"That induces me to say one thing to you."
"What is it?"
"That I wish to marry."
"Foreseen," said the grandfather, bursting into a laugh.
"How foreseen?"
"Yes, foreseen. You shall have your little maid."
Marius, stupefied and dazzled, trembled in all his limbs, and M. Gillenormand continued,—
"Yes, you shall have the pretty little dear. She comes every day in the form of an old gentleman to ask after you. Ever since you have been wounded she has spent her time in crying and making lint. I made inquiries; she lives at No. 7, Rue de l'Homme Armé. Ah, there we are! Ah, you want her, do you? Well, you shall have her. You're tricked this time; you had made your little plot, and had said to yourself, 'I will tell it point-blank to that grandfather, that mummy of the Regency and the Directory, that old beau, that Dorante who has become Géronte; he has had his frolics too, and his amourettes, and his grisettes, and his Cosettes; he has had his fling, he has had his wings, and he has eaten the bread of spring; he must surely remember it, we shall see. Battle!' Ah, you take the cock-chafer by the horns; very good. I offer you a cutlet, and you answer me, 'By the bye, I wish to marry,' By Jupiter! Here's a transition! Ah, you made up your mind for a quarrel, but you did not know that I was an old coward. What do you say to that? You are done; you did not expect to find your grandfather more stupid than yourself. You have lost the speech you intended to make me, master lawyer, and that is annoying. Well, all the worse, rage away; I do what you want, and that stops you, stupid! Listen! I have made my inquiries, for I too am cunning; she is charming, she is virtuous; the Lancer does not speak the truth, she made heaps of lint. She is a jewel; she adores you; if you had died there would have been three of us, and her coffin would have accompanied mine. I had the idea as soon as you were better of planting her there by your bedside; but it is only in romances that girls are introduced to the beds of handsome young wounded men in whom they take an interest. That would not do, for what would your aunt say? You were quite naked three parts of the time, sir; ask Nicolette, who never left you for a moment, whether it were possible for a female to be here? And then, what would the doctor have said? for a pretty girl does not cure a fever. Well, say no more about it; it is settled and done; take her. Such is my fury. Look you, I saw that you did not love me, and I said, 'What can I do to make that animal love me?' I said, 'Stay, I have my little Cosette ready to hand. I will give her to him, and then he must love me a little, or tell me the reason why.' Ah! you believed that the old man would storm, talk big, cry no, and lift his cane against all this dawn. Not at all. Cosette, very good; love, very good. I ask for nothing better; take the trouble, sir, to marry; be happy, my beloved child!"
After saying this the old man burst into sobs. He took Marius's head and pressed it to his old bosom, and both began weeping. That is one of the forms of supreme happiness.
"My father!" Marius exclaimed.
"Ah, you love me, then!" the old man said.
There was an ineffable moment; they were choking and could not speak. At length the old man stammered,—
"Come! the stopper is taken out of him; he called me father."
Marius disengaged his head from his grandfather's arms, and said gently,—
"Now that I am better, father, I fancy I could see her."
"Foreseen, too; you will see her to-morrow."
"Father?"
"Well, what?"
"Why not to-day?"
"Well, to-day; done for to-day. You have called me father thrice, and it's worth that. I will see about it, and she shall be brought here. Foreseen, I tell you. That has already been put in verse, and it is the denouement of André Chénier's elegy, the 'Jeune Malade,'—André Chénier, who was butchered by the scound—by the giants of '93."
M. Gillenormand fancied he could see a slight frown on Marius's face, though, truth to tell, he was not listening, as he had flown away into ecstasy, and was thinking much more of Cosette than of 1793. The grandfather, trembling at haying introduced André Chénier so inopportunely, hurriedly continued,—
"Butchered is not the word. The fact is that the great revolutionary geniuses who were not wicked, that is incontestable, who were heroes, Pardi, found that André Chénier was slightly in their way, and they had him guillo—that is to say, these great men on the 7th Thermidor, in the interest of the public safety, begged André Chénier to be kind enough to go—"
M. Gillenormand, garroted by his own sentence, could not continue. Unable to terminate it or retract it, the old man rushed, with all the speed which his age allowed, out of the bed-room, shut the door after him, and purple, choking, and foaming, with his eyes out of his head, found himself nose to nose with honest Basque, who was cleaning boots in the anteroom. He seized Basque by the collar and furiously shouted into his face, "By the hundred thousand Javottes of the devil, those brigands assassinated him!"
"Whom, sir?"
"André Chénier."
"Yes, sir," said the horrified Basque,
CHAPTER IV.
MLLE. GILLENORMAND HAS NO OBJECTIONS TO THE MATCH.
Cosette and Marius saw each other again. We will not attempt to describe the interview, for there are things which we must not attempt to paint: the sun is of the number. The whole family, Basque and Nicolette included, were assembled in Marius's chamber at the moment when Cosette entered. She appeared in the doorway, and seemed to be surrounded by a halo: precisely at this moment the grandfather was going to blow his nose, but he stopped short, holding his nose in his handkerchief and looking over it.
"Adorable!" he cried.
And then he blew a sonorous blast. Cosette was intoxicated, ravished, startled, in heaven. She was as timid as a person can be through happiness; she stammered, turned pale and then pink, and wished to throw herself into Marius's arms, but dared not. She was ashamed of loving before so many people; for the world is merciless to happy lovers, and always remains at the very moment when they most long to be alone. And yet they do not want these people at, all. With Cosette, and behind her, had entered a white-haired man, serious, but still smiling, though the smile was wandering and poignant. It was "Monsieur Fauchelevent,"—it was Jean Valjean. He was well-dressed, as the porter had said, in a new black suit and a white cravat. The porter was a thousand leagues from recognizing in this correct citizen, this probable notary, the frightful corpse-bearer who had arrived at the gate on the night of June 7, ragged, filthy, hideous, and haggard, with a mask of blood and mud on his face, supporting in his arms the unconscious Marius; still his porter's instincts were aroused. When M. Fauchelevent arrived with Cosette, the porter could not refrain from confiding this aside to his wife, "I don't know why, but I fancy that I have seen that face before." M. Fauchelevent remained standing by the door of Marius's room, as if afraid; he held under his arm a packet rather like an octavo volume wrapped in paper. The paper was green, apparently from mildew.
"Has this gentleman always got books under his arm like that?" Mademoiselle Gillenormand, who was not fond of books, asked Nicolette in a whisper.
"Well," M. Gillenormand, who had heard her, answered in the same key, "he is a savant; is that his fault? Monsieur Boulard, whom I knew, never went out without a book either, and like him had always had an old book near his heart."
Then bowing, he said in a loud voice,—
"M. Tranchelevent."
Father Gillenormand did not do it purposely, but an inattention to proper names was an aristocratic way of his.
"Monsieur Tranchelevent, I have the honor of requesting this lady's hand for my grandson, M. le Baron Marius Pontmercy."
Monsieur "Tranchelevent" bowed.
"All right," the grandfather said.
And turning to Marius and Cosette, with both arms extended in benediction, he cried,—
"You have leave to adore each other."
They did not let it be said twice, and the prattling began. They talked in a whisper, Marius reclining on his couch and Cosette standing by his side. "Oh, Heaven!" Cosette murmured, "I see you again: it is you. To go and fight like that! But why? It is horrible. For four months I have been dead. Oh, how wicked it was of you to have been at that battle! What had I done to you? I forgive you, but you will not do it again. Just now, when they came to tell me to come to you, I thought again that I was going to die, but it was of joy. I was so sad! I did not take the time to dress myself, and I must look frightful; what will your relation say at seeing me in a tumbled collar? But speak! you let me speak all alone. We are still in the Rue de l'Homme Armé. It seems that your shoulder was terrible, and I was told that I could have put my hand in it, and that your flesh was as if it had been cut with scissors. How frightful that is! I wept so that I have no eyes left. It is strange that a person can suffer like that Your grandfather has a very kind look. Do not disturb yourself, do not rest on your elbow like that, or you will hurt yourself. Oh, how happy I am! So our misfortunes are all ended! I am quite foolish. There were things I wanted to say to you which I have quite forgotten. Do you love me still? We live in the Rue de l'Homme Armé. There is no garden there. I made lint the whole time; look here, sir, it is your fault, my fingers are quite rough."
