CHAPTER V.
MAME BOUGON IS THUNDER-STRUCK.
The next day, Mame Bougon,—it was thus that Courfeyrac called the old portress, principal lodger, and charwoman, of No. 50-52, though her real name was Madame Bourgon, as we have stated; but that scamp of a Courfeyrac respected nothing,—Mame Bougon, to her stupefaction, noticed that Marius again went out in his best coat. He returned to the Luxembourg, but did not go beyond his half-way bench; he sat down there, as on the previous day, regarding from a distance, and seeing distinctly, the white bonnet, the black dress, and, above all, the blue radiance. He did not move or return home till the gates of the Luxembourg were closed. He did not see M. Leblanc and his daughter go away, and hence concluded that they left the garden by the gate in the Rue de l'Ouest. Some weeks after, when reflecting on the subject, he could never remember where he dined that day. On the next day, the third, Mame Bougon received another thunder-stroke; Marius went out in his new coat. "Three days running!" she exclaimed. She tried to follow him, but Marius walked quickly, and with immense strides: it was a hippopotamus attempting to overtake a chamois. She lost him out of sight in two minutes, and went back panting, three parts choked by her asthma, and furious. "What sense is there," she growled, "in putting on one's best coat every day, and making people run like that!"
Marius had gone to the Luxembourg, where M. Leblanc and the young lady were already. Marius approached as near to them as he could, while pretending to read his book, though still a long distance off, and then sat down on his bench, where he spent four hours in watching the sparrows, which he fancied were ridiculing him, hopping about in the walk. A fortnight passed in this way; Marius no longer went to the Luxembourg to walk, but always to sit down at the same spot, without knowing why. Arriving, he did not stir. He every morning put on his new coat, although he did not show himself, and began again on the morrow. She was decidedly, marvellously beautiful; the sole remark resembling a criticism that could be made was that the contradiction between her glance, which was sad, and her smile, which was joyous, gave her face a slightly startled look, which at times caused this gentle face to become strange without ceasing to be charming.
CHAPTER VI.
TAKEN PRISONER.
On one of the last days of the second week Marius was as usual seated on his bench, holding in his hand an open book in which he had not turned a page for several months, when he suddenly started; an event was occurring at the end of the walk. M. Leblanc and his daughter had left their bench, the girl was holding her father's arm, and both were proceeding slowly toward the middle of the walk where Marius was. He shut his book, then opened it again and tried to read, but he trembled, and the glory came straight toward him. "Oh, Heaven!" he thought, "I shall not have the time to assume an attitude." The white-haired man and the girl, however, advanced; it seemed to him as if this lasted an age, and it was only a second. "What do they want here?" he asked himself. "What! she is going to pass here; her feet will tread this sand, this walk, two paces from me!" He was quite upset; he would have liked to be very handsome, and have the cross. He heard the soft measured sound of their footsteps approaching him, and he imagined that M. Leblanc glanced at him irritably. "Is this gentleman going to speak to me?" he thought. He hung his head, and when he raised it again they were close to him. The girl passed, and in passing looked at him,—looked at him intently, with a thoughtful gentleness which made Marius shudder from head to foot. It seemed to him as if she reproached him for keeping away from her so long, and was saying, "I have come instead." Marius was dazzled by these eyeballs full of beams and abysses. He felt that his brain was on fire. She had come toward him—what joy!—and then, she had looked at him. She appeared to him lovelier than she had ever been,—lovely with a beauty at once feminine and angelic, a perfect beauty, which would have made Petrarch sing and Dante kneel. He felt as if he were floating in the blue sky, but at the same time he was horribly annoyed because he had dust on his boots, and he felt sure that she had looked at his boots too.
He looked after her till she disappeared, and then walked about the garden like a maniac. He probably at times laughed to himself and talked aloud. He was so pensive near the nursery-maids that each of them fancied him in love with her. He quitted the Luxembourg, hoping to meet her again in the street. He met Courfeyrac under the arcades of the Pantheon, and said to him, "Come and dine with me." They went to Rousseau's and spent six francs. Marius ate like an ogre, and gave six sous to the waiter. After dinner he said to Courfeyrac, "Have you read the papers? What a fine speech Audry de Puyraveau made!" He was distractedly in love. He then said to Courfeyrac, "Let us go to the theatre,—I'll pay." They went to the Porte St. Martin to see Frederick in the "Auberge des Adrets," and Marius was mightily amused. At the same time he became more virtuous than ever. On leaving the theatre he refused to look at the garter of a dressmaker who was striding across a gutter, and Courfeyrac happening to say, "I should like to place that woman in my collection," he almost felt horrified. Courfeyrac invited him to breakfast next morning at the Café Voltaire. He went there, and ate even more than on the previous day. He was thoughtful and very gay, and seemed to take every opportunity to laugh noisily. A party of students collected round the table and spoke of the absurdities paid for by the State, which are produced from the pulpit of the Sorbonne, and then the conversation turned to the faults and gaps in dictionaries. Marius interrupted the discussion by exclaiming, "And yet it is very agreeable to have the cross."
"That is funny!" Courfeyrac whispered to Jean Prouvaire.
"No, it is serious," the other answered.
It was in truth serious; Marius had reached that startling and charming hour which commences great passions. A look had effected all this. When the mine is loaded, when the fire is ready, nothing is more simple, and a glance is a spark. It was all over; Marius loved a woman, and his destiny was entering the unknown. The glance of a woman resembles certain wheels which are apparently gentle but are formidable: you daily pass by their side with impunity, and without suspecting anything, and the moment arrives when you even forget that the thing is there. You come, you go, you dream, you speak, you laugh, and all in a minute you feel yourself caught, and it is all over with you. The wheel holds you, the glance has caught you; it has caught, no matter where or how, by some part of your thought which dragged after you, or by some inattention on your part. You are lost, and your whole body will be drawn in; a series of mysterious forces seizes you, and you struggle in vain, for human aid is no longer possible. You pass from cog-wheel to cog-wheel, from agony to agony, from torture to torture, —you and your mind, your fortune, your future, and your soul; and, according as you are in the power of a wicked creature or of a noble heart, you will issue from this frightful machinery either disfigured by shame or transfigured by passion.
CHAPTER VII.
ADVENTURES OF THE LETTER "U" LEFT TO CONJECTURES.
Isolation, separation from everything, pride, independence, a taste for nature, the absence of daily and material labor, the soul-struggles of chastity, and his benevolent ecstasy in the presence of creation, had prepared Marius for that possession which is called passion. His reverence for his father had gradually become a religion, and, like all religions, withdrew into the depths of the soul: something was wanting for the foreground, and love came. A whole month passed, during which Marius went daily to the Luxembourg: when the hour arrived nothing could stop him. "He is on duty," Courfeyrac said. Marius lived in rapture, and it is certain that the young lady looked at him. In the end he had grown bolder, and went nearer the bench; still he did not pass in front of it, obeying at once the timid instincts and prudent instincts of lovers. He thought it advisable not to attract the father's attention, and hence arranged his stations behind trees and the pedestals of statues, with profound Machiavellism, so as to be seen as much as possible by the young lady and as little as possible by the old gentleman. At times he would be standing for half an hour motionless in the shadow of some Leonidas or Spartacus, holding in one hand a book, over which his eyes, gently raised, sought the lovely girl; and she, for her part, turned her charming profile toward him with a vague smile. While talking most naturally and quietly with the white-haired man, she fixed upon Marius all the reveries of a virginal and impassioned glance. It is an old and immemorial trick which Eve knew from the first day of the world, and which every woman knows from the first day of her life. Her mouth replied to the one and her eye answered the other.
