"That's a tough invalid," Gavroche thought. And he could not refrain from clapping his hands, but it was thrown away; it was not heard by the two combatants, who deafened one another, and mingled their breath in the struggle. At length there was a silence, and Montparnasse ceased writhing. Gavroche muttered this aside, "Is he dead?" The worthy man had not uttered a word or given a cry; he rose, and Gavroche heard him say to Montparnasse, "Get up."
Montparnasse did so, but the citizen still held him. Montparnasse had the humiliated and furious attitude of a wolf snapped at by a sheep. Gavroche looked and listened, making an effort to double his eyes with his ears; he was enormously amused. He was rewarded for his conscientious anxiety, for he was able to catch the following dialogue, which borrowed from the darkness a sort of tragic accent. The gentleman questioned, and Montparnasse answered,—
"What is your age?"
"Nineteen."
"You are strong and healthy, why do you not work?"
"It is a bore."
"What is your trade?"
"Idler."
"Speak seriously. Can anything be done for you? What do you wish to be?"
"A robber."
There was a silence, and the old gentleman seemed in profound thought; but he did not loose his hold of Montparnasse. Every now and then the young bandit, who was vigorous and active, gave starts like a wild beast caught in a snare; he shook himself, attempted a trip, wildly writhed his limbs, and tried to escape. The old gentleman did not appear to notice it, and held the ruffian's two arms in one hand with the sovereign indifference of absolute strength. The old man's reverie lasted some time; then, gazing fixedly at Montparnasse, he mildly raised his voice and addressed to him, in the darkness where they stood, a sort of solemn appeal, of which Gavroche did not lose a syllable.
"My boy, you are entering by sloth into the most laborious of existences. Ah! you declare yourself an idler, then prepare yourself for labor. Have you ever seen a formidable machine which is called a rolling-mill? You must be on your guard against it; for it is a crafty and ferocious thing, and if it catch you by the skirt of the coat it drags you under it entirely. Such a machine is indolence. Stop while there is yet time, and save yourself, otherwise it is all over with you, and ere long you will be among the cog-wheels. Once caught, hope for nothing more. You will be forced to fatigue yourself, idler; and no rest will be allowed you, for the iron hand of implacable toil has seized you. You refuse to earn your livelihood, have a calling, and accomplish a duty. It bores you to be like the rest; well, you will be different. Labor is the law, and whoever repulses it as a bore must have it as a punishment. You do not wish to be a laborer, and you will be a slave. Toil only lets you loose on one side to seize you again on the other; you do not wish to be its friend, and you will be its negro. Ah, you did not care for the honest fatigue of men, and you are about to know the sweat of the damned; while others sing you will groan. You will see other men working in the distance, and they will seem to you to be resting. The laborer, the reaper, the sailor, the blacksmith, will appear to you in the light like the blessed inmates of a paradise. What a radiance there is in the anvil! What joy it is to guide the plough, and tie up the sheaf! What a holiday to fly before the wind in a boat! But you, idler, will have to dig and drag, and roll and walk. Pull at your halter, for you are a beast of burden in the service of hell! So your desire is to do nothing? Well, you will not have a week, a day, an hour without feeling crushed. You will not be able to lift anything without agony, and every passing minute will make your muscles crack. What is a feather for others will be a rock for you, and the most simple things will become steep. Life will become a monster around you, and coming, going, breathing, will be so many terrible tasks for you. Your lungs will produce in you the effect of a hundred-pound weight; and going there sooner than here will be a problem to solve. Any man who wishes to go out, merely opens his door and finds himself in the street; but if you wish to go out you must pierce through your wall. What do honest men do to reach the street? They go downstairs; but you will tear up your sheets, make a cord of them fibre by fibre, then pass through your window and hang by this thread over an abyss. And it will take place at night, in the storm, the rain, or the hurricane; and if the cord be too short you will have but one way of descending, by falling—falling haphazard into the gulf, and from any height, and on what? On some unknown thing beneath. Or you will climb up a chimney at the risk of burning yourself; or crawl through a sewer at the risk of drowning. I will say nothing of the holes which must be masked; of the stones which you will have to remove and put back twenty times a day, or of the plaster you must hide under your mattress. A lock presents itself, and the citizen has in his pocket the key for it, made by the locksmith; but you, if you wish to go out, are condemned to make a terrible masterpiece. You will take a double sou and cut it asunder. With what tools? You will invent them; that is your business. Then you will hollow out the interior of the two parts, being careful not to injure the outside, and form a thread all round the edge, so that the two parts may fit closely like a box and its cover. When they are screwed together there will be nothing suspicious to the watchers,—for you will be watched. It will be a double sou, but for yourself a box. What will you place in this box? A small piece of steel, a watch-spring in which you have made teeth, and which will be a saw. With this saw, about the length of a pin, you will be obliged to cut through the bolt of the lock, the padlock of your chain, the bar at your window, and the fetter on your leg. This masterpiece done, this prodigy accomplished, all the miracles of art, skill, cleverness, and patience executed, what will be your reward if you are detected? A dungeon. Such is the future. What precipices are sloth and pleasure! To do nothing is a melancholy resolution, are you aware of that? To live in indolence on the social substance; to be useless, that is to say, injurious,—this leads straight to the bottom of misery. Woe to the man who wishes to be a parasite, for he will be vermin! Ah! it does not please you to work. Ah! you have only one thought, to drink well, eat well, and sleep well. You will drink water; you will eat black bread; you will sleep on a plank, with fetters riveted to your limbs, and feel their coldness at night in your flesh! You will break these fetters and fly; very good. You will drag yourself on your stomach into the shrubs and eat grass like the beasts of the field; and you will be re-captured, and then you will pass years in a dungeon, chained to the wall, groping in the dark for your water-jug, biting at frightful black bread which dogs would refuse, and eating beans which maggots have eaten before you. You will be a wood-louse in a cellar. Ah, ah! take pity on yourself, wretched boy, still so young, who were at your nurse's breast not twenty years ago, and have doubtless a mother still! I implore you to listen to me. You want fine black cloth, polished shoes, to scent your head with fragrant oil, to please bad women, and be a pretty fellow; you will have your hair close shaven, and wear a red jacket and wooden shoes. You want a ring on your finger; and will wear a collar on your neck, and if you look at a woman you will be beaten. And you will go in there at twenty and come out at fifty years of age. You will go in young, red-cheeked, healthy, with your sparkling eyes and all your white teeth, and your curly locks; and you will come out again broken, bent, wrinkled, toothless, horrible, and gray-headed! Ah, my poor boy, you are on the wrong road, and indolence is a bad adviser; for robbery is the hardest of labors. Take my advice, and do not undertake the laborious task of being an idler. To become a rogue is inconvenient, and it is not nearly so hard to be an honest man. Now go, and think over what I have said to you. By the bye, what did you want of me? My purse? Here it is."
And the old man, releasing Montparnasse, placed his purse in his hand, which Montparnasse weighed for a moment; after which, with the same mechanical precaution as if he had stolen it, Montparnasse let it glide gently into the back-pocket of his coat. All this said and done, the old gentleman turned his back and quietly resumed his walk.