"Angel!" said Marius.
Angel is the only word in the language which cannot be worn out; no other word would resist the pitiless use which lovers make of it. Then, as there was company present, they broke off, and did not say a word more, contenting themselves with softly clasping hands. M. Gillenormand turned to all the rest in the room, and cried,—
"Speak loudly, good people; make a noise, will you? Come, a little row, hang it all! so that these children may prattle at their ease."
And going up to Marius and Cosette, he whispered to them,—
"Go on; don't put yourselves out of the way."
Aunt Gillenormand witnessed with stupor this irruption of light into her antiquated house. This stupor had nothing aggressive about it; it was not at all the scandalized and envious glance cast by an owl at two ring-doves: it was the stupid eye of a poor innocent of the age of fifty-seven; it was a spoiled life looking at that triumph, love.
"Mademoiselle Gillenormand the elder," her father said to her, "I told you that this would happen." He remained silent for a moment, and added,—
"Look at the happiness of others."
Then he turned to Cosette.
"How pretty she is! how pretty she is! she is a Greuze! So you are going to have all that for yourself, scamp? Ah, my boy, you have had a lucky escape from me; for if I were not fifteen years too old we would fight with swords and see who should have her. There, I am in love with you, Mademoiselle; but it is very natural, it is your right. What a famous, charming little wedding we will have! St. Denis du Saint-Sacrament is our parish; but I will procure a dispensation, so that you may be married at St. Paul, for the church is better. It was built for the Jesuits, and more coquettish. It is opposite Cardinal Birague's fountain. The masterpiece of Jesuit architecture is at Namur, and is called St. Loup; you should go and see that when you are married, for it is worth the journey. Mademoiselle, I am entirely of your opinion; I wish girls to marry, for they are made for it. There is a certain Sainte Catharine whom I would always like to see with hair disordered. To remain a maid is fine, but it is cold. Multiply, says the Bible. To save the people a Joan of Arc is wanted; but to make a people we want Mother Gigogne. So marry, my darlings; I really do not see the use of remaining a maid. I know very well that they have a separate chapel in church, and join the confraternity of the Virgin; but, sapristi! a good-looking young husband, and at the end of a year a plump bantling, who sucks at you bravely, and who has rolls of fat on his thighs, and who clutches your bosom with his pink little paws, are a good deal better than holding a candle at vespers and singing Turris Eburnea."
The grandfather pirouetted on his nonagenarian heels, and began speaking again, like a spring which had been wound up:—
"Ainsi, bornant le cours de tes rêvasseries,
Alcippe, il est donc vrai, dans peu tu te maries."
"By the bye?"
"What, father?"
"Had you not an intimate friend?"
"Yes, Courfeyrac."
"What has become of him?"
"He is dead."
"That is well."
He sat down by their side, made Cosette take a chair, and took their four hands in his old wrinkled hands.
"This darling is exquisite! This Cosette is a masterpiece! She is a very little girl and a very great lady. She will be only a baroness, and that is a derogation, for she is born to be a marchioness. What eyelashes she has! My children, drive it well into your pates that you are on the right road. Love one another; be foolish over it, for love is the stupidity of men and the cleverness of God. So adore one another. Still," he added, suddenly growing sad, "what a misfortune! More than half I possess is sunk in annuities; so long as I live it will be all right, but when I am dead, twenty years hence, ah! my poor children, you will not have a farthing! Your pretty white hands, Madame la Baronne, will be wrinkled by work."
Here a serious and calm voice was heard saying:
"Mademoiselle Euphrasie Fauchelevent has six hundred thousand francs."
It was Jean Valjean's voice. He had not yet uttered a syllable; no one seemed to remember that he was present, and he stood motionless behind all these happy people.
"Who is the Mademoiselle Euphrasie in question?" the startled grandfather asked.
"Myself," said Cosette.
"Six hundred thousand francs!" M. Gillenormand repeated.
"Less fourteen or fifteen thousand, perhaps," Jean Valjean said.
And he laid on the table the parcel which Aunt Gillenormand had taken for a book. Jean Valjean himself opened the packet; it was a bundle of bank-notes. They were turned over and counted; there were six hundred bank-notes for a thousand francs, and one hundred and sixty-eight for five hundred, forming a total of five hundred and eighty-four thousand francs.
"That's a famous book," said M. Gillenormand.
"Five hundred and eighty-four thousand francs!" the aunt murmured.
"That arranges a good many things, does it not, Mademoiselle Gillenormand the elder?" the grandfather continued. "That devil of a Marius has found a millionnaire grisette upon the tree of dreams! Now trust to the amourettes of young people! Students find studentesses with six hundred thousand francs. Cherubin works better than Rothschild."
"Five hundred and eighty-four thousand francs!" Mademoiselle Gillenormand repeated; "five hundred and eighty-four thousand francs! We may as well say six hundred thousand."
As for Marius and Cosette, they were looking at each other during this period, and hardly paid any attention to this detail.
CHAPTER V.
DEPOSIT YOUR MONEY IN A FOREST RATHER THAN WITH A NOTARY.
Of course our readers have understood, and no lengthened explanation will be required, that Jean Valjean after the Champmathieu affair was enabled by his escape for a few days to come to Paris, and withdraw in time from Laffitte's the sum he had gained under the name of M. Madeleine at M.-sur-M.; and that, afraid of being recaptured, which in fact happened to him shortly after, he buried this sum in the forest of Montfermeil, at the spot called the Blaru bottom. This sum, six hundred and thirty thousand francs, all in bank-notes, occupied but little space, and was contained in a box; but in order to protect the box from damp he placed it in an oak coffer filled with chips of chestnut-wood. In the same coffer he placed his other treasure, the Bishop's candlesticks. It will be remembered that he carried off these candlesticks in his escape from M.-sur-M. The man seen on one previous evening by Boulatruelle was Jean Valjean, and afterwards, whenever Jean Valjean required money, he fetched it from the Blaru clearing, and hence his absences to which we have referred. He had a pick concealed somewhere in the shrubs, in a hiding-place known to himself alone. When he found Marius to be convalescent, feeling that the hour was at hand when this money might be useful, he went to fetch it; and it was also he whom Boulatruelle saw in the wood, but this time in the morning, and not at night. Boulatruelle inherited the pick.
The real sum was five hundred and eighty-four thousand five hundred francs, but Jean Valjean kept back the five hundred francs for himself. "We will see afterwards," he thought. The difference between this sum and the six hundred and thirty thousand francs withdrawn from Laffitte's represented the expenditure of ten years from 1823 to 1833. The five years' residence in the convent had cost only five thousand francs. Jean Valjean placed the two silver candlesticks on the mantel-piece, where they glistened, to the great admiration of Toussaint. Moreover, Jean Valjean knew himself freed from Javert; it had been stated in his presence, and he verified the fact in the Moniteur which had published it, that an Inspector of Police of the name of Javert had been found drowned under a washer-woman's boat between the Pont-au-change and the Pont-Neuf, and that a letter left by this man, hitherto irreproachable and highly esteemed by his chiefs, led to the belief in an attack of dementia and suicide. "In truth," thought Jean Valjean, "since he let me go when he had hold of me, he must have been mad at that time."
