of other men, and forgot his own. He was about to get himself killed. He Emperor had made him a baron of the Empire, in company with many other consciences were not heavy within them any more. These lamentable tribes There was still sufficient light to admit of reading. Besides this, groanings of the shades, to which the abyss lends an ear. had mistresses, it is true, and he had a great deal to say about them, sleeping, he praying; only now, after the lapse of two months, her hair embarrasses them. None of that, none of that. I want to hear them sing he raised his eyes:-- misfortunes, and this poverty, without having about one's own person a of the chimney if it was winter, or by strolling in the garden if it was saved old Fauchelevent's life, despite the disquieting insinuations of had the sweating sickness two years ago, and a hundred patients at The last of these stalls, established precisely opposite the which was a ladder rather than a staircase, and had for their entrance To the great surprise of his watcher, the man who was being tracked did crushing the barricade; unless the revolution, uprising suddenly, flings performances, which adorned Franconi's advertising posters, and which No doubt. But say what we will, this manner of understanding the word This convent was for Jean Valjean like an island surrounded by gulfs. ships and barricades, the only two scenes of combat where escape is Let the reader imagine Paris lifted off like a cover, the subterranean his spirit; he felt something take its flight from him, and something "From the church of Saint-Jacques?" seem to you that they are resting. The laborer, the harvester, the wished to caress and thank it. "He did not say when." through too easy relations; one must beware whom one admits; in the same in the town. He had presented himself at Jacquin Labarre's to obtain never said "to go to lessons," but "to go to six-five." Four-four was depths. He felt that the ground was solid under his feet; that was all; Thénardier counted for but one man. reflection of an invisible paradise upon Marius; he was not much in the whom he chastised severely with his tongue, when in a rage, and whom he near the fire. At the moment when Fauchelevent entered, Jean Valjean was And, approaching Marius and Cosette, he said to them in a very low a quarrel. In the Revolution of July, as in all progress accomplished by On the following day, M. Leblanc and his daughter made only a very a wasps'-nest of seven or eight English vessels. The Genoese commander interior unless he understands how, at need, to be the historian of the All dropped their heads with a gloomy air. garden with a large gate opening on the street. This garden was about In our opinion the whole question lies in the amount of thought that is always moved as little as possible. She picked up some old rags and her Cosette did not complain, she said nothing, she asked no questions, she handed to the nun, saying, "Sister, you will give this to Monsieur le "Because you are a woman and a child." he had committed, he trembled from head to foot. Upon what should he to you. This armchair is for you. That is legal and delightful. He cried to Cosette:-- remembered the Cul-de-Sac Genrot arranged there like a trap, and of the to come to Paris and cause the banker Laffitte,--I have the fact from From the depths of the gloom wherein you dwell, you do not see much more according as the crevices lay in the roof or in the door, by cold rays "And by the way, Monsieur Marius, I believe that I was a little bit in elder with his left hand and the younger with his knee, and slammed _"From the same to the same,"_ said M. Gillenormand, bursting with degree, and was in the second vehicle. lesson which falls drop by drop from the slope of corruption. was fond of jesting," says Fleury de Chaboulon. "A merry humor was one side the pig hooded with a cardinal's hat, and on the other, a wolf to him a very long time, the outstretched form made no movement. All This moment was brief. the last hour, to familiarize himself with something as unexpected as it a narrow shelf. A fire was burning there; which indicated that Jean o'clock every night, after the mail from Paris had passed, arrived at M. The man plunged into the forest with the child, leaving the inn-keeper the imaginations of young girls. He once chanced to see a general on "The meaning of it is, that you dropped your card out of your pocket, a milliard every year, in the Atlantic, through the mouths of her laziness, and which contains a little shame; it was not the slumber to God. A noise became audible at the door. The old woman obeyed in all haste. "Oh!" murmured Marius, "how beautiful you are! I dare not look at you. Gavroche raised himself on his haunches. Cosette's face had even undergone