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LES MISÉRABLES



VOLUME I—FANTINE



PREFACE


So long as there shall exist, by virtue of law and custom, decrees of
damnation pronounced by society, artificially creating hells amid the
civilization of earth, and adding the element of human fate to divine
destiny; so long as the three great problems of the century—the
degradation of man through pauperism, the corruption of woman through
hunger, the crippling of children through lack of light—are unsolved;
so long as social asphyxia is possible in any part of the world;—in
other words, and with a still wider significance, so long as ignorance
and poverty exist on earth, books of the nature of Les Misérables
cannot fail to be of use.

HAUTEVILLE HOUSE, 1862.



FANTINE



BOOK FIRST—A JUST MAN



CHAPTER I—M. MYRIEL


In 1815, M. Charles-François-Bienvenu Myriel was Bishop of D—— He was
an old man of about seventy-five years of age; he had occupied the see
of D—— since 1806.

Although this detail has no connection whatever with the real substance
of what we are about to relate, it will not be superfluous, if merely
for the sake of exactness in all points, to mention here the various
rumors and remarks which had been in circulation about him from the
very moment when he arrived in the diocese. True or false, that which
is said of men often occupies as important a place in their lives, and
above all in their destinies, as that which they do. M. Myriel was the
son of a councillor of the Parliament of Aix; hence he belonged to the
nobility of the bar. It was said that his father, destining him to be
the heir of his own post, had married him at a very early age, eighteen
or twenty, in accordance with a custom which is rather widely prevalent
in parliamentary families. In spite of this marriage, however, it was
said that Charles Myriel created a great deal of talk. He was well
formed, though rather short in stature, elegant, graceful, intelligent;
the whole of the first portion of his life had been devoted to the
world and to gallantry.

The Revolution came; events succeeded each other with precipitation;
the parliamentary families, decimated, pursued, hunted down, were
dispersed. M. Charles Myriel emigrated to Italy at the very beginning
of the Revolution. There his wife died of a malady of the chest, from
which she had long suffered. He had no children. What took place next
in the fate of M. Myriel? The ruin of the French society of the olden
days, the fall of his own family, the tragic spectacles of ’93, which
were, perhaps, even more alarming to the emigrants who viewed them from
a distance, with the magnifying powers of terror,—did these cause the
ideas of renunciation and solitude to germinate in him? Was he, in the
midst of these distractions, these affections which absorbed his life,
suddenly smitten with one of those mysterious and terrible blows which
sometimes overwhelm, by striking to his heart, a man whom public
catastrophes would not shake, by striking at his existence and his
fortune? No one could have told: all that was known was, that when he
returned from Italy he was a priest.

In 1804, M. Myriel was the Curé of B—— [Brignolles]. He was already
advanced in years, and lived in a very retired manner.

About the epoch of the coronation, some petty affair connected with his
curacy—just what, is not precisely known—took him to Paris. Among other
powerful persons to whom he went to solicit aid for his parishioners
was M. le Cardinal Fesch. One day, when the Emperor had come to visit
his uncle, the worthy Curé, who was waiting in the anteroom, found
himself present when His Majesty passed. Napoleon, on finding himself
observed with a certain curiosity by this old man, turned round and
said abruptly:—

“Who is this good man who is staring at me?”


“Sire,” said M. Myriel, “you are looking at a good man, and I at a
great man. Each of us can profit by it.”


That very evening, the Emperor asked the Cardinal the name of the Curé,
and some time afterwards M. Myriel was utterly astonished to learn that
he had been appointed Bishop of D——

What truth was there, after all, in the stories which were invented as
to the early portion of M. Myriel’s life? No one knew. Very few
families had been acquainted with the Myriel family before the
Revolution.

M. Myriel had to undergo the fate of every newcomer in a little town,
where there are many mouths which talk, and very few heads which think.
He was obliged to undergo it although he was a bishop, and because he
was a bishop. But after all, the rumors with which his name was
connected were rumors only,—noise, sayings, words; less than
words—_palabres_, as the energetic language of the South expresses it.

However that may be, after nine years of episcopal power and of
residence in D——, all the stories and subjects of conversation which
engross petty towns and petty people at the outset had fallen into
profound oblivion. No one would have dared to mention them; no one
would have dared to recall them.

M. Myriel had arrived at D—— accompanied by an elderly spinster,
Mademoiselle Baptistine, who was his sister, and ten years his junior.

Their only domestic was a female servant of the same age as
Mademoiselle Baptistine, and named Madame Magloire, who, after having
been _the servant of M. le Curé_, now assumed the double title of maid
to Mademoiselle and housekeeper to Monseigneur.

Mademoiselle Baptistine was a long, pale, thin, gentle creature; she
realized the ideal expressed by the word “respectable”; for it seems
that a woman must needs be a mother in order to be venerable. She had
never been pretty; her whole life, which had been nothing but a
succession of holy deeds, had finally conferred upon her a sort of
pallor and transparency; and as she advanced in years she had acquired
what may be called the beauty of goodness. What had been leanness in
her youth had become transparency in her maturity; and this diaphaneity
allowed the angel to be seen. She was a soul rather than a virgin. Her
person seemed made of a shadow; there was hardly sufficient body to
provide for sex; a little matter enclosing a light; large eyes forever
drooping;—a mere pretext for a soul’s remaining on the earth.

Madame Magloire was a little, fat, white old woman, corpulent and
bustling; always out of breath,—in the first place, because of her
activity, and in the next, because of her asthma.

On his arrival, M. Myriel was installed in the episcopal palace with
the honors required by the Imperial decrees, which class a bishop
immediately after a major-general. The mayor and the president paid the
first call on him, and he, in turn, paid the first call on the general
and the prefect.

The installation over, the town waited to see its bishop at work.



CHAPTER II—M. MYRIEL BECOMES M. WELCOME


The episcopal palace of D—— adjoins the hospital.

The episcopal palace was a huge and beautiful house, built of stone at
the beginning of the last century by M. Henri Puget, Doctor of Theology
of the Faculty of Paris, Abbé of Simore, who had been Bishop of D—— in
1712. This palace was a genuine seignorial residence. Everything about
it had a grand air,—the apartments of the Bishop, the drawing-rooms,
the chambers, the principal courtyard, which was very large, with walks
encircling it under arcades in the old Florentine fashion, and gardens
planted with magnificent trees. In the dining-room, a long and superb
gallery which was situated on the ground floor and opened on the
gardens, M. Henri Puget had entertained in state, on July 29, 1714, My
Lords Charles Brûlart de Genlis, archbishop; Prince d’Embrun; Antoine
de Mesgrigny, the capuchin, Bishop of Grasse; Philippe de Vendôme,
Grand Prior of France, Abbé of Saint Honoré de Lérins; François de
Berton de Crillon, bishop, Baron de Vence; César de Sabran de
Forcalquier, bishop, Seignor of Glandève; and Jean Soanen, Priest of
the Oratory, preacher in ordinary to the king, bishop, Seignor of
Senez. The portraits of these seven reverend personages decorated this
apartment; and this memorable date, the 29th of July, 1714, was there
engraved in letters of gold on a table of white marble.

The hospital was a low and narrow building of a single story, with a
small garden.

Three days after his arrival, the Bishop visited the hospital. The
visit ended, he had the director requested to be so good as to come to
his house.

“Monsieur the director of the hospital,” said he to him, “how many sick
people have you at the present moment?”


“Twenty-six, Monseigneur.”


“That was the number which I counted,” said the Bishop.

“The beds,” pursued the director, “are very much crowded against each
other.”


“That is what I observed.”


“The halls are nothing but rooms, and it is with difficulty that the
air can be changed in them.”


“So it seems to me.”


“And then, when there is a ray of sun, the garden is very small for the
convalescents.”


“That was what I said to myself.”


“In case of epidemics,—we have had the typhus fever this year; we had
the sweating sickness two years ago, and a hundred patients at
times,—we know not what to do.”


“That is the thought which occurred to me.”


“What would you have, Monseigneur?” said the director. “One must resign
one’s self.”


This conversation took place in the gallery dining-room on the ground
floor.

The Bishop remained silent for a moment; then he turned abruptly to the
director of the hospital.

“Monsieur,” said he, “how many beds do you think this hall alone would
hold?”


“Monseigneur’s dining-room?” exclaimed the stupefied director.

The Bishop cast a glance round the apartment, and seemed to be taking
measures and calculations with his eyes.

“It would hold full twenty beds,” said he, as though speaking to
himself. Then, raising his voice:—

“Hold, Monsieur the director of the hospital, I will tell you
something. There is evidently a mistake here. There are thirty-six of
you, in five or six small rooms. There are three of us here, and we
have room for sixty. There is some mistake, I tell you; you have my
house, and I have yours. Give me back my house; you are at home here.”


On the following day the thirty-six patients were installed in the
Bishop’s palace, and the Bishop was settled in the hospital.

M. Myriel had no property, his family having been ruined by the
Revolution. His sister was in receipt of a yearly income of five
hundred francs, which sufficed for her personal wants at the vicarage.
M. Myriel received from the State, in his quality of bishop, a salary
of fifteen thousand francs. On the very day when he took up his abode
in the hospital, M. Myriel settled on the disposition of this sum once
for all, in the following manner. We transcribe here a note made by his
own hand:—

NOTE ON THE REGULATION OF MY HOUSEHOLD EXPENSES.

For the little seminary . . . . . . . . . . . . . .    1,500 livres
Society of the  mission . . . . . . . . . . . . . .      100   ”
 For the Lazarists of Montdidier . . . . . . . . . .      100   ”
 Seminary for foreign missions in Paris  . . . . . .      200   ”
 Congregation of the Holy Spirit . . . . . . . . . .      150   ”
 Religious establishments of the Holy Land . . . . .      100   ”
 Charitable maternity societies  . . . . . . . . . .      300   ”
 Extra, for that of Arles  . . . . . . . . . . . . .       50   ”
 Work for the amelioration of prisons  . . . . . . .      400   ”
 Work for the relief and delivery of prisoners . . .      500   ”
 To liberate fathers of families incarcerated for debt  1,000   ”
 Addition to the salary of the poor teachers of the
diocese  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .    2,000   ”
 Public granary of the Hautes-Alpes  . . . . . . . .      100   ”
 Congregation of the ladies of D——, of Manosque, and of
Sisteron, for the gratuitous instruction of poor
girls  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .    1,500   ”
 For the poor  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .    6,000   ”
 My personal expenses  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .    1,000   ”
 ———
Total  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   15,000   ”


M. Myriel made no change in this arrangement during the entire period
that he occupied the see of D—— As has been seen, he called it
_regulating his household expenses_.

This arrangement was accepted with absolute submission by Mademoiselle
Baptistine. This holy woman regarded Monseigneur of D—— as at one and
the same time her brother and her bishop, her friend according to the
flesh and her superior according to the Church. She simply loved and
venerated him. When he spoke, she bowed; when he acted, she yielded her
adherence. Their only servant, Madame Magloire, grumbled a little. It
will be observed that Monsieur the Bishop had reserved for himself only
one thousand livres, which, added to the pension of Mademoiselle
Baptistine, made fifteen hundred francs a year. On these fifteen
hundred francs these two old women and the old man subsisted.

And when a village curate came to D——, the Bishop still found means to
entertain him, thanks to the severe economy of Madame Magloire, and to
the intelligent administration of Mademoiselle Baptistine.

One day, after he had been in D—— about three months, the Bishop said:—

“And still I am quite cramped with it all!”


