



[Illustration: Last Drop from the Cup]






The days that follow weddings are solitary. People respect the
meditations of the happy pair. And also, their tardy slumbers, to some
degree. The tumult of visits and congratulations only begins later on.
On the morning of the 17th of February, it was a little past midday
when Basque, with napkin and feather-duster under his arm, busy in
setting his antechamber to rights, heard a light tap at the door. There
had been no ring, which was discreet on such a day. Basque opened the
door, and beheld M. Fauchelevent. He introduced him into the
drawing-room, still encumbered and topsy-turvy, and which bore the air
of a field of battle after the joys of the preceding evening.

“_Dame_, sir,” remarked Basque, “we all woke up late.”


“Is your master up?” asked Jean Valjean.

“How is Monsieur’s arm?” replied Basque.

“Better. Is your master up?”


“Which one? the old one or the new one?”


“Monsieur Pontmercy.”


“Monsieur le Baron,” said Basque, drawing himself up.

A man is a Baron most of all to his servants. He counts for something
with them; they are what a philosopher would call, bespattered with the
title, and that flatters them. Marius, be it said in passing, a
militant republican as he had proved, was now a Baron in spite of
himself. A small revolution had taken place in the family in connection
with this title. It was now M. Gillenormand who clung to it, and Marius
who detached himself from it. But Colonel Pontmercy had written: “My
son will bear my title.” Marius obeyed. And then, Cosette, in whom the
woman was beginning to dawn, was delighted to be a Baroness.

“Monsieur le Baron?” repeated Basque. “I will go and see. I will tell
him that M. Fauchelevent is here.”


“No. Do not tell him that it is I. Tell him that some one wishes to
speak to him in private, and mention no name.”


“Ah!” ejaculated Basque.

“I wish to surprise him.”


“Ah!” ejaculated Basque once more, emitting his second “ah!” as an
explanation of the first.

And he left the room.

Jean Valjean remained alone.

The drawing-room, as we have just said, was in great disorder. It
seemed as though, by lending an ear, one might still hear the vague
noise of the wedding. On the polished floor lay all sorts of flowers
which had fallen from garlands and head-dresses. The wax candles,
burned to stumps, added stalactites of wax to the crystal drops of the
chandeliers. Not a single piece of furniture was in its place. In the
corners, three or four armchairs, drawn close together in a circle, had
the appearance of continuing a conversation. The whole effect was
cheerful. A certain grace still lingers round a dead feast. It has been
a happy thing. On the chairs in disarray, among those fading flowers,
beneath those extinct lights, people have thought of joy. The sun had
succeeded to the chandelier, and made its way gayly into the
drawing-room.

Several minutes elapsed. Jean Valjean stood motionless on the spot
where Basque had left him. He was very pale. His eyes were hollow, and
so sunken in his head by sleeplessness that they nearly disappeared in
their orbits. His black coat bore the weary folds of a garment that has
been up all night. The elbows were whitened with the down which the
friction of cloth against linen leaves behind it.

Jean Valjean stared at the window outlined on the polished floor at his
feet by the sun.

There came a sound at the door, and he raised his eyes.

Marius entered, his head well up, his mouth smiling, an indescribable
light on his countenance, his brow expanded, his eyes triumphant. He
had not slept either.

“It is you, father!” he exclaimed, on catching sight of Jean Valjean;
“that idiot of a Basque had such a mysterious air! But you have come
too early. It is only half past twelve. Cosette is asleep.”


That word: “Father,” said to M. Fauchelevent by Marius, signified:
supreme felicity. There had always existed, as the reader knows, a
lofty wall, a coldness and a constraint between them; ice which must be
broken or melted. Marius had reached that point of intoxication when
the wall was lowered, when the ice dissolved, and when M. Fauchelevent
was to him, as to Cosette, a father.

He continued: his words poured forth, as is the peculiarity of divine
paroxysms of joy.

“How glad I am to see you! If you only knew how we missed you
yesterday! Good morning, father. How is your hand? Better, is it not?”


And, satisfied with the favorable reply which he had made to himself,
he pursued:

“We have both been talking about you. Cosette loves you so dearly! You
must not forget that you have a chamber here, We want nothing more to
do with the Rue de l’Homme Armé. We will have no more of it at all. How
could you go to live in a street like that, which is sickly, which is
disagreeable, which is ugly, which has a barrier at one end, where one
is cold, and into which one cannot enter? You are to come and install
yourself here. And this very day. Or you will have to deal with
Cosette. She means to lead us all by the nose, I warn you. You have
your own chamber here, it is close to ours, it opens on the garden; the
trouble with the clock has been attended to, the bed is made, it is all
ready, you have only to take possession of it. Near your bed Cosette
has placed a huge, old, easy-chair covered with Utrecht velvet and she
has said to it: ‘Stretch out your arms to him.’ A nightingale comes to
the clump of acacias opposite your windows, every spring. In two months
more you will have it. You will have its nest on your left and ours on
your right. By night it will sing, and by day Cosette will prattle.
Your chamber faces due South. Cosette will arrange your books for you,
your Voyages of Captain Cook and the other,—Vancouver’s and all your
affairs. I believe that there is a little valise to which you are
attached, I have fixed upon a corner of honor for that. You have
conquered my grandfather, you suit him. We will live together. Do you
play whist? you will overwhelm my grandfather with delight if you play
whist. It is you who shall take Cosette to walk on the days when I am
at the courts, you shall give her your arm, you know, as you used to,
in the Luxembourg. We are absolutely resolved to be happy. And you
shall be included in it, in our happiness, do you hear, father? Come,
will you breakfast with us to-day?”


“Sir,” said Jean Valjean, “I have something to say to you. I am an
ex-convict.”


The limit of shrill sounds perceptible can be overleaped, as well in
the case of the mind as in that of the ear. These words: “I am an
ex-convict,” proceeding from the mouth of M. Fauchelevent and entering
the ear of Marius overshot the possible. It seemed to him that
something had just been said to him; but he did not know what. He stood
with his mouth wide open.

