stop up that hole, would certainly have found the stiff abandoned there, comfort for the benefit of those who suffer and those who are ignorant. when it is torn open with the iron, in order that grain may be deposited Scotland has trios of witches, Paris has quartettes of old gossiping "What? So much the better?" retorted his wife. parliamentary families. In spite of this marriage, however, it was said prison fell ill. A priest was needed to attend the criminal in his failures; no more money, private fortunes rendered uneasy, public credit had known of this marauding, she would have punished the delinquents Why? This, without any dissimulation, and also without any exaggeration, is side, as though she was expecting him. Then she sat down again on her who bear wonderful fruit." Grantaire was sitting opposite another figure, at a marble Saint-Anne deserters reported to him that they had just quitted their regiment, a benevolent gentleman doing? Will he come? Perhaps the animal has set the philosopher to thinking. There is government therein. There one that conscience. On entering the order of Saint Vincent de Paul, she had grated windows of the dormitories, a torch ran along the ridge-pole of In his oratory there were two straw prie-Dieu, and there was an He advanced with anxiety, but with calmness, seeing nothing, knowing And, in addition to this,--all these contradictions are the lightning "Once outside the gate, you gallop home, you get your card, you return, The man-projectile no longer acquainted with his route and retreating! "Then I will pray to God and I will think of you here, so that you may certain fresh access of life. "The dinners are better at Édon's than at Bombarda's," exclaimed him, in spite of disgust and pity, a vague recollection of having met On the 18th of June, 1815, he relied all the more on his artillery, of a minute the little Thénardiers were playing with the new-comer at me. This is what they discovered: This Champmathieu had been, thirty irritated glances watching France narrowly all over Europe, England, a CHAPTER III--THE EIGHTEENTH OF JUNE, 1815 courtyard, called the court of the Bâtiment-Neuf (New Building), which of industry, which are engendered by the patience of the galleys in stew-pan to another, very busily superintending an excellent dinner Matelote and Gibelotte received them. At that moment Favourite, folding her arms and throwing her head back, "I have no money to buy any dinner." thought; and as she thought, so she did. The result was the whiteness Pontmercy was one of those who took their revenge and overthrew the shouting, "Look! take this, honest people." This logic was known to the "A police spy, yes; from the moment when I have misused the police. I am He shouts. Help! Help! He still shouts on. and uncomfortable there. There are rough people there sometimes; and heart with it. Then I said: 'I cannot live anywhere else than here.' I saved old Fauchelevent's life, despite the disquieting insinuations of the priest had provided for him, and he had full confidence in this barricade alone and unaided, that is to say, with his company. be she!" In order to form an idea of this struggle, it is necessary to imagine a long and massive beam traversed this subterranean excavation from side Thénardier: _A comrade of the galleys_. Boulatruelle obstinately refused faces of men, but hated their noise, he found them assembled and silent all that for the sake of an old wretch of an apple-thief who, most had caught sight of under the flag-stones might also catch the eye of however, that Jean Valjean would want to put the river between his Fauchelevent. stone, with balustrade with a double curve. sufficiently potent to charge all nature with its messages. "villain," the female Thénardier sprang from the bed, Thénardier grasped will be remembered, had succeeded in joining the army, and had dragged Far from it. As there is always more wretchedness below than there Chevalier Roze, whose name had been Mademoiselle Roze, and who was "No; it is not good. What will you do after that?" "And you climb up? Yes, I understand." as though one's soul were becoming amalgamated with the darkness. This They had broken their rope in pulling it after them, and a bit of it of imprints of bloody hands were visible on the door-posts. It was there To teach Cosette to read, and to let her play, this constituted nearly of the patrol of the right bank. Colbas_. This inn had for a landlord a certain Jacquin Labarre, a man be seen, which was interdicted to the nuns. One day the pulpit was captious, almost venomous; all this in memory of her monk, whose widow conversation even beyond its customary limits. As he rose to take his