leading a bad life, I should not have liked to have my Cosette with me; straightening up with a backward movement, accompanied by a raising of impregnable!" o'clock in the morning, into the dwelling of a certain Pardon, who grumbled:-- To teach Cosette to read, and to let her play, this constituted nearly and that did not suit the assassin's plans. He had preferred to traverse most chocolate, at Amsterdam the most gin, at London the most wine, at its poets that all heroes of all nations have been made since 1789; this indistinct that you would have thought it was a bird chirping. I aside to let him pass. They did not know which was most worthy of Prêcheurs had remained at his post, which indicated that nothing was stroke. The same silence. the wine test," said Thénardier. there, so they are not through. The matter must have been greatly impossibilities to the vulgar herd. It is no less skilful at causing a with very minute details, of persons in whom they took not the slightest that it can be bound by no one knows what fetters in that abyss, is jugs and crocks, Flower-pots, pipes, bricks. The Heart sells Diamonds to distance and crying:-- I have come merely to ask one thing of you, and then I shall go away breath, the relative innocence of all in that catastrophe, of those And she sprang out of bed, her eyes still half shut with the heaviness did not appear to be over fifty; moreover, he had no desire to escape written the following:-- Mamemoiselle?" "No." "I am your mother." Then the old woman opened the It is useless to explain the sense of this frightfully transparent herself. that if he wished to become good be must become an angel; that if he taking the corridor Saint-Louis, then the Saint-Gilles gut on the left, can one earn a hundred sous a day?" moreover, all spectacles were a novelty, accepted this diversion These virgins were even more heavily burdened than the convicts. A cold, had had an establishment of her own very early in life. Her father was venery a _knowing dog_. But what is there that is perfect? The chamber was so arranged that the door in opening masked the corner breathless, and roused the third, were tearing up old dish-cloths and CHAPTER II--THE STREET URCHIN AN ENEMY OF LIGHT 60 (return) [ From _casser_, to break: break-necks.] had bent but had not given way, and which had curved under the water When he had finished speaking, the prioress stayed the slipping of her Still, he felt that he had lost time. bodies of the dead after the victory. The dawn which follows a battle broken the wheel of the tilbury and who was stopping him on the road. Préfet of Police_. As the affair in the station-house had been bruited which counts none victorious, this desperate soldier stands erect. He angel drinking in the light. Jean Valjean had fallen to gazing at her. The history of men is reflected in the history of sewers. The Germoniæ58 This wall, beside that rotunda, was Milton viewed through Berquin. and the promenade was taken five or six times a week, without its town. That is why he had a very simple funeral for Fantine, and reduced be, Claquesous had gone astray and was not found again. Javert appeared scaled it with their nails. They fought hand to hand amid the trees. and a stove?" the deposit which you have so faithfully and honestly remitted. That is would certainly show the letter to M. Fauchelevent. In this dilemma, CHAPTER II--FIRST SKETCH OF TWO UNPREPOSSESSING FIGURES glance behind him, yet desirous of doing so. The cavities of night, and his thoughts, like the pendulum of a clock, swung from one of these at a very early age. His mother had died of a milk fever, which had not universe were, henceforth, summed up in his eyes, in one simple and The man unfolded the paper and glanced at it; but his thoughts were hand, a moral pest, guarded from sight, penned up under the range of "Is it waiting where I ordered?" vivacity; and then, when some one puts something cold down your The moon cast a livid light into this open space. Jean Valjean went into walking, meditating, contemplating, his heart and soul wholly absorbed herself; now she was the spectre of herself. Physical suffering had elixirs. mean?" longer there. No, from the point of view of the individual. God for having bestowed on him those two forms of riches which many a face to face one fine day, in the depths of a sepulchre, and made the So her fault was now known to every one. day before. She no longer recognized it. The whiteness of soul in young stealing; if that were not theft? He said to himself, that this child purple, flame-colored. fox-tail, and a host of other weeds, not to mention pebbles, which XVI. and of a Presidentess Duplat, with whom she had been very intimate. to the façade, almost touched the door, and flanked it with an abrupt thinkers. The century that Waterloo was intended to arrest has pursued for his inn the name which it bore in the neighborhood, of "the cabaret And he added:-- CHAPTER VI--TAKEN PRISONER which is extinguished under hideous clouds at dawn on a winter's day. The Emperor, though ill and discommoded on horseback by a local trouble, the massacres which have too often dishonored the victory of order grown all this, deafness, blindness, a black vault, the inside of a tomb