who kept wheeling round at every discharge of canister-shot and trying to hide behind him, ‘Idiot! this is disgraceful, you’re going to get yourself killed, shot in the back.’ Digging into the sand on the friable slopes of this hillock, the author of these lines has himself found the disintegrating remains of the neck of a bomb after forty-six years’ corrosion, and old fragments of iron that snapped like elder-twigs between his fingers.

As everyone knows, the undulations of the variously sloping plains

where the engagement between Napoleon and Wellington took place are no longer what they were on the eighteenth of June 1815. By taking from this

mournful field what was used to raise a monument to it its true relief has been obliterated, and history, baffled, no longer recognizes the place. For the sake of glorifying it, it has been disfigured. On seeing Waterloo again two years later, Wellington exclaimed, ‘My battlefield has been altered!’ Where the great pyramid of earth surmounted by the lion is today, there was a ridge that fell away at a negotiable gradient towards the Nivelles road, but on the other side, towards the Genappe road, was virtually an escarpment.

The height of this escarpment can still be measured by the height of the two great burial sites that rise up on either side of the Genappe–Brussels road: one on the left, the English grave, and one on the right, the German grave.

There is no French grave. For France, the whole of this plain is a burial place. Thanks to the thousands upon thousands of cartloads of earth employed for the mound, one hundred and fifty feet in height and half a mile in circumference, the approach to the Mont-St-Jean plateau is now a gentle rise. On the day of the battle it was a steep and difficult climb, especially on the side of La Haie-Sainte. So sharply did the ground rise there that the English cannon could not see below them the farm at the bottom of the vale, on which the fighting centred. On the eighteenth of June

1815 the rains had made this steepness even more abrupt, mud complicated the ascent, and not only was it a climb but the climbers were floundering in the mire. Along the crest of the plateau ran a kind of trench that a distant observer could not have suspected.

What was this trench? Let us explain. Braine-l’Alleud is a Belgian

village, Ohain is another. These villages, both of them concealed in the folds of the landscape, are connected by a lane about four miles long that crosses a rolling plain, often running into hills and cutting through them like a furrow, which means that at certain points this route is a gully. In 1815, as today, this lane ran across the ridge of the Mont-St-Jean plateau between the two paved roads to Genappe and Nivelles. Only, today it is flush with the plain. Then, it was a sunken road. Its two embankments have been removed to build the monument hill. Along most of its route this lane was, and still is, a trench; a trench sometimes a dozen feet deep, and whose too precipitous banks would collapse in places, particularly in winter, under

heavy downpours. There were accidents. The road was so narrow at the Braine-l’Alleud end that a passer-by was crushed by a cart there, as attested by a stone cross standing near the graveyard, which gives the name of the dead man, ‘Monsieur Bernard Debrye, merchant at Brussels’, and the date of the accident, ‘February 1637’.* It ran so deep across the Mont-St-Jean plateau that a peasant, Mathieu Nicaise, was buried under a landslip in 1783, as attested by another stone cross, the top of which disappeared in the clearances but whose overturned pedestal can still be seen today on the grassy slope on the left-hand side of the road between La Haie-Sainte and Mont-St-Jean farm.

On a day of battle this sunken road of which there was no warning,

running along the edge of the Mont-St-Jean ridge – a ditch at the top of the escarpment, a hidden rut in the ground – was invisible, that is to say, dire.

VIII

The Emperor Asks His Guide Lacoste a Question

So on the morning of Waterloo, Napoleon was feeling pleased.

He had reason to be. The battle plan he had devised, as we have

established, was indeed admirable.

Once the battle had started, the very different turn that events had taken –

the resistance of Hougomont, the tenacity of La Haie-Sainte, Bauduin killed, Foy put out of action, the unexpected wall against which Soye’s brigade had dashed itself, Guilleminot’s fatal blunder in having neither shot nor gunpowder pouches, the batteries floundering in the mud, the fifteen unescorted guns toppled by Uxbridge into a sunken road, the limited effect of the bombs falling on the English lines – embedding themselves in the rain-sodden ground and only succeeding in producing volcanoes of mud so that grapeshot turned into a splattering; the futility of Piré’s show of force on Braine-l’Alleud – all that cavalry, fifteen squadrons, more or less wiped out; the English right wing ineffectually harassed, the left wing ineffectually breached; Ney’s strange misunderstanding in massing, instead of deploying in echelon formation, the four divisions of the 1st Corps, ranks

twenty-seven deep with fronts of two hundred men thus exposed to artillery fire, the terrifying inroads into these masses made by cannon-balls, the attack columns divided, the broadside battery suddenly revealed on their flank; Bourgeois, Donzelot and Durutte placed in jeopardy, Quiot repulsed; that Herculean graduate of the Polytechnic School Lieutenant Vieux wounded while hacking with an axe at the gate of La Haie-Sainte under plunging fire from the English barricade across the sharp bend in the Genappe–Brussels road; Marcognet’s division trapped between infantry and cavalry, shot down in the rye at point-blank range by Best and Pack and put to the sword by Ponsonby; the Prince of Saxe-Weimar, whose seven-gun battery had been spiked, holding and retaining Frischemont and Smohain despite Comte d’Erlon; the 105th’s colours captured, the 45th’s colours captured, that Prussian black hussar arrested by the scouts of a flying column of three hundred light cavalry reconnoitring between Wavre and Plancenoit, the disquieting things this prisoner had said, Grouchy’s delay, the fifteen hundred men killed in less than an hour in the orchard at Hougomont, the eighteen hundred men mown down in even less time round La Haie-Sainte – all these ominous incidents, passing before Napoleon like the clouds of battle, had barely troubled his gaze and cast no shadow on the certitude in that imperial face. Napoleon was used to looking at war steadily. He never counted the cost in the heart-rending detail of its individual numbers. Numbers mattered little to him, provided they gave this total: victory. It did not alarm him that things should not go according to plan in the early stages; believing as he did that he was master and owner of the outcome, he could wait, assuming that he was beyond question, and he treated destiny as his equal. He seemed to say to fate: You would not dare.

Half light, half shadow, Napoleon felt protected in acting for the good

and tolerated in doing wrong. He had in his favour, or thought he had, a connivance, one might almost say, a complicity of events, equivalent to antiquity’s invulnerability.

Yet anyone with Beresina, Leipzig and Fontainebleau behind him might

well have been wary of Waterloo. A mysterious scowl is growing visible in the far reaches of the sky.

The moment when Wellington fell back, Napoleon felt a thrill. He

suddenly saw the Mont-St-Jean plateau emptying and the English front disappearing. Their army was rallying, but not in view. The emperor half rose in his stirrups. The gleam of victory flashed in his eyes.

Wellington cornered in the forest of Soignes, and destroyed – this was the

ultimate overthrow of England by France. It was Crécy, Poitiers, Malplaquet and Ramillies avenged. The man of Marengo was cancelling out Agincourt.

Reflecting on this tremendous change of fortune, the emperor then swept

his field-glasses one last time over every part of the battlefield. His Guard, standing at attention behind him, gazed up at him with a kind of veneration.

He was turning things over in his mind. He examined the slopes, noted the inclines, scrutinized the clumps of trees, the patch of rye, the path. He seemed to be counting every bush. He gazed with some intentness at the two English barricades blocking the roads, two huge ramparts of felled trees: one on the Genappe road above La Haie-Sainte, armed with two cannons – of the entire English artillery these alone could see the floor of the battlefield; and one on the Nivelles road where the Dutch bayonets of Chassé’s brigade glinted. He noticed near this barricade the old white-painted chapel of St Nicolas that stands at the corner of the road that cuts across towards Braine-l’Alleud. He leaned over and spoke in an undertone to his guide Lacoste. The guide gave a negative, probably perfidious, shake of the head.

The emperor straightened up again and pondered.

Wellington had withdrawn. It only remained to complete this withdrawal

by extirpation.

Turning round abruptly, Napoleon dispatched a courier to ride to Paris at

full gallop with the news that the battle was won.

Napoleon was one of those geniuses from which lightning strikes.

He had just found his thunderbolt.

He gave the order to Milhaud’s cuirassiers to take the Mont-St-Jean

plateau.

IX

The Unexpected

They numbered three thousand five hundred. They formed a front over half a mile long. They were giant men on colossal horses. They were twenty-six squadrons and they had behind them for support Lefebvre-Desnouettes’s division, the one hundred and six elite gendarmes, the light cavalry of the Guard, eleven hundred and ninety-seven men, and the lancers of the Guard, eight hundred and eighty lances. They wore helmets without plumes and cuirasses of wrought steel, with horse-pistols in their saddle holsters and the long sabre-sword. That morning the whole army had admired them when at nine o’clock, with trumpets sounding and all the bands playing ‘Veillons au salut de l’empire’, they had come in a dense column, one of their batteries on one flank, the other at their centre; and deploying in two ranks, between the Genappe road and Frischemont, had taken up their battle position in that strong second line so astutely drawn up by Napoleon which, with Kellermann’s cuirassiers on its far left and Milhaud’s cuirassiers on the far right, had, so to speak, two wings of steel.

Aide-de-camp Bernard brought them the emperor’s order. Ney drew his

sword and placed himself at their head. The enormous squadrons set off.

It was a magnificent spectacle.

All this cavalry with sabres raised, standards flying and trumpets

sounding, in column by division formation, moving simultaneously as one, with the precision of a bronze battering-ram opening a breach, descended the hill of La Belle-Alliance, plunged into the fearsome depths where so many had already fallen, disappeared in the smoke, then emerging from that obscurity reappeared on the other side of the vale, still massed in close array, riding at full trot through a hail of grapeshot bursting over them, up the dreadful mud slope of the Mont-St-Jean plateau. Up they rode, solemn, menacing, imperturbable. In the intervals of musket and artillery fire could be heard that great thundering of hoofs. As there were two divisions, there were two columns, with Wathier’s division on the right and Delort’s on the left. From a distance they looked like two huge adders of steel streaking

towards the crest of the plateau. This thing moved through the battle like something supernatural.

Nothing like it had been seen since the heavy cavalry’s capture of the

great redoubt at Borodino. Murat was not here, but Ney was again present.

This mass seemed to have turned into a monster and to have but a single soul. Glimpsed through the occasional rift in a vast fog of smoke, each squadron rippled and bulged like a polyp ring. A jumble of helmets, cries, sabres, a turbulent bounding of horses’ rumps amid cannon and fanfare – a terrible, disciplined tumult; the cuirasses on top of this like scales on the hydra.

This seems a chronicle of another age. Something similar to this vision

appeared no doubt in the old Orphic epics telling of centaurs, those ancient hybrids, those giant creatures with human faces and equine breasts who scaled Olympus at a gallop, horrible, invulnerable, sublime: gods and beasts.

By a bizarre numerical coincidence, twenty-six battalions were to meet

these twenty-six squadrons. Calm, silent, motionless, behind the crest of the plateau, in the shadow of their concealed battery, in thirteen square formations, two battalions to a square, arranged in two lines, seven in the first, six in the second, with rifle butts to their shoulders, aiming at what was about to appear, the English infantry lay in wait. They could not see the cuirassiers and the cuirassiers could not see them. They listened to this rising tide of men. They heard the swelling sound of the three thousand horse, the alternate and symmetric beat of their cantering hoofs, the rattle of the cuirasses, the clinking of the sabres and a kind of mighty fierce breathing. There was a terrible silence, then suddenly a long row of raised arms brandishing sabres appeared over the ridge, and helmets and trumpets and standards, and three thousand grey-mustachioed heads shouting, ‘Long live the emperor!’ All this cavalry surged on to the plateau, and it was like the arrival of an earthquake.

All at once tragedy struck: on the English left, our right, the head of the

column of cuirassiers reared up with a frightful clamour. Just when they reached the top of the ridge, riding furiously, totally bent on destruction in

their headlong charge on the squares and the cannon, the cuirassiers had noticed a trench, a death trap, lying between them and the English. It was the sunken road to Ohain.

This was a moment of horror. There, directly under the horses’ hoofs,

twelve feet deep between the double embankment, yawned the unexpected ravine. The second line drove the first into it, and the third drove the second. The horses reared then lunged backwards, landed on their rumps, slid with all four legs in the air, unseating and flattening their riders; unable to reverse, the whole column solely a projectile, the impetus gathered to trample the English now trampling the French. The inexorable ravine could only capitulate when filled. Riders and horses rolled pell-mell into the pit, crushing each other, together forming but one flesh, and when this trench was filled with living men they were trodden underfoot and the rest were able to pass. Almost a third of Dubois’s brigade fell into that abyss.

This is when the battle started to be lost.

One local tradition, obviously exaggerating, says two thousand horses

and fifteen hundred men were entombed in the Ohain sunken road. This figure probably includes all the other dead bodies thrown into this pit the day after the battle.

Let us note in passing that it was this Dubois brigade, now meeting with

such disaster, that in another charge an hour earlier had captured the standard of the Lüneburg battalion.

Before ordering this charge by Milhaud’s cuirassiers, Napoleon had

scanned the terrain but had not been able to see the sunken road, which did not show up even as a line in the surface of the plateau. Alerted nevertheless and made wary by the little white chapel that stands on the corner where it meets the Nivelles road, he had probably asked the guide Lacoste whether there might be some obstacle. The guide had answered no. It might almost be said, that shake of a peasant’s head was Napoleon’s undoing.

Yet other disasters were destined to occur. Was it possible Napoleon

might have won that battle? We say no. Why? Because of Wellington?

Because of Blücher? No. Because of God. Bonaparte victorious at Waterloo was no longer in the rubric of the nineteenth century. Another chapter of

history was now in the making in which Napoleon no longer had any place.

Events had long ago indicated their lack of goodwill. It was time for this immense man to fall.

The inordinate weight of this man was disturbing the balance of human

destiny. This individual alone counted for more than the rest of the world put together. These excessive quantities of human vitality concentrated in a single person – the world going to one man’s head – would be fatal to civilization if it were to continue. The moment had come for the incorruptible supremacy of natural justice to intervene. The principles and elements on which depend the normal gravitations within both the moral order and that of the physical world were probably protesting. The stench of spilled blood, cemeteries filled to overflowing, weeping mothers – these make an unanswerable case. When the earth is glutted, mysterious groanings that emerge from the shadows are heard in the unfathomable abyss.

Napoleon had been denounced in the realms of the infinite and his

downfall had been decided. He was an inconvenience to God.

Waterloo is no battle. It is a change of front in the universe.

X

The Mont-St-Jean Plateau

The battery revealed itself at the same time as the ravine.

Sixty cannons and the thirteen squares fired at the cuirassiers at close

range. The intrepid General Delort gave the English battery the military salute.

All the English flying artillery had galloped back inside the squares. The

cuirassiers did not even pause. The sunken road disaster had taken its toll but had not daunted them. They were men whose courage increases as their numbers diminish.

Wathier’s column alone had suffered in the disaster. Delort’s column,

which Ney had ordered to veer to the left, as though sensing the pitfall, arrived intact.

The cuirassiers hurled themselves on the English squares. Riding flat out,

no reining back, sabres clamped between teeth, pistols in hand, such was the attack. There are moments in battle when the soul so hardens the man, the soldier changes into a statue, when all this flesh turns to granite. The English battalions under furious assault stood fast. So what followed was terrifying.

The English squares were attacked on all sides simultaneously. A frenzied

whirl enveloped them. The infantry remained coldly impassive. The first rank, kneeling, met the cuirassiers with their bayonets, the second rank fired on them. Behind the second rank the gunners charged their cannons, the front of the square opened up allowing a blast of grapeshot through, then closed again. The cuirassiers replied by pressing on. Their huge horses reared, took the ranks in their stride, leapt over the bayonets and came down, gigantic as they were, in the middle of these four living walls. The cannon-balls ripped through the cuirassiers, the cuirassiers made breaches in the squares. Rows of men disappeared, crushed under the horses.

Bayonets were plunged into the bellies of these centaurs. Hence the hideous wounds of a kind perhaps not seen elsewhere. This frenzied cavalry having taken its toll on them, the squares closed up with no failure of nerve. With inexhaustible supplies of grapeshot, they created explosions in their assailants’ midst. The face of this battle was monstrous. These squares were no longer battalions, they were craters. These cuirassiers were no longer cavalry, they were a storm. Each square was a volcano attacked by a cloud.

Lava strove against thunderbolts.

From the very first of these onslaughts, the square on the extreme right,

the most exposed of all, being out on a limb, was almost annihilated. It was formed of the 75th Regiment of Highlanders. As the killing went on around him, the bagpiper in the middle, with his eyes downcast in profound heedlessness, his melancholy gaze filled with the reflection of forests and lakes, sat on a drum with the bag under his arm, playing the Highland airs.

These Scotsmen died thinking of Ben Lothian, as the Greeks died remembering Argos. The sword of a cuirassier, lopping off the bag and the arm that held it, put an end to the song by killing the singer.

Relatively few in number, and reduced by the trench catastrophe, the

cuirassiers were up against almost the entire English army here, but they excelled themselves, each man the equal of ten. Meanwhile, some Hanoverian battalions gave ground. Wellington saw this and his thoughts turned to his cavalry. Had Napoleon’s thoughts at that same moment turned to his infantry, he would have won the battle. This oversight was his great fatal mistake.

All of a sudden the cuirassiers, who had been the assailants, found

themselves assailed. The English cavalry was at their back. Before them, the squares, behind them, Somerset, that is to say fourteen hundred Dragoon Guards. Somerset had Dornberg with the German light horse on his right, and on his left Trip with the Belgian carabineers. Attacked on their flank and head-on, before and behind, by infantry and cavalry, the cuirassiers had to defend themselves on all sides. What did they care? They were a whirlwind. Their valour was beyond words.

Furthermore, they had the battery still thundering away behind them. It

must have been so, for these men to have been wounded in the back. One of their cuirasses, holed by a biscayen ball in the left shoulder plate, is in the collection of the so-called Waterloo Museum. For such Frenchmen, no less than such Englishmen were required.

It was no longer a fray, it was a darkness, a fury, a vertiginous rage of

souls and spirits, a hurricane of flashing swords. In an instant the fourteen hundred Dragoon Guards were no more than eight hundred. Fuller, their lieutenant-colonel, was killed. Ney brought up Lefebvre-Desnouettes’s lancers and light horse. The Mont-St-Jean plateau was captured, recaptured, captured again. The cuirassiers relinquished the cavalry and returned to the infantry, or rather that whole tremendous throng was engaged in close combat, none letting go of the other. The squares still held firm. There were twelve assaults. Ney had four horses killed under him. Half the cuirassiers remained on the plateau. This fighting went on for two hours.

The English army was deeply shaken by it. There is no doubt that had

they not been weakened in their first assault by the disaster at the sunken road the cuirassiers would have overwhelmed the centre and decided the

victory. This extraordinary cavalry struck terror in Clinton, who had lived through Talavera and Badajoz. Three-quarters vanquished, Wellington expressed a hero’s admiration. ‘Splendid!’* he said under his breath.

The cuirassiers destroyed seven of the thirteen squares, seized or spiked

sixty guns and captured from the English regiments six flags, which three cuirassiers and three light cavalry of the Guard brought to the emperor in front of the farm at La Belle-Alliance.

Wellington’s situation had worsened. This strange battle was like a

ferocious duel between two wounded men who, while still fighting and holding out against each other, are both bleeding to death. Which of the two will be the first to fall?

The struggle for the plateau continued.

How far did the cuirassiers get? No one could rightly say. What is certain

is that on the day after the battle a cuirassier and his horse were found dead in a weighbridge structure at Mont-St-Jean, at the very point where the four roads from Nivelles, Genappe, La Hulpe and Brussels meet and intersect.

