eyes full of that grand flame which one beholds in the depths of history led from one central pipe to all these little basins sketched out a sort The official language of the Roads and Bridges gave to these gratings ray of light from without made it stand out like a silhouette, and Jean A cold wind was blowing from the plain. The forest was dark, not a leaf and mournful gravity in the midst of the throng, was in process of He clearly perceived this truth, the foundation of his life henceforth, francs, a den minus a fireplace, called a cabinet, which contained only employed in the conquest of the ideal. Gaze past the people, and you kissed the police agent's coat. She would have softened a heart of happiness to his child's future. This caused the curé to regard him with "You know well that I'm no fool. Ordinarily, I am believed. I have "Well, if you eat it, I will eat it too." had cropped up and subjugated him. A whole new world was dawning on his theatre. We'll go to see the savages. They ain't real, those savages The Thénardier silently handed him the folded bill. voice, as he plunged under the black elm-trees, in the wintry wind:-- and had the thrill of a hymn. He was subject to unexpected outbursts of The intoxication of the lovers was only equalled, as we have already the prompter's whistle, at the theatre; the vague hatreds, rancors, converted into a casement, a couple of paces distant from the redoubt he gazed all around him and perceived a creature larger than a Nicolette, who had succeeded to Magnon, and that short-breathed and who led a garrison life, outside the family and far from the domestic "Ah! see here, my good man; I am very sorry, but I have no room left." took aim at the newcomer and sent the officer's casque to join the to her husband. thinker, all historic murderers are to be found there, in that hideous Come, there goes another peal, that is to order the porter to go and She resumed her contemplation of the book. It was written in the most Marius ascended the stairs of the hovel with slow steps; at the moment himself tender. From the egotism of the man who suffers he passes to the give me your most sacred word of honor, that you will not tell her. Is A cloud swept across Marius' brow. He seized Éponine by the arm:-- kings, forty-one queens, three thousand six hundred canonized saints, will you have nothing to do with me?" "I have just come from the deep threatening gravity which precedes engagements. They took aim, point But Enjolras and Marius, and the seven or eight rallied about them, repress his sobs: you do. You have stolen Alba, we shall take Clusium.' Rome said: 'You bottom of my soul remained black. It is not enough to be happy, one must which is on high at the summit, at the crest, at the zenith, that which Perpetual motion was in his little arms and perpetual clamor in his two blocks of shadow. One of these blocks of shadow entirely covered the soldier's. The officer did not persist, and retired speedily. This time very far beyond their own love. now beginning. say; "do go and see what he wants." "Bah!" the mother would reply, "he "Come have a drink," said he. cataract, breaking the stoutest supporting beams like glass. Quite uprising is of a calamity? And then, are all uprisings calamities? And Jean Valjean had fallen from one danger upon another. "Let yourself slide, we'll catch you." your whole right shoulder bears a deep burn, because you one day laid extinct family; Cosette was not his own daughter, but the daughter of Dwarf_ was transferred into _Mirror_. The Café Lemblin stood up for the bound to bestow alms on the poor whom he met, but he never gave them also noticed the wedding, and while their companions and the passers-by municipal guard occupied the Rue des Prêcheurs. The bulk of the army was door to the prodigal, the brave man rubs elbows with the braggart; he an effort to reach the street which he saw at the end of the lane, he even more alarming to the emigrants who viewed them from a distance, Valjean felt the terrible spider running along those black strands and the fracture of his collar-bone. There always is a last wound like that motionless and his eyes no longer had the appearance of being alive. "No," said he. she did not undress, in order that she might not be so cold. indifference loved. His mind could get along without belief, but his About three o'clock the four couples, frightened at their happiness, Suddenly, the distant and melancholy vibration of a clock shook the cannon. from dampness, he had placed it in a coffer filled with chestnut The spiral staircase, hewn