Виктор Мари Гюго
Les Misérables, v. 5
CHAPTER X
RETURN OF THE SON PRODIGAL OF HIS LIFE
At each jolt over the pavement a drop of blood fell from Marius's hair. It was quite night when the hackney coach reached No. 6, Rue des Filles du Calvaire. Javert got out first, examined at a glance the number over the gateway, and raising the heavy knocker of hammered steel, embellished in the old style with a goat and a satyr contending, gave a violent knock. The folding-door opened slightly, and Javert pushed it open. The porter half showed himself, yawning, and scarce awake, candle in hand. All were asleep in the house, for people go to bed early at the Marais, especially on days of rioting. This good old district, terrified by the revolution, takes refuge in sleep, like children who, when they hear "old Bogey coming," quickly hide their heads under the counterpane. In the mean while Jean Valjean and the driver removed Marius from the hackney coach, Valjean holding him under the armpits and the coachman under the knees. While carrying Marius in this way Jean Valjean passed his hands under his clothes, which were terribly torn, felt his chest, and assured himself that his heart still beat. It even beat a little less feebly, as if the motion of the vehicle had produced a certain renewal of vitality. Javert addressed the porter in the tone which becomes the government in the presence of the porter of a factionist.
"Any one live here of the name of Gillenormand?"
"It is here. What do you want with him?"
"We bring him his son."
"His son?" the porter asked in amazement.
"He is dead."
Jean Valjean, who came up ragged and filthy behind Javert, and whom the porter regarded with some horror, made him a sign that it was not so. The porter seemed neither to understand Javert's remark nor Jean Valjean's sign. Javert continued, —
"He has been to the barricade, and here he is."
"To the barricade!" the porter exclaimed.
"He has been killed. Go and wake his father."
The porter did not stir.
"Be off!" Javert continued; and added, "There will be a funeral here to-morrow."
For Javert, the ordinary incidents of the streets were classified categorically, which is the commencement of foresight and surveillance, and each eventuality had its compartment; the possible facts were to some extent kept in drawers, whence they issued on occasions, in variable quantities; there were in the streets, disturbance, riot, carnival, and interments.
The porter limited himself to awaking Basque; Basque awoke Nicolette; Nicolette awoke Aunt Gillenormand. As for the grandfather, he was left to sleep, as it was thought that he would know the affair quite soon enough as it was. Marius was carried to the first-floor, no one being acquainted with the fact in the rest of the house, and he was laid on an old sofa in M. Gillenormand's ante-room, and while Basque went to fetch a physician and Nicolette opened the linen-presses, Jean Valjean felt Javert touch his shoulder. He understood, and went down, Javert following close at his heels. The porter saw them depart, as he had seen them arrive, with a startled sleepiness. They got into the hackney coach, and the driver on his box.
"Inspector Javert," Jean Valjean said, "grant me one thing more."
"What is it?" Javert answered roughly.
"Let me go home for a moment, and you can then do with me what you please."
Javert remained silent for a few moments with his chin thrust into the collar of his great-coat, and then let down the front window.
"Driver," he said, "No. 7, Rue de l'Homme Armé."
CHAPTER XI
A SHAKING IN THE ABSOLUTE
They did not speak during the entire ride. What did Jean Valjean want? To finish what he had begun; to warn Cosette, tell her where Marius was, give her perhaps some other useful information, and make, if he could, certain final arrangements. For his own part, as regarded what concerned him personally, it was all over; he had been arrested by Javert, and did not resist. Any other than he, in such a situation, would perhaps have thought vaguely of the rope which Thénardier had given him, and the bars of the first cell he entered; but since his meeting with the Bishop, Jean Valjean had within him a profound religious hesitation against every assault, even on himself. Suicide, that mysterious attack on the unknown, which may contain to a certain extent the death of the soul, was impossible to Jean Valjean.
On entering the Rue de l'Homme Armé the coach stopped, as the street was too narrow for vehicles to pass along it. Jean Valjean and Javert got out. The driver humbly represented to "Mr. Inspector" that the Utrecht velvet of his coach was quite spoiled by the blood of the assassinated man and the filth of the assassin, – that is how he understood the affair, – and he added that an indemnity was due to him. At the same time taking his license-book from his pocket, he begged Mr. Inspector to have the kindness to write him a little bit of a certificate. Javert thrust back the book which the driver offered him and said, —
"How much do you want, including the time you waited and the journey?"