"Old humbug!" Montparnasse muttered. Who was the old gentleman? The reader has doubtless guessed. Montparnasse, in his stupefaction, watched him till he disappeared in the gloom, and this contemplation was fatal for him. While the old gentleman retired, Gavroche advanced. He had assured himself by a glance that Father Mabœuf was still seated on his bench, and was probably asleep; then the gamin left the bushes, and began crawling in the shadow behind the motionless Montparnasse. He thus got up to the young bandit unnoticed, gently insinuated his hand into the back-pocket of the fine black cloth coat, seized the purse, withdrew his hand, and crawled back again into the shadow like a lizard. Montparnasse, who had no reason to be on his guard, and who was thinking for the first time in his life, perceived nothing; and Gavroche, when he had returned to the spot where Father Mabœuf was sitting, threw the purse over the hedge and ran off at full speed. The purse fell on Father Mabœuf's foot and awoke him. He stooped down and picked up the purse, which he opened without comprehending anything. It was a purse, with two compartments; in one was some change, in the other were six napoleons. M. Mabœuf, greatly startled, carried the thing to his housekeeper.
"It has fallen from heaven," said Mother Plutarch.
Cosette's sorrow, so poignant and so sharp four or five months previously, had without her knowledge attained the convalescent stage. Nature, spring, youth, love for her father, the gayety of the flowers and birds filtered gradually, day by day and drop by drop, something that almost resembled oblivion into her virginal and young soul. Was the fire entirely extinguished; or were layers of ashes merely formed? The fact is, that she hardly felt now the painful and burning point. One day she suddenly thought of Marius; "Why," she said, "I had almost forgotten him." This same week she noticed, while passing the garden gate, a very handsome officer in the Lancers, with a wasp-like waist, a delightful uniform, the cheeks of a girl, a sabre under his arm, waxed mustaches, and lacquered schapska. In other respects, he had light hair, blue eyes flush with his head, a round, vain, insolent, and pretty face; he was exactly the contrary of Marius. He had a cigar in his mouth, and Cosette supposed that he belonged to the regiment quartered in the barracks of the Rue de Babylone. The next day she saw him pass again, and remarked the hour. From this moment—was it an accident?—she saw him pass nearly every day. The officer's comrades perceived that there was in this badly kept garden, and behind this poor, old-fashioned railing, a very pretty creature who was nearly always there when the handsome lieutenant passed, who is no stranger to the reader, as his name was Théodule Gillenormand.
"Hilloh!" they said to him, "there's a little girl making eyes at you, just look at her."
"Have I the time," the Lancer replied, "to look at all the girls who look at me?"
It was at this identical time that Marius was slowly descending to the abyss, and said, "If I could only see her again before I die!" If his wish had been realized, if he had at that moment seen Cosette looking at a Lancer, he would have been unable to utter a word, but expired of grief. Whose fault would it have been? Nobody's. Marius possessed one of those temperaments which bury themselves in chagrin and abide in it: Cosette was one of those who plunge into it and again emerge. Cosette, however, was passing through that dangerous moment,—the fatal phase of feminine reverie left to itself, in which the heart of an isolated maiden resembles those vine tendrils which cling, according to chance, to the capital of a marble column or to the sign-post of an inn. It is a rapid and decisive moment, critical for every orphan, whether she be poor or rich; for wealth does not prevent a bad choice, and misalliances take place in very high society. But the true misalliance is that of souls; and in the same way as many an unknown young man, without name, birth, or fortune, is a marble capital supporting a temple of grand sentiments and grand ideas, so a man of the world, satisfied and opulent, who has polished boots and varnished words, if we look not at the exterior but at the interior,—that is to say, what is reserved for the wife,—is nought but a stupid log obscurely haunted by violent, unclean, and drunken passions,—the inn sign-post.
What was there in Cosette's soul? Passion calmed or lulled to sleep, love in a floating state; something which was limpid and brilliant, perturbed at a certain depth, and sombre lower still. The image of the handsome officer was reflected on the surface, but was there any reminiscence at the bottom, quite at the bottom? Perhaps so, but Cosette did not know.
A singular incident occurred.
In the first fortnight of April Jean Valjean went on a journey; this, as we know, occurred from time to time at very lengthened intervals, and he remained away one or two days at the most. Where did he go? No one knew, not even Cosette; once only she had accompanied him in a hackney coach, upon the occasion of one of these absences, to the corner of a little lane which was called, "Impasse de la Planchette." He got out there, and the coach carried Cosette back to the Rue de Babylone. It was generally when money ran short in the house that Jean Valjean took these trips. Jean Valjean, then, was absent; and he had said, "I shall be back in three days." At night Cosette was alone in the drawing-room, and in order to while away the time, she opened her piano and began singing to her own accompaniment the song of Euryanthe, "Hunters wandering in the wood," which is probably the finest thing we possess in the shape of music. When she had finished she remained passive. Suddenly she fancied she heard some one walking in the garden. It could not be her father, for he was away; and it could not be Toussaint, as she was in bed, for it was ten o'clock at night. Cosette was near the drawing-room shutters, which were closed, and put her ear to them; and it seemed to her that it was the footfall of a man who was walking very gently. She hurried up to her room on the first floor, opened a Venetian frame in her shutter, and looked out into the garden. The moon was shining bright as day, and there was nobody in it. She opened her window; the garden was perfectly calm, and all that could be seen of the street was as deserted as usual.
Cosette thought that she was mistaken, and she had supposed that she heard the noise. It was an hallucination produced by Weber's gloomy and wonderful chorus, which opens before the mind bewildering depths; which trembles before the eye like a dizzy forest in which we hear the cracking of the dead branches under the restless feet of the hunters, of whom we catch a glimpse in the obscurity. She thought no more of it. Moreover, Cosette was not naturally very timid: she had in her veins some of the blood of the gypsy, and the adventurer who goes about barefooted. As we may remember, she was rather a lark than a dove, and she had a stern and brave temper.
The next evening, at nightfall, she was walking about the garden. In the midst of the confused thoughts which occupied her mind, she fancied she could distinguish now and then a noise like that of the previous night, as if some one were walking in the gloom under the trees not far from her; but she said to herself that nothing so resembles the sound of a footfall on grass as the grating of two branches together, and she took no heed of it,—besides, she saw nothing. She left the "thicket," and had a small grass-plat to cross ere she reached the house. The moon, which had just risen behind her, projected Cosette's shadow, as she left the clump of bushes, upon the grass in front of her, and she stopped in terror. By the side of her shadow the moon distinctly traced on the grass another singularly startling and terrible shadow,—a shadow with a hat on its head. It was like the shadow of a man standing at the edge of the clump a few paces behind Cosette. For a moment she was unable to speak or cry, or call out, or stir, or turn her head; but at last she collected all her courage and boldly turned round. There was nobody; she looked on the ground and the shadow had disappeared. She went back into the shrubs, bravely searched in every corner, went as far as the railings, and discovered nothing. She felt really chilled. Was it again an hallucination? What! two days in succession? One hallucination might pass, but two! The alarming point was, that the shadow was most certainly not a ghost, for ghosts never wear round hats.
The next day Jean Valjean returned, and Cosette told him what she fancied she had seen and heard. She expected to be reassured, and that her father would shrug his shoulders and say, "You are a little goose;" but Jean Valjean became anxious.
