بخش 5 کتاب 9

BOOK NINE

SUPREME DARKNESS, SUPREME DAWN

PITY FOR THE UNHAPPY, BUT INDULGENCE FOR THE HAPPY

IT IS A terrible thing to be happy! How we content ourselves with it! How easily we find it to be the be-all and end-all! How easily, having attained that false aim of life, happiness, we forget the real aim, duty!

We must say, though, that it would be wrong to blame Marius.

Marius, as we explained, had not put any questions to Monsieur Fauchelevent before his marriage, and since then had been afraid to put any to Jean Valjean. He had regretted the promise he had let the man drag out of him. He had told himself over and over that he was wrong to make that concession to despair. He had restricted himself to gradually banishing Jean Valjean from the house and erasing him as much as possible from Cosette’s mind. He had always in a way stood between Cosette and Jean Valjean, sure that this way she would not notice the man and would not think about him. It was more than erasure, it was an eclipse.

Marius did what he judged necessary and right. He believed he had serious reasons for pushing Jean Valjean out of the way, without harshness, but without weakness—the same serious reasons we have already seen and others we will see later. Having met by chance, during a trial in which he was acting for the defence, a former clerk from the banking house of Laffitte, without looking for it he had obtained mysterious information that he had not, if the truth be known, been able to delve into any further, out of that very respect for the secret he had promised to keep, and out of consideration for Jean Valjean’s precarious situation. He believed, at that particular moment, that he had a grave duty to perform, which was the restitution of the six hundred thousand francs to someone he was looking for as discreetly as possible. Meanwhile, he refrained from touching the money.

As for Cosette, she was not in on any of these secrets; but it would be hard to condemn her, either. There was an all-powerful magnetism between herself and Marius that made her, instinctively and almost automatically, do whatever Marius wanted. She sensed that Marius wanted something in regard to “Monsieur Jean” and she fell into line. Her husband did not have to say a word to her; she felt the vague, but clear, pressure of his tacit intentions, and blindly complied. Her compliance here consisted in not remembering whatever Marius forgot. She did not need to make any effort to do this. Without herself knowing why, and without being in any way to blame, her soul had so thoroughly become her husband’s that whatever was covered in darkness in Marius’s thoughts, grew dim in hers.

Let’s not go too far, though; in relation to Jean Valjean, this disregard and this erasure were only superficial. She was more unthinking than oblivious. In her heart of hearts, she was very fond of the man she had so long called her father. But she loved her husband even more. That is what had somewhat tipped her heart’s balance in favour of one side only.

It sometimes happened that Cosette spoke of Jean Valjean and expressed amazement. Then Marius would calm her down: “He’s away, I think. Didn’t he say he was going on a trip?” “That’s true,” Cosette thought. “He was in the habit of disappearing like this. But not for so long.” Two or three times she sent Nicolette around to the rue de l’Homme-Armé to find out whether Monsieur Jean was back from his trip. Jean Valjean had her say he was still away.

Cosette did not inquire any further, having only one need on this earth, Marius. We should say further that, on their side, Marius and Cosette had been away. They had gone to Vernon. Marius had taken Cosette to his father’s grave.

Marius had little by little taken Cosette away from Jean Valjean. Cosette had let it happen.

Besides, what people call much too harshly, in certain cases, the ingratitude of children is not always as reprehensible as you might think. It is the ingratitude of nature. Nature, as we have already said elsewhere, “looks straight ahead.” Nature divides the living into those on the way in and those on the way out. Those on the way out are turned toward the darkness, those on the way in toward the light. Whence a gap that, for the old, is fatal, and, for the young, involuntary. This gap is at first imperceptible, but it slowly increases like all dividing branches. The smaller branches, without breaking off the trunk, grow away from it. It is not their fault. Youth goes where there is joy, festivity, bright lights, love. Old age goes to the end. They do not lose sight of each other, but they lose their hold on each other. Young people feel the cooling effect of life; old people that of the grave. Let’s not blame the poor children.

LAST FLICKERINGS OF A LAMP WITH NO OIL

ONE DAY JEAN VALJEAN went downstairs, took three steps into the street, sat down on a curbstone, on that same curbstone where Gavroche, on the night of June 5, had found him musing; he stayed there for a few minutes, then went back up. This was the last swing of the pendulum. The next day, he did not leave his room. The day after that, he did not leave his bed.

His concierge, who prepared his frugal meal, a bit of cabbage and a few potatoes with a bit of streaky bacon, looked at the brown earthenware plate and cried: “But you didn’t eat yesterday, you poor dear man!” “Yes, I did,” replied Jean Valjean.

“The plate’s still full.”

“Look at the water pitcher. It’s empty.”

“That proves you drank; it doesn’t prove you ate.”

“Well, then,” said Jean Valjean, “what if I was only hungry for water?”

“That’s called thirst and, when you don’t eat at the same time, it’s called fever.”

“I’ll eat tomorrow.”

“Or on Trinity Sunday. Why not today? Do you hear anyone else say: ‘I’ll eat tomorrow!’ Fancy leaving me my plate full without touching it! And my red potatoes were so good!” Jean Valjean took the old woman’s hand: “I promise you I’ll eat them,” he said to her in his benign voice.

“I’m not happy with you,” answered the concierge.

Jean Valjean hardly saw any human being apart from this good woman. There are streets in Paris that no one walks down and houses where no one comes. He was in one of those streets and in one of those houses.

In the days when he still went out, he had bought a little copper crucifix for a few sous from a coppersmith and he had hung it on a nail facing his bed. That particular gallows, the holy rood, is always good to see.

A week went by without Jean Valjean’s taking a step even inside his room. He kept to his bed. The concierge said to her husband: “That old fellow from upstairs doesn’t get up anymore, doesn’t eat anymore, he won’t last long. He’s got his sorrows, that one has. You can’t tell me his daughter hasn’t made a bad match.” The porter returned in the tone of husbandly supremacy: “If he’s rich, he can get a doctor. If he’s not rich, he can do without. If he doesn’t get a doctor, he’ll die.” “And if he gets one?”

“He’ll die.”

The concierge began to scratch away at the grass that was growing in what she called her pavement with a knife, and while tearing out the grass, she mumbled: “That’s a shame. An old man who’s so clean! He’s as white as a plucked chicken.” She saw a local doctor going by at the end of the street and took it upon herself to ask him in.

“It’s on the second floor,” she told him. “You can go straight in. Since the old fellow doesn’t stir from his bed anymore, the key’s always in the door.” The doctor saw Jean Valjean and spoke to him. When he came back downstairs, the concierge intercepted him: “Well, then, doctor?” “Your sick man is very sick indeed.”

“What’s he got?”

“Everything—and nothing. That’s a man who, to all appearances, has lost someone dear to him. A person can die of that.” “What did he tell you?”

“He told me he was in good health.”

“Will you come back again, doctor?”

“Yes,” answered the doctor. “But someone other than me has to come back.”

A FEATHER CRUSHES THE MAN WHO LIFTED FAUCHELEVENT’S CART

ONE EVENING, JEAN VALJEAN had trouble lifting himself up on his elbow; he took his wrist and couldn’t find the pulse; his breathing was shallow and stopped now and then; he realized that he was weaker than he had ever yet been. So, under pressure no doubt from some ultimate overriding concern, he made an effort, sat up, and got dressed. He put on his old workingman’s gear. Not going out anymore, he had reverted to it and preferred it. He had to stop several times as he was dressing and the sheer effort of getting his arms into the sleeves of his jacket made the sweat roll down his forehead.

Since he had been on his own, he had put his bed in the antechamber so as to occupy the deserted apartment as little as possible. He opened the suitcase and pulled out Cosette’s little bundle of clothes. He spread them out on the bed.

The bishop’s candlesticks were in their place on the mantelpiece. He took two beeswax candles out of a drawer and put them in the candlesticks. Then, though it was still broad daylight, in summer, he lit them. You sometimes see candles blazing away like this in the middle of the day in rooms where dead people lie.

