"Really, you may have acted sensibly, for the workmen who will come to-morrow to stop up the hole would certainly have found the swell, and your trail would be followed up. Some one has passed through the sewer. Who? How did he get out? Was he seen to do so? The police are full of sense; the drain is a traitor, and denounces you. Such a find is a rarity; it attracts attention; for few people employ the sewer for their little business, while the river belongs to everybody, and is the real grave. At the end of a month your man is fished up at the nets of St. Cloud. Well, who troubles himself about that? It's carrion, that's all. Who killed the man? Paris. And justice makes no inquiries. You acted wisely."
The more loquacious Thénardier became, the more silent Jean Valjean was. Thénardier shook his shoulder again.
"And now, let's settle our business. You have Been my key, so show me your money."
Thénardier was haggard, firm, slightly menacing, but remarkably friendly. There was one strange fact: Thénardier's manner was not simple; he did not appear entirely at his ease. While not affecting any mysterious air, he spoke in a low voice. From time to time he laid his finger on his lip, and muttered "Chut!" It was difficult to guess why, for there were only themselves present. Jean Valjean thought that other bandits were probably hidden in some corner no great distance off, and that Thénardier was not anxious to share with them. The latter continued,—
"Now for a finish. How much had the swell about him?"
Jean Valjean felt in his pockets. It was, as will be remembered, always his rule to have money about him for the gloomy life of expedients to which he was condemned rendered it a law for him. This time, however, he was unprovided. In putting on upon the previous evening his National Guard uniform, he forgot, mournfully absorbed as he was, to take out his pocket-book, and he had only some change in his waistcoat-pocket. He turned out his pocket, which was saturated with slime, and laid on the banquette a louis d'or, two five-franc pieces, and five or six double sous. Thénardier thrust out his lower lip with a significant twist of the neck.
"You did not kill him for much," he said.
He began most familiarly feeling in Jean Valjean and Marius's pockets, and Jean Valjean, who was most anxious to keep his back to the light, allowed him to do so. While feeling in Marius's coat, Thénardier, with the dexterity of a conjurer, managed to tear off, without Jean Valjean perceiving the fact, a strip, which he concealed under his blouse; probably thinking that this piece of cloth might help him to recognize hereafter the assassinated man and the assassin. However, he found no more than the thirty francs.
"It is true," he said; "one with the other, you have no more than that."
And forgetting his phrase, half-shares, he took all. He hesitated a little at the double sous, but on reflection he took them too, while grumbling, "I don't care, it is killing people too cheaply."
This done, he again took the key from under his blouse.
"Now, my friend, you must be off. It is here as at the fairs; you pay when you go out. You have paid, so you can go."
And he began laughing. We may be permitted to doubt whether he had the pure and disinterested intention of saving an assassin, when he gave a stranger the help of this key, and allowed any one but himself to pass through this gate. Thénardier helped Jean Valjean to replace Marius on his back, and then proceeded to the grating on the tips of his naked feet. After making Jean Valjean a sign to follow him, he placed his finger on his lip, and remained for some seconds as if in suspense; but when the inspection was over he put the key in the lock. The bolt slid, and the gate turned on its hinges without either grinding or creaking. It was plain that this grating and these hinges, carefully oiled, opened more frequently than might be supposed. This smoothness was ill-omened; it spoke of furtive comings and goings, of the mysterious entrances and exits of night-men, and the crafty foot-fall of crime. The sewer was evidently an accomplice of some dark band, and this taciturn grating was a receiver. Thénardier held the door ajar, left just room for Jean Valjean to pass, relocked the gate, and plunged back into the darkness, making no more noise than a breath; he seemed to walk with the velvety pads of a tiger. A moment later this hideous providence had disappeared, and Jean Valjean was outside.
CHAPTER IX.
MARIUS APPEARS DEAD TO A CONNAISSEUR.
He let Marius slip down on to the bank. They were outside: the miasmas, the darkness, the horror, were behind him; the healthy, pure, living, joyous, freely respirable air inundated him. All around him was silence, but it was the charming silence of the sun setting in the full azure. Twilight was passing, and night, the great liberator, the friend of all those who need a cloak of darkness to escape from an agony, was at hand. The sky presented itself on all sides like an enormous calm, and the river rippled up to his feet with the sound of a kiss. The aerial dialogue of the nests bidding each other good-night in the elms of the Champs Élysées was audible. A few stars, faintly studding the pale blue of the zenith, formed in the immensity little imperceptible flashes. Night unfolded over Jean Valjean's head all the sweetness of infinitude. It was the undecided and exquisite hour which says neither yes nor no. There was already sufficient night for a man to lose himself in it a short distance off, and yet sufficient daylight to recognize any one close by. Jean Valjean was for a few seconds irresistibly overcome by all this august and caressing serenity. There are minutes of oblivion in which suffering gives up harassing the wretch; all is eclipsed in the thought; peace covers the dreamer like night, and under the gleaming twilight the soul is lit with stars in imitation of the sky which is becoming illumined. Jean Valjean could not refrain from contemplating the vast clear night above him, and pensively took a bath of ecstasy and prayer in the majestic silence of the eternal heavens. Then, as if the feeling of duty returned to him, he eagerly bent down over Marius, and lifting some water in the hollow of his hand, softly threw a few drops into his face. Marius's eyelids did not move, but he still breathed through his parted lips. Jean Valjean was again about to plunge his hand into the river, when he suddenly felt an indescribable uneasiness, as when we feel there is some one behind us without seeing him. He turned round, and there was really some one behind him, as there had been just before.
A man of tall stature, dressed in a long coat, with folded arms, and carrying in his right hand a "life-preserver," whose leaden knob could be seen, was standing a few paces behind Jean Valjean, who was leaning over Marius. It was with the help of the darkness a species of apparition; a simple man would have been frightened at it owing to the twilight, and a thoughtful one on account of the bludgeon. Jean Valjean recognized Javert. The reader has doubtless guessed that the tracker of Thénardier was no other than Javert. Javert, after his unhoped-for escape from the barricade, went to the Préfecture of Police, made a verbal report to the prefect in person in a short audience, and then immediately returned to duty, which implied—the note found on him will be remembered—a certain surveillance of the right bank of the river at the Champs Élysées, which had for some time past attracted the attention of the police. There he perceived Thénardier and followed him. The rest is known.
It will be also understood that the grating so obligingly opened for Jean Valjean was a clever trick on the part of Thénardier. He felt that Javert was still there,—the watched man has a scent which never deceives him,—and it was necessary to throw a bone to this greyhound. An assassin,—what a chance! he could not let it slip. Thénardier, on putting Jean Valjean outside in his place, offered a prey to the policeman, made him loose his hold, caused himself to be forgotten in a greater adventure, recompensed Javert for his loss of time,—which always flatters a spy,—gained thirty francs, and fully intended for his own part to escape by the help of this diversion.
Jean Valjean had passed from one reef to another.
These two meetings one upon the other, felling from Thénardier on Javert, were rude. Javert did not recognize Jean Valjean, who, as we have said, no longer resembled himself. He did not unfold his arms, but made sure his "life-preserver" by an imperceptible movement, and said, in a sharp, calm voice,—
"Who are you?"
"Myself."
"What do you mean?"
"I am Jean Valjean."
Javert placed his life-preserver between his teeth, bent his knees, bowed his back, laid his two powerful hands on Jean Valjean's shoulders, which they held as in two vises, examined and recognized him. Their faces almost touched, and Javert's glance was terrific. Jean Valjean remained inert under Javert's gripe, like a lion enduring the claw of a lynx.