personalities, as one removes his false nose at a masked ball, sometimes pavements, were visible. An eye cast upward at that mass of shadows he said, "The functionary can make no mistake; the magistrate is never Marius hesitated to believe that the Fauchelevent of the barricade was "And great haste is required." officially eloquent. In his shadow could be seen germinating that At half-past three o'clock in the morning, he lost one illusion; This was true, up to a certain point, for she said to herself that the twelve; the almude of the Canaries, twenty-five; the cuartin of the there, around my mouth, and you will nail the top plank on loosely." and starless, or when the moon and the wind are making openings in the "You were not at the school day before yesterday." And turning to Madame Hucheloup, he added:-- whether Jean Valjean was in a condition to disentangle all that we have of hell into another. walks, you are lost, you love. But one thing remains for you to do: to Pantin. All civilizations are there in an abridged form, all barbarisms once again before I die!" volubility, in which there was nothing alarming. All this was uttered Quite the reverse. "I have dined." apron, dismally sponging out their work. Louis XI. is there with There, sir. I owe for four quarters--a whole year! that is to say, sixty and two o'clock in the morning. Poor Cosette said nothing. As she had Javert, as he addressed these grave and supplicating words to the man, imagine an N touching the Rue Saint-Denis with its summit and the Halles provided he be a god. At first sight, this family presented no very special feature except its she thought a great deal. The rule of Fontevrault did not forbid this. First of all, even before examining himself and reflecting, all of those who have "found out everything," without any interest in the people who ask nothing better than to become spectators. While he was post at his observatory. In a twinkling, and with the agility of his as the Seine, where it terminates in a Y; secondly, on his right, the This sort of wit is transmitted from generation to generation of the his horse having tumbled down. the statue of Henry IV. M. Piet, in the Rue Thérèse, No. 4, was making "Go on, nevertheless," ejaculated Thénardier, and he continued to "The long-haired man must be Brujon, and the bearded one Demi-Liard, wait until they are in the street before replying." the omnibus had been overturned. "You see, sister, this doll is more amusing than the other. She twists, "I warn you that I shall not admit that you don't know how to write." God. Ah! the hussies! If I catch them tripping! I do not jest, that I don't! and the shades of this world, its follies, its lies, its hatreds, its Jean Valjean changed his number in the galleys. He was called 9,430. They thought they had noticed that he wore something on his breast, is. "Politicians" are confused with assassins in the same legend. experienced that sort of religious terror which seizes the masses when on that unknown man. Cambronne invents the word for Waterloo as Rouget There should be flashes of light athwart such houses. The joy which they This Fauchelevent was one of the few enemies whom M. Madeleine had at "Now that I think of it, Father Fauvent, let us give a whole hour to it. Meanwhile he had halted, and for the last two minutes he had been light is here. We are not acquainted with the maladies of these ancient a rampart higher than a man. There is nothing like the hand of the often managed to breakfast off of such a roll. He called his species of Que déjà ton cour avait répondu. fall as he had bestowed it on the elevation. At Schoenbrunn there was Marseillaise. rent, to-morrow my oldest daughter, my spouse with her fever, my child Madeleine did not hesitate to sacrifice the first to the second--his always entertained the legitimate scorn which one owes to what is merely savant! a botanist! an inoffensive man! Something must be done for him!" "That is just." despair at his grandson's pillow, was, like Marius, neither alive nor Marius scrutinized the man more and more as he listened to him. Don don don "Yes, that man, whoever he may have been, was sublime. Do you know what sheet iron, with a hood, which rose above a neighboring roof. About the epoch of the coronation, some petty affair connected with The President addressed him in nearly the same words which he had microscopic battles, gewgaws and ribbons--he lavished everything on uproar of happiness! Be grave in church, well and good. But, as soon as as their city, had returned to darkness, scenting what the good "Precisely, Pontmercy. Did you know him?" rather than pretty; she had no ungraceful feature, but she was awkward, reader will remember, as far as the hostelry of the Thénardiers. These stranger would have been present! I should have been side by side with from the sun than ours. rebus: R. Grantaire was a man who took good care not to believe in extremity of the hovel, stared at him in stupefaction, as almost free must give me something, M. le Marquis."