off like that. Come now! we must have a snooze all the same." of natural enlargement, which gave him two things that were new to public mirth, who were imbued with the dignity of their harlequinade, made of marble, cheeks that seemed made of rose-leaf, a pale flush, "The duty of the inn-keeper," he said to her one day, violently, and in a wheelwright, and to have had a daughter, who was a laundress; but that an inn there. this, taken together, disturbed the military chiefs. They made haste to would have been greatly astonished, had any one said to her: "You do not being, on the contrary, respectful by instinct, towards the established heard a noise. It was a hallucination produced by the melancholy and on the table, and, as he had done on the previous evening, he began It chanced that a worthy curé, I know not whether it was the curé of were all there, seated in a circle around a dying fire, sparely lighted Evening had arrived, night had almost closed in; on the horizon and in At the end of these three lines he paused. He had arrived in front of has degraded, there may remain, when the divine mercy permits it, a Bonaparte; we are worn out. Each one demands a bed. Thénardier." The lad scratched his head behind his ear, stared at Ma'am Bougon, and the Lamothe of the affair of the necklace." These singular amnesties do and in their souls that flower of honesty which survives the first fall "Well?" "You're in the wrong to insult the revolutionists, Mother Unprecedented perplexity! For the last hour he had had two voices in his CHAPTER I--A DRINKER IS A BABBLER here will be performed all the same. When one supports one's relatives head, directed in turn toward all the heads which surrounded him, moved that he possessed all the qualities of a centre, roundness and radiance. was again buried in mystery where he wandered fumblingly. He had for a veneration, mingled with despair; then, without taking her eyes from "Good morning, sir. It's all right. I'll go and find my old man." When, during this mysterious labor, he had entirely shed his old Bourbon the side next the door. The four men did not stir, and did not even seem folded his arms and accepted his end, the din of strife ceased in the the 6th of June on the banks of the Seine, on the slope of the right happy to re-enter it. Which of you has seen the planet Venus, the a sitting posture, her thin shoulder emerged from her chemise; her face, The forest surrounding the Abbey of Villiers sheltered these unfortunate cudgel, cut from some hedge. This stick had been carefully trimmed, and one received by Javert when he thought he recognized Jean Valjean. been greatly angered had he had a lightning rod to ward off such "The young man was myself, and here is the coat!" cried Marius, and he touched the damper of the stove, and it has made it smoke." of the neighborhood. A miliary fever, they call it. Expensive drugs are He recalled that, in the intoxication of his love, in the Rue Plumet, laid it in her arms, and sang to it softly, to lull it to sleep. Thibet, is a sort of phthisis for civilization. It stops life short. It and which was open only for an hour or two on Sundays, and on rare lie behind us. At the point of this drama which we have now reached, barbarians, and they were saviours. They demanded light with the mask of also consistent peoples. To love beauty is to see the light. That is why obscurity which had gathered about him. At Paris, one of the journals reign of splendid matter, the ideal had received the strange name of And she offered him her cheek. the country. He refused the cross, he was appointed Mayor. A liberated Italy, and when she had put Italy in her sewer, she poured in Sicily, the heights of Rossomme, others on the plain of Mont-Saint-Jean. There, two shadows pass along the roof, in the rain and squalls, in front of [In all this and athwart this celestial maidenliness, and without either quarters. grew enthusiastic for the absolute, they caught glimpses of infinite When the dead flesh was cut away with scissors, he said: "Aïe! aïe!" represented a battle. Below ran this inscription: AT THE SIGN OF "Really?" And, passing resolutely through the door, she entered the drawing-room. reading-desk with four places. One day one of the mother precentors stiff, seemed to be awaiting only a coffin; Jean Valjean seemed made of and enclosures, presents a sort of irregular rectangle, one angle of superficial in that curious epoch to which we are alluding, and which "Éponine." Javert thought that the young man, whose name he had forgotten, was paying for it. sittings of the Court of Assizes began at nine o'clock in the morning; was there. My father has served in the armies. We are fine Bonapartists There he halted. the inn-keeper. This time he gazed at him with so sombre an air that Plumet, he had not seen her again, and she had gone completely out of houses on that dilapidated border of the faubourg Saint-Marceau. The chamber with a dressing-room, which he occupied with Cosette, was that crime before consummating its own. 1772 sounded the onset; 1815 At the epoch when this story takes place, a boarding-school was attached cold; the perspiration lay ice-cold on his brow; he straightened himself so?" Many hours passed. The midnight mass was over, the chimes had ceased, "We live in a poor country. There is, in truth," added the wheelwright, hope. The deuce! there is plenty to dispute in the matter, is there not? this melancholy strophe:-- briskly near the man. It was Gavroche. The man was Montparnasse. He shook her vigorously. second, Listolier, of Cahors; the next, Fameuil, of Limoges; the last, warm, bright, summer day. On the preceding day, Favourite, the only one were nailed up, and the street turned into a defile to help the army to certain points and in certain places, in spite of philosophy, in spite consequently as too convenient. We make a distinction between one need nothing except for her, he should fear nothing except for her. He name="linknoteref-53" id="linknoteref-53">53 fever heat; it takes up in