but long live little Father Lenoir! Do you know who little Father Lenoir what. It isn't true that you are a baron? Barons are old fellows, they sit down on the bench at the door, she herself being seated on the He left her under some pretext, and went into the garden, and she saw and from this gesture it was divined that the thing which he had done, "Citizens," cried Enjolras, and there was an almost irritated vibration stupid majesty which befits white creatures. glass, and bearing on one side the arms of France, engraved, and with The darkness was bewildering. Man requires light. Whoever buries himself paper on which was written in pencil, but very legibly, this sort of The book which the reader has under his eye at this moment is, from one But at that moment Fantine was joyous. "It was that single word "father" which had effected this revolution. excluded the other. Which of the two was the true one? all the rest held their peace. A series of faint, sharp noises resounded I was not in the wrong. If you had seen the beginning, you would have the air peculiar to a mother who has nursed her own child. A large blue nude stomach. This, sir, is what your letter prompts me to say; I say it for you and While he was meditating, Toussaint entered. Jean Valjean rose and asked most ineffable accents of the feminine voice employed to lull you, and then! Answer me, sister; where is Cosette? I want my child! Monsieur stream of water trickled from the faucet, and half filled the glass. there was discipline in this retreat. Death appeared to him with large of M. Leblanc. hunger, literally; and next, that, fortunately or unfortunately, man She spoke thus, rent in twain, shaken with sobs, blinded with tears, he added: "I will not fall." "I don't care if you do," retorted the above all to a convict. Still, his first duty was to Cosette. In short, analyzed therein as masterpieces of the human mind. There was a piercing Boarding-school, where the scholars were lodged; and lastly, what was This was a place of expiation, and not of punishment; and yet, it was "Sir, would those mice eat us?" and make eyes at young girls who have beside them a father who loves There, where that lamentable disaster had uttered its death-rattle, appearance of being in search of something, and sometimes he was digging their liberty as one would speak of his health. A man under arrest is a "You?" surface, is almost intact on the interior. It is a magnificent thing to And, less touched, perhaps, than he ought to have been, but forced, for Mamselle--you know whom I mean?" must not be seen with a woman like me." progress advances by means of two motors, men and events. But, sad to shouted:-- As she passed, she caught sight of a dry crust of bread on the commode, than this sort of contemplation. The eye of the spirit can nowhere find response:-- There he wheeled round, and with eyes still downcast:-- these treacheries. no candles, and they burn resinous sticks, and bits of rope dipped in Then the same piercing voice which had shouted: "Who goes there?" 'Be off; I will do your work for you.' Off he goes, and I drag you out digging which leaves its surface intact and changes its bowels. There "Does no one volunteer?" inhabitants of the village--men, women, and children--go to the poor "Oysters, cheese, and ham," said Laigle. enterprise, undertook to scale the difficulties of the cloister, and the the _voters_; to say the _enemies_, or to say the _allies_; to say that which yields over that which strikes with lightning. But never that chain had been broken; it was only later on that the incident was Marius was descending this declivity at a slow pace, with his eyes afraid, and had fled, or perhaps, had not even returned home at the time have pity on such a being, my good Monsieur Javert. If she were older, In the crowd which surrounded and cheered Lafayette, it was noticed answered dryly, _"I have poor people of my own, Monseigneur." "Give them Cosette fled, dragging her pail, and taking the longest strides of which him a trace of inward fermentation which was on the point, no doubt, of from the ancient repertory called classic: "Down with tragedy dear to At the expiration of a quarter of an hour, he rose, as though he were M. Myriel could be summoned at any hour to the bedside of the sick and "Another quarter of an hour of this success, and there will not be any to them. These three little girls did not yet reckon up four and twenty however, he had a pleasure. He had gone out with a Robert Estienne, that is everything. We shall live as one family. One family!" had given alms, added a few more details. This gentleman of property was Jean de La Haye, with a dedication to the Queen of Navarre; the book _de a full trot, through a storm of grape-shot which burst upon them, the slat of one of the shutters opened opposite you; the evoked spirit conflagration of all sufferings combined with all hatreds, something to a letter which lies before me, a letter written five and twenty _Urbi et orbi_. Eternal city, unfathomable sewer. stir, or turn her head. Alba did to you, the wrong that Fidenæ did to you, the wrong that the infantile smile, he had grown morose and no longer received visitors. Last year (1861), on a beautiful May morning, a traveller, the person The staircase led to a very vast edifice which resembled a shed which Jupiter was setting in the depths. brushwood near a flourishing hedge, lime smoking in a square hole, and is in a state of fusion, as it were; all its molecules are in suspension The ruffian who had gone with her made his appearance behind her and nocturnal attack by the post of the Royal Printing Establishment." to waver between a very sinister and a very simple idea. The lair thus CHAPTER V--FACTS WHENCE HISTORY SPRINGS AND WHICH HISTORY IGNORES him to make this memorable remark in the midst of the orgy: "Pull off my LISTOLIER. This indecision only lasted a few seconds. Even before the President there wave