 Chapter 10 of Book 3 of Les Miserables, 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. Les Miserables, Volume 2, by Victor Hugo. Translated by Isabelle Florence Hapgood. Book 3. Accomplishment of the promise made to the dead woman. Chapter 10. He who seeks to better himself may render his situation worse. Madame Tarnardier had allowed her husband to have his own way, as was her want. She had expected great results. When the man and Cozzette had taken their departure, Tarnardier allowed a full quarter of an hour to elapse. Then he took her aside and showed her the fifteen hundred francs. "'Is that all?' said she. It was the first time since they had set up housekeeping that she had dared to criticize one of the master's acts. The blow told. "'You are right, and sooth,' said he. "'I am a fool. Give me my hat!' He folded up the three bank-bills, thrust them into his pocket, and ran out in all haste. But he made a mistake, and turned to the right first. Some neighbors, of whom he made inquiries, put him on the track again. The lark and the man had been seen going in the direction of Livry. He followed these hints, walking with great strides, and talking to himself the while. "'That man is evidently a million dressed in yellow, and I am an animal. First he gave twenty sews, then five francs, then fifty francs, then fifteen hundred francs, all with equal readiness. He would have given fifteen thousand francs, but I shall overtake him. And then that bundle of clothes prepared beforehand for the child. All that was singular. Many mysteries lay concealed under it. One does not let mysteries out of one's hand when one has once grasped them. The secrets of the wealthy are sponges of gold. One must know how to subject them to pressure. All these thoughts whirled through his brain. "'I am an animal,' said he. When one leaves Montfermé, and reaches the turn which the road takes that runs to Livry, it can be seen stretching out before one to a great distance across the plateau. On arriving there he calculated that he ought to be able to see the old man and the child. He looked as far as his vision reached and saw nothing. He made fresh inquiries, but he had wasted time. Some passers-by informed him that the man and child of whom he was in search had gone towards the forest in the direction of Garnier. He hastened in that direction. They were far in advance of him, but a child walked slowly, and he walked fast. And then he was well acquainted with the country. All at once he paused and dealt himself a blow on his forehead, like a man who has forgotten some essential point, and who was ready to retrace his steps. "'I ought to have taken my gun,' said he to himself. T'Nardier was one of those double natures which sometimes pass through our midst without her being aware of the fact, and who disappear without her finding them out, because destiny has only exhibited one side of them. It is the fate of many men to live thus half-submerged. In a calm and even situation T'Nardier possessed all that is required to make, we will not say to be, what people have agreed to call an honest trader, a good bourgeois. At the same time, certain circumstances been given, certain shocks arriving to bring his under-nature to the surface. He had all the requisites for a blackard. He was a shopkeeper in whom there was some taint of the monster. Satan must have occasionally crouched down in some corner of the hovel in which T'Nardier dwelt, and have fallen a-dreaming in the presence of this hideous masterpiece. After a momentary hesitation, ba, he thought, they will have time to make their escape. And he pursued his road, walking rapidly straight ahead, and with almost an air of certainty, with the sagacity of a fox sending a covey of partridges. In truth, when he had passed the ponds and had traversed in an oblique direction the large clearing which lies on the right of the Avenue de Bellevue, and reached at her valley which nearly makes the circuit of the hill and covers the arch of the ancient aqueduct of the Abbey of Shell, he caught sight over the top of the brushwood of the hat on which he had already erected so many conjectures. It was that man's hat. The brushwood was not high. T'Nardier recognized the fact that the man and Cozette were sitting there. The child could not be seen on account of her small size, but the head of her doll was visible. T'Nardier was not mistaken. The man was sitting there, and letting Cozette get somewhat rested. The innkeeper walked round the brushwood and presented himself abruptly to the eyes of those whom he was in search of. Pardon, excuse me, sir," he said, quite breathless, but here are your fifteen hundred francs. So saying, he handed the stranger the three bank-bills. The man raised his eyes. What is the meaning of this? T'Nardier replied respectfully, It means, sir, that I shall take back Cozette. Cozette shuddered and pressed close to the old man. He replied, gazing to the very bottom of T'Nardier's eyes the while, and enunciating every syllable distinctly. You are going to take back Cozette. Yes, sir, I am. I will tell you. I have considered the matter. In fact, I have not the right to give her to you. I am an honest man, you see. This child does not belong to me. She belongs to her mother. It was her mother who confided her to me. I can only resign her to her mother. You will say to me, but her mother is dead. Good. In that case, I can only give the child up to the person who shall bring me a writing signed by her mother to the effect that I am to hand the child over to the person therein mentioned. That is clear. The man, without making any reply, fumbled in his pocket, and T'Nardier beheld the pocketbook of bank bills make its appearance once more. The tavernkeeper shivered with joy. Good, thought he, let us hold firm, he is going to bribe me. Before opening the pocketbook the traveller cast a glance about him. The spot was absolutely deserted. There was not a soul either in the woods or in the valley. The man opened his pocketbook once more, and drew from it not the handful of bills which T'Nardier expected, but a simple little paper which he unfolded and presented fully open to the inkkeeper, saying, You are right, read. T'Nardier took the paper and read, Montré-sur-Mer, March 25th, 1823. This year T'Nardier, you will deliver cosette to this person. You will be paid for all the little things. I have the honour to salute you with respect, Fontaine. You know that signature, resumed the man. It certainly was Fontaine's signature. T'Nardier recognized it. There was no reply to make. He experienced two violent vexations, the vexation of renouncing the bribery which he had hoped for, and the vexation of being beaten. The man added, You may keep this paper as your receipt. T'Nardier retreated in tolerably good order. This signature is fairly well imitated. He growled between his teeth, however, let it go. Then he essayed a desperate effort. It is well, sir, he said, since you are the person, but I must be paid for all those little things. A great deal is owing to me. The man rose to his feet, filliping the dust from his threadbare sleeve. Monsieur T'Nardier, in January last the mother beckoned that she owed you 120 francs. In February you sent her a bill of 500 francs. You received 300 francs at the end of February and 300 francs at the beginning of March. Since then nine months have elapsed, at 15 francs a month the price agreed upon, which makes 135 francs. You had received 100 francs too much, that makes 35 still owing you. I have just given you 1500 francs. T'Nardier's sensations were those of the wolf. At the moment when he feels himself nipped and seized by the steel jaw of the trap. Who is this devil of a man, he thought? And he did what the wolf does. He shook himself. Audacity had succeeded with him once. Monsieur, I don't know your name, he said resolutely, and this time casting aside all respectful ceremony. I shall take back Cozzette if you do not give me a thousand crowns. The stranger said tranquilly, come, Cozzette. He took Cozzette by his left hand, and with his right he picked up his cudgel which was lying on the ground. T'Nardier noted the enormous size of the cudgel and the solitude of the spot. The man plunged into the forest with the child, leaving the innkeeper motionless and speechless. While they were walking away, T'Nardier scrutinized his huge shoulders which were a little rounded, and his great fists. Then, bringing his eyes back to his own person, they fell upon his feeble arms and his thin hands. I really must have been exceedingly stupid not to have thought to bring my gun, he said to himself, since I was going hunting. However, the innkeeper did not give up. I want to know where he is going, said he, and he set out to follow them at a distance. Two things were left on his hands, an irony in the shape of the paper signed Fontine and a consolation, the fifteen hundred francs. The man led Cozzette off in the direction of Leverie and Bondy. He walked slowly with drooping head in an attitude of reflection and sadness. The winter had thinned out the forest so that T'Nardier did not lose them from sight, although he kept at a good distance. The man turned round from time to time and looked to see if he was being followed. All at once he caught sight of T'Nardier. He plunged suddenly into the brushwood with Cozzette, where they could both hide themselves. The deuce! said T'Nardier, and he redoubled his pace. The thickness of the undergrowth forced him to draw nearer to them. When the man had reached the densest part of the thicket he wheeled round. It was in vain that T'Nardier sought to conceal himself in the branches. He could not prevent the man seeing him. The man cast upon him an uneasy glance, then elevated his head and continued his course. The innkeeper set out again in pursuit. Thus they continued for two or three hundred paces. All at once the man turned round once more. He saw the innkeeper. This time he gazed at him with so somber an air that T'Nardier decided that it was useless to proceed further. T'Nardier retraced his steps. Les muserables by Victor Hugo Translated by Isabelle Florence Hapgood Book Third Accomplishment of the Promise Made to the Dead Woman Chapter 11, No. 9430 reappears, and Cozzette wins it in the lottery. Jean Valjean was not dead. When he fell into the sea, or rather when he threw himself into it, he was not ironed as we have seen. He swam under water until he reached a vessel at anchor to which a boat was moored. He found means of hiding himself in this boat until night. At night he swam off again and reached the shore a little way from Cape-Brin. There, as he did not lack money, he procured clothing. A small country house in the neighbourhood of Balagier was at that time the dressing-room of escaped convicts, a lucrative specialty. Then Jean Valjean, like all the sorry