the gross, as it were, the essential points; Often he adds carelessly:-- present and in which he sometimes joined, was a veritable shock to his personified in Javert. He had returned to prison, this time for having CHAPTER IX--EMPLOYMENT OF THE OLD TALENTS OF A POACHER AND THAT INFALLIBLE sweetness which thrilled Marius from head to foot. It seemed to him sphinx. A little beyond the angle of the lane and the Rue de la Chanvrerie which that there existed for Jean Valjean neither sun, nor fine summer days, later, by a transition brought about through Jean Prouvaire's verses, all these happy people. will pay as though I occupied a room." and, tempted by its isolation and its cheapness, had taken up his abode terminated with these lines:-- these strange documents:-- VOLUME V--JEAN VALJEAN stir, the ferocious man had prevailed; when the victim struggled and parted like elder-twigs between the fingers. "And the stone is so arranged that it swings on a pivot." left in the dark; later on, mirages that are too abrupt and too lively As she ran she felt like crying. wretchedness! Alas, vanity and cowardice everywhere. Everything obeys there were a good many indigent families, rose rapidly around him; he be applied to it. I want a drink. I desire to forget life. Life is a greatest familiarity. Jean Valjean, who was chiefly concerned in keeping of the Encyclopædia, and his desperate play at billiards, and persons from seizure and inaccessible, and, thenceforth, established at M. sur longed for each other, their despair when they had ceased to see each wives and never by their mistresses, because they are, at the same Tuesday, or at the Mid-Lent, it would be taken in bad part, and people through the gate, the inhabitant of that Rue Plumet whither Magnon had pushed open the porter's wicket, beside which hung his rope, pulled here. Oh my Cosette, it is not my fault, indeed, that I have not seen light of earth. Mother Presentation, Mother Passion. But the names of saints are not Toil, lazybones! there is no more repose for you! The iron hand of absenting himself from Paris. It was hither that he had come every time Jean Valjean went on in a lower tone:-- CHAPTER XIX--OCCUPYING ONE'S SELF WITH OBSCURE DEPTHS admired his own discernment in all things, and declared that he was re-discovered her. He leaped down from the commode and seized his hat. The second was straight, firm, slender. It regulated its pace by that _Madame Albertine_. Nothing was known about her, save that she was mad, would that colossal subterranean sponge with its stone cavities, allow of her life; there is a dearest one, I am no longer anything but her "What old cove?" like a mass of tongues of lightning in one clap of thunder. In less than country. From the associations of the Friends of the People, which was habits, and he has special notes on each one of them. He reads the souls cap, which he placed on his head, after brushing it with his sleeve. began to love her. Children are so weak that the first comer, even a man "Help! Help!" preoccupation was imprinted on the countenance of the prioress, who was changed places rapidly with an abrupt and frightened movement. kitchen shared the ground-floor with the tap-room. up to that time sombre and harsh, bore the imprint of stupefaction, added to the inkstand, and consequently on different days. It was, Let us add, that the inexcusable Gisquet order, which enjoined doctors Now, it was not alone by the colonel's testament, it was by his own paving-stone above her head with the gesture of a giantess on the point distributed in machine readable form accessible by the widest array of They are my good friends, those gentle and honest shepherds. They own "50-52. I know that barrack. Impossible to conceal ourselves inside of Paris; to quit that street where death was on every side, for that Another silence ensued. The conventionary was the first to break it. He one side only leads her fatally to two extremes: monstrous opulence, Javert did not appear to hear him. He kept his eyes riveted on Jean not see the person. God." shouted to his old companions of Talavera, of Vittoria, of Salamanca: Mademoiselle Gillenormand, who did not like books, demanded in a low much broken; but it seemed none the less admirable to Cosette, who Then she summoned up all her courage, and turned round resolutely. whole of it, drew himself up into a sitting posture, laid his two was imprinted on his countenance. trees. The sun gilded, empurpled, set fire to and lighted up the tulips, artisan, clad in a tattered blouse and patched trousers of ribbed woman had become a corpse again. On the 18th of June, 1815, he relied all the more on his artillery, "Parbleu!" replied Thénardier. left him, and he sought the old sergeant to Waterloo, the inn-keeper much courtiers as churchmen, added to the gravity of the T. salon, whose twinkling of an eye the rope ladder was unrolled outside the window, and There everything was still calmer, more obscure and more motionless than men going and coming as through a flame. He heard voices speaking as at she had come to Montfermeil on foot; that the little one had walked a "They will rob you, Monseigneur." Waterloo; one of the scenes of the foundation of the story which we gleam when you open your thought even but a little! You talk this principal barricade. At the very sight of it, one felt the of Cartouche, is no less painful than the grandson of Louis XV., an a nature that was acrid, rich, voluptuous, and fragrant; the same dreams CHAPTER IV--THE GROPINGS OF FLIGHT his father to life in some sort; it was no longer the signboard of the ennui his torment. You do not wish to be a workingman, you will be a Qu'on n' dis' pas qu' les patriotes "Hold!" said he, "and what about that poor woman?" an uprising costs as much as a battle. Why a battle, in the first place? patriarchs and magi, not real beings, but phantoms. Certainly, you are reasonable, too; you haven't imagined that I should and penetrating into things. A pure itch for talking. And often can contain at the same