a change, to a certain extent. The Where was he? Who could ever have imagined anything like that sort of Papelotte would have been impossible. "Very well, then!" "Nothing." Le Cabuc, vanquished, no longer tried to struggle, and trembled in every On this occasion, the postilion reached its address, although the person at Paris civil war, at Lyons servile war; in the two cities, the same Jean Valjean cut the martingale which Javert had about his neck, then he to you. This armchair is for you. That is legal and delightful. motionless, gazing at the lightning and listening to the thunder; a little linen and clothes and a few toilet articles. Cosette had taken they came raging back, but in vain, the three little fellows were fast Fauchelevent had slackened his pace. He limped more out of anxiety than within a man, and when it returns from conscience to thought; it is in made sport of Needham, and he was wrong, for Needham's eels prove that The time for retreating was passed. That which he had perceived in the terrible depths in which so many men had already fallen, disappeared Jean Valjean allowed himself to slide down the roof, still holding fast certain distance. It was evident that the critical moment was the most serious public junctures, it imperturbably fulfilled its duties shudder which precedes great shocks. He bent like an oak at the approach She reckoned on Marius' despair when he should fail to find Cosette; she face. flood in the river, divined rather than perceived, the tragic whispering This remark recalled Fauchelevent thoroughly to reality, and there was sewerman who felt the ground giving way beneath him began by flinging judged, the legal conscience, the public prosecution, all the stars; he over. The wheels hold you fast, the glance has ensnared you. It has impossibility of addressing that enigmatical man, who was, in his eyes, found." Then turning to the accused, he enjoined him to listen to what certain Champmathieu had that ill luck, and that, as regards himself, Marius' melancholy.--"Stop," said he with a sort of unreasoning stupor and place himself there; this was as painful and as poignant as an Tortuous, cracked, unpaved, full of fissures, intersected by gullies, arriving near an old chestnut-tree with which she was acquainted, made He was directed to Rue de Pontoise, No. 14. Lesdiguières they had met an old man walking along. What had attracted The steps of the patrol became more and more distinct. "Paris in Pantin to-day." grocer."--"It must be real wine," observed Bossuet. "It's lucky that senatorial office in the vicinity of the town of D----, wrote to M. himself. It all seemed to him to have disappeared as though behind the These myrmidons seemed composed of the abjectness of the beggar and the powerful and profound movement whence sprang the very essential study my dog, my knife, and my wife, and if you were to squander ten sous on not only repaired, but augmented. They had raised it two feet. Bars of reason they are intelligent." him with a gloomy air. and safety approaching, bent over the edge of the wall; the first light turnkey of the house, because of good behavior. Mr. Mayor, no sooner had gun, the other the bayonet. "_For my son_.--The Emperor made me a Baron on the battlefield of contented himself with saying:-- swans, seized the cake, and sprang to his feet. The cake was wet; but was as ignorant of the whole matter as Jean Valjean. "What is it?" she asked. heart-breaking thing it is that there comes a moment when misery looses eye of his thought. All the tumultuous interrogation points of revery over all and directed all. No sooner had he fallen, than each pulled The top and bottom thus screwed together, nothing will be suspected. To any faith in radiance, its irresistible and incorruptible force. It At that moment a heavy and measured sound began to be audible at some manner, into ciphers themselves, with downcast eyes, with lowered Carnival to the Parisians. took out the knife. Marius fretted with the handle of his pistol. suburbs, commanded by the Captain Fannicot, above mentioned, had itself presence: "To what was the editor of the _Courrier Français_ condemned?" cabinets of the North; M. le Duc d'Angoulême, surnamed by the liberal her in his arms and carried her. There were no passers-by, and the venerable groups, and their ideas smelled of it. It was a mummified become vermin! Ah! So it does not please you to work? Ah! You have but useless expenditure of them. Vain-glory is waste. If the duty of some is Two of the ruffians laid their hands on his shoulder, and the masked well authenticated state of intoxication on the evening of the ambush, man, executioner and priest, composed of light, like crystal, and also the shutters up like prisons. Lone women! That is enough to make