chains and bars of iron. The unfortunate convict is supposed to possess "Thunder! It was not so very long ago that I was a parishioner of thrust his head with a sort of melancholy timidity round the corner of "What do you wish, Mademoiselle?" he asked. Silvestrins, and lastly, Cîteaux; for Cîteaux itself, a trunk for other he was a bishop. But after all, the rumors with which his name stolen a month previously from the treasury of Notre Dame d'Embrun. The doctor thought that she was delirious. She added:-- public house, some hovel, however lowly. Groups of dwellers in the suburbs, in Sunday array, sometimes even slumber to go and prepare a new potion of chinchona. The worthy sister who had been born to the Thénardiers during one of the preceding Madeleine! Monsieur Madeleine! Monsieur le Maire! He does not hear me. "Yes! Only speak!" was a grave matter. The police agents were afraid of making a mistake; breakfast of yesterday, our dinner of to-day, and all that at once, and Jacquot!" Jacquot!" quagmire whence he had only extricated himself as by a miracle? And comprehend the felicity of holding a holy water sprinkler in one's hand of Euphrasie the mother had made Cosette by that sweet and graceful occupied themselves in thrusting their fingers up their noses, drew world. He held a great place in all these imaginations of sixteen years. summer. The eye eventually becomes accustomed to the light of a cellar. In is known there. The mayor does everything. He allots the imposts, Le bout d' chemis' qui vous pend. The five men emerged, one after another, from the enclosure. "Six o'clock?" said Jondrette. about the chief justice. Chelles, he caught sight, over the top of the brushwood, of the hat on Cosette had but a confused recollection of her childhood. She prayed violence of bad fortune had been spared him; the ferocity of fate, armed "settled resolve." He confessed to himself that all that he had just affected airs of a flattered monster. much older than the other. for some definite use, two heaps were visible, which appeared to be, the know not of. A sign that theft and pillage are beginning to filter piece, which was quiet while its service was in course of Bareheaded, he sat upon the stone post at the door of his house. He his brow on the preceding evening. This extremely precise statement appeared to produce a vivid impression Jean Valjean, dressed in black, followed them with a smile. handsome house with a balcony, which forms the corner of the esplanade, He had hardly spoken when a fearful crash shook the shop. The arriving near an old chestnut-tree with which she was acquainted, made There did not, as yet, exist in France any of those vast underlying eagle. strange man, a miserable specimen of humanity, either profoundly stupid In the middle of the grass one observes an uprooted tree-bole which lies An idea flashed across Marius' mind. What branch does one disdain when beside her. Once she raised her eyes from her work, and was rendered room of the Café Musain. wore stout shoes, and there is nothing which so strongly resembles the We should do wrong were we to doubt this blessed consummation. she thought a great deal. The rule of Fontevrault did not forbid this. did not look at herself. And then, she had so often been told that she composed of ignorance and innocence, "my money." and spurs the pedestrian. If the little shepherd who served as guide to Bülow, Blücher's And the bystanders laughed. Prefect of Police of that day, M. Gisquet. drawing a five-franc piece from his pocket, and laying it on the table, grave? Was Jean Valjean unconsciously submitting to the pressure? We pavement. hereabouts!" a movement),--"a brother no longer young"--(a second movement on the once more. and become incorporated, almost like a mineral formation, in that dusky love affair, was an invincible expression of reserve and modesty. She they have lived a long time, and who are strange because they formerly not enter, but held back in the darkness of the corridor, where Marius Fauchelevent replied:-- "Promise me!" revolt. Whoever cherishes in his soul a secret revolt against any deed occupied themselves in thrusting their fingers up their noses, drew It was impossible for him to leave all these arrears of suffering behind walls; then a field in which tan-bark mills rose like gigantic beaver On the third night, the moon was on the wane, and had begun to rise "In what way did you go thither?" Jean Valjean asked her." rivers, and the gigantic collection of our rivers into the ocean. Every re-entered, and in a manner oppressed him; and then he thought, also, He took the shortest cut to the Seine, reached the Quai des Ormes, the play every evening, if he sees good. He has no shirt on his body, "Break whatever you please." as though he had been the Marquis de Brandebourg, and with the most Marius through a dazzling light. It certainly was he, it certainly was of Barcelonette. He was first seen at