Виктор Мари Гюго
Les Misérables, v. 4
BOOK XV
THE RUE DE L'HOMME ARMÉ
CHAPTER I
BLOTTING, BLABBING
What are the convulsions of a city compared with the convulsions of a soul? Man is even a greater profundity than the people. Jean Valjean at this very moment was suffering from a frightful internal earthquake, and all the gulfs were reopened within him. He too was quivering, like Paris, on the threshold of a formidable and obscure revolution. A few hours had sufficed to cover his destiny and his conscience with shadows, and of him, as of Paris, it might be said, "The two principles are face to face." The white angel and the black angel are about to wrestle with each other on the brink of the abyss; which will hurl the other down?
On the evening of that same day, Jean Valjean, accompanied by Cosette and Toussaint, proceeded to the Rue de l'Homme Armé, where a tremendous incident was fated to take place. Cosette had not left the Rue Plumet without an attempt at resistance, and for the first time since they had lived together, the will of Cosette and the will of Jean Valjean had shown themselves distinct, and had contradicted each other, though they did not come into collision. There was objection on one side and inflexibility on the other: for the abrupt counsel, "Remove!" thrown to Jean Valjean by a stranger, had alarmed him to such a point as to render him absolute. He fancied himself tracked and pursued, and Cosette was compelled to yield. The pair reached the Rue de l'Homme Armé without exchanging a syllable, for each was so deep in personal thought, while Jean Valjean was so anxious that he did not notice Cosette's sadness, and Cosette was so sad that she did not notice Jean Valjean's anxiety. Jean Valjean had brought Toussaint with him, which he had never done in his previous absences, but he foresaw that he might possibly never return to the Rue Plumet, and he could neither leave Toussaint behind him nor tell her his secret. Moreover, he felt her to be devoted and sure; the treachery of a servant to a master begins with curiosity, and Toussaint, as if predestined to be Jean Valjean's servant, was not curious. She was wont to say through her stammering in her patois of a Barneville peasant, "I am so, I do my work, and the rest does not concern me." In his departure from the Rue Plumet, which was almost a flight, Jean Valjean took away with him nothing but the fragrant little portmanteau, christened by Cosette the "inseparable." Packed trunks would have required porters, and porters are witnesses; a hackney-coach had been called to the gate in the Rue de Babylone and they went away in it. It was with great difficulty that Toussaint obtained permission to pack up a little stock of linen and clothes, and a few toilet articles; Cosette herself only took her desk and blotting-book. Jean Valjean, in order to heighten the solitude and mystery of this disappearance, had so arranged as to leave the Rue Plumet at nightfall, which had given Cosette the time to write her note to Marius. They reached the Rue de l'Homme Armé when it was quite dark, and went to bed in perfect silence.
The apartments in this street were situated on a second floor in a back-yard, and consisted of two bed-rooms, a dining-room, and a kitchen adjoining, with a closet in which was a flock-bed, that fell to the lot of Toussaint. The dining-room was at the same time ante-room and separated the two bed-rooms, and the apartments were provided with the necessary articles of furniture. Human nature is so constituted that men become reassured almost as absurdly as they are alarmed; hence Jean Valjean had scarce reached the Rue de l'Homme Armé ere his anxiety cleared away and was gradually dissipated. There are calming places which act to some extent mechanically on the mind, and when a street is obscure the inhabitants are peaceful. Jean Valjean felt a contagious tranquillity in this lane of old Paris, which is so narrow that it is barred against vehicles by a cross-beam, which is dumb and deaf amid the noisy town, full of twilight in broad daylight, and, so to speak, incapable of feeling emotions between its two rows of tall centenary houses, which are silent like old folks are. There is in this street a stagnant oblivion, and Jean Valjean breathed again in it, for how was it possible that he could be found there? His first care was to place the "inseparable" by his side; he slept soundly, and night counsels, we might add, night appeases. The next morning he woke up almost gay. He considered the dining-room charming, though it was hideous, for it was furnished with an old round table, a low side-board surmounted by a mirror, a rickety easy-chair, and a few chairs encumbered with Toussaint's parcels. In one of these parcels Jean Valjean's National Guard uniform could be seen through an opening.