_ The Marquis turned round and "'Mariage un Mardi gras N'aura point enfants ingrats.'54 less in love with the unknown musician. Each one dreamed that she was accompanied these words. other snuff"; in the nineteenth it is "to chew each other's throats." extracted from the depths, and unearthed by special seekers. But you are Lenoir, and read aloud a singular document, which seemed to emanate from realities, had eventually created for him a sort of interior state which pray at all. door, seated on the chair from which he had not stirred, and holding his being, and become as monstrous as the human heart? he might not again be caught unprovided as on the night when he had I denounce myself. If I do not denounce myself? come, let us see how it hated worse than any one in the world at that moment. However, it was butterflies, she came panting up to him and said: "Ah! How I have run!" that of an escaped bird. He plunged back into the gloom as though he spider on the fly. Montparnasse suddenly tossed away his rose, bounded "Lord! the candle is all burned out! Something has happened." revolution is a return from the fictitious to the real. It is because it _Invenerunt parvulum pannis involutum_, some mountebank's booth from of copperas issued in puffs from the roofs of the neighboring factory. blowing out his brains. Jean Valjean gently. God delivers over to men his visible will in events, an obscure text Marius recalled perfectly now that funereal sight of Jean Valjean This time the good gossips had no trouble. "He is an ignorant man, of Jean Valjean took Javert by the martingale, as one would take a beast of it on the edge of the quay. A moment later, a tall black figure, which a "Really?" cannon could not see the farm, situated in the bottom of the valley, at the same time, as a brother and as a judge, to those impenetrable at the foot of that declivity which the cuirassiers had ascended, now The best thing, assuredly, is the pacific solution. In short, let us himself, how he would have cried to his father: "Father! Here I am! It Jean Valjean himself opened the package; it was a bundle of bank-notes. history, one of the best princes who ever sat on a throne. Visible nature hardly existed for him. It would almost be true to say comrades had nicknamed him Jean the Jack-screw. Once, when they were had elapsed since that night. More than once he had scratched the back dunkerque in order. Jean Valjean stared silently at the wall opposite "My child," said the man, "take these, and go and dress yourself during their course at Paris; he knew that the best coffee was to be had a singular state; he thought that he heard drums, cannon, trumpets, To tell the truth, neither of them slept. He seated himself close to her, he gazed at her in silence, or he talked years between them, but they already represented the whole society of to be the people of some one who mingles with your dawns the startling the rear of the mayor's arm-chair, and there he stood, perfectly erect, grand purple hour of life, happy love, such shocks would force even the "That is evident," said Théodule. of a single house, a large, square house of three stories, built of This is what socialism said outside and above a few sects which have latch. All that the first passer-by had to do at any hour, was to give "Pierced?" that name would not menace him, that that light would but produce was no longer any slope, for the corpses had levelled the road with the the most solitary points in Paris; the shore which faces the Grand- you have whitewash on your back!" On the previous evening, Marius, in a hermits by day and cut-throats by night, that clumsy mill which turns "You were not at the school day before yesterday." France." them a few paces off. Gavroche allowed an: "Ah! good!" to escape him, sing in a voice as feeble as a breath. The nun listened. This is what Moreover, no trace of work was revealed in that dwelling; no handicraft, glided out of the house. It was only nine o'clock in the evening. Marius There was in him a headstrong little man who hated Napoleon. BOOK SECOND.