very softly"; and as he kissed her brow, the steps paused. furtive and uneasy gentleness of a cat which is desirous of entering. brazier, and had then straightened himself up again, and now Thénardier, it a box on the ear. Rather than borrow, he went without food. He had 23 (return) [_L'Aile_, wing.] for three days. Marius absent three days, this was horrible on the part Facts, however, are awkward things to disconcert, and they are connection do you make this confession? What is your motive?" Thénardier was one of those double natures which sometimes pass through silence he knew also the moment for speech. Oh, admirable consoler! He first place, she will have very beautiful hands; she had ridiculous two or three millions in ten minutes. In reality, "these two or three "What is the matter with your hand?" said he. ruins peach-trees and apricot-trees. Excess of zeal kills the grace and convent who was malicious; then Mother Sainte-Mechtilde (Mademoiselle in recovering himself as Jean Valjean had. insist. nothing was lacking. come to tell thee the name of thy mother. She was called Fantine. with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution eyes. The consciousness of her beauty burst upon her in an instant, like enter. The convent is a compression which, in order to triumph over the Games and Laughter, argiraspides; they are stupids. My friends, every One man was heard to say to another: "Do you see that fellow with a the Monarchy." Thénardier conducted him to a chamber on the first floor, which was of be vexed, and was jealous of his own shadow. It is thus, in fact, that four months. Oh! how wicked it was of you to go to that battle! What had needed; a study, it will be remembered, being required by the council of "Well, in two hours, then." Little Gavroche combat. And if he let go his hold? "Moire antique!" exclaimed the old gentleman. "Thanks, Marius. That is by degrading myself in your eyes that I elevate myself in my own. This had looked at herself,--and gave vent to a cry. She had just dazzled There, sir. I owe for four quarters--a whole year! that is to say, sixty Revolutions spring not from an accident, but from necessity. A the very air he breathed, was veneration for all authority. This was At this word she bestowed on her daughter a passionate kiss, which woke "The world is nothing in the presence of the cross. Martin, the eleventh two openings, the door and one window; and three hundred and forty-six walls, and a stone ceiling, and are called _chambers of punishment_. A A little street, the Rue du Chemin-Vert-Saint-Antoine, opened out There should be flashes of light athwart such houses. The joy which they it. questions to himself without replying to them. The intestines of Paris indescribable melancholy serenity. In his left hand he carried a little equilibrium; that is to say, to equity. A force composed of earth and termination in _aille_, in _orgue_, in _iergue_, or in _uche_. Thus: Now, in order to form an idea of the scene which is to follow, let the Perhaps she had no ulterior meaning. Jean Valjean thought he perceived "The Petit-Picpus convent." aloud, the sand fills it; silence. His eyes still gaze forth, the sand which it required no words to interpret: "Javert, it is I." and the nuns could not resist the temptation to raise the corner of severity on that point was carried. One day a young girl received a from the defilement of the birds. The water turns it green, the air here. Oh my Cosette, it is not my fault, indeed, that I have not seen with him, he saw the beggar in his usual place, beneath the lantern in the world that is cheap except trouble; you can get that for nothing, Second problem: To share it. well-known leaders were going the rounds, that is to say, running from trip, adding that he meant to set out that very evening. "Go!" had been the very top, the chimneys stood palely out. The sky was of that kissed the police agent's coat. She would have softened a heart of What was there in the young girl's glance on this occasion? Marius could Valjean's two robust hands, and stood for several minutes as though shape of the paper signed _Fantine_, and a consolation, the fifteen his aged fingers, stiffened with rheumatism, lay crooked up in the folds into the house and had listened at his door, as he passed. It was a is a pocket crocodile. The dancers at the opera are pink female savages. of powder. a customer and casting a glance from time to time at the enemy, that by degrading myself in your eyes that I elevate myself in my own. This village that he had studied for the priesthood. the Minister of State, Comte Anglès, then prefect of police at Paris. CHAPTER V--MONSEIGNEUR BIENVENU MADE HIS CASSOCKS LAST TOO LONG Restoration, and like it, did not recognize his father's claim to the happened?" the Revolution, perhaps an eventual indefinable resignation born of the "Why, certainly. The Limosin woman. Of what are you speaking?" may be kindness in the broom. of the wall on the right. Jean Valjean blew out the light and placed and that the English army was ready for battle. "So much the better!" to read in his childhood. When he reached man's estate, he became a It was clear that it was she. Marius felt his heart stop beating. this girl was odious to him; it was she who had his five francs, it was printer's name. The stranger did not stir. situation--was walled in behind him. It was one of those blind alleys, by its two corners from two observers who might have been, one in the He was very well dressed, as the porter had said, entirely in black, in This information given, Gavroche added: existence at once clearer and more impenetrable, and that, out of his that it can be bound by no one knows what fetters in that abyss, is netting, "what's that for?" oneself killed for a dead man! If that isn't enough to drive any one a beak, wings which are not wings, gills which are not gills, paws which anything but stolen consideration, that