Les Misérables
fortune in the business, and that of the arrondissement as well, we
will admit. He had been appointed mayor, in recognition of his
services. The police discovered that M. Madeleine was no other than an
ex-convict who had broken his ban, condemned in 1796 for theft, and
named Jean Valjean. Jean Valjean has been recommitted to prison. It
appears that previous to his arrest he had succeeded in withdrawing
from the hands of M. Laffitte, a sum of over half a million which he
had lodged there, and which he had, moreover, and by perfectly
legitimate means, acquired in his business. No one has been able to
discover where Jean Valjean has concealed this money since his return
to prison at Toulon.
The second article, which enters a little more into detail, is an
extract from the _Journal de Paris_, of the same date.
A former convict, who had been liberated, named Jean Valjean, has just
appeared before the Court of Assizes of the Var, under circumstances
calculated to attract attention. This wretch had succeeded in escaping
the vigilance of the police, he had changed his name, and had succeeded
in getting himself appointed mayor of one of our small northern towns;
in this town he had established a considerable commerce. He has at last
been unmasked and arrested, thanks to the indefatigable zeal of the
public prosecutor. He had for his concubine a woman of the town, who
died of a shock at the moment of his arrest. This scoundrel, who is
endowed with Herculean strength, found means to escape; but three or
four days after his flight the police laid their hands on him once
more, in Paris itself, at the very moment when he was entering one of
those little vehicles which run between the capital and the village of
Montfermeil (Seine-et-Oise). He is said to have profited by this
interval of three or four days of liberty, to withdraw a considerable
sum deposited by him with one of our leading bankers. This sum has been
estimated at six or seven hundred thousand francs. If the indictment is
to be trusted, he has hidden it in some place known to himself alone,
and it has not been possible to lay hands on it. However that may be,
the said Jean Valjean has just been brought before the Assizes of the
Department of the Var as accused of highway robbery accompanied with
violence, about eight years ago, on the person of one of those honest
children who, as the patriarch of Ferney has said, in immortal verse,
“. . . Arrive from Savoy every year,
And who, with gentle hands, do clear
Those long canals choked up with soot.”
This bandit refused to defend himself. It was proved by the skilful and
eloquent representative of the public prosecutor, that the theft was
committed in complicity with others, and that Jean Valjean was a member
of a band of robbers in the south. Jean Valjean was pronounced guilty
and was condemned to the death penalty in consequence. This criminal
refused to lodge an appeal. The king, in his inexhaustible clemency,
has deigned to commute his penalty to that of penal servitude for life.
Jean Valjean was immediately taken to the prison at Toulon.
The reader has not forgotten that Jean Valjean had religious habits at
M. sur M. Some papers, among others the _Constitutional_, presented
this commutation as a triumph of the priestly party.
Jean Valjean changed his number in the galleys. He was called 9,430.
However, and we will mention it at once in order that we may not be
obliged to recur to the subject, the prosperity of M. sur M. vanished
with M. Madeleine; all that he had foreseen during his night of fever
and hesitation was realized; lacking him, there actually was _a soul
lacking_. After this fall, there took place at M. sur M. that
egotistical division of great existences which have fallen, that fatal
dismemberment of flourishing things which is accomplished every day,
obscurely, in the human community, and which history has noted only
once, because it occurred after the death of Alexander. Lieutenants are
crowned kings; superintendents improvise manufacturers out of
themselves. Envious rivalries arose. M. Madeleine’s vast workshops were
shut; his buildings fell to ruin, his workmen were scattered. Some of
them quitted the country, others abandoned the trade. Thenceforth,
everything was done on a small scale, instead of on a grand scale; for
lucre instead of the general good. There was no longer a centre;
everywhere there was competition and animosity. M. Madeleine had
reigned over all and directed all. No sooner had he fallen, than each
pulled things to himself; the spirit of combat succeeded to the spirit
of organization, bitterness to cordiality, hatred of one another to the
benevolence of the founder towards all; the threads which M. Madeleine
had set were tangled and broken, the methods were adulterated, the
products were debased, confidence was killed; the market diminished,
for lack of orders; salaries were reduced, the workshops stood still,
bankruptcy arrived. And then there was nothing more for the poor. All
had vanished.
The state itself perceived that some one had been crushed somewhere.
Less than four years after the judgment of the Court of Assizes
establishing the identity of Jean Valjean and M. Madeleine, for the
benefit of the galleys, the cost of collecting taxes had doubled in the
arrondissement of M. sur M.; and M. de Villèle called attention to the
fact in the rostrum, in the month of February, 1827.
CHAPTER II—IN WHICH THE READER WILL PERUSE TWO VERSES, WHICH ARE OF THE
DEVIL’S COMPOSITION, POSSIBLY
Before proceeding further, it will be to the purpose to narrate in some
detail, a singular occurrence which took place at about the same epoch,
in Montfermeil, and which is not lacking in coincidence with certain
conjectures of the indictment.
