Les Misérables
his left knee a leather knee-cap, whence hung a moderately large bell.
His face, which was in the shadow, was not distinguishable.
However, the goodman had removed his cap, and exclaimed, trembling all
over:—
“Ah, good God! How come you here, Father Madeleine? Where did you
enter? Dieu-Jésus! Did you fall from heaven? There is no trouble about
that: if ever you do fall, it will be from there. And what a state you
are in! You have no cravat; you have no hat; you have no coat! Do you
know, you would have frightened any one who did not know you? No coat!
Lord God! Are the saints going mad nowadays? But how did you get in
here?”
His words tumbled over each other. The goodman talked with a rustic
volubility, in which there was nothing alarming. All this was uttered
with a mixture of stupefaction and _naïve_ kindliness.
“Who are you? and what house is this?” demanded Jean Valjean.
“Ah! pardieu, this is too much!” exclaimed the old man. “I am the
person for whom you got the place here, and this house is the one where
you had me placed. What! You don’t recognize me?”
“No,” said Jean Valjean; “and how happens it that you know me?”
“You saved my life,” said the man.
He turned. A ray of moonlight outlined his profile, and Jean Valjean
recognized old Fauchelevent.
“Ah!” said Jean Valjean, “so it is you? Yes, I recollect you.”
“That is very lucky,” said the old man, in a reproachful tone.
“And what are you doing here?” resumed Jean Valjean.
“Why, I am covering my melons, of course!”
In fact, at the moment when Jean Valjean accosted him, old Fauchelevent
held in his hand the end of a straw mat which he was occupied in
spreading over the melon bed. During the hour or thereabouts that he
had been in the garden he had already spread out a number of them. It
was this operation which had caused him to execute the peculiar
movements observed from the shed by Jean Valjean.
He continued:—
“I said to myself, ‘The moon is bright: it is going to freeze. What if
I were to put my melons into their greatcoats?’ And,” he added, looking
at Jean Valjean with a broad smile,—“pardieu! you ought to have done
the same! But how do you come here?”
Jean Valjean, finding himself known to this man, at least only under
the name of Madeleine, thenceforth advanced only with caution. He
multiplied his questions. Strange to say, their rôles seemed to be
reversed. It was he, the intruder, who interrogated.
“And what is this bell which you wear on your knee?”
“This,” replied Fauchelevent, “is so that I may be avoided.”
“What! so that you may be avoided?”
Old Fauchelevent winked with an indescribable air.
“Ah, goodness! there are only women in this house—many young girls. It
appears that I should be a dangerous person to meet. The bell gives
them warning. When I come, they go.”
“What house is this?”
“Come, you know well enough.”
“But I do not.”
“Not when you got me the place here as gardener?”
“Answer me as though I knew nothing.”
“Well, then, this is the Petit-Picpus convent.”
Memories recurred to Jean Valjean. Chance, that is to say, Providence,
had cast him into precisely that convent in the Quartier Saint-Antoine
where old Fauchelevent, crippled by the fall from his cart, had been
admitted on his recommendation two years previously. He repeated, as
though talking to himself:—
“The Petit-Picpus convent.”
“Exactly,” returned old Fauchelevent. “But to come to the point, how
the deuce did you manage to get in here, you, Father Madeleine? No
matter if you are a saint; you are a man as well, and no man enters
here.”
“You certainly are here.”
“There is no one but me.”
“Still,” said Jean Valjean, “I must stay here.”
“Ah, good God!” cried Fauchelevent.
Jean Valjean drew near to the old man, and said to him in a grave
voice:—
“Father Fauchelevent, I saved your life.”
“I was the first to recall it,” returned Fauchelevent.
“Well, you can do to-day for me that which I did for you in the olden
days.”
Fauchelevent took in his aged, trembling, and wrinkled hands Jean
Valjean’s two robust hands, and stood for several minutes as though
incapable of speaking. At length he exclaimed:—
“Oh! that would be a blessing from the good God, if I could make you
some little return for that! Save your life! Monsieur le Maire, dispose
of the old man!”
A wonderful joy had transfigured this old man. His countenance seemed
to emit a ray of light.
“What do you wish me to do?” he resumed.
“That I will explain to you. You have a chamber?”
“I have an isolated hovel yonder, behind the ruins of the old convent,
in a corner which no one ever looks into. There are three rooms in it.”
The hut was, in fact, so well hidden behind the ruins, and so cleverly
arranged to prevent it being seen, that Jean Valjean had not perceived
it.
“Good,” said Jean Valjean. “Now I am going to ask two things of you.”
“What are they, Mr. Mayor?”
“In the first place, you are not to tell any one what you know about
me. In the second, you are not to try to find out anything more.”
“As you please. I know that you can do nothing that is not honest, that
you have always been a man after the good God’s heart. And then,
moreover, you it was who placed me here. That concerns you. I am at
your service.”
“That is settled then. Now, come with me. We will go and get the
child.”
“Ah!” said Fauchelevent, “so there is a child?”
He added not a word further, and followed Jean Valjean as a dog follows
his master.
