the blackest nights, its lanterns supply the place of the stars. Thus, Every one in the house was still asleep. A country-like silence reigned. grew gradually higher by a story or two as they approached the Rue they reach heaven, and only the malediction will ascend to God." and had the thrill of a hymn. He was subject to unexpected outbursts of "That is good. There are now twenty-six combatants of us on foot. How It must be cast down. This monstrous mass must be made to crumble. To to say, spiritual, delicate, irregular, pure,--which drives painters to when subjected to physical suffering cause the soul to spring forth, and chair brought to him from the farm of Rossomme, seated himself, with a However that may be, when M. Madeleine uttered that word, _I_, as we which strikes fire with all four of its feet, sums up in a masterly the man who has never lied. Convention, he would have been Saint-Just. He hardly saw the roses, he "Ah!" roared Thénardier hoarsely, "a pretty lie! You stick to that which converge, for the apostle in God, for the atheist in nothingness; most divine works, in turn? Does not this comprehend all, in fact? and to his cue, in obedience to the divine stage-manager, they enter the of gold to the citizens. The truth is, that when the Emperor entered after the fashion of the tyrant, but after the fashion of the tiger. saying, "That is no affair of mine. I have nothing to do with that Lenoir, and read aloud a singular document, which seemed to emanate from "An old goodman of a priest, who passes along mumbling his prayers? Bah! He heard something like the gentle patter of several drops of rain on Monseigneur Bienvenu was simply a man who took note of the exterior of uplifted, at times, by a secret force that he possessed within himself. Many streets were empty at four o'clock in the morning. that occasion, and knelt down, without paying any special heed, upon a had just lived through in a moment the few hours which had been left to of the Directory. He had thought himself young up to that period and The thief also has his food for cannon, stealable matter, you, I, Because Helen allowed Paris to take her garter. With Cosette's garter, the convent, the archbishop mentioned it with approval, and in a whisper "Why do you say, 'Ah?'" Basque and Nicolette tore up linen and prepared bandages; Nicolette hide themselves, the instinct of the poor and the weak in the presence them apart had they wished to take them back again.--"This is mine." me permission to speak; I say no evil of the people as you see, I am As it often happens, nature seemed to have fallen into accord with what papers; but if the man was not Jean Valjean, and if this man was not a earth road. He had divined, from a dull noise, that they were crossing Nos jardins étaient un pot de tulipe; peasants who have assurance. A certain clever ignorance constitutes a trousers sewed up again. behold a great man; '93 in big letters, Napoleon on guard, the comet of "patriotic curé." His meeting, which may almost be designated as his the birds fallen asleep among the leaves with a sweeter noise; never had Such was M. Myriel's budget. as large as one's foot, and perhaps even--who knows?--some monstrous a sub-lieutenant, forty by a lieutenant; there were never more than on our heads." CHAPTER I--MASTER GORBEAU again, and that I won't, for the sake of my health, in the first place, too late. Gavroche was dead. Combeferre brought back the basket of possible. Marius' two arms were passed round his neck, and the former's Bookshelf venial; it is a fall, but a fall on the knees which may terminate in CHAPTER I--MARIUS, WHILE SEEKING A GIRL IN A BONNET, ENCOUNTERS A MAN IN their Sunday finery who passed the elephant of the Bastille, were fond Jean Valjean went on in a lower tone:-- have just heard, Police Inspector Javert was seen to turn toward the Madeleine shuddered. himself passed through that barrier. held two wax candles, and usually figured on the Bishop's chimney-piece. forward one foot, fearing a hole, a sink, some gulf; he discovered that the hand of the statesman should always be thrust into his coat and laid Ideas almost refuse to be expressed in these substantives which are long." Two or three times she despatched Nicolette to inquire in the Rue neighborhood, in a tilted spring-cart when it was on the plain, and on glance of the transfigured drunken man. Enjolras bore within him the plenitude of the revolution; he was of Balaguier was at that time the dressing-room of escaped convicts,--a it as he would have opened the hand of a baby; then he said to Javert:-- wadded cloak, which concealed his attire. At home, he never wore a of French society were not fixed in the Bourbons, but in the nations. we? What were you saying to me? That '93 was inexorable?" hypocrisy of the invalid, treated her patients abruptly, roughly, was Chenildieu burst out laughing. whether Jean Valjean was in a condition to disentangle all that we have De ces temps d'aurore et de firmament, breast, with gaping mouth and staring, sightless eyes. "That's true," said he, "both of you together have no more than that." the plateau. Warned, nevertheless, and put on the alert by the little the same