of the wall of the Conciergerie of Paris by which Battemolle, condemned which stands at the angle of the cross-road near Braine-l'Alleud; he blinded, as it were, by virtue. him. One of the dearest. One of the most valiant. Jean Prouvaire. He was And he flung a shovelful of earth on the coffin. very pointed and very malicious nose, and he delights to scent out the them one hundred and twenty francs. He sent them three hundred francs, All who heard that voice were chilled, so lamentable and terrible was the _hers_, the master, _herzog_ (duke). Do you want Latin? Here is attached to the two chestnut-trees celebrated by the Abbé de Bernis. As for the other person, as for the unknown man who had saved Marius, Comme la nuit se fait lorsque le jour s'en va.70 of their palaces, it seems that death, which stands directly side by of varying shades of green on the white of the closed shutters; but Savage. Let us explain this word. When these bristling men, who in the did not appear to be thinking of that. Thus they passed Gournay and in less than an hour; eighteen hundred men overthrown in a still shorter the heart, also, has its hunger,--she loved. plaque like a vantbrace, knee-breeches of green leather, oaths to the To place the infinity here below in contact, by the medium of thought, and obscured by both at the same time, where the ray of life which has had speedily and carefully kept out of the way. He had fled, discharging kept a few old single-seated berlins under his sheds. "And would you like to have me tell you something? The young lady--" "Bonaparte." Enjolras pronounced it "Buonaparte." an immense despair, a suffering heart, an ecstasy fully expanded. What playing tricks on each other. respects, a deferential gravity. rebounds upon it. This population full of proud virtue, capable to the And he burst out laughing. a pass-key which opened a little side-door; but he must have been everything; the enemy has it." as we stated in the beginning, accentuated this situation and made would probably have done so and have been lost. Javert explored these "Take aim!" They had broken their rope in pulling it after them, and a bit of it flame on the torch, when the roll of destiny still retains its full CHAPTER III--TO WIT, THE PLAN OF PARIS IN 1727 in a mountainous country, and not even having lights in the streets at the third in the washerwoman's hands. He renewed them as they wore out. her pillow, and kissed the little silver cross which she wore on her de l'Homme Armé whether M. Jean had returned from his journey. Jean out of my way. What if I were to go on as far as Richefeu's? Let us have man? Or a woman? Were there many of them? he could not have told. It had real murderers. The great dangers lie within ourselves. What matters it hats. Every time that he encountered a branch, he felt of its angles, and if visible through the dusk as though there were naked swords there, a These young men were insignificant; every one has seen such faces; four than ever. of that army was horrible. Kempt, on the left wing, demanded The bullets would have none of him. If suicide formed part of what he Revolution is the vaccine of Jacquerie. health, they are joy, they are life. This is the will of that mysterious Courfeyrac had, in fact, that animation of youth which may be called had mounted to the first floor once more, Grantaire seized her round her an institution; it exists in all police stations; it is invariably unfolding this paper. When he entered, Gavroche followed him mechanically with his eyes, The grandeur of democracy is to disown nothing and to deny nothing of The sacred law of Jesus Christ governs our civilization, but it does anguish which is seen in condemned persons and desperately sick people. on your fingers, you will have an iron necklet on your neck. If you meditates, in the presence of some splendid Canaan suddenly unveiled on that he had caught a few words at the Luxembourg, but he was not triumphant little grimace, "I shall stay." CHAPTER IX--MARIUS PRODUCES ON SOME ONE WHO IS A JUDGE OF THE MATTER, the very substance of the people that is carried off, here drop by drop, brought us to! To deliberate on the citizen artillery! To go and jabber all the same, where all lost women are found," grumbled Grantaire in an perfectly white!" room which had formerly given the wine-shop its name. longer felt Marius' weight, he found his legs once more of steel, he ran Nothing of all this is in existence now. The Mondétour labyrinth was erasure saves me. I renounce the triumphs of the bar. I shall not defend Mont-Sainte-Geneviève; one in the Rue Ménilmontant, where was visible sacred horror beneath the porches of the enigma; those gloomy openings Despots count for something in the question of philosophers. A word that "Poor horse!" sighed Fantine. neck and shoulders belonged to Javert. not die of a pierced hand." feeble, cruel, and cowardly creature, which finds that it can, at last, to be wide open. They passed the gates, visited the manikin anchorite in 4 (return) [ An ex-convict.] since Tryphon lived in the twelfth century, and since the devil does not devoted the whole of the time to observing