





That same day, towards four o’clock in the afternoon, Jean Valjean was
sitting alone on the back side of one of the most solitary slopes in
the Champ-de-Mars. Either from prudence, or from a desire to meditate,
or simply in consequence of one of those insensible changes of habit
which gradually introduce themselves into the existence of every one,
he now rarely went out with Cosette. He had on his workman’s waistcoat,
and trousers of gray linen; and his long-visored cap concealed his
countenance.

He was calm and happy now beside Cosette; that which had, for a time,
alarmed and troubled him had been dissipated; but for the last week or
two, anxieties of another nature had come up. One day, while walking on
the boulevard, he had caught sight of Thénardier; thanks to his
disguise, Thénardier had not recognized him; but since that day, Jean
Valjean had seen him repeatedly, and he was now certain that Thénardier
was prowling about in their neighborhood.

This had been sufficient to make him come to a decision.

Moreover, Paris was not tranquil: political troubles presented this
inconvenient feature, for any one who had anything to conceal in his
life, that the police had grown very uneasy and very suspicious, and
that while seeking to ferret out a man like Pépin or Morey, they might
very readily discover a man like Jean Valjean.

Jean Valjean had made up his mind to quit Paris, and even France, and
go over to England.

He had warned Cosette. He wished to set out before the end of the week.

He had seated himself on the slope in the Champ-de-Mars, turning over
all sorts of thoughts in his mind,—Thénardier, the police, the journey,
and the difficulty of procuring a passport.

He was troubled from all these points of view.

Last of all, an inexplicable circumstance which had just attracted his
attention, and from which he had not yet recovered, had added to his
state of alarm.

On the morning of that very day, when he alone of the household was
stirring, while strolling in the garden before Cosette’s shutters were
open, he had suddenly perceived on the wall, the following line,
engraved, probably with a nail:—

_16 Rue de la Verrerie_.

This was perfectly fresh, the grooves in the ancient black mortar were
white, a tuft of nettles at the foot of the wall was powdered with the
fine, fresh plaster.

This had probably been written on the preceding night.

What was this? A signal for others? A warning for himself?

In any case, it was evident that the garden had been violated, and that
strangers had made their way into it.

He recalled the odd incidents which had already alarmed the household.

His mind was now filling in this canvas.

He took good care not to speak to Cosette of the line written on the
wall, for fear of alarming her.

In the midst of his preoccupations, he perceived, from a shadow cast by
the sun, that some one had halted on the crest of the slope immediately
behind him.

He was on the point of turning round, when a paper folded in four fell
upon his knees as though a hand had dropped it over his head.

He took the paper, unfolded it, and read these words written in large
characters, with a pencil:—

“MOVE AWAY FROM YOUR HOUSE.”


Jean Valjean sprang hastily to his feet; there was no one on the slope;
he gazed all around him and perceived a creature larger than a child,
not so large as a man, clad in a gray blouse and trousers of
dust-colored cotton velvet, who was jumping over the parapet and who
slipped into the moat of the Champ-de-Mars.

Jean Valjean returned home at once, in a very thoughtful mood.






Marius had left M. Gillenormand in despair. He had entered the house
with very little hope, and quitted it with immense despair.

However, and those who have observed the depths of the human heart will
understand this, the officer, the lancer, the ninny, Cousin Théodule,
had left no trace in his mind. Not the slightest. The dramatic poet
might, apparently, expect some complications from this revelation made
point-blank by the grandfather to the grandson. But what the drama
would gain thereby, truth would lose. Marius was at an age when one
believes nothing in the line of evil; later on comes the age when one
believes everything. Suspicions are nothing else than wrinkles. Early
youth has none of them. That which overwhelmed Othello glides innocuous
over Candide. Suspect Cosette! There are hosts of crimes which Marius
could sooner have committed.

He began to wander about the streets, the resource of those who suffer.
He thought of nothing, so far as he could afterwards remember. At two
o’clock in the morning he returned to Courfeyrac’s quarters and flung
himself, without undressing, on his mattress. The sun was shining
brightly when he sank into that frightful leaden slumber which permits
ideas to go and come in the brain. When he awoke, he saw Courfeyrac,
Enjolras, Feuilly, and Combeferre standing in the room with their hats
on and all ready to go out.

Courfeyrac said to him:—

“Are you coming to General Lamarque’s funeral?”


It seemed to him that Courfeyrac was speaking Chinese.

He went out some time after them. He put in his pocket the pistols
which Javert had given him at the time of the adventure on the 3d of
February, and which had remained in his hands. These pistols were still
loaded. It would be difficult to say what vague thought he had in his
mind when he took them with him.

