A little Les Mis Humor

Review: California Musical Theater Production of Les Miserables.

This show was spectacular.  I went in expecting a good show - but I knew it wasn't the Broadway production, or the North American Touring group - so I didn't expect it to be great.  It was.

The staging, the orchestra, and the lighting were perfect.  Really.  It was perfectly staged with great use of set pieces for multiple scenes with nothing seeming out of place.  The orchestra was perfect, volume was great, and I was amazed to hear an orchestra sounding just as good as the 25th Anniversary concert in the O2 in London.  They really were that good.

Director's staging choices: Most of it was perfect, there were only a few moments when I said "that was really awkward."
 1. When Marius and Cosette are singing "A Heart Full of Love" their voices and words sound like they are in rapture while there bodies stand stiffly 6 feet apart and they take one awkward step toward each other every four measures.  It was contrived and didn't work.
 2. I understand the Thenardier's Chop-house is full of whores, vermin and scum.  Did we need to have a couple having sex upstairs for the ENTIRE song "Master of the House?" It wasn't appropriately crass, it was just plain dumb and offensive.

Now - to the on-stage performers.

ValJean - Amazing!  I knew when Peter Lockyer sang the Soliloquy that this was a man who could nail it.  He could put in the emotion without sacrificing the musical quality. He had the ability to sing like Alfie Boe, but could let emotion come through like Hugh Jackman, but without losing the pitch or the sweetness.  I listened in serene ecstasy as Lockyer sang "Bring Him Home,"  it was perfect.  Well done sir!

 







Javert - Couldn't keep up with the tempo.  Andrew Varela sang well; he had the physical presence, but the songs were too fast for him.  He sounded rushed and like he couldn't enunciate well enough at that speed to make it work.  Noble effort - but poorly timed for his talent.










Fantine - Genevieve Leclerc's voice is amazing and she held her own acting.  There were a few awkward blocking moments, but she was convincing, and "I Dreamed a Dream" was felt rather than heard - which is exactly as it should be.  She let the emotion come through her, and I appreciated her sincerity. 










Thenardier - Good, not great.  Timothy Gulan seemed like he remembered every few minutes that he was supposed to more evil, or more humorous.  The rest of the time he was going through the motions.
 









Madame Thenardier - This role has been defined for the last 2 decades by Jenny Galloway.  I have never seen anyone else come close - until Shawna Hamic.  Seriously?  That was incredible!  She is the embodiment of the character, from the book and the musical.  It was perfect, brash, funny, and at all times I thought "That's her! There is no acting, she has become the character."  Bravo Madame.  Bravo!
 








Cosette - Julie Benko did well.  She didn't stand out to me as good or bad, so I say well done.  If you aren't analyzed it means you played the roll so well the story just flowed on perfectly.




 






Marius - Devin Ilaw's voice was perfectly boyish and infatuated.  This will sound odd - but my only complaint was over enunciation.  He said and sang the words so exactly that it sounded odd, not like a young revolutionary with passion and abandon.  He had energy, and when he said "I'm doing everything all wrong" I cracked up - he did it perfectly.

 








Eponine:  Wow.  I've had trouble deciding who I liked better - Lea Salonga or Samantha Barks.  Well, Briana Carlson-Goodman just gave them a run for their money.  She sang "On My Own" with passion, grief, and sweetness.  Her death scene was perfect - sung in physical pain but emotional tranquility.  My only complaint was her blending - when singing with the Company or in the trio, she didn't blend well with the others.
 

 







Enjolras - Jason Forbach held his own.  That is a difficult role to sing and he did it better than Michael Maguire, but not as well as Ramin Karimloo. 










Young Cosette - Castle on a Cloud was stunning.  Well done Erin Cearlock.




 


 







Gavroche - Julian Silva was a perfect little Gamin.  He had the smiles, the winks, the great physicality and personality to make it all work.  He stood up to Javert and his last song was as heartbreaking as it could be.

 

 





Grantaire - This character finally had a memorable role when performed in the 25th Anniversary concert by Hadley Fraser.  This production had Joseph Spieldenner - he sang well, but missed a chance to make a name for himself. He was sadly, forgettable.

Overall Grade A-  

It was thoroughly enjoyable, but a few poor choices detracted from a wonderfully staged show.

Why Les Miserables Matters

Les Miserables is about belief, faith, and conversion. It is about moments of Crisis that test us and try us.

Do you live what you profess? What would it take to change your mind? Can people change? What is worth living for? What is worth dying for?

These are the themes of Les Miserables. Each main character must face a moment when their view on life, their professed reason for happiness, is challenged.

THE BISHOP:

The story begins with an old Bishop. He gives up the large church to make it a hospital, and moves his alter and house into the old small hospital. He helps the poor, the needy, and never keeps anything nice or expensive for himself, except a nice set of silver dinnerware.

Along comes a poor convict – fresh out of prison. The Bishop gives the man dinner on his silver, lets him sleep on a feather bed, and calls him “brother.”
The convict steals all the silverware from the cupboard. He runs away in the night and is caught by the gendarmes and brought back to the Bishop.

The bishop has always professed to be a forgiving man of God. He lives a poor simple life, but has somehow kept this silver all along. Will he still be forgiving to a man that betrayed his trust and mocked his hospitality? Will he still keep his little guilty pleasure – the silver, or will he give it up, and forgive the convict? Where does his happiness lie? Is it in Justice or Mercy?

THE MOTHER:

She falls in love. She is in the prime of her youth and can’t imagine a better life. Then her wealthy boyfriend abandons her one day and she is left alone, pregnant, with no employment. She passes a woman on the street who had two daughters of her own. Those two little girls look happy and content. Her daughter could possibly have a better life living with them for a time. Will the mother give up her daughter to grant her the chance at a better life?

The mother attains work, but is eventually cast out because she has a child and no husband. She can’t find any good work and must decide between her pride and dignity, and supporting her daughter financially. Will she sell her locket, her hair, her teeth, her virtue? What can she sacrifice for the love of her daughter? Where does her happiness lie? Is it in her own life, or her daughters?

THE REVOLUTIONARY:

His father left when he was young, and never returned. His Grandfather is rich and wants to dictate how his grandson lives his life. Will this young man live a rich privileged life that he is entitled to? While he live poor? When he finds out his father was a good honest man, will he follow his footsteps?

The revolutionary believes in the people of France. He believes in the cause of freedom. His life is dedicated to the revolution. Then he falls in love - completely and absolutely head-over-heels in love. His love is leaving, going away to England forever. Will he follow her and find happiness in a life of love and happiness? Will he stay and fight at the barricades in the cause of freedom?

The revolutionary knows his father’s life was saved by a man named Thernardier. He swears to his father to help this “Thernardier” if they ever meet. He swears to help him anyway he can. When they do meet, Thernardier is a the worst and most vile of men. The revolutionary watches as his girlfriend and her father are threatened, kidnapped, and held hostage by Thernardier.

Should the Revolutionary save his girlfriend, or the man he swore to serve and protect? Is his happiness in love, or in honor?

THE OTHER WOMAN:

(this story line is mostly in the musical, not the book)

She loves a young man. He is handsome; he is brave; he is rich but lives like he’s poor.; and… he is in love with someone else.

She would be his at any moment if he asked, but he sees them as “just friends.” He asks her to help him court his love. He asks her to find her, find her address, take him to her, deliver her love notes.

Where does the happiness of ”the other woman” lie? Is it in being with him, or in making him happy by helping him be with another?

When he breaks her heart over and over again, should she still defend and help him? When his life is in danger, will she sacrifice her life for his, even though he is in love with someone else?

THE INSPECTOR:

Life is just. You reap what you sow. There are no hand-outs. There are no gray areas. There is hard work and honest living, and that’s the way to be happy.
He is just in all things. He gives people exactly what is required by law. He has no need to pass judgment because that is for God and the courts. He enforces.

Men are good, or men are bad. They choose, and they keep their course. He has seen it time and time again.

When Javert wrongly accuses a man, he asks for demotion and reprimand. He asks that justice be meted out on him as it is on everyone else.

What does he do when a convict, a man who broke his parole and is on the lam, appears to be good? The man helps others and lives a seemingly honest life. How can this be?

When a man he has hunted, chased, and found has a chance to kill the inspector, the convict instead lets him live. He lets him go.

When the convict should be running for his life, he stops to help an injured young man, to carry him to safety.

The convict never asks for help for himself, only to be allowed to help others. He needs an hour, a day, a short time to finish helping someone else, then he’ll turn himself in. Can he be believed?

The Inspector must decide: Is happiness found in never breaking a single rule? Is it found in justice? Is there room for mercy, and if so, how can he reconcile that in his mind?

THE CONVICT:

He is the main character of the story. He has many of these moments of Crisis. When he is shown kindness and love, will he steal and be who he has become in Prison? Will he steal the silver from the Bishop?
When he is forgiven and given a new lease on life – will he change, will he become a better man?

When another man is accused in his place. When the convict could have someone else jailed in his place, will he let it happen and live a free man, or will he confess to save this stranger from a lifetime in Prison?

When the convict sees a prostitute being abused and mis-accused, while he stand up for her?

When he is asked to care for a little child, what will he do for her?

When she grows up and has become all he cares about in the world, can he let her go when it is her time to move on, marry, and live her own life?

When he is given a chance to exact punishment and vengeance on the officer who had been chasing him his entire adult life, will he take it.? When the officer has done “wrong” and the convict has ”the right” to kill him, will he?

When the convict realizes he is a liability to his daughter, will he exit her life for good, for her good?

This story speaks to us. It speaks to the very core of why we live. What makes us happy? What makes life worth living, and death worth dying? What is the ultimate goal? Where is the line between right and wrong, good and bad, justice and mercy?

This is about conversion – do we really believe that which we profess? When it’s all on the line, who are we?

Who Am I?

Greatest Soundtrack of Les Miserables Ever!

I love the music of Les Miserables.  I decided to finally build my own soundtrack using my favorite version of each song. 

For Example  - I love Alfie Boe's version of "Bring Him Home", but Colm Wilkinson does "Who Am I better.  I actually like Hugh Jackman's "Soliloquy" best, and Anne Hathaway's "I Dreamed a Dream."  I prefer other singer's for their other songs.  There are some roles where I think one person just did the role best - period.

Best at their roles
Lea Salonga as Eponine
Michael Ball as Marius
Matt Lucas as Thernardier
Philip Quast as Javert
Ramin Karimloo as Enjolras

Here is my full compilation of songs in my soundtrack (it's obvious I liked the Anniversary Concert's better than any specific company)

Act I

• Overture (Look Down)                                   25^thAnniversary Concert        
• On Parole/The Bishop                                    10^th Anniversary Concert
• Valjean’s Soliloquy (What Have I Done?)     2012 Motion Picture
• At the End of the Day                                     10^th Anniversary Concert
• I Dreamed a Dream                                        2012 Motion Picture
• Lovely Ladies                                                 25^thAnniversary Concert
• Fantine’s Arrest/The Runaway Cart               25^thAnniversary Concert
• Who Am I?                                                     10^th Anniversary Concert
• Fantine’s Death                                               10^th Anniversary Concert
• The Confrontation                                          10^th Anniversary Concert
• Castle on a Cloud                                            25^thAnniversary Concert
• Master of the House                                        25^thAnniversary Concert
• The Well Scene                                               25^thAnniversary Concert
• The Bargain                                                     25^thAnniversary Concert
• Look Down                                                     25^thAnniversary Concert
• Stars –                                                             10^th Anniversary Concert
• The ABC Café / Red and Black                     10^th Anniversary Concert
• Do You Hear the People Sing?                       25^thAnniversary Concert
• In My Life                                                      10^th Anniversary Concert
• A Heart Full of Love                                      10^th Anniversary Concert
• The Attack on Rue Plumet                              25^thAnniversary Concert
• One Day More                                                10^th Anniversary Concert

Act II

• At the Barricade                                              10^th Anniversary Concert
• On My Own                                                    10^th Anniversary Concert
• Building the Barricade                                    10^th Anniversary Concert
• Javert’s Arrival / Little People                        10^th Anniversary Concert
• A Little Fall of Rain                                       10^th Anniversary Concert
• Night of Anguish                                            10^th Anniversary Concert
• The First Attack                                              10^th Anniversary Concert
• Drink with Me                                                10^th Anniversary Concert
• Bring Him Home                                            25^thAnniversary Concert
• Final Battle / Dog Eats Dog                            25^thAnniversary Concert
• Javert’s Suicide                                               10^th Anniversary Concert
• Turning                                                            25^thAnniversary Concert
• Empty Chairs at Empty Tables                       10^th Anniversary Concert
• Every Day / A Heart Full of Love (Reprise)  10^th Anniversary Concert
• Valjean’s Confession                                       25^thAnniversary Concert
• Wedding Chorale /Beggars at the Feast          25^thAnniversary Concert
• Epilogue: Valjean’s Death                               10^th Anniversary Concert

Publishing Children's version

I have finally published the Children's Edition of Les Miserables.

You can purchase it for $2 from Kindle here: Les Miserables Children's Edition

Les Miserables Fanatic

I finally understand those ridiculous Star Trek fans.  I understand how they can remember the different casts, seasons, episodes, facts etc.

I am not a "Trekker" or a "Trekkie,"  I'm a "LesMiser?"  I can tell you most every fact about the entire book.  I know who wrote and produced the musical, who was in the original Broadway Cast, who performed in the 10th Anniversary Concert, who performed in the 25th Anniversary concert, the movie, the different non-musical film versions, etc...
I have read 6 different versions of the book and I own 3.  My dream gift is to someday be given a pair of silver candlesticks.
In the middle of Medical School I took the time to abridge the book myself.  I then made it into a PDF so I could read it on a tablet.  Then I posted my own abridgment of the book.  Now I have finally published a children's version for Kindle.

I have written 6 different posts (some quite long winded) about Les Miserables in the last year. Here they are in case anyone else is as ridiculously interested as I am.

1.Why Les Miserables Matters:Seriously - what could be so important about this story that I have made my own version and 7 different posts about it?

2.Explaining why the end of the stage musical makes no sense: Why does Eponine take Valjean to Heaven?

3. Predictions made 4 months before the release of the Movie Musical

4. My Review of the Movie Musical

5. Comparing two of my favorite fictional characters:  ValJean from Les Miserables, and Tevye from Fiddler on the Roof

6. Why we should limit Standing Ovations and Encores: using Les Miserables as examples of times where they were appropriate and wonderful.

Here is the free version of the e-book which you can download to your kindle, nook, tablet, etc...

Les Miserables Abridged, Part 6: The End

BOOK FIFTH - THE GRANDSON AND THE GRANDFATHER

I - MARIUS, ESCAPING FROM CIVIL WAR, PREPARES FOR DOMESTIC WAR

            Marius was for a long time neither dead nor alive. He had for several weeks a fever accompanied with delirium, and serious cerebral symptoms resulting rather from the concussion produced by the wounds in the head than from the wounds themselves.

            He repeated the name of Cosette during entire nights in the dismal loquacity of fever and with the gloomy obstinacy of agony. The size of certain gashes was a serious danger, the suppuration of large wounds always being liable to reabsorption, and consequently to kill the. patient, under certain atmospheric influences; at every change in the weather, at the slightest storm, the physician was anxious, "Above all, let the wounded man have no excitement," he repeated. The dressings were complicated and difficult, the fastening of cloths and bandages with sparadrap not being invented at that period. Nicolette used for lint a sheet "as big as a ceiling," said she. It was not without difficulty that the chloruretted lotions and the nitrate of silver brought the gangrene to an end. As long as there was danger, M. Gillenormand, in despair at the bedside if his grandson, was, like Marius, neither dead nor alive.

            Every day, and sometimes twice a day, a very well-dressed gentleman with white hair, such was the description given by the porter, came to inquire after the wounded man, and left a large package of lint for the dressings.

            At last, on the 7th of September, four months, to a day, after the sorrowful night when they had brought him home dying to his grandfather, the physician declared him out of danger. Convalescence began. Marius was, however obliged still to remain for more than two months stretched on a long chair, on account of the accidents resulting from the fracture of the shoulder-blade. There is always a last wound like this which will not close, and which prolongs the dressings, to the great disgust of the patient.

            However, this long sickness and this long convalescence saved him from pursuit. In France, there is no anger, even governmental, which six months does not extinguish. Emeutes, in the present state of society, are so much the fault of everybody that they are followed by a certain necessity of closing the eyes. Let us add that the infamous Gisquet order, which enjoined physicians to inform against the wounded, having outraged public opinion, and not only public opinion, but the king first of all, the wounded were shielded and protected by this indignation; and, with the exception of those who had been taken prisoners in actual combat, the courts-martial dared not disturb any. Marius was therefore left in peace.

            M. Gillenormand passed first through every anguish, and there every ecstasy. They had great difficulty in preventing him from passing every night with the wounded man; he had his large armchair brought to the side of Marius' bed; he insisted that his daughter should take the finest linen in the house for compresses and bandages. Mademoiselle Gillenormand, like a prudent and elder person, found means to spare the fine linen, while she left the grandfather to suppose that he was obeyed. M. Gillenormand did not permit anybody to explain to him that for making lint cambric is not so good as coarse linen, nor new linen so good as old. He superintended all the dressings, from which Mademoiselle Gillenormand modestly absented herself. When the dead flesh was cut with scissors, he would say: "aie! aie!" Nothing was so touching as to see him hand a cup of gruel to the wounded man with his gentle senile trembling. He overwhelmed the doctor with questions. He did not perceive that he always asked the same.

            At each new phase of improvement, which continued to grow more and more visible, the grandfather raved. He did a thousand mirthful things mechanically; he ran up and down stairs without knowing why. A neighbour, a pretty woman withal, was amazed at receiving a large bouquet one morning; it was M. Gillenormand who sent it to her. The husband made a scene. M. Gillenormand attempted to take Nicolette upon his knees. He called Marius Monsieur the Baron.

            He cried, "Vive la Republique!"

            At every moment, he asked the physician: "There is no more danger, is there!" He looked at Marius with a grandmother's eyes. He brooded him when he ate. He no longer knew himself, he no longer counted on himself. Marius was the master of the house, there was abdication in his joy, he was the grandson of his grandson.

            In this lightness of heart which possessed him, he was the most venerable of children. For fear of fatiguing or of annoying the convalescent, he got behind him to smile upon him. He was contented, joyous, enraptured, delightful young. His white hairs added a sweet majesty to the cheerful light upon his face. When grace is joined with wrinkles, it is adorable. There is an unspeakable dawn in happy old age.

            As for Marius, while he let them dress his wounds and care for him, he had one fixed idea: Cosette.

            Since the fever and the delirium had left him, he had not uttered that name, and they might have supposed that he no longer thought of it. He held his peace, precisely because his soul was in it.

            He did not know what had become of Cosette; the whole affair of the Rue de la Chanvrerie was like a cloud in his memory; shadows, almost indistinct, were floating in his mind, Eponine, Gavroche, Mabeuf, the Thenardiers, all his friends mingled drearily with the smoke of the barricade; the strange passage of M. Fauchelevent in that bloody drama produced upon him the effect of an enigma in a tempest; he understood nothing in regard to his own life; he neither knew how, nor by whom, he had been saved, and nobody about him knew; all that they could tell him was that he had been brought to the Rue des Filles du Calvaire in a fiacre by night; past, present, future, all was now to him but the mist of a vague idea; but there was within this mist an immovable point, one clear and precise feature, something which was granite, a resolution, a will to find Cosette again. To him the idea of life was not distinct from the idea of Cosette; he had decreed in his heart that he would not accept the one without the other, and he was unalterably determined to demand from anybody, no matter whom, who should wish to compel him to live, from his grandfather, from Fate, from Hell, the restitution of his vanished Eden.

            He did not hide the obstacles from himself.

            Let us emphasise one point here: he was not won over, and was little softened by all the solicitude and all the tenderness of his grandfather. In the first place, he was not in the secret of it all; then, in his sick man's reveries, still feverish perhaps, he distrusted this gentleness as a new and strange thing, the object of which was to subdue him. He remained cold. The grandfather expended his poor old smile for nothing. Marius said to himself it was well so long as he, Marius, did not speak and offered no resistance; but that, when the question of Cosette was raised, he would find another face, and his grandfather's real attitude would be unmasked. Then it would be harsh recrudescence of family questions, every sarcasm and every objection at once: Fauchelevent, Coupelevent, fortune, poverty, misery, the stone at the neck, the future. Violent opposition; conclusion, refusal. Marius was bracing himself in advance.

            And then, in proportion as he took new hold of life, his former griefs reappeared, the old ulcers of his memory reopened, he thought once more of the past. Colonel Pontmercy appeared again between M. Gillenormand and him, Marius; he said to himself that there was no real goodness to be hoped for from him who had been so unjust and so hard to his father. And with health, there returned to him a sort of harshness towards his grandfather. The old man bore it with gentleness.

            M. Gillenormand, without manifesting it in any way, noticed that Marius, since he had been brought home and restored to consciousness had not once said to him "father." He did not say monsieur, it is true; but he found means to say neither the one nor the other, by a certain manner of turning his sentences.

            A crisis was evidently approaching.

            As it almost always happens in similar cases, Marius, in order to try himself, skirmished before offering battle. This is called feeling the ground. One morning it happened that M. Gillenormand, over a newspaper which had fallen into his hands, spoke lightly of the Convention and discharged a royalist epiphonema upon Danton, Saint Just, and Robespierre. "The men of '93 were giants," said Marius, sternly. The old man was silent, and did not whisper for the rest of the day.

            Marius, who had always present to his mind the inflexible grandfather of his early years, saw in this silence an intense concentration of anger, augured from it a sharp conflict, and increased his preparations for combat in the inner recesses of his thought.

            He determined that in case of refusal he would tear off his bandages, dislocate his shoulder, lay bare, and open his remaining wounds, and refuse all nourishment. His wounds were his ammunition. To have Cosette or to die.

            He waited for the favourable moment with the crafty patience of the sick.

            That moment came.

II - MARIUS ATTACKS

            One day M. Gillenormand, while his daughter was putting in order the vials and the cups upon the marble top of the bureau, bent over Marius and said to him in his most tender tone:

            "Do you see, my darling Marius, in your place I would eat meat now rather than fish. A fried sole is excellent to begin a convalescence, but, to put the sick man on his legs, it takes a good cutlet."

            Marius, nearly all whose strength had returned, gathered it together, sat up in bed, rested his clenched hands on the sheets, looked his grandfather in the face, assumed a terrible air, and said:

            "This leads me to say something to you."

            "What is it?"

            "It is that I wish to marry."

            "Foreseen," said the grandfather. And he burst out laughing.

            "How foreseen?"

            "Yes, foreseen. You shall have her, your lassie."

            Marius, astounded, and overwhelmed by the dazzling burst of happiness, trembled in every limb.

