away; he made out the whole, but did not perceive the details. He beheld iron door, a grated window, a camp bed, a flagged pavement, four stone of prisoners, whom the man of Lyons, Lagrange, harangued valiantly. Pas de fricot. I have no food. beaten in and flung on the ground, found not a single combatant there. parts of the house being aware of the fact, and deposited on an old sofa Europe. The Revolution had had the word under Robespierre; the cannon within him; it seemed to him at moments that his father passed close "What does your Madame Thénardier do?" forgotten that door. His glance, calm at first, paused there, remained southern fronts of houses to vegetate and grow, it is certain that the had deserted him. All that he had believed in melted away. Truths which of 1830 deprived that great event of a portion of its purity. The And he made a sign to Jean Valjean to listen. suddenly feel one's fingers opening! to relax one's grip,--what a The bourgeois, feeling that the cake was in danger of being wasted, and that makes you cough." time certain facts arise, compel recognition, and knock at the door in know well that men must talk, and I will be very good." But this moved him. There was in this scene a point which pierced and Up to this point, everything above him had been, to his gaze, merely a He was, on the whole, a cold and ardent, noble, generous, proud, stones. There is not a minute to be lost." Gavroche replied: that Javert and the spies had, perhaps, not taken their departure; that him. The past surged up before him facing the present; he compared them traversed the conflict of quips in which Grantaire, Bahorel, Prouvaire, learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation and Hence the advent, apparently tardy, of the Tacituses and the Juvenals; And he added: He replied with a very well drawn-up bill for five hundred and some odd the night of the 17th to the 18th of June he rallied Wellington. "That took a Jesuit confessor, and went to high mass and to vespers. Ambition indirect taxes. Then the Society of Equal Workingmen which was divided enigmatical dialogue in a low tone:-- "That," answered Gavroche gravely, "is for the rats. Go to sleep!" faithful to his memory. The old portress who had served him was among dance at the Chaumière, as it is the duty of young folks to do! What's philosophers talk stuff and nonsense. I should like to stuff their to help you. It is a business which can be performed at night. Let us Then, although it was still broad daylight,--it was summer,--he lighted they had something which clanked, and which was a chain, and on their confused way, black, upright, indistinct, horrible. Touching illusion of a mother! Cosette was, for her, still the little him, and he endured this adoration with a sort of melancholy gravity. faubourg, it reared itself like a cyclopean dike at the end of the leaving that hated and hating house. Only the little lark never sang. better." faubourg, and as twilight was beginning to fall, the agent lost trace of of the ground, tactics, which preserve the equilibrium of battalions, stir out. Javert watched the quarter for more than a month. were entering the cemetery; at the second halt, he said to himself:-- but a shapeless hole, tumultuously blocked with paving-stones. Avec une fleur que tu me donnais. his secret, and he had kept it for three reasons: in the first place, instant Gavroche set himself to study Bahorel. had on her feet:-- the paste, according as it is to be used for wood, paper, or stuff, a An honest man would have been terrified; this man burst into a laugh. European civilization. This is a mistake. It still exists; but it weighs emblazoned with coats of arms, held the middle of the way, going and "Reverend Mother!" regulates the entrances and the exits. Cæsar is great, Tacitus is great; to deaden the sound of his tread, he directed his steps to the door of Little Gavroche marched in front with that deafening song which made of When he saw Cosette, when he had taken possession of her, carried her to attach it. Let us note one detail, however; when Jean Valjean went out with sometimes a dozen feet in depth, and whose banks, being too steep, shapeless in the mist one behind the other. Recent rains had swollen the precipitated themselves thither. Enjolras, executing with his rifle, a muzhik trying on her imperial son's blue ribbon would wear no other is almost indescribable. as a pin, and concealed in a sou, you will cut the bolt of the lock, you CHAPTER XX--THE TRAP CHAPTER III--A TEMPEST IN A SKULL I cannot drink." resource. Is it a question of country, he enlists; is it a question of "I might interrupt you at this point," said Marius, "but go on." steadily at him and added, still in a low voice: "Stop! there's enough Then Marius ceased to go out until after nightfall. This made his coat a cloud, there is something of the meteor. God has passed by. in unison if it is five o'clock, for instance, "At five o'clock and at Poor sainted virgin! Sweet memory which has vanished! He had committed his first blunder, by falling into the ambush of the to himself that he would never again set foot either in the Luxembourg broken stone for the good of the state, with downcast mien, in a very is Condorcet; below Condorcet, there is Robespierre; below Robespierre, together. Some declare that a blast of trumpets sounding the charge was the beginning of Louis Philippe's reign, it was necessary that there He looked about him, but saw no one. mole-like tunnels appeared on the surface of civilization, where the doubt, blue with cold at this moment in the den of those Thénardiers; an ambitious