Les Misérables
At that word, Jean Valjean became wild. He folded his arms, glared at
the floor beneath his feet as though he would have excavated an abyss
therein, and his voice suddenly rose in thundering tones:
“As one family! No. I belong to no family. I do not belong to yours. I
do not belong to any family of men. In houses where people are among
themselves, I am superfluous. There are families, but there is nothing
of the sort for me. I am an unlucky wretch; I am left outside. Did I
have a father and mother? I almost doubt it. On the day when I gave
that child in marriage, all came to an end. I have seen her happy, and
that she is with a man whom she loves, and that there exists here a
kind old man, a household of two angels, and all joys in that house,
and that it was well, I said to myself: ‘Enter thou not.’ I could have
lied, it is true, have deceived you all, and remained Monsieur
Fauchelevent. So long as it was for her, I could lie; but now it would
be for myself, and I must not. It was sufficient for me to hold my
peace, it is true, and all would go on. You ask me what has forced me
to speak? a very odd thing; my conscience. To hold my peace was very
easy, however. I passed the night in trying to persuade myself to it;
you questioned me, and what I have just said to you is so extraordinary
that you have the right to do it; well, yes, I have passed the night in
alleging reasons to myself, and I gave myself very good reasons, I have
done what I could. But there are two things in which I have not
succeeded; in breaking the thread that holds me fixed, riveted and
sealed here by the heart, or in silencing some one who speaks softly to
me when I am alone. That is why I have come hither to tell you
everything this morning. Everything or nearly everything. It is useless
to tell you that which concerns only myself; I keep that to myself. You
know the essential points. So I have taken my mystery and have brought
it to you. And I have disembowelled my secret before your eyes. It was
not a resolution that was easy to take. I struggled all night long. Ah!
you think that I did not tell myself that this was no Champmathieu
affair, that by concealing my name I was doing no one any injury, that
the name of Fauchelevent had been given to me by Fauchelevent himself,
out of gratitude for a service rendered to him, and that I might
assuredly keep it, and that I should be happy in that chamber which you
offer me, that I should not be in any one’s way, that I should be in my
own little corner, and that, while you would have Cosette, I should
have the idea that I was in the same house with her. Each one of us
would have had his share of happiness. If I continued to be Monsieur
Fauchelevent, that would arrange everything. Yes, with the exception of
my soul. There was joy everywhere upon my surface, but the bottom of my
soul remained black. It is not enough to be happy, one must be content.
Thus I should have remained Monsieur Fauchelevent, thus I should have
concealed my true visage, thus, in the presence of your expansion, I
should have had an enigma, thus, in the midst of your full noonday, I
should have had shadows, thus, without crying ‘’ware,’ I should have
simply introduced the galleys to your fireside, I should have taken my
seat at your table with the thought that if you knew who I was, you
would drive me from it, I should have allowed myself to be served by
domestics who, had they known, would have said: ‘How horrible!’ I
should have touched you with my elbow, which you have a right to
dislike, I should have filched your clasps of the hand! There would
have existed in your house a division of respect between venerable
white locks and tainted white locks; at your most intimate hours, when
all hearts thought themselves open to the very bottom to all the rest,
when we four were together, your grandfather, you two and myself, a
stranger would have been present! I should have been side by side with
you in your existence, having for my only care not to disarrange the
cover of my dreadful pit. Thus, I, a dead man, should have thrust
myself upon you who are living beings. I should have condemned her to
myself forever. You and Cosette and I would have had all three of our
heads in the green cap! Does it not make you shudder? I am only the
most crushed of men; I should have been the most monstrous of men. And
I should have committed that crime every day! And I should have had
that face of night upon my visage every day! every day! And I should
have communicated to you a share in my taint every day! every day! to
you, my dearly beloved, my children, to you, my innocent creatures! Is
it nothing to hold one’s peace? is it a simple matter to keep silence?
No, it is not simple. There is a silence which lies. And my lie, and my
fraud and my indignity, and my cowardice and my treason and my crime, I
should have drained drop by drop, I should have spit it out, then
swallowed it again, I should have finished at midnight and have begun
again at midday, and my ‘good morning’ would have lied, and my ‘good
night’ would have lied, and I should have slept on it, I should have
eaten it, with my bread, and I should have looked Cosette in the face,
and I should have responded to the smile of the angel by the smile of
the damned soul, and I should have been an abominable villain! Why
should I do it? in order to be happy. In order to be happy. Have I the
right to be happy? I stand outside of life, sir.”
Jean Valjean paused. Marius listened. Such chains of ideas and of
anguishes cannot be interrupted. Jean Valjean lowered his voice once
more, but it was no longer a dull voice—it was a sinister voice.
“You ask why I speak? I am neither denounced, nor pursued, nor tracked,
you say. Yes! I am denounced! yes! I am tracked! By whom? By myself. It
is I who bar the passage to myself, and I drag myself, and I push
myself, and I arrest myself, and I execute myself, and when one holds
oneself, one is firmly held.”
