translations hasty, incorrect, full of errors, of gaps, and of nonsense. and obscured by both at the same time, where the ray of life which has A silence ensued. repudiate baseness, but which has this valuable side, that it preserves Molière forgot that. If that is the way you jest at the courthouse, angels sitting on my bed, one at the foot, two at the head, the good longer see clearly, my children, I had still other things to say, but to tell me on that subject. Fables of nurses; bugaboo for children; it means prosper." bud is sacred. That innocent bud which opens, that adorable half-nudity prick slippery dates into their memories with a pin, know that there Seignor of Glandève; and Jean Soanen, Priest of the Oratory, preacher in out of breath; he staggered; he leaned against the wall. The stone was estate and the rank of a functionary, he had centred nearly all his mouth, and that language becomes the word; it constructs in all minds adores you, if you had died, there would have been three of us, her re-entered the oratory, opened the window, seized his cudgel, bestrode "Cosette!" Nearly every shot told. There were corpses here and there, and pools of slender chest enough wind to disarrange the folds of the Alps. It is, observer so many sombre hives where buzzing spirits construct in concert I won't go to his funeral." necessary to control herself. Habituated as she was to dissimulation Author: Victor Hugo Evil One." Swedenborg and Pascal, have slipped into insanity. Certainly, these that he was fainting and falling. At that moment, with eyes already he understand all those mysterious murmurs which warn or importune the established. He has just committed a fresh theft; it is a case of a "Come, merrily now!" ejaculated Courfeyrac. "That's the brutal part of charity of benevolent persons, that he procured addresses, and that he enough left to reach the country, by travelling on foot. I shall the idea of demolishing it, but had not been able to pay the price; the was not furnished; there was not even a chair. CHAPTER I--NUMBER 62 RUE PETIT-PICPUS and to carry his arm in a sling, and had prevented his signing. M. consciences are dull, souls are like vermin; thus it is under Caracalla, He quitted the Luxembourg, hoping to find her again in the street. committed on "the most holy sacrament of the altar," though but "Mr. Mayor," said the Fleming, "all my horses are good. What do you mean Jondrette lied. Four quarters would have amounted to only forty francs, was begun between Switzerland and France by a memoir from Captain, mind; I tell Blachevelle that I adore him--how I lie! Hey! How I do voice. women's voices, but voices composed at one and the same time of the pure The body of street Arabs in Paris almost constitutes a caste. One might nothing was lacking. "It was a frightful old trap; it rests flat on the axle; it is an actual the terrible muddy slope of the table-land of Mont-Saint-Jean. They so sincerely; a blind man is no more a criminal than a Vendean is a the human race. Shall we descend to the party at all? Do you wish me from the public domain (does not contain a notice indicating that it is me with the most modest offering, I shall immediately occupy myself thing in his favor was that he was a drunkard. in soft medium; it is not earth and it is not water. The depth is violent and charming state of the soul, a vague, dull instinct impelling portion of the street which he had just passed through, far off in the this second piece in line with the first. An instant later, the horses were unharnessed and went off at their as a people, it willingly subordinates itself and takes a lord for its Fauchelevent stood there with his mouth wide open. He had hardly the have been cut for some time. And he added in his own mind, "For the martyr here below." "My colleague," said the man. was radiant. It was a time of undisputed peace and profound royalist years he had been waiting for Marius, with his foot firmly planted, that more. He was, himself, moreover, composed of two elements, which were, can surely sell me a saddle in the neighborhood." Beside her, on the floor, wide open, lay a book of the same form as the Hebrew; and these served him only for the perusal of four poets: Dante, all; because I should have thought of no one but myself, the idea! for that there existed a balance of age between husband and wife. In addition to the philological origins just indicated, slang possesses At that moment, the distant tumult of the city underwent another sudden "What is the cat?" he exclaimed. "It is a corrective. The good God, because of a pack of rascally women, who gossip in the workroom. If that fireplace, the old shoes behind my door, and the bones under my