consideration humiliates me, and "Now, for my trouble, promise me--" has happened to me once before, but it was less painful then; it was a "Break whatever you please." and asked in accents which all understood:-- "Tell me all about it!" An icy north wind was blowing, and imparted to things around him a "Immediately," responded the host. The centre of the English army, rather concave, very dense, and from above. The infantry men, replying from below, six against two pay it." gain thereby, truth would lose. Marius was at an age when one believes anything stranger than that long and bloody protest of dealers in "But I told you: 'Pay attention!' Why, it is his figure, it is his face, "Can some one lend me a double-barrelled rifle?" said Jean Valjean. "Yes," replied the Bishop. all distresses, the coldest. Still, Father Mabeuf had not entirely lost physician, and while Nicolette opened the linen-presses, Jean Valjean with a shiver at their sinister approach, when Waterloo could be dimly had had the secret openings of the two doors to this passage repaired. had under his arm a volume of the memoirs of the Duc de Saint-Simon. A prosecution, legal infamy, prison, the scaffold, the executioner, the two immense adders of steel were to be seen crawling towards the crest "No one doubts the right of the monastery to sepulture. Only fanatics the IRS. It is necessary that society should look at these things, because it is He loosed her hands. "Certainly, sir." ugliness, sadness; and from all this there was disengaged an austere and paroxysms of joy. At nightfall, a workingman encountered near the canal a "very well will not see her child. What shall we say to her?" "Well, since there is no other means." beautiful neighbor without a guimpe so that her throat was only women, that silent cloister, slowly permeated him, and little by little, as though some chance had created an understanding between them, and as glance of the transfigured drunken man. They were turned over and counted. There were five hundred notes for a man, whom a word from you may ruin; on the other hand, justice, which a into play, he had caused the truth to burst forth in wrath, he had arm-chair, and several plain chairs which were encumbered with once more. She made the sign of a superior dismissing an inferior to Napoleon, before giving the order for this charge of Milhaud's of the law, even of the law of charity. G----, calm, his body almost She retorted with acrimony:-- On turning into the walk, he saw M. Leblanc and the young girl at the uniforms, who take no part in the fighting; pretended invalids; "Six o'clock?" said Jondrette. Such is the theory of the skilful. Because Helen allowed Paris to take her garter. With Cosette's garter, One morning it came to pass that M. Gillenormand spoke slightingly of heaven, be the angel of an angel, exist in the sun, be content one ventured to ascend it, one crossed a first landing, then a second, to say, repose. CHAPTER II--MOTHER PLUTARQUE FINDS NO DIFFICULTY IN EXPLAINING A PHENOMENON passion. His worship of his father had gradually become a religion, "Sir," said the little Savoyard, with that childish confidence which is taken refuge in architecture, seems mingled with all the stones of that raised his head with an air of stupefaction. CHAPTER XVII--MORTUUS PATER FILIUM MORITURUM EXPECTAT is that it can become confused, thrown off the track, and defeated. exhausted all means; he had been deterred neither by the season, nor against God. It certainly was singular that the stoker of order, that that Jesus has constituted me the shepherd. Who knows the ways of What became of these men? They still exist. They have always existed. "I prefer Bombarda to Édon," declared Blachevelle. "There is more meadows and the flowers into the heart of man. discussion, which had been lacking under the Republic, and to grandeur "All this noise for that!" said the man; "well, what if she did play group. Enjolras had a double-barrelled hunting-gun, Combeferre the gun it. In truth, Bishop, I tell you that I have a philosophy of my own, elucidated; on the contrary, all of them had been rendered more dense, in the Rue Aubry le Boucher; that Lobau and Bugeaud were putting their the police station. It was opened, and in it were found two printed then a familiar sign with her hand, and went towards the door, saying:-- among barbarous peoples and an object of merchandise among civilized and Africa on a small scale. The cat is a drawing-room tiger, the lizard met? How comes it to pass that the birds sing, that snow melts, that as you see fit; but first help me to carry him home. That is all that I It was the chain-gang, in fact, which had set out before daybreak from having as yet, neither name, nor fault, nor spot, nor exigence, nor officers charged with resistance yielded too easily; the idea of At that moment the young cock's crow executed by little Gavroche interim, until there should be a false Marchangy, named d'Arlincourt. invisible guns, drew himself up in the face of death and as though he Javert thought that the young man, whose name he had forgotten, was He tries to defend himself; he tries to sustain himself; he makes He drew near to the Jondrette girl. that makes you cough." like eels under the north wind. The nettles seemed to twist long arms Everything was there; the apparatus was the same, the hour of the night, It was very narrow. seen. Magnon was a sort of fashionable woman in the sphere of crime. She was the four cardinal points of progress. Diderot towards the beautiful, blank at the redoubt; the platoon firing of the line and of the soldiers necessary to the advent of the great century. Some one, a person to whom BOOK FIFTH.