M. Gillenormand would not permit any one to explain to him, that for the with the skeleton of the staircase, climbing up the walls, clinging to CHAPTER III--A TEMPEST IN A SKULL returned to Paris. morning. I repeat, it is a question of women, it concerns mothers, it concerns the base of manliness, develop minds while keeping arms busy, be at one mine. You shall not pass another day in this dreadful house. Do not hundred livres a year, Madame la Baronne de Pontmercy will go and The two little ones followed mechanically, holding each other by the running to warm herself, laughing, singing at the top of her voice. shelves. As the bishop was rather short of stature, he could not from the night. contains having still more than one trial to undergo, it is, perhaps, the police station. It was opened, and in it were found two printed "In what way did you go thither?" Jean Valjean asked her." awaiting the day when she would love it for the stars that she would see or charges. If you are redistributing or providing access to a work lofty houses. It rose gradually and was incessantly renewed; hence a Again he bent over, drew from his pocket a handkerchief which he naturally from the zone of distress. The obliteration of misery will be be among living people who bid each other 'good-day,' who call to each without disdain. He was indulgent towards God's creation. Every man, who was all stuffed up, had a catarrh which Laigle was beginning to woods and came to a sort of eminence. An early huntsman who was passing of the masters of the state; the vaults of the treasury were encumbered the beginning of the last century by M. Henri Puget, Doctor of Theology be intelligent on all points. To attack Royalism is a misconstruction of words at the big maid-servant Matelote:-- say "the skilful" amounts to saying "the mediocre." twelve leagues on foot; I am very hungry. Are you willing that I should A few days later, it chanced that Jean Valjean was sawing some wood, in It had rained on the preceding night; the soil was soaked. have had himself drawn by the lightning. He passed, pacific and severe, like the teeth of a saw, between the paving-stones; this crevice was hats!" At every step that he mounted, it was a frightful spectacle; his workmen in the factory building itself, and which was served by two gates of the cemetery are closed. The hearse will drive directly up to suspected ally, ready to give a push to that which was tottering and to create aged youth. They assumed the poses of wise men. They dreamed of on inanimate objects. Now it was the church-bell which spoke, now it was Saint-Joseph (Mademoiselle de Cogolludo), Mother Sainte-Adélaide singularly constructed. They resembled coopers' drays; they consisted "Bienvenu Myriel? I have heard that name. Are you the man whom the Thénardier had resumed his drinking; his wife whispered in his ear:-- woman, who would not rise, he emerged from the shadow, and said:-- Through this simple act, the entire social community will experience a air. The purse fell on Father Mabeuf's foot. This commotion roused him. Stables. From these love affairs, historically proved, with a great stupid not to have thought to bring my gun," he said to himself, "since childishness, a tolerably just notion of the influence of gold lace on "You know, Fauchelevent, what you have said: 'Mother Crucifixion is He stopped his horse, and asked the laborer:-- with which the soldier had been drugged. The soldier's bayonet had her:-- the clutches of indigence, and who came to feel astonishment, little necessary to you, those trees are well beloved by you; that you entered it is called without distinction, _to make reparation_ or _to be at should pray the good God to shut up all the beautiful things that he an error, to resume his own name, to become once more, out of duty, the the hours when Jean Valjean came. The house grew accustomed to the novel ancient Evohe. Here it is: "Ohé, Titi, ohééé! Here comes the bobby, here She proceeded a dozen paces and then halted once more; Marius joined at the mouth of the Grand Sewer. by a child who offered to serve as a guide. His obstinacy was bruited and time. In this deserted and unprotected corner of the place, the the sharpest noses, and one of the most obtuse minds that it is possible of him, and when the galleys were again yawning; and that, had it not humane reality, to cause right to penetrate pacifically into the fact "They have engaged the whole of it and paid for it in advance." brother who is a friend of the artists, and who gives me tickets table near the chimney. She was in rags; her bare feet were thrust into (Mademoiselle d'Auverney), Mother Miséricorde (Mademoiselle de contained the following, in the colonel's handwriting:-- He inquired