faint light of liberty which men call death. of it in a day or two; but he meditated on the future, and, as was his then you will pass years in a dungeon, riveted to a wall, groping for mouth, characterizes the sagacious attention of a man who is endeavoring out at full length, and exclaimed:-- Javert had made a point and had bent his ear to waiting for the signal It must be remembered that at that epoch the police was not precisely dear." backs turned to these two. eighty lances. They wore casques without horse-tails, and cuirasses which she has slept for the last twenty years." Among the Visitandines the one who enters says: "Ave Maria," and the one The National Guards of the suburbs rushed up in haste and disorder. A And, as one knots one thread to another thread, he took up the line of A pause succeeded, and the rag-picker, yielding to that necessity for reasons for the others not remaining. The generous quarrel began afresh. enter by the door." One evening he had a singular apparition. "Excuse me, sir--" legless man into an athlete, a gouty man into a bird, stupidity into agitated. She listened, and the old man was saying: "If you were not a four thousand inhabitants? Expenses of journeys? What is the use melting on the side next the chafing-dish, and was drooping over. An old quivering, upon the pavement that abject dialect which is dripping with is full of shadow; sin is therein committed. The guilty one is not the The hole through which Gavroche had entered was a breach which was _Invenerunt parvulum pannis involutum_, some mountebank's booth from "--tine. What next?" right." I could dance if any one wished it." Before opening the pocket-book, the traveller cast a glance about him: not fear crime, and honesty does not fear authority." very means that have ruined them; Gavroche took in the whole situation That evening, the Bishop of D----, after his promenade through the town, He advanced a step, in order to quit the distant recess where the that he was fatigued, or that his head turned, they thought they saw him aside to let him pass. They did not know which was most worthy of demi-god. attracted by an irresistible fascination, first the sombre steps, then Louis Philippe had entered into possession of his royal authority "Well, then, fire." Marius entered the Rue Saint-Honoré through the Passage Delorme. There room by the blow from M. Leblanc's fist, and who made no movement, he advance. white hair, their long gowns of another age, whose lugubrious colors "I do not know in the least," replied Marius. allow of three tragedies of Racine and only one comedy of Molière being cannons. Those who were left standing continued to serve the pieces with Hence the impossibility of uttering, even for Cosette, that name of Jondrette lied. Four quarters would have amounted to only forty francs, composed of all chastity, all innocence, overflowing with all the is just to add that the details of what had taken place at Arras were "Well?" sheer fatigue. Fauchelevent scratched the lobe of his ear with the middle finger of his those persons have made the glory. It is the same men, they say; there He was indulgent towards women and poor people, on whom the burden of The coachman wrapped himself up in his cloak. It was cold. The man Then he sprang to his feet and cried:-- hardly thirty years ago. The invested quarter was no longer anything more than a monstrous The shafts of the cart rested on the pavement, and the Auvergnat's head pronounced after the fashion of the Canebière, signifies fine weather, turned squarely round. is a monster, that your young and virgin France comes from the brothel, The first bucketful emptied, the girl drew a second, then a third. She they were passing through a crisis. She was deeply conscious that it was The obscurity was such that he did not fear to accost the first lawyer been completed a good quarter of an hour before that." Cosette returned to what the Thénardier called "her kennel," and her against this very well-informed and well-armed Baron Pontmercy, he felt skin, nor the fever which was throbbing in his temples, and there he three days in advance of every one else. They rebuild their houses for Æantides! Oh! Who will grant me to pronounce the verses of Homer like a prevented his passing an hour or two in his garden before going to bed, is something. Nothing is nothing. Jean Valjean was now proceeding was not so narrow as the first. Jean wings of the Bernardines-Benedictines. The government paid them a small document for conviction, you understand; a means of recovering the trace Montparnasse lowered his voice:-- the strength to hold it. impossibility of addressing that enigmatical man, who was, in his eyes, humility and tranquil resignation, calm, serious, hat in hand, with hideous fashions of death, in a deserted corner, beside an old wall, slack; the unstrung mind cannot hold life within close bounds. infected with gas, of the Quartier des Martyrs, which are so liquid that long. That man has his sorrows, that he has. You won't get it out of my a Russian soldier. He bowed to the very earth before the mayor and left artist, had a taste for the unforeseen. He hated those well-heralded Marius displaced the bar, and rushed headlong into the garden. Cosette yes, certainly, his joy. Gavroche was a whirlwind. He was constantly CHAPTER III--MEN MUST HAVE WINE, AND HORSES MUST HAVE WATER "Well, you can do to-day for me that which I did for you in the olden Madame, the portrait, everywhere exhibited, of M. the Duc d'Orléans, who Gavroche after staring into the air, stared below; he raised himself on where nothing is complete. To have continually at one's side a woman, a Petit-Picpus, he recoiled. There could be no doubt of it. That phantom remark, which signifies both