It must be supposed, however, that M. Leblanc eventually noticed something, for frequently when Marius arrived he got up and began walking. He left their accustomed seat, and adopted at the other end of the walk the bench close to the Gladiator, as if to see whether Marius would follow them. Marius did not understand it, and committed this fault. "The father" began to become unpunctual, and no longer brought "his daughter" every day. At times he came alone, and then Marius did not stop, and this was another fault. Marius paid no attention to these symptoms: from the timid phase he had passed by a natural and fatal progress into a blind phase. His love was growing, and he dreamed of it every night, and then an unexpected happiness occurred to him, like oil on fire, and redoubled the darkness over his eyes. One evening at twilight he found on the bench which "M. Leblanc and his daughter" had just quitted, a simple, unembroidered handkerchief, which, however, was white and pure, and seemed to him to exhale ineffable odors. He seized it with transport, and noticed that it was marked with the letters "U. F." Marius knew nothing about the lovely girl, neither her family, her name, nor her abode; these two letters were the first thing of hers which he seized,—adorable initials, upon which he at once began to erect his scaffolding. "U" was evidently the Christian name: "Ursule!" he thought; "what a delicious name!" He kissed the handkerchief, smelt it, placed it on his heart during the day, and at night upon his lips to go to sleep.
"I can see her whole soul!" he exclaimed.
This handkerchief belonged to the old gentleman, who had simply let it fall from his pocket. On the following days, when Marius went to the Luxembourg, he kissed the handkerchief, and pressed it to his heart. The lovely girl did not understand what this meant, and expressed her surprise by imperceptible signs.
"Oh, modesty!" said Marius.
CHAPTER VIII.
EVEN INVALIDS MAY BE LUCKY.
Since we have uttered the word modesty, and as we conceal nothing, we are bound to say, however, that notwithstanding his ecstasy, on one occasion "his Ursule" caused him serious vexation. It was on one of the days when she induced M. Leblanc to leave the bench and walk about. There was a sharp spring breeze which shook the tops of the plane-trees; and father and daughter, arm in arm, had just passed in front of Marius, who rose and watched them, as was fitting for a man in his condition. All at once a puff of wind, more merry than the rest, and probably ordered to do the business of spring, dashed along the walk, enveloped the maiden in a delicious rustling worthy of the nymphs of Virgil and the Fauns of Theocritus, and raised her dress—that dress more sacred than that of Isis—almost as high as her garter. A leg of exquisite shape became visible. Marius saw it, and he was exasperated and furious. The maiden rapidly put down her dress, with a divinely startled movement, but he was not the less indignant. There was no one in the walk, it was true, but there might have been somebody; and if that somebody had been there! Is such a thing conceivable? What she has just done is horrible! Alas! the poor girl had done nothing, and there was only one culprit, the wind; but Marius, in whom faintly quivered the Bartholo which is in Cherubino, was determined to be dissatisfied, and was jealous of his shadow; it is thus, in fact, that the bitter and strange jealousy of the flesh is aroused in the human heart, and dominates it, even unjustly. Besides, apart from his jealousy, the sight of this charming leg was not at all agreeable to him, and any other woman's white stocking would have caused him more pleasure.
When "his Ursule," after reaching the end of the walk, turned back with M. Leblanc, and passed in front of the bench on which Marius was sitting, he gave her a stern, savage glance. The girl drew herself slightly up, and raised her eyelids, which means, "Well, what is the matter now?" This was their first quarrel. Marius had scarce finished upbraiding her in this way with his eyes, when some one crossed the walk. It was a bending invalid, all wrinkled and white, wearing the uniform of Louis XV., having on his chest the little oval red cloth badge with crossed swords, the soldier's cross of Saint Louis, and decorated besides with an empty coat-sleeve, a silver chin, and a wooden leg. Marius fancied he could notice that this man had an air of satisfaction; it seemed to him that the old cynic, while hobbling past him, gave him a fraternal and extremely jovial wink, as if some accident had enabled them to enjoy in common some good thing. Why was this relic of Mars so pleased? What had occurred, between this wooden leg and the other? Marius attained the paroxysm of jealousy, "He was perhaps there," he said to himself; "perhaps he saw," and he felt inclined to exterminate the invalid.
With the help of time every point grows blunted, and Marius's anger with "Ursule," though so just and legitimate, passed away. He ended by pardoning her; but it was a mighty effort, and he sulked with her for three days. Still, through all this, and owing to all this, his passion increased, and became insane.
CHAPTER IX.
ECLIPSE.
We have seen how Marius discovered, or fancied he had discovered, that her name was Ursule. Appetite comes while loving, and to know that her name was Ursule was a great deal already, but it was little. In three or four weeks Marius had devoured this happiness and craved another; he wished to know where she lived. He had made the first fault in falling into the trap of the Gladiator's bench; he had committed a second by not remaining at the Luxembourg when M. Leblanc went there alone; and he now committed a third, an immense one,—he followed "Ursule." She lived in the Rue de l'Ouest, in the most isolated part, in a new three-storied house of modest appearance. From this moment Marius added to his happiness of seeing her at the Luxembourg the happiness of following her home. His hunger increased; he knew what her name was, her Christian name at least, the charming, the real name of a woman; he knew where she lived; and he now wanted to know who she was. One evening after following them home, and watching them disappear in the gateway, he went in after them, and valiantly addressed the porter.
"Is that the gentleman of the first floor who has just come in?"
"No," the porter answered, "it is the gentleman of the third floor."
Another step made! This success emboldened Marius.
"Front?" he asked.
"Hang it!" said the porter, "our rooms all look on the street."
"And what is the gentleman?" Marius continued.
"He lives on his property. He is a very good man, who does a deal of good to the unhappy, though he is not rich."
"What is his name?" Marius added.
The porter raised his head and said,—
"Are you a police spy, sir?"
Marius went off much abashed, but highly delighted, for he was progressing.
"Good!" he thought; "I know that her name is Ursule, that she is the daughter of a retired gentleman, and that she lives there, on a third floor in the Rue de l'Ouest."
On the morrow M. Leblanc and his daughter made but a short appearance at the Luxembourg, and went away in broad daylight. Marius followed them to the Rue de l'Ouest, as was his habit, and on reaching the gateway M. Leblanc made his daughter go in first, then stopped, turned, and looked intently at Marius. The next day they did not come to the Luxembourg, and Marius waited in vain the whole day. At nightfall he went to the Rue de l'Ouest, and noticed a light in the third-floor windows, and he walked about beneath these windows till the light was extinguished. The next day there was no one at the Luxembourg; Marius waited all day, and then went to keep his night-watch under the windows. This took him till ten o'clock, and his dinner became what it could; for fever nourishes the sick man and love the lover. Eight days passed in this way, and M. Leblanc and his daughter did not again appear at the Luxembourg. Marius made sorrowful conjectures, for he did not dare watch the gateway by day; he contented himself with going at night to contemplate the reddish brightness of the window-panes. He saw shadows pass now and then, and his heart beat.