CHAPTER VI.
THE TWO OLD MEN, EACH IN HIS FASHION,
DO EVERYTHING FOR COSETTE'S
HAPPINESS.
All preparations were made for the marriage, and the physician, on being consulted, declared that it might take place in February. It was now December; and a few ravishing weeks of perfect happiness slipped away. The least happy man was not the grandfather: he sat for a whole quarter of an hour contemplating Cosette.
"The admirably pretty girl!" he would exclaim, "and she has so soft and kind an air! She is the most charming creature I have ever seen in my life. Presently she will have virtues with a violet scent. She is one of the Graces, on my faith! A man can only live nobly with such a creature. Marius, my lad, you are a baron, you are rich; so do not be a pettifogger, I implore you."
Cosette and Marius had suddenly passed from the sepulchre into paradise: the transition had not been prepared, and they would have been stunned if they had not been dazzled.
"Do you understand anything of all this?" Marius would say to Cosette.
"No," Cosette answered; "but it seems to me as if the good God were looking at us."
Jean Valjean did everything, smoothed everything, conciliated everything, and rendered everything easy. He hurried toward Cosette's happiness with as much eagerness and apparently with as much joy as Cosette herself. As he had been Mayor, he was called to solve a delicate problem, the secret of which he alone possessed,—the civil status of Cosette. To tell her origin openly might have prevented the marriage; but he got Cosette out of all the difficulties. He arranged for her a family of dead people, a sure method of not incurring any inquiry. Cosette was the only one left of an extinct family. Cosette was not his daughter, but the daughter of another Fauchelevent. Two brothers Fauchelevent had been gardeners at the convent of the Little Picpus. They proceeded to this convent; the best testimonials and most satisfactory character were given; for the good nuns, little suited and but little inclined to solve questions of paternity, had never known exactly of which of the two Fauchelevents Cosette was the daughter. They said what was wanted, and said it zealously. An instrument was drawn up by a notary and Cosette became by law Mademoiselle Euphrasie Fauchelevent, and was declared an orphan both on the father's and mother's side. Jean Valjean managed so as to be designated, under the name of Fauchelevent, as guardian of Cosette, with M. Gillenormand as supervising guardian. As for the five hundred and eighty-four thousand francs, they were a legacy left to Cosette by a dead person who wished to remain unknown. The original legacy had been five hundred and ninety-four thousand francs, but ten thousand had been spent in the education of Mademoiselle Euphrasie, five thousand of which had been paid to the convent. This legacy, deposited in the hands of a third party, was to be handed over to Cosette upon her majority, or at the period of her marriage. All this was highly acceptable, as we see, especially when backed up by more than half a million francs. There were certainly a few singular points here and there, but they were not seen, for one of the persons interested had his eyes bandaged by love, and the others by the six hundred thousand francs.
Cosette learned that she was not the daughter of the old man whom she had so long called father; he was only a relation, and another Fauchelevent was her real father. At another moment this would have grieved her, but in the ineffable hour she had now reached it was only a slight shadow, a passing cloud; and she had so much joy that this cloud lasted but a short time. She had Marius. The young man came; the old man disappeared: life is so. And then, Cosette had been accustomed for many long years to see enigmas around her; every being who has had a mysterious childhood is ever ready for certain renunciations. Still she continued to call Jean Valjean "father." Cosette, who was among the angels, was enthusiastic about Father Gillenormand; it is true that he overwhelmed her with madrigals and presents. While Jean Valjean was constructing for Cosette an unassailable position in society, M. Gillenormand attended to the wedding trousseau. Nothing amused him so much as to be magnificent; and he had given Cosette a gown of Binche guipure, which he inherited from his own grandmother. "These fashions spring up again," he said; "antiquities are the great demand, and the young ladies of my old days dress themselves like the old ladies of my youth." He plundered his respectable round-bellied commodes of Coromandel lacquer, which had not been opened for years. "Let us shrive these dowagers," he said, "and see what they have in their paunch." He noisily violated drawers full of the dresses of all his wives, all his mistresses, and all his female ancestry. He lavished on Cosette Chinese satins, damasks, lampas, painted moires, gros de Naples dresses, Indian handkerchiefs embroidered with gold that can be washed, Genoa and Alençon point lace, sets of old jewelry, ivory bonbon boxes adorned with microscopic battles, laces, and ribbons. Cosette, astounded, wild with love for Marius and with gratitude to M. Gillenormand, dreamed of an unbounded happiness, dressed in satin and velvet. Her wedding-basket seemed to her supported by seraphim, and her soul floated in ether with wings of Mechlin lace. The intoxication of the lovers was only equalled, as we stated, by the ecstasy of the grandfather, and there was something like a flourish of trumpets in the Rue des Filles du Calvaire. Each morning there was a new offering of bric-à-brac from the grandfather to Cosette, and all sorts of ornaments were spread out splendidly around her. One day Marius, who not unfrequently talked gravely through his happiness, said, with reference to some incident which I have forgotten,—
"The men of the revolution are so great that they already possess the prestige of centuries, like Cato and like Phocion, and each of them seems a mémoire antique."
"Moire antique!" exclaimed the old gentleman; "thank you, Marius, that is the very idea which I was seeking for."
And on the morrow a splendid tea-colored moire antique dress was added to Cosette's outfit. The grandfather extracted a wisdom from this frippery:—
"Love is all very well, but this is required with it. Something useless is required in happiness; happiness is only what is absolutely necessary, but season it, say I, with an enormous amount of superfluity. A palace and her heart; her heart and the Louvre. Give me my shepherdess, and try that she be a duchess. Bring me Phillis crowned with corn-flowers, and add to her one thousand francs a year. Open for me an endless Bucolic under a marble colonnade. I consent to the Bucolic and also to the fairy scene in marble and gold. Dry happiness resembles dry bread; you eat it, but you do not dine. I wish for superfluity, for the useless, for extravagance, for that which is of no use. I remember to to have seen in Strasburg Cathedral a clock as tall as a three-storied house, which marked the hour, which had the kindness to mark the hour, but did not look as if it was made for the purpose; and which, after striking midday or midnight,—midday, the hour of the sun, and midnight, the hour of love, or any other hour you please,—gave you the moon and the stars, earth and sea, birds and fishes, Phœbus and Phœbe, and a heap of things that came out of a corner, and the twelve apostles, and the Emperor Charles V., and Éponine and Sabinus, and a number of little gilt men who played the trumpet into the bargain, without counting the ravishing chimes which it scattered in the air on every possible occasion, without your knowing why. Is a wretched, naked clock, which only marks the hours, worth that? I am of the opinion of the great clock of Strasburg, and prefer it to the Black Forest cuckoo clock."
M. Gillenormand talked all sorts of nonsense about the marriage, and all the ideas of the eighteenth century passed pell-mell into his dithyrambs.