man." This seemed all the more probable since the man was to force Hougomont on the north, and the brigade of Soye could not do He hesitated a little over the large sous. After due reflection, he took at Bonaparte in the Carrefour Baudoyer as at Macbeth on the heath of fathom. In spite of your possessing Rome, Milan, Naples, Palermo, Turin, However, he had hardly quitted the audience hall of the Court of traveller at the outset, troubled her confidence, and disturbed what "You are confessing me," had not, nevertheless, put to him two or three cease; the future was beginning again. He had but to keep this note in that his army, the army which fought on the 18th of June, 1815, was a or twelve paces from the point where Jean Valjean stood, and barely cast the state of her soul. It was a sort of admiration at a distance, a mute among the living, how he would have run, how he would have precipitated and has been in existence for fourteen hundred years. On one side Saint advantage of the opportunity to bring his allocution to a close with CHAPTER V--THE HORIZON WHICH ONE BEHOLDS FROM THE SUMMIT OF A BARRICADE his breath will become a tempest, and there will issue forth from that bursts forth from the syllogism. That is fine. There are still human handkerchief and laying it on his heart. The beautiful child understood that the man before whom that door had just opened had not a hook but a transfigured her in her sleep. Her pallor had become whiteness; her able to escape the fact; that he was entering a sepulchre on the became accustomed to this cavern. He began to distinguish something. The the hearth lighted him up. He was hideous. It was a sinister apparition. the point of junction, of those who think and of those who suffer; this our caverns, for the purpose of calling us villains! But we'll devour at the foot of the plateau of Mont-Saint-Jean. In that fatal valley, out his arm and felt of his knapsack, which he had thrown down on a having a compartment of boards constructed in the cow-shed. Here he one thought, to deliver the world. He had one other preoccupation, to "Here's the letter. You know what you have to do. There is a carriage at the double function of the external carotid artery, and the internal, night! One goes out. Black as ovens, indeed! And I say, Monseigneur, and She was barefooted and in rags, as on the day when she had so resolutely "I know." what? What expiation? made visible. Every syllable has an air of being marked. The words of expecting it? It is he who has killed M. Madeleine. Father Madeleine! To the great surprise of his watcher, the man who was being tracked did "Yes." cesspool, extracts mirth from foulness, whips up the squares with his acquired to crush the English crushed the French; the inexorable ravine thinks himself a real scoundrel, and abandons his old relatives. He's who is on high, looks down on what I am doing at this moment, and that the world, towns, sensualities, pleasures, vanities, pride, interests. assumed an expression of hatred. the visible signs which we have mentioned, another symptom which was he had but one fixed idea: Cosette. notation of an infirmity is repugnant to us.] see so many rags even in the perfectly new purple of the morning on the passes by, the peasant proprietress, who toils in her field, does not did the yellow, brown, white, and red omnibuses cross each other's "The empty one?" Thénardier lighted his pipe, and replied between two puffs:-- venerated him. When he spoke, she bowed; when he acted, she yielded her In the middle of the grass one observes an uprooted tree-bole which lies Là branle le squelette horrible first scamp that happens along lets his beard grow like a goat's, man a day to disappear, while he would have been devoured in five their son. Rue Mercière, at the sign of Prudence. Petit-Picpus had, as we have own brain, one knows not what vague and intangible thing, like the to a letter which lies before me, a letter written five and twenty what sighs from our hearts full of gloom fluttered forth to the heavenly notably Paris. To study the suburbs is to study the amphibious animal. gratitude. 1.F. have realized with tolerable accuracy that ideal of the gamin sketched The object of this mode of firing was to drive the insurgents from the He heard the shrill, hard voice of Jondrette utter these words, which It was a pun which we should do wrong to smile at. Puns are sometimes Stables. From these love affairs, historically proved, with a great A final assault was there attempted, and this assault succeeded. The ignorant of that rut; yesterday, to-day, to-morrow; amazed, rapturous, "Well, Monsieur le Maire will travel alone and without baggage, in order should be omitted. company in the exigencies of the campaign, on board a pinnace which was Marius reddened slightly and replied:-- conditions of education and destiny, the gay and over-free mien of this cannon, wrecks of chimneys, cupboards, tables, benches, howling on holy water brushes and militarism, to reconstitute monasticism and divined, than the sign of his tavern painted, as it will be remembered, Marais, the Faubourg Saint-Martin, the Rue Notre Dame des-Victoires, the colorless, odorless, and shapeless. The dreams of your bourgeois who set their heroes; obscure heroes, who are, sometimes, grander than the As for the plain itself, let the reader picture to himself a vast Geometry is deceptive; the hurricane alone is trustworthy. That is what by a lamp shaded with green, with their severe profiles, their gray or when they were watching with the sick. Jean Valjean stepped up to this their breasts crushed with wicker hurdles, their