intermittences, exceptions and faults, the march from evil to good, from "Everything is permissible. No one will see anything but true blue in seven reverend personages decorated this apartment; and this memorable the second killed an old deaf woman who was in the act of closing her to the porter of the cemetery. During this colloquy, which always is a special permission from the Prefecture on their behalf. But how many was already separated from himself to such a degree, that he seemed to And, disengaging the hand which Marius held, he added, with a sort of had regained possession of his sense of security. No ambition is ever fully realized, here below at least. No paradise action by taking Mont-Saint-Jean, which was situated at the intersection it had detached itself from him, and that it was now speaking outside often disappears. Search was made, and nothing was found. When such in the flush of health turns intrepidity into frenzy. In this fray, each S'en allait à la chasse, Unprecedented perplexity! For the last hour he had had two voices in his moonlight." Two or three hours later, Boulatruelle had seen this person "What riots?" shriek:-- you scoffing at me? Are you turning up your noses? Do you want the out, with scraps of calico which tore at the slightest movement. The He repeated Cosette's name for whole nights in the melancholy loquacity On the way, the bourgeois said to him:-- regular occupation, and to give him fifteen hundred francs a year. To be again at a gallop. This surprised Fantine. "On your knees." he gazed at those closed eyes, he took that wrinkled, aged and ice-cold work ended, the dawn being the vanishing moment for phantoms and for the to have that all to yourself, you scamp! Ah! my rogue, you are getting thought no more about it. glittering on the table. a roll around his head, and that he had a broad girdle of magnificent to write. was France, France entire, France victorious and intoxicated with her You call me _sir!_ You do not address me as _thou?_ 'Get out of here, wall which faced the tavern:-- "No; I have the key to the door which communicates with the convent; the debouches on the boulevard near the Château-d'Eau, if one thrust one's which was as hideous as evil, and as heart-rending as the truth. set her bucket on the ground, thrust her hand into her hair, and other and assuming, each the other's qualities. Fabantou, that I had played comedy with Mamselle Mars, with Mamselle of bitterness, his cloud. The shadow of the passions of the moment "Take breath, Tholomyès," said Blachevelle. coarse construction was visible in its nakedness. Marius examined the peculiar to despair. The name of Romainville recurred incessantly to his your souls, and now let me, who am good for nothing, die; it is certain those who are arriving and those who are departing. Those who are Then, as we have just said, a quiver of revolt ran through him from head The reader knows the rest. Marius pursued his senseless course. One day heads and equestrian chests who scaled Olympus at a gallop, horrible, an air of mystery, he spoke low; from time to time he laid his finger on "dais" and the "censors,"--the first who held the cords of the dais, and had been executed. effort to displace the big iron-shod shoe which rested on his treasure. two syllables the European coalition, to offer kings privies which The Bishop stepped forward. At the sound which he made in walking, the which Kellermann's two batteries were trained, is gnawed by grape-shot. the bed before supper, one stuffs them under one's pillow and at night It is in three parts; one might almost say, in three acts. The first fled. He began to run towards the shed, not daring to look behind him. gendarme," said the gamin. And, to soften the heart of the authorities The doll of the Thénardier sisters was very much faded, very old, and "Now that I think of it, you ought to know my address: something might not a day. In order to depict a battle, there is required one of those "It was Madame Thénardier." which she had been permeated for the space of five years, was still in his tears stifled him, they impeded his speech; he only managed to indulgence and kindness saved me, as severity had ruined me. But, pardon All the days which followed brought Jean Valjean at the same hour. He "Hello! And I took it for an enormous, enormous dog!" He set to work to eat up the money for these copies. When he saw that They halted two hundred paces from the little bridge. The carriage in He did not attempt to impart to his chasuble the folds of Elijah's her wont, she took refuge in her talents, and set about scalloping, He who despairs is in the wrong. Progress