“I should think so!” exclaimed Madame Magloire. “Monseigneur has not
even claimed the allowance which the department owes him for the
expense of his carriage in town, and for his journeys about the
diocese. It was customary for bishops in former days.”


“Hold!” cried the Bishop, “you are quite right, Madame Magloire.”


And he made his demand.

Some time afterwards the General Council took this demand under
consideration, and voted him an annual sum of three thousand francs,
under this heading: _Allowance to M. the Bishop for expenses of
carriage, expenses of posting, and expenses of pastoral visits._

This provoked a great outcry among the local burgesses; and a senator
of the Empire, a former member of the Council of the Five Hundred which
favored the 18 Brumaire, and who was provided with a magnificent
senatorial office in the vicinity of the town of D——, wrote to M. Bigot
de Préameneu, the minister of public worship, a very angry and
confidential note on the subject, from which we extract these authentic
lines:—

“Expenses of carriage? What can be done with it in a town of less than
four thousand inhabitants? Expenses of journeys? What is the use of
these trips, in the first place? Next, how can the posting be
accomplished in these mountainous parts? There are no roads. No one
travels otherwise than on horseback. Even the bridge between Durance
and Château-Arnoux can barely support ox-teams. These priests are all
thus, greedy and avaricious. This man played the good priest when he
first came. Now he does like the rest; he must have a carriage and a
posting-chaise, he must have luxuries, like the bishops of the olden
days. Oh, all this priesthood! Things will not go well, M. le Comte,
until the Emperor has freed us from these black-capped rascals. Down
with the Pope! [Matters were getting embroiled with Rome.] For my part,
I am for Cæsar alone.” Etc., etc.

On the other hand, this affair afforded great delight to Madame
Magloire. “Good,” said she to Mademoiselle Baptistine; “Monseigneur
began with other people, but he has had to wind up with himself, after
all. He has regulated all his charities. Now here are three thousand
francs for us! At last!”


That same evening the Bishop wrote out and handed to his sister a
memorandum conceived in the following terms:—

EXPENSES OF CARRIAGE AND CIRCUIT.

For furnishing meat soup to the patients in the hospital. 1,500 livres
For the maternity charitable society of Aix . . . . . . .   250   ”
 For the maternity charitable society of Draguignan  . . .   250   ”
 For foundlings  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   500   ”
 For orphans   . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   500   ”
 ——-
Total  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3,000   ”


Such was M. Myriel’s budget.

As for the chance episcopal perquisites, the fees for marriage bans,
dispensations, private baptisms, sermons, benedictions, of churches or
chapels, marriages, etc., the Bishop levied them on the wealthy with
all the more asperity, since he bestowed them on the needy.

After a time, offerings of money flowed in. Those who had and those who
lacked knocked at M. Myriel’s door,—the latter in search of the alms
which the former came to deposit. In less than a year the Bishop had
become the treasurer of all benevolence and the cashier of all those in
distress. Considerable sums of money passed through his hands, but
nothing could induce him to make any change whatever in his mode of
life, or add anything superfluous to his bare necessities.

Far from it. As there is always more wretchedness below than there is
brotherhood above, all was given away, so to speak, before it was
received. It was like water on dry soil; no matter how much money he
received, he never had any. Then he stripped himself.

The usage being that bishops shall announce their baptismal names at
the head of their charges and their pastoral letters, the poor people
of the country-side had selected, with a sort of affectionate instinct,
among the names and prenomens of their bishop, that which had a meaning
for them; and they never called him anything except Monseigneur
Bienvenu [Welcome]. We will follow their example, and will also call
him thus when we have occasion to name him. Moreover, this appellation
pleased him.

“I like that name,” said he. “Bienvenu makes up for the Monseigneur.”


We do not claim that the portrait herewith presented is probable; we
confine ourselves to stating that it resembles the original.




CHAPTER III—A HARD BISHOPRIC FOR A GOOD BISHOP


The Bishop did not omit his pastoral visits because he had converted
his carriage into alms. The diocese of D—— is a fatiguing one. There
are very few plains and a great many mountains; hardly any roads, as we
have just seen; thirty-two curacies, forty-one vicarships, and two
hundred and eighty-five auxiliary chapels. To visit all these is quite
a task.

The Bishop managed to do it. He went on foot when it was in the
neighborhood, in a tilted spring-cart when it was on the plain, and on
a donkey in the mountains. The two old women accompanied him. When the
trip was too hard for them, he went alone.

One day he arrived at Senez, which is an ancient episcopal city. He was
mounted on an ass. His purse, which was very dry at that moment, did
not permit him any other equipage. The mayor of the town came to
receive him at the gate of the town, and watched him dismount from his
ass, with scandalized eyes. Some of the citizens were laughing around
him. “Monsieur the Mayor,” said the Bishop, “and Messieurs Citizens, I
perceive that I shock you. You think it very arrogant in a poor priest
to ride an animal which was used by Jesus Christ. I have done so from
necessity, I assure you, and not from vanity.”


In the course of these trips he was kind and indulgent, and talked
rather than preached. He never went far in search of his arguments and
his examples. He quoted to the inhabitants of one district the example
of a neighboring district. In the cantons where they were harsh to the
poor, he said: “Look at the people of Briançon! They have conferred on
the poor, on widows and orphans, the right to have their meadows mown
three days in advance of every one else. They rebuild their houses for
them gratuitously when they are ruined. Therefore it is a country which
is blessed by God. For a whole century, there has not been a single
murderer among them.”


In villages which were greedy for profit and harvest, he said: “Look at
the people of Embrun! If, at the harvest season, the father of a family
has his son away on service in the army, and his daughters at service
in the town, and if he is ill and incapacitated, the curé recommends
him to the prayers of the congregation; and on Sunday, after the mass,
all the inhabitants of the village—men, women, and children—go to the
poor man’s field and do his harvesting for him, and carry his straw and
his grain to his granary.” To families divided by questions of money
and inheritance he said: “Look at the mountaineers of Devolny, a
country so wild that the nightingale is not heard there once in fifty
years. Well, when the father of a family dies, the boys go off to seek
their fortunes, leaving the property to the girls, so that they may
find husbands.” To the cantons which had a taste for lawsuits, and
where the farmers ruined themselves in stamped paper, he said: “Look at
those good peasants in the valley of Queyras! There are three thousand
souls of them. Mon Dieu! it is like a little republic. Neither judge
nor bailiff is known there. The mayor does everything. He allots the
imposts, taxes each person conscientiously, judges quarrels for
nothing, divides inheritances without charge, pronounces sentences
gratuitously; and he is obeyed, because he is a just man among simple
men.” To villages where he found no schoolmaster, he quoted once more
the people of Queyras: “Do you know how they manage?” he said. “Since a
little country of a dozen or fifteen hearths cannot always support a
teacher, they have schoolmasters who are paid by the whole valley, who
make the round of the villages, spending a week in this one, ten days
in that, and instruct them. These teachers go to the fairs. I have seen
them there. They are to be recognized by the quill pens which they wear
in the cord of their hat. Those who teach reading only have one pen;
those who teach reading and reckoning have two pens; those who teach
reading, reckoning, and Latin have three pens. But what a disgrace to
be ignorant! Do like the people of Queyras!”


Thus he discoursed gravely and paternally; in default of examples, he
invented parables, going directly to the point, with few phrases and
many images, which characteristic formed the real eloquence of Jesus
Christ. And being convinced himself, he was persuasive.




CHAPTER IV—WORKS CORRESPONDING TO WORDS


His conversation was gay and affable. He put himself on a level with
the two old women who had passed their lives beside him. When he
laughed, it was the laugh of a schoolboy. Madame Magloire liked to call
him Your Grace [_Votre Grandeur_]. One day he rose from his armchair,
and went to his library in search of a book. This book was on one of
the upper shelves. As the bishop was rather short of stature, he could
not reach it. “Madame Magloire,” said he, “fetch me a chair. My
greatness [_grandeur_] does not reach as far as that shelf.”


One of his distant relatives, Madame la Comtesse de Lô, rarely allowed
an opportunity to escape of enumerating, in his presence, what she
designated as “the expectations” of her three sons. She had numerous
relatives, who were very old and near to death, and of whom her sons
were the natural heirs. The youngest of the three was to receive from a
grandaunt a good hundred thousand livres of income; the second was the
heir by entail to the title of the Duke, his uncle; the eldest was to
succeed to the peerage of his grandfather. The Bishop was accustomed to
listen in silence to these innocent and pardonable maternal boasts. On
one occasion, however, he appeared to be more thoughtful than usual,
while Madame de Lô was relating once again the details of all these
inheritances and all these “expectations.” She interrupted herself
impatiently: “Mon Dieu, cousin! What are you thinking about?” “I am
thinking,” replied the Bishop, “of a singular remark, which is to be
found, I believe, in St. Augustine,—‘Place your hopes in the man from
whom you do not inherit.’”


At another time, on receiving a notification of the decease of a
gentleman of the country-side, wherein not only the dignities of the
dead man, but also the feudal and noble qualifications of all his
relatives, spread over an entire page: “What a stout back Death has!”
he exclaimed. “What a strange burden of titles is cheerfully imposed on
him, and how much wit must men have, in order thus to press the tomb
into the service of vanity!”


He was gifted, on occasion, with a gentle raillery, which almost always
concealed a serious meaning. In the course of one Lent, a youthful
vicar came to D——, and preached in the cathedral. He was tolerably
eloquent. The subject of his sermon was charity. He urged the rich to
give to the poor, in order to avoid hell, which he depicted in the most
frightful manner of which he was capable, and to win paradise, which he
represented as charming and desirable. Among the audience there was a
wealthy retired merchant, who was somewhat of a usurer, named M.
Géborand, who had amassed two millions in the manufacture of coarse
cloth, serges, and woollen galloons. Never in his whole life had M.
Géborand bestowed alms on any poor wretch. After the delivery of that
sermon, it was observed that he gave a sou every Sunday to the poor old
beggar-women at the door of the cathedral. There were six of them to
share it. One day the Bishop caught sight of him in the act of
bestowing this charity, and said to his sister, with a smile, “There is
M. Géborand purchasing paradise for a sou.”


When it was a question of charity, he was not to be rebuffed even by a
refusal, and on such occasions he gave utterance to remarks which
induced reflection. Once he was begging for the poor in a drawing-room
of the town; there was present the Marquis de Champtercier, a wealthy
and avaricious old man, who contrived to be, at one and the same time,
an ultra-royalist and an ultra-Voltairian. This variety of man has
actually existed. When the Bishop came to him, he touched his arm,
_“You must give me something, M. le Marquis.”_ The Marquis turned round
and answered dryly, _“I have poor people of my own, Monseigneur.” “Give
them to me,”_ replied the Bishop.

One day he preached the following sermon in the cathedral:—

“My very dear brethren, my good friends, there are thirteen hundred and
twenty thousand peasants’ dwellings in France which have but three
openings; eighteen hundred and seventeen thousand hovels which have but
two openings, the door and one window; and three hundred and forty-six
thousand cabins besides which have but one opening, the door. And this
arises from a thing which is called the tax on doors and windows. Just
put poor families, old women and little children, in those buildings,
and behold the fevers and maladies which result! Alas! God gives air to
men; the law sells it to them. I do not blame the law, but I bless God.
In the department of the Isère, in the Var, in the two departments of
the Alpes, the Hautes, and the Basses, the peasants have not even
wheelbarrows; they transport their manure on the backs of men; they
have no candles, and they burn resinous sticks, and bits of rope dipped
in pitch. That is the state of affairs throughout the whole of the
hilly country of Dauphiné. They make bread for six months at one time;
they bake it with dried cow-dung. In the winter they break this bread
up with an axe, and they soak it for twenty-four hours, in order to
render it eatable. My brethren, have pity! behold the suffering on all
sides of you!”