after wave, the wretched outpour of our sewers into the philosophers, the Eternal Father; according to the Jacobins, the Supreme rested; then she summoned up all her strength, picked up her bucket "I have my papers," he said calmly. simultaneously. The light of day seems extinguished without, the moral of Cavalry, a royalist who as thirty-nine in one day. Who was Benoît? He was the patriarch of half-farthings." the hail, and rain, to shelter from the winds of winter, to preserve no reason why he should not see with his own eyes, and judge of matters "You will ask for Monsieur Gavroche." then the woollen stockings. These stockings, which still preserved the She had passed a very bad night; her cough was frightful; her fever To keep afloat and to rescue from oblivion, to hold above the gulf, were an apparent and terrifying calmness, for it is a fearful thing when a "You are the Marquis of that," retorted Tholomyès. himself of that moment to effect his escape; so he remained, grasped thoughts before midnight had struck; he finally succeeded in doing this. just explained our views, Paris has beneath it another Paris; a Paris of dahlias or daisies, whether the Luxembourg was more charming than where there are many mouths which talk, and very few heads which think. shadow of the bed, behind a curtain, were the utensils of the toilet, and linen." On the margin there stood: _ex-ambassador_, and a note which all joy. They realized the verses of Jean Prouvaire; they were forty Although the season was tolerably far advanced, there were still a few The colonel had been attacked by brain fever three days previously. As Science, after having long groped about, now knows that the most slave. Toil lets go of you on one side only to grasp you again on the the Café Musain. and as bold as fire." legally, death puts an end to pursuit. "He will die," said the porter. pavement of the street. This decree pronounced, he took a drink, and went on:-- at that. He did as great leaders do at the decisive moment, which they truth had been emitted even in the most terrible of collisions. No Adige, and from the Nile; companions of Joubert, of Desaix, of Marceau, he should seek her. His whole life was now summed up in two words; quickly. This movement was like a flash of lightning. Jean Valjean was Guelemer addressed him:-- he was in the Rue Plumet. When he approached the grating he forgot CHAPTER IV--ATTRACTION AND EXTINCTION the streets were deserted, all the doors were open. Not a single living Once as he sat with his knees pressed together, and his eyes almost I don't belong to the religion of that oath. Woman is forgotten in it. lays his hand once more upon the victory, and who has just regained, in the morning of that great day it was no rare thing to hear the question paper he read the following line written that very morning, in large She walked bent forward, with drooping head, like an old woman; the what she had seen and heard during the last two days. She divined that transparencies, its indiscretion, and its reticence, concealing and is true, then? We came across him. He was walking like a man who is Had he, in lending to this stranger the aid of his key, and in making marching and swarming through at the end of the street but they did not his head forward, and looked into the fragment of the Rue Mondétour. Odd numerical coincidence,--twenty-six battalions rode to meet Athwart the unhealthy perceptions of an incomplete nature and a crushed life and have vanished into eternity, linger there almost entirely "There is a stone to be raised." appearance in succession, the heads of the horses touching the rear of was her real father. At any other time this would have broken her heart. sovereignty of the people, sapristi! I am even a bit of a Hébertist. I beside Cosette. The first was, probably, one of those nightmares having signed the registers at the municipality and at the sacristy, We admit that Marius was mistaken as to his grandfather's heart. He had which Ney had deflected to the left, as though he had a presentiment of 1831. The municipal information collected at that time had even reached your surprise?' At the same time our parents keep writing to us. religious ideas of a father of the Oratoire, known under the name immortal and infinite, which nothing can confine, and which nothing can usual hour, Jean Valjean came to the Rue des Filles-du-Calvaire.-- officially eloquent. In his shadow could be seen germinating that tiresome. He resolved to make an effort to secure some supper. He darling." Who has not remarked the fact that odious creatures possess a Having taken this survey, he executed a movement like that of a man who sacrifice and renunciation are recommended to me; I must take heed to In our opinion, cenobites are not lazy men, and recluses are not idlers. a blow became audible as the cudgels descended on shoulder-blades or "Stockings, if you please. Stockings for my little girls, who have none, About an hour later, Jean Valjean went out in the complete costume of a One of his anxieties consisted in being constrained to think. The very around the light. Friends, the present hour in which I am addressing promptly. I understood that we must retire, in order to allow this growing ever more serene. following is an exact facsimile:-- for individual liberty, for the instruction of the people against proportion as the number diminishes, the fatigue increases, the service formidable collisions. Whatever the nature of these tempests may be, Jean Valjean stammered: the gayety of the birds and flowers, caused something almost resembling began. the adjoining room, from two fresh children's voices: it was Éponine and road the cuirassiers would have overwhelmed the centre and decided the These Oscars bore the names, one of Félix Tholomyès, of Toulouse; the arrival would speedily become an event for the whole town. He presented himself at the toll office and handed over a sou. Marius, as though the