Les Misérables
“That is quite right. I do not digest meat well. It is too heavy.”
“What shall we have for dinner?”
“Bread.”
“The baker demands a settlement, and says, ‘no money, no bread.’”
“That is well.”
“What will you eat?”
“We have apples in the apple-room.”
“But, Monsieur, we can’t live like that without money.”
“I have none.”
The old woman went away, the old man remained alone. He fell into
thought. Gavroche became thoughtful also. It was almost dark.
The first result of Gavroche’s meditation was, that instead of scaling
the hedge, he crouched down under it. The branches stood apart a little
at the foot of the thicket.
“Come,” exclaimed Gavroche mentally, “here’s a nook!” and he curled up
in it. His back was almost in contact with Father Mabeuf’s bench. He
could hear the octogenarian breathe.
Then, by way of dinner, he tried to sleep.
It was a cat-nap, with one eye open. While he dozed, Gavroche kept on
the watch.
The twilight pallor of the sky blanched the earth, and the lane formed
a livid line between two rows of dark bushes.
All at once, in this whitish band, two figures made their appearance.
One was in front, the other some distance in the rear.
“There come two creatures,” muttered Gavroche.
The first form seemed to be some elderly bourgeois, who was bent and
thoughtful, dressed more than plainly, and who was walking slowly
because of his age, and strolling about in the open evening air.
The second was straight, firm, slender. It regulated its pace by that
of the first; but in the voluntary slowness of its gait, suppleness and
agility were discernible. This figure had also something fierce and
disquieting about it, the whole shape was that of what was then called
_an elegant_; the hat was of good shape, the coat black, well cut,
probably of fine cloth, and well fitted in at the waist. The head was
held erect with a sort of robust grace, and beneath the hat the pale
profile of a young man could be made out in the dim light. The profile
had a rose in its mouth. This second form was well known to Gavroche;
it was Montparnasse.
He could have told nothing about the other, except that he was a
respectable old man.
Gavroche immediately began to take observations.
One of these two pedestrians evidently had a project connected with the
other. Gavroche was well placed to watch the course of events. The
bedroom had turned into a hiding-place at a very opportune moment.
Montparnasse on the hunt at such an hour, in such a place, betokened
something threatening. Gavroche felt his gamin’s heart moved with
compassion for the old man.
What was he to do? Interfere? One weakness coming to the aid of
another! It would be merely a laughing matter for Montparnasse.
Gavroche did not shut his eyes to the fact that the old man, in the
first place, and the child in the second, would make but two mouthfuls
for that redoubtable ruffian eighteen years of age.
While Gavroche was deliberating, the attack took place, abruptly and
hideously. The attack of the tiger on the wild ass, the attack of the
spider on the fly. Montparnasse suddenly tossed away his rose, bounded
upon the old man, seized him by the collar, grasped and clung to him,
and Gavroche with difficulty restrained a scream. A moment later one of
these men was underneath the other, groaning, struggling, with a knee
of marble upon his breast. Only, it was not just what Gavroche had
expected. The one who lay on the earth was Montparnasse; the one who
was on top was the old man. All this took place a few paces distant
from Gavroche.
The old man had received the shock, had returned it, and that in such a
terrible fashion, that in a twinkling, the assailant and the assailed
had exchanged rôles.
“Here’s a hearty veteran!” thought Gavroche.
He could not refrain from clapping his hands. But it was applause
wasted. It did not reach the combatants, absorbed and deafened as they
were, each by the other, as their breath mingled in the struggle.
Silence ensued. Montparnasse ceased his struggles. Gavroche indulged in
this aside: “Can he be dead!”
The goodman had not uttered a word, nor given vent to a cry. He rose to
his feet, and Gavroche heard him say to Montparnasse:—
“Get up.”
Montparnasse rose, but the goodman held him fast. Montparnasse’s
attitude was the humiliated and furious attitude of the wolf who has
been caught by a sheep.
Gavroche looked on and listened, making an effort to reinforce his eyes
with his ears. He was enjoying himself immensely.
He was repaid for his conscientious anxiety in the character of a
spectator. He was able to catch on the wing a dialogue which borrowed
from the darkness an indescribably tragic accent. The goodman
questioned, Montparnasse replied.
“How old are you?”
“Nineteen.”
“You are strong and healthy. Why do you not work?”
“It bores me.”
“What is your trade?”
“An idler.”
“Speak seriously. Can anything be done for you? What would you like to
be?”
“A thief.”
A pause ensued. The old man seemed absorbed in profound thought. He
stood motionless, and did not relax his hold on Montparnasse.
Every moment the vigorous and agile young ruffian indulged in the
twitchings of a wild beast caught in a snare. He gave a jerk, tried a
crook of the knee, twisted his limbs desperately, and made efforts to
escape.
The old man did not appear to notice it, and held both his arms with
one hand, with the sovereign indifference of absolute force.