This horseman had passed right through the English lines. One of the men who found the body still lives at Mont-St-Jean. His name is Dehaze. He was eighteen years old at the time.

Wellington felt the scales tipping against him. The crisis was

approaching.

The cuirassiers had not succeeded, in the sense that there had been no

breakthrough in the centre. With everyone holding the plateau, no one held it, and in short it remained for the most part with the English. Wellington had the village and the flat ground above, Ney had only the ridge and the slope. On both sides they seemed rooted in that lugubrious soil.

But the English were sinking – beyond recovery, it seemed. The

haemorrhaging of this army was horrible. Kempt on the left wing demanded reinforcements. ‘There are none,’ replied Wellington, ‘let him fight to the death!’ By a singular coincidence which reflects the exhaustion of both armies, almost at that same moment Ney asked Napoleon for additional infantry and Napoleon exclaimed, ‘Infantry! Where does he expect me to find any? Does he expect me to create infantry?’

Nevertheless, the English army was the more stricken of the two. The

furious charges of those great squadrons with their metal cuirasses and steely breasts had pounded the infantry. A few men around a flag marked where a regiment had been posted, many a battalion was now commanded by a mere captain or lieutenant. Alten’s division, which had already suffered so badly at La Haie-Sainte, was almost destroyed. The intrepid Belgians of van Kluze’s brigade lay strewn on the rye fields along the Nivelles road.

Almost nothing was left of those Dutch grenadiers who in 1811 fought alongside us in Spain against Wellington and in 1815 joined the English side to fight against Napoleon. The number of officers lost was considerable. Lord Uxbridge, who buried his leg the following day, had a shattered knee. While on the French side, in that assault by the cuirassiers, Delort, Lhéritier, Colbert, Donop, Travers and Blancard were put out of

action, on the English side Alten was wounded, Barnes was wounded, Delancey was killed, van Merlen killed, Ompteda killed, the whole of Wellington’s general staff decimated, and England had the worst of it in that bloody deadlock. The 2nd Regiment of Foot Guards had lost five lieutenant-colonels, four captains and three ensigns; the 1st Battalion of the 30th Infantry had lost twenty-four officers and one hundred and twelve soldiers; the 79th Highlanders had lost twenty-four officers wounded, eighteen officers dead, four hundred and fifty soldiers killed. The entire regiment of the Hanoverian Cumberland Hussars, commanded by Colonel Hake, who was later to be court-martialled and cashiered, had turned tail at the sight of the fighting and fled into the forest of Soignes, sowing panic all the way to Brussels. Transport vehicles, munitions trucks, baggage wagons, carts full of wounded casualties, seeing the French gaining ground and approaching the forest, made a dash for it. The Dutch who had been attacked by the French cavalry fuelled the alarm. From Vert-Coucou to Groenendael, over a distance of nearly five miles in the direction of Brussels, according to the testimony of eyewitnesses still alive today, the roads were choked with those fleeing. This panic was such that it spread to the Prince de Condé at Mechlin and to Louis XVIII at Ghent. Apart from the weak reserve force positioned behind the field hospital set up at Mont-

St-Jean farm, and Vivian and Vandeleur’s brigades that flanked the left wing, Wellington had no more cavalry. A number of batteries lay dismounted. These facts are acknowledged by Siborne. And Pringle, exaggerating the disaster, goes so far as to say that the Anglo-Dutch army was reduced to thirty-four thousand men. The Iron Duke remained calm, but his lips had paled. The Austrian commissioner Vincent and the Spanish commissioner Álava, present at the battle on the English general staff, thought the duke was defeated. At five o’clock Wellington drew out his watch and was heard to murmur these grim words, ‘Night or Blücher!’

It was at about that moment that a distant line of bayonets glinted on the

high ground above Frischemont.

That was the turning point in this huge drama.

XI

A Bad Guide for Napoleon, a Good Guide for Bülow

Napoleon’s bitter disappointment is common knowledge, the hoped-for Grouchy turning out to be Blücher. Death instead of life.

Fate takes these turns. You were expecting to rule the world; St Helena

comes into view.

If the shepherd boy who served as guide to Blücher’s second-in-

command Bülow had advised him to exit the forest above Frischemont instead of below Plancenoit, the shape of the nineteenth century might have been different. Napoleon would have won the battle of Waterloo. By any other route than the one below Plancenoit, the Prussian army would have come to a gully their artillery could not have negotiated, and Bülow would not have arrived.

Now, we have it from the Prussian general Muffling that an hour’s delay

and Blücher would have found Wellington no longer holding his own: ‘The battle was lost.’

Clearly, Bülow arrived just in time. He had, after all, been greatly

delayed. He had bivouacked at Dion-le-Mont and set out at first light. But the roads were impassable and his divisions had become mired. The ruts

came up to the cannons’ wheel hubs. Furthermore, he had to cross the Dyle over the narrow bridge at Wavre. The street leading to the bridge had been set on fire by the French, so the ammunition supplies and artillery vehicles, unable to pass between two rows of burning houses, had to wait until the fire was extinguished. It was midday before Bülow’s vanguard even reached Chapelle-St-Lambert.

Had the action begun two hours earlier, it would have been over by four

o’clock, and Blücher would have turned up at the battle won by Napoleon.

Such are these immense quirks of fate, commensurate with an infinite we cannot comprehend.

As early as midday the emperor with his telescope had been the first to

notice on the far horizon something that arrested his attention. He said, ‘I see a cloud over there that looks like troops to me.’ Then he asked the Duc de Dalmatie, ‘Soult, what do you see over towards Chapelle-St-Lambert?’ Training his field-glass, the marshal answered, ‘Four or five thousand men, sire. Obviously Grouchy.’ Yet whatever it was remained motionless in the haze. All the general staff’s field-glasses studied ‘the cloud’ pointed out by the emperor. Some said, ‘They’re columns resting.’ Most said, ‘They’re trees.’ The truth is, the cloud did not move. The emperor sent Domon’s division of light cavalry as a reconnaissance detachment to investigate.

Indeed, Bülow had not moved. His vanguard was very weak and could

do nothing. He was having to wait for the main body of the army, and he had been ordered to assemble his forces before entering the fray. But at five o’clock, seeing Wellington imperilled, with these remarkable words Blücher ordered Bülow to attack: ‘We must give the English army some air.’

Shortly afterwards, the divisions of Losthin, Hiller, Hake and Ryssel

deployed in front of Lobau’s corps, Prince William of Prussia’s cavalry emerged from the Bois de Paris, Plancenoit was in flames, and Prussian cannon-balls began to rain even on the ranks of the reserve guard behind Napoleon.

XII

The Guard

We know the rest: the intervention of a third army, the battle reconfigured, the thundering of eighty-six guns firing simultaneously, Pirch I turning up along with Bülow, Zieten’s cavalry led by Blücher himself, the French driven back, Marcognet swept from the Ohain plateau, Durutte dislodged from Papelotte, Donzelot and Quiot falling back, Lobau caught obliquely, a fresh battle unleashed on our shattered regiments as dusk fell; the whole English line resuming the offensive and pressing forward, the gigantic breach opened up in the French army, English grapeshot and Prussian grapeshot assisting each other; the slaughter; disaster on the front line, disaster on the flanks; the Guard entering the fray amid this dreadful destruction.

Sensing they were about to die they shouted, ‘Long live the emperor!’

There is nothing more stirring in history than the roar of these acclamations in the throes of death.

The sky had been overcast all day. Suddenly, at that very moment – it

was eight o’clock in the evening – the clouds on the horizon parted, letting the great sinister glow of the setting sun filter through the elms on the Nivelles road. At Austerlitz they had seen the sun rise.

For this final act, every battalion of the Guard was commanded by a

general. Friant, Michel, Roguet, Harlet, Mallet, Poret de Morvan were there. When, through the fog of this battle, the Grenadier Guards’ tall hats with their large eagle plates appeared, identical, aligned, steady, splendid, the enemy felt a respect for France. It was like seeing twenty Victories entering on the field of battle with their wings spread, and those who were the victors, believing themselves to be vanquished, fell back. But Wellington shouted, ‘Up, Guards, and at ’em!’ The red regiment of English Guards lying behind the hedges sprang up, a hail of grapeshot riddled the tricolour flag fluttering round our eagles, all charged at each other, and the final carnage began. The Imperial Guard sensed in the dusk the army falling back around it, and the immense panic of a rout; it heard the desperate

‘Every man for himself!’ that had replaced ‘Long live the emperor!’ And while those behind fled, they continued to advance, with more and more of them stricken and dying with every step they took. There were no falterers, no faint-hearts. The soldier in that troop was as much a hero as the general.

Not a man among them shirked that suicide.

Frenzied, with all the noble grandeur of death accepted, Ney put himself

in the way of every onslaught in that bloodbath. That is where he had his fifth horse killed under him. Sweating, with fire in his eyes, foam on his lips, his uniform unbuttoned, one of his epaulettes cut in half by a sabre stroke from a horseguard, his great-eagle plate dented by a bullet, bleeding, muddied, magnificent, a broken sword in his hand, he said, ‘Come and see how a marshal of France dies on the battlefield!’ But to no avail. He did not die. He was distraught and incensed. To Drouet d’Erlon he threw down this challenge, ‘Are you not going to get yourself killed?’ In the midst of all that artillery that was destroying a handful of men, he cried, ‘Is there nothing, then, for me! Oh! I wish all these English shells would strike me in the belly!’ Ill-fated man, you were saved for French bullets!

XIII

The Catastrophe

The rout behind the Guard was grim.

The army suddenly collapsed on all sides at once, at Hougomont, La

Haie-Sainte, Papelotte, Plancenoit. The cry of ‘Treachery!’ was followed by the cry of ‘Every man for himself!’ An army on the run is a thaw setting in.

Everything gives way, splits, cracks, wobbles, overturns, falls, jostles, hurries, hurtles on. Extraordinary disintegration. Ney borrows a horse, leaps on it, and without a cravat, hatless and swordless, stands astride the Brussels road, stopping both English and French. He tries to detain the army, he calls it back, he insults it, he grasps at the absconders. He is overwhelmed. The soldiers flee from him, shouting ‘Long live Marshal Ney!’ Two of Durutte’s regiments go back and forth, bewildered, as though tossed between the uhlans’ sabres and the fusillades of Kempt, Best, Pack

and Rylandt’s brigades. The worst of frays is a rout. Friends kill each other so as to make their escape. Squadrons and battalions dash against each other and disperse, a vast battle spume. Lobau at one end and Reille at the other are caught up in the surge. In vain does Napoleon form defence lines with what he has left of the Guard. In vain does he expend in a final effort the squadrons serving as his personal escort. Quiot retreats before Vivian, Kellermann before Vandeleur, Lobau before Bülow, Morand before Pirch, Domon and Subervie before Prince William of Prussia. Guyot, who led the emperor’s squadrons in their charge, falls under the feet of the English dragoons. Napoleon gallops along the line of fugitives, harangues, urges, threatens, entreats them. All those mouths that had shouted that morning ‘Long live the emperor!’ remain agape. They hardly recognize him. The Prussian cavalry, newly arrived, comes in hot pursuit, swoops, sabres, slashes, hacks, kills, exterminates. The draught animals bolt, the cannons flee. The soldiers of the artillery-train unhitch the ammunition wagons and use the horses to escape. Overturned wagons with their wheels in the air block the road and cause havoc. Men crush and trample one another, walk over the living and the dead. Arms flail. A dizzying multitude fills the roads, paths, bridges, plains, hills, valleys, woods, choked by this invasion of forty thousand men. Cries, desperation, knapsacks and guns tossed into the rye, swords used to slash a way through, no comrades now, no officers, no generals, indescribable terror. Zieten cutting France down at his leisure. The lions turned into hunted deer. Such was this flight.

At Genappe there was an attempt to turn and make a stand, to check the

rout. Lobau rallied three hundred men. The entrance to the village was barricaded, but at the first volley of Prussian artillery fire all fled again and Lobau was taken. That volley of fire can be seen today imprinted on the gable of an old brick farm building on the right-hand side of the road a few minutes before the entrance to Genappe. The Prussians fell on Genappe, no doubt infuriated at having so little proved themselves victors. Their pursuit was monstrous. Blücher gave the orders for slaughter. Roguet had set a macabre example by threatening with death any French grenadier who brought him a Prussian prisoner. Blücher outdid Roguet. Cornered in the

doorway of an inn at Genappe, the general of the Young Guard, Duhesme, surrendered his sword to a death’s-head hussar who took the sword and slew his prisoner. Victory ended with the assassination of the vanquished.

Let us punish, since history is ours: old Blücher brought dishonour on himself. This ferocity was the culmination of the disaster. The desperate rout continued, through Genappe, Quatre-Bras, Gosselies, Frasnes, Charleroi, Thuin, and only stopped at the frontier. Alas! And who was it that fled in this way? The Grand Army.

This madness, this terror, this collapse into ruin of the greatest bravery

that has ever amazed history – was this without cause? No. The shadow of an enormous right hand falls on Waterloo. It was the day of destiny. The power that exceeds man shaped that day. Hence the terrified furrow on those brows. Hence all those noble souls surrendering their swords. Those who had conquered Europe were completely cast down, having nothing more to say or do, sensing a terrible presence in that shadow. Hoc erat in fatis.* On that day the prospects of the human race changed. Waterloo is the pivot of the nineteenth century. The demise of the great man was essential to the advent of the great century. Someone who is not to be challenged took care of it. The heroes’ panic is understandable. The battle of Waterloo was not just a matter of cloud – it was a matter of meteorology. God intervened.

At nightfall in a meadow near Genappe, Bernard and Bertrand stopped a

man, grabbing hold of him by the skirt of his coat. Distraught, bemused, this desperado caught up in the rout and carried along this far had just dismounted, tucked the reins of his horse under his arm and, wild-eyed, was making his way back, alone, to Waterloo. It was Napoleon, still trying to keep going, immense somnambulist of this shattered dream.

XIV

The Last Square

Several squares of the Guard, steadfast in this tide of disorderly retreat, like rocks in flowing water, held out until nightfall. With darkness descending

and death too, resolute, they awaited that twofold obscurity and allowed it to close in on them. Isolated from the others and cut off from the army now scattered in every direction, each regiment died alone. To make this final stand they had taken up position, some on the Rossomme heights, others on the Mont-St-Jean plain. There, abandoned, vanquished, awesome, these grim squares died magnificently. Ulm, Wagram, Jena, Friedland, died with them.

At twilight, around nine o’clock in the evening, below the Mont-St-Jean

plateau, there was one left. In that fateful valley, at the foot of the slope the cuirassiers had climbed and that was now thronged with the massed English, under the converging fire of the victorious enemy’s artillery, under an appalling density of missiles, this square fought on. It was commanded by an unknown officer named Cambronne. At each discharge the square diminished, and countered. It replied to grapeshot with gunfire, its four walls continually contracting. Far away, fugitives pausing breathless for a moment listened in the shadows to that dismal diminishing thunder.

When this legion was no more than a handful, when their flag was no

more than a tatter; when, having used up all their bullets, their guns were no more than truncheons; when the heap of corpses was larger than the group left alive, there was among the victors a sort of sacred terror around these noblest of dying men, and the English artillery, pausing for breath, fell silent. It was a respite of sorts. These combatants had what seemed like spectres milling around them, silhouettes of men on horseback, the dark profiles of cannons, the white sky glimpsed through wheels and gun-carriages. The colossal death’s-head that heroes always glimpse through the smoke in the thick of battle advanced on them, and watched. Through the shades of dusk they could hear the artillery guns being loaded. The lighted linstocks formed a circle round them, like tigers’ eyes in the dark. All the gunners of the English batteries approached their cannons, and then, holding the moment of death suspended above these men, an English general, Colville according to some, Maitland according to others, his emotions stirred, shouted to them, ‘Brave Frenchmen, surrender!’ Cambronne replied, ‘Merde!’

XV

Cambronne

The French reader wishing to be respected, what may be the finest word a Frenchman has ever uttered cannot be repeated to him. It is forbidden to dump on history an instance of the sublime.

At our own risk and peril, we infringe this ban.

So among those giants there was one Titan: Cambronne.

To say that word, and then die. What could be nobler? For having the will

to do so is to die, and it was not this man’s fault if, fired on by cannons, he survived.

The man who won the battle of Waterloo was not Napoleon routed, it was

not Wellington buckling at four o’clock, in despair at five, it was not Blücher, who did not fight. The man who won the battle of Waterloo was Cambronne.

To hurl such a verbal thunderbolt at the bombshells that are killing you is

to be victorious!

To have this response to the catastrophe, to say this to destiny, to provide

this base for the future lion, to deliver this retort to the night rain, to Hougomont’s treacherous wall, to Ohain’s sunken road, to Grouchy’s delay, to Blücher’s arrival, to be sarcastic in the grave, to contrive to remain standing even after you have fallen, to send the European coalition packing in two syllables, to offer to kings those latrines already familiar to the Caesars, to make the basest of words the most elevated by combining it with the glory of France, to have the nerve to bring Waterloo to a close with Mardi Gras, to complement Leonidas with Rabelais, to sum up this victory in a last word that cannot be spoken, to lose on the battlefield and carry off the prize of history, after this carnage to have the last laugh – this is tremendous.

It is thumbing your nose at disaster! It reaches the heights of Aeschylean

grandeur!

Cambronne’s word is like a rupture. It is the rupturing of a breast with

disdain. It is an explosion caused by excess of anguish. Who was

victorious? Was it Wellington? No! Without Blücher he was lost. Was it Blücher? No! What Wellington had not begun, Blücher could not have finished. This Cambronne, this eleventh-hour extra, this unknown soldier, this infinitely small player in the war, senses there is an untruth here, more intensely distressing, an untruth in a catastrophe, and while he is bursting with rage he is offered this paltry thing, his life! How could he not react?

There they are, all the kings of Europe, the satisfied generals, the

thundering Jupiters, they number a hundred thousand victorious soldiers, and behind the hundred thousand a million; their cannons with their fuses lit stand gaping, they have the Imperial Guard and the Grand Army under their heel, they have just crushed Napoleon, and there is no one left but Cambronne. There is no one left to protest but this worm. He will protest.

So he searches for a word as a man searches for a sword. A spume rises within him, and this spume is the word. In the face of this extraordinary and undistinguished victory, in face of this victory with none victorious, this despairing man draws himself up. He suffers the enormity of it but he can see its emptiness. And he more than spits on it. And overwhelmed by numbers, by superior force and circumstance, he finds in his soul an expression: excrement! We repeat it. To say that, to do that, to light on that, is to be the victor!

At that fateful moment the spirit of the great days of the past entered that

unknown man. Cambronne alights on the word for Waterloo as Rouget de l’Isle alights on the ‘Marseillaise’, visited by inspiration from on high. An emanation of the divine whirlwind is released and these men are imbued with it, and they quiver, and one of them sings the supreme song, and the other utters the terrible cry. This word of titanic disdain Cambronne hurls not only at Europe in the name of the Empire – that would be of little consequence – he hurls it at the past in the name of the Revolution. It is heard, and the giants’ spirit of old is recognized in Cambronne. It could be Danton speaking, or Kléber roaring!

At that word from Cambronne, the English voice responded, ‘Fire!’ The

batteries blazed, the hill trembled, from every cannon issued a last dreadful belch of grapeshot; the immense smoke billowed, a dim whiteness under

the moonrise, and when the smoke cleared, there was nothing left. That formidable remnant had been annihilated. The Guard was dead. The four walls of the living redoubt lay on the ground, only the merest quiver detectable here and there among those bodies. And so it was that the French legions, greater than the Roman legions, expired on Mont-St-Jean, on the rain- and blood-soaked earth in the mournful ryefields, on the spot where Joseph, who drives the Nivelles mail-coach, now passes, at four o’clock in the morning, whistling and cheerfully lashing his horse.

