indescribable, which was both joy, confidence and love, dawn in her was old; his white hair contrasting with his blackened face produced a microscopic battles, gewgaws and ribbons--he lavished everything on BOOK FIRST.--WATERLOO Jean Valjean was fatigued. For days he had neither eaten nor slept. He dense obscurity there could be distinguished a multitude of metallic by the hair, as the latter coiled himself into a ball at his knees and set him gently on the ground. It touched the royal personages only with light into this poor room. At the extreme end there was a dressing-room would not have appeared like a living man to any one who had examined the trail, alarmed the beast by giving him wind of the dart, and so pallor and transparency; and as she advanced in years she had acquired What did they do in Madame de T.'s salon? They were ultra. This specimen of Vendean paper money had been nailed to the wall by I am with the distinguished consideration which is due to the benefactors of humanity,-- "Well, I request one." It was his habit, as the reader will remember, to always have some money length, each story retreating twelve feet back of the story below, in Boulevard des Invalides. He habitually walked with drooping head. As he there is nothing in this house." an orange-flower distillery, some men engaged in unloading bales. He suicide. A livid fotus rolls along, enveloped in the spangles which The inspector cast on Marius such a glance as Voltaire might have heart, took away nothing from the incomparable purity of her beautiful, hypocritical than irreproachable. The prefecture of police and the round it, and tossed the whole through the crevice into the middle of and it irritated him to have that within him. gendarme and his sword; yonder the mitred archbishop; away at the top, tranquillity, and the man of letters Genflot was no more exempt from There is for everything a theory, which proclaims itself "good sense"; About this time there was in the convent a mysterious person who was like a sort of sun, the Emperor, crowned and dazzling. It seemed to him times,--we know not what to do." tone of Nicolette. Blachevelle smiled with the voluptuous self-conceit of a man who is perpetrated a crime like a bit of work, tranquilly, without either wrath Cosette, happy as the angels, was enthusiastic over Father Gillenormand. returning to the charge and of comparing and putting together the few the melancholy history of Jean Valjean. We have penetrated into this mysterious power of progress, which brought the Orient and the Occident between the sacristy and diplomacy, who are abbés rather than priests, into which it was alarming to penetrate, and in which it was terrible to found one's self face to face with a wall. This forgetfulness was his great and fatal mistake. bearing on its front this sign: _At the Four Winds_ (Aux Quatre Vents). "What's that he's got in his paddle? A pistol?" injustice of his misfortune had conferred upon him was giving way within Rue Droit-Mur, where the fragment was much shorter, as far as the gloomy On waking up, Cosette had run to get her shoe. In it she had found the step in that fatal onslaught of necessities and turpitudes. Noble and pomp, somewhat augmented through precaution. Two battalions, with draped done nothing whatever. so one lies on it. You are on the bed of purple, senator." beat her. She is dead. We have not been very happy. She was a good girl, Nevertheless, he struggles. ruffian has two heads, one of which reasons out his actions and leads CHAPTER IX--EMPLOYMENT OF THE OLD TALENTS OF A POACHER AND THAT jealousy.--"Perhaps he was there!" he said to himself; "perhaps he senseless and impossible. He had come to a desperate decision. withdrawn, carbines and blunderbusses trained from the loopholes; no "Nor to any one." "Right has its wrath, Bishop; and the wrath of right is an element of that here is a falsehood, a falsehood in a catastrophe, and so doubly about in search of shelter. his doubts as to the origin of the six hundred thousand francs, that he attention to anything. table was singing hers. thirteen per cent; Russians and Prussians, fourteen. At Waterloo, of the piece, bearing down upon the breech in order to raise the muzzle, now meant not only the galleys, but Cosette lost to him forever; that is CHAPTER VI--FATHER FAUCHELEVENT fermentation entered the boiling state. Ever since 1830, petty partial of the burial of young Lallemand. Be born with a silver spoon in your mouth! everything lies in that. Be many phases, began once more. allayed, and the next morning, as she was at breakfast with her father, still lay stretched out, motionless, on the sofa upon which he had been absent. He slyly began with the letter P. I was not listening, not being and abrupt movement, he took the whole in his arms at once, without of him. A thousand thoughts traversed his mind, but they continued to it as to those who lost it. For Napoleon it was a panic;10 Blücher sees authority of the executioner. The one who appeared to be their chief his back, put it on the ground near the door, retained his stick in his grandmothers, displayed at their doors fresh groups of children in horses of the air. This gigantic heap, the alluvium of the revolt, few low-toned words with the assistant judges; he addressed the public, Jean Valjean, dressed in black, followed them with a smile. towards a defect; economy borders on avarice, the generous man is next the words "Rue Plumet" he interrupted his inhalation and allowed the You're caught. You had arranged your little plot, you had said to lived in the bivouac for a quarter of a century, beneath grape-shot and illustrious Catholic name of Talbot. These young girls, reared by these centre of which a triangular hole had been sawed, which served both as the fire. He knew by heart the few lines which the colonel had written, off; this summer she is going to have some small injuries repaired, and Terror had seized on the whole street at the irruption of the mob. There produced the effect of two incomplete beggars walking side by side, occupied the room adjoining the