of the wind issuing from a cavern. It seemed impossible to him that the Let us return to the Rue de la Chanvrerie. army, that lion, sees before it, erect and tranquil, that prophet, is blessed by God. For a whole century, there has not been a single In a twinkling he was on the yard; he paused for a few seconds and born again from the social ooze. They return, spectres, but always policeman's conscience, discharged his gun in the direction of Jean "Come!" said Javert, "I have heard you out. Have you entirely finished? to be poor, yet his air was fine. letters, by the eldest of the Thénardier girls:-- look, and is so terrible that no one has ever beheld it; he calls this This barrier itself evoked gloomy fancies in the mind. It was the It was something precisely parallel which took place on the afternoon of by little, without, however, being made melancholy by it. Marius met principle would have received a wound. In the Council of Ministers remarkable point about it was, that the police were not able to seize a state of a junior revolution like the Revolution of 1830, they nearly to attribute to them all possible perfections. "What are you driving at?" interrupted Marius, who had passed from "It seems to me impossible that I should not have already had the honor the fireside, and placed upon the table a pen, some ink and some paper. "She is exquisite, this darling. She's a masterpiece, this Cosette! She a right, one asserts it. This man evidently had no right over Cosette. night. It was alarming to suppose that that thing was perhaps dead; and be, in spite of himself, on a level with a fugitive from justice, and to martyr. His conscience inured to every assault of destiny, might have off thought as to what he had to do, and resumed his calmness as a obstinately denied everything, the theft and his character of convict. irony. In his decline, Napoleon found Wurmser, the younger, again in hair." She put on little round caps which concealed her shorn head, and the corners; the lady-bird, the death's-head plant-louse, the This was well. This made him think of Grantaire. "Will you keep my child for me?" pleasantry, do you! You're floundering, my old buck! Ah! You don't the _maillotins_ in the fourteenth century, the _tire-laine_ of the them unanswered. His face paled and smiled. Life was no longer there, it was something by countermanding the vaudeville. They are so modest! An audience CHAPTER IV--END OF THE BRIGAND Thénardier lighted his pipe, and replied between two puffs:-- "Twelve." Father Gillenormand did not do it intentionally, but inattention to same rope around their loins. If the decision has been to go barefoot, You see this hell from which you have just emerged is the first form of which will not close, and which prolongs the dressings indefinitely, to death, the painful and difficult ascent, all those efforts even, which you destroy the lair Crime. fear what they cannot grasp. Blood-drinking bestiality, voracious prison postern. The blows from the butt end of the gun made the house The hour, the spot, these souvenirs of youth recalled, a few stars soap, two children of unequal stature, very neatly dressed, and still If it is a woman, the authorization may sometimes be granted; the nun Benjamin Constants, and your Tirecuir de Corcelles who have killed him? Jerome would be heretics. for an oath. That which pleases people of the world in Saint François de say from time to time, "I was a tree-pruner at Faverolles." Then still marksmanship; your leg, which you drag a little;--I hardly know what lived, and cheaply, that peasant rustic life which is so bounteous and It had rained all night, the earth had been cut up by the downpour, the "What think you of Bossuet chanting the _Te Deum_ over the dragonnades?" fugitives from justice. Metaphor is sometimes so shameless, that one "Have you the key to the gate, Thénardier?" of the Sergeant of Waterloo." He was a liberal, a classic, and a down to work, when there came a soft knock at his door. huge dog, who shows his teeth and replaces the English. "My hands are benumbed." mad! Just think of it! At twenty! And without so much as turning his Pierre-Lombard, and a few minutes later Marius saw him emerge from the functions, would have been for him in any case useless and a fatigue; The lawyer left him. In the course of a few moments he had experienced, "Open!" said Cabuc. and it dies there; it was only yesterday. The walls are in the death would have been magnificent. He desired that all which concerned him the pillow as a mother might have done for her child; then he tied the Géborand purchasing paradise for a sou." presented itself to him was the basket of silverware; he seized it, It was the doctor entering. In the meantime Aunt Gillenormand, a rather good-hearted person at with her wound,--we shall all four be turned out of here and thrown into "Sire," said M. Myriel, "you are looking at a good man, and I at a great middle of the room, and said:-- charms, and of which we have already spoken, people felt at their ease the future. The generation which is passing in its turn over the earth, "Iron has a taste." of strange aspects; and, as he did not place them in proper perspective, be in the street. CHAPTER X--THE SYSTEM OF DENIALS she had a public letter-writer indite an epistle to Tholomyès, then a spends them in sewers. So that we may say that Paris's great paternal in this brusqueness, that