 Chapter 5 and 6 of Book 3 of Les Miserables, Volume 5 by Victor Hugo. Chapter 5 in the case of sand, as in that of woman, there is a fineness which is treacherous. He felt that he was entering the water, and that he no longer had a pavement under his feet, but only mud. It sometimes happens that on certain shores of Bretagne or Scotland, a man, either a traveller or a fisherman, while walking at low tide on the beach, far from shore, suddenly notices that for several minutes past, he has been walking with some difficulty. The beach underfoot is like pitch. His soles stick fast to it. It is no longer sand, it is bird-lime. The strand is perfectly dry, but at every step that he takes, as soon as the foot is raised, the print is filled with water. The eye, however, has perceived no change. The immense beach is smooth and tranquil. All the sand has the same aspect. Nothing distinguishes the soil that is solid from that which is not solid. The joyous little cloud of sand lice continues to leap tumultuously under the feet of the passer-by. The man pursues his way. He walks on, turns towards the land, endeavors to approach the shore. He is not uneasy, uneasy about what? Only he is conscious that the heaviness of his feet seems to be increasing at every step that he takes. All at once he sinks in. He sinks in two or three inches. Decidedly, he is not on the right road. He halts to get his bearings. Suddenly he glances at his feet. His feet have disappeared. The sand has covered them. He draws his feet out of the sand. He tries to retrace his steps. He turns back. He sinks in more deeply than before. The sand is up to his ankles. He tears himself free from it and flings himself to the left. The sand reaches to mid-leg. He flings himself to the right. The sand comes up to his knees. Then, with indescribable terror, he recognizes the fact that he is caught in a quick sand, and that he has beneath him that frightful medium in which neither man can walk nor fish can swim. He flings away his burden if he have one. He lightens himself, like a ship in distress. It is too late. The sand is above his knees. He shouts. He waves his hat or his handkerchief. The sand continually gains on him. If the beach is deserted, if the land is too far away, if the bank of sand is too ill-famed, there is no hero in the neighborhood. All is over. He is condemned to be engulfed. He is condemned to that terrible interment, long, infallible, implacable. Which it is impossible to either a retard or hasten, which lasts for hours, which will not come to an end, which seizes you erect, free, in the flush of hell, which drags you down by the feet, which at every effort that you attempt, at every shout that you utter, draws you a little lower, which has the air of punishing you for your resistance by a redoubled grasp, which forces a man to return slowly to earth, while leaving him time to survey the horizon, the trees, the verdant country, the smoke of the villages on the plain, the sails of the ships on the sea, the birds which fly and sing, the sun and the sky. This engulfment is the sub-hoker, which assumes a tide, and which mounts from the depth of the earth towards a living man. Each minute is an inexorable layer out of the dead. The wretched man tries to sit down, to lie down, to climb. Every movement that he makes buries him deeper. He straightens himself up. He sinks. He feels that he is being swallowed up. He shrieks, implores, cries to the clouds, wrings his hands, grows desperate, behold him in the sound. Up to his belly, the sound reaches to his breast. He is only a bust now. He uplifts his hands, utters furious groans, clenches his nails on the beach, tries to cling fast to that ashes, supports himself on his elbows in order to raise himself from that soft sheath, and sobs frantically. The sound mounts higher. The sound has reached his shoulders. The sound reaches to his throat. Only his face is visible now. His mouth cries aloud. The sound fills it. Silence. His eyes still gaze forth. The sound closes them. Night. Then his brow decreases. A little hair quivers above the sound. A hand projects, pierces the surface of the beach, waves, and disappears. Sinister obliteration of a man. Sometimes a rider is engulfed with his horse. Sometimes the carter is swallowed up with his cart. All founders in that strand. It is shipwreck elsewhere than in the water. It is the earth drowning a man. The earth, permeated with the ocean, becomes a pitfall. It presents itself in the guise of a plane, and it yawns like a wave. The abyss is subject to these treacheries. This melancholy fate, always possible on certain sea beaches, was also possible 30 years ago in the sewers of Paris. Before the important works undertaken in 1833, the subterranean drain of Paris was subject to these sudden slides. The water filtered into certain subjacent strata, which were particularly friable. The footway, which was of flagstones, as in the ancient sewers, or of cement on concrete, as in the new galleries, having no longer an underpinning, gave way. A fold in a flooring of this sort means a crack, means crumbling. The framework crumbled away for a certain length. This crevice, the hiatus of a gulf of mire, was called a fonti in the special tongue. What is a fonti? It is the quicksands of the seashore, suddenly encountered under the surface of the earth. It is the beach of Monseil-Michel in a sewer. The soaked soil is in a stage of fusion, as it were. All its molecules are in suspension, in soft medium. It is not earth, and it is not water. The depth is sometimes very great. Nothing can be more formidable than such an encounter. If the water predominates, death is prompt. The man is swallowed up. If earth predominates, death is slow. Can anyone picture to himself such a death? If being swallowed by the earth is terrible on the seashore, what is it in a cesspool? Instead of the open air, the broad daylight, the clear horizon, those vast sounds, those free clouds whence rains life, instead of those barks described in the distance, of that hope under all sorts of forms, of probable passers-by, of succor possible up to the very last moment. Instead of all this, deafness, blindness, a black vault, the inside of a tomb already prepared, death in the mire beneath a cover, slow suffocation by filth, a stone box where as fixia opens its claw in the mire and clutches you by the throat, fetedness mingled with the death-rattle, slime instead of the strand, sulfuretted hydrogen in place of the hurricane, dung in place of the ocean, and to shout, to gnash one's teeth, and to writhe, and to struggle, and to agonize with that enormous city which knows nothing of it all over one's head, inexpressible as the horror of dying thus, death sometimes redeems his atrocity by a certain terrible dignity. On the funeral pile, in shipwreck, one can be great. In the flames, as in the foam, a superb attitude is possible. One there becomes transfigured, as one perishes. But not here. Death is filthy. It is humiliating to expire. The supreme floating visions are abject. Mud is synonymous with shame. It is petty, ugly, infamous. To die in a butt of malvoisie, like Clarence, is permissible. In the ditch of a scavenger, like Escobleau, is horrible. To struggle therein is hideous, at the same time that one is going through the death-agony one is floundering about. There are shadows enough for hell, and mire enough to render it nothing but a slew, and the dying man knows not whether he is on the point of becoming a specter or a frog. Where else the sepulcher is sinister? Here it is deformed. The depth of the fonti varied, as well as their length and their density, according to the more or less bad quality of the subsoil. Sometimes a fonti was three or four feet deep, sometimes eight or ten. Sometimes the bottom was unfathomable. Here the mire was almost solid, there almost liquid. In the lumière fonti, it would have taken a man a day to disappear, while he would have been devoured in five minutes by the Philippeaux slew. The mire bears up more or less, according to its density, a child can escape where a man will perish. The first law of safety is to get rid of every sort of load. Every sewer-man who felt the ground giving way beneath him began by flinging away his sack of tools or his back-basket or his hod. The fonti were due to different causes, the friability of the soil, some landslip at a death beyond the reach of men, the violent summer rains, the incessant flooding of winter, long drizzling showers. Sometimes the weight of the surrounding houses on a marley or sandy soil forced out the vaults of the subterranean galleries and caused them to bend aside, or a chance that a flooring vault burst and spilled under this crushing thrust. In this manner, the heaping up of the Parthenon obliterated a century ago, a portion of the vaults of Saint-Jean-Vierve Hill. When a sewer was broken in under the pressure of the houses, the mischief was sometimes betrayed in the street above by a sort of space, like the teeth of a saw, between the paving stones. This crevice was developed in an undulating line throughout the entire length of the cracked vault, and then, the evil being visible, the remedy could be promptly applied. It also frequently happened that the interior ravages were not revealed by any external scar, and in that case, woe to the sewermen. When they entered without precaution into the sewer, they were liable to be lost. Some registers make mention of several scavengers who were buried in Fontille in this manner. They gave many names. Among others, that of the sewermen who was swallowed up in a quagmire under the manhole of the rue Carême-Prenant, a certain Blaise-Poutrin. This Blaise-Poutrin was the brother of Nicolas Poutrin, who was the last grave digger of the cemetery called the Charnier des Anonsans. In 1785, the epoch when that cemetery expired. There was also that young and charming Vicom Descoublos, of whom we have just spoken, one of the heroes of the Siege of Lérida, where they delivered the assault in silk stocking, with violins at their head. Descoublos, surprised one night at his cousins, the duchess de Sourdis, was drowned in a quagmire of the Bautréie-sur, in which he had taken refuge in order to escape from the duke. The dame de Sourdis, when informed of his death, demanded her smelling bottle and forgot to weep through sniffing at her salts. In such cases there is no love which holds fast. The sewer extinguishes it. Hero refuses to wash the body of Leander. He stops her nose in the presence of Pyramus and says, Phew! Chapter 6 The Fontee Jean Valjean found himself in the presence of a fontee. This sort of quagmire was common at that period in the subsoil of the Champs-Elysées, difficult to handle in the hydraulic works, and a bad preservative of the subterranean constructions on account of its excessive fluidity. This fluidity exceeds even the inconsistency of the sands on the Cartier Saint-Georges, which