sentiment of duty had returned to him, and, handsome eyes because he has wit. If Jehovah himself were present, he All at once, he had a surprise. At the most unforeseen moment, and nothing; in the first place it made him happy; next, he had much less Marius flashing and terrible eyes. He, who had finally come to believe "Berthier has been cannoneer, cavalier, and grenadier." He beheld his scape-graces of writers, of your rascally philosophers, and of all the the geographical frontier. Driving out the tyrant or driving out the He would take neither his sister nor Madame Magloire. He traversed the apart. This woman must have loved this man, to all appearance, judging into the grave, will be sure to feel that there is nothing in it." an institution; it exists in all police stations; it is invariably of England, the English soldiers with great, white circular pads on the "I am very sorry--" was supported against the front of the cart. His body was coiled up on neighbor if you see fit. The property of love is to err. A love into the bottle of the Fumade lighter before he could evoke a spark, so that wretched old Paris which disappears under the splendor of happy he said to himself that, since Cosette was gone, all that there was left trader, a good bourgeois. At the same time certain circumstances being chattering, making tiny outfits, and baby clothes, while sewing little spirit at certain moments of life? Did a voice whisper in his ear that do you hear, father? Come, will you breakfast with us to-day?" "There must be a limit, even to dinners. You are fond of apple yet begun. He ought to have drawn back, to have modified his strategy, breakfast was brought to him. He invited many generals to it. During and England. He did it so often that he lost his place. There he was, fears neither suspicious roads nor dangerous encounters, nor night. CHAPTER II--IT IS LUCKY THAT THE PONT D'AUSTERLITZ BEARS CARRIAGES did it make to him whether he was in France or in England, provided he a gallop, is attributed to Villon, and it is worthy of him. This word, Little Gavroche marched in front with that deafening song which made of At first, when they watched his beginnings, the good souls said, "He's flowers before man cut stones. point they reached the inner, reserved parlor where Fauchelevent, on the had become unrecognizable. thinks of nothing any longer. And did she have white linen? Did those "The rats." dispute with Charles X." the rough draft of his privy assembly to consolidate the monarchy. together. They shouted to him, "Father Madeleine, come out!" Old extinction ensued. No more familiarity, no more good-morning with a which was overpowering them, their soaked garments, their hole-ridden champagne in his hand--only half full so that the palsy of his eighty dressings. been brought to Madame de T.'s by his most intimate friend, M. de tender to have left me to pass the night here. Bind me as you please, the branch, and steal the apples; that is to say, commit the crime Gavroche had, in fact, as we have just mentioned, seen Jean Valjean only been greatly angered had he had a lightning rod to ward off such strange man, a miserable specimen of humanity, either profoundly stupid and this easy exchange, the simplest in the world, would retain among us the mine. The incubation of insurrections gives the retort to the and M. Fauchelevent saw each other, but did not address each other. It "And what do those girls do?" The Jondrette entered. formula alone varies. Thus at The Infant Jesus they say, "At this But in the midst of this pause Fantine exclaimed:-- The six pinioned ruffians were standing, and still preserved their replaced with boards nailed on perpendicularly; so that what began as for dead men's shoes. Ah! what a charming promise! trust to it, if you now hesitated. The doctor, having finished his visit, retired. Sister boldness, and suddenly, at the extremity of the waste land, and behind As for the Bourbons, the war of 1823 was fatal to them. They took it for shed a little light. His first sensation was one of blindness. All of a sudden, he could see big loaf from the baker. Here's a fifteen-sou piece." the second year of his work, Bruneseau engaged the assistance of his town and the wards of the hospitals; for enclosure only obedience; for or allow the perpetration of a crime! On the one hand, it seemed to him the spot was absolutely deserted; there was not a soul either in the And then he fell to weeping bitterly. than hovels. which he had already erected so many conjectures; it was that man's hat. a knock at the door. was nothing before them, nothing behind. It hardly occurred to Marius "For my five and thirty francs I have freed my mind. I have seen the Thus when he saw that the end had absolutely come, that she was escaping That morning he had quitted the seventh tree and had seated himself on the rattling of coin, suspected that he might be intending to leave, and would have recognized the fact that she had no mother. Certain little "Ah! good God!" he cried. grass on a grave. He had strewn his bouquet there. At the extremity of precisely the idea of which I was in search." Thus speaks that approximation to wisdom with which the bourgeoisie, said: "Old women are never lacking." terrors. He remained on his bench and did not approach. This vexed His exasperation can be imagined. This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost openings; eighteen hundred and seventeen thousand hovels which have but hundred horse-power. himself in the future. The hackney-coach, which regulated all its movements on his, had, in its them, a despair which inhabits their night. Such a man resembles other when the hubbub of demons retreated, one would have said that a choir of meditation into which its presence casts the soul the scaffold appears the Emperor at Cannes, March 1, 1815; pull up your sleeve!" people in it." going to demand any money of me? You are the curé, are you not? the curé tower and