 Chapter 8 of Book 3 of Les Miserables, Volume 4, by Victor Hugo. The House in the Rue Plume, Chapter 8, The Chain Gang Jean Valjean was the more unhappy of the two. Youth, even in its sorrows, always possesses its own peculiar radiance. At times, Jean Valjean suffered so greatly that he became pura. It is the property of grief to cause the childish side of man to reappear. He had an incongruable conviction that Cossette was escaping from him. He would have liked to resist, to retain her, to arouse her enthusiasm by some external and brilliant matter. These ideas, pura, as we have just said, and at the same time senile, conveyed to him by their very childishness a tolerably just notion of the influence of gold lace on the imaginations of young girls. He once chanced to see a general on a horseback in full uniform pass along the street, Comte Coutard, the commandant of Paris. He envied that gilded man. What happiness it would be, he said to himself, if he could put on that suit, which was an incontestable thing, and if Cossette could behold him thus, she would be dazzled. And when he had Cossette on his arm, and passed the gates of the two other races, the guard would present arms to him, and that would suffice for Cossette, and would dispel her idea of looking at young men. An unforeseen shock was added to these sad reflections. In the isolated life in which they led, and since they had come to dwell in the Rue Blumée, they had contracted one habit. They sometimes took a pleasure trip to see the sunrise, a mild species of enjoyment which befits those who are entering life and those who are quitting it. For those who love solitude a walk in the early morning is equivalent to a stroll by night, with the cheerfulness of nature added. The streets are deserted and the birds are singing. Cossette, a bird herself, liked to rise early. These matutinal excursions were planned on the preceding evening. She proposed, and she agreed. It was arranged like a plot. They set out before daybreak, and these trips were so many small delights for Cossette. These innocent eccentricities pleased young people. Jean-Varjean's inclination led him, as we have seen, to the least frequented spots, to solitary nooks, to forgotten places. There then existed, in the vicinity of the barriers of Paris, a sort of poor meadows, which were almost confounded with the city, where grew in summer sickly grain, and which in autumn, after the harvest had been gathered, presented the appearance not of having been reaped, but peeled. Jean-Varjean loved to haunt these fields. Cossette was not bored there. It meant solitude to him and liberty to her. There she became a little girl once more. She could run and almost play. She took off her hat, laid it on Jean-Varjean's knees, and gathered bunches of flowers. She gazed at the butterflies on the flowers, but did not catch them. Gentleness and tenderness are born with love, and the young girl who cherishes within her breast a trembling and fragile ideal has mercy on the wing of a butterfly. She wove garlands of poppies, which she placed on her head, and which crossed and penetrated with sunlight, glowing until they flamed, formed for her rosy face a crown of burning embers. Even after their life had grown sad, they kept up their custom of early strolls. One morning in October, therefore, tempted by the serene perfection of the autumn of 1831, they set out and found themselves at break of day near the Barrier Domain. It was not dawn, it was daybreak, a delightful and stern moment. A few constellations here and there in the deep, pale as yore the earth, all black, the heavens all white, a quiver amid the blades of grass, everywhere the mysterious chill of twilight. A lark, which seemed mingled with the stars, was caroling at a prodigious height, and one would have declared that the hymn of pettiness calmed immensity. In the east, the Valdes Grace projected its dark mass on the clear horizon with the sharpness of steel. Venus, dazzlingly brilliant, was rising behind that dome, and had the air of a soul making its escape from a gloomy edifice. All was peace and silence. There was no one on the road. A few stray laborers, of whom they barely caught a glimpse, were on their way to work along the side paths. Jean-Garjean was sitting in a crosswalk on some planks deposited at the gate of a timber yard. His face was turned towards the highway, his back towards the light. He had forgotten the sun, which was on the point of rising. He had sunk into one of those profound absorptions in which the mind becomes concentrated, which imprison even the eye, and which are equivalent to four walls. There are meditations, which may be called vertical. When one is at the bottom of them, time is required to return to earth. Jean-Valjean had plunged into one of these reveries. He was thinking of Cossette, of the happiness that was possible if nothing came between him and her, of the light with which she filled his life, a light which was but the emanation of her soul. He was almost happy in his reverie. Cossette, who was standing beside him, was gazing at the clouds as they turned rosy. All at once, Cossette exclaimed, Father, I think someone was coming yonder. Jean-Valjean raised his eyes. Cossette was right. The causeway, which leads to the ancient Barria de Men, is a prolongation, as the reader knows, of the Rue de Serre, and is cut at right angles by the inner boulevard. At the elbow of the causeway and the boulevard, at the spot where it branches, they heard a noise which it was difficult to account for at that hour, and a sort of confused pile made its appearance. Some shapeless thing which was coming from the boulevard was turning into the road. It grew larger, it seemed to move in an orderly manner, though it was bristling and quivering. It seemed to be a vehicle, but its load could not be distinctly made out. There were horses, wheels, shouts, whips were cracking. By degrees the outlines became fixed, although bathed in shadows. It was a vehicle, in fact, which had just turned from the boulevard into the highway, and which was directing its course towards the barrier near which sat Jean-Valjean. A second of the same aspect followed, then a third, then a fourth. Seven chariots made their appearance in secession, the heads of the horses touching the rear of the wagon in front. Figures were moving on these vehicles, flashes were visible through the dusk, as though there were naked swords there. A clanking became audible, which resembled the rattling of chains, and as this something advanced the sound of voices waxed louder, and it turned into a terrible thing such as emerges from the cave of dreams. As it drew nearer, it assumed a form, and was outlined behind the trees with the pallid hue of an apparition. The mass grew white. The day, which was slowly dawning, cast a wan light on this swarming heap, which was at once both sepulchral and living. The heads of the figures turned into the faces of corpses, and this is what it proved to be. Seven wagons were driving in a file along the road. The first six were singularly constructed. They resembled cooper's drays. They consisted of long ladders placed on two wheels and forming barrows at their rear extremities. Each tray, or rather let us say each ladder, was attached to four horses' harnessed tandem. On these ladders, strange clusters of men were being drawn. In the faint light, these men were to be divined rather than seen. Twenty-four on each vehicle, twelve on a side, back to back, facing the passers by, their legs dangling in the air. This was the manner in which these men were traveling, and behind their backs they had something which clanked, and which was a chain, and on their necks something which shone, and which was an iron collar. Each man had his collar, but the chain was for all. So that if these four and twenty men had occasion to alight from the drey and walk, they were seized with a sort of inexorable unity, and were obliged to wind over the ground with the chain for a backbone, somewhat after the fashion of millipeds. In the back and front of each vehicle, two men with muskets stood erect, each holding one end of the chain under his foot. The iron necklets were square. The seventh vehicle, a huge rack-sided baggage wagon without a hood, had four wheels and six horses, and carried a sonorous pile of iron-boilers, cast-iron pots, braziers, and chains, among which were mingled several men who were pinioned and stretched at full length, and who seemed to be ill. This wagon, all latticework, was garnished with dilapidated hurdles, which appeared to have served for former punishments. These vehicles kept to the middle of the road. On each side marched a double hedge of guards of infamous aspect, wearing three-cornered hats, like the soldiers under the directory, shabby, covered with spots and holes, muffled in uniforms of veterans and the trousers of undertaker's men, half-gray, half-blue, which were almost hanging in rags with red epaulets, yellow shoulder belts, short sabers, muskets, and cudgels. They were a species of soldier black guards. These mermidans seemed composed of the abjectness of the beggar and the authority of the executioner. The one who appeared to be their chief held a pistilion's whip in his hand. All these details, blurred by the dimness of dawn, became more and more clearly outlined as the light increased. At the head and in the rear of the convoy rode mountain genetarms serious and with sword in fist. The procession was so long that when the first vehicle reached the barrier, the last was barely debauching from the boulevard, a throng sprung. It is impossible to say whence, and formed in a twinkling, as is frequently the case in Paris, pressed forward from both sides of the road and looked on. In the neighboring lanes the shouts of people calling to each other and the wooden shoes of market gardenings hastening up to gaze were audible. The men massed upon these drays allowed themselves to be jolted along in silence. They were livid with the chill of morning. They all wore linen trousers and their bare feet were thrust into wooden shoes. The rest of their costume was a fantasy of wretchedness. Their accoutrements were horribly incongruous. Nothing is more funeral than the harlequin in rags. Battered felt hats, tarpaulin caps, hideous woollen night caps, and side by side with a short blouse, a black coat broken at the elbow. Many wore women's headgear, others had baskets on their heads, hairy breasts were visible, and through the rent in their garments tattooed designs could be described. Temples of love, flaming hearts, cupids, eruptions and unhealthy red blotches could also be seen. Two or three had a straw rope attached to the crossbar of the drae, and suspended under them like a stirrup, which supported their feet. One of them held in his hand and raised to his mouth something which had the appearance of a