Виктор Мари Гюго
Les Misérables, v. 4
CHAPTER V
COSETTE AFTER THE LETTER
While reading these lines Cosette gradually fell into a reverie, and at the moment when she raised her eyes from the last page the handsome officer passed triumphantly in front of the gate; for it was his hour. Cosette found him hideous. She began gazing at the roll of paper again; it was in an exquisite hand-writing, Cosette thought, all written by the same hand, but with different inks, some very black, others pale, as when ink is put in the stand, and consequently on different days. It was, therefore, a thought expanded on the paper, sigh by sigh, irregularly, without order, without choice, without purpose, accidentally. Cosette had never read anything like it; this manuscript, in which she saw more light than obscurity, produced on her the effect of the door of a shrine left ajar. Each of these mysterious lines flashed in her eyes, and flooded her heart with a strange light. The education which she had received had always spoken to her of the soul, and not of love, much as if a person were to speak of the burning log and say nothing about the flame. This manuscript of fifteen pages suddenly and gently revealed to her the whole of love, sorrow, destiny, life, eternity, the beginning and the end. It was like a hand which opened and threw upon her a galaxy of beams. She felt in these lines an impassioned, ardent, generous, and honest nature, a sacred will, an immense grief and an immense hope, a contracted heart, and an expanded ecstasy. What was the manuscript? A letter. A letter without address, name, or signature, pressing and disinterested, an enigma composed of truths, a love-message fit to be borne by an angel and read by a virgin; a rendezvous appointed off the world, a sweet love-letter written by a phantom to a shadow. It was a tranquil and crushed absent man, who seemed ready to seek a refuge in death, and who sent to his absent love the secret of destiny, the key of life. It had been written with one foot in the grave and the hand in heaven, and these lines, which had fallen one by one on the paper, were what might be called drops of the soul.
And now, from whom could these pages come? Who could have written them? Cosette did not hesitate for a moment, – only from one man, from him! Daylight had returned to her mind and everything reappeared. She experienced an extraordinary joy and a profound agony. It was he! He who wrote to her; he had been there; his arm had been passed through the railings! While she was forgetting him he had found her again! But had she forgotten him? No, never! she was mad to have thought so for a moment; for she had ever loved, ever adored him. The fire was covered, and had smouldered for a while, but, as she now plainly saw, it had spread its ravages, and again burst into a flame which entirely kindled her. This letter was like a spark that had fallen from the other soul into hers; she felt the fire begin again, and she was penetrated by every word of the manuscript. "Oh, yes," she said to herself, "how well I recognize all this! I had read it all already in his eyes."
As she finished reading it for the third time, Lieutenant Théodule returned past the railings, and clanked his spurs on the pavement. Cosette was obliged to raise her eyes, and she found him insipid, silly, stupid, useless, fatuous, displeasing, impertinent, and very ugly. The officer thought himself bound to smile, and she turned away ashamed and indignant; she would have gladly thrown something at his head. She ran away, re-entered the house, and locked herself in her bedroom, to re-read the letter, learn it by heart, and dream. When she had read it thoroughly, she kissed it and hid it in her bosom. It was all over. Cosette had fallen back into the profound seraphic love; the Paradisaic abyss had opened again. The whole day through, Cosette was in a state of bewilderment; she hardly thought, and her ideas were confused in her brain; she could not succeed in forming any conjectures, and she hoped through a tremor, what? Vague things. She did not dare promise herself anything, and she would not refuse herself anything. A pallor passed over her face, and a quiver over her limbs; and she fancied at moments that it was all a chimera, and said to herself, "Is it real?" Then she felt the well-beloved paper under her dress, pressed it to her heart, felt the corners against her flesh, and if Jean Valjean had seen her at that moment he would have shuddered at the luminous and strange joy which overflowed from her eyelids. "Oh, yes," she thought, "it is certainly his! This comes from him for me!" And she said to herself that an intervention of the angels, a celestial accident, had restored him to her. Oh, transfiguration of love! oh, dreams! this celestial accident, this intervention of angels, was the ball of bread cast by one robber to another from the Charlemagne yard to the Lions' den, over the buildings of La Force.