            M. Gillenormand continued:

            "Yes, you shall have her, your handsome, pretty little girl. She comes every day in the shape of an old gentleman to inquire after you. Since you were wounded, she has passed her time in weeping and making lint. I have made inquiry. She lives in the Rue de l'Homme Arme, Number Seven. Ah, we are ready! Ah! you want her! you shall have her. That catches you. You had arranged your little plot; you said to yourself: I am going to make it known bluntly to that grandfather, to that mummy of the Regency and of the Directory, to that old beau, to that Dorante become a Geronte; he has had his levities too, himself, and his amours and his grisettes, and his Cosettes; he has made his display, he has had his wings, he has eaten his spring bread; he must remember it well. We shall see. Battle. Ah! you take the bug by the horns. That is good. I propose a cutlet, and you answer: 'A propos, I wish to marry.' That is what I call a transition. Ah! you had reckoned upon some bickering. You didn't know that I was an old coward. What do you say to that? You are spited. To find your grandfather still more stupid than yourself, you didn't expect that, you lose the argument which you were to have made to me, monsieur advocate; it is provoking. Well, it is all the same, rage. I do what you wish, that cuts you out of it, idiot. Listen. I have made inquiries, I am sly too; she is charming, she is modest, the lancer is not true, she has made heaps of lint, she is a jewel, she worships you; if you had died, there would have been three of us; her bier would have accompanied mine. I had a strong notion, as soon as you were better, to plant her square at your bedside, but it is only in romances that they introduce young girls unceremoniously to the side of the side of the pretty wounded men who interest them. That does not do. What would your aunt have said? You have been quite naked three-quarters of the time, my goodman. Ask Nicolette, who has not left you a minute, if it was possible for a woman to be here. And then what would the doctor have said? That doesn't cure a fever, a pretty girl. Finally, it is all right; don't let us talk any more about it, it is said, it is done, it is fixed; take her. Such is my ferocity. Do you see, I saw that you did not love me; I said: What is there that I can do, then, to make this animal love me? I said: Hold on! I have my little Cosette under my hand; I will give her to him, he must surely love a little then, or let him tell why. Ah! you thought that the old fellow was going to storm, to make a gruff voice, to cry No, and to lift his cane upon all this dawn. Not at all. Cosette, so be it; love, so be it; I ask nothing better. Monsieur, take the trouble to marry. Be happy, my dear child."

            This said, the old man burst into sobs.

            And he took Marius' head, and he hugged it in both arms against his old breast, and they both began to weep. That is one of the forms of supreme happiness.

            "Father!" exclaimed Marius.

            "Ah! you love me then!" said the old man.

            There was an ineffable moment. They choked and could not speak.

            At last the old man stammered:

            "Come! the ice is broken. He has called me, 'Father.'"

            Marius released his head from his grandfather's arms, and said softly:

            "But, father, now that I am well, it seems to me that I could see her."

            "Foreseen again, you shall see her tomorrow."

            "Father!"

            "What?"

            "Why not to-day?"

            "Well, to-day. Here goes for to-day. You have called me 'Father,' three times, it is well worth that. I will see to it. She shall be brought to you

III - MADEMOISELLE GILLENORMAND AT LAST THINKS IT NOT IMPROPER THAT MONSIEUR FAUCHELEVENT SHOULD COME IN WITH SOMETHING UNDER HIS ARM

            Cosette and Marius saw each other again.

            What the interview was, we will not attempt to tell. There are things which we should not undertake to paint; the sun is of the number.

            The whole family, including Basque and Nicolette, were assembled in Marius' room when Cosette entered.

            She appeared on the threshold; it seemed as if she were in a cloud.

            Just at that instant the grandfather was about to blow his nose; he stopped short, holding his nose in his handkerchief, and looking at Cosette above it:

            "Adorable!" he exclaimed.

            Then he blew his nose with a loud noise.

            Cosette was intoxicated, enraptured, startled, in Heaven. She was as frightened as one can be by happiness. She stammered, quite pale, quite red, wishing to throw herself into Marius' arms, and not daring to. Ashamed to show her love before all those people. We are pitiless towards happy lovers; we stay there when they have the strongest desire to be alone. They, however, have no need at all of society.

            With Cosette and behind her had entered a man with white hair, grave, smiling nevertheless, but with a vague and poignant smile. This was "Monsieur Fauchelevent;" this was Jean Valjean.

            He was very well dressed, as the porter had said, in a new black suit, with a white cravat.

            The porter was a thousand miles from recognising in this correct bourgeois, in this probable notary, the frightful corpse-bearer who landed at his door on the night of the 7th of June, ragged, muddy, hideous, haggard, his face masked by blood and dirt, supporting the fainting Marius in his arms; still his porter's scent was awakened. When M. Fauchelevent had arrived with Cosette, the porter could not help confiding this remark to his wife: "I don't know why I always imagine that I have seen that face somewhere."

            Monsieur Fauchelevent, in Marius' room, stayed near the door, as if apart. He had under his arm a package similar in appearance to an octavo volume, wrapped in paper. The paper of the envelope was greenish, and seemed mouldy.

            "Does this gentleman always have books under his arm like that?" asked Mademoiselle Gillenormand, who did not like books, in a low voice of Nicolette.

            "Well," answered M. Gillenormand, who had heard her, in the same tone, "he is a scholar. What then? is it his fault? Monsieur Boulard, whom I knew, never went out without a book, he neither, and always had an old volume against his heart, like that."

            And bowing, he said, in a loud voice:

            "Monsieur Tranchelevent-"

            Father Gillenormand did not do this on purpose, but inattention to proper names was an aristocratic way he had.

            "Monsieur Tranchelevent, I have the honour of asking of you for my grandson, Monsieur the Baron Marius Pontmercy, the hand of mademoiselle."

            Monsieur Tranchelevent bowed.

            "It is done," said the grandfather.

            And, turning towards Marius and Cosette, with arms extended and blessing, he cried: "Permission to adore each other."

            They did not make him say it twice. It was all the same! The cooing began. They talked low, Marius leaning on his long chair, Cosette standing near him. "Oh, my God!" murmured Cosette, "I see you again! It is you! it is you! To have gone to fight like that! But why! It is horrible. For four months I have been dead. Oh, how naughty it is to have been in that battle! What had I done to you? I pardon you, but you won't do it again. Just now, when they came to tell us to come, I thought again I should die, but it was of joy. I was so sad! I did not take time to dress myself; I must look like a fright. What will your relatives say of me, to see me with a collar ragged? But speak now! You let me do all the talking. We are still in the Rue de l'Homme Arme. Your shoulder, that was terrible. They told me they could put their fist into it. And then they have cut your flesh with scissors. That is frightful. I have cried; I have no eyes left. It is strange that anybody can suffer like that. Your grandfather has a very kind appearance. Don't disturb yourself; don't rest on your elbow; take care, you will hurt yourself. Oh, how happy I am! So our trouble is all over! I am very silly. I wanted to say something to you that I have forgotten completely. Do you love me still? We live in the Rue de l'Homme Arme. There is no garden. I have been making lint all the time. Here, monsieur, look, it is your fault, my fingers are callous." "Angel!" said Marius.

            Angel is the only word in the language which cannot be worn out. No other word would resist the pitiless use which lovers make of it.

            Then, as there were spectators, they stopped, and did not say another word, contenting themselves with touching each other's hands very gently.

            M. Gillenormand turned towards all those who were in the room, and cried:

            "Why don't you talk loud, the rest of you? Make a noise, behind the scenes. Come, a little uproar, the devil! so that these children can chatter at their ease."

            And, approaching Marius and Cosette, he said to them very low:

            "Make love. Don't be disturbed."

            Aunt Gillenormand witnessed with amazement this irruption of light into her aged interior. This amazement was not at all aggressive; it was not the least in the world the scandalised and envious look of an owl upon two ringdoves; it was the dull eye of a poor innocent girl of fifty-seven; it was incomplete life beholding that triumph, love.

            "Mademoiselle Gillenormand the elder," said her father to her, "I told you plainly that this would happen."

            He remained silent a moment and added:

            "Behold the happiness of others."

            Then he turned towards Cosette:

            "How pretty she is! how pretty she is! She is a Greuze. You are going to have her all alone to yourself then, rascal! Ah! my rogue, you have a narrow escape from me, you are lucky, if I were not fifteen years too old, we would cross swords for who should have her. Stop! I am in love with you, mademoiselle. That is very natural. It is your right. Ah! the sweet pretty charming little wedding that this is going to make! Saint Denis du Saint Sacrement is our parish, but I will have a dispensation so that you may be married at Saint Paul's. The church is better. It was built by the Jesuits. It is more coquettish. It is opposite the fountain of Cardinal de Birague. The masterpiece of Jesuit architecture is at Namur. It is called Saint Loup. You must go there when you are married. It is worth the journey. Mademoiselle, I am altogether of your opinion, I want girls to marry, they are made for that. There is a certain St. Catherine whom I would always like to see with her hair down. To be an old maid, that is fine, but it is cold. The Bible says: Multiply. To save the people, we need Jeanne d'Arc; but to make the people, we used Mother Gigogne. So, marry, beauties. I really don't see the good of being an old maid. I know very well that they have a chapel apart in the church, and that the talk a good deal about the sisterhood of the Virgin; but, zounds, a handsome husband, a fine fellow, and, at the end of the year, a big flaxen-haired boy who sucks you merrily, and who has good folds of fat on his legs, and who squeezes your breast by handfuls in his little rosy paws, while he laughs like the dawn, that is better after all than holding a taper at vespers and singing Turris eburnea!"

            The grandfather executed a pirouette upon his ninety year old heels and began to talk again, like a spring which flies back: -

           

            Ainsi, bornant le cours de tes revasseries.

            Alcippe, il est donc vrai, dans peu tu te maries.

           

            "By the way!"

            "What, father?"

            "Didn't you have an intimate friend?"

            "Yes, Courfeyrac."

            "What has become of him?"

            "He is dead."

            "Very well."

            He sat down near them, made Cosette sit down, and took their four hands in his old wrinkled hands:

            "She is exquisite, this darling. She is a masterpiece, this Cosette! She is a very little girl and a very great lady. She will be only a baroness, that is stooping; she was born a marchioness. Hasn't she lashes for you? My children, fix it well in your noddles that you are in the right of it. Love one another. Be foolish about it. Love is the foolishness of men, and the wisdom of God. Adore each other. Only," added he, suddenly darkening, "what a misfortune! This is what I am thinking of! More than half of what I have is in annuity; as long as I live, it's all well enough, but after my death, twenty years from now, ah! my poor children, you will not have a sou. Your beautiful white hands, Madame the Baroness, will do the devil the honour to pull him by the tail."

            "Mademoiselle Euphrasie Fauchelevent has six hundred thousand francs."

            It was Jean Valjean's voice.

            He had not yet uttered a word, nobody seemed even to remember that he was there, and he stood erect and motionless behind all these happy people.

            "How is Mademoiselle Euphrasie in question?" asked the grandfather, startled.

            "That is me," answered Cosette.

            "Six hundred thousand francs!" resumed M. Gillenormand.

            "Less fourteen or fifteen thousand francs, perhaps," said Jean Valjean. And he laid on the table the package which Aunt Gillenormand had taken for a book.

            Jean Valjean opened the package himself; it was a bundle of bank-notes. They ran through them, and they counted them. There were five hundred bills of a thousand francs, and a hundred and sixty-eight of five hundred. In all, five hundred and eighty-four thousand francs.

            "That is a good book," said M. Gillenormand.

            "Five hundred and eighty-four thousand francs!" murmured the aunt.

            "This arranges things very well, does it not, Mademoiselle Gillenormand the elder?" resumed the grandfather. "This devil of a Marius, he has found you a grisette millionaire on the tree of dreams! Then trust in the love-making of young folks nowadays! Students find studentesses with six hundred thousand francs. Cherubin works better than Rothschild."

            "Five hundred and eighty-four thousand francs!" repeated Mademoiselle Gillenormand in an undertone. "Five hundred and eighty-four! you might call it six hundred thousand, indeed!"

            As for Marius and Cosette, they were looking at each other during this time; they paid little attention to this incident.

IV - DEPOSIT YOUR MONEY RATHER IN SOME FOREST THAN WITH SOME NOTARY

            The reader has doubtless understood, without it being necessary to explain at length, that Jean Valjean, after the Champmathieu affair, had been able, thanks to his first escape for a few days to come to Paris, and to, withdraw the sum made by him, under the name of Monsieur Madeleine, at Montreuil-sur-mer, from Laffitte's in time; and that, in the fear of being retaken, which happened to him, in fact, a short time after, he had concealed and buried that sum in the forest of Montfermeil, in the place called the Blaru grounds. The sum, six hundred and thirty thousand francs, all in bank-notes, was of small bulk, and was contained in a box; but to preserve the box from moisture he had placed it in an oaken chest, full of chestnut shavings. In the same chest, he had put his other treasure, the bishop's candlesticks. It will be remembered that he carried away these candlesticks when he escaped from Montreuil-sur-mer.

            Afterwards, whenever Jean Valjean was in need of money, he went to the Blaru glade for it. Hence the absences of which we have spoken. He had a pickaxe somewhere in the bushes, in a hiding-place known only to himself. When he saw Marius convalescent, feeling that the hour was approaching when this money might be useful, he had gone after it.

            The real sum was five hundred and eighty-four thousand five hundred francs. Jean Valjean took out five hundred francs for himself. "We will see afterwards," thought he.

            The difference between this sum and the six hundred and thirty thousand francs withdrawn from Laffitte's represented the expenses of ten years, from 1823 to 1833. The five years spent in the convent had cost only five thousand francs.

            Jean Valjean put the two silver candlesticks upon the mantel, where they shone, to Toussaint's great admiration.

            Moreover, Jean Valjean knew that he was delivered from Javert. It had been mentioned in his presence, and he had verified the fact in the "Moniteur," which published it, that an inspector of police, named Javert, had been found drowned under a washerwoman's boat between the Pont au Change and Pont Neuf, and that a paper left by this man, otherwise irreproachable and highly esteemed by his chiefs, led to a belief that he had committed suicide during a fit of mental aberration. "In fact," thought Jean Valjean, "since having me in his power, he let me go, he must already have been crazy."

V - THE TWO OLD MEN DO EVERYTHING, EACH IN HIS OWN WAY, THAT COSETTE MAY BE HAPPY

            All the preparations were made for the marriage. The physician being consulted said that it might take place in February. This was in December. Some ravishing weeks of perfect happiness rolled away.

            The least happy was not the grandfather. He would remain for a quarter of an hour at a time gazing at Cosette.

            "The wonderful pretty girl!" he exclaimed. "And her manners are so sweet and so good. It is of no use to say my love my heart, she is the most charming girl that I have ever seen in my life. Besides, she will have virtues for you sweet as violets. She is a grace, indeed! You can but live nobly with such a creature. Marius, my boy, you are a baron, you are rich, don't pettifog, I beg of you."

            Cosette and Marius had passed abruptly from the grave to paradise. There had been but little caution in the transition, and they would have been stunned if they had not been dazzled.

            "Do you understand anything about it?" said Marius to Cosette.

            "No," answered Cosette, "but it seems to me that the good God is caring for us."

            Jean Valjean did all, smoothed all, conciliated all made all easy. He hastened towards Cosette's happiness with as much eagerness, and apparently as much joy, as Cosette herself.

            As he had been a mayor, he knew how to solve a delicate problem, in the secret of which he was alone: Cosette's civil state. To bluntly give her origin, who knows? that might prevent the marriage. He drew Cosette out of all difficulty. He arranged a family of dead people for her, a sure means of incurring no objection. Cosette was what remained of an extinct family; Cosette was not his daughter, but the daughter of another Fauchelevent. Two brothers Fauchelevent had been gardeners at the convent of the Petit Picpus. They went to this convent, the best recommendations and the most respectable testimonials abounded; the good nuns, little apt and little inclined to fathom questions of paternity, and understanding no malice, had never known very exactly of which of the two Fauchelevents little Cosette was the daughter. They said what was wanted of them, and said it with zeal. A notary's act was drawn up. Cosette became before the law Mademoiselle Euphrasie Fauchelevent. She was declared an orphan. Jean Valjean arranged matters in such a way as to be designated, under the name of Fauchelevent, as Cosette's guardian, with M. Gillenormand as overseeing guardian.

            As for the five hundred and eighty-four thousand francs, that was a legacy left to Cosette by a dead person who desired to remain unknown. The original legacy had been five hundred and ninety-four thousand francs; but ten thousand francs had been expended for Mademoiselle Euphrasie's education, of which five thousand francs were paid to the convent itself. This legacy, deposited in the hands of a third party, was to be given up to Cosette at her majority or at the time of her marriage. Altogether this was very acceptable, as we see, especially with a basis of more than half a million. There were indeed a few singularities here and there, but nobody saw them; one of those interested had his eyes bandaged by love, the other by the six hundred thousand francs.

            Cosette learned that she was not the daughter of that old man whom she had so long called father. He was only a relative; another Fauchelevent was her real father. At any other time, this would have broken her heart. But at this ineffable hour, it was only a little shadow, a darkening, and she had so much joy that this cloud was of short duration. She had Marius. The young man came, the goodman faded away; such is life.

            And then, Cosette had been accustomed for long years to see enigmas about her: everybody who has had a mysterious childhood is always ready for certain renunciations.

            She continued, however, to say "Father" to Jean Valjean.

            Cosette, in raptures, was enthusiastic about Grandfather Gillenormand. It is true that he loaded her with madrigals and with presents. While Jean Valjean was building a normal condition in society for Cosette, and a possession of an unimpeachable state, M. Gillenormand was watching over the wedding corbeille. Nothing amused him so much as being magnificent. He had given Cosette a dress of Binche guipure which descended to him from his own grandmother. "These fashions have come round again," said he, "old things are the rage, and the young women of my old age dress like the old women of my childhood."

            He rifled his respectable round-bellied bureaus of Coromandel lac which had not been opened for years. "Let us put these dowagers to the confession," said he; "Let us see what they have in them." He noisily stripped the deep drawers full of toilets of all his wives, of all his mistresses, and of all his ancestresses. Pekins, damasks, lampas, painted moires, dresses of gros de Tours, Indian handkerchiefs embroidered with a gold which could be washed, dauphines in the piece finished on both sides, Genoa and Alencon point, antique jewellery, comfit-boxes of ivory ornamented with microscopic battles, clothes, ribbons, he lavished all upon Cosette. Cosette, astonished, desperately in love with Marius and wild with gratitude towards M. Gillenormand, dreamed of a boundless happiness clad in satin and velvet. Her wedding corbeille appeared to her upborne by seraphim. Her soul soared into the azure on wings of Mechlin lace.

            The intoxication of the lovers was only equalled, as we have said, by the ecstasy of the grandfather. It was like a flourish of trumpets in the Rue des Filles du Calvaire.

            Every morning, a new offering of finery from the grandfather to Cosette. Every possible furbelow blossomed out splendidly about her.

            One day Marius, who was fond of talking gravely in the midst of his happiness, said in reference to I know not what incident:

            "The men of the revolution are so great that they already have the prestige of centuries, like Cato and like Phocion, and each of them seems a memoire antique (antique memory)."

            "Moire antique!" exclaimed the old man. "Thank you, Marius. That is precisely the idea that I was in search of."

            And the next day a magnificent dress of tea-coloured moire antique was added to Cosette's corbeille.

            Aunt Gillenormand beheld it all with her imperturbable placidity. She had had within five or six months a certain number of emotions; Marius returned, Marius brought back bleeding, Marius brought back from a barricade, Marius dead, then alive, Marius reconciled, Marius bethrothed, Marius marrying a pauper, Marius marrying a millionaire. The six hundred thousand francs had been her last surprise. Then her first communicant indifference returned to her. She went regularly to the offices, picked over her rosary, read her prayer-book, whispered Aves in one part of the house, while they were whispering I Love Yous in the other, and, vaguely, saw Marius and Cosette as two shadows. The shadow was herself.

            There is a certain condition of inert asceticism in which the soul, neutralised by torpor, a stranger to what might be called the business of living, perceives, with the exception of earthquakes and catastrophes, no human impressions, neither pleasant impressions, nor painful impressions. "This devotion," said Grandfather Gillenormand to his daughter, "corresponds to a cold in the head. You smell nothing of life. No bad odour, but no good one."

            Still, the six hundred thousand francs had determined the hesitation of the old maid. Her father had acquired the habit of counting her for so little, that he had not consulted her in regard to the consent to Marius' marriage. He had acted with impetuosity, according to his wont, having, a despot become a slave, but one thought, to satisfy Marius. As for the aunt, that the aunt existed, and that she might have an opinion, he had not even thought; and, perfect sheep as she was, this had ruffled her. A little rebellious inwardly, but outwardly impassible, she said to herself: "My father settles the question of the marriage without me, I will settle the question of the inheritance without him." She was rich, in fact, and her father was not. She had therefore reserved her decision thereupon. It is probable that, if the marriage had been poor, she would have left it poor. So much the worse for monsieur, my nephew! He marries a beggar, let him be a beggar. But Cosette's half-million pleased the aunt, and changed her feelings in regard to this pair of lovers. Some consideration is due to six hundred thousand francs, and it was clear that she could not do otherwise than leave her fortune to these young people, since they no longer needed it.

            It was arranged that the couple should live with the grandfather. M. Gillenormand absolutely insisted upon giving them his room, the finest in the house. "It will rejuvenate me," he declared. "It is an old project. I always had the idea of making a wedding in my room." He filled this room with a profusion of gay old furniture. He hung the walls and the ceiling with an extraordinary stuff which he had in the piece, and which he believed to be from Utrecht, a satin background with golden immortelles, and velvet auriculas. "With this stuff," said he, "the Duchess d'Anville's bed was draped at La Roche Guyon." He put a little Saxony figure on the mantel, holding a muff over her naked belly.

            M. Gillenormand's library became the attorney's office which Marius required; an office, it will be remembered, being rendered necessary by the rules of the order.

VI - THE EFFECTS OF DREAM MINGLED WITH HAPPINESS

            The lovers saw each other every day. Cosette came with M. Fauchelevent. "It is reversing the order of things," said Mademoiselle Gillenormand, "that the intended should come to the house to be courted like this." But Marius' convalescence had led to the habit; and the armchairs in the Rue des Filles du Calvaire, better for long talks than the straw chairs of the Rue de l'Homme Arme, had rooted it. Marius and M. Fauchelevent saw one another, but did not speak to each other. That seemed to be understood. Every girl needs a chaperon. Cosette could not have come without M. Fauchelevent. To Marius, M. Fauchelevent was the condition of Cosette. He accepted it. In bringing upon the carpet, vaguely and generally, matters of policy, from the point of view of the general amelioration of the lot of all, they succeeded in saying a little more than yes and no to each other. Once, on the subject of education, which Marius wished gratuitous and obligatory, multiplied under all forms, lavished upon all like the air and the sunshine, in one word, respirable by the entire people, they fell into unison and almost into a conversation. Marius remarked on this occasion that M. Fauchelevent talked well and even with a certain elevation of language. There was, however, something wanting. M. Fauchelevent had something less than a man of the world, and something more.

