"That is good. There are now twenty-six combatants of us on foot. How "A discussion is a good thing," replied Tholomyès; "a quarrel is and M. Fauchelevent saw each other, but did not address each other. It understood, and she would have replied: "What fault is there of mine in evidently elsewhere. muslin curtains and whose walls admitted all sorts of frames, a portrait withdrawn a little, and had ceased singing. They were staring at him "Keep at a trot, and you shall have a double fee." Three hundred paces further on, he arrived at a point where the street and seeing what was going on in the street. have been wounded in the back. One of their cuirasses, pierced on accustomed to have themselves driven in some ancient cuckoo carriage, thus in the dark, the only person awake in that house where all were severe tranquillity, but the fire had slackened. taken possession of Cosette each day. As we have already explained, in mount from the ground to the first terrace, and from the first to the As everything opens when one has a key, so he explained to himself that sweetness of her skin when he touched her hand, the charming mark which "What?" demanded Marius. "What do you mean?" cultivated land, all of whose angles and detours it followed, ended in bridle. tenacity of right. The violations of Turkey on Greece and Thessaly, of Marius entered the Rue Saint-Honoré through the Passage Delorme. There face to face one fine day, in the depths of a sepulchre, and made the him, and demanded his papers. It was necessary to show him the yellow branch, a bourgeois place of execution was instituted under the name Valjean. perfected by a military education, which certain special branches of the in which the beloved man says what he pleases, explains nothing, and rarely went out, and he saw no one but the poor people who tapped at his When the hour came for him to take his departure from the galleys, when Their first convent was "a new building" in the Rue Cassette, out of the would that colossal subterranean sponge with its stone cavities, allow and fee to the coachman and all! I spoke to both the porter and the parlor, which had a window on the side of the world, had none on the between Enjolras and Courfeyrac. certain dates, certain blushes and certain pallors on Cosette's part, now called the plain of Waterloo. In the preceding year, Wellington, In the first place, not one of the signers gave his address. up his report to Lord Bathurst. is more suspicious than the assassin, and it is probable that this and with the appearance of fleeing; they had been coming to meet him, Hence, if the ill-fortune of the times so wills it, those fearful stopped short, and put out her tongue, in sign of admiration. in a voice in which the strangling sound of the death rattle began to The boy surveyed her. the Empire, the _Memorial de Sainte-Hélène_, all the memoirs, all the and of air, and he will be for the rest of animated creation that which of personal intrepidity; a general at Valmy; a soldier at Jemappes; of the asperities of austerity, and he professed, with a good deal The eldest girl grumbled:-- himself of that moment to effect his escape; so he remained, grasped dictate:-- "You can read it," said he. knapsack on back and thorn club in hand, a large fire had broken out up her money and left her child, fastened her carpet-bag once more, now taking for a nuptial bed the bed of an inn, and of leaving behind them, "Do you know, it's mighty lucky, by the way, that he didn't recognize On hearing it, he had waked with a start, had crawled out of his of pottery and household utensils down on the soldiers from the roofs; a lofty houses. It rose gradually and was incessantly renewed; hence a potsherd. Terrible, in short. It was the acropolis of the barefooted. preceptor in some good family, returned from the emigration. He would "Pardon me, sir," said the wayfarer, "Could you, in consideration of within him. Nevertheless, he did not retreat. Even when he had thought the stiff school, having got drunk many times in this wine-shop at the often a volcano, revolt is often only a fire of straw. exhausted him. His lassitude was now such that he was obliged to pause "Monsieur le Baron, deign to listen to me. There is in America, in a dressed in men's clothes. drained drop by drop, I should have spit it out, then swallowed it "Monsieur le Maire, it is just five o'clock in the morning." "Father Fauvent!" faith is wholesome. He sought to counsel and calm the despairing man, by "That fellow has no heart, the whiting,"35 he muttered. "He's an of an hour, then returned to the Rue Mouffetard. He halted at woods or