CHAPTER VI
THE OLD PEOPLE ARE OPPORTUNELY OBLIGED TO GO OUT
When night came Jean Valjean went out, and Cosette dressed herself. She arranged her hair in the way that best became her, and put on a dress whose body, being cut a little too low, displayed the whole of the neck, and was therefore, as girls say, "rather indecent." It was not the least in the world indecent, but it was prettier than the former fashion. She dressed herself in this way without knowing why. Was she going out? No. Did she expect a visitor? No. She went down into the garden as it grew dark; Toussaint was engaged in her kitchen, which looked out on the back-yard. Cosette began walking under the branches, removing them from time to time with her hand, as some were very low, and thus reached the bench. The stone was still there, and she sat down and laid her beautiful white hand on the stone, as if to caress and thank it. All at once she had that indescribable feeling which people experience even without seeing, when some one is standing behind them. She turned her head and rose, – it was he. He was bareheaded, and seemed pale and thin, and his black clothes could be scarce distinguished. The twilight rendered his glorious forehead livid, and covered his eyes with darkness; and he had, beneath a veil of incomparable gentleness, something belonging to death and night. His face was lit up by the flush of departing day, and by the thoughts of an expiring soul. He seemed as if he were not yet a spectre, but was no longer a man. His hat was thrown among the shrubs a few paces from him. Cosette, though ready to faint, did not utter a cry; she slowly recoiled, as she felt herself attracted, but he did not stir. Through the ineffable sadness that enveloped him she felt the glance of the eyes which she could not see. Cosette, in recoiling, came to a tree, and leaned against it; had it not been for this tree she would have fallen. Then she heard his voice, that voice which she had really never heard before, scarce louder than the rustling of the foliage, as he murmured, —
"Pardon me for being here; my heart is swollen. I could not live as I was, and I have come. Have you read what I placed on that bench? Do you recognize me at all? Do not be frightened at me. Do you remember that day when you looked at me, now so long ago? It was in the Luxembourg garden near the Gladiator, and the days on which you passed before me were June 16 and July 2; it is nearly a year ago. I have not seen you again for a very long time. I inquired of the woman who lets out chairs, and she said that you no longer came there. You lived in the Rue de l'Ouest on the third-floor front of a new house. You see that I know. I followed you, what else could I do? And then you disappeared. I fancied that I saw you pass once as I was reading the papers under the Odéon Arcade, and ran after you, but no, it was a person wearing a bonnet like yours. At night I come here – fear nothing, no one sees me. I come to gaze and be near your windows, and I walk very softly that you may not hear me, for you might be alarmed. The other evening I was behind you; you turned round, and I fled. Once I heard you sing; I was happy. Does it harm you that I should listen to you through the shutters while singing? No, it cannot harm you. You see, you are my angel, so let me come now and then. I believe that I am going to die. If you only knew how I adore you! Forgive me for speaking to you. I know not what I am saying, perhaps I offend you – do I offend you? – "
"Oh, my mother!" said she.
And she sank down as if she were dying. He seized her in his arms and pressed her to his heart, not knowing what he did. He supported her while himself tottering. He felt as if his head were full of smoke; flashes passed between his eye-lashes. His ideas left him; and it seemed to him as if he were accomplishing a religious act, and yet committing a profanation. However, he had not the least desire for this ravishing creature, whose form he felt against his bosom; he was distractedly in love. She took his hand, and laid it on her heart; he felt the paper there, and stammered, —
"You love me, then?"
She answered in so low a voice that it was almost an inaudible breath, —
"Silence! you know I do."
And she hid her blushing face in the bosom of the proud and intoxicated young man. He fell on to the bench, and she by his side. They no longer found words, and the stars were beginning to twinkle. How came it that their lips met? How comes it that the bird sings, the snow melts, the rose opens, May bursts into life, and the dawn grows white behind the black trees on the rustling tops of the hills? One kiss, and that was all. Both trembled and gazed at each other in the darkness with flashing eyes. They neither felt the fresh night nor the cold stone, nor the damp grass, nor the moist soil, – they looked at each other, and their hearts were full of thought. Their hands were clasped without their cognizance. She did not ask him, did not even think of it, how he had managed to enter the garden; for it seemed to her so simple that he should be there. From time to time Marius's knee touched Cosette's knee, and both quivered. At intervals Cosette stammered a word; her soul trembled on her lips like the dewdrop on a flower.