asunder with the axe, lay in the middle of Nothing is more curious than a barricade preparing for an assault. Each "Where are we to find a young 'un?" said Guelemer. Beyond the grating was the open air, the river, the daylight, the shore, the dying man knows not whether he is on the point of becoming a spectre Although very old, she still played the harp, and did it very well. Enlarge these dark replies which he was making to himself, he pulled the table "Do you want to see? Look here, I'm going to write a word to show you." horizontal, bearing a bullet, buck-shot or a biscaïen at the tip of each bears away as well as to him whom it strikes! It breaks the one against great need of man, the finite, which admits of embrace, they ignore. The they were hungry and thirsty. The elder broke the cake into two small and low-ceiled, was furnished with a heap of empty bottles piled characters have taken as they became abased, the trace of prostitution shoulders, and took himself to task in these terms:-- the same destiny; they are no longer anything but the two wings of the Bernardines-Benedictines of the Petit-Picpus, of whom we are speaking, which is extinguished under hideous clouds at dawn on a winter's day. Who would blame Sisyphus and Jean Valjean for saying: "It is enough!" "Nor a scamp with the air of an old red tail?" There now remained in the house only Marius, the Jondrettes and "Not another word." personage, a marshal of France, a prince, a duke, and a peer, traversed and sharing, the enigma of this lower world which covers the human shouted:-- virtuous and holy in the sight of God. Oh! poor woman." innocence of thieves does not extend to that point. great. hand. He, in the meantime, had immediately begun to make his descent to rejoin vanishing, especially in winter, at the hour when the twilight breeze It certainly is sad that turpitude heaped up should give a sum total of Enjolras alone was not struck. When he had no longer any weapon, he "Put me where you like," said the man; "in the attic, in the stable. I _"Tso-maraude."_1 the doctor was wiping his eyes; the corpse itself was weeping. earth by the light, had he begged for mercy! How many times had that never,--this is what we desire. bookseller, Quai des Augustins._ up that disastrous mass to the eager Prussian cavalry, and aided the of this combat was monstrous. These squares were no longer battalions, form a pyramidal bundle. This cluster supported a trellis-work of brass "Matelote is homely!" he cried: "Matelote is of a dream of ugliness! necessity of getting a clear view behind that heap of paving-stones, and single instant, made Javert, pinioned as he was, scale the little field-glass, on the extreme horizon, something which had attracted his council-chamber; you have only to turn the copper handle of yonder door, to others will be a rock to you. The simplest things will become steep Plantes than in his garden at Austerlitz. The year before he had owed about, the post-mistress and some other persons who saw the letter M. Gillenormand kept up no relations with his son-in-law. The colonel Robert, Abbé de Molesme, in the diocese of Langres, in 1098. Now it was those personal motives, of something that was also general, and, with his accustomed placidity:-- in the New Building was Guelemer, the second was a nail; Guelemer, that This word struck Marius. fact that an ambush was in course of preparation, a dark but terrible go over all the seams that we have made and see whether they hold fast. actors in these gigantic scenes have disappeared; beginning with the himself nor of Marius. He was thinking of Cosette. however vigorous, energetic, and desperate Jean Valjean might be. Is not my daughter beautiful? You must have been very cold in that to close itself abruptly. This wall was built of paving-stones. It was in accordance with a custom which is rather widely prevalent in alone in the world. He had never been father, lover, husband, friend. In father nor mother. I have brought her up. I have bread enough for estimated at six or seven hundred thousand francs. If the indictment is spendthrift, prodigal, and to the verge of generosity, talkative, and the powers of the human tongue. Enlarge and with crape on his hat. the _Moniteur_, and the bulletins of the grand army, would have been The other, a _Moniteur_ of the 15th of June, 1832, announced the suicide them apart had they wished to take them back again.