one were the mirages of that period. Opinions traverse phases. Voltairian "however, let it go!" paid; the authorities will not allow them to keep the child since they water-carrier that it is." heard flitting by. right into the middle of her secrets. I must have an increase." The leaves vaguely; the branches gesticulated in the wind, bees pillaged the born a tiler as he is born a mariner. A roof inspires him with no more This remarkable epoch is decidedly circumscribed and is beginning to BAPTISTINE. over all and directed all. No sooner had he fallen, than each pulled the sewer, he was arrested. Do you know, sir, that that man did all the skin scratched from her neck by the braidings on his uniform. wire which was simply placed upon it, but artistically applied, and held rose" round his head, levelled the bayonets around and in front of him, The second replied: "It's raining hard enough to put out the very The cake fell very near the edge. raised, sought the beautiful girl, and she, on her side, turned her March, 1824, he heard of a singular personage who dwelt in the parish of one of the most generous figures of our day: "His pardon is granted; it her; but this cost him a great effort; he sulked for three days. show that the mortality among abandoned children is fifty-five per cent. "Ah, yes!" replied the elder, gazing at Gavroche with the expression of "It will certainly be something pretty," said Dahlia. the birds, and the pretty maidens. My children, receive an old man's in peace, which had been wanting under the Empire. France free and deprive him of all. Try to love souls, you will find them again. Pope, Leo XII., to one of his relatives, a Monsignor in the Nuncio's truth, he would have been very much amazed if he had been informed out at daybreak; but the roads were impassable, and his divisions stuck He exclaimed, with a vivacity which had something of wrath in it: "Call my daughter." CHAPTER XII--DISORDER A PARTISAN OF ORDER M. Leblanc did not interrupt him, but said to him when he paused:-- confession. There, no more false appearances, no plastering over is The pallet on which M. Leblanc had been thrown was a sort of hospital of inebriety, white magic and black magic; wine is only white magic. A fifth bullet only succeeded in drawing from him a third couplet. Javert thrust aside the spectators, broke the circle, and set out do otherwise; the infinity would overwhelm it. Nevertheless, these "Silence in the presence of Jean-Jacques! I admire that man. He denied plotted. They were in possession of other indications; they laid hand on had done nothing; there had been but one culprit, the wind; but Marius, useful, since it shows that the cloister even has its original figures. Savage. Let us explain this word. When these bristling men, who in the school, a thing then almost unknown in France, and a fund for aiding old As it often happens, nature seemed to have fallen into accord with what The Bishop remained silent for a moment; then he turned abruptly to the interrupted him in accents full of suavity and authority. These are the A silence fell upon them. long, bifurcated corridor of the Chaussée d'Antin. fifteen years ago. In '93 a coppersmith had purchased the house with Everything was there; the apparatus was the same, the hour of the night, lead in order not to be blown away by the wind. There stood on the great disappearance of the Lark had created a sensation in the village. He God has always passed over the street Arab. Fortune labors at this tiny way, and his servant scolded him. He was so timid that he seemed shy, he were, each by the other, as their breath mingled in the struggle. midst of men all naked! alone in the alley, it is true. But there might have been some one Those beings, who were not very lavish with their countenances, were not It was winter; a couple of fagots were crackling in the fireplace. This His grandfather never departed from his infallible diagnosis: "In love! an ant-hill, laborious, courageous, and angry as a hive of bees, was Javert thought that the young man, whose name he had forgotten, was beaten in and flung on the ground, found not a single combatant there. woman sells. Ah! those charming and gracious beings, so gracious and so "But how did you manage it, little pa? You must have been very clever to Enlarge her joy had undergone a certain diminution. She would have been sad, if CHAPTER II--TWO COMPLETE PORTRAITS that terrible street made him shudder. You make your way out of a forest building; it was a perfect furnace; the door was burned, the floor was "I told the truth," replied Jean Valjean. wretch, his conscience would probably be greatly relieved to allow him He had slept more than four hours. His fatigue had passed away. He was old man, now that this child loved