Les Misérables
“But you!” cried Marius with a wrath in which there was veneration,
“why did you not tell it to me? It is your own fault, too. You save
people’s lives, and you conceal it from them! You do more, under the
pretext of unmasking yourself, you calumniate yourself. It is
frightful.”
“I told the truth,” replied Jean Valjean.
“No,” retorted Marius, “the truth is the whole truth; and that you did
not tell. You were Monsieur Madeleine, why not have said so? You saved
Javert, why not have said so? I owed my life to you, why not have said
so?”
“Because I thought as you do. I thought that you were in the right. It
was necessary that I should go away. If you had known about that
affair, of the sewer, you would have made me remain near you. I was
therefore forced to hold my peace. If I had spoken, it would have
caused embarrassment in every way.”
“It would have embarrassed what? embarrassed whom?” retorted Marius.
“Do you think that you are going to stay here? We shall carry you off.
Ah! good heavens! when I reflect that it was by an accident that I have
learned all this. You form a part of ourselves. You are her father, and
mine. You shall not pass another day in this dreadful house. Do not
imagine that you will be here to-morrow.”
“To-morrow,” said Jean Valjean, “I shall not be here, but I shall not
be with you.”
“What do you mean?” replied Marius. “Ah! come now, we are not going to
permit any more journeys. You shall never leave us again. You belong to
us. We shall not loose our hold of you.”
“This time it is for good,” added Cosette. “We have a carriage at the
door. I shall run away with you. If necessary, I shall employ force.”
And she laughingly made a movement to lift the old man in her arms.
“Your chamber still stands ready in our house,” she went on. “If you
only knew how pretty the garden is now! The azaleas are doing very well
there. The walks are sanded with river sand; there are tiny violet
shells. You shall eat my strawberries. I water them myself. And no more
‘madame,’ no more ‘Monsieur Jean,’ we are living under a Republic,
everybody says _thou_, don’t they, Marius? The programme is changed. If
you only knew, father, I have had a sorrow, there was a robin redbreast
which had made her nest in a hole in the wall, and a horrible cat ate
her. My poor, pretty, little robin red-breast which used to put her
head out of her window and look at me! I cried over it. I should have
liked to kill the cat. But now nobody cries any more. Everybody laughs,
everybody is happy. You are going to come with us. How delighted
grandfather will be! You shall have your plot in the garden, you shall
cultivate it, and we shall see whether your strawberries are as fine as
mine. And, then, I shall do everything that you wish, and then, you
will obey me prettily.”
Jean Valjean listened to her without hearing her. He heard the music of
her voice rather than the sense of her words; one of those large tears
which are the sombre pearls of the soul welled up slowly in his eyes.
He murmured:
“The proof that God is good is that she is here.”
“Father!” said Cosette.
Jean Valjean continued:
“It is quite true that it would be charming for us to live together.
Their trees are full of birds. I would walk with Cosette. It is sweet
to be among living people who bid each other ‘good-day,’ who call to
each other in the garden. People see each other from early morning. We
should each cultivate our own little corner. She would make me eat her
strawberries. I would make her gather my roses. That would be charming.
Only . . .”
He paused and said gently:
“It is a pity.”
The tear did not fall, it retreated, and Jean Valjean replaced it with
a smile.
Cosette took both the old man’s hands in hers.
“My God!” said she, “your hands are still colder than before. Are you
ill? Do you suffer?”
“I? No,” replied Jean Valjean. “I am very well. Only . . .”
He paused.
“Only what?”
“I am going to die presently.”
Cosette and Marius shuddered.
“To die!” exclaimed Marius.
“Yes, but that is nothing,” said Jean Valjean.
He took breath, smiled and resumed:
“Cosette, thou wert talking to me, go on, so thy little robin
red-breast is dead? Speak, so that I may hear thy voice.”
Marius gazed at the old man in amazement.
Cosette uttered a heartrending cry.
“Father! my father! you will live. You are going to live. I insist upon
your living, do you hear?”
Jean Valjean raised his head towards her with adoration.
“Oh! yes, forbid me to die. Who knows? Perhaps I shall obey. I was on
the verge of dying when you came. That stopped me, it seemed to me that
I was born again.”
“You are full of strength and life,” cried Marius. “Do you imagine that
a person can die like this? You have had sorrow, you shall have no
more. It is I who ask your forgiveness, and on my knees! You are going
to live, and to live with us, and to live a long time. We take
possession of you once more. There are two of us here who will
henceforth have no other thought than your happiness.”
“You see,” resumed Cosette, all bathed in tears, “that Marius says that
you shall not die.”
Jean Valjean continued to smile.
“Even if you were to take possession of me, Monsieur Pontmercy, would
that make me other than I am? No, God has thought like you and myself,
and he does not change his mind; it is useful for me to go. Death is a
good arrangement. God knows better than we what we need. May you be
happy, may Monsieur Pontmercy have Cosette, may youth wed the morning,
may there be around you, my children, lilacs and nightingales; may your
life be a beautiful, sunny lawn, may all the enchantments of heaven
fill your souls, and now let me, who am good for nothing, die; it is
certain that all this is right. Come, be reasonable, nothing is
possible now, I am fully conscious that all is over. And then, last
night, I drank that whole jug of water. How good thy husband is,
Cosette! Thou art much better off with him than with me.”
