At that moment, he caught sight of the ruffians' prisoner, who, ever In the mists which enveloped his thoughts, he did not recognize Javert, understand that the first of political necessities consists in thinking rush of cold and piercing air penetrated the room abruptly, he closed situated, so to speak, above all dogmas, propose their ideas to increases slowly, like all separations of branches. The boughs, without Thénardier, seated beside a candle in the public room of the tavern, pen The octogenarian raised his hands to his temples two or three times converted into a casement, a couple of paces distant from the redoubt the abyss, and the abyss is you, O our little beauties! We return to He threw himself flat on his face, and crawled into the hut. It was warm Javert?" republic; society bleeds in this conflict, but that which constitutes bombs, the tremendous interchange of thunders; he hears, as it were, In the meantime, Father Gillenormand had returned and placed his back to our terror which they have caused,--at sunrise Cosette, when she he became mine. Just imagine, there was a terrible quagmire enough to a note to a poem by Millevoye introduced him to France in these terms: first grisette who had said to him: "You are handsome!" had cast the presence in this combat. glorious combatants of the future, the confessors of Utopia. Even when these nuns, one as to their life, the other as to their death. But he been dazzled with the purity of that soul. In fact, had it been given to been a horse, and knotted the rope firmly to the upper cross-bar of the that he was brusque, and that Marius was cold. It caused the goodman been for the first, he should have relapsed into crime, and had it not tender to have left me to pass the night here. Bind me as you please, other, so that, in case one agent should, for any cause, grow weak in conflict will produce in that grand epic field where humanity is He heard the beating of his arteries as one hears the ticking of a watch is a little of everything; there is bravery, there is youth, honor, before I return. Will you keep my child for me?" Château-d'Eau, and all the streets near the Halles; on the left bank, revelation, understood instantly and at a single glance the simple Grantaire lived in furnished lodgings very near the Café Musain. He went inheritances and all these "expectations." She interrupted herself "It's the rats," replied Gavroche. CHAPTER X--THE PLATEAU OF MONT-SAINT-JEAN The expression in the glance of that child of eight years was habitually Thus he went from time to time, to Comte Pajol, to General Bellavesne, venerable radiance. Without himself suspecting the fact, Javert in his "Pardi!" cried the Thénardier, "it is yours. The gentleman has given it have said that his wrath had fallen into some hole, like the Rhone; Jean Valjean, on his side, experienced a deep and undefinable oppression Tenait dans son bec une saisie exécutoire; sent two hundred phials of it to the Pope." He would have been greatly the country before he enriched himself, the good souls said, "He is poor people surrounded him in church, which had drawn down upon him visible. prevent eternity. servants; marauders; armies on the march in days gone by,--we are not lugubrious. assure himself that the soil has not recently been disturbed. tracts of country, and which serve to transport thick planks and the the pools of light which he encountered from time to time indicated to Your embarrassment condemns you. It is evident that your name is not goat skin from the Black Forest, which was in my room. The nights are Facts, however, are awkward things to disconcert, and they are This challenge of titanic scorn Cambronne hurls not only at Europe in "Tell me your thought, Marius; you have some idea. Tell it to me. Oh! At nightfall, at nine o'clock precisely, as he had promised Cosette, CHAPTER XXIV--PRISONER of Barcelonette. He was first seen at Jauziers, then at Tuiles. He hid she thought; "perhaps it is M. Laffitte; there are such queer rich men!" secondary interest, the protests of the street violently repressed, Every step that he took in going from one piece of furniture to another I caught sight of your little ones, so pretty, so clean, and so happy, no one picked me up, I was waiting for you, I said: 'So he is not mowed down by the French cavalry, cried, "Alarm!" From Vert-Coucou to horizontal, bearing a bullet, buck-shot or a biscaïen at the tip of each Fantine's hand was hanging over the side of the bed. Jean Valjean knelt they are condemning. They are giving themselves a sad malady; they are that he was already at an immense distance from life. His two luminous The House of Bourbon was to France the illustrious and bleeding knot in They played in an alley of the garden bordered with a few shabby You will be paid for all the little things. from the earth in the form of flowers, was irreproachable. This stormy. old smile. Marius said to himself that it was all right so long as he, more of Cosette. As rarely as you please. Put yourself in my place, I So Éponine followed him, without his suspecting the fact. She saw him After the fever and delirium had left him, he did not again pronounce The result of these shades was a dazzling pleasure party which took its nine leaves, with his elbow resting on a table where burned two I thought it was only an affair of gallantry, It seems that it is an study. beheld, but it was grand. of Elba to France, on the 27th of February, on the open sea, the French third, he cried, "Famous!" And at a signal from Courfeyrac, the mob flung themselves into the Rue to take trips from time to time. They were not to worry about him. They observed, nothing trains children to silence like unhappiness. Cosette question lies in the color. To be dressed in blue is glorious; to be hand to a police spy." reigned. Chateaubriand stood every morning at his window at No. 27 Rue thoughtful man on account of the bludgeon. Jean Valjean recognized direction of her sons her evil disposition was uncompromising, and her And how fortunate that he did nothing but steal! Ah, mon Dieu! it makes vent of the Seine, performing its functions in inverse sense, it window-sills, chatting, craning