Les Misérables
must be cautious. If I no longer come at all, it would produce a bad
effect, it would be considered singular. What I can do, by the way, is
to come in the afternoon, when night is beginning to fall.”
“You shall come every evening,” said Marius, “and Cosette will be
waiting for you.”
“You are kind, sir,” said Jean Valjean.
Marius saluted Jean Valjean, happiness escorted despair to the door,
and these two men parted.
CHAPTER II—THE OBSCURITIES WHICH A REVELATION CAN CONTAIN
Marius was quite upset.
The sort of estrangement which he had always felt towards the man
beside whom he had seen Cosette, was now explained to him. There was
something enigmatic about that person, of which his instinct had warned
him.
This enigma was the most hideous of disgraces, the galleys. This M.
Fauchelevent was the convict Jean Valjean.
To abruptly find such a secret in the midst of one’s happiness
resembles the discovery of a scorpion in a nest of turtledoves.
Was the happiness of Marius and Cosette thenceforth condemned to such a
neighborhood? Was this an accomplished fact? Did the acceptance of that
man form a part of the marriage now consummated? Was there nothing to
be done?
Had Marius wedded the convict as well?
In vain may one be crowned with light and joy, in vain may one taste
the grand purple hour of life, happy love, such shocks would force even
the archangel in his ecstasy, even the demigod in his glory, to
shudder.
As is always the case in changes of view of this nature, Marius asked
himself whether he had nothing with which to reproach himself. Had he
been wanting in divination? Had he been wanting in prudence? Had he
involuntarily dulled his wits? A little, perhaps. Had he entered upon
this love affair, which had ended in his marriage to Cosette, without
taking sufficient precautions to throw light upon the surroundings? He
admitted,—it is thus, by a series of successive admissions of ourselves
in regard to ourselves, that life amends us, little by little,—he
admitted the chimerical and visionary side of his nature, a sort of
internal cloud peculiar to many organizations, and which, in paroxysms
of passion and sorrow, dilates as the temperature of the soul changes,
and invades the entire man, to such a degree as to render him nothing
more than a conscience bathed in a mist. We have more than once
indicated this characteristic element of Marius’ individuality.
He recalled that, in the intoxication of his love, in the Rue Plumet,
during those six or seven ecstatic weeks, he had not even spoken to
Cosette of that drama in the Gorbeau hovel, where the victim had taken
up such a singular line of silence during the struggle and the ensuing
flight. How had it happened that he had not mentioned this to Cosette?
Yet it was so near and so terrible! How had it come to pass that he had
not even named the Thénardiers, and, particularly, on the day when he
had encountered Éponine? He now found it almost difficult to explain
his silence of that time. Nevertheless, he could account for it. He
recalled his benumbed state, his intoxication with Cosette, love
absorbing everything, that catching away of each other into the ideal,
and perhaps also, like the imperceptible quantity of reason mingled
with this violent and charming state of the soul, a vague, dull
instinct impelling him to conceal and abolish in his memory that
redoubtable adventure, contact with which he dreaded, in which he did
not wish to play any part, his agency in which he had kept secret, and
in which he could be neither narrator nor witness without being an
accuser.
Moreover, these few weeks had been a flash of lightning; there had been
no time for anything except love.
In short, having weighed everything, turned everything over in his
mind, examined everything, whatever might have been the consequences if
he had told Cosette about the Gorbeau ambush, even if he had discovered
that Jean Valjean was a convict, would that have changed him, Marius?
Would that have changed her, Cosette? Would he have drawn back? Would
he have adored her any the less? Would he have refrained from marrying
her? No. Then there was nothing to regret, nothing with which he need
reproach himself. All was well. There is a deity for those drunken men
who are called lovers. Marius blind, had followed the path which he
would have chosen had he been in full possession of his sight. Love had
bandaged his eyes, in order to lead him whither? To paradise.
But this paradise was henceforth complicated with an infernal
accompaniment.
Marius’ ancient estrangement towards this man, towards this
Fauchelevent who had turned into Jean Valjean, was at present mingled
with horror.
In this horror, let us state, there was some pity, and even a certain
surprise.
This thief, this thief guilty of a second offence, had restored that
deposit. And what a deposit! Six hundred thousand francs.
He alone was in the secret of that deposit. He might have kept it all,
he had restored it all.
Moreover, he had himself revealed his situation. Nothing forced him to
this. If any one learned who he was, it was through himself. In this
avowal there was something more than acceptance of humiliation, there
was acceptance of peril. For a condemned man, a mask is not a mask, it
is a shelter. A false name is security, and he had rejected that false
name. He, the galley-slave, might have hidden himself forever in an
honest family; he had withstood this temptation. And with what motive?
Through a conscientious scruple. He himself explained this with the
irresistible accents of truth. In short, whatever this Jean Valjean
might be, he was, undoubtedly, a conscience which was awakening. There
existed some mysterious re-habilitation which had begun; and, to all
appearances, scruples had for a long time already controlled this man.