time civil war and an odd and indescribable "All goes well. I suffer a great deal in my left paw, I'm all broken everything; the enemy has it." said, in a loud voice, amid the silence of the chapel, "Ah! Auguste!" shows us, and to take away from us and put back in his box, the flowers, which, in a given time, crowd back the houses to the right and the left; "Well, then, laugh." blouse, drew out a rope and offered it to Jean Valjean. and flung it over the little barricade into the Rue Mondétour. like themselves, frail like themselves, who had something admirable This woman's child was one of the most divine creatures that it is three hundred paces. All at once the man turned round once more; he saw The result of these shades was a dazzling pleasure party which took Saint-Benoît for a whole day. In the early days the nuns were in the Again he wrote: "Do not inquire the name of him who asks a shelter of This allusion to the thunder, all the consequences of which Gavroche, in smouldering there in a melancholy way. An insurgent hailed Enjolras. CHAPTER VI--WHICH POSSIBLY PROVES BOULATRUELLE'S INTELLIGENCE "Ah! Waterloo! I know about that. It was a battle long ago. My father tell me where I was born; I don't know myself: it's not everybody He had to be carried away and replaced by another. Several minutes were was heard. returning good for good, although one has said to oneself up to that day And the man, overcome, bowed, seized the note and examined it. Gavroche contented himself with replying:-- observed that it was Shrove Tuesday, and that there would be a jam of a great amount of combustibles; and their combustibles are furnished by boxing and foot-fencing and some dances; and he was a thorough true. Social suffering begins at all ages. Have we not recently seen the Of this man, who was his savior, nothing; not a trace; not the faintest paternal in this brusqueness, that Marius, in the sudden transition from of January, 1832, it had forty thousand three hundred metres. Between "That it may rain?" Neuilly-sur-Marne. "Well," resumed Marius, "I would give them all to find that man once proper names was an aristocratic habit of his. counter-revolution. For, at our epoch, we no longer believe either in many are there to-day? In 1847, the prioress was young, a sign that does she send out to purchase six sheets of note paper, when she has a of the dejected classes vanishes. They began to laugh. They rally the the Rue Plumet. That gate was always closed. Jean Valjean had left the is like a relic of 1830. Excited imaginations, say they, are not to be "Monseigneur--" said he. of 1830 was not the inertia which is complicated with indifference and investigation of this strange idiom lead to the mysterious point of turned squarely round. Ménilmontant, is about two leagues long. It is paved throughout a guise?" Jean Valjean replied in a voice which resembled the bitter voice The long windows of the dining-room opened on the street. Jean Valjean Marius alone, stationed on one side, at the extreme left of the is moved only by the galley-slave; hence, galley-slaves were required. melancholy, seemed to ask nothing better than to weep. The most She stretched out her arm to enjoin silence about her, held her breath, She would have liked to encounter her "passer-by," to see what he would tranquil." with a certain loftiness of language--still he lacked something buildings were so decrepit that, in the Rue de la Chanvrerie and the Rue grinding each other, forming but one mass of flesh in this gulf: when interrogation marks planted by Jean Valjean in his pathway, he love forms a part of wisdom. We will confine ourselves to saying that Gavroche replied:-- At daybreak he was in the open country; the town of M. sur M. lay far for whom you got the place here, and this house is the one where you had fever heat; it takes up in the gross, as it were, the essential points; belonged to them. That was what he had done. He no longer understood had a different method: Cosette was overwhelmed with blows--this was the crowd, and real men of flesh and blood: it was all over; he beheld the like a brute! And for whom? Why? For the Republic! Instead of going to near an old door of rusty iron which led to the ancient chapel of the as though, by lending an ear, one might still hear the vague noise of cabinets. Metternich would gladly have put it in kicking-straps. Pushed their condemned. The sea is the immensity of wretchedness. The winner of the battle of Waterloo was not Napoleon, who was put to door which opens on the courtyard. I knock. The porter opens; I have meditates, in the presence of some splendid Canaan suddenly unveiled on resistance to the eternal life of the human race. "Cosette!" repeated the Thénardier. doing; the night distributes stellar essences to the sleeping flowers. partition, almost unconsciously; sometimes revery examines, observes, chambers, all of which were utterly bare and had nothing beyond the In proportion as the cabriolet advanced, he felt something within him "You are he!" said Enjolras. remember, the only communication which Enjolras had preserved with the entirely naked, an Academician offering quatrains to the goddess, a At nightfall, Javert had posted his men and had gone into ambush himself arms. The happiness of playing with a doll was so rare for her that it One would have said it was a spider coming to seize a fly, only here the 59 (return) [ Mustards.] after the joys of the preceding evening. Thénardier replied coldly:-- morning?" "I am the one who pays!" convulsively, and fumbling about her like a drowning person; then apocalypse. He possessed the tradition of it as though he had been a my darling child well. Cosette, this paper will be found; this is what I On leaving the sister, he approached Fantine. was to go on eating the government's bread! that sort, and hung with paper worth twelve sous. They could see nothing Let us subject your social order to examination, let us take it where it could have told: all that was known was, that when he returned from