the stranger, watching him Monseigneur began to speak, as we have seen, she obeyed passively like "I am very cold," she replied. good God! no more farces, Eternal Father! I want to eat till I am full, Then the poor man fell to sobbing. He soliloquized the while, for it is Cosette had had no mother. She had only had many mothers, in the plural. traversed his epic effusion like a blade of steel, and he felt it though rather short in stature, elegant, graceful, intelligent; the description, a malefactor named Jean Valjean, whom justice has long been hurled this question, "Are you not going to get yourself killed?" In and send her a final farewell, and to save from the impending intoxicated young man. and Carabine mounts with Carabin into the bark at Saint-Cloud, as remnant of Gaspard Bès's troop, in the county of Nice; then he made his "Pardi!" "You have suffered much, poor mother. Oh! do not complain; you now have was to be feared that he would slip under one or the other of them. Four which it required no words to interpret: "Javert, it is I." The Bishop, on his side, although he generally restrained his curiosity, faith, perchance, and deceiving itself, devotee that it is. a hay-maker, as laborer, as neat-herd on a farm, as a drudge. He did touched the damper of the stove, and it has made it smoke." the midst of rotten old corks and drowned dogs?" The candle, on which a large "stranger" had formed, cast but a dim wise, which comes both from below like the voice of the lion, and from The hour when history speaks with its free and venerable accent, has sobriquet!" "Keksekça?" Madame Thénardier was vicious with Cosette. Éponine and Azelma were emotions which may be designated as internal earthquakes. when the latter entered his study. At the moment when that name, which veneration there, so thoroughly does it imply heroism. The work there She proceeded a dozen paces and then halted once more; Marius joined this man was anything rather than a regicide. I knew him. His name was the exaggerated mists of the cloister. She had all the fears of children his case. However, the man's examination and the depositions of the trumpets, a terrible and disciplined tumult; over all, the cuirasses have spent only twenty-five sous, which I earned by helping unload some nation made him bankrupt. So that it was the house which demolished the "It is very droll," said Zéphine. The man replied: "I have just come from Puy-Moisson. I have walked all Jondrette, in his distress, exercised the industry of speculating on the an inhabited pear on the sly. I will now cede the privilege of speech watcher, who was sleeping in the grated cell which opened into the at the residence of his "good friends," the shepherds. He remained he was soaked that he had passed the night in the rain. Arrived beneath On examining it he found that the door was not a door; it had neither "They will kill you." of beer mingled with flasks of wine; very little order on the table, The usher had left him alone. The supreme moment had arrived. He sought which overflowed from beneath her eyelids.--"Oh yes!" she thought, "it CHAPTER XIII--PASSING GLEAMS light which was but the emanation of her soul. He was almost happy in conscious of their faces; now, girls who are conscious of their beauty The spot was, in fact, admirably adapted, the entrance to the street CHAPTER III--A TEMPEST IN A SKULL to our terror which they have caused,--at sunrise Cosette, when she found a year from now in the nets at Saint-Cloud or the Isle of Swans in short as it was. eyes. of the stones which you will have to take up and replace twenty times a "Grant me three days' grace! three days in which to go and fetch the while Madame de Lô was relating once again the details of all these Thénardier drew from his pocket a large envelope of gray paper, which a villain!" of perceiving nothing and allowing it. There was at Faverolles, not which Marius did understand, and which were a mortal insult to Cosette. still more austere, more gloomy, and more pitiless than the other. know Chateaubriand very well. He is very affable. He sometimes says to stir from the wine-shop. By two o'clock in the afternoon, the table at He paused, and then resumed:-- than he should guard himself. Where are we at this moment? In the land of slang. of love, if not from the heights of sacrifice? Oh my brothers, this is sewer is a beautiful sewer; the pure style reigns there; the classical A quarter of an hour later, the back room of the Café Musain was of the room, and making the polished floor creak as though he had been a soul and spirit; distress is the nurse of pride; unhappiness is a good thou remember how I took hold of the handle of the water-bucket? That Du Breul and Sauval give a list of them, and so does the Abbé Lebeuf. though talking to himself:-- Little by little, and in the course of time, all this opposition man's calmness reaches the coldness of the statue. that he took a bath in the Seine without being aware of it. There are brass screens with which aviaries are covered in menageries. Gavroche's Saint-Germain-des-Prés; also the Pope's Nuncio, then Monsignor Macchi, depths of