On the eighth day, when he arrived beneath the windows, there was no light. "What!" he said to himself, "the lamp is not lighted! can they have gone out?" He waited till ten o'clock, till midnight, till one o'clock, but no light was kindled at the third-floor windows, and nobody entered the house. He went away with very gloomy thoughts. On the morrow—for he only lived from morrow to morrow, and he had no to-day, so to speak—he saw nobody at the Luxembourg, as he expected, and at nightfall he went to the house. There was no light at the windows, the shutters were closed, and the third floor was all darkness. Marius rapped, walked in, and said to the porter,—
"The gentleman on the third floor?"
"Moved," the porter answered.
Marius tottered, and asked feebly,—
"Since when?"
"Yesterday."
"Where is he living now?"
"I do not know."
"Then he did not leave his new address?"
"No."
And the porter, raising his nose, recognized Marius.
"What! it's you, is it?" he said; "why, you must really be a police spy."
BOOK VII.
PATRON MINETTE.
CHAPTER I.
MINES AND MINERS.
Human societies have ever what is called in theatres "un troisième dessous," and the social soil is everywhere undermined, here for good and there for evil. These works are upon one another; there are upper mines and lower mines, and there is a top and bottom in this obscure sub-soil, which at times gives way beneath the weight of civilization, and which our indifference and carelessness trample under foot. The Encyclopædia was in the last century an almost open mine, and the darkness, that gloomy brooder of primitive Christianity, only awaited an occasion to explode beneath the Cæsars and inundate the human race with light. For in the sacred darkness there is latent light, and the volcanoes are full of a shadow which is capable of flashing, and all lava begins by being night. The catacombs in which the first Mass was read were not merely the cellar of Rome but also the vault of the world.
There are all sorts of excavations beneath the social building, that marvel complicated by a hovel; there is the religious mine, the philosophic mine, the political mine, the social economic mine, and the revolutionary mine. One man picks with the idea, another with figure, another with auger, and they call to and answer each other from the catacombs. Utopias move in subterranean passages and ramify in all directions; they meet there at times and fraternize. Jean Jacques lends his pick to Diogenes, who lends him his lantern in turn; at times, though, they fight, and Calvin clutches Socinus by the hair. But nothing arrests or interrupts the tension of all their energies toward the object, and the vast simultaneous energy, which comes and goes, ascends, descends, and reascends, in the obscurity, and which slowly substitutes top for bottom and inside for out; it is an immense and unknown ant-heap. Society hardly suspects this excavation, which leaves no traces on its surface and yet changes its insides; and there are as many different works and varying extractions as there are subterranean tiers. What issues from all these deep excavations? The future.
The deeper we go the more mysterious the mines become. To a certain point which the social philosopher is able to recognize the labor is good; beyond that point it is doubtful and mixed, and lower still it becomes terrible. At a certain depth the excavations can no longer be endured by the spirit of civilization, and man's limit of breathing is passed: a commencement of monsters becomes possible. The descending ladder is strange, and each rung corresponds with a stage upon which philosophy can land, and meet one of these miners, who are sometimes divine, at others deformed. Below John Huss there is Luther; below Luther, Descartes; below Descartes, Voltaire; below Voltaire, Condorcet; below Condorcet, Robespierre; below Robespierre, Marat; and below Marat, Babeuf; and so it goes on. Lower still we notice confusedly, at the limit which separates the indistinct from the invisible, other gloomy men, who perhaps do not yet exist: those of yesterday are spectres, those of the morrow grubs. The mental eye can only distinguish them obscurely, and the embryonic labor of the future is one of the visions of the philosopher. A world in limbo at the fœtus stage—what an extraordinary sketch! St Simon, Owen, and Founder are also there in the side-passages.
Assuredly, although a divine and invisible chain connects together without their cognizance all these subterranean miners, who nearly always fancy themselves isolated but are not so, their labors vary greatly, and the light of the one contrasts with the dazzle of the other: some are celestial and others tragical. Still, however great the contrast may be, all these laborers, from the highest to the most nocturnal, from the wisest down to the maddest, have a similitude in their disinterestedness: they leave themselves on one side, omit themselves, do not think of themselves, and see something different from themselves. They have a glance, and that glance seeks the absolute; the first has heaven in his eyes, and the last, however enigmatical he may be, has beneath Ids eyebrow the pale brightness of infinity. Venerate every man, no matter what he may be doing,—any man who has the sign, a starry eyeball. The dark eyeball is the other sign, and with it evil begins. Before the man who has this look, think and tremble. Social order has its black miners. There is a point where profundity is burial and where light is extinguished. Below all these mines which we have indicated,—below all these galleries, below all this immense subterranean arterial system of progress and Utopia, far deeper in the ground, below Marat, below Babeuf, much, much lower, there is the last passage, which has no connection with the upper drifts. It is a formidable spot, and what we termed the troisième dessous. It is the grave of darkness and the cave of the blind, Inferi, and communicates with the abysses.
CHAPTER II.
THE BOTTOM.
Here disinterestedness fades away, and the dream is vaguely sketched. Every one for himself. The eyeless I yells, seeks, gropes, and groans: the social Ugolino is in this gulf. The ferocious shadows which prowl about this grave, almost brutes, almost phantoms, do not trouble themselves about human progress; they are ignorant of ideas and language, and thus they care for nought beyond individual gratification. They are almost unconscious, and there is within them a species of frightful obliteration. They have two mothers, both step-mothers,—ignorance and wretchedness. They have for their guide want, and for all power of satisfaction appetite; they are brutally voracious, that is to say, ferocious,—not after the fashion of the tyrant, but that of the tiger. From suffering these grubs pass to crime,—it is a fetal affiliation, a ghastly propagation, the logic of darkness; what crawls in the lowest passage is no longer the stifled demand of the absolute, but the protest of matter. Man becomes a dragon then; his starting-point is to be hungry and thirsty, and his terminus is to be Satan. Lacenaire issued from this cave.
We have just seen one of the compartments of the upper mine, the great political, revolutionary, and philosophic sap. There, as we said, all is noble, pure, worthy, and honest: men may be mistaken in it, and are mistaken, but the error must be revered, because it implies so much heroism, and the work performed there has a name,—Progress. The moment has now arrived to take a glance at other and hideous depths. There is beneath society, and there ever will be, till the day when ignorance is dissipated, the great cavern of evil. This cavern is below all the rest, and the enemy of all; it is hatred without exception. This cavern knows no philosophers, and its dagger never made a pen, while its blackness bears no relation with the sublime blackness of the inkstand. The fingers of night, which clench beneath this asphyxiating roof, never opened a book or unfolded a newspaper. Babeuf is to Cartouche a person who takes advantage of his knowledge, and Marat an aristocrat in the sight of Schinderhannes, and the object of this cavern is the overthrow of everything.
Of everything,—including the upper levels, which it execrates. It not only undermines in its hideous labor the existing social order, but it undermines philosophy, science, the law, human thought, civilization, revolution, and progress, and it calls itself most simply, robbery, prostitution, murder, and assassination. It is darkness, and desires chaos, and its roof is composed of ignorance. All the other mines above it have only one object, to suppress it; and philosophy and progress strive for this with all their organs simultaneously, by the amelioration of the real, as well as the contemplation of the ideal. Destroy the cave, Ignorance, and you destroy the mole, Crime. Let us condense in a few words a portion of what we have just written. The sole social evil is darkness; humanity is identity, for all men are of the same clay, and in this nether world, at least, there is no difference in predestination; we are the same shadow before, the same flesh during, and the same ashes afterwards: but ignorance, mixed with the human paste, blackens it, and this incurable blackness enters man and becomes Evil there.