Born a Provençal, he easily familiarized himself with the dialect of
the south. He said, _“En bé! moussu, sés sagé?”_ as in lower Languedoc;
_“Onté anaras passa?”_ as in the Basses-Alpes; _“Puerte un bouen moutu
embe un bouen fromage grase,”_ as in upper Dauphiné. This pleased the
people extremely, and contributed not a little to win him access to all
spirits. He was perfectly at home in the thatched cottage and in the
mountains. He understood how to say the grandest things in the most
vulgar of idioms. As he spoke all tongues, he entered into all hearts.

Moreover, he was the same towards people of the world and towards the
lower classes. He condemned nothing in haste and without taking
circumstances into account. He said, “Examine the road over which the
fault has passed.”


Being, as he described himself with a smile, an _ex-sinner_, he had
none of the asperities of austerity, and he professed, with a good deal
of distinctness, and without the frown of the ferociously virtuous, a
doctrine which may be summed up as follows:—

“Man has upon him his flesh, which is at once his burden and his
temptation. He drags it with him and yields to it. He must watch it,
check it, repress it, and obey it only at the last extremity. There may
be some fault even in this obedience; but the fault thus committed is
venial; it is a fall, but a fall on the knees which may terminate in
prayer.

“To be a saint is the exception; to be an upright man is the rule. Err,
fall, sin if you will, but be upright.

“The least possible sin is the law of man. No sin at all is the dream
of the angel. All which is terrestrial is subject to sin. Sin is a
gravitation.”


When he saw everyone exclaiming very loudly, and growing angry very
quickly, “Oh! oh!” he said, with a smile; “to all appearance, this is a
great crime which all the world commits. These are hypocrisies which
have taken fright, and are in haste to make protest and to put
themselves under shelter.”


He was indulgent towards women and poor people, on whom the burden of
human society rest. He said, “The faults of women, of children, of the
feeble, the indigent, and the ignorant, are the fault of the husbands,
the fathers, the masters, the strong, the rich, and the wise.”


He said, moreover, “Teach those who are ignorant as many things as
possible; society is culpable, in that it does not afford instruction
gratis; it is responsible for the night which it produces. This soul is
full of shadow; sin is therein committed. The guilty one is not the
person who has committed the sin, but the person who has created the
shadow.”


It will be perceived that he had a peculiar manner of his own of
judging things: I suspect that he obtained it from the Gospel.

One day he heard a criminal case, which was in preparation and on the
point of trial, discussed in a drawing-room. A wretched man, being at
the end of his resources, had coined counterfeit money, out of love for
a woman, and for the child which he had had by her. Counterfeiting was
still punishable with death at that epoch. The woman had been arrested
in the act of passing the first false piece made by the man. She was
held, but there were no proofs except against her. She alone could
accuse her lover, and destroy him by her confession. She denied; they
insisted. She persisted in her denial. Thereupon an idea occurred to
the attorney for the crown. He invented an infidelity on the part of
the lover, and succeeded, by means of fragments of letters cunningly
presented, in persuading the unfortunate woman that she had a rival,
and that the man was deceiving her. Thereupon, exasperated by jealousy,
she denounced her lover, confessed all, proved all.

The man was ruined. He was shortly to be tried at Aix with his
accomplice. They were relating the matter, and each one was expressing
enthusiasm over the cleverness of the magistrate. By bringing jealousy
into play, he had caused the truth to burst forth in wrath, he had
educed the justice of revenge. The Bishop listened to all this in
silence. When they had finished, he inquired,—

“Where are this man and woman to be tried?”


“At the Court of Assizes.”


He went on, “And where will the advocate of the crown be tried?”


A tragic event occurred at D—— A man was condemned to death for murder.
He was a wretched fellow, not exactly educated, not exactly ignorant,
who had been a mountebank at fairs, and a writer for the public. The
town took a great interest in the trial. On the eve of the day fixed
for the execution of the condemned man, the chaplain of the prison fell
ill. A priest was needed to attend the criminal in his last moments.
They sent for the curé. It seems that he refused to come, saying, “That
is no affair of mine. I have nothing to do with that unpleasant task,
and with that mountebank: I, too, am ill; and besides, it is not my
place.” This reply was reported to the Bishop, who said, _“Monsieur le
Curé is right: it is not his place; it is mine.”_

He went instantly to the prison, descended to the cell of the
“mountebank,” called him by name, took him by the hand, and spoke to
him. He passed the entire day with him, forgetful of food and sleep,
praying to God for the soul of the condemned man, and praying the
condemned man for his own. He told him the best truths, which are also
the most simple. He was father, brother, friend; he was bishop only to
bless. He taught him everything, encouraged and consoled him. The man
was on the point of dying in despair. Death was an abyss to him. As he
stood trembling on its mournful brink, he recoiled with horror. He was
not sufficiently ignorant to be absolutely indifferent. His
condemnation, which had been a profound shock, had, in a manner, broken
through, here and there, that wall which separates us from the mystery
of things, and which we call life. He gazed incessantly beyond this
world through these fatal breaches, and beheld only darkness. The
Bishop made him see light.

On the following day, when they came to fetch the unhappy wretch, the
Bishop was still there. He followed him, and exhibited himself to the
eyes of the crowd in his purple camail and with his episcopal cross
upon his neck, side by side with the criminal bound with cords.

He mounted the tumbril with him, he mounted the scaffold with him. The
sufferer, who had been so gloomy and cast down on the preceding day,
was radiant. He felt that his soul was reconciled, and he hoped in God.
The Bishop embraced him, and at the moment when the knife was about to
fall, he said to him: “God raises from the dead him whom man slays; he
whom his brothers have rejected finds his Father once more. Pray,
believe, enter into life: the Father is there.” When he descended from
the scaffold, there was something in his look which made the people
draw aside to let him pass. They did not know which was most worthy of
admiration, his pallor or his serenity. On his return to the humble
dwelling, which he designated, with a smile, as _his palace_, he said
to his sister, _“I have just officiated pontifically.”_

Since the most sublime things are often those which are the least
understood, there were people in the town who said, when commenting on
this conduct of the Bishop, _“It is affectation.”_

This, however, was a remark which was confined to the drawing-rooms.
The populace, which perceives no jest in holy deeds, was touched, and
admired him.

As for the Bishop, it was a shock to him to have beheld the guillotine,
and it was a long time before he recovered from it.

In fact, when the scaffold is there, all erected and prepared, it has
something about it which produces hallucination. One may feel a certain
indifference to the death penalty, one may refrain from pronouncing
upon it, from saying yes or no, so long as one has not seen a
guillotine with one’s own eyes: but if one encounters one of them, the
shock is violent; one is forced to decide, and to take part for or
against. Some admire it, like de Maistre; others execrate it, like
Beccaria. The guillotine is the concretion of the law; it is called
_vindicate_; it is not neutral, and it does not permit you to remain
neutral. He who sees it shivers with the most mysterious of shivers.
All social problems erect their interrogation point around this
chopping-knife. The scaffold is a vision. The scaffold is not a piece
of carpentry; the scaffold is not a machine; the scaffold is not an
inert bit of mechanism constructed of wood, iron and cords.

It seems as though it were a being, possessed of I know not what sombre
initiative; one would say that this piece of carpenter’s work saw, that
this machine heard, that this mechanism understood, that this wood,
this iron, and these cords were possessed of will. In the frightful
meditation into which its presence casts the soul the scaffold appears
in terrible guise, and as though taking part in what is going on. The
scaffold is the accomplice of the executioner; it devours, it eats
flesh, it drinks blood; the scaffold is a sort of monster fabricated by
the judge and the carpenter, a spectre which seems to live with a
horrible vitality composed of all the death which it has inflicted.

Therefore, the impression was terrible and profound; on the day
following the execution, and on many succeeding days, the Bishop
appeared to be crushed. The almost violent serenity of the funereal
moment had disappeared; the phantom of social justice tormented him.
He, who generally returned from all his deeds with a radiant
satisfaction, seemed to be reproaching himself. At times he talked to
himself, and stammered lugubrious monologues in a low voice. This is
one which his sister overheard one evening and preserved: “I did not
think that it was so monstrous. It is wrong to become absorbed in the
divine law to such a degree as not to perceive human law. Death belongs
to God alone. By what right do men touch that unknown thing?”


In course of time these impressions weakened and probably vanished.
Nevertheless, it was observed that the Bishop thenceforth avoided
passing the place of execution.

M. Myriel could be summoned at any hour to the bedside of the sick and
dying. He did not ignore the fact that therein lay his greatest duty
and his greatest labor. Widowed and orphaned families had no need to
summon him; he came of his own accord. He understood how to sit down
and hold his peace for long hours beside the man who had lost the wife
of his love, of the mother who had lost her child. As he knew the
moment for silence he knew also the moment for speech. Oh, admirable
consoler! He sought not to efface sorrow by forgetfulness, but to
magnify and dignify it by hope. He said:—

“Have a care of the manner in which you turn towards the dead. Think
not of that which perishes. Gaze steadily. You will perceive the living
light of your well-beloved dead in the depths of heaven.” He knew that
faith is wholesome. He sought to counsel and calm the despairing man,
by pointing out to him the resigned man, and to transform the grief
which gazes upon a grave by showing him the grief which fixes its gaze
upon a star.




CHAPTER V—MONSEIGNEUR BIENVENU MADE HIS CASSOCKS LAST TOO LONG


The private life of M. Myriel was filled with the same thoughts as his
public life. The voluntary poverty in which the Bishop of D—— lived,
would have been a solemn and charming sight for any one who could have
viewed it close at hand.

Like all old men, and like the majority of thinkers, he slept little.
This brief slumber was profound. In the morning he meditated for an
hour, then he said his mass, either at the cathedral or in his own
house. His mass said, he broke his fast on rye bread dipped in the milk
of his own cows. Then he set to work.

A Bishop is a very busy man: he must every day receive the secretary of
the bishopric, who is generally a canon, and nearly every day his
vicars-general. He has congregations to reprove, privileges to grant, a
whole ecclesiastical library to examine,—prayer-books, diocesan
catechisms, books of hours, etc.,—charges to write, sermons to
authorize, curés and mayors to reconcile, a clerical correspondence, an
administrative correspondence; on one side the State, on the other the
Holy See; and a thousand matters of business.

What time was left to him, after these thousand details of business,
and his offices and his breviary, he bestowed first on the necessitous,
the sick, and the afflicted; the time which was left to him from the
afflicted, the sick, and the necessitous, he devoted to work. Sometimes
he dug in his garden; again, he read or wrote. He had but one word for
both these kinds of toil; he called them _gardening_. “The mind is a
garden,” said he.

Towards midday, when the weather was fine, he went forth and took a
stroll in the country or in town, often entering lowly dwellings. He
was seen walking alone, buried in his own thoughts, his eyes cast down,
supporting himself on his long cane, clad in his wadded purple garment
of silk, which was very warm, wearing purple stockings inside his
coarse shoes, and surmounted by a flat hat which allowed three golden
tassels of large bullion to droop from its three points.

It was a perfect festival wherever he appeared. One would have said
that his presence had something warming and luminous about it. The
children and the old people came out to the doorsteps for the Bishop as
for the sun. He bestowed his blessing, and they blessed him. They
pointed out his house to any one who was in need of anything.