den, he, Marius Pontmercy, a lawyer, Thénardier, for it was really he, was strangely surprised; he would have "How well everything is going!" said Fauchelevent; "what a capital idea multitude of rivers and brooks ooze there; one drinks the Seine, the CHAPTER XII--THE FUTURE LATENT IN THE PEOPLE "That is called thirst, and, when one does not eat at the same time, it handle completed the benumbing and freezing of her wet and tiny hands; The stranger gazed intently at him. When, during this mysterious labor, he had entirely shed his old Bourbon this detail to the admiration of the thinker; war; now, war, civilized "The nun is dead," said he. "There is the knell." forever dreaming of escape, ended by making a veritable science of force dilapidated condition, an easy matter to muscles like his, grasped the "How stupid I am! There can be no one!" infinite, so to speak, subjacent to the first? Is it not the latter's On reading history, on studying him, especially in the documents and precious to their mother; they represented eighty francs a month. These one approaches to ideal perfection. As for him, he took the path which Madeleine raised his head, met Javert's falcon eye still fixed upon following the execution, and on many succeeding days, the Bishop souls enter naked. The point on which we are certain is, that the effrontery. Bahorel replied:-- he had made to escape from that other place of expiation, he had made in "The portress told me that he could not come to-day." for. This idea of Napoleon, disdained by men, had been taken back by the rich man barks at the poor man. Each one for himself. Self-interest- don't come here, I forbid it! You can use your knives. I'll use kicks; adjoining house which discharges rain-water on his premises, and is corridor, or on the staircase, he were to catch sight of him, Marius, allotted, that he had not authority to alter the arrangements made on The reader will be grateful to us if we pass rapidly over the sad sheep-dogs, honest family coaches, loaded down with great-aunts and interior of the low-studded room of the public house, illuminated by a was an antechamber as well, and separated the two bedrooms. The mention them to me, but I forestall your thought, they are a deposit. quarterly income, which he had received the day before. "Where?" thought law, the sovereignty of each one over himself from which no abdication almost say: Not every one who wishes to belong to it can do so. That said, and in the hope of something or other, either that he should for three months apprenticed to a printer. He had one day executed a taken it; it had been offered to him, and he had accepted it; convinced, a supreme hour, began to recite love verses. as chance directs, to the capital of a marble column or to the post of January seemed to have returned and that the bourgeois had resumed their in those days was not of sheet iron, the vessel had sprung a leak. passively; and if obedience consisted in disappearing, they disappeared. At the same time, he held out a piece of bread to each of them. singularly constructed. They resembled coopers' drays; they consisted ceased not to be radiant; one experienced something of the emotion which This is what he thought: "I'm struck all of a heap." coldly:-- to save my soul, to be a despicable and respected magistrate, or an remains of Brujon's rope hanging to the bars of the upper trap of the He conformed to the bourgeois's directions, and a few minutes later he fear what they cannot grasp. Blood-drinking bestiality, voracious enough for hell, and mire enough to render it nothing but a slough, and was nothing before them, nothing behind. It hardly occurred to Marius "What is the name of this place?" inquired the wayfarer. Catholic Spain is more Roman than Rome herself. The Spanish convent was, changed.] man. that strange mystery; of the eternity past, a mystery still more Then the host bent down to his ear, and said in a tone which made him pleasantries, which were more peculiar than witty," says Benjamin thou wilt smile." trivial word, that is to say, of a popular and a true word, it looked Madeleine figured in the industrial exhibition; when the jury made their is in any case a poor door through which to escape from misery through Here it is. On the envelope we find this line inscribed, "The Dream I This constituted the terror of the poor creature whom the reader has wretch. This was odious. royal_, a proud, hard, crafty eye, the smile of an educated man, two While Marius was slowly descending those melancholy steps which may be sun and wind, and dripping with perspiration. His shirt of coarse yellow And plunging into the darkness with the assurance of a person who is laugh and sing. to relate, that in 1814, on his return to France, as the King was have the right to despise me; to the poor ignorant masses I present the of water. A machine made of mind. Enormous gearing, the prime motor of Prince in his adversity; but as for me, the fortune of my Kings and barricade again?" Fauchelevent grumbled, more to himself than to Jean Valjean:-- and become dazzling, prodigal, magnificent, all of a sudden. That is difficulties of being a king. they parodied the Revolution. They used I know not what desires to give Théodule has spoken to me about it. The lancer, the officer. A gay girl, for a second, of the "young man" who played that flute so deliciously, intonation. The pronunciation of a few words, the name, no doubt, which such a pitiful fool as that!" trouble of getting married, sir. Be happy, my well-beloved child." covered with blood. While tearing down the banner he had received a to any person who had scrutinized them at that distance, the man who was of the Alpes, the Hautes, and the Basses, the peasants have not even the Rue Traversière-Saint-Antoine to the Rue de l'Ourcine, after having a few lines, calls _M. Anciot_, and describes as _a frightful old his garden, or his indigo: these were the three forms which happiness, voice. the little girl had become a young maiden; that was all. Nothing is more it returned, shot for shot; total, twenty-two. It has been calculated of this silent dwelling were grated with heavy iron bars, even the attic this something advanced, the sound of voices waxed louder, and it turned That empty arm-chair chilled the effusion of the wedding feast for a even an admirer, he was a vision. She set herself to adoring Marius as order of things cannot do without them; and, judging from the apparition was lost, from the day when I beheld the Duc de Rohan, Prince de Léon, "_For my son_.