"Perhaps it is nothing," he said to her. He left her with some excuse, and went into the garden, where she saw him examine the railings with considerable attention. In the night she woke up. This time she was certain, and she distinctly heard some one walking just under her windows. She walked to her shutter and opened it. There was in the garden really a man holding a large stick in his hand. At the moment when she was going to cry out, the moon lit up the man's face,—it was her father. She went to bed again saying, "He seems really very anxious!" Jean Valjean passed that and the two following nights in the garden, and Cosette saw him through the hole in her shutter. On the third night the moon was beginning to rise later, and it might have been about one in the morning when she beard a hearty burst of laughter, and her father's voice calling her:—
"Cosette!"
She leaped out of bed, put on her dressing-gown, and opened her window; her father was standing on the grass-plat below.
"I have woke you up to reassure you," he said; "look at this,—here's your shadow in the round hat."
And he showed her on the grass a shadow which the moon designed, and which really looked rather like the spectre of a man wearing a round hat. It was an outline produced by a zinc chimney-pot with a cowl, which rose above an adjoining roof. Cosette also began laughing, all her mournful suppositions fell away, and the next morning at breakfast she jested at the ill-omened garden, haunted by the ghost of chimney-pots. Jean Valjean quite regained his ease; as for Cosette, she did not notice particularly whether the chimney-pot were really in the direction of the shadow which she had seen or fancied she saw, and whether the moon were in the same part of the heavens. She did not cross-question herself as to the singularity of a chimney-pot which is afraid of being caught in the act, and retires when its shadow is looked at; for the shadow did retire when Cosette turned round, and she fancied herself quite certain of that fact. Cosette became quite reassured, for the demonstration seemed to her perfect, and the thought left her brain that there could have been any one walking about the garden by night. A few days after, however, a fresh incident occurred.
In the garden, near the railings looking out on the street, there was a stone bench, protected from the gaze of passers-by by a hedge, but it would have been an easy task to reach it by thrusting an arm through the railings and the hedge. One evening in this same month of April, Jean Valjean had gone out, and Cosette, after sunset, was seated on this bench. The wind was freshening in the trees, and Cosette was reflecting; an objectless sorrow was gradually gaining on her, the invincible sorrow which night produces, and which comes perhaps—for who knows?—from the mystery of the tomb which is yawning at the moment. Possibly Fantine was in that shadow.
Cosette rose, and slowly went round the garden, walking on the dew-laden grass and saying to herself through the sort of melancholy somnambulism in which she was plunged: "I ought to have wooden shoes to walk in the garden at this hour; I shall catch cold." She returned to the bench; but at the moment when she was going to sit down, she noticed at the place she had left a rather large stone, which had evidently not been there a moment before. Cosette looked at the stone, asking herself what it meant. All at once the idea that the stone had not reached the bench of itself, that some one had placed it there, and that an arm had been passed through the grating, occurred to her and frightened her. This time it was a real fear, for there was the stone. No doubt was possible. She did not touch it, but fled without daring to look behind her, sought refuge in the house, and at once shuttered, barred, and bolted the French window opening on the steps. Then she asked Toussaint,—
"Has my father come in?"
"No, Miss."
(We have indicated once for all Toussaint's stammering, and we ask leave no longer to accentuate it, as we feel a musical notation of an infirmity to be repulsive.)
Jean Valjean, a thoughtful man, and stroller by night, often did not return till a late hour.
"Toussaint," Cosette continued, "be careful to put up the bars to the shutters looking on the garden, and to place the little iron things in the rings that close them."
"Oh, I am sure I will, Miss."
Toussaint did not fail, and Cosette was well aware of the fact, but she could not refrain from adding,—
"For it is so desolate here."
"Well, that's true," said Toussaint; "we might be murdered before we had the time to say, Ouf! and then, too, master does not sleep in the house. But don't be frightened, Miss. I fasten up the windows like Bastilles. Lone women! I should think that is enough to make a body shudder. Only think! to see men coming into your bedroom and hear them say, 'Be quiet, you!' and then they begin to cut your throat. It is not so much the dying, for everybody dies, and we know that we must do so; but it is the abomination of feeling those fellows touch you; and then their knives are not sharp, perhaps; oh, Lord!"
"Hold your tongue," said Cosette, "and fasten up everything securely."
Cosette, terrified by the drama improvised by Toussaint, and perhaps too by the apparitions of the last week, which returned to her mind, did not even dare to say to her, "Just go and look at the stone laid on the bench;" for fear of having to open the garden gate again, and the men might walk in. She had all the doors and windows carefully closed, made Toussaint examine the whole house from cellar to attic, locked herself in her bedroom, looked under the bed, and slept badly. The whole night through, she saw the stone as large as a mountain and full of caverns. At sunrise—the peculiarity of sunrise is to make us laugh at all our terrors of the night, and our laughter is always proportioned to the fear we have felt—at sunrise, Cosette, on waking, saw her terror like a nightmare, and said to herself: "What could I be thinking about! It was like the steps which I fancied I heard last week in the garden at night! It is like the shadow of the chimney-pot. Am I going to turn coward now?" The sun, which poured through the crevices of her shutters and made the damask curtains one mass of purple, re-assured her so fully that all faded away in her mind, even to the stone.
"There was no more a stone on the bench than there was a man in a round hat in the garden. I dreamed of the stone like the rest."
She dressed herself, went down into the garden, and felt a cold perspiration all over her,—the stone was there. But this only lasted for a moment, for what is terror by night is curiosity by day.
"Nonsense!" she said, "I'll see."
She raised the stone, which was of some size, and there was something under it that resembled a letter; it was an envelope of white paper. Cosette seized it; there was no address on it, and it was not sealed up. Still, the envelope, though open, was not empty, for papers could be seen inside. Cosette no longer suffered from terror, nor was it curiosity; it was a commencement of anxiety. Cosette took out a small quire of paper, each page of which was numbered, and bore several lines written in a very nice and delicate hand, so Cosette thought. She looked for a name, but there was none; for a signature, but there was none either. For whom was the packet intended? Probably for herself, as a hand had laid it on the bench. From whom did it come? An irresistible fascination seized upon her; she tried to turn her eyes away from these pages, which trembled in her hand. She looked at the sky, the street, the acacias all bathed in light, the pigeons circling round an adjoining roof, and then her eye settled on the manuscript, and she said to herself that she must know what was inside it. This is what she read.
The reduction of the Universe to a single being, the expansion of a single being as far as God,—such is love.
Love is the salutation of the angels to the stars.
How sad the soul is when it is sad through love! What a void is the absence of the being who of her own self fills the world! Oh, how true it is that the beloved being becomes God! We might understand how God might be jealous, had not the Father of all evidently made creation for the soul, and the soul for love.
The soul only needs to see a smile in a white crape bonnet in order to enter the palace of dreams.
God is behind everything, but everything conceals God. Things are black and creatures are opaque, but to love a being is to render her transparent.
Certain thoughts are prayers. There are moments when the soul is kneeling, no matter what the attitude of the body may be.
Separated lovers cheat absence by a thousand chimerical things, which, however, have their reality. They are prevented seeing each other, and they cannot write, but they find a number of mysterious ways to correspond. They send to each other the song of birds, the light of the sun, the sighs of the breeze, the rays of the stars, and the whole of creation; and why should they not? All the works of God are made to serve love. Love is sufficiently powerful to interest all nature with its messages.