CHAPTER III.
BABET, GUEULEMER, CLAQUESOUS, AND MONTPARNASSE.
A quartette of bandits, Babet, Gueulemer, Claquesous, and Montparnasse, governed, from 1830 to 1835, the lowest depths of Paris. Gueulemer was a Hercules out of place, and his den was the Arche-Marion sewer. He was six feet high, had lungs of marble, muscles of bronze, the respiration of a cavern, the bust of a colossus, and a bird's skull. You fancied you saw the Farnèse Hercules, attired in ticking trousers and a cotton-velvet jacket. Gueulemer built in this mould might have subdued monsters, but he had found it shorter to be one. A low forehead, wide temples, under forty years of age, but with crow's-feet, rough short hair, and a bushy beard,—you can see the man. His muscles demanded work, and his stupidity would not accept it: he was a great slothful strength, and an assassin through nonchalance. People believed him to be a Creole, and he had probably laid his hands upon Marshal Brune when massacred, as he was a porter at Avignon in 1815. From that stage he had become a bandit.
Babet's transparency contrasted with the meat of Gueulemer; he was thin and learned,—transparent but impenetrable: you might see the light through his bones, but not through his eyes. He called himself a chemist, had been a clown with Bobêche and a harlequin with Bobino, and had played in the vaudeville at St. Mihiel. He was a man of intentions, and a fine speaker, who underlined his smiles and placed his gestures between inverted commas. His trade was to sell in the open air plaster busts and portraits of the "chief of the State," and, in addition, he pulled teeth out. He had shown phenomena at fairs, and possessed a booth with a trumpet and the following show-board,—"Babet, dentist, and member of the academies, performs physical experiments on metals and metalloids, extirpates teeth, and undertakes stumps given up by the profession. Terms: one tooth, one franc fifty centimes; two teeth, two francs; three teeth, two francs fifty centimes. Take advantage of the opportunity." (The last sentence meant, Have as many teeth pulled out as possible.) He was married and had children, but did not know what had become of wife or children: he had lost them, just as another man loses his handkerchief. Babet was a high exception in the obscure world to which he belonged, for he read the newspapers. One day, at the time when he still had his family with him in his caravan, he read in the Moniteur that a woman had just been delivered of a child with a calf's snout, and exclaimed, "There's a fortune! My wife would not have the sense to produce me a child like that!" Since then he had given up everything to "undertake Paris:" the expression is his own.
What was Claquesous? He was night; and never showed himself till the sky was bedaubed with blackness. In the evening he emerged from a hole, to which he returned before daybreak. Where was this hole? No one knew. In the greatest darkness, and when alone with his accomplices, he turned his back when he spoke to them. Was his name Claquesous? No: he said, "My name is Not-at-all." If a candle were brought in he put on a mask, and he was a ventriloquist into the bargain, and Babet used to say, "Claquesous is a night-bird with two voices." Claquesous was vague, wandering, and terrible: no one was sure that he had a name, for Claquesous was a nickname; no one was sure that he had a voice, for his stomach spoke more frequently than his mouth; and no one was sure that he had a face, as nothing had ever been seen but his mask. He disappeared like a ghost, and when he appeared he seemed to issue from the ground.
Montparnasse was a sorry sight. He was a lad not yet twenty, with a pretty face, lips that resembled cherries, beautiful black hair, and the brightness of spring in his eyes: he had every vice, and aspired to every crime, and the digestion of evil gave him an appetite for worse. He was the gamin turned pickpocket, and the pickpocket had become a garroter. He was genteel, effeminate, graceful, robust, soft, and ferocious. The left-hand brim of his hat was turned up to make room for the tuft of hair, in the style of 1829. He lived by robbery committed with violence, and his coat was cut in the latest fashion, though worn at the seams. Montparnasse was an engraving of the fashions, in a state of want, and committing murders. The cause of all the attacks made by this young man was a longing to be well dressed: the first grisette who said to him, "You are handsome," put the black spot in his heart, and made a Cain of this Abel. Finding himself good-looking, he wished to be elegant, and the first stage of elegance is idleness: but the idleness of the poor man is crime. Few prowlers were so formidable as Montparnasse, and at the age of eighteen he had several corpses behind him. More than one wayfarer lay in the shadow of this villain with outstretched arms, and with his face in a pool of blood. Curled, pomaded, with his waist pinched in, the hips of a woman, the bust of a Prussian officer, the buzz of admiration of the girls of the boulevard around him, a carefully-tied cravat, a life-preserver in his pocket, and a flower in his buttonhole,—such was this dandy of the tomb.
CHAPTER IV.
COMPOSITION OF THE TROOP.
These four bandits formed a species of Proteus, winding through the police ranks and striving to escape the indiscreet glances of Vidocq "under various shapes,—tree, flame, and fountain,"—borrowing one another's names and tricks, asylums for one another, laying aside their personality as a man removes a false nose at a masquerade; at times simplifying themselves so as to be only one man, at others multiplying themselves to such an extent that Coco-Latour himself took them for a mob. These four men were not four men; they were a species of four-headed robber working Paris on a grand scale; the monstrous polype of evil inhabiting the crypt of society. Owing to their ramifications and the subjacent network of their relations, Babet, Gueulemer, Claquesous, and Montparnasse had the general direction of all the foul play in the department of the Seine. The finders of ideas in this style, the men with nocturnal imaginations, applied to them to execute them; the four villains were supplied with the canvas, and they produced the scenery. They were always in a position to supply a proportionate and proper staff for every robbery which was sufficiently lucrative and required a stout arm. If a crime were in want of persons to carry it out, they sub-let the accomplices, and they always had a band of actors at the service of all the tragedies of the caverns.
They generally met at nightfall, the hour when they awoke, on the steppes that border the Salpêtrière. There they conferred, and, as they had the twelve dark hours before them, they settled their employment. Patron Minette was the name given in the subterranean lurking-places to the association of these four men. In the old and fantastic popular language, which is daily dying out, Patron Minette signifies the morning, just as "between dog and wolf" signifies night. This appellation was probably derived from the hour when their work finished, for dawn is the moment for spectres to fade away and for bandits to part. These four men were known by this title. When the President of the Assizes visited Lacenaire in prison, he questioned him about a crime which the murderer denied. "Who committed it?" the President asked; and Lacenaire gave this answer, which was enigmatical for the magistrate, but clear for the police,—"It is, perhaps, Patron Minette."
The plot of a play may be at times divined from the list of names; and a party of bandits may perhaps be appreciated in the same way. Here are the names to which the principal members of Patron Minette answered, exactly as they survive in special memoirs.
Panchaud called Spring, alias Bigrenaille, Brujon (there was a dynasty of Brujons, about whom we may still say a word); Boulatruelle, the road-mender, of whom we have caught a glimpse; Laveuve; Finistère; Homer-Hogu, a negro; Tuesday night; Make haste; Fauntleroy, alias Flower-girl; Glorious, a liberated convict; Stop the coach, alias Monsieur Dupont; The Southern Esplanade; Poussagrive; Carmagnolet; Kruideniers, alias Bizarro; Lace-eater; Feet in the air; Half farthing, alias Two Milliards, etc. etc.
