 Chapter 14 of Book 1 of Les Misérables Vol. 2 by Victor Hugo. Les Misérables Vol. 2 by Victor Hugo. Translated by Isabelle Florence Hapgood. Book 1st Waterloo. Chapter 14 The Last Square. Several squares of the guard, motionless amid this stream of the defeat as rocks in running water, held their own until night. Night came, death also. They awaited that double shadow, and invincible allowed themselves to be enveloped therein. Each regiment, isolated from the rest and having no bond with the army now shattered in every part, died alone. They had taken up position for this final action, Salmon the Heights of Rossome, others on the plain of Mont-Saint-Jean. There, abandoned, vanquished, terrible, those gloomy squares endured their death-throws in formidable fashion. Olm, Vakram, Jena, Friedland, died with them. At twilight, towards nine o'clock in the evening, one of them was left at the foot of the plateau of Mont-Saint-Jean. In that fatal valley, at the foot of that declivity which the cuirassier had ascended, now inundated by the masses of the English, under the converging fires of the victorious hostile cavalry, under a frightful density of projectiles, this square fought on. It was commanded by an obscure officer named Combran. At each discharge, the square diminished and replied. It replied to the grapeshot with a fusillade continually contracting its four walls. The fugitives, pausing breathless for a moment in the distance, listened in the darkness to that gloomy and ever-decreasing thunder. When this legion had been reduced to a handful, when nothing was left of their flag but a rag, when their guns, the bullets all gone, were no longer anything but clubs. When the heap of corpses was larger than the group of survivors, there reigned among the conquerors around those men dying so sublimely, a sort of sacred terror, and the English artillery taking breath became silent. This furnished a sort of respite. These combatants had around them something in the nature of a swarm of spectres. Silhouettes of men on horseback, the black profiles of canon, the white sky viewed through wheels and gun carriages, the colossal death's head which the heroes saw constantly through the smoke in the depths of the battle, advanced upon them and gazed at them. Through the shades of twilight they could hear the pieces being loaded. The matches all lighted, like the eyes of tigers at night, formed a circle round their heads. All the linstocks of the English batteries approached the cannons, and then, with emotion, holding the supreme moment suspended above these men. An English general, Colville, according to some, Maitland, according to others, shouted to them, surrender brave Frenchman. Combran replied, blank. Editor's commentary, another edition of this book, has the word mairet in lieu of the blank above. End of book first, chapter 14, recording by Ruth Golding. Chapter 15 of book 1 of Les Misérables volume 2 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 Ruth Golding. Les Misérables volume 2 by Victor Hugo. Translated by Isabelle Florence Hapgood. Book first, Waterloo. Chapter 15, Combran. If any French reader objected to having his susceptibilities offended, one would have to refrain from repeating in his presence what is perhaps the finest reply that a Frenchman ever made. This would enjoin us from consigning something sublime to history. At our own risk and peril, let us violate this injunction. Now then, among those giants, there was one titan, Combran. To make that reply and then perish, what could be grander? For being willing to die is the same as to die, and it was not this man's fault if he survived after he was shot. The winner of the Battle of Waterloo was not Napoleon, who was put to flight, nor Wellington, giving way at four o'clock, in despair at five, nor Blushia, who took no part in the engagement. The winner of Waterloo was Combran. To thunder forth such a reply at the lightning flash that kills you is to conquer. Thus to answer the catastrophe, thus to speak to fate, to give this pedestal to the future lion, to hurl such a challenge to the midnight rainstorm, to the treacherous wall of Ugement, to the sunken road of Ouin, to Grouchy's Delay, to Blushia's arrival, to be irony itself in the tomb, to act so as to stand upright though fallen, to drown in two syllables the European coalition, to offer kings privies which the Caesars once knew, to make the lowest of words the most lofty by entwining with it the glory of France, insolently to end Waterloo with Mardi Gras, to finish Leonidas with Rabilet, to set the crown on this victory by a word impossible to speak, to lose the field and preserve history, to have the laugh on your side after such a carnage, this is immense. It was an insult such as a thunder cloud might hurl, it reaches the grandeur of Iscalus. Combran's reply produces the effect of a violent break, just like the breaking of a heart under a weight of scorn, just the overflow of agony bursting forth. Who conquered Wellington? No. Had it not been for Blushia he was lost, was it Blushia? No. If Wellington had not begun, Blushia could not have finished. This Combran, this man spending his last hour, this unknown soldier, this infinitesimal of war, realises that here is a falsehood, a falsehood in a catastrophe, and so doubly agonising. And at the moment when his rage is bursting forth because of it, he is offered this mockery, life. How could he restrain himself? Yonder are all the kings of Europe, the generals flushed with victory, the dubators darting thunderbolts. They have a hundred thousand victorious soldiers, and back of the hundred thousand a million. Their cannon stand with yawning mouths, the match is lighted. They grind down under their heels the imperial guards and the grand army. They have just crushed Napoleon and only Combran remains. Only this earthworm is left to protest, he will protest. Then he seeks for the appropriate word as one seeks for a sword, his mouth froths, and the froth is the word. In face of this mean and mighty victory, in face of this victory which counts none victorious, this desperate soldier stands erect. He grants its overwhelming immensity, but he establishes its triviality. And he does more than spit upon it. Born down by numbers, by superior force, by brute matter, he finds in his soul an expression, excrement. We repeat it, to use that word to do thus, to invent such an expression, is to be the conqueror. The spirit of mighty days at that portentous moment made its descent on that unknown man. Combran invents the word for Waterloo as Rougé invents the Marseillais under the visitation of a breath from on high. An emanation from the divine whirlwind leaps forth and comes sweeping over these men, and they shake, and one of them sings the song supreme and the other utters the frightful cry. This challenge of titanic scorn, Combran hurls not only at Europe, in the name of the Empire, that would be a trifle. He hurls it at the past, in the name of the Revolution. It is heard, and Combran is recognized as possessed by the ancient spirit of the Titans. Danton seems to be speaking, Claibor seems to be bellowing. At that word from Combran the English voice responded, Fire! The batteries flamed, the hill trembled, from all those brazen mouths belched a last terrible gush of grapeshot. A vast volume of smoke vaguely wiped in the light of the rising moon rolled out, and when the smoke dispersed there was no longer anything there. That formidable remnant had been annihilated. The guard was dead. The four walls of the living redoubt lay prone, and hardly was there discernible here and there even a quiver in the bodies. It was thus that the French legions, greater than the Roman legions, expired on Mont Saint-Jean. On the soil watered with rain and blood amid the gloomy grain, on the spot where nowadays Joseph, who drives the post-wagon from Nivelle, passes whistling and cheerfully whipping up his horse at four o'clock in the morning. CHAPTER 16 OF BOOK FIRST OF LES MISERABLE VOLUME II 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 Nadine Godboulet. LES MISERABLE VOLUME II BY VICTOR HUGO TRANSLATED BY ISABEL FLORENCE HABGOOD BOOK FIRST WATERLOO CHAPTER 16 QUOTE LIBRAS IN DUCE The battle of Waterloo is an enigma. It is as obscure to those who won it as to those who lost it. For Napoleon it was a panic. Blutcher sees nothing in it but fire. Wellington understands nothing in regard to it. Look at the reports. The built-ins are confused. The commentary is involved. Some stammer. Others lisp. Jarmini divides the battle of Waterloo into four moments. Muffling cuts it up into three changes. Charas alone, though we hold another judgment than he's on some points, ceased with his haughty glance the characteristic outlines of that catastrophe of human genius in conflict with divine chance. All the other historians suffer from being somewhat dazzled, and in this dazzled state they fumble about. It was a day of lightning brilliancy, in fact a crumbling of the military monarchy which, to the vast perfection of kings, drew all the kingdoms after it, the fall of force, the defeat of war. In this event, stamped with superhuman necessity, the part played by man amounts to nothing. If we take Waterloo from Wellington and Blutcher, do we thereby deprive England and Germany of anything? No, neither that illustrious England nor that August Germany enter into the problem of Waterloo. Thank heaven, nations are great independently of the lugubrious feats of the sword. Neither England nor Germany nor France is contained in a scabbard. At this epoch, when Waterloo is only a clashing of swords, above Blutcher, Germany has Schiller. Above Wellington, England has Byron. A vast down of ideas is the peculiarity of our century, and in that aurora, England and Germany have a magnificent radiance. They are majestic because they think. The elevation of level which they contribute to civilization is intrinsic with them. It proceeds from themselves and not from an accident. The aggrandizement which they have brought to the nineteenth century has not Waterloo as its source. It is only barbarious people who undergo rapid growth after a victory. That is the temporary vanity of Torrance swelled by a storm. Civilized people, especially in our day, are neither elevated nor abased by the good or bad fortune of a captain. Their specific gravity in the human species results from something more than a combat. Their honor, thank God, their dignity, their intelligence, their genius, honored numbers which those gamblers, heroes and conquerors can put in the lottery of battles. Often a battle is lost and progress is conquered. There is less glory and more liberty. The drum holds its peace. Reason takes the word. It is a game in which he who loses wins. Let us therefore speak of Waterloo conely from both sides. Let us render to chance that which is due to chance and to God that which is due to God. What is Waterloo? A victory? No. The winning number in the lottery. The coin, won by Europe, paid by France. It was not worthwhile to place a lie on there. Waterloo, moreover, is the strangest encounter in history. Napoleon and Wellington. They are not enemies. They are opposites. Never did God who is fond of antithesis make a more striking contrast, a more extraordinary comparison. On one side, precision, foresight, geometry, prudence, an assured retreat, reserve spared, with an obstinate coolness, an impertable method, strategy which takes advantage of the ground, tactics which preserve the equilibrium of battalions, carnage executed according to rule, war regulated, watch in hand, nothing voluntarily left to chance, the ancient classic courage, absolute regularity. On the other, intuition, divination, military oddity, superhuman instinct, a flaming glance, an indescribable something which gazes like an eagle and which strikes like the lightning, a prodigious art in disdainful