CHAPTER I
THE 16TH OF FEBRUARY, 1833-
The night of the 16th to the 17th
of February, 1833, was a blessed night. Above
its shadows heaven stood open. It was the wedding
night of Marius and Cosette.
The day had been adorable.
It had not been the grand festival
dreamed by the grandfather, a fairy spectacle, with
a confusion of cherubim and Cupids over the heads of
the bridal pair, a marriage worthy to form the subject
of a painting to be placed over a door; but it had
been sweet and smiling.
The manner of marriage in 1833 was
not the same as it is to-day. France had not
yet borrowed from England that supreme delicacy of
carrying off one’s wife, of fleeing, on coming
out of church, of hiding oneself with shame from one’s
happiness, and of combining the ways of a bankrupt
with the delights of the Song of Songs. People
had not yet grasped to the full the chastity, exquisiteness,
and decency of jolting their paradise in a posting-chaise,
of breaking up their mystery with clic-clacs,
of taking for a nuptial bed the bed of an inn, and
of leaving behind them, in a commonplace chamber,
at such a night, the most sacred of the souvenirs
of life mingled pell-mell with the tete-a-tete of the
conductor of the diligence and the maid-servant of
the inn.
In this second half of the nineteenth
century in which we are now living, the mayor and
his scarf, the priest and his chasuble, the law and
God no longer suffice; they must be eked out by the
Postilion de Lonjumeau; a blue waistcoat turned up
with red, and with bell buttons, a plaque like a vantbrace,
knee-breeches of green leather, oaths to the Norman
horses with their tails knotted up, false galloons,
varnished hat, long powdered locks, an enormous whip
and tall boots. France does not yet carry elegance
to the length of doing like the English nobility,
and raining down on the post-chaise of the bridal pair
a hail storm of slippers trodden down at heel and
of worn-out shoes, in memory of Churchill, afterwards
Marlborough, or Malbrouck, who was assailed on his
wedding-day by the wrath of an aunt which brought him
good luck. Old shoes and slippers do not, as
yet, form a part of our nuptial celebrations; but
patience, as good taste continues to spread, we shall
come to that.
In 1833, a hundred years ago, marriage
was not conducted at a full trot.
Strange to say, at that epoch, people
still imagined that a wedding was a private and social
festival, that a patriarchal banquet does not spoil
a domestic solemnity, that gayety, even in excess,
provided it be honest, and decent, does happiness
no harm, and that, in short, it is a good and a venerable
thing that the fusion of these two destinies whence
a family is destined to spring, should begin at home,
and that the household should thenceforth have its
nuptial chamber as its witness.
And people were so immodest as to
marry in their own homes.
The marriage took place, therefore,
in accordance with this now superannuated fashion,
at M. Gillenormand’s house.
Natural and commonplace as this matter
of marrying is, the banns to publish, the papers to
be drawn up, the mayoralty, and the church produce
some complication. They could not get ready before
the 16th of February.
Now, we note this detail, for the
pure satisfaction of being exact, it chanced that
the 16th fell on Shrove Tuesday. Hesitations,
scruples, particularly on the part of Aunt Gillenormand.
“Shrove Tuesday!” exclaimed
the grandfather, “so much the better. There
is a proverb:
“’Mariage
un Mardi gras
N’aura point enfants ingrats.’
Let us proceed. Here goes for
the 16th! Do you want to delay, Marius?”
“No, certainly not!” replied the lover.
“Let us marry, then,” cried the grandfather.
Accordingly, the marriage took place
on the 16th, notwithstanding the public merrymaking.
It rained that day, but there is always in the sky
a tiny scrap of blue at the service of happiness, which
lovers see, even when the rest of creation is under
an umbrella.
On the preceding evening, Jean Valjean
handed to Marius, in the presence of M. Gillenormand,
the five hundred and eighty-four thousand francs.
As the marriage was taking place under
the regime of community of property, the papers had
been simple.
Henceforth, Toussaint was of no use
to Jean Valjean; Cosette inherited her and promoted
her to the rank of lady’s maid.
As for Jean Valjean, a beautiful chamber
in the Gillenormand house had been furnished expressly
for him, and Cosette had said to him in such an irresistible
manner: “Father, I entreat you,” that
she had almost persuaded him to promise that he would
come and occupy it.
A few days before that fixed on for
the marriage, an accident happened to Jean Valjean;
he crushed the thumb of his right hand. This was
not a serious matter; and he had not allowed any one
to trouble himself about it, nor to dress it, nor
even to see his hurt, not even Cosette. Nevertheless,
this had forced him to swathe his hand in a linen bandage,
and to carry his arm in a sling, and had prevented
his signing. M. Gillenormand, in his capacity
of Cosette’s supervising-guardian, had supplied
his place.
We will not conduct the reader either
to the mayor’s office or to the church.
One does not follow a pair of lovers to that extent,
and one is accustomed to turn one’s back on
the drama as soon as it puts a wedding nosegay in
its buttonhole. We will confine ourselves to noting
an incident which, though unnoticed by the wedding
party, marked the transit from the Rue des Filles-du-Calvaire
to the church of Saint-Paul.
At that epoch, the northern extremity
of the Rue Saint-Louis was in process of repaving.
It was barred off, beginning with the Rue du Pare-Royal.
It was impossible for the wedding carriages to go directly
to Saint-Paul. They were obliged to alter their
course, and the simplest way was to turn through the
boulevard. One of the invited guests observed
that it was Shrove Tuesday, and that there would be
a jam of vehicles. “Why?” asked
M. Gillenormand “Because of the maskers.” “Capital,”
said the grandfather, “let us go that way.
These young folks are on the way to be married; they
are about to enter the serious part of life.
This will prepare them for seeing a bit of the masquerade.”
They went by way of the boulevard.
The first wedding coach held Cosette and Aunt Gillenormand,
M. Gillenormand and Jean Valjean. Marius, still
separated from his betrothed according to usage, did
not come until the second. The nuptial train,
on emerging from the Rue des Filles-du-Calvaire,
became entangled in a long procession of vehicles
which formed an endless chain from the Madeleine to
the Bastille, and from the Bastille to the Madeleine.
