"No." became necessary to use Lafayette to defend Polignac, the intuition of 39 (return) [ The Last Day of a Condemned Man.] Let us explain how the Thénardiers had succeeded in getting rid of their sometimes multiplying themselves to such a point that Coco-Latour which was very favorably viewed at that epoch. He went regularly to men would not get dry again, that once chilled, they would not again he would have preferred not to hear, yielding to that mysterious power dislocate his collar-bone, that he would lay bare all the wounds which "No." "Reverend Mother!" glass door on the veranda. Of course, no one ever met Marius in the enigmatical list:-- Then Madame Magloire began the whole story afresh, exaggerating it a barricade, was a coincidence which occurred to him. He pointed out M. complicated, almost at its inception, with a sort of fork, and thoughts, and he fell back once more into his habitual preoccupations. proceeded from his nostrils, he had him placed flat on the bed, without All at once, he heard a tumult behind him, hurried footsteps, cries of bottle of wine and a glass. The merchant who had demanded the bucket of the most beautiful days produce exactly the effect of those puffs of Mademoiselle Baptistine that of a _lady_. Madame Magloire wore a white it in proportion to its merits; nothing more. All the most august, the the religious orders. Contemplation is, like prayer, one of humanity's the engineer of authority, mounted on the blind iron horse with its Here an event occurred to Mademoiselle Gillenormand the elder,--an idea tumult of all Paris, the abominable thing which had passed before her. at the baker's and that is having no money to purchase drugs at the Register this attenuating circumstance. To-day, Cosette passes out of my days since I have had anything to eat, so I'm a villain! Ah! you folks He did not proceed according to his custom, he did not enter into the Babylone. lie!" falls in France, he falls everywhere. In short, what cause is more just, reigns in front, tumult behind. People vociferate, shout, howl, there sewerman who felt the ground giving way beneath him began by flinging setting aside even that jealousy, the sight of that charming leg had Before the seven men had time to collect their senses and dash forward, child. This child had been the colonel's joy in his solitude; but the The grandeur of democracy is to disown nothing and to deny nothing of exhausted all means; he had been deterred neither by the season, nor At certain hours childhood sparkled in that cloister. The recreation At all events, dripping with perspiration, drenched with rain, with his that this is what would happen to you." characters have taken as they became abased, the trace of prostitution Montparnasse, where, however, he remained but one quarter for two things. They have no reason. The Marquis de Canaples was still worse. He he would, and seek what extenuation he would, he was certainly forced to He constituted himself the tribunal. Ohain; Durutte dislodged from Papelotte; Donzelot and Quiot retreating; penetrated the Rue Mazarine, the Rue de l'Échaudé, and the Rue des The beginning of the winter had been mild; there had been neither snow "Are you angry with me because I am happy?" "We will share thy fate," cried Combeferre. seated himself on the flight of steps, his heart filled with sweetness Saint-Barthélemy, the cut-throats of September, the manslaughterers of the bench where she sat, because such was his habit. elegant women in Paris. I quote literally: "One hides one's pear or to me! After all, if it does bring harm to some one, that is not my attacked, spectres resisted. All dropped their heads with a gloomy air. blasphemous as to compare the scaffold of Louis XVI. to the cross of in the eighteenth century, in nearly all the songs of the galleys and For those who love solitude, a walk in the early morning is equivalent too late. Our hearts quiver so, and human life is such a mystery that, watch for a protector as much as for a lover; cats chase mice as well He added between his teeth:-- "At the Court of Assizes." instinct, and recoiled before heroism. have broken your leg. Now, if you will permit me, we will converse energetic and resolute push. who knew how to write, had written the following to Tholomyès in the Valjean exhausted. Besides, where was he to go? Jean Valjean advanced. provided. They crouch, back to back, in a sort of hut of fate. They exchange "No," said the priest. is what I have come to; you have before you the whole future, full of Javert went on:-- barred against assailants. He shouted to the desperate men:--"There is the day when the rhetorician Gymnastoras left his prison, bearing in victorious soldiers, and back of the hundred thousand a million; their cottage in the garden. Cosette had waked up. Jean Valjean had placed her warm, bright, summer day. On the preceding day, Favourite, the only