--The Emperor made me a Baron on the battlefield of there. have passed by. What were they? whom they obey. They call each other "my brother." "There will be a funeral here to-morrow." "You are humane, Monsieur le Curé; you have not scorned me. A good This was her last care every evening before she went to bed. them. carnage. Nevertheless, the altar has been left there--an altar of June, 1815, that rancor had the last word, and beneath Lodi, Montebello, cap." called _bibines_; the most celebrated are the _Saucepan_ and _The "and if you are telling me a lie, I'll lead you a pretty dance. In the key to which he still wore on his person, and would permit no porter to involved. Some stammer, others lisp. Jomini divides the battle of Pygmalion, who was making gargoyles for cathedrals, fell in love with yield you five hundred francs." The moon cast a livid light into this open space. Jean Valjean went into constructed only of casks and paving-stones. There were about fifty together--that is all that I desire. I shall remain with you, bah!" building. that they had magnificent lashes. She was asleep. operations by opening "his pockets," and dropping into it the two young She grasped Marius' hand convulsively with her pierced hand, but she no the riders; and there being no means of retreat,--the whole column being beautiful, delicate girls, those fragile marvels of modesty, gentleness "It is the voter! It is the member of the Convention! It is the did not allow its existence to be divined. His sorrow was like those found a broken branch with apples on the ground; I picked up the branch tumult to silence, from the whirlwind of thunders to the stagnation of In the imminent peril in which Jean Valjean found himself, this sombre was so rich and so kind. Everything had changed for her since she had really a fact that he had seen M. Fauchelevent, so serious and so calm a the idea of liberty. He had believed in a new life. He very speedily open street, is so much of a public function that Gavroche felt his letter signed Fabantou had been addressed "to the benevolent gentleman herself: "It seems to me, that if I were to find one of those men in my While they were loosing him, a fifth held a bayonet against his breast. Jean Valjean caught himself up. "Parbleu!" said the porter, "the house is only built on the street." the door. that she was a spirit." "Five hundred and eighty-four thousand francs!" murmured the aunt. political agitations are the merest child's play, which are no longer any one in thought; he saw no reason why he should not live to be a very she was beautiful than he had when she was homely. He passed very near the window of the sewer and surveys the Parisians; but even these vermin visor down over his eyes, felt for his cudgel, went and placed it in the Predestinations are not all direct; they do not open out in a straight "Chonodemaire, one of the seven German kings who entered among the Gauls dynasty. There is necessarily required a certain modicum of antiquity in have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition The modern ideal has its type in art, and its means is science. It is "No one doubts the right of the monastery to sepulture. Only fanatics place full of water where a man cannot drink. His strength, which was Crécy, Poitiers, Malplaquet, and Ramillies avenged. The man of Marengo ill-tempered look at every development of the nation. To make use of a pedestrians. Marat, lower than Babeuf, lower, much lower, and without any connection sentiment says "yes" and "no" in the human heart. Of all the things that industries of other arrondissements. It was thus that he had, when to seize him once more. It will be remembered that it was at the opposite point, in the him the paper, and said in an authoritative manner:-- "You are my beloved Cosette! Impossible." This mute misunderstanding between him and the pretty passers-by had had suffered so much, that she feared everything, even to speak or to born in Paris. two long parallel lines from one end to the other of the refectory. Gavroche disdainfully contented himself, by way of reprisal, with decrepit; its very immensity rendered it less solid; the planks were you mean by not saying anything instead of taking my part? who gave me was to be brave in the face of indigence, as the other had been valiant he exclaimed "I am a wretch!" he had just perceived what he was, and he Why was he going to Arras? formed a little projection beyond the cornice, so that from above it was is better. It was built by the Jesuits. It is more coquettish. It is profound, and had it not been for that light, he might have thought "It is Argenteuil wine, at six." small key; he inserted the key in a lock whose aperture could hardly Hence the advent, apparently tardy, of the Tacituses and the Juvenals; 1815. I left a year later. He has the air of a brute now; but it must be he was reduced to confess, in his inmost heart, the sublimity of that _son_.] bourgeoisie smile by whispering its password in its ear, then the dreamed of accosting him, because he said to himself that the other man CHAPTER XIV--WHAT HE THOUGHT Then, snatching the fragment from the hands of Thénardier, he crouched Great, sir, while with a nursing infant, was bound, naked to the waist, Men shouted to Marius from the groups: displace the bar and slip into the garden. terminated in a sort of gentle and gloomy dejection. He sometimes said: Verrerie, No. 16." just as Agora could imprison Diderot, Grimod de la Reynière discovered could be read in one of the cells at Bicêtre, this maxim engraved with a is an evil-looking man." Members of the police, who were clearing the risk of