





The incidents the reader is about to peruse were not all known at M.
sur M. But the small portion of them which became known left such a
memory in that town that a serious gap would exist in this book if we
did not narrate them in their most minute details. Among these details
the reader will encounter two or three improbable circumstances, which
we preserve out of respect for the truth.

On the afternoon following the visit of Javert, M. Madeleine went to
see Fantine according to his wont.

Before entering Fantine’s room, he had Sister Simplice summoned.

The two nuns who performed the services of nurse in the infirmary,
Lazariste ladies, like all sisters of charity, bore the names of Sister
Perpétue and Sister Simplice.

Sister Perpétue was an ordinary villager, a sister of charity in a
coarse style, who had entered the service of God as one enters any
other service. She was a nun as other women are cooks. This type is not
so very rare. The monastic orders gladly accept this heavy peasant
earthenware, which is easily fashioned into a Capuchin or an Ursuline.
These rustics are utilized for the rough work of devotion. The
transition from a drover to a Carmelite is not in the least violent;
the one turns into the other without much effort; the fund of ignorance
common to the village and the cloister is a preparation ready at hand,
and places the boor at once on the same footing as the monk: a little
more amplitude in the smock, and it becomes a frock. Sister Perpétue
was a robust nun from Marines near Pontoise, who chattered her patois,
droned, grumbled, sugared the potion according to the bigotry or the
hypocrisy of the invalid, treated her patients abruptly, roughly, was
crabbed with the dying, almost flung God in their faces, stoned their
death agony with prayers mumbled in a rage; was bold, honest, and
ruddy.

Sister Simplice was white, with a waxen pallor. Beside Sister Perpétue,
she was the taper beside the candle. Vincent de Paul has divinely
traced the features of the Sister of Charity in these admirable words,
in which he mingles as much freedom as servitude: “They shall have for
their convent only the house of the sick; for cell only a hired room;
for chapel only their parish church; for cloister only the streets of
the town and the wards of the hospitals; for enclosure only obedience;
for gratings only the fear of God; for veil only modesty.” This ideal
was realized in the living person of Sister Simplice: she had never
been young, and it seemed as though she would never grow old. No one
could have told Sister Simplice’s age. She was a person—we dare not say
a woman—who was gentle, austere, well-bred, cold, and who had never
lied. She was so gentle that she appeared fragile; but she was more
solid than granite. She touched the unhappy with fingers that were
charmingly pure and fine. There was, so to speak, silence in her
speech; she said just what was necessary, and she possessed a tone of
voice which would have equally edified a confessional or enchanted a
drawing-room. This delicacy accommodated itself to the serge gown,
finding in this harsh contact a continual reminder of heaven and of
God. Let us emphasize one detail. Never to have lied, never to have
said, for any interest whatever, even in indifference, any single thing
which was not the truth, the sacred truth, was Sister Simplice’s
distinctive trait; it was the accent of her virtue. She was almost
renowned in the congregation for this imperturbable veracity. The Abbé
Sicard speaks of Sister Simplice in a letter to the deaf-mute Massieu.
However pure and sincere we may be, we all bear upon our candor the
crack of the little, innocent lie. She did not. Little lie, innocent
lie—does such a thing exist? To lie is the absolute form of evil. To
lie a little is not possible: he who lies, lies the whole lie. To lie
is the very face of the demon. Satan has two names; he is called Satan
and Lying. That is what she thought; and as she thought, so she did.
The result was the whiteness which we have mentioned—a whiteness which
covered even her lips and her eyes with radiance. Her smile was white,
her glance was white. There was not a single spider’s web, not a grain
of dust, on the glass window of that conscience. On entering the order
of Saint Vincent de Paul, she had taken the name of Simplice by special
choice. Simplice of Sicily, as we know, is the saint who preferred to
allow both her breasts to be torn off rather than to say that she had
been born at Segesta when she had been born at Syracuse—a lie which
would have saved her. This patron saint suited this soul.

Sister Simplice, on her entrance into the order, had had two faults
which she had gradually corrected: she had a taste for dainties, and
she liked to receive letters. She never read anything but a book of
prayers printed in Latin, in coarse type. She did not understand Latin,
but she understood the book.

This pious woman had conceived an affection for Fantine, probably
feeling a latent virtue there, and she had devoted herself almost
exclusively to her care.

M. Madeleine took Sister Simplice apart and recommended Fantine to her
in a singular tone, which the sister recalled later on.

On leaving the sister, he approached Fantine.

Fantine awaited M. Madeleine’s appearance every day as one awaits a ray
of warmth and joy. She said to the sisters, “I only live when Monsieur
le Maire is here.”


She had a great deal of fever that day. As soon as she saw M. Madeleine
she asked him:—

“And Cosette?”


He replied with a smile:—

“Soon.”


M. Madeleine was the same as usual with Fantine. Only he remained an
hour instead of half an hour, to Fantine’s great delight. He urged
every one repeatedly not to allow the invalid to want for anything. It
was noticed that there was a moment when his countenance became very
sombre. But this was explained when it became known that the doctor had
bent down to his ear and said to him, “She is losing ground fast.”


Then he returned to the town-hall, and the clerk observed him
attentively examining a road map of France which hung in his study. He
wrote a few figures on a bit of paper with a pencil.






From the town-hall he betook himself to the extremity of the town, to a
Fleming named Master Scaufflaer, French Scaufflaire, who let out
“horses and cabriolets as desired.”


In order to reach this Scaufflaire, the shortest way was to take the
little-frequented street in which was situated the parsonage of the
parish in which M. Madeleine resided. The curé was, it was said, a
worthy, respectable, and sensible man. At the moment when M. Madeleine
arrived in front of the parsonage there was but one passer-by in the
street, and this person noticed this: After the mayor had passed the
priest’s house he halted, stood motionless, then turned about, and
retraced his steps to the door of the parsonage, which had an iron
knocker. He laid his hand quickly on the knocker and lifted it; then he
paused again and stopped short, as though in thought, and after the
lapse of a few seconds, instead of allowing the knocker to fall
abruptly, he placed it gently, and resumed his way with a sort of haste
which had not been apparent previously.

M. Madeleine found Master Scaufflaire at home, engaged in stitching a
harness over.

“Master Scaufflaire,” he inquired, “have you a good horse?”


“Mr. Mayor,” said the Fleming, “all my horses are good. What do you
mean by a good horse?”


“I mean a horse which can travel twenty leagues in a day.”


“The deuce!” said the Fleming. “Twenty leagues!”


“Yes.”


“Hitched to a cabriolet?”


“Yes.”


“And how long can he rest at the end of his journey?”


“He must be able to set out again on the next day if necessary.”


“To traverse the same road?”


“Yes.”


“The deuce! the deuce! And it is twenty leagues?”


M. Madeleine drew from his pocket the paper on which he had pencilled
some figures. He showed it to the Fleming. The figures were 5, 6, 8½.

“You see,” he said, “total, nineteen and a half; as well say twenty
leagues.”


“Mr. Mayor,” returned the Fleming, “I have just what you want. My
little white horse—you may have seen him pass occasionally; he is a
small beast from Lower Boulonnais. He is full of fire. They wanted to
make a saddle-horse of him at first. Bah! He reared, he kicked, he laid
everybody flat on the ground. He was thought to be vicious, and no one
knew what to do with him. I bought him. I harnessed him to a carriage.
That is what he wanted, sir; he is as gentle as a girl; he goes like
the wind. Ah! indeed he must not be mounted. It does not suit his ideas
to be a saddle-horse. Every one has his ambition. ‘Draw? Yes. Carry?
No.’ We must suppose that is what he said to himself.”


“And he will accomplish the trip?”


“Your twenty leagues all at a full trot, and in less than eight hours.
But here are the conditions.”


“State them.”


“In the first place, you will give him half an hour’s breathing spell
midway of the road; he will eat; and some one must be by while he is
eating to prevent the stable boy of the inn from stealing his oats; for
I have noticed that in inns the oats are more often drunk by the stable
men than eaten by the horses.”


“Some one will be by.”


“In the second place—is the cabriolet for Monsieur le Maire?”


“Yes.”


“Does Monsieur le Maire know how to drive?”


“Yes.”


“Well, Monsieur le Maire will travel alone and without baggage, in
order not to overload the horse?”


“Agreed.”


“But as Monsieur le Maire will have no one with him, he will be obliged
to take the trouble himself of seeing that the oats are not stolen.”


“That is understood.”


“I am to have thirty francs a day. The days of rest to be paid for
also—not a farthing less; and the beast’s food to be at Monsieur le
Maire’s expense.”


M. Madeleine drew three napoleons from his purse and laid them on the
table.

“Here is the pay for two days in advance.”


“Fourthly, for such a journey a cabriolet would be too heavy, and would
fatigue the horse. Monsieur le Maire must consent to travel in a little
tilbury that I own.”


“I consent to that.”


“It is light, but it has no cover.”


“That makes no difference to me.”


“Has Monsieur le Maire reflected that we are in the middle of winter?”


M. Madeleine did not reply. The Fleming resumed:—

“That it is very cold?”


M. Madeleine preserved silence.

Master Scaufflaire continued:—

“That it may rain?”


M. Madeleine raised his head and said:—

“The tilbury and the horse will be in front of my door to-morrow
morning at half-past four o’clock.”


“Of course, Monsieur le Maire,” replied Scaufflaire; then, scratching a
speck in the wood of the table with his thumb-nail, he resumed with
that careless air which the Flemings understand so well how to mingle
with their shrewdness:—

“But this is what I am thinking of now: Monsieur le Maire has not told
me where he is going. Where is Monsieur le Maire going?”


He had been thinking of nothing else since the beginning of the
conversation, but he did not know why he had not dared to put the
question.

“Are your horse’s forelegs good?” said M. Madeleine.

“Yes, Monsieur le Maire. You must hold him in a little when going down
hill. Are there many descends between here and the place whither you
are going?”


“Do not forget to be at my door at precisely half-past four o’clock
to-morrow morning,” replied M. Madeleine; and he took his departure.

The Fleming remained “utterly stupid,” as he himself said some time
afterwards.

The mayor had been gone two or three minutes when the door opened
again; it was the mayor once more.

He still wore the same impassive and preoccupied air.

“Monsieur Scaufflaire,” said he, “at what sum do you estimate the value
of the horse and tilbury which you are to let to me,—the one bearing
the other?”


“The one dragging the other, Monsieur le Maire,” said the Fleming, with
a broad smile.

“So be it. Well?”


“Does Monsieur le Maire wish to purchase them or me?”


“No; but I wish to guarantee you in any case. You shall give me back
the sum at my return. At what value do you estimate your horse and
cabriolet?”


“Five hundred francs, Monsieur le Maire.”


“Here it is.”


M. Madeleine laid a bank-bill on the table, then left the room; and
this time he did not return.

Master Scaufflaire experienced a frightful regret that he had not said
a thousand francs. Besides the horse and tilbury together were worth
but a hundred crowns.

The Fleming called his wife, and related the affair to her. “Where the
devil could Monsieur le Maire be going?” They held counsel together.
“He is going to Paris,” said the wife. “I don’t believe it,” said the
husband.

M. Madeleine had forgotten the paper with the figures on it, and it lay
on the chimney-piece. The Fleming picked it up and studied it. “Five,
six, eight and a half? That must designate the posting relays.” He
turned to his wife:—

“I have found out.”


“What?”


“It is five leagues from here to Hesdin, six from Hesdin to Saint-Pol,
eight and a half from Saint-Pol to Arras. He is going to Arras.”


Meanwhile, M. Madeleine had returned home. He had taken the longest way
to return from Master Scaufflaire’s, as though the parsonage door had
been a temptation for him, and he had wished to avoid it. He ascended
to his room, and there he shut himself up, which was a very simple act,
since he liked to go to bed early. Nevertheless, the portress of the
factory, who was, at the same time, M. Madeleine’s only servant,
noticed that the latter’s light was extinguished at half-past eight,
and she mentioned it to the cashier when he came home, adding:—

“Is Monsieur le Maire ill? I thought he had a rather singular air.”


This cashier occupied a room situated directly under M. Madeleine’s
chamber. He paid no heed to the portress’s words, but went to bed and
to sleep. Towards midnight he woke up with a start; in his sleep he had
heard a noise above his head. He listened; it was a footstep pacing
back and forth, as though some one were walking in the room above him.
He listened more attentively, and recognized M. Madeleine’s step. This
struck him as strange; usually, there was no noise in M. Madeleine’s
chamber until he rose in the morning. A moment later the cashier heard
a noise which resembled that of a cupboard being opened, and then shut
again; then a piece of furniture was disarranged; then a pause ensued;
then the step began again. The cashier sat up in bed, quite awake now,
and staring; and through his window-panes he saw the reddish gleam of a
lighted window reflected on the opposite wall; from the direction of
the rays, it could only come from the window of M. Madeleine’s chamber.
The reflection wavered, as though it came rather from a fire which had
been lighted than from a candle. The shadow of the window-frame was not
shown, which indicated that the window was wide open. The fact that
this window was open in such cold weather was surprising. The cashier
fell asleep again. An hour or two later he waked again. The same step
was still passing slowly and regularly back and forth overhead.

The reflection was still visible on the wall, but now it was pale and
peaceful, like the reflection of a lamp or of a candle. The window was
still open.

This is what had taken place in M. Madeleine’s room.






The reader has, no doubt, already divined that M. Madeleine is no other
than Jean Valjean.

We have already gazed into the depths of this conscience; the moment
has now come when we must take another look into it. We do so not
without emotion and trepidation. There is nothing more terrible in
existence than this sort of contemplation. The eye of the spirit can
nowhere find more dazzling brilliance and more shadow than in man; it
can fix itself on no other thing which is more formidable, more
complicated, more mysterious, and more infinite. There is a spectacle
more grand than the sea; it is heaven: there is a spectacle more grand
than heaven; it is the inmost recesses of the soul.

To make the poem of the human conscience, were it only with reference
to a single man, were it only in connection with the basest of men,
would be to blend all epics into one superior and definitive epic.
Conscience is the chaos of chimæras, of lusts, and of temptations; the
furnace of dreams; the lair of ideas of which we are ashamed; it is the
pandemonium of sophisms; it is the battlefield of the passions.
Penetrate, at certain hours, past the livid face of a human being who
is engaged in reflection, and look behind, gaze into that soul, gaze
into that obscurity. There, beneath that external silence, battles of
giants, like those recorded in Homer, are in progress; skirmishes of
dragons and hydras and swarms of phantoms, as in Milton; visionary
circles, as in Dante. What a solemn thing is this infinity which every
man bears within him, and which he measures with despair against the
caprices of his brain and the actions of his life!

Alighieri one day met with a sinister-looking door, before which he
hesitated. Here is one before us, upon whose threshold we hesitate. Let
us enter, nevertheless.

We have but little to add to what the reader already knows of what had
happened to Jean Valjean after the adventure with Little Gervais. From
that moment forth he was, as we have seen, a totally different man.
What the Bishop had wished to make of him, that he carried out. It was
more than a transformation; it was a transfiguration.

He succeeded in disappearing, sold the Bishop’s silver, reserving only
the candlesticks as a souvenir, crept from town to town, traversed
France, came to M. sur M., conceived the idea which we have mentioned,
accomplished what we have related, succeeded in rendering himself safe
from seizure and inaccessible, and, thenceforth, established at M. sur
M., happy in feeling his conscience saddened by the past and the first
half of his existence belied by the last, he lived in peace, reassured
and hopeful, having henceforth only two thoughts,—to conceal his name
and to sanctify his life; to escape men and to return to God.

These two thoughts were so closely intertwined in his mind that they
formed but a single one there; both were equally absorbing and
imperative and ruled his slightest actions. In general, they conspired
to regulate the conduct of his life; they turned him towards the gloom;
they rendered him kindly and simple; they counselled him to the same
things. Sometimes, however, they conflicted. In that case, as the
reader will remember, the man whom all the country of M. sur M. called
M. Madeleine did not hesitate to sacrifice the first to the second—his
security to his virtue. Thus, in spite of all his reserve and all his
prudence, he had preserved the Bishop’s candlesticks, worn mourning for
him, summoned and interrogated all the little Savoyards who passed that
way, collected information regarding the families at Faverolles, and
saved old Fauchelevent’s life, despite the disquieting insinuations of
Javert. It seemed, as we have already remarked, as though he thought,
following the example of all those who have been wise, holy, and just,
that his first duty was not towards himself.