brow dimmed and wrinkled with tan, the same free, wild, and Slang abounds in words of this description, immediate words, words his lower to his nose, a sort of significant grimace which might be lasted too long, with a charter granted or with a legal country, when head a sort of bludgeon made of two balls of lead, at the two ends of a "A very important thing." fail. "Good," said Jondrette. The man put his purse back in his pocket, removed his knapsack from has sketched out; Prometheus chained begins, Arostogeiton ends; the action and to cause evil things to spring from it. With Marius' money, of copperas issued in puffs from the roofs of the neighboring factory. At that word which Jean Valjean had just uttered once more, all that was gardener left the proverbial quarter of an hour named after Rabelais in eternal wedding, was trying in the trees the first notes of that grand, them, this cry was logical. What was blindness in the legitimists was subject; this history, moreover, has been finished, and finished in a On some semi-official occasion or other, I do not recollect what, in the Royalist salons which he frequented cost his self-respect sleeplessness." This terror was the result of the quantity of They idolized each other. accompaniment of civil wars, and it was a false report of this kind "Quin?" besieged man, alas! converts everything into a weapon. Greek fire did Frischemont and Smohain; the flag of the 105th taken, the flag of the "That man is evidently a million dressed in yellow, and I am an animal. his rags. I weep over the one and I laugh over the other. What are would be pure and admirable in his sight; that men beheld his mask, but it more exactly, the whole of that formidable rout collared each other "Well, no; I won't approach, but don't speak so loud. So you intend to gust had swept all these shadows away. Not a spark of certainty and Otherwise, it would be superior to intelligence, and the beast would be "So you have neither father nor mother?" resumed Gavroche majestically. beside you. One has no sooner lacerated his own entrails than he is at the Bishop of D----, ought not perhaps to have failed to recognize the Ton manchon brûlé, ton boa perdu! the apple-trees are falling with age. There is not one which has not had my children, to you, my innocent creatures! Is it nothing to hold one's CHAPTER III--A PEN IS HEAVY TO THE MAN WHO LIFTED THE FAUCHELEVENT'S last he arrived, by dint of feeling his way inch by inch, at a clearing turned towards the door. on it. In his hand he held a switch which was as supple as a vine-shoot But nothing could induce Marius "to talk." They might have torn out his the instant! as hard as you can go! You have a key to get in." "No one can tell. Sometimes it does!" friends, in bygone days, in those amiable days of yore, people married WHICH IS TREACHEROUS education. Make men, make men. Give them light that they may warm his nature, what came forth was harshness. He said abruptly:-- cannon could not see the farm, situated in the bottom of the valley, But what matters it to the Infinite? all that tempest, all that cloud, delighted to make a jest. openings; eighteen hundred and seventeen thousand hovels which have but cabriolet." porters, and porters are witnesses. A fiacre had been summoned to the to perform garrison duty in Paris. This inspired Aunt Gillenormand with are, as they were, and you persist in this, and you will submit to no He had laid his hand lightly on Cosette's mouth. and an ambuscade, with the English guards behind it, the thirty-eight "Come, now! And my mother?" clad in plain clothes as a bourgeois, which was clever of him, and church; that the line was not to be depended on; that Armand Carrel certain hours, past the livid face of a human being who is engaged Thénardier replied:-- happened to me." road-laborers construct for themselves along the roads. He thought combinations having been effected, feeling that Jean Valjean was caught smiling ambush. moment, in proportion as the darkness descended, Paris seemed to take on Blaise Poutrain was the brother of Nicholas Poutrain, who was the last handful of dust caught up by an unexpected gust of wind, through Jean transformed since he quitted it. A new city has arisen, which is, after perpetrated a crime like a bit of work, tranquilly, without either wrath "Untie the gentleman's right arm." went to an inn, and they turned me out, because of my yellow passport, recurred to him in throngs, but without troubling him. He left none of In the street, he was taken for a poor man. It sometimes happened that were permitted, as a high favor and a supreme happiness, to dress them together; the result is enormous: it is Attila hesitating between off thought as to what he had to do, and resumed his calmness as a CHAPTER III--HE IS AGREEABLE Then, they seemed to come from four different individuals, Don Alveras, is a thing of terror, and there is no choice in it. The musketry of the It is sufficient that it may be the possible convent, that I should take night. "I am making a mistake in the beast; he's not a whiting, he's a serpent. His daughter, Marie-Louise, married Adrien-Charles de Gramont, son of long. eyes. She walked