Les Misérables
An idea had occurred to Gavroche which had brought him to a decision,
but he had not mentioned it for fear that Marius might offer some
objection to it.
This was the idea:—
“It is barely midnight, the Rue de l’Homme Armé is not far off; I will
go and deliver the letter at once, and I shall get back in time.”
BOOK FIFTEENTH—THE RUE DE L’HOMME ARMÉ
CHAPTER I—A DRINKER IS A BABBLER
What are the convulsions of a city in comparison with the insurrections
of the soul? Man is a depth still greater than the people. Jean Valjean
at that very moment was the prey of a terrible upheaval. Every sort of
gulf had opened again within him. He also was trembling, like Paris, on
the brink of an obscure and formidable revolution. A few hours had
sufficed to bring this about. His destiny and his conscience had
suddenly been covered with gloom. Of him also, as well as of Paris, it
might have been said: “Two principles are face to face. The white angel
and the black angel are about to seize each other on the bridge of the
abyss. Which of the two will hurl the other over? Who will carry the
day?”
On the evening preceding this same 5th of June, Jean Valjean,
accompanied by Cosette and Toussaint had installed himself in the Rue
de l’Homme Armé. A change awaited him there.
Cosette had not quitted the Rue Plumet without making an effort at
resistance. For the first time since they had lived side by side,
Cosette’s will and the will of Jean Valjean had proved to be distinct,
and had been in opposition, at least, if they had not clashed. There
had been objections on one side and inflexibility on the other. The
abrupt advice: “Leave your house,” hurled at Jean Valjean by a
stranger, had alarmed him to the extent of rendering him peremptory. He
thought that he had been traced and followed. Cosette had been obliged
to give way.
Both had arrived in the Rue de l’Homme Armé without opening their lips,
and without uttering a word, each being absorbed in his own personal
preoccupation; Jean Valjean so uneasy that he did not notice Cosette’s
sadness, Cosette so sad that she did not notice Jean Valjean’s
uneasiness.
Jean Valjean had taken Toussaint with him, a thing which he had never
done in his previous absences. He perceived the possibility of not
returning to the Rue Plumet, and he could neither leave Toussaint
behind nor confide his secret to her. Besides, he felt that she was
devoted and trustworthy. Treachery between master and servant begins in
curiosity. Now Toussaint, as though she had been destined to be Jean
Valjean’s servant, was not curious. She stammered in her peasant
dialect of Barneville: “I am made so; I do my work; the rest is no
affair of mine.”
In this departure from the Rue Plumet, which had been almost a flight,
Jean Valjean had carried away nothing but the little embalmed valise,
baptized by Cosette “the inseparable.” Full trunks would have required
porters, and porters are witnesses. A fiacre had been summoned to the
door on the Rue de Babylone, and they had taken their departure.
It was with difficulty that Toussaint had obtained permission to pack
up a little linen and clothes and a few toilet articles. Cosette had
taken only her portfolio and her blotting-book.
Jean Valjean, with a view to augmenting the solitude and the mystery of
this departure, had arranged to quit the pavilion of the Rue Plumet
only at dusk, which had allowed Cosette time to write her note to
Marius. They had arrived in the Rue de l’Homme Armé after night had
fully fallen.
They had gone to bed in silence.
The lodgings in the Rue de l’Homme Armé were situated on a back court,
on the second floor, and were composed of two sleeping-rooms, a
dining-room and a kitchen adjoining the dining-room, with a garret
where there was a folding-bed, and which fell to Toussaint’s share. The
dining-room was an antechamber as well, and separated the two bedrooms.
The apartment was provided with all necessary utensils.
People re-acquire confidence as foolishly as they lose it; human nature
is so constituted. Hardly had Jean Valjean reached the Rue de l’Homme
Armé when his anxiety was lightened and by degrees dissipated. There
are soothing spots which act in some sort mechanically on the mind. An
obscure street, peaceable inhabitants. Jean Valjean experienced an
indescribable contagion of tranquillity in that alley of ancient Paris,
which is so narrow that it is barred against carriages by a transverse
beam placed on two posts, which is deaf and dumb in the midst of the
clamorous city, dimly lighted at midday, and is, so to speak, incapable
of emotions between two rows of lofty houses centuries old, which hold
their peace like ancients as they are. There was a touch of stagnant
oblivion in that street. Jean Valjean drew his breath once more there.
How could he be found there?
His first care was to place _the inseparable_ beside him.
He slept well. Night brings wisdom; we may add, night soothes. On the
following morning he awoke in a mood that was almost gay. He thought
the dining-room charming, though it was hideous, furnished with an old
round table, a long sideboard surmounted by a slanting mirror, a
dilapidated armchair, and several plain chairs which were encumbered
with Toussaint’s packages. In one of these packages Jean Valjean’s
uniform of a National Guard was visible through a rent.
As for Cosette, she had had Toussaint take some broth to her room, and
did not make her appearance until evening.
About five o’clock, Toussaint, who was going and coming and busying
herself with the tiny establishment, set on the table a cold chicken,
which Cosette, out of deference to her father, consented to glance at.