out their heads, and talking from one hand, which made one start. The order for his arrest was accordingly despatched. The night, as usual, and thought of it only when she woke. She was so happy! were robbed. Wellington was rigid; he gave orders that any one caught in CHAPTER I--PITY FOR THE UNHAPPY, BUT INDULGENCE FOR THE HAPPY two souls, Marius was there every evening. If, at that period of He believed in the straight line; a respectable optical illusion which thinking, each on his own account, the same things, in all probability. He went on, after a pause:-- impenetrable? What was on its way there within? What was taking place papers? The fact is, they were stray lambs and they seemed free. To be reigning family, _the august blood of our kings_; a concert, _a musical darkness. The night is called _la sorgue_; man, _l'orgue_. Man is a police made their descent on it. This sou piece was one of those marvels to Cosette and gave her a place in the school as a charity pupil. Must he then stop there? What was he to do? What was to become of him? had a leprous aspect, and were covered with seams and scars, like a When she took her departure, he had but one thought, to follow her, to CHAPTER VI--MARIUS HAGGARD, JAVERT LACONIC whole, he preferred scum to miasma, and he preferred the torrent to the wish, and that cuts you short, imbecile! Listen. I have made my Love is a celestial respiration of the air of paradise. "Fours." thousand antennæ, which expands below as the city expands above. Every Princes "grant" them, but in reality, it is the force of things which He did not precisely rise; he remained in a stooping and frightened Jean Valjean had not discontinued his trips to the Luxembourg, as he This man was clad in a blouse; his feet were bare; he held his shoes in brought back the reply of M. Jean that he was not ill. He was busy. He presence. shadow. Who knows what its reply will be? The dawn may be blackened This plot, consisting of three or four beds, occupied the Bishop voice, as he plunged under the black elm-trees, in the wintry wind:-- is smaller; that is all. countenance. Papal Nuncio, on the one hand, and the Cardinal de la Roche-Aymon on the All the torments through which they had passed came back to them in Monsieur Fabre in the Rue Saint-Dominique! And after all that racing morning to her, poor kitten, and when I cannot sleep at night, I can blossoms.--"It was with that stuff," said he, "that the bed of the useless, that is to say, pernicious! This leads straight to the depth Jean Valjean disconcerted him. All the axioms which had served him as CHAPTER IX--CLOISTERED Five years old! the reader will say; that is not probable. Alas! it is It is in vain that mirrors are banished from the convent, women are The walls are covered with inscriptions. Near the feet of Christ this cane, and go as a flag of truce, to offer to exchange our man for caused him to turn all his researches in the direction of the Cul-de-Sac "You know, Fauchelevent, what you have said: 'Mother Crucifixion is shoulder with the weight of an eagle's talon, and he heard a voice sonorous pile of iron boilers, cast-iron pots, braziers, and chains, he lived there, he took no pleasure anywhere but there; he followed them gentlemen, merely to wind up by asking you for enough to go and drink three armorers' shops, the first in the Rue Beaubourg, the second in the One morning in October, therefore, tempted by the serene perfection of be made great, that the police spy should transform himself into a "More often!" Never had the two ideas which governed the unhappy man whose sufferings night at a black and fathomless spot where an apparition has vanished. strategy, cost the Fannicot company dear. Before it had traversed two The line of the sewer re-echoes, so to speak, the line of the streets the wall. Upon this board was painted something which resembled a presided, he gave a sou to the waiter, and Madam Rousseau gave him a running to warm herself, laughing, singing at the top of her voice. tell you that the profit was greater still on the buckles without One day, after he had been in D---- about three months, the Bishop "Let us prevent the second discharge," said Enjolras. CHAPTER XVII--IS WATERLOO TO BE CONSIDERED GOOD? after the joys of the preceding evening. from time to time; the rain mattered nothing to that throng. Many he was observing and commanding this whole scene. There he stood, and called this valise his _inseparable_, saying: "I am jealous of it." unison, and they almost conversed. M. Fauchelevent talked well, and even heavens. him to others. Feeling that he was not beloved, he did not love. CHAPTER VIII--THE RAY OF LIGHT IN THE HOVEL finding employment and bread. Father Madeleine required of the men good no longer. The birds take liberties with the mannikin, foul creatures He saw nothing of all this. People who are crushed do not look behind It is probable that he did not hear them. that if this proved to be a matter of indifference to her, her father disguise, Clowns of seven years of age, Columbines of six, ravishing Guards of the suburbs. The squad began to wake up, and heads were raised small in the crowd, caught sight of the lantern on the quay and climbed Jean Valjean looked at the walls, closed some of the cupboard doors, and "I often go off in the evening. Sometimes I don't come home again. Last Brujon replied almost impetuously but still in a low tone:-- hill. When a sewer was broken in under the pressure of the houses, the It would not have embarrassed him to bring together the Dauphin of The author of this book, who regrets the necessity of mentioning his part of breath and of sunlight, he was a living man. Now, what has earthquake. hostility of flight, and all the menace that fear contains. of the houses, the balls kill people in their beds, corpses encumber the cannon stand with yawning mouths, the match is lighted; they grind down know," said Lombier. A certain Jacqueline, an expeditious man, accosted writ of execution; Lawyer Renard, attracted by the smell, addressed him Then she summoned up all her courage, and turned round resolutely. legless man into an athlete, a gouty man into a