  Enlarge

The Comfortor  1b1-5-comfortor


Here and there he halted, accosted the little boys and girls, and
smiled upon the mothers. He visited the poor so long as he had any
money; when he no longer had any, he visited the rich.

As he made his cassocks last a long while, and did not wish to have it
noticed, he never went out in the town without his wadded purple cloak.
This inconvenienced him somewhat in summer.

On his return, he dined. The dinner resembled his breakfast.

At half-past eight in the evening he supped with his sister, Madame
Magloire standing behind them and serving them at table. Nothing could
be more frugal than this repast. If, however, the Bishop had one of his
curés to supper, Madame Magloire took advantage of the opportunity to
serve Monseigneur with some excellent fish from the lake, or with some
fine game from the mountains. Every curé furnished the pretext for a
good meal: the Bishop did not interfere. With that exception, his
ordinary diet consisted only of vegetables boiled in water, and oil
soup. Thus it was said in the town, _when the Bishop does not indulge
in the cheer of a curé, he indulges in the cheer of a trappist_.

After supper he conversed for half an hour with Mademoiselle Baptistine
and Madame Magloire; then he retired to his own room and set to
writing, sometimes on loose sheets, and again on the margin of some
folio. He was a man of letters and rather learned. He left behind him
five or six very curious manuscripts; among others, a dissertation on
this verse in Genesis, _In the beginning, the spirit of God floated
upon the waters_. With this verse he compares three texts: the Arabic
verse which says, _The winds of God blew;_ Flavius Josephus who says,
_A wind from above was precipitated upon the earth;_ and finally, the
Chaldaic paraphrase of Onkelos, which renders it, _A wind coming from
God blew upon the face of the waters_. In another dissertation, he
examines the theological works of Hugo, Bishop of Ptolemaïs,
great-grand-uncle to the writer of this book, and establishes the fact,
that to this bishop must be attributed the divers little works
published during the last century, under the pseudonym of Barleycourt.

Sometimes, in the midst of his reading, no matter what the book might
be which he had in his hand, he would suddenly fall into a profound
meditation, whence he only emerged to write a few lines on the pages of
the volume itself. These lines have often no connection whatever with
the book which contains them. We now have under our eyes a note written
by him on the margin of a quarto entitled _Correspondence of Lord
Germain with Generals Clinton, Cornwallis, and the Admirals on the
American station. Versailles, Poinçot, book-seller; and Paris, Pissot,
bookseller, Quai des Augustins._

Here is the note:—

“Oh, you who are!

“Ecclesiastes calls you the All-powerful; the Maccabees call you the
Creator; the Epistle to the Ephesians calls you liberty; Baruch calls
you Immensity; the Psalms call you Wisdom and Truth; John calls you
Light; the Books of Kings call you Lord; Exodus calls you Providence;
Leviticus, Sanctity; Esdras, Justice; the creation calls you God; man
calls you Father; but Solomon calls you Compassion, and that is the
most beautiful of all your names.”


Toward nine o’clock in the evening the two women retired and betook
themselves to their chambers on the first floor, leaving him alone
until morning on the ground floor.

It is necessary that we should, in this place, give an exact idea of
the dwelling of the Bishop of D——




CHAPTER VI—WHO GUARDED HIS HOUSE FOR HIM


The house in which he lived consisted, as we have said, of a ground
floor, and one story above; three rooms on the ground floor, three
chambers on the first, and an attic above. Behind the house was a
garden, a quarter of an acre in extent. The two women occupied the
first floor; the Bishop was lodged below. The first room, opening on
the street, served him as dining-room, the second was his bedroom, and
the third his oratory. There was no exit possible from this oratory,
except by passing through the bedroom, nor from the bedroom, without
passing through the dining-room. At the end of the suite, in the
oratory, there was a detached alcove with a bed, for use in cases of
hospitality. The Bishop offered this bed to country curates whom
business or the requirements of their parishes brought to D——

The pharmacy of the hospital, a small building which had been added to
the house, and abutted on the garden, had been transformed into a
kitchen and cellar. In addition to this, there was in the garden a
stable, which had formerly been the kitchen of the hospital, and in
which the Bishop kept two cows. No matter what the quantity of milk
they gave, he invariably sent half of it every morning to the sick
people in the hospital.

_“I am paying my tithes,”_ he said.

His bedroom was tolerably large, and rather difficult to warm in bad
weather. As wood is extremely dear at D——, he hit upon the idea of
having a compartment of boards constructed in the cow-shed. Here he
passed his evenings during seasons of severe cold: he called it his
_winter salon_.

In this winter salon, as in the dining-room, there was no other
furniture than a square table in white wood, and four straw-seated
chairs. In addition to this the dining-room was ornamented with an
antique sideboard, painted pink, in water colors. Out of a similar
sideboard, properly draped with white napery and imitation lace, the
Bishop had constructed the altar which decorated his oratory.

His wealthy penitents and the sainted women of D—— had more than once
assessed themselves to raise the money for a new altar for
Monseigneur’s oratory; on each occasion he had taken the money and had
given it to the poor. “The most beautiful of altars,” he said, “is the
soul of an unhappy creature consoled and thanking God.”


In his oratory there were two straw prie-Dieu, and there was an
armchair, also in straw, in his bedroom. When, by chance, he received
seven or eight persons at one time, the prefect, or the general, or the
staff of the regiment in garrison, or several pupils from the little
seminary, the chairs had to be fetched from the winter salon in the
stable, the prie-Dieu from the oratory, and the armchair from the
bedroom: in this way as many as eleven chairs could be collected for
the visitors. A room was dismantled for each new guest.

It sometimes happened that there were twelve in the party; the Bishop
then relieved the embarrassment of the situation by standing in front
of the chimney if it was winter, or by strolling in the garden if it
was summer.

There was still another chair in the detached alcove, but the straw was
half gone from it, and it had but three legs, so that it was of service
only when propped against the wall. Mademoiselle Baptistine had also in
her own room a very large easy-chair of wood, which had formerly been
gilded, and which was covered with flowered pekin; but they had been
obliged to hoist this bergère up to the first story through the window,
as the staircase was too narrow; it could not, therefore, be reckoned
among the possibilities in the way of furniture.

Mademoiselle Baptistine’s ambition had been to be able to purchase a
set of drawing-room furniture in yellow Utrecht velvet, stamped with a
rose pattern, and with mahogany in swan’s neck style, with a sofa. But
this would have cost five hundred francs at least, and in view of the
fact that she had only been able to lay by forty-two francs and ten
sous for this purpose in the course of five years, she had ended by
renouncing the idea. However, who is there who has attained his ideal?

Nothing is more easy to present to the imagination than the Bishop’s
bedchamber. A glazed door opened on the garden; opposite this was the
bed,—a hospital bed of iron, with a canopy of green serge; in the
shadow of the bed, behind a curtain, were the utensils of the toilet,
which still betrayed the elegant habits of the man of the world: there
were two doors, one near the chimney, opening into the oratory; the
other near the bookcase, opening into the dining-room. The bookcase was
a large cupboard with glass doors filled with books; the chimney was of
wood painted to represent marble, and habitually without fire. In the
chimney stood a pair of firedogs of iron, ornamented above with two
garlanded vases, and flutings which had formerly been silvered with
silver leaf, which was a sort of episcopal luxury; above the
chimney-piece hung a crucifix of copper, with the silver worn off,
fixed on a background of threadbare velvet in a wooden frame from which
the gilding had fallen; near the glass door a large table with an
inkstand, loaded with a confusion of papers and with huge volumes;
before the table an armchair of straw; in front of the bed a prie-Dieu,
borrowed from the oratory.

Two portraits in oval frames were fastened to the wall on each side of
the bed. Small gilt inscriptions on the plain surface of the cloth at
the side of these figures indicated that the portraits represented, one
the Abbé of Chaliot, bishop of Saint Claude; the other, the Abbé
Tourteau, vicar-general of Agde, abbé of Grand-Champ, order of Cîteaux,
diocese of Chartres. When the Bishop succeeded to this apartment, after
the hospital patients, he had found these portraits there, and had left
them. They were priests, and probably donors—two reasons for respecting
them. All that he knew about these two persons was, that they had been
appointed by the king, the one to his bishopric, the other to his
benefice, on the same day, the 27th of April, 1785. Madame Magloire
having taken the pictures down to dust, the Bishop had discovered these
particulars written in whitish ink on a little square of paper,
yellowed by time, and attached to the back of the portrait of the Abbé
of Grand-Champ with four wafers.

At his window he had an antique curtain of a coarse woollen stuff,
which finally became so old, that, in order to avoid the expense of a
new one, Madame Magloire was forced to take a large seam in the very
middle of it. This seam took the form of a cross. The Bishop often
called attention to it: “How delightful that is!” he said.

All the rooms in the house, without exception, those on the ground
floor as well as those on the first floor, were white-washed, which is
a fashion in barracks and hospitals.

However, in their latter years, Madame Magloire discovered beneath the
paper which had been washed over, paintings, ornamenting the apartment
of Mademoiselle Baptistine, as we shall see further on. Before becoming
a hospital, this house had been the ancient parliament house of the
Bourgeois. Hence this decoration. The chambers were paved in red
bricks, which were washed every week, with straw mats in front of all
the beds. Altogether, this dwelling, which was attended to by the two
women, was exquisitely clean from top to bottom. This was the sole
luxury which the Bishop permitted. He said, _“That takes nothing from
the poor.”_

It must be confessed, however, that he still retained from his former
possessions six silver knives and forks and a soup-ladle, which Madame
Magloire contemplated every day with delight, as they glistened
splendidly upon the coarse linen cloth. And since we are now painting
the Bishop of D—— as he was in reality, we must add that he had said
more than once, “I find it difficult to renounce eating from silver
dishes.”


To this silverware must be added two large candlesticks of massive
silver, which he had inherited from a great-aunt. These candlesticks
held two wax candles, and usually figured on the Bishop’s
chimney-piece. When he had any one to dinner, Madame Magloire lighted
the two candles and set the candlesticks on the table.

In the Bishop’s own chamber, at the head of his bed, there was a small
cupboard, in which Madame Magloire locked up the six silver knives and
forks and the big spoon every night. But it is necessary to add, that
the key was never removed.

The garden, which had been rather spoiled by the ugly buildings which
we have mentioned, was composed of four alleys in cross-form, radiating
from a tank. Another walk made the circuit of the garden, and skirted
the white wall which enclosed it. These alleys left behind them four
square plots rimmed with box. In three of these, Madame Magloire
cultivated vegetables; in the fourth, the Bishop had planted some
flowers; here and there stood a few fruit-trees. Madame Magloire had
once remarked, with a sort of gentle malice: “Monseigneur, you who turn
everything to account, have, nevertheless, one useless plot. It would
be better to grow salads there than bouquets.” “Madame Magloire,”
retorted the Bishop, “you are mistaken. The beautiful is as useful as
the useful.” He added after a pause, “More so, perhaps.”


This plot, consisting of three or four beds, occupied the Bishop almost
as much as did his books. He liked to pass an hour or two there,
trimming, hoeing, and making holes here and there in the earth, into
which he dropped seeds. He was not as hostile to insects as a gardener
could have wished to see him. Moreover, he made no pretensions to
botany; he ignored groups and consistency; he made not the slightest
effort to decide between Tournefort and the natural method; he took
part neither with the buds against the cotyledons, nor with Jussieu
against Linnæus. He did not study plants; he loved flowers. He
respected learned men greatly; he respected the ignorant still more;
and, without ever failing in these two respects, he watered his
flower-beds every summer evening with a tin watering-pot painted green.

