Les Misérables
protection, and of adorning my writings with your name. If you
deign to honor me with the most modest offering, I shall
immediately occupy myself in making a piesse of verse to pay you my
tribute of gratitude. Which I shall endeavor to render this piesse
as perfect as possible, will be sent to you before it is inserted
at the beginning of the drama and delivered on the stage.
To Monsieur
and Madame Pabourgeot,
My most respectful complements,
GENFLOT, man of letters.
P. S. Even if it is only forty sous.
Excuse me for sending my daughter and not presenting myself, but
sad motives connected with the toilet do not permit me, alas! to go
out.
Finally, Marius opened the fourth letter. The address ran: _To the
benevolent Gentleman of the church of Saint-Jacques-du-haut-Pas_. It
contained the following lines:—
BENEVOLENT MAN: If you deign to accompany my daughter, you will
behold a misserable calamity, and I will show you my certificates.
At the aspect of these writings your generous soul will be moved
with a sentiment of obvious benevolence, for true philosophers
always feel lively emotions.
Admit, compassionate man, that it is necessary to suffer the most
cruel need, and that it is very painful, for the sake of obtaining
a little relief, to get oneself attested by the authorities as
though one were not free to suffer and to die of inanition while
waiting to have our misery relieved. Destinies are very fatal for
several and too prodigal or too protecting for others.
I await your presence or your offering, if you deign to make one,
and I beseech you to accept the respectful sentiments with which I
have the honor to be,
truly magnanimous man,
your very humble
and very obedient servant,
P. FABANTOU, dramatic artist.
After perusing these four letters, Marius did not find himself much
further advanced than before.
In the first place, not one of the signers gave his address.
Then, they seemed to come from four different individuals, Don Alvarès,
Mistress Balizard, the poet Genflot, and dramatic artist Fabantou; but
the singular thing about these letters was, that all four were written
by the same hand.
What conclusion was to be drawn from this, except that they all come
from the same person?
Moreover, and this rendered the conjecture all the more probable, the
coarse and yellow paper was the same in all four, the odor of tobacco
was the same, and, although an attempt had been made to vary the style,
the same orthographical faults were reproduced with the greatest
tranquillity, and the man of letters Genflot was no more exempt from
them than the Spanish captain.
It was waste of trouble to try to solve this petty mystery. Had it not
been a chance find, it would have borne the air of a mystification.
Marius was too melancholy to take even a chance pleasantry well, and to
lend himself to a game which the pavement of the street seemed desirous
of playing with him. It seemed to him that he was playing the part of
the blind man in blind man’s buff between the four letters, and that
they were making sport of him.
Nothing, however, indicated that these letters belonged to the two
young girls whom Marius had met on the boulevard. After all, they were
evidently papers of no value. Marius replaced them in their envelope,
flung the whole into a corner and went to bed. About seven o’clock in
the morning, he had just risen and breakfasted, and was trying to
settle down to work, when there came a soft knock at his door.
As he owned nothing, he never locked his door, unless occasionally,
though very rarely, when he was engaged in some pressing work. Even
when absent he left his key in the lock. “You will be robbed,” said
Ma’am Bougon. “Of what?” said Marius. The truth is, however, that he
had, one day, been robbed of an old pair of boots, to the great triumph
of Ma’am Bougon.
There came a second knock, as gentle as the first.
“Come in,” said Marius.
The door opened.
“What do you want, Ma’am Bougon?” asked Marius, without raising his
eyes from the books and manuscripts on his table.
A voice which did not belong to Ma’am Bougon replied:—
“Excuse me, sir—”
It was a dull, broken, hoarse, strangled voice, the voice of an old
man, roughened with brandy and liquor.
Marius turned round hastily, and beheld a young girl.
CHAPTER IV—A ROSE IN MISERY
A very young girl was standing in the half-open door. The dormer window
of the garret, through which the light fell, was precisely opposite the
door, and illuminated the figure with a wan light. She was a frail,
emaciated, slender creature; there was nothing but a chemise and a
petticoat upon that chilled and shivering nakedness. Her girdle was a
string, her head ribbon a string, her pointed shoulders emerged from
her chemise, a blond and lymphatic pallor, earth-colored collar-bones,
red hands, a half-open and degraded mouth, missing teeth, dull, bold,
base eyes; she had the form of a young girl who has missed her youth,
and the look of a corrupt old woman; fifty years mingled with fifteen;
one of those beings which are both feeble and horrible, and which cause
those to shudder whom they do not cause to weep.
Marius had risen, and was staring in a sort of stupor at this being,
who was almost like the forms of the shadows which traverse dreams.
The most heart-breaking thing of all was, that this young girl had not
come into the world to be homely. In her early childhood she must even
have been pretty. The grace of her age was still struggling against the
hideous, premature decrepitude of debauchery and poverty. The remains
of beauty were dying away in that face of sixteen, like the pale
sunlight which is extinguished under hideous clouds at dawn on a
winter’s day.