"It's seven hours and a quarter," the driver answered, "and my velvet was brand new. Eighty francs, Mr. Inspector."
Javert took from his pocket four Napoleons, and dismissed the hackney coach. Jean Valjean thought that it was Javert's intention to take him on foot to the Blancs Manteaux post, or that of the Archives, which were close by. They entered the street, which was as usual deserted. Javert followed Jean Valjean, and, on reaching No. 7, the latter rapped, and the gate opened.
"Very good," said Javert; "go up."
He added, with a strange expression, and as if making an effort to speak in this way, —
"I will wait for you here."
Jean Valjean looked at Javert, for this style of conduct was not at all a habit of Javert's. Still, it could not surprise him greatly that Javert should now place in him a sort of haughty confidence, – the confidence of the cat which grants the mouse liberty to the length of its claw, determined as Jean Valjean was to give himself up and make an end of it. He thrust open the gate, entered the house, shouted to the porter, who was lying down and had pulled the string from his bed, "It is I," and mounted the staircase. On reaching the first story he paused, for every Via Dolorosa has its stations. The window at the head of the stairs, a sash-window, was open. As is the case in many old houses, the staircase obtained light from, and looked out on, the street. The street lantern, situated precisely opposite, threw some little light on the stairs, which caused a saving of a lamp. Jean Valjean, either to breathe or mechanically, thrust his head out of this window and looked down into the street. It is short, and the lamp lit it from one end to the other. Jean Valjean had a bedazzlement of stupor: there was no one in it.
Javert had gone away.
CHAPTER XII
THE GRANDFATHER
Basque and the porter had carried Marius, who was still lying motionless on the sofa on which he had been laid on arriving, into the drawing-room. The physician, who had been sent for, hurried in, and Aunt Gillenormand had risen. Aunt Gillenormand came and went, horrified, clasping her hands, and incapable of doing anything but saying, "Can it be possible?" She added at intervals, "Everything will be stained with blood." When the first horror had passed away a certain philosophy of the situation appeared even in her mind, and was translated by the exclamation, "It must end in that way." She did not go so far, though, as "Did I not say so?" which is usual on occasions of this nature.
By the surgeon's orders a folding-bed was put up near the sofa. He examined Marius, and after satisfying himself that the pulse still beat, that the patient had no penetrating wound in the chest, and that the blood at the corners of the lips came from the nostrils, he had him laid flat on the bed, without a pillow, the head level with the body, and even a little lower, the chest bare, in order to facilitate the breathing. Mademoiselle Gillenormand, seeing that Marius was being undressed, withdrew, and told her beads in her bed-room. The body had received no internal injury; a ball, deadened by the pocket-book, had deviated, and passed round the ribs with a frightful gash, but as it was not deep, it was therefore not dangerous. The long subterranean march had completed the dislocation of the collar-bone, and there were serious injuries there. The arms were covered with sabre-cuts; no scar disfigured the face, but the head was cut all over with gashes. What would be the state of these wounds on the head, – did they stop at the scalp, or did they reach the brain? It was impossible to say yet. It was a serious symptom that they had caused the faintness. And men do not always awake from such fainting-fits; the hemorrhage, moreover, had exhausted the wounded man. From the waist downward the lower part of the body had been protected by the barricade.
Basque and Nicolette tore up linen and prepared bandages: Nicolette sewed them and Basque rolled them. As they had no lint, the physician had temporarily checked the effusion of blood with cakes of wadding. By the side of the bed three candles burned on the table on which the surgeon's pocket-book lay open. He washed Marius's face and hair with cold water, and a bucketful was red in an instant. The porter, candle in hand, lighted him. The surgeon seemed to be thinking sadly: from time to time he gave a negative shake of the head, as if answering some question which he mentally addressed to himself. Such mysterious dialogues of the physician with himself are a bad sign for the patient. At the moment when the surgeon was wiping the face and gently touching with his finger the still closed eyelids, a door opened at the end of the room, and a tall, pale figure appeared: it was the grandfather. The riot during the last two days had greatly agitated, offended, and occupied M. Gillenormand; he had not been able to sleep on the previous night, and he had been feverish all day. At night he went to bed at a very early hour, bidding his people bar up the house, and had fallen asleep through weariness.