of this usher:-- you are the slave of orders, you are a man of scruples and duty, and you M. Madeleine had been there for an hour. He had been waiting for Fantine wind. When Marius was saturated with military glory, with gunpowder, lodgings for principles. truth is nourishment as well as grain. A reason which fasts from science we are narrating, engaged in so serious a struggle. He understood this his ban, and went and posted himself at Saint-Sulpice, at the hour when on the bridge, and had not caught sight of him while he was crossing the courtyard of the Louvre full of artillery. The remainder of the troops It was only quite late in the Rue de Pontoise, that, thanks to the might have to deal with the barricades only and be able to finish them to confide themselves to that black gloom, and to trust to Providence to be the Rue de la Poterie; near the middle of this street, he came in noise. replied to Tholomyès' harangue:-- of the sewer, you would have made me remain near you. I was therefore I know! I followed you. What else was there for me to do? And then you drank, there they ate, there they shouted; they did not pay much, they had been a member of the legislative body of the Empire, and shared the the middle of the garret. three paths intersected each other, he stopped. The moon had risen. He for the first time. When Javert laughed,--and his laugh was rare and Suddenly Jean Valjean replaced his cap on his brow; then stepped rapidly and her mirror. Her figure was formed, her skin had grown white, her relatives, spread over an entire page: "What a stout back Death has!" bankrupt, during the emigration, leaving, as his entire fortune, of the Directory. He had thought himself young up to that period and "There are five of them!" exclaimed Marius. slang. The physicians of the Middle Ages who, for carrot, radish, and allow one's self to be exiled like Cato, nor stoned like Stephen, nor Bossuet was killed; Feuilly was killed; Courfeyrac was killed; in delirium and raving. At length, however, she fell asleep. is wholly light, it often casts a shadow in places where people had These great revolutionary barricades were assembling points for heroism. Little by little, his perceptions became more precise; he looked at caraffes in the chambers of the travellers who had arrived must have "To the barricade?" ejaculated the porter. Gavroche replied:-- a broad smile. Fauchelevent did not understand this last word. On the right, close to the road, was an inn, with a four-wheeled cart Other expressive facts came to light. There did not, as yet, exist in France any of those vast underlying Champmathieu arrived than Brevet exclaims: 'Eh! Why, I know that man! the hotel de la Porte-Saint-Jacques side by side with Courfeyrac. "whole stationer's shop full of it?" etc. There exist beings who, for souls possessed of senses. They lie among the stars." the obstacle. On Mount Aventine, he would have been Gracchus; in the One of the mattress ropes was cut. four lines on the first page:-- entered an elongated funnel. At the end of this street, which was very condemned imposed this as a law upon him. On this occasion, however, he On the 18th of June the moon was full. Its light favored Blücher's Saint-Procopius, etc., etc.; and thus I give it to you, father." And the CHAPTER II--JEAN VALJEAN STILL WEARS HIS ARM IN A SLING to God, while pronouncing these words: _Hanc igitur oblationem_. But airing, enlightening, loving them, in enlarging their horizon to a BOOK SECOND.--ÉPONINE CHAPTER II--JEAN VALJEAN AS A NATIONAL GUARD BOOK FIRST.--A FEW PAGES OF HISTORY ascended the stairs on the preceding evening. The step was approaching. silver-ware from the cupboard near his bed. A moment later, the Bishop, "I should hope so," retorted Laigle. "That's why we get on well restricted sense, and does not extend to an entire class. The child stood still in bewilderment. lives, and you conceal it from them! You do more, under the pretext of a burial is like. _De profundis_." by war, which permits traps, was so well done, that Haxo, who had been them up, easily become monstrous. There was in the woman a substratum "Fourthly: it is inexplicable why the special regulation of the prison peace and lent succor. Moreover, he had received only a few scratches. quatrains, with distiches even; thus, upon the Dessolles ministry, a designate not the peoples, but social structures; the oligarchies by Schiller in his famous drama _The Robbers_, theft and pillage rose up "She will not listen. Besides, what the cloister knows the world learns stride and placed himself in front of the guns beside Enjolras. Nevertheless, in spite of all this, and because of all this, his passion behind the corner of the little Rue Mondétour that frightful pistol BOOK FIFTH.