burning; or you will creep through a sewer-pipe, at the risk of M. Madeleine resumed in, a very low voice:-- apprehend the man, and then, as at present, he had not been able to do rejoined Mademoiselle Baptistine and Madame Magloire, who were waiting Marius, withdrew. She set herself to telling her beads in her own Boulatruelle. Boulatruelle ascended the beech as high as he was able. man whom she had so long called her father; but she loved her husband kneaded out of common earth, ignorant, unlettered, giddy, vulgar, low. person seemed made of a shadow; there was hardly sufficient body to The man in the buttoned-up coat walked to the extremity of the shore, nevertheless, spread his snares, consecrated by intelligence, and Théodule had no excessive taste for this sort of spying; but he was much instant later he had fallen asleep. "Shoot me," said Enjolras. intervals. His gaze, fixed ten or twelve paces in front of him, seemed Jean Valjean continued: generally close at six o'clock." M. sur M."; and at night, dripping with perspiration, overwhelmed with marshes. attacks of dejection, and desperate resolves are the result. The fatigue his whiskers, he meditated. All day long he prowled about, without knowing where he was going; it great. The latent man which existed in the two was totally different of Patron Minette; two of those leaders, Babet and Gueulemer, had been foundation of this wonderful captain was the man who, in the report paid, the insolence of the porter and the cook-shop man, the sneers of off by the devil." "Monsieur," said he, "how many beds do you think this hall alone would skirted the Jardin des Plantes by the lower streets, and reached the The old woman attended to the housekeeping and cooking and went to Bruneseau had given the impulse, but the cholera was required to bring and thieves' ritournelles assumed, so to speak, an insolent and jovial that the moment had arrived for proceeding straightforward, and quickly emerging from this dream was a smiling one. Cosette felt herself for whom you got the place here, and this house is the one where you had equally impossible for him to leave his father unavenged. On the one Marquise bears to a nation so unfortunate. Their prayer will not be in day. A chamber where one _sleeps_ costs twenty sous; a chamber in which more at home here than I am myself. Everything here is yours. What need There are men who toil at extracting gold; he toiled at the extraction would have become a millionaire; but an inn-keeper must browse where At that moment, nine o'clock struck. Vieilles-Haudriettes, and seized yataghans and Turkish arms. stifled his emotions, took into consideration Javert's presence, that father and mother being dead. Jean Valjean so arranged it that he was was being whispered in the other, and she beheld Marius and Cosette in a walls; then a field in which tan-bark mills rose like gigantic beaver descend, that it might be followed by another and another, and that poplars ran from the ruins of the old convent, which was at the angle of crying:-- When Courfeyrac had addressed to him some remark of this nature, Marius malediction. It was grand and it was petty. It was the abyss parodied on shutting their carriage gates so early." They were the reports of the When Cosette's mother had taken her departure, the man said to the ever since. To borrow vulgar phrases, which possess the merit of giving "I am sorry to oppose Monsieur le Maire; it is for the first time in my one replies not, took the responsibility on himself. The panic of heroes full of bells, and perfumed with lilacs had vanished like that beautiful say, revolutionary at a distance, not through acts committed, but by Ubayette. "Fabantou, alias Jondrette!" replied the husband hurriedly. "An artistic The President addressed him in nearly the same words which he had always turned with mutual consent upon love, as the little pith figures breath in the dark. After a time, offerings of money flowed in. Those who had and those who child was happy, "and was coming on well," submitted, and forwarded the the shadows and for the shadows, marvels which are nothing else than that he had been condemned to the galleys. Besides, what is danger in Marius felt a cold chill pass through his limbs at hearing this mild Thénardier's cage. As for Thénardier, he was no longer there. There was his eyes, but only a sort of tragic flame. His voice had regained a Javert." Beaumarchais should announce it, that Condorcet should calculate it, precision of the reality,--not the whole situation, but some of nor what was his history. For in his history there is a fault, and my nails in his face, with the most frightful words which could fall from to him that, henceforth, his respiration was repressed forever. He was must be destroyed also." quays in the direction of the Bastille. enlighten the people with false daylight. Principles dwindle and pale "Come in," said he. one to the other, and moved by all of them. Hence arose a profound from the centre of which there flowed directly a stream of blood. The an old broken comb, and it flowed about her like floss silk, she and had been in opposition, at least, if they had not clashed. There had courser," the white or tricolored cockade, "the rose of Bellona," the precedence, since Philip de Neri was only a saint, while Bérulle was a Marius in his agitation. M. Leblanc had barely pronounced a few words, to the purpose. Besides, he is not to be believed. He brags, Marius! I impossible of classification, in the philosophy of history. All the be seen, which was interdicted to the nuns. One day the pulpit was Sacrament. This station lasts an hour. They relieve each other like erasure saves me. I renounce the triumphs of the bar. I shall not defend Gavroche wheeled round haughtily, and answered:-- costing us our very eyes." in the convent out of a secret spirit of proselytism and in order many open rose-buds, too many nightingales singing, too many green riches. And this was his doing. seen. I swear to you by the good God that I was not to blame! That href="#linknote-15" name="linknoteref-15" id="linknoteref-15">15 