





What are the convulsions of a city in comparison with the insurrections
of the soul? Man is a depth still greater than the people. Jean Valjean
at that very moment was the prey of a terrible upheaval. Every sort of
gulf had opened again within him. He also was trembling, like Paris, on
the brink of an obscure and formidable revolution. A few hours had
sufficed to bring this about. His destiny and his conscience had
suddenly been covered with gloom. Of him also, as well as of Paris, it
might have been said: “Two principles are face to face. The white angel
and the black angel are about to seize each other on the bridge of the
abyss. Which of the two will hurl the other over? Who will carry the
day?”


On the evening preceding this same 5th of June, Jean Valjean,
accompanied by Cosette and Toussaint had installed himself in the Rue
de l’Homme Armé. A change awaited him there.

Cosette had not quitted the Rue Plumet without making an effort at
resistance. For the first time since they had lived side by side,
Cosette’s will and the will of Jean Valjean had proved to be distinct,
and had been in opposition, at least, if they had not clashed. There
had been objections on one side and inflexibility on the other. The
abrupt advice: “Leave your house,” hurled at Jean Valjean by a
stranger, had alarmed him to the extent of rendering him peremptory. He
thought that he had been traced and followed. Cosette had been obliged
to give way.

Both had arrived in the Rue de l’Homme Armé without opening their lips,
and without uttering a word, each being absorbed in his own personal
preoccupation; Jean Valjean so uneasy that he did not notice Cosette’s
sadness, Cosette so sad that she did not notice Jean Valjean’s
uneasiness.

Jean Valjean had taken Toussaint with him, a thing which he had never
done in his previous absences. He perceived the possibility of not
returning to the Rue Plumet, and he could neither leave Toussaint
behind nor confide his secret to her. Besides, he felt that she was
devoted and trustworthy. Treachery between master and servant begins in
curiosity. Now Toussaint, as though she had been destined to be Jean
Valjean’s servant, was not curious. She stammered in her peasant
dialect of Barneville: “I am made so; I do my work; the rest is no
affair of mine.”


In this departure from the Rue Plumet, which had been almost a flight,
Jean Valjean had carried away nothing but the little embalmed valise,
baptized by Cosette “the inseparable.” Full trunks would have required
porters, and porters are witnesses. A fiacre had been summoned to the
door on the Rue de Babylone, and they had taken their departure.

It was with difficulty that Toussaint had obtained permission to pack
up a little linen and clothes and a few toilet articles. Cosette had
taken only her portfolio and her blotting-book.

Jean Valjean, with a view to augmenting the solitude and the mystery of
this departure, had arranged to quit the pavilion of the Rue Plumet
only at dusk, which had allowed Cosette time to write her note to
Marius. They had arrived in the Rue de l’Homme Armé after night had
fully fallen.

They had gone to bed in silence.

The lodgings in the Rue de l’Homme Armé were situated on a back court,
on the second floor, and were composed of two sleeping-rooms, a
dining-room and a kitchen adjoining the dining-room, with a garret
where there was a folding-bed, and which fell to Toussaint’s share. The
dining-room was an antechamber as well, and separated the two bedrooms.
The apartment was provided with all necessary utensils.

People re-acquire confidence as foolishly as they lose it; human nature
is so constituted. Hardly had Jean Valjean reached the Rue de l’Homme
Armé when his anxiety was lightened and by degrees dissipated. There
are soothing spots which act in some sort mechanically on the mind. An
obscure street, peaceable inhabitants. Jean Valjean experienced an
indescribable contagion of tranquillity in that alley of ancient Paris,
which is so narrow that it is barred against carriages by a transverse
beam placed on two posts, which is deaf and dumb in the midst of the
clamorous city, dimly lighted at midday, and is, so to speak, incapable
of emotions between two rows of lofty houses centuries old, which hold
their peace like ancients as they are. There was a touch of stagnant
oblivion in that street. Jean Valjean drew his breath once more there.
How could he be found there?

His first care was to place _the inseparable_ beside him.

He slept well. Night brings wisdom; we may add, night soothes. On the
following morning he awoke in a mood that was almost gay. He thought
the dining-room charming, though it was hideous, furnished with an old
round table, a long sideboard surmounted by a slanting mirror, a
dilapidated armchair, and several plain chairs which were encumbered
with Toussaint’s packages. In one of these packages Jean Valjean’s
uniform of a National Guard was visible through a rent.