--THE DESCENT. or wagoner passes in a quarter of an hour. The barricade was free. head. sombre, illuminated as by the radiance of dawn and entirely covered, at Besides, we might miss the funeral without missing the riot." Avenue de Neuilly; the white flag, showing faintly rosy in the setting to be the result. All these groups seem to the passing and thoughtful nineteen years in collecting on the floor of the prison. at the moment. himself. Feuilly had a generous heart. The range of his embrace was him. He seated himself in silence, and waited an hour. Cosette did not the furniture as it was the first day; he had merely had the glass door a window on that discreet retreat, the reader will permit us one other A whispering ensued. Courfeyrac was bare-headed. face. The sister chanced to raise her eyes to it. He took from his pocket two small objects which were nothing more than she bent upon Marius all the reveries of a virginal and passionate eye. "Precisely." arrived. His comrades assisted him, as is the custom in that sad place. the fiercest visions of war, gazed with uneasy eyes on that species of frightful shoe of the coarsest description, half dilapidated and all others, was a fine military action; but after all, we repeat, the alone with his company of eighty-three men every effort of the hostile early. It is only half past twelve. Cosette is asleep." without violence, without any direct action on his part, by virtue of a She pressed in her hand, small, bony, and feeble as that of a skeleton, sufficient, nevertheless, to throw beams, which at times resembled hope, An honest man would have been terrified; this man burst into a laugh. of his ambition lay in resembling any other man who paid his taxes. This suspected as much. That man was too good, too perfect, too affected. when it is torn open with the iron, in order that grain may be deposited they had contained but one soul. "Not another one. The door is closed. No one can enter now." threw her in a singularly troubled state of mind. Up to that moment she if with regret. One would have said that he was both forced to go there sacrifice. The convent is supreme egoism having for its result supreme arm on Sundays. one, finding nothing which suited him. He had no doubt that if any one Sacrament. This station lasts an hour. They relieve each other like "The last man to leave this room will smash the skull of this spy." However, this long illness and this long convalescence saved him from God must not be judged from appearances. Beneath the gilding of heaven I light. History will do justice to him for this loyalty. a sort of splendid reaction, it with it dazzles nature; the mysterious it to account. He declared to himself that there was no equilibrium and himself, the necessity of regulating his pace to the pace of street would not have astonished a forest. The lofty trees, the copses, of which the moonlight rendered distinctly legible the ancient trousers and a waistcoat of coarse gray cloth, to which something yellow about in search of shelter. was a sort of envelope which appeared to contain papers. scraped the gutters, stole a little, but, like cats and sparrows, gayly and recognized him. Their faces almost touched. Javert's look was laughter, provided that hatred lay at the bottom. Marius had never between the sacristy and diplomacy, who are abbés rather than priests, Mahomet, he left behind him in the East words as great as the pyramids, has already seen in the gloomy parts of this book. his teeth, which were charming, while he dictated _The Monarchy does not question a saint." M. Madeleine had preserved all his prestige industries of other arrondissements. It was thus that he had, when arm-chairs; she had the garden. Jean Valjean had a canopied bed of leagues distant from Brussels,--there are relics of the Middle Ages of those profound sighs which seem to throw off dejection. Then Fantine immediately find a lodgement as soon as the open gate permits them to best of men, he would be the worst; that it behooved him now, so to weakly. Courfeyrac was energetically making a breach in it. On the table which goes the round, and maintains good order in the episcopal palace, and to the instinct of prudence common to lovers. He considered it Bodies press close to each other in misery, as in cold, but hearts draw from a distance, with a sort of respectful awe. This poorly dressed charming April which is called twenty years. They were four Oscars; for, and finds it. And this soul, found and tested, is a woman. A hand An abyss six feet broad and eighty feet deep separated them from the only remained to impart a new direction to the theft, and to cause it Opposite this tree, which was an ash, there was a chestnut-tree, destiny, good and evil, the way of being against being, the conscience Paris, centre, banlieue, circumference; this constitutes all the earth eye on the sentinels, Combeferre, Courfeyrac, Jean Prouvaire, Feuilly, it. and then, I ought to have said to myself that a young man like you--" "Her grandfather." It occurred to him to glance over the wall which he was skirting. three stories high and entirely of cut stone. Such things as there are as chance directs, to the capital of a marble column or to the post of "After her folly" meant: "after she had married the colonel." _Seven Billiards_, Rue des Mathurins-Saint-Jacques, served as rallying "The man recovered his animation as he ate. My brother made him drink This is what he thought: "I'm struck all of a heap." the portress not to expect him that night. general-in-chief of the army of Italy, whom the message of the Directory That done, he once more drew the big key from under his blouse. and more resolute could be seen in the world, and replied with haughty to the human body. Their prosperity and their fatness mean the opened both leaves of their folding-doors to the millionnaire. They made finding themselves under the muzzles of this forest of guns, did not The Faubourg Saint-Antoine, more than any other group of the population, with his nature. was homely; Jean Valjean alone said gently: "No indeed! no indeed!" At glance had told him so, that she did not know his name, but that she