"Inspector Javert," he said, "you have me. Besides, since this morning I have considered myself your prisoner. I did not give you my address in order to try to escape you. Take me, but grant me one thing."
Javert did not seem to hear, but kept his eyeballs fixed on Jean Valjean. His wrinkled chin thrust up his lips toward his nose, a sign of stern reverie. At length he loosed his hold of Jean Valjean, drew himself up, clutched his cudgel, and, as if in a dream, muttered rather than asked this question,—
"What are you doing here, and who is that man?"
Jean Valjean replied, and the sound of his voice seemed to awaken Javert,—
"It is of him that I wished to speak. Do with me as you please, but help me first to carry him home. I only ask this of you."
Javert's face was contracted in the same way as it always was when any one believed him capable of a concession; still he did not say no. He stopped again, took from his pocket a handkerchief, which he dipped in the water, and wiped Marius's ensanguined forehead.
"This man was at the barricade," he said in a low voice, and as if speaking to himself; "he was the one whom they called Marius."
He was a first-class spy, who had observed everything, listened to everything, heard everything, and picked up everything, when he believed himself a dead man; who spied even in his death agony, and, standing on the first step of the sepulchre, took notes. He seized Marius's hand, and felt his pulse.
"He is wounded," said Jean Valjean.
"He is a dead man," said Javert.
Jean Valjean replied,—
"No; not yet."
"Then you brought him from the barricade here?" Javert observed.
His preoccupation must have been great for him not to dwell on this alarming escape through the sewers, and not even remark Jean Valjean's silence after his question. Jean Valjean, on his side, seemed to have a sole thought; he continued,—
"He lives in the Marais, in the Rue des Filles du Calvaire, with his grandfather. I do not know his name."
Jean Valjean felt in Marius's pocket, took out the portfolio, opened it at the page on which Marius had written in pencil, and offered it to Javert. There was still sufficient floating light in the air to be able to read, and Javert, besides, had in his eyes the feline phosphorescence of night-birds. He deciphered the few lines written by Marius, and growled, "Gillenormand, No. 6, Rue des Filles du Calvaire." Then he cried, "Driver!"
Our readers will remember the coachman waiting above in case of need. A moment after the hackney, which came down the incline leading to the watering-place, was on the bank. Marius was deposited on the back seat, and Javert sat down by Jean Valjean's side on the front one. When the door was closed the fiacre started off rapidly along the quays in the direction of the Bastille. They quitted the quay and turned into the streets; and the driver, a black outline on his seat, lashed his lean horses. There was an icy silence in the hackney coach; Marius motionless, with his body reclining in one corner, his head on his chest, his arms pendent, and his legs stiff, appeared to be only waiting for a coffin. Jean Valjean seemed made of gloom, and Javert of stone; and in this fiacre full of night, whose interior, each time that it passed a lamp, seemed to be lividly lit up as if by an intermittent flash, accident united and appeared to confront the three immobilities of tragedy,—the corpse, the spectre, and the statue.
CHAPTER X.
RETURN OF THE SON PRODIGAL OF HIS LIFE.
At each jolt over the pavement a drop of blood fell from Marius's hair. It was quite night when the hackney coach reached No. 6, Rue des Filles du Calvaire. Javert got out first, examined at a glance the number over the gateway, and raising the heavy knocker of hammered steel, embellished in the old style with a goat and a satyr contending, gave a violent knock. The folding-door opened slightly, and Javert pushed it open. The porter half showed himself, yawning, and scarce awake, candle in hand. All were asleep in the house, for people go to bed early at the Marais, especially on days of rioting. This good old district, terrified by the revolution, takes refuge in sleep, like children who, when they hear "old Bogey coming," quickly hide their heads under the counterpane. In the mean while Jean Valjean and the driver removed Marius from the hackney coach, Valjean holding him under the armpits and the coachman under the knees. While carrying Marius in this way Jean Valjean passed his hands under his clothes, which were terribly torn, felt his chest, and assured himself that his heart still beat. It even beat a little less feebly, as if the motion of the vehicle had produced a certain renewal of vitality. Javert addressed the porter in the tone which becomes the government in the presence of the porter of a factionist.
"Any one live here of the name of Gillenormand?"
"It is here. What do you want with him?"
"We bring him his son."
"His son?" the porter asked in amazement.
"He is dead."
Jean Valjean, who came up ragged and filthy behind Javert, and whom the porter regarded with some horror, made him a sign that it was not so. The porter seemed neither to understand Javert's remark nor Jean Valjean's sign. Javert continued,—
"He has been to the barricade, and here he is."
"To the barricade!" the porter exclaimed.
"He has been killed. Go and wake his father."
The porter did not stir.
"Be off!" Javert continued; and added, "There will be a funeral here to-morrow."
For Javert, the ordinary incidents of the streets were classified categorically, which is the commencement of foresight and surveillance, and each eventuality had its compartment; the possible facts were to some extent kept in drawers, whence they issued on occasions, in variable quantities; there were in the streets, disturbance, riot, carnival, and interments.
The porter limited himself to awaking Basque; Basque awoke Nicolette; Nicolette awoke Aunt Gillenormand. As for the grandfather, he was left to sleep, as it was thought that he would know the affair quite soon enough as it was. Marius was carried to the first-floor, no one being acquainted with the fact in the rest of the house, and he was laid on an old sofa in M. Gillenormand's ante-room, and while Basque went to fetch a physician and Nicolette opened the linen-presses, Jean Valjean felt Javert touch his shoulder. He understood, and went down, Javert following close at his heels. The porter saw them depart, as he had seen them arrive, with a startled sleepiness. They got into the hackney coach, and the driver on his box.
"Inspector Javert," Jean Valjean said, "grant me one thing more."
"What is it?" Javert answered roughly.
"Let me go home for a moment, and you can then do with me what you please."
Javert remained silent for a few moments with his chin thrust into the collar of his great-coat, and then let down the front window.
"Driver," he said, "No. 7, Rue de l'Homme Armé."
CHAPTER XI.
A SHAKING IN THE ABSOLUTE.
They did not speak during the entire ride. What did Jean Valjean want? To finish what he had begun; to warn Cosette, tell her where Marius was, give her perhaps some other useful information, and make, if he could, certain final arrangements. For his own part, as regarded what concerned him personally, it was all over; he had been arrested by Javert, and did not resist. Any other than he, in such a situation, would perhaps have thought vaguely of the rope which Thénardier had given him, and the bars of the first cell he entered; but since his meeting with the Bishop, Jean Valjean had within him a profound religious hesitation against every assault, even on himself. Suicide, that mysterious attack on the unknown, which may contain to a certain extent the death of the soul, was impossible to Jean Valjean.
On entering the Rue de l'Homme Armé the coach stopped, as the street was too narrow for vehicles to pass along it. Jean Valjean and Javert got out. The driver humbly represented to "Mr. Inspector" that the Utrecht velvet of his coach was quite spoiled by the blood of the assassinated man and the filth of the assassin,—that is how he understood the affair,—and he added that an indemnity was due to him. At the same time taking his license-book from his pocket, he begged Mr. Inspector to have the kindness to write him a little bit of a certificate. Javert thrust back the book which the driver offered him and said,—
"How much do you want, including the time you waited and the journey?"
"It's seven hours and a quarter," the driver answered, "and my velvet was brand new. Eighty francs, Mr. Inspector."
Javert took from his pocket four Napoleons, and dismissed the hackney coach. Jean Valjean thought that it was Javert's intention to take him on foot to the Blancs Manteaux post, or that of the Archives, which were close by. They entered the street, which was as usual deserted. Javert followed Jean Valjean, and, on reaching No. 7, the latter rapped, and the gate opened.