--THE GREAT BOURGEOIS "We may depend on you?" CHAPTER III--A BURIAL; AN OCCASION TO BE BORN AGAIN of a distant street lamp, that the gamin guided his two "brats." dead, he was not there. He was evidently a prisoner. Combeferre said to rather low barricade, which shut off the Rue de la Petite Truanderie; to nothing but a scrap of rusty iron; the sword of Marengo was odious and Fantine learned how to live without fire entirely in the winter; how to He sang: "Voici la lune qui paraît, intoned a psalm beginning with _Ecce_, and instead of _Ecce_ she uttered incomprehensible, he gazed upon it. He did not study God; he was dazzled convicts by M. de Vivonne for his mistress. M. Gillenormand had binds together and rounds off the angles of the ideas. But too much a millionnaire!" booths were all illuminated, because the citizens would soon pass on M. Madeleine did not reply. The Fleming resumed:-- ideas; nevertheless, while absolutely maintaining our reserves, our of prisoners, whom the man of Lyons, Lagrange, harangued valiantly. pole surmounted by a red cap. avoiding which resembles seeking. In short, the eclogue took place. candles under a green shade, engulfed in his tapestry armchair, and in learn the most minute details; we are going to lay our finger on the without knowing what he was doing. He supported her, though he was month of February, there had been rain; the roads were bad. And then, All at once the hearse halted; it had reached the gate. The permission opening. point; first, on his left, the vast sewer of the Plâtrière, a sort of "And I know how to write, too!" sounded the depths, for another reason than history. We shall therefore judicatis terram_. Here lies Blondeau, Blondeau the Nose, Blondeau the new regime, and all the shadows and all the light of the earth passed on. Almost a third of Dubois's brigade fell into that abyss. "Towards the end, when he had reached the figs, there came a knock at ignorance of her isolation, in order to make an artificial vocation had hurt his soul, as too vivid a light would have hurt his eyes on the night of the 17th to the 18th of June he rallied Wellington. "That exclamation: "This is too much!"--and this interrogation: "But where is "Very seriously, I must get out of this place." speak more distinctly than others. The one which was blowing at that my little girl. I will be a lady. I will come to see you, and you shall reflected in the funereal, the sepulchral immensity of silence, unknown Nôtre; to-day it is ruins and briars. The pilasters are surmounted by repeated:-- pressed his hands, adored his garment, kissed his feet! Oh! Why had his this. severe towards myself, all the justice that I have done would become as he indicated the man of the Rue des Billettes: "Do you see that big for Jean Valjean to pass out, closed the grating again, gave the key a Fantine returned home. She was furious, and related the occurrence to As we have seen, prayer, the celebration of the offices of religion, useful; it is neglected and it becomes hurtful. It is exterminated. How "Certainly." "Provincial," said the man, "if you positively insist upon it, I inquiring when Your Greatness will receive the red cap!"--"Oh! oh! "It is strength. One would have to be a terrible man to do such a thing enormous black whiskers, prominent eyes, the lower part of his face "Father," pursued Marius, "my good father, if you only knew! I love her. This mute misunderstanding between him and the pretty passers-by had happy, and to forget them, and fearing that, were these debts of CHAPTER IV--ATTRACTION AND EXTINCTION well-known leaders were going the rounds, that is to say, running from with a rope's end round his neck, mounts the white cockade. "Death to "After her folly" meant: "after she had married the colonel." She was carrying, in addition, a large carpet-bag, which seemed very "Quin?" to the gloomy horizon. some mighty, visible phantom, one knew not what, standing erect beside animal," said he. Once in the forest he slackened his pace, and began a careful when you are no longer there, you perceive that the streets are dear to conversation:-- swerve from it. "The day is vulgar," said he, "and deserves only a the hand. He saw him enter the Rue du Chemin-Vert-Saint-Antoine; he Was G---- a vulture after all? Yes; if he were to be judged by the brushed off. He preferred to elaborate his masterpieces in the dark and cities alone can offer such spectacles. These immense enclosures alone CHAPTER VI--FOUR O'CLOCK IN THE AFTERNOON servant's efforts to prevent him, crying: "My son is not coming! I shall "Hey?" said Gavroche, who had just closed his eyes. mud, it reconstructs manners; from the potsherd it infers the amphora or girl of seven years. All was black. still passing slowly and regularly back and forth overhead. people who had been scattered abroad, for many days and nights. There Section 3. Information about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive and uncomfortable there. There are rough people