black stone and which he seemed to be noy. It was bread which he was eating. There were no eyes there that were not either dry, dulled, or flaming with an evil light. The escort troop cursed, the men in chains did not utter a syllable. From time to time the sound of a blow became audible as the cudgels descended on shoulder blades or skulls. Some of these men were yawning. Their rags were terrible. Their feet hung down, their shoulders oscillated, their heads clashed together, their fetters clanked, their eyes glared ferociously, their fists clenched or fell open and earthly like the hands of corpses. In the rear of the convoy ran a band of children screaming with laughter. This file of vehicles, whatever its nature was, was mournful. It was evident that tomorrow, that an hour hence, a pouring rain might descend, that it might be followed by another and another, and that their dilapidated garments would be drenched, that once soaked these men would not get dry again, that once chilled they would not again get warm, that their linen trousers would be glued to their bones by the downpour, that the water would fill their shoes, that no lashes from the whips would be able to prevent their jaws from chattering, that the chain would continue to bind them by the neck, that their legs would continue to dangle, and it was impossible not to shudder at the sight of these human beings, thus bound and passive beneath the cold clowns of autumn, and delivered over to the rain, to the blast, to all the furies of the air like trees and stones. Blows from the cudgel were not omitted, even in the case of the sick men, who lay there knotted with ropes and motionless on the seventh wagon, and who appeared to have been tossed like sacks, filled with misery. Suddenly the sun made its appearance. The immense light of the Orient burst forth, and one would have said that it had set fire to all those ferocious heads. Their tongues were unloosed, a conflagration of grins, oaths and songs exploded. The broad horizontal sheet of light severed the file in two parts, illuminating heads and bodies, leaving feet and wheels in the obscurity. Thoughts made their appearance on these faces. It was a terrible moment. Visible demons with their masks removed, fierce souls laid bare. Though lighted up, this wild throng remained in gloom. Some who were gay had in their mouths quills, through which they blew vermin over the crowd, picking out the women. The dawn accentuated these lamentable profiles with the blackness of its shadows. There was not one of these creatures who was not deformed by reason of wretchedness, and the whole was so monstrous that one would have said that the sun's brilliancy had changed into the glare of the lightning. The wagon-load, which headed the line, had struck up a song, and were shouting at the top of their voices with a haggard joviality, a pooperie of desogères, then famous called the Vestal. The trees shivered mournfully in the cross lanes, countenances of bourgeois, listened in an idiotic delight to these coarse strains droned by specters. All sorts of distress met in this procession as in chaos. Here were to be found the facial angles of every sort of beast. Old men, youths, bald heads, gray beards, cynical monstrosities, sour resignation, savage grins, senseless attitudes, snouts surmounted by caps, heads like those of young girls with corkscrew curls on the temples, infantile visages, and by reason of that horrible thin skeleton faces to which death alone was lacking. On the first cart was a negro who had been a slave in all probability, and who could make a comparison of his chains. The frightful leveler from low shame had passed over these brows. At that degree of abasement the last transformations were suffered by all in their extremist depths and ignorance converted into dullness, was the equal of intelligence converted into despair. There was no choice possible between these men who appeared to the eye as the flower of the mud. It was evident that the person who had the ordering of that unclean procession had not classified them. These beings had been fettered and coupled palmel, an alphabetical disorder probably, and loaded haphazard on those carts. Nevertheless, horrors, when grouped together, always end by evolving a result. All editions of wretched men give a sum total. Each chain exhaled a common soul, and each dray load has its own physiognomy. By the side of the one where they were singing, there was one where they were howling, a third where they were begging. One could be seen in which they were gnashing their teeth. Another load menaced the spectators, another blasphemed God. The last was as silent as the tomb. Dante would have thought that he beheld his seven circles of hell on the march. The march of the damned to their tortures performed incinster wise, not on the formidable and flaming chariot of the apocalypse, but what was more mournful than that on the gibbet cart. One of the guards who had a hook on the end of his cudgel made a pretense from time to time of stirring up this mass of human filth. An old woman in the crowd pointing them out to her little boy five years old, and said to him, Rascal, let that be a warning to you. As the songs and blasphemies increased, the man who appeared to be the captain of the escort cracked his whip, and at that signal a fearful dull and blind flogging which produced the sound of hail fell upon the seven dray loads, many roared and foamed at the mouth, which redoubled the delight of the street urchins who had hastened up, a swarm of flies on these wounds. Jean Valjean's eyes had assumed a frightful expression. They were no longer eyes. They were those deep and glassy objects which replaced the glance in the case of certain wretched men, which seemed unconscious of reality, and in which flames the reflection of terrors and of catastrophes. He was not looking at a spectacle. He was seeing a vision. He tried to rise, to flee, to make his escape. He could not move his feet. Sometimes the things that you see seize upon you and hold you fast. He remained nailed to the spot, petrified, stupid, asking himself a thwart confused and inexpressible anguish, what this sepulchral persecution signified, and whence had come that pandemonium which was pursuing him. All at once he raised his hand to his brow, a gesture habitual to those whose memory suddenly returns. He remembered that this was, in fact, the usual itinerary, that it was customary to make this detour in order to avoid all possibility of encountering royalty on the road to Fontainebleau, and that five and thirty years before he had himself passed through that barrier. Cossette was no less terrified, but in a different way she did not understand what she beheld did not seem to her to be possible. At length she cried, Father, what are those men in those carts? Jean Valjean replied, convicts, where are they going? To the galleys. At that moment, the cuddling, multiplied by a hundred hands, became zealous, blows with the flight of the sword were mingled with it. It was a perfect storm of whips and clubs. The convicts bent before it. A hideous obedience was evoked by the torture, and all held their peace, darting glances like chained wolves. Cossette trembled in every limb. She resumed, Father, are they still men? Sometimes, answered the unhappy man. It was the chain-gang, in fact, which had set out before daybreak from Bessetre, and had taken the road to in order to avoid Fontainebleau, where the king then was. This caused the horrible journey to last three or four days longer, but torture may surely be prolonged with the object of sparing the royal personage aside of it. Jean Valjean returned home utterly overwhelmed. Such encounters are shocks, and the memory that they leave behind them resembles a thorough shaking up. Nevertheless, Jean Valjean did not observe that. On his way back, to the rue de Belbaran, was Cossette. The latter was plying him with other questions on the subject of what they had just seen. Perhaps he was too much absorbed in his own dejection to notice her words and reply to them. But when Cossette was leaving him in the evening, to butake herself to bed, he heard her say in a low voice, as though talking to herself. It seems to me that if I were to find one of those men in my pathway, oh my God, I should die merely from the sight of him close at hand. Fortunately, chance ordained that on the morrow of that tragic day there was some official solemnity apropos of I know not what. Feets in Paris, a review in the Champ de Marre, jousts in the Seine, theatrical performance in the Champs fireworks at the Arc de la Troie, illuminations everywhere. Jean Valjean did violence to his habits and took Cossette to see these rejoicings, for the purpose of diverting her from the memory of the day before, and of the facing beneath the smiling tumult of all Paris, the abominable thing which had passed before her. The review with which the festival was spiced made the presence of uniforms perfectly natural. Jean Valjean donned his uniform of a national guard with the vague inward feeling of a man who is betaking himself to shelter. However, this trip seemed to attain its object. Cossette, who mated her law to please her father, and to whom more over all spectacles were a novelty, accepted this diversion with the light and easy good grace of youth, and did not pout too disdainfully at that flutter of enjoyment called a public feat, so that Jean Valjean was able to believe that he had succeeded and that no trace of that hideous vision remained. Some days later, one morning when the sun was shining brightly, and they were both on the steps leading to the garden, another infraction of the rules which Jean Valjean seemed to have imposed upon himself, and the custom of remaining in her chamber which melancholy had caused Cossette to adopt, Cossette, in a wrapper, was standing erect in that negligent attire of early morning which envelops young girls in an adorable way, and which produces the effect of a cloud drawn over a star, and, with her head bathed in light, Rosie, after good sleep, submitting to the gentle glances of the tender old man, she was picking a daisy to pieces. Cossette did not know the delightful legend, I love a little, passionately, etc. Who was there who could have taught her? She was handling the flower instinctively, innocently, without a suspicion that to pluck a daisy apart is to do the same by heart. If there were a fourth and smiling grace called melancholy, she would have worn the air of that grace. Jean Valjean was fascinated by the contemplation of those tiny fingers on that flower, and forgetful of everything in the radiance emitted by that child. A red breast was warbling in the thicket on one side. White cloudlets floated across the sky so gaily that one would have said that they had just been set at liberty. Cossette went on, attentively tearing the