These names have faces, and express not merely beings but species. Each of these names responds to a variety of the poisonous fungi which grow beneath human civilization. These beings, very careful about showing their faces, were not of those whom we may see passing by day, for at that period, weary of their night wanderings, they went to sleep in the lime-kilns, the deserted quarries of Montmartre or Montrouge, or even in the snow. They ran to earth.
What has become of these men? They still exist, and have ever existed. Horace alludes to them in his Ambubaiarum collegia, pharmacopolœ, mendici, mimœ, and so as long as society is what it is they will be what they are. Under the obscure vault of their cellar they are even born again from the social leakage; they return as spectres, but ever identical. The only difference is that they no longer bear the same names and are no longer in the same skins; though the individuals are extirpated, the tribe exists. They have always the same qualities, and from vagrant to prowler, the race ever remains pure. They guess purses in pockets and scent watches in fobs; and gold and silver have a peculiar smell for them. There are simple cits of whom we might say that they have a robbable look, and these men patiently follow these cits. When a foreigner or a countryman passes, they quiver like the spider in its web.
These men, when we catch a glimpse of them upon a deserted boulevard at midnight, are frightful; they do not seem to be men, but forms made of living fog; we might say that they are habitually a portion of the darkness, that they are not distinct, that they have no other soul but shadow, and that they have become detached from night momentarily, and in order to live a monstrous life for a few moments. What is required to make these phantoms vanish? light, floods of light. Not a single bat can resist the dawn. Light up the lower strata of society.
BOOK VIII.
THE EVIL POOR.
CHAPTER I.
MARIUS LOOKING FOR A GIRL'S BONNET MEETS A MAN'S CAP.
Summer passed away, then autumn and winter arrived. Neither M. Leblanc nor the young lady had set foot again in the Luxembourg, while Marius had but one thought, that of seeing again this sweet and adorable face. He sought it ever, he sought it everywhere, but found nothing. He was no longer Marius the enthusiastic dreamer, the resolute, ardent, and firm man, the bold challenger of destiny, the brain that built up future upon future, the young mind encumbered with plans, projects, pride, ideas, and resolves,—he was a lost dog. He fell into a dark sorrow, and it was all over with him; work was repulsive, walking fatigued him, and solitude wearied him. Mighty nature, once so full of forms, brightness, voices, counsel, perspectives, horizons, and instruction, was now a vacuum before him; and he felt as if everything had disappeared. He still thought, for he could not do otherwise, but no longer took pleasure in his thoughts. To all that they incessantly proposed to him in whispers, he answered in the shadow, "What use is it?" He made himself a hundred reproaches. "Why did I follow her? I was so happy merely in seeing her! She looked at me, and was not that immense? She looked as if she loved me, and was not that everything? I wanted to have what? There is nothing beyond that, and I was absurd. It is my fault," etc. etc. Courfeyrac, to whom he confided nothing, as was his nature, but who guessed pretty nearly all, for that was his nature too, had begun by congratulating him on being in love, and made sundry bad jokes about it. Then, on seeing Marius in this melancholy state, he ended by saying to him, "I see that you have simply been a fool; come to the Chaumière."
Once, putting confidence in a splendid September sun, Marius allowed himself to be taken to the ball of Sceaux by Courfeyrac, Bossuet, and Grantaire, hoping—what a dream!—that he might find her there. Of course he did not see the lady whom he sought; "and yet this is the place where all the lost women can be found," Grantaire growled aside. Marius left his friends at the ball, and returned afoot, alone, tired, feverish, with eyes troubled and sad, in the night, stunned with noise and dust by the many vehicles full of singing beings who were returning from the holiday, and who passed him. He was discouraged, and in order to relieve his aching head, inhaled the sharp smell of the walnut-trees on the road-side. He began living again more than ever in solitude, crushed, giving way to his internal agony, walking up and down like a wolf caught in a trap, everywhere seeking the absent one, and brutalized by love.
Another time he had a meeting which produced a strange effect upon him. In the little streets adjoining the Boulevard des Invalides he passed a man dressed like a workman, and wearing a deep-peaked cap, under which white locks peered out. Marius was struck by the beauty of this white hair, and looked at the man, who was walking slowly, and as if absorbed in painful meditation. Strange to say, he fancied that he could recognize M. Leblanc,—it was the same hair, the same profile, as far as the peak allowed him to see, and the same gait, though somewhat more melancholy. But why this work-man's clothing? What was the meaning of this disguise? Marius was greatly surprised, and when he came to himself again his first impulse was to follow this man, for he might, perhaps, hold the clew which he had so long been seeking. At any rate, he must have a close look at the man, and clear up the enigma; but he hit on this idea too late, for the man was no longer there. He had turned into some side street, and Marius was unable to find him again. This meeting troubled him for some days, and then faded away. "After all," he said to himself, "it is probably only a resemblance."
CHAPTER II.
MARIUS FINDS SOMETHING.
Marius still lived at the Gorbeau house, but he paid no attention to his fellow-lodgers. At this, period, in truth, there were no other tenants in the house but himself and those Jondrettes whose rent he had once paid, without ever having spoken to father, mother, or daughters. The other lodgers had removed, were dead, or turned out for not paying their rent. On one day of this winter the sun had shown itself a little during the afternoon, but it was Feb. 2, that old Candlemas day, whose treacherous sun, the precursor of a six weeks' frost, inspired Matthew Laensberg with these two lines, which have justly become classical,—
"Qu'il luise oil qu'il luiserne
L'ours rentre en sa caverne."
Marius had just left his cavern, for night was falling. It was the hour to go and dine, for he had been obliged to revert to that practice, such is the infirmity of ideal passions. He had just crossed the threshold of his door, which Mame Bougon was sweeping at this very moment, while uttering the memorable soliloquy,—
"What is there cheap at present? Everything is dear. There is only trouble which is cheap, and it may be had for nothing."
Marius slowly walked along the boulevard, in the direction of the Rue St. Jacques. He walked thoughtfully with hanging head. All at once he felt himself elbowed in the fog. He turned and saw two girls in rags, one tall and thin, the other not quite so tall, who passed hurriedly, panting, frightened, and as if running away; they were coming toward him, and ran against him as they passed. Marius noticed in the twilight their livid faces, uncovered heads, dishevelled hair, their ragged petticoats, and bare feet. While running they talked together, and the elder said,—
"The slops came, and nearly caught me."
And the other answered, "I saw them, and so I bolted, bolted, bolted."
Marius understood, from this sinister slang, that the police had nearly caught the two girls, and that they had managed to escape. They buried themselves beneath the trees behind him, and for a few minutes produced a sort of vague whiteness in the obscurity. Marius had stopped for a moment, and was just going on, when he noticed a small gray packet lying at his feet. He stooped down and picked it up; it was a sort of envelope, apparently containing papers.
"Why," he said, "these poor girls must have let it fall."
He turned back and called to them, but could not find them. He thought they must be some distance off, so he thrust the parcel into his pocket and went to dinner. On his way he saw in a lane turning out of the Rue Mouffetard, a child's coffin, covered with a black pall, laid on three chairs, and illumined by a candle. The two girls in the twilight reverted to his thoughts.
"Poor mothers!" he thought, "there is something even more sad than to see one's children die,—it is to see them live badly."
Then these shadows, which varied his melancholy, left his thoughts, and he fell back into his usual reflections. He began thinking of his six months of love and happiness in the open air and broad daylight under the glorious Luxembourg trees.