Every step he took going from one piece of furniture to the other wore him out and he was forced to sit down. It was not the normal fatigue that expends strength in order to renew it; it was the last vestige of what motion was possible; it was life exhausted and running out drop by drop in overwhelming efforts never to be made again.

One of the chairs on which he now dropped had been placed in front of the mirror, so fatal for him, so providential for Marius, in which he had read Cosette’s writing on the blotter backward. He saw himself in the mirror but did not recognize himself. He looked eighty years old; before Marius’s marriage, you would scarcely have given him fifty; this year had cost him thirty. What he had on his forehead was not the wrinkles of age, but the mysterious mark of death. You could sense there the gouging of that pitiless claw. His cheeks sagged; the skin on his face was the colour that makes it look like there is dirt over it already; both corners of his mouth were turned down like the mask the ancients used to carve on tombs; he stared into space with an air of reproach; you would have taken him for one of those great tragic figures whose rôle is to lament someone.

He was in that place, the last phase of desolation, where sorrow no longer flows down like a fountain; it has, so to speak, coagulated; the soul is blocked by a sort of clot of despair.

Night had come. With great difficulty he dragged a table and the old armchair over to the fireplace and placed on the table a quill pen, ink, and paper.

That done, he fainted. When he regained consciousness, he was thirsty. Not being able to lift up the water pitcher, he tilted it painfully toward his mouth and gulped a mouthful down.

Then he turned toward the bed and, still sitting down, for he could not remain on his feet, he looked at the tiny black dress and all those little objects so dear to his heart. Such contemplation can go on for hours that fly by like minutes. All of a sudden he shivered; he felt the cold coming over him; he leaned on the table, which the bishop’s candlesticks lit, and he took up the pen.

As neither the pen nor the ink had been used for a long time, the pen nib was bent and the ink was dry. He had to get up and put a few drops of water in the ink, which he could only do by stopping and sitting down two or three times; and then he was forced to write with the back of the pen. He wiped his forehead from time to time.

His hand was shaking. He slowly wrote the lines that follow:

Cosette, I bless you. I am going to explain to you. Your husband was right in giving me to understand that I ought to clear off; yet he was a little mistaken in what he believed, but he was right. He is a very good man. Always love him with all your heart when I am dead. Monsieur Pontmercy, always love my beloved child. Cosette, they will find this note, here is what I want to tell you, you will see the figures, if I have the strength to remember them, listen carefully, the money really does belong to you. Here is the whole story: White jet comes from Norway, black jet comes from England, black glass beads come from Germany. Jet is lighter, more precious, more dear. We can make imitations in France just as in Germany. You need a small anvil two inches square and a spirit lamp to soften the wax. The wax used to be made with resin and lamp black and cost four francs a pound. I came up with the idea of making it with shellac and turpentine. It costs no more than thirty sous and is a lot better. Loops are made with a violet glass that you stick onto a small black iron plate frame using the wax. The glass should be violet for iron jewelry and black for gold jewelry. Spain buys a lot of it. That is the place for jet … Here he broke off, the pen fell from his fingers, one of those desperate sobs came over him that sometimes rose up from the very depths of his being, the poor man took his head in his hands and brooded.

“Oh!” he cried inside (lamentable cries, heard by God alone), “it’s over. I won’t see her again. She is a smile that brushed over me. I am about to go into that dark night without even seeing her again. Oh, to hear her voice, touch her dress, look at her, my girl, that angel, if only for a minute, an instant! And then die! Dying is nothing, what is unbearable is dying without seeing her. She would give me a smile, she would have a word with me. Would that hurt anyone? No, it’s over, forever. Here I am, all alone. My God! My God! I will never see her again.” At that moment someone knocked on his door.

BOTTLE OF INK THAT ONLY MANAGES TO WHITEN

THAT SAME DAY, or, more precisely, that same evening, as Marius had just left the table and retired to his office to study a case file, Basque had handed him a letter, saying: “The person who wrote the letter is in the antechamber.” Cosette had taken the grandfather’s arm and was taking a turn in the garden.

A letter, like a man, can look bad. Coarse paper, clumsy folding, the mere sight of certain missives puts you off. The letter Basque had brought was of this sort.

Marius took it. It smelled of tobacco. Nothing evokes a memory like a smell. Marius recognized the tobacco. He looked at the address: To Monsieur, Monsieur le baron Pontmerci. At his private hotel. Recognizing the tobacco made him recognize the handwriting. You could say that amazement has its flashes of insight. Marius was, as it were, illuminated by one of those flashes.

The sense of smell, that mysterious aide-mémoire, instantly brought a whole world back to him. This was indeed the paper, the way of folding, the watery tone of the ink, it was indeed the familiar handwriting; and more than anything else it was the tobacco. The Jondrette garret appeared before him.

What a strange stroke of luck! One of the two trails he had been hoping to find for so long, the one he’d gone to so much trouble over even recently and that he’d thought forever cold, had come to offer itself to him of its own accord.

He eagerly unsealed the letter and read:

Monsieur le baron,

If the Supreme Being had gven me the talent for it, I could have been the baron Thénard, member of the institute (académie des ciences), but I am not. I merely bare the same name as him, happy if this reminder recomends me to the excellense of your bounties. The kindness you honour me with will be resiprocated. I am in posseshion of a secret conserning an individual. This individual conserns you. I hold the secret at your disposal desiring to have the honour of being yuseful to you. I will give you the simple meens of chasing from your honourable famly this individual who has no right to it, Madame la barone being of high birth. The sanktuary of virtu could never coabit any longer with crime without abdickating.

I await in the entechamber the orders of Monsieur le baron.

With respect.

The letter was signed “THÉNARD.”

This signature was not false. It was merely somewhat abbreviated.

Besides, the gobbledygook and the spelling rounded off the revelation. The certificate of origin was complete. There could be no doubt whatsoever.

Marius’s emotion was profound. After the initial surge of surprise, he felt a surge of happiness. If he could only find the other man now, the one who had saved his life, he would have nothing more to wish for.

He opened a drawer in his secretaire, pulled out a few banknotes, shoved them in his pocket, closed the secretaire again and rang. Basque opened the door a little.

“Show him in,” said Marius.

Basque announced: “Monsieur Thénard.”

A man entered. Fresh surprise for Marius. The man who entered was someone he had never seen before in his life.

This man, who was old on top of everything else, had a bulbous nose, a chin that disappeared into his cravat, green goggles with a double shade of green taffeta over his eyes, hair slicked down flat over his forehead to his eyebrows like the wigs of high-life English coach drivers. His hair was grey. He was dressed in black from head to foot, in a very threadbare but clean black; a bunch of charms, hanging out of his fob pocket, suggested a watch. He held an old hat in his hand. He walked with a stoop, and the curve of his back was accentuated by the very low bow he gave.

What was striking at first sight was that the man’s coat, although carefully buttoned up, was too big for him and seemed to have been made for someone else.