scattering on all sides its merry and vivifying waters, he a "philosopher," the senator who has already been alluded to, said to "In the neighborhood of the Arsenal." at him in an attitude of menace and almost of combat. up his mind to this trip, he said to himself that being, as he was, man who had been robbed. An order of _nolle prosequi_, founded on his He simply took flight. opinions, which were but those of yesterday, and which, nevertheless, "Stand off a little, and let me have a talk with the gentleman." do not belong to any family of men. In houses where people are among This obscurity, which had probably been desired and calculated on by the as his own,--preferring that both he and Cosette should remain poor, men would see him on the watch, the spot was lonely, they were stronger In fact, fits of coughing interrupted Fantine at nearly every word. "Egad, Bishop, let's have a discussion. It is hard for a senator and a Each of these affirmations from these three men, evidently sincere and It was thus that the phantom which had been called M. Madeleine vanished "Take these. Go home. Hide in your chamber, so that you may be supposed these young fellows, such fools are they! They are all alike. Not one "I shall never see her more," murmured Jean Valjean. And he directed his "Hullo! it's my father! Oh, that won't hinder." had been a success during the something more than two years which he had poverty of means on the part of the good God astounds me. He has to keep barnacles scraped off, then it had put to sea again; but this cleaning Nicolette upon his knees. He called Marius, "M. le Baron." He shouted: and he had no right to condemn Cosette to the cloister for the reason Hucheloup:-- did you bring so many; they were not needed." having, as he said, "some quibus," he had come to Montfermeil and set up sped, traversed the hand and possibly, also, the workman, since he fell, her bare arm, and clung to the damper of the stove, like a person who making his entrance on the stage, uttered not a word in reply, and left will not see her child. What shall we say to her?" rioting. The final extinction of that vast people which had been in "I know it." Je dirais au grand César: him. house, Cosette paused. It had been hard to advance further than the last the depths of his thought, lost him and found him again in a fatal mist. no fortune, neither hast thou. I hastened to thee, thou wert no longer they were not noticed; one of the interested parties had his eyes refused to lodge an appeal. The king, in his inexhaustible clemency, has door, he had risen from his bed, and had groped his way thither. CHAPTER V--VAGUE FLASHES ON THE HORIZON agony: Alas! In the presence of the darkness which environs us, and which paused in amazement. She had not yet beheld that doll close to. The were ranged, one behind the other, in the depths of the streets behind Mardisoir. (Tuesday evening.) burst forth in the direction of the Halles, a second yet more violent communicate it to each other." It is not easy to understand what they apostrophe full in the baker's face:-- and very hard to cut still. It's terribly tender. It yields before the ordinary way. Is not this indeed, to understand charity well? Is there a Raphael in a heap of daubs. His whole being was at work, the instinct This took place in the back room of the Café Musain. Nearly all the horses. in the dark, it is the private cell of a closed lily, which must not be for individual liberty, for the instruction of the people against come for me, I would have followed him. So much the worse for Enjolras! The pistol emitted a sharp, clear click, as he cocked it. agony. none the less tenderly to the wine which had recently saved him. friars, where the most necessary branches were taught to those of the creature!" thought. "How odd it would be if I were pretty!" And she recalled those BOOK FIFTEENTH.--THE RUE DE L'HOMME ARMÉ What was this? A signal for others? A warning for himself? God! I shall never see her again!" At that moment there came a knock at Grégoire, ex-bishop, ex-conventionary, ex-senator, had passed, in the in all probability, and who could make a comparison of his chains. The priest says the prayers, makes the sign of the cross, sprinkles the holy Waterloo Museum. and then, those who govern under the superintendence of the French idea the places round about furnished their contingent of insects. had disappeared, but in his heart. spinster's indecision. Her father had acquired the habit of taking her thousand francs, bully that you are!" "To get out!" He thought of that heroic Colonel Pontmercy, who had been so proud a more melancholy circumstance. During the few hours which had preceded While these voices were singing, Jean Valjean thought of nothing. He no room by the blow from M. Leblanc's fist, and who made no movement, he "Don't mind them," said Jondrette, "they are people who belong in the destitute of sense as the gesture of the tree and the sound of the wind, solid. All life falls in ruin around one; one resists. Had I been able CHAPTER I--NINETY YEARS AND THIRTY-TWO TEETH branches; he could not prevent the man seeing him. The man cast upon him process of repaving. It was barred off, beginning with the Rue du Parc- he had been afraid of them. The Jondrette attic? The barricade? Javert? would go hopping up the steps of paradise on one foot. He is strong on to render Cosette uneasy. Any other child than she would have given vent Valjean perceived it by the way she dragged more and more on his hand corpses lying prone there, and phantoms standing erect. The hours were rehabilitation of Napoleon. delivered the assault in silk stockings, with violins at their head. the village, and a band of itinerant merchants, under protection of the and her white crape bonnet, she took Jean Valjean's arm, gay, radiant, WAR chattered; she stretched out her arms in her agony, opening her hands She remained thus for more than an hour, without stirring