impetiosity, all the mysteries of a profound soul associated with destiny, the stream, the plain, the forest, the hill, summoned, and in a manner forced to obey, the despot going even so far as to tyrannized over the field of battle. Faith in a star mingled with strategic science, elevating but perturbing it. Wellington was the brim of war, Napoleon was its Michelangelo, and on this occasion genius was vanquished by calculation. On both sides someone was awaited, it was the exact calculator who succeeded. Napoleon was waiting for grouchy, he did not come. Wellington expected butcher, he came. Wellington is classic war taking its revenge, but apart at his donning had encountered him in Italy and beaten him superbly. The old owl had fled before the young vulture. The old tactics had been not only struck as by lightning but disgraced. Who was that Corsican of six and twenty? What signified that splendid ignoramus who, with everything against him, nothing in his favour, without provisions, without ammunition, without cannon, without shoes, almost without an army, with a mere handful of men against masses, hurled himself on Europe combined, and absurdly won victories in the impossible? Wends had issued that forminating convict, who almost without taking breath, and with the same set of combatants in hand, pulverised one after the other, the five armies of the emperor of Germany, upsetting Beaulieu on Alvinci, Wormser on Beaulieu, Mellas on Wormser, Mac on Mellas? Who was this novice in war with the effrontery of a luminary? The academical military school excommunicated him, and as it lost its footing, hence the implacable rancour of the old Caesarism against the new, of the regular sword against the flaming sword, and of the ex-jacker against genius. On the eighteenth of June, 1815, that rancour had the last word, and beneath Lodi, Montebello, Montenote, Mantua, Arcola, it wrote Waterloo, a triumph of the Mediocris which is sweet to the majority. Destiny consented to this irony. In his decline, Napoleon found Wormser, the younger, again in front of him. In fact, to get Wormser, it sufficed to blanch the hair of Wellington. Waterloo is the battle of the First Order, won by a captain of the Second. That which must be admired in the battle of Waterloo is England, the English firmness, the English resolution, the English blood. The superb thing about England there, no offence to her, was herself. It was not her captain, it was her army. Wellington, oddly ungrateful, declares in the letter to Lord Bathurst that his army, the army which fought on the eighteenth of June, 1815, was a detestable army. What does that somber intermingling of bones buried beneath the furrows of Waterloo think of that? England has been too modest in the matter of Wellington. To make Wellington so great is to belittle England. Wellington is nothing but a hero like many another. Those scotch grays, those horse guards, those regiments of Maidland and of Mitchell, that infantry of Puck and Camp, that cabaree of Ponson B and Somerset, those Highlanders playing the pie-brooch under the shower of Grape-Shot, those battalions of Rylant, those utterly raw recruits, who hardly knew how to handle a musket, holding their own against Esslings and rivaly's own troops, that is what was grand. Wellington was tenacious. In that lay his merit, and we are not seeking to lessen it, but the least of his food soldiers and of his cavalry would have been as solid as he. The iron soldier is worth as much as the iron duke. As for us, all our glorification goes to the English soldier, to the English army, to the English people. If trophy there be, it is to England that the trophy is due. The column of Waterloo would be more just if, instead of the figure of a man, it bore on high the statue of a people. But these great England will be angry at what we are saying here. She still cherishes, after her own 1688 and our 1789, the feudal illusion. She believes in heredity and the hierarchy. These people, surpassed by none in power and glory, regards itself as a nation, and not as a people. And as a people, it willingly subordinates itself and takes the Lord for its head. As a workman, it allows itself to be disdained. As a soldier, it allows itself to be flocked. It will be remembered that at the battle of Inca man a surgeon to head, it appears, saved the army, could not be mentioned by Lord Paglen, as the English military hierarchy does not permit any hero below the grade of an officer to be mentioned in the reports. That which we admire above all, in an encounter of the nature of Waterloo, is the marvellous cleverness of chance. The nocturnal rain, the wall of Uggermond, the hollow root of O'Hane, grouchy death to the cannon, Napoleon's guide deceiving him, Barlow's guide enlightening him. The whole of this catechism is wonderfully conducted. On the whole, let us say it plainly, it was more of a massacre than of a battle at Waterloo. Of all pitched battles, Waterloo is the one which has the smallest front for such a number of combatants. Napoleon 3 quarters of a league, Wellington half a league, 72,000 combatants on each side. From these denseness the carnage arose. The following calculation has been made and the following proportion established. Lots of men, at Austerlitz French 14%, Russians 30%, Austrians 44%, at Wargram French 13%, Austrians 14%, at the Moskova French 37%, Russians 44%, at Bouton French 13%, Russians and Prussians 14%, at Waterloo French 56%, the Allies 31%, total for Waterloo 41%, 144,000 combatants, 60,000 dead. Today the field of Waterloo has the calm which belongs to the earth, the impassive support of a man and it resembles all planes. At night moreover a sort of visionary mist arises from it and if a traveller strolls there, if he listens, if he watches, if he dreams like Virgil in the fatal planes of Philippi, the hallucination of the catastrophe takes possession of him. The frightful 18th of June lives again. The false monumental hillock disappears, the lion vanishes in air, the battlefield resumes its reality, lines of infantry underlaid over the plane. Furious gallops traverse the horizon. The frightened dreamer beholds the flash of sabers, the gleam of bayonets, the flare of bombs, the tremendous interchange of thunders. He hears, as it were, the death rattle in the depth of a tomb, the vague clamour of the battle phantom. Those shadows are grenades, those lights are creases, that skeleton Napoleon, that other skeleton is Wellington. All this no longer exists and yet it clashes together and combats still, and the ravines are in purple, and the tree is quiver, and there is fury even in the clouds and in the shadows. All those terrible heights—Hougoumon, Mont-Saint-Jean, Frichemont, Papelotte, Plancenois appear confusedly, crowned with whirlwinds of spectres, engaged in exterminating each other. CHAPTER 17 OF BOOK I OF LES MISERABLE VOLUME II BY VICTOR Hougou. There exists a very respectable liberal school which does not hate Waterloo. We do not belong to it. To us, Waterloo is but the stupefied date of liberty. That such an eagle shall emerge from such an egg is certainly unexpected. If one places oneself at the culminating point of view of the question, Waterloo is intentionally a counter-revolutionary victory. It is Europe against France. It is Petersburg, Berlin and Vienna against Paris. It is the status quo against the initiative. It is 14 July 1789, attacked through 20 March 1815. It is the monarchies clearing the decks in opposition to the indomitable French rioting. The final extinction of that vast people, which had been in eruption for 26 years, such was the dream. The solidarity of the Brunswick's, the Nassau's, the Romanovs, the Hohenzollans, the Hapsburgs, with the Bourbons. Waterloo bears divine right on its cropper. It is true that the empire having been despotic, the kingdom by the natural reaction of things, was forced to be liberal, and that a constitutional order was the unwilling result of Waterloo to the great regret of the conquerors. It is because revolution cannot really be conquered, and that being providential and absolutely fatal, it is always cropping up afresh, before Waterloo, in Bonaparte overthrowing the old thrones, after Waterloo, in Louis XVIII, granting and conforming to the charter. Bonaparte places a postillian on the throne of Naples, and a sergeant on the throne of Sweden, employing inequality to demonstrate equality. Louis XVIII at Saint-to-Anne, countersigns the declaration of the rights of man. If you wish to gain an idea of what revolution is, call it progress, and if you wish to acquire an idea of the nature of progress, call it tomorrow. Tomorrow fulfills its work irresistibly, and it is already fulfilling it today. It always reaches its goal strangely. It employs Wellington to make of Foix, who was only a soldier, an orator. Foix falls at Ugo-Mont, and rises again in the Tribune. Thus does progress proceed. There is no such thing as a bad tool for that workman. It does not become disconcerted, but adjusts to its divine work the man who has bestridden the Alps, and the good old tottering invalid of Father Elise. It makes use of the gouty man, as well as of the conqueror. Of the conqueror without, of the gouty man within. Waterloo, by cutting short the demolition of European thrones by the sword, had no other effect than to cause the revolutionary work to be continued in another direction. The slashes have finished. It was the turn of the thinkers. The century that Waterloo was intended to arrest has pursued its march. That sinister victory was vanquished by liberty. In short, and incontestably, that which triumphed at Waterloo, that which smiled in Wellington's rear, that which brought him all the marshal's staffs of Europe, including, it is said, the staff of a marshal of France, that which joyously chundled the barrows full of bones to erect the knoll of the lion, that which triumphantly inscribed on that pedestal the date June the 18th, 1815, that which encouraged Blucher, as he put the flying army to the sword, that which from the heights of the plateau of Mont Saint-Jean hovered over France as over its prey, was the counter-revolution. It was the counter-revolution which murmured that infamous word, dismemberment. On arriving in Paris, it beheld the crater close at hand, it felt those ashes which scorched its feet, and it changed its mind. It returned to the stammer of a charter. Let us behold in Waterloo only that which is in Waterloo, let us behold in Waterloo only that which is in Waterloo. Of intentional liberty there is none. The counter-revolution was involuntarily liberal, in the same manner as, by a corresponding phenomenon, Napoleon was involuntarily revolutionary. On the eighteenth of June, 1815, the Mounted Robespierre was hurled from his saddle. End of Book First, Chapter 17, Recording by Ruth Golding Translated by Isabelle Florence Hapgood Book One, Waterloo, Chapter 18, A Recruescence of Divine Right End of the Dictatorship, A Whole European System Crumbled Away The Empire sank into a gloom which resembled that of the Roman world as it expired. Again we behold the abyss, as in the days of the Barbarians, only the barbarism of 1815, which must be called by its pet name of the counter-revolution, was not long breathed, soon felt a panting and halted short. The Empire was bewept, let us acknowledge that fact, and bewept by heroic eyes. If glory lies in the sword converted into a scepter, the Empire had been glory in person. It had diffused over the earth all the light which tyranny can give a somber light. We will say more, an obscure light. Compared to the true daylight it is night. This disappearance of night produces the effect of an eclipse. Louis XVIII re-entered Paris. The circling dances of the 8th of July effaced the enthusiasm of the 20th of March. The Corsican became the antithesis of the Bienes. The flag on the dome of the Trilaurie