As for Cosette, she ordered Toussaint to bring a basin of broth to her bed-room, and did not make her appearance till evening. At about five o'clock, Toussaint, who went about very busy with getting things to rights, placed a cold fowl on the dinner-table, which Cosette consented to look at, through deference for her father. This done, Cosette protesting a persistent headache, said good-night to Jean Valjean, and shut herself up in her bed-room. Jean Valjean ate a wing of the fowl with appetite, and with his elbows on the table, and gradually growing reassured, regained possession of his serenity. While he was eating this modest dinner, he vaguely heard twice or thrice stammering Toussaint say to him, "There is a disturbance, sir, and people are fighting in Paris." But, absorbed in a multitude of internal combinations, he had paid no attention to her; truth to tell, he had not heard her. He rose and began walking from the door to the window, and from the window to the door with calmness. Cosette, his sole preoccupation, reverted to his mind, not that he was alarmed by this headache, a slight nervous attack, a girl's pouting, a momentary cloud, which would disappear in a day or two, but he thought of the future, and, as usual, thought of it gently. After all, he saw no obstacle to his happy life resuming its course: at certain hours everything seems impossible, at others everything appears easy, and Jean Valjean was in one of those good hours. They usually arrive after bad hours, as day does after night, through that law of succession and contrast which is the basis of our nature, and which superficial minds call antithesis. In this peaceful street where he had sought shelter, Jean Valjean freed himself from all that had troubled him for some time past, and from the very fact that he had seen so much darkness he was beginning to perceive a little azure. To have left the Rue Plumet without any complication or incident was a good step gained, and perhaps it would be wise to leave the country, were it only for a few months, and go to London. Well, they would go; what did he care whether he were in England or France, provided that he had Cosette by his side? Cosette was his nation, Cosette sufficed for his happiness, and the idea that he perhaps did not suffice for Cosette's happiness, that idea which had formerly been his fever and sleeplessness, did not even present itself to his mind. All his past sorrows had collapsed, and he was in the centre of optimism. Cosette, being by his side, seemed to be his, and this is an optical effect which everybody has experienced. He arranged in his mind, and with all possible facility, the departure for England with Cosette, and he saw his felicity reconstructed, no matter where, in the perspectives of his reverie.
While slowly walking up and down, his eye suddenly fell on something strange. He noticed, facing him in the inclined mirror over the side-board, and read distinctly: —
"MY WELL-BELOVED, – Alas! my father insists on our going away at once. We shall be this evening at No. 7, Rue de l'Homme Armé, and within a week in London.
COSETTE.""June 4."
Jean Valjean stopped with haggard gaze. Cosette, on arriving, had laid her blotting-book on the side-board facing the mirror, and, immersed in her painful thoughts, had forgotten it, without even noticing that she had left it open at the very page on which she had dried the few lines she had written and intrusted to the young workman passing along the Rue Plumet. The writing was imprinted on the blotting-paper and the mirror reflected the writing. The result was what is called in geometry a symmetric image, so that the writing reversed on the blotting-paper was placed straight in the mirror, and offered its natural direction, and Jean Valjean had before his eyes the letter written on the previous evening by Cosette to Marius. It was simple and crushing. Jean Valjean walked up to the mirror and read the lines again, but did not believe in them. They produced on him the effect of appearing in a flash of lightning: it was an hallucination; it was impossible; it was not. Gradually his perception became more precise, he looked at Cosette's blotting-book, and the feeling of the real fact returned to him. He took up the blotting-book, saying, "It comes from that." He feverishly examined the lines imprinted on the blotting-paper, but as they ran backward he could see no meaning in the strange scrawl. Then he said to himself, "Why, it means nothing; there is nothing written there." And he drew a long breath with inexpressible relief. Who has not felt such wild delight in horrible moments? The soul does not surrender to despair till it has exhausted every illusion.