"How sad my life has become!" he said to himself; "girls constantly appear to me, but formerly they were angels, and now they are ghouls."
CHAPTER III.
FOUR LETTERS.
At night, as he undressed to go to bed, his hand felt in his coat pocket the parcel which he had picked up in the boulevard and forgotten. He thought that it would be as well to open it, as the packet might contain the girls' address, if it belonged to them, or in any case the necessary information to restore it to the person to whom it belonged. He opened the envelope, which was not sealed, and contained four letters, also unsealed. The addresses were on all four, and they exhaled a frightful perfume of tobacco. The first letter was addressed,—"To Madame, Madame la Marquise de Grucheray, on the Square opposite the Chamber of Deputies." Marius said to himself that he would probably find the information he wanted, and as the letter was not sealed he could read it without impropriety. It was drawn up as follows:—
"MADAME LA MARQUISE,—The virtue of clemency and piety is that which unites sosiety most closely. Move your Christian feelings, and dain a glance of compasion at this unfortunate Spaniard, and victim to his loyalty and atachment to the sacred cause of legitimacy, who shed his blood, devoted the whole of his fortune to defend this cause, and is now in the greatest missery. He does not doubt that you, honnored lady, will grant some asistence to preserve an existence entirely painful for a soldier of honor and edducation, who is covered with wounds, and he reckons before hand on the humanity which annimates you, and the interest which your ladyship takes in so unhapy a nacion. Their prayer will not be in vain, and His gratitude will retain her charming memory.
"With the most respectful feelings, I have the honor to be, madame,
"DON ALVARES,
Spanish captain of cavvalry, a Royalist refugee in France, who is travelling for his country, and who wants the means to continue his jurney."
No address was attached to the signature, but Marius hoped to find it in the second letter, of which the superscription was,—"To Madame, Madame la Comtesse de Montvernet, Rue Cassette, No. 9. This is what Marius read:—
"MADAME LA COMTESSE,—It is a unhapy mother of a familly of six children, of which the yungest is only eight months old; I ill since my last confinement, deserted by my husband, and hawing no ressourse in the world, living in the most frightful indijance.
"Trusting in your ladyship, she has the honor to be, madame, with profound respect,
"FEMME BALIZARD."
Marius passed to the third letter, which was, like the preceding, a petition, and he read in it:—
"MONSIEUR PABOURGEOT, Elector, wholesale dealer in caps, Rue St. Denis, at the corner of the Rue Aux-Fers:
"I venture to adress this letter to you, to ask you to grant me the pretious favor of your sympathies, and to interest you in a litterary man, who has just sent a drama to the Théâtre Français. The subject is historical, and the scene takes place in Auvergne in the time of the Empire; the style, I believe, is natural, laconic, and may posess some merit. There are couplets for singing at four places. The comic, the serious, and the unexpected elements are blended in it with a variety of characters, and a tinge of romance is lightly spread through the whole plot, which moves misteriously, and the finale takes place amid several brilliant tableaux. My principal desire is to satisfy the desire which progressively animates sosiety, that is to say, fashion, that capritious and vague whirligig which changes with nearly every wind.
"In spite of these quallities, I have reason to fear that jealousy and the selfishness of privileged authors may obtain my exclusion from the stage, for I am not unaware of the vexation which is caused to new-comers.
"Monsieur Pabourgeot, your just reputation as the enlightened protector of litterary men, emboldens me to send to you my daughter, who will explain to you our indijant situation, wanting for bread and fire in this winter season. To tell you that I wish you to accept the homage which I desire to make to you of my drama, and all those that may succeed it, is to prove to you how much I desire the honor of sheltering myself under your ægis, and adorning my writings with your name. If you dain to honor me with the most modest offering, I will at once set to work writing a coppy of verses, by which to pay you my debt of grattitude. These verses, which I will try to render as perfect as possible, will be sent to you before they are insirted in the beginning of the drama, and produced on the stage.
"My most respectful homage to Monsieur and Madame Pabourgeot,
GENFLOT, man of letters.
"P.S. If it was only forty sous. I appologize for sending my daughter, and not paying my respects personaly, but sad reasons of dress do not allow me, alas! to go out."
Marius then opened the last letter, which was addressed "To the Benevolent gentleman of the church of St. Jacques du Haut-pas," and it contained the following few lines:—
"BENEVOLENT MAN,—If you will dain to accompany my daughter you will witness a misserable calamity, and I will show you my certificates.
"At the sight of these dokuments your generous soul will be moved by a feeling of sensitive benevolence, for true philosophers always experience lively emotions.
"Allow, compasionate man, that a man must experience the most cruel want, and that it is very painful to obtain any relief, by having it attested by the authorities, as if a man were not at liberty to suffer and die of inanicion, while waiting till our missery is releaved. Fate is too cruel to some and too lavish or protecting for others. I await your presence or your offering, if you dain to make one, and I beg you to believe in the grateful feelings with which I have the honor of being, really magnamious sir,
"Your very humble, and most obedient servant, "P. FABANTOU, dramatic artist."
After reading these four letters Marius did not find himself much more advanced than before. In the first place not one of the writers gave his address; and next they appeared to come from four different individuals,—"Don Alvarez, Madame Balizard, the poet Genflot, and the dramatic artist Fabantou;" but these letters offered this peculiarity, that they were all in the same handwriting. What could be concluded from this, save that they came from the same person? Moreover—and this rendered the conjecture even more probable—the paper, which was coarse and yellow, was the same for all four, the tobacco smell was the same, and though an attempt had evidently been made to vary the handwriting, the same orthographical mistakes were reproduced with the most profound tranquillity, and Genflot, the man of letters, was no more exempt from them than the Spanish captain. To strive and divine this mystery was time thrown away, and if he had not picked it up it would have looked like a mystification; Marius was too sad to take kindly even a jest of accident, and lend himself to a game which the street pavement appeared desirous to play with him. He felt as if he were playing at blind-man's-buff among these four letters and they were mocking him. Nothing, besides, indicated that these letters belonged to the girls whom Marius had met in the boulevard. After all they were papers evidently of no value. Marius returned them to the envelope, threw the lot into a corner, and went to bed.
At about seven in the morning he had got up and breakfasted, and was trying to set to work, when there came a gentle tap at the door. As he possessed nothing he never took out his key, except very rarely when he had a pressing job to finish. As a rule, even when out, he left the key in the lock. "You will be robbed," said Mame Bougon. "Of what?" Marius asked. It is a fact, however, that one day a pair of old boots were stolen, to the great triumph of Mame Bougon. There was a second knock, quite as gentle as the first.
"Come in," said Marius.
The door opened.
"What is the matter, Mame Bougon?" Marius continued, without taking his eyes off the books and manuscripts on his table.
A voice which was not Mame Bougon's replied,—"I beg your pardon, sir."
It was a hollow, cracked, choking voice,—the voice of an old man, rendered hoarse by dram-drinking and exposure to the cold. Marius turned sharply and noticed a girl.
CHAPTER IV.
A ROSE IN WRETCHEDNESS.
A very young girl was standing in the half-open door. The sky-light, through which light entered, was exactly opposite the door, and threw upon this face a sallow gleam. She was a pale, wretched, fleshless creature, and had only a chemise and a petticoat upon her shivering and frozen nudity. For waist-belt she had a piece of string, for head-dress another; pointed shoulders emerged from her chemise; she was of a yellow lymphatic pallor, cadaverous collar-bones, hands red, mouth half open and degraded, with few teeth, the eye was sunken and hollow, and she had the outline of an abortive girl and the look of a corrupted old woman, or fifty years blended with fifteen. She was one of those beings who are at once weak and horrible, and who make those shudder whom they do not cause to weep.