At the same time, it must be confessed, nothing just like this had yet
presented itself.

Never had the two ideas which governed the unhappy man whose sufferings
we are narrating, engaged in so serious a struggle. He understood this
confusedly but profoundly at the very first words pronounced by Javert,
when the latter entered his study. At the moment when that name, which
he had buried beneath so many layers, was so strangely articulated, he
was struck with stupor, and as though intoxicated with the sinister
eccentricity of his destiny; and through this stupor he felt that
shudder which precedes great shocks. He bent like an oak at the
approach of a storm, like a soldier at the approach of an assault. He
felt shadows filled with thunders and lightnings descending upon his
head. As he listened to Javert, the first thought which occurred to him
was to go, to run and denounce himself, to take that Champmathieu out
of prison and place himself there; this was as painful and as poignant
as an incision in the living flesh. Then it passed away, and he said to
himself, “We will see! We will see!” He repressed this first, generous
instinct, and recoiled before heroism.

It would be beautiful, no doubt, after the Bishop’s holy words, after
so many years of repentance and abnegation, in the midst of a penitence
admirably begun, if this man had not flinched for an instant, even in
the presence of so terrible a conjecture, but had continued to walk
with the same step towards this yawning precipice, at the bottom of
which lay heaven; that would have been beautiful; but it was not thus.
We must render an account of the things which went on in this soul, and
we can only tell what there was there. He was carried away, at first,
by the instinct of self-preservation; he rallied all his ideas in
haste, stifled his emotions, took into consideration Javert’s presence,
that great danger, postponed all decision with the firmness of terror,
shook off thought as to what he had to do, and resumed his calmness as
a warrior picks up his buckler.

He remained in this state during the rest of the day, a whirlwind
within, a profound tranquillity without. He took no “preservative
measures,” as they may be called. Everything was still confused, and
jostling together in his brain. His trouble was so great that he could
not perceive the form of a single idea distinctly, and he could have
told nothing about himself, except that he had received a great blow.

He repaired to Fantine’s bed of suffering, as usual, and prolonged his
visit, through a kindly instinct, telling himself that he must behave
thus, and recommend her well to the sisters, in case he should be
obliged to be absent himself. He had a vague feeling that he might be
obliged to go to Arras; and without having the least in the world made
up his mind to this trip, he said to himself that being, as he was,
beyond the shadow of any suspicion, there could be nothing out of the
way in being a witness to what was to take place, and he engaged the
tilbury from Scaufflaire in order to be prepared in any event.

He dined with a good deal of appetite.

On returning to his room, he communed with himself.

He examined the situation, and found it unprecedented; so unprecedented
that in the midst of his reverie he rose from his chair, moved by some
inexplicable impulse of anxiety, and bolted his door. He feared lest
something more should enter. He was barricading himself against
possibilities.

A moment later he extinguished his light; it embarrassed him.

It seemed to him as though he might be seen.

By whom?

Alas! That on which he desired to close the door had already entered;
that which he desired to blind was staring him in the face,—his
conscience.

His conscience; that is to say, God.

Nevertheless, he deluded himself at first; he had a feeling of security
and of solitude; the bolt once drawn, he thought himself impregnable;
the candle extinguished, he felt himself invisible. Then he took
possession of himself: he set his elbows on the table, leaned his head
on his hand, and began to meditate in the dark.

“Where do I stand? Am not I dreaming? What have I heard? Is it really
true that I have seen that Javert, and that he spoke to me in that
manner? Who can that Champmathieu be? So he resembles me! Is it
possible? When I reflect that yesterday I was so tranquil, and so far
from suspecting anything! What was I doing yesterday at this hour? What
is there in this incident? What will the end be? What is to be done?”


This was the torment in which he found himself. His brain had lost its
power of retaining ideas; they passed like waves, and he clutched his
brow in both hands to arrest them.

Nothing but anguish extricated itself from this tumult which
overwhelmed his will and his reason, and from which he sought to draw
proof and resolution.

His head was burning. He went to the window and threw it wide open.
There were no stars in the sky. He returned and seated himself at the
table.

The first hour passed in this manner.

Gradually, however, vague outlines began to take form and to fix
themselves in his meditation, and he was able to catch a glimpse with
precision of the reality,—not the whole situation, but some of the
details. He began by recognizing the fact that, critical and
extraordinary as was this situation, he was completely master of it.

This only caused an increase of his stupor.

Independently of the severe and religious aim which he had assigned to
his actions, all that he had made up to that day had been nothing but a
hole in which to bury his name. That which he had always feared most of
all in his hours of self-communion, during his sleepless nights, was to
ever hear that name pronounced; he had said to himself, that that would
be the end of all things for him; that on the day when that name made
its reappearance it would cause his new life to vanish from about him,
and—who knows?—perhaps even his new soul within him, also. He shuddered
at the very thought that this was possible. Assuredly, if any one had
said to him at such moments that the hour would come when that name
would ring in his ears, when the hideous words, Jean Valjean, would
suddenly emerge from the darkness and rise in front of him, when that
formidable light, capable of dissipating the mystery in which he had
enveloped himself, would suddenly blaze forth above his head, and that
that name would not menace him, that that light would but produce an
obscurity more dense, that this rent veil would but increase the
mystery, that this earthquake would solidify his edifice, that this
prodigious incident would have no other result, so far as he was
concerned, if so it seemed good to him, than that of rendering his
existence at once clearer and more impenetrable, and that, out of his
confrontation with the phantom of Jean Valjean, the good and worthy
citizen Monsieur Madeleine would emerge more honored, more peaceful,
and more respected than ever—if any one had told him that, he would
have tossed his head and regarded the words as those of a madman. Well,
all this was precisely what had just come to pass; all that
accumulation of impossibilities was a fact, and God had permitted these
wild fancies to become real things!

His reverie continued to grow clearer. He came more and more to an
understanding of his position.

It seemed to him that he had but just waked up from some inexplicable
dream, and that he found himself slipping down a declivity in the
middle of the night, erect, shivering, holding back all in vain, on the
very brink of the abyss. He distinctly perceived in the darkness a
stranger, a man unknown to him, whom destiny had mistaken for him, and
whom she was thrusting into the gulf in his stead; in order that the
gulf might close once more, it was necessary that some one, himself or
that other man, should fall into it: he had only let things take their
course.

The light became complete, and he acknowledged this to himself: That
his place was empty in the galleys; that do what he would, it was still
awaiting him; that the theft from little Gervais had led him back to
it; that this vacant place would await him, and draw him on until he
filled it; that this was inevitable and fatal; and then he said to
himself, “that, at this moment, he had a substitute; that it appeared
that a certain Champmathieu had that ill luck, and that, as regards
himself, being present in the galleys in the person of that
Champmathieu, present in society under the name of M. Madeleine, he had
nothing more to fear, provided that he did not prevent men from sealing
over the head of that Champmathieu this stone of infamy which, like the
stone of the sepulchre, falls once, never to rise again.”


All this was so strange and so violent, that there suddenly took place
in him that indescribable movement, which no man feels more than two or
three times in the course of his life, a sort of convulsion of the
conscience which stirs up all that there is doubtful in the heart,
which is composed of irony, of joy, and of despair, and which may be
called an outburst of inward laughter.

He hastily relighted his candle.

“Well, what then?” he said to himself; “what am I afraid of? What is
there in all that for me to think about? I am safe; all is over. I had
but one partly open door through which my past might invade my life,
and behold that door is walled up forever! That Javert, who has been
annoying me so long; that terrible instinct which seemed to have
divined me, which had divined me—good God! and which followed me
everywhere; that frightful hunting-dog, always making a point at me, is
thrown off the scent, engaged elsewhere, absolutely turned from the
trail: henceforth he is satisfied; he will leave me in peace; he has
his Jean Valjean. Who knows? it is even probable that he will wish to
leave town! And all this has been brought about without any aid from
me, and I count for nothing in it! Ah! but where is the misfortune in
this? Upon my honor, people would think, to see me, that some
catastrophe had happened to me! After all, if it does bring harm to
some one, that is not my fault in the least: it is Providence which has
done it all; it is because it wishes it so to be, evidently. Have I the
right to disarrange what it has arranged? What do I ask now? Why should
I meddle? It does not concern me; what! I am not satisfied: but what
more do I want? The goal to which I have aspired for so many years, the
dream of my nights, the object of my prayers to Heaven,—security,—I
have now attained; it is God who wills it; I can do nothing against the
will of God, and why does God will it? In order that I may continue
what I have begun, that I may do good, that I may one day be a grand
and encouraging example, that it may be said at last, that a little
happiness has been attached to the penance which I have undergone, and
to that virtue to which I have returned. Really, I do not understand
why I was afraid, a little while ago, to enter the house of that good
curé, and to ask his advice; this is evidently what he would have said
to me: It is settled; let things take their course; let the good God do
as he likes!”


Thus did he address himself in the depths of his own conscience,
bending over what may be called his own abyss; he rose from his chair,
and began to pace the room: “Come,” said he, “let us think no more
about it; my resolve is taken!” but he felt no joy.

Quite the reverse.

One can no more prevent thought from recurring to an idea than one can
the sea from returning to the shore: the sailor calls it the tide; the
guilty man calls it remorse; God upheaves the soul as he does the
ocean.

After the expiration of a few moments, do what he would, he resumed the
gloomy dialogue in which it was he who spoke and he who listened,
saying that which he would have preferred to ignore, and listened to
that which he would have preferred not to hear, yielding to that
mysterious power which said to him: “Think!” as it said to another
condemned man, two thousand years ago, “March on!”


Before proceeding further, and in order to make ourselves fully
understood, let us insist upon one necessary observation.

It is certain that people do talk to themselves; there is no living
being who has not done it. It may even be said that the word is never a
more magnificent mystery than when it goes from thought to conscience
within a man, and when it returns from conscience to thought; it is in
this sense only that the words so often employed in this chapter, _he
said, he exclaimed_, must be understood; one speaks to one’s self,
talks to one’s self, exclaims to one’s self without breaking the
external silence; there is a great tumult; everything about us talks
except the mouth. The realities of the soul are nonetheless realities
because they are not visible and palpable.

So he asked himself where he stood. He interrogated himself upon that
“settled resolve.” He confessed to himself that all that he had just
arranged in his mind was monstrous, that “to let things take their
course, to let the good God do as he liked,” was simply horrible; to
allow this error of fate and of men to be carried out, not to hinder
it, to lend himself to it through his silence, to do nothing, in short,
was to do everything! that this was hypocritical baseness in the last
degree! that it was a base, cowardly, sneaking, abject, hideous crime!

For the first time in eight years, the wretched man had just tasted the
bitter savor of an evil thought and of an evil action.

He spit it out with disgust.

He continued to question himself. He asked himself severely what he had
meant by this, “My object is attained!” He declared to himself that his
life really had an object; but what object? To conceal his name? To
deceive the police? Was it for so petty a thing that he had done all
that he had done? Had he not another and a grand object, which was the
true one—to save, not his person, but his soul; to become honest and
good once more; to be a just man? Was it not that above all, that
alone, which he had always desired, which the Bishop had enjoined upon
him—to shut the door on his past? But he was not shutting it! great
God! he was re-opening it by committing an infamous action! He was
becoming a thief once more, and the most odious of thieves! He was
robbing another of his existence, his life, his peace, his place in the
sunshine. He was becoming an assassin. He was murdering, morally
murdering, a wretched man. He was inflicting on him that frightful
living death, that death beneath the open sky, which is called the
galleys. On the other hand, to surrender himself to save that man,
struck down with so melancholy an error, to resume his own name, to
become once more, out of duty, the convict Jean Valjean, that was, in
truth, to achieve his resurrection, and to close forever that hell
whence he had just emerged; to fall back there in appearance was to
escape from it in reality. This must be done! He had done nothing if he
did not do all this; his whole life was useless; all his penitence was
wasted. There was no longer any need of saying, “What is the use?” He
felt that the Bishop was there, that the Bishop was present all the
more because he was dead, that the Bishop was gazing fixedly at him,
that henceforth Mayor Madeleine, with all his virtues, would be
abominable to him, and that the convict Jean Valjean would be pure and
admirable in his sight; that men beheld his mask, but that the Bishop
saw his face; that men saw his life, but that the Bishop beheld his
conscience. So he must go to Arras, deliver the false Jean Valjean, and
denounce the real one. Alas! that was the greatest of sacrifices, the
most poignant of victories, the last step to take; but it must be done.
Sad fate! he would enter into sanctity only in the eyes of God when he
returned to infamy in the eyes of men.

“Well,” said he, “let us decide upon this; let us do our duty; let us
save this man.” He uttered these words aloud, without perceiving that
he was speaking aloud.

He took his books, verified them, and put them in order. He flung in
the fire a bundle of bills which he had against petty and embarrassed
tradesmen. He wrote and sealed a letter, and on the envelope it might
have been read, had there been any one in his chamber at the moment,
_To Monsieur Laffitte, Banker, Rue d’Artois, Paris_. He drew from his
secretary a pocket-book which contained several bank-notes and the
passport of which he had made use that same year when he went to the
elections.

Any one who had seen him during the execution of these various acts,
into which there entered such grave thought, would have had no
suspicion of what was going on within him. Only occasionally did his
lips move; at other times he raised his head and fixed his gaze upon
some point of the wall, as though there existed at that point something
which he wished to elucidate or interrogate.

When he had finished the letter to M. Laffitte, he put it into his
pocket, together with the pocket-book, and began his walk once more.

His reverie had not swerved from its course. He continued to see his
duty clearly, written in luminous letters, which flamed before his eyes
and changed its place as he altered the direction of his glance:—

_“Go! Tell your name! Denounce yourself!”_

In the same way he beheld, as though they had passed before him in
visible forms, the two ideas which had, up to that time, formed the
double rule of his soul,—the concealment of his name, the
sanctification of his life. For the first time they appeared to him as
absolutely distinct, and he perceived the distance which separated
them. He recognized the fact that one of these ideas was, necessarily,
good, while the other might become bad; that the first was
self-devotion, and that the other was personality; that the one said,
_my neighbour_, and that the other said, _myself_; that one emanated
from the light, and the other from darkness.

They were antagonistic. He saw them in conflict. In proportion as he
meditated, they grew before the eyes of his spirit. They had now
attained colossal statures, and it seemed to him that he beheld within
himself, in that infinity of which we were recently speaking, in the
midst of the darkness and the lights, a goddess and a giant contending.

He was filled with terror; but it seemed to him that the good thought
was getting the upper hand.

He felt that he was on the brink of the second decisive crisis of his
conscience and of his destiny; that the Bishop had marked the first
phase of his new life, and that Champmathieu marked the second. After
the grand crisis, the grand test.

But the fever, allayed for an instant, gradually resumed possession of
him. A thousand thoughts traversed his mind, but they continued to
fortify him in his resolution.

One moment he said to himself that he was, perhaps, taking the matter
too keenly; that, after all, this Champmathieu was not interesting, and
that he had actually been guilty of theft.

He answered himself: “If this man has, indeed, stolen a few apples,
that means a month in prison. It is a long way from that to the
galleys. And who knows? Did he steal? Has it been proved? The name of
Jean Valjean overwhelms him, and seems to dispense with proofs. Do not
the attorneys for the Crown always proceed in this manner? He is
supposed to be a thief because he is known to be a convict.”


In another instant the thought had occurred to him that, when he
denounced himself, the heroism of his deed might, perhaps, be taken
into consideration, and his honest life for the last seven years, and
what he had done for the district, and that they would have mercy on
him.

But this supposition vanished very quickly, and he smiled bitterly as
he remembered that the theft of the forty sous from little Gervais put
him in the position of a man guilty of a second offence after
conviction, that this affair would certainly come up, and, according to
the precise terms of the law, would render him liable to penal
servitude for life.

He turned aside from all illusions, detached himself more and more from
earth, and sought strength and consolation elsewhere. He told himself
that he must do his duty; that perhaps he should not be more unhappy
after doing his duty than after having avoided it; that if he _allowed
things to take their own course_, if he remained at M. sur M., his
consideration, his good name, his good works, the deference and
veneration paid to him, his charity, his wealth, his popularity, his
virtue, would be seasoned with a crime. And what would be the taste of
all these holy things when bound up with this hideous thing? while, if
he accomplished his sacrifice, a celestial idea would be mingled with
the galleys, the post, the iron necklet, the green cap, unceasing toil,
and pitiless shame.