As for Cosette, she had had Toussaint take some broth to her room, and
did not make her appearance until evening.

About five o’clock, Toussaint, who was going and coming and busying
herself with the tiny establishment, set on the table a cold chicken,
which Cosette, out of deference to her father, consented to glance at.

That done, Cosette, under the pretext of an obstinate sick headache,
had bade Jean Valjean good night and had shut herself up in her
chamber. Jean Valjean had eaten a wing of the chicken with a good
appetite, and with his elbows on the table, having gradually recovered
his serenity, had regained possession of his sense of security.

While he was discussing this modest dinner, he had, twice or thrice,
noticed in a confused way, Toussaint’s stammering words as she said to
him: “Monsieur, there is something going on, they are fighting in
Paris.” But absorbed in a throng of inward calculations, he had paid no
heed to it. To tell the truth, he had not heard her. He rose and began
to pace from the door to the window and from the window to the door,
growing ever more serene.

With this calm, Cosette, his sole anxiety, recurred to his thoughts.
Not that he was troubled by this headache, a little nervous crisis, a
young girl’s fit of sulks, the cloud of a moment, there would be
nothing left of it in a day or two; but he meditated on the future,
and, as was his habit, he thought of it with pleasure. After all, he
saw no obstacle to their happy life resuming its course. At certain
hours, everything seems impossible, at others everything appears easy;
Jean Valjean was in the midst of one of these good hours. They
generally succeed the bad ones, as day follows night, by virtue of that
law of succession and of contrast which lies at the very foundation of
nature, and which superficial minds call antithesis. In this peaceful
street where he had taken refuge, Jean Valjean got rid of all that had
been troubling him for some time past. This very fact, that he had seen
many shadows, made him begin to perceive a little azure. To have
quitted the Rue Plumet without complications or incidents was one good
step already accomplished. Perhaps it would be wise to go abroad, if
only for a few months, and to set out for London. Well, they would go.
What difference did it make to him whether he was in France or in
England, provided he had Cosette beside him? Cosette was his nation.
Cosette sufficed for his happiness; the idea that he, perhaps, did not
suffice for Cosette’s happiness, that idea which had formerly been the
cause of his fever and sleeplessness, did not even present itself to
his mind. He was in a state of collapse from all his past sufferings,
and he was fully entered on optimism. Cosette was by his side, she
seemed to be his; an optical illusion which every one has experienced.
He arranged in his own mind, with all sorts of felicitous devices, his
departure for England with Cosette, and he beheld his felicity
reconstituted wherever he pleased, in the perspective of his reverie.

As he paced to and fro with long strides, his glance suddenly
encountered something strange.

In the inclined mirror facing him which surmounted the sideboard, he
saw the four lines which follow:—

“My dearest, alas! my father insists on our setting out immediately. We
shall be this evening in the Rue de l’Homme Armé, No. 7. In a week we
shall be in England. COSETTE. June 4th.”


Jean Valjean halted, perfectly haggard.

Cosette on her arrival had placed her blotting-book on the sideboard in
front of the mirror, and, utterly absorbed in her agony of grief, had
forgotten it and left it there, without even observing that she had
left it wide open, and open at precisely the page on which she had laid
to dry the four lines which she had penned, and which she had given in
charge of the young workman in the Rue Plumet. The writing had been
printed off on the blotter.

The mirror reflected the writing.

The result was, what is called in geometry, _the symmetrical image_; so
that the writing, reversed on the blotter, was righted in the mirror
and presented its natural appearance; and Jean Valjean had beneath his
eyes the letter written by Cosette to Marius on the preceding evening.

It was simple and withering.

Jean Valjean stepped up to the mirror. He read the four lines again,
but he did not believe them. They produced on him the effect of
appearing in a flash of lightning. It was a hallucination, it was
impossible. It was not so.

Little by little, his perceptions became more precise; he looked at
Cosette’s blotting-book, and the consciousness of the reality returned
to him. He caught up the blotter and said: “It comes from there.” He
feverishly examined the four lines imprinted on the blotter, the
reversal of the letters converted into an odd scrawl, and he saw no
sense in it. Then he said to himself: “But this signifies nothing;
there is nothing written here.” And he drew a long breath with
inexpressible relief. Who has not experienced those foolish joys in
horrible instants? The soul does not surrender to despair until it has
exhausted all illusions.

