Les Misérables
women were fond of begging.
However, this quarter, which had a superannuated rather than an antique
air, was tending even then to transformation. Even at that time any one
who was desirous of seeing it had to make haste. Each day some detail
of the whole effect was disappearing. For the last twenty years the
station of the Orleans railway has stood beside the old faubourg and
distracted it, as it does to-day. Wherever it is placed on the borders
of a capital, a railway station is the death of a suburb and the birth
of a city. It seems as though, around these great centres of the
movements of a people, the earth, full of germs, trembled and yawned,
to engulf the ancient dwellings of men and to allow new ones to spring
forth, at the rattle of these powerful machines, at the breath of these
monstrous horses of civilization which devour coal and vomit fire. The
old houses crumble and new ones rise.
Since the Orleans railway has invaded the region of the Salpêtrière,
the ancient, narrow streets which adjoin the moats Saint-Victor and the
Jardin des Plantes tremble, as they are violently traversed three or
four times each day by those currents of coach fiacres and omnibuses
which, in a given time, crowd back the houses to the right and the
left; for there are things which are odd when said that are rigorously
exact; and just as it is true to say that in large cities the sun makes
the southern fronts of houses to vegetate and grow, it is certain that
the frequent passage of vehicles enlarges streets. The symptoms of a
new life are evident. In this old provincial quarter, in the wildest
nooks, the pavement shows itself, the sidewalks begin to crawl and to
grow longer, even where there are as yet no pedestrians. One morning,—a
memorable morning in July, 1845,—black pots of bitumen were seen
smoking there; on that day it might be said that civilization had
arrived in the Rue de l’Ourcine, and that Paris had entered the suburb
of Saint-Marceau.
CHAPTER II—A NEST FOR OWL AND A WARBLER
It was in front of this Gorbeau house that Jean Valjean halted. Like
wild birds, he had chosen this desert place to construct his nest.
He fumbled in his waistcoat pocket, drew out a sort of a pass-key,
opened the door, entered, closed it again carefully, and ascended the
staircase, still carrying Cosette.
At the top of the stairs he drew from his pocket another key, with
which he opened another door. The chamber which he entered, and which
he closed again instantly, was a kind of moderately spacious attic,
furnished with a mattress laid on the floor, a table, and several
chairs; a stove in which a fire was burning, and whose embers were
visible, stood in one corner. A lantern on the boulevard cast a vague
light into this poor room. At the extreme end there was a dressing-room
with a folding bed; Jean Valjean carried the child to this bed and laid
her down there without waking her.
He struck a match and lighted a candle. All this was prepared
beforehand on the table, and, as he had done on the previous evening,
he began to scrutinize Cosette’s face with a gaze full of ecstasy, in
which the expression of kindness and tenderness almost amounted to
aberration. The little girl, with that tranquil confidence which
belongs only to extreme strength and extreme weakness, had fallen
asleep without knowing with whom she was, and continued to sleep
without knowing where she was.
Jean Valjean bent down and kissed that child’s hand.
Nine months before he had kissed the hand of the mother, who had also
just fallen asleep.
The same sad, piercing, religious sentiment filled his heart.
He knelt beside Cosette’s bed.
lt was broad daylight, and the child still slept. A wan ray of the
December sun penetrated the window of the attic and lay upon the
ceiling in long threads of light and shade. All at once a heavily laden
carrier’s cart, which was passing along the boulevard, shook the frail
bed, like a clap of thunder, and made it quiver from top to bottom.
“Yes, madame!” cried Cosette, waking with a start, “here I am! here I
am!”
And she sprang out of bed, her eyes still half shut with the heaviness
of sleep, extending her arms towards the corner of the wall.
“Ah! mon Dieu, my broom!” said she.
She opened her eyes wide now, and beheld the smiling countenance of
Jean Valjean.
“Ah! so it is true!” said the child. “Good morning, Monsieur.”
Children accept joy and happiness instantly and familiarly, being
themselves by nature joy and happiness.
Cosette caught sight of Catherine at the foot of her bed, and took
possession of her, and, as she played, she put a hundred questions to
Jean Valjean. Where was she? Was Paris very large? Was Madame
Thénardier very far away? Was she to go back? etc., etc. All at once
she exclaimed, “How pretty it is here!”
It was a frightful hole, but she felt free.
“Must I sweep?” she resumed at last.
“Play!” said Jean Valjean.
The day passed thus. Cosette, without troubling herself to understand
anything, was inexpressibly happy with that doll and that kind man.
CHAPTER III—TWO MISFORTUNES MAKE ONE PIECE OF GOOD FORTUNE
On the following morning, at daybreak, Jean Valjean was still by
Cosette’s bedside; he watched there motionless, waiting for her to
wake.
Some new thing had come into his soul.
Jean Valjean had never loved anything; for twenty-five years he had
been alone in the world. He had never been father, lover, husband,
friend. In the prison he had been vicious, gloomy, chaste, ignorant,
and shy. The heart of that ex-convict was full of virginity. His sister
and his sister’s children had left him only a vague and far-off memory
which had finally almost completely vanished; he had made every effort
to find them, and not having been able to find them, he had forgotten
them. Human nature is made thus; the other tender emotions of his
youth, if he had ever had any, had fallen into an abyss.