XVI

Quot Libras in Duce?*

The battle of Waterloo is an enigma. It is as obscure to those who won it as it is to those who lost it. For Napoleon it was panic.† Blücher sees only gunfire. Wellington cannot make sense of it. Look at the reports. The accounts are confused, the commentaries muddled. Some mumble, others stammer. Jomini divides the battle of Waterloo into four phases. Muffling breaks it down into three acts. Although on a few points our opinion differs, Charras alone captured in his fine survey the distinctive features of this catastrophe of human genius grappling with divine chance. All the other historians are to some extent blinded, and their blindness leaves them groping in the dark. A blinding day indeed, with the collapse of the military monarchy, which to the great amazement of kings brought down all kingdoms with it, the downfall of might, the routing of war.

In this event, which bears the stamp of transcendent necessity, the role of

men counts for nothing.

To take Waterloo away from Wellington and Blücher, is that to deprive

England and Germany of anything? No. Neither illustrious England nor majestic Germany is called into question by the problem of Waterloo.

Thank heavens, nations are great regardless of the grim fortunes of war.

Neither England, nor Germany, nor France is defined by the scabbard.

During a period when Waterloo is no more than a clatter of sabres, over and beyond Blücher Germany has Goethe; over and beyond Wellington England

has Byron. A great intellectual dawn distinguishes our century, and in this advent of light England and Germany have their own magnificent radiance.

They have majesty because they think. The advancement they bring to civilization is intrinsic to them. It derives from themselves and not from an accident. Their greater power and influence in the nineteenth century are not founded on Waterloo. It is only barbarous peoples that suddenly flourish after a victory, such being the fleeting vanity of torrents swollen by a storm.

Civilized peoples, especially in our own times, neither rise nor fall by the good or bad fortune of a leader. Their specific weight within the human race results from something more than a conflict. Their honour, thank God, their dignity, their understanding, their genius, are not numbers that those gamblers the heroes and conquerors can throw into the lottery of battle.

Often a battle lost is progress gained. Less glory, more freedom. The drum falls silent, reason speaks. It is the game of loser wins. So let us discuss Waterloo dispassionately from both sides. Let us render to chance what is due to chance, and to God what is due to God. What is Waterloo? A victory?

No. A lottery. A lottery won by Europe at France’s expense. It was not really worth putting a lion there.

Besides, Waterloo is the strangest encounter in history. Napoleon and

Wellington. They are not enemies, they are opposites. Never did God, who delights in antithesis, set up a more striking contrast, a more extraordinary comparison. On the one hand, precision, foresight, analysis, prudence, retreat secured, reserves husbanded, a steady nerve, imperturbable method, strategy that makes the most of the terrain, tactics that balance battalions, carnage by the rule book, war regulated by the clock, nothing willingly left to chance, the old classic courage, absolute correctness. On the other hand, intuition, guesswork, military unorthodoxy, supernatural instinct, a fiery glance, something indefinable that has the eye of an eagle and strikes like a thunderbolt, extraordinary artfulness exercised with disdainful impetuosity, all the mysteries of a deep soul, an alliance with destiny, with river, plain, forest, hill summonsed and to some extent forced to obey, the despot extending his tyranny over the battlefield, trust in the stars combined with strategic skill, enhancing it, but in an unsettling way. Wellington was the

Barrême of warfare, Napoleon was its Michelangelo. And this time genius was defeated by calculation.

On both sides an arrival was expected. It was the accurate calculator who

succeeded. Napoleon expected Grouchy; he did not come. Wellington expected Blücher; he came.

Wellington is classic warfare taking its revenge. Bonaparte had

encountered it in Italy at the dawn of his career and magnificently defeated it. The old owl had fled before the young vulture. Time-honoured tactics had been not only routed, but outraged. Who was this twenty-six-year-old Corsican? What was the meaning of this glorious ignoramus who, with everything against him, nothing in his favour, without supplies, without munitions, without cannons, without shoes, almost without an army, with a handful of men against masses, kept hurling himself against a united Europe and preposterously winning impossible victories? Where did this devastating madman come from, who almost without pausing for breath, and playing the same hand in terms of the forces at his disposal, smashed the emperor of Germany’s five armies, one after the other, toppling Beaulieu after Alvinzi, Wurmser after Beaulieu, Melas after Wurmser, Mack after Melas? Who was this newcomer-to-war with the audacity of a luminary? The orthodox military establishment anathematized him even as they gave ground to him. Hence the implacable rancour of the old imperialism against the new, of the regular sabre against the flaming sword, and of chessboard thinking against genius. On the eighteenth of June 1815 that rancour had the last word, and under Lodi, Montebello, Montenotte, Mantua, Arcola, it wrote: Waterloo. Triumph of the undistinguished, pleasing to the majority. Destiny allowed this irony. When his sun was setting, Napoleon was confronted with a young Wurmser.

After all, you have only to give Wellington white hair, and you have

Wurmser.

Waterloo is a first-rate battle won by a second-rate commander.

What must be admired in the battle of Waterloo is England, English

steadfastness, English resolution, English blood. With all due respect, what

was superb about England in this instance was England herself. It was not her captain, it was her army.

Peculiarly ungrateful, Wellington declares in a letter to Lord Bathurst that

his army, the army that fought on the eighteenth of June 1815, was an ‘infamous army’. What does that grievous jumble of human remains buried in the fields of Waterloo think of that?

England has been too modest in relation to Wellington. To make

Wellington so great is to belittle England. Wellington is just a hero like any other. Those Scots Greys, those Horse Guards, those regiments of Maitland and Mitchell, that infantry of Pack and Kempt, that cavalry of Ponsonby and Somerset, those Highlanders playing their bagpipes under artillery fire, those battalions under Rylandt, those raw recruits who hardly knew how to handle a musket holding their own against the veteran troops of Essling and Rivoli, that is what is great. Wellington was tenacious, that was his virtue, and we do not begrudge him that, but the least of his footsoldiers and cavalry were just as staunch as he. The iron soldier is quite as good as the Iron Duke. As far as we are concerned, all our praise goes to the English soldier, the English army, the English people. If trophy there be, it is to England the trophy is due. The Waterloo memorial would be more legitimate if, instead of the figure of one man, the column raised to the skies the statue of a people.

But this great England will be annoyed by what we say. After her own

1688 and our 1789 she still cherishes the feudal illusion. She believes in heredity and hierarchy. This people that none surpasses in power and glory respects itself as a nation, not as the people. And as the people it willingly submits to authority and takes a lord for its leader. It lets the English workman be scorned, it lets the English soldier be flogged. Remember, at the battle of Inkerman, a sergeant who apparently saved the army could not be mentioned by Lord Raglan, as the English military hierarchy did not allow any hero below officer rank to be mentioned in a report.

What we admire above all in a conjuncture such as that of Waterloo is the

amazing ingenuity of chance. Night rain, the Hougomont wall, Ohain’s sunken road, Grouchy deaf to the cannon, Napoleon deceived by his guide,

Bülow reliably informed by his – the entire disaster is wonderfully orchestrated.

Let us be honest, all things considered, what happened at Waterloo was

more of a massacre than a battle.

Of all pitched battles Waterloo is the one with the smallest front in

relation to the number of combatants. Napoleon, three thousand three hundred yards; Wellington, two thousand two hundred yards; seventy-two thousand combatants on each side. It was from this density that the carnage resulted.

The following calculation has been made and this ratio established for

lives lost: at Austerlitz, French, fourteen per cent; Russians, thirty per cent; Austrians, forty-four per cent. At Wagram, French, thirteen per cent; Austrians, fourteen. At Borodino, French, thirty-seven per cent; Russians, forty-four. At Bautzen, French, thirteen per cent; Russians and Prussians, fourteen. At Waterloo, French, fifty-six per cent; Allies, thirty-one. Total for Waterloo, forty-one per cent. One hundred and forty-four thousand combatants; sixty thousand dead.

The field of Waterloo today has a peacefulness that belongs to the earth,

man’s impassive pedestal, and it looks like every other plain.

Yet at night a kind of visionary mist arises from it, and if some traveller

wanders there, if he looks, if he listens, if he dreams like Virgil before the fateful plains of Philippi, the haunting catastrophe grips him. That ghastly eighteenth of June comes to life again. The spurious monument hill disappears, that undistinguished lion vanishes, the battlefield regains its reality. Lines of infantry ripple over the plain, galloping charges sweep across the horizon. The terror-stricken dreamer sees the flash of sabres, the glint of bayonets, the flare of bombshells, the monstrous exchange of thunderous fire. He hears, like a dying rasp from deep in the grave, the indistinct clamour of the phantom battle. Those shadows are grenadiers, those glistenings are cuirassiers. This skeleton is Napoleon, that skeleton is Wellington. All this is no more, and still they clash and the fighting goes on.

And the gullies turn red, and the trees tremble, and there is fury even in the clouds. And all those untamed heights – Hougomont, Mont-St-Jean,

Frischemont, Papelotte, Plancenoit – appear in the gloom indistinctly crowned with tumults of spectres slaughtering each other.

XVII

Should Waterloo Be Regarded as a Good Thing?

There is a very respectable liberal school of thought that does not abhor Waterloo. We are not of that school. For us, only to its astoundment is Waterloo a day of liberty. That such an eagle should emerge from such an egg is most certainly unexpected.

Looked at from the point of view of its immediate aftermath, Waterloo is

meant to be a counter-revolutionary victory. It is Europe against France. It is Petersburg, Berlin and Vienna against Paris. It is the status quo against any initiative. It is the fourteenth of July 1789 attacked through the twentieth of March 1815. It is the monarchies taking action against the indomitable French mob. Finally to suppress that vast populace, in eruption now for twenty-six years, this was the dream. The Brunswicks, Nassaus, Romanoffs, Hohenzollerns, Habsburgs showing solidarity with the Bourbons. Divine right rides on the back of Waterloo. It is true that, the Empire having been despotic, by a natural reaction in the order of things royalty was bound to be liberal, and grudgingly, to the great regret of the victors, a constitutional order emerged from Waterloo. The fact is, revolution cannot be truly quelled and, being providential and absolutely inevitable, it keeps recurring: before Waterloo, with Bonaparte bringing down the old dynasties, after Waterloo, with Louis XVIII granting and submitting to the Charter. Bonaparte puts a coachman on the throne of Naples and a sergeant on the throne of Sweden, using inequality to demonstrate equality. Louis XVIII at St-Ouen countersigns the Declaration of the Rights of Man. If you want to understand what revolution is, call it Progress. And if you want to understand what progress is, call it Tomorrow.

Tomorrow comes into effect irresistibly, and does so even today. It always achieves its end by strange means. It employs Wellington to turn Foy, a mere soldier, into an orator. Foy falls at Hougomont and rises as a

politician. This is how progress operates. No such thing as a bad tool for this workman. Not to be deterred, he adapts to his divine task the man who bestrode the Alps and Père Élysée’s good old doddering invalid. He makes use of the gout-sufferer as well as the conqueror; of the conqueror abroad, the gout-sufferer at home. By cutting short the extirpation by the sword of the European monarchies, the effect of Waterloo was none other than to perpetuate the revolutionary enterprise in a different way. The swordsmen have finished, it is the turn of the thinkers. The century that Waterloo tried to halt walked right over it and continued on its way. That inauspicious victory was vanquished by liberty.

In short, and indisputably, what triumphed at Waterloo, what smiled on

Wellington, what brought him the baton of every marshal of Europe, including, it is said, the baton of a marshal of France, what gladly trundled the barrowloads of earth full of human remains to raise the lion mound, what triumphantly inscribed on that pedestal the date ‘18 June 1815’, what spurred Blücher in hacking the routed army to pieces, what loomed over France from the heights of the Mont-St-Jean plateau, as if over its prey, was the counter-revolution. It was the counter-revolution that murmured the infamous word ‘dismemberment’. Once it got to Paris, it saw the volcano at close hand, it felt the volcanic ash burning its feet, and it had second thoughts. It reverted to stammering about a charter.

Let us not see Waterloo for anything other than what it was. Not

intentionally liberal. The counter-revolution was inadvertently liberal just as, by a corresponding phenomenon, Napoleon was inadvertently revolutionary. On the eighteenth of June 1815, the mounted Robespierre was unseated.

XVIII

Another Outbreak of Divine Right

The end of dictatorship. A whole European system collapsed.

The Empire sank into a gloom resembling that of the dying Roman

world. Once again people looked into the abyss as in the days of the

barbarians. Only, the barbarism of 1815, which must be called by its own name, ‘counter-revolution’, was short-winded, soon ran out of breath and came to a standstill. Admittedly, tears were shed for the Empire, and heroes’ eyes shed them. If glory lies in the sword made sceptre, the Empire was glory itself. It cast over the earth all the light of which tyranny is capable: a sombre light. Let us go further: an obscure light. Compared with true daylight it is darkness. The dispelling of this darkness created the effect of an eclipse.

Louis XVIII returned to Paris. The ring dances of July the eighth blotted

out the revels of March the twentieth. The Corsican became the antithesis of the Béarnais. The flag on the dome of the Tuileries was white. Exile came to the throne. The pine table from Hartwell took its place in front of Louis XIV’s fleur-de-lys covered armchair. Bouvines and Fontenoy were spoken of as if they had happened only yesterday, and Austerlitz had become old news. Church and monarchy fraternized majestically. One of the most undisputed symbols of nineteenth-century society’s salvation was taken up throughout France and throughout the continent: Europe adopted the white cockade. Trestaillon was celebrated. The device non pluribus impar* reappeared in the stone rays representing a sun on the front of the barracks on the Quai d’Orsay. Where there had been an Imperial Guard was now the royal household guard. All heaped with unfitting victories and out of place amid these new developments, a little ashamed perhaps of Marengo and Arcola, the Arc du Carrousel made the best of it with a statue of the Duc d’Angoulême. A ghastly common grave in 1793, the Madeleine Cemetery, with the bones of Louis XVI and Marie-Antoinette lying in that dust, was now covered with jasper and marble. In the moat of Vincennes a tombstone sprang up, recalling the fact that the Duc d’Enghien had perished in the same month that Napoleon was crowned. Pope Pius VII, who solemnized that coronation very soon after that death, placidly blessed the downfall just as he had blessed the elevation. There was at Schönbrunn a little ghost, aged four, whom it was seditious to call the king of Rome. And these things happened, and these kings regained their thrones, and the master of Europe was put in a cage, and the old regime became the new regime, and all the

earth’s light and all the earth’s shadow changed places, because one afternoon on a certain summer’s day a shepherd said to a Prussian in the forest: Go this way, not that!

This 1815 was a kind of gloomy April. Old, insalubrious and poisonous

realities took on a new appearance. Untruth espoused 1789, divine right masked itself with a charter, fictions became constitutional; with Article 14 in their hearts, prejudices, superstitions and reservations took on a veneer of liberalism. Snakes changing their skin.

Man had been both magnified and diminished by Napoleon. During that

reign of glorious physical achievement, the ideal had been given the strange name of ideology. A grave imprudence in a great man, to deride the future.

The populace, however, that cannon fodder so fond of the cannon loader, kept looking to him. Where is he? What is he doing? ‘Napoleon’s dead,’ said a passer-by to a veteran of Marengo and Waterloo. ‘Napoleon dead!’ cried the soldier. ‘That’s how well you know him.’ The popular imagination threw down a challenge to this defeated man. After Waterloo there was dinginess at the heart of Europe. Napoleon’s demise left a great emptiness that long remained unfilled.

Kings stepped into this void. Old Europe took the opportunity to reform.

There was a Holy Alliance. Belle-Alliance!* the fateful field of Waterloo had said in anticipation.

Confronted with the presence of that old Europe recast, the features of a

new France took shape. Disparaged by the emperor, the future made its entry. On its brow was that star, liberty. The ardent eyes of young generations turned to it. Strangely, people were inspired both by that future, liberty, and by that past, Napoleon. Defeat increased the stature of the vanquished. Bonaparte overthrown seemed greater than Napoleon standing.

Those who had triumphed were scared. England had him guarded by Hudson Lowe, and France had him watched by Montchenu. His folded arms became the disquiet of monarchs. Alexander called him ‘my insomnia’. This fear stemmed from how much of the revolutionary there was in him. Which is what explains and excuses Bonapartist liberalism.

This spectre caused the old world to tremble. Kings reigned uneasily with the rock of St Helena on the horizon.

While Napoleon was dying at Longwood, the sixty thousand men who

had fallen in battle at Waterloo quietly rotted, and something of their peacefulness spread throughout the world. And out of this the Congress of Vienna made the treaties of 1815, and Europe called this the Restoration.

That is what Waterloo is.

But what does it matter to the infinite? All this storm, all this cloud, this

war, then this peace, all this shadow did not for an instant dim the gleam of that immense eye in which an aphid hopping from one blade of grass to another is equal to the eagle flying from belfry to belfry between the towers of Notre-Dame.

XIX

The Battlefield at Night

Let us return, as we must for this book, to that fateful battlefield.

On the eighteenth of June there was a full moon. This brightness

favoured Blücher’s ferocious pursuit, betrayed the fugitives’ traces, delivered up that hapless mass to the frenzied Prussian cavalry and contributed to the massacre. Sometimes catastrophes occur with the tragic collusion of the night.

After the last cannon-shot had been fired, the plain of Mont-St-Jean was

left deserted.

The English occupied the French encampment, such is the way victory

usually asserts itself: by sleeping in the bed of the vanquished. They bivouacked beyond Rossomme. The Prussians, unleashed on the routed army, pushed forward. Wellington went to the village of Waterloo to write his report to Lord Bathurst.

If ever sic vos non vobis* was applicable, it is definitely to this village of

Waterloo. Waterloo did nothing and remained over a mile away from the

action. Mont-St-Jean was shelled, Hougomont was set ablaze, Papelotte was set ablaze, Plancenoit was set ablaze, La Haie-Sainte was stormed, La

Belle-Alliance witnessed the embrace of the two victors. These names are scarcely known and Waterloo, which made no contribution to the battle, gets all the credit.

We are not one of war’s sycophants. When the opportunity arises, we tell

the truth about it. War has a terrible beauty of which we have made no secret. We can all agree it also has some uglinesses. One of the most surprising is the summary stripping of the dead after victory. The day after a battle always dawns on naked bodies.

Who does this? Who defiles triumph in this way? What hideous furtive

hand is it that steals into victory’s pocket? Who are these sneak thieves that ply their trade in the wake of glory? Some philosophers, Voltaire among them, maintain they are precisely those who won that glory. It is the same men, they say, there are no others who step in; those left standing pillage those lying on the ground. The hero of the day is the vampire of the night.

After all, a man surely has the right to a bit of thieving from a corpse when he is the author of its death. This is not what we believe. It seems impossible to us that winning the laurels and stealing the shoes from a dead man could be done by the same hand.

What is certain is that, as a rule, after the victors come the thieves. But let

us not blame the soldier, especially not the contemporary soldier.

Every army has a tail-end and that is where the blame must lie. Hybrid

creatures, half brigand half servant, every type of flying rat that this twilight, known as war, engenders – non-combatant wearers of uniform, fake invalids, intimidating cripples, unlicensed victuallers, sometimes with their wives, riding in little carts and stealing what they then sell on, beggars offering themselves as guides to officers, hangers-on, marauders. In days gone by (we are not speaking of the present), armies on the march had all this trailing after them, so much so that in military jargon they were called ‘camp followers’. No army, no nation was responsible for these creatures.