Then he perceived that the man who was addressing him was frightful.
Wholly absorbed in his own dazzled state, he had not, up to that
moment, observed the other man’s terrible pallor.

Jean Valjean untied the black cravat which supported his right arm,
unrolled the linen from around his hand, bared his thumb and showed it
to Marius.

“There is nothing the matter with my hand,” said he.

Marius looked at the thumb.

“There has not been anything the matter with it,” went on Jean Valjean.

There was, in fact, no trace of any injury.

Jean Valjean continued:

“It was fitting that I should be absent from your marriage. I absented
myself as much as was in my power. So I invented this injury in order
that I might not commit a forgery, that I might not introduce a flaw
into the marriage documents, in order that I might escape from
signing.”


Marius stammered.

“What is the meaning of this?”


“The meaning of it is,” replied Jean Valjean, “that I have been in the
galleys.”


“You are driving me mad!” exclaimed Marius in terror.

“Monsieur Pontmercy,” said Jean Valjean, “I was nineteen years in the
galleys. For theft. Then, I was condemned for life for theft, for a
second offence. At the present moment, I have broken my ban.”


In vain did Marius recoil before the reality, refuse the fact, resist
the evidence, he was forced to give way. He began to understand, and,
as always happens in such cases, he understood too much. An inward
shudder of hideous enlightenment flashed through him; an idea which
made him quiver traversed his mind. He caught a glimpse of a wretched
destiny for himself in the future.

“Say all, say all!” he cried. “You are Cosette’s father!”


And he retreated a couple of paces with a movement of indescribable
horror.

Jean Valjean elevated his head with so much majesty of attitude that he
seemed to grow even to the ceiling.

“It is necessary that you should believe me here, sir; although our
oath to others may not be received in law . . .”


Here he paused, then, with a sort of sovereign and sepulchral
authority, he added, articulating slowly, and emphasizing the
syllables:

“. . . You will believe me. I the father of Cosette! before God, no.
Monsieur le Baron Pontmercy, I am a peasant of Faverolles. I earned my
living by pruning trees. My name is not Fauchelevent, but Jean Valjean.
I am not related to Cosette. Reassure yourself.”


Marius stammered:

“Who will prove that to me?”


“I. Since I tell you so.”


Marius looked at the man. He was melancholy yet tranquil. No lie could
proceed from such a calm. That which is icy is sincere. The truth could
be felt in that chill of the tomb.

“I believe you,” said Marius.

Jean Valjean bent his head, as though taking note of this, and
continued:

“What am I to Cosette? A passer-by. Ten years ago, I did not know that
she was in existence. I love her, it is true. One loves a child whom
one has seen when very young, being old oneself. When one is old, one
feels oneself a grandfather towards all little children. You may, it
seems to me, suppose that I have something which resembles a heart. She
was an orphan. Without either father or mother. She needed me. That is
why I began to love her. Children are so weak that the first comer,
even a man like me, can become their protector. I have fulfilled this
duty towards Cosette. I do not think that so slight a thing can be
called a good action; but if it be a good action, well, say that I have
done it. Register this attenuating circumstance. To-day, Cosette passes
out of my life; our two roads part. Henceforth, I can do nothing for
her. She is Madame Pontmercy. Her providence has changed. And Cosette
gains by the change. All is well. As for the six hundred thousand
francs, you do not mention them to me, but I forestall your thought,
they are a deposit. How did that deposit come into my hands? What does
that matter? I restore the deposit. Nothing more can be demanded of me.
I complete the restitution by announcing my true name. That concerns
me. I have a reason for desiring that you should know who I am.”


And Jean Valjean looked Marius full in the face.

All that Marius experienced was tumultuous and incoherent. Certain
gusts of destiny produce these billows in our souls.

We have all undergone moments of trouble in which everything within us
is dispersed; we say the first things that occur to us, which are not
always precisely those which should be said. There are sudden
revelations which one cannot bear, and which intoxicate like baleful
wine. Marius was stupefied by the novel situation which presented
itself to him, to the point of addressing that man almost like a person
who was angry with him for this avowal.

“But why,” he exclaimed, “do you tell me all this? Who forces you to do
so? You could have kept your secret to yourself. You are neither
denounced, nor tracked nor pursued. You have a reason for wantonly
making such a revelation. Conclude. There is something more. In what
connection do you make this confession? What is your motive?”


“My motive?” replied Jean Valjean in a voice so low and dull that one
would have said that he was talking to himself rather than to Marius.
“From what motive, in fact, has this convict just said ‘I am a
convict’? Well, yes! the motive is strange. It is out of honesty. Stay,
the unfortunate point is that I have a thread in my heart, which keeps
me fast. It is when one is old that that sort of thread is particularly
solid. All life falls in ruin around one; one resists. Had I been able
to tear out that thread, to break it, to undo the knot or to cut it, to
go far away, I should have been safe. I had only to go away; there are
diligences in the Rue Bouloy; you are happy; I am going. I have tried
to break that thread, I have jerked at it, it would not break, I tore
my heart with it. Then I said: ‘I cannot live anywhere else than here.’
I must stay. Well, yes, you are right, I am a fool, why not simply
remain here? You offer me a chamber in this house, Madame Pontmercy is
sincerely attached to me, she said to the armchair: ‘Stretch out your
arms to him,’ your grandfather demands nothing better than to have me,
I suit him, we shall live together, and take our meals in common, I
shall give Cosette my arm . . . Madame Pontmercy, excuse me, it is a
habit, we shall have but one roof, one table, one fire, the same
chimney-corner in winter, the same promenade in summer, that is joy,
that is happiness, that is everything. We shall live as one family. One
family!”


