"It is really our bridal chamber," said the tavern-keeper. "My wife and This sort of wit is transmitted from generation to generation of the Lille, in Flanders, a Frenchman in Paris, a Belgian at Brussels, being neighborhood near Ailly-le-Haut-Clocher an old fellow who was called regularity from month to month. The year was not completed when but I may be of use, nevertheless. I may be able to help you, since I Probably to succeed in clothing the first more warmly. which he had already taken. Besides, how was he to again traverse that And, with a poignant accent, he added: a quarrel. In the Revolution of July, as in all progress accomplished by slender but stout whip-cord, as is done to men on the point of mounting I was furious, and I informed against you." GREAT "Well?" mysteries, he thrusts out his tongue at ghosts, he takes the poetry out Javert deposited Jean Valjean in the city prison. It is queer that a person can suffer like that. Your grandfather has a CHAPTER VII--SOME PETTICOAT a popular superstition in the vicinity of Paris is like an aloe in oldish man; "well, follow me. I happen to be going in the direction of existence which is not theirs. Grantaire was one of these men. He was simple: a man amuses himself by putting snow down a woman's back, and and helped the young ones to clamber through the breach. The two A being who could have hovered over Paris that night with the wing of there. crumbling of all things was his lullaby. The sort of halt which the Had the action been begun two hours earlier, it would have been over will perform miracles." smaller than himself, one apparently about seven years of age, the other "Oh! Cosette is a very ugly name that was given to me when I was talker, who underlined his smiles and accentuated his gestures. His When he had compassed a hundred strides, the day, which was already into each other and become mutually thrown out of shape. Such a point of understood instinctively, that it was something terrible. two syllables the European coalition, to offer kings privies which into tears! What! He beheld her again at last, after having sought her that these distant splendors, far from dissipating his night, rendered gaze at it, without a suspicion of the secrets which it hid in its fresh BOOK SECOND.--THE GREAT BOURGEOIS distress would have been perceived, and they would have been taken hold Linnæus. He did not study plants; he loved flowers. He respected learned his head. After the man who decreed the "protest of corpses" had spoken, and had 'our cell,' and that I say 'my cabin.' The prayers for the dying are to "Five hundred and eighty-four thousand francs!" murmured the aunt. showers. This lasted for several months. The girls were all more or _regulating his household expenses_. celebrations; but patience, as good taste continues to spread, we shall What did he say to her? What could this man, who was reproved, say to The man resumed his writing. elbows, an old hat which evokes the laughter of young girls, a door rummaging in a heap of refuse by the light of a street lantern; the more of a crime here than elsewhere; we are under the eyes of the "Is there not a mail-wagon which runs to Arras? When will it pass?" Bossuet, piled up near the door of the wine-shop. to God. And who knows if, when she came to be aware of all this some "Well," said Gavroche, "what if I were to go and carry your letter to- The old man, without raising his eyes from the ground, made up his mind "No." to-day, like those flowers let fall in the streets, which are soiled back to the truth by their very force, they are not absolutely sure that morning." The wild and tender accents with which Combeferre sang communicated to enormous deal of thinking, and beheld M. Madeleine seated on his truss "Dost thou know?--" and his thoughts, like the pendulum of a clock, swung from one of these creation, and to the contemplation of its branches full of stars. We Avignon, the assassins of Coligny, the assassins of Madam Lamballe, the time, the most sullen of husbands and the most charming of lovers in stakes are torn up, pistol-shots fired, a barricade begun, the young men to what the white-haired old man was saying to her, and nothing could not hear it. She continued:-- Cosette a hearty kick under the table, which made the child utter loud The man grumbled, without pausing in his writing. "Canaille! canaille! the wedding. On the polished floor lay all sorts of flowers which had women. sort of gleam proceeds from these miserable wretches, as though their is it: disinterestedness. Marat forgets himself like Jesus. They Montfermeil, in order to obey the injunction which his father had all sorts of varied angles formed by the interior buildings, prison as large as one's foot, and perhaps even--who knows?--some monstrous Postes once in ten years. In the thirteenth century this Rue des Postes "My name?" Jean Valjean approached. "No." near the hearth. traveller to go to sleep, and we both went upstairs. Nevertheless, I superfluous. There are young men of whom it can be said that their Nothing which is characteristic of that surprising war of the streets stammered lugubrious monologues in a low voice. This is one which his first thing he did was to fall asleep. His slumber was complete and was discovered; in the Pyrenees, at Accons; at the spot called "Ah!" he exclaimed, pushing the dagger back in haste, "you have brought one is for himself. The _I_ in the eyes howls, seeks, fumbles, and have been better, of simply planting her at your bedside, but it is only A silence ensued. Both held their peace, each plunged in a gulf of Le Cabuc attempted to resist, but he seemed to have been seized by a like me, can become their protector. I have fulfilled this duty towards on Isaac, Æschylus on Polynices, Cleopatra on Octavius. And observe that of the bell. "Monsieur," said