The house had not a single door which could be locked. The door of the
dining-room, which, as we have said, opened directly on the cathedral
square, had formerly been ornamented with locks and bolts like the door
of a prison. The Bishop had had all this ironwork removed, and this
door was never fastened, either by night or by day, with anything
except the latch. All that the first passer-by had to do at any hour,
was to give it a push. At first, the two women had been very much tried
by this door, which was never fastened, but Monsieur de D—— had said to
them, “Have bolts put on your rooms, if that will please you.” They had
ended by sharing his confidence, or by at least acting as though they
shared it. Madame Magloire alone had frights from time to time. As for
the Bishop, his thought can be found explained, or at least indicated,
in the three lines which he wrote on the margin of a Bible, “This is
the shade of difference: the door of the physician should never be
shut, the door of the priest should always be open.”


On another book, entitled _Philosophy of the Medical Science_, he had
written this other note: “Am not I a physician like them? I also have
my patients, and then, too, I have some whom I call my unfortunates.”


Again he wrote: “Do not inquire the name of him who asks a shelter of
you. The very man who is embarrassed by his name is the one who needs
shelter.”


It chanced that a worthy curé, I know not whether it was the curé of
Couloubroux or the curé of Pompierry, took it into his head to ask him
one day, probably at the instigation of Madame Magloire, whether
Monsieur was sure that he was not committing an indiscretion, to a
certain extent, in leaving his door unfastened day and night, at the
mercy of any one who should choose to enter, and whether, in short, he
did not fear lest some misfortune might occur in a house so little
guarded. The Bishop touched his shoulder, with gentle gravity, and said
to him, _“Nisi Dominus custodierit domum, in vanum vigilant qui
custodiunt eam,” Unless the Lord guard the house, in vain do they watch
who guard it._

Then he spoke of something else.

He was fond of saying, “There is a bravery of the priest as well as the
bravery of a colonel of dragoons,—only,” he added, “ours must be
tranquil.”





CHAPTER VII—CRAVATTE


It is here that a fact falls naturally into place, which we must not
omit, because it is one of the sort which show us best what sort of a
man the Bishop of D—— was.

After the destruction of the band of Gaspard Bès, who had infested the
gorges of Ollioules, one of his lieutenants, Cravatte, took refuge in
the mountains. He concealed himself for some time with his bandits, the
remnant of Gaspard Bès’s troop, in the county of Nice; then he made his
way to Piédmont, and suddenly reappeared in France, in the vicinity of
Barcelonette. He was first seen at Jauziers, then at Tuiles. He hid
himself in the caverns of the Joug-de-l’Aigle, and thence he descended
towards the hamlets and villages through the ravines of Ubaye and
Ubayette.

He even pushed as far as Embrun, entered the cathedral one night, and
despoiled the sacristy. His highway robberies laid waste the
country-side. The gendarmes were set on his track, but in vain. He
always escaped; sometimes he resisted by main force. He was a bold
wretch. In the midst of all this terror the Bishop arrived. He was
making his circuit to Chastelar. The mayor came to meet him, and urged
him to retrace his steps. Cravatte was in possession of the mountains
as far as Arche, and beyond; there was danger even with an escort; it
merely exposed three or four unfortunate gendarmes to no purpose.

“Therefore,” said the Bishop, “I intend to go without escort.”


“You do not really mean that, Monseigneur!” exclaimed the mayor.

“I do mean it so thoroughly that I absolutely refuse any gendarmes, and
shall set out in an hour.”


“Set out?”


“Set out.”


“Alone?”


“Alone.”


“Monseigneur, you will not do that!”


“There exists yonder in the mountains,” said the Bishop, “a tiny
community no bigger than that, which I have not seen for three years.
They are my good friends, those gentle and honest shepherds. They own
one goat out of every thirty that they tend. They make very pretty
woollen cords of various colors, and they play the mountain airs on
little flutes with six holes. They need to be told of the good God now
and then. What would they say to a bishop who was afraid? What would
they say if I did not go?”


“But the brigands, Monseigneur?”


“Hold,” said the Bishop, “I must think of that. You are right. I may
meet them. They, too, need to be told of the good God.”


“But, Monseigneur, there is a band of them! A flock of wolves!”


“Monsieur le maire, it may be that it is of this very flock of wolves
that Jesus has constituted me the shepherd. Who knows the ways of
Providence?”


“They will rob you, Monseigneur.”


“I have nothing.”


“They will kill you.”


“An old goodman of a priest, who passes along mumbling his prayers?
Bah! To what purpose?”


“Oh, mon Dieu! what if you should meet them!”


“I should beg alms of them for my poor.”


“Do not go, Monseigneur. In the name of Heaven! You are risking your
life!”


“Monsieur le maire,” said the Bishop, “is that really all? I am not in
the world to guard my own life, but to guard souls.”


They had to allow him to do as he pleased. He set out, accompanied only
by a child who offered to serve as a guide. His obstinacy was bruited
about the country-side, and caused great consternation.

He would take neither his sister nor Madame Magloire. He traversed the
mountain on mule-back, encountered no one, and arrived safe and sound
at the residence of his “good friends,” the shepherds. He remained
there for a fortnight, preaching, administering the sacrament,
teaching, exhorting. When the time of his departure approached, he
resolved to chant a _Te Deum_ pontifically. He mentioned it to the
curé. But what was to be done? There were no episcopal ornaments. They
could only place at his disposal a wretched village sacristy, with a
few ancient chasubles of threadbare damask adorned with imitation lace.

“Bah!” said the Bishop. “Let us announce our _Te Deum_ from the pulpit,
nevertheless, Monsieur le Curé. Things will arrange themselves.”


They instituted a search in the churches of the neighborhood. All the
magnificence of these humble parishes combined would not have sufficed
to clothe the chorister of a cathedral properly.

While they were thus embarrassed, a large chest was brought and
deposited in the presbytery for the Bishop, by two unknown horsemen,
who departed on the instant. The chest was opened; it contained a cope
of cloth of gold, a mitre ornamented with diamonds, an archbishop’s
cross, a magnificent crosier,—all the pontifical vestments which had
been stolen a month previously from the treasury of Notre Dame
d’Embrun. In the chest was a paper, on which these words were written,
_“From Cravatte to Monseigneur Bienvenu.”_

“Did not I say that things would come right of themselves?” said the
Bishop. Then he added, with a smile, “To him who contents himself with
the surplice of a curate, God sends the cope of an archbishop.”


“Monseigneur,” murmured the curé, throwing back his head with a smile.
“God—or the Devil.”


The Bishop looked steadily at the curé, and repeated with authority,
“God!”


When he returned to Chastelar, the people came out to stare at him as
at a curiosity, all along the road. At the priest’s house in Chastelar
he rejoined Mademoiselle Baptistine and Madame Magloire, who were
waiting for him, and he said to his sister: “Well! was I in the right?
The poor priest went to his poor mountaineers with empty hands, and he
returns from them with his hands full. I set out bearing only my faith
in God; I have brought back the treasure of a cathedral.”


That evening, before he went to bed, he said again: “Let us never fear
robbers nor murderers. Those are dangers from without, petty dangers.
Let us fear ourselves. Prejudices are the real robbers; vices are the
real murderers. The great dangers lie within ourselves. What matters it
what threatens our head or our purse! Let us think only of that which
threatens our soul.”


Then, turning to his sister: “Sister, never a precaution on the part of
the priest, against his fellow-man. That which his fellow does, God
permits. Let us confine ourselves to prayer, when we think that a
danger is approaching us. Let us pray, not for ourselves, but that our
brother may not fall into sin on our account.”


However, such incidents were rare in his life. We relate those of which
we know; but generally he passed his life in doing the same things at
the same moment. One month of his year resembled one hour of his day.

As to what became of “the treasure” of the cathedral of Embrun, we
should be embarrassed by any inquiry in that direction. It consisted of
very handsome things, very tempting things, and things which were very
well adapted to be stolen for the benefit of the unfortunate. Stolen
they had already been elsewhere. Half of the adventure was completed;
it only remained to impart a new direction to the theft, and to cause
it to take a short trip in the direction of the poor. However, we make
no assertions on this point. Only, a rather obscure note was found
among the Bishop’s papers, which may bear some relation to this matter,
and which is couched in these terms, _“The question is, to decide
whether this should be turned over to the cathedral or to the
hospital.”_




CHAPTER VIII—PHILOSOPHY AFTER DRINKING


The senator above mentioned was a clever man, who had made his own way,
heedless of those things which present obstacles, and which are called
conscience, sworn faith, justice, duty: he had marched straight to his
goal, without once flinching in the line of his advancement and his
interest. He was an old attorney, softened by success; not a bad man by
any means, who rendered all the small services in his power to his
sons, his sons-in-law, his relations, and even to his friends, having
wisely seized upon, in life, good sides, good opportunities, good
windfalls. Everything else seemed to him very stupid. He was
intelligent, and just sufficiently educated to think himself a disciple
of Epicurus; while he was, in reality, only a product of
Pigault-Lebrun. He laughed willingly and pleasantly over infinite and
eternal things, and at the “crotchets of that good old fellow the
Bishop.” He even sometimes laughed at him with an amiable authority in
the presence of M. Myriel himself, who listened to him.

On some semi-official occasion or other, I do not recollect what,
Count*** [this senator] and M. Myriel were to dine with the prefect. At
dessert, the senator, who was slightly exhilarated, though still
perfectly dignified, exclaimed:—

“Egad, Bishop, let’s have a discussion. It is hard for a senator and a
bishop to look at each other without winking. We are two augurs. I am
going to make a confession to you. I have a philosophy of my own.”


“And you are right,” replied the Bishop. “As one makes one’s
philosophy, so one lies on it. You are on the bed of purple, senator.”


The senator was encouraged, and went on:—

“Let us be good fellows.”


“Good devils even,” said the Bishop.

“I declare to you,” continued the senator, “that the Marquis d’Argens,
Pyrrhon, Hobbes, and M. Naigeon are no rascals. I have all the
philosophers in my library gilded on the edges.”


“Like yourself, Count,” interposed the Bishop.

