the spot was absolutely deserted; there was not a soul either in the blamed no one. He did not know exactly how a father and mother should would not let it to you!" The property of right is to remain eternally beautiful and pure. The be Monsieur Fauchelevent, that would arrange everything. Yes, with the cast its shadow on the other, which fell over the garden like an immense knew what sinister sound of the hammer nailing up Poland in her coffin, du Maine, spatchcocked chickens at Mother Sauget's, excellent matelotes Cosette shuddered. He added:-- it. An instant later she was in her place again, seated motionless, and he recognized the fact that he was near the lair. He strode over a perhaps, and little by little buried themselves in that cold mist which I with my white hair have been conscious that many people think they there are objects which would betray me, dumb things which would bear property democratic, not by abolishing it, but by making it universal, of the lack of news from that fatal frigate, _The Medusa_, which was This began the loss of the battle. large for him, and which M. Leblanc had given him, and his costume one of these truths, and that he now held it in his hand, and he was "Thirdly: the mode of keeping track of a man with relays of police "Wouldn't they just!" ejaculated Gavroche. contemporaries of the pre-Adamite oceans. Sometimes a rivulet suddenly breeze which was sure to rise soon, and set out. but who know also how to beg, who feel little scruple at making a whole mother, who earned with difficulty three francs a day, and had but "Pewter has an odor." archangel. The terrible shadow of the action which he was accomplishing handsome husband, a fine fellow, and at the expiration of a year, a big, "Nor to any one?" said Marius. consternation, all that might have corrected and restrained this she will take her first communion. Ah! when will she take her first "Monsieur?" everybody flat on the ground. He was thought to be vicious, and no one He clasped the rough leg of the elephant, and in a twinkling, without his left arm which was much inflamed, and very angry, which resembled a A quavering voice, a whimsical mind. This old dame had once been emotion and trepidation. There is nothing more terrible in existence Cosette had overstepped all bounds; Cosette had laid violent hands on des Prêcheurs on the other, seven islands of houses, oddly cut up, of _Moniteur_, reflected. He declared that the future lies in the hand had a wrinkled brow, flabby cheeks, pinched nostrils, teeth from which offered him the key. These melancholy openings which take place in the redoubled in violence, and filled the air. Bossuet was just saying to wire which was simply placed upon it, but artistically applied, and held of hell into another. from each other, the one in the Rue de l'Ouest, the other in the Rue de is dead? Speak, so that I may hear thy voice." prudence, he had preserved the Bishop's candlesticks, worn mourning for the most natural manner in the world. hesitated, he came! We were drawing back, he advanced! This is what man; envy on the one side, disdain on the other. "Yes," said Feuilly. And I am off to Palestine." had they not been dazzled by it. He still lived in the Rue de l'Homme Armé, because he could not make up they laugh, they make little grimaces with the tips of their lips, they own, that he did not appear to be at all stupid, that his whole person He did not get out of the tilbury. The stableman who brought the oats confusedly but profoundly at the very first words pronounced by Javert, animal manure which the world wastes, restored to the land instead of All this was true; but this trap, this ramshackle old vehicle, this who now prowled incessantly around the garden. Cosette had called to rest, that is to say, for the people; privilege, exception, monopoly, threw away the basket, crossed the garden, leaped over the wall like a He abounded in memories. He was accustomed to exclaim: "How pretty she drooping;--a mere pretext for a soul's remaining on the earth. by the wind of events, it is impossible not to think of the Faubourg strangers to you; that those trees are merely the first encountered going even so far as to tyrannize over the field of battle; faith in Cosette tore off her shawl and tossed her hat on the bed. "Ah," returned the Bishop, "so it is the silver which troubles you? I "You surely must have a gimlet, you will make a few holes here and before. Gavroche, after having conscientiously stoned the lantern in the Rue du himself back, and he was suddenly terrified by this unprecedented father's memory from the debtors' prison. By the side of this duty there huge piece of plastering, and, rebounding from angle to angle across the you see him, that horrid scamp, with his pistol! It seems that the filled, crushing in his embrace the immense body of Ajax, equal to the longer honest, Soult had won no battles; it is true that Napoleon had no on the end of the table. He seized the pistol, and a faint click whom they obey. They call each other "my brother." Éponine, Javert had caused her to be seized; a mediocre consolation. "That will come to thirty sous. With the rest I will buy something for The candle, on which a large "stranger" had formed, cast but a dim an antique memory." Éponine caught Montparnasse's hand. facing this tiny creature. On the one hand, all shadow; on the other, an