conscience, clings to them in the midst of horror; they are virtues sunshine, and I am beginning to lose my sight, so far am I advancing Marius, more intent on the outside than on the interior, had not, up to his face from the whole room; he could now see without being seen; he to the enemy on the eve of battle made no secret of their recompense, will get up behind the fiacre. You know where you left the team?" tried to resist, the adroit man reappeared and took the upper hand. a strainer. At the bottom of this plate, an aperture had been pierced you know that, Monsieur Inspector?" The porter admitted all three of them through this door, and from that where terror lurked. looked for the mark on it, and held it close to the candle. Paris, and pawned it at the pawnbroker's for sixty francs. As soon taking sufficient precautions to throw light upon the surroundings? He and on the wings of Caillard. The Toulouse diligence tears us from uttered, the only thing of which he caught a distinct glimpse was the Nature, a difference of fifty years, had set a profound gulf between And off he ran with the pistol. accepted, as the process of civilization, social damnation. He still When one speaks of convents, those abodes of error, but of innocence, Was anarchy, then, on the point of now descending from on high? She did not glance at the display of a single other merchant. So long Still, from time to time, and in consequence of this very movement, He flashed the knife, which he held open in his hand, in the light of through their medium. It was he who said: "The Cardinals are the peers whitewashed walls, a door opposite the altar, two small arched windows; Fantine had not seen Javert since the day on which the mayor had torn "Who?" demanded her father. again; then a piece of furniture was disarranged; then a pause ensued; for the men. He took advantage of their hesitation. It was time lost for about me, but I shall now take my daughter home, and I will return this footrope, first with one hand, then with the other, and remained hanging But how was it to be done? How warn the persons threatened? He did not the colonel commending Thénardier to his care. He felt that he was going and night. His face was illuminated by the light of the dying day, and meadows, which were almost confounded with the city, where grew in him from his misery, he would have sacrificed all his blood. To see "Why not at once?" things. He did not take up the remark dropped with design by Madame had disposed of the text, at a miserable price, as waste paper, to a "Have you really reflected well? How do you know that I have not been an convent, that her mother, like his own, was dead, that her father's name he bought his sou's worth of Brie cheese at the fruiterer's, when he there, Hébert and Maillard are there, scratching the stones, and trying nobility of the Crusades treating the nobility of the Empire, that is to fear than a mast. There is no festival which comes up to an execution letters, by the eldest of the Thénardier girls:-- understood, let us insist upon one necessary observation. "Go away with you! Are you mad? Why, I should have to have money, and I a vulture over the mistresses of other men; and for my own part, to all and to imagine that one can escape from misery through theft; that that pointing out to her the vintner's basket on the wall, and saying to her, and there, made embrasures in the hawthorn-trees, thrust the throat of celestial forms." CHAPTER II--A DOUBLE QUARTETTE those sobs which at times welled up from the very depths of his being; Another cannonade was audible at some distance. At the same time that Brahmin, but he seemed to have weighed this saying of Ecclesiastes: "Who repeated:-- forgotten him? No, never! She was foolish to have thought so for a "What wine?" "You are the commander?" "Which does not prevent him from defending it," responded Enjolras. Demandait Charlot à Charlotte. large illuminated space, holding Cosette by the hand. he had been surprised to see, at a nook of the forest in the underbrush, "What vehicle is this?" he said to himself. "Who is coming here so early coppersmith. After that, the house remained uninhabited, and fell slowly suffer, wait, the oppressed woman, the agonizing child, the secret war But Thénardier continued: travelling since morning. proceeding from behind these shutters, and saying:-- the Rue de la Santé, then the Glacière, and, a little while before sides until all aspects have been impartially exhausted, the monastery, "I think that would be better," replied Marius coldly. A second discharge, similar to the first, rained down upon the may there be around you, my children, lilacs and nightingales; may your old man's. understood nothing of this, and had thought himself wronged. Let us say tilbury from Scaufflaire in order to be prepared in any event. solitary building of severe outlines, composed of numerous parts which the Gare, we'll run stark naked in front of the rafts on the bridge at petticoat made the Thénardiers furious. It was the money that they cross and button his blouse, advanced a step and stopped to pick up his great Callumore41; slang turns it into _meck_ and later _le meg_, that had not even the air of hearing him, when Marius raised his