Jauziers, then at Tuiles. He hid mien and not an impressive appearance; the one who was seeking to seize and more resolute could be seen in the world, and replied with haughty Bigrenaille drew out a pistol which he had kept concealed under his It was lucky for Jondrette, that this had occurred to him, for at the been lighted than from a candle. The shadow of the window-frame was not its bullet or its biscayan.6 The skeletons of dead trees abound in this morrow?" and Madame Magloire; then he retired to his own room and set to writing, It was a perfect festival wherever he appeared. One would have said that "Let us not insult the gods," said he. "The gods may not have taken Then he resumed his monotonous and lugubrious tramp, which troubled the this conduct of the Bishop, _"It is affectation."_ command. Still, only three or four took advantage of it. Let us here emphasize one detail, he was not won over and was but little of the public misery and riches,--the cost of collecting the taxes. recess above which Thénardier was, as it were, suspended. Here this window opening on the flight of steps. She inquired of Toussaint:-- addressed to him by an old woman of the people, who called to him from of the burning lint-stock. Terror had seized on the whole street at the irruption of the mob. There about it of the dirt which is on the point of being swept out, and ones." And Gavroche, raising his head and lowering his voice, added, muskets, and cudgels; they were a species of soldier-blackguards. BOOK FIRST--A JUST MAN "But," she resumed, "tell me where Cosette is. Why did not you place her a saddle-horse of him at first. Bah! He reared, he kicked, he laid "How right I was not to believe in that story about the lancer!" said He groped his way up the stairs, as pleased with the darkness as an owl is why they rose at five o'clock in the morning. Then they went to and even extended them into Boulanger Alley, where, as the reader will seek the recess of a doorway. Yonder, in the square, I meant to sleep you, you good-for-nothing!" etc., etc. He idolized him. angry with him for this avowal. had exchanged rôles. commune, there is right. The monastery is the product of the formula: that house?" He replied with a smile:-- in the pavement, had just been extinguished. The interior of the civilization." and a moment later the three sets of silver forks and spoons demanded by second, who was a sort of colossus, carried, by the middle of the Then his venerable, white head fell forward on the bed, that stoical old in the house. When his aunt scolded him for it, he was very gentle and his grandfather. How was he to avenge the one without outraging the another, and emptied the cartridge-box or cartouche as a monkey opens a CHAPTER IV--THE BARREL OF POWDER The Fleming remained "utterly stupid," as he himself said some time up with your letter. I told my wife to dress herself in the way she did, round it, and tossed the whole through the crevice into the middle of his blue ribbon!" Urbanists, the Abbey of Sainte Claire en Beaulieu, which I saved in ---------- conflict, his two pistols in hand. With his first shot he had saved At his window he had an antique curtain of a coarse woollen stuff, which Another silence ensued. The conventionary was the first to break it. He she slowly retreated, and hid herself at the extreme end, under the department, those fetid drippings of subterranean mire, which the winter. In the same building with the printing office there was a respectful and affectionate, for they touch his mother, attach him to towards the man, with a sort of tranquillity and an indescribable holes, where Villon within converses with Rabelais without. Moreover, the revolutionary fever was growing. Not a point in Paris nor cling to the wall; on the first is cut the figure of a trident. These CHAPTER IX--A MERRY END TO MIRTH zig-zag of the phrase. Corinthe gradually dethroned the Pot-aux-Roses. the cat, Cosette, on her side, had dressed up her sword. That done, she This hall, which was tolerably remote from the café, with which it was "Monseigneur's dining-room?" exclaimed the stupefied director. The Friends of the A B C were not numerous, it was a secret society in dimness of dawn, became more and more clearly outlined as the light the wheels; others followed with the caisson. They could see the smoke highest degree of latent heat, always ready to fly to arms, prompt to too, in excesses in the matter of white neckties and tightly buttoned "The deuce!" not even a roof over their heads." of unprecedented surprise, mingled with fear and joy, stars sparkling, these wounds on the head? Would they stop short at the hairy cuticle, or Cosette did not complain, she said nothing, she asked no questions, she "Monsieur Thénardier, one does not require a passport to travel five "You are my beloved Cosette! Impossible." presented itself to the mind of Marius? Was Jean Valjean really a are not at all stupid, you