was white. The exile reigned. Hartwell's Pine Table took its place in front of the flirty-leafed strewn throne of Louis XIV. Bouvine and Fontaineux were mentioned as though they had taken place on the preceding day, Austerlitz having become antiquated. The altar and the throne fraternised majestically. One of the most undisputed forms of health of society in the 19th century was established over France and over the continent. Europe adopted the White Cockade. Treste-Aillot was celebrated. The device, non-pluribus in parre, reappeared on the stone rays representing a sun upon the front of the barracks on the Cay d'Orsay. Where there had been an imperial guard, there was now a red house. The Arc de Gaulle cell, all laden with badly-born victories, thrown out of its element among these novelties, a little ashamed it may be, of Marengo and Arcola, extricated itself from its predicament with the statue of Duc d'Angoulême. The cemetery of the Madeleine, a terrible pauper's grave in 1793, was covered with jasper and marble since the bones of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette lay in the dust. In the motor of Vassennes, a sepulchral shaft sprang from the earth, recalling the fact that the Duc d'Angoulême had perished in the very month when Napoleon was crowned. Pope Pius VII, who had performed the coronation very near this death, tranquilly bestowed his blessing on the fall as he had bestowed it on the elevation. At Choumboin there was a little shadow, aged four, whom it was seditious to call the king of Rome. And these things took place and the kings resumed their thrones, and the master of Europe was put in a cage, and the old regime became the new regime, and all the shadows and all the light of the earth changed place, because, on the afternoon of a certain summer's day, a shepherd said to oppression in the forest, go this way and not that. This 1815 was a sort of lugubrious April. Ancient and healthy in poisonous realities were covered with new appearances. A lie wedded 1789, the right divine was masked under a charter. Fictions became constitutional, prejudices, superstitions and mental reservations, with Article XIV in the heart, were varnished over with liberalism. It was the serpent's change of skin. Man had been rendered both greater and smaller by Napoleon. Under this reign of splendid matter, the ideal had received the strange name of ideology. It is a grave imprudence in a great man to turn the future into derision. The populace, however, that food for canon which is so fond of the canoneer, sought him with its glance. Where is he? What is he doing? Napoleon is dead, said a passer-by to a veteran of Marengo and Waterloo. He is dead, cried the soldier. You don't know him. Imagination distrusted this man, even when overthrown. The depths of Europe were full of darkness after Waterloo. Something enormous remained long empty through Napoleon's disappearance. The kings placed themselves in this void. Ancient Europe profited by it to undertake reforms. There was a holy alliance, bell alliance, beautiful alliance. The fatal field of Waterloo had said in advance. In presence and in face of that antique Europe reconstructed, the features of a new France were sketched out. The future, which the Emperor had rallied, made its entry. On its brow it bore the star, Liberty. The glowing eyes of all young generations were turned on it. Singular fact. People were, at one and the same time, in love with the future, Liberty, and the past, Napoleon. Defeat had rendered the vanquished greater. Bonaparte, Fortland seemed more lofty than Napoleon erect. Those who had triumphed were alarmed. England had him guarded by Hudson Low, and France had him watched by Montgenoux. His folded arms became a source of uneasiness to thrones. Alexander called him My Sleeplessness. The terror was the result of the quantity of revolution which was contained in him. This is what explains and excuses Bonaparte's liberalism. This phantom caused the Old World to tremble. The kings reigned, but ill at their ease, with the Rock of St Helena on the horizon. While Napoleon was passing through the Death Struggle at Longwood, the sixty-thousand men who had fallen on the field of Waterloo were quietly rotting, and something of their peace was shed abroad over the world. The Congress of Vienna made the treaties in 1815, and Europe called this the restoration. This is what Waterloo was. But what matters it to the infinite? All that tempest, all that cloud, that war, then that peace? All that darkness did not trouble for a moment the light of the immense eye, before which a grub skipping from one blade of grass to another equals the eagle soaring from belfry to belfry on the towers of Notre-Dame. L'Émiserable, volume two by Victor Hugo, translated by Isabel Florence Hapgood, Book First, Waterloo, Chapter Nineteen, The Battlefield at Night. Let us return, it is a necessity in this book, to that fatal battlefield. On the eighteenth of June the moon was full, its light-favored blue-curse ferocious pursuit betrayed the traces of the fugitives, delivered up that disastrous mass to the eager Prussian cavalry, and aided the massacre. Such tragic favors of the night do occur sometimes during catastrophes. After the last cannon-shot had been fired, the plain of Mont-Saint-Jean remained deserted. The English occupied the encampment of the French. It is the usual sign of victory to sleep in the bed of the vanquished. They established their bivouac behind Rassame. The pressions, let loose on the retreating route, pushed forward. Wellington went to the village of Waterloo to draw up his report to Lord Bathurst. If ever the sick Vos Non-Vobis was applicable, it certainly is to that village of Waterloo. Waterloo took no part, and lay half a league from the scene of action. Mont-Saint-Jean was cannon-aided, Ugumon was burned, La Haissanne was taken by assault, Papalo was burned, Plant-Saint-Noir was burned, La Belle Alliance beheld the embrace of the two conquerors. These names are hardly known, and Waterloo, which worked not in the battle, bears off all the honour. We are not of the number of those who flatter war. When the occasion presents itself, we tell the truth about it. War has frightful beauties which we have not concealed. It has also, we acknowledge, some hideous features. One of the most surprising is the prompt stripping of the bodies of the dead after the victory. The dawn which follows a battle always rises on naked corpses. Who does this? Who thus soils the triumph? What hideous furtive hand is that which is slipped into the pocket of victory? What pickpockets are they who ply their trade in the rear of glory? Some philosophers, Voltaire among the number, affirm that it is precisely those persons have made the glory. It is the same men, they say. There is no relief core. Those who are erect, pillage those who are prone on the earth. The hero of the day is the vampire of the night. One has assuredly the right, after all, to strip a corpse a bit when one is the author of that corpse. For our own part we do not think so. It seems to us impossible that the same hand should pluck laurels and perloin the shoes from a dead man. One thing is certain, which is that generally after conquerors follow thieves. But let us leave the soldier, especially the contemporary soldier, out of the question. Every army has a rearguard, and it is that which must be blamed. Bat-like creatures, half-brigands and lackeys, all the sorts of vespretyos that that twilight called war engenders, wearers of uniforms who take no part in the fighting, pretended invalids, formidable limpers, interloping subtlers, trotting along in little carts, sometimes accompanied by their wives, and stealing things which they sell again. Beggars offering themselves as guides to officers, soldiers, servants, marauders, armies on the march in days gone by. We are not speaking of the present. Drag all this behind them, so that in the special language they are called stragglers. No army, no nation was responsible for those beings. They spoke Italian and followed the Germans, then spoke French and followed the English. It was by one of these wretches, a Spanish straggler who spoke French, that the Marquilla Fervoc, deceived by his Bicar jargon, and taking him for one of our own men, was traitorously slain and robbed on the battlefield itself, in the course of the night which followed the victory of Sarasole. The rascal sprang from this marauding. The detestable Maxim, live on the enemy, produced this leprosy, which a strict discipline alone could heal. There are reputations which are deceptive. One does not always know why certain generals, great in other directions, have been so popular. Teren was adored by his soldiers because he tolerated pillage. Evil permitted constitutes part of goodness. Teren was so good that he allowed the Palatinate to be delivered over to fire and blood. The marauders in the train of an army were more or less in number, according as the chief was more or less severe. Hulk and Marceau had no stragglers. Wellington had few, and we do him the justice to mention it. Nevertheless, on the night of the 18th to the 19th of June, the dead were robbed. Wellington was rigid. He gave orders that anyone caught in the act should be shot. But Rapien is tenacious. The marauders stole in one corner of the battlefield, while others were being shot in another. The moon was sinister over this plain. Towards midnight a man was prowling about, or rather climbing in the direction of the hollow road of O'Ain. To all appearance he was one of those whom we have just described, neither English nor French, neither peasant nor soldier, less a man than a ghoul attracted by the scent of the dead bodies, having theft for his victory, and come to riffle Waterloo. He was clad in a blouse that was something like a great coat. He was uneasy and audacious. He walked forwards and gazed behind him. Who was this man? The night probably knew more of him than the day. He had no sack, but evidently he had large pockets under his coat. From time to time he halted, scrutinized the plain around him. As though to see whether he were observed, bent over abruptly, disturbed something silent and motionless on the ground, then rose and fled. His sliding motion, his attitudes, his mysterious and rapid gestures, caused him to resemble those twilight larvae which haunt ruins, and which ancient Norman legends call the Allures. Certain nocturnal waiting birds produce these silhouettes among the marshes. A glance capable of piercing all that mist deeply would have perceived at some distance a sort of little subtler's wagon with a fluted wicker hood, harnessed to a famished nag which was cropping the grass across its bit as it halted, hidden as it were, behind the hovel which adjoins the highway to Neve, at the angle of the road from Monde Saint-Jean to Brénaloud, and in the wagon a sort of woman seated on coffers and packages. Perhaps there was some connection between that wagon and that prowler. The darkness was serene, not a cloud in the zenith. What matters if the earth be red, the moon remains white. These are the indifferences of the sky. In the fields, branches of trees broken by grapeshot, but not fallen, upheld by their bark, swayed gently in the breeze of night. A breath, almost a respiration, moved the shrubbery. Quivers which resembled the departure of souls ran through the grass. In the distance, the coming and going of patrols and the general rounds of the English camp were audible. Lugamon, Lai, Isan continued to burn, forming one in the west, the other in the east. Two great flames which were joined by the cordon of Bivouac fires of the English, like a necklace of rubies with two carbuncles at the extremities, as they extended in an immense semicircle over the hills along the horizon. We have described the catastrophe of the road of O'ain. The heart is terrified at the