Les Miserables
Hugo, Victor
Table Of Content
The Works of Victor Hugo
Translated by Isabel F. Hapgood
Les Miserables
1
VOLUME I − FANTINE.
Les Miserables
VOLUME I − FANTINE. 2
PREFACE
So long as there shall exist, by virtue of law and custom, decrees of damnation
pronounced by society, artificially creating hells amid the civilization of earth, and adding
the element of human fate to divine destiny; so long as the three great problems of the
century – the degradation of man through pauperism, the corruption of woman through
hunger, the crippling of children through lack of light – are unsolved; so long as social
asphyxia is possible in any part of the world; – in other words, and with a still wider
significance, so long as ignorance and poverty exist on earth, books of the nature of Les
Miserables cannot fail to be of use.
HAUTEVILLE HOUSE, 1862.
Les Miserables
PREFACE 3
FANTINE
Les Miserables
FANTINE 4
BOOK FIRST – A JUST MAN
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BOOK FIRST – A JUST MAN 5
CHAPTER I − M. MYRIEL
In 1815, M. Charles−Francois−Bienvenu Myriel was Bishop of D – –
He was an old man of about seventy−five years of age; he had occupied the see of D – –
since 1806.
Although this detail has no connection whatever with the real substance of what we are
about to relate, it will not be superfluous, if merely for the sake of exactness in all points, to
mention here the various rumors and remarks which had been in circulation about him from
the very moment when he arrived in the diocese. True or false, that which is said of men
often occupies as important a place in their lives, and above all in their destinies, as that
which they do. M. Myriel was the son of a councillor of the Parliament of Aix; hence he
belonged to the nobility of the bar. It was said that his father, destining him to be the heir of
his own post, had married him at a very early age, eighteen or twenty, in accordance with a
custom which is rather widely prevalent in parliamentary families. In spite of this marriage,
however, it was said that Charles Myriel created a great deal of talk. He was well formed,
though rather short in stature, elegant, graceful, intelligent; the whole of the first portion of
his life had been devoted to the world and to gallantry.
The Revolution came; events succeeded each other with precipitation; the parliamentary
families, decimated, pursued, hunted down, were dispersed. M. Charles Myriel emigrated to
Italy at the very beginning of the Revolution. There his wife died of a malady of the chest,
from which she had long suffered. He had no children. What took place next in the fate of
M. Myriel? The ruin of the French society of the olden days, the fall of his own family, the
tragic spectacles of '93, which were, perhaps, even more alarming to the emigrants who
viewed them from a distance, with the magnifying powers of terror, – did these cause the
ideas of renunciation and solitude to germinate in him? Was he, in the midst of these
distractions, these affections which absorbed his life, suddenly smitten with one of those
mysterious and terrible blows which sometimes overwhelm, by striking to his heart, a man
whom public catastrophes would not shake, by striking at his existence and his fortune? No
one could have told: all that was known was, that when he returned from Italy he was a
priest.
In 1804, M. Myriel was the Cure of B – – [Brignolles]. He was already
advanced in years, and lived in a very retired manner.
About the epoch of the coronation, some petty affair connected with his curacy – just
what, is not precisely known – took him to Paris. Among other powerful persons to whom
he went to solicit aid for his parishioners was M. le Cardinal Fesch. One day, when the
Emperor had come to visit his uncle, the worthy Cure, who was waiting in the anteroom,
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CHAPTER I − M. MYRIEL 6
found himself present when His Majesty passed. Napoleon, on finding himself observed
with a certain curiosity by this old man, turned round and said abruptly: –
"Who is this good man who is staring at me?"
"Sire," said M. Myriel, "you are looking at a good man, and I at a great man. Each of us
can profit by it."
That very evening, the Emperor asked the Cardinal the name of the Cure, and some time
afterwards M. Myriel was utterly astonished to learn that he had been appointed Bishop of D
– –
What truth was there, after all, in the stories which were invented as to the early portion
of M. Myriel's life? No one knew. Very few families had been acquainted with the Myriel
family before the Revolution.
M. Myriel had to undergo the fate of every newcomer in a little town, where there are
many mouths which talk, and very few heads which think. He was obliged to undergo it
although he was a bishop, and because he was a bishop. But after all, the rumors with which
his name was connected were rumors only, – noise, sayings, words; less than words –
palabres, as the energetic language of the South expresses it.
However that may be, after nine years of episcopal power and of residence in D – – , all
the stories and subjects of conversation which engross petty towns and petty people at the
outset had fallen into profound oblivion. No one would have dared to mention them; no one
would have dared to recall them.
M. Myriel had arrived at D – – accompanied by an elderly spinster, Mademoiselle
Baptistine, who was his sister, and ten years his junior.
Their only domestic was a female servant of the same age as Mademoiselle Baptistine,
and named Madame Magloire, who, after having been the servant of M. le Cure, now
assumed the double title of maid to Mademoiselle and housekeeper to Monseigneur.
Mademoiselle Baptistine was a long, pale, thin, gentle creature; she realized the ideal
expressed by the word "respectable"; for it seems that a woman must needs be a mother in
order to be venerable. She had never been pretty; her whole life, which had been nothing but
a succession of holy deeds, had finally conferred upon her a sort of pallor and transparency;
and as she advanced in years she had acquired what may be called the beauty of goodness.
What had been leanness in her youth had become transparency in her maturity; and this
diaphaneity allowed the angel to be seen. She was a soul rather than a virgin. Her person
seemed made of a shadow; there was hardly sufficient body to provide for sex; a little matter
enclosing a light; large eyes forever drooping; – a mere pretext for a soul's remaining on the
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CHAPTER I − M. MYRIEL 7
earth.
Madame Magloire was a little, fat, white old woman, corpulent and bustling; always out
of breath, – in the first place, because of her activity, and in the next, because of her asthma.
On his arrival, M. Myriel was installed in the episcopal palace with the honors required
by the Imperial decrees, which class a bishop immediately after a major−general. The mayor
and the president paid the first call on him, and he, in turn, paid the first call on the general
and the prefect.
The installation over, the town waited to see its bishop at work.
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CHAPTER I − M. MYRIEL 8
CHAPTER II − M. MYRIEL BECOMES M. WELCOME
The episcopal palace of D – – adjoins the hospital.
The episcopal palace was a huge and beautiful house, built of stone at the beginning of
the last century by M. Henri Puget, Doctor of Theology of the Faculty of Paris, Abbe of
Simore, who had been Bishop of D – – in 1712. This palace was a genuine seignorial
residence. Everything about it had a grand air, – the apartments of the Bishop, the
drawing−rooms, the chambers, the principal courtyard, which was very large, with walks
encircling it under arcades in the old Florentine fashion, and gardens planted with
magnificent trees. In the dining−room, a long and superb gallery which was
,to star? Very well. We shall be the
grasshoppers of the stars. And then, besides, we shall see God. Ta, ta, ta! What twaddle all
these paradises are! God is a nonsensical monster. I would not say that in the Moniteur,
egad! but I may whisper it among friends. Inter pocula. To sacrifice the world to paradise is
to let slip the prey for the shadow. Be the dupe of the infinite! I'm not such a fool. I am a
nought. I call myself Monsieur le Comte Nought, senator. Did I exist before my birth? No.
Shall I exist after death? No. What am I? A little dust collected in an organism. What am I to
do on this earth? The choice rests with me: suffer or enjoy. Whither will suffering lead me?
To nothingness; but I shall have suffered. Whither will enjoyment lead me? To nothingness;
but I shall have enjoyed myself. My choice is made. One must eat or be eaten. I shall eat. It
is better to be the tooth than the grass. Such is my wisdom. After which, go whither I push
thee, the grave−digger is there; the Pantheon for some of us: all falls into the great hole.
End. Finis. Total liquidation. This is the vanishing−point. Death is death, believe me. I laugh
at the idea of there being any one who has anything to tell me on that subject. Fables of
nurses; bugaboo for children; Jehovah for men. No; our to−morrow is the night. Beyond the
tomb there is nothing but equal nothingness. You have been Sardanapalus, you have been
Vincent de Paul – it makes no difference. That is the truth. Then live your life, above all
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CHAPTER VIII − PHILOSOPHY AFTER DRINKING 35
things. Make use of your I while you have it. In truth, Bishop, I tell you that I have a
philosophy of my own, and I have my philosophers. I don't let myself be taken in with that
nonsense. Of course, there must be something for those who are down, – for the barefooted
beggars, knife−grinders, and miserable wretches. Legends, chimeras, the soul, immortality,
paradise, the stars, are provided for them to swallow. They gobble it down. They spread it
on their dry bread. He who has nothing else has the good. God. That is the least he can have.
I oppose no objection to that; but I reserve Monsieur Naigeon for myself. The good God is
good for the populace."
The Bishop clapped his hands.
"That's talking!" he exclaimed. "What an excellent and really marvellous thing is this
materialism! Not every one who wants it can have it. Ah! when one does have it, one is no
longer a dupe, one does not stupidly allow one's self to be exiled like Cato, nor stoned like
Stephen, nor burned alive like Jeanne d'Arc. Those who have succeeded in procuring this
admirable materialism have the joy of feeling themselves irresponsible, and of thinking that
they can devour everything without uneasiness, – places, sinecures, dignities, power,
whether well or ill acquired, lucrative recantations, useful treacheries, savory capitulations
of conscience, – and that they shall enter the tomb with their digestion accomplished. How
agreeable that is! I do not say that with reference to you, senator. Nevertheless, it is
impossible for me to refrain from congratulating you. You great lords have, so you say, a
philosophy of your own, and for yourselves, which is exquisite, refined, accessible to the
rich alone, good for all sauces, and which seasons the voluptuousness of life admirably. This
philosophy has been extracted from the depths, and unearthed by special seekers. But you
are good−natured princes, and you do not think it a bad thing that belief in the good God
should constitute the philosophy of the people, very much as the goose stuffed with
chestnuts is the truffled turkey of the poor."
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CHAPTER VIII − PHILOSOPHY AFTER DRINKING 36
CHAPTER IX − THE BROTHER AS DEPICTED BY THE SISTER
In order to furnish an idea of the private establishment of the Bishop of D – – , and of
the manner in which those two sainted women subordinated their actions, their thoughts,
their feminine instincts even, which are easily alarmed, to the habits and purposes of the
Bishop, without his even taking the trouble of speaking in order to explain them, we cannot
do better than transcribe in this place a letter from Mademoiselle Baptistine to Madame the
Vicomtess de Boischevron, the friend of her childhood. This letter is in our possession.
D – – , Dec. 16, 18 – . MY GOOD MADAM: Not a day passes without our speaking of
you. It is our established custom; but there is another reason besides. Just imagine, while
washing and dusting the ceilings and walls, Madam Magloire has made some discoveries;
now our two chambers hung with antique paper whitewashed over, would not discredit a
chateau in the style of yours. Madam Magloire has pulled off all the paper. There were
things beneath. My drawing−room, which contains no furniture, and which we use for
spreading out the linen after washing, is fifteen feet in height, eighteen square, with a ceiling
which was formerly painted and gilded, and with beams, as in yours. This was covered with
a cloth while this was the hospital. And the woodwork was of the era of our grandmothers.
But my room is the one you ought to see. Madam Magloire has discovered, under at least ten
thicknesses of paper pasted on top, some paintings, which without being good are very
tolerable. The subject is Telemachus being knighted by Minerva in some gardens, the name
of which escapes me. In short, where the Roman ladies repaired on one single night. What
shall I say to you? I have Romans, and Roman ladies [here occurs an illegible word], and the
whole train. Madam Magloire has cleaned it all off; this summer she is going to have some
small injuries repaired, and the whole revarnished, and my chamber will be a regular
museum. She has also found in a corner of the attic two wooden pier−tables of ancient
fashion. They asked us two crowns of six francs each to regild them, but it is much better to
give the money to the poor; and they are very ugly besides, and I should much prefer a
round table of mahogany.
I am always very happy. My brother is so good. He gives all he has to the poor and sick.
We are very much cramped. The country is trying in the winter, and we really must do
something for those who are in need. We are almost comfortably lighted and warmed. You
see that these are great treats.
My brother has ways of his own. When he talks, he says that a bishop ought to be so.
Just imagine! the door of our house is never fastened. Whoever chooses to enter finds
himself at once in my brother's room. He fears nothing, even at night. That is his sort of
bravery, he says.
He does not wish me or Madame Magloire feel any fear for him. He exposes himself to
all sorts of dangers, and he does not like to have us even seem to notice it. One must know
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CHAPTER IX − THE BROTHER AS DEPICTED BY THE SISTER 37
how to understand him.
He goes out in the rain, he walks in the water, he travels in winter. He fears neither
suspicious roads nor dangerous encounters, nor night.
Last year he went quite alone into a country of robbers. He would not take us. He was
absent for a fortnight. On his return nothing had happened to him; he was thought to be
dead, but was perfectly well, and said, "This is the way I have been robbed!" And then he
opened a trunk full of jewels, all the jewels of the cathedral of Embrun, which the thieves
had given him.
When he returned on that occasion, I could not refrain from scolding him a little, taking
care, however, not to speak except when the carriage was making a noise, so that no one
might hear me.
At first I used to say to myself, "There are no dangers which will stop him; he is
terrible." Now I have ended by getting used to it. I make a sign to Madam Magloire that she
is not to oppose him. He risks himself as he sees fit. I carry off
,Madam Magloire, I enter my
chamber, I pray for him and fall asleep. I am at ease, because I know that if anything were to
happen to him, it would be the end of me. I should go to the good God with my brother and
my bishop. It has cost Madam Magloire more trouble than it did me to accustom herself to
what she terms his imprudences. But now the habit has been acquired. We pray together, we
tremble together, and we fall asleep. If the devil were to enter this house, he would be
allowed to do so. After all, what is there for us to fear in this house? There is always some
one with us who is stronger than we. The devil may pass through it, but the good God dwells
here.
This suffices me. My brother has no longer any need of saying a word to me. I
understand him without his speaking, and we abandon ourselves to the care of Providence.
That is the way one has to do with a man who possesses grandeur of soul.
I have interrogated my brother with regard to the information which you desire on the
subject of the Faux family. You are aware that he knows everything, and that he has
memories, because he is still a very good royalist. They really are a very ancient Norman
family of the generalship of Caen. Five hundred years ago there was a Raoul de Faux, a Jean
de Faux, and a Thomas de Faux, who were gentlemen, and one of whom was a seigneur de
Rochefort. The last was Guy−Etienne−Alexandre, and was commander of a regiment, and
something in the light horse of Bretagne. His daughter, Marie−Louise, married
Adrien−Charles de Gramont, son of the Duke Louis de Gramont, peer of France, colonel of
the French guards, and lieutenant−general of the army. It is written Faux, Fauq, and Faoucq.
Good Madame, recommend us to the prayers of your sainted relative, Monsieur the
Cardinal. As for your dear Sylvanie, she has done well in not wasting the few moments
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CHAPTER IX − THE BROTHER AS DEPICTED BY THE SISTER 38
which she passes with you in writing to me. She is well, works as you would wish, and loves
me.
That is all that I desire. The souvenir which she sent through you reached me safely, and
it makes me very happy. My health is not so very bad, and yet I grow thinner every day.
Farewell; my paper is at an end, and this forces me to leave you. A thousand good wishes.
BAPTISTINE.
P.S. Your grand nephew is charming. Do you know that he will soon be five years old?
Yesterday he saw some one riding by on horseback who had on knee−caps, and he said,
"What has he got on his knees?" He is a charming child! His little brother is dragging an old
broom about the room, like a carriage, and saying, "Hu!"
As will be perceived from this letter, these two women understood how to mould
themselves to the Bishop's ways with that special feminine genius which comprehends the
man better than he comprehends himself. The Bishop of D – – , in spite of the gentle and
candid air which never deserted him, sometimes did things that were grand, bold, and
magnificent, without seeming to have even a suspicion of the fact. They trembled, but they
let him alone. Sometimes Madame Magloire essayed a remonstrance in advance, but never
at the time, nor afterwards. They never interfered with him by so much as a word or sign, in
any action once entered upon. At certain moments, without his having occasion to mention
it, when he was not even conscious of it himself in all probability, so perfect was his
simplicity, they vaguely felt that he was acting as a bishop; then they were nothing more
than two shadows in the house. They served him passively; and if obedience consisted in
disappearing, they disappeared. They understood, with an admirable delicacy of instinct, that
certain cares may be put under constraint. Thus, even when believing him to be in peril, they
understood, I will not say his thought, but his nature, to such a degree that they no longer
watched over him. They confided him to God.
Moreover, Baptistine said, as we have just read, that her brother's end would prove her
own. Madame Magloire did not say this, but she knew it.
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CHAPTER IX − THE BROTHER AS DEPICTED BY THE SISTER 39
CHAPTER X − THE BISHOP IN THE PRESENCE OF AN
UNKNOWN LIGHT
A t an epoch a little later than the date of the letter cited in the preceding pages, he did a
thing which, if the whole town was to be believed, was even more hazardous than his trip
across the mountains infested with bandits.
In the country near D – – a man lived quite alone. This man, we will state at once, was a
former member of the Convention. His name was G – –
Member of the Convention, G – – was mentioned with a sort of horror in the little world
of D – – A member of the Convention – can you imagine such a thing? That existed from
the time when people called each other thou, and when they said "citizen." This man was
almost a monster. He had not voted for the death of the king, but almost. He was a
quasi−regicide. He had been a terrible man. How did it happen that such a man had not been
brought before a provost's court, on the return of the legitimate princes? They need not have
cut off his head, if you please; clemency must be exercised, agreed; but a good banishment
for life. An example, in short, etc. Besides, he was an atheist, like all the rest of those
people. Gossip of the geese about the vulture.
Was G – – a vulture after all? Yes; if he were to be judged by the element of ferocity in
this solitude of his. As he had not voted for the death of the king, he had not been included
in the decrees of exile, and had been able to remain in France.
He dwelt at a distance of three−quarters of an hour from the city, far from any hamlet,
far from any road, in some hidden turn of a very wild valley, no one knew exactly where. He
had there, it was said, a sort of field, a hole, a lair. There were no neighbors, not even
passers−by. Since he had dwelt in that valley, the path which led thither had disappeared
under a growth of grass. The locality was spoken of as though it had been the dwelling of a
hangman.
Nevertheless, the Bishop meditated on the subject, and from time to time he gazed at
the horizon at a point where a clump of trees marked the valley of the former member of the
Convention, and he said, "There is a soul yonder which is lonely."
And he added, deep in his own mind, "I owe him a visit."
But, let us avow it, this idea, which seemed natural at the first blush, appeared to him
after a moment's reflection, as strange, impossible, and almost repulsive. For, at bottom, he
shared the general impression, and the old member of the Convention inspired him, without
his being clearly conscious of the fact himself, with that sentiment which borders on hate,
and which is so well expressed by the word estrangement.
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CHAPTER X − THE BISHOP IN THE PRESENCE OF AN UNKNOWN LIGHT 40
Still, should the scab of the sheep cause the shepherd to recoil? No. But what a sheep!
The good Bishop was perplexed. Sometimes he set out in that direction; then he
returned.
Finally, the rumor one day spread through the town that a sort of young shepherd, who
served the member of the Convention in his hovel, had come in quest of a doctor; that the
old wretch was dying, that paralysis was gaining on him, and that he would not live over
night. – "Thank God!" some added.
The Bishop took his staff, put on his cloak, on account of his too threadbare cassock, as
we have mentioned, and because of the evening breeze which was sure to rise soon, and set
out.
The sun was setting, and had almost touched the horizon when the Bishop arrived at the
excommunicated spot. With a certain beating of the heart, he recognized the fact that he was
near the lair. He strode over a ditch, leaped a hedge, made his way through a fence of dead
boughs, entered a neglected
,paddock, took a few steps with a good deal of boldness, and
suddenly, at the extremity of the waste land, and behind lofty brambles, he caught sight of
the cavern.
It was a very low hut, poor, small, and clean, with a vine nailed against the outside.
Near the door, in an old wheel−chair, the arm−chair of the peasants, there was a
white−haired man, smiling at the sun.
Near the seated man stood a young boy, the shepherd lad. He was offering the old man a
jar of milk.
While the Bishop was watching him, the old man spoke: "Thank you," he said, "I need
nothing." And his smile quitted the sun to rest upon the child.
The Bishop stepped forward. At the sound which he made in walking, the old man
turned his head, and his face expressed the sum total of the surprise which a man can still
feel after a long life.
"This is the first time since I have been here," said he, "that any one has entered here.
Who are you, sir?"
The Bishop answered: –
"My name is Bienvenu Myriel."
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CHAPTER X − THE BISHOP IN THE PRESENCE OF AN UNKNOWN LIGHT 41
"Bienvenu Myriel? I have heard that name. Are you the man whom the people call
Monseigneur Welcome?"
"I am."
The old man resumed with a half−smile
"In that case, you are my bishop?"
"Something of that sort."
"Enter, sir."
The member of the Convention extended his hand to the Bishop, but the Bishop did not
take it. The Bishop confined himself to the remark: –
"I am pleased to see that I have been misinformed. You certainly do not seem to me to
be ill."
"Monsieur," replied the old man, "I am going to recover."
He paused, and then said: –
"I shall die three hours hence."
Then he continued: –
"I am something of a doctor; I know in what fashion the last hour draws on. Yesterday,
only my feet were cold; to−day, the chill has ascended to my knees; now I feel it mounting
to my waist; when it reaches the heart, I shall stop. The sun is beautiful, is it not? I had
myself wheeled out here to take a last look at things. You can talk to me; it does not fatigue
me. You have done well to come and look at a man who is on the point of death. It is well
that there should be witnesses at that moment. One has one's caprices; I should have liked to
last until the dawn, but I know that I shall hardly live three hours. It will be night then. What
does it matter, after all? Dying is a simple affair. One has no need of the light for that. So be
it. I shall die by starlight."
The old man turned to the shepherd lad: –
"Go to thy bed; thou wert awake all last night; thou art tired."
The child entered the hut.
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CHAPTER X − THE BISHOP IN THE PRESENCE OF AN UNKNOWN LIGHT 42
The old man followed him with his eyes, and added, as though speaking to himself: –
"I shall die while he sleeps. The two slumbers may be good neighbors."
The Bishop was not touched as it seems that he should have been. He did not think he
discerned God in this manner of dying; let us say the whole, for these petty contradictions of
great hearts must be indicated like the rest: he, who on occasion, was so fond of laughing at
"His Grace," was rather shocked at not being addressed as Monseigneur, and he was almost
tempted to retort "citizen." He was assailed by a fancy for peevish familiarity, common
enough to doctors and priests, but which was not habitual with him. This man, after all, this
member of the Convention, this representative of the people, had been one of the powerful
ones of the earth; for the first time in his life, probably, the Bishop felt in a mood to be
severe.
Meanwhile, the member of the Convention had been surveying him with a modest
cordiality, in which one could have distinguished, possibly, that humility which is so fitting
when one is on the verge of returning to dust.
The Bishop, on his side, although he generally restrained his curiosity, which, in his
opinion, bordered on a fault, could not refrain from examining the member of the
Convention with an attention which, as it did not have its course in sympathy, would have
served his conscience as a matter of reproach, in connection with any other man. A member
of the Convention produced on him somewhat the effect of being outside the pale of the law,
even of the law of charity. G – – , calm, his body almost upright, his voice vibrating, was
one of those octogenarians who form the subject of astonishment to the physiologist. The
Revolution had many of these men, proportioned to the epoch. In this old man one was
conscious of a man put to the proof. Though so near to his end, he preserved all the gestures
of health. In his clear glance, in his firm tone, in the robust movement of his shoulders, there
was something calculated to disconcert death. Azrael, the Mohammedan angel of the
sepulchre, would have turned back, and thought that he had mistaken the door. G – – seemed
to be dying because he willed it so. There was freedom in his agony. His legs alone were
motionless. It was there that the shadows held him fast. His feet were cold and dead, but his
head survived with all the power of life, and seemed full of light. G – – , at this solemn
moment, resembled the king in that tale of the Orient who was flesh above and marble
below.
There was a stone there. The Bishop sat down. The exordium was abrupt.
"I congratulate you," said he, in the tone which one uses for a reprimand. "You did not
vote for the death of the king, after all."
The old member of the Convention did not appear to notice the bitter meaning
underlying the words "after all." He replied. The smile had quite disappeared from his face.
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CHAPTER X − THE BISHOP IN THE PRESENCE OF AN UNKNOWN LIGHT 43
"Do not congratulate me too much, sir. I did vote for the death of the tyrant."
It was the tone of austerity answering the tone of severity.
"What do you mean to say?" resumed the Bishop.
"I mean to say that man has a tyrant, – ignorance. I voted for the death of that tyrant.
That tyrant engendered royalty, which is authority falsely understood, while science is
authority rightly understood. Man should be governed only by science."
"And conscience," added the Bishop.
"It is the same thing. Conscience is the quantity of innate science which we have within
us."
Monseigneur Bienvenu listened in some astonishment to this language, which was very
new to him.
The member of the Convention resumed: –
"So far as Louis XVI. was concerned, I said `no.' I did not think that I had the right to
kill a man; but I felt it my duty to exterminate evil. I voted the end of the tyrant, that is to
say, the end of prostitution for woman, the end of slavery for man, the end of night for the
child. In voting for the Republic, I voted for that. I voted for fraternity, concord, the dawn. I
have aided in the overthrow of prejudices and errors. The crumbling away of prejudices and
errors causes light. We have caused the fall of the old world, and the old world, that vase of
miseries, has become, through its upsetting upon the human race, an urn of joy."
"Mixed joy," said the Bishop.
"You may say troubled joy, and to−day, after that fatal return of the past, which is
called 1814, joy which has disappeared! Alas! The work was incomplete, I admit: we
demolished the ancient regime in deeds; we were not able to suppress it entirely in ideas. To
destroy abuses is not sufficient; customs must be modified. The mill is there no longer; the
wind is still there."
"You have demolished. It may be of use to demolish, but I distrust a demolition
complicated with wrath."
"Right has its wrath, Bishop; and the wrath of right is an element of progress. In any
case, and in spite of whatever may be said, the French Revolution is the most important step
of
,the human race since the advent of Christ. Incomplete, it may be, but sublime. It set free
all the unknown social quantities; it softened spirits, it calmed, appeased, enlightened; it
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caused the waves of civilization to flow over the earth. It was a good thing. The French
Revolution is the consecration of humanity."
The Bishop could not refrain from murmuring: –
"Yes? '93!"
The member of the Convention straightened himself up in his chair with an almost
lugubrious solemnity, and exclaimed, so far as a dying man is capable of exclamation: –
"Ah, there you go; '93! I was expecting that word. A cloud had been forming for the
space of fifteen hundred years; at the end of fifteen hundred years it burst. You are putting
the thunderbolt on its trial."
The Bishop felt, without, perhaps, confessing it, that something within him had suffered
extinction. Nevertheless, he put a good face on the matter. He replied: –
"The judge speaks in the name of justice; the priest speaks in the name of pity, which is
nothing but a more lofty justice. A thunderbolt should commit no error." And he added,
regarding the member of the Convention steadily the while, "Louis XVII.?"
The conventionary stretched forth his hand and grasped the Bishop's arm.
"Louis XVII.! let us see. For whom do you mourn? is it for the innocent child? very
good; in that case I mourn with you. Is it for the royal child? I demand time for reflection.
To me, the brother of Cartouche, an innocent child who was hung up by the armpits in the
Place de Greve, until death ensued, for the sole crime of having been the brother of
Cartouche, is no less painful than the grandson of Louis XV., an innocent child, martyred in
the tower of the Temple, for the sole crime of having been grandson of Louis XV."
"Monsieur," said the Bishop, "I like not this conjunction of names."
"Cartouche? Louis XV.? To which of the two do you object?"
A momentary silence ensued. The Bishop almost regretted having come, and yet he felt
vaguely and strangely shaken.
The conventionary resumed: –
"Ah, Monsieur Priest, you love not the crudities of the true. Christ loved them. He
seized a rod and cleared out the Temple. His scourge, full of lightnings, was a harsh speaker
of truths. When he cried, `Sinite parvulos,' he made no distinction between the little
children. It would not have embarrassed him to bring together the Dauphin of Barabbas and
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the Dauphin of Herod. Innocence, Monsieur, is its own crown. Innocence has no need to be
a highness. It is as august in rags as in fleurs de lys."
"That is true," said the Bishop in a low voice.
"I persist," continued the conventionary G – – "You have mentioned Louis XVII. to me.
Let us come to an understanding. Shall we weep for all the innocent, all martyrs, all
children, the lowly as well as the exalted? I agree to that. But in that case, as I have told you,
we must go back further than '93, and our tears must begin before Louis XVII. I will weep
with you over the children of kings, provided that you will weep with me over the children
of the people."
"I weep for all," said the Bishop.
"Equally!" exclaimed conventionary G – – ; "and if the balance must incline, let it be on
the side of the people. They have been suffering longer."
Another silence ensued. The conventionary was the first to break it. He raised himself
on one elbow, took a bit of his cheek between his thumb and his forefinger, as one does
mechanically when one interrogates and judges, and appealed to the Bishop with a gaze full
of all the forces of the death agony. It was almost an explosion.
"Yes, sir, the people have been suffering a long while. And hold! that is not all, either;
why have you just questioned me and talked to me about Louis XVII.? I know you not. Ever
since I have been in these parts I have dwelt in this enclosure alone, never setting foot
outside, and seeing no one but that child who helps me. Your name has reached me in a
confused manner, it is true, and very badly pronounced, I must admit; but that signifies
nothing: clever men have so many ways of imposing on that honest goodman, the people.
By the way, I did not hear the sound of your carriage; you have left it yonder, behind the
coppice at the fork of the roads, no doubt. I do not know you, I tell you. You have told me
that you are the Bishop; but that affords me no information as to your moral personality. In
short, I repeat my question. Who are you? You are a bishop; that is to say, a prince of the
church, one of those gilded men with heraldic bearings and revenues, who have vast
prebends, – the bishopric of D – – fifteen thousand francs settled income, ten thousand in
perquisites; total, twenty−five thousand francs, – who have kitchens, who have liveries, who
make good cheer, who eat moor−hens on Friday, who strut about, a lackey before, a lackey
behind, in a gala coach, and who have palaces, and who roll in their carriages in the name of
Jesus Christ who went barefoot! You are a prelate, – revenues, palace, horses, servants, good
table, all the sensualities of life; you have this like the rest, and like the rest, you enjoy it; it
is well; but this says either too much or too little; this does not enlighten me upon the
intrinsic and essential value of the man who comes with the probable intention of bringing
wisdom to me. To whom do I speak? Who are you?"
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The Bishop hung his head and replied, "Vermis sum – I am a worm."
"A worm of the earth in a carriage?" growled the conventionary.
It was the conventionary's turn to be arrogant, and the Bishop's to be humble.
The Bishop resumed mildly: –
"So be it, sir. But explain to me how my carriage, which is a few paces off behind the
trees yonder, how my good table and the moor−hens which I eat on Friday, how my
twenty−five thousand francs income, how my palace and my lackeys prove that clemency is
not a duty, and that '93 was not inexorable.
The conventionary passed his hand across his brow, as though to sweep away a cloud.
"Before replying to you," he said, "I beseech you to pardon me. I have just committed a
wrong, sir. You are at my house, you are my guest, I owe you courtesy. You discuss my
ideas, and it becomes me to confine myself to combating your arguments. Your riches and
your pleasures are advantages which I hold over you in the debate; but good taste dictates
that I shall not make use of them. I promise you to make no use of them in the future."
"I thank you," said the Bishop.
G – – resumed.
"Let us return to the explanation which you have asked of me. Where were we? What
were you saying to me? That '93 was inexorable?"
"Inexorable; yes," said the Bishop. "What think you of Marat clapping his hands at the
guillotine?"
"What think you of Bossuet chanting the Te Deum over the dragonnades?"
The retort was a harsh one, but it attained its mark with the directness of a point of steel.
The Bishop quivered under it; no reply occurred to him; but he was offended by this mode
of alluding to Bossuet. The best of minds will have their fetiches, and they sometimes feel
vaguely wounded by the want of respect of logic.
The conventionary began to pant; the asthma of the agony which is mingled with the
last breaths interrupted his voice; still, there was a perfect lucidity of soul in his eyes. He
went on: –
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"Let me say a few words more in this and that direction; I am willing. Apart from the
Revolution, which, taken as a whole, is an immense human
,affirmation, '93 is, alas! a
rejoinder. You think it inexorable, sir; but what of the whole monarchy, sir? Carrier is a
bandit; but what name do you give to Montrevel? Fouquier−Tainville is a rascal; but what is
your opinion as to Lamoignon−Baville? Maillard is terrible; but Saulx−Tavannes, if you
please? duch*ene senior is ferocious; but what epithet will you allow me for the elder
Letellier? Jourdan−Coupe−Tete is a monster; but not so great a one as M. the Marquis de
Louvois. Sir, sir, I am sorry for Marie Antoinette, archduch*ess and queen; but I am also
sorry for that poor Huguenot woman, who, in 1685, under Louis the Great, sir, while with a
nursing infant, was bound, naked to the waist, to a stake, and the child kept at a distance; her
breast swelled with milk and her heart with anguish; the little one, hungry and pale, beheld
that breast and cried and agonized; the executioner said to the woman, a mother and a nurse,
`Abjure!' giving her her choice between the death of her infant and the death of her
conscience. What say you to that torture of Tantalus as applied to a mother? Bear this well
in mind sir: the French Revolution had its reasons for existence; its wrath will be absolved
by the future; its result is the world made better. From its most terrible blows there comes
forth a caress for the human race. I abridge, I stop, I have too much the advantage;
moreover, I am dying."
And ceasing to gaze at the Bishop, the conventionary concluded his thoughts in these
tranquil words: –
"Yes, the brutalities of progress are called revolutions. When they are over, this fact is
recognized, – that the human race has been treated harshly, but that it has progressed."
The conventionary doubted not that he had successively conquered all the inmost
intrenchments of the Bishop. One remained, however, and from this intrenchment, the last
resource of Monseigneur Bienvenu's resistance, came forth this reply, wherein appeared
nearly all the harshness of the beginning: –
"Progress should believe in God. Good cannot have an impious servitor. He who is an
atheist is but a bad leader for the human race."
The former representative of the people made no reply. He was seized with a fit of
trembling. He looked towards heaven, and in his glance a tear gathered slowly. When the
eyelid was full, the tear trickled down his livid cheek, and he said, almost in a stammer,
quite low, and to himself, while his eyes were plunged in the depths: –
"O thou! O ideal! Thou alone existest!"
The Bishop experienced an indescribable shock.
After a pause, the old man raised a finger heavenward and said: –
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"The infinite is. He is there. If the infinite had no person, person would be without limit;
it would not be infinite; in other words, it would not exist. There is, then, an I. That I of the
infinite is God."
The dying man had pronounced these last words in a loud voice, and with the shiver of
ecstasy, as though he beheld some one. When he had spoken, his eyes closed. The effort had
exhausted him. It was evident that he had just lived through in a moment the few hours
which had been left to him. That which he had said brought him nearer to him who is in
death. The supreme moment was approaching.
The Bishop understood this; time pressed; it was as a priest that he had come: from
extreme coldness he had passed by degrees to extreme emotion; he gazed at those closed
eyes, he took that wrinkled, aged and ice−cold hand in his, and bent over the dying man.
"This hour is the hour of God. Do you not think that it would be regrettable if we had
met in vain?"
The conventionary opened his eyes again. A gravity mingled with gloom was imprinted
on his countenance.
"Bishop," said he, with a slowness which probably arose more from his dignity of soul
than from the failing of his strength, "I have passed my life in meditation, study, and
contemplation. I was sixty years of age when my country called me and commanded me to
concern myself with its affairs. I obeyed. Abuses existed, I combated them; tyrannies
existed, I destroyed them; rights and principles existed, I proclaimed and confessed them.
Our territory was invaded, I defended it; France was menaced, I offered my breast. I was not
rich; I am poor. I have been one of the masters of the state; the vaults of the treasury were
encumbered with specie to such a degree that we were forced to shore up the walls, which
were on the point of bursting beneath the weight of gold and silver; I dined in Dead Tree
Street, at twenty−two sous. I have succored the oppressed, I have comforted the suffering. I
tore the cloth from the altar, it is true; but it was to bind up the wounds of my country. I have
always upheld the march forward of the human race, forward towards the light, and I have
sometimes resisted progress without pity. I have, when the occasion offered, protected my
own adversaries, men of your profession. And there is at Peteghem, in Flanders, at the very
spot where the Merovingian kings had their summer palace, a convent of Urbanists, the
Abbey of Sainte Claire en Beaulieu, which I saved in 1793. I have done my duty according
to my powers, and all the good that I was able. After which, I was hunted down, pursued,
persecuted, blackened, jeered at, scorned, cursed, proscribed. For many years past, I with my
white hair have been conscious that many people think they have the right to despise me; to
the poor ignorant masses I present the visage of one damned. And I accept this isolation of
hatred, without hating any one myself. Now I am eighty−six years old; I am on the point of
death. What is it that you have come to ask of me?"
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"Your blessing," said the Bishop.
And he knelt down.
When the Bishop raised his head again, the face of the conventionary had become
august. He had just expired.
The Bishop returned home, deeply absorbed in thoughts which cannot be known to us.
He passed the whole night in prayer. On the following morning some bold and curious
persons attempted to speak to him about member of the Convention G – – ; he contented
himself with pointing heavenward.
From that moment he redoubled his tenderness and brotherly feeling towards all
children and sufferers.
Any allusion to "that old wretch of a G – – " caused him to fall into a singular
preoccupation. No one could say that the passage of that soul before his, and the reflection
of that grand conscience upon his, did not count for something in his approach to perfection.
This "pastoral visit" naturally furnished an occasion for a murmur of comment in all the
little local coteries.
"Was the bedside of such a dying man as that the proper place for a bishop? There was
evidently no conversion to be expected. All those revolutionists are backsliders. Then why
go there? What was there to be seen there? He must have been very curious indeed to see a
soul carried off by the devil."
One day a dowager of the impertinent variety who thinks herself spiritual, addressed
this sally to him, "Monseigneur, people are inquiring when Your Greatness will receive the
red cap!" – "Oh! oh! that's a coarse color," replied the Bishop. "It is lucky that those who
despise it in a cap revere it in a hat."
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CHAPTER XI − A RESTRICTION
We should incur a great risk of deceiving ourselves, were we to conclude from this that
Monseigneur Welcome was "a philosophical bishop," or a "patriotic cure." His meeting,
which may almost be designated as his union, with conventionary G – – , left behind it in his
mind a sort of astonishment, which rendered him still more gentle. That is all.
,Although Monseigneur Bienvenu was far from being a politician, this is, perhaps, the
place to indicate very briefly what his attitude was in the events of that epoch, supposing
that Monseigneur Bienvenu ever dreamed of having an attitude.
Let us, then, go back a few years.
Some time after the elevation of M. Myriel to the episcopate, the Emperor had made
him a baron of the Empire, in company with many other bishops. The arrest of the Pope took
place, as every one knows, on the night of the 5th to the 6th of July, 1809; on this occasion,
M. Myriel was summoned by Napoleon to the synod of the bishops of France and Italy
convened at Paris. This synod was held at Notre−Dame, and assembled for the first time on
the 15th of June, 1811, under the presidency of Cardinal Fesch. M. Myriel was one
of the ninety−five bishops who attended it. But he was present only at one sitting and at
three or four private conferences. Bishop of a mountain diocese, living so very close to
nature, in rusticity and deprivation, it appeared that he imported among these eminent
personages, ideas which altered the temperature of the assembly. He very soon returned to D
– – He was interrogated as to this speedy return, and he replied: "I embarrassed them. The
outside air penetrated to them through me. I produced on them the effect of an open door."
On another occasion he said, "What would you have? Those gentlemen are princes. I
am only a poor peasant bishop."
The fact is that he displeased them. Among other strange things, it is said that he
chanced to remark one evening, when he found himself at the house of one of his most
notable colleagues: "What beautiful clocks! What beautiful carpets! What beautiful liveries!
They must be a great trouble. I would not have all those superfluities, crying incessantly in
my ears: `There are people who are hungry! There are people who are cold! There are poor
people! There are poor people!'"
Let us remark, by the way, that the hatred of luxury is not an intelligent hatred. This
hatred would involve the hatred of the arts. Nevertheless, in churchmen, luxury is wrong,
except in connection with representations and ceremonies. It seems to reveal habits which
have very little that is charitable about them. An opulent priest is a contradiction. The priest
must keep close to the poor. Now, can one come in contact incessantly night and day with
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all this distress, all these misfortunes, and this poverty, without having about one's own
person a little of that misery, like the dust of labor? Is it possible to imagine a man near a
brazier who is not warm? Can one imagine a workman who is working near a furnace, and
who has neither a singed hair, nor blackened nails, nor a drop of sweat, nor a speck of ashes
on his face? The first proof of charity in the priest, in the bishop especially, is poverty.