He held the blotter in his hand and contemplated it in stupid delight,
almost ready to laugh at the hallucination of which he had been the
dupe. All at once his eyes fell upon the mirror again, and again he
beheld the vision. There were the four lines outlined with inexorable
clearness. This time it was no mirage. The recurrence of a vision is a
reality; it was palpable, it was the writing restored in the mirror. He
understood.

Jean Valjean tottered, dropped the blotter, and fell into the old
armchair beside the buffet, with drooping head, and glassy eyes, in
utter bewilderment. He told himself that it was plain, that the light
of the world had been eclipsed forever, and that Cosette had written
that to some one. Then he heard his soul, which had become terrible
once more, give vent to a dull roar in the gloom. Try then the effect
of taking from the lion the dog which he has in his cage!

Strange and sad to say, at that very moment, Marius had not yet
received Cosette’s letter; chance had treacherously carried it to Jean
Valjean before delivering it to Marius. Up to that day, Jean Valjean
had not been vanquished by trial. He had been subjected to fearful
proofs; no violence of bad fortune had been spared him; the ferocity of
fate, armed with all vindictiveness and all social scorn, had taken him
for her prey and had raged against him. He had accepted every extremity
when it had been necessary; he had sacrificed his inviolability as a
reformed man, had yielded up his liberty, risked his head, lost
everything, suffered everything, and he had remained disinterested and
stoical to such a point that he might have been thought to be absent
from himself like a martyr. His conscience inured to every assault of
destiny, might have appeared to be forever impregnable. Well, any one
who had beheld his spiritual self would have been obliged to concede
that it weakened at that moment. It was because, of all the tortures
which he had undergone in the course of this long inquisition to which
destiny had doomed him, this was the most terrible. Never had such
pincers seized him hitherto. He felt the mysterious stirring of all his
latent sensibilities. He felt the plucking at the strange chord. Alas!
the supreme trial, let us say rather, the only trial, is the loss of
the beloved being.

Poor old Jean Valjean certainly did not love Cosette otherwise than as
a father; but we have already remarked, above, that into this paternity
the widowhood of his life had introduced all the shades of love; he
loved Cosette as his daughter, and he loved her as his mother, and he
loved her as his sister; and, as he had never had either a woman to
love or a wife, as nature is a creditor who accepts no protest, that
sentiment also, the most impossible to lose, was mingled with the rest,
vague, ignorant, pure with the purity of blindness, unconscious,
celestial, angelic, divine; less like a sentiment than like an
instinct, less like an instinct than like an imperceptible and
invisible but real attraction; and love, properly speaking, was, in his
immense tenderness for Cosette, like the thread of gold in the
mountain, concealed and virgin.

Let the reader recall the situation of heart which we have already
indicated. No marriage was possible between them; not even that of
souls; and yet, it is certain that their destinies were wedded. With
the exception of Cosette, that is to say, with the exception of a
childhood, Jean Valjean had never, in the whole of his long life, known
anything of that which may be loved. The passions and loves which
succeed each other had not produced in him those successive green
growths, tender green or dark green, which can be seen in foliage which
passes through the winter and in men who pass fifty. In short, and we
have insisted on it more than once, all this interior fusion, all this
whole, of which the sum total was a lofty virtue, ended in rendering
Jean Valjean a father to Cosette. A strange father, forged from the
grandfather, the son, the brother, and the husband, that existed in
Jean Valjean; a father in whom there was included even a mother; a
father who loved Cosette and adored her, and who held that child as his
light, his home, his family, his country, his paradise.

Thus when he saw that the end had absolutely come, that she was
escaping from him, that she was slipping from his hands, that she was
gliding from him, like a cloud, like water, when he had before his eyes
this crushing proof: “another is the goal of her heart, another is the
wish of her life; there is a dearest one, I am no longer anything but
her father, I no longer exist”; when he could no longer doubt, when he
said to himself: “She is going away from me!” the grief which he felt
surpassed the bounds of possibility. To have done all that he had done
for the purpose of ending like this! And the very idea of being
nothing! Then, as we have just said, a quiver of revolt ran through him
from head to foot. He felt, even in the very roots of his hair, the
immense reawakening of egotism, and the _I_ in this man’s abyss howled.