"You are ignorant of the art of festivals, and do not know how to get up a day's pleasure in these times," he exclaimed. "Your nineteenth century is soft, and is deficient in excess: it is ignorant of what is rich and noble. In everything it is close-shorn. Your third estate is insipid and has no color, smell, or shape. The dream of your bourgeoises, who establish themselves, as they call it, is a pretty boudoir freshly decorated with mahogany and calico. Make way, there! The Sieur Grigou marries the Demoiselle Grippesou. Sumptuousness and splendor. A louis d'or has been stuck to a wax candle. Such is the age. I insist on flying beyond the Sarmatians. Ah, so far back as 1787 I predicted that all was lost on the day when I saw the Due de Rohan, Prince de Léon, Duc de Chabot, Duc de Montbazon, Marquis de Soubise, Vicomte de Thouars, Peer of France, go to Longchamps in a tapecul: that bore its fruits. In this century men have a business, gamble on the Stock Exchange, win money, and are mean. They take care of and varnish their surface: they are carefully dressed, washed, soaped, shaved, combed, rubbed, brushed, and cleaned externally, irreproachable, as polished as a pebble, discreet, trim, and at the same time,—virtue of my soul!—they have at the bottom of their conscience dungheaps and cess-pools, at which a milkmaid who blows her nose with her fingers would recoil. I grant the present age this motto,—dirty cleanliness. Marius, do not be annoyed; grant me the permission to speak, for I have been saying no harm of the people, you see. I have my mouth full of your people, but do let me give the bourgeoisie a pill. I tell you point-blank that at the present day people marry, but no longer know how to marry. Ah, it is true, I regret the gentility of the old manners; I regret it all,—that elegance, that chivalry, that courteous and dainty manner, that rejoicing luxury which every one possessed, the music forming part of the wedding, symphony above and drums beating below stairs, the joyous faces seated at table, the spicy madrigals, the songs, the fireworks, the hearty laugh, the devil and his train, and the large ribbon bows. I regret the bride's garter, for it is first cousin of the girdle of Venus. On what does the siege of Troy turn? Parbleu! on Helen's garter. Why do men fight? Why does the divine Diomedes smash on the head of Merioneus that grand brass helmet with the ten points? Why do Achilles and Hector tickle each other with lances? Because Helen let Paris take her garter. With Cosette's garter Homer would write the Iliad; he would place in his poem an old chatterer like myself, and call him Nestor. My friends, in former times, in those amiable former times, people married learnedly: they made a good contract and then a good merry-making. So soon as Cujas had gone out, Gamacho came in. Hang it all! the stomach is an agreeable beast, that demands its due, and wishes to hold its wedding too. We supped well, and had at table a pretty neighbor without a neckerchief, who only concealed her throat moderately. Oh, the wide laughing mouths, and how gay people were in those days! Youth was a bouquet, every young man finished with a branch of lilac or a posy of roses; if he were a warrior, he was a shepherd, and if by chance he were a captain of dragoons, he managed to call himself Florian. All were anxious to be pretty fellows, and they wore embroidery and rouge. A bourgeois looked like a flower, and a marquis like a precious stone. They did not wear straps, they did not wear boots; they were flashing, lustrous, gilt, light, dainty, and coquettish, but it did not prevent them wearing a sword by their side; they were humming-birds with beak and nails. It was the time of the Indes galantes. One of the sides of that age was delicate, the other magnificent; and, by the vertu-choux! people amused themselves. At the present day they are serious; the bourgeois is miserly, the bourgeoise prudish,—your age is out of shape. The Graces would be expelled because their dresses were cut too low in the neck. Alas! beauty is concealed as an ugliness. Since the revolution all wear trousers, even the ballet girls; a ballet girl must be serious, and your rigadoons are doctrinaire. A man must be majestic, and would feel very much annoyed at not having his chin in his cravat. The idea of a scamp of twenty, who is about to marry, is to resemble Monsieur Royer-Collard. And do you know what people reach by this majesty? They are little. Learn this fact: joy is not merely joyous, it is grand. Be gayly in love; though, hang it all! marry, when you do marry, with fever and amazement and tumult, and a hurly-burly of happiness. Gravity at church, if you will; but so soon as the mass is ended, sarpejeu! you ought to make a dream whirl round your wife. A marriage ought to be royal and chimerical, and parade its ceremony from the Cathedral of Rheims to the Pagoda of Chante-loup. I have a horror of a scrubby marriage. Ventre-goulette! Be in Olympus at least upon that day. Be gods. Ah, people might be sylphs, jests and smiles, Argyraspides, but they are scrubs! My friends, every newly-married man ought to be Prince Aldobrandini. Take advantage of this unique moment of life to fly into the Empyrean with the swans and the eagles, even if you fall back to-morrow into the bourgeoisie of frogs. Do not save upon the hymeneal rites; do not nibble at this splendor, nor split farthings on the day when you are radiant. A wedding is not housekeeping. Oh, if I had my way it should be a gallant affair, and violins should be heard in the trees. Here is my programme: sky-blue and silver. I would mingle in the fête the rustic divinities, and convene the Dryads and the Nereids. The wedding of Amphitrite, a pink cloud, nymphs with their hair carefully dressed and quite nude, an academician offering quatrains to the Deess, a car drawn by marine monsters.
'Triton trottait devant, et tirait de sa conque,
Des sons si ravissants qu'il ravissait quiconque!'
There is a programme for a fête, or I'm no judge, sac à papier!"
While the grandfather, in the heat of his lyric effusion, was listening to himself, Cosette and Marius were intoxicating themselves by looking freely at each other. Aunt Gillenormand regarded all this with her imperturbable placidity; she had, during the last five or six months, a certain amount of emotions; Marius returned, Marius brought back bleeding, Marius brought from a barricade, Marius dead, then living, Marius reconciled, Marius affianced, Marius marrying a poor girl, Marius marrying a millionnaire. The six hundred thousand francs had been her last surprise, and then the indifference of a leading communicant returned to her. She went regularly to her mass, told her beads, read her euchology, whispered in one corner of the house her Aves, while "I love you" was being whispered in another, and saw Marius and Cosette vaguely like two shadows. The shadow was herself. There is a certain state of inert asceticism in which the mind, neutralized by torpor, and a stranger to what might be called the business of living, does not perceive, with the exception of earthquakes and catastrophes, any human impressions, either pleasant or painful. "This devotion," Father Gillenormand would say to his daughter, "resembles a cold in the head; you smell nothing of life, neither a good odor nor a bad one." However, the six hundred thousand francs had settled the old maid's indecision. Her father was accustomed to take her so little into account that he had not consulted her as to the consent to Marius's marriage. He had acted impetuously, according to his wont, having, as a despot who had become a slave, but one thought, that of satisfying Marius. As for the aunt, he had scarce remembered that the aunt existed, and that she might have an opinion of her own, and, sheep though she was, this had offended her. Somewhat roused internally, but externally impassive, she said to herself, "My father settles the marriage question without me, and I will settle the question of the inheritance without him." She was rich, in fact, and her father was not so, and it is probable that if the marriage had been poor she would have left it poor. "All the worse for my nephew! If he chose to marry a beggar, he may be a beggar too." But Cosette's half a million of francs pleased the aunt and changed her feelings with respect to the loving couple; consideration is due to six hundred thousand francs, and it was evident that she could not do otherwise than leave her fortune to these young people, because they no longer required it.
It was arranged that the couple should reside at M. Gillenormand's, and the grandfather insisted on giving them his bed-room, the finest room in the house. "It will make me younger," he declared. "It is an old place. I always had the idea that the wedding should take place in my room." He furnished this room with a heap of old articles of gallantry; he had it hung with an extraordinary fabric which he had in the piece, and believed to be Utrecht, a gold satin ground with velvet auriculas. "It was with that stuff," he said, "that the bed of the Duchess d'Anville à la Rocheguyon was hung." He placed on the mantel-piece a figure in Saxon porcelain carrying a muff on its naked stomach. M. Gillenormand's library became the office which Marius required; for an office, it will be borne in mind, is insisted upon by the council of the order.
CHAPTER VII.
THE EFFECTS OF DREAMING BLENDED WITH HAPPINESS.