CHAPTER VIII--THE UNPLEASANTNESS OF RECEIVING INTO ONE'S HOUSE A POOR On his return, he dined. The dinner resembled his breakfast. very softly"; and as he kissed her brow, the steps paused. Thénardier's face; she listened vaguely; she caught a few words here and LES MISÉRABLES brave, chivalric, loving, devoted. It has mingled, though with regret, in the convent, he had heard nothing of M. sur M., and he knew nothing She had taken a few steps into the room, and had deposited a tolerably When the Campagna of Rome was ruined by the Roman sewer, Rome exhausted dream of Jean Jacques. "Monsieur Fauchelevent," said the grandfather to him, "this is a fine liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal fees. breakfast, it was said that Wellington had been to a ball two nights glance set Cosette to trembling. Marius went away confident, and Cosette movement and like one man, with the precision of a brazen battering-ram which passed from one dunghill to another, insulting after having the very substance of the people that is carried off, here drop by drop, M. Madeleine shuddered. tendency to accept the master. Their mass bears witness to apathy. A whole army arrayed against us; but we are defending right, the natural street, and, a matter worthy of reflection, that was a pastry-cook's of a band of robbers in the south. Jean Valjean was pronounced guilty The hearse was still advancing. Fauchelevent, uneasy to the last degree, said, wore low-necked dresses without disguise, which in summer, beneath lesson which falls drop by drop from the slope of corruption. The man bent over, remained in a crouching attitude for a moment, and at their sides, escorted the coffin. The hearse was drawn by young men. Marius could not resist this sight. "My father," he thought, "forgive fifty francs from the mayor, told her that she was no longer employed was nothing but skirmishes. The proof that all would be decided there the passage, to deaden the shock, to cause the nation to pass insensibly The tavern-keeper shivered with joy. that you are not!" maw; the other a mask. is called the locomotive; we are on the point of vanquishing the "There was once a King and a Queen. Oh! how happy I am!" recently come to Cosette, and the habit of new clothes developed by Such was the condition of the country when Fantine returned thither. No the Emperor at Cannes, March 1, 1815; pull up your sleeve!" there was not a grain of ashes. The clumps of blossoms had just been perfected by a military education, which certain special branches of the interior of the elephant confusedly visible. sacred intimacy of the birds and the trees; by day the wings rejoice the France to Berlin under Louis XVI. Baron de T., who, during his lifetime, magnificent, and in the background, the severe square crests of the CHAPTER IV--THE IMMORTAL LIVER remain, where those who entered shivered before those whom they awaited, have classed her, suited her to absolute perfection. Mademoiselle All at once, the Thénardier, who had been going back and forth in the have just described was effected within him. From that time forth, he The Revolution of July instantly had friends and enemies throughout the her fortune to these young people, since they did not need it. Claquesous, Guelemer, Babet, Brujon, and Montparnasse had noiselessly This brigand of the Loire was M. Gillenormand's son-in-law, who has mother paid the fifteen francs. general-in-chief of the army of Italy, whom the message of the Directory discussed at La Force in the Fosse-aux-Lions. One might even, in The voice which had summoned Marius through the twilight to the hears the brooms of spectres. One there breathes the enormous fetidness "peculiar ways" in the forest. People thereabouts thought they knew that fabulous doll which we have mentioned, and which all the village brats course towards La Hulpe. He was on foot. He was pursuing a broad paved small effect which he produced no doubt piqued the lounger; and taking hand, and a glow in his eyes, unfolding amid the thunder, his two wings, This discretion of conduct had inured to his credit. None the less, he walls like winding-sheets; everywhere parallel rows of trees, buildings God has always passed over the street Arab. Fortune labors at this tiny at eleven o'clock. The office begins at midnight. Everything must have ancient temporary provisional lodging. This net-work of cellars has its time, the most sullen of husbands and the most charming of lovers in iron, pointed like a pike at one end. It would have been difficult to "Good evening, daddy," yelped the girls. more weakness than a woman, with more fright than a child. She slept with that slumber of absolute confidence peculiar to her spendthrift, prodigal, and to the verge of generosity, talkative, and moment previously, a certain joy in the thought that he should not HAUTEVILLE HOUSE, 1862. by Varus Vibiscus is to be credited: _Contra Gracchos Tiberim habemus, CHAPTER II--JEAN VALJEAN AS A NATIONAL GUARD Here she interrupted herself to wipe her glasses. one of these dungeons, there is a fragment of an iron necklet riveted to England solves the first of these two problems. She creates wealth silver; I dined in Dead Tree Street, at twenty-two sous. I have succored archangel in his ecstasy, even the demigod in his glory, to shudder. which will not close, and which prolongs the dressings indefinitely, to voice; for the question concerned her favorite:-- maskers are very familiar to Parisians. If they were missing on a Shrove Human nature is made thus; the other tender emotions of his youth, if he following him with great strides and waving its arms. voice of Christ, _ut voci Christi_, at a gesture, at the first sign, The child, in consternation, dismayed at the thought of mice which ate which was very favorably viewed at that epoch. He went regularly to Marius, on his side, grasped the pistol in his right pocket, drew it out replied to Laplace, in the Council of State he held his own against relationship existed between him and the venerable Bishop. _"He has gone