They spoke Italian and followed the Germans, they spoke French and followed the English. It was by one of these wretched camp followers, a French-speaking Spaniard, that the Marquis de Fervacques, taken in by his Picardy gabble and mistaking him for one of our own, during the night

following the victory of Ceresole was treacherously slain and robbed on the very battlefield itself. The looter was born of looting. That ghastly maxim, ‘Live off the enemy’, produced this plague, which only strict discipline could cure. Some reputations are misleading; it is not always known why certain generals, indeed great generals, have been so popular. Turenne was adored by his soldiers because he tolerated looting. Making allowances for wrong-doing is an element of goodness. Turenne was so good that he allowed the Palatinate to be put to fire and sword. The marauders to be seen in the wake of an army were more or less numerous depending on whether the man in charge was more or less of a disciplinarian. Hoche and Marceau had no camp followers, Wellington had few, and we gladly give him credit for this.

Nevertheless, on the night of the eighteenth to the nineteenth of June, the

dead were stripped. Wellington was uncompromising: he gave the order that anyone caught looting was to be shot. But looting is hard to stamp out.

Looters stole in one corner of the battlefield while they were being shot in another.

The effect of the moonlight on this plain was lurid.

Around midnight a man was prowling, or rather lurking, over by the

Ohain sunken road. He was to all appearances one of those specimens we have just described, neither English nor French, neither peasant nor soldier, not so much a man as a ghoul, drawn by the smell of the dead and, victory to him meaning theft, coming to pillage Waterloo. He wore a loose overgarment that was a bit like a great-coat. He was jittery and bold, he went forward and looked behind. Who was this man? Night probably knew more about him than day. He had no bag but evidently some capacious pockets under his coat. From time to time he halted, scanned the plain around him as though to check whether he was being watched, abruptly bent down, fiddled on the ground with something still and silent, then rose and slipped away. His stealth, his behaviour, his hurried and mysterious movements made him look like those twilight spectres that haunt ruins, and in old Norman legends are called ‘les Alleurs’.

Certain nocturnal wading birds appear as such silhouettes in the marshes.

Any searching gaze that probed all that mist would have noticed,

standing some distance away as if hidden behind the farm building on the Nivelles high road, at the corner of the road from Mont-St-Jean to Braine-l’Alleud, a little victualler’s wagon of some sort with a tar-coated wicker hood, harnessed to a half-starved nag grazing on nettles through its bit, and in this wagon some woman sitting on top of various boxes and bundles.

Maybe there was a connection between this wagon and this prowler.

The darkness was serene. Not a cloud in the sky above. So what, if the

earth is red – the moon stays white. Such is the indifference of the heavens.

In the meadows, branches of trees broken by shelling but not brought down, with their bark still holding, swayed gently in the night breeze. A breath of air, almost a sigh, stirred the scrub. There were quiverings in the grass, like souls departing.

The coming and going of patrols and of officers doing their rounds in the

English camp could be heard indistinctly in the distance.

Hougomont and La Haie-Sainte continued to burn, raising two great

blazes, to east and west, joined together by the line of English camp fires strung out over the hills on the horizon in a vast semicircle, like an unfastened necklace of rubies with two carbuncles at either end.

We have told of the disaster at the Ohain cutting. The heart is appalled at

the thought of what a death that must have been for so many gallant men.

If there is one thing that is horrifying, if there exists a reality that is worse

than any dream, it is this: to live, to see the sun, to be in the prime of manhood, to have health and happiness, to laugh bravely, to rush towards the glory that lies ahead of you, to feel in your breast breathing lungs, a beating heart, a reasoning will, to speak, think, hope, love, to have a mother, to have a wife, to have children, to have light, and all at once, in the time it takes to cry out, in less than a minute, to plunge into an abyss, to fall, tumble, crush, be crushed, to see ears of wheat, flowers, leaves, branches, not to be able to catch hold of anything, to feel your sword is useless, with men beneath you, horses on top of you, to struggle in vain, your bones broken by a kick in the dark, to feel a heel burst your eyeballs, to bite

frantically on horseshoes, to suffocate, yell, writhe, to be buried, and to say to yourself, ‘A moment ago I was alive!’

Where there had been the agonized moans of that dreadful calamity, all

was silence now. The hollow of the sunken road was filled with horses and riders inextricably piled on top of each other. A terrible jumble. There was no embankment any more. The corpses had levelled the road with the plain, and came right up to the brim like a well filled bushel of barley. A heap of dead bodies on top, a river of blood below, such was this road on the evening of the eighteenth of June 1815. The blood ran all the way to the Nivelles high road and there formed a large pool in front of the felled trees that barred the way at a spot that is pointed out even today. It was, remember, on the opposite side, towards the Genappe road, that the cuirassiers came to grief. The pile of corpses varied in density according to how deep the sunken road was. Towards the middle, where it was flush with the plain, and where Delort’s division had passed, the layer of corpses thinned out.

The night prowler, whom we have just brought to the reader’s attention,

made his way over there. He ferreted about in that vast tomb. He kept looking. He was carrying out who knows what hideous inspection of the dead. There was blood underfoot where he walked.

All of a sudden he stopped.

A few paces in front of him in the sunken road, just where the pile of

dead bodies ended, sticking out from underneath that heap of men and horses was an open hand caught in the moonlight.

That hand had on its finger something that gleamed, and that something

was a gold ring.

The man bent down, remained crouching for a moment, and when he

stood up again there was no longer a ring on that hand.

He did not exactly stand up. He remained in a feral and fearful attitude,

with his back to the pile of dead, scanning the horizon, kneeling, with the whole weight of his upper body borne on his two index fingers resting on the ground, his head peering over the edge of the sunken road. The jackal’s four paws are suited to certain actions.

Then making a decision, he straightened up.

At that moment he gave a start. He felt someone holding on to him from

behind.

He turned. It was the open hand, which had closed and grabbed the skirt

of his coat.

An honest man would have been frightened. This one began to laugh. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘it’s only the corpse. I prefer a ghost to a gendarme.’ But the hand weakened and released him. Exertion is quickly spent in the

grave.

‘Now then,’ said the prowler, ‘is this corpse alive? Let’s see.’ He bent down again, fumbled in the heap, pushed aside whatever was

causing an obstruction, seized the hand, gripped the arm, freed the head, pulled out the body, and a few moments later he was dragging into the shadow of the sunken road a lifeless, or at least unconscious, man. He was a cuirassier, an officer, and indeed a fairly high-ranking officer; a large gold epaulette showed under his breast-plate. This officer had lost his helmet. A vicious sabre cut had slashed his face, so that all you could see was blood.

That apart, he did not appear to have any broken limbs, and by a stroke of good luck, if that term may be used in this context, the dead had formed a buttress over him in such a way as to save him from being crushed. His eyes were closed.

On his breast-plate he wore the Legion of Honour silver cross.

The prowler tore off this cross, which disappeared into one of those deep

pouches under his coat.

After which he patted the officer’s fob-pocket, felt a watch there, and

took it. Then he searched his waistcoat, found a purse and pocketed it.

When he reached this stage in delivering aid to this dying man, the

officer opened his eyes.

‘Thanks,’ he said feebly.

The roughness of the way he had been manhandled, the night freshness,

the air he could now breathe freely, had brought him out of his insensibility.

The prowler did not reply. He raised his head. The tread of feet on the

plain could be heard – probably some patrol approaching.

The officer murmured, for there was still the anguish of death in his

voice, ‘Who won the battle?’

‘The English,’ answered the prowler.

The officer spoke again. ‘Look in my pockets. You’ll find a watch and a

purse. Take them.’

That had already been done.

The prowler went through the motions of doing as he was asked, and

said, ‘There’s nothing there.’

‘I’ve been robbed,’ said the officer. ‘I’m sorry. They would have been

yours.’

The patrol’s footfalls became increasingly distinct. ‘There’s someone coming,’ said the prowler with a start, like a man about

to be off.

Raising his arm with difficulty, the officer detained him. ‘You’ve saved

my life. Who are you?’

The prowler spoke quickly and in a low voice. ‘Like you, I was with the

French army. I must leave you. If they were to catch me I’d be shot. I’ve saved your life. Now fend for yourself.’

‘What’s your rank?’ ‘Sergeant.’ ‘What’s your name?’ ‘Thénardier.’ ‘I shan’t forget that name,’ said the officer. ‘And you remember mine.

My name is Pontmercy.’

OceanofPDF.com

Book Two

The Ship Orion

I

Number 24601 Becomes Number 9430

Jean Valjean had been recaptured.

It will be appreciated if we do not dwell on the painful details. We will

confine ourselves to reproducing two items published by contemporary newspapers a few months after the surprising events that had taken place at Montreuil-sur-Mer.

These articles are rather perfunctory. Remember, at that time there was

no Gazette des Tribunaux.

The first is taken from Le Drapeau Blanc. It is dated the twenty-fifth of

July 1823:

An arrondissement in the Pas de Calais has just been the scene of no ordinary event. A man from outside the département, named Monsieur Madeleine, had over the past few years, thanks to some new processes, rebuilt a local industry of long standing, the manufacture of jet and black glass trinkets. He had made his fortune by it and, admittedly, that of the arrondissement. In recognition of his services he had been appointed mayor.

The police have discovered that this Monsieur Madeleine was none other than an ex-convict in breach of parole, imprisoned for theft in 1796, and named Jean Valjean. Jean Valjean has been sent back to prison. It appears that before his arrest he had succeeded in withdrawing from Monsieur Laffitte’s bank a sum amounting to more than half a million, which he had deposited there and moreover earned perfectly legitimately, it is said, through his business activities. Since his return to the prison hulks at Toulon it has not been possible to find out where Jean Valjean has concealed this money.

The second article, a little more detailed, is taken from the Journal de Paris of the same date:

A freed convict named Jean Valjean has just appeared before the Var court of assizes in circumstances bound to attract attention. This villain had managed to elude police vigilance. He had changed his name and succeeded in getting himself appointed mayor of one of our small northern towns. He had established in this town a rather considerable business. He has finally been unmasked and arrested, thanks to the indefatigable zeal of the public prosecutor’s office. He had for a mistress a common prostitute who died of a seizure at the time of his arrest. This wretch, who is endowed with Herculean strength, contrived to escape, but three or four days after his escape the police recaptured him, right here in Paris, just as he was getting into one of those small carriages that ply the route between the capital and the village of Montfermeil (Seine-et-Oise). He is said to have profited by this interval of three or four days’ liberty to regain possession of a considerable sum that had been deposited by him with one of our leading bankers. This sum has been estimated at six or seven hundred thousand francs. According to the charges that have been brought against him, he has hidden it in some place known only to himself and it has proved impossible to seize it. However that may be, the said Jean Valjean has just been brought before the assizes of the département of the Var, accused of armed highway robbery, committed about eight years ago on the person of one of those honest children who, as the patriarch of Ferney has said in those immortal lines:

… arrive from Savoy every year, And by whose hand are nimbly cleared Those long flues clogged with soot.

This brigand refused to defend himself. It was proved by the skilful and eloquent representative of the public prosecutor that there had been a conspiracy to rob, and that Jean Valjean belonged to a gang of thieves in the south of the country. Found guilty, Jean Valjean was given a death sentence. The criminal refused to lodge an appeal. The king, in his inexhaustible clemency, has been so good as to commute his sentence to penal servitude for life. Jean Valjean was immediately taken to the prison hulks at Toulon.

It will not be forgotten that Jean Valjean was a regular church-goer at Montreuil-sur-Mer. Some papers, among others Le Constitutionnel, represented this commutation as a triumph of the clerical party.

Jean Valjean’s prisoner number changed. He was now 9430.

Anyway, let it be said once and for all, when Monsieur Madeleine went,

the prosperity of Montreuil-sur-Mer went with him. Everything he had foreseen during his night of feverishness and indecision came true. With him gone, the moving spirit was indeed gone. After his downfall there was at Montreuil-sur-Mer that self-interested parcelling-out of the spoils of the

once great, that fatal carving-up of flourishing enterprises that takes place in obscurity every day among humankind, and which history has noted only once because it occurred after the death of Alexander. Lieutenants crowned themselves king. Foremen acted as factory-owners. Envious rivalries sprang up. Monsieur Madeleine’s vast workshops were closed down. The buildings fell into ruin. The workmen went their separate ways, some of them left the area, others left the trade. From then on, everything was done on a small scale instead of being done on a large scale, for money instead of the general good. The centre now gone, competition rife, and everywhere rapacious greed. Monsieur Madeleine had it all under control, and he gave direction. With his removal, it was every man for himself. The spirit of organization gave way to the spirit of conflict. Cordiality gave way to bitterness. The founder’s benevolence towards all gave way to hatred of one another. The threads Monsieur Madeleine had woven together became tangled and broke. Manufacturing processes were compromised, the quality of the products deteriorated, trust was destroyed, markets shrank, orders fell, wages dropped, workshops stood idle, bankruptcy followed. And then the poor were left with nothing. It all disappeared.

The state itself noticed that someone had been put out of business

somewhere. Less than four years after the court of assizes’ ruling whereby Monsieur Madeleine was identified as Jean Valjean to the benefit of the prison hulks, the cost of collecting taxes had doubled in the arrondissement of Montreuil-sur-Mer, and Monsieur de Villèle pointed this out in an address to parliament in February 1827.

II

In Which Are to Be Read Two Lines of Verse Perhaps by the Devil

Before going any further, it is appropriate at this point to relate in some detail a singular incident that took place at Montfermeil at about the same time, and which may be not unconnected with certain conjectures made by the public prosecutor.

There is at Montfermeil a very ancient local superstition, all the more

curious and all the more precious because a popular superstition anywhere near Paris is like an aloe in Siberia. We are among those who have respect for anything in the way of a rare plant. This, then, is the superstition of Montfermeil: people believe that the devil has from time immemorial chosen to hide his treasures in the forest. The womenfolk say it is not uncommon at nightfall in out-of-the-way parts of the forest to encounter a black man, looking like a carter or a wood-cutter, wearing wooden clogs, dressed in trousers and a coarse smock, and recognizable by the fact that instead of a cap or hat he has two huge horns on his head. Sure enough, this must make him recognizable. The man is usually busy digging a hole. There are three ways of dealing with such an encounter. The first is to approach the man and speak to him. Then you realize that the man is just a peasant, that he looks black because it is dusk, that he is not digging a hole at all but cutting grass for his cows, and what you mistook for horns is nothing but a pitchfork he is carrying on his back, the prongs of which, thanks to the twilight distortion of perspective, appeared to be sprouting out of his head.

You go home and die within the week. The second method is to watch him, wait until he has dug his hole, filled it in and gone away, then to run over very quickly to where he was digging, open up the hole again and take the ‘treasure’ which the black man has inevitably left there. In this case you die within the month. Finally, the third method is not to speak to the black man, not to look at him, and to run away as fast as your legs can carry you. You die within the year.

As all three methods have their drawbacks, the second, which at least

offers some advantages – among others, that of owning a treasure, if only for a month – is the one most generally adopted. So, always tempted to try their luck, bold men have quite frequently, we are assured, opened up the holes dug by the black man and tried to rob the devil. Apparently it is a poor deal – at least if tradition is anything to go by, and in particular the two enigmatic lines on the subject, in barbarous Latin, left by a wicked Norman monk named Tryphon, who was a bit of a sorcerer. This Tryphon is buried

at the abbey of St-Georges de Bocherville, near Rouen, and toads breed on his grave.

So tremendous exertions are made, usually these holes are very deep, a

man sweats, digs, toils all night (for this is done at night), he gets his shirt soaked, he burns out his rush-light, he damages his pick, and when at last he reaches the bottom of the hole, when he lays his hand on the ‘treasure’, what does he find? What is this devil’s treasure? A sou, occasionally a silver coin, a stone, a skeleton, a bleeding corpse, sometimes a ghost folded in four like a sheet of paper in a wallet, sometimes nothing. Which is what Tryphon’s lines of verse seem to warn meddlesome snoopers:

Fodit, et in fossa thesauros condit opaca, As, nummos, lapides, cadaver, simulacra, nihilque.*

These days, apparently, people sometimes also find a powder flask with bullets, sometimes an old pack of greasy, singed playing-cards that has obviously been used by devils. Tryphon does not record these two finds, since Tryphon lived in the twelfth century and the devil does not seem to have had the wit to invent gunpowder before Roger Bacon, or playing-cards before Charles VI.

What is more, if you play with these cards, you are sure to lose

everything you possess, and as for the powder in the flask, it has the property of causing your gun to blow up in your face.

Now, very shortly after the period when it seemed to the public

prosecutor that, while on the loose for several days, the freed convict Jean Valjean had been prowling around Montfermeil, in that very same village people noticed that an old road-mender named Boulatruelle was ‘behaving oddly’ in the forest. Locally, it was generally taken for a fact that this Boulatruelle was an ex-convict. He was subject to some sort of police surveillance, and as he could not find a job anywhere else the authorities employed him for a pittance as a road-mender on the Gagny to Lagny byway.

This fellow Boulatruelle was a man regarded with distrust by the local

people, too respectful, too humble, quick to doff his cap to everyone,

trembling and smiling in the presence of gendarmes, probably connected with robber bands, they said, suspected of lying in ambush on the edge of the woods at nightfall. The only thing in his favour was that he was a drunkard.

This is what was thought to have been observed: Of late, Boulatruelle had taken to leaving his job of stone-laying and road

maintenance very early and going off into the forest with his pickaxe.

People encountered him towards the close of day in the most deserted clearings, in the wildest thickets, looking as if he was searching for something, sometimes digging holes. The women who passed by at first mistook him for Beelzebub, then they would recognize Boulatruelle and were scarcely more reassured. These encounters seemed to vex Boulatruelle deeply. It was obvious that he was trying to keep out of sight, and there was some mystery in what he was doing.

It was said in the village, ‘Clearly the devil has made some sort of

appearance. Boulatruelle saw him, and he’s now searching. He has actually got it in him to steal Lucifer’s hoard.’ Voltairians added, ‘Will it be Boulatruelle that gets the better of the devil, or the devil that gets the better of Boulatruelle?’ Old women made a great many signs of the cross.

Meanwhile Boulatruelle’s antics in the forest ceased, and he went back to

his usual road-mending. The talk turned to something else.

Nevertheless, a few individuals remained curious, thinking that what was

involved here was probably not the fabulous legendary treasures but some stroke of good luck, more serious and more tangible than the devil’s banknotes, of which the road-mender had no doubt half discovered the secret. The most ‘intrigued’ were the schoolmaster and the innkeeper Thénardier, who was friendly with everybody and not above striking up a relationship with Boulatruelle.

‘He’s been in the prison hulks?’ said Thénardier. ‘Well, by God, who’s to

say who’s there now or will be in the future?’

One evening the schoolmaster declared that in the old days the law would

have investigated what Boulatruelle was up to in the forest, and he would

have been made to talk, and put to torture if necessary, and that Boulatruelle would not have held out against the water test, for instance.

‘Let’s put him to the wine test,’ said Thénardier.