At that word, Jean Valjean became wild. He folded his arms, glared at
the floor beneath his feet as though he would have excavated an abyss
therein, and his voice suddenly rose in thundering tones:

“As one family! No. I belong to no family. I do not belong to yours. I
do not belong to any family of men. In houses where people are among
themselves, I am superfluous. There are families, but there is nothing
of the sort for me. I am an unlucky wretch; I am left outside. Did I
have a father and mother? I almost doubt it. On the day when I gave
that child in marriage, all came to an end. I have seen her happy, and
that she is with a man whom she loves, and that there exists here a
kind old man, a household of two angels, and all joys in that house,
and that it was well, I said to myself: ‘Enter thou not.’ I could have
lied, it is true, have deceived you all, and remained Monsieur
Fauchelevent. So long as it was for her, I could lie; but now it would
be for myself, and I must not. It was sufficient for me to hold my
peace, it is true, and all would go on. You ask me what has forced me
to speak? a very odd thing; my conscience. To hold my peace was very
easy, however. I passed the night in trying to persuade myself to it;
you questioned me, and what I have just said to you is so extraordinary
that you have the right to do it; well, yes, I have passed the night in
alleging reasons to myself, and I gave myself very good reasons, I have
done what I could. But there are two things in which I have not
succeeded; in breaking the thread that holds me fixed, riveted and
sealed here by the heart, or in silencing some one who speaks softly to
me when I am alone. That is why I have come hither to tell you
everything this morning. Everything or nearly everything. It is useless
to tell you that which concerns only myself; I keep that to myself. You
know the essential points. So I have taken my mystery and have brought
it to you. And I have disembowelled my secret before your eyes. It was
not a resolution that was easy to take. I struggled all night long. Ah!
you think that I did not tell myself that this was no Champmathieu
affair, that by concealing my name I was doing no one any injury, that
the name of Fauchelevent had been given to me by Fauchelevent himself,
out of gratitude for a service rendered to him, and that I might
assuredly keep it, and that I should be happy in that chamber which you
offer me, that I should not be in any one’s way, that I should be in my
own little corner, and that, while you would have Cosette, I should
have the idea that I was in the same house with her. Each one of us
would have had his share of happiness. If I continued to be Monsieur
Fauchelevent, that would arrange everything. Yes, with the exception of
my soul. There was joy everywhere upon my surface, but the bottom of my
soul remained black. It is not enough to be happy, one must be content.
Thus I should have remained Monsieur Fauchelevent, thus I should have
concealed my true visage, thus, in the presence of your expansion, I
should have had an enigma, thus, in the midst of your full noonday, I
should have had shadows, thus, without crying ‘’ware,’ I should have
simply introduced the galleys to your fireside, I should have taken my
seat at your table with the thought that if you knew who I was, you
would drive me from it, I should have allowed myself to be served by
domestics who, had they known, would have said: ‘How horrible!’ I
should have touched you with my elbow, which you have a right to
dislike, I should have filched your clasps of the hand! There would
have existed in your house a division of respect between venerable
white locks and tainted white locks; at your most intimate hours, when
all hearts thought themselves open to the very bottom to all the rest,
when we four were together, your grandfather, you two and myself, a
stranger would have been present! I should have been side by side with
you in your existence, having for my only care not to disarrange the
cover of my dreadful pit. Thus, I, a dead man, should have thrust
myself upon you who are living beings. I should have condemned her to
myself forever. You and Cosette and I would have had all three of our
heads in the green cap! Does it not make you shudder? I am only the
most crushed of men; I should have been the most monstrous of men. And
I should have committed that crime every day! And I should have had
that face of night upon my visage every day! every day! And I should
have communicated to you a share in my taint every day! every day! to
you, my dearly beloved, my children, to you, my innocent creatures! Is
it nothing to hold one’s peace? is it a simple matter to keep silence?
No, it is not simple. There is a silence which lies. And my lie, and my
fraud and my indignity, and my cowardice and my treason and my crime, I
should have drained drop by drop, I should have spit it out, then
swallowed it again, I should have finished at midnight and have begun
again at midday, and my ‘good morning’ would have lied, and my ‘good
night’ would have lied, and I should have slept on it, I should have
eaten it, with my bread, and I should have looked Cosette in the face,
and I should have responded to the smile of the angel by the smile of
the damned soul, and I should have been an abominable villain! Why
should I do it? in order to be happy. In order to be happy. Have I the
right to be happy? I stand outside of life, sir.”


Jean Valjean paused. Marius listened. Such chains of ideas and of
anguishes cannot be interrupted. Jean Valjean lowered his voice once
more, but it was no longer a dull voice—it was a sinister voice.

“You ask why I speak? I am neither denounced, nor pursued, nor tracked,
you say. Yes! I am denounced! yes! I am tracked! By whom? By myself. It
is I who bar the passage to myself, and I drag myself, and I push
myself, and I arrest myself, and I execute myself, and when one holds
oneself, one is firmly held.”


And, seizing a handful of his own coat by the nape of the neck and
extending it towards Marius:

“Do you see that fist?” he continued. “Don’t you think that it holds
that collar in such a wise as not to release it? Well! conscience is
another grasp! If one desires to be happy, sir, one must never
understand duty; for, as soon as one has comprehended it, it is
implacable. One would say that it punished you for comprehending it;
but no, it rewards you; for it places you in a hell, where you feel God
beside you. One has no sooner lacerated his own entrails than he is at
peace with himself.”


And, with a poignant accent, he added:

“Monsieur Pontmercy, this is not common sense, I am an honest man. It
is by degrading myself in your eyes that I elevate myself in my own.
This has happened to me once before, but it was less painful then; it
was a mere nothing. Yes, an honest man. I should not be so if, through
my fault, you had continued to esteem me; now that you despise me, I am
so. I have that fatality hanging over me that, not being able to ever
have anything but stolen consideration, that consideration humiliates
me, and crushes me inwardly, and, in order that I may respect myself,
it is necessary that I should be despised. Then I straighten up again.
I am a galley-slave who obeys his conscience. I know well that that is
most improbable. But what would you have me do about it? it is the
fact. I have entered into engagements with myself; I keep them. There
are encounters which bind us, there are chances which involve us in
duties. You see, Monsieur Pontmercy, various things have happened to me
in the course of my life.”