The lovers saw each other daily, and Cosette came with M. Fauchelevent. "It is turning things topsy-turvy," said Mademoiselle Gillenormand, "that the lady should come to the gentleman's house to have court paid to her in that way." But Marius's convalescence had caused the adoption of the habit, and the easy-chairs of the Rue des Filles du Calvaire, more convenient for a tête-à-tête than the straw-bottomed chairs of the Rue de l'Homme Armé, had decided it. Marius and M. Fauchelevent saw each other, but did not speak, and this seemed to be agreed on. Every girl needs a chaperon, and Cosette could not have come without M. Fauchelevent; and for Marius, M. Fauchelevent was the condition of Cosette, and he accepted him. In discussing vaguely, and without any precision, political matters as connected with the improvement of all, they managed to say a little more than Yes and No. Once, on the subject of instruction, which Marius wished to be gratuitous and obligatory, multiplied in every form, lavished upon all like light and air, and, in a word, respirable by the entire people, they were agreed, and almost talked. Marius remarked on this occasion that M. Fauchelevent spoke well, and even with a certain elevation of language, though something was wanting. M. Fauchelevent had something less than a man of the world, and something more. Marius, in his innermost thoughts, surrounded with all sorts of questions this M. Fauchelevent, who was to him simple, well-wishing, and cold. At times doubts occurred to him as to his own recollections; he had a hole in his memory, a black spot, an abyss dug by four months of agony. Many things were lost in it, and he was beginning to ask himself whether it was the fact that he had seen M. Fauchelevent, a man so serious and so calm, at the barricade.
This was, however, not the sole stupor which the appearances and disappearances of the past had left in his mind. We must not believe that he was delivered from all those promptings of memory which compel us, even when happy and satisfied, to take a melancholy backward glance. The head which does not turn to effaced horizons contains neither thought nor love. At moments Marius buried his face in his hands, and the tumultuous and vague past traversed the fog which he had in his brain. He saw Mabœuf fall again, he heard Gavroche singing under the grape-shot, and he felt on his lips the coldness of Éponine's forehead; Enjolras, Courfeyrac, Jean Prouvaire, Combeferre, Bossuet, Grantaire, all his friends rose before him, and then disappeared. Were they all dreams, these dear, sorrowful, valiant, charming, and tragic beings? Had they really existed? The riot had robed everything in its smoke, and these great fevers have great dreams. He questioned himself, he felt himself, and had a dizziness from all these vanished realities. Where were they all, then? Was it really true that everything was dead? A fall into the darkness had carried away everything except himself; all this had disappeared as it were behind the curtain of a theatre. There are such curtains which drop on life, and God passes on to the next act. In himself was he really the same man? He, poor, was rich; he, the abandoned man, had a family; he, the desperate man, was going to marry Cosette. He seemed to have passed through a tomb, and to have gone in black and come out white. And in this tomb the others had remained. At certain times all these beings of the past, returning and present, formed a circle round him, and rendered him gloomy. Then he thought of Cosette, and became serene again, but it required no less than this felicity to efface this catastrophe. M. Fauchelevent had almost a place among these vanished beings. Marius hesitated to believe that the Fauchelevent of the barricade was the same as that Fauchelevent in flesh and bone so gravely seated by the side of Cosette. The first was probably one of those nightmares brought to him and carried away by his hours of delirium. However, as their two natures were so far apart, it was impossible for Marius to ask any question of M. Fauchelevent. The idea had not even occurred to him; we have already indicated this characteristic detail. Two men who have a common secret, and who, by a sort of tacit agreement, do not exchange a syllable on the subject, are not so rare as may be supposed. Once, however, Marius made an effort; he turned the conversation on the Rue de la Chanvrerie, and turning to M. Fauchelevent, he said to him,—
"Do you know that street well?"
"What street?"
"The Rue de la Chanvrerie."
"I have never heard the name of that street," M. Fauchelevent said, in the most natural tone in the world.
The answer, which related to the name of the street, and not to the street itself, seemed to Marius more conclusive than it really was.
"Decidedly," he thought, "I must have been dreaming. I had an hallucination. It was some one that resembled him, and M. Fauchelevent was not there."
CHAPTER VIII.
TWO MEN IMPOSSIBLE TO FIND.
The enchantment, great though it was, did not efface other thoughts from Marius's mind. While the marriage arrangements were being made, and the fixed period was waited for, he made some troublesome and scrupulous retrospective researches. He owed gratitude in several quarters; he owed it for his father, and he owed it for himself. There was Thénardier, and there was the stranger who had brought him back to M. Gillenormand's. Marius was anxious to find these two men again, as he did not wish to marry, be happy, and forget them, and feared lest these unpaid debts of honor might cast a shadow over his life, which would henceforth be so luminous. It was impossible for him to leave all these arrears suffering behind him, and he wished, ere he entered joyously into the future, to obtain a receipt from the past. That Thénardier was a villain took nothing from the fact that he had saved Colonel Pontmercy. Thénardier was a bandit for all the world excepting for Marius. And Marius, ignorant of the real scene on the battle-field of Waterloo, did not know this peculiarity, that his father stood to Thénardier in the strange situation of owing him life without owing him gratitude. Not one of the agents whom Marius employed could find Thénardier's trail, and the disappearance seemed complete on that side. Mother Thénardier had died in prison before trial, and Thénardier and his daughter Azelma, the only two left of this lamentable group, had plunged again into the shadow. The gulf of the social unknown had silently closed again upon these beings. No longer could be seen on the surface that quivering, that tremor, and those obscure concentric circles which announce that something has fallen there, and that a grappling-iron may be thrown in.
Mother Thénardier being dead, Boulatruelle being out of the question, Claquesous having disappeared, and the principal accused having escaped from prison, the trial for the trap in the Gorbeau attic had pretty nearly failed. The affair had remained rather dark, and the assize court had been compelled to satisfy itself with two subalterns, Panchaud, alias Printanier, alias Bigrenaille, and Demi-Liard, alias Deux Milliards, who had been condemned, after hearing both parties, to ten years at the galleys. Penal servitude for life was passed against their accomplices who had escaped; Thénardier, as chief and promoter, was condemned to death, also in default. This condemnation was the only thing that remained of Thénardier, casting on this buried name its sinister gleam, like a candle by the side of a coffin. However, this condemnation, by thrusting Thénardier back into the lowest depths through the fear of being recaptured, added to the dense gloom which covered this man.
As for the other, the unknown man who had saved Marius, the researches had at first some result, and then stopped short. They succeeded in finding again the hackney coach which had brought Marius to the Rue des Filles du Calvaire on the night of June 6. The driver declared that on the 6th of June, by the order of a police agent, he had stopped from three P.M. till nightfall on the quay of the Champs Élysées, above the opening of the Great Sewer; that at about nine in the evening the gate of the sewer which looks upon the river-bank opened; that a man came out, bearing on his shoulders another man, who appeared to be dead; that the agent, who was watching at this point, had arrested the living man and seized the dead man; that he, the coachman, had taken "all these people" into his hackney coach; that they drove first to the Rue des Filles du Calvaire and deposited the dead man there; that the dead man was M. Marius, and that he, the coachman, recognized him thoroughly, though he was alive this time; that afterwards they got into his coach again, and a few yards from the gate of the Archives he was ordered to stop; that he was paid in the street and discharged, and the agent took away the other man; that he knew nothing more, and that the night was very dark. Marius, as we said, remembered nothing. He merely remembered that he had been seized from behind by a powerful hand at the moment when he fell backwards from the barricade, and then all was effaced for him. He had only regained his senses when he was at M. Gillenormand's.