They did their utmost to get the old road-mender drunk. Boulatruelle

drank an enormous amount and said very little. He combined with admirable skill and in masterly proportion a guzzler’s thirst with the discretion of a judge. Nonetheless, by dint of making repeated attempts, and piecing together and milking the few obscure words he did let slip, this is what Thénardier and the schoolmaster thought they deduced:

One morning at daybreak, when Boulatruelle was on his way to work,

somewhere in the woods he had been surprised to see a shovel and pick under a bush, ‘almost as if they’d been hidden’. However, he supposed they were probably the shovel and pick of Père Six-Fours the water-carrier, and thought no more about it. But on the evening of the same day, he had seen – though he himself could not be seen, being hidden behind a large tree – ‘a certain individual who wasn’t at all from these parts, and that he, Boulatruelle, knew very well’ (translation by Thénardier: ‘a fellow inmate of the prison hulks’), heading away from the road into the densest part of the forest. Boulatruelle stubbornly refused to reveal his name. This individual was carrying a package, something square, like a large box or a small chest. Surprisingly, to Boulatruelle. Yet not until seven or eight minutes had passed did the idea of following ‘this certain individual’ occur to him. But it was too late. The individual was already in the thick of the forest, darkness had fallen, and Boulatruelle had not been able to catch up with him. So he decided to keep watch on the edge of the woods. ‘There was moonlight.’ Two or three hours later Boulatruelle saw his man emerge from the woods, carrying not the little coffer any more but a shovel and pick. Boulatruelle let the individual go past, and did not dream of accosting him because he said to himself the other fellow was three times stronger than he was and armed with a pick and would probably bash him over the head when he recognized him and realized that he himself had been recognized. Touching demonstrations of feeling on the part of two old comrades encountering each other again. But the shovel and pick had been

a ray of light to Boulatruelle. He hurried to the bush he had noticed that morning, and found that neither shovel nor pick was there any more. From this he concluded that having gone into the forest, his man had dug a hole with his pick, buried the chest, and filled in the hole with his shovel. Now, the chest was too small to contain a body, so it contained money. Hence the searching. Boulatruelle had explored, scoured, combed the whole forest, and had dug wherever he thought the earth had been recently disturbed. In vain.

He had ‘turned up’ nothing. No one in Montfermeil thought any more

about it. There were only a few old crones who said, ‘You may depend on it, the Gagny road-mender didn’t do all that spadework for nothing. The devil came, for sure.’

III

The Ankle-chain Must Have Been Worked on Previously, to Break at a

Single Hammer Blow

Towards the end of October of that same year of 1823 the inhabitants of Toulon saw the return to their port, for the repair of some damage after heavy weather, of the ship Orion, later used at Brest as a training-ship, and at that time part of the Mediterranean fleet.

Crippled as it was, for the seas had been rough with it, this vessel created

an impression as it came into harbour. It flew some flag or other that earned it a statutory eleven-gun salute, which was returned shot for shot. Total: twenty-two. It has been calculated that in salvoes, royal and military honours, exchanges of courtesy volleys, ceremonial signals, harbour and citadel formalities, sunrise and sunset salutes every day by all forts and all ships of war, port openings and closings et cetera, the civilized world was discharging around the globe every twenty-four hours one hundred and fifty thousand unnecessary cannon shots. At six francs per cannon shot, that comes to nine hundred thousand francs a day, three hundred million a year, that go up in smoke. This is just one small detail. Meanwhile the poor are dying of hunger.

The year 1823 was what the Restoration called ‘the time of the Spanish

war’.

A single event of great incident, this war had many peculiarities. A big

family affair for the Bourbon dynasty, the French branch aiding and protecting the Madrid branch, that is to say, exercising its seniority; an apparent return to our national traditions complicated by subjection to constraints imposed by the governments of the north; Monsieur le Duc d’Angoulême, dubbed ‘the hero of Andújar’ by the liberal press, striking a triumphant pose somewhat at odds with his peaceable manner, curbing the old and very real terrorism of the Holy Office in its dealings with the imaginary terrorism of the liberals; the sans-culottes revived, to the great horror of dowagers, under the name of descamisados; monarchism impeding progress portrayed as anarchy; the theories of ’89 suddenly sapped of strength; a European stop put to the French idea spreading around the world; in that crusade of kings against peoples, the Prince of Carignano, later Charles Albert, enrolling as a volunteer with the red worsted epaulettes of a grenadier, alongside the generalissimo son of France; soldiers of the Empire going to war again, but after eight years’ rest, aged, saddened and under the white cockade; the tricolour flag waved abroad by a handful of heroic Frenchmen, just as thirty years earlier the white standard was waved at Koblenz; monks mingling with our troops; the spirit of liberty and change made to see reason by bayonets; principles battered by cannon fire; France undoing by force of arms what she had achieved by force of intellect; in addition to this, enemy leaders bribed, soldiers irresolute, towns besieged by millions; no military risks and yet the possibility of explosions, as with all undermining in the event of discovery and penetration; little bloodshed, little honour won, shameful for some, glorious for none – such was this war waged by princes descended from Louis XIV and conducted by generals who had made their careers under Napoleon. Its sad fate was to be a revival of neither great war nor great politics.

There were a few genuine feats of arms. The capture of Trocadero,

among others, was a fine military action; but overall, we repeat, the trumpets of this war produce a cracked sound, the whole enterprise was

dubious, history endorses France in finding it hard to accept this spurious triumph. It seemed clear that certain Spanish officers whose duty was to resist yielded too easily. The victory gave rise to a suggestion of corruption.

It appeared that generals rather than battles had been won, and the conquering soldier came home humbled. A belittling war indeed, in which the words ‘Bank of France’ could be read in the folds of the flag.

Soldiers of the 1808 war, on whom Saragossa had fallen mightily,

frowned in 1823 at the easy opening-up of citadels and began to regret Palafox. France’s temperament is such that it would far rather have to face Rostopchin than Ballesteros.

From a yet more serious point of view, and one that ought also to be

emphasized, this war that offended the military spirit in France incensed the democratic spirit. It was an enterprise of subjugation. In this campaign the object of the French soldier, son of democracy, was the conquest of a yoke for others. Hideous inconsistency. France is meant to stir the soul of nations, not to stifle it. Since 1792 all revolutions in Europe have been the French Revolution: liberty radiates from France. It is a solar phenomenon.

None but the blind can fail to see it! Bonaparte said so.

The war of 1823, an outrage against the brave Spanish people, was at the

same time, therefore, an outrage against the French Revolution. It was France that committed this monstrous offence – by violence, for aside from wars of liberation everything armies do is done by violence. The term ‘unquestioning obedience’ indicates this. An army is a strangely contrived masterpiece by which force results from an enormous amount of powerlessness. This is the explanation of war, waged by humanity against humanity despite humanity.

As for the Bourbons, the war of 1823 was disastrous for them. They

regarded it as a success. They did not see the danger that lies in suppressing an idea by decree. They were so mistaken in their naivety that they introduced into their institution as an element of strength the great undermining weakness of a crime. The spirit of machination entered their government. The seed of 1830 was sown in 1823. In their decision-making the Spanish campaign became an argument for the use of force and for

divine-right initiatives. Having re-established el rey neto* in Spain, France could surely re-establish the absolute monarch at home. They fell into the dreadful error of mistaking the obedience of the soldier for the consent of the nation. That kind of misplaced confidence leads to the loss of thrones.

Fall asleep at your peril in the shade of a manchineel tree, or in the shadow of an army.

But to return to the ship Orion: While the army conducted its operations under the command of the

prince-generalissimo, a fleet cruised in the Mediterranean. We have just mentioned that the Orion was in this fleet and that events at sea had brought it back to port at Toulon.

There is something about the presence of a warship in a port that

fascinates and draws the crowd. It is because it has grandeur, and the crowd loves grandeur.

A ship of the line is one of the most magnificent conjunctions of the

genius of man and the power of nature.

A ship of the line combines both the heaviest and lightest of components

because it operates at one and the same time with the three forms of matter, solid, liquid and gas, and must contend with all three. It has eleven iron claws to grab the granite sea-bed, and to catch the wind in the clouds it has more wings and feelers than any flying insect. Its breath is expelled from its one hundred and twenty cannons as from enormous bugles, and proudly answers thunder. The ocean tries to lead it astray in the frightening sameness of its waves, but the vessel has a soul, its compass, that guides it and always indicates north. On dark nights its lanterns act as substitutes for the stars. So against the wind, it has rope and canvas; against water, timber; against rock, iron, brass and lead; against darkness, light; against immensity, a needle.

If you wish to get some idea of all these gigantic proportions that

together constitute the ship of the line, you have only to go into one of the six-storey building-sheds in the port of Brest or Toulon. There, under a bell jar, as it were, are the vessels under construction. This colossal beam is a yard, that great column of wood lying on the ground, stretching as far as the

eye can see, is the mainmast. Measured from its root in the hold to its top in the clouds, it is three hundred and sixty feet long, and three feet in diameter at the base. The English mainmast rises to a height of two hundred and seventeen feet above the water line. Our ancestors’ navy used ropes, ours uses chains. The ordinary pile of chains for a one-hundred-gun ship is four feet high, twenty feet wide and eight feet deep. And how much timber is needed to build this vessel? One hundred and ten thousand cubic feet. It is a floating forest.

And furthermore, it should be noted, we are talking only about the naval

vessel of forty years ago here, the simple sailing-ship. Steam, then in its infancy, has since added new miracles to that wonder called the warship. At the present time, for example, the hybrid vessel with a screw propeller is an astonishing machine, driven by a spread of over three thousand five hundred square yards of canvas and a two thousand five hundred horse-power steam engine.

Leaving aside these new marvels, the old-fashioned vessel of Christopher

Columbus and de Ruyter is one of man’s great masterpieces. It is as limitless in power as is the infinite in breezes, it gathers the wind in its sails, it is unerring in the immense diffusiveness of the waves; afloat it rules.

Yet there comes a time when the gale snaps this sixty-foot yard like a

twig, when the wind bends this four-hundred-foot mast like a reed, when this anchor, weighing ten thousand pounds, swings about in the trough of the wave like a fisherman’s hook in the jaws of a pike, when those monstrous cannons utter plaintive and futile roars that the hurricane carries away into the darkness and into the void, when all that might and all that majesty are engulfed in a superior might and majesty.

Whenever immense force is deployed and ends up as immense weakness,

men’s imaginations are stirred. Hence the curious observers in seaports who, without quite understanding why, come flocking round these marvellous machines of war and navigation.

So every day from morning till evening, the quays, pierheads and jetties

of Toulon harbour were crowded with a multitude of idlers and gawpers, badauds as they say in Paris, making it their business to view the Orion.

The Orion was a ship that had been in poor shape for a long time. On her

previous sailings, thick layers of barnacles had collected on the hull, so much so that her speed was reduced by half. She had gone into dry dock the year before to have these barnacles scraped off, then she put out to sea again. But this scraping had weakened the bolting on the hull. When the ship reached the Balearic Isles the strained planking opened up and, as the hull was not lined with sheet metal in those days, the vessel had shipped water. A violent equinoctial gale had sprung up and staved in the ship’s head and broken through a porthole on the port side, and damaged the foresail chain-wales. After sustaining these injuries the Orion had returned to Toulon.

She was anchored near the Arsenal. She was in commission and under

repair. The hull was not damaged on the starboard side, but in the usual way a few planks had been prised open here and there to let air into the hold.

One morning, the crowd watching her witnessed an accident.

The crew were busy bending sails. The yardman responsible for fastening

the earings on the main-topgallant on the starboard side lost his balance. He was seen to wobble. The multitude thronging the Arsenal quay gave a cry.

Plunging head first, the man went over the yard, his hands stretched out towards the abyss. He grabbed at the footrope in passing, first with one hand, then the other, and there he was left dangling. The sea lay dizzyingly far below him. The impact of his fall set the footrope swinging violently.

The man swayed back and forth on that rope like a stone in a sling.

To go to his aid was to take a terrifying risk. Not one of the sailors, all

fishermen from along the coast recently levied for service, dared venture it.

Meanwhile, the poor yardman was tiring. The anguish on his face could not be seen but his exhaustion showed in every limb. His arms were horribly stretched by his own weight. Every effort he made to hoist himself up served only to make the footrope swing more wildly. He did not shout, for fear of wasting his strength. With no expectation of rescue, the moment when he should let go of the rope was inevitable, and all heads turned aside every now and then so as not to see him fall. There are moments when a piece of rope, a pole, the branch of a tree, represents life itself, and it is a

terrible thing to see a human being separate from it and drop like a ripe fruit.

All of a sudden came the glimpse of a man climbing up the rigging with

the agility of a tiger-cat. This man was dressed in red, he was a convict. He wore a green cap, he was a lifer. When he reached the top a gust of wind carried his cap away and revealed him to be completely white-haired. This was not a young man.

Indeed, a convict working on board with a forced-labour gang from the

prison hulks had rushed up to the officer of the watch in the very first instant, and amid the crew’s consternation and hesitation, while all the sailors trembled and backed away he had asked the officer’s permission to risk his life to save the yardman. At a nod from the officer, with one blow of a hammer he had broken the chain riveted to the shackle round his ankle, then grabbed a rope, and leapt up into the shrouds. No one noticed at the time how easily that chain was broken. It was only later that people remembered.

In an instant he was on the yard. He paused for a few seconds and

seemed to be eyeing it up. Those seconds during which the yardman swung in the breeze, hanging by a thread, seemed like centuries to those watching.

At last the convict looked up to heaven and took a step forward. The crowd breathed again. They saw him run along the yard. When he reached the yardarm he fastened to it one end of the rope he had brought with him, and let the other hang down; then he began to lower himself down this rope, hand over hand, and now the tension was indescribable: instead of one man suspended over the abyss, there were two.

It looked like a spider coming to catch a fly, only in this case the spider

brought life, not death. Ten thousand pairs of eyes were fixed on those two.

Not a cry, not a word, the same contraction furrowed every brow. Every mouth held its breath as if afraid to add in the slightest to the breeze that shook those two poor wretches.

Meanwhile, the convict managed to lower himself to within reach of the

sailor. Just in time: another minute, and the exhausted and despairing man would have dropped into the abyss. The convict securely lashed round him

the rope to which he clung with one hand, as he worked with the other. At last they saw him climb back on to the yard and haul the sailor up after him.

He held him there for a moment to let him regain strength, then picked him up and carried him, walking along the yard to the mast cap and from there down into the mast top, where he left him in the hands of his shipmates.

At that moment the crowd applauded: there were old chain-gang warders

who wept, and women embraced each other on the quayside, and all voices were heard to cry with a kind of surge of compassion, ‘The selflessness of that man!’

He, meanwhile, immediately set about climbing down to rejoin his fellow

convict-labourers. To hasten his descent he slid down the rigging, and started running along one of the lower yards. All eyes followed him. At a certain moment everyone was stricken with fear. Whether it was that he was exhausted or overcome with dizziness, he seemed to falter and teeter. All at once the crowd gave a great cry: the convict had just fallen into the sea.

It was a perilous drop. The frigate Algésiras was moored alongside the

Orion, and the poor convict had fallen between the two ships. There was reason to fear he might be trapped under one or the other. Four men quickly leapt into a boat. The crowd cheered them on, again every soul was filled with anxiety. The man had not risen to the surface. He had vanished into the sea without causing a ripple, as though he had fallen into a vat of oil. They searched, they dived. It was to no avail. The search continued until nightfall. They did not even find the body.

The following day the Toulon newspaper published these few lines:

17 November, 1823. Yesterday a convict with a forced-labour gang on board the Orion, on his way back after going to the rescue of a sailor, fell into the sea and was drowned.

His body could not be found. It is assumed it must have become trapped under the pilings at the Arsenal point: this man was registered as prisoner number 9430, and his name was Jean Valjean.

OceanofPDF.com

Book Three

A Deathbed Promise Is Honoured

I

The Problem of Water at Montfermeil

Montfermeil is situated between Livry and Chelles on the southern edge of that high plateau separating the Ourcq from the Marne. Today it is a fairly large market-town, graced throughout the year by stuccoed villas and on Sundays by prosperous gentry. In 1823 there were neither so many white houses nor so many satisfied gentry at Montfermeil. It was just a village in the woods. You certainly came across a few country houses dating from the last century, recognizable by their air of grandeur, their wrought-iron balconies, and those long windows with little panes of glass that reflect all kinds of different shades of green on the white of the closed shutters. But Montfermeil was nonetheless a village. Retired drapers and professional holidaymakers had not yet discovered it. It was a peaceful and charming place that was not on the way to anywhere. There, at little expense, people lived that peasant life of great bounty and ease. Only water was scarce, on account of the height of the plateau.

You had to go quite far to fetch it. The Gagny side of the village drew its

water from the magnificent ponds they have in the woods over there. The only drinking-water to be found at the other end of the village, round by the church, on the Chelles side, came from a little spring halfway down the hill, close to the Chelles road, about a quarter of an hour from Montfermeil.

So this fetching of water was quite a heavy chore for every household. The

large houses, the aristocracy, which included the Thénardier inn, paid a

quarter-sou per bucketful to a fellow who made his living in this way, and who earned about eight sous a day from this business of supplying Montfermeil with water. But this fellow worked only until seven o’clock in the evening in summer and five o’clock in winter, and once darkness had fallen, and the ground-floor shutters were closed, anyone who had no water to drink went to fetch it or went without.

Now this was the terror of that poor creature the reader may not have

forgotten, little Cosette. Remember, Cosette was useful to the Thénardiers in two ways: they got the mother to pay them, and the child to wait on them. So when her mother stopped paying altogether – the reader learned why in preceding chapters – the Thénardiers kept Cosette. They treated her as a servant. As such, she it was who ran to fetch water when it was needed. And quite terrified at the idea of going to the spring at night, the child made sure there was never a lack of water in the house.

Christmas of the year 1823 was particularly jolly at Montfermeil. The

onset of winter had been mild. There had been no snow or frost yet. Some street entertainers from Paris had obtained permission from the mayor to put up their booths in the village’s main street, and by the same licence a group of itinerant merchants had erected their stalls on the church square and even as far down as Ruelle du Boulanger where, the reader may remember, the Thénardier inn was located. As a result the inns and taverns were full, and that quiet little village acquired a rowdy and cheerful liveliness. We should even mention, for the sake of historical accuracy, that among the curiosities displayed in the square was a menagerie in which some dreadful touts, dressed in tatters and from who knows where, exhibited to the peasants of Montfermeil in 1823 one of those terrifying vultures from Brazil that our Royal Museum did not possess until 1845, and which have a tricolour cockade for an eye. Naturalists, I believe, call this bird Caracara polyborus.

It belongs to the order Accipitres and to the family of vultures. A few good old Bonapartist soldiers in retirement in the village went religiously along to see this creature. The mountebanks said the tricolour cockade was a unique phenomenon created by the good Lord especially for their menagerie.

That Christmas evening several men, carters and pedlars, were seated at a

table around four or five candles, drinking in the low-ceilinged room of the Thénardier inn. This room was like all tavern rooms: tables, pewter jugs, bottles, drinkers, smokers; dimly lit, very noisy. However, the date was signalled as that of the year 1823 by two objects on the table that were then fashionable among the bourgeois class, namely a kaleidoscope and a moiré-métallique lamp. Thénardier’s wife was attending to the supper, which was roasting in front of a good blazing fire. Her husband was drinking with his customers and talking politics.

As well as the political conversations, which were mainly on the subject of

the Spanish war and Monsieur le Duc d’Angoulême, audible amid the hubbub were comments on matters of entirely local concern, such as the following:

‘Round Nanterre and Suresnes they produced a lot of wine this year.

Where they were expecting ten barrels they ended up with twelve. There was a lot of juice got out of the pressing.’

‘But the grapes can’t have been ripe?’ ‘In those parts the grapes mustn’t be harvested ripe. If they’re harvested

ripe the wine turns oily by spring.’

‘Then the wine’s very light?’ ‘Those wines are even lighter than the ones from round here. The

harvesting has to be done early.’ Et cetera.

Or a miller was shouting, ‘Are we responsible for what’s in the sacks? We

find countless small seeds in them that we can’t afford to spend time picking out and that just have to be left to go through the mill. There’s darnel, yellow vetchling, corncockle, vetch, hempseed, couch grass, meadow fox-tail and a host of other tares, not to mention the quantity of grit in certain types of grain, particularly Breton grain. I don’t like milling Breton wheat any more than pit sawyers like to saw beams with nails in them. Imagine all the unwholesome dust that adds to the yield. And then people complain about the flour. They shouldn’t. The flour’s no fault of ours.’

