Les Misérables
otherwise.’ This is the whole truth, and I do not think that I have
omitted anything. She lives in a garden with an iron fence, in the Rue
Plumet. It is in the neighborhood of the Invalides.”
Father Gillenormand had seated himself, with a beaming countenance,
beside Marius. As he listened to him and drank in the sound of his
voice, he enjoyed at the same time a protracted pinch of snuff. At the
words “Rue Plumet” he interrupted his inhalation and allowed the
remainder of his snuff to fall upon his knees.
“The Rue Plumet, the Rue Plumet, did you say?—Let us see!—Are there not
barracks in that vicinity?—Why, yes, that’s it. Your cousin Théodule
has spoken to me about it. The lancer, the officer. A gay girl, my good
friend, a gay girl!—Pardieu, yes, the Rue Plumet. It is what used to be
called the Rue Blomet.—It all comes back to me now. I have heard of
that little girl of the iron railing in the Rue Plumet. In a garden, a
Pamela. Your taste is not bad. She is said to be a very tidy creature.
Between ourselves, I think that simpleton of a lancer has been courting
her a bit. I don’t know where he did it. However, that’s not to the
purpose. Besides, he is not to be believed. He brags, Marius! I think
it quite proper that a young man like you should be in love. It’s the
right thing at your age. I like you better as a lover than as a
Jacobin. I like you better in love with a petticoat, sapristi! with
twenty petticoats, than with M. de Robespierre. For my part, I will do
myself the justice to say, that in the line of _sans-culottes_, I have
never loved any one but women. Pretty girls are pretty girls, the
deuce! There’s no objection to that. As for the little one, she
receives you without her father’s knowledge. That’s in the established
order of things. I have had adventures of that same sort myself. More
than one. Do you know what is done then? One does not take the matter
ferociously; one does not precipitate himself into the tragic; one does
not make one’s mind to marriage and M. le Maire with his scarf. One
simply behaves like a fellow of spirit. One shows good sense. Slip
along, mortals; don’t marry. You come and look up your grandfather, who
is a good-natured fellow at bottom, and who always has a few rolls of
louis in an old drawer; you say to him: ‘See here, grandfather.’ And
the grandfather says: ‘That’s a simple matter. Youth must amuse itself,
and old age must wear out. I have been young, you will be old. Come, my
boy, you shall pass it on to your grandson. Here are two hundred
pistoles. Amuse yourself, deuce take it!’ Nothing better! That’s the
way the affair should be treated. You don’t marry, but that does no
harm. You understand me?”
Marius, petrified and incapable of uttering a syllable, made a sign
with his head that he did not.
The old man burst out laughing, winked his aged eye, gave him a slap on
the knee, stared him full in the face with a mysterious and beaming
air, and said to him, with the tenderest of shrugs of the shoulder:—
“Booby! make her your mistress.”
Marius turned pale. He had understood nothing of what his grandfather
had just said. This twaddle about the Rue Blomet, Pamela, the barracks,
the lancer, had passed before Marius like a dissolving view. Nothing of
all that could bear any reference to Cosette, who was a lily. The good
man was wandering in his mind. But this wandering terminated in words
which Marius did understand, and which were a mortal insult to Cosette.
Those words, “make her your mistress,” entered the heart of the strict
young man like a sword.
He rose, picked up his hat which lay on the floor, and walked to the
door with a firm, assured step. There he turned round, bowed deeply to
his grandfather, raised his head erect again, and said:—
“Five years ago you insulted my father; to-day you have insulted my
wife. I ask nothing more of you, sir. Farewell.”
Father Gillenormand, utterly confounded, opened his mouth, extended his
arms, tried to rise, and before he could utter a word, the door closed
once more, and Marius had disappeared.
The old man remained for several minutes motionless and as though
struck by lightning, without the power to speak or breathe, as though a
clenched fist grasped his throat. At last he tore himself from his
armchair, ran, so far as a man can run at ninety-one, to the door,
opened it, and cried:—
“Help! Help!”
His daughter made her appearance, then the domestics. He began again,
with a pitiful rattle: “Run after him! Bring him back! What have I done
to him? He is mad! He is going away! Ah! my God! Ah! my God! This time
he will not come back!”
He went to the window which looked out on the street, threw it open
with his aged and palsied hands, leaned out more than half-way, while
Basque and Nicolette held him behind, and shouted:—
“Marius! Marius! Marius! Marius!”
But Marius could no longer hear him, for at that moment he was turning
the corner of the Rue Saint-Louis.
The octogenarian raised his hands to his temples two or three times
with an expression of anguish, recoiled tottering, and fell back into
an armchair, pulseless, voiceless, tearless, with quivering head and
lips which moved with a stupid air, with nothing in his eyes and
nothing any longer in his heart except a gloomy and profound something
which resembled night.
BOOK NINTH—WHITHER ARE THEY GOING?
CHAPTER I—JEAN VALJEAN
That same day, towards four o’clock in the afternoon, Jean Valjean was
sitting alone on the back side of one of the most solitary slopes in
the Champ-de-Mars. Either from prudence, or from a desire to meditate,
or simply in consequence of one of those insensible changes of habit
which gradually introduce themselves into the existence of every one,
he now rarely went out with Cosette. He had on his workman’s waistcoat,
and trousers of gray linen; and his long-visored cap concealed his
countenance.
