joy. He suffered all the pangs of a mother, and he knew not what it equality, for religion heaven, God the direct priest, human conscience other. The French, fired on from every point,--from behind the walls, touch them, he had them placed under the table on which Father Mabeuf compartments of bigotry. somewhere in town. Sometimes in the very quarter where the fighting is At the period of his most abject misery, he had observed that young was almost tempted to retort "citizen." He was assailed by a fancy for shed. plan of action, and risked its stroke. One morning it drew itself up "I was looking for you," resumed Laigle de Meaux. her cease weeping. pair of pincers were visible, protruding from the man's pocket. second with nearly all the vices of the first, without possessing to peruse; but this conversation had taken place in the street. Any that narrow brow. All the demonstrations of horror which a satisfied Brujon seemed to be stupefied by prison. He could sometimes be seen the gayety of the birds and flowers, caused something almost resembling believe me. I laugh at the idea of there being any one who has anything in hand, lighted them. lighted in the kitchen, and there they were engaged in moulding into conscience, and which whispers to a man, "Thou art with God!" She made no movement of either surprise or of joy; she was joy itself. On the following day, at the same hour, Jean Valjean came. hair. instincts of war which have been repressed, youthful courage which has case of the mind as in that of the ear. These words: "I am an ex- BOOK FIRST.--A FEW PAGES OF HISTORY The master-stroke of strong men consists in saving themselves by the the coquetry of her dress was concerned; she wore a cap of fine linen, name="linknoteref-26" id="linknoteref-26">26 Gavroche raised his face:-- outside of life; those words, _going away!_ caused him to re-enter it He alone was in the secret of that deposit. He might have kept it all, precaution as though he had stolen it. of this combat was monstrous. These squares were no longer battalions, This explanation reassured the child a little. He had seen white mice in is strange but probably well founded, Le Cabuc was Claquesous. The fact in India as well as in Turkey, to ascetic claustration. Whoever says sides, with cannons with lighted matches facing us. We could not see Convention, this representative of the people, had been one of the charming women there were in those days, and what pretty little faces The President tried to touch him with some grave and pathetic words, At times, amid his convict toil, he paused. He fell to thinking. His was no end of them." CHAPTER I--THE SEWER AND ITS SURPRISES "Yes, Madame," replied the man, raising his hand to his hat. To this there is nothing to say. Peoples, like planets, possess the any need of their knowing. banlieue massed at the corner of the street suddenly pointed out to each it was I." The man half rose. girl, who was not yet a person, for a few days, and thereafter paid no No one has ever discovered to what this monologue referred. some of them thought his attire suspicious and his mien sinister. He was he. "Have you the key to the gate, Thénardier?" then! Answer me, sister; where is Cosette? I want my child! Monsieur love, of the mother who had lost her child. As he knew the moment for Esplandian attacks the giant marquis Swantibore with a cobbler's brazier, and had then straightened himself up again, and now Thénardier, Gavroche, as he listened, had seized a cane that Montparnasse held in It was the second white apparition which he had encountered. The Bishop "Now, defend me against my husband." It was evident that they had Jean Valjean before their eyes. That was on the Boulevard du Maine pulled off their hats to an old-fashioned "The baker demands a settlement, and says, 'no money, no bread.'" been converted into an ambulance, there were five men gravely wounded, evoking tears. The _pègre_ is always the poor _pègre_, and he is always the faces of the judges, of soldiers, and of spectators; all were the doing of the King. terrestrial paradise. The invention is old, my friends, but it is Marius absolutely had not the time to descend from the commode, reach attained the point where Father Mabeuf was, he flung the purse over the longer any one but me to deal with. If he is drunk, I shall say to him: to put new soles on their old shoes. And all this awkward batch of brats There lay in the inflection of voice which accompanied these words shoulders, from the point of view which we have just indicated. the assembly. He very soon returned to D---- He was interrogated as to was transition reigning; he had preserved the ancient pronunciation "You didn't see a little imp of a dandy prowling about the premises?" Exasperated by the successive apparition of the red flag and the old Moreover, Marius was heart-broken. Everything had plunged through a gloomy toward that man. But what was she to do? She no longer knew to which was overpowering them, their soaked garments, their hole-ridden astonished a man." When a being who is dear to us is on the point of death, we gaze upon Then he made the military salute. were robbed. Wellington was rigid; he gave orders that any one caught in them stared at the cake, the elder gazed after the retreating bourgeois. they turn wags. M. Gillenormand was not of this nature; his domination to be seen in 1848, in the Rue du Contrat-Social, at the corner of the At M. sur M. he exercised the unpleasant but useful functions of an Hill, having been weakened, had come up to the support of Wellington; He had seized Cabuc's collar, blouse, shirt, and suspender with his left his stroll brought him, for the second time, near the bench, and he had the person who came under his wrath at such a time! effected in his mind. There is a widening of the sphere of thought which "Montfermeil is quite pretty, is it not? People go there on pleasure new-born babe is dying. I know nothing about that, but just look at this Jean Valjean went on:-- into the channel a concentrated prose which bites. others united in families and almost in communion, turned over social Alexander, and Napoleon; knowing deeds, facts, details, dates, proper extremities. Each dray, or rather let us say, each ladder, was attached "And you climb up? Yes, I understand." the house, an edge of pavement, so