Les Misérables
been the only one to take note of the man in question, and this is the
description that he gave:
“That man was terrible.”
Marius had the blood-stained clothing which he had worn when he had
been brought back to his grandfather preserved, in the hope that it
would prove of service in his researches.
On examining the coat, it was found that one skirt had been torn in a
singular way. A piece was missing.
One evening, Marius was speaking in the presence of Cosette and Jean
Valjean of the whole of that singular adventure, of the innumerable
inquiries which he had made, and of the fruitlessness of his efforts.
The cold countenance of “Monsieur Fauchelevent” angered him.
He exclaimed, with a vivacity which had something of wrath in it:
“Yes, that man, whoever he may have been, was sublime. Do you know what
he did, sir? He intervened like an archangel. He must have flung
himself into the midst of the battle, have stolen me away, have opened
the sewer, have dragged me into it and have carried me through it! He
must have traversed more than a league and a half in those frightful
subterranean galleries, bent over, weighed down, in the dark, in the
cesspool,—more than a league and a half, sir, with a corpse upon his
back! And with what object? With the sole object of saving the corpse.
And that corpse I was. He said to himself: ‘There may still be a
glimpse of life there, perchance; I will risk my own existence for that
miserable spark!’ And his existence he risked not once but twenty
times! And every step was a danger. The proof of it is, that on
emerging from the sewer, he was arrested. Do you know, sir, that that
man did all this? And he had no recompense to expect. What was I? An
insurgent. What was I? One of the conquered. Oh! if Cosette’s six
hundred thousand francs were mine….”
“They are yours,” interrupted Jean Valjean.
“Well,” resumed Marius, “I would give them all to find that man once
more.”
Jean Valjean remained silent.
BOOK SIXTH—THE SLEEPLESS NIGHT
CHAPTER I—THE 16TH OF FEBRUARY, 1833
The night of the 16th to the 17th of February, 1833, was a blessed
night. Above its shadows heaven stood open. It was the wedding night of
Marius and Cosette.
The day had been adorable.
It had not been the grand festival dreamed by the grandfather, a fairy
spectacle, with a confusion of cherubim and Cupids over the heads of
the bridal pair, a marriage worthy to form the subject of a painting to
be placed over a door; but it had been sweet and smiling.
The manner of marriage in 1833 was not the same as it is to-day. France
had not yet borrowed from England that supreme delicacy of carrying off
one’s wife, of fleeing, on coming out of church, of hiding oneself with
shame from one’s happiness, and of combining the ways of a bankrupt
with the delights of the Song of Songs. People had not yet grasped to
the full the chastity, exquisiteness, and decency of jolting their
paradise in a posting-chaise, of breaking up their mystery with
clic-clacs, of taking for a nuptial bed the bed of an inn, and of
leaving behind them, in a commonplace chamber, at so much a night, the
most sacred of the souvenirs of life mingled pell-mell with the
tête-à-tête of the conductor of the diligence and the maid-servant of
the inn.
In this second half of the nineteenth century in which we are now
living, the mayor and his scarf, the priest and his chasuble, the law
and God no longer suffice; they must be eked out by the Postilion de
Lonjumeau; a blue waistcoat turned up with red, and with bell buttons,
a plaque like a vantbrace, knee-breeches of green leather, oaths to the
Norman horses with their tails knotted up, false galloons, varnished
hat, long powdered locks, an enormous whip and tall boots. France does
not yet carry elegance to the length of doing like the English
nobility, and raining down on the post-chaise of the bridal pair a hail
storm of slippers trodden down at heel and of worn-out shoes, in memory
of Churchill, afterwards Marlborough, or Malbrouck, who was assailed on
his wedding-day by the wrath of an aunt which brought him good luck.
Old shoes and slippers do not, as yet, form a part of our nuptial
celebrations; but patience, as good taste continues to spread, we shall
come to that.
In 1833, a hundred years ago, marriage was not conducted at a full
trot.
Strange to say, at that epoch, people still imagined that a wedding was
a private and social festival, that a patriarchal banquet does not
spoil a domestic solemnity, that gayety, even in excess, provided it be
honest, and decent, does happiness no harm, and that, in short, it is a
good and a venerable thing that the fusion of these two destinies
whence a family is destined to spring, should begin at home, and that
the household should thenceforth have its nuptial chamber as its
witness.
And people were so immodest as to marry in their own homes.
The marriage took place, therefore, in accordance with this now
superannuated fashion, at M. Gillenormand’s house.
Natural and commonplace as this matter of marrying is, the banns to
publish, the papers to be drawn up, the mayoralty, and the church
produce some complication. They could not get ready before the 16th of
February.
Now, we note this detail, for the pure satisfaction of being exact, it
chanced that the 16th fell on Shrove Tuesday. Hesitations, scruples,
particularly on the part of Aunt Gillenormand.
“Shrove Tuesday!” exclaimed the grandfather, “so much the better. There
is a proverb:
“‘Mariage un Mardi gras
N’aura point enfants ingrats.’66
Let us proceed. Here goes for the 16th! Do you want to delay, Marius?”
“No, certainly not!” replied the lover.
“Let us marry, then,” cried the grandfather.