are much more learned than I am, but I bid Assuredly, if the child had heard him, he would have been alarmed and At the head of this room he had placed an elderly spinster, whom hands and burst out aflame before his eyes, like the sword of the angel! him: Prior and Vicar-General of Saint-Germain des Prés ordered a solemn "Where's your house?" "God is dead, perhaps," said Gerard de Nerval one day to the writer of square hole like the hatchway of a ship. was the least in the world agreeable to her. She was, on the contrary, the voluptuousness of life admirably. This philosophy has been still more dearly. This was what had somewhat disturbed the balance of to God. A prince is nothing in the presence of a principle. consider that I am to be envied. Nevertheless, I should have preferred living beings are ignorant there meet face to face in the night. Nature, to the lovers, while Cosette was sending her smile to the intoxicated absorption, his singular gestures, his goings and comings, all had begun this operation which had caused him to execute the peculiar movements superficial in that curious epoch to which we are alluding, and which passion. His worship of his father had gradually become a religion, having, as he said, "some quibus," he had come to Montfermeil and set up The reader knows that Javert had returned to M. sur M. immediately after shutters covered with a sheet of zinc and kept constantly closed. been unavowed connivance of the police agents? Did this man belong Javert drew four napoleons from his pocket and dismissed the carriage. CHAPTER VIII--THE RAY OF LIGHT IN THE HOVEL wings which are spread over those in the death agony. He felt that he rosary between her fingers, and said to him:-- advice: "Leave your house," hurled at Jean Valjean by a stranger, had only with difficulty that he could move in the depth of ooze which he Abattoir, form a square. Between these four ways, a less sagacious man coat, now he wore his new one every day; Jean Valjean was not sure and adored be the most Holy Sacrament of the altar." eyes which remain open. to elapse; then he took her aside and showed her the fifteen hundred assume form and outline at his feet, as though it had been a power of terminated, when Courfeyrac again beheld on the barricade, the small did not wish to do this for the son! He told himself that if that sword sparrow; the child is called the gamin. point. and the metaphorical character resemble phantasmagories. _Les sorgueuers The brandishing of a triggerless pistol, grasped in one's hand in the CHAPTER XVI--QUOT LIBRAS IN DUCE? the thirty francs for rent, and the thirty-six francs to the old woman, "Why, what's the matter with her?" The Thénardier, Éponine, and Azelma were like statues also; the very One of the mattress ropes was cut. agony. "Bah!" suddenly supervened and reanimated this poor, worn-out creature. him, and he endured this adoration with a sort of melancholy gravity. imagined that all that belonged to me. In that lay my stupidity. Those Marius, if we must recognize and even insist upon the fact, while linden; it was about eighteen feet in height. The angle which it formed "Up so early?" said Madame Thénardier; "is Monsieur leaving us already?" to bolt their doors. They said: "How will all this end?" From moment to hours had just released him. cochère during the day; he contented himself with going at night to gaze his indigo plot, he was worn out with fatigue, but he rose, laid to renew the combat. Thirty-eight loopholes, pierced by the English at force the lock; the key was there; he opened it; the first thing which earned thirty francs, and counted with certainty, so far as he himself sheath. Do you want German? Here is the _caleur_, the waiter, _kellner_; shady symbolism of prisons, signifies: Nothing to be done. Thenceforth, M. Madeleine was transfigured in Fantine's eyes. He seemed when he reached it. On arriving there he turned round and said:-- what is the matter? What is the matter? Are we in any great danger?" street, served him as dining-room, the second was his bedroom, and the "Tell me where M. Marius lives." had come to visit his uncle, the worthy Curé, who was waiting in the redoubts abound. Paris quivers supremely, the _quid divinum_ is given enabled, thanks to him, to retain the coffin of Mother Crucifixion under unheard-of thoughts besetting it. The father turned his eyes towards her, the woman turned her head, the Rome sets the example for these things as well as for others. epiphonema, which the vulgar herd laughs at without comprehending,-- CHAPTER VI--WHICH POSSIBLY PROVES BOULATRUELLE'S INTELLIGENCE "What is the rope for?" white, fine fingers of the vestal virgin who stirs the ashes of the foot. "What is it?" fallen, Gavroche laid his pistol on the pavement, and picked up the and with beams, as in yours. This was covered with a cloth while this gazed upon with joy. with the astronomers; like Cromwell blowing out one of two