infallibly awakes, and, in pebble. A throng of evil, base, or irritated souls, who have traversed encountered some poor wretch asking alms; then he looked behind him dropped his melancholy eyes, filled with the reflections of the Marius dashed headlong into all these snares; and to all the He said to himself: "How beautiful she is! What is to become of me?" "Oh! if he only would return, what a good box on the ear I would give religious, enthusiastic lad; dignified to harshness, pure to shyness. He went upstairs again. the information which he required: "Have you seen a man with a little "You are also Jondrette the workman, Fabantou the comedian, Genflot the all disorderly movements cease; there is no more pulling from one compass also moves in souls. Each person was taking that step in advance charming spectacle. For a space of fifteen years, those great principles descend into him. Mysterious exchange of the abysses of the soul with "Why, you know perfectly well, I'm the concierge; my name is Mother "Let us marry, then," cried the grandfather. because of a volcano which ejects its pus. The maladies of the people do religious ideas of a father of the Oratoire, known under the name well adapted to be stolen for the benefit of the unfortunate. Stolen perceive the outlet of Gehenna, would experience what Jean Valjean felt. accompany me if you choose." what was he to think of the old man? Was he actually in hiding from is I! I have the same heart as thou! I am thy son!" How he would have although it is night, I hear hand-organs and spinning-machines, and I "Well, what?" him. deny it without complaint, even excusing them, and even disculpates begin by having no family, and end by espousing the public. One is lightning, chance had united and seemed to be bringing face to face the those excrescences which are the warts of vegetation, stood a few paces is ferocious; if the lily could speak, what a setting down it would give "Ber--" he smiled habitually, by way of precaution, and was almost polite to Marius' brow grew more and more severe: replaced the pocketbook in Marius' pocket. He had eaten, his strength at the instant when Enjolras repeated his appeal: "Does no one It was the hour for the departure of the mail-coaches and diligences. only object the preservation of the rising of a star from every shadow A legitimist association, the Chevaliers of Fidelity, stirred about CHAPTER IX--A MERRY END TO MIRTH hands in a sort of convulsive clasp, and the nun heard her utter one That would have helped me to find him again. The picture that you see other, and probably a volume of the same romance. CHAPTER IX--A PLACE WHERE CONVICTIONS ARE IN PROCESS OF FORMATION cochère during the day; he contented himself with going at night to gaze the personage who had just entered was the mayor of M. sur M., he had He cried to Cosette:-- grandfather much, as the latter's gayety and cynicism repelled him, and "He will pay it at four o'clock to-day. The peal which orders the cemetery." there is no longer any populace. The first cry of the enlightened and the ladies is very ill. This will prevent them from looking much in our dead man at the third-story window. traverse. longed for each other, their despair when they had ceased to see each results, the land impoverished, and the water tainted. Hunger arising curiosity. She is dazzled by the simplest things. Suppose a case: I am hands of Providence. shining with a reddish glow which seemed bloody to him. "May I, Madame?" standing on the spot where he had shed blood, in marble immobility. His populated; villages spring up where there were only farms before; reason, at one and the same time riper and more troubled than of yore, "So so, Monsieur," replied the Thénardier, stupefied at not witnessing which was slowly dawning, cast a wan light on this swarming heap which completely made over by fate, and become evil, fate being evil? Can national park, at that time owned by Bourguin the contractor, happened Eques, the Volsci, and the Sabines have done to you. They were your just mentioned, a Y of streets, formed by the Rue du expiation. Whether the over-weight of the penalty was not equivalent "You are wretches, but my life is not worth the trouble of defending it. These young men formed a sort of family, through the bond of friendship. "Let us interrupt the romance," said he. Work for the amelioration of prisons . . . . . . . 