fugitives who are seeking to evade the vigilance of the law and social fatality, pursued an obscure and undulating itinerary. He found his first refuge at Prado, near Bosse. Then he directed his course towards Grand Villard near Préhensant in the Haute-Zalp. It was a fumbling and uneasy flight, a mole's track whose branchings are untraceable. Later on some trace of his passage into I in the territory of Sivria was discovered, in the Pyrenees at Acquand, at the spot called Grange de Doumec, near the market of Chavail, and in the environs of Perrigueur at Bruny, canton of La Chapelle-Gonague. He reached Paris. We have just seen him at Mont-Fermet. His first care on arriving in Paris had been to buy morning clothes for a little girl of from seven to eight years of age, then to procure a lodging. That done he had betaken himself to Mont-Fermet. It will be remembered that already during his preceding escape he had made a mysterious trip thither, or somewhere in that neighbourhood, of which the law had gathered an inkling. However, he was thought to be dead, and this still further increased the obscurity which had gathered about him. At Paris one of the journals which chronicled the fact fell into his hands. He felt reassured and almost at peace, as though he had really been dead. On the evening of the day when Jean Valjean rescued Cosette from the claws of the tenardier he returned to Paris. He re-entered it at nightfall with the child by way of the barrier morceau. There he entered a cabriolet which took him to the esplanade of the observatoire. There he got out, paid the coachman, took Cosette by the hand, and together they directed their steps through the darkness, through the deserted streets which adjoined the orcine and the glacier towards the boulevard de l'hôpital. The day had been strange and filled with emotions for Cosette. They had eaten some bread and cheese purchased in isolated taverns behind hedges. They had changed carriages frequently. They had travelled short distances on foot. She made no complaint, but she was weary, and Jean Valjean perceived it by the way she dragged more and more on his hand as she walked. He took her on his back. Cosette, without letting go of Catherine, laid her head down Jean Valjean's shoulder, and there fell asleep. TRANSLATED BY ISABEL FLORENCE HABGOOD BOOK FORTH THE GORBAU HOVEL CHAPTER I MASTER GORBAU Forty years ago, a rambler who had ventured into that unknown country of the Salpettrière, and who had mounted to the barrière d'Italie by way of the boulevard, reached a point where it might be said that Paris disappeared. It was no longer solitude, for there were passes by. It was not the country, for there were houses and streets. It was not the city, for the streets had ruts like highways and the grass grew in them. It was not a village, the houses were too lofty. What was it then? It was an inhabited spot where there was no one. It was a desert place where there was someone. It was a boulevard of the great city, a street of Paris, more wild at night than the forest, more gloomy by day than a cemetery. It was the old quarter of the Marché au Chevaux. The rambler, if he risked himself outside the four decrepit walls of this Marché au Chevaux, if he consented even to pass beyond the rue du petit banquier, after living on his right a garden protected by high walls, then a field in which ten bark mills rose like gigantic beaver-huts, then an enclosure encumbered with timber with a heap of stumps, sawdust, and shavings on which stood a large dog barking. Then a long, low, utterly dilapidated wall with a little black door in mourning laden with mosses which were covered with flowers in the spring. Then in the most deserted spot a frightful and decrepit building on which ran the inscription in large letters, post no bills. This daring rambler would have reached little-known latitudes at the corner of the rue des Vignes Saint-Marcelles. There, near a factory, and between two garden walls, there could be seen at that epoch a mean building which, at the first glance, seemed as small as a thatched hovel, and which was, in reality, as large as a cathedral. It presented its side and gable to the public road, hence its apparent diminutiveness. Nearly the whole of the house was hidden. Only the door and one window could be seen. This hovel was only one story high. The first detail that struck the observer was that the door could never have been anything but the door of a hovel, while the window, if it had been carved out of dressed tone instead of being in rough masonry, might have been the lattice of a lordly mansion. The door was nothing but a collection of worm-eaten planks, roughly bound together by cross-beams which resembled roughly hewn logs. It opened directly on a steep staircase of lofty steps, muddy, chalky, plaster-stained, dusty steps of the same width as itself, which could be seen from the street, running straight up like a ladder, and disappearing in the darkness between the two walls. The top of the shapeless bay into which this door shot was masked by a narrow scantling in the centre of which a triangular hole had been sewed, which served both as a wicket and air-hole when the door was closed. On the inside of the door, the figure's fifty-two had been traced with a couple of strokes of a brush dipped in ink, and above the scantling the same hand had doped the number fifty so that one hesitated. Where was one? Above the door it said, number fifty. The inside replied, no, number fifty-two. No one knows what dust-colored figures were suspended like draperies from the triangular opening. The window was large, sufficiently elevated, garnished with vanishing blinds, and with a frame in large square panes. Only these large panes were suffering from various wounds, which were both concealed and betrayed by an ingenious paper-bandage, and the blinds, dislocated and unpasted, threatened passes by, rather than screened the occupants. The horizontal slats were missing here and there, and had been naively replaced, with boards nailed on perpendicularly, so that what began as a blind ended as a shutter. This door with an unclean and this window with an honest, though dilapidated air, thus beheld on the same house, produced the effect of two incomplete beggars walking side by side, with different means beneath the same rags, the one having always been a mendicant, and the other having once been a gentleman. The staircase led to a very vast edifice, which resembled a shed which had been converted into a house. This edifice had, for its intestinal tube, a long corridor on which opened to right and left sorts of compartments of varied dimensions which were inhabitable under stress of circumstances, and rather more like stalls than cells. These chambers received their light from the vague waste-grounds in the neighborhood. All this was dark, desegreable, worn, melancholy, sepulchral, traversed according as the crevices lay in the roof or in the door, by cold rays or by icy winds. An interesting and picturesque peculiarity of this sort of dwelling is the enormous size of the spiders. To the left of the entrance door, on the boulevard side, at about the height of a man from the ground, a small window which had been walled up, formed a square niche full of stones which the children had thrown there as they passed by. A portion of this building has recently been demolished. From what still remains of it, one can form a judgment as to what it was in former days. As a whole, it was not over a hundred years old. A hundred years is youth in a church and age in a house. It seems as though man's lodging partake of his ephemeral character and God's house of his eternity. The postman called the house number 5052, but it was known in the neighborhood as the Gorbo House. Let us explain whence this appellation was derived. Collectors of petty details who become herbalists of anecdotes and prick slippery dates into their memories with a pin know that there was in Paris during the last century, about 1770, two attorneys at the Châtelet named Juan Corbo, Raven, the other Renard, Fox. The two names had been forestalled by La Fontaine. The opportunity was too fine for the lawyers. They made the most of it. A parody was immediately put in circulation in the galleries of the courthouse in verses that limped a little. Maître Corbo, sur un dossier perché, tenait dans son vec une saisie exécutoire. Maître Renard, par l'odeur alléchée, lui fit à peu près cette histoire. Eh, bonjour, etc. The two honest practitioners, imbarassed by the jests and finding the bearing of their heads interfered with by the shouts of laughter which followed them, resolved to get rid of their names and hit upon the expedient of applying to the king. Their petition was presented to Louis XV on the same day when the papal nuncio, on the one hand, and the cardinal de la Roche Émond, on the other, both devoutly kneeling were each engaged in putting on in his majesty's presence a sleeper on the bare feet of Madame du Barry who had just got out of bed. The king, who was laughing, continued to laugh, passed gaily from the two bishops to the two lawyers, and bestowed on these limbs of the law their former names, or nearly so. By the king's command, Maître Gorbo was permitted to add a tale to his initial letter and to call himself Gorbo. Maître Renard was less lucky. All he obtained was leave to place a P in front of his R and to call himself Prenard, so that the second name bore all almost as much resemblance as the first. Now, according to local tradition, this Maître Gorbo had been the proprietor of the building numbered 5052 on the Boulevard de l'Hôpital. He was even the author of the monumental window. Hence the edifice bore the name of the Gorbo House. Opposite this house, among the trees of the Boulevard, rose a great elm, which was three quarters dead. Almost directly facing it opens the rue de la Barrière des Gobelins, a street then without houses, unpaved, planted with unhealthy trees, which was green or muddy, according to the season, and which ended squarely in the exterior wall of Paris. An order of capris issued in puffs from the roofs of the neighboring factory. The barrier was closed at hand. In 1823 the city wall was still in existence. This barrier itself evoked gloomy fancies in the mind. It was the road to beset. It was through it that, under the empire and the restoration, prisoners condemned to death re-entered Paris on the day of their execution. It was there that about 1829 was committed that mysterious assassination, called the assassination of the Fontaine Bleu Barrière, whose authors justice was never able to discover. A millencaly problem which has never been elucidated. A frightful enigma which has never been unriddled. Take a few steps, and you come upon that fatal rue-croule barbe where Eulbach stabbed the goat-girl of Ivry to the sound of