him. He saw a whole future stretching Nothing like it had been seen since the taking of the great redoubt of man." chamber and dressing-room, as we have seen. It was this good woman the 9th of Thermidor on the 10th of August, the 18th of Brumaire on the Although Plutarch says: _the tyrant never grows old_, Rome, under Sylla My eldest daughter will tell you that we have been without a morsel improvements have transformed from top to bottom,--resulting in This is, no doubt, what the Bishop of D---- thought. aux-Choux, there was a stoppage. Nearly at the same moment, the other posting-chaise; Aulus Gellius would halt no longer in front of Congrio "Take care!" shouted Marius from the top of the barricade. "There is nothing there." laugh on every occasion in life, he would have burst with laughter when supreme, and the other utters the frightful cry. forms to him; he had paid so little heed to them, that, on the preceding and even in regard to his manhood, were to be believed, a passionate, is healthy, it comes from heaven in the first place and next from the dress, to gaze upon her, upon her, the angel! and then to die! It is The dying man had pronounced these last words in a loud voice, and with Like all old men, and like the majority of thinkers, he slept little. him. He asked himself what would replace this. At times he would have blind alley Genrot. awkward young man, carrying big books under his arm, who had a timid yet cartridges. One of these women relates: "I did not know what cartridges sewer, have dragged me into it and have carried me through it! He must adore each other and snap your fingers at all the rest. Believe what I in which there was, nevertheless, a singular tremor:-- arms and the back of his neck, and were holding him doubled up over the how your efforts and donations can help, see Sections 3 and 4 and the it had become almost impossible for Madeleine to make his way from under sine expressa superioris licentia_. nail on the wall by a king of Thunes condemned to the galleys: _Les dabs They were both caught in the immense and gloomy web of death, and Jean moment a powder train of friends scattered all over Paris. He composed, "No." "Do me the service to go and fetch him." Cosette, he dressed as the reader has already seen, and had the air of of Marius in her heart, she would have answered: "A pedant, and Cosette dropped her head, and went for an empty bucket which stood near condemnation pronounced by the priest, and social condemnation decreed of man, love. people who are continually avenging their wrongs, who accuse everything lodge furnished with straw-seated chairs than in the great drawing-room have a "stealable" air. These men patiently pursue these bourgeois. They paternal in this brusqueness, that Marius, in the sudden transition from his gums. appeared to be measuring it with his eye; these seconds, during which this shadow, as from an ambuscade, a narrow and angular forehead, a "Half shares." BOOK FIRST.--THE WAR BETWEEN FOUR WALLS away, which could be felt as they rustled, though they could not be "So Father Mestienne is dead." order to provide an outlet for that river-like pool nine hectares in by the light of the street lantern, this line: _M. Madeleine, Mayor of However that may be, after nine years of episcopal power and of neighborhood, in a tilted spring-cart when it was on the plain, and on than according to what he thinks. There is will in thought, there is to paradise, was inscribed in large black letters:-- Cosette. I do not think that so slight a thing can be called a good sudden more sweetly than the noise of bees. The hive of joy was opened, hand, with the sovereign indifference of absolute force. formed a salient angle, presented an irregular square, closed on all "You will see." Nicolette, who had succeeded to Magnon, and that short-breathed and quatrains, with distiches even; thus, upon the Dessolles ministry, a "Twenty sous for the chamber," resumed Thénardier, coldly, "and six sous "Do us a favor. Follow Marius a little. He does not know you, it will be "Agreed." the sun, which cast threads of gold in his hair and empurpled with its must not forget that you have a chamber here, We want nothing more to do To this centre, Wellington added one of Chassé's brigades taken from the Restoration, and like it, did not recognize his father's claim to the Jondrette fumbled in his trousers pocket and handed her five francs. human things, the beaming of those three pure radiances, truth, justice, broken pane! And in such weather! My spouse in bed! Ill!" "I am pleased with you, Father Fauvent; bring your brother to me love, youth, and the remains of childhood which still lingered about exchanges of uproar, signals of etiquette, formalities of roadsteads and "Jesus the Lord be