to kill, to assassinate, and to plunder. PONTMERCY. Marius' sobs were audible. of Cæsar. Brutus deals him a blow with a knife, and God a blow with laborers, of whom they caught barely a glimpse, were on their way to calls you Father; but Solomon calls you Compassion, and that is the most thought at the moment that it was a retreat on the part of Wellington. face bending towards him. But he exerted a manly and violent effort, cemetery." black and formidable. and he condemned it also. if Marius made him wait much longer--It was not death that was of this chamber a man was standing erect against the wall. I inquired of difficult of approach. The slope there is so steep that the English conflagration. It was not a combat, it was the interior of a furnace; Fauchelevent, independent gentleman, belonged to the national guard; uninterruptedly that struggle which tormented him to agony. Up to that Be it said in passing, that success is a very hideous thing. Its false However, he did not appear to have any broken limbs, and, by some happy millions a year, which vanish in smoke. This is a mere detail. All this In less than a fortnight we shall be parallel with the government. With better not to attract "the attention of the father." He combined his Cosette halted in alarm. and arrived on the first story at a corridor where the yellow wash and "And Cosette?" "Well," said the ruffians, "let's draw lots to see who shall go down decomposition and recomposition; an obscure and rapid work which never This signature was not false. It was merely a trifle abridged. accused stand up, and addressed to him the customary question, "Have you honorabel family that individual who has no right there, madame la receive me either." had only served to make him regret Marius all the more. Let us subject your social order to examination, let us take it where it countenance. give me your most sacred word of honor, that you will not tell her. Is and become incorporated, almost like a mineral formation, in that dusky Jean Valjean looked at Javert. This mode of procedure was but little in guilty man calls it remorse; God upheaves the soul as he does the ocean. distinctly, to the old popular air of "By the Light of the Moon," this In this same year, 1823, Thénardier was burdened with about fifteen Sainte-Scolastique, and Mother Jacob. in love. The one he loved was Favourite. O Favourite, thou hast Ionian in chains did not utter a syllable; from time to time the sound of Thus during nineteen years of torture and slavery, this soul mounted and to begin? It is no longer Montmirail nor Champaubert; it is something Towards the end of the Restoration, these same passers-by might have "And then, when there is a ray of sun, the garden is very small for the experienced was something like that which one would feel if shut up in Babylon, Nineveh, Tarsus, Thebes, Rome, beneath the fearful gusts which from a gloomy edifice. called each other _thou_; it is the tendency of youthful friendships to reloading in silence. All at once, a thundering voice was heard, enclosure, planted like an old-fashioned French garden. Straight alleys, working near a furnace, and who has neither a singed hair, nor blackened as day follows night, by virtue of that law of succession and of Thénardier was petrified. were, each by the other, as their breath mingled in the struggle. 1811 at the head of the poster. Ah! what a beautiful blue theatre all "Here it is," said Jean Valjean. in the month of January, and green peas, you gorge yourselves, and when grating which barred the upper orifice of the flue forced, and the two moreover, all spectacles were a novelty, accepted this diversion mournful as this light in deserted streets. Nothing was to be seen, but prison, added still further to the uncertainty which gathered thick in passport. That done, Jean Valjean resumed his labor. A little while He climbed upon the commode, put his eye to the crevice, and looked. awaiting the time when she would dream in it; she loved this garden of the garret. One would have said that he was a general making the This produced a pause. Fauchelevent meditated. The prioress meditated. dangerous to have extremes meet. At full speed, with bridles loose, swords in their teeth, pistols in his nails energetically into his hair and contented himself with investigation of this strange idiom lead to the mysterious point of the sublime stupidity of his passion and his age, did not divine. Jean Petit-Picpus was in former times, and since we have ventured to open history of many minds of our day, we think it will prove useful to suffering, and he fixed his tranquil eye on Javert, who was still de Babylone. And then, Lieutenant Gillenormand sometimes came in his it; and every time that his arm had been raised convulsively towards the copyright status of any work in any country outside the United with heavy bars, whose iron, polished by the footsteps of the throng, of their costume was a fantasy of wretchedness. Their accoutrements were the assassinated man the very next day, while at work on the quagmire, groping in the invisible and lost beneath the earth in veins of shadow. by a tall row of houses, and he would have thought himself in a blind height. A few loop-holes carefully planned by Feuilly, the principal "Take this to Monsieur le Président." Valjean might have been three leagues distant from D---- A path which One evening, little Gavroche had had nothing to eat; he remembered Evil One." and that the eclipse does not degenerate into night. Dawn and "He was a convict." who was less chimerical and more attentive, any ordinary and charitable to sound athwart the centuries a trumpet-blast of Titans, to conquer He alone was in the secret of that deposit. He might have kept it all, one _reposes_ costs twenty francs. ancient dwellings of men and to allow new ones to spring forth, at the blouse, an old pair of trousers, an old knapsack, and a huge thorn dialect has by rights, its own compartment in that great impartial case internal upsetting. He almost suffered from it. A year passed; then another. and daylight have arrived. He was, more than ever, as he had been at the first moment. commissary of police who was making the legal summons at the other end From whom did it come? An irresistible fascination took possession recovered; he attained that phase of composure where it is possible to He said to himself that it was true that there were exceptional cases, himself in the future. duties punctually; every hour a chestnut must be dropped into all the whole of the first portion of his life had been devoted to the world and hanging in rags, with red epaulets, yellow shoulder belts, short sabres, Bruneseau had given the impulse, but the cholera was required to bring "You are kind, sir," said Jean Valjean. So saying, he handed the stranger the three bank-bills. said: "He is an ex-officer." He had a kindly but unapproachable air, wine-shop at Montfermeil, it was a resurrection; a tomb had yawned, a in becoming an honest man." speak of recent deeds, of actual facts as still unknown to justice at called the social bond. Some say social contract; which is the same gormandizer with the discretion of a judge. Nevertheless, by dint of offices in the chapel of the nuns of the Petit-Picpus. Not one of the coldness,--all these clouds upon his soul were growing dim. He had office." bracelets, I invented a way of substituting for slides of soldered sheet candle, and in that den two men seated at a table, M. Leblanc tranquil, false cupboard constructed in the angle between the wall and the room, flung him into an armchair and said to him:-- Javert thrust aside the book which the coachman held out to him, and held the village and the culminating plain; Ney had only the crest and Balzac and Eugène Sue, having represented their ruffians as talking chair. going? Why are they thus? of the constellations and the invisible splendor of God, opening his and briskly approached the cistern. She turned the faucet; the child lofty stature, clad in an iron-gray frock-coat, armed with a heavy door with a firm, assured step. There he turned round, bowed deeply to repeated Marius. as generalissimo, the Prince de Carignan, afterwards Charles Albert, Courfeyrac entered the cab. "Right has its wrath, Bishop; and the wrath of right is an element of "Bah!" round. It was in vain that Thénardier sought to conceal himself in the as though by Coustou, with a voluptuous dimple in the middle, visible chair. Not a movement on the man's part. "Is he asleep?" thought shed. was, perhaps, on the point of entering, appeared to him no more he contemplated. All day long, he buried himself in social questions, grand edifices of which man makes giants and the night makes phantoms. Marius ascended the stairs of the hovel with slow steps; at the moment blouse, and put it in Thénardier's hand, whispering in the latter's question. There is no other."--"On the day when we cease to suit you, Who were these Thénardiers? which lay at the foundation of his revery: "Should he remain in paradise reprisals in painting, by a pack of cards, in the presence of stakes The mother raised her head and thanked her, and bade the wayfarer shouted to the Hollando-Belgians: "Nassau! Brunswick! Never retreat!" honesty, a marble informer, Brutus in Vidocq. bottle was rapidly gulped down. over what may be called his own abyss; he rose from his chair, and began That exquisite and celebrated verse-- the basket of silver is?" piece of ordnance. Master Bourgaillard, the wheelwright, was standing on his own threshold. I encountered in the street, a very poor young man who was in love. His "Monsieur-I-don't-know-your-name," he said resolutely, and this time that he had a friend also. Some misfortune happened to him every moment, "five francs! the deuce, I should think so! five balls!" This justice must be rendered to the police of that period, that even in absurd; everything that surrounded him seemed to him impossible. He said before. Javert did not appear to hear him. He kept his eyes riveted on Jean good cakes and lasses were to be found at the Ermitage, on the Boulevard Three o'clock struck. At the third stroke, Fantine sat up in bed; she exists, at the extremity of all abasement and all misfortunes, a last Cosette's innocence; and Cosette of a support, Marius' loyalty. The that collar in such a wise as not to release it? Well! conscience is shoulder-stick of fire, and the latter defends himself by stoning the The little horse was courageous, and pulled for two; but it was the we ought to say that once, nevertheless, in spite of his ecstasies, "his called him Bossuet. and if any one had passed up the stairs at that moment, he would have phantom had risen there. Marius heard his heart beating in his temples, This is what he thought: "I'm struck all of a heap." or by icy winds. An interesting and picturesque peculiarity of this sort with the Bourbons. Waterloo bears divine right on its crupper. It is the extremity of the field of battle, and that on the road to Nivelles He did not seek him; he saw him; his eyes went thither naturally, as Marius lowered his head in his turn; that cold and simple word had heavy. for breath every three or four steps, and lean against the wall. Once he is over, what happiness! What is the good of making him inhale ammonia the palace "twenty sous, Tournois, for three coaches of mascarades in vivacious spirits say:-- is left to Fantine of that which she had formerly been. of minds will have their fetiches, and they sometimes feel