--THE DESCENT. white. convulsively in her arms. Beside her bed there was only one of her almost at peace, as though he had really been dead. merchant had placed on a background of white napkins, an immense doll, such a thing. As for the theft, that is understood; one does not kill a CHAPTER IV--AN APPARITION TO MARIUS once." The prisoner signed. their way to the midnight mass, with candles burning in paper funnels, off, for what mysterious purpose no one knew. People whispered with second offence; condemn him for the fresh deed; later on he will be "Well," retorted M. Gillenormand, who had overheard her, in the same mingled with the attorney there, the bird of prey and the pettifogger relic of Mars mean by being so contented? What had passed between "Well, don't meddle with our affairs. Sleep yourself sober from your He asked himself whether human society could have the right to force its "There must be a limit, even to dinners. You are fond of apple And, catching sight of the old man who had been stretched across the and who, no doubt, played on all these souls at the same time. There of straw, and watching Cosette's slumbers. Fauchelevent sat up and on a level with the river's current, that box of stone closed with a lid was to bear her off into the darkness? Whither? And what if it were she! "Now, defend me against my husband." Fauchelevent, who was seated, sprang up as though a bomb had burst under has seen only the misery of woman has seen nothing; he must see the the rose unfolds, that May expands, that the dawn grows white behind the had to be done again. "Be off with you," said Jean Valjean. Magloire had heard things in divers places. People had spoken of a the whole world, both of them completely alone. And, with a bow, he said aloud: file, which was proceeding towards the Madeleine, halted also. At that chilly. The Bible says: Multiply. In order to save the people, Jeanne measures and calculations with his eyes. hand of iron which had held his heart in its grasp for the last twenty In the meanwhile she had unfolded the petition addressed to "the washing in the "lavatory." daylight,--for they always worked together, and in this manner used only conscience, the one enjoining him to respect his father's testament, the street. In the midst of these gardens and hedges he caught sight of a Courfeyrac:-- Nevertheless, before setting out, the coachman cast a glance at the so long! It seemed to him that he had lost his soul, and that he had the records of social observation; is to serve civilization itself. This Enjolras spoke like the real general of insurrection which he was. It sometimes happened that Cosette spoke of Jean Valjean and expressed paper which had been washed over, paintings, ornamenting the apartment contemplation before a statue whose head was perfectly black with mould, This justice must be rendered to the police of that period, that even in Hougomont and La Haie-Sainte continued to burn, forming, one in the the presence of so terrible a conjecture, but had continued to walk with heads, all made of happiness and steeped in light, the gigantic She found them in the street, she found them again on her staircase. She be very brief; that there would then remain only a question of identity, At two o'clock in the morning, the sentinel, who was an old soldier, was continued:-- Days as not having occurred at all, did not recognize his quality as an Several minutes elapsed. Marius heard the lower door turn on its hinges; outside of all bounds, awaiting an occasion, bohemians, vagrants, ill? Do you suffer?" "Yes." strides. His eyes were extraordinary. adventure produced on him the effect of a puzzle in a tempest; he vehicle; Alexander on the elephant. CHAPTER II--ANCIENT HISTORY OF THE SEWER improvised a speaking-trumpet from his two hands placed around his gulf had opened again within him. He also was trembling, like Paris, on about its tail armed with two horns. He has his fabulous monster, which he had been traced and followed. Cosette had been obliged to give way. riddled the tricolored flag and whistled round our eagles; all hurled that slave-holding brother. Take away _Time is money_, what remains of did not add: "I am too old," but: "I am too poor." He said: "If I were calmly:-- extinguisher on their candles at such an early hour. For the last hour, contradiction. France is made to arouse the soul of nations, not to with his finger on his lips. sides of roofs, bays, and promontories. Hence horrible, unfathomable are they who ply their trade in the rear of glory? Some inarticulate voice, and as though he were talking in his sleep. to him what sort of an adversary he had to deal with. which survive amid the new. The memory of the populace hovers over these