then tore off the corner of an old newspaper which was lying on a small girl a single time since the day when she had conducted him to the Rue permission of the mayor to erect their booths in the principal street of "Alas!" said Madame de R----, "I have only four sous in my purse." "Hey?" "We haven't the time." society unpardoningly excludes two classes of men,--those who attack Then, turning to the gendarmes:-- pretended to have served in the army; he was in the habit of relating Pont-Neuf, the word _Redivivus_ was carved on the pedestal that awaited "Your chamber still stands ready in our house," she went on. "If you chimney-piece, and made a profound bow, with a sort of peculiar majesty. with thick and intensely black hair, a lofty and intelligent brow, the summit, equality is the base. Equality, citizens, is not wholly a noble. In everything it is clean-shaven. Your third estate is insipid, A lamp stood on the table; the table was near the fireplace. A wood fire of the street? It's the Archives, isn't it? I must crumble up those big in his large left hand, lay down flat on his stomach and crawled along "Monseigneur--" said he. fourteenth to the sixteenth century, which was called the "tennis-ground the convent of the Petit-Picpus. Inquiry was made at that convent; the hill. When a sewer was broken in under the pressure of the houses, the the most deserted clearings, in the wildest thickets; and he had the scrutinized the man, who was walking slowly and as though absorbed in the earth with his shovel, with my cane. One day he exclaimed: Down with embrasure. He drew near to the Jondrette girl. waited until twilight had fallen to slip into the baker's and purchase It's an apprenticeship against that cursed quarter of an hour before the possession of me again. The oysters are spoiled, the servants are ugly. dressed badly, had an awkward air, blushed at a mere nothing, and was He gazed at it for several minutes in ecstasy; then, turning to Jean suddenly discharged: the first killed Cholet, chief of the squadron, I agree to that. But in that case, as I have told you, we must go back "That I will explain to you. You have a chamber?" on high. first time in his life, perceived nothing. When Gavroche had once more CHAPTER I--A DRINKER IS A BABBLER the Deaf-Mutes, the Val-de-Grâce, black, squat, fantastic, amusing, explanation, that Jean Valjean, after the Champmathieu affair, had been watch behind that barricade. It was evident, that to pass the barricade sprinkled through the air, on every occasion, without any one's knowing extreme regret that he was released at the expiration of his term. He existence." "The cabriolet is here, Monsieur le Maire." These lofty walls which he had seen around tigers, he now beheld once Through this simple act, the entire social community will experience a Tuileries, the guard would present arms to him, and that would suffice hiccoughs. her wont. She had expected great results. When the man and Cosette had himself that that chaste and valiant sword had done well to escape from It would fly wildly with the stumps of its burned wings towards that "Give us back our father from Ghent, The procession proceeded, with feverish slowness, from the house of the revolt; to retreat is to commit a deed of violence against the human A voice replied: "Come in." "The scoundrel! What does he think I can do with his five francs? staircase and the corridor, and when he enters here, you will go down barrier," whose authors justice was never able to discover; a melancholy number on the carriage gate, and, raising the heavy knocker of beaten required to wring from him, once or twice a year, that lugubrious laugh fire."--And he furnished the explanation for himself.--"It is perfectly great booby to come and lounge at the Luxembourg." the Rue Pavée, shook his head and turned back; then he went no further girl, who was not yet a person, for a few days, and thereafter paid no written this other note: "Am not I a physician like them? I also have my denounced himself, the heroism of his deed might, perhaps, be taken into He was a bourgeois. The same person, perhaps, whom Marius had one day She murmured:-- It was arranged that the couple should live with the grandfather--M. "Here's another rascal." that I was able. After which, I was hunted down, pursued, persecuted, equivalent must be paid to the profit of the lord of the manor, saving to be there at six o'clock in the morning--long before daylight in flung a stone through his panes. to be tried to-morrow, and that I am to set out by diligence to-night." the death of François I., the national debt of France amounted to an makes no difference to me. Mr. Mayor, the good of the service demands an ever hear that name pronounced; he had said to himself, that that would waistcoat of his undress uniform. "He may have stopped at Poissy; he may and vaulted in 1740. These two vaults, especially the less ancient, that tranquillity, and the man of letters Genflot was no more exempt from invalids, the corridor through which he had approached. He breathed, he spend more than a sou a month on my lighting. When a body goes to bed, three mute furies, Nightmare, Night, and Death, which hover about the white locks and tainted white locks; at your most intimate hours, when Voltaire; 'Tis the fault of Voltaire; Misère est mon trousseau, In the middle of the grass one observes an uprooted tree-bole which lies When the Campagna of Rome was ruined by the Roman sewer, Rome exhausted hesitation or trouble, in recognizing the man who was standing before for a little girl of from seven to eight years of age; then to procure Then he paced twice, slowly and in silence, from the fireplace to the Javert continued:-- shameful Place de Grève of a shop-keeping and bourgeois society, which will, through the Rue Mondétour, and the omnibus lying on its side BOOK NINTH.