thought of what that death must have been to so many brave men. If there is anything terrible, if there exists a reality which surpasses dreams, it is this. To live, to see the sun, to be in full possession of virile force, to possess health and joy, to laugh valiantly, to rush towards a glory which one sees dazzling in front of one, to feel in one's breast lungs which breathe, a heart which beats, a will which reasons, to speak, think, hope, love, to have a mother, to have a wife, to have children, to have the light and all at once in the space of a shout, in less than a minute, to sink into an abyss, to fall, to roll, to crush, to be crushed, to see ears of wheat, flowers, leaves, branches, not to be able to catch hold of anything, to feel one's sword useless, men beneath one, horses on top of one, to struggle in vain since one's bones have been broken by some kick in the darkness, to feel a heel which makes one's eyes start from their sockets, to bite horses' shoes in one's rage, to stifle, to yell, to rive, to be beneath and to say to oneself, but just a little while ago I was a living man. There, where that lamentable disaster had uttered its death rattle, all was silence now. The edges of the hollow road were encumbered with horses and riders, inextricably heaped up, terrible entanglements. There was no longer any slope, for the corpses had levelled the road with the plain, and reached the brim like a well-filled bushel of barley. A heap of dead bodies in the upper part, a river of blood in the lower part, such was that road on the evening of the 18th of June, 1815. The blood ran even to Venevae Highway, and there overflowed in a large pool in front of the abotus of trees which barred the way, at a spot which is still pointed out. It will be remembered that it was at the opposite point, in the direction of the Genap Road, that the destruction of the Carassiers had taken place. The thickness of the layer of bodies was proportioned to the depth of the hollow road. Toward the middle, at the point where it became level, where Delors Division had passed, the layer of corpses was thinner. The nocturnal prowler whom we had just shown to the reader was going in that direction. He was searching that vast tomb. He gazed about. He passed the dead in some sort of hideous review. He walked with his feet in the blood. All at once he paused. A few paces in front of him, in the hollow road, at the point where the pile of dead came to an end, an open hand, illumined by the moon, projected from beneath that heap of men. That hand had on its finger something sparkling, which was a ring of gold. The man bent over, remained in a crouching attitude for a moment, and when he rose there was no longer a ring on the hand. He did not precisely rise. He remained in a stooping and frightened attitude, with his back turned to the heap of dead, scanning the horizon on his knees, with the whole upper portion of his body supported on his two forefingers, which rested on the earth, and his head peering above the edge of the hollow road. The jackals' four paws suit some actions. Then coming to a decision he rose to his feet. At that moment he gave a terrible start. He felt someone clutch him from behind. He wheeled round. It was the open hand which had closed and had seized the skirt of his coat. An honest man would have been terrified. This man burst into a laugh. Come, said he, it's only a dead body. I prefer spook to a gendarm. But the hand weakened and released him. Aford is quickly exhausted in the grave. Well now, said the prowler. Is that dead fellow alive? Let's see. He bent down again, fumbled among the heap, pushed aside everything that was in his way, seized the hand, grasped the arm, freed the head, pulled out the body, and a few moments later he was dragging the lifeless, or at least the unconscious man, through the shadows of hollow road. He was a crassier, an officer, and even an officer of considerable rank. A large gold epaulet peeped from beneath the caress. This officer no longer possessed a helmet. A furious sword-cut had scarred his face, where nothing was discernable but blood. However, he did not appear to have any broken limbs, and by some happy chance, if that word is permissible here, the dead had been vaulted above him in such a manner as to preserve him from being crushed. His eyes were still closed. On his caress he wore the silver cross of a legion of honor. The prowler tore off this cross, which disappeared into one of the gulfs which he had beneath his great coat. Then he felt of the officer's fob, discovered a watch there, and took possession of it. Next he searched his waistcoat, found a purse, and pocketed it. When he arrived at this stage of Succor, which he was administering to this dying man, the officer opened his eyes. Thanks, he said feebly. The abruptness of the movements of the man who was manipulating him, the freshness of a night, the air which he could inhale freely, had roused him from his lethargy. The prowler made no reply. He raised his head. A sound of footsteps was audible in the plane. Some patrol was probably approaching. The officer murmured, for the death agony was still in his voice. Who won the battle? The English, answered the prowler. The officer went on. Look in my pockets. You will find a watch and a purse. Take them. It was already done. The prowler executed the required faint and said, There is nothing there. I have been robbed, said the officer. I am sorry for that. You should have had them. The steps of the patrol became more and more distinct. Someone is coming, said the prowler, with the movement of a man who was taking his departure. The officer raised his arm feebly and detained him. You have saved my life. Who are you? The prowler answered rapidly and in a low voice. Like yourself, I belong to the French army. I must leave you. If they were to catch me, they would shoot me. I have saved your life. Now get out of the scrape yourself. What is your rank? Sergeant. What is your name? Finnaudier. I shall not forget that name, said the officer. And do you remember mine? My name is Pomerasy. End of Book 1, Chapter 19. Chapter 1 of Book 2 of Lémy-Zarab, Volume 2 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 Peter Eastman. Lémy-Zarab, Volume 2 by Victor Hugo Translated by Isabelle Florence-Hapgood Book 2, The Ship Orion Chapter 1 Number 24601 becomes Number 9430 Jean Valjean had been recaptured. The reader will be grateful to us if we pass rapidly over the sad details. We will confine ourselves to transcribing two paragraphs, published by the journals of that day, a few months after the surprising events which had taken place at Montré-Sonmer. These articles are rather summary. It must be remembered that at that epoch the Gazette des Tribunaux was not yet in existence. We borrow the first from the Drapeau Blanc. It bears the date of July 25th, 1823. An Orondis Mont of the Pâté Calais has just been the theatre of an event quite out of the ordinary course. A man who was a stranger in the department and who bore the name of Monsieur Madeleine, had, thanks to the new methods, resuscitated some years ago an ancient local industry, the manufacture of jet and of black glass trinkets. He had made his fortune in the business, and that of the Orondis Mont as well, we will admit. He had been appointed mayor in recognition of his services. The police discovered that Monsieur Madeleine was no other than an ex-convict who had broken his ban, condemned in 1796 for theft, and named Jean Valjean. Jean Valjean has been recommitted to prison. It appears that previous to his arrest he had succeeded in withdrawing from the hands of Monsieur Lafitte a sum of over half a million which he had lodged there, and which he had moreover, and by perfectly legitimate means, acquired in his business. No one has been able to discover where Jean Valjean has concealed this money since his return to prison at Toulon. The second article, which enters a little more into detail, is an extract from the Journal de Paris of the same date. A former convict who had been liberated, named Jean Valjean, has just appeared before the court of the sizes of the Vare, under circumstances calculated to attract attention. This wretch had succeeded in escaping the vigilance of the police. He had changed his name, and had succeeded in getting himself appointed mayor of one of our small northern towns. In this town he had established a considerable commerce. He has at last been unmasked and arrested, thanks to the indefatigable zeal of the public prosecutor. He had for his concubine a woman of the town who died of a shock at the moment of his arrest. This scoundrel, who is endowed with Herculean strength, found means to escape. But three or four days after his flight, the police laid their hands on him once more, in Paris itself, at the very moment when he was entering one of those little vehicles which run between the capital and the village of Montfermets. He is said to have profited by this interval of three or four days of liberty to withdraw a considerable sum deposited by him with one of our leading bankers. This sum has been estimated at six or seven hundred thousand francs. If the indictment is to be trusted, he has hidden it in some place known to himself alone, and it has not been possible to lay hands on it. However that may be, the said Jean Valjean has just been brought before the Assizes of the Department of the Vare as accused of highway robbery, accompanied with violence about eight years ago, on the person of one of those honest children, who as the patriarch of Ferney has said in immortal verse, arrive from Savoy every year, and who with gentle hands do clear those long canals choked up with soot. This bandit refused to defend himself. It was proved by the skillful and eloquent representative of the public prosecutor that the theft was committed in complicity with others, and that Jean Valjean was a member of a band of robbers in the south. Jean Valjean was pronounced guilty and was condemned to the death penalty in consequence. This criminal refused to lodge an appeal. The king in his inexhaustible clemency has deigned to commute his penalty to that of penal servitude for life. Jean Valjean was immediately taken to the prison at Toulon. The reader has not forgotten that Jean Valjean had religious habits among Tres Rémer. Some papers, among others the Constitutional, presented this commutation as a triumph of the priestly party. Jean Valjean changed his number in the galleys. He was called 9430. However, and we will mention it at once, in order that we may not be obliged to recur to the subject, the prosperity of Montres Rémer vanished with Monsieur Madeleine. All that he had foreseen during his night of fever and hesitation was realized. Lacking him, there actually was a soul lacking. After this fall there took place at Montres Rémer that egotistical division of great existences which have fallen, that fatal dismemberment of flourishing things, which is accomplished every day, obscurely in the human community, and which history has noted only once because it occurred after the death of Alexander. Lieutenants are crowned kings. Superintendents improvise manufacturers out of themselves. Envious rivalries arose. Monsieur Madeleine's vast workshops were shut. His buildings fell to ruin. His workmen were scattered. Some of them quitted the country. Others abandoned the trade. Henceforth everything was done on a small scale instead of on a grand scale, for lucre instead of the general good. There was no longer a centre. Everywhere there was competition and animosity. Monsieur Madeleine had reigned overall and directed all. No sooner had he fallen than each pulled things to himself. The spirit of combat succeeded to the spirit of organisation, bitterness to cordiality, hatred of one another, to the benevolence of the founder towards all. The threads which Monsieur Madeleine had set were tangled and broken. The methods were adulterated. The products were debased. Confidence was killed. The market diminished for lack of orders. Salaries were reduced. The workshops stood still. Bankruptcy arrived. And then there was nothing more for the poor. All had vanished. The state itself perceived that someone had been crushed somewhere. Less than four years after the judgment of the court of assizes, establishing the identity of Jean Valjean and Monsieur Madeleine for the benefit of the galleys, the cost of collecting taxes had doubled in the arrondissement of Montréal-sur-Mer. And Monsieur Viel called attention to the fact in the rostrum, in the month of February 1827. 