And, seizing a handful of his own coat by the nape of the neck and
extending it towards Marius:
“Do you see that fist?” he continued. “Don’t you think that it holds
that collar in such a wise as not to release it? Well! conscience is
another grasp! If one desires to be happy, sir, one must never
understand duty; for, as soon as one has comprehended it, it is
implacable. One would say that it punished you for comprehending it;
but no, it rewards you; for it places you in a hell, where you feel God
beside you. One has no sooner lacerated his own entrails than he is at
peace with himself.”
And, with a poignant accent, he added:
“Monsieur Pontmercy, this is not common sense, I am an honest man. It
is by degrading myself in your eyes that I elevate myself in my own.
This has happened to me once before, but it was less painful then; it
was a mere nothing. Yes, an honest man. I should not be so if, through
my fault, you had continued to esteem me; now that you despise me, I am
so. I have that fatality hanging over me that, not being able to ever
have anything but stolen consideration, that consideration humiliates
me, and crushes me inwardly, and, in order that I may respect myself,
it is necessary that I should be despised. Then I straighten up again.
I am a galley-slave who obeys his conscience. I know well that that is
most improbable. But what would you have me do about it? it is the
fact. I have entered into engagements with myself; I keep them. There
are encounters which bind us, there are chances which involve us in
duties. You see, Monsieur Pontmercy, various things have happened to me
in the course of my life.”
Again Jean Valjean paused, swallowing his saliva with an effort, as
though his words had a bitter after-taste, and then he went on:
“When one has such a horror hanging over one, one has not the right to
make others share it without their knowledge, one has not the right to
make them slip over one’s own precipice without their perceiving it,
one has not the right to let one’s red blouse drag upon them, one has
no right to slyly encumber with one’s misery the happiness of others.
It is hideous to approach those who are healthy, and to touch them in
the dark with one’s ulcer. In spite of the fact that Fauchelevent lent
me his name, I have no right to use it; he could give it to me, but I
could not take it. A name is an _I_. You see, sir, that I have thought
somewhat, I have read a little, although I am a peasant; and you see
that I express myself properly. I understand things. I have procured
myself an education. Well, yes, to abstract a name and to place oneself
under it is dishonest. Letters of the alphabet can be filched, like a
purse or a watch. To be a false signature in flesh and blood, to be a
living false key, to enter the house of honest people by picking their
lock, never more to look straightforward, to forever eye askance, to be
infamous within the _I_, no! no! no! no! no! It is better to suffer, to
bleed, to weep, to tear one’s skin from the flesh with one’s nails, to
pass nights writhing in anguish, to devour oneself body and soul. That
is why I have just told you all this. Wantonly, as you say.”
He drew a painful breath, and hurled this final word:
“In days gone by, I stole a loaf of bread in order to live; to-day, in
order to live, I will not steal a name.”
“To live!” interrupted Marius. “You do not need that name in order to
live?”
“Ah! I understand the matter,” said Jean Valjean, raising and lowering
his head several times in succession.
A silence ensued. Both held their peace, each plunged in a gulf of
thoughts. Marius was sitting near a table and resting the corner of his
mouth on one of his fingers, which was folded back. Jean Valjean was
pacing to and fro. He paused before a mirror, and remained motionless.
Then, as though replying to some inward course of reasoning, he said,
as he gazed at the mirror, which he did not see:
“While, at present, I am relieved.”
He took up his march again, and walked to the other end of the
drawing-room. At the moment when he turned round, he perceived that
Marius was watching his walk. Then he said, with an inexpressible
intonation:
“I drag my leg a little. Now you understand why!”
Then he turned fully round towards Marius:
“And now, sir, imagine this: I have said nothing, I have remained
Monsieur Fauchelevent, I have taken my place in your house, I am one of
you, I am in my chamber, I come to breakfast in the morning in
slippers, in the evening all three of us go to the play, I accompany
Madame Pontmercy to the Tuileries, and to the Place Royale, we are
together, you think me your equal; one fine day you are there, and I am
there, we are conversing, we are laughing; all at once, you hear a
voice shouting this name: ‘Jean Valjean!’ and behold, that terrible
hand, the police, darts from the darkness, and abruptly tears off my
mask!”
Again he paused; Marius had sprung to his feet with a shudder. Jean
Valjean resumed:
“What do you say to that?”
Marius’ silence answered for him.
Jean Valjean continued:
“You see that I am right in not holding my peace. Be happy, be in
heaven, be the angel of an angel, exist in the sun, be content
therewith, and do not trouble yourself about the means which a poor
damned wretch takes to open his breast and force his duty to come
forth; you have before you, sir, a wretched man.”
Marius slowly crossed the room, and, when he was quite close to Jean
Valjean, he offered the latter his hand.
But Marius was obliged to step up and take that hand which was not
offered, Jean Valjean let him have his own way, and it seemed to Marius
that he pressed a hand of marble.
“My grandfather has friends,” said Marius; “I will procure your
pardon.”