Maskers abounded on the boulevard. In spite of
the fact that it was raining at intervals, Merry-Andrew,
Pantaloon and Clown persisted. In the good humor
of that winter of 1833, Paris had disguised itself
as Venice. Such Shrove Tuesdays are no longer
to be seen now-a-days. Everything which exists
being a scattered Carnival, there is no longer any
Carnival.
The sidewalks were overflowing with
pedestrians and the windows with curious spectators.
The terraces which crown the péristyles of the
theatres were bordered with spectators. Besides
the maskers, they stared at that procession peculiar
to Shrove Tuesday as to Longchamps, of
vehicles of every description, citadines, tapissieres,
carioles, cabriolets marching in order, rigorously
riveted to each other by the police regulations, and
locked into rails, as it were. Any one in these
vehicles is at once a spectator and a spectacle.
Police-sergeants maintained, on the sides of the boulevard,
these two interminable parallel files, moving in contrary
directions, and saw to it that nothing interfered
with that double current, those two brooks of carriages,
flowing, the one down stream, the other up stream,
the one towards the Chaussee d’Antin, the
other towards the Faubourg Saint-Antoine. The
carriages of the peers of France and of the Ambassadors,
emblazoned with coats of arms, held the middle of the
way, going and coming freely. Certain joyous
and magnificent trains, notably that of the Boeuf
Gras, had the same privilege. In this gayety of
Paris, England cracked her whip; Lord Seymour’s
post-chaise, harassed by a nickname from the populace,
passed with great noise.
In the double file, along which the
municipal guards galloped like sheep-dogs, honest
family coaches, loaded down with great-aunts and grandmothers,
displayed at their doors fresh groups of children in
disguise, Clowns of seven years of age, Columbines
of six, ravishing little creatures, who felt that
they formed an official part of the public mirth,
who were imbued with the dignity of their harlequinade,
and who possessed the gravity of functionaries.
From time to time, a hitch arose somewhere
in the procession of vehicles; one or other of the
two lateral files halted until the knot was disentangled;
one carriage delayed sufficed to paralyze the whole
line. Then they set out again on the march.
The wedding carriages were in the
file proceeding towards the Bastille, and skirting
the right side of the Boulevard. At the top of
the Pont-aux-Choux, there was a stoppage. Nearly
at the same moment, the other file, which was proceeding
towards the Madeleine, halted also. At that point
of the file there was a carriage-load of maskers.
These carriages, or to speak more
correctly, these wagon-loads of maskers are very familiar
to Parisians. If they were missing on a Shrove
Tuesday, or at the Mid-Lent, it would be taken in bad
part, and people would say: “There’s
something behind that. Probably the ministry
is about to undergo a change.” A pile of
Cassandras, Harlequins and Columbines, jolted along
high above the passers-by, all possible grotesquenesses,
from the Turk to the savage, Hercules supporting Marquises,
fishwives who would have made Rabelais stop up his
ears just as the Maenads made Aristophanes drop his
eyes, tow wigs, pink tights, dandified hats, spectacles
of a grimacer, three-cornered hats of Janot tormented
with a butterfly, shouts directed at pedestrians, fists
on hips, bold attitudes, bare shoulders, immodesty
unchained; a chaos of shamelessness driven by a coachman
crowned with flowers; this is what that institution
was like.
Greece stood in need of the chariot
of Thespis, France stands in need of the hackney-coach
of Vade.
Everything can be parodied, even parody.
The Saturnalia, that grimace of antique beauty, ends,
through exaggeration after exaggeration, in Shrove
Tuesday; and the Bacchanal, formerly crowned with sprays
of vine leaves and grapes, inundated with sunshine,
displaying her marble breast in a divine semi-nudity,
having at the present day lost her shape under the
soaked rags of the North, has finally come to be called
the Jack-pudding.
The tradition of carriage-loads of
maskers runs back to the most ancient days of the
monarchy. The accounts of Louis XI. allot to the
bailiff of the palace “twenty sous, Tournois,
for three coaches of mascarades in the cross-roads.”
In our day, these noisy heaps of creatures are accustomed
to have themselves driven in some ancient cuckoo carriage,
whose imperial they load down, or they overwhelm a
hired landau, with its top thrown back, with their
tumultuous groups. Twenty of them ride in a carriage
intended for six. They cling to the seats, to
the rumble, on the cheeks of the hood, on the shafts.
They even bestride the carriage lamps. They stand,
sit, lie, with their knees drawn up in a knot, and
their legs hanging. The women sit on the men’s
laps. Far away, above the throng of heads, their
wild pyramid is visible. These carriage-loads
form mountains of mirth in the midst of the rout.
Colle, Panard and Pirón flow from it, enriched
with slang. This carriage which has become colossal
through its freight, has an air of conquest. Uproar
reigns in front, tumult behind. People vociferate,
shout, howl, there they break forth and writhe with
enjoyment; gayety roars; sarcasm flames forth, joviality
is flaunted like a red flag; two jades there drag farce
blossomed forth into an apotheosis; it is the triumphal
car of laughter.
A laughter that is too cynical to
be frank. In truth, this laughter is suspicious.
This laughter has a mission. It is charged with
proving the Carnival to the Parisians.
These fishwife vehicles, in which
one feels one knows not what shadows, set the philosopher
to thinking. There is government therein.
There one lays one’s finger on a mysterious
affinity between public men and public women.
It certainly is sad that turpitude
heaped up should give a sum total of gayety, that
by piling ignominy upon opprobrium the people should
be enticed, that the system of spying, and serving
as caryatids to prostitution should amuse the rabble
when it confronts them, that the crowd loves to behold
that monstrous living pile of tinsel rags, half dung,
half light, roll by on four wheels howling and laughing,
that they should clap their hands at this glory composed
of all shames, that there would be no festival for
the populace, did not the police promenade in their
midst these sorts of twenty-headed hydras of joy.
But what can be done about it? These be-ribboned
and be-flowered tumbrils of mire are insulted and
pardoned by the laughter of the public. The laughter
of all is the accomplice of universal degradation.