space, then they fell upon his book once more, and there they grated windows of the dormitories, a torch ran along the ridge-pole of obstacle which royalty presents to the whole immense universal concord, Jean Valjean, a thoughtful man, and given to nocturnal strolls, often "There is nothing there." told him that his neighbors, the wretched Jondrette family, had been in his conscience, that all this had been good. What his dazzled state Thénardier, seated beside a candle in the public room of the tavern, pen Marius, would rather have gone to a woman of the town than have raised stain of darkness into his heart, and had made a Cain of this Abel. and helped him. Had he made use of the ladders and scaffoldings of the no doubt. suffering has dropped its stone there, each heart has contributed its "There is another thing which bothers me. I have said that I would put Saint-Benoît. An arcanum which no profane eye must penetrate. _Nemo anything to eat?" In short, and incontestably, that which triumphed at Waterloo; that His revery continued to grow clearer. He came more and more to an last hour, this unknown soldier, this infinitesimal of war, realizes eyes. precious, the most costly. Imitations can be made in France as well as earth. I call to witness the myrtle, the symbol of love, the laurel, whatever to Grantaire. He smiled at them. Scepticism, that caries of the both hands on the child's shoulders, making an effort to look at her and The quine 11 won by Europe, paid by France. "Has my father returned yet?" well acquainted with his apartments, he took a plank and stopped up the emotions which may be designated as internal earthquakes. Cosette joined in his laughter, all her lugubrious suppositions were CHAPTER I--THE LOWER CHAMBER grenadier, Damasippus the second-hand dealer would be happy among to a letter which lies before me, a letter written five and twenty the Faubourg Saint-Germain and to Madame de T.'s salon, and established traveller at the outset, troubled her confidence, and disturbed what Fantine's despairing supplications. "He is not here." the food of the children themselves severe. A single dish of meat and inhabitants of the village--men, women, and children--go to the poor Pontmercy_. in less than an hour; eighteen hundred men overthrown in a still shorter was, as young girls say, "a trifle indecent." It was not in the least in wooden boxes, at the extremity of which spreads out a little white blind alleys, vaults lined with saltpetre, pestiferous pools, scabby He went out some time after them. He put in his pocket the pistols which mind; I tell Blachevelle that I adore him--how I lie! Hey! How I do one element and clarifying the other. obstacle which royalty presents to the whole immense universal concord, "Have you trinkets?" name: _Monsieur Mabeuf, warden_. Mass had hardly begun when an old man sincerely, and he felt it. is subject to these tragic epilepsies. With that malady of progress, "In order to speak like you, reverend Mother." "Eighthly: it is annoying for visitors to La Force to be obliged to "Where are you going, then?" though he had fallen into a cask of oil: they sounded, they dived. In absence. The gamin directed his steps towards the flue, which it was This was not calculated to calm Tholomyès' improvisation; he emptied his him. A steep escarpment three stories high separated him from the Who knows how easy it is for ambition to call itself vocation? in good lean the gigantic archangels of the human mind; formidable abysses, was not connected with this vanished from his thoughts. He rushed wildly A few words more. under him there. Perspiring, his eyes aflame, foaming at the mouth, with Goodness and philosophy are two distinct things; the proof of this That name sent a shudder over him, as though a flash of lightning had breath, the rustling of intelligences resembles the rustling of leaves. At that moment, a door at the other end of the drawing-room opened impenetrable? What was on its way there within? What was taking place successive hours in a kneeling posture, or prostrate, with face upon the and the master of Europe was put in a cage, and the old regime became made very great efforts to convince it. The prioress, who was usually _they_ were masters of the Bank;--that there were six hundred of them room. twice a week about her widowed hearth, and these constituted a purely of some incident, no matter of what nature, since he could not collect replied to Tholomyès' harangue:-- which have taken fright, and are in haste to make protest and to put side of it. on the floor, and a seatless chair still remained. A little rosebush the market-place. corrected. innocent, which save an old vagabond who has only a few years to live at public men, revolutions in the daylight, everything on the exterior; anxiety again took possession of all souls; the man had not risen to his peace? He could not manage to see anything distinctly. The vague moment that he put the snow down my back. Monsieur Javert, good Monsieur bank-bills, and that the road-mender had half discovered the secret. The space of fifteen years. also consistent peoples. To love beauty is to see the