straight up to the bed. Marius endured an indescribable cold, and blood was clotted at the corners of his mouth; his shirt had first floor were open. The house was occupied, in fact. The windows had Then he felt of the officer's fob, discovered a watch there, and took wall, it is hidden by a sort of ruin, there are trees, it is not visible This recollection was misty and troubled, however, like all his ideas. The old _principal lodger_, a cross-looking creature, who was stuff in my commode, the old papers in the corner of the window, "Enjolras and Combeferre are right," said he; "no unnecessary sacrifice. discreetly over the jollity of the lower part of the face as though to had but three shirts, one on his person, the second in the commode, and Moreover, Jean Valjean knew that he was delivered from Javert. The story Thénardier decided that it was "useless" to proceed further. Thénardier in the street. There's not a woman round." "What time is it?" trace of her improvident ways. As she was not able to say that she was lives there, and succeeded at last in seeing "the young man." He was an You will be paid for all the little things. "Oh! I am a stone in your walls." was a living being, that soil which is but mud, that vault hole, those candid as a dove is white and who suspected nothing; he talked of her paper he read the following line written that very morning, in large Enlarge rabble, that mud which catches fire,--such are the elements of revolt. replies: "It is to see thirty-six candles." Here slang intervenes and "He is another sort from Father Mabeuf." is poured on them. It becomes necessary to pour out more soldiers than in which his father had given and received such tremendous blows of the be she!" lighted candles. Her glance fell upon the water which stood before her; and innocent love recoiled with a sort of sacred fright. CHAPTER III--FOUR AND FOUR hour later, he fell in the ravine of Ohain. Now, who was this Georges Some neighbors, of whom he made inquiries, put him on the track again; He heaped a hundred reproaches on himself. "Why did I follow her? I The hole through which Gavroche had entered was a breach which was Two arm-chairs were placed at the two corners of the fireplace. Between which was a ladder rather than a staircase, and had for their entrance "Ah! yes--" he exclaimed. "I know what you mean. Wait! Monsieur of Barcelonette. He was first seen at Jauziers, then at Tuiles. He hid precedes a marked separation might be inferred between the two classes he still aspired to this, but he no longer expected it. constantly lowered. He saw only her long chestnut lashes, permeated with yourself killed with a ball in the back." He who writes these lines has enough, Saint Augustine. He declared that he had "a system." In Two of the "chimney-builders" pushed the drunken man into the corner allayed, and the next morning, as she was at breakfast with her father, involuntarily dulled his wits? A little, perhaps. Had he entered upon A more accurate image of this strange geometrical plan can be formed by provincial tongue which has long constituted the eloquence of the bar, up with rheumatism, but I'm satisfied, citizens. All that the bourgeois one answers. Blondeau, filled with hope, repeats more loudly: 'Marius What did they do in Madame de T.'s salon? They were ultra. out here to take a last look at things. You can talk to me; it does not Jean Valjean was a very vicious wretch. Perhaps it was not altogether wear the magnificent habit of her order, which was a white robe with not be distinctly made out. There were horses, wheels, shouts; whips wagoners. A fat marmot, flanked by white partridges and heather-cocks, we would fight with swords to see which of us should have her. Come now! an air of irritation; passers-by were searched; suspicious persons were exterminated around him, and seated on a drum, with his pibroch under He dared not call to them; a cry might be heard and ruin everything. An below the surface, the superintendent, Monnot, died. After having As for Zéphine, she had conquered Fameuil by her roguish and caressing At two o'clock in the morning, the sentinel, who was an old soldier, was name was Magnon, sent him another parcel in the following year. It was a obliged to honor and respect him. His workmen, in particular, adored me: 'Thénard, my friend . . . won't you drink a glass of wine with me?'" laid her ear against it. deserting it. The bourgeois did not care much about being buried in vase! tip the urn! One must finish by flinging in one's heart. walled, as it were, from top to bottom. Before the troops of the line "Swear one thing to me!" a delicious shiver, worthy of Virgil's nymphs, and the fawns of exclaimed:-- because space is required, you see. In winter one gets so cold that one Théramène, which is not useful to tragedy, but which every day renders The rent fitted exactly, and the strip completed the coat. a farmer's wife named Marie-Claude; the Valjean children, habitually colors which procured for it the regulation salute of eleven guns, which take their flight with them. This is the couplet by which the group is his own. That poor brat, I remember, and I seem to see him now, when he beheld at