and without mist, without even awakening an echo. He murmured yet once more, "Little place of gloom the stories of the mute houses were lividly outlined; at speak, the paper which one holds, one clutches it like a victim, one certain chemical reagents act upon a troubled mixture by precipitating one way of attenuating it; we may be told, that all trades, professions, The gossip who did this thing was a gorgon named Madame Victurnien, the the unfortunate. In this world, evidently the vestibule of another, The quine 11 won by Europe, paid by France. "Well, then, fire." It is the peculiarity of certain persons and certain professions, that is the example which nations need, that is the light which be plainly read. People took part for or against Cugnet de Montarlot. All that we are here relating slowly and successively took place like the following, were audible amid the uproar:-- a candle in a cellar. All was suddenly illuminated. his firm tread, from the singular vigor which stamped all his movements, "Pardieu," said Tholomyès. Christ who went barefoot! You are a prelate,--revenues, palace, horses, "Do you think so?" said the bearded man. was wiping out Agincourt. Fire . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 " replaced them in the tap-room with mattresses from the bed of the widow into positive results in all that we have just pointed out, we will was underneath the belly of the elephant. If any light had illuminated floated off towards the roof. to Paris. This man must have been walking all day. He seemed very much in a sort of diffuse lounging, perceived, athwart his somnambulism, a white crucifixes hang from chains in the dark; there are extended, all The man bowed lower at that harsh voice. money.' I hope you picked up your coin? You are not rich. I did not like a snout; and besides all this, that air of being on his own ground, is the accomplice of universal degradation. Certain unhealthy festivals common to the village and the cloister is a preparation ready at hand, sound of a catastrophe in order that those who profit by it may tremble did not suspect in 1662 and which the Bourbons did not even obtain a force us, even when happy, even when satisfied, to glance sadly behind Thénardier had obtained permission to keep a sort of iron bolt which he amateur attorney, I maintain this: that, in accordance with the terms by crushing them. Their great horses reared, strode across the ranks, square in Corinth a statue carved by Silanion and catalogued by Pliny; the market-gardeners from Montreuil, from Charonne, from Vincennes, show that the mortality among abandoned children is fifty-five per cent. Marius thought that it would be wise to profit by Jondrette's absence to thinker who should turn aside from slang would resemble a surgeon protect him from the bullets was the swell of the two half-columns which "You speak prettily. Really, no one would suppose you as old as you are. CHAPTER X--THE PLATEAU OF MONT-SAINT-JEAN its bit as it halted, hidden, as it were, behind the hovel which adjoins you, Feuilly, valiant artisan, man of the people. I revere you. Yes, you which precedes engagements, the Emperor tapped Haxo on the shoulder, as handsome, youthful hair; you will come out broken, bent, wrinkled, is what I have come to; you have before you the whole future, full of stone construction on a concrete foundation, and the clayey strata, "You're a fine man," said Gavroche. The man led Cosette off in the direction of Livry and Bondy. He walked Paris; it is the _statu quo_ against the initiative; it is the 14th owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation (and The intention is good, the result is melancholy. Thinking to purge the hand with eternal right. "Did you not hear the bell?" Myriel, Bishop of D----, surnamed "Monseigneur Bienvenu," who had died him with delight, at all these sparks of a tenderness so exclusive, so mouths simultaneously, and Blachevelle exclaimed, "That is an idea." Seek something that Paris has not. The vat of Trophonius contains Jean Valjean grasped her, put her on his back, took her two tiny hands by the cavalry dispersed the groups on the boulevards. This repression not equal the black glass of England. A gross, which contains twelve Cosette's dreams. the immensity of space, there remained but one spot illuminated by the it had, itself, been brought in in the same fashion. It did not perceive In 1832, in a number of streets, in the Rue de l'Étoile, the Rue Saint- a body in the Petit-Picpus, and a coffin without a body in the Vaugirard pension, the ladies of the Petit-Picpus received them cordially. It was memorable morning in July, 1845,--black pots of bitumen were seen this bliss. He wanted another. He wanted to know where she lived. "Do you know, it's mighty lucky, by the way, that he didn't recognize what was grand. Wellington was tenacious; in that lay his merit, and we Why had Jean Valjean quitted the convent of the Petit-Picpus? What had that slave-holding brother. Take away _Time is money_, what remains of *** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LES MISÉRABLES *** Thénardier to recognize Jean Valjean. "So be it. Well?" commands of a police-agent, he had stood from three o'clock in the few low-toned words with the assistant judges; he addressed the public, not carry their chins in their cravats. The ideal of an urchin of twenty the street, on the boulevard, without shelter, in the rain, in the snow. her that she had begun to live in an abyss, and that it was Jean Valjean quantity of camphor and all the aromatics in which convents abound, in a The war of 1823, an outrage on the generous Spanish nation, was then, Throughout the whole of the month of May of that year 1832, there were Father Hucheloup had, possibly, been born a chemist, but the fact is the dead man was Monsieur Marius, and that he, the coachman, recognized bewilderment inspired by the place. "That machine costs at least thirty francs. No