Accordingly, the marriage took place on the 16th, notwithstanding the
public merrymaking. It rained that day, but there is always in the sky
a tiny scrap of blue at the service of happiness, which lovers see,
even when the rest of creation is under an umbrella.
On the preceding evening, Jean Valjean handed to Marius, in the
presence of M. Gillenormand, the five hundred and eighty-four thousand
francs.
As the marriage was taking place under the régime of community of
property, the papers had been simple.
Henceforth, Toussaint was of no use to Jean Valjean; Cosette inherited
her and promoted her to the rank of lady’s maid.
As for Jean Valjean, a beautiful chamber in the Gillenormand house had
been furnished expressly for him, and Cosette had said to him in such
an irresistible manner: “Father, I entreat you,” that she had almost
persuaded him to promise that he would come and occupy it.
A few days before that fixed on for the marriage, an accident happened
to Jean Valjean; he crushed the thumb of his right hand. This was not a
serious matter; and he had not allowed any one to trouble himself about
it, nor to dress it, nor even to see his hurt, not even Cosette.
Nevertheless, this had forced him to swathe his hand in a linen
bandage, and to carry his arm in a sling, and had prevented his
signing. M. Gillenormand, in his capacity of Cosette’s
supervising-guardian, had supplied his place.
We will not conduct the reader either to the mayor’s office or to the
church. One does not follow a pair of lovers to that extent, and one is
accustomed to turn one’s back on the drama as soon as it puts a wedding
nosegay in its buttonhole. We will confine ourselves to noting an
incident which, though unnoticed by the wedding party, marked the
transit from the Rue des Filles-du-Calvaire to the church of
Saint-Paul.
At that epoch, the northern extremity of the Rue Saint-Louis was in
process of repaving. It was barred off, beginning with the Rue du
Parc-Royal. It was impossible for the wedding carriages to go directly
to Saint-Paul. They were obliged to alter their course, and the
simplest way was to turn through the boulevard. One of the invited
guests observed that it was Shrove Tuesday, and that there would be a
jam of vehicles.—“Why?” asked M. Gillenormand—“Because of the
maskers.”—“Capital,” said the grandfather, “let us go that way. These
young folks are on the way to be married; they are about to enter the
serious part of life. This will prepare them for seeing a bit of the
masquerade.”
They went by way of the boulevard. The first wedding coach held Cosette
and Aunt Gillenormand, M. Gillenormand and Jean Valjean. Marius, still
separated from his betrothed according to usage, did not come until the
second. The nuptial train, on emerging from the Rue des
Filles-du-Calvaire, became entangled in a long procession of vehicles
which formed an endless chain from the Madeleine to the Bastille, and
from the Bastille to the Madeleine. Maskers abounded on the boulevard.
In spite of the fact that it was raining at intervals, Merry-Andrew,
Pantaloon and Clown persisted. In the good humor of that winter of
1833, Paris had disguised itself as Venice. Such Shrove Tuesdays are no
longer to be seen nowadays. Everything which exists being a scattered
Carnival, there is no longer any Carnival.
The sidewalks were overflowing with pedestrians and the windows with
curious spectators. The terraces which crown the peristyles of the
theatres were bordered with spectators. Besides the maskers, they
stared at that procession—peculiar to Shrove Tuesday as to
Longchamps,—of vehicles of every description, citadines, tapissières,
carioles, cabriolets marching in order, rigorously riveted to each
other by the police regulations, and locked into rails, as it were. Any
one in these vehicles is at once a spectator and a spectacle. Police
sergeants maintained, on the sides of the boulevard, these two
interminable parallel files, moving in contrary directions, and saw to
it that nothing interfered with that double current, those two brooks
of carriages, flowing, the one downstream, the other upstream, the one
towards the Chaussée d’Antin, the other towards the Faubourg
Saint-Antoine. The carriages of the peers of France and of the
Ambassadors, emblazoned with coats of arms, held the middle of the way,
going and coming freely. Certain joyous and magnificent trains, notably
that of the Bœuf Gras, had the same privilege. In this gayety of Paris,
England cracked her whip; Lord Seymour’s post-chaise, harassed by a
nickname from the populace, passed with great noise.
In the double file, along which the municipal guards galloped like
sheep-dogs, honest family coaches, loaded down with great-aunts and
grandmothers, displayed at their doors fresh groups of children in
disguise, Clowns of seven years of age, Columbines of six, ravishing
little creatures, who felt that they formed an official part of the
public mirth, who were imbued with the dignity of their harlequinade,
and who possessed the gravity of functionaries.
From time to time, a hitch arose somewhere in the procession of
vehicles; one or other of the two lateral files halted until the knot
was disentangled; one carriage delayed sufficed to paralyze the whole
line. Then they set out again on the march.
The wedding carriages were in the file proceeding towards the Bastille,
and skirting the right side of the Boulevard. At the top of the
Pont-aux-Choux, there was a stoppage. Nearly at the same moment, the
other file, which was proceeding towards the Madeleine, halted also. At
that point of the file there was a carriage-load of maskers.
These carriages, or to speak more correctly, these wagon-loads of
maskers are very familiar to Parisians. If they were missing on a
Shrove Tuesday, or at the Mid-Lent, it would be taken in bad part, and
people would say: “There’s something behind that. Probably the ministry
is about to undergo a change.” A pile of Cassandras, Harlequins and