there sometimes; and am I who now address you? Who are you who are listening to me? And are Valjean was immediately taken to the prison at Toulon. for to-day; but I will not answer for to-morrow." The second was straight, firm, slender. It regulated its pace by that sufficed for God. The Emperor had had the dream of a genius; in that yellow rather than green; doors blackened by handmarks; tap-room extremities. I know neither your name, nor your address, but I warn you, "Say, now." did not see M. Leblanc and his daughter retire. He concluded that they her from the man. Her ailing brain comprehended nothing, but the only time about La Haie-Sainte,--all these stormy incidents passing like the most ingenuous graces of the child; a pure and fugitive moment, which "That man was terrible." along the quay on the shore. Valjean caused the answer "no" to be given. usual. There was cavalry on the Place du Palais-Royal. boasted of being able to crack a nut with one blow of her fist. Except himself lost, he had not drawn back. His only thought now was to finish "The dinners are better at Édon's than at Bombarda's," exclaimed eyes were closed, his hair was plastered down on his temples like a happiness close beside me!" enter the Bel Sauvage, arm in arm."_ A seditious utterance. Six months progress transparent beneath the revolt, the chambers and streets, the wet stones could be felt. A fierce breath rose from this abyss. The "You should have knocked." This took place in the tap-room near Javert's post. and that there existed between them some connection, of relationship, found a year from now in the nets at Saint-Cloud or the Isle of Swans in Magnon was a sort of fashionable woman in the sphere of crime. She was render a service to the one whom he loved. thousand francs. Besides the horse and tilbury together were worth but a by the police, though not yet arrested. This Magnon, whose name the shattered; Guilleminot's fatal heedlessness when he had neither petard father's place, and, in his turn, supported the sister who had brought "They will kill you." "Don't forget what I told you. You will do everything sure?" of passion which existed in her. None of her dreams had ever proceeded Waterloo into four moments; Muffling cuts it up into three changes; In the sixth year his turn to escape occurred again; he availed himself and had picked it up again on emerging. She entered, pushed the door to "I often go off in the evening. Sometimes I don't come home again. Last lodge furnished with straw-seated chairs than in the great drawing-room the hideous vitality of things which have been organized out of permits. Let us confine ourselves to prayer, when we think that a danger spoons which were absolutely necessary. Now, it was the usage of the better method, with Gribeauval's movable star." of mind. His twin plots, the one with the nuns, the one for the convent, It was Sister Simplice. showers. This lasted for several months. The girls were all more or house,--made the beds, did the washing, the cooking, and everything Then throwing down the pen:-- arm alone. Eight days before the capitulation of Paris he had just What did Jean Valjean want? To finish what he had begun; to warn having agreed upon a price with the owner of the asses, they returned "M. Scaufflaire?" to me, that I sometimes do not know what I am saying. I understand you; old man, who was the porter, and who held a candle. francs the metre, and the bourgeoise masonry known as _à petits behave in society. It has not been absolutely proved that he knows how of life there, perchance; I will risk my own existence for that there held out for seven hours against the fury of an army. "I have something to say to you." that he was delivered from all those obsessions of the memory which J'ai fort lu Platon, mais rien ne m'en reste; inches. Decidedly, he is not on the right road; he halts to get his must have been very thirsty: for the children who followed him saw him A big Flemish servant-maid placed his knife and fork in all haste; he the richest of all, we understate the truth when we value the loss on had ended by drowning himself in the sewer. "Ah! yes, sir," replied Toussaint. "It is in the direction of Saint- knees, when Madame Magloire entered, according to her wont, to get the post for a corporal and four soldiers, had left the soldiers in the carried to the point of forgetting all anxiety for his own life, that Messieurs the lawyers, I sincerely compliment you. You are droll." Evening had arrived, night had almost closed in; on the horizon and in streets, the imminence of the inexorable adventure, which was in thing, whatever it was, ran on its two wheels and could go to Arras. Man lives by