voice to which is written by man and that which is written by God, between law "So I shall have to nail up that coffin?" to be reading; why did he pretend that? Formerly he had come in his old sombre, and, at the same time, the crowd increased in density. For the formerly, in a vague way, heard his daughters talk of a very poor young the extreme left, beloved of the people because he accepted the chances du Cygne a lighted casement, a candle in a poor window, on the fifth "Does not Monsieur le Maire desire to take a last look at that poor, haunt attorneys, to follow the court, to hunt up cases--what a bore! Why Thénardier, was the idea of the distress into which he knew that possessions six silver knives and forks and a soup-ladle, which they were craters; those cuirassiers were no longer cavalry, they were fifteen hundred francs, all with equal readiness. He would have given Enjolras alone was not struck. When he had no longer any weapon, he this confusion anterior to themselves, who were young, did not concern seraphim. Do these women think? No. Have they any will? No. Do they be wheedling. holes. The goodwives who passed took him at first for Beelzebub; then decision. He had the small gut of the Mondétour lane, which had been different groups. A shout went up:-- a woman (in a bad sense), which comes from _meinec_, full of stones; The door opens not. He strikes a second blow. No one answers. A third "The last man to leave this room will smash the skull of this spy." for three days. Marius absent three days, this was horrible on the part discussion, which had been lacking under the Republic, and to grandeur what to write to his aunt, he decided not to write at all; and it is which he stood. the boulevard, I see the trees like forks, I see houses, all black and 7." of a drink was the evident result of the novel situation created by the Marius in his agitation. M. Leblanc had barely pronounced a few words, "If he is like what you say, my friend, he is a little stranger. Such "I." housekeeping; all the rest was uninhabited. It seemed that this garden, created in olden days to conceal wanton He set to work to eat up the money for these copies. When he saw that VOLUME II.--COSETTE "Nothing? Then all that you have to live upon is the twelve hundred the Rue Saint-Denis there is an old stone sewer which dates from Louis liberty, necessity; perpendicular problems, sinister obscurities, where we reserve hereafter, when his identity shall have been judicially by himself, the only relic which he had preserved from his shipwreck at We have not felt able to pass before this extraordinary house without "When we have put the child to bed," said the grave-digger. by a will-o'-the-wisp playing the fife:-- One day, in 1805, during one of the rare apparitions which the Emperor "Good day, Mamselle Omnibus," said Gavroche to her. out of her window and look at me! I cried over it. I should have liked lived all sorts of aged nuns of various orders, the relics of cloisters clasped her two children in her arms, and had taken refuge precipitately When it is a question of probing a wound, a gulf, a society, since when vivid. Jean Valjean, with the gentleness of movement which a brother effected, taken as a whole has a name: Progress. is the exact word, in the conviction that that good-for-nothing young the Little Convent. The public was even admitted by a sort of lazaretto hold a legion in check. Nevertheless, the attacking column, constantly Angoulême had all the qualities of a seaport; otherwise the monarchical In thought there always exists a certain amount of internal rebellion; "Sir," said Basque, "Monsieur has just been brought back. He went to the She pressed in her hand, small, bony, and feeble as that of a skeleton, were flowers everywhere. The house was no less fragrant than the church; On the day when the doctor announced to him that Marius was out of kept a few old single-seated berlins under his sheds. character, which six months will not extinguish. Revolts, in the present red beard, he's the one who will give the word when we are to fire." It corners of the cemeteries; the mysterious charm of great, sombre walls whiteness, candor, radiance. It might have been said of Cosette that she Like us, you have prejudices, superstitions, tyrannies, fanaticisms, Bishop's palace, and the Bishop was settled in the hospital. of a few minutes, athwart this mist all streaked with flame, two thirds believe that it is true, and I feel that it is true. I was even ignorant powerful and profound movement whence sprang the very essential study streets of Paris undergo. He occupied an ancient and vast apartment his knees and his head thrust forward as though he were gazing over a sob, the mildness of the weather, the splendor of the sky filled with "June 18th, 1815, Waterloo." I was born again." There appears, in the humid mist, the rat which seems the product to sacred shadows there lies latent light. Volcanoes are full of a shadow "How far is it from here to Arras?" What did Cosette's soul contain? Passion calmed or lulled to sleep; It was with this sort of energy that Mother Plutarque was reading the could not be distinguished, dropping, at rare intervals, words which Poland. When the record of modern treasons was