Again Jean Valjean paused, swallowing his saliva with an effort, as
though his words had a bitter after-taste, and then he went on:

“When one has such a horror hanging over one, one has not the right to
make others share it without their knowledge, one has not the right to
make them slip over one’s own precipice without their perceiving it,
one has not the right to let one’s red blouse drag upon them, one has
no right to slyly encumber with one’s misery the happiness of others.
It is hideous to approach those who are healthy, and to touch them in
the dark with one’s ulcer. In spite of the fact that Fauchelevent lent
me his name, I have no right to use it; he could give it to me, but I
could not take it. A name is an _I_. You see, sir, that I have thought
somewhat, I have read a little, although I am a peasant; and you see
that I express myself properly. I understand things. I have procured
myself an education. Well, yes, to abstract a name and to place oneself
under it is dishonest. Letters of the alphabet can be filched, like a
purse or a watch. To be a false signature in flesh and blood, to be a
living false key, to enter the house of honest people by picking their
lock, never more to look straightforward, to forever eye askance, to be
infamous within the _I_, no! no! no! no! no! It is better to suffer, to
bleed, to weep, to tear one’s skin from the flesh with one’s nails, to
pass nights writhing in anguish, to devour oneself body and soul. That
is why I have just told you all this. Wantonly, as you say.”


He drew a painful breath, and hurled this final word:

“In days gone by, I stole a loaf of bread in order to live; to-day, in
order to live, I will not steal a name.”


“To live!” interrupted Marius. “You do not need that name in order to
live?”


“Ah! I understand the matter,” said Jean Valjean, raising and lowering
his head several times in succession.

A silence ensued. Both held their peace, each plunged in a gulf of
thoughts. Marius was sitting near a table and resting the corner of his
mouth on one of his fingers, which was folded back. Jean Valjean was
pacing to and fro. He paused before a mirror, and remained motionless.
Then, as though replying to some inward course of reasoning, he said,
as he gazed at the mirror, which he did not see:

“While, at present, I am relieved.”


He took up his march again, and walked to the other end of the
drawing-room. At the moment when he turned round, he perceived that
Marius was watching his walk. Then he said, with an inexpressible
intonation:

“I drag my leg a little. Now you understand why!”


Then he turned fully round towards Marius:

“And now, sir, imagine this: I have said nothing, I have remained
Monsieur Fauchelevent, I have taken my place in your house, I am one of
you, I am in my chamber, I come to breakfast in the morning in
slippers, in the evening all three of us go to the play, I accompany
Madame Pontmercy to the Tuileries, and to the Place Royale, we are
together, you think me your equal; one fine day you are there, and I am
there, we are conversing, we are laughing; all at once, you hear a
voice shouting this name: ‘Jean Valjean!’ and behold, that terrible
hand, the police, darts from the darkness, and abruptly tears off my
mask!”


Again he paused; Marius had sprung to his feet with a shudder. Jean
Valjean resumed:

“What do you say to that?”


Marius’ silence answered for him.

Jean Valjean continued:

“You see that I am right in not holding my peace. Be happy, be in
heaven, be the angel of an angel, exist in the sun, be content
therewith, and do not trouble yourself about the means which a poor
damned wretch takes to open his breast and force his duty to come
forth; you have before you, sir, a wretched man.”


Marius slowly crossed the room, and, when he was quite close to Jean
Valjean, he offered the latter his hand.

But Marius was obliged to step up and take that hand which was not
offered, Jean Valjean let him have his own way, and it seemed to Marius
that he pressed a hand of marble.

“My grandfather has friends,” said Marius; “I will procure your
pardon.”


“It is useless,” replied Jean Valjean. “I am believed to be dead, and
that suffices. The dead are not subjected to surveillance. They are
supposed to rot in peace. Death is the same thing as pardon.”


And, disengaging the hand which Marius held, he added, with a sort of
inexorable dignity:

“Moreover, the friend to whom I have recourse is the doing of my duty;
and I need but one pardon, that of my conscience.”


At that moment, a door at the other end of the drawing-room opened
gently half way, and in the opening Cosette’s head appeared. They saw
only her sweet face, her hair was in charming disorder, her eyelids
were still swollen with sleep. She made the movement of a bird, which
thrusts its head out of its nest, glanced first at her husband, then at
Jean Valjean, and cried to them with a smile, so that they seemed to
behold a smile at the heart of a rose:

“I will wager that you are talking politics. How stupid that is,
instead of being with me!”


Jean Valjean shuddered.

“Cosette! . . .” stammered Marius.

And he paused. One would have said that they were two criminals.

Cosette, who was radiant, continued to gaze at both of them. There was
something in her eyes like gleams of paradise.

“I have caught you in the very act,” said Cosette. “Just now, I heard
my father Fauchelevent through the door saying: ‘Conscience . . . doing
my duty . . .’ That is politics, indeed it is. I will not have it.
People should not talk politics the very next day. It is not right.”


“You are mistaken. Cosette,” said Marius, “we are talking business. We
are discussing the best investment of your six hundred thousand francs
. . .”


“That is not it at all,” interrupted Cosette. “I am coming. Does
anybody want me here?”


And, passing resolutely through the door, she entered the drawing-room.
She was dressed in a voluminous white dressing-gown, with a thousand
folds and large sleeves which, starting from the neck, fell to her
feet. In the golden heavens of some ancient gothic pictures, there are
these charming sacks fit to clothe the angels.

She contemplated herself from head to foot in a long mirror, then
exclaimed, in an outburst of ineffable ecstasy:

“There was once a King and a Queen. Oh! how happy I am!”


That said, she made a curtsey to Marius and to Jean Valjean.

“There,” said she, “I am going to install myself near you in an
easy-chair, we breakfast in half an hour, you shall say anything you
like, I know well that men must talk, and I will be very good.”