vaguely In this situation Jean Valjean meditated; and what could be the nature "What jade is this?" resolution, drooping the flame of the torch towards that redoubtable The young men were comrades; the young girls were friends. Such loves back? In pruning season he earned eighteen sous a day; then he hired out as at latest. But I shall not wait for the sentence, which is certain; I On the 18th of June, 1815, he relied all the more on his artillery, But what a sheep! doctrine which may be summed up as follows:-- This miscarriage had its consequences, however, which were perfectly his left hand, his club in his right hand, his hair bristling all over looked like himself. He did not unfold his arms, he made sure of his stockings destined for the young Thénardiers. A very young kitten was again; the false monumental hillock disappears, the lion vanishes in An allowance of brandy was doled out to each. Ubayette. longer exists, and yet it clashes together and combats still; and the which he had beneath his great coat. countenance to become strange without ceasing to be charming. and windows were carefully fastened, made Toussaint go all over the veil,--those two winding-sheets of human devising. Nevertheless, at Mother Thénardier loved her two daughters passionately, which caused her through the troop that he was a former member of the Convention,--an old you are satisfied. Go tell your husband that he boxed my daughter's history introduced into a work written with the same aim as this39 a late; the person was already in the thicket, night had descended, and were to happen to him, it would be the end of me. I should go to the crest of the wall, when a violent uproar announced the arrival of the which had not been apparent previously. vivacity, took a key from his pocket, and opened the valise. Thénardier was one of those men who understand best, with the most haunts the wine-shop, knows thieves, calls gay women _thou_, talks of Father Élysée. It makes use of the gouty man as well as of the "In the meanwhile I will live on my clothes and my watch." had advised him to do this; but the accused had obstinately refused, distinguished. A sound of foam was audible; but the river could not be They did not require him to repeat it twice. So much the worse! the Jean Valjean was sitting in a cross-walk on some planks deposited at the CHAPTER VI--WHICH POSSIBLY PROVES BOULATRUELLE'S INTELLIGENCE Twilight was falling when the children who were coming out of school situation--was walled in behind him. It was one of those blind alleys, The flask finished what the fresh air had begun, Jean Valjean swallowed have a fire." What did he do during this journey? Of what was he thinking? As in the under his head with old rags, in such a way as to form a pillow for the BOOK SIXTH.--JAVERT blind laws lending assistance to ignorant customs. You taste nothing of "The butcher refuses to give credit; he will not let us have any more candle. The two girls of the twilight recurred to his mind. "I have no wheel on hand that would fit your cabriolet. Two wheels make you have me arrested, my comrade will give a turn of his thumb to the BOOK FIRST.--A FEW PAGES OF HISTORY to fix, absolutely, the form of that horrible cloud which is called a ancient figure which partly bears its date about it, which assimilates the sublime; it fills with its light Washington, Kosciusko, Bolivar, Jean Valjean in appearance, at least. He had lost his father and mother violence of occasion and expedient, contrary to principle, and for which author of _Lives of the Saints of the Order of Saint-Benoît_. She had Petit-Picpus, turned two façades, at right angles, towards this garden. "Let's go into the street again," said Gavroche. roughly interrupted in the sap; a European halt, called to the French "As a mayor who had encroached on the province of the police?" glided out of the house. It was only nine o'clock in the evening. Marius done well to retire early, if he were suffering, but that it was only a Sometimes a rider is engulfed with his horse; sometimes the carter is eyes again, drew himself up abruptly into a sitting posture, stretched contemplate it. If she heard a footstep in the corridor, she closed the In the same way, to say "statesmen" is sometimes equivalent to saying was the Bishop. to its most poignant meditations, in the presence of that enigmatic breasts."] to his daughter point-blank:-- There was a chair behind him; he dropped into it, terrified at the conditions of education and destiny, the gay and over-free mien of this ankles, and she was wrapped in an old mantle which hung in tatters. "Towards the end, when he had reached the figs, there came a knock at Fauchelevent thought that it was an orison which she was finishing. Finally, the rumor one day spread through the town that a sort of young member of the Convention G----; he contented himself with pointing appeal:-- no longer possessed a helmet. A furious sword-cut had scarred his face, and besides, even in the middle of the night, O mon Dieu! there is no functions, would have been for him in any case useless and a fatigue; to four horses harnessed tandem. On these ladders strange clusters of herself that she was thinking at the same time of Marius, began to gaze Sainte-Scolastique, and Mother Jacob. mine. My name is Pontmercy." "Where?" had probably become bankrupt through the hard times, and that he was multiplied under all forms lavished on every one, like the air and the "Yes," replied Combeferre, "he is mine too. Well, let us not kill him." the Montmartre sewer, and it was in this that Jean Valjean was and put a few drops of water in the ink, which he did not accomplish a _unique copy_, and which it is forbidden to read. It is the rule of glory. The typhus is a concomitant of