"Very good," said Javert; "go up."
He added, with a strange expression, and as if making an effort to speak in this way,—
"I will wait for you here."
Jean Valjean looked at Javert, for this style of conduct was not at all a habit of Javert's. Still, it could not surprise him greatly that Javert should now place in him a sort of haughty confidence,—the confidence of the cat which grants the mouse liberty to the length of its claw, determined as Jean Valjean was to give himself up and make an end of it. He thrust open the gate, entered the house, shouted to the porter, who was lying down and had pulled the string from his bed, "It is I," and mounted the staircase. On reaching the first story he paused, for every Via Dolorosa has its stations. The window at the head of the stairs, a sash-window, was open. As is the case in many old houses, the staircase obtained light from, and looked out on, the street. The street lantern, situated precisely opposite, threw some little light on the stairs, which caused a saving of a lamp. Jean Valjean, either to breathe or mechanically, thrust his head out of this window and looked down into the street. It is short, and the lamp lit it from one end to the other. Jean Valjean had a bedazzlement of stupor: there was no one in it.
Javert had gone away.
CHAPTER XII.
THE GRANDFATHER.
Basque and the porter had carried Marius, who was still lying motionless on the sofa on which he had been laid on arriving, into the drawing-room. The physician, who had been sent for, hurried in, and Aunt Gillenormand had risen. Aunt Gillenormand came and went, horrified, clasping her hands, and incapable of doing anything but saying, "Can it be possible?" She added at intervals, "Everything will be stained with blood." When the first horror had passed away a certain philosophy of the situation appeared even in her mind, and was translated by the exclamation, "It must end in that way." She did not go so far, though, as "Did I not say so?" which is usual on occasions of this nature.
By the surgeon's orders a folding-bed was put up near the sofa. He examined Marius, and after satisfying himself that the pulse still beat, that the patient had no penetrating wound in the chest, and that the blood at the corners of the lips came from the nostrils, he had him laid flat on the bed, without a pillow, the head level with the body, and even a little lower, the chest bare, in order to facilitate the breathing. Mademoiselle Gillenormand, seeing that Marius was being undressed, withdrew, and told her beads in her bed-room. The body had received no internal injury; a ball, deadened by the pocket-book, had deviated, and passed round the ribs with a frightful gash, but as it was not deep, it was therefore not dangerous. The long subterranean march had completed the dislocation of the collar-bone, and there were serious injuries there. The arms were covered with sabre-cuts; no scar disfigured the face, but the head was cut all over with gashes. What would be the state of these wounds on the head,—did they stop at the scalp, or did they reach the brain? It was impossible to say yet. It was a serious symptom that they had caused the faintness. And men do not always awake from such fainting-fits; the hemorrhage, moreover, had exhausted the wounded man. From the waist downward the lower part of the body had been protected by the barricade.
Basque and Nicolette tore up linen and prepared bandages: Nicolette sewed them and Basque rolled them. As they had no lint, the physician had temporarily checked the effusion of blood with cakes of wadding. By the side of the bed three candles burned on the table on which the surgeon's pocket-book lay open. He washed Marius's face and hair with cold water, and a bucketful was red in an instant. The porter, candle in hand, lighted him. The surgeon seemed to be thinking sadly: from time to time he gave a negative shake of the head, as if answering some question which he mentally addressed to himself. Such mysterious dialogues of the physician with himself are a bad sign for the patient. At the moment when the surgeon was wiping the face and gently touching with his finger the still closed eyelids, a door opened at the end of the room, and a tall, pale figure appeared: it was the grandfather. The riot during the last two days had greatly agitated, offended, and occupied M. Gillenormand; he had not been able to sleep on the previous night, and he had been feverish all day. At night he went to bed at a very early hour, bidding his people bar up the house, and had fallen asleep through weariness.
Old men have a fragile sleep. M. Gillenormand's bed-room joined the drawing-room, and whatever precautions had been taken, the noise awoke him. Surprised by the crack of light which he saw in his door, he had got out of bed and groped his way to the door. He was standing on the threshold, with one hand on the door-handle, his head slightly bent forward and shaking, his body enfolded in a white dressing-gown as straight and creaseless as a winding-sheet: he was surprised, and looked like a ghost peering into a tomb. He noticed the bed, and on the mattress this young bleeding man, of the whiteness of wax, with closed eyes, open mouth, livid cheeks, naked to the waist, marked all over with vermilion, wounded, motionless, and brightly illumined.
The grandfather had from head to foot that shudder which ossified limbs can have. His eyes, whose cornea was yellow owing to their great age, were veiled by a sort of glassy stare; his entire face assumed in an instant the earthly angles of a skeleton's head; his arms fell pendent as if a spring had been broken in them, and his stupor was displayed by the outspreading of all the fingers of his two old trembling hands. His knees formed a salient angle, displaying through the opening of his dressing-gown his poor naked legs bristling with white hairs, and he murmured,—
"Marius!"
"He has just been brought here, sir," said Basque; "he went to the barricade, and—"
"He is dead," the old gentleman exclaimed in a terrible voice. "Oh, the brigand!"
Then a sort of sepulchral transfiguration drew up this centenarian as straight as a young man.
"You are the surgeon, sir," he said; "begin by telling me one thing. He is dead, is he not?"
The surgeon, who was frightfully anxious, maintained silence, and M. Gillenormand wrung his hands with a burst of terrifying laughter.
"He is dead, he is dead! He has let himself be killed at the barricade through hatred of me; it was against me that he did it! Ah, the blood-drinker, that is the way in which he returns to me! Woe of my life, he is dead!"
He went to a window, opened it quite wide, as if he were stifling, and standing there began speaking to the night in the street.
"Stabbed, sabred, massacred, exterminated, slashed, cut to pieces! Do you see that, the beggar! He knew very well that I expected him, and that I had his room ready, and that I had placed at my bed-head his portrait when he was a child! He knew very well that he need only return, and that for years I had been recalling him, and that I sat at night by my fire-side with my hands on my knees, not knowing what to do, and that I was crazy about him! You knew that very well; you had only to return and say, 'It is I,' and you would be the master of the house, and I would obey you, and you could do anything you liked with your old ass of a grandfather! You knew it very well, and said, 'No, he is a royalist, I will not go!' and you went to the barricades, and have let yourself be killed out of spite, in order to revenge yourself for what I said on the subject of Monsieur le Due de Berry! Is not that infamous! Go to bed and sleep quietly, for he is dead. This is my awaking."
The surgeon, who was beginning to be anxious for both, left Marius, and going up to M. Gillenormand, took his arm. The grandfather turned, looked at him with eyes that seemed dilated and bloodshot, and said calmly,—
"I thank you sir, I am calm. I am a man. I saw the death of Louis XVI., and can endure events. There is one thing that is terrible,—it is the thought that it is your newspapers which do all the mischief. You have scribblers, speakers, lawyers, orators, tribunes, discussions, progress, lights, rights of man, liberty of the press, and that is the way in which your children are brought back to your houses. Oh, Marius, it is abominable! Killed! dead before me! a barricade! Oh, the bandit! Doctor, you live in the quarter, I believe? Oh yes, I know you well. I have seen your cab pass from my window. Well, I will tell you. You are wrong if you think that I am in a passion, for people do not get in a passion with a dead man, it would be stupid. That is a boy I brought up; I was old when he was still quite little. He played in the Tuileries with his little spade and his little chair, and, in order that the inspectors should not scold, I used to fill up with my cane the holes which he made with his spade. One day he cried, 'Down with Louis XVIII.!' and went off. It is not my fault. He was all pink and white, and his mother is dead: have you noticed that all little children are light-haired? He is a son of one of those brigands of the Loire, but children are innocent of their fathers' crimes. I remember him when he was so high, and he could never manage to pronounce a d. He spoke so sweetly and incomprehensibly that you might have fancied him a bird. I remember one day that a circle was formed in front of the Farnese Hercules to admire that child, he was so lovely. He had a head such as you see in pictures. I used to speak loud to him, and threaten him with my cane; but he knew very well that it was a joke. In the morning, when he entered my room, I scolded; but it produced the effect of sunshine upon me. It is not possible to defend yourself against these brats, for they take you, and hold you, and do not let you go again. It is the fact that there never was a Cupid like that child. And now what do you say of your Lafayette, your Benjamin Constant, and your Tirecuir de Corcelles, who kill him for me? Oh, it cannot pass away like that!"