At length he told himself that it must be so, that his destiny was thus
allotted, that he had not authority to alter the arrangements made on
high, that, in any case, he must make his choice: virtue without and
abomination within, or holiness within and infamy without.

The stirring up of these lugubrious ideas did not cause his courage to
fail, but his brain grow weary. He began to think of other things, of
indifferent matters, in spite of himself.

The veins in his temples throbbed violently; he still paced to and fro;
midnight sounded first from the parish church, then from the town-hall;
he counted the twelve strokes of the two clocks, and compared the
sounds of the two bells; he recalled in this connection the fact that,
a few days previously, he had seen in an ironmonger’s shop an ancient
clock for sale, upon which was written the name, _Antoine-Albin de
Romainville_.

He was cold; he lighted a small fire; it did not occur to him to close
the window.

In the meantime he had relapsed into his stupor; he was obliged to make
a tolerably vigorous effort to recall what had been the subject of his
thoughts before midnight had struck; he finally succeeded in doing
this.

“Ah! yes,” he said to himself, “I had resolved to inform against
myself.”


And then, all of a sudden, he thought of Fantine.

“Hold!” said he, “and what about that poor woman?”


Here a fresh crisis declared itself.

Fantine, by appearing thus abruptly in his reverie, produced the effect
of an unexpected ray of light; it seemed to him as though everything
about him were undergoing a change of aspect: he exclaimed:—

“Ah! but I have hitherto considered no one but myself; it is proper for
me to hold my tongue or to denounce myself, to conceal my person or to
save my soul, to be a despicable and respected magistrate, or an
infamous and venerable convict; it is I, it is always I and nothing but
I: but, good God! all this is egotism; these are diverse forms of
egotism, but it is egotism all the same. What if I were to think a
little about others? The highest holiness is to think of others; come,
let us examine the matter. The _I_ excepted, the _I_ effaced, the _I_
forgotten, what would be the result of all this? What if I denounce
myself? I am arrested; this Champmathieu is released; I am put back in
the galleys; that is well—and what then? What is going on here? Ah!
here is a country, a town, here are factories, an industry, workers,
both men and women, aged grandsires, children, poor people! All this I
have created; all these I provide with their living; everywhere where
there is a smoking chimney, it is I who have placed the brand on the
hearth and meat in the pot; I have created ease, circulation, credit;
before me there was nothing; I have elevated, vivified, informed with
life, fecundated, stimulated, enriched the whole country-side; lacking
me, the soul is lacking; I take myself off, everything dies: and this
woman, who has suffered so much, who possesses so many merits in spite
of her fall; the cause of all whose misery I have unwittingly been! And
that child whom I meant to go in search of, whom I have promised to her
mother; do I not also owe something to this woman, in reparation for
the evil which I have done her? If I disappear, what happens? The
mother dies; the child becomes what it can; that is what will take
place, if I denounce myself. If I do not denounce myself? come, let us
see how it will be if I do not denounce myself.”


After putting this question to himself, he paused; he seemed to undergo
a momentary hesitation and trepidation; but it did not last long, and
he answered himself calmly:—

“Well, this man is going to the galleys; it is true, but what the
deuce! he has stolen! There is no use in my saying that he has not been
guilty of theft, for he has! I remain here; I go on: in ten years I
shall have made ten millions; I scatter them over the country; I have
nothing of my own; what is that to me? It is not for myself that I am
doing it; the prosperity of all goes on augmenting; industries are
aroused and animated; factories and shops are multiplied; families, a
hundred families, a thousand families, are happy; the district becomes
populated; villages spring up where there were only farms before; farms
rise where there was nothing; wretchedness disappears, and with
wretchedness debauchery, prostitution, theft, murder; all vices
disappear, all crimes: and this poor mother rears her child; and behold
a whole country rich and honest! Ah! I was a fool! I was absurd! what
was that I was saying about denouncing myself? I really must pay
attention and not be precipitate about anything. What! because it would
have pleased me to play the grand and generous; this is melodrama,
after all; because I should have thought of no one but myself, the
idea! for the sake of saving from a punishment, a trifle exaggerated,
perhaps, but just at bottom, no one knows whom, a thief, a
good-for-nothing, evidently, a whole country-side must perish! a poor
woman must die in the hospital! a poor little girl must die in the
street! like dogs; ah, this is abominable! And without the mother even
having seen her child once more, almost without the child’s having
known her mother; and all that for the sake of an old wretch of an
apple-thief who, most assuredly, has deserved the galleys for something
else, if not for that; fine scruples, indeed, which save a guilty man
and sacrifice the innocent, which save an old vagabond who has only a
few years to live at most, and who will not be more unhappy in the
galleys than in his hovel, and which sacrifice a whole population,
mothers, wives, children. This poor little Cosette who has no one in
the world but me, and who is, no doubt, blue with cold at this moment
in the den of those Thénardiers; those peoples are rascals; and I was
going to neglect my duty towards all these poor creatures; and I was
going off to denounce myself; and I was about to commit that
unspeakable folly! Let us put it at the worst: suppose that there is a
wrong action on my part in this, and that my conscience will reproach
me for it some day, to accept, for the good of others, these reproaches
which weigh only on myself; this evil action which compromises my soul
alone; in that lies self-sacrifice; in that alone there is virtue.”


He rose and resumed his march; this time, he seemed to be content.

Diamonds are found only in the dark places of the earth; truths are
found only in the depths of thought. It seemed to him, that, after
having descended into these depths, after having long groped among the
darkest of these shadows, he had at last found one of these diamonds,
one of these truths, and that he now held it in his hand, and he was
dazzled as he gazed upon it.

“Yes,” he thought, “this is right; I am on the right road; I have the
solution; I must end by holding fast to something; my resolve is taken;
let things take their course; let us no longer vacillate; let us no
longer hang back; this is for the interest of all, not for my own; I am
Madeleine, and Madeleine I remain. Woe to the man who is Jean Valjean!
I am no longer he; I do not know that man; I no longer know anything;
it turns out that some one is Jean Valjean at the present moment; let
him look out for himself; that does not concern me; it is a fatal name
which was floating abroad in the night; if it halts and descends on a
head, so much the worse for that head.”


He looked into the little mirror which hung above his chimney-piece,
and said:—

“Hold! it has relieved me to come to a decision; I am quite another man
now.”


He proceeded a few paces further, then he stopped short.

“Come!” he said, “I must not flinch before any of the consequences of
the resolution which I have once adopted; there are still threads which
attach me to that Jean Valjean; they must be broken; in this very room
there are objects which would betray me, dumb things which would bear
witness against me; it is settled; all these things must disappear.”


He fumbled in his pocket, drew out his purse, opened it, and took out a
small key; he inserted the key in a lock whose aperture could hardly be
seen, so hidden was it in the most sombre tones of the design which
covered the wall-paper; a secret receptacle opened, a sort of false
cupboard constructed in the angle between the wall and the
chimney-piece; in this hiding-place there were some rags—a blue linen
blouse, an old pair of trousers, an old knapsack, and a huge thorn
cudgel shod with iron at both ends. Those who had seen Jean Valjean at
the epoch when he passed through D—— in October, 1815, could easily
have recognized all the pieces of this miserable outfit.

He had preserved them as he had preserved the silver candlesticks, in
order to remind himself continually of his starting-point, but he had
concealed all that came from the galleys, and he had allowed the
candlesticks which came from the Bishop to be seen.

He cast a furtive glance towards the door, as though he feared that it
would open in spite of the bolt which fastened it; then, with a quick
and abrupt movement, he took the whole in his arms at once, without
bestowing so much as a glance on the things which he had so religiously
and so perilously preserved for so many years, and flung them all,
rags, cudgel, knapsack, into the fire.

[Illustration: Candlesticks Into the Fire]

He closed the false cupboard again, and with redoubled precautions,
henceforth unnecessary, since it was now empty, he concealed the door
behind a heavy piece of furniture, which he pushed in front of it.

After the lapse of a few seconds, the room and the opposite wall were
lighted up with a fierce, red, tremulous glow. Everything was on fire;
the thorn cudgel snapped and threw out sparks to the middle of the
chamber.

As the knapsack was consumed, together with the hideous rags which it
contained, it revealed something which sparkled in the ashes. By
bending over, one could have readily recognized a coin,—no doubt the
forty-sou piece stolen from the little Savoyard.

He did not look at the fire, but paced back and forth with the same
step.

All at once his eye fell on the two silver candlesticks, which shone
vaguely on the chimney-piece, through the glow.

“Hold!” he thought; “the whole of Jean Valjean is still in them. They
must be destroyed also.”


He seized the two candlesticks.

There was still fire enough to allow of their being put out of shape,
and converted into a sort of unrecognizable bar of metal.

He bent over the hearth and warmed himself for a moment. He felt a
sense of real comfort. “How good warmth is!” said he.

He stirred the live coals with one of the candlesticks.

A minute more, and they were both in the fire.

At that moment it seemed to him that he heard a voice within him
shouting: “Jean Valjean! Jean Valjean!”


His hair rose upright: he became like a man who is listening to some
terrible thing.

“Yes, that’s it! finish!” said the voice. “Complete what you are about!
Destroy these candlesticks! Annihilate this souvenir! Forget the
Bishop! Forget everything! Destroy this Champmathieu, do! That is
right! Applaud yourself! So it is settled, resolved, fixed, agreed:
here is an old man who does not know what is wanted of him, who has,
perhaps, done nothing, an innocent man, whose whole misfortune lies in
your name, upon whom your name weighs like a crime, who is about to be
taken for you, who will be condemned, who will finish his days in
abjectness and horror. That is good! Be an honest man yourself; remain
Monsieur le Maire; remain honorable and honored; enrich the town;
nourish the indigent; rear the orphan; live happy, virtuous, and
admired; and, during this time, while you are here in the midst of joy
and light, there will be a man who will wear your red blouse, who will
bear your name in ignominy, and who will drag your chain in the
galleys. Yes, it is well arranged thus. Ah, wretch!”


The perspiration streamed from his brow. He fixed a haggard eye on the
candlesticks. But that within him which had spoken had not finished.
The voice continued:—

“Jean Valjean, there will be around you many voices, which will make a
great noise, which will talk very loud, and which will bless you, and
only one which no one will hear, and which will curse you in the dark.
Well! listen, infamous man! All those benedictions will fall back
before they reach heaven, and only the malediction will ascend to God.”


This voice, feeble at first, and which had proceeded from the most
obscure depths of his conscience, had gradually become startling and
formidable, and he now heard it in his very ear. It seemed to him that
it had detached itself from him, and that it was now speaking outside
of him. He thought that he heard the last words so distinctly, that he
glanced around the room in a sort of terror.

“Is there any one here?” he demanded aloud, in utter bewilderment.

Then he resumed, with a laugh which resembled that of an idiot:—

“How stupid I am! There can be no one!”


There was some one; but the person who was there was of those whom the
human eye cannot see.

He placed the candlesticks on the chimney-piece.

Then he resumed his monotonous and lugubrious tramp, which troubled the
dreams of the sleeping man beneath him, and awoke him with a start.

This tramping to and fro soothed and at the same time intoxicated him.
It sometimes seems, on supreme occasions, as though people moved about
for the purpose of asking advice of everything that they may encounter
by change of place. After the lapse of a few minutes he no longer knew
his position.

He now recoiled in equal terror before both the resolutions at which he
had arrived in turn. The two ideas which counselled him appeared to him
equally fatal. What a fatality! What conjunction that that Champmathieu
should have been taken for him; to be overwhelmed by precisely the
means which Providence seemed to have employed, at first, to strengthen
his position!

There was a moment when he reflected on the future. Denounce himself,
great God! Deliver himself up! With immense despair he faced all that
he should be obliged to leave, all that he should be obliged to take up
once more. He should have to bid farewell to that existence which was
so good, so pure, so radiant, to the respect of all, to honor, to
liberty. He should never more stroll in the fields; he should never
more hear the birds sing in the month of May; he should never more
bestow alms on the little children; he should never more experience the
sweetness of having glances of gratitude and love fixed upon him; he
should quit that house which he had built, that little chamber!
Everything seemed charming to him at that moment. Never again should he
read those books; never more should he write on that little table of
white wood; his old portress, the only servant whom he kept, would
never more bring him his coffee in the morning. Great God! instead of
that, the convict gang, the iron necklet, the red waistcoat, the chain
on his ankle, fatigue, the cell, the camp bed all those horrors which
he knew so well! At his age, after having been what he was! If he were
only young again! but to be addressed in his old age as “thou” by any
one who pleased; to be searched by the convict-guard; to receive the
galley-sergeant’s cudgellings; to wear iron-bound shoes on his bare
feet; to have to stretch out his leg night and morning to the hammer of
the roundsman who visits the gang; to submit to the curiosity of
strangers, who would be told: “That man yonder is the famous Jean
Valjean, who was mayor of M. sur M.”; and at night, dripping with
perspiration, overwhelmed with lassitude, their green caps drawn over
their eyes, to remount, two by two, the ladder staircase of the galleys
beneath the sergeant’s whip. Oh, what misery! Can destiny, then, be as
malicious as an intelligent being, and become as monstrous as the human
heart?

And do what he would, he always fell back upon the heartrending dilemma
which lay at the foundation of his reverie: “Should he remain in
paradise and become a demon? Should he return to hell and become an
angel?”


What was to be done? Great God! what was to be done?

The torment from which he had escaped with so much difficulty was
unchained afresh within him. His ideas began to grow confused once
more; they assumed a kind of stupefied and mechanical quality which is
peculiar to despair. The name of Romainville recurred incessantly to
his mind, with the two verses of a song which he had heard in the past.
He thought that Romainville was a little grove near Paris, where young
lovers go to pluck lilacs in the month of April.

He wavered outwardly as well as inwardly. He walked like a little child
who is permitted to toddle alone.

At intervals, as he combated his lassitude, he made an effort to
recover the mastery of his mind. He tried to put to himself, for the
last time, and definitely, the problem over which he had, in a manner,
fallen prostrate with fatigue: Ought he to denounce himself? Ought he
to hold his peace? He could not manage to see anything distinctly. The
vague aspects of all the courses of reasoning which had been sketched
out by his meditations quivered and vanished, one after the other, into
smoke. He only felt that, to whatever course of action he made up his
mind, something in him must die, and that of necessity, and without his
being able to escape the fact; that he was entering a sepulchre on the
right hand as much as on the left; that he was passing through a death
agony,—the agony of his happiness, or the agony of his virtue.

Alas! all his resolution had again taken possession of him. He was no
further advanced than at the beginning.

Thus did this unhappy soul struggle in its anguish. Eighteen hundred
years before this unfortunate man, the mysterious Being in whom are
summed up all the sanctities and all the sufferings of humanity had
also long thrust aside with his hand, while the olive-trees quivered in
the wild wind of the infinite, the terrible cup which appeared to Him
dripping with darkness and overflowing with shadows in the depths all
studded with stars.






Three o’clock in the morning had just struck, and he had been walking
thus for five hours, almost uninterruptedly, when he at length allowed
himself to drop into his chair.

There he fell asleep and had a dream.

This dream, like the majority of dreams, bore no relation to the
situation, except by its painful and heart-rending character, but it
made an impression on him. This nightmare struck him so forcibly that
he wrote it down later on. It is one of the papers in his own
handwriting which he has bequeathed to us. We think that we have here
reproduced the thing in strict accordance with the text.

Of whatever nature this dream may be, the history of this night would
be incomplete if we were to omit it: it is the gloomy adventure of an
ailing soul.

Here it is. On the envelope we find this line inscribed, “The Dream I
had that Night.”


“I was in a plain; a vast, gloomy plain, where there was no grass. It
did not seem to me to be daylight nor yet night.

“I was walking with my brother, the brother of my childish years, the
brother of whom, I must say, I never think, and whom I now hardly
remember.

“We were conversing and we met some passers-by. We were talking of a
neighbor of ours in former days, who had always worked with her window
open from the time when she came to live on the street. As we talked we
felt cold because of that open window.

“There were no trees in the plain. We saw a man passing close to us. He
was entirely nude, of the hue of ashes, and mounted on a horse which
was earth color. The man had no hair; we could see his skull and the
veins on it. In his hand he held a switch which was as supple as a
vine-shoot and as heavy as iron. This horseman passed and said nothing
to us.