In a space between two windows a reaper, sat at the same table as a

landowner negotiating a price for some work to be done on a meadow in the

spring, was saying, ‘There’s no harm in the grass being wet. It cuts better.

Dew helps, monsieur. In any case grass like that, your grass, it’s still young and very hard to cut. Being as it’s so tender, you see, it flattens before the blade.’ Et cetera.

Cosette was in her usual place, seated on the crossbar of the kitchen table

near the chimney. She was in rags, with her bare feet in wooden clogs, and she was knitting by the firelight some woollen stockings for the little Thénardier girls. A kitten was playing under the chairs. The clear voices of two children could be heard laughing and chattering in a neighbouring room: Éponine and Azelma.

In the chimney corner a leather strap hung from a nail.

Intermittently the cries of a very young child somewhere in the house

pierced the tavern din. It was a little boy Thénardier’s wife had given birth to one winter – ‘without knowing why,’ she said, ‘as a result of the cold’ – and who was a little over three years old. The mother had nursed him but she did not love him. When the little mite’s desperate wailing became too hard to ignore, Thénardier would say, ‘Your son’s squalling, go and see what he wants.’ ‘Bah!’ the mother would reply, ‘I can’t be bothered with him.’ And the neglected infant would carry on crying in the dark.

II

Two Finished Portraits

So far in this book the Thénardiers have been seen only in profile. The time has come to circle around this couple and consider them from every angle.

Thénardier had just turned fifty. Madame Thénardier was close to forty,

which is fifty for a woman, so husband and wife were of equivalent age.

Our readers may have retained, from her very first appearance, some

memory of this Thénardier woman, tall, blonde, ruddy, greasy, brawny, robust, huge and agile. She was, as we have said, akin to that race of feral giant-women at fairs who strut about with paving-stones suspended from their hair. She did everything in the house, the bed-making, the cleaning, the washing, the cooking, the this, the that and the other. Her only domestic help was Cosette: a mouse in the service of an elephant. Everything trembled at

the sound of her voice, window-panes, furniture and people. Her broad face was as covered with freckles as a skimming ladle is riddled with holes. She had something of a beard. She was the archetypal market porter dressed up as a girl. She swore magnificently. She boasted of being able to crack a walnut with a single blow of her fist. Were it not for the romances she had read, which at times caused the mincing maid beneath the ogress to make a bizarre reappearance, it would never have occurred to anyone to say of her, ‘That’s a woman.’ This Thénardier woman was like the product of grafting a young little miss on a fishwife. If you heard her speak, you would say, ‘That’s a martinet.’ If you watched her drink, you would say, ‘That’s an old soak.’ If you saw the way she treated Cosette, you would say, ‘That’s a vicious brute.’ In repose, a tooth stuck out of her mouth.

A small, thin, pale, angular, bony, puny man, Thénardier looked poorly and

was in the best of health – this is where his cunning began. To be on the safe side he smiled habitually, and was more or less polite to everybody, even the beggar to whom he refused a quarter-sou. He had the eyes of a ferret and the appearance of a man of letters. He greatly resembled portraits of Abbé Delille. He indulged his own vanity by drinking with carters. No one had ever managed to get him drunk. He smoked a large pipe. He wore a smock and under his smock an old black coat. He had pretensions in the way of literature and materialism. There were certain names he often mentioned to support whatever he was saying: Voltaire, Raynal, Parny, and oddly enough St Augustine. He claimed to have ‘a system’. All in all, a great swindler. A crook philosopher – a filousophe*. This is a distinct category that does exist.

Remember, he claimed to have served in the army. He would relate with some relish how at Waterloo, as a sergeant in the 6th or the 9th Light something or other, under a hail of fire, alone against a squadron of death’s-head hussars, he had protected with his body and saved ‘a dangerously wounded general’. Hence the gaudy sign on his wall and the name by which his inn was known locally, ‘the Sergeant of Waterloo tavern’. He was liberal, classicist and Bonapartist. He had contributed to the Champ d’Asile fund. In the village the story was that he had studied for the priesthood.

We believe he had merely studied in Holland to be an innkeeper. This

fraudster of a mongrel order was most likely a Fleming from Lille when in Flanders, a Frenchman in Paris, a Belgian in Brussels, conveniently astride two frontiers. His valour at Waterloo we are already familiar with. As we can see, he exaggerated a little. The shifting, the devious, the accidental, was his natural element. A slippery conscience leads to an unsettled life, and probably at that tumultuous time around the eighteenth of June 1815 Thénardier belonged to that breed of marauding purveyors we have already mentioned, roaming about, selling to some, stealing from others, and travelling as a family man with wife and children, in some rickety cart in the wake of troops on the march, with an instinct for always attaching themselves to the victorious army. With this campaign behind him and having, as he said, ‘the wherewithal’, he had come to Montfermeil and opened an inn.

The wherewithal, consisting of purses and watches, gold rings and silver

crosses gathered at harvest time from furrows sown with corpses, did not amount to a large sum, and had not carried this victualler turned innkeeper very far.

Thénardier had that suggestion of straightness in his gestures that when

accompanied by an oath conjures up the barracks, and by a sign of the cross, the seminary. He was a fine talker. He did nothing to discourage the belief that he was a man of learning. Nevertheless, the schoolmaster noticed that he ‘took some liberties’ in his use of language.† He wrote out travellers’ bills with an air of superiority, but keen eyes sometimes spotted spelling mistakes.

Thénardier was cunning, greedy, idle and crafty. He was not above philandering with his servants, which meant his wife no longer kept any. This giantess was jealous. She thought this thin sallow little man must be the object of universal desire.

Above all an astute and level-headed man, Thénardier was a restrained sort

of villain. This is the worst type; hypocrisy is involved.

It was not that Thénardier was not on occasion capable of at least as much

anger as his wife, but this was very rare. And since he bore a grudge against the entire human race, since he had a deep furnace of hatred burning within him, since he was one of those people who are perpetually avenging

themselves, who blame any passing scapegoat for everything that has gone wrong for them and who are always ready, as if justifiably aggrieved, to foist on anybody but themselves responsibility for the sum total of deceptions, bankruptcies and calamities in their lives, with all this leaven fermenting inside him, frothing in his mouth and bubbling in his eyes, on such occasions he was terrible. Woe betide the person who came in the way of his fury then!

In addition to his other qualities Thénardier was keen and discerning, silent

or talkative as appropriate, and always with supreme intelligence. He had something of a sailor’s gaze, accustomed as they are to screwing up their eyes when looking through their telescopes. Thénardier was a statesman*.

At the sight of Madame Thénardier every newcomer to the inn would say,

‘That’s the master of the household.’ Wrong. She was not even the mistress.

It was the husband who was both master and mistress. She was the agent, he was the author. He controlled everything by a kind of invisible and constant magnetic power. Just a word from him, sometimes a sign, was enough. The mammoth obeyed. Though she was not fully aware of it, in the eyes of his wife Thénardier was a special and sovereign kind of being. She had the virtues of her own nature. If she were ever in disagreement over any detail with ‘Monsieur Thénardier’, an unthinkable eventuality in any case, never would she have contradicted her husband in public about anything. She would never have committed ‘in front of strangers’, as women so often do, the offence of what in parliamentary language is called ‘exposing the crown’.

Although the harmony between them resulted only in evil, there was spiritual communion in Madame Thénardier’s submission to her husband. That rowdy mountain of flesh was directed by the little finger of that weedy despot. Seen in its dwarfish and freakish mode, this was that great universal phenomenon: matter’s adoration of mind. For some ugliness derives its reason for being from the very depths of eternal beauty. There was something of the unknown about Thénardier. Hence the absolute domination of that woman by that man.

At certain moments she saw him as a beacon of light, at others she felt his menace.

This woman was a formidable creature who loved only her children and

feared only her husband. She was a mother because she was a mammal. In

fact her maternal instinct was confined to her daughters and, as we shall see, did not extend to boys. As for him, that man had only one thing in mind: to enrich himself.

He was not succeeding in this. This great talent lacked a worthy stage.

Thénardier was on his way to ruin in Montfermeil, if ruin is possible with nothing. In Switzerland or the Pyrenees this have-not would have become a millionaire. But the innkeeper must graze wherever fate has tethered him.

Of course, the word ‘innkeeper’ is used here in a restricted sense and does

not apply to a whole generic class.

In that same year of 1823 Thénardier owed some fifteen hundred francs to

pressing creditors, which was a worry to him.

Whatever fate’s relentless injustice towards him, Thénardier was one of

those men who best understand, with the utmost insight and in the most modern way, what among barbarous peoples is a virtue and among civilized peoples a commodity: hospitality. He was also an excellent poacher and admired as a good shot. He had a certain cold, quiet laugh that was particularly dangerous.

His theories as a landlord sometimes erupted from him in illuminating

outbursts. He had professional aphorisms that he implanted in his wife’s mind. ‘The duty of the innkeeper,’ he told her one day in a fierce, low voice, ‘is to sell to anybody that comes along some hot grub, somewhere to rest, light, warmth, dirty sheets, good cheer, bed lice and a smile, to stop passers-by, to empty small purses and within reason to lighten fat ones, to accommodate travelling families with consideration, to leech the man, fleece the woman, pluck the child, to charge for the open window, the closed window, the chimney corner, the armchair, the chair, the high stool, the wooden stool, the feather bed, the mattress and the truss of straw, to know how much the mirror is worn out by being obscured and set a price on it, and by every devilish means to make the traveller pay for everything, even the flies his dog eats!’

This man and this woman were guile wedded to rage, a hideous and

terrible coupling.

While Thénardier pondered and plotted, his wife gave no thought to absent

creditors, had no care of yesterday or tomorrow, and lived in a state of fury, entirely in the present moment.

Such were these two beings. Cosette was trapped between them, enduring

their twofold assault on her, like a creature who is at the same time being crushed in a mill and pulled to pieces with pincers. The man and the woman each had a different method. Cosette was beaten black and blue – this was the woman’s doing. She went barefoot in winter – this was the man’s.

Cosette was up and down the stairs, washing, sweeping, scrubbing,

dusting, hurrying, slaving, panting, lifting heavy objects; tiny as she was, she was doing all the hard work. No pity whatsoever: a vicious mistress, a malicious master. The Thénardier inn was like a spider’s web in which Cosette was caught, trembling with fear. This sinister household represented a paradigm of oppression. It was a bit like the fly being the servant of spiders.

Unprotesting, the poor child said nothing.

When they find themselves in such a situation from the very start, so weak

and so defenceless among mankind, what goes on inside those souls who have only just left God?

III

Men Must Have Wine and Horses Must Have Water

Another four travellers had turned up.

Cosette was sadly pensive. For although she was only eight years old she

had already suffered so much that when lost in thought she looked like a gloomy old woman.

She had a bruised eyelid from being hit by Thénardier’s wife, which

prompted the woman to remark from time to time, ‘How ugly she is with that black eye!’

So Cosette was thinking that it was dark, very dark, that the pitchers and

carafes in the rooms of the unforeseen guests had unexpectedly to be filled, and now there was no water left in the cistern.

What slightly reassured her was that not much water was drunk in the

Thénardier establishment. There was no lack of thirsty people, but theirs was

the kind of thirst that reaches more readily for the jug of wine than for the jug of water. Anyone asking for a glass of water would have seemed uncivilized to all those men with their glasses of wine. But there came a moment when the child trembled. The Thénardier woman lifted the lid of a stewing-pot bubbling on the stove, then took a glass and suddenly approached the cistern.

She turned the tap. The child had raised her head and was following her every movement. A thin trickle of water flowed from the tap and half filled the glass.

‘Look at that,’ said she, ‘there’s no more water!’ She remained silent for a moment. The child did not breathe. ‘Bah!’ said the Thénardier woman, examining the half-filled glass, ‘this

will be enough.’

Cosette returned to her task but for more than fifteen minutes she felt her

heart fluttering in her chest like a big snowflake. So she counted the minutes that passed and wished it was already the next morning.

Now and then one of the drinkers would look out into the street and

exclaim, ‘It’s pitch black!’ Or, ‘You’d need to be a cat to walk the streets without a lantern at this hour!’ And Cosette quailed.

All of a sudden one of the pedlars staying at the inn came in and said in a

harsh voice, ‘My horse hasn’t been watered.’

‘Yes, it has,’ said the Thénardier woman. ‘I tell you, ma’am, it hasn’t,’ retorted the pedlar.

Cosette emerged from under the table. ‘Oh, it has, monsieur!’ she said. ‘The horse drank, it drank from the

bucket, a whole bucketful, I was the one that took it the water, and I spoke to it.’

This was not true. Cosette was lying. ‘She’s no bigger than your hand, that one, but she tells monumental lies,’

exclaimed the pedlar. ‘I tell you, it hasn’t been watered, you cheeky little brat! It has a way of blowing when it hasn’t been watered that I well recognize.’

Cosette persisted and added in a voice hoarse with anguish and hardly

audible, ‘It drank its fill, it did.’

‘Now this isn’t getting us anywhere,’ said the pedlar angrily. ‘I want my

horse watered, and let that be the end of it!’

Cosette crept under the table again. ‘Well, that’s right,’ said the Thénardier woman, ‘if that beast hasn’t been

given water, it must be given some.’

Then, glancing about her, ‘Now, where’s she got to?’ She bent down and saw Cosette cowering at the other end of the table,

almost under the drinkers’ feet.

‘Will you come out of there?’ shouted the Thénardier woman.

Cosette crawled out of the hole, as it were, in which she had been hiding. ‘Mademoiselle Dog, for want of a better name,’ said the woman, ‘go and

water that horse.’

‘But madame,’ said Cosette feebly, ‘there’s no water.’ The Thénardier woman threw the street door wide open, ‘Well then, go and

fetch some!’

Cosette’s head dropped, and she went to pick up an empty bucket in the

chimney corner. This bucket was bigger than she was, and the child could have sat inside it and been comfortable there.

The Thénardier woman returned to her stove and with a wooden spoon

tasted what was in the stewing-pot, grumbling the while, ‘There’s water at the spring. You needn’t be a genius to know that. I think I should have browned the onions.’

Then she rummaged in a drawer containing some small coins, pepper and

shallots.

‘Now, Mam’zelle Ugly Toad,’ she added, ‘on your way back you can pick

up a large loaf from the baker’s. There’s a fifteen-sou piece.’

Cosette had a little side pocket in her pinafore. She took the coin without a

word and put it in that pocket.

Then she stood there motionless, with the bucket in her hand, the door

open in front of her. She seemed to be waiting for someone to come to her rescue.

‘Go on, then!’ shouted the Thénardier woman.

Cosette went out. The door closed behind her.

IV

A Doll Makes Its Appearance

The row of open-air stalls that started at the church extended, the reader will remember, as far as the Thénardier inn. Because the gentry would soon be passing by on their way to midnight mass these stalls were all lit up with candles burning in paper cones, which produced ‘a magical effect’, as Montfermeil’s schoolmaster, at that moment seated at one of the Thénardiers’ tables, observed. However, there was not a single star to be seen in the sky.

The last of these stalls, set up exactly opposite the Thénardiers’ doorway,

was a fancy goods stall, all glittering with tinsel, glass trinkets and wonderful things made of tin. In pride of place, right in front, on a white cloth, the stallholder had placed a huge doll nearly two feet high, wearing a pink crêpe dress, with a gold tiara on its head, and real hair and enamel eyes. All day long this marvel had been on display to the wonderment of passers-by under ten years old, and no mother in Montfermeil found rich enough or extravagant enough to give it to her child. Éponine and Azelma had spent hours gazing at it, and furtively, it is true, even Cosette had dared to look at it.

For all her great despondency and distress, as Cosette stepped out, bucket

in hand, she could not help looking up at that amazing doll, ‘the lady’, as she called it. The poor child stood there paralysed. She had not yet seen the doll from so close up. The entire stall seemed a palace to her: this doll was not a doll, it was a vision. It was joy, splendour, wealth, happiness that appeared in a kind of fabulous radiance to this wretched little creature so deeply submerged in cold and dreary poverty. With the sad and naive wisdom of childhood Cosette measured the abyss that separated her from that doll. She said to herself that you would have to be a queen or a princess at least to have something like that belong to you. She considered that lovely pink dress, that lovely sleek hair, and she thought, ‘How happy that doll must be!’ She could not take her eyes off that fantastic stall. The more she looked, the more dazzled she was. She thought she was seeing paradise. There were other dolls behind the big one that looked like fairies and spirits to her. The trader pacing to and fro at the back of his stall seemed to her a little like the Eternal Father.

In her adoration she forgot everything, even the errand she had been sent

on. All at once the Thénardier woman’s harsh voice jolted her back to reality. ‘What! Not on your way yet, you witless girl! Just you wait! I’ll be right with you! What’s she doing here, I ask you! Little monster, she is!’

Thénardier’s wife had glanced out into the street and caught sight of the

spellbound Cosette.

Cosette fled with her pail, moving as fast as she could.

V

The Little Girl All Alone

As the Thénardier inn was in that part of the village near the church, it was at the spring in the forest, over towards Chelles, that Cosette had to go to draw water.

She did not look at any other tradesman’s stall. So long as she was in

Ruelle du Boulanger and in the vicinity of the church, the illuminated stalls lit the road, but soon the last glimmer of light from the last stall vanished from sight. The poor child found herself in the dark. She ploughed on. But with fear mounting in her, she rattled the handle of her bucket as much as she could as she walked along. This made a noise that kept her company.

The further she went, the darker it became. There was no one else out on

the streets. However, she did come across one woman, who seeing her pass by turned round and stood there muttering to herself, ‘Now where on earth can that child be going? Is it a werewolf child?’ Then the woman recognized Cosette. ‘Oh,’ said she, ‘it’s Alouette!’

Cosette thus made her way through the labyrinth of tortuous and deserted

streets in which the village of Montfermeil on the Chelles side ends. As long as she had houses or even just walls on either side of the road, she kept going fairly confidently. From time to time she saw the glow of a candle through the chink in a shutter. That was light and life, there were people there, which reassured her. But as she went on her pace slowed as if automatically. When she had passed the corner of the last house Cosette stopped. It had been hard to go beyond the last stall. It became impossible to go beyond the last house.

She put down her bucket, thrust her hand into her hair and began slowly to

scratch her head, a gesture characteristic of children who are terrified and do not know what to do. This was no longer Montfermeil. It was open countryside. Before her lay the dark and deserted emptiness. She gazed in despair into this blackness where there was no one now, where there were beasts, maybe ghosts. She looked hard and heard the beasts moving in the grass and she distinctly saw the ghosts stirring in the trees. Then she picked up her bucket again. Fear made her daring. ‘Puh!’ she said. ‘I’ll tell her there was no water left!’

And she resolutely retraced her steps into Montfermeil.

She had hardly gone a hundred paces when she stopped again and went

back to scratching her head. Now it was the Thénardier woman who loomed before her, looking hideous, with that hyena’s mouth and anger blazing in her eyes. The child looked ahead, then behind her, with a pitiful gaze. What was she to do? What would become of her? Where was she to go? Ahead was the spectre of the Thénardier woman, behind her all the shades of the night and the spectres of the forest. It was from the Thénardier woman that she retreated. She set off towards the spring again and started to run. She ran out of the village, she ran into the forest, not looking at anything now, not listening to anything. She did not stop running until she was out of breath, but still she went on walking. She kept on going, panic-stricken.

As she ran she felt close to tears.

The nocturnal rustling of the forest completely enveloped her. Her mind

was a blank, she could see nothing. The immensity of night confronted this tiny creature. On the one hand utter darkness, on the other an atom.

It was only seven or eight minutes’ walk from the edge of the woods to the

spring. Cosette knew the way, having walked it many times in daylight.

