بخش 5 کتاب 7

BOOK SEVEN

THE LAST DROP IN THE CHALICE

THE SEVENTH CIRCLE AND THE EIGHTH HEAVEN

THE DAY AFTER a wedding is lonely. One respects the reverential silence of the happy couple. And also, a little, the fact that they don’t go to sleep till late and then sleep in. The clamour of visits and congratulations does not begin till later. On the morning of February 17, it was a bit after midday when Basque, busy “doing his antechamber,” with cloth and feather duster under his arm, heard a light rap at the door. The person had not rung the bell, which was discreet on such a day. Basque opened up and saw Monsieur Fauchelevent. He ushered him into the salon, which was still in a cluttered mess and looked like the battlefield of the previous night’s jubilation.

“Heavens, Monsieur,” observed Basque, “we’ve woken up rather late.”

“Is your master up?” asked Jean Valjean.

“How is Monsieur’s arm?” asked Basque.

“Better. Is your master up?”

“Which one? The old one or the new one?”

“Monsieur Pontmercy.”

“Monsieur le baron?” said Basque, drawing himself up.

One is especially a baron for one’s servants. Something of the glory is reflected on them; they have what a philosopher would call a spattering of title, and this flatters them. Marius, we might mention in passing, a militant republican—and he had proved it—was now a baron in spite of himself. A minor revolution had taken place in the family over this title; it was now Monsieur Gillenormand who insisted on it, and Marius who made light of it. But Colonel Pontmercy had written: “My son will bear my title.” Marius asserted. And then again, Cosette, in whom the woman was beginning to dawn, was thrilled to be a baroness.

“Monsieur le baron?” Basque repeated. “I’ll go and see. I’ll go and tell him Monsieur Fauchelevent is here.”

“No. Don’t tell him it is me. Tell him that someone wants to talk to him in private but don’t give the name.”

“Ah!” said Basque.

“I want to give him a surprise.”

“Ah!” Basque said again, giving himself his second “Ah!” as an explanation of the first.

And he went out. Jean Valjean stood alone.

The salon, as we say, was in chaos. It looked as though, if you cocked your ear, you would still have been able to hear the faint noise of the wedding. On the parquet floor there were all sorts of flowers that had fallen from the garlands and out of people’s coiffures. The candles had burned down to stubs and added stalactites of wax to the crystals of the chandeliers. Not a single piece of furniture was in its proper place. In the corners, three or four armchairs, pushed together to form a circle, looked as though they were carrying on chatting. The whole thing was cheerful as can be. A certain grace lingers on after a party has died. It had been happy. Over these chairs in disarray, among these wilting flowers, under these extinguished lights, all thoughts had been of joy. The sun had taken over from the chandelier, and gaily entered the room.

A few minutes ticked away. Jean Valjean stood rooted to the spot right where Basque had left him. He was very pale. His eyes were hollow and so sunken in their sockets from lack of sleep that they had almost disappeared. His black coat had the tired wrinkles of a garment that had stayed up all night. The elbows had gone white with that fluffy down that friction leaves on fabric. Jean Valjean looked down at the window outlined on the parquet floor at his feet by the sun.

There was a noise at the door, he looked up. Marius stepped in, his head high, laughter on his lips, some indefinable light over his face, his forehead radiant, his eyes triumphant. He, too, had not slept a wink.

“It’s you, Father!” he cried when he saw Jean Valjean. “That idiot of a Basque with his mysterious air! But you’ve come too early. It’s only half past twelve. Cosette is still sleeping.” That word father, said to Monsieur Fauchelevent by Marius, meant: supreme bliss. There had always been, as we know, a wall, a certain coldness and constraint between them, ice to be broken or melted. Marius had reached that point of intoxication where the wall drops and the ice melts, and Monsieur Fauchelevent was now for him, as for Cosette, a father.

He went on; the words spilled out of him, which is a feature of such heavenly paroxysms of joy: “I’m so happy to see you! If you only knew how much we missed you yesterday! Hello, father. How’s your hand? Better, I think?” And, satisfied with the positive response he had given himself, he rushed on: “We talked about you a lot, the two of us. Cosette loves you so much! You haven’t forgotten that your room is here. We don’t want any more of this rue de l’Homme-Armé. We don’t want any more of it at all. How could you go and live in a street like that, when it is sick, and crotchety, and ugly, and fenced off at one end, and where a person is cold, where a person can’t even get in? You will come and move in here. And this very day, too. Or you’ll have to deal with Cosette. She means to lead us all by the nose, I warn you. You saw your room, it’s right next to ours, it looks out on the garden; the lock has been fixed, the bed’s made up, it’s all ready, all you have to do is come over. Cosette has placed a big old bergère covered in Utrecht velvet by your bed and she said to it: “Open your arms to him.” Every spring, in the stand of acacias outside your windows, a nightingale comes. You’ll have him in a couple of months. You’ll have his nest to your left and ours to your right. By night he will sing and by day Cosette will talk. Your room faces full south. Cosette will arrange your books there for you, your Voyages of Captain Cook, and the other one, Vancouver’s,2 all your things. There is, I believe, a small suitcase to which you are attached; I’ve selected a place of honour for it. You’ve won over my grandfather, you go together well. We’ll all live together. Do you play whist? You’ll make my grandfather jump for joy if you play whist. You’re the one who’ll take Cosette out walking on my days in court, you’ll give her your arm, you know, like you used to do, before, in the Luxembourg. We are absolutely determined to be deliriously happy. And you’ll be deliriously happy, too, at our happiness, do you hear, father? Speaking of which, are you having breakfast with us today?” “Monsieur,” said Jean Valjean, “I have something to tell you. I am an ex-convict.”