Here a short digression is necessary. There was in Paris at the time, in a shady old dive in the rue Beautreillis, near the Arsenal, an ingenious Jew whose business it was to turn a scoundrel into a respectable man. Not for too long, which might have been uncomfortable for the scoundrel. The change was a set change in full view of the audience, for a day or two, at the rate of thirty sous a day, by means of a costume as closely as possible resembling ordinary average respectability. The costume hirer was called the Changer; the crooks of Paris had given him the name and did not know him by any other. He had a fairly complete wardrobe in stock. The rags with which he decked people out were roughly convincing. He had specialties and general categories; from every nail in his shop, a social condition hung, worn and crumpled; here, a magistrate’s garb, there a priest’s, there a banker’s, in one corner a retired soldier’s, elsewhere that of a man of letters, further away a statesman’s. The man was the wardrobe master for the immense drama that skulduggery staged in Paris. His dive was the dressing room from which theft emerged and to which daylight robbery returned. A rogue in tatters showed up at this changing room, put down thirty sous, and chose the outfit that suited him, depending on the rôle he wanted to play that day, and when he went back downstairs, that rogue was suddenly somebody. The next day, the costume was faithfully returned and the Changer, who trusted robbers with all his stock, was never robbed. These clothes had one drawback, though: They didn’t fit, not being made for those who wore them; they were too tight on this one, baggy on that one, didn’t fit anyone. Any crook who was bigger or smaller than the human average was ill at ease in the Changer’s costumes. You had to be not too fat and not too skinny. The Changer only catered to normal men. He had taken the measure of the species in the person of the first thug to happen along, who was neither thick nor thin, neither tall nor small. Whence the sometimes difficult adaptations that the Changer’s customers had to try and get away with as best they could. Too bad for the exceptions! The statesman’s outfit, for instance, which was black from top to bottom and consequently most seemly, would have been too big for Pitt and too small for Castelcicala.1 The garb of the statesman was described as follows in the Changer’s catalogue, which we quote: “A coat of black cloth, trousers of black woolskin, a waistcoat of silk, boots, and linen.” In the margin was written “Ex-ambassador” and a note that we also transcribe: “In a separate box, a wig properly frizzed, green spectacles, charms, and two small quill tubes one inch long wrapped in cotton.” All this went with the statesman, ex-ambassador. The whole costume was, if we may use the word, tired; the seams were going white, a sort of buttonhole was opening up on one of the elbows, and, on top of this, a button was missing on the breast of the coat; but this was a mere detail, for the statesman’s hand had always to be inside his coat over his heart, the purpose being to hide the missing button.

If Marius had been familiar with the occult institutions of Paris, he would immediately have recognized, on the back of the visitor that Basque had just shown in, the statesman’s outfit borrowed from the Take-that-one-down-for-me of the Changer.

Marius’s disappointment at seeing a man enter who was not the man he was expecting, turned to displeasure with the newcomer. He looked him up and down while the character was busy bowing exaggeratedly, and he asked him in a crisp tone: “What do you want?” The man answered with an amiable grimace not unlike a crocodile’s grin: “It does not seem possible to me that I have not already had the honour of seeing Monsieur le baron about town. I really do think I met him in particular, a few years ago, at Madame la princesse Bagration’s and in the salons of his lordship the vicomte Dambray,2 peer of France.” It is always a good tactic in crooked dealings to seem to recognize someone you don’t know. Marius paid close attention to the man’s speech. He focused on the accent and the gestures, but his disappointment only grew; this man’s was a nasal tone, absolutely unlike the sharp dry voice he was expecting. He was completely thrown.

“I do not know,” he said, “either Madame Bagration or Monsieur Dambray. I have never in my life set foot in either’s house.” The reply was gruff. The character, gracious even so, insisted.

“Then it must have been at Chateaubriand’s that I saw Monsieur! I know Chateaubriand very well. A most affable man. He sometimes says to me: Thénard, my friend, won’t you have a drink with me?” Marius’s forehead became more and more stern: “I have never had the honour of being received at Monsieur de Chateaubriand’s. Let’s get to the point. What do you want?” Confronted by the harder tone of voice, the man bowed even lower.

“Monsieur le baron, deign to hear me out. In America, in a region close to Panama, there is a village called La Joya. This village consists of a lone house. A big, square, three-storey house made of bricks baked in the sun, each side of the square five hundred feet long, each floor set back twelve feet from the floor below so that every floor has a terrace in front of it that runs round the entire building; at the centre an inner courtyard where the provisions and munitions are kept; no windows, only loopholes, no door, only ladders, ladders to go up from the ground to the first terrace, and from the first to the second, and from the second to the third, ladders to go down into the inner courtyard; no doors on the rooms, only trapdoors, no stairs to the rooms, only ladders; at night, they shut the trapdoors, they take away the ladders, they level blunderbusses and carbines out the loopholes; no means of gaining entry; a house by day, a citadel by night, eight hundred inhabitants, and that’s the village for you. Why so many precautions? Because the region’s dangerous; it’s full of cannibals. So why do people go there? Because it’s a marvellous region; it’s where you find gold.” “What are you getting at?” Marius broke in, having shifted from disappointment to impatience.

“This, Monsieur le baron. I am a tired old ex-diplomat. The old world has given me an appetite. I’d like to try savages.” “And?”

“Monsieur le baron, selfishness makes the world go round. The landless peasant woman who works by the day turns round when a stagecoach goes by, the landowning peasant woman labouring in her own field doesn’t turn round. The poor man’s dog barks at the rich man, the rich man’s dog barks at the poor man. Every man for himself. Self-interest, that’s man’s purpose in life. And gold is the lodestone.” “So? Get to the point.”

“I’d like to go and set myself up in La Joya. There are three of us. I have a missus and a young lady—a very beautiful girl. The voyage is long and dear. I need a bit of money.” “What’s this got to do with me?” asked Marius.

The stranger poked his neck up out of his cravat in a movement peculiar to the vulture, and replied with a smile twice as big: “Could it be that Monsieur le baron has not read my letter?” This was very nearly the case. The fact is that the contents of the epistle had glanced off Marius. He had taken in the writing more than what it said. He could hardly remember a word of it. For a moment now a new suspicion had been aroused by a new clue falling into place. He had noticed that detail: “a missus and a young lady.” He fixed a piercing eye on the stranger. An examining magistrate could not have done better. He was almost lying in wait for him. He kept his answer brief: “Be more specific.” The stranger thrust both hands in both fob pockets, threw back his head without straightening up his spine, but scrutinizing Marius in turn through the green glare of his glasses.

“Right you are, Monsieur le baron. I will be more specific. I have a secret to sell you.”

“A secret!”

“A secret.”

“That concerns me?”

“Somewhat.”

“What is this secret?”

Marius examined the man more and more intensely as he listened to him.

“I’ll begin gratis,” said the stranger. “You’ll see that I’m worth your while.”

“Go on.”

“Monsieur le baron, you have under your roof a thief and a murderer.”

Marius jumped.

“Under my roof? No!” he said.

The stranger brushed his hat with his elbow, imperturbable, and went on: “Murderer and thief. Note, Monsieur le baron, that I am not talking here about deeds that are old, bygone, and void, that can be cancelled out by statutory limitation in the eye of the law, and by repentance in the eye of God. I’m talking about recent deeds, current deeds, deeds justice is still ignorant of, even as we speak. I shall proceed. This man has insinuated himself into your confidence, and almost into your family, under a false name. I am going to tell you his real name. And tell it to you for nothing.” “I’m listening.”

“His name is Jean Valjean.”

“I know.”

“I am going to tell you, also for nothing, who he is.”

“Go on.”

“He is an ex-convict.”

“I know.”

“You know since I had the honour of telling you.”

“No. I knew beforehand.”

Marius’s cold tone, that double retort “I know,” his terseness, so unamenable to dialogue, stirred mute fury in the stranger. He shot Marius a furtive look of rage, immediately extinguished. As fast as it was, that look was the kind you recognize when you have seen it before; it did not escape Marius. Certain flashes of fire can only come from certain souls; the eye, that cellar window of thought, is set ablaze; glasses hide nothing; you might as well stick a pane of glass on hell.

The stranger went on, smiling: “I would not allow myself to contradict Monsieur le baron. In any case, you must see that I am well informed. Now, what I am about to tell is known to myself alone. It concerns the fortune of Madame la baronne. It is an extraordinary secret. It is for sale. I offer it to you first. Dirt cheap. Twenty thousand francs.” “I know that secret just as I know the others,” said Marius.

The character felt the need to lower his price a little: “Monsieur le baron, say ten thousand francs and I’ll talk.” “I repeat that you have nothing to tell me. I know what you want to say.”

There was a fresh flash in the man’s eyes. He shouted: “I still have to eat today. It’s an extraordinary secret, I tell you. Monsieur le baron, I am going to talk. I am talking. Give me twenty francs.” Marius stared at him: “I know your extraordinary secret, just as I knew the name Jean Valjean, just as I know your name.” “My name?”