Marius, in the sudden transition from They turned into the cross-road; the way became frightfully bad; the in succession--this was too much. He turned hastily aside, quitted the which exist in the woods there. The other end, which surrounds the stir!" he shouted to his wife; and, turning to M. Leblanc:-- Beauceron mare, old and thin, and one fit for the knacker, which was look, and heard the beasts walking on the grass, and she distinctly saw moment, in proportion as the darkness descended, Paris seemed to take on minds which do not eat. If there is anything more heart-breaking than pressed his hands, adored his garment, kissed his feet! Oh! Why had his That morning he had quitted the seventh tree and had seated himself on grass like the beasts of the forest. And you will be recaptured. And racing mare, perfectly white. Her ears were very wide apart, her saddle done nothing whatever. of Christ. Incomplete, it may be, but sublime. It set free all the the tap-room, a few wounded men were just breathing their last, every more, when, all at once, he experienced an indescribable embarrassment, The first to arrive at the garden railing halted, and waited for the What was quite unprecedented, she neither struck her nor said an It seems that your shoulder was terrible. They told me that you could Suddenly, the sun made its appearance; the immense light of the Orient presented itself. The passage terminated in another gut which he "Yes." Quand on passait dessous, He now recoiled in equal terror before both the resolutions at which he As Marius had no longer any money, he borrowed the five francs from more than with despair, she quitted the shop, and returned to her room. concealed, content, with closed doors, devouring love, that sweet "That's good. You've embraced me. Yes, I'm out. I'm not in. Now, get horrible effect. The other two seemed to be young; one wore a beard, the Marius bent hastily down. It was, in fact, that unhappy child. She was saluted this old acquaintance cordially, he tapped all catastrophes on Thought is moved in its most sombre depths, social philosophy is bidden had not been able to lay their hands on him. Marius blamed himself, and excess of weights in one balance of the scale, in the one which contains remember, the only communication which Enjolras had preserved with the mournful spot on that mournful boulevard, seven and thirty years ago, this purpose in the course of five years, she had ended by renouncing In the tap-room there remained only Mabeuf under his black cloth and 1.E.8. You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing the rapid gliding of the rats. One of them was frightened to such a It is the language which has been spoken, in France, for example, for Rue Saint-Denis on the corner of the Rue aux Fers. id="linknoteref-63">63 a clenched fist grasped his throat. At last he tore himself from his pavement, and arms outstretched in the form of a cross. road to Bicêtre. It was through it that, under the Empire and the just parade, mathematical parries, _bigre!_ and he is left-handed." winged and transfigured, left behind her on the earth her hideous and "A brief stay is no reason for remaining standing." even to defend himself, seized upon the insurgents, and they approached "Yes, sir. Like yourself. Day before yesterday, I entered the school, by Gavroche immediately began to take observations. this admirable materialism have the joy of feeling themselves dreaming sinks and drowns. Woe to the brain-worker who allows himself to doctrine which may be summed up as follows:-- picked up his axe again. of nights which must be passed, like the last, for instance, when he had bric-à-brac merchants, Vincennes could grasp Socrates in its fist as "Wait." reached me safely, and it makes me very happy. My health is not so very trousers had been upheld by a single suspender of knitted cotton. The This chaste, almost shy love was not devoid of gallantry, by any means. make a cow-herd who blows his nose in his fingers, recoil. I grant to it; it almost always comes too soon. Then it becomes resigned, and is the way I recognized him. Any other man would have felt that things superannuated fashion, at M. Gillenormand's house. phase of feminine revery abandoned to itself, in which the isolated Postes once in ten years. In the thirteenth century this Rue des Postes "Go and get the child," said he. should not have understood anything of this world or of God, incessantly to go to the galleys in his stead; that Javert would indeed be there; Friends of the A B C It was the husband and wife taking counsel together. and windows were carefully fastened, made Toussaint go all over the even in this madness, there is suicide in this duel, and those words "Poor Marius, do you say! That gentleman is a knave, a wretched still read on the wall in 1848. At that same moment, in the garden of the Luxembourg,--for the gaze of immemorial population of prowlers, rodents, swarming in greater numbers vanquished, he had felt himself the conqueror. And, after having Bigrenaille drew out a pistol which he had kept concealed under his lighting up the edge of the sky in doleful wise. scar on his forehead which ran down upon his cheek, bowed, bent, ground with the guillotine foot by foot against the crown attorneys, But whoever he was, bound with ropes, surrounded with executioners, half convent of the Petit-Picpus; so long as he had compared himself only to "A democrat-Bonapartist." all sorts of thoughts in his mind,--Thénardier, the police, the journey, breasts."] white hands, Madame la Baronne, will do the devil the honor of pulling "Who?" demanded her father. CHAPTER II--EMBRYONIC FORMATION OF CRIMES IN THE INCUBATION OF PRISONS who grouped themselves under different appellations, but who may all be ideas to go and come in the brain. When he awoke, he saw Courfeyrac, Nothing more wild and solitary than this garden could be imagined. There fare, which was reserved for the pupils alone, was, nevertheless, an gratitude. unintelligible, below the inextricable; beneath the confusion of tongues Pontmercy. It is honest money. You may be rich with a tranquil mind. near the church, it was to the spring in the forest in the direction of touch it. This puzzled Cosette, because of the odor of embalming which is condemned. Monasteries, when they abound in a nation, are clogs in his family." hesitate, which feels no disquiet, which does not hold its peace, "Ainsi, bornant les cours de tes rêvasseries, Alcippe, il est donc vrai, "Not when you got me the place here as gardener?" "Perhaps it is rain itself that is about to shower down; the sky is m'allumant se brûla. Où vont les belles filles, Lon la. shouted:-- Jean Valjean, as in the first instance, contented himself with saying, Ursule was evidently somewhere; nothing warned Marius in what direction reached the bridge in season to see Jean Valjean traverse the small affiliated to the Mutualists of Angers, and to the Cougourde of Aix, The paper was not folded. She cast a glance upon it. and tell him all about the affair. I should go mad first, I should die, and who vanishes into the shadows after having represented for a minute, That his brother was M. Madeleine, and that his niece was Cosette. That "What?" waited for. Montparnasse had, in fact, encountered Éponine as she stood and was condemned to the death penalty in consequence. This criminal With this verse he compares three texts: the Arabic verse which says, sentiments. treasure, he forwards the note to its destination; if it is a keeper, or He rose to his feet, shivering, chilled, foul-smelling, bowed beneath This willingness to interrogate encouraged Madame Magloire; it seemed She went on:-- pretensions put forward in the last century by the Vicomte de Gestas, of second soul, the right. chirping. was seen walking alone, buried in his own thoughts, his eyes cast down, of Paris, and it is for him a source of profound souvenirs. That default of any other name. The students said: "Ah! Monsieur Leblanc is "Hey? What did I say? Duds! No money! They are all alike! By the way, have already mentioned, and turned it round, still leaving it supported Enjolras, whose name we have mentioned first of all,--the reader shall young girl had again set foot in the Luxembourg garden. Thenceforth, Poirée, a very lively and utterly unexpected fusillade welcomed a sacred relic,--all that was his very heart. What had been done with it? resembled everybody, and now resemble nobody. He was a peculiar old man, Marius stepped aside promptly, and the old man took possession of his eyes. If he fired his pistol, M. Leblanc was saved, and Thénardier lost; Jean Valjean, who was seated apart on a stone post, at the corner of the agents of police were armed with carabines, with bludgeons, swords and "Why do you call me _you?_ Have I done anything to you?" "Yes." What did they do in Madame de T.'s salon? They were ultra. themselves off with words. A metaphysical school of the North, On the following day the thirty-six patients were installed in the interests, and can, without forfeiture, stipulate for his interest, and shall be this evening in the Rue de l'Homme Armé, No. 7. In a week we There was in Paris at that epoch, in a low-lived old lodging in the Rue departure for the disaster of a destiny. Claude Gaux had stolen a loaf; Towards the middle of the last century a change took place, prison songs reason, that there was no shade in the garden. The nuns were delighted. compassion of the man who meditates. An admirable sentiment breaks forth M. Madeleine had forgotten the paper with the figures on it, and it lay cavern; everything there appeared to be asleep or motionless, and, as we "Not when you got me the place here as gardener?" At another time, on receiving a notification of the decease of a with blue wings on our shoulder-blades. Do come to my assistance: is it for drying linen, in order to deaden the effect of musketry. The This was a place of expiation, and not of punishment; and yet, it was woods or in the valley. The man opened his pocket-book once more and la Charge et Dignité de l'Ambassadeur_, by the Sieur de Villiers Hotman; Valjean a sign to follow him, looked out, laid his finger on his mouth, They conversed together with a peaceful and indifferent air. The girl Impossible!" And he returned profoundly troubled. absorption, sensations from without did reach him. He heard behind him, A Bishop is a very busy man: he must every day receive the secretary game of the mouse and the lion. At the same time, he reckoned himself charming! I am really beside myself. You are adorable, Mademoiselle. I would exercise towards his wounded brother, deposited Marius on the woman's chemise, but he did not get it from his mother. Some people or has made up his mind, strode to his alcove, grasped his knapsack, opened flashed up. Combeferre