Les Misérables
the whole of Jean Valjean’s existence. And then he talked of her
mother, and he made her pray.
She called him _father_, and knew no other name for him.
He passed hours in watching her dressing and undressing her doll, and
in listening to her prattle. Life, henceforth, appeared to him to be
full of interest; men seemed to him good and just; he no longer
reproached any one in thought; he saw no reason why he should not live
to be a very old man, now that this child loved him. He saw a whole
future stretching out before him, illuminated by Cosette as by a
charming light. The best of us are not exempt from egotistical
thoughts. At times, he reflected with a sort of joy that she would be
ugly.
This is only a personal opinion; but, to utter our whole thought, at
the point where Jean Valjean had arrived when he began to love Cosette,
it is by no means clear to us that he did not need this encouragement
in order that he might persevere in well-doing. He had just viewed the
malice of men and the misery of society under a new aspect—incomplete
aspects, which unfortunately only exhibited one side of the truth, the
fate of woman as summed up in Fantine, and public authority as
personified in Javert. He had returned to prison, this time for having
done right; he had quaffed fresh bitterness; disgust and lassitude were
overpowering him; even the memory of the Bishop probably suffered a
temporary eclipse, though sure to reappear later on luminous and
triumphant; but, after all, that sacred memory was growing dim. Who
knows whether Jean Valjean had not been on the eve of growing
discouraged and of falling once more? He loved and grew strong again.
Alas! he walked with no less indecision than Cosette. He protected her,
and she strengthened him. Thanks to him, she could walk through life;
thanks to her, he could continue in virtue. He was that child’s stay,
and she was his prop. Oh, unfathomable and divine mystery of the
balances of destiny!
CHAPTER IV—THE REMARKS OF THE PRINCIPAL TENANT
Jean Valjean was prudent enough never to go out by day. Every evening,
at twilight, he walked for an hour or two, sometimes alone, often with
Cosette, seeking the most deserted side alleys of the boulevard, and
entering churches at nightfall. He liked to go to Saint-Médard, which
is the nearest church. When he did not take Cosette with him, she
remained with the old woman; but the child’s delight was to go out with
the good man. She preferred an hour with him to all her rapturous
_tête-à-têtes_ with Catherine. He held her hand as they walked, and
said sweet things to her.
It turned out that Cosette was a very gay little person.
The old woman attended to the housekeeping and cooking and went to
market.
They lived soberly, always having a little fire, but like people in
very moderate circumstances. Jean Valjean had made no alterations in
the furniture as it was the first day; he had merely had the glass door
leading to Cosette’s dressing-room replaced by a solid door.
He still wore his yellow coat, his black breeches, and his old hat. In
the street, he was taken for a poor man. It sometimes happened that
kind-hearted women turned back to bestow a sou on him. Jean Valjean
accepted the sou with a deep bow. It also happened occasionally that he
encountered some poor wretch asking alms; then he looked behind him to
make sure that no one was observing him, stealthily approached the
unfortunate man, put a piece of money into his hand, often a silver
coin, and walked rapidly away. This had its disadvantages. He began to
be known in the neighborhood under the name of _the beggar who gives
alms_.
The old _principal lodger_, a cross-looking creature, who was
thoroughly permeated, so far as her neighbors were concerned, with the
inquisitiveness peculiar to envious persons, scrutinized Jean Valjean a
great deal, without his suspecting the fact. She was a little deaf,
which rendered her talkative. There remained to her from her past, two
teeth,—one above, the other below,—which she was continually knocking
against each other. She had questioned Cosette, who had not been able
to tell her anything, since she knew nothing herself except that she
had come from Montfermeil. One morning, this spy saw Jean Valjean, with
an air which struck the old gossip as peculiar, entering one of the
uninhabited compartments of the hovel. She followed him with the step
of an old cat, and was able to observe him without being seen, through
a crack in the door, which was directly opposite him. Jean Valjean had
his back turned towards this door, by way of greater security, no
doubt. The old woman saw him fumble in his pocket and draw thence a
case, scissors, and thread; then he began to rip the lining of one of
the skirts of his coat, and from the opening he took a bit of yellowish
paper, which he unfolded. The old woman recognized, with terror, the
fact that it was a bank-bill for a thousand francs. It was the second
or third only that she had seen in the course of her existence. She
fled in alarm.
A moment later, Jean Valjean accosted her, and asked her to go and get
this thousand-franc bill changed for him, adding that it was his
quarterly income, which he had received the day before. “Where?”
thought the old woman. “He did not go out until six o’clock in the
evening, and the government bank certainly is not open at that hour.”
The old woman went to get the bill changed, and mentioned her surmises.
That thousand-franc note, commented on and multiplied, produced a vast
amount of terrified discussion among the gossips of the Rue des Vignes
Saint-Marcel.
A few days later, it chanced that Jean Valjean was sawing some wood, in
his shirt-sleeves, in the corridor. The old woman was in the chamber,
putting things in order. She was alone. Cosette was occupied in
admiring the wood as it was sawed. The old woman caught sight of the
coat hanging on a nail, and examined it. The lining had been sewed up
again. The good woman felt of it carefully, and thought she observed in
the skirts and revers thicknesses of paper. More thousand-franc
bank-bills, no doubt!