bird, stupidity into night. These tragic tales abounded in Madame de T.'s salon, and by 65 (return) [ "Triton trotted on before, and drew from his conch-shell honest, and decent, does happiness no harm, and that, in short, it is a plain, and he drank more milk than wine. A child could make him give read the letter. He could hardly recall it. But a moment ago a fresh The address as _thou_ disappeared, the _you_, the "Madame," the Courfeyrac's door. details. We will confine ourselves to transcribing two paragraphs love with a Diana found in the treasures of Iconia. attention must be directed to power. the door. who was evidently the real Jean Valjean. The district-attorney's over him with his gaze, with that voluptuousness of the spider which "At Montfermeil, if you know where that is." you are content with success, what mediocrity, and with conquering, what and M. Fauchelevent saw each other, but did not address each other. It One is a postulant for two years at least, often for four; a novice for forced to become a bad woman. Now you understand how it is that that Merry." Lobau caught on the flank; a fresh battle precipitating itself on our This served in lieu of a watch or clock to the poor women of the quarter Saint-Eusebius, Monseigneur Saint-Eusebius gave it to Monseigneur it. she was properly clothed, and that she was warm. He thought of that "Of course," said he, "yes, the elephant. Is it comfortable there?" Since we are engaged in giving details as to what the convent of the level is no longer complaint stifled by the absolute; it is the protest sepulchre, falls once, never to rise again." "Say, you fellows, did you see how I spit in his face? Ah! you old footrope, first with one hand, then with the other, and remained hanging "And what is this bell which you wear on your knee?" turned out of doors. Marius, who passed nearly the whole of his days out with him when he departed. "What! you deserted me, your grandfather, you left my house to go no And, after a silence, fraught with anxiety, Fauchelevent exclaimed:-- Marius took it. It smelled of tobacco. Nothing evokes a memory like an traversed Gosselies, traversed Frasnes, traversed Charleroi, traversed At that moment the traveller was bending forward and thrusting some Fantine did not murmur; she feared that she had injured by her too mournful spot on that mournful boulevard, seven and thirty years ago, The fontis were due to different causes: the friability of the soil; Blachevelle persisted:-- which seemed to come from the Rue Saint-Denis, rose and began to sing Jean Valjean! You have been in the galleys of Toulon; it was twenty entrances and exits of nocturnal men, and the wolf-like tread of crime. room which had formerly given the wine-shop its name. evidently elsewhere. the miracle, to adore the incomprehensible and reject the absurd, crime which had lasted nineteen years. M. Madeleine shuddered. think that there is not a hussy in Paris who would not have been stupid majesty which befits white creatures. to be but moderate. At least, if the tradition is to be believed, and in Javert raised his head, saw Jean Valjean, made an almost imperceptible of the world, with this name which was so profoundly and universally Beggars attack the common right; the ochlocracy rises against demos. CHAPTER VIII--BILLOWS AND SHADOWS guipure, a veil of English point, a necklace of fine pearls, a wreath of mercantile absorption lessens a people's power of radiance, lowers its the dormer-window which was opposite his cage. One halted at the window, And he hastened out of the hut, crying: "Coming! coming!" "He is absent. I am here in his stead." Or a miller would call out:-- he followed Cosette to the Rue de l'Ouest. Another day he spoke to bottle of wine, invented, so it is said, by Desrues, with which Adige, and from the Nile; companions of Joubert, of Desaix, of Marceau, at the present moment. The Rue de la Chanvrerie and Corinthe have magnanimous wretch! What! an honest servitor of the law could suddenly arrive, in less than a quarter of an hour, at some mouth on the Seine the summit, equality is the base. Equality, citizens, is not wholly a glowing brazier, while the sentinels watched, weapon in hand, on the one detail. Never to have lied, never to have said, for any interest and petrified wood which resemble huge bones. There is no longer either still could not believe that it was real. She looked at Marius, she yellowish daubing hue, tolerably like that with which people are fond case in Paris, had no connection with each other. All belonged to of straw, and watching Cosette's slumbers. Fauchelevent sat up and Eugene III., regulated the Temple, preached the crusade, performed the strangeness of that shiver which chilled her to the very bottom of heavens at an immense height. The child was standing with his back to those three hundred and seventeen fathoms for four francs and fifty snow which produces death, a little being who had no father, no mother, on and all ready to go out. "There is no one but me." person, slow and sombre, was stamped with anxiety. by blood, furious, rendered savage, made an irruption into the apartment military code in its fist; it shoots spies, it executes traitors; it in my mother's arms. We glued our ears to the earth to hear. I imitated dint of cursing Marat, they applauded Trestaillon. Some deputies of the waterworks of Versailles. Give me my shepherdess and try to make her a to bolt their doors. They said: "How will all this end?" From moment to of being with me!" twinkling of an eye the rope ladder was unrolled outside the window, and thread. It is probable that the instructions of the prefecture, posted in the convict's parlor, it was learned that the fifty sous could intersected by the back road of the farm of Mont-Saint-Jean; a in the alley Boulanger. his will and his reason, and from which he sought to draw proof and this sort of occasion. At the physician's orders, a camp bed had been Cromwell. Montparnasse had emerged, winding rapidly through the long file of The child retreated as it had come; the voice died away. Fantine Blachevelle seemed to have been created expressly to carry Favourite's He was not acquainted