            Marius, inwardly and in the depth of his thought, surrounded this M. Fauchelevent, who was to him simply benevolent and cold, with all sorts of silent questions. There came to him at intervals doubts about his own recollections. In his memory there was a hole, a black place, an abyss scooped out by four months of agony. Many things were lost in it. He was led to ask himself if it were really true; that he had seen M. Fauchelevent, such a man, so serious and so calm, in the barricade.

            This was not, however, the only stupor which the appearances and the disappearances of the past had left in his mind. We must not suppose that he was delivered from all those obsessions of the memory which force us, even when happy, even when satisfied, to look back with melancholy. The head which does not turn towards the horizons of the past, contains neither thought nor love. At moments, Marius covered his face with his hands, and the vague past tumultuously traversed the twilight which filled his brain. He saw Mabeuf fall again, he heard Gavroche singing beneath the grape, he felt upon his lip the chill of Eponine's forehead; Enjolras, Courfeyrac, Jean Proutaire, Combeferre, Bossuet, Grantaire, all his friends, rose up before him, then dissipated. All these beings, dear, sorrowful, valiant, charming or tragical, were they dreams? had they really existed? The emeute had wrapped everything in its smoke. These great fevers have great dreams. He interrogated himself; he groped within himself; he was dizzy with all these vanished realities. Where were they all then? Was it indeed true that all were dead? A fall into the darkness had carried off all, except himself. It all seemed to him to have disappeared as if behind a curtain at a theatre. There are such curtains which drop down in life. God is passing to the next act.

            And himself, was he really the same man? He, the poor; he was rich; he, the abandoned, he had a family; he, the despairing, he was marrying Cosette. It seemed to him that he had passed through a tomb, and that he had gone in black, and that he had come out white. And in this tomb, the others had remained. At certain moments, all these beings of the past, returned and present, formed a circle about him and rendered him gloomy; then he thought of Cosette, and again became serene; but it required nothing less than this felicity to efface this catastrophe.

            M. Fauchelevent almost had a place among these vanished beings. Marius hesitated to believe that the Fauchelevent of the barricade was the same as this Fauchelevent in flesh and blood, so gravely seated near Cosette. The first was probably one of those nightmares coming and going with his hours of delirium. Moreover, their natures showing a steep front to each other, no question was possible from Marius to M. Fauchelevent. The idea of it did not even occur to him. We have already indicated this characteristic circumstance.

            Two men who have a common secret, and who, by a sort of tacit agreement, do not exchange a word upon the subject, such a thing is less rare than one would think.

            Once only, Marius made an attempt. He brought the Rue de la Chanvrerie into the conversation, and, turning towards M. Fauchelevent, he said to him:

            "You are well acquainted with that street?"

            "What street?"

            "The Rue de la Chanvrerie."

            "I have no idea of the name of that street," answered M. Fauchelevent in the most natural tone in the world.

            The answer, which bore upon the name of the street, and not upon the street itself, appeared to Marius more conclusive than it was.

            "Decidedly," thought be, "I have been dreaming. I have had a hallucination. It was somebody who resembled him. M. Fauchelevent was not there."

VII - TWO MEN IMPOSSIBLE TO FIND

            The enchantment, great as it was, did not efface other preoccupations from Marius' mind.

            During the preparations for the marriage, and while waiting for the time fixed upon, he had some difficult and careful retrospective researches made.

            He owed gratitude on several sides, he owed some on his father's account, he owed some on his own.

            There was Thenardier; there was the unknown man who had brought him, Marius, to M. Gillenormand's.

            Marius persisted in trying to find these two men, not intending to marry, to be happy, and to forget them, and fearing lest these debts of duty unpaid might cast a shadow over his life, so luminous henceforth. It was impossible for him to leave all these arrears unsettled behind him; and he wished, before entering joyously into the future, to have a quittance from the past.

            That Thenardier was a scoundrel, took away nothing from this fact that he had saved Colonel Pontmercy. Thenardier was a bandit to everybody except Marius.

            And Marius, ignorant of the real scene of the battle-field of Waterloo, did not know this peculiarity, that his father was, with reference to Thenardier, in this singular situation, that he owed his life to him without owing him any thanks.

            None of the various agents whom Marius employed, succeeded in finding Thenardier's track. Effacement seemed complete on that side. The Thenardiess had died in prison pending the examination on the charge. Thenardier and his daughter Azelma, the two who alone remained of that woeful group, had plunged back into the shadow. The gulf of the social Unknown had silently closed over these beings. There could no longer even be seen on the surface that quivering, that trembling, those obscure concentric circles which announce that something has fallen there, and that we may cast in the lead.

            The Thenardiess being dead, Boulatruelle being put out of the case, Claquesous having disappeared, the principal accused having escaped from prison, the prosecution for the ambuscade at the Gorbeau house was almost abortive. The affair was left in deep obscurity. The Court of Assizes was obliged to content itself with two subalterns, Panchaud, alias Printanier, alias Bigrenaille, and Demi-Liard, alias Deux Milliards, who were tried and condemned to ten years at the galleys. Hard labour for life was pronounced against their accomplices who had escaped and did not appear. Thenardier, chief and ringleader, was, also for non-appearance, condemned to death. This condemnation was the only thing which remained in regard to Thenardier, throwing over that buried name its ominous glare, like a candle beside a bier.

            Moreover, by crowding Thenardier back into the lowest depths, for fear of being retaken, this condemnation added to the thick darkness which covered this man.

            As for the other, as for the unknown man who had saved Marius, the researches at first had some result, then stopped short. They succeeded in finding the fiacre which had brought Marius to the Rue des Filles du Calvaire on the evening of the 6th of June. The driver declared that on the 6th of June, by order of a police officer, he had been "stationed," from three o'clock in the afternoon until night, on the quai of the Champs Elysees, above the outlet of the Grand Sewer; that, about nine o'clock in the evening, the grating of the sewer, which overlooks the river beach, was opened; that a man came out, carrying another man on his shoulders, who seemed to be dead; that the officer, who was watching at that point, arrested the living man, and seized the dead man; that, on the order of the officer, he, the driver, received "all those people" into the fiacre; that they went first to the Rue des Filles du Calvaire; that they left the dead man there; that the dead man was Monsieur Marius, and that he, the driver, recognised him plainly, although he was alive "this time;" that they then got into his carriage again; that he whipped up his horses; that, within a few steps of the door of the Archives, he had been called to stop; that there in the street, he had been paid and left, and that the officer took away the other man; that he knew nothing more, that the night was very dark.

            Marius, we have said, recollected nothing. He merely remembered having been seized from behind by hand at the moment he fell backwards into the barricades, then all became a blank to him. He had recovered consciousness only at M. Gillenormand's.

            He was lost in conjectures.

            He could not doubt his own identity. How did it come about, however, that, falling in the Rue de la Chanvrerie, he had been picked up by the police officer on the banks of the Seine, near the Pont des Invalides? Somebody had carried him from the quartier of the markets to the Champs Elysees. And how? By the sewer. Unparalleled devotion!

            Somebody? who?

            It was this man whom Marius sought.

            Of this man, who was his saviour, nothing; no trace; not the least indication.

            Marius, although compelled to great reserve in this respect, pushed his researches as far as the prefecture of police. There, no more than elsewhere, did the information obtained lead to any eclaircissement. The prefecture knew less than the driver of the fiacre. They had no knowledge of any arrest made on the 6th of June at the grating of the Grand Sewer; they had received no officer's report upon that fact, which, at the prefecture, was regarded as a fable. They attributed the invention of this fable to the driver. A driver who wants drink-money is capable of anything, even of imagination. The thing was certain, for all that, and Marius could not doubt it, unless by doubting his own identity, as we have just said.

            Everything, in this strange enigma, was inexplicable.

            This man, this mysterious man, whom the driver had seen come out of the grating of the Grand Sewer bearing Marius senseless upon his back, and whom the police officer on the watch had arrested in the very act of saving an insurgent, what had become of him? what had become of the officer himself? Why had this officer kept silence? had the man succeeded in escaping? had he bribed the officer? Why did this man give no sign of life to Marius, who owed everything to him? His disinterestedness was not less wonderful than his devotion. Why did not this man reappear? Perhaps he was above recompense, but nobody is above gratitude. Was he dead? what kind of a man was this? how did he look? Nobody could tell. The driver answered: "The night was very dark." Basque and Nicolette, in their amazement, had only looked at their young master covered with blood. The porter, whose candle had lighted the tragic arrival of Marius, alone had noticed the man in question, and this is the description which he gave of him: "This man was horrible."

            In the hope of deriving aid in his researches from them, Marius had had preserved the bloody clothes which he wore when he was brought back to his grandfather's. On examining the coat, it was noticed that one skirt was oddly torn. A piece was missing.

            One evening, Marius spoke, before Cosette and Jean Valjean, of all this singular adventure, of the numberless inquiries which he had made, and of the uselessness of his efforts. The cold countenance of "Monsieur Fauchelevent" made him impatient. He exclaimed with a vivacity which had almost the vibration of anger:

            "Yes, that man, whoever he may be, was sublime. Do you know what he did, monsieur? He intervened like the archangel. He must have thrown himself into the midst of the combat, have snatched me out of it, have opened the sewer, have drawn me into it, have borne me through it! He must have made his way for more than four miles through hideous subterranean galleries, bent, stooping in the darkness, in the cloaca, more than four miles, monsieur, with a corpse upon his back! And with what object? With the single object of saving that corpse. And that corpse was I. He said to himself: 'There is perhaps a glimmer of life still there; I will risk my own life for that miserable spark!' And his life, he did not risk it once, but twenty times! And each step was a danger. The proof is, that on coming out of the sewer he was arrested. Do you know, monsieur, that that man did all that? And he could expect no recompense. What was I? An insurgent. What was I? A vanquished man. Oh! if Cosette's six hundred thousand francs were mine-"

            "They are yours," interrupted Jean Valjean.

            "Well," resumed Marius, "I would give them to find that man!"

            Jean Valjean kept silence.

           

           

BOOK SIXTH - THE WHITE NIGHT

I - THE 16TH OF FEBRUARY, 1833

            The night of the 16th of February, 1833, was a blessed night. Above, its shade the heavens were opened. It was the wedding night of Marius and Cosette.

            The day had been adorable.

            It had not been the sky-blue festival dreamed by the grandfather, a fairy scene with a confusion of cherubs and cupids above the heads of the married pair, a marriage worthy a frieze panel; but it had been sweet and mirthful.

            In 1833, a hundred years ago, marriage was not performed at a full trot.

            It was still imagined it that day, strange to tell, that a marriage is an intimate and social festival; that a patriarchal banquet does not spoil a domestic solemnity, that gaiety, even excessive, provided it be seemly, does no harm to happiness, and finally that it is venerable and good that the fusion of these two destinies whence a family is to arise, should commence in the house, and that the household should have the nuptial chamber for a witness henceforth.

            And they have the shamelessness to be married at home.

            The marriage took place, therefore, according to that now obsolete fashion, at M. Gillenormand's.

            Natural and ordinary as this matter of marriage may be, the banns to be published, the deeds to be drawn up, the mairie, the church, always render it somewhat complex. They could not be ready before the 16th of February.

            Now, we mention this circumstance for the pure satisfaction of being exact, it happened that the 16th was Mardi Gras. Hesitations, scruples, particularly from Aunt Gillenormand.

            "Mardi Gras!" exclaimed the grandfather. "So much the better. There is a proverb: -

            Mariage un Mardi Gras,

            N'aura point d'enfants ingrats. -

            Let us go on. Here goes for the 16th! Do you want to put it off, you, Marius?"

            "Certainly not!" answered the lover.

            "Let us get married," said the grandfather.

            So the marriage took place on the 16th, notwithstanding the public gaiety. It rained that day, but there is always a little patch of blue in the sky at the service of happiness, which lovers see, even though the rest of creation be under an umbrella.

            On the previous evening, Jean Valjean had handed to Marius, in presence of M. Gillenormand, the five hundred and eighty-four thousand francs.

            The marriage being performed under the law of community, the deeds were simple.

            Toussaint was henceforth useless to Jean Valjean; Cosette had inherited her and had promoted her to the rank of waiting-maid.

            As for Jean Valjean, there was a beautiful room in the Gillenormand house furnished expressly for him, and Cosette had said to him so irresistibly: "Father, I pray you," that she had made him almost promise that he would come and occupy it.

            A few days before the day fixed for the marriage, an accident happened to Jean Valjean; he slightly bruised the thumb of his right hand. It was not serious; and he had allowed nobody to take any trouble about it, nor to dress it, nor even to see his hurt, not even Cosette. It compelled him, however, to muffle his hand in a bandage. And to carry his arm in a sling, and prevented his signing anything. M. Gillenormand, as Cosette's overseeing guardian, took his place.

            We shall take the reader neither to the mairie nor to the church. We hardly follow two lovers as far as that, and we generally turn our backs upon the drama as soon as it puts its bridegroom's bouquet into his buttonhole. We shall merely mention an incident which, although unnoticed by the wedding party, marked its progress from the Rue des Filles du Calvaire to Saint Paul's.

            They were repaving, at that time, the northern extremity of the Rue Saint Louis. It was fenced off where it leaves the Rue du Parc Royal. It was impossible for the wedding carriages to go directly to Saint Paul's. It was necessary to change the route, and the shortest way was to turn off by the boulevard. One of the guests observed that it was Mardi Gras, and that the boulevard would be encumbered with carriages. "Why?" asked M. Gillenormand. "On account of the masks." "Capital!" said the grandfather; "let us go that way. These young folks are marrying; they are going to enter upon the serious things of life. It will prepare them for it to see a bit of masquerade."

            They went by the boulevard. The first of the wedding carriages contained Cosette and Aunt Gillenormand, M. Gillenormand, and Jean Valjean. Marius, still separated from his betrothed, according to the custom, did not come till the second. The nuptial cortege, on leaving the Rue des Filles du Calvaire, was involved in the long procession of carriages which made an endless chain from the Madeleine to the Bastille and from the Bastille to the Madeleine.

            Masks abounded on the boulevard. It was of no avail that it rained at intervals; Pantaloon and Harlequin were obstinate. In the good-humour of that winter of 1833, Paris had disguised herself as Venice. We see no such Mardi Gras nowadays. Everything being an expanded carnival, there is no longer any carnival.

            The cross-alleys were choked with passengers, and the windows with the curious. The terraces which crown the peristyles of the theatres were lined with spectators. Besides the masks, they beheld that row, peculiar to Mardi Gras as well as to Longchamps, of vehicles of all sorts, hackney coaches, spring carts, carrioles, cabriolets, moving in order, rigorously riveted to one another by the regulations of the police, and, as it were, running in grooves. Whoever is in one of these vehicles is, at the same time, spectator and spectacle. Sergents de ville kept those two interminable parallel files on the lower sides of the boulevard moving with a contrary motion, and watched, so that nothing should hinder their double current, over those two streams of carriages flowing, the one down, the other up, the one towards the Chaussee d'Antin. the other towards the Faubourg Saint Antoine. The emblazoned carriages of the peers of France, and the ambassadors, kept the middle of the roadway, going and coming freely. Certain magnificent and joyous corteges, especially the Fat Ox, had the same privilege. In this gaiety of Paris, England cracked her whip; the postchaise of Lord Seymour, teased with a nickname by the populace, passed along with a great noise.

            From time to time, there was a block somewhere in the procession of vehicles; one or the other of the two lateral files stopped until the knot was disentangled; one carriage obstructed was enough to paralyse the whole line. Then they resumed their course.

            The wedding carriages were in the file going towards the Bastille, and moving along the right side of the boulevard. At the Rue du Pont aux Choux, there was a stop for a time. Almost at the same instant, on the other side, the other file, which was going towards the Madeleine, also stopped. There was at this point of that file, a carriage-load of masks.

            From one side of the boulevard to the other, the carriage in

            which the masks were, looked into the carriage opposite, in which was

            the bride.

            "Hullo!" said a mask, "a wedding."

            "A sham wedding," replied another. "We are the genuine."

            And, too far off to be able to accost the wedding party, fearing moreover the call of the sergents de ville, the two masks looked elsewhere.

            The whole carriage-load of masks had enough to do a moment afterwards, the multitude began to hoot at it, which is the caress of the populace to the maskers, and the two masks which had just spoken were obliged to make front to the street with their comrades, and had none too many of all the weapons from the storehouse of the markets, to answer the enormous jaw of the people. A frightful exchange of metaphors was carried on between the masks and the crowd.

            Meanwhile, two other masks in the same carriage, a huge-nosed Spaniard with an oldish air and enormous black moustaches, and a puny jade, a very young girl, with a black velvet mask, had also noticed the wedding party, and, while their companions and the passers-by were lampooning one another, carried on a dialogue in a low tone.

            Their aside was covered by the tumult and lost in it. The gusts of rain had soaked the carriage, which was thrown wide open; the February wind is not warm; even while answering the Spaniard, the girl, with her low-necked dress, shivered, laughed, and coughed.

            This was the dialogue:

            "Say, now."

            "What, daron?" *

            "Do you see that old fellow?"

            "What old fellow?"

            "There, in the first roulotte of the wedding party by our side."

            "Who has his arm hooked into a black cravat?"

            "Yes."

            "Well?"

            "I am sure I know him."

            "Ah!"

            "Can you see the bride by stooping over?"

            "No."

            "And the groom?"

            "There is no groom in that roulotte."

            "Pshaw!"

            "Unless it may be the other old fellow."

            "Bend forward well and try to see the bride."

            "I can't."

            "It's all the same, that old fellow who has something the matter with his paw, I am sure I know him."

            "And what good does it do you to know him?"

            "Nobody knows. Sometimes!"

            "I don't get much amusement out of old men, for my part."

            "I know him."

            "Know him to your heart's content."

            "How the devil is he at the wedding?"

            "We are at it, too, ourselves."

            "Where does this wedding party come from?"

            "How do I know?"

            "Listen."

            "What?"

            "You must do something."

            "What?"

            "Get out of our roulotte and filer * that wedding party."

            "What for?"

            "To know where it goes and what it is. Make haste to get out, run, my daughter you are young."

            "I can't leave the carriage."

            "Why not?"

            "I am rented."

            "Ah, the deuce!"

            "I owe my day to the prefecture."

            "That is true."

            "If I leave the carriage, the first officer who sees me arrests me. You know very well."

            "Yes, I know."

            "To-day I am bought by the governmant

            "It is all the same. That old fellow worries me."

            "Old men worry you. You are not a young girl, however."

            "He is in the first carriage."

            "Well?"

            "In the bride's roulotte."

            "What then?"

            "Then he is the father."

            "What is that to me?"

            "I tell you that he is the father."

            "There isn't any other father."

            "Listen."

            "What?"

            "For my part, I can hardly go out unless I am masked. Here, I am hidden, nobody knows that I am here. But tomorrow, there are no more masks. It is Ash-Wednesday. I risk falling. * I must get back to my hole. You are free." -

            * Falling, being arrested. -

            "Not too much so."

            "More than I still."

            "Well, what then?"

            "You must try to find out where this wedding party have gone."

            "Where it is going?"

            "Yes."

            "I know that."

            "Where is it going, then?"

            "To the Cadran Bleu."

            "In the first place, it is not in that direction."

            "Well! to the Rapee."

            "Or somewhere else."

            "It is free. Weddings are free."

            "That isn't all. I tell you that you must try to let me know what that wedding party is, that this old fellow belongs to, and where that wedding party lives."

            "Not often! that will be funny. It is convenient to find, a week afterwards, a wedding party which passed by in Paris on Mardi Gras. A pin in a haystack! Is it possible!"

            "No matter, you must try. Do you understand, Azelma?"

            The two files resumed their movement in opposite directions on the two sides of the boulevard, and the carriage of the masks lost sight of the bride's "roulotte."

II - JEAN VALJEAN STILL HAS HIS ARM IN A SLING

            When, at the completion of all the ceremonies, after having pronounced before the mayor and the priest every possible yes, after having signed the registers at the municipality and at the sacristy, after having exchanged their rings, after having been on their knees elbow to elbow, under the canopy of white moire in the smoke of the censer, hand in hand, admired and envied by all, Marius in black, she in white, preceded by the usher in colonel's epaulettes, striking the pavement with his halberd, between two hedges of marvelling spectators, they arrived under the portal of the church where the folding-doors were both open, ready to get into the carriage again, and all was over, Cosette could not yet believe it. She looked at Marius, she looked at the throng, she looked at the sky; it seemed as if she were afraid of awaking. Her astonished and bewildered air rendered her unspeakably bewitching. To return, they got into the same carriage, Marius by Cosette's side; M. Gillenormand and Jean Valjean sat opposite. Aunt Gillenormand had drawn back one degree, and was in the second carriage. "My children," said the grandfather, "here you are Monsieur the Baron and Madame the Baroness, with thirty thousand francs a year." And Cosette, leaning close up to Marius, caressed his ear with this angelic whisper: "It is true, then. My name is Marius. I am Madame You."

            Such a day is an ineffable mixture of dream and of certainty. You possess and you suppose. You still have some time before you for imagination. It is an unspeakable emotion on that day to be at noon and to think of midnight. The delight of these two hearts overflowed upon the throng and gave joy to the passers-by.

            People stopped in the Rue Saint Antoine in front of Saint Paul's to see, through the carriage window, the orange flowers trembling upon Cosette's head.

            Then they returned to the Rue des Filles du Calvaire, to their home. Marius, side by side with Cosette, ascended, triumphant and radiant, that staircase up which he had been carried dying. The poor gathered before the door, and, sharing their purses, they blessed them. There were flowers everywhere. The house was not less perfumed than the church; after incense, roses. They thought they heard voices singing in the infinite; they had God in their hearts; destiny appeared to them like a ceiling of stars; they saw above their heads a gleam of sunrise. Suddenly the clock struck. Marius looked at Cosette's bewitching bare arm and the rosy things which he dimly perceived through the lace of her corsage, and Cosette, seeing Marius look, began to blush even to the tips of her ears.

            A banquet had been prepared in the dining-room.

            An illumination a giorno is the necessary attendant of a great joy. Dusk and obscurity are not accepted by the happy. They do not consent to be dark. Night, yes; darkness, no. If there is no sun, one must be made.

            The dining-room was a furnace of cheerful things. In the centre above the white and glittering table, a Venetian lustre with flat drops, with all sorts of coloured birds, blue, violet, red, green, perched in the midst of the candles; about the lustre girandoles, upon the wall reflectors with triple and quintuple branches; glasses, crystals, glassware, vessels, porcelains, Faenza-ware, pottery, gold and silver ware, all sparkled and rejoiced. The spaces between the candelabra were filled with bouquets, so that, wherever there was not a light, there was a flower.