Marius had risen, and was gazing with a species of stupor at this being, who almost resembled the shadows that traverse dreams. What was most crushing of all was, that this girl had not come into the world to be ugly, and in her childhood she must even have been pretty. The grace of youth was still struggling with the hideous and premature senility of debauchery and poverty. A remnant of beauty was expiring on this countenance of sixteen, like the pallid sun which dies out under the frightful clouds on the dawn of a winter's day. This face was not absolutely strange to Marius, and he fancied that he had already seen it somewhere.
"What do you want, miss?" he asked.
The girl replied, with her drunken galley-slave's voice,—
"It is a letter for you, Monsieur Marius."
She addressed him by name, and hence he could not doubt but that she had business with him; but who was this girl, and how did she know his name? Without waiting for any authority, she walked in, walked in boldly, looking around her with a sort of assurance that contracted the heart, at the whole room and the unmade bed. Her feet were bare, and large holes in her petticoat displayed her long legs and thin knees. She was shivering, and held in her hand a letter, which she offered to Marius. On opening the letter, he noticed that the large, clumsy wafer was still damp, which proved that the missive had not come a long distance, and he read:—
"MY AMIABLE NEIGHBOR AND YOUNG SIR,—I have herd of your kindness to me, and that you paid my half-year's rent six months ago. I bless you for it, young sir. My eldest daughter will tell you that we have been without a morsel of bread for two days,—four persons, and my wife ill. If I am not deseived in my opinion, I dare to hope that your generous heart will be affected by this statement, and will subject you to the desire to be propicious to me, by daining to lavish on me a trifling charity,
"I am, with the distinguished consideration which is due to the benefactors of humanity,
"JONDRETTE.
"P.S. My daughter will wait for your orders, my dear Monsieur Marius."
This letter, in the midst of the obscure adventure which had been troubling Marius since the previous evening, was like a candle in a cellar; all was suddenly lit up. This letter came from where the other letters came. It was the same handwriting, the same style, the same orthography, the same paper, and the same tobacco smell. They were five letters, five stories, five names, five signatures, and only one writer. The Spanish captain Don Alvarez, the unhappy mother Balizard, the dramatic author Genflot, and the old comedian Fabantou, were all four Jondrette, if, indeed, Jondrette's name were really Jondrette.
During the lengthened period that Marius had lived in this house, he had, as we stated, but rare occasions to see, or even catch a glimpse of, his very low neighbors; His mind was elsewhere, and where the mind is there is the eye. He must have passed the Jondrettes more than once in the passage and on the stairs, but they were to him merely shadows. He had paid so little attention to them, that on the previous evening he had run against the Jondrette girls on the boulevard without recognizing them, for it was evidently they, and it was with great difficulty that the girl, who had just entered the room, aroused in him, through disgust and pity, a vague fancy that he had met her somewhere before.
Now he saw everything clearly. He comprehended that his neighbor Jondrette had hit upon the trade in his distress of working upon the charity of benevolent persons, that he procured addresses and wrote under supposititious names, to people whom he supposed to be rich and charitable, letters which his children delivered at their risk and peril, for this father had attained such a stage that he hazarded his daughters; he was gambling with destiny and staked them. Marius comprehended that, in all probability, judging from their flight of the previous evening, their panting, their terror, and the slang words he overheard, these unfortunates carried on some other dark trades, and the result of all this was, in the heart of human society such as it is constituted, two wretched beings, who were neither children, nor girls, nor women, but a species of impure and innocent monsters, which were the produce of wretchedness; melancholy beings without age, name, or sex, to whom neither good nor evil is any longer possible, and who, on emerging from childhood, have nothing left in the world, not liberty, nor virtue, nor responsibility; souls that expanded yesterday and are faded to-day, like the flowers which have fallen in the street and are plashed by the mud while waiting till a wheel crushes them.
While Marius was bending on the young girl an astonished and painful glance, she was walking about the garret with the boldness of a spectre, and without troubling herself in the slightest about her state of nudity. At some moments her unfastened and torn chemise fell almost to her waist. She moved the chairs about, disturbed the toilette articles on the chest of drawers, felt Marius's clothes, and rummaged in every corner.
"Why," she said, "you have a looking-glass!"
And she hummed, as if she had been alone, bits of vaudeville songs and wild choruses, which her guttural and hoarse voice rendered mournful. But beneath this boldness there was something constrained, alarmed, and humiliated, for effrontery is a disgrace. Nothing could well be more sad than to see her fluttering about the room with the movement of a broken-winged bird startled by a dog. It was palpable that with other conditions of education and destiny, the gay and free demeanor of this girl might have been something gentle and charming. Among animals, the creature born to be a dove is never changed into an osprey; that is only possible with men. Marius was thinking, and left her alone, and she walked up to the table.
"Ah!" she said, "books."
A gleam darted from her glassy eye: she continued, and her accent expressed the attitude of being able to boast of something to which no human creature is insensible,—
"I know how to read."
She quickly seized the book lying on the table, and read rather fluently,—
"General Bauduin received orders to carry with the five battalions of his brigade the Château of Hougomont, which is in the centre of the plain of Waterloo—"
She broke off.
"Ah, Waterloo, I know all about that. It was a battle in which my father was engaged, for he served in the army. We are thorough Bonapartists, we are. Waterloo was fought against the English."
She laid down the book, took up a pen, and exclaimed, "And I can write, too."
She dipped the pen in the ink, and turned to Marius, saying,—
"Would you like a proof? Stay, I will write a line to show you."
And ere he had time to answer she wrote on a sheet of white paper in the middle of the table, "Here are the slops." Then throwing down the pen, she added,—
"There are no errors in spelling, as you can see, for my sister and I were well educated. We have not always been what we are now, we were not made—"
Here she stopped, fixed her glassy eye on Marius, and burst into a laugh, as she said, with an intonation which contained every possible agony, blended with every possible cynicism,—
"Bah!"
And then she began humming these words, to a lively air,—
"J'ai faim, mon père,
Pas de fricot.
J'ai froid, ma mère,
Pas de tricot.
Grelotte,
Lolotte!
Sanglote,
Jacquot!"
She had scarce completed this verse, ere she exclaimed,—
"Do you ever go to the play, Monsieur Marius? I do so. I have a brother who is a friend of the actors, and gives me tickets every now and then. I don't care for the gallery much, though, for you are so squeezed up; at times too there are noisy people there, and others who smell bad."
Then she stared at Marius, gave him a strange look, and said to him,—
"Do you know, M. Marius, that you are a very good-looking fellow!"
And at the same moment the same thought occurred to both, which made her smile and him blush. She walked up to him, and laid a hand upon his shoulder,—"You don't pay any attention to me, but I know you, M. Marius. I meet you here on the staircase, and then I see you go into the house of the one called Father Mabœuf, who lives over at Austerlitz, sometimes when I go that way. Your curly hair becomes you very well."
Her voice tried to be very soft, and only succeeded in being very low; a part of her words was lost in the passage from the larynx to the lips, as on a piano-forte some keys of which are broken. Marius had gently recoiled.