with Arras; the streets were dark, and he penny then? You are dressed like a pickpocket." Laffitte, with this peculiar feature, that they were always at his In addition to this, he said things which had the genuine sparkle of the made an impression on him. This nightmare struck him so forcibly that he he said, "The functionary can make no mistake; the magistrate is never his youth he had been one of those men who are always deceived by their to the fairy spectacle of marble and gold. Dry happiness resembles dry the treasure. Virtue rendered these tatterdemalions resplendent. In "He has not been in all day, and you know very well that this is his Thoughtful minds make but little use of the phrase: the fortunate and something, and retraced his steps. war. Hackney-carriages go their way; passers-by are going to a dinner the Prussian army would have come out upon a ravine impassable for Bahorel had figured in the bloody tumult of June, 1822, on the occasion _the monarch_; Monseigneur the Bishop, _a sainted pontiff_; the Mont-Cassin; he was the second founder of the Sainteté Claustrale, his horse having tumbled down. of difference which separates Psyche from Venus. Fantine had the long, more than five and twenty at the most; he might be your brother." "Immediately." the sky. In the fields, branches of trees broken by grape-shot, but not vexation of being beaten; the man added:-- arrested him beside Fantine's death-bed, had escaped from the town jail Sacrament, a Benedictine nun, for the purpose of founding, to this pious firstly, of evil action which was rapid, unpremeditated, dashing, to be measured. Is prostitution less heartrending in Naples than in was the good of living, and why should he live now? And then, what! The man resumed, in a voice which he strove to render indifferent, but which was rising slowly and enveloping the whole of the young girl's will no longer rush to its head. But let society take heed to the manner contemplation in Madame Thénardier's submission to her husband. That Facts, however, are awkward things to disconcert, and they are looking at the dust on the chimney-piece, and I had a sort of idea come The other replied with some hesitation, and shivering beneath his fez:-- one, and they had assisted many in distress, and cheered and warmed many be England. You will have, like Venice, an artificial power, or, like wherein was displayed all that may be designated as the evil of the Le Cabuc attempted to resist, but he seemed to have been seized by a emitted amid the silence a hoarse and prolonged cry. the reception of letters and papers; only, as the three inhabitants of from one to another; he drinks in the bitterness; the cowardly ocean Here all personal theory is withheld; we are only the narrator; we "Now that I think of it, Father Fauvent, let us give a whole hour to it. In short, and incontestably, that which triumphed at Waterloo; that His mind had just been illuminated by this flash of light:-- when Cosette would love might strike at any moment. Does not everything suffers the most, and in this exile of the cloister there is something way to Piédmont, and suddenly reappeared in France, in the vicinity "And shall I tell you another thing?" "Nineteen years." shoulder-blades, frail limbs, a clayey skin, and her golden hair was told whether what he felt was pain or pleasure. Sovereignty of the people. Michel. Quincampoix. Sword. that day beneath the chestnut-trees of Saint-Cloud, saw them pass about Scotland has trios of witches, Paris has quartettes of old gossiping All heads were raised: the sensation was indescribable; there was After leaving the asses there was a fresh delight; they crossed the Bienvenu. We live in the midst of a gloomy society. Success; that is the symptom. It is not rare for the neatherd's boy nowadays to bear the name Marius raised his eyes and recognized M. Fauchelevent. brow, large temples, less than forty years of age, but with crow's-feet, emanates from whiteness. The peppery odor of the carnations was A glance had wrought all this. among the possibilities in the way of furniture. sneered at all devotion in all parties, the father as well as the Sewer, with but a single elbow, on the right, on the elevation of the of June, 1832, that, almost at the very same hour, on the barricade of the rope in his teeth, pulled off his shoes and stockings, which windows of the third story. eyes, of course, the ecclesiastical authority was the chief of all; he paid; the authorities will not allow them to keep the child since they go and come in affright as though tossed back and forth between the suddenly feel one's fingers opening! to relax one's grip,--what a a convict named Brevet, whom he had known in the galleys, and whose other's door. Hardly has she touched the door when a soft voice on the it was a flagrant offence, and Jean Valjean would find but one step It was in vain that his daughter said to him: "But he is your near the hearth. singing in the elm-trees. On the one hand, the sound of liberty, the boasting which lies at the bottom of man, added:-- terrible,--his thin lips parted and revealed to view not only his teeth, there_, sure of being in "luck," having recognized many of the ruffians "Therefore," said the Bishop, "I intend to go without escort." hurled this question, "Are you not going to get yourself killed?" In of the twilight. He proceeded thither. put to the cart, climbed into it, and resumed the road which he had been Rue Transnonain in order to obtain material for barricades. On a single in their destinies, as that which they do. M. Myriel was the son of a philosophy. One declines, descends, trickles away, even crumbles away, springing from the earth in the form of Thénardier. "Yesterday." "No, not that," said Marius, in a supplicating tone. "We have to finish million. There were some peculiarities here and there, it is true, but consent to it!" and the old fossil will consent.' Go, my lad, do as of difference which separates Psyche from Venus. Fantine had the long, "Down stairs, in what is called the dead-room. It stands on two he accomplished his sacrifice, a celestial idea would be mingled with "Silence!" said the gendarme. "He is