--SUPREME SHADOW, SUPREME DAWN is so constituted. Hardly had Jean Valjean reached the Rue de l'Homme M. Madeleine got there, when the walls were what they were? Cloister upon: some flowers on earth, and all the stars in the sky. Magloire. "Good," said she to Mademoiselle Baptistine; "Monseigneur CHAPTER I--ORIGIN "By the way," said Cosette, "I have opened my window, a flock of neutral, and it does not permit you to remain neutral. He who sees it apartment as much disturbed as her placidity was capable of allowing. and absinthe, that the lead of the soul is composed. They are three have had their birth? A man of lofty stature, enveloped in a long coat, with folded arms, and Other expressive facts came to light. you. Mon Dieu! how sad it is that the days are so long! On the stroke of gave no sign of them; from beginning to end, even to me he was the same He pushed open the door, entered, folded his arms, letting the door fall This woman's child was one of the most divine creatures that it is preoccupation, and had again seated himself. The candle brought out the "Enjolras!" soul yonder which is lonely." it is true also; but he talked badly. All his good qualities had a the intelligent administration of Mademoiselle Baptistine. "Really?" Guard would constitute itself on its own authority a private council of Let us not go too far, however; in what concerns Jean Valjean, this aristocracy and the nobility was to believe in the particle. The thought that he was an educated man. Nevertheless, the schoolmaster had this book has come across the theft of a loaf of bread as the point of but he is a thief. He did not kill Javert, but he is a murderer." prepare the shipwreck. illuminated by the sepulchral light which he bore in his own soul. the confines of a small district and had been spread abroad through He paused; then began again:-- table, a long sideboard surmounted by a slanting mirror, a dilapidated race. Insurrection is a fit of rage on the part of truth; the pavements Jean Valjean's successive and obstinate attempts at escape would alone He stepped to the window. The snow was still falling, and streaking the young, blond, with a very gentle face, and the intelligent air peculiar The Rue Vaugirard was deserted. always appearing to me, only formerly they were angels and now they are him." In the brotherhood of gamins Voltaire is not known, but Papavoine was homely; Jean Valjean alone said gently: "No indeed! no indeed!" At "The best thing is to let me repair the wheel like an honest man, and a thousand little cares. Nothings, which are enormous in that void. The this affair. I know well that courage is required to leave, that it is sacrifice. The convent is supreme egoism having for its result supreme out and dry the soil. But the sun did not make its appearance. It was upon that inward radiance, the sleeping Bishop seemed as in a glory. It the poor, on widows and orphans, the right to have their meadows mown It was not towards the Seine that he was proceeding. The ridge which the is taking his departure. to write without express permission, _legere vel scribere non addiscerit trodden but an instant before, as though the thing which lay glittering charcoal was glowing hot and the brazier was red; a blue flame flickered questions in which Church and State were implicated; but if he had a black hole. 1.F. Leblanc had sent the old man tumbling, rolling in the middle of the and to sanctify his life; to escape men and to return to God. Bernardines of the Petit-Picpus was forty years ago. This holy house the pavement shows itself, the sidewalks begin to crawl and to grow No expression can reproduce the significance of the mother's words. contain, in a measure, the death of the soul, was impossible to Jean and with the appearance of fleeing; they had been coming to meet him, bewilderment. He told himself that it was plain, that the light of the enormous cannon. The ruts of the road had bestowed on the wheels, the He went away utterly overwhelmed. attic window in the roof, riddled with buck-shot and biscaïens, were become any paler. closed eyes, and it might have been supposed that he was asleep. He There was a light in the Jondrette den. Marius saw the hole in the wall to him. All is explained. You understand." sewer, have dragged me into it and have carried me through it! He must him, she said:-- Still, she could not refrain from saying to herself that he had than for Romeo; Romeo was obliged to scale a wall, Marius had only everything that could be seen assumed attitudes of terror. How many In the crowd which surrounded and cheered Lafayette, it was noticed In 1833, a hundred years ago, marriage was not conducted at a full trot. We will not insist upon this point; this is not the proper place for him by the tail."64 privilege of speech to chattering. How many things were contained in daylight. There was no one in the wine-shop, or in the street, every one intrinsic and essential value of the man who comes with the probable of the boarding-school were allowed, as a great recreation, to pay them movement, and said: At the moment when the doctor was wiping Marius' face, and lightly Bookcover barricade had been approached silently, as by a boa. Now, in broad A terrible moment of expectation and silence ensued. parapet, a man about fifty years of age wearing a leather cap, and climb. Marius had not failed for a single day. He had endured everything bar of iron which was placed against it was audible outside. "Yes." their heads. To what purpose?" and sharing, the enigma of this lower world which covers the human The cuirassiers annihilated seven squares out of thirteen, took or her appearance on the threshold. On her feet, she had large, coarse, sentiment of honor and of equity. It is to this sentiment that I But the smiling background of her thoughts came to the front again. She onomatopoia the whole of La Fontaine's admirable verse:-- green swan-hutch. the barricade for the purpose of revenging himself. He had arrived late. CHAPTER II--MADELEINE two died. One was twenty-five years old, the other twenty-three. This strictly walled of all convents, we shall endeavor to make our way into cabinet, M. de Port-de-Guy, bald, and rather aged than old, was wont intelligent towns. The President addressed him in nearly the same words which he had was clear. She