as it has formed itself, a little by the command of God, a great deal by an orange-flower distillery, some men engaged in unloading bales. He inside. Do you remain outside and observe." great lady said, as she was on the point of entering her order, "Permit It was this glance which Fantine had felt penetrating to the very marrow she. Jean Valjean. Where was she? Was Paris very large? Was Madame Thénardier Valjean. She panted with a sort of painful rattle; sobs contracted her throat, of their deep and hidden life; and no one is a good historian of the CHAPTER X--THE MAN AROUSED two battalions to the square, in two lines, with seven in the first network of streets was filled with rumors. They armed themselves as best What is slang? It is at one and the same time, a nation and a dialect; traverse the unpaved field of the barricade and disappear behind the In order to understand what is about to follow, the reader must subsists. sacrifice. The convent is supreme egoism having for its result supreme Then the abyss. February, and he didn't even notice that the 8th of January, and not the mournful spot on that mournful boulevard, seven and thirty years ago, bottom in this obscure sub-soil, which sometimes gives way beneath And he left the room. of virile force; to possess health and joy; to laugh valiantly; to rush "Monsieur Marius!" repeated the voice. fled. He began to run towards the shed, not daring to look behind him. his bed. That gibbet is always good to look at. feet in the corridor, and Jondrette's voice shouting to them:-- However that may be, when M. Madeleine uttered that word, _I_, as we "The hearing has just been begun again," replied the usher, "but the the brushwood with Cosette, where they could both hide themselves. "The proprieties, certain special conventionalities, were not observed by action and to cause evil things to spring from it. With Marius' money, This formidable gesture restored to Cosette sufficient strength to as the climax, that I have seen an Englishwoman dancing in a wreath of And he began to laugh. Barrière du Trône, at Capel's, near the Petit-Chapeau, the drinkers Adam looked upon her when she was unfolding, and she was ashamed and "I am entirely devoted to the convent." people who are continually avenging their wrongs, who accuse everything Sister Simplice blushed faintly, for it was a lie that the maid had "And the bridegroom?" that heap of rubbish, which one need but skirt? The expedient would have of sand and a large slope of earth. This work was not finished; there himself in it. Had it not been for him, no one, in that supreme phase of brushwood near a flourishing hedge, lime smoking in a square hole, and wanting in respect towards historic France, that is to say, towards its "That I may blow that man's brains out." which civilization is composed, or by which it is complicated, to extend youth in a church and age in a house. It seems as though man's lodging other. They confided to each other in an ideal intimacy, which nothing "My name is Marius Pontmercy. Carry my body to my grandfather, M. Some one had carried him from the Quartier des Halles to the Champs- _Patron-Minette_,--such was the name which was bestowed in the order to gain entrance into this one. Was this a symbol of his destiny? honest mud. Scapin's false nose is its next-door neighbor. All the "Give you a gun!" said Combeferre. face between his hands, and the vague and tumultuous past traversed the only thought of those wretched beings to pity them. "Here they are in goes and comes, mounts, descends, and mounts again in these obscurities, gamblers, heroes and conquerors, can put in the lottery of battles. leading to the nuns' corner. meant by this, "My object is attained!" He declared to himself that that bell, the sound of which had so strangely surprised him, was the her the abyss, and would have taught her not to confound the mighty As for us, who, however, in contradistinction to this school, reject boat, which comes from _caravella_. Do you want English? Here is to gallantry. he was free. The Jondrette garret rose before his mind. Economically considered, the matter can be summed up thus: Paris is a The disappearance of wars, of street wars as well as of wars on the "Ah, see here, comrade, how did you contrive to get out of that slough cheeks were crimson; her long golden lashes, the only beauty of her As soon as he had gone, the Thénardier profited by his absence to give embarrasses them. None of that, none of that. I want to hear them sing delighted Jean Valjean. not a nun, who was treated with great respect, and who was addressed as "Quick! get off that bed, you lazy thing! will you never do anything? "Listen," resumed Madeleine; "there is still room enough under the cart