He went up to Marius, who was still livid and motionless, and began wringing his hands again. The old gentleman's white lips moved as it were mechanically, and allowed indistinct sentences to pass, which were scarce audible. "Ah, heartless! ah, clubbist! ah, scoundrel! ah, Septembrizer!"—reproaches uttered in a low voice by a dying man to a corpse. By degrees, as such internal eruptions must always burst forth, the flood of words returned; but the grandfather seemed no longer to have the strength to utter them; his voice was so hollow and choked that it seemed to come from the other brink of an abyss.
"I do not care a bit; I will die too. And then to think there is not a wench in Paris who would not be happy to produce the happiness of that scoundrel,—a scamp, who, instead of amusing himself and enjoying life, went to fight, and let himself be shot like a brute! And for whom, and for what? For the republic, instead of going to dance at the Chaumière, as is the duty of young men! It is really worth while being twenty years of age. The republic,—a fine absurdity! Poor mothers bring pretty boys into the world for that! Well, he is dead; that will make two hearses under the gateway. So you have got yourself served in that way for love of General Lamarque! What did General Lamarque do for you? A sabrer! a chatterer! to get one's self killed for a dead man! Is it not enough to drive one mad? Can you understand that? At twenty! and without turning his head to see whether he left anything behind him! Now, see the poor old fellows who are obliged to die all alone. Rot in your corner, owl! Well, after all, that is what I hoped for, and is for the best, as it will kill me right off. I am too old; I am one hundred; I am a hundred thousand, and I had a right to be dead long ago. Well, this blow settles it. It is all over. What happiness! What is the use of making him inhale ammonia and all that pile of drugs? You ass of a doctor, you are wasting your time. There, he's dead, quite dead! I know it, for I am dead too. He did not do the thing by halves. Yes, the present age is infamous, infamous, infamous! And that is what I think of you, your ideas, your systems, your masters, your oracles, your doctors, your scamps of writers, your rogues of philosophers, and all the revolutions which have startled the Tuileries ravens during the last sixty years. And since you were pitiless in letting yourself be killed so, I will not even feel sorry at your death. Do your hear, assassin?"
At this moment Marius slowly opened his eyes, and his glance, still veiled by lethargic surprise, settled on M. Gillenormand.
"Marius!" the old man cried; "Marius, my little Marius! My child! My beloved son! You open your eyes! You look at me! You are alive! Thanks!"
And he fell down in a fainting fit.
BOOK IV.
JAVERT DERAILED.
Javert retired slowly from the Rue de l'Homme Armé. He walked with drooping head for the first time in his life, and equally for the first time in his life with his hands behind his back. Up to that day Javert had only assumed, of Napoleon's two attitudes, the one which expresses resolution, the arms folded on the chest; the one indicating uncertainty, the arms behind the back, was unknown to him. Now a change had taken place, and his whole person, slow and sombre, was stamped with anxiety. He buried himself in the silent streets, but followed a certain direction. He went by the shortest road to the Seine, reached the Quai des Ormes, walked along it, passed the Grêve, and stopped, a little distance from the Place du Châtelet, at the corner of the Pont Nôtre Dame. The Seine makes there, between that bridge and the Pont au Change on one side, and the Quai de la Mégisserie and the Quai aux Fleurs on the other, a species of square hike traversed by a rapid. This point of the Seine is feared by sailors; nothing can be more dangerous than this rapid, at that period contracted and irrigated by the piles of the mill bridge, since demolished. The two bridges, so close to each other, heighten the danger, for the water hurries formidably through the arches. It rolls in broad, terrible waves, it increases, and is heaped up; the flood strives to root out the piles of the bridge with thick liquid cords. Men who fall in there do not reappear, and the best swimmers are drowned.
Javert leaned his elbows on the parapet, his chin on his hand, and while his hands mechanically closed on his thick whiskers, he reflected. A novelty, a revolution, a catastrophe had just taken place within him, and he must examine into it. Javert was suffering horribly, and for some hours past Javert had ceased to be simple. He was troubled; this brain, so limpid in its blindness, had lost its transparency, and there was a cloud in this crystal. Javert felt in his conscience duty doubled, and he could not hide the fact from himself. When he met Jean Valjean so unexpectedly on the Seine bank, he had something within him of the wolf that recaptures its prey and the dog that finds its master again. He saw before him two roads, both equally straight; but he saw two of them, and this terrified him, as he had never known in his life but one straight line. And, poignant agony! these two roads were contrary, and one of these right lines excluded the other. Which of the two was the true one? His situation was indescribable; to owe his life to a malefactor, to accept this debt and repay him; to be, in spite of himself, on the same footing with an escaped convict, and requite one service with another service; to let it be said to him, "Be off!" and to say in his turn, "Be free!" to sacrifice to personal motives duty, that general obligation, and to feel in these personal motives something general too, and perhaps superior; to betray society in order to remain faithful to his conscience,—that all these absurdities should be realized, and accumulated upon him, was what startled him. One thing had astonished him,—that Jean Valjean had shown him mercy; and one thing had petrified him,—that he, Javert, had shown mercy to Jean Valjean.
Where was he? He sought and no longer found himself. What was he to do now? To give up Jean Valjean was bad, to leave Jean Valjean at liberty was bad. In the former case, the man of authority fell lower than the man of the galleys; in the second, a convict rose higher than the law, and set his foot upon it. In either case, dishonor for him, Javert. Whatever resolution he might form, there was a fall, for destiny has certain extremities projecting over the impossible, beyond which life is only a precipice. Javert had reached one of these extremities: one of his anxieties was to be constrained to think, and the very violence of all these contradictory emotions compelled him to do so. Now, thought was an unusual thing for him, and singularly painful. There is always in thought a certain amount of internal rebellion, and he was irritated at having that within him. Thought, no matter on what subject beyond the narrow circle of his destiny, would have been to him in any case useless and wearisome; but thinking about the day which had just passed was a torture. And yet he must after such shocks look into his conscience, and give himself an account of himself. What he had done caused him to shudder; he, Javert, had thought fit to decide—against all police regulations, against all social and judicial organization, and against the entire codes—a discharge: that had suited him. He had substituted his own affairs for public affairs; was not that unjustifiable? Each time that he stood facing the nameless action which he had committed, he trembled from head to foot. What should he resolve on? Only one resource was left him,—to return at full speed to the Rue de l'Homme Armé and lock up Jean Valjean. It was clear that this was what he ought to do, but he could not do it. Something barred the way on that side. What! is there anything in the world besides sentences, the police, and the authorities? Javert was overwhelmed.
