Les Misérables
something else.
Some persons, however, were still curious, surmising that in all this
there was probably no fabulous treasure of the legends, but some fine
windfall of a more serious and palpable sort than the devil’s
bank-bills, and that the road-mender had half discovered the secret.
The most “puzzled” were the schoolmaster and Thénardier, the proprietor
of the tavern, who was everybody’s friend, and had not disdained to
ally himself with Boulatruelle.
“He has been in the galleys,” said Thénardier. “Eh! Good God! no one
knows who has been there or will be there.”
One evening the schoolmaster affirmed that in former times the law
would have instituted an inquiry as to what Boulatruelle did in the
forest, and that the latter would have been forced to speak, and that
he would have been put to the torture in case of need, and that
Boulatruelle would not have resisted the water test, for example. “Let
us put him to the wine test,” said Thénardier.
They made an effort, and got the old road-mender to drinking.
Boulatruelle drank an enormous amount, but said very little. He
combined with admirable art, and in masterly proportions, the thirst of
a gormandizer with the discretion of a judge. Nevertheless, by dint of
returning to the charge and of comparing and putting together the few
obscure words which he did allow to escape him, this is what Thénardier
and the schoolmaster imagined that they had made out:—
One morning, when Boulatruelle was on his way to his work, at daybreak,
he had been surprised to see, at a nook of the forest in the
underbrush, a shovel and a pickaxe, _concealed, as one might say_.
However, he might have supposed that they were probably the shovel and
pick of Father Six-Fours, the water-carrier, and would have thought no
more about it. But, on the evening of that day, he saw, without being
seen himself, as he was hidden by a large tree, “a person who did not
belong in those parts, and whom he, Boulatruelle, knew well,” directing
his steps towards the densest part of the wood. Translation by
Thénardier: _A comrade of the galleys_. Boulatruelle obstinately
refused to reveal his name. This person carried a package—something
square, like a large box or a small trunk. Surprise on the part of
Boulatruelle. However, it was only after the expiration of seven or
eight minutes that the idea of following that “person” had occurred to
him. But it was too late; the person was already in the thicket, night
had descended, and Boulatruelle had not been able to catch up with him.
Then he had adopted the course of watching for him at the edge of the
woods. “It was moonlight.” Two or three hours later, Boulatruelle had
seen this person emerge from the brushwood, carrying no longer the
coffer, but a shovel and pick. Boulatruelle had allowed the person to
pass, and had not dreamed of accosting him, because he said to himself
that the other man was three times as strong as he was, and armed with
a pickaxe, and that he would probably knock him over the head on
recognizing him, and on perceiving that he was recognized. Touching
effusion of two old comrades on meeting again. But the shovel and pick
had served as a ray of light to Boulatruelle; he had hastened to the
thicket in the morning, and had found neither shovel nor pick. From
this he had drawn the inference that this person, once in the forest,
had dug a hole with his pick, buried the coffer, and reclosed the hole
with his shovel. Now, the coffer was too small to contain a body;
therefore it contained money. Hence his researches. Boulatruelle had
explored, sounded, searched the entire forest and the thicket, and had
dug wherever the earth appeared to him to have been recently turned up.
In vain.
He had “ferreted out” nothing. No one in Montfermeil thought any more
about it. There were only a few brave gossips, who said, “You may be
certain that the mender on the Gagny road did not take all that trouble
for nothing; he was sure that the devil had come.”
CHAPTER III—THE ANKLE-CHAIN MUST HAVE UNDERGONE A CERTAIN PREPARATORY
MANIPULATION TO BE THUS BROKEN WITH A BLOW FROM A HAMMER
Towards the end of October, in that same year, 1823, the inhabitants of
Toulon beheld the entry into their port, after heavy weather, and for
the purpose of repairing some damages, of the ship _Orion_, which was
employed later at Brest as a school-ship, and which then formed a part
of the Mediterranean squadron.
This vessel, battered as it was,—for the sea had handled it
roughly,—produced a fine effect as it entered the roads. It flew some
colors which procured for it the regulation salute of eleven guns,
which it returned, shot for shot; total, twenty-two. It has been
calculated that what with salvos, royal and military politenesses,
courteous exchanges of uproar, signals of etiquette, formalities of
roadsteads and citadels, sunrises and sunsets, saluted every day by all
fortresses and all ships of war, openings and closings of ports, etc.,
the civilized world, discharged all over the earth, in the course of
four and twenty hours, one hundred and fifty thousand useless shots. At
six francs the shot, that comes to nine hundred thousand francs a day,
three hundred millions a year, which vanish in smoke. This is a mere
detail. All this time the poor were dying of hunger.
The year 1823 was what the Restoration called “the epoch of the Spanish
war.”
This war contained many events in one, and a quantity of peculiarities.