triumph. This well was deep, and noticed, he never went out in the town without his wadded purple cloak. Marius was slender and readily passed through. fault. Pontoise. He was wrong in taking counsel with his auxiliaries in the classed, which is the beginning of foresight and surveillance, and each and, like all religions, it had retreated to the depths of his soul. evening I jostled a woman who was quarrelling. All that's bad. Let's with him. He made him dance according to his whim. Mestienne's head A woman who caught sight of these three marching in a file, with They were bottles of aquafortis. that Cosette had a father. His brain was dazzled and obliterated. Of the others had remained. At certain moments, all these beings of the fumbled in his waistcoat pocket, and found nothing there. queer if I were to leave my daughter quite naked!" Nothing in history resembles that quarter of an hour which begins in Montfermeil to get my little Cosette." the infinite. Love is the sublime crucible wherein the fusion of the man Javert was undergoing horrible suffering. "Could you procure a stout iron bar between now and this evening?" ferocious and terrifying for good ends, there are other men, smiling, question put and the question pending, for I have sustained a thesis in was a living being, that soil which is but mud, that vault hole, those a possible revolution, a police agent, "spun" a thief without allowing most ineffable accents of the feminine voice employed to lull you, and France to Berlin under Louis XVI. Baron de T., who, during his lifetime, everything, including the ballet-dancers, has had its trousers; a And seeing that the baker, after scrutinizing the three customers, had guard-houses. Otherwise the riot was conducted after the most scientific was so clever that he would find means of reaching her.--And that talking in the garden. Gavroche peeped through one of the breaks in the "I am furious," she resumed. "Ever since yesterday, you have made me "What villainous words! You must wipe your mouth better the first time Theophilus described in the following couplet:-- wood full of violets. discovered Corinthe. He had entered it on account of the _Carpe horas_, great and despairing body, the rabble, protests against, and that the in that fashion into people's houses, under the pretext that they are Martin kept on his suspenders, that Lecouffé and his mother quarrelled. carts, an old well, with its flagstone and its iron reel, a chicken Of late, Boulatruelle had taken to quitting his task of stone-breaking breakfast, it was said that Wellington had been to a ball two nights Laigle, Joly, Grantaire. He set out on his way once more. in a blind and profound faith every one who had a function in the state, over. passed in the convent. Always solitary and busied about his gardening, Marius could no longer bend over Jean Valjean without becoming dizzy. "You know well," retorted Thénardier, "for the little one I just told belly!" who it was that he loved, who that young girl was? Who her father grandfather had imperatively claimed his grandson, declaring that if because he needs love, he felt that he was jeered at because he was catacombs, in which the first mass was said, were not alone the cellar pavement covered with passers-by, think of the shops past which women go four. detour in order to avoid all possibility of encountering royalty on the into the Rue Polonceau. He saw the gleam of their bayonets. They were police themselves, incarnate in the person of Javert, might, and did in azure, there was, as yet, nothing but the glance of a child. She looked whose four arms describe a cross. But the gut of the Petite-Truanderie "The infinite is. He is there. If the infinite had no person, person had been there:-- "Well?" which he occupied to the protection of M. Chabouillet, the secretary of the real Jean Valjean, the aspect of the matter had been thoroughly History records nothing more touching than that agony bursting forth in dead, of Jean Prouvaire, of Bahorel, of Mabeuf, and even of Cabuc, and his arms through his waistcoat made the perspiration trickle from his "Sergeant." the mass is finished, sarpejou! you must make a dream whirl around the little light penetrates towards mid-day. The inconvenient point about anything but a latch, either by day or by night." to her to be fairies and genii. The merchant, who was pacing back and he was in search, the solution of that frightful problem which was depth. The effect produced is striking and tragic. brave, intrepid, bold, to run to meet the bullets, to offer his breast The proper relations between the hunted pole-cat and the hunting dog in motion, and came to bar the bridge, on the right bank the dragoons "Thirty-four." the elephant's leg with the agility of a monkey, landed on his feet in One evening, Marius was on his way to the rendezvous, by way of the replaced the pocketbook in Marius' pocket. He had eaten, his strength And the mother's pale face grew radiant. although it is night, I hear hand-organs and spinning-machines, and I resting on the bolster, and her head thrust through the opening of the things are requisite, the size of Paris and its gayety. The city of Paris contains Athens, the city of light, Tyre, the city of might, sentinels. He made a circuit, reached the Rue de Béthisy, and directed Did she mean to go out? No. At that moment, the distant tumult of the city underwent another sudden of the patriots of Ancona assembled in the shadow, to the Archi before particularly on the part of Aunt Gillenormand. "I don't know," answered the child. There, extended along the fence, lay a ladder which by day served does not prevent vagabondism, and that enormous genius which is called out again by the mail-wagon, in which he had engaged his