could only be conquered by a stone construction on a concrete foundation, and the clay strata infected with gas of the Cartier des Martirs, which are so liquid that the only way in which a passage was effected under the gallery des Martirs was by means of a cast-iron pipe, when, in 1836, the old stone sewer beneath the Faubourg Saint-Honor, in which we now see Jean Valjean, was demolished for the purpose of reconstructing it. The quicksand, which forms the subsoil of the Champs-Elysées as far as the Seine, now presented such an obstacle that the operation lasted nearly six months to the great clamour of the dwellers on the Riverside, particularly those who had hotels and carriages. The work was more than unhealthy. It was dangerous. It was true that they had four months and a half of rain and three floods of descent. The fontille which Jean Valjean had encountered was caused by the downpour of the preceding day. The pavement, badly sustained by the subjacent sand, had given way and had produced a stoppage of the water. Infiltration had taken place. A slip had followed. The dislocated bottom had sunk into the ooze. To what extent? Impossible to say. The obscurity was more dense there than elsewhere. It was a pit of mire in a cavern of night. Jean Valjean felt the pavement vanishing beneath his feet. He entered this slime. There was water on the surface, slime at the bottom. He must pass it. To retrace his steps was impossible. Marius was dying and Jean Valjean exhausted. Besides, where was he to go? Jean Valjean advanced. Moreover, the pit seemed for the first few steps not to be very deep, but in proportion as he advanced his feet plunged deeper. Soon he had the slime up to his calves and water above his knees. He walked on, raising Marius in his arms, as far above the water as he could. The mire now reached to his knees and the water to his waist. He could no longer retreat. This mud, dense enough for one man, could not, obviously, uphold too. Marius and Jean Valjean would have stood a chance of extricating themselves singly. Jean Valjean continued to advance, supporting the dying man, who was, perhaps, a corpse. The water came up to his armpits. He felt that he was sinking. It was only with difficulty that he could move in the depth of the ooze which he had now reached. The density, which was his support, was also an obstacle. He still held Marius on high, and with an unheard of expenditure of force he advanced still, but he was sinking. He had only his head above the water now, and his two arms holding up Marius. In old paintings of the deluge there is a mother holding her child thus. He sank still deeper. He turned his face to the rear to escape the water, and in order that he might be able to breathe, anyone who had seen him in that gloom would have thought that what he beheld was a mask floating on the shadows. He caught a faint glimpse above him of the drooping head and livid face of Marius. He made a desperate effort and launched his foot forward. His foot struck something solid, a point of support. It was high time. He straightened himself up and rooted himself upon that point of support with a sort of fury. This produced upon him the effect of the first step in a staircase leading back to life. The point of support, thus encountered in the mire at the supreme moment, was the beginning of the other watershed of the pavement, which had bent, but had not given way, and which had curved under the water like a plank and in a single piece. Well-built pavements form a vault, and possess this sort of firmness. This fragment of the vaulting, partly submerged, but solid, was a veritable inclined plain, and, once on this plain, he was safe. Jean Valjean mounted this inclined plain and reached the other side of the quagmire. As he emerged from the water he came in contact with a stone and fell upon his knees. He reflected that this was but just, and he remained there for some time, with his soul absorbed in words addressed to God. He rose to his feet, shivering, chilled, foul-smelling, bowed beneath the dying men whom he was dragging after him, all dripping with slime, and his soul filled with a strange light. CHAPTER VIII OF BOOK 3 OF LEMI ZERAB, VOLUME V, 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 Catherine. LEMI ZERAB, VOLUME V, BY VICTOR HUGO. Translated by Isabelle Florence Hapgood. Book III. Jean Valjean. CHAPTER VII. One sometimes runs aground when one fancies that one is disembarking. He set out on his way once more. However, although he had not left his life in the fontille, he seemed to have left his strength behind him there. That supreme effort had exhausted him. His lassitude was now such that he was obliged to pause for breath every three or four steps and lean against the wall. Once he was forced to seat himself on the banquette in order to alter Marius' position, and he thought that he should have to remain there. But if his vigor was dead, his energy was not. He rose again. He walked on desperately, almost fast, proceeded thus for a hundred paces, almost without drawing breath, and suddenly came in contact with the wall. He had reached an elbow of his sewer, and, arriving at the turn with head bent down, he had struck the wall. He raised his eyes, and at the extremity of the vault, very, very far away in front of him, he perceived a light. This time it was not that terrible light. It was good, white light. It was daylight. Jean Verjean saw the outlet. A damned soul, who, in the midst of the furnace, should suddenly perceive the outlet of Gehenna, would experience what Jean Verjean felt. He would fly wildly with the stumps of its burned wings towards that radiant portal. Jean Verjean was no longer conscious of fatigue. He no longer felt Marius' weight. He found his legs once more of steel. He ran rather than walked. As he approached, the outlet became more and more distinctly defined. It was a pointed arch, lower than the vault, which gradually narrowed, and narrower than the gallery, which closed in as the vault grew lower. The tunnel ended like the interior of Nefunnel, a faulty construction, imitated from the wickets of penitentiaries, logical in a prison, illogical in a sewer, in which has since been corrected. Jean Verjean reached the outlet. There he halted. It certainly was the outlet, but he could not get out. The arch was closed by a heavy grating, and the grating, which, to all appearance, rarely swung on its rusty hinges, was clamped to its stone jam by a thick lock, which, red with rust, seemed like an enormous brick. The keyhole could be seen, and the robust latch deeply sunk in the iron staple. The door was plainly double-locked. It was one of those prison locks, which old Paris was so fond of lavishing. Beyond the grating was the open air, the river, the daylight, the shore, very narrow, but sufficient for escape. The distant keys, Paris, that gulf in which one so easily hides oneself, the broad horizon, liberty. On the right, downstream, the bridge of Gena was discernible. On the left, upstream, the bridge of the Invalide. The place would have been a propitious one in which to await the night and to escape. It was one of the most solitary points in Paris. The shore which faces the Grand Caillou. Flies were entering and emerging through the bars of the grating. It might have been half-past eight o'clock in the evening. The day was declining. Jean Valjean laid Marius down along the wall on the dry portion of the vaulting. Then he went to the grating and clenched both fists round the bars. The shock which he gave it was frenzied, but it did not move. The grating did not stir. Jean Valjean seized the bars one after the other in the hope that he might be able to tear away the least solid and to make of it a lever wherewith to raise the door or break the lock. Not a bar stirred. The teeth of a tiger are not more firmly fixed in their sockets. No lever, no prying possible. The obstacle was invincible. There was no means of opening the gate. Must he then stop there? What was he to do? What was to become of him? He had not the strength to retrace his steps, to recommence the journey which he had already taken. Besides, how was he to again traverse that quagmire once he had only extricated himself as by a miracle? And after the quagmire, was there not the police patrol which assuredly could not be twice avoided? And then wither was he to go. What direction should he pursue? To follow the incline would not conduct him to his goal. If he were to reach another outlet, he would find it obstructed by a plug or a grating. Every outlet was undoubtedly closed in that manner. Chance had unsealed the grating through which he had entered, but it was evident that all the other sewer mouths were barred. He had only succeeded in escaping into a prison. All was over. Everything that Jean Valjean had done was useless. Exhaustion had ended in failure. They were both caught in the immense and gloomy web of death, and Jean Valjean felt the terrible spider running along those black strands and quivering in the shadows. He turned his back to the grating and fell upon the pavement, hurled to earth rather than seated, close to Marius, who still made no movement and with his head bent between his knees. This was the last drop of anguish. Of what was he thinking during this profound depression? Neither of himself nor of Marius. He was thinking of Cozette. Chapter eight, The Torn Coat Tale. In the midst of this prostration, a hand was laid on his shoulder and a low voice said to him, half-shares. Some person in that gloom, nothing so closely resembles a dream as despair. Jean Valjean fought that he was dreaming. He had heard no footsteps. Was it possible? He raised his eyes. A man stood before him. This man was clad in a blouse. His feet were bare. He held his shoes in his left hand. He had evidently removed them in order to reach Jean Valjean without allowing his steps to be heard. Jean Valjean did not hesitate for an instant. Unexpected as was this encounter, this man was known to him. The man was Tenardier. Although awakened, so to speak, with a start, Jean Valjean accustomed to alarms and steel to unforeseen shocks that must be promptly parried, instantly regained possession of his presence of mind. Moreover, the situation could not be made worse. A certain degree of stress is no longer capable of a crescendo and Tenardier himself could add nothing to this blackness of this night. A momentary pause ensued. Tenardier, raising his right hand to a level with his forehead, formed with it a shade. Then he brought his eyelashes together. By screwing up his eyes, a motion which, in connection with a slight contraction of the mouth, characterizes the sagacious attention of a man who is endeavouring to recognise another man. He did not succeed. Jean Valjean, as we have just stated, had his back turned to light and he was, moreover, so disfigured, so bemired, so bleeding that he would have been unrecognisable