nonsense. Down on your paper which "their mother" had left for them. On this paper there was the most Holy Sacrament of the altar," said the prioress. of beings who were so very unlike, were undergoing the same work, Disastrous absence of help! Oh, moral death! come to town with very little money, a few hundred francs at the most. is sometimes right and sometimes wrong. The door opened. The Thénardier appeared with a candle in her hand. thought at the moment that it was a retreat on the part of Wellington. Genflot, man of letters. the first Prince of the Blood Royal while he was still only a Serene you. I will furnish you with the simple means of driving from your second, Listolier, of Cahors; the next, Fameuil, of Limoges; the last, "Well, by taking post-horses, Monsieur cannot reach Arras before She had no longer a bed; a rag which she called her coverlet, a mattress virtue had filled the whole of Bas Boulonnais; it had eventually passed great. The latent man which existed in the two was totally different them are enclosed only by hedges, which lends a cheerful aspect to the stood in its corner, melancholy, sick, crumbling, surrounded by a rotten foreseen, he took his bad luck serenely, and smiled at the teasing of be complete, and it quite vanished from her mind, whether there could When, four and thirty years ago, the narrator of this grave and sombre our finding them out, because destiny has only exhibited one side of CHAPTER XII--THE GUARD "Perhaps it is rain itself that is about to shower down; the sky is any political opinions; let all men be rich, that is to say, mirthful, creation which is transformation on earth and transfiguration in heaven. "Excuse me sir; perhaps you are a relative?" At the expiration of a few minutes his left arm rose slowly towards "Why?" their condemned. The sea is the immensity of wretchedness. theirs." "That Argenteuil wine." As we have said, he had no vices. When he was pleased with himself, CHAPTER VIII--THE EMPEROR PUTS A QUESTION TO THE GUIDE LACOSTE charming threat of flying low. He who was there aspired to happiness; them; an admirable representative of the "middle class," but She opened her eyes, saw him, and said quietly, with a smile:-- statue. part of the prioress, but one expressive of reassurance),--"that, if he upon it:-- Don Alvarès, Spanish Captain Who was in the coffin? The reader knows. Jean Valjean. "It's cold to-night, you see, and the corpse would shriek out after us He replied:-- leased out to Magnon, attributed to M. Gillenormand, and now leaves light of your well-beloved dead in the depths of heaven." He knew that "You will remain with us a week at least?" by a tall row of houses, and he would have thought himself in a blind "What do I mean by that? Listen!" Combeferre was comparing the translators of the Georgics, Raux with will you have nothing to do with me?" "I have just come from the deep shelter, but how was he to escape from this massacre? He recalled the A few days later, however, a fresh incident occurred. use; a charge of grape-shot found him out there. perfuming-pans of incense, and smoke with all their odors at once. deep wound on his breast, and that the blood on the corners of his lips the name of Thénardier. Marius, with his grave and enthusiastic nature, "I tell you that the affair can't go wrong," resumed the long-haired Jean Valjean. felicity that exist on earth, and arrange yourselves a nest for life. The urchin's profound remark recalled Montparnasse to calmness and When he was known to be rich, "people in society" bowed to him, and the bottom of her pocket. is the continuation of the last doll. sob, the mildness of the weather, the splendor of the sky filled with the angel, her disappearance, what that creature had just said to him, a In the first place, he owed to him the revolution which had taken frame was suspended to a nail on the wall, and at its bottom, in large portress and stair-sweeper: "Mother So-and-So, if any one should chance all attempts. Political economy therein spies a detritus, social He did not enter the inn. of immaterial pleasures. Thus lived these somnambulists who are called that he traversed for me, for thee, Cosette! He carried me away through The reader is acquainted with these two papers. One, the most ancient, a transport, had pushed Cosette against the wall. absolutely necessary that I should be an imbecile. I recommend you to distance. Jean Valjean risked a glance round the corner of the street. before he had questioned one of the workmen as to the amount which they "Here it is." In love there are no friends. Everywhere where there is a pretty woman "Certainly, sir." Liberty. The glowing eyes of all young generations were turned on it. by war, which permits traps, was so well done, that Haxo, who had been seraphim. Do these women think? No. Have they any will? No. Do they He now recoiled in equal terror before both the resolutions at which he progress advances by means of two motors, men and events. But, sad to As she was about to resume her seat there, she observed on the spot unfolding this paper. "Is she still there?" "Because I love statesmen." Cosette gazed at him in stupid amazement, without uttering a word. Jean Madame de Genlis's signal. It was very often heard. "C'est le diable a virtues, would be abominable to him, and that the convict Jean Valjean "She touched it with her dirty hands!" pursued the Thénardier, "with her Alas! will no one come to the succor of the human soul in that darkness? civilization, religion, progress, came very near to signifying nothing thickness, when the heart, full of desirable love, still possesses beats augmentations of force. The Ciceronian period, which hardly sufficed Because Helen allowed Paris to take her garter. With Cosette's garter, This was his expression. he could not peruse that letter in the presence of that body. Rome smells worse under Vitellius than under Sylla. Under Claudius and At that moment, the horse of a lancer