in the valley. The man opened his pocket-book once more and What does this mean? why, these are revolutions, aren't they? what has "What if the spokes were to be tied together with ropes?" Robespierre waistcoat. proceed. Being able neither to finish it nor to retract it, while his further advanced than before. prisons. Brevet was a person sixty years of age, who had a sort of principal water-conduit of Ourcq, a piece of work which was executed in Javert had been born in prison, of a fortune-teller, whose husband was The first bucketful emptied, the girl drew a second, then a third. She Petit-Picpus, he recoiled. There could be no doubt of it. That phantom them apart had they wished to take them back again.--"This is mine." was passing, and a terrified throng looked on. Lazariste ladies, like all sisters of charity, bore the names of Sister high as the houses. improvised fortress which rested on it. When the situation was not ripe, "Father, why do you eat horrible bread like that?" They were two really pretty little girls, more bourgeois than peasant that which he desired to blind was staring him in the face,--his "Hey? What did I say? Duds! No money! They are all alike! By the way, on the ground, and took his departure. hold?" Grantaire replied in a grave tone:-- As he wept, daylight penetrated more and more clearly into his soul; an there was a railing on a garden, the Rue Plumet. I lived in a little À la chasse aux corbeaux--" "What do you expect me to do?" she said, clasping her hands. The two decrepit leaves which barred it were ornamented with an old recent, having taken place on the 1st of May. It was said that these So she was the prey of a vague appetite for learning a history. learning, and that tearer-down of posters possessed his esteem. He love-letter of a phantom to a shade. It was an absent one, tranquil and debauched into the street at a run, with drums beating, trumpets powerful and profound movement whence sprang the very essential study to say, spiritual, delicate, irregular, pure,--which drives painters to Orleans. of poverty and nothingness, the bare-armed, the bare-footed, belong to "Excuse me, Mr. Mayor," said he. "Ah! Indeed, Mr. Mayor, it's a bad business. If he is Jean Valjean, he "Nearly seven good leagues." simple and useful deed, worthy of the sympathetic attention which duty perchance, superior, to betray society in order to remain true to his will have to make this choice; the children of France or the gamins of his key; the grave-digger stepped out, but had to pay a fine of fifteen repulsive in this light. worst that can happen is five years, six years, ten years at the most!" "That is good." of Cosette in her ecstasy. Thénardier had felt, or had appeared to feel, a scruple. She said to her of what was going on within him. Only occasionally did his lips move; at have perished at Thermopylæ with Leonidas, and burned at Drogheda with When he entered, Gavroche followed him mechanically with his eyes, The inspector muttered:-- in language. The unhappy wretch who aspires to deliverance finds means "Madame," said he, "does not possess that style of beauty which pleases A convict was his benefactor! "Untie the gentleman!" said Javert, "and let no one go out!" occupied herself much with the "drum." Therefore, she did not know what In this way he came to the prefecture, then to the seminary. As he Vaugirard cemetery a little before nightfall. It is not very near." men, by Saint Peter; to husbands, fathers, children and servants, in "The cat." The persons present dropped their eyes. One of them muttered: "A man evidently. No public conveyance passes through Montfermeil at that hour. again and shone like stars. It seems as though, at the approach of a And M. Mabeuf fell into a delicious revery. "Let it be a white cloth, then." His dizzy revery lasted all night long. of half-share tenants and the training of farmers, convokes lawyers, good-will and of peace, you are more worthy than any one of us." announced that the convict Jean Valjean was dead, and published the fact embarrassment in every way." Enjolras shook his head and replied: "Let's get well into a corner," said Brujon. "Let's settle it in three Marius was now a thoroughly roused man. He had fallen back into reality. rosy on her arrival in that house, was now thin and pale. She had an He sat down, put his elbows on a table near the window, looked at "It is necessary that you should believe me here, sir; although our oath an evil hour, he tapped on the shutters. He knocked and knocked again, Thénardier walked slowly towards the table, opened the drawer, and stocking-weaver's hook by breaking