Certain unhealthy festivals disaggregate the people
and convert them into the populace. And populaces,
like tyrants, require buffoons. The King has Roquelaure,
the populace has the Merry-Andrew. Paris is a
great, mad city on every occasion that it is a great
sublime city. There the Carnival forms part of
politics. Paris, let us confess it willingly
allows infamy to furnish it with comedy. She
only demands of her masters when she has
masters one thing: “Paint me
the mud.” Rome was of the same mind.
She loved Nero. Nero was a titanic lighterman.
Chance ordained, as we have just said,
that one of these shapeless clusters of masked men
and women, dragged about on a vast calash, should
halt on the left of the boulevard, while the wedding
train halted on the right. The carriage-load
of masks caught sight of the wedding carriage containing
the bridal party opposite them on the other side of
the boulevard.
“Hullo!” said a masker, “here’s
a wedding.”
“A sham wedding,” retorted another.
“We are the genuine article.”
And, being too far off to accost the
wedding party, and fearing also, the rebuke of the
police, the two maskers turned their eyes elsewhere.
At the end of another minute, the
carriage-load of maskers had their hands full, the
multitude set to yelling, which is the crowd’s
caress to masquerades; and the two maskers who had
just spoken had to face the throng with their comrades,
and did not find the entire repertory of projectiles
of the fishmarkets too extensive to retort to the enormous
verbal attacks of the populace. A frightful exchange
of metaphors took place between the maskers and the
crowd.
In the meanwhile, two other maskers
in the same carriage, a Spaniard with an enormous
nose, an elderly air, and huge black moustache, and
a gaunt fishwife, who was quite a young girl, masked
with a loup, had also noticed the wedding, and
while their companions and the passers-by were exchanging
insults, they had held a dialogue in a low voice.
Their aside was covered by the tumult
and was lost in it. The gusts of rain had drenched
the front of the vehicle, which was wide open; the
breezes of February are not warm; as the fishwife,
clad in a low-necked gown, replied to the Spaniard,
she shivered, laughed and coughed.
Here is their dialogue:
“Say, now.”
“What, daddy?”
“Do you see that old cove?”
“What old cove?”
“Yonder, in the first wedding-cart, on our side.”
“The one with his arm hung up in a black cravat?”
“Yes.”
“Well?”
“I’m sure that I know him.”
“Ah!”
“I’m willing that they should cut my throat,
and I’m ready to swear that
I never said either you, thou, or I, in my life, if
I don’t know that
Parisian.” [pantinois.]
“Paris in Pantin to-day.”
“Can you see the bride if you stoop down?”
“No.”
“And the bridegroom?”
“There’s no bridegroom in that trap.”
“Bah!”
“Unless it’s the old fellow.”
“Try to get a sight of the bride by stooping
very low.”
“I can’t.”
“Never mind, that old cove who
has something the matter with his paw I know, and
that I’m positive.”
“And what good does it do to know him?”
“No one can tell. Sometimes it does!”
“I don’t care a hang for old fellows,
that I don’t!”
“I know him.”
“Know him, if you want to.”
“How the devil does he come to be one of the
wedding party?”
“We are in it, too.”
“Where does that wedding come from?”
“How should I know?”
“Listen.”
“Well, what?”
“There’s one thing you ought to do.”
“What’s that?”
“Get off of our trap and spin that wedding.”
“What for?”
“To find out where it goes,
and what it is. Hurry up and jump down, trot,
my girl, your legs are young.”
“I can’t quit the vehicle.”
“Why not?”
“I’m hired.”
“Ah, the devil!”
“I owe my fishwife day to the prefecture.”
“That’s true.”
“If I leave the cart, the first
inspector who gets his eye on me will arrest me.
You know that well enough.”
“Yes, I do.”
“I’m bought by the government for to-day.”
“All the same, that old fellow bothers me.”
“Do the old fellows bother you? But you’re
not a young girl.”
“He’s in the first carriage.”
“Well?”
“In the bride’s trap.”
“What then?”
“So he is the father.”
“What concern is that of mine?”
“I tell you that he’s the father.”
“As if he were the only father.”
“Listen.”
“What?”
“I can’t go out otherwise
than masked. Here I’m concealed, no one
knows that I’m here. But to-morrow, there
will be no more maskers. It’s Ash Wednesday.
I run the risk of being nabbed. I must sneak back
into my hole. But you are free.”
“Not particularly.”
“More than I am, at any rate.”
“Well, what of that?”
“You must try to find out where that wedding-party
went to.”
“Where it went?”
“Yes.”
“I know.”
“Where is it going then?”
“To the Cadran-Bleu.”
“In the first place, it’s not in that
direction.”
“Well! to la Rapee.”
“Or elsewhere.”
“It’s free. Wedding-parties are at
liberty.”
“That’s not the point
at all. I tell you that you must try to learn
for me what that wedding is, who that old cove belongs
to, and where that wedding pair lives.”
“I like that! that would be
queer. It’s so easy to find out a wedding-party
that passed through the street on a Shrove Tuesday,
a week afterwards. A pin in a hay-mow! It
ain’t possible!”
“That don’t matter. You must try.
You understand me, Azelma.”
The two files resumed their movement
on both sides of the boulevard, in opposite directions,
and the carriage of the maskers lost sight of the
“trap” of the bride.
Chapter II
Jean Valjean still wears his
arm in A sling
To realize one’s dream.
To whom is this accorded? There must be elections
for this in heaven; we are all candidates, unknown
to ourselves; the angels vote. Cosette and Marius
had been elected.
Cosette, both at the mayor’s
office and at church, was dazzling and touching.
Toussaint, assisted by Nicolette, had dressed her.
Cosette wore over a petticoat of white
taffeta, her robe of Binche guipure, a veil of English
point, a necklace of fine pearls, a wreath of orange
flowers; all this was white, and, from the midst of
that whiteness she beamed forth. It was an exquisite
candor expanding and becoming transfigured in the
light. One would have pronounced her a virgin
on the point of turning into a goddess.
Marius’ handsome hair was lustrous
and perfumed; here and there, beneath the thick curls,
pale lines the scars of the barricade were
visible.
The grandfather, haughty, with head
held high, amalgamating more than ever in his toilet
and his manners all the elegances of the epoch of
Barras, escorted Cosette. He took the place of
Jean Valjean, who, on account of his arm being still
in a sling, could not give his hand to the bride.