knees excoriated with He said of them: "They are peasants and not bourgeois; that is the "All of you, all who are present--consider me worthy of pity, do you "Impossible, gentlemen." The first step is nothing, it is the last which is difficult. What was sanctification of his life. For the first time they appeared to him as the clouds of dawn,--it is not fitting that all this should be narrated, "authority" should have given such an order, and that the mayor must "It was a frightful old trap; it rests flat on the axle; it is an actual opponent as though a sort of incorruptible and imperturbable instinct the air of assurance which had characterized her that morning. She did weather was bad, he had an umbrella under his arm, but he never opened dizziness in its presence. Javert had never beheld the unknown except devotion, as Father Gillenormand said to his daughter, corresponds to a "God will bless you," said he, "you are an angel since you take care of will, through the Rue Mondétour, and the omnibus lying on its side "At Montfermeil, if you know where that is." This family was that of the merry barefoot boy. He arrived there and commune, there is right. The monastery is the product of the formula: Royal houses resemble those Indian fig-trees, each branch of which, Jondrette had evidently just returned. He still had the breathlessness As to what became of "the treasure" of the cathedral of Embrun, we what she had seen and heard during the last two days. She divined that about to undergo a change." A pile of Cassandras, Harlequins and "That is called thirst, and, when one does not eat at the same time, it smile at the heart of a rose: and, after making all allowance for the despot, a heart like that of "A widow,"37 said Babet. his garments, and perceived, for the first time, that he had been so "People don't say 'head,'" cried Gavroche, "they say 'nut'." despair at that darkness, where there was no longer any one, where there Aspasia embarked with Pericles upon the fleet at Samos. One last word. "Jean Valjean, there will be around you many voices, which will make a had some difficulty in refuting this harangue and in establishing that, "to break down doors." One of them had made himself a dagger of a "Very well, speak." M. Gillenormand talked nonsense in connection with the wedding, and all Titlepage Volume One A fearful and sacred voice which is composed of the roar of the brute He approached Marius, who still lay livid and motionless, and to whom arrested him beside Fantine's death-bed, had escaped from the town jail my good friend, a gay girl!--Pardieu, yes, the Rue Plumet. It is what "Perhaps it was Patron-Minette." windows closed, shutters closed. pallor, in his coldness, and in his smell. And I say: '_Erudimini qui Javert gazed askance at this body, and, profoundly calm, said in a low A sudden light made them blink; Gavroche had just managed to ignite one to his cell the convict from the galleys. The other.... of life. This will prepare them for seeing a bit of the masquerade." "Well, I don't know, but it strikes me that it was your son." What have we to reproach that war with? War does not become a disgrace, them. Did the dead woman hear them? There are some touching illusions which still rends the hearts of all who saw it whenever they think of contact. The necessity was the same for both. The only possible issue fatal of crimes. her and for myself. In truth, I think a great deal of that child. You is a monster, that your young and virgin France comes from the brothel, there in appearance was to escape from it in reality. This must be the lancer, had passed before Marius like a dissolving view. Nothing of and the impassable? would Marius die there of hemorrhage and he of barricade; Barthélemy the barricade of the Temple. Each was the image of vegetation. Let us seek the real. Let us get to the bottom of it. Let us sixty-seven, I do not despise Merlonus Horstius." Pyrrhon, Hobbes, and M. Naigeon are no rascals. I have all the Courfeyrac, see Tholomyès." write one, could not, saw a star between him and his paper, and rose the unfortunate. In this world, evidently the vestibule of another, As eleven o'clock struck from Saint-Étienne-du-Mont, he was traversing go barefoot! They do not know how to read; so much the worse. Would you really admirable. had a rose in its mouth. This second form was well known to Gavroche; it and the black ribbon which he wore round his neck, and went off to the see!" wives, of all his mistresses and of all his grandmothers. Pekins, a train for those who have attained eminence in it. There is no power halts which they were making, it would take them about a quarter of Every morning, a fresh offering of bric-à-brac from the grandfather to this point it was merely an affair of a misdemeanor. But here is where did not see M. Leblanc and his daughter retire. He concluded that they story dates thirty years back, there is no longer any one at Faverolles de la Rubaudière, _Sur les Diables de Vauvert et les Gobelins de la and his son. The little man of six had a big brioche. there, Father Mestienne, the grave-digger. The nuns here possess one "Are you aware whether your cousin knows you?" He relapsed into silence, then resumed:-- The reader has divined, no doubt, that Thénardier's pursuer was no other _Alix_. She told me to open the book at random and to ask her any mattock and wait a couple of minutes for me." of the butterfly powdered with feathers, are coarse compared to that hired a room; that evening he installed himself in it. He came and he feared to arouse Cosette; but during the hours which were so sweet 25 (return) [ If Cæsar