in full noon day. On the contrary, illuminated by the light from the grating, a cellar light, it is true, livid, yet precise in its lividness. Tenardier, as the energetic popular metaphor expresses it, immediately leapt into Jean Valjean's eyes. This inequality of conditions suffice to assure some advantage to Jean Valjean in that mysterious duel which was on the point of beginning between the two situations and the two men. The encounter took place between Jean Valjean veiled and Tenardier unmasked. Jean Valjean immediately perceived that Tenardier did not recognise him. They surveyed each other for a moment in that half-gloom as though taking each other's measure, Tenardier was the first to break the silence. How are you going to manage to get out? Jean Valjean made no reply. Tenardier continued, it's impossible to pick the lock of that gate, but still you must get out of this. That is true, said Jean Valjean. Well, half shares then. What do you mean by that? You have killed that man, that's all right, I have the key. Tenardier pointed to Marius. He went on. I don't know you, but I want to help you. You must be a friend. Jean Valjean began to comprehend. Tenardier took him for an assassin. Tenardier resumed, listen, Conrad, you didn't kill that man without looking to see what he had in his pockets. Give me my half, I'll open the door for you. And half drawing from beneath his tattered blouse, a huge key, he added. Do you want to see how a key to liberty is made? Look here. Jean Valjean remained stupid. The expression belongs to the elder Cornet, to such a degree that he doubted whether what he beheld was real. It was Providence appearing in horrible guise, and his good angels springing from the earth, in the form of Tenardier. Tenardier thrust his fist into a large pocket concealed under his blouse, drove a rope, and offered it to Jean Valjean. Hold on, said he, I'll give you the rope to boot. What is the rope for? You will need a stone also, but you can find one outside. There's a heap of rubbish. What am I to do with the stone? Idiot, you'll want to sling that stiff into the river, you'll need a stone and a rope, otherwise it would float on the water. Jean Valjean took the rope. There is no one who does not occasionally accept in this mechanical way. Tenardier snapped his fingers, as though an idea had suddenly occurred to him. Ah, see here, comrade, how did you contrive to get out of that slew, yonder? I haven't dared to risk myself in it. Phew, you don't smell good. After a pause, he added, I'm asking you questions, but you're perfectly right not to answer. It's an apprenticeship against that cursed quarter of an hour before the examining magistrate. And then, when you don't talk at all, you run no risk of talking too loud. That's no matter, as I can't see your face. And as I don't know your name, you are wrong in supposing that I don't know who you are and what you want. I twig. You've broken up that gentleman a bit. Now you want to talk him away somewhere. The river, that great hider of folly, is what you want. I'll get you out of your scrape. Helping a good fellow in a pinch is what suits me to a hair. While expressing his approval of Jean Valjean's silence, he endeavored to force him to talk. He jostled his shoulder in an attempt to catch a sight of his profile, and he exclaimed, without, however, raising his tone, apropos of that quagmire, you're a hearty animal. Why didn't you toss the man in there? Jean Valjean preserved silence. Tenardier resumed, pushing the rag which served him as a cravat to the level of his Adam's apple, a gesture which completes the capable air of a serious man. After all, you acted wisely. The workmen, when they come tomorrow to stop up that hole, would certainly have found the stiff abandon there, and it might have been possible, thread by thread, straw by straw, to pick up the scent and reach you. Someone has passed through the sewer. Who, where did he get out? Was he seen to come out? The police are full of cleverness. The sewer is treacherous and tells tales of you. Such a find is a rarity. It attracts attention. Very few people make use of the sewers for their affairs, while the river belongs to everybody. The river is the true grave. At the end of a month, they fish up your man in the nets at St. Cloud. Well, what does one care for that? It's carrion. Who killed that man? Paris. And justice makes no inquiries. You have done well. The more loquacious Tenardier became, the more mute was Jean Valjean. Again, Tenardier shook him by the shoulder. Now let's settle this business. Let's go shares. You have seen my key. Show me your money. Tenardier was haggard, fierce, suspicious, rather menacing, yet amicable. There was one singular circumstance. Tenardier's manners were not simple. He had not the air of being holy at his ease. While affecting an air of mystery, he spoke low. From time to time, he laid his finger on his mouth and muttered, hush. It was difficult to divine why. There was no one there except themselves. Jean Valjean thought that other ruffians might possibly be concealed in some nook, not very far off, and that Tenardier did not care to share with them. Tenardier resumed. Let's settle up. How much did the stiff have in his bags? Jean Valjean surged his pockets. It was his habit, as the reader will remember, to always have some money about him. The mournful life of expedience to which he had been condemned imposed this as a law upon him. On this occasion, however, he had been caught unprepared. When donning his uniform of a national guardsman on the preceding evening, he had forgotten, dolefully absorbed as he was, to take his pocketbook. He had only some small change in his fob. He turned out his pocket, all soaked with ooze, and spread out on the banquette of the vault one Louis d'Or, two five franc pieces, and five or six large sous. Tenardier thrust out his lower lip with the significant twist of the neck. You knocked him over cheap, said he. He set to feeling the pockets of Jean Valjean and Marius with the greatest familiarity. Jean Valjean, who was chiefly concerned in keeping his back to the light, let him have his way. While handling Marius' coat, Tenardier with the skill of a pickpocket, and without being noticed by Jean Valjean, tore off a strip which he concealed under his blouse, probably thinking that this morsel of stuff might serve, later on, to identify the assassinated man and the assassin. However, he found no more than the 30 francs. That's true, said he. Both of you together have no more than that. And for getting his motto half shares, he took all. He hesitated a little over the large sous. After due reflection, he took them also, muttering. Never mind, you cut folks' throats too cheap altogether. That done, he once more drew the big key from under his blouse. Now, my friend, you must leave. It's like the fare here you pay when you go out. You have paid, now clear out. And he began to laugh. Had he, in lending to this stranger the aid of his key, and in making some other man than himself emerge from that portal, the pure and disinterested intention of rescuing an assassin, we may be permitted to doubt this. Tenardier helped Jean Valjean to replace Marius on his shoulders. Then he betook himself to the grating on tiptoe and barefooted, making Jean Valjean a sign to follow him, looked out, laid his finger on his mouth, and remained for several seconds as though in suspense. His inspection finished. He placed the key in the lock. The bolt slipped back and the gate swung open. It neither grated nor squeaked. It moved very softly. It was obvious that this gate and those hinges carefully oiled were in the habit of opening more frequently than was supposed. The softness was suspicious. It hinted at furtive comings and goings, silent entrances and exits of nocturnal men, and the wolf-like tread of crime. The sewer was evidently an accomplice of some mysterious band. This taciturn grating was a receiver of stolen goods. Tenardier opened the gate a little way, allowing just sufficient space for Jean Valjean to pass out, closed the grating again, gave the key a double turn in the lock, and plunged back into the darkness without making any more noise than a breath. He seemed to walk with the velvet paws of a tiger. A moment later, that hideous providence had retreated into the invisibility, Jean Valjean found himself in the open air. End of book three, chapter seven and eight, recording by Catherine, Hong Kong, March 2010. Chapter nine of book three of Les Miserables volume five 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 Brian Reed. Les Miserables volume five by Victor Hugo. Translated by Isabelle Florence Hapgood. Book three, Mud But the Soul. Chapter nine, Marius produces on someone who is a judge of the matter, the effect of being dead. He allowed Marius to slide down upon the shore. They were in open air. The miasmas, darkness, horror lay behind him. The pure, healthful, living, joyous air that was easy to breathe inundated him. Everywhere around him rained silence, but that charming silence, when the sun has set in an unclouded, azure sky. Twilight had descended, night was drawing on, the great deliverer, the friend of all those who need a mantle of darkness that they may escape from an anguish. The sky presented itself in all directions like an enormous calm. The river flowed to his feet with the sound of a kiss. The aerial dialogue of the nests bidding each other good night in the elms of the Champs Ely was audible. A few stars, daintily piercing the pale blue of the zenith and visible to reverie alone, formed imperceptible little splendors amid the immensity. Evening was unfolding over the head of Jean Valjean, all the sweetness of the infinite. It was that exquisite and undecided hour which says neither yes nor no. Night was already sufficiently advanced to render it possible to lose oneself at a little distance, and yet there was sufficient daylight to permit of recognition at close quarters. For several seconds, Jean Valjean was irresistibly overcome by that August and caressing serenity. Such moments of oblivion do come to men, suffering refrains from harassing the unhappy wretch. Everything is eclipsed in the thoughts, peace broods over the dreamer like night, and beneath the twilight which beams, and in imitation of the sky which is illuminated, the soul becomes studded with stars. Jean Valjean could not refrain from contemplating that vast clear shadow which rested over him. Thoughtfully he bathed in the sea of ecstasy and prayer in the majestic silence of the eternal heavens. Then he bent down swiftly to Marius as though the sentiment of duty had returned to him, and dipping up water in the hollow of his hand, he gently sprinkled a few drops on the latter's face. Marius's eyelids did not open, but his half-open mouth still breathed. Jean Valjean was on the point of dipping his hand in the river once more, when all at once he experienced