The senator resumed:—

“I hate Diderot; he is an ideologist, a declaimer, and a revolutionist,
a believer in God at bottom, and more bigoted than Voltaire. Voltaire
made sport of Needham, and he was wrong, for Needham’s eels prove that
God is useless. A drop of vinegar in a spoonful of flour paste supplies
the _fiat lux_. Suppose the drop to be larger and the spoonful bigger;
you have the world. Man is the eel. Then what is the good of the
Eternal Father? The Jehovah hypothesis tires me, Bishop. It is good for
nothing but to produce shallow people, whose reasoning is hollow. Down
with that great All, which torments me! Hurrah for Zero which leaves me
in peace! Between you and me, and in order to empty my sack, and make
confession to my pastor, as it behooves me to do, I will admit to you
that I have good sense. I am not enthusiastic over your Jesus, who
preaches renunciation and sacrifice to the last extremity. ‘Tis the
counsel of an avaricious man to beggars. Renunciation; why? Sacrifice;
to what end? I do not see one wolf immolating himself for the happiness
of another wolf. Let us stick to nature, then. We are at the top; let
us have a superior philosophy. What is the advantage of being at the
top, if one sees no further than the end of other people’s noses? Let
us live merrily. Life is all. That man has another future elsewhere, on
high, below, anywhere, I don’t believe; not one single word of it. Ah!
sacrifice and renunciation are recommended to me; I must take heed to
everything I do; I must cudgel my brains over good and evil, over the
just and the unjust, over the _fas_ and the _nefas_. Why? Because I
shall have to render an account of my actions. When? After death. What
a fine dream! After my death it will be a very clever person who can
catch me. Have a handful of dust seized by a shadow-hand, if you can.
Let us tell the truth, we who are initiated, and who have raised the
veil of Isis: there is no such thing as either good or evil; there is
vegetation. Let us seek the real. Let us get to the bottom of it. Let
us go into it thoroughly. What the deuce! let us go to the bottom of
it! We must scent out the truth; dig in the earth for it, and seize it.
Then it gives you exquisite joys. Then you grow strong, and you laugh.
I am square on the bottom, I am. Immortality, Bishop, is a chance, a
waiting for dead men’s shoes. Ah! what a charming promise! trust to it,
if you like! What a fine lot Adam has! We are souls, and we shall be
angels, with blue wings on our shoulder-blades. Do come to my
assistance: is it not Tertullian who says that the blessed shall travel
from star to star? Very well. We shall be the grasshoppers of the
stars. And then, besides, we shall see God. Ta, ta, ta! What twaddle
all these paradises are! God is a nonsensical monster. I would not say
that in the _Moniteur_, egad! but I may whisper it among friends.
_Inter pocula_. To sacrifice the world to paradise is to let slip the
prey for the shadow. Be the dupe of the infinite! I’m not such a fool.
I am a nought. I call myself Monsieur le Comte Nought, senator. Did I
exist before my birth? No. Shall I exist after death? No. What am I? A
little dust collected in an organism. What am I to do on this earth?
The choice rests with me: suffer or enjoy. Whither will suffering lead
me? To nothingness; but I shall have suffered. Whither will enjoyment
lead me? To nothingness; but I shall have enjoyed myself. My choice is
made. One must eat or be eaten. I shall eat. It is better to be the
tooth than the grass. Such is my wisdom. After which, go whither I push
thee, the grave-digger is there; the Pantheon for some of us: all falls
into the great hole. End. _Finis_. Total liquidation. This is the
vanishing-point. Death is death, believe me. I laugh at the idea of
there being any one who has anything to tell me on that subject. Fables
of nurses; bugaboo for children; Jehovah for men. No; our to-morrow is
the night. Beyond the tomb there is nothing but equal nothingness. You
have been Sardanapalus, you have been Vincent de Paul—it makes no
difference. That is the truth. Then live your life, above all things.
Make use of your _I_ while you have it. In truth, Bishop, I tell you
that I have a philosophy of my own, and I have my philosophers. I don’t
let myself be taken in with that nonsense. Of course, there must be
something for those who are down,—for the barefooted beggars,
knife-grinders, and miserable wretches. Legends, chimæras, the soul,
immortality, paradise, the stars, are provided for them to swallow.
They gobble it down. They spread it on their dry bread. He who has
nothing else has the good God. That is the least he can have. I oppose
no objection to that; but I reserve Monsieur Naigeon for myself. The
good God is good for the populace.”


The Bishop clapped his hands.

“That’s talking!” he exclaimed. “What an excellent and really
marvellous thing is this materialism! Not every one who wants it can
have it. Ah! when one does have it, one is no longer a dupe, one does
not stupidly allow one’s self to be exiled like Cato, nor stoned like
Stephen, nor burned alive like Jeanne d’Arc. Those who have succeeded
in procuring this admirable materialism have the joy of feeling
themselves irresponsible, and of thinking that they can devour
everything without uneasiness,—places, sinecures, dignities, power,
whether well or ill acquired, lucrative recantations, useful
treacheries, savory capitulations of conscience,—and that they shall
enter the tomb with their digestion accomplished. How agreeable that
is! I do not say that with reference to you, senator. Nevertheless, it
is impossible for me to refrain from congratulating you. You great
lords have, so you say, a philosophy of your own, and for yourselves,
which is exquisite, refined, accessible to the rich alone, good for all
sauces, and which seasons the voluptuousness of life admirably. This
philosophy has been extracted from the depths, and unearthed by special
seekers. But you are good-natured princes, and you do not think it a
bad thing that belief in the good God should constitute the philosophy
of the people, very much as the goose stuffed with chestnuts is the
truffled turkey of the poor.”





CHAPTER IX—THE BROTHER AS DEPICTED BY THE SISTER


In order to furnish an idea of the private establishment of the Bishop
of D——, and of the manner in which those two sainted women subordinated
their actions, their thoughts, their feminine instincts even, which are
easily alarmed, to the habits and purposes of the Bishop, without his
even taking the trouble of speaking in order to explain them, we cannot
do better than transcribe in this place a letter from Mademoiselle
Baptistine to Madame the Vicomtess de Boischevron, the friend of her
childhood. This letter is in our possession.

D——, Dec. 16, 18—. MY GOOD MADAM: Not a day passes without our speaking
of you. It is our established custom; but there is another reason
besides. Just imagine, while washing and dusting the ceilings and
walls, Madam Magloire has made some discoveries; now our two chambers
hung with antique paper whitewashed over, would not discredit a château
in the style of yours. Madam Magloire has pulled off all the paper.
There were things beneath. My drawing-room, which contains no
furniture, and which we use for spreading out the linen after washing,
is fifteen feet in height, eighteen square, with a ceiling which was
formerly painted and gilded, and with beams, as in yours. This was
covered with a cloth while this was the hospital. And the woodwork was
of the era of our grandmothers. But my room is the one you ought to
see. Madam Magloire has discovered, under at least ten thicknesses of
paper pasted on top, some paintings, which without being good are very
tolerable. The subject is Telemachus being knighted by Minerva in some
gardens, the name of which escapes me. In short, where the Roman ladies
repaired on one single night. What shall I say to you? I have Romans,
and Roman ladies [here occurs an illegible word], and the whole train.
Madam Magloire has cleaned it all off; this summer she is going to have
some small injuries repaired, and the whole revarnished, and my chamber
will be a regular museum. She has also found in a corner of the attic
two wooden pier-tables of ancient fashion. They asked us two crowns of
six francs each to regild them, but it is much better to give the money
to the poor; and they are very ugly besides, and I should much prefer a
round table of mahogany.

I am always very happy. My brother is so good. He gives all he has to
the poor and sick. We are very much cramped. The country is trying in
the winter, and we really must do something for those who are in need.
We are almost comfortably lighted and warmed. You see that these are
great treats.

My brother has ways of his own. When he talks, he says that a bishop
ought to be so. Just imagine! the door of our house is never fastened.
Whoever chooses to enter finds himself at once in my brother’s room. He
fears nothing, even at night. That is his sort of bravery, he says.

He does not wish me or Madame Magloire feel any fear for him. He
exposes himself to all sorts of dangers, and he does not like to have
us even seem to notice it. One must know how to understand him.

He goes out in the rain, he walks in the water, he travels in winter.
He fears neither suspicious roads nor dangerous encounters, nor night.

Last year he went quite alone into a country of robbers. He would not
take us. He was absent for a fortnight. On his return nothing had
happened to him; he was thought to be dead, but was perfectly well, and
said, “This is the way I have been robbed!” And then he opened a trunk
full of jewels, all the jewels of the cathedral of Embrun, which the
thieves had given him.

When he returned on that occasion, I could not refrain from scolding
him a little, taking care, however, not to speak except when the
carriage was making a noise, so that no one might hear me.

At first I used to say to myself, “There are no dangers which will stop
him; he is terrible.” Now I have ended by getting used to it. I make a
sign to Madam Magloire that she is not to oppose him. He risks himself
as he sees fit. I carry off Madam Magloire, I enter my chamber, I pray
for him and fall asleep. I am at ease, because I know that if anything
were to happen to him, it would be the end of me. I should go to the
good God with my brother and my bishop. It has cost Madam Magloire more
trouble than it did me to accustom herself to what she terms his
imprudences. But now the habit has been acquired. We pray together, we
tremble together, and we fall asleep. If the devil were to enter this
house, he would be allowed to do so. After all, what is there for us to
fear in this house? There is always some one with us who is stronger
than we. The devil may pass through it, but the good God dwells here.

This suffices me. My brother has no longer any need of saying a word to
me. I understand him without his speaking, and we abandon ourselves to
the care of Providence. That is the way one has to do with a man who
possesses grandeur of soul.

I have interrogated my brother with regard to the information which you
desire on the subject of the Faux family. You are aware that he knows
everything, and that he has memories, because he is still a very good
royalist. They really are a very ancient Norman family of the
generalship of Caen. Five hundred years ago there was a Raoul de Faux,
a Jean de Faux, and a Thomas de Faux, who were gentlemen, and one of
whom was a seigneur de Rochefort. The last was Guy-Étienne-Alexandre,
and was commander of a regiment, and something in the light horse of
Bretagne. His daughter, Marie-Louise, married Adrien-Charles de
Gramont, son of the Duke Louis de Gramont, peer of France, colonel of
the French guards, and lieutenant-general of the army. It is written
Faux, Fauq, and Faoucq.

Good Madame, recommend us to the prayers of your sainted relative,
Monsieur the Cardinal. As for your dear Sylvanie, she has done well in
not wasting the few moments which she passes with you in writing to me.
She is well, works as you would wish, and loves me.

That is all that I desire. The souvenir which she sent through you
reached me safely, and it makes me very happy. My health is not so very
bad, and yet I grow thinner every day. Farewell; my paper is at an end,
and this forces me to leave you. A thousand good wishes.

BAPTISTINE.

P.S. Your grand nephew is charming. Do you know that he will soon be
five years old? Yesterday he saw some one riding by on horseback who
had on knee-caps, and he said, “What has he got on his knees?” He is a
charming child! His little brother is dragging an old broom about the
room, like a carriage, and saying, “Hu!”


As will be perceived from this letter, these two women understood how
to mould themselves to the Bishop’s ways with that special feminine
genius which comprehends the man better than he comprehends himself.
The Bishop of D——, in spite of the gentle and candid air which never
deserted him, sometimes did things that were grand, bold, and
magnificent, without seeming to have even a suspicion of the fact. They
trembled, but they let him alone. Sometimes Madame Magloire essayed a
remonstrance in advance, but never at the time, nor afterwards. They
never interfered with him by so much as a word or sign, in any action
once entered upon. At certain moments, without his having occasion to
mention it, when he was not even conscious of it himself in all
probability, so perfect was his simplicity, they vaguely felt that he
was acting as a bishop; then they were nothing more than two shadows in
the house. They served him passively; and if obedience consisted in
disappearing, they disappeared. They understood, with an admirable
delicacy of instinct, that certain cares may be put under constraint.
Thus, even when believing him to be in peril, they understood, I will
not say his thought, but his nature, to such a degree that they no
longer watched over him. They confided him to God.

Moreover, Baptistine said, as we have just read, that her brother’s end
would prove her own. Madame Magloire did not say this, but she knew it.




CHAPTER X—THE BISHOP IN THE PRESENCE OF AN UNKNOWN LIGHT


At an epoch a little later than the date of the letter cited in the
preceding pages, he did a thing which, if the whole town was to be
believed, was even more hazardous than his trip across the mountains
infested with bandits.