“My brother said to me, ‘Let us take to the hollow road.’

“There existed a hollow way wherein one saw neither a single shrub nor
a spear of moss. Everything was dirt-colored, even the sky. After
proceeding a few paces, I received no reply when I spoke: I perceived
that my brother was no longer with me.

“I entered a village which I espied. I reflected that it must be
Romainville. (Why Romainville?)5

“The first street that I entered was deserted. I entered a second
street. Behind the angle formed by the two streets, a man was standing
erect against the wall. I said to this man:—

“‘What country is this? Where am I?’ The man made no reply. I saw the
door of a house open, and I entered.

“The first chamber was deserted. I entered the second. Behind the door
of this chamber a man was standing erect against the wall. I inquired
of this man, ‘Whose house is this? Where am I?’ The man replied not.

“The house had a garden. I quitted the house and entered the garden.
The garden was deserted. Behind the first tree I found a man standing
upright. I said to this man, ‘What garden is this? Where am I?’ The man
did not answer.

“I strolled into the village, and perceived that it was a town. All the
streets were deserted, all the doors were open. Not a single living
being was passing in the streets, walking through the chambers or
strolling in the gardens. But behind each angle of the walls, behind
each door, behind each tree, stood a silent man. Only one was to be
seen at a time. These men watched me pass.

“I left the town and began to ramble about the fields.

“After the lapse of some time I turned back and saw a great crowd
coming up behind me. I recognized all the men whom I had seen in that
town. They had strange heads. They did not seem to be in a hurry, yet
they walked faster than I did. They made no noise as they walked. In an
instant this crowd had overtaken and surrounded me. The faces of these
men were earthen in hue.

“Then the first one whom I had seen and questioned on entering the town
said to me:—

“‘Whither are you going! Do you not know that you have been dead this
long time?’

“I opened my mouth to reply, and I perceived that there was no one near
me.”


He woke. He was icy cold. A wind which was chill like the breeze of
dawn was rattling the leaves of the window, which had been left open on
their hinges. The fire was out. The candle was nearing its end. It was
still black night.

He rose, he went to the window. There were no stars in the sky even
yet.

From his window the yard of the house and the street were visible. A
sharp, harsh noise, which made him drop his eyes, resounded from the
earth.

Below him he perceived two red stars, whose rays lengthened and
shortened in a singular manner through the darkness.

As his thoughts were still half immersed in the mists of sleep, “Hold!”
said he, “there are no stars in the sky. They are on earth now.”


But this confusion vanished; a second sound similar to the first roused
him thoroughly; he looked and recognized the fact that these two stars
were the lanterns of a carriage. By the light which they cast he was
able to distinguish the form of this vehicle. It was a tilbury
harnessed to a small white horse. The noise which he had heard was the
trampling of the horse’s hoofs on the pavement.

“What vehicle is this?” he said to himself. “Who is coming here so
early in the morning?”


At that moment there came a light tap on the door of his chamber.

He shuddered from head to foot, and cried in a terrible voice:—

“Who is there?”


Some one said:—

“I, Monsieur le Maire.”


He recognized the voice of the old woman who was his portress.

“Well!” he replied, “what is it?”


“Monsieur le Maire, it is just five o’clock in the morning.”


“What is that to me?”


“The cabriolet is here, Monsieur le Maire.”


“What cabriolet?”


“The tilbury.”


“What tilbury?”


“Did not Monsieur le Maire order a tilbury?”


“No,” said he.

“The coachman says that he has come for Monsieur le Maire.”


“What coachman?”


“M. Scaufflaire’s coachman.”


“M. Scaufflaire?”


That name sent a shudder over him, as though a flash of lightning had
passed in front of his face.

“Ah! yes,” he resumed; “M. Scaufflaire!”


If the old woman could have seen him at that moment, she would have
been frightened.

A tolerably long silence ensued. He examined the flame of the candle
with a stupid air, and from around the wick he took some of the burning
wax, which he rolled between his fingers. The old woman waited for him.
She even ventured to uplift her voice once more:—

“What am I to say, Monsieur le Maire?”


“Say that it is well, and that I am coming down.”







The posting service from Arras to M. sur M. was still operated at this
period by small mail-wagons of the time of the Empire. These
mail-wagons were two-wheeled cabriolets, upholstered inside with
fawn-colored leather, hung on springs, and having but two seats, one
for the postboy, the other for the traveller. The wheels were armed
with those long, offensive axles which keep other vehicles at a
distance, and which may still be seen on the road in Germany. The
despatch box, an immense oblong coffer, was placed behind the vehicle
and formed a part of it. This coffer was painted black, and the
cabriolet yellow.

These vehicles, which have no counterparts nowadays, had something
distorted and hunchbacked about them; and when one saw them passing in
the distance, and climbing up some road to the horizon, they resembled
the insects which are called, I think, termites, and which, though with
but little corselet, drag a great train behind them. But they travelled
at a very rapid rate. The post-wagon which set out from Arras at one
o’clock every night, after the mail from Paris had passed, arrived at
M. sur M. a little before five o’clock in the morning.

That night the wagon which was descending to M. sur M. by the Hesdin
road, collided at the corner of a street, just as it was entering the
town, with a little tilbury harnessed to a white horse, which was going
in the opposite direction, and in which there was but one person, a man
enveloped in a mantle. The wheel of the tilbury received quite a
violent shock. The postman shouted to the man to stop, but the
traveller paid no heed and pursued his road at full gallop.

“That man is in a devilish hurry!” said the postman.

The man thus hastening on was the one whom we have just seen struggling
in convulsions which are certainly deserving of pity.

Whither was he going? He could not have told. Why was he hastening? He
did not know. He was driving at random, straight ahead. Whither? To
Arras, no doubt; but he might have been going elsewhere as well. At
times he was conscious of it, and he shuddered. He plunged into the
night as into a gulf. Something urged him forward; something drew him
on. No one could have told what was taking place within him; every one
will understand it. What man is there who has not entered, at least
once in his life, into that obscure cavern of the unknown?

However, he had resolved on nothing, decided nothing, formed no plan,
done nothing. None of the actions of his conscience had been decisive.
He was, more than ever, as he had been at the first moment.

Why was he going to Arras?

He repeated what he had already said to himself when he had hired
Scaufflaire’s cabriolet: that, whatever the result was to be, there was
no reason why he should not see with his own eyes, and judge of matters
for himself; that this was even prudent; that he must know what took
place; that no decision could be arrived at without having observed and
scrutinized; that one made mountains out of everything from a distance;
that, at any rate, when he should have seen that Champmathieu, some
wretch, his conscience would probably be greatly relieved to allow him
to go to the galleys in his stead; that Javert would indeed be there;
and that Brevet, that Chenildieu, that Cochepaille, old convicts who
had known him; but they certainly would not recognize him;—bah! what an
idea! that Javert was a hundred leagues from suspecting the truth; that
all conjectures and all suppositions were fixed on Champmathieu, and
that there is nothing so headstrong as suppositions and conjectures;
that accordingly there was no danger.

That it was, no doubt, a dark moment, but that he should emerge from
it; that, after all, he held his destiny, however bad it might be, in
his own hand; that he was master of it. He clung to this thought.

At bottom, to tell the whole truth, he would have preferred not to go
to Arras.

Nevertheless, he was going thither.

As he meditated, he whipped up his horse, which was proceeding at that
fine, regular, and even trot which accomplishes two leagues and a half
an hour.

In proportion as the cabriolet advanced, he felt something within him
draw back.

At daybreak he was in the open country; the town of M. sur M. lay far
behind him. He watched the horizon grow white; he stared at all the
chilly figures of a winter’s dawn as they passed before his eyes, but
without seeing them. The morning has its spectres as well as the
evening. He did not see them; but without his being aware of it, and by
means of a sort of penetration which was almost physical, these black
silhouettes of trees and of hills added some gloomy and sinister
quality to the violent state of his soul.

Each time that he passed one of those isolated dwellings which
sometimes border on the highway, he said to himself, “And yet there are
people there within who are sleeping!”


The trot of the horse, the bells on the harness, the wheels on the
road, produced a gentle, monotonous noise. These things are charming
when one is joyous, and lugubrious when one is sad.

It was broad daylight when he arrived at Hesdin. He halted in front of
the inn, to allow the horse a breathing spell, and to have him given
some oats.

The horse belonged, as Scaufflaire had said, to that small race of the
Boulonnais, which has too much head, too much belly, and not enough
neck and shoulders, but which has a broad chest, a large crupper, thin,
fine legs, and solid hoofs—a homely, but a robust and healthy race. The
excellent beast had travelled five leagues in two hours, and had not a
drop of sweat on his loins.

He did not get out of the tilbury. The stableman who brought the oats
suddenly bent down and examined the left wheel.

“Are you going far in this condition?” said the man.

He replied, with an air of not having roused himself from his reverie:—

“Why?”


“Have you come from a great distance?” went on the man.

“Five leagues.”


“Ah!”


“Why do you say, ‘Ah?’”


The man bent down once more, was silent for a moment, with his eyes
fixed on the wheel; then he rose erect and said:—

“Because, though this wheel has travelled five leagues, it certainly
will not travel another quarter of a league.”


He sprang out of the tilbury.

“What is that you say, my friend?”


“I say that it is a miracle that you should have travelled five leagues
without you and your horse rolling into some ditch on the highway. Just
see here!”


The wheel really had suffered serious damage. The shock administered by
the mail-wagon had split two spokes and strained the hub, so that the
nut no longer held firm.

“My friend,” he said to the stableman, “is there a wheelwright here?”


“Certainly, sir.”


“Do me the service to go and fetch him.”


“He is only a step from here. Hey! Master Bourgaillard!”


Master Bourgaillard, the wheelwright, was standing on his own
threshold. He came, examined the wheel and made a grimace like a
surgeon when the latter thinks a limb is broken.

“Can you repair this wheel immediately?”


“Yes, sir.”


“When can I set out again?”


“To-morrow.”


“To-morrow!”


“There is a long day’s work on it. Are you in a hurry, sir?”


“In a very great hurry. I must set out again in an hour at the latest.”


“Impossible, sir.”


“I will pay whatever you ask.”


“Impossible.”


“Well, in two hours, then.”


“Impossible to-day. Two new spokes and a hub must be made. Monsieur
will not be able to start before to-morrow morning.”


“The matter cannot wait until to-morrow. What if you were to replace
this wheel instead of repairing it?”


“How so?”


“You are a wheelwright?”


“Certainly, sir.”


“Have you not a wheel that you can sell me? Then I could start again at
once.”


“A spare wheel?”


“Yes.”


“I have no wheel on hand that would fit your cabriolet. Two wheels make
a pair. Two wheels cannot be put together hap-hazard.”


“In that case, sell me a pair of wheels.”


“Not all wheels fit all axles, sir.”


“Try, nevertheless.”


“It is useless, sir. I have nothing to sell but cart-wheels. We are but
a poor country here.”


“Have you a cabriolet that you can let me have?”


The wheelwright had seen at the first glance that the tilbury was a
hired vehicle. He shrugged his shoulders.

“You treat the cabriolets that people let you so well! If I had one, I
would not let it to you!”


“Well, sell it to me, then.”


“I have none.”


“What! not even a spring-cart? I am not hard to please, as you see.”


“We live in a poor country. There is, in truth,” added the wheelwright,
“an old calash under the shed yonder, which belongs to a bourgeois of
the town, who gave it to me to take care of, and who only uses it on
the thirty-sixth of the month—never, that is to say. I might let that
to you, for what matters it to me? But the bourgeois must not see it
pass—and then, it is a calash; it would require two horses.”


“I will take two post-horses.”


“Where is Monsieur going?”


“To Arras.”


“And Monsieur wishes to reach there to-day?”


“Yes, of course.”


“By taking two post-horses?”


“Why not?”


“Does it make any difference whether Monsieur arrives at four o’clock
to-morrow morning?”


“Certainly not.”


“There is one thing to be said about that, you see, by taking
post-horses—Monsieur has his passport?”


“Yes.”


“Well, by taking post-horses, Monsieur cannot reach Arras before
to-morrow. We are on a crossroad. The relays are badly served, the
horses are in the fields. The season for ploughing is just beginning;
heavy teams are required, and horses are seized upon everywhere, from
the post as well as elsewhere. Monsieur will have to wait three or four
hours at the least at every relay. And, then, they drive at a walk.
There are many hills to ascend.”


“Come then, I will go on horseback. Unharness the cabriolet. Some one
can surely sell me a saddle in the neighborhood.”


“Without doubt. But will this horse bear the saddle?”


“That is true; you remind me of that; he will not bear it.”


“Then—”


“But I can surely hire a horse in the village?”


“A horse to travel to Arras at one stretch?”


“Yes.”


“That would require such a horse as does not exist in these parts. You
would have to buy it to begin with, because no one knows you. But you
will not find one for sale nor to let, for five hundred francs, or for
a thousand.”


“What am I to do?”


“The best thing is to let me repair the wheel like an honest man, and
set out on your journey to-morrow.”


“To-morrow will be too late.”


“The deuce!”


“Is there not a mail-wagon which runs to Arras? When will it pass?”


“To-night. Both the posts pass at night; the one going as well as the
one coming.”


“What! It will take you a day to mend this wheel?”


“A day, and a good long one.”


“If you set two men to work?”


“If I set ten men to work.”


“What if the spokes were to be tied together with ropes?”


“That could be done with the spokes, not with the hub; and the felly is
in a bad state, too.”


“Is there any one in this village who lets out teams?”


“No.”


“Is there another wheelwright?”


The stableman and the wheelwright replied in concert, with a toss of
the head.

“No.”


He felt an immense joy.

It was evident that Providence was intervening. That it was it who had
broken the wheel of the tilbury and who was stopping him on the road.
He had not yielded to this sort of first summons; he had just made
every possible effort to continue the journey; he had loyally and
scrupulously exhausted all means; he had been deterred neither by the
season, nor fatigue, nor by the expense; he had nothing with which to
reproach himself. If he went no further, that was no fault of his. It
did not concern him further. It was no longer his fault. It was not the
act of his own conscience, but the act of Providence.

He breathed again. He breathed freely and to the full extent of his
lungs for the first time since Javert’s visit. It seemed to him that
the hand of iron which had held his heart in its grasp for the last
twenty hours had just released him.

It seemed to him that God was for him now, and was manifesting Himself.

He said to himself that he had done all he could, and that now he had
nothing to do but retrace his steps quietly.

If his conversation with the wheelwright had taken place in a chamber
of the inn, it would have had no witnesses, no one would have heard
him, things would have rested there, and it is probable that we should
not have had to relate any of the occurrences which the reader is about
to peruse; but this conversation had taken place in the street. Any
colloquy in the street inevitably attracts a crowd. There are always
people who ask nothing better than to become spectators. While he was
questioning the wheelwright, some people who were passing back and
forth halted around them. After listening for a few minutes, a young
lad, to whom no one had paid any heed, detached himself from the group
and ran off.

At the moment when the traveller, after the inward deliberation which
we have just described, resolved to retrace his steps, this child
returned. He was accompanied by an old woman.

“Monsieur,” said the woman, “my boy tells me that you wish to hire a
cabriolet.”


These simple words uttered by an old woman led by a child made the
perspiration trickle down his limbs. He thought that he beheld the hand
which had relaxed its grasp reappear in the darkness behind him, ready
to seize him once more.

He answered:—

“Yes, my good woman; I am in search of a cabriolet which I can hire.”


And he hastened to add:—

“But there is none in the place.”


“Certainly there is,” said the old woman.

“Where?” interpolated the wheelwright.

“At my house,” replied the old woman.

He shuddered. The fatal hand had grasped him again.

The old woman really had in her shed a sort of basket spring-cart. The
wheelwright and the stable-man, in despair at the prospect of the
traveller escaping their clutches, interfered.

“It was a frightful old trap; it rests flat on the axle; it is an
actual fact that the seats were suspended inside it by leather thongs;
the rain came into it; the wheels were rusted and eaten with moisture;
it would not go much further than the tilbury; a regular ramshackle old
stage-wagon; the gentleman would make a great mistake if he trusted
himself to it,” etc., etc.

All this was true; but this trap, this ramshackle old vehicle, this
thing, whatever it was, ran on its two wheels and could go to Arras.