This is, no doubt, what the Bishop of D – – thought.
It must not be supposed, however, that he shared what we call the "ideas of the century"
on certain delicate points. He took very little part in the theological quarrels of the moment,
and maintained silence on questions in which Church and State were implicated; but if he
had been strongly pressed, it seems that he would have been found to be an ultramontane
rather than a gallican. Since we are making a portrait, and since we do not wish to conceal
anything, we are forced to add that he was glacial towards Napoleon in his decline.
Beginning with 1813, he gave in his adherence to or applauded all hostile manifestations. He
refused to see him, as he passed through on his return from the island of Elba, and he
abstained from ordering public prayers for the Emperor in his diocese during the Hundred
Days.
Besides his sister, Mademoiselle Baptistine, he had two brothers, one a general, the
other a prefect. He wrote to both with tolerable frequency. He was harsh for a time towards
the former, because, holding a command in Provence at the epoch of the disembarkation at
Cannes, the general had put himself at the head of twelve hundred men and had pursued the
Emperor as though the latter had been a person whom one is desirous of allowing to escape.
His correspondence with the other brother, the ex−prefect, a fine, worthy man who lived in
retirement at Paris, Rue Cassette, remained more affectionate.
Thus Monseigneur Bienvenu also had his hour of party spirit, his hour of bitterness, his
cloud. The shadow of the passions of the moment traversed this grand and gentle spirit
occupied with eternal things. Certainly, such a man would have done well not to entertain
any political opinions. Let there be no mistake as to our meaning: we are not confounding
what is called "political opinions" with the grand aspiration for progress, with the sublime
faith, patriotic, democratic, humane, which in our day should be the very foundation of
every generous intellect. Without going deeply into questions which are only indirectly
connected with the subject of this book, we will simply say this: It would have been well if
Monseigneur Bienvenu had not been a Royalist, and if his glance had never been, for a
single instant, turned away from that serene contemplation in which is distinctly discernible,
above the fictions and the hatreds of this world, above the stormy vicissitudes of human
things, the beaming of those three pure radiances, truth, justice, and charity.
While admitting that it was not for a political office that God created Monseigneur
Welcome, we should have understood and admired his protest in the name of right and
liberty, his proud opposition, his just but perilous resistance to the all−powerful Napoleon.
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But that which pleases us in people who are rising pleases us less in the case of people who
are falling. We only love the fray so long as there is danger, and in any case, the combatants
of the first hour have alone the right to be the exterminators of the last. He who has not been
a stubborn accuser in prosperity should hold his peace in the face of ruin. The denunciator of
success is the only legitimate executioner of the fall. As for us, when Providence intervenes
and strikes, we let it work. 1812 commenced to disarm us. In 1813 the cowardly breach of
silence
of that taciturn legislative body, emboldened by catastrophe, possessed only traits which
aroused indignation. And it was a crime to applaud, in 1814, in the presence of those
marshals who betrayed; in the presence of that senate which passed from one dunghill to
another, insulting after having deified; in the presence of that idolatry which was loosing its
footing and spitting on its idol, – it was a duty to turn aside the head. In 1815, when the
supreme disasters filled the air, when France was seized with a shiver at their sinister
approach, when Waterloo could be dimly discerned opening before Napoleon, the mournful
acclamation of the army and the people to the condemned of destiny had nothing laughable
in it, and, after making all allowance for the despot, a heart like that of the Bishop of D – – ,
ought not perhaps to have failed to recognize the august and touching features presented by
the embrace of a great nation and a great man on the brink of the abyss.
With this exception, he was in all things just, true, equitable, intelligent, humble and
dignified, beneficent and kindly, which is only another sort of benevolence. He was a priest,
a sage, and a man. It must be admitted, that even in the political views with which we have
just reproached him, and which we are disposed to judge almost with severity, he was
tolerant and easy, more so, perhaps, than we who are speaking here. The porter of the
town−hall had been placed there by the Emperor. He was an old non−commissioned officer
of the old
,guard, a member of the Legion of Honor at Austerlitz, as much of a Bonapartist as
the eagle. This poor fellow occasionally let slip inconsiderate remarks, which the law then
stigmatized as seditious speeches. After the imperial profile disappeared from the Legion of
Honor, he never dressed himself in his regimentals, as he said, so that he should not be
obliged to wear his cross. He had himself devoutly removed the imperial effigy from the
cross which Napoleon had given him; this made a hole, and he would not put anything in its
place. "I will die," he said, "rather than wear the three frogs upon my heart!" He liked to
scoff aloud at Louis XVIII. "The gouty old creature in English gaiters!" he said; "let him
take himself off to Prussia with that queue of his." He was happy to combine in the same
imprecation the two things which he most detested, Prussia and England. He did it so often
that he lost his place. There he was, turned out of the house, with his wife and children, and
without bread. The Bishop sent for him, reproved him gently, and appointed him beadle in
the cathedral.
In the course of nine years Monseigneur Bienvenu had, by dint of holy deeds and gentle
manners, filled the town of D – – with a sort of tender and filial reverence. Even his conduct
towards Napoleon had been accepted and tacitly pardoned, as it were, by the people, the
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good and weakly flock who adored their emperor, but loved their bishop.
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CHAPTER XII − THE SOLITUDE OF MONSEIGNEUR WELCOME
A bishop is almost always surrounded by a full squadron of little abbes, just as a
general is by a covey of young officers. This is what that charming Saint Francois de Sales
calls somewhere "les pretres blancs−becs," callow priests. Every career has its aspirants,
who form a train for those who have attained eminence in it. There is no power which has
not its dependents. There is no fortune which has not its court. The seekers of the future
eddy around the splendid present. Every metropolis has its staff of officials. Every bishop
who possesses the least influence has about him his patrol of cherubim from the seminary,
which goes the round, and maintains good order in the episcopal palace, and mounts guard
over monseigneur's smile. To please a bishop is equivalent to getting one's foot in the stirrup
for a sub−diaconate. It is necessary to walk one's path discreetly; the apostleship does not
disdain the canonship.
Just as there are bigwigs elsewhere, there are big mitres in the Church. These are the
bishops who stand well at Court, who are rich, well endowed, skilful, accepted by the world,
who know how to pray, no doubt, but who know also how to beg, who feel little scruple at
making a whole diocese dance attendance in their person, who are connecting links between
the sacristy and diplomacy, who are abbes rather than priests, prelates rather than bishops.
Happy those who approach them! Being persons of influence, they create a shower about
them, upon the assiduous and the favored, and upon all the young men who understand the
art of pleasing, of large parishes, prebends, archidiaconates, chaplaincies, and cathedral
posts, while awaiting episcopal honors. As they advance themselves, they cause their
satellites to progress also; it is a whole solar system on the march. Their radiance casts a
gleam of purple over their suite. Their prosperity is crumbled up behind the scenes, into nice
little promotions. The larger the diocese of the patron, the fatter the curacy for the favorite.
And then, there is Rome. A bishop who understands how to become an archbishop, an
archbishop who knows how to become a cardinal, carries you with him as conclavist; you
enter a court of papal jurisdiction, you receive the pallium, and behold! you are an auditor,
then a papal chamberlain, then monsignor, and from a Grace to an Eminence is only a step,
and between the Eminence and the Holiness there is but the smoke of a ballot. Every
skull−cap may dream of the tiara. The priest is nowadays the only man who can become a
king in a regular manner; and what a king! the supreme king. Then what a nursery of
aspirations is a seminary! How many blushing choristers, how many youthful abbes bear on
their heads Perrette's pot of milk! Who knows how easy it is for ambition to call itself
vocation? in good faith, perchance, and deceiving itself, devotee that it is.
Monseigneur Bienvenu, poor, humble, retiring, was not accounted among the big
mitres. This was plain from the complete absence of young priests about him. We have seen
that he "did not take" in Paris. Not a single future dreamed of engrafting itself on this
solitary old man. Not a single sprouting ambition committed the folly of putting forth its
foliage in his shadow. His canons and grand−vicars were good old men, rather vulgar like
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himself, walled up like him in this diocese, without exit to a cardinalship, and who
resembled their bishop, with this difference, that they were finished and he was completed.
The impossibility of growing great under Monseigneur Bienvenu was so well understood,
that no sooner had the young men whom he ordained left the seminary than they got
themselves recommended to the archbishops of Aix or of Auch, and went off in a great
hurry. For, in short, we repeat it, men wish to be pushed. A saint who dwells in a paroxysm
of abnegation is a dangerous neighbor; he might communicate to you, by contagion, an
incurable poverty, an anchylosis of the joints, which are useful in advancement, and in short,
more renunciation than you desire; and this infectious virtue is avoided. Hence the isolation
of Monseigneur Bienvenu. We live in the midst of a gloomy society. Success; that is the
lesson which falls drop by drop from the slope of corruption.
Be it said in passing, that success is a very hideous thing. Its false resemblance to merit
deceives men. For the masses, success has almost the same profile as supremacy. Success,
that Menaechmus of talent, has one dupe, – history. Juvenal and Tacitus alone grumble at it.
In our day, a philosophy which is almost official has entered into its service, wears the livery
of success, and performs the service of its antechamber. Succeed: theory. Prosperity argues
capacity. Win in the lottery, and behold! you are a clever man. He who triumphs is
venerated. Be born with a silver spoon in your mouth! everything lies in that. Be lucky, and
you will have all the rest; be happy, and people will think you great. Outside of five or six
immense exceptions, which compose the splendor of a century, contemporary admiration is
nothing but short−sightedness. Gilding is gold. It does no harm to be the first arrival by pure
chance, so long as you do arrive. The common herd is an old Narcissus who adores himself,
and who applauds the vulgar herd. That enormous ability by virtue of which one is Moses,
Aeschylus, Dante, Michael Angelo, or Napoleon, the multitude awards on the spot, and by
acclamation, to whomsoever attains his object, in whatsoever it may consist. Let a notary
transfigure himself into a deputy: let a false Corneille compose Tiridate; let a eunuch come
to possess a harem; let a military Prudhomme accidentally win the decisive battle of an
epoch; le t an apothecary invent cardboard shoe−so les for the army o f the
Sambre−and−Meuse, and construct for himself, out of this cardboard, sold as leather, four
hundred thousand francs of income; let a pork−packer espouse usury, and cause it to bring
forth seven or eight millions, of which he is the father and of which it is the mother; let a
preacher become a bishop by force of his nasal drawl; let the steward of a fine family be so
rich on retiring from service that he
,is made minister of finances, – and men call that Genius,
just as they call the face of Mousqueton Beauty, and the mien of Claude Majesty. With the
constellations of space they confound the stars of the abyss which are made in the soft mire
of the puddle by the feet of ducks.
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CHAPTER XII − THE SOLITUDE OF MONSEIGNEUR WELCOME 56
CHAPTER XIII − WHAT HE BELIEVED
We are not obliged to sound the Bishop of D – – on the score of orthodoxy. In the
presence of such a soul we feel ourselves in no mood but respect. The conscience of the just
man should be accepted on his word. Moreover, certain natures being given, we admit the
possible development of all beauties of human virtue in a belief that differs from our own.
What did he think of this dogma, or of that mystery? These secrets of the inner tribunal
of the conscience are known only to the tomb, where souls enter naked. The point on which
we are certain is, that the difficulties of faith never resolved themselves into hypocrisy in his
case. No decay is possible to the diamond. He believed to the extent of his powers. "Credo
in Patrem," he often exclaimed. Moreover, he drew from good works that amount of
satisfaction which suffices to the conscience, and which whispers to a man, "Thou art with
God!"
The point which we consider it our duty to note is, that outside of and beyond his faith,
as it were, the Bishop possessed an excess of love. In was in that quarter, quia multum
amavit, – because he loved much – that he was regarded as vulnerable by "serious men,"
"grave persons" and "reasonable people"; favorite locutions of our sad world where egotism
takes its word of command from pedantry. What was this excess of love? It was a serene
benevolence which overflowed men, as we have already pointed out, and which, on
occasion, extended even to things. He lived without disdain. He was indulgent towards
God's creation. Every man, even the best, has within him a thoughtless harshness which he
reserves for animals. The Bishop of D – – had none of that harshness, which is peculiar to
many priests, nevertheless. He did not go as far as the Brahmin, but he seemed to have
weighed this saying of Ecclesiastes: "Who knoweth whither the soul of the animal goeth?"
Hideousness of aspect, deformity of instinct, troubled him not, and did not arouse his
indignation. He was touched, almost softened by them. It seemed as though he went
thoughtfully away to seek beyond the bounds of life which is apparent, the cause, the
explanation, or the excuse for them. He seemed at times to be asking God to commute these
penalties. He examined without wrath, and with the eye of a linguist who is deciphering a
palimpsest, that portion of chaos which still exists in nature. This revery sometimes caused
him to utter odd sayings. One morning he was in his garden, and thought himself alone, but
his sister was walking behind him, unseen by him: suddenly he paused and gazed at
something on the ground; it was a large, black, hairy, frightful spider. His sister heard him
say: –
"Poor beast! It is not its fault!"
Why not mention these almost divinely childish sayings of kindness? Puerile they may
be; but these sublime puerilities were peculiar to Saint Francis d'Assisi and of Marcus
Aurelius. One day he sprained his ankle in his effort to avoid stepping on an ant. Thus lived
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CHAPTER XIII − WHAT HE BELIEVED 57
this just man. Sometimes he fell asleep in his garden, and then there was nothing more
venerable possible.
Monseigneur Bienvenu had formerly been, if the stories anent his youth, and even in
regard to his manhood, were to be believed, a passionate, and, possibly, a violent man. His
universal suavity was less an instinct of nature than the result of a grand conviction which
had filtered into his heart through the medium of life, and had trickled there slowly, thought
by thought; for, in a character, as in a rock, there may exist apertures made by drops of
water. These hollows are uneffaceable; these formations are indestructible.
In 1815, as we think we have already said, he reached his seventy−fifth
birthday, but he did not appear to be more than sixty. He was not tall; he was rather
plump; and, in order to combat this tendency, he was fond of taking long strolls on foot; his
step was firm, and his form was but slightly bent, a detail from which we do not pretend to
draw any conclusion. Gregory XVI., at the age of eighty, held himself erect and smiling,
which did not prevent him from being a bad bishop. Monseigneur Welcome had what the
people term a "fine head," but so amiable was he that they forgot that it was fine.
When he conversed with that infantile gayety which was one of his charms, and of
which we have already spoken, people felt at their ease with him, and joy seemed to radiate
from his whole person. His fresh and ruddy complexion, his very white teeth, all of which he
had preserved, and which were displayed by his smile, gave him that open and easy air
which cause the remark to be made of a man, "He's a good fellow"; and of an old man, "He
is a fine man." That, it will be recalled, was the effect which he produced upon Napoleon.
On the first encounter, and to one who saw him for the first time, he was nothing, in fact, but
a fine man. But if one remained near him for a few hours, and beheld him in the least degree
pensive, the fine man became gradually transfigured, and took on some imposing quality, I
know not what; his broad and serious brow, rendered august by his white locks, became
august also by virtue of meditation; majesty radiated from his goodness, though his
goodness ceased not to be radiant; one experienced something of the emotion which one
would feel on beholding a smiling angel slowly unfold his wings, without ceasing to smile.
Respect, an unutterable respect, penetrated you by degrees and mounted to your heart, and
one felt that one had before him one of those strong, thoroughly tried, and indulgent souls
where thought is so grand that it can no longer be anything but gentle.
As we have seen, prayer, the celebration of the offices of religion, alms−giving, the
consolation of the afflicted, the cultivation of a bit of land, fraternity, frugality, hospitality,
renunciation, confidence, study, work, filled every day of his life. Filled is exactly the word;
certainly the Bishop's day was quite full to the brim, of good words and good deeds.
Nevertheless, it was not complete if cold or rainy weather prevented his passing an hour or
two in his garden before going to bed, and after the two women had retired. It seemed to be
a sort of rite with him, to prepare himself for slumber by meditation in the presence of the
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CHAPTER XIII − WHAT HE BELIEVED 58
grand spectacles of the nocturnal heavens. Sometimes, if the two old women were not
asleep, they heard him pacing slowly along the walks at a very advanced hour of the night.
He was there alone, communing with himself, peaceful, adoring, comparing the serenity of
his heart with the serenity of the ether, moved amid the darkness by the visible splendor of
the constellations and the invisible splendor of God, opening his heart to the thoughts which
fall from the Unknown. At such moments, while he offered his heart at the hour when
nocturnal flowers offer their perfume, illuminated like a lamp amid the starry night, as he
poured himself out in ecstasy in the midst of the universal radiance of creation, he could not
have told himself, probably, what was passing in his spirit; he felt something take its flight
from him, and something descend into him. Mysterious exchange of the abysses of the soul
with the abysses of the universe!
He thought of the grandeur and presence of God; of the future eternity, that strange
mystery; of the eternity past, a mystery still more strange; of all
,the infinities, which pierced
their way into all his senses, beneath his eyes; and, without seeking to comprehend the
incomprehensible, he gazed upon it. He did not study God; he was dazzled by him. He
considered those magnificent conjunctions of atoms, which communicate aspects to matter,
reveal forces by verifying them, create individualities in unity, proportions in extent, the
innumerable in the infinite, and, through light, produce beauty. These conjunctions are
formed and dissolved incessantly; hence life and death.
He seated himself on a wooden bench, with his back against a decrepit vine; he gazed at
the stars, past the puny and stunted silhouettes of his fruit−trees. This quarter of an acre, so
poorly planted, so encumbered with mean buildings and sheds, was dear to him, and
satisfied his wants.
What more was needed by this old man, who divided the leisure of his life, where there
was so little leisure, between gardening in the daytime and contemplation at night? Was not
this narrow enclosure, with the heavens for a ceiling, sufficient to enable him to adore God
in his most divine works, in turn? Does not this comprehend all, in fact? and what is there
left to desire beyond it? A little garden in which to walk, and immensity in which to dream.
At one's feet that which can be cultivated and plucked; over head that which one can study
and meditate upon: some flowers on earth, and all the stars in the sky.
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CHAPTER XIII − WHAT HE BELIEVED 59
CHAPTER XIV − WHAT HE THOUGHT
One last word.
Since this sort of details might, particularly at the present moment, and to use an
expression now in fashion, give to the Bishop of D – – a certain "pantheistical"
physiognomy, and induce the belief, either to his credit or discredit, that he entertained one
of those personal philosophies which are peculiar to our century, which sometimes spring up
in solitary spirits, and there take on a form and grow until they usurp the place of religion,
we insist upon it, that not one of those persons who knew Monseigneur Welcome would
have thought himself authorized to think anything of the sort. That which enlightened this
man was his heart. His wisdom was made of the light which comes from there.
No systems; many works. Abstruse speculations contain vertigo; no, there is nothing to
indicate that he risked his mind in apocalypses. The apostle may be daring, but the bishop
must be timid. He would probably have felt a scruple at sounding too far in advance certain
problems which are, in a manner, reserved for terrible great minds. There is a sacred horror
beneath the porches of the enigma; those gloomy openings stand yawning there, but
something tells you, you, a passer−by in life, that you must not enter. Woe to him who
penetrates thither!
Geniuses in the impenetrable depths of abstraction and pure speculation, situated, so to
speak, above all dogmas, propose their ideas to God. Their prayer audaciously offers
discussion. Their adoration interrogates. This is direct religion, which is full of anxiety and
responsibility for him who attempts its steep cliffs.
Human meditation has no limits. At his own risk and peril, it analyzes and digs deep
into its own bedazzlement. One might almost say, that by a sort of splendid reaction, it with
it dazzles nature; the mysterious world which surrounds us renders back what it has
received; it is probable that the contemplators are contemplated. However that may be, there
are on earth men who – are they men? – perceive distinctly at the verge of the horizons of
revery the heights of the absolute, and who have the terrible vision of the infinite mountain.
Monseigneur Welcome was one of these men; Monseigneur Welcome was not a genius. He
would have feared those sublimities whence some very great men even, like Swedenborg
and Pascal, have slipped into insanity. Certainly, these powerful reveries have their moral
utility, and by these arduous paths one approaches to ideal perfection. As for him, he took
the path which shortens, – the Gospel's.
He did not attempt to impart to his chasuble the folds of Elijah's mantle; he projected no
ray of future upon the dark groundswell of events; he did not see to condense in flame the
light of things; he had nothing of the prophet and nothing of the magician about him. This
humble soul loved, and that was all.
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CHAPTER XIV − WHAT HE THOUGHT 60
That he carried prayer to the pitch of a superhuman aspiration is probable: but one can
no more pray too much than one can love too much; and if it is a heresy to pray beyond the
texts, Saint Theresa and Saint Jerome would be heretics.
He inclined towards all that groans and all that expiates. The universe appeared to him
like an immense malady; everywhere he felt fever, everywhere he heard the sound of
suffering, and, without seeking to solve the enigma, he strove to dress the wound. The
terrible spectacle of created things developed tenderness in him; he was occupied only in
finding for himself, and in inspiring others with the best way to compassionate and relieve.
That which exists was for this good and rare priest a permanent subject of sadness which
sought consolation.
There are men who toil at extracting gold; he toiled at the extraction of pity. Universal
misery was his mine. The sadness which reigned everywhere was but an excuse for unfailing
kindness. Love each other; he declared this to be complete, desired nothing further, and that
was the whole of his doctrine. One day, that man who believed himself to be a
"philosopher," the senator who has already been alluded to, said to the Bishop: "Just survey
the spectacle of the world: all war against all; the strongest has the most wit. Your love each
other is nonsense." – "Well," replied Monseigneur Welcome, without contesting the point,
"if it is nonsense, the soul should shut itself up in it, as the pearl in the oyster." Thus he shut
himself up, he lived there, he was absolutely satisfied with it, leaving on one side the
prodigious questions which attract and terrify, the fathomless perspectives of abstraction, the
precipices of metaphysics – all those profundities which converge, for the apostle in God,
for the atheist in nothingness; destiny, good and evil, the way of being against being, the
conscience of man, the thoughtful somnambulism of the animal, the transformation in death,
the recapitulation of existences which the tomb contains, the incomprehensible grafting of
successive loves on the persistent I, the essence, the substance, the Nile, and the Ens, the
soul, nature, liberty, necessity; perpendicular problems, sinister obscurities, where lean the
gigantic archangels of the human mind; formidable abysses, which Lucretius, Manou, Saint
Paul, Dante, contemplate with eyes flashing lightning, which seems by its steady gaze on the
infinite to cause stars to blaze forth there.
Monseigneur Bienvenu was simply a man who took note of the exterior of mysterious
questions without scrutinizing them, and without troubling his own mind with them, and
who cherished in his own soul a grave respect for darkness.
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CHAPTER XIV − WHAT HE THOUGHT 61
BOOK SECOND – THE FALL
Les Miserables
BOOK SECOND – THE FALL 62
CHAPTER I − THE EVENING OF A DAY OF WALKING
Early in the month of October, 1815, about an hour before sunset,
a man who was travelling on foot entered the little town of D – – The few inhabitants
who were at their windows or on their thresholds at the moment stared at this traveller with a
sort of uneasiness. It was difficult to encounter a wayfarer of more wretched appearance. He
was a man of medium stature, thickset and robust, in the prime of life. He might have been
forty−six or forty−eight years old. A cap with a drooping leather visor partly concealed his
face, burned and tanned by sun and wind, and dripping
,with perspiration. His shirt of coarse
yellow linen, fastened at the neck by a small silver anchor, permitted a view of his hairy
breast: he had a cravat twisted into a string; trousers of blue drilling, worn and threadbare,
white on one knee and torn on the other; an old gray, tattered blouse, patched on one of the
elbows with a bit of green cloth sewed on with twine; a tightly packed soldier knapsack,
well buckled and perfectly new, on his back; an enormous, knotty stick in his hand;
iron−shod shoes on his stockingless feet; a shaved head and a long beard.
The sweat, the heat, the journey on foot, the dust, added I know not what sordid quality
to this dilapidated whole. His hair was closely cut, yet bristling, for it had begun to grow a
little, and did not seem to have been cut for some time.
No one knew him. He was evidently only a chance passer−by. Whence came he? From
the south; from the seashore, perhaps, for he made his entrance into D – – by the same street
which, seven months previously, had witnessed the passage of the Emperor Napoleon on his
way from Cannes to Paris. This man must have been walking all day. He seemed very much
fatigued. Some women of the ancient market town which is situated below the city had seen
him pause beneath the trees of the boulevard Gassendi, and drink at the fountain which
stands at the end of the promenade. He must have been very thirsty: for the children who
followed him saw him stop again for a drink, two hundred paces further on, at the fountain
in the market−place.
On arriving at the corner of the Rue Poichevert, he turned to the left, and directed his
steps toward the town−hall. He entered, then came out a quarter of an hour later. A
gendarme was seated near the door, on the stone bench which General Drouot had mounted
on the 4th of March to read to the frightened throng of the inhabitants of D – – the
proclamation of the Gulf Juan. The man pulled off his cap and humbly saluted the
gendarme.
The gendarme, without replying to his salute, stared attentively at him, followed him for
a while with his eyes, and then entered the town−hall.
There then existed at D – – a fine inn at the sign of the Cross of Colbas. This inn had for
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CHAPTER I − THE EVENING OF A DAY OF WALKING 63
a landlord a certain Jacquin Labarre, a man of consideration in the town on account of his
relationship to another Labarre, who kept the inn of the Three Dauphins in Grenoble, and
had served in the Guides. At the time of the Emperor's landing, many rumors had circulated
throughout the country with regard to this inn of the Three Dauphins. It was said that
General Bertrand, disguised as a carter, had made frequent trips thither in the month of
January, and that he had distributed crosses of honor to the soldiers and handfuls of gold to
the citizens. The truth is, that when the Emperor entered Grenoble he had refused to install
himself at the hotel of the prefecture; he had thanked the mayor, saying, "I am going to the
house of a brave man of my acquaintance"; and he had betaken himself to the Three
Dauphins. This glory of the Labarre of the Three Dauphins was reflected upon the Labarre
of the Cross of Colbas, at a distance of five and twenty leagues. It was said of him in the
town, "That is the cousin of the man of Grenoble."
The man bent his steps towards this inn, which was the best in the country−side. He
entered the kitchen, which opened on a level with the street. All the stoves were lighted; a
huge fire blazed gayly in the fireplace. The host, who was also the chief cook, was going
from one stew−pan to another, very busily superintending an excellent dinner designed for
the wagoners, whose loud talking, conversation, and laughter were audible from an
adjoining apartment. Any one who has travelled knows that there is no one who indulges in
better cheer than wagoners. A fat marmot, flanked by white partridges and heather−co*cks,
was turning on a long spit before the fire; on the stove, two huge carps from Lake Lauzet
and a trout from Lake Alloz were cooking.
The host, hearing the door open and seeing a newcomer enter, said, without raising his
eyes from his stoves: –
"What do you wish, sir?"
"Food and lodging," said the man.
"Nothing easier," replied the host. At that moment he turned his head, took in the
traveller's appearance with a single glance, and added, "By paying for it."
The man drew a large leather purse from the pocket of his blouse, and answered, "I have
money."
"In that case, we are at your service," said the host.
The man put his purse back in his pocket, removed his knapsack from his back, put it on
the ground near the door, retained his stick in his hand, and seated himself on a low stool
close to the fire. D – – is in the mountains. The evenings are cold there in October.
But as the host went back and forth, he scrutinized the traveller.
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CHAPTER I − THE EVENING OF A DAY OF WALKING 64
"Will dinner be ready soon?" said the man.
"Immediately," replied the landlord.
While the newcomer was warming himself before the fire, with his back turned, the
worthy host, Jacquin Labarre, drew a pencil from his pocket, then tore off the corner of an
old newspaper which was lying on a small table near the window. On the white margin he
wrote a line or two, folded it without sealing, and then intrusted this scrap of paper to a child
who seemed to serve him in the capacity both of scullion and lackey. The landlord
whispered a word in the scullion's ear, and the child set off on a run in the direction of the
town−hall.
The traveller saw nothing of all this.
Once more he inquired, "Will dinner be ready soon?"
"Immediately," responded the host.
The child returned. He brought back the paper. The host unfolded it eagerly, like a
person who is expecting a reply. He seemed to read it attentively, then tossed his head, and
remained thoughtful for a moment. Then he took a step in the direction of the traveller, who
appeared to be immersed in reflections which were not very serene.
"I cannot receive you, sir," said he.
The man half rose.
"What! Are you afraid that I will not pay you? Do you want me to pay you in advance?
I have money, I tell you."
"It is not that."
"What then?"
"You have money – "
"Yes," said the man.
"And I," said the host, "have no room."
The man resumed tranquilly, "Put me in the stable."
"I cannot."
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CHAPTER I − THE EVENING OF A DAY OF WALKING 65
"Why?"
"The horses take up all the space."
"Very well!" retorted the man; "a corner of the loft then, a truss of straw. We will see
about that after dinner."
"I cannot give you any dinner."
This declaration, made in a measured but firm tone, struck the stranger as grave. He
rose.
"Ah! bah! But I am dying of hunger. I have been walking since sunrise. I have travelled
twelve leagues. I pay. I wish to eat."
"I have nothing," said the landlord.
The man burst out laughing, and turned towards the fireplace and the stoves: "Nothing!
and all that?"
"All that is engaged."
"By whom?"
"By messieurs the wagoners."
"How many are there of them?"
"Twelve."
"There is enough food there for twenty."
"They have engaged the whole of it and paid for it in advance."
The man seated himself again, and said, without raising his voice, "I am at an inn; I am
hungry, and I shall remain."
Then the host bent down to his ear, and said in a tone which made him start, "Go
away!"
At that moment the traveller was bending forward and thrusting some brands into the
fire with the iron−shod tip of his staff; he turned quickly round, and as he opened his mouth
to reply, the host gazed steadily at him and added, still in a low voice: "Stop! there's enough
,situated on the
ground−floor and opened on the gardens, M. Henri Puget had entertained in state, on July
29, 1714, My Lords Charles Brulart de Genlis, archbishop; Prince d'Embrun; Antoine de
Mesgrigny, the capuchin, Bishop of Grasse; Philippe de Vendome, Grand Prior of France,
Abbe of Saint Honore de Lerins; Francois de Berton de Crillon, bishop, Baron de Vence;
Cesar de Sabran de Forcalquier, bishop, Seignor of Glandeve; and Jean Soanen, Priest of the
Oratory, preacher in ordinary to the king, bishop, Seignor of Senez. The portraits of these
seven reverend personages decorated this apartment; and this memorable date, the 29th of
July, 1714, was there engraved in letters of gold on a table of white marble.
The hospital was a low and narrow building of a single story, with a small garden.
Three days after his arrival, the Bishop visited the hospital. The visit ended, he had the
director requested to be so good as to come to his house.
"Monsieur the director of the hospital," said he to him, "how many sick people have you
at the present moment?"
"Twenty−six, Monseigneur."
"That was the number which I counted," said the Bishop.
"The beds," pursued the director, "are very much crowded against each other."
"That is what I observed."
"The halls are nothing but rooms, and it is with difficulty that the air can be changed in
them."
"So it seems to me."
"And then, when there is a ray of sun, the garden is very small for the convalescents."
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CHAPTER II − M. MYRIEL BECOMES M. WELCOME 9
"That was what I said to myself."
"In case of epidemics, – we have had the typhus fever this year; we had the sweating
sickness two years ago, and a hundred patients at times, – we know not what to do."
"That is the thought which occurred to me."
"What would you have, Monseigneur?" said the director. "One must resign one's self."
This conversation took place in the gallery dining−room on the ground−floor.
The Bishop remained silent for a moment; then he turned abruptly to the director of the
hospital.
"Monsieur," said he, "how many beds do you think this hall alone would hold?"
"Monseigneur's dining−room?" exclaimed the stupefied director.
The Bishop cast a glance round the apartment, and seemed to be taking measures and
calculations with his eyes.
"It would hold full twenty beds," said he, as though speaking to himself. Then, raising
his voice: –
"Hold, Monsieur the director of the hospital, I will tell you something. There is
evidently a mistake here. There are thirty−six of you, in five or six small rooms. There are
three of us here, and we have room for sixty. There is some mistake, I tell you; you have my
house, and I have yours. Give me back my house; you are at home here."
On the following day the thirty−six patients were installed in the Bishop's palace, and
the Bishop was settled in the hospital.
M. Myriel had no property, his family having been ruined by the Revolution. His sister
was in receipt of a yearly income of five hundred francs, which sufficed for her personal
wants at the vicarage. M. Myriel received from the State, in his quality of bishop, a salary of
fifteen thousand francs. On the very day when he took up his abode in the hospital, M.
Myriel settled on the disposition of this sum once for all, in the following manner. We
transcribe here a note made by his own hand: –
NOTE ON THE REGULATION OF MY HOUSEHOLD EXPENSES.
For the little seminary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1,500 livres Society of the mission . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . 100 " For the Lazarists of Montdidier . . . . . . . . . . 100 " Seminary for foreign missions
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CHAPTER II − M. MYRIEL BECOMES M. WELCOME 10
in Paris . . . . . . 200 " Congregation of the Holy Spirit . . . . . . . . . . 150 " Religious
establishments of the Holy Land . . . . . 100 " Charitable maternity societies . . . . . . . . . . 300
" Extra, for that of Arles . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50 " Work for the amelioration of prisons . . . . . . .
400 " Work for the relief and delivery of prisoners . . . 500 " To liberate fathers of families
incarcerated for debt 1,000 " Addition to the salary of the poor teachers of the diocese . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2,000 " Public granary of the Hautes−Alpes . . . . . . . . 100 " Congregation
of the ladies of D – – , of Manosque, and of Sisteron, for the gratuitous instruction of poor
girls . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1,500 " For the poor . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6,000 " My
personal expenses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1,000 " – – – Total . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15,000 "
M. Myriel made no change in this arrangement during the entire period that he occupied
the see of D – – As has been seen, he called it regulating his household expenses.
This arrangement was accepted with absolute submission by Mademoiselle Baptistine.
This holy woman regarded Monseigneur of D – – as at one and the same time her brother
and her bishop, her friend according to the flesh and her superior according to the Church.
She simply loved and venerated him. When he spoke, she bowed; when he acted, she
yielded her adherence. Their only servant, Madame Magloire, grumbled a little. It will be
observed that Monsieur the Bishop had reserved for himself only one thousand livres,
which, added to the pension of Mademoiselle Baptistine, made fifteen hundred francs a year.
On these fifteen hundred francs these two old women and the old man subsisted.
And when a village curate came to D – – , the Bishop still found means to entertain him,
thanks to the severe economy of Madame Magloire, and to the intelligent administration of
Mademoiselle Baptistine.
One day, after he had been in D – – about three months, the Bishop said: –
"And still I am quite cramped with it all!"
"I should think so!" exclaimed Madame Magloire. "Monseigneur has not even claimed
the allowance which the department owes him for the expense of his carriage in town, and
for his journeys about the diocese. It was customary for bishops in former days."
"Hold!" cried the Bishop, "you are quite right, Madame Magloire."
And he made his demand.
Some time afterwards the General Council took this demand under consideration, and
voted him an annual sum of three thousand francs, under this heading: Allowance to M. the
Bishop for expenses of carriage, expenses of posting, and expenses of pastoral visits.
Les Miserables
CHAPTER II − M. MYRIEL BECOMES M. WELCOME 11
This provoked a great outcry among the local burgesses; and a senator of the Empire, a
former member of the Council of the Five Hundred which favored the 18 Brumaire, and
who was provided with a magnificent senatorial office in the vicinity of the town of D – – ,
wrote to M. Bigot de Preameneu, the minister of public worship, a very angry and
confidential note on the subject, from which we extract these authentic lines: –
"Expenses of carriage? What can be done with it in a town of less than four thousand
inhabitants? Expenses of journeys? What is the use of these trips, in the first place? Next,
how can the posting be accomplished in these mountainous parts? There are no roads. No
one travels otherwise than on horseback. Even the bridge between Durance and
Chateau−Arnoux can barely support ox−teams. These priests are all thus, greedy and
avaricious. This man played the good priest when he first came. Now he does like the rest;
he must have a carriage and a posting−chaise, he must have luxuries, like the bishops of the
olden days. Oh, all this priesthood! Things will not go well, M. le Comte, until the Emperor
has freed us from these black−capped rascals. Down with the Pope! [Matters were getting
embroiled with Rome.] For my part,
,Les Miserables
CHAPTER I − THE EVENING OF A DAY OF WALKING 66
of that sort of talk. Do you want me to tell you your name? Your name is Jean Valjean. Now
do you want me to tell you who you are? When I saw you come in I suspected something; I
sent to the town−hall, and this was the reply that was sent to me. Can you read?"
So saying, he held out to the stranger, fully unfolded, the paper which had just travelled
from the inn to the town−hall, and from the town−hall to the inn. The man cast a glance
upon it. The landlord resumed after a pause.
"I am in the habit of being polite to every one. Go away!"
The man dropped his head, picked up the knapsack which he had deposited on the
ground, and took his departure.
He chose the principal street. He walked straight on at a venture, keeping close to the
houses like a sad and humiliated man. He did not turn round a single time. Had he done so,
he would have seen the host of the Cross of Colbas standing on his threshold, surrounded by
all the guests of his inn, and all the passers−by in the street, talking vivaciously, and pointing
him out with his finger; and, from the glances of terror and distrust cast by the group, he
might have divined that his arrival would speedily become an event for the whole town.
He saw nothing of all this. People who are crushed do not look behind them. They know
but too well the evil fate which follows them.
Thus he proceeded for some time, walking on without ceasing, traversing at random
streets of which he knew nothing, forgetful of his fatigue, as is often the case when a man is
sad. All at once he felt the pangs of hunger sharply. Night was drawing near. He glanced
about him, to see whether he could not discover some shelter.
The fine hostelry was closed to him; he was seeking some very humble public house,
some hovel, however lowly.
Just then a light flashed up at the end of the streets; a pine branch suspended from a
cross−beam of iron was outlined against the white sky of the twilight. He proceeded thither.
It proved to be, in fact, a public house. The public house which is in the Rue de
Chaffaut.
The wayfarer halted for a moment, and peeped through the window into the interior of
the low−studded room of the public house, illuminated by a small lamp on a table and by a
large fire on the hearth. Some men were engaged in drinking there. The landlord was
warming himself. An iron pot, suspended from a crane, bubbled over the flame.
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CHAPTER I − THE EVENING OF A DAY OF WALKING 67
The entrance to this public house, which is also a sort of an inn, is by two doors. One
opens on the street, the other upon a small yard filled with manure. The traveller dare not
enter by the street door. He slipped into the yard, halted again, then raised the latch timidly
and opened the door.
"Who goes there?" said the master.
"Some one who wants supper and bed."
"Good. We furnish supper and bed here."
He entered. All the men who were drinking turned round. The lamp illuminated him on
one side, the firelight on the other. They examined him for some time while he was taking
off his knapsack.
The host said to him, "There is the fire. The supper is cooking in the pot. Come and
warm yourself, comrade."
He approached and seated himself near the hearth. He stretched out his feet, which were
exhausted with fatigue, to the fire; a fine odor was emitted by the pot. All that could be
distinguished of his face, beneath his cap, which was well pulled down, assumed a vague
appearance of comfort, mingled with that other poignant aspect which habitual suffering
bestows.
It was, moreover, a firm, energetic, and melancholy profile. This physiognomy was
strangely composed; it began by seeming humble, and ended by seeming severe. The eye
shone beneath its lashes like a fire beneath brushwood.
One of the men seated at the table, however, was a fishmonger who, before entering the
public house of the Rue de Chaffaut, had been to stable his horse at Labarre's. It chanced
that he had that very morning encountered this unprepossessing stranger on the road
between Bras d'Asse and – I have forgotten the name. I think it was Escoublon. Now, when
he met him, the man, who then seemed already extremely weary, had requested him to take
him on his crupper; to which the fishmonger had made no reply except by redoubling his
gait. This fishmonger had been a member half an hour previously of the group which
surrounded Jacquin Labarre, and had himself related his disagreeable encounter of the
morning to the people at the Cross of Colbas. From where he sat he made an imperceptible
sign to the tavern−keeper. The tavern−keeper went to him. They exchanged a few words in a
low tone. The man had again become absorbed in his reflections.
The tavern−keeper returned to the fireplace, laid his hand abruptly on the shoulder of
the man, and said to him: –
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CHAPTER I − THE EVENING OF A DAY OF WALKING 68
"You are going to get out of here."
The stranger turned round and replied gently, "Ah! You know? – "
"Yes."
"I was sent away from the other inn."
"And you are to be turned out of this one."
"Where would you have me go?"
"Elsewhere."
The man took his stick and his knapsack and departed.
As he went out, some children who had followed him from the Cross of Colbas, and
who seemed to be lying in wait for him, threw stones at him. He retraced his steps in anger,
and threatened them with his stick: the children dispersed like a flock of birds.
