Les Misérables
That is what happened to him at Grasse. We have seen in what manner he
was received at D——
CHAPTER X—THE MAN AROUSED
As the Cathedral clock struck two in the morning, Jean Valjean awoke.
What woke him was that his bed was too good. It was nearly twenty years
since he had slept in a bed, and, although he had not undressed, the
sensation was too novel not to disturb his slumbers.
He had slept more than four hours. His fatigue had passed away. He was
accustomed not to devote many hours to repose.
He opened his eyes and stared into the gloom which surrounded him; then
he closed them again, with the intention of going to sleep once more.
When many varied sensations have agitated the day, when various matters
preoccupy the mind, one falls asleep once, but not a second time. Sleep
comes more easily than it returns. This is what happened to Jean
Valjean. He could not get to sleep again, and he fell to thinking.
He was at one of those moments when the thoughts which one has in one’s
mind are troubled. There was a sort of dark confusion in his brain. His
memories of the olden time and of the immediate present floated there
pell-mell and mingled confusedly, losing their proper forms, becoming
disproportionately large, then suddenly disappearing, as in a muddy and
perturbed pool. Many thoughts occurred to him; but there was one which
kept constantly presenting itself afresh, and which drove away all
others. We will mention this thought at once: he had observed the six
sets of silver forks and spoons and the ladle which Madame Magloire had
placed on the table.
Those six sets of silver haunted him.—They were there.—A few paces
distant.—Just as he was traversing the adjoining room to reach the one
in which he then was, the old servant-woman had been in the act of
placing them in a little cupboard near the head of the bed.—He had
taken careful note of this cupboard.—On the right, as you entered from
the dining-room.—They were solid.—And old silver.—From the ladle one
could get at least two hundred francs.—Double what he had earned in
nineteen years.—It is true that he would have earned more if “the
_administration_ had not _robbed him_.”
His mind wavered for a whole hour in fluctuations with which there was
certainly mingled some struggle. Three o’clock struck. He opened his
eyes again, drew himself up abruptly into a sitting posture, stretched
out his arm and felt of his knapsack, which he had thrown down on a
corner of the alcove; then he hung his legs over the edge of the bed,
and placed his feet on the floor, and thus found himself, almost
without knowing it, seated on his bed.
He remained for a time thoughtfully in this attitude, which would have
been suggestive of something sinister for any one who had seen him thus
in the dark, the only person awake in that house where all were
sleeping. All of a sudden he stooped down, removed his shoes and placed
them softly on the mat beside the bed; then he resumed his thoughtful
attitude, and became motionless once more.
Throughout this hideous meditation, the thoughts which we have above
indicated moved incessantly through his brain; entered, withdrew,
re-entered, and in a manner oppressed him; and then he thought, also,
without knowing why, and with the mechanical persistence of reverie, of
a convict named Brevet, whom he had known in the galleys, and whose
trousers had been upheld by a single suspender of knitted cotton. The
checkered pattern of that suspender recurred incessantly to his mind.
He remained in this situation, and would have so remained indefinitely,
even until daybreak, had not the clock struck one—the half or quarter
hour. It seemed to him that that stroke said to him, “Come on!”
He rose to his feet, hesitated still another moment, and listened; all
was quiet in the house; then he walked straight ahead, with short
steps, to the window, of which he caught a glimpse. The night was not
very dark; there was a full moon, across which coursed large clouds
driven by the wind. This created, outdoors, alternate shadow and gleams
of light, eclipses, then bright openings of the clouds; and indoors a
sort of twilight. This twilight, sufficient to enable a person to see
his way, intermittent on account of the clouds, resembled the sort of
livid light which falls through an air-hole in a cellar, before which
the passers-by come and go. On arriving at the window, Jean Valjean
examined it. It had no grating; it opened in the garden and was
fastened, according to the fashion of the country, only by a small pin.
He opened it; but as a rush of cold and piercing air penetrated the
room abruptly, he closed it again immediately. He scrutinized the
garden with that attentive gaze which studies rather than looks. The
garden was enclosed by a tolerably low white wall, easy to climb. Far
away, at the extremity, he perceived tops of trees, spaced at regular
intervals, which indicated that the wall separated the garden from an
avenue or lane planted with trees.
Having taken this survey, he executed a movement like that of a man who
has made up his mind, strode to his alcove, grasped his knapsack,
opened it, fumbled in it, pulled out of it something which he placed on
the bed, put his shoes into one of his pockets, shut the whole thing up
again, threw the knapsack on his shoulders, put on his cap, drew the
visor down over his eyes, felt for his cudgel, went and placed it in
the angle of the window; then returned to the bed, and resolutely
seized the object which he had deposited there. It resembled a short
bar of iron, pointed like a pike at one end. It would have been
difficult to distinguish in that darkness for what employment that bit
of iron could have been designed. Perhaps it was a lever; possibly it
was a club.