thunder as in the male dramas. A few paces more, and you arrive at the abominable pollarded arms of the Barrière Saint-Jacques, that expedient of the philanthropist to conceal the scaffold, that miserable and shameful place de grove of a shop-keeping and bourgeois society. Which recoiled before the death penalty, neither daring to abolish it with grandeur, nor to uphold it with authority. Leaving aside this place Saint-Jacques which was, as it were, predestined, and which has always been horrible, probably the most mournful spot on that mournful boulevard seven and thirty years ago, was the spot which even today is so unattractive, where stood the building number fifty-fifty-two. Bourgeois houses only began to spring up there twenty-five years later. The place was unpleasant. In addition to the gloomy thoughts which assailed one there, one was conscious of being between the Salpétrière, a glimpse of whose dome could be seen, and Bissette, whose outskirts one was fairly touching, that is to say between the madness of women and the madness of men. As far as the eye could see, one could perceive nothing but the abattoirs, the city-wall, and the fronts of a few factories, resembling barracks or monasteries. Everywhere about stood hovels, rubbish, ancient walls blackened like circloths, new white walls like winding sheets. Everywhere parallel rows of trees, buildings erected on a line, flat constructions, long, cold rows, and the melancholy sadness of right angles. Not an unevenness of the ground, not a caprice in the architecture, not a fold. The ensemble was glacial, regular, hideous. Everything oppresses the heart like symmetry. It is because symmetry is ennui, and ennui is at the very foundation of grief. Despair yorns. Something more terrible than a hell where one suffers may be imagined, and that is a hell where one is bored. If such a hell existed, that bit of the boulevard de l'hôpital might have formed the entrance to it. Nevertheless, at nightfall, at the moment when the daylight is vanishing, especially in winter, at the hour when the twilight breathes tears from the alms their last russet leaves, when the darkness is deep and starless, or when the moon and the wind are making openings in the clouds and losing themselves in the shadows, this boulevard suddenly becomes frightful. The black lines sink inwards and are lost in the shades like morsels of the infinite. The passer-by cannot refrain from recalling the innumerable traditions of the place which are connected with the jibbet. The solitude of this spot, where so many crimes have been committed, had something terrible about it. One almost had a pre-sentiment of meeting with traps in that darkness. All the confused forms of the darkness seemed suspicious, and the long hollow square of which one caught a glimpse between each tree seemed graves. By day it was ugly. In the evening, melancholy. By night it was sinister. In summer, at twilight, one saw here and there a few old women seated at the foot of the Elm on benches moldy with rain. These good old women were fond of begging. However, this quarter, which had a superannuated rather than an antique air, was standing even then to transformation. Even at that time, anyone who was desirous of seeing it had to make haste. Each day, some detail of the whole effect was disappearing. For the last 20 years, the station of the Orleans Railway has stood beside the old Fobourg and distracted it as it does today. Wherever it is placed on the borders of a capital, a railway station is the death of a suburb and the birth of a city. It seems as though, around these great centers of the movements of a people, the earth full of germs crumbled and yawned to engulf the ancient dwellings of men and to allow new ones to spring forth at the rattle of these powerful machines at the breath of these monstrous horses of civilization which devour coal and vomit fire. The old houses crumbled and new ones rise. Since the Orleans Railway has invaded the region of the Salpétrière, the ancient narrow streets which adjoin the motes Saint-Victor and the Jardin des Plantes tremble as they are violently traversed three or four times each day by those currents of coached fioccas and omnibuses which, in a given time, crowd back the houses to the right and the left, for there are things which are odd when said that are rigorously exact. And just as it is true to say that in large cities the sun makes the southern fronts of houses to vegetate and grow, it is certain that the frequent passage of vehicles and largest streets. The symptoms of a new life are evident. In this old provincial quarter, in the wildest nooks, the pavement shows itself. The sidewalks begin to crawl and to grow longer, even where there are as yet no pedestrians. One morning, a memorable morning in July 1845, black pots of betumen were seen smoking there. On that day it might be said that civilization had arrived in the Rue de l'Urcine, and that Paris had entered the suburb of Saint-Marceau. Chapter 2 of Book 4 of Les Miserables, 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. Les Miserables, Volume 2 by Victor Hugo. Translated by Isabelle Florence Hapgood. Book 4. The Gorbo Huffle. Chapter 2. A Nest for Owl and a Warbler. It was in front of this Gorbo house that Jean Valjean halted. Like wild birds he had chosen this desert place to construct his nest. He fumbled in his waistcoat pocket, drew out a sort of a pass-key, opened the door, entered, closed it again carefully, and ascended the staircase, still carrying cosette. At the top of the stairs he drew from his pocket another key, with which he opened another door. The chamber which he entered, and which he closed again instantly, was a kind of moderately spacious attic, furnished with a mattress laid on the floor, a table and several chairs. A stove in which a fire was burning, and whose embers were visible, stood in one corner. A lantern on the boulevard cast a vague light into this poor room. At the extreme end there was a dressing room with a folding bed. Jean Valjean carried the child to this bed, and laid her down there without waiting her. He struck a match and lighted a candle. All this was prepared beforehand on the table, and as he had done on the previous evening, he began to scrutinize cosette's face with a gaze full of ecstasy, in which the expression of kindness and tenderness almost amounted to aberration. The little girl, with that tranquil confidence which belongs only to extreme strength and extreme weakness, had fallen asleep without knowing with whom she was, and continued to sleep without knowing where she was. Jean Valjean bent down and kissed that child's hand. Nine months before he had kissed the hand of the mother who had also just fallen asleep. The same sad, piercing, religious sentiment filled his heart. He knelt beside cosette's bed. It was broad daylight, and the child still slept. A wan ray of the December sun penetrated the window of the attic, and lay upon the ceiling in long threads of light and shade. All at once a heavily laden carrier's cart, which was passing along the boulevard, shook the frail bed like a clap of thunder, and made it quiver from top to bottom. "'Yes, madame,' cried cosette, waking with the start, "'Here I am, here I am.' As she sprang out of bed, her eyes still half-shut with the heaviness of sleep, extending her arms towards the corner of the wall. "'Ah, won't you, my broom,' said she. She opened her eyes wide now, and beheld the smiling countenance of Jean Valjean. "'Ah, so it is true,' said the child. "'Good morning, monsieur.' Catherine except joy and happiness instantly and familiarly, being themselves by nature joy and happiness. Cosette caught sight of Catherine at the foot of her bed, and took possession of her. And as she played, she put a hundred questions to Jean Valjean. Where was she? Was Paris very large? Was Madame Tarnardier very far away? Was she to go back? Etc. Etc. All at once she exclaimed, "'How pretty it is here!' It was a frightful whole, but she felt free. "'Must I sweep?' she resumed at last. "'Play,' said Jean Valjean. "'The day passed thus. Cosette, without troubling herself to understand anything, was inexpressibly happy with that doll and that kind man. End of Book 4, Chapter 2. Chapter 3 of Book 4 of Lémiz Arab 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 Les Miserables Vol. 2 by Victor Hugo. Translated by Isabelle Florence Hapgood. Book 4. The Gorbo Huffle. Chapter 3. Two misfortunes make one piece of good fortune. On the following morning, at daybreak, Jean Valjean was still by Cousette's bedside. He watched there motionless, waiting for her to wake. Some new thing had come into his soul. Jean Valjean had never loved anything. For twenty-five years he had been alone in the world. He had never been father, lover, husband, friend. In the prison he had been vicious, gloomy, chaste, ignorant, and shy. The heart of that ex-convict was full of virginity. His sister and his sister's children had left him only a vague and far-off memory which had finally almost completely vanished. He had made every effort to find them, and not having been able to find them, he had forgotten them. Human nature is made thus. The other tender emotions of his youth, if he had ever had any, had fallen into an abyss. When he saw Cousette, when he had taken possession of her, carried her off, and delivered her, he felt his heart moved within him. All the passion and affection within him awoke and rushed towards that child. He approached the bed where she lay sleeping, and trembled with joy. He suffered all the pangs of a mother, and he knew not what it meant. For that great and singular movement of a heart which begins to love is a very obscure and a very sweet thing. Poor old man, with a perfectly new heart. Only as he was five and fifty, and Cousette eight years of age, all that might have been loved in the whole course of his life flowed together into a sort of ineffable light. It was the second white apparition which she had encountered. The bishop had caused the dawn of virtue to rise on his horizon. Cousette caused the dawn of love to rise. The early days passed in this dazzled state. Cousette, on her side, had also, unknown to herself, become another being. Poor little thing. She was so little when her mother left her that she no longer remembered her. Like all children who resemble young shoots of the vine which cling to everything, she had tried to love. She had not succeeded. All had repulsed her. The Tenerdies, their children, other children. She had loved the dog, and he had died, after which nothing and nobody would have anything to do with her. It is a sad thing to say, and we have already intimated it, that at eight years of age her heart was cold. It was not her fault. It was not the faculty of loving that she lacked. Alas, it was the possibility. Thus, from the very