            In the antechamber three violins and a flute played some of Haydn's quartettes in softened strains.

            Jean Valjean sat in a chair in the parlour, behind the door, which shut back upon him in such a way as almost to hide him. A few moments before they took their seats at the table, Cosette came, as if from a sudden impulse, and made him a low courtesy, spreading out her bridal dress with both hands, and, with a tenderly frolicsome look, she asked him:

            "Father, are you pleased?"

            "Yes," said Jean Valjean, "I am pleased."

            "Well, then, laugh."

            Jean Valjean began to laugh.

            A few moments afterward, Basque announced dinner.

            The guests, preceded by M. Gillenormand giving his arm to Cosette, entered the dining-room, and took their places, according to the appointed order, about the table.

            Two large arm-chairs were placed, on the right and on the left of the bride, the first for M. Gillenormand, the second for Jean Valjean. M. Gillenormand took his seat. The other arm-chair remained empty.

            All eyes sought "Monsieur Fauchelevent."

            He was not there.

            M. Gillenormand called Basque.

            "Do you know where Monsieur Fauchelevent is?"

            "Monsieur," answered Basque. "Exactly. Monsieur Fauchelevent told me to say to monsieur that he was suffering a little from his sore hand, and could not dine with Monsieur the Baron and Madame the Baroness. That he begged they would excuse him, that he would come tomorrow morning. He has just gone away."

            This empty arm-chair chilled for a moment the effusion of the nuptial repast. But, M. Fauchelevent absent, M. Gillenormand was there, and the grandfather was brilliant enough for two. He declared that M. Fauchelevent did well to go to bed early, if he was suffering, but that it was only a "scratch." This declaration was enough. Besides, what is one dark corner in such a deluge of joy? Cosette and Marius were in one of those selfish and blessed moments when we have no faculty save for the perception of happiness. And then, M. Gillenormand had an idea. "By Jove, this armchair is empty. Come here, Marius. Your aunt, although she has a right to you, will allow it. This arm-chair is for you. It is legal, and it is proper. 'Fortunatus beside Fortunata.'" Applause from the whole table. Marius took Jean Valjean's place at Cosette's side; and things arranged themselves in such a way that Cosette, at first saddened by Jean Valjean's absence, was finally satisfied with it. From the moment that Marius was the substitute, Cosette would not have regretted God. She put her soft little foot encased in white satin upon Marius' foot.

            The arm-chair occupied, M. Fauchelevent was effaced and nothing was missed. And, five minutes later, the whole table was laughing from one end to the other with all the spirit of forgetfulness.

III - THE INSEPARABLE

            What had become of Jean Valjean?

            Immediately after having laughed, upon Cosette's playful injunction, nobody observing him, Jean Valjean had left his seat, got up, and, unperceived, had reached the antechamber. It was that same room which eight months before he had entered, black with mire, blood, and powder, bringing the grandson home to the grandfather. The old woodwork was garlanded leaves and flowers; the musicians were seated on the couch upon which they had placed Marius. Basque, in a black coat, short breeches, white stockings, and white gloves, was arranging crowns of roses about each of the dishes which was to be served up. Jean Valjean had shown him his arm in a sling, charged him to explain his absence, and gone away.

            The windows of the dining-room looked upon the street. Jean Valjean stood for some minutes motionless in the obscurity under those radiant windows. He listened. The confused sounds of the banquet reached him. He heard the loud and authoritative words of the grandfather, the violins, the clatter of the plates and glasses, the bursts of laughter, and through all that gay uproar he distinguished Cosette's sweet joyous voice.

            He left the Rue des Filles du Calvaire and returned to the Rue de l'Homme Arme.

            To return, he went by the Rue Saint Louis, the Rue Culture Sainte Catherine, and the Blancs Manteaux; it was a little longer, but it was the way by which, for three months, to avoid the obstructions and the mud of the Rue Vieille du Temple, he had been accustomed to come every day, from the Rue de l'Homme Arme to the Rue des Filles du Calvaire with Cosette.

            This way over which Cosette had passed excluded for him every other road.

            Jean Valjean returned home. He lighted his candle and went upstairs. The apartment was empty. Toussaint herself was no longer there. Jean Valjean's step made more noise than usual in the rooms. All the closets were open. He went into Cosette's room. There were no sheets on the bed. The pillow, without a pillow-case and without laces, was laid upon the coverlets folded at the foot of the mattress of which the ticking was to be seen and on which nobody should sleep henceforth. All the little feminine objects to which Cosette clung had been carried away; there remained only the heavy furniture and the four walls. Toussaint's bed was also stripped. A single bed was made and seemed waiting for somebody, that was Jean Valjean's.

            He took out slowly looked at the walls, shut some closet doors, went and came from one room to the other.

            Then he found himself again in his own room, and he put his candle on the table.

            He had released his arm from the sling, and he helped himself with his right hand as if he did not suffer from it.

            He approached his bed, and his eye fell, was it by chance? was it with intention? upon the inseparable, of which Cosette had been jealous, upon the little trunk which never left him. On the 4th of June, on arriving in the Rue de l'Homme Arme, he had placed it upon a candle-stand at the head of his bed. He went to this stand with a sort of vivacity, took a key from his pocket, and opened the valise.

            He took out slowly the garments in which, ten years before, Cosette had left Montfermeil; first the little dress, then the black scarf, then the great heavy child's shoes which Cosette could have almost put on still, so small a foot she had, then the bodice of very thick fustian, then the knit-skirt, then the apron with pockets, then the woollen stockings. Those stockings, on which the shape of a little leg was still gracefully marked, were hardly longer than Jean Valjean's hand. These were all black. He had carried these garments for her to Montfermeil. As he took them out of the valise, he laid them on the bed. He was thinking. He remembered. It was in winter, a very cold December, she shivered half-naked in rags, her little feet all red in her wooden shoes. He, Jean Valjean, he had taken her away from those rags to clothe her in this mourning garb. The mother must have been pleased in her tomb to see her daughter wear mourning for her, and especially to see that she was clad, and that she was warm. He thought of that forest of Montfermeil; they had crossed it together, Cosette and he; he thought of the weather, of the trees without leaves, of the forest without birds, of the sky without sun; it is all the same, it was charming. He arranged the little things upon the bed, the scarf next the skirt, the stockings beside the shoes, the bodice beside the dress, and he looked at them one after another. She was no higher than that, she had her great doll in her arms, she had put her louis d'or in the pocket of this apron, she laughed, they walked holding each other by the hand; she had nobody but him in the world.

            Then his venerable white head fell upon the bed, this old stoical heart broke, his face was swallowed up, so to speak, in Cosette's garments, and anybody who had passed along the staircase at that moment, would have heard fearful sobs.

           

IV - IMMORTALE JECUR

            The formidable old struggle, several phases of which we have already seen, recommenced.

            He had reached the last crossing of good and evil. He had that dark intersection before his eyes. This time again, as it had already happened to him in other sorrowful crises, two roads opened before him; the one tempting, the other terrible. Which should he take?

            The one which terrified him was advised by the mysterious indicating finger which we all perceive whenever we fix our eyes upon the shadow.

            Jean Valjean had, once again, the choice between the terrible haven and the smiling ambush.

            It is true, then? the soul may be cured, but not the lot. Fearful thing! an incurable destiny!

            The question which presented itself was this:

            In what manner should Jean Valjean comport himself in regard to the happiness of Cosette and Marius? This happiness, it was he who had willed it, it was he who had made it; he had thrust it into his own heart, and at this hour, looking upon it, he might have the same satisfaction that an armourer would have, who should recognise his own mark upon a blade, on withdrawing it all reeking from his breast.

            Cosette had Marius, Marius possessed Cosette. They had everything, even riches. And it was his work.

            But this happiness, now that it existed, now that it was here, what was he to do with it, he, Jean Valjean? Should he impose himself upon this happiness? Should he treat it as belonging to him? Unquestionably, Cosette was another's; but should he, Jean Valjean, retain all of Cosette that he could retain? Should he remain the kind of father, scarcely seen, but respected, which he had been hitherto? Should he introduce himself quietly into Cosette's house? Should he bring, without saying a word, his past to this future? Should he present himself there as having a right, and should he come and take his seat, veiled, at that luminous hearth? Should he take, smiling upon them, the hands of those innocent beings into his two tragical hands? Should he place upon the peaceful andirons of the Gillenormand parlour, his feet which dragged after them the infamous shadow of the law? Should he enter upon a participation of chances with Cosette and Marius? Should he thicken the obscurity upon his head and the cloud upon theirs? Should he put in his catastrophe as a companion for their two felicities? Should he continue to keep silence? In a word, should he be, by the side of these two happy beings, the ominous mute of destiny?

            We must be accustomed to fatality and its encounter, to dare to raise our eyes when certain questions appear to us in their horrible nakedness. Good or evil are behind this severe interrogation point. "What are you going to do?" demands the sphynx.

            This familiarity with trial Jean Valjean had. He looked fixedly upon the sphynx.

            He examined the pitiless problem under all its phases.

            Cosette, that charming existence, was the raft of this shipwreck. What was he to do? Cling on, or let go his hold?

            If he clung to it, he escaped disaster, he rose again into the sunshine, he let the bitter water drip from garments and his hair, he was saved, he lived.

            If he loosed his hold?

            Then, the abyss.

            Thus bitterly he held counsel with his thoughts, or, to speak more truthfully, he struggled; he rushed, furious, within himself, sometimes against his will, sometimes against his conviction.

            It was a good thing for Jean Valjean that he had been able to weep. It gave him light, perhaps. For all that, the beginning was wild. A tempest, more furious than that which had formerly driven him towards Arras, broke loose within him. The past came back to him face to face with the present; he compared and he sobbed. The sluice of tears once opened, the despairing man writhed.

            He felt that he was stopped.

            At last Jean Valjean entered the calmness of despair.

            He weighed, he thought, he considered the alternatives of the mysterious balance of light and shade.

            To impose his galleys upon these two dazzling children, or to consummate by himself his irremediable engulfment. On the one side the sacrifice of Cosette, on the other of himself.

            At what solution did he stop?

            What determination did he take? What was, within himself, his final answer to the incorruptible demand of fatality? What door did he decide to open? Which side of his life did he resolve to close and to condemn? Between all these unfathomable precipices which surrounded him, what was his choice? What extremity did he accept? To which of these gulfs did he bow his head?

            His giddy reverie lasted all night.

            He remained there until dawn, in the same attitude, doubled over on the bed, prostrated under the enormity of fate, crushed perhaps, alas! his fists clenched, his arms extended at a right angle, like one taken from the cross and thrown down with his face to the ground. He remained twelve hours, the twelve hours of a long winter night, chilled, without lifting his head, and without uttering a word. He was as motionless as a corpse, while his thought writhed upon the ground and flew away, now like the hydra, now like the eagle. To see him thus without motion, one would have said he was dead; suddenly he thrilled convulsively, and his mouth, fixed upon Cosette's garments, kissed them; then one saw that he was alive.

            What one? since Jean Valjean was alone, and there was nobody there?

            The One who is in the darkness.

           

BOOK SEVENTH - THE LAST DROP IN THE CHALICE

I - THE SEVENTH CIRCLE AND THE EIGHTH HEAVEN

            The day after a wedding is solitary. The privacy of the happy is respected. And thus their slumber is a little belated. The tumult of visits and felicitations does not commence until later. On the morning of the 17th of February, it was a little after noon, when Basque, his napkin and duster under his arm, busy "doing his antechamber," heard a light rap at the door. There was no ring, which is considerate on such a day. Basque opened and saw M. Fauchelevent. He introduced him into the parlour, still cumbered and topsy-turvy, and which had the appearance of the battle-field of the evening's festivities.

            "Faith, monsieur," observed Basque, "we are waking up late."

            "Has your master risen?" inquired Jean Valjean.

            "How is monsieur's arm?" answered Basque.

            "Better. Has your master risen?"

            "Which? the old or the new one?"

            "Monsieur Pontmercy."

            "Monsieur the Baron?" said Basque, drawing himself up.

            One is baron to his domestics above all. Something of it is reflected upon them; they have what a philosopher would call the spattering of the title, and it flatters them. Marius, to speak of it in passing, a republican militant, and he had proved it, was now a baron in spite of himself. A slight revolution had taken place in the family in regard to this title. At present it was M. Gillenormand who clung to it and Marius who made light of it. But Colonel Pontmercy had written: My son will bear my title. Marius obeyed. And then Cosette, in whom the woman was beginning to dawn, was in raptures at being a baroness.

            "Monsieur the Baron?" repeated Basque. "I will go and see. I will tell him that Monsieur Fauchelevent is here."

            "No. Do not tell him that it is I. Tell him that somebody asks to speak with him in private, and do not give him any name."

            "Ah!" said Basque.

            "I wish to give him a surprise."

            "Ah!" resumed Basque, giving himself his second ah! as an explanation of the first.

            And he went out.

            Jean Valjean remained alone.

            The parlour, as we have just said, was all in disorder. It seemed that by lending the ear the vague rumour of the wedding might still have been heard. There were all sorts of flowers, which had fallen from garlands and head-dresses, upon the floor. The candles, burned to the socket, added stalactites of wax to the pendents of the lustres. Not a piece of furniture was in its place. In the corners, three or four arm-chairs drawn up and forming a circle, had the appearance of continuing a conversation. Altogether it was joyous. There is still a certain grace in a dead festival. It has been happy. Upon those chairs in disarray, among those flowers which are withering, under those extinguished lights, there have been thoughts or joy. The sun succeeded to the chandelier, and entered cheerfully into the parlour.

            A few minutes elapsed. Jean Valjean was motionless in the spot where Basque had left him. He was very pale. His eyes were hollow, and so sunken in their sockets from want of sleep that they could hardly be seen. His black coat had the weary folds of a garment which has passed the night. The elbows were whitened with that down which is left upon cloth by the chafing of linen. Jean Valjean was looking at the window marked out by the sun upon the floor at his feet.

            There was a noise at the door, he raised his eyes.

            Marius entered, his head erect, his mouth smiling, an indescribable light upon his face, his forehead radiant, his eye triumphant. He also had not slept.

            "It is you, father!" exclaimed he on perceiving Jean Valjean; "that idiot of a Basque with his mysterious air! But you come too early. It is only half an hour after noon yet. Cosette is asleep."

            That word: Father, said to M. Fauchelevent by Marius, signified: Supreme felicity. There had always been, as we know, barrier, coldness, and constraint between them; ice to break or to melt. Marius had reached that degree of intoxication where the barrier was falling, the ice was dissolving, and M. Fauchelevent was to him, as to Cosette, a father.

            He continued; words overflowed from him, which is characteristic of these divine paroxysms of joy:

            "How glad I am to see you! If you knew how we missed you yesterday! Good morning, father. How is your hand? Better, is it not?"

            And, satisfied with the good answer which he made to himself, he went on:

            "We have both of us talked much about you. Cosette loves you so much! You will not forget that your room is here. We will have no more of the Rue de l'Homme Arme. We will have no more of it at all. How could you go to live in a street like that, which is sickly, which is scowling, which is ugly, which has a barrier at one end, where you are cold, and where you cannot get in? you will come and install yourself here. And that to-day. Or you will have a bone to pick with Cosette. She intends to lead us all by the nose, I warn you. You have seen your room, it is close by ours, it looks upon the gardens; the lock has been fixed, the bed is made, it is all ready; you have nothing to do but to come. Cosette has put a great old easy chair of Utrecht velvet beside your bed, to which she said: stretch out your arms for him. Every spring, in the clump of acacias which is in front of your windows, there comes a nightingale, you will have her in two months. You will have her nest at your left and ours at your right. By night she will sing, and by day Cosette will talk. Your room is full in the south. Cosette will arrange your books there for you, your voyage of Captain Cook, and the other, Vancouver's, all your things. There is, I believe, a little valise which you treasure, I have selected a place of honour for it. You have conquered my grandfather, you suit him. We will live together. Do you know whist? you will overjoy my grandfather, if you know whist. You will take Cosette to walk on my court-days, you will give her your arm, you know, as at the Luxembourg, formerly. We have absolutely decided to be very happy. And you are part of our happiness, do you understand, father? Come now, you breakfast with us to-day?"

            "Monsieur," said Jean Valjean, "I have one thing to tell you. I am an old convict."

            The limit of perceptible acute sounds may be passed quite as easily for the mind as for the ear. Those words: I am an old convict, coming from M. Fauchelevent's mouth and entering Marius' ear, went beyond the possible. Marius did not hear. It seemed to him that something had just been said to him; but he knew not what. He stood aghast.

            He then perceived that the man who was talking to him was terrible. Excited as he was, he had not until this moment noticed that frightful pallor.

            Jean Valjean untied the black cravat which sustained his right arm, took off the cloth wound about his head, laid his thumb bare, and showed it to Marius.

            "There is nothing the matter with my hand," said he.

            Marius looked at the thumb.

            "There has never been anything the matter with it," continued Jean Valjean.

            There was, in fact, no trace of a wound. Jean Valjean pursued:

            "It was best that I should be absent from your marriage. I absented myself as much as I could. I feigned this wound so as not to commit a forgery, not to introduce a nullity into the marriage acts, to be excused from signing."

            Marius stammered out:

            "What does this mean?"

            "It means," answered Jean Valjean, "that I have been in the galleys."

            "You drive me mad!" exclaimed Marius in dismay.

            "Monsieur Pontmercy," said Jean Valjean, "I was nineteen years in the galleys. For robbery. Then I was sentenced for life. For robbery. For a second offence. At this hour I am in breach of ban."

            It was useless for Marius to recoil before the reality, to refuse the fact, to resist the evidence; he was compelled to yield. He began to comprehend, and as always happens in such a case, he comprehended beyond the truth. He felt the shiver of a horrible interior flash; an idea which made him shudder, crossed his mind. He caught a glimpse in the future of a hideous destiny for himself.

            "Tell all, tell all!" cried he. "You are Cosette's father!"

            And he took two steps backward with an expression of unspeakable horror.

            Jean Valjean raised his head with such a majesty of attitude that he seemed to rise to the ceiling.

            "It is necessary that you believe me in this, monsieur; although the oath of such as I be not received."

            Here he made a pause; then, with a sort of sovereign and sepulchral authority, he added, articulating slowly and emphasising his syllables:

            "-You will believe me. I, the father of Cosette I before God, no. Monsieur Baron Pontmercy, I am a Peasant of Faverolles. I earned my living by pruning trees. My name is not Fauchelevent, my name is Jean Valjean. I am nothing to Cosette. Compose yourself."

            Marius faltered:

            "Who proves it to me-"

            "I. Since I say so."

            Marius looked at this man. He was mournful, yet self-possessed. No lie could come out of such a calmness. That which is frozen is sincere. We feel the truth in that sepulchral coldness.

            "I believe you," said Marius.

            Jean Valjean inclined his head as if making oath; and continued:

            "What am I to Cosette? a passer. Ten years ago, I did not know that she existed. I love her, it is true. A child whom one has seen when little, being himself already old, he loves. When a man is old, he feels like a grandfather towards all little children. You can, it seems to me, suppose that I have something which resembles a heart. She was an orphan. Without father or mother. She had need of me. That is why I began to love her. Children are so weak, that anybody, even a man like me, may be their protector. I performed that duty with regard to Cosette. I do not think that one could truly call so little a thing a good deed; but if it is a good deed, well, set it down that I have done it. Record that mitigating circumstance. Today Cosette leaves my life; our two roads separate. Henceforth I can do nothing more for her. She is Madame Pontmercy. Her protector is changed. And Cosette gains by the change. All is well. As for the six hundred thousand francs, you have not spoken of them to me, but I anticipate your thought; that is a trust. How did this trust come into my hands? What matters it? I make over the trust. Nothing more can be asked of me. I complete the restitution by telling my real name. This again concerns me. I desire, myself, that you should know who I am."

            And Jean Valjean looked Marius in the face.

            All that Marius felt was tumultuous and incoherent. Certain blasts of destiny make such waves in our soul.

            We have all had such moments of trouble, in which everything within us is dispersed; we say the first things that come to mind, which are not always precisely those that we should say. There are sudden revelations which we cannot bear, and which intoxicate like a noxious wine. Marius was so stupefied at the new condition of affairs which opened before him that he spoke to this man almost as though he were angry with him for his avowal.

            "But after all," exclaimed he, "why do you tell me all this? What compels you to do so? You could have kept the secret to yourself. You are neither denounced, nor pursued, nor hunted. You have some reason for making, from mere wantonness, such a revelation. Finish it. There is something else. In connection with what do you make this avowal? From what motive?"

            "From what motive?" answered Jean Valjean, in a voice so low and so hollow that one would have said it was to himself he was speaking rather than to Marius. "From what motive, indeed, does this convict come and say: I am a convict? Well, yes! the motive is strange. It is from honour. Yes, my misfortune is a cord which I have here in my heart and which holds me fast. When one is old these cords are strong. The whole life wastes away about them; they hold fast. If I had been able to tear out this cord, to break it, to untie the knot, or to cut it, to go far away, I had been saved, I had only to depart; there are diligences in the Rue du Bouloy; you are happy, I go away. I have tried to break this cord, I have pulled upon it, it held firmly, it did not snap, I was tearing my heart out with it. Then I said I cannot live away from here. I must stay. Well, yes; but you are right, I am a fool, why not just simply stay? You offer me a room in the house, Madame Pontmercy loves me well, she says to that arm-chair: Stretch out your arms for him, your grandfather asks nothing better than to have me, I suit him, we shall all live together, eat in common, I will give my arm to Cosette- to Madame Pontmercy, pardon me, it is from habit- we will have but one roof, but one table, but one fire, the same chimney corner in winter, the same promenade in summer, that is joy, that is happiness, that, it is everything. We will live as one family, one family!"

            At this word Jean Valjean grew wild. He folded his arms, gazed at the floor at his feet as if he wished to hollow out an abyss in it, and his voice suddenly became piercing.