He paid what was asked, left the tilbury with the wheelwright to be
repaired, intending to reclaim it on his return, had the white horse
put to the cart, climbed into it, and resumed the road which he had
been travelling since morning.

At the moment when the cart moved off, he admitted that he had felt, a
moment previously, a certain joy in the thought that he should not go
whither he was now proceeding. He examined this joy with a sort of
wrath, and found it absurd. Why should he feel joy at turning back?
After all, he was taking this trip of his own free will. No one was
forcing him to it.

And assuredly nothing would happen except what he should choose.

As he left Hesdin, he heard a voice shouting to him: “Stop! Stop!” He
halted the cart with a vigorous movement which contained a feverish and
convulsive element resembling hope.

It was the old woman’s little boy.

“Monsieur,” said the latter, “it was I who got the cart for you.”


“Well?”


“You have not given me anything.”


He who gave to all so readily thought this demand exorbitant and almost
odious.

“Ah! it’s you, you scamp?” said he; “you shall have nothing.”


He whipped up his horse and set off at full speed.

He had lost a great deal of time at Hesdin. He wanted to make it good.
The little horse was courageous, and pulled for two; but it was the
month of February, there had been rain; the roads were bad. And then,
it was no longer the tilbury. The cart was very heavy, and in addition,
there were many ascents.

He took nearly four hours to go from Hesdin to Saint-Pol; four hours
for five leagues.

At Saint-Pol he had the horse unharnessed at the first inn he came to
and led to the stable; as he had promised Scaufflaire, he stood beside
the manger while the horse was eating; he thought of sad and confusing
things.

The inn-keeper’s wife came to the stable.

“Does not Monsieur wish to breakfast?”


“Come, that is true; I even have a good appetite.”


He followed the woman, who had a rosy, cheerful face; she led him to
the public room where there were tables covered with waxed cloth.

“Make haste!” said he; “I must start again; I am in a hurry.”


A big Flemish servant-maid placed his knife and fork in all haste; he
looked at the girl with a sensation of comfort.

“That is what ailed me,” he thought; “I had not breakfasted.”


His breakfast was served; he seized the bread, took a mouthful, and
then slowly replaced it on the table, and did not touch it again.

A carter was eating at another table; he said to this man:—

“Why is their bread so bitter here?”


The carter was a German and did not understand him.

He returned to the stable and remained near the horse.

An hour later he had quitted Saint-Pol and was directing his course
towards Tinques, which is only five leagues from Arras.

What did he do during this journey? Of what was he thinking? As in the
morning, he watched the trees, the thatched roofs, the tilled fields
pass by, and the way in which the landscape, broken at every turn of
the road, vanished; this is a sort of contemplation which sometimes
suffices to the soul, and almost relieves it from thought. What is more
melancholy and more profound than to see a thousand objects for the
first and the last time? To travel is to be born and to die at every
instant; perhaps, in the vaguest region of his mind, he did make
comparisons between the shifting horizon and our human existence: all
the things of life are perpetually fleeing before us; the dark and
bright intervals are intermingled; after a dazzling moment, an eclipse;
we look, we hasten, we stretch out our hands to grasp what is passing;
each event is a turn in the road, and, all at once, we are old; we feel
a shock; all is black; we distinguish an obscure door; the gloomy horse
of life, which has been drawing us halts, and we see a veiled and
unknown person unharnessing amid the shadows.

Twilight was falling when the children who were coming out of school
beheld this traveller enter Tinques; it is true that the days were
still short; he did not halt at Tinques; as he emerged from the
village, a laborer, who was mending the road with stones, raised his
head and said to him:—

“That horse is very much fatigued.”


The poor beast was, in fact, going at a walk.

“Are you going to Arras?” added the road-mender.

“Yes.”


“If you go on at that rate you will not arrive very early.”


He stopped his horse, and asked the laborer:—

“How far is it from here to Arras?”


“Nearly seven good leagues.”


“How is that? the posting guide only says five leagues and a quarter.”


“Ah!” returned the road-mender, “so you don’t know that the road is
under repair? You will find it barred a quarter of an hour further on;
there is no way to proceed further.”


“Really?”


“You will take the road on the left, leading to Carency; you will cross
the river; when you reach Camblin, you will turn to the right; that is
the road to Mont-Saint-Éloy which leads to Arras.”


“But it is night, and I shall lose my way.”


“You do not belong in these parts?”


“No.”


“And, besides, it is all crossroads; stop! sir,” resumed the
road-mender; “shall I give you a piece of advice? your horse is tired;
return to Tinques; there is a good inn there; sleep there; you can
reach Arras to-morrow.”


“I must be there this evening.”


“That is different; but go to the inn all the same, and get an extra
horse; the stable-boy will guide you through the crossroads.”


He followed the road-mender’s advice, retraced his steps, and, half an
hour later, he passed the same spot again, but this time at full speed,
with a good horse to aid; a stable-boy, who called himself a postilion,
was seated on the shaft of the cariole.

Still, he felt that he had lost time.

Night had fully come.

They turned into the crossroad; the way became frightfully bad; the
cart lurched from one rut to the other; he said to the postilion:—

“Keep at a trot, and you shall have a double fee.”


In one of the jolts, the whiffle-tree broke.

“There’s the whiffle-tree broken, sir,” said the postilion; “I don’t
know how to harness my horse now; this road is very bad at night; if
you wish to return and sleep at Tinques, we could be in Arras early
to-morrow morning.”


He replied, “Have you a bit of rope and a knife?”


“Yes, sir.”


He cut a branch from a tree and made a whiffle-tree of it.

This caused another loss of twenty minutes; but they set out again at a
gallop.

The plain was gloomy; low-hanging, black, crisp fogs crept over the
hills and wrenched themselves away like smoke: there were whitish
gleams in the clouds; a strong breeze which blew in from the sea
produced a sound in all quarters of the horizon, as of some one moving
furniture; everything that could be seen assumed attitudes of terror.
How many things shiver beneath these vast breaths of the night!

He was stiff with cold; he had eaten nothing since the night before; he
vaguely recalled his other nocturnal trip in the vast plain in the
neighborhood of D——, eight years previously, and it seemed but
yesterday.

The hour struck from a distant tower; he asked the boy:—

“What time is it?”


“Seven o’clock, sir; we shall reach Arras at eight; we have but three
leagues still to go.”


At that moment, he for the first time indulged in this reflection,
thinking it odd the while that it had not occurred to him sooner: that
all this trouble which he was taking was, perhaps, useless; that he did
not know so much as the hour of the trial; that he should, at least,
have informed himself of that; that he was foolish to go thus straight
ahead without knowing whether he would be of any service or not; then
he sketched out some calculations in his mind: that, ordinarily, the
sittings of the Court of Assizes began at nine o’clock in the morning;
that it could not be a long affair; that the theft of the apples would
be very brief; that there would then remain only a question of
identity, four or five depositions, and very little for the lawyers to
say; that he should arrive after all was over.

The postilion whipped up the horses; they had crossed the river and
left Mont-Saint-Éloy behind them.

The night grew more profound.






But at that moment Fantine was joyous.

She had passed a very bad night; her cough was frightful; her fever had
doubled in intensity; she had had dreams: in the morning, when the
doctor paid his visit, she was delirious; he assumed an alarmed look,
and ordered that he should be informed as soon as M. Madeleine arrived.

All the morning she was melancholy, said but little, and laid plaits in
her sheets, murmuring the while, in a low voice, calculations which
seemed to be calculations of distances. Her eyes were hollow and
staring. They seemed almost extinguished at intervals, then lighted up
again and shone like stars. It seems as though, at the approach of a
certain dark hour, the light of heaven fills those who are quitting the
light of earth.

Each time that Sister Simplice asked her how she felt, she replied
invariably, “Well. I should like to see M. Madeleine.”


Some months before this, at the moment when Fantine had just lost her
last modesty, her last shame, and her last joy, she was the shadow of
herself; now she was the spectre of herself. Physical suffering had
completed the work of moral suffering. This creature of five and twenty
had a wrinkled brow, flabby cheeks, pinched nostrils, teeth from which
the gums had receded, a leaden complexion, a bony neck, prominent
shoulder-blades, frail limbs, a clayey skin, and her golden hair was
growing out sprinkled with gray. Alas! how illness improvises old-age!

At midday the physician returned, gave some directions, inquired
whether the mayor had made his appearance at the infirmary, and shook
his head.

M. Madeleine usually came to see the invalid at three o’clock. As
exactness is kindness, he was exact.

About half-past two, Fantine began to be restless. In the course of
twenty minutes, she asked the nun more than ten times, “What time is
it, sister?”


Three o’clock struck. At the third stroke, Fantine sat up in bed; she
who could, in general, hardly turn over, joined her yellow, fleshless
hands in a sort of convulsive clasp, and the nun heard her utter one of
those profound sighs which seem to throw off dejection. Then Fantine
turned and looked at the door.

No one entered; the door did not open.

She remained thus for a quarter of an hour, her eyes riveted on the
door, motionless and apparently holding her breath. The sister dared
not speak to her. The clock struck a quarter past three. Fantine fell
back on her pillow.

She said nothing, but began to plait the sheets once more.

Half an hour passed, then an hour, no one came; every time the clock
struck, Fantine started up and looked towards the door, then fell back
again.

Her thought was clearly perceptible, but she uttered no name, she made
no complaint, she blamed no one. But she coughed in a melancholy way.
One would have said that something dark was descending upon her. She
was livid and her lips were blue. She smiled now and then.

Five o’clock struck. Then the sister heard her say, very low and
gently, “He is wrong not to come to-day, since I am going away
to-morrow.”


Sister Simplice herself was surprised at M. Madeleine’s delay.

In the meantime, Fantine was staring at the tester of her bed. She
seemed to be endeavoring to recall something. All at once she began to
sing in a voice as feeble as a breath. The nun listened. This is what
Fantine was singing:—

“Lovely things we will buy
As we stroll the faubourgs through.
Roses are pink, corn-flowers are blue,
I love my love, corn-flowers are blue.


“Yestere’en the Virgin Mary came near my stove, in a broidered mantle
clad, and said to me, ‘Here, hide ’neath my veil the child whom you one
day begged from me. Haste to the city, buy linen, buy a needle, buy
thread.’

“Lovely things we will buy
As we stroll the faubourgs through.


“Dear Holy Virgin, beside my stove I have set a cradle with ribbons
decked. God may give me his loveliest star; I prefer the child thou
hast granted me. ‘Madame, what shall I do with this linen fine?’—‘Make
of it clothes for thy new-born babe.’

“Roses are pink and corn-flowers are blue,
I love my love, and corn-flowers are blue.


“‘Wash this linen.’—‘Where?’—‘In the stream. Make of it, soiling not,
spoiling not, a petticoat fair with its bodice fine, which I will
embroider and fill with flowers.’—‘Madame, the child is no longer here;
what is to be done?’—‘Then make of it a winding-sheet in which to bury
me.’

“Lovely things we will buy
As we stroll the faubourgs through,
Roses are pink, corn-flowers are blue,
I love my love, corn-flowers are blue.”


This song was an old cradle romance with which she had, in former days,
lulled her little Cosette to sleep, and which had never recurred to her
mind in all the five years during which she had been parted from her
child. She sang it in so sad a voice, and to so sweet an air, that it
was enough to make any one, even a nun, weep. The sister, accustomed as
she was to austerities, felt a tear spring to her eyes.

The clock struck six. Fantine did not seem to hear it. She no longer
seemed to pay attention to anything about her.

Sister Simplice sent a serving-maid to inquire of the portress of the
factory, whether the mayor had returned, and if he would not come to
the infirmary soon. The girl returned in a few minutes.

Fantine was still motionless and seemed absorbed in her own thoughts.

The servant informed Sister Simplice in a very low tone, that the mayor
had set out that morning before six o’clock, in a little tilbury
harnessed to a white horse, cold as the weather was; that he had gone
alone, without even a driver; that no one knew what road he had taken;
that people said he had been seen to turn into the road to Arras; that
others asserted that they had met him on the road to Paris. That when
he went away he had been very gentle, as usual, and that he had merely
told the portress not to expect him that night.

While the two women were whispering together, with their backs turned
to Fantine’s bed, the sister interrogating, the servant conjecturing,
Fantine, with the feverish vivacity of certain organic maladies, which
unite the free movements of health with the frightful emaciation of
death, had raised herself to her knees in bed, with her shrivelled
hands resting on the bolster, and her head thrust through the opening
of the curtains, and was listening. All at once she cried:—

“You are speaking of M. Madeleine! Why are you talking so low? What is
he doing? Why does he not come?”


Her voice was so abrupt and hoarse that the two women thought they
heard the voice of a man; they wheeled round in affright.

“Answer me!” cried Fantine.

The servant stammered:—

“The portress told me that he could not come to-day.”


“Be calm, my child,” said the sister; “lie down again.”


Fantine, without changing her attitude, continued in a loud voice, and
with an accent that was both imperious and heart-rending:—

“He cannot come? Why not? You know the reason. You are whispering it to
each other there. I want to know it.”


The servant-maid hastened to say in the nun’s ear, “Say that he is busy
with the city council.”


Sister Simplice blushed faintly, for it was a lie that the maid had
proposed to her.

On the other hand, it seemed to her that the mere communication of the
truth to the invalid would, without doubt, deal her a terrible blow,
and that this was a serious matter in Fantine’s present state. Her
flush did not last long; the sister raised her calm, sad eyes to
Fantine, and said, “Monsieur le Maire has gone away.”


Fantine raised herself and crouched on her heels in the bed: her eyes
sparkled; indescribable joy beamed from that melancholy face.

“Gone!” she cried; “he has gone to get Cosette.”


Then she raised her arms to heaven, and her white face became
ineffable; her lips moved; she was praying in a low voice.

When her prayer was finished, “Sister,” she said, “I am willing to lie
down again; I will do anything you wish; I was naughty just now; I beg
your pardon for having spoken so loud; it is very wrong to talk loudly;
I know that well, my good sister, but, you see, I am very happy: the
good God is good; M. Madeleine is good; just think! he has gone to
Montfermeil to get my little Cosette.”


She lay down again, with the nun’s assistance, helped the nun to
arrange her pillow, and kissed the little silver cross which she wore
on her neck, and which Sister Simplice had given her.

“My child,” said the sister, “try to rest now, and do not talk any
more.”


Fantine took the sister’s hand in her moist hands, and the latter was
pained to feel that perspiration.

“He set out this morning for Paris; in fact, he need not even go
through Paris; Montfermeil is a little to the left as you come thence.
Do you remember how he said to me yesterday, when I spoke to him of
Cosette, _Soon, soon?_ He wants to give me a surprise, you know! he
made me sign a letter so that she could be taken from the Thénardiers;
they cannot say anything, can they? they will give back Cosette, for
they have been paid; the authorities will not allow them to keep the
child since they have received their pay. Do not make signs to me that
I must not talk, sister! I am extremely happy; I am doing well; I am
not ill at all any more; I am going to see Cosette again; I am even
quite hungry; it is nearly five years since I saw her last; you cannot
imagine how much attached one gets to children, and then, she will be
so pretty; you will see! If you only knew what pretty little rosy
fingers she had! In the first place, she will have very beautiful
hands; she had ridiculous hands when she was only a year old; like
this! she must be a big girl now; she is seven years old; she is quite
a young lady; I call her Cosette, but her name is really Euphrasie.
Stop! this morning I was looking at the dust on the chimney-piece, and
I had a sort of idea come across me, like that, that I should see
Cosette again soon. Mon Dieu! how wrong it is not to see one’s children
for years! One ought to reflect that life is not eternal. Oh, how good
M. le Maire is to go! it is very cold! it is true; he had on his cloak,
at least? he will be here to-morrow, will he not? to-morrow will be a
festival day; to-morrow morning, sister, you must remind me to put on
my little cap that has lace on it. What a place that Montfermeil is! I
took that journey on foot once; it was very long for me, but the
diligences go very quickly! he will be here to-morrow with Cosette: how
far is it from here to Montfermeil?”


The sister, who had no idea of distances, replied, “Oh, I think that he
will be here to-morrow.”


“To-morrow! to-morrow!” said Fantine, “I shall see Cosette to-morrow!
you see, good sister of the good God, that I am no longer ill; I am
mad; I could dance if any one wished it.”