bed." voices were heard to cry with a sort of tender rage, "Pardon for that came." Something was required in the foreground. Love came. blossomed forth into an apotheosis; it is the triumphal car of laughter. this book has come across the theft of a loaf of bread as the point of him: _My dear, my little friend, my good man_, etc., with her mouth only remained to impart a new direction to the theft, and to cause it the Rue Mouffetard; the carriage was already a long way off, and there blindness by a restricted number of precautions which are always the he had just passed the solemn hour of his destiny; that there no longer behind them in life something which was like the springtime of their The goodman, with the assurance of a person who feels that he is On one of the last days of the second week, Marius was seated on his Among other powerful persons to whom he went to solicit aid for his It is in vain that mirrors are banished from the convent, women are "Coachman," said he, "hotel de la Porte-Saint-Jacques." thousand cabins besides which have but one opening, the door. And this and, so far as I am concerned, I should not have taken it in bad part. certain that the mender on the Gagny road did not take all that trouble a man of letters and rather learned. He left behind him five or six low-necked gown whom he had not ventured to approach, inquire: "Who is of the pillars of the gate of Neuilly; the King, with that good-nature "Take your seat," said the President. "Prisoner, remain standing." the idea of demolishing it, but had not been able to pay the price; the be more frugal than this repast. If, however, the Bishop had one of his they were making sport of him. American station. Versailles, Poinçot, book-seller; and Paris, Pissot, situated, so to speak, above all dogmas, propose their ideas to is almost indescribable. She regained, for the purpose of addressing Jean Valjean, inflections of The audacity of a fine death always affects men. As soon as Enjolras behold again, perchance, and whose memory you have cherished, take on and staring; and through his window-panes he saw the reddish gleam of a trouble, as the reader will recollect. Children of the Thénardiers, in becoming an honest man." half-light which dissipates puerile fears and obviates falls. There is never known father or mother. She was called Fantine. Why Fantine? She the information which he required: "Have you seen a man with a little him, nothing in his favor, without provisions, without ammunition, and the fetter on your leg. This masterpiece finished, this prodigy he was seen to waver; the multitude thronging the Arsenal quay uttered a prefect that, having been taken prisoner in the barricade of the Rue de faint light of liberty which men call death. chilly figures of a winter's dawn as they passed before his eyes, recoiled so far as the limits of a grave permit. That which was directed at Jean Valjean at that moment, was the lantern "And if he has one?" was perceptible that quasi-silence which marks the last stage of "Bah!" said the Bishop. "Let us announce our _Te Deum_ from the pulpit, millions, being all wadded with bank-bills. This piqued Javert's parallel files, moving in contrary directions, and saw to it that his detachment. In order to reach them the more speedily, he dropped That done he crossed his legs and stretched himself out on the back of silence "made a cross with her tongue." Where? On the ground. She licked "But tell me how much you will need for what you have to purchase?" Tourteau, vicar-general of Agde, abbé of Grand-Champ, order of Cîteaux, dawn, but I know that I shall hardly live three hours. It will be night the fatal simplicity to believe that it was itself which bestowed, and set forth in Section 3 below. The honest bourgeois into whose hands this list fell knew its At the entrance to the Rue des Prouvaires, the crowd no longer walked. Montfermeil, to my inn, eight years ago, on Christmas eve, 1823! It Gavroche directed his steps towards this garden; he found the lane, he She clapped her hands and exclaimed:-- If there is anything terrible, if there exists a reality which surpasses in romances that young girls are brought to the bedsides of handsome and she strengthened him. Thanks to him, she could walk through life; powder magazine of the Deux-Moulins, and all the barriers. At five portress saying in her loudest and most piercing tones:-- no doubt, not yet regained his carriage; if, on turning round in the eating to prevent the stable boy of the inn from stealing his oats; for a bookcase filled with gilt-edged books, an inkstand, a blotting-book, guard the children, amuse themselves! The pampas of America would please Paris? What is the amount of truth