He passed before the prison. At the door hung an iron chain attached to a bell. He rang.
The wicket opened.
"Turnkey," said he, removing his cap politely, "will you have the kindness to admit me,
and give me a lodging for the night?"
A voice replied: –
"The prison is not an inn. Get yourself arrested, and you will be admitted."
The wicket closed again.
He entered a little street in which there were many gardens. Some of them are enclosed
only by hedges, which lends a cheerful aspect to the street. In the midst of these gardens and
hedges he caught sight of a small house of a single story, the window of which was lighted
up. He peered through the pane as he had done at the public house. Within was a large
whitewashed room, with a bed draped in printed cotton stuff, and a cradle in one corner, a
few wooden chairs, and a double−barrelled gun hanging on the wall. A table was spread in
the centre of the room. A copper lamp illuminated the tablecloth of coarse white linen, the
pewter jug shining like silver, and filled with wine, and the brown, smoking soup−tureen. At
this table sat a man of about forty, with a merry and open countenance, who was dandling a
little child on his knees. Close by a very young woman was nursing another child. The father
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CHAPTER I − THE EVENING OF A DAY OF WALKING 69
was laughing, the child was laughing, the mother was smiling.
The stranger paused a moment in revery before this tender and calming spectacle. What
was taking place within him? He alone could have told. It is probable that he thought that
this joyous house would be hospitable, and that, in a place where he beheld so much
happiness, he would find perhaps a little pity.
He tapped on the pane with a very small and feeble knock.
They did not hear him.
He tapped again.
He heard the woman say, "It seems to me, husband, that some one is knocking."
"No," replied the husband.
He tapped a third time.
The husband rose, took the lamp, and went to the door, which he opened.
He was a man of lofty stature, half peasant, half artisan. He wore a huge leather apron,
which reached to his left shoulder, and which a hammer, a red handkerchief, a powder−horn,
and all sorts of objects which were upheld
,by the girdle, as in a pocket, caused to bulge out.
He carried his head thrown backwards; his shirt, widely opened and turned back, displayed
his bull neck, white and bare. He had thick eyelashes, enormous black whiskers, prominent
eyes, the lower part of his face like a snout; and besides all this, that air of being on his own
ground, which is indescribable.
"Pardon me, sir," said the wayfarer, "Could you, in consideration of payment, give me a
plate of soup and a corner of that shed yonder in the garden, in which to sleep? Tell me; can
you? For money?"
"Who are you?" demanded the master of the house.
The man replied: "I have just come from Puy−Moisson. I have walked all day long. I
have travelled twelve leagues. Can you? – if I pay?"
"I would not refuse," said the peasant, "to lodge any respectable man who would pay
me. But why do you not go to the inn?"
"There is no room."
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CHAPTER I − THE EVENING OF A DAY OF WALKING 70
"Bah! Impossible. This is neither a fair nor a market day. Have you been to Labarre?"
"Yes."
"Well?"
The traveller replied with embarrassment: "I do not know. He did not receive me."
"Have you been to What's−his−name's, in the Rue Chaffaut?"
The stranger's embarrassment increased; he stammered, "He did not receive me either."
The peasant's countenance assumed an expression of distrust; he surveyed the
newcomer from head to feet, and suddenly exclaimed, with a sort of shudder: –
"Are you the man? – "
He cast a fresh glance upon the stranger, took three steps backwards, placed the lamp on
the table, and took his gun down from the wall.
Meanwhile, at the words, Are you the man? the woman had risen, had clasped her two
children in her arms, and had taken refuge precipitately behind her husband, staring in terror
at the stranger, with her bosom uncovered, and with frightened eyes, as she murmured in a
low tone, "Tso−maraude."[1]
[1] Patois of the French Alps: chat de maraude, rascally marauder.
All this took place in less time than it requires to picture it to one's self. After having
scrutinized the man for several moments, as one scrutinizes a viper, the master of the house
returned to the door and said: –
"Clear out!"
"For pity's sake, a glass of water," said the man.
"A shot from my gun!" said the peasant.
Then he closed the door violently, and the man heard him shoot two large bolts. A
moment later, the window−shutter was closed, and the sound of a bar of iron which was
placed against it was audible outside.
Night continued to fall. A cold wind from the Alps was blowing. By the light of the
expiring day the stranger perceived, in one of the gardens which bordered the street, a sort of
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CHAPTER I − THE EVENING OF A DAY OF WALKING 71
hut, which seemed to him to be built of sods. He climbed over the wooden fence resolutely,
and found himself in the garden. He approached the hut; its door consisted of a very low and
narrow aperture, and it resembled those buildings which road−laborers construct for
themselves along the roads. He thought without doubt, that it was, in fact, the dwelling of a
road−laborer; he was suffering from cold and hunger, but this was, at least, a shelter from
the cold. This sort of dwelling is not usually occupied at night. He threw himself flat on his
face, and crawled into the hut. It was warm there, and he found a tolerably good bed of
straw. He lay, for a moment, stretched out on this bed, without the power to make a
movement, so fatigued was he. Then, as the knapsack on his back was in his way, and as it
furnished, moreover, a pillow ready to his hand, he set about unbuckling one of the straps.
At that moment, a ferocious growl became audible. He raised his eyes. The head of an
enormous dog was outlined in the darkness at the entrance of the hut.
It was a dog's kennel.
He was himself vigorous and formidable; he armed himself with his staff, made a shield
of his knapsack, and made his way out of the kennel in the best way he could, not without
enlarging the rents in his rags.
He left the garden in the same manner, but backwards, being obliged, in order to keep
the dog respectful, to have recourse to that manoeuvre with his stick which masters in that
sort of fencing designate as la rose couverte.
When he had, not without difficulty, repassed the fence, and found himself once more in
the street, alone, without refuge, without shelter, without a roof over his head, chased even
from that bed of straw and from that miserable kennel, he dropped rather than seated himself
on a stone, and it appears that a passer−by heard him exclaim, "I am not even a dog!"
He soon rose again and resumed his march. He went out of the town, hoping to find
some tree or haystack in the fields which would afford him shelter.
He walked thus for some time, with his head still drooping. When he felt himself far
from every human habitation, he raised his eyes and gazed searchingly about him. He was in
a field. Before him was one of those low hills covered with close−cut stubble, which, after
the harvest, resemble shaved heads.
The horizon was perfectly black. This was not alone the obscurity of night; it was
caused by very low−hanging clouds which seemed to rest upon the hill itself, and which
were mounting and filling the whole sky. Meanwhile, as the moon was about to rise, and as
there was still floating in the zenith a remnant of the brightness of twilight, these clouds
formed at the summit of the sky a sort of whitish arch, whence a gleam of light fell upon the
earth.
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CHAPTER I − THE EVENING OF A DAY OF WALKING 72
The earth was thus better lighted than the sky, which produces a particularly sinister
effect, and the hill, whose contour was poor and mean, was outlined vague and wan against
the gloomy horizon. The whole effect was hideous, petty, lugubrious, and narrow.
There was nothing in the field or on the hill except a deformed tree, which writhed and
shivered a few paces distant from the wayfarer.
This man was evidently very far from having those delicate habits of intelligence and
spirit which render one sensible to the mysterious aspects of things; nevertheless, there was
something in that sky, in that hill, in that plain, in that tree, which was so profoundly
desolate, that after a moment of immobility and revery he turned back abruptly. There are
instants when nature seems hostile.
He retraced his steps; the gates of D – – were closed. D – – , which had sustained sieges
during the wars of religion, was still surrounded in 1815 by ancient walls flanked by square
towers which have been demolished since. He passed through a breach and entered the town
again.
It might have been eight o'clock in the evening. As he was not acquainted with the
streets, he recommenced his walk at random.
In this way he came to the prefecture, then to the seminary. As he passed through the
Cathedral Square, he shook his fist at the church.
At the corner of this square there is a printing establishment. It is there that the
proclamations of the Emperor and of the Imperial Guard to the army, brought from the
Island of Elba and dictated by Napoleon himself, were printed for the first time.
Worn out with fatigue, and no longer entertaining any hope, he lay down on a stone
bench which stands at the doorway of this printing office.
At that moment an old woman came out of the church. She saw the man stretched out in
the shadow. "What are you doing there, my friend?" said she.
He answered harshly and angrily: "As you see, my good woman, I am sleeping." The
good woman, who was well worthy the name, in fact, was the Marquise de R – –
"On this bench?" she went on.
"I have had a mattress of wood for nineteen years," said the man;
,"to−day I have a
mattress of stone."
"You have been a soldier?"
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CHAPTER I − THE EVENING OF A DAY OF WALKING 73
"Yes, my good woman, a soldier."
"Why do you not go to the inn?"
"Because I have no money."
"Alas!" said Madame de R – – , "I have only four sous in my purse."
"Give it to me all the same."
The man took the four sous. Madame de R – – continued: "You cannot obtain lodgings
in an inn for so small a sum. But have you tried? It is impossible for you to pass the night
thus. You are cold and hungry, no doubt. Some one might have given you a lodging out of
charity."
"I have knocked at all doors."
"Well?"
"I have been driven away everywhere."
The "good woman" touched the man's arm, and pointed out to him on the other side of
the street a small, low house, which stood beside the Bishop's palace.
"You have knocked at all doors?"
"Yes."
"Have you knocked at that one?"
"No."
"Knock there."
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CHAPTER I − THE EVENING OF A DAY OF WALKING 74
CHAPTER II − PRUDENCE COUNSELLED TO WISDOM.
That evening, the Bishop of D – – , after his promenade through the town, remained
shut up rather late in his room. He was busy over a great work on Duties, which was never
completed, unfortunately. He was carefully compiling everything that the Fathers and the
doctors have said on this important subject. His book was divided into two parts: firstly, the
duties of all; secondly, the duties of each individual, according to the class to which he
belongs. The duties of all are the great duties. There are four of these. Saint Matthew points
them out: duties towards God (Matt. vi.); duties towards one's self (Matt. v. 29, 30); duties
towards one's neighbor (Matt. vii. 12); duties towards animals (Matt. vi. 20, 25). As for the
other duties the Bishop found them pointed out
and prescribed elsewhere: to sovereigns and subjects, in the Epistle to the Romans; to
magistrates, to wives, to mothers, to young men, by Saint Peter; to husbands, fathers,
children and servants, in the Epistle to the Ephesians; to the faithful, in the Epistle to the
Hebrews; to virgins, in the Epistle to the Corinthians. Out of these precepts he was
laboriously constructing a harmonious whole, which he desired to present to souls.
At eight o'clock he was still at work, writing with a good deal of inconvenience upon
little squares of paper, with a big book open on his knees, when Madame Magloire entered,
according to her wont, to get the silver−ware from the cupboard near his bed. A moment
later, the Bishop, knowing that the table was set, and that his sister was probably waiting for
him, shut his book, rose from his table, and entered the dining−room.
The dining−room was an oblong apartment, with a fireplace, which had a door opening
on the street (as we have said), and a window opening on the garden.
Madame Magloire was, in fact, just putting the last touches to the table.
As she performed this service, she was conversing with Mademoiselle Baptistine.
A lamp stood on the table; the table was near the fireplace. A wood fire was burning
there.
One can easily picture to one's self these two women, both of whom were over sixty
years of age. Madame Magloire small, plump, vivacious; Mademoiselle Baptistine gentle,
slender, frail, somewhat taller than her brother, dressed in a gown of puce−colored silk, of
the fashion of 1806, which she had purchased at that date in Paris, and which had lasted ever
since. To borrow vulgar phrases, which possess the merit of giving utterance in a single
word to an idea which a whole page would hardly suffice to express, Madame Magloire had
the air of a peasant, and Mademoiselle Baptistine that of a lady. Madame Magloire wore a
white quilted cap, a gold Jeannette cross on a velvet ribbon upon her neck, the only bit of
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CHAPTER II − PRUDENCE COUNSELLED TO WISDOM. 75
feminine jewelry that there was in the house, a very white fichu puffing out from a gown of
coarse black woollen stuff, with large, short sleeves, an apron of cotton cloth in red and
green checks, knotted round the waist with a green ribbon, with a stomacher of the same
attached by two pins at the upper corners, coarse shoes on her feet, and yellow stockings,
like the women of Marseilles. Mademoiselle Baptistine's gown was cut on the patterns of
1806, with a short waist, a narrow, sheath−like skirt, puffed sleeves, with flaps and buttons.
She concealed her gray hair under a frizzed wig known as the baby wig. Madame Magloire
had an intelligent, vivacious, and kindly air; the two corners of her mouth unequally raised,
and her upper lip, which was larger than the lower, imparted to her a rather crabbed and
imperious look. So long as Monseigneur held his peace, she talked to him resolutely with a
mixture of respect and freedom; but as soon as Monseigneur began to speak, as we have
seen, she obeyed passively like her mistress. Mademoiselle Baptistine did not even speak.
She confined herself to obeying and pleasing him. She had never been pretty, even when she
was young; she had large, blue, prominent eyes, and a long arched nose; but her whole
visage, her whole person, breathed forth an ineffable goodness, as we stated in the
beginning. She had always been predestined to gentleness; but faith, charity, hope, those
three virtues which mildly warm the soul, had gradually elevated that gentleness to sanctity.
Nature had made her a lamb, religion had made her an angel. Poor sainted virgin! Sweet
memory which has vanished!
Mademoiselle Baptistine has so often narrated what passed at the episcopal residence
that evening, that there are many people now living who still recall the most minute details.
At the moment when the Bishop entered, Madame Magloire was talking with
considerable vivacity. She was haranguing Mademoiselle Baptistine on a subject which was
familiar to her and to which the Bishop was also accustomed. The question concerned the
lock upon the entrance door.
It appears that while procuring some provisions for supper, Madame Magloire had
heard things in divers places. People had spoken of a prowler of evil appearance; a
suspicious vagabond had arrived who must be somewhere about the town, and those who
should take it into their heads to return home late that night might be subjected to unpleasant
encounters. The police was very badly organized, moreover, because there was no love lost
between the Prefect and the Mayor, who sought to injure each other by making things
happen. It behooved wise people to play the part of their own police, and to guard
themselves well, and care must be taken to duly close, bar and barricade their houses, and to
fasten the doors well.
Madame Magloire emphasized these last words; but the Bishop had just come from his
room, where it was rather cold. He seated himself in front of the fire, and warmed himself,
and then fell to thinking of other things. He did not take up the remark dropped with design
by Madame Magloire. She repeated it. Then Mademoiselle Baptistine, desirous of satisfying
Madame Magloire without displeasing her brother, ventured to say timidly: –
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CHAPTER II − PRUDENCE COUNSELLED TO WISDOM. 76
"Did you hear what Madame Magloire is saying, brother?"
"I have heard something of it in a vague way," replied the Bishop. Then half−turning in
his chair, placing his hands on his knees, and raising towards the old servant woman his
cordial face, which so easily grew joyous, and which was illuminated from below by the
firelight, – "Come, what is the matter? What is the matter? Are we in any great danger?"
Then Madame Magloire began the whole story afresh, exaggerating it a little without
being aware of the fact. It appeared that a Bohemian, a bare−footed vagabond, a sort of
dangerous mendicant,
,was at that moment in the town. He had presented himself at Jacquin
Labarre's to obtain lodgings, but the latter had not been willing to take him in. He had been
seen to arrive by the way of the boulevard Gassendi and roam about the streets in the
gloaming. A gallows−bird with a terrible face.
"Really!" said the Bishop.
This willingness to interrogate encouraged Madame Magloire; it seemed to her to
indicate that the Bishop was on the point of becoming alarmed; she pursued triumphantly: –
"Yes, Monseigneur. That is how it is. There will be some sort of catastrophe in this
town to−night. Every one says so. And withal, the police is so badly regulated" (a useful
repetition). "The idea of living in a mountainous country, and not even having lights in the
streets at night! One goes out. Black as ovens, indeed! And I say, Monseigneur, and
Mademoiselle there says with me – "
"I," interrupted his sister, "say nothing. What my brother does is well done."
Madame Magloire continued as though there had been no protest: –
"We say that this house is not safe at all; that if Monseigneur will permit, I will go and
tell Paulin Musebois, the locksmith, to come and replace the ancient locks on the doors; we
have them, and it is only the work of a moment; for I say that nothing is more terrible than a
door which can be opened from the outside with a latch by the first passer−by; and I say that
we need bolts, Monseigneur, if only for this night; moreover, Monseigneur has the habit of
always saying `come in'; and besides, even in the middle of the night, O mon Dieu! there is
no need to ask permission."
At that moment there came a tolerably violent knock on the door.
"Come in," said the Bishop.
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CHAPTER II − PRUDENCE COUNSELLED TO WISDOM. 77
CHAPTER III − THE HEROISM OF PASSIVE OBEDIENCE.
The door opened.
It opened wide with a rapid movement, as though some one had given it an energetic
and resolute push.
A man entered.
We already know the man. It was the wayfarer whom we have seen wandering about in
search of shelter.
He entered, advanced a step, and halted, leaving the door open behind him. He had his
knapsack on his shoulders, his cudgel in his hand, a rough, audacious, weary, and violent
expression in his eyes. The fire on the hearth lighted him up. He was hideous. It was a
sinister apparition.
Madame Magloire had not even the strength to utter a cry. She trembled, and stood with
her mouth wide open.
Mademoiselle Baptistine turned round, beheld the man entering, and half started up in
terror; then, turning her head by degrees towards the fireplace again, she began to observe
her brother, and her face became once more profoundly calm and serene.
The Bishop fixed a tranquil eye on the man.
As he opened his mouth, doubtless to ask the new−comer what he desired, the man
rested both hands on his staff, directed his gaze at the old man and the two women, and
without waiting for the Bishop to speak, he said, in a loud voice: –
"See here. My name is Jean Valjean. I am a convict from the galleys. I have passed
nineteen years in the galleys. I was liberated four days ago, and am on my way to Pontarlier,
which is my destination. I have been walking for four days since I left Toulon. I have
travelled a dozen leagues to−day on foot. This evening, when I arrived in these parts, I went
to an inn, and they turned me out, because of my yellow passport, which I had shown at the
town−hall. I had to do it. I went to an inn. They said to me, `Be off,' at both places. No one
would take me. I went to the prison; the jailer would not admit me. I went into a dog's
kennel; the dog bit me and chased me off, as though he had been a man. One would have
said that he knew who I was. I went into the fields, intending to sleep in the open air,
beneath the stars. There were no stars. I thought it was going to rain, and I re−entered the
town, to seek the recess of a doorway. Yonder, in the square, I meant to sleep on a stone
bench. A good woman pointed out your house to me, and said to me, `Knock there!' I have
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CHAPTER III − THE HEROISM OF PASSIVE OBEDIENCE. 78
knocked. What is this place? Do you keep an inn? I have money – savings. One hundred and
nine francs fifteen sous, which I earned in the galleys by my labor, in the course of nineteen
years. I will pay. What is that to me? I have money. I am very weary; twelve leagues on
foot; I am very hungry. Are you willing that I should remain?"
"Madame Magloire," said the Bishop, "you will set another place."
The man advanced three paces, and approached the lamp which was on the table.
"Stop," he resumed, as though he had not quite understood; "that's not it. Did you hear? I am
a galley−slave; a convict. I come from the galleys." He drew from his pocket a large sheet of
yellow paper, which he unfolded. "Here's my passport. Yellow, as you see. This serves to
expel me from every place where I go. Will you read it? I know how to read. I learned in the
galleys. There is a school there for those who choose to learn. Hold, this is what they put on
this passport: `Jean Valjean, discharged convict, native of' – that is nothing to you – `has
been nineteen years in the galleys: five years for house−breaking and burglary; fourteen
years for having attempted to escape on four occasions. He is a very dangerous man.' There!
Every one has cast me out. Are you willing to receive me? Is this an inn? Will you give me
something to eat and a bed? Have you a stable?"
"Madame Magloire," said the Bishop, "you will put white sheets on the bed in the
alcove." We have already explained the character of the two women's obedience.
Madame Magloire retired to execute these orders.
The Bishop turned to the man.
"Sit down, sir, and warm yourself. We are going to sup in a few moments, and your bed
will be prepared while you are supping."
At this point the man suddenly comprehended. The expression of his face, up to that
time sombre and harsh, bore the imprint of stupefaction, of doubt, of joy, and became
extraordinary. He began stammering like a crazy man: –
"Really? What! You will keep me? You do not drive me forth? A convict! You call me
sir! You do not address me as thou? `Get out of here, you dog!' is what people always say to
me. I felt sure that you would expel me, so I told you at once who I am. Oh, what a good
woman that was who directed me hither! I am going to sup! A bed with a mattress and
sheets, like the rest of the world! a bed! It is nineteen years since I have slept in a bed! You
actually do not want me to go! You are good people. Besides, I have money. I will pay well.
Pardon me, monsieur the inn−keeper, but what is your name? I will pay anything you ask.
You are a fine man. You are an inn−keeper, are you not?"
"I am," replied the Bishop, "a priest who lives here."
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CHAPTER III − THE HEROISM OF PASSIVE OBEDIENCE. 79
"A priest!" said the man. "Oh, what a fine priest! Then you are not going to demand any
money of me? You are the cure, are you not? the cure of this big church? Well! I am a fool,
truly! I had not perceived your skull−cap."
As he spoke, he deposited his knapsack and his cudgel in a corner, replaced his passport
in his pocket, and seated himself. Mademoiselle Baptistine gazed mildly at him. He
continued:
"You are humane, Monsieur le Cure; you have not scorned me. A good priest is a very
good thing. Then you do not require me to pay?"
"No," said the Bishop; "keep your money. How much have you? Did you not tell me
one hundred and nine francs?"
"And fifteen sous," added the man.
"One hundred and nine francs fifteen sous. And how long did it take you to earn that?"
"Nineteen years."
"Nineteen years!"
The Bishop sighed deeply.
,The man continued: "I have still the whole of my money. In four days I have spent only
twenty−five sous, which I earned by helping unload some wagons at Grasse. Since you are
an abbe, I will tell you that we had a chaplain in the galleys. And one day I saw a bishop
there. Monseigneur is what they call him. He was the Bishop of Majore at Marseilles. He is
the cure who rules over the other cures, you understand. Pardon me, I say that very badly;
but it is such a far−off thing to me! You understand what we are! He said mass in the middle
of the galleys, on an altar. He had a pointed thing, made of gold, on his head; it glittered in
the bright light of midday. We were all ranged in lines on the three sides, with cannons with
lighted matches facing us. We could not see very well. He spoke; but he was too far off, and
we did not hear. That is what a bishop is like."
While he was speaking, the Bishop had gone and shut the door, which had remained
wide open.
Madame Magloire returned. She brought a silver fork and spoon, which she placed on
the table.
"Madame Magloire," said the Bishop, "place those things as near the fire as possible."
And turning to his guest: "The night wind is harsh on the Alps. You must be cold, sir."
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CHAPTER III − THE HEROISM OF PASSIVE OBEDIENCE. 80
Each time that he uttered the word sir, in his voice which was so gently grave and
polished, the man's face lighted up. Monsieur to a convict is like a glass of water to one of
the shipwrecked of the Medusa. Ignominy thirsts for consideration.
"This lamp gives a very bad light," said the Bishop.
Madame Magloire understood him, and went to get the two silver candlesticks from the
chimney−piece in Monseigneur's bed−chamber, and placed them, lighted, on the table.
"Monsieur le Cure," said the man, "you are good; you do not despise me. You receive
me into your house. You light your candles for me. Yet I have not concealed from you
whence I come and that I am an unfortunate man."
The Bishop, who was sitting close to him, gently touched his hand. "You could not help
telling me who you were. This is not my house; it is the house of Jesus Christ. This door
does not demand of him who enters whether he has a name, but whether he has a grief. You
suffer, you are hungry and thirsty; you are welcome. And do not thank me; do not say that I
receive you in my house. No one is at home here, except the man who needs a refuge. I say
to you, who are passing by, that you are much more at home here than I am myself.
Everything here is yours. What need have I to know your name? Besides, before you told
me you had one which I knew."
The man opened his eyes in astonishment.
"Really? You knew what I was called?"
"Yes," replied the Bishop, "you are called my brother."
"Stop, Monsieur le Cure," exclaimed the man. "I was very hungry when I entered here;
but you are so good, that I no longer know what has happened to me."
The Bishop looked at him, and said, –
"You have suffered much?"
"Oh, the red coat, the ball on the ankle, a plank to sleep on, heat, cold, toil, the convicts,
the thrashings, the double chain for nothing, the cell for one word; even sick and in bed, still
the chain! Dogs, dogs are happier! Nineteen years! I am forty−six. Now there is the yellow
passport. That is what it is like."
"Yes," resumed the Bishop, "you have come from a very sad place. Listen. There will
be more joy in heaven over the tear−bathed face of a repentant sinner than over the white
robes of a hundred just men. If you emerge from that sad place with thoughts of hatred and
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CHAPTER III − THE HEROISM OF PASSIVE OBEDIENCE. 81
of wrath against mankind, you are deserving of pity; if you emerge with thoughts of
good−will and of peace, you are more worthy than any one of us."
In the meantime, Madame Magloire had served supper: soup, made with water, oil,
bread, and salt; a little bacon, a bit of mutton, figs, a fresh cheese, and a large loaf of rye
bread. She had, of her own accord, added to the Bishop's ordinary fare a bottle of his old
Mauves wine.
The Bishop's face at once assumed that expression of gayety which is peculiar to
hospitable natures. "To table!" he cried vivaciously. As was his custom when a stranger
supped with him, he made the man sit on his right. Mademoiselle Baptistine, perfectly
peaceable and natural, took her seat at his left.
The Bishop asked a blessing; then helped the soup himself, according to his custom.
The man began to eat with avidity.
All at once the Bishop said: "It strikes me there is something missing on this table."
Madame Magloire had, in fact, only placed the three sets of forks and spoons which
were absolutely necessary. Now, it was the usage of the house, when the Bishop had any one
to supper, to lay out the whole six sets of silver on the table−cloth – an innocent ostentation.
This graceful semblance of luxury was a kind of child's play, which was full of charm in that
gentle and severe household, which raised poverty into dignity.
Madame Magloire understood the remark, went out without saying a word, and a
moment later the three sets of silver forks and spoons demanded by the Bishop were
glittering upon the cloth, symmetrically arranged before the three persons seated at the table.
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CHAPTER III − THE HEROISM OF PASSIVE OBEDIENCE. 82
CHAPTER IV − DETAILS CONCERNING THE CHEESE−DAIRIES
OF PONTARLIER.
Now, in order to convey an idea of what passed at that table, we cannot do better than
to transcribe here a passage from one of Mademoiselle Baptistine's letters to Madame
Boischevron, wherein the conversation between the convict and the Bishop is described with
ingenious minuteness.
". . . This man paid no attention to any one. He ate with the voracity of a starving man.
However, after supper he said:
"`Monsieur le Cure of the good God, all this is far too good for me; but I must say that
the carters who would not allow me to eat with them keep a better table than you do.'
"Between ourselves, the remark rather shocked me. My brother replied: –
"`They are more fatigued than I.'
"`No,' returned the man, `they have more money. You are poor; I see that plainly. You
cannot be even a curate. Are you really a cure? Ah, if the good God were but just, you
certainly ought to be a cure!'
"`The good God is more than just,' said my brother.
"A moment later he added: –
"`Monsieur Jean Valjean, is it to Pontarlier that you are going?'
"`With my road marked out for me.'
"I think that is what the man said. Then he went on: –
"`I must be on my way by daybreak to−morrow. Travelling is hard. If the nights are
cold, the days are hot.'
"`You are going to a good country,' said my brother. `During the Revolution my family
was ruined. I took refuge in Franche−Comte at first, and there I lived for some time by the
toil of my hands. My will was good. I found plenty to occupy me. One has only to choose.
There are paper mills, tanneries, distilleries, oil factories, watch factories on a large scale,
steel mills, copper works, twenty iron foundries at least, four of which, situated at Lods, at
Chatillon, at Audincourt, and at Beure, are tolerably large.'
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CHAPTER IV − DETAILS CONCERNING THE CHEESE−DAIRIES OF PONTARLIER. 83
"I think I am not mistaken in saying that those are the names which my brother
mentioned. Then he interrupted himself and addressed me: –
"`Have we not some relatives in those parts, my dear sister?'
"I replied, –
"`We did have some; among others, M. de Lucenet, who was captain of the gates at
Pontarlier under the old regime.'
"`Yes,' resumed my brother; `but in '93, one had no longer any relatives, one had only
one's arms. I worked. They have, in the country of Pontarlier,
,whither you are going,
Monsieur Valjean, a truly patriarchal and truly charming industry, my sister. It is their
cheese−dairies, which they call fruitieres.'
"Then my brother, while urging the man to eat, explained to him, with great minuteness,
what these fruitieres of Pontarlier were; that they were divided into two classes: the big
barns which belong to the rich, and where there are forty or fifty cows which produce from
seven to eight thousand cheeses each summer, and the associated fruitieres, which belong to
the poor; these are the peasants of mid−mountain, who hold their cows in common, and
share the proceeds. `They engage the services of a cheese−maker, whom they call the grurin;
the grurin receives the milk of the associates three times a day, and marks the quantity on a
double tally. It is towards the end of April that the work of the cheese−dairies begins; it is
towards the middle of June that the cheese−makers drive their cows to the mountains.'
"The man recovered his animation as he ate. My brother made him drink that good
Mauves wine, which he does not drink himself, because he says that wine is expensive. My
brother imparted all these details with that easy gayety of his with which you are acquainted,
interspersing his words with graceful attentions to me. He recurred frequently to that
comfortable trade of grurin, as though he wished the man to understand, without advising
him directly and harshly, that this would afford him a refuge. One thing struck me. This man
was what I have told you. Well, neither during supper, nor during the entire evening, did my
brother utter a single word, with the exception of a few words about Jesus when he entered,
which could remind the man of what he was, nor of what my brother was. To all
appearances, it was an occasion for preaching him a little sermon, and of impressing the
Bishop on the convict, so that a mark of the passage might remain behind. This might have
appeared to any one else who had this, unfortunate man in his hands to afford a chance to
nourish his soul as well as his body, and to bestow upon him some reproach, seasoned with
moralizing and advice, or a little commiseration, with an exhortation to conduct himself
better in the future. My brother did not even ask him from what country he came, nor what
was his history. For in his history there is a fault, and my brother seemed to avoid everything
which could remind him of it. To such a point did he carry it, that at one time, when my
brother was speaking of the mountaineers of Pontarlier, who exercise a gentle labor near
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CHAPTER IV − DETAILS CONCERNING THE CHEESE−DAIRIES OF PONTARLIER. 84
heaven, and who, he added, are happy because they are innocent, he stopped short, fearing
lest in this remark there might have escaped him something which might wound the man. By
dint of reflection, I think I have comprehended what was passing in my brother's heart. He
was thinking, no doubt, that this man, whose name is Jean Valjean, had his misfortune only
too vividly present in his mind; that the best thing was to divert him from it, and to make
him believe, if only momentarily, that he was a person like any other, by treating him just in
his ordinary way. Is not this indeed, to understand charity well? Is there not, dear Madame,
something truly evangelical in this delicacy which abstains from sermon, from moralizing,
from allusions? and is not the truest pity, when a man has a sore point, not to touch it at all?
It has seemed to me that this might have been my brother's private thought. In any case,
what I can say is that, if he entertained all these ideas, he gave no sign of them; from
beginning to end, even to me he was the same as he is every evening, and he supped with
this Jean Valjean with the same air and in the same manner in which he would have supped
with M. Gedeon le Provost, or with the curate of the parish.
"Towards the end, when he had reached the figs, there came a knock at the door. It was
Mother Gerbaud, with her little one in her arms. My brother kissed the child on the brow,
and borrowed fifteen sous which I had about me to give to Mother Gerbaud. The man was
not paying much heed to anything then. He was no longer talking, and he seemed very much
fatigued. After poor old Gerbaud had taken her departure, my brother said grace; then he
turned to the man and said to him, `You must be in great need of your bed.' Madame
Magloire cleared the table very promptly. I understood that we must retire, in order to allow
this traveller to go to sleep, and we both went up stairs. Nevertheless, I sent Madame
Magloire down a moment later, to carry to the man's bed a goat skin from the Black Forest,
which was in my room. The nights are frigid, and that keeps one warm. It is a pity that this
skin is old; all the hair is falling out. My brother bought it while he was in Germany, at
Tottlingen, near the sources of the Danube, as well as the little ivory−handled knife which I
use at table.
"Madame Magloire returned immediately. We said our prayers in the drawing−room,
where we hang up the linen, and then we each retired to our own chambers, without saying a
word to each other."
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CHAPTER IV − DETAILS CONCERNING THE CHEESE−DAIRIES OF PONTARLIER. 85
CHAPTER V − TRANQUILLITY
A fter bidding his sister good night, Monseigneur Bienvenu took one of the two silver
candlesticks from the table, handed the other to his guest, and said to him, –
"Monsieur, I will conduct you to your room."
The man followed him.
As might have been observed from what has been said above, the house was so
arranged that in order to pass into the oratory where the alcove was situated, or to get out of
it, it was necessary to traverse the Bishop's bedroom.
At the moment when he was crossing this apartment, Madame Magloire was putting
away the silverware in the cupboard near the head of the bed. This was her last care every
evening before she went to bed.
The Bishop installed his guest in the alcove. A fresh white bed had been prepared there.
The man set the candle down on a small table.
"Well," said the Bishop, "may you pass a good night. To−morrow morning, before you
set out, you shall drink a cup of warm milk from our cows."
"Thanks, Monsieur l'Abbe," said the man.
Hardly had he pronounced these words full of peace, when all of a sudden, and without
transition, he made a strange movement, which would have frozen the two sainted women
with horror, had they witnessed it. Even at this day it is difficult for us to explain what
inspired him at that moment. Did he intend to convey a warning or to throw out a menace?
Was he simply obeying a sort of instinctive impulse which was obscure even to himself? He
turned abruptly to the old man, folded his arms, and bending upon his host a savage gaze, he
exclaimed in a hoarse voice: –
"Ah! really! You lodge me in your house, close to yourself like this?"
He broke off, and added with a laugh in which there lurked something monstrous: –
"Have you really reflected well? How do you know that I have not been an assassin?"
The Bishop replied: –
"That is the concern of the good God."
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CHAPTER V − TRANQUILLITY 86
Then gravely, and moving his lips like one who is praying or talking to himself, he
raised two fingers of his right hand and bestowed his benediction on the man, who did not
bow, and without turning his head or looking behind him, he returned to his bedroom.
When the alcove was in use, a large serge curtain drawn from wall to wall concealed the
altar. The Bishop knelt before this curtain as he passed and said a brief prayer. A moment
later he was in his garden, walking, meditating, conteplating, his heart and soul wholly
absorbed in those grand and mysterious things which God shows at night to the eyes which
remain open.
,As for the man, he was actually so fatigued that he did not even profit by the nice white
sheets. Snuffing out his candle with his nostrils after the manner of convicts, he dropped, all
dressed as he was, upon the bed, where he immediately fell into a profound sleep.
Midnight struck as the Bishop returned from his garden to his apartment.
A few minutes later all were asleep in the little house.
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CHAPTER V − TRANQUILLITY 87
CHAPTER VI − JEAN VALJEAN
Towards the middle of the night Jean Valjean woke.
Jean Valjean came from a poor peasant family of Brie. He had not learned to read in his
childhood. When he reached man's estate, be became a tree−pruner at Faverolles. His
mother was named Jeanne Mathieu; his father was called Jean Valjean or Vlajean, probably
a sobriquet, and a contraction of viola Jean, "here's Jean."
Jean Valjean was of that thoughtful but not gloomy disposition which constitutes the
peculiarity of affectionate natures. On the whole, however, there was something decidedly
sluggish and insignificant about Jean Valjean in appearance, at least. He had lost his father
and mother at a very early age. His mother had died of a milk fever, which had not been
properly attended to. His father, a tree−pruner, like himself, had been killed by a fall from a
tree. All that remained to Jean Valjean was a sister older than himself, – a widow with seven
children, boys and girls. This sister had brought up Jean Valjean, and so long as she had a
husband she lodged and fed her young brother.
The husband died. The eldest of the seven children was eight years old. The youngest,
one.
Jean Valjean had just attained his twenty−fifth year. He took the father's place, and, in
his turn, supported the sister who had brought him up. This was done simply as a duty and
even a little churlishly on the part of Jean Valjean. Thus his youth had been spent in rude
and ill−paid toil. He had never known a "kind woman friend" in his native parts. He had not
had the time to fall in love.
He returned at night weary, and ate his broth without uttering a word. His sister, mother
Jeanne, often took the best part of his repast from his bowl while he was eating, – a bit of
meat, a slice of bacon, the heart of the cabbage, – to give to one of her children. As he went
on eating, with his head bent over the table and almost into his soup, his long hair falling
about his bowl and concealing his eyes, he had the air of perceiving nothing and allowing it.
There was at Faverolles, not far from the Valjean thatched cottage, on the other side of the
lane, a farmer's wife named Marie−Claude; the Valjean children, habitually famished,
sometimes went to borrow from Marie−Claude a pint of milk, in their mother's name, which
they drank behind a hedge or in some alley corner, snatching the jug from each other so
hastily that the little girls spilled it on their aprons and down their necks. If their mother had
known of this marauding, she would have punished the delinquents severely. Jean Valjean
gruffly and grumblingly paid Marie−Claude for the pint of milk behind their mother's back,
and the children were not punished.
In pruning season he earned eighteen sous a day; then he hired out as a hay−maker, as
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CHAPTER VI − JEAN VALJEAN 88
laborer, as neat−herd on a farm, as a drudge. He did whatever he could. His sister worked
also but what could she do with seven little children? It was a sad group enveloped in
misery, which was being gradually annihilated. A very hard winter came. Jean had no work.
The family had no bread. No bread literally. Seven children!
One Sunday evening, Maubert Isabeau, the baker on the Church Square at Faverolles,
was preparing to go to bed, when he heard a violent blow on the grated front of his shop. He
arrived in time to see an arm passed through a hole made by a blow from a fist, through the
grating and the glass. The arm seized a loaf of bread and carried it off. Isabeau ran out in
haste; the robber fled at the full speed of his legs. Isabeau ran after him and stopped him.
The thief had flung away the loaf, but his arm was still bleeding. It was Jean Valjean.
This took place in 1795. Jean Valjean was taken before the tribunals of the time for theft
and breaking and entering an inhabited house at night. He had a gun which he used better
than any one else in the world, he was a bit of a poacher, and this injured his case. There
exists a legitimate prejudice against poachers. The poacher, like the smuggler, smacks too
strongly of the brigand. Nevertheless, we will remark cursorily, there is still an abyss
between these races of men and the hideous assassin of the towns. The poacher lives in the
forest, the smuggler lives in the mountains or on the sea. The cities make ferocious men
because they make corrupt men. The mountain, the sea, the forest, make savage men; they
develop the fierce side, but often without destroying the humane side.
Jean Valjean was pronounced guilty. The terms of the Code were explicit. There occur
formidable hours in our civilization; there are moments when the penal laws decree a
shipwreck. What an ominous minute is that in which society draws back and consummates
the irreparable abandonment of a sentient being! Jean Valjean was condemned to five years
in the galleys.
On the 22d of April, 1796, the victory of Montenotte, won by the
general−in−chief of the army of Italy, whom the message of the Directory to the Five
Hundred, of the 2d of Floreal, year IV., calls Buona−Parte, was announced in Paris; on that
same day a great gang of galley−slaves was put in chains at Bicetre. Jean Valjean formed a
part of that gang. An old turnkey of the prison, who is now nearly eighty years old, still
recalls perfectly that unfortunate wretch who was chained to the end of the fourth line, in the
north angle of the courtyard. He was seated on the ground like the others. He did not seem to
comprehend his position, except that it was horrible. It is probable that he, also, was
disentangling from amid the vague ideas of a poor man, ignorant of everything, something
excessive. While the bolt of his iron collar was being riveted behind his head with heavy
blows from the hammer, he wept, his tears stifled him, they impeded his speech; he only
managed to say from time to time, "I was a tree−pruner at Faverolles." Then still sobbing, he
raised his right hand and lowered it gradually seven times, as though he were touching in
succession seven heads of unequal heights, and from this gesture it was divined that the
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CHAPTER VI − JEAN VALJEAN 89
thing which he had done, whatever it was, he had done for the sake of clothing and
nourishing seven little children.
He set out for Toulon. He arrived there, after a journey of twenty−seven days, on a cart,
with a chain on his neck. At Toulon he was clothed in the red cassock. All that had
constituted his life, even to his name, was effaced; he was no longer even Jean Valjean; he
was number 24,601. What became of his sister? What became of the seven children? Who
troubled himself about that? What becomes of the handful of leaves from the young tree
which is sawed off at the root?