A person who had seen her a quarter of an hour previously would not
have understood the change; she was all rosy now; she spoke in a lively
and natural voice; her whole face was one smile; now and then she
talked, she laughed softly; the joy of a mother is almost infantile.

“Well,” resumed the nun, “now that you are happy, mind me, and do not
talk any more.”


Fantine laid her head on her pillow and said in a low voice: “Yes, lie
down again; be good, for you are going to have your child; Sister
Simplice is right; every one here is right.”


And then, without stirring, without even moving her head, she began to
stare all about her with wide-open eyes and a joyous air, and she said
nothing more.

The sister drew the curtains together again, hoping that she would fall
into a doze. Between seven and eight o’clock the doctor came; not
hearing any sound, he thought Fantine was asleep, entered softly, and
approached the bed on tiptoe; he opened the curtains a little, and, by
the light of the taper, he saw Fantine’s big eyes gazing at him.

She said to him, “She will be allowed to sleep beside me in a little
bed, will she not, sir?”


The doctor thought that she was delirious. She added:—

“See! there is just room.”


The doctor took Sister Simplice aside, and she explained matters to
him; that M. Madeleine was absent for a day or two, and that in their
doubt they had not thought it well to undeceive the invalid, who
believed that the mayor had gone to Montfermeil; that it was possible,
after all, that her guess was correct: the doctor approved.

He returned to Fantine’s bed, and she went on:—

“You see, when she wakes up in the morning, I shall be able to say good
morning to her, poor kitten, and when I cannot sleep at night, I can
hear her asleep; her little gentle breathing will do me good.”


“Give me your hand,” said the doctor.

She stretched out her arm, and exclaimed with a laugh:—

“Ah, hold! in truth, you did not know it; I am cured; Cosette will
arrive to-morrow.”


The doctor was surprised; she was better; the pressure on her chest had
decreased; her pulse had regained its strength; a sort of life had
suddenly supervened and reanimated this poor, worn-out creature.

“Doctor,” she went on, “did the sister tell you that M. le Maire has
gone to get that mite of a child?”


The doctor recommended silence, and that all painful emotions should be
avoided; he prescribed an infusion of pure chinchona, and, in case the
fever should increase again during the night, a calming potion. As he
took his departure, he said to the sister:—

“She is doing better; if good luck willed that the mayor should
actually arrive to-morrow with the child, who knows? there are crises
so astounding; great joy has been known to arrest maladies; I know well
that this is an organic disease, and in an advanced state, but all
those things are such mysteries: we may be able to save her.”





DEPARTURE


It was nearly eight o’clock in the evening when the cart, which we left
on the road, entered the porte-cochère of the Hotel de la Poste in
Arras; the man whom we have been following up to this moment alighted
from it, responded with an abstracted air to the attentions of the
people of the inn, sent back the extra horse, and with his own hands
led the little white horse to the stable; then he opened the door of a
billiard-room which was situated on the ground floor, sat down there,
and leaned his elbows on a table; he had taken fourteen hours for the
journey which he had counted on making in six; he did himself the
justice to acknowledge that it was not his fault, but at bottom, he was
not sorry.

The landlady of the hotel entered.

“Does Monsieur wish a bed? Does Monsieur require supper?”


He made a sign of the head in the negative.

“The stableman says that Monsieur’s horse is extremely fatigued.”


Here he broke his silence.

“Will not the horse be in a condition to set out again to-morrow
morning?”


“Oh, Monsieur! he must rest for two days at least.”


He inquired:—

“Is not the posting-station located here?”


“Yes, sir.”


The hostess conducted him to the office; he showed his passport, and
inquired whether there was any way of returning that same night to M.
sur M. by the mail-wagon; the seat beside the post-boy chanced to be
vacant; he engaged it and paid for it. “Monsieur,” said the clerk, “do
not fail to be here ready to start at precisely one o’clock in the
morning.”


This done, he left the hotel and began to wander about the town.

He was not acquainted with Arras; the streets were dark, and he walked
on at random; but he seemed bent upon not asking the way of the
passers-by. He crossed the little river Crinchon, and found himself in
a labyrinth of narrow alleys where he lost his way. A citizen was
passing along with a lantern. After some hesitation, he decided to
apply to this man, not without having first glanced behind and in front
of him, as though he feared lest some one should hear the question
which he was about to put.

“Monsieur,” said he, “where is the court-house, if you please.”


“You do not belong in town, sir?” replied the bourgeois, who was an
oldish man; “well, follow me. I happen to be going in the direction of
the court-house, that is to say, in the direction of the hotel of the
prefecture; for the court-house is undergoing repairs just at this
moment, and the courts are holding their sittings provisionally in the
prefecture.”


“Is it there that the Assizes are held?” he asked.

“Certainly, sir; you see, the prefecture of to-day was the bishop’s
palace before the Revolution. M. de Conzié, who was bishop in ’82,
built a grand hall there. It is in this grand hall that the court is
held.”


On the way, the bourgeois said to him:—

“If Monsieur desires to witness a case, it is rather late. The sittings
generally close at six o’clock.”


When they arrived on the grand square, however, the man pointed out to
him four long windows all lighted up, in the front of a vast and gloomy
building.

“Upon my word, sir, you are in luck; you have arrived in season. Do you
see those four windows? That is the Court of Assizes. There is light
there, so they are not through. The matter must have been greatly
protracted, and they are holding an evening session. Do you take an
interest in this affair? Is it a criminal case? Are you a witness?”


He replied:—

“I have not come on any business; I only wish to speak to one of the
lawyers.”


“That is different,” said the bourgeois. “Stop, sir; here is the door
where the sentry stands. You have only to ascend the grand staircase.”


He conformed to the bourgeois’s directions, and a few minutes later he
was in a hall containing many people, and where groups, intermingled
with lawyers in their gowns, were whispering together here and there.

It is always a heart-breaking thing to see these congregations of men
robed in black, murmuring together in low voices, on the threshold of
the halls of justice. It is rare that charity and pity are the outcome
of these words. Condemnations pronounced in advance are more likely to
be the result. All these groups seem to the passing and thoughtful
observer so many sombre hives where buzzing spirits construct in
concert all sorts of dark edifices.

This spacious hall, illuminated by a single lamp, was the old hall of
the episcopal palace, and served as the large hall of the palace of
justice. A double-leaved door, which was closed at that moment,
separated it from the large apartment where the court was sitting.

The obscurity was such that he did not fear to accost the first lawyer
whom he met.

“What stage have they reached, sir?” he asked.

“It is finished,” said the lawyer.

“Finished!”


This word was repeated in such accents that the lawyer turned round.

“Excuse me sir; perhaps you are a relative?”


“No; I know no one here. Has judgment been pronounced?”


“Of course. Nothing else was possible.”


“To penal servitude?”


“For life.”


He continued, in a voice so weak that it was barely audible:—

“Then his identity was established?”


“What identity?” replied the lawyer. “There was no identity to be
established. The matter was very simple. The woman had murdered her
child; the infanticide was proved; the jury threw out the question of
premeditation, and she was condemned for life.”


“So it was a woman?” said he.

“Why, certainly. The Limosin woman. Of what are you speaking?”


“Nothing. But since it is all over, how comes it that the hall is still
lighted?”


“For another case, which was begun about two hours ago.”


“What other case?”


“Oh! this one is a clear case also. It is about a sort of blackguard; a
man arrested for a second offence; a convict who has been guilty of
theft. I don’t know his name exactly. There’s a bandit’s phiz for you!
I’d send him to the galleys on the strength of his face alone.”


“Is there any way of getting into the court-room, sir?” said he.

“I really think that there is not. There is a great crowd. However, the
hearing has been suspended. Some people have gone out, and when the
hearing is resumed, you might make an effort.”


“Where is the entrance?”


“Through yonder large door.”


The lawyer left him. In the course of a few moments he had experienced,
almost simultaneously, almost intermingled with each other, all
possible emotions. The words of this indifferent spectator had, in
turn, pierced his heart like needles of ice and like blades of fire.
When he saw that nothing was settled, he breathed freely once more; but
he could not have told whether what he felt was pain or pleasure.

He drew near to many groups and listened to what they were saying. The
docket of the session was very heavy; the president had appointed for
the same day two short and simple cases. They had begun with the
infanticide, and now they had reached the convict, the old offender,
the “return horse.” This man had stolen apples, but that did not appear
to be entirely proved; what had been proved was, that he had already
been in the galleys at Toulon. It was that which lent a bad aspect to
his case. However, the man’s examination and the depositions of the
witnesses had been completed, but the lawyer’s plea, and the speech of
the public prosecutor were still to come; it could not be finished
before midnight. The man would probably be condemned; the
attorney-general was very clever, and never _missed_ his culprits; he
was a brilliant fellow who wrote verses.

An usher stood at the door communicating with the hall of the Assizes.
He inquired of this usher:—

“Will the door be opened soon, sir?”


“It will not be opened at all,” replied the usher.

“What! It will not be opened when the hearing is resumed? Is not the
hearing suspended?”


“The hearing has just been begun again,” replied the usher, “but the
door will not be opened again.”


“Why?”


“Because the hall is full.”


“What! There is not room for one more?”


“Not another one. The door is closed. No one can enter now.”


The usher added after a pause: “There are, to tell the truth, two or
three extra places behind Monsieur le Président, but Monsieur le
Président only admits public functionaries to them.”


So saying, the usher turned his back.

He retired with bowed head, traversed the antechamber, and slowly
descended the stairs, as though hesitating at every step. It is
probable that he was holding counsel with himself. The violent conflict
which had been going on within him since the preceding evening was not
yet ended; and every moment he encountered some new phase of it. On
reaching the landing-place, he leaned his back against the balusters
and folded his arms. All at once he opened his coat, drew out his
pocket-book, took from it a pencil, tore out a leaf, and upon that leaf
he wrote rapidly, by the light of the street lantern, this line: _M.
Madeleine, Mayor of M. sur M._; then he ascended the stairs once more
with great strides, made his way through the crowd, walked straight up
to the usher, handed him the paper, and said in an authoritative
manner:—

“Take this to Monsieur le Président.”


The usher took the paper, cast a glance upon it, and obeyed.






Although he did not suspect the fact, the mayor of M. sur M. enjoyed a
sort of celebrity. For the space of seven years his reputation for
virtue had filled the whole of Bas Boulonnais; it had eventually passed
the confines of a small district and had been spread abroad through two
or three neighboring departments. Besides the service which he had
rendered to the chief town by resuscitating the black jet industry,
there was not one out of the hundred and forty communes of the
arrondissement of M. sur M. which was not indebted to him for some
benefit. He had even at need contrived to aid and multiply the
industries of other arrondissements. It was thus that he had, when
occasion offered, supported with his credit and his funds the linen
factory at Boulogne, the flax-spinning industry at Frévent, and the
hydraulic manufacture of cloth at Boubers-sur-Canche. Everywhere the
name of M. Madeleine was pronounced with veneration. Arras and Douai
envied the happy little town of M. sur M. its mayor.

The Councillor of the Royal Court of Douai, who was presiding over this
session of the Assizes at Arras, was acquainted, in common with the
rest of the world, with this name which was so profoundly and
universally honored. When the usher, discreetly opening the door which
connected the council-chamber with the court-room, bent over the back
of the President’s armchair and handed him the paper on which was
inscribed the line which we have just perused, adding: “The gentleman
desires to be present at the trial,” the President, with a quick and
deferential movement, seized a pen and wrote a few words at the bottom
of the paper and returned it to the usher, saying, “Admit him.”


The unhappy man whose history we are relating had remained near the
door of the hall, in the same place and the same attitude in which the
usher had left him. In the midst of his reverie he heard some one
saying to him, “Will Monsieur do me the honor to follow me?” It was the
same usher who had turned his back upon him but a moment previously,
and who was now bowing to the earth before him. At the same time, the
usher handed him the paper. He unfolded it, and as he chanced to be
near the light, he could read it.

“The President of the Court of Assizes presents his respects to M.
Madeleine.”


He crushed the paper in his hand as though those words contained for
him a strange and bitter aftertaste.

He followed the usher.

A few minutes later he found himself alone in a sort of wainscoted
cabinet of severe aspect, lighted by two wax candles, placed upon a
table with a green cloth. The last words of the usher who had just
quitted him still rang in his ears: “Monsieur, you are now in the
council-chamber; you have only to turn the copper handle of yonder
door, and you will find yourself in the court-room, behind the
President’s chair.” These words were mingled in his thoughts with a
vague memory of narrow corridors and dark staircases which he had
recently traversed.

The usher had left him alone. The supreme moment had arrived. He sought
to collect his faculties, but could not. It is chiefly at the moment
when there is the greatest need for attaching them to the painful
realities of life, that the threads of thought snap within the brain.
He was in the very place where the judges deliberated and condemned.
With stupid tranquillity he surveyed this peaceful and terrible
apartment, where so many lives had been broken, which was soon to ring
with his name, and which his fate was at that moment traversing. He
stared at the wall, then he looked at himself, wondering that it should
be that chamber and that it should be he.

He had eaten nothing for four and twenty hours; he was worn out by the
jolts of the cart, but he was not conscious of it. It seemed to him
that he felt nothing.

He approached a black frame which was suspended on the wall, and which
contained, under glass, an ancient autograph letter of Jean Nicolas
Pache, mayor of Paris and minister, and dated, through an error, no
doubt, the _9th of June_, of the year II., and in which Pache forwarded
to the commune the list of ministers and deputies held in arrest by
them. Any spectator who had chanced to see him at that moment, and who
had watched him, would have imagined, doubtless, that this letter
struck him as very curious, for he did not take his eyes from it, and
he read it two or three times. He read it without paying any attention
to it, and unconsciously. He was thinking of Fantine and Cosette.

As he dreamed, he turned round, and his eyes fell upon the brass knob
of the door which separated him from the Court of Assizes. He had
almost forgotten that door. His glance, calm at first, paused there,
remained fixed on that brass handle, then grew terrified, and little by
little became impregnated with fear. Beads of perspiration burst forth
among his hair and trickled down upon his temples.

At a certain moment he made that indescribable gesture of a sort of
authority mingled with rebellion, which is intended to convey, and
which does so well convey, _“Pardieu! who compels me to this?”_ Then he
wheeled briskly round, caught sight of the door through which he had
entered in front of him, went to it, opened it, and passed out. He was
no longer in that chamber; he was outside in a corridor, a long, narrow
corridor, broken by steps and gratings, making all sorts of angles,
lighted here and there by lanterns similar to the night taper of
invalids, the corridor through which he had approached. He breathed, he
listened; not a sound in front, not a sound behind him, and he fled as
though pursued.

When he had turned many angles in this corridor, he still listened. The
same silence reigned, and there was the same darkness around him. He
was out of breath; he staggered; he leaned against the wall. The stone
was cold; the perspiration lay ice-cold on his brow; he straightened
himself up with a shiver.

Then, there alone in the darkness, trembling with cold and with
something else, too, perchance, he meditated.

He had meditated all night long; he had meditated all the day: he heard
within him but one voice, which said, “Alas!”


A quarter of an hour passed thus. At length he bowed his head, sighed
with agony, dropped his arms, and retraced his steps. He walked slowly,
and as though crushed. It seemed as though some one had overtaken him
in his flight and was leading him back.

He re-entered the council-chamber. The first thing he caught sight of
was the knob of the door. This knob, which was round and of polished
brass, shone like a terrible star for him. He gazed at it as a lamb
might gaze into the eye of a tiger.

He could not take his eyes from it. From time to time he advanced a
step and approached the door.

Had he listened, he would have heard the sound of the adjoining hall
like a sort of confused murmur; but he did not listen, and he did not
hear.

Suddenly, without himself knowing how it happened, he found himself
near the door; he grasped the knob convulsively; the door opened.

He was in the court-room.






He advanced a pace, closed the door mechanically behind him, and
remained standing, contemplating what he saw.

It was a vast and badly lighted apartment, now full of uproar, now full
of silence, where all the apparatus of a criminal case, with its petty
and mournful gravity in the midst of the throng, was in process of
development.

At the one end of the hall, the one where he was, were judges, with
abstracted air, in threadbare robes, who were gnawing their nails or
closing their eyelids; at the other end, a ragged crowd; lawyers in all
sorts of attitudes; soldiers with hard but honest faces; ancient,
spotted woodwork, a dirty ceiling, tables covered with serge that was
yellow rather than green; doors blackened by handmarks; tap-room lamps
which emitted more smoke than light, suspended from nails in the
wainscot; on the tables candles in brass candlesticks; darkness,
ugliness, sadness; and from all this there was disengaged an austere
and august impression, for one there felt that grand human thing which
is called the law, and that grand divine thing which is called justice.