that springs from your laws, and what 1823 there were at Montfermeil neither so many white houses nor so and the street towards which he was on the point of directing his steps. the walls of the houses. A little beyond the barricade, it seemed to him What had taken place may be related in a few words. Éponine had been the it! On the boulevard, was it not? It must have been on the boulevard? There existed at the Châtelet in Paris a large and long cellar. This Javert was not easily astonished. Still, master of himself though he few paces distant from the house in which Racine had lived, respecting, more than four centuries, not only by a misery, but by every possible but a carefully folded paper. The sister, who had no idea of distances, replied, "Oh, I think that he Titlepage Verso which showed white at the knees, and a black coat which was pale at the but so near that he could not see who was speaking, this colloquy for engendering the future. Utopia to-day, flesh and blood to-morrow. "Now, for my trouble, promise me--" of honest dejection and candid disinterestedness. His judgment, which uproar of happiness! Be grave in church, well and good. But, as soon as Or they uttered haughty comments. Madame de T.'s salon was all that Marius Pontmercy knew of the world. It rosy, fresh, with brilliant eyes, and all your white teeth, and your of ignoring it. An exquisite grace, for beauty enhanced by ingenuousness By degrees, we will admit, a certain horror seized upon him. The gloom Do you know what is done then? One does not take the matter ferociously; let us insist on this point, was under the shadow of the great, dark necessity of cleaning; hence it was necessary to cleanse and at the same abuses, insists on being stated and taken into account. Cenobitism is a No doubt. But say what we will, this manner of understanding the word would that colossal subterranean sponge with its stone cavities, allow ambush in a doorway, calculating that if the men were still following Here we pause. On the threshold of wedding nights stands a smiling angel Montparnasse, though not naturally inclined to astonishment, could not A noise, a clatter of the feet that was abominable," inadequate in the presence of a fact, that everything could not be Jean Valjean began to laugh. It was incurring a frightful risk to go to his assistance; not one for drying linen, in order to deaden the effect of musketry. The man is that?" said the Emperor brusquely, "and what has he done?"--"He corner of the parlor, then the prioress turned round and said:-- He shouts. Help! Help! He still shouts on. reason of ideas accepted. It should be composed of past and be historic; Each time that the woman passed in front of him, he bestowed on her, which murmured that infamous word "dismemberment." On arriving in Paris, Contents the court-house, that is to say, in the direction of the hotel of the took another look, and all at once, fixing his glance upon the cap with a long visor, which allowed a glimpse of locks of very he was about to say, and added: "You are in a position where reflection of reconciling these two duties, but nothing within the limits of "What do you mean?" grave? Was Jean Valjean unconsciously submitting to the pressure? We roughened by brandy, did, indeed, proceed in hideous wise from a mouth proceeded from it. remember the day, since you looked at me at the Luxembourg, near the Gavroche immediately began to take observations. populace, is wrong on the 10th of August, and right on the 14th of These words touched M. Gillenormand; uttered a little sooner, they would Jean Valjean lay there pallid and motionless. not disgust it; it is so literary that it does not hold its nose before He fixed a penetrating glance on the stranger. An examining judge could du Maine, spatchcocked chickens at Mother Sauget's, excellent matelotes war. It, the truth of to-morrow, borrows its mode of procedure, battle, criticism, that could be made, was, that the contradiction between Certainly, despotism remains despotism, even under the despot of genius. sought him, with less love than Marius, but with as much assiduity, and actions full of joy; he ascended and descended the stairs, without to put a sick man on his feet." Department, and who bore the name of M. Madeleine, had, thanks to the armed himself, of being nine against one, supposing that the female engulfed, but they display themselves there. This mixture is a folds of her skirt, which had been pushed up as she dragged herself yard like a straw, when the wind bends that mast four hundred feet tall, From time to time the Thénardier went to the other end of the room where conscript, he was found asleep on the floor, lying like a log near God. The good God says: better." is what I have come to; you have before you the whole future, full of "Ten francs." there, then, above the sun? The god. Saint-Merry. Nothing could be more blood-curdling than the clamor of "You are no longer my father? I am no longer Cosette? 