"I have a packet," he said, with his cold gravity, "which, I believe, belongs to you. Allow me to deliver it to you."
And he handed her the envelope which contained the four letters; she clapped her hands and said,—
"We looked for it everywhere."
Then she quickly seized the parcel and undid the envelope, while saying,—
"Lord of Lords! how my sister and I did look for it! And so you found it,—on the boulevard, did you not? It must have been there. You see, it was dropped while we were running, and it was my brat of a sister who was such an ass. When we got home we could not find it, and as we did not wish to be beaten,—which is unnecessary, which is entirely unnecessary, which is absolutely unnecessary,—we said at home that we had delivered the letters, and that the answer was Nix! And here are the poor letters! Well, and how did you know that they were mine? Ob, yes, by the writing. So, then, it was you that we ran against last night? We could not see anything, and I said to my sister, 'Is it a gentleman?' and she answered, 'Yes, I think it is a gentleman.'"
While saying this she had unfolded the petition addressed "To the Benevolent gentleman of the church of St. Jacques du Haut-pas."
"Hilloh!" she said, "this is the one for the old swell who goes to Mass. Why, 't is just the hour, and I will carry it to him. He will perhaps give us something for breakfast."
Then she burst into a laugh, and added,—
"Do you know what it will be if we breakfast to-day? We shall have our breakfast of the day before yesterday, our dinner of the day before yesterday, our breakfast of yesterday, our dinner of yesterday, all at once this morning. Well, hang it all! if you are not satisfied, rot, dogs!"
This reminded Marius of what the hapless girl had come to get from him; he fumbled in his waistcoat, but found nothing. The girl went on, and seemed speaking as if no longer conscious of the presence of Marius.
"Sometimes I go out at night. Sometimes I do not come home. Before we came here last winter we lived under the arches of the bridges, and kept close together not to be frozen. My little sister cried. How sad the water is! When I thought of drowning myself, I said, 'No, it is too cold,' I go about all alone when I like, and sleep at times in ditches. Do you know, at night, when I walk along the boulevard, I see trees like forks, I see black houses as tall as the towers of Notre Dame, I fancy that the white walls are the river, and I say to myself, 'Why, there is water!' The stars are like illumination lamps, and you might say that they smoke, and the wind puts them out I feel stunned, as if my hair was lashing my ears; however the night may be, I hear barrel-organs and spinning machinery, but what do I know? I fancy that stones are being thrown at me, and I run away unconsciously, for all turns round me. When you have not eaten it is funny."
And she gazed at him with haggard eyes.
After feeling in the depths of all his pockets, Marius succeeded in getting together five francs sixteen sous; it was at this moment all that he possessed in the world. "Here is my to-days dinner," he thought, "and to-morrow will take care of itself." He kept the sixteen sous, and gave the girl the five-franc piece, which she eagerly clutched.
"Good!" she said, "there is sunshine."
And, as if the sunshine had the property of melting in her brain avalanches of slang, she went on,—
"Five francs! a shiner! a monarch! in this crib! that's stunning! Well, you 're a nice kid, and I do the humble to you. Two days' drink and a bully feed,—a feast; we 're well fixed. Hurrah, pals!"
She pulled her chemise up over her shoulders, gave Marius a deep courtesy and a familiar wave of the hand, and walked toward the door, saying,—
"Good day, sir; but no matter, I'll go and find my old swell."
As she passed she noticed on the drawers an old crust of dry bread mouldering in the dust; she caught it up, and bit into it savagely, grumbling,—
"It is good, it is hard; it breaks my teeth!"
Then she left the room.
CHAPTER V.
A PROVIDENTIAL PEEP-HOLE.
Marius had lived for the past five years in poverty, want, and even distress, but he now saw that he had never known what real misery was, and he had just witnessed it; it was the phantom which bad just passed before him. For, in truth, he who has only seen man's misery has seen nothing, he must see woman's misery; while he who has seen woman's misery has seen nothing, for he must see the misery of the child. When man has reached the last extremity he has also reached the limit of his resources; and then, woe to the defenceless beings that surround him! Work, wages, bread, fire, courage, and food will all fail him at once; the light of day seems extinguished outside, the moral light is extinguished within him. In these shadows man comes across the weakness of the wife and the child, and violently bends them to ignominy.
In such a case every horror is possible, and despair is surrounded by thin partitions which all open upon vice and crime. Health, youth, honor, the sacred and retiring delicacy of the still innocent flesh, the heart-virginity and modesty, that epidermis of the soul, are foully clutched by this groping hand, which seeks resources, finds opprobrium, and puts up with it.
Fathers, mothers, brothers, sisters, men, women, and girls, adhere and are aggregated almost like a mineral formation in this misty promiscuity of sexes, relations, ages, infamies, and innocencies. Leaning against each other, they crouch in a species of den of destiny, and look at each other lamentably. Oh, the unfortunates! how pale they are! how cold they are! It seems as if they belong to a planet much farther from the sun than our own.
This girl was to Marius a sort of emissary from the darkness, and she revealed to him a hideous side of night. Marius almost reproached himself for the preoccupations of reverie and passion which, up to this day, had prevented him from taking a glance at his neighbors. To have paid their rent was a mechanical impulse, which any one might have had; but he, Marius, ought to have done better. What, only a wall separated himself from these abandoned creatures, who lived groping in night, beyond the pale of other living beings! He elbowed them, he was to some extent the last link of the human race which they could touch; he heard them living, or rather dying, by his side, and he paid no attention to them! Every moment of the day he heard them, through the wall, coming, going, and talking—and he did not listen! and in their words were groans, and he did not hear them! His thoughts were elsewhere,—engaged with dreams, impossible sun-beams, loves in the air, and follies; and yet, human creatures, his brethren in Christ, his brethren in the people, were slowly dying by his side, dying unnecessarily! He even formed part of their misfortune, and he aggravated it. For, if they had had another neighbor, a neighbor more attentive, less chimerical, an ordinary and charitable man, their indigence would evidently have been noticed, their signals of distress perceived, and they might perhaps have been picked up and saved long before. They doubtless seemed very depraved, very corrupt, very vile, and indeed very odious; but persons who fall without being degraded are rare; besides, there is a stage where the unfortunate and the infamous are mingled and confounded in one word,—a fatal word, "Les Misérables," and with whom lies the fault? And then, again, should not the charity be the greater the deeper the fall is?
While reading himself this lecture,—for there were occasions on which Marius was his own pedagogue, and reproached himself more than he deserved,—he looked at the wall which separated him from the Jondrettes, as if his pitying glance could pass through the partition and warm the unhappy beings. The wall was a thin coating of plaster supported by laths and beams, and which, as we have stated, allowed the murmurs of words and voices to be distinctly heard. A man must be a dreamer like Marius not to have noticed the fact before. No paper was hung on either side of the wall, and its clumsy construction was plainly visible. Almost unconsciously Marius examined this partition; for at times reverie examines, scrutinizes, and observes much as thought does. All at once he rose, for he had just noticed near the ceiling a triangular hole produced by the gap between three laths. The plaster which once covered this hole had fallen off, and by getting on his chest of drawers he could see through this aperture into the room of the Jondrettes. Commiseration has, and should have, its curiosity, and it is permissible to regard misfortune traitorously when we wish to relieve it. "Let me see," thought Marius, "what these people are like, and what state they are in." He clambered on the drawers, put his eye to the hole, and looked.