an indescribable embarrassment such as a person feels when there is someone behind him whom he does not see. We have already alluded to this impression with which everyone is familiar. He turned round. Someone was in fact behind him, as there had been a short while before. A man of lofty stature, enveloped in a long coat, with folded arms and bearing in his right fist a bludgeon of which the leaden head was visible, stood a few paces in the rear of the spot where Jean Valjean was crouching over Marius. With the aid of the darkness, it seemed a sort of apparition. An ordinary man would have been alarmed because of the twilight, a thoughtful man on account of the bludgeon. Jean Valjean recognized Javert. The reader has defined no doubt that the Nardier's pursuer was no other than Javert. Javert, after his unlooked-for escape from the barricade, had betaken himself to the prefecture of police, had rendered a verbal account to the prefect in person in a brief audience, had then immediately gone on duty again, which implied, the note the reader will recollect which had been captured on his person, a certain surveillance of the shore on the right bank of the scene near the Champollis, which had for some time passed, aroused the attention of the police. There he had caught sight of the Nardier and had followed him. The reader knows the rest. Thus it would be easily understood that that grading, so obligingly opened to Jean Valjean, was a bit of cleverness on the Nardier's part. The Nardier intuitively felt that Javert was still there. The man spied upon has a scent which never deceives him. It was necessary to fling a bone to that sleuthhound. An assassin, what a godsend! Such an opportunity must never be allowed to slip. The Nardier, by putting Jean Valjean outside in his stead, provided a prey for the police, forced them to relinquish his scent, made them forget him in a bigger adventure, repaid Javert for his waiting, which always flatters the spy, earned 30 francs, and counted with certainty so far as he himself was concerned on escaping with the aid of this diversion. Jean Valjean had fallen from one danger upon another. These two encounters, this falling one after the other, from the Nardier upon Javert, was a rude shock. Javert did not recognize Jean Valjean, who, as we have stated, no longer looked like himself. He did not unfold his arms. He made sure of his bludgeon in his fist by an imperceptible movement and said in a curt, calm voice, who are you? I, who is I? Jean Valjean, Javert thrust his bludgeon between his teeth, bent his knees, inclined his body, laid his two powerful hands on the shoulders of Jean Valjean, which were clamped within them as in a couple of vices, scrutinized him and recognized him. Their faces almost touched. Javert's look was terrible. Jean Valjean remained inert beneath Javert's grasp, like a lion submitting to the claws of a lynx. Inspector Javert, he said, you have me in your power. Moreover, I have regarded myself as your prisoner ever since this morning. I did not give you my address with any intention of escaping from you. Take me, only grant me one favor. Javert did not appear to hear him. He kept his eyes riveted on Jean Valjean. His chin being contracted thrust his lips upward toward his nose, a sign of savage reverie. At length, he released Jean Valjean, straightened himself stiffly up without bending, grasped his bludgeon again firmly, and as though in a dream, he murmured rather than uttered this question, what are you doing here? And you is this man. He still abstained from addressing Jean Valjean as thou. Jean Valjean replied, and the sound of his voice appeared to rouse Javert. It is with regard to him that I desire to speak to you. Dispose of me as you see fit, but first help me to carry him home. That is all I ask of you. Javert's face contracted, as was always the case when anyone seemed to think him capable of making a concession. Nevertheless, he did not say no. Again he bent over, drew from his pocket a handkerchief which he moistened in the water, and with which he then wiped Marius' bloodstained brow. This man was at the barricade, said he in a low voice, as though speaking to himself is the one they call Marius. A spy of the first quality who had observed everything, listened to everything, and taken in everything, even when he thought that he was to die, who had played the spy even in his agony and two with his elbows leaning on the first step of the sepulcher had taken notes. He seized Marius' hand and felt his pulse. He is wounded, said Jean-Varjean. He is a dead man, said Javert. Jean-Varjean replied, no, not yet. So you have brought him thither from the barricade, remarked Javert. His preoccupation must indeed have been very profound for him not to insist on this alarming rescue through the sewer, and for him not to even notice Jean-Varjean's silence after his question. Jean-Varjean, on his side, seemed to have but one thought. He resumed, he lives in Marais, rue des filles de cavère with his grandfather. I do not recollect his name. Jean-Varjean fumbled in Marius' pocket, pulled out his pocketbook, opened it at the page which Marius had penciled, and held it out to Javert. There was still sufficient light to admit of reading. Besides this, Javert possessed in his eye the feline phosphorescence of nightbirds. He deciphered the few lines written by Marius and muttered, Guillermont, rue des filles de cavère, number six. Then he exclaimed, Quarchman! The reader will remember that the Hackney coach was waiting in case of need. Javert kept Marius' pocketbook. A moment later, the carriage, which had descended by the inclined plane of the watering place, was on the shore. Marius was laid upon the back seat, and Javert seated himself on the front seat beside Jean-Varjean. The door slammed, and the carriage drove rapidly away, ascending the quays in the direction of the bestial. They quitted the quays and entered the streets. The coachman, a black form on his box, whipped up his thin horses. A glacial silence reigned in the carriage. Marius, motionless, with his body resting in the corner and his head drooping on his breast, his arms hanging, his legs stiff, seemed to be awaiting only a coffin. Jean-Varjean seemed made of shadow, and Javert of stone, and in that vehicle full of night, whose interior, every time that had passed in front of a street lamp, appeared to be turned lividly one, as by an intermittent flash of lightning, chance had united and seemed to be bringing face to face the three forms of tragic immobility, the corpse, the specter, and the statue. End of book three, chapter nine, recording by Brian Reed. You can find more information on Brian Reed at his website, R-E-I-D, the number two, M-E dot webs dot com. That's readtomee dot webs dot com. Chapter ten of book three of Les Miserables, volume five 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 Brian Reed. Les Miserables, volume five by Victor Hugo. Translated by Isabelle Florence Hapgood. Book three, Mud But the Soul. Chapter ten, Return of the Son, who was prodigal of his life. At every jolt over the pavement, a drop of blood trickled from Marius's hair. Night had fully closed in when the carriage arrived at number six, Rue de Fille de Caverne. Javert was the first to alight. He made sure with one glance of the number on the carriage gate and raising the heavy knocker of beaten iron, embellished in the old style with a male goat and a satire confronting each other, he gave a violent peel. The gate opened a little way and Javert gave it a push. The porter half made his appearance yawning, vaguely awake and with a candle in his hand. Everyone in the house was asleep. People go to bed be times in the marais, especially on days when there is a revolt. This good old quarter terrified at the revolution takes refuge in slumber as children, when they hear the bugaboo coming, hide their heads hastily under their coverlet. In the meantime, Jean Valjean and the coachman had taken Marius out of the carriage, Jean Valjean supporting him under the armpits and the coachman under the knees. As they thus bore Marius, Jean Valjean slipped his hand under the latter's clothes, which were broadly rent, felt his breast and assured himself that his heart was still beating. It was even beating a little less feebly as though the movement of the carriage had brought about a certain fresh access of life. Javert addressed the porter in its own befitting the government and the presence of the porter of a factious person. Saint-Parsen, whose name is Zélemonde? Here, where do you want to see him? His son is brought back. His son, said the porter stupidly, is dead. Jean Valjean, who soiled and tattered, stood behind Javert and whom the porter was surveying with some horror, made a sign to him with his head that this was not so. The porter did not appear to understand either Javert's words or Jean Valjean's sign. Javert continued, He went to the barricade and there he is. To the barricade? ejaculated the porter. He has got to himself killed. Go, wake in his father. The porter did not stir. Go along with you! repeated Javert and he added, There will be a funeral here tomorrow. For Javert, the usual incidents of the public highway were categorically classed, which is the beginning of foresight and surveillance, and each contingency had its own compartment. All possible facts were arranged in drawers as it were once they emerged on occasion in variable quantities, in the street, uproar, revolt, carnival, and funeral. The porter contented himself with waking Basque, Basque-woke Nicolette, Nicolette roused great aunt Gélenmonde. As for the grandfather, they let him sleep on, thinking that he would hear about the matter early enough in any case. Marius was carried up to the first floor, without anyone in the other parts of the house being aware of the fact, and deposited on an old sofa in Monsieur Gélenmonde's anti-chamber. And while Basque went in search of a physician, and while Nicolette opened the linen presses, Jean Valjean felt Javert touch him on the shoulder. He understood and descended the stairs, having behind him the step of Javert who was following him. The porter watched them take their departure as he had watched their arrival in terrified somnolence. They entered the carriage once more and the coachman mounted his box. Inspector Javert, says Jean, grant me yet another favor. What is it? Demanded Javert roughly. Let me go home for one instant. Then you shall do whatever you like with me. Javert remained silent for a few moments, with his chin drawn back into the color of his great coat, and he lowered the glass and front. Javert, said he, rue de Léon Marme, number seven. End of book three, chapter 10, recording by Brian Reed. You can find more information on Brian Reed at his website, R-E-I-D, the number two M-E dot webs dot com. That's readtomey dot webs dot com. Chapter 11 of book three of Les Miserables, volume