Strange to say, she did not get lost. A vestigial instinct somehow guided her.

Yet she glanced to neither left nor right for fear of seeing things in the branches and in the undergrowth. And so she reached the spring.

It was a small natural basin, hollowed out by the water in clayey soil, about

two feet deep, surrounded by moss and by those tall frilly grasses called ‘Henri IV ruffs’, and paved with a few large stones. A quietly murmuring stream flowed from it.

Cosette did not stop to catch her breath. It was very dark, but she was used

to coming to this spring. With her left hand she groped in the darkness for a young oak leaning over the spring that usually served her as something to hold on to, found one of its branches, and hanging from it bent down and plunged the bucket into the water. So violent was her state of turmoil that her strength was three times normal. As she bent over like this she did not notice the pocket of her pinafore empty into the spring. The fifteen-sou piece fell into the water. Cosette neither saw nor heard it fall. She pulled out the bucket, almost full, and set it down on the grass.

Having done so, she realized she was drained by exhaustion. She would

have liked to start back at once but it had been such an effort to fill the bucket she could not go one step further. She just had to sit down. She dropped to the grass and remained crouching there. She shut her eyes, then opened them again, without knowing why but unable to do otherwise.

The unsettled water in the bucket beside her formed circular ripples that

looked like snakes of blazing white.

The sky overhead was overcast with enormous black clouds, like palls of

smoke. The tragic mask of darkness seemed in some indeterminate way to bend over this child.

Jupiter was setting in the heavens.

The child gazed wild-eyed at this huge star that was unfamiliar to her and

terrified her. The planet at that moment was actually very close to the horizon and passing through a thick layer of mist that gave it a horrible ruddiness.

The gruesomely crimson-tinged mist magnified the star. It was like a luminous wound.

A cold wind blew off the plain. The forest was gloomy, with no rustling of

leaves, none of those vague bright glimmers of summer. Great boughs were horribly upraised. Stunted, gnarled bushes whistled in the clearings. Tall grasses were like a wriggling mass of eels beneath the icy blast. Brambles writhed with what looked like long arms equipped with claws attempting to catch prey. Scraps of dried heather flew past, chased by the wind, seeming to flee in terror before something coming. Forbidding expanses stretched away on all sides.

Darkness is harrowing. Man needs light. Anyone plunging into the

opposite of daylight feels the heart contract. When the eye sees darkness the mind is perturbed. In obscurity, in darkness, in murky impenetrability, there is anxiety even for the mightiest. No one walks alone in the forest at night without trembling. Shadows and trees, two dreadful densities. A fanciful reality appears in blurry depths. The inconceivable takes shape with spectral clarity a few paces before you. You see floating, either in space or in your own mind, something indefinably vague and elusive, like the dreams of sleeping flowers. There are menacing shapes on the horizon. You inhale the emanations of the great black void. You are afraid to look behind you and at the same time you want to. Pits of darkness, things that have grown frenzied, silent silhouettes that dissipate when you approach, dimly perceived tangles, agitated clusters, murky puddles, the dismal reflected in the gloomy, the sepulchral immensity of silence, possible alien beings, mysteriously bending branches, terrifying tree trunks, long hanks of rustling plants – against all this you are defenceless. None so bold that does not quail and feel the closeness of anguish. You experience something ghastly as if your soul were blending with the darkness. This impregnation with shadows is unutterably sinister for a child.

Forests are apocalyptic, and the beating of a tiny soul’s wings creates a

sound of agony beneath their monstrous vault.

Without understanding what she was experiencing Cosette felt captured by

that black enormity of nature. It was not just terror that overcame her now, it was something even more terrifying than terror. She shuddered. There are no words to express the strangeness of that shudder, which chilled her to her heart’s core. She had grown wild-eyed. She almost had the feeling she might not be able to resist coming back again at the same time the next day.

Then by a kind of instinct, to escape from this peculiar state of being,

which she did not understand but which scared her, she began to count aloud, one, two, three, four, and so on up to ten, and when she had finished she started from the beginning again. This gave back to her a true perception of the things around her. She felt the coldness of her hands, which she had got wet while drawing water. She stood up. Her fear had returned, a natural and

unconquerable fear. She had but one thought now, to flee. As fast as her legs could carry her, through the woods, through open countryside, back to the houses, the windows, the lighted candles. Her glance fell upon the bucket that stood in front of her. Such was the dread the Thénardier woman inspired in her, she dared not flee without the pail of water. She seized the handle with both hands. She could hardly lift the bucket.

She went a dozen paces like this but the bucket was full, it was heavy, she

was forced to put it down again. She caught her breath for a moment, then once more lifted the handle and set off again, going a little further this time.

But she had to stop again. After a few seconds’ rest she went on. She walked stooping forward, her head bowed, like an old woman. The weight of the bucket strained and stiffened her thin arms. The iron handle numbed and chilled her little wet hands even more. She was forced to stop every now and then, and each time she stopped the cold water that splashed from the pail fell on her bare legs. This was happening in the depths of a forest, at night, in winter, far from all human eyes. She was an eight-year-old child. At that moment there was no one but God watching this sorry sight.

And doubtless her mother, alas! For there are things that make women

lying dead in their graves open their eyes.

She panted with a sort of painful rasp. Sobs choked her throat but she

dared not weep, so afraid was she of the Thénardier woman, even at a distance. She had acquired the habit of always imagining the Thénardier woman was right there.

However, she could not cover much ground like this and she went very

slowly. Despite shortening the length of her stops and walking as far as she could between them, she thought apprehensively that at this rate it would take her more than an hour to get back to Montfermeil, and the Thénardier woman would beat her. This apprehensiveness mingled with her terror at being alone in the woods at night. She was utterly exhausted and not yet out of the forest.

When she reached an old chestnut tree that she recognized she made a final stop, longer than the other breaks she had taken, so as to be well rested, then she gathered all her strength, picked up her bucket, and pluckily set off again.

Yet the poor little creature could not help crying out in desperation, ‘O my God! my God!’

At that moment, she suddenly felt her bucket no longer weighed anything.

A hand, which looked enormous to her, had just seized the handle and vigorously lifted it. She looked up. Towering above her, a huge black figure was walking beside her in the dark. It was a man who had caught up with her and she had not heard him coming. Without a word this man had taken the handle of the bucket she was carrying.

There is an instinct for every encounter in life. The child was unafraid.

VI

Which May Prove Boulatruelle’s Intelligence

In the afternoon of that same Christmas Eve 1823 a man walked for quite a long time along the most deserted part of Boulevard de l’Hôpital in Paris.

This man looked like someone in search of lodgings, and he seemed to have a preference for stopping at the most modest houses in this run-down area on the fringes of the outlying St-Marceau district.

We shall see later that the man did actually rent a room in this remote

neighbourhood.

In the clothes he wore, as in his entire person, this man was the

embodiment of the type that might be called the gentleman beggar, combining extreme poverty with extreme cleanliness. This is quite a rare mixture that inspires intelligent hearts with that dual respect felt for the person who is very poor and the person who is very respectable. He wore an extremely old and well brushed round hat, a threadbare frock-coat of a coarse cloth of yellow ochre, a colour not at all out of the ordinary at that time, a generous waistcoat with pockets cut in the old-fashioned style, black breeches faded grey at the knees, stockings of black worsted and sturdy shoes with copper buckles. He looked like a former tutor to a good family, an émigré who had now returned. From his completely white hair, his wrinkled brow, his pale lips, from his whole face that denoted dejection and weariness of life, you would have assumed he was well over sixty. From his firm albeit slow step, from the remarkable vigour that stamped his every movement, you

would have reckoned he was scarcely fifty. The wrinkles on his brow inspired confidence and would have predisposed in his favour anyone who observed him closely. His lips were contracted in a strange twist of what looked like severity but was actually humility. There was in the depth of his gaze some indefinably melancholic serenity. In his left hand he carried a little bundle tied up in a handkerchief. With his right hand he leaned on some sort of staff cut from a hedgerow. This staff had been trimmed with a degree of care, and did not look too rough. The best had been made of the knots in it, and a coral-like knob had been fashioned out of red wax: it was a cudgel and it looked like a cane.

There are few passers-by on that boulevard, particularly in winter. The man

seemed to avoid them rather than seek them out, yet without making too much of it.

At that time King Louis XVIII went nearly every day to Choisy-le-Roi. It

was one of his favourite excursions. Around two o’clock, almost invariably, the royal carriage and cavalcade came racing headlong down Boulevard de l’Hôpital.

This served as a substitute for a watch or clock to the local beggarwomen,

who said, ‘It’s two o’clock, there he goes on his way back to the Tuileries.’

And some came running, and others lined up, for there is always a noisy

crowd when a king goes by. Besides, the appearance and disappearance of Louis XVIII created a certain impression on the streets of Paris. It was swift but majestic. This impotent king liked to ride at full gallop. Unable to walk, he wanted to go fast: this cripple would gladly have had himself drawn by lightning. Peaceable and severe, he went about surrounded by drawn sabres.

His massive coach, all gilt with large emblems of lilies painted on the panels, would thunder by. There was hardly time to catch a glimpse of it. You would see in the rear right-hand corner against white satin upholstered cushions an impassive broad scarlet face, a freshly powdered forehead with a oiseau royal hairstyle*; a proud, stern, shrewd eye, a scholar’s smile, two big epaulettes with bullion fringes on a civilian coat, the Golden Fleece, the cross of St Louis, the cross of the Legion of Honour, the Holy Spirit silver plaque, a large belly and a wide blue sash: it was the king. Outside of Paris he kept his

white-plumed hat on his knees wrapped in their long English gaiters. When he came back into the city he put his hat on his head, waving rarely. He stared coldly at the people, who responded likewise. When he appeared for the first time in the St-Marceau district, his entire success resided in the remark one local inhabitant made to his companion, ‘That bigwig there’s the government.’

So the king going by, always at the same time, with this unfailing

regularity, was the main event of the day on Boulevard de l’Hôpital.

The pedestrian in the yellow frock-coat was obviously not from this area,

and probably not from Paris, for he was unaware of this fact. When at two o’clock the royal carriage, surrounded by a squadron of lifeguards all silver-braided, appeared in the boulevard, having driven round La Salpêtrière, he seemed surprised and almost alarmed. There was no one but him on the side avenue. He hastily stepped back behind a corner in the perimeter wall, though this did not prevent Monsieur le Duc d’Havré from noticing him. As captain of the guard on duty that day, Monsieur le Duc d’Havré was seated in the carriage opposite the king. He said to His Majesty, ‘There’s a rather villainous-looking man.’ Some policemen who were clearing the way for the king also noticed him, and one of them received the order to follow him. But the man dived down the deserted little streets of that neighbourhood, and as the light was beginning to fade the policeman lost track of him, as stated in a report addressed that same evening to Monsieur le Comte Anglès, minister of state and prefect of police.

When the man in the yellow frock-coat had given the policeman the slip,

he quickened his pace, not without having looked round many times to reassure himself he was not being followed. At a quarter-past four, that is to say after dark, he passed in front of the Porte St-Martin theatre where The Two Convicts was playing that day. He was struck by the poster, illuminated by the streetlights outside the theatre, for although he was walking fast he stopped to read it. A moment later he was in Cul-de-Sac de La Planchette and entered the Plat d’Étain inn, where the office for the coach to Lagny used to be. This coach left at half-past four. The horses were harnessed and,

summoned by the coachman, the travellers were hastily clambering up the steep iron steps of the carriage.

The man asked, ‘Are there any seats left?’ ‘Only one, beside me on the box,’ said the coachman. ‘I’ll take it.’ ‘Climb up.’ Nevertheless, before setting out, the coachman cast a glance at the

traveller’s shabby attire, the small size of his bundle, and made him pay his fare.

‘Are you going as far as Lagny?’ asked the coachman. ‘Yes,’ said the man.

The traveller paid the fare to Lagny.

They set off. When they had passed the toll-gate the coachman tried to start

a conversation but the traveller replied only in monosyllables. The coachman resorted to whistling and swearing at his horses.

The coachman wrapped himself up in his cloak. It was cold. The man

appeared to pay no heed to this. Thus they passed through Gournay and Neuilly-sur-Marne.

Towards six o’clock in the evening they reached Chelles. The coachman

stopped to rest his horses in front of the carters’ inn housed in the old outbuildings of the royal abbey.

‘I’m getting off here,’ said the man.

He took his bundle and his staff and jumped down from the vehicle. A

moment later he had disappeared. He did not go into the inn.

When a few minutes later the coach started off again for Lagny it did not

pass him on Chelles’s main street.

The coachman turned to the travellers inside the coach. ‘That one there,’ he

said, ‘is a man who’s not from these parts, for I don’t know him. He looks as if he’s hard up yet he’s not careful with money. He pays the fare to Lagny and only goes as far as Chelles. It’s dark, all the houses are closed up, he doesn’t go to the inn, and there’s no sign of him. The ground must have opened up and swallowed him.’

The man had not been swallowed up into the ground but had hurried down

Chelles’s main street in the dark, then like someone who was familiar with the area and had already been here before, he turned left before the church, down the lane leading to Montfermeil.

He made his way rapidly along this lane. Where the old tree-lined road

from Gagny to Lagny cuts across it, he heard people coming. He hastily hid in a ditch and waited there until the passers-by were gone. Actually, this precaution was almost unnecessary, for as we have already said, it was a very dark December night. There were scarcely more than two or three stars to be seen in the sky.

It is at this point that the hill starts to rise. The man did not go back on to

the Montfermeil road. He struck across the fields to the right and went striding towards the forest.

Once in the forest he slackened his pace, and began to look carefully at all

the trees, making his way step by step as though seeking and following some mysterious route known only to himself. There came a moment when he appeared to be lost, and stopped in indecision. Proceeding tentatively all the time, at last he came to a clearing where there was a pile of large whitish stones. He moved quickly towards these stones, and studied them closely in the night mist as though inspecting them. A few paces away from the pile of stones was a large tree, covered with those growths that are the warts of vegetation. He went up to this tree and ran his hand over the bark of the trunk, as if trying to recognize and count all the warts.

Opposite this tree, which was an ash, was a chestnut tree, which had been

barked and to which a band of zinc had been nailed by way of a dressing for the wound. He raised himself on tip-toe and touched this band of zinc.

Then he stamped on the ground for a while in the space that lay between

the tree and the stones, like someone checking that the soil has not recently been disturbed.

This done, he took his bearings, then carried on walking through the forest.

It was this man who had just encountered Cosette.

As he walked through the woods towards Montfermeil he noticed that tiny

figure, groaning as it went, setting down its burden, then picking it up again

and resuming its progress. He came nearer and saw it was a very small child carrying an enormous bucket of water. Then he went up to the child and silently took the handle of the bucket.

VII

Cosette at the Stranger’s Side in the Dark

Cosette, as we have said, was not afraid. The man spoke to her. He spoke in a deep, almost quiet voice.

‘My child, what you’re carrying there is very heavy for you.’ Cosette looked up and replied, ‘Yes, monsieur.’ ‘Give it to me,’ said the man. ‘I’ll carry it for you.’ Cosette let go of the bucket. The man started walking alongside her. ‘It really is very heavy,’ he muttered. Then he added, ‘How old are you,

little one?’

‘Eight, monsieur.’ ‘And have you come far like this?’ ‘From the spring in the forest.’ ‘Have you got far to go?’ ‘A good quarter of an hour’s walk from here.’ The man remained silent for a moment, then said abruptly, ‘So you’ve no

mother?’

‘I don’t know,’ replied the child.

Before the man had time to respond she added, ‘I don’t think so. Other

people do. But I don’t.’

And after a pause she went on, ‘I think I never had one.’ The man stopped, put down the bucket, bent over and placed both hands

on the child’s shoulders, straining to look at her and to see her face in the dark. Cosette’s thin, pinched features appeared as a vague blur in the sky’s wan light.

‘What’s your name?’ said the man. ‘Cosette.’ It was as though the man had received an electric shock. He took another

look at her, then removed his hands from Cosette’s shoulders, picked up the

bucket and set off again.

After a moment he asked, ‘Where do you live, little one?’ ‘At Montfermeil, if you know where that is.’ ‘Is that where we’re going?’ ‘Yes, monsieur.’ There was another pause, then he spoke again. ‘So who was it that sent you

out at this hour to fetch water from the forest?’

‘It was Madame Thénardier.’ The man went on, striving to keep any trace of emotion out of his voice,

but there was nevertheless a noticeable tremor in it, ‘What does your Madame Thénardier do?’

‘She’s my mistress,’ said the child. ‘She keeps the inn.’ ‘The inn?’ said the man. ‘Well, I’m going to stay there tonight. Show me

the way.’

‘That’s where we’re going,’ said the child.

The man walked quite fast. Cosette had no trouble keeping up with him.

She no longer felt any tiredness. From time to time she looked up at the man with a kind of ineffable tranquillity and trust. She had never been taught to turn to providence or to pray. Yet she felt within her something that resembled hope and joy, something that climbed heavenwards.

Several minutes elapsed. The man resumed, ‘Is there no servant in

Madame Thénardier’s house?’

‘No, monsieur.’ ‘You’re by yourself?’ ‘Yes, monsieur.’ Another pause ensued. Cosette raised her voice. ‘That’s to say, there are

two little girls.’

‘What little girls?’ ‘Ponine and Zelma.’ This was how the child shortened those Romantic names close to the

Thénardier woman’s heart.

‘Who are Ponine and Zelma?’

‘They’re Madame Thénardier’s young misses. That’s to say, her

daughters.’

‘And what do they do?’ ‘Oh!’ said the child. ‘They have beautiful dolls, things that have gold in

them, all kinds of things. They play, they have fun.’

‘All day long?’ ‘Yes, monsieur.’ ‘And you?’ ‘I work.’ ‘All day long?’ The child looked up with those big eyes of hers that had a tear in them you

could not see because of the dark, and replied softly, ‘Yes, monsieur.’

After an interval of silence she went on, ‘Sometimes, when I’ve finished

working, and they don’t mind, I can play too.’

‘And how do you play?’ ‘As best I can. I’m left to myself. But I haven’t many toys. Ponine and

Zelma won’t let me play with their dolls. I’ve only a little lead sword that’s no bigger than that.’

The child held up her little finger. ‘And it doesn’t cut?’ ‘Yes, it does, monsieur,’ said the child. ‘It cuts salad and the heads off

flies.’

They reached the village. Cosette led the stranger through the streets. They

passed in front of the bakery but Cosette did not think of the bread that she was supposed to bring back. The man had stopped asking her questions and now kept a sombre silence. When they had left the church behind them, seeing all the open-air stalls the man asked Cosette, ‘So is this the market?’

‘No, monsieur, it’s Christmas.’ As they approached the inn Cosette timidly touched his arm. ‘Monsieur?’ ‘What, my child?’ ‘We’re very close to the house.’ ‘Well?’ ‘Will you let me take my bucket now?’

‘Why?’ ‘The thing is, if Madame sees that someone has carried it for me, she’ll

beat me.’

The man handed her the bucket. A moment later they were at the door of

the inn.

VIII

The Vexation of Playing Host to a Poor Man Who May Be Rich

Cosette could not help casting a sidelong glance at the big doll still on display at the fancy goods stall. Then she knocked. The door opened. The Thénardier woman appeared holding a candle.

‘Ah! so it’s you, you little beggar! Thank heavens, it’s taken you long

enough! The minx! She must have been dawdling!’

‘Madame,’ said Cosette trembling all over, ‘here’s a gentleman who’s

come to stay.’

The Thénardier woman very quickly replaced her churlish scowl with her

amiable grimace, a change of expression characteristic of innkeepers, and avidly peered at the newcomer.

‘Is this the gentleman?’ she said. ‘Yes, madame,’ replied the man, raising his hand to his hat.