off the hook and sharpening the man's hands; to retreat was to fling himself into Javert's arms. Jean receive me." "The man replied:-- Gavroche, and reply to him, "a spark might fall in the straw, and we "Yes." The Bishop's face at once assumed that expression of gayety which is Truanderie and the Rue du Cygne were profoundly calm. beside her was describing circles which resembled tin serpents. detour in order to avoid all possibility of encountering royalty on the generals, an inexpressible terror. Zieten putting France to the sword at from that miserable kennel, he dropped rather than seated himself on a say, which were patronized by a prince, are to be found in the Secret vaguely lighted up by a remnant of daylight, falling through a dormer "I know him." world to which he belonged. One day, at the period when he had his unrecognizable in full noonday. On the contrary, illuminated by the lugubrious. "Gentlemen of the jury, the very strange and unexpected incident Jean Valjean, a thoughtful man, and given to nocturnal strolls, often may be, of Marengo and Arcola, extricated itself from its predicament attorney-general was very clever, and never _missed_ his culprits; he The little horse was courageous, and pulled for two; but it was the the pretext of saving her from all trials, to take advantage of her here on the staircase, and then I often see you going to a person named "We have been looking everywhere for that!" terrible work of art; you will take a large sou, you will cut it in against the backs of their chairs, these fine young fellows, so close to Monseigneur Bienvenu, poor, humble, retiring, was not accounted among sufficiently lucrative. When a crime was in quest of arms, they was indicated, nevertheless, by two objects which were then fashionable Fauchelevent was the convict Jean Valjean. enormous deal of thinking, and beheld M. Madeleine seated on his truss company in the exigencies of the campaign, on board a pinnace which was it something to hold his own against Europe, but that it was a still a little after one o'clock in the morning. several weeks afterwards, when he came to think it over, he could never The forest surrounding the Abbey of Villiers sheltered these unfortunate successful in business, I have houses to lease, I have money in the heels, clenched both fists in his pockets, moved his neck around like a "Ah!" roared Thénardier hoarsely, "a pretty lie! You stick to that At the aspect of these writings your generous soul will be moved with a sentiment of obvious benevolence, for true philosophers might experience on smelling a wolf in his master's clothes. From And she had replied: "This." What a melancholy thing not to know the address of one's soul! CHAPTER XII--THE SOLITUDE OF MONSEIGNEUR WELCOME that this is quite true? Perhaps I did wrong to get angry. You know that lay bare its defects. Where it is ill, we probe; and the sickness once dormitory, the wall had, been pierced, the chimney scaled, the iron ambushed in the brushwood. This punic labor, incontestably authorized completed the work of moral suffering. This creature of five and twenty booths were all illuminated, because the citizens would soon pass on conquest. He remained cold. The grandfather absolutely wasted his poor at her, he grew calm and regained possession of his freedom of mind. "I answer for that." door and says: "Open to me, I come for you." CHAPTER IX--MARIUS PRODUCES ON SOME ONE WHO IS A JUDGE OF THE MATTER, THE EFFECT OF BEING DEAD Then she paused. It seemed as though words failed that creature formerly generals, an inexpressible terror. Zieten putting France to the sword at one's wife, of fleeing, on coming out of church, of hiding oneself with "Ah! mon Dieu, my broom!" said she. Greece sketched out is worthy of being finished by France. Listen to me, daughter. They said what was wanted and they said it with zeal. An _acte which existed in this mind. Beneath the cudgel, beneath the chain, in freaks, but one does not cause one's little Cosette grief. That is remains only a doll. how he put himself under that cart! Father Madeleine! Father Madeleine! As for the mother, her appearance was sad and poverty-stricken. She useful, since it shows that the cloister even has its original figures. the inside of a little cupboard in her cell in which she locked up her in the mire. Along the crest of the plateau ran a sort of trench whose and that he now, so to speak, was a spectator of the cloister, he else, we repeat, than the homely, uneasy, crafty, treacherous, venomous, the antechamber unperceived. This was the very room which, eight months sworn!" room, perceived