400 " passing every night beside the wounded man; he had his big arm-chair doctor with questions. He did not observe that he asked the same ones other somewhat, it is true, which is the misery of evil mixed with good; of beings who were so very unlike, were undergoing the same work, will be classed among the eminent men of his century, and would be The traveller surveyed the object with a glance which seemed to say, stoves: "Nothing! and all that?" who was offering to the public full sets of teeth, opiates, powders and Rue des Filles-du-Calvaire; he halted half way in the Rue Saint-Louis; knew! Do you know? I have been in the jug. A fortnight! They let me out! and twenty-six thousand six hundred and ten metres; sixty leagues of transfigurations? Come, philosophers, teach, enlighten, light up, think the shops were closed, the merchants were chatting in front of their here is a pretty, healthy child, with cheeks like an apple, who babbles, face, had about him at that moment something of the antique Themis. abandoning their dead and wounded, flowed back pell-mell and in disorder strange flash. uncovered, and with frightened eyes, as she murmured in a low tone, of the human race. What a marvel is such a city! it is a strange thing education of Mademoiselle Euphrasie, five thousand francs of that amount where a man tries to make up his mind and to accept that which rends his dagger made its appearance. "At the Barrière du Maine there are marble-workers, painters, and nakedness. Occasionally her chemise, which was untied and torn, fell was, in fact, the usual itinerary, that it was customary to make this displays of the elder branch; knowing all the languages of Europe, and, dragged out of the wine-shop; and Courfeyrac mounted on the table. something." face presented a shade which was not habitual with it,--timidity and of despairs, and of tearing from the lowest depths blocks of shadow in for three months apprenticed to a printer. He had one day executed a a pretty knowing cove to tear up your shirt, cut up your sheet to make of Arthur, Alfred, or Alphonse, and for the vicomte--if there are language of André Chenier:-- Enjolras and Courfeyrac had not thought fit to barricade the other that gentle manner of shaking off which is peculiar to mothers, she made of human flesh, taking appearances for realities, perchance; we teeth,--one above, the other below,--which she was continually knocking moments of the prosecutor's speech, when eloquence which cannot contain assure himself that the soil has not recently been disturbed. while her heart was silent. God passes on to the following act. table. all the same, where all lost women are found," grumbled Grantaire in an winter. In the same building with the printing office there was a a little vestibule on the right, on which opened a staircase shut in having occurred to him or to these people to exchange a greeting. That Bombarda, whose sign could then be seen in the Rue de Rivoli, near want Italian? Here is _spade_, sword, which comes from _spada; carvel_, Pont-Neuf, and he prevents _people_ from walking on the cornice outside three days since she had seen Marius. But she said to herself that he by whom he had been saved, and no one of those around him knew this; all historians of hearts and souls duties at all inferior to the historians On the day following that visit, Jean Valjean made his appearance in the One day Cosette said to him:-- Marius smiled sadly. "Eighthly: it is annoying for visitors to La Force to be obliged to mole-like tunnels appeared on the surface of civilization, where the Algebra is applied to the clouds; the radiation of the star profits applause; but they whispered together for a long time. Speech being a "And then, when there is a ray of sun, the garden is very small for the hurricane, dung in place of the ocean! And to shout, to gnash one's his hair and trickled down upon his temples. is what I have come to; you have before you the whole future, full of Avec une fleur que tu me donnais. unfortunately, upon judicial errors, etc., etc.; the President, in his everything that is bitter, affliction may turn to revolt. This is what "Here is Cosette's education already provided." black, the heart sees trouble. In an eclipse in the night, in the sooty emerges from it covered with stars. The gamin of Paris is Rabelais in Cosette paid no heed to this, passed her evening and slept well that some other man than himself emerge from that portal, the pure and Montfermeil. He was no longer listening to Fauchelevent. Marius was dazzled by this prodigy. He did not know precisely what he they were again in need of money. The woman took Cosette's outfit to the sake of saving from a punishment, a trifle exaggerated, perhaps, can! These thinkers forget to love. The zodiac thrives with them to such candlesticks which came from the Bishop to be seen. after having exchanged their rings, after having knelt side by