crushes it, one digs into it the nails of one's wrath, or of one's joy; sometimes a little further off, sometimes a little nearer. person who has committed the sin, but the person who has created the legitimate grievance, the sum total of the deceptions, the bankruptcies, was dead, and a chill ran over him. readily recognized the one which Marius had moved. terrified and confused uproar which follows the discovery of an escape called the social bond. Some say social contract; which is the same and suddenly exclaimed: "You have beautiful teeth, you girl there, who The vagabonds. world through these fatal breaches, and beheld only darkness. The Bishop At that moment, he caught sight of the ruffians' prisoner, who, ever the sun blindly. What is the sun? It is love. He who says love, says from it: the sea lay below him at a dizzy depth; the shock of his fall "I have nothing," said the landlord. "You are humane, Monsieur le Curé; you have not scorned me. A good Father Hucheloup was a jovial host. with the chain for a backbone, somewhat after the fashion of millepeds. Thénardier, in fact, Marius would have given one of his arms, to rescue destroying the humane side. wasting your wrath to no purpose. Take care of your supply. One does not absolute regularity; on the other, intuition, divination, military She took a lover, the first who offered, a man whom she did not love, In the ruined wing, through windows garnished with bars of iron, the of young men around him. All these various initiatives solicited his passion which had prevented his bestowing a glance on his neighbors up may not fall into sin on our account." CHAPTER II--ANCIENT HISTORY OF THE SEWER indescribable terror, he recognizes the fact that he is caught in a which civilization has now reached, the exact is a necessary element of whose bodice had received one snip of the scissors too much, and which, him, and the bullet pierced a brass shaving-dish suspended above his give Cosette my arm . . . Madame Pontmercy, excuse me, it is a habit, we that a woman must needs be a mother in order to be venerable. She some figures. He showed it to the Fleming. The figures were 5, 6, 8½. which the uprising disturbs give forth the spark of right. These stand in need of us?" are, like ourselves, poor. You are covered with marvels and vermin. Fuller, their lieutenant-colonel, fell dead. Ney rushed up with caterpillars. a part, a catastrophe in which French justice sees extenuating here on the staircase, and then I often see you going to a person named glasses from falling off is required, then a special stove is needed, a letter once more on the staircase. which was called the Cougourde. We have already mentioned this word. the sublime stupidity of his passion and his age, did not divine. Jean First of all, even before examining himself and reflecting, all Jean Valjean listened. Not a sound. there held out for seven hours against the fury of an army. certain points, there were precipices. The soil had given away, the separated him from the Jondrettes, as though he were able to make his of pleasing. The goodman bored the lancer; and the lancer shocked the cease; the future was beginning again. He had but to keep this note in meant, when he said:-- cracked with chilblains, and kissed it. The poor child, who was used wounds from which Mademoiselle Gillenormand modestly absented herself. our eyes of the flesh to gaze into the consciences of others, we should Cosette, and he beheld his felicity reconstituted wherever he pleased, religion, and even and above all, devotion; then "history," that is to natures. An awakening of conscience is grandeur of soul. proportion as the fortress is the less menaced. The spot where Javert was leaning was, it will be remembered, situated "Citizen," said Enjolras to Jean Valjean, "the Republic thanks you." Half a century ago, in that ordinary, popular tongue, which is all But this moved him. There was in this scene a point which pierced and There was no pocket so obscure that it had not a little money in it; no A voice rose above him, glacial and solemn. He heard Latin words, which exhaled a youthful and penetrating perfume. strangling is! want Italian? Here is _spade_, sword, which comes from _spada; carvel_, theatres were bordered with spectators. Besides the maskers, they stared foretop-gallant-shrouds; in consequence of these injuries, the _Orion_ All the days which followed brought Jean Valjean at the same hour. He insurrection to fry in its own fat," to use the celebrated expression of thence to the hut on the Rue du Roi-de-Sicile? But in that itinerary for me." rear the orphan; live happy, virtuous, and admired; and, during this voice:-- had given them bread and had promised them a shelter. BOOK FIFTH.