affirmation even more than by bread. to pay altogether, the reason for which we have read in preceding transmitted to Babet's mistress in the Salpêtrière. A biscuit, in the more than a week in one shop, as the masters always discharged him Jean Valjean had seated himself on a chair in the drawing-room, behind He retired with bowed head, traversed the antechamber, and slowly mother, if she had broken her ban. And he would have done it with that Marius had fallen into a wasps'-nest of wits. However, although he was pensive nose, and another Monsignor, entitled thus: Abbate Palmieri, thinking of the things that she might be thinking about. This time the man heard it. He seemed to understand. He made a motion CHAPTER VI--SISTER SIMPLICE PUT TO THE PROOF "So you have a hole in your stomach?" began Laigle again. song of which he was capable. His march, far from being retarded by his by a child who offered to serve as a guide. His obstinacy was bruited stranger, Timoleon against the tyrant, which is the greater? the one is its Transteverin is the man of the faubourgs, its _hammal_ is the When M. Mabeuf straightened himself up, there was no longer any one shutting their carriage gates so early." They were the reports of the CHAPTER III--A BURIAL; AN OCCASION TO BE BORN AGAIN Saint Bernard, while Merlonus Horstius only gives three hundred and certain points and in certain places, in spite of philosophy, in spite This point of the Seine is dreaded by mariners. Nothing is more human body, the network of secret societies began to spread all over the Marius went his way. He fumbled in his pocket, drew out his purse, opened it, and took out a but a shapeless hole, tumultuously blocked with paving-stones. the right in the direction of the Barrière de Fontainebleau. paper, coarsely folded--the very sight of certain missives is you'll find out presently, that it isn't all roses to thrust yourself "Come now, will you answer?" cried Marius. "What do you want with me?" homicide, all sorts of sacrilege, every variety of crime; on the other, CHAPTER VII--NAPOLEON IN A GOOD HUMOR boasting which lies at the bottom of man, added:-- if Louis XV. is worse than Claudian, Madame Dubarry is better than wretch. In the midst of all this terror the Bishop arrived. He was and becomes _le boulanger_ (the baker), who puts the bread into the whose interior we have just shown. In 1657, Pope Alexander VII. had "By the way, Monsieur Fabre, I might as well say it to you at once." that it is not a liar. Ingenuousness has taken refuge there. The mask of And with an adorable shrug of the shoulders, and an indescribably pair of man's trousers, but he did not get them from his father, and a which are nothing but all the varieties of flame made into flowers. All blond brat who nurses lustily, and who has fine rolls of fat on his France by kings, had been diversely interpreted in France, as we have Salpêtrière, and came to a halt, where? Precisely at that double number and rubies seem wet, and make veiled beings in the shadow below weep, becomes mechanical by force of habit; and one sometimes says _forever_ severe, and which was humble. There was in the depth of his glance an milk for the magnanimous. CHAPTER III--MEN MUST HAVE WINE, AND HORSES MUST HAVE WATER guise?" Jean Valjean replied in a voice which resembled the bitter voice She seized the coin. "He lives in the Marais, Rue des Filles-du-Calvaire, with his warmth. Strong as his nature was, the absence of Marius had wrought some stood motionless, on the point of falling, like the statue of despair. broken his ban, condemned in 1796 for theft, and named Jean Valjean. his neck, side by side with the criminal bound with cords. basket. corner, snatching the jug from each other so hastily that the little purse was actually lost. It is unnecessary to say that no one claimed the Convent of the Bernardines of the Perpetual Adoration. The box in get a rope at midnight, in the Rue Polonceau? Certainly, if Jean Valjean household should thenceforth have its nuptial chamber as its witness. April joy which bore so strong a resemblance to herself. Insensibly, and nothing, stupefied and delighted with this sweet crushing beneath sacks The insurrection had made of the centre of Paris a sort of inextricable, CHAPTER I--THE 16TH OF FEBRUARY, 1833 really a fact that he had seen M. Fauchelevent, so serious and so calm a gun, the other the bayonet. Bonapartist. He had subscribed for the Champ d'Asile. It was said in the somewhat, and that he could not dine with Monsieur le Baron and Madame logical in a prison, illogical in a sewer, and which has since been Saint-Benoît for a whole day. In the early days the nuns were in the qu'il ravissait quiconque!"