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 Vaughan Ollman. Les Miserables, Vol. 2 by Victor Hugo. Translated by Isabelle Florence Hapgood. Book II. The Ship Orion. Chapter II. In which the reader will peruse two verses which are of the devil's composition possibly. Before proceeding further, it will be to the purpose to narrate, in some detail, a singular occurrence which took place at about the same epic in Mont-Fermet and which is not lacking in coincidence with certain conjectures of the indictment. There exists in the region of Mont-Fermet a very ancient superstition, which is all the more curious and all the more precious, because a popular superstition in the vicinity of Paris is like an aloe in Siberia. We are among those who respect everything which is in the nature of a rare plant. Here, then, is the superstition of Mont-Fermet. It is thought that the devil, from time immemorial, has selected the forest as a hiding place for his treasures. Good wives affirm that it is no rarity to encounter at nightfall insincluded nooks of the forest, a black man with the air of a carter or a woodchopper wearing wooden shoes clad in trousers and a blouse of linen, and recognizable by the fact that, instead of a cap or hat, he has two immense horns on his head. This ought, in fact, to render him recognizable. This man is habitually engaged in digging a hole. There are three ways of profiting by such an encounter. The first is to approach the man and speak to him. Then it is seen that the man is simply a peasant, that he appears black because it is nightfall, that he is not digging any hole whatever, but is cutting grass for his cows, and that what had been taken for horns is nothing but a dung fork which he is carrying on his back. And whose teeth, thanks to the perspective of evening, seem to spring from his head. The man returns home and dies within the week. The second way is to watch it, to wait until he has dug his hole, until he has filled it and has gone away, and then to run with great speed to the trench, to open it once more and seize the treasure with the black man has necessarily placed there. In this case one dies within the month. Finally the last method is not to speak to the black man, not to look at him and to flee at the best speed of one's legs. One then dies within the year. As all three methods are attended with their special inconveniences, the second, which at all events presents some advantages among others that are possessing a treasure, if only for a month, is the one most generally adopted. So bold men who are tempted by every chance, have quite frequently, as we are assured, open the holes excavated by the black man, and try to rob the devil. The success of the operation appears to be but moderate, at least if the tradition is to be believed, and in particular the two enigmatic lines in Barbarus Latin, which an evil Norman monk, a bit of a sorcerer, named Trifon, has left on this subject. This Trifon is buried at the Abbey of Saint George, de Bourcheville, Neroin, and toads spawn on his grave. Accordingly, enormous efforts are made. Such trenches are ordinarily extremely deep. A man sweats, digs, toils all night, for it must be done at night. He wets his shirt, burns out his candle, breaks his mattock, and when he arrives at the bottom of the hole, when he lays his hand on the treasure, what does he find? What is the devil's treasure? A sous, sometimes a crown piece, a stone, a skeleton, a bleeding body, sometimes a specter, folded in four, like a sheet of paper in a portfolio, sometimes nothing. This is what Trifon's verses seem to announce to the indiscreet and curious. It seems that in our day there is sometimes found a powder horn with bullets, sometimes an old pack of cards greasy and worn, which has evidently served the devil. Trifon does not record these two finds, since Trifon lived in the 12th century, and since the devil does not appear to have the wit to invent powder before Roger Bacon's time, and cards before the time of Charles VI. Moreover, if one plays it cards, one is sure to lose all that one possesses, and as for the powder in the horn, it possesses the property of making your gun burst in your face. Now, a very short time after the epic, when it seemed to the prosecuting attorney that the liberated convict, Jean Valjean, during his flight of several days had been prowling around Montfermets, it was remarked in that village that a certain old road labourer, named Boulatroy, had peculiar ways in the forest. People thereabouts thought they knew that this Boulatroy had been in the galleys. He was subjected to certain police supervision, and as he could find work nowhere, the administration employed him at reduced rates as a road mender on the crossroad, from Gagny to Lény. This Boulatroy was a man who was viewed with disfavor by the inhabitants of the district, as too respectful, too humble, too prompt in removing his cap to everyone, and trembling and smiling in the presence of the gendarm, probably affiliated to robber bands, they said, suspected of lying in ambush at verge of corpses at nightfall. The only thing in his favour was that he was not a drunkard. This is what people thought they had noticed. Of late, Boulatroy had taken to quitting his task of stone-breaking and carried the road at a very early hour, and to be taking himself to the forest with his pickaxe. He was encountered toward evening in the most deserted clearings in the wildest thickets, and he had the appearance of being in search of something, and sometimes he was digging holes. The good wives who passed took him at first for Bielzebub. Then they recognized Boulatroy, and were not in the least reassured thereby. These encounters seemed to cause Boulatroy a lively displeasure. It was evident that he sought to hide, and that there was some mystery in what he was doing. It was said in the village it is clear that the devil has appeared. Boulatroy has seen him, is on the search. In sooth he is cunning enough to pocket Lucifer's hoard. The Voltarians added, will Boulatroy catch the devil, or will the devil catch Boulatroy? The old women made a great many signs of the cross. In the meantime, Boulatroy's maneuvers in the forest ceased, and he resumed his regular occupation of road-mending and people gossiped of something else. Some persons, however, were still curious, surmising that in all this there was probably no fabulous treasure of the legends, but some fine windfall of a more serious and palpable sort than the devil's bank-builds. Road-mender had half discovered the secret. The most puzzled were the schoolmaster and Thénaudier, the proprietor of the tavern, who was everybody's friend, and had not disdained ally himself with Boulatroy. He has been in the galleys, said Thénaudier, a. No one knows who has been there who will be there. One evening the schoolmaster affirmed that in former times the law could have instituted an inquiry as to what Boulatroy did in the forest, and that the latter would have been forced to speak, and that he would have been put to the torture in case of need, and that Boulatroy would have not resisted the water test, for example. Let us put him to the wine test, said Thénaudier. They made an effort and got the old road-mender to drinking. Boulatroy drank an enormous amount, but said very little. He combined, with admirable art and in masterly proportions, the thirst of Agamandisier with the discretion of a judge. Nevertheless, by dint of returning to the charge and of comparing and putting together the few obscure words which he did allow to escape him, this is what Thénaudier and the schoolmaster imagined that they had made out. One morning when Boulatroy was on his way to his work at daybreak, he had been surprised to see at a nook of the forest and the underbrush a shovel and a pickaxe, concealed, as one might say. However, he might have supposed that they were probably the shovel and pickaxe of Father Six-Four, the water carrier, and would have thought no more about it. But on the evening of that day he saw, without being seen himself, as he was hidden by a large street, a person who did not belong in those parts, and whom he, Boulatroy, knew well, directing his steps toward the densest part of the wood. Translation by Thénaudier, a comrade of the galleys. Boulatroy, obstinately refused to reveal his name. This person carried a package, something square, like a large box or a small trunk. Surprise on the port of Boulatroy. However, it was only after the expiration of seven or eight minutes that the idea of following that person had occurred to him. But it was too late. The person had already was already in the thicket. Now he had descended, and Boulatroy had not been able to catch up with him. Then he had adopted the course of watching for him at the edge of the wood. It was moonlight. Two or three hours later, Boulatroy had seen this person emerge from the brushwood, carrying no longer the coffer, but a shovel and pick. Boulatroy had allowed the person to pass, and had not dreamed of accosting him. Because, he said to himself that the other man was three times as strong as he was, and armed with a pickaxe. And that he would probably knock him over the head on recognizing him, and on perceiving that he was recognized. Touching a fusion of two old comrades on meeting again? But the shovel and pick had served as a ray of light to Boulatroy. He had hastened to the thicket in the morning, and had found neither shovel nor pick. From this he had drawn the inference that this person, once in the forest, had dug a hole with his pick, buried the coffer, and reclosed the hole with his shovel. Now the coffer was too small to contain a body, therefore it contained money. Hence his researches. Boulatroy had explored, sounded, searched the entire forest and the thicket, and had dug wherever the earth appeared to him to have been recently turned up. In vain. He had ferreted out nothing. Known in Montfermet, thought any more about it. There are only a few brave gossips who said, You may be certain that the mender on the Gagnier Road did not take all that trouble for nothing. He was sure that the devil had come. End of Book Two, Chapter Two. Recording by Vaughn Ollman. V-O-N-S-T-A-K-E-S dot blogspot dot com. Chapter Three of Book Two of Les Miserables, Volume Two, 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 Vaughn Ollman. Les Miserables, Volume Two, by Victor Hugo. Translated by Isabelle Florence Hapgood. Book Second. The Ship Orion. Chapter Three. The ankle chain must have undergone a certain preparatory manipulation to be thus broken with a blow from a hammer. Towards the end of October, in that same year, 1823, the inhabitants of Toulon beheld the entry into their port, after heavy weather, and for the purpose of repairing some damages, of the ship Orion, which was employed later at Brest as a school ship, and which then formed a part of the Mediterranean squadron. This vessel, battered as it was, for the sea had handled it roughly, produced a fine effect as it entered the roads. It flew some colors, which procured for it the regulation salute of eleven guns, which it returned shot for shot, totaled twenty-two. It has been calculated that what