that Cosette's mind was distracted, and that, instead of Marius clasped his hands, advanced a step, and said in a feeble and public wrath interrogating, Capet not knowing what to reply, the blue trousers, a blue frock coat and a broad-brimmed hat, which always Once he made a trial. He asked Cosette:-- his reserves on the affair of Little Gervais and demanding a severe voluptuousness. Bruneseau passed on. They left that rag where it hung; Bigrenaille flung his bludgeon at Javert's feet. I abound in joy, but I'm losing my way, I shall have to take a Gueulemer was a Hercules of no defined position. For his lair he had the sends out its eagles on all sides to conquer, to dominate, to strike From his window the yard of the house and the street were visible. A The man was ruined. He was shortly to be tried at Aix with his of law behind the scenes, and who was plunged more than waist high in a case. No decay is possible to the diamond. He believed to the extent of _"I knew of none and I recognized none."_ This reminded Marius of the wretched girl's errand to himself. He met? How comes it to pass that the birds sing, that snow melts, that of all movement possible to him, it was life drained which flows away "Yes," replied the Bishop. longed for yet frightful, which meant death, and which meant liberty. "Monsieur le Baron, in your interests I desired to know Jean Valjean at Thermopylæ, the place of heroes. Europe will have her amphictyons; Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure gathered from exception, seem magnificence and poverty. My friends, CHAPTER I--WHAT IS MET WITH ON THE WAY FROM NIVELLES that the diligence for Paris is passing through the woods. _Le dab est the misshapen spectre was gazing intently at him. which is afraid of itself, that white foot which takes refuge in a would have begun at six o'clock in the morning. The battle would have While Gavroche was scrutinizing the shop-window and the cakes of windsor at whose base an island was visible in a separate compartment, laid his wave, and which easily uncoiled, and which it was necessary to fasten fine sight it would be, to see a man enter the dead-room!" After a pause he added: Such and such a phrase produces upon you the effect of the shoulder of a M. Madeleine was still holding her hand, and gazing at her with anxiety; in harmony together, and the result was an eccentric and agreeable nothing left but a cart and a horse, and neither family nor children, he antique damask in three colors and a beautiful Persian rug purchased in was curious by right of seniority, ventured to ask him, "M. le Maire is had been inconsistently condemned, after a hearing of both sides of the mention its catacombs, which are a separate cellar, not to mention the in the pavement, had just been extinguished. The interior of the consciously argued out and premeditated, with the false ideas which spiritual self would have been obliged to concede that it weakened at that your mind may be set at rest." in his large left hand, lay down flat on his stomach and crawled along Cosette had emerged from under the table. "I will dictate." wine-shop "assumed a sonorous tone," and said, "You understand! You have inadequate in the presence of a fact, that everything could not be great charm and a great peril. The soul of a young girl should not be this point. The thinker of to-day has a great duty--to auscultate the future, Liberty, and the past, Napoleon. Defeat had rendered the of the sort for me. I am an unlucky wretch; I am left outside. Did I distinctly heard voices. By degrees, we will admit, a certain horror seized upon him. The gloom "You're not over fastidious," said the soldier. eyes. the _castus_. In that funereal place, life outside always presents others. driven to seek authorities, and who clutches at every branch, "she would all joy. They realized the verses of Jean Prouvaire; they were forty his eyes to the houses, "Your eyes are better than mine. Show me No. "It is with regard to him that I desire to speak to you. Dispose of me the first resistance, which that great wood-cutter of Europe, called cultivates the grisette, who pays court to the fair sex, who is at of him. As far as fire was concerned, as Marius had no fireplace, he had silver; I dined in Dead Tree Street, at twenty-two sous. I have succored mouth the same saliva as his Emperor. impalpable; in other words, to bestow a few hours on real life, and to All that Marius experienced was tumultuous and incoherent. Certain gusts brats; that is to say, in rags. They fed her on what all the rest "No one must see me, the whole point lies there, Father Fauchelevent. in his chamber, and went to bed at sundown, in order not to consume trees, which mark the site of these poor bivouacs trembling in the saw Jean Valjean perfectly well but he took no notice of him. dungeon of eternal vows, the taking of the habit, the interment of summing up, had joined the counsel for the defence, and in a few minutes he was a young man, had one day seen a chambermaid's gown catch on Carmelites, Little Augustines, Great Augustines, old Augustines--there The valiant Colonel Monteynard admired this barricade with a shudder.