--"This is mine." that was of yours, Father Madeleine!" Still, though unknown to hearts intoxicated with purity, nature is he placed the plank from his bed like a bridge from the roof of the in horrible twitchings; every effort which he made to re-ascend served an inadmissible hypothesis, by the way,--she would not have blamed _porte piétonne_.16 The Bernardines-Benedictines of the Rue Petit-Picpus of commerce, almost to the dignity of a religion. In civilization, such great minuteness, what these _fruitières_ of Pontarlier were; that they The ambiguous phrase by means of which Montparnasse had warned Gavroche Thénardier conducted him to a chamber on the first floor, which was of he had supposed himself fixed; he now suspected, with uneasiness, and wish to die. This is a moment when the instinct of self-preservation Cosette was thinking that it was dark, very dark, that the pitchers and freely. In order to do that it was necessary that the sun should come "I." and he became blind again. Nevertheless, he advanced as rapidly as The husband died. The eldest of the seven children was eight years old. "He's not a saint, and he's not a hero!" said Thénardier. "He's an one of the most strangely exquisite forms of happiness upon this earth, understand duty; for, as soon as one has comprehended it, it is the moment of his fall and his loss of consciousness was that of Jean wise elector, and a very severe juryman; he was still a man of pleasure. problem, with the secret of which he alone was acquainted, Cosette's a cross of black wood with this name in white letters: COLONEL BARON green cap; he was a life convict. On arriving on a level with the top, a among these eminent personages, ideas which altered the temperature of probable that nothing would have resulted from the discovery made "Si César m'avait donné All at once, she experienced that indefinable impression which one in the seventeenth century, the poet more than the King. It attained its One morning in October, therefore, tempted by the serene perfection of she was the taper beside the candle. Vincent de Paul has divinely traced her the abyss, and would have taught her not to confound the mighty of wreaking my vengeance, I have denounced you as a convict, you, a uprooted. The code was no longer anything more than a stump in his hand. Thénardier had fallen, and which had engulfed the latter. Marius had "That's true." he beheld anything like this. This confidence terrified him. The consideration. Ah! by all the saints of Olympus and by all the gods Every one is aware that the variously inclined undulations of the The first law of safety is to get rid of every sort of load. Every his sergeant-major nor to quibble with Comte de Lobau; he possessed for himself; that this was even prudent; that he must know what took andirons, half enveloped in his huge screen of coromandel lacquer, with "This time it is for me. The Mother Prioress wants me. Good, now I am revolutionary which becomes reassuring in governing power, therein lay this population should have diminished in the last fifty years; and his bed, his table, his commode, and his two chairs loaded on a 10 (return) [ "A battle terminated, a day finished, false measures established in his own house. He confided her to the sisters, who put The two little boys exchanged terrified glances. They will both enter the carriage with my comrade behind. Somewhere, them,--a courtyard surrounded by walls hung with vines, and the face was a gamin of Paris; he Shouts: "Forward!" as the horse of Scripture since he liked to go to bed early. Nevertheless, the portress of the Jean Valjean obeyed. It was the smile of a spectre. except her pallor. Something barred his way in that direction. woman holding your hand, and crying, "Ah, my new boots! what a state children, those who want them have none, and those who don't want them fatigue which expends the strength only to renew it; it was the remnant exchanged with a comrade and entered the cavalry. He had what was attraction; and love, properly speaking, was, in his immense tenderness Salpêtrière; in 1811 under the Rue Neuve-des-Petits-Pères, under the Rue his bare arm. do this, he must have been thoroughly familiar with the enormous they derided the prescribed man well on this occasion. What separated the porter pulled the rope, the gate opened, and they went out. which began by the sacrifice of self. tyrant." tremble, but did not shake the door. Madame Magloire contemplated every day with delight, as they glistened his belly, the sand reaches to his breast, he is only a bust now. He against that little embroidered handkerchief, which smells of patchouli! Passy Barrier. From moment to moment, some huge vehicle, painted yellow fact, but she could not refrain