was Salvo's royal and military politeness's, courteous exchanges of uproar, signals of etiquette, formalities, of roads, deads, and citadels, sunrises and sunsets, saluted every day by all fortresses and all ships of war, openings and closings of ports, etc., the civilized world discharged all over the earth in the course of four and twenty hours one hundred and fifty thousand useless shots, at six francs the shot that comes to nine hundred thousand francs a day, three hundred millions a year, which vanish in smoke. This is a mere detail. All this time the port were dying of hunger. The year 1823 was what the restoration called the epic of the Spanish War. Contained many events in one, and a quantity of peculiarities, a grand family affair for the houses of Bourbon, the branch of France, suckering and protecting the branch of Madrid, that is to say, performing an act devolving on the elder, an apparent return to our national traditions, complicated by servitude and by subjection to the cabinet to the north. Monsieur le Duc de Agloulme, surnommed by the liberal sheets, the hero of Andujar, compressing in a triumphal attitude that was somewhat contradicted by his peaceable air, the ancient very powerful terrorism of the Holy Office, it variants with the shimmery terrorism of the liberals. The son culot resuscitated to the great terror of the Dowagers, under the name of Descama, Descamisados, monarchy opposing an obstacle to progress described as anarchy, the theories of eighty-nine roughly interrupted in the sap. A European halt called to the French idea, which is making the tour of the world. Besides the son of France as Generalissimo, the prince of Carignon, afterwards Charles Albert, enrolling himself in that crusade of kings against people as a volunteer, with grenadier epaillettes of red worsted, the soldiers of the empire setting out on a fresh campaign, but aged, saddened after eight years of repose and under the white cocotte, the tricolored standard waved abroad by heroic handful of Frenchmen, as the white standard had been thirty years earlier, coblinettes. Monks mingled with our troops. The spirit of liberty and of novelty brought to its senses by bayonettes. Principles slaughtered by cannonades, France undoing by her arms that which she had done by her mind. In addition to this, hostile leaders sold, soldiers hesitating, cities besieged by millions, no military perils, and yet possible explosions as in every mind which is surprised and evaded, but little bloodshed, little honour won, shame for some, glory for no one. Such was this war made by the princes descended from Louis XIV, and conducted by generals who had been under Napoleon. Its sad fate was to recall neither the Grand War nor Grand Politics. Some feats of arms were serious. The taking of the Trocadero, among others, was a fine military action, but after all we repeat the trumpets of this war give back a crack to sound. The whole effect was suspicious. History approves of France for making a difficulty about accepting this false triumph. It seems evident that certain Spanish officers connected with resistance yielded too easily. The idea of corruption was connected with the victory. It appears as though generals and not battles had been won, and the conquering soldier returned humiliated. A debasing war, in short, in which the Bank of France could be read in the folds of the flag. Soldiers of the War of 1808, on whom Saragossa had fallen in formidable ruin, frowned in 1823 at the easy surrender of citadels, and began to regret Pala-Fox. It is the nature of France referred to have rosto-chin rather than balestros in front of her. From a still more serious point of view, and one which it is also proper to assist upon here, this war, which wounded the military spirit of France, enraged the democratic spirit. It was an enterprise of enthrallment. In that campaign, the object of the French soldier, the son of democracy, was the conquest of a yoke for others. A hideous contradiction. France is made to arouse the soul of nations, not to stifle it. All the revolutions of Europe since 1792 are the French Revolution, liberty darts rays from France. That is a solar fact. Blind as he who will not see, it was Bonaparte who said it. The War of 1823, an outrage on the generous Spanish nation, was then, at the same time, an outrage on the French Revolution. It was France who committed this monstrous violence, by foul means, for with the exceptions of wars of liberation, everything that armies do is by foul means. The words passive obedience indicate this. An army is a strange masterpiece of combination, whereas force results from an enormous sum of impotence. Thus is war, made by humanity against humanity, despite humanity explained. As for the Bourbons, the War of 1823 was fatal to them. They took it for a success. They did not perceive the danger that lies in having an idea slain to order. They went astray in their innocence to such a degree that they introduced the immense enfeeblement of a crime into their establishment as an element of strength. The spirit of the ambush entered into their politics. 1830 had its germ in 1823. The Spanish campaign became, in their councils, an argument for force and for adventure by divine right. France, having re-established El Reyneto in Spain, might well have re-established the absolute king at home. They fell into the alarming error of taking the obedience of the soldier for the consent of the nation. Such confidence is the ruin of thrones. It is not permitted to fall asleep, either in the shadow of a machinil tree, nor in the shadow of an enemy. Let us return to the ship Orion. During the operations of the army commanded by the Prince Generalissimo, a squadron had been cruising in the Mediterranean. We have just stated that the Orion belonged to this fleet, and that accidents of the sea had brought it into the port at Toulon. The presence of a vessel of war in a port has something about it which attracts and engages a crowd. It is because it is great, and the crowd loves what is great. A ship of the line is one of the most magnificent combinations of the genius of man with the powers of nature. A ship of the line is composed, at the same time, of the heaviest and the lightest of possible matter, for it deals at one at the same time with three forms of substance, solid, liquid, and fluid, and it must do battle with all three. It has eleven claws of iron with which to seize the granite on the bottom of the sea, and more wings and more antenna than winged insects to catch the wind in the clouds. Its breath pours out through its hundred and twenty cannons as through enormous trumpets, and replies proudly to the thunder. The ocean seeks to lead it astray in the alarming sameness of its billows, but the vessel has its soul, its compass, which counsels it and always shows it the north. In the blackest nights its lanterns supply the place of the stars. Thus against the wind it had its cordage and its canvas, against the water-wood, against the rocks its iron brass and lead, against the shadows its light, and against immensity a needle. If one wishes to form an idea of all those gigantic proportions which, taken as a whole, constitute the ship of the line, one has only to enter one of the six-story covered construction stocks in the ports of Brest or Toulon. The vessels in process of construction are under a bell glass there, as it were. This colossal beam is a yard. That great column of wood which stretches on the earth as far as the eye can reach is the main mast. Taking it from its root in the stocks to its tip in the clouds, it is sixty fathoms long, and its diameter as its base is three feet. The English main mast rises to a height of 217 feet above the waterline. The navy of our fathers employed cables. Ours employs chains. The simple pile of chains on a ship of a hundred guns is four feet high, twenty feet in breadth, and eight feet in depth. And how much wood is required to make this ship? Three thousand cubic meters. It is a floating fortress. And moreover, let this be borne in mind, it is only a question here of the military vessel of forty years ago of the simple sailing vessel. Steam, then in its infancy, has since added new miracles to that prodigy, which is called a war vessel. At the present time, for example, the mixed vessel with a screw is a surprising machine propelled by three thousand square meters of canvas, and by an engine of two thousand five hundred horsepower. Not to mention these new marvels. The ancient vessel of Christopher Columbus and of D'Roytier is one of the masterpieces of man. An exhaustible enforce, as is the infinite in gales. It stores up the wind and it sails. It is precise in the immense vagueness of the billows. It floats and it rains. There comes an hour, nevertheless, when the gale breaks that sixty foot yard like a straw. When the wind bends that mast four hundred feet tall. When that anchor, which weighs tens of thousands, is twisted in the jaws of the waves, like a fisherman's hook in the jaws of a pike. When those monstrous cannons utter plaintive and futile roars, which the hurricane bears forth into the void, into the night. When all that power and all that majesty are engulfed in a power and majesty which are supreme. Every time that immense force is displayed to culminate in an immense feebleness, it affords men food for thought. Hence in the port's curious people abound around these marvelous machines of war and of navigation, without being able to explain perfectly to themselves why. Every day, accordingly, from morning until night, the quays, sluices, and the jetties of the port of Troulon were covered with a multitude of idlers and lounge-jews, as they say in Paris, whose business consisted in staring at the Orion. The Orion was a ship that had been ailing for a long time. In the course of its previous cruises, thick layers of barnacles had collected on its keel, to such a degree, as a deprived of half its speed. It had gone into the dry dock the year before this, in order to have the barnacles scraped off. Then it had put to sea again, but this cleaning had affected the bolts of the keel. In the neighbourhood of the Ballerac Isles, the sides had been strained and had opened, and as the plating in those days was not of sheet iron, the vessel had sprung a leak. A violent equinautical gale had come up, which had at first staved integrating in a porthole on the larbord side, and damaged the four top gallant shrouds. In consequence of these injuries, the Orion had run back to Troulon. It anchored near the arsenal, it was fully equipped, and repairs were begun. The hull had received no damage on the starboard, but some of the planks had been unnailed here and there, according to Custon, to prevent of air entering the hold. One morning the crowd, which was gazing at it, witnessed an accident. The crew was busy mending the sails. The top men, who had to take the upper corner of the main top saw on the starboard, lost his balance. He was seen to waver. The multitude thronging the arsenal quay entered a cry. The man's head overbalanced his body. The man fell around the yard. With his hands outstretched toward the abyss. On his way he seized the foot-rope, first with one hand there with the other, and remained hanging from it. The sea lay below him in a dizzying depth. The shock of his fall had imparted to the foot-rope a violent swinging motion. The man swayed back and forth at the end of that rope, like a stone in a sling. It was incurring a frightful risk to go to his assistance. Not one of the sailors, all fishermen of the coast, recently levied for the service, dared to attempt it. In the meantime the unfortunate topman was losing his strength. His anguish could not be discerned on his face, but his exhaustion was visible in every limbs. His arms were contracted in horrible twitchings. Every effort which he made to re-ascend served but