A grand family affair for the house of Bourbon; the branch of France
succoring and protecting the branch of Madrid, that is to say,
performing an act devolving on the elder; an apparent return to our
national traditions, complicated by servitude and by subjection to the
cabinets of the North; M. le Duc d’Angoulême, surnamed by the liberal
sheets _the hero of Andujar_, compressing in a triumphal attitude that
was somewhat contradicted by his peaceable air, the ancient and very
powerful terrorism of the Holy Office at variance with the chimerical
terrorism of the liberals; the _sansculottes_ resuscitated, to the
great terror of dowagers, under the name of _descamisados_; monarchy
opposing an obstacle to progress described as anarchy; the theories of
’89 roughly interrupted in the sap; a European halt, called to the
French idea, which was making the tour of the world; beside the son of
France as generalissimo, the Prince de Carignan, afterwards Charles
Albert, enrolling himself in that crusade of kings against people as a
volunteer, with grenadier epaulets of red worsted; the soldiers of the
Empire setting out on a fresh campaign, but aged, saddened, after eight
years of repose, and under the white cockade; the tricolored standard
waved abroad by a heroic handful of Frenchmen, as the white standard
had been thirty years earlier at Coblentz; monks mingled with our
troops; the spirit of liberty and of novelty brought to its senses by
bayonets; principles slaughtered by cannonades; France undoing by her
arms that which she had done by her mind; in addition to this, hostile
leaders sold, soldiers hesitating, cities besieged by millions; no
military perils, and yet possible explosions, as in every mine which is
surprised and invaded; but little bloodshed, little honor won, shame
for some, glory for no one. Such was this war, made by the princes
descended from Louis XIV., and conducted by generals who had been under
Napoleon. Its sad fate was to recall neither the grand war nor grand
politics.
Some feats of arms were serious; the taking of the Trocadéro, among
others, was a fine military action; but after all, we repeat, the
trumpets of this war give back a cracked sound, the whole effect was
suspicious; history approves of France for making a difficulty about
accepting this false triumph. It seemed evident that certain Spanish
officers charged with resistance yielded too easily; the idea of
corruption was connected with the victory; it appears as though
generals and not battles had been won, and the conquering soldier
returned humiliated. A debasing war, in short, in which the _Bank of
France_ could be read in the folds of the flag.
Soldiers of the war of 1808, on whom Saragossa had fallen in formidable
ruin, frowned in 1823 at the easy surrender of citadels, and began to
regret Palafox. It is the nature of France to prefer to have
Rostopchine rather than Ballesteros in front of her.
From a still more serious point of view, and one which it is also
proper to insist upon here, this war, which wounded the military spirit
of France, enraged the democratic spirit. It was an enterprise of
enthralment. In that campaign, the object of the French soldier, the
son of democracy, was the conquest of a yoke for others. A hideous
contradiction. France is made to arouse the soul of nations, not to
stifle it. All the revolutions of Europe since 1792 are the French
Revolution: liberty darts rays from France. That is a solar fact. Blind
is he who will not see! It was Bonaparte who said it.
The war of 1823, an outrage on the generous Spanish nation, was then,
at the same time, an outrage on the French Revolution. It was France
who committed this monstrous violence; by foul means, for, with the
exception of wars of liberation, everything that armies do is by foul
means. The words _passive obedience_ indicate this. An army is a
strange masterpiece of combination where force results from an enormous
sum of impotence. Thus is war, made by humanity against humanity,
despite humanity, explained.
As for the Bourbons, the war of 1823 was fatal to them. They took it
for a success. They did not perceive the danger that lies in having an
idea slain to order. They went astray, in their innocence, to such a
degree that they introduced the immense enfeeblement of a crime into
their establishment as an element of strength. The spirit of the ambush
entered into their politics. 1830 had its germ in 1823. The Spanish
campaign became in their counsels an argument for force and for
adventures by right Divine. France, having re-established _el rey
netto_ in Spain, might well have re-established the absolute king at
home. They fell into the alarming error of taking the obedience of the
soldier for the consent of the nation. Such confidence is the ruin of
thrones. It is not permitted to fall asleep, either in the shadow of a
machineel tree, nor in the shadow of an army.
Let us return to the ship _Orion_.
During the operations of the army commanded by the prince
generalissimo, a squadron had been cruising in the Mediterranean. We
have just stated that the _Orion_ belonged to this fleet, and that
accidents of the sea had brought it into port at Toulon.
The presence of a vessel of war in a port has something about it which
attracts and engages a crowd. It is because it is great, and the crowd
loves what is great.
A ship of the line is one of the most magnificent combinations of the
genius of man with the powers of nature.
A ship of the line is composed, at the same time, of the heaviest and
the lightest of possible matter, for it deals at one and the same time
with three forms of substance,—solid, liquid, and fluid,—and it must do
battle with all three. It has eleven claws of iron with which to seize
the granite on the bottom of the sea, and more wings and more antennæ
than winged insects, to catch the wind in the clouds. Its breath pours
out through its hundred and twenty cannons as through enormous
trumpets, and replies proudly to the thunder. The ocean seeks to lead
it astray in the alarming sameness of its billows, but the vessel has
its soul, its compass, which counsels it and always shows it the north.
In the blackest nights, its lanterns supply the place of the stars.
Thus, against the wind, it has its cordage and its canvas; against the