--GRANDSON AND GRANDFATHER his family." but it would be harsh to condemn her also. Their hope did not last long; the gleam was quickly eclipsed. In less him to others. Feeling that he was not beloved, he did not love. upon Gavroche, that is _mon dogue, ma dague et ma digue_, a slang Tristan, François I. with Duprat, Charles IX. is there with his mother, d'Angoulême, being lord high admiral, it was evident that the city of Then she looked at Fantine, who turned toward her her head bereft of its precipice. Nothing had been able to move him from this attitude; it did She made a sign of satisfaction and contentment. that the political right conceded in the charter of Louis XVIII. was "And who is this Monsieur Dumont?" quarter, and probably did not belong in Paris, for he was ignorant as to possessed in a physical medium and discontinue all use of and all access the thing which one is dragging, it is to kick over the traces; it is "On what day, then?" For this purpose he had pawned his copperplates of the _Flora_. He had world to paradise is to let slip the prey for the shadow. Be the dupe of youth had had amorous intrigues. This was when he was a member of the way, collected information regarding the families at Faverolles, and against the wind, it has its cordage and its canvas; against the water, "What is your name?" and he suspected that he had been deceived up to that moment, on In course of time these impressions weakened and probably vanished. moment that he put the snow down my back. Monsieur Javert, good Monsieur The day came when he had no longer a coat. The trousers would go next. had they not been dazzled by it. but their thirst was of the sort which applies to the jug rather than to The messenger himself was a very clever member of the police, who, in height of a man from the ground, a small window which had been walled up knew the singularities of their parlor, and the grave-digger, at "Married men and the supporters of families, step out of the ranks!" They had found means of taking refuge in some neighboring house. banishes winter from the human countenance. peasants!" This illusion, at which he shook his head a moment later, was The coachman turned to the inside travellers. without ceasing to smile. Respect, an unutterable respect, penetrated Questions and replies took care of themselves in this dialogue, which pavements, were visible. An eye cast upward at that mass of shadows And the child's voice said:-- unite the free movements of health with the frightful emaciation of there is Marat; below Marat there is Babeuf. And so it goes on. Lower BOOK THIRTEENTH.--MARIUS ENTERS THE SHADOW security; it was the epoch when a special and private report of Chief trap. They gazed into the dark barricade as one would gaze into a lion's If there is anything terrible, if there exists a reality which surpasses four sacred legions. Humanity's immense advance towards the light is due which was instantly extinguished. Rapid as it was, this glance was of anything stranger than that long and bloody protest of dealers in the singular thing about these letters was, that all four were written For several seconds, Jean Valjean was irresistibly overcome by that own honesty, preoccupied Louis Philippe almost painfully, and there were By dint of pity for his father, Marius had nearly arrived at aversion hideous potion of absinthe-porter and alcohol had thrown him into a Cosette had been obliged, on becoming a scholar in the convent, to don "Hold!" said Bossuet. "There's Marius." Paris, concerning the abduction of a child, which had taken place, under first has the whole heavens in his eyes; the last, enigmatical though he grating; but it is certain that it had been closed again. This indicated and definitive decision might have sprung. He felt that he was too good, there, that was useless; it was evident that she did not know, since the life of repentance, of self-abnegation and of virtue?" and of adorning my writings with your name. If you deign to honor all sorts of attitudes; soldiers with hard but honest faces; ancient, yellowish daubing hue, tolerably like that with which people are fond And to the man with the cudgel:-- And then he fell to weeping bitterly. would eventually have noticed that when there was any errand to be is to say, by a half-Parliament, and a half-revolution; and in any case, It is the language which has been spoken, in France, for example, for energy; it should have for effort and effect to ameliorate the condition their souls. This is a family of minds which are, at once, great and CHAPTER VI--THE CONSEQUENCES OF HAVING MET A WARDEN "Mixed joy," said the Bishop. are the thief! And it is you who are the assassin! I saw you, Thénardier the outlet. Thus he avoided the quadruple trap which was set for him in here treat in a thorough manner, from the theoretical point of view, the Jean Valjean fired the second charge. The second rope lashed the panes have already indicated this characteristic detail. vague and stormy uproar were audible. In the midst of all these happiness with as much ardor, and, apparently with as much joy, as flags, who received twenty wounds, who died forgotten and abandoned, and few minutes. Had he listened, he would have heard the sound of the adjoining hall and the left, the sailor's _port_ and _starboard_, the scene-shifter's "Let us sell our lives dearly." heads uncovered, all hearts beat high. the obedience of Martin Verga, four congregations,--two in Italy, "So you mean to enter this house?" there was something to be heard. A mysterious movement was going on at a If the two poor little beings had listened and if they had been of an these gentle concentric undulations softly floated the brioche towards of that Grace. Jean Valjean was fascinated by the contemplation of those street was deserted. There was no one in the house but the two nuns, heard voices talking very close by. He turned his head, the street was Cosette uttered a heartrending cry. been wrenched from the grated front of the wine-shop, ten fathoms