leaves from her flower. She seemed to be thinking about something. But whatever it was, it must be something charming. All at once she turned her head over her shoulder with the delicate langer of a swan, and she said to Jean Valjean, Father, what are the galleys like? This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Chapter 1 A Wound Without Healing Within Thus their life clouded over by degrees. But one diversion, which had formerly been a happiness, remained to them, which was to carry bread to those who were hungry, and clothing to those who were cold. Cossette often accompanied Jean Valjean on his visits to the poor, on which they recovered some remnants of their former free intercourse. And sometimes, when the day had been a good one, when they had assisted many in distress and cheered and warmed many little children, Cossette was rather merry in the evening. It was at this epoch that they paid their visit to the Jean Dretten. On the day following that visit, Jean Valjean made his appearance in the pavilion in the morning, calm as was his work, but with a large wound on his left arm, which was much inflamed and very angry, which resembled a burn, and which he explained in some way or other. This wound resulted in his being detained in the house for a month with fever. He would not call in the doctor. When Cossette urged him, all the dog doctor, said he. Cossette dressed the wound morning and evening with so divine an air and such angelic happiness at being of use to him that Jean Valjean felt all his former joy returning, his fears and anxieties dissipating, and he gazed at Cossette, saying, Oh, what a kindly wound! Oh, what a great misfortune! Cossette, on perceiving that her father was ill, had deserted the pavilion and again taken a fancy to the little lodging and the back courtyard. She passed nearly all her days beside Jean Valjean and read to him the books which he desired. Generally, they were books of travel. Jean Valjean was undergoing a new birth. His happiness was reviving in these ineffable rays, the Luxembourg, the prowling young stranger, Cossette's coldness. All his clouds upon his soul were growing dim. He had reached the point where he said to himself, Oh, imagine all that. Oh, I'm an old fool. His happiness was so great that the horrible discovery of the Tenardiers made in Nezendret-Hovl, unexpected as it was, had, after a fashion, glided over him unnoticed. He had succeeded in making his escape. All trace of him was lost. What more did he care for? He only thought of those wretched beings to pity them. Here they are in prison, and henceforth they'll be incapacitated for doing any harm, he thought. But what a lamentable family in distress! As for the hideous vision of the Barrière du Men, Cossette had not referred to it again. Sister Sainte Mestille had taught Cossette music in the convent. Cossette had the voice of a linnet with a soul, and sometimes in the evening, in a wounded man's humble abode, she warbled melancholy songs which delighted Jean Valjean. Spring came. The garden was so delightful at that season of the year that Jean Valjean said, Cossette, you never go there, I want you to stroll in it. As you like, Father, said Cossette. And for the sake of obeying her father, she resumed her walks in the garden, generally alone, for, as we have mentioned, Jean Valjean, who was probably afraid of being seen through the fence, hardly ever went there. Jean Valjean's wound had created a diversion. When Cossette saw that her father was suffering less, that he was convalescing, and that he appeared to be happy, she experienced a contentment which she did not even perceive. So gently and naturally had it come. Then it was in a month of March, the days were growing longer, the winter was departing, the winter always bears away with it a portion of our sadness. Then came April, that daybreak of summer, fresh as dawn always is, gay like every childhood. A little inclined to weep at time is like the newborn being that it is. In that month, nature has charming gleams which pass from the sky, from the trees, from the meadows, and the flowers into the heart of man. Cossette was still too young to escape the penetrating influence of that April joy, which bore so strong a resemblance to herself. Insensibly, and without her suspecting the fact, the blackness departed from her spirit. In spring, sad souls grow light, as light falls into sellers at midday. Cossette was no longer sad. However, though this was so, she did not account for it to herself. In the morning, about ten o'clock after breakfast, when she had succeeded in enticing her father into the garden for a quarter of an hour, and when she was pacing up and down in the sunlight in front of the steps, supporting his left arm for him, she did not perceive that she laughed every moment and that she was happy. Jean Valjean, intoxicated, beheld her growing fresh and rosy once more. Oh, what a good wound, he repeated in a whisper, and he felt grateful to the tenardiers. His wound once healed, he resumed his solitary twilight strolls. It is a mistake to suppose that a person can stroll alone in that fashion in the uninhabited regions of Paris without meeting with some adventure. Chapter 2 Mother Plutarch finds no difficulty in explaining a phenomenon. One evening, little Gavros had had nothing to eat. He remembered that he had not dined on the preceding day either. This was becoming tiresome. He resolved to make an effort to secure some supper. He strolled out beyond the Salpétriere into deserted regions. That is where windfalls are to be found, where there is no one. One always finds something. He reached a settlement which appeared to him to be the village of Ostélitz. On one of his preceding lounges, he had noticed there an old garden haunted by an old man and an old woman, and in that garden a passable apple tree. Beside the apple tree stood a sort of fruit house, which was not securely fastened and where one might contrive to get an apple. One apple is a supper. One apple is life. That which was Adam's ruin might prove Gavros's salvation. The garden abutted on a solitary unpaved lane, bordered with brushwood while awaiting the arrival of houses. The garden was separated from it by a hedge. Gavros directed his steps towards this garden. He found the lane. He recognized the apple tree. He verified the fruit house. He examined the hedge. A hedge means merely one stride. The day was declining. There was not even a cat in the lane. The hour was propitious. Gavros began the operation of scaling the hedge. Then suddenly paused. Someone was talking in the garden. Gavros peeped through one of the breaks in the hedge. A couple of paces distant, at the foot of the hedge on the other side, exactly at the point where the gap which he was meditating would have been made. There was a sort of recumbent stone which formed a bench. And on this bench was seated the old man of the garden, while the old woman was standing in front of him. The old woman was grumbling. Gavros, who was not very discreet, listened. Monsieur Maverf said the old woman. Maverf thought Gavros, that name is a perfect farce. The old man, who was thus addressed, did not stir. The old woman repeated, Monsieur Maverf. The old man, without raising his eyes from the ground, made up his mind to answer. What is it, Mother Plutarch? Mother Plutarch, thought Gavros, another farcical name. Mother Plutarch began again, and the old man was forced to accept the conversation. The landlord is not pleased. Why? We owe three quarters rent. In three months we shall owe him for four quarters. He says that he will turn you out to sleep. I will go. The green grace that insists on being paid. She will no longer leave her faggots. What will you warm yourself with this winter? We shall have no wood. There is the sun. The butcher refuses to give credit. He will not have us buy any more meat. That is quite right. I do not digest meat well. It is too heavy. What shall we have for dinner? Bread. The baker demands a settlement and says no money, no bread. That is well. What will you eat? We have apples in the apple room. But, Monsieur, we can't live like that without money, or have none. The old woman went away. The old man remained alone. He fell into thought. Gavros became thoughtful also. It was almost dark. The first result of Gavros's meditation was that instead of scaling the hedge, he crouched down under it. The branches stood apart a little at the foot of the thicket. Come, exclaimed Gavros mentally. Here's a nook. And he curled up in it. His back was almost in contact with Father Medef's bench. He could hear the octogenarian breathe. Then, by way of dinner, he tried to sleep. It was a cat nap with one eye open. While he dozed, Gavros kept on the watch. The twilight pallor of the sky blanched the earth, and the lane formed a livid line between two rows of dark bushes. All at once, in his whitish band, two figures made their appearance. One was in front, the other some distance in the rear. Here come two creatures, muttered Gavros. The first forms seemed to be some elderly bourgeois who was bent and thoughtful, dressed more than plainly and who was walking slowly because of his age and strolling about in the open evening air. The second was straight, firm slender. It regulated its pace by that of the first, but in the voluntary slowness of its gait, suppleness and agility were discernible. This figure had also something fierce and disquieting about it. The whole shape was that of what was then called an elegant. The hat was a good shape, the coat black, well cut, probably a fine cloth and well fitted in at the waist. The head was held erect with a sort of robust grace, and beneath the hat the pale profile of a young man could be made out in the dim light. The profile had a rose in its mouth. The second form was well known to Gavros. It was Montpanasse. He could have told nothing about the other, except that he was a respectable old man. Gavros immediately began to take observations. One of these two pedestrians evidently had a project connected with the other. Gavros was well placed to watch the course of events. The bedroom had turned into a hiding place at a very opportune moment. Montpanasse on the hunt at such an hour, in such a place, but tokened something threatening. Gavros felt his gammon's heart move with compassion for the old man. What was he to do? Into fear? One weakness coming to the aid of another. It would be merely a laughing matter for Montpanasse. Gavros did not shut his eyes to the fact that the old man in the first place, and the child in the second, would make but two mouthfuls for that redoubtable ruffian 18 years of age. While Gavros was deliberating, the attack took place abruptly and hideously. The attack of the tiger on the wild ass, the attack of the spider on the fly. Montpanasse suddenly tossed away his rose, bounded upon the old man, seized