Jean Valjean, dressed in black, followed
them with a smile.
“Monsieur Fauchelevent,”
said the grandfather to him, “this is a fine
day. I vote for the end of afflictions and sorrows.
Henceforth, there must be no sadness anywhere.
Pardieu, I decree joy! Evil has no right to exist.
That there should be any unhappy men is, in sooth,
a disgrace to the azure of the sky. Evil does
not come from man, who is good at bottom. All
human miseries have for their capital and central government
hell, otherwise, known as the Devil’s Tuileries.
Good, here I am uttering demagogical words! As
far as I am concerned, I have no longer any political
opinions; let all me be rich, that is to say, mirthful,
and I confine myself to that.”
When, at the conclusion of all the
ceremonies, after having pronounced before the mayor
and before the priest all possible “yesses,”
after having signed the registers at the municipality
and at the sacristy, after having exchanged their
rings, after having knelt side by side under the pall
of white moire in the smoke of the censer, they arrived,
hand in hand, admired and envied by all, Marius in
black, she in white, preceded by the suisse, with
the epaulets of a colonel, tapping the pavement with
his halberd, between two rows of astonished spectators,
at the portals of the church, both leaves of which
were thrown wide open, ready to enter their carriage
again, and all being finished, Cosette still could
not believe that it was real. She looked at Marius,
she looked at the crowd, she looked at the sky:
it seemed as though she feared that she should wake
up from her dream. Her amazed and uneasy air
added something indescribably enchanting to her beauty.
They entered the same carriage to return home, Marius
beside Cosette; M. Gillenormand and Jean Valjean sat
opposite them; Aunt Gillenormand had withdrawn one
degree, and was in the second vehicle.
“My children,” said the
grandfather, “here you are, Monsieur lé
Baron and Madame la Baronne, with an income of thirty
thousand livres.”
And Cosette, nestling close to Marius,
caressed his ear with an angelic whisper: “So
it is true. My name is Marius. I am Madame
Thou.”
These two creatures were resplendent.
They had reached that irrevocable and irrecoverable
moment, at the dazzling intersection of all youth and
all joy. They realized the verses of Jean Prouvaire;
they were forty years old taken together. It
was marriage sublimated; these two children were two
lilies. They did not see each other, they did
not contemplate each other. Cosette perceived
Marius in the midst of a glory; Marius perceived Cosette
on an altar. And on that altar, and in that glory,
the two apotheoses mingling, in the background, one
knows not how, behind a cloud for Cosette, in a flash
for Marius, there was the ideal thing, the real thing,
the meeting of the kiss and the dream, the nuptial
pillow. All the torments through which they had
passed came back to them in intoxication. It
seemed to them that their sorrows, their sleepless
nights, their tears, their anguish, their terrors,
their despair, converted into caresses and rays of
light, rendered still more charming the charming hour
which was approaching; and that their griefs were but
so many handmaidens who were preparing the toilet of
joy. How good it is to have suffered! Their
unhappiness formed a halo round their happiness.
The long agony of their love was terminating in an
ascension.
It was the same enchantment in two
souls, tinged with voluptuousness in Marius, and with
modesty in Cosette. They said to each other in
low tones: “We will go back to take a look
at our little garden in the Rue Plumet.”
The folds of Cosette’s gown lay across Marius.
Such a day is an ineffable mixture
of dream and of reality. One possesses and one
supposes. One still has time before one to divine.
The emotion on that day, of being at mid-day and of
dreaming of midnight is indescribable. The delights
of these two hearts overflowed upon the crowd, and
inspired the passers-by with cheerfulness.
People halted in the Rue Saint-Antoine,
in front of Saint-Paul, to gaze through the windows
of the carriage at the orange-flowers quivering on
Cosette’s head.
Then they returned home to the Rue
des Filles-du-Calvaire. Marius,
triumphant and radiant, mounted side by side with Cosette
the staircase up which he had been borne in a dying
condition. The poor, who had trooped to the door,
and who shared their purses, blessed them. There
were flowers everywhere. The house was no less
fragrant than the church; after the incense, roses.
They thought they heard voices carolling in the infinite;
they had God in their hearts; destiny appeared to them
like a ceiling of stars; above their heads they beheld
the light of a rising sun. All at once, the clock
struck. Marius glanced at Cosette’s charming
bare arm, and at the rosy things which were vaguely
visible through the lace of her bodice, and Cosette,
intercepting Marius’ glance, blushed to her
very hair.
Quite a number of old family friends
of the Gillenormand family had been invited; they
pressed about Cosette. Each one vied with the
rest in saluting her as Madame la Baronne.
The officer, Theodule Gillenormand,
now a captain, had come from Chartres, where he was
stationed in garrison, to be present at the wedding
of his cousin Pontmercy. Cosette did not recognize
him.
He, on his side, habituated as he
was to have women consider him handsome, retained
no more recollection of Cosette than of any other
woman.
“How right I was not to believe
in that story about the lancer!” said Father
Gillenormand, to himself.
Cosette had never been more tender
with Jean Valjean. She was in unison with Father
Gillenormand; while he erected joy into aphorisms and
maxims, she exhaled goodness like a perfume. Happiness
desires that all the world should be happy.
She regained, for the purpose of addressing
Jean Valjean, inflections of voice belonging to the
time when she was a little girl. She caressed
him with her smile.
A banquet had been spread in the dining-room.
Illumination as brilliant as the daylight
is the necessary seasoning of a great joy. Mist
and obscurity are not accepted by the happy. They
do not consent to be black. The night, yes; the
shadows, no. If there is no sun, one must be
made.
The dining-room was full of gay things.
In the centre, above the white and glittering table,
was a Venetian lustre with flat plates, with all sorts
of colored birds, blue, violet, red, and green, perched
amid the candles; around the chandelier, girandoles,
on the walls, sconces with triple and quintuple branches;
mirrors, silverware, glassware, plate, porcelain,
faience, pottery, gold and silversmith’s work,
all was sparkling and gay. The empty spaces between
the candelabra were filled in with bouquets, so that
where there was not a light, there was a flower.