Oh, Spring, thou art a letter which I write to her.
The future belongs even more to hearts than to minds. Loving is the only thing which can occupy and fill the immensity, for the infinite needs the inexhaustible.
Love is a portion of the soul itself, and is of the same nature as it. Like it, it is the divine spark; like it, it is incorruptible, indivisible, and imperishable. It is a point of fire within us, which is immortal and infinite; which nothing can limit, and nothing extinguish. We feel it burning even in the marrow of our bones, and see its flashing in the depths of the heavens.
Oh, love! adoration! voluptuousness of two minds which comprehend each other, of two hearts which are exchanged, of two glances that penetrate one another! You will come to me, oh happiness, will you not? Walks with her in the solitudes, blest and radiant days! I have dreamed that from time to time hours were detached from the lives of the angels, and came down here to traverse the destinies of men.
God can add nothing to the happiness of those who love, except giving them endless duration. After a life of love, an eternity of love is in truth an augmentation; but it is impossible even for God to increase in its intensity the ineffable felicity which love gives to the soul in this world. God is the fulness of heaven, love is the fulness of man.
You gaze at a star for two motives, because it is luminous and because it is impenetrable. You have by your side a sweeter radiance and greater mystery,—woman.
All of us, whoever we may be, have our respirable beings. If they fail us, air fails us, and we stifle and die. Dying through want of love is frightful, for it is the asphyxia of the soul.
When love has blended and moulded two beings in an angelic and sacred union, they have found the secret of life; henceforth they are only the two terms of the same destiny, the two wings of one mind. Love and soar!
On the day when a woman who passes before you emits light as she walks, you are lost, for you love. You have from that moment but one thing to do; think of her so intently that she will be compelled to think of you.
What love begins can only be completed by God.
True love is in despair, or enchanted by a lost glove or a found handkerchief, and it requires eternity for its devotion and its hopes. It is composed at once of the infinitely great and the infinitely little.
If you are a stone, be a magnet; if you are a plant, be sensitive; if you are a man, be love.
Nothing is sufficient for love. You have happiness and you wish for Paradise. You have Paradise, and you crave for heaven. Oh, ye who love each other, all this is in love, contrive to find it there. Love has, equally with heaven, contemplation, and more than heaven, voluptuousness.
Does she still go to the Luxembourg? No, sir.—Does she attend mass in that church? She does not go there any longer.—Does she still live in this house? She has removed.—Where has she gone to live? She did not leave her address.
What a gloomy thing it is not to know where to find one's soul.
Love has its childishness, and other passions have their littleness. Shame on the passions that makes a man little! Honor to the one which makes him a child!
It is a strange thing, are you aware of it? I am in the night. There is a being who vanished and took heaven with her.
Oh! to lie side by side in the same tomb, hand in hand, and to gently caress a finger from time to time in the darkness, would suffice for my eternity.
You who suffer because you love, love more than ever. To die of love is to live through it.
Love, a gloomy starry transfiguration, is mingled with this punishment, and there is ecstasy in the agony.
Oh, joy of birds! they sing because they have the nest.
Love is the celestial breathing of the atmosphere of Paradise.
Profound hearts, wise minds, take life as God makes it; it is a long trial, an unintelligible preparation for the unknown destiny. This destiny, the true one, begins for man with the first step in the interior of the tomb. Then something appears to him, and he begins to distinguish the definite. The definite, reflect on that word. The living see the infinite, but the definite only shows itself to the dead. In the mean while, love and suffer, hope and contemplate. Woe, alas, to the man who has only loved bodies, shapes, and appearances! Death will strip him of all that. Try to love souls, and you will meet them again.
I have met in the street a very poor young man who was in love. His hat was old, his coat worn, the elbows in holes; the water passed through his shoes, and the stars through his soul.
What a grand thing it is to be loved! What a grander thing still to love! The heart becomes heroic by the might of passion. Henceforth it is composed of nought but what is pure, and is only supported by what is elevated and great. An unworthy thought can no more germinate in it than a nettle on a glacier. The lofty and serene soul, inaccessible to emotions and vulgar passions, soaring above the clouds and shadows of the world,—follies, falsehoods, hatreds, vanities, and miseries,—dwells in the azure of the sky, and henceforth only feels the profound and subterranean heavings of destiny as the summit of the mountains feels earthquakes.
If there were nobody who loved, the sun would be extinguished.
While reading these lines Cosette gradually fell into a reverie, and at the moment when she raised her eyes from the last page the handsome officer passed triumphantly in front of the gate; for it was his hour. Cosette found him hideous. She began gazing at the roll of paper again; it was in an exquisite hand-writing, Cosette thought, all written by the same hand, but with different inks, some very black, others pale, as when ink is put in the stand, and consequently on different days. It was, therefore, a thought expanded on the paper, sigh by sigh, irregularly, without order, without choice, without purpose, accidentally. Cosette had never read anything like it; this manuscript, in which she saw more light than obscurity, produced on her the effect of the door of a shrine left ajar. Each of these mysterious lines flashed in her eyes, and flooded her heart with a strange light. The education which she had received had always spoken to her of the soul, and not of love, much as if a person were to speak of the burning log and say nothing about the flame. This manuscript of fifteen pages suddenly and gently revealed to her the whole of love, sorrow, destiny, life, eternity, the beginning and the end. It was like a hand which opened and threw upon her a galaxy of beams. She felt in these lines an impassioned, ardent, generous, and honest nature, a sacred will, an immense grief and an immense hope, a contracted heart, and an expanded ecstasy. What was the manuscript? A letter. A letter without address, name, or signature, pressing and disinterested, an enigma composed of truths, a love-message fit to be borne by an angel and read by a virgin; a rendezvous appointed off the world, a sweet love-letter written by a phantom to a shadow. It was a tranquil and crushed absent man, who seemed ready to seek a refuge in death, and who sent to his absent love the secret of destiny, the key of life. It had been written with one foot in the grave and the hand in heaven, and these lines, which had fallen one by one on the paper, were what might be called drops of the soul.
And now, from whom could these pages come? Who could have written them? Cosette did not hesitate for a moment,—only from one man, from him! Daylight had returned to her mind and everything reappeared. She experienced an extraordinary joy and a profound agony. It was he! He who wrote to her; he had been there; his arm had been passed through the railings! While she was forgetting him he had found her again! But had she forgotten him? No, never! she was mad to have thought so for a moment; for she had ever loved, ever adored him. The fire was covered, and had smouldered for a while, but, as she now plainly saw, it had spread its ravages, and again burst into a flame which entirely kindled her. This letter was like a spark that had fallen from the other soul into hers; she felt the fire begin again, and she was penetrated by every word of the manuscript. "Oh, yes," she said to herself, "how well I recognize all this! I had read it all already in his eyes."