He held the book in his hand and gazed at it, stupidly happy, almost ready to laugh at the hallucination of which he had been the dupe. All at once his eyes fell again on the mirror, and he saw the vision again; the lines stood on it with inexorable clearness. This time it was no mirage, it was palpable, it was the writing turned straight in the mirror, and he comprehended the fact. Jean Valjean tottered, let the blotting-book slip from his grasp, and fell into the old easy-chair by the side of the side-board with hanging head and glassy, wandering eye. He said to himself that it was evident that the light of this world was eclipsed, and that Cosette had written that to somebody. Then he heard his soul, which had become terrible again, utter a hoarse roar in the darkness. Just attempt to take from the lion the dog he has in his cage! Strange, and sad to say, at that moment Marius had not yet received Cosette's letter, and accident had treacherously carried it to Jean Valjean before delivering it to Marius. Jean Valjean up to that day had never been conquered by a trial; he had been subjected to frightful assaults, not a blow of evil fortune had been spared him, and the ferocity of fate, armed with all social revenge and contempt, had taken him for its victim and furiously attacked him. He had accepted, when it was necessary, every extremity; he had surrendered his reacquired inviolability as man, given up his liberty, risked his head, lost everything and suffered everything, and he had remained disinterested and stoical to such an extent that at times he seemed to be oblivious of self, like a martyr. His conscience, hardened to all possible assaults of adversity, might seem quite impregnable; but any one who had now gazed into his heart would have been compelled to allow that it was growing weak. In truth, of all the tortures he had undergone in this long trial to which fate subjected him, this was the most formidable, and never had such a vise held him before. He felt the mysterious agitation of all his latent sensibilities, he felt the twitching of an unknown fibre. Alas! the supreme trial, we may say the sole trial, is the loss of the being whom we love.
Poor old Jean Valjean did not assuredly love Cosette otherwise than as a father; but, as we have already remarked, the very widowhood of his life had introduced all the forms of love into this paternity: he loved Cosette as his daughter, loved her as his mother, and loved her as his sister, and, as he had never had a mistress or a wife, that feeling too, the most clinging of all, was mingled with the others, vague, ignorant, pure with the purity of blindness unconscious, heavenly, angelic, and divine, less as a feeling than an instinct, less as an instinct than an attraction, imperceptible, invisible, but real; and love, properly so called, was in his enormous tenderness for Cosette as the vein of gold is in the mountain, dark and virginal. Our readers must study for a moment this state of the heart; no marriage was possible between them, not even that of souls, and yet it is certain that their destinies were wedded. Excepting Cosette, that is to say, excepting a childhood, Jean Valjean, during the whole of his life, had known nothing about things that may be loved. Those passions and loves which succeed each other had not produced in him those successive stages of green, light green, or dark green, which may be noticed on leaves that survive the winter, and in men who pass their fiftieth year. In fine, as we have more than once urged, all this internal fusion, all this ensemble, whose resultant was a lofty virtue, ended by making Jean Valjean a father to Cosette, – a strange father, forged out of the grandsire, the son, the brother, and the husband, which were in Jean Valjean; a father in whom there was even a mother; a father who loved Cosette and adored her, and who had this child for his light, his abode, his family, his country, and his paradise. Hence, when he saw that it was decidedly ended, that she was escaping from him, slipping through his fingers, concealing herself, that she was a cloud, that she was water; when he had before his eyes this crushing evidence: "Another is the object of her heart, another is the wish of her life, she has a lover, I am only the father, I no longer exist;" when he could no longer doubt, when he said to himself, "She is leaving me," the sorrow he experienced went beyond the limits of the possible. To have done all that he had done to attain this, and to be nothing! Then, as we have just stated, he had a quivering of revolt from head to foot; he felt even in the roots of his hair the immense reawaking of selfishness, and the "I" yelled in the depths of this man's soul.
There are such things as internal earthquakes; the penetration of a desperate certainty into a man is not effected without removing and breaking certain profound elements which are at times the man himself. Grief, when it attains that pitch, is a frantic flight of all the forces of the conscience, and such crises are fatal. Few among us emerge from them equal to ourselves and firm in our duty; for when the limit of suffering is exceeded, the most imperturbable virtue is disconcerted. Jean Valjean took up the blotting-book and convinced himself afresh; he bent down as if petrified, and with fixed eye, over the undeniable lines, and such a cloud collected within him that it might be believed that the whole interior of his soul was in a state of collapse. He examined this revelation through the exaggerations of reverie with an apparent and startling calmness, for it is a formidable thing when a man's calmness attains the coldness of a statue. He measured the frightful step which his destiny had taken without any suspicion on his part, he recalled his fears of the past summer, so madly dissipated, he recognized the precipice; it was still the same, but Jean Valjean was no longer at the top but at the bottom. It was an extraordinary and crushing fact that he had fallen without perceiving it, the whole light of his life had fled while he still fancied he could see the sun. His instinct did not hesitate; he brought together certain circumstances, certain dates, certain blushes, and certain palenesses of Cosette, and said to himself, "It is he!" The divination of despair is a species of mysterious bow which never misses its mark, and with its first shaft it hit Marius. He did not know the name, but at once found the man; he perceived distinctly at the bottom of the implacable evocation of memory the unknown prowler of the Luxembourg, that villanous seeker of amourettes, that romantic idler, that imbecile, that coward, – for it is cowardice to exchange loving glances with girls who have by their side a father who loves them. After feeling quite certain that this young man was at the bottom of the situation, and that all this came from him, Jean Valjean, the regenerated man, the man who had toiled so heavily in his soul, the man who had made so many efforts to resolve his whole life, his whole misery, and his whole misfortune into love, looked into himself and saw there a spectre – hatred.