from adding:-- that there was occasion to avenge the Colonel for the misfortune of puerile game of keeping such a man at the end of a thread. He thought which was slowly dawning, cast a wan light on this swarming heap which The unprecedented and heart-rending thing about it was that he had attitude was an ex-convict, and what he was dragging on his shoulders When this legion had been reduced to a handful, when nothing was left and helped the young ones to clamber through the breach. The two Lords Charles Brûlart de Genlis, archbishop; Prince d'Embrun; Antoine the sand is above his knees. "You will send sixty pistoles every six months to that blood-drinker, The first thing which struck him in this paddock was a door of the under the pseudonym of Barleycourt. him something of the wolf which regains his grip on his prey, and of the pastoral ring, and whence had fallen so many good deeds and so many had no longer any talent, Arnault had no longer any wit, Carnot was no by these contradictions in the attitude of problems, which seem with mud, cuirassiers who had taken by assault the fleet lying at anchor The most esteemed among the vocal mothers were Mother Sainte-Honorine; hands, with a smile? Should he place upon the peaceful fender of the His grandfather never departed from his infallible diagnosis: "In love! CHAPTER VII--IN WHICH WILL BE FOUND THE ORIGIN OF THE SAYING: DON'T LOSE THE CARD Moreover, Fauchelevent was perfectly composed. He took his time. The "That arranges everything," said Courfeyrac. CHAPTER X--RESULT OF THE SUCCESS it, like de Maistre; others execrate it, like Beccaria. The guillotine Such was M. Myriel's budget. "Hey?" His position was visibly becoming critical. "I know that secret as well as the others," said Marius. "To Andelys." "I will take it." he is an imbecile, it does not concern you. What are you worrying for, blows. Then she looked at Fantine, who turned toward her her head bereft of its "She slept in her coffin for twenty years, by express permission of our CHAPTER III--A TEMPEST IN A SKULL these lines, confounding progress with God, and taking the interruption She hummed:-- the roofs in the direction of the Halles. A bell, which had the air of a cap which concealed his face. Was this precaution or humility? Both. Such is the theory of the skilful. feeble, cruel, and cowardly creature, which finds that it can, at last, had said all this to himself; he had wished to pass beyond, to act, to carriage-loads form mountains of mirth in the midst of the rout. Collé, one's self." up, transported to the tap-room, and cared for. In the intervals, he "There should be no other newspaper than the _Moniteur_, and no other ahead without knowing whether he would be of any service or not; then That done, he put the paper in the pocket of the still snoring face-to-face encounter of selfish and wretched. On the part of her say amid her fever: "I have been a sinner; but when I have my child all frankness. If one knew the password, the voice resumed, "Enter on the right." sick man, under certain atmospheric conditions; at every change of despair. All at once a shudder ran through him. "Mercy, Madame, Madame! I will not do so any more!" At that moment it seemed to him that he heard a voice within him real. Marius had already seen too much of life not to know that nothing CHAPTER XIV--THE LAST SQUARE fillets, the justice's drawing-room furnished with tapestries and vast battle-field. that the priests had forgiven her her monk. She had a small property, hat! He walked in a bent attitude, and the curve in his spine augmented Marius, stunned and overwhelmed with the dazzling shock, trembled in The King frowned, glanced at the signature of the petition and beheld his cage, deposited beside his bed a loaf of black bread weighing two "Grant me three days' grace! three days in which to go and fetch the habit of lending them their black garments. This seemed profane, and two classes; at the same time, he was conscious of an indescribable or lost, then a pleasure with which your conscience and your vertebral Swedenborg and Pascal, have slipped into insanity. Certainly, these spaces between the trees and force the passer-by to bend his head; one her that she had begun to live in an abyss, and that it was Jean Valjean Cosette ventured to emerge from her hole. And, as one knots one thread to another thread, he took up the line of religious ideas of a father of the Oratoire, known under the name While you, at least, are called Théodule." vegetates, that is to say, one develops in a certain meagre fashion, Montfermeil to get my little Cosette." This tramping to and fro soothed and at the same time intoxicated him. But in the midst of this pause Fantine exclaimed:-- foreseeing a possibility of combat and insurgents in force, had He's not a good student. Here is none of your heavy-sides, a student who obliged to honor and respect him. His workmen, in particular, adored say that he was setting out on a journey?"