Gradually they conversed, and expansiveness succeeded the silence which is plenitude. The night was serene and splendid above their heads, and these two beings, pure as spirits, told each other everything, – their dreams, their intoxication, their ecstasy, their chimeras, their depressions, how they had adored and longed for each other at a distance, and their mutual despair when they ceased to meet. They confided to each other in an ideal intimacy which nothing henceforth could increase all their most hidden and mysterious thoughts. They told each other, with a candid faith in their illusions, all that love, youth, and the remnant of childhood which they still had, brought to their minds. Their two hearts were poured into each other; so that at the end of an hour the young man had the maiden's soul and the maiden his. They were mutually penetrated, enchanted, and dazzled. When they had finished, when they had told each other everything, she laid her head on his shoulder and asked him, —
"What is your name?"
"Marius," he said; "and yours?"
"Mine is Cosette."
BOOK VI
LITTLE GAVROCHE
CHAPTER I
A MALICIOUS TRICK OF THE WIND
Since 1823, while the public-house at Montfermeil was sinking and gradually being swallowed up, not in the abyss of a bankruptcy, but in the sewer of small debts, the Thénardiers had had two more children, both male. These made five, two daughters and three boys, and they were a good many. The mother had got rid of the latter while still babies by a singular piece of good luck. Got rid of, that is exactly the term, for in this woman there was only a fragment of nature; it is a phenomenon, however, of which there is more than one instance. Like the Maréchale de Lamothe-Houdancourt, the Thénardier was only a mother as far as her daughters, and her maternity ended there. Her hatred of the human race began with her boys; on the side of her sons her cruelty was perpendicular, and her heart had in this respect a dismal steepness. As we have seen, she detested the eldest, and execrated the two others. Why? Because she did. The most terrible of motives and most indisputable of answers is, Because. "I do not want a pack of squalling brats," this mother said.
Let us now explain how the Thénardiers managed to dispose of their last two children, and even make a profit of them. That Magnon, to whom we referred a few pages back, was the same who continued to get an annuity out of old Gillenormand for the two children she had. She lived on the Quai des Célestins, at the corner of that ancient Rue du Petit-Musc, which has done all it could to change its bad reputation into a good odor. Our readers will remember the great croup epidemic, which, thirty-five years ago, desolated the banks of the Seine in Paris, and of which science took advantage to make experiments on a grand scale as to the efficacy of inhaling alum, for which the external application of tincture of iodine has been so usefully substituted in our day. In this epidemic Magnon lost her two boys, still very young, on the same day, one in the morning, the other in the evening. It was a blow, for these children were precious to their mother, as they represented eighty francs a month. These eighty francs were very punctually paid by the receiver of M. Gillenormand's rents, a M. Barge, a retired bailiff who lived in the Rue de Sicile. When the children were dead the annuity was buried, and so Magnon sought an expedient. In the dark free-masonry of evil of which she formed part everything is known, secrets are kept, and people help each other. Magnon wanted two children, and Madame Thénardier had two of the same size and age; it was a good arrangement for one, and an excellent investment for the other. The little Thénardiers became the little Magnons, and Magnon left the Quai des Célestins, and went to live in the Rue Cloche-Perce. In Paris the identity which attaches an individual to himself is broken by moving from one street to the others. The authorities, not being warned by anything, made no objections, and the substitution was effected in the simplest way in the world. Thénardier, however, demanded for this loan of children ten francs a month, which Magnon promised, and even paid. We need not say that M. Gillenormand continued to sacrifice himself, and went every six months to see the children. He did not notice the change. "Oh, sir," Magnon would say to him, "how like you they are, to be sure."