He was calm and happy now beside Cosette; that which had, for a time,
alarmed and troubled him had been dissipated; but for the last week or
two, anxieties of another nature had come up. One day, while walking on
the boulevard, he had caught sight of Thénardier; thanks to his
disguise, Thénardier had not recognized him; but since that day, Jean
Valjean had seen him repeatedly, and he was now certain that Thénardier
was prowling about in their neighborhood.
This had been sufficient to make him come to a decision.
Moreover, Paris was not tranquil: political troubles presented this
inconvenient feature, for any one who had anything to conceal in his
life, that the police had grown very uneasy and very suspicious, and
that while seeking to ferret out a man like Pépin or Morey, they might
very readily discover a man like Jean Valjean.
Jean Valjean had made up his mind to quit Paris, and even France, and
go over to England.
He had warned Cosette. He wished to set out before the end of the week.
He had seated himself on the slope in the Champ-de-Mars, turning over
all sorts of thoughts in his mind,—Thénardier, the police, the journey,
and the difficulty of procuring a passport.
He was troubled from all these points of view.
Last of all, an inexplicable circumstance which had just attracted his
attention, and from which he had not yet recovered, had added to his
state of alarm.
On the morning of that very day, when he alone of the household was
stirring, while strolling in the garden before Cosette’s shutters were
open, he had suddenly perceived on the wall, the following line,
engraved, probably with a nail:—
_16 Rue de la Verrerie_.
This was perfectly fresh, the grooves in the ancient black mortar were
white, a tuft of nettles at the foot of the wall was powdered with the
fine, fresh plaster.
This had probably been written on the preceding night.
What was this? A signal for others? A warning for himself?
In any case, it was evident that the garden had been violated, and that
strangers had made their way into it.
He recalled the odd incidents which had already alarmed the household.
His mind was now filling in this canvas.
He took good care not to speak to Cosette of the line written on the
wall, for fear of alarming her.
In the midst of his preoccupations, he perceived, from a shadow cast by
the sun, that some one had halted on the crest of the slope immediately
behind him.
He was on the point of turning round, when a paper folded in four fell
upon his knees as though a hand had dropped it over his head.
He took the paper, unfolded it, and read these words written in large
characters, with a pencil:—
“MOVE AWAY FROM YOUR HOUSE.”
Jean Valjean sprang hastily to his feet; there was no one on the slope;
he gazed all around him and perceived a creature larger than a child,
not so large as a man, clad in a gray blouse and trousers of
dust-colored cotton velvet, who was jumping over the parapet and who
slipped into the moat of the Champ-de-Mars.
Jean Valjean returned home at once, in a very thoughtful mood.
CHAPTER II—MARIUS
Marius had left M. Gillenormand in despair. He had entered the house
with very little hope, and quitted it with immense despair.
However, and those who have observed the depths of the human heart will
understand this, the officer, the lancer, the ninny, Cousin Théodule,
had left no trace in his mind. Not the slightest. The dramatic poet
might, apparently, expect some complications from this revelation made
point-blank by the grandfather to the grandson. But what the drama
would gain thereby, truth would lose. Marius was at an age when one
believes nothing in the line of evil; later on comes the age when one
believes everything. Suspicions are nothing else than wrinkles. Early
youth has none of them. That which overwhelmed Othello glides innocuous
over Candide. Suspect Cosette! There are hosts of crimes which Marius
could sooner have committed.
He began to wander about the streets, the resource of those who suffer.
He thought of nothing, so far as he could afterwards remember. At two
o’clock in the morning he returned to Courfeyrac’s quarters and flung
himself, without undressing, on his mattress. The sun was shining
brightly when he sank into that frightful leaden slumber which permits
ideas to go and come in the brain. When he awoke, he saw Courfeyrac,
Enjolras, Feuilly, and Combeferre standing in the room with their hats
on and all ready to go out.
Courfeyrac said to him:—
“Are you coming to General Lamarque’s funeral?”
It seemed to him that Courfeyrac was speaking Chinese.
He went out some time after them. He put in his pocket the pistols
which Javert had given him at the time of the adventure on the 3d of
February, and which had remained in his hands. These pistols were still
loaded. It would be difficult to say what vague thought he had in his
mind when he took them with him.
All day long he prowled about, without knowing where he was going; it
rained at times, he did not perceive it; for his dinner, he purchased a
penny roll at a baker’s, put it in his pocket and forgot it. It appears
that he took a bath in the Seine without being aware of it. There are
moments when a man has a furnace within his skull. Marius was passing
through one of those moments. He no longer hoped for anything; this
step he had taken since the preceding evening. He waited for night with
feverish impatience, he had but one idea clearly before his mind;—this
was, that at nine o’clock he should see Cosette. This last happiness
now constituted his whole future; after that, gloom. At intervals, as
he roamed through the most deserted boulevards, it seemed to him that
he heard strange noises in Paris. He thrust his head out of his reverie
and said: “Is there fighting on hand?”