He lost himself in conjectures; he could not doubt as to his own identity, but how was it that he, who had fallen in the Rue de la Chanvrerie, had been picked up by the police agent on the bank of the Seine, near the bridge of the Invalides? Some one had brought him from the market district to the Champs Élysées, and how,—by the sewer? Extraordinary devotion! Some one? Who? It was the man whom Marius was seeking. Of this man, who was his saviour, he could find nothing, not a trace, not the slightest sign. Marius, though compelled on this side to exercise a great reserve, pushed on his inquiries as far as the Préfecture of Police, but there the information which he obtained led to no better result than elsewhere. The Préfecture knew less about the matter than the driver of the hackney coach; they had no knowledge of any arrest having taken place at the outlet of the great drain on June 6; they had received no report from the agent about this fact which, at the Préfecture, was regarded as a fable. The invention of this fable was attributed to the driver; for a driver anxious for drink-money is capable of anything, even imagination. The fact, however, was certain, and Marius could not doubt it, unless he doubted his own identity, as we have just said. Everything in this strange enigma was inexplicable; this man, this mysterious man, whom the driver had seen come out of the grating of the great drain, bearing the fainting Marius on his back, and whom the police agent caught in the act of saving an insurgent,—what had become of him? What had become of the agent himself? Why had this agent kept silence? Had the man succeeded in escaping? Had be corrupted the agent? Why did this man give no sign of life to Marius, who owed everything to him? The disinterestedness was no less prodigious than the devotion. Why did this man not reappear? Perhaps he was above reward, but no man is above gratitude. Was he dead? Who was the man? What was he like? No one was able to say: the driver replied, "The night was very dark." Basque and Nicolette in their start had only looked at their young master, who was all bloody. The porter, whose candle had lit up Marius's tragic arrival, had alone remarked the man in question, and this was the description he gave of him: "The man was frightful."
In the hope of deriving some advantage from them for his researches, Marius kept his blood-stained clothes which he wore when he was brought to his grandfather's. On examining the coat it was noticed that the skirt was strangely torn, and a piece was missing. One evening Marius was speaking in the presence of Cosette and Jean Valjean about all this singular adventure, the countless inquiries he had made, and the inutility of his efforts; Monsieur Fauchelevent's cold face offended him, and he exclaimed with a vivacity which had almost the vibration of anger,—
"Yes, that man, whoever he may be, was sublime. Do you know what he did, sir? He intervened like an archangel. He was obliged to throw himself into the midst of the contest, carry me away, open the sewer, drag me off, and carry me. He must have gone more than a league and a half through frightful subterranean galleries, bent and bowed in the darkness, in the sewer, for more than half a league, sir, with a corpse on his back! And for what object? For the sole object of saving that corpse; and that corpse was myself. He said to himself, 'There is, perhaps, a gleam of life left here, and I will risk my existence for this wretched spark!' and he did not risk his existence once, but twenty times! And each step was a danger, and the proof is, that on leaving the sewer he was arrested. Do you know, sir, that this man did all that? And he had no reward to expect. What was I? An insurgent. What was I? A conquered man. Oh! if Cosette's six thousand francs were mine—"
"They are yours," Jean Valjean interrupted.
"Well, then," Marius continued, "I would give them to find that man again."
Jean Valjean was silent.
BOOK VI.
THE SLEEPLESS NIGHT.
CHAPTER I.
FEBRUARY 16, 1833.
The night of February 16 was a blessed night, for it had above its shadow the open sky. It was the wedding-night of Marius and Cosette.
The day had been adorable; it was not the blue festival dreamed of by the grandfather, a fairy scene, with a confusion of cherubim and cupids above the head of the married couple, a marriage worthy of being represented over a door, but it had been sweet and smiling. The fashion of marrying in 1833 was not at all as it is now. France had not yet borrowed from England that supreme delicacy of carrying off a wife, of flying on leaving the church, hiding one's self as if ashamed of one's happiness, and combining the manœuvres of a bankrupt with the ravishment of the Song of Songs. We had not yet understood how chaste, exquisite, and decent it is to jolt one's paradise in a postchaise; to vary the mystery with click-clacks of the whip; to select an inn bed as the nuptial couch, and to leave behind one, at the conventional alcove at so much per night, the most sacred recollection of life, jumbled with the tête-à-têtes of the guard of the diligence and the chamber-maid. In the second half of the nineteenth century, in which we now are, the mayor and his scarf, the priest and his chasuble, the law and God, are no longer sufficient; they must be complemented by the postilion of Lonjumeau; blue jacket with red facings and bell buttons, a leather-bound plate, green leather breeches, oaths to the Norman horses with their knotted tails, imitation gold lace, oil-skin hat, heavy, dusty horses, an enormous whip, and strong boots. France does not carry the elegance to such an extent as to shower on the postchaise, as the English nobility do, old shoes and battered slippers, in memory of Churchill, afterwards Marlborough or Malbrouck, who was assailed on his wedding-day by the anger of an aunt which brought him good luck. Shoes and slippers do not yet form part of our nuptial celebrations; but, patience, with the spread of good taste we shall yet come to it.
In 1833,—it is a century since then,—marriage was not performed at a smart trot; people still supposed at that epoch, whimsically enough, that a marriage is a private and social festival, that a patriarchal banquet does not spoil a domestic solemnity; that gayety, even if it be excessive, so long as it is decent, does no harm to happiness; and finally, that it is venerable and good for the fusion of these two destinies from which a family will issue, to begin in the house, and that the household may have in future the nuptial chamber as a witness; and people were so immodest as to many at home. The wedding took place, then, according to this fashion which is now antiquated, at M. Gillenormand's; and though this affair of marrying is so simple and natural, the publication of the banns, drawing up the deeds, the mayoralty, and the church always cause some complication, and they could not be ready before February 16. Now—we note this detail for the pure satisfaction of being exact—it happened that the 16th was Mardi Gras. There were hesitations and scruples, especially on the part of Aunt Gillenormand.
"A Mardi Gras!" the grandfather exclaimed; "all the better. There is a proverb that,—
'Mariage un Mardi gras
N'aura point d'enfants ingrats.'
All right. Done for the 16th. Do you wish to put it off, Marius?"
"Certainly not," said the amorous youth.
"We'll marry then," said the grandfather.
The marriage, therefore, took place on the 16th, in spite of the public gayety. It rained on that day, but there is always in the sky a little blue patch at the service of happiness, which lovers see, even when the rest of creation are under their umbrellas. On the previous day Jean Valjean had handed to Marius, in the presence of M. Gillenormand, the five hundred and eighty-four thousand francs. As the marriage took place in the ordinary way, the deeds were very simple. Toussaint was henceforth useless to Jean Valjean, so Cosette inherited her, and promoted her to the rank of lady's-maid. As for Jean Valjean, a nice room was furnished expressly for him at M. Gillenormand's, and Cosette had said to him so irresistibly, "Father, I implore you," that she had almost made him promise that he would come and occupy it. A few days before that fixed for the marriage an accident happened to Jean Valjean; he slightly injured the thumb of his right hand. It was not serious, and he had not allowed any one to poultice it, or even see it, not even Cosette. Still, it compelled him to wrap up his hand in a bandage and wear his arm in a sling, and this, of course, prevented him from signing anything. M. Gillenormand, as supervising guardian to Cosette, took his place. We will not take the reader either to the mayoralty or to church. Two lovers are not usually followed so far, and we are wont to turn our back on the drama so soon as it puts a bridegroom's bouquet in its button-hole. We will restrict ourselves to noting an incident which, though unnoticed by the bridal party, marked the drive from the Rue des Filles du Calvaire to St. Paul's Church.