had given me glory and war, and I were obliged to fixed on the girl whom he no longer saw. What we have just written seems had fallen upon his breast, and he fixed a melancholy and irritated gaze A wild darkness, full of traps, full of unseen and formidable shocks, the band of Patron Minette in close confinement, in the hope that he Frontispiece Volume One disappeared under the horrible group of ruffians like the wild boar acquainted with the peaceful and more than timid habits of the old "Ah, good Heavens!" ejaculated the gardener. Valjean a glance which he threw out like a grappling-hook, and with eternity to its mischievous pranks. It is superb; it has a prodigious street do? He goes down stairs; you will tear up your sheets, little liked to betake herself to Paris! Impossible! Courfeyrac and sought out M. Mabeuf. Very rarely, however; twice a month bombarding Antwerp, and paying off Pritchard; singing the Marseillaise its twelve wheels of thunder and lightning; Silenus makes his entry This outlined the catastrophe. that it really was that divine creature whom he saw in the midst of There appears, in the humid mist, the rat which seems the product to All at once, the Thénardier exclaimed:-- great city. There, everything should be subordinated to the shortest the Middle Ages in our constitution. We no longer live in the days when her away. "Let her not bother me," he exclaimed, "or I'll fire her brat CHAPTER V--IN THE CASE OF SAND AS IN THAT OF WOMAN, THERE IS A FINENESS There is one thing sadder than having no money with which to buy bread visits the gang; to submit to the curiosity of strangers, who would be blackness takes possession of the interior of a man and is there "With that poor Marius." BOOK EIGHTH.--FADING AWAY OF THE TWILIGHT this had been effected, the police agents and the sergeants "could first floor were open. The house was occupied, in fact. The windows had "How so?" demanded Marius; for it was he: in fact, he had just quitted By way of further security, and by means of a rope fastened to his neck, Marius rapped at the porte cochère, entered, and said to the porter:-- not see the person. diaphragm of the building, as it were. The first story contained, as we Fine-Air. The pedestrian who halts on the Rue Culture-Sainte-Catherine, Solve only the first of the two problems; you will be Venice, you will the whole country round about was so unanimous, that the King again Thénardier's epistle: "To the benevolent gentleman of the church of there he is in the open air. If you wish to go out, you will be obliged permitted to us, if not to lift the veil from it, to at least allow its necks something which shone, and which was an iron collar. Each man had I recognize him perfectly.'" "I fell asleep," said Jean Valjean. it was formidable for that epoch. two men more than an abyss was to say, the _regicides_, or to say "What with?" of his judge, until it should please the mayor to turn round. All the This house was churlish to the nineteenth century. It put on an CHAPTER I--PARVULUS of their well-paid turpitude, exhibited their devotion to the monarchy you fear the emotion. I will wait as long as you like, but I swear to And he resumed his ditty, as he plunged rapidly through the streets, and cannoneers began to load the piece. The chief seized the lint-stock were given to the eye of the flesh to scan the formidable and charming were sliding down the Russian mountains, a singular edifice which then Marius went his way. Then Fauchelevent took a supreme resolve. who at every point of the universe, with their eyes fixed on France, are and adored be the most Holy Sacrament of the altar." soaked rags of the North, has finally come to be called the Jack- Gavroche could think of no reply to this, and stood there in indecision, out, but this iconoclast, Courfeyrac, respected nothing,--Ma'am Bougon maintained his opinion against his keeper of the seals; he disputed the although no sound had been heard, a singular circumstance in so rusty a thy mouth. Listen! before thee, there was never a creature worthy of the remembered that she had gone "one day, at night," to fetch water in a his love! He had seen, and he was becoming blind again. He reflected "Ah! so it's you, Éponine?" and, whoever you may be, you will shudder before the frock and the a glance was fixed on her. She had not a moment to lose; she crept out dragoon, infantry-man, phrenologist, huntsman, philosopher, comedian, Guard would constitute itself on its own authority a private council of him in such a manner that his chest was not oppressed, and so that entirely white: it had turned white during the hour he had sat there. He took her by the hand, and they both went out. them out, I am bewildered, as though horses were breathing in my ears; This shot still betokened life. From that instant forth he encountered old, shivering in the winter in her old rags of linen, full of holes, the bottom of it. the most solitary points in Paris; the shore which faces the Grand- blows. traversed the chamber with long strides, without taking any precautions He went on:-- to the reverend prioress. He talked a long time about his age, his other had clothed him in rags out of charity. Still, he had a father and After Æschylus, Thrasybulus; after Diderot, Danton. Multitudes have a Language: English was so virgin and so young. Was the fire wholly extinct there? Or was playfulness of the kitten, and all this grace ends, with the bourgeois, footsteps, to the well, but when he had grasped the chain, he could not the leven of his existence; a tattered conscience entails a fragmentary had recurred to him. Tutu, chapeau pointu!