In the antechamber, three violins
and a flute softly played quartettes by Haydn.
Jean Valjean had seated himself on
a chair in the drawing-room, behind the door, the
leaf of which folded back upon him in such a manner
as to nearly conceal him. A few moments before
they sat down to table, Cosette came, as though inspired
by a sudden whim, and made him a deep courtesy, spreading
out her bridal toilet with both hands, and with a tenderly
roguish glance, she asked him:
“Father, are you satisfied?”
“Yes,” said Jean Valjean, “I am
content!”
“Well, then, laugh.”
Jean Valjean began to laugh.
A few moments later, Basque announced that dinner
was served.
The guests, preceded by M. Gillenormand
with Cosette on his arm, entered the dining-room,
and arranged themselves in the proper order around
the table.
Two large arm-chairs figured on the
right and left of the bride, the first for M. Gillenormand,
the other for Jean Valjean. M. Gillenormand took
his seat. The other arm-chair remained empty.
They looked about for M. Fauchelevent.
He was no longer there.
M. Gillenormand questioned Basque.
“Do you know where M. Fauchelevent is?”
“Sir,” replied Basque,
“I do, precisely. M. Fauchelevent told me
to say to you, sir, that he was suffering, his injured
hand was paining him somewhat, and that he could not
dine with Monsieur lé Baron and Madame la
Baronne. That he begged to be excused, that he
would come to-morrow. He has just taken his departure.”
That empty arm-chair chilled the effusion
of the wedding feast for a moment. But, if M.
Fauchelevent was absent, M. Gillenormand was present,
and the grandfather beamed for two. He affirmed
that M. Fauchelevent had done well to retire early,
if he were suffering, but that it was only a slight
ailment. This declaration sufficed. Moreover,
what is an obscure corner in such a submersion of
joy? Cosette and Marius were passing through
one of those egotistical and blessed moments when no
other faculty is left to a person than that of receiving
happiness. And then, an idea occurred to M. Gillenormand. “Pardieu,
this armchair is empty. Come hither, Marius.
Your aunt will permit it, although she has a right
to you. This armchair is for you. That is
legal and delightful. Fortunatus beside
Fortunata.” Applause from the
whole table. Marius took Jean Valjean’s
place beside Cosette, and things fell out so that
Cosette, who had, at first, been saddened by Jean Valjean’s
absence, ended by being satisfied with it. From
the moment when Marius took his place, and was the
substitute, Cosette would not have regretted God himself.
She set her sweet little foot, shod in white satin,
on Marius’ foot.
The arm-chair being occupied, M. Fauchelevent
was obliterated; and nothing was lacking.
And, five minutes afterward, the whole
table from one end to the other, was laughing with
all the animation of forgetfulness.
At dessert, M. Gillenormand, rising
to his feet, with a glass of champagne in his hand only
half full so that the palsy of his eighty years might
not cause an overflow, proposed the health
of the married pair.
“You shall not escape two sermons,”
he exclaimed. “This morning you had one
from the cure, this evening you shall have one from
your grandfather. Listen to me; I will give you
a bit of advice: Adore each other. I do
not make a pack of gyrations, I go straight to the
mark, be happy. In all creation, only the turtle-doves
are wise. Philosophers say: ‘Moderate
your joys.’ I say: ‘Give rein
to your joys.’ Be as much smitten with
each other as fiends. Be in a rage about it.
The philosophers talk stuff and nonsense. I should
like to stuff their philosophy down their gullets
again. Can there be too many perfumes, too many
open rose-buds, too many nightingales singing, too
many green leaves, too much aurora in life? can people
love each other too much? can people please each other
too much? Take care, Estelle, thou art too pretty!
Have a care, Nemorin, thou art too handsome! Fine
stupidity, in sooth! Can people enchant each
other too much, cajole each other too much, charm
each other too much? Can one be too much alive,
too happy? Moderate your joys. Ah, indeed!
Down with the philosophers! Wisdom consists in
jubilation. Make merry, let us make merry.
Are we happy because we are good, or are we good because
we are happy? Is the Sancy diamond called the
Sancy because it belonged to Harley de Sancy, or because
it weighs six hundred carats? I know nothing
about it, life is full of such problems; the important
point is to possess the Sancy and happiness.
Let us be happy without quibbling and quirking.
Let us obey the sun blindly. What is the sun?
It is love. He who says love, says woman.
Ah! ah! behold omnipotence women. Ask
that demagogue of a Marius if he is not the slave
of that little tyrant of a Cosette. And of his
own free will, too, the coward! Woman! There
is no Robespierre who keeps his place but woman reigns.
I am no longer Royalist except towards that royalty.
What is Adam? The kingdom of Eve. No ’89
for Eve. There has been the royal sceptre surmounted
by a fleur-de-lys, there has been the
imperial sceptre surmounted by a globe, there has been
the sceptre of Charlemagne, which was of iron, there
has been the sceptre of Louis the Great, which was
of gold, the revolution twisted them between
its thumb and forefinger, ha’penny straws; it
is done with, it is broken, it lies on the earth,
there is no longer any sceptre, but make me a revolution
against that little embroidered handkerchief, which
smells of patchouli! I should like to see you
do it. Try. Why is it so solid? Because
it is a gewgaw. Ah! you are the nineteenth century?
Well, what then? And we have been as foolish
as you. Do not imagine that you have effected
much change in the universe, because your trip-gallant
is called the cholera-morbus, and because
your pourree is called the cachuca. In fact,
the women must always be loved. I defy you to
escape from that. These friends are our angels.
Yes, love, woman, the kiss forms a circle from which
I defy you to escape; and, for my own part, I should
be only too happy to re-enter it. Which of you
has seen the planet Venus, the coquette of the abyss,
the Celimene of the ocean, rise in the infinite, calming
all here below? The ocean is a rough Alcestis.
Well, grumble as he will, when Venus appears he is
forced to smile. That brute beast submits.
We are all made so. Wrath, tempest, claps of thunder,
foam to the very ceiling. A woman enters on the
scene, a planet rises; flat on your face! Marius
was fighting six months ago; to-day he is married.