In the daytime it would have been possible to recognize it as nothing
more than a miner’s candlestick. Convicts were, at that period,
sometimes employed in quarrying stone from the lofty hills which
environ Toulon, and it was not rare for them to have miners’ tools at
their command. These miners’ candlesticks are of massive iron,
terminated at the lower extremity by a point, by means of which they
are stuck into the rock.
He took the candlestick in his right hand; holding his breath and
trying to deaden the sound of his tread, he directed his steps to the
door of the adjoining room, occupied by the Bishop, as we already know.
On arriving at this door, he found it ajar. The Bishop had not closed
it.
CHAPTER XI—WHAT HE DOES
Jean Valjean listened. Not a sound.
He gave the door a push.
He pushed it gently with the tip of his finger, lightly, with the
furtive and uneasy gentleness of a cat which is desirous of entering.
The door yielded to this pressure, and made an imperceptible and silent
movement, which enlarged the opening a little.
He waited a moment; then gave the door a second and a bolder push.
It continued to yield in silence. The opening was now large enough to
allow him to pass. But near the door there stood a little table, which
formed an embarrassing angle with it, and barred the entrance.
Jean Valjean recognized the difficulty. It was necessary, at any cost,
to enlarge the aperture still further.
He decided on his course of action, and gave the door a third push,
more energetic than the two preceding. This time a badly oiled hinge
suddenly emitted amid the silence a hoarse and prolonged cry.
Jean Valjean shuddered. The noise of the hinge rang in his ears with
something of the piercing and formidable sound of the trump of the Day
of Judgment.
In the fantastic exaggerations of the first moment he almost imagined
that that hinge had just become animated, and had suddenly assumed a
terrible life, and that it was barking like a dog to arouse every one,
and warn and to wake those who were asleep. He halted, shuddering,
bewildered, and fell back from the tips of his toes upon his heels. He
heard the arteries in his temples beating like two forge hammers, and
it seemed to him that his breath issued from his breast with the roar
of the wind issuing from a cavern. It seemed impossible to him that the
horrible clamor of that irritated hinge should not have disturbed the
entire household, like the shock of an earthquake; the door, pushed by
him, had taken the alarm, and had shouted; the old man would rise at
once; the two old women would shriek out; people would come to their
assistance; in less than a quarter of an hour the town would be in an
uproar, and the gendarmerie on hand. For a moment he thought himself
lost.
He remained where he was, petrified like the statue of salt, not daring
to make a movement. Several minutes elapsed. The door had fallen wide
open. He ventured to peep into the next room. Nothing had stirred
there. He lent an ear. Nothing was moving in the house. The noise made
by the rusty hinge had not awakened any one.
This first danger was past; but there still reigned a frightful tumult
within him. Nevertheless, he did not retreat. Even when he had thought
himself lost, he had not drawn back. His only thought now was to finish
as soon as possible. He took a step and entered the room.
This room was in a state of perfect calm. Here and there vague and
confused forms were distinguishable, which in the daylight were papers
scattered on a table, open folios, volumes piled upon a stool, an
armchair heaped with clothing, a prie-Dieu, and which at that hour were
only shadowy corners and whitish spots. Jean Valjean advanced with
precaution, taking care not to knock against the furniture. He could
hear, at the extremity of the room, the even and tranquil breathing of
the sleeping Bishop.
He suddenly came to a halt. He was near the bed. He had arrived there
sooner than he had thought for.
Nature sometimes mingles her effects and her spectacles with our
actions with sombre and intelligent appropriateness, as though she
desired to make us reflect. For the last half-hour a large cloud had
covered the heavens. At the moment when Jean Valjean paused in front of
the bed, this cloud parted, as though on purpose, and a ray of light,
traversing the long window, suddenly illuminated the Bishop’s pale
face. He was sleeping peacefully. He lay in his bed almost completely
dressed, on account of the cold of the Basses-Alps, in a garment of
brown wool, which covered his arms to the wrists. His head was thrown
back on the pillow, in the careless attitude of repose; his hand,
adorned with the pastoral ring, and whence had fallen so many good
deeds and so many holy actions, was hanging over the edge of the bed.
His whole face was illumined with a vague expression of satisfaction,
of hope, and of felicity. It was more than a smile, and almost a
radiance. He bore upon his brow the indescribable reflection of a light
which was invisible. The soul of the just contemplates in sleep a
mysterious heaven.
A reflection of that heaven rested on the Bishop.
It was, at the same time, a luminous transparency, for that heaven was
within him. That heaven was his conscience.
At the moment when the ray of moonlight superposed itself, so to speak,
upon that inward radiance, the sleeping Bishop seemed as in a glory. It
remained, however, gentle and veiled in an ineffable half-light. That
moon in the sky, that slumbering nature, that garden without a quiver,
that house which was so calm, the hour, the moment, the silence, added
some solemn and unspeakable quality to the venerable repose of this
man, and enveloped in a sort of serene and majestic aureole that white
hair, those closed eyes, that face in which all was hope and all was
confidence, that head of an old man, and that slumber of an infant.
There was something almost divine in this man, who was thus august,