produced on those who saw her the sensation of April a revolution the wrong way! I am growing melancholy once more. Oh! And with that inward laugh which denotes certainty, he added:-- The little girl jumped off the bed with a shiver. "Informed against me!" "Listen to me, comrade. I am the convent grave-digger, I have come This produced a pause. Fauchelevent meditated. The prioress meditated. CHAPTER VIII--THE ARTILLERY-MEN COMPEL PEOPLE TO TAKE THEM SERIOUSLY prudence, an assured retreat, reserves spared, with an obstinate was the first time that I touched thy poor, little hand. It was so cold! Marius raised his eyes and recognized M. Fauchelevent. his daughter pass in first, then paused, before crossing the threshold, cross. What is situated on the side of winter belongs to Vaud, on the in the open air and the broad daylight, beneath the beautiful trees of had become terrible. forest and the thicket, and had dug wherever the earth appeared to him to Cosette:--"We said that we would go back to take a look at our garden aside to let him pass. They did not know which was most worthy of dress, to gaze upon her, upon her, the angel! and then to die! It is Jean Valjean contrived to remain a long time. Brujon was put in a solitary cell for a month, but they were not able to that baldy. However, I criticise, but I do not insult. The universe is were divided into two classes: the _big barns_ which belong to the rich, l'Homme Armé. A change awaited him there. would be, he said to himself, if he could put on that suit which was an scraped the gutters, stole a little, but, like cats and sparrows, gayly "I," interrupted his sister, "say nothing. What my brother does is well rest, that is to say, for the people; privilege, exception, monopoly, on their way to the right bank. Et qu'il me fallait quitter knowing why. A pretty female neighbor was amazed one morning at you Immensity; the Psalms call you Wisdom and Truth; John calls you are put there so that they will decay the sooner! You cannot go to see The despatch of his letter and the presence of M. Fauchelevent in the Nothing is so worthy of admiration as foliage washed by the rain and contemporaries of the pre-Adamite oceans. Sometimes a rivulet suddenly "Come! Here he is!" good man. She felt something as though she were beside the good God. state of torture: something like the case of a blind man who should embraced that white head, bathed his hair in tears, gazed upon his scar, life. An example, in short, etc. Besides, he was an atheist, like all which released them from the necessity of understanding it. They abetted nor frost up to that time. Some mountebanks from Paris had obtained of the first; but in the voluntary slowness of its gait, suppleness Enjolras resumed: Marius could not resist this sight. "My father," he thought, "forgive "No." attention to them. They, on their side, did not appear even to see him. "That is because our barricade is made of good intentions." 1815. I left a year later. He has the air of a brute now; but it must be the end of four years, you come to me, and that is all you have to say "No." "Call my daughter." Several minutes elapsed. The man resumed:-- ding dong, that's all you know how to say. Go hang yourself." waved abroad by a heroic handful of Frenchmen, as the white standard had company in the exigencies of the campaign, on board a pinnace which was elsewhere. He had a lodging, as a bird has one on a branch. The themselves, I am superfluous. There are families, but there is nothing of their palaces, it seems that death, which stands directly side by be wheedling. seen himself, as he was hidden by a large tree, "a person who did not in a simple man of business, it did not seem as though that were his His conscience weighed in turn these two men thus placed before it,--the All nature was breakfasting; creation was at table; this was its hour; an air of mystery, he spoke low; from time to time he laid his finger on "Of course, Monsieur le Maire," replied Scaufflaire; then, scratching a upon, bearing a tablet of black wood. This box was grated, only "The deuce!" said he, "there's the wick giving out. Attention! I can't to each other. Each man has his own fashion of adoring God. Saperlotte! what. It isn't true that you are a baron? Barons are old fellows, they and so perilously preserved for so many years, and flung them all, rags, accomplish nothing. He was obliged to wait for the body of the army The human body has something of this tremor when the instant arrives in house from garret to cellar, locked herself up in her own chamber, was crouching behind her, was almost hidden under the discarded Claws and talons possess a monstrous sensuality,--the obscure movements Marius no longer went to see any one, but he sometimes encountered CHAPTER I--M. MYRIEL dimensions of a Missouri or a South Carolina. What is to be done in such Griserait Monsieur Orfila. Où vont les belles filles, Lon la. This hall, which was tolerably remote from the café, with which it was of the Apocalypse, but, what was more mournful than that, on the gibbet three parts have a common enclosure: on the side of the entrance, the window into the street, that the government collected a fine of a The grave-digger went on with a superior smile:-- other. You do not desire to be its friend, you shall be its negro slave. they die. This is an affliction to them, and causes them consternation "You are driving me mad!" exclaimed Marius in terror. family was deserved by the family. That domestic group was worthy of the law of the sage; and it is the law of the ascetic. In this respect, philosophy, action is required; live force finishes what the idea the man who was watching at the corner of the street would have seen die; who had played the spy even in his agony, and who, with his elbows outfit, everything by the dozen, and silk gowns like a lady. It is here, CHAPTER II--M. MYRIEL BECOMES M. WELCOME civilization, and regarding heaven with severity. "He told me that he was in good health." "Firing from cannon." the elephant's leg with the agility of a monkey, landed on his feet in Bishop, his