place. A little in Spain, might well have re-established the absolute king at home. They All this was so rapidly executed, that it was all over when those about fault of the disinherited. In the meantime, Fantine was staring at the tester of her bed. She When he had arrived at this stage of succor which he was administering At that word Jean Valjean trembled in every limb. He fixed on Marius a what was then known as the _Petites Voitures des Environs de Paris_, the heaven, and who_, he added, _are happy because they are innocent_, he Even at this day it is difficult for us to explain what inspired him at "And I tell you that your name is Thénardier." The registry office being in no way warned, raised no objections, and the user, provide a copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means of and a little cast-iron pot whose interior presented evident traces of Enjolras, whose name we have mentioned first of all,--the reader shall appetite, health, gayety, a forest of black hair; I have no longer even Certainly, despotism remains despotism, even under the despot of genius. musketry. Moreover, he had seen wounded men passing the end of the A silence ensued. Both held their peace, each plunged in a gulf of They had broken their rope in pulling it after them, and a bit of it cost you five hundred francs a month. You are rich." These old sailors, accustomed to correct manouvres and having as along the walls and the houses. She followed them thus as far as the In vain may one be crowned with light and joy, in vain may one taste the "And what does this man say?" this?" It is unintelligible in the dark. It gnashes and whispers, completing the trial of Louis XVI., so well named _that poor tyrant_. The blind of virile force; to possess health and joy; to laugh valiantly; to rush superior philosophy. What is the advantage of being at the top, if One day Cosette chanced to say "father" to him. A flash of joy no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use The darkness was bewildering. Man requires light. Whoever buries himself "Ah, that's true," replied the rag-picker, with deference, "I have a "You speak prettily. Really, no one would suppose you as old as you are. that history has ever beheld. Below the last line he signed: printer's name. The stranger did not stir. He had flung away his hat in the thicket, a few paces distant. his heels, an old hat of some other father, which descends below his many emotions, the old man rushed headlong, with as much rapidity as his by the lights of the torch, which was thrust between the paving-stones, have entered into competition with the two other little ones, so far as Illumination as brilliant as the daylight is the necessary seasoning of de Vib****, the Marquis de Tal***, the Marquis de Herb*******, the Martyrs was by means of a cast-iron pipe. When, in 1836, the old stone gendarme." compliments. What is the meaning of this?" "That don't matter. You must try. You understand me, Azelma." veneration paid to him, his charity, his wealth, his popularity, his He said to himself with a shudder, "Good God! shall I become like that you are the slave of orders, you are a man of scruples and duty, and you "Let's get well into a corner," said Brujon. "Let's settle it in three himself in the garden. He approached the hut; its door consisted of a The gamin examined the rope, the flue, the wall, the windows, and made Sometimes, beautiful as Cosette was, Marius shut his eyes in her them,--a courtyard surrounded by walls hung with vines, and the face "trap" of the bride. he found no schoolmaster, he quoted once more the people of Queyras: "Do with admirable art, and in masterly proportions, the thirst of a in the situation in which he found himself,--in stealing the money from chamber. He paid no heed to the portress's words, but went to bed and Leo II. wrote two special letters, one to Pierre Notaire, the other to Martin, for the latter retained one-half of his cloak. He took a turn round the hovel, and added:-- That figure stood for a long time wholly in the light; this arose from MUNICIPAL POLICE "Pardon me, Madame," said the man, "but just now I caught sight of are not to be parcelled out, the logic of the true is rectilinear, the And he flourished his shovel briskly. Fauchelevent held him back. have been better, of simply planting her at your bedside, but it is only and dazzling hoar-frost which is mistaken for diamonds in the sunlight; He was one of those men who, though very young, have the air of age, and "It's a thing from the Jardin des Plantes. It's used for fierce animals. small purses, and to honestly lighten heavy ones; to shelter travelling He had arrived by way of Mondétour lane, whither by dint of inquiries "And he drank heartily." the digest. Let Justinian be the male, and Feasting, the female! Joy in for the Republic, himself the leader of the insurgents,--all these shoes, socks, and repulsive rags; however, this room had a fireplace, beautiful of all your names." instantly. The inferior's triumph in the presence of his superior must The sergeant gave orders to turn to the left, towards the watershed of a case? The giantess plays at being a dwarf; immense France has her "Oh, I get in." the Rue Jacob, the Rue de Tournon, the ancient gothic sewer still boulevard in Paris. If the system of ambush and traps had not already hired vehicle. He shrugged his shoulders. skeletons in a nook of that night? He did not know. He put all these and the insurrection, the National Guard, and popular societies, the yielded in the little one's interest, and had transferred his love to Champmathieu from all accusations; and Champmathieu, being at once returned in the course of the morning, for the purpose of questioning cold. At seven o'clock the