When he saw Cosette, when he had taken possession of her, carried her
off, and delivered her, he felt his heart moved within him.
All the passion and affection within him awoke, and rushed towards that
child. He approached the bed, where she lay sleeping, and trembled with
joy. He suffered all the pangs of a mother, and he knew not what it
meant; for that great and singular movement of a heart which begins to
love is a very obscure and a very sweet thing.
Poor old man, with a perfectly new heart!
Only, as he was five and fifty, and Cosette eight years of age, all
that might have been love in the whole course of his life flowed
together into a sort of ineffable light.
It was the second white apparition which he had encountered. The Bishop
had caused the dawn of virtue to rise on his horizon; Cosette caused
the dawn of love to rise.
The early days passed in this dazzled state.
Cosette, on her side, had also, unknown to herself, become another
being, poor little thing! She was so little when her mother left her,
that she no longer remembered her. Like all children, who resemble
young shoots of the vine, which cling to everything, she had tried to
love; she had not succeeded. All had repulsed her,—the Thénardiers,
their children, other children. She had loved the dog, and he had died,
after which nothing and nobody would have anything to do with her. It
is a sad thing to say, and we have already intimated it, that, at eight
years of age, her heart was cold. It was not her fault; it was not the
faculty of loving that she lacked; alas! it was the possibility. Thus,
from the very first day, all her sentient and thinking powers loved
this kind man. She felt that which she had never felt before—a
sensation of expansion.
The man no longer produced on her the effect of being old or poor; she
thought Jean Valjean handsome, just as she thought the hovel pretty.
These are the effects of the dawn, of childhood, of joy. The novelty of
the earth and of life counts for something here. Nothing is so charming
as the coloring reflection of happiness on a garret. We all have in our
past a delightful garret.
Nature, a difference of fifty years, had set a profound gulf between
Jean Valjean and Cosette; destiny filled in this gulf. Destiny suddenly
united and wedded with its irresistible power these two uprooted
existences, differing in age, alike in sorrow. One, in fact, completed
the other. Cosette’s instinct sought a father, as Jean Valjean’s
instinct sought a child. To meet was to find each other. At the
mysterious moment when their hands touched, they were welded together.
When these two souls perceived each other, they recognized each other
as necessary to each other, and embraced each other closely.
Taking the words in their most comprehensive and absolute sense, we may
say that, separated from every one by the walls of the tomb, Jean
Valjean was the widower, and Cosette was the orphan: this situation
caused Jean Valjean to become Cosette’s father after a celestial
fashion.
And in truth, the mysterious impression produced on Cosette in the
depths of the forest of Chelles by the hand of Jean Valjean grasping
hers in the dark was not an illusion, but a reality. The entrance of
that man into the destiny of that child had been the advent of God.
Moreover, Jean Valjean had chosen his refuge well. There he seemed
perfectly secure.
The chamber with a dressing-room, which he occupied with Cosette, was
the one whose window opened on the boulevard. This being the only
window in the house, no neighbors’ glances were to be feared from
across the way or at the side.
The ground floor of Number 50-52, a sort of dilapidated penthouse,
served as a wagon-house for market-gardeners, and no communication
existed between it and the first story. It was separated by the
flooring, which had neither traps nor stairs, and which formed the
diaphragm of the building, as it were. The first story contained, as we
have said, numerous chambers and several attics, only one of which was
occupied by the old woman who took charge of Jean Valjean’s
housekeeping; all the rest was uninhabited.
It was this old woman, ornamented with the name of the _principal
lodger_, and in reality intrusted with the functions of portress, who
had let him the lodging on Christmas eve. He had represented himself to
her as a gentleman of means who had been ruined by Spanish bonds, who
was coming there to live with his little daughter. He had paid her six
months in advance, and had commissioned the old woman to furnish the
chamber and dressing-room, as we have seen. It was this good woman who
had lighted the fire in the stove, and prepared everything on the
evening of their arrival.
Week followed week; these two beings led a happy life in that hovel.
Cosette laughed, chattered, and sang from daybreak. Children have their
morning song as well as birds.
It sometimes happened that Jean Valjean clasped her tiny red hand, all
cracked with chilblains, and kissed it. The poor child, who was used to
being beaten, did not know the meaning of this, and ran away in
confusion.
At times she became serious and stared at her little black gown.
Cosette was no longer in rags; she was in mourning. She had emerged
from misery, and she was entering into life.
Jean Valjean had undertaken to teach her to read. Sometimes, as he made
the child spell, he remembered that it was with the idea of doing evil
that he had learned to read in prison. This idea had ended in teaching
a child to read. Then the ex-convict smiled with the pensive smile of
the angels.
He felt in it a premeditation from on high, the will of some one who
was not man, and he became absorbed in reverie. Good thoughts have
their abysses as well as evil ones.
To teach Cosette to read, and to let her play, this constituted nearly