--"That is true," thought gratis; it is responsible for the night which it produces. This soul and without being noticed by Jean Valjean, tore off a strip which he school-girls would begin to laugh, not in their sleeves, but under wretch of a mayor, you came here to frighten me, but I'm not afraid of have been very happy. All is over. Do not weep, my children, I am not which Enjolras unfolded, and on which he read these five lines, written slipper, that throat which veils itself before a mirror as though a The man drew a large leather purse from the pocket of his blouse, and soap, two children of unequal stature, very neatly dressed, and still strolling in the fields. washed free. The last veil is torn away. A sewer is a cynic. It tells And, after a pause, he added: As for M. Gillenormand, his consideration was of absolutely first-rate age added to it. One is not a century with impunity. The years finally began to tug at her skirt. "But you alone should hear it--" says "Vah!" and in a moment he has passed from the small brat to the the Rue de Pontoise, in front of the office of the commissary of police, Jean Valjean had sat on the previous evening. As he ate his breakfast, That evening, before he went to bed, he said again: "Let us never fear be content. Thus I should have remained Monsieur Fauchelevent, thus I wise elector, and a very severe juryman; he was still a man of pleasure. a singular state; he thought that he heard drums, cannon, trumpets, almost always illusions for the sacrificed, but illusions with which, would eventually have noticed that when there was any errand to be the lives of the angels and came here below to traverse the destinies of man's calmness reaches the coldness of the statue. or four days longer; but torture may surely be prolonged with the object periphrase in verse was the age of crudities in prose. His god-father the second killed an old deaf woman who was in the act of closing her He went to the Luxembourg again, but he did not proceed further than his carter's blouse on their backs when it was very cold; they drank no hand was a sacred grave, on the other hoary locks. surrounded with a sort of aureole the man to whom, in his thoughts, and who was thinking far more of Cosette than of 1793. with his thoughts filled with abominable projects. "'Wash this linen.'--'Where?'--'In the stream. Make of it, soiling think it necessary to point out here. It is the state of a mind on the a contractor for the work of prisons, who made the prisoners work at a The sky had been overcast all day long. All of a sudden, at that very individual anxieties. It was hailed with an enthusiastic acclamation. has taken a look and said: 'She is dead, that is well.' When the doctor Suddenly, the sun made its appearance; the immense light of the Orient house. This house has since been demolished and rebuilt, and the number by Haydn. cuirassiers quitted the cavalry to return to the infantry; or, to put at night he returned home to water his garden, and to read his books. At called each other _thou_; it is the tendency of youthful friendships to was he to get out? should he find an issue? should he find it in time? CHAPTER VI--THE FONTIS solve the enigma, he strove to dress the wound. The terrible spectacle Suddenly Jean Valjean replaced his cap on his brow; then stepped rapidly fist; happy and indignant, he held his heel upon crime, vice, rebellion, Oh no, the idea! I shall never put on those horrors again. With that Cosette and Toussaint were asleep, and plunged three or four matches noise. ill-paid toil. He had never known a "kind woman friend" in his native Préfet of Police_. As the affair in the station-house had been bruited abrupt turns, in which the perspective changes suddenly. Chance is the not please him. There already existed between them all the dissonances the last, who became illustrious at an early age, he was endowed with established. He has just committed a fresh theft; it is a case of a moment, had just begun again. Marius posted himself on the watch at the instant; perhaps, in the vaguest region of his mind, he did make was never fastened, either by night or by day, with anything except the remarked, returned the insult; the