Les Misérables
escape; and, for my own part, I should be only too happy to re-enter
it. Which of you has seen the planet Venus, the coquette of the abyss,
the Célimène of the ocean, rise in the infinite, calming all here
below? The ocean is a rough Alcestis. Well, grumble as he will, when
Venus appears he is forced to smile. That brute beast submits. We are
all made so. Wrath, tempest, claps of thunder, foam to the very
ceiling. A woman enters on the scene, a planet rises; flat on your
face! Marius was fighting six months ago; to-day he is married. That is
well. Yes, Marius, yes, Cosette, you are in the right. Exist boldly for
each other, make us burst with rage that we cannot do the same,
idealize each other, catch in your beaks all the tiny blades of
felicity that exist on earth, and arrange yourselves a nest for life.
Pardi, to love, to be loved, what a fine miracle when one is young!
Don’t imagine that you have invented that. I, too, have had my dream,
I, too, have meditated, I, too, have sighed; I, too, have had a
moonlight soul. Love is a child six thousand years old. Love has the
right to a long white beard. Methusalem is a street arab beside Cupid.
For sixty centuries men and women have got out of their scrape by
loving. The devil, who is cunning, took to hating man; man, who is
still more cunning, took to loving woman. In this way he does more good
than the devil does him harm. This craft was discovered in the days of
the terrestrial paradise. The invention is old, my friends, but it is
perfectly new. Profit by it. Be Daphnis and Chloe, while waiting to
become Philemon and Baucis. Manage so that, when you are with each
other, nothing shall be lacking to you, and that Cosette may be the sun
for Marius, and that Marius may be the universe to Cosette. Cosette,
let your fine weather be the smile of your husband; Marius, let your
rain be your wife’s tears. And let it never rain in your household. You
have filched the winning number in the lottery; you have gained the
great prize, guard it well, keep it under lock and key, do not squander
it, adore each other and snap your fingers at all the rest. Believe
what I say to you. It is good sense. And good sense cannot lie. Be a
religion to each other. Each man has his own fashion of adoring God.
Saperlotte! the best way to adore God is to love one’s wife. _I love
thee!_ that’s my catechism. He who loves is orthodox. The oath of Henri
IV. places sanctity somewhere between feasting and drunkenness.
Ventre-saint-gris! I don’t belong to the religion of that oath. Woman
is forgotten in it. This astonishes me on the part of Henri IV. My
friends, long live women! I am old, they say; it’s astonishing how much
I feel in the mood to be young. I should like to go and listen to the
bagpipes in the woods. Children who contrive to be beautiful and
contented,—that intoxicates me. I would like greatly to get married, if
any one would have me. It is impossible to imagine that God could have
made us for anything but this: to idolize, to coo, to preen ourselves,
to be dove-like, to be dainty, to bill and coo our loves from morn to
night, to gaze at one’s image in one’s little wife, to be proud, to be
triumphant, to plume oneself; that is the aim of life. There, let not
that displease you which we used to think in our day, when we were
young folks. Ah! vertu-bamboche! what charming women there were in
those days, and what pretty little faces and what lovely lasses! I
committed my ravages among them. Then love each other. If people did
not love each other, I really do not see what use there would be in
having any springtime; and for my own part, I should pray the good God
to shut up all the beautiful things that he shows us, and to take away
from us and put back in his box, the flowers, the birds, and the pretty
maidens. My children, receive an old man’s blessing.”
The evening was gay, lively and agreeable. The grandfather’s sovereign
good humor gave the key-note to the whole feast, and each person
regulated his conduct on that almost centenarian cordiality. They
danced a little, they laughed a great deal; it was an amiable wedding.
Goodman Days of Yore might have been invited to it. However, he was
present in the person of Father Gillenormand.
There was a tumult, then silence.
The married pair disappeared.
A little after midnight, the Gillenormand house became a temple.
Here we pause. On the threshold of wedding nights stands a smiling
angel with his finger on his lips.
The soul enters into contemplation before that sanctuary where the
celebration of love takes place.
There should be flashes of light athwart such houses. The joy which
they contain ought to make its escape through the stones of the walls
in brilliancy, and vaguely illuminate the gloom. It is impossible that
this sacred and fatal festival should not give off a celestial radiance
to the infinite. Love is the sublime crucible wherein the fusion of the
man and the woman takes place; the being one, the being triple, the
being final, the human trinity proceeds from it. This birth of two
souls into one, ought to be an emotion for the gloom. The lover is the
priest; the ravished virgin is terrified. Something of that joy ascends
to God. Where true marriage is, that is to say, where there is love,
the ideal enters in. A nuptial bed makes a nook of dawn amid the
shadows. If it were given to the eye of the flesh to scan the
formidable and charming visions of the upper life, it is probable that
we should behold the forms of night, the winged unknowns, the blue
passers of the invisible, bend down, a throng of sombre heads, around
the luminous house, satisfied, showering benedictions, pointing out to
each other the virgin wife gently alarmed, sweetly terrified, and
bearing the reflection of human bliss upon their divine countenances.