Thénardier, to whom avatars were an easy task, seized this opportunity to become Jondrette. His two daughters and Gavroche had scarcely had time to perceive that they had two little brothers; for in a certain stage of misery people are affected by a sort of spectral indifference, and regard human beings as ghosts. Your nearest relatives are often to you no more than vague forms of the shadow, hardly to be distinguished from the nebulous back-ground of life, and which easily become blended again with the invisible. On the evening of the day when Mother Thénardier handed over her two babes to Magnon, with the well-expressed will of renouncing them forever, she felt, or pretended to feel, a scruple, and said to her husband, "Why, that is deserting one's children!" But Thénardier, magisterial and phlegmatic, cauterized the scruple with this remark, "Jean Jacques Rousseau did better." From scruple the mother passed to anxiety: "But suppose the police were to trouble us? Tell me, Monsieur Thénardier, whether what we have done is permitted?" Thénardier replied: "Everything is permitted. Nobody will see through it out of the blue. Besides, no one has any interest in inquiring closely after children that have not a sou." Magnon was a sort of she-dandy in crime, and dressed handsomely. She shared her rooms, which were furnished in a conventional and miserable way, with a very clever Gallicized English thief. This Englishwoman, a naturalized Parisian, respectable through her powerful and rich connections, who was closely connected with medals of the library and the diamonds of Mademoiselle Mars, was at a later date celebrated in the annals of crime. She was called "Mamselle Miss." The two little ones who had fallen into Magnon's clutches had no cause to complain; recommended by the eighty francs, they were taken care of, like everything which brings in a profit. They were not badly clothed, not badly fed, treated almost like "little gentlemen," and better off with their false mother than the true one. Magnon acted the lady, and never talked slang in their presence. They spent several years there, and Thénardier augured well of it. One day he happened to say to Magnon as she handed him the monthly ten francs, "The 'father' must give them an education."
All at once these two poor little creatures, hitherto tolerably well protected, even by their evil destiny, were suddenly hurled into life, and forced to begin it. An arrest of criminals en masse, like that in the Jondrette garret, being necessarily complicated with researches and ulterior incarcerations, is a veritable disaster for that hideous and occult counter-society which lives beneath public society; and an adventure of this nature produces all sorts of convulsions in this gloomy world. The catastrophe of the Thénardiers was the catastrophe of Magnon. One day, a little while after Magnon had given Éponine the note relating to the Rue Plumet, the police made a sudden descent on the Rue Cloche-Perce. Magnon was arrested, as was Mamselle Miss, and all the inhabitants of the house which were suspected were caught in the haul. The two little boys were playing at the time in the back-yard, and saw nothing of the raid; but when they tried to go in they found the door locked and the house empty. A cobbler whose stall was opposite called to them and gave them a paper which "their mother" had left for them. On the paper was this address, "M. Barge, receiver of rents, No. 8, Rue du Roi de Sicile." The cobbler said to them: "You no longer live here. Go there, it is close by, the first street on your left. Ask your way with that paper." The boys set off, the elder leading the younger, and holding in his hand the paper which was to serve as their guide. It was cold, and his little numbed fingers held the paper badly, and at the corner of a lane a puff of wind tore it from him; and as it was night the boy could not find it again. They began wandering about the streets haphazard.
CHAPTER II
GAVROCHE REAPS ADVANTAGE FROM NAPOLEON THE GREAT
Spring in Paris is very frequently traversed by sharp, violent breezes which, if they do not freeze, chill. These breezes, which sadden the brightest days, produce exactly the same effect as the blasts of cold wind which enter a warm room through the crevices of a badly closed door or window. It seems as if the gloomy gate of winter has been left ajar, and that the wind comes from there. In the spring of 1832, the period when the first great epidemic of this century broke out in Europe, these breezes were sharper and more cutting than ever, and some door even more icy than that of winter had been left ajar. It was the door of the sepulchre, and the breath of cholera could be felt in these breezes. From a meteorological point of view these cold winds had the peculiarity that they did not exclude a powerful electric tension. Frequent storms, accompanied by thunder and lightning, broke out at this period.
One evening, when these breezes were blowing sharply, so sharply that January seemed to have returned, and the citizens had put on their cloaks again, little Gavroche, still shivering gayly under his rags, was standing as if in ecstasy in front of a hair-dresser's shop in the vicinity of the Orme-Saint Gervais. He was adorned with a woman's woollen shawl, picked up no one knew where, of which he had made a muffler. Little Gavroche appeared to be lost in admiration of a waxen image of a bride, wearing a very low-necked dress, and a wreath of orange-flowers in her hair, which revolved between two lamps, and lavished its smiles on the passers-by; but in reality he was watching the shop to see whether he could not "prig" a cake of soap, which he would afterwards sell for a sou to a barber in the suburbs. He frequently breakfasted on one of these cakes, and he called this style of work, for which he had a talent, "shaving the barbers." While regarding the bride, and casting sheep's eyes on the cake of soap, he growled between his teeth: "Tuesday: this is not Tuesday. Is it Tuesday? Perhaps it is Tuesday; yes, it is Tuesday." What this soliloquy referred to was never known; but if it was to the last time he had dined, it was three days ago, for the present day was a Friday. The barber, in his shop warmed with a good stove, was shaving a customer and taking every now and then a side-glance at this enemy, – this shivering and impudent gamin who had his two hands in his pockets, but his mind evidently elsewhere.