did greatly respected and vastly admired because he had seen a man fall from grave-digger in my pocket. I will tell you what will take place. They of rubies on their brows, and diamond tears in their eyes. The diamonds S'adorer huit jours, c'était bien la peine! disengage him otherwise than by lifting the vehicle off of him. himself tender. From the egotism of the man who suffers he passes to the There he had for servants, in addition to the porter, that chambermaid, "Why?" sadness, Cosette so sad that she did not notice Jean Valjean's The traveller saw nothing of all this. sense in it. Then he said to himself: "But this signifies nothing; there And finally, on the way from the Gorbeau house to La Force, one of the light into this poor room. At the extreme end there was a dressing-room While Marius had been dreaming with his head pressed to the tree, an Jean Valjean had reached. He was directing his course towards the belt containing the bridal party opposite them on the other side of the One day a man with his beard worn like a collar and with an Italian forth from the depths of '89 and '93 were in the air. Youth was on about these clothes, they "did not fit"; not having been made for those carrying a child who can walk. Pay for two." the picture. _un réguisé_.--What are the galleys? A brazier of damnation, a hell. The years, without being able to throw him. This arrest was not a beginning, coat. If I had a coat of any sort, I would go and see Mademoiselle Mars, "dais" and the "censors,"--the first who held the cords of the dais, and "People don't say 'head,'" cried Gavroche, "they say 'nut'." pensive mood, his ardor for theft somewhat cooled; but he was addicted "Nothing," said Marius, with a sort of firmness and resolution that was to him, and he began once more to gain a confused idea, now of the wall Only, he thought of Cosette with a pang at his heart. those excrescences which are the warts of vegetation, stood a few paces bonnet, the black dress, and above all, that blue light. He did not stir eyes:-- Below all these mines which we have just mentioned, below all these which she did not understand, but which terrified her, and, when she had when I see so much misery everywhere, I suspect that God is not rich. "What is the rope for?" colloquy in the street inevitably attracts a crowd. There are always dunkerque in order. Jean Valjean stared silently at the wall opposite what wrong Clusium has done to them. Brennus answers: 'The wrong that misery of the child. "The deuce," exclaimed Courfeyrac, "you will eat up five francs while replaced the pocketbook in Marius' pocket. He had eaten, his strength seem to you that they are resting. The laborer, the harvester, the letter once more. Then she descended the stairs and emerged, running and The face of the male Thénardier presented that expressive fold which hydraulic manufacture of cloth at Boubers-sur-Canche. Everywhere the her tiny hand. They were of those dwarfed natures which, if a dull fire chances to warm that word had its absolute meaning for Jean Valjean. He hazarded a and Henry his disciple, and another sort of erring spirits who were would probably have done so and have been lost. Javert explored these remainder of the adventure and above all, not wishing to be present when side-street, to make his escape through it, and thus to break his scent houses with no other roof than the cold clouds of heaven, those who, angel.' And the angel comes, and one sees one's Cosette again! and one All these hopes were exchanged between the different groups in a sort of Cosette nodded gravely. Thus assured and buttressed, the centre of the Anglo-Dutch army was well "I will go and inform Madame." Chemin-Vert-Saint-Antoine, which spread out in two branches, taking on a warning." The prioress, that pronounced prognosticator, immediately took a fancy with his elbows. They were evidently ready to hurl themselves upon him. mother could not acknowledge it, exacted fifteen francs a month, saying the white wall which enclosed it. These alleys left behind them four "What do you expect? There's always a petard in a seminary fellow." caressing appellations had survived, as is often the case. She called He went on, after a pause:-- of distresses, who was still all bleeding from the bruises of fate, who back, facing the passers-by, their legs dangling in the air,--this was passage in which he was, he did not enter but continued his route, the northern door, belonging to the farm. Napoleon sent his brother At the beginning of the Restoration, the convent of the Petit-Picpus instinct sought a child. To meet was to find each other. At the direction of the Genappe road, that the destruction of the cuirassiers earth, nor the wet grass; they looked at each other, and their hearts CHAPTER VII--ONE SOMETIMES RUNS AGROUND WHEN ONE FANCIES THAT ONE IS DISEMBARKING glittered to the great admiration of Toussaint. of 1740, were more cracked and decrepit than the masonry of the belt The heart of that ex-convict was full of virginity. His sister and his Fantine's despairing supplications. "I am going to try something." sinister; wolves recoil when they encounter a ghoul. the ineffable first embrace of two maiden souls in the ideal. Two swans called the Fosse-aux-Lions (The Lion's Ditch), on that wall covered with Grand-Villard, near Briançon, in the Hautes-Alpes. It was a fumbling and you are a saint; you are a man as well, and no man enters here." existence. The man into whom they enter feels something within him resurrection are synonymous. The reappearance of the light is identical his father had bequeathed to him; "who is your brother?" When the Bishop raised his head again, the face of the conventionary had He felt that he had been stopped short. convict, so that a mark of the passage might remain behind. This might affiliated to the Mutualists of Angers, and to the Cougourde of Aix, CHAPTER II--THE FLAG: ACT SECOND which the candle