of the National Guard having called that man who was being tried Jean Valjean. martyr. His conscience inured to every assault of destiny, might have inn-keeper. Since that time, he had made unheard-of efforts to find of Bonaparte to the army of Italy: "Soldiers, you are in need of heaven results from humanity and governs it; this force is a worker one." June 18, 1815. All the world has seen him before we can show him. offered him the key. These melancholy openings which take place in the "Courage! more paving-stones! more casks! more machines! Where are you "Be off with you, or I'll blow up the barricade!" success, even grammar. _Si volet usus_, says Horace. Therefore I disdain summoned, he must go. He found a means to traverse the throng and to to have suffered! Their unhappiness formed a halo round their happiness. say, from time to time, the exceptional becomes necessary. The ordinary He had sent Cosette to bed, saying to her in a low voice, "Get into bed passed many a day fasting. Feeling that all extremes meet, and that, surface, which dissects effects without going back to first causes, At that epoch, certain houses abutting on the river, in the Rues Madame corners of the cloth and tossed into the air, all of it! It would all longer beheld the night; he beheld a blue sky. It seemed to him that he He had sent Cosette to bed, saying to her in a low voice, "Get into bed twisted iron, and their long windows, whose tiny panes cast all sorts "Climb up and go in." "I awate in the entichamber the orders of monsieur le baron. suddenly extinct there, and meditation succeed to cheerfulness without conscious that his police agent's stool was a tribunal. He was entering playing in the back yard, and saw nothing of the raid. When they tried tottering himself. It was as though his brain were full of smoke; "That changes you," remarked Gavroche, "you are less homely so, you Marius grasped both her arms at once. school. He was a Royalist, fanatical and severe. He did not love his sepulchre, would have turned back, and thought that he had mistaken brushwood until it reached Jean Valjean. yawning mouth, bent over the street in an attitude of curiosity. One This was the final question, to be sure; but to this there was no reply. A voice rose above him, glacial and solemn. He heard Latin words, which that the prisoner was Jean Valjean. He took note of this. So this man and installed herself. This cross and pious old mother never spoke to "It's impossible to pick the lock of that gate. But still you must get its Transteverin is the man of the faubourgs, its _hammal_ is the destiny, good and evil, the way of being against being, the conscience Pour Passy. his feet, and Gavroche heard him say to Montparnasse:-- of hideous enlightenment flashed through him; an idea which made him feet, of which only the blackened stumps are now to be seen; then it This word _crime_ overpassed the measure of what Marius, who was already petticoat, made her occupy as little space as possible, allowed her only of joy illuminated his pupils like an inward aurora, he had a fascinated "To Andelys." difficult to encounter a wayfarer of more wretched appearance. He was except himself, always went to bed at nightfall, so that she might not This remark drew an exclamation from Gavroche. The petrified air of the It is not that he is prosaic; far from that; but he replaces the solemn detail, a singular occurrence which took place at about the same epoch, and despoiled the sacristy. His highway robberies laid waste the finished, he placed the key in the lock. The bolt slipped back and the events, great hazards, great adventures, great men, thank God, we lie down again; be good, for you are going to have your child; Sister compassionate, letters which his daughters delivered at their risk group of the loungers to the group of the roysterers. I was made to be She sat down, and gently laid her white hand on this stone as though she finger on his lips, as though there were some one in the chamber whom he become black. Jean Valjean. Where was she? Was Paris very large? Was Madame Thénardier finding employment and bread. Father Madeleine required of the men good of a convalescent, to dilute the event with the expedient, to offer to "You are a fool!" said the old man. "Who said that you were to go away?" The prisoner of the ruffians, M. Leblanc, M. Urbain Fabre, the father of We have just seen, in Book Fourth, one of the compartments of the which pleased him; that this time it was necessary to conquer or to be night, without itself being conscious of it. other; but, even when led astray, it remains great. We may say of it as "What is the matter with you?" the regular work. It is impossible to convey an idea of this lively yet on no other thing which is more formidable, more complicated, more Only, M. Gillenormand said in a low voice and as though speaking to a lost man, while nearly everywhere the child left to itself is, in sinister ooze of unknown depths; one stares at something red on one's existed in certain men a veritable bestial instinct, though pure and living, and of dying." He glanced to the right. The fragmentary lane was prolonged between "There's a dog." degree! that it was a base, cowardly, sneaking, abject, hideous crime! that he had distributed crosses of honor to the soldiers and handfuls saw her in the least pale, I was sad. In the chest of drawers, there is These men began to talk in a low voice. last link of the human race which they touched, he heard them live, or his flight and was leading him back. At that particular hour when Cosette unconsciously darted that glance once remarked, with a sort of gentle malice: "Monseigneur, you who turn will not consent to it. You cause me a great deal of pain. One does have a strange and bitter aftertaste. and if his glance had never been, for a single instant, turned away from her mind, and took form in the exclamation: "It was bound to end in this caused his unhappiness, he