first day, all her sentient and thinking powers loved this kind man. She felt that which she had never felt before. A sensation of expansion. The man no longer produced on her the effect of being old or poor. She thought Jean Valjean handsome, just as she thought the hovel pretty. These are the effects of the dawn, of childhood, of joy. The novelty of the earth and of life counts for something here. Nothing is so charming as the colouring reflection of happiness on a garret. We all have in our past a delightful garret. Nature, a difference of fifty years, had set a profound gulf between Jean Valjean and Cousette. Destiny filled in this gulf. Destiny suddenly united and wedded with its irresistible power these two uprooted existences, differing in age alike in sorrow. One in fact completed the other. Cousette's instinct sought a father, as Jean Valjean's instinct sought a child. To meet was to find each other. At the mysterious moment when their hands touched, they were welded together. When these two souls perceived each other, they recognised each other as necessary to each other and embraced each other closely, taking the words in their most comprehensive and absolute sense, we may say, that separated from everyone by the walls of the tomb, Jean Valjean was the widower, and Cousette was the orphan. The situation caused Jean Valjean to become Cousette's father after a celestial fashion. And in truth the mysterious impression produced on Cousette in the depths of the forest of Shell by the hand of Jean Valjean grasping hers in the dark was not an illusion, but a reality. The entrance of that man into the destiny of that child had been the advent of God. Moreover, Jean Valjean had chosen his refuge well. There he seemed perfectly secure. The chamber with the dressing room which he occupied with Cousette was the one whose window opened on the boulevard. This being the only window in the house, no neighbour's glances were to be feared from across the way or at the side. The ground floor of number 5052, a sort of dilapidated penthouse, served as a wagon house for market gardeners, and no communication existed between it and the first story. It was separated by the flooring which had neither traps nor stairs, and which formed the diaphragm of the house, as it were. The first story contained, as we have said, numerous chambers and several attics, only one of which was occupied by the old woman who took charge of Jean Valjean's housekeeping. All the rest was uninhabited. It was this old woman, ornamented with the name of the principal lodger, and in reality entrusted with the functions of Portress, who had let him the lodging on Christmas Eve. He had represented himself to her as a gentleman of means who had been ruined by Spanish bonds, who was coming there to live with his little daughter. He had paid her six months in advance, and had commissioned the old woman to furnish the chamber and dressing room, as we have seen. It was this good woman who had lighted the fire in the stove, and prepared everything on the evening of their arrival. Week followed week. These two beings led a happy life in that hovel. Cosette laughed, chattered, and sang from daybreak. Children have their morning song as well as birds. It sometimes happened that Jean Valjean clasped her tiny red hand, all cracked with chill-blanes, and kissed it. The poor child, who was used to being beaten, did not know the meaning of this, and ran away in confusion. At times she became serious, and stared at her little black gown. Cosette was no longer in rags. She was in mourning. She had emerged from misery, and she was entering into life. Jean Valjean had undertaken to teach her to read. Sometimes, as he made the child spell, he remembered that it was with the idea of doing evil that he had learned to read in prison. This idea had ended in teaching a child to read. Then the ex-convict smiled, with the pensive smile of the angels. He felt in it a premeditation from on high the will of someone who was not man, and he became absorbed in reverie. Good thoughts have their abysses as well as evil ones. To teach Cosette to read and to let her play, this constituted nearly the whole of Jean Valjean's existence. And then he talked to her mother, and he made her pray. She called him father, and knew no other name for him. He passed hours in watching her dressing and undressing her doll, and in listening to her prattle. Life henceforth appeared to him to be full of interest. Men seemed to him good and just. He no longer reproached anyone in thought. He saw no reason why he should not live to be a very old man, now that this child loved him. He saw a whole future stretching out before him, illuminated by Cosette as by a charming light. The best of us are not exempt from egotistical thoughts. At times he reflected with a sort of joy that she would be ugly. This is only a personal opinion. But to utter our whole thought, at the point where Jean Valjean had arrived when he began to love Cosette, it is by no means clear to us that he did not need this encouragement in order that he might persevere in well-doing. He had just viewed the malice of men and the misery of society under a new aspect. Incomplete aspects which unfortunately only exhibited one side of the truth. The fate of woman asund up in Fontaine and public authority as personified in Javert. He had returned to prison this time for having done right. He had coffed fresh bitterness. Disgust and lassitude were overpowering him. Even the memory of the bishop probably suffered a temporary eclipse, though sure to reappear later on, luminous and triumphant. But after all that sacred memory was growing dim. Who knows whether Jean Valjean had not been on the eve of growing discouraged and of falling once more. He loved and grew strong again. Alas! he walked with no less indecision than Cosette. He protected her and she strengthened him. Thanks to him she could walk through life. Thanks to her he could continue in virtue. He was that child's day and she was his prop. Oh! unfathomable and divine mystery of the balances of destiny! End of book 4, chapter 3 Chapter 4 of book 4 of Les Miserables 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 Jonathan Ross. Les Miserables volume 2 by Victor Hugo. Translated by Isabelle Florin's Hatgood. Book 4. The Gorbohovel Chapter 4. The Remarks of the Principal Tenant Both Aljan was prudent enough never to go out by day. Every evening at twilight he walked for an hour or two, sometimes alone, often with Cosette, seeking the most deserted side alleys of the Boulevard and entering churches at nightfall. He liked to go to Saint Medard, which is the nearest church. When he did not take Cosette with him she remained with the old woman, but the child's delight was to go out with the good man. She preferred an hour with him to all her rapturous tata-tates with Catherine. He held her hand as they walked and said sweet things to her. It turned out that Cosette was a very gay little person. The old woman attended to the housekeeping and cooking and went to market. They lived soberly, always having a little fire, but like people in very moderate circumstances. Jean Valjean had made no alterations in the furniture as it was the first day. He had merely had the glass door leading to Cosette's dressing room replaced by a solid door. He still wore his yellow coat, his black breeches, and his old hat. In the street he was taken for a poor man. It sometimes happened that kind-hearted women turned back to bestow a sue on him. Jean Valjean accepted the sue with a deep bow. It also happened occasionally that he encountered some poor wretch asking alms. Then he looked behind him to make sure that no one was observing him. Selfly approached the unfortunate man, put a piece of money into his hand, off in a silver coin, and walked rapidly away. This had its disadvantages. He began to be known in the neighborhood under the name of the beggar who gives alms. The old principal lodger, a cross-looking creature who was thoroughly permeated so far as her neighbors were concerned with the inquisitiveness peculiar to envious persons, scrutinized Jean Valjean a great deal without his suspecting the fact. She was a little deaf, which rendered her talkative. There remained to her from her past two teeth, one above the other below, which she was continually knocking against each other. She had questioned Cosette, who had not been able to tell her anything since she knew nothing herself, except that she had come from Montfermets. One morning, the spy saw Jean Valjean with an air which struck the old gossip as peculiar, entering one of the uninhabited compartments of the hobble. She followed him with the step of an old cat, and was able to observe him without being seen, through a crack in the door, which was directly opposite him. Jean Valjean had his back turned towards this door, by way of greater security, no doubt. The old woman saw him fumble in his pocket, and drawed thence a case, scissors and thread. Then he began to rip the lining of one of the skirts of his coat, and from the opening he took a bit of yellowish paper, which he unfolded. The old woman recognized with terror the fact that it was a bank bill for a thousand francs. It was the second or third only that she had seen in the course of her existence. She fled in alarm. A moment later, Jean Valjean accosted her, and asked her to go and get this thousand franc bill changed for him, adding that it was his quarterly income, which he had received the day before. Where, thought the old woman, he did not go out till six o'clock in the evening, and the government bank certainly is not open at that hour. The old woman went to get the bill changed, and mentioned her surmises. That thousand franc note, commented on and multiplied, produced a vast amount of terrified discussion among the gossips of the Rue des Vies Saint Marceaux. A few days later, a chance that Jean Valjean was sawing some wood in his shirt sleeves in the corridor. The old woman was in the chamber, putting things in order. She was alone. Cosette was occupied in admiring the wood as it was sawed. The old woman caught sight of the coat hanging on a nail, and examined it. The lining had been sewed up again. The good woman felt of it carefully, and thought she observed in the skirts and reveres, thicknesses of paper. More thousand franc bank bills, no doubt. She also noticed that there were all sorts of things in the pockets. Not only the needles, thread, and scissors, which she had seen, but a big pocketbook, a very large knife, and a suspicious circumstance. Several wigs of various colors. Each pocket of his coat had the air of being in a manner provided against unexpected accidents. Thus the inhabitants of the house reached the last days of winter. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibreVox.org. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibreVox.org. Near St. Medard's Church there was a poor man who was in the habit of crouching on the brink of a public well which had been condemned, and on whom Jean Valjean was fond of bestowing charity. He never passed this man without giving him a few sews. Sometimes he spoke to him. Those who envied this mendicant said that he belonged to the police. He was an ex-bedal of 75, who was constantly mumbling his prayers. One evening, as Jean Valjean was passing by, when he had not cosed with him, he saw the beggar in his usual place, beneath the lantern, which had just been lighted. The man seemed engaged in prayer, according to his custom, and was much bent over. Jean Valjean stepped up to him, and placed his customary alms in his hand. The mendicant raised his eyes suddenly, stared intently at Jean Valjean, then dropped his head quickly. This movement was like a flash of lightning. Jean Valjean was seized with a shutter. It seemed to him that he had just caught sight, by the light of the street lantern, not of the placid and beaming visage of the old beetle, but of a well-known and startling face. He experienced the same impression that one would have on finding oneself, all of a sudden, face to face in the dark with a tiger. He recoiled, terrified, petrified, daring neither to breathe, to speak, to remain nor to flee, staring at the beggar who had dropped his head, which was enveloped in a rag, and no longer appeared to know that he was there. At this strange moment, an instinct, possibly the mysterious instinct of self-preservation, restrained Jean Valjean from uttering a word. The beggar had the same figure, the same rags, the same appearance as he had every day. Bah! said Jean Valjean, I am mad, I am dreaming, impossible, and he returned profoundly troubled. He hardly dared to confess, even to himself, that the face which he thought he had seen was the face of Javert. That night, on thinking the matter over, he regretted not having questioned the man in order to force him to raise his head a second time. On the following day, at nightfall, he went back. The beggar was at his post. Good day, my good man, said Jean Valjean, resolutely handing him a suit. The beggar raised his head and replied in a warning voice, thanks, my good sir. It was unmistakably the ex-beetle. Jean Valjean felt completely reassured. He began to laugh. How the deuce could I have thought that I saw Javert there, he thought. Am I going to lose my eyesight now? And he thought no more about it. A few days afterwards, it might have been at eight o'clock in the evening, he was in his room and engaged in making cosette spell aloud. When he heard the house door open and then shut again, this struck him as singular. The old woman, who was the only inhabitant of the house except himself, always went to bed at nightfall, so that she might not burn out her candles. Jean Valjean made a sign to cosette to be quiet. He heard someone ascending the stairs. It might possibly be the old woman who might have fallen ill and have been out of the apothecaries. Jean Valjean listened. The step was heavy and sounded like that of a man, but the old woman wore stout shoes and there's nothing that would so strongly resemble the step of a man as that of an old woman. Nevertheless, Jean Valjean blew out his candle. He had sent cosette to bed, sang to her in a low voice, get into bed very softly, and as he kissed her brow, the steps paused. Jean Valjean remained silent, motionless, with his back towards the door, seated on the chair from which he had not stirred and holding his breath in the dark. After the expiration of a rather long interval, he turned around. As he heard nothing more and as he raised his eyes towards the door of his chamber, he saw a light through the keyhole. This light formed a sort of sinister star in the blackness of the door and the wall. There was evidently someone there who was holding a candle in his hand and listening. Several minutes elapsed then and the light retreated, but he heard no sound of footsteps which seemed to indicate that the person who had been listening at the door had removed his shoes. Jean Valjean threw himself, all dressed as he was, on his bed and could not close his eyes all night. At daybreak, just as he was falling into a doze through fatigue, he was awakened by the creaking of a door which opened on some attic at the end of the corridor. Then he heard the same masculine footstep which had ascended the stairs on the preceding evening. The step was approaching. He sprang off the bed and applied his eye to the keyhole, which was tolerably large, hoping to see the person who had made his way by night into the house and had listened at his door as he passed. It was a man, in fact, who passed this time without pausing in front of Jean Valjean's chamber. The corridor was too dark to allow the person's face being extinguished, but when the man reached the staircase, a ray of light from without made it stand out like a silhouette, and Jean Valjean had a complete view of his back. The man was a lofty stature, clad in a long frock coat, with a cudgel under his arm. The formidable neck and shoulders belonged to Javert. Jean Valjean might have attempted to catch another glimpse of him through his window opening on the boulevard, but he would have been obliged to open the window. He dared not. It was evident that this man had entered with a key and, like himself, who had given him that key. What was the meaning of this? When the old woman came to do the work at seven o'clock in the morning, Jean Valjean cast a penetrating glance on her, but he did not question her. The good woman appeared as usual. As she swept up, she remarked to him, possibly Montseur may have heard someone come in last night. At that age and on that boulevard, eight o'clock in the evening was the dead of the night. That is true, by the way, he replied in the most natural tone possible. Who was it? It was a new lodger who had come into the house, said the old woman. And what was his name? I don't know exactly. Dumon or Domon, or some name of that sort. And who is this Montseur, Dumon? The old woman gazed at him with her little pole cat eyes and answered, a gentleman of property like yourself. Perhaps she had no ulterior meaning. Jean Valjean thought he perceived one. When the old woman had taken her departure, he did up 100 francs, which he had in a cupboard, into a roll and put it in his pocket. In spite of all the precautions which he took in this operation, so that he might not be heard rattling silver, a hundredth to a piece escaped from his hands and rolled noisily on the floor. When darkness came on, he descended and carefully scrutinized both sides of the boulevard. He saw no one. The boulevard appeared to be absolutely deserted. It is true that a person can conceal himself behind trees. He went upstairs again. He took her by the hand, and they both won out. Volume 2 by Victor Hugo Translated by Isabelle Florence Hapgood Book No. 5 Les Miserables, Chapter 1 The Zig-Zags of Strategy An observation here becomes necessary, in view of the pages which the reader is about to peruse and of others which will be met with further on. The author of this book, who regrets the necessity of mentioning himself, has been absent from Paris for many years. Paris has been transformed since he quitted it. A new city has arisen which is, after a fashion, unknown to him. There is no need for him to say that he loves Paris. Paris is his mind's natal city. In consequence of demolitions and reconstructions, the Paris of his youth, that Paris which he bore away religiously in his memory, is now a Paris of days gone by. He must be permitted to speak of that Paris as though it still existed. It is possible that when the author conducts his reader to a spot and says, In such a street stands such and such a house. Neither street nor house will any longer exist in that locality. Readers may verify the facts if they care to take the trouble. For his own part he is unacquainted with the new Paris and he writes with the old Paris before his eyes in an illusion which is precious to him. It is a delight to him to dream that there still lingers behind him something of that which he beheld when he was in his own country and that all has not vanished. So long as you go and come in your native land you imagine that those streets are a matter of indifference to you, that those windows, those roofs, those doors are nothing to you, that those walls are strangers to you, that those trees are merely the first encountered haphazard, that those houses which you do not enter are useless to you, that the pavements which you tread are merely stones. Later on when you are no longer there you perceive that the streets are dear to you, that you miss those roofs, those doors, and those walls are necessary to you, those trees are well beloved by you, that you entered those houses which you never entered every day, and that you have left a part of your heart, of your blood, of your soul in those pavements. All those places which you no longer behold, which you may never behold again, perchance, and whose memory you have cherished, take on a melancholy charm, recur to your mind with the melancholy of an apparition, make the holy land visible to you and are, so to speak, the very form of France, and you love them, and you call them up as they are, as they were, and you persist in this, and you will submit to no change, for you are attached to the figure of your fatherland as to the face of your mother. May we then be permitted to speak of the past in the present, that said we beg the reader to take note of it, and we continue. Jean Valjean instantly quitted the boulevard and plunged into the streets, taking the most intricate lines which he could devise, returning on his track at times to make sure that he was not being followed. This maneuver is peculiar to the hunted stag. On soil with the imprint of the track may be left. This maneuver possesses, among other advantages, that of deceiving the huntsmen and the dogs by throwing them on the wrong scent. In winery this is called false re-embusement. The moon was full that night. Jean Valjean was not sorry for this. The moon, still very close to the horizon, cast great masses of light and shadow into the streets. Jean Valjean could glide along close to the houses on the dark side and yet keep watch on the light side. He did not, perhaps, take sufficiently into consideration the fact that the dark side escaped him. Still, in the deserted lanes which lie near the roues-pollevaux, he thought he felt certain that no one was following him. Cossette walked on without asking any questions. The sufferings of the first six years of her life had instilled something passive into her nature. Moreover, and this is a remark to which we shall frequently have occasion to