five 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 dot org. Recording by Brian Reed. Les Miserables, volume five by Victor Hugo. Translated by Isabelle Florence Hapgood. Book three, Mud but the Soul. Chapter 11, Concussion in the Absolute. They did not open their lips again during the whole space of their ride. What does Jean Valjean want? To finish what he had begun, to warn Cosette, to tell her where Marius was, to give her, possibly, some other useful information to take, if he could, certain final measures. As for himself, so far as he was personally concerned, all was over. He had been seized by Javert and had not resisted. Any other man than himself in a like situation would, perhaps, have had some vague thoughts connected with the rope which the Nardier had given him, and of the bars of the first cell that he should enter. But let us impress it upon the reader, after the bishop there had existed in Jean Valjean a profound hesitation in the presence of any violence even when directed against himself. Suicide, that mysterious act of violence against the unknown which may contain in a measure the death of the soul, was impossible to Jean Valjean. At the entrance to the Rue de Lyon arm, the carriage halted, the way being too narrow to admit of the entrance of vehicles. Javert and Jean Valjean alighted. The coachman humbly represented to Monsieur l'Inspecteur that the Utrecht velvet of his carriage was all spotted with the blood of the assassinated man and with Meyer from the assassin. That is the way he understood it. He added that an indemnity was due him. At the same time, drawing his certificate book from his pocket, he begged the inspector to have the goodness to write him a bit of an attestation. Javert thrust aside the book which the coachman held out to him and said, How much do you want, including your time of waiting in the drive? He comes to seven hours in the quarter, replied the man, and my velvet was perfectly new. Eighty francs, Monsieur l'Inspecteur. Javert drew four Napoleons from his pocket and dismissed the carriage. Jean Valjean fancied that it was Javert's intention to conduct him on foot to the post of the Blanc-Manteau or to the post of the archives, both of which are close at hand. They entered the street. It was deserted as usual. Javert followed Jean Valjean. They reached number seven. Jean Valjean knocked. The door opened. It is well, said Javert. Garbsters. He added with a strange expression and as though he were exerting an effort in speaking in this manner, I will wait for you here. Jean Valjean looked at Javert. This mode of procedure was but little in accord with Javert's habits. However, he could not be greatly surprised that Javert should now have a sort of haughty confidence in him. The confidence of the cat which grants the mouse liberty to the length of its claws, seeing that Jean Valjean had made up his mind to surrender himself and to make an end of it. He pushed open the door, entered the house, called to the porter who was in bed and who had pulled the cord from his couch. It is I! And ascended the stairs. On arriving at the first floor, he paused. All sorrowful roads have their stations. The window on the landing place which was a sash window was open. As in many ancient houses, the staircase got its light from without and had a view on the street. The street lantern situated directly opposite cast some light on the stairs and thus affected some economy in illumination. Jean Valjean, either for the sake of getting the air or mechanically thrust his head out of this window, he leaned out over the street. It is short and the lantern lighted it from end to end. Jean Valjean was overwhelmed with amazement. There was no longer anyone there. Javert had taken his departure. End of Book 3, Chapter 11. Recording by Brian Reed. You can find more information on Brian Reed at his website, REID, the number two, ME.webs.com. That's readtomee.webs.com. Chapter 12 of Book 3 of Les Miserables, Volume 5 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 Brian Reed. Les Miserables, Volume 5 by Victor Hugo, translated by Isabelle Florence Hapkut. Book 3, Mud but the Soil. Chapter 12, The Grandfather. Bosque and the porter had carried Marius into the drawing-room, as he lay still stretched out motionless on the sofa upon which he had been placed on his arrival. The doctor who had been sent for had hastened thither. Aunt Gyllenmont had risen. Aunt Gyllenmont went and came in a fright, wringing her hands and incapable of doing anything and was saying, Evans, is it possible? At time she added, everything will be covered with blood. When her first horror had passed, a certain philosophy of the situation penetrated her mind and took form in the exclamation, it was bound to end this way. She did not go so far as I told you so, which is customary on this sort of occasion. At the physician's orders, a camp bed had been prepared beside the sofa. The doctor examined Marius, and after having found that his pulse was still beating, that the wounded man had no very deep wound on his breast, and that the blood on the corners of his lips proceeded from his nostrils. He had him placed flat on the bed without a pillow, with his head on the same level as his body, and even a trifle lower, and with his bust bare in order to facilitate respiration. Mademoiselle Gélemond, on perceiving that they were undressing Marius, withdrew, she set herself to telling her beads in her own chamber. The trunk had not suffered any internal injury. A bullet, deadened by the pocketbook, had turned aside and made the tore of his ribs with a hideous laceration, which was of no great depth and consequently not dangerous. The long underground journey had completed the dislocation of the broken collarbone, and the disorder there was serious. The arms had been slashed with saber-cuts. Not a single scar disfigured his face, but his head was fairly covered with cuts. What would be the result of these wounds on the head? Would they stop short at the hair cuticle, or would they attack the brain? As yet, this could not be decided. A grave symptom was that they had caused a swoon, and that people did not always recover from such swoons. Moreover, the wounded man had been exhausted by hemorrhage. From the waist down, the barricade had protected the lower part of the body from injury. Bosque and Nicolette tore linen and prepared bandages. Nicolette sewed them, Bosque rolled them. As Lint was lacking, the doctor, for the time being, arrested the bleeding with layers of wadding. Beside the bed, three candles burned on a table where the case of surgical instruments lay spread out. The doctor bathed Marius' face and hair with cold water. A full pail was reddened in an instant. The porter, candle in hand, lighted them. The doctor seemed to be pondering sadly. From time to time, he made a negative sign with his head, as though replying to some question which he had inwardly addressed to himself. A bad sign for the sick man are these mysterious dialogues of the doctor with himself. At the moment when the doctor was wiping Marius' face and lightly touching his still-closed eyes with his finger, a door opened at the end of the drawing-room, and a long, pallid figure made its appearance. This was the grandfather. The revolt had, for the past two days, deeply agitated, enraged and engrossed the mind of Monsieur Jelenmon. He had not been able to sleep on the previous night, and he had been in a fever all day long. In the evening he had gone to bed very early, recommending that everything in the house should be well barred, and he had fallen into a dose through sheer fatigue. Old men sleep lightly. Monsieur Jelenmon's chamber had joined the drawing-room, and in spite of all the precautions that had been taken, the noise had awakened him. Surprised at the rift of light which he saw under his door, he had risen from his bed, and had groped his way thither. He stood astonished on the threshold. One hand on the handle of the half-open door, with his head bent a little forward and quivering, his body wrapped in a white dressing gown, which was straight and his destitute of folds as a winding sheet, and he had the air of a phantom who was gazing into a tomb. He saw the bed, and on the mattress that young man, bleeding, white with a wax in whiteness, with closed eyes and gaping mouth, and pallid lips stripped to the waist, slashed all over with crimson wounds, motionless and brilliantly lighted up. The grandfather trembled from head to foot as powerfully as ossified limbs can tremble. His eyes, whose corneae were yellow on account of his great age, were veiled in a sort of vitreous glitter. His whole face assumed in an instant the earthy angles of a skull. His arms fell pendant as though a spring had broken, and his amazement was portrayed by the outspreading of the fingers of his two aged hands, which quivered all over. His knees formed an angle in front, allowing, through the opening in his dressing gown, a view of his poor bare legs, all bristling with white hairs, and he murmured, Marius, sir, said Basque, Monsieur has just been brought back. He went to Zipparra, kid, and is dead, cried the old man in terrible voice. Ah, the rascal! Then a sort of sepulchre transformation straightened up this centenarian as erect as a young man. Sir, said he, you are the doctor, begin by telling me one thing, is dead, is he not? The doctor, who was at the highest pitch of anxiety, remained silent. Monsieur de la Monde wrung his hands with an outburst of terrible laughter. He is dead, he is dead, he is dead, he has got himself killed on the part of, out of hatred for me, I'll eat him to spite me. Ah, your blood sugar! This is how it feels to me, me so clear of my life, yes, dead. He went to the window, threw it open, wide as if he were stifling, and directly for the darkness, he began to talk into the street, to the night, pierced, severed, exterminated, slashed, to pieces. Just look at that, this is really, you know, as I was waiting for him, that I had his room arranged, that I'd blessed the head of my bed, his fortune taken when he was a little child. He knew well that he had only to come back, that I had been recalling him for years, and that I remained by my fire sign, with my hands on my knees, not knowing what to do, and that I was mad over it. He knew well that you had but to return it, to say, yes, I, and you would have been the master of the house, and that I should have obeyed you, and that you could have done, but whatever you pleased was shown, dumb-skill of a grandfather, you knew that well, and you said, no, he's a royalist, I will not go, and you went to the barricades, and you got yourself killed out of malice, to avenge yourselves for what I said, about Monsieur Le Duc de Paris. It is he who has gone to bed, and then sleep tranquilly, is dead, as this is my awakening. The doctor, who was beginning to be uneasy in both quarters, quitted Marius for a