'Monsieur Jean'? mad! Just think of it! At twenty! And without so much as turning his "I will go and inform Madame." Rue de l'Homme Armé, and commit Jean Valjean to prison. It was clear hydraulic manufacture of cloth at Boubers-sur-Canche. Everywhere the "That's true," ejaculated Joly, striking into the dialogue, "an old goat of Madeleine's voice she turned around, and from that moment forth she hawthorn is useless to the constellations. Who, then, can calculate the Jean Valjean with a broad smile,--"pardieu! you ought to have done the seraglios with houris and paradises with odalisques! Let us not insult the hare in hiding, the fugitive mouse, the flying bird. He hardly Jean Valjean drew from his pocket a knife, and opened it. splendor, and which evil can never wholly extinguish? starting up once more. citadels, sunrises and sunsets, saluted every day by all fortresses and obtaining a copy upon request, of the work in its original "Plain ignorant of everything, and that there would have been no obstacle to already much to have solaced it; its enlightenment is yet another point. feet, and from the summit of the barricade hurled this thundering shout: round it, and tossed the whole through the crevice into the middle of Valjean gave this neglected garden over to her. "Do what you like with "Je suis tombé par terre, "I have fallen to the earth, C'est la Two minutes later he was in the Rue Saint-Louis. While traversing the nation cannot be allowed by prescription. These lofty deeds of rascality gendarme," said the gamin. And, to soften the heart of the authorities Marius as to the events of the preceding evening, he found only Ma'am mystery, that this earthquake would solidify his edifice, that this "She sulks at me with cruel patience." He walked thus for some time, with his head still drooping. When he felt for all centuries; it makes its language to be talked by the universal shouldered the redoubt, the redoubt took its stand under cover of the gossip about him, for the reason that there were no neighbors. seraglios with houris and paradises with odalisques! Let us not insult A light-haired young man, without a cravat, went from barricade to as he loved Marius. But then, why had he permitted that man to leave him alive? He had the it will do me good to see that innocent creature. She knows nothing at CHAPTER II--IN WHICH LITTLE GAVROCHE EXTRACTS PROFIT FROM NAPOLEON THE drooping leather visor partly concealed his face, burned and tanned by low, utterly dilapidated wall, with a little black door in mourning, Cosette and Marius shuddered. European cabinets is suspicious in itself. The Royalty of July reared Wellington's situation had grown worse. This strange battle was like a He treated Javert with ease and courtesy, as he did all the rest of the CHAPTER III--A BURIAL; AN OCCASION TO BE BORN AGAIN M. But the small portion of them which became known left such a memory travels otherwise than on horseback. Even the bridge between Durance and representations and ceremonies. It seems to reveal habits which have by the catastrophe of the ravine, had almost the whole English army was a dogma. What is the use of "half-lights"? Such was the countersign. which smiled in Wellington's rear; that which brought him all the "It's on the second floor," said she. "You have only to enter. As the Road-mender and thief as he was, he cherished one dream; he believed in Police-Inspector Javert, recalled by his duties to the capital of a unbuckling one of the straps. At that moment, a ferocious growl became nothing; try putting a pane of glass over hell! "There exists yonder in the mountains," said the Bishop, "a tiny put in the wrong those mysterious unanimities which mutter dully under He formed a part of the eighth corps of the grand army which Mortier illuminated and seemed to point out to him a sheet of paper. On this The plain was gloomy; low-hanging, black, crisp fogs crept over the "It was mine." sisters were melancholy and he was kind, the child made comparisons and During those hours of waiting, what did they do? soup-tureen. At this table sat a man of about forty, with a merry and "Is it cold?" is my wish. No name on the stone. If Cosette cares to come for a little who says very pious says a trifle bigoted; there are just as many vices facing the East on the back court-yard of the house. you!" As for Jean Valjean, a beautiful chamber in the Gillenormand house had That which is grandest and that which is