sword of Fontenoy was laughable and one were not free to suffer and to die of inanition while waiting by beseeching the jury and the court, if the identity of Jean Valjean CHAPTER V--AT BOMBARDA'S The following day was the 3d of June, 1832, a date which it is necessary boiler, there can be no force except in the brain; in other words, The two decrepit leaves which barred it were ornamented with an old very readily discover a man like Jean Valjean. blood on the pavement. I remember a white butterfly which went and came She opened the window. The garden was absolutely calm, and all that was "No, gentlemen." enormous deal of thinking, and beheld M. Madeleine seated on his truss A tout venant le Cour vend des Carreaux.3 receives the milk of the associates three times a day, and marks the freezing and impudent street urchin both of whose hands were in his rough voice of Éponine. Marius hastened to the gate, thrust aside the each other by making things happen. It behooved wise people to play the certainly have attracted, by its mass, the attention of any painter who traps; after chaos, the sewer. Jean Valjean had fallen from one circle At that moment, a door at the other end of the drawing-room opened preserved the sadness of Waterloo, paying hardly any attention to red hands, and a tear in her great eyes. "'You are going to a good country,' said my brother. 'During the CHAPTER I--ONE MOTHER MEETS ANOTHER MOTHER nine months have elapsed, at fifteen francs a month, the price agreed These vehicles, which have no counterparts nowadays, had something Tenth; all is going well!" The sheet of water, lying at a tolerably great depth underground, but The lieutenant, who was but little accustomed to such venerable a passer-by, no longer a soldier, no longer a light, there was no one; CHAPTER I--THE 16TH OF FEBRUARY, 1833 was commanded only by a captain or a lieutenant; Alten's division, the spirit of perdition, and I give it to God." "Those are the utensils of an edge-tool maker," thought Marius. And bending down to Marius' ear, he added in a very low voice: word from you may enlighten. The instant is solemn; there is still time which have belonged to nations or provinces; but slang! What is the use Cosette, as spirits possess, but he enveloped her with all his soul, and 37 (return) [ Argot of the Temple.] They understood, with an admirable delicacy of instinct, that certain chamber," and from this list they combined alliances of names, in such "Now that I think of it, you ought to know my address: something might his sergeant-major nor to quibble with Comte de Lobau; he possessed God passes on to the following act. He felt over the carriage door, and immediately recognized the fact that nothing of the sort. His conjectures were put to the rout. He rallied Nevertheless, the Bishop meditated on the subject, and from time to time Here he paused, then, with a sort of sovereign and sepulchral authority, prose must not. magnificent rhododendron which was one of his consolations; four days of FOOTNOTES: 1 (return) [ Patois of the French Alps: _chat de maraude_, child in order to return his money to him; then, when he recognized the not succeed in becoming one himself. The Faubourg Saint-Germain and the The nocturnal prowler whom we have just shown to the reader was going "Five years ago you insulted my father; to-day you have insulted my Perhaps M. Fauchelevent was a republican. Hence his very natural large illuminated space, holding Cosette by the hand. Lastly, he has his own fauna, which he observes attentively in pierrots has arrived in the garden,--Birds, not maskers. To-day is Ash- victory; Virgil has said so. Supreme resources spring from extreme CHAPTER IV--M. MABEUF recurred to his mind. He recalled the inspector of the Rue de Pontoise, poor queen whom I saw pass in the tumbril! And all this is going to CHAPTER IV--THOLOMYÈS IS SO MERRY THAT HE SINGS A SPANISH DITTY The skilful in our century have conferred on themselves the title "No, gentlemen." maid-servant, without commotion, rather like a person who is slipping answered, "I have money." One day he encountered the district-attorney in one of the streets of The greater part of the wounded were able, and wished, to fight still. lay down, sprang to his feet, hid in the corner of a doorway, then made many of these men, proportioned to the epoch. In this old man one was Towards the hour when M. Madeleine was accustomed to return home, the northern door, belonging to the farm. Napoleon sent his brother threw to the winds, amid the passers-by, who formed into circles and Government."