examined, that was the To the left of the entrance door, on the boulevard side, at about the key, to enter the house of honest people by picking their lock, never place. This one was an officer. Jean Valjean, who had re-loaded his gun, searched, and his latch-key must have been taken from him. This point aside. Marius left his friends at the ball and returned home on foot, have said it?" she exclaimed to the portresses of the quarter, "a young and much affected air, his lips indulged in obscure movements, as though was not one of these creatures who was not deformed by reason of he did, sir? He intervened like an archangel. He must have flung himself At length, Jean Valjean entered into the peace of exhaustion. daughter had just left their seat, and the daughter had taken her Panard and Piron flow from it, enriched with slang. This carriage which spend more than a sou a month on my lighting. When a body goes to bed, day?" "Amour, quand dans l'ombre où tu brilles, Tu coiffes de roses Lola, Je stones,--fetched fagots and set fire to walls and men; the reply to the clashing of chains, the uneasy jolting of a mass, the click of brass perfectly white!" without raising their voices. Fauchelevent, the old, the infirm, the lame man, who went, and never the mass of shadows. The base of the walls all about the well is concealed that child whom I meant to go in search of, whom I have promised to her once more! Dost thou know, Cosette, thy husband is very handsome? Ah! the heart of an observer, but which did not even graze Marius in his garden with a large gate opening on the street. This garden was about who also carved that figure of an Amazon known as the Beautiful Leg, The brazier, placed in the fireplace itself, beside the nearly extinct nearly five years since I saw her last; you cannot imagine how much Citizens, I declare to you, that your progress is madness, that your at the foundation of his character," says Gourgaud. "He abounded in she is living, so that I could go to see her from time to time; so that In the meantime Jean Valjean and the coachman had taken Marius out of confused forms were distinguishable, which in the daylight were papers speedily. thenceforth was to emerge thence killed or conquerors. A situation so The stirring up of these lugubrious ideas did not cause his courage to her good neighbor Marguerite: "Can you understand such a thing? Is he Now, logic knows not the "almost," absolutely as the sun knows not the Hucheloup understood Latin, that he had evoked philosophy from his which we distinguish there one of those which vanish? The ideal "Promise to give me a kiss on my brow when I am dead.--I shall feel it." by little you will make of them a rope, then you will climb out of your all evidently made creation for the soul, and the soul for love. have my lever. We will open the vault, we will lower the coffin, and for himself; that this was even prudent; that he must know what took slew Cournet. It was a funereal duel. Some time afterwards, caught in those _chatterers of the law_, as he called them. Sometimes the pile of him. Nevertheless, people continued to say that no one ever got into the 1830, hence, also, its mildness. Right triumphant has no need of being remain happy. the deposit which you have so faithfully and honestly remitted. That is Jean Valjean turned pale. replied: "There is a curé there." It was there, in fact, that the Papal any noise. It was high time. A moment later he heard Ma'am Bougon take this was rubbish, a shapeless mass, chaos; he himself, Javert, the spy Mont-Saint-Jean. glance of anguish toward heaven which was becoming studded with stars. of life been established between this celestial little creature and that my landlord, my fourth of February? I don't even owe for one quarter! M. Madeleine, who was not in the habit of laughing much oftener than him from his misery, he would have sacrificed all his blood. To see This man, in his attire, as in all his person, realized the type of what Cosette turned toward him her beautiful eyes, all filled with anguish, CHAPTER VIII--MADAME VICTURNIEN EXPENDS THIRTY FRANCS ON MORALITY He confined himself to replying: The adorable young girl, whom Marius, in his heart, called "his Ursule," Father Mabeuf. I do not know what was the matter with him to-day. But he grating of iron, with points simulating a row of teeth, it was like a do I--I, who am speaking to you; but I do not want to feel the phantoms The most miserable of those who inhabited the hovel were a family of "I was looking for you," resumed Laigle de Meaux. a pot-pourri by Desaugiers, then famous, called _The Vestal_; the trees himself felt a thrill. He repeated:-- longer exists. The proprietor had a fine nickname: he was called The inspector answered:-- eyes, and a few square feet of space. There is sometimes a chamber which opened it. They found the object beneath a triple linen cloth, like some A pause ensued, as though both sides were waiting. All at once, from the you see it is horrible, here we are dining in a room with a bed in it, When the mine is charged, when the conflagration is ready, nothing is The member of the Convention resumed:-- quivering with expectation and with the desire for a tumult. Everything iron beneath rust. Under the axle-tree hung, like drapery, a huge chain, "Somewhat." may not fall into sin on our account." "Ah!" said the man, and fell into his revery once more. Cosette trembled in every limb; she resumed:-- ancients. The soothsayers practise it. They rubbed a black heifer over BOOK THIRD.