A sacred galley-slave! a convict impregnable by justice, and that through the deed of Javert! Was it not frightful that Javert and Jean Valjean, the man made to punish and the man made to endure,—that these two men, who were both the property of the law, should have reached the point of placing themselves both above the law? What! such enormities could happen and no one be punished? Jean Valjean, stronger than the whole social order, would be free, and he, Javert, would continue to eat the bread of the Government! His reverie gradually became terrible: he might through this reverie have reproached himself slightly on the subject of the insurgent carried home to the Rue des Filles du Calvaire, but he did not think of it. The slighter fault was lost in the greater; and besides, this insurgent was evidently a dead man, and, legally, death checks persecution. Jean Valjean,—that was the weight which he had on his mind. Jean Valjean disconcerted him. All the axioms which had been the support of his whole life crumbled away before this man, and the generosity of Jean Valjean to him, Javert, overwhelmed him. Other facts which he remembered, and which he had formerly treated as falsehoods and folly, now returned to his mind as realities. M. Madeleine reappeared behind Jean Valjean, and the two figures were blended into one, which was venerable. Javert felt that something horrible, admiration for a convict, was entering his soul. Respect for a galley-slave, is it possible? He shuddered at it, and could not escape from it, although he struggled. He was reduced to confess in his soul the sublimity of this villain, and this was odious. A benevolent malefactor, a compassionate, gentle, helping, and merciful convict,—repaying good for evil, pardon for hatred, preferring pity to vengeance, ready to destroy himself sooner than his enemy, saving the man who had struck him, kneeling on the pinnacle of virtue, and nearer to the angels than to man. Javert was constrained to confess to himself that such a monster existed.
This could not last. Assuredly—and we lay stress on the fact—he had not yielded without resistance to this monster, to this infamous angel, to this hideous hero, at whom he felt almost as indignant as stupefied. Twenty times while in that hackney coach face to face with Jean Valjean the legal tiger had roared within him. Twenty times he had felt tempted to hurl himself on Jean Valjean, to seize and devour him,—that is to say, arrest him. What more simple, in fact,—shout to the nearest post before which he passed, "Here is a convict who has broken his ban!" and then go away, leave the condemned man there, be ignorant of the rest, and interfere no further? This man is eternally the prisoner of the law, and the law will do what it pleases with him. What was fairer? Javert had said all this to himself; he had wished to go further,—to act, apprehend the man,—and then, as now, had been unable; and each time that his hand was convulsively raised to Jean Valjean's collar, it fell back as if under an enormous weight, and he heard in the bottom of his heart a voice, a strange voice, crying to him, "That is well. Give up your saviour, then send for Pontius Pilate's basin, and wash your hands in it!"
Then his thoughts reverted to himself, and by the side of Jean Valjean aggrandized he saw himself degraded. A convict was his benefactor, but why had he allowed that man to let him live? He had the right of being killed at that barricade, and should have employed that right. It would have been better to call the other insurgents to his aid against Jean Valjean, and have himself shot by force. His supreme agony was the disappearance of certainty, and he felt himself uprooted. The code was now only a stump in his hand, and he had to deal with scruples of an unknown species. There was within him a sentimental revelation entirely distinct from the legal affirmation, his sole measure hitherto, and it was not sufficient to remain in his old honesty. A whole order of unexpected facts arose and subjugated him, an entire new world appeared to his soul; benefits accepted and returned, devotion, mercy, indulgence, violence done by pity to austerity, no more definitive condemnation, no more damnation, the possibility of a tear in the eye of the law, and perhaps some justice according to God acting in an inverse ratio to justice according to man. He perceived in the darkness the rising of an unknown moral sun, and he was horrified and dazzled. He was an owl forced to look like the eagle.
He said to himself that it was true, then, that there were exceptions, that authority might be disconcerted, that the rule might fall short in the presence of a fact, that everything was not contained in the text of a code, that the unforeseen made itself obeyed, that the virtue of a convict might set a snare for the virtue of a functionary, that the monstrous might be divine, that destiny had such ambuscades; and he thought with despair that he had himself not been protected from a surprise. He was compelled to recognize that goodness existed; this galley-slave had been good, and he, extraordinary to say, had been good also. Hence he was becoming depraved. He felt that he was a coward, and it horrified him. The ideal for Javert was not to be human, grand, or sublime; it was to be irreproachable,—and now he had broken down. How had he reached this stage? How had all this happened? He could not have told himself. He took his head between his hands; but whatever he might do, he could not succeed in explaining it. He certainly had had the intention of delivering Jean Valjean over to the law, of which Jean Valjean was the captive and of which he was the slave. He had not confessed to himself for a single instant, while he held him, that he had a thought of letting him go; it was to some extent unconsciously that his hand had opened and allowed him to escape.
All sorts of enigmatic novelties passed before his eyes. He asked himself questions and gave himself answers, and his answers terrified him. He asked himself, "What has this convict, this desperate man, whom I followed to persecution, and who had me under his heel, and could have avenged himself, and ought to have acted so, both for his rancor and his security, done in leaving me my life and showing me mercy,—his duty? No, something more. And what have I done in showing him mercy in my turn,—my duty? No, something more. Is there, then, something more than duty?" Here he was terrified, he was thrown off his balance,—one of the scales fell into the abyss, the other ascended to heaven; and Javert felt no less horror at the one above than at the one below. Without being the least in the world what is termed a Voltairian, or philosopher, or incredulous man, respectful, on the contrary, instinctively to the Established Church, he only knew it as an august fragment of the social ensemble; order was his dogma, and sufficient for him. Since he had attained man's age and office, he had set nearly all his religion in the police, being,—and we employ the words without the slightest irony, and in their most serious acceptation,—being, as we have said, a spy, as another man is a priest He had a superior, M. Gisquet; but he had never thought up to this day of that other superior, God. He felt the presence of this new Chief unexpectedly, and was troubled by Him. He was thrown out of gear by this person; he knew not what to do with this Superior, for he was not ignorant that the subordinate is bound always to bow the head, that he must neither disobey, nor blame, nor discuss, and that when facing a superior who astonishes him too much, the inferior has no other resource but his resignation. But how could he manage to give in his resignation to God?
However this might be, one fact to which he constantly returned, and which ruled everything else, was that he had just committed a frightful infraction of the law. He had closed his eyes to a relapsed convict who had broken his ban; he had set a galley-slave at liberty. He had stolen from the laws a man who belonged to them. He had done this, and no longer understood himself. He was not certain of being himself. The very reasons of his deed escaped him, and he only felt the dizziness it produced. He had lived up to this moment in that blind faith which engenders a dark probity; and this faith was leaving him, this probity had failed him. All that he had believed was dissipated, and truths which he did not desire inexorably besieged him. He must henceforth be another man, and he suffered the strange pain of a conscience suddenly operated on for cataract. He saw what it was repulsive to him to see, and felt himself spent, useless, dislocated from his past life, discharged and dissolved. Authority was dead within him, and he no longer had a reason for living. Terrible situation! to be moved. To be made of granite, and doubt! To be the statue of punishment cast all of one piece in the mould of the law, and suddenly to perceive that you have under your bronze bosom something absurd and disobedient, which almost resembles a heart! To have requited good for good, though you have said to yourself up to this day that such good is evil! To be the watch-dog, and fawn! To be ice, and melt! To be a pair of pincers, and become a hand! suddenly to feel your fingers opening! To lose your hold. Oh, what a frightful thing! The man projectile, no longer knowing his road, and recoiling! To be obliged to confess this: infallibility is not infallible; there may be an error in the dogma; all is not said when a code has spoken, society is not perfect, authority is complicated with vacillation, a crack in the immutable is possible, judges are men, the law may be deceived, the courts may make a mistake! To see a flaw in the immense blue window-glass of the firmament.