to augment the oscillations of the foot-rope. He did not shout for fear of exhausting his strength. All were awaiting the minute when he should release his hold on the rope, and from instant to instant heads were turned that his fall might not be seen. There are moments when a bit of rope, a pole, the branch of a tree, is life itself, and it's a terrible thing to see a living being detach himself from it, and fall like a ripe fruit. All at once a man was seen climbing into the rigging with the agility of a tidal-cat. This man was dressed in red. He was a convict. He wore a green cap. He was a life convict. On arriving on a level with the top, a gust of wind carried away his cap, and allowed a perfectly white head to be seen. He was not a young man. A convict employed on board with a detachment from the galleys had, in fact, at the very first instant hastened to the officer of the watch, and in the midst of the consternation and the hesitation of the crew, while all the sailors were trembling and drawing back, he had asked the officer's permission to risk his life to save the topman. At an affirmative sign from the officer, he had broken the chain riveted to his ankle with one blow of a hammer. Then he had caught up a rope, and had dashed into the rigging. No one noticed, at the instant, with what ease the chain had been broken. It was only later on that the incident was recalled. In a twinkling he was on the yard. He paused for a few seconds and appeared to be measuring it with his eye. These seconds, during which the breeze swayed the topman at the extremity of a thread, seemed centuries to those who were looking on. At last the convict raised his eyes to have it advance the step. The crowd drew a long breath. He was seen to run out along the yard. On arriving at the point, he fastened the rope to which he had brought to it, and allowed the other end to hang down. Then he began to descend the rope, hand over hand, and then, and the anguish was indescribable, instead of one man suspended over the gulf, there were two. One would have said it was a spider coming to seize a fly, only here the spider brought life, not death. Ten thousand glances were fastened on this group. Not a cry, not a word, the same tremor contracted every brow. All mouths held their breaths, as though they feared to add the slightest puff of wind, which was swaying the two unfortunate men. In the meantime the convict had succeeded in lowering himself to a position near the sailor. It was high time, one minute more, and the exhausted and despairing man would have allowed himself to fall into the abyss. The convict had moored him securely with the cord to which he clung with one hand, while he was working with the other. At last he was seen to climb back on the yard and drag the sailor up after him. He held him there a moment to allow him to recover his strength, and then he grasped him in his arms and carried him, walking on the yard himself to the cap, and from there to the main top where he left him in the hands of his comrades. At that moment the crowd broke into applause, old convict sergeants among them wept, and women embraced each other in the quay, and all voices were heard to cry with a sort of tender rage, pardon for that man. He, in the meantime, had immediately begun to make his descent to rejoin his detachment. In order to reach them the more speedily, he dropped into the rigging and ran along one of the lower yards. All eyes were following him. At a certain moment fear assailed them, whether it was that he was fatigued or that his head turned, they thought they saw him hesitate and stagger. All at once the crowd uttered a loud shout. The convict had fallen into the sea. The fall was perilous. The frigate El Guesceres was anchored alongside the Orion, and the poor convict had fallen between the two vessels. It was to be feared that he would slip under one or the other of them. Four men flung themselves hastily into a boat. The crowd cheered them on. Anxiety again took possession of all souls. The man had not risen to the surface. He had disappeared in the sea without leaving a ripple, as though he had fallen into a cask of oil. They sounded, they dived, in vain. The search was continued until the evening. They did not even find the body. On the following day the two long newspaper printed these lines. November 17, 1823. Yesterday a convict, belonging to the detachment on board of the Orion, on his return from rendering assistance to a sailor, fell into the sea and was drowned. The body has not yet been found. It is supposed that it is entangled under the piles of the Arsenal Point. This man was committed unto the number 9,430, and his name was Jean-Valjean. End of Book 2 Chapter 3 Recording by Vaughn Ohlmann This is a LibreVox recording. All LibreVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibreVox.org. Chapter 1 of Book 3 of Les Mouserabes, Volume 2 by Victor Hugo Translated by Isabelle Florence-Hapgood Recording by Geneva Book 3 Chapter 1 The Water Question at Montfamil Montfamil is situated between livery and the shares on the southern edge of their lofty table land which separates the orc from the mountain. At the present day it is a tolerably large town, ornamented all the years through with plaster villas, and on Sundays with beaming burglar. In 1823, there were at Montfamil neither so many white houses, nor so many well-satisfied citizens. It was only a village in the forest. Some pleasure houses of the last century were to be met with there, to be sure, which were recognizable by their grand air, their balconies in twisted iron, and their long windows, whose tiny panes cast all sorts of varying shades of green on the white of the closed shutters. But Montfamil was nonetheless a village. Retired closed merchants and rusticating attorneys had not discovered it as yet. It was a peaceful and charming place, which was not on the road to anywhere. There are people lived and cheaply, that present rustic life, which is so bounteous and so easy. Only water was where there, on account of the elevation of the plateau. It was necessary to fetch it from a considerable distance. The end of the village, towards Gagny drew its water from the magnificent ponds, which exist in the woods there. The other end, which surrounds the church and which lies in the direction of Cheers, found drinking water only at a little spring halfway down the slope, near the road to Cheers, about a quarter of an hour from Montfamil. Thus, each household found it hard work to speed supplied with water. The large houses, the aristocracy, of which the Tenerdeer tabbing from the part, paid half a fasten a bucketful to a man who made a business of it, and who earned about 8 sooths a day in his enterprise of supplying Montfamil with water. But this good man only worked until 7 o'clock in the evening in summer and 5 in winter. At night once come and shutters on the ground floor once closed, he who had no water to drink went to fetch it for himself or did without it. This constituted the terror of the poor creature, whom the reader has probably not forgotten, little cassette. It will be remembered that cassette was useful to the Tenerdeer in two ways. They made mother pay them and made child serve them. So when mother sees to pay altogether the reason for which we have read in the preceding chapters, the Tenerdeer skipped cassette. She took the place of a servant in their house. In this capacity, she it was who ran to fetch water when it was required. So the child, who was greatly terrified at year of going to spring at night, took great care that water should never be lacking in the house. Christmas of the year 1823 was particularly brilliant as Montfamil. The beginning of the winter had been mired. There had been neither snow nor frost up to that time. Some money banks from Paris had obtained permission of the mayor to erect their booth in the principal street of the village and a band of itinerant merchants and the protection of the saint tolerance had constructed their stores on church square and even extended them into Boulanger early, where as the reader will perhaps remember, the Tenerdeer's hostelry was situated. These people feared inks and drinking shops and communicated to the tranquil little district a noisy and joyous life. In order to play the part of faithful historian, we ought even to add that among the curiosities displayed in the square, there was a menagerie in which rightful clones clad in rags and comminua new vans exempted to the presence of Montfamil in 1823, one of those horrible Brazilian vultures, such as our Royal Museum did not possess until 1845 and which have a tricolor coquette for an eye. I believe that naturalists call this bird caracara polyborus. It belongs to the order of the epicides and to the family of the vultures. Some good old bonapartist soldiers who had retired to the village went to see this creature with great devotion. The Monty Banks gave out that the tricolor coquette was the unique phenomenon made by God expressly for their menagerie. On Christmas Eve itself, a number of men, characters and peddlers were seated at table drinking and smoking around four or five candles in the public room of Tenerdeer's hostelry. This room resembles all drinking shop rooms, tables, pewter jugs, bottles, drinkers, smokers, little light and great deal of noise. The date of the year 1823 was indicated nevertheless by two objects which were then fashionable in a burglar class, to which a kaleidoscope and a lamp of red tin. The female Tenerdeer was attending to the supper which was roasting in front of a clear fire. Her husband was drinking with his customers and talking politics. Besides political conversations, which had further principal subjects, the Spanish war and Muzio Ledog de Angolima, strictly local parentheses, like the following, were audible amid the uproar. About Nantre and Sresne, the vines have flourished greatly. When ten pieces were recorded on, there had been 12. They have yielded a great deal of juice under the press, but the grapes cannot be ripe. In those past, the grapes should not be ripe. The wine turns oily as soon as spring comes. Then it is very thin wine. There are wines pouring even like this. The grapes must be gathered while green, etc. Or a male would cut out. Are we responsible for what is in the sacks? We find in them a quantity of small seeds which we cannot sift out and which we are obliged to send through the milestones. There are towels, fennel, wedges, hemp seeds, foxtail, and a host of other weeds, not to mention pebbles, which are bound in certain wheat, especially in Bratton wheat. I am not fond of grinding Bratton wheat any more than longswears like to saw beams with nails in them. You can judge off the bad dust that makes in grinding. And then people can't plan about flour. There in the round, flour is not for hours. In a space between two windows, a mower, who was seated at table with a landed proprietor, who was fixing on a price for some middle work to be performed in the spring, was saying. It is no harm to have the grass wet. It cuts better. Due to the good things, it makes no difference with the grass. The grass is very young and very hard to cut still, it's terribly tender, it's years before the iron, etc. Cosette was in her usual place, seated on the crossbar to kitchen table beyond the chimney. She was in rags. Her bare feet were stretched into wooden shoes, and by the firelight, she was engaged in knitting wooden stockings destined for the young teenage years. A very young kitten was playing about among the chairs. Laughter and chatter were audible in the adjoining room from two fresh children's voices. It was Ebonina and Azeoma. In the chimney corner, I kept a nine tails with honey on her nail. At intervals, the cry of a very young child, which was somewhere in the house, ran through the noise of a dream shop. It was a little boy who had