There is such a thing as the sudden giving way of the inward subsoil. A
despairing certainty does not make its way into a man without thrusting
aside and breaking certain profound elements which, in some cases, are
the very man himself. Grief, when it attains this shape, is a headlong
flight of all the forces of the conscience. These are fatal crises. Few
among us emerge from them still like ourselves and firm in duty. When
the limit of endurance is overstepped, the most imperturbable virtue is
disconcerted. Jean Valjean took the blotter again, and convinced
himself afresh; he remained bowed and as though petrified and with
staring eyes, over those four unobjectionable lines; and there arose
within him such a cloud that one might have thought that everything in
this soul was crumbling away.

He examined this revelation, athwart the exaggerations of reverie, with
an apparent and terrifying calmness, for it is a fearful thing when a
man’s calmness reaches the coldness of the statue.

He measured the terrible step which his destiny had taken without his
having a suspicion of the fact; he recalled his fears of the preceding
summer, so foolishly dissipated; he recognized the precipice, it was
still the same; only, Jean Valjean was no longer on the brink, he was
at the bottom of it.

The unprecedented and heart-rending thing about it was that he had
fallen without perceiving it. All the light of his life had departed,
while he still fancied that he beheld the sun.

His instinct did not hesitate. He put together certain circumstances,
certain dates, certain blushes and certain pallors on Cosette’s part,
and he said to himself: “It is he.”


The divination of despair is a sort of mysterious bow which never
misses its aim. He struck Marius with his first conjecture. He did not
know the name, but he found the man instantly. He distinctly perceived,
in the background of the implacable conjuration of his memories, the
unknown prowler of the Luxembourg, that wretched seeker of love
adventures, that idler of romance, that idiot, that coward, for it is
cowardly to come and make eyes at young girls who have beside them a
father who loves them.

After he had thoroughly verified the fact that this young man was at
the bottom of this situation, and that everything proceeded from that
quarter, he, Jean Valjean, the regenerated man, the man who had so
labored over his soul, the man who had made so many efforts to resolve
all life, all misery, and all unhappiness into love, looked into his
own breast and there beheld a spectre, Hate.

Great griefs contain something of dejection. They discourage one with
existence. The man into whom they enter feels something within him
withdraw from him. In his youth, their visits are lugubrious; later on
they are sinister. Alas, if despair is a fearful thing when the blood
is hot, when the hair is black, when the head is erect on the body like
the flame on the torch, when the roll of destiny still retains its full
thickness, when the heart, full of desirable love, still possesses
beats which can be returned to it, when one has time for redress, when
all women and all smiles and all the future and all the horizon are
before one, when the force of life is complete, what is it in old age,
when the years hasten on, growing ever paler, to that twilight hour
when one begins to behold the stars of the tomb?

While he was meditating, Toussaint entered. Jean Valjean rose and asked
her:—

“In what quarter is it? Do you know?”


Toussaint was struck dumb, and could only answer him:—

“What is it, sir?”


Jean Valjean began again: “Did you not tell me that just now that there
is fighting going on?”


“Ah! yes, sir,” replied Toussaint. “It is in the direction of
Saint-Merry.”


There is a mechanical movement which comes to us, unconsciously, from
the most profound depths of our thought. It was, no doubt, under the
impulse of a movement of this sort, and of which he was hardly
conscious, that Jean Valjean, five minutes later, found himself in the
street.

Bareheaded, he sat upon the stone post at the door of his house. He
seemed to be listening.

Night had come.






How long did he remain thus? What was the ebb and flow of this tragic
meditation? Did he straighten up? Did he remain bowed? Had he been bent
to breaking? Could he still rise and regain his footing in his
conscience upon something solid? He probably would not have been able
to tell himself.

The street was deserted. A few uneasy bourgeois, who were rapidly
returning home, hardly saw him. Each one for himself in times of peril.
The lamp-lighter came as usual to light the lantern which was situated
precisely opposite the door of No. 7, and then went away. Jean Valjean
would not have appeared like a living man to any one who had examined
him in that shadow. He sat there on the post of his door, motionless as
a form of ice. There is congealment in despair. The alarm bells and a
vague and stormy uproar were audible. In the midst of all these
convulsions of the bell mingled with the revolt, the clock of
Saint-Paul struck eleven, gravely and without haste; for the tocsin is
man; the hour is God. The passage of the hour produced no effect on
Jean Valjean; Jean Valjean did not stir. Still, at about that moment, a
brusque report burst forth in the direction of the Halles, a second yet
more violent followed; it was probably that attack on the barricade in
the Rue de la Chanvrerie which we have just seen repulsed by Marius. At
this double discharge, whose fury seemed augmented by the stupor of the
night, Jean Valjean started; he rose, turning towards the quarter
whence the noise proceeded; then he fell back upon the post again,
folded his arms, and his head slowly sank on his bosom again.