It is always the same story. These poor living beings, these creatures of God, henceforth
without support, without guide, without refuge, wandered away at random, – who even
knows? – each in his own direction perhaps, and little by little buried themselves in that cold
mist which engulfs solitary destinies; gloomy shades, into which disappear in succession so
many unlucky heads, in the sombre march of the human race. They quitted the country. The
clock−tower of what had been their village forgot them; the boundary line of what had been
their field forgot them; after a few years' residence in the galleys, Jean Valjean himself
forgot them.
,In that heart, where there had been a wound, there was a scar. That is all. Only
once, during all the time which he spent at Toulon, did he hear his sister mentioned. This
happened, I think, towards the end of the fourth year of his captivity. I know not through
what channels the news reached him. Some one who had known them in their own country
had seen his sister. She was in Paris. She lived in a poor street Rear Saint−Sulpice, in the
Rue du Gindre. She had with her only one child, a little boy, the youngest. Where were the
other six? Perhaps she did not know herself. Every morning she went to a printing office,
No. 3 Rue du Sabot, where she was a folder and stitcher. She was obliged to be there at six
o'clock in the morning – long before daylight in winter. In the same building with the
printing office there was a school, and to this school she took her little boy, who was seven
years old. But as she entered the printing office at six, and the school only opened at seven,
the child had to wait in the courtyard, for the school to open, for an hour – one hour of a
winter night in the open air! They would not allow the child to come into the printing office,
because he was in the way, they said. When the workmen passed in the morning, they
beheld this poor little being seated on the pavement, overcome with drowsiness, and often
fast asleep in the shadow, crouched down and doubled up over his basket. When it rained, an
old woman, the portress, took pity on him; she took him into her den, where there was a
pallet, a spinning−wheel, and two wooden chairs, and the little one slumbered in a corner,
pressing himself close to the cat that he might suffer less from cold. At seven o'clock the
school opened, and he entered. That is what was told to Jean Valjean.
They talked to him about it for one day; it was a moment, a flash, as though a window
had suddenly been opened upon the destiny of those things whom he had loved; then all
closed again. He heard nothing more forever. Nothing from them ever reached him again; he
never beheld them; he never met them again; and in the continuation of this mournful
history they will not be met with any more.
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CHAPTER VI − JEAN VALJEAN 90
Towards the end of this fourth year Jean Valjean's turn to escape arrived. His comrades
assisted him, as is the custom in that sad place. He escaped. He wandered for two days in the
fields at liberty, if being at liberty is to be hunted, to turn the head every instant, to quake at
the slightest noise, to be afraid of everything, – of a smoking roof, of a passing man, of a
barking dog, of a galloping horse, of a striking clock, of the day because one can see, of the
night because one cannot see, of the highway, of the path, of a bush, of sleep. On the
evening of the second day he was captured. He had neither eaten nor slept for thirty−six
hours. The maritime tribunal condemned him, for this crime, to a prolongation of his term
for three years, which made eight years. In the sixth year his turn to escape occurred again;
he availed himself of it, but could not accomplish his flight fully. He was missing at
roll−call. The cannon were fired, and at night the patrol found him hidden under the keel of
a vessel in process of construction; he resisted the galley guards who seized him. Escape and
rebellion. This case, provided for by a special code, was punished by an addition of five
years, two of them in the double chain. Thirteen years. In the tenth year his turn came round
again; he again profited by it; he succeeded no better. Three years for this fresh attempt.
Sixteen years. Finally, I think it was during his thirteenth year, he made a last attempt, and
only succeeded in getting retaken at the end of four hours of absence. Three years for those
four hours. Nineteen years. In October, 1815, he was released; he had entered there in 1796,
for having broken a pane of glass and taken a loaf of bread.
Room for a brief parenthesis. This is the second time, during his studies on the penal
question and damnation by law, that the author of this book has come across the theft of a
loaf of bread as the point of departure for the disaster of a destiny. Claude Gaux had stolen a
loaf; Jean Valjean had stolen a loaf. English statistics prove the fact that four thefts out of
five in London have hunger for their immediate cause.
Jean Valjean had entered the galleys sobbing and shuddering; he emerged impassive.
He had entered in despair; he emerged gloomy.
What had taken place in that soul?
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CHAPTER VI − JEAN VALJEAN 91
CHAPTER VII − THE INTERIOR OF DESPAIR
Let us try to say it.
It is necessary that society should look at these things, because it is itself which creates
them.
He was, as we have said, an ignorant man, but he was not a fool. The light of nature was
ignited in him. Unhappiness, which also possesses a clearness of vision of its own,
augmented the small amount of daylight which existed in this mind. Beneath the cudgel,
beneath the chain, in the cell, in hardship, beneath the burning sun of the galleys, upon the
plank bed of the convict, he withdrew into his own consciousness and meditated.
He constituted himself the tribunal.
He began by putting himself on trial.
He recognized the fact that he was not an innocent man unjustly punished. He admitted
that he had committed an extreme and blameworthy act; that that loaf of bread would
probably not have been refused to him had he asked for it; that, in any case, it would have
been better to wait until he could get it through compassion or through work; that it is not an
unanswerable argument to say, "Can one wait when one is hungry?" That, in the first place,
it is very rare for any one to die of hunger, literally; and next, that, fortunately or
unfortunately, man is so constituted that he can suffer long and much, both morally and
physically, without dying; that it is therefore necessary to have patience; that that would
even have been better for those poor little children; that it had been an act of madness for
him, a miserable, unfortunate wretch, to take society at large violently by the collar, and to
imagine that one can escape from misery through theft; that that is in any case a poor door
through which to escape from misery through which infamy enters; in short, that he was in
the wrong.
Then he asked himself –
Whether he had been the only one in fault in his fatal history. Whether it was not a
serious thing, that he, a laborer, out of work, that he, an industrious man, should have lacked
bread. And whether, the fault once committed and confessed, the chastisem*nt had not been
ferocious and disproportioned. Whether there had not been more abuse on the part of the
law, in respect to the penalty, than there had been on the part of the culprit in respect to his
fault. Whether there had not been an excess of weights in one balance of the scale, in the one
which contains expiation. Whether the over−weight of the penalty was not equivalent to the
annihilation of the crime, and did not result in reversing the situation, of replacing the fault
of the delinquent by the fault of the repression, of converting the guilty man into the victim,
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CHAPTER VII − THE INTERIOR OF DESPAIR 92
and the debtor into the creditor, and of ranging the law definitely on the side of the man who
had violated it.
Whether this penalty, complicated by successive aggravations for attempts at escape,
had not ended in becoming a sort of outrage perpetrated by the stronger upon the feebler, a
crime of society against the individual, a crime which was being committed afresh every
day, a crime which had lasted nineteen years.
He asked himself whether human society could have the right to force its members to
suffer equally in one case for its own unreasonable lack of foresight,
,and in the other case
for its pitiless foresight; and to seize a poor man forever between a defect and an excess, a
default of work and an excess of punishment.
Whether it was not outrageous for society to treat thus precisely those of its members
who were the least well endowed in the division of goods made by chance, and consequently
the most deserving of consideration.
These questions put and answered, he judged society and condemned it.
He condemned it to his hatred.
He made it responsible for the fate which he was suffering, and he said to himself that it
might be that one day he should not hesitate to call it to account. He declared to himself that
there was no equilibrium between the harm which he had caused and the harm which was
being done to him; he finally arrived at the conclusion that his punishment was not, in truth,
unjust, but that it most assuredly was iniquitous.
Anger may be both foolish and absurd; one can be irritated wrongfully; one is
exasperated only when there is some show of right on one's side at bottom. Jean Valjean felt
himself exasperated.
And besides, human society had done him nothing but harm; he had never seen
anything of it save that angry face which it calls Justice, and which it shows to those whom
it strikes. Men had only touched him to bruise him. Every contact with them had been a
blow. Never, since his infancy, since the days of his mother, of his sister, had he ever
encountered a friendly word and a kindly glance. From suffering to suffering, he had
gradually arrived at the conviction that life is a war; and that in this war he was the
conquered. He had no other weapon than his hate. He resolved to whet it in the galleys and
to bear it away with him when he departed.
There was at Toulon a school for the convicts, kept by the Ignorantin friars, where the
most necessary branches were taught to those of the unfortunate men who had a mind for
them. He was of the number who had a mind. He went to school at the age of forty, and
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CHAPTER VII − THE INTERIOR OF DESPAIR 93
learned to read, to write, to cipher. He felt that to fortify his intelligence was to fortify his
hate. In certain cases, education and enlightenment can serve to eke out evil.
This is a sad thing to say; after having judged society, which had caused his
unhappiness, he judged Providence, which had made society, and he condemned it also.
Thus during nineteen years of torture and slavery, this soul mounted and at the same
time fell. Light entered it on one side, and darkness on the other.
Jean Valjean had not, as we have seen, an evil nature. He was still good when he arrived
at the galleys. He there condemned society, and felt that he was becoming wicked; he there
condemned Providence, and was conscious that he was becoming impious.
It is difficult not to indulge in meditation at this point.
Does human nature thus change utterly and from top to bottom? Can the man created
good by God be rendered wicked by man? Can the soul be completely made over by fate,
and become evil, fate being evil? Can the heart become misshapen and contract incurable
deformities and infirmities under the oppression of a disproportionate unhappiness, as the
vertebral column beneath too low a vault? Is there not in every human soul, was there not in
the soul of Jean Valjean in particular, a first spark, a divine element, incorruptible in this
world, immortal in the other, which good can develop, fan, ignite, and make to glow with
splendor, and which evil can never wholly extinguish?
Grave and obscure questions, to the last of which every physiologist would probably
have responded no, and that without hesitation, had he beheld at Toulon, during the hours of
repose, which were for Jean Valjean hours of revery, this gloomy galley−slave, seated with
folded arms upon the bar of some capstan, with the end of his chain thrust into his pocket to
prevent its dragging, serious, silent, and thoughtful, a pariah of the laws which regarded the
man with wrath, condemned by civilization, and regarding heaven with severity.
Certainly, – and we make no attempt to dissimulate the fact, – the observing
physiologist would have beheld an irremediable misery; he would, perchance, have pitied
this sick man, of the law's making; but he would not have even essayed any treatment; he
would have turned aside his gaze from the caverns of which he would have caught a glimpse
within this soul, and, like Dante at the portals of hell, he would have effaced from this
existence the word which the finger of God has, nevertheless, inscribed upon the brow of
every man, – hope.
Was this state of his soul, which we have attempted to analyze, as perfectly clear to Jean
Valjean as we have tried to render it for those who read us? Did Jean Valjean distinctly
perceive, after their formation, and had he seen distinctly during the process of their
formation, all the elements of which his moral misery was composed? Had this rough and
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CHAPTER VII − THE INTERIOR OF DESPAIR 94
unlettered man gathered a perfectly clear perception of the succession of ideas through
which he had, by degrees, mounted and descended to the lugubrious aspects which had, for
so many years, formed the inner horizon of his spirit? Was he conscious of all that passed
within him, and of all that was working there? That is something which we do not presume
to state; it is something which we do not even believe. There was too much ignorance in
Jean Valjean, even after his misfortune, to prevent much vagueness from still lingering
there. At times he did not rightly know himself what he felt. Jean Valjean was in the
shadows; he suffered in the shadows; he hated in the shadows; one might have said that he
hated in advance of himself. He dwelt habitually in this shadow, feeling his way like a blind
man and a dreamer. Only, at intervals, there suddenly came to him, from without and from
within, an access of wrath, a surcharge of suffering, a livid and rapid flash which illuminated
his whole soul, and caused to appear abruptly all around him, in front, behind, amid the
gleams of a frightful light, the hideous precipices and the sombre perspective of his destiny.
The flash passed, the night closed in again; and where was he? He no longer knew. The
peculiarity of pains of this nature, in which that which is pitiless – that is to say, that which
is brutalizing – predominates, is to transform a man, little by little, by a sort of stupid
transfiguration, into a wild beast; sometimes into a ferocious beast.
Jean Valjean's successive and obstinate attempts at escape would alone suffice to prove
this strange working of the law upon the human soul. Jean Valjean would have renewed
these attempts, utterly useless and foolish as they were, as often as the opportunity had
presented itself, without reflecting for an instant on the result, nor on the experiences which
he had already gone through. He escaped impetuously, like the wolf who finds his cage
open. Instinct said to him, "Flee!" Reason would have said, "Remain!" But in the presence
of so violent a temptation, reason vanished; nothing remained but instinct. The beast alone
acted. When he was recaptured, the fresh severities inflicted on him only served to render
him still more wild.
One detail, which we must not omit, is that he possessed a physical strength which was
not approached by a single one of the denizens of the galleys. At work, at paying out a cable
or winding up a capstan, Jean Valjean was worth four men. He sometimes lifted and
sustained enormous weights on his back; and when the occasion demanded it, he replaced
that implement which is called a jack−screw, and was formerly called orgueil [pride],
whence, we may remark in passing, is derived the name of the Rue Montorgueil, near the
Halles [Fishmarket]
,in Paris. His comrades had nicknamed him Jean the Jack−screw. Once,
when they were repairing the balcony of the town−hall at Toulon, one of those admirable
caryatids of Puget, which support the balcony, became loosened, and was on the point of
falling. Jean Valjean, who was present, supported the caryatid with his shoulder, and gave
the workmen time to arrive.
His suppleness even exceeded his strength. Certain convicts who were forever dreaming
of escape, ended by making a veritable science of force and skill combined. It is the science
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CHAPTER VII − THE INTERIOR OF DESPAIR 95
of muscles. An entire system of mysterious statics is daily practised by prisoners, men who
are forever envious of the flies and birds. To climb a vertical surface, and to find points of
support where hardly a projection was visible, was play to Jean Valjean. An angle of the
wall being given, with the tension of his back and legs, with his elbows and his heels fitted
into the unevenness of the stone, he raised himself as if by magic to the third story. He
sometimes mounted thus even to the roof of the galley prison.
He spoke but little. He laughed not at all. An excessive emotion was required to wring
from him, once or twice a year, that lugubrious laugh of the convict, which is like the echo
of the laugh of a demon. To all appearance, he seemed to be occupied in the constant
contemplation of something terrible.
He was absorbed, in fact.
Athwart the unhealthy perceptions of an incomplete nature and a crushed intelligence,
he was confusedly conscious that some monstrous thing was resting on him. In that obscure
and wan shadow within which he crawled, each time that he turned his neck and essayed to
raise his glance, he perceived with terror, mingled with rage, a sort of frightful accumulation
of things, collecting and mounting above him, beyond the range of his vision, – laws,
prejudices, men, and deeds, – whose outlines escaped him, whose mass terrified him, and
which was nothing else than that prodigious pyramid which we call civilization. He
distinguished, here and there in that swarming and formless mass, now near him, now afar
off and on inaccessible table−lands, some group, some detail, vividly illuminated; here the
galley−sergeant and his cudgel; there the gendarme and his sword; yonder the mitred
archbishop; away at the top, like a sort of sun, the Emperor, crowned and dazzling. It
seemed to him that these distant splendors, far from dissipating his night, rendered it more
funereal and more black. All this – laws, prejudices, deeds, men, things – went and came
above him, over his head, in accordance with the complicated and mysterious movement
which God imparts to civilization, walking over him and crushing him with I know not what
peacefulness in its cruelty and inexorability in its indifference. Souls which have fallen to
the bottom of all possible misfortune, unhappy men lost in the lowest of those limbos at
which no one any longer looks, the reproved of the law, feel the whole weight of this human
society, so formidable for him who is without, so frightful for him who is beneath, resting
upon their heads.
In this situation Jean Valjean meditated; and what could be the nature of his meditation?
If the grain of millet beneath the millstone had thoughts, it would, doubtless, think that
same thing which Jean Valjean thought.
All these things, realities full of spectres, phantasmagories full of realities, had
eventually created for him a sort of interior state which is almost indescribable.
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CHAPTER VII − THE INTERIOR OF DESPAIR 96
At times, amid his convict toil, he paused. He fell to thinking. His reason, at one and the
same time riper and more troubled than of yore, rose in revolt. Everything which had
happened to him seemed to him absurd; everything that surrounded him seemed to him
impossible. He said to himself, "It is a dream." He gazed at the galley−sergeant standing a
few paces from him; the galley−sergeant seemed a phantom to him. All of a sudden the
phantom dealt him a blow with his cudgel.
Visible nature hardly existed for him. It would almost be true to say that there existed
for Jean Valjean neither sun, nor fine summer days, nor radiant sky, nor fresh April dawns. I
know not what vent−hole daylight habitually illumined his soul.
To sum up, in conclusion, that which can be summed up and translated into positive
results in all that we have just pointed out, we will confine ourselves to the statement that, in
the course of nineteen years, Jean Valjean, the inoffensive tree−pruner of Faverolles, the
formidable convict of Toulon, had become capable, thanks to the manner in which the
galleys had moulded him, of two sorts of evil action: firstly, of evil action which was rapid,
unpremeditated, dashing, entirely instinctive, in the nature of reprisals for the evil which he
had undergone; secondly, of evil action which was serious, grave, consciously argued out
and premeditated, with the false ideas which such a misfortune can furnish. His deliberate
deeds passed through three successive phases, which natures of a certain stamp can alone
traverse, – reasoning, will, perseverance. He had for moving causes his habitual wrath,
bitterness of soul, a profound sense of indignities suffered, the reaction even against the
good, the innocent, and the just, if there are any such. The point of departure, like the point
of arrival, for all his thoughts, was hatred of human law; that hatred which, if it be not
arrested in its development by some providential incident, becomes, within a given time, the
hatred of society, then the hatred of the human race, then the hatred of creation, and which
manifests itself by a vague, incessant, and brutal desire to do harm to some living being, no
matter whom. It will be perceived that it was not without reason that Jean Valjean's passport
described him as a very dangerous man.
From year to year this soul had dried away slowly, but with fatal sureness. When the
heart is dry, the eye is dry. On his departure from the galleys it had been nineteen years
since he had shed a tear.
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CHAPTER VII − THE INTERIOR OF DESPAIR 97
CHAPTER VIII − BILLOWS AND SHADOWS
A man overboard!
What matters it? The vessel does not halt. The wind blows. That sombre ship has a path
which it is forced to pursue. It passes on.
The man disappears, then reappears; he plunges, he rises again to the surface; he calls,
he stretches out his arms; he is not heard. The vessel, trembling under the hurricane, is
wholly absorbed in its own workings; the passengers and sailors do not even see the
drowning man; his miserable head is but a speck amid the immensity of the waves. He gives
vent to desperate cries from out of the depths. What a spectre is that retreating sail! He gazes
and gazes at it frantically. It retreats, it grows dim, it diminishes in size. He was there but
just now, he was one of the crew, he went and came along the deck with the rest, he had his
part of breath and of sunlight, he was a living man. Now, what has taken place? He has
slipped, he has fallen; all is at an end.
He is in the tremendous sea. Under foot he has nothing but what flees and crumbles.
The billows, torn and lashed by the wind, encompass him hideously; the tossings of the
abyss bear him away; all the tongues of water dash over his head; a populace of waves spits
upon him; confused openings half devour him; every time that he sinks, he catches glimpses
of precipices filled with night; frightful and unknown vegetations seize him, knot about his
feet, draw him to them; he is conscious that he is becoming an abyss, that he forms part of
the foam; the waves toss him from one to another; he drinks in the bitterness; the cowardly
ocean attacks him furiously, to drown him; the enormity plays with his
,I am for Caesar alone." Etc., etc.
On the other hand, this affair afforded great delight to Madame Magloire. "Good," said
she to Mademoiselle Baptistine; "Monseigneur began with other people, but he has had to
wind up with himself, after all. He has regulated all his charities. Now here are three
thousand francs for us! At last!"
That same evening the Bishop wrote out and handed to his sister a memorandum
conceived in the following terms: –
EXPENSES OF CARRIAGE AND CIRCUIT.
For furnishing meat soup to the patients in the hospital. 1,500 livres For the maternity
charitable society of Aix . . . . . . . 250 " For the maternity charitable society of Draguignan .
. . 250 " For foundlings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 500 " For orphans . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . 500 " – – − Total . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3,000 "
Such was M. Myriel's budget.
As for the chance episcopal perquisites, the fees for marriage bans, dispensations,
private baptisms, sermons, benedictions, of churches or chapels, marriages, etc., the Bishop
levied them on the wealthy with all the more asperity, since he bestowed them on the needy.
After a time, offerings of money flowed in. Those who had and those who lacked
knocked at M. Myriel's door, – the latter in search of the alms which the former came to
deposit. In less than a year the Bishop had become the treasurer of all benevolence and the
cashier of all those in distress. Considerable sums of money passed through his hands, but
nothing could induce him to make any change whatever in his mode of life, or add anything
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CHAPTER II − M. MYRIEL BECOMES M. WELCOME 12
superfluous to his bare necessities.
Far from it. As there is always more wretchedness below than there is brotherhood
above, all was given away, so to speak, before it was received. It was like water on dry soil;
no matter how much money he received, he never had any. Then he stripped himself.
The usage being that bishops shall announce their baptismal names at the head of their
charges and their pastoral letters, the poor people of the country−side had selected, with a
sort of affectionate instinct, among the names and prenomens of their bishop, that which had
a meaning for them; and they never called him anything except Monseigneur Bienvenu
[Welcome]. We will follow their example, and will also call him thus when we have
occasion to name him. Moreover, this appellation pleased him.
"I like that name," said he. "Bienvenu makes up for the Monseigneur."
We do not claim that the portrait herewith presented is probable; we confine ourselves
to stating that it resembles the original.
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CHAPTER II − M. MYRIEL BECOMES M. WELCOME 13
CHAPTER III − A HARD BISHOPRIC FOR A GOOD BISHOP
The Bishop did not omit his pastoral visits because he had converted his carriage into
alms. The diocese of D – – is a fatiguing one. There are very few plains and a great many
mountains; hardly any roads, as we have just seen; thirty−two curacies, forty−one
vicarships, and two hundred and eighty−five auxiliary chapels. To visit all these is quite a
task.
The Bishop managed to do it. He went on foot when it was in the neighborhood, in a
tilted spring−cart when it was on the plain, and on a donkey in the mountains. The two old
women accompanied him. When the trip was too hard for them, he went alone.
One day he arrived at Senez, which is an ancient episcopal city. He was mounted on an
ass. His purse, which was very dry at that moment, did not permit him any other equipage.
The mayor of the town came to receive him at the gate of the town, and watched him
dismount from his ass, with scandalized eyes. Some of the citizens were laughing around
him. "Monsieur the Mayor," said the Bishop, "and Messieurs Citizens, I perceive that I
shock you. You think it very arrogant in a poor priest to ride an animal which was used by
Jesus Christ. I have done so from necessity, I assure you, and not from vanity."
In the course of these trips he was kind and indulgent, and talked rather than preached.
He never went far in search of his arguments and his examples. He quoted to the inhabitants
of one district the example of a neighboring district. In the cantons where they were harsh to
the poor, he said: "Look at the people of Briancon! They have conferred on the poor, on
widows and orphans, the right to have their meadows mown three days in advance of every
one else. They rebuild their houses for them gratuitously when they are ruined. Therefore it
is a country which is blessed by God. For a whole century, there has not been a single
murderer among them."
In villages which were greedy for profit and harvest, he said: "Look at the people of
Embrun! If, at the harvest season, the father of a family has his son away on service in the
army, and his daughters at service in the town, and if he is ill and incapacitated, the cure
recommends him to the prayers of the congregation; and on Sunday, after the mass, all the
inhabitants of the village – men, women, and children – go to the poor man's field and do his
harvesting for him, and carry his straw and his grain to his granary." To families divided by
questions of money and inheritance he said: "Look at the mountaineers of Devolny, a
country so wild that the nightingale is not heard there once in fifty years. Well, when the
father of a family dies, the boys go off to seek their fortunes, leaving the property to the
girls, so that they may find husbands." To the cantons which had a taste for lawsuits, and
where the farmers ruined themselves in stamped paper, he said: "Look at those good
peasants in the valley of Queyras! There are three thousand souls of them. Mon Dieu! it is
like a little republic. Neither judge nor bailiff is known there. The mayor does everything.
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CHAPTER III − A HARD BISHOPRIC FOR A GOOD BISHOP 14
He allots the imposts, taxes each person conscientiously, judges quarrels for nothing, divides
inheritances without charge, pronounces sentences gratuitously; and he is obeyed, because
he is a just man among simple men." To villages where he found no schoolmaster, he quoted
once more the people of Queyras: "Do you know how they manage?" he said. "Since a little
country of a dozen or fifteen hearths cannot always support a teacher, they have
school−masters who are paid by the whole valley, who make the round of the villages,
spending a week in this one, ten days in that, and instruct them. These teachers go to the
fairs. I have seen them there. They are to be recognized by the quill pens which they wear in
the cord of their hat. Those who teach reading only have one pen; those who teach reading
and reckoning have two pens; those who teach reading, reckoning, and Latin have three
pens. But what a disgrace to be ignorant! Do like the people of Queyras!"
Thus he discoursed gravely and paternally; in default of examples, he invented parables,
going directly to the point, with few phrases and many images, which characteristic formed
the real eloquence of Jesus Christ. And being convinced himself, he was persuasive.
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CHAPTER III − A HARD BISHOPRIC FOR A GOOD BISHOP 15
CHAPTER IV − WORKS CORRESPONDING TO WORDS
His conversation was gay and affable. He put himself on a level with the two old
women who had passed their lives beside him. When he laughed, it was the laugh of a
schoolboy. Madame Magloire liked to call him Your Grace [Votre Grandeur]. One day he
rose from his arm−chair, and went to his library in search of a book. This book was on one
of the upper shelves. As the bishop was rather short of stature, he could not reach it.
"Madame Magloire," said he, "fetch me a chair. My greatness [grandeur] does not reach as
far as that shelf."
One of his distant relatives,
,agony. It seems as
though all that water were hate.
Nevertheless, he struggles.
He tries to defend himself; he tries to sustain himself; he makes an effort; he swims. He,
his petty strength all exhausted instantly, combats the inexhaustible.
Where, then, is the ship? Yonder. Barely visible in the pale shadows of the horizon.
The wind blows in gusts; all the foam overwhelms him. He raises his eyes and beholds
only the lividness of the clouds. He witnesses, amid his death−pangs, the immense madness
of the sea. He is tortured by this madness; he hears noises strange to man, which seem to
come from beyond the limits of the earth, and from one knows not what frightful region
beyond.
There are birds in the clouds, just as there are angels above human distresses; but what
can they do for him? They sing and fly and float, and he, he rattles in the death agony.
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CHAPTER VIII − BILLOWS AND SHADOWS 98
He feels himself buried in those two infinities, the ocean and the sky, at one and the
same time: the one is a tomb; the other is a shroud.
Night descends; he has been swimming for hours; his strength is exhausted; that ship,
that distant thing in which there were men, has vanished; he is alone in the formidable
twilight gulf; he sinks, he stiffens himself, he twists himself; he feels under him the
monstrous billows of the invisible; he shouts.
There are no more men. Where is God?
He shouts. Help! Help! He still shouts on.
Nothing on the horizon; nothing in heaven.
He implores the expanse, the waves, the seaweed, the reef; they are deaf. He beseeches
the tempest; the imperturbable tempest obeys only the infinite.
Around him darkness, fog, solitude, the stormy and nonsentient tumult, the undefined
curling of those wild waters. In him horror and fatigue. Beneath him the depths. Not a point
of support. He thinks of the gloomy adventures of the corpse in the limitless shadow. The
bottomless cold paralyzes him. His hands contract convulsively; they close, and grasp
nothingness. Winds, clouds, whirlwinds, gusts, useless stars! What is to be done? The
desperate man gives up; he is weary, he chooses the alternative of death; he resists not; he
lets himself go; he abandons his grip; and then he tosses forevermore in the lugubrious
dreary depths of engulfment.
Oh, implacable march of human societies! Oh, losses of men and of souls on the way!
Ocean into which falls all that the law lets slip! Disastrous absence of help! Oh, moral death!
The sea is the inexorable social night into which the penal laws fling their condemned.
The sea is the immensity of wretchedness.
The soul, going down stream in this gulf, may become a corpse. Who shall resuscitate
it?
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CHAPTER VIII − BILLOWS AND SHADOWS 99
CHAPTER IX − NEW TROUBLES
When the hour came for him to take his departure from the galleys, when Jean Valjean
heard in his ear the strange words, Thou art free! the moment seemed improbable and
unprecedented; a ray of vivid light, a ray of the true light of the living, suddenly penetrated
within him. But it was not long before this ray paled. Jean Valjean had been dazzled by the
idea of liberty. He had believed in a new life. He very speedily perceived what sort of liberty
it is to which a yellow passport is provided.
And this was encompassed with much bitterness. He had calculated that his earnings,
during his sojourn in the galleys, ought to amount to a hundred and seventy−one francs. It is
but just to add that he had forgotten to include in his calculations the forced repose of
Sundays and festival days during nineteen years, which entailed a diminution of about
eighty francs. At all events, his hoard had been reduced by various local levies to the sum of
one hundred and nine francs fifteen sous, which had been counted out to him on his
departure. He had understood nothing of this, and had thought himself wronged. Let us say
the word – robbed.
On the day following his liberation, he saw, at Grasse, in front of an orange−flower
distillery, some men engaged in unloading bales. He offered his services. Business was
pressing; they were accepted. He set to work. He was intelligent, robust, adroit; he did his
best; the master seemed pleased. While he was at work, a gendarme passed, observed him,
and demanded his papers. It was necessary to show him the yellow passport. That done, Jean
Valjean resumed his labor. A little while before he had questioned one of the workmen as to
the amount which they earned each day at this occupation; he had been told thirty sous.
When evening arrived, as he was forced to set out again on the following day, he presented
himself to the owner of the distillery and requested to be paid. The owner did not utter a
word, but handed him fifteen sous. He objected. He was told, "That is enough for thee." He
persisted. The master looked him straight between the eyes, and said to him "Beware of the
prison."
There, again, he considered that he had been robbed.
Society, the State, by diminishing his hoard, had robbed him wholesale. Now it was the
individual who was robbing him at retail.
Liberation is not deliverance. One gets free from the galleys, but not from the sentence.
That is what happened to him at Grasse. We have seen in what manner he was received
at D – –
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CHAPTER IX − NEW TROUBLES 100
CHAPTER X − THE MAN AROUSED
As the Cathedral clock struck two in the morning, Jean Valjean awoke.
What woke him was that his bed was too good. It was nearly twenty years since he had
slept in a bed, and, although he had not undressed, the sensation was too novel not to disturb
his slumbers.
He had slept more than four hours. His fatigue had passed away. He was accustomed
not to devote many hours to repose.
He opened his eyes and stared into the gloom which surrounded him; then he closed
them again, with the intention of going to sleep once more.
When many varied sensations have agitated the day, when various matters preoccupy
the mind, one falls asleep once, but not a second time. Sleep comes more easily than it
returns. This is what happened to Jean Valjean. He could not get to sleep again, and he fell
to thinking.
He was at one of those moments when the thoughts which one has in one's mind are
troubled. There was a sort of dark confusion in his brain. His memories of the olden time
and of the immediate present floated there pell−mell and mingled confusedly, losing their
proper forms, becoming disproportionately large, then suddenly disappearing, as in a muddy
and perturbed pool. Many thoughts occurred to him; but there was one which kept
constantly presenting itself afresh, and which drove away all others. We will mention this
thought at once: he had observed the six sets of silver forks and spoons and the ladle which
Madame Magloire had placed on the table.
Those six sets of silver haunted him. – They were there. – A few paces distant. – Just as
he was traversing the adjoining room to reach the one in which he then was, the old
servant−woman had been in the act of placing them in a little cupboard near the head of the
bed. – He had taken careful note of this cupboard. – On the right, as you entered from the
dining−room. – They were solid. – And old silver. – From the ladle one could get at least
two hundred francs. – Double what he had earned in nineteen years. – It is true that he
would have earned more if "the administration had not robbed him."
His mind wavered for a whole hour in fluctuations with which there was certainly
mingled some struggle. Three o'clock struck. He opened his eyes again, drew himself up
abruptly into a sitting posture, stretched out his arm and felt of his knapsack, which he had
thrown down on a corner of the alcove; then he hung his legs over the edge of the bed,
,and
placed his feet on the floor, and thus found himself, almost without knowing it, seated on his
bed.
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CHAPTER X − THE MAN AROUSED 101
He remained for a time thoughtfully in this attitude, which would have been suggestive
of something sinister for any one who had seen him thus in the dark, the only person awake
in that house where all were sleeping. All of a sudden he stooped down, removed his shoes
and placed them softly on the mat beside the bed; then he resumed his thoughtful attitude,
and became motionless once more.
Throughout this hideous meditation, the thoughts which we have above indicated
moved incessantly through his brain; entered, withdrew, re−entered, and in a manner
oppressed him; and then he thought, also, without knowing why, and with the mechanical
persistence of revery, of a convict named Brevet, whom he had known in the galleys, and
whose trousers had been upheld by a single suspender of knitted cotton. The checkered
pattern of that suspender recurred incessantly to his mind.
He remained in this situation, and would have so remained indefinitely, even until
daybreak, had not the clock struck one – the half or quarter hour. It seemed to him that that
stroke said to him, "Come on!"
He rose to his feet, hesitated still another moment, and listened; all was quiet in the
house; then he walked straight ahead, with short steps, to the window, of which he caught a
glimpse. The night was not very dark; there was a full moon, across which coursed large
clouds driven by the wind. This created, outdoors, alternate shadow and gleams of light,
eclipses, then bright openings of the clouds; and indoors a sort of twilight. This twilight,
sufficient to enable a person to see his way, intermittent on account of the clouds, resembled
the sort of livid light which falls through an air−hole in a cellar, before which the passersby
come and go. On arriving at the window, Jean Valjean examined it. It had no grating; it
opened in the garden and was fastened, according to the fashion of the country, only by a
small pin. He opened it; but as a rush of cold and piercing air penetrated the room abruptly,
he closed it again immediately. He scrutinized the garden with that attentive gaze which
studies rather than looks. The garden was enclosed by a tolerably low white wall, easy to
climb. Far away, at the extremity, he perceived tops of trees, spaced at regular intervals,
which indicated that the wall separated the garden from an avenue or lane planted with trees.
Having taken this survey, he executed a movement like that of a man who has made up
his mind, strode to his alcove, grasped his knapsack, opened it, fumbled in it, pulled out of it
something which he placed on the bed, put his shoes into one of his pockets, shut the whole
thing up again, threw the knapsack on his shoulders, put on his cap, drew the visor down
over his eyes, felt for his cudgel, went and placed it in the angle of the window; then
returned to the bed, and resolutely seized the object which he had deposited there. It
resembled a short bar of iron, pointed like a pike at one end. It would have been difficult to
distinguish in that darkness for what employment that bit of iron could have been designed.
Perhaps it was a lever; possibly it was a club.
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CHAPTER X − THE MAN AROUSED 102
In the daytime it would have been possible to recognize it as nothing more than a
miner's candlestick. Convicts were, at that period, sometimes employed in quarrying stone
from the lofty hills which environ Toulon, and it was not rare for them to have miners' tools
at their command. These miners' candlesticks are of massive iron, terminated at the lower
extremity by a point, by means of which they are stuck into the rock.
He took the candlestick in his right hand; holding his breath and trying to deaden the
sound of his tread, he directed his steps to the door of the adjoining room, occupied by the
Bishop, as we already know.
On arriving at this door, he found it ajar. The Bishop had not closed it.
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CHAPTER X − THE MAN AROUSED 103
CHAPTER XI − WHAT HE DOES
Jean Valjean listened. Not a sound.
He gave the door a push.
He pushed it gently with the tip of his finger, lightly, with the furtive and uneasy
gentleness of a cat which is desirous of entering.
The door yielded to this pressure, and made an imperceptible and silent movement,
which enlarged the opening a little.
He waited a moment; then gave the door a second and a bolder push.
It continued to yield in silence. The opening was now large enough to allow him to
pass. But near the door there stood a little table, which formed an embarrassing angle with it,
and barred the entrance.
Jean Valjean recognized the difficulty. It was necessary, at any cost, to enlarge the
aperture still further.
He decided on his course of action, and gave the door a third push, more energetic than
the two preceding. This time a badly oiled hinge suddenly emitted amid the silence a hoarse
and prolonged cry.
Jean Valjean shuddered. The noise of the hinge rang in his ears with something of the
piercing and formidable sound of the trump of the Day of Judgment.
In the fantastic exaggerations of the first moment he almost imagined that that hinge
had just become animated, and had suddenly assumed a terrible life, and that it was barking
like a dog to arouse every one, and warn and to wake those who were asleep. He halted,
shuddering, bewildered, and fell back from the tips of his toes upon his heels. He heard the
arteries in his temples beating like two forge hammers, and it seemed to him that his breath
issued from his breast with the roar of the wind issuing from a cavern. It seemed impossible
to him that the horrible clamor of that irritated hinge should not have disturbed the entire
household, like the shock of an earthquake; the door, pushed by him, had taken the alarm,
and had shouted; the old man would rise at once; the two old women would shriek out;
people would come to their assistance; in less than a quarter of an hour the town would be in
an uproar, and the gendarmerie on hand. For a moment he thought himself lost.
He remained where he was, petrified like the statue of salt, not daring to make a
movement. Several minutes elapsed. The door had fallen wide open. He ventured to peep
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CHAPTER XI − WHAT HE DOES 104
into the next room. Nothing had stirred there. He lent an ear. Nothing was moving in the
house. The noise made by the rusty hinge had not awakened any one.
This first danger was past; but there still reigned a frightful tumult within him.
Nevertheless, he did not retreat. Even when he had thought himself lost, he had not drawn
back. His only thought now was to finish as soon as possible. He took a step and entered the
room.
This room was in a state of perfect calm. Here and there vague and confused forms were
distinguishable, which in the daylight were papers scattered on a table, open folios, volumes
piled upon a stool, an arm−chair heaped with clothing, a prie−Dieu, and which at that hour
were only shadowy corners and whitish spots. Jean Valjean advanced with precaution,
taking care not to knock against the furniture. He could hear, at the extremity of the room,
the even and tranquil breathing of the sleeping Bishop.
He suddenly came to a halt. He was near the bed. He had arrived there sooner than he
had thought for.
Nature sometimes mingles her effects and her spectacles with our actions with sombre
and intelligent appropriateness, as though she desired to make us reflect. For the last
half−hour a large cloud had covered the heavens. At the moment when Jean Valjean paused
in front of the bed, this cloud parted, as though on purpose, and a ray of light, traversing the
long window, suddenly illuminated the Bishop's
,pale face. He was sleeping peacefully. He
lay in his bed almost completely dressed, on account of the cold of the Basses−Alps, in a
garment of brown wool, which covered his arms to the wrists. His head was thrown back on
the pillow, in the careless attitude of repose; his hand, adorned with the pastoral ring, and
whence had fallen so many good deeds and so many holy actions, was hanging over the
edge of the bed. His whole face was illumined with a vague expression of satisfaction, of
hope, and of felicity. It was more than a smile, and almost a radiance. He bore upon his
brow the indescribable reflection of a light which was invisible. The soul of the just
contemplates in sleep a mysterious heaven.
A reflection of that heaven rested on the Bishop.
It was, at the same time, a luminous transparency, for that heaven was within him. That
heaven was his conscience.
At the moment when the ray of moonlight superposed itself, so to speak, upon that
inward radiance, the sleeping Bishop seemed as in a glory. It remained, however, gentle and
veiled in an ineffable half−light. That moon in the sky, that slumbering nature, that garden
without a quiver, that house which was so calm, the hour, the moment, the silence, added
some solemn and unspeakable quality to the venerable repose of this man, and enveloped in
a sort of serene and majestic aureole that white hair, those closed eyes, that face in which all
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CHAPTER XI − WHAT HE DOES 105
was hope and all was confidence, that head of an old man, and that slumber of an infant.
There was something almost divine in this man, who was thus august, without being
himself aware of it.
Jean Valjean was in the shadow, and stood motionless, with his iron candlestick in his
hand, frightened by this luminous old man. Never had he beheld anything like this. This
confidence terrified him. The moral world has no grander spectacle than this: a troubled and
uneasy conscience, which has arrived on the brink of an evil action, contemplating the
slumber of the just.
That slumber in that isolation, and with a neighbor like himself, had about it something
sublime, of which he was vaguely but imperiously conscious.
No one could have told what was passing within him, not even himself. In order to
attempt to form an idea of it, it is necessary to think of the most violent of things in the
presence of the most gentle. Even on his visage it would have been impossible to distinguish
anything with certainty. It was a sort of haggard astonishment. He gazed at it, and that was
all. But what was his thought? It would have been impossible to divine it. What was evident
was, that he was touched and astounded. But what was the nature of this emotion?