            "One family! no. I am of no family. I am not of yours. I am not of the family of men. In houses where people are at home I am an incumbrance. There are families, but they are not for me. I am the unfortunate; I am outside. Had I a father and a mother? I almost doubt it. The day that I married that child it was all over, I saw that she was happy, and that she was with the man whom she loved, and that there was a good old man here, a household of two angels, all joys in this house, and that it was well, I said to myself: Enter thou not. I could have lied, it is true, have deceived you all, have remained Monsieur Fauchelevent. As long as it was for her, I could lie; but now it would be for myself, I must not do it. It was enough to remain silent, it is true, and everything would continue. You ask me what forces me to speak? a strange thing; my conscience. To remain silent was, however, very easy. I have passed the night in trying to persuade myself to do so; you are confessing me, and what I come to tell you is so strange that you have a right to do so; well, yes, I have passed the night in giving myself reasons, I have given myself very good reasons, I have done what I could, it was of no use. But there are two things in which I did not succeed; neither in breaking the cord which holds me by the heart fixed, riveted, and sealed here, nor in silencing some one who speaks low to me when I am alone. That is why I have come to confess all to you this morning. All, or almost all. It is useless to tell what concerns only myself; I keep it for myself. The essential you know. So I have taken my mystery, and brought it to you. And I have ripped open my secret under your eyes. It was not an easy resolution to form. All night I have struggled with myself. Ah! you think I have not said to myself that this is not the Champmathieu affair, that in concealing my name I do no harm to anybody, that the name of Fauchelevent was given to me by Fauchelevent himself in gratitude for a service rendered, and I could very well keep it, and that I should be happy in this room which you offer me, that I should interfere with nothing, that I should be in my little corner, and that, while you would have Cosette, I should have the idea of being in the same house with her. Each one would have had his due share of happiness. To continue to be Monsieur Fauchelevent, smoothed the way for everything. Yes, except for my soul. There was joy everywhere about me, the depths of my soul were still black. It is not enough to be happy, we must be satisfied with ourselves. Thus I should have remained Monsieur Fauchelevent, thus I should have concealed my real face, thus, in presence of your cheerfulness, I should have borne an enigma, thus, in the midst of your broad day, I should have been darkness, thus, without openly crying beware, I should have introduced the galleys at your hearth, I should have sat down at your table with the thought that, if you knew who I was, you would drive me away, I should have let myself be served by domestics who, if they had known, would have said: How horrible! I should have touched you with my elbow which you have a right to shrink from, I should have filched the grasp of your hand! There would have been in your house a division of respect between venerable white hairs and dishonoured white hairs; at your most intimate hours, when all hearts would have thought themselves open to each other to the bottom, when we should have been all four together, your grandfather, you two, and myself; there would have been a stranger there! I should have been side by side with you in your existence, having but one care, never to displace the covering of my terrible pit. Thus I, a dead man, should have imposed myself upon you, who are alive. Her I should have condemned to myself for ever. You, Cosette, and I, we should have been three heads in the green cap! Do you not shudder? I am only the most depressed of men, I should have been the most monstrous. And this crime I should have committed every day! And this lie I should have acted every day! And this face of night I should have worn every day! And of my disgrace, I should have given to you your part every day! every day! to you, my loved ones, you, my children, you, my innocents! To be quiet is nothing? to keep silence is simple? No, it is not simple. There is a silence which lies. And my lie, and my fraud, and my unworthiness, and my cowardice, and my treachery, and my crime, I should have drunk drop by drop, I should have spit it out, then drunk again, I should have finished at midnight and recommenced at noon, and my good-morning would have lied, and my good-night would have lied, and I should have slept upon it, and I should have eaten it with my bread, and I should have looked Cosette in the face, and I should have answered the smile of the angel with the smile of the damned, and I should have been a detestable impostor! What for? to be happy. To be happy, I! Have I the right to be happy? I am outside of life, monsieur."

            Jean Valjean stopped. Marius listened. Such a chain of ideas and of pangs cannot be interrupted. Jean Valjean lowered his voice anew, but it was no longer a hollow voice, it was an ominous voice.

            "You ask why I speak? I am neither informed against, nor pursued, nor hunted, say you. Yes! I am informed against! yes! I am pursued! yes! I am hunted? By whom? by myself. It is I myself who bar the way before myself, and I drag myself, and I urge myself, and I check myself, and I exert myself, and when one holds himself he is well held."

            He breathed with difficulty, and forced out these final words:

            "To live, once I stole a loaf of bread; to-day, to live, I will not steal a name."

            "My grandfather has friends," said Marius. "I will procure your pardon."

            "It is useless," answered Jean Valjean. "They think me dead, that is enough. The dead are not subjected to surveillance. They are supposed to moulder tranquilly. Death is the same thing as pardon."

            And, disengaging his hand, which Marius held, he added with a sort of inexorable dignity:

            "Besides, to do my duty, that is the friend to which I have recourse; and I need pardon of but one, that is my conscience."

            Just then, at the other end of the parlour, the door was softly opened a little way, and Cosette's head made its appearance. They saw only her sweet face, her hair was in charming disorder, her eyelids were still swollen with sleep. She made the movement of a bird passing its head out of its nest, looked first at her husband, then at Jean Valjean, and called to them with a laugh, you would have thought you saw a smile at the bottom of a rose:

            "I'll wager that you're talking politics. How stupid that is, instead of being with me!"

            Jean Valjean shuddered.

            "Cosette," faltered Marius- and he stopped. One would have said that they were two culprits.

            Cosette, radiant, continued to look at them both. The frolic of paradise was in her eyes.

            "I catch you in the very act," said Cosette. "I just heard my father Fauchelevent say, through the door: 'Conscience- Do his duty.'- It is politics, that is. I will not have it. You ought not to talk politics the very next day. It is not right."

            "You are mistaken, Cosette," answered Marius. "We were talking business. We are talking of the best investment for your six hundred thousand francs-"

            "It is not all that," interrupted Cosette. "I am coming. Do you want me here?"

            And, passing resolutely through the door, she came into the parlour. She was dressed in a full white morning gown, with a thousand folds and with wide sleeves which, starting from the neck, fell to her feet. There are in the golden skies of old Gothic pictures such charming robes for angels to wear.

            She viewed herself from head to foot in a large glass, then exclaimed with an explosion of ineffable ecstasy:

            "Once there was a king and a queen. Oh! how happy I am!" So saying, she made a reverence to Marius and to Jean Valjean. "There," said she, "I am going to install myself by you in an armchair; we breakfast in half an hour, you shall say all you wish to; I know very well that men must talk I shall be very good."

            Marius took her arm, and said to her lovingly:

            "We are talking business."

            "By the way," answered Cosette, "I have opened my window, a flock of pierrots [sparrows or masks] have just arrived in the garden. Birds, not masks. It is Ash Wednesday to-day; but not for the birds."

            "I tell you that we are talking business; go, my darling Cosette, leave us a moment. We are talking figures. It will tire you."

            "You have put on a charming cravat this morning, Marius. You are very coquettish, monseigneur. It will not tire me."

            "I assure you that it will tire you."

            "No. Because it is you. I shall not understand you, but I will listen to you. When we hear voices that we love, we need not understand the words they say. To be here together is all that I want. I shall stay with you; pshaw!"

            "You are my darling Cosette! Impossible."

            "Impossible!"

            "Yes."

            "Very well," replied Cosette. "I would have told you the news. I would have told you that grandfather is still asleep, that your aunt is at mass, that the chimney in my father Fauchelevent's room smokes, that Nicolette has sent for the sweep, that Toussaint and Nicolette have had a quarrel already, that Nicolette makes fun of Toussaint's stuttering. Well, you shall know nothing. Ah! it is impossible! I too, in my turn, you shall see, monsieur, I will say: it is impossible. Then who will be caught? I pray you, my darling Marius, let me stay here with you two."

            "I swear to you that we must be alone."

            "Well, am I anybody?"

            Jean Valjean did not utter a word. Cosette turned towards him.

            "In the first place, father, I want you to come and kiss me. What are you doing there, saying nothing, instead of taking my part? who gave me such a father as that? You see plainly that I am very unfortunate in my domestic affairs. My husband beats me. Come, kiss me this instant."

            Jean Valjean approached.

            Cosette turned towards Marius.

            "You, sir, I make faces at you."

            Then she offered her forehead to Jean Valjean. Jean Valjean took a step towards her.

            Cosette drew back.

            "Father, you are pale. Does your arm hurt you?"

            "It is well." said Jean Valjean.

            "Have you slept badly?"

            "No."

            "Are you sad?"

            "No."

            "Kiss me. If you are well, if you sleep well, if you are happy, I will not scold you."

            And again she offered him her forehead.

            Jean Valjean kissed that forehead, upon which there was a celestial reflection.

            "Smile."

            Jean Valjean obeyed. It was the smile of a spectre.

            "Now defend me against my husband."

            "Cosette!-" said Marius.

            "Get angry, father. Tell him that I must stay. You can surely talk before me. So you think me very silly. It is very astonishing then what you are saying! business, putting money in a bank, that is a great affair. Men play the mysterious for nothing. I want to stay. I am very pretty this morning. Look at me, Marius."

            And with an adorable shrug of the shoulders and an inexpressibly exquisite pout, she looked at Marius. It was like a flash between these two beings. That somebody was there mattered little.

            "I love you!" said Marius.

            "I adore you!" said Cosette.

            And they fell irresistibly into each other's arms.

            "Now," resumed Cosette, readjusting a fold of her gown with a little triumphant pout, "I shall stay."

            "What, no," answered Marius, in a tone of entreaty, "we have something to finish."

            "No, still?"

            Marius assumed a grave tone of voice:

            "I assure you, Cosette, that it is impossible."

            "Ah! you put on your man's voice, monsieur. Very well, I'll go. You, father, you have not sustained me. Monsieur my husband, monsieur my papa, you are tyrants. I am going to tell grandfather of you. If you think that I shall come back and talk nonsense to you, you are mistaken. I am proud. I wait for you now, you will see that it is you who will get tired without me. I am going away, very well."

            And she went out.

            Two seconds later, the door opened again, her fresh rosy face passed once more between the two folding doors, and she cried to them:

            "I am very angry."

            The door closed again and the darkness returned.

            It was like a stray sunbeam which, without suspecting it, should have suddenly traversed the night.

            Marius made sure that the door was well closed.

            "Poor Cosette!" murmured he, "when she knows-"

            At these words, Jean Valjean trembled in every limb. He fixed upon Marius a bewildered eye.

            "Cosette! Oh, yes, it is true, you will tell this to Cosette. That is right. Stop, I had not thought of that. People have the strength for some things, but not for others. Monsieur, I beseech you, I entreat you, Monsieur, give me your most sacred word, do not tell her. Is it not enough that you know it yourself? I could have told it of myself without being forced to it, I would have told it to the universe, to all the world, that would be nothing to me. But she, she doesn't know what it is, it would appal her. A convict, why! you would have to explain it to her, to tell her: It is a man who has been to the galleys. She saw the Chain pass by one day. Oh, my God!"

            He sank into an arm-chair and hid his face in both hands. He could not be heard, but by the shaking of his shoulders it could be seen that he was weeping. Silent tears, terrible tears.

            There is a stifling in the sob. A sort of convulsion seized him, he bent over upon the back of the arm-chair as if to breathe, letting his arms hang down and allowing Marius to see his face bathed in tears, and Marius heard him murmur so low that his voice seemed to come from a bottomless depth: "Oh! would that I could die!"

            "Be calm," said Marius, "I will keep your secret for myself alone."

            And, less softened perhaps than he should have been, but obliged for an hour past to familiarise himself with a fearful surprise, seeing by degrees a convict superimposed before his eyes upon M. Fauchelevent, possessed little by little of this dismal reality, and led by the natural tendency of the position to determine the distance which had just been put between this man and himself, Marius added:

            "It is impossible that I should not say a word to you of the trust which you have so faithfully and so honestly restored. That is an act of probity. It is just that a recompense should be given you. Fix the sum yourself, it shall be counted out to you. Do not be afraid fix it very high."

            "I thank you, monsieur," answered Jean Valjean gently.

            He remained thoughtful a moment, passing the end of his forefinger over his thumb-nail mechanically, then he raised his voice:

            "It is all nearly finished. There is one thing left-"

            "What?"

            Jean Valjean had as it were a supreme hesitation, and, voiceless, almost breathless, he faltered out rather than said:

            "Now that you know, do you think, monsieur, you who are the master, that I ought not to see Cosette again?"

            "I think that would be best," answered Marius coldly.

            "I shall not see her again," murmured Jean Valjean. And he walked towards the door.

            He placed his hand upon the knob, the latch yielded, the door started, Jean Valjean opened it wide enough to enable him to pass out, stopped a second motionless, then shut the door, and turned towards Marius.

            He was no longer pale, he was livid. There were no longer tears in his eyes, but a sort of tragical flame. His voice had again become strangely calm.

            "But, monsieur," said he, "if you are willing, I will come and see her. I assure you that I desire it very much. If I had not clung to seeing Cosette, I should not have made the avowal which I have made, I should have gone away; but wishing to and to continue to see her, I was compelled in honour to tell you all. You follow my reasoning, do you not? that is a thing which explains itself. You see, for nine years past, I have had her near me. We lived first in that ruin on the boulevard, then in the convent, then near the Luxembourg. It was there that you saw her for the first time. You remember her blue plush hat. We were afterwards in the quartier of the Invalides where there was a grating and a garden. Rue Plumet. I lived in a little back-yard where I heard her piano. That was my life. We never left each other. That lasted nine years and some months. I was like her father, and she was my child. I don't know whether you understand me, Monsieur Pontmercy, but from the present time, to see her no more, to speak to her no more, to have nothing more, that would be hard. If you do not think it wrong, I will come from time to time to see Cosette. I should not come often. I would not stay long. You might say I should be received in the little low room. On the ground floor. I would willingly come in by the back-door, which is for the servants, but that would excite wonder, perhaps. It is better, I suppose, that I should enter by the usual door. Monsieur, indeed, I would really like to see Cosette a little still. As rarely as you please. Put yourself in my place, it is all that I have. And then, we must take care. If I should not come at all, it would have a bad effect, it would be thought singular. For instance, what I can do, is to come in the evening, at nightfall."

            "You will come every evening," said Marius, "and Cosette will expect you."

            "You are kind, monsieur," said Jean Valjean.

            Marius bowed to Jean Valjean, happiness conducted despair to the door, and these two men separated.

II - THE OBSCURITIES WHICH A REVELATION MAY CONTAIN

            Marius was completely unhinged.

            The kind of repulsion which he had always felt for the man with whom he saw Cosette was now explained. There was something strangely enigmatic in this person, of which his instinct had warned him. This enigma was the most hideous of disgraces, the galleys. This M. Fauchelevent was the convict Jean Valjean.

            The former repulsion of Marius towards this man, towards this Fauchelevent become Jean Valjean, was now mingled with horror.

            In this horror, we must say, there was some pity, and also a certain astonishment.

            This robber, this twice-convicted robber, had restored a trust. And what a trust? Six hundred thousand francs. He was alone in the secret of the trust. He might have kept all, he had given up all.

            Moreover, he had revealed his condition of his own accord. Nothing obliged him to do so. If it were known who he was, it was through himself. There was more in that avowal than the acceptance of humiliation, there was the acceptance of peril. To a condemned man, a mask is not a mask, but a shelter. He had renounced that shelter. A false name is security; he had thrown away this false name. He could, he, a galley-slave, have hidden himself for ever in an honourable family; he had resisted this temptation. And from what motive? from conscientious scruples. He had explained it himself with the irresistible accent of reality. In short, whatever this Jean Valjean might be, he had incontestably an awakened conscience. There was in him some mysterious regeneration begun; and, according to all appearance, for a long time already the scruple had been master of the man. Such paroxysms of justice and goodness do not belong to vulgar natures. An awakening of conscience is greatness of soul.

            Jean Valjean was sincere. This sincerity, visible, palpable, unquestionable, evident even by the grief which it caused him, rendered investigation useless and gave authority to all that this man said. Here, for Marius, a strange inversion of situations. What came from M. Fauchelevent? distrust. What flowed from Jean Valjean? confidence.

            In the mysterious account which Marius thoughtfully drew up concerning this Jean Valjean, he verified the credit, he verified the debit, he attempted to arrive at a balance. But it was all as it were in a storm. Marius, endeavouring to get a clear idea of this man, and pursuing, so to speak, Jean Valjean in the depths of his thought, lost him and found him again in a fatal mist.

            The trust honestly surrendered, the probity of the avowal, that was good. It was like a break in the cloud, but the cloud again became black.

            Confused as Marius' recollections were, some shadow of them returned to him.

            What was the exact nature of that affair in the Jondrette garret? Why, on the arrival of the police, did this man, instead of making his complaint, make his escape? Here Marius found the answer. Because this man was a fugitive from justice in breach of ban.

            Another question: Why had this man come into the barricade? For now Marius saw that reminiscence again distinctly, reappearing in these emotions like sympathetic ink before the fire. This man was in the barricade. He did not fight there. What did he come there for? Before this question a spectre arose, and made response. Javert. Marius recalled perfectly to mind at this hour the fatal sight of Jean Valjean dragging Javert bound outside the barricade, and he again heard the frightful pistol-shot behind the corner of the little Rue Mondetour. There was, probably, hatred between the spy and this galley-slave. The one cramped the other. Jean Valjean had gone to the barricade to avenge himself. He had arrived late. He knew probably that Javert was a prisoner there. The Corsican vendetta penetrated into certain lower depths and is their law; it is so natural that it does not astonish souls half turned back towards the good; and these hearts are so constituted that a criminal, in the path of repentance, may be scrupulous in regard to robbery and not be so in regard to vengeance. Jean Valjean had killed Javert. At least, that seemed evident.

            Finally, a last question: but to this no answer. This question Marius felt like a sting. How did it happen that Jean Valjean's existence had touched Cosette's so long? What was this gloomy game of providence which had placed this child in contact with this man? Are coupling chains then forged on high also, and does it please God to pair the angel with the demon? Can then a crime and an innocence be room-mates in the mysterious galleys of misery? In this strait of the condemned, which is called human destiny, can two foreheads pass close to one another, the one childlike, the other terrible, the one all bathed in the divine whiteness of the dawn, the other for ever pallid with the glare of an eternal lightning? Who could have determined this inexplicable fellowship? In what manner, through what prodigy, could community of life have been established between this celestial child and this old wretch? Who had been able to bind the lamb to the wolf, and, a thing still more incomprehensible, attach the wolf to the lamb? For the savage being adored the frail being, for, during nine years, the angel had had the monster for a support. Cosette's childhood and youth, her coming to the day, her maidenly growth towards life and light, had been protected by this monstrous devotion. Here, the questions exfoliated, so to speak, into innumerable enigmas, abyss opened at the bottom of abysm, and Marius could no longer bend over Jean Valjean without dizziness. What then was this man precipice?

            The old Genesiac symbols are eternal; in human society, such as it is and will be, until the day when a greater light shall change it, there are always two men, one superior, the other subterranean; he who follows good is Abel; he who follows evil is Cain. What was this remorseful Cain? What was this bandit religiously absorbed in the adoration of a virgin, watching over her, bringing her up, guarding her, dignifying her, and enveloping her, himself impure, with purity? What was this cloaca which had venerated this innocence to such an extent as to leave it immaculate? What was this Jean Valjean watching over the education of Cosette? What was this figure of darkness, whose only care was to preserve from all shadow and from all cloud the rising of a star?

            In this was the secret of Jean Valjean; in this was also the secret of God.

            Before this double secret, Marius recoiled. The one in some sort reassured him in regard to the other. God was as visible in this as Jean Valjean. God has his instruments. He uses what tool He pleases. He is not responsible to man. Do we know the ways of God? Jean Valjean had laboured upon Cosette. He had, to some extent, formed that soul. That was incontestable. Well, what then? The workman was horrible; but the work admirable. God performs His miracles as seems good to Himself. He had constructed this enchanting Cosette, and he had employed Jean Valjean on the work. It had pleased Him to choose this strange co-worker. What reckoning have we to ask of Him? Is it the first time that the dunghill has aided the spring to make the rose?

            Marius made these answers to himself, and declared that they were good. On all the points which we have just indicated, he had not dared to press Jean Valjean, without avowing to himself that he dared not. He adored Cosette, he possessed Cosette. Cosette was resplendently pure. That was enough for him. What explanation did he, need? Cosette was a light. Does light need to be explained? He had all; what could he desire? All, is not that enough. The personal affairs of Jean Valjean did not concern him. In bending over the fatal shade of this man, he clung to this solemn declaration of the miserable being: "I am nothing to Cosette. Ten years ago, I did not know of her existence!"

            Jean Valjean was a passer. He had said so, himself. Well, he was passing away. Whatever he might be, his part was finished. Henceforth Marius was to perform the functions of Providence for Cosette. Cosette had come forth to find in the azure her mate, her lover, her husband, her celestial male. In taking flight, Cosette, winged and transfigured, left behind her on the ground, empty and hideous, her chrysalis, Jean Valjean.

            This man was of the night, of the living and terrible night. How should he dare to probe it to the bottom? It is appalling to question the shadow: Who knows what answer it will make? The dawn might be blackened by it for ever.

            In this frame of mind it was a bitter perplexity to Marius to think that this man should have henceforth any contact whatever with Cosette. These fearful questions, before which he had shrunk, and from which an implacable and definitive decision might have sprung, he now reproached himself almost, for not having put. He thought himself too good, too mild, let us say the word, too weak. This weakness had led him to an imprudent concession. He had allowed himself to be moved. He had done wrong. He should have merely and simply cast off Jean Valjean. Jean Valjean was the Jonah, he should have done it, and relieved his house of this man. He was vexed with himself; he was vexed with the abruptness of that whirl of emotions which had deafened, blinded, and drawn him on. He was displeased with himself.

            What should be done now? Jean Valjean's visits were very repugnant to him. Of what use was this man in his house? What should he do? Here he shook off his thoughts he was unwilling to probe, he was unwilling to go deeper; he was unwilling to fathom himself. He had promised, he had allowed himself to be led into a promise; Jean Valjean had his promise; even to a convict, especially to a convict, a man should keep his word. Still, his first duty was towards Cosette. In short, a repulsion, which predominated over all else, possessed him.

            Marius turned all this assemblage of ideas over in his mind confusedly, passing from one to another, and excited by all. Hence a deep commotion. It was not easy for him to hide this commotion from Cosette, but love is a talent, and Marius succeeded.

            Besides, he put without apparent object, some questions to Cosette, who, as candid as a dove is white, suspected nothing; he talked with her of her childhood and her youth, and he convinced himself more and more that all a man can be that is good, paternal, venerable, this convict had been to Cosette. All that Marius had dimly seen and conjectured was real. This darkly mysterious nettle had loved and protected this lily.

           

BOOK EIGHTH - THE TWILIGHT WANE

I - THE BASEMENT ROOM

            The next day, at nightfall, Jean Valjean knocked at the M. Gillenormand porte-cochere. Basque received him. Basque happened to be in the court-yard very conveniently, and as if he had had orders. It sometimes happens that one says to a servant: "You will be on the watch for Monsieur So-and-so, when he comes."

            Basque, without waiting for Jean Valjean to come up to him, addressed him as follows:

            "Monsieur the Baron told me to ask monsieur whether he desires to go upstairs or to remain below?"

            "To remain below," answered Jean Valjean.

            Basque, who was moreover absolutely respectful, opened the door of the basement room and said: "I will inform madame."

            The room which Jean Valjean entered was an arched and damp basement, used as a cellar when necessary, looking upon the street, paved with red tiles, and dimly lighted by a window with an iron grating.