He resumed his gloomy dialogue with himself.

All at once, he raised his eyes; some one was walking in the street, he
heard steps near him. He looked, and by the light of the lanterns, in
the direction of the street which ran into the Rue-aux-Archives, he
perceived a young, livid, and beaming face.

Gavroche had just arrived in the Rue de l’Homme Armé.

Gavroche was staring into the air, apparently in search of something.
He saw Jean Valjean perfectly well but he took no notice of him.

Gavroche after staring into the air, stared below; he raised himself on
tiptoe, and felt of the doors and windows of the ground floor; they
were all shut, bolted, and padlocked. After having authenticated the
fronts of five or six barricaded houses in this manner, the urchin
shrugged his shoulders, and took himself to task in these terms:—

“Pardi!”


Then he began to stare into the air again.

Jean Valjean, who, an instant previously, in his then state of mind,
would not have spoken to or even answered any one, felt irresistibly
impelled to accost that child.

“What is the matter with you, my little fellow?” he said.

“The matter with me is that I am hungry,” replied Gavroche frankly. And
he added: “Little fellow yourself.”


Jean Valjean fumbled in his fob and pulled out a five-franc piece.

But Gavroche, who was of the wagtail species, and who skipped
vivaciously from one gesture to another, had just picked up a stone. He
had caught sight of the lantern.

“See here,” said he, “you still have your lanterns here. You are
disobeying the regulations, my friend. This is disorderly. Smash that
for me.”


And he flung the stone at the lantern, whose broken glass fell with
such a clatter that the bourgeois in hiding behind their curtains in
the opposite house cried: “There is ‘Ninety-three’ come again.”


The lantern oscillated violently, and went out. The street had suddenly
become black.

“That’s right, old street,” ejaculated Gavroche, “put on your
night-cap.”


And turning to Jean Valjean:—

“What do you call that gigantic monument that you have there at the end
of the street? It’s the Archives, isn’t it? I must crumble up those big
stupids of pillars a bit and make a nice barricade out of them.”


Jean Valjean stepped up to Gavroche.

“Poor creature,” he said in a low tone, and speaking to himself, “he is
hungry.”


And he laid the hundred-sou piece in his hand.

Gavroche raised his face, astonished at the size of this sou; he stared
at it in the darkness, and the whiteness of the big sou dazzled him. He
knew five-franc pieces by hearsay; their reputation was agreeable to
him; he was delighted to see one close to. He said:—

“Let us contemplate the tiger.”


He gazed at it for several minutes in ecstasy; then, turning to Jean
Valjean, he held out the coin to him, and said majestically to him:—

“Bourgeois, I prefer to smash lanterns. Take back your ferocious beast.
You can’t bribe me. That has got five claws; but it doesn’t scratch
me.”


“Have you a mother?” asked Jean Valjean.

Gavroche replied:—

“More than you have, perhaps.”


“Well,” returned Jean Valjean, “keep the money for your mother!”


Gavroche was touched. Moreover, he had just noticed that the man who
was addressing him had no hat, and this inspired him with confidence.

“Truly,” said he, “so it wasn’t to keep me from breaking the lanterns?”


“Break whatever you please.”


“You’re a fine man,” said Gavroche.

And he put the five-franc piece into one of his pockets.

His confidence having increased, he added:—

“Do you belong in this street?”


“Yes, why?”


“Can you tell me where No. 7 is?”


“What do you want with No. 7?”


Here the child paused, he feared that he had said too much; he thrust
his nails energetically into his hair and contented himself with
replying:—

“Ah! Here it is.”


An idea flashed through Jean Valjean’s mind. Anguish does have these
gleams. He said to the lad:—

“Are you the person who is bringing a letter that I am expecting?”


“You?” said Gavroche. “You are not a woman.”


“The letter is for Mademoiselle Cosette, is it not?”


“Cosette,” muttered Gavroche. “Yes, I believe that is the queer name.”


“Well,” resumed Jean Valjean, “I am the person to whom you are to
deliver the letter. Give it here.”


“In that case, you must know that I was sent from the barricade.”


“Of course,” said Jean Valjean.

Gavroche engulfed his hand in another of his pockets and drew out a
paper folded in four.

Then he made the military salute.

“Respect for despatches,” said he. “It comes from the Provisional
Government.”