been born to the teenage years during one of the preceding winters. She did not know why, she said, the result of the cold, and who was a little more than three years old. The mother had nursed him, but she did not love him. When the persistent clamor of the bread became too annoying, the son scrolling to an ideal would say, to go and see what he wants. But the mother would reply, he buzzes me, and the neglected child continued to shriek in the dark. End of BOX 3 Chapter 1, The Water Question at Moon for Mail by Daniel Shorten So far in this book, the Tenardiers have been viewed only in profile. The moment has arrived for making the circuit of this couple, and considering it under all its aspects. Tenardier had just passed his fiftieth birthday. Madame Tenardier was approaching her forties, which is equivalent to fifty in a woman, so that there existed a balance of age between husband and wife. Our readers have possibly preserved some recollection of this Tenardier woman, ever since her first appearance. Tall, blonde, red, fats, angular, square, enormous, and agile. She belonged, as we have said, to the race of those colossal, wild women who contort themselves at fairs with paving stones hanging from their hair. She did everything about the house, made the beds, did the washing, the cooking, and everything else. Cassette was her only servant, a mouse in the service of an elephant. Everything trembled at the sound of her voice, windowpains, furniture, and people. Her big face, dotted with red blotches, presented the appearance of a skimmer. She had a beard. She was an ideal market porter, dressed in women's clothes. She swore splendidly. She boasted of being able to crack a nut with one blow of her fist. Except for the romances which she had read, and which made the affected lady peep through the ogreous at times. In a very queer way, the idea would never have occurred to anyone to say of her, that is a woman. This tenaldier female was like the product of a wench engrafted on a fishwife. When one heard her speak, one said, that is a gendarm. When one saw her drink, one said, that is a carter. When one saw her handle Cassette, one said, that is the hangman. One of her teeth projected when her face was in repose. Tenaldier was a small, thin, pale, angular, bony, feeble man, who had a sickly air and who was wonderfully healthy. His cunning began here. He smiled habitually by way of precaution, and was almost polite to everybody, even to the beggar to whom he refused half a farthing. He had the glance of a pole-cat in the bearing of a man of letters. He greatly resembled the portraits of the abbey de Lille. His coquetry consisted in drinking with the carters. No one had ever succeeded in rendering him drunk. He smoked a big pipe. He wore a blouse, and under his blouse, an old black coat. He made pretensions to literature and to materialism. There were certain names which he often pronounced to support whatever things he might be saying, Voltaire, Rénaud, Parni, and Singulier Lyonov, Saint Augustine. He declared that he had a system. In addition, he was a great swindler, a philosoph, a scientific thief. The species does exist. It will be remembered that he pretended to have served in the army. He was in the habit of relating with exuberance, how, being a sergeant in the sixth or the ninth light, something or other, at Waterloo, he had alone, and in the presence of a squadron of death-dealing hussars, covered with his body and saved from death, in the midst of the grave-shot, a general who had been dangerously wounded. Then arose for his wall the flaring sign, and for his inn the name which had bore in the neighbourhood, of the cabaret of the sergeant of Waterloo. He was a liberal, a classic, and a bonapartist. He had subscribed for the Chant Asile. It was said in the village that he had studied for the priesthood. We believe that he had simply studied in Holland for an innkeeper. This rascal of composite order was, in all probability, some Fleming from Lille in Flanders, a Frenchman in Paris, a Belgian at Brussels, being comfortably astride of both frontiers. As for his prowess at Waterloo, the reader is already acquainted with that. It will be perceived that he exaggerated it a trifle. Ebb and Flo, wandering, adventure, was the leaven of his existence. A tattered conscience entails a fragmentary life, and, apparently, at the stormy epoch of June 18, 1815, Tenaudier belonged to that variety of marauding subtlers of which we have spoken, beating about the country, selling to some, stealing from others, and travelling like a family man, with wife and children, in a rickety cart, in the rear of troops on the march, with an instinct for always attaching himself to the victorious army. This campaign ended, and, having, as he said, some kibus, he had come to Montfermets and set up an inn there. This kibus, composed of purses and watches, of gold rings and silver crosses, gathered in harvest-time in furrows sewn with corpses, did not amount to a large total, and did not carry this subtler turned eating housekeeper very far. Tenaudier had that peculiar rectilinear something about his gestures, which, accompanied by an oath, recalls the barracks, and by a sign of the cross, the seminary. He was a fine talker. He allowed it to be thought that he was an educated man. Nevertheless, the schoolmaster had noticed that he pronounced him properly. He composed the traveller's tariff card in a superior manner, but practiced eyes sometimes spied out orthographical errors in it. Tenaudier was cunning, greedy, slothful, and clever. He did not disdain his servants, which caused his wife to dispense with them. This giantess was jealous. It seemed to her that that thin and yellow little man must be an object coveted by all. Tenaudier, who was above all an astute and well-balanced man, was a scamp of a temperate sort. This is the worst species. Hypocrisy enters into it. It is not that Tenaudier was not, on occasion, capable of wrath to quite the same degree as his wife, but this was very rare, and at such times, since he was enraged with the human race in general, as he bore within him a deep furnace of hatred. And since he was one of those people who are continually avenging their wrongs, who accuse everything that passes before them of everything which has befallen them, and who are always ready to cast upon the first person who comes to hand, as a legitimate grievance, the sum total of the deceptions, the bankruptcies, and the calamities of their lives, when all this leaven was stirred up in him and boiled forth from his mouth and eyes, he was terrible. Woe to the person who came under his wrath at such a time. In addition to his other qualities, Tenaudier was attentive and penetrating. Silent or talkative, according to circumstances, and always highly intelligent. He had something of the look of sailors who were accustomed to screw up their eyes to gaze through marine glasses. Tenaudier was a statesman. Every newcomer who entered the tavern said on catching sight of Madame Tenaudier, there is the master of the house. A mistake. She was not even the mistress. The husband was both master and mistress. She worked, he created. He directed everything by a sort of invisible and constant magnetic action. A word was sufficient for him, sometimes a sign, the mastodon obeyed. Tenaudier was a sort of special and sovereign being in Madame Tenaudier's eyes, though she did not thoroughly realize it. She was possessed of virtues after her own kind. If she had ever had a disagreement as to any detail with Monsieur Tenaudier, which was an inadmissible hypothesis, by the way, she would not have blamed her husband in public on any subject whatever. She would never have committed before strangers, that mistake so often committed by women, and which is called in parliamentary language, exposing the crown. Although their concord had only evil as its result, there was contemplation in Madame Tenaudier's submission to her husband. That mountain of noise and flesh moved under the little finger of that frail despot. Viewed on its dwarfed and grotesque side, this was that grand and universal thing, the adoration of mind by matter, for certain ugly features have a cause in the very depths of eternal beauty. There was an unknown quantity about Tenaudier, hence the absolute empire of the man over that woman. At certain moments she beheld him like a lighted candle, at others she felt him like a claw. This woman was a formidable creature who loved no one except her children, and who did not fear anyone except her husband. She was a mother because she was mammiferous, but her maternity stopped short with her daughters, and as we shall see, did not extend to boys. The man had but one thought, how to enrich himself. He did not succeed at this. A theater worthy of this great talent was lacking. Tenaudier was ruining himself at Mont-Falmet, if ruin is possible to zero. In Switzerland or in the Pyrenees, this penniless scamp would have become a millionaire, but an innkeeper must browse where fate has hitched him. It will be understood that the word innkeeper is here employed in a restricted sense, and does not extend to an entire class. In this same year, 1823, Tenaudier was burdened with about fifteen hundred francs worth of petty debts, and this rendered him anxious. Whatever may have been the obstinate injustice of destiny in this case, Tenaudier was one of those men who understand best, with the most profundity and in the most modern fashion, that thing which is a virtue among barbarous peoples, and an object of merchandise among civilized peoples. Hospitality. Besides, he was an admirable poacher, and quoted for his skill in shooting. He had a certain cold and tranquil laugh, which was particularly dangerous. His theories as a landlord sometimes burst forth in lightning flashes. He had professional aphorisms which he inserted into his wife's mind. The duty of the innkeeper, he said to her one day, violently and in a low voice, is to sell to the first comer, stews, repose, light, fire, dirty sheets, a servant, lice, and a smile, to stop passersby, to empty small purses, and to honestly lighten heavy ones, to shelter travelling families respectfully, to shave the man, to pluck the woman, to pick the child clean, to quote the window open, the window shut, the chimney corner, the armchair, the chair, the ottoman, the stool, the feather bed, the mattress, and the truss of straw, to know how much the shadow uses up the mirror, and to put a price on it, and by 500,000 devils to make the traveller pay for everything, even for the flies which his dog eats. This man and this woman were ruse and rage wedded, a hideous and terrible team. While the husband pondered and combined, Madame Tenardier thought not of absent creditors, took no heed of yesterday, nor of tomorrow, and lived in a fit of anger, all in a minute. Such were these two beings. Cossette was between them, subjected to their double pressure, like a creature who is the same time being ground up in a mill and pulled to pieces with pincers. The man and the woman each had a different method. Cossette was overwhelmed with blows. This was the woman's. She went barefooted in winter. That was the man's doing. Cossette ran upstairs and down, washed, swept, rubbed, dusted, ran, fluttered about, panted, moved heavy articles, and, weak as she was, did the coursework. There was no mercy for her. A fierce mistress and venomous master, the Tenardier hostelry was like a spider's web, in which Cossette had been caught, and where she lay trembling. The ideal of oppression was realized by this sinister household. It was something like the fly serving the spiders. The poor child passively held her peace. What takes place within these souls, when they have but just quitted God, find themselves thus, at the very dawn of life? Very small, and in the midst of men all naked. End of Book Third, Chapter Two