In the country near D—— a man lived quite alone. This man, we will
state at once, was a former member of the Convention. His name was G——

Member of the Convention, G—— was mentioned with a sort of horror in
the little world of D—— A member of the Convention—can you imagine such
a thing? That existed from the time when people called each other
_thou_, and when they said “citizen.” This man was almost a monster. He
had not voted for the death of the king, but almost. He was a
quasi-regicide. He had been a terrible man. How did it happen that such
a man had not been brought before a provost’s court, on the return of
the legitimate princes? They need not have cut off his head, if you
please; clemency must be exercised, agreed; but a good banishment for
life. An example, in short, etc. Besides, he was an atheist, like all
the rest of those people. Gossip of the geese about the vulture.

Was G—— a vulture after all? Yes; if he were to be judged by the
element of ferocity in this solitude of his. As he had not voted for
the death of the king, he had not been included in the decrees of
exile, and had been able to remain in France.

He dwelt at a distance of three-quarters of an hour from the city, far
from any hamlet, far from any road, in some hidden turn of a very wild
valley, no one knew exactly where. He had there, it was said, a sort of
field, a hole, a lair. There were no neighbors, not even passers-by.
Since he had dwelt in that valley, the path which led thither had
disappeared under a growth of grass. The locality was spoken of as
though it had been the dwelling of a hangman.

Nevertheless, the Bishop meditated on the subject, and from time to
time he gazed at the horizon at a point where a clump of trees marked
the valley of the former member of the Convention, and he said, “There
is a soul yonder which is lonely.”


And he added, deep in his own mind, “I owe him a visit.”


But, let us avow it, this idea, which seemed natural at the first
blush, appeared to him after a moment’s reflection, as strange,
impossible, and almost repulsive. For, at bottom, he shared the general
impression, and the old member of the Convention inspired him, without
his being clearly conscious of the fact himself, with that sentiment
which borders on hate, and which is so well expressed by the word
estrangement.

Still, should the scab of the sheep cause the shepherd to recoil? No.
But what a sheep!

The good Bishop was perplexed. Sometimes he set out in that direction;
then he returned.

Finally, the rumor one day spread through the town that a sort of young
shepherd, who served the member of the Convention in his hovel, had
come in quest of a doctor; that the old wretch was dying, that
paralysis was gaining on him, and that he would not live over
night.—“Thank God!” some added.

The Bishop took his staff, put on his cloak, on account of his too
threadbare cassock, as we have mentioned, and because of the evening
breeze which was sure to rise soon, and set out.

The sun was setting, and had almost touched the horizon when the Bishop
arrived at the excommunicated spot. With a certain beating of the
heart, he recognized the fact that he was near the lair. He strode over
a ditch, leaped a hedge, made his way through a fence of dead boughs,
entered a neglected paddock, took a few steps with a good deal of
boldness, and suddenly, at the extremity of the waste land, and behind
lofty brambles, he caught sight of the cavern.

It was a very low hut, poor, small, and clean, with a vine nailed
against the outside.

Near the door, in an old wheel-chair, the armchair of the peasants,
there was a white-haired man, smiling at the sun.

Near the seated man stood a young boy, the shepherd lad. He was
offering the old man a jar of milk.

While the Bishop was watching him, the old man spoke: “Thank you,” he
said, “I need nothing.” And his smile quitted the sun to rest upon the
child.

The Bishop stepped forward. At the sound which he made in walking, the
old man turned his head, and his face expressed the sum total of the
surprise which a man can still feel after a long life.

“This is the first time since I have been here,” said he, “that any one
has entered here. Who are you, sir?”


The Bishop answered:—

“My name is Bienvenu Myriel.”


“Bienvenu Myriel? I have heard that name. Are you the man whom the
people call Monseigneur Welcome?”


“I am.”


The old man resumed with a half-smile

“In that case, you are my bishop?”


“Something of that sort.”


“Enter, sir.”


The member of the Convention extended his hand to the Bishop, but the
Bishop did not take it. The Bishop confined himself to the remark:—

“I am pleased to see that I have been misinformed. You certainly do not
seem to me to be ill.”


“Monsieur,” replied the old man, “I am going to recover.”


He paused, and then said:—

“I shall die three hours hence.”


Then he continued:—

“I am something of a doctor; I know in what fashion the last hour draws
on. Yesterday, only my feet were cold; to-day, the chill has ascended
to my knees; now I feel it mounting to my waist; when it reaches the
heart, I shall stop. The sun is beautiful, is it not? I had myself
wheeled out here to take a last look at things. You can talk to me; it
does not fatigue me. You have done well to come and look at a man who
is on the point of death. It is well that there should be witnesses at
that moment. One has one’s caprices; I should have liked to last until
the dawn, but I know that I shall hardly live three hours. It will be
night then. What does it matter, after all? Dying is a simple affair.
One has no need of the light for that. So be it. I shall die by
starlight.”


The old man turned to the shepherd lad:—

“Go to thy bed; thou wert awake all last night; thou art tired.”


The child entered the hut.

The old man followed him with his eyes, and added, as though speaking
to himself:—

“I shall die while he sleeps. The two slumbers may be good neighbors.”


The Bishop was not touched as it seems that he should have been. He did
not think he discerned God in this manner of dying; let us say the
whole, for these petty contradictions of great hearts must be indicated
like the rest: he, who on occasion, was so fond of laughing at “His
Grace,” was rather shocked at not being addressed as Monseigneur, and
he was almost tempted to retort “citizen.” He was assailed by a fancy
for peevish familiarity, common enough to doctors and priests, but
which was not habitual with him. This man, after all, this member of
the Convention, this representative of the people, had been one of the
powerful ones of the earth; for the first time in his life, probably,
the Bishop felt in a mood to be severe.

Meanwhile, the member of the Convention had been surveying him with a
modest cordiality, in which one could have distinguished, possibly,
that humility which is so fitting when one is on the verge of returning
to dust.

The Bishop, on his side, although he generally restrained his
curiosity, which, in his opinion, bordered on a fault, could not
refrain from examining the member of the Convention with an attention
which, as it did not have its course in sympathy, would have served his
conscience as a matter of reproach, in connection with any other man. A
member of the Convention produced on him somewhat the effect of being
outside the pale of the law, even of the law of charity. G——, calm, his
body almost upright, his voice vibrating, was one of those
octogenarians who form the subject of astonishment to the physiologist.
The Revolution had many of these men, proportioned to the epoch. In
this old man one was conscious of a man put to the proof. Though so
near to his end, he preserved all the gestures of health. In his clear
glance, in his firm tone, in the robust movement of his shoulders,
there was something calculated to disconcert death. Azrael, the
Mohammedan angel of the sepulchre, would have turned back, and thought
that he had mistaken the door. G—— seemed to be dying because he willed
it so. There was freedom in his agony. His legs alone were motionless.
It was there that the shadows held him fast. His feet were cold and
dead, but his head survived with all the power of life, and seemed full
of light. G——, at this solemn moment, resembled the king in that tale
of the Orient who was flesh above and marble below.

There was a stone there. The Bishop sat down. The exordium was abrupt.

“I congratulate you,” said he, in the tone which one uses for a
reprimand. “You did not vote for the death of the king, after all.”


The old member of the Convention did not appear to notice the bitter
meaning underlying the words “after all.” He replied. The smile had
quite disappeared from his face.

“Do not congratulate me too much, sir. I did vote for the death of the
tyrant.”


It was the tone of austerity answering the tone of severity.

“What do you mean to say?” resumed the Bishop.

“I mean to say that man has a tyrant,—ignorance. I voted for the death
of that tyrant. That tyrant engendered royalty, which is authority
falsely understood, while science is authority rightly understood. Man
should be governed only by science.”


“And conscience,” added the Bishop.

“It is the same thing. Conscience is the quantity of innate science
which we have within us.”


Monseigneur Bienvenu listened in some astonishment to this language,
which was very new to him.

The member of the Convention resumed:—

“So far as Louis XVI. was concerned, I said ‘no.’ I did not think that
I had the right to kill a man; but I felt it my duty to exterminate
evil. I voted the end of the tyrant, that is to say, the end of
prostitution for woman, the end of slavery for man, the end of night
for the child. In voting for the Republic, I voted for that. I voted
for fraternity, concord, the dawn. I have aided in the overthrow of
prejudices and errors. The crumbling away of prejudices and errors
causes light. We have caused the fall of the old world, and the old
world, that vase of miseries, has become, through its upsetting upon
the human race, an urn of joy.”


“Mixed joy,” said the Bishop.

“You may say troubled joy, and to-day, after that fatal return of the
past, which is called 1814, joy which has disappeared! Alas! The work
was incomplete, I admit: we demolished the ancient regime in deeds; we
were not able to suppress it entirely in ideas. To destroy abuses is
not sufficient; customs must be modified. The mill is there no longer;
the wind is still there.”


“You have demolished. It may be of use to demolish, but I distrust a
demolition complicated with wrath.”


“Right has its wrath, Bishop; and the wrath of right is an element of
progress. In any case, and in spite of whatever may be said, the French
Revolution is the most important step of the human race since the
advent of Christ. Incomplete, it may be, but sublime. It set free all
the unknown social quantities; it softened spirits, it calmed,
appeased, enlightened; it caused the waves of civilization to flow over
the earth. It was a good thing. The French Revolution is the
consecration of humanity.”


The Bishop could not refrain from murmuring:—

“Yes? ’93!”


The member of the Convention straightened himself up in his chair with
an almost lugubrious solemnity, and exclaimed, so far as a dying man is
capable of exclamation:—

“Ah, there you go; ’93! I was expecting that word. A cloud had been
forming for the space of fifteen hundred years; at the end of fifteen
hundred years it burst. You are putting the thunderbolt on its trial.”


The Bishop felt, without, perhaps, confessing it, that something within
him had suffered extinction. Nevertheless, he put a good face on the
matter. He replied:—

“The judge speaks in the name of justice; the priest speaks in the name
of pity, which is nothing but a more lofty justice. A thunderbolt
should commit no error.” And he added, regarding the member of the
Convention steadily the while, “Louis XVII.?”


The conventionary stretched forth his hand and grasped the Bishop’s
arm.

“Louis XVII.! let us see. For whom do you mourn? is it for the innocent
child? very good; in that case I mourn with you. Is it for the royal
child? I demand time for reflection. To me, the brother of Cartouche,
an innocent child who was hung up by the armpits in the Place de Grève,
until death ensued, for the sole crime of having been the brother of
Cartouche, is no less painful than the grandson of Louis XV., an
innocent child, martyred in the tower of the Temple, for the sole crime
of having been grandson of Louis XV.”


“Monsieur,” said the Bishop, “I like not this conjunction of names.”


“Cartouche? Louis XV.? To which of the two do you object?”


A momentary silence ensued. The Bishop almost regretted having come,
and yet he felt vaguely and strangely shaken.

The conventionary resumed:—

“Ah, Monsieur Priest, you love not the crudities of the true. Christ
loved them. He seized a rod and cleared out the Temple. His scourge,
full of lightnings, was a harsh speaker of truths. When he cried,
_‘Sinite parvulos,’_ he made no distinction between the little
children. It would not have embarrassed him to bring together the
Dauphin of Barabbas and the Dauphin of Herod. Innocence, Monsieur, is
its own crown. Innocence has no need to be a highness. It is as august
in rags as in fleurs de lys.”


“That is true,” said the Bishop in a low voice.

“I persist,” continued the conventionary G—— “You have mentioned Louis
XVII. to me. Let us come to an understanding. Shall we weep for all the
innocent, all martyrs, all children, the lowly as well as the exalted?
I agree to that. But in that case, as I have told you, we must go back
further than ’93, and our tears must begin before Louis XVII. I will
weep with you over the children of kings, provided that you will weep
with me over the children of the people.”


“I weep for all,” said the Bishop.