She also noticed that there were all sorts of things in the pockets.
Not only the needles, thread, and scissors which she had seen, but a
big pocket-book, a very large knife, and—a suspicious
circumstance—several wigs of various colors. Each pocket of this coat
had the air of being in a manner provided against unexpected accidents.
Thus the inhabitants of the house reached the last days of winter.
CHAPTER V—A FIVE-FRANC PIECE FALLS ON THE GROUND AND PRODUCES A TUMULT
Near Saint-Médard’s church there was a poor man who was in the habit of
crouching on the brink of a public well which had been condemned, and
on whom Jean Valjean was fond of bestowing charity. He never passed
this man without giving him a few sous. Sometimes he spoke to him.
Those who envied this mendicant said that he belonged to the police. He
was an ex-beadle of seventy-five, who was constantly mumbling his
prayers.
One evening, as Jean Valjean was passing by, when he had not Cosette
with him, he saw the beggar in his usual place, beneath the lantern
which had just been lighted. The man seemed engaged in prayer,
according to his custom, and was much bent over. Jean Valjean stepped
up to him and placed his customary alms in his hand. The mendicant
raised his eyes suddenly, stared intently at Jean Valjean, then dropped
his head quickly. This movement was like a flash of lightning. Jean
Valjean was seized with a shudder. It seemed to him that he had just
caught sight, by the light of the street lantern, not of the placid and
beaming visage of the old beadle, but of a well-known and startling
face. He experienced the same impression that one would have on finding
one’s self, all of a sudden, face to face, in the dark, with a tiger.
He recoiled, terrified, petrified, daring neither to breathe, to speak,
to remain, nor to flee, staring at the beggar who had dropped his head,
which was enveloped in a rag, and no longer appeared to know that he
was there. At this strange moment, an instinct—possibly the mysterious
instinct of self-preservation,—restrained Jean Valjean from uttering a
word. The beggar had the same figure, the same rags, the same
appearance as he had every day. “Bah!” said Jean Valjean, “I am mad! I
am dreaming! Impossible!” And he returned profoundly troubled.
He hardly dared to confess, even to himself, that the face which he
thought he had seen was the face of Javert.
That night, on thinking the matter over, he regretted not having
questioned the man, in order to force him to raise his head a second
time.
On the following day, at nightfall, he went back. The beggar was at his
post. “Good day, my good man,” said Jean Valjean, resolutely, handing
him a sou. The beggar raised his head, and replied in a whining voice,
“Thanks, my good sir.” It was unmistakably the ex-beadle.
Jean Valjean felt completely reassured. He began to laugh. “How the
deuce could I have thought that I saw Javert there?” he thought. “Am I
going to lose my eyesight now?” And he thought no more about it.
A few days afterwards,—it might have been at eight o’clock in the
evening,—he was in his room, and engaged in making Cosette spell aloud,
when he heard the house door open and then shut again. This struck him
as singular. The old woman, who was the only inhabitant of the house
except himself, always went to bed at nightfall, so that she might not
burn out her candles. Jean Valjean made a sign to Cosette to be quiet.
He heard some one ascending the stairs. It might possibly be the old
woman, who might have fallen ill and have been out to the apothecary’s.
Jean Valjean listened.
The step was heavy, and sounded like that of a man; but the old woman
wore stout shoes, and there is nothing which so strongly resembles the
step of a man as that of an old woman. Nevertheless, Jean Valjean blew
out his candle.
He had sent Cosette to bed, saying to her in a low voice, “Get into bed
very softly”; and as he kissed her brow, the steps paused.
Jean Valjean remained silent, motionless, with his back towards the
door, seated on the chair from which he had not stirred, and holding
his breath in the dark.
After the expiration of a rather long interval, he turned round, as he
heard nothing more, and, as he raised his eyes towards the door of his
chamber, he saw a light through the keyhole. This light formed a sort
of sinister star in the blackness of the door and the wall. There was
evidently some one there, who was holding a candle in his hand and
listening.
Several minutes elapsed thus, and the light retreated. But he heard no
sound of footsteps, which seemed to indicate that the person who had
been listening at the door had removed his shoes.
Jean Valjean threw himself, all dressed as he was, on his bed, and
could not close his eyes all night.
At daybreak, just as he was falling into a doze through fatigue, he was
awakened by the creaking of a door which opened on some attic at the
end of the corridor, then he heard the same masculine footstep which
had ascended the stairs on the preceding evening. The step was
approaching. He sprang off the bed and applied his eye to the keyhole,
which was tolerably large, hoping to see the person who had made his
way by night into the house and had listened at his door, as he passed.
It was a man, in fact, who passed, this time without pausing, in front
of Jean Valjean’s chamber. The corridor was too dark to allow of the
person’s face being distinguished; but when the man reached the
staircase, a ray of light from without made it stand out like a
silhouette, and Jean Valjean had a complete view of his back. The man
was of lofty stature, clad in a long frock-coat, with a cudgel under