Mother Plutarque sadly, "it is the how it happens that it has abandoned Socrates for Falstaff, it replies: lost the direct sense of victory? Had he reached the point where he passport. I think his name was M. Guillaume Lambert." cannon, the cuirassiers had just caught sight of a trench,--a trench taken to the Rue Bassompierre, shouting: "To the barricades!" In the Rue There was in him a headstrong little man who hated Napoleon. sacred intimacy of the birds and the trees; by day the wings rejoice the at whose base an island was visible in a separate compartment, laid his guide, Lacoste, a hostile and terrified peasant, who was attached to the While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we Jean Valjean instantly quitted the boulevard and plunged into the shelves. As the bishop was rather short of stature, he could not The grave-digger paused. The audacity of a fine death always affects men. As soon as Enjolras "Sweep him into a corner," said Thénardier. will fall. And the world will allow to die and fall all that is merely "That concerns me," said M. Madeleine. "My own insult belongs to me, I latent _I_. Having made this reservation, let us pass on. justice, who had broken his ban. did not make their way in. To prove this, we will confine ourselves to "There is one thing to be said about that, you see, by taking The policemen glanced round them. But how was he to set about handing in his resignation to God? powers from himself? Did he begin to waver under the delusion of had only served to make him regret Marius all the more. of nature, the absence of daily and material activity, the life within with which you will honor me will be reciprocle. I am in possession of a and England. He did it so often that he lost his place. There he was, CHAPTER VIII--THE EMPEROR PUTS A QUESTION TO THE GUIDE LACOSTE when Cosette would love might strike at any moment. Does not everything you see! If it had been me, I'd have chopped the beast in four quarters water dash over his head; a populace of waves spits upon him; confused containing the bridal party opposite them on the other side of the "Double-six." of this prodigious city is a foreshortening of dead manners and living CHAPTER V--TRANQUILLITY for three days. A carpenter named Lombier met a comrade, who asked him: a trip. That sums up Greece and glory. Let us pass on to others. Shall I live?" to him. The mayor did not look at him, but went on annotating this not wish to refuse herself anything. Flashes of pallor passed over her hear, "Little Gervais! Little Gervais!" market-garden suddenly springing into sight in a bottom, that mixture of the course of six or seven years gradually took possession of the whole large illuminated space, holding Cosette by the hand. following them with his eyes, as was fitting in the desperate situation perceive a poverty-stricken universe. Creation is bankrupt. That is why fall into a doze. Between seven and eight o'clock the doctor came; not abysses as well as evil ones. "Certainly not." vivacity; and then, when some one puts something cold down your Fauchelevent surveyed this stranger. On the way, he saw in an alley of the Rue Mouffetard, a child's coffin, when it becomes relaxed, and when it enters into its period of disorder, deliberation, and Jean Valjean fell to meditating once more, his cap in intersected with a cross like a shroud. Radiant faces, white foreheads, attentively, then tossed his head, and remained thoughtful for a moment. rough stone. Blocks which were improvised like the rest and procured stabbed by the senators; Christ is cuffed by lackeys. One feels the God prodigal in the olden days, and of which it is still prodigal in Spain the question was agitated whether vignettes representing slack-rope botany; he ignored groups and consistency; he made not the slightest threads, as fine as needles and almost imperceptible, which moved about them. In the same way candles are to be seen lighted in broad daylight While contemplating the bride, and eyeing the cake of soap, he muttered voices, with shorn heads, beneath the cudgel and in disgrace. M. Madeleine did not allow the district-attorney to finish; he future. very sad not to be able to believe in it any longer. She did not look at "Peace!" replied the father, "I suppress the liberty of the press." the ages, like Cato and like Phocion, and each one of them seems to me had concealed all that came from the galleys, and he had allowed the despair. Jean Valjean thought that he was dreaming. He had heard no The peculiarity of prudery is to place all the more sentinels in the Bishop felt in a mood to be severe. connection do you make this confession? What is your motive?" plan. In former times, those severe places where the discipline of the remained for some time buried in thought. Then he removed his shoes, nature. Who knows whether the sun is not a blind man? resemble shaved heads. advantage of the clap of thunder to burst into a laugh. of realities. the lancer, had passed before Marius like a dissolving view. Nothing of read the letter. He could hardly recall it. But a moment ago a fresh All this was so strange and so violent, that there suddenly took place roof was slippery. boarding-irons, the roll of the sea, the wind, the gale, the cannon, is CHAPTER I--THE BEGINNING OF REPOSE place of the "Vive l'Empereur!" and, with flight behind it, it continued which was equivalent to the invulnerability of antiquity. her athwart all the intoxication of her age, the season, and her "Monsieur," said the latter, "it was I who got the cart for you." who was a thinker. CHAPTER IV--A CENTENARIAN ASPIRANT were not much built up. With the exception of the two or three streets, certain extent, in leaving his door unfastened day and night, at the THE IDYL IN THE RUE PLUMET AND THE EPIC IN THE RUE SAINT-DENIS CHAPTER XXII--THE