            The room was not of those which are harassed by the brush, the duster, and the broom. In it the dust was tranquil. There the persecution of the spiders had not been organised. A fine web, broadly spread out, very black, adorned with dead flies, ornamented one of the window-panes. The room, small and low, was furnished with a pile of empty bottles heaped up in one corner. The wall had been washed with a wash of yellow ochre, which was scaling off in large flakes. At the end was a wooden mantel, painted black, with a narrow shelf. A fire was kindled, which indicated that somebody had anticipated Jean Valjean's answer: To remain below.

            Two armchairs were placed at the corners of the fireplace. Between the chairs was spread, in guise of a carpet, an old bed-side rug, showing more warp than wool.

            The room was lighted by the fire in the fireplace and the twilight from the window.

            Jean Valjean was fatigued. For some days he had neither eaten nor slept. He let himself fall into one of the arm-chairs.

            Basque returned, set a lighted candle upon the mantel, and retired. Jean Valjean, his head bent down and his chin upon his breast, noticed neither Basque nor the candle.

            Suddenly he started up. Cosette was behind him.

            He had not seen her come in, but he had felt that she was coming.

            He turned. He gazed at her. She was adorably beautiful. But what he looked upon with that deep look, was not her beauty but her soul.

            "Ah, well!" exclaimed Cosette, "father, I knew that you were singular, but I should never have thought this. What an idea! Marius tells me that it is you who wish me to receive you here."

            "Yes, it is I."

            "I expected the answer. Well, I warn you that I am going to make a scene. Let us begin at the beginning. Father, kiss me."

            And she offered her cheek.

            Jean Valjean remained motionless.

            "You do not stir. I see it. You act guilty. But it is all the same, I forgive you. Jesus Christ said: 'Offer the other cheek.' Here it is."

            And she offered the other cheek.

            Jean Valjean did not move. It seemed as if his feet were nailed to the floor.

            "This is getting serious," said Cosette. "What have I done to you? I declare I am confounded. You owe me amends. You will dine with us."

            "I have dined."

            "That is not true. I will have Monsieur Gillenormand scold you. Grandfathers are made to scold fathers. Come. Go up to the parlour with me. Immediately."

            "Impossible."

            Cosette here lost ground a little. She ceased to order and passed to questions.

            "But why not? and you choose the ugliest room in the house to see me in. It is horrible here."

            "You know, madame, I am peculiar, I have my whims."

            Cosette clapped her little hands together.

            "Madame! Still again! What does this mean?"

            Jean Valjean fixed upon her that distressing smile to which he sometimes had recourse:

            "You have wished to be madame. You are so."

            "Not to you, father."

            "Don't call me father any more."

            "What."

            "Call me Monsieur Jean. Jean, if you will."

            "You are no longer father? I am no longer Cosette? Monsieur Jean? What does this mean? but these are revolutions, these are! what then has happened? look me in the face now. And you will not live with us! And you will not have my room! What have I done to you? what have I done to you? Is there anything the matter?"

            "Nothing."

            "Well then?"

            "All is as usual."

            "Why do you change your name?"

            "You have certainly changed yours."

            He smiled again with that same smile and added:

            "Since you are Madame Pontmercy I can surely be Monsieur Jean."

            "I don't understand anything about it. It is all nonsense; I shall ask my husband's permission for you to be Monsieur Jean. I hope that he will not consent to it. You make me a great deal of trouble. You may have whims, but you must not grieve your darling Cosette. It is wrong. You have no right to be naughty, you are too good."

            He made no answer.

            She seized both his hands hastily and, with an irresistible impulse, raising them towards her face, she pressed them against her neck under her chin, which is a deep token of affection.

            "Oh!" said she to him, "be good!"

            And she continued:

            "This is what I call being good: being nice, coming to stay here, there are birds here as well as in the Rue Plumet, living with us, leaving that hole in the Rue de l'Homme Arme, not giving us riddles to guess, being like other people, dining with us, breakfasting with us, being my father."

            He disengaged his hands.

            "You have no more need of a father, you have a husband."

            Cosette could not contain herself.

            "I no more need of a father! To things like that which have no common sense, one really doesn't know what to say!"

            "If Toussaint was here," replied Jean Valjean, like one who is in search of authorities and who catches at every straw, "she would be the first to acknowledge that it is true that I always had my peculiar ways. There is nothing new in this. I have always liked my dark corner."

            "But it is cold here. We can't see clearly. It is horrid, too, to want to be Monsieur Jean. I don't want you to talk so to me."

            "Just now, on my way here," answered Jean Valjean, "I saw a piece of furniture in the Rue Saint Louis. At a cabinet maker's. If I were a pretty woman, I should make myself a present of that piece of furniture. A very fine toilet table; in the present style, What you call rosewood, I think. It is inlaid. A pretty large glass. There are drawers in it. It is handsome."

            "Oh! the ugly bear!" replied Cosette.

            And with a bewitching sauciness, pressing her teeth together and separating her lips, she blew upon Jean Valjean. It was a Grace copying a kitten.

            "I am furious," she said. "Since yesterday, you all make me rage. Everybody spites me. I don't understand. You don't defend me against Marius. Marius doesn't uphold me against you, I am all alone. I arrange a room handsomely. If I could have put the good God into it, I would have done it. You leave me my room upon my hands. My tenant bankrupts me. I order Nicolette to have a nice little dinner. Nobody wants your dinner, madame. And my father Fauchelevent, wishes me to call him Monsieur Jean, and to receive him in a hideous, old, ugly, mouldy cellar, where the walls have a beard, and where there are empty bottles for vases, and spiders' webs for curtains. You are singular, I admit, that is your way, but a truce is granted to people who get married. You should not have gone back to being singular immediately. So you are going to be well satisfied with your horrid Rue de l'Homme Arme. I was very forlorn there, myself! What have you against me? You give me a great deal of trouble. Fie!"

            And, growing suddenly serious, she looked fixedly at Jean Valjean, and added:

            "So you don't like it that I am happy?"

            Artlessness, unconsciously, sometimes penetrates very deep. This question, simple to Cosette, was severe to Jean Valjean. Cosette: wished to scratch; she tore.

            Jean Valjean grew pale. For a moment he did not answer, then, with an indescribable accent and talking to himself, he murmured: "Her happiness was the aim of my life. Now, God may beckon me away. Cosette, you are happy; my time is full."

            "Ah, you have called me Cosette!" exclaimed she.

            And she sprang upon his neck.

            Jean Valjean, in desperation, clasped her to his breast wildly. It seemed to him almost as if he were taking her back.

            "Thank you, father!" said Cosette to him.

            The transport was becoming poignant to Jean Valjean. He gently put away Cosette's arms, and took his hat.

            "Well?" said Cosette.

            Jean Valjean answered:

            "I will leave you madame; they are waiting for you."

            And, from the door, he added:

            "I called you Cosette. Tell your husband that that shall not happen again. Pardon me."

            Jean Valjean went out, leaving Cosette astounded at that enigmatic farewell.

II - OTHER STEPS BACKWARD

            The following day, at the same hour, Jean Valjean came.

            Cosette put no questions to him, was no longer astonished, no longer exclaimed that she was cold, no longer talked of the parlour; she avoided saying either father or Monsieur Jean. She let him speak as he would. She allowed herself to be called madame. Only she betrayed a certain diminution of joy. She would have been sad, if sadness had been possible for her.

            It is probable that she had had one of those conversations with Marius, in which the beloved man says what he pleases, explains nothing, and satisfies the beloved woman. The curiosity of lovers does not go very far beyond their love.

            The basement room had made its toilet a little. Basque had suppressed the bottles, and Nicolette the spiders.

            Every succeeding morrow brought Jean Valjean at the same hour. He came every day, not having the strength to take Marius' words otherwise than to the letter. Marius made his arrangements, so as to be absent at the hours when Jean Valjean came. The house became accustomed to M. Fauchelevent's new mode of life. Toussaint added: "Monsieur always was just so," she repeated. The grandfather issued this decree: "He is an original!" and all was said. Besides, at ninety, no further tie is possible; all is juxtaposition; a new-comer is an annoyance. There is no more room; all the habits are formed. M. Fauchelevent, M. Tranchelevent, Grandfather Gillenormand asked nothing better than to be relieved of "that gentleman." He added: "Nothing is more common than these originals. They do all sorts of odd things.

            Several weeks passed thus. A new life gradually took possession of Cosette; the relations which marriage creates, the visits, the care of the house, the pleasures, those grand affairs. Cosette's pleasures were not costly; they consisted in a single one: being with Marius. Going out with him, staying at home with him, this was the great occupation of her life. It was a joy to them for ever new, to go out arm in arm, in the face of the sun, in the open street, without hiding, in sight of everybody, all alone with each other. Cosette had one vexation. Toussaint could not agree with Nicolette, the wedding of two old maids being impossible, and went away. The grandfather was in good health; Marius argued a few cases now and then; Aunt Gillenormand peacefully led by the side of the new household, that lateral life which was enough for her. Jean Valjean came every day.

            The disappearance of familiarity, the madame, the Monsieur Jean, all this made him different to Cosette. The care which he had taken to detach her from him, succeeded with her. She became more and more cheerful, and less and less affectionate. However, she still loved him very much, and he felt it. One day she suddenly said to him, "You were my father, you are no longer my father, you were uncle, you are no longer my uncle, you were Monsieur Fauchelevent, you are Jean. Who are you then? I don't like all that. If I did not know you were so good, I should be afraid of you."

            He still lived in the Rue de l'Homme Arme, unable to resolve to move further from the quartier in which Cosette dwelt.

            At first he stayed with Cosette only a few minutes, then went away.

            Little by little he got into the habit of making his visits longer. One would have said that he took advantage of the example of the days which were growing longer: he came earlier and went away later.

            One day Cosette inadvertently said to him: "Father." A flash of joy illuminated Jean Valjean's gloomy old face. He replied to her: "Say Jean." "Ah! true," she answered with a burst of laughter, "Monsieur Jean." "That is right," said he, and he turned away that she might not see him wipe his eyes.

III - THEY REMEMBER THE GARDEN IN THE RUE PLUMET

            That was the last time. From that last gleam onward, there was complete extinction. No more familiarity, no more good-day with a kiss, never again that word so intensely sweet: Father! he was, upon his own demand and through his own complicity, driven in succession from every happiness; and he had this misery, that after having lost Cosette wholly in one day, he had been obliged afterwards to lose her again little by little.

            The eye at last becomes accustomed to the light of a cellar. In short, to have a vision of Cosette every day sufficed him. His whole life was concentrated in that hour. He sat by her side, he looked at her in silence, or rather he talked to her of the years long gone, of her childhood, of the convent, of her friends of those days.

            Jean Valjean's visits did not grow shorter. Far from it. When the heart is slipping we do not stop on the descent.

            When Jean Valjean desired to prolong his visit, and to make the hours pass unnoticed, be eulogised Marius; he thought him beautiful, noble, courageous, intellectual, eloquent, good. Cosette surpassed him. Jean Valjean began again. They were never silent. Marius, this word was inexhaustible; there were volumes in these six letters. In this way Jean Valjean succeeded in staying a long time. To see Cosette, to forget at her side, it was so sweet to him. It was the staunching of his wound. It happened several times that Basque came down twice to say: "Monsieur Gillenormand sends me to remind Madame the Baroness that dinner is served."

            On those days, Jean Valjean returned home very thoughtful. Was there, then, some truth in that comparison of the chrysalis which had presented itself to Marius' mind? Was Jean Valjean indeed a chrysalis who was obstinate, and who came to make visits to his butterfly.

            One day he stayed longer than usual. The next day, he noticed that there was no fire in the fireplace. "What!" thought he. "No fire," And he made the explanation to himself: "It is a matter of course. We are in April. The cold weather is over."

            "Goodness! how cold it is here!" exclaimed Cosette as she came in.

            "Why no," said Jean Valjean.

            "So it is you who told Basque not to make a fire?"

            "Yes. We are close upon May."

            "But we have fire until the month of June. In this cellar, it is needed the year round."

            "I thought that the fire was unnecessary."

            "That is just one of your ideas!" replied Cosette.

            The next day there was a fire. But the two arm-chairs were placed at the other end of the room, near the door. "What does that mean?" thought Jean Valjean.

            He went for the arm-chairs, and put them back in their usual place near the chimney.

            This fire being kindled again encouraged him, however. He continued the conversation still longer than usual. As he was getting up to go away, Cosette said to him:

            "My husband said a funny thing to me yesterday."

            "What was it?"

            "He said: 'Cosette, we have an income of thirty thousand francs. Twenty-seven that you have, three that my grandfather allows me.' I answered: 'That makes thirty.' 'Would you have the courage to live on three thousand?' I answered: 'Yes, on nothing. Provided it be with you.' And then I asked: 'Why do you say this?' He answered: 'To know.'"

            Jean Valjean did not say a word. Cosette probably expected some explanation from him; he listened to her in a mournful silence. He went back to the Rue de l'Homme Arme; he was so deeply absorbed that he mistook the door, and instead of entering his own house, he entered the next one. Not until he had gone up almost to the second story did he perceive his mistake, and go down again. His mind was racked with conjectures. It was evident that Marius had doubts in regard to the origin of these six hundred thousand francs, that he feared some impure source, who knows? that he had perhaps discovered that this money came from him, Jean Valjean, that he hesitated before this suspicious fortune, and disliked to take it as his own, preferring to remain poor, himself and Cosette, than to be rich with a doubtful wealth.

            Besides, vaguely, Jean Valjean began to feel that the door was shown him.

            The next day, he received, on entering the basement room, something like a shock. The arm-chairs had disappeared. There was not even a chair of any kind.

            "Ah now," exclaimed Cosette as she came in, "no chairs! Where are the arm-chairs, then?"

            "They are gone," answered Jean Valjean.

            "That is a pretty business!"

            Jean Valjean stammered: "I told Basque to take them away."

            "And what for?"

            "I shall stay only a few minutes to-day."

            "Staying a little while is no reason for standing while you do stay."

            "I believe that Basque needed some arm-chairs for the parlour."

            "What for?"

            "You doubtless have company this evening."

            "We have nobody."

            Jean Valjean could not say a word more.

            Cosette shrugged her shoulders.

            "To have the chairs carried away! The other day you had the fire put out. How singular you are!"

            "Good-bye," murmured Jean Valjean.

            He did not say: "Good-bye, Cosette." But he had not the strength to say "Good-bye, madame."

            He went away overwhelmed.

            This time he had understood.

            The next day be did not come. Cosette did not notice it until night.

            "Why," said she, "Monsieur Jean has not come to-day."

            She felt something like a slight oppression of the heart, but she hardly perceived it, being immediately diverted by a kiss from Marius.

            The next day he did not come.

            Cosette paid no attention to it, passed the evening and slept as usual, and thought of it only on waking. She was so happy! She sent Nicolette very quickly to Monsieur Jean's to know if he were sick, and why he had not come the day before. Nicolette brought back Monsieur Jean's answer. He was not sick. He was busy. He would come very soon. As soon as he could. However, he was going to make a little journey. Madame must remember that he was in the habit of making journeys from time to time. Let there be no anxiety. Let them not be troubled about him.

            Nicolette, on entering Monsieur Jean's house, had repeated to him the very words of her mistress. That madame sent to know "why Monsieur Jean had not come the day before." "It is two days that I have not been there," said Jean Valjean mildly.

            But the remark escaped the notice of Nicolette, who reported nothing of it to Cosette.

BOOK NINTH - SUPREME SHADOW, SUPREME DAWN

I - PITY FOR THE UNHAPPY, BUT INDULGENCE FOR THE HAPPY

            It is a terrible thing to be happy! How pleased we are with it! How all-sufficient we think it! How, being in possession of the false aim of life, happiness, we forget the true aim, duty!

            We must say, however, that it would be unjust to blame Marius.

            Marius as we have explained, before his marriage, had put no questions to M. Fauchelevent, and, since, he had feared to put any to Jean Valjean. He had regretted the promise into which he had allowed himself to be led. He had reiterated to himself many times that he had done wrong in making that concession to despair. He did nothing more than gradually to banish Jean Valjean from his house, and to obliterate him as much as possible from Cosette's mind. He had in some sort constantly placed himself between Cosette and Jean Valjean, sure that in that way she would not notice him, and would never think of him. It was more than obliteration, it was eclipse.

            Marius did what he deemed necessary and just. He supposed he had, for discarding Jean Valjean, without harshness, but without weakness, serious reasons, which we have already seen, and still others which we shall see further on. Having chanced to meet, in a cause in which he was engaged, an old clerk of the house of Lafitte, he had obtained, without seeking it, some mysterious information which he could not, in truth, probe to the bottom, from respect for the secret which he had promised to keep, and from care for Jean Valjean's perilous situation. He believed, at that very time, that he had a solemn duty to perform, the restitution of the six hundred thousand francs to somebody whom he was seeking as cautiously as possible. In the meantime, he abstained from using that money.

           

II - THE LAST FLICKERINGS OF THE EXHAUSTED LAMP

            One day Jean Valjean went down stairs, took three steps into the street, sat down upon a stone block, upon that same block where Gavroche, on the night of the 5th of June, had found him musing; he remained there a few minutes, then went upstairs again. This was the last oscillation of the pendulum. The next day, he did not leave his room. The day after he did not leave his bed.

            His portress, who prepared his frugal meal, some cabbage, a few potatoes with a little pork, looked into the brown earthen plate, and exclaimed:

            "Why, you didn't eat anything yesterday, poor dear man!"

            "Yes, I did," answered Jean Valjean.

            "The plate is full."

            "Look at that water-pitcher. That is empty."

            "That shows that you have drunk; it don't show that you have eaten."

            "Well," said Jean Valjean, "suppose I have only been hungry, for water?"

            "That is called thirst, and, when people don't eat at the same time, it is called fever."

            "I will eat tomorrow."

            "Or at Christmas. Why not eat to-day? Do people say: I will eat tomorrow! To leave me my whole plateful without touching it! My cole slaugh, which was so good!"

            Jean Valjean took the old woman's hand:

            "I promise to eat it," said he to her in his benevolent voice.

            "I am not satisfied with you," answered the portress.

            Jean Valjean scarcely ever saw any other human being than this good woman. There are streets in Paris in which nobody walks, and houses into which nobody comes. He was in one of those streets, and in one of those houses.

            While he still went out, he had bought of a brazier for a few sous a little copper crucifix which he had hung upon a nail before his bed. The cross is always good to look upon.

            A week elapsed, and Jean Valjean had not taken a step in his room. He was still in bed. The portress said to her husband: "The goodman upstairs does not get up any more, he does not eat any more, he won't last long. He has trouble, he has. Nobody can get it out of my head that his daughter has made a bad match."

            The porter replied, with the accent of the marital sovereignty:

            "If he is rich, let him have a doctor. If he is not rich, let him not have any. If he doesn't have a doctor, he will die."

            "And if he does have one?"

            "He will die," said the porter.

            The portress began to dig up with an old knife some grass which was sprouting in what she called her pavement, and, while she was pulling up the grass, she muttered:

            "It is a pity. An old man who is so nice! He is white as a chicken."

            She saw a physician of the quartier passing at the end of the street; she took it upon herself to beg him to go up.

            "It is on the second floor," said she to him. "You will have nothing to do but go in. As the goodman does not stir from his bed now, the key is in the door all the time."

            The physician saw Jean Valjean, and spoke with him.

            When he came down, the portress questioned him:

            "Well, doctor?"

            "Your sick man is very sick."

            "What is the matter with him?"

            "Everything and nothing. He is a man who, to all appearance has lost some dear friend. People die of that."

            "What did he tell you?"

            "He told me that he was well."

            "Will you come again, doctor?"

            "Yes," answered the physician. "But another than I must come again."

III - A PEN IS HEAVY TO HIM WHO LIFTED FAUCHELEVENT'S CART

            One evening Jean Valjean had difficulty in raising himself upon his elbow; he felt his wrist and found no pulse; his breathing was short, and stopped at intervals; he realised that he was weaker than he had been before. Then, undoubtedly under the pressure of some supreme desire, he made an effort, sat up in bed, and dressed himself. He put on his old working-man's garb. As he went out no longer, he had returned to it, and he preferred it. He was obliged to stop several times while dressing; the mere effort of putting on his waistcoat, made the sweat roll down his forehead.

            Since he had been alone, he had made his bed in the ante-room, so as to occupy this desolate tenement as little as possible.

            He opened the valise and took out Cosette's suit.

            He spread it out upon his bed.

            The bishop's candlesticks were in their place, on the mantel. He took two wax tapers from a drawer, and put them into the candlesticks. Then, although it was still broad daylight, it was in summer, he lighted them. We sometimes see torches lighted thus in broad day, in rooms where the dead lie.

            Each step that he took in going from one piece of furniture to another, exhausted him, and he was obliged to sit down. It was not ordinary fatigue which spends the strength that it may be renewed; it was the remnant of possible motion; it was exhausted life pressed out drop by drop in overwhelming efforts, never to be made again.

            One of the chairs upon which he sank, was standing before that mirror, so fatal for him, so providential for Marius, in which he had read Cosette's note, reversed on the blotter. He saw himself in this mirror, and did not recognise himself. He was eighty years old; before Marius' marriage, one would hardly have thought him fifty; this year had counted thirty. What was now upon his forehead was not the wrinkle of age, it was the mysterious mark of death. You perceived on it the impress of the relentless talon. His cheeks were sunken; the skin of his face was of that colour which suggests the idea of earth already above it; the corners of his mouth were depressed as in that mask which the ancients sculptured upon tombs, he looked at the hollowness with a look of reproach; you would have said it was one of those grand tragic beings who rise in judgment.

            He was in that condition, the last phase of dejection, in which sorrow no longer flows; it is, so to speak, coagulated; the soul is covered as if with a clot of despair.

            Night had come. With much labour he drew a table and an old arm-chair near the fireplace, and put upon the table pen, ink, and paper.

            Then he fainted. When he regained consciousness he was thirsty. Being unable to lift the water-pitcher, with great effort he tipped it towards his mouth, and drank a swallow. Then he turned to the bed, and, still sitting for he could stand but a moment, he looked at the little black dress, and all those dear objects.

            Such contemplations last for hours which seem minutes. Suddenly he shivered, he felt that the chill was coming; he leaned upon the table which was lighted by the bishop's candlesticks, and took the pen.

            As neither the pen nor the ink had been used for a long time, the tip of the pen was bent back, the ink was dried, he was obliged to get up and put a few drops of water into the ink, which he could not do without stopping and sitting down two or three times, and he was compelled to write with the back of the pen. He wiped his forehead from time to time.