“Give it to me,” said Jean Valjean.

Gavroche held the paper elevated above his head.

“Don’t go and fancy it’s a love letter. It is for a woman, but it’s for
the people. We men fight and we respect the fair sex. We are not as
they are in fine society, where there are lions who send chickens55 to
camels.”


“Give it to me.”


“After all,” continued Gavroche, “you have the air of an honest man.”


“Give it to me quick.”


“Catch hold of it.”


And he handed the paper to Jean Valjean.

“And make haste, Monsieur What’s-your-name, for Mamselle Cosette is
waiting.”


Gavroche was satisfied with himself for having produced this remark.

Jean Valjean began again:—

“Is it to Saint-Merry that the answer is to be sent?”


“There you are making some of those bits of pastry vulgarly called
_brioches_ [blunders]. This letter comes from the barricade of the Rue
de la Chanvrerie, and I’m going back there. Good evening, citizen.”


That said, Gavroche took himself off, or, to describe it more exactly,
fluttered away in the direction whence he had come with a flight like
that of an escaped bird. He plunged back into the gloom as though he
made a hole in it, with the rigid rapidity of a projectile; the alley
of l’Homme Armé became silent and solitary once more; in a twinkling,
that strange child, who had about him something of the shadow and of
the dream, had buried himself in the mists of the rows of black houses,
and was lost there, like smoke in the dark; and one might have thought
that he had dissipated and vanished, had there not taken place, a few
minutes after his disappearance, a startling shiver of glass, and had
not the magnificent crash of a lantern rattling down on the pavement
once more abruptly awakened the indignant bourgeois. It was Gavroche
upon his way through the Rue du Chaume.






Jean Valjean went into the house with Marius’ letter.

He groped his way up the stairs, as pleased with the darkness as an owl
who grips his prey, opened and shut his door softly, listened to see
whether he could hear any noise,—made sure that, to all appearances,
Cosette and Toussaint were asleep, and plunged three or four matches
into the bottle of the Fumade lighter before he could evoke a spark, so
greatly did his hand tremble. What he had just done smacked of theft.
At last the candle was lighted; he leaned his elbows on the table,
unfolded the paper, and read.

In violent emotions, one does not read, one flings to the earth, so to
speak, the paper which one holds, one clutches it like a victim, one
crushes it, one digs into it the nails of one’s wrath, or of one’s joy;
one hastens to the end, one leaps to the beginning; attention is at
fever heat; it takes up in the gross, as it were, the essential points;
it seizes on one point, and the rest disappears. In Marius’ note to
Cosette, Jean Valjean saw only these words:—

“I die. When thou readest this, my soul will be near thee.”


In the presence of these two lines, he was horribly dazzled; he
remained for a moment, crushed, as it were, by the change of emotion
which was taking place within him, he stared at Marius’ note with a
sort of intoxicated amazement, he had before his eyes that splendor,
the death of a hated individual.

He uttered a frightful cry of inward joy. So it was all over. The
catastrophe had arrived sooner than he had dared to hope. The being who
obstructed his destiny was disappearing. That man had taken himself off
of his own accord, freely, willingly. This man was going to his death,
and he, Jean Valjean, had had no hand in the matter, and it was through
no fault of his. Perhaps, even, he is already dead. Here his fever
entered into calculations. No, he is not dead yet. The letter had
evidently been intended for Cosette to read on the following morning;
after the two discharges that were heard between eleven o’clock and
midnight, nothing more has taken place; the barricade will not be
attacked seriously until daybreak; but that makes no difference, from
the moment when “that man” is concerned in this war, he is lost; he is
caught in the gearing. Jean Valjean felt himself delivered. So he was
about to find himself alone with Cosette once more. The rivalry would
cease; the future was beginning again. He had but to keep this note in
his pocket. Cosette would never know what had become of that man. All
that there requires to be done is to let things take their own course.
This man cannot escape. If he is not already dead, it is certain that
he is about to die. What good fortune!

Having said all this to himself, he became gloomy.

Then he went downstairs and woke up the porter.

About an hour later, Jean Valjean went out in the complete costume of a
National Guard, and with his arms. The porter had easily found in the
neighborhood the wherewithal to complete his equipment. He had a loaded
gun and a cartridge-box filled with cartridges.

He strode off in the direction of the markets.






In the meantime, Gavroche had had an adventure.