The mind has limits beyond which it can’t perceive sharp sounds any more than the ear can. Those words: “I am an ex-convict,” coming from the mouth of Monsieur Fauchelevent and entering Marius’s ears, exceeded the limits of the possible. Marius did not hear. It seemed to him that something had just been said to him, but he did not know what. He stood openmouthed.

He realized then that the man talking to him was frightening. In his happy daze, he had not till that moment noticed that terrible pallor.

Jean Valjean untied the black cravat that was supporting his right arm, untied the cloth wrapped round his hand, laid bare his thumb and showed it to Marius.

“There’s nothing wrong with my hand,” he said.

Marius looked at the thumb.

“There’s never been anything wrong with it,” Jean Valjean went on.

There was indeed no trace of a wound. Jean Valjean pursued: “It was best for me not to be at your wedding. I’ve stayed out of it as much as I could. I feigned this wound so as not to commit forgery, so as not to introduce a void into the marriage certificates, so as to get out of signing.” Marius stammered: “What does this mean?”

“It means,” said Jean Valjean, “that I was in the galleys.”

“You’re driving me mad!” Marius cried, horrified.

“Monsieur Pontmercy,” said Jean Valjean, “I spent nineteen years in the galleys. For theft. Then I was sentenced to life. For theft. For a second offence. At the present time, I am in breach of ban.” Marius could recoil from reality all he liked, reject the facts, resist the evidence; he was compelled to yield. He started to understand, and as always happens in such cases, his understanding went further. He shuddered with a ghastly inner flash; an idea, which made him shake, crossed his mind. He glimpsed a deformed destiny in the future—his own.

“Tell all, tell all!” he yelled. “You are Cosette’s father!”

And he stepped back in a movement of unsayable horror.

Jean Valjean raised his head in an attitude of such nobility that he seemed to grow as tall as the ceiling.

“It is essential that you believe me here, Monsieur, and although the oath of the likes of us is not admitted in court …”

Here he paused, and then, with a sort of sovereign and sepulchral authority he added, slowly articulating and emphasizing every syllable: “You will believe me. Cosette’s father—me! Before God, no. Monsieur le baron Pontmercy, I am a peasant from Faverolles. I used to earn my living pruning trees. My name is not Fauchelevent, my name is Jean Valjean. I am nothing to Cosette. Rest assured.” Marius stuttered: “Who can prove to me—”

“I can. Since I’m telling you.”

Marius looked at this man. He was grim and tranquil. No lie could possibly emerge from such calm. What is ice-cold is sincere. You could feel the truth in this coldness of the grave.

“I believe you,” said Marius.

Jean Valjean dipped his head as though taking note of this and continued: “What am I to Cosette? A passerby. Ten years ago, I didn’t know she existed. I love her, it’s true. When you’ve known a child when she was small, being yourself old already, you can’t help but love them. When you are old, you feel like a grandfather to all little children. You may, it seems to me, assume that I have something akin to a heart. She was an orphan. Without father or mother. She needed me. So that is why I began to love her. Children are so weak that the first person to come along, even a man like me, can be their protector. That’s the duty I carried out in relation to Cosette. I don’t think you can really call such a small thing a good deed; but if it is a good deed, well then, let’s say that I did it. Make a note of this extenuating circumstance. Today Cosette is passing out of my life; we are going our separate ways. From now on I can do nothing more for her. She is Madame Pontmercy. Her saviour has changed. And Cosette has gained by the change. All is well. As for the six hundred thousand francs, you haven’t mentioned them to me but I know what you’re thinking—it’s a trust. How did this trust come into my hands? Does it matter? I’m handing over the trust. Nothing more can be asked of me. I complete the restitution in saying my real name. That, too, is my business. But, for my sake, I want you to know who I am.” And Jean Valjean looked Marius full in the face.

What Marius felt was turbulent and incoherent. Certain of destiny’s blasts create such tidal waves in our souls.

We have all had such troubled moments in which everything inside us breaks up; we say whatever comes into our heads, which is not always exactly what we should say. There are sudden revelations that we just cannot bear and that make our heads spin like bad wine. Marius was so stupefied by the new situation that had been revealed to him that he spoke to the man almost as if he resented him for making the confession.