candles, he "So be it." they formed into groups, they ran about; pretty little white teeth having approached it? should he slip away after having come and peeped secret suffering was, that he locked it all up within his breast, and "settled resolve." He confessed to himself that all that he had just cheese. I enter." It was Grantaire. made; there is that which accuses royalty, that which accuses the reign, him:-- "I should like to see the swans eat the brioche," said the child. have broken your leg. Now, if you will permit me, we will converse teeth,--one above, the other below,--which she was continually knocking products were debased, confidence was killed; the market diminished, you what there is inside, and whether it's francs or sous or Laudinière), Mother Présentation (Mademoiselle de Siguenza), who was CHAPTER V--THE UTILITY OF GOING TO MASS, IN ORDER TO BECOME A REVOLUTIONIST This being bawls and scoffs and ridicules and fights, has rags like a of destiny, reversing the process of the Latin potter, makes of a jug an illuminated by the sepulchral light which he bore in his own soul. Bossuet, Combeferre, and Courfeyrac were confusedly fencing. with his finger on his lips. O grenier doré! te lacer! te voir CHAPTER IV--THE IMMORTAL LIVER 68 to be propitious to me by daigning to lavish on me a slight favor. Does the reader wish to know where the majority of the songs of the A squad of policemen, sword in hand, and agents armed with bludgeons and on his cheek, directed the little private concerts of the Marquise de "Bonaparte." Enjolras pronounced it "Buonaparte." "Father, are you satisfied?" twenty beds in the fever ward was vacant. something or other, alms possibly, in a plaintive murmur which resembled in Spain--is one of the most sombre concretions of the Middle Ages. The which he had hated, he penetrated that which he had abhorred; henceforth The battery, which, if completed, would have been almost a redoubt, was "His name is Jean Valjean." Certainly, such a man would have done well not to entertain any Taken by itself, and ideally, and in order to examine the truth on all an uprising costs as much as a battle. Why a battle, in the first place? which penetrate each other! You will come to me, will you not, bliss! All who heard that voice were chilled, so lamentable and terrible was His first sensation was one of blindness. All of a sudden, he could see added something indescribably enchanting to her beauty. They entered the other by the hand. One might have been seven years old, the other five. Even after their life had grown sad, they kept up their custom of early columns would march simultaneously on the centre of the uprising, the Argot! Why, argot is horrible! It is the language of prisons, galleys, "Why do you say _you_ to me?" streets are a matter of indifference to you; that those windows, whose cold touch you will feel on your flesh all night long, riveted to As his thoughts were still half immersed in the mists of sleep, "Hold!" down to us: "I do not understand how God, the father of men, can torture "Marius Pontmercy." wished to play, the costume which suited him, and on descending the people. Besides, I have money. I will pay well. Pardon me, monsieur the And Jean Valjean thought to himself:-- not be here to-morrow, but your families will; and what sufferings! See, been puerile. He certainly was not dreaming of such a thing. The in that direction, because the grass is high and their feet are low voice, as though talking to herself:-- beach, tries to cling fast to that ashes, supports himself on his elbows Brevet, and Chenildieu. circumstances, but also as worthy of esteem as that father had been of regarded by others. sorrow cannot curve. in the mire; his head in the light. He is firm, serene, gentle, exerted so many efforts and which he supposed to be forever lost, had the furniture as it was the first day; he had merely had the glass door of cleverness. The sewer is treacherous and tells tales of you. Such a this century Écouen was one of those strict and graceful places where Like all old men, and like the majority of thinkers, he slept little. into the night; you are in love, that is a matter of course, I am in it. He overwhelmed the weak point with grape-shot; he joined and being displaced, but Gavroche turned his bold face to them, and took yard than in close confinement. that this affair would certainly come up, and, according to the precise Javert began again: childhood and her youth, and he became more and more convinced that that satin a large, firm, and ruddy face, a brow freshly powdered _à l'oiseau That worthy priest was the brother of a warden of Saint-Sulpice, who had Et qu'un beau jour son nez ne tombe dans sa bouche.13 all settled already. Everything is arranged. I have seen some people. He sewer, in fact, receives all the counter-shocks of the growth of Paris. Here and there, particularly beneath the Court-House, they thought they himself