            His hand trembled. He slowly wrote the few lines which follow:

            "Cosette, I bless you. I am going to make an explanation to you. Your husband was quite right in giving me to understand that I ought to leave; still there is some mistake in what he believed, but he was right. He is very good. Always love him well when I am dead. Monsieur Pontmercy, always love my darling child. Cosette, this paper will be found, this is what I want to tell you, you shall see the figures, if I have the strength to recall them, listen well, this money is really your own. This is the whole story: The white jet comes from Norway, the black jet comes from England, the blackglass imitation comes from Germany. The jet is lighter, more precious, more costly. We can make imitations in France as well as in Germany It requires a little anvil two inches square, and a spiritlamp to soften the wax. The wax was formerly made with resin and lamp-black, and cost four francs a pound. I hit upon making it with gum lac and turpentine. This costs only thirty sous, and it is much better. The buckles are made of violet glass, which is fastened by means of this wax to a narrow rim of black iron. The glass should be violet for iron trinkets, and the black for gold trinkets. Spain purchases many of them. That is the country of jet-"

            Here he stopped, the pen fell from his fingers, he gave way to one of those despairing sobs which rose at times from the depths of his being, the poor man clasped his head with both hands, and reflected.

            "Oh!" exclaimed he within himself (pitiful cries, heard by God alone), "it is all over. I shall never see her more. She is a smile which has passed over me. I am going to enter into the night without even seeing her again. Oh! a minute, an instant, to hear her voice, to touch her dress, to look at her, the angel! and then to die! It is nothing to die, but it is dreadful to die without seeing her. She would smile upon me, she would say a word to me. Would that harm anybody? No, it is over, forever. Here I am, all alone. My God! my God! I shall never see her again."

            At this moment there was a rap at his door.

IV - A BOTTLE OF INK WHICH SERVES ONLY TO WHITEN

            That very day, or rather that very evening, just as Marius had left the table and retired into his office, having a bundle of papers to study over, Basque had handed him a letter, saying: "the person who wrote the letter is in the antechamber."

            Cosette had taken grandfather's arm, and was walking in the garden.

            A letter, as well as a man, may have a forbidding appearance. Coarse paper, clumsy fold, the mere sight of certain missives displeases. The letter which Basque brought was of this kind.

            Marius took it. It smelt of tobacco. Nothing awakens a reminiscence like an odour. Marius recognised this tobacco. He looked at the address: To Monsieur, Monsieur the Baron Pommerci. In his hotel. The recognition of the tobacco made him recognise the handwriting. We might say that astonishment has its flashes. Marius was, as it were, illuminated by one of those flashes.

            The scent, the mysterious aid-memory, revived a whole world within him. Here was the very paper, the manner of folding, the paleness of the ink; here was, indeed, the well-known handwriting; above all, here was the tobacco. The Jondrette garret appeared before him.

            Thus, strange freak of chance! one of the two traces which he had sought so long, the one which he had again recently made so many efforts to gain, and which he believed forever lost, came of itself to him.

            He broke the seal eagerly, and read:- -

            "Monsieur Baron,- If the Supreme Being had given me the talents for it, I could have been Baron Thenard, member of the Institute (Academy of Ciences), but I am not so. I merely bear the same name that he does, happy if this remembrance commends me to the excellence of your bounties. The benefit with which you honour me will be reciprocal. I am in possession of a secret conserning an individual. This individual conserns you. I hold the secret at your disposition, desiring to have the honour of being yuseful to you. I will give you the simple means of drivving from your honourable family this individual who has no right in it, Madame the Baroness being of high birth. The sanctuary of virtue could not coabit longer with crime without abdicating.

           

                        "I attend in the entichamber the orders of Monsieur the Baron.-                              

                                                                                                                        With respect." -

           

            The letter was signed "THENARD."

            This signature was not a false one. It was only a little abridged.

            Besides the rigmarole and the orthography completed the revelation. The certificate of origin was perfect. There was no doubt possible.

            The emotion of Marius was deep. After the feeling of surprise, he had a feeling of happiness. Let him now find the other man whom he sought, the man who had saved him, Marius, and he would have nothing more to wish.

            He opened one of his secretary drawers, took out some bank-notes, put them in his pockets, closed the secretary, and rang. Basque appeared.

            "Show him in," said Marius.

            Basque announced:

            "Monsieur Thenard."

            A man entered.

            A new surprise for Marius. The man who came in was perfectly unknown to him.

            This man, old withal, had a large nose, his chin in his cravat, green spectacles, with double shade of green silk over his eyes, his hair polished and smoothed down, his forehead close to the eyebrows, like the wigs of English coachmen in high life. His hair was grey. He was dressed in black from head to foot, in a well worn but tidy black; a bunch of trinkets, hanging from his fob, suggested a watch. He held an old hat in his hand. He walked with a stoop, and the crook of his back increased the lowliness of his bow.

            Marius' disappointment, on seeing another man enter than the one he was expecting, turned into dislike towards the new comer. He examined him from head to foot, while the personage bowed without measure, and asked him in a sharp tone:

            "What do you want?"

            The man answered with an amiable grin of which the caressing smile of a crocodile would give some idea:

            "It seems to me impossible that I have not already had the honour of seeing Monsieur the Baron in society. I really think that I met him privately some years ago, at Madame the Princess Bagration's and in the salons of his lordship the Viscount Dambray, peer of France."

            It is always good tactics in rascality to pretend to recognise one whom you do not know.

            Marius listened attentively to the voice of this man. He watched for the tone and gesture eagerly, but his disappointment increased; it was a whining pronunciation, entirely different from the sharp and dry sound of voice which he expected. He was completely bewildered.

            "I don't know," said he, "either Madame Bagration or M. Dambray. I have never in my life set foot in the house of either the one or the other."

            The answer was testy. The person, gracious notwithstanding, persisted:

            "Then it must be at Chateaubriand's that I have seen monsieur? I know Chateaubriand well. He is very affable. He says to me sometimes: 'Thenard, my friend, won't you drink a glass of wine with me?'"

            Marius' brow grew more and more severe:

            "I have never had the honour of being received at Monsieur de Chateaubriand's. Come to the point. What is it you wish?"

            The man, in view of the harsher voice, made a lower bow.

            "Monsieur Baron, deign to listen to me. There is in America, in a region which is near Panama, a village called La Joya.

            I would like

            to go and establish myself at La Joya. There are three of us. I have

            my spouse and my young lady; a girl who is very beautiful. The voyage is long and dear. I must have a little money."

            "How does that concern me?" inquired Marius.

            The stranger stretched his neck out of his cravat, a movement characteristic of the vulture, and replied, with redoubled smiles:

            "Then Monsieur the Baron has not read my letter?"

            That was not far from true. The fact is, that the contents of the epistle had glanced off from Marius. He had seen the handwriting rather than read the letter. He scarcely remembered it. Within a moment a new clue had been given him. He had noticed this remark: My spouse and my young lady. He fixed a searching eye upon the stranger. An examining judge could not have done better. He seemed to be lying in ambush for him. He answered:

            "Explain."

            The stranger thrust his hands into his fobs, raised his head without straightening his backbone, but scrutinising Marius in his turn with the green gaze of his spectacles.

            "Certainly, Monsieur the Baron. I will explain. I have a secret to sell you."

            "A secret?"

            "A secret."

            "Which concerns me?"

            "Somewhat."

            "What is this secret?"

            Marius examined the man more and more closely, while listening to him.

            "I commence gratis," said the stranger. "You will see that I am interesting."

            "Go on."

            "Monsieur Baron, you have in your house a robber and an assassin."

            Marius shuddered.

            "In my house? no," said he.

            The stranger, imperturbable, brushed his hat with his sleeve, and continued:

            "Assassin and robber. Observe, Monsieur Baron, that I do not speak here of acts, old, by-gone, and withered, which may be cancelled by prescription in the eye of the law, and by repentance in the eye of God. I speak of recent acts, present acts, acts yet unknown to justice at this hour. I will proceed. This man has glided into your confidence, and almost into your family, under a false name. I am going to tell you his true name. And to tell it to you for nothing."

            "I am listening."

            "His name is Jean Valjean."

            "I know it."

            "I am going to tell you, also for nothing, who he is."

            "Say on."

            "He is an old convict."

            "I know it."

            "You know it since I have had the honour of telling you."

            "No. I knew it before."

            Marius' cool tone, that double reply, I know it, his laconic method of speech, embarrassing to conversation, excited some suppressed anger in the stranger. He shot furtively at Marius a furious look, which was immediately extinguished. Quick as it was, this look was one of those which are recognised after they have once been seen; it did not escape Marius. Certain flames can only come from certain souls; the eye, that window of the thought, blazes with it; spectacles hide nothing; you might as well put a glass over hell.

            The stranger resumed with a smile:

            "I do not permit myself to contradict Monsieur the Baron. At all events, you must see that I am informed. Now, what I have to acquaint you with, is known to myself alone. It concerns the fortune of Madame the Baroness. It is an extraordinary secret. It is for sale. I offer it to you first. Cheap. Twenty thousand francs."

            "I know the secret as well as the others," said Marius.

            The person felt the necessity of lowering his price a little.

            "Monsieur Baron, say ten thousand francs, and I will go on."

            "I repeat, that you have nothing to acquaint me with. I know what you wish to tell me."

            There was a new flash in the man's eye. He exclaimed:

            "Still I must dine to-day. It is an extraordinary secret, I tell you. Monsieur the Baron, I am going to speak. I will speak. Give me twenty francs."

            Marius looked at him steadily: "I know your extraordinary secret; just as I knew Jean Valjean's name: just as I know your name."

            "My name?"

            "That is not difficult, Monsieur Baron. I have had the honour of writing it to you and telling it to you. Thenard."

            "Dier."

            "Eh?"

            "Thenardier."

            "Who is that?"

            In danger the porcupine bristles, the beetle feigns death, the Old Guard forms a square; this man began to laugh.

            Then, with a fillip, he brushed a speck of dust from his coatsleeve.

            Marius continued:

            "You are also the working-man Jondrette, the comedian Fabantou, the poet Genflot, the Spaniard Don Alvares, and the woman Balizard."

            "The woman what?"

            "And you have kept a chop-house at Montfermeil."

            "A chop-house! never."

            "And I tell you that you are Thenardier."

            "I deny it."

            "And that you are a scoundrel. Here."

            And Marius, taking a bank-note from his pocket, threw it in his face.

            "Thanks! pardon! five hundred francs! Monsieur Baron!"

            And the man, bewildered, bowing, catching the note, examined it.

            "Five hundred francs!" he repeated in astonishment. And he stammered out in an undertone: "A serious fafiot!"

            Then bluntly:

            "Well, so be it," exclaimed he. "Let us make ourselves comfortable."

            And, with the agility of a monkey, throwing his hair off backwards, pulling off his spectacles, taking out his nose and pocketing the two quill tubes which have just spoken, and which have already seen elsewhere another page this book, took off his countenance one takes off his hat.

            His eye kindled; his forehead, uneven, ravined, humped in spots, hideously wrinkled the top, emerged; his nose became as sharp as a beak; the fierce and cunning profile of the man prey appeared again.

            "Monsieur the Baron infallible," said clear voice from which all nasality has disappeared, "I am Thenardier."

            And he straightened his bent back.

            Thenardier, for it was indeed he, was strangely surprised; he would have been disconcerted if he could have been. He had come to bring astonishment, and he himself received it. This humiliation had been compensated by five hundred francs, and, all things considered, he accepted it; but he was none the less astounded.

            He saw this Baron Pontmercy for the first time, and, in spite of his disguise, this Baron Pontmercy recognised him, and recognised him thoroughly. And not only was this baron fully informed, in regard to Thenardier, but he seemed fully informed in regard to Jean Valjean. Who was this almost beardless young man, so icy and so generous, who knew people's names, who knew all their names, and who opened his purse to them, who abused rogues like a judge and who paid them like a dupe?

            Thenardier, it will be remembered, although he had been a neighbour of Marius, had never seen him, which is frequent in Paris; he had once heard some talk of his daughters about a very poor young man named Marius who lived in the house. He had written to him, without knowing him, the letter which we have seen. No connection was possible in his mind between that Marius and M. the Baron Pontmercy.

            Through his daughter Azelma, however, whom he had put upon the track of the couple married on the 16th of February, and through his own researches, he had succeeded in finding out many things, and, from the depth of his darkness, he had been able to seize more than one mysterious clue. He had, by dint of industry, discovered, or, at least, by dint of induction, guessed who the man was whom he had met on a certain day in the Grand Sewer. From the man, he had easily arrived at the name. He knew that Madame the Baroness Pontmercy was Cosette. But, in that respect, he intended to be prudent. Who was Cosette? He did not know exactly himself. He suspected indeed some illegitimacy. Fantine's story had always seemed to him ambiguous; but why speak of it? to get paid for his silence? He had, or thought he had, something better to sell than that. And to all appearances, to come and make, without any proof, this revelation to Baron Pontmercy: Your wife is a bastard, would only have attracted the husband's boot towards the revelator's back.

            Marius remained absorbed in thought. At last, then, he had caught Thenardier; this man, whom he had so much desired to find again, was before him: so he would be able to do honour to Colonel Pontmercy's injunction. He was humiliated that that hero should owe anything to this bandit, and that the bill of exchange drawn by his father from the depth of the grave upon him, Marius, should have been protested until this day. It appeared to him, also, in the complex position of his mind with regard to Thenardier, that here was an opportunity to avenge the colonel for the misfortune of having been saved by such a rascal. However that might be, he was pleased. He was about to deliver the colonel's shade at last from his unworthy creditor, and it seemed to him that he was about to release his father's memory from imprisonment for debt.

            Besides this duty, he had another, to clear up, if he could, the source of Cosette's fortune. The opportunity seemed to present itself. Thenardier knew something, perhaps. It might be useful to probe this man to the bottom. He began with that.

            Thenardier had slipped the "serious fafiot" into his fob, and was looking at Marius with an almost affectionate humility.

            Marius interrupted the silence.

            "Thenardier, I have told you your name. Now your secret, what you came to make known to me, do you want me to tell you that? I too have my means of information. You shall see that I know more about it than you do. Jean Valjean, as you have said, is an assassin and a robber. A robber, because he robbed a rich manufacturer, M. Madeleine, whose ruin he caused. An assassin, because he assassinated the police-officer, Javert."

            "I don't understand Monsieur Baron," said Thenardier.

            "I will make myself understood. Listen. There was, in an arrondissement of the Pas-de-Calais, about 1822, a man who had had some old difficulty with justice, and who, under the name of M. Madeleine, had reformed and re-established himself. He had become in the full force of the term an upright man. By means of a manufacture, that of black glass trinkets, he had made the fortune of an entire city. As for his own fortune, he had made it also, but secondarily, and, in some sort, incidentally. He was the foster-father of the poor. He founded hospitals, opened schools, visited the sick, endowed daughters, supported widows, adopted orphans; he was, as it were, the guardian of the country. He had refused the Cross, he had been appointed mayor. A liberated convict knew the secret of a penalty once incurred by this man; he informed against him and had him arrested, and took advantage of the arrest to come to Paris and draw from the banker, Laffitte- I have the fact from the cashier himself- by means of a false signature, a sum of more than a million which belonged to M. Madeleine. This convict who robbed M. Madeleine is Jean Valjean. As to the other act, you have just as little to tell me. Jean Valjean killed the officer Javert; he killed him with a pistol. I, who am now speaking to you, I was present."

            Thenardier cast sovereign glance of a beaten man, who lays hold on victory again, and who has just recovered in one minute all the ground which he had lost. But the smile returned immediately: the inferior before the superior can only have a skulking triumph, and Thenardier merely said to Marius:

            "Monsieur Baron, we are on the wrong track."

            And he emphasised this phrase by giving his bunch of trinkets an expressive twirl.

            "What!" replied Marius, "do you deny that? These are facts."

            "They are chimeras. The confidence with which Monsieur the Baron honours me makes it makes it my duty to tell him so. Before all things, truth and justice. I do not like to see people accused unjustly. Monsieur Baron, Jean Valjean never robbed Monsieur Madeleine, and Jean Valjean never killed Javert."

            "You speak strongly! how is that?"

            "For two reasons."

            "What are they? tell me."

            "The first is this: he did not rob Monsieur Madeleine, since Jean Valjean himself who was Monsieur Madeleine."

            "What is that you are telling me?"

            "And the second is this: he did not assassinate Javert, since Javert himself killed Javert."

            "What do you mean?"

            "That Javert committed suicide."

            "Prove it! prove it!" cried Marius, beside himself.

            Thenardier resumed, scanning his phrase in the fashion of an ancient Alexandrine:

            "The-police-of-ficer-Ja-vert-was-found-drowned-under-a-boat-by-the- Pont-au-Change."

            "But prove it now!"

            Thenardier took from his pocket a large envelope of grey paper, which seemed to contain folded sheets of different sizes.

            "I have my documents," said he, with calmness.

            And he added:

            "Monsieur Baron, in you interest, I wished to find out Jean Valjean to the bottom. I say that Jean Valjean and Madeleine are the same man; and I say that Javert had no other assassin than Javert; and when I speak I have the proofs. Not manuscript proofs; writing is suspicious; writing is complaisant, but proofs in print."

            While speaking, Thenardier took out of the envelope two newspapers, yellow, faded, and strongly saturated with tobacco. One of these two newspapers, broken at all the folds, and falling in square pieces, seemed much older than the other.

            "Two facts, two proofs," said Thenardier. And unfolding the two papers, he handed them to Marius.

            With these two newspapers the reader is acquainted. One, the oldest, a copy of the "Drapeau Blanc," of the 25th of July, 1823, the text of which can be found on page 304 of this book, established the identity of M. Madeleine and Jean Valjean. The other, a "Moniteur" of the 15th of June, 1832, verified the suicide of Javert, adding that it appeared from a verbal report made by Javert to the prefect prisoner in the barricade of the Rue de la Chanvrerie, he had owed his life to the magnanimity of an insurgent who, though he had him at the muzzle of his pistol, instead of blowing out his brains, had fired into the air.

            Marius read. There was evidence, certain date, unquestionable proof; these two newspapers had not been printed expressly to support Thenardier's words. The note published in the "Moniteur" was an official communication from the prefecture of police. Marius could not doubt. The information derived from the cashier was false, and he himself was mistaken. Jean Valjean, suddenly growing grand, arose from the cloud. Marius could not restrain a cry of joy:

            "Well, then, this unhappy man is a wonderful man! all that fortune is really his own! he is Madeleine, the providence of a whole region! He is Jean Valjean, the saviour of Javert! he is a hero! he is a saint!"

            "He is not a saint, and he is not a hero," said Thenardier. "He is an assassin and a robber."

            And he added with the tone of a man who begins to feel some authority in himself: "Let us be calm."

            Robber, assassin; these words, which Marius supposed were gone, yet which came back, fell upon him like a shower of ice.

            "Again," said he.

            "Still," said Thenardier. "Jean Valjean did not rob Madeleine, but he is a robber. He did not kill Javert, but he is a murderer."

            "Will you speak," resumed Marius, "of that petty theft of forty years ago, expiated, as appears from your newspapers themselves, by a whole life of repentance, abnegation, and virtue?"

            "I said assassination and robbery, Monsieur Baron. And I repeat that I speak of recent facts. What I have to reveal to you is absolutely unknown. It belongs to the unpublished. And perhaps you will find in it the source of the fortune adroitly presented by Jean Valjean to Madame the Baroness. I say adroitly, for, by a donation of this kind, to glide into an honourable house, the comforts of which he will share, and, by the same stroke, to conceal his crime, to enjoy his robbery, to bury his name, and to create himself a family, that would not be very unskilful."

            "I might interrupt you here," observed Marius; "but continue."

            "Monsieur Baron, I will tell you all, leaving the recompense to your generosity. This secret is worth a pile of gold. You will say to me: why have you not gone to Jean Valjean? For a very simple reason: I know that he has dispossessed himself, and dispossessed in your favour, and I think the contrivance ingenious; but he has not a sou left, he would show me his empty hands, and, since I need some money for my voyage to La Joya, I prefer you, who have all, to him who has nothing. I am somewhat fatigued; allow me to take a chair."

            Marius sat down, and made sign to him to sit down.

            Thenardier installed himself in a cappadine chair, took up the two newspapers, thrust them back into the envelope, and muttered, striking the "Drapeau Blanc" with his nail: "It cost me some hard work to get this one." This done, he crossed his legs and lay back in his chair, an attitude characteristic of people who are sure of what they are saying, then entered into the subject seriously, and emphasising his words:

            "Monsieur Baron, on the 6th of June, 1832, about a year ago, the day of the emeute, a man was in the Grand Sewer of Paris, near where the sewer empties into the Seine, between the Pont des Invalides and the Pont d'Iena."

            Marius suddenly drew his chair near Thenardier's. Thenardier noticed this movement, and continued with the deliberation of a speaker who holds his interlocutor fast, and who feels the palpitation of his adversary beneath his words:

            "This man, compelled to conceal himself, for reasons foreign to politics, however, had taken the sewer for his dwelling, and had a key to it. It was, I repeat it, the 6th of June; it might have been eight o'clock in the evening. The man heard a noise in the sewer. Very much surprised, he hid himself, and watched. It was a sound of steps, somebody was walking in the darkness; somebody was coming in his direction. Strange to say, there was another man in the sewer beside him. The grating of the outlet of the sewer was not far off. A little light which came from it enabled him to recognise the newcomer, and to see that this man was carrying something on his back. He walked bent over. The man who was walking bent over was an old convict, and what he was carrying upon his shoulders was a corpse. Assassination in flagrante delicto, if ever there was such a thing. As for the robbery, it follows of course; nobody kills a man for nothing. This convict was going to throw his corpse into the river. It is a noteworthy fact, that before reaching the grating of the outlet, this convict, who came from a distance in the sewer, had been compelled to pass through a horrible quagmire in which it would seem that he might have left the corpse; but, the sewer-men working upon the quagmire might, the very next day, have found the assassinated man, and that was not the assassin's game. He preferred to go through the quagmire with his load, and his efforts must have been terrible; it is impossible to put one's life in greater peril; I do not understand how he came out of it alive."

            Marius' chair drew still nearer. Thenardier took advantage of it to draw a long breath. He continued:

            "Monsieur Baron, a sewer is not the Champ de Mars. One lacks everything there, even room. When two men are in a sewer, they must meet each other. That is what happened. The resident and the traveler were compelled to say good-day to each other, to their mutual regret. The traveler said to the resident: 'You see what I have on my back, I must get out, you have the key, give it to me.' This convict was a man of terrible strength. There was no refusing him. Still he who had the key parleyed, merely to gain time. He examined the dead man, but he could see nothing, except that he was young, well dressed, apparently a rich man, and all disfigured with blood. While he was talking, he found means to cut and tear off from behind, without the assassin perceiving it, a piece of the assassinated man's coat. A piece of evidence, you understand; means of getting trace of the affair, and proving the crime upon the criminal. He put this piece of evidence in his pocket. After which he opened the grating, let the man out with his incumbrance on his back, shut the grating again and escaped, little caring to be mixed up with the remainder of the adventure, and especially desiring not to be present when the assassin should throw the assassinated man into the river. You understand now. He who was carrying the corpse was Jean Valjean; he who had the key is now speaking to you, and the piece of the coat-"

            Thenardier finished the phrase by drawing from his pocket and holding up, on a level with his eyes, between his thumbs and his forefingers, a strip of ragged black cloth, covered with dark stains.