that she might be able to watch for It was in front of this Gorbeau house that Jean Valjean halted. Like Ursule was evidently somewhere; nothing warned Marius in what direction his old age, of his misery, of his reprobation. He woke. He was icy cold. A wind which was chill like the breeze of dawn perfections, excellencies, and qualities. Every good quality tends Ambiorix fought against Rome, Artevelde against France, Marnix against his heart. He would have turned pale, had it been possible for him to not a nun, who was treated with great respect, and who was addressed as fault of the disinherited. missionaries of nations. Babylon has no ideal; Carthage has no ideal. than a bird, who was awake every morning before any one else in the crumbling away. Roses are pink, corn-flowers are blue, repeated for the third time: 'Marius Pontmercy!' I replied: 'Present!' do otherwise; the infinity would overwhelm it. Nevertheless, these Marius was dazzled by this prodigy. He did not know precisely what he That said, she made a curtsey to Marius and to Jean Valjean. He returned home, tried to take up his work again, and did not succeed; Simplice in a letter to the deaf-mute Massieu. However pure and sincere salaries, diminishing trouble, balancing what should be and what is, him thoroughly; he looked and recognized the fact that these two stars He made a sign to his wife, who hastily drew near, and showed her the The lower she descended, the darker everything grew about her, the more He felt in it a premeditation from on high, the will of some one who with cockchafers, or a bunch of lilacs. These encounters with strange beneath a great yew tree over which climbs the wild convolvulus, amid As we have said previously, it attacked in the name of the revolution-- "Go on, nevertheless," ejaculated Thénardier, and he continued to populated; villages spring up where there were only farms before; very low and narrow aperture, and it resembled those buildings which believed, was even more hazardous than his trip across the mountains her well. vaguely white in the light of the rising moon, rolled out, and when the The lamp-lighter came as usual to light the lantern which was situated watch-spring, and this watch-spring, properly handled, cuts good-sized for breath every three or four steps, and lean against the wall. Once he On the following day he did not come. Cosette only observed the fact in the generous impulse of the workingman nor the honest order of the those beings which are both feeble and horrible, and which cause those scrutinized the man, who was walking slowly and as though absorbed in impossible, at others everything appears easy; Jean Valjean was in the beneath his hat: his eyes were not visible, since they were lost under the contrary of revolt. Every revolution, being a normal outcome, It might be said that agony writhes. It goes, comes, advances towards the _Annales_ is of the Latin race, let us rather say he is a Roman. with policemen, and where the other could easily exercise violence. town and the wards of the hospitals; for enclosure only obedience; for to M. de Latil, Monsieur's confessor, afterwards Archbishop of Reims attained colossal statures, and it seemed to him that he beheld within A quartette of ruffians, Claquesous, Gueulemer, Babet, and Montparnasse However, we will remark by the way, everything was not ridiculous and "Will dinner be ready soon?" said the man. Oh, simplicity of the old! oh, the depth of children! this, the barricade burst into a laugh. derivative of the night. execrate this Government. It is the crown tempered by the cotton to mention it. misdeeds, some chief of a dangerous band, who gave alms to conceal CHAPTER III--MARIUS ATTACKED twice a week about her widowed hearth, and these constituted a purely his character of a philosopher of the nineteenth century, accepted, was something of heaven through holiness. "Yes." It was serious; in fact, Marius had reached that first violent and regretfully in the beginning, then with intoxication and as though The crackling of the burning flesh became audible, and the odor peculiar To feel the sacred shadow which forms an obstacle! a wasp-like waist, a delicious uniform, the cheeks of a young girl, a something of the majesty which is on the point of being decapitated. As undertaker's men knot a rope around your coffin and lower you down. The Still, his daughter had been saying for some time: "My father is it as he would have opened the hand of a baby; then he said to Javert:-- "Do you know the chapel?" "Say all, say all!" he cried. "You are Cosette's father!" 'Tis the fault of . . . " Each time that the woman passed in front of him, he bestowed on her, off rather than to say that she had been born at Segesta when she had Cosette adored the goodman. She was always at his heels. Where Jean for the first time on the 15th of June, 1811, under the presidency "Yes, since we are now in the month of May." incomprehensible grafting of successive loves on the persistent _I_, have broken your leg. Now, if you will permit me, we will converse Louis Philippe having been severely judged by some, harshly, perhaps, by In the antechamber, three violins and a flute softly played quartettes watch o'er the Safety of the Empire," they had come in a solid column, quarter of an hour to die. heads uncovered, all hearts beat high. That evening, before he went to bed, he said again: "Let us never fear "These fashions come up again," said he, "ancient things are the rage, to see her; it is necessary that you should live for her. When you are "For whom is this letter?" suffering, and I try to assuage it, I possess only the puny forces of a 33 (return) [ A game of ninepins, in which one side of the ball is was no love lost between the Prefect and the Mayor, who sought to injure "Your father! promise me, Éponine! Swear to me that you will not give existed some mysterious re-habilitation which had begun; and, to all at Tilsit he taught Emperors majesty, at the Academy of Sciences he to them. These three little girls did not yet reckon up four and twenty This gayety was troubled by one bitter reflection. was falling into disuse. Dampness was invading it, the flowers were eighty years old; before Marius' marriage, he would have hardly been Pour manger gaîment un cent de marrons. Régale si tu peux et mange si tu l'oses.