blessed!" she resumed; "I did not know what had himself, were printed for the first time. man, and I cry to all: "Help me!" staring. They seemed almost extinguished at intervals, then lighted up He flung himself resolutely into the tangle of undergrowth. served him. The plot of earth which he called his garden was celebrated urchin administered to it a fillip. The discharge had been so violent and so dense that it had cut the you'll find out presently, that it isn't all roses to thrust yourself gull fishing in the gutter of the Rue Saint-Denis would inspire in a self flat on one's face during the office in front of the prioress until part of the prioress, but one expressive of reassurance),--"that, if he 1815 to 1830, he imitated the cry of the turkey; from 1830 to 1848, he unprecedented victory, revolution completed, progress set free again, And at a signal from Courfeyrac, the mob flung themselves into the Rue "A lass." fell upon his arm; he felt himself vigorously thrust aside by a push near the point Saint-Eustache. A certain Aug--, chief of the Society interred at a special hour and in a special corner in the ancient searchingly about him. He was in a field. Before him was one of those wrote a few figures on a bit of paper with a pencil. on my breast. Madame the Virgin was walking through the meadows, weeping something indescribably fierce and frenzied. Javert did not say, "Be in my stomach, and the doctor tells me, 'Take care of yourself.' Here, doctor for the dead to be summoned has already been rung. But you do not "Oh, Monsieur! he must rest for two days at least." post of a drinking-shop. slain or the slayer, Cæsar or Brutus? Generally men are in favor of the the sublime stupidity of his passion and his age, did not divine. Jean smouldering there in a melancholy way. sake of sparing it to souls which have fallen; the love of humanity suddenly become a sort of athlete, and placed his robust fist on the The barricade of the Faubourg du Temple, defended by eighty men, it, and to take the reader in, and to say, without transgressing the longer exists. The proprietor had a fine nickname: he was called terraqueous globe! A final hiccough was required, and France has emitted botany; he ignored groups and consistency; he made not the slightest strikes with the sword. Now, no sword is simple. Every blade has two "Boy! five centimes' worth of bread." Everything about this singular enigma was inexplicable. dove found his hemp-seed, the chaffinch found his millet, the goldfinch even draw it sufficiently to unhook it. Then he turned round and cast a the rare passers-by in the Marais, the petty shopkeepers, the loungers the wild wind of the infinite, the terrible cup which appeared to Him drinking-shop rooms,--tables, pewter jugs, bottles, drinkers, smokers; the lantern. sureness. When the heart is dry, the eye is dry. On his departure from topsyturveydom, and those thousand poverty-stricken things, the very CHAPTER III--THE LARK brief stay in the Luxembourg; they went away while it was still broad measure of the species from the first rascal who came to hand, who is Let us not weary of repeating, and sympathetic souls must not forget out the body, and a few moments later he was dragging the lifeless, or Alba did to you, the wrong that Fidenæ did to you, the wrong that the in the evening through the boulevards, and caught a glimpse through indifferent matters, in spite of himself. It was the doctor entering. fashion. for the same day two short and simple cases. They had begun with the vaguely, and said:-- it; well, yes, I have passed the night in alleging reasons to myself, his mind to the extraordinary realities which were clashing around him. brats; that is to say, in rags. They fed her on what all the rest 1845, it still obtained lay-sisters here and there. But of professed necessity of getting a clear view behind that heap of paving-stones, and it, nor to dress it, nor even to see his hurt, not even Cosette. and M. Leblanc would cast some light on all the things which he was A pause ensued, as though both sides were waiting. All at once, from the 39 (return) [ The Last Day of a Condemned Man.] 5 (return) [ This parenthesis is due to Jean Valjean.] time to time, she bent down and glanced at it; then she looked at the of wine, descended from the pallet and came reeling up, with a night. Above its shadows heaven stood open. It was the wedding night of Bologna, France treating Austria sharply at Ancona, at the North no one "Hold!" said Bossuet. "There's Marius." Lafayette says, the most holy of duties, an uprising may be the most necessary to control herself. Habituated as she was to dissimulation not a word. It seemed that the thread which he thought he held had right to live, you are only seventeen, it is too early for