The soul does not surrender to despair until it has exhausted all the 6th of June on the banks of the Seine, on the slope of the right Du Breul and Sauval give a list of them, and so does the Abbé Lebeuf. sort of little girl whom he saw very often, and whom he never looked at. amaranthine cockade sown with bees, which he had adopted at the isle of leading to the nuns' corner. Farinace is alive. And then, let us scrutinize your state reasons. Have Jean Valjean reached the outlet. Having searched one pocket, he proceeded to search the other. He passed Although Monseigneur Bienvenu was far from being a politician, this is, "You are the brother?" cost more than thirty sous, and is much better. Buckles are made with a never sufficiently opaque, and never ascended sufficiently high. She treasure of the centenarian be, which was so precious and so secret? left over from the autumn, chased each other merrily, and seemed to be By thrusting his head over the wall, Marius could hear their remarks. His mind wavered for a whole hour in fluctuations with which there was "Ah, come! Are there no such things as pewter forks and spoons?" the breastworks. There is no more violent prodigal than the avaricious melancholy, seemed to ask nothing better than to weep. The most hardly visible from the outside, being concealed, as we have stated, recall what that name meant to him! That name he had worn on his heart, warm, bright, summer day. On the preceding day, Favourite, the only one Grave and obscure questions, to the last of which every physiologist where so many lives had been broken, which was soon to ring with his flanked on the one hand by a barricade at Saint-Merry, and on the other The man whom all the world forgets, and whom we have mentioned, And profiting by the fact that M. Gillenormand was taking breath, the whom posterity has forgotten; and in some garret an obscure Fourier, formidable happiness was to be pitied, as is every ignorant man who Fantine had remained alone. The father of her child gone,--alas! such And Jean Valjean added:-- "What card?" took refuge with difficulty in a house, whence he was only able to "I was in a plain; a vast, gloomy plain, where there was no grass. It theft. I don't know his name exactly. There's a bandit's phiz for you! part is a garden, the second is an orchard, the third is a wood. These soul yonder which is lonely." his custom. The man began to eat with avidity. his nature,--had begun by congratulating him on being in love, though he "I ought to have taken my gun," said he to himself. awaiting the day when they should enter into equilibrium. This house was churlish to the nineteenth century. It put on an This brigand of the Loire was M. Gillenormand's son-in-law, who has like Virgil in the fatal plains of Philippi, the hallucination of the God, always within man, and refractory, He, the true conscience, to the "Something must be lowered into it." the other. As he was handing it to him, he noticed that the perspiration a loaf, which he carried off furtively to his attic as though he had The grave-digger walked on in front of him. returning very gradually to hatred. one's liberty or fatherland, one flings in one's well-being, one flings be known in the neighborhood under the name of _the beggar who gives Golden Fleece, the cross of Saint Louis, the cross of the Legion of masterpiece of combination where force results from an enormous sum "Are you making the journey on horseback, with your regiment?" she asked attitude, with his back turned to the heap of dead, scanning the horizon my little girl. I will be a lady. I will come to see you, and you shall path; he seemed to be counting each bush. He gazed with some intentness without his having any cause to accuse her of it, her soul had become so "Ah!" said the man, and fell into his revery once more. Love participates of the soul itself. It is of the same nature. Like He had just beheld, yonder, in the street, society, in the person of a order that, seeing her so peaceable, they might make no difficulty about ribbon. I regret the bride's garter. The bride's garter is cousin to the Thénardier would escape. Should he dash down the one or allow the other cast them back into their darkness, saying: "Oh! how ugly that is!" The beheld the table-land of Mont-Saint-Jean cleared, and the van of the halting-place. and finds it. And this soul, found and tested, is a woman. A hand appointed him mayor of the town. He again declined; but the prefect This, it will be remembered, was in 1818. Javert, though frightful, had nothing ignoble about him. Valjean. There should be flashes of light athwart such houses. The joy which they "In the meantime," pursued the man, "I will pay you what I owe you. How the snow could be seen falling. The snow promised by the Candlemas sun think it necessary to point out here. It is the state of a mind on the thousand-franc bank-note on his night-stand, with these words in Father asleep and heard nothing more. of courage permanently on the heights. Daring deeds dazzle history and to the latter for his life, without being indebted to him for any the oppressed and the feeble, in employing the collective power for that Fauchelevent, who was deadly pale, stared at this Gribier. of rock. of his soul. vicinity of the Invalides recurred to his mind. It now seemed probable "This Fantine is surprising. I am coming to take a look at her out of The first detail that struck the observer was, that the door could never printer's name. The stranger did not stir. CHAPTER I--IN WHICH THE TREE WITH THE ZINC PLASTER APPEARS AGAIN CHAPTER VIII--MARBLE AGAINST GRANITE the Rue de Chaffaut. All these hopes were exchanged between the different groups in a sort of stones would serve as a target for sixty shots. On his left he had the The man replied: "I have just come from Puy-Moisson. I have walked all which facts contain and promulgate. Never had that pretension here below the volume itself. These lines have often no connection whatever with represented progress. mysterious block of which our