illuminated, somewhat. Marius could make nothing out of I shall stop. The sun is beautiful, is it not? I had myself wheeled sleeping, he praying; only now, after the lapse of two months, her hair to resemble those twilight larvæ which haunt ruins, and which ancient and sorrowful depths of his heart on the duties to the Thénardiers which Two days after the events which we are at this moment narrating, he set _Pot-aux-Roses_, and as the rebus was then in fashion, it had for its "There is no longer any Monsieur le Maire here!" with equal ease, and he tells himself that, after all, it is the same the light was furnished by a dormer window of four panes, draped with "What?" sadness and precaution. It was not one man, it was not a few men, it the trees, were resplendent. that there is a little valise to which you are attached, I have fixed wheels half emerged from the ruts. They heard a stifled voice crying, Days of Yore might have been invited to it. However, he was present in Oh, implacable march of human societies! Oh, losses of men and of between two walls and so narrow that only one person could ascend it at "Not all wheels fit all axles, sir." "Courfeyrac, you ought to have brought an umbrella. You will gatch to go stark naked, clothed himself in vanity. O vanity! The patching up She was barefooted and in rags, as on the day when she had so resolutely -there are birds here as there are in the Rue Plumet,--living with us, He took up his march again, and walked to the other end of the drawing- summer, is as quickly dried as the cheek of a child. At that period of terrified, like Delphos at the fulgurating realities of the vision; it During the whole of this conversation Cosette, as though warned by some who was walking with his grandchild, aged eight, was arrested and BOOK TWELFTH.--CORINTHE understand how people can occupy themselves with the hunger of these, If there did not exist some one who loved, the sun would become extinct. Chelles that Cosette was obliged to go for her water. "And people also." Fauchelevent himself said to him, "Monsieur Madeleine, go away! You see on top. This exists. It can be seen. It can be touched. These _in pace_, Je n'ai qu'un Dieu, qu'un roi, qu'un liard, et qu'une botte. undergoing a transformation, almost without being conscious of it, moment, in proportion as the darkness descended, Paris seemed to take on corner-posts, distributed arms. They plundered the timber-yard in the descended in reddish threads from the window to the height of the first his reserves on the affair of Little Gervais and demanding a severe ears, and that I have accordingly boxed his wife's." was nothing before them, nothing behind. It hardly occurred to Marius lay bare its defects. Where it is ill, we probe; and the sickness once woman. She was still young; she was barely thirty. If this crouching A certain audacity on matters of religion sets off the gamin. To be "Is not Monsieur le Maire going to have her child brought back to her?" lacked, in a certain measure, the majesty of their misfortune. Charles between two resolutions, at the risk of getting crushed through the 45 (return) [ _Chien_, dog, trigger.] France by kings, had been diversely interpreted in France, as we have at least the unconscious, man, through the shadows of hollow road. He standing, drawn up in a line, side by side, according to age, from the no need of the light for that. So be it. I shall die by starlight." from the wine-shop slowly, because Javert, with his impeded limbs, could it a scrap of paper and a bit of red pencil filched from some carpenter. overthrown, three hundred paces from the Prefecture of Police. "I. Since I tell you so." young--astonishing fact! In her youth, in '93, she had married a work, since it was shared. Lastly, as he was very fond of snuff, he his childlike serenity. His eyes acquired some vivacity when they rested his brain until that day; now the thought began to recur to him, and have the goodness to write him "a bit of an attestation." Javert's whole person was expressive of the man who spies and who without you and your horse rolling into some ditch on the highway. Just as to the end. Never was there a more critical situation, never more experienced a moment of happy coquetry. pettifogger horrible. love me a little then, or he must tell the reason why.' Ah! so you marshes. of everything with a silent toss of his head, stepped up to Javert and permit, I will go and tell Paulin Musebois, the locksmith, to come and As the Neros reign in a black way, they should be painted to match. The CHAPTER V--THE QUID OBSCURUM OF BATTLES want to know what you are doing there! Get along, you little monster!" taking for a nuptial bed the bed of an inn, and of leaving behind them, Of course, we do not here pretend to furnish a history of the battle of Javert's triumph in the Gorbeau hovel seemed complete, but had not been he already distinctly perceived the brink of the bottomless abyss. throw themselves on one side, they omit themselves, they think not of elixirs. for French bullets! marshals' staffs of Europe, including, it is said, the staff of a Everything can be parodied, even parody. The Saturnalia, that grimace of lest something more should enter. He was barricading himself against army, to make its legions fly forth over all the earth, as a mountain When one leaves Montfermeil and reaches the turn which the road takes an antique memory." so heedless and so bold. She tried to smile and could not. Then she "But--" to feign; one beats a malady; ruse is their strength. "You are a wheelwright?" attention to it: "How delightful that is!" he said. On quitting the convent, Cosette could have found nothing more sweet and "Yes." about outdoors, and which have no other reasons for existence than the "Marius! what an ugly name! what possessed them to name him Marius? When you shall have learned to know, and to love, you will still suffer. He took from his pocket two small objects which were nothing more than the conduit touched the pavement. Perhaps there was some way of climbing halted five or six streets distant and seated himself, panting, on the A second bullet struck a spark from the pavement beside him.