Old men have a fragile sleep. M. Gillenormand's bed-room joined the drawing-room, and whatever precautions had been taken, the noise awoke him. Surprised by the crack of light which he saw in his door, he had got out of bed and groped his way to the door. He was standing on the threshold, with one hand on the door-handle, his head slightly bent forward and shaking, his body enfolded in a white dressing-gown as straight and creaseless as a winding-sheet: he was surprised, and looked like a ghost peering into a tomb. He noticed the bed, and on the mattress this young bleeding man, of the whiteness of wax, with closed eyes, open mouth, livid cheeks, naked to the waist, marked all over with vermilion, wounded, motionless, and brightly illumined.
The grandfather had from head to foot that shudder which ossified limbs can have. His eyes, whose cornea was yellow owing to their great age, were veiled by a sort of glassy stare; his entire face assumed in an instant the earthly angles of a skeleton's head; his arms fell pendent as if a spring had been broken in them, and his stupor was displayed by the outspreading of all the fingers of his two old trembling hands. His knees formed a salient angle, displaying through the opening of his dressing-gown his poor naked legs bristling with white hairs, and he murmured, —
"Marius!"
"He has just been brought here, sir," said Basque; "he went to the barricade, and – "
"He is dead," the old gentleman exclaimed in a terrible voice. "Oh, the brigand!"
Then a sort of sepulchral transfiguration drew up this centenarian as straight as a young man.
"You are the surgeon, sir," he said; "begin by telling me one thing. He is dead, is he not?"
The surgeon, who was frightfully anxious, maintained silence, and M. Gillenormand wrung his hands with a burst of terrifying laughter.
"He is dead, he is dead! He has let himself be killed at the barricade through hatred of me; it was against me that he did it! Ah, the blood-drinker, that is the way in which he returns to me! Woe of my life, he is dead!"
He went to a window, opened it quite wide, as if he were stifling, and standing there began speaking to the night in the street.
"Stabbed, sabred, massacred, exterminated, slashed, cut to pieces! Do you see that, the beggar! He knew very well that I expected him, and that I had his room ready, and that I had placed at my bed-head his portrait when he was a child! He knew very well that he need only return, and that for years I had been recalling him, and that I sat at night by my fire-side with my hands on my knees, not knowing what to do, and that I was crazy about him! You knew that very well; you had only to return and say, 'It is I,' and you would be the master of the house, and I would obey you, and you could do anything you liked with your old ass of a grandfather! You knew it very well, and said, 'No, he is a royalist, I will not go!' and you went to the barricades, and have let yourself be killed out of spite, in order to revenge yourself for what I said on the subject of Monsieur le Due de Berry! Is not that infamous! Go to bed and sleep quietly, for he is dead. This is my awaking."
The surgeon, who was beginning to be anxious for both, left Marius, and going up to M. Gillenormand, took his arm. The grandfather turned, looked at him with eyes that seemed dilated and bloodshot, and said calmly, —
"I thank you sir, I am calm. I am a man. I saw the death of Louis XVI., and can endure events. There is one thing that is terrible, – it is the thought that it is your newspapers which do all the mischief. You have scribblers, speakers, lawyers, orators, tribunes, discussions, progress, lights, rights of man, liberty of the press, and that is the way in which your children are brought back to your houses. Oh, Marius, it is abominable! Killed! dead before me! a barricade! Oh, the bandit! Doctor, you live in the quarter, I believe? Oh yes, I know you well. I have seen your cab pass from my window. Well, I will tell you. You are wrong if you think that I am in a passion, for people do not get in a passion with a dead man, it would be stupid. That is a boy I brought up; I was old when he was still quite little. He played in the Tuileries with his little spade and his little chair, and, in order that the inspectors should not scold, I used to fill up with my cane the holes which he made with his spade. One day he cried, 'Down with Louis XVIII.!' and went off. It is not my fault. He was all pink and white, and his mother is dead: have you noticed that all little children are light-haired? He is a son of one of those brigands of the Loire, but children are innocent of their fathers' crimes. I remember him when he was so high, and he could never manage to pronounce a d. He spoke so sweetly and incomprehensibly that you might have fancied him a bird. I remember one day that a circle was formed in front of the Farnese Hercules to admire that child, he was so lovely. He had a head such as you see in pictures. I used to speak loud to him, and threaten him with my cane; but he knew very well that it was a joke. In the morning, when he entered my room, I scolded; but it produced the effect of sunshine upon me. It is not possible to defend yourself against these brats, for they take you, and hold you, and do not let you go again. It is the fact that there never was a Cupid like that child. And now what do you say of your Lafayette, your Benjamin Constant, and your Tirecuir de Corcelles, who kill him for me? Oh, it cannot pass away like that!"
