Les Misérables
Bicêtre, and had taken the road to Mans in order to avoid
Fontainebleau, where the King then was. This caused the horrible
journey to last three or four days longer; but torture may surely be
prolonged with the object of sparing the royal personage a sight of it.
Jean Valjean returned home utterly overwhelmed. Such encounters are
shocks, and the memory that they leave behind them resembles a thorough
shaking up.
Nevertheless, Jean Valjean did not observe that, on his way back to the
Rue de Babylone with Cosette, the latter was plying him with other
questions on the subject of what they had just seen; perhaps he was too
much absorbed in his own dejection to notice her words and reply to
them. But when Cosette was leaving him in the evening, to betake
herself to bed, he heard her say in a low voice, and as though talking
to herself: “It seems to me, that if I were to find one of those men in
my pathway, oh, my God, I should die merely from the sight of him close
at hand.”
Fortunately, chance ordained that on the morrow of that tragic day,
there was some official solemnity apropos of I know not what,—fêtes in
Paris, a review in the Champ de Mars, jousts on the Seine, theatrical
performances in the Champs-Élysées, fireworks at the Arc de l’Étoile,
illuminations everywhere. Jean Valjean did violence to his habits, and
took Cosette to see these rejoicings, for the purpose of diverting her
from the memory of the day before, and of effacing, beneath the smiling
tumult of all Paris, the abominable thing which had passed before her.
The review with which the festival was spiced made the presence of
uniforms perfectly natural; Jean Valjean donned his uniform of a
national guard with the vague inward feeling of a man who is betaking
himself to shelter. However, this trip seemed to attain its object.
Cosette, who made it her law to please her father, and to whom,
moreover, all spectacles were a novelty, accepted this diversion with
the light and easy good grace of youth, and did not pout too
disdainfully at that flutter of enjoyment called a public fête; so that
Jean Valjean was able to believe that he had succeeded, and that no
trace of that hideous vision remained.
Some days later, one morning, when the sun was shining brightly, and
they were both on the steps leading to the garden, another infraction
of the rules which Jean Valjean seemed to have imposed upon himself,
and to the custom of remaining in her chamber which melancholy had
caused Cosette to adopt, Cosette, in a wrapper, was standing erect in
that negligent attire of early morning which envelops young girls in an
adorable way and which produces the effect of a cloud drawn over a
star; and, with her head bathed in light, rosy after a good sleep,
submitting to the gentle glances of the tender old man, she was picking
a daisy to pieces. Cosette did not know the delightful legend, _I love
a little, passionately, etc_.—who was there who could have taught her?
She was handling the flower instinctively, innocently, without a
suspicion that to pluck a daisy apart is to do the same by a heart. If
there were a fourth, and smiling Grace called Melancholy, she would
have worn the air of that Grace. Jean Valjean was fascinated by the
contemplation of those tiny fingers on that flower, and forgetful of
everything in the radiance emitted by that child. A red-breast was
warbling in the thicket, on one side. White cloudlets floated across
the sky, so gayly, that one would have said that they had just been set
at liberty. Cosette went on attentively tearing the leaves from her
flower; she seemed to be thinking about something; but whatever it was,
it must be something charming; all at once she turned her head over her
shoulder with the delicate languor of a swan, and said to Jean Valjean:
“Father, what are the galleys like?”
BOOK FOURTH—SUCCOR FROM BELOW MAY TURN OUT TO BE SUCCOR FROM ON HIGH
CHAPTER I—A WOUND WITHOUT, HEALING WITHIN
Thus their life clouded over by degrees.
But one diversion, which had formerly been a happiness, remained to
them, which was to carry bread to those who were hungry, and clothing
to those who were cold. Cosette often accompanied Jean Valjean on these
visits to the poor, on which they recovered some remnants of their
former free intercourse; and sometimes, when the day had been a good
one, and they had assisted many in distress, and cheered and warmed
many little children, Cosette was rather merry in the evening. It was
at this epoch that they paid their visit to the Jondrette den.
On the day following that visit, Jean Valjean made his appearance in
the pavilion in the morning, calm as was his wont, but with a large
wound on his left arm which was much inflamed, and very angry, which
resembled a burn, and which he explained in some way or other. This
wound resulted in his being detained in the house for a month with
fever. He would not call in a doctor. When Cosette urged him, “Call the
dog-doctor,” said he.
Cosette dressed the wound morning and evening with so divine an air and
such angelic happiness at being of use to him, that Jean Valjean felt
all his former joy returning, his fears and anxieties dissipating, and
he gazed at Cosette, saying: “Oh! what a kindly wound! Oh! what a good
misfortune!”
Cosette on perceiving that her father was ill, had deserted the
pavilion and again taken a fancy to the little lodging and the back
courtyard. She passed nearly all her days beside Jean Valjean and read
to him the books which he desired. Generally they were books of travel.
Jean Valjean was undergoing a new birth; his happiness was reviving in
these ineffable rays; the Luxembourg, the prowling young stranger,
Cosette’s coldness,—all these clouds upon his soul were growing dim. He
had reached the point where he said to himself: “I imagined all that. I
am an old fool.”