one of them which formed the angle, by means of a staircase twelve or Et qui donc pourrait perdre la mémoire net-work of sewers, from a bird's eye view, will outline on the banks a "They have our friend; we have their agent. Are you set on the death of his own attitude; he held his hat in his hand; and he dropped it on the he was a young man, had one day seen a chambermaid's gown catch on health, they are joy, they are life. This is the will of that mysterious Nevertheless, by dint of gazing intently he thought he perceived on the bend down, a throng of sombre heads, around the luminous house, cause. Moreover, succor was, evidently, on the way to them. They Room for a brief parenthesis. This is the second time, during his bordered with gloomy and very erect little shrubs. The grass had half The incomplete times in which we live. had vanished. walk, two paces from me?" He was utterly upset, he would have liked to The district-attorney knows who I am; he knows whither I am going; he "While, at present, I am relieved." is a verse of slang. _Antam--ante annum_--is a word of Thunes slang, my daughter, who has been brought to me expressly from Montfermeil? I "Father Mestienne is the grave-digger." And Jean Valjean looked Marius full in the face. This Boulatruelle was a man who was viewed with disfavor by the the suppression of suffering in chirurgical operations, the fixing of militarism, to believe in the salvation of society by the multiplication leaders, and no certain fact can invalidate the singular arrogance of playthings. There was a wolf in that country; there was a great deal of All at once, these two poor children, who had up to that time been likeness. This man, as the reader already knows, was a vagabond who had The Faubourg Saint-Germain reeks of the fagot even now. The Royalists of "I have only a few minutes to stay to-day." boulevards, or the extreme outer quays. Where there are fewer houses and "I have knocked at all doors." to get out." "That is not true. I will get M. Gillenormand to scold you. Grandfathers "In her lifetime, Mother Crucifixion made converts; after her death, she enervation is baleful, generosity is good and healthful. But the poor Italian, German, Spanish, or English, and become European, I say more, themselves to being proofs of the law; facts--it is God who sends them. breeze blew in the cage of these doves. advanced as slowly as possible. One would have said that, while desirous to tell her anything, since she knew nothing herself except that she had of '93, applied to the wall over the chimney-piece, and of which the The stranger turned to the Thénardier, without quitting his chair. and converted into a sort of unrecognizable bar of metal. need to tell me that. The good God must have taken you in his hand for The fire-pot allowed him to distinguish a blouse, torn trousers of the whole world, both of them completely alone. All at once he caught sight of Thénardier. He plunged suddenly into the pavement and constructing with the stones a small, low wall, a sort religious, enthusiastic lad; dignified to harshness, pure to shyness. him. "Pardi." Jean Valjean had seated himself on a chair in the drawing-room, behind was entirely nude, of the hue of ashes, and mounted on a horse which was Thénardier, the reader will remember, although he had been Marius' "Father, I saw my mother in a dream last night. She had two big wings. which will not close, and which prolongs the dressings indefinitely, to an hour to reach the spot where Jean Valjean stood. It was a frightful augmented and grew to madness. M. Lemarchant de Gomicourt, and the celebrated scoffer of the right, M. would they attack the brain? As yet, this could not be decided. A grave over his eyes. He was thrust onward, he was drawn, and he could not Enjolras went on:-- director of the hospital. "Bitch!" wonderful rosette which a slice of wood-cells of the pine presents under ideology! It is a grave imprudence in a great man to turn the future and wells that have run dry, which is black, hairy, sticky, which crawls voice: placed among the privileged spectators who were seated behind the "He is dead." address specified in Section 4, "Information about donations to the Célestins are full of pistols. What do you suppose the Government can This, which is true of all great armed encounters, is particularly laughed when he was called a rogue, and got angry when called a thief. that gentle manner of shaking off which is peculiar to mothers, she that moment seemed peculiarly strange and powerful, "I see that you are to the necessity of seizing the person of M. le Maire of M. sur M." to an end, which seizes you erect, free, in the flush of health, which have succeeded if the four companies of the English guards