Les Misérables
There was still fire enough to allow of their being put out of shape,
and converted into a sort of unrecognizable bar of metal.
He bent over the hearth and warmed himself for a moment. He felt a
sense of real comfort. “How good warmth is!” said he.
He stirred the live coals with one of the candlesticks.
A minute more, and they were both in the fire.
At that moment it seemed to him that he heard a voice within him
shouting: “Jean Valjean! Jean Valjean!”
His hair rose upright: he became like a man who is listening to some
terrible thing.
“Yes, that’s it! finish!” said the voice. “Complete what you are about!
Destroy these candlesticks! Annihilate this souvenir! Forget the
Bishop! Forget everything! Destroy this Champmathieu, do! That is
right! Applaud yourself! So it is settled, resolved, fixed, agreed:
here is an old man who does not know what is wanted of him, who has,
perhaps, done nothing, an innocent man, whose whole misfortune lies in
your name, upon whom your name weighs like a crime, who is about to be
taken for you, who will be condemned, who will finish his days in
abjectness and horror. That is good! Be an honest man yourself; remain
Monsieur le Maire; remain honorable and honored; enrich the town;
nourish the indigent; rear the orphan; live happy, virtuous, and
admired; and, during this time, while you are here in the midst of joy
and light, there will be a man who will wear your red blouse, who will
bear your name in ignominy, and who will drag your chain in the
galleys. Yes, it is well arranged thus. Ah, wretch!”
The perspiration streamed from his brow. He fixed a haggard eye on the
candlesticks. But that within him which had spoken had not finished.
The voice continued:—
“Jean Valjean, there will be around you many voices, which will make a
great noise, which will talk very loud, and which will bless you, and
only one which no one will hear, and which will curse you in the dark.
Well! listen, infamous man! All those benedictions will fall back
before they reach heaven, and only the malediction will ascend to God.”
This voice, feeble at first, and which had proceeded from the most
obscure depths of his conscience, had gradually become startling and
formidable, and he now heard it in his very ear. It seemed to him that
it had detached itself from him, and that it was now speaking outside
of him. He thought that he heard the last words so distinctly, that he
glanced around the room in a sort of terror.
“Is there any one here?” he demanded aloud, in utter bewilderment.
Then he resumed, with a laugh which resembled that of an idiot:—
“How stupid I am! There can be no one!”
There was some one; but the person who was there was of those whom the
human eye cannot see.
He placed the candlesticks on the chimney-piece.
Then he resumed his monotonous and lugubrious tramp, which troubled the
dreams of the sleeping man beneath him, and awoke him with a start.
This tramping to and fro soothed and at the same time intoxicated him.
It sometimes seems, on supreme occasions, as though people moved about
for the purpose of asking advice of everything that they may encounter
by change of place. After the lapse of a few minutes he no longer knew
his position.
He now recoiled in equal terror before both the resolutions at which he
had arrived in turn. The two ideas which counselled him appeared to him
equally fatal. What a fatality! What conjunction that that Champmathieu
should have been taken for him; to be overwhelmed by precisely the
means which Providence seemed to have employed, at first, to strengthen
his position!
There was a moment when he reflected on the future. Denounce himself,
great God! Deliver himself up! With immense despair he faced all that
he should be obliged to leave, all that he should be obliged to take up
once more. He should have to bid farewell to that existence which was
so good, so pure, so radiant, to the respect of all, to honor, to
liberty. He should never more stroll in the fields; he should never
more hear the birds sing in the month of May; he should never more
bestow alms on the little children; he should never more experience the
sweetness of having glances of gratitude and love fixed upon him; he
should quit that house which he had built, that little chamber!
Everything seemed charming to him at that moment. Never again should he
read those books; never more should he write on that little table of
white wood; his old portress, the only servant whom he kept, would
never more bring him his coffee in the morning. Great God! instead of
that, the convict gang, the iron necklet, the red waistcoat, the chain
on his ankle, fatigue, the cell, the camp bed all those horrors which
he knew so well! At his age, after having been what he was! If he were
only young again! but to be addressed in his old age as “thou” by any
one who pleased; to be searched by the convict-guard; to receive the
galley-sergeant’s cudgellings; to wear iron-bound shoes on his bare
feet; to have to stretch out his leg night and morning to the hammer of
the roundsman who visits the gang; to submit to the curiosity of
strangers, who would be told: “That man yonder is the famous Jean
Valjean, who was mayor of M. sur M.”; and at night, dripping with
perspiration, overwhelmed with lassitude, their green caps drawn over
their eyes, to remount, two by two, the ladder staircase of the galleys
beneath the sergeant’s whip. Oh, what misery! Can destiny, then, be as
malicious as an intelligent being, and become as monstrous as the human
heart?
And do what he would, he always fell back upon the heartrending dilemma
which lay at the foundation of his reverie: “Should he remain in
paradise and become a demon? Should he return to hell and become an
angel?”
What was to be done? Great God! what was to be done?