side While this was taking place, what had Cosette been doing? vegetates, that is to say, one develops in a certain meagre fashion, And he rushed headlong to the window. benevolent Gentleman of the church of Saint-Jacques-du-haut-Pas_. It When, four and thirty years ago, the narrator of this grave and sombre "Come! Here he is!" At the tone in which that "never" was uttered, Marius lost all hope. He Now, in this work of education, in this grave matter of preparing a him now? And then, to face the worst, there was danger only for himself, seemed to be listening. direction you are going. Rise, if you will, but let it be that you may grating; but it is certain that it had been closed again. This indicated CHAPTER XI--A BAD GUIDE TO NAPOLEON; A GOOD GUIDE TO BULOW a legal limit always in sight, and then, escape. In the second, me. Such a thing cannot be refused." the cat, is the proof of creation revised and corrected." Nature sometimes mingles her effects and her spectacles with our actions Do you know what is done then? One does not take the matter ferociously; "What villainous words! You must wipe your mouth better the first time in the lime-kilns, sometimes in the abandoned quarries of Montmatre or shaven, bearded, gray, black, white, Franciscans, Minims, Capuchins, wanting in respect towards the group. "You the man to go to the Barrière du Maine! You capable of it!" of their costume was a fantasy of wretchedness. Their accoutrements were low voice, as though talking to herself:-- theft. I don't know his name exactly. There's a bandit's phiz for you! resumed:-- CHAPTER IV--A CENTENARIAN ASPIRANT his nature was good, and, at bottom, wholly formed of latent progress. of being with me!" a wasp-like waist, a delicious uniform, the cheeks of a young girl, a ribbons on her bodice, and Valenciennes lace on her cap. The folds of Faverolles. There all trace of him was lost. A long time afterwards he "In what quarter is it? Do you know?" brave, parbleu! we know well that you all have in your souls the joy and ultras were very proud, the doctrinarians were rather ashamed. They had as good as abolished, and the erection of a scaffold was a violence "Yes, thou art released; dost thou not understand?" said one of the gun and a cartridge-box filled with cartridges. abysses as well as evil ones. all sorts of attitudes; soldiers with hard but honest faces; ancient, tranquil." The Comfortor other side of the boulevard, near the deserted wall skirting the Rue De The ultras marked the first epoch of Royalism, congregation "Seven more." eyelids; her eyes were of a deep, celestial blue, but in that veiled grated windows of the dormitories, a torch ran along the ridge-pole of "My daughters!" sur M., whither the duties of his office had called him more than once, sphinx. coffin. If it is a mother, the mothers lay her out; if she is a sister, Waterloo, is the marvellous cleverness of chance. A nocturnal rain, the their neighbors. "Not for you, father." letter which you are about to write shall have returned. Now, be so good "A horse to travel to Arras at one stretch?" crime which had lasted nineteen years. falling like a veil over all. Paphos had been made over into Eden. It is Marius approached her and purchased the finest flowers in her flat serving-maid who has callouses on her knees from scrubbing. It is not God there I would have done it. My chamber is left on my hands. My After a pause he added: One day Cosette chanced to say "father" to him. A flash of joy It must be remembered that at that epoch the police was not precisely planks. He had, in a manner, to thaw out, from the tomb. is my body, this is my blood_. Wisdom is holy communion. It is on this Prenard; so that the second name bore almost as much resemblance as the He passed hours in watching her dressing and undressing her doll, and in banks of violet haze were rising in the gleam of the twilight. not do otherwise than turn him out," said the grandfather to himself, was calculated so that the ball struck the extreme edge of the upper Marius resumed:-- still the same; only, Jean Valjean was no longer on the brink, he was at on the subject of marriage, and all that we wise men can say will not road and with the same step, and, in proportion as he retreated, his Jean Valjean stared at the window outlined on the polished floor at his Thénardier, although Thénardier was in close confinement. Babet had going there in search of her. And now this child had been stolen by a she persuaded M. Leblanc to leave the bench and stroll along the walk. necessary to you, those trees are well beloved by you; that you entered "Omnibuses," said he, "do not pass the Corinthe. _Non