recur, she had grown used, without being herself aware of it, to the peculiarities of this good man and to the freaks of destiny, and then she was with him and she felt safe. Jean Valjean knew no more where he was going than did Cossette. He trusted in God as she trusted in him. It seemed as though he also were clinging to the hand of someone greater than himself. He thought he felt being leading him, though invisible. However, he had no settled idea, no plan, no project. He was not even absolutely sure that it was Javert, and then it might have been Javert without Javert knowing that he was Jean Valjean. Was not he disguised? Was not he believed to be dead? Still, queer things had been going on for several days. He wanted no more of them. He was determined not to return to the Gorbo House. Like the wild animal chased from its lair, he was seeking a hole in which he might hide until he could find one where he might dwell. Jean Valjean described many and varied labyrinths in the Mouffatard quarter, which was already asleep, as though the discipline of the Middle Ages and the yoke of the curfew still existed. He combined in various manners with cunning strategy. The Rue Sancier and the Rue Corpo, the Rue du Patois sans Victor, and the Rue du Puy Lermite. There are lodging houses in this locality, but he did not even enter one. Finding nothing which suited him, he had no doubt that if anyone had a chance to be upon his track, they would have lost it. As eleven o'clock struck from the sang at Yain du Mans, he was traversing the Rue du Puy Lermite in front of the office of the commissary of police situated at number 14. A few moments later, the instinct of which we have spoken above made him turn round. At that moment he saw distinctly thanks to the commissary's lantern which portrayed them, three men who were following him closely, pass one after the other under that lantern on the dark side of the street. One of the three entered the alley leading to the commissary's house. The one who marched at their head struck him as decidedly suspicious. Calm child, he said to Cossette, and he made haste to quit the Rue Pantois. He took a circuit, turned into the Passage des Patriages, which was closed on account of the hour, strode along the Rue des Lépis des Bois in the Rue des Arbalettes, and plunged into the Rue des Postes. At that time there was a square formed by the intersection of streets, where the college, Ronin, stands today, and where the Rue Nouve Sans Genevieve turns off. It is understood, of course, that the Rue Nouve Sans Genevieve is an old street, and that a posting chase does not pass through the Rue des Postes once in ten years. In the thirteenth century, the Rue des Postes was inhabited by potters, and its real name is Rue des Postes. The moon cast a livid light into this open space. Jean Valjean went into Ambouche in a doorway, calculating that even if the men were still following him, he could not fail to get a good look at them as they traversed this illuminated space. In point of fact, three minutes had not elapsed when the men made their appearance. There were four of them now. All were tall, dressed in long brown coats, with round hats and huge cudgels in their hands. Their great stature and their vast fists rendered them no less alarming than did their sinister stride through the darkness. One would have pronounced them four spectres, disguised as bourgeois. They halted in the middle of the space and formed a group, like men in consultation. They had an air of indecision. The one who appeared to be their leader turned round and pointed hastily with his right hand in the direction which Jean Valjean had taken. Another seemed to indicate the contrary direction with considerable obstinacy. At the moment when the first man wheeled round, the moon fell full in his face. Jean Valjean recognized Jover perfectly. 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 Volumes II by Victor Hugo Translated by Isabelle Florence Hapgood Book V. for a Black Hunt A Mute Pack Chapter II It is Lucky that the Pond d'Osterlitz bears carriages. Uncertainty was at an end for Jean Valjean. Fortunately it still lasted for the men. He took advantage of their hesitation. It was time lost for them, but gained for him. He slipped from under the gate where he had concealed himself, and went down the Rue des Postes, towards the region of the Jardin des Plantes. Cazette was beginning to be tired. He took her in his arms and carried her. There were no passes by, and the street lanterns had not been lighted on account of there being a moon. He redoubled his pace. In a few strides he had reached the goblets potteries, on the front of which the moonlight rendered distinctly legible the ancient inscription. He left behind him the Rue de la Clef, then the Fountain Saint-Victor, skirted the Jardin des Plantes by the lower streets, and reached the quay. There he turned round. The quay was deserted. The streets were deserted. There was no one behind him. He drew a long breath. He gained the Pond d'Osterlitz. Tolls were still collected there at that epoch. He presented himself at the Toll office and handed over a soot. It is two soos, said the old soldier in charge of the bridge. You are carrying a child who can walk. Pay for two. He paid, vexed, that his passage should have aroused remark. Every flight should be an imperceptible slipping away. A heavy cart was crossing the Sen at the same time as himself and on its way like him to the right bank. This was of use to him. He could traverse the bridge in the shadow of the cart. Towards the middle of the bridge Cosette, whose feet were benumbed, wanted to walk. He set her on the ground and took her hand again. The bridge once crossed. He perceived some timber-yards on his right. He directed his course thither. In order to reach them, it was necessary to risk himself in a tolerably large, uncheltered and illuminated space. He did not hesitate. Those who were on his track had evidently lost the scent, and Jean Valjean believed himself to be out of danger. Hunted, yes, followed, no. A little street, the rue du chemin vers Saint-Antoine, opened out between two timber-yards enclosed in walls. This street was dark and narrow, and seemed made expressly for him. Before entering it, he cast a glance behind him. From the point where he stood he could see the whole extent of the Pond d'Osterlitz. Four shadows were just entering on the bridge. These shadows had their backs turned to the jardin des plantes, and were on their way to the right bank. These four shadows were the four men. Jean Valjean shuddered, like the wild beast which is recaptured. One hope remained to him. It was that the men had not perhaps stepped on the bridge, and had not caught sight of him while he was crossing the large illuminated space holding Cosette by the hand. In that case, by plunging into the little street before him, he might escape, if he could reach the timber-yards, the marshes, the market gardens, the uninhabited ground which was not built upon. It seemed to him that he might commit himself to that silent little street. He entered it. End of book 5th chapter 2, Recording by Ruth Golden Volume 2 by Victor Hugo Translated by Isabel F. Hafpgood Book 5th, The Descent Chapter 3, To Witt, The Plan of Paris in 1727 300 paces further on he arrived at a point where the street forked. It separated into two streets which ran in a slanting line, one to the right and the other to the left. Jean Virgin had before him what resembled the two branches of a Y, which should he choose? He did not hesitate, but took the one on the right. Why? Because that to the left ran towards a suburb, that is to say, towards inhabited regions, and the right branch towards the open country, that is to say, towards deserted regions. However, they no longer walked very fast. Cossette's pace retarded Jean Virgin's. He took her up and carried her again. Cossette laid her head on the shoulder of the good man and said not a word. He turned round from time to time and looked behind him. He took care to keep always on the dark side of the street. The street was straight in his rear. The first two or three times that he turned round he saw nothing. The silence was profound and he continued his march somewhat reassured. All at once on turning round he thought he perceived in the portion of the street which he had just passed through, far off in the obscurity, something which was moving. He rushed forward precipitately rather than walked, hoping to find some side street to make his escape through it, and thus to break his scent once more. He arrived at a wall. This wall, however, did not absolutely prevent further progress. It was a wall which bordered a transverse street in which the one he had taken ended. Here again he was obliged to come to a decision. Should he go to the right or to the left? He glanced to the right. The fragmentary lane was prolonged between buildings which were either sheds or barns, then ended at a blind alley. The extremity of the cul-de-sac was distinctly visible, a lofty white wall. He glanced to the left. On that side the lane was open, and about 200 paces further on ran into a street of which it was the affluent. On that side lay safety. At the moment when Jean Valjean was meditating a turn to the left, in an effort to reach the street which he saw at the end of the lane, he perceived a sort of motionless black statue at the corner of the lane and the street towards which he was on the point of directing his steps. It was someone, a man, who had evidently just been posted there, and who was barring the passage and waiting. Jean Valjean recoiled. The point of Paris where Jean Valjean found himself, situated between the Fogburg, Saint-Tatouane and Larapie, is one of those which recent improvements have transformed from top to bottom, resulting in disfigurement according to some. And in a transfiguration according to others. The market gardens, the timber yards, and the old buildings have been afaced. Today there are brand new wide streets, arenas, circuses, hippodromes, railway stations, and a prison, matzas, there, progress as the reader sees with its antidote. Half a century ago in that ordinary popular tongue which is all compounded of traditions, which persists in calling the Institut les Quatre Nations and the Opera-Camique Fédieu. The precise spot where the Jean Valjean had arrived was called Le Petit Picpu. The Porte Saint-Jacques, the Porte Paris, the Barrière de Ségeance, the Pocherance, la Gallio, le Celestine, les Capuchines, les Merles, la Beube, la Abrie de Cracovie, le Petit Pologne. These are the names of old Paris which survive amid the new. The memory of the populace hovers over these relics of the past. Le Petit Picpu, which moreover hardly ever had any existence, and never was more than the outline of a quarter, had nearly the monkish aspect of a Spanish