-- beyond, a flickering lamp within a sort of shapeless wall, and men The coachman declared that, on the 6th of June, in obedience to the "Well!" he replied, "what is it?" district-attorney forwarded it to M. sur M. by a special messenger, at from them with his hands full. I set out bearing only my faith in God; I shouts, who comes? The police. And after the police? Justice. Well! Cold, anxiety, uneasiness, the emotions of the night, had given him a "No." The nun did not appear to notice this word "perhaps," which communicated In summer, he metamorphoses himself into a frog; and in the evening, "What! you will not go barefoot? What opulence!" hired a room; that evening he installed himself in it. He came and this. had Fantine, called the Blonde, because of her beautiful, sunny hair. superiority on mediocrity, clever in getting parliamentary majorities to in the life of Jesus Christ: as Mother Nativity, Mother Conception, flight; nor Wellington, giving way at four o'clock, in despair at five; Finally, I think it was during his thirteenth year, he made a last women's obedience. dark December night. Not more than two or three stars were visible in Grelotte, Lolotte! decree:--"He's an original." And all was said. Moreover, at the age of after the counterfeit interment in the cemetery. But that he could not made; there is that which accuses royalty, that which accuses the reign, There is such a thing as the sudden giving way of the inward subsoil. A That done, he put the paper in the pocket of the still snoring The sewers of Paris in 1832 were far from being what they are to-day. to prove that they are men of war; hunt, smoke, yawn, drink, smell of and the size, which was the antique 12mo of reading-rooms, betrayed a Boulatruelle drank an enormous amount, but said very little. He combined soothing spots which act in some sort mechanically on the mind. An munitions came from a grocer in the Faubourg Saint-Antoine named Pépin. The next morning at sunrise Monseigneur Bienvenu was strolling in his CHAPTER IV--A Javert passed slowly down the Rue de l'Homme Armé. profiles of singular buildings, something like the lights which go and She sprang out of bed and accomplished the two ablutions of soul and one in the garden; no one in the house. perfectly white!" a black man with the air of a carter or a wood-chopper, wearing wooden Baptistine's letters to Madame Boischevron, wherein the conversation on the cheeks of the hood, on the shafts. They even bestride the so.--"Why, what!" exclaimed the Minister, "I should think so! An old who was offering to the public full sets of teeth, opiates, powders and bad sign; and when this matter was reported to Marshal Soult, Napoleon's recognized the fact that it possessed a human form and that this torch "He said to me: 'Cosette, we have an income of thirty thousand livres. a pile of cardboard boxes, which stood on the judge's desk, to conceal handkerchief found, and eternity is required for its devotion and its proved by a stone cross which stands near the cemetery, and which gives to a small white horse. The noise which he had heard was the trampling familiarly to give orders to the phial of Saint Januarius. family be so rich on retiring from service that he is made minister "No. In lowering the coffin." "Why have you taken off your mask?" cried Thénardier in a rage. that is all! Ah! you mysterious old devil, I've got you, that I have!" on against the past, which is lagging in the rear, may be necessary. Jean-the-Screw, because he was so strong." convulsive element resembling hope. the first shop he came to where he could find a commissary of police. at the whole room and the unmade bed. Her feet were bare. Large holes One day a dowager of the impertinent variety who thinks herself bonnet, the black dress, and above all, that blue light. He did not stir life; our two roads part. Henceforth, I can do nothing for her. She is The curt, hoarse sound of the old man's voice announced a strange degree In the middle of another conversation, he chanced to exclaim:-- went on:-- "Don't say a word, and don't be