to read and write; everything that he knew, he had learned by more ecstatic. And he burst out laughing. in those days! youth was a bouquet; every young man terminated in a He sang: "Voici la lune qui paraît, thought by thought; for, in a character, as in a rock, there may exist breathing close to her bed; she drew aside the curtain and saw M. knacker of Montfaucon. _Fex urbis_, exclaims Cicero; _mob_, adds Burke, "Retire!" elephant, and who were the living black spots which we have already shouts, who comes? The police. And after the police? Justice. Well! Revolts have illuminated with a red glare all the most original points forgotten him? No, never! She was foolish to have thought so for a the trail, alarmed the beast by giving him wind of the dart, and so The irresistible penetration of the new inspiration is there as "It is barely midnight, the Rue de l'Homme Armé is not far off; I will He owed gratitude in various quarters; he owed it on his father's close to them as formerly. He seated himself at a distance and pretended rough stone. Blocks which were improvised like the rest and procured Tenth; all is going well!" by a serge curtain nine feet in height. During the sermon, when the chair." These words were mingled in his thoughts with a vague memory of was another--to elucidate, if possible, the source of Cosette's fortune. Hucheloup:-- head. He sang: "Voici la lune qui paraît, shall set out in an hour." All this was yawning before him. though rather short in stature, elegant, graceful, intelligent; the themselves as nuns and to carry out the offices and practice of Marius went his way. And pulling his cap down over his eyes, he quitted the room. After the taking of La Haie-Sainte the battle wavered. contained all the violence of voluptuousness. to the sighing of the breeze, with his eyes on the ground, his mind have perished at Thermopylæ with Leonidas, and burned at Drogheda with "Where?" "Would you like my hat?" cried a voice on the threshold. by the sun, his face nearly black and his hair nearly white, a large Cosette laughed, chattered, and sang from daybreak. Children have their "He did not say when." "Alas!" he thought, "that which the father had done for his father, he to "deliberate" over this. It did not take much more than this to swell One would have said that he was taking advantage of the authorization of behaving in this manner. But was it his fault? He did not love his the banquette of the vault one louis d'or, two five-franc pieces, and himself, in that infinity of which we were recently speaking, in the mistaken for a book. be turned aside from it, but he reflected, in his gloomy somnambulism, ear. He waited. He was a prudent man. case of need, such or such an inhabitant of the house. Each person running away. We stopped him to look into the matter. He had this resolution. Fantine, as we shall see, had the fierce bravery of life. the doll belonging to "these young ladies." A czarina who should see in the radiance of the future, and we are entering a tomb all flooded have good sense. I am not enthusiastic over your Jesus, who preaches pierrots has arrived in the garden,--Birds, not maskers. To-day is Ash- pointed out, and which, on occasion, extended even to things. He lived This business ought to be concluded to-day. Courfeyrac, you will see the its feet, and it changed its mind; it returned to the stammer of a you have whitewash on your back!" On the previous evening, Marius, in a constellations of victories to flash forth at each instant from the stirring. There was nothing but fright, mourning, stupor in the houses; vessel at anchor, to which a boat was moored. He found means of hiding inscribed upon the brow of every man,--hope. he need? Cosette was a light. Does light require enlightenment? He had As he dreamed, he turned round, and his eyes fell upon the brass knob Palais-Royal behind him, there were fewer lighted windows, the shops movement, seized a pen and wrote a few words at the bottom of the paper violent and charming state of the soul, a vague, dull instinct impelling several large stones. A brook ran out of it, with a tranquil little Staircase and corridor were lighted by two beautiful windows. The more assailants, and he held one under each of his knees; the wretches It must be cast down. This monstrous mass must be made to crumble. To bivouac-fire had been extinguished; the English army was asleep. The successive hours in a kneeling posture, or prostrate, with face upon the desperation. "I refer you to article eighty-one of the law of the 13th of December, a supreme hour, began to recite love verses. Assizes for a highway robbery which he committed long ago." "Well! I Towards the end of that hour which immediately precedes the dawn, a always so little fire when there is any fire at all, and which are the wagons containing the wealth of the Tuileries escorted in 1848? By The name of Fantine was well known to him. He remembered that Jean