The Rue St. Louis was being repaired at the time, and it was blocked from the Rue du Parc Royal, hence it was impossible for the carriage to go direct to St. Paul's. As they were obliged to change their course, the most simple plan was to turn into the boulevard. One of the guests drew attention to the fact that, as it was Mardi Gras, there would be a block of vehicles. "Why so?" M. Gillenormand asked. "On account of the masks." "Famous," said the grandfather; "we will go that way. These young people are going to marry and see the serious side of life, and seeing the masquerade will be a slight preparation for it." They turned into the boulevard: the first of the wedding carriages contained Cosette and Aunt Gillenormand, M. Gillenormand, and Jean Valjean. Marius, still separated from his bride, according to custom, was in the second. The nuptial procession, on turning out of the Rue des Filles du Calvaire, joined the long file of vehicles making an endless chain from the Madeleine to the Bastille, and from the Bastille to the Madeleine. Masks were abundant on the boulevard: and though it rained every now and then, Paillasse, Pantalon, and Gille were obstinate. In the good humor of that winter of 1833 Paris had disguised itself as Venus. We do not see a Mardi Gras like this now-a-days, for as everything existing is a wide-spread carnival, there is no carnival left. The sidewalks were thronged with pedestrians, and the windows with gazers; and the terraces crowning the peristyles of the theatres were covered with spectators. In addition to the masks, they look at the file—peculiar to Mardi Gras as to Longchamp—of vehicles of every description, citadines, carts, curricles, and cabs, marching in order rigorously riveted to each other by police regulations, and, as it were, running on rails. Any one who happens to be in one of these vehicles is at once spectator and spectacle. Policemen standing by the side of the boulevard kept in place these two interminable files moving in a contrary direction, and watched that nothing should impede the double current of these two streams, one running up, the other down, one towards the Chaussée d'Antin, the other towards the Faubourg St. Antoine. The escutcheoned carriages of the Peers of France and Ambassadors held the crown of the causeway, coming and going freely; and certain magnificent and gorgeous processions, notably the Bœuf Gras, had the same privilege. In this Parisian gayety England clacked his whip, for the post-chaise of Lord Seymour, at which a popular sobriquet was hurled, passed with a great noise.
In the double file, along which Municipal Guards galloped like watch-dogs, honest family arks, crowded with great-aunts and grandmothers, displayed at windows healthy groups of disguised children, Pierrots of seven and Pierrettes of six, ravishing little creatures, feeling that they officially formed part of the public merriment, penetrated with the dignity of their Harlequinade, and displaying the gravity of functionaries. From time to time a block occurred somewhere in the procession of vehicles; one or other of the two side files stopped until the knot was untied, one impeded vehicle sufficing to block the whole line. Then they started again. The wedding carriages were in the file, going towards the Bastille on the right-hand side of the boulevard. Opposite the Rue du Pont-aux-Choux there was a stoppage, and almost at the same moment the file on the other side proceeding towards the Madeleine stopped too. At this point of the procession there was a carriage of masks. These carnages, or, to speak more correctly, these cartloads of masks, are well known to the Parisians; if they failed on Mardi Gras or at mid-Lent, people would say, "There's something behind it. Probably we are going to have a change of Ministry." A heap of Harlequins, Columbines, and Pantaloons jolted above the heads of the passers-by,—all possible grotesques, from the Turk to the savage. Hercules supporting Marquises, fish-fags who would make Rabelais stop his ears, as well as Mænads who would make Aristophanes look down, tow perukes, pink fleshings, three-cornered hats, pantaloons, spectacles, cries given to the pedestrians, hands on hips, bold postures, naked shoulders, masked faces, and unmuzzled immodesty; a chaos of effronteries driven by a coachman in a head-dress of flowers,—such is this institution. Greece felt the want of Thespis' cart, and France needs Vadé's fiacre. All may be parodied, even parody. The Saturnalia, that grimace of antique beauty, by swelling and swelling becomes the Mardi Gras: and the Bacchanal, formerly crowned with vine-leaves, inundated by sunshine, and displaying marble breasts in a divine semi-nudity, is now flabby under the drenched rags of the North, has ended by being called a chie-en-lit.
The tradition of the coaches of masks dates back to the oldest times of the Monarchy. The accounts of Louis XI. allow the Palace steward "twenty sous tournois for three coaches of masquerades." In our time these noisy piles of creatures generally ride in some old coucou the roof of which they encumber, or cover with their tumultuous group a landau the hood of which is thrown back. There are twenty in a carriage intended for six. You see them on the seat, on the front stool, on the springs of the hood, and on the pole, and they even straddle across the lamps. They are standing, lying down, or seated, cross-legged, or with pendent legs. The women occupy the knees of the men, and this wild pyramid is seen for a long distance over the heads of the crowd. These vehicles form mountains of merriment in the midst of the mob, and Collé, Panard, and Piron flow from them enriched with slang, and the fish-fag's catechism is expectorated from above upon the people. This fiacre, which has grown enormous through its burden, has an air of conquest; Hubbub is in front and Hurly-burly behind. People shout in it, sing in it, yell in it, and writhe with happiness in it; gayety roars there, sarcasm flashes, and joviality is displayed like a purple robe; two jades drag in it farce expanded into an apotheosis, and it is the triumphal car of laughter,—a laughter, though, too cynical to be frank, and in truth this laughter is suspicious. It has a mission,—that of verifying the carnival to the Parisians. These fish-fag vehicles, in which some strange darkness is perceptible, cause the philosopher to reflect; there is something of the government in them, and you lay your finger there on a curious affinity between public men and public women. It is certainly a sorry thought, that heaped-up turpitudes give a sum-total of gayety; that a people can be amused by building up ignominy on opprobrium; that spying, acting as a caryatid to prostitution, amuses the mob while affronting it; that the crowd is pleased to see pass on four wheels this monstrous living pile of beings, spangled rags, one half ordure, one half light, who bark and sing; that they should clap their hands at all this shame, and that no festival is possible for the multitude unless the police promenade in its midst these twenty-headed hydras of joy. Most sad this certainly is, but what is to be done? These tumbrels of beribboned and flowered filth are insulted and pardoned by the public laughter, and the laughter of all is the accomplice of the universal degradation. Certain unhealthy festivals disintegrate the people and convert them into populace; but a populace, like tyrants, requires buffoons. The king has Roquelaure, and the people has Paillasse. Paris is the great mad city wherever it is not the great sublime city, and the carnival there is political. Paris, let us confess it, willingly allows infamy to play a farce for its amusement, and only asks of its masters—when it has masters—one thing, "paint the mud for me." Rome was of the same humor; she loved Nero, and Nero was a Titanic débardeur.
Accident willed it, as we have just said, that one of the shapeless groups of masked men and women collected in a vast barouche stopped on the left of the boulevard while the wedding party stopped on the right. The carriage in which the masks were, noticed opposite to it the carriage in which was the bride.
"Hilloh!" said a mask, "a wedding."
"A false wedding," another retorted, "we are the true one."
And, as they were too far off to address the wedding party, and as they also feared the interference of the police, the two masks looked elsewhere. The whole vehicle-load of masquers had plenty of work a moment after, for the mob began hissing it, which is the caress given by the mob to masquerades, and the two masks who had just spoken were obliged to face the crowd with their comrades, and found all the missiles of the market repertory scarce sufficient to reply to the atrocious jaw-lashing from the people. A frightful exchange of metaphors took place between the masks and the crowd. In the mean while two other masks in the same carriage, a Spaniard with an exaggerated nose, an oldish look, and enormous black moustaches, and a thin and very youthful fish-girl, wearing a half-mask, had noticed the wedding also, and while their companions and the spectators were insulting each other, held a conversation in a low voice. Their aside was covered by the tumult and was lost in it. The showers had drenched the open carriage; the February wind is not warm, and so the fish-girl while answering the Spaniard shivered, laughed, and coughed. This was the dialogue, which we translate from the original slang:—
"Look here."
"What is it, pa?"
"Do you see that old man?"
"What old man?"
"There, in the wedding coach, with his arm in a sling."
"Yes. Well?"
"I feel sure that I know him."
"Ah!"
"May my neck be cut, and I never said you, thou, or I, in my life, if I do not know that Parisian."
"To-day Paris is Pantin."