“Equally!” exclaimed conventionary G——; “and if the balance must
incline, let it be on the side of the people. They have been suffering
longer.”


Another silence ensued. The conventionary was the first to break it. He
raised himself on one elbow, took a bit of his cheek between his thumb
and his forefinger, as one does mechanically when one interrogates and
judges, and appealed to the Bishop with a gaze full of all the forces
of the death agony. It was almost an explosion.

“Yes, sir, the people have been suffering a long while. And hold! that
is not all, either; why have you just questioned me and talked to me
about Louis XVII.? I know you not. Ever since I have been in these
parts I have dwelt in this enclosure alone, never setting foot outside,
and seeing no one but that child who helps me. Your name has reached me
in a confused manner, it is true, and very badly pronounced, I must
admit; but that signifies nothing: clever men have so many ways of
imposing on that honest goodman, the people. By the way, I did not hear
the sound of your carriage; you have left it yonder, behind the coppice
at the fork of the roads, no doubt. I do not know you, I tell you. You
have told me that you are the Bishop; but that affords me no
information as to your moral personality. In short, I repeat my
question. Who are you? You are a bishop; that is to say, a prince of
the church, one of those gilded men with heraldic bearings and
revenues, who have vast prebends,—the bishopric of D—— fifteen thousand
francs settled income, ten thousand in perquisites; total, twenty-five
thousand francs,—who have kitchens, who have liveries, who make good
cheer, who eat moor-hens on Friday, who strut about, a lackey before, a
lackey behind, in a gala coach, and who have palaces, and who roll in
their carriages in the name of Jesus Christ who went barefoot! You are
a prelate,—revenues, palace, horses, servants, good table, all the
sensualities of life; you have this like the rest, and like the rest,
you enjoy it; it is well; but this says either too much or too little;
this does not enlighten me upon the intrinsic and essential value of
the man who comes with the probable intention of bringing wisdom to me.
To whom do I speak? Who are you?”


The Bishop hung his head and replied, _“Vermis sum_—I am a worm.”


“A worm of the earth in a carriage?” growled the conventionary.

It was the conventionary’s turn to be arrogant, and the Bishop’s to be
humble.

The Bishop resumed mildly:—

“So be it, sir. But explain to me how my carriage, which is a few paces
off behind the trees yonder, how my good table and the moor-hens which
I eat on Friday, how my twenty-five thousand francs income, how my
palace and my lackeys prove that clemency is not a duty, and that ’93
was not inexorable.”


The conventionary passed his hand across his brow, as though to sweep
away a cloud.

“Before replying to you,” he said, “I beseech you to pardon me. I have
just committed a wrong, sir. You are at my house, you are my guest, I
owe you courtesy. You discuss my ideas, and it becomes me to confine
myself to combating your arguments. Your riches and your pleasures are
advantages which I hold over you in the debate; but good taste dictates
that I shall not make use of them. I promise you to make no use of them
in the future.”


“I thank you,” said the Bishop.

G—— resumed.

“Let us return to the explanation which you have asked of me. Where
were we? What were you saying to me? That ’93 was inexorable?”


“Inexorable; yes,” said the Bishop. “What think you of Marat clapping
his hands at the guillotine?”


“What think you of Bossuet chanting the _Te Deum_ over the
dragonnades?”


The retort was a harsh one, but it attained its mark with the
directness of a point of steel. The Bishop quivered under it; no reply
occurred to him; but he was offended by this mode of alluding to
Bossuet. The best of minds will have their fetiches, and they sometimes
feel vaguely wounded by the want of respect of logic.

The conventionary began to pant; the asthma of the agony which is
mingled with the last breaths interrupted his voice; still, there was a
perfect lucidity of soul in his eyes. He went on:—

“Let me say a few words more in this and that direction; I am willing.
Apart from the Revolution, which, taken as a whole, is an immense human
affirmation, ’93 is, alas! a rejoinder. You think it inexorable, sir;
but what of the whole monarchy, sir? Carrier is a bandit; but what name
do you give to Montrevel? Fouquier-Tainville is a rascal; but what is
your opinion as to Lamoignon-Bâville? Maillard is terrible; but
Saulx-Tavannes, if you please? Duchêne senior is ferocious; but what
epithet will you allow me for the elder Letellier? Jourdan-Coupe-Tetê
is a monster; but not so great a one as M. the Marquis de Louvois. Sir,
sir, I am sorry for Marie Antoinette, archduchess and queen; but I am
also sorry for that poor Huguenot woman, who, in 1685, under Louis the
Great, sir, while with a nursing infant, was bound, naked to the waist,
to a stake, and the child kept at a distance; her breast swelled with
milk and her heart with anguish; the little one, hungry and pale,
beheld that breast and cried and agonized; the executioner said to the
woman, a mother and a nurse, ‘Abjure!’ giving her her choice between
the death of her infant and the death of her conscience. What say you
to that torture of Tantalus as applied to a mother? Bear this well in
mind sir: the French Revolution had its reasons for existence; its
wrath will be absolved by the future; its result is the world made
better. From its most terrible blows there comes forth a caress for the
human race. I abridge, I stop, I have too much the advantage; moreover,
I am dying.”


And ceasing to gaze at the Bishop, the conventionary concluded his
thoughts in these tranquil words:—

“Yes, the brutalities of progress are called revolutions. When they are
over, this fact is recognized,—that the human race has been treated
harshly, but that it has progressed.”


The conventionary doubted not that he had successively conquered all
the inmost intrenchments of the Bishop. One remained, however, and from
this intrenchment, the last resource of Monseigneur Bienvenu’s
resistance, came forth this reply, wherein appeared nearly all the
harshness of the beginning:—

“Progress should believe in God. Good cannot have an impious servitor.
He who is an atheist is but a bad leader for the human race.”


The former representative of the people made no reply. He was seized
with a fit of trembling. He looked towards heaven, and in his glance a
tear gathered slowly. When the eyelid was full, the tear trickled down
his livid cheek, and he said, almost in a stammer, quite low, and to
himself, while his eyes were plunged in the depths:—

“O thou! O ideal! Thou alone existest!”


The Bishop experienced an indescribable shock.

After a pause, the old man raised a finger heavenward and said:—

“The infinite is. He is there. If the infinite had no person, person
would be without limit; it would not be infinite; in other words, it
would not exist. There is, then, an _I_. That _I_ of the infinite is
God.”


The dying man had pronounced these last words in a loud voice, and with
the shiver of ecstasy, as though he beheld some one. When he had
spoken, his eyes closed. The effort had exhausted him. It was evident
that he had just lived through in a moment the few hours which had been
left to him. That which he had said brought him nearer to him who is in
death. The supreme moment was approaching.

The Bishop understood this; time pressed; it was as a priest that he
had come: from extreme coldness he had passed by degrees to extreme
emotion; he gazed at those closed eyes, he took that wrinkled, aged and
ice-cold hand in his, and bent over the dying man.

“This hour is the hour of God. Do you not think that it would be
regrettable if we had met in vain?”


The conventionary opened his eyes again. A gravity mingled with gloom
was imprinted on his countenance.

“Bishop,” said he, with a slowness which probably arose more from his
dignity of soul than from the failing of his strength, “I have passed
my life in meditation, study, and contemplation. I was sixty years of
age when my country called me and commanded me to concern myself with
its affairs. I obeyed. Abuses existed, I combated them; tyrannies
existed, I destroyed them; rights and principles existed, I proclaimed
and confessed them. Our territory was invaded, I defended it; France
was menaced, I offered my breast. I was not rich; I am poor. I have
been one of the masters of the state; the vaults of the treasury were
encumbered with specie to such a degree that we were forced to shore up
the walls, which were on the point of bursting beneath the weight of
gold and silver; I dined in Dead Tree Street, at twenty-two sous. I
have succored the oppressed, I have comforted the suffering. I tore the
cloth from the altar, it is true; but it was to bind up the wounds of
my country. I have always upheld the march forward of the human race,
forward towards the light, and I have sometimes resisted progress
without pity. I have, when the occasion offered, protected my own
adversaries, men of your profession. And there is at Peteghem, in
Flanders, at the very spot where the Merovingian kings had their summer
palace, a convent of Urbanists, the Abbey of Sainte Claire en Beaulieu,
which I saved in 1793. I have done my duty according to my powers, and
all the good that I was able. After which, I was hunted down, pursued,
persecuted, blackened, jeered at, scorned, cursed, proscribed. For many
years past, I with my white hair have been conscious that many people
think they have the right to despise me; to the poor ignorant masses I
present the visage of one damned. And I accept this isolation of
hatred, without hating any one myself. Now I am eighty-six years old; I
am on the point of death. What is it that you have come to ask of me?”


_“Your blessing,”_ said the Bishop.

And he knelt down.

When the Bishop raised his head again, the face of the conventionary
had become august. He had just expired.

The Bishop returned home, deeply absorbed in thoughts which cannot be
known to us. He passed the whole night in prayer. On the following
morning some bold and curious persons attempted to speak to him about
member of the Convention G——; he contented himself with pointing
heavenward.

From that moment he redoubled his tenderness and brotherly feeling
towards all children and sufferers.

Any allusion to “that old wretch of a G——” caused him to fall into a
singular preoccupation. No one could say that the passage of that soul
before his, and the reflection of that grand conscience upon his, did
not count for something in his approach to perfection.

This “pastoral visit” naturally furnished an occasion for a murmur of
comment in all the little local coteries.

“Was the bedside of such a dying man as that the proper place for a
bishop? There was evidently no conversion to be expected. All those
revolutionists are backsliders. Then why go there? What was there to be
seen there? He must have been very curious indeed to see a soul carried
off by the devil.”


One day a dowager of the impertinent variety who thinks herself
spiritual, addressed this sally to him, “Monseigneur, people are
inquiring when Your Greatness will receive the red cap!”—“Oh! oh!
that’s a coarse color,” replied the Bishop. “It is lucky that those who
despise it in a cap revere it in a hat.”





CHAPTER XI—A RESTRICTION


We should incur a great risk of deceiving ourselves, were we to
conclude from this that Monseigneur Welcome was “a philosophical
bishop,” or a “patriotic curé.” His meeting, which may almost be
designated as his union, with conventionary G——, left behind it in his
mind a sort of astonishment, which rendered him still more gentle. That
is all.

Although Monseigneur Bienvenu was far from being a politician, this is,
perhaps, the place to indicate very briefly what his attitude was in
the events of that epoch, supposing that Monseigneur Bienvenu ever
dreamed of having an attitude.

Let us, then, go back a few years.

Some time after the elevation of M. Myriel to the episcopate, the
Emperor had made him a baron of the Empire, in company with many other
bishops. The arrest of the Pope took place, as every one knows, on the
night of the 5th to the 6th of July, 1809; on this occasion, M. Myriel
was summoned by Napoleon to the synod of the bishops of France and
Italy convened at Paris. This synod was held at Notre-Dame, and
assembled for the first time on the 15th of June, 1811, under the
presidency of Cardinal Fesch. M. Myriel was one of the ninety-five
bishops who attended it. But he was present only at one sitting and at
three or four private conferences. Bishop of a mountain diocese, living
so very close to nature, in rusticity and deprivation, it appeared that
he imported among these eminent personages, ideas which altered the
temperature of the assembly. He very soon returned to D—— He was
interrogated as to this speedy return, and he replied: _“I embarrassed
them. The outside air penetrated to them through me. I produced on them
the effect of an open door.”_

On another occasion he said, _“What would you have? Those gentlemen are
princes. I am only a poor