            Marius had risen, pale, hardly breathing, his eye fixed upon the wrap of black cloth, and, without uttering a word, without losing sight of this rag, he retreated to the wall, and, with his right hand stretched behind him, groped about for a key which was in the lock of a closet near the chimney. He found this key, opened the closet, and thrust his arm into it without looking, and without removing his startled eyes from the fragment that Thenardier held up.

            Meanwhile Thenardier continued:

            "Monsieur Baron, I have the strongest reasons to believe that the assassinated young man was an opulent stranger drawn into a snare by Jean Valjean, and the bearer of an enormous sum."

            "The young man was myself, and there is the coat!" cried Marius, and he threw an old black coat covered with blood upon the carpet.

            Then, snatching the fragment from Thenardier's hands, he bent down over the coat, and applied the piece to the cut skirt. The edged fitted exactly, and the strip completed the coat.

            Thenardier was petrified. He thought this: "I am floored."

            Marius rose up, quivering, desperate, flashing.

            He felt in his pocket, and walked, furious, towards Thenardier offering him and almost pushing into his face his fist full of five hundred and a thousand franc notes.

            "You are a wretch! you are a liar, a slanderer, a scoundrel. You came to accuse this man, you have justified him; you wanted to destroy him, you have succeeded only in glorifying him. And it is you who are a robber! and it is you who are an assassin! I saw you Thenardier, Jondrette, in that den on the Boulevard de l'Hopital. I know enough about you to send you to the galleys, and further even, if I wished. Here, there are a thousand francs, braggart that you are!"

            And he threw a bill for a thousand francs to Thenardier.

            "Ah! Jondrette Thenardier, vile knave! let this be a lesson to you, pedlar of secrets, trader in mysteries, fumbler in the dark, wretch! Take these five hundred francs, and leave this place! Waterloo protects you."

            "Waterloo!" muttered Thenardier, pocketing the five hundred francs with the thousand francs.

            "Yes, assassin! you saved the life of a colonel there-"

            "Of a general," said Thenardier, raising his head.

            "Of a colonel!" replied Marius with a burst of passion. "I would not give a farthing for a general. And you came here to act out your infamy! I tell you that you have committed every crime. Go! out of my sight! Be happy only, that is all that I desire. Ah! monster! there are three thousand francs more. Take them. You will start tomorrow for America, with your daughter, for your wife is dead, abominable liar. I will see to your departure, bandit, and I will count out to you then twenty thousand francs. Go and get hung elsewhere!"

            "Monsieur Baron," answered Thenardier, bowing to the ground, "eternal gratitude."

            And Thenardier went out, comprehending nothing, astounded and transported with this sweet crushing under sacks of gold and with this thunderbolt bursting upon his head in bank-notes.

            Thunderstruck he was, but happy also; and he would have been have been very sorry to have had a lightning rod against that thunderbolt.

            Let us finish with this man at once. Two days after the events which we are now relating, he left, through Marius' care, for America, under a false name, with his daughter Azelma, provided with a draft upon New York for twenty thousand francs. Thenardier, the moral misery of Thenardier, the brokendown bourgeois, was irremediable; he was in America what he had been in Europe. The touch of a wicked man is often enough to corrupt a good deed and make an evil result spring from it. With Marius' money, Thenardier became a slaver.

            As soon as Thenardier was out of doors, Marius ran to the garden where Cosette was still walking:

            "Cosette! Cosette!" cried he. "Come! come quick! Let us go. Basque, a fiacre! Cosette, come. Oh! my God! It was he who saved my life! Let us not lose a minute! Put on your shawl."

            Cosette thought him mad, and obeyed.

            He did not breathe, he put his hand upon his heart to repress its beating. He walked to and fro with rapid strides, he embraced Cosette: "Oh! Cosette! I am an unhappy man!" said he.

            Marius was in amaze. He began to see in this and Valjean a strangely lofty and saddened form. An unparalleled virtue appeared before him, supreme and mild, humble in its immensity. The convict was transfigured into Christ. Marius was bewildered by this marvel. He did not know exactly what he saw, but it was grand.

            In a moment, a fiacre was at the door.

            Marius helped Cosette in and sprang in himself.

            "Driver," said he, "Rue de l'Homme Arme, Number 7."

            The fiacre started.

            "Oh! what happiness!" said Cosette. "Rue de l'Homme Arme! I dared not speak to you of it again. We are going to see Monsieur Jean."

            "Your father! Cosette, your father more than ever. Cosette, I see it. You told me that you never received the letter which I sent you by Gavroche. It must have fallen into his hands. Cosette, he went to the barricade to save me. As it is a necessity for him to be an angel, on the way, he saved others; he saved Javert. He snatched me out of that gulf to give me to you. He carried me on his back in that frightful sewer. Oh! I am an unnatural ingrate. Cosette, after having been your providence, he was mine. Only think that there was a terrible quagmire, enough to drown him a hundred times, to drown him in the mire, Cosette! he carried me through that. I had fainted; I saw nothing, I heard nothing, I could know nothing of my own fate. We are going to bring him back, take him with us, whether he will or no, he shall never leave us again. If he is only at home! If we only find him! I will pass the rest of my life in venerating him. Yes, that must be it, do you see, Cosette? Gavroche must have handed my letter to him. It is all explained. You understand."

            Cosette did not understand a word.

            "You are right," said she him.

            Meanwhile the fiacre rolled on.

V - NIGHT BEHIND WHICH IS DAWN

            At the knock which he heard at his door, Jean Valjean turned his head.

            "Come in," said he feebly.

            The door opened. Cosette and Marius appeared.

            Cosette rushed into the room.

            Marius remained upon the threshold, leaning against the casing of the door.

            "Cosette!" said Jean Valjean, and he rose in his chair, his arms stretched out and trembling, haggard, livid, terrible, with immense joy in his eyes.

            Cosette stifled with emotion, fell upon Jean Valjean's breast.

            "Father!" said she.

            Jean Valjean, beside himself, stammered:

            "Cosette! she? you, madame? it is you, Cosette? Oh, my God!"

            And, clasped in Cosette's arms, he exclaimed:

            "It is you, Cosette? you are here? You forgive me then!"

            Marius, dropping his eyelids that the tears might not fall, stepped forward and murmured between his lips which were contracted convulsively to check the sobs:

            "Father!"

            "And you too, you forgive me!" said Jean Valjean.

            Marius could not utter a word, and Jean Valjean added: "Thanks."

            Cosette took off her shawl and threw her hat upon the bed.

            "They are in my way," said she.

            And, seating herself upon the old man's knees, she stroked away his white hair with an adorable grace, and kissed his forehead.

            Jean Valjean, bewildered, offered no resistance.

            Cosette, who had but a very confused understanding of all this, redoubled her caresses, as if she would pay Marius' debt.

            Jean Valjean faltered:

            "How foolish we are! I thought I should never see her again. Only think, Monsieur Pontmercy, that at the moment you came in, I was saying to myself: It is over. There is her little dress, I am a miserable man, I shall never see Cosette again, I was saying that at the very moment you were coming up the stairs. Was I not silly? I was as silly as that! But we reckon without God. God said: You think that you are going to be abandoned, dolt? No. No, it shall not come to pass like that. Come, here is a poor goodman who has need of an angel. And the angel comes; and I see my Cosette again! and I see my darling Cosette again! Oh! I was very miserable!"

            For a moment he could not speak, then he continued:

            "I really needed to see Cosette a little while from time to time. A heart does want a bone to gnaw. Still I felt plainly that I was in the way. I gave myself reasons: they have no need of you, stay in your corner, you have no right to continue for ever. Oh! bless God, I see her again! Monsieur Pontmercy, let me call her Cosette. It will not be

            very long."

            And Cosette continued again:

            "How naughty to have left us in this way! Where have you been? why were you away so long? Your journeys did not use to last more than three or four days. I sent Nicolette, the answer always was: He is absent. How long since you returned? Why did not you let us know? Do you know that you are very much changed. Oh! the naughty father! he has been sick, and we did not know it! Here, Marius, feel his hand, how cold it is!"

            "So you are here, Monsieur Pontmercy, you forgive me!" repeated Jean Valjean.

            At these words, which Jean Valjean now said for the second time, all that was swelling in Marius heart found an outlet, he broke forth:

            "Cosette, do you hear? that is the way with him! he begs my pardon, and do you know what he has done for me, Cosette? he has saved my life. He has done more. He has given you to me. And, after having saved me, and after having given you to me, Cosette, what did he do with himself? he sacrificed himself. There is the man. And, to me the ungrateful, to me the forgetful, to me the pitiless, to me the guilty, he says: Thanks! Cosette, my whole life passed at the feet of this man would be too little. That barricade, that sewer, that furnace, that cloaca, he went through everything for me, for you, Cosette! He bore me through death in every form which he put aside from me, and which he accepted for himself. All courage, all virtue, all heroism, all sanctity, he has it all, Cosette, that man is an angel!"

            "Hush! hush!" said Jean Valjean in a whisper. "Why tell all that?"

            "But you!" exclaimed Marius, with a passion in which veneration was mingled, "why have not you told it? It is your fault, too. You save people's lives, and you hide it from them! You do more, under pretence of unmasking yourself, you calumniate, yourself. It is frightful."

            "I told the truth," answered Jean Valjean.

            "No," replied Marius, "the truth is the whole truth; and you did not tell it. You were Monsieur Madeleine, why not have said so? You had saved Javert, why not have said so? I owe my life to you! why not have said so?"

            "Because I thought as you did. I felt that you were right. It was necessary that I should go away. If you had known that affair of the sewer, you would have made me stay with you. I should then have had to keep silent. If I had spoken, it would have embarrassed all."

            "Embarrassed what? embarrassed whom?" replied Marius. "Do you suppose you are going to stay here? We are going to carry you back. Oh! my God! when I think it was by accident that I learned it all! We are going to carry you back. You are a part of us. You are her father and mine. You shall not spend another day in this horrid house. Do not imagine that you will be here tomorrow."

            "Tomorrow," said Jean Valjean, "I shall not be here, but I shall not be at your house."

            "What do you mean?" replied Marius. "Ah now, we shall allow no more journeys. You shall never leave us again. You belong to us. We will not let you go."

            "This time, it is for good," added Cosette. "We have a carriage below. I am going to carry you off. If necessary, I shall use force."

            And laughing, she made as if she would lift the old man arms.

            "Your room is still in our house," she continued. "If you knew how pretty the garden is now. The azalias are growing finely. The paths are sanded with river sand: there are some little violet shells. You shall eat some of my strawberries. I water them myself. And no more madame, and no more Monsieur Jean, we are a republic, are we not, Marius? The programme is changed. You are coming with us. How glad grandfather will be! I have your bed in the garden, you shall tend it, and we will see if your strawberries are as fine as mine. And then, I will do what ever you wish, and then, you will obey me."

            Jean Valjean listened to her without hearing her. He heard the music of her voice rather than the meaning of her words; one of those big tears which are the gloomy pearls of the soul, gathered slowly in his eye. He murmured:

            "The proof that God is good is that she is here."

            "Father!" cried Cosette.

            Jean Valjean continued:

            "It is very true that it would be charming to live together. They have their trees full of birds. I would walk with Cosette. To be with people who live, who bid each other good morning, who call each other into the garden, would be sweet. We would see each other as soon as it was morning. We would each cultivate our little corner. She would have me eat her strawberries. I would have her pick my roses. It would be charming. Only-"

            He paused and said mildly:

            "It is a pity."

            The tear did not fall, it went back, and Jean Valjean replaced it with a smile.

            Cosette took both the old man's hands in her own.

            "My God!" said she, "your hands are colder yet. Are you sick? Are you suffering?"

            "No," answered Jean Valjean. "I am very well. Only-"

            He stopped.

            "Only what?"

            "I shall die in a few minutes."

            Cosette and Marius shuddered.

            "Die!" exclaimed Marius.

            "Yes, but that is nothing," said Jean Valjean.

            He breathed, smiled, and continued.

            "Cosette, you are speaking to me, go on, speak, let me hear your

            voice!"

            Marius, petrified, gazed upon the old man.

            Cosette uttered a piercing cry:

            "Father! my father! you shall live. You are going to live. I will have you live, do you hear?"

            Jean Valjean raised head towards her with adoration.

            "Oh, yes, forbid me to die. Who knows? I shall obey perhaps. I was just dying when you came. That stopped me, it seemed to me that I was born again."

            "You are full of strength and life," exclaimed Marius. "Do you think people die like that? You have had trouble, you shall have no more. I ask your pardon now, and that on my knees! You shall live, and live with us, and live long. We will take you back. Both of us here will have but one thought henceforth, your happiness!"

            "You see," added Cosette in tears, "that Marius says you will not die."

            Jean Valjean continued to smile.

            "If you should take me back, Monsieur Pontmercy, would that make me different from what I am? No; God thought as you and I did, and he has not changed his mind; it is best that I should go away. Death is a good arrangement. God knows better than we do what we need. That you are happy, that Monsieur Pontmercy has Cosette, that youth espouses morning, that there are about you, my children, lilacs and nightingales, that your life is a beautiful lawn in the sunshine, that all the enchantments of heaven fill your souls, and now, that I who am good for nothing, that I die; surely all this is well. Look you, be reasonable, there is nothing else possible now, I am sure that it is all over. An hour ago I had a fainting fit. And then, last night, I drank that pitcher full of water. How good your husband is, Cosette! You are much better off than with me."

            There was a noise at the door. It was the physician coming in.

            "Good day and good-by, doctor," said Jean Valjean. "Here are my poor children."

            There Marius approached the physician. He addressed this single word to him: "Monsieur?" but the manner pronouncing it, there was complete question.

            The physician answered the question by an expressive glance.

            "Because things are unpleasant," said Jean Valjean, "that is no reason for being unjust towards God."

            There was a silence. All hearts were oppressed.

            Jean Valjean turned towards Cosette. He began to gaze at her as if he would take a look which should endure through eternity. At the depth of shadow to which he had already descended, ecstasy was still possible to him while beholding Cosette. The reflection of that sweet countenance illumined his pale face. The sepulchre may have its enchantments.

            The physician felt his pulse.

            "Ah! it was you he needed!" murmured he, looking at Cosette and Marius.

            And, bending towards Marius' ear he added very low: "Too late."

            Jean Valjean, almost without ceasing to gaze upon Cosette, turned upon Marius and the physician a look of serenity. They heard these almost inarticulate words come from his lips:

            "It is nothing to die; it is frightful not to live."

            Suddenly he arose. These returns of strength are sometimes a sign of the death-struggle. He walked with a firm step to the wall, put aside Marius and the physician, who offered to assist him, took down from the wall the little copper crucifix which hung there, came back, and sat down with all the freedom of motion of perfect health, and said in a loud voice, laying the crucifix on the table:

            "Behold the great martyr."

            Then his breast sank in, his head wavered, as if the dizziness of the tomb seized him, and his hands resting upon his knees, began to clutch as his pantaloons.

            Cosette supported his shoulders, and sobbed, and attempted to speak to him, but could not. There could be distinguished, among the words mingled with that mournful saliva which accompanies tears, sentences like this: "Father! do not leave us. Is it possible that we have found you again only to lose you?"

            The agony of death may be said to meander. It goes, comes, advances towards the grave, and returns towards life. There is some groping in the act of dying.

            Jean Valjean, after this semi-syncope, gathered strength, shook his forehead as if to throw off the darkness, and became almost completely lucid once more. He took a fold of Cosette's sleeve, and kissed it.

            "He is reviving! doctor, he is reviving!" cried Marius.

            "You are both kind," said Jean Valjean. "I will tell you what has given me pain. What has given me pain, Monsieur Pontmercy, was that you have been unwilling to touch that money. That money really belongs to your wife. I will explain it to you, my children, on that account I am glad to see you. The black jet comes from England, the white jet comes from Norway. All this is in the paper you see there, which you will read. For bracelets, I invented the substitution of clasps made by bending the metal, for clasps made by soldering the metal. They are handsomer, better, and cheaper. You understand how much money can be made. So Cosette's fortune is really her own. I give you these particulars so that your minds may be at rest."

            The portress had come up, and was looking through the half-open door. The physician motioned her away, but he could not prevent that good, zealous woman from crying to the dying man before she went:

            "Do you want a priest?"

            "I have one," answered Jean Valjean.

            And, with his finger, he seemed to designate a point above his head, where, you would have said, he saw some one.

            It is probable that the Bishop was indeed a witness of this death-agony.

            Cosette slipped a pillow under his back gently.

            Jean Valjean resumed: "Monsieur Pontmercy, have no fear, I conjure you. The six hundred thousand francs are really Cosette's. I shall have lost my life if you do not enjoy it! We succeeded very well in making glasswork. We rivalled what is called Berlin jewellery. Indeed, the German black glass cannot be compared with it. A gross, which contains twelve hundred grains very well cut, costs only three francs."

            When a being who is dear to us is about to die, we look at him with a look which clings to him, and which would hold him back. Both, dumb with anguish, knowing not what to say to and trembling they stood before him, Marius holding Cosette's hand.

            From moment to moment, Jean Valjean grew weaker. He was sinking; he was approaching the dark horizon. His breath come intermittent; it was interrupted by a slight rattle. He had difficulty in moving his wrist, his feet had lost all motion, and at the same time that the distress of the limbs and the exhaustion of the body increased, all the majesty of the soul rose and displayed itself upon his forehead. The light of the unknown world was already visible in his eye.

            His face grew pale, and at the same time smiled. Life was no longer present, there was something else. His breath died away, his look grew grand. It was a corpse on which you felt wings.

            He motioned to Cosette to approach, then to Marius; it was evidently the last minute of the last hour, and he began to speak to them in a voice so faint it seemed to come from afar, and you would have said that there was already a wall between them and him.

            "Come closer, come closer, both of you. I love you dearly. Oh! it is good to die so! You too, you love me, my Cosette. I knew very well that you still had some affection for your old goodman. How kind you are to put this cushion under my back! You will weep for me a little, will you not? Not too much. I do not wish any deep grief. You must amuse yourselves a great deal my children. I forgot to tell you that on buckles without tongues still more is made than on anything else. A gross, twelve dozen, costs ten francs, and sells for sixty. That is really a good business. So you need not be astonished at the six hundred thousand francs, Monsieur Pontmercy. It is honest money. You can be rich without concern. You must have a carriage, from time to time a box at the theatres, beautiful ball dresses, my Cosette, and then give good dinners to your friends, be very happy. I was writing just now to Cosette. She will find my letter. To her I bequeath the two candlesticks which are on the mantel. They are silver; but to me they are gold, they are diamond; they change the candles which are put into them, into consecrated tapers. I do not know whether he who gave them to me is satisfied with me in heaven. I have done what I could. My children, you will not forget that I am a poor man, you will have me buried in the most convenient piece of ground under a stone to mark the spot. That is my wish. No name on the stone. If Cosette will come for a little while sometimes, it will give me a pleasure. You too, Monsieur Pontmercy. I must confess to you that I have not always loved you; I ask your pardon. Now, she and you are but one to me. I am very grateful to you. I feel that you make Cosette happy. If you knew, Monsieur Pontmercy, her beautiful rosy cheeks were my joy; when I saw her a little pale, I was sad. There is a five hundred franc bill in the bureau. I have not touched it. It is for the poor. Cosette, do you see your little dress, there on the bed? do you recognise it? Yet it was only ten years ago. How time passes! We have been very happy. It is over. My children, do not weep, I am not going very far, I shall see you from there. You will only have to look when it is night, you will see me smile. Cosette, do you remember Montfermeil? You were in the wood, you were very much frightened; do you remember when I took the handle of the water-bucket? That time I touched your poor little hand. It was so cold! Ay! you had red hands in those days, mademoiselle, your hands are very white now. And the great doll! do you remember? you called her Catharine. You regretted that you did not carry her to the convent. How you made me laugh sometimes, my sweet angel! You have forgotten it. You were so cunning when you were little! You played. You put cherries in your ears. Those are things of the past. The forests through which we have passed with our child, the trees under which we have walked, the convents in which we have hidden, the games, the free laughter of childhood, all is in shadow. I imagined that all that belonged to me. There was my folly. Those Thenardiers were wicked. We must forgive them. Cosette, the time has come to tell of your mother. Her name was Fantine. Remember that name: Fantine. Fall on your knees whenever you pronounce it. She suffered much. And loved you much. Her measure of unhappiness was as full as yours of happiness. Such are the distributions of God. He is on high, he sees us all, and he knows what he does in the midst of his great stars. So I am going away, my children. Love each other dearly always. There is scarcely anything else in the world but that: to love one another. You will think sometimes of the poor old man who died here. O my Cosette! it is not my fault, indeed, if I have not seen you all this time, it broke my, heart.

            My children, I do not see very clearly now, I had some more things to say, but it makes no difference. Think of me a little. You are blessed creatures. I do not know what is the matter with me, I see a light. Come nearer. I die happy. Let me put my hands upon your dear beloved heads."

            Cosette and Marius fell on their knees, overwhelmed, choked with tears, each grasping one of Jean Valjean's hands. Those august hands moved no more.

            He had fallen backwards, the light from the candlesticks fell upon him; his white face looked up towards heaven, he let Cosette and Marius cover his hands with kisses; he was dead.

            The night was starless and very dark. Without doubt, in the gloom some mighty angel was standing, with outstretched wings, awaiting the soul.

           

VI - GRASS HIDES AND RAIN BLOTS OUT

            There is, in the cemetery of Pere Lachaise, in the neighbourhood of the Potters' field, far from the elegant quartier of that city of sepulchres, far from all those fantastic tombs which display in presence of eternity the hideous fashions of death, in a deserted corner, beside an old wall, beneath great yew on which the bindweed climbs, among the dog-grass and the mosses, a stone. This stone is exempt no more than the rest from the leprosy of time, from the mould, the lichen, and the droppings of the birds. The air turns it black, the water green. It is near no path, the people do not like to go in that direction because the grass is high, and they would wet their feet. When there is a little sunshine, the lizards come out. There is, all about, a rustling of wild oats. In the spring, the linnets sing in the tree.

            This stone is entirely blank. The only thought in cutting it was of the essentials of the grave, and there was no other care than to make this stone long enough and narrow enough to cover a man.

            No name can be read there.

            Only many years ago, a hand wrote upon it in pencil these four lines which have become gradually illegible under the rain and the dust, and which are probably effaced:

He sleeps.  Although his fate was very strange,

He lived.  He died when he had no longer his angel.

The thing came to pass simply, of itself,

As the night comes when the day is gone.

THE END