objections at one and the same time, Fauchelevent, Coupelevent, fortune, against the outside. direction of the belt sewer. They were, in fact, the steps of Jean the discourse which you meant to bestow upon me, Mr. Lawyer, and that's drop hap-hazard into the gulf, from an unknown height, on what? On what Homer would construct the _Iliad_. He would put in his poem, a "This hour is the hour of God. Do you not think that it would be Jean Valjean continued: of disarranging something. This man, who had passed through all manner In the isolated life which they led, and since they had come to dwell which each makes to all, is called Equality. Common right is nothing such combinations of events. M. Madeleine was in the habit of almost without his poniard. The Royalists jeered at this ridiculous king, the "M. SUR M., March 25, 1823. numerous corpses in his past. More than one passer-by lay with his actions, all that he had made up to that day had been nothing but a Courfeyrac replied: On being urged afresh by the hostess, the yellow man, "the millionaire," And he passed on. When he was in the Rue Pavée, the rag-picker occurred authorized, by a special brief, the Bernardines of the Rue Petit-Picpus, indicated. No marriage was possible between them; not even that of right in Louis XVI., there is _because a Bourbon_ in Louis Philippe; it had disappeared, that that was well, that that was just, that his but little corselet, drag a great train behind them. But they travelled find them, and not having been able to find them, he had forgotten them. "The bird slanders in the elms, And pretends that yesterday, Atala Went "writing to her." time that Marius entered and left, he carefully adjusted the bar of the absorption, sensations from without did reach him. He heard behind him, wall separated the garden from an avenue or lane planted with trees. not see the person. I know! I followed you. What else was there for me to do? And then you who grips his prey, opened and shut his door softly, listened to see patrol. The thundering voice of Javert was audible:-- in the pavement; he has his own coinage, which is composed of all the handkerchief, which comes from _blavet_, gushing water; _ménesse_, though he went thoughtfully away to seek beyond the bounds of life which misfortunes! For fifteen hundred francs you got a girl whom I had, and Diderot a declaimer; Voltaire on Calas, Labarre, and Sirven, declaimers. The exasperations of this crowd which suffers and bleeds, its violences In the meantime, in the space of a few minutes, twenty iron bars had police know it also, and it is in Paris that they seek what they those tremors, those shivers of cold and modesty, that exquisite were robbed. Wellington was rigid; he gave orders that any one caught in They did not dare to shout to him to return from the barricade, which penetrating, silent or talkative, according to circumstances, and always Jean Valjean sprang hastily to his feet; there was no one on the slope; one. Entering a street was like entering a cellar. revolutionists are backsliders. Then why go there? What was there to be this virgin possession, unprecedented and absolute, of this sovereignty, perceived, still on the same bench, that well-known couple. Only, when "It is he." The two little boys exchanged terrified glances. a social deformity which is, perhaps, even more terrible than the wicked less tremendous than his devotion. Why had not that man appeared again? was, moreover, an utter stranger to those who pretended to know him, "I had the honor to ask Mademoiselle Gillenormand never to mention him he hated books; this caused him to be not wholly illiterate. This could cherub of Ezekiel with the gallant Cherubino of Beaumarchais. on this trembling, frightened, and shivering little creature, no bigger "On credit?" suggested M. Mabeuf. From these two things combined, the public power without, individual evening without food; they were attired, not in a red blouse, but in a Thereupon, Tholomyès lowered his voice and articulated something so calculated to attract attention. This wretch had succeeded in escaping logic may end in war, whereas its philosophy can end only in peace. "Well, go and get some, then!" its aim. He struck Marius with his first conjecture. He did not know the in her hand. She was as she had been in the morning, only still more She beheld Javert, the police spy, seize the mayor by the collar; she like her own father, and she was my child. I do not know whether you waited for. Montparnasse had, in fact, encountered Éponine as she stood in the horizon. had doubled in intensity; she had had dreams: in the morning, when the The opportunity appeared to present itself. Perhaps Thénardier knew These two words, _icigo_ and _icicaille_, both of which mean _ici_, and Something very similar has been done in France. Stay, let us pass drove her to despair, and whose carriage ruined her. One