“Yes.”

“That’s not hard, Monsieur le baron. I had the honour of writing it for you and of telling it to you. Thénard.” “—dier.”

“Huh?”

“Thénardier.”

“Who’s that?”

When in danger, the porcupine bristles, the scarab plays dead, the old guard forms a square; this man started to laugh. Then he brushed a speck of dust from his coat sleeve with a flick. Marius continued: “You are also the workingman Jondrette, the comedian Fabantou, the poet Genflot, the Spaniard don Alvarez, and mother Balizard.” “Mother what?”

“And you used to keep a greasy spoon of a place in Montfermeil.”

“A greasy spoon! Never!”

“And I tell you, you are Thénardier.”

“I deny it.”

“And you are a beggar of a man. Here.”

And Marius, pulling a banknote out of his pocket, threw it in his face.

“Thanks! Pardon! Five hundred francs! Monsieur le baron!”

And the man, overcome, bowing and scraping, grabbed the note and examined it.

“Five hundred francs!” he repeated, flabbergasted. And he stammered under his breath: “A serious scrap of paper!” Then abruptly: “All right! You’re on!” he cried. “Let’s make ourselves comfortable.”

And, with the swiftness of a monkey, tossing his hair back, ripping off his glasses, taking out of his nose and pocketing the two quill tubes we mentioned a moment ago, and which we have already seen as it happens on another page of this book, he took his face off as you take off a hat.

His eyes lit up; his forehead, uneven, deeply lined, lumpy, hideously wrinkled at the top, cleared, his nose regained its beaklike sharpness; the ferocious and acute profile of the man of prey reappeared.

“Monsieur le baron is infallible,” he said in a clear voice free of any nasal twang. “I am Thénardier.” And he straightened up his hunched back.

Thénardier, for it was indeed he, was strangely taken aback; he’d have been rocked, if that were possible for him. He had come to deliver a shock, and it was he who had received one. This humiliation had been compensated for by five hundred francs, and, all in all, he accepted it; but he was no less stunned.

He was seeing this baron Pontmercy for the very first time, and, despite his disguise, this baron Pontmercy recognized him, and recognized him good and proper. And not only did this baron know exactly who Thénardier was, but he seemed to know all about Jean Valjean, too. Who was this practically beardless young man, so glacial and so generous, who knew people’s names, who knew all their names, and who opened his purse to them, who bullied crooks about like a judge and who paid them like a mug?

Thénardier, you will recall, although once living next door to Marius, had never set eyes on him, which happens often enough in Paris; he had once vaguely heard his daughters talking about a very poor young man named Marius who lived in the house. He had written him the letter we know about, without knowing him. There was no possible connection in his mind between that Marius and this Monsieur le baron Pontmercy.

As for the name Pontmercy, you will recall that, on the battlefield of Waterloo, he had only caught the last two syllables, for which he had always held the legitimate contempt we owe to mere thanks.

Otherwise, through his daughter Azelma, whom he had set on the trail of the newly married couple of February 16, and through his own digging, he had managed to find out a lot of things and, from the depths of his darkness, he had succeeded in seizing more than one mysterious thread. He had, by dint of industry, discovered, or, at the very least, by dint of induction, divined, who the man was that he had encountered on a certain day in the Grand Sewer. From the man, he had easily arrived at the name. He knew that Madame la baronne Pontmercy was Cosette. But on that score he intended to be discreet. Who was Cosette? He himself did not really know. He caught a whiff of bastardy, Fantine’s story having always struck him as fishy; but what was the good of bringing it up? To get his silence paid for? He had, or thought he had, something better than that for sale. And, to all appearances, to come along, without proof, and make this revelation to the baron Pontmercy: “Your wife is a bastard”—well, it would only succeed in attracting the husband’s boot to the revealer’s backside.

To Thénardier’s way of thinking, the conversation with Marius had not yet got off the ground. He had had to retreat, modify his strategy, abandon one position, change tack; but nothing essential had yet been jeopardized, and he had five hundred francs in his pocket. Moreover, he had something decisive to say, and even vis-à-vis this baron Pontmercy, well informed and well armed as he was, he felt himself to be in a strong position. For men of Thénardier’s ilk, all dialogue is a battle. In the one that was about to begin, how did he stand? He did not know who he was talking to, but he knew what he was talking about. He swiftly made this internal review of his forces, and after agreeing, “I am Thénardier,” he hung fire.

Marius had remained pensive. So, he had Thénardier at last. The man whom he had wanted so badly to find once more was there. So, he would be able to honour Colonel Pontmercy’s injunction. He felt humiliated that that hero had owed anything to this crook, and that the bill of exchange drawn on Marius by his father from the bottom of the grave should have been outstanding till that day. It also seemed to him, in the complex state his mind was in over Thénardier, that there was good reason to avenge the colonel for the misfortune of having been saved by such a scoundrel. But whatever else happened, he was satisfied. Finally, he was going to free the colonel’s shade from the clutches of this unworthy creditor, and it seemed to him that he was about to release his father’s memory from debtors’ jail.

Alongside this duty, he had another, which was to throw light if possible on the source of Cosette’s fortune. The opportunity seemed to present itself. Thénardier did perhaps know something. It might be useful to sound the man out. He would start with that.

Thénardier had slipped the “serious scrap of paper” into his fob pocket and was looking at Marius with an almost tender sweetness. Marius broke the silence.

“Thénardier, I’ve told you what your name is. Now, your secret, what you’ve come to tell me, would you like me to tell you what it is? I know more about it than you do. Jean Valjean, as you say, is a murderer and a thief. A thief, since he robbed a rich manufacturer, Monsieur Madeleine, whose ruin he caused. A murderer, since he murdered the police officer, Javert.” “I don’t understand, Monsieur le baron,” said Thénardier.

“I’ll make myself clearer. Listen. Some time around 1822, in an arrondissement of the Pas-de-Calais, there was a man who had had some kind of scrape with the law some time before and who, under the name of Monsieur Madeleine, got back on his feet and rehabilitated himself. This man became a just man, in the full force of the term. With an industry, the manufacture of black glass beads, he made the fortune of a whole town. As for his personal fortune, he made that, too, but only secondarily, and in a way, incidentally. He was a foster father to the poor. He founded hospitals, opened schools, visited the sick, provided for daughters, supported widows, adopted orphans; he was the guardian, so to speak, of the district. He turned down the cross, he was appointed mayor. A freed convict knew the secret about a sentence that was incurred by this man; he denounced him and had him arrested, and took advantage of the arrest to come to Paris, to Laffitte, the banker’s, and withdraw, using a false signature—I heard this from the cashier himself—a sum of more than half a million, belonging to Monsieur Madeleine. This convict, who robbed Monsieur Madeleine, is Jean Valjean. As for the other deed, you have nothing to tell me there, either. Jean Valjean killed the police officer Javert; he shot him with a pistol. I, who am speaking to you now, was there.” Thénardier threw Marius the withering look of a beaten man who once more suddenly has his hand on victory and has just clawed back in one go all the ground he had lost. But the smile was back in place immediately; the inferior can only enjoy an obsequious triumph in front of the superior and Thénardier contented himself with saying to Marius: “Monsieur le baron, we are on the wrong track.” And he emphasized this phrase by giving his bunch of charms an expressive twirl.

“What?” Marius returned. “Do you contest it? Those are the facts.”

“Those are fantasies; you’re dreaming. The confidence with which Monsieur le baron honours me makes it my duty to say so. Truth and justice, first and foremost. I don’t like seeing people accused unjustly. Monsieur le baron, Jean Valjean did not rob Monsieur Madeleine, and Jean Valjean did not kill Javert.” “That’s a good one! How do you work that out?”

“Two reasons.”

“Which are? Go on.”

“The first is this: He didn’t rob Monsieur Madeleine, given that he, Jean Valjean, is himself Monsieur Madeleine.” “What are you talking about?”

“And the second is this: He didn’t murder Javert, given that the man who killed Javert is Javert.” “What do you mean?”

