Les Misérables
Before Father Madeleine’s arrival, everything had languished in the
country; now everything lived with a healthy life of toil. A strong
circulation warmed everything and penetrated everywhere. Slack seasons
and wretchedness were unknown. There was no pocket so obscure that it
had not a little money in it; no dwelling so lowly that there was not
some little joy within it.
Father Madeleine gave employment to every one. He exacted but one
thing: Be an honest man. Be an honest woman.
As we have said, in the midst of this activity of which he was the
cause and the pivot, Father Madeleine made his fortune; but a singular
thing in a simple man of business, it did not seem as though that were
his chief care. He appeared to be thinking much of others, and little
of himself. In 1820 he was known to have a sum of six hundred and
thirty thousand francs lodged in his name with Laffitte; but before
reserving these six hundred and thirty thousand francs, he had spent
more than a million for the town and its poor.
The hospital was badly endowed; he founded six beds there. M. sur M. is
divided into the upper and the lower town. The lower town, in which he
lived, had but one school, a miserable hovel, which was falling to
ruin: he constructed two, one for girls, the other for boys. He
allotted a salary from his own funds to the two instructors, a salary
twice as large as their meagre official salary, and one day he said to
some one who expressed surprise, “The two prime functionaries of the
state are the nurse and the schoolmaster.” He created at his own
expense an infant school, a thing then almost unknown in France, and a
fund for aiding old and infirm workmen. As his factory was a centre, a
new quarter, in which there were a good many indigent families, rose
rapidly around him; he established there a free dispensary.
At first, when they watched his beginnings, the good souls said, “He’s
a jolly fellow who means to get rich.” When they saw him enriching the
country before he enriched himself, the good souls said, “He is an
ambitious man.” This seemed all the more probable since the man was
religious, and even practised his religion to a certain degree, a thing
which was very favorably viewed at that epoch. He went regularly to low
mass every Sunday. The local deputy, who nosed out all rivalry
everywhere, soon began to grow uneasy over this religion. This deputy
had been a member of the legislative body of the Empire, and shared the
religious ideas of a father of the Oratoire, known under the name of
Fouché, Duc d’Otrante, whose creature and friend he had been. He
indulged in gentle raillery at God with closed doors. But when he
beheld the wealthy manufacturer Madeleine going to low mass at seven
o’clock, he perceived in him a possible candidate, and resolved to
outdo him; he took a Jesuit confessor, and went to high mass and to
vespers. Ambition was at that time, in the direct acceptation of the
word, a race to the steeple. The poor profited by this terror as well
as the good God, for the honorable deputy also founded two beds in the
hospital, which made twelve.
Nevertheless, in 1819 a rumor one morning circulated through the town
to the effect that, on the representations of the prefect and in
consideration of the services rendered by him to the country, Father
Madeleine was to be appointed by the King, mayor of M. sur M. Those who
had pronounced this newcomer to be “an ambitious fellow,” seized with
delight on this opportunity which all men desire, to exclaim, “There!
what did we say!” All M. sur M. was in an uproar. The rumor was well
founded. Several days later the appointment appeared in the _Moniteur_.
On the following day Father Madeleine refused.
In this same year of 1819 the products of the new process invented by
Madeleine figured in the industrial exhibition; when the jury made
their report, the King appointed the inventor a chevalier of the Legion
of Honor. A fresh excitement in the little town. Well, so it was the
cross that he wanted! Father Madeleine refused the cross.
Decidedly this man was an enigma. The good souls got out of their
predicament by saying, “After all, he is some sort of an adventurer.”
We have seen that the country owed much to him; the poor owed him
everything; he was so useful and he was so gentle that people had been
obliged to honor and respect him. His workmen, in particular, adored
him, and he endured this adoration with a sort of melancholy gravity.
When he was known to be rich, “people in society” bowed to him, and he
received invitations in the town; he was called, in town, Monsieur
Madeleine; his workmen and the children continued to call him Father
Madeleine, and that was what was most adapted to make him smile. In
proportion as he mounted, throve, invitations rained down upon him.
“Society” claimed him for its own. The prim little drawing-rooms on M.
sur M., which, of course, had at first been closed to the artisan,
opened both leaves of their folding-doors to the millionnaire. They
made a thousand advances to him. He refused.
This time the good gossips had no trouble. “He is an ignorant man, of
no education. No one knows where he came from. He would not know how to
behave in society. It has not been absolutely proved that he knows how
to read.”
When they saw him making money, they said, “He is a man of business.”
When they saw him scattering his money about, they said, “He is an
ambitious man.” When he was seen to decline honors, they said, “He is
an adventurer.” When they saw him repulse society, they said, “He is a
brute.”