While Gavroche was examining the bride, the window, and the Windsor soap, two boys of unequal height, very decently dressed, and younger than himself, one apparently seven, the other five years of age, timidly turned the handle and entered the shop, asking for something, charity possibly, in a plaintive murmur which was more like a sob than a prayer. They both spoke together, and their words were unintelligible, because sobs choked the voice of the younger boy, and cold made the teeth of the elder rattle. The barber turned with a furious face, and without laying down his razor drove the older boy into the street with his left hand, and the little one with his knee, and closed the door again, saying, —
"To come and chill people for nothing!"
The two lads set out again, crying. A cloud had come up in the mean while, and it began raining, little Gavroche ran up to them, and accosted them thus, —
"What's the matter with you, brats?"
"We don't know where to sleep," the elder replied.
"Is that all?" said Gavroche; "that's a great thing. Is that anything to cry about, simpletons?" And assuming an accent of tender affection and gentle protection, which was visible through his somewhat pompous superiority, he said, —
"Come with me, kids."
"Yes, sir," said the elder boy.
And the two children followed him as they would have done an archbishop, and left off crying. Gavroche led them along the Rue St. Antoine, in the direction of the Bastille, and while going off took an indignant and retrospective glance at the barber's shop.
"That whiting has no heart," he growled; "he's an Englishman."
A girl, seeing the three walking in file, Gavroche at the head, burst into a loud laugh. This laugh was disrespectful to the party.
"Good day, Mamselle Omnibus," Gavroche said to her.
A moment after the hair-dresser returning to his mind, he added, —
"I made a mistake about the brute; he is not a whiting, but a snake. Barber, I'll go and fetch a locksmith, and order him to put a bell on your tail."
This barber had made him aggressive; as he stepped across a gutter, he addressed a bearded portress, worthy to meet Faust on the Brocken, and who was holding her broom in her hand, —
"Madame," he said to her, "I see that you go out with your horse."
And after this he plashed the varnished boots of a passer-by.
"Scoundrel!" the gentleman said furiously. Gavroche raised his nose out of the shawl.
"Have you a complaint to make, sir?"
"Yes, of you," said the gentleman.
"The office is closed," Gavroche remarked. "I don't receive any more complaints to-day."
As he went along the street he noticed a girl of thirteen or fourteen, shivering in a gateway, in such short petticoats that she showed her knees. But the little girl was beginning to get too tall a girl for that. Growth plays you such tricks, and the petticoat begins to become short when nudity grows indecent.
"Poor girl," said Gavroche, "she hasn't even a pair of breeches. Here, collar this."
And taking off all the good wool which he had round his neck he threw it over the thin violet shoulders of the beggar-girl, when the muffler became once again a shawl. The little girl looked at him with an astonished air, and received the shawl in silence. At a certain stage of distress a poor man in his stupor no longer groans at evil, and gives no thanks for kindness. This done, —
"B-r-r!" said Gavroche, colder than Saint Martin, who, at any rate, retained one half his cloak. On hearing this "Brr," the shower, redoubling its passion, poured down; those wicked skies punish good actions.
"Hilloh!" Gavroche shouted, "what's the meaning of this? It is raining again. Bon Dieu! if this goes on, I shall withdraw my subscription."
And he set out again.
"No matter," he said as he took a glance at the beggar-girl crouching under her shawl, "she's got a first-rate skin."
And, looking at the clouds, he cried, – "Sold you are!"
The two children limped after him, and as they passed one of those thick close gratings which indicate a baker's, for bread, like gold, is placed behind a grating, Gavroche turned round.
"By the bye, brats, have you dined?"
"We have had nothing to eat, sir, since early this morning," the elder answered.