As she finished reading it for the third time, Lieutenant Théodule returned past the railings, and clanked his spurs on the pavement. Cosette was obliged to raise her eyes, and she found him insipid, silly, stupid, useless, fatuous, displeasing, impertinent, and very ugly. The officer thought himself bound to smile, and she turned away ashamed and indignant; she would have gladly thrown something at his head. She ran away, re-entered the house, and locked herself in her bedroom, to re-read the letter, learn it by heart, and dream. When she had read it thoroughly, she kissed it and hid it in her bosom. It was all over. Cosette had fallen back into the profound seraphic love; the Paradisaic abyss had opened again. The whole day through, Cosette was in a state of bewilderment; she hardly thought, and her ideas were confused in her brain; she could not succeed in forming any conjectures, and she hoped through a tremor, what? Vague things. She did not dare promise herself anything, and she would not refuse herself anything. A pallor passed over her face, and a quiver over her limbs; and she fancied at moments that it was all a chimera, and said to herself, "Is it real?" Then she felt the well-beloved paper under her dress, pressed it to her heart, felt the corners against her flesh, and if Jean Valjean had seen her at that moment he would have shuddered at the luminous and strange joy which overflowed from her eyelids. "Oh, yes," she thought, "it is certainly his! This comes from him for me!" And she said to herself that an intervention of the angels, a celestial accident, had restored him to her. Oh, transfiguration of love! oh, dreams! this celestial accident, this intervention of angels, was the ball of bread cast by one robber to another from the Charlemagne yard to the Lions' den, over the buildings of La Force.
When night came Jean Valjean went out, and Cosette dressed herself. She arranged her hair in the way that best became her, and put on a dress whose body, being cut a little too low, displayed the whole of the neck, and was therefore, as girls say, "rather indecent." It was not the least in the world indecent, but it was prettier than the former fashion. She dressed herself in this way without knowing why. Was she going out? No. Did she expect a visitor? No. She went down into the garden as it grew dark; Toussaint was engaged in her kitchen, which looked out on the back-yard. Cosette began walking under the branches, removing them from time to time with her hand, as some were very low, and thus reached the bench. The stone was still there, and she sat down and laid her beautiful white hand on the stone, as if to caress and thank it. All at once she had that indescribable feeling which people experience even without seeing, when some one is standing behind them. She turned her head and rose,—it was he. He was bareheaded, and seemed pale and thin, and his black clothes could be scarce distinguished. The twilight rendered his glorious forehead livid, and covered his eyes with darkness; and he had, beneath a veil of incomparable gentleness, something belonging to death and night. His face was lit up by the flush of departing day, and by the thoughts of an expiring soul. He seemed as if he were not yet a spectre, but was no longer a man. His hat was thrown among the shrubs a few paces from him. Cosette, though ready to faint, did not utter a cry; she slowly recoiled, as she felt herself attracted, but he did not stir. Through the ineffable sadness that enveloped him she felt the glance of the eyes which she could not see. Cosette, in recoiling, came to a tree, and leaned against it; had it not been for this tree she would have fallen. Then she heard his voice, that voice which she had really never heard before, scarce louder than the rustling of the foliage, as he murmured,—
"Pardon me for being here; my heart is swollen. I could not live as I was, and I have come. Have you read what I placed on that bench? Do you recognize me at all? Do not be frightened at me. Do you remember that day when you looked at me, now so long ago? It was in the Luxembourg garden near the Gladiator, and the days on which you passed before me were June 16 and July 2; it is nearly a year ago. I have not seen you again for a very long time. I inquired of the woman who lets out chairs, and she said that you no longer came there. You lived in the Rue de l'Ouest on the third-floor front of a new house. You see that I know. I followed you, what else could I do? And then you disappeared. I fancied that I saw you pass once as I was reading the papers under the Odéon Arcade, and ran after you, but no, it was a person wearing a bonnet like yours. At night I come here—fear nothing, no one sees me. I come to gaze and be near your windows, and I walk very softly that you may not hear me, for you might be alarmed. The other evening I was behind you; you turned round, and I fled. Once I heard you sing; I was happy. Does it harm you that I should listen to you through the shutters while singing? No, it cannot harm you. You see, you are my angel, so let me come now and then. I believe that I am going to die. If you only knew how I adore you! Forgive me for speaking to you. I know not what I am saying, perhaps I offend you—do I offend you?—"
"Oh, my mother!" said she.
And she sank down as if she were dying. He seized her in his arms and pressed her to his heart, not knowing what he did. He supported her while himself tottering. He felt as if his head were full of smoke; flashes passed between his eye-lashes. His ideas left him; and it seemed to him as if he were accomplishing a religious act, and yet committing a profanation. However, he had not the least desire for this ravishing creature, whose form he felt against his bosom; he was distractedly in love. She took his hand, and laid it on her heart; he felt the paper there, and stammered,—
"You love me, then?"
She answered in so low a voice that it was almost an inaudible breath,—
"Silence! you know I do."
And she hid her blushing face in the bosom of the proud and intoxicated young man. He fell on to the bench, and she by his side. They no longer found words, and the stars were beginning to twinkle. How came it that their lips met? How comes it that the bird sings, the snow melts, the rose opens, May bursts into life, and the dawn grows white behind the black trees on the rustling tops of the hills? One kiss, and that was all. Both trembled and gazed at each other in the darkness with flashing eyes. They neither felt the fresh night nor the cold stone, nor the damp grass, nor the moist soil,—they looked at each other, and their hearts were full of thought. Their hands were clasped without their cognizance. She did not ask him, did not even think of it, how he had managed to enter the garden; for it seemed to her so simple that he should be there. From time to time Marius's knee touched Cosette's knee, and both quivered. At intervals Cosette stammered a word; her soul trembled on her lips like the dewdrop on a flower.
Gradually they conversed, and expansiveness succeeded the silence which is plenitude. The night was serene and splendid above their heads, and these two beings, pure as spirits, told each other everything,—their dreams, their intoxication, their ecstasy, their chimeras, their depressions, how they had adored and longed for each other at a distance, and their mutual despair when they ceased to meet. They confided to each other in an ideal intimacy which nothing henceforth could increase all their most hidden and mysterious thoughts. They told each other, with a candid faith in their illusions, all that love, youth, and the remnant of childhood which they still had, brought to their minds. Their two hearts were poured into each other; so that at the end of an hour the young man had the maiden's soul and the maiden his. They were mutually penetrated, enchanted, and dazzled. When they had finished, when they had told each other everything, she laid her head on his shoulder and asked him,—
"What is your name?"
"Marius," he said; "and yours?"
"Mine is Cosette."
Since 1823, while the public-house at Montfermeil was sinking and gradually being swallowed up, not in the abyss of a bankruptcy, but in the sewer of small debts, the Thénardiers had had two more children, both male. These made five, two daughters and three boys, and they were a good many. The mother had got rid of the latter while still babies by a singular piece of good luck. Got rid of, that is exactly the term, for in this woman there was only a fragment of nature; it is a phenomenon, however, of which there is more than one instance. Like the Maréchale de Lamothe-Houdancourt, the Thénardier was only a mother as far as her daughters, and her maternity ended there. Her hatred of the human race began with her boys; on the side of her sons her cruelty was perpendicular, and her heart had in this respect a dismal steepness. As we have seen, she detested the eldest, and execrated the two others. Why? Because she did. The most terrible of motives and most indisputable of answers is, Because. "I do not want a pack of squalling brats," this mother said.