“But in the end,” he shouted, “why are you telling me all this? What’s forcing you to? You could have kept the secret to yourself. No one’s denouncing you, or pursuing you, or tracking you down, are they? You have some reason for making such a revelation of your own volition. Get on with it. There’s something else. What’s the reason you’re making this confession? What’s your motive?” “What’s my motive?” answered Jean Valjean in such a low and muffled voice that he seemed to be talking to himself more than to Marius. “What motive, indeed, could this convict have for coming and saying: ‘I am a convict’? Well, yes! My motive is strange. It’s out of honesty. Listen, what is really unlucky is that I have these strings here in my heart that keep me bound. It is especially when you are old that these strings are sturdy. Life falls apart completely all around you; they hold fast. If I could have ripped out these strings, broken them, untied the knot or cut it, gone far away, I’d have been saved; all I’d have had to do is leave; there are plenty of stagecoaches in the rue du Bouloi; you’re happy, I take myself off. I’ve tried to break them, these strings, I’ve tugged at them, but they’ve held firm, they haven’t snapped, I was merely tearing my heart out with them. So then I said: ‘I can’t live anywhere but here. I must stay.’ Well, yes, but you’re right, I’m an idiot, why not just stay? You offer me a room in the house, Madame Pontmercy is fond of me, she says to that armchair: ‘Open your arms to him’; your grandfather asks nothing better than to have me, he thinks we go well together, we’ll all live together, eat together, I’ll give my arm to Cosette—to Madame Pontmercy, sorry, force of habit—we’ll have but one roof, one table, one fire, the same corner of the fireplace in winter, the same walks in summer. That is joy, that is, that is happiness, that is everything, that is. We’ll live as a family. As a family!” At this word, Jean Valjean became fierce. He folded his arms, studied the floor at his feet as though he would have liked to disappear through the floorboards into a hole, and his voice suddenly boomed: “As a family! No! I’m not part of any family. I’m not part of yours. I’m not part of the family of man. In houses where people are at home, I’m the odd one out. There are families, but that’s not for me. I’m the unlucky one; I’m on the outside, looking in. Did I have a father and a mother? I almost doubt it. The day I married off that child, it was all over, I saw her happy, and that she was with the man she loves, and that there was a good old man there, a marriage of two angels, every joy about the house, and that this was good, and I said to myself: ‘You, stay out.’ I could lie, it’s true, fool the lot of you, remain Monsieur Fauchelevent. As long as it was for her, I was able to lie; but now that it would be for myself, I must not do it. All I had to do was keep quiet, it’s true, and everything would carry on. You ask me what’s forcing me to speak? A funny thing—my conscience. It would have been so easy to keep quiet, though. I’ve spent the night trying to persuade myself to do just that; you are hearing my confession, and what I have come to tell you is so extraordinary that you have a right to hear it; so, yes, I spent the night coming up with reasons, I came up with some very good reasons, I did all I could, naturally. But there are two things I didn’t manage to pull off: I didn’t manage to snap the strings that keep me bound, riveted, stuck here, by my heart; and I didn’t manage to silence the one who whispers to me when I am alone. That’s why I came to confess everything to you this morning. Everything, or as good as. There are things I could say, but they’re pointless and concern only me; I’ll keep those things to myself. The essential, you know. So, I’ve taken my secret and I’ve brought it to you. And I’ve ripped it open before your very eyes. It wasn’t an easy decision to make. I struggled with myself all night. Ah, you think I didn’t tell myself that this wasn’t the Champmathieu affair, that in concealing my name I wasn’t doing anyone any harm, that the name Fauchelevent was given to me by Fauchelevent himself in gratitude for a service rendered, and that I could very well hang on to it, and that I’d be happy in this room you’re offering me, that I wouldn’t be in the way, that I’d be in my little corner, and that, while you had Cosette, I, I’d have the knowledge that I was in the same house as her. Everyone would have had their due of happiness. For me to go on being Monsieur Fauchelevent would have been better for everyone. Yes, except for my soul. There was joy all around me, but the bottom of my soul stayed black. It’s not enough to be happy, you have to be content. If I’d gone on being Monsieur Fauchelevent, if I’d kept my true face hidden, in the middle of your flourishing, I’d have been an enigma; in the middle of your bright sunlight, I’d have been in darkness; without warning you, quite simply, I’d have brought the penal colony into your home, I’d have sat at your table with the thought that, if you knew who I was, you’d drive me away; I’d have let myself be waited on by servants who, if they’d known, would have said: ‘How horrible!’ I’d have brushed you with my elbow when you have a right to want no part of it, I’d have cheated you of your handshakes! Respect in your house would have been split between a venerable white head and a branded white head; in your most intimate moments, when all hearts would have believed themselves to be completely open, each for the others, when all four of us would have been together, your grandfather, you two, and myself, there would have been a stranger in your midst! I’d have been alongside you in your existence, worrying only about how to keep the lid on my terrible well. I, a dead man, would have forced myself on you, the living. As for her, I’d have sentenced her to me for life. You, Cosette, and I, we’d have been three heads in the one green lifer’s cap! Doesn’t it make you shudder? Where I’m only the most stricken of men, I’d have been the most monstrous. And this crime, I’d have committed it every day! And this lie, I’d have told it every day! And this face of darkness, I’d have worn it over my face every day! And my stain, I’d have given you your share of it every day! Every day! To you my dearly beloved, to you my children, to you my innocents! You think keeping quiet is nothing? You think staying silent is simple? No, it’s not simple. There is a silence that lies. And my lie, and my fraud, and my unworthiness, and my cowardice, and my treachery, and my crime—I would have drained it all to the dregs, I’d have spat it back up, then drunk it again, I’d have finished at midnight and started again at midday, and my good morning would have been a lie, and my good evening would have been a lie, and I’d have slept on it, and I’d have eaten it with my bread, and I’d have looked Cosette in the face, and I’d have answered the angel’s smile with the smile of the damned, and I’d have been a vile imposter! What for? To be happy. To be happy—me! Do I have the right to be happy? I am one of life’s outsiders, Monsieur.” Jean Valjean stopped. Marius was listening. Such trains of thought and heartache cannot be interrupted. Jean Valjean dropped his voice once more, but it was no longer muted, it was ominous.