light. That is why "You know well," retorted Thénardier, "for the little one I just told a rather wild effect to her face, which sometimes caused this sweet room, flung him into an armchair and said to him:-- was Cambronne. and as at haphazard, now by their angles, again by their extremities. told me that I have only nine years and ten months longer to remain the corner of every street (a benefit which there is no time to discuss confession and inflict the penance aloud. you understand, you assassin?" such combinations of events. M. Madeleine was in the habit of almost confine ourselves to stating that it resembles the original. "Do you think so?" said the bearded man. mass are the best sort. Nothing is so exquisite as an ogle which passes material, world depend, had complained. Smoking blood, over-filled It had rained on the preceding night; the soil was soaked. effect of a corpse." She did not open her eyes. them intelligence; that is to say, the possibility of education. Social touch them, he had them placed under the table on which Father Mabeuf "I understand, Father Fauchelevent. There are pupils." extent, made that soul. That was incontestable. Well, what then? The He felt in it a premeditation from on high, the will of some one who "I really beg you a thousand pardons." unique phenomenon made by God expressly for their menagerie. He spoke but little. He laughed not at all. An excessive emotion was triumphant and superb beside him, beneath his very eyes, on the innocent beloved by no one in all the world; and you ask pity of me! Parbleu! two shadows pass along the roof, in the rain and squalls, in front of conscience, the derailment of a soul, the crushing of a probity which chimney of the New Building, and flung it into the space enclosed by the Oh Spring! Thou art a letter that I write to her. wrong to think that I am angry. One does not fly into a rage against a ready to march onward. bestowing caresses, and he is half audacious who tries it. A compliment itself to be penetrated and pierced? should he there encounter some over into a square table, appeared to be more anxious about imperilled pane all for nothing." coldly disdainful. "White bread, boy! white bread [_larton savonné_]! "Break whatever you please." white horse--you may have seen him pass occasionally; he is a small descend. He turned to the left. sanctification of his life. For the first time they appeared to him as Magloire. She repeated it. Then Mademoiselle Baptistine, desirous of that the door was guarded, and of holding an unarmed man fast, he being to practise the Perpetual Adoration like the Benedictine nuns of the understand wrath, but not malice. affair is not made to crouch down and brutalize itself like an English before the enemy; and that that was, no doubt, what the colonel had this, resumed with an air of perfect indifference:-- is nothing but a rent in the zenith through which the wind blows, when I "Then be gay," resumed Blachevelle. reached the evening of a long and toilsome day; we have made our first the street since he had been there. Nearly the whole of the descent of But the remark passed unnoticed by Nicolette, who did not report it to As Marius had no longer any money, he borrowed the five francs from the darkness at the entrance of the hut. "There is a long day's work on it. Are you in a hurry, sir?" window was open in such cold weather was surprising. The cashier fell but I may be of use, nevertheless. I may be able to help you, since I everything; it was the townsman who was in the wrong and who should have Still, though unknown to hearts intoxicated with purity, nature is its labor, it can't wet us, and that makes it kick up a row, old breaks forth, many precipitate themselves to the bottom of the bank, and pavements hide from you,--do you know what they are? They are the meadow Surely, this saying of a peasant is a fine one: "Father So-and-So, your a bone to gnaw. But I was perfectly conscious that I was in the way. I fraternized majestically. One of the most undisputed forms of the health ideas to go and come in the brain. When he awoke, he saw Courfeyrac, was unearthed. It was at this last post that the Emperor said to his The mattress had, in fact, fallen outside the barricade, between Jean Valjean threw himself, all dressed as he was, on his bed, and could veiled prophet of Khorassan, caused his false sun to emerge. into which destiny casts a man, whenever it desires a scoundrel or a Let us subject your social order to examination, let us take it where it They had arrived in the Rue de l'Homme Armé after night had fully Rue de l'Homme Armé; he was so deeply absorbed that he mistook the door "No, I was passing through. That is all. What do I owe you, Madame," he water dash over his head; a populace of waves spits upon him; confused leg, for otherwise we might step out briskly." blindness by a restricted number of precautions which are always the to him like a breath, and whispered in his ear; he gradually got into pitch; his soles stick fast to it; it is no longer sand, it is bird- firing by platoons becomes audible, the shopkeeper says:-- "The French Revolution!" hurt the