All day long he prowled about, without knowing where he was going; it
rained at times, he did not perceive it; for his dinner, he purchased a
penny roll at a baker’s, put it in his pocket and forgot it. It appears
that he took a bath in the Seine without being aware of it. There are
moments when a man has a furnace within his skull. Marius was passing
through one of those moments. He no longer hoped for anything; this
step he had taken since the preceding evening. He waited for night with
feverish impatience, he had but one idea clearly before his mind;—this
was, that at nine o’clock he should see Cosette. This last happiness
now constituted his whole future; after that, gloom. At intervals, as
he roamed through the most deserted boulevards, it seemed to him that
he heard strange noises in Paris. He thrust his head out of his reverie
and said: “Is there fighting on hand?”


At nightfall, at nine o’clock precisely, as he had promised Cosette, he
was in the Rue Plumet. When he approached the grating he forgot
everything. It was forty-eight hours since he had seen Cosette; he was
about to behold her once more; every other thought was effaced, and he
felt only a profound and unheard-of joy. Those minutes in which one
lives centuries always have this sovereign and wonderful property, that
at the moment when they are passing they fill the heart completely.

Marius displaced the bar, and rushed headlong into the garden. Cosette
was not at the spot where she ordinarily waited for him. He traversed
the thicket, and approached the recess near the flight of steps: “She
is waiting for me there,” said he. Cosette was not there. He raised his
eyes, and saw that the shutters of the house were closed. He made the
tour of the garden, the garden was deserted. Then he returned to the
house, and, rendered senseless by love, intoxicated, terrified,
exasperated with grief and uneasiness, like a master who returns home
at an evil hour, he tapped on the shutters. He knocked and knocked
again, at the risk of seeing the window open, and her father’s gloomy
face make its appearance, and demand: “What do you want?” This was
nothing in comparison with what he dimly caught a glimpse of. When he
had rapped, he lifted up his voice and called Cosette.—“Cosette!” he
cried; “Cosette!” he repeated imperiously. There was no reply. All was
over. No one in the garden; no one in the house.

Marius fixed his despairing eyes on that dismal house, which was as
black and as silent as a tomb and far more empty. He gazed at the stone
seat on which he had passed so many adorable hours with Cosette. Then
he seated himself on the flight of steps, his heart filled with
sweetness and resolution, he blessed his love in the depths of his
thought, and he said to himself that, since Cosette was gone, all that
there was left for him was to die.

All at once he heard a voice which seemed to proceed from the street,
and which was calling to him through the trees:—

“Mr. Marius!”


He started to his feet.

“Hey?” said he.

“Mr. Marius, are you there?”


“Yes.”


“Mr. Marius,” went on the voice, “your friends are waiting for you at
the barricade of the Rue de la Chanvrerie.”


This voice was not wholly unfamiliar to him. It resembled the hoarse,
rough voice of Éponine. Marius hastened to the gate, thrust aside the
movable bar, passed his head through the aperture, and saw some one who
appeared to him to be a young man, disappearing at a run into the
gloom.






Jean Valjean’s purse was of no use to M. Mabeuf. M. Mabeuf, in his
venerable, infantile austerity, had not accepted the gift of the stars;
he had not admitted that a star could coin itself into louis d’or. He
had not divined that what had fallen from heaven had come from
Gavroche. He had taken the purse to the police commissioner of the
quarter, as a lost article placed by the finder at the disposal of
claimants. The purse was actually lost. It is unnecessary to say that
no one claimed it, and that it did not succor M. Mabeuf.

Moreover, M. Mabeuf had continued his downward course.

His experiments on indigo had been no more successful in the Jardin des
Plantes than in his garden at Austerlitz. The year before he had owed
his housekeeper’s wages; now, as we have seen, he owed three quarters
of his rent. The pawnshop had sold the plates of his _Flora_ after the
expiration of thirteen months. Some coppersmith had made stewpans of
them. His copper plates gone, and being unable to complete even the
incomplete copies of his _Flora_ which were in his possession, he had
disposed of the text, at a miserable price, as waste paper, to a
second-hand bookseller. Nothing now remained to him of his life’s work.
He set to work to eat up the money for these copies. When he saw that
this wretched resource was becoming exhausted, he gave up his garden
and allowed it to run to waste. Before this, a long time before, he had
given up his two eggs and the morsel of beef which he ate from time to
time. He dined on bread and potatoes. He had sold the last of his
furniture, then all duplicates of his bedding, his clothing and his
blankets, then his herbariums and prints; but he still retained his
most precious books, many of which were of the greatest rarity, among
others, _Les Quadrins Historiques de la Bible_, edition of 1560; _La
Concordance des Bibles_, by Pierre de Besse; _Les Marguerites de la
Marguerite_, of Jean de La Haye, with a dedication to the Queen of
Navarre; the book _de la Charge et Dignité de l’Ambassadeur_, by the
Sieur de Villiers Hotman; a _Florilegium Rabbinicum_ of 1644; a
_Tibullus_ of 1567, with this magnificent inscription: _Venetiis, in
ædibus Manutianis_; and lastly, a Diogenes Laertius, printed at Lyons
in 1644, which contained the famous variant of the manuscript 411,
thirteenth century, of the Vatican, and those of the two manuscripts of
Venice, 393 and 394, consulted with such fruitful results by Henri
Estienne, and all the passages in Doric dialect which are only found in
the celebrated manuscript of the twelfth century belonging to the
Naples Library. M. Mabeuf never had any fire in his chamber, and went
to bed at sundown, in order not to consume any candles. It seemed as
though he had no longer any neighbors: people avoided him when he went
out; he perceived the fact. The wretchedness of a child interests a
mother, the wretchedness of a young man interests a young girl, the
wretchedness of an old man interests no one. It is, of all distresses,
the coldest. Still, Father Mabeuf had not entirely lost his childlike
serenity. His eyes acquired some vivacity when they rested on his
books, and he smiled when he gazed at the Diogenes Laertius, which was
a unique copy. His bookcase with glass doors was the only piece of
furniture which he had kept beyond what was strictly indispensable.