That face was not wholly unknown to Marius. He thought he remembered
having seen it somewhere.
“What do you wish, Mademoiselle?” he asked.
The young girl replied in her voice of a drunken convict:—
“Here is a letter for you, Monsieur Marius.”
She called Marius by his name; he could not doubt that he was the
person whom she wanted; but who was this girl? How did she know his
name?
Without waiting for him to tell her to advance, she entered. She
entered resolutely, staring, with a sort of assurance that made the
heart bleed, at the whole room and the unmade bed. Her feet were bare.
Large holes in her petticoat permitted glimpses of her long legs and
her thin knees. She was shivering.
She held a letter in her hand, which she presented to Marius.
Marius, as he opened the letter, noticed that the enormous wafer which
sealed it was still moist. The message could not have come from a
distance. He read:—
MY AMIABLE NEIGHBOR, YOUNG MAN: I have learned of your goodness to
me, that you paid my rent six months ago. I bless you, young man.
My eldest daughter will tell you that we have been without a morsel
of bread for two days, four persons and my spouse ill. If I am not
deseaved in my opinion, I think I may hope that your generous heart
will melt at this statement and the desire will subjugate you to be
propitious to me by daigning to lavish on me a slight favor.
I am with the distinguished consideration which is due to the
benefactors of humanity,—
JONDRETTE.
P.S. My eldest daughter will await your orders, dear Monsieur Marius.
This letter, coming in the very midst of the mysterious adventure which
had occupied Marius’ thoughts ever since the preceding evening, was
like a candle in a cellar. All was suddenly illuminated.
This letter came from the same place as the other four. There was the
same writing, the same style, the same orthography, the same paper, the
same odor of tobacco.
There were five missives, five histories, five signatures, and a single
signer. The Spanish Captain Don Alvarès, the unhappy Mistress Balizard,
the dramatic poet Genflot, the old comedian Fabantou, were all four
named Jondrette, if, indeed, Jondrette himself were named Jondrette.
Marius had lived in the house for a tolerably long time, and he had
had, as we have said, but very rare occasion to see, to even catch a
glimpse of, his extremely mean neighbors. His mind was elsewhere, and
where the mind is, there the eyes are also. He had been obliged more
than once to pass the Jondrettes in the corridor or on the stairs; but
they were mere forms to him; he had paid so little heed to them, that,
on the preceding evening, he had jostled the Jondrette girls on the
boulevard, without recognizing them, for it had evidently been they,
and it was with great difficulty that the one who had just entered his
room had awakened in him, in spite of disgust and pity, a vague
recollection of having met her elsewhere.
Now he saw everything clearly. He understood that his neighbor
Jondrette, in his distress, exercised the industry of speculating on
the charity of benevolent persons, that he procured addresses, and that
he wrote under feigned names to people whom he judged to be wealthy and
compassionate, letters which his daughters delivered at their risk and
peril, for this father had come to such a pass, that he risked his
daughters; he was playing a game with fate, and he used them as the
stake. Marius understood that probably, judging from their flight on
the evening before, from their breathless condition, from their terror
and from the words of slang which he had overheard, these unfortunate
creatures were plying some inexplicably sad profession, and that the
result of the whole was, in the midst of human society, as it is now
constituted, two miserable beings who were neither girls nor women, a
species of impure and innocent monsters produced by misery.
Sad creatures, without name, or sex, or age, to whom neither good nor
evil were any longer possible, and who, on emerging from childhood,
have already nothing in this world, neither liberty, nor virtue, nor
responsibility. Souls which blossomed out yesterday, and are faded
to-day, like those flowers let fall in the streets, which are soiled
with every sort of mire, while waiting for some wheel to crush them.
Nevertheless, while Marius bent a pained and astonished gaze on her,
the young girl was wandering back and forth in the garret with the
audacity of a spectre. She kicked about, without troubling herself as
to her nakedness. Occasionally her chemise, which was untied and torn,
fell almost to her waist. She moved the chairs about, she disarranged
the toilet articles which stood on the commode, she handled Marius’
clothes, she rummaged about to see what there was in the corners.
“Hullo!” said she, “you have a mirror!”
And she hummed scraps of vaudevilles, as though she had been alone,
frolicsome refrains which her hoarse and guttural voice rendered
lugubrious.
An indescribable constraint, weariness, and humiliation were
perceptible beneath this hardihood. Effrontery is a disgrace.
Nothing could be more melancholy than to see her sport about the room,
and, so to speak, flit with the movements of a bird which is frightened
by the daylight, or which has broken its wing. One felt that under
other conditions of education and destiny, the gay and over-free mien
of this young girl might have turned out sweet and charming. Never,
even among animals, does the creature born to be a dove change into an
osprey. That is only to be seen among men.
Marius reflected, and allowed her to have her way.
She approached the table.
“Ah!” said she, “books!”
A flash pierced her glassy eye. She resumed, and her accent expressed
the happiness which she felt in boasting of something, to which no
human creature is insensible:—