Les Misérables
that thou still felt friendly towards thy poor old man. How kind it was
of thee to place that pillow under my loins! Thou wilt weep for me a
little, wilt thou not? Not too much. I do not wish thee to have any
real griefs. You must enjoy yourselves a great deal, my children. I
forgot to tell you that the profit was greater still on the buckles
without tongues than on all the rest. A gross of a dozen dozens cost
ten francs and sold for sixty. It really was a good business. So there
is no occasion for surprise at the six hundred thousand francs,
Monsieur Pontmercy. It is honest money. You may be rich with a tranquil
mind. Thou must have a carriage, a box at the theatres now and then,
and handsome ball dresses, my Cosette, and then, thou must give good
dinners to thy friends, and be very happy. I was writing to Cosette a
while ago. She will find my letter. I bequeath to her the two
candlesticks which stand on the chimney-piece. They are of silver, but
to me they are gold, they are diamonds; they change candles which are
placed in them into wax-tapers. I do not know whether the person who
gave them to me is pleased with me yonder on high. I have done what I
could. My children, you will not forget that I am a poor man, you will
have me buried in the first plot of earth that you find, under a stone
to mark the spot. This is my wish. No name on the stone. If Cosette
cares to come for a little while now and then, it will give me
pleasure. And you too, Monsieur Pontmercy. I must admit that I have not
always loved you. I ask your pardon for that. Now she and you form but
one for me. I feel very grateful to you. I am sure that you make
Cosette happy. If you only knew, Monsieur Pontmercy, her pretty rosy
cheeks were my delight; when I saw her in the least pale, I was sad. In
the chest of drawers, there is a bank-bill for five hundred francs. I
have not touched it. It is for the poor. Cosette, dost thou see thy
little gown yonder on the bed? dost thou recognize it? That was ten
years ago, however. How time flies! We have been very happy. All is
over. Do not weep, my children, I am not going very far, I shall see
you from there, you will only have to look at night, and you will see
me smile. Cosette, dost thou remember Montfermeil? Thou wert in the
forest, thou wert greatly terrified; dost thou remember how I took hold
of the handle of the water-bucket? That was the first time that I
touched thy poor, little hand. It was so cold! Ah! your hands were red
then, mademoiselle, they are very white now. And the big doll! dost
thou remember? Thou didst call her Catherine. Thou regrettedest not
having taken her to the convent! How thou didst make me laugh
sometimes, my sweet angel! When it had been raining, thou didst float
bits of straw on the gutters, and watch them pass away. One day I gave
thee a willow battledore and a shuttlecock with yellow, blue and green
feathers. Thou hast forgotten it. Thou wert roguish so young! Thou
didst play. Thou didst put cherries in thy ears. Those are things of
the past. The forests through which one has passed with one’s child,
the trees under which one has strolled, the convents where one has
concealed oneself, the games, the hearty laughs of childhood, are
shadows. I imagined that all that belonged to me. In that lay my
stupidity. Those Thénardiers were wicked. Thou must forgive them.
Cosette, the moment has come to tell thee the name of thy mother. She
was called Fantine. Remember that name—Fantine. Kneel whenever thou
utterest it. She suffered much. She loved thee dearly. She had as much
unhappiness as thou hast had happiness. That is the way God apportions
things. He is there on high, he sees us all, and he knows what he does
in the midst of his great stars. I am on the verge of departure, my
children. Love each other well and always. There is nothing else but
that in the world: love for each other. You will think sometimes of the
poor old man who died here. Oh my Cosette, it is not my fault, indeed,
that I have not seen thee all this time, it cut me to the heart; I went
as far as the corner of the street, I must have produced a queer effect
on the people who saw me pass, I was like a madman, I once went out
without my hat. I no longer see clearly, my children, I had still other
things to say, but never mind. Think a little of me. Come still nearer.
I die happy. Give me your dear and well-beloved heads, so that I may
lay my hands upon them.”
Cosette and Marius fell on their knees, in despair, suffocating with
tears, each beneath one of Jean Valjean’s hands. Those august hands no
longer moved.
He had fallen backwards, the light of the candles illuminated him.
His white face looked up to heaven, he allowed Cosette and Marius to
cover his hands with kisses.
He was dead.
The night was starless and extremely dark. No doubt, in the gloom, some
immense angel stood erect with wings outspread, awaiting that soul.
CHAPTER VI—THE GRASS COVERS AND THE RAIN EFFACES
In the cemetery of Père-Lachaise, in the vicinity of the common grave,
far from the elegant quarter of that city of sepulchres, far from all
the tombs of fancy which display in the presence of eternity all the
hideous fashions of death, in a deserted corner, beside an old wall,
beneath a great yew tree over which climbs the wild convolvulus, amid
dandelions and mosses, there lies a stone. That stone is no more exempt
than others from the leprosy of time, of dampness, of the lichens and
from the defilement of the birds. The water turns it green, the air
blackens it. It is not near any path, and people are not fond of
walking in that direction, because the grass is high and their feet are
immediately wet. When there is a little sunshine, the lizards come
thither. All around there is a quivering of weeds. In the spring,
linnets warble in the trees.