His eye never quitted the old man. The only thing which was clearly to be inferred from
his attitude and his physiognomy was a strange indecision. One would have said that he was
hesitating between the two abysses, – the one in which one loses one's self and that in which
one saves one's self. He seemed prepared to crush that skull or to kiss that hand.
At the expiration of a few minutes his left arm rose slowly towards his brow, and he
took off his cap; then his arm fell back with the same deliberation, and Jean Valjean fell to
meditating once more, his cap in his left hand, his club in his right hand, his hair bristling all
over his savage head.
The Bishop continued to sleep in profound peace beneath that terrifying gaze.
The gleam of the moon rendered confusedly visible the crucif ix over the
chimney−piece, which seemed to be extending its arms to both of them, with a benediction
for one and pardon for the other.
Suddenly Jean Valjean replaced his cap on his brow; then stepped rapidly past the bed,
without glancing at the Bishop, straight to the cupboard, which he saw near the head; he
raised his iron candlestick as though to force the lock; the key was there; he opened it; the
first thing which presented itself to him was the basket of silverware; he seized it, traversed
the chamber with long strides, without taking any precautions and without troubling himself
about the noise, gained the door, re−entered the oratory, opened the window, seized his
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CHAPTER XI − WHAT HE DOES 106
cudgel, bestrode the window−sill of the ground−floor, put the silver into his knapsack, threw
away the basket, crossed the garden, leaped over the wall like a tiger, and fled.
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CHAPTER XI − WHAT HE DOES 107
CHAPTER XII − THE BISHOP WORKS
The next morning at sunrise Monseigneur Bienvenu was strolling in his garden.
Madame Magloire ran up to him in utter consternation.
"Monseigneur, Monseigneur!" she exclaimed, "does your Grace know where the basket
of silver is?"
"Yes," replied the Bishop.
"Jesus the Lord be blessed!" she resumed; "I did not know what had become of it."
The Bishop had just picked up the basket in a flower−bed. He presented it to Madame
Magloire.
"Here it is."
"Well!" said she. "Nothing in it! And the silver?"
"Ah," returned the Bishop, "so it is the silver which troubles you? I don't know where it
is."
"Great, good God! It is stolen! That man who was here last night has stolen it."
In a twinkling, with all the vivacity of an alert old woman, Madame Magloire had
rushed to the oratory, entered the alcove, and returned to the Bishop. The Bishop had just
bent down, and was sighing as he examined a plant of cochlearia des Guillons, which the
basket had broken as it fell across the bed. He rose up at Madame Magloire's cry.
"Monseigneur, the man is gone! The silver has been stolen!"
As she uttered this exclamation, her eyes fell upon a corner of the garden, where traces
of the wall having been scaled were visible. The coping of the wall had been torn away.
"Stay! yonder is the way he went. He jumped over into Cochefilet Lane. Ah, the
abomination! He has stolen our silver!"
The Bishop remained silent for a moment; then he raised his grave eyes, and said gently
to Madame Magloire: –
"And, in the first place, was that silver ours?"
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CHAPTER XII − THE BISHOP WORKS 108
Madame Magloire was speechless. Another silence ensued; then the Bishop went on: –
"Madame Magloire, I have for a long time detained that silver wrongfully. It belonged
to the poor. Who was that man? A poor man, evidently."
"Alas! Jesus!" returned Madame Magloire. "It is not for my sake, nor for
Mademoiselle's. It makes no difference to us. But it is for the sake of Monseigneur. What is
Monseigneur to eat with now?"
The Bishop gazed at her with an air of amazement.
"Ah, come! Are there no such things as pewter forks and spoons?"
Madame Magloire shrugged her shoulders.
"Pewter has an odor."
"Iron forks and spoons, then."
Madame Magloire made an expressive grimace.
"Iron has a taste."
"Very well," said the Bishop; "wooden ones then."
A few moments later he was breakfasting at the very table at which Jean Valjean had sat
on the previous evening. As he ate his breakfast, Monseigneur Welcome remarked gayly to
his sister, who said nothing, and to Madame Magloire, who was grumbling under her breath,
that one really does not need either fork or spoon, even of wood, in order to dip a bit of
bread in a cup of milk.
"A pretty idea, truly," said Madame Magloire to herself, as she went and came, "to take
in a man like that! and to lodge him close to one's self! And how fortunate that he did
nothing but steal! Ah, mon Dieu! it makes one shudder to think of it!"
As the brother and sister were about to rise from the table, there came a knock at the
door.
"Come in," said the Bishop.
The door opened. A singular and violent group made its appearance on the threshold.
Three men were holding a fourth man by the collar. The three
,men were gendarmes; the
other was Jean Valjean.
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CHAPTER XII − THE BISHOP WORKS 109
A brigadier of gendarmes, who seemed to be in command of the group, was standing
near the door. He entered and advanced to the Bishop, making a military salute.
"Monseigneur – " said he.
At this word, Jean Valjean, who was dejected and seemed overwhelmed, raised his head
with an air of stupefaction.
"Monseigneur!" he murmured. "So he is not the cure?"
"Silence!" said the gendarme. "He is Monseigneur the Bishop."
In the meantime, Monseigneur Bienvenu had advanced as quickly as his great age
permitted.
"Ah! here you are!" he exclaimed, looking at Jean Valjean. "I am glad to see you. Well,
but how is this? I gave you the candlesticks too, which are of silver like the rest, and for
which you can certainly get two hundred francs. Why did you not carry them away with
your forks and spoons?"
Jean Valjean opened his eyes wide, and stared at the venerable Bishop with an
expression which no human tongue can render any account of.
"Monseigneur," said the brigadier of gendarmes, "so what this man said is true, then?
We came across him. He was walking like a man who is running away. We stopped him to
look into the matter. He had this silver – "
"And he told you," interposed the Bishop with a smile, "that it had been given to him by
a kind old fellow of a priest with whom he had passed the night? I see how the matter
stands. And you have brought him back here? It is a mistake."
"In that case," replied the brigadier, "we can let him go?"
"Certainly," replied the Bishop.
The gendarmes released Jean Valjean, who recoiled.
"Is it true that I am to be released?" he said, in an almost inarticulate voice, and as
though he were talking in his sleep.
"Yes, thou art released; dost thou not understand?" said one of the gendarmes.
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CHAPTER XII − THE BISHOP WORKS 110
"My friend," resumed the Bishop, "before you go, here are your candlesticks. Take
them."
He stepped to the chimney−piece, took the two silver candlesticks, and brought them to
Jean Valjean. The two women looked on without uttering a word, without a gesture, without
a look which could disconcert the Bishop.
Jean Valjean was trembling in every limb. He took the two candlesticks mechanically,
and with a bewildered air.
"Now," said the Bishop, "go in peace. By the way, when you return, my friend, it is not
necessary to pass through the garden. You can always enter and depart through the street
door. It is never fastened with anything but a latch, either by day or by night."
Then, turning to the gendarmes: –
"You may retire, gentlemen."
The gendarmes retired.
Jean Valjean was like a man on the point of fainting.
The Bishop drew near to him, and said in a low voice: –
"Do not forget, never forget, that you have promised to use this money in becoming an
honest man."
Jean Valjean, who had no recollection of ever having promised anything, remained
speechless. The Bishop had emphasized the words when he uttered them. He resumed with
solemnity: –
"Jean Valjean, my brother, you no longer belong to evil, but to good. It is your soul that
I buy from you; I withdraw it from black thoughts and the spirit of perdition, and I give it to
God."
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CHAPTER XII − THE BISHOP WORKS 111
CHAPTER XIII − LITTLE GERVAIS
Jean Valjean left the town as though he were fleeing from it. He set out at a very hasty
pace through the fields, taking whatever roads and paths presented themselves to him,
without perceiving that he was incessantly retracing his steps. He wandered thus the whole
morning, without having eaten anything and without feeling hungry. He was the prey of a
throng of novel sensations. He was conscious of a sort of rage; he did not know against
whom it was directed. He could not have told whether he was touched or humiliated. There
came over him at moments a strange emotion which he resisted and to which he opposed the
hardness acquired during the last twenty years of his life. This state of mind fatigued him.
He perceived with dismay that the sort of frightful calm which the injustice of his misfortune
had conferred upon him was giving way within him. He asked himself what would replace
this. At times he would have actually preferred to be in prison with the gendarmes, and that
things should not have happened in this way; it would have agitated him less. Although the
season was tolerably far advanced, there were still a few late flowers in the hedge−rows here
and there, whose odor as he passed through them in his march recalled to him memories of
his childhood. These memories were almost intolerable to him, it was so long since they had
recurred to him.
Unutterable thoughts assembled within him in this manner all day long.
As the sun declined to its setting, casting long shadows athwart the soil from every
pebble, Jean Valjean sat down behind a bush upon a large ruddy plain, which was absolutely
deserted. There was nothing on the horizon except the Alps. Not even the spire of a distant
village. Jean Valjean might have been three leagues distant from D – – A path which
intersected the plain passed a few paces from the bush.
In the middle of this meditation, which would have contributed not a little to render his
rags terrifying to any one who might have encountered him, a joyous sound became audible.
He turned his head and saw a little Savoyard, about ten years of age, coming up the path
and singing, his hurdy−gurdy on his hip, and his marmot−box on his back,
One of those gay and gentle children, who go from land to land affording a view of their
knees through the holes in their trousers.
Without stopping his song, the lad halted in his march from time to time, and played at
knuckle−bones with some coins which he had in his hand – his whole fortune, probably.
Among this money there was one forty−sou piece.
The child halted beside the bush, without perceiving Jean Valjean, and tossed up his
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CHAPTER XIII − LITTLE GERVAIS 112
handful of sous, which, up to that time, he had caught with a good deal of adroitness on the
back of his hand.
This time the forty−sou piece escaped him, and went rolling towards the brushwood
until it reached Jean Valjean.
Jean Valjean set his foot upon it.
In the meantime, the child had looked after his coin and had caught sight of him.
He showed no astonishment, but walked straight up to the man.
The spot was absolutely solitary. As far as the eye could see there was not a person on
the plain or on the path. The only sound was the tiny, feeble cries of a flock of birds of
passage, which was traversing the heavens at an immense height. The child was standing
with his back to the sun, which cast threads of gold in his hair and empurpled with its
blood−red gleam the savage face of Jean Valjean.
"Sir," said the little Savoyard, with that childish confidence which is composed of
ignorance and innocence, "my money."
"What is your name?" said Jean Valjean.
"Little Gervais, sir."
"Go away," said Jean Valjean.
"Sir," resumed the child, "give me back my money."
Jean Valjean dropped his head, and made no reply.
The child began again, "My money, sir."
Jean Valjean's eyes remained fixed on the earth.
"My piece of money!" cried the child, "my white piece! my silver!"
It seemed as though Jean Valjean did not hear him. The child grasped him by the collar
of his blouse and shook him. At the same time he made an effort to displace the big
iron−shod shoe which rested on his treasure.
"I want my piece of money! my piece of forty sous!"
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CHAPTER XIII − LITTLE GERVAIS 113
The child wept. Jean Valjean raised his head. He still remained seated.
,His eyes were
troubled. He gazed at the child, in a sort of amazement, then he stretched out his hand
towards his cudgel and cried in a terrible voice, "Who's there?"
"I, sir," replied the child. "Little Gervais! I! Give me back my forty sous, if you please!
Take your foot away, sir, if you please!"
Then irritated, though he was so small, and becoming almost menacing: –
"Come now, will you take your foot away? Take your foot away, or we'll see!"
"Ah! It's still you!" said Jean Valjean, and rising abruptly to his feet, his foot still resting
on the silver piece, he added: –
"Will you take yourself off!"
The frightened child looked at him, then began to tremble from head to foot, and after a
few moments of stupor he set out, running at the top of his speed, without daring to turn his
neck or to utter a cry.
Nevertheless, lack of breath forced him to halt after a certain distance, and Jean Valjean
heard him sobbing, in the midst of his own revery.
At the end of a few moments the child had disappeared.
The sun had set.
The shadows were descending around Jean Valjean. He had eaten nothing all day; it is
probable that he was feverish.
He had remained standing and had not changed his attitude after the child's flight. The
breath heaved his chest at long and irregular intervals. His gaze, fixed ten or twelve paces in
front of him, seemed to be scrutinizing with profound attention the shape of an ancient
fragment of blue earthenware which had fallen in the grass. All at once he shivered; he had
just begun to feel the chill of evening.
He settled his cap more firmly on his brow, sought mechanically to cross and button his
blouse, advanced a step and stopped to pick up his cudgel.
At that moment he caught sight of the forty−sou piece, which his foot had half ground
into the earth, and which was shining among the pebbles. It was as though he had received a
galvanic shock. "What is this?" he muttered between his teeth. He recoiled three paces, then
halted, without being able to detach his gaze from the spot which his foot had trodden but an
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CHAPTER XIII − LITTLE GERVAIS 114
instant before, as though the thing which lay glittering there in the gloom had been an open
eye riveted upon him.
At the expiration of a few moments he darted convulsively towards the silver coin,
seized it, and straightened himself up again and began to gaze afar off over the plain, at the
same time casting his eyes towards all points of the horizon, as he stood there erect and
shivering, like a terrified wild animal which is seeking refuge.
He saw nothing. Night was falling, the plain was cold and vague, great banks of violet
haze were rising in the gleam of the twilight.
He said, "Ah!" and set out rapidly in the direction in which the child had disappeared.
After about thirty paces he paused, looked about him and saw nothing.
Then he shouted with all his might: –
"Little Gervais! Little Gervais!"
He paused and waited.
There was no reply.
The landscape was gloomy and deserted. He was encompassed by space. There was
nothing around him but an obscurity in which his gaze was lost, and a silence which
engulfed his voice.
An icy north wind was blowing, and imparted to things around him a sort of lugubrious
life. The bushes shook their thin little arms with incredible fury. One would have said that
they were threatening and pursuing some one.
He set out on his march again, then he began to run; and from time to time he halted and
shouted into that solitude, with a voice which was the most formidable and the most
disconsolate that it was possible to hear, "Little Gervais! Little Gervais!"
Assuredly, if the child had heard him, he would have been alarmed and would have
taken good care not to show himself. But the child was no doubt already far away.
He encountered a priest on horseback. He stepped up to him and said: –
"Monsieur le Cure, have you seen a child pass?"
"No," said the priest.
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CHAPTER XIII − LITTLE GERVAIS 115
"One named Little Gervais?"
"I have seen no one."
He drew two five−franc pieces from his money−bag and handed them to the priest.
"Monsieur le Cure, this is for your poor people. Monsieur le Cure, he was a little lad,
about ten years old, with a marmot, I think, and a hurdy−gurdy. One of those Savoyards, you
know?"
"I have not seen him."
"Little Gervais? There are no villages here? Can you tell me?"
"If he is like what you say, my friend, he is a little stranger. Such persons pass through
these parts. We know nothing of them."
Jean Valjean seized two more coins of five francs each with violence, and gave them to
the priest.
"For your poor," he said.
Then he added, wildly: –
"Monsieur l'Abbe, have me arrested. I am a thief."
The priest put spurs to his horse and fled in haste, much alarmed.
Jean Valjean set out on a run, in the direction which he had first taken.
In this way he traversed a tolerably long distance, gazing, calling, shouting, but he met
no one. Two or three times he ran across the plain towards something which conveyed to
him the effect of a human being reclining or crouching down; it turned out to be nothing but
brushwood or rocks nearly on a level with the earth. At length, at a spot where three paths
intersected each other, he stopped. The moon had risen. He sent his gaze into the distance
and shouted for the last time, "Little Gervais! Little Gervais! Little Gervais!" His shout died
away in the mist, without even awakening an echo. He murmured yet once more, "Little
Gervais!" but in a feeble and almost inarticulate voice. It was his last effort; his legs gave
way abruptly under him, as though an invisible power had suddenly overwhelmed him with
the weight of his evil conscience; he fell exhausted, on a large stone, his fists clenched in his
hair and his face on his knees, and he cried, "I am a wretch!"
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CHAPTER XIII − LITTLE GERVAIS 116
Then his heart burst, and he began to cry. It was the first time that he had wept in
nineteen years.
When Jean Valjean left the Bishop's house, he was, as we have seen, quite thrown out
of everything that had been his thought hitherto. He could not yield to the evidence of what
was going on within him. He hardened himself against the angelic action and the gentle
words of the old man. "You have promised me to become an honest man. I buy your soul. I
take it away from the spirit of perversity; I give it to the good God."
This recurred to his mind unceasingly. To this celestial kindness he opposed pride,
which is the fortress of evil within us. He was indistinctly conscious that the pardon of this
priest was the greatest assault and the most formidable attack which had moved him yet; that
his obduracy was finally settled if he resisted this clemency; that if he yielded, he should be
obliged to renounce that hatred with which the actions of other men had filled his soul
through so many years, and which pleased him; that this time it was necessary to conquer or
to be conquered; and that a struggle, a colossal and final struggle, had been begun between
his viciousness and the goodness of that man.
In the presence of these lights, he proceeded like a man who is intoxicated. As he
walked thus with haggard eyes, did he have a distinct perception of what might result to him
from his adventure at D – – ? Did he understand all those mysterious murmurs which warn
or importune the spirit at certain moments of life? Did a voice whisper in his ear that he had
just passed the solemn hour of his destiny; that there no longer remained a middle course for
him; that if he were not henceforth the best of men, he would be the worst; that it behooved
him now, so to speak, to mount higher than the Bishop,
,or fall lower than the convict; that if
he wished to become good be must become an angel; that if he wished to remain evil, he
must become a monster?
Here, again, some questions must be put, which we have already put to ourselves
elsewhere: did he catch some shadow of all this in his thought, in a confused way?
Misfortune certainly, as we have said, does form the education of the intelligence;
nevertheless, it is doubtful whether Jean Valjean was in a condition to disentangle all that
we have here indicated. If these ideas occurred to him, he but caught glimpses of, rather than
saw them, and they only succeeded in throwing him into an unutterable and almost painful
state of emotion. On emerging from that black and deformed thing which is called the
galleys, the Bishop had hurt his soul, as too vivid a light would have hurt his eyes on
emerging from the dark. The future life, the possible life which offered itself to him
henceforth, all pure and radiant, filled him with tremors and anxiety. He no longer knew
where he really was. Like an owl, who should suddenly see the sun rise, the convict had
been dazzled and blinded, as it were, by virtue.
That which was certain, that which he did not doubt, was that he was no longer the same
man, that everything about him was changed, that it was no longer in his power to make it as
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CHAPTER XIII − LITTLE GERVAIS 117
though the Bishop had not spoken to him and had not touched him.
In this state of mind he had encountered little Gervais, and had robbed him of his forty
sous. Why? He certainly could not have explained it; was this the last effect and the supreme
effort, as it were, of the evil thoughts which he had brought away from the galleys, – a
remnant of impulse, a result of what is called in statics, acquired force? It was that, and it
was also, perhaps, even less than that. Let us say it simply, it was not he who stole; it was
not the man; it was the beast, who, by habit and instinct, had simply placed his foot upon
that money, while the intelligence was struggling amid so many novel and hitherto
unheard−of thoughts besetting it.
When intelligence re−awakened and beheld that action of the brute, Jean Valjean
recoiled with anguish and uttered a cry of terror.
It was because, – strange phenomenon, and one which was possible only in the situation
in which he found himself, – in stealing the money from that child, he had done a thing of
which he was no longer capable.
However that may be, this last evil action had a decisive effect on him; it abruptly
traversed that chaos which he bore in his mind, and dispersed it, placed on one side the thick
obscurity, and on the other the light, and acted on his soul, in the state in which it then was,
as certain chemical reagents act upon a troubled mixture by precipitating one element and
clarifying the other.
First of all, even before examining himself and reflecting, all bewildered, like one who
seeks to save himself, he tried to find the child in order to return his money to him; then,
when he recognized the fact that this was impossible, he halted in despair. At the moment
when he exclaimed "I am a wretch!" he had just perceived what he was, and he was already
separated from himself to such a degree, that he seemed to himself to be no longer anything
more than a phantom, and as if he had, there before him, in flesh and blood, the hideous
galley−convict, Jean Valjean, cudgel in hand, his blouse on his hips, his knapsack filled with
stolen objects on his back, with his resolute and gloomy visage, with his thoughts filled with
abominable projects.
Excess of unhappiness had, as we have remarked, made him in some sort a visionary.
This, then, was in the nature of a vision. He actually saw that Jean Valjean, that sinister face,
before him. He had almost reached the point of asking himself who that man was, and he
was horrified by him.
His brain was going through one of those violent and yet perfectly calm moments in
which revery is so profound that it absorbs reality. One no longer beholds the object which
one has before one, and one sees, as though apart from one's self, the figures which one has
in one's own mind.
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Thus he contemplated himself, so to speak, face to face, and at the same time, athwart
this hallucination, he perceived in a mysterious depth a sort of light which he at first took for
a torch. On scrutinizing this light which appeared to his conscience with more attention, he
recognized the fact that it possessed a human form and that this torch was the Bishop.
His conscience weighed in turn these two men thus placed before it, – the Bishop and
Jean Valjean. Nothing less than the first was required to soften the second. By one of those
singular effects, which are peculiar to this sort of ecstasies, in proportion as his revery
continued, as the Bishop grew great and resplendent in his eyes, so did Jean Valjean grow
less and vanish. After a certain time he was no longer anything more than a shade. All at
once he disappeared. The Bishop alone remained; he filled the whole soul of this wretched
man with a magnificent radiance.
Jean Valjean wept for a long time. He wept burning tears, he sobbed with more
weakness than a woman, with more fright than a child.
As he wept, daylight penetrated more and more clearly into his soul; an extraordinary
light; a light at once ravishing and terrible. His past life, his first fault, his long expiation, his
external brutishness, his internal hardness, his dismissal to liberty, rejoicing in manifold
plans of vengeance, what had happened to him at the Bishop's, the last thing that he had
done, that theft of forty sous from a child, a crime all the more cowardly, and all the more
monstrous since it had come after the Bishop's pardon, – all this recurred to his mind and
appeared clearly to him, but with a clearness which he had never hitherto witnessed. He
examined his life, and it seemed horrible to him; his soul, and it seemed frightful to him. In
the meantime a gentle light rested over this life and this soul. It seemed to him that he beheld
Satan by the light of Paradise.
How many hours did he weep thus? What did he do after he had wept? Whither did he
go! No one ever knew. The only thing which seems to be authenticated is that that same
night the carrier who served Grenoble at that epoch, and who arrived at D – – about three
o'clock in the morning, saw, as he traversed the street in which the Bishop's residence was
situated, a man in the attitude of prayer, kneeling on the pavement in the shadow, in front of
the door of Monseigneur Welcome.
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CHAPTER XIII − LITTLE GERVAIS 119
BOOK THIRD. – IN THE YEAR 1817
Les Miserables
BOOK THIRD. – IN THE YEAR 1817 120
CHAPTER I − THE YEAR 1817
1817 is the year which Louis XVIII., with a certain royal assurance
which was not wanting in pride, entitled the twenty−second of his reign. It is the year in
which M. Bruguiere de Sorsum was celebrated. All the hairdressers' shops, hoping for
powder and the return of the royal bird, were besmeared with azure and decked with
fleurs−de−lys. It was the candid time at which Count Lynch sat every Sunday as
church−warden in the church−warden's pew of Saint−Germain−des−Pres, in his costume of
a peer of France, with his red ribbon and his long nose and the majesty of profile peculiar to
a man who has performed a brilliant action. The brilliant action performed by M. Lynch was
this: being mayor of Bordeaux, on the 12th of March, 1814, he had surrendered the city a
little too promptly to M. the Duke d'Angouleme. Hence his peerage. In 1817 fashion
swallowed up little boys of from four to six years of age in vast caps of morocco leather
with ear−tabs resembling Esquimaux mitres. The French army was dressed in white, after
,the mode of the Austrian; the regiments were called legions; instead of numbers they bore
the names of departments; Napoleon was at St. Helena; and since England refused him green
cloth, he was having his old coats turned. In 1817 Pelligrini sang; Mademoiselle Bigottini
danced; Potier reigned; Odry did not yet exist. Madame Saqui had succeeded to Forioso.
There were still Prussians in France. M. Delalot was a personage. Legitimacy had just
asserted itself by cutting off the hand, then the head, of Pleignier, of Carbonneau, and of
Tolleron. The Prince de Talleyrand, grand chamberlain, and the Abbe Louis, appointed
minister of finance, laughed as they looked at each other, with the laugh of the two augurs;
both of them had celebrated, on the 14th of July, 1790, the mass of federation in the Champ
de Mars; Talleyrand had said it as bishop, Louis had served it in the capacity of deacon. In
1817, in the side−alleys of this same Champ de Mars, two great cylinders of wood might
have been seen lying in the rain, rotting amid the grass, painted blue, with traces of eagles
and bees, from which the gilding was falling. These were the columns which two years
before had upheld the Emperor's platform in the Champ de Mai. They were blackened here
and there with the scorches of the bivouac of Austrians encamped near Gros−Caillou. Two
or three of these columns had disappeared in these bivouac fires, and had warmed the large
hands of the Imperial troops. The Field of May had this remarkable point: that it had been
held in the month of June and in the Field of March (Mars). In this year, 1817, two things
were popular: the Voltaire−Touquet and the snuff−box a la Charter. The most recent
Parisian sensation was the crime of Dautun, who had thrown his brother's head into the
fountain of the Flower−Market.
They had begun to feel anxious at the Naval Department, on account of the lack of news
from that fatal frigate, The Medusa, which was destined to cover Chaumareix with infamy
and Gericault with glory. Colonel Selves was going to Egypt to become Soliman−Pasha.
The palace of Thermes, in the Rue de La Harpe, served as a shop for a cooper. On the
platform of the octagonal tower of the Hotel de Cluny, the little shed of boards, which had
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CHAPTER I − THE YEAR 1817 121
served as an observatory to Messier, the naval astronomer under Louis XVI., was still to be
seen. The duch*esse de Duras read to three or four friends her unpublished Ourika, in her
boudoir furnished by X. in sky−blue satin. The N's were scratched off the Louvre. The
bridge of Austerlitz had abdicated, and was entitled the bridge of the King's Garden [du
Jardin du Roi], a double enigma, which disguised the bridge of Austerlitz and the Jardin des
Plantes at one stroke. Louis XVIII., much preoccupied while annotating Horace with the
corner of his finger−nail, heroes who have become emperors, and makers of wooden shoes
who have become dauphins, had two anxieties, – Napoleon and Mathurin Bruneau. The
French Academy had given for its prize subject, The Happiness procured through Study. M.
Bellart was officially eloquent. In his shadow could be seen germinating that future
advocate−general of Broe, dedicated to the sarcasms of Paul−Louis Courier. There was a
false Chateaubriand, named Marchangy, in the interim, until there should be a false
Marchangy, named d'Arlincourt. Claire d'Albe and Malek−Adel were masterpieces;
Madame Cottin was proclaimed the chief writer of the epoch. The Institute had the
academician, Napoleon Bonaparte, stricken from its list of members. A royal ordinance
erected Angouleme into a naval school; for the Duc d'Angouleme, being lord high admiral,
it was evident that the city of Angouleme had all the qualities of a seaport; otherwise the
monarchical principle would have received a wound. In the Council of Ministers the
question was agitated whether vignettes representing slack−rope performances, which
adorned Franconi's advertising posters, and which attracted throngs of street urchins, should
be tolerated. M. Paer, the author of Agnese, a good sort of fellow, with a square face and a
wart on his cheek, directed the little private concerts of the Marquise de Sasenaye in the Rue
Ville l'Eveque. All the young girls were singing the Hermit of Saint−Avelle, with words by
Edmond Geraud. The Yellow Dwarf was transferred into Mirror. The Cafe Lemblin stood
up for the Emperor, against the Cafe Valois, which upheld the Bourbons. The Duc de Berri,
already surveyed from the shadow by Louvel, had just been married to a princess of Sicily.
Madame de Stael had died a year previously. The body−guard hissed Mademoiselle Mars.
The grand newspapers were all very small. Their form was restricted, but their liberty was
great. The Constitutionnel was constitutional. La Minerve called Chateaubriand
Chateaubriant. That t made the good middle−class people laugh heartily at the expense of
the great writer. In journals which sold themselves, prostituted journalists, insulted the exiles
of 1815. David had no longer any talent, Arnault had no longer any wit, Carnot was no
longer honest, Soult had won no battles; it is true that Napoleon had no longer any genius.
No one is ignorant of the fact that letters sent to an exile by post very rarely reached him, as
the police made it their religious duty to intercept them. This is no new fact; Descartes
complained of it in his exile. Now David, having, in a Belgian publication, shown some
displeasure at not receiving letters which had been written to him, it struck the royalist
journals as amusing; and they derided the prescribed man well on this occasion. What
separated two men more than an abyss was to say, the regicides, or to say the voters; to say
the enemies, or to say the allies; to say Napoleon, or to say Buonaparte. All sensible people
were agreed that the era of revolution had been closed forever by King Louis XVIII.,
surnamed "The Immortal Author of the Charter." On the platform of the Pont−Neuf, the
word Redivivus was carved on the pedestal that awaited the statue of Henry IV. M. Piet, in
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CHAPTER I − THE YEAR 1817 122
the Rue Therese, No. 4, was making the rough draft of his privy assembly to consolidate the
monarchy. The leaders of the Right said at grave conjunctures, "We must write to Bacot."
MM. Canuel, O'Mahoney, and De Chappedelaine were preparing the sketch, to some extent
with Monsieur's approval, of what was to become later on "The Conspiracy of the Bord de
l'Eau" – of the waterside. L'Epingle Noire was already plotting in his own quarter.
Delaverderie was conferring with Trogoff. M. Decazes, who was liberal to a degree, reigned.
Chateaubriand stood every morning at his window at No. 27 Rue Saint−Dominique, clad in
footed trousers, and slippers, with a madras kerchief knotted over his gray hair, with his eyes
fixed on a mirror, a complete set of dentist's instruments spread out before him, cleaning his
teeth, which were charming, while he dictated The Monarchy according to the Charter to M.
Pilorge, his secretary. Criticism, assuming an authoritative tone, preferred Lafon to Talma.
M. de Feletez signed himself A.; M. Hoffmann signed himself Z. Charles Nodier wrote
Therese Aubert. Divorce was abolished. Lyceums called themselves colleges. The
collegians, decorated on the collar with a golden fleur−de−lys, fought each other apropos of
the King of Rome. The counter−police of the chateau had denounced to her Royal Highness
Madame, the portrait, everywhere exhibited, of M. the Duc d'Orleans, who made a better
appearance in his uniform of a colonel−general of hussars than M. the Duc de Berri, in his
uniform of colonel−general of dragoons – a serious inconvenience. The city of Paris was
having the dome of the Invalides regilded at its own expense. Serious men asked themselves
what M. de Trinquelague would do on such or such an
,occasion; M. Clausel de Montals
differed on divers points from M. Clausel de Coussergues; M. de Salaberry was not
satisfied. The comedian Picard, who belonged to the Academy, which the comedian Moliere
had not been able to do, had The Two Philiberts played at the Odeon, upon whose pediment
the removal of the letters still allowed THEATRE OF THE EMPRESS to be plainly read.
People took part for or against Cugnet de Montarlot. Fabvier was factious; Bavoux was
revolutionary. The Liberal, Pelicier, published an edition of Voltaire, with the following
title: Works of Voltaire, of the French Academy. "That will attract purchasers," said the
ingenious editor. The general opinion was that M. Charles Loyson would be the genius of
the century; envy was beginning to gnaw at him – a sign of glory; and this verse was
composed on him: –
"Even when Loyson steals, one feels that he has paws."
As Cardinal Fesch refused to resign, M. de Pins, Archbishop of Amasie, administered
the diocese of Lyons. The quarrel over the valley of Dappes was begun between Switzerland
and France by a memoir from Captain, afterwards General Dufour. Saint−Simon, ignored,
was erecting his sublime dream. There was a celebrated Fourier at the Academy of Science,
whom posterity has forgotten; and in some garret an obscure Fourier, whom the future will
recall. Lord Byron was beginning to make his mark; a note to a poem by Millevoye
introduced him to France in these terms: a certain Lord Baron. David d'Angers was trying to
work in marble. The Abbe Caron was speaking, in terms of praise, to a private gathering of
seminarists in the blind alley of Feuillantines, of an unknown priest, named Felicite−Robert,
who, at a latter date, became Lamennais. A thing which smoked and clattered on the Seine
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with the noise of a swimming dog went and came beneath the windows of the Tuileries,
from the Pont Royal to the Pont Louis XV.; it was a piece of mechanism which was not
good for much; a sort of plaything, the idle dream of a dream−ridden inventor; an utopia – a
steamboat. The Parisians stared indifferently at this useless thing. M. de Vaublanc, the
reformer of the Institute by a coup d'etat, the distinguished author of numerous
academicians, ordinances, and batches of members, after having created them, could not
succeed in becoming one himself. The Faubourg Saint−Germain and the pavilion de Marsan
wished to have M. Delaveau for prefect of police, on account of his piety. Dupuytren and
Recamier entered into a quarrel in the amphitheatre of the School of Medicine, and
threatened each other with their fists on the subject of the divinity of Jesus Christ. Cuvier,
with one eye on Genesis and the other on nature, tried to please bigoted reaction by
reconciling fossils with texts and by making mastodons flatter Moses.
M. Francois de Neufchateau, the praiseworthy cultivator of the memory of Parmentier,
made a thousand efforts to have pomme de terre [potato] pronounced parmentiere, and
succeeded therein not at all. The Abbe Gregoire, ex−bishop, ex−conventionary, ex−senator,
had passed, in the royalist polemics, to the state of "Infamous Gregoire." The locution of
which we have made use – passed to the state of – has been condemned as a neologism by
M. Royer Collard. Under the third arch of the Pont de Jena, the new stone with which, the
two years previously, the mining aperture made by Blucher to blow up the bridge had been
stopped up, was still recognizable on account of its whiteness. Justice summoned to its bar a
man who, on seeing the Comte d'Artois enter Notre Dame, had said aloud: "Sapristi! I regret
the time when I saw Bonaparte and Talma enter the Bel Sauvage, arm in arm." A seditious
utterance. Six months in prison. Traitors showed themselves unbuttoned; men who had gone
over to the enemy on the eve of battle made no secret of their recompense, and strutted
immodestly in the light of day, in the cynicism of riches and dignities; deserters from Ligny
and Quatre−Bras, in the brazenness of their well−paid turpitude, exhibited their devotion to
the monarchy in the most barefaced manner.
This is what floats up confusedly, pell−mell, for the year 1817, and is now forgotten.
History neglects nearly all these particulars, and cannot do otherwise; the infinity would
overwhelm it. Nevertheless, these details, which are wrongly called trivial, – there are no
trivial facts in humanity, nor little leaves in vegetation, – are useful. It is of the physiognomy
of the years that the physiognomy of the centuries is composed. In this year of 1817 four
young Parisians arranged "a fine farce."
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CHAPTER II − A DOUBLE QUARTETTE
These Parisians came, one from Toulouse, another from Limoges, the third from
Cahors, and the fourth from Montauban; but they were students; and when one says student,
one says Parisian: to study in Paris is to be born in Paris.
These young men were insignificant; every one has seen such faces; four specimens of
humanity taken at random; neither good nor bad, neither wise nor ignorant, neither geniuses
nor fools; handsome, with that charming April which is called twenty years. They were four
Oscars; for, at that epoch, Arthurs did not yet exist. Burn for him the perfumes of Araby!
exclaimed romance. Oscar advances. Oscar, I shall behold him! People had just emerged
from Ossian; elegance was Scandinavian and Caledonian; the pure English style was only to
prevail later, and the first of the Arthurs, Wellington, had but just won the battle of
Waterloo.
These Oscars bore the names, one of Felix Tholomyes, of Toulouse; the second,
Listolier, of Cahors; the next, Fameuil, of Limoges; the last, Blachevelle, of Montauban.
Naturally, each of them had his mistress. Blachevelle loved Favourite, so named because she
had been in England; Listolier adored Dahlia, who had taken for her nickname the name of a
flower; Fameuil idolized Zephine, an abridgment of Josephine; Tholomyes had Fantine,
called the Blonde, because of her beautiful, sunny hair.
Favourite, Dahlia, Zephine, and Fantine were four ravishing young women, perfumed
and radiant, still a little like working−women, and not yet entirely divorced from their
needles; somewhat disturbed by intrigues, but still retaining on their faces something of the
serenity of toil, and in their souls that flower of honesty which survives the first fall in
woman. One of the four was called the young, because she was the youngest of them, and
one was called the old; the old one was twenty−three. Not to conceal anything, the three first
were more experienced, more heedless, and more emancipated into the tumult of life than
Fantine the Blonde, who was still in her first illusions.
Dahlia, Zephine, and especially Favourite, could not have said as much. There had
already been more than one episode in their romance, though hardly begun; and the lover
who had borne the name of Adolph in the first chapter had turned out to be Alphonse in the
second, and Gustave in the third. Poverty and coquetry are two fatal counsellors; one scolds
and the other flatters, and the beautiful daughters of the people have both of them
whispering in their ear, each on its own side. These badly guarded souls listen. Hence the
falls which they accomplish, and the stones which are thrown at them. They are
overwhelmed with splendor of all that is immaculate and inaccessible. Alas! what if the
Jungfrau were hungry?
Favourite having been in England, was admired by Dahlia and Zephine. She had had an
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establishment of her own very early in life. Her father was an old unmarried professor of
mathematics, a brutal man and a braggart, who went out to give lessons in spite of his age.
This professor, when he was a young man, had one day
,seen a chambermaid's gown catch
on a fender; he had fallen in love in consequence of this accident. The result had been
Favourite. She met her father from time to time, and he bowed to her. One morning an old
woman with the air of a devotee, had entered her apartments, and had said to her, "You do
not know me, Mamemoiselle?" "No." "I am your mother." Then the old woman opened the
sideboard, and ate and drank, had a mattress which she owned brought in, and installed
herself. This cross and pious old mother never spoke to Favourite, remained hours without
uttering a word, breakfasted, dined, and supped for four, and went down to the porter's
quarters for company, where she spoke ill of her daughter.
It was having rosy nails that were too pretty which had drawn Dahlia to Listolier, to
others perhaps, to idleness. How could she make such nails work? She who wishes to remain
virtuous must not have pity on her hands. As for Zephine, she had conquered Fameuil by her
roguish and caressing little way of saying "Yes, sir."
The young men were comrades; the young girls were friends. Such loves are always
accompanied by such friendships.
Goodness and philosophy are two distinct things; the proof of this is that, after making
all due allowances for these little irregular households, Favourite, Zephine, and Dahlia were
philosophical young women, while Fantine was a good girl.
Good! some one will exclaim; and Tholomyes? Solomon would reply that love forms a
part of wisdom. We will confine ourselves to saying that the love of Fantine was a first love,
a sole love, a faithful love.
She alone, of all the four, was not called "thou" by a single one of them.
Fantine was one of those beings who blossom, so to speak, from the dregs of the people.
Though she had emerged from the most unfathomable depths of social shadow, she bore on
her brow the sign of the anonymous and the unknown. She was born at M. sur M. Of what
parents? Who can say? She had never known father or mother. She was called Fantine. Why
Fantine? She had never borne any other name. At the epoch of her birth the Directory still
existed. She had no family name; she had no family; no baptismal name; the Church no
longer existed. She bore the name which pleased the first random passer−by, who had
encountered her, when a very small child, running bare−legged in the street. She received
the name as she received the water from the clouds upon her brow when it rained. She was
called little Fantine. No one knew more than that. This human creature had entered life in
just this way. At the age of ten, Fantine quitted the town and went to service with some
farmers in the neighborhood. At fifteen she came to Paris "to seek her fortune." Fantine was
beautiful, and remained pure as long as she could. She was a lovely blonde, with fine teeth.
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She had gold and pearls for her dowry; but her gold was on her head, and her pearls were in
her mouth.
She worked for her living; then, still for the sake of her living, – for the heart, also, has
its hunger, – she loved.
She loved Tholomyes.
An amour for him; passion for her. The streets of the Latin quarter, filled with throngs
of students and grisettes, saw the beginning of their dream. Fantine had long evaded
Tholomyes in the mazes of the hill of the Pantheon, where so many adventurers twine and
untwine, but in such a way as constantly to encounter him again. There is a way of avoiding
which resembles seeking. In short, the eclogue took place.
Blachevelle, Listolier, and Fameuil formed a sort of group of which Tholomyes was the
head. It was he who possessed the wit.
Tholomyes was the antique old student; he was rich; he had an income of four thousand
francs; four thousand francs! a splendid scandal on Mount Sainte−Genevieve. Tholomyes
was a fast man of thirty, and badly preserved. He was wrinkled and toothless, and he had the
beginning of a bald spot, of which he himself said with sadness, the skull at thirty, the knee
at forty. His digestion was mediocre, and he had been attacked by a watering in one eye. But
in proportion as his youth disappeared, gayety was kindled; he replaced his teeth with
buffooneries, his hair with mirth, his health with irony, his weeping eye laughed incessantly.