Less than half an hour afterwards Cosette, who had grown rosy again
before the flame of a good fire, was lying asleep in the old gardener’s
bed. Jean Valjean had put on his cravat and coat once more; his hat,
which he had flung over the wall, had been found and picked up. While
Jean Valjean was putting on his coat, Fauchelevent had removed the bell
and kneecap, which now hung on a nail beside a vintage basket that
adorned the wall. The two men were warming themselves with their elbows
resting on a table upon which Fauchelevent had placed a bit of cheese,
black bread, a bottle of wine, and two glasses, and the old man was
saying to Jean Valjean, as he laid his hand on the latter’s knee: “Ah!
Father Madeleine! You did not recognize me immediately; you save
people’s lives, and then you forget them! That is bad! But they
remember you! You are an ingrate!”
CHAPTER X—WHICH EXPLAINS HOW JAVERT GOT ON THE SCENT
The events of which we have just beheld the reverse side, so to speak,
had come about in the simplest possible manner.
When Jean Valjean, on the evening of the very day when Javert had
arrested him beside Fantine’s death-bed, had escaped from the town jail
of M. sur M., the police had supposed that he had betaken himself to
Paris. Paris is a maelstrom where everything is lost, and everything
disappears in this belly of the world, as in the belly of the sea. No
forest hides a man as does that crowd. Fugitives of every sort know
this. They go to Paris as to an abyss; there are gulfs which save. The
police know it also, and it is in Paris that they seek what they have
lost elsewhere. They sought the ex-mayor of M. sur M. Javert was
summoned to Paris to throw light on their researches. Javert had, in
fact, rendered powerful assistance in the recapture of Jean Valjean.
Javert’s zeal and intelligence on that occasion had been remarked by M.
Chabouillet, secretary of the Prefecture under Comte Anglès. M.
Chabouillet, who had, moreover, already been Javert’s patron, had the
inspector of M. sur M. attached to the police force of Paris. There
Javert rendered himself useful in divers and, though the word may seem
strange for such services, honorable manners.
He no longer thought of Jean Valjean,—the wolf of to-day causes these
dogs who are always on the chase to forget the wolf of yesterday,—when,
in December, 1823, he read a newspaper, he who never read newspapers;
but Javert, a monarchical man, had a desire to know the particulars of
the triumphal entry of the “Prince Generalissimo” into Bayonne. Just as
he was finishing the article, which interested him; a name, the name of
Jean Valjean, attracted his attention at the bottom of a page. The
paper announced that the convict Jean Valjean was dead, and published
the fact in such formal terms that Javert did not doubt it. He confined
himself to the remark, “That’s a good entry.” Then he threw aside the
paper, and thought no more about it.
Some time afterwards, it chanced that a police report was transmitted
from the prefecture of the Seine-et-Oise to the prefecture of police in
Paris, concerning the abduction of a child, which had taken place,
under peculiar circumstances, as it was said, in the commune of
Montfermeil. A little girl of seven or eight years of age, the report
said, who had been intrusted by her mother to an inn-keeper of that
neighborhood, had been stolen by a stranger; this child answered to the
name of Cosette, and was the daughter of a girl named Fantine, who had
died in the hospital, it was not known where or when.
This report came under Javert’s eye and set him to thinking.
The name of Fantine was well known to him. He remembered that Jean
Valjean had made him, Javert, burst into laughter, by asking him for a
respite of three days, for the purpose of going to fetch that
creature’s child. He recalled the fact that Jean Valjean had been
arrested in Paris at the very moment when he was stepping into the
coach for Montfermeil. Some signs had made him suspect at the time that
this was the second occasion of his entering that coach, and that he
had already, on the previous day, made an excursion to the neighborhood
of that village, for he had not been seen in the village itself. What
had he been intending to do in that region of Montfermeil? It could not
even be surmised. Javert understood it now. Fantine’s daughter was
there. Jean Valjean was going there in search of her. And now this
child had been stolen by a stranger! Who could that stranger be? Could
it be Jean Valjean? But Jean Valjean was dead. Javert, without saying
anything to anybody, took the coach from the _Pewter Platter_,
Cul-de-Sac de la Planchette, and made a trip to Montfermeil.
He expected to find a great deal of light on the subject there; he
found a great deal of obscurity.
For the first few days the Thénardiers had chattered in their rage. The
disappearance of the Lark had created a sensation in the village. He
immediately obtained numerous versions of the story, which ended in the
abduction of a child. Hence the police report. But their first vexation
having passed off, Thénardier, with his wonderful instinct, had very
quickly comprehended that it is never advisable to stir up the
prosecutor of the Crown, and that his complaints with regard to the
_abduction_ of Cosette would have as their first result to fix upon
himself, and upon many dark affairs which he had on hand, the
glittering eye of justice. The last thing that owls desire is to have a
candle brought to them. And in the first place, how explain the fifteen
hundred francs which he had received? He turned squarely round, put a
gag on his wife’s mouth, and feigned astonishment when the _stolen
child_ was mentioned to him. He understood nothing about it; no doubt
he had grumbled for awhile at having that dear little creature “taken
from him” so hastily; he should have liked to keep her two or three
days longer, out of tenderness; but her “grandfather” had come for her
in the most natural way in the world. He added the “grandfather,” which
produced a good effect. This was the story that Javert hit upon when he
arrived at Montfermeil. The grandfather caused Jean Valjean to vanish.