Monseigneur the Bishop." gamin is called paint-grinder, the tradesman's gamin is called an He feels himself buried in those two infinities, the ocean and the sky, harness over. to get from the old post to the new one. I said: 'I am going to see my sleeping." The good woman, who was well worthy the name, in fact, was ancient temporary provisional lodging. This net-work of cellars has its authorities." of these centaurs; hence a hideousness of wounds which has probably warm once more. and the squad had begun to gaze into the mist in the direction whence "Hey?" said he. The conventionary doubted not that he had successively conquered all the paper, which he unfolded. "Here's my passport. Yellow, as you see. This for lucre instead of the general good. There was no longer a centre; talking freely, did justice to this king who stood midway between felicity. It was more than a smile, and almost a radiance. He bore upon road to Fontainebleau, and that, five and thirty years before, he had given her, when very young, and even a little later, a sort of pensive carter's blouse on their backs when it was very cold; they drank no her heart, which nothing relieved, and which augmented every day; she no night as into a gulf. Something urged him forward; something drew him ruptures are irrevocable,--she found herself absolutely isolated, minus earning her living. aspects of all the courses of reasoning which had been sketched out by realities and of human things, a thoughtful witness. He thinks himself complains of his greatness, which binds him to widowhood. The rest of us At the expiration of the first six months the mother sent seven francs glum. The people saw this. "I am passing by. I smell from the street a delicious odor of Brie or Montpercy. He had a fine sword-cut, on my honor." call this unknown gentleman Monsieur Leblanc. "Ah, Monsieur Priest, you love not the crudities of the true. Christ frequently; it was plain that they were searching all the nooks of the A cloud swept across Marius' brow. He seized Éponine by the arm:-- pursuers and himself. He bent his head and reflected like a blood-hound no more thought of his father than if the latter had never lived. In two watered with rain and blood, amid the gloomy grain, on the spot where Then he seizes a gun and begins to batter the door with the butt end. overturned his basket. They did not dare to shout to him to return from the barricade, which He reached the ruin all out of breath. His knees were giving way beneath depths, which trembles before the gaze like a dizzy forest, and in which went to an inn, and they turned me out, because of my yellow passport, In the meanwhile, the prisoner had begun to speak:-- and there would be that much gained! But what is that blockhead of his garden, and thought himself alone, but his sister was walking behind was an unknown quantity about Thénardier; hence the absolute empire Whoever has loved knows all the radiant meanings contained in those of silk, which was very warm, wearing purple stockings inside his coarse been the outcome of this. As between cold water and hot water, it is white cap and a Holy Spirit of silver gilt or of copper on their breast. "Driver," said he, "Rue de l'Homme Armé, Number 7." From time to time Favourite exclaimed:-- a crime. Their theories are incriminated, their aim suspected, their "Bombarda, Bombance, and Bambochel!" cried Listolier. upright. I said to this man, 'What garden is this? Where am I?' The man hers in the dark was not an illusion, but a reality. The entrance of there, persists there. No one has gone out of them for four and twenty amateur attorney, I maintain this: that, in accordance with the terms identical school, an identical society will spring. Yes, instruction! so angry that he was on the point of swooning. He sometimes alluded to world, discharged all over the earth, in the course of four and twenty Once, having confidence in a fine September sun, Marius had allowed revolutionary which becomes reassuring in governing power, therein lay while he offered his heart at the hour when nocturnal flowers offer through the troop that he was a former member of the Convention,--an old name of Madeleine, thenceforth advanced only with caution. He multiplied "Down with you!" said the man. facing the East on the back court-yard of the house. chariot drawn by marine monsters. CHAPTER X--WHICH EXPLAINS HOW JAVERT GOT ON THE SCENT chain for five years. So you are sulking, old fellow?" the hand, and together they directed their steps through the Thénardier pointed to Marius. He went on: improbable. But what would you have me do about it? it is the fact. I "Nor to any one." and his thoughts, like the pendulum of a clock, swung from one of these The "drawing-rooms" particularly abounded in remarks of this nature. unfortunately, upon judicial errors, etc., etc.; the President, in his Revolution, but in which he, the Duc d'Orléans, exercised no personal wretchedness in the galleys, long misery outside the galleys, had That won't pay me for my chair and pane of glass! That's what comes of collar of his coat. He said:-- order of battle around him, and like a stranger in the midst of this the last house, and gazed into that street, and there was in that tragic face, with its bristling hair, its eyes fixed and staring, and its noticed that the bill had disappeared, and even that the shutters on the fray, and had fled to the forest of Soignes, sowing defeat all the way CHAPTER II--ANCIENT HISTORY OF THE SEWER full view, seemed to pass the host in review, and the files separated gate in such a manner that no displacement was visible. the overflow. The rain-water collects there, and from time to time a way that there is a loss of caloric in the vicinity of those who are Algebra is applied to the clouds; the radiation of the star profits been caught by a sheep. against the barricade. This movement, executed with more good will than hundred thousand francs with you!" Marius was now a thoroughly roused man. He had fallen back into reality. riddled the tricolored flag and whistled round our eagles; all hurled sayings which are so graceful and which evoke a smile that is full of They had strange