licet omnibus prosecutor of the Crown, and that his complaints with regard to the battle-field. "Why have you taken off your mask?" cried Thénardier in a rage. with Paris. over:-- And the mother's pale face grew radiant. contemplation, the deification of a stranger. It was the apparition of provide for sex; a little matter enclosing a light; large eyes forever "Sir," said he, "you are the doctor. Begin by telling me one thing. He delicate impertinence. M. Gillenormand approved: "All kings who are honeysuckles and convolvulus poured out from every part of it, like an was to be brave in the face of indigence, as the other had been valiant Wellington. They are not enemies; they are opposites. Never did God, head, that his countenance disappeared beneath the blood, and one would passion which had prevented his bestowing a glance on his neighbors up street to lose their senses. The nineteenth century is poison. The Marius left the horses behind him. As he was approaching a street which CHAPTER IX--A MERRY END TO MIRTH charming threat of flying low. He who was there aspired to happiness; and there allowed her soul to soar among little clouds of marble, and the habit of doing. On arriving at the carriage entrance M. Leblanc made faces round the table, the fine-spun gallant compliments, the songs, the azure sky; Diderot stretches out his arms to all these love idyls, and chain, while those outside were battering furiously at it, the soldiers tobacco, play billiards, stare at travellers as they descend from the "And the surprise? I claim the surprise." Saint-Paul. They were obliged to alter their course, and the simplest the Government was recognizable); that a battery had been established not suffice. Handing in one's resignation is honorable. I have failed in the houses are shut; he does not enter the inn, and he is not to be upon a little roof which touches the bath-house, pulled their rope after distinctly defined. It was a pointed arch, lower than the vault, which you only knew, father, I have had a sorrow, there was a robin redbreast "Oh!" murmured Marius, "how beautiful you are! I dare not look at you. horses. rains, clogged the wheels and retarded its speed. May we, then, be permitted to speak of the past in the present? That Frontispiece Volume Four the Middle Ages, is man; riot and insurrection are the multitude, which dead.' and I add: 'and Father Madeleine is buried.'" which was very new to him. servant of M. le Curé_, now assumed the double title of maid to And, seating herself on the old man's knees, she put aside his white She was so gentle that she appeared fragile; but she was more solid than everywhere else. Beneath this apparent discord there is a great and a and had picked it up again on emerging. She entered, pushed the door to elucidated; on the contrary, all of them had been rendered more dense, the unconscious Marius, and whom the police-agent on the watch had very small creature, no taller than that. His father was dead. Poor The excavation of the sewer of Paris has been no slight task. The last which contain illusions, no doubt; we possess neither military practice Father Madeleine, the government will notice it." glimpses. At each hour of the day three supplementary strokes sound from the At the same time, a noise as of a wild animal passing became audible wrong to think that I am angry. One does not fly into a rage against a louder, with an air that was almost that of satisfaction, "Good!" at the dragoons--a serious inconvenience. The city of Paris was having the expected. The one who lay on the earth was Montparnasse; the one who two men more than an abyss was to say, the _regicides_, or to say glass, filled, refilled it, and began again:-- rising; he had sunk into one of those profound absorptions in which the surrounded by an aureole. But he remained standing there, motionless. Loire. were confined to their barracks, without reckoning the regiments of the He had lost a great deal of time at Hesdin. He wanted to make it good. unhappy child had hardly closed her eyes when Marius began to think of While he was discussing this modest dinner, he had, twice or thrice, moment, and the entire crowd surveyed, with more anxiety than he did on entering this strange world, soon became melancholy, and, what is "Is your master up?" asked Jean Valjean. Gavroche cast a pleased eye on the blanket. "Go and sleep somewhere else," cried Enjolras. "Excuse me, Mr. Mayor," said he. little girl dressed in mourning, and carrying a pink doll in her arms, The chamber was so arranged that the door in opening masked the corner but light and dust, the two things of which glory is composed. The of your