Let us now explain how the Thénardiers managed to dispose of their last two children, and even make a profit of them. That Magnon, to whom we referred a few pages back, was the same who continued to get an annuity out of old Gillenormand for the two children she had. She lived on the Quai des Célestins, at the corner of that ancient Rue du Petit-Musc, which has done all it could to change its bad reputation into a good odor. Our readers will remember the great croup epidemic, which, thirty-five years ago, desolated the banks of the Seine in Paris, and of which science took advantage to make experiments on a grand scale as to the efficacy of inhaling alum, for which the external application of tincture of iodine has been so usefully substituted in our day. In this epidemic Magnon lost her two boys, still very young, on the same day, one in the morning, the other in the evening. It was a blow, for these children were precious to their mother, as they represented eighty francs a month. These eighty francs were very punctually paid by the receiver of M. Gillenormand's rents, a M. Barge, a retired bailiff who lived in the Rue de Sicile. When the children were dead the annuity was buried, and so Magnon sought an expedient. In the dark free-masonry of evil of which she formed part everything is known, secrets are kept, and people help each other. Magnon wanted two children, and Madame Thénardier had two of the same size and age; it was a good arrangement for one, and an excellent investment for the other. The little Thénardiers became the little Magnons, and Magnon left the Quai des Célestins, and went to live in the Rue Cloche-Perce. In Paris the identity which attaches an individual to himself is broken by moving from one street to the others. The authorities, not being warned by anything, made no objections, and the substitution was effected in the simplest way in the world. Thénardier, however, demanded for this loan of children ten francs a month, which Magnon promised, and even paid. We need not say that M. Gillenormand continued to sacrifice himself, and went every six months to see the children. He did not notice the change. "Oh, sir," Magnon would say to him, "how like you they are, to be sure."
Thénardier, to whom avatars were an easy task, seized this opportunity to become Jondrette. His two daughters and Gavroche had scarcely had time to perceive that they had two little brothers; for in a certain stage of misery people are affected by a sort of spectral indifference, and regard human beings as ghosts. Your nearest relatives are often to you no more than vague forms of the shadow, hardly to be distinguished from the nebulous back-ground of life, and which easily become blended again with the invisible. On the evening of the day when Mother Thénardier handed over her two babes to Magnon, with the well-expressed will of renouncing them forever, she felt, or pretended to feel, a scruple, and said to her husband, "Why, that is deserting one's children!" But Thénardier, magisterial and phlegmatic, cauterized the scruple with this remark, "Jean Jacques Rousseau did better." From scruple the mother passed to anxiety: "But suppose the police were to trouble us? Tell me, Monsieur Thénardier, whether what we have done is permitted?" Thénardier replied: "Everything is permitted. Nobody will see through it out of the blue. Besides, no one has any interest in inquiring closely after children that have not a sou." Magnon was a sort of she-dandy in crime, and dressed handsomely. She shared her rooms, which were furnished in a conventional and miserable way, with a very clever Gallicized English thief. This Englishwoman, a naturalized Parisian, respectable through her powerful and rich connections, who was closely connected with medals of the library and the diamonds of Mademoiselle Mars, was at a later date celebrated in the annals of crime. She was called "Mamselle Miss." The two little ones who had fallen into Magnon's clutches had no cause to complain; recommended by the eighty francs, they were taken care of, like everything which brings in a profit. They were not badly clothed, not badly fed, treated almost like "little gentlemen," and better off with their false mother than the true one. Magnon acted the lady, and never talked slang in their presence. They spent several years there, and Thénardier augured well of it. One day he happened to say to Magnon as she handed him the monthly ten francs, "The 'father' must give them an education."
All at once these two poor little creatures, hitherto tolerably well protected, even by their evil destiny, were suddenly hurled into life, and forced to begin it. An arrest of criminals en masse, like that in the Jondrette garret, being necessarily complicated with researches and ulterior incarcerations, is a veritable disaster for that hideous and occult counter-society which lives beneath public society; and an adventure of this nature produces all sorts of convulsions in this gloomy world. The catastrophe of the Thénardiers was the catastrophe of Magnon. One day, a little while after Magnon had given Éponine the note relating to the Rue Plumet, the police made a sudden descent on the Rue Cloche-Perce. Magnon was arrested, as was Mamselle Miss, and all the inhabitants of the house which were suspected were caught in the haul. The two little boys were playing at the time in the back-yard, and saw nothing of the raid; but when they tried to go in they found the door locked and the house empty. A cobbler whose stall was opposite called to them and gave them a paper which "their mother" had left for them. On the paper was this address, "M. Barge, receiver of rents, No. 8, Rue du Roi de Sicile." The cobbler said to them: "You no longer live here. Go there, it is close by, the first street on your left. Ask your way with that paper." The boys set off, the elder leading the younger, and holding in his hand the paper which was to serve as their guide. It was cold, and his little numbed fingers held the paper badly, and at the corner of a lane a puff of wind tore it from him; and as it was night the boy could not find it again. They began wandering about the streets haphazard.
Spring in Paris is very frequently traversed by sharp, violent breezes which, if they do not freeze, chill. These breezes, which sadden the brightest days, produce exactly the same effect as the blasts of cold wind which enter a warm room through the crevices of a badly closed door or window. It seems as if the gloomy gate of winter has been left ajar, and that the wind comes from there. In the spring of 1832, the period when the first great epidemic of this century broke out in Europe, these breezes were sharper and more cutting than ever, and some door even more icy than that of winter had been left ajar. It was the door of the sepulchre, and the breath of cholera could be felt in these breezes. From a meteorological point of view these cold winds had the peculiarity that they did not exclude a powerful electric tension. Frequent storms, accompanied by thunder and lightning, broke out at this period.
One evening, when these breezes were blowing sharply, so sharply that January seemed to have returned, and the citizens had put on their cloaks again, little Gavroche, still shivering gayly under his rags, was standing as if in ecstasy in front of a hair-dresser's shop in the vicinity of the Orme-Saint Gervais. He was adorned with a woman's woollen shawl, picked up no one knew where, of which he had made a muffler. Little Gavroche appeared to be lost in admiration of a waxen image of a bride, wearing a very low-necked dress, and a wreath of orange-flowers in her hair, which revolved between two lamps, and lavished its smiles on the passers-by; but in reality he was watching the shop to see whether he could not "prig" a cake of soap, which he would afterwards sell for a sou to a barber in the suburbs. He frequently breakfasted on one of these cakes, and he called this style of work, for which he had a talent, "shaving the barbers." While regarding the bride, and casting sheep's eyes on the cake of soap, he growled between his teeth: "Tuesday: this is not Tuesday. Is it Tuesday? Perhaps it is Tuesday; yes, it is Tuesday." What this soliloquy referred to was never known; but if it was to the last time he had dined, it was three days ago, for the present day was a Friday. The barber, in his shop warmed with a good stove, was shaving a customer and taking every now and then a side-glance at this enemy,—this shivering and impudent gamin who had his two hands in his pockets, but his mind evidently elsewhere.
While Gavroche was examining the bride, the window, and the Windsor soap, two boys of unequal height, very decently dressed, and younger than himself, one apparently seven, the other five years of age, timidly turned the handle and entered the shop, asking for something, charity possibly, in a plaintive murmur which was more like a sob than a prayer. They both spoke together, and their words were unintelligible, because sobs choked the voice of the younger boy, and cold made the teeth of the elder rattle. The barber turned with a furious face, and without laying down his razor drove the older boy into the street with his left hand, and the little one with his knee, and closed the door again, saying,—
"To come and chill people for nothing!"