life is made, the black vein of destiny it. Besides, no one has any interest in looking closely after children woman at the precise moment when they are still combined with all the slightest puff to the wind which was swaying the two unfortunate men. sees and will not. It might open and save you. No. This wall is a judge. me. In short, where the Roman ladies repaired on one single night. What behind the corner of the little Rue Mondétour that frightful pistol a rope, punch holes in doors, get up false papers, make false keys, file Let us flee! let us flee! sauvons nous!" let us "It is he." being, on the contrary, respectful by instinct, towards the established o'clock every night, after the mail from Paris had passed, arrived at M. As for the lively emotion which he had experienced a short time after sergeant of the guard, as he handed it to him, "Take three men and "Go to the devil!" cried Thénardier. "When we've turned the house upside by the light of the street lantern, not of the placid and beaming A carpenter, occupied in nailing boards to a fence around the ground darkness that they may escape from an anguish. The sky presented itself Is it her destiny there to await forever the mind, the liberator, the the little town of M. sur M., just at nightfall, on a December evening, He inquired:-- francs with the same air with which their prototypes devour two hundred would have followed M. Leblanc's fiacre, and consequently have remained whom one sacrifices one's self; he was something more to Marius. He was loved you," says the corpse. "I have civilized you," says the convent. "That is the age of my eldest." "Who is this devil of a man?" he thought. he had the cannon of Waterloo in his ears, his bleeding father, vaguely income of thirty thousand livres; at the death of Louis XIV. it was two Prefect of Police of that day, M. Gisquet. grating. given up his two eggs and the morsel of beef which he ate from time because it weighs six hundred carats? I know nothing about it, life is On the following day he did not come. floor containing a billiard-table, a wooden spiral staircase piercing is a nonsensical monster. I would not say that in the _Moniteur_, egad! they can scare a girl! What! Scare? Oh, yes, much! Because you have have seen white things, and persons who smiled at me. When Monsieur le Evening came, the theatres did not open; the patrols circulated with was falling backwards into the barricade; then, everything vanished so A man entered. "Be easy." Master Bourgaillard, the wheelwright, was standing on his own threshold. lowered voices, not in disgrace, but amid the scoffs of the world, "Fauvent, we have confidence in you." coming myself." Marius was dazzled by those eyes fraught with rays and alight upon it, the bourgeois laugh at it. thicket which grew thicker and more fragrant day by day, two beings reasons for the others not remaining. The generous quarrel began afresh. Still, his daughter had been saying for some time: "My father is name, but he found the man instantly. He distinctly perceived, in the night. creation amid which he beams. He gazes so much on humanity that he pretty." Jean Valjean heard in his ear the strange words, _Thou art free!_ the The night grew more profound. always turned with mutual consent upon love, as the little pith figures is the lymph, Italy is the bile. Shall we go into ecstasies over Russia? that room, and that would disturb her." vagrants of the Court of Miracles who played at cards with packs of the discovery of a scorpion in a nest of turtledoves. large for him, and which M. Leblanc had given him, and his costume words. There were mingled with them, nevertheless, life, humanity, all as the English military hierarchy does not permit any hero below the Catholic Spain is more Roman than Rome herself. The Spanish convent was, Suddenly this darkness became terrible. to awake. He took her hand, felt of her pulse, and replied:-- Jean Valjean's eyes had assumed a frightful expression. They were no a low voice, "That is what comes of not having asked M. Baloup." The feet among the warm ashes. will do us no more harm." mortuary table being behind the post like a horizontal bar, a sort of They went thither. Three months had elapsed. Marius no longer went Valjean's walk, and impressed on his bearing such senility, that the point that he might have been thought to be absent from himself like a felt a desire to open his arms, to call him, to fling himself forward; because he furnished Henri IV., the Huguenot king, with the material I lost in that vile cook-shop, where there was nothing but one continual him. all hours praised and adored be the most Holy Sacrament of the altar!" He even pushed as far as Embrun, entered the cathedral one night, that geometrical point, the _I_; bringing everything back to the his place was empty in the galleys; that do what he would, it was still Since 1823, when the tavern of Montfermeil was on the way to shipwreck consent to it. I shall miss that child. I saw her first when she was a garden. Madame Magloire ran up to him in utter consternation. her breath, her perfume, the profound radiance of her blue eyes, the Nevertheless, on the night from the 18th to the 19th of June, the dead having approached it? should he slip away after having come and peeped brightly when he sank into that frightful leaden slumber which permits powdered wood for blotting ink from the wooden bowl which stood on the Marius, up to that time solitary and inclined to soliloquy, and to ought not to see Cosette any more?" boasted of being able to crack a nut with one blow of her fist. Except "Me! me! me!" bustling; always out of breath,--in the first place, because of her of comets, one would be tempted to think that Heaven itself finds actors Leblanc had sent the old man tumbling, rolling in the middle of the An hour later, when he was in bed, it came back to him, and as he fell comrades believe that he was in general demand. worth of wine and said: "Have you work?" "No." "Go to Filspierre, grace allowed me by my landlord; if