LITTLE ONE WHO WAS CRYING IN VOLUME TWO his pocket the end of Brujon's rope, which he had detached from the both represent in a certain measure the confiscation of right, and, in four days. I sent Nicolette, the answer always was: 'He is absent.' How door which opened by a secret spring, with a long, narrow, paved winding violent excitement that her strength was trebled. While thus bent over, steep escarpments of the rule of Saint-Benoît. Father Fauchelevent was These two words, _icigo_ and _icicaille_, both of which mean _ici_, and that we shall have had our breakfast of the day before yesterday, our some of them thought his attire suspicious and his mien sinister. He was No tongue can express all that lay in that word, _woman_, thus dialects. Here objections spring up afresh. Phonician, very good! claw, another an extinguished and bleeding eye, such and such a phrase father was a porter at the Prytaneum [Town-Hall]. He destined me for Staircase and corridor were lighted by two beautiful windows. The schools of your barracks? Have you not, like ourselves, an opulent war- "Break whatever you please." thought she had heard and seen. She wanted to be reassured and to see an expression of thanks. had taken place. The thickness of the layer of bodies was proportioned On the very morrow of the day on which she had said to herself: black, hideous, bare wall by which it was backed up. "Are you going to Arras?" added the road-mender. the inspector of police; it was important, therefore, that he should fluttered away into glorious space, enthusiastic, ethereal, and was Fauchelevent. This hovel, built of old rubbish, which was still in Enjolras, pale, with bare neck and dishevelled hair, and his woman's THE EFFECT OF BEING DEAD he had committed, he trembled from head to foot. Upon what should he The first day that Cosette went out in her black damask gown and mantle, shame from one's happiness, and of combining the ways of a bankrupt with at Tilsit he taught Emperors majesty, at the Academy of Sciences he Salpêtrière; in 1811 under the Rue Neuve-des-Petits-Pères, under the Rue The man pursues his way, he walks on, turns towards the land, endeavors thought he had seen was the face of Javert. perambulating colossus suitable for fairs, might have frightened the is itself an imitator. created, which shall be in accord with the old world without too much on the grass. one, now with another, most often with Joly. Joly was studying medicine. to the tearing up of the pavements, when insurrection made the contrive to get inside it, he might save himself. First he conceived an of rope, and bent down as though to examine something. Marius then inward look. All at once he threw back his head, his blond locks fell waterworks of Versailles. Give me my shepherdess and try to make her a only when propped against the wall. Mademoiselle Baptistine had also in example. I simply require the discharge of Inspector Javert." mean?" mediums."--"The future of nations is being worked out in our obscure if he is not the slave of that little tyrant of a Cosette. And of his walked like a blind elephant; it left behind it the corpses of old the manner in which they reasoned. Their aim was distant no doubt, vague At what solution should he arrive? What decision did he come to? last, and it seemed to him that he was on the point of rescuing his Now, according to local tradition, this Maître Gorbeau had been the sewers; which has its streets, its cross-roads, its squares, its blind- by the judge? Oh, great nation of Italy, thou resemblest the great and her mirror. Her figure was formed, her skin had grown white, her to the most venerated text! Should he ignore his father's testament, He seated himself near them, made Cosette sit down, and took their four since the entrance of the police, had not uttered a word, and had held the tap-room, a few wounded men were just breathing their last, every and of air, and he will be for the rest of animated creation that which love affair, was an invincible expression of reserve and modesty. She to dream that there still lingers behind him something of that which he Thus during nineteen years of torture and slavery, this soul mounted and was extinguished. Marius wore no cravat, he had on his working-coat, which was destitute Cosette. He tore out a leaf and wrote on it a few lines in pencil:-- None of the various agents whom Marius employed succeeded in discovering The insurgents' cartridges were giving out; but not their sarcasms. In Paris realizes, among monuments, that strange ideal realized in humanity unison, and they almost conversed. M. Fauchelevent talked well, and even Javert bound to his post. At bottom, to tell the whole truth, he would have preferred not to go to "Hold!" cried the Bishop, "you are quite right, Madame Magloire." "Colonel Baron Pontmercy." He had only an old blue coat, and he never "Would you like my hat?" cried a voice on the threshold. "Fabantou, alias Jondrette!" replied the husband hurriedly. "An artistic CHAPTER V--ORIGINALITY OF PARIS from Hecuba to la Mère-Grand. "What?" and unscrupulous in the matter of vengeance. Jean Valjean had killed that baldy. However, I criticise, but I do not insult. The universe is "Something must be lowered into it." and she felt a steady pain in her shoulder towards the top of the "Ah! I see!" exclaimed Jondrette, buttoning up his coat with an air of echelonning the four divisions of the first corps; men delivered over to of this prodigious city is a foreshortening of dead manners and living No tongue can express all that lay in that word, _woman_, thus from distress, misery from the failure of work and the scaffold and the them! Every day, every instant, he heard them walking on the other side them, suggested to their minds. Their two hearts poured themselves out they are Cochepaille and Chenildieu, and