He was dilapidated but still in flower. His youth, which was packing up for departure long
before its time, beat a retreat in good order, bursting with laughter, and no one saw anything
but fire. He had had a piece rejected at the Vaudeville. He made a few verses now and then.
In addition to this he doubted everything to the last degree, which is a vast force in the eyes
of the weak. Being thus ironical and bald, he was the leader. Iron is an English word. Is it
possible that irony is derived from it?
One day Tholomyes took the three others aside, with the gesture of an oracle, and said
to them: –
"Fantine, Dahlia, Zephine, and Favourite have been teasing us for nearly a year to give
them a surprise. We have promised them solemnly that we would. They are forever talking
about it to us, to me in particular, just as the old women in Naples cry to Saint Januarius,
`Faccia gialluta, fa o miracolo, Yellow face, perform thy miracle,' so our beauties say to me
incessantly, `Tholomyes, when will you bring forth your surprise?' At the same time our
parents keep writing to us. Pressure on both sides. The moment has arrived, it seems to me;
let us discuss the question."
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CHAPTER II − A DOUBLE QUARTETTE 127
Thereupon, Tholomyes lowered his voice and articulated something so mirthful, that a
vast and enthusiastic grin broke out upon the four mouths simultaneously, and Blachevelle
exclaimed, "That is an idea."
A smoky tap−room presented itself; they entered, and the remainder of their
confidential colloquy was lost in shadow.
The result of these shades was a dazzling pleasure party which took place on the
following Sunday, the four young men inviting the four young girls.
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CHAPTER II − A DOUBLE QUARTETTE 128
CHAPTER III − FOUR AND FOUR
I t is hard nowadays to picture to one's self what a pleasure−trip of students and grisettes
to the country was like, forty−five years ago. The suburbs of Paris are no longer the same;
the physiognomy of what may be called circumparisian life has changed completely in the
last half−century; where there was the cuckoo, there is the railway car; where there was a
tender−boat, there is now the steamboat; people speak of Fecamp nowadays as they spoke of
Saint−Cloud in those days. The Paris of 1862 is a city which has France for its outskirts.
The four couples conscientiously went through with all the country follies possible at
that time. The vacation was beginning, and it was a warm, bright, summer day. On the
preceding day, Favourite, the only one who knew how to write, had written the following to
Tholomyes in the name of the four: "It is a good hour to emerge from happiness." That is
why they rose at five o'clock in the morning. Then they went to Saint−Cloud by the coach,
looked at the dry cascade and exclaimed, "This must be very beautiful when there is water!"
They breakfasted at the Tete−Noir, where Castaing had not yet been; they treated
themselves to a game of ring−throwing under the quincunx of trees of the grand fountain;
they ascended Diogenes' lantern, they gambled for macaroons at the roulette establishment
of the Pont de Sevres, picked bouquets at Pateaux, bought reed−pipes at Neuilly, ate apple
tarts everywhere, and were perfectly happy.
The young girls rustled and chatted like warblers escaped from their cage. It was a
perfect delirium. From time to time they bestowed little taps on the young men. Matutinal
intoxication of life! adorable years! the wings of the dragonfly quiver. Oh, whoever
,you may
be, do you not remember? Have you rambled through the brushwood, holding aside the
branches, on account of the charming head which is coming on behind you? Have you slid,
laughing, down a slope all wet with rain, with a beloved woman holding your hand, and
crying, "Ah, my new boots! what a state they are in!"
Let us say at once that that merry obstacle, a shower, was lacking in the case of this
good−humored party, although Favourite had said as they set out, with a magisterial and
maternal tone, "The slugs are crawling in the paths, – a sign of rain, children."
All four were madly pretty. A good old classic poet, then famous, a good fellow who
had an Eleonore, M. le Chevalier de Labouisse, as he strolled that day beneath the
chestnut−trees of Saint−Cloud, saw them pass about ten o'clock in the morning, and
exclaimed, "There is one too many of them," as he thought of the Graces. Favourite,
Blachevelle's friend, the one aged three and twenty, the old one, ran on in front under the
great green boughs, jumped the ditches, stalked distractedly over bushes, and presided over
this merry−making with the spirit of a young female faun. Zephine and Dahlia, whom
chance had made beautiful in such a way that they set each off when they were together, and
completed each other, never left each other, more from an instinct of coquetry than from
Les Miserables
CHAPTER III − FOUR AND FOUR 129
friendship, and clinging to each other, they assumed English poses; the first keepsakes had
just made their appearance, melancholy was dawning for women, as later on, Byronism
dawned for men; and the hair of the tender sex began to droop dolefully. Zephine and Dahlia
had their hair dressed in rolls. Listolier and Fameuil, who were engaged in discussing their
professors, explained to Fantine the difference that existed between M. Delvincourt and M.
Blondeau.
Blachevel le seemed to have been created expressly to carry Favour i te 's
single−bordered, imitation India shawl of Ternaux's manufacture, on his arm on Sundays.
Tholomyes followed, dominating the group. He was very gay, but one felt the force of
government in him; there was dictation in his joviality; his principal ornament was a pair of
trousers of elephant−leg pattern of nankeen, with straps of braided copper wire; he carried a
stout rattan worth two hundred francs in his hand, and, as he treated himself to everything, a
strange thing called a cigar in his mouth. Nothing was sacred to him; he smoked.
"That Tholomyes is astounding!" said the others, with veneration. "What trousers! What
energy!"
As for Fantine, she was a joy to behold. Her splendid teeth had evidently received an
office from God, – laughter. She preferred to carry her little hat of sewed straw, with its long
white strings, in her hand rather than on her head. Her thick blond hair, which was inclined
to wave, and which easily uncoiled, and which it was necessary to fasten up incessantly,
seemed made for the flight of Galatea under the willows. Her rosy lips babbled
enchantingly. The corners of her mouth voluptuously turned up, as in the antique masks of
Erigone, had an air of encouraging the audacious; but her long, shadowy lashes drooped
discreetly over the jollity of the lower part of the face as though to call a halt. There was
something indescribably harmonious and striking about her entire dress. She wore a gown of
mauve barege, little reddish brown buskins, whose ribbons traced an X on her fine, white,
open−worked stockings, and that sort of muslin spencer, a Marseilles invention, whose
name, canezou, a corruption of the words quinze aout, pronounced after the fashion of the
Canebiere, signifies fine weather, heat, and midday. The three others, less timid, as we have
already said, wore low−necked dresses without disguise, which in summer, beneath
flower−adorned hats, are very graceful and enticing; but by the side of these audacious
outfits, blond Fantine's canezou, with its transparencies, its indiscretion, and its reticence,
concealing and displaying at one and the same time, seemed an alluring godsend of decency,
and the famous Court of Love, presided over by the Vicomtesse de Cette, with the sea−green
eyes, would, perhaps, have awarded the prize for coquetry to this canezou, in the contest for
the prize of modesty. The most ingenious is, at times, the wisest. This does happen.
Brilliant of face, delicate of profile, with eyes of a deep blue, heavy lids, feet arched and
small, wrists and ankles admirably formed, a white skin which, here and there allowed the
azure branching of the veins to be seen, joy, a cheek that was young and fresh, the robust
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CHAPTER III − FOUR AND FOUR 130
throat of the Juno of AEgina, a strong and supple nape of the neck, shoulders modelled as
though by Coustou, with a voluptuous dimple in the middle, visible through the muslin; a
gayety cooled by dreaminess; sculptural and exquisite – such was Fantine; and beneath these
feminine adornments and these ribbons one could divine a statue, and in that statue a soul.
Fantine was beautiful, without being too conscious of it. Those rare dreamers,
mysterious priests of the beautiful who silently confront everything with perfection, would
have caught a glimpse in this little working−woman, through the transparency of her
Parisian grace, of the ancient sacred euphony. This daughter of the shadows was
thoroughbred. She was beautiful in the two ways – style and rhythm. Style is the form of the
ideal; rhythm is its movement.
We have said that Fantine was joy; she was also modesty.
To an observer who studied her attentively, that which breathed from her athwart all the
intoxication of her age, the season, and her love affair, was an invincible expression of
reserve and modesty. She remained a little astonished. This chaste astonishment is the shade
of difference which separates Psyche from Venus. Fantine had the long, white, fine fingers
of the vestal virgin who stirs the ashes of the sacred fire with a golden pin. Although she
would have refused nothing to Tholomyes, as we shall have more than ample opportunity to
see, her face in repose was supremely virginal; a sort of serious and almost austere dignity
suddenly overwhelmed her at certain times, and there was nothing more singular and
disturbing than to see gayety become so suddenly extinct there, and meditation succeed to
cheerfulness without any transition state. This sudden and sometimes severely accentuated
gravity resembled the disdain of a goddess. Her brow, her nose, her chin, presented that
equilibrium of outline which is quite distinct from equilibrium of proportion, and from
which harmony of countenance results; in the very characteristic interval which separates
the base of the nose from the upper lip, she had that imperceptible and charming fold, a
mysterious sign of chastity, which makes Barberousse fall in love with a Diana found in the
treasures of Iconia.
Love is a fault; so be it. Fantine was innocence floating high over fault.
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CHAPTER III − FOUR AND FOUR 131
CHAPTER IV − THOLOMYES IS SO MERRY THAT HE SINGS A
SPANISH DITTY
That day was composed of dawn, from one end to the other. All nature seemed to be
having a holiday, and to be laughing. The flower−beds of Saint−Cloud perfumed the air; the
breath of the Seine rustled the leaves vaguely; the branches gesticulated in the wind, bees
pillaged the jasmines; a whole bohemia of butterflies swooped down upon the yarrow, the
clover, and the sterile oats; in the august park of the King of France there was a pack of
vagabonds, the birds.
The four merry couples, mingled with the sun, the fields, the flowers, the trees, were
resplendent.
And in this community of Paradise, talking, singing, running, dancing, chasing
butterflies, plucking convolvulus, wetting their pink, open−work stockings
,Madame la Comtesse de Lo, rarely allowed an opportunity
to escape of enumerating, in his presence, what she designated as "the expectations" of her
three sons. She had numerous relatives, who were very old and near to death, and of whom
her sons were the natural heirs. The youngest of the three was to receive from a grand−aunt
a good hundred thousand livres of income; the second was the heir by entail to the title of
the Duke, his uncle; the eldest was to succeed to the peerage of his grandfather. The Bishop
was accustomed to listen in silence to these innocent and pardonable maternal boasts. On
one occasion, however, he appeared to be more thoughtful than usual, while Madame de Lo
was relating once again the details of all these inheritances and all these "expectations." She
interrupted herself impatiently: "Mon Dieu, cousin! What are you thinking about?" "I am
thinking," replied the Bishop, "of a singular remark, which is to be found, I believe, in St.
Augustine, – `Place your hopes in the man from whom you do not inherit.'"
At another time, on receiving a notification of the decease of a gentleman of the
country−side, wherein not only the dignities of the dead man, but also the feudal and noble
qualifications of all his relatives, spread over an entire page: "What a stout back Death has!"
he exclaimed. "What a strange burden of titles is cheerfully imposed on him, and how much
wit must men have, in order thus to press the tomb into the service of vanity!"
He was gifted, on occasion, with a gentle raillery, which almost always concealed a
serious meaning. In the course of one Lent, a youthful vicar came to D – – , and preached in
the cathedral. He was tolerably eloquent. The subject of his sermon was charity. He urged
the rich to give to the poor, in order to avoid hell, which he depicted in the most frightful
manner of which he was capable, and to win paradise, which he represented as charming and
desirable. Among the audience there was a wealthy retired merchant, who was somewhat of
a usurer, named M. Geborand, who had amassed two millions in the manufacture of coarse
cloth, serges, and woollen galloons. Never in his whole life had M. Geborand bestowed alms
on any poor wretch. After the delivery of that sermon, it was observed that he gave a sou
every Sunday to the poor old beggar−women at the door of the cathedral. There were six of
them to share it. One day the Bishop caught sight of him in the act of bestowing this charity,
and said to his sister, with a smile, "There is M. Geborand purchasing paradise for a sou."
Les Miserables
CHAPTER IV − WORKS CORRESPONDING TO WORDS 16
When it was a question of charity, he was not to be rebuffed even by a refusal, and on
such occasions he gave utterance to remarks which induced reflection. Once he was begging
for the poor in a drawing−room of the town; there was present the Marquis de Champtercier,
a wealthy and avaricious old man, who contrived to be, at one and the same time, an
ultra−royalist and an ultra−Voltairian. This variety of man has actually existed. When the
Bishop came to him, he touched his arm, "You must give me something, M. le Marquis."
The Marquis turned round and answered dryly, "I have poor people of my own,
Monseigneur." "Give them to me," replied the Bishop.
One day he preached the following sermon in the cathedral: –
"My very dear brethren, my good friends, there are thirteen hundred and twenty
thousand peasants' dwellings in France which have but three openings; eighteen hundred and
seventeen thousand hovels which have but two openings, the door and one window; and
three hundred and forty−six thousand cabins besides which have but one opening, the door.
And this arises from a thing which is called the tax on doors and windows. Just put poor
families, old women and little children, in those buildings, and behold the fevers and
maladies which result! Alas! God gives air to men; the law sells it to them. I do not blame
the law, but I bless God. In the department of the Isere, in the Var, in the two departments of
the Alpes, the Hautes, and the Basses, the peasants have not even wheelbarrows; they
transport their manure on the backs of men; they have no candles, and they burn resinous
sticks, and bits of rope dipped in pitch. That is the state of affairs throughout the whole of
the hilly country of Dauphine. They make bread for six months at one time; they bake it
with dried cow−dung. In the winter they break this bread up with an axe, and they soak it for
twenty−four hours, in order to render it eatable. My brethren, have pity! behold the suffering
on all sides of you!"
Born a Provencal, he easily familiarized himself with the dialect of the south. He said,
"En be! moussu, ses sage?" as in lower Languedoc; "Onte anaras passa?" as in the
Basses−Alpes; "Puerte un bouen moutu embe un bouen fromage grase," as in upper
Dauphine. This pleased the people extremely, and contributed not a little to win him access
to all spirits. He was perfectly at home in the thatched cottage and in the mountains. He
understood how to say the grandest things in the most vulgar of idioms. As he spoke all
tongues, he entered into all hearts.
Moreover, he was the same towards people of the world and towards the lower classes.
He condemned nothing in haste and without taking circ*mstances into account. He said,
"Examine the road over which the fault has passed."
Being, as he described himself with a smile, an ex−sinner, he had none of the asperities
of austerity, and he professed, with a good deal of distinctness, and without the frown of the
ferociously virtuous, a doctrine which may be summed up as follows: –
Les Miserables
CHAPTER IV − WORKS CORRESPONDING TO WORDS 17
"Man has upon him his flesh, which is at once his burden and his temptation. He drags
it with him and yields to it. He must watch it, cheek it, repress it, and obey it only at the last
extremity. There may be some fault even in this obedience; but the fault thus committed is
venial; it is a fall, but a fall on the knees which may terminate in prayer.
"To be a saint is the exception; to be an upright man is the rule. Err, fall, sin if you will,
but be upright.
"The least possible sin is the law of man. No sin at all is the dream of the angel. All
which is terrestrial is subject to sin. Sin is a gravitation."
When he saw everyone exclaiming very loudly, and growing angry very quickly, "Oh!
oh!" he said, with a smile; "to all appearance, this is a great crime which all the world
commits. These are hypocrisies which have taken fright, and are in haste to make protest and
to put themselves under shelter."
He was indulgent towards women and poor people, on whom the burden of human
society rest. He said, "The faults of women, of children, of the feeble, the indigent, and the
ignorant, are the fault of the husbands, the fathers, the masters, the strong, the rich, and the
wise."
He said, moreover, "Teach those who are ignorant as many things as possible; society is
culpable, in that it does not afford instruction gratis; it is responsible for the night which it
produces. This soul is full of shadow; sin is therein committed. The guilty one is not the
person who has committed the sin, but the person who has created the shadow."
It will be perceived that he had a peculiar manner of his own of judging things: I suspect
that he obtained it from the Gospel.
One day he heard a criminal case, which was in preparation and on the point of trial,
discussed in a drawing−room. A wretched man, being at the end of his resources, had coined
counterfeit money, out of love for a woman, and for the child which he had had by her.
Counterfeiting was still punishable with death at that epoch. The woman had been arrested
in the act of passing the first false piece made by the man. She was held, but
,in the tall grass,
fresh, wild, without malice, all received, to some extent, the kisses of all, with the exception
of Fantine, who was hedged about with that vague resistance of hers composed of
dreaminess and wildness, and who was in love. "You always have a queer look about you,"
said Favourite to her.
Such things are joys. These passages of happy couples are a profound appeal to life and
nature, and make a caress and light spring forth from everything. There was once a fairy
who created the fields and forests expressly for those in love, – in that eternal hedge−school
of lovers, which is forever beginning anew, and which will last as long as there are hedges
and scholars. Hence the popularity of spring among thinkers. The patrician and the
knife−grinder, the duke and the peer, the limb of the law, the courtiers and townspeople, as
they used to say in olden times, all are subjects of this fairy. They laugh and hunt, and there
is in the air the brilliance of an apotheosis – what a transfiguration effected by love!
Notaries' clerks are gods. And the little cries, the pursuits through the grass, the waists
embraced on the fly, those jargons which are melodies, those adorations which burst forth in
the manner of pronouncing a syllable, those cherries torn from one mouth by another, – all
this blazes forth and takes its place among the celestial glories. Beautiful women waste
themselves sweetly. They think that this will never come to an end. Philosophers, poets,
painters, observe these ecstasies and know not what to make of it, so greatly are they
dazzled by it. The departure for Cythera! exclaims Watteau; Lancret, the painter of
plebeians, contemplates his bourgeois, who have flitted away into the azure sky; Diderot
stretches out his arms to all these love idyls, and d'Urfe mingles druids with them.
After breakfast the four couples went to what was then called the King's Square to see a
newly arrived plant from India, whose name escapes our memory at this moment, and
which, at that epoch, was attracting all Paris to Saint−Cloud. It was an odd and charming
shrub with a long stem, whose numerous branches, bristling and leafless and as fine as
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CHAPTER IV − THOLOMYES IS SO MERRY THAT HE SINGS A SPANISH DITTY 132
threads, were covered with a million tiny white rosettes; this gave the shrub the air of a head
of hair studded with flowers. There was always an admiring crowd about it.
After viewing the shrub, Tholomyes exclaimed, "I offer you asses!" and having agreed
upon a price with the owner of the asses, they returned by way of Vanvres and Issy. At Issy
an incident occurred. The truly national park, at that time owned by Bourguin the contractor,
happened to be wide open. They passed the gates, visited the manikin anchorite in his grotto,
tried the mysterious little effects of the famous cabinet of mirrors, the wanton trap worthy of
a satyr become a millionaire or of Turcaret metamorphosed into a Priapus. They had stoutly
shaken the swing attached to the two chestnut−trees celebrated by the Abbe de Bernis. As he
swung these beauties, one after the other, producing folds in the fluttering skirts which
Greuze would have found to his taste, amid peals of laughter, the Toulousan Tholomyes,
who was somewhat of a Spaniard, Toulouse being the cousin of Tolosa, sang, to a
melancholy chant, the old ballad gallega, probably inspired by some lovely maid dashing in
full flight upon a rope between two trees: –
"Soy de Badajoz, "Badajoz is my home, Amor me llama, And Love is my name; Toda
mi alma, To my eyes in flame, Es en mi ojos, All my soul doth come; Porque ensenas, For
instruction meet A tuas piernas. I receive at thy feet"
Fantine alone refused to swing.
"I don't like to have people put on airs like that," muttered Favourite, with a good deal
of acrimony.
After leaving the asses there was a fresh delight; they crossed the Seine in a boat, and
proceeding from Passy on foot they reached the barrier of l'Etoile. They had been up since
five o'clock that morning, as the reader will remember; but bah! there is no such thing as
fatigue on Sunday, said Favourite; on Sunday fatigue does not work.
About three o'clock the four couples, frightened at their happiness, were sliding down
the Russian mountains, a singular edifice which then occupied the heights of Beaujon, and
whose undulating line was visible above the trees of the Champs Elysees.
From time to time Favourite exclaimed: –
"And the surprise? I claim the surprise."
"Patience," replied Tholomyes.
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CHAPTER IV − THOLOMYES IS SO MERRY THAT HE SINGS A SPANISH DITTY 133
CHAPTER V − AT BOMBARDA'S
The Russian mountains having been exhausted, they began to think about dinner; and
the radiant party of eight, somewhat weary at last, became stranded in Bombarda's public
house, a branch establishment which had been set up in the Champs−Elysees by that famous
restaurant−keeper, Bombarda, whose sign could then be seen in the Rue de Rivoli, near
Delorme Alley.
A large but ugly room, with an alcove and a bed at the end (they had been obliged to put
up with this accommodation in view of the Sunday crowd); two windows whence they could
survey beyond the elms, the quay and the river; a magnificent August sunlight lightly
touching the panes; two tables; upon one of them a triumphant mountain of bouquets,
mingled with the hats of men and women; at the other the four couples seated round a merry
confusion of platters, dishes, glasses, and bottles; jugs of beer mingled with flasks of wine;
very little order on the table, some disorder beneath it;
"They made beneath the table A noise, a clatter of the feet that was abominable,"
says Moliere.
This was the state which the shepherd idyl, begun at five o'clock in the morning, had
reached at half−past four in the afternoon. The sun was setting; their appetites were satisfied.
The Champs−Elysees, filled with sunshine and with people, were nothing but light and
dust, the two things of which glory is composed. The horses of Marly, those neighing
marbles, were prancing in a cloud of gold. Carriages were going and coming. A squadron of
magnificent body−guards, with their clarions at their head, were descending the Avenue de
Neuilly; the white flag, showing faintly rosy in the setting sun, floated over the dome of the
Tuileries. The Place de la Concorde, which had become the Place Louis XV. once more, was
choked with happy promenaders. Many wore the silver fleur−de−lys suspended from the
white−watered ribbon, which had not yet wholly disappeared from button−holes in the year
1817. Here and there choruses of little girls threw to the winds, amid the passersby, who
formed into circles and applauded, the then celebrated Bourbon air, which was destined to
strike the Hundred Days with lightning, and which had for its refrain: –
" R e n d e z − n o u s n o t r e p e r e d e G a n d ,
Rendez−nous notre pere."
" G i v e u s b a c k o u r f a t h e r f r o m G h e n t ,
Give us back our father."
Groups of dwellers in the suburbs, in Sunday array, sometimes even decorated with the
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CHAPTER V − AT BOMBARDA'S 134
fleur−de−lys, like the bourgeois, scattered over the large square and the Marigny square,
were playing at rings and revolving on the wooden horses; others were engaged in drinking;
some journeyman printers had on paper caps; their laughter was audible. Every thing was
radiant. It was a time of undisputed peace and profound royalist security; it was the epoch
when a special and private report of Chief of Police Angeles to the King, on the subject of
the suburbs of Paris, terminated with these lines: –
"Taking all things into consideration, Sire, there is nothing to be feared from these
people. They are as heedless and as indolent as cats. The populace is restless
,in the
provinces; it is not in Paris. These are very pretty men, Sire. It would take all of two of them
to make one of your grenadiers. There is nothing to be feared on the part of the populace of
Paris the capital. It is remarkable that the stature of this population should have diminished
in the last fifty years; and the populace of the suburbs is still more puny than at the time of
the Revolution. It is not dangerous. In short, it is an amiable rabble."
Prefects of the police do not deem it possible that a cat can transform itself into a lion;
that does happen, however, and in that lies the miracle wrought by the populace of Paris.
Moreover, the cat so despised by Count Angles possessed the esteem of the republics of old.
In their eyes it was liberty incarnate; and as though to serve as pendant to the Minerva
Aptera of the Piraeus, there stood on the public square in Corinth the colossal bronze figure
of a cat. The ingenuous police of the Restoration beheld the populace of Paris in too
"rose−colored" a light; it is not so much of "an amiable rabble" as it is thought. The Parisian
is to the Frenchman what the Athenian was to the Greek: no one sleeps more soundly than
he, no one is more frankly frivolous and lazy than he, no one can better assume the air of
forgetfulness; let him not be trusted nevertheless; he is ready for any sort of cool deed; but
when there is glory at the end of it, he is worthy of admiration in every sort of fury. Give
him a pike, he will produce the 10th of August; give him a gun, you will have Austerlitz. He
is Napoleon's stay and Danton's resource. Is it a question of country, he enlists; is it a
question of liberty, he tears up the pavements. Beware! his hair filled with wrath, is epic; his
blouse drapes itself like the folds of a chlamys. Take care! he will make of the first Rue
Grenetat which comes to hand Caudine Forks. When the hour strikes, this man of the
faubourgs will grow in stature; this little man will arise, and his gaze will be terrible, and his
breath will become a tempest, and there will issue forth from that slender chest enough wind
to disarrange the folds of the Alps. It is, thanks to the suburban man of Paris, that the
Revolution, mixed with arms, conquers Europe. He sings; it is his delight. Proportion his
song to his nature, and you will see! As long as he has for refrain nothing but la
Carmagnole, he only overthrows Louis XVI.; make him sing the Marseillaise, and he will
free the world.
This note jotted down on the margin of Angles' report, we will return to our four
couples. The dinner, as we have said, was drawing to its close.
Les Miserables
CHAPTER V − AT BOMBARDA'S 135
CHAPTER VI − A CHAPTER IN WHICH THEY ADORE EACH
OTHER
Chat at table, the chat of love; it is as impossible to reproduce one as the other; the chat
of love is a cloud; the chat at table is smoke.
Fameuil and Dahlia were humming. Tholomyes was drinking. Zephine was laughing,
Fantine smiling, Listolier blowing a wooden trumpet which he had purchased at
Saint−Cloud.
Favourite gazed tenderly at Blachevelle and said: –
"Blachevelle, I adore you."
This called forth a question from Blachevelle: –
"What would you do, Favourite, if I were to cease to love you?"
"I!" cried Favourite. "Ah! Do not say that even in jest! If you were to cease to love me, I
would spring after you, I would scratch you, I should rend you, I would throw you into the
water, I would have you arrested."
Blachevelle smiled with the voluptuous self−conceit of a man who is tickled in his
self−love. Favourite resumed: –
"Yes, I would scream to the police! Ah! I should not restrain myself, not at all! Rabble!"
Blachevelle threw himself back in his chair, in an ecstasy, and closed both eyes proudly.
Dahlia, as she ate, said in a low voice to Favourite, amid the uproar: –
"So you really idolize him deeply, that Blachevelle of yours?"
"I? I detest him," replied Favourite in the same tone, seizing her fork again. "He is
avaricious. I love the little fellow opposite me in my house. He is very nice, that young man;
do you know him? One can see that he is an actor by profession. I love actors. As soon as he
comes in, his mother says to him: `Ah! mon Dieu! my peace of mind is gone. There he goes
with his shouting. But, my dear, you are splitting my head!' So he goes up to rat−ridden
garrets, to black holes, as high as he can mount, and there he sets to singing, declaiming,
how do I know what? so that he can be heard down stairs! He earns twenty sous a day at an
a t t o rney ' s by penn ing qu ibb l es . He i s t he son o f a f o rme r p recen to r o f
Saint−Jacques−du−Haut−Pas. Ah! he is very nice. He idolizes me so, that one day when he
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CHAPTER VI − A CHAPTER IN WHICH THEY ADORE EACH OTHER 136
saw me making batter for some pancakes, he said to me: `Mamselle, make your gloves into
fritters, and I will eat them.' It is only artists who can say such things as that. Ah! he is very
nice. I am in a fair way to go out of my head over that little fellow. Never mind; I tell
Blachevelle that I adore him – how I lie! Hey! How I do lie!"
Favourite paused, and then went on: –
"I am sad, you see, Dahlia. It has done nothing but rain all summer; the wind irritates
me; the wind does not abate. Blachevelle is very stingy; there are hardly any green peas in
the market; one does not know what to eat. I have the spleen, as the English say, butter is so
dear! and then you see it is horrible, here we are dining in a room with a bed in it, and that
disgusts me with life."
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CHAPTER VI − A CHAPTER IN WHICH THEY ADORE EACH OTHER 137
CHAPTER VII − THE WISDOM OF THOLOMYES
In the meantime, while some sang, the rest talked together tumultuously all at once; it
was no longer anything but noise. Tholomyes intervened.
"Let us not talk at random nor too fast," he exclaimed. "Let us reflect, if we wish to be
brilliant. Too much improvisation empties the mind in a stupid way. Running beer gathers
no froth. No haste, gentlemen. Let us mingle majesty with the feast. Let us eat with
meditation; let us make haste slowly. Let us not hurry. Consider the springtime; if it makes
haste, it is done for; that is to say, it gets frozen. Excess of zeal ruins peach−trees and
apricot−trees. Excess of zeal kills the grace and the mirth of good dinners. No zeal,
gentlemen! Grimod de la Reyniere agrees with Talleyrand."
A hollow sound of rebellion rumbled through the group.
"Leave us in peace, Tholomyes," said Blachevelle.
"Down with the tyrant!" said Fameuil.
"Bombarda, Bombance, and Bambochel!" cried Listolier.
"Sunday exists," resumed Fameuil.
"We are sober," added Listolier.
"Tholomyes," remarked Blachevelle, "contemplate my calmness [mon calme]."
"You are the Marquis of that," retorted Tholomyes.
This mediocre play upon words produced the effect of a stone in a pool. The Marquis de
Montcalm was at that time a celebrated royalist. All the frogs held their peace.
"Friends," cried Tholomyes, with the accent of a man who had recovered his empire,
"Come to yourselves. This pun which has fallen from the skies must not be received with too
much stupor. Everything which falls in that way is not necessarily worthy of enthusiasm and
respect. The pun is the dung of the mind which soars. The jest falls, no matter where; and
the mind after producing a piece of stupidity plunges into the azure depths. A whitish speck
flattened against the rock does not prevent the condor from soaring aloft. Far be it from me
to insult the pun! I honor it in proportion to its merits; nothing more. All the most august, the
most sublime, the most charming of humanity, and perhaps outside of humanity, have made
puns. Jesus Christ made a pun on St. Peter, Moses on Isaac, AEschylus
,on Polynices,
Cleopatra on Octavius. And observe that Cleopatra's pun preceded the battle of Actium, and
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CHAPTER VII − THE WISDOM OF THOLOMYES 138
that had it not been for it, no one would have remembered the city of Toryne, a Greek name
which signifies a ladle. That once conceded, I return to my exhortation. I repeat, brothers, I
repeat, no zeal, no hubbub, no excess; even in witticisms, gayety, jollities, or plays on
words. Listen to me. I have the prudence of Amphiaraus and the baldness of Caesar. There
must be a limit, even to rebuses. Est modus in rebus.
"There must be a limit, even to dinners. You are fond of apple turnovers, ladies; do not
indulge in them to excess. Even in the matter of turnovers, good sense and art are requisite.
Gluttony chastises the glutton, Gula punit Gulax. Indigestion is charged by the good God
with preaching morality to stomachs. And remember this: each one of our passions, even
love, has a stomach which must not be filled too full. In all things the word finis must be
written in good season; self−control must be exercised when the matter becomes urgent; the
bolt must be drawn on appetite; one must set one's own fantasy to the violin, and carry one's
self to the post. The sage is the man who knows how, at a given moment, to effect his own
arrest. Have some confidence in me, for I have succeeded to some extent in my study of the
law, according to the verdict of my examinations, for I know the difference between the
question put and the question pending, for I have sustained a thesis in Latin upon the manner
in which torture was administered at Rome at the epoch when Munatius Demens was
quaestor of the Parricide; because I am going to be a doctor, apparently it does not follow
that it is absolutely necessary that I should be an imbecile. I recommend you to moderation
in your desires. It is true that my name is Felix Tholomyes; I speak well. Happy is he who,
when the hour strikes, takes a heroic resolve, and abdicates like Sylla or Origenes."
Favourite listened with profound attention.
"Felix," said she, "what a pretty word! I love that name. It is Latin; it means prosper."
Tholomyes went on: –
"Quirites, gentlemen, caballeros, my friends. Do you wish never to feel the prick, to do
without the nuptial bed, and to brave love? Nothing more simple. Here is the receipt:
lemonade, excessive exercise, hard labor; work yourself to death, drag blocks, sleep not,
hold vigil, gorge yourself with nitrous beverages, and potions of nymphaeas; drink
emulsions of poppies and agnus castus; season this with a strict diet, starve yourself, and add
thereto cold baths, girdles of herbs, the application of a plate of lead, lotions made with the
subacetate of lead, and fomentations of oxycrat."
"I prefer a woman," said Listolier.
"Woman," resumed Tholomyes; "distrust her. Woe to him who yields himself to the
unstable heart of woman! Woman is perfidious and disingenuous. She detests the serpent
from professional jealousy. The serpent is the shop over the way."
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CHAPTER VII − THE WISDOM OF THOLOMYES 139
"Tholomyes!" cried Blachevelle, "you are drunk!"
"Pardieu," said Tholomyes.
"Then be gay," resumed Blachevelle.
"I agree to that," responded Tholomyes.
And, refilling his glass, he rose.
"Glory to wine! Nunc te, Bacche, canam! Pardon me ladies; that is Spanish. And the
proof of it, senoras, is this: like people, like cask. The arrobe of Castile contains sixteen
litres; the cantaro of Alicante, twelve; the almude of the Canaries, twenty−five; the cuartin
of the Balearic Isles, twenty−six; the boot of Tzar Peter, thirty. Long live that Tzar who was
great, and long live his boot, which was still greater! Ladies, take the advice of a friend;
make a mistake in your neighbor if you see fit. The property of love is to err. A love affair is
not made to crouch down and brutalize itself like an English serving−maid who has
callouses on her knees from scrubbing. It is not made for that; it errs gayly, our gentle love.
It has been said, error is human; I say, error is love. Ladies, I idolize you all. O Zephine, O
Josephine, face more than irregular, you would be charming were you not all askew. You
have the air of a pretty face upon which some one has sat down by mistake. As for
Favourite, O nymphs and muses! one day when Blachevelle was crossing the gutter in the
Rue Guerin−Boisseau, he espied a beautiful girl with white stockings well drawn up, which
displayed her legs. This prologue pleased him, and Blachevelle fell in love. The one he
loved was Favourite. O Favourite, thou hast Ionian lips. There was a Greek painter named
Euphorion, who was surnamed the painter of the lips. That Greek alone would have been
worthy to paint thy mouth. Listen! before thee, there was never a creature worthy of the
name. Thou wert made to receive the apple like Venus, or to eat it like Eve; beauty begins
with thee. I have just referred to Eve; it is thou who hast created her. Thou deservest the
letters−patent of the beautiful woman. O Favourite, I cease to address you as `thou,' because
I pass from poetry to prose. You were speaking of my name a little while ago. That touched
me; but let us, whoever we may be, distrust names. They may delude us. I am called Felix,
and I am not happy. Words are liars. Let us not blindly accept the indications which they
afford us. It would be a mistake to write to Liege[2] for corks, and to Pau for gloves. Miss
Dahlia, were I in your place, I would call myself Rosa. A flower should smell sweet, and
woman should have wit. I say nothing of Fantine; she is a dreamer, a musing, thoughtful,
pensive person; she is a phantom possessed of the form of a nymph and the modesty of a
nun, who has strayed into the life of a grisette, but who takes refuge in illusions, and who
sings and prays and gazes into the azure without very well knowing what she sees or what
she is doing, and who, with her eyes fixed on heaven, wanders in a garden where there are
more birds than are in existence. O Fantine, know this: I, Tholomyes, I am all illusion; but
she does not even hear me, that blond maid of Chimeras! as for the rest, everything about
her is freshness, suavity, youth, sweet morning light. O Fantine, maid worthy of being called
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CHAPTER VII − THE WISDOM OF THOLOMYES 140
Marguerite or Pearl, you are a woman from the beauteous Orient. Ladies, a second piece of
advice: do not marry; marriage is a graft; it takes well or ill; avoid that risk. But bah! what
am I saying? I am wasting my words. Girls are incurable on the subject of marriage, and all
that we wise men can say will not prevent the waistcoat−makers and the shoe−stitchers from
dreaming of husbands studded with diamonds. Well, so be it; but, my beauties, remember
this, you eat too much sugar. You have but one fault, O woman, and that is nibbling sugar. O
nibbling sex, your pretty little white teeth adore sugar. Now, heed me well, sugar is a salt.
All salts are withering. Sugar is the most desiccating of all salts; it sucks the liquids of the
blood through the veins; hence the coagulation, and then the solidification of the blood;
hence tubercles in the lungs, hence death. That is why diabetes borders on consumption.
Then, do not crunch sugar, and you will live. I turn to the men: gentlemen, make conquest,
rob each other of your well−beloved without remorse. Chassez across. In love there are no
friends. Everywhere where there is a pretty woman hostility is open. No quarter, war to the
death! a pretty woman is a casus belli; a pretty woman is flagrant misdemeanor. All the
invasions of history have been determined by petticoats. Woman is man's right. Romulus
carried off the Sabines; William carried off the Saxon women; Caesar carried off the Roman
women. The man who is not
,loved soars like a vulture over the mistresses of other men; and
for my own part, to all those unfortunate men who are widowers, I throw the sublime
proclamation of Bonaparte to the army of Italy: "Soldiers, you are in need of everything; the
enemy has it."
[2] Liege: a cork−tree. Pau: a jest on peau, skin.
Tholomyes paused.
"Take breath, Tholomyes," said Blachevelle.
At the same moment Blachevelle, supported by Listolier and Fameuil, struck up to a
plaintive air, one of those studio songs composed of the first words which come to hand,
rhymed richly and not at all, as destitute of sense as the gesture of the tree and the sound of
the wind, which have their birth in the vapor of pipes, and are dissipated and take their flight
with them. This is the couplet by which the group replied to Tholomyes' harangue: –
"The father turkey−co*cks so grave Some money to an agent gave, That master good
Clermont−Tonnerre Might be made pope on Saint Johns' day fair. But this good Clermont
could not be Made pope, because no priest was he; And then their agent, whose wrath
burned, With all their money back returned."
This was not calculated to calm Tholomyes' improvisation; he emptied his glass, filled,
refilled it, and began again: –
"Down with wisdom! Forget all that I have said. Let us be neither prudes nor prudent
men nor prudhommes. I propose a toast to mirth; be merry. Let us complete our course of
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CHAPTER VII − THE WISDOM OF THOLOMYES 141
law by folly and eating! Indigestion and the digest. Let Justinian be the male, and Feasting,
the female! Joy in the depths! Live, O creation! The world is a great diamond. I am happy.
The birds are astonishing. What a festival everywhere! The nightingale is a gratuitous
Elleviou. Summer, I salute thee! O Luxembourg! O Georgics of the Rue Madame, and of the
Allee de l'Observatoire! O pensive infantry soldiers! O all those charming nurses who, while
they guard the children, amuse themselves! The pampas of America would please me if I
had not the arcades of the Odeon. My soul flits away into the virgin forests and to the
savannas. All is beautiful. The flies buzz in the sun. The sun has sneezed out the humming
bird. Embrace me, Fantine!"
He made a mistake and embraced Favourite.
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CHAPTER VII − THE WISDOM OF THOLOMYES 142
CHAPTER VIII − THE DEATH OF A HORSE
"The dinners are better at Edon's than at Bombarda's," exclaimed Zephine.
"I prefer Bombarda to Edon," declared Blachevelle. "There is more luxury. It is more
Asiatic. Look at the room downstairs; there are mirrors [glaces] on the walls."
"I prefer them [glaces, ices] on my plate," said Favourite.
Blachevelle persisted: –
"Look at the knives. The handles are of silver at Bombarda's and of bone at Edon's.
Now, silver is more valuable than bone."
"Except for those who have a silver chin," observed Tholomyes.
He was looking at the dome of the Invalides, which was visible from Bombarda's
windows.
A pause ensued.
"Tholomyes," exclaimed Fameuil, "Listolier and I were having a discussion just now."
"A discussion is a good thing," replied Tholomyes; "a quarrel is better."
"We were disputing about philosophy."
"Well?"
"Which do you prefer, Descartes or Spinoza?"
"Desaugiers," said Tholomyes.
This decree pronounced, he took a drink, and went on: –
"I consent to live. All is not at an end on earth since we can still talk nonsense. For that I
return thanks to the immortal gods. We lie. One lies, but one laughs. One affirms, but one
doubts. The unexpected bursts forth from the syllogism. That is fine. There are still human
beings here below who know how to open and close the surprise box of the paradox merrily.
This, ladies, which you are drinking with so tranquil an air is Madeira wine, you must know,
from the vineyard of Coural das Freiras, which is three hundred and seventeen fathoms
above the level of the sea. Attention while you drink! three hundred and seventeen fathoms!