The two lads set out again, crying. A cloud had come up in the mean while, and it began raining, little Gavroche ran up to them, and accosted them thus,—
"What's the matter with you, brats?"
"We don't know where to sleep," the elder replied.
"Is that all?" said Gavroche; "that's a great thing. Is that anything to cry about, simpletons?" And assuming an accent of tender affection and gentle protection, which was visible through his somewhat pompous superiority, he said,—
"Come with me, kids."
"Yes, sir," said the elder boy.
And the two children followed him as they would have done an archbishop, and left off crying. Gavroche led them along the Rue St. Antoine, in the direction of the Bastille, and while going off took an indignant and retrospective glance at the barber's shop.
"That whiting has no heart," he growled; "he's an Englishman."
A girl, seeing the three walking in file, Gavroche at the head, burst into a loud laugh. This laugh was disrespectful to the party.
"Good day, Mamselle Omnibus," Gavroche said to her.
A moment after the hair-dresser returning to his mind, he added,—
"I made a mistake about the brute; he is not a whiting, but a snake. Barber, I'll go and fetch a locksmith, and order him to put a bell on your tail."
This barber had made him aggressive; as he stepped across a gutter, he addressed a bearded portress, worthy to meet Faust on the Brocken, and who was holding her broom in her hand,—
"Madame," he said to her, "I see that you go out with your horse."
And after this he plashed the varnished boots of a passer-by.
"Scoundrel!" the gentleman said furiously. Gavroche raised his nose out of the shawl.
"Have you a complaint to make, sir?"
"Yes, of you," said the gentleman.
"The office is closed," Gavroche remarked. "I don't receive any more complaints to-day."
As he went along the street he noticed a girl of thirteen or fourteen, shivering in a gateway, in such short petticoats that she showed her knees. But the little girl was beginning to get too tall a girl for that. Growth plays you such tricks, and the petticoat begins to become short when nudity grows indecent.
"Poor girl," said Gavroche, "she hasn't even a pair of breeches. Here, collar this."
And taking off all the good wool which he had round his neck he threw it over the thin violet shoulders of the beggar-girl, when the muffler became once again a shawl. The little girl looked at him with an astonished air, and received the shawl in silence. At a certain stage of distress a poor man in his stupor no longer groans at evil, and gives no thanks for kindness. This done,—
"B-r-r!" said Gavroche, colder than Saint Martin, who, at any rate, retained one half his cloak. On hearing this "Brr," the shower, redoubling its passion, poured down; those wicked skies punish good actions.
"Hilloh!" Gavroche shouted, "what's the meaning of this? It is raining again. Bon Dieu! if this goes on, I shall withdraw my subscription."
And he set out again.
"No matter," he said as he took a glance at the beggar-girl crouching under her shawl, "she's got a first-rate skin."
And, looking at the clouds, he cried,—"Sold you are!"
The two children limped after him, and as they passed one of those thick close gratings which indicate a baker's, for bread, like gold, is placed behind a grating, Gavroche turned round.
"By the bye, brats, have you dined?"
"We have had nothing to eat, sir, since early this morning," the elder answered.
"Then you haven't either father or mother?" Gavroche continued magisterially.
"I beg your pardon, sir; we have a pa and a ma, but we don't know where they are."
"Sometimes that is better than knowing," said Gavroche, who was a philosopher in his small way.
"We have been walking about for two hours," the lad continued, "and looked for things at the corners of the streets, but found nothing."
"I know," said Gavroche; "the dogs eat everything."
He resumed after a pause,—
"And so we have lost our authors. We don't know what we have done with them. That isn't right, gamins. It is foolish to mislay grown-up people. Well, one must swig, for all that."
He did not ask them any more questions, for what could be more simple than to have no domicile? The elder of the boys, who had almost entirely recovered the happy carelessness of childhood, made this remark: "It is funny all the same. Mamma said she would take us to look for blessed box, on Palm Sunday. Mamma is a lady who lives with Mamselle Miss."
"Tanflute!" added Gavroche.
He stopped, and for some minutes searched all sorts of corners which he had in his rags: at length he raised his head with an air which only wished to represent satisfaction, but which was in reality triumphant,—
"Calm yourselves, kids; here is supper for three."
And he drew a sou from one of his pockets; without giving the lads time to feel amazed, he pushed them both before him into the baker's shop, and laid his sou on the counter, exclaiming,—
"Garçon, five centimes' worth of bread."
The baker, who was the master in person, took up a loaf and a knife.
"In three pieces, garçon," remarked Gavroche, and he added with dignity,—
"We are three."
And seeing that the baker, after examining the three suppers, had taken a loaf of black bread, he thrust his finger into his nose, with as imperious a sniff as if he had the great Frederick's pinch of snuff on his thumb, and cast in the baker's face this indignant remark,—
"Keksekça?"
Those of our readers who might be tempted to see in this remark of Gavroche's to the baker a Russian or Polish word, or one of the savage cries which the Ioways or the Botocudos hurl at each other across the deserted streams, are warned that this is a word which they (our readers) employ daily, and which signifies, qu'est ce que c'est que cela? The baker perfectly comprehended, and replied,—
"Why, it is bread, very good seconds bread."
"You mean black bread," Gavroche remarked, with a calm and cold disdain. "White bread, my lad; I stand treat."
The baker could not refrain from smiling, and while cutting some white bread gazed at them in a compassionate way which offended Gavroche.
"Well, baker's man," he said, "what is there about us that you measure us in that way?"
When the bread was cut, the baker put the sou in the till, and Gavroche said to the two boys,—
"Grub away."
The boys looked at him in surprise, and Gavroche burst into a laugh.
"Oh, yes, that's true, they don't understand yet, they are so little."
And he continued, "Eat."
At the same time he gave each of them a lump of bread. Thinking that the elder, who appeared to him more worthy of his conversation, merited some special encouragement, and ought to have any hesitation about satisfying his hunger removed, he added, as he gave him the larger lump,—
"Shove that into your gun."
There was one piece smaller than the two others, and he took that for himself. The poor boys, Gavroche included, were starving; while tearing the bread with their teeth, they blocked up the baker's shop, who, now that he was paid, looked at them angrily.
"Let us return to the street," said Gavroche.
They started again in the direction of the Bastille; and from time to time as they passed lighted shops, the younger boy stopped to see what o'clock it was by a leaden watch hung round his neck by a string.
"Well, he is a great fool," said Gavroche.
Then he thoughtfully growled between his teeth, "No matter, if I had kids of my own I would take more care of them than that."
As they were finishing their bread, they reached the corner of that gloomy Rue de Ballet at the end of which the low and hostile wicket of La Force is visible.
"Hilloh, is that you, Gavroche?" some one said.
"Hilloh, is that you, Montparnasse?" said Gavroche.
It was a man who accosted Gavroche, no other than Montparnasse disguised with blue spectacles, but Gavroche was able to recognize him.
"My eye!" Gavroche went on, "you have a skin of the color of a linseed poultice and blue spectacles like a doctor. That's your style, on the word of an old man!"