“That Javert committed suicide.”

“Prove it! Prove it!” Marius shrieked, losing control.

Thénardier went on, scanning his sentence in the manner of a classical alexandrine: “The-po-lice-off-i-cer-Ja-vert-was-found-drown-ed-un-der-a-boat-at-the-Pont-au-Change.” “So prove it, then!”

Thénardier pulled from his side pocket a large grey paper envelope that looked as if it contained folded pages of different sizes.

“I have my file,” he said, calmly.

And he added: “Monsieur le baron, for your sake, I wanted to know my Jean Valjean backward. I say that Jean Valjean and Madeleine are the same man, and I say that Javert had no killer other than Javert, and when I say something, it’s because I have proof. Not handwritten proof, handwriting is suspicious, writing is lax, but proof in print.” As he spoke, Thénardier extracted from the envelope two editions of newspapers, yellowed, faded, and highly saturated with tobacco. One of these two newspapers, torn at the creases and falling apart in squared-off strips, looked a lot older than the other.

“Two facts, two pieces of proof,” said Thénardier. And he handed Marius the two newspapers unfolded and spread out.

These two newspapers are familiar to the reader. One, the older one, an edition of the Drapeau blanc of July 25, 1823, the text of which can be found on see here of this book, established that Monsieur Madeleine and Jean Valjean were identical. The other, a Moniteur of June 15, 1832, recorded Javert’s suicide, adding that it resulted from a report by Javert to the prefect that, having been made a prisoner in the barricade in the rue de la Chanvrerie, he had owed his life to the magnanimity of an insurgent who, while holding him with his pistol, instead of blowing his brains out, had fired into the air.

Marius read. Here was evidence, certain date, irrefutable proof; these two newspapers had not been printed expressly to support Thénardier’s story: The note published in the Moniteur was an official communiqué of the prefecture of police. Marius could not doubt it. The bank clerk’s information was false and he himself had been mistaken. Jean Valjean, suddenly looming large, emerged from the cloud cover. Marius could not hold back a cry of joy: “So then, that poor unfortunate man is a wonderful man! That whole fortune really did belong to him! He is Madeleine, the salvation of a whole region! He is Jean Valjean, the saviour of Javert! He is a hero! He is a saint!” “He is not a saint, and he is not a hero,” said Thénardier. “He is a murderer and a thief.”

And he added in the voice of a man who feels he is gaining the upper hand: “Let’s calm down, shall we?” Thief, murderer, these words that Marius had thought banished, returned and crashed over him like a shower of ice.

“Still?” he said.

“Still!” said Thénardier. “Jean Valjean did not rob Monsieur Madeleine, but he is still a thief. He did not kill Javert, but he is still a murderer.” “You’re not talking,” Marius shot back, “about that miserable petty theft of forty years ago, expiated, as appears from your very own newspapers, by a whole lifetime of repentance, self-denial, and good?” “I say murder and theft, Monsieur le baron. And I repeat that I’m talking about current deeds. What I have to reveal to you is absolutely unknown. It’s a scoop. And maybe it’s where you’ll find the source of the fortune cunningly offered by Jean Valjean to Madame la baronne. I say cunningly, for, through a donation of the kind, to slip into an honourable household, the comforts of which he will share, and, by the same token, cover up his crime, to enjoy the fruits of his theft, bury his name, and create himself a family—that would not be particularly inept.” “I could interrupt you here,” observed Marius, “but go on.”

“Monsieur le baron, I will tell you all, leaving the reward to your generosity. This secret is worth its weight in gold. You’ll say to me: ‘Why didn’t you go to Jean Valjean?’ For a very simple reason: I know that he has dispossessed himself, and dispossessed himself in your favour, and I find the scheme ingenious; but he no longer has a sou, he would just show me his empty pockets, and since I need some money for my trip to La Joya, I prefer you, you have the lot, to him—he has nothing. I’m a little weary, allow me to take a seat.” Marius sat down and gestured for him to sit.

Thénardier settled into a padded chair, took back the two newspapers, thrust them back in the envelope, and muttered, tapping the Drapeau blanc with his nail: “I went to a lot of trouble to get this one.” That done, he crossed his legs and lay back in his chair, in the manner of a man who is sure of what he is saying; then he took the plunge and tackled the subject gravely, stressing every word with great emphasis: “Monsieur le baron, the sixth of June, 1832, roughly a year ago, the day of the riot, there was a man in the Grand Sewer of Paris, over where the sewer comes out at the Seine, between the pont des Invalides and the pont d’Iéna.” Marius abruptly brought his chair closer to Thénardier’s. Thénardier registered the movement and went on at the slow pace of an orator who holds his audience in the palm of his hand and feels his enemy squirming under his words: “This man was forced to go into hiding, though for reasons that have nothing to do with politics, and he’d taken the sewer as his place of residence and had a key to it. It was, I repeat, the sixth of June; it could have been eight o’clock in the evening. The man heard a noise in the sewer. He was pretty startled and he hugged the wall and watched. It was the noise of footsteps, someone was walking in the shadows, someone was coming his way. The funny thing was that there was another man in the sewer—someone other than himself. The sewer exit was not far away. A bit of light coming through the gate allowed him to recognize the newcomer and to see that the man was carrying something on his back. He was walking hunched over. The man walking hunched over was an ex-convict and what he was lugging on his shoulders was a corpse. Case of being caught red-handed in the act of murder, if ever there was one. As for the theft, it goes without saying; you don’t kill a man for free. The convict was going to throw the corpse in the river. A fact to note is that before reaching the exit gate, the convict, who came from way down the sewer, had to have encountered a dreadful bog where it would seem he could well have left the corpse, but the very next day, the sewer workers working on the quagmire would have found the murdered man and that was not how the murderer wanted it. He preferred to get through the bog, with his burden, and he must have worked horribly hard at it, you could not put your life more completely at risk. I don’t understand how he got out of there alive.” Marius’s chair came even closer. Thénardier took advantage of this to take a deep breath. He pursued: “Monsieur le baron, a sewer is not the Champ de Mars. There’s nothing there, not even room. When there are two men in there, they have to run into each other. And that’s what happened. The resident and the man passing through were forced to say hello to each other, regretfully on both sides. The blow-in said to the resident: ‘You can see what’s on my back, I’ve got to get out, you have the key, give it to me.’ This convict was a man of terrible strength. There was no refusing him. Yet the one with the key parlayed, solely to gain time. He examined the dead man, but he couldn’t see anything, except that he was young, well turned out, apparently rich, and all disfigured by blood. While he chatted, he was able to tear off a piece of the murdered man’s coat at the back, without the murderer being any the wiser. Supporting evidence, you understand; a way of getting back on the trail of things and pinning the crime on the criminal. He put the supporting evidence in his pocket. After which he opened the gate, let the man out with his load on his back, shut the gate again, and bolted, not caring too much to get mixed up in the episode as it happens and especially not wanting to be there when the murderer chucked his victim into the river. Now you get it. The one lugging the corpse is Jean Valjean; the one with the key is speaking to you at this very moment; and the bit of coat—” Thénardier finished his sentence by pulling out of his pocket and flourishing, at eye level, between both thumbs and forefingers, a strip of black cloth that was in shreds and covered with dark stains.

Marius had got to his feet, pale, barely breathing, his eye fixed on the piece of black cloth, and, without uttering a word, without taking his eyes off this tatter, he backed toward the wall and, with his right hand stretched out behind him, groped for the key in the lock of a cupboard next to the fireplace. He found the key, opened the cupboard, and thrust his arm in without looking and without taking his startled eyes off the fragment of cloth Thénardier held up.

Meanwhile Thénardier went on: “Monsieur le baron, I have very good reason to think that the young man assassinated was a wealthy foreigner, lured by Jean Valjean into a trap while he was carrying an enormous sum on him.” “The young man was me, and here is the coat!” cried Marius as he threw an old black coat all covered in blood on the parquet floor.