There exists in the region of Montfermeil a very ancient superstition,
which is all the more curious and all the more precious, because a
popular superstition in the vicinity of Paris is like an aloe in
Siberia. We are among those who respect everything which is in the
nature of a rare plant. Here, then, is the superstition of Montfermeil:
it is thought that the devil, from time immemorial, has selected the
forest as a hiding-place for his treasures. Goodwives affirm that it is
no rarity to encounter at nightfall, in secluded nooks of the forest, a
black man with the air of a carter or a wood-chopper, wearing wooden
shoes, clad in trousers and a blouse of linen, and recognizable by the
fact, that, instead of a cap or hat, he has two immense horns on his
head. This ought, in fact, to render him recognizable. This man is
habitually engaged in digging a hole. There are three ways of profiting
by such an encounter. The first is to approach the man and speak to
him. Then it is seen that the man is simply a peasant, that he appears
black because it is nightfall; that he is not digging any hole
whatever, but is cutting grass for his cows, and that what had been
taken for horns is nothing but a dung-fork which he is carrying on his
back, and whose teeth, thanks to the perspective of evening, seemed to
spring from his head. The man returns home and dies within the week.
The second way is to watch him, to wait until he has dug his hole,
until he has filled it and has gone away; then to run with great speed
to the trench, to open it once more and to seize the “treasure” which
the black man has necessarily placed there. In this case one dies
within the month. Finally, the last method is not to speak to the black
man, not to look at him, and to flee at the best speed of one’s legs.
One then dies within the year.
As all three methods are attended with their special inconveniences,
the second, which at all events, presents some advantages, among others
that of possessing a treasure, if only for a month, is the one most
generally adopted. So bold men, who are tempted by every chance, have
quite frequently, as we are assured, opened the holes excavated by the
black man, and tried to rob the devil. The success of the operation
appears to be but moderate. At least, if the tradition is to be
believed, and in particular the two enigmatical lines in barbarous
Latin, which an evil Norman monk, a bit of a sorcerer, named Tryphon
has left on this subject. This Tryphon is buried at the Abbey of
Saint-Georges de Bocherville, near Rouen, and toads spawn on his grave.
Accordingly, enormous efforts are made. Such trenches are ordinarily
extremely deep; a man sweats, digs, toils all night—for it must be done
at night; he wets his shirt, burns out his candle, breaks his mattock,
and when he arrives at the bottom of the hole, when he lays his hand on
the “treasure,” what does he find? What is the devil’s treasure? A sou,
sometimes a crown-piece, a stone, a skeleton, a bleeding body,
sometimes a spectre folded in four like a sheet of paper in a
portfolio, sometimes nothing. This is what Tryphon’s verses seem to
announce to the indiscreet and curious:—
“Fodit, et in fossa thesauros condit opaca,
As, nummas, lapides, cadaver, simulacra, nihilque.”
It seems that in our day there is sometimes found a powder-horn with
bullets, sometimes an old pack of cards greasy and worn, which has
evidently served the devil. Tryphon does not record these two finds,
since Tryphon lived in the twelfth century, and since the devil does
not appear to have had the wit to invent powder before Roger Bacon’s
time, and cards before the time of Charles VI.
Moreover, if one plays at cards, one is sure to lose all that one
possesses! and as for the powder in the horn, it possesses the property
of making your gun burst in your face.
Now, a very short time after the epoch when it seemed to the
prosecuting attorney that the liberated convict Jean Valjean during his
flight of several days had been prowling around Montfermeil, it was
remarked in that village that a certain old road-laborer, named
Boulatruelle, had “peculiar ways” in the forest. People thereabouts
thought they knew that this Boulatruelle had been in the galleys. He
was subjected to certain police supervision, and, as he could find work
nowhere, the administration employed him at reduced rates as a
road-mender on the crossroad from Gagny to Lagny.
This Boulatruelle was a man who was viewed with disfavor by the
inhabitants of the district as too respectful, too humble, too prompt
in removing his cap to every one, and trembling and smiling in the
presence of the gendarmes,—probably affiliated to robber bands, they
said; suspected of lying in ambush at verge of copses at nightfall. The
only thing in his favor was that he was a drunkard.
This is what people thought they had noticed:—
Of late, Boulatruelle had taken to quitting his task of stone-breaking
and care of the road at a very early hour, and to betaking himself to
the forest with his pickaxe. He was encountered towards evening in the
most deserted clearings, in the wildest thickets; and he had the
appearance of being in search of something, and sometimes he was
digging holes. The goodwives who passed took him at first for
Beelzebub; then they recognized Boulatruelle, and were not in the least
reassured thereby. These encounters seemed to cause Boulatruelle a
lively displeasure. It was evident that he sought to hide, and that
there was some mystery in what he was doing.
It was said in the village: “It is clear that the devil has appeared.
Boulatruelle has seen him, and is on the search. In sooth, he is
cunning enough to pocket Lucifer’s hoard.”
The Voltairians added, “Will Boulatruelle catch the devil, or will the
devil catch Boulatruelle?” The old women made a great many signs of the
cross.
In the meantime, Boulatruelle’s manœuvres in the forest ceased; and he
resumed his regular occupation of roadmending; and people gossiped of