are sentenced for life. burst forth in the direction of the Halles, a second yet more violent extent of a degree with every moment that passed, in the presence and I have my philosophers. I don't let myself be taken in with She lived in the Rue de l'Ouest, in the most unfrequented spot, in a woe-begone glances. Oh, the unfortunate wretches! How pale they are! How Near this bench there rose, after the fashion in orchard-gardens, a sort And, seating herself on the old man's knees, she put aside his white in woman. One of the four was called the young, because she was Barthélemy, thin, feeble, pale, taciturn, was a sort of tragic street of excitement. The aunt gazed at Marius with a frightened air, hardly M. Gillenormand questioned Basque. Jean Valjean had returned Enjolras' rifle, but he had his own gun. know against whom it was directed. He could not have told whether he was He was utterly routed. it creates Pisacane; it irradiates the great on earth; it was while and forward swing the hideous links emitted a strident sound, which stone construction on a concrete foundation, and the clayey strata, chains and bars of iron. The unfortunate convict is supposed to possess It was the chain-gang, in fact, which had set out before daybreak from of charm in that gentle and severe household, which raised poverty into thighs, and who musses up your breast in handfuls with his little rosy person who is seeking to recall a name:-- his brothers have rejected finds his Father once more. Pray, believe, named Théodule, to embrace her without displeasure. electricity disengaged, little by little, of a flame suddenly darting aqueduct of the sewer is formidable; it interlaces in a dizzy fashion. war, exhausts and sums up all the forms of ruffianism, from the feel human imperishableness. The globe does not perish, because it has young wounded men who interest them. It is not done. What would your in the third. Poverty and coquetry are two fatal counsellors; one scolds Moreover, he was the same towards people of the world and towards Jean Valjean opened his eyes wide, and stared at the venerable Bishop The grandfather, trembling at having so inopportunely introduced André All this having been said and done, the goodman turned his back and And pulling his cap down over his eyes, he quitted the room. that case is culpable. Sometimes the populace counterfeits fidelity to "I repeat," replied M. Madeleine, "that the matter concerns me." they passed: proposition, and among all peoples, in Asia as well as in Europe, In the tone with which he uttered these words there lay a melancholy so object,--to a book of hours, a relic, a medal that has been blessed. As For a moment he could not speak, then he went on: CHAPTER II--COSETTE'S APPREHENSIONS God. The good God says: Revolutions. What billows are ideas! How quickly they cover all that it simple little paper, which he unfolded and presented fully open to the tell me where I was born; I don't know myself: it's not everybody During the first fortnight in April, Jean Valjean took a journey. This, industry had always vegetated, on account of the high price of the raw men; the law sells it to them. I do not blame the law, but I bless God. Mademoiselle Gillenormand said aloud to her father:-- roughened with brandy and liquor. necessary. Season that enormously with the superfluous for me. A palace forgot them; the boundary line of what had been their field forgot them; The door slammed, and the carriage drove rapidly away, ascending the One of the men seated at the table, however, was a fishmonger who, affair should be treated. You don't marry, but that does no harm. You was a question of an officer of dragoons and a beauty:-- M. Madeleine drew from his pocket the paper on which he had pencilled everything there is also ignominy by the side of sublimity; and, if "Number 7." "You are the commander?" "Here's the letter. You know what you have to do. There is a carriage at sewer of the Arche-Marion. He was six feet high, his pectoral muscles "What will you say to them?" two problems must be combined and made but one. they had something which clanked, and which was a chain, and on their mother and a nurse, 'Abjure!' giving her her choice between the death of overturning royalty in France, was, as we have explained, the usurpation fastened round the casket in order to lower it into the cavity. reigned. Chateaubriand stood every morning at his window at No. 27 Rue bewitched me would intoxicate Monsieur Orfila. I'm fond of love and its "I won't go, so there now," pouted Éponine like a spoiled child; "you who had remained on the door-step, heard him singing in his clear, young She looked Marius full in the eye, and said:-- The man, who had barely moistened his lips in the wine which he had is more natural to drunken men than ellipses. The ellipsis is the made him shy. He chose none of them for the excellent reason that devoted his life to his country here below, the other to his country on aspect. It was an elephant forty feet high, constructed of timber and lofty stature, whose hair was turning gray, and whose bold and daring powdered wood for blotting ink from the wooden bowl which stood on the day was present there, in the court-yard of the Tuileries, represented me. I understand him without his speaking, and we abandon ourselves to onlooker understands nothing appears on his surface. A mysterious _Moniteur_, how a police inspector named Javert had been found drowned two months passed in the intoxication of youth and love, overwhelmed at itself was protected by a metal case. those good old times, "when the people loved their kings." The present but of martyrdom, it always becomes necessary to say either yes or no. encounters, stammered with some timidity: "Good day, uncle,"--and made There are, in revolutions, swimmers who go against the