This stone is perfectly plain. In cutting it the only thought was the
requirements of the tomb, and no other care was taken than to make the
stone long enough and narrow enough to cover a man.
No name is to be read there.
Only, many years ago, a hand wrote upon it in pencil these four lines,
which have become gradually illegible beneath the rain and the dust,
and which are, to-day, probably effaced:
Il dort. Quoique le sort fût pour lui bien étrange,
Il vivait. Il mourut quand il n’eut plus son ange.
La chose simplement d’elle-même arriva,
Comme la nuit se fait lorsque le jour s’en va.70
LETTER TO M. DAELLI
Publisher of the Italian translation of _Les Misérables_ in Milan.
HAUTEVILLE-HOUSE, October 18, 1862.
You are right, sir, when you tell me that _Les Misérables_ is written
for all nations. I do not know whether it will be read by all, but I
wrote it for all. It is addressed to England as well as to Spain, to
Italy as well as to France, to Germany as well as to Ireland, to
Republics which have slaves as well as to Empires which have serfs.
Social problems overstep frontiers. The sores of the human race, those
great sores which cover the globe, do not halt at the red or blue lines
traced upon the map. In every place where man is ignorant and
despairing, in every place where woman is sold for bread, wherever the
child suffers for lack of the book which should instruct him and of the
hearth which should warm him, the book of _Les Misérables_ knocks at
the door and says: “Open to me, I come for you.”
At the hour of civilization through which we are now passing, and which
is still so sombre, the _miserable’s_ name is Man; he is agonizing in
all climes, and he is groaning in all languages.
Your Italy is no more exempt from the evil than is our France. Your
admirable Italy has all miseries on the face of it. Does not banditism,
that raging form of pauperism, inhabit your mountains? Few nations are
more deeply eaten by that ulcer of convents which I have endeavored to
fathom. In spite of your possessing Rome, Milan, Naples, Palermo,
Turin, Florence, Sienna, Pisa, Mantua, Bologna, Ferrara, Genoa, Venice,
a heroic history, sublime ruins, magnificent ruins, and superb cities,
you are, like ourselves, poor. You are covered with marvels and vermin.
Assuredly, the sun of Italy is splendid, but, alas, azure in the sky
does not prevent rags on man.
Like us, you have prejudices, superstitions, tyrannies, fanaticisms,
blind laws lending assistance to ignorant customs. You taste nothing of
the present nor of the future without a flavor of the past being
mingled with it. You have a barbarian, the monk, and a savage, the
lazzarone. The social question is the same for you as for us. There are
a few less deaths from hunger with you, and a few more from fever; your
social hygiene is not much better than ours; shadows, which are
Protestant in England, are Catholic in Italy; but, under different
names, the _vescovo_ is identical with the _bishop_, and it always
means night, and of pretty nearly the same quality. To explain the
Bible badly amounts to the same thing as to understand the Gospel
badly.
Is it necessary to emphasize this? Must this melancholy parallelism be
yet more completely verified? Have you not indigent persons? Glance
below. Have you not parasites? Glance up. Does not that hideous
balance, whose two scales, pauperism and parasitism, so mournfully
preserve their mutual equilibrium, oscillate before you as it does
before us? Where is your army of schoolmasters, the only army which
civilization acknowledges?
Where are your free and compulsory schools? Does every one know how to
read in the land of Dante and of Michael Angelo? Have you made public
schools of your barracks? Have you not, like ourselves, an opulent
war-budget and a paltry budget of education? Have not you also that
passive obedience which is so easily converted into soldierly
obedience? military establishment which pushes the regulations to the
extreme of firing upon Garibaldi; that is to say, upon the living honor
of Italy? Let us subject your social order to examination, let us take
it where it stands and as it stands, let us view its flagrant offences,
show me the woman and the child. It is by the amount of protection with
which these two feeble creatures are surrounded that the degree of
civilization is to be measured. Is prostitution less heartrending in
Naples than in Paris? What is the amount of truth that springs from
your laws, and what amount of justice springs from your tribunals? Do
you chance to be so fortunate as to be ignorant of the meaning of those
gloomy words: public prosecution, legal infamy, prison, the scaffold,
the executioner, the death penalty? Italians, with you as with us,
Beccaria is dead and Farinace is alive. And then, let us scrutinize
your state reasons. Have you a government which comprehends the
identity of morality and politics? You have reached the point where you
grant amnesty to heroes! Something very similar has been done in
France. Stay, let us pass miseries in review, let each one contribute
his pile, you are as rich as we. Have you not, like ourselves, two
condemnations, religious condemnation pronounced by the priest, and
social condemnation decreed by the judge? Oh, great nation of Italy,
thou resemblest the great nation of France! Alas! our brothers, you
are, like ourselves, _Miserables_.
From the depths of the gloom wherein you dwell, you do not see much
more distinctly than we the radiant and distant portals of Eden. Only,
the priests are mistaken. These holy portals are before and not behind
us.
I resume. This book, _Les Misérables_, is no less your mirror than
ours. Certain men, certain castes, rise in revolt against this book,—I
understand that. Mirrors, those revealers of the truth, are hated; that
does not prevent them from being of use.