Such fits of justice and goodness are not characteristic of vulgar
natures. An awakening of conscience is grandeur of soul.
Jean Valjean was sincere. This sincerity, visible, palpable,
irrefragable, evident from the very grief that it caused him, rendered
inquiries useless, and conferred authority on all that that man had
said.
Here, for Marius, there was a strange reversal of situations. What
breathed from M. Fauchelevent? distrust. What did Jean Valjean inspire?
confidence.
In the mysterious balance of this Jean Valjean which the pensive Marius
struck, he admitted the active principle, he admitted the passive
principle, and he tried to reach a balance.
But all this went on as in a storm. Marius, while endeavoring to form a
clear idea of this man, and while pursuing Jean Valjean, so to speak,
in the depths of his thought, lost him and found him again in a fatal
mist.
The deposit honestly restored, the probity of the confession—these were
good. This produced a lightening of the cloud, then the cloud became
black once more.
Troubled as were Marius’ memories, a shadow of them returned to him.
After all, what was that adventure in the Jondrette attic? Why had that
man taken to flight on the arrival of the police, instead of entering a
complaint?
Here Marius found the answer. Because that man was a fugitive from
justice, who had broken his ban.
Another question: Why had that man come to the barricade?
For Marius now once more distinctly beheld that recollection which had
reappeared in his emotions like sympathetic ink at the application of
heat. This man had been in the barricade. He had not fought there. What
had he come there for? In the presence of this question a spectre
sprang up and replied: “Javert.”
Marius recalled perfectly now that funereal sight of Jean Valjean
dragging the pinioned Javert out of the barricade, and he still heard
behind the corner of the little Rue Mondétour that frightful pistol
shot. Obviously, there was hatred between that police spy and the
galley-slave. The one was in the other’s way. Jean Valjean had gone to
the barricade for the purpose of revenging himself. He had arrived
late. He probably knew that Javert was a prisoner there. The Corsican
vendetta has penetrated to certain lower strata and has become the law
there; it is so simple that it does not astonish souls which are but
half turned towards good; and those hearts are so constituted that a
criminal, who is in the path of repentance, may be scrupulous in the
matter of theft and unscrupulous in the matter of vengeance. Jean
Valjean had killed Javert. At least, that seemed to be evident.
This was the final question, to be sure; but to this there was no
reply. This question Marius felt like pincers. How had it come to pass
that Jean Valjean’s existence had elbowed that of Cosette for so long a
period?
What melancholy sport of Providence was that which had placed that
child in contact with that man? Are there then chains for two which are
forged on high? and does God take pleasure in coupling the angel with
the demon? So a crime and an innocence can be room-mates in the
mysterious galleys of wretchedness? In that defiling of condemned
persons which is called human destiny, can two brows pass side by side,
the one ingenuous, the other formidable, the one all bathed in the
divine whiteness of dawn, the other forever blemished by the flash of
an eternal lightning? Who could have arranged that inexplicable pairing
off? In what manner, in consequence of what prodigy, had any community
of life been established between this celestial little creature and
that old criminal?
Who could have bound the lamb to the wolf, and, what was still more
incomprehensible, have attached the wolf to the lamb? For the wolf
loved the lamb, for the fierce creature adored the feeble one, for,
during the space of nine years, the angel had had the monster as her
point of support. Cosette’s childhood and girlhood, her advent in the
daylight, her virginal growth towards life and light, had been
sheltered by that hideous devotion. Here questions exfoliated, so to
speak, into innumerable enigmas, abysses yawned at the bottoms of
abysses, and Marius could no longer bend over Jean Valjean without
becoming dizzy. What was this man-precipice?
The old symbols of Genesis are eternal; in human society, such as it
now exists, and until a broader day shall effect a change in it, there
will always be two men, the one superior, the other subterranean; the
one which is according to good is Abel; the other which is according to
evil is Cain. What was this tender Cain? What was this ruffian
religiously absorbed in the adoration of a virgin, watching over her,
rearing her, guarding her, dignifying her, and enveloping her, impure
as he was himself, with purity?
What was that cesspool which had venerated that innocence to such a
point as not to leave upon it a single spot? What was this Jean Valjean
educating Cosette? What was this figure of the shadows which had for
its only object the preservation of the rising of a star from every
shadow and from every cloud?
That was Jean Valjean’s secret; that was also God’s secret.
In the presence of this double secret, Marius recoiled. The one, in
some sort, reassured him as to the other. God was as visible in this
affair as was Jean Valjean. God has his instruments. He makes use of
the tool which he wills. He is not responsible to men. Do we know how
God sets about the work? Jean Valjean had labored over Cosette. He had,
to some extent, made that soul. That was incontestable. Well, what
then? The workman was horrible; but the work was admirable. God
produces his miracles as seems good to him. He had constructed that
charming Cosette, and he had employed Jean Valjean. It had pleased him
to choose this strange collaborator for himself. What account have we
to demand of him? Is this the first time that the dung-heap has aided