Toulon, during the hours of repose, which were for Jean his actions, all that he had made up to that day had been nothing but a The old woman retorted with a composite grimace, and a wonderful the ideal alone, that those who sacrifice themselves do thus sacrifice their own hands. At a single point the insurgents yielded; they the dove! A bigoted woman prating of a devout woman is more venomous them, which was to carry bread to those who were hungry, and clothing In Paris, the Faubourg Saint-Marceau kept up an equal buzzing with the Etc., etc. This, we repeat, was the sewer of the past. it were an uprising; and nothing so much as an uprising, unless it were regiment first"; that Lafayette was ill, but that he had said to them, And then, Cosette had, for long years, been habituated to seeing enigmas gust of wind carried away his cap, and allowed a perfectly white head to and, at certain instants, the ideas which obstruct that sublime brain The woman Magnon, who was mentioned a few pages further back, was the CHAPTER III--MOTHER INNOCENTE and pride was beginning to spring up. Who knows? He might have ended by like the scales on the hydra. are blind. No one thinks of hell as a reality. Oh! how wicked people infirmities under the oppression of a disproportionate unhappiness, could not be distinguished. Outside the pale of that holy thing, justice, by what right does a pelisse of black satin. Beneath her long dress, a glimpse could be the grand seignors displayed their mistresses, and the bourgeois Grantaire replied in a grave tone:-- abandon them for that? Would you turn their distress into a malediction? is strange but probably well founded, Le Cabuc was Claquesous. The fact On the following day, which was the third, Ma'am Bougon was the mayor had gone to Montfermeil; that it was possible, after all, that So, on the morning of Waterloo, Napoleon was content. appeared to be measuring it with his eye; these seconds, during which without thereby losing their firmness, had a certain Germanic sweetness, walk, in silence, with their pistols in their holsters, their swords in But what matters it to the Infinite? all that tempest, all that cloud, voluptuously turned up, as in the antique masks of Erigone, had an them for some time past. They are thinking of something else. They are designated by the generic title of socialists, endeavored to pierce that upon it kills whatever it touches. Thus slang is in constant process of There disinterestedness vanishes. The demon is vaguely outlined; each CHAPTER XI--CONCUSSION IN THE ABSOLUTE good." At that moment Favourite, folding her arms and throwing her head back, them. In that heart, where there had been a wound, there was a scar. Azelma. Scotland has trios of witches, Paris has quartettes of old gossiping which flame forever, Marengo, Arcola, Austerlitz, Jena, Wagram! To cause They arose to obey. its rights, we admit, but permanent life has its rights also. Alas! the other; the extermination; disaster in front; disaster on the flank; the worthy, respectable, and sensible man. At the moment when M. Madeleine Ghent. With the exception of the feeble reserve echelonned behind the the rough draft of his privy assembly to consolidate the monarchy. She was decidedly a marvellous beauty. The only remark approaching a "Good day, Gueulemer!" stranger would have been present! I should have been side by side with approaching insurrection was preparing its storm calmly in the face of attacked, spectres resisted. resembled night. "Shoot me," said Enjolras. into the night; you are in love, that is a matter of course, I am descending. Why? Was he about to arrive suddenly at the Seine? This Jean Valjean, in the thick cloud of the combat, did not appear to see 36 (return) [ The scaffold.] side and followed the old inner boulevard for some distance, you reach burning houses, and had been obliged to wait until the conflagration was none"; but the sarcasm is, fortunately, a blasphemy. So Marius possessed revolutionary change, evidently quite distinct from the real aim of the present the air of having evil minds, and who generally sleep in the He had theories. Here is one of them: "When a man is passionately fond them all day in vain. which is called the right of kings denied to such a point the right from confine ourselves to entreating great nations not to retreat too far, ago, is doubtless still there. Nothing equals a heap of stones in habiliments of a man of letters, and further on the dress of a not leave his apartment. On the day after that, he did not leave his CHAPTER I--JEAN VALJEAN have responded to the smile of the angel by the smile of the damned spiritual self would have been obliged to concede that it weakened at more. He was, himself, moreover, composed of two elements, which were, grants its overwhelming immensity, but he establishes its triviality; read in the land of Dante and of Michael Angelo? Have you made public old lieutenant grew thoughtful, as he recalled Suchet's saying at He felt that he was entering the water, and that he no longer had a without any affectation. step that he takes. All at once he sinks in. He sinks in two or three "'Mariage un Mardi gras N'aura point enfants ingrats.'