That is well. Yes, Marius, yes, Cosette, you are
in the right. Exist boldly for each other, make
us burst with rage that we cannot do the same, idealize
each other, catch in your beaks all the tiny blades
of felicity that exist on earth, and arrange yourselves
a nest for life. Pardi, to love, to be loved,
what a fine miracle when one is young! Don’t
imagine that you have invented that. I, too, have
had my dream, I, too, have meditated, I, too, have
sighed; I, too, have had a moonlight soul. Love
is a child six thousand years old. Love has the
right to a long white beard. Methusalem is a
street arab beside Cupid. For sixty centuries
men and women have got out of their scrape by loving.
The devil, who is cunning, took to hating man; man,
who is still more cunning, took to loving woman.
In this way he does more good than the devil does
him harm. This craft was discovered in the days
of the terrestrial paradise. The invention is
old, my friends, but it is perfectly new. Profit
by it. Be Daphnis and Chloe, while waiting to
become Philemon and Baucis. Manage so that, when
you are with each other, nothing shall be lacking
to you, and that Cosette may be the sun for Marius,
and that Marius may be the universe to Cosette.
Cosette, let your fine weather be the smile of your
husband; Marius, let your rain be your wife’s
tears. And let it never rain in your household.
You have filched the winning number in the lottery;
you have gained the great prize, guard it well, keep
it under lock and key, do not squander it, adore each
other and snap your fingers at all the rest. Believe
what I say to you. It is good sense. And
good sense cannot lie. Be a religion to each
other. Each man has his own fashion of adoring
God. Saperlotte! the best way to adore God
is to love one’s wife. I love thee! that’s
my catechism. He who loves is orthodox. The
oath of Henri IV. places sanctity somewhere between
feasting and drunkenness. Ventre-saint-gris!
I don’t belong to the religion of that oath.
Woman is forgotten in it. This astonishes me
on the part of Henri IV. My friends, long live
women! I am old, they say; it’s astonishing
how much I feel in the mood to be young. I should
like to go and listen to the bagpipes in the woods.
Children who contrive to be beautiful and contented, that
intoxicates me. I would like greatly to get married,
if any one would have me. It is impossible to
imagine that God could have made us for anything but
this: to idolize, to coo, to preen ourselves,
to be dove-like, to be dainty, to bill and coo our
loves from morn to night, to gaze at one’s image
in one’s little wife, to be proud, to be triumphant,
to plume oneself; that is the aim of life. There,
let not that displease you which we used to think
in our day, when we were young folks. Ah! vertu-bamboche!
what charming women there were in those days, and
what pretty little faces and what lovely lasses!
I committed my ravages among them. Then love
each other. If people did not love each other,
I really do not see what use there would be in having
any springtime; and for my own part, I should pray
the good God to shut up all the beautiful things that
he shows us, and to take away from us and put back
in his box, the flowers, the birds, and the pretty
maidens. My children, receive an old man’s
blessing.”
The evening was gay, lively and agreeable.
The grandfather’s sovereign good humor gave
the key-note to the whole feast, and each person regulated
his conduct on that almost centenarian cordiality.
They danced a little, they laughed a great deal; it
was an amiable wedding. Goodman Days of Yore
might have been invited to it. However, he was
present in the person of Father Gillenormand.
There was a tumult, then silence.
The married pair disappeared.
A little after midnight, the Gillenormand house became
a temple.
Here we pause. On the threshold
of wedding nights stands a smiling angel with his
finger on his lips.
The soul enters into contemplation
before that sanctuary where the celebration of love
takes place.
There should be flashes of light athwart
such houses. The joy which they contain ought
to make its escape through the stones of the walls
in brilliancy, and vaguely illuminate the gloom.
It is impossible that this sacred and fatal festival
should not give off a celestial radiance to the infinite.
Love is the sublime crucible wherein the fusion of
the man and the woman takes place; the being one,
the being triple, the being final, the human trinity
proceeds from it. This birth of two souls into
one, ought to be an emotion for the gloom. The
lover is the priest; the ravished virgin is terrified.
Something of that joy ascends to God. Where true
marriage is, that is to say, where there is love, the
ideal enters in. A nuptial bed makes a nook of
dawn amid the shadows. If it were given to the
eye of the flesh to scan the formidable and charming
visions of the upper life, it is probable that we should
behold the forms of night, the winged unknowns, the
blue passers of the invisible, bend down, a throng
of sombre heads, around the luminous house, satisfied,
showering benedictions, pointing out to each other
the virgin wife gently alarmed, sweetly terrified,
and bearing the reflection of human bliss upon their
divine countenances. If at that supreme hour,
the wedded pair, dazzled with voluptuousness and believing
themselves alone, were to listen, they would hear
in their chamber a confused rustling of wings.
Perfect happiness implies a mutual understanding with
the angels. That dark little chamber has all
heaven for its ceiling. When two mouths, rendered
sacred by love, approach to create, it is impossible
that there should not be, above that ineffable kiss,
a quivering throughout the immense mystery of stars.
These felicities are the true ones.
There is no joy outside of these joys. Love is
the only ecstasy. All the rest weeps.
To love, or to have loved, this
suffices. Demand nothing more. There is
no other pearl to be found in the shadowy folds of
life. To love is a fulfilment.
Chapter III
the inseparable
What had become of Jean Valjean?
Immediately after having laughed,
at Cosette’s graceful command, when no one was
paying any heed to him, Jean Valjean had risen and
had gained the antechamber unperceived. This
was the very room which, eight months before, he had
entered black with mud, with blood and powder, bringing
back the grandson to the grandfather. The old
wainscoting was garlanded with foliage and flowers;
the musicians were seated on the sofa on which they
had laid Marius down. Basque, in a black coat,
knee-breeches, white stockings and white gloves, was
arranging roses round all of the dishes that were
to be served. Jean Valjean pointed to his arm
in its sling, charged Basque to explain his absence,
and went away.
The long windows of the dining-room
opened on the street. Jean Valjean stood for
several minutes, erect and motionless in the darkness,
beneath those radiant windows. He listened.
The confused sounds of the banquet reached his ear.
He heard the loud, commanding tones of the grandfather,
the violins, the clatter of the plates, the bursts
of laughter, and through all that merry uproar, he
distinguished Cosette’s sweet and joyous voice.