The old man’s reverie lasted for some time, then, looking steadily at
Montparnasse, he addressed to him in a gentle voice, in the midst of
the darkness where they stood, a solemn harangue, of which Gavroche did
not lose a single syllable:—
“My child, you are entering, through indolence, on one of the most
laborious of lives. Ah! You declare yourself to be an idler! prepare to
toil. There is a certain formidable machine, have you seen it? It is
the rolling-mill. You must be on your guard against it, it is crafty
and ferocious; if it catches hold of the skirt of your coat, you will
be drawn in bodily. That machine is laziness. Stop while there is yet
time, and save yourself! Otherwise, it is all over with you; in a short
time you will be among the gearing. Once entangled, hope for nothing
more. Toil, lazybones! there is no more repose for you! The iron hand
of implacable toil has seized you. You do not wish to earn your living,
to have a task, to fulfil a duty! It bores you to be like other men?
Well! You will be different. Labor is the law; he who rejects it will
find ennui his torment. You do not wish to be a workingman, you will be
a slave. Toil lets go of you on one side only to grasp you again on the
other. You do not desire to be its friend, you shall be its negro
slave. Ah! You would have none of the honest weariness of men, you
shall have the sweat of the damned. Where others sing, you will rattle
in your throat. You will see afar off, from below, other men at work;
it will seem to you that they are resting. The laborer, the harvester,
the sailor, the blacksmith, will appear to you in glory like the
blessed spirits in paradise. What radiance surrounds the forge! To
guide the plough, to bind the sheaves, is joy. The bark at liberty in
the wind, what delight! Do you, lazy idler, delve, drag on, roll,
march! Drag your halter. You are a beast of burden in the team of hell!
Ah! To do nothing is your object. Well, not a week, not a day, not an
hour shall you have free from oppression. You will be able to lift
nothing without anguish. Every minute that passes will make your
muscles crack. What is a feather to others will be a rock to you. The
simplest things will become steep acclivities. Life will become
monstrous all about you. To go, to come, to breathe, will be just so
many terrible labors. Your lungs will produce on you the effect of
weighing a hundred pounds. Whether you shall walk here rather than
there, will become a problem that must be solved. Any one who wants to
go out simply gives his door a push, and there he is in the open air.
If you wish to go out, you will be obliged to pierce your wall. What
does every one who wants to step into the street do? He goes
downstairs; you will tear up your sheets, little by little you will
make of them a rope, then you will climb out of your window, and you
will suspend yourself by that thread over an abyss, and it will be
night, amid storm, rain, and the hurricane, and if the rope is too
short, but one way of descending will remain to you, to fall. To drop
hap-hazard into the gulf, from an unknown height, on what? On what is
beneath, on the unknown. Or you will crawl up a chimney-flue, at the
risk of burning; or you will creep through a sewer-pipe, at the risk of
drowning; I do not speak of the holes that you will be obliged to mask,
of the stones which you will have to take up and replace twenty times a
day, of the plaster that you will have to hide in your straw pallet. A
lock presents itself; the bourgeois has in his pocket a key made by a
locksmith. If you wish to pass out, you will be condemned to execute a
terrible work of art; you will take a large sou, you will cut it in two
plates; with what tools? You will have to invent them. That is your
business. Then you will hollow out the interior of these plates, taking
great care of the outside, and you will make on the edges a thread, so
that they can be adjusted one upon the other like a box and its cover.
The top and bottom thus screwed together, nothing will be suspected. To
the overseers it will be only a sou; to you it will be a box. What will
you put in this box? A small bit of steel. A watch-spring, in which you
will have cut teeth, and which will form a saw. With this saw, as long
as a pin, and concealed in a sou, you will cut the bolt of the lock,
you will sever bolts, the padlock of your chain, and the bar at your
window, and the fetter on your leg. This masterpiece finished, this
prodigy accomplished, all these miracles of art, address, skill, and
patience executed, what will be your recompense if it becomes known
that you are the author? The dungeon. There is your future. What
precipices are idleness and pleasure! Do you know that to do nothing is
a melancholy resolution? To live in idleness on the property of
society! to be useless, that is to say, pernicious! This leads straight
to the depth of wretchedness. Woe to the man who desires to be a
parasite! He will become vermin! Ah! So it does not please you to work?
Ah! You have but one thought, to drink well, to eat well, to sleep
well. You will drink water, you will eat black bread, you will sleep on
a plank with a fetter whose cold touch you will feel on your flesh all
night long, riveted to your limbs. You will break those fetters, you
will flee. That is well. You will crawl on your belly through the
brushwood, and you will eat grass like the beasts of the forest. And
you will be recaptured. And then you will pass years in a dungeon,
riveted to a wall, groping for your jug that you may drink, gnawing at
a horrible loaf of darkness which dogs would not touch, eating beans
that the worms have eaten before you. You will be a wood-louse in a
cellar. Ah! Have pity on yourself, you miserable young child, who were
sucking at nurse less than twenty years ago, and who have, no doubt, a
mother still alive! I conjure you, listen to me, I entreat you. You
desire fine black cloth, varnished shoes, to have your hair curled and
sweet-smelling oils on your locks, to please low women, to be handsome.
You will be shaven clean, and you will wear a red blouse and wooden
shoes. You want rings on your fingers, you will have an iron necklet on
your neck. If you glance at a woman, you will receive a blow. And you