"Can you see the bride by stooping?"
"No."
"And the bridegroom?"
"There is no bridegroom in that coach."
"Nonsense."
"Unless it be the other old man."
"Come, try and get a look at the bride by stooping."
"I can't."
"No matter, that old fellow who has something the matter with his paw, I feel certain I know him."
"And what good will it do you, your knowing him?"
"I don't know. Sometimes!"
"I don't care a curse for old fellows."
"I know him."
"Know him as much as you like."
"How the deuce is he at the wedding?"
"Why, we are there too."
"Where does the wedding come from?"
"How do I know?"
"Listen."
"Well, what is it?"
"You must do something."
"What is it?"
"Get out of our trap and follow that wedding."
"What to do?"
"To know where it goes and what it is. Make haste and get down; run, my daughter, for you are young."
"I can't leave the carriage."
"Why not?"
"I am hired."
"Oh, the devil!"
"I owe the Préfecture my day's work."
"That's true."
"If I leave the carriage, the first inspector who sees me will arrest me. You know that."
"Yes, I know it."
"To-day I am bought by Pharos" (the government).
"No matter, that old fellow bothers me."
"All old men bother you, and yet you ain't a chicken yourself."
"He is in the first carriage."
"Well, what then?"
"In the bride's carriage."
"What next?"
"So he is the father."
"How does that concern me?"
"I tell you he is the father."
"You do nothing but talk about that father."
"Listen."
"Well, what?"
"I can only go away masked, for I am hidden here, and no one knows I am here. But to-morrow there will be no masks, for it is Ash Wednesday, and I run a risk of being nailed. I shall be obliged to go back to my hole, but you are free."
"Not quite."
"Well, more so than I am."
"Well, what then?"
"You must try to find out where that wedding party is going to."
"Going to?"
"Yes."
"Oh, I know."
"Where to, then?"
"To the Cadran Bleu."
"But that is not the direction."
"Well, then! to La Rapée."
"Or elsewhere."
"They can do as they like, for weddings are free."
"That is not the thing. I tell you that you must try to find out for me what that wedding is, and where it comes from."
"Of course! that would be funny. It's so jolly easy to find out a week after where a wedding party has gone to that passed during the Mardi Gras. A pin in a bundle of hay. Is it possible?"
"No matter, you must try. Do you hear, Azelma?"
The two files recommenced their opposite movement on the boulevard, and the carriage of masks lost out of sight that which contained the bride.
CHAPTER II.
JEAN VALJEAN STILL HAS HIS ARM IN A SLING.
To realize one's dream—to whom is this granted? There must be elections for this in heaven; we are the unconscious candidates, and the angels vote. Cosette and Marius had been elected. Cosette, both at the mayoralty and at church, was brilliant and touching. Toussaint, helped by Nicolette, had dressed her. Cosette wore over a skirt of white taffetas her dress of Binche lace, a veil of English point, a necklace of fine pearls, and a crown of orange-flowers; all this was white, and in this whiteness she was radiant. It was an exquisite candor expanding and becoming transfigured in light; she looked like a virgin on the point of becoming a goddess. Marius's fine hair was shining and perfumed, and here and there a glimpse could be caught, under the thick curls, of pale lines, which were the scars of the barricade. The grandfather, superb, with head erect, amalgamating in his toilette and manners all the elegances of the time of Barras, gave his arm to Cosette. He took the place of Jean Valjean, who, owing to his wound, could not give his hand to the bride. Jean Valjean, dressed all in black, followed and smiled.
"Monsieur Fauchelevent," the grandfather said to him, "this is a glorious day, and I vote the end of afflictions and cares. Henceforth there must be no sorrow anywhere. By Heaven! I decree joy! misfortune has no right to exist, and it is a disgrace for the azure of heaven that there are unfortunate men. Evil does not come from man, who, at the bottom, is good; but all human miseries have their capital and central government in hell, otherwise called the Tuileries of the devil. There, I am making demagogic remarks at present! For my part I have no political opinions left; and all I stick to is that men should be rich, that is to say, joyous."
When, at the end of all the ceremonies,—after pronouncing before the mayor and before the priest every yes that is possible, after signing the register at the municipality and in the sacristy, after exchanging rings, after kneeling side by side under the canopy of white moire in the smoke of the censer,—they arrived holding each other by the hand, admired and envied by all. Marius in black, she in white, preceded by the beadle in the colonel's epaulettes, striking the flag-stones with his halbert, between two rows of dazzled spectators, at the church doors which were thrown wide open, ready to get into their carriage, —and then all was over. Cosette could not yet believe it. She looked at Marius, she looked at the crowd, she looked at heaven; it seemed as if she were afraid of awaking. Her astonished and anxious air imparted something strangely enchanting to her. In returning they both rode in the same carriage, Marius seated by Cosette's side, and M. Gillenormand and Jean Valjean forming their vis-à-vis. Aunt Gillenormand had fallen back a step and was in the second carriage. "My children," the grandfather said, "you are now M. le Baron and Madame la Baronne with thirty thousand francs a year." And Cosette, nuzzling against Marius, caressed his ear with the angelic whisper, "It is true, then, my name is Marius and I am Madame Thou." These two beings were resplendent; they had reached the irrevocable and irrecoverable moment, the dazzling point of intersection of all youth and all joy. They realized Jean Prouvaire's line; together they did not number forty years. It was marriage sublimated, and these two children were two lilies. They did not see each other, but contemplated each other. Cosette perceived Marius in a glory, and Marius perceived Cosette upon an altar. And upon this altar, and in this glory, the two apotheoses blending behind a cloud for Cosette and a flashing for Marius, there was the ideal thing, the real thing, the meeting-place of kisses and of sleep, the nuptial pillow.
All the torments they had gone through returned to them in intoxication; it appeared to them as if the griefs, the sleeplessness, the tears, the anguish, the terrors, and the despair, by being converted into caresses and sunbeams, rendered more charming still the charming hour which was approaching; and that their sorrows were so many handmaidens who performed the toilette of joy. How good it is to have suffered! Their misfortunes made a halo for their happiness, and the long agony of their love ended in an ascension. There was in these two souls the same enchantment, tinged with voluptuousness in Marius and with modesty in Cosette. They said to each other in a whisper, "We will go and see again our little garden in the Rue Plumet." The folds of Cosette's dress were upon Marius. Such a day is an ineffable blending of dream and certainty: you possess and you suppose, and you still have time before you to divine. It is an indescribable emotion on that day to be at midday and think of midnight. The delight of these two hearts overflowed upon the crowd, and imparted merriment to the passers-by. People stopped in the Rue St. Antoine, in front of St. Paul's, to look through the carriage-window,—the orange flowers trembling on Cosette's head. Then they returned to the Rue des Filles du Calvaire,—home. Marius, side by side with Cosette, ascended, triumphantly and radiantly, that staircase up which he had been dragged in a dying state. The beggars, collected before the gate and dividing the contents of their purses, blessed them. There were flowers everywhere, and the house was no less fragrant than the church: after the incense the rose. They fancied they could hear voices singing in infinitude; they had God in their hearts; destiny appeared to them like a ceiling of stars; they saw above their heads the flashing of the rising sun. Marius gazed at Cosette's charming bare arm and the pink things which could be vaguely seen through the lace of the stomacher, and Cosette, catching Marius's glance, blushed to the white of her eyes. A good many old friends of the Gillenormand family had been invited, and they thronged round Cosette, outvying one another in calling her Madame la Baronne. The officer, Théodule Gillenormand, now captain, had come from Chartres, where he was stationed, to be present at his cousin's marriage: Cosette did not recognize him. He, on his side, accustomed to be thought a pretty fellow by the women, remembered Cosette no more than any other.