him by the collar, grasped and clung to him, and Gavros with difficulty restrained a scream. A moment later, one of these men was underneath the other, groaning, struggling, with a knee of marble upon his breast. Only, it was not just what Gavros had expected. The one who lay on the earth was Montpanasse. The one who was on top was the old man. All this took place a few paces distant from Gavros. The old man had received the shock, had returned it, and that in such a terrible fashion, that in a twinkling, he assailant and assailed at exchange rolls. He was a hearty veteran, thought Gavros. He could not refrain from clapping his hands, but it was applause wasted. I did not reach the competence, absorbed and deafened as they were, each by the other, as their breath mingled in the struggle. Silence ensued. Montpanasse ceased his struggles. Gavros indulged in his assail. Can he be dead? The good man had not uttered a word, nor given vent to a cry. He rose to his feet, and Gavros heard him say to Montpanasse, Good up! Montpanasse rose, but the good man held him fast. Montpanasse's attitude was the humiliated and furious attitude of the wolf, who has been caught by a sheep. Gavros looked on and listened, making an effort to reinforce his eyes with his ears. He was enjoying himself immensely. He was repaid for his conscientious anxiety in the character of respectator. He was able to catch on the wing a dialogue, which borrowed from the darkness an indescribably tragic accent. The good man questioned. Montpanasse replied, How old are you? Nineteen. You are strong and healthy. Why do you not work? It bores me. What is your trade? An idler. Speak seriously. Could nothing be done for you? What would you like to be? A thief. A pause ensued. The old man seemed absorbed in profound thought. He stood motionless and did not relax his hold on Montpanasse. Every moment the vigorous and agile young ruffian indulged in the twitchings of a wild beast caught in a snare. He gave a jerk, tried a crook of the knee, twisted his limbs desperately and made efforts to escape. The old man did not appear to notice it and held both his arms with one hand, with the sovereign indifference of absolute force. The old man's reverie lasted for some time, then, looking steadily at Montpanasse, he addressed him in a gentle voice in the midst of the darkness where they stood, a solemn harangue of which Kavrosh did not lose a single syllable. My child, you are entering through indolence on one of the most laborious of lives. You declare yourself to be an idler? Prepare to toil. There is a certain formidable machine. Have you seen it? It is the rolling mill. You must be on your guard against it. It is crafty and ferocious. If it catches hold of the skirt of your coat, you'll be drawn in bodily. That machine is laziness. Stop while there is yet time and save yourself, otherwise it is all over with you. In a short time you will be among the gearing. Once entangled, hope for nothing more. Toil, lazy bones. There is no more repose for you. The iron hand of implacable toil has seized you. You do not wish to earn your living, to have a task, to fulfill a duty. It bores you to be like other men? Well, you will be different. Labor is the law. He who rejects it will find all we his torment. You do not wish to be a working man? You will be a slave. Toil lets go of your one side only to grasp you again on the other. You do not desire to be its friend? You shall be its negro slave. You would have none of the honest weariness of men. You shall have the sweat of the dam. Where others sing, you will rattle in your throat. You will see a fire off from below. Other men at work. It will seem to you that they are resting. The laborer, the harvester, the sailor, the blacksmith will appear to you in glory like the blessed spirits in paradise. What radiance surrounds the forge? To guide the plough, to bind the sheaves is joy. The bark at liberty in the wind, what delight? Do you, lazy idler, delve, drag on, roll, march, drag your halter? You are a beast of burden in the team of hell. Ah, to do nothing is your object. Well, not a week, not a day, not an hour, shall you have free from oppression. You will be able to lift nothing without anguish. Every minute that passes will make your muscles crack. What is a feather to others will be a rock to you. The simplest things will become steep aclivities. Life will become monstrous all about you. To go, to come, to breathe will be just so many terrible labours. Your lungs will produce on you the effect of weighing a hundred pounds. Whether you shall walk here rather than there will become a problem that must be solved. Anyone who wants to go out simply gives his door a push, and there he is in the open air. If you wish to go out, you will be obliged to pierce your wall. What does everyone who wants to step into the street do? He goes downstairs. You will tear up your sheets little by little, you will make of them a rope, then you will climb out of your window, and you will suspend yourself by that thread over an abyss. And it will be night, a mid-storm, rain, and a hurricane. And if the rope is too short, but one way of descending will remain to you, to fall, to drop haphazard into the gulf from an unknown height. On what? On what is beneath, on the unknown? Or you will crawl up a chimney flue at the risk of burning, or you will creep through a sewer pipe at the risk of drowning. I do not speak of the holes you will be obliged to mask, of the stones which you will have to take up and replace twenty times a day, of the plaster that you will have to hide in your straw pallet. A lock presents itself. The bourgeois has in his pocket a key made by a locksmith. If you wish to pass out, you will be condemned to execute a terrible work of art. You will take a large sue, you will cut it into two plates. With what tools? You will have to invent them. That is your business. Then you will hollow out the interior of these plates, taking great care of the outside, and you will make on the edges a thread so that they can be adjusted one upon the other like a box in its cover. The top and bottom thus screwed together, nothing will be suspected. To the overseers, it will be only a sue. To you, it will be a box. What will you put in this box? A small bit of steel. A watch spring in which you will cut teeth and which will form a saw. With this saw, long as a pin and concealed in a sue, you will cut the bolt of the lock, you will sever the bolts, you padlock of your chain, and the bar at your window, and the fetter on your leg. This masterpiece finished? This prodigy accomplished? All these miracles of art, address, skill, and patience executed? What will be your recompense if it becomes known that you are the author? The dungeon. There is your future. What precipices are idleness and pleasure? Do you know that to do nothing is a melancholy resolution? To live in idleness on the property of society? To be useless? That is to say, pernicious. This leads straight to the depth of wretchedness. Woe to the man who desires to be a parasite. He will become vermin. So it does not please you to work. You have but one thought, to drink well, to eat well, to sleep well. You will drink water. You will eat black bread. You will sleep on a plank with a fetter whose cold touch you will feel on your flesh all night long, riveted to your limbs. You will break those fetters. You will flee. That is wealth. You will crawl on your belly through the brushwood, and then you will eat grass like the beasts of the forest. And you will be recaptured. And then you will pass years in a dungeon, riveted to a wall, groping through your jug that you may drink, gnawing at a horrible loaf of darkness which dogs would not touch, eating beans that the worms have eaten before you. You will be a wood louse in a cellar. Ah, have pity on yourself, you miserable young child, who was sucking at nurse less than 20 years ago. And who have no doubt the mother still alive. I conjure you. Listen to me. I entreat you. You desire fine black cloth, varnished shoes, to have your hair curled and sweet smelling oils on your locks, to please low women, to be handsome. You will be shaven clean, and you will wear a red blouse and wooden shoes. You want rings on your fingers. You will have an iron necklace on your neck. If you glance at a woman, you'll receive a blow, and you will enter there at the age of 20, and you will come out at 50. You will enter young, rosy, fresh with brilliant eyes, and all your white teeth, and your handsome youthful hair. You will come out broken, bent, wrinkled, toothless, horrible with white locks. Ah, my poor child, you are on the wrong road. Idleness is counseling you badly. The hardest of all work is thieving. Believe me to not undertake that painful profession of an idle man. It is not comfortable to become a rascal. It is less disagreeable to be an honest man. Now go and ponder on what I have said to you. By the way, what did you want of me? My purse? Here it is. And the old man, releasing Montpenas, put his purse into the latter's hand. Montpenas weighed it for a moment, after which he allowed it to slide gently to the back pocket of his coat with the same mechanical precaution as though he had stolen it. All this having been said and done, the good man turned his back and tranquilly resumed his stroll. That blockhead muttered Montpenas. Who was this good man? The reader has no doubt already divine. Montpenas watched him with amazement as he disappeared in the dusk. This contemplation was fatal to him. While the old man was walking away, Gavrosh drew near. Gavrosh had assured himself, with a sidelong glance, that Father Mbiff was still sitting on his bench, probably sound asleep. Then the gammon emerged from his thicket and began to crawl after Montpenas in the dark, as the latter stood there motionless. In this manner he came up to Montpenas without being seen or heard. Gently insinuated his hand into the back pocket of that frock coat of fine black cloth, seized the purse with through his hand, and having recourse once more to his crawling, he slipped away like an adder through the shadows. Montpenas, who had no reason to be on guard and who was engaged in thought for the first time in his life, perceived nothing. When Gavrosh had once more attained the point where Father Mbiff was, he flung the purse over the hedge and fled as fast as his legs would carry him. The purse fell on Father Mbiff's foot. This commotion roused him. He bent over and picked up the purse. He did not understand in the least, but opened it. The purse had two compartments. In one of them there was some small change. In the other lay six Napoleons. Monsieur Mbiff, in great alarm, referred the matter to his housekeeper. That has fallen from heaven, said Mother Plutarch. End of Book 4 Recording by Algie Pug, Perth, Western Australia Book 5, Chapter 1 of Les