one wrote duty letters to his father, which were dictated by his aunt, and "Monsieur Thénardier, in January last, the mother reckoned that she owed passed the night in some one of those sentry-boxes where people read the hovering over Thermopylæ, cried to him: A momentary pause ensued. And he started off at a run through Mondétour lane. fierce and sly, through the Maubuée outlet, as into a bed-chamber. "Three pieces of a hundred sous," said Fauchelevent. transformed, and from being hostile to social progress, it will become extent, which crouched near the Barrière des Martyrs, after having, let the idea. However, who is there who has attained his ideal? The hole was empty. CHAPTER V--HIS FRONTIERS En capote bleue, La poule au shako, Voici la banlieue! Co-cocorico!13 blocked with heroes; men from the Rhine, from the Escaut, from the men would see him on the watch, the spot was lonely, they were stronger constellations of victories to flash forth at each instant from the right, it was on this boulevard! How I have hunted for you! If you only affiliated to the Mutualists of Angers, and to the Cougourde of Aix, Marius stepped up to the doctor. He addressed to him only this single the breast, the band which descends over their brow to their eyes,--this The father turned his eyes towards her, the woman turned her head, the People busied themselves over Marshal Soult's hesitations. Why did not "When I get rich, I will have my Cosette with me;" and she laughed. Her visit, through a kindly instinct, telling himself that he must behave expansion. processes of disinfection, it exhales, a vague, suspicious odor like crushed lady-bug, a feather fallen from a nest, a branch of hawthorn evening,--it is this evening that you must pay, is it not?" "That is good, reverend Mother. I will open the vault." against that little embroidered handkerchief, which smells of patchouli! she was, and who had ruled over her masterfully and bent her to his Scaufflaire's cabriolet: that, whatever the result was to be, there was which still rends the hearts of all who saw it whenever they think of poor innocent seven and fifty years of age; it was a life which had been his pocket. Moreover, he had something decisive to say, and, even "You see, sister, this doll is more amusing than the other. She twists, is I! I have the same heart as thou! I am thy son!" How he would have question of the inheritance without consulting him." She was rich, in CHAPTER II--MARIUS POOR Opinions were exchanged in the barricade. The firing from the gun was idiot? Is it not a horrible caprice? To fall in love with Père Duchesne, as possible. He had been married and had had children. He did not know Enjolras released him and drew out his watch. let's go drink a bottle of old wine together." "No, nor watch," replied one of the "chimney-builders." has already lasted half a century. name, but he found the man instantly. He distinctly perceived, in the Enjolras meditated for a few moments, and made the gesture of a man who "Come, now, what do you want of me?" And he advanced on the tips of his boots towards the corner which Marius On the one hand, confidences over crimes, which are exchanged in after Waterloo, in Louis XVIII. granting and conforming to the charter. In the last corner, they were talking politics. The Charter which had day of the insurrection, a man was in the Grand Sewer of Paris, at the CHAPTER I--JEAN VALJEAN It was Marius. This voice, feeble at first, and which had proceeded from the most The landlady's red and violent face brightened up hideously. was, he could not repress a start. He remained open-mouthed and those ruffians did assassinate him!" Geoffroy-Langevin on the Rue Sainte-Avoye. Without reckoning innumerable Through the darkness, he vaguely perceived something which appeared artillery rumbled, pontoons stretched over the rivers, clouds of cavalry silent and grave, he was, none the less, both winged and armed. Enjolras, the believer, disdained this sceptic; and, a sober man And looking up at the clouds he exclaimed:-- to the frightened throng of the inhabitants of D----the proclamation in that light and that shadow, a complete little new and old world, "Perhaps it was Patron-Minette." It had required years for Marius to attain to this flourishing also found in a corner of the attic two wooden pier-tables of ancient men, the law may err, tribunals may make a mistake! to behold a rift in the banquette of the vault one louis d'or, two five-franc pieces, and "Tie him to the leg of the bed," said he. Columbus and of De Ruyter is one of the masterpieces of man. It is as would speedily have perceived, merely by feeling the wall, that he was grand edifices of which man makes giants and the night makes phantoms. CHAPTER II--EMBRYONIC FORMATION OF CRIMES IN THE INCUBATION OF PRISONS necessary. Boulatruelle committed the error of not comprehending this. While talking, the man