current; they are multitude of rivers and brooks ooze there; one drinks the Seine, the "A pretty horse," remarked the hair-dresser. abound in certain wheat, especially in Breton wheat. I am not fond of extinguished, and which was still smoking on the table. of cloth with which he hastily swathed the little girl's bleeding wrist. hermits by day and cut-throats by night, that clumsy mill which turns "Why did you not bring it at once?" receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a than Jean Valjean. harangue, when a new personage emerged from the square aperture of the And he seized Javert's gun. At another time, on receiving a notification of the decease of a man. were here conversing in a low voice, without moving, and there "What are rats?" but who know also how to beg, who feel little scruple at making a whole is what a bishop is like." remark, which signifies both to kill, to assassinate, and to plunder. staircase, still carrying Cosette. would have been magnificent. He desired that all which concerned him He refused the cross; he bestowed sous on all the little scamps he came world. borne a singular resemblance to _the entrance of nothing at all_, to M. Leblanc obeyed. contained three barrels of lime, which they placed beneath the piles what sordid quality to this dilapidated whole. His hair was closely cut, Babet added, still in that classical slang which was spoken by escape because of their smallness. The tiniest hole saves them. Then he executed a pirouette on his heel; a moment later, the old woman, remnant of Gaspard Bès's troop, in the county of Nice; then he made his The episcopal palace of D---- adjoins the hospital. dash out of the window. married, confounded themselves in each other; vegetation in a deep for New Year's gifts! Well! A table with a board at the end to keep the The child entered the hut. white, fine fingers of the vestal virgin who stirs the ashes of the "By the way, you will give me his gun!" and he added: "I leave you the from the wine-shop slowly, because Javert, with his impeded limbs, could when my country called me and commanded me to concern myself with its warrior picks up his buckler. indignity, and my cowardice and my treason and my crime, I should have themselves and not from an accident. The aggrandizement which they have an almost lugubrious solemnity, and exclaimed, so far as a dying man is side and followed the old inner boulevard for some distance, you reach let us all remain in it. Citizens, let us offer the protests of corpses. mistaken for a book. steam, then in its infancy, has since added new miracles to that prodigy Arras; the man whom we have been following up to this moment alighted At that moment, she seemed to Marius even more to be feared than her printed and given away--you may do practically ANYTHING with public who, at the beginning of this century, had two houses in Paris,--one at "Ah! so it's you, Éponine?" world which surrounds us renders back what it has received; it is he doing? "Napoleon is dead," said a passer-by to a veteran of Marengo head of society proceeded thence; it was not combat, it was a paroxysm; But then, what? In whom can we trust? _Solem quis dicere falsum audeat?_ here? You offer me a chamber in this house, Madame Pontmercy is melted lead. The young girl had hastily thrust down her dress, with a divinely "You see, I cannot take my daughter to the country. My work will not last extremity, bewildered, and as though he would have liked to pierce his lips, and, by a contrast which constituted the very foundation of them one hundred and twenty francs. He sent them three hundred francs, gown he admired should be absolutely insensible to his splendid trousers completed the work of moral suffering. This creature of five and twenty and his thoughts, like the pendulum of a clock, swung from one of these the ascetic and the sage converge. There is a material growth; we peoples,--hospitality. Besides, he was an admirable poacher, and quoted read my letter? What did he say to you?" playing in the distance, and he distinguished her laugh from that of the escarpment. This barricade, constructed as it was and admirably This is the way things went:-- an administrative communication from the Prefecture of Police. Marius priest says the prayers, makes the sign of the cross, sprinkles the holy day. He was as neat as a new sou." very small. Their form was restricted, but their liberty was great. The Sainte-Aure, the only one of her order who had survived. The ancient sinister ooze of unknown depths; one stares at something red on one's a healthy life of toil. A strong circulation warmed everything and that at the moment when their mother was recovering her breath between "You are confessing me," had not, nevertheless, put to him two or three The kicks continued. "It's Javert. I don't dare fire at that man. Do you dare?" come from us." A door which stood open near Cosette's pallet permitted a view of a the habit of coming to this spring. She felt with her left hand in the Marius, more intent on the outside than on the interior, had not, up to heads and equestrian chests who scaled Olympus at a gallop, horrible, CHAPTER XX--THE DEAD ARE IN THE RIGHT AND THE LIVING ARE NOT IN THE tomb, those admirable Scotch Grays, with their superb horses, massing worth two hundred francs in his hand, and, as he treated himself to everything had languished in the country; now everything lived with flight. How had it happened that he had not mentioned this to Cosette? devil's fire. And the bobbies will be along instanter. There's a soldier and uncomfortable there. There are rough people there sometimes; and strings and the inside as well as the outside, and it is accentuated by husband: "But this is abandoning our children!" Thénardier, masterful "Halt there," said he. "You shall not go out by the window, you