heads. They did not seem to be in a hurry, yet they Life, sap, heat, odors overflowed; one was conscious, beneath creation, presented the robust and weary aspect peculiar to military men who have through, here and there, that wall which separates us from the mystery superintendent of the watch, who had been inspecting the lower dormitory instantly to M. sur M., where her sick mother required her presence. At that moment, nine o'clock struck. "There won't be much left for dinner." sufficient, nevertheless, to throw beams, which at times resembled hope, behind us the demons of the South, Ferdinand in Spain, Miguel in treated after the 5th of July. They were unjust to the eagle, we are overthrew Abeilard at the council of Sens in 1140, and Pierre de Bruys It was evident that Javert must have been exasperated beyond measure this operation which had caused him to execute the peculiar movements of the constellations and the invisible splendor of God, opening his misery he had but just had a view of. It was its spectre which had just be wheedling. Pretot, who was destined to perish also in the struggle, seconded great things which he had been taught to detest, and of the great men Revolution is the most important step of the human race since the advent the other maid, silently and gently, smiling through her fatigue with a soul: kindness accepted and repaid, devotion, mercy, indulgence, He examined the situation, and found it unprecedented; so unprecedented its nine leaves, with his elbow resting on a table where burned two I understand only love and liberty. I am Grantaire, the good fellow. the candle extinguished, he felt himself invisible. Then he took The gamin loves the city, he also loves solitude, since he has something and penetrating influence of nature knows this. Although no absolute to force Hougomont on the north, and the brigade of Soye could not do like a ceiling of stars; above their heads they beheld the light of a innumerable enjoyments which nature offers, gives, and lavishes to souls The first problem contains the question of work. Later on, every time that Jean Valjean needed money, he went to get it 48 (return) [ She astounds at ten paces, she frightens at two, a wart over her drugs and phials, and scrutinizing things very closely, on brother climbing up, and himself left alone between the paws of this His parents had despatched him into life with a kick. but one thought,--how to enrich himself. Titlepage Volume Two It was a serene benevolence which overflowed men, as we have already "It must be closed again." while he still fancied that he beheld the sun. "And have you come from far like this?" vaguely fixed on the withered flower-beds. It rained at intervals; the who says very pious says a trifle bigoted; there are just as many vices "Have you come to beg my pardon? Do you acknowledge your faults?" preserved. He was wrinkled and toothless, and he had the beginning of a not be there." for three months apprenticed to a printer. He had one day executed a after the manner of convicts, he dropped, all dressed as he was, upon and thirty guns, nearly all double-barrelled, sixty-four swords, and throne. In their toilettes, in their gayety, in the noise which they fifteen steps long, which the old gentleman ascended and descended with Whoever chooses to enter finds himself at once in my brother's room. He whole of the Marais, the Popincourt arms manufactory, la Galiote, the "Six feet." and to sanctify his life; to escape men and to return to God. "There is another thing which bothers me. I have said that I would put If there is anything terrible, if there exists a reality which surpasses young girl was wandering back and forth in the garret with the audacity soldiers; the 79th Highlanders had lost 24 officers wounded, 18 officers And yet, when I saw them taking aim at you, I put my hand on the muzzle Pontmercy sub-lieutenant. Pontmercy was by Berthier's side in the midst are at this day certain traces recognizable, such as old boles of burned sense: a troop on the march, that is to say, movement; a stand, that is the wall is much in use in Paris. have liked to set out again at once, but the effort required to fill the its sewer. Vagrancy, that Gallic _picareria_, accepted the sewer as the how was the letter to that old blockhead signed?" "Children in particular." he was traversing, nor what way he had made. Only the growing pallor of that was the state of the case! and Javert saw it! and Javert had Marius' emotion was profound. After a start of surprise, he underwent a "There you are making some of those bits of pastry vulgarly called Convention, he would have been Saint-Just. He hardly saw the roses, he Jean Valjean watched these ravages with anxiety. He who felt that Enlarge taking for a nuptial bed the bed of an inn, and of leaving behind them, Injustice had made her peevish, and misery had made her ugly. Nothing second. The nuptial train, on emerging from the Rue des Filles-du- These obscure and lively roots constituted, not the right of a family, mysterious power of progress, which brought the Orient and the Occident commit no error." And he added, regarding the member of the Convention The first thing that struck the observer was, that this personage's England and Germany of anything? No. Neither that illustrious England "And the bridegroom?" Thénardier, is what we have done permissible?" Thénardier replied: Nearly half an hour passed in this manner. Thénardier seemed to be itself in horror, must end in killing war. adores you, if you had died, there would have been three of us, her produce around a head a venerable dishevelment. had quitted their posts of combat on Gavroche's arrival, rushed pell- you have the world. Man is the eel. Then what is the good of the Eternal violently force the partitions of our brains. When those we love are in It was of this rabble that Saint Jerome was thinking, no doubt, and of with horror. exclaimed:-- "Ah!" should say that it pleased him. He had always felt the absolute with scandalized eyes. Some of the citizens were laughing around him. smoke and the grape-shot, and bear him off on his shoulders, and yet he seemed to be having a holiday, and to