That done, Cosette, under the pretext of an obstinate sick headache,
had bade Jean Valjean good night and had shut herself up in her
chamber. Jean Valjean had eaten a wing of the chicken with a good
appetite, and with his elbows on the table, having gradually recovered
his serenity, had regained possession of his sense of security.
While he was discussing this modest dinner, he had, twice or thrice,
noticed in a confused way, Toussaint’s stammering words as she said to
him: “Monsieur, there is something going on, they are fighting in
Paris.” But absorbed in a throng of inward calculations, he had paid no
heed to it. To tell the truth, he had not heard her. He rose and began
to pace from the door to the window and from the window to the door,
growing ever more serene.
With this calm, Cosette, his sole anxiety, recurred to his thoughts.
Not that he was troubled by this headache, a little nervous crisis, a
young girl’s fit of sulks, the cloud of a moment, there would be
nothing left of it in a day or two; but he meditated on the future,
and, as was his habit, he thought of it with pleasure. After all, he
saw no obstacle to their happy life resuming its course. At certain
hours, everything seems impossible, at others everything appears easy;
Jean Valjean was in the midst of one of these good hours. They
generally succeed the bad ones, as day follows night, by virtue of that
law of succession and of contrast which lies at the very foundation of
nature, and which superficial minds call antithesis. In this peaceful
street where he had taken refuge, Jean Valjean got rid of all that had
been troubling him for some time past. This very fact, that he had seen
many shadows, made him begin to perceive a little azure. To have
quitted the Rue Plumet without complications or incidents was one good
step already accomplished. Perhaps it would be wise to go abroad, if
only for a few months, and to set out for London. Well, they would go.
What difference did it make to him whether he was in France or in
England, provided he had Cosette beside him? Cosette was his nation.
Cosette sufficed for his happiness; the idea that he, perhaps, did not
suffice for Cosette’s happiness, that idea which had formerly been the
cause of his fever and sleeplessness, did not even present itself to
his mind. He was in a state of collapse from all his past sufferings,
and he was fully entered on optimism. Cosette was by his side, she
seemed to be his; an optical illusion which every one has experienced.
He arranged in his own mind, with all sorts of felicitous devices, his
departure for England with Cosette, and he beheld his felicity
reconstituted wherever he pleased, in the perspective of his reverie.
As he paced to and fro with long strides, his glance suddenly
encountered something strange.
In the inclined mirror facing him which surmounted the sideboard, he
saw the four lines which follow:—
“My dearest, alas! my father insists on our setting out immediately. We
shall be this evening in the Rue de l’Homme Armé, No. 7. In a week we
shall be in England. COSETTE. June 4th.”
Jean Valjean halted, perfectly haggard.
Cosette on her arrival had placed her blotting-book on the sideboard in
front of the mirror, and, utterly absorbed in her agony of grief, had
forgotten it and left it there, without even observing that she had
left it wide open, and open at precisely the page on which she had laid
to dry the four lines which she had penned, and which she had given in
charge of the young workman in the Rue Plumet. The writing had been
printed off on the blotter.
The mirror reflected the writing.
The result was, what is called in geometry, _the symmetrical image_; so
that the writing, reversed on the blotter, was righted in the mirror
and presented its natural appearance; and Jean Valjean had beneath his
eyes the letter written by Cosette to Marius on the preceding evening.
It was simple and withering.
Jean Valjean stepped up to the mirror. He read the four lines again,
but he did not believe them. They produced on him the effect of
appearing in a flash of lightning. It was a hallucination, it was
impossible. It was not so.
Little by little, his perceptions became more precise; he looked at
Cosette’s blotting-book, and the consciousness of the reality returned
to him. He caught up the blotter and said: “It comes from there.” He
feverishly examined the four lines imprinted on the blotter, the
reversal of the letters converted into an odd scrawl, and he saw no
sense in it. Then he said to himself: “But this signifies nothing;
there is nothing written here.” And he drew a long breath with
inexpressible relief. Who has not experienced those foolish joys in
horrible instants? The soul does not surrender to despair until it has
exhausted all illusions.
He held the blotter in his hand and contemplated it in stupid delight,
almost ready to laugh at the hallucination of which he had been the
dupe. All at once his eyes fell upon the mirror again, and again he
beheld the vision. There were the four lines outlined with inexorable
clearness. This time it was no mirage. The recurrence of a vision is a
reality; it was palpable, it was the writing restored in the mirror. He
understood.
Jean Valjean tottered, dropped the blotter, and fell into the old
armchair beside the buffet, with drooping head, and glassy eyes, in
utter bewilderment. He told himself that it was plain, that the light
of the world had been eclipsed forever, and that Cosette had written
that to some one. Then he heard his soul, which had become terrible
once more, give vent to a dull roar in the gloom. Try then the effect
of taking from the lion the dog which he has in his cage!
Strange and sad to say, at that very moment, Marius had not yet
received Cosette’s letter; chance had treacherously carried it to Jean
Valjean before delivering it to Marius. Up to that day, Jean Valjean
had not been vanquished by trial. He had been subjected to fearful
proofs; no violence of bad fortune had been spared him; the ferocity of