Wealthy travellers are not so polite. This gesture and an inspection of the

stranger’s clothing and baggage, which the Thénardier woman assessed at a glance, caused the amiable grimace to vanish and the churlish scowl to reappear. She responded drily, ‘Come in, old man.’

The ‘old man’ entered. The Thénardier woman cast a second glance at him,

taking particular note of his frock-coat, which was completely threadbare, and his hat, which was a little battered, and with a toss of her head, a wrinkling of her nose and a screwing-up of her eyes consulted her husband, who was still drinking with the carters.

The husband replied with that imperceptible motion of the forefinger

which together with a pursing of the lips signifies in such cases: flat broke.

At which point the Thénardier woman exclaimed, ‘Now see here, my good

fellow, I’m very sorry, but I’ve no room left.’

‘Put me where you like,’ said the man, ‘in the attic, in the stable. I’ll pay

the price of a room.’

‘Forty sous.’ ‘Forty sous. Agreed.’ ‘Very well!’ ‘Forty sous!’ a carter muttered to the Thénardier woman. ‘But it’s only

twenty!’

‘For him, it’s forty sous,’ the Thénardier woman replied in the same

undertone. ‘I don’t give lodgings to paupers for less.’

‘That’s true,’ her husband added softly, ‘it lowers the tone of a place to

have people like that staying in it.’

In the meantime, having left his bundle and staff on a bench, the man had

sat down at a table on which Cosette had been eager to place a bottle of wine and a glass. The pedlar who had asked for the bucket of water had gone to take it out to his horse himself. Cosette had resumed her place under the kitchen table with her knitting.

The man, who barely moistened his lips with the glass of wine he poured

for himself, observed the child with peculiar attention.

Cosette was ugly. Had she been happy, she might have been pretty. We

have already given a quick sketch of that forlorn little figure. Cosette was thin and pale. She was nearly eight years old, she hardly looked six. Her huge eyes, sunk in a kind of deep shadow, were almost dull with weeping. The corners of her mouth had that downward turn of habitual anguish to be observed in the condemned and the incurably sick. As her mother had suspected, her hands were ‘covered with chilblains’. The light cast on her by the fire at that moment brought out the angularity of her bones and made obvious her frightful thinness. As she was always shivering she had acquired the habit of pressing her knees together. She wore no more than a rag of clothing that would have been pitiful in summer and was horrifying in winter.

All she had on was tattered cotton, not a scrap of wool. Her skin showed through here and there, marked black and blue all over, indicating where the Thénardier woman had hit her. Her naked legs were red and skinny. The prominence of her collarbones made you want to weep. This child’s whole

person, her behaviour, the way she moved, the sound of her voice, her pauses between one word and the next, the expression in her eyes, her silence, her slightest gesture, expressed and conveyed one idea only: fear.

Fear was written all over her. She was, so to speak, steeped in it. Fear drew

her elbows in close to her hips, kept her feet tucked under her skirt, made her take up as little space as possible, allowed her to breathe only the bare minimum, and had become what might be called her habit of body, with no possibility of change except to intensify. Deep in her eyes was a kernel of stupefied terror.

This fear was such that when she got back, wet through though she was,

Cosette dared not go and dry herself in front of the fire, and silently applied herself to her task again.

The expression in the eyes of this eight-year-old child was usually so

dejected and sometimes so tragic that at certain moments she seemed to be turning into an idiot or a demon.

Never, as we have said, had she known what it means to pray. Never had

she set foot in a church. ‘Have I got time for that?’ said the Thénardier woman.

The man in the yellow frock-coat did not take his eyes off Cosette. ‘Now that I think of it, what about that bread?’ Responding as she always did whenever the Thénardier woman raised her

voice, Cosette very quickly came out from under the table.

She had completely forgotten about the bread. She resorted to the tactic

adopted by children in constant fear. She lied.

‘Madame, the bakery was shut.’ ‘You should have knocked.’ ‘I did knock, madame.’ ‘Well?’ ‘The baker didn’t open the door.’ ‘I’ll find out tomorrow whether that’s true,’ said the Thénardier woman.

‘And if you’re lying, there’ll be the devil to pay. In the meantime, give me back the fifteen sous.’

Cosette stuck her hand into the pocket of her pinafore and turned sickly

pale. The fifteen-sou coin was not there any more.

‘Come on,’ said the Thénardier woman, ‘you heard me!’ Cosette turned her pocket inside out, there was nothing in it. What could

have become of that money? The poor little creature was completely dumbfounded. She was petrified.

‘That fifteen-sou coin,’ scolded the Thénardier woman, ‘did you lose it? Or

are you trying to steal it from me?’

At the same time she reached out for the strap hanging by the fireplace.

This ominous gesture gave Cosette the strength to cry, ‘Spare me! Madame!

Madame! I won’t do it again!’

The Thénardier woman unhooked the strap.

Meanwhile the man in the yellow frock-coat had been fumbling in his

waistcoat pocket without anyone noticing. In fact the other travellers were drinking or playing cards and paying no attention to anything else.

Cosette cringed in the corner of the fireplace, trying to keep her poor half-

naked limbs tucked in and covered up. The Thénardier woman raised her arm.

‘Excuse me, madame,’ said the man, ‘but I saw something fall out of the

little one’s apron pocket just now and roll away. Perhaps that was it.’ At the same time he bent down and seemed to search on the floor for a moment.

‘Just as I thought. Here it is,’ he said, straightening up. And he held out a

silver coin to the Thénardier woman.

‘Yes, that’s it,’ said she.

No, it was not, for it was a twenty-sou coin, but this was to the Thénardier

woman’s advantage. She put the coin in her pocket and merely scowled fiercely at the child, saying, ‘All the same, just you mind it doesn’t happen again!’

Cosette returned to what the Thénardier woman called ‘her kennel’, and

her big eyes, riveted on the wayfaring stranger, began to take on an expression they had never had before. It was as yet only naive amazement but tinged with a kind of stunned trustfulness.

‘By the way, do you want supper?’ the Thénardier woman asked the

traveller.

He did not reply. He appeared to be deep in thought. ‘What on earth is anyone to make of that man?’ she muttered. ‘He’s some

frightful pauper. One that can’t afford to pay for supper. Will he even pay for his lodging? Anyway, it’s just as well he didn’t take it into his head to steal the money that was on the floor.’

Meanwhile, a door had opened and Éponine and Azelma had come in.

They really were two pretty little girls, more like gentry than peasants,

extremely charming, one with very glossy brown hair, the other with long black braids hanging down her back, both lively, clean, plump, fresh and healthy, a pleasure to behold. They were warmly clothed but with so much of a mother’s special care that the heaviness of the materials did not detract from the daintiness of the outfit. Winter was catered for without the loss of spring. These two little girls emanated light. Moreover, they behaved like royalty. There was sovereignty in their dress, in their mirth, in the noise they made.

When they came in the Thénardier woman said to them in a grumbling

tone of voice that was yet full of adoration, ‘Ah! there you are!’

Then pulling them on to her lap one after the other, smoothing their hair,

retying their ribbons, and then letting them go, giving them a shake in that gentle way mothers do, she exclaimed, ‘Don’t they look a fright!’

They went and sat by the fireside. They had a doll, which they turned

round and round on their knees, merrily prattling away. From time to time Cosette looked up from her knitting and dolefully watched them play.

Éponine and Azelma did not look at Cosette. For them she was like the

dog. These three little girls’ ages did not add up to twenty-four years between them but they already represented the whole of human society: envy on the one hand, scorn on the other.

The Thénardier sisters’ doll was very shabby, very old, and very much the

worse for wear but seemed nonetheless wonderful to Cosette, who had never had a doll in her life, a real doll, to use an expression that all children will understand.

Suddenly the Thénardier woman, who was constantly moving about the

room, going to and fro, noticed that Cosette was distracted and that instead of working she was watching the little ones play.

‘Ah! I’ve caught you!’ she cried. ‘So that’s how you work! I’ll make you

work with a feel of the strap.’

Without rising from his chair the stranger turned to the Thénardier woman.

‘Madame,’ he said, smiling with an almost apprehensive look, ‘go on, let her play!’

From any traveller who had eaten a slice of mutton and drunk a couple of

bottles of wine with his supper, and did not look like ‘some frightful pauper’, such a wish would have been a command. But that a man wearing a hat like that should take the liberty of making any request, and that a man wearing a coat like that should take the liberty of expressing his will, was something that Madame Thénardier did not think she had to tolerate.

She retorted sourly, ‘Since she eats she has to work. I don’t feed her to do

nothing.’

‘Well, what is it she’s making?’ said the stranger in that gentle voice so

strangely at odds with his beggarly clothes and stevedore’s shoulders.

The Thénardier woman condescended to reply, ‘Stockings, if you please.

Stockings for my little girls, who have none to speak of and who’ll soon be going around barefoot.’

The man looked at Cosette’s poor little red feet and went on, ‘When will

she have finished that pair of stockings?’

‘The lazybones! She has at least three or four full days’ work still!’ ‘And how much might that pair of stockings be worth when she’s finished

them?’

The Thénardier woman threw him a contemptuous glance. ‘At least thirty

sous.’

‘Would you sell them for five francs?’ said the man. ‘Good God!’ a carter listening to this exclaimed with a guffaw. ‘Five

francs! I should damn well think so! Five francs!’

Thénardier thought he ought to put in a word.

‘Yes, monsieur, if that’s your pleasure, we’ll sell you that pair of stockings

for five francs. We can’t refuse travellers anything.’

‘You’d have to pay right away,’ said the Thénardier woman in her curt and

peremptory fashion.

‘I’m buying that pair of stockings,’ replied the man, ‘and’, he added,

drawing from his pocket a five-franc coin that he laid on the table, ‘there’s the payment for them.’

Then he turned to Cosette. ‘Now your work belongs to me. Play, my child.’ The carter was so impressed by the five-franc coin that he left his glass

where it was and rushed over.

‘It’s true, would you believe it!’ he cried, examining it. ‘It’s a hind

coachwheel*all right! And not counterfeit!’

Thénardier came up and silently put the coin in his pocket.

There was nothing the Thénardier woman could say. She chewed her lips

and her face took on an expression of hatred.

Meanwhile, Cosette trembled. ‘Is it true, madame?’ she dared to ask. ‘May

I play?’

‘Play!’ said the Thénardier woman in a terrible voice. ‘Thank you, madame,’ said Cosette. And while with her voice she thanked

the Thénardier woman, with all her little soul she thanked the traveller.

Thénardier went back to his drinking.

His wife whispered in his ear, ‘Who the devil can this yellow man be?’ ‘I’ve seen millionaires who had frock-coats like that,’ Thénardier replied in

a lordly manner.

Cosette had put aside her knitting but had not left her place. Cosette always

moved as little as possible. From a box behind her she had taken some old rags and her little lead sword.

Éponine and Azelma paid no attention to what was going on. They had just

carried out a very important operation: they had got hold of the cat. They had thrown the doll on the floor, and despite its miaowings and contortions, Éponine, who was the elder, was swaddling the kitten with a heap of old red and blue dressing-up clothes. While performing this serious and difficult task she was talking to her sister in that sweet and adorable way children have,

which like the splendour of a butterfly’s wings loses its magic when you try to pin it down.

‘You see, sister, this doll’s more fun than the other one. It moves, it cries,

it’s warm. Look, sister, let’s play with it. Pretend this is my little girl. That I’m a lady. That I come to see you and you look at her. That little by little, you notice her whiskers and you’re surprised. And then you see her ears, and then you see her tail, and you’re amazed. And you say to me, “Good gracious!” And I say, “Yes, madame, this little girl of mine is like that. That’s the way little girls are nowadays.” ’

Azelma listened in wonder to Éponine.

In the meantime the drinkers had started singing an obscene song that

made them laugh fit to shake the rafters. Thénardier encouraged them and joined in.

Just as birds use anything to build a nest, so do children make a doll out of

anything. While Éponine and Azelma swaddled the cat, Cosette swaddled her sword. When she had done that, she laid it in her arms and softly sang lullabies to it.

Playing with dolls is one of the most urgent needs and at the same time one

of the most charming instincts that little girls have. Nursing, dressing, adorning, putting clothes on, taking them off, putting them on again, teaching, scolding a little, cradling, dandling, lulling to sleep, imagining that something is someone – a woman’s entire future lies in this. While dreaming and chattering, making little trousseaux and layettes, sewing little dresses, blouses and vests, the baby girl grows into a little girl, the little girl into a big girl, the big girl into a woman. The first child follows on from the last doll.

A little girl without a doll is almost as unhappy and quite as inconceivable

as a woman without a child.

So Cosette had made herself a doll out of the sword.

The Thénardier woman went over to the ‘yellow man’. ‘My husband’s

right,’ she thought. ‘He could be Monsieur Laffitte. There are some very weird rich folk!’

She came and leaned on his table. ‘Monsieur …’ she said.

At this word ‘monsieur’ the man turned round. Up until then the

Thénardier woman had addressed him only as ‘old fellow’ or ‘old man’.

‘You see, monsieur,’ she went on, adopting a sickly-sweet expression that

was even more unpleasant to look at than her ferocious one, ‘I’m all for the child playing, I’m not against it, but just this once, because you’re generous.

You see, she has nothing. She has to work.’

‘Then she’s not yours, this child?’ asked the man. ‘Good God! No, monsieur! She’s a little pauper we’ve just taken in out of

charity. Some sort of idiot child. She must have water on the brain. She has a large head, as you can see. We do what we can for her, after all we’re not rich. Though we keep writing to where she comes from, we’ve not had any reply for the last six months. Her mother must be dead.’

‘Ah!’ said the man, and returned to his reflections. ‘She was no better than she should be, that mother of hers,’ added the

Thénardier woman. ‘She abandoned her child.’

As though some instinct had alerted her that she was being talked about,

Cosette did not take her eyes off the Thénardier woman throughout this entire conversation. She listened vaguely. She heard the odd few words.

Meanwhile, the boozers, all of them three-quarters drunk, were repeating

their scurrilous refrain with redoubled merriment. It was a highly ribald song involving the Virgin and the infant Jesus. The Thénardier woman went over to join in the hearty laughter. From under the table Cosette gazed into the fire, which was reflected in her staring eyes. She began rocking in her arms again the swaddled bundle she had made, and as she rocked it she sang in a low voice, ‘My mother’s dead! My mother’s dead! My mother’s dead!’

Pressed again by the hostess, the yellow man, ‘the millionaire’, at last

consented to have some supper.

‘What does monsieur want?’ ‘Bread and cheese,’ said the man. ‘He’s surely a beggar,’ thought the Thénardier woman.

The drunks were still singing their song and the child under the table was

singing hers.

All at once Cosette broke off. She had just turned round and caught sight

of the little Thénardier girls’ doll, which they had abandoned for the cat and left on the floor a few feet from the kitchen table.

So she dropped the swaddled sword that only half satisfied her and then let

her eyes wander slowly around the room. The Thénardier woman was talking quietly to her husband and counting some money, Ponine and Zelma were playing with the cat, the travellers were eating or drinking or singing, there was no one looking at her. She had not a moment to lose. She crept out from under the table on her hands and knees, made sure once more that she was not being watched, then swiftly slithered over to the doll and grabbed it. A moment later she was back in her place, sitting still, but turned in such a way as to keep in shadow the doll she held in her arms. The joy of playing with a doll was so rare for her that it had all the intensity of a real thrill.

No one had seen her, except the traveller, who was slowly eating his frugal

meal.

This joy lasted for almost a quarter of an hour.

But careful though she was, Cosette did not notice one of the doll’s feet

was sticking out and that it was very brightly lit by the fire in the hearth. That pink foot shining in the shadows suddenly caught Azelma’s eye, and she said to Éponine, ‘Look, sister!’

The two little girls left off what they were doing, flabbergasted. Cosette

had dared to take the doll! Éponine stood up, and without letting go of the cat went over to her mother and began to tug at her skirt.

‘Leave me alone!’ said her mother. ‘What do you want?’ ‘Mother,’ said the child, ‘look!’ And she pointed to Cosette. Completely transported in her possession of

the doll, Cosette was blind and deaf to everything else.

The Thénardier woman’s face took on that peculiar expression which

consists of a terrible fury concerning life’s trivialities, and which has led to such women being called harpies. This time wounded pride incensed her even more. Cosette had overstepped all boundaries. Cosette had violated the doll belonging to these ‘little misses’. The look on a czarina’s face, seeing a

muzhik trying on her imperial son’s broad blue sash, would have been no different.

She shouted in a voice husky with indignation, ‘Cosette!’ Cosette started as if the earth had trembled beneath her. She turned round. ‘Cosette!’ repeated the Thénardier woman.

Cosette took the doll and laid it gently on the floor with a kind of

reverence mixed with despair. Then without taking her eyes off it, she clasped her hands and wrung them, which is a dreadful thing to say of a child that age. Then – what none of her emotions that day had managed to achieve, neither her flight through the forest, nor the weight of the bucket of water, nor the loss of the money, nor the sight of the strap, nor even the ominous words she had heard Madame Thénardier utter – she wept. She burst into sobs.

Meanwhile the traveller had risen to his feet. ‘What’s the matter?’ he said to the Thénardier woman. ‘Don’t you see?’ said the woman, pointing to the corpus delicti that lay at

Cosette’s feet.

‘Well, what is it?’ said the man. ‘That guttersnipe’, replied the Thénardier woman, ‘has dared to touch the

children’s doll!’

‘All this fuss just for that!’ said the man. ‘Well, what if she did play with

the doll?’

‘She touched it with her dirty hands!’ the Thénardier woman went on.

‘With her horrible dirty hands.’

At this, Cosette sobbed all the more. ‘Will you stop that noise!’ shouted the Thénardier woman.

The man walked straight over to the street door, opened it, and went out.

As soon as he was gone the Thénardier woman took advantage of his

absence to give Cosette a hefty kick under the table, which made the child cry out loud.

The door opened again and the man reappeared, carrying with both hands

the fabulous doll that has already been mentioned, which had held all the youngsters in the village in thrall since morning, and he stood it in front of Cosette, saying, ‘Here, this is for you.’

We can only assume that in the time he had been there, which was an hour

or more, he had been dimly aware of the fancy goods stall so splendidly illuminated with lanterns and candles that its brightness could be seen through the window of the tavern.

Cosette looked up. She had seen the man approach her with that doll as if it

might have been the sun approaching. She heard those incredible words, ‘This is for you.’ She stared at him. She stared at the doll. Then she slowly retreated, and went and hid under the far end of the table in the corner by the wall.

She was not crying any more, she was not wailing, she looked as if she

dared not breathe.

The Thénardier woman, Éponine and Azelma might have been statues.

Even the drinkers were held in suspense. There was a solemn silence throughout the tavern.

Paralysed and speechless, the Thénardier woman returned to her

speculations. ‘Who the hell is this old man? Is he a pauper? Is he a millionaire? He may be both, in other words a thief.’

On her husband’s face appeared that particular expression that marks the

human countenance whenever overriding instinct appears there in all its bestial strength. The innkeeper stared at the doll and the traveller in turn. He seemed to be getting the scent of the man as he might have got the scent of a bag of money. This lasted no more than a fleeting moment.

He went over to his wife and said to her quietly, ‘That thing costs at least

thirty francs. No fooling about. Grovel to the man!’

The crass and the guileless have this in common: the transitional mode is

not in their nature.

‘Well, Cosette,’ said the Thénardier woman in a voice that strove to be

sweet and consisted entirely of the bitter honey of vicious women, ‘aren’t you going to take your doll?’

Cosette ventured out of her hiding-place. ‘My little Cosette,’ said the Thénardier woman caressingly, ‘monsieur has

given you a doll. Take it, it’s yours.’