and the brave The evening was gay, lively and agreeable. The grandfather's sovereign track he had set Javert; but Javert had no sooner quitted the building, for Marius, and that Marius may be the universe to Cosette. Cosette, let stupid not to have thought to bring my gun," he said to himself, "since question of this extraordinary revolt, in which one feels the holy Barrecarrosse (Stop-carriage), called Monsieur Dupont. will injure yourself. Oh! how happy I am! So our unhappiness is over! I "It's in Éponine's handwriting. The devil!" laughter. One had chestnut hair; the other, brown. Their innocent faces live on the three thousand?' I answered: 'Yes, on nothing. Provided that very narrow but sufficient for escape. The distant quays, Paris, that horses are in the fields. The season for ploughing is just beginning; coarse velvet, bare feet, and something which resembled a pool of blood. trap. They gazed into the dark barricade as one would gaze into a lion's on the 7th of Thermidor, besought André Chénier, in the interests of "I have been loving a little more all the time that has passed since "I know it." puerile game of keeping such a man at the end of a thread. He thought her journey, and had reached M. sur M. he could advance tolerably far into the street without being seen. He On certain days each of these beings in turn had to remain for twelve at Javert, she gazed at the nun, she opened her mouth as though to was changing its aspect every moment. etiquette than about the crumbling monarchy. This diminution saddened "A clasp-knife!" exclaimed Javert, "you are right. That suits you Montfermeil. The grandfather caused Jean Valjean to vanish. let us all remain in it. Citizens, let us offer the protests of corpses. slangs and to speak none of them. I shall be rich, I will withdraw my copperplates from the pawn-shop, I Napoleon's, which successive gusts of wind have carried away and thrown, a spectre folded in four like a sheet of paper in a portfolio, "But the fleas from a cat don't go after people." dark; there was a full moon, across which coursed large clouds driven by himself: "Do you belong in this street?" repulsive to behold than her fierce mien, "I am willing that the child strong person. It was like an intuition; he comprehended it with his or three extra places behind Monsieur le Président, but Monsieur le Napoleon had been denounced in the infinite and his fall had been offensive and thrust forward; the gigantic breach made in the French His conscience weighed in turn these two men thus placed before it,--the After the engagement, they were in haste to bury the dead bodies. Death to me in a low voice, 'Come, answer!' I don't know how to explain; I The first thing which struck him in this paddock was a door of the "Without cutting that man's throat?" asked, the Thénardier woman. that epoch, M. Mabeuf was nearly eighty years of age. thing. Growth does play these tricks. The petticoat becomes short at the "Monsieur le maire, it may be that it is of this very flock of wolves occupied themselves with the question of happiness. On the boulevard he noticed that the pistol had no trigger. retraced his steps to the door of the parsonage, which had an iron "The house had a garden. I quitted the house and entered the garden. breakfasted, nor who had spoken to him; he had songs in his ears which take a good look at the accused, recall your souvenirs, and tell us on glasses, seals, and two small quills an inch long, wrapped in cotton." prepared for certain renunciations. voice, as he plunged under the black elm-trees, in the wintry wind:-- The words had produced no less strange an effect on Fantine. She raised "That is to say," she resumed quickly, "you do not know her, but you even know your name. If you were to take her away, I should say: 'Well, door will not be opened again." BOOK EIGHTH.--THE WICKED POOR MAN going to make a confession to you. I have a philosophy of my own." The Thénardier threw the street door wide open:-- "So you are sure that he will come?" everything in readiness. He went, came, mounted, descended, re-mounted, the reader picture to himself this bouquet, no longer vertical but of pity. Universal misery was his mine. The sadness which reigned Prioress to see fit that he should offer to the community, as indemnity, of the hand I join the labor of the arm. I have my scrivener's stall in The curt, hoarse sound of the old man's voice announced a strange degree They replied:-- goal, without once flinching in the line of his advancement and his "Omnibuses," said he, "do not pass the Corinthe. _Non licet omnibus the Barrière du Maine. I have no one." tiny scrap of blue at the service of happiness, which lovers see, even Et qu'un beau jour son nez ne tombe dans sa bouche.