“You ask me why I’m speaking out? I haven’t been denounced, or pursued, or tracked down, you say. Oh yes I have! I’ve been denounced! Yes, I’ve been pursued! Yes, I’ve been tracked down! Who by? By myself. I’m the one barring my way myself, and I drag myself along, and I push and shove myself, and I arrest myself, and I restrain myself, and when a man holds himself in custody, he won’t get away.” And, seizing his own coat in his clenched fist and holding it out to Marius: “You see this fist, here?” he went on. “Wouldn’t you say it’s holding this collar in such a way as to not let go of it? Well then! Conscience is like a fist of another kind! If you want to be happy, Monsieur, you must never have a sense of duty; for the moment you do, it becomes implacable. You’d think it was punishing you for seeing it; but no: It rewards you, for it puts you in a hell where you can feel God beside you. No sooner have you torn your heart out than you are at peace with yourself.” And, with poignant emphasis, he added: “Monsieur Pontmercy, this is not common sense, but I am an honest man. In debasing myself in your eyes I rise in mine. This has already happened to me once before, but it was less painful then; it was nothing. Yes, an honest man. I would not be if, through my fault, you had continued to esteem me; now that you despise me, I am. I have a curse on me that means never being able to have any but stolen consideration, such consideration humiliates me and overwhelms me inside, and so, for me to respect myself, I have to be despised by others. Then I can hold my head up. I am a convict who obeys his conscience. I’m well aware that this seems unlikely. But what do you want me to do about it? That’s how it is. I’ve made commitments to myself; I keep them. There are encounters that bind us, there are random events that drive us to do our duty. You see, Monsieur Pontmercy, I’ve been through a bit in life.” Jean Valjean paused again and swallowed his saliva with effort as though his words had a bitter aftertaste, before he resumed: “When you have such horror hanging over you, you don’t have the right to make others share in it unwittingly, you don’t have the right to contaminate them with your pestilence, you don’t have the right to push them over the edge of your precipice without their realizing, you don’t have the right to trundle your red convict smock around on them, you don’t have the right to burden another’s happiness on the sly with your own misery. To go up to those who are well and press your invisible ulcer against them in the shadows—that is abhorrent. Fauchelevent gave me his name in vain. I don’t have the right to use it. He was able to give it to me; I wasn’t able to take it. A name is an identity. You see, Monsieur, I have thought a bit, I have read a bit, even though I’m a peasant; and I know a thing or two. You see I can express myself properly. I’ve given myself an education of my own. So then, yes, taking away a name and sticking yourself under it is dishonest. The letters of the alphabet can be swiped like a purse or a watch. To be a forged signature in flesh and blood, to be a living picklock, to enter the homes of decent people by picking their locks, never to look openly, always to squint, to be rotten to the core inside, no! no! no! no! Better to suffer, to bleed, to weep, to tear your skin off your flesh with your nails, to spend your nights tossing and turning in anguish, to gnaw away at yourself, guts and soul. That’s why I’m here telling you all this. Of my own volition, as you say.” He gulped in air painfully and then tossed out these final words: “Once upon a time I stole a loaf of bread to live; today, to live, I will not steal a name.” “To live!” Marius broke in. “You don’t need that name to live?”

“Ah, I know what I’m saying,” answered Jean Valjean, nodding slowly several times.

There was a silence. Both kept quiet, each deeply absorbed in thought. Marius had gone and sat himself down at a table and was leaning with the corner of his mouth hooked on a curled finger. Jean Valjean was pacing up and down. He stopped in front of a mirror and stood dead still. Then, as though obeying some inner argument, he spoke, staring in the mirror without seeing himself: “Whereas now, I’m relieved!” He began to move again and strode to the other end of the drawing room. As he turned round, he realized that Marius was watching him pace. So then he said to him in a tone no words can describe: “I drag one leg a bit. Now you know why.” Then he turned all the way round to face Marius squarely.

“And now, Monsieur, picture this: I said nothing, I remained Monsieur Fauchelevent, I took my place among you, I am part of the family, I’m in my room, I come down and have breakfast in the morning in my slippers, in the evening we go off to a show together, the three of us, I accompany Madame Pontmercy to the Tuileries and to the place Royale, we are together, you think of me as the same as you; one fine day, I’m here, you’re here, we’re chatting away, we’re laughing, suddenly you hear a voice shout: ‘Jean Valjean!’ And you see the awful hand of the police shoot out of the shadows and promptly rip off my mask!” He clammed up again. Marius had leaped to his feet. Jean Valjean went on: “What do you say to that?”

Marius’s silence was his answer.

“You see I’m right not to keep my silence. Listen, be happy, be in seventh heaven, be an angel’s angel, live in the sun, and be satisfied with that, and don’t worry how a poor doomed man goes about getting things off his chest and doing his duty; you have a most miserable man before you, Monsieur.” Marius slowly crossed the room and when he was close to Jean Valjean, held out his hand. But Marius had to reach out and take that other hand that did not reach for his. Jean Valjean just stood there and it felt to Marius like he was squeezing a hand of marble.

“My grandfather has friends,” said Marius. “I’ll get you your pardon.”

“There’s no point,” said Jean Valjean. “They think I’m dead, that’s enough. The dead aren’t subject to surveillance. They are supposed to rot quietly away. Death, that’s the same thing as a pardon.” And, disengaging his hand from Marius, who was hanging on to it, he added with a sort of ruthless dignity: “Besides, doing my duty, now that’s the friend I can turn to; and I need only one pardon and that is from my conscience.” At that moment, at the far end of the room, the door cracked open gently and Cosette poked her head in. Only her sweet face was visible; her hair was beautifully tousled, her eyelids were still swollen from sleep. She moved like a bird darting its head out of its nest, looked first at her husband, then at Jean Valjean, and cried to them with a laugh, so that you felt as if you saw a smile deep inside a rose: “I bet you’re talking politics! Talk about silly, when you could be with me!” Jean Valjean gave a start.

“Cosette—” Marius stammered.

And he broke off. Both men looked guilty.

Cosette, radiant, continued to look from one to the other. There were glints of paradise in her eyes.

“I’ve caught you in the very act,” said Cosette. “I just heard, through the door, my father Fauchelevent saying: ‘Conscience … Doing my duty …’ That’s politics, that is. I won’t have it. You really shouldn’t be talking politics the very next day. It’s not right.” “You’re wrong, Cosette,” answered Marius. “We’re talking business. We’re discussing the best way to invest your six hundred thousand francs …” “That’s not everything,” Cosette interrupted. “I’m coming in. Do you want me here?”

And, slipping resolutely through the door, she stepped into the salon. She was wearing a loose white peignoir with lots of pleats and bell sleeves, which fell to her feet. In the golden skies of old Gothic paintings there are similarly charming sacks for bagging angels in.

She studied herself from head to toe in the big mirror, then cried out in a burst of ineffable ecstasy: “Once upon a time there was a king and a queen. Oh, I’m so happy!” That said, she curtseyed to Marius and to Jean Valjean.