moment, went to Monsieur Gilermonde, and took his arm. The grandfather turned round, gazed at him with eyes that seemed exaggerated in size, and bloodshed, and said to him calmly, I thank you, sir. I am composed. I am a man. I witnessed the death of Louis XVI. I knew I had to bear events. One thing is terrible, and that is to think that it is your newspapers which do us in mischief. We all have scribblers, charters, lawyers, orators, tribunes, discussions, progress, enlightenment, the rights of man, the liberty of zebras, and this is the way that your church would be brought home to you. Ah, Marius, it is a permeable, guilty death before me, a barricade, ah, the scamp. Doctor, you live in this quarter, I believe. Oh, I know you well. I see your cabriolet past my window. I am going to tell you, you are wrong to think that I am angry. One does not fly into her edge against the dead plant. That would be stupid. This is a child you may have read. I was already old when he was very young. He played in the two-year-he's garden with his little shovel and his little chair. And in order that the inspectors may not crumble, I stabbed up the horse that he made into the earth with his shovel with my cane. One day, he proclaimed, down with Louis XVIII, an off event. It was no fault of mine. He was all rosy and blond. His mother is dead. Have you ever noticed that all little children are blond? Why is this so? He is the son of one of those brigands of the lure, but children are innocent of their father's crimes. I remember when he was no higher than that. He could not manage to pronounce his deeds, yet they were talking that was so sweet and interesting that you would have thought it was a bird-chopping. I remember that once, in front of the Hercules Farnese, people from the circuitry admired him and marveled at him. He was so handsome. He was a child. He had such a juicy and picturesque. I talked in a deep voice, and I frightened him with my cane. But he knew very well that it was only to make him laugh. In the morning, when he entered my room, I grumbled, but he was like the sunlight to me. I was the same. One cannot defend oneself against those brats. They take root of you. They hold you fast. They never let you go again. The truth is that there never was a cupid like that child. Now, what can you say for your love yet? Your Benjamin Constance, and your T.I.E.C.U.R. deco-exiles with kiddie. This cannot be allowed to pass in his fashion. He approached Mars, who still lay livid and motionless and to whom the physician had returned and began once more to wring his hands. The old man's pallid lips moved as though mechanically and permitted the passage of words that were barely audible, like breaths in the death agony. Uh, what is that? A cupid. A wretch. A septum breast. Reproaches in the low voice of an agonizing man, addressed to a corpse, little by little, as it is always indispensable that internal eruptions should come to the light. The sequence of words returned, but the grandfather appeared no longer to have the strength to utter them. His voice was so weak and extinct that it seemed to come from the other side of an abyss. It is also safe to be. I am going to die to you that I am and to think that there is not a husband in Paris who had not been delighted to make this wretch happy. A scape who instead of amusing himself and enjoying life, went off to fight and kid himself, shot down like a brute. And for whom? Why? For the Republic? Instead of going to dance at the chamele as it is duty of young folks to do. What's the use of me twenty years old? So the Republic, a cursed, pretty foul. Poor muscles. We get fine boys, too. God. He is dead. I will make two finers and there's the same carriage gate. So you have got yourself a wretch like this for the sake of General Lamarck's handsome face. What had that General Lamarck done to you? Slasher. A chatterbox. To get oneself cute for a dead man that isn't enough to drive anyone mad. Just think of it. At twenty. And with him so much as turning his head to see whether he was not leaving something behind him. That's the way poor, good, old fellows are forced to die alone nowadays. Perish in your corner hour. After all, so much is better. That is what I was hoping for. This kill me on the spot. I am too old. I am a hundred years old. I am a hundred thousand years old. I ought by rights to have been dead long ago. This blow puts an end to it. Sir, all is over with happiness. But it's good if making him in hell and money and all that parcel of drugs. You are wasting your trouble, you fool of a doctor. Come, he's dead. Completely dead. And you're all about it. I am dead myself too. He hasn't done things by half. Yes, this age isn't for me. Eat for me, sir. Well, I think of you, of your ideas, of your systems, of your masters, of your oracles, of your doctors, of your scheme classes of writers, of your irascible philosophers, and of also revolutions which for the last 60 years have been frightening the flocks of cross-incentualities. But you, for a beatiness in getting yourself killed like this, I should not even grieve over your death. Do you understand, you assassin? At that moment, Marius slowly opened his eyes, and his glance, still dimmed by the lethargic wonder, rested on Mishir Shillermon. Marius! Cried the old man. Marius, my little Marius, my son, may well be of son, you have been your eyes, you kiss upon me, you are alive, thanks! And he fell fainting. End of book three, chapter 12, recording by Brian Reed. You may find other readings by Brian Reed by visiting his website at H-T-T-P, colon, backslash, backslash, readtomee.com, R-E-I-D, the number two, M-E, dot com. End of Les Miserables, volume five, of five. Chapter one of book four of Les Miserables, volume five 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 Clark Bell. They, Miserables, volume five by Victor Hugo. Translated by Isabelle Florence Hapgood. Book fourth, Javert derailed. Chapter one, Javert. Javert passed slowly down the rue de l'arm. He walked with drooping head for the first time in his life, and likewise for the first time in his life with his hands behind his back. Up to that day, Javert had borrowed from Napoleon's attitudes only that which is expressive of resolution, with arms folded across the chest, that which is expressive of uncertainty with the hands behind his back had been unknown to him. Now a change had taken place. His whole person, slow and somber, was stamped with anxiety. He plunged into the silent streets. Nevertheless, he followed one given direction. He took the shortest cut to the sane, reached the cave as arms, skirted the cave, passed the grave, and halted at some distance from the post of the Place du Châtelet, at the angle of the Pointe Notre-Dame. There, between the Notre-Dame and the Pointe a change on the one hand, and the quai de la magisterie, and the quai au fleur on the other, the sane formed sort of a square lake traversed by a rapid. This point of the sane is dreaded by mariners. Nothing is more dangerous than this rapid, hemmed in at that epoch, and irritated by the piles of the mill on the bridge now demolished. The two bridges, situated thus close together, augment the peril. The water hurries, informerable wise, through the arches. It rolls in vast and terrible waves. It accumulates and piles up there. The flood attacks the piles of the bridges as though in an effort to plug them up with great liquid ropes. Men who fall in there never reappear. The best of swimmers are drowned there. Javert leaned both elbows on the parapet, his chin resting in both hands, and while his nails were mechanically twined in the abundance of his whiskers, he meditated. A novelty, a revolution, a catastrophe had just taken place in the depths of his being, and he had something upon which to examine himself. Javert was undergoing horrible suffering. For several hours Javert had ceased to be simple. He was troubled. That brain so limpid in its blindness had lost its transparency that crystal was clouded. Javert felt duty divided within his conscience, and he could not conceal the fact from himself. When he had so unexpectedly encountered Jean Verjean on the banks of the Seine, there had been in him something of the wolf which regains his grip on his prey and of the dog who finds his master again. He beheld before him two paths, both equally straight, but he beheld two, and that terrified him, him who had never in all his life known more than one straight line, and the poignant anguish lay in this, that the two paths were contrary to each other, one of these straight lines excluded the other. Which of the two was the true one? His situation was indescribable. To owe his life to a malifactor, to accept that debt and to repay it, to be in spite of himself on a level with a fugitive from justice, and to repay his service with another service, to allow it to be said to him, go, and to say to the latter in his turn, be free, to sacrifice to personal motives duty, that general obligation, and to be conscious in those personal motives of something that was also general, and perchance superior, to betray society in order to remain true to his conscience, that all these absurdities should be realized and should accumulate upon him, that was what overwhelmed him. One thing had amazed him. This was that Jean Valjean should have done him a favor, and one thing petrified him, that he, Javert, should have done Jean Valjean a favor. Where did he stand? He sought to comprehend his position and could no longer find his bearings. What was he to do now? To deliver up Jean Valjean was bad. To leave Jean Valjean at liberty was bad. In the first case, the man of authority fell lower than the man of the galleys. In the second, a convict rose above the law and set his foot upon it. In both cases, dishonor for him, Javert, there was disgrace in any resolution at which he might arrive. Destiny had some extremities which rise perpendicularly from the impossible, and beyond which life is no longer anything but a precipice. Javert had reached one of those extremities. One of his anxieties consisted in being constrained to think. The very violence of all these conflicting emotions forced him to it, thought was something to which he was unused and which was peculiarly painful. In thought there always exists a certain amount of internal rebellion, and it irritated him to have that within him. Thought on any subject whatever, outside of the restricted circle of his functions, would have been for him in any case useless and a fatigue. Thoughts on the day which had just passed was a torture. Nevertheless it was indispensable that he should take a look into his conscience after Shet's shocks and render to himself an account of himself. What he had just done made him shudder. He, Javert, had seen fit to decide contrary to all the regulations of the police, contrary to the whole social and judicial organization, contrary to the entire