In 1820, five years after his arrival in M. sur M., the services which
he had rendered to the district were so dazzling, the opinion of the
whole country round about was so unanimous, that the King again
appointed him mayor of the town. He again declined; but the prefect
resisted his refusal, all the notabilities of the place came to implore
him, the people in the street besought him; the urging was so vigorous
that he ended by accepting. It was noticed that the thing which seemed
chiefly to bring him to a decision was the almost irritated apostrophe
addressed to him by an old woman of the people, who called to him from
her threshold, in an angry way: _“A good mayor is a useful thing. Is he
drawing back before the good which he can do?”_
This was the third phase of his ascent. Father Madeleine had become
Monsieur Madeleine. Monsieur Madeleine became Monsieur le Maire.
CHAPTER III—SUMS DEPOSITED WITH LAFFITTE
On the other hand, he remained as simple as on the first day. He had
gray hair, a serious eye, the sunburned complexion of a laborer, the
thoughtful visage of a philosopher. He habitually wore a hat with a
wide brim, and a long coat of coarse cloth, buttoned to the chin. He
fulfilled his duties as mayor; but, with that exception, he lived in
solitude. He spoke to but few people. He avoided polite attentions; he
escaped quickly; he smiled to relieve himself of the necessity of
talking; he gave, in order to get rid of the necessity for smiling. The
women said of him, “What a good-natured bear!” His pleasure consisted
in strolling in the fields.
He always took his meals alone, with an open book before him, which he
read. He had a well-selected little library. He loved books; books are
cold but safe friends. In proportion as leisure came to him with
fortune, he seemed to take advantage of it to cultivate his mind. It
had been observed that, ever since his arrival at M. sur M., his
language had grown more polished, more choice, and more gentle with
every passing year. He liked to carry a gun with him on his strolls,
but he rarely made use of it. When he did happen to do so, his shooting
was something so infallible as to inspire terror. He never killed an
inoffensive animal. He never shot at a little bird.
Although he was no longer young, it was thought that he was still
prodigiously strong. He offered his assistance to any one who was in
need of it, lifted a horse, released a wheel clogged in the mud, or
stopped a runaway bull by the horns. He always had his pockets full of
money when he went out; but they were empty on his return. When he
passed through a village, the ragged brats ran joyously after him, and
surrounded him like a swarm of gnats.
It was thought that he must, in the past, have lived a country life,
since he knew all sorts of useful secrets, which he taught to the
peasants. He taught them how to destroy scurf on wheat, by sprinkling
it and the granary and inundating the cracks in the floor with a
solution of common salt; and how to chase away weevils by hanging up
orviot in bloom everywhere, on the walls and the ceilings, among the
grass and in the houses.
He had “recipes” for exterminating from a field, blight, tares,
foxtail, and all parasitic growths which destroy the wheat. He defended
a rabbit warren against rats, simply by the odor of a guinea-pig which
he placed in it.
One day he saw some country people busily engaged in pulling up
nettles; he examined the plants, which were uprooted and already dried,
and said: “They are dead. Nevertheless, it would be a good thing to
know how to make use of them. When the nettle is young, the leaf makes
an excellent vegetable; when it is older, it has filaments and fibres
like hemp and flax. Nettle cloth is as good as linen cloth. Chopped up,
nettles are good for poultry; pounded, they are good for horned cattle.
The seed of the nettle, mixed with fodder, gives gloss to the hair of
animals; the root, mixed with salt, produces a beautiful yellow
coloring-matter. Moreover, it is an excellent hay, which can be cut
twice. And what is required for the nettle? A little soil, no care, no
culture. Only the seed falls as it is ripe, and it is difficult to
collect it. That is all. With the exercise of a little care, the nettle
could be made useful; it is neglected and it becomes hurtful. It is
exterminated. How many men resemble the nettle!” He added, after a
pause: “Remember this, my friends: there are no such things as bad
plants or bad men. There are only bad cultivators.”
The children loved him because he knew how to make charming little
trifles of straw and cocoanuts.
When he saw the door of a church hung in black, he entered: he sought
out funerals as other men seek christenings. Widowhood and the grief of
others attracted him, because of his great gentleness; he mingled with
the friends clad in mourning, with families dressed in black, with the
priests groaning around a coffin. He seemed to like to give to his
thoughts for text these funereal psalmodies filled with the vision of
the other world. With his eyes fixed on heaven, he listened with a sort
of aspiration towards all the mysteries of the infinite, those sad
voices which sing on the verge of the obscure abyss of death.
He performed a multitude of good actions, concealing his agency in them
as a man conceals himself because of evil actions. He penetrated houses
privately, at night; he ascended staircases furtively. A poor wretch on
returning to his attic would find that his door had been opened,
sometimes even forced, during his absence. The poor man made a clamor
over it: some malefactor had been there! He entered, and the first
thing he beheld was a piece of gold lying forgotten on some piece of
furniture. The “malefactor” who had been there was Father Madeleine.
He was affable and sad. The people said: “There is a rich man who has
not a haughty air. There is a happy man who has not a contented air.”
Some people maintained that he was a mysterious person, and that no one
ever entered his chamber, which was a regular anchorite’s cell,
furnished with winged hour-glasses and enlivened by cross-bones and