Gavroche, after having conscientiously stoned the lantern in the Rue du
Chaume, entered the Rue des Vieilles-Haudriettes, and not seeing “even
a cat” there, he thought the opportunity a good one to strike up all
the song of which he was capable. His march, far from being retarded by
his singing, was accelerated by it. He began to sow along the sleeping
or terrified houses these incendiary couplets:—

“L’oiseau médit dans les charmilles,
Et prétend qu’hier Atala
Avec un Russe s’en alla.
Où vont les belles filles,
Lon la.

“Mon ami Pierrot, tu babilles,
Parce que l’autre jour Mila
Cogna sa vitre et m’appela,
Où vont les belles filles,
Lon la.

“Les drôlesses sont fort gentilles,
Leur poison qui m’ensorcela
Griserait Monsieur Orfila.
Où vont les belles filles,
Lon la.

“J’aime l’amour et les bisbilles,
J’aime Agnès, j’aime Paméla,
Lise en m’allumant se brûla.
Où vont les belles filles,
Lon la.

“Jadis, quand je vis les mantilles
De Suzette et de Zéila,
Mon âme à leurs plis se mêla,
Où vont les belles filles,
Lon la.

“Amour, quand dans l’ombre où tu brilles,
Tu coiffes de roses Lola,
Je me damnerais pour cela.
Où vont les belles filles,
Lon la.

“Jeanne à ton miroir tu t’habilles!
Mon cœur un beau jour s’envola.
Je crois que c’est Jeanne qui l’a.
Où vont les belles filles,
Lon la.

“Le soir, en sortant des quadrilles,
Je montre aux étoiles Stella,
Et je leur dis: ‘Regardez-la.’
Où vont les belles filles,
Lon la.”56


Gavroche, as he sang, was lavish of his pantomime. Gesture is the
strong point of the refrain. His face, an inexhaustible repertory of
masks, produced grimaces more convulsing and more fantastic than the
rents of a cloth torn in a high gale. Unfortunately, as he was alone,
and as it was night, this was neither seen nor even visible. Such
wastes of riches do occur.

All at once, he stopped short.

“Let us interrupt the romance,” said he.

His feline eye had just descried, in the recess of a carriage door,
what is called in painting, an _ensemble_, that is to say, a person and
a thing; the thing was a hand-cart, the person was a man from Auvergene
who was sleeping therein.

The shafts of the cart rested on the pavement, and the Auvergnat’s head
was supported against the front of the cart. His body was coiled up on
this inclined plane and his feet touched the ground.

Gavroche, with his experience of the things of this world, recognized a
drunken man. He was some corner errand-man who had drunk too much and
was sleeping too much.

“There now,” thought Gavroche, “that’s what the summer nights are good
for. We’ll take the cart for the Republic, and leave the Auvergnat for
the Monarchy.”


His mind had just been illuminated by this flash of light:—

“How bully that cart would look on our barricade!”


The Auvergnat was snoring.

Gavroche gently tugged at the cart from behind, and at the Auvergnat
from the front, that is to say, by the feet, and at the expiration of
another minute the imperturbable Auvergnat was reposing flat on the
pavement.

The cart was free.

Gavroche, habituated to facing the unexpected in all quarters, had
everything about him. He fumbled in one of his pockets, and pulled from
it a scrap of paper and a bit of red pencil filched from some
carpenter.

He wrote:—

_“French Republic.”_

“Received thy cart.”

And he signed it:  “GAVROCHE.”


That done, he put the paper in the pocket of the still snoring
Auvergnat’s velvet vest, seized the cart shafts in both hands, and set
off in the direction of the Halles, pushing the cart before him at a
hard gallop with a glorious and triumphant uproar.

This was perilous. There was a post at the Royal Printing
Establishment. Gavroche did not think of this. This post was occupied
by the National Guards of the suburbs. The squad began to wake up, and
heads were raised from camp beds. Two street lanterns broken in
succession, that ditty sung at the top of the lungs. This was a great
deal for those cowardly streets, which desire to go to sleep at sunset,
and which put the extinguisher on their candles at such an early hour.
For the last hour, that boy had been creating an uproar in that
peaceable arrondissement, the uproar of a fly in a bottle. The sergeant
of the banlieue lent an ear. He waited. He was a prudent man.

The mad rattle of the cart, filled to overflowing the possible measure
of waiting, and decided the sergeant to make a reconnaisance.

“There’s a whole band of them there!” said he, “let us proceed gently.”