Marius took her by the arm and said lovingly to her:

“We are talking business.”


“By the way,” said Cosette, “I have opened my window, a flock of
pierrots has arrived in the garden,—Birds, not maskers. To-day is
Ash-Wednesday; but not for the birds.”


“I tell you that we are talking business, go, my little Cosette, leave
us alone for a moment. We are talking figures. That will bore you.”


“You have a charming cravat on this morning, Marius. You are very
dandified, monseigneur. No, it will not bore me.”


“I assure you that it will bore you.”


“No. Since it is you. I shall not understand you, but I shall listen to
you. When one hears the voices of those whom one loves, one does not
need to understand the words that they utter. That we should be here
together—that is all that I desire. I shall remain with you, bah!”


“You are my beloved Cosette! Impossible.”


“Impossible!”


“Yes.”


“Very good,” said Cosette. “I was going to tell you some news. I could
have told you that your grandfather is still asleep, that your aunt is
at mass, that the chimney in my father Fauchelevent’s room smokes, that
Nicolette has sent for the chimney-sweep, that Toussaint and Nicolette
have already quarrelled, that Nicolette makes sport of Toussaint’s
stammer. Well, you shall know nothing. Ah! it is impossible? you shall
see, gentlemen, that I, in my turn, can say: It is impossible. Then who
will be caught? I beseech you, my little Marius, let me stay here with
you two.”


“I swear to you, that it is indispensable that we should be alone.”


“Well, am I anybody?”


Jean Valjean had not uttered a single word. Cosette turned to him:

“In the first place, father, I want you to come and embrace me. What do
you mean by not saying anything instead of taking my part? who gave me
such a father as that? You must perceive that my family life is very
unhappy. My husband beats me. Come, embrace me instantly.”


Jean Valjean approached.

Cosette turned toward Marius.

“As for you, I shall make a face at you.”


Then she presented her brow to Jean Valjean.

Jean Valjean advanced a step toward her.

Cosette recoiled.

“Father, you are pale. Does your arm hurt you?”


“It is well,” said Jean Valjean.

“Did you sleep badly?”


“No.”


“Are you sad?”


“No.”


“Embrace me if you are well, if you sleep well, if you are content, I
will not scold you.”


And again she offered him her brow.

Jean Valjean dropped a kiss upon that brow whereon rested a celestial
gleam.

“Smile.”


Jean Valjean obeyed. It was the smile of a spectre.

“Now, defend me against my husband.”


“Cosette! . . .” ejaculated Marius.

“Get angry, father. Say that I must stay. You can certainly talk before
me. So you think me very silly. What you say is astonishing! business,
placing money in a bank a great matter truly. Men make mysteries out of
nothing. I am very pretty this morning. Look at me, Marius.”


And with an adorable shrug of the shoulders, and an indescribably
exquisite pout, she glanced at Marius.

“I love you!” said Marius.

“I adore you!” said Cosette.

And they fell irresistibly into each other’s arms.

“Now,” said Cosette, adjusting a fold of her dressing-gown, with a
triumphant little grimace, “I shall stay.”


“No, not that,” said Marius, in a supplicating tone. “We have to finish
something.”


“Still no?”


Marius assumed a grave tone:

“I assure you, Cosette, that it is impossible.”


“Ah! you put on your man’s voice, sir. That is well, I go. You, father,
have not upheld me. Monsieur my father, monsieur my husband, you are
tyrants. I shall go and tell grandpapa. If you think that I am going to
return and talk platitudes to you, you are mistaken. I am proud. I
shall wait for you now. You shall see, that it is you who are going to
be bored without me. I am going, it is well.”


And she left the room.

Two seconds later, the door opened once more, her fresh and rosy head
was again thrust between the two leaves, and she cried to them:

“I am very angry indeed.”


The door closed again, and the shadows descended once more.

It was as though a ray of sunlight should have suddenly traversed the
night, without itself being conscious of it.

Marius made sure that the door was securely closed.

“Poor Cosette!” he murmured, “when she finds out . . .”


At that word Jean Valjean trembled in every limb. He fixed on Marius a
bewildered eye.

“Cosette! oh yes, it is true, you are going to tell Cosette about this.
That is right. Stay, I had not thought of that. One has the strength
for one thing, but not for another. Sir, I conjure you, I entreat now,
sir, give me your most sacred word of honor, that you will not tell
her. Is it not enough that you should know it? I have been able to say
it myself without being forced to it, I could have told it to the
universe, to the whole world,—it was all one to me. But she, she does
not know what it is, it would terrify her. What, a convict! we should
be obliged to explain matters to her, to say to her: ‘He is a man who
has been in the galleys.’ She saw the chain-gang pass by one day. Oh!
My God!” . . . He dropped into an armchair and hid his face in his
hands.

His grief was not audible, but from the quivering of his shoulders it
was evident that he was weeping. Silent tears, terrible tears.

There is something of suffocation in the sob. He was seized with a sort
of convulsion, he threw himself against the back of the chair as though
to gain breath, letting his arms fall, and allowing Marius to see his
face inundated with tears, and Marius heard him murmur, so low that his
voice seemed to issue from fathomless depths:

“Oh! would that I could die!”


“Be at your ease,” said Marius, “I will keep your secret for myself
alone.”


And, less touched, perhaps, than he ought to have been, but forced, for
the last hour, to familiarize himself with something as unexpected as
it was dreadful, gradually beholding the convict superposed before his
very eyes, upon M. Fauchelevent, overcome, little by little, by that
lugubrious reality, and led, by the natural inclination of the
situation, to recognize the space which had just been placed between
that man and himself, Marius added:

“It is impossible that I should not speak a word to you with regard to
the deposit which you have so faithfully and honestly remitted. That is
an act of probity. It is just that some recompense should be bestowed
on you. Fix the sum yourself, it shall be counted out to you. Do not
fear to set it very high.”


“I thank you, sir,” replied Jean Valjean, gently.