Then ripping the fragment out of Thénardier’s hands, he crouched over the coat and brought the torn fragment to the mutilated panel. The tear fitted perfectly, the strip completed the coat. Thénardier was petrified. What he thought was: “I’ll be buggered!” Marius straightened up, shivering, desperate, radiant. He fumbled in his pocket and strode, furious, over to Thénardier, handing him, practically ramming into his face a fist filled with notes of five hundred francs and one thousand francs.

“You are a thorough bastard! You are a liar, a defamer, a cur. You came to accuse a man, but you’ve only vindicated him; you wanted to sink him, but you’ve only succeeded in glorifying him. You are the thief! You are the murderer! I saw you, Thénardier Jondrette, in that hole on the boulevard de l’Hôpital, I’ve got enough on you to send you to jail and beyond, if I wanted to. Here, here’s a thousand francs, racketeer scum that you are!” And he threw a thousand-franc note at Thénardier.

“Ah, Jondrette Thénardier, vile reprobate! Let this be a lesson to you, you peddler of secrets, mystery merchant, rummager in the dark, miserable bastard! Take these five hundred francs while you’re at it and get out! Waterloo is the only thing saving your hide!” “Waterloo!” snorted Thénardier, pocketing the five hundred francs along with the thousand francs.

“Yes, you murderous swine! You saved the life of a colonel—”

“A general,” said Thénardier, lifting his head.

“A colonel!” Marius shot back in a fit of rage. “I wouldn’t give two hoots for a general. And to think you came here to commit your evil deeds! I tell you, you have committed every crime in the book. Get out! Get out of my sight! Go and crawl under a rock! Just be happy, that’s all I ask. You monster! Here’s another three thousand francs. Take it. You’ll leave tomorrow at the latest for America, with your daughter; for your wife is dead, you lying worm! I’ll see to it that you set sail, you crook, and I’ll count you out twenty thousand francs at the dock! Go and get yourself hanged somewhere else!” “Monsieur le baron,” replied Thénardier bowing to the ground, “eternal gratitude.”

And Thénardier scuttled away, comprehending nothing, stunned and thrilled at this soft pummeling with bags of gold, this thunderclap bursting over his head in banknotes.

Thunderstruck he was, but content, too; and he would have been very sorry to have had a lightning rod to protect him against this particular bolt from the blue.

Let’s wash our hands of the man without further ado. Two days after the events we are relating at the moment, he left, thanks to Marius, for America, under a false name, with his daughter Azelma, armed with a draft for twenty thousand francs to be drawn in New York. The moral destitution of Thénardier, that bourgeois manqué, was irremediable; he was in America what he had been in Europe. Contact with a mean man is sometimes all it takes to corrupt a good deed and cause something bad to spring from it. With the money from Marius, Thénardier made himself a slave trader.3 As soon as Thénardier was out the door, Marius ran to the garden where Cosette was still ambling.

“Cosette! Cosette!” he yelled. “Come! Come quickly. We must get cracking. Basque, a fiacre! Cosette, hurry. Oh, my God! He was the one who saved my life! We mustn’t lose a minute! Put your shawl on.” Cosette thought he’d gone mad, and did as she was told.

He couldn’t breathe, he placed his hand on his heart to slow the beating. He paced to and fro with great strides, he kissed Cosette: “Ah, Cosette! What a sorry man I am!” he said.

Marius was overcome. He began to have an inkling of how incredibly lofty and solemn a figure this Jean Valjean was. An unheard-of virtue appeared to him, supreme and meek, humble in its immensity. The convict was transfigured into Christ. Marius was completely dazzled by this wonder. He did not know exactly what he saw, only that it was great.

In an instant, a fiacre was at the door.

Marius handed Cosette up and leaped in.

“Driver,” he said, “rue de l’Homme-Armé, number seven.”

The fiacre set off.

“Ah, what happiness!” said Cosette. “Rue de l’Homme-Armé. I didn’t dare bring it up anymore. We’re going to see Monsieur Jean.” “Your father, Cosette! Your father, more than ever. Cosette, I think I can guess what happened. You told me you never got the letter I sent you via Gavroche. It must have fallen into his hands. Cosette, he went to the barricade to save me. As his great need is to be an angel, just like that, in passing, he saved others there. He saved Javert. He pulled me out of that inferno in order to hand me to you. He carried me on his back through that appalling sewer. Ah, I’m a monstrous ingrate. Cosette, after being your salvation, he was mine. Just imagine. There was an awful quagmire, one you could drown in a hundred times over, one that could drown you in the sludge, Cosette! He got me through it. I’d passed out; I saw nothing, I heard nothing, I didn’t have a clue what was happening to me. We’re going to bring him back, have him here with us, whether he likes it or not, he won’t be leaving us ever again. Let’s hope he’s at home! Let’s hope we find him! I’ll spend the rest of my life at his feet. Yes, that must be it, you see, Cosette? Gavroche must have handed my letter to him, instead of you. That explains everything. You understand.” Cosette did not understand a word.

“You’re right,” she said.

Meanwhile the fiacre rolled along.

NIGHT WITH DAY BEHIND IT

AT THE KNOCK he heard at his door, Jean Valjean turned round.

“Come in,” he croaked.

The door opened. Cosette and Marius appeared. Cosette rushed into the room. Marius stayed on the landing, leaning against the doorway.

“Cosette!” said Jean Valjean, and he rose in his chair, his arms open wide and shaking, haggard, pale, looking like death, but with an immense joy in his eyes.

Cosette, choked with emotion, fell on Jean Valjean’s breast.

“Father!” she said.

Jean Valjean was overwhelmed; he stuttered: “Cosette! It’s her! You, Madame! It’s you! Oh, God!” And, hugged tight in Cosette’s arms, he cried: “It’s you! You’re here! So you forgive me!”

Marius closed his eyes to stop the tears flowing, took a step forward and murmured between lips convulsively pressed together to stop the sobs: “My father!” “And you, too, you forgive me!” said Jean Valjean.

Marius could find no words and Jean Valjean spoke again: “Thank you.”

Cosette tore off her shawl and threw her hat on the bed.

“They’re in the way.”

And, sitting on the old man’s knees, she brushed aside his white hair in the sweetest gesture and kissed his forehead. Jean Valjean just sat there, bewildered.

Cosette, who had only a very dim idea of what was going on, kissed him and caressed him more intently, as though she wanted to pay off Marius’s debt. Jean Valjean stammered: “How stupid can you be! I thought I’d never see her again. Just imagine, Monsieur Pontmercy, the moment you came in, I was saying to myself: It’s finished. There’s her little dress, I am a miserable man, I’ll never see Cosette again. I was saying that the very moment you were coming up the stairs. What an idiot I was! See what an idiot I am! But we don’t take the good Lord into account. The good Lord says: You think they’re going to abandon you, nincompoop! No, no, that’s not how it’s going to happen. Let’s see, there’s a poor old man that needs an angel. And the angel comes; and a man sees his Cosette again, a man sees his little Cosette again! Ah, I was so unhappy!” For a moment he could not speak, then he went on: “I really did need to see Cosette for just a moment from time to time. A heart needs a bone to gnaw on. But I was all too well aware I wasn’t wanted. I resigned myself to it: They don’t need you, stay in your corner, a man doesn’t have the right to go on forever. Ah, God be blessed, I’m seeing her again! You know, Cosette, your husband is very handsome? Ah, that’s a pretty embroidered collar you have there, lovely. I like that pattern. Your husband chose it, didn’t he? And then, you must have cashmeres. Monsieur Pontmercy, let me call her Cosette. It won’t be for long.” And Cosette came back: “How mean to have left us like that! Where on earth did you go? Why did you stay away so long? Once, your trips only lasted three or four days. I sent Nicolette over, but they always told her: ‘He’s away.’ How long have you been back? Why didn’t you let us know? Do you know you’ve changed a lot? Ah, wicked father! He was sick and we didn’t know! Here, Marius, feel how cold his hand is!” “So here you are! Monsieur Pontmercy, you forgive me!” Jean Valjean repeated.