If at that supreme hour, the wedded pair, dazzled with voluptuousness
and believing themselves alone, were to listen, they would hear in
their chamber a confused rustling of wings. Perfect happiness implies a
mutual understanding with the angels. That dark little chamber has all
heaven for its ceiling. When two mouths, rendered sacred by love,
approach to create, it is impossible that there should not be, above
that ineffable kiss, a quivering throughout the immense mystery of
stars.
These felicities are the true ones. There is no joy outside of these
joys. Love is the only ecstasy. All the rest weeps.
To love, or to have loved,—this suffices. Demand nothing more. There is
no other pearl to be found in the shadowy folds of life. To love is a
fulfilment.
CHAPTER III—THE INSEPARABLE
What had become of Jean Valjean?
Immediately after having laughed, at Cosette’s graceful command, when
no one was paying any heed to him, Jean Valjean had risen and had
gained the antechamber unperceived. This was the very room which, eight
months before, he had entered black with mud, with blood and powder,
bringing back the grandson to the grandfather. The old wainscoting was
garlanded with foliage and flowers; the musicians were seated on the
sofa on which they had laid Marius down. Basque, in a black coat,
knee-breeches, white stockings and white gloves, was arranging roses
round all of the dishes that were to be served. Jean Valjean pointed to
his arm in its sling, charged Basque to explain his absence, and went
away.
The long windows of the dining-room opened on the street. Jean Valjean
stood for several minutes, erect and motionless in the darkness,
beneath those radiant windows. He listened. The confused sounds of the
banquet reached his ear. He heard the loud, commanding tones of the
grandfather, the violins, the clatter of the plates, the bursts of
laughter, and through all that merry uproar, he distinguished Cosette’s
sweet and joyous voice.
He quitted the Rue des Filles-du-Calvaire, and returned to the Rue de
l’Homme Armé.
In order to return thither, he took the Rue Saint-Louis, the Rue
Culture-Sainte-Catherine, and the Blancs-Manteaux; it was a little
longer, but it was the road through which, for the last three months,
he had become accustomed to pass every day on his way from the Rue de
l’Homme Armé to the Rue des Filles-du-Calvaire, in order to avoid the
obstructions and the mud in the Rue Vieille-du-Temple.
This road, through which Cosette had passed, excluded for him all
possibility of any other itinerary.
Jean Valjean entered his lodgings. He lighted his candle and mounted
the stairs. The apartment was empty. Even Toussaint was no longer
there. Jean Valjean’s step made more noise than usual in the chambers.
All the cupboards stood open. He penetrated to Cosette’s bedroom. There
were no sheets on the bed. The pillow, covered with ticking, and
without a case or lace, was laid on the blankets folded up on the foot
of the mattress, whose covering was visible, and on which no one was
ever to sleep again. All the little feminine objects which Cosette was
attached to had been carried away; nothing remained except the heavy
furniture and the four walls. Toussaint’s bed was despoiled in like
manner. One bed only was made up, and seemed to be waiting some one,
and this was Jean Valjean’s bed.
Jean Valjean looked at the walls, closed some of the cupboard doors,
and went and came from one room to another.
Then he sought his own chamber once more, and set his candle on a
table.
He had disengaged his arm from the sling, and he used his right hand as
though it did not hurt him.
He approached his bed, and his eyes rested, was it by chance? was it
intentionally? on the _inseparable_ of which Cosette had been jealous,
on the little portmanteau which never left him. On his arrival in the
Rue de l’Homme Armé, on the 4th of June, he had deposited it on a round
table near the head of his bed. He went to this table with a sort of
vivacity, took a key from his pocket, and opened the valise.
From it he slowly drew forth the garments in which, ten years before,
Cosette had quitted Montfermeil; first the little gown, then the black
fichu, then the stout, coarse child’s shoes which Cosette might almost
have worn still, so tiny were her feet, then the fustian bodice, which
was very thick, then the knitted petticoat, next the apron with
pockets, then the woollen stockings. These stockings, which still
preserved the graceful form of a tiny leg, were no longer than Jean
Valjean’s hand. All this was black of hue. It was he who had brought
those garments to Montfermeil for her. As he removed them from the
valise, he laid them on the bed. He fell to thinking. He called up
memories. It was in winter, in a very cold month of December, she was
shivering, half-naked, in rags, her poor little feet were all red in
their wooden shoes. He, Jean Valjean, had made her abandon those rags
to clothe herself in these mourning habiliments. The mother must have
felt pleased in her grave, to see her daughter wearing mourning for
her, and, above all, to see that she was properly clothed, and that she
was warm. He thought of that forest of Montfermeil; they had traversed
it together, Cosette and he; he thought of what the weather had been,
of the leafless trees, of the wood destitute of birds, of the sunless
sky; it mattered not, it was charming. He arranged the tiny garments on
the bed, the fichu next to the petticoat, the stockings beside the
shoes, and he looked at them, one after the other. She was no taller
than that, she had her big doll in her arms, she had put her louis d’or
in the pocket of that apron, she had laughed, they walked hand in hand,
she had no one in the world but him.
Then his venerable, white head fell forward on the bed, that stoical
old heart broke, his face was engulfed, so to speak, in Cosette’s
garments, and if any one had passed up the stairs at that moment, he