The torment from which he had escaped with so much difficulty was
unchained afresh within him. His ideas began to grow confused once
more; they assumed a kind of stupefied and mechanical quality which is
peculiar to despair. The name of Romainville recurred incessantly to
his mind, with the two verses of a song which he had heard in the past.
He thought that Romainville was a little grove near Paris, where young
lovers go to pluck lilacs in the month of April.
He wavered outwardly as well as inwardly. He walked like a little child
who is permitted to toddle alone.
At intervals, as he combated his lassitude, he made an effort to
recover the mastery of his mind. He tried to put to himself, for the
last time, and definitely, the problem over which he had, in a manner,
fallen prostrate with fatigue: Ought he to denounce himself? Ought he
to hold his peace? He could not manage to see anything distinctly. The
vague aspects of all the courses of reasoning which had been sketched
out by his meditations quivered and vanished, one after the other, into
smoke. He only felt that, to whatever course of action he made up his
mind, something in him must die, and that of necessity, and without his
being able to escape the fact; that he was entering a sepulchre on the
right hand as much as on the left; that he was passing through a death
agony,—the agony of his happiness, or the agony of his virtue.
Alas! all his resolution had again taken possession of him. He was no
further advanced than at the beginning.
Thus did this unhappy soul struggle in its anguish. Eighteen hundred
years before this unfortunate man, the mysterious Being in whom are
summed up all the sanctities and all the sufferings of humanity had
also long thrust aside with his hand, while the olive-trees quivered in
the wild wind of the infinite, the terrible cup which appeared to Him
dripping with darkness and overflowing with shadows in the depths all
studded with stars.
CHAPTER IV—FORMS ASSUMED BY SUFFERING DURING SLEEP
Three o’clock in the morning had just struck, and he had been walking
thus for five hours, almost uninterruptedly, when he at length allowed
himself to drop into his chair.
There he fell asleep and had a dream.
This dream, like the majority of dreams, bore no relation to the
situation, except by its painful and heart-rending character, but it
made an impression on him. This nightmare struck him so forcibly that
he wrote it down later on. It is one of the papers in his own
handwriting which he has bequeathed to us. We think that we have here
reproduced the thing in strict accordance with the text.
Of whatever nature this dream may be, the history of this night would
be incomplete if we were to omit it: it is the gloomy adventure of an
ailing soul.
Here it is. On the envelope we find this line inscribed, “The Dream I
had that Night.”
“I was in a plain; a vast, gloomy plain, where there was no grass. It
did not seem to me to be daylight nor yet night.
“I was walking with my brother, the brother of my childish years, the
brother of whom, I must say, I never think, and whom I now hardly
remember.
“We were conversing and we met some passers-by. We were talking of a
neighbor of ours in former days, who had always worked with her window
open from the time when she came to live on the street. As we talked we
felt cold because of that open window.
“There were no trees in the plain. We saw a man passing close to us. He
was entirely nude, of the hue of ashes, and mounted on a horse which
was earth color. The man had no hair; we could see his skull and the
veins on it. In his hand he held a switch which was as supple as a
vine-shoot and as heavy as iron. This horseman passed and said nothing
to us.
“My brother said to me, ‘Let us take to the hollow road.’
“There existed a hollow way wherein one saw neither a single shrub nor
a spear of moss. Everything was dirt-colored, even the sky. After
proceeding a few paces, I received no reply when I spoke: I perceived
that my brother was no longer with me.
“I entered a village which I espied. I reflected that it must be
Romainville. (Why Romainville?)5
“The first street that I entered was deserted. I entered a second
street. Behind the angle formed by the two streets, a man was standing
erect against the wall. I said to this man:—
“‘What country is this? Where am I?’ The man made no reply. I saw the
door of a house open, and I entered.
“The first chamber was deserted. I entered the second. Behind the door
of this chamber a man was standing erect against the wall. I inquired
of this man, ‘Whose house is this? Where am I?’ The man replied not.
“The house had a garden. I quitted the house and entered the garden.
The garden was deserted. Behind the first tree I found a man standing
upright. I said to this man, ‘What garden is this? Where am I?’ The man
did not answer.
“I strolled into the village, and perceived that it was a town. All the
streets were deserted, all the doors were open. Not a single living
being was passing in the streets, walking through the chambers or
strolling in the gardens. But behind each angle of the walls, behind
each door, behind each tree, stood a silent man. Only one was to be
seen at a time. These men watched me pass.
“I left the town and began to ramble about the fields.
“After the lapse of some time I turned back and saw a great crowd
coming up behind me. I recognized all the men whom I had seen in that
town. They had strange heads. They did not seem to be in a hurry, yet
they walked faster than I did. They made no noise as they walked. In an
instant this crowd had overtaken and surrounded me. The faces of these
men were earthen in hue.
“Then the first one whom I had seen and questioned on entering the town
said to me:—
“‘Whither are you going! Do you not know that you have been dead this
long time?’
“I opened my mouth to reply, and I perceived that there was no one near