At those words, coming once more from Jean Valjean, all that was welling up in Marius’s heart found an outlet and he burst out: “Cosette, do you hear that? Typical! He asks me to forgive him. And do you know what he did for me, Cosette? He saved my life! He did more than that. He gave me you. And after saving me, and after giving me you, Cosette, what did he do with himself? He sacrificed himself. That’s the kind of man he is. And to me the oblivious, the pitiless, the guilty, the ungrateful wretch, he says: Thank you! Cosette, if I spent my whole life at this man’s feet, it would be too little. The barricade, the sewer, the furnace, the cesspit—he went through it all for me, for you, Cosette! He carried me through every form of death, driving death away from me and accepting it for himself. Every form of courage, every form of virtue, every form of heroisim, every form of saintliness, he has the lot! Cosette, this man is an angel!” “Shhhh! Shhh!” Jean Valjean whispered. “Why say all that?”

“But what about you!” shouted Marius with a fury verging on veneration. “Why didn’t you say anything? It’s your fault, too. You save people’s lives, and you hide it from them! You do more than that, you slander yourself while you’re pretending to unmask yourself. It’s appalling.” “I told the truth,” answered Jean Valjean.

“No,” Marius retorted, “the truth is the whole truth and that you did not tell. You were Monsieur Madeleine. Why didn’t you say so? You saved Javert, why didn’t you say so? I owe my life to you, why didn’t you say so?” “Because I thought as you did. I felt you were right. I had to go away. If you’d known about that sewer business, you would have made me stay with you. So I had to keep quiet. If I had spoken out, it would’ve upset everything.” “Upset what! Upset who?” returned Marius. “You don’t think you’re going to stay here, do you? You’re coming with us. My God! When I think it was only by accident that I learned all this! You’re coming with us. You are part of us. You are her father and mine. You’re not spending another day in this hellhole of a place. Don’t imagine that you’ll still be here tomorrow.” “Tomorrow,” said Jean Valjean, “I won’t be here, but I won’t be at your place, either.”

“What do you mean by that?” replied Marius. “Oh, no, we won’t allow any more trips. You’re not leaving us again. You belong to us. We won’t let you go.” “This time, it’s for keeps,” chipped in Cosette. “We have a carriage down below. I’m kidnapping you. If necessary, I’ll use force.” And, laughing, she made as though to lift the old man up in her arms.

“Your room’s still there at our place,” she went on. “If you only knew how lovely the garden is at the moment! The azaleas are coming along nicely. The paths are all sanded with river sand; there are little violet-coloured shells in it. You’ll eat my strawberries. I water them myself. And no more Madame, and no more Monsieur Jean, we are in a republic, everybody says tu, don’t they, Marius? There’s been a change of program. If you only knew, Father, I had a terrible thing happen, there was a robin redbreast that had built its nest in a hole in the wall, and a horrible cat went and ate it on me. My poor pretty little robin redbreast, who used to stick its head in the window and look at me! I cried over it. I could have killed the cat! But no one is going to cry anymore now. Everyone is going to laugh, everyone is going to be happy. You’re going to come with us. Grandfather will be so pleased! You’ll have your patch in the garden, you’ll grow things in it, and we’ll see if your strawberries are as good as mine. And then, I’ll do whatever you like, and you’ll do whatever I say.” Jean Valjean listened to her without understanding what she was saying. He was listening to the music of her voice more than the meaning of her words; one of those big tears, which are the sombre pearls of the soul, slowly gathered in his eye. He murmured: “The proof that God is good, is that she is here.” “My darling father!” said Cosette.

Jean Valjean went on: “It’s all too true that it would be lovely to live together. They have trees full of birds. I’d stroll around with Cosette. To be one of the living, say good morning to each other, call out to each other in the garden, how sweet that is. We’d see each other from first thing in the morning. We’d each have our own little corner. She would get me to eat her strawberries, I would get her to pick my roses. It would be lovely. Only—” He broke off, and said softly: “What a shame.”

The tear did not fall, it went back in, and Jean Valjean replaced it with a smile. Cosette took both the old man’s hands in hers.

“My God!” she said. “Your hands are even colder. Are you sick? Are you in pain?”

“Me? No,” answered Jean Valjean. “I feel very well. Only—”

He stopped himself.

“Only what?”

“I’m going to die in a little while.”

Cosette and Marius shuddered.

“To die!” cried Marius.

“Yes, but that’s nothing,” said Jean Valjean.

He took a breath, smiled, and went on: “Cosette, you were talking to me, go on, talk some more, so your little robin redbreast is dead, talk, so I can hear your voice!” Marius looked at the old man, petrified. Cosette let out a heartrending cry.

“Father! My darling father! You shall live. You are going to live. I want you to live, do you hear me!” Jean Valjean lifted his head to her in adoration.

“Ah, yes, forbid me to die. Who knows? Perhaps I’ll obey. I was dying when you arrived. That stopped me, I felt like I was born again.” “You’re full of strength and life,” cried Marius. “You don’t really imagine that people die just like that? You’ve had your sorrows, you won’t have any more. It is I who beg your forgiveness, and on my knees, to boot! You are going to live, and to live with us, and to live a long time. We will take you home. There are two of us here who will have only one thought from now on—your happiness!” “You see,” Cosette said, in tears. “Marius says you won’t die.”

Jean Valjean went on smiling.

“If you were to take me back, Monsieur Pontmercy, would that mean I was not what I am? No, God thought the same as you and I did, and He doesn’t change His mind. It’s best that I take myself off. Death is a good arrangement. God knows better than we do what we need. That you be happy, that Monsieur Pontmercy have Cosette, that youth marry morning, that there be lilacs and nightingales around you, my children, that your life be a beautiful lawn in sunlight, that all the enchantments of heaven fill your soul, and that now I, I who am good for nothing, I die—all this is surely only right and good. You see, be reasonable, there’s nothing left now, I feel absolutely sure that it’s over. An hour ago, I fainted. And then, last night, I drank that pitcher full of water over there. How good your husband is, Cosette! You’re much better off with him than with me.” There was a noise at the door. It was the doctor coming in.

“Hello and goodbye,” said Jean Valjean. “Here are my poor children.”

Marius went over to the doctor. He addressed this single word to him: “Monsieur?” But the way he said it involved the whole question.

The doctor answered that question with a glance that said it all.

“Just because you don’t like the way things are,” said Jean Valjean, “that’s no reason to be unfair to God.” There was a silence. All hearts were heavy. Jean Valjean turned to Cosette. He began to contemplate her as though he wanted to take her in for all eternity. Even at the dark depth to which he had already descended, he could still feel ecstasy in gazing at Cosette. The glow from that sweet face lit up his own pale face. Even at death’s door, a person can still be dazzled.

The doctor felt his pulse.

“Ah, it’s you that he needed!” he murmured, looking at Cosette and Marius.

And, bending over to Marius’s ear, he whispered: “Too late.”

Jean Valjean, almost without ceasing to gaze at Cosette, considered Marius and the doctor with serenity. They heard these words, barely audible, come from his lips: “Dying is nothing; what’s terrible is not to live.” All of a sudden, he stood up. These surges of strength are sometimes a sign of dying. He walked with firm tread to the wall, pushed Marius and the doctor aside when they tried to help him, took down the small copper crucifix from the wall where it was hanging, came back and sat down with all the ease of movement of a man in his prime, and said in a loud voice, laying the crucifix on the table: “There is the great martyr.” Then his chest sank, his head swayed, as though the intoxication of the grave had taken hold of him, and his hands, lying on his knees, began to claw at the fabric of his trousers.

Cosette held him by the shoulders and sobbed, and tried to talk to him but could not do it. Among the words that mingled with that mournful saliva that accompanies tears, they could make out words such as these: “Father! Don’t leave us. Can we really have found you again only to lose you?” It could be said that death meanders in its throes. It comes and goes, moves toward the grave, then turns back toward life. There is groping in the act of dying.