town. The roads were not much paved, the streets were not much built up. With the exception of the two or three streets of which we shall presently speak, all was wall and solitude there, not a shop, not a vehicle, hardly a candle lighted here and there in the windows, all lights extinguished after ten o'clock, gardens, convents, timbiards, marshes, occasional lowly dwellings and great walls as high as the houses. Such was this quarter in the last century. The revolution snubbed it soundly. The Republican government demolished and cut through it. Rubbish shoots were established there. Thirty years ago this quarter was disappearing under the erasing process of new buildings. Today it has been utterly blotted out. The Petit Picpu, of which no existing plan has preserved a trace, is indicated with sufficient clearness in the plan of 1727. Published at Paris by Denis Thierry, Rue Saint-Jacques, opposite the Rue du Plâtre at Lyons by Jean Girin, Rue Mercier at the sign of Prudence. Petit Picpu had, as we have just mentioned, a wide of streets, formed by the Rue Chemin Vert Saint-Antoine, which spread out in two branches, taking on the left the name of Little Picpu Street, and on the right the name of the Rue Poulenture. These two limbs of the Y were connected at the apex as by a bar. This bar was called Rue Dreumeur. The Rue Poulenture ended there. The Rue Petit Picpu passed on and ascended towards the Lenoir Market. A person coming from the scene reached the extremity of the Rue Poulenture, and on his right the Rue Dreumeur, turning abruptly at a right angle, in front of him the wall of that street, and on his right a truncated prolongation of the Rue Dreumeur, which had no issue and was called the cul-de-sac-gen-rot. It was here that Jean Valjean stood. As we have just said, on catching sight of that black silhouette standing on guard at the angle of the Rue Dreumeur and the Rue Petit Picpu, he recoiled. There could be no doubt of it. That phantom was lying in wait for him. What was he to do? The time for retreating was past. That which he had perceived in movement an instant before, in the distant darkness, was Gervais and his squad without a doubt. Gervais was probably already at the commencement of the street at whose end Jean Valjean stood. Gervais, to all appearances, was acquainted with this little labyrinth, and had taken his precautions by sending one of his men to guard the exit. These surmises, which so closely resembled proofs, wailed suddenly, like a handful of dust caught up by an unexpected gust of wind. Through Jean Valjean's mournful brain, he examined the cul-de-sac-gen-rot. There he was cut off. He examined the Rue Petit Picpu. There stood a sentinel. He saw that black form standing out in relief against the white pavement, illuminated by the moon. To advance was to fall into this man's hands. To retreat was to fling himself into Gervais's arms. Jean Valjean felt himself caught, as in a net which was slowly contracting. He gazed heavenward in despair. End of Book 5, Chapter 3, Recording by James Crook, Ocean Grove, Victoria, Australia Chapter 4 of Book 5 of Les Miserables, 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 Al Dano, Les Miserables, Volume 2 by Victor Hugo, translated by Isabelle Florence Hapgood, Book 5, Les Miserables, Chapter 4, The Gropings of Flight In order to understand what follows, it is requisite to form an exact idea of the droit-mourlaine and in particular of the angle which one leaves on the left, when one emerges from the roux-prenonceau into this lane. Droits-mourlaine was almost entirely bordered on the right, as far as the roux-petit-pique-pousse by houses of mean aspect on the left by a solitary building of severe outlines, composed of numerous parts which grew gradually higher by a story or two as they approached the roux-petit-pique-pousse side, so that this building which was very lofty on the roux-petit-pique-pousse side was tolerably low on the side adjoining the roux-prenonceau. There, at the angle of which we have spoken, it descended to such a degree that it consisted of merely a wall. This wall did not abut directly on the street. It formed a deeply retreating niche concealed by its two corners from two observers who might have been one in the roux-prenonceau, the other in the roux-droit-mourlaine. Beginning with these angles of the niche, the wall extended along the roux-prenonceau as far as a house which bore the number 49 and along the roux-droit-mourlaine where the fragment was much shorter, as far as the gloomy building which we have mentioned and whose gable it intersected, thus forming another retreating angle in the street. This gable was somber of aspect, only one window was visible or, to speak more correctly, two shutters covered with a sheet of zinc and kept constantly closed. The state of the places of which we are here giving a description is rigorously exact, and will certainly awake a very precise memory in the mind of old inhabitants of the quarter. The niche was entirely filled by a thing which resembled a colossal and wretched door. It was a vast formless assemblage of perpendicular planks, the upper ones being broader than the lower, bound together by long transverse strips of iron. At one side there was a carriage-gate of the ordinary dimensions and which had evidently not been cut more than fifty years previously. A linden tree showed its crest above the niche, and the wall was covered with ivy on the side of the roux-prenonceau. In the imminent peril in which Jean Valjean found himself, this somber building had about it a solitary and uninhabited look which tempted him. He ran his eyes rapidly over it. He said to himself that if he could contrive to get inside it, he might save himself. First he conceived an idea, then a hope. In the central portion of the front of this building on the Roux-dreau-mure side, there were, at all windows of the different stories, ancient cistern-pipes of lead. The various branches of the pipes, which led from one central pipe to all these little basins, sketched out a sort of tree on the front. These ramifications of pipes with their hundred elbows imitated those old leafless vine-stocks which writhe over the fronts of old farm-houses. This odd espallier, with its branches of lead and iron, was the first thing that struck Jean Valjean. He seated Cossette with her back against a stone post, with an injunction to be silent, and ran to the spot where the conduit touched the pavement. Perhaps there was some way of climbing up by it and entering the house, but the pipe was dilapidated in past service, hardly hung to its fastenings. Moreover, all the windows of this silent dwelling were grated with heavy iron bars, even the attic window in the roof, and then the moon fell full upon that façade that the man who was watching at the corner of the street would have seen Jean Valjean in the act of climbing, and finally what was to be done with Cossette? How was she to be drawn up to the top of the three-story house? He gave up all idea of climbing by means of the drain pipe and crawled along the wall to get back into the roux-pollosau. When he reached the slant of the wall where he had left Cossette, he noticed that no one could see him there. As we have just explained, he was concealed from all eyes, no matter from which direction they were approaching. Besides this, he was in the shadow. Finally there were two doors, perhaps they might be forced. The wall above which he saw the linden tree and the ivy evidently abutted on the garden where he could at least hide himself, although there were as yet no leaves on the trees, and spend the remainder of the night. Time was passing, he must act quickly. He felt over the carriage door, and immediately recognized the fact that it was impractical outside and in. He approached the other door with more hope. It was frightfully decrepit. Its very immensity rendered it less solid. The planks were rotten. The iron vans, there were only three of them, were rusted. It seemed as though it might be possible to pierce this worm-eaten barrier. On examining it, he found that the door was not a door. It had neither hinges, crossbars, lock, nor fissure in the middle. The iron vans traversed it from side to side without any break. Through the crevices in the planks he caught a view of unhewn slabs and blocks of stone roughly cemented together, which passers-by might still have seen there ten years ago. He was forced to acknowledge with consternation that this apparent door was simply a wooden decoration of a building against which it was placed. It was easy to tear off a plank, but then one found oneself face to face with a wall. Le Miserable 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 James Crook. Le Miserable Volume 2 by Victor Hugo. Translated by Isabelle F. Hapgood. Book 5 The Descent Chapter 5 Which Would Be Impossible With Gas Lanterns At that moment a heavy and measured sound began to be audible at some distance. Jean Verjean risked a glance round the corner of the street. Seven or eight soldiers drawn up in a platoon had just abashed into the roue-pollenture. He saw the gleam of their bayonets. They were advancing towards him. These soldiers, at whose head he distinguished Jean Verjean's tall figure, advanced slowly and cautiously. They halted frequently. It was plain that they were searching all the nooks of the walls and all the embrasures of the doors and alleys. This was some patrol that Jean Verjean had encountered. There could be no mistake as to this surmise and whose aid he had demanded. Jean Verjean's two acolytes were marching in their ranks. At the rate at which they were marching and in consideration of the halts which they were making, it would take them about a quarter of an hour to reach the spot where Jean Verjean stood. It was a frightful moment. A few minutes only separated Jean Verjean from that terrible precipice which yawned before him for the third time. And the galleys now meant not only the galleys, but Cosette lost to him forever. That is to say, a life resembling the interior of a tomb. There was but one thing which was possible. Jean Verjean had this peculiarity that he carried as one might say two beggars' pouches. In one he kept his saintly thoughts. In the other the redoubtable talents of a convict. He rummaged in the one or the other according to circumstances. Among his other resources, thanks to his numerous escapes from the prison at Toulon, he was, as it will be remembered, a past master in the incredible art of crawling up without ladder or climbing irons, by sheer muscular force, by leaning on the nape of his neck, his shoulders, his hips and his knees, by helping himself on the rare projections of the stone in the right angle of a wall as high as the sixth story if need be. An art which has rendered so celebrated and so alarming, that corner of the wall of