He remained in thought for a moment, mechanically passing the tip of
his fore-finger across his thumb-nail, then he lifted up his voice:

“All is nearly over. But one last thing remains for me . . .”


“What is it?”


Jean Valjean struggled with what seemed a last hesitation, and, without
voice, without breath, he stammered rather than said:

“Now that you know, do you think, sir, you, who are the master, that I
ought not to see Cosette any more?”


“I think that would be better,” replied Marius coldly.

“I shall never see her more,” murmured Jean Valjean. And he directed
his steps towards the door.

He laid his hand on the knob, the latch yielded, the door opened. Jean
Valjean pushed it open far enough to pass through, stood motionless for
a second, then closed the door again and turned to Marius.

He was no longer pale, he was livid. There were no longer any tears in
his eyes, but only a sort of tragic flame. His voice had regained a
strange composure.

“Stay, sir,” he said. “If you will allow it, I will come to see her. I
assure you that I desire it greatly. If I had not cared to see Cosette,
I should not have made to you the confession that I have made, I should
have gone away; but, as I desired to remain in the place where Cosette
is, and to continue to see her, I had to tell you about it honestly.
You follow my reasoning, do you not? it is a matter easily understood.
You see, I have had her with me for more than nine years. We lived
first in that hut on the boulevard, then in the convent, then near the
Luxembourg. That was where you saw her for the first time. You remember
her blue plush hat. Then we went to the Quartier des Invalides, where
there was a railing on a garden, the Rue Plumet. I lived in a little
back court-yard, whence I could hear her piano. That was my life. We
never left each other. That lasted for nine years and some months. I
was like her own father, and she was my child. I do not know whether
you understand, Monsieur Pontmercy, but to go away now, never to see
her again, never to speak to her again, to no longer have anything,
would be hard. If you do not disapprove of it, I will come to see
Cosette from time to time. I will not come often. I will not remain
long. You shall give orders that I am to be received in the little
waiting-room. On the ground floor. I could enter perfectly well by the
back door, but that might create surprise perhaps, and it would be
better, I think, for me to enter by the usual door. Truly, sir, I
should like to see a little more of Cosette. As rarely as you please.
Put yourself in my place, I have nothing left but that. And then, we
must be cautious. If I no longer come at all, it would produce a bad
effect, it would be considered singular. What I can do, by the way, is
to come in the afternoon, when night is beginning to fall.”


“You shall come every evening,” said Marius, “and Cosette will be
waiting for you.”


“You are kind, sir,” said Jean Valjean.

Marius saluted Jean Valjean, happiness escorted despair to the door,
and these two men parted.






Marius was quite upset.

The sort of estrangement which he had always felt towards the man
beside whom he had seen Cosette, was now explained to him. There was
something enigmatic about that person, of which his instinct had warned
him.

This enigma was the most hideous of disgraces, the galleys. This M.
Fauchelevent was the convict Jean Valjean.

To abruptly find such a secret in the midst of one’s happiness
resembles the discovery of a scorpion in a nest of turtledoves.

Was the happiness of Marius and Cosette thenceforth condemned to such a
neighborhood? Was this an accomplished fact? Did the acceptance of that
man form a part of the marriage now consummated? Was there nothing to
be done?

Had Marius wedded the convict as well?

In vain may one be crowned with light and joy, in vain may one taste
the grand purple hour of life, happy love, such shocks would force even
the archangel in his ecstasy, even the demigod in his glory, to
shudder.

As is always the case in changes of view of this nature, Marius asked
himself whether he had nothing with which to reproach himself. Had he
been wanting in divination? Had he been wanting in prudence? Had he
involuntarily dulled his wits? A little, perhaps. Had he entered upon
this love affair, which had ended in his marriage to Cosette, without
taking sufficient precautions to throw light upon the surroundings? He
admitted,—it is thus, by a series of successive admissions of ourselves
in regard to ourselves, that life amends us, little by little,—he
admitted the chimerical and visionary side of his nature, a sort of
internal cloud peculiar to many organizations, and which, in paroxysms
of passion and sorrow, dilates as the temperature of the soul changes,
and invades the entire man, to such a degree as to render him nothing
more than a conscience bathed in a mist. We have more than once
indicated this characteristic element of Marius’ individuality.

He recalled that, in the intoxication of his love, in the Rue Plumet,
during those six or seven ecstatic weeks, he had not even spoken to
Cosette of that drama in the Gorbeau hovel, where the victim had taken
up such a singular line of silence during the struggle and the ensuing
flight. How had it happened that he had not mentioned this to Cosette?
Yet it was so near and so terrible! How had it come to pass that he had
not even named the Thénardiers, and, particularly, on the day when he
had encountered Éponine? He now found it almost difficult to explain
his silence of that time. Nevertheless, he could account for it. He
recalled his benumbed state, his intoxication with Cosette, love
absorbing everything, that catching away of each other into the ideal,
and perhaps also, like the imperceptible quantity of reason mingled
with this violent and charming state of the soul, a vague, dull
instinct impelling him to conceal and abolish in his memory that
redoubtable adventure, contact with which he dreaded, in which he did
not wish to play any part, his agency in which he had kept secret, and
in which he could be neither narrator nor witness without being an
accuser.

Moreover, these few weeks had been a flash of lightning; there had been
no time for anything except love.

In short, having weighed everything, turned everything over in his
mind, examined everything, whatever might have been the consequences if
he had told Cosette about the Gorbeau ambush, even if he had discovered
that Jean Valjean was a convict, would that have changed him, Marius?
Would that have changed her, Cosette? Would he have drawn back? Would
he have adored her any the less? Would he have refrained from marrying
her? No. Then there was nothing to regret, nothing with which he need
reproach himself. All was well. There is a deity for those drunken men
who are called lovers. Marius blind, had followed the path which he
would have chosen had he been in full possession of his sight. Love had
bandaged his eyes, in order to lead him whither? To paradise.

But this paradise was henceforth complicated with an infernal
accompaniment.