A noise became audible at the door.
It was the doctor entering.
“Good-day, and farewell, doctor,” said Jean Valjean. “Here are my poor
children.”
Marius stepped up to the doctor. He addressed to him only this single
word: “Monsieur? . . .” But his manner of pronouncing it contained a
complete question.
The doctor replied to the question by an expressive glance.
“Because things are not agreeable,” said Jean Valjean, “that is no
reason for being unjust towards God.”
A silence ensued.
All breasts were oppressed.
Jean Valjean turned to Cosette. He began to gaze at her as though he
wished to retain her features for eternity.
In the depths of the shadow into which he had already descended,
ecstasy was still possible to him when gazing at Cosette. The
reflection of that sweet face lighted up his pale visage.
The doctor felt of his pulse.
“Ah! it was you that he wanted!” he murmured, looking at Cosette and
Marius.
And bending down to Marius’ ear, he added in a very low voice:
“Too late.”
Jean Valjean surveyed the doctor and Marius serenely, almost without
ceasing to gaze at Cosette.
These barely articulate words were heard to issue from his mouth:
“It is nothing to die; it is dreadful not to live.”
All at once he rose to his feet. These accesses of strength are
sometimes the sign of the death agony. He walked with a firm step to
the wall, thrusting aside Marius and the doctor who tried to help him,
detached from the wall a little copper crucifix which was suspended
there, and returned to his seat with all the freedom of movement of
perfect health, and said in a loud voice, as he laid the crucifix on
the table:
“Behold the great martyr.”
Then his chest sank in, his head wavered, as though the intoxication of
the tomb were seizing hold upon him.
His hands, which rested on his knees, began to press their nails into
the stuff of his trousers.
Cosette supported his shoulders, and sobbed, and tried to speak to him,
but could not.
Among the words mingled with that mournful saliva which accompanies
tears, they distinguished words like the following:
“Father, do not leave us. Is it possible that we have found you only to
lose you again?”
It might be said that agony writhes. It goes, comes, advances towards
the sepulchre, and returns towards life. There is groping in the action
of dying.
Jean Valjean rallied after this semi-swoon, shook his brow as though to
make the shadows fall away from it and became almost perfectly lucid
once more.
He took a fold of Cosette’s sleeve and kissed it.
“He is coming back! doctor, he is coming back,” cried Marius.
“You are good, both of you,” said Jean Valjean. “I am going to tell you
what has caused me pain. What has pained me, Monsieur Pontmercy, is
that you have not been willing to touch that money. That money really
belongs to your wife. I will explain to you, my children, and for that
reason, also, I am glad to see you. Black jet comes from England, white
jet comes from Norway. All this is in this paper, which you will read.
For bracelets, I invented a way of substituting for slides of soldered
sheet iron, slides of iron laid together. It is prettier, better and
less costly. You will understand how much money can be made in that
way. So Cosette’s fortune is really hers. I give you these details, in
order that your mind may be set at rest.”
The portress had come upstairs and was gazing in at the half-open door.
The doctor dismissed her.
But he could not prevent this zealous woman from exclaiming to the
dying man before she disappeared: “Would you like a priest?”
“I have had one,” replied Jean Valjean.
And with his finger he seemed to indicate a point above his head where
one would have said that he saw some one.
It is probable, in fact, that the Bishop was present at this death
agony.
Cosette gently slipped a pillow under his loins.
Jean Valjean resumed:
“Have no fear, Monsieur Pontmercy, I adjure you. The six hundred
thousand francs really belong to Cosette. My life will have been wasted
if you do not enjoy them! We managed to do very well with those glass
goods. We rivalled what is called Berlin jewellery. However, we could
not equal the black glass of England. A gross, which contains twelve
hundred very well cut grains, only costs three francs.”
When a being who is dear to us is on the point of death, we gaze upon
him with a look which clings convulsively to him and which would fain
hold him back.
Cosette gave her hand to Marius, and both, mute with anguish, not
knowing what to say to the dying man, stood trembling and despairing
before him.
Jean Valjean sank moment by moment. He was failing; he was drawing near
to the gloomy horizon.
His breath had become intermittent; a little rattling interrupted it.
He found some difficulty in moving his forearm, his feet had lost all
movement, and in proportion as the wretchedness of limb and feebleness
of body increased, all the majesty of his soul was displayed and spread
over his brow. The light of the unknown world was already visible in
his eyes.
His face paled and smiled. Life was no longer there, it was something
else.
His breath sank, his glance grew grander. He was a corpse on which the
wings could be felt.
He made a sign to Cosette to draw near, then to Marius; the last minute
of the last hour had, evidently, arrived.
He began to speak to them in a voice so feeble that it seemed to come
from a distance, and one would have said that a wall now rose between
them and him.
“Draw near, draw near, both of you. I love you dearly. Oh! how good it
is to die like this! And thou lovest me also, my Cosette. I knew well