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CHAPTER VIII − THE DEATH OF A HORSE 143
and Monsieur Bombarda, the magnificent eating−house keeper, gives you those three
hundred and seventeen fathoms for four francs and fifty centimes."
Again Fameuil interrupted him: –
"Tholomyes, your opinions fix the law. Who is your favorite author?"
"Ber – "
"Quin?"
"No; Choux."
And Tholomyes continued: –
"Honor to Bombarda! He would equal Munophis of Elephanta if he could but get me an
Indian dancing−girl, and Thygelion of Chaeronea if he could bring me a Greek courtesan;
for, oh, ladies! there were Bombardas in Greece and in Egypt. Apuleius tells us of them.
Alas! always the same, and nothing new; nothing more unpublished by the creator in
creation! Nil sub sole novum, says Solomon; amor omnibus idem, says Virgil; and Carabine
mounts with Carabin into the bark at Saint−Cloud, as Aspasia embarked with Pericles upon
the fleet at Samos. One last word. Do you know what Aspasia was, ladies? Although she
lived at an epoch when women had, as yet, no soul, she was a soul; a soul of a rosy and
purple hue, more ardent hued than fire, fresher than the dawn. Aspasia was a creature in
whom two extremes of womanhood met; she was the goddess prostitute; Socrates plus
Manon Lescaut. Aspasia was created in case a mistress should be needed for Prometheus."
Tholomyes, once started, would have found some difficulty in stopping, had not a horse
fallen down upon the quay just at that moment. The shock caused the cart and the orator to
come to a dead halt. It was a Beauceron mare, old and thin, and one fit for the knacker,
which was dragging a very heavy cart. On arriving in front of Bombarda's, the worn−out,
exhausted beast had refused to proceed any further. This incident attracted a crowd. Hardly
had the cursing and indignant carter had time to utter with proper energy the sacramental
word, Matin (the jade), backed up with a pitiless cut of the whip, when the jade fell, never to
rise again. On hearing the hubbub made by the passersby, Tholomyes' merry auditors turned
their heads, and Tholomyes took advantage of the opportunity to bring his allocution to a
close with this melancholy strophe: –
"Elle etait de ce monde ou coucous et carrosses[3] Ont le meme destin; Et, rosse, elle a
vecu ce que vivant les rosses, L'espace d'un matin!"
[3] She belonged to that circle where cuckoos and carriages share the same fate; and a
jade herself, she lived, as jades live, for the space of a morning (or jade).
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CHAPTER VIII − THE DEATH OF A HORSE 144
"Poor horse!" sighed Fantine.
And Dahlia exclaimed: –
"There is Fantine on the point of crying over horses. How can one be such a pitiful fool
as that!"
At that moment Favourite, folding her arms and throwing her head back, looked
resolutely at Tholomyes and said: –
"Come, now! the surprise?"
"Exactly. The moment has arrived," replied Tholomyes. "Gentlemen, the hour for
giving these ladies a surprise has struck. Wait for us a moment, ladies."
"It begins with a kiss," said Blachevelle.
"On the brow," added Tholomyes.
Each gravely bestowed a kiss on his mistress's brow; then all four filed out through the
door, with their fingers on their lips.
Favourite clapped her hands on their departure.
"It is beginning to be amusing already," said she.
"Don't be too long," murmured Fantine; "we are waiting for you."
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CHAPTER VIII − THE DEATH OF A HORSE 145
CHAPTER IX − A MERRY END TO MIRTH
When the young girls were left alone, they leaned two by two on the window−sills,
chatting, craning out their heads, and talking from one window to the other.
They saw the young men emerge from the Cafe Bombarda arm in arm. The latter turned
round, made signs to them, smiled, and disappeared
,in that dusty Sunday throng which
makes a weekly invasion into the Champs−Elysees.
"Don't be long!" cried Fantine.
"What are they going to bring us?" said Zephine.
"It will certainly be something pretty," said Dahlia.
"For my part," said Favourite, "I want it to be of gold."
Their attention was soon distracted by the movements on the shore of the lake, which
they could see through the branches of the large trees, and which diverted them greatly.
It was the hour for the departure of the mail−coaches and diligences. Nearly all the
stage−coaches for the south and west passed through the Champs−Elysees. The majority
followed the quay and went through the Passy Barrier. From moment to moment, some huge
vehicle, painted yellow and black, heavily loaded, noisily harnessed, rendered shapeless by
trunks, tarpaulins, and valises, full of heads which immediately disappeared, rushed through
the crowd with all the sparks of a forge, with dust for smoke, and an air of fury, grinding the
pavements, changing all the paving−stones into steels. This uproar delighted the young girls.
Favourite exclaimed: –
"What a row! One would say that it was a pile of chains flying away."
It chanced that one of these vehicles, which they could only see with difficulty through
the thick elms, halted for a moment, then set out again at a gallop. This surprised Fantine.
"That's odd!" said she. "I thought the diligence never stopped."
Favourite shrugged her shoulders.
"This Fantine is surprising. I am coming to take a look at her out of curiosity. She is
dazzled by the simplest things. Suppose a case: I am a traveller; I say to the diligence, `I will
go on in advance; you shall pick me up on the quay as you pass.' The diligence passes, sees
me, halts, and takes me. That is done every day. You do not know life, my dear."
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CHAPTER IX − A MERRY END TO MIRTH 146
In this manner a certain time elapsed. All at once Favourite made a movement, like a
person who is just waking up.
"Well," said she, "and the surprise?"
"Yes, by the way," joined in Dahlia, "the famous surprise?"
"They are a very long time about it!" said Fantine.
As Fantine concluded this sigh, the waiter who had served them at dinner entered. He
held in his hand something which resembled a letter.
"What is that?" demanded Favourite.
The waiter replied: –
"It is a paper that those gentlemen left for these ladies."
"Why did you not bring it at once?"
"Because," said the waiter, "the gentlemen ordered me not to deliver it to the ladies for
an hour."
Favourite snatched the paper from the waiter's hand. It was, in fact, a letter.
"Stop!" said she; "there is no address; but this is what is written on it – "
"THIS IS THE SURPRISE."
She tore the letter open hastily, opened it, and read [she knew how to read]: –
"OUR BELOVED: –
"You must know that we have parents. Parents – you do not know much about such
things. They are called fathers and mothers by the civil code, which is puerile and honest.
Now, these parents groan, these old folks implore us, these good men and these good
women call us prodigal sons; they desire our return, and offer to kill calves for us. Being
virtuous, we obey them. At the hour when you read this, five fiery horses will be bearing us
to our papas and mammas. We are pulling up our stakes, as Bossuet says. We are going; we
are gone. We flee in the arms of Lafitte and on the wings of Caillard. The Toulouse
diligence tears us from the abyss, and the abyss is you, O our little beauties! We return to
society, to duty, to respectability, at full trot, at the rate of three leagues an hour. It is
necessary for the good of the country that we should be, like the rest of the world, prefects,
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CHAPTER IX − A MERRY END TO MIRTH 147
fathers of families, rural police, and councillors of state. Venerate us. We are sacrificing
ourselves. Mourn for us in haste, and replace us with speed. If this letter lacerates you, do
the same by it. Adieu.
"For the space of nearly two years we have made you happy. We bear you no grudge for
that. "Signed: BLACHEVELLE. FAMUEIL. LISTOLIER. FELIX THOLOMYES.
"Postscriptum. The dinner is paid for."
The four young women looked at each other.
Favourite was the first to break the silence.
"Well!" she exclaimed, "it's a very pretty farce, all the same."
"It is very droll," said Zephine.
"That must have been Blachevelle's idea," resumed Favourite. "It makes me in love with
him. No sooner is he gone than he is loved. This is an adventure, indeed."
"No," said Dahlia; "it was one of Tholomyes' ideas. That is evident.
"In that case," retorted Favourite, "death to Blachevelle, and long live Tholomyes!"
"Long live Tholomyes!" exclaimed Dahlia and Zephine.
And they burst out laughing.
Fantine laughed with the rest.
An hour later, when she had returned to her room, she wept. It was her first love affair,
as we have said; she had given herself to this Tholomyes as to a husband, and the poor girl
had a child.
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CHAPTER IX − A MERRY END TO MIRTH 148
BOOK FOURTH. – TO CONFIDE IS SOMETIMES TO DELIVER
INTO A PERSON'S POWER
Les Miserables
BOOK FOURTH. – TO CONFIDE IS SOMETIMES TO DELIVER INTO A PERSON'S POWER 149
CHAPTER I − ONE MOTHER MEETS ANOTHER MOTHER
There was, at Montfermeil, near Paris, during the first quarter of this century, a sort of
cook−shop which no longer exists. This cook−shop was kept by some people named
Thenardier, husband and wife. It was situated in Boulanger Lane. Over the door there was a
board nailed flat against the wall. Upon this board was painted something which resembled a
man carrying another man on his back, the latter wearing the big gilt epaulettes of a general,
with large silver stars; red spots represented blood; the rest of the picture consisted of
smoke, and probably represented a battle. Below ran this inscription: AT THE SIGN OF
SERGEANT OF WATERLOO (Au Sargent de Waterloo).
Nothing is more common than a cart or a truck at the door of a hostelry. Nevertheless,
the vehicle, or, to speak more accurately, the fragment of a vehicle, which encumbered the
street in front of the cook−shop of the Sergeant of Waterloo, one evening in the spring of
1818, would certainly have attracted, by its mass, the attention of any painter who had
passed that way.
It was the fore−carriage of one of those trucks which are used in wooded tracts of
country, and which serve to transport thick planks and the trunks of trees. This fore−carriage
was composed of a massive iron axle−tree with a pivot, into which was fitted a heavy shaft,
and which was supported by two huge wheels. The whole thing was compact,
overwhelming, and misshapen. It seemed like the gun−carriage of an enormous cannon. The
ruts of the road had bestowed on the wheels, the fellies, the hub, the axle, and the shaft, a
layer of mud, a hideous yellowish daubing hue, tolerably like that with which people are
fond of ornamenting cathedrals. The wood was disappearing under mud, and the iron
beneath rust. Under the axle−tree hung, like drapery, a huge chain, worthy of some Goliath
of a convict. This chain suggested, not the beams, which it was its office to transport, but the
mastodons and mammoths which it might have served to harness; it had the air of the
galleys, but of cyclopean and superhuman galleys, and it seemed to have been detached
from some monster. Homer would have bound Polyphemus with it, and Shakespeare,
Caliban.
Why was that fore−carriage of a truck in that place in the street? In the first place, to
encumber the street; next, in order that it might finish the process of rusting. There is a
throng of institutions in the old social order, which one comes across in this fashion as one
walks
,about outdoors, and which have no other reasons for existence than the above.
The centre of the chain swung very near the ground in the middle, and in the loop, as in
the rope of a swing, there were seated and grouped, on that particular evening, in exquisite
interlacement, two little girls; one about two years and a half old, the other, eighteen
months; the younger in the arms of the other. A handkerchief, cleverly knotted about them,
prevented their falling out. A mother had caught sight of that frightful chain, and had said,
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CHAPTER I − ONE MOTHER MEETS ANOTHER MOTHER 150
"Come! there's a plaything for my children."
The two children, who were dressed prettily and with some elegance, were radiant with
pleasure; one would have said that they were two roses amid old iron; their eyes were a
triumph; their fresh cheeks were full of laughter. One had chestnut hair; the other, brown.
Their innocent faces were two delighted surprises; a blossoming shrub which grew near
wafted to the passers−by perfumes which seemed to emanate from them; the child of
eighteen months displayed her pretty little bare stomach with the chaste indecency of
childhood. Above and around these two delicate heads, all made of happiness and steeped in
light, the gigantic fore−carriage, black with rust, almost terrible, all entangled in curves and
wild angles, rose in a vault, like the entrance of a cavern. A few paces apart, crouching down
upon the threshold of the hostelry, the mother, not a very prepossessing woman, by the way,
though touching at that moment, was swinging the two children by means of a long cord,
watching them carefully, for fear of accidents, with that animal and celestial expression
which is peculiar to maternity. At every backward and forward swing the hideous links
emitted a strident sound, which resembled a cry of rage; the little girls were in ecstasies; the
setting sun mingled in this joy, and nothing could be more charming than this caprice of
chance which had made of a chain of Titans the swing of cherubim.
As she rocked her little ones, the mother hummed in a discordant voice a romance then
celebrated: –
"It must be, said a warrior."
Her song, and the contemplation of her daughters, prevented her hearing and seeing
what was going on in the street.
In the meantime, some one had approached her, as she was beginning the first couplet
of the romance, and suddenly she heard a voice saying very near her ear: –
"You have two beautiful children there, Madame."
"To the fair and tender Imogene – "
replied the mother, continuing her romance; then she turned her head.
A woman stood before her, a few paces distant. This woman also had a child, which she
carried in her arms.
She was carrying, in addition, a large carpet−bag, which seemed very heavy.
This woman's child was one of the most divine creatures that it is possible to behold. lt
was a girl, two or three years of age. She could have entered into competition with the two
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CHAPTER I − ONE MOTHER MEETS ANOTHER MOTHER 151
other little ones, so far as the coquetry of her dress was concerned; she wore a cap of fine
linen, ribbons on her bodice, and Valenciennes lace on her cap. The folds of her skirt were
raised so as to permit a view of her white, firm, and dimpled leg. She was admirably rosy
and healthy. The little beauty inspired a desire to take a bite from the apples of her cheeks.
Of her eyes nothing could be known, except that they must be very large, and that they had
magnificent lashes. She was asleep.
She slept with that slumber of absolute confidence peculiar to her age. The arms of
mothers are made of tenderness; in them children sleep profoundly.
As for the mother, her appearance was sad and poverty−stricken. She was dressed like a
working−woman who is inclined to turn into a peasant again. She was young. Was she
handsome? Perhaps; but in that attire it was not apparent. Her hair, a golden lock of which
had escaped, seemed very thick, but was severely concealed beneath an ugly, tight, close,
nun−like cap, tied under the chin. A smile displays beautiful teeth when one has them; but
she did not smile. Her eyes did not seem to have been dry for a very long time. She was
pale; she had a very weary and rather sickly appearance. She gazed upon her daughter asleep
in her arms with the air peculiar to a mother who has nursed her own child. A large blue
handkerchief, such as the Invalides use, was folded into a fichu, and concealed her figure
clumsily. Her hands were sunburnt and all dotted with freckles, her forefinger was hardened
and lacerated with the needle; she wore a cloak of coarse brown woollen stuff, a linen gown,
and coarse shoes. It was Fantine.
It was Fantine, but difficult to recognize. Nevertheless, on scrutinizing her attentively, it
was evident that she still retained her beauty. A melancholy fold, which resembled the
beginning of irony, wrinkled her right cheek. As for her toilette, that aerial toilette of muslin
and ribbons, which seemed made of mirth, of folly, and of music, full of bells, and perfumed
with lilacs had vanished like that beautiful and dazzling hoar−frost which is mistaken for
diamonds in the sunlight; it melts and leaves the branch quite black.
Ten months had elapsed since the "pretty farce."
What had taken place during those ten months? It can be divined.
After abandonment, straightened circ*mstances. Fantine had immediately lost sight of
Favourite, Zephine and Dahlia; the bond once broken on the side of the men, it was loosed
between the women; they would have been greatly astonished had any one told them a
fortnight later, that they had been friends; there no longer existed any reason for such a
thing. Fantine had remained alone. The father of her child gone, – alas! such ruptures are
irrevocable, – she found herself absolutely isolated, minus the habit of work and plus the
taste for pleasure. Drawn away by her liaison with Tholomyes to disdain the pretty trade
which she knew, she had neglected to keep her market open; it was now closed to her. She
had no resource. Fantine barely knew how to read, and did not know how to write; in her
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CHAPTER I − ONE MOTHER MEETS ANOTHER MOTHER 152
childhood she had only been taught to sign her name; she had a public letter−writer indite an
epistle to Tholomyes, then a second, then a third. Tholomyes replied to none of them.
Fantine heard the gossips say, as they looked at her child: "Who takes those children
seriously! One only shrugs one's shoulders over such children!" Then she thought of
Tholomyes, who had shrugged his shoulders over his child, and who did not take that
innocent being seriously; and her heart grew gloomy toward that man. But what was she to
do? She no longer knew to whom to apply. She had committed a fault, but the foundation of
her nature, as will be remembered, was modesty and virtue. She was vaguely conscious that
she was on the verge of falling into distress, and of gliding into a worse state. Courage was
necessary; she possessed it, and held herself firm. The idea of returning to her native town of
M. sur M. occurred to her. There, some one might possibly know her and give her work;
yes, but it would be necessary to conceal her fault. In a confused way she perceived the
necessity of a separation which would be more painful than the first one. Her heart
contracted, but she took her resolution. Fantine, as we shall see, had the fierce bravery of
life. She had already valiantly renounced finery, had dressed herself in linen, and had put all
her silks, all her ornaments, all her ribbons, and all her laces on her daughter, the only vanity
which was left to her, and a holy one it was. She sold all that she had, which produced for
her two hundred francs; her little debts paid, she had only
,about eighty francs left. At the age
of twenty−two, on a beautiful spring morning, she quitted Paris, bearing her child on her
back. Any one who had seen these two pass would have had pity on them. This woman had,
in all the world, nothing but her child, and the child had, in all the world, no one but this
woman. Fantine had nursed her child, and this had tired her chest, and she coughed a little.
We shall have no further occasion to speak of M. Felix Tholomyes. Let us confine
ourselves to saying, that, twenty years later, under King Louis Philippe, he was a great
provincial lawyer, wealthy and influential, a wise elector, and a very severe juryman; he was
still a man of pleasure.
Towards the middle of the day, after having, from time to time, for the sake of resting
herself, travelled, for three or four sous a league, in what was then known as the Petites
Voitures des Environs de Paris, the "little suburban coach service," Fantine found herself at
Montfermeil, in the alley Boulanger.
As she passed the Thenardier hostelry, the two little girls, blissful in the monster swing,
had dazzled her in a manner, and she had halted in front of that vision of joy.
Charms exist. These two little girls were a charm to this mother.
She gazed at them in much emotion. The presence of angels is an announcement of
Paradise. She thought that, above this inn, she beheld the mysterious HERE of Providence.
These two little creatures were evidently happy. She gazed at them, she admired them, in
such emotion that at the moment when their mother was recovering her breath between two
couplets of her song, she could not refrain from addressing to her the remark which we have
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CHAPTER I − ONE MOTHER MEETS ANOTHER MOTHER 153
just read: –
"You have two pretty children, Madame."
The most ferocious creatures are disarmed by caresses bestowed on their young.
The mother raised her head and thanked her, and bade the wayfarer sit down on the
bench at the door, she herself being seated on the threshold. The two women began to chat.
"My name is Madame Thenardier," said the mother of the two little girls. "We keep this
inn."
Then, her mind still running on her romance, she resumed humming between her teeth:
–
" I t m u s t b e s o ; I a m a k n i g h t ,
And I am off to Palestine."
This Madame Thenardier was a sandy−complexioned woman, thin and angular – the
type of the soldier's wife in all its unpleasantness; and what was odd, with a languishing air,
which she owed to her perusal of romances. She was a simpering, but masculine creature.
Old romances produce that effect when rubbed against the imagination of cook−shop
woman. She was still young; she was barely thirty. If this crouching woman had stood
upright, her lofty stature and her frame of a perambulating colossus suitable for fairs, might
have frightened the traveller at the outset, troubled her confidence, and disturbed what
caused what we have to relate to vanish. A person who is seated instead of standing erect –
destinies hang upon such a thing as that.
The traveller told her story, with slight modifications.
That she was a working−woman; that her husband was dead; that her work in Paris had
failed her, and that she was on her way to seek it elsewhere, in her own native parts; that she
had left Paris that morning on foot; that, as she was carrying her child, and felt fatigued, she
had got into the Villemomble coach when she met it; that from Villemomble she had come
to Montfermeil on foot; that the little one had walked a little, but not much, because she was
so young, and that she had been obliged to take her up, and the jewel had fallen asleep.
At this word she bestowed on her daughter a passionate kiss, which woke her. The child
opened her eyes, great blue eyes like her mother's, and looked at – what? Nothing; with that
serious and sometimes severe air of little children, which is a mystery of their luminous
innocence in the presence of our twilight of virtue. One would say that they feel themselves
to be angels, and that they know us to be men. Then the child began to laugh; and although
the mother held fast to her, she slipped to the ground with the unconquerable energy of a
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CHAPTER I − ONE MOTHER MEETS ANOTHER MOTHER 154
little being which wished to run. All at once she caught sight of the two others in the swing,
stopped short, and put out her tongue, in sign of admiration.
Mother Thenardier released her daughters, made them descend from the swing, and
said: –
"Now amuse yourselves, all three of you."
Children become acquainted quickly at that age, and at the expiration of a minute the
little Thenardiers were playing with the new−comer at making holes in the ground, which
was an immense pleasure.
The new−comer was very gay; the goodness of the mother is written in the gayety of the
child; she had seized a scrap of wood which served her for a shovel, and energetically dug a
cavity big enough for a fly. The grave−digger's business becomes a subject for laughter
when performed by a child.
The two women pursued their chat.
"What is your little one's name?"
"Cosette."
For Cosette, read Euphrasie. The child's name was Euphrasie. But out of Euphrasie the
mother had made Cosette by that sweet and graceful instinct of mothers and of the populace
which changes Josepha into Pepita, and Francoise into Sillette. It is a sort of derivative
which disarranges and disconcerts the whole science of etymologists. We have known a
grandmother who succeeded in turning Theodore into Gnon.
"How old is she?"
"She is going on three."
"That is the age of my eldest."
In the meantime, the three little girls were grouped in an attitude of profound anxiety
and blissfulness; an event had happened; a big worm had emerged from the ground, and they
were afraid; and they were in ecstasies over it.
Their radiant brows touched each other; one would have said that there were three heads
in one aureole.
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CHAPTER I − ONE MOTHER MEETS ANOTHER MOTHER 155
"How easily children get acquainted at once!" exclaimed Mother Thenardier; "one
would swear that they were three sisters!"
This remark was probably the spark which the other mother had been waiting for. She
seized the Thenardier's hand, looked at her fixedly, and said: –
"Will you keep my child for me?"
The Thenardier made one of those movements of surprise which signify neither assent
nor refusal.
Cosette's mother continued: –
"You see, I cannot take my daughter to the country. My work will not permit it. With a
child one can find no situation. People are ridiculous in the country. It was the good God
who caused me to pass your inn. When I caught sight of your little ones, so pretty, so clean,
and so happy, it overwhelmed me. I said: `Here is a good mother. That is just the thing; that
will make three sisters.' And then, it will not be long before I return. Will you keep my child
for me?"
"I must see about it," replied the Thenardier.
"I will give you six francs a month."
Here a man's voice called from the depths of the cook−shop: –
"Not for less than seven francs. And six months paid in advance."
"Six times seven makes forty−two," said the Thenardier.
"I will give it," said the mother.
"And fifteen francs in addition for preliminary expenses," added the man's voice.
"Total, fifty−seven francs," said Madame Thenardier. And she hummed vaguely, with
these figures: –
"It must be, said a warrior."
"I will pay it," said the mother. "I have eighty francs. I shall have enough left to reach
the country, by travelling on foot. I shall earn money there, and as soon as I have a little I
will return for my darling."
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CHAPTER I − ONE MOTHER MEETS ANOTHER MOTHER
,156
The man's voice resumed: –
"The little one has an outfit?"
"That is my husband," said the Thenardier.
"Of course she has an outfit, the poor treasure. – I understood perfectly that it was your
husband. – And a beautiful outfit, too! a senseless outfit, everything by the dozen, and silk
gowns like a lady. It is here, in my carpet−bag."
"You must hand it over," struck in the man's voice again.
"Of course I shall give it to you," said the mother. "It would be very queer if I were to
leave my daughter quite naked!"
The master's face appeared.
"That's good," said he.
The bargain was concluded. The mother passed the night at the inn, gave up her money
and left her child, fastened her carpet−bag once more, now reduced in volume by the
removal of the outfit, and light henceforth and set out on the following morning, intending to
return soon. People arrange such departures tranquilly; but they are despairs!
A neighbor of the Thenardiers met this mother as she was setting out, and came back
with the remark: –
"I have just seen a woman crying in the street so that it was enough to rend your heart."
When Cosette's mother had taken her departure, the man said to the woman: –
"That will serve to pay my note for one hundred and ten francs which falls due
to−morrow; I lacked fifty francs. Do you know that I should have had a bailiff and a protest
after me? You played the mouse−trap nicely with your young ones."
"Without suspecting it," said the woman.
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CHAPTER I − ONE MOTHER MEETS ANOTHER MOTHER 157
CHAPTER II − FIRST SKETCH OF TWO UNPREPOSSESSING
FIGURES
The mouse which had been caught was a pitiful specimen; but the cat rejoices even
over a lean mouse.
Who were these Thenardiers?
Let us say a word or two of them now. We will complete the sketch later on.
These beings belonged to that bastard class composed of coarse people who have been
successful, and of intelligent people who have descended in the scale, which is between the
class called "middle" and the class denominated as "inferior," and which combines some of
the defects of the second with nearly all the vices of the first, without possessing the
generous impulse of the workingman nor the honest order of the bourgeois.
They were of those dwarfed natures which, if a dull fire chances to warm them up,
easily become monstrous. There was in the woman a substratum of the brute, and in the man
the material for a blackguard. Both were susceptible, in the highest degree, of the sort of
hideous progress which is accomplished in the direction of evil. There exist crab−like souls
which are continually retreating towards the darkness, retrograding in life rather than
advancing, employing experience to augment their deformity, growing incessantly worse,
and becoming more and more impregnated with an ever−augmenting blackness. This man
and woman possessed such souls.
Thenardier, in particular, was troublesome for a physiognomist. One can only look at
some men to distrust them; for one feels that they are dark in both directions. They are
uneasy in the rear and threatening in front. There is something of the unknown about them.
One can no more answer for what they have done than for what they will do. The shadow
which they bear in their glance denounces them. From merely hearing them utter a word or
seeing them make a gesture, one obtains a glimpse of sombre secrets in their past and of
sombre mysteries in their future.
This Thenardier, if he himself was to be believed, had been a soldier – a sergeant, he
said. He had probably been through the campaign of 1815, and had even conducted himself
with tolerable valor, it would seem. We shall see later on how much truth there was in this.
The sign of his hostelry was in allusion to one of his feats of arms. He had painted it
himself; for he knew how to do a little of everything, and badly.
It was at the epoch when the ancient classical romance which, after having been Clelie,
was no longer anything but Lodoiska, still noble, but ever more and more vulgar, having
fallen from Mademoiselle de Scuderi to Madame Bournon−Malarme, and from Madame de
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CHAPTER II − FIRST SKETCH OF TWO UNPREPOSSESSING FIGURES 158
Lafayette to Madame Barthelemy−Hadot, was setting the loving hearts of the portresses of
Paris aflame, and even ravaging the suburbs to some extent. Madame Thenardier was just
intelligent enough to read this sort of books. She lived on them. In them she drowned what
brains she possessed. This had given her, when very young, and even a little later, a sort of
pensive attitude towards her husband, a scamp of a certain depth, a ruffian lettered to the
extent of the grammar, coarse and fine at one and the same time, but, so far as
sentimentalism was concerned, given to the perusal of Pigault−Lebrun, and "in what
concerns the sex," as he said in his jargon – a downright, unmitigated lout. His wife was
twelve or fifteen years younger than he was. Later on, when her hair, arranged in a
romantically drooping fashion, began to grow gray, when the Magaera began to be
developed from the Pamela, the female Thenardier was nothing but a coarse, vicious
woman, who had dabbled in stupid romances. Now, one cannot read nonsense with
impunity. The result was that her eldest daughter was named Eponine; as for the younger,
the poor little thing came near being called Gulnare; I know not to what diversion, effected
by a romance of Ducray−Dumenil, she owed the fact that she merely bore the name of
Azelma.
However, we will remark by the way, everything was not ridiculous and superficial in
that curious epoch to which we are alluding, and which may be designated as the anarchy of
baptismal names. By the side of this romantic element which we have just indicated there is
the social symptom. It is not rare for the neatherd's boy nowadays to bear the name of
Arthur, Alfred, or Alphonse, and for the vicomte – if there are still any vicomtes – to be
called Thomas, Pierre, or Jacques. This displacement, which places the "elegant" name on
the plebeian and the rustic name on the aristocrat, is nothing else than an eddy of equality.
The irresistible penetration of the new inspiration is there as everywhere else. Beneath this
apparent discord there is a great and a profound thing, – the French Revolution.
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CHAPTER II − FIRST SKETCH OF TWO UNPREPOSSESSING FIGURES 159
CHAPTER III − THE LARK
I t is not all in all sufficient to be wicked in order to prosper. The cook−shop was in a
bad way.
Thanks to the traveller's fifty−seven francs, Thenardier had been able to avoid a protest
and to honor his signature. On the following month they were again in need of money. The
woman took Cosette's outfit to Paris, and pawned it at the pawnbroker's for sixty francs. As
soon as that sum was spent, the Thenardiers grew accustomed to look on the little girl
merely as a child whom they were caring for out of charity; and they treated her accordingly.
As she had no longer any clothes, they dressed her in the cast−off petticoats and chemises of
the Thenardier brats; that is to say, in rags. They fed her on what all the rest had left – a little
better than the dog, a little worse than the cat. Moreover, the cat and the dog were her
habitual table−companions; Cosette ate with them under the table, from a wooden bowl
similar to theirs.
The mother, who had established herself, as we shall see later on, at M. sur M., wrote,
or, more correctly, caused to be written, a letter every month, that she might have news of
her child. The Thenardiers replied invariably, "Cosette is doing wonderfully well."
At the expiration of the first six months the mother sent seven francs for the seventh
month, and continued her remittances with tolerable regularity from month to month. The
year was not
,completed when Thenardier said: "A fine favor she is doing us, in sooth! What
does she expect us to do with her seven francs?" and he wrote to demand twelve francs. The
mother, whom they had persuaded into the belief that her child was happy, "and was coming
on well," submitted, and forwarded the twelve francs.
Certain natures cannot love on the one hand without hating on the other. Mother
Thenardier loved her two daughters passionately, which caused her to hate the stranger.
It is sad to think that the love of a mother can possess villainous aspects. Little as was
the space occupied by Cosette, it seemed to her as though it were taken from her own, and
that that little child diminished the air which her daughters breathed. This woman, like many
women of her sort, had a load of caresses and a burden of blows and injuries to dispense
each day. If she had not had Cosette, it is certain that her daughters, idolized as they were,
would have received the whole of it; but the stranger did them the service to divert the blows
to herself. Her daughters received nothing but caresses. Cosette could not make a motion
which did not draw down upon her head a heavy shower of violent blows and unmerited
chastisem*nt. The sweet, feeble being, who should not have understood anything of this
world or of God, incessantly punished, scolded, ill−used, beaten, and seeing beside her two
little creatures like herself, who lived in a ray of dawn!
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CHAPTER III − THE LARK 160
Madame Thenardier was vicious with Cosette. Eponine and Azelma were vicious.
Children at that age are only copies of their mother. The size is smaller; that is all.
A year passed; then another.
People in the village said: –
"Those Thenardiers are good people. They are not rich, and yet they are bringing up a
poor child who was abandoned on their hands!"
They thought that Cosette's mother had forgotten her.
In the meanwhile, Thenardier, having learned, it is impossible to say by what obscure
means, that the child was probably a bastard, and that the mother could not acknowledge it,
exacted fifteen francs a month, saying that "the creature" was growing and "eating," and
threatening to send her away. "Let her not bother me," he exclaimed, "or I'll fire her brat
right into the middle of her secrets. I must have an increase." The mother paid the fifteen
francs.
From year to year the child grew, and so did her wretchedness.
As long as Cosette was little, she was the scape−goat of the two other children; as soon
as she began to develop a little, that is to say, before she was even five years old, she
became the servant of the household.
Five years old! the reader will say; that is not probable. Alas! it is true. Social suffering
begins at all ages. Have we not recently seen the trial of a man named Dumollard, an orphan
turned bandit, who, from the age of five, as the official documents state, being alone in the
world, "worked for his living and stole"?
Cosette was made to run on errands, to sweep the rooms, the courtyard, the street, to
wash the dishes, to even carry burdens. The Thenardiers considered themselves all the more
authorized to behave in this manner, since the mother, who was still at M. sur M., had
become irregular in her payments. Some months she was in arrears.
If this mother had returned to Montfermeil at the end of these three years, she would not
have recognized her child. Cosette, so pretty and rosy on her arrival in that house, was now
thin and pale. She had an indescribably uneasy look. "The sly creature," said the
Thenardiers.
Injustice had made her peevish, and misery had made her ugly. Nothing remained to her
except her beautiful eyes, which inspired pain, because, large as they were, it seemed as
though one beheld in them a still larger amount of sadness.
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CHAPTER III − THE LARK 161
It was a heart−breaking thing to see this poor child, not yet six years old, shivering in
the winter in her old rags of linen, full of holes, sweeping the street before daylight, with an
enormous broom in her tiny red hands, and a tear in her great eyes.
She was called the Lark in the neighborhood. The populace, who are fond of these
figures of speech, had taken a fancy to bestow this name on this trembling, frightened, and
shivering little creature, no bigger than a bird, who was awake every morning before any
one else in the house or the village, and was always in the street or the fields before
daybreak.
Only the little lark never sang.
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CHAPTER III − THE LARK 162
BOOK FIFTH. – THE DESCENT.
Les Miserables
BOOK FIFTH. – THE DESCENT. 163
CHAPTER I − THE HISTORY OF A PROGRESS IN BLACK GLASS
TRINKETS
And in the meantime, what had become of that mother who according to the people at
Montfermeil, seemed to have abandoned her child? Where was she? What was she doing?
After leaving her little Cosette with the Thenardiers, she had continued her journey, and
had reached M. sur M.
This, it will be remembered, was in 1818.
Fantine had quitted her province ten years before. M. sur M. had changed its aspect.
While Fantine had been slowly descending from wretchedness to wretchedness, her native
town had prospered.
About two years previously one of those industrial facts which are the grand events of
small districts had taken place.
This detail is important, and we regard it as useful to develop it at length; we should
almost say, to underline it.
From time immemorial, M. sur M. had had for its special industry the imitation of
English jet and the black glass trinkets of Germany. This industry had always vegetated, on
account of the high price of the raw material, which reacted on the manufacture. At the
moment when Fantine returned to M. sur M., an unheard−of transformation had taken place
in the production of "black goods." Towards the close of 1815 a man, a stranger, had
established himself in the town, and had been inspired with the idea of substituting, in this
manufacture, gum−lac for resin, and, for bracelets in particular, slides of sheet−iron simply
laid together, for slides of soldered sheet−iron.
This very small change had effected a revolution.
This very small change had, in fact, prodigiously reduced the cost of the raw material,
which had rendered it possible in the first place, to raise the price of manufacture, a benefit
to the country; in the second place, to improve the workmanship, an advantage to the
consumer; in the third place, to sell at a lower price, while trebling the profit, which was a
benefit to the manufacturer.
Thus three results ensued from one idea.
In less than three years the inventor of this process had become rich, which is good, and
had made every one about him rich, which is better. He was a stranger in the Department. Of
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CHAPTER I − THE HISTORY OF A PROGRESS IN BLACK GLASS TRINKETS 164
his origin, nothing was known; of the beginning of his career, very little. It was rumored that
he had come to town with very little money, a few hundred francs at the most.
It was from this slender capital, enlisted in the service of an ingenious idea, developed
by method and thought, that he had drawn his own fortune, and the fortune of the whole
countryside.
On his arrival at M. sur M. he had only the garments, the appearance, and the language
of a workingman.
It appears that on the very day when he made his obscure entry into the little town of M.
sur M., just at nightfall, on a December evening, knapsack on back and thorn club in hand, a
large fire had broken out in the town−hall. This man had rushed into the flames and saved, at
the risk of his own life, two children who belonged to the captain of the gendarmerie; this is
why they had forgotten to ask him for his passport. Afterwards they had learned
,his name.
He was called Father Madeleine.
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CHAPTER I − THE HISTORY OF A PROGRESS IN BLACK GLASS TRINKETS 165
CHAPTER II − MADELEINE
He was a man about fifty years of age, who had a preoccupied air, and who was good.
That was all that could be said about him.
Thanks to the rapid progress of the industry which he had so admirably re−constructed,
M. sur M. had become a rather important centre of trade. Spain, which consumes a good
deal of black jet, made enormous purchases there each year. M. sur M. almost rivalled
London and Berlin in this branch of commerce. Father Madeleine's profits were such, that at
the end of the second year he was able to erect a large factory, in which there were two vast
workrooms, one for the men, and the other for women. Any one who was hungry could
present himself there, and was sure of finding employment and bread. Father Madeleine
required of the men good will, of the women pure morals, and of all, probity. He had
separated the work−rooms in order to separate the sexes, and so that the women and girls
might remain discreet. On this point he was inflexible. It was the only thing in which he was
in a manner intolerant. He was all the more firmly set on this severity, since M. sur M.,
being a garrison town, opportunities for corruption abounded. However, his coming had
been a boon, and his presence was a godsend. Before Father Madeleine's arrival, everything
had languished in the country; now everything lived with a healthy life of toil. A strong
circulation warmed everything and penetrated everywhere. Slack seasons and wretchedness
were unknown. There was no pocket so obscure that it had not a little money in it; no
dwelling so lowly that there was not some little joy within it.
Father Madeleine gave employment to every one. He exacted but one thing: Be an
honest man. Be an honest woman.
As we have said, in the midst of this activity of which he was the cause and the pivot,
Father Madeleine made his fortune; but a singular thing in a simple man of business, it did
not seem as though that were his chief care. He appeared to be thinking much of others, and
little of himself. In 1820 he was known to have a sum of six hundred and thirty thousand
francs lodged in his name with Laffitte; but before reserving these six hundred and thirty
thousand francs, he had spent more than a million for the town and its poor.
The hospital was badly endowed; he founded six beds there. M. sur M. is divided into
the upper and the lower town. The lower town, in which he lived, had but one school, a
miserable hovel, which was falling to ruin: he constructed two, one for girls, the other for
boys. He allotted a salary from his own funds to the two instructors, a salary twice as large
as their meagre official salary, and one day he said to some one who expressed surprise,
"The two prime functionaries of the state are the nurse and the schoolmaster." He created at
his own expense an infant school, a thing then almost unknown in France, and a fund for
aiding old and infirm workmen. As his factory was a centre, a new quarter, in which there
were a good many indigent families, rose rapidly around him; he established there a free
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CHAPTER II − MADELEINE 166
dispensary.
At first, when they watched his beginnings, the good souls said, "He's a jolly fellow
who means to get rich." When they saw him enriching the country before he enriched
himself, the good souls said, "He is an ambitious man." This seemed all the more probable
since the man was religious, and even practised his religion to a certain degree, a thing
which was very favorably viewed at that epoch. He went regularly to low mass every
Sunday. The local deputy, who nosed out all rivalry everywhere, soon began to grow uneasy
over this religion. This deputy had been a member of the legislative body of the Empire, and
shared the religious ideas of a father of the Oratoire, known under the name of Fouche, Duc
d'Otrante, whose creature and friend he had been. He indulged in gentle raillery at God with
closed doors. But when he beheld the wealthy manufacturer Madeleine going to low mass at
seven o'clock, he perceived in him a possible candidate, and resolved to outdo him; he took
a Jesuit confessor, and went to high mass and to vespers. Ambition was at that time, in the
direct acceptation of the word, a race to the steeple. The poor profited by this terror as well
as the good God, for the honorable deputy also founded two beds in the hospital, which
made twelve.
Nevertheless, in 1819 a rumor one morning circulated through the town to the effect
that, on the representations of the prefect and in consideration of the services rendered by
him to the country, Father Madeleine was to be appointed by the King, mayor of M. sur M.
Those who had pronounced this new−comer to be "an ambitious fellow," seized with delight
on this opportunity which all men desire, to exclaim, "There! what did we say!" All M. sur
M. was in an uproar. The rumor was well founded. Several days later the appointment
appeared in the Moniteur. On the following day Father Madeleine refused.
In this same year of 1819 the products of the new process invented
by Madeleine figured in the industrial exhibition; when the jury made their report, the
King appointed the inventor a chevalier of the Legion of Honor. A fresh excitement in the
little town. Well, so it was the cross that he wanted! Father Madeleine refused the cross.
Decidedly this man was an enigma. The good souls got out of their predicament by
saying, "After all, he is some sort of an adventurer."
We have seen that the country owed much to him; the poor owed him everything; he
was so useful and he was so gentle that people had been obliged to honor and respect him.