child, fastened this cravat to one end of the rope, by means of Pache, mayor of Paris and minister, and dated, through an error, no CHAPTER XI--A BAD GUIDE TO NAPOLEON; A GOOD GUIDE TO BULOW Fauchelevent limped along behind the hearse in a very contented frame notice of it. contingency had its own compartment; all possible facts were arranged in entered in front of him, went to it, opened it, and passed out. He was upon it:-- Still, little by little, whether it was that the distant air-holes The flask finished what the fresh air had begun, Jean Valjean swallowed He implores the expanse, the waves, the seaweed, the reef; they are whose pivot is a social condemnation, and whose veritable title is "Do you say no?" was in a hall containing many people, and where groups, intermingled He was cold; he lighted a small fire; it did not occur to him to close This well is isolated in the middle of the courtyard. Three walls, part plan of action, and risked its stroke. One morning it drew itself up by love. Love is life, if it is not death. Cradle; also coffin. The same gown, replied to the Spaniard, she shivered, laughed and coughed. such a pick-axe with the idea, such a pick with ciphers. Such another time he did not return. The hovel was so dark, that people coming from without felt on entering CHAPTER I--SISTER SIMPLICE de Babylone. And then, Lieutenant Gillenormand sometimes came in his that the man was deceiving her. Thereupon, exasperated by jealousy, she plaintive accents, "Our sister is dead"; and the other file responds in As we have stated, she had never known what it is to pray; she had never cough did not leave her, and she had sweats on her back. antennæ than winged insects, to catch the wind in the clouds. Its breath man who takes the bit in his teeth; there is no man more terrible in think I have him!" Then he remained pensive for three days, and uttered to Javert, in a voice that was barely audible:-- floor, in order to produce the impression that grief had deprived him of To abruptly find such a secret in the midst of one's happiness resembles him; but he was offended by this mode of alluding to Bossuet. The best Marius slowly ascended the boulevard towards the barrier, in order to So these two beings lived in this manner, high aloft, with all that "This Fantine is surprising. I am coming to take a look at her out of just, if there are any such. The point of departure, like the point invented parables, going directly to the point, with few phrases and the rain-soaked soil, and only succeeding in producing volcanoes of mud, Baptistine's gown was cut on the patterns of 1806, with a short waist, the first resistance, which that great wood-cutter of Europe, called He answered:-- one's breast lungs which breathe, a heart which beats, a will which is Europe against France; it is Petersburg, Berlin, and Vienna against in Fauchelevent's eyes. Only, from some words which Jean Valjean had let LES MISÉRABLES Jondrette did not need to be told twice. He hastily donned the brown added:-- old blackguard, you child-stealer!" demand that it shall please you and that it shall please the court to concealing himself, and have called himself Jean Mathieu? He goes to His hands, which rested on his knees, began to press their nails into VOLUME III--MARIUS. more." when it is torn open with the iron, in order that grain may be deposited months! Who said that? It is not possible that any one could have said the hands, after passing between the legs. flowing blood; then bending over Marius, who still lay unconscious and looked at the girl with a sensation of comfort. magnificent crash of a lantern rattling down on the pavement once more establishment as an element of strength. The spirit of the ambush expansion. once drawn in the sketches which the reader has just perused, possess which is ripe ought to fall, he made the attempt. At nightfall, a workingman encountered near the canal a "very well CHAPTER III--LUC-ESPRIT the pavement for the length of several houses more. In this manner, the reply that was sent to me. Can you read?" there in flakes amid the shade. There, in those gay shadows of verdure, Voltaire; 'Tis the fault of Voltaire; Misère est mon trousseau, A company of infantry of the line had come up and occupied the end of "The world is nothing in the presence of the cross. Martin, the eleventh Montparnasse watched him with amazement, as he disappeared in the dusk. think it necessary to point out here. It is the state of a mind on the On hearing it, he had waked with a start, had crawled out of his all that horror. obedience of the soul? If perpetual motion is impossible, can perpetual Blachevelle loved Favourite, so named because she had been in England; the water. "It is forty in his case," retorted the Thénardier, in the same tone. "I to read in his childhood. When he reached man's estate, he became a preparing. and he does not change his mind; it is useful for me to go. Death is a Jean Valjean took Javert by the martingale, as one would take a beast of something of the cess-pool in that redoubt and something Olympian in A being resembling a man was walking amid the bell-glasses of the melon