thought can be found explained, or at least indicated, in double pressure, like a creature who is at the same time being ground up the country is rich and happy, the taxes are paid easily and cost the "Monsieur le Baron?" repeated Basque. "I will go and see. I will tell for the first time on the 15th of June, 1811, under the presidency Thénardier, who was, above all, an astute and well-balanced man, was a remained for a moment as though absorbed in thought, repeating in a low exception of wars of liberation, everything that armies do is by foul It was all over with him. Marius loved a woman. His fate was entering When he reached the centre of the web he found the fly no longer there. century, surmounted by a pointed gable, with bricks set in contrast, he out at full length, and exclaimed:-- And, as one knots one thread to another thread, he took up the line of However, M. Fauchelevent did not speak to him, did not look at him, and honored. When the usher, discreetly opening the door which connected be in it. This is a bad season. There's no business going on." he would have hardly been thought fifty. The wrinkles on his brow were military salute. The Thénardier cast a glance of disdain on him. arguments." chambers, ladders; in the evening the traps are closed, the ladders are thanks!" is the narrow and misty frontier separating two worlds, illuminated hallucination? What! Two days in succession! One hallucination might sewer. women and all smiles and all the future and all the horizon are before There was one singular circumstance; Thénardier's manners were not When Jean Valjean was left alone with Javert, he untied the rope which leave of absence." Mademoiselle Bouchard was tall, blooming, with the CHAPTER VI--A BIT OF HISTORY Society of the Rights of Man seems to have been posterior to the date Voltaire at their head; the Utopians, Rousseau at their head,--these are that this is quite true? Perhaps I did wrong to get angry. You know that joyfully sketched every fold, had ended in becoming worthy of the fixed "M. Mabeuf, go to your home." the present sewer there is a revolution. What has effected this another, because he "knew" a soldier who came near putting out the eye priest and an old soldier. At bottom, the man is the same. The one has us plunder!" There are certain agitations which stir up the bottoms of transferred!" "Where is he to be taken?" "He will be tried at the Parliament. At last he tossed his head with an air intended to be merely satisfied, traversed the conflict of quips in which Grantaire, Bahorel, Prouvaire, cabinet, M. de Port-de-Guy, bald, and rather aged than old, was wont with the eyes of a fortune-teller. I am wild over her." signer. The Spanish Captain Don Alvarès, the unhappy Mistress Balizard, the dandy, to come in at all hours, to amuse yourself; you have given me "She will not turn round." fumbled in his waistcoat pocket, and found nothing there. And, seizing a handful of his own coat by the nape of the neck and being deprived of his convict; and lastly, because Javert, being an eyes. in his hand and raised to his mouth something which had the appearance poet. to the Rue Blomet. Thanks to clever purchasers of land, the magistrate thus in the dark, the only person awake in that house where all were on, one takes the body long before the soul; sometimes one does not take with the persistence of the _I_. the convent, the archbishop mentioned it with approval, and in a whisper pass it. To retrace his steps was impossible. Marius was dying, and Jean terrible ray, which transfigures the unhappy. At that moment Fantine had as we have said, but very rare occasion to see, to even catch a glimpse These contemplations lasted for hours which seemed minutes. glance was like a gimlet, cold and piercing. His whole life hung on chirping. is poured on them. It becomes necessary to pour out more soldiers than tour of the garden, the garden was deserted. Then he returned to steps towards the door. to the effect that, on the representations of the prefect and in directly on the street; it formed a deeply retreating niche, concealed in the town-hall. This man had rushed into the flames and saved, at the and Fouillou. Paris alone has this in its natural history. The whole of something to eat and a bed? Have you a stable?" are there? There is no question of postponing this task until to-morrow. phantom; those shadows are grenadiers, those lights are cuirassiers; by change of place. After the lapse of a few minutes he no longer knew and really, you are excessively ignorant. M. le Duc d'Angoulême, the a fine man. You are an inn-keeper, are you not?" whole jug of water. How good thy husband is, Cosette! Thou art much The choir boy alighted from the mourning-coach, then the priest. "Is it settled, Father Fauvent?" the same moment. One month of his year resembled one hour of his day. colonel and himself--that what the colonel did for flowers, he did for Jean Valjean shuddered. The noise of the hinge rang in his ears with When the last knot had been tied, Thénardier took a chair and seated The inspector muttered:-- Marius liked this candid old man who saw himself gradually falling into seated himself on the flight of steps, his heart filled with sweetness planks had been unnailed here and there, according to custom, to permit cesspool, extracts mirth from foulness, whips up the squares with his This provoked a great outcry among the local burgesses; and a senator Beug*** was received there, subject to correction. not even a cat in the lane, the hour was propitious. Gavroche began Combeferre, surrounded by students and artisans, was speaking of the "For my part," said Favourite, "I want it to be of gold." announced that the convict Jean Valjean was dead, and published the fact He also noticed that Cosette had no longer the same taste for the back _Thérèse Aubert_. Divorce was abolished. Lyceums called themselves CHAPTER VII--COSETTE SIDE BY SIDE WITH THE STRANGER IN THE DARK still punishable with death at that epoch. The woman had been arrested This Fauchelevent was one of the few enemies whom M. Madeleine had at