It was clear that the hydra of anarchy had emerged from its box and
that it was stalking abroad through the quarter.

And the sergeant ventured out of the post with cautious tread.

All at once, Gavroche, pushing his cart in front of him, and at the
very moment when he was about to turn into the Rue des
Vieilles-Haudriettes, found himself face to face with a uniform, a
shako, a plume, and a gun.

For the second time, he stopped short.

“Hullo,” said he, “it’s him. Good day, public order.”


Gavroche’s amazement was always brief and speedily thawed.

“Where are you going, you rascal?” shouted the sergeant.

“Citizen,” retorted Gavroche, “I haven’t called you ‘bourgeois’ yet.
Why do you insult me?”


“Where are you going, you rogue?”


“Monsieur,” retorted Gavroche, “perhaps you were a man of wit
yesterday, but you have degenerated this morning.”


“I ask you where are you going, you villain?”


Gavroche replied:—

“You speak prettily. Really, no one would suppose you as old as you
are. You ought to sell all your hair at a hundred francs apiece. That
would yield you five hundred francs.”


“Where are you going? Where are you going? Where are you going,
bandit?”


Gavroche retorted again:—

“What villainous words! You must wipe your mouth better the first time
that they give you suck.”


The sergeant lowered his bayonet.

“Will you tell me where you are going, you wretch?”


“General,” said Gavroche “I’m on my way to look for a doctor for my
wife who is in labor.”


“To arms!” shouted the sergeant.

The master-stroke of strong men consists in saving themselves by the
very means that have ruined them; Gavroche took in the whole situation
at a glance. It was the cart which had told against him, it was the
cart’s place to protect him.

At the moment when the sergeant was on the point of making his descent
on Gavroche, the cart, converted into a projectile and launched with
all the latter’s might, rolled down upon him furiously, and the
sergeant, struck full in the stomach, tumbled over backwards into the
gutter while his gun went off in the air.

The men of the post had rushed out pell-mell at the sergeant’s shout;
the shot brought on a general random discharge, after which they
reloaded their weapons and began again.

This blind-man’s-buff musketry lasted for a quarter of an hour and
killed several panes of glass.

In the meanwhile, Gavroche, who had retraced his steps at full speed,
halted five or six streets distant and seated himself, panting, on the
stone post which forms the corner of the Enfants-Rouges.

He listened.

After panting for a few minutes, he turned in the direction where the
fusillade was raging, lifted his left hand to a level with his nose and
thrust it forward three times, as he slapped the back of his head with
his right hand; an imperious gesture in which Parisian street-urchindom
has condensed French irony, and which is evidently efficacious, since
it has already lasted half a century.

This gayety was troubled by one bitter reflection.

“Yes,” said he, “I’m splitting with laughter, I’m twisting with
delight, I abound in joy, but I’m losing my way, I shall have to take a
roundabout way. If I only reach the barricade in season!”


Thereupon he set out again on a run.

And as he ran:—

“Ah, by the way, where was I?” said he.

And he resumed his ditty, as he plunged rapidly through the streets,
and this is what died away in the gloom:—

“Mais il reste encore des bastilles,
Et je vais mettre le holà
Dans l’ordre public que voilà.
Où vont les belles filles,
Lon la.

“Quelqu’un veut-il jouer aux quilles?
Tout l’ancien monde s’écroula
Quand la grosse boule roula.
Où vont les belles filles,
Lon la.

“Vieux bon peuple, à coups de béquilles,
Cassons ce Louvre où s’étala
La monarchie en falbala.
Où vont les belles filles,
Lon la.

“Nous en avons forcé les grilles,
Le roi Charles-Dix ce jour-là,
Tenait mal et se décolla.
Où vont les belles filles,
Lon la.”57


The post’s recourse to arms was not without result. The cart was
conquered, the drunken man was taken prisoner. The first was put in the
pound, the second was later on somewhat harassed before the councils of
war as an accomplice. The public ministry of the day proved its
indefatigable zeal in the defence of society, in this instance.

Gavroche’s adventure, which has lingered as a tradition in the quarters
of the Temple, is one of the most terrible souvenirs of the elderly
bourgeois of the Marais, and is entitled in their memories: “The
nocturnal attack by the post of the Royal Printing Establishment.”


[THE END OF VOLUME IV “SAINT DENIS”]




JEAN VALJEAN




[Illustration: Frontispiece Volume Five]

[Illustration: Titlepage Volume Five]