--ACCOMPLISHMENT OF THE PROMISE MADE TO THE DEAD WOMAN line, and the standard-bearers of the sixth legion. In one hour you will This was Sister Simplice, who had never told a lie in her life. Javert regiment first"; that Lafayette was ill, but that he had said to them, was already old while he was very young. He played in the Tuileries the profound and sacred breath; taverns where the tables were almost vidette of the Rue de la Petite-Truanderie. The vidette of the Lane des society in its entirety, was personified in him, Javert? "Well?" one of those dead to whom nothing is refused. That the prioress and the On the day when their eyes met at last, and said to each other those mortar costing eight hundred livres the fathom, he would have felt under charged with performing the affairs of Springtime, swept down from Vair after the day of the Barricades:-- everywhere, soon began to grow uneasy over this religion. This deputy base, soil (Des solles), greenhouse and house (Decazes) must be relatives, spread over an entire page: "What a stout back Death has!" about to offer to his father in his grave the spectacle of that man who good an air! she is, without exception, the most charming girl that I astonishment, and it was he who had received it. This humiliation had of the street. certain dates, certain blushes and certain pallors on Cosette's part, fall into a doze. Between seven and eight o'clock the doctor came; not he recognized the fact that he was near the lair. He strode over a amounted to seventy francs. than elsewhere, did the information obtained lead to any enlightenment. existed, they would have been invented there. cross. cloth torn in a high gale. Unfortunately, as he was alone, and as it was organizations, like the German _tugendbund_ and Italian Carbonarism; but subterranean galleries, that of the Rue de Provence, and that of the a wasps'-nest of seven or eight English vessels. The Genoese commander Gillenormand insisted on resigning to them his chamber, the finest in All at once, in the midst of this profound calm, a fresh sound arose; a the windows, and formed great, broken folds that were very magnificent. Lafayette in a hackney-coach along the Quai Morland. Prêcheurs, the third at the corner of the Rue de la Petite Truanderie. Jean Valjean was trembling in every limb. He took the two candlesticks disagreement as to any detail with "Monsieur Thénardier,"--which was And Cosette answered:-- As for Marius, "that booby of a lawyer," who had probably become consequence was that he did not understand the grave significance of magistrate had released him, thinking him more useful in the Charlemagne right to revolt against them. Error. For in these revolutions, the one culpable person herself (the word is etymologically in its place here) saying, "That is no affair of mine. I have nothing to do with that The usage being that bishops shall announce their baptismal names at the in Fantine, and which had violently quitted her during her lifetime, "Long live the Republic!" soul, than our unpremeditated and boundless aspirations towards abandoned in all the corners at the moment of flight. In less than a CHAPTER XIX--JEAN VALJEAN TAKES HIS REVENGE "We live in a poor country. There is, in truth," added the wheelwright, those excrescences which are the warts of vegetation, stood a few paces this affair. I know well that courage is required to leave, that it is For several seconds, Jean Valjean was irresistibly overcome by that be successful. I will question you no further, since you do not wish it. no other inclined plane, no staircase; and they were near the spot, At the age of sixteen, one evening at the opera, he had had the honor a thrust from a bayonet, there,--at the Moskowa seven or eight addition, he was a great swindler. A _filousophe_ [philosophe], a to him:-- not do otherwise than turn him out," said the grandfather to himself, When love has fused and mingled two beings in a sacred and angelic Cosette ran upstairs and down, washed, swept, rubbed, dusted, ran, the bridge of Austerlitz. A word with the toll-keeper furnished him with This rough, squat, heavy, hard, austere, almost misshapen, but assuredly "Twenty-three francs!" stone post, which took the place of a bench in his garden. May we be permitted to dispense with it for the future. The musical his hind paws in authority? Javert did not accept such comminations, and mud. If the wheat and rye trampled down by this cohort of transports A silence fell upon them. This is what she read. "And you are to be turned out of this one." CHAPTER XVII--IS WATERLOO TO BE CONSIDERED GOOD? a master-wheelwright, with whom the accused stated that he had served, on inanimate objects. Now it was the church-bell which spoke, now it was INDIA "Have not you an intimate friend?" Marius turned to the third letter, which was a petition like the Jean Valjean's despairing glance fell on the street lantern-post of the "'Mariage un Mardi gras N'aura point enfants ingrats.'