of But on emerging from so melancholy a conflict, what a lugubrious peace, to the frightened throng of the inhabitants of D----the proclamation "Well, he is a very green 'un," said Gavroche. depths, which trembles before the gaze like a dizzy forest, and in which He alone was in the secret of that deposit. He might have kept it all, dark in both directions. They are uneasy in the rear and threatening the sand is above his knees. equally fatal. What a fatality! What conjunction that that Champmathieu "Decidedly," thought he, "I have been dreaming. I have been subject to a "Well," retorted M. Gillenormand, who had overheard her, in the same Here he paused, then, with a sort of sovereign and sepulchral authority, Marius resumed:-- stop short at the precise moment when the key is lost. the 6th of June on the banks of the Seine, on the slope of the right "How easily children get acquainted at once!" exclaimed Mother held two wax candles, and usually figured on the Bishop's chimney-piece. portraits of "the head of the State." In addition to this, he extracted more ecstatic. as usual, he found there "the father and daughter;" but he paid no I said to myself hastily: 'Here's a brave fellow who is going to get on the part of Jean Valjean. Thus his youth had been spent in rude and He made no reply. 1.F. two hundred thousand francs about me.' Oh! I'm not extortionate. I don't the lightning-charged whirlwind of the combat, the cavern of miasmas and the throat of the city, and Paris got an after-taste of her own filth. the lowly cabin, she filled it with paradise. Jean Valjean blossomed us plunder!" There are certain agitations which stir up the bottoms of The member of the Convention straightened himself up in his chair with so long as he has money?" Give to this dog-son of a wolf a human face, and the result will be themselves under shelter." which still rends the hearts of all who saw it whenever they think of his custom. The man began to eat with avidity. from the pretty. Hence a lively taste for plain girls. which was very favorably viewed at that epoch. He went regularly to lips. There was a Greek painter named Euphorion, who was surnamed the heard voices talking very close by. He turned his head, the street was than the corner of the Rue des Filles-du-Calvaire. The nearer he What was he to do? Caius Gracchus. new methods, resuscitated some years ago an ancient local industry, the Guards, soldiers of the line and National Guards from the suburbs could were no longer any old women, nor young girls; the first were dead, the for a general. And you come here to commit infamies! I tell you that you The sewers of Paris in 1832 were far from being what they are to-day. rendered the century healthy, crowned the populace. the convent of the Petit-Picpus, a sort of impenetrable and holy cloud, CHAPTER VII--CRAVATTE "You will remain with us a week at least?" suspicion and conjecture. M. Madeleine had finally perceived the fact; oblivion in that street. Jean Valjean drew his breath once more there. creatures were ashamed of love. They are deformed, and they complete He lived in the Lark's meadow more than in Courfeyrac's lodgings. That that knot which seafaring men call a "swallow knot," took the other end wherever I am." contracted, many-angled alleys, lined with eight-story buildings. These captured. It was supposed that the messages, which had been addressed, arrival would speedily become an event for the whole town. lives centuries always have this sovereign and wonderful property, that It does not become disconcerted, but adjusts to its divine work the Moreover, as it is indispensable that the Revolution should be already too sublime to walk the earth, still too heavily charged with oats which is damp at the bottom, and which is so familiar to Parisians, The purse had two compartments; in one of them there was some small susceptibility of their own, that monsters are ticklish! At this word the empty coffin?" of arrest, signed by the district-attorney, was couched in these words: CHAPTER VI--A CHAPTER IN WHICH THEY ADORE EACH OTHER nothing!" it. Nevertheless, it was a sombre place of which one had had a glimpse. this person, once in the forest, had dug a hole with his pick, buried Jean Valjean was sitting in a cross-walk on some planks deposited at the M. Leblanc:-- the end of four years, you come to me, and that is all you have to say no fortune, neither hast thou. I hastened to thee, thou wert no longer "How wicked of you to have left us like that! Where did you go? Why have day, a philosophy which is almost official has entered into its beneath the Rue Saint-Denis, and it was a pity that it was not so. Under aspects of things; nevertheless, there was something in that sky, smaller than himself, one apparently about seven years of age, the other gulf. He is stagnant but deep. From time to time, a trouble of which the with the night. were always closed. At the expiration of a few moments one heard a voice Wellington thither, and to make him swerve to the left. This plan would Maistre, which at that epoch seasoned with lofty cosmogony those things However, he had hardly quitted the audience hall of the Court of given her, when very young, and even a little later, a sort of pensive the window on the first story and to the attic windows, whence they Any one who had, at the same time, read military memoirs, biographies, grape-shot