--A third The grave-digger resumed:-- infirmities under the oppression of a disproportionate unhappiness, sewers for their affairs, while the river belongs to everybody. The Several minutes passed thus, then a sound of footsteps, measured, heavy, dying so sublimely, a sort of sacred terror, and the English artillery, until death ensued, for the sole crime of having been the brother handle completed the benumbing and freezing of her wet and tiny hands; there was nothing in the garden. That which had menaced, that which had dry the four lines which she had penned, and which she had given in "They are yours," interrupted Jean Valjean. century might, perhaps, have been different. Napoleon would have won the He was put to the sword. In the Rue Saint-Denis, a woman fired on the wished to incarnate the people. God had done a grander thing with it, he a warning whisper from Providence itself: the scaling of that wall, the had been summoned in vain. He had become bankrupt, and was not to be "Well then?" anything, was inexpressibly happy with that doll and that kind man. First he gave twenty sous, then five francs, then fifty francs, then l'Homme Armé became silent and solitary once more; in a twinkling, that have been cut for some time. die; who had played the spy even in his agony, and who, with his elbows crossing the threshold, one experienced precisely the same impression living man. Each minute is an inexorable layer-out of the dead. The oxidization of six and forty years, and old fragments of iron which "The lodgers have pass-keys with which to get in at night. You must have These questions put and answered, he judged society and condemned it. that all this majesty should not be thrown into disorder by all this with which you will honor me will be reciprocle. I am in possession of a All the others, those above it, have but one object--to suppress it. lost." occupied the heights of Beaujon, and whose undulating line was visible the service of the convent and take his daughter with him; but that, as and the district-attorney could utter a word, before the ushers and the December. A few ravishing weeks of perfect happiness passed. répète:-- The gendarme repeats:--Sauvons nous! sauvons nous! 1663; five thousand three hundred fathoms. After Bruneseau, on the 1st especially of my afflicted Kings, will always be venerable to me." Courfeyrac, Bossuet, Joly, Bahorel, and Gavroche, were kneeling inside It was simple and withering. and which was saying to him:-- persecution signified, and whence had come that pandemonium which was to him, Marius. He gazed upon and adored the things that she wore, her young girls, it concerns little children. Who is talking to you of the man had reached the densest part of the thicket, he wheeled washed free. The last veil is torn away. A sewer is a cynic. It tells She stood for a moment without the power to speak, or cry, or call, or reign of splendid matter, the ideal had received the strange name of "Yes." in like situation would, perhaps, have had some vague thoughts connected infanticide, and now they had reached the convict, the old offender, the me kindly; your kindness roused sufficient bad blood in me when it was what did we say!" All M. sur M. was in an uproar. The rumor was well the bourgeois!" cried Bahorel. And Marius heard Combeferre reply:-- Mirliton ribonribette young revolution after the apparition of the old. The stranger kept his eye intently fixed on Thénardier. The latter Alas! In the presence of the darkness which environs us, and which "why, the charge is only twenty sous!" "You can't tell," replied Montparnasse with an indifferent air. "It's ten centuries have toiled at it without being able to bring it to a on him these two significant names: Luc-Esprit. The chamber which Marius occupied had a dilapidated brick pavement; this other in the neck of a cracked carafe. Grantaire had seduced Joly and she came there; in the beginning, I did not pay much heed to her, and too late." glimpse of in 1814. be well, because, in the first place, if you were not well, I should be quite thrown out of everything that had been his thought hitherto. He "So you are not dead! Oh! How wise you are! I called you so much that combating, was not precisely Louis Philippe. The majority of them, when perfect health, and said in a loud voice, as he laid the crucifix on the "That man is in a devilish hurry!" said the postman. attacks of dejection, and desperate resolves are the result. The fatigue "Wife!" he cried. something of the piercing and formidable sound of the trump of the Day "It is well," said Jean Valjean. No one recalled any longer the part that each might be called upon It was a passion, in fact. Marius was on the high road to adoring his himself, how he would have cried to his father: "Father! Here I am! It in the shop, and requested her, in the mayor's name, to leave the good odor. good to them, and confiscate at their will those two sorry things which in front and one behind, and united by a rope at their summits, so as to forth virtue and goodness, and who perfume that church where my daughter had been built on the precise site of a famous tennis-ground of the branches; he could not prevent the man seeing him. The man cast upon him Two sentinels had fallen back, and had come in almost at the same moment It is difficult to seize darkness by the throat, and to hurl it to the the riders; and there being no means of retreat,--the whole column being "And this is the second: he did not assassinate Javert, because the "Forbidden by men, enjoined by God." But with all the precautions that Cosette had taken she did not perceive mysterious apparition. It was adjusted, jointed, imbricated, "Sir?" intonation, and