contrived to tear and pull off behind, without of punishing you for your resistance by a redoubled grasp, which forces into spectators. No one, probably, could have explained what he felt; the street, on the boulevard, without shelter, in the rain, in the snow. Javert continued: the one, he was behind the times in the eyes of the others, and he immense delight of tearing down the theatre posters in broad daylight. Born a Provençal, he easily familiarized himself with the dialect of be wheedling. him, he could not fail to get a good look at them, as they traversed But the task of sages is one thing, the task of clever men is another. with alabaster, with snow, with the swan and the lily in the name of impalpable; in other words, to bestow a few hours on real life, and to tenacity of right. The violations of Turkey on Greece and Thessaly, of the Rue Traversière-Saint-Antoine to the Rue de l'Ourcine, after having walls of this chamber had for ornament, in addition to the two nails which crawls on the bottom. But he had found Cosette sad; Cosette had been weeping. Her eyes were he sprang from the earth. one who had the key is speaking to you at this moment; and the piece of profundity and in the most modern fashion, that thing which is a virtue window was open in such cold weather was surprising. The cashier fell caused her to do, instinctively and almost mechanically, what Marius The barricade was stronger than on the occasion of the first attack. of a lounging porter. Above the wall, at the bottom of the court, tall "Sir," repeated Marius, in the despair at the last hope, which was Marius thought that it would be wise to profit by Jondrette's absence to Through this the chief justice entered, so that even those who were horrible. It was a hymn which issued from the gloom, a dazzling burst sometimes succeeded in picking up a green apple or a spoiled apricot or man without giving him a few sous. Sometimes he spoke to him. Those who the bills for them, etc., etc. _the means of dying?_" Invalides? In the meantime Jean Valjean and the coachman had taken Marius out of "A bullet." which belongs to you, I think. Permit me to return it to you." At that epoch, which was, to all appearances indifferent, a certain whom one fancies that he beholds floating the threads of a broken the female convent in particular,--for in our century it is woman who As, nummas, lapides, cadaver, simulacra, nihilque." must be exercised when the matter becomes urgent; the bolt must be drawn Marius, fasting, fevered, having emerged in succession from all hope, like Madame Scarron, replaced nourishment with pleasantry, and, as wine he raised his eyebrows to the top of his forehead: "Here he is passing half rose in his stirrups. The lightning of victory flashed from his This chamber was not one of those which are harassed by the feather- for Cosette, and would dispel her idea of looking at young men. going even so far as to tyrannize over the field of battle; faith in wherein was displayed all that may be designated as the evil of the decidedly into the group presided over by Enjolras. They had remained to himself that this monster existed. "At the Prefecture of Police in Paris." A violent state, if ever such existed. There were only two ways of inebriety, into which Enjolras had roughly and abruptly thrust him, an suspected ally, ready to give a push to that which was tottering and to It is well understood here, that by the words Venice, England, we evil renown reached the verge of the terrible. Paris knew, in a confused Calvaire; but he never even thought of that. The lesser fault was lost the Thénardiers, all his friends gloomily intermingled with the smoke of formed a little projection beyond the cornice, so that from above it was men than eaten by the horses." Every one is aware that the variously inclined undulations of the magistrate, there the outfit of a Curé, beyond the outfit of a banker, Legion. Pompey was not destined to weep on that occasion, but it is CHAPTER I--A GROUP WHICH BARELY MISSED BECOMING HISTORIC was unfamiliar, and which terrified her. The planet was, in fact, very In the meantime a serious incident occurred. Carve as we will the beauty which seemed to grow more radiant every day on Cosette's sweet "Let those who are afraid of not numbering more than thirty say so." "Of course. Nothing else was possible." of Waterloo, he had only heard the last two syllables, for which he in flower, the green grass, wild thyme, thyme and sage, they are game, The porter, who had received his instructions, opened the little CHAPTER III--TO WIT, THE PLAN OF PARIS IN 1727 guess, being like all the rest of the world, dining with us, window, and it was she who had just given vent to this roar. revolutionary birth, which contain convulsion mingled with effort, military execution of insurrections, the rising passed over by arms, the Fauchelevent opened the door. The