What was taking place in Javert was the Fampoux of a rectilinear conscience, the overthrow of a mind, the crushing of a probity irresistibly hurled in a straight line and breaking itself against God. It was certainly strange that the fireman of order, the engineer of authority, mounted on the blind iron horse, could be unsaddled by a beam of light! That the incommutable, the direct, the correct, the geometrical, the passive, the perfect, could bend; that there should be for the locomotive a road to Damascus! God, ever within man, and Himself the true conscience, refractory to the false conscience; the spark forbidden to expire, the ray ordered to remember the sun, the mind enjoined to recognize the true absolute when it confronts itself with the fictitious absolute, a humanity that cannot be lost; the human heart inadmissible,—did Javert comprehend this splendid phenomenon, the most glorious, perhaps, of our internal prodigies? Did he penetrate it? Did he explain it to himself? Evidently no. But under the pressure of this incomprehensible incontestability he felt his brain cracking. He was less transfigured than the victim of this prodigy: he endured it with exasperation, and only saw in all this an immense difficulty of living. It seemed to him as if henceforth his breathing was eternally impeded. He was not accustomed to have anything unknown over his head; hitherto everything he had above him had been to his eye a clear, simple, limpid surface; there was nothing unknown or obscure,—nothing but what was definite, co-ordinated, enchained, precise, exact, circumscribed, limited, and closed. Everything foreseen, authority was a flat surface; there was no fall in it or dizziness before it. Javert had never seen anything unknown except below him. Irregularity, unexpected things, the disorderly opening of the chaos, and a possible fall over a precipice,—all this was the doing of the lower regions, of the rebels, the wicked and the wretched. How Javert threw himself back, and was suddenly startled by this extraordinary apparition,—a gulf above him!
What then! the world was dismantled from top to bottom and absolutely disconcerted! In what could men trust, when what they felt convinced of was crumbling away! What! the flaw in the cuirass of society could be formed by a magnanimous scoundrel! What! an honest servant of the law could find himself caught between two crimes,—the crime of letting a man escape and the crime of arresting him! All was not certain, then, in the orders given by the State to the official! There could be blind alleys in duty! What then? all this was real! Was it true that an ex-bandit, bowed under condemnations, could draw himself up, and end by being in the right? Was this credible? Were there, then, cases in which the law must retire before transfigured crime, and stammer its apologies? Yes, it was so! and Javert saw it, and Javert touched it! And not only could he not deny it, but he had a share in it. These were realities, and it was abominable that real facts could attain such a deformity. If facts did their duty they would restrict themselves to bring proofs of the law, for facts are sent by God. Was, then, anarchy about to descend from on high? Thus, both in the exaggeration of agony and the optical illusion of consternation, everything which might have restricted and corrected his impression faded away, and society, the human race, and the universe henceforth were contained for his eyes in a simple and hideous outline. Punishment, the thing tried, the strength due to the legislature, the decrees of sovereign courts, the magistracy, the government, prevention and repression, official wisdom, legal infallibility, the principle of authority, all the dogmas on which political and civil security, the sovereignty, justice, logic flowing from the code and public truth, were a heap of ruins, chaos. He himself, Javert, the watcher of order, incorruptibility in the service of the police, the trusty mastiff of society, conquered and hurled to the ground; and on the summit of all this ruin stood a man in a green cap, and with a glory round his brow,—such was the state of overthrow he had reached, such the frightful vision which he had in his mind. Was this endurable? No, it was a violent state, were there ever one, and there were only two ways of escaping from it: one was to go resolutely to Jean Valjean and restore to the dungeon the man of the galleys; the other—
Javert left the parapet, and with head erect this time walked firmly toward the guard-room indicated by a lantern at one of the corners of the Place du Châtelet. On reaching it he saw through the window a policeman, and went in. The police recognize each other merely by the way in which they push open the door of a guard-room. Javert mentioned his name, showed his card to the sergeant, and sat down at the table on which a candle was burning. There were also on the table a pen, a leaden inkstand, and paper, ready for contingent reports and the records of the night patrols. This table, always completed by a straw chair, is an institution; it exists in all police offices; it is always adorned with a boxwood saucer full of sawdust, and a box of red wafers, and it is the lower stage of the official style. It is here that the State literature commences. Javert took the pen and a sheet of paper and began writing. This is what he wrote:—
"A FEW REMARKS FOR THE GOOD OF THE SERVICE.
"1. I beg M. le Préfet to cast his eyes on this.
"2. Prisoners when they return from examination at the magistrate's office take off their shoes and remain barefoot on the slabs while they are being searched. Some cough on re-entering prison. This entails infirmary expenses.
"3. Tracking is good, with relays of agents at regular distances; but on important occasions two agents at the least should not let each other out of sight, because if for any reason one agent were to fail in his duty, the other would watch him and take his place.
"4. There is no explanation why the special rules of the prison of the Madelonnettes prohibit a prisoner from having a chair, even if he pay for it.
"5. At the Madelonnettes there are only two gratings to the canteen, which allows the canteen woman to let the prisoners touch her hand.
"6. The prisoners called 'barkers,' who call the other prisoners to the visitors' room, demand two sous from each prisoner for crying his name distinctly. This is a robbery.
"7. Ten sous are kept back from the pay of a prisoner working in the weaving room for a running thread: this is an abuse on the part of the manager, as the cloth is not the less good.
"8. It is annoying that visitors to La Force are obliged to pass through the boys court in proceeding to the speaking-room of Sainte Marie Égyptienne.
"9. It is certain that gendarmes are daily heard repeating, in the court-yard of the Préfecture, the examination of prisoners by the magistrates. For a gendarme, who ought to be consecrated, to repeat what he has heard in the examination room is a serious breach of duty.
"10. Madame Henry is an honest woman, her canteen is very clean; but it is wrong for a woman to hold the key of the secret cells. This is not worthy of the Conciergerie of a great civilization."
Javert wrote these lines in his calmest and most correct handwriting, not omitting to cross a t, and making the paper creak firmly beneath his pen. Under the last line he signed,—
"JAVERT, Inspector of the first class.
"At the post of the Place du Châtelet,
about one in the morning, June 7, 1832."
Javert dried the ink on the paper, folded it like a letter, sealed it, wrote on the back, "Note for the Administration," left it on the table, and quitted the guard-room. The glass door fell back after him. He again diagonally crossed the Place du Châtelet, reached the quay again, and went back with automatic precision to the same spot which he had left a quarter of an hour previously; he bent down and found himself again in the same attitude on the same parapet slab; it seemed as if he had not stirred. The darkness was complete, for it was the sepulchral moment which follows midnight; a ceiling of clouds hid the stars; the houses in the Cité did not display a single light, no one passed, all the streets and quays that could be seen were deserted, and Nôtre Dame and the towers of the Palace of Justice appeared lineaments of the night. A lamp reddened the edge of the quay, and the shadows of the bridges looked ghostly one behind the other. Rains had swelled the river. The spot where Javert was leaning was, it will be remembered, precisely above the rapids of the Seine and that formidable whirlpool which unrolls itself and rolls itself up again like an endless screw. Javert stooped down and looked; all was dark, and nothing could be distinguished. A sound of spray was audible, but the river was invisible. At moments in this dizzy depth a flash appeared and undulated, for water has the power, even on the darkest night, of obtaining light, no one knows whence, and changing itself into a lizard. The glimmer vanished and all became indistinct again. Immensity seemed open there, and what was beneath was not water, but the gulf. The quay-wall, abrupt, confused, mingled with the vapor, hidden immediately, produced the effect of a precipice of infinitude.