“So, there,” she said. “I’m going to sit myself down alongside you in an armchair, we’ll be having breakfast in half an hour, you can talk all you like, I’m well aware men have to talk, I’ll be very good.” Marius took her arm and said lovingly to her: “We’re talking business.”

“Speaking of which,” answered Cosette, “I opened my window and a bunch of pierrots just popped up in the garden. Birds, not masks. Today is Ash Wednesday, but not for the birds.” “I mean it, we’re talking business. Off you go, my darling Cosette, leave us a moment. We’re talking numbers. You’ll be bored.”

“You’ve put on a gorgeous cravat this morning, Marius. You look most dashing, my lord. No, I won’t be bored.”

“I assure you, you will.”

“Not if it’s you two. I won’t understand you, but I’ll listen to you. When a girl hears the voices she loves, she doesn’t need to understand the words they are saying. To be here, together, that’s all I want. I’m staying here with you and that’s that!” “You are my darling Cosette! But you can’t!”

“I can’t?”

“No.”

“Very well,” Cosette replied. “I would have given you some news. I would have told you that my grandfather is still sleeping, that your aunt is at mass, that the chimney in my father Fauchelevent’s room smokes, that Nicolette has had the chimney sweep round, that Toussaint and Nicolette have already had a fight, that Nicolette pokes fun at Toussaint’s stutter. Now you’ll know nothing. Ah, I can’t, you say? I, too, will have my turn, you’ll see, Monsieur, at saying: ‘You can’t.’ Who will get a telling off then? Please, my sweet Marius, let me stay here with the two of you.” “I swear we need to be on our own.”

“Well then, do I count as anyone?”

Jean Valjean did not utter a word. Cosette turned to him.

“First of all, Father, I’d like you to come and give me a kiss. What are you doing standing over there saying nothing, instead of taking my side? Where did I get such a father? You can see very well that I’m extremely unhappy at home. My husband beats me. So come here, give me a kiss immediately.” Jean Valjean went over. Cosette turned back to Marius.

“As for you, I poke my tongue at you.”

Then she held out her forehead to Jean Valjean. Jean Valjean took a step toward her. Cosette shrank back.

“Father, you’re white. Is your arm hurting you?”

“It’s better,” said Jean Valjean.

“Did you sleep badly?”

“No.”

“Are you sad?”

“No.”

“Give me a kiss. If you’re well, if you’re sleeping well, if you’re happy, I won’t scold you.”

And once again, she held out her forehead to him. Jean Valjean planted a kiss on this forehead with its heavenly reflection.

“Smile.”

Jean Valjean did what he was told. It was the smile of a spectre.

“Now defend me against my husband.”

“Cosette!—” said Marius.

“Get angry, Father. Tell him I have to stay. Surely people can talk in front of me. You must think I’m a real ninny. What you have to say must be pretty astounding! Business, investing money in a bank, that is really something! Men play at being mysterious over nothing. I want to stay. I’m very pretty this morning. Look at me, Marius.” And with an adorable shrug of the shoulders, she shot Marius an absolutely exquisite sulky look. Something like lightning flashed between those two. That someone else was there just did not matter.

“I love you!” said Marius.

“I adore you!” said Cosette.

And they fell irresistibly into each other’s arms.

“And now,” Cosette resumed, readjusting a pleat in her peignoir with a triumphant little pout, “I’m staying.”

“No you’re not,” Marius replied in an imploring tone. “There’s something we have to finish.”

“So it’s still no?”

Marius assumed a grave tone of voice: “I assure you, Cosette, you can’t stay.”

“Ah, you’re putting on your manly voice, Monsieur. Very well, I’ll be off. You, Father, did not support me. Monsieur mon mari, Monsieur mon papa, you are tyrants. I’m going to tell Grandfather. If you think I’ll be coming back, you are very much mistaken. I am proud. I will wait for you to come to me, now. You’ll see that it’s you who’ll be bored without me. I’m off, thank you all the same.” And off she went.

Two seconds later, the door opened again, her fresh rosy face poked once more round the door, and she yelled at them: “I am very angry.”

The door shut again and darkness returned. It was as though a ray of sunshine had gone astray and, without realizing it, had flashed through the night. Marius made sure the door was properly shut.

“Poor Cosette!” he murmured. “When she finds out—”

At these words, a shiver ran down Jean Valjean’s entire body. He fixed Marius with a wild-eyed stare.

“Cosette! Oh, yes, that’s true, you’ll tell all this to Cosette. That’s right. Fancy, I didn’t think of that. A person can only face one thing at a time, you have no strength left for anything else. Monsieur, I beseech you, I entreat you, Monsieur, give me your most sacred word, don’t tell her. Isn’t it enough that you know yourself? I’ve been able to tell it myself without being forced into it, I would have told the world, told everyone, I wouldn’t have cared less. But her! She doesn’t know anything about anything, it would appall her. A convict, for God’s sake! A person would be forced to explain to her, to tell her: ‘That means a man who’s been in the galleys.’ She saw a chain gang going past one day. Oh, my God!” He collapsed into an armchair and hid his face in his hands. You couldn’t hear him, but from the way his shouders shook, you could see he was crying. Silent tears, terrible tears.

You suffocate when you sob. A sort of convulsion seized him, he flopped back against the back of the chair trying to breathe, letting his arms hang down and letting Marius see his face flooded with tears, and Marius heard him murmur, so low that his voice seemed to come from fathomless depths: “Oh, I wish I was dead!” “Rest assured,” said Marius, “I’ll keep your secret for myself alone.”

And, less moved to pity, perhaps, than he should have been, but obliged for the past hour to accustom himself to the dreadful shock of seeing a convict gradually superimpose himself on Monsieur Fauchelevent before his very eyes, little by little overtaken by this grim reality and led by the downhill trend of the situation to note the gulf that had just opened between this man and himself, Marius added: “I can’t possibly not say something about the trust you have so faithfully and so honourably handed over. That was an act of probity. It’s only right that you be given a reward. You decide on the amount yourself, and you will have it. Don’t be afraid of asking too much.” “Thank you, Monsieur,” answered Jean Valjean softly.