Great griefs contain exhaustion, and discourage us with life; the man into whom they enter feels something retire from him. In youth their visit is mournful, at a later date it is sinister. Alas! when the blood is hot, when the hair is black, when the head is upright on the body like the flame on the candle, when the heart, full of a yearning love, still has palpitations which may be given to it in return, when a man has time to recover from the wound, when all women are there, and all the smiles, and all the future, and the whole horizon, when the strength of life is complete, – if despair be a frightful thing under such circumstances, what is it then in old age, when years are growing more and more livid, at that twilight hour when the stars of the tomb are beginning to become visible? While Jean Valjean was thinking, Toussaint came in; he rose and asked her, —
"Do you know whereabout it is?"
Toussaint, in her stupefaction, could only answer, —
"I beg your pardon, sir."
Jean Valjean continued, —
"Did you not say just now that they were fighting?"
"Oh yes, sir," Toussaint replied; "over at St. Merry."
There are some mechanical movements which come to us, without our cognizance, from our deepest thoughts. It was doubtless under the impulse of a movement of this nature, of which he was scarce conscious, that Jean Valjean found himself five minutes later in the street. He was bareheaded, and sat down on the bench before his house, seemingly listening.
Night had set in.
CHAPTER II
THE GAMIN THE ENEMY OF LAMPS
How long did he remain there? What was the ebb and flow of this tragical meditation? Did he draw himself up? Did he remain bowed down? Had he been bent till he was broken? Could he recover himself and stand again upon something solid in his conscience? Probably he could not have said himself. The street was deserted, and a few anxious citizens who hurriedly returned home scarce noticed him, for each for himself is the ride in times of peril. The lamplighter came as usual to light the lamp which was exactly opposite the door of No. 7, and went away. Jean Valjean would not have appeared to be a living man to any one who might have examined him in this gloom, and he sat on his bench motionless, like a statue of ice. His despair had got beyond congelation. The tocsin and vague stormy rumors could be heard, and in the midst of all these convulsions of the bell blended with the riot, the clock of St. Paul struck the eleventh hour, solemnly and without hurrying; for the tocsin is man, the hour is God. The passing of the hour produced no effect on Jean Valjean, and he did not stir. Almost immediately after, however, a sudden detonation broke out in the direction of the markets, followed by a second even more violent; it was probably that attack on the barricade of the Rue de la Chanvrerie which we have just seen repulsed by Marius. At this double discharge, whose fury seemed increased by the stupor of the night, Jean Valjean started; he turned in the direction whence the sound came, but then fell back on his bench, crossed his arms, and his head slowly bent down again on his chest. He resumed his dark dialogue with himself.
All at once he raised his eyes, for there was some one in the street; he heard footsteps close to him, and by the light of the lamp he perceived a livid, young, and radiant face, in the direction of the street which runs past the Archives. It was Gavroche, who had just arrived from the Rue de la Chanvrerie; Gavroche was looking up in the air, and appeared to be seeking. He saw Jean Valjean distinctly, but paid no attention to him. Gavroche, after looking up in the air, looked down on the ground; he stood on tiptoe, and felt the doors and ground-floor windows; they were all shut, bolted, and barred. After examining the fronts of several houses barricaded in this way, the gamin shrugged his shoulders, and then resumed his self-colloquy with himself, thus, "By Jove!" Then he looked up in the air again. Jean Valjean, who a moment previously in his present state of mind would neither have spoken to nor answered any one, felt an irresistible impulse to address this lad.
"My little boy," he said, "what is the matter with you?"
"Why, I'm hungry," Gavroche answered bluntly. And he added, "Little yourself!"