No one in all that throng paid any attention to him; all glances were
directed towards a single point, a wooden bench placed against a small
door, in the stretch of wall on the President’s left; on this bench,
illuminated by several candles, sat a man between two gendarmes.

This man was _the_ man.

He did not seek him; he saw him; his eyes went thither naturally, as
though they had known beforehand where that figure was.

He thought he was looking at himself, grown old; not absolutely the
same in face, of course, but exactly similar in attitude and aspect,
with his bristling hair, with that wild and uneasy eye, with that
blouse, just as it was on the day when he entered D——, full of hatred,
concealing his soul in that hideous mass of frightful thoughts which he
had spent nineteen years in collecting on the floor of the prison.

He said to himself with a shudder, “Good God! shall I become like that
again?”


This creature seemed to be at least sixty; there was something
indescribably coarse, stupid, and frightened about him.

At the sound made by the opening door, people had drawn aside to make
way for him; the President had turned his head, and, understanding that
the personage who had just entered was the mayor of M. sur M., he had
bowed to him; the attorney-general, who had seen M. Madeleine at M. sur
M., whither the duties of his office had called him more than once,
recognized him and saluted him also: he had hardly perceived it; he was
the victim of a sort of hallucination; he was watching.

Judges, clerks, gendarmes, a throng of cruelly curious heads, all these
he had already beheld once, in days gone by, twenty-seven years before;
he had encountered those fatal things once more; there they were; they
moved; they existed; it was no longer an effort of his memory, a mirage
of his thought; they were real gendarmes and real judges, a real crowd,
and real men of flesh and blood: it was all over; he beheld the
monstrous aspects of his past reappear and live once more around him,
with all that there is formidable in reality.

All this was yawning before him.

He was horrified by it; he shut his eyes, and exclaimed in the deepest
recesses of his soul, “Never!”


And by a tragic play of destiny which made all his ideas tremble, and
rendered him nearly mad, it was another self of his that was there! all
called that man who was being tried Jean Valjean.

Under his very eyes, unheard-of vision, he had a sort of representation
of the most horrible moment of his life, enacted by his spectre.

Everything was there; the apparatus was the same, the hour of the
night, the faces of the judges, of soldiers, and of spectators; all
were the same, only above the President’s head there hung a crucifix,
something which the courts had lacked at the time of his condemnation:
God had been absent when he had been judged.

There was a chair behind him; he dropped into it, terrified at the
thought that he might be seen; when he was seated, he took advantage of
a pile of cardboard boxes, which stood on the judge’s desk, to conceal
his face from the whole room; he could now see without being seen; he
had fully regained consciousness of the reality of things; gradually he
recovered; he attained that phase of composure where it is possible to
listen.

M. Bamatabois was one of the jurors.

He looked for Javert, but did not see him; the seat of the witnesses
was hidden from him by the clerk’s table, and then, as we have just
said, the hall was sparely lighted.

At the moment of this entrance, the defendant’s lawyer had just
finished his plea.

The attention of all was excited to the highest pitch; the affair had
lasted for three hours: for three hours that crowd had been watching a
strange man, a miserable specimen of humanity, either profoundly stupid
or profoundly subtle, gradually bending beneath the weight of a
terrible likeness. This man, as the reader already knows, was a
vagabond who had been found in a field carrying a branch laden with
ripe apples, broken in the orchard of a neighbor, called the Pierron
orchard. Who was this man? an examination had been made; witnesses had
been heard, and they were unanimous; light had abounded throughout the
entire debate; the accusation said: “We have in our grasp not only a
marauder, a stealer of fruit; we have here, in our hands, a bandit, an
old offender who has broken his ban, an ex-convict, a miscreant of the
most dangerous description, a malefactor named Jean Valjean, whom
justice has long been in search of, and who, eight years ago, on
emerging from the galleys at Toulon, committed a highway robbery,
accompanied by violence, on the person of a child, a Savoyard named
Little Gervais; a crime provided for by article 383 of the Penal Code,
the right to try him for which we reserve hereafter, when his identity
shall have been judicially established. He has just committed a fresh
theft; it is a case of a second offence; condemn him for the fresh
deed; later on he will be judged for the old crime.” In the face of
this accusation, in the face of the unanimity of the witnesses, the
accused appeared to be astonished more than anything else; he made
signs and gestures which were meant to convey No, or else he stared at
the ceiling: he spoke with difficulty, replied with embarrassment, but
his whole person, from head to foot, was a denial; he was an idiot in
the presence of all these minds ranged in order of battle around him,
and like a stranger in the midst of this society which was seizing fast
upon him; nevertheless, it was a question of the most menacing future
for him; the likeness increased every moment, and the entire crowd
surveyed, with more anxiety than he did himself, that sentence
freighted with calamity, which descended ever closer over his head;
there was even a glimpse of a possibility afforded; besides the
galleys, a possible death penalty, in case his identity were
established, and the affair of Little Gervais were to end thereafter in
condemnation. Who was this man? what was the nature of his apathy? was
it imbecility or craft? Did he understand too well, or did he not
understand at all? these were questions which divided the crowd, and
seemed to divide the jury; there was something both terrible and
puzzling in this case: the drama was not only melancholy; it was also
obscure.

The counsel for the defence had spoken tolerably well, in that
provincial tongue which has long constituted the eloquence of the bar,
and which was formerly employed by all advocates, at Paris as well as
at Romorantin or at Montbrison, and which to-day, having become
classic, is no longer spoken except by the official orators of
magistracy, to whom it is suited on account of its grave sonorousness
and its majestic stride; a tongue in which a husband is called _a
consort_, and a woman _a spouse_; Paris, _the centre of art and
civilization_; the king, _the monarch_; Monseigneur the Bishop, _a
sainted pontiff_; the district-attorney, _the eloquent interpreter of
public prosecution_; the arguments, _the accents which we have just
listened to_; the age of Louis XIV., _the grand age_; a theatre, _the
temple of Melpomene_; the reigning family, _the august blood of our
kings_; a concert, _a musical solemnity_; the General Commandant of the
province, _the illustrious warrior, who, etc._; the pupils in the
seminary, _these tender levities_; errors imputed to newspapers, _the
imposture which distills its venom through the columns of those
organs_; etc. The lawyer had, accordingly, begun with an explanation as
to the theft of the apples,—an awkward matter couched in fine style;
but Bénigne Bossuet himself was obliged to allude to a chicken in the
midst of a funeral oration, and he extricated himself from the
situation in stately fashion. The lawyer established the fact that the
theft of the apples had not been circumstantially proved. His client,
whom he, in his character of counsel, persisted in calling
Champmathieu, had not been seen scaling that wall nor breaking that
branch by any one. He had been taken with that branch (which the lawyer
preferred to call a _bough_) in his possession; but he said that he had
found it broken off and lying on the ground, and had picked it up.
Where was there any proof to the contrary? No doubt that branch had
been broken off and concealed after the scaling of the wall, then
thrown away by the alarmed marauder; there was no doubt that there had
been a thief in the case. But what proof was there that that thief had
been Champmathieu? One thing only. His character as an ex-convict. The
lawyer did not deny that that character appeared to be, unhappily, well
attested; the accused had resided at Faverolles; the accused had
exercised the calling of a tree-pruner there; the name of Champmathieu
might well have had its origin in Jean Mathieu; all that was true,—in
short, four witnesses recognize Champmathieu, positively and without
hesitation, as that convict, Jean Valjean; to these signs, to this
testimony, the counsel could oppose nothing but the denial of his
client, the denial of an interested party; but supposing that he was
the convict Jean Valjean, did that prove that he was the thief of the
apples? that was a presumption at the most, not a proof. The prisoner,
it was true, and his counsel, “in good faith,” was obliged to admit it,
had adopted “a bad system of defence.” He obstinately denied
everything, the theft and his character of convict. An admission upon
this last point would certainly have been better, and would have won
for him the indulgence of his judges; the counsel had advised him to do
this; but the accused had obstinately refused, thinking, no doubt, that
he would save everything by admitting nothing. It was an error; but
ought not the paucity of this intelligence to be taken into
consideration? This man was visibly stupid. Long-continued wretchedness
in the galleys, long misery outside the galleys, had brutalized him,
etc. He defended himself badly; was that a reason for condemning him?
As for the affair with Little Gervais, the counsel need not discuss it;
it did not enter into the case. The lawyer wound up by beseeching the
jury and the court, if the identity of Jean Valjean appeared to them to
be evident, to apply to him the police penalties which are provided for
a criminal who has broken his ban, and not the frightful chastisement
which descends upon the convict guilty of a second offence.

The district-attorney answered the counsel for the defence. He was
violent and florid, as district-attorneys usually are.

He congratulated the counsel for the defence on his “loyalty,” and
skilfully took advantage of this loyalty. He reached the accused
through all the concessions made by his lawyer. The advocate had seemed
to admit that the prisoner was Jean Valjean. He took note of this. So
this man was Jean Valjean. This point had been conceded to the
accusation and could no longer be disputed. Here, by means of a clever
autonomasia which went back to the sources and causes of crime, the
district-attorney thundered against the immorality of the romantic
school, then dawning under the name of _the Satanic school_, which had
been bestowed upon it by the critics of the _Quotidienne_ and the
_Oriflamme_; he attributed, not without some probability, to the
influence of this perverse literature the crime of Champmathieu, or
rather, to speak more correctly, of Jean Valjean. Having exhausted
these considerations, he passed on to Jean Valjean himself. Who was
this Jean Valjean? Description of Jean Valjean: a monster spewed forth,
etc. The model for this sort of description is contained in the tale of
Théramène, which is not useful to tragedy, but which every day renders
great services to judicial eloquence. The audience and the jury
“shuddered.” The description finished, the district-attorney resumed
with an oratorical turn calculated to raise the enthusiasm of the
journal of the prefecture to the highest pitch on the following day:
And it is such a man, etc., etc., etc., vagabond, beggar, without means
of existence, etc., etc., inured by his past life to culpable deeds,
and but little reformed by his sojourn in the galleys, as was proved by
the crime committed against Little Gervais, etc., etc.; it is such a
man, caught upon the highway in the very act of theft, a few paces from
a wall that had been scaled, still holding in his hand the object
stolen, who denies the crime, the theft, the climbing the wall; denies
everything; denies even his own identity! In addition to a hundred
other proofs, to which we will not recur, four witnesses recognize
him—Javert, the upright inspector of police; Javert, and three of his
former companions in infamy, the convicts Brevet, Chenildieu, and
Cochepaille. What does he offer in opposition to this overwhelming
unanimity? His denial. What obduracy! You will do justice, gentlemen of
the jury, etc., etc. While the district-attorney was speaking, the
accused listened to him open-mouthed, with a sort of amazement in which
some admiration was assuredly blended. He was evidently surprised that
a man could talk like that. From time to time, at those “energetic”
moments of the prosecutor’s speech, when eloquence which cannot contain
itself overflows in a flood of withering epithets and envelops the
accused like a storm, he moved his head slowly from right to left and
from left to right in the sort of mute and melancholy protest with
which he had contented himself since the beginning of the argument. Two
or three times the spectators who were nearest to him heard him say in
a low voice, “That is what comes of not having asked M. Baloup.” The
district-attorney directed the attention of the jury to this stupid
attitude, evidently deliberate, which denoted not imbecility, but
craft, skill, a habit of deceiving justice, and which set forth in all
its nakedness the “profound perversity” of this man. He ended by making
his reserves on the affair of Little Gervais and demanding a severe
sentence.

At that time, as the reader will remember, it was penal servitude for
life.

The counsel for the defence rose, began by complimenting Monsieur
l’Avocat-General on his “admirable speech,” then replied as best he
could; but he weakened; the ground was evidently slipping away from
under his feet.






The moment for closing the debate had arrived. The President had the
accused stand up, and addressed to him the customary question, “Have
you anything to add to your defence?”


The man did not appear to understand, as he stood there, twisting in
his hands a terrible cap which he had.

The President repeated the question.

This time the man heard it. He seemed to understand. He made a motion
like a man who is just waking up, cast his eyes about him, stared at
the audience, the gendarmes, his counsel, the jury, the court, laid his
monstrous fist on the rim of woodwork in front of his bench, took
another look, and all at once, fixing his glance upon the
district-attorney, he began to speak. It was like an eruption. It
seemed, from the manner in which the words escaped from his
mouth,—incoherent, impetuous, pell-mell, tumbling over each other,—as
though they were all pressing forward to issue forth at once. He said:—

“This is what I have to say. That I have been a wheelwright in Paris,
and that it was with Monsieur Baloup. It is a hard trade. In the
wheelwright’s trade one works always in the open air, in courtyards,
under sheds when the masters are good, never in closed workshops,
because space is required, you see. In winter one gets so cold that one
beats one’s arms together to warm one’s self; but the masters don’t
like it; they say it wastes time. Handling iron when there is ice
between the paving-stones is hard work. That wears a man out quickly.
One is old while he is still quite young in that trade. At forty a man
is done for. I was fifty-three. I was in a bad state. And then, workmen
are so mean! When a man is no longer young, they call him nothing but
an old bird, old beast! I was not earning more than thirty sous a day.
They paid me as little as possible. The masters took advantage of my
age—and then I had my daughter, who was a laundress at the river. She
earned a little also. It sufficed for us two. She had trouble, also;
all day long up to her waist in a tub, in rain, in snow. When the wind
cuts your face, when it freezes, it is all the same; you must still
wash. There are people who have not much linen, and wait until late; if
you do not wash, you lose your custom. The planks are badly joined, and
water drops on you from everywhere; you have your petticoats all damp
above and below. That penetrates. She has also worked at the laundry of
the Enfants-Rouges, where the water comes through faucets. You are not
in the tub there; you wash at the faucet in front of you, and rinse in
a basin behind you. As it is enclosed, you are not so cold; but there
is that hot steam, which is terrible, and which ruins your eyes. She
came home at seven o’clock in the evening, and went to bed at once, she
was so tired. Her husband beat her. She is dead. We have not been very
happy. She was a good girl, who did not go to the ball, and who was
very peaceable. I remember one Shrove-Tuesday when she went to bed at
eight o’clock. There, I am telling the truth; you have only to ask. Ah,
yes! how stupid I am! Paris is a gulf. Who knows Father Champmathieu
there? But M. Baloup does, I tell you. Go see at M. Baloup’s; and after
all, I don’t know what is wanted of me.”


The man ceased speaking, and remained standing. He had said these
things in a loud, rapid, hoarse voice, with a sort of irritated and
savage ingenuousness. Once he paused to salute some one in the crowd.
The sort of affirmations which he seemed to fling out before him at
random came like hiccoughs, and to each he added the gesture of a
wood-cutter who is splitting wood. When he had finished, the audience
burst into a laugh. He stared at the public, and, perceiving that they
were laughing, and not understanding why, he began to laugh himself.

It was inauspicious.

The President, an attentive and benevolent man, raised his voice.

He reminded “the gentlemen of the jury” that “the sieur Baloup,
formerly a master-wheelwright, with whom the accused stated that he had
served, had been summoned in vain. He had become bankrupt, and was not
to be found.” Then turning to the accused, he enjoined him to listen to
what he was about to say, and added: “You are in a position where
reflection is necessary. The gravest presumptions rest upon you, and
may induce vital results. Prisoner, in your own interests, I summon you
for the last time to explain yourself clearly on two points. In the
first place, did you or did you not climb the wall of the Pierron
orchard, break the branch, and steal the apples; that is to say, commit
the crime of breaking in and theft? In the second place, are you the
discharged convict, Jean Valjean—yes or no?”


The prisoner shook his head with a capable air, like a man who has
thoroughly understood, and who knows what answer he is going to make.
He opened his mouth, turned towards the President, and said:—

“In the first place—”


Then he stared at his cap, stared at the ceiling, and held his peace.

“Prisoner,” said the district-attorney, in a severe voice; “pay
attention. You are not answering anything that has been asked of you.
Your embarrassment condemns you. It is evident that your name is not
Champmathieu; that you are the convict, Jean Valjean, concealed first
under the name of Jean Mathieu, which was the name of his mother; that
you went to Auvergne; that you were born at Faverolles, where you were
a pruner of trees. It is evident that you have been guilty of entering,
and of the theft of ripe apples from the Pierron orchard. The gentlemen
of the jury will form their own opinion.”