Miserables. This is a LibreVox recording. All LibreVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to learn how to volunteer, please visit LibreVox.org. This recording is performed by Sofía Bravo of Miami, Florida. Book 5 The end of which does not resemble the beginning. Chapter 1 Solitude and the Barracks Combined From Les Miserables by Victor Hugo Translated by Isabel Florence Hapgood Cosette's grief, which had been so poignant and life-leafed four or five months previously, had, without her being conscious of the fact, entered upon its convalescence. Nature, spring, youth, love for her father, the gaiety of the birds and flowers, cause something almost resembling forgetfulness, to filter gradually, drop by drop, into that soul which was so virgin and so young. Was the fire wholly extinct there? Or was it merely that layers of ashes had formed? The truth is that she hardly felt the painful and burning spot any longer. One day she suddenly thought of Marius. Hi, said she, I no longer think of him. That same week she had noticed a very handsome officer of Lancers, with a wasp-like waist, a delicious uniform, the cheeks of a young girl, a sorter under his arm, waxed mustaches, and a glazed shopka, passing the gate. Moreover, he had light hair, prominent blue eyes, a round face, as vain, insolent, and good-looking, quite the reverse of Marius. He had a cigar in his mouth. José thought that this officer doubtless, to the regiment and barracks in the rude de la below. On the following day she saw him pass again. She took note of the hour. From that time forth was a chance. She saw him pass nearly every day. The officer's comrades perceived that there was, in that badly kept garden. Behind that malicious rococo fence, a very pretty creature, who was almost always there, when the handsome lieutenant, who was not unknown to the reader, and whose name was Teodun Gil-Nomal, passed by. See here, they said to him, there's a little creature there who's making eyes of you. Look! Have I the time? replied the Lancer, to look at all the girls who look at me? This was at the precise moment when Marius was descending heavily towards Agony, and was saying, if I could but see her before I die. Had his wish been realized, had he beheld Cosette at the moment, gazing at the Lancer, he would not have been able to utter a word, and he would have expired with grief. Whose fault was it? No one's. Marius possessed one of those temperaments, which bury themselves in sorrow, and there abide. Cosette was one of those persons who plunged into sorrow, and emerged from it again. Cosette was, moreover, passing through that dangerous period, that fatal phase of feminine reverie, abandoned to itself, in which the isolated heart of a young girl resembles the tendrils of the vine, which cling, as chance directs, to the capital of a marble column, or to the post of a wine shop. A rapid and decisive moment, critical for every orphan, be she rich or poor, her wealth does not prevent a bad choice. Misalignses are made in very high circles. Real misaligns is that of souls. And as many an unknown young man, without name, without birth, without fortune, is a marble column, which bears up a temple of grand sentiments and grand ideas. So such and such, a man of the world, satisfied and opulent, who has polished boots and varnished words, if looked at not outside, but inside, a thing which is reserved for his wife, is nothing more than a block obscurely haunted by violent, unclean, and vine-ess passions, the post of a drinking shop. What did Cosette's soul contain? Passion, calm, and lulled to sleep, something limpid, brilliant, troubled to a certain depth, and gloomy, lower down. The image of the handsome officer was reflected in the surface. Did his souvenir finger in the depths, right at the bottom? Possibly, Cosette depart now. A singular incident, super vain. End of chapter. Chapter 2 Cosette's Apprehensions During the first fortnight in April, Jean Valjean took a journey. This, as the reader knows, happened from time to time at very long intervals. He remained absent a day or two days at the utmost. Where did he go? Not when he knew, not even Cosette. Once only, on the occasion of one of these departures, she had accompanied him in a hackneyed coach, as far as a little blind alley, at the corner of which she read, Impasse de la Planchette. There he alighted, and the coach took Cosette back to the rue de Bebelon. It was usually when money was lacking in the house that Jean Valjean took these little trips. So, Jean Valjean was absent. He had said, I shall return in three days. That evening, Cosette was alone in the drawing room. In order to get rid of her ennui, she had opened her piano organ, and had begun to sing, accompanying herself the while, the chorus from Urethane. Hunters stray in the wood, which is probably the most beautiful thing in all the sphere of music. When she had finished, she remained wrapped in thought. All at once it seemed to her that she had heard the sound of footsteps in the garden. It could not be her father, who was absent. It could not be Toussaint. She was in bed, and it was ten o'clock at night. She stepped to the shutter of the drawing room, which was closed, and laid her ear against it. It seemed to her that it was the tread of a man, and that he was walking very softly. She mounted rapidly to the first floor, to her own chamber, opened a small wicket in her shutter, and peeped into the garden. The moon was at the full. Everything could be seen as plainly as by day. There was no one there. She opened the window. The garden was absolutely calm, and all that was visible was that the street was deserted, as usual. Cosette thought that she had been mistaken. She thought that she had heard a noise. It was a hallucination produced by the melancholy and magnificent chorus of Weber, which lays open before the mind terrified depths, which trembles before the gaze like a dizzy forest, and in which one hears the cackling of dead branches beneath the uneasy tread of the huntsman of whom one catches a glimpse through the twilight. She thought no more about it. Moreover, Cosette was not very timid by nature. There flowed in her veins some of the blood of the Bohemian, and the adventurous who runs barefoot. It will be remembered that she was more of a lark than a dove. There was a foundation of wilderness and bravery in her. On the following day, at an earlier hour, towards nightfall, she was strolling in the garden, in the midst of the confused thought which occupied her. She fancied that she had caught for an instant a sound similar to that of the preceding evening, as though someone were walking beneath the trees in the dusk, and not very far from her. But she told herself that nothing so closely resembled the step on the grass as the friction of two branches which had moved from side to side, and she paid no heed to it. Besides, she could see nothing. She emerged from the thicket. She had still to cross a small lawn to regain the steps. The moon which had just risen behind her cast Cosette's shadow in front of her upon this lawn, as she came out from the shrubbery. Cosette halted an alarm. Beside her shadow, the moon outlined distinctly upon the turf another shadow, which was particularly starflame and terrible, a shadow which had a round hat. It was the shadow of a man who must have been standing on the border of the clump of shrubbery, a few paces in the rear of Cosette. She stood for a moment without the power to speak, or cry, or call, or stir, or turn her head. Then she summoned up all her courage and turned round resolutely. There was none there. She glanced on the ground. The figure had disappeared. She re-entered the thicket, searched the corners boldly, went as far as the gate and found nothing. She felt herself absolutely chilled with terror. Was this another hallucination? What, two days in succession? One hallucination might pass with two hallucinations? The disquieting point about it was that the shadow had assuredly not been a phantom. Phantoms do not wear round hats. On the following day Jean Valjean returned. Cosette told him what she thought she had heard and seen. She wanted to be reassured, and to see her father shrug his shoulders and say to her, You are a little goose. Jean Valjean grew anxious. Said he. He left her under some pretext and went into the garden, and she saw him examining the gate with great attention. During the night she woke up. This time she was sure, and she distinctly heard someone walking close to the flight of step beneath her window. She ran to her little wicket and opened it. In point of fact there was a man in the garden, but the large club in his hand. Just as she was about to scream, the moon lighted up the van profile. There was her father. She returned to her bed, saying to herself, He is very uneasy. Jean Valjean passed that night, and the two succeeding nights in the garden. Cosette saw him through the hole in her shutter. On the third night the moon was on the wing, and had begun to rise later, at one o'clock in the morning, possibly, she had heard a loud burst of laughter, and her father's voice calling her. Cosette! She jumped out of bed, threw on her dressing-gound, and opened her window. Her father was standing on the grass-plot below. I have went to you for the purpose of reassuring you, said he. Look! There is your shadow with the round hat. And he pointed out to her, on the turf, a shadow cast by the moon, and which did indeed bear considerable resemblance to the specter of a man wearing a round hat. It was the shadow produced by a chimney-pipe of sheet iron, with a hood which rose above a neighbouring roof. Cosette joined in his laughter. All her legrugrious suppositions were laid, and the next morning, as she was at breakfast with her father, she made merry over the sinister garden haunted by shadows of iron chimney pots. Jean Valjean became quite tranquil once more. As for Cosette, she did not pay much attention to the question whether the chimney-pot was really in the direction of the shadow which she had seen, or thought she had seen, and whether the moon had been in the same spot in the sky. She did not question herself as to the peculiarity of a chimney-pot, which is afraid of being caught in the act, and which retires when someone looks at its shadow, for the shadow had taken alarm when Cosette had turned round, and Cosette had thought herself very sure of this. Cosette's serenity was fully restored. The proof appeared to her to be complete, and it quite vanished from her mind, whether there could possibly be anyone walking in the garden during the evening or at night. A few days later, however, a fresh incident occurred. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Peter Eastman. Les Miserables, Volume 4 by Victor Hugo. Translated by Isabelle Florence Hapgood. Book 5. The End of Which Does Not Resemble the Beginning. Chapter 3. Enriched with Commentaries by Toussaint. In the garden, near the railing on the street, there was a stone bench, screened from the eyes of the curious by a plantation of yoke-elms, but which could, in case of necessity, be reached by an arm from the outside, past the trees and the gate. One evening, during that same month of April, Jean Valjean had gone out. Cosette had seated herself on this bench after sundown. The breeze was blowing briskly in the trees, Cosette was meditating. An objectless sadness was taking possession of her little by little, that invincible sadness evoked by the evening, and which arises, perhaps, who knows, from the mystery of the tomb which is a jar at that hour. Perhaps Fantine was within that shadow. Cosette Rose slowly made the tour of the garden, walking on the grass drenched in dew, and saying to herself, through the species of melancholy somnambulism in which she was plunged, really, one needs wooden shoes for the garden at this hour, one takes cold. She returned to the bench. As she was about to resume her seat there, she observed on the spot which she had quitted a tolerably large stone, which had evidently not been there a moment before. Cosette gazed at the stone, asking herself what it meant. All at once the idea occurred to her that the stone had not reached the bench all by itself, that someone had placed it there, that an arm had been thrust through the railing, and this idea appeared to alarm her. This time the fear was genuine. The stone was there, no doubt was possible. She did not touch it, fled without glancing behind her, took refuge in the house, and immediately closed with shutter, bolt, and bar the door-like window opening on the flight of steps. She inquired of Toussaint, has my father returned yet? Not yet, mademoiselle. We have already noted once for all the fact that Toussaint stuttered. May we be permitted to dispense with it for the future. The musical notation of an infirmity is repugnant to us. Jean Valjean, a thoughtful man and given to nocturnal strolls, often returned quite late at night. Toussaint went on, Cosette. Are you careful to thoroughly barricade the shutter's opening on the garden, at least with bars in the evening, and to put the little iron things of the little rings that close them? Oh, be easy on that score, miss. Toussaint did not fail in her duty, and Cosette was well aware of the fact, but she could not refrain from adding. It is so solitary here. So far as that is concerned, said Toussaint, it is true. We might be assassinated before we had time to say oh! And Monsieur does not sleep in the house to boot. But fear nothing, miss. I fasten the shutters up like prisons. Lone women. That is enough to make one shudder, I believe you. Just imagine. What if you were to see men enter your chamber at night, and say, hold your tongue, and begin to cut your throat? It's not the dying so much. You die for one must die. That's all right. It's the abomination of feeling those people touch you. And then their knives. They can't be able to cut well with them. Oh, good gracious! Be quiet, said Cosette, fasten everything thoroughly. Cosette, terrified by the melodrama improvised by Toussaint, and possibly also by the recollection of the apparitions of the past week, which recurred to her memory, dared not even say to her, go and look at the stone which has been placed on the bench, for fear of opening the garden gate and allowing the men to enter. She saw that all the doors and windows were carefully fastened, made Toussaint go all over the house from Garrett to Seller, locked herself up in her own chamber, bolted her door, looked under her couch, went to bed, and slept badly. All night long she saw that big stone, as large as a mountain and full of caverns. At sunrise the property of the rising sun is to make us laugh at all our terrors of the past night, and her laughter is in direct proportion to our terror which they have caused. At sunrise, Cosette, when she woke, viewed her fright as a nightmare, and said to herself, What have I been thinking of? It is like the footsteps that I thought I heard a week or two ago in the garden at night. It is like the shadow of the chimney-pot. Am I becoming a coward? The sun, which was glowing through the crevices in her shutters, and herning the damask curtains crimson, reassured her to such an extent that everything vanished from her thoughts, even the stone. There was no more stone on the bench than there was a man in a round hat in the garden. I dreamed about the stone, as I did all the rest. She dressed herself, descended to the garden, ran to the bench, and broke out in a cold perspiration. The stone was there. But this lasted only for a moment. That, which is terror by night, is curiosity by day. Bah! said she. Come, let us see what it is. She lifted the stone, which was tolerably large. Beneath it was something which resembled a ladder. It was a white envelope. Cosette seized it. There was no address on one side, no seal on the other. Yet the envelope, though unsealed, was not empty. Papers could be seen inside. Cosette examined it. It was no longer alarm. It was no longer curiosity. It was a beginning of anxiety. Cosette drew from the envelope its contents, a little notebook of paper, each page of which was numbered, and bore a few lines in a very fine and rather pretty handwriting, as Cosette thought. Cosette looked for a name. There was none. To whom was this addressed? To her, probably, since a hand had deposited the packet on her bench. From whom did it come? An irresistible fascination took possession of her. She tried to turn away her eyes from the leaflets which were trembling in her hand. She gazed at the sky, the street, the acacias all bathed in light, the pigeons fluttering over a neighboring roof, and then her glance suddenly fell upon the manuscript, and she said to herself that she must know what it contained. This is what she read. Chapter 4 A Heart Beneath a Stone The reduction of the universe to a single being, the expansion of a single being even to God, that is love. Love is the salutation of the angels to the stars. How sad is the soul when it is sad through love. What a void in the absence of the being who by herself fills the world. Oh, how true it is that the beloved being becomes God. One could comprehend that God might be jealous of this, had not God the Father of all evidently made creation for the soul, and the soul for love. The glimpse of a smile beneath a white crepe bonnet with a lilac curtain, is sufficient to cause the soul to enter into the palace of dreams. God is behind everything, but everything hides God. Things are black, creatures are opaque. To love a being is to render that being transparent. Certain thoughts are prayers. There are moments when, whatever the attitude of the body may be, the soul is on its knees. Parted lovers be guile absence by a thousand chimerical devices, which possess, however, a reality of their own. They are prevented from seeing each other. They cannot write to each other. They discover a multitude of mysterious means to correspond. They send each other the song of the birds, the perfume of the flowers, the smiles of children, the light of the sun, the sirens of the breeze, the rays of stars, the rays of stars, all creation. And why not? All the works of God are made to serve love. Love is sufficiently potent to charge all nature with its messages. Oh spring, thou art a letter that I write to her. The future belongs to hearts even more than it does to minds. Love, that is the only thing that can occupy and fill eternity. In the infinite, the inexhaustible is requisite. Love participates of the soul itself. It is of the same nature. Like it, it is the divine spark. Like it, it is incorruptible, indivisible, imperishable. It is a point of fire that exists within us, which is immortal and infinite, which nothing can confine and which nothing can extinguish. We feel it burning even to the very marrow of our bones, and we see it beaming in the very depths of heaven. Oh love, adorations, voluptuousness of two minds which understand each other, of two hearts which exchange with each other, of two glances which penetrate each other. You will come to me, will you not, Bliss? Strolls by twos in the solitudes, blessed and radiant days. I have sometimes dreamed that from time to time hours detached themselves from the lives of the angels, and came here below to traverse the destinies of men. God can add nothing to the happiness of those who love, except to give them endless duration. After a life of love, an eternity of love is in fact an augmentation. But to increase in intensity, even the ineffable felicity which love bestows on the soul, even in this world, is impossible, even to God. God is the plenitude of heaven. Love is the plenitude of man. You look at a star for two reasons, because it is luminous and because it is impenetrable. You have beside you a sweeter radiance and a greater mystery, woman. All of us, whoever we may be, have our respirable beings. We lack air and we stifle, then we die. To die for lack of love is horrible, suffocation of the soul. When love has fused and mingled two beings in a sacred and angelic unity, the secret of life has been discovered so far as they are concerned. They are no longer anything more than the two boundaries of the same destiny. They are no longer anything but the two wings of the same spirit. Love soar. On the day when a woman, as she passes before you, emits light as she walks, you are lost, you love. But one thing remains for you to do, to think of her so intently that she is constrained to think of you. What love commences can be finished by God alone. True love is in despair and is enchanted over a glove lost or a handkerchief found, and eternity is required for its devotion and its hopes. It is composed both of the infinitely great and the infinitely little. If you are a stone, be adamant. If you are a plant, be the sensitive plant. If you are a man, be love. Nothing suffices for love. We have happiness, we desire paradise. We possess paradise, we desire heaven. Oh ye who love each other, all this is contained in love. Understand how to find it there. Love has contemplation as well as heaven. And more than heaven it has voluptuousness. Does she still come to the Luxembourg? No, sir. This is the church where she attends mass, is it not? She no longer comes here. Does she still live in this house? She has moved away. Where has she gone to dwell? She did not say. What a melancholy thing, not to know the address of one's soul. Love has its childishness. Other passions have their pettinesses. Shame on the passions which be little man, honor to the one which makes a child of him. There is one strange thing, do you know it? I dwell in the night. There is a being who carried off my sky when she went away. Oh, wood that we were lying side by side in the same grave, hand