His happiness was so great that the horrible discovery of the
Thénardiers made in the Jondrette hovel, unexpected as it was, had,
after a fashion, glided over him unnoticed. He had succeeded in making
his escape; all trace of him was lost—what more did he care for! he
only thought of those wretched beings to pity them. “Here they are in
prison, and henceforth they will be incapacitated for doing any harm,”
he thought, “but what a lamentable family in distress!”
As for the hideous vision of the Barrière du Maine, Cosette had not
referred to it again.
Sister Sainte-Mechtilde had taught Cosette music in the convent;
Cosette had the voice of a linnet with a soul, and sometimes, in the
evening, in the wounded man’s humble abode, she warbled melancholy
songs which delighted Jean Valjean.
Spring came; the garden was so delightful at that season of the year,
that Jean Valjean said to Cosette:—
“You never go there; I want you to stroll in it.”
“As you like, father,” said Cosette.
And for the sake of obeying her father, she resumed her walks in the
garden, generally alone, for, as we have mentioned, Jean Valjean, who
was probably afraid of being seen through the fence, hardly ever went
there.
Jean Valjean’s wound had created a diversion.
When Cosette saw that her father was suffering less, that he was
convalescing, and that he appeared to be happy, she experienced a
contentment which she did not even perceive, so gently and naturally
had it come. Then, it was in the month of March, the days were growing
longer, the winter was departing, the winter always bears away with it
a portion of our sadness; then came April, that daybreak of summer,
fresh as dawn always is, gay like every childhood; a little inclined to
weep at times like the new-born being that it is. In that month, nature
has charming gleams which pass from the sky, from the trees, from the
meadows and the flowers into the heart of man.
Cosette was still too young to escape the penetrating influence of that
April joy which bore so strong a resemblance to herself. Insensibly,
and without her suspecting the fact, the blackness departed from her
spirit. In spring, sad souls grow light, as light falls into cellars at
midday. Cosette was no longer sad. However, though this was so, she did
not account for it to herself. In the morning, about ten o’clock, after
breakfast, when she had succeeded in enticing her father into the
garden for a quarter of an hour, and when she was pacing up and down in
the sunlight in front of the steps, supporting his left arm for him,
she did not perceive that she laughed every moment and that she was
happy.
Jean Valjean, intoxicated, beheld her growing fresh and rosy once more.
“Oh! What a good wound!” he repeated in a whisper.
And he felt grateful to the Thénardiers.
His wound once healed, he resumed his solitary twilight strolls.
It is a mistake to suppose that a person can stroll alone in that
fashion in the uninhabited regions of Paris without meeting with some
adventure.
CHAPTER II—MOTHER PLUTARQUE FINDS NO DIFFICULTY IN EXPLAINING A
PHENOMENON
One evening, little Gavroche had had nothing to eat; he remembered that
he had not dined on the preceding day either; this was becoming
tiresome. He resolved to make an effort to secure some supper. He
strolled out beyond the Salpêtrière into deserted regions; that is
where windfalls are to be found; where there is no one, one always
finds something. He reached a settlement which appeared to him to be
the village of Austerlitz.
In one of his preceding lounges he had noticed there an old garden
haunted by an old man and an old woman, and in that garden, a passable
apple-tree. Beside the apple-tree stood a sort of fruit-house, which
was not securely fastened, and where one might contrive to get an
apple. One apple is a supper; one apple is life. That which was Adam’s
ruin might prove Gavroche’s salvation. The garden abutted on a
solitary, unpaved lane, bordered with brushwood while awaiting the
arrival of houses; the garden was separated from it by a hedge.
Gavroche directed his steps towards this garden; he found the lane, he
recognized the apple-tree, he verified the fruit-house, he examined the
hedge; a hedge means merely one stride. The day was declining, there
was not even a cat in the lane, the hour was propitious. Gavroche began
the operation of scaling the hedge, then suddenly paused. Some one was
talking in the garden. Gavroche peeped through one of the breaks in the
hedge.
A couple of paces distant, at the foot of the hedge on the other side,
exactly at the point where the gap which he was meditating would have
been made, there was a sort of recumbent stone which formed a bench,
and on this bench was seated the old man of the garden, while the old
woman was standing in front of him. The old woman was grumbling.
Gavroche, who was not very discreet, listened.
“Monsieur Mabeuf!” said the old woman.
“Mabeuf!” thought Gavroche, “that name is a perfect farce.”
The old man who was thus addressed, did not stir. The old woman
repeated:—
“Monsieur Mabeuf!”
The old man, without raising his eyes from the ground, made up his mind
to answer:—
“What is it, Mother Plutarque?”
“Mother Plutarque!” thought Gavroche, “another farcical name.”
Mother Plutarque began again, and the old man was forced to accept the
conversation:—
“The landlord is not pleased.”
“Why?”
“We owe three quarters rent.”
“In three months, we shall owe him for four quarters.”
“He says that he will turn you out to sleep.”
“I will go.”
“The green-grocer insists on being paid. She will no longer leave her
fagots. What will you warm yourself with this winter? We shall have no
wood.”
“There is the sun.”
“The butcher refuses to give credit; he will not let us have any more
meat.”