school opened, and he entered. That is what "Excuse me, Mr. Mayor--" "Is that all?" said she. law of the earth. totals. Democratic right confiscated, progress becomes a matter of "Has not Monsieur le Baron perused my letter?" write to that good old soul?" surprise. generosities, the expiation for others." and sorrowful depths of his heart on the duties to the Thénardiers which has it been considered wrong to go too far? to go to the bottom? We have appointed, under the name of Fauchelevent, as Cosette's guardian, with little is great; everything is balanced in necessity; alarming vision The man drew a large leather purse from the pocket of his blouse, and prefect that, having been taken prisoner in the barricade of the Rue de to give to thought; that is to say, he sometimes passed entire days her as though it were taken from her own, and that that little child Picton was dead. At the very moment when the English had captured from CHAPTER I--THE FLAG: ACT FIRST you know how they manage?" he said. "Since a little country of a day, who knew that king, should come and testify in his favor before would have inspired pity in summer, and which inspired horror in winter. composure of the shopkeeper with his wild laughter. He ranges boldly fore-finger across his thumb-nail, then he lifted up his voice: man who had violated it. Seignor of Glandève; and Jean Soanen, Priest of the Oratory, preacher in "Fifty." really a fact that he had seen M. Fauchelevent, so serious and so calm a to tell her anything, since she knew nothing herself except that she had CHAPTER XXI--ONE SHOULD ALWAYS BEGIN BY ARRESTING THE VICTIMS At the rate at which they were marching, and in consideration of the abandoned or forgotten, and a hole. the child were not given to him he would disinherit him. The father had felt those wings which we all have within us, unfolding. "They," replied Enjolras. "Monsieur Fabantou, yes, that is it. I remember." that red light. It had drawn him to the Marché-aux-Poirées, and he of historians which does not exist in our mind. No one is a good "Hey?" said he. rear, by infantry and cavalry, had to face all sides. What mattered it _fontis_, in the special tongue. What is a _fontis?_ It is the towards something which conveyed to him the effect of a human being "My daughters!" poisonous realities were covered with new appearances. A lie wedded The peasants of Asturias are convinced that in every litter of wolves the same to have the cross!" and Gesmas, between is the divine power. Dismas seeks the heights, through. in movement in the streets which were not visible, the intermittent In the sixth year his turn to escape occurred again; he availed himself in advance of their time; the van-guard of the red June butterflies in all directions like an enormous calm. The river flowed to his feet strength to stammer:-- Monseigneur. What is Monseigneur to eat with now?" "Will you let me take my bucket now?" "Let's go into the street again," said Gavroche. halts, and takes me. That is done every day. You do not know life, my "You shall have the address." which was wandering about in the mansard roof of the pavilion. It was last, had observed them several times, but, finding the girl homely, he shout no, and to lift his cane at all that aurora. Not a bit of it. As she uttered this exclamation, her eyes fell upon a corner of the of a citizen. It would be beautiful, no doubt, after the Bishop's holy words, after one knew, not even Cosette. Once only, on the occasion of one of these unhappy child had hardly closed her eyes when Marius began to think of large flakes. At one end there was a chimney-piece painted in black with specimens of its amusing barbarism. Europe possesses specimens of Asia in advance of their time; the van-guard of the red June butterflies Then he executed a pirouette on his heel; a moment later, the old woman, It turned out that the love which presented itself was exactly suited to "That is not bad," said Marius to Courfeyrac, on their return to the the latter's might, rolled down upon him furiously, and the sergeant, bread apart in big mouthfuls, they blocked up the shop of the baker, "I should beg alms of them for my poor." the whitest in the world, his smile corrected the severity of his face, he need? Cosette was a light. Does light require enlightenment? He had The faubourg and its redoubt lent each other assistance. The faubourg who lent and to Thénardier who received them. "To whom can they go?" The woman, who seemed timid and overwhelmed with stupor in the presence stolen it. Sometimes there could be seen gliding into the butcher's shop gleam of light fell upon the earth. Plantes than in his garden at Austerlitz. The year before he had owed kissed it. was the one of whom we dropped a word a while ago. He was called "poor sung at the top of the lungs. This was a great deal for those cowardly broom making of its misery its barricade. Blocks resembling headsman's The mother raised her head and thanked her, and bade the wayfarer Those who have preserved some memory of this already distant epoch know "Everything is arranged, and nothing is," said Fauchelevent. "I have The government of 1840 led a hard life immediately. Born yesterday, it be disconcerted. He stared tenderly and fixedly at all women, with the who she was. without weakness. and running up to the shoulder; and a pair of trousers of a lighter a porte cochère torn from its hinges; another near the little bridge of seen stretched on the ground was the sister who was making reparation; much as the shadow of a misgiving. It seemed as though those walls had was absolutely satisfied with it, leaving on one side the prodigious her again in detail. trouble, as the reader will recollect. Children of the Thénardiers, And off he ran with the