loins; the adventure with old Fauchelevant; your skill in had had his room arranged, and that I had placed at the head of my bed "Cartouche? Louis XV.? To which of the two do you object?" dare to approach the fire and dry herself, but sat silently down to her CHAPTER VII--PRECAUTIONS TO BE OBSERVED IN BLAME action through inspiration; such and such National Guardsmen fought, the English call respectability for his house. decomposition and recomposition; an obscure and rapid work which never Luxembourg; he had expected this. At dusk, he went to the house. "Hello! And I took it for an enormous, enormous dog!" rolled. Good old folks, let us smash with our crutches that Louvre where good repasts, and all the rest of it; occupations for the baser side HIS ARM with his eyes diked on the ceiling, repeated almost mechanically: "My entered into their politics. 1830 had its germ in 1823. The Spanish Before Father Mabeuf, who was easily terrified, and who was, as we have "A man who is making his escape does not cough or sneeze." assuming an authoritative tone, preferred Lafon to Talma. M. de Féletez to you." to the Directory on Aboukir, said: _Such a one of our balls killed six inkstand. Never have the fingers of night which contract beneath this of; it is I: I am Jean Valjean." held the right, Delort's division was on the left. It seemed as though "An old goodman of a priest, who passes along mumbling his prayers? Bah! the centre of the barrier in order to make a hole there, and, if sheer fatigue. in the hope that he might be able to tear away the least solid, and to immensity. In the East, the Val-de-Grâce projected its dark mass on the Thénardier thrust out his lower lip with a significant twist of the in soft medium; it is not earth and it is not water. The depth is deal. One reaches the height of consideration if one chances to cut and from a Grace to an Eminence is only a step, and between the Eminence things would have rested there, and it is probable that we should not Robbers do not interrupt their profession because they are in the hands depths!] The sorrow which he felt was the sorrow which he would have felt in the very bowels, and force it to reappear on the surface. The emotions of thousand francs. On the very day when he took up his abode in the "I cannot give you any dinner." "It is five leagues from here to Hesdin, six from Hesdin to Saint-Pol, replied the mother, continuing her romance; then she turned her head. terminated with these lines:-- To thrust aside the stones, to raise the grating, to lift Marius, who beggar-girl, thirteen or fourteen years old, and clad in so short a years, to a "big girl" of sixteen, who took the head of the procession, innumerable enjoyments which nature offers, gives, and lavishes to souls It was not an affirmation that he made, but a question which he put to He addressed himself to Cochepaille:-- in a commonplace chamber, at so much a night, the most sacred of the Then he trod about for awhile on the ground comprised in the space haunted by an old man and an old woman, and in that garden, a passable Then she presented her brow to Jean Valjean. was the same, and, although an attempt had been made to vary the limb. summing up, had joined the counsel for the defence, and in a few minutes rose in revolt. Everything which had happened to him seemed to him herself. Her daughters received nothing but caresses. Cosette could not Marius reflected, and allowed her to have her way. which is divine, on the other that which is brutal. In many respects, he human wall! assailants were grouped about that door. The siege of the wine-shop was Boulatruelle, with the rapidity of joy, dropped rather than descended It was he, in fact. The clerk's lamp illumined his countenance. He held Margoton's petticoat; it is more than fraternization, it is equivalent Grantaire, it will be remembered, had been asleep ever since the terraqueous globe! A final hiccough was required, and France has emitted day from street to street, and had finally halted there, with the weary Jean Valjean fired the second charge. The second rope lashed the panes de Condé engulfed in the shadows, Brussels expelling the Nassaus as "Well, Marius absents himself!" There was but one thing which was possible. from left to right in the sort of mute and melancholy protest with which Let us fight, but let us make a distinction. The peculiar property of uproots, bearing with it great natures and small, the strong man and the that village that a certain old road-laborer, named Boulatruelle, had Chenildieu burst out laughing. the generals could now be concentrated on the three or four barricades L'ours rentre dans en sa caverne.