He went up to Marius, who was still livid and motionless, and began wringing his hands again. The old gentleman's white lips moved as it were mechanically, and allowed indistinct sentences to pass, which were scarce audible. "Ah, heartless! ah, clubbist! ah, scoundrel! ah, Septembrizer!" – reproaches uttered in a low voice by a dying man to a corpse. By degrees, as such internal eruptions must always burst forth, the flood of words returned; but the grandfather seemed no longer to have the strength to utter them; his voice was so hollow and choked that it seemed to come from the other brink of an abyss.
"I do not care a bit; I will die too. And then to think there is not a wench in Paris who would not be happy to produce the happiness of that scoundrel, – a scamp, who, instead of amusing himself and enjoying life, went to fight, and let himself be shot like a brute! And for whom, and for what? For the republic, instead of going to dance at the Chaumière, as is the duty of young men! It is really worth while being twenty years of age. The republic, – a fine absurdity! Poor mothers bring pretty boys into the world for that! Well, he is dead; that will make two hearses under the gateway. So you have got yourself served in that way for love of General Lamarque! What did General Lamarque do for you? A sabrer! a chatterer! to get one's self killed for a dead man! Is it not enough to drive one mad? Can you understand that? At twenty! and without turning his head to see whether he left anything behind him! Now, see the poor old fellows who are obliged to die all alone. Rot in your corner, owl! Well, after all, that is what I hoped for, and is for the best, as it will kill me right off. I am too old; I am one hundred; I am a hundred thousand, and I had a right to be dead long ago. Well, this blow settles it. It is all over. What happiness! What is the use of making him inhale ammonia and all that pile of drugs? You ass of a doctor, you are wasting your time. There, he's dead, quite dead! I know it, for I am dead too. He did not do the thing by halves. Yes, the present age is infamous, infamous, infamous! And that is what I think of you, your ideas, your systems, your masters, your oracles, your doctors, your scamps of writers, your rogues of philosophers, and all the revolutions which have startled the Tuileries ravens during the last sixty years. And since you were pitiless in letting yourself be killed so, I will not even feel sorry at your death. Do your hear, assassin?"
At this moment Marius slowly opened his eyes, and his glance, still veiled by lethargic surprise, settled on M. Gillenormand.
"Marius!" the old man cried; "Marius, my little Marius! My child! My beloved son! You open your eyes! You look at me! You are alive! Thanks!"
And he fell down in a fainting fit.
BOOK IV
JAVERT DERAILED
Javert retired slowly from the Rue de l'Homme Armé. He walked with drooping head for the first time in his life, and equally for the first time in his life with his hands behind his back. Up to that day Javert had only assumed, of Napoleon's two attitudes, the one which expresses resolution, the arms folded on the chest; the one indicating uncertainty, the arms behind the back, was unknown to him. Now a change had taken place, and his whole person, slow and sombre, was stamped with anxiety. He buried himself in the silent streets, but followed a certain direction. He went by the shortest road to the Seine, reached the Quai des Ormes, walked along it, passed the Grêve, and stopped, a little distance from the Place du Châtelet, at the corner of the Pont Nôtre Dame. The Seine makes there, between that bridge and the Pont au Change on one side, and the Quai de la Mégisserie and the Quai aux Fleurs on the other, a species of square hike traversed by a rapid. This point of the Seine is feared by sailors; nothing can be more dangerous than this rapid, at that period contracted and irrigated by the piles of the mill bridge, since demolished. The two bridges, so close to each other, heighten the danger, for the water hurries formidably through the arches. It rolls in broad, terrible waves, it increases, and is heaped up; the flood strives to root out the piles of the bridge with thick liquid cords. Men who fall in there do not reappear, and the best swimmers are drowned.