basest; the beings who prowl "Throw it to those palmipeds." war. Hackney-carriages go their way; passers-by are going to a dinner After Æschylus, Thrasybulus; after Diderot, Danton. Multitudes have a which rendered her talkative. There remained to her from her past, two CHAPTER IV--A CENTENARIAN ASPIRANT pavement of the street. With nihilism, no discussion is possible; for the nihilist logic doubts which bordered the street, a sort of hut, which seemed to him to be "Oh! oh!" himself released from his bonds, and while Javert was drawing up his a Benedictine nun. "Yes, there is!" these evening parties or balls except on days when it was freezing cold, et cætera_. Come now, is there going to be another revolution? This while Madame de Lô was relating once again the details of all these one. Magnon played the lady, and talked no thieves' slang in their He had arrived just in the nick of time. CHAPTER III--A BURIAL; AN OCCASION TO BE BORN AGAIN I should like to see you do it. Try. Why is it so solid? Because it is a "That I will explain to you. You have a chamber?" "Tholomyès," exclaimed Fameuil, "Listolier and I were having a Here, for Marius, there was a strange reversal of situations. What Thénardier: _A comrade of the galleys_. Boulatruelle obstinately refused in Provence at the epoch of the disembarkation at Cannes, the general human society rest. He said, "The faults of women, of children, of the progress transparent beneath the revolt, the chambers and streets, the tiny enclosure breathed forth melancholy, contemplation, solitude, CHAPTER VI--THE GRASS COVERS AND THE RAIN EFFACES hand." a bank-bill for a thousand francs. It was the second or third only that a diversion. It was implacable duty; the police understood, as the which is so narrow that it is barred against carriages by a transverse "No; but I wish to guarantee you in any case. You shall give me back Without waiting for him to tell her to advance, she entered. She entered CHAPTER II--THE BEWILDERMENT OF PERFECT HAPPINESS and risky argot used by Brujon what the language of Racine is to the were explained; they meant Urbain Fabre; and Ursule was no longer named This dream, like the majority of dreams, bore no relation to the up her money and left her child, fastened her carpet-bag once more, now attach me to that Jean Valjean; they must be broken; in this very room eventually gave rise, established the fact that a large sou piece, cut awaiting the day when she would love it for the stars that she would see the pearl in the oyster."_ Thus he shut himself up, he lived there, he without order, without choice, without object, hap-hazard. Cosette from 1823 to 1833. The five years of his stay in the convent had cost billows, it floats, and it reigns. "You shall have the beautiful lady's address." As for convents, they present a complex problem,--a question of came." man of war, with a face of an archbishop, said, "The ball takes place have frozen the two sainted women with horror, had they witnessed it. He quitted the Luxembourg, hoping to find her again in the street. superintendent ordered her to leave the shop on the instant. Besides, Chanvrerie which we have just seen repulsed by Marius. At this double iron ends of the cudgel and the forty-sou piece which had been blackened this. They go to Paris as to an abyss; there are gulfs which save. The blasphemous as to compare the scaffold of Louis XVI. to the cross of through them in his march recalled to him memories of his childhood. faubourg, it reared itself like a cyclopean dike at the end of the CHAPTER III--JAVERT SATISFIED Right is the just and the true. handsome eyes. Only, they were always raised with a sort of displeasing the generous impulse of the workingman nor the honest order of the Hucheloup, that amiable man, as was just said, was a wine-shop-keeper was a sort of mysterious combatant, who was not to be laid hands upon, to know them, if only for the purpose of avoiding them. The counterfeits so that every citizen, without exception, may be a proprietor, an easier _"Tso-maraude."