Les Misérables
It is the interior of a flower that is not yet unfolded, it is
whiteness in the dark, it is the private cell of a closed lily, which
must not be gazed upon by man so long as the sun has not gazed upon it.
Woman in the bud is sacred. That innocent bud which opens, that
adorable half-nudity which is afraid of itself, that white foot which
takes refuge in a slipper, that throat which veils itself before a
mirror as though a mirror were an eye, that chemise which makes haste
to rise up and conceal the shoulder for a creaking bit of furniture or
a passing vehicle, those cords tied, those clasps fastened, those laces
drawn, those tremors, those shivers of cold and modesty, that exquisite
affright in every movement, that almost winged uneasiness where there
is no cause for alarm, the successive phases of dressing, as charming
as the clouds of dawn,—it is not fitting that all this should be
narrated, and it is too much to have even called attention to it.
The eye of man must be more religious in the presence of the rising of
a young girl than in the presence of the rising of a star. The
possibility of hurting should inspire an augmentation of respect. The
down on the peach, the bloom on the plum, the radiated crystal of the
snow, the wing of the butterfly powdered with feathers, are coarse
compared to that chastity which does not even know that it is chaste.
The young girl is only the flash of a dream, and is not yet a statue.
Her bed-chamber is hidden in the sombre part of the ideal. The
indiscreet touch of a glance brutalizes this vague penumbra. Here,
contemplation is profanation.
We shall, therefore, show nothing of that sweet little flutter of
Cosette’s rising.
An oriental tale relates how the rose was made white by God, but that
Adam looked upon her when she was unfolding, and she was ashamed and
turned crimson. We are of the number who fall speechless in the
presence of young girls and flowers, since we think them worthy of
veneration.
Cosette dressed herself very hastily, combed and dressed her hair,
which was a very simple matter in those days, when women did not swell
out their curls and bands with cushions and puffs, and did not put
crinoline in their locks. Then she opened the window and cast her eyes
around her in every direction, hoping to descry some bit of the street,
an angle of the house, an edge of pavement, so that she might be able
to watch for Marius there. But no view of the outside was to be had.
The back court was surrounded by tolerably high walls, and the outlook
was only on several gardens. Cosette pronounced these gardens hideous:
for the first time in her life, she found flowers ugly. The smallest
scrap of the gutter of the street would have met her wishes better. She
decided to gaze at the sky, as though she thought that Marius might
come from that quarter.
All at once, she burst into tears. Not that this was fickleness of
soul; but hopes cut in twain by dejection—that was her case. She had a
confused consciousness of something horrible. Thoughts were rife in the
air, in fact. She told herself that she was not sure of anything, that
to withdraw herself from sight was to be lost; and the idea that Marius
could return to her from heaven appeared to her no longer charming but
mournful.
Then, as is the nature of these clouds, calm returned to her, and hope
and a sort of unconscious smile, which yet indicated trust in God.
Every one in the house was still asleep. A country-like silence
reigned. Not a shutter had been opened. The porter’s lodge was closed.
Toussaint had not risen, and Cosette, naturally, thought that her
father was asleep. She must have suffered much, and she must have still
been suffering greatly, for she said to herself, that her father had
been unkind; but she counted on Marius. The eclipse of such a light was
decidedly impossible. Now and then, she heard sharp shocks in the
distance, and she said: “It is odd that people should be opening and
shutting their carriage gates so early.” They were the reports of the
cannon battering the barricade.
A few feet below Cosette’s window, in the ancient and perfectly black
cornice of the wall, there was a martin’s nest; the curve of this nest
formed a little projection beyond the cornice, so that from above it
was possible to look into this little paradise. The mother was there,
spreading her wings like a fan over her brood; the father fluttered
about, flew away, then came back, bearing in his beak food and kisses.
The dawning day gilded this happy thing, the great law, “Multiply,” lay
there smiling and august, and that sweet mystery unfolded in the glory
of the morning. Cosette, with her hair in the sunlight, her soul
absorbed in chimæras, illuminated by love within and by the dawn
without, bent over mechanically, and almost without daring to avow to
herself that she was thinking at the same time of Marius, began to gaze
at these birds, at this family, at that male and female, that mother
and her little ones, with the profound trouble which a nest produces on
a virgin.
CHAPTER XI—THE SHOT WHICH MISSES NOTHING AND KILLS NO ONE
The assailants’ fire continued. Musketry and grape-shot alternated, but
without committing great ravages, to tell the truth. The top alone of
the Corinthe façade suffered; the window on the first floor, and the
attic window in the roof, riddled with buckshot and biscaïens, were
slowly losing their shape. The combatants who had been posted there had
been obliged to withdraw. However, this is according to the tactics of
barricades; to fire for a long while, in order to exhaust the
insurgents’ ammunition, if they commit the mistake of replying. When it
is perceived, from the slackening of their fire, that they have no more
powder and ball, the assault is made. Enjolras had not fallen into this
trap; the barricade did not reply.
At every discharge by platoons, Gavroche puffed out his cheek with his
tongue, a sign of supreme disdain.