He quitted the Rue des Filles-du-Calvaire,
and returned to the Rue de l’Homme Arme.
In order to return thither, he took
the Rue Saint-Louis, the Rue Culture-Sainte-Catherine,
and the Blancs-Manteaux; it was a little longer,
but it was the road through which, for the last three
months, he had become accustomed to pass every day
on his way from the Rue de l’Homme Arme
to the Rue des Filles-du-Calvaire,
in order to avoid the obstructions and the mud in
the Rue Vielle-du-Temple.
This road, through which Cosette had
passed, excluded for him all possibility of any other
itinerary.
Jean Valjean entered his lodgings.
He lighted his candle and mounted the stairs.
The apartment was empty. Even Toussaint was no
longer there. Jean Valjean’s step made
more noise than usual in the chambers. All the
cupboards stood open. He penetrated to Cosette’s
bedroom. There were no sheets on the bed.
The pillow, covered with ticking, and without a case
or lace, was laid on the blankets folded up on the
foot of the mattress, whose covering was visible,
and on which no one was ever to sleep again.
All the little feminine objects which Cosette was attached
to had been carried away; nothing remained except
the heavy furniture and the four walls. Toussaint’s
bed was despoiled in like manner. One bed only
was made up, and seemed to be waiting some one, and
this was Jean Valjean’s bed.
Jean Valjean looked at the walls,
closed some of the cupboard doors, and went and came
from one room to another.
Then he sought his own chamber once
more, and set his candle on a table.
He had disengaged his arm from the
sling, and he used his right hand as though it did
not hurt him.
He approached his bed, and his eyes
rested, was it by chance? was it intentionally? on
the inseparable of which Cosette had been jealous,
on the little portmanteau which never left him.
On his arrival in the Rue de l’Homme Arme,
on the 4th of June, he had deposited it on a round
table near the head of his bed. He went to this
table with a sort of vivacity, took a key from his
pocket, and opened the valise.
From it he slowly drew forth the garments
in which, ten years before, Cosette had quitted Montfermeil;
first the little gown, then the black fichu, then
the stout, coarse child’s shoes which Cosette
might almost have worn still, so tiny were her feet,
then the fustian bodice, which was very thick, then
the knitted petticoat, next the apron with pockets,
then the woollen stockings. These stockings, which
still preserved the graceful form of a tiny leg, were
no longer than Jean Valjean’s hand. All
this was black of hue. It was he who had brought
those garments to Montfermeil for her. As he
removed them from the valise, he laid them on the
bed. He fell to thinking. He called up memories.
It was in winter, in a very cold month of December,
she was shivering, half-naked, in rags, her poor little
feet were all red in their wooden shoes. He, Jean
Valjean, had made her abandon those rags to clothe
herself in these mourning habiliments. The mother
must have felt pleased in her grave, to see her daughter
wearing mourning for her, and, above all, to see that
she was properly clothed, and that she was warm.
He thought of that forest of Montfermeil; they had
traversed it together, Cosette and he; he thought
of what the weather had been, of the leafless trees,
of the wood destitute of birds, of the sunless sky;
it mattered not, it was charming. He arranged
the tiny garments on the bed, the fichu next to the
petticoat, the stockings beside the shoes, and he looked
at them, one after the other. She was no taller
than that, she had her big doll in her arms, she had
put her louis d’or in the pocket of that
apron, she had laughed, they walked hand in hand,
she had no one in the world but him.
Then his venerable, white head fell
forward on the bed, that stoical old heart broke,
his face was engulfed, so to speak, in Cosette’s
garments, and if any one had passed up the stairs
at that moment, he would have heard frightful sobs.
Chapter IV
the immortal liver -
The old and formidable struggle, of
which we have already witnessed so many phases, began
once more.
Jacob struggled with the angel but
one night. Alas! how many times have we beheld
Jean Valjean seized bodily by his conscience, in the
darkness, and struggling desperately against it!
Unheard-of conflict! At certain
moments the foot slips; at other moments the ground
crumbles away underfoot. How many times had that
conscience, mad for the good, clasped and overthrown
him! How many times had the truth set her knee
inexorably upon his breast! How many times, hurled
to earth by the light, had he begged for mercy!
How many times had that implacable spark, lighted
within him, and upon him by the Bishop, dazzled him
by force when he had wished to be blind! How many
times had he risen to his feet in the combat, held
fast to the rock, leaning against sophism, dragged
in the dust, now getting the upper hand of his conscience,
again overthrown by it! How many times, after
an equivoque, after the specious and treacherous reasoning
of egotism, had he heard his irritated conscience
cry in his ear: “A trip! you wretch!”
How many times had his refractory thoughts rattled
convulsively in his throat, under the evidence of
duty! Resistance to God. Funereal sweats.
What secret wounds which he alone felt bleed!
What excoriations in his lamentable existence!
How many times he had risen bleeding, bruised, broken,
enlightened, despair in his heart, serenity in his
soul! and, vanquished, he had felt himself the conqueror.
And, after having dislocated, broken, and rent his
conscience with red-hot pincers, it had said to him,
as it stood over him, formidable, luminous, and tranquil:
“Now, go in peace!”
But on emerging from so melancholy
a conflict, what a lugubrious peace, alas!
Nevertheless, that night Jean Valjean
felt that he was passing through his final combat.
A heart-rending question presented itself.
Prédestinations are not all direct;
they do not open out in a straight avenue before the
predestined man; they have blind courts, impassable
alleys, obscure turns, disturbing crossroads offering
the choice of many ways. Jean Valjean had halted
at that moment at the most perilous of these crossroads.
He had come to the supreme crossing
of good and evil. He had that gloomy intersection
beneath his eyes. On this occasion once more,
as had happened to him already in other sad vicissitudes,
two roads opened out before him, the one tempting,
the other alarming.
Which was he to take?
He was counselled to the one which
alarmed him by that mysterious index finger which
we all perceive whenever we fix our eyes on the darkness.
Once more, Jean Valjean had the choice
between the terrible port and the smiling ambush.
Is it then true? the soul may recover;
but not fate. Frightful thing! an incurable destiny!