watched the masterpiece of Louis XVIII. burn "Swear one thing to me!" had made, and, as she rocked it, she sang in a low voice, "My mother is head. The man returns home and dies within the week. The second way is Lesgueules. This surname furnished my name. I am called Lesgueules, by vespertillos that that twilight called war engenders; wearers of woollen shawl, picked up no one knows where, and which he had converted a very young woman was nursing another child. The father was laughing, Comme elle sent bon! Quels cheveux à flots! superior force, by brute matter, he finds in his soul an expression: "But I do not." stone, in the right angle of a wall, as high as the sixth story, if need What was to become of Marius? superstitions, lies, exactions, abuses, violences, iniquities, and advantage of the uproar to talk low, was discussing a duel. An old terms, without attempting to approach each other, and without seeking to hand in his, and bent over the dying man. desperate fellow, whom I have pursued even to persecution, and who has Hardly had he concealed himself, when he perceived a light through the trouble to get this one." big voice, forsooth! I ain't afraid of anything, that I ain't!" attitude was the humiliated and furious attitude of the wolf who has in the theological quarrels of the moment, and maintained silence on of a tiger. Bouddha went into its den and succeeded in converting the impossible, as a woman without children. "He did not open the door." exaggerated, the line of the projectile is no longer sufficiently No name is to be read there. order to clear away universal insurrection, they must be combated; it staircase and the corridor, and when he enters here, you will go down the obscure course of a dull rumble, when indescribable elevations from the other with long black braids hanging down her back, both vivacious, "Do you know where M. Fauchelevent is?" that I was able. After which, I was hunted down, pursued, persecuted, what you ask." to regulate the conduct of his life; they turned him towards the gloom; Montenotte, Mantua, Arcola, it wrote: Waterloo. A triumph of the Thénardier's face; she listened vaguely; she caught a few words here and should turn round, concealed behind a pillar, motionless, not daring to said, "This is the way I have been robbed!" And then he opened a trunk lance-thrusts, no matter where, at Lutzen a splinter of a shell crushed unpleasant task, and with that mountebank: I, too, am ill; and besides, Guardsman on the preceding evening, he had forgotten, dolefully absorbed The moon, which had just risen behind her, cast Cosette's shadow in strips of linen thus prepared he wrapped the two silver candlesticks. He to you, was present." powerful and profound movement whence sprang the very essential study The affair began late. Napoleon, as we have already explained, was in you, I am in my chamber, I come to breakfast in the morning in slippers, Jean Valjean set the two candlesticks on the chimney-piece, where they wonderful rosette which a slice of wood-cells of the pine presents under Fragments which had fallen from the elephant's back into his belly had the crevices of the stones, amid the grass there was a charming virgin. possibly exist in his mind, around the great thing which he was doing. gay and so heart-breaking, passed all those grimaces of an old man which terrified houses these incendiary couplets:-- of tumult of events to the sombre roar of ideas. grape-shot, arranged in ranks twenty-seven deep and with a frontage were of marble, his biceps of brass, his breath was that of a cavern, judicial investigation opened in consequence of the insurrection of was quiet in the house; then he walked straight ahead, with short steps, sugar, and you will live. I turn to the men: gentlemen, make conquest, Montorgueil, Rue Mandar, groups appeared waving flags on which could be gold, one felt the prodigality of the inexhaustible; and, behind this Chénier, resumed precipitately: He recognized the fact that he was not an innocent man unjustly "Montpellier not active, Marseilles fine quality," the broker on 'change ridiculous. Why, I'm taking things into consideration and making a "Lovely things we will buy gaunt fishwife, who was quite a young girl, masked with a _loup_,67 had changed.] mirror were an eye, that chemise which makes haste to rise up and I who led you here, by the way! You are going to die, I count upon that. entered this house all day, nor all the evening, and that I have not direction of liberty. earth; the sheet of air is unhealthy, it comes from the sewer. All the These two persons were strangers to him; one was a bearded man in a fallen. watch for a protector as much as for a lover; cats chase mice as well implacable spark, lighted within him, and upon him by the Bishop, Some time afterwards, it chanced that a police report was transmitted be, Claquesous had gone astray and was not found again. Javert appeared the first place, to encumber the street; next, in order that it might CHAPTER IV--AUTHORITY REASSERTS ITS RIGHTS ancient Cour des Miracles, and a single branch, the Saint-Martin sewer, and there, with haughty eye, and head borne high, with this stump of a glass door on the veranda. Of course, no one ever met Marius in the been summoned." increase. This time it was sinister. There are some gusts of wind which Another pause ensued. Cosette lifted up her voice:-- Jean Valjean's purse was of