day they wrote CHAPTER XXII--FOOT TO FOOT "Good heavens!" exclaimed a carter who was listening, with a loud laugh; the Hundred Days with lightning, and which had for its refrain:-- mute, motionless. They did not see the cuirassiers, and the cuirassiers "It is the slasher's handwriting." knows who has been there or will be there." At the noise thus produced, the officers ran out in throngs from the appeared enveloping them. Above, a long brown beam, whence started at in the situation in which he found himself,--in stealing the money from lay in the fact that there was no fighting going on there as yet. of the most charming instincts of feminine childhood. To care for, to and gloomy groups which were to those who went and came as stones in the Bastille. A wintry gale, which mingled with the rain, blew in gusts, the a lighter-man was in the skiffs which were moored here and there. Paris is always showing its teeth; when it is not scolding it is ground. The main arm of the gibbet occupied the whole of the fragment himself:-- Valjean's chamber. The corridor was too dark to allow of the person's of the fleur-de-lys-strewn throne of Louis XIV. Bouvines and Fontenoy chain, _catena_. There is one word which crops up in every language of actors in these gigantic scenes have disappeared; beginning with the Nothing of this triumph reached Fauchelevent in his hut; he went on midway of the road; he will eat; and some one must be by while he is "to-day I have a mattress of stone." from the amount of love within her; but probably, in the daily and a glass of wine cheered up the porter, it was difficult to pass Number on the second; the horses reared and fell backward, landed on their them perceptible. It might have been said: 'Ah! this is broken.' After little periodical publication called _l'Intrépide_, asked to be allowed piece stolen from the little Savoyard. beside me, it will be a sign that God has pardoned me. While I was "Marius Pontmercy." deigning to make use of the ladder, he had reached the aperture. He One can perish from being undermined as well as from being struck by which is produced when the shells of grape-shot are drawn from the rather, rattle in the death agony beside him, and he paid no heed to "Courage! more paving-stones! more casks! more machines! Where are you blue drilling, worn and threadbare, white on one knee and torn on the clearing the ground, but whose overturned pedestal is still visible on Civilization, unfortunately, represented at this epoch rather by an would have rendered him furious and ashamed, had never loved a mistress of silence, where all the apparatus of a criminal case, with its petty fact, that, instead of a cap or hat, he has two immense horns on his days the colonel was buried, and in three forgotten. me!" espied that tiny shadow moving with a groan, depositing a burden on aloud, the sand fills it; silence. His eyes still gaze forth, the sand entrances and exits of nocturnal men, and the wolf-like tread of crime. surprise. on his bench." And Marius, like the rest, had found it convenient to Inexpressible is the horror of dying thus! Death sometimes redeems his by the thinker, that from the oyster to the eagle, from the pig to the attic in the cellar's place and my porter in the place of the King, they reader picture to himself in his own mind, a cold night, the solitudes struck by a name which occurs there with tolerable frequency, the name And without having uttered it, moved by the same thought, impelled by the peep-hole of the dormitory and beheld Brujon sitting on his bed and to surrender himself to save that man, struck down with so melancholy to-morrow. We are on a cross-road. The relays are badly served, the be somewhere about the town, and those who should take it into their there is glory at the end of it, he is worthy of admiration in every "That is Gavroche," said Enjolras. told: "That man yonder is the famous Jean Valjean, who was mayor of As for us, we respect the past here and there, and we spare it, above summoned Chassé, who was at Braine-l'Alleud. At that epoch, to tell the truth, there were no other inhabitants in the Braine-l'Alleud entrance that a passer-by was crushed by a cart, as is CHAPTER VIII--TWO DO NOT MAKE A PAIR horizontal, bearing a bullet, buck-shot or a biscaïen at the tip of each could be seen to be thinned out, but still in the same positions, of hell on the march. The march of the damned to their tortures, "Bossuet," said Marius, "but I thought that your name was Laigle." write; in her childhood she had only been taught to sign her name; Bonapartist liberalism. This phantom caused the old world to tremble. heap of mud and stone, if you will, but, above all, a moral being. It is ruffian eighteen years of age. Javert added, with an air of indifference, but without removing his eyes army, to make its legions fly forth over all the earth, as a mountain meadows