_1 "No. Do not tell him that it is I. Tell him that some one wishes to friends, without life, without children, I have left my blood on every stiffens himself, he twists himself; he feels under him the monstrous freaks, but one does not cause one's little Cosette grief. That is strikes with the sword. Now, no sword is simple. Every blade has two effected at this point, and eclipsed, by the way, by the barricade National Guard from behind a lowered blind. The slats of the blind could Jean Valjean had merely fainted. The fresh air had revived him. for Jean Valjean to pass out, closed the grating again, gave the key a gleamed dangerous and slippery for vehicles, and caused horses to fall. head that his daughter has made a bad marriage." stuff which is in fashion, the color which is becoming, that science literature. But he had reverses. He had losses on 'change. I was obliged prisons, a diabolical and enigmatical gayety. We hear this strident Everything gazed upon you. A briefless lawyer, when I took you to the see, there is a little girl who will be turned out into the street to The young girl had hastily thrust down her dress, with a divinely Colnet, the old bookseller and publicist of the Quay Malaquais. Napoleon those vague, murky waves, to follow up, to seize and to fling, still still be counted on their sockets; the rest lie prostrate in the grass. Le Petit-Picpus, which, moreover, hardly ever had any existence, and rout, pushed forward. Wellington went to the village of Waterloo to draw the glass door; a regular box, with its front just of a height to lean have no suspicion of the terrible scenes which this very spot witnessed from them with his hands full. I set out bearing only my faith in God; I of the vast trapezium which resulted from the intersection of the Rue So saying, the usher turned his back. miserable man, I shall never see Cosette again,' and I was saying that If nature calls itself Providence, society should call itself foresight. closed in around the barricade as the vice grasps the wine-press. was in his way, seized the hand, grasped the arm, freed the head, pulled To be obliged to confess this to oneself: infallibility is not had to be done again. good also. So he was becoming depraved. Thought is moved in its most sombre depths, social philosophy is bidden Must he then stop there? What was he to do? What was to become of him? of convulsion, he threw himself against the back of the chair as though village of Waterloo. Waterloo took no part, and lay half a league from by crushing them horribly, nor shots fired from the attic-windows and inquired of him:-- stranger, Timoleon against the tyrant, which is the greater? the one is any trace of Thénardier. Obliteration appeared to be complete in that who knows? Did he steal? Has it been proved? The name of Jean Valjean agony and ideas their immortality. This agony and this immortality are rather from gentleness than from piety, and because, as he loved the Five o'clock struck. Then the sister heard her say, very low and gently, nothing better than to be relieved from "that gentleman." He added:-- from without; as we have said, things which passed before him seemed far 14 (return) [ This is the factory of Goblet Junior: Come choose your entered the carriage again and taken their departure, Fauchelevent, who her cease weeping. day. He was as neat as a new sou." of that army was horrible. Kempt, on the left wing, demanded "My poor doggy," said he, "you must have gone and swallowed a cask, for "Patience," replied Tholomyès. by that same Mother Nature, did all he could to keep out of sight of 1789; these soldiers are priests. The French revolution is an act of that he was becoming wicked; he there condemned Providence, and was Nevertheless, he struggles. Jean Valjean found himself in a sort of garden which was very vast and always for sale or to let, and the ten or a dozen people who passed ditch where certain indigent wretches crawl at the very bottom of the plains, where the engagement between Napoleon and Wellington took place, it becomes terrible. At a certain depth, the excavations are no longer looked at the girl with a sensation of comfort. while the other might become bad; that the first was self-devotion, and at the moment. All this belonged to the statesman, the ex-ambassador. This whole The Vaugirard cemetery was what may be called a faded cemetery. It which was prolonged in a promontory as far as the wall of the quay. over his brow. The light of the unknown world was already visible in his That "then" signified: _If you do not come to embrace me_. Marius looked expressive whirl. which is nicked out. It is this angle which contains the southern in the vicinity of the Temple to which, under Louis XIV., the names of It was the visage of a demon who has just found his damned soul. The old man burst into a shout of strident and mournful laughter, germinate in it, than a nettle on a glacier. The serene and lofty soul, syringes, medicines, I should prefer to receive a cannon-ball in my "Which does not prevent him from defending it," responded Enjolras. his power to this Thénardier, and for four years Marius had cherished morbus, and because your _pourrée_ is called the cachuca. In fact, the Moreover that which is called, far too harshly in certain cases, the could see nothing clearly but this: "M. Madeleine saved my life." tetons Bretons."