"Silence," said Montparnasse, "not so loud;" and he quickly dragged Gavroche out of the light of the shops. The two little boys followed mechanically, holding each other by the hand. When they were under the black arch of a gateway, protected from eyes and rain, Montparnasse remarked,
"Do you know where I am going?"
"To the abbey of Go-up-with-regret" (the scaffold), said Gavroche.
"Joker!"
And Montparnasse added,—
"I am going to meet Babet."
"Ah!" said Gavroche, "her name is Babet, is it?"
Montparnasse lowered his voice,—
"It is not a she, but a he."
"I thought he was buckled up."
"He has unfastened the buckle," Montparnasse replied.
And he hurriedly told the boy that on that very morning Babet, while being removed to the Conciergerie, escaped by turning to the left instead of the right in the "police-office passage."
Gavroche admired his skill.
"What a dentist!" said he.
Montparnasse added a few details about Babet's escape, and ended with, "Oh, that is not all."
Gavroche, while talking, had seized a cane which Montparnasse held in his hand; he mechanically pulled at the upper part, and a dagger blade became visible.
"Ah!" he said as he quickly thrust it back, "you have brought your gendarme with you disguised as a civilian."
Montparnasse winked.
"The deuce!" Gavroche continued, "are you going to have a turn-up with the slops?"
"There's no knowing," Montparnasse answered carelessly; "it's always as well to have a pin about you."
Gavroche pressed him.
"What are you going to do to-night?"
Montparnasse again became serious, and said, mincing his words,—
"Some things."
And he suddenly changed the conversation.
"By the bye—"
"What?"
"Something that happened the other day. Just fancy. I meet a bourgeois, and he makes me a present of a sermon, and a purse. I put it in my pocket, a moment later I feel for it, and there was nothing there."
"Only the sermon," said Gavroche.
"But where are you going now?" Montparnasse continued.
Gavroche pointed to his two protégés, and said,—
"I am going to put these two children to bed."
"Where?"
"At my house."
"Have you a lodging?"
"Yes."
"Where?"
"Inside the elephant," said Gavroche.
Montparnasse, though naturally not easy to astonish, could not refrain from the exclamation,—
"Inside the elephant?"
"Well, yes, kekçaa?"
This is another word belonging to the language which nobody reads and everybody speaks; kekçaa signifies, qu'est-ce-que cela a? The gamin's profound remark brought Montparnasse back to calmness and good sense: he seemed to entertain a better opinion of Gavroche's lodgings.
"Ah, yes," he said, "the 'elephant.' Are you comfortable there?"
"Very," Gavroche replied. "Most comfortable. There are no draughts as there are under the bridges."
"How do you get in? Is there a hole?"
"Of course there is, but you have no need to mention it; it's between the front legs, and the police-spies don't know it."
"And you climb in? yes, I understand."
"A turn of the hand, cric crac, it's done; and there's no one to be seen."
After a pause Gavroche added,—
"I shall have a ladder for these young ones."
Montparnasse burst into a laugh.
"Where the devil did you pick up those kids?"
"A barber made me a present of them."
In the mean while Montparnasse had become pensive.
"You recognized me very easily," he said.
He took from his pocket two small objects, which were quills wrapped in cotton, and thrust one into each nostril; they made him quite a different nose.
"That changes you," said Gavroche; "you are not so ugly now, and you ought to keep them in for good."
Montparnasse was a handsome fellow, but Gavroche was fond of a joke.
"Without any humbug," Montparnasse asked; "what do you think of me now?"
It was also a different sound of voice; in a second Montparnasse had become unrecognizable.
"Oh! play Porrichinelle for us!" Gavroche exclaimed.
The two lads, who had heard nothing up to this moment, engaged as they were themselves in thrusting their fingers up their noses, drew nearer on hearing this name, and gazed at Montparnasse with a beginning of joy and admiration. Unhappily Montparnasse was in no humor for jesting; he laid his hand on Gavroche's shoulder, and said, with a stress on each word,—
"Listen to what I tell you, boy; if I were on the spot, with my dog, my knife, and my wife, and you were to offer me ten double sous I would not refuse to work, but we are not at Mardi Gras."[1]
This strange sentence produced a singular effect on the gamin; he turned around sharply, looked with his little bright eyes all around, and noticed a few yards off a policeman with his back turned to them. Gavroche let an "all-right" slip from him, which he at once repressed, and shook Montparnasse's hand.
"Well, good-night," he said; "I am off to my elephant with my brats. Should you happen to want me any night you'll find me there. I lodge in the entresol, and there's no porter; ask for Monsieur Gavroche."
"All right," said Montparnasse.
And they parted, Montparnasse going toward the Grève, and Gavroche toward the Bastille. The youngest boy, dragged on by his brother, whom Gavroche dragged along in his turn, looked round several times to watch "Porrichinelle" go away.
The enigmatical sentence by which Montparnasse informed Gavroche of the presence of the policeman contained no other talisman but the sound dig repeated five or six times under various forms. This syllable, not pronounced separately, but artistically mingled with the words of a sentence, means, "Take care, we cannot speak freely." There was also in Montparnasse's remark a literary beauty which escaped Gavroche's notice, that is, mon dogue, ma dague, et ma digue,—a phrase of the Temple slang greatly in use among the merry-andrews and queues rouges of the great age in which Molière wrote and Callot designed.
Twenty years back there might have been seen in the southeastern corner of the square of the Bastille near the canal dock, dug in the old moat of the citadel-prison, a quaint monument, which has already been effaced from the memory of Parisians, and which should have left some trace, as it was an idea of the "Member of the Institute, Commander-in-Chief of the army of Egypt." We say monument, though it was only a plaster cast; but this cast itself, a prodigious sketch, the grand corpse of a Napoleonic idea which two or three successive puffs of wind carried away each time farther from us, had become historic, and assumed something definitive, which formed a contrast with its temporary appearance. It was an elephant, forty feet high, constructed of carpentry and masonry, bearing on its back a castle which resembled a house, once painted green by some plasterer, and now painted black by the heavens, the rain, and time. In this deserted and uncovered corner of the square the wide forehead of the colossus, its trunk, its tusks, its castle, its enormous back, and its four feet like columns, produced at night upon the starlit sky a surprising and terrible outline. No one knew what it meant, and it seemed a sort of symbol of the popular strength. It was gloomy, enigmatical, and immense; it looked like a powerful phantom visible and erect by the side of the invisible spectre of the Bastille. Few strangers visited this edifice, and no passer-by looked at it. It was falling in ruins, and each season plaster becoming detached from its flanks, made horrible wounds upon it. The "Édiles," as they were called in the fashionable slang, had forgotten it since 1814. It stood there in its corner, gloomy, sickly, crumbling away, surrounded by rotting palings, which were sullied every moment by drunken drivers. There were yawning cracks in its stomach, a lath issued from its tail, and tall grass grew between its legs; and as the level of the square had risen during the last thirty years through that slow and continuous movement which insensibly elevates the soil of great cities, it was in a hollow, and it seemed as if the earth were giving way beneath it. It was unclean, despised, repulsive, and superb; ugly in the eyes of cits, but melancholy in the eyes of the thinker. It had something about it of the ordure which is swept away, and something of the majesty which is decapitated.