One day, Mother Plutarque said to him:—

“I have no money to buy any dinner.”


What she called dinner was a loaf of bread and four or five potatoes.

“On credit?” suggested M. Mabeuf.

“You know well that people refuse me.”


M. Mabeuf opened his bookcase, took a long look at all his books, one
after another, as a father obliged to decimate his children would gaze
upon them before making a choice, then seized one hastily, put it in
under his arm and went out. He returned two hours later, without
anything under his arm, laid thirty sous on the table, and said:—

“You will get something for dinner.”


From that moment forth, Mother Plutarque saw a sombre veil, which was
never more lifted, descend over the old man’s candid face.

On the following day, on the day after, and on the day after that, it
had to be done again.

M. Mabeuf went out with a book and returned with a coin. As the
second-hand dealers perceived that he was forced to sell, they
purchased of him for twenty sous that for which he had paid twenty
francs, sometimes at those very shops. Volume by volume, the whole
library went the same road. He said at times: “But I am eighty;” as
though he cherished some secret hope that he should arrive at the end
of his days before reaching the end of his books. His melancholy
increased. Once, however, he had a pleasure. He had gone out with a
Robert Estienne, which he had sold for thirty-five sous under the Quai
Malaquais, and he returned with an Aldus which he had bought for forty
sous in the Rue des Grès.—“I owe five sous,” he said, beaming on Mother
Plutarque. That day he had no dinner.

He belonged to the Horticultural Society. His destitution became known
there. The president of the society came to see him, promised to speak
to the Minister of Agriculture and Commerce about him, and did
so.—“Why, what!” exclaimed the Minister, “I should think so! An old
savant! a botanist! an inoffensive man! Something must be done for
him!” On the following day, M. Mabeuf received an invitation to dine
with the Minister. Trembling with joy, he showed the letter to Mother
Plutarque. “We are saved!” said he. On the day appointed, he went to
the Minister’s house. He perceived that his ragged cravat, his long,
square coat, and his waxed shoes astonished the ushers. No one spoke to
him, not even the Minister. About ten o’clock in the evening, while he
was still waiting for a word, he heard the Minister’s wife, a beautiful
woman in a low-necked gown whom he had not ventured to approach,
inquire: “Who is that old gentleman?” He returned home on foot at
midnight, in a driving rain-storm. He had sold an Elzevir to pay for a
carriage in which to go thither.

He had acquired the habit of reading a few pages in his Diogenes
Laertius every night, before he went to bed. He knew enough Greek to
enjoy the peculiarities of the text which he owned. He had now no other
enjoyment. Several weeks passed. All at once, Mother Plutarque fell
ill. There is one thing sadder than having no money with which to buy
bread at the baker’s and that is having no money to purchase drugs at
the apothecary’s. One evening, the doctor had ordered a very expensive
potion. And the malady was growing worse; a nurse was required. M.
Mabeuf opened his bookcase; there was nothing there. The last volume
had taken its departure. All that was left to him was Diogenes
Laertius. He put this unique copy under his arm, and went out. It was
the 4th of June, 1832; he went to the Porte Saint-Jacques, to Royal’s
successor, and returned with one hundred francs. He laid the pile of
five-franc pieces on the old serving-woman’s nightstand, and returned
to his chamber without saying a word.

On the following morning, at dawn, he seated himself on the overturned
post in his garden, and he could be seen over the top of the hedge,
sitting the whole morning motionless, with drooping head, his eyes
vaguely fixed on the withered flower-beds. It rained at intervals; the
old man did not seem to perceive the fact.

In the afternoon, extraordinary noises broke out in Paris. They
resembled shots and the clamors of a multitude.

Father Mabeuf raised his head. He saw a gardener passing, and
inquired:—

“What is it?”


The gardener, spade on back, replied in the most unconcerned tone:—

“It is the riots.”


“What riots?”


“Yes, they are fighting.”


“Why are they fighting?”


“Ah, good Heavens!” ejaculated the gardener.

“In what direction?” went on M. Mabeuf.

“In the neighborhood of the Arsenal.”


Father Mabeuf went to his room, took his hat, mechanically sought for a
book to place under his arm, found none, said: “Ah! truly!” and went
off with a bewildered air.