His workmen, in particular, adored him, and he endured this adoration with a sort of
melancholy gravity. When he was known to be rich, "people in society" bowed to him, and
he received invitations in the town; he was called, in town, Monsieur Madeleine; his
workmen and the children continued to call him Father Madeleine, and that was what was
most adapted to make him smile. In proportion as he mounted, throve, invitations rained
down upon him. "Society" claimed him for its own. The prim little drawing−rooms on M.
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CHAPTER II − MADELEINE 167
sur M., which, of course, had at first been closed to the artisan, opened both leaves of their
folding−doors to the millionnaire. They made a thousand advances to him. He refused.
This time the good gossips had no trouble. "He is an ignorant man, of no education. No
one knows where he came from. He would not know how to behave in society. It has not
been absolutely proved that he knows how to read."
When they saw him making money, they said, "He is a man of business." When they
saw him scattering his money about, they said, "He is an ambitious man." When he was seen
to decline honors, they said, "He is an adventurer." When they saw him repulse society, they
said, "He is a brute."
In 1820, five years after his arrival in M. sur M., the services
which he had rendered to the district were so dazzling, the opinion of the whole country
round about was so unanimous, that the King again appointed him mayor of the town. He
again declined; but the prefect resisted his refusal, all the notabilities of the place came to
implore him, the people in the street besought him; the urging was so vigorous that he ended
by accepting. It was noticed that the thing which seemed chiefly to bring him to a decision
was the almost irritated apostrophe addressed to him by an old woman of the people, who
called to him from her threshold, in an angry way: "A good mayor is a useful thing. Is he
drawing back before the good which he can do?"
This was the third phase of his ascent. Father Madeleine
,there were no
proofs except against her. She alone could accuse her lover, and destroy him by her
confession. She denied; they insisted. She persisted in her denial. Thereupon an idea
occurred to the attorney for the crown. He invented an infidelity on the part of the lover, and
succeeded, by means of fragments of letters cunningly presented, in persuading the
unfortunate woman that she had a rival, and that the man was deceiving her. Thereupon,
exasperated by jealousy, she denounced her lover, confessed all, proved all.
The man was ruined. He was shortly to be tried at Aix with his accomplice. They were
relating the matter, and each one was expressing enthusiasm over the cleverness of the
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CHAPTER IV − WORKS CORRESPONDING TO WORDS 18
magistrate. By bringing jealousy into play, he had caused the truth to burst forth in wrath, he
had educed the justice of revenge. The Bishop listened to all this in silence. When they had
finished, he inquired, –
"Where are this man and woman to be tried?"
"At the Court of Assizes."
He went on, "And where will the advocate of the crown be tried?"
A tragic event occurred at D – – A man was condemned to death for murder. He was a
wretched fellow, not exactly educated, not exactly ignorant, who had been a mountebank at
fairs, and a writer for the public. The town took a great interest in the trial. On the eve of the
day fixed for the execution of the condemned man, the chaplain of the prison fell ill. A priest
was needed to attend the criminal in his last moments. They sent for the cure. It seems that
he refused to come, saying, "That is no affair of mine. I have nothing to do with that
unpleasant task, and with that mountebank: I, too, am ill; and besides, it is not my place."
This reply was reported to the Bishop, who said, "Monsieur le Cure is right: it is not his
place; it is mine."
He went instantly to the prison, descended to the cell of the "mountebank," called him
by name, took him by the hand, and spoke to him. He passed the entire day with him,
forgetful of food and sleep, praying to God for the soul of the condemned man, and praying
the condemned man for his own. He told him the best truths, which are also the most simple.
He was father, brother, friend; he was bishop only to bless. He taught him everything,
encouraged and consoled him. The man was on the point of dying in despair. Death was an
abyss to him. As he stood trembling on its mournful brink, he recoiled with horror. He was
not sufficiently ignorant to be absolutely indifferent. His condemnation, which had been a
profound shock, had, in a manner, broken through, here and there, that wall which separates
us from the mystery of things, and which we call life. He gazed incessantly beyond this
world through these fatal breaches, and beheld only darkness. The Bishop made him see
light.
On the following day, when they came to fetch the unhappy wretch, the Bishop was still
there. He followed him, and exhibited himself to the eyes of the crowd in his purple camail
and with his episcopal cross upon his neck, side by side with the criminal bound with cords.
He mounted the tumbril with him, he mounted the scaffold with him. The sufferer, who
had been so gloomy and cast down on the preceding day, was radiant. He felt that his soul
was reconciled, and he hoped in God. The Bishop embraced him, and at the moment when
the knife was about to fall, he said to him: "God raises from the dead him whom man slays;
he whom his brothers have rejected finds his Father once more. Pray, believe, enter into life:
the Father is there." When he descended from the scaffold, there was something in his look
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CHAPTER IV − WORKS CORRESPONDING TO WORDS 19
which made the people draw aside to let him pass. They did not know which was most
worthy of admiration, his pallor or his serenity. On his return to the humble dwelling, which
he designated, with a smile, as his palace, he said to his sister, "I have just officiated
pontifically."
Since the most sublime things are often those which are the least understood, there were
people in the town who said, when commenting on this conduct of the Bishop, "It is
affectation."
This, however, was a remark which was confined to the drawing−rooms. The populace,
which perceives no jest in holy deeds, was touched, and admired him.
As for the Bishop, it was a shock to him to have beheld the guillotine, and it was a long
time before he recovered from it.
In fact, when the scaffold is there, all erected and prepared, it has something about it
which produces hallucination. One may feel a certain indifference to the death penalty, one
may refrain from pronouncing upon it, from saying yes or no, so long as one has not seen a
guillotine with one's own eyes: but if one encounters one of them, the shock is violent; one
is forced to decide, and to take part for or against. Some admire it, like de Maistre; others
execrate it, like Beccaria. The guillotine is the concretion of the law; it is called vindicte; it
is not neutral, and it does not permit you to remain neutral. He who sees it shivers with the
most mysterious of shivers. All social problems erect their interrogation point around this
chopping−knife. The scaffold is a vision. The scaffold is not a piece of carpentry; the
scaffold is not a machine; the scaffold is not an inert bit of mechanism constructed of wood,
iron and cords.
It seems as though it were a being, possessed of I know not what sombre initiative; one
would say that this piece of carpenter's work saw, that this machine heard, that this
mechanism understood, that this wood, this iron, and these cords were possessed of will. In
the frightful meditation into which its presence casts the soul the scaffold appears in terrible
guise, and as though taking part in what is going on. The scaffold is the accomplice of the
executioner; it devours, it eats flesh, it drinks blood; the scaffold is a sort of monster
fabricated by the judge and the carpenter, a spectre which seems to live with a horrible
vitality composed of all the death which it has inflicted.
Therefore, the impression was terrible and profound; on the day following the
execution, and on many succeeding days, the Bishop appeared to be crushed. The almost
violent serenity of the funereal moment had disappeared; the phantom of social justice
tormented him. He, who generally returned from all his deeds with a radiant satisfaction,
seemed to be reproaching himself. At times he talked to himself, and stammered lugubrious
monologues in a low voice. This is one which his sister overheard one evening and
preserved: "I did not think that it was so monstrous. It is wrong to become absorbed in the
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CHAPTER IV − WORKS CORRESPONDING TO WORDS 20
divine law to such a degree as not to perceive human law. Death belongs to God alone. By
what right do men touch that unknown thing?"
In course of time these impressions weakened and probably vanished. Nevertheless, it
was observed that the Bishop thenceforth avoided passing the place of execution.
M. Myriel could be summoned at any hour to the bedside of the sick and dying. He did
not ignore the fact that therein lay his greatest duty and his greatest labor. Widowed and
orphaned families had no need to summon him; he came of his own accord. He understood
how to sit down and hold his peace for long hours beside the man who had lost the wife of
his love, of the mother who had lost her child. As he knew the moment for silence he knew
also the moment for speech. Oh, admirable consoler! He sought not to efface sorrow by
forgetfulness, but to magnify and dignify it by hope. He said: –
"Have a care of the manner in which you turn towards the dead. Think not of that which
perishes. Gaze steadily. You will perceive the living light of
,had become Monsieur
Madeleine. Monsieur Madeleine became Monsieur le Maire.
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CHAPTER II − MADELEINE 168
CHAPTER III − SUMS DEPOSITED WITH LAFFITTE
On the other hand, he remained as simple as on the first day. He had gray hair, a
serious eye, the sunburned complexion of a laborer, the thoughtful visage of a philosopher.
He habitually wore a hat with a wide brim, and a long coat of coarse cloth, buttoned to the
chin. He fulfilled his duties as mayor; but, with that exception, he lived in solitude. He spoke
to but few people. He avoided polite attentions; he escaped quickly; he smiled to relieve
himself of the necessity of talking; he gave, in order to get rid of the necessity for smiling,
The women said of him, "What a good−natured bear!" His pleasure consisted in strolling in
the fields.
He always took his meals alone, with an open book before him, which he read. He had a
well−selected little library. He loved books; books are cold but safe friends. In proportion as
leisure came to him with fortune, he seemed to take advantage of it to cultivate his mind. It
had been observed that, ever since his arrival at M. sur M.. his language had grown more
polished, more choice, and more gentle with every passing year. He liked to carry a gun with
him on his strolls, but he rarely made use of it. When he did happen to do so, his shooting
was something so infallible as to inspire terror. He never killed an inoffensive animal. He
never shot at a little bird.
Although he was no longer young, it was thought that he was still prodigiously strong.
He offered his assistance to any one who was in need of it, lifted a horse, released a wheel
clogged in the mud, or stopped a runaway bull by the horns. He always had his pockets full
of money when he went out; but they were empty on his return. When he passed through a
village, the ragged brats ran joyously after him, and surrounded him like a swarm of gnats.
It was thought that he must, in the past, have lived a country life, since he knew all sorts
of useful secrets, which he taught to the peasants. He taught them how to destroy scurf on
wheat, by sprinkling it and the granary and inundating the cracks in the floor with a solution
of common salt; and how to chase away weevils by hanging up orviot in bloom everywhere,
on the walls and the ceilings, among the grass and in the houses.
He had "recipes" for exterminating from a field, blight, tares, foxtail, and all parasitic
growths which destroy the wheat. He defended a rabbit warren against rats, simply by the
odor of a guinea−pig which he placed in it.
One day he saw some country people busily engaged in pulling up nettles; he examined
the plants, which were uprooted and already dried, and said: "They are dead. Nevertheless, it
would be a good thing to know how to make use of them. When the nettle is young, the leaf
makes an excellent vegetable; when it is older, it has filaments and fibres like hemp and
flax. Nettle cloth is as good as linen cloth. Chopped up, nettles are good for poultry;
pounded, they are good for horned cattle. The seed of the nettle, mixed with fodder, gives
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CHAPTER III − SUMS DEPOSITED WITH LAFFITTE 169
gloss to the hair of animals; the root, mixed with salt, produces a beautiful yellow
coloring−matter. Moreover, it is an excellent hay, which can be cut twice. And what is
required for the nettle? A little soil, no care, no culture. Only the seed falls as it is ripe, and it
is difficult to collect it. That is all. With the exercise of a little care, the nettle could be made
useful; it is neglected and it becomes hurtful. It is exterminated. How many men resemble
the nettle!" He added, after a pause: "Remember this, my friends: there are no such things as
bad plants or bad men. There are only bad cultivators."
The children loved him because he knew how to make charming little trifles of straw
and cocoanuts.
When he saw the door of a church hung in black, he entered: he sought out funerals as
other men seek christenings. Widowhood and the grief of others attracted him, because of
his great gentleness; he mingled with the friends clad in mourning, with families dressed in
black, with the priests groaning around a coffin. He seemed to like to give to his thoughts for
text these funereal psalmodies filled with the vision of the other world. With his eyes fixed
on heaven, he listened with a sort of aspiration towards all the mysteries of the infinite, those
sad voices which sing on the verge of the obscure abyss of death.
He performed a multitude of good actions, concealing his agency in them as a man
conceals himself because of evil actions. He penetrated houses privately, at night; he
ascended staircases furtively. A poor wretch on returning to his attic would find that his door
had been opened, sometimes even forced, during his absence. The poor man made a clamor
over it: some malefactor had been there! He entered, and the first thing he beheld was a
piece of gold lying forgotten on some piece of furniture. The "malefactor" who had been
there was Father Madeleine.
He was affable and sad. The people said: "There is a rich man who has not a haughty
air. There is a happy man who has not a contented air."
Some people maintained that he was a mysterious person, and that no one ever entered
his chamber, which was a regular anchorite's cell, furnished with winged hour−glasses and
enlivened by cross−bones and skulls of dead men! This was much talked of, so that one of
the elegant and malicious young women of M. sur M. came to him one day, and asked:
"Monsieur le Maire, pray show us your chamber. It is said to be a grotto." He smiled, and
introduced them instantly into this "grotto." They were well punished for their curiosity. The
room was very simply furnished in mahogany, which was rather ugly, like all furniture of
that sort, and hung with paper worth twelve sous. They could see nothing remarkable about
it, except two candlesticks of antique pattern which stood on the chimney−piece and
appeared to be silver, "for they were hall−marked," an observation full of the type of wit of
petty towns.
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CHAPTER III − SUMS DEPOSITED WITH LAFFITTE 170
Nevertheless, people continued to say that no one ever got into the room, and that it was
a hermit's cave, a mysterious retreat, a hole, a tomb.
It was also whispered about that he had "immense" sums deposited with Laffitte, with
this peculiar feature, that they were always at his immediate disposal, so that, it was added,
M. Madeleine could make his appearance at Laffitte's any morning, sign a receipt, and carry
off his two or three millions in ten minutes. In reality, "these two or three millions" were
reducible, as we have said, to six hundred and thirty or forty thousand francs.
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CHAPTER III − SUMS DEPOSITED WITH LAFFITTE 171
CHAPTER IV − M. MADELEINE IN MOURNING
At the beginning of 1820 the newspapers announced the death
of M. Myriel, Bishop of D – – , surnamed "Monseigneur Bienvenu," who had died in
the odor of sanctity at the age of eighty−two.
The Bishop of D – – – to supply here a detail which the papers omitted – had been blind
for many years before his death, and content to be blind, as his sister was beside him.
Let us remark by the way, that to be blind and to be loved, is, in fact, one of the most
strangely exquisite forms of happiness upon this earth, where nothing is complete. To have
continually at one's side a woman, a daughter, a sister, a charming being, who is there
because you need her and because she cannot do without you; to know that we are
indispensable to a person who is necessary to us; to be able to incessantly measure one's
affection by the amount of her presence which she bestows on us, and to say to ourselves,
"Since she consecrates the whole of her
,your well−beloved dead in the
depths of heaven." He knew that faith is wholesome. He sought to counsel and calm the
despairing man, by pointing out to him the resigned man, and to transform the grief which
gazes upon a grave by showing him the grief which fixes its gaze upon a star.
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CHAPTER IV − WORKS CORRESPONDING TO WORDS 21
CHAPTER V − MONSEIGNEUR BIENVENU MADE HIS
CASSOCKS LAST TOO LONG
The private life of M. Myriel was filled with the same thoughts as his public life. The
voluntary poverty in which the Bishop of D – – lived, would have been a solemn and
charming sight for any one who could have viewed it close at hand.
Like all old men, and like the majority of thinkers, he slept little. This brief slumber was
profound. In the morning he meditated for an hour, then he said his mass, either at the
cathedral or in his own house. His mass said, he broke his fast on rye bread dipped in the
milk of his own cows. Then he set to work.
A Bishop is a very busy man: he must every day receive the secretary of the bishopric,
who is generally a canon, and nearly every day his vicars−general. He has congregations to
reprove, privileges to grant, a whole ecclesiastical library to examine, – prayer−books,
diocesan catechisms, books of hours, etc., – charges to write, sermons to authorize, cures
and mayors to reconcile, a clerical correspondence, an administrative correspondence; on
one side the State, on the other the Holy See; and a thousand matters of business.
What time was left to him, after these thousand details of business, and his offices and
his breviary, he bestowed first on the necessitous, the sick, and the afflicted; the time which
was left to him from the afflicted, the sick, and the necessitous, he devoted to work.
Sometimes he dug in his garden; again, he read or wrote. He had but one word for both these
kinds of toil; he called them gardening. "The mind is a garden," said he.
Towards mid−day, when the weather was fine, he went forth and took a stroll in the
country or in town, often entering lowly dwellings. He was seen walking alone, buried in his
own thoughts, his eyes cast down, supporting himself on his long cane, clad in his wadded
purple garment of silk, which was very warm, wearing purple stockings inside his coarse
shoes, and surmounted by a flat hat which allowed three golden tassels of large bullion to
droop from its three points.
It was a perfect festival wherever he appeared. One would have said that his presence
had something warming and luminous about it. The children and the old people came out to
the doorsteps for the Bishop as for the sun. He bestowed his blessing, and they blessed him.
They pointed out his house to any one who was in need of anything.
Here and there he halted, accosted the little boys and girls, and smiled upon the
mothers. He visited the poor so long as he had any money; when he no longer had any, he
visited the rich.
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CHAPTER V − MONSEIGNEUR BIENVENU MADE HIS CASSOCKS LAST TOO LONG 22
As he made his cassocks last a long while, and did not wish to have it noticed, he never
went out in the town without his wadded purple cloak. This inconvenienced him somewhat
in summer.
On his return, he dined. The dinner resembled his breakfast.
At half−past eight in the evening he supped with his sister, Madame Magloire standing
behind them and serving them at table. Nothing could be more frugal than this repast. If,
however, the Bishop had one of his cures to supper, Madame Magloire took advantage of
the opportunity to serve Monseigneur with some excellent fish from the lake, or with some
fine game from the mountains. Every cure furnished the pretext for a good meal: the Bishop
did not interfere. With that exception, his ordinary diet consisted only of vegetables boiled
in water, and oil soup. Thus it was said in the town, when the Bishop does not indulge in the
cheer of a cure, he indulges in the cheer of a trappist.
After supper he conversed for half an hour with Mademoiselle Baptistine and Madame
Magloire; then he retired to his own room and set to writing, sometimes on loose sheets, and
again on the margin of some folio. He was a man of letters and rather learned. He left behind
him five or six very curious manuscripts; among others, a dissertation on this verse in
Genesis, In the beginning, the spirit of God floated upon the waters. With this verse he
compares three texts: the Arabic verse which says, The winds of God blew; Flavius
Josephus who says, A wind from above was precipitated upon the earth; and finally, the
Chaldaic paraphrase of Onkelos, which renders it, A wind coming from God blew upon the
face of the waters. In another dissertation, he examines the theological works of Hugo,
Bishop of Ptolemais, great−grand−uncle to the writer of this book, and establishes the fact,
that to this bishop must be attributed the divers little works published during the last century,
under the pseudonym of Barleycourt.
Sometimes, in the midst of his reading, no matter what the book might be which he had
in his hand, he would suddenly fall into a profound meditation, whence he only emerged to
write a few lines on the pages of the volume itself. These lines have often no connection
whatever with the book which contains them. We now have under our eyes a note written by
him on the margin of a quarto entitled Correspondence of Lord Germain with Generals
Clinton, Cornwallis, and the Admirals on the American station. Versailles, Poincot,
book−seller; and Paris, Pissot, bookseller, Quai des Augustins.
Here is the note: –
"Oh, you who are!
"Ecclesiastes calls you the All−powerful; the Maccabees call you the Creator; the
Epistle to the Ephesians calls you liberty; Baruch calls you Immensity; the Psalms call you
Wisdom and Truth; John calls you Light; the Books of Kings call you Lord; Exodus calls
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CHAPTER V − MONSEIGNEUR BIENVENU MADE HIS CASSOCKS LAST TOO LONG 23
you Providence; Leviticus, Sanctity; Esdras, Justice; the creation calls you God; man calls
you Father; but Solomon calls you Compassion, and that is the most beautiful of all your
names."
Toward nine o'clock in the evening the two women retired and betook themselves to
their chambers on the first floor, leaving him alone until morning on the ground floor.
It is necessary that we should, in this place, give an exact idea of the dwelling of the
Bishop of D – –
Les Miserables
CHAPTER V − MONSEIGNEUR BIENVENU MADE HIS CASSOCKS LAST TOO LONG 24
CHAPTER VI − WHO GUARDED HIS HOUSE FOR HIM
The house in which he lived consisted, as we have said, of a ground floor, and one
story above; three rooms on the ground floor, three chambers on the first, and an attic above.
Behind the house was a garden, a quarter of an acre in extent. The two women occupied the
first floor; the Bishop was lodged below. The first room, opening on the street, served him
as dining−room, the second was his bedroom, and the third his oratory. There was no exit
possible from this oratory, except by passing through the bedroom, nor from the bedroom,
without passing through the dining−room. At the end of the suite, in the oratory, there was a
detached alcove with a bed, for use in cases of hospitality. The Bishop offered this bed to
country curates whom business or the requirements of their parishes brought to D – –
The pharmacy of the hospital, a small building which had been added to the house, and
abutted on the garden, had been transformed into a kitchen and cellar. In addition to this,
there was in the garden a stable, which had formerly been the kitchen of the hospital, and in
which the Bishop kept two cows. No matter what the quantity of milk they gave, he
invariably sent half of it every morning to the sick people in the hospital. "I am paying my
tithes," he said.
His bedroom
,was tolerably large, and rather difficult to warm in bad weather. As wood
is extremely dear at D – – , he hit upon the idea of having a compartment of boards
constructed in the cow−shed. Here he passed his evenings during seasons of severe cold: he
called it his winter salon.
In this winter salon, as in the dining−room, there was no other furniture than a square
table in white wood, and four straw−seated chairs. In addition to this the dining−room was
ornamented with an antique sideboard, painted pink, in water colors. Out of a similar
sideboard, properly draped with white napery and imitation lace, the Bishop had constructed
the altar which decorated his oratory.
His wealthy penitents and the sainted women of D – – had more than once assessed
themselves to raise the money for a new altar for Monseigneur's oratory; on each occasion
he had taken the money and had given it to the poor. "The most beautiful of altars," he said,
"is the soul of an unhappy creature consoled and thanking God."
In his oratory there were two straw prie−Dieu, and there was an arm−chair, also in
straw, in his bedroom. When, by chance, he received seven or eight persons at one time, the
prefect, or the general, or the staff of the regiment in garrison, or several pupils from the
little seminary, the chairs had to be fetched from the winter salon in the stable, the prie−Dieu
from the oratory, and the arm−chair from the bedroom: in this way as many as eleven chairs
could be collected for the visitors. A room was dismantled for each new guest.
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CHAPTER VI − WHO GUARDED HIS HOUSE FOR HIM 25
It sometimes happened that there were twelve in the party; the Bishop then relieved the
embarrassment of the situation by standing in front of the chimney if it was winter, or by
strolling in the garden if it was summer.
There was still another chair in the detached alcove, but the straw was half gone from it,
and it had but three legs, so that it was of service only when propped against the wall.
Mademoiselle Baptistine had also in her own room a very large easy−chair of wood, which
had formerly been gilded, and which was covered with flowered pekin; but they had been
obliged to hoist this bergere up to the first story through the window, as the staircase was too
narrow; it could not, therefore, be reckoned among the possibilities in the way of furniture.
Mademoiselle Baptistine's ambition had been to be able to purchase a set of
drawing−room furniture in yellow Utrecht velvet, stamped with a rose pattern, and with
mahogany in swan's neck style, with a sofa. But this would have cost five hundred francs at
least, and in view of the fact that she had only been able to lay by forty−two francs and ten
sous for this purpose in the course of five years, she had ended by renouncing the idea.
However, who is there who has attained his ideal?
Nothing is more easy to present to the imagination than the Bishop's bedchamber. A
glazed door opened on the garden; opposite this was the bed, – a hospital bed of iron, with a
canopy of green serge; in the shadow of the bed, behind a curtain, were the utensils of the
toilet, which still betrayed the elegant habits of the man of the world: there were two doors,
one near the chimney, opening into the oratory; the other near the bookcase, opening into the
dining−room. The bookcase was a large cupboard with glass doors filled with books; the
chimney was of wood painted to represent marble, and habitually without fire. In the
chimney stood a pair of firedogs of iron, ornamented above with two garlanded vases, and
flutings which had formerly been silvered with silver leaf, which was a sort of episcopal
luxury; above the chimney−piece hung a crucifix of copper, with the silver worn off, fixed
on a background of threadbare velvet in a wooden frame from which the gilding had fallen;
near the glass door a large table with an inkstand, loaded with a confusion of papers and
with huge volumes; before the table an arm−chair of straw; in front of the bed a prie−Dieu,
borrowed from the oratory.
Two portraits in oval frames were fastened to the wall on each side of the bed. Small
gilt inscriptions on the plain surface of the cloth at the side of these figures indicated that the
portraits represented, one the Abbe of Chaliot, bishop of Saint Claude; the other, the Abbe
Tourteau, vicar−general of Agde, abbe of Grand−Champ, order of Citeaux, diocese of
Chartres. When the Bishop succeeded to this apartment, after the hospital patients, he had
found these portraits there, and had left them. They were priests, and probably donors – two
reasons for respecting them. All that he knew about these two persons was, that they had
been appointed by the king, the one to his bishopric, the other to his benefice, on the same
day, the 27th of April, 1785. Madame Magloire having taken the pictures down to dust,
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CHAPTER VI − WHO GUARDED HIS HOUSE FOR HIM 26
the Bishop had discovered these particulars written in whitish ink on a little square of
paper, yellowed by time, and attached to the back of the portrait of the Abbe of
Grand−Champ with four wafers.
At his window he had an antique curtain of a coarse woollen stuff, which finally
became so old, that, in order to avoid the expense of a new one, Madame Magloire was
forced to take a large seam in the very middle of it. This seam took the form of a cross. The
Bishop often called attention to it: "How delightful that is!" he said.
All the rooms in the house, without exception, those on the ground floor as well as those
on the first floor, were white−washed, which is a fashion in barracks and hospitals.
However, in their latter years, Madame Magloire discovered beneath the paper which
had been washed over, paintings, ornamenting the apartment of Mademoiselle Baptistine, as
we shall see further on. Before becoming a hospital, this house had been the ancient
parliament house of the Bourgeois. Hence this decoration. The chambers were paved in red
bricks, which were washed every week, with straw mats in front of all the beds. Altogether,
this dwelling, which was attended to by the two women, was exquisitely clean from top to
bottom. This was the sole luxury which the Bishop permitted. He said, "That takes nothing
from the poor."
It must be confessed, however, that he still retained from his former possessions six
silver knives and forks and a soup−ladle, which Madame Magloire contemplated every day
with delight, as they glistened splendidly upon the coarse linen cloth. And since we are now
painting the Bishop of D – – as he was in reality, we must add that he had said more than
once, "I find it difficult to renounce eating from silver dishes."
To this silverware must be added two large candlesticks of massive silver, which he had
inherited from a great−aunt. These candlesticks held two wax candles, and usually figured
on the Bishop's chimney−piece. When he had any one to dinner, Madame Magloire lighted
the two candles and set the candlesticks on the table.
In the Bishop's own chamber, at the head of his bed, there was a small cupboard, in
which Madame Magloire locked up the six silver knives and forks and the big spoon every
night. But it is necessary to add, that the key was never removed.
The garden, which had been rather spoiled by the ugly buildings which we have
mentioned, was composed of four alleys in cross−form, radiating from a tank. Another walk
made the circuit of the garden, and skirted the white wall which enclosed it. These alleys left
behind them four square plots rimmed with box. In three of these, Madame Magloire
cultivated vegetables; in the fourth, the Bishop had planted some flowers; here and there
stood a few fruit−trees. Madame Magloire had once remarked, with a sort of gentle malice:
"Monseigneur, you who turn everything to account, have, nevertheless,
,one useless plot. It
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CHAPTER VI − WHO GUARDED HIS HOUSE FOR HIM 27
would be better to grow salads there than bouquets." "Madame Magloire," retorted the
Bishop, "you are mistaken. The beautiful is as useful as the useful." He added after a pause,
"More so, perhaps."
This plot, consisting of three or four beds, occupied the Bishop almost as much as did
his books. He liked to pass an hour or two there, trimming, hoeing, and making holes here
and there in the earth, into which he dropped seeds. He was not as hostile to insects as a
gardener could have wished to see him. Moreover, he made no pretensions to botany; he
ignored groups and consistency; he made not the slightest effort to decide between
Tournefort and the natural method; he took part neither with the buds against the cotyledons,
nor with Jussieu against Linnaeus. He did not study plants; he loved flowers. He respected
learned men greatly; he respected the ignorant still more; and, without ever failing in these
two respects, he watered his flower−beds every summer evening with a tin watering−pot
painted green.
The house had not a single door which could be locked. The door of the dining−room,
which, as we have said, opened directly on the cathedral square, had formerly been
ornamented with locks and bolts like the door of a prison. The Bishop had had all this
ironwork removed, and this door was never fastened, either by night or by day, with
anything except the latch. All that the first passerby had to do at any hour, was to give it a
push. At first, the two women had been very much tried by this door, which was never
fastened, but Monsieur de D – – had said to them, "Have bolts put on your rooms, if that will
please you." They had ended by sharing his confidence, or by at least acting as though they
shared it. Madame Magloire alone had frights from time to time. As for the Bishop, his
thought can be found explained, or at least indicated, in the three lines which he wrote on the
margin of a Bible, "This is the shade of difference: the door of the physician should never be
shut, the door of the priest should always be open."
On another book, entitled Philosophy of the Medical Science, he had written this other
note: "Am not I a physician like them? I also have my patients, and then, too, I have some
whom I call my unfortunates."
Again he wrote: "Do not inquire the name of him who asks a shelter of you. The very
man who is embarrassed by his name is the one who needs shelter."
It chanced that a worthy cure, I know not whether it was the cure of Couloubroux or the
cure of Pompierry, took it into his head to ask him one day, probably at the instigation of
Madame Magloire, whether Monsieur was sure that he was not committing an indiscretion,
to a certain extent, in leaving his door unfastened day and night, at the mercy of any one
who should choose to enter, and whether, in short, he did not fear lest some misfortune
might occur in a house so little guarded. The Bishop touched his shoulder, with gentle
gravity, and said to him, "Nisi Dominus custodierit domum, in vanum vigilant qui
custodiunt eam," Unless the Lord guard the house, in vain do they watch who guard it.
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CHAPTER VI − WHO GUARDED HIS HOUSE FOR HIM 28
Then he spoke of something else.
He was fond of saying, "There is a bravery of the priest as well as the bravery of a
colonel of dragoons, – only," he added, "ours must be tranquil."
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CHAPTER VI − WHO GUARDED HIS HOUSE FOR HIM 29
CHAPTER VII − CRAVATTE
I t is here that a fact falls naturally into place, which we must not omit, because it is one
of the sort which show us best what sort of a man the Bishop of D – – was.
After the destruction of the band of Gaspard Bes, who had infested the gorges of
Ollioules, one of his lieutenants, Cravatte, took refuge in the mountains. He concealed
himself for some time with his bandits, the remnant of Gaspard Bes's troop, in the county of
Nice; then he made his way to Piedmont, and suddenly reappeared in France, in the vicinity
of Barcelonette. He was first seen at Jauziers, then at Tuiles. He hid himself in the caverns
of the Joug−de−l'Aigle, and thence he descended towards the hamlets and villages through
the ravines of Ubaye and Ubayette.
He even pushed as far as Embrun, entered the cathedral one night, and despoiled the
sacristy. His highway robberies laid waste the country−side. The gendarmes were set on his
track, but in vain. He always escaped; sometimes he resisted by main force. He was a bold
wretch. In the midst of all this terror the Bishop arrived. He was making his circuit to
Chastelar. The mayor came to meet him, and urged him to retrace his steps. Cravatte was in
possession of the mountains as far as Arche, and beyond; there was danger even with an
escort; it merely exposed three or four unfortunate gendarmes to no purpose.
"Therefore," said the Bishop, "I intend to go without escort."
"You do not really mean that, Monseigneur!" exclaimed the mayor.
"I do mean it so thoroughly that I absolutely refuse any gendarmes, and shall set out in
an hour."
"Set out?"
"Set out."
"Alone?"
"Alone."
"Monseigneur, you will not do that!"
"There exists yonder in the mountains," said the Bishop, a tiny community no bigger
than that, which I have not seen for three years. They are my good friends, those gentle and
honest shepherds. They own one goat out of every thirty that they tend. They make very
pretty woollen cords of various colors, and they play the mountain airs on little flutes with
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CHAPTER VII − CRAVATTE 30
six holes. They need to be told of the good God now and then. What would they say to a
bishop who was afraid? What would they say if I did not go?"
"But the brigands, Monseigneur?"
"Hold," said the Bishop, "I must think of that. You are right. I may meet them. They,
too, need to be told of the good God."
"But, Monseigneur, there is a band of them! A flock of wolves!"
"Monsieur le maire, it may be that it is of this very flock of wolves that Jesus has
constituted me the shepherd. Who knows the ways of Providence?"
"They will rob you, Monseigneur."
"I have nothing."
"They will kill you."
"An old goodman of a priest, who passes along mumbling his prayers? Bah! To what
purpose?"
"Oh, mon Dieu! what if you should meet them!"
"I should beg alms of them for my poor."
"Do not go, Monseigneur. In the name of Heaven! You are risking your life!"
"Monsieur le maire," said the Bishop, "is that really all? I am not in the world to guard
my own life, but to guard souls."
They had to allow him to do as he pleased. He set out, accompanied only by a child who
offered to serve as a guide. His obstinacy was bruited about the country−side, and caused
great consternation.
He would take neither his sister nor Madame Magloire. He traversed the mountain on
mule−back, encountered no one, and arrived safe and sound at the residence of his "good
friends," the shepherds. He remained there for a fortnight, preaching, administering the
sacrament, teaching, exhorting. When the time of his departure approached, he resolved to
chant a Te Deum pontifically. He mentioned it to the cure. But what was to be done? There
were no episcopal ornaments. They could only place at his disposal a wretched village
sacristy, with a few ancient chasubles of threadbare damask adorned with imitation lace.
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CHAPTER VII − CRAVATTE 31
"Bah!" said the Bishop. "Let us announce our Te Deum from the pulpit, nevertheless,
Monsieur le Cure. Things will arrange themselves."
They instituted a search in the churches of the neighborhood. All the magnificence of
these humble parishes combined would not have sufficed to clothe the chorister of a
cathedral
,properly.
While they were thus embarrassed, a large chest was brought and deposited in the
presbytery for the Bishop, by two unknown horsem*n, who departed on the instant. The
chest was opened; it contained a cope of cloth of gold, a mitre ornamented with diamonds,
an archbishop's cross, a magnificent crosier, – all the pontifical vestments which had been
stolen a month previously from the treasury of Notre Dame d'Embrun. In the chest was a
paper, on which these words were written, "From Cravatte to Monseigneur Bienvenu."
"Did not I say that things would come right of themselves?" said the Bishop. Then he
added, with a smile, "To him who contents himself with the surplice of a curate, God sends
the cope of an archbishop."
"Monseigneur," murmured the cure, throwing back his head with a smile. "God – or the
Devil."
The Bishop looked steadily at the cure, and repeated with authority, "God!"
When he returned to Chastelar, the people came out to stare at him as at a curiosity, all
along the road. At the priest's house in Chastelar he rejoined Mademoiselle Baptistine and
Madame Magloire, who were waiting for him, and he said to his sister: "Well! was I in the
right? The poor priest went to his poor mountaineers with empty hands, and he returns from
them with his hands full. I set out bearing only my faith in God; I have brought back the
treasure of a cathedral."
That evening, before he went to bed, he said again: "Let us never fear robbers nor
murderers. Those are dangers from without, petty dangers. Let us fear ourselves. Prejudices
are the real robbers; vices are the real murderers. The great dangers lie within ourselves.
What matters it what threatens our head or our purse! Let us think only of that which
threatens our soul."
Then, turning to his sister: "Sister, never a precaution on the part of the priest, against
his fellow−man. That which his fellow does, God permits. Let us confine ourselves to
prayer, when we think that a danger is approaching us. Let us pray, not for ourselves, but
that our brother may not fall into sin on our account."
However, such incidents were rare in his life. We relate those of which we know; but
generally he passed his life in doing the same things at the same moment. One month of his
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CHAPTER VII − CRAVATTE 32
year resembled one hour of his day.
As to what became of "the treasure" of the cathedral of Embrun, we should be
embarrassed by any inquiry in that direction. It consisted of very handsome things, very
tempting things, and things which were very well adapted to be stolen for the benefit of the
unfortunate. Stolen they had already been elsewhere. Half of the adventure was completed;
it only remained to impart a new direction to the theft, and to cause it to take a short trip in
the direction of the poor. However, we make no assertions on this point. Only, a rather
obscure note was found among the Bishop's papers, which may bear some relation to this
matter, and which is couched in these terms, "The question is, to decide whether this should
be turned over to the cathedral or to the hospital."
Les Miserables
CHAPTER VII − CRAVATTE 33
CHAPTER VIII − PHILOSOPHY AFTER DRINKING
The senator above mentioned was a clever man, who had made his own way, heedless
of those things which present obstacles, and which are called conscience, sworn faith,
justice, duty: he had marched straight to his goal, without once flinching in the line of his
advancement and his interest. He was an old attorney, softened by success; not a bad man by
any means, who rendered all the small services in his power to his sons, his sons−in−law, his
relations, and even to his friends, having wisely seized upon, in life, good sides, good
opportunities, good windfalls. Everything else seemed to him very stupid. He was
intelligent, and just sufficiently educated to think himself a disciple of Epicurus; while he
was, in reality, only a product of Pigault−Lebrun. He laughed willingly and pleasantly over
infinite and eternal things, and at the "Crotchets of that good old fellow the Bishop." He
even sometimes laughed at him with an amiable authority in the presence of M. Myriel
himself, who listened to him.
On some semi−official occasion or other, I do not recollect what, Count*** [this
senator] and M. Myriel were to dine with the prefect. At dessert, the senator, who was
slightly exhilarated, though still perfectly dignified, exclaimed: –
"Egad, Bishop, let's have a discussion. It is hard for a senator and a bishop to look at
each other without winking. We are two augurs. I am going to make a confession to you. I
have a philosophy of my own."
"And you are right," replied the Bishop. "As one makes one's philosophy, so one lies on
it. You are on the bed of purple, senator."
The senator was encouraged, and went on: –
"Let us be good fellows."
"Good devils even," said the Bishop.
"I declare to you," continued the senator, "that the Marquis d'Argens, Pyrrhon, Hobbes,
and M. Naigeon are no rascals. I have all the philosophers in my library gilded on the
edges."
"Like yourself, Count," interposed the Bishop.
The senator resumed: –
"I hate Diderot; he is an ideologist, a declaimer, and a revolutionist, a believer in God at
bottom, and more bigoted than Voltaire. Voltaire made sport of Needham, and he was
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CHAPTER VIII − PHILOSOPHY AFTER DRINKING 34
wrong, for Needham's eels prove that God is useless. A drop of vinegar in a spoonful of
flour paste supplies the fiat lux. Suppose the drop to be larger and the spoonful bigger; you
have the world. Man is the eel. Then what is the good of the Eternal Father? The Jehovah
hypothesis tires me, Bishop. It is good for nothing but to produce shallow people, whose
reasoning is hollow. Down with that great All, which torments me! Hurrah for Zero which
leaves me in peace! Between you and me, and in order to empty my sack, and make
confession to my pastor, as it behooves me to do, I will admit to you that I have good sense.
I am not enthusiastic over your Jesus, who preaches renunciation and sacrifice to the last
extremity. 'Tis the counsel of an avaricious man to beggars. Renunciation; why? Sacrifice; to
what end? I do not see one wolf immolating himself for the happiness of another wolf. Let
us stick to nature, then. We are at the top; let us have a superior philosophy. What is the
advantage of being at the top, if one sees no further than the end of other people's noses? Let
us live merrily. Life is all. That man has another future elsewhere, on high, below,
anywhere, I don't believe; not one single word of it. Ah! sacrifice and renunciation are
recommended to me; I must take heed to everything I do; I must cudgel my brains over good
and evil, over the just and the unjust, over the fas and the nefas. Why? Because I shall have
to render an account of my actions. When? After death. What a fine dream! After my death
it will be a very clever person who can catch me. Have a handful of dust seized by a
shadow−hand, if you can. Let us tell the truth, we who are initiated, and who have raised the
veil of Isis: there is no such thing as either good or evil; there is vegetation. Let us seek the
real. Let us get to the bottom of it. Let us go into it thoroughly. What the deuce! let us go to
the bottom of it! We must scent out the truth; dig in the earth for it, and seize it. Then it
gives you exquisite joys. Then you grow strong, and you laugh. I am square on the bottom, I
am. Immortality, Bishop, is a chance, a waiting for dead men's shoes. Ah! what a charming
promise! trust to it, if you like! What a fine lot Adam has! We are souls, and we shall be
angels, with blue wings on our shoulder−blades. Do come to my assistance: is it not
Tertullian who says that the blessed shall travel from star