Marius’ ancient estrangement towards this man, towards this
Fauchelevent who had turned into Jean Valjean, was at present mingled
with horror.

In this horror, let us state, there was some pity, and even a certain
surprise.

This thief, this thief guilty of a second offence, had restored that
deposit. And what a deposit! Six hundred thousand francs.

He alone was in the secret of that deposit. He might have kept it all,
he had restored it all.

Moreover, he had himself revealed his situation. Nothing forced him to
this. If any one learned who he was, it was through himself. In this
avowal there was something more than acceptance of humiliation, there
was acceptance of peril. For a condemned man, a mask is not a mask, it
is a shelter. A false name is security, and he had rejected that false
name. He, the galley-slave, might have hidden himself forever in an
honest family; he had withstood this temptation. And with what motive?
Through a conscientious scruple. He himself explained this with the
irresistible accents of truth. In short, whatever this Jean Valjean
might be, he was, undoubtedly, a conscience which was awakening. There
existed some mysterious re-habilitation which had begun; and, to all
appearances, scruples had for a long time already controlled this man.
Such fits of justice and goodness are not characteristic of vulgar
natures. An awakening of conscience is grandeur of soul.

Jean Valjean was sincere. This sincerity, visible, palpable,
irrefragable, evident from the very grief that it caused him, rendered
inquiries useless, and conferred authority on all that that man had
said.

Here, for Marius, there was a strange reversal of situations. What
breathed from M. Fauchelevent? distrust. What did Jean Valjean inspire?
confidence.

In the mysterious balance of this Jean Valjean which the pensive Marius
struck, he admitted the active principle, he admitted the passive
principle, and he tried to reach a balance.

But all this went on as in a storm. Marius, while endeavoring to form a
clear idea of this man, and while pursuing Jean Valjean, so to speak,
in the depths of his thought, lost him and found him again in a fatal
mist.

The deposit honestly restored, the probity of the confession—these were
good. This produced a lightening of the cloud, then the cloud became
black once more.

Troubled as were Marius’ memories, a shadow of them returned to him.

After all, what was that adventure in the Jondrette attic? Why had that
man taken to flight on the arrival of the police, instead of entering a
complaint?

Here Marius found the answer. Because that man was a fugitive from
justice, who had broken his ban.

Another question: Why had that man come to the barricade?

For Marius now once more distinctly beheld that recollection which had
reappeared in his emotions like sympathetic ink at the application of
heat. This man had been in the barricade. He had not fought there. What
had he come there for? In the presence of this question a spectre
sprang up and replied: “Javert.”


Marius recalled perfectly now that funereal sight of Jean Valjean
dragging the pinioned Javert out of the barricade, and he still heard
behind the corner of the little Rue Mondétour that frightful pistol
shot. Obviously, there was hatred between that police spy and the
galley-slave. The one was in the other’s way. Jean Valjean had gone to
the barricade for the purpose of revenging himself. He had arrived
late. He probably knew that Javert was a prisoner there. The Corsican
vendetta has penetrated to certain lower strata and has become the law
there; it is so simple that it does not astonish souls which are but
half turned towards good; and those hearts are so constituted that a
criminal, who is in the path of repentance, may be scrupulous in the
matter of theft and unscrupulous in the matter of vengeance. Jean
Valjean had killed Javert. At least, that seemed to be evident.

This was the final question, to be sure; but to this there was no
reply. This question Marius felt like pincers. How had it come to pass
that Jean Valjean’s existence had elbowed that of Cosette for so long a
period?

What melancholy sport of Providence was that which had placed that
child in contact with that man? Are there then chains for two which are
forged on high? and does God take pleasure in coupling the angel with
the demon? So a crime and an innocence can be room-mates in the
mysterious galleys of wretchedness? In that defiling of condemned
persons which is called human destiny, can two brows pass side by side,
the one ingenuous, the other formidable, the one all bathed in the
divine whiteness of dawn, the other forever blemished by the flash of
an eternal lightning? Who could have arranged that inexplicable pairing
off? In what manner, in consequence of what prodigy, had any community
of life been established between this celestial little creature and
that old criminal?

Who could have bound the lamb to the wolf, and, what was still more
incomprehensible, have attached the wolf to the lamb? For the wolf
loved the lamb, for the fierce creature adored the feeble one, for,
during the space of nine years, the angel had had the monster as her
point of support. Cosette’s childhood and girlhood, her advent in the
daylight, her virginal growth towards life and light, had been
sheltered by that hideous devotion. Here questions exfoliated, so to
speak, into innumerable enigmas, abysses yawned at the bottoms of
abysses, and Marius could no longer bend over Jean Valjean without
becoming dizzy. What was this man-precipice?

The old symbols of Genesis are eternal; in human society, such as it
now exists, and until a broader day shall effect a change in it, there
will always be two men, the one superior, the other subterranean; the
one which is according to good is Abel; the other which is according to
evil is Cain. What was this tender Cain? What was this ruffian
religiously absorbed in the adoration of a virgin, watching over her,
rearing her, guarding her, dignifying her, and enveloping her, impure
as he was himself, with purity?

What was that cesspool which had venerated that innocence to such a
point as not to leave upon it a single spot? What was this Jean Valjean
educating Cosette? What was this figure of the shadows which had for
its only object the preservation of the rising of a star from every
shadow and from every cloud?

That was Jean Valjean’s secret; that was also God’s secret.

In the presence of this double secret, Marius recoiled. The one, in
some sort, reassured him as to the other. God was as visible in this
affair as was Jean Valjean. God has his instruments. He makes use of
the tool which he wills. He is not responsible to men. Do we know how
God sets about the work? Jean Valjean had labored over Cosette. He had,
to some extent, made that soul. That was incontestable. Well, what
then? The workman was horrible; but the work was admirable. God
produces his miracles as seems good to him. He had constructed that
charming Cosette, and he had employed Jean Valjean. It had pleased him
to choose this strange collaborator for himself. What account have we
to demand of him? Is this the first time that the dung-heap has aided
the spring to create the rose?