He remained pensive for a moment, mechanically running the tip of his forefinger over the nail of his thumb, then he spoke up: “That just about does it. There is one last thing I—” “What?”

Jean Valjean seemed to have one last hesitation and, tonelessly, almost breathlessly, he stammered out rather than spoke these words: “Now that you know, do you think, Monsieur, you who are the master, that I should not see Cosette anymore?” “I think that would be best,” replied Marius coldly.

“I won’t see her again,” murmured Jean Valjean.

And he headed for the door. He placed his hand on the doorknob, the spring bolt yielded, the door cracked open, Jean Valjean opened it just wide enough to squeeze through, remained motionless for a second, then shut the door again and turned back to face Marius.

He was no longer pale, he was white. There were no more tears in his eyes, but a sort of tragic fire. His voice had become strangely calm again.

“Listen, Monsieur,” he said, “if you like, I’ll come and see her. I assure you that I want to very much. If I hadn’t been so keen to see Cosette, I would not have made the confession I’ve just made to you, I’d have gone away; but since I want to stay wherever Cosette is and go on seeing her, I had to make a clean breast of it to you in all honesty. You follow my reasoning, don’t you? It’s not hard to understand. You see, it’s over nine years that I’ve had her by my side. We lived at first in that slum on the boulevard, after that in the convent, after that near the Luxembourg. That’s where you saw her for the first time. You remember her fluffy blue hat. After that we were in the quartier des Invalides where there was a fence and a garden. Rue Plumet. I lived in a little rear courtyard from where I could hear her on the piano. That is my life for you. We never left each other’s side. That lasted nine years and one month. I was like her father and she was my little girl. I don’t know if you follow me, Monsieur Pontmercy, but to go off now, not see her anymore, not talk to her anymore, not have anything anymore—that would be hard. If you don’t see any harm in it, I’ll come and see Cosette from time to time. I won’t come often. I won’t stay long. You can tell them to stick me in the little room downstairs. On the ground floor. I’m happy to come in the back door, the one for the servants, but that might startle them. It would be better, I think, if I came in the front door the same as everyone else. Monsieur, truly. I’d like very much to go on seeing Cosette for a while. As rarely as you like. Put yourself in my place, that’s all I have left. And then, you have to be careful. If I no longer ever came, that would have a bad effect, people would find that funny. For instance, what I could do is come in the evening, when night is about to fall.” “You will come every evening,” said Marius, “and Cosette will be waiting for you.”

“You are good, Monsieur,” said Jean Valjean.

Marius bowed to Jean Valjean, happiness saw despair to the door, and the two men parted.

THE OBSCURITIES A REVELATION MAY CONTAIN

MARIUS WAS SHATTERED.

The sort of distance he had always felt for the man he used to see Cosette with was now explained for him. There was something indefinably enigmatic about that character that his instinct had warned him about. The enigma turned out to be the most shameful disgrace, jail. This Monsieur Fauchelevent was the convict Jean Valjean.

To abruptly find such a secret in the midst of his happiness was like discovering a scorpion in a nest of turtledoves. Was Marius and Cosette’s happiness from now on condemned to such kinship? Was it a fait accompli? Was acceptance of this man part of the marriage that had been consummated? Wasn’t there anything that could now be done? Had Marius also married the convict?

It is all very well to be crowned with light and joy, it is all very well to savour life’s great golden hour, happy love; such shocks would force even an archangel in his ecstasy, even a demigod in his glory, to quake.

As always happens in changes of perspective of this kind, where the earth shifts under our feet, Marius wondered if he wasn’t himself at fault somewhere here? Had he lacked astuteness? Had he lacked prudence? Had he unintentionally let things go to his head? A little, perhaps. Had he embarked on this amorous adventure that had ended in his marriage to Cosette a bit too carelessly to take in his surroundings? He took stock—which is the way it goes: By a series of successive stocktakings of ourselves by ourselves, life gets us to mend our ways little by little—he took stock of the fanciful and visionary side of his nature, a sort of inner cloud cover peculiar to many organisms and that, in the paroxysms of passion and of pain, expands, changing the temperature of the soul and invading the whole man, to the point where there is nothing left of him but a conscience blanketed by haze. We have more than once pointed out this characteristic feature of Marius’s makeup as an individual. He recalled that, in the intoxication of his love, in the rue Plumet, for six or seven ecstatic weeks, he had not even spoken to Cosette of the baffling drama that had taken place in the Gorbeau slum, in which the victim had taken the odd course of keeping quiet during the struggle and of running away after it. Why hadn’t he spoken about it to Cosette? Yet it was all so close and so frightening. Why hadn’t he even mentioned the Thénardiers to her and, especially, the day he had run into Éponine? He now almost had trouble explaining to himself his silence at the time. He did register it, though. He remembered his giddy exhilaration, his intoxication with Cosette, how love absorbed everything, how they’d kidnapped each other and carried each other off into the ideal, and perhaps, also, as the imperceptible dose of reason mixed in with that violent and wonderful state of the soul, a vague and nameless instinct to hide and to wipe from his memory that fearful episode he did not want to go near, in which he did not want to play any kind of rôle, which he himself shunned and in which he could be neither narrator nor witness without also being accuser. Besides, those few weeks had gone by in a flash; they hadn’t had time for anything but love. In the end, when he weighed everything up, turned it over, examined it, if he had told Cosette about the Gorbeau ambush, if he had named the Thénardiers to her, what would the consequences have been? Even if he had discovered that Jean Valjean was a convict, would that have changed him, Marius? Would it have changed her, Cosette? Would he have withdrawn? Would he have adored her any the less? Would he have married her any the less? No. Would it have changed anything that had happened? No. Nothing to regret, then, nothing to reproach himself for. All was well. There is a god for those drunks known as lovers. Blind, Marius had followed the course he would have followed with his eyes wide open. Love had blindfolded him, to take him where? To paradise.