in hand, and from time to time in the darkness, gently caressing a finger. That would suffice for my eternity. Ye who suffer because ye love, love yet more. To die of love is to live in it. Love, a somber and starry transfiguration, is mingled with this torture. There is ecstasy in agony. Oh joy of the birds, it is because they have nests that they sing. Love is a celestial respiration of the air of paradise. Deep hearts, sage minds, take life as God has made it. It is a long trial, an incomprehensible preparation for an unknown destiny. This destiny, the true one, begins for a man with the first step inside the tomb. Then something appears to him, and he begins to distinguish the definitive. The definitive meditate upon that word. The living perceive the infinite. The definitive permits itself to be seen only by the dead. In the meanwhile, love and suffer hope and contemplate. Whoa, alas to him who shall have loved only bodies, forms, appearances. Death will deprive him of all. Try to love souls, you will find them again. I encountered in the street a very poor young man who was in love. His hat was old, his coat was worn, his elbows were in holes. Water trickled through his shoes and the stars through his soul. What a grand thing it is to be loved. What a far grander thing it is to love. The heart becomes heroic by dint of passion. It is no longer composed of anything but what is pure. It no longer rests on anything that is not elevated and great. An unworthy thought can no more germinate in it than a nettle on a glacier. The serene and lofty soul inaccessible to vulgar passions and emotions, dominating the clouds and the shades of this world, its follies, its lies, its hatreds, its vanities, its miseries, and habits the blue of heaven. And no longer feels anything but profound and subterranean shocks of destiny, as the crests of mountains feel the shocks of earthquake. If there did not exist someone who loved, the sun would become extinct. Translated by Isabel Florence Habgud Book 5 The End Of Which Does Not Resemble The Beginning Chapter 5 Cosette After The Letter As Cosette read, she gradually fell into thought. At the very moment when she raised her eyes from the last line of the notebook, the handsome officer passed triumphantly in front of the gate. It was his hour. Cosette thought him hideous. She resumed her contemplation of the book. It was written in the most charming of chirrography, thought Cosette. In the same hand, but with diver's inks, sometimes very black, again whitish, as when ink has been added to the ink stand and consequently on different days. It was, then, a mind which had unfolded itself there, sigh by sigh, irregularly, without order, without choice, without object, haphazard. Cosette had never read anything like it. This manuscript, in which she already perceived more light than obscurity, produced upon her the effect of a half-open sanctuary. Each one of these mysterious lines shown before her eyes and inundated her heart with a strange radiance. The education which she had received had always talked to her of the soul and never of love, very much as one might talk of the firebrand and not the flame. This manuscript of fifteen pages suddenly and sweetly revealed to her all of love, sorrow, destiny, life, eternity, the beginning, the end. It was as if a hand had opened and suddenly flung upon her a handful of rays of light. In these few lines she felt a passionate, ardent, generous, honest nature, a sacred will, an immense sorrow, and an immense despair, a suffering heart, an ecstasy fully expanded. What was this manuscript? A letter. A letter without name, without address, without date, without signature, pressing and disinterested, an enigma composed of truths, a message of love made to be brought by an angel and read by a virgin, an appointment made beyond the bounds of earth, the love letter of a phantom to a shade. It was an absent one, tranquil and dejected, who seemed ready to take refuge in death, and who sent to the absent love his lady, the secret of fate, the key of life, love. This had been written with one foot in the grave and one finger in heaven, these lines which had fallen one by one on the paper, were what might be called drops of soul. Now, from whom could these pages come? Who could have penned them? Cosette did not hesitate for a moment, one man only. He. Day had dawned once more in her spirit, all had reappeared. She felt an unheard of joy and a profound anguish. It was he, he who had written. He was there. It was he whose arm had been thrust through that railing. While she was forgetful of him, he had found her again. But had she forgotten him? No, never. She was foolish to have thought so for a single moment. She had always loved him, always adored him. The fire had been smothered and had smothered for a time, but she saw all plainly now. It had but made headway, and now it had burst forth afresh, and had inflamed her whole being. This notebook was like a spark which had fallen from that other soul into hers. She felt the conflagration starting up once more. She imbued herself thoroughly with every word of the manuscript. Oh, yes, said she. How perfectly I recognize all that. That is what I had already read in his eyes. As she was finishing it for the third time, Lieutenant Teoduo passed the gate once more, and rattled his spurs upon the pavement. Cosette was forced to raise her eyes. She thought him insipid, silly, stupid, useless, foppish, displeasing, impertinent, and extremely ugly. The officer thought it his duty to smile at her. She turned away as in shame and indignation. She would gladly have thrown something at his head. She fled, re-entered the house, and shut herself up in her chamber to pre-use the manuscript once more, to learn it by heart and to dream. When she had thoroughly mastered it, she kissed it and put it in her bosom. All was over. Cosette had fallen back into deep, seraphic love. The abyss of Eden had yawned once more. All day long, Cosette remained in a sort of bewilderment. She scarcely thought her ideas were in the state of a tangled skein in her brain. She could not manage to conjecture anything. She hoped through a tremor. What? Bake things. She dared make herself no promises, and she did not wish to refuse herself anything. Flashes of pallor passed over her countenance, and shivers ran through her frame. It seemed to her, at intervals, that she was entering the land of Chimeras. She said to herself, Is this reality? Then she felt of the deer paper within her bosom under her gown. She pressed it to her heart. She felt its angles against her flesh, and if Jean Valjean had seen her at the moment, he would have shuddered in the presence of that luminous and unknown joy, which overflowed from beneath her eyelids. Oh, yes, she thought. It is certainly he. This comes from him, and is for me. And she told herself that in intervention of angels, a celestial dance had given him back to her. Oh, transfiguration of love. Oh, dreams. That celestial dance, that intervention of the angels, was a pellet of bread tossed by one thief to another thief, from the Charlemagne courtyard to the lion's ditch over the roofs of La Force. End of chapter five. Chapter six. Old people are made to go out opportunity. When evening came, Jean Valjean went out. Cosette dressed herself. She arranged her hair in the most becoming manner, and she put on a dress whose bodice had received one snip of the scissors too much, and which, through this slope, permitted a view of the beginning of her throat, and was, as young girls say, a trifle indecent. It was not in the least indecent, but it was prettier than usual. She made her toilet thus without knowing why she did so. Did she mean to go out? No. Was she expecting a visitor? No. At dusk she went down to the garden, to Song's busy in her kitchen, which opened to the backyard. She began to stroll under the trees, thrusting aside the branches from time to time with her hand, because there were some which hung very low. In this manner she reached the bench. The stone was still there. She sat down and gently laid her white hand on this stone, as though she wished to caress and thank it. All at once she experienced that indefinable impression which one undergoes when there is someone standing behind one, even when she does not see the person. She turned her head and rose to her feet. It was he. His head was bare. He appeared to have grown thin and pale. His black clothes were hardly discernible. The twilight threw a wan light on his fine brow and covered his eyes and shadows. Beneath the veil of incomparable sweetness, he had something about him that suggested death and night. His face was illuminated by the light of the dying day, and by the thought of a soul that is taking flight. He seemed to be not yet a ghost, and he was no longer a man. He had flung away his hat and the thicket a few paces distant. Cosette, though ready to swoon, uttered no cry. She retreated slowly, for she felt herself attracted. He did not stir. By virtue of something ineffable and melancholy which enveloped him, she felt the look in his eyes which she could not see. Cosette, in her retreat, encountered a tree and leaned against it. Had it not been for this tree, she would have fallen. Then she heard his voice, that voice which she had really never heard, barely rising above the rustle of the leaves and murmuring. Pardon me, here I am. My heart is full. I could not live on as I was living, and I have come. Have you read what I placed there on the bench? Do you recognize me at all? Have no fear of me. It is a long time. You remember the day, since you looked at me at the Luxembourg, near the Gladiator. And the day when you passed before me, it was on the 16th of June and the 2nd of July. It is nearly a year ago. I have not seen you for a long time. I inquired at the woman who let the chairs, and she told me that she no longer saw you. You lived in the rue de l'Houest, on the third floor in the front apartments of a new house. You see that I know. I followed you. What else was there for me to do? And then you disappeared. I thought I saw you pass once, while I was reading the newspapers under the arcade of the Odail. I ran after you, but no, it was a person who had a bonnet like yours. At night I came hither. Do not be afraid, no one sees me. I come to gaze upon your windows near at hand. I walk very softly so that you may not hear, for you might be alarmed. The other evening I was behind you, you turned round, I fled. Once I heard you singing. I was happy. Did it affect you because I heard you singing through the shutters? That could not hurt you. No, it is not so. You see, you are my angel. Let me come sometimes. I think that I am going to die. If you only knew, I adore you. Forgive me, I speak to you, but I do not know what I am saying. I may have displeased you. Have I displeased you? Oh, my mother, she