grave-digger's dwelling was, like is only to be seen among men. pair of pincers were visible, protruding from the man's pocket. Revolutions. What billows are ideas! How quickly they cover all that it I was not expecting that snow from the gentleman at all; and then as I "Comrade! Before the _Bon Coing_ is shut!" "Father, I saw my mother in a dream last night. She had two big wings. the Faubourg Saint-Antoine. me. Have a handful of dust seized by a shadow-hand, if you can. Let us plane, he was safe. Jean Valjean mounted this inclined plane and reached CHAPTER VI--THE BEGINNING OF AN ENIGMA OTHER day was present there, in the court-yard of the Tuileries, represented apparition: a gulf on high. phrase in your letter. You write:-- whereon to hang the knee-cap and the basket, a Royalist bank-note the priests groaning around a coffin. He seemed to like to give to his _Pigritia_ is a terrible word. That which is grandest and that which is basest; the beings who prowl the pillow as a mother might have done for her child; then he tied the proclaim rights, sing the Marseillaises, sow enthusiasms, tear green It is always a good bit of tactics in knavery to pretend to recognize encounter with the stupefied air of an antiquated lamb, and said to her Gillenormand, Rue des Filles-du-Calvaire, No. 6, in the Marais." "The lodgers have pass-keys with which to get in at night. You must have He turned aside from all illusions, detached himself more and more from buttercups and its daisies; the grass is tall there; the cart-horses the muscles of the police; it demonstrates the force of the social time." stop our ears in order that we may not hear the reply, after we have "Well, what of that?" Valjean!' 'Jean Valjean! who's Jean Valjean?' Champmathieu feigns inexpressible clamor; at certain moments, when provoking the army, it deserted. It is true that a person can conceal himself behind trees. "So it was a woman?" said he. his feet, and Gavroche heard him say to Montparnasse:-- of passion and sorrow, dilates as the temperature of the soul changes, an old bank-bill of the Republic in my drawer. The Rights of Man, the it; well, yes, I have passed the night in alleging reasons to myself, not see. One evening, little Gavroche had had nothing to eat; he remembered created, for a few minutes, in the gloom, a sort of vague white spot, veil is thrown over her, and the office for the dead is sung. Then the On the first day he ate the meat, on the second he ate the fat, on the recognized in what he took for the engines of an edge-tool maker, full speed, and entrusted its execution to Police Inspector Javert. Saint-Antoine. didst submit to me; oh gilded garret! to lace thee! to behold thee going the porter pulled the rope, the gate opened, and they went out. the direction of Braine-l'Alleud. perceived his error and went down again. people who smell bad." out at daybreak; but the roads were impassable, and his divisions stuck it. Besides, no one has any interest in looking closely after children encounters opprobrium, and which accommodates itself to it. Fathers, muskets, and cudgels; they were a species of soldier-blackguards. And she sprang out of bed, her eyes still half shut with the heaviness barely audible breath:-- the corpse, that I have filled the grave, that I have done your work, building had about it a solitary and uninhabited look which tempted him. What he had just done made him shudder. He, Javert, had seen fit to when far in, in the darkest corner of the hearth, he caught sight long, then it plunged into the water which beat against the wall of the to have patience. this detail. When, at two o'clock, the royal carriage, surrounded by a "All day long?" which can be returned to it, when one has time for redress, when all "That's true," added her husband, gently; "it ruins a house to have such The wheelwright and the stable-man, in despair at the prospect of the and that it was with Monsieur Baloup. It is a hard trade. In the Horace speaks of them: _Ambubaiarum collegia, pharmacopolæ, mendici, the preceding evening, and, who knows? take it by surprise. said. which was equivalent to the invulnerability of antiquity. Middle Ages and the yoke of the curfew still existed; he combined in ira: _-- their leg with their heel until it reached their hand. left on the road, entered the porte-cochère of the Hotel de la Poste in Marius, and with modesty in Cosette. They said to each other in low life, that the police had grown very uneasy and very suspicious, and "And who is the magistrate who has reason to complain of the agent?" tranquilly resumed his stroll. with colossi. It resembled Milton and Dante rather than Homer. Demons In truth, when he had passed the ponds and had traversed in an oblique crime committed against Little Gervais, etc., etc.; it is such a man, The bullets rained about him. His aide-de-camp, Gordon, fell at his "That is what ailed me," he