Jean Valjean gathered strength again after this semi-blackout, shook his head as though to shake off the dark, and became almost completely lucid again. He grabbed a piece of Cosette’s sleeve and kissed it.

“He’s coming back! Doctor, he’s coming back!” cried Marius.

“You are good, the two of you,” said Jean Valjean. “I’ll tell you what hurt me. What hurt me, Monsieur Pontmercy, is that you didn’t want to touch the money. That money really is your wife’s. I’m going to explain to you, my children, that’s even the real reason I’m so pleased to see you. Black jet comes from England, white jet comes from Norway. All of this is in that note over there, that you’ll read. For bracelets, I invented a way of replacing soldered metal loops with slightly open metal loops. It’s prettier, better, and cheaper. You see all the money that can be made. Cosette’s fortune is well and truly hers. I give you these details to put your minds at rest.” The concierge had come up and was watching by the door, which was ajar. The doctor sent her away, but he could not prevent the good woman from calling out to the dying man before she disappeared: “Would you like a priest?” “I have one,” said Jean Valjean.

And, with his finger, he seemed to be pointing to a spot above his head where you would have sworn he saw someone. It is likely, in fact, that the bishop was there with him in his agony.

Cosette gently slid a pillow behind his back. Jean Valjean went on: “Monsieur Pontmercy, have no fear, I implore you. The six hundred thousand francs really are Cosette’s. I’ll have lived my life in vain if you don’t enjoy them! We got to the stage where we were turning out very good glass beads. We could compete with what is known as Berlin jewellery. You can’t, for instance, equal the black glass of Germany. A gross, which contains twelve hundred well-cut stones, only costs three francs.” When a being that is dear to us is about to die, you look at them with a look that clings to them in an effort to hold them back. Both Cosette and Marius, speechless with anguish, not knowing what to say to death, desperate and trembling, stood before him, Cosette giving Marius her hand.

Jean Valjean was fading fast, from one moment to the next. He was going down; he was getting closer to that dark horizon. His breath had become intermittent, broken up by a faint death rattle. He had trouble moving his arm, his feet had lost all movement and at the same time as the misery of his limbs and the crushing of his body was growing, all the majesty of his soul was rising and unfurling across his forehead. The light of the unknown world was already visible in his eyes.

His face grew white and at the same time he smiled. Life was no longer there, there was something else. His breath died away, his gaze widened. He was a corpse with wings you could feel.

He signalled to Cosette to approach, then to Marius; it was clearly the final minute of the final hour, and he began to talk to them in a voice so weak it seemed to come from far away, and from that moment, it was as though there was a wall between them and him.

“Come here, come here both of you. I love you dearly. Oh, it’s good to die this way! You, too, you love me, my Cosette. I knew all along that you still felt affection for your good old boy. How sweet of you to have put that pillow behind my back! You will cry for me a bit, won’t you? Not too much. I don’t want you to be overcome with sorrow. You must live life to the hilt, my children. I forgot to tell you, you make even more on the buckles without tongues than on all the rest. The gross, the twelve dozen, used to cost ten francs and sell for sixty. It really was a good business. So you really shouldn’t be surprised at that six hundred thousand francs, Monsieur Pontmercy. It’s honest money. You can be rich in all tranquillity. You must have a carriage, from time to time a box at the theatre, beautiful ball gowns, my Cosette, and then give your good friends good dinners, be very happy. I was writing to Cosette a moment ago. She’ll find my letter. It is to her that I bequeath those two candlesticks on the mantelpiece. They’re silver; but for me, they are gold, they are diamond; they change the candles you put in them into altar candles. I don’t know if the man who gave them to me is pleased with me up there. I did what I could. My children, you won’t forget that I’m a pauper, you’ll bury me in the first plot of ground you come across beneath a stone to mark the spot. That is my wish. No name on the stone. If Cosette wants to come and see me for a while sometimes, it will make me happy. You, too, Monsieur Pontmercy. I have to confess I have not always loved you; forgive me, please. Now the two of you are but one for me. I am very grateful to you. I feel that you make Cosette happy. If you only knew, Monsieur Pontmercy, her beautiful rosy cheeks, they were my joy in life: Whenever I saw her a bit pale, I was sad. There’s a five-hundred-franc note in the chest of drawers. I haven’t touched it. It’s for the poor. Cosette, you see your little dress, over there on the bed? Do you recognize it? Yet it’s only ten years ago. How time flies! We have been pretty happy. It’s over. My children, don’t cry, I’m not going far. I’ll see you from there. You’ll only have to look up at night and you’ll see me smile. Cosette, do you remember Montfermeil? You were in the woods, you were scared stiff; do you remember how I took the handle of the bucket? That was the first time I touched your poor little hand. It was so cold! Ah, you had red hands in those days, Mademoiselle; they are nice and white now. And the big doll! Do you remember? You called her Catherine. You were sorry you didn’t bring her to the convent! How you made me laugh at times, my sweet angel! When it rained, you used to launch bits of straw in the gutters and watch them sail away. One day, I gave you a wickerwork bat and a shuttlecock with yellow, blue, and green feathers. You’ve forgotten it, I know. You were so mischievous when you were little! You were always playing. You’d stick cherries over your ears. That’s all in the past. The forests where you went with your little girl, the trees where we would stroll, the convents where we hid, the games, the good hard laughs of childhood, that is shadow now. I thought all that belonged to me. That’s where I was so stupid. Those Thénardiers were a nasty lot. You must forgive them. Cosette, the time has come to tell you your mother’s name. Her name was Fantine. Hang on to that name: Fantine. Go down on your knees every time you say it. She suffered so much. She loved you dearly. She had as much unhappiness as you have happiness. Those are God’s lots. He is up there, he sees every one of us, and he knows what he’s doing up there in the middle of his great stars. So, I’m going away, my children. Love one another dearly, always. Nothing else in the world really matters but that: to love one another. You will think sometimes of the poor old man who died here. O, my Cosette! It’s not my fault, is it, if I didn’t see you all this time lately. It broke my heart. I would go just to the corner of your street, I must have had quite an effect on the people who saw me go by, I was like a madman, once I went out without a hat. My children, I can’t see too clearly anymore now, I still had things to say, but never mind. Think of me sometimes. You are among the blessed. I don’t know what’s the matter with me, I see light. Come closer. I die happy. Give me your dearly beloved heads, so I can lay my hands on them.” Cosette and Marius fell to their knees, distraught, choking with tears, each with one of Jean Valjean’s hands on their head. Those august hands no longer stirred. He had fallen backward, the light from the two candlesticks shone on him; his white face looked up at the sky, he let Cosette and Marius cover his hands with kisses; he was dead.

The night was starless and black as pitch. Doubtless, in the dark, some vast angel was standing by with wings outspread, waiting for his soul.

THE GRASS HIDES AND THE RAIN ERASES

IN THE CEMETERY of Père-Lachaise, close to the common grave, far from the elegant quartier of this city of sepulchres, far from all those fantastic tombs that show off death’s ghastly fashions in the face of eternity, in a deserted corner, along an old wall, under a great yew tree on which birdwood climbs, among the couch grass and the moss and the bindweed, there is a stone. This stone is no more exempt than the others from the leprosy of time, of mould, of lichen, and of bird droppings. Water turns it green, the air turns it black. It is not near any path and no one likes going over that way, because the grass is high and your feet get instantly wet. When there is a bit of sun, the lizards come out. There is, all around, a rustling of wild oats. In spring, the warblers sing in the tree.

This stone is completely bare. The only idea in cutting it was to meet the bare requirements of a grave, and no further care was taken than to make the stone long enough and narrow enough to cover a man.

There is no name on it for you to read.

Only, many years ago already, someone’s hand wrote four lines of verse on it in chalk, lines that gradually became illegible under the rain and the dust, and that have probably now been erased: He sleeps. Though fate for him was truly odd,

He lived. He died when his angel was gone;

The thing just happened of its own accord,

As night comes on when day is done.