said. And she sank down as though on the point of death. He grasped her. She fell. He took her in his arms. He pressed her close without knowing what he was doing. He supported her as though he was tottering himself. It was as though his brain were full of smoke. Lightning started between his lips. His ideas vanished. It seemed to him that he was accomplishing some religious act and that he was committing a profanation. Moreover, he had not the least passion for this lovely woman whose force he felt against his breast. He was beside himself with love. She took his hand and laid it on her heart. He felt the paper there. He stammered, you love me then? She replied in a voice so low that it was no longer anything more than a barely audible breath. Hush, thou knowest it. And she hid her blushing face on the breast of the superb and intoxicated young man. He fell upon the bench and she beside him. They had no words more. The stars were beginning to gleam. How did it come to pass that their lips met? How comes it to pass that the birds sing, that snow melts, that the rose unfolds, that may expands, that the dawn grows white beyond the black trees of the shivering crest of the hills? A kiss and that was all. Both started and gazed into the darkness with sparkling eyes. They felt neither the cool night nor the cold stone nor the damp earth nor the wet grass. They had looked at each other and their hearts were full of thoughts. They had clasped hands unconsciously. She did not ask him. She did not even wonder how he had entered there and how he had made his way into the garden. It seemed so simple to her that he should be there. From time to time, Marius's knee touched Cosette's knee and both shivered. At intervals, Cosette stammered a word. Her soul fluttered on her lips like a drop of dew on a flower. Little by little, they began to talk to each other. A fusion followed silence, which is fullness. The night was serene and splendid overhead. These two beings, pure as spirits, told each other everything. Their dreams, their intoxications, their ecstasies, their chimeras, their weaknesses, how they had adored each other from afar, how they had longed for each other, their despair when they had ceased to see each other. They confided to each other in an ideal intimacy, which nothing could augment, their most secret and most mysterious thoughts. They related to each other with candid faith in their illusions. All that love, youth, and the remains of childhood which still lingered about them, suggested to their minds. Their two hearts poured themselves out into each other in such wise that at the expiration of a quarter of an hour, it was the young men who had the young girl's soul and the young girl who had the young man's soul. Each became permeated with the other. They were enchanted with each other. They dazzled each other. When they had finished, when they had told each other everything, she laid her head on his shoulder and asked him, What is your name? My name is Marius, said he. And yours? My name is Cosette. End of Book 5, Chapter 6 Chapter 1 of Book 6 of Les Miserables, Volume 4 by Victor Hugo This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org Recording by May Lowe Les Miserables, Volume 4 by Victor Hugo Translated by Isabelle Florence Hapgood Book 6, Little Gavrosch Chapter 1, The Malicious Playfulness of the Wind Since 1823, when the tavern of Montfermets was on its way to Shipwreck and was being gradually engulfed, not in the abyss of bankruptcy, but in the cesspool of petty debts, the Thanadiere pair had had two other children. Both males. That made five. Two girls and three boys. Madame Thanadiere had got rid of the last two, while they were still young and very small, with remarkable luck. Got rid of is the word. There was but a mere fragment of nature in that woman, a phenomenon, by the way, of which there is more than one example extant. Like the Maréchal de la Motudancourt, the Thanadiere was a mother to her daughters only. There, her maternity ended, her hatred of the human race began with her own sons. In the direction of her sons, her evil disposition was uncompromising, and her heart had a lugubrious wall in that quarter. As the reader has seen, she detested the eldest, she cursed the other two. Why? Because. The most terrible of motives, the most unanswerable of retorts. Because. I have no need of a litter of squalling brats, said this mother. Let us explain how the Thanadiere's had succeeded in getting rid of their last two children, and even in drawing profit from the operation. The woman Manion, who was mentioned a few pages further back, was the same one who had succeeded in making old Guylaine-en-Mong support the two children which she had had. She lived on the Quay de Celestine, at the corner of this ancient street of the Petit Musque, which afforded her the opportunity of changing her evil repute into good odor. The reader will remember the great epidemic of Krupp, which ravaged the river districts of the Sain and Paris thirty-five years ago, and of which science took advantage to make experiments on a grand scale as to the efficacy of inhalations of alum, so beneficially replaced at the present day, by the external tincture of iodine. During this epidemic, the Manion lost both her boys, who were still very young, one in the morning, the other in the evening of the same day. This was a blow. These children were precious to their mother. They represented eighty francs a month. These eighty francs were punctually paid in the name of Monsieur Guylaine-en-Mong, by collector of his rents, Monsieur Barich, a retired tip-staff in the Rue des Radicesiles. The children dead, the income was at an end. The Manion sought an expedient. In that dark freemasonry of evil, of which she formed a part, everything is known, all secrets are kept, and all lend mutual aid. Manion needed two children, the Thanadiers had two. The same sex, the same age. A good arrangement for the one, a good investment for the other. The little Thanadiers became little Manions. Manion quitted the Cueil de la Célestine, and went to live in the Rue-Cloche-Pers. In Paris, the identity which binds an individual to himself is broken between one street and another. The registry office, being in no way warned, raised no objections, and the substitution was effected in the most simple manner in the world. Only the Thanadiers extracted for this loan of her children ten francs a month, which Manion promised to pay, and which she actually did pay. It is unnecessary to add that Monsieur Guylain-en-Mont continued to perform his compact. He came to see the children every six months. He did not perceive the change. Monsieur, Manion said to him, How much they resemble you! Thanadiers, to whom avatars were easy, seized this occasion to become gendres. His two daughters and Gavrache had hardly had time to discover that they had two little brothers. When a certain degree of misery is reached, one is overpowered with a sort of spectral indifference, and one regards human beings as though they were spectres. Your nearest relations are often no more for you, than vague shadowy forms barely outlined against a nebulous background of life and easily confounded again with the invisible. On the evening of the day when she handed over her two little ones to Manion, with express intention of renouncing them forever, the Thanadiers had felt, or had appeared to feel, a scruple. She said to her husband, But this is abandoning our children. Thanadiers, masterful and flammatic, quarterised the scruple with this saying. Jean-Jacques Rousseau did even better. From scruples, the mother proceeded to uneasiness. But what if the police were to annoy us? Tell me, monsieur Thanadiers, is what we have done permissible? Thanadiers replied, Everything is permissible. No one will see anything but true blue in it. Besides, no one has any interest in looking closely after children who have not a sue. Manion was a sort of fashionable woman in the sphere of crime. She was careful about her toilet. She shared her lodgings, which were furnished in an affected and wretched style, with a clever, gallicised English thief. This English woman, who had become a naturalised Parisienne, recommended by very wealthy relations, intimately connected with the medals in the library, and mademoiselle Mars diamonds, became celebrated later on in judicial accounts. She was called Mamzelle Miss. The two little creatures who had fallen to Manion had no reason to complain of their lot. Recommended by the 80 francs, they were well cared for, as is everything from which profit is derived. They were neither badly clothed, nor badly fed. They were treated almost like little gentlemen, better by their false mother than by their real one. Manion played the lady, and talked no thieves slang in their presence. Thus passed several years. Then Adièd augured well from the fact. One day, he chanced to say to Manion as she handed him his monthly stipend of ten francs. The father must give them some education. All at once, these two poor children, who had, up to that time, been protected tolerably well, even by their evil fate. Were abruptly hurled into life and forced to begin it for themselves. A wholesale arrest of malfactors, like that in the Gendret Garrett, necessarily complicated by investigations and subsequent incarcerations, is a veritable disaster for that hideous and occult counter-society which pursues its existence beneath public society. An adventure of this description entails all sorts of catastrophes in that somber world. The Thanadier catastrophe involved the catastrophe of Manion. One day, a short time after Manion had handed to Epenine the note relating to the Rue Plumeil, a sudden raid was made by the police in the Rue Clochpels. Manion was seized, as was also Mamzelle Miss, and all the inhabitants of the house, which was of a suspicious character, were gathered into the net. While this was going on, the two little boys were playing in the backyard and saw nothing of the raid. When they tried to enter the house again, they found the door fastened and the house empty. A cobbler opposite called them to him and delivered to them a paper which their mother had left for them. On this paper there was an address, Monsieur Barge, collector of rents, Rue de la Roie de Cécile, number eight. The proprietor of the stall said to them, You cannot live here any longer. Go there, it is nearby, the first street on the left. Ask your way from this paper. The children set out, the elder leading the younger, and holding in his hand the paper which was to guide them. It was cold, and his benarmed little fingers could not close very firmly, and they did not keep a very good hold on the paper. At the corner of the Rue Clochpels a gust of wind tore it from him, and as night was falling the child was not able to find it again. They began to wander aimlessly through the streets.