[Illustration: Father Champmathieu on Trial]

The prisoner had finally resumed his seat; he arose abruptly when the
district-attorney had finished, and exclaimed:—

“You are very wicked; that you are! This what I wanted to say; I could
not find words for it at first. I have stolen nothing. I am a man who
does not have something to eat every day. I was coming from Ailly; I
was walking through the country after a shower, which had made the
whole country yellow: even the ponds were overflowed, and nothing
sprang from the sand any more but the little blades of grass at the
wayside. I found a broken branch with apples on the ground; I picked up
the branch without knowing that it would get me into trouble. I have
been in prison, and they have been dragging me about for the last three
months; more than that I cannot say; people talk against me, they tell
me, ‘Answer!’ The gendarme, who is a good fellow, nudges my elbow, and
says to me in a low voice, ‘Come, answer!’ I don’t know how to explain;
I have no education; I am a poor man; that is where they wrong me,
because they do not see this. I have not stolen; I picked up from the
ground things that were lying there. You say, Jean Valjean, Jean
Mathieu! I don’t know those persons; they are villagers. I worked for
M. Baloup, Boulevard de l’Hôpital; my name is Champmathieu. You are
very clever to tell me where I was born; I don’t know myself: it’s not
everybody who has a house in which to come into the world; that would
be too convenient. I think that my father and mother were people who
strolled along the highways; I know nothing different. When I was a
child, they called me _young fellow_; now they call me _old Fellow_;
those are my baptismal names; take that as you like. I have been in
Auvergne; I have been at Faverolles. Pardi. Well! can’t a man have been
in Auvergne, or at Faverolles, without having been in the galleys? I
tell you that I have not stolen, and that I am Father Champmathieu; I
have been with M. Baloup; I have had a settled residence. You worry me
with your nonsense, there! Why is everybody pursuing me so furiously?”


The district-attorney had remained standing; he addressed the
President:—

“Monsieur le Président, in view of the confused but exceedingly clever
denials of the prisoner, who would like to pass himself off as an
idiot, but who will not succeed in so doing,—we shall attend to
that,—we demand that it shall please you and that it shall please the
court to summon once more into this place the convicts Brevet,
Cochepaille, and Chenildieu, and Police-Inspector Javert, and question
them for the last time as to the identity of the prisoner with the
convict Jean Valjean.”


“I would remind the district-attorney,” said the President, “that
Police-Inspector Javert, recalled by his duties to the capital of a
neighboring arrondissement, left the court-room and the town as soon as
he had made his deposition; we have accorded him permission, with the
consent of the district-attorney and of the counsel for the prisoner.”


“That is true, Mr. President,” responded the district-attorney. “In the
absence of sieur Javert, I think it my duty to remind the gentlemen of
the jury of what he said here a few hours ago. Javert is an estimable
man, who does honor by his rigorous and strict probity to inferior but
important functions. These are the terms of his deposition: ‘I do not
even stand in need of circumstantial proofs and moral presumptions to
give the lie to the prisoner’s denial. I recognize him perfectly. The
name of this man is not Champmathieu; he is an ex-convict named Jean
Valjean, and is very vicious and much to be feared. It is only with
extreme regret that he was released at the expiration of his term. He
underwent nineteen years of penal servitude for theft. He made five or
six attempts to escape. Besides the theft from Little Gervais, and from
the Pierron orchard, I suspect him of a theft committed in the house of
His Grace the late Bishop of D—— I often saw him at the time when I was
adjutant of the galley-guard at the prison in Toulon. I repeat that I
recognize him perfectly.’”


This extremely precise statement appeared to produce a vivid impression
on the public and on the jury. The district-attorney concluded by
insisting, that in default of Javert, the three witnesses Brevet,
Chenildieu, and Cochepaille should be heard once more and solemnly
interrogated.

The President transmitted the order to an usher, and, a moment later,
the door of the witnesses’ room opened. The usher, accompanied by a
gendarme ready to lend him armed assistance, introduced the convict
Brevet. The audience was in suspense; and all breasts heaved as though
they had contained but one soul.

The ex-convict Brevet wore the black and gray waistcoat of the central
prisons. Brevet was a person sixty years of age, who had a sort of
business man’s face, and the air of a rascal. The two sometimes go
together. In prison, whither fresh misdeeds had led him, he had become
something in the nature of a turnkey. He was a man of whom his
superiors said, “He tries to make himself of use.” The chaplains bore
good testimony as to his religious habits. It must not be forgotten
that this passed under the Restoration.

“Brevet,” said the President, “you have undergone an ignominious
sentence, and you cannot take an oath.”


Brevet dropped his eyes.

“Nevertheless,” continued the President, “even in the man whom the law
has degraded, there may remain, when the divine mercy permits it, a
sentiment of honor and of equity. It is to this sentiment that I appeal
at this decisive hour. If it still exists in you,—and I hope it
does,—reflect before replying to me: consider on the one hand, this
man, whom a word from you may ruin; on the other hand, justice, which a
word from you may enlighten. The instant is solemn; there is still time
to retract if you think you have been mistaken. Rise, prisoner. Brevet,
take a good look at the accused, recall your souvenirs, and tell us on
your soul and conscience, if you persist in recognizing this man as
your former companion in the galleys, Jean Valjean?”


Brevet looked at the prisoner, then turned towards the court.

“Yes, Mr. President, I was the first to recognize him, and I stick to
it; that man is Jean Valjean, who entered at Toulon in 1796, and left
in 1815. I left a year later. He has the air of a brute now; but it
must be because age has brutalized him; he was sly at the galleys: I
recognize him positively.”


“Take your seat,” said the President. “Prisoner, remain standing.”


Chenildieu was brought in, a prisoner for life, as was indicated by his
red cassock and his green cap. He was serving out his sentence at the
galleys of Toulon, whence he had been brought for this case. He was a
small man of about fifty, brisk, wrinkled, frail, yellow, brazen-faced,
feverish, who had a sort of sickly feebleness about all his limbs and
his whole person, and an immense force in his glance. His companions in
the galleys had nicknamed him _I-deny-God_ (_Je-nie Dieu_, Chenildieu).

The President addressed him in nearly the same words which he had used
to Brevet. At the moment when he reminded him of his infamy which
deprived him of the right to take an oath, Chenildieu raised his head
and looked the crowd in the face. The President invited him to
reflection, and asked him as he had asked Brevet, if he persisted in
recognition of the prisoner.

Chenildieu burst out laughing.

“Pardieu, as if I didn’t recognize him! We were attached to the same
chain for five years. So you are sulking, old fellow?”


“Go take your seat,” said the President.

The usher brought in Cochepaille. He was another convict for life, who
had come from the galleys, and was dressed in red, like Chenildieu, was
a peasant from Lourdes, and a half-bear of the Pyrenees. He had guarded
the flocks among the mountains, and from a shepherd he had slipped into
a brigand. Cochepaille was no less savage and seemed even more stupid
than the prisoner. He was one of those wretched men whom nature has
sketched out for wild beasts, and on whom society puts the finishing
touches as convicts in the galleys.

The President tried to touch him with some grave and pathetic words,
and asked him, as he had asked the other two, if he persisted, without
hesitation or trouble, in recognizing the man who was standing before
him.

“He is Jean Valjean,” said Cochepaille. “He was even called
Jean-the-Screw, because he was so strong.”


Each of these affirmations from these three men, evidently sincere and
in good faith, had raised in the audience a murmur of bad augury for
the prisoner,—a murmur which increased and lasted longer each time that
a fresh declaration was added to the proceeding.

The prisoner had listened to them, with that astounded face which was,
according to the accusation, his principal means of defence; at the
first, the gendarmes, his neighbors, had heard him mutter between his
teeth: “Ah, well, he’s a nice one!” after the second, he said, a little
louder, with an air that was almost that of satisfaction, “Good!” at
the third, he cried, “Famous!”


The President addressed him:—

“Have you heard, prisoner? What have you to say?”


He replied:—

“I say, ‘Famous!’”


An uproar broke out among the audience, and was communicated to the
jury; it was evident that the man was lost.

“Ushers,” said the President, “enforce silence! I am going to sum up
the arguments.”


At that moment there was a movement just beside the President; a voice
was heard crying:—

“Brevet! Chenildieu! Cochepaille! look here!”


All who heard that voice were chilled, so lamentable and terrible was
it; all eyes were turned to the point whence it had proceeded. A man,
placed among the privileged spectators who were seated behind the
court, had just risen, had pushed open the half-door which separated
the tribunal from the audience, and was standing in the middle of the
hall; the President, the district-attorney, M. Bamatabois, twenty
persons, recognized him, and exclaimed in concert:—

“M. Madeleine!”







It was he, in fact. The clerk’s lamp illumined his countenance. He held
his hat in his hand; there was no disorder in his clothing; his coat
was carefully buttoned; he was very pale, and he trembled slightly; his
hair, which had still been gray on his arrival in Arras, was now
entirely white: it had turned white during the hour he had sat there.

All heads were raised: the sensation was indescribable; there was a
momentary hesitation in the audience, the voice had been so
heart-rending; the man who stood there appeared so calm that they did
not understand at first. They asked themselves whether he had indeed
uttered that cry; they could not believe that that tranquil man had
been the one to give that terrible outcry.

This indecision only lasted a few seconds. Even before the President
and the district-attorney could utter a word, before the ushers and the
gendarmes could make a gesture, the man whom all still called, at that
moment, M. Madeleine, had advanced towards the witnesses Cochepaille,
Brevet, and Chenildieu.

“Do you not recognize me?” said he.

All three remained speechless, and indicated by a sign of the head that
they did not know him. Cochepaille, who was intimidated, made a
military salute. M. Madeleine turned towards the jury and the court,
and said in a gentle voice:—

“Gentlemen of the jury, order the prisoner to be released! Mr.
President, have me arrested. He is not the man whom you are in search
of; it is I: I am Jean Valjean.”


Not a mouth breathed; the first commotion of astonishment had been
followed by a silence like that of the grave; those within the hall
experienced that sort of religious terror which seizes the masses when
something grand has been done.

In the meantime, the face of the President was stamped with sympathy
and sadness; he had exchanged a rapid sign with the district-attorney
and a few low-toned words with the assistant judges; he addressed the
public, and asked in accents which all understood:—

“Is there a physician present?”


The district-attorney took the word:—

“Gentlemen of the jury, the very strange and unexpected incident which
disturbs the audience inspires us, like yourselves, only with a
sentiment which it is unnecessary for us to express. You all know, by
reputation at least, the honorable M. Madeleine, mayor of M. sur M.; if
there is a physician in the audience, we join the President in
requesting him to attend to M. Madeleine, and to conduct him to his
home.”


M. Madeleine did not allow the district-attorney to finish; he
interrupted him in accents full of suavity and authority. These are the
words which he uttered; here they are literally, as they were written
down, immediately after the trial by one of the witnesses to this
scene, and as they now ring in the ears of those who heard them nearly
forty years ago:—

“I thank you, Mr. District-Attorney, but I am not mad; you shall see;
you were on the point of committing a great error; release this man! I
am fulfilling a duty; I am that miserable criminal. I am the only one
here who sees the matter clearly, and I am telling you the truth. God,
who is on high, looks down on what I am doing at this moment, and that
suffices. You can take me, for here I am: but I have done my best; I
concealed myself under another name; I have become rich; I have become
a mayor; I have tried to re-enter the ranks of the honest. It seems
that that is not to be done. In short, there are many things which I
cannot tell. I will not narrate the story of my life to you; you will
hear it one of these days. I robbed Monseigneur the Bishop, it is true;
it is true that I robbed Little Gervais; they were right in telling you
that Jean Valjean was a very vicious wretch. Perhaps it was not
altogether his fault. Listen, honorable judges! a man who has been so
greatly humbled as I have has neither any remonstrances to make to
Providence, nor any advice to give to society; but, you see, the infamy
from which I have tried to escape is an injurious thing; the galleys
make the convict what he is; reflect upon that, if you please. Before
going to the galleys, I was a poor peasant, with very little
intelligence, a sort of idiot; the galleys wrought a change in me. I
was stupid; I became vicious: I was a block of wood; I became a
firebrand. Later on, indulgence and kindness saved me, as severity had
ruined me. But, pardon me, you cannot understand what I am saying. You
will find at my house, among the ashes in the fireplace, the forty-sou
piece which I stole, seven years ago, from Little Gervais. I have
nothing farther to add; take me. Good God! the district-attorney shakes
his head; you say, ‘M. Madeleine has gone mad!’ you do not believe me!
that is distressing. Do not, at least, condemn this man! What! these
men do not recognize me! I wish Javert were here; he would recognize
me.”


Nothing can reproduce the sombre and kindly melancholy of tone which
accompanied these words.

He turned to the three convicts, and said:—

“Well, I recognize you; do you remember, Brevet?”


He paused, hesitated for an instant, and said:—

“Do you remember the knitted suspenders with a checked pattern which
you wore in the galleys?”


Brevet gave a start of surprise, and surveyed him from head to foot
with a frightened air. He continued:—

“Chenildieu, you who conferred on yourself the name of ‘Jenie-Dieu,’
your whole right shoulder bears a deep burn, because you one day laid
your shoulder against the chafing-dish full of coals, in order to
efface the three letters T. F. P., which are still visible,
nevertheless; answer, is this true?”


“It is true,” said Chenildieu.

He addressed himself to Cochepaille:—

“Cochepaille, you have, near the bend in your left arm, a date stamped
in blue letters with burnt powder; the date is that of the landing of
the Emperor at Cannes, March 1, 1815; pull up your sleeve!”


Cochepaille pushed up his sleeve; all eyes were focused on him and on
his bare arm.

A gendarme held a light close to it; there was the date.

The unhappy man turned to the spectators and the judges with a smile
which still rends the hearts of all who saw it whenever they think of
it. It was a smile of triumph; it was also a smile of despair.

“You see plainly,” he said, “that I am Jean Valjean.”


In that chamber there were no longer either judges, accusers, nor
gendarmes; there was nothing but staring eyes and sympathizing hearts.
No one recalled any longer the part that each might be called upon to
play; the district-attorney forgot he was there for the purpose of
prosecuting, the President that he was there to preside, the counsel
for the defence that he was there to defend. It was a striking
circumstance that no question was put, that no authority intervened.
The peculiarity of sublime spectacles is, that they capture all souls
and turn witnesses into spectators. No one, probably, could have
explained what he felt; no one, probably, said to himself that he was
witnessing the splendid outburst of a grand light: all felt themselves
inwardly dazzled.

It was evident that they had Jean Valjean before their eyes. That was
clear. The appearance of this man had sufficed to suffuse with light
that matter which had been so obscure but a moment previously, without
any further explanation: the whole crowd, as by a sort of electric
revelation, understood instantly and at a single glance the simple and
magnificent history of a man who was delivering himself up so that
another man might not be condemned in his stead. The details, the
hesitations, little possible oppositions, were swallowed up in that
vast and luminous fact.

It was an impression which vanished speedily, but which was
irresistible at the moment.

“I do not wish to disturb the court further,” resumed Jean Valjean. “I
shall withdraw, since you do not arrest me. I have many things to do.
The district-attorney knows who I am; he knows whither I am going; he
can have me arrested when he likes.”


He directed his steps towards the door. Not a voice was raised, not an
arm extended to hinder him. All stood aside. At that moment there was
about him that divine something which causes multitudes to stand aside
and make way for a man. He traversed the crowd slowly. It was never
known who opened the door, but it is certain that he found the door
open when he reached it. On arriving there he turned round and said:—

“I am at your command, Mr. District-Attorney.”


Then he addressed the audience:—

“All of you, all who are present—consider me worthy of pity, do you
not? Good God! When I think of what I was on the point of doing, I
consider that I am to be envied. Nevertheless, I should have preferred
not to have had this occur.”


He withdrew, and the door closed behind him as it had opened, for those
who do certain sovereign things are always sure of being served by some
one in the crowd.

Less than an hour after this, the verdict of the jury freed the said
Champmathieu from all accusations; and Champmathieu, being at once
released, went off in a state of stupefaction, thinking that all men
were fools, and comprehending nothing of this vision.