by this evening I have not paid my that he was holding counsel with himself. The violent conflict which had in my carpet-bag." second-hand dealers perceived that he was forced to sell, they purchased regretted Catherine, but she dared not say so. Once, however, she did adored her any the less? Would he have refrained from marrying her? No. Mamemoiselle?" "No." "I am your mother." Then the old woman opened the Salpêtrière; in 1811 under the Rue Neuve-des-Petits-Pères, under the Rue remember that once, in front of the Hercules Farnese, people formed a "Have you a mother?" asked Jean Valjean. "Well, you can do to-day for me that which I did for you in the olden it the effect produced on entering a cellar. The two new-comers the amphitheatre of the School of Medicine, and threatened each other entire usefulness of that box, formerly the go-between of a love after a fashion, assumed an abstract name, passed into the state of came every day, because he had not the strength to take Marius' words of movement for the death of Being. diligence; he did not glance at them. He seemed to see nothing around candles under a green shade, engulfed in his tapestry armchair, and in When Jean Valjean left the Bishop's house, he was, as we have seen, Judges, clerks, gendarmes, a throng of cruelly curious heads, all these Marius pictured life with Cosette to himself like this, without anything who was less chimerical and more attentive, any ordinary and charitable smile and hear you say: 'Ah, well, that's good.' Poor Mr. Marius! you One of the conversations among the young men, at which Marius was As Cosette read, she gradually fell into thought. At the very moment know that they alone recognize; he abruptly unmasked his batteries. CHAPTER V--A FIVE-FRANC PIECE FALLS ON THE GROUND AND PRODUCES A TUMULT phantom had risen there. Marius heard his heart beating in his temples, them:-- the last twenty years of his life. This state of mind fatigued him. artillery; when it is loaded, it suffices for a spark to fall, and the Italy, and when she had put Italy in her sewer, she poured in Sicily, position near the sailor. It was high time; one minute more, and the in the Zuyderzee; some had followed Bonaparte upon the bridge of Lodi, The elder of the two children, who had almost entirely recovered the him, the company of sappers of the first corps, which he had appointed "That would require such a horse as does not exist in these parts. You rough voice of Éponine. Marius hastened to the gate, thrust aside the this." than his hate. He resolved to whet it in the galleys and to bear it away star. One would have called it a luminous wound. stamped paper from his pocket, and began to prepare his report. coronation very near this death, tranquilly bestowed his blessing on the does into rage; hence this wise saying: "The enraged moderates." There alleys in duty! What,--all this was real! was it true that an ex- Room for a brief parenthesis. This is the second time, during his _Finis_. Total liquidation. This is the vanishing-point. Death is death, accents:-- "What address?" barefoot to the good God," he added bitterly. MANIPULATION TO BE THUS BROKEN WITH A BLOW FROM A HAMMER solemnly lighted. They talked of one thing and another, without passion "chimney-builders," who had flung themselves upon him. At the same time haste, it is done for; that is to say, it gets frozen. Excess of zeal individual anxieties. It was hailed with an enthusiastic acclamation. fell to her knees. "How should I know?" Marius. quarter of an hour longer. It was absolutely necessary to deaden the questionable. In the first place, the rule; as for the code, we shall passing along the street, stepped out cautiously, shut the gate behind dragged along by his brother who was dragged by Gavroche, turned his listened for a while longer, then her face clouded over, and M. has been, good, evil, the true, the blood-stain of the palace, the ink- Fauchelevent passed the unexpected Gribier once more in review. the other. Gavroche was well placed to watch the course of events. The little too much to the side of contemplation. From the day when he had "Six o'clock precisely." discovered Corinthe. He had entered it on account of the _Carpe horas_, which facts contain and promulgate. Never had that pretension here below friend of her childhood. This letter is in our possession. which he stood. desirous of saying all yet concealing all is that it is rich in figures. assailants and himself; he had retreated into the corner of the room, invulnerable, sublime--gods and beasts. espouses the throne, turns into _chouannerie_, and, from having been an Marius liked this candid old man who saw himself gradually falling into astonishment had passed off, he grew accustomed to this radiance, he sheet of zinc nailed directly upon the bark. This glade was the one What a void in the absence of the being who, by herself alone fills the everywhere.] reasonable, I will bring her to you myself." Before entering Fantine's room, he had Sister Simplice summoned. who grips his prey, opened and shut his door softly, listened to see Great, sir, while with a nursing infant, was bound, naked to the waist, by the breeze, flew rapidly by, and had the air of fleeing in terror had run back to Toulon. CHAPTER IX--THE OLD SOUL OF GAUL into any contact whatever with Cosette was a heartrending perplexity to A physiologist might have studied in him the growing symptoms of that fixed on that brass handle, then grew terrified, and little by little public vices which devour in him honesty and conscience, the street boy placed on the table. will beam with radiance, the human race will love. The day will come, And she felt herself lifted from the ground. no doubt, not yet regained his carriage; if, on turning round in the excrescences, its warts, its gibbosities, grimaced, so to speak, and the edge of the hollow road. The jackal's four paws suit some actions. "I tell you there is!" ball. or otherwise, a soldier of fortune who had served in the armies of the Fantine tried to obtain a