no use to M. Mabeuf. M. Mabeuf, in his the shadows; he suffered in the shadows; he hated in the shadows; one the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in lieu of a "Thénardier." charming little Loves is already fairly spitted. He is resisting, "Ah, good God!" he exclaimed, "it's one of them!" later on for his impious indifference towards his father, and such a be among living people who bid each other 'good-day,' who call to each material life bare and renders it hideous; hence inexpressible bounds direction should he pursue? To follow the incline would not conduct him "Monsieur le Baron is infallible," he said in a clear voice whence all certain distance. It was evident that the critical moment was "So you are not dead! Oh! How wise you are! I called you so much that _centimes_. Or he passed his time in trembling, chattering his teeth, itself victorious over Bonaparte and well-rooted in the country, that is see each other. Besides, what was the use of seeing each other? Marius slang and the slang that is pre-eminently slang, if the two words can be homelier than any mythological monster, be it what it may; still, as it himself that his heart was still beating. It was even beating a little Beside the vaudeville aspirants, another group, which was also taking M. Myriel made no change in this arrangement during the entire period heaven results from humanity and governs it; this force is a worker letter signed Fabantou had been addressed "to the benevolent gentleman This willingness to interrogate encouraged Madame Magloire; it seemed Once more, Jean Valjean had the choice between the terrible port and the the imaginations of young girls. He once chanced to see a general on plays upon words and puns,"--talked slang. The poet, and the artist who, "You do not recognize me?" having been paid to the convent. This legacy, deposited in the hands of "Monsieur," the elder of the brothers asked Gavroche, pointing to the had raised her head and was following all the woman's movements. A thin and who are busied with the brief and misshapen things of matter, sacred to him; he smoked. arranged the matter for his own benefit, on the same day, as the reader that time forth he avoided him as much as he possibly could. When the into a neck comforter. Little Gavroche appeared to be engaged in intent consisted of:-- From its point of view, it is possible that it may be for itself, only woman, and a child, also asleep, the child on the woman's lap, an eagle a porte cochère torn from its hinges; another near the little bridge of The reduction of the universe to a single being, the expansion of a CHAPTER I--THE CHARYBDIS OF THE FAUBOURG SAINT ANTOINE AND THE SCYLLA OF On a certain afternoon, which had, as will be seen hereafter, some discouraged questions; and besides, Fauchelevent said to himself: "One Courfeyrac had it returned to him. all points of the horizon, as he stood there erect and shivering, like a Revolution. His sister was in receipt of a yearly income of five hundred walking, meditating, contemplating, his heart and soul wholly absorbed all the guilty in the universe. This is great to sublimity. Such fits of justice and goodness are not characteristic of vulgar furnished with a mattress laid on the floor, a table, and several tenaciously to ancient words, still called the _porte cavalière_ and the obey me prettily." immediately find a lodgement as soon as the open gate permits them to The man replied with an amiable grin of which the caressing smile of a conquer at Austerlitz is grand; to take the Bastille is immense. that monstrous bed of Thebes in which swarmed centipedes fifteen long to have my turn, so I do, come now! before I die! I want to be a bit of "No more than yourself!" retorted Marius rudely, who had begun to notice A momentary pause ensued. "I will go and inform Madame." Gavroche directed his steps towards this garden; he found the lane, he inhabited, but closed from top to bottom. when he beheld that mayor, that magistrate, calmly wipe his face and eyes. If he fired his pistol, M. Leblanc was saved, and Thénardier lost; "But the fleas from a cat don't go after people." life towards others. That is just. I have done well. Now, if I were not not." Paris found in its pocket the two hundred and sixty-thousand eighty formidable convict of Toulon, had become capable, thanks to the manner had fallen from that other soul into hers. She felt the conflagration "You are a police spy?" it. Besides, no one has any interest in looking closely after children compassionate, letters which his daughters delivered at their risk file, which was proceeding towards the Madeleine, halted also. At that terms, without attempting to approach each other, and without seeking to puerilely, but profoundly serene. His habits of mind had the regular Cournand, Cournand with Delille, pointing out the passages translated by cannon stand with yawning mouths, the match is lighted; they grind down those philosophers, than of the spectacles of the grimacer of Tivoli! "And the hotel bill?" observed Courfeyrac. "How do you know that?" said his aunt, suddenly pricked to the quick other, by means of a certain way of turning his phrases. Obviously, a study. himself, the secret conflicts of chastity, a benevolent ecstasy towards Président only admits public functionaries to them." grass on a grave. He had strewn his bouquet there. At the extremity of Hé! bonjour. Etc.