But this paradise was complicated from now on by an infernal contact.

Marius’s erstwhile sense of distance from this man, from this Fauchelevent–cum–Jean Valjean, was now mixed with horror. In this horror, we have to say, there was some pity and even a certain amazement.

This thief, this recidivist thief, had restored a trust of six hundred thousand francs. He was the only one to know about the secret trust. He could have kept it all, yet he had handed it all over.

On top of that, he had himself revealed his situation of his own accord. Nothing obliged him to. If anyone knew who he was, it was his own doing. There was in that confession more than the acceptance of humiliation, there was the acceptance of danger. For a condemned man, a mask is not a mask, it is a refuge. He had given up that refuge. A false name means security; he had cast off that false name. He, a galley slave, could have hidden himself away forever in a respectable family; he had resisted the temptation. And for what motive? The scruples of conscience. He had explained this himself in the irresistible voice of truth. To sum up, whatever this Jean Valjean was, his was unarguably a conscience that was stirring. There was some mysterious rehabilitation already at work there, and to all appearances, for a long time already, scruples had had this man under strict control. Such attacks of justness and goodness are not given to vulgar natures. The stirring of conscience is the grandeur of the soul.

Jean Valjean was sincere. This sincerity, which was visible, palpable, indisputable, evident even in the pain that it caused him, made further information pointless and lent weight to all the man said. Here, for Marius, a strange turning of tables occurred. What came from Monsieur Fauchelevent? Distrust. What emanated from Jean Valjean? Trust.

In this mysterious balance sheet that the reflective Marius was drawing up for Jean Valjean, he noted the credit, he noted the debit, and he tried to reach a balance. But all this was happening in a storm. In endeavouring to get a clear picture of the man and pursuing Jean Valjean, so to speak, in his innermost thoughts, he kept losing him and finding him again in an inescapable haze.

The honesty in handing over the trust, the probity of the confession, that was good. It was like a break in the clouds, but then the clouds would turn black again. As muddled as Marius’s memories were, a shadow of them came back to him.

What exactly was that business in the Jondrette garret all about? Why, at the arrival of the police, instead of lodging a complaint, did the man make his escape? Here Marius found the answer. Because the man was a fugitive from justice in breach of ban.

Another question: Why had the man come to the barricade? For now Marius distinctly saw that episode again, resurfacing like indelible ink over a flame. This man was at the barricade. He didn’t fight, though. So what had he come there to do? Before this question a spectre rose up, and gave the answer. Javert. Marius recalled perfectly clearly at that moment the funereal vision of Jean Valjean dragging the trussed-up Javert beyond the barricade, and he could still hear the awful pistol shot ringing out from around the corner of the petite rue Mondétour. There was probably hate between that spy and this galley slave. One was in the other’s way. Jean Valjean had gone to the barricade to take his revenge. He had got there late. He doubtless knew that Javert was held prisoner there. The Corsican vendetta1 had spread among the dregs in certain sectors of the underworld and was the rule there; it is so simple that it doesn’t even shock semi-reformed souls; and people like that are so made that a criminal, in the process of repenting, may be scrupulous about theft but not about revenge. Jean Valjean had killed Javert. At least that much seemed clear.

Finally, one last question; but this one had no answer. Marius felt this question like a jab to the heart. How was it that Jean Valjean’s existence had rubbed shoulders so long with Cosette’s? What was this sombre game of Providence that had placed this child in such close contact with this man? Could there also be coupling chains, forged up above, and does God amuse himself by pairing an angel with a demon? Can crime and innocence be roommates in the mysterious prison of misery and destitution? In that parade of the condemned known as human destiny, can two heads come together, one naïve, the other fearsome, one all bathed in the divine white washes of dawn, the other forever blanched by the glimmer of endless lightning? Who could have decided on this inexplicable pairing? In what way, as the result of what miracle, could a shared life have been set up between the heavenly little girl and the doomed old man? Who could have tied the lamb to the wolf, and, even more incomprehensible, tethered the wolf to the lamb? For the wolf loved the lamb, for the savage one adored the frail one, for over the course of nine years, the angel had had the monster to lean on. Cosette’s childhood and adolescence, her coming into the world, her virginal growth toward life and the light, had been protected by that warped devotion. Here, the questions peeled off, so to speak, into countless puzzles, abysses opened at the bottom of abysses, and Marius could no longer lean over Jean Valjean without vertigo. So what was this sheer cliff of a man, then?

The old symbols from Genesis2 are eternal; in human society, as it exists, until the day that a greater clarity shall change it, there are and always will be two men, the one on top, the other subterranean; the one who follows good is Abel; the one who follows bad is Cain. Who was this loving Cain? Who was this felon so religiously absorbed in the adoration of a virgin, watching over her, raising her, keeping her, dignifying her, and enveloping her, himself impure, in purity? What was this cesspit that had revered such innocence to the point of not leaving a stain on her? Who was this Jean Valjean who had seen to Cosette’s education? What was this figure of darkness whose sole concern had been to protect a rising star from all shadow and from all cloud?

There lay Jean Valjean’s secret; and there lay God’s secret.

Faced with this twin secret, Marius shrank back. The one in a way reassured him about the other. God was as visible in this enterprise as Jean Valjean. God has His instruments. He uses whatever tool He pleases. He is not answerable to man. Do we know the ways of God? Jean Valjean had worked on Cosette. He had more or less made that soul. This was incontestable. So, what then? The worker was awful, but his work was wonderful. God performs His miracles however He sees fit. He had built the lovely Cosette, and He had put Jean Valjean to work to do it. It had pleased Him to choose this strange collaborator. What account have we to ask of Him? Is it the first time that manure has helped spring make a rose?