Jean Valjean felt in his pocket and pulled out a five-franc piece. But Gavroche, who was a species of wagtail, and rapidly passed from one gesture to another, had just picked up a stone. He had noticed the lamp.
"Hilloh!" he said, "you have still got lights here. You are not acting rightly, my friends; that is disorderly conduct. Break it for me."
And he threw the stone at the lamp, whose glass fell with such a noise that the citizens concealed behind their curtains in the opposite house cried, "There is '93!" The lamp oscillated violently and went out; the street suddenly became dark.
"That's it, old street," said Gavroche, "put on your nightcap." Then, turning to Jean Valjean, he said, —
"What do you call that gigantic monument which you have there at the end of the street? It's the Archives, isn't it? Let's pull down some of those great brutes of columns and make a tidy barricade."
Jean Valjean walked up to Gavroche.
"Poor creature!" he said in a low voice, and as if speaking to himself, "he is hungry."
And he placed the five-franc piece in his hand. Gavroche raised his nose, amazed at the size of this double sou; he looked at it in the darkness, and the whiteness of the double sou dazzled him. He was acquainted with five-franc pieces by hearsay, and their reputation was agreeable to him; he was delighted to see one so closely, and said, "Let us contemplate the tiger." He looked at it for some moments in ecstasy; then, turning to Jean Valjean, he held out the coin to him, and said majestically, —
"Citizen, I prefer breaking the lamps. Take back your ferocious animal, for I am not to be corrupted. It has five claws, but can't scratch me."
"Have you a mother?" Jean Valjean asked.
Gavroche replied, —
"Perhaps more than you."
"Well," Jean Valjean continued, "keep that money for your mother."
Gavroche was affected. Moreover, he had noticed that the man who was addressing him had no hat on, and this inspired him with confidence.
"Really, then," he said, "it is not to prevent me breaking the lamps?"
"Break as many as you like."
"You are a worthy man," said Gavroche.
And he put the five-franc piece in one of his pockets. Then, with increasing confidence, he added; —
"Do you belong to this street?"
"Yes; why?"
"Can you point me out No. 7?"
"What do you want at No. 7?"
Here the lad stopped, for he feared lest he had said too much. He energetically plunged his nails into his hair, and confined himself to answering, —
"Ah, there it is."
An idea flashed across Jean Valjean's mind, for agony has lucidities of that nature. He said to the boy, —
"Have you brought me the letter which I am expecting?"
"You," said Gavroche, "you ain't a woman."
"The letter is for Mademoiselle Cosette, is it not?"
"Cosette?" Gavroche grumbled; "yes, I think it is that absurd name."
"Well," Jean Valjean continued, "you have to deliver the letter to me; so give it here."
"In that case, you must be aware that I am sent from the barricade?"
"Of course," said Jean Valjean.
Gavroche thrust his hand into another of his pockets, and produced a square folded letter; then he gave the military salute.
"Respect for the despatch," he said; "it comes from the Provisional Government."
"Give it to me," said Jean Valjean.
Gavroche held the paper above his head.
"You must not imagine that it is a love-letter, though it is for a woman; it is for the people; we are fighting, and we respect the sex; we are not like people in the world of fashion, where there are lions that send poulets to camels."
"Give it to me."
"After all," Gavroche continued, "you look like an honest man."
"Make haste."
"Here it is."
And he handed the paper to Jean Valjean.
"And make haste, Monsieur Chose, since Mamselle Chosette is waiting."
Gavroche felt pleased at having made this pun. Jean Valjean added, —
"Must the answer be taken to St. Merry?"
"You would make in that way," Gavroche exclaimed, "one of those pastries vulgarly called brioches [blunders]. That letter comes from the barricade in the Rue de la Chanvrerie, and I am going back to it. Good-night, citizen."
This said, Gavroche went away, or, to speak more correctly, resumed his birdlike flight to the spot whence he had escaped. He plunged again into the darkness, as if there were a hole there, with the rigid rapidity of a projectile: the lane of l'Homme Armé became once again silent and solitary. In a twinkling, this strange lad, who had shadows and dreams within him, buried himself in the gloom of these rows of black houses, and was lost in it like smoke in darkness, and it might have been fancied that he was dispersed, had vanished, had not, a few minutes after his disappearance, a noisy breakage of glass, and the splendid echo of a lamp falling on the pavement, suddenly reawakened the indignant citizens. It was Gavroche passing along the Rue de Chaume.