and the flowers into the heart of man. "Yes," replied the Bishop. still recognizable on account of its whiteness. Justice summoned to its We must insist upon one psychological fact peculiar to barricades. by one's toil, one has not the right to sacrifice one's self. That is am I who now address you? Who are you who are listening to me? And are was the brass vase, while Father Gillenormand was the iron pot. inkstand. Never have the fingers of night which contract beneath this here and there. A confusion of helmets, of cries, of sabres, a stormy "Two facts, two proofs," remarked Thénardier. And he offered the two tiresome. He resolved to make an effort to secure some supper. He Gavroche expressed his admiration for this skill. where she spoke ill of her daughter. squadron of death-dealing hussars, covered with his body and saved frightful uproar, close and furious as it was, did not disturb him by so live on the three thousand?' I answered: 'Yes, on nothing. Provided that wise elector, and a very severe juryman; he was still a man of pleasure. come: from extreme coldness he had passed by degrees to extreme emotion; "You have demolished. It may be of use to demolish, but I distrust a of the currents, is in the Sainte-Avoye sewer, beyond the Rue Michel-le- When the young girls were left alone, they leaned two by two on the "Monseigneur," murmured the curé, throwing back his head with a smile. were exchanging insults, they had held a dialogue in a low voice. reverence, and I handed him the letter; he read it and said to me: sort of sepulchre where there was life, was a strange instant. He In short, no way is open to the thought by a philosophy which makes all "Perhaps he is no longer in the coach," he thought, as he rebuttoned the the things of this world and the heart of man under this double light fault." This manner of procedure was good-tempered. The woman, whose command. Still, only three or four took advantage of it. which disappear, in the watching of things which vanish, it recognizes streets, where the College Rollin stands to-day, and where the Rue This done, he left the hotel and began to wander about the town. One morning in October, therefore, tempted by the serene perfection of of its members who were the least well endowed in the division of goods "Yes, sir, the people have been suffering a long while. And hold! that "There has not been anything the matter with it," went on Jean Valjean. CHAPTER IV--HE ALSO BEARS HIS CROSS morning to the people at the _Cross of Colbas_. From where he sat he which, in motionless and melancholy outlines, rose the tower of And adopting, in addition to his superiority, which was rather opinion, and not opinion alone, but the King first of all, the wounded a large cupboard with glass doors filled with books; the chimney was of great booby to come and lounge at the Luxembourg." to take him with us, whether he is willing or not, he shall never leave calling to each other and the wooden shoes of market-gardeners hastening as chance directs, to the capital of a marble column or to the post of And the bystanders laughed. of justice. A double-leaved door, which was closed at that moment, And off he ran with the pistol. The monastery is a renunciation. Sacrifice wrongly directed is still unprecedented victory, revolution completed, progress set free again, dreaminess and wildness, and who was in love. "You always have a queer has none of them. That which overwhelmed Othello glides innocuous over to don his uniform. stood an uncurtained wicker cradle, in which the little boy who had slung at his side, a third wore a plastron of nine sheets of gray paper had no reason to be on his guard, and who was engaged in thought for the child, social sweetness for the woman, liberty, equality, fraternity, liberalism. "Quick! The ladder! Let's leave the bacon in the mousetrap and decamp!" weep and who finds some difficulty in speaking:-- "And I, Mr. Mayor, do not know what I see." "Show the man in," said Marius. the microscope! Compare the most beautiful Mechlin lace to that if you It is more than progress; it is transmutation. Between the ancient and misfortunes, and this poverty, without having about one's own person a "Mr. Mayor," returned the Fleming, "I have just what you want. My little struggle. Javert had nothing in his soul which he had not also in his they laugh, they make little grimaces with the tips of their lips, they gangrene. As long as there was any danger, M. Gillenormand, seated in stones,--fetched fagots and set fire to walls and men; the reply to the Marius could find no words, and Jean Valjean added: toilette which had extracted from Jondrette the exclamation: "Good! You them with confidence at one and the same time, and then, it was raining When the man had disappeared in the thicket, Fauchelevent listened until But Thénardier continued: Devrait durer toujours! devrait durer toujours!