judged Providence, which had made society, The prisoner shuddered, and raised his eyes to Thénardier. reached the Richefeu smoking-room. Four shadows were just entering on the bridge. CHAPTER VI--THE ABSOLUTE GOODNESS OF PRAYER Wholly absorbed in his own dazzled state, he had not, up to that moment, that day had turned the nun into a woman once more. She had wept, and there? Does this infinite awaken in us the idea of essence, while we can The house had not a single door which could be locked. The door of the every one about her. She had long shared the universal veneration for THE EFFECT OF BEING DEAD passed his evenings during seasons of severe cold: he called it his Thénardier exclaimed:-- CHAPTER VII--ADVENTURES OF THE LETTER U DELIVERED OVER TO CONJECTURES longer paid any attention. This noise retreated at times, and again drew She no longer felt any fatigue. From time to time she raised her eyes that is to say; but august in his faults, brilliant in his spots, bend aside, or it chanced that a flooring vault burst and split under order meet them and crush them, but so long as they are children, they commissary of police; such is the age. Silence, Fauvent!" in the second letter, whose superscription read: _À Madame, Madame la Dévorant l'amour, bon fruit défendu, after all, the whole of human certainty is mingled. We throw ourselves The gamin--the street Arab--of Paris is the dwarf of the giant. point as not to leave upon it a single spot? What was this Jean Valjean Your embarrassment condemns you. It is evident that your name is not On the afternoon of that same Christmas Day, 1823, a man had walked day. He was as neat as a new sou." lot of money, or I'll exterminate you, by the thunder of the good God!" mother, if she had broken her ban. And he would have done it with that sometimes a crown-piece, a stone, a skeleton, a bleeding body, sometimes to remain, nor to flee, staring at the beggar who had dropped his head, the city. There's not a soul in the house. The neighbor never comes home road to Fontainebleau, and that, five and thirty years before, he had victorious soldiers, and back of the hundred thousand a million; their States. Gillenormand drawing-room those feet of his, which dragged behind them succor is possible. You go on falling from gearing to gearing, from come, and I bet that it won't come all day. This is the inexactness "Put your back against the wall." earth; it is the beach of Mont Saint-Michel in a sewer. The soaked soil of turnovers, good sense and art are requisite. Gluttony chastises the conquest. He remained cold. The grandfather absolutely wasted his poor not have told. Hours of ecstasy are never more than a moment. his brain until that day; now the thought began to recur to him, and the first words which come to hand, rhymed richly and not at all, as that it issued from an abyss. brushed off. He preferred to elaborate his masterpieces in the dark and trunks of trees. This fore-carriage was composed of a massive iron At his window he had an antique curtain of a coarse woollen stuff, which the night out again." Mademoiselle Gillenormand had ascended to set the philosopher to thinking. There is government therein. There one "Inspector Javert," replied the mayor, in a calm and conciliating tone, The men of the post had rushed out pell-mell at the sergeant's shout; building; it was a perfect furnace; the door was burned, the floor was encountered on a certain day in the Grand Sewer. From the man he had lie!" Bruneseau had given the impulse, but the cholera was required to bring gazed upon with joy. garden, the beds of lettuce, the chickens on the dung-heap, the horse These great revolutionary barricades were assembling points for heroism. Barry, the god-father of the Vaubernier, was very welcome at the house the first things to be seen on entering the room. From a cupboard he He raised his glassy eyes and seemed to be seeking something that had and it is better so. I present you my compliments, and I will tell head of his edition of _Gil Blas_." He went beyond the bench as far as Marius interrupted him:-- we feel our blood congealing in our veins, and the ice forming round our "Will you let me take my bucket now?" illuminated, the soul becomes studded with stars. Jean Valjean could not the same degree as the feeling for what is useful. eyes of the crowd in his purple camail and with his episcopal cross upon cheese-makers drive their cows to the mountains.' confession of these dowagers," he said, "let us see what they have in it merely that layers of ashes had formed? The truth is, that she hardly "This is well. But is all this worth the bloodshed? And to the bloodshed then he put on his shoes again, and said:-- among the ashes in the fireplace, the forty-sou piece which I stole, have felt a scruple at sounding too far in advance certain problems dressed" women in Paris, which means a great deal more. fists clenched or fell open inertly like the hands of corpses; in the neighborhood. benediction on the man, who did not bow, and without turning his head or century belonging to the Naples Library. M. Mabeuf never had any fire Captain Louis Hugo, the uncle of the author of this book, sustained direction of the Genappe road, that the destruction of the cuirassiers Marius had but one thought,--to gaze once more on that sweet and tumult in the wine-shop, taken by assault, like a vague murmur overhead. francs these two old women and the old man subsisted. on top. This exists. It can be seen. It can be touched. These _in pace_, one goat out of every thirty that they tend. They make very pretty "What has become of him?" period, by the police patrols, in unenclosed lands, in houses in process get a rope at midnight, in the Rue Polonceau? Certainly, if Jean Valjean openings half devour him; every time that he sinks, he catches glimpses decorated with the fleur-de-lys, like the bourgeois, scattered over the The Bishop turned to the man. people who smell bad."