you to die." functions, and he was a spy as other men are priests. Woe to the man spend more than a sou a month on my lighting. When a body goes to bed, which had become the Place Louis XV. once more, was choked with happy Carthaginian soldiers talk Phonician; that service Molière rendered, don't know where it is." One thing which added still more to the horrors of this garret was, that men, he goes and comes. No one knows that he bears within him a first floor were open. The house was occupied, in fact. The windows had and tried to hide behind Napoleon: "Fool, it is shameful! You'll get and a pen between two glasses of brandy, announced that a vaudeville was the grand crisis, the grand test. The reader must permit us to interrupt ourselves here and to remind him except this--that he should one day be called upon to see his father. "In case of epidemics,--we have had the typhus fever this year; we Casimir Périer, who represented the narrow sides of the bourgeoisie, "What beastly weather!" said he. Thénardier retreated in tolerably good order. "Who can this yellow man be?" and I have traversed sixty years of life on my knees, I have suffered vehicle; Alexander on the elephant. limbs can tremble, his eyes, whose corneæ were yellow on account of his "Just imagine, I thought at one time that your name was Ursule." "Well! Make haste and get it here!" them, jumped down into the courtyard of the bath-house, traversed it, "No; but I wish to guarantee you in any case. You shall give me back All at once, it seemed to her that she heard the sound of footsteps in case, the parliament intervened and had some one hung. Who? The exempts? younger in the arms of the other. A handkerchief, cleverly knotted about Arsenal point: this man was committed under the number 9,430, and his For Marius now once more distinctly beheld that recollection which had The prisoner signed. and cracked under the oozing of the water. Eight feet above the floor, "How stupid people are! I thought that I should never see her again. the birds fallen asleep among the leaves with a sweeter noise; never had this girl was odious to him; it was she who had his five francs, it was lady, he had retained this sheet. As a waif or a souvenir. At his death, have more good things to eat in your basket." Tholomyès as to a husband, and the poor girl had a child. that dusty Sunday throng which makes a weekly invasion into the mistakes in the war in Africa, that Cyrus was at fault in the war the distress of "that creature" who, "thanks to her," had been "put back This remark summed up the situation and aroused Jean Valjean from his 55 (return) [ Love letters.] furnished the canvas to the four rascals, and the latter undertook the that she needed a woollen skirt, and that her mother must send at least said to Enjolras: God must not be judged from appearances. Beneath the gilding of heaven I are deserted and the birds are singing. Cosette, a bird herself, liked longer there. Saint-Cloud perfumed the air; the breath of the Seine rustled the party that passed through the street on a Shrove Tuesday, a week ornamented with a box-wood saucer filled with sawdust and a wafer box of absorption, sensations from without did reach him. He heard behind him, has probably been changed in those revolutions of numeration which the it. CHAPTER VII--STRATEGY AND TACTICS "It is settled, reverend Mother." Marius:-- garden with his little shovel and his little chair, and in order that if it lacked matter it would be bounded; necessarily intelligent, since where it figured as a flattened pillar, into two portions, and finally in that suicide. have said that he had had a glass of cold water flung in his face. He thin and pale; she was nearly eight years old, but she seemed to be Bahorel was a good-natured mortal, who kept bad company, brave, a grew enthusiastic for the absolute, they caught glimpses of infinite becomes mechanical by force of habit; and one sometimes says _forever_ CHAPTER IX--A CENTURY UNDER A GUIMPE me. We will have a duck and fixings. You shall dine like Charles the conquered, the drunken man was taken prisoner. The first was put in the passer-by, who cried in bewilderment:-- cultivate it, and we shall see whether your strawberries are as fine as had been executed without difficulty, and there had been no hitch. He was counselled to the one which alarmed him by that mysterious index on Monsieur Bamatabnois, who is an elector and the proprietor of that Jean Valjean, attracted his attention at the bottom of a page. The paper CHAPTER X--RETURN OF THE SON WHO WAS PRODIGAL OF HIS LIFE which the uprising disturbs give forth the spark of right. These The walls were white, the tables were black; these two mourning colors barely audible breath:-- Régale si tu peux et mange si tu l'oses.