Marius gave himself these answers and told himself that they were right. On all the points we have just listed, he had not dared press Jean Valjean—without admitting to himself that he simply did not dare. He adored Cosette. He possessed Cosette, Cosette was splendidly unsullied. That was enough for him. What further clarification did he need? Cosette was a ray of light. Does light need to be clarified? He had everything; what more could he want? Isn’t everything enough? Jean Valjean’s personal affairs were none of his business. In crouching over the fatal shadow of that man, he clung to the solemn declaration the poor miserable man had made: “I am nothing to Cosette. Ten years ago, I didn’t know she existed.” Jean Valjean had just been passing through. He had said so himself. Well then, let him keep going. Whatever he was, his rôle was over. Marius was there from now on to carry out the job of Providence by Cosette’s side. Cosette had soared off into the blue to find her mate, her lover, her spouse, her celestial male. In taking flight, winged and transfigured, Cosette was leaving behind her on the ground, empty and hideous, her chrysalis, Jean Valjean. Into whatever circle of ideas Marius spiralled off, he always came back to a certain feeling of horror for Jean Valjean. A sacred horror perhaps, for, as we just pointed out, he sensed a quid divinum3 in this man. But, no matter what he did, and no matter what extenuating circumstances he looked for, he could not avoid falling back on this: The man was a convict; that is, the one who does not even have a place on the social ladder, being below the lowest rung. Below the lowest of men comes the convict. The convict is no longer the like of the living, so to speak. The law has stripped him of all the amount of humanity it can deprive a man of. On penal questions, Marius, though he remained a democrat, was still stuck on the side of the ruthless legal system and he had, about those whom the law strikes, all the ideas of the law. He had not yet, we have to say, gone all the way as far as progress goes. He had not yet come to distinguish between what is written by man and what is written by God, between the law and justice. He had not examined and weighed up the right man claims to dispose of the irrevocable and the irreparable. He was not revolted by the notion of vindicte4—prosecution and punishment. He found it perfectly natural that certain infringements of the written law be followed by eternal punishments, and he accepted social damnation as civilized procedure. That was as far as he had got, though he reserved the right to advance infallibly later, his nature being good and basically entirely made up of latent progress.

In this conceptual environment, Jean Valjean looked disfigured and repulsive to him. He was the reprobate. He was the convict. This word was for him like a trumpet blast at the Last Judgment;5 and, after thinking about Jean Valjean for a long time, his final movement was to turn his head away. Vade retro6—get thee behind me.

Marius, it must be acknowledged and even underlined, even while interrogating Jean Valjean to the point where Jean Valjean had said to him, “You are hearing my confession,” had not, however, put two or three decisive questions to him. It was not that they had not occurred to him, but he had been frightened of them. The Jondrette garret? The barricade? Javert? Who knows how far such revelations might have gone? Jean Valjean did not seem like a man who would shrink from the truth, and who knows whether Marius, after goading him on, would not have wanted to gag him? In certain extreme situations, surely all of us have wanted to block our ears after posing a question so we don’t hear the answer. It is especially when we love someone that we experience this sort of cowardice. It is not wise to question sinister situations to the nth degree, especially when the indissoluble side of our own life is fatally involved. From Jean Valjean’s desperate explanations, some unbearable light might be shone, and who knows whether this hideous clarity might not even reflect on Cosette? Who knows whether a sort of infernal glimmer might not remain on that angelic brow? The flare of light in a thunderstorm is still lightning. Fate has such interlocking connections whereby innocence itself is stamped with crime by the grim law of bleeding reflections. The purest natures may forever preserve the lurid reflections of some horrible association. Rightly or wrongly, Marius had been afraid. He already knew too much. He sought to turn a deaf ear rather than to find out more. Distraught, he carried Cosette off in his arms and shut his eyes to Jean Valjean.

That man was of the night, of the living and terrible night. How could Marius dare to try and plumb the depths? It is terrifying, questioning the shadows. Who knows what they might answer? The dawn could be blackened by it forever.

In this frame of mind, it was a gut-wrenching torment for Marius to think that the man would have any further contact whatever with Cosette. These fearful questions, in the face of which he had recoiled, yet which might have given rise to a final and implacable decision—he could almost have kicked himself now for not having asked them. He thought he’d been too kind, too soft, we might as well say it, too weak. This weakness had led him to make a foolish concession. He’d let himself be moved. He’d been wrong. He should have thrown Jean Valjean out, purely and simply. Jean Valjean meant playing with fire, he should have done it, and rid his house of the man. He was angry with himself, he was angry with this sudden whirlwind of emotions that had deafened him, blinded him, and swept him away. He was unhappy with himself.

What was he to do now? Jean Valjean’s visits were profoundly repugnant to him now. What was the good of having the man there at his place? What could he do? Here, his head spun, he did not want to dig any deeper; he did not want to go into it any further, he did not want to probe his own feelings. He had made a promise, he had let himself be carried away into making a promise; Jean Valjean had his promise; even with a convict, especially with a convict, a man must keep his word. Still, his first duty was to Cosette. In short, he was racked with repulsion, which dominated everything.

Marius rolled this whole set of ideas around confusedly in his mind, going from one idea to the next and stirred by all of them. Hence his deep commotion. It was not easy for him to hide this commotion from Cosette, but love is a talent and Marius managed.

On top of this, he put questions to Cosette, apparently aimlessly, and she, candid as a dove is white, did not suspect a thing; he talked to her about her childhood and her youth and he convinced himself more and more that all that a man can be that is good, fatherly, and respectable, this convict had been for Cosette. All that Marius had glimpsed and assumed was real. That sinister stinging nettle had loved and protected this lily.