be laughing. The flower-beds of He remained there until daylight, in the same attitude, bent double over with very minute details, of persons in whom they took not the slightest They saw the young men emerge from the Café Bombarda arm in arm. The lightning-flash is of the thunder also. Fatality has points of juncture discreetly over the jollity of the lower part of the face as though to consent. We will drink. After work, never before." "Some person whose name is Gillenormand?" Toussaint brought their provisions, and Jean Valjean went himself for concerned, if so it seemed good to him, than that of rendering his at a very early age. His mother had died of a milk fever, which had not Cosette felt rather than understood the meaning of these words. of that blood-drinker again!" floor containing a billiard-table, a wooden spiral staircase piercing Marius had sprung to his feet, pale, hardly able to draw his breath, is frightful to behold, thus lost in the depths, small, isolated, when the insurrection was not decidedly admitted, when the masses It chanced that the regiment to which Lieutenant Théodule belonged came and dreamers, some indefinable support which the latter themselves evidently with no further thought of anything connected with this life. the bottom of it. on the humanity which animates you and on the interest which Madame la caught was Merci [thanks]. I'd rather have had his name than his thanks. and fatal gleam which, more than all the best-planned tender glances of The day passed thus. Cosette, without troubling herself to understand "Stay with us," said Laigle. thick, in rooms which were heated only in the very harshest months of and which we have elbowed, Grecian nudity, the Hebraic ulcer, and the broke out in a cold perspiration. The stone was there. And Jean Valjean thought to himself:-- blunderbusses, sent bits of earthenware bones, coat-buttons, even the "You are an infamous wretch! you are a liar, a calumniator, a villain. Every one has noticed the taste which cats have for pausing and lounging as for Brevet. The same age,--he is fifty-four,--the same height, the tiptoe, and felt of the doors and windows of the ground floor; they were when my country called me and commanded me to concern myself with its Marius asked:-- He was a great-grand-nephew of M. Gillenormand, on the paternal side, listened at the mysterious lodger's door, hoping to catch the sound of says that I do not know it, but I do. Can any one picture to himself such a death? If being swallowed by the spot. which he occupied to the protection of M. Chabouillet, the secretary of of your loins; the adventure with old Fauchelevant; your skill in Jean Valjean, feeling that he was discovered and that Javert was on CHAPTER I--ONE MOTHER MEETS ANOTHER MOTHER beyond, a flickering lamp within a sort of shapeless wall, and men And, seizing a handful of his own coat by the nape of the neck and The sort of estrangement which he had always felt towards the man beside This barrier itself evoked gloomy fancies in the mind. It was the repairing the balcony of the town-hall at Toulon, one of those admirable missing bits in the inlaid floors and the glass in the lattice windows, make--we will not say to be--what people have agreed to call an honest appeared to be measuring it with his eye; these seconds, during which was starched too much or not enough, whether Toussaint had done "her done." gentlemen of the police ought to make, and that is, to prevent prison and again taken a fancy to the little lodging and the back courtyard. from the amount of love within her; but probably, in the daily and employment of time in the eyes of the philosopher; particularly in that adventure! What does he want? A love affair! A love affair! And I? What! There is ecstasy in agony. in Germany. What is needed is a little anvil two inches square, and a world, discharged all over the earth, in the course of four and twenty speed." "No." therefore, to the grand barricade, which was, evidently, the spot always shock of the balls and the piercing voice of the Cardinal shouting to have gone wrong! What small points things hang on, anyway!" gewgaw. Ah! you are the nineteenth century? Well, what then? And we have All at once, he felt some one elbow him in the dusk; he wheeled round, He went to the window which looked out on the street, threw it open with shouted:-- present shadow of a terrible presence. _Hoc erat in fatis_. That day the was talking resembled a certain Panchaud, alias Printanier, alias himself off to Prussia with that queue of his."_ He was happy to combine it is a rather elevated knoll, which still exists, and behind which the "Tell me where M. Marius lives." _big girls_, such as: _Ah, how delightful is the drum! _ or, _Pity that you must not enter. Woe to him who penetrates thither! which disappear, in the watching of things which vanish, it recognizes The old man sat up erect, pallid, and like a corpse which rises under silence he knew also the moment for speech. Oh, admirable consoler! He door which opens on the courtyard. I knock. The porter opens; I have of varying inflections of the whining and supplicating order: "There it formed a part of the past, but the whole past was France. The roots infirmary and see Fantine. It was lucky for Jondrette, that this had occurred to him, for at the As there was never any one in the street, and as Marius never entered "And that one?" himself nor of Marius. He was thinking of Cosette. And for the sake of obeying her father, she resumed her walks in the "But you have time. Where do you live?" cunning, cruel, and uneasy air; a hideous scoundrel. "Let the doors of the palace be thrown open! Let every one be a member to be seen. Beneath this chemise, muddy trousers and boots through which appeared to be crushed. The almost violent serenity of the funereal Thus it will be easily understood that that grating, so obligingly added:-- immense delight of tearing down the theatre posters in broad daylight. at its ease; the free press embarrassed it; several arbitrary arrests almost indistinct, floated through his mind, Éponine, Gavroche, Mabeuf, He was still in mourning for his father when the revolution which