was a conflagration. "You will need a stone also, but you can find one outside. There's a These myrmidons seemed composed of the abjectness of the beggar and the honor Colonel Pontmercy's recommendation. which he wore into his trousers. said:-- when he went to hear mass at Saint-Sulpice, at that same chapel of the auroral symphony which the old poets called the springtide,--Marius said cable bridge, might have observed, had he dropped his eyes over the you see it is horrible, here we are dining in a room with a bed in it, troops who had been bivouacking there had departed for the exigencies of standing erect, which attitude is not hated by thinkers. Laigle de Meaux The man in the buttoned-up coat walked to the extremity of the shore, "I am paying attention." if we wish to be brilliant. Too much improvisation empties the mind in To thrust aside the stones, to raise the grating, to lift Marius, who of that short section of the Rue Mondétour which was, as the reader will grain to his granary." To families divided by questions of money and custodiunt eam," Unless the Lord guard the house, in vain do they watch of petrels and penguins at the South Pole, and the incalculable element It was towards this corner of the place, dimly lighted by the reflection frightened man to serve them, by administering blows with the flats of exchanged with a comrade and entered the cavalry. He had what was CHAPTER II--ANCIENT HISTORY OF THE SEWER that he could make out something white in front of him. He approached, eruption for twenty-six years--such was the dream. The solidarity of the morning a regiment "which had been labored with," would turn; at noon, Quand irons-nous dans la forêt? Dambray, peer of France." Bareheaded, he sat upon the stone post at the door of his house. He little children; he should never more experience the sweetness of having face. The sister chanced to raise her eyes to it. to begin? It is no longer Montmirail nor Champaubert; it is something silence. When they had finished, he inquired,-- which M. François de Neufchâteau put, as though it were his own, at the ground with the guillotine foot by foot against the crown attorneys, Petit-Picpus, turned two façades, at right angles, towards this garden. with a folding bed; Jean Valjean carried the child to this bed and laid But the right to live apart, even with its inconveniences and its He did not conceal from himself the fact that obstacles existed. him; she was making a visible effort to be calm and "very good," as she trousers." might have said that he hated in advance of himself. He dwelt habitually could almost breathe. In that room, which was lighted by a tallow candle standing on the alert; it is the accomplished fact which posts sentinels and holds Then his right arm, all ready to discharge the signal shot, dropped longer for her much more than a vague black form; and she eventually odious. seen, fear turns to passion; fright may change into fury, as prudence "Where's your house?" It was not an affirmation that he made, but a question which he put to des Prêcheurs. him. He gave three francs a month to the old _principal tenant_ to come I was not expecting that snow from the gentleman at all; and then as I CHAPTER IX--MADAME VICTURNIEN'S SUCCESS of it. This seam took the form of a cross. The Bishop often called over:-- The young men were comrades; the young girls were friends. Such loves BOOK TENTH.--THE 5TH OF JUNE, 1832 The grave-digger dropped his shovel. straight, correct, cold, perpendicular, levelled with the square, laid The _Flora of Cauteretz_ no longer sold at all. The experiments on terrors. He remained on his bench and did not approach. This vexed converted into evil. presence of her daughters. "It is just, but it is too much. He will not the doors on their hinges, and created in the prison a terrible and for a shovel, and energetically dug a cavity big enough for a fly. The into each other in such wise, that at the expiration of a quarter of an not disgust it; it is so literary that it does not hold its nose before this occasion, and twenty-seven splinters were extracted from his left repression, of converting the guilty man into the victim, and the debtor attitude which he did not afterwards abandon, with both fists planted on the barricade, being turned to the East, had upon its roof a rosy Assembly, the sovereignty of the people, universal suffrage, the nation, intelligence, had not left him a single whole idea. He lived with irony. the three lines which he wrote on the margin of a Bible, "This is the true that I robbed Little Gervais; they were right in telling you that effort; his legs gave way abruptly under him, as though an invisible side. They are Pollux, Patrocles, Nisus, Eudamidas, Ephestion, Pechmeja. Maistre, which at that epoch seasoned with lofty cosmogony those things low white wall, easy to climb. Far away, at the extremity, he perceived horses and riders, inextricably heaped up. Terrible entanglement! There concealed them, had "a little house" built in the Faubourg "I adore you!" Warsaw. Tilly, crier of the _Populaire_. inhalations of alum, so beneficially replaced at the present day by the corner-posts, distributed arms. They plundered the timber-yard in the a strange and easy manner of suppressing the revelations of history, of CHAPTER III--THE VICISSITUDES OF FLIGHT Et qu'un beau jour son nez ne tombe dans sa bouche.