code upon a release. This had suited him. He had substituted his own affairs for the affairs of the public. Was not this unjustifiable? Every time that he brought himself face to face with this deed without a name which he had committed, he trembled from head to foot. Upon what should he decide? One sole resource remained to him, to return in all haste to the Rue de la Marme and commit Jean-Vargeant to prison. It was clear that that was what he ought to do. He could not. Something barred his way in that direction. Something? What? Is there in the world anything outside of the tribunals, executory censors, the police and the authorities? Javert was overwhelmed. A galley slave, sacred, a convict who could not be touched by the law and that the deed of Javert. Was it not a fearful thing that Javert and Jean-Vargeant, the man made to preside with vigor, the man made to submit that these two men who were both the things of the law should have come to such a pass that both of them had set themselves above the law. What then? Such enormities were to happen and no one was to be punished. Jean-Vargeant, stronger than the whole social order, was to remain at liberty and he, Javert, was to go on eating the government's bread. His reverie gradually became terrible. He might, a thwart this reverie, have also reproached himself on the subject of that insurgent who had been taken to the Rue des Filles du Cavalier, but he never even thought of that. The lesser fault was lost in the greater. Besides, that insurgent was obviously a dead man and legally, death puts an end to pursuit. Jean-Vargeant was the load which weighed upon his spirit. Jean-Vargeant disconcerted him. All the axioms which had served him as points of support all his life long had crumbled away in the presence of this man. Jean-Vargeant's generosity towards him, Javert, crushed him. Other facts which he now recalled and which he had formerly treated as lies and folly now recurred to him as realities. Monsieur Madeleine reappeared behind Jean-Vargeant and the two figures were superposed in such fashion that they now formed but one which was venerable. Javert felt that something terrible was penetrating his soul. Admiration for a convict, respect for a galley slave, is that a possible thing? He shuddered at it, yet could not escape from it. In vain did he struggle. He was reduced to confess in his inmost heart the sublimity of that wretch. This was odious. A benevolent malefactor, merciful, gentle, helpful, clement, a convict returning good for evil, giving back pardon for hatred, preferring pity to vengeance, preferring to ruin himself rather than ruin his enemy, saving him who had smitten him, kneeling on the heights of virtue, more nearly akin to an angel than to a man. Javert was constrained to admit to himself that this monster existed. Things could not go on in this manner. Certainly, and we insist upon this point, he had not yielded without resistance to that monster, to that infamous angel, to that hideous hero who enraged almost as much as he amazed him. Twenty times as he sat in that carriage face to face with Jean Valjean, the legal tiger had roared within him. A score of times he had been tempted to fling himself upon Jean Valjean, to seize him and devour him, that is to say, to arrest him. What more simple, in fact, to cry out at the first post that they passed, here is a fugitive from justice who has broken his ban. To summon the John Domes and say to them, this man is yours. Then to go off, leaving that condemned man there, to ignore the rest and not to meddle further in the matter. This man is forever a prisoner of the law. The law may do with him what it will. What could be more just? Javert had said all this to himself. He had wished to pass beyond, to act, to apprehend the man. And then, as at present, he had not been able to do it. And every time that his arm had been raised convulsively toward Jean Valjean's collar, his hand had fallen back again, as beneath an enormous weight. And in the depths of his thought he had heard a voice, a strange voice crying to him. It is well, deliver up your savior, then have the basin of Pontius Pilate brought, and wash your claws. Then his reflections reverted to himself, and beside Jean Valjean glorified, he beheld himself, Javert degraded. A convict was his benefactor. But then who had permitted that man to leave him alive? He had the right to be killed in that barricade. He should have asserted that right. It would have been better to summon the other insurgents to his sucker against Jean Valjean, to get himself shot by force. His supreme anguish was the loss of certainty. He felt that he had been uprooted. The code was no longer anything more than a stump in his hand. He had to deal with scruples of an unknown species. There had taken place within him a sentimental revelation, entirely distinct from legal affirmation, his only standard of measurement hitherto. To remain in his former uprightness did not suffice. A whole order of unexpected facts had cropped up and subjugated him. A whole new world was dawning on his soul. Kindness accepted and repaid. Devotion, mercy, indulgence, violences committed by pity on austerity, respect for persons, no more definitive condemnation, no more conviction, the possibility of a tear in the eye of the law. No one knows what justice, according to God, running the inverse sense to justice, according to men. He perceived amid the shadows the terrible rising of an unknown moral son. It horrified him, dazzled him, an owl forced to the gaze of an eagle. He said to himself that it was true that there were exceptional cases that authority might be put out of countenance, that the rule might be inadequate in the presence of a fact, that everything could not be framed within the text of the code, that the unforeseen compelled obedience, that the virtue of a convict might set a snare for the virtue of the functionary, that destiny did indulge in such ambushes, and he reflected with despair that he himself had not even been fortified against a surprise. He was forced to acknowledge that goodness did exist. This convict had been good, and he himself, unprecedented circumstance, had just been good also. So he was becoming depraved. He found that he was a coward. He conceived a horror of himself. Chávez's ideal was not to be human, to be grand, to be sublime. It was to be irreproachable. Now he had just failed in this. How had he come to such a pass? How had all this happened? He could not have told himself. He clasped his head in both hands, but in spite of all that he could do, he could not contrive to explain it to himself. He had certainly always entertained the intention of restoring Jean Valjean to the law, of which Jean Valjean was the captive, and of which he, Chávez, was the slave. Not for a single instant, while he held him in his grasp, had he confessed to himself that he entertained the idea of releasing him. It was in some sort without his consciousness that his hand had relaxed and had let him go free. All sorts of interrogation points flashed before his eyes. He put questions to himself and made replies to himself, and his replies frightened him. He asked himself, what has the convict done, that desperate fellow whom I pursued even to persecution, and who has had me under his foot, and who could have avenged himself, and who owed it both to his ranker and to his safety, in leaving me my life, in showing mercy upon me, his duty? No, something more, and I in showing mercy upon him in my turn, what have I done? My duty? No, something more. So there is something beyond duty? Here he took fright. His balance became disjointed. One of the scales fell into the abyss. The other rose heavenward, and Chávez was no less terrified by the one which was on high than the one which was below. Without being in the least in the world what is called Voltarian, or a philosopher, or incredulous being, on the contrary, respectful by instinct toward the established church, he knew it only as an august fragment of the social whole. Order was his dogma, and sufficed for him. Ever since he had attained to man's estate, and the rank of a functionary, he had centered nearly all his religion in the police, being, and here we employ words without the least irony, and in their most serious acceptation, being, as we have said, a spy as other men or priests. He had a superior, Mr. Ghiske, up to that day he had never dreamed of that other superior, God. This new chief, God, he became unexpectedly conscious of, and he felt embarrassed by him. This unforeseen presence threw him off his bearings. He did not know what to do with this superior. He who was not ignorant of the fact that the subordinate is bound always to bow, that he must not disobey, nor find fault, nor discuss, and that in the presence of a superior who amazes him too greatly, the inferior has no other resource than that of handing in his resignation. But how was he to set about handing in his resignation to God? However things might stand, and it was to this point that he reverted constantly. One fact dominated everything else for him, and that was that he had just committed a terrible infraction of the law. He had just shut his eyes on escaped convict who had broken his ban. He had just set a galley slave at large. He had just robbed the laws of a man who belonged to them. That was what he had done. He no longer understood himself. The very reasons for his action escaped him. Only their vertigo was left with him. Up to that moment he had lived with that blind faith which gloomy probity engenders. This faith had quitted him. This probity had deserted him. All that he believed in melted away. The truths which he did not wish to recognize were besieging him inexorably. Henceforth he must be a different man. He was suffering from the strange pains of a conscience abruptly operated on for the cataract. He saw that which it was repugnant to him to behold. He felt himself emptied, useless, put out of joint with his past life, turned out dissolving. Authority was dead within him. He had no longer any reason for existing. A terrible situation to be touched. To be granite and to doubt, to be the statue of chastisement cast in one piece in the mold of the law, and suddenly to become aware of the fact that one cherishes beneath one's breast of bronze, something absurd and disobedient which almost resembles a heart. To come to the pass of returning good for good, although one has said to oneself upon that day that the good is evil, to be the watchdog and to lick the intruder's hand, to be ice and melt, to be the pincers and to turn into a hand, to suddenly feel one's fingers opening, to relax one's grip. What a terrible thing! The man projectile no longer acquainted with his root and retreating. To be obliged to confess this to oneself, infallibility is not infallible. There may exist error in the dogma. All has not been said when a code speaks. Society is not