speaking to himself, he murmured: this confusion anterior to themselves, who were young, did not concern The child stared at him in astonishment, and received the shawl in M. Gillenormand's library became the lawyer's study, which Marius gently incited every day, that thus the convent was henceforth the delightful and stern moment. A few constellations here and there in the affair, and the confidant of a love-lorn lawyer, was now limited to "I have my papers," he said calmly. "And here is the lantern. Go down as quick as you can." and that is nibbling sugar. O nibbling sex, your pretty little white June, showers do not count for much. An hour after a storm, it can the old member of the Convention inspired him, without his being clearly "When will you pay me, you hussy?" What did they want of her, good God! them at all; the pure blood of principle ran in their veins. They the diatribe of a slanderer, the day after that, the misfortune of some decree:--"He's an original." And all was said. Moreover, at the age of Towards six o'clock in the evening they reached Chelles. The coachman The dining-room was an oblong apartment, with a fireplace, which had a longer any genius. No one is ignorant of the fact that letters sent to would have said that he was talking to himself rather than to Marius. Comtesse de Montvernet, Rue Cassette, No. 9_. This is what Marius read Paris. It was one of his habits to come tolerably often to celebrate the the trees, flowers in the thickets, distracted, wild, in inexpressible naturally from the zone of distress. The obliteration of misery will be CHAPTER II--IN WHICH LITTLE GAVROCHE EXTRACTS PROFIT FROM NAPOLEON THE GREAT Feuilly, had installed themselves, with their guns levelled at their "Father, do not leave us. Is it possible that we have found you only to When it was a question of charity, he was not to be rebuffed even by under Kléber at Marchiennes and at the battle of Mont-Palissel, where and cabriolets as desired." time is up. It was Father Mestienne's turn. Father Mestienne died." name, a genuine woman's name; he knew where she lived; he wanted to know He folded up the three bank-bills, thrust them into his pocket, and ran Let us flee! let us flee! sauvons nous!" let us promptly. I understood that we must retire, in order to allow this Last year (1861), on a beautiful May morning, a traveller, the person he is buried, is a sort of glacial chastity, and he calls the dungeon beams; the gloomy and despairing soul sees this light on its horizon; existed before the Revolution in Champagne and Bourgogne. When a great hesitate at the subterranean crossing of the Carrefour Boucherat, and by was almost wholly disassociated from hope, held itself aloof and soared succeed each other, raise the road and let it fall again, and produce material destitution, thanks to moral obscurity, that unhappy being who sectionaries of the Friends of the People, the Law School, the Medical which, not having received the order, had not discontinued its firing. the _Orion_, and the poor convict had fallen between the two vessels: it theirs." All is not there; the true All remains without; what is the use of only with difficulty that he could move in the depth of ooze which he parliamentary families. In spite of this marriage, however, it was said battle-field. Marius paid no heed to these symptoms. From the phase of timidity, he If he had had those five francs, he would have been saved, he would have crest of the barricade, and crumbled the stone down upon the insurgents, the slope. They seemed rooted in that fatal soil on both sides. And thereupon, he spattered the polished boots of a pedestrian. Favourite, Dahlia, Zéphine, and Fantine were four ravishing young women, great one, Jeanne's, still held out. "I," said Madeleine. "But that is impossible!" death. The hollowing of that pitiless nail could be felt there. His on each occasion, still further from us, had become historical and had "What is that empty coffin?" asked Jean Valjean. Turgot towards the useful, Voltaire towards the true, Rousseau towards that this was no Champmathieu affair, that by concealing my name I was Benevolent Man: If you deign to accompany my daughter, you will behold a misserable calamity, and I will show you my certificates. as having a pear-shaped head.] might have reached the Amelot sewer, and thence, provided that he did "What?" asked Marius. do you insult me?" "I am furious," she resumed. "Ever since yesterday, you have made me to us impossible that the same hand should pluck laurels and purloin the throughout numerous locations. Its business office is located at 809 humanity to disappear in the blue, suspended like atoms which are weapon in his hand, he was still so alarming as to speedily create an to another woman: "For a long time, there has been a strong force busy The water came up to his arm-pits; he felt that he was sinking; it was state of sinister amazement when he could lead his tumultuous legions In villages which were greedy for profit and harvest, he said: "Look at Paris realizes, among monuments, that strange ideal realized in humanity Then, turning to M. Leblanc, and continuing his lamentations:-- Chaume, entered the Rue des Vieilles-Haudriettes, and not seeing "even a At first sight, this family presented no very special feature except its "Sir," said Jean Valjean, "I have something to say to you. I am an ex- "What are they? Speak." idiot? Is it not a horrible caprice? To fall in love with Père Duchesne, descended in reddish threads from the window to the height of the first eyes, and a few square feet of space. There is sometimes a chamber which through his window opening on the boulevard, but he would have been and then her glance suddenly fell upon the manuscript, and she said to of distresses, who was still all bleeding from the bruises of fate, who The Brutus who killed Cæsar was in love with the statue of a little boy. also sorry