Javert leaned his elbows on the parapet, his chin on his hand, and while his hands mechanically closed on his thick whiskers, he reflected. A novelty, a revolution, a catastrophe had just taken place within him, and he must examine into it. Javert was suffering horribly, and for some hours past Javert had ceased to be simple. He was troubled; this brain, so limpid in its blindness, had lost its transparency, and there was a cloud in this crystal. Javert felt in his conscience duty doubled, and he could not hide the fact from himself. When he met Jean Valjean so unexpectedly on the Seine bank, he had something within him of the wolf that recaptures its prey and the dog that finds its master again. He saw before him two roads, both equally straight; but he saw two of them, and this terrified him, as he had never known in his life but one straight line. And, poignant agony! these two roads were contrary, and one of these right lines excluded the other. Which of the two was the true one? His situation was indescribable; to owe his life to a malefactor, to accept this debt and repay him; to be, in spite of himself, on the same footing with an escaped convict, and requite one service with another service; to let it be said to him, "Be off!" and to say in his turn, "Be free!" to sacrifice to personal motives duty, that general obligation, and to feel in these personal motives something general too, and perhaps superior; to betray society in order to remain faithful to his conscience, – that all these absurdities should be realized, and accumulated upon him, was what startled him. One thing had astonished him, – that Jean Valjean had shown him mercy; and one thing had petrified him, – that he, Javert, had shown mercy to Jean Valjean.
Where was he? He sought and no longer found himself. What was he to do now? To give up Jean Valjean was bad, to leave Jean Valjean at liberty was bad. In the former case, the man of authority fell lower than the man of the galleys; in the second, a convict rose higher than the law, and set his foot upon it. In either case, dishonor for him, Javert. Whatever resolution he might form, there was a fall, for destiny has certain extremities projecting over the impossible, beyond which life is only a precipice. Javert had reached one of these extremities: one of his anxieties was to be constrained to think, and the very violence of all these contradictory emotions compelled him to do so. Now, thought was an unusual thing for him, and singularly painful. There is always in thought a certain amount of internal rebellion, and he was irritated at having that within him. Thought, no matter on what subject beyond the narrow circle of his destiny, would have been to him in any case useless and wearisome; but thinking about the day which had just passed was a torture. And yet he must after such shocks look into his conscience, and give himself an account of himself. What he had done caused him to shudder; he, Javert, had thought fit to decide – against all police regulations, against all social and judicial organization, and against the entire codes – a discharge: that had suited him. He had substituted his own affairs for public affairs; was not that unjustifiable? Each time that he stood facing the nameless action which he had committed, he trembled from head to foot. What should he resolve on? Only one resource was left him, – to return at full speed to the Rue de l'Homme Armé and lock up Jean Valjean. It was clear that this was what he ought to do, but he could not do it. Something barred the way on that side. What! is there anything in the world besides sentences, the police, and the authorities? Javert was overwhelmed.
A sacred galley-slave! a convict impregnable by justice, and that through the deed of Javert! Was it not frightful that Javert and Jean Valjean, the man made to punish and the man made to endure, – that these two men, who were both the property of the law, should have reached the point of placing themselves both above the law? What! such enormities could happen and no one be punished? Jean Valjean, stronger than the whole social order, would be free, and he, Javert, would continue to eat the bread of the Government! His reverie gradually became terrible: he might through this reverie have reproached himself slightly on the subject of the insurgent carried home to the Rue des Filles du Calvaire, but he did not think of it. The slighter fault was lost in the greater; and besides, this insurgent was evidently a dead man, and, legally, death checks persecution. Jean Valjean, – that was the weight which he had on his mind. Jean Valjean disconcerted him. All the axioms which had been the support of his whole life crumbled away before this man, and the generosity of Jean Valjean to him, Javert, overwhelmed him. Other facts which he remembered, and which he had formerly treated as falsehoods and folly, now returned to his mind as realities. M. Madeleine reappeared behind Jean Valjean, and the two figures were blended into one, which was venerable. Javert felt that something horrible, admiration for a convict, was entering his soul. Respect for a galley-slave, is it possible? He shuddered at it, and could not escape from it, although he struggled. He was reduced to confess in his soul the sublimity of this villain, and this was odious. A benevolent malefactor, a compassionate, gentle, helping, and merciful convict, – repaying good for evil, pardon for hatred, preferring pity to vengeance, ready to destroy himself sooner than his enemy, saving the man who had struck him, kneeling on the pinnacle of virtue, and nearer to the angels than to man. Javert was constrained to confess to himself that such a monster existed.