This is the problem which presented itself to him:
In what manner was Jean Valjean to
behave in relation to the happiness of Cosette and
Marius? It was he who had willed that happiness,
it was he who had brought it about; he had, himself,
buried it in his entrails, and at that moment, when
he reflected on it, he was able to enjoy the sort
of satisfaction which an armorer would experience on
recognizing his factory mark on a knife, on withdrawing
it, all smoking, from his own breast.
Cosette had Marius, Marius possessed
Cosette. They had everything, even riches.
And this was his doing.
But what was he, Jean Valjean, to
do with this happiness, now that it existed, now that
it was there? Should he force himself on this
happiness? Should he treat it as belonging to
him? No doubt, Cosette did belong to another;
but should he, Jean Valjean, retain of Cosette all
that he could retain? Should he remain the sort
of father, half seen but respected, which he had hitherto
been? Should he, without saying a word, bring
his past to that future? Should he present himself
there, as though he had a right, and should he seat
himself, veiled, at that luminous fireside? Should
he take those innocent hands into his tragic hands,
with a smile? Should he place upon the peaceful
fender of the Gillenormand drawing-room those feet
of his, which dragged behind them the disgraceful
shadow of the law? Should he enter into participation
in the fair fortunes of Cosette and Marius? Should
he render the obscurity on his brow and the cloud
upon theirs still more dense? Should he place
his catastrophe as a third associate in their felicity?
Should he continue to hold his peace? In a word,
should he be the sinister mute of destiny beside these
two happy beings?
We must have become habituated to
fatality and to encounters with it, in order to have
the daring to raise our eyes when certain questions
appear to us in all their horrible nakedness.
Good or evil stands behind this severe interrogation
point. What are you going to do? demands the
sphinx.
This habit of trial Jean Valjean possessed.
He gazed intently at the sphinx.
He examined the pitiless problem under all its aspects.
Cosette, that charming existence,
was the raft of this shipwreck. What was he to
do? To cling fast to it, or to let go his hold?
If he clung to it, he should emerge
from disaster, he should ascend again into the sunlight,
he should let the bitter water drip from his garments
and his hair, he was saved, he should live.
And if he let go his hold?
Then the abyss.
Thus he took sad council with his
thoughts. Or, to speak more correctly, he fought;
he kicked furiously internally, now against his will,
now against his conviction.
Happily for Jean Valjean that he had
been able to weep. That relieved him, possibly.
But the beginning was savage. A tempest, more
furious than the one which had formerly driven him
to Arras, broke loose within him. The past surged
up before him facing the present; he compared them
and sobbed. The silence of tears once opened,
the despairing man writhed.
He felt that he had been stopped short.
Alas! in this fight to the death between
our egotism and our duty, when we thus retreat step
by step before our immutable ideal, bewildered, furious,
exasperated at having to yield, disputing the ground,
hoping for a possible flight, seeking an escape, what
an abrupt and sinister resistance does the foot of
the wall offer in our rear!
To feel the sacred shadow which forms an obstacle!
The invisible inexorable, what an obsession!
Then, one is never done with conscience.
Make your choice, Brutus; make your choice, Cato.
It is fathomless, since it is God. One flings
into that well the labor of one’s whole life,
one flings in one’s fortune, one flings in one’s
riches, one flings in one’s success, one flings
in one’s liberty or fatherland, one flings in
one’s well-being, one flings in one’s
repose, one flings in one’s joy! More! more!
more! Empty the vase! tip the urn! One must
finish by flinging in one’s heart.
Somewhere in the fog of the ancient hells, there is
a tun like that.
Is not one pardonable, if one at last
refuses! Can the inexhaustible have any right?
Are not chains which are endless above human strength?
Who would blame Sisyphus and Jean Valjean for saying:
“It is enough!”
The obedience of matter is limited
by friction; is there no limit to the obedience of
the soul? If perpetual motion is impossible, can
perpetual self-sacrifice be exacted?
The first step is nothing, it is the
last which is difficult. What was the Champmathieu
affair in comparison with Cosette’s marriage
and of that which it entailed? What is a re-entrance
into the galleys, compared to entrance into the void?
Oh, first step that must be descended,
how sombre art thou! Oh, second step, how black
art thou!
How could he refrain from turning
aside his head this time?
Martyrdom is sublimation, corrosive
sublimation. It is a torture which consecrates.
One can consent to it for the first hour; one seats
oneself on the throne of glowing iron, one places
on one’s head the crown of hot iron, one accepts
the globe of red hot iron, one takes the sceptre of
red hot iron, but the mantle of flame still remains
to be donned, and comes there not a moment when the
miserable flesh revolts and when one abdicates from
suffering?
At length, Jean Valjean entered into
the peace of exhaustion.
He weighed, he reflected, he considered
the alternatives, the mysterious balance of light
and darkness.
Should he impose his galleys on those
two dazzling children, or should he consummate his
irremediable engulfment by himself? On one side
lay the sacrifice of Cosette, on the other that of
himself.
At what solution should he arrive?
What decision did he come to?
What resolution did he take?
What was his own inward definitive response to the
unbribable interrogatory of fatality? What door
did he decide to open? Which side of his life
did he resolve upon closing and condemning? Among
all the unfathomable precipices which surrounded him,
which was his choice? What extremity did he accept?
To which of the gulfs did he nod his head?
His dizzy revery lasted all night long.
He remained there until daylight,
in the same attitude, bent double over that bed, prostrate
beneath the enormity of fate, crushed, perchance,
alas! with clenched fists, with arms outspread at right
angles, like a man crucified who has been un-nailed,
and flung face down on the earth. There he remained
for twelve hours, the twelve long hours of a long
winter’s night, ice-cold, without once raising
his head, and without uttering a word. He was
as motionless as a corpse, while his thoughts wallowed
on the earth and soared, now like the hydra, now like
the eagle. Any one to behold him thus motionless
would have pronounced him dead; all at once he shuddered
convulsively, and his mouth, glued to Cosette’s
garments, kissed them; then it could be seen that he
was alive.
Who could see? Since Jean Valjean
was alone, and there was no one there.
The One who is in the shadows.