Nothing could be seen but the hostile coldness of the water, and the sickly smell of the damp stones could be felt. A ferocious breath rose from this abyss; and the swelling of the river, divined rather than perceived, the tragic muttering of the water, the mournful immensity of the bridge arches, a possible fall into this gloomy vacuum,—all this shadow was full of horror. Javert remained for some moments motionless, gazing at this opening of the darkness, and considered the invisible with an intentness which resembled attention. All at once he took off his hat and placed it on the brink of the quay. A moment after a tall black figure, which any belated passer-by might have taken at a distance for a ghost, appeared standing on the parapet, stooped toward the Seine, then drew itself up, and fell straight into the darkness. There was a dull plash, and the shadows alone were in the secret of this obscure form which had disappeared beneath the waters.
BOOK V.
GRANDSON AND GRANDFATHER.
CHAPTER I.
WHERE WE AGAIN MEET THE TREE WITH THE ZINC PATCH.
Some time after the events which we have just recorded, the Sieur Boulatruelle had a lively emotion. The Sieur Boulatruelle is the road-mender of Montfermeil of whom we have already caught a glimpse in the dark portions of this book. Boulatruelle, it will possibly be remembered, was a man occupied with troubled and various things. He broke stones and plundered travellers on the highway. Road-mender and robber, he had a dream: he believed in the treasures buried in the forest of Montfermeil. He hoped some day to find money in the ground at the foot of a tree, and in the mean while willingly fished for it in the pockets of passers-by. Still, for the present he was prudent, for he had just had a narrow escape. He was, as we know, picked up with the other ruffians in Jondrette's garret. There is some usefulness in a vice, for his drunkenness saved him, and it never could be cleared up whether he were there as a robber or as a robbed man. He was set at liberty on account of his proved intoxication on the night of the attack, and returned to the woods. He went back to his road from Gagny to Lagny, to break stones for the State, under surveillance, with hanging head and very thoughtful, slightly chilled by the robbery which had almost ruined him, but turning with all the more tenderness to the wine which had saved him.
As for the lively emotion which he had a short time after his return beneath the turf-roof of his road-mender's cabin, it was this: One morning Boulatruelle, while going as usual to work and to his lurking-place, possibly a little before daybreak, perceived among the branches a man whose back he could alone see, but whose shape, so he fancied, through the mist and darkness, was not entirely unknown to him. Boulatruelle, though a drunkard, had a correct and lucid memory, an indispensable defensive weapon for any man who is at all on bad terms with legal order.
"Where the devil have I seen some one like that man?" he asked.
But he could give himself no reply, save that he resembled somebody of whom he had a confused recollection. Boulatruelle, however, made his comparisons and calculations, though he was unable to settle the identity. This man did not belong to those parts, and bad come there evidently afoot, as no public vehicle passed through Montfermeil at that hour. He must have been walking all night Where did he come from? No great distance, for he had neither haversack nor bundle. Doubtless from Paris. Why was he in this wood? Why was lie there at such an hour? What did he want there? Boulatruelle thought of the treasure. By dint of racking his memory he vaguely remembered having had, several years previously, a similar alarm on the subject of a man who might very well be this man. While meditating he had, under the very weight of his meditation, hung his head, a natural but not clever thing. When he raised it again the man had disappeared in the forest and the mist.
"By the deuce!" said Boulatruelle, "I will find him again, and discover to what parish that parishioner belongs. This walker of Patron-Minette has a motive, and I will know it. No one must have a secret in my forest without my being mixed up in it."
He took up his pick, which was very sharp. "Here's something," he growled, "to search the ground and a man."
And as one thread is attached to another thread, covering the steps as well as he could in the direction which the man must have pursued, he began marching through the coppice. When he had gone about a hundred yards, day, which was beginning to break, aided him. Footsteps on the sand here and there, trampled grass, broken heather, young branches bent into the shrubs and rising with a graceful slowness, like the arms of a pretty woman who stretches herself on waking, gave him a species of trail. He followed it and then lost it, and time slipped away; he got deeper into the wood and reached a species of eminence. An early sportsman passing at a distance along a path, and whistling the air of Guillery, gave him the idea of climbing up a tree, and though old, he was active. There was on the mound a very large beech, worthy of Tityrus and Boulatruelle, and he climbed up the tree as high as he could. The idea was a good one; for while exploring the solitude on the side where the wood is most entangled, Boulatruelle suddenly perceived the man, but had no sooner seen him than he lost him out of sight again. The man entered, or rather glided, into a rather distant clearing, masked by large trees, but which Boulatruelle knew very well, because he had noticed near a large heap of stones a sick chestnut-tree bandaged with a zinc plate nailed upon it. This clearing is what was formerly called the Blaru-bottom, and the pile of stones, intended no one knows for what purpose, which could be seen there thirty years ago, is doubtless there still. Nothing equals the longevity of a heap of stones, except that of a plank paling. It is there temporarily; what a reason for lasting!
Boulatruelle, with the rapidity of joy, tumbled off the tree rather than came down it. The lair was found, and now he had only to seize the animal. The famous treasure he had dreamed of was probably there. It was no small undertaking to reach the clearing by beaten paths which make a thousand annoying windings; it would take a good quarter of an hour. In a straight line through the wood, which is at that spot singularly dense, very thorny, and most aggressive, it would take half an hour at least This is what Boulatruelle was wrong in not understanding; he believed in the straight line,—a respectable optical illusion which has ruined many men. The wood, bristling though it was, appeared to him the right road.
"Let us go by the Rue de Rivoli of the wolves," he said.
Boulatruelle, accustomed to crooked paths, this time committed the error of going straight, and resolutely cast himself among the shrubs. He had to contend with holly, nettles, hawthorns, eglantines, thistles, and most irascible roots, and was fearfully scratched. At the bottom of the ravine he came to a stream which he was obliged to cross, and at last reached the Blaru clearing after forty minutes, perspiring, wet through, blowing, and ferocious. There was no one in the clearing. Boulatruelle hurried to the heap of stones; it was still in its place, and had not been carried off. As for the man, he had vanished in the forest. He had escaped. Where? In which direction? Into which clump of trees? It were impossible to guess. And, most crushing thing of all, there was behind the heap of stones and in front of the zinc-banded tree a pick, forgotten or abandoned, and a hole; but the hole was empty.
"Robber!" Boulatruelle cried, shaking his fists at heaven.
CHAPTER II.
MARIUS LEAVING CIVIL WAR PREPARES FOR A DOMESTIC WAR.
Marius was for a long time neither dead nor alive. He had for several weeks a fever accompanied by delirium, and very serious brain symptoms caused by the shocks of the wounds in the head rather than the wounds themselves. He repeated Cosette's name for whole nights with the lugubrious loquacity of fever and the gloomy obstinacy of agony. The width of certain wounds was a serious danger, for the suppuration of wide wounds may always be absorbed into the system, and consequently kill the patient under certain atmospheric influences; and at each change in the weather, at the slightest storm, the physician became anxious. "Mind that the patient suffers from no emotion," he repeated. The dressings were complicated and difficult, for the fixing of bandages and lint by the sparadrap had not been imagined at that period. Nicolette expended in lint a sheet "as large as a ceiling," she said; and it was not without difficulty that the chloruretted lotions and nitrate of silver reached the end of the gangrene. So long as there was danger, M. Gillenormand, broken-hearted by the bedside of his grandson, was like Marius, neither dead nor alive.