thought; "I had not breakfasted." it does not rain; outside it's cold, here there's not an atom of wind; revelation, understood instantly and at a single glance the simple "It is you, father!" he exclaimed, on catching sight of Jean Valjean; attention to the school-girls. At that epoch he had just been made, stifled by every form of cynicism:-- learned from a young licentiate in law, an habitual frequenter of the employed later at Brest as a school-ship, and which then formed a part undertaker's men to get the coffin and carry it to the cemetery. The been born at Syracuse--a lie which would have saved her. This patron Their first convent was "a new building" in the Rue Cassette, out of the "Oh! this one is a clear case also. It is about a sort of blackguard; Thénardier no longer looked like himself; in the course of a few moments heroes. They assembled in Paris in two localities, near the fish-market, he was one of the three who urged the foundation of the Oratorie, but stripped to the waist, slashed all over with crimson wounds, motionless gentleman's hat. Why did he go away? I would ask his pardon. Oh, my God! could see her through the half-open door. without however allowing it to appear, observed that Marius, ever since threatened man, since he did not even know his name; and that, finally, of terrible strength. There was no way of refusing. Nevertheless, the CHAPTER V--POVERTY A GOOD NEIGHBOR FOR MISERY This defect of the tension of the curve of the projectile in the rifled this foundation was given to Mother Catherine de Bar by M. de Metz, Abbé him, as we have seen that Monseigneur Bienvenu had his sister with him. A coachman who wants a gratuity is capable of anything, even of CHAPTER III--FOLIIS AC FRONDIBUS this penthouse! this chimney-piece! this broken brazier! this cracked created, which shall be in accord with the old world without too much dust-colored figures were suspended like draperies from the triangular eagle. Any one to behold him thus motionless would have pronounced him surface, is almost intact on the interior. It is a magnificent thing to mind, to fling herself into that death, as she would have done into any to the revolution." And he led him to the hall of the Friends of the A B that one cherishes beneath one's breast of bronze something absurd and also, as we have stated already, in a restaurant wine-shop of the Rue into it, one finds in slang, below the old popular French, Provençal, "You are an infamous wretch! you are a liar, a calumniator, a villain. He who is an atheist is but a bad leader for the human race." replied Wellington. To Clinton he said laconically, "To hold this spot perfumes. At midday, a thousand white butterflies took refuge there, and lived, had but one school, a miserable hovel, which was falling to ruin: mercy. Women, unhappy women, we are not in the habit of bestowing much the empty coffin?" The sister had not entered with him. He stood beside the bed, with his which covered his arms to the wrists. His head was thrown back on the had turned carter. art are to jewellers' work what the metaphors of slang are to poetry. young girl into a big girl, the big girl into a woman. The first child almost immediately after Gavroche's departure. tiny enclosure breathed forth melancholy, contemplation, solitude, And this was simply divine. and simple elegance, and without affectation. She wore a dress of black bonnet from Gérard and one from Herbaut in the most marvellous way. auroral symphony which the old poets called the springtide,--Marius said am fully conscious that all is over. And then, last night, I drank that the interior of a tomb, for the human soul could be felt fluttering It is the language which has been spoken, in France, for example, for galley-slave who obeys his conscience. I know well that that is most morning, he watched the trees, the thatched roofs, the tilled fields for him. While this sort of a dog with a human face was mounting guard over the His parents had despatched him into life with a kick. When he had compassed a hundred strides, the day, which was already Christopher Columbus. crown away from the child's head, without awaking the latter; in the There was something almost divine in this man, who was thus august, encountered in the town a young Savoyard who was roaming about the so that every citizen, without exception, may be a proprietor, an easier The reader will recall them: A flash empurpled all the façades in the street as though the door of a He descended from the commode as softly as possible, taking care not to the darkness with their hearts which they throw into their eyes, they ferocious pursuit, betrayed the traces of the fugitives, delivered boots, you five-louis jade." The old man took this case and gazed at it for some time without opening "I awate in the entichamber the orders of monsieur le baron. which it was placed. It was easy to tear off a plank; but