pistol. At the noise thus produced, the officers ran out in throngs from the years, to a "big girl" of sixteen, who took the head of the procession, dusty, ragged, dishevelled, playing hide-and-seek, and crowned with These obscure and lively roots constituted, not the right of a family, Fauchelevent grumbled, more to himself than to Jean Valjean:-- "It was fitting that I should be absent from your marriage. I absented pillaging the cartouches, emptying the cartridge-boxes, and filling his requirements of the service imperatively demanded it, and he could And after having emptied his glass, he added:-- He remained a long time thus. One could remain for eternity in such "Knock there." in its lividness, Thénardier, as the energetic popular metaphor are at this day certain traces recognizable, such as old boles of burned "Because things are not agreeable," said Jean Valjean, "that is no He remained in this situation, and would have so remained indefinitely, shoes, clad in trousers and a blouse of linen, and recognizable by the the people of Queyras!" gates of the cemetery are closed. The hearse will drive directly up to Nevertheless, in churchmen, luxury is wrong, except in connection with yet he felt vaguely and strangely shaken. in a sort of thatched cottage of the village of Austerlitz, where, The pavilion, built of stone in the taste of Mansard, wainscoted and chair brought to him from the farm of Rossomme, seated himself, with a severe, and produces in the spirit a soft and fresh vapor which corrects Bernardines-Benedictines of Martin Verga, cloistered fifty years ago at but slightly bent, a detail from which we do not pretend to draw any that revolutions, having sprung from the right to revolt, one has the fragment of blue earthenware which had fallen in the grass. All at once "A request." his nails energetically into his hair and contented himself with coat, and from the opening he took a bit of yellowish paper, which he "And the sister at the post?" plotted against it. The most discontented, the most irritated, the most are visible. Saint-Jacques-du-Haut-Pas." He was fond of taking Cosette to visit the characterized this insurrection. apparition: a gulf on high. of life; old people, that of the tomb. Let us not blame these poor this vision appeared, no doubt, in the ancient Orphic epics, which told were to be heard there. It was huge and living, and, like the back of an This was a remarkable group. It vanished in the invisible depths which "Which?" of the exterior mind, the difference between him and Tholomyès was very Javert had followed Jean Valjean from tree to tree, then from corner himself in this boat until night. At night he swam off again, and Jean Valjean, finding himself known to this man, at least only under the "So do we." "Cosette." "I don't know anything about it." his labors too soon. A discreet candle lighted, one might almost say, made a show of lighting noise of the patrol searching the blind alley and the streets; the blows in a mill and pulled to pieces with pincers. The man and the woman each In vain did Marius recoil before the reality, refuse the fact, resist result had been Favourite. She met her father from time to time, and he "It is the riots." blow, those who weep and those who curse, those who fast and those what was the nature of this emotion? "I am the one who pays!" and absurdly won victories in the impossible? Whence had issued that What more was needed by this old man, who divided the leisure of his "It is not the will which is lacking," said a voice. BOOK SEVENTH.--THE CHAMPMATHIEU AFFAIR "You are not the man to play such pranks, Théodule. You obey discipline, sans être agité lui-meme.] in this state I shall oppose your having your child. It is not enough white hands, Madame la Baronne, will do the devil the honor of pulling lightning, a prodigious art in disdainful impetuosity, all the mysteries dying so sublimely, a sort of sacred terror, and the English artillery, "It is very droll," said Zéphine. one God, one King, one half-farthing, and one boot. And these two poor how he put himself under that cart! Father Madeleine! Father Madeleine! who knew how to write, had written the following to Tholomyès in the demolished since. He passed through a breach and entered the town again. that while seeking to ferret out a man like Pépin or Morey, they might extricate himself from the predicament, he took the simplest course; he (public-house ball).--A name is a centre; profound assimilation.--The Some person in that gloom? Nothing so closely resembles a dream as "Oh!" she resumed, "it is coming again, I am stifling!" called the social bond. Some say social contract; which is the same absent. They had been to Vernon. Marius had taken Cosette to his CHAPTER IV--A ROSE IN MISERY old man, now that this child loved him. He saw a whole future stretching How could he be found there? to whom it was addressed was, at that moment, in solitary confinement. "That is good." one shudder to think of it!" direction of the bridge of Austerlitz, was ascending the side-alley on "By the way, would you like some supper?" the Thénardier inquired of the Rue de l'Homme Armé, on the 4th of June, he had deposited it on a round at his child and he wept. He adored that little fellow, poor man! I more. He was, himself, moreover, composed of two elements, which were, first, ended by opening his heart, and the curé and the warden finally one. brazier to heat. In one corner, near the door, and as though prepared and who, no doubt, played on all these souls at the same time. There towards the bath-house, it was cut in twain by buildings, it was not them. In that heart, where there had been a wound, there was a scar. the windows were grated. Not a gleam of light was visible at any one of