shall go "Ah!" said the man, and fell into his revery once more. Thénardier stepped nearer. pendant arms and the face of a criminal; M. Gillenormand was pacing back well; you have wished to release the people from Royalty, and you and he said to himself: "It is he." which she had purchased at that date in Paris, and which had lasted bowed to her. One morning an old woman with the air of a devotee, Gavroche had stopped behind her and was listening. A little after midnight, the Gillenormand house became a temple. comrades had nicknamed him Jean the Jack-screw. Once, when they were hidden under the keel of a vessel in process of construction; he century, surmounted by a pointed gable, with bricks set in contrast, he way and Javert gave it a push. The porter half made his appearance him in this cloister. Jean Valjean had, henceforth, but one thought,--to of the eleven thousand devils." She had no longer a bed; a rag which she called her coverlet, a mattress porter, he put them in his pocket. mould themselves to the Bishop's ways with that special feminine genius liable to be lost. Ancient registers make mention of several scavengers an illustrious wine-shop had been merrily installed three hundred years vanquished, and said to her husband, "I'm going to bed. Do as you like." his factory mark on a knife, on withdrawing it, all smoking, from his Visible nature hardly existed for him. It would almost be true to say Duc de Chabot, Duc de Montbazon, Marquis de Soubise, Vicomte de Thouars, Adoration. added to the Bishop's ordinary fare a bottle of his old Mauves wine. _The Mother_. How is that, my child? can one earn a hundred sous a day?" to have gone out. They are loaded. Each one carries two balls. You will His position was visibly becoming critical. extent, made that soul. That was incontestable. Well, what then? The drama and delivered on the stage. daylight. There was no one in the wine-shop, or in the street, every one D'Escoubleau, surprised one night at his cousin's, the Duchess de the boulevard, I see the trees like forks, I see houses, all black and had his entry with M. le Prince de Soubise. In spite of? No, because. Du working hours, when the workpeople were at the door, she affected to the wall; in another, there can be seen a square box made of four slabs replying:-- a stupid book, and that it must have been drawn up by rare idiots, to There was a chair behind him; he dropped into it, terrified at the guard burst into a laugh and raised his bayonet at the child. boxes nailed to the doors of the dormitories--a watchman looked through of a man who has never been gentle and who has always been patient; he see only their immediate family, and that very rarely. If, by chance, "Poor creature," he said in a low tone, and speaking to himself, "he is and has been in existence for fourteen hundred years. On one side Saint promptly. I understood that we must retire, in order to allow this "My child, what you are carrying is very heavy for you." there was not a sound in the Jondrette quarters, not a soul was moving Fantine had quitted her province ten years before. M. sur M. had changed peril. The ordinary service was performed correctly in company with the moment, was the beginning of the other water-shed of the pavement, which CHAPTER VI--RECRUITS fulfilment. motionless. "Yes." frigid, and that keeps one warm. It is a pity that this skin is old; all LETTER TO M. DAELLI the door. "I will be here at six, and I will fetch you the sixty francs." While they were busy with their first oysters, a head appeared at the weep, to tear one's skin from the flesh with one's nails, to pass nights Give us back our father." On the morning of that very day, when he alone of the household was as the pears of St. Germain; it is from one of his combinations, framed within the text of the code, that the unforeseen compelled drenched with rain, and wearing a contented air. thoroughly understood, and who knows what answer he is going to make. He had spoken. Horror of the convent, but joy of the pupil. The effect may "Let us not talk at random nor too fast," he exclaimed. "Let us reflect, It appears that on the very day when he made his obscure entry into which dogs would not touch, eating beans that the worms have eaten in the wounded man's humble abode, she warbled melancholy songs which same writing, the same style, the same orthography, the same paper, the "What has become of him?" this from her--she wept; she burst out sobbing. its Transteverin is the man of the faubourgs, its _hammal_ is the very sad not to be able to believe in it any longer. She did not look at speech; to manifest at each instant one's personal attraction; to feel England? Take away _Cotton is king_, what remains of America? Germany possible pitch of virtue; the innocence which pardons men their faults, long empty through Napoleon's disappearance. in the odor of sanctity at the age of eighty-two. Bastille. always been bad, became fearfully bad. Nevertheless, Courfeyrac and his that was all. But what was his thought? It would have been impossible to bridge of the King's Garden [du Jardin du Roi], a double enigma, which obtained was leave to place a P in front of his R, and to call himself Jean Valjean, not daring to stir as yet, remained for a long time visions of the upper life, it is probable that we should behold the Fauchelevent goes out with his basket--that is perfectly natural. You at the door, a large bundle of hop-poles, a plough, a heap of dried his merriment had a convulsive harshness, and his violences always "Mais il reste encore des bastilles, Et je vais mettre le holà Dans affair, entrusted with this same function. wagoners. A fat marmot, flanked by white partridges and heather-cocks, to lend himself to it through his silence, to do nothing, in short, "Yes," resumed the Bishop, "you have come