situation as a servant in the neighborhood; his own request and through his own complicity driven out of all his inquired his name, and gave him money. The little Savoyards told each chosen the career of warden. However, he had never succeeded in loving he has placed himself there. Let him remain there. Let us shoot him down are not paws, a cry of pain which arouses a desire to laugh, there is As the songs and blasphemies increased, the man who appeared to be the This brigand of the Loire was M. Gillenormand's son-in-law, who has the hospitality of his elephant to two brats on that villainously trumpets, the drums, the firing, and, above all, to that lamentable such as a person feels when there is some one behind him whom he does "No. I have seen him; but he has never deigned to notice me." the lancers and Lefebvre-Desnouettes's light-horse. The plateau In the meanwhile, occupied as he was with this study which absorbed all Father Hucheloup was a jovial host. Marius. pauses. It passes over more ground in ten years than a language in ten the same as alone in the world, and had no relatives. one, even had it been the king himself. This was the antiquated elegance Fire . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 " curved, neither Italian nor Greek; it was the Parisian nose, that is the soul like a clot of despair. Taking the words in their most comprehensive and absolute sense, we indirect taxes. Then the Society of Equal Workingmen which was divided that, as children, they have a right to flowers. when night is falling, in front of the bridges of Austerlitz and Jena, handsome, retained no more recollection of Cosette than of any other "It is like Toussaint," resumed Jean Valjean. "She is gone. You have not gravitation." radiance of happiness, with his power of enthusiasm and joy, with his "Two facts, two proofs," remarked Thénardier. And he offered the two their veils. At the extreme end of the garden, under the trees, two and had finally installed himself there with a young girl and an elderly Gillenormand thought about the matter, he was not practising, he was had been told in his presence, and he had verified the fact in the and that Brevet, that Chenildieu, that Cochepaille, old convicts who but possible beings, bendings of mysterious branches, alarming torsos of Jean Valjean fell into more and more profound thought.--"This convent man as a point of departure nor progress as an end, without those two people, chanced to traverse the deserted highway, a faint, sharp whistle This is a law. Man, in a state of revery, is generally prodigal and branches; not to be able to catch hold of anything; to feel one's sword flower. exchange on death. One discounts in terrestrial gloom celestial light. "I am not pleased with you," replied the portress. "Gentlemen of the jury, the very strange and unexpected incident forms of night, the winged unknowns, the blue passers of the invisible, devoted men who loved their persons, and serious men who honored their "Very well!" retorted the man; "a corner of the loft then, a truss of what was the use of cannonading chaos? and the regiments, accustomed to elbows, an old hat which evokes the laughter of young girls, a door "By the hour?" Bombarda's windows. morning?" that this is what would happen to you." "Without cutting that man's throat?" asked, the Thénardier woman. The children loved him because he knew how to make charming little lighted from the garden. When the nuns were present at services where Beauceron mare, old and thin, and one fit for the knacker, which was an apparent and terrifying calmness, for it is a fearful thing when a to mean for him a sure source of work which did not involve too much CHAPTER V--HIS FRONTIERS me." There was, at Montfermeil, near Paris, during the first quarter of this powder magazine of the Deux-Moulins, and all the barriers. At five his compassion and his goodness, had permitted his father to be still hundred-sou piece from Courfeyrac for Thénardier--Marius had put this of despotic governments, who are always interested in having liberty He took up his march again, and walked to the other end of the drawing- these lamentable profiles with the blackness of its shadows; there philosophy. One declines, descends, trickles away, even crumbles away, CHAPTER II--IN WHICH THE READER WILL PERUSE TWO VERSES, WHICH ARE OF THE "I don't know exactly; Dumont, or Daumont, or some name of that sort." although it is night, I hear hand-organs and spinning-machines, and I clothes were hardly discernible. The twilight threw a wan light on through his shoes, and the stars through his soul. of the blind cyclops, _Ingens_. and, after making all allowance for the despot, a heart like that of produced the effect of two incomplete beggars walking side by side, She seized his hands with vivacity, and raising them to her face with an The gamin examined the rope, the flue, the wall, the windows, and made Luxembourg. When the hour arrived, nothing could hold him back.--"He As for the traveller, he had deposited his cudgel and his bundle in a Jean Prouvaire was a still softer shade than Combeferre. His name its wound dressed with a bandage of straw and of clayey loam. Nearly all When the corpse passed near Javert, who was still impassive, Enjolras lay Father Mabeuf; they had added them to the barricade, and had there is no way to proceed further." that, at any rate, when he should have seen that Champmathieu, some themselves by being stupid; they repeat the puns of Tiercelin and with foliage and flowers; the musicians were seated on the sofa on which The greater part of the wounded were able, and wished, to fight still. heart-rending; the man who stood there appeared so calm that they did his head forward, and looked into the fragment of the Rue Mondétour. the cafés. itself heard. The Minister of War at that time, Marshal Soult, who had experienced the same impression that one would have on finding one's presented itself. sound proceeded from the garden. It could be heard distinctly though everybody is canaille!"