Every day, and sometimes twice a day, a white-haired and well-dressed gentleman,—such was the description given by the porter,—came to inquire after the wounded man, and left a large parcel of lint for the dressings. At length, on September 7th, four months, day by day, from the painful night on which he had been brought home dying to his grandfather, the physician declared that he could answer for him, and that convalescence was setting in. Marius, however, would be obliged to lie for two months longer on a couch, owing to the accidents produced by the fracture of the collar-bone. There is always a last wound like that which will not close, and eternizes the dressings, to the great annoyance of the patient. This long illness and lengthened convalescence, however, saved him from prosecution: in France there is no anger, even public, which six months do not extinguish. Riots, in the present state of society, are so much everybody's fault, that they are followed by a certain necessity of closing the eyes. Let us add that Gisquet's unjustifiable decree which ordered physicians to denounce their patients having out-raged opinion, and not merely opinion, but the king first of all, the wounded were covered and protected by this indignation, and, with the exception of those taken prisoners in the act of fighting, the courts-martial did not dare to molest any one. Hence Marius was left undisturbed.
M. Gillenormand first passed through every form of agony, and then through every form of ecstasy. Much difficulty was found in keeping him from passing the whole night by Marius's side; he had his large easy-chair brought to the bed, and he insisted on his daughter taking the finest linen in the house to make compresses and bandages. Mademoiselle Gillenormand, as a sensible and elderly lady, managed to save the fine linen, while making her father believe that he was obeyed. M. Gillenormand would not listen to any explanation, that for the purpose of making lint fine linen is not so good as coarse, or new so good as worn. He was present at all the dressings, from which Mademoiselle Gillenormand modestly absented herself. When the dead flesh was cut away with scissors he said, "Aïe, aïe!" Nothing was so touching as to see him hand the wounded man a cup of broth with his gentle senile trembling. He overwhelmed the surgeon with questions, and did not perceive that he constantly repeated the same. On the day when the physician informed him that Marius was out of danger he was beside himself. He gave his porter three louis d'or, and at night, when he went to his bed-room, danced a gavotte, making castagnettes of his thumb and forefinger, and sang a song something like this:—
"Jeanne est née à Fougère,
Vrai nid d'une bergère;
J'adore son jupon
Fripon.
"Amour, tu vis en elle;
Car c'est dans sa prunelle
Que tu mets ton carquois,
Narquois!
"Moi, je la chante, et j'aime,
Plus que Diane même,
Jeanne et ses dure tetons
Bretons."
Then he knelt on a chair, and Basque, who was watching him through the crack of the door, felt certain that he was praying. Up to that day he had never believed in God. At each new phase in the improvement of the patient, which went on steadily, the grandfather was extravagant. He performed a multitude of mechanical actions full of delight: he went up and down stairs without knowing why. A neighbor's wife, who was very pretty, by the way, was stupefied at receiving one morning a large bouquet: it was M. Gillenormand who sent it to her, and her husband got up a jealous scene. M. Gillenormand tried to draw Nicolette on his knees: he called Marius Monsieur le Baron, and shouted, "Long live the Republic!" Every moment he asked the medical man, "There is no danger now, is there?" He looked at Marius with a grandmother's eyes, and gloated over him when he slept. He no longer knew himself, no longer took himself into account. Marius was the master of the house; there was abdication in his joy, and he was the grandson of his grandson. In his present state of merriment he was the most venerable of children: through fear of wearying or annoying the convalescent he would place himself behind him in order to smile upon him. He was satisfied, joyous, ravished, charming and young, and his white hair added a gentle majesty to the gay light which he had on his face. When grace is mingled with wrinkles it is adorable; and there is a peculiar dawn in expansive old age.
As for Marius, while letting himself be nursed and petted, he had one fixed idea,—Cosette. Since the fever and delirium had left him he no longer pronounced this name, and it might be supposed that he had forgotten it; but he was silent precisely because his soul was there. He knew not what had become of Cosette: the whole affair of the Rue de la Chanvrerie was like a cloud in his memory; shadows almost indistinct floated through his spirit. Éponine, Gavroche, Mabœuf, the Thénardiers, and all his friends mournfully mingled with the smoke of the barricade; the strange passage of M. Fauchelevent through that blood-stained adventure produced upon him the effect of an enigma in a tempest: he understood nothing of his own life, he knew not how or by whom he had been saved, and no one about knew it either: all they were able to tell him was that he had been brought there at night in a hackney coach. Past, present, future,—all this was to him like the mist of a vague idea; but there was in this mist one immovable point, a clear and precise lineament, something made of granite, a resolution, a will,—to find Cosette again. For him the idea of life was not distinct from the idea of Cosette: he had decreed in his heart that he would not receive one without the other, and he unalterably determined to demand of his grandfather, of destiny, of fate, of Hades itself, the restitution of his lost Eden.
He did not conceal the obstacles from himself. Here let us underline one fact: he was not won or greatly affected by all the anxiety and all the tenderness of his grandfather. In the first place he was not in the secret of them all, and next, in his sick man's reveries, which were perhaps still feverish, he distrusted this gentleness as a strange and new thing intended to subdue him. He remained cold to it, and the poor grandfather lavished his smiles in pure loss. Marius said to himself that it was all very well so long as he did not speak and let matters rest; but when he came to Cosette, he should find another face, and his grandfathers real attitude would be unmasked. Then he would be rough; a warming up of family questions, a comparison of positions, every possible sarcasm and objection at once. Fauchelevent, Coupelevent, fortune, poverty, wretchedness, the stone on the neck, the future a violent resistance, and the conclusion—a refusal. Marius stiffened himself against it beforehand. And then, in proportion as he regained life, his old wrongs reappeared, the old ulcers of his memory reopened, he thought again of the past. Colonel Pontmercy placed himself once more between M. Gillenormand and him, Marius, and he said to himself that he had no real kindness to hope for from a man who had been so unjust and harsh to his father. And with health came back a sort of bitterness against his grandfather, from which the old man gently suffered. M. Gillenormand, without letting it be seen, noticed that Marius, since he had been brought home and regained consciousness, had never once called him father. He did not say Sir, it is true, but he managed to say neither one nor the other, by a certain way of turning his sentences.
A crisis was evidently approaching, and, as nearly always happens in such cases, Marius, in order to try himself, skirmished before offering battle; this is called feeling the ground. One morning it happened that M. Gillenormand, alluding to a newspaper which he had come across, spoke lightly of the Convention, and darted a Royalist epigram at Danton, St. Just, and Robespierre. "The men of '93 were giants," Marius said sternly; the old man was silent, and did not utter another syllable all the day. Marius, who had the inflexible grandfather of his early years ever present to his mind, saw in this silence a profound concentration of anger, augured from it an obstinate struggle, and augmented his preparations for the contest in the most hidden corners of his mind. He determined that in case of refusal he would tear off his bandages, dislocate his collar-bone, expose all the wounds still unhealed, and refuse all food. His wounds were his ammunition; he must have Cosette or die. He awaited the favorable moment with the crafty patience of sick persons, and the moment arrived.
CHAPTER III.
MARIUS ATTACKS.
One day M. Gillenormand, while his daughter was arranging the phials and cups on the marble slab of the sideboard, leaned over Marius, and said in his most tender accent,—
"Look you, my little Marius, in your place I would rather eat meat than fish; a fried sole is excellent at the beginning of a convalescence; but a good cutlet is necessary to put the patient on his legs."
Marius, whose strength had nearly quite returned, sat up, rested his two clenched fists on his sheet, looked his grandfather in the face, assumed a terrible air, and said,—