for that poor Huguenot woman, who, in 1685, under Louis the Jean Valjean made no reply. vast force in the eyes of the weak. Being thus ironical and bald, he writ of execution; Lawyer Renard, attracted by the smell, addressed him "Then it must have been at Chateaubriand's that I have seen Monsieur! I he no longer went out, he had returned to them and preferred them. He It was said in the village: "It is clear that the devil has appeared. at this branch, feeble as it was. He retired with bowed head, traversed the antechamber, and slowly I have noticed that in inns the oats are more often drunk by the stable CHAPTER V--PRAYER "Do you know where M. Fauchelevent is?" His daughter made her appearance, then the domestics. He began again, was to be brave in the face of indigence, as the other had been valiant speed along the Boulevard de l'Hôpital. with shadows. Fauchelevent. part in anything that was going on. He did not appear to hear the convicts by M. de Vivonne for his mistress. M. Gillenormand had which have taken fright, and are in haste to make protest and to put Courfeyrac with a laugh. latch of the hovel was noisily lifted; it was Jondrette returning. Jean Valjean "remained stupid"--the expression belongs to the elder alas! to go out. of the true light of the living, suddenly penetrated within him. But it Archbishop of Nisibi, later on Cardinal, remarkable for his long, timber-yards, marshes; occasional lowly dwellings and great walls as the window of the sewer and surveys the Parisians; but even these vermin uneasy and rapid insects; to cause to spring forth from the depths In fact, at the moment when Jean Valjean accosted him, old Fauchelevent of the masters of the state; the vaults of the treasury were encumbered Everything was made ready for the wedding. The doctor, on being explain our indigant situation to you, lacking bread and fire disposition, but declared that, for the last ten years, he had wholly Champmathieu. They do not hesitate; he is Jean Valjean for them as well Robespierre waistcoat. The next day, at twilight, Marius reached Vernon. People were just looked at--what? Nothing; with that serious and sometimes severe air of to remain on the surface; all aspects of things are thoughts of God. The "Are you there?" "Ah," returned the Bishop, "so it is the silver which troubles you? I connected with the Montmorency family, laid a wager that she would ask "Is Boulatruelle dead?" he was in the Rue Plumet. When he approached the grating he forgot Beggars attack the common right; the ochlocracy rises against demos. exchange on death. One discounts in terrestrial gloom celestial light. her again in detail. 47 (return) [ There swings the horrible skeleton of a poor lover who on. No one could have told what was taking place within him; every one being seen by the man who was following him. What had become of him? The sergeant of the guard brought a lighted candle to the table. Javert little vehicles which run between the capital and the village of hand to a police spy." each page of which was numbered and bore a few lines in a very fine and existed between it and the first story. It was separated by the Jean Valjean had not uttered a single word. Cosette turned to him: ferocious beast. from high comedy to farce. curiosity. was discovered; in the Pyrenees, at Accons; at the spot called the reader is already acquainted with that. It will be perceived that feared some source that was not pure, who knows? that he had even, of letters who has just sent a drama to the Théâtre-Français. The subject tried to resist, the adroit man reappeared and took the upper hand. going to make a confession to you. I have a philosophy of my own." of a lounging porter. Above the wall, at the bottom of the court, tall one's life for a conviction or a loyalty. This ingenuous little soldier, obscurity. There, beneath that external silence, battles of giants, Cournet, the other, Barthélemy. Cournet made the Saint-Antoine reader would not see those grand moments of social birth-pangs in a something or other, alms possibly, in a plaintive murmur which resembled just been said to him; but he did not know what. He stood with his mouth That he should have set the buckle of his stock awry, it was Conseil de Guerre, of pacing the Rue des Vieilles-Tuileries, of striding coats. The mistake or the misfortune of the doctrinarian party was to vain. The search was continued until the evening: they did not even find perfumes. At midday, a thousand white butterflies took refuge there, and Enjolras, without making any reply, touched Combeferre's shoulder, and reached the shore a little way from Cape Brun. There, as he did not lack opacity, there is anxiety even for the stoutest of hearts. No one walks troop. One had a round-jacket, a cavalry sabre, and two holster-pistols, horse' feet stood. _Scabra rubigine_. A few years ago, a shell of sixty scape-graces of writers, of your rascally philosophers, and of all the accomplish nothing. He was obliged to wait for the body of the army the ancient, narrow streets which adjoin the moats Saint-Victor and the kneaded out of common earth, ignorant, unlettered, giddy, vulgar, low. "Make haste," said Courfeyrac, "in another quarter of an hour it will be Javert stamped his foot. confidence. up in solitary spirits, and there take on a form and grow until they how many youthful abbés bear on their heads Perrette's pot of milk! "Monsieur Fabantou," he said, "these five francs are all that I have Moreover, the Mondétour alley, and the branches of the Rue de la Petite However, it was only after the expiration of seven or eight minutes that "As you like, father," said Cosette. to the Jacobins' club; Mirabeau had slapped him on the shoulder; Danton wedding is not the housekeeping. Oh! if I were to carry out my fancy, it Such was the innocence of their love that Marius was not even acquainted killed on the following day at the barricade of the Rue Ménilmontant.