the conciergeery of Paris by which Bâtimentl, condemned to death, made his escape twenty years ago. Jean Verjean measured with his eyes the wall above which he aspired the linden. It was about eighteen feet in height. The angle which it formed with the gable of the large building was filled at its lower extremity by a mass of masonry of a triangular shape, probably intended to preserve that too convenient corner from the rubbish of those dirty creatures called the passes by. This practice of filling up corners of the wall is much in use in Paris. This mass was about five feet in height. The space above the summit of this mass, which it was necessary to climb, was not more than fourteen feet. The wall was surmounted by a flat stone without a coping. Cossette was the difficulty, for she did not know how to climb a wall. Should he abandon her? Jean Verjean did not once think of that. It was impossible to carry her. A man's whole strength is required to successfully carry out these singular ascents. The least burden would disturb his centre of gravity and pull him downwards. A rope would have been required. Jean Verjean had none. Where was he to get a rope at midnight in the Roues-Pollenture? Certainly if Jean Verjean had had a kingdom, he would have given it for a rope at that moment. All extreme situations have their lightning flashes which sometimes dazzle, sometimes illuminate us. Jean Verjean's despairing glance fell on the street lantern post of the blind Allie-Generotte. At that epoch there were no gas jets in the streets of Paris. At nightfall lanterns placed at regular distances were lighted. They were ascended and descended by means of a rope which traversed the street from side to side and was adjusted in a groove of the post. The pulley over which this rope ran was fastened underneath the lantern in a little iron box, the key to which was kept by the lamplighter, and the rope itself was protected by a metal case. Jean Verjean, with the energy of a supreme struggle, crossed the street at one bound, entered the blind Allie, broke the latch of the little box with the point of his knife, and an instant later he was beside Cossette once more. He had a rope. These gloomy inventors of expedience work rapidly when they are fighting against fatality. We have already explained that the lanterns had not yet been lighted that night. The lantern in the cul-de-sac-Generotte was thus naturally extinct, like the rest, and one could pass directly under it without even noticing that it was no longer in its place. Nevertheless, the hour, the place, the darkness, Jean Verjean's absorption, his singular gestures, his goings and comings had all begun to render Cossette uneasy. Any other child than she would have given vent to loud shrieks long before. She contended herself with plucking Jean Verjean by the skirt of his coat. They could hear the sound of the patrol's approach ever more and more distinctly. Father, said she, in a very low voice, I am afraid. Who is coming yonder? Hush, replied the unhappy man. It is Madame Thénardierre. Cossette shuddered. He added, Say nothing. Don't interfere with me. If you cry out, if you weep, the Thénardierre is lying in wait for you. She is coming to take you back. Then, without haste, but without making a useless movement, with firm and curt precision, the more remarkable at a moment when the patrol and Giver might come upon him at any moment. He undid his cravat, passed it round Cossette's body under the armpits, taking care that it should not hurt the child, fastened this cravat to one end of the rope by means of that knot which seafaring men call a swallow-knot, took the other end of the rope in his teeth, pulled off his shoes and stockings which he threw over the wall, stepped upon the mass of masonry, and began to raise himself in the angle of the wall and the gable with as much solidity and certainty as though he had the rounds of a ladder under his feet and elbows. Half a minute had not elapsed when he was resting on his knees on the wall. Cossette gazed at him in stupid amazement without uttering a word. Jean Valjean's injunction and the name of Madame Thanadier had chilled her blood. All at once she heard Jean Valjean's voice crying to her, though in a very low tone, put your back against the wall. She obeyed, don't say a word and don't be alarmed, went on Jean Valjean, and she felt herself lifted from the ground. Before she had time to recover herself, she was on top of the wall. Jean Valjean grasped her, put her on his back, took her two tiny hands in his large left hand, lay down flat on his stomach and crawled along on the top of the wall as far as the cant. As he had guessed, there stood a building whose roof started from the top of the wooden barricade and ascended to within a very short distance of the ground, with a gentle slope which grazed the linden tree. A lucky circumstance, for the wall was much higher on this side than on the street side. Jean Valjean could only see the ground at a great depth below him. He had just reached the slope of the roof and had not yet left the crest of the wall when a violent uproar announced the arrival of the patrol. The thundering voice of Javert was audible. Search the blind alley. The roue-dromeur is guarded. So is the roue-petite pique-pou. I'll answer for it that he is in the blind alley. The soldiers rushed in to the gen-rot alley. Jean Valjean allowed himself to slide down the roof, still holding fast to Cossette, reached the linden tree and leapt to the ground. Whether from terror or courage, Cossette had not breathed a sound, though her hands were a little abraded. End of Book 5, Chapter 5. Recording by James Crook, Ocean Grove, Victoria, Australia. Chapter 6 of Book 5 of Les Miserables, 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 Jonathan Ross. Les Miserables, Volume 2 by Victor Hugo. Translated by Isabelle Florence Hapgood. Book 5. For a Black Hunt, a Mute Pack. Chapter 6. The Beginning of an Enigma. Jean Valjean found himself in a sort of garden which was very vast and of singular aspect. One of those melancholy gardens which seemed made to be looked at in winter and at night. This garden was oblong in shape, with an alley of large poplars at the further end, tolerably tall forest trees in the corners, and an unshaded space in the center, where could be seen a very large solitary tree, then several fruit trees, gnarled and bristling like bushes, beds of vegetables, a melon patch, whose glass frame sparkled in the moonlight, and an old well. Here and there stood stone benches which seemed black with moss. The alleys were bordered with gloomy and very erect little shrubs. The grass had half taken possession of them, and a green mold covered the rest. Jean Valjean had beside him the building whose roof had served him as means of descent, a pile of faggots, and behind the faggots directly against the wall, a stone statue whose mutilated face was no longer anything more than a shapeless mask which loomed vaguely through the gloom. The building was a sort of ruin, where dismantled chambers were distinguishable, one of which, much encumbered, seemed to serve as a shed. The large building of the Rue de Rameux, which had a wing and the Rue Petite Pic Pieu, turned two facades at right angles towards the garden. These interior facades were even more tragic than the exterior. All the windows were graded, now the gleam of light was visible at any one of them. The upper story had scuttles like prisons, one of those facades cast a shadow on the other, which fell over the garden like an immense black pall. No other house was visible, the bottom of the garden was lost in mist and darkness. Nevertheless, walls could be confusedly made out, which intersected as though they were more cultivated land beyond, and the low roofs of the Rue Paul & Zo. Nothing more wild and solitary than this garden could be imagined. There was no one in it, which was quite natural in view of the hour, but it did not seem as though the spot were made for anyone to walk in, even in broad daylight. Jean Valjean's first care had then to get hold of his shoes and put them on again, then to step under the shed with Cozette. A man who is fleeing never thinks himself sufficiently hidden. The child, whose thoughts were still on the Ténardier, shared his instinct for withdrawing from sight as much as possible. Cozette trembled and pressed close to him. They heard the tumultuous noise of the patrol searching the blind alley and the streets, the blows of their gun stocks against the stones, Javert's appeals of the police spies whom he had posted, and his appreciations mangled with words which could not be distinguished. At the expiration of a quarter of an hour, it seemed as though that species of stormy roar were becoming more distant. Jean Valjean held his breath. He had laid his hand lightly on Cozette's mouth. However, the solitude in which he stood was so strangely calm that this frightful uproar, close and furious as it was, did not disturb him by so much as the shadow of a misgiving. It seemed as though those walls had been built of the deaf stones of which the scriptures speak. All at once, in the midst of this profound calm, a fresh sound arose, a sound as celestial, divine, ineffable, ravishing, as the other had been horrible. It was a hymn which issued from the gloom, a dazzling burst of prayer and harmony in the obscure and alarming silence of the night. Women's voices, but voices composed at one and the same time of the pure accents of virgins and the innocent accents of children. Voices which are not of the earth, and which resemble those that the newborn infant still hears, and which the dying man hears already. This song proceeded from the gloomy edifice, which towered above the garden. At the moment when the hubbub of demons retreated, one would have said that a choir of angels was approaching through the gloom. Cosette and Jean Valjean fell on their knees. They knew not what it was. They knew not where they were, but both of them, the man and the child, the penitent and the innocent, felt that they must kneel. These voices had this strange characteristic, that they did not prevent the building from seeming to be deserted. It was a supernatural chant in an uninhabited house. While these voices were singing, Jean Valjean thought of nothing. He no longer beheld the night. He beheld the blue sky. It seemed to him that he felt those wings which we all have within us, unfolding. The song died away. It may have lasted a long time. Jean Valjean could not have told. Hours of ecstasy are never more than a moment. All fell silent again. There was no longer anything in the street. There was nothing in the garden. That which had vanished, that which had reassured him, all had vanished. The breeze swayed a few dry weeds on the crest of the wall, and they gave out a faint, sweet melancholy sound.