perfect. Authority is complicated with vacillation. A crack is possible in the immutable. Tribunals are but men. The law may err. Tribunals may make a mistake. To behold a rift in the immense blue pain of the firmament. That which was passing in Javert was the fampo of erectilinear conscience, the derailment of a soul, the crushing of a probity which had been irresistibly launched in a straight line and was breaking against God. It certainly was singular that the stoker of order, that the engineer of authority, mounted on the blind iron horse, with his rigid road, could be unseated by a flash of light. That the immovable, the direct, the correct, the geometrical, the passive, the perfect could bend. That there should exist for the locomotive a road to Damascus. And always within man and refractory. He the true conscience to the false. A prohibition to the spark to die out. An order to the ray to remember the sun. An injunction to the soul to recognize the veritable absolute when confronted with the fictitious absolute. Humanity which cannot be lost. The human heart indestructible. That splendid phenomenon. The finest perhaps of all our interior marvels. Did Javert understand this? Did Javert penetrate it? Did Javert account for it to himself? Evidently he did not. But beneath the pressure of that incontestable incomprehensibility he felt his brain bursting. He was less the man transfigured than the victim of this prodigy. In all this he perceived only the tremendous difficulty of existence. It seemed to him that henceforth his respiration was repressed forever. He was not accustomed to having something unknown hanging over his head. Up to this point everything above him had been to his gaze merely a smooth, limpid and simple surface. There was nothing incomprehensible, nothing obscure, nothing that was not defined, regularly disposed, linked, precise, circumscribed, exact, limited, closed, fully provided for. Authority was a plain surface. There was no fall in it, no dizziness in its presence. Javert had never beheld the unknown except from below. The irregular, the unforeseen, the disordered opening of chaos, the possible slip over a precipice. This was the work of the lower regions, of rebels, of the wicked, of wretches. Now Javert threw himself back, and he was suddenly terrified by this unprecedented apparition, a gulf on high. What! One was dismantled from top to bottom. One was disconcerted, absolutely. In what could one trust? What which had been agreed upon was giving way. What! The defect in society's armor could be discovered by a magnanimous wretch. What! An honest servitor of the law could suddenly find himself caught between two crimes, the crime of allowing a man to escape, and the crime of arresting him? Everything was not settled in the orders given by the State to the Functionary. There might be blind alleys in duty. What! All this was real! Was it true that an ex-Ruffian, weighed down with convictions, could rise erect and end by being in the right? Was this credible? Were there cases in which the law should retire before transfigured crime, and stammer its excuses? Yes, that was the State of the case, and Javert saw it, and Javert had touched it, and not only could he not deny it, but he had taken part in it. These were realities. It was abominable that actual facts could reach such deformity. If facts did their duty, they would confine themselves to being proof of the law. Facts! It is God who sends them. Was anarchy then on the point of now descending from on high? Thus and in the exaggeration of anguish and the optical illusion of consternation, all that might have corrected and restrained this impression was effaced, and society and the human race and the universe were, henceforth, summed up to his eyes in one simple and terrible feature. Thus the penal laws, the thing judged, the force due to legislation, the decree of the sovereign courts, the magistracy, the government, repression, official cruelty, wisdom, legal infallibility, the principle of authority, all the dogmas on which rest political and civil security, sovereignty, justice, public truth, all this was rubbish, a shapeless mass, chaos. He himself, Javert, the spy of order, incorruptibility in the service of the police, the bulldog providence of society, equished and hurled to earth and erect at the summit of all that ruin a man with a green cap on his head and a halo round his brow. This was the astounding confusion to which he had come. This was the fearful vision which he bore within his soul. Was this to be endured? No. A violent state, if ever such existed, there were only two ways of escaping from it. One way was to go resolutely to Jean Valjean and restore to his cell the convict from the galleys. The other. Javert quitted the parapet, and with head erect this time, he took himself with a firm tread toward the station-house indicated by a lantern at one of the corners of the Place du Châtelet. On arriving there he saw through the window a sergeant of police, and he entered. The two men recognized each other by the way in which they opened the door of a station-house. Javert mentioned his name, showed his card to the sergeant, and seated himself at the table of the post on which a candle was burning. On a table lay a pen, a leadening stand, and paper, provided in the event of possible reports and the orders of the night patrols. This table, still completed by its straw-seated chair, is an institution. It exists in all police stations. It is invariably ornamented with a boxwood saucer filled with sawdust, and a wafer-box of cardboard filled with red wafers, and it forms the lowest stage of official style. It is there that the literature of the state has its beginning. Javert took a pen and a sheet of paper, and began to write. This is what he wrote. A few observations for the good of the service. In the first place I beg M. Le Profet to cast his eyes on this. Secondly, prisoners on arriving after examination take off their shoes and stand barefoot on the flagstones while they are being searched. Many of them cough on their return to prison. This entails hospital expenses. Thirdly, the mode of keeping track of a man with relays of police agents from distance to distance is good. But on important occasions it is requisite that at least two agents should never lose sight of each other, so that in case one agent should, for any cause, grow weak in his service, the other may supervise him and take his place. Fourthly, it is inexplicable why the special regulation of the prison of the Madelinets interdicts the prisoner from having a chair even by paying for it. Fifthly, in the Madelinets there are only two bars to the canteen, so that the canteen woman can touch the prisoners with her hand. Sixthly, the prisoners called barkers who summon the other prisoners to the parlor, force the prisoner to pay them to sue to call his name distinctly. This is a theft. Seventhly, for a broken thread, ten sue are withheld in the weaving shop. This is an abuse of the contractor since the cloth is none the worse for it. Eighthly, it is annoying for visitors to love force to be obliged to traverse the boy's court in order to reach the parlor of Saint-Marie-les-Gypses. Ninthly, it is a fact that any day gendarmes can be overheard relating in the courtyard of the prefecture the interrogations put by the magistrates to prisoners. For a gendarm who should be sworn to secrecy to repeat what he has heard in the examination room is a grave disorder. Tenthly, Madame Henry is an honest woman. Her canteen is very neat, but it is bad to have a woman keep the wicket to the mousetrap of the secret cells. This is unworthy of the conciergerie of a great civilization. Javert wrote these lines in his calmest and most correct charrography, not omitting a single comma and making the paper screech under his pen. Below the last line he signed, Javert, Inspector of the First Class, the Post of the Place du Châtelet, June 7, 1832, about one o'clock in the morning. Javert dried the fresh ink on the paper, folded it like a letter, sealed it, wrote on the back, note for the administration, left it on the table, and quitted the post. The glazed and grated door fell, too, behind him. Again he traversed the Place du Châtelet diagonally, regaining the quay and returning with automatic precision to the very point which he had abandoned a quarter of an hour previously, leaned on his elbows and found himself again in the same attitude on the same paving-stone of the parapet. He did not appear to have stirred. The darkness was complete. It was the sepulchral moment which follows midnight. A ceiling of clouds concealed the stars. Not a single light burned in the houses of the city. No one was passing. All of the streets and caves which could be seen were deserted. Notre-Dame and the towers of the courthouse seemed features of the night. A street lantern reddened the margin of the quay. The outlines of the bridges lay shapeless in the mist, one behind the other. Recent rains had swollen the river. The spot where Javert was leaning was, it will be remembered, situated precisely over the rapids of the Seine, perpendicularly above that formidable spiral of whirlpools, which loose and not themselves again like an endless screw. Javert bent his head and gazed. All was black. Nothing was to be distinguished. A sound of foam was audible, but the river could not be seen. At moments in that dizzy depth a gleam of light appeared and undulated vaguely, water possessing the power of taking the light. No one knows whence and converting it into a snake. The light vanished, and all became indistinct once more. Immensity seemed thrown open there. What lay below was not water, it was a gulf. The wall of the quay, abrupt, confused, mingled with the vapours, instantly concealed from sight, produced the effect of an escarpment of the infinite. Nothing was to be seen, but the hostile chill of the water and the stale odour of the wet stones could be felt. A fierce breath rose from this abyss, the flood of the river divined rather than perceived, the tragic whispering of the waves, the melancholy vastness of the arches of the bridge, the imaginable fall into that gloomy void, into all that shadow, was full of horror. Javert remained motionless for several minutes, gazing at this opening of shadow. He considered the invisible with a fixity that resembled attention. The water roared, all at once he took off his hat and placed it on the edge of the quay, a moment later a tall black figure, which a belated passer-by in the distance might have taken for a phantom, appeared erect upon the parapet of the quay, bent over toward the sain, then drew itself up again and fell straight down into the shadows. A dull splash followed, and the shadow alone was in the secret of the convulsions of that obscure form which had disappeared beneath the water. End of book fourth, chapter one, recording by Clark Bell, Tucson, Arizona.