Marius made himself these replies, and declared to himself that they
were good. He had not dared to press Jean Valjean on all the points
which we have just indicated, but he did not confess to himself that he
did not dare to do it. He adored Cosette, he possessed Cosette, Cosette
was splendidly pure. That was sufficient for him. What enlightenment
did he need? Cosette was a light. Does light require enlightenment? He
had everything; what more could he desire? All,—is not that enough?
Jean Valjean’s personal affairs did not concern him.

And bending over the fatal shadow of that man, he clung fast,
convulsively, to the solemn declaration of that unhappy wretch: “I am
nothing to Cosette. Ten years ago I did not know that she was in
existence.”


Jean Valjean was a passer-by. He had said so himself. Well, he had
passed. Whatever he was, his part was finished.

Henceforth, there remained Marius to fulfil the part of Providence to
Cosette. Cosette had sought the azure in a person like herself, in her
lover, her husband, her celestial male. Cosette, as she took her
flight, winged and transfigured, left behind her on the earth her
hideous and empty chrysalis, Jean Valjean.

In whatever circle of ideas Marius revolved, he always returned to a
certain horror for Jean Valjean. A sacred horror, perhaps, for, as we
have just pointed out, he felt a _quid divinum_ in that man. But do
what he would, and seek what extenuation he would, he was certainly
forced to fall back upon this: the man was a convict; that is to say, a
being who has not even a place in the social ladder, since he is lower
than the very lowest rung. After the very last of men comes the
convict. The convict is no longer, so to speak, in the semblance of the
living. The law has deprived him of the entire quantity of humanity of
which it can deprive a man.

Marius, on penal questions, still held to the inexorable system, though
he was a democrat and he entertained all the ideas of the law on the
subject of those whom the law strikes. He had not yet accomplished all
progress, we admit. He had not yet come to distinguish between that
which is written by man and that which is written by God, between law
and right. He had not examined and weighed the right which man takes to
dispose of the irrevocable and the irreparable. He was not shocked by
the word _vindicte_. He found it quite simple that certain breaches of
the written law should be followed by eternal suffering, and he
accepted, as the process of civilization, social damnation. He still
stood at this point, though safe to advance infallibly later on, since
his nature was good, and, at bottom, wholly formed of latent progress.

In this stage of his ideas, Jean Valjean appeared to him hideous and
repulsive. He was a man reproved, he was the convict. That word was for
him like the sound of the trump on the Day of Judgment; and, after
having reflected upon Jean Valjean for a long time, his final gesture
had been to turn away his head. _Vade retro_.

Marius, if we must recognize and even insist upon the fact, while
interrogating Jean Valjean to such a point that Jean Valjean had said:
“You are confessing me,” had not, nevertheless, put to him two or three
decisive questions.

It was not that they had not presented themselves to his mind, but that
he had been afraid of them. The Jondrette attic? The barricade? Javert?
Who knows where these revelations would have stopped? Jean Valjean did
not seem like a man who would draw back, and who knows whether Marius,
after having urged him on, would not have himself desired to hold him
back?

Has it not happened to all of us, in certain supreme conjunctures, to
stop our ears in order that we may not hear the reply, after we have
asked a question? It is especially when one loves that one gives way to
these exhibitions of cowardice. It is not wise to question sinister
situations to the last point, particularly when the indissoluble side
of our life is fatally intermingled with them. What a terrible light
might have proceeded from the despairing explanations of Jean Valjean,
and who knows whether that hideous glare would not have darted forth as
far as Cosette? Who knows whether a sort of infernal glow would not
have lingered behind it on the brow of that angel? The spattering of a
lightning-flash is of the thunder also. Fatality has points of juncture
where innocence itself is stamped with crime by the gloomy law of the
reflections which give color. The purest figures may forever preserve
the reflection of a horrible association. Rightly or wrongly, Marius
had been afraid. He already knew too much. He sought to dull his senses
rather than to gain further light.

In dismay he bore off Cosette in his arms and shut his eyes to Jean
Valjean.

That man was the night, the living and horrible night. How should he
dare to seek the bottom of it? It is a terrible thing to interrogate
the shadow. Who knows what its reply will be? The dawn may be blackened
forever by it.

In this state of mind the thought that that man would, henceforth, come
into any contact whatever with Cosette was a heartrending perplexity to
Marius.

He now almost reproached himself for not having put those formidable
questions, before which he had recoiled, and from which an implacable
and definitive decision might have sprung. He felt that he was too
good, too gentle, too weak, if we must say the word. This weakness had
led him to an imprudent concession. He had allowed himself to be
touched. He had been in the wrong. He ought to have simply and purely
rejected Jean Valjean. Jean Valjean played the part of fire, and that
is what he should have done, and have freed his house from that man.

He was vexed with himself, he was angry with that whirlwind of emotions
which had deafened, blinded, and carried him away. He was displeased
with himself.

What was he to do now? Jean Valjean’s visits were profoundly repugnant
to him. What was the use in having that man in his house? What did the
man want? Here, he became dismayed, he did not wish to dig down, he did
not wish to penetrate deeply; he did not wish to sound himself. He had
promised, he had allowed himself to be drawn into a promise; Jean
Valjean held his promise; one must keep one’s word even to a convict,
above all to a convict. Still, his first duty was to Cosette. In short,
he was carried away by the repugnance which dominated him.

Marius turned over all this confusion of ideas in his mind, passing
from one to the other, and moved by all of them. Hence arose a profound
trouble.

It was not easy for him to hide this trouble from Cosette, but love is
a talent, and Marius succeeded in doing it.

However, without any apparent object, he questioned Cosette, who was as
candid as a dove is white and who suspected nothing; he talked of her
childhood and her youth, and he became more and more convinced that
that convict had been everything good, paternal and respectable that a
man can be towards Cosette. All that Marius had caught a glimpse of and
had surmised was real. That sinister nettle had loved and protected
that lily.