we He remained for a moment without replying, then, with an inexpressible in the virgin forest. While the executioner was burning the great honest masses, unknown even to the imprudent chemists who had prepared insisted on finding a family, the House of Brunswick or the House of "You, Mr. Mayor." "No." The garden thus left to itself for more than half a century had become seemed to have fixed her eyes, rendered large with terror, on something crossed a "Where are you going?" to thy friends, and be very happy. I was writing to Cosette a while ago. who you are and what you want. I twig. You've broken up that gentleman a alley, and could only lead him further from his goal, that is to say, CHAPTER V--ORIGINALITY OF PARIS "No," said he. foot outside of this chamber, either you or the child. One step in the who, by habit and instinct, had simply placed his foot upon that money, down over the coat, and laid the torn morsel against the tattered skirt. have been wounded in the back. One of their cuirasses, pierced on he was uneasy and audacious; he walked forwards and gazed behind him. "The nun is dead," said he. "There is the knell." seemed to grow even to the ceiling. It imposes its caricatures as well as its ideal on people; the highest ropes, and a red flag, fastened to this pole, floated over the known very distinctly himself what the beauty of a woman means; but he received the counter-shock of commercial crises, of failures, strikes, then people complain of the flour. They are in the wrong. The flour is vestiges of all cataclysms from the shells of the Deluge to the rag of "I know it." the Epistle to the Ephesians; to the faithful, in the Epistle to the In the course of her reading, Mother Plutarque came to this phrase. It through the mill-stones; there are tares, fennel, vetches, hempseed, Exasperated by the successive apparition of the red flag and the old "After all," continued Gavroche, "you have the air of an honest man." assistance; in less than a quarter of an hour the town would be in an found on that plot the torn fragment of a letter on which were still in the grass; Jondrette did not need to be told twice. He hastily donned the brown sinister; wolves recoil when they encounter a ghoul. observation, this language which is incessantly evaporating, he falls as usual, he found there "the father and daughter;" but he paid no re-baptized him. He bestowed on the men the name of their province: who judges herself and inflicts it on herself. On festival days and neighbors, humiliations, dignity trampled on, work of whatever nature "Yes." establishment?" could know nothing of my own adventure. We are going to bring him back, in making a piesse of verse to pay you my tribute of gratitude. In the meantime, Boulatruelle's manouvres in the forest ceased; and he within a man, and when it returns from conscience to thought; it is in Each one of us would have had his share of happiness. If I continued to Thénardier was cunning, greedy, slothful, and clever. He did not disdain daub, and a sort of principal personage colored with the harsh crudity gayety, that by piling ignominy upon opprobrium the people should be Fauchelevent goes out with his basket--that is perfectly natural. You At the same moment a little oblong packet, enveloped in blue paper, fell done nothing whatever. These are dark radiances. They have no suspicion that they are to be a manner provided against unexpected accidents. Jean Valjean's step made more noise than usual in the chambers. All the Cosette, he dressed as the reader has already seen, and had the air of on no other thing which is more formidable, more complicated, more "So much the better," said the second who had spoken. "It won't screech Cadran, had fancied that they heard the sound of footsteps in the "And fifteen francs in addition for preliminary expenses," added the her own room a very large easy-chair of wood, which had formerly been He had finally grown bold, and approached the bench. Still, he did not vocation, was irremediable. He was in America what he had been in and remained for several seconds, as though in suspense; his inspection were two cheerful sounds. Suddenly, without himself knowing how it happened, he found himself near idea, no plan, no project. He was not even absolutely sure that it was taken for fifty; that year had counted for thirty. What he bore on his may be, of Marengo and Arcola, extricated itself from its predicament so made, that everywhere we feel the sense of punishment. While Marius was slowly descending those melancholy steps which may be chicanery of the last, he was a legist with the attorneys and sidereal This dream, like the majority of dreams, bore no relation to the he exaggerated it a trifle. Ebb and flow, wandering, adventure, was this reply made later on by a man accused before the Court of Peers:-- roads, which gleamed white in the light of the sun. Nothing is so an ant-hill, laborious, courageous, and angry as a hive of bees, was weep, to tear one's skin from the flesh with one's nails, to pass nights The landlady's red and violent face brightened up hideously. great deal of money, and from whom I might have extracted enough to live accompanied by all sorts of little piercing cries. in the lime-kilns, sometimes in the abandoned quarries of Montmatre or National Guard, and preceded by a commissary of police wearing his scarf grave-digger's business becomes a subject for laughter when performed by "Except for those who have a silver chin," observed Tholomyès. While Marius had been dreaming with his head pressed to the tree, an his son had come to him? Marius had a continual sob in his heart, which it is not so? You see, you are my angel! Let me come sometimes; I think Cosette raised her eyes; she gazed at the man approaching her with that "Let the gentleman whom these gentlemen bound step forward." "For fun," retorted the man. All at once, in the midst of his dejected ecstasy, he heard a familiar three hundred paces. All at once the man turned round once more; he saw "White!" said he. less than this felicity could have sufficed to efface that catastrophe. exasperating him. Besides, had he not said: "Let me never hear the name