“Good for you,” said he, “rip up the cloth. We want some lint.”
Courfeyrac called the grape-shot to order for the little effect which
it produced, and said to the cannon:
“You are growing diffuse, my good fellow.”
One gets puzzled in battle, as at a ball. It is probable that this
silence on the part of the redoubt began to render the besiegers
uneasy, and to make them fear some unexpected incident, and that they
felt the necessity of getting a clear view behind that heap of
paving-stones, and of knowing what was going on behind that impassable
wall which received blows without retorting. The insurgents suddenly
perceived a helmet glittering in the sun on a neighboring roof. A
fireman had placed his back against a tall chimney, and seemed to be
acting as sentinel. His glance fell directly down into the barricade.
“There’s an embarrassing watcher,” said Enjolras.
Jean Valjean had returned Enjolras’ rifle, but he had his own gun.
Without saying a word, he took aim at the fireman, and, a second later,
the helmet, smashed by a bullet, rattled noisily into the street. The
terrified soldier made haste to disappear. A second observer took his
place. This one was an officer. Jean Valjean, who had re-loaded his
gun, took aim at the newcomer and sent the officer’s casque to join the
soldier’s. The officer did not persist, and retired speedily. This time
the warning was understood. No one made his appearance thereafter on
that roof; and the idea of spying on the barricade was abandoned.
“Why did you not kill the man?” Bossuet asked Jean Valjean.
Jean Valjean made no reply.
CHAPTER XII—DISORDER A PARTISAN OF ORDER
Bossuet muttered in Combeferre’s ear:
“He did not answer my question.”
“He is a man who does good by gun-shots,” said Combeferre.
Those who have preserved some memory of this already distant epoch know
that the National Guard from the suburbs was valiant against
insurrections. It was particularly zealous and intrepid in the days of
June, 1832. A certain good dram-shop keeper of Pantin des Vertus or la
Cunette, whose “establishment” had been closed by the riots, became
leonine at the sight of his deserted dance-hall, and got himself killed
to preserve the order represented by a tea-garden. In that bourgeois
and heroic time, in the presence of ideas which had their knights,
interests had their paladins. The prosiness of the originators
detracted nothing from the bravery of the movement. The diminution of a
pile of crowns made bankers sing the Marseillaise. They shed their
blood lyrically for the counting-house; and they defended the shop,
that immense diminutive of the fatherland, with Lacedæmonian
enthusiasm.
At bottom, we will observe, there was nothing in all this that was not
extremely serious. It was social elements entering into strife, while
awaiting the day when they should enter into equilibrium.
Another sign of the times was the anarchy mingled with governmentalism
[the barbarous name of the correct party]. People were for order in
combination with lack of discipline.
The drum suddenly beat capricious calls, at the command of such or such
a Colonel of the National Guard; such and such a captain went into
action through inspiration; such and such National Guardsmen fought,
“for an idea,” and on their own account. At critical moments, on “days”
they took counsel less of their leaders than of their instincts. There
existed in the army of order, veritable guerilleros, some of the sword,
like Fannicot, others of the pen, like Henri Fonfrède.
Civilization, unfortunately, represented at this epoch rather by an
aggregation of interests than by a group of principles, was or thought
itself, in peril; it set up the cry of alarm; each, constituting
himself a centre, defended it, succored it, and protected it with his
own head; and the first comer took it upon himself to save society.
Zeal sometimes proceeded to extermination. A platoon of the National
Guard would constitute itself on its own authority a private council of
war, and judge and execute a captured insurgent in five minutes. It was
an improvisation of this sort that had slain Jean Prouvaire. Fierce
Lynch law, with which no one party had any right to reproach the rest,
for it has been applied by the Republic in America, as well as by the
monarchy in Europe. This Lynch law was complicated with mistakes. On
one day of rioting, a young poet, named Paul Aimé Garnier, was pursued
in the Place Royale, with a bayonet at his loins, and only escaped by
taking refuge under the porte-cochère of No. 6. They shouted:—“There’s
another of those Saint-Simonians!” and they wanted to kill him. Now, he
had under his arm a volume of the memoirs of the Duc de Saint-Simon. A
National Guard had read the words _Saint-Simon_ on the book, and had
shouted: “Death!”
On the 6th of June, 1832, a company of the National Guards from the
suburbs, commanded by the Captain Fannicot, above mentioned, had itself
decimated in the Rue de la Chanvrerie out of caprice and its own good
pleasure. This fact, singular though it may seem, was proved at the
judicial investigation opened in consequence of the insurrection of
1832. Captain Fannicot, a bold and impatient bourgeois, a sort of
condottiere of the order of those whom we have just characterized, a
fanatical and intractable governmentalist, could not resist the
temptation to fire prematurely, and the ambition of capturing the
barricade alone and unaided, that is to say, with his company.
Exasperated by the successive apparition of the red flag and the old
coat which he took for the black flag, he loudly blamed the generals
and chiefs of the corps, who were holding council and did not think
that the moment for the decisive assault had arrived, and who were
allowing “the insurrection to fry in its own fat,” to use the