"Then you haven't either father or mother?" Gavroche continued magisterially.
"I beg your pardon, sir; we have a pa and a ma, but we don't know where they are."
"Sometimes that is better than knowing," said Gavroche, who was a philosopher in his small way.
"We have been walking about for two hours," the lad continued, "and looked for things at the corners of the streets, but found nothing."
"I know," said Gavroche; "the dogs eat everything."
He resumed after a pause, —
"And so we have lost our authors. We don't know what we have done with them. That isn't right, gamins. It is foolish to mislay grown-up people. Well, one must swig, for all that."
He did not ask them any more questions, for what could be more simple than to have no domicile? The elder of the boys, who had almost entirely recovered the happy carelessness of childhood, made this remark: "It is funny all the same. Mamma said she would take us to look for blessed box, on Palm Sunday. Mamma is a lady who lives with Mamselle Miss."
"Tanflute!" added Gavroche.
He stopped, and for some minutes searched all sorts of corners which he had in his rags: at length he raised his head with an air which only wished to represent satisfaction, but which was in reality triumphant, —
"Calm yourselves, kids; here is supper for three."
And he drew a sou from one of his pockets; without giving the lads time to feel amazed, he pushed them both before him into the baker's shop, and laid his sou on the counter, exclaiming, —
"Garçon, five centimes' worth of bread."
The baker, who was the master in person, took up a loaf and a knife.
"In three pieces, garçon," remarked Gavroche, and he added with dignity, —
"We are three."
And seeing that the baker, after examining the three suppers, had taken a loaf of black bread, he thrust his finger into his nose, with as imperious a sniff as if he had the great Frederick's pinch of snuff on his thumb, and cast in the baker's face this indignant remark, —
"Keksekça?"
Those of our readers who might be tempted to see in this remark of Gavroche's to the baker a Russian or Polish word, or one of the savage cries which the Ioways or the Botocudos hurl at each other across the deserted streams, are warned that this is a word which they (our readers) employ daily, and which signifies, qu'est ce que c'est que cela? The baker perfectly comprehended, and replied, —
"Why, it is bread, very good seconds bread."
"You mean black bread," Gavroche remarked, with a calm and cold disdain. "White bread, my lad; I stand treat."
The baker could not refrain from smiling, and while cutting some white bread gazed at them in a compassionate way which offended Gavroche.
"Well, baker's man," he said, "what is there about us that you measure us in that way?"
When the bread was cut, the baker put the sou in the till, and Gavroche said to the two boys, —
"Grub away."
The boys looked at him in surprise, and Gavroche burst into a laugh.
"Oh, yes, that's true, they don't understand yet, they are so little."
And he continued, "Eat."
At the same time he gave each of them a lump of bread. Thinking that the elder, who appeared to him more worthy of his conversation, merited some special encouragement, and ought to have any hesitation about satisfying his hunger removed, he added, as he gave him the larger lump, —
"Shove that into your gun."
There was one piece smaller than the two others, and he took that for himself. The poor boys, Gavroche included, were starving; while tearing the bread with their teeth, they blocked up the baker's shop, who, now that he was paid, looked at them angrily.
"Let us return to the street," said Gavroche.
They started again in the direction of the Bastille; and from time to time as they passed lighted shops, the younger boy stopped to see what o'clock it was by a leaden watch hung round his neck by a string.
"Well, he is a great fool," said Gavroche.
Then he thoughtfully growled between his teeth, "No matter, if I had kids of my own I would take more care of them than that."
As they were finishing their bread, they reached the corner of that gloomy Rue de Ballet at the end of which the low and hostile wicket of La Force is visible.
"Hilloh, is that you, Gavroche?" some one said.
"Hilloh, is that you, Montparnasse?" said Gavroche.
It was a man who accosted Gavroche, no other than Montparnasse disguised with blue spectacles, but Gavroche was able to recognize him.
"My eye!" Gavroche went on, "you have a skin of the color of a linseed poultice and blue spectacles like a doctor. That's your style, on the word of an old man!"
"Silence," said Montparnasse, "not so loud;" and he quickly dragged Gavroche out of the light of the shops. The two little boys followed mechanically, holding each other by the hand. When they were under the black arch of a gateway, protected from eyes and rain, Montparnasse remarked,