This could not last. Assuredly – and we lay stress on the fact – he had not yielded without resistance to this monster, to this infamous angel, to this hideous hero, at whom he felt almost as indignant as stupefied. Twenty times while in that hackney coach face to face with Jean Valjean the legal tiger had roared within him. Twenty times he had felt tempted to hurl himself on Jean Valjean, to seize and devour him, – that is to say, arrest him. What more simple, in fact, – shout to the nearest post before which he passed, "Here is a convict who has broken his ban!" and then go away, leave the condemned man there, be ignorant of the rest, and interfere no further? This man is eternally the prisoner of the law, and the law will do what it pleases with him. What was fairer? Javert had said all this to himself; he had wished to go further, – to act, apprehend the man, – and then, as now, had been unable; and each time that his hand was convulsively raised to Jean Valjean's collar, it fell back as if under an enormous weight, and he heard in the bottom of his heart a voice, a strange voice, crying to him, "That is well. Give up your saviour, then send for Pontius Pilate's basin, and wash your hands in it!"
Then his thoughts reverted to himself, and by the side of Jean Valjean aggrandized he saw himself degraded. A convict was his benefactor, but why had he allowed that man to let him live? He had the right of being killed at that barricade, and should have employed that right. It would have been better to call the other insurgents to his aid against Jean Valjean, and have himself shot by force. His supreme agony was the disappearance of certainty, and he felt himself uprooted. The code was now only a stump in his hand, and he had to deal with scruples of an unknown species. There was within him a sentimental revelation entirely distinct from the legal affirmation, his sole measure hitherto, and it was not sufficient to remain in his old honesty. A whole order of unexpected facts arose and subjugated him, an entire new world appeared to his soul; benefits accepted and returned, devotion, mercy, indulgence, violence done by pity to austerity, no more definitive condemnation, no more damnation, the possibility of a tear in the eye of the law, and perhaps some justice according to God acting in an inverse ratio to justice according to man. He perceived in the darkness the rising of an unknown moral sun, and he was horrified and dazzled. He was an owl forced to look like the eagle.
He said to himself that it was true, then, that there were exceptions, that authority might be disconcerted, that the rule might fall short in the presence of a fact, that everything was not contained in the text of a code, that the unforeseen made itself obeyed, that the virtue of a convict might set a snare for the virtue of a functionary, that the monstrous might be divine, that destiny had such ambuscades; and he thought with despair that he had himself not been protected from a surprise. He was compelled to recognize that goodness existed; this galley-slave had been good, and he, extraordinary to say, had been good also. Hence he was becoming depraved. He felt that he was a coward, and it horrified him. The ideal for Javert was not to be human, grand, or sublime; it was to be irreproachable, – and now he had broken down. How had he reached this stage? How had all this happened? He could not have told himself. He took his head between his hands; but whatever he might do, he could not succeed in explaining it. He certainly had had the intention of delivering Jean Valjean over to the law, of which Jean Valjean was the captive and of which he was the slave. He had not confessed to himself for a single instant, while he held him, that he had a thought of letting him go; it was to some extent unconsciously that his hand had opened and allowed him to escape.
All sorts of enigmatic novelties passed before his eyes. He asked himself questions and gave himself answers, and his answers terrified him. He asked himself, "What has this convict, this desperate man, whom I followed to persecution, and who had me under his heel, and could have avenged himself, and ought to have acted so, both for his rancor and his security, done in leaving me my life and showing me mercy, – his duty? No, something more. And what have I done in showing him mercy in my turn, – my duty? No, something more. Is there, then, something more than duty?" Here he was terrified, he was thrown off his balance, – one of the scales fell into the abyss, the other ascended to heaven; and Javert felt no less horror at the one above than at the one below. Without being the least in the world what is termed a Voltairian, or philosopher, or incredulous man, respectful, on the contrary, instinctively to the Established Church, he only knew it as an august fragment of the social ensemble; order was his dogma, and sufficient for him. Since he had attained man's age and office, he had set nearly all his religion in the police, being, – and we employ the words without the slightest irony, and in their most serious acceptation, – being, as we have said, a spy, as another man is a priest He had a superior, M. Gisquet; but he had never thought up to this day of that other superior, God. He felt the presence of this new Chief unexpectedly, and was troubled by Him. He was thrown out of gear by this person; he knew not what to do with this Superior, for he was not ignorant that the subordinate is bound always to bow the head, that he must neither disobey, nor blame, nor discuss, and that when facing a superior who astonishes him too much, the inferior has no other resource but his resignation. But how could he manage to give in his resignation to God?