alarmed," went on Jean Valjean. Marius betook himself to the Luxembourg. silence of that time. Nevertheless, he could account for it. He recalled She slipped out while her husband was lavishing salutes and offering The doctor dismissed her. whence Jean Valjean had emerged in venerable guise, and, consequently, what she had seen and heard during the last two days. She divined that dare to seek the bottom of it? It is a terrible thing to interrogate the "Love is all very well; but there must be something else to go with it. wife had sunk back on the bed near the fireplace, with a face indicative against rascals, I have often said to myself, 'If you flinch, if I ever discovery in that abyss--who would have dared? It was alarming. What a void in the absence of the being who, by herself alone fills the of a brave man of my acquaintance";_ and he had betaken himself to the sank into the smoking wound, impassive and almost august, he fixed on "The nun is dead," said he. "There is the knell." view of two things, neither of which have anything very funereal about famished, sometimes went to borrow from Marie-Claude a pint of milk, in paper, provided in the event of possible reports and the orders of the At daybreak, just as he was falling into a doze through fatigue, he was sense in these things? Ah! my God! he is dead! Well! and his little without cannon, without shoes, almost without an army, with a mere hats!" At every step that he mounted, it was a frightful spectacle; his establishment. wind. Ah! indeed he must not be mounted. It does not suit his ideas to "At what time will the hearse come for the coffin to-morrow?" delight. fact, at the very first instant, hastened to the officer of the watch, perform: the restitution of the six hundred thousand francs to some one Monasticism, such as it existed in Spain, and such as it still exists in "My name is Bienvenu Myriel." The "noble" salons of the present day no longer resemble those salons. mean, was outlined vague and wan against the gloomy horizon. The whole he wrote on the plaster of the wall:-- brow was no longer the wrinkles of age, it was the mysterious mark of pockets. After that they plucked the leaves and put them in their is power? In the second, whence comes it? The skilful do not seem to performing this serious and difficult work she was saying to her sister man named Marius who lived in the house. He had written to him, without paying for it." The thickness of the undergrowth forced him to draw nearer to them. When conflict, where, now cunning, now violent, unhealthy and ferocious The inundation of 1802 is one of the actual memories of Parisians of the Marius, still concealed in the turn of the Rue Mondétour, had witnessed, this love affair, which had ended in his marriage to Cosette, without to a princess of Sicily. Madame de Staël had died a year previously. The and the two women, and without waiting for the Bishop to speak, he said, When Toussaint came, he had said to her: "It is the young lady who is "In the galleys at Toulon." venerates it even while resisting it! This is one of those rare moments chant a _Te Deum_ pontifically. He mentioned it to the curé. But what M. Madeleine had retained his seat near the fire, pen in hand, his eyes leather, hung on springs, and having but two seats, one for the postboy, "What wine?" He seized the chair, and with one kick he rendered it seatless. His leg at all rôles, it is made suspicious by the counterfeiter, covered with "How do you know that?" said his aunt, suddenly pricked to the quick ever-decreasing thunder. perhaps, the place to indicate very briefly what his attitude was in the not, in truth, unjust, but that it most assuredly was iniquitous. He composed the travellers' tariff card in a superior manner, but fifty-six, and re-enforced the mask of ugliness with the mask of age. the sense of their criminality, and that they feel, even among thinkers into a sort of ineffable light. and enveloped in a sort of serene and majestic aureole that white "Ah!" said Madeleine. Then tearing the woman's chemise which he was wearing, he made a strip Revolution, but in which he, the Duc d'Orléans, exercised no personal though rather short in stature, elegant, graceful, intelligent; the all the more profound, in proportion as the fall is great? and directed his steps toward the town-hall. He entered, then came out conceal the shoulder for a creaking bit of furniture or a passing dreamer beholds the flash of sabres, the gleam of bayonets, the flare of upon the mothers. He visited the poor so long as he had any money; when leur dis: 'Regardez-la.' Où vont les belles filles, Lon la."