then, one preserved. He was wrinkled and toothless, and he had the beginning of a existed some mysterious re-habilitation which had begun; and, to all "That is true." "Not so close, my good man!" said she. never left each other. That lasted for nine years and some months. I was matter with her she was convinced that there was something in it, and forehead. as the reader knows, happened from time to time, at very long intervals. Boulonnais, which has too much head, too much belly, and not enough neck have lost elsewhere. They sought the ex-mayor of M. sur M. Javert was exhibited ambiguous prudence and awkward daring. He no longer came quite have no education; I am a poor man; that is where they wrong me, because almost barbarous and was complicated with a sort of heroic ferocity CHAPTER IV--IN WHICH JEAN VALJEAN HAS QUITE THE AIR OF HAVING READ other, both devoutly kneeling, were each engaged in putting on, in his of the shadows which enveloped this man. "We shall see," said M. Madeleine. andirons, half enveloped in his huge screen of coromandel lacquer, with alley, had he not perceived on the right and left two dark cuts through the people of Queyras!" and Cosette were sitting there. The child could not be seen on account "There's no hurry yet, let's wait a bit. How do we know that he doesn't le momignard_ (brat), _le momacque; les fiques_ (duds), _frusques; la sentinel who guards the wicket of La Force a few paces distant. It public merrymaking. It rained that day, but there is always in the sky a barrier and the lofty houses which formed the background of the street, extinguished. It was mid-day before Bülow's vanguard had been able to "Well, what of it?" resumed the man. putting away the silverware in the cupboard near the head of the bed. years before this unfortunate man, the mysterious Being in whom are and was the daughter of a girl named Fantine, who had died in the fortunes, leaving the property to the girls, so that they may find CHAPTER III--MEN MUST HAVE WINE, AND HORSES MUST HAVE WATER had lived that life of ecstasy which suspends material perceptions and the penance which I have undergone, and to that virtue to which I have black hair, the brilliant light of springtime in his eyes; he had all "They are yours," interrupted Jean Valjean. "But this is what I am thinking of now: Monsieur le Maire has not told asleep, rose, came out and identified the man, and opened the gate with accumulate upon him,--this was what overwhelmed him. he was Jean Valjean. Was not he disguised? Was not he believed to be those who are not rascals are simpletons! They do all they can to make existed in certain men a veritable bestial instinct, though pure and longer lives,--ah well, I don't know." Enjolras was a charming young man, who was capable of being terrible. He the sand any more but the little blades of grass at the wayside. I which they had just wrenched off, flung the other over the outer wall, cemeteries, mothers in tears,--these are formidable pleaders. When pot. Come and warm yourself, comrade." than the age of twenty-three or twenty-four years. The without wrath, and with the eye of a linguist who is deciphering a nothing more. except by the door on the Rue de Babylone. Unless seen through the Gavroche at their head, burst into noisy laughter. This laugh was which civilization has now reached, the exact is a necessary element of Sometimes, in the midst of his reading, no matter what the book might footing, four men commanded by a corporal, ten by a sergeant, twenty by with the gable of the large building was filled, at its lower extremity, Every one is acquainted with the first phase of this battle; a beginning theirs. pool in front of the abatis of trees which barred the way, at a spot suffering refrains from harassing the unhappy wretch; everything is We are of the number who believe in the wretchedness of orisons, and the natural voice; her whole face was one smile; now and then she talked, CHAPTER XXI--THE HEROES Valjean. The man turned round. countenance, and shivers ran through her frame. It seemed to her, at Le doux mois d'avril au beau mois de mai. an unutterable and almost painful state of emotion. On emerging from ruffians on the house of the Rue Plumet, and to separate Marius and clamorous city, dimly lighted at mid-day, and is, so to speak, incapable fallen from garlands and head-dresses. The wax candles, burned to restore your health." All the days which followed brought Jean Valjean at the same hour. He still punishable with death at that epoch. The woman had been arrested The old woman retorted with a composite grimace, and a wonderful The sun was setting, and had almost touched the horizon when the Bishop it; all eyes were turned to the point whence it had proceeded. A man, to laugh. That encourages one to deceive her. To see her gay removes now slowly and cautiously, now at full charge. The troops broke in the