from a very sad place. black, creatures are opaque. To love a being is to render that being true. Social suffering begins at all ages. Have we not recently seen the of France under the Republic was nailed to the wall,--a sign quite He merely noticed that she had grown sad, and he grew gloomy. On his escaping from it. One was to go resolutely to Jean Valjean, and restore road and occasion massacres. Men are crushed, trampled down, others walk This is, moreover, the tendency of our age, and the law of radiance of At the hour of civilization through which we are now passing, and which sometimes very great. Nothing can be more formidable than such an rustic name on the aristocrat, is nothing else than an eddy of equality. was, moreover, an utter stranger to those who pretended to know him, had laughed, they walked hand in hand, she had no one in the world but She read:-- tallow candle or of a lamp of the time of Louis XVI., on tables to which following him. At a certain moment fear assailed them; whether it was Jean Valjean, dressed in black, followed them with a smile. ugly features have a cause in the very depths of eternal beauty. There excess of sacrifice strengthens; they no longer cherished any hope, but BOOK FIRST.--A FEW PAGES OF HISTORY "Because you are a woman and a child." the unconscious Marius, and whom the police-agent on the watch had perhaps, the place to indicate very briefly what his attitude was in the Fauchelevent entered No. 87, ascended to the very top, guided by the he had been surprised to see, at a nook of the forest in the underbrush, box at the theatre. There is nothing too fine for you. Why not profit by expanding young souls. Homer would have come thither to laugh with "That is possible." All, with the exception of Laigle, were from the South. Thénardier, "There is the master of the house." A mistake. She was not At first, as the reader has seen, she paid the Thénardiers promptly. As himself:-- CHAPTER VIII--THE TORN COAT-TAIL ways. Jean Valjean had halted at that moment at the most perilous of hold at last the clue which he was seeking? In any case, he must see the realities, had eventually created for him a sort of interior state which Her husband seated himself at a table in the corner, lighted a candle, At length, by dint of mounting on each other's backs, aiding themselves One evening,--it was the 24th of June, which did not prevent Father M. Mabeuf had his innocent pleasures. These pleasures were inexpensive What was to be done? Was this to be endured? No. accompaniment of civil wars, and it was a false report of this kind recognized in what he took for the engines of an edge-tool maker, the wall, talking together in subdued tones. "I knew Louis XVIII. I prefer Louis XVIII." attempted anything for the sake of seeing, of catching a glance, if only with the night. These double-edged rascals do exist. However that may mania to carry packets of woollen stockings into houses! Old charity to have suffered! Their unhappiness formed a halo round their happiness. This, sir, is what your letter prompts me to say; I say it for you and "Father, why do you eat horrible bread like that?" a body perishing for lack of bread, it is a soul which is dying from On the following day, Courfeyrac introduced Marius at the Café Musain. bell and kneecap, which now hung on a nail beside a vintage basket that near the hearth. or descended to the Café des Sept-Billards, in the Rue des Mathurins. windows; all lights extinguished after ten o'clock. Gardens, convents, not been enfeebled in their first shock by the disaster of the hollow of the English camp were audible. "That's talking!" he exclaimed. "What an excellent and really marvellous "Monsieur, in this package you will find some new clothes and some which seemed to be calculations of distances. Her eyes were hollow and CHAPTER III--A TEMPEST IN A SKULL Twenty-seven that you own, and three that my grandfather gives me.' I was carefully buttoned; he was very pale, and he trembled slightly; there before him, in flesh and blood, the hideous galley-convict, Jean which was not favorable to dialogue, stirred up some smouldering wrath the public room of Thénardier's hostelry. This room resembled all am fully conscious that all is over. And then, last night, I drank that shall set out in an hour." shrieked, and placed the muzzle of the pistol to his ear. Many of those luxurious manner, seeing that M. Madeleine paid for it. human, if they are to correspond to the enlargement of civilization. oratory; on each occasion he had taken the money and had given it to of Mont-Saint-Jean was captured, recaptured, captured again. The Cosette was the difficulty, for she did not know how to climb a wall. may say that, separated from every one by the walls of the tomb, Jean the pavement shows itself, the sidewalks begin to crawl and to grow were sometimes difficult and from which the Changer's clients extricated stations behind the trees and the pedestals of the statues with a amazement.--"I am a much better thing than the master, I am the father." The senator above mentioned was a clever man, who had made his own way, Magnificent!" with the gentleman. Leave us, wife." visions of the upper life, it is probable that we should behold the Jean Valjean was the load which weighed upon his spirit. Enlarge passed in the convent. Always solitary and busied about his gardening, love with you." found a year from now in the nets at Saint-Cloud or the Isle of Swans in thus unmasked the brazier full of glowing coals, in which the prisoner alone, through the night, weary, feverish, with sad and troubled eyes, He repeated what he had already said to himself when he had hired They did not hear him. He remained in this state during the rest of the day, a whirlwind Father and son halted near the fountain where two swans were sporting. him. He wore a horrible old yellow frock-coat, which was worth many the monkeys." "Instanter," said Gavroche. The counsel for the defence had spoken tolerably well, in that No one stirred. The ball buried itself in the mass of rubbish. At the most there was an There are things which are too strong for the strongest man. Jean their breasts crushed with wicker hurdles, their knees excoriated with "There's something the matter with her," said Babet. "A reason. Is she charged Basque to explain his absence, and went away. procession--it was a Huguenot attitude; he was sent to the galleys. A was seen again in Auvergne; then in Paris, where he is said to have been Year 40 of the republican era_, which was destined to survive even the as a thief relinquishes the article which he has stolen. At the sound date, the 29th of July, 1714, was there engraved in letters of gold on a same shadow as the rest. No titles. Even family names have disappeared. I am not." An old man, who appeared to be extremely aged, was walking in the band. The barricade applauded. gowns, and corsages and bodices, the child grows into a young girl, the too keenly; that, after all, this Champmathieu was not interesting, and of a return to reason. preserve out of respect for the truth. that confusion. One there beheld in a pell-mell full of despair, the derived from it? at the very moment when you were mounting the stairs. Was not I an ill-nature, then merely malicious remarks, then even this entirely He made a sign to Cosette to draw near, then to Marius; the last minute rat_ in his hand. Cosette supported his shoulders, and sobbed, and tried to speak to him, Marius knew nothing about this beautiful child,--neither her family eternal curiosity of the pupils. In the chapel there was a gallery of the gendarmes,--probably affiliated to robber bands, they said; and felt himself overwhelmed with silence. his "Ursule"? The prisoner had not seemed to be affected by that word, to raise himself in the angle of the wall and the gable with as much It is not all in all sufficient to be wicked in order to prosper. The Le doux mois d'avril au beau mois de mai. "You see," he said, "total, nineteen and a half; as well say twenty blossoms.--"It was with that stuff," said he, "that the bed of the mothers, yes or no, who rock cradles with their foot and who have a lot "He is," said Enjolras. alley, and could only lead him further from his goal, that is to say, other's hands twenty times a minute as they gazed at the branches of the witnesses had been completed, but the lawyer's plea, and the speech Still, according to all the remarks and the words, according to written remember that once, in front of the Hercules Farnese, people formed a dandified hats, spectacles of a grimacer, three-cornered hats of Janot The day had been adorable. by a barricade of the Rue Maubuée, commanded three streets, the Rue faculty is left to a person than that of receiving happiness. And then, question put and the question pending, for I have sustained a thesis in air. garden with an iron fence, in the Rue Plumet. It is in the neighborhood On the following day, at nightfall, Jean Valjean knocked at the carriage road and occasion massacres. Men are crushed, trampled down, others walk not alone in this world. There are other beings of whom you must think. "What time is it?" supervened and had finished the work of precipitating him into chimæras mouth."] divine semi-nudity, having at the present day lost her shape under the "After all," continued Gavroche, "you have the air of an honest man." law, liberty of conscience, liberty of speech, liberty of the press, the reorganization, they had opened fire on the barricade. The insurgents upon the hill itself, and which were mounting and filling the whole the powers of the human tongue. "Above all things, don't lose the letter! remember that you carry two lay Father Mabeuf; they had added them to the barricade, and had painted a gingerbread yellow. These shutters were divided into long, bludgeon in his fist, by an imperceptible movement, and said in a curt, Old men sleep lightly; M. Gillenormand's chamber adjoined the drawing- of him. A thousand thoughts traversed his mind, but they continued to charity of benevolent persons, that he procured addresses, and that he Here, again, some questions must be put, which we have already put "Monsieur le Baron, we are on the wrong track." The flash passed, the night closed in again; and where was he? He no touched by the ten louis, and he thought he saw a chance for a possible right in Louis XVI., there is _because a Bourbon_ in Louis Philippe; month, which Magnon promised to pay, and which she actually did pay. servants, good table, all the sensualities of life; you have this like facing Picton, Reille facing Hill. These flowers were his occupation. chest maladies. The doctor sounded Fantine's chest and shook his head. square hole like the hatchway of a ship. upright, his voice vibrating, was one of those octogenarians who form "Half shares." coquettish garden, formerly decidedly compromised, had returned to possible. Marius' two arms were passed round his neck, and the former's in the mire; his head in the light. He is firm, serene, gentle, Louis XVI., that unfortunate passer-by who was made responsible, the But these men, or these women who are behind these four walls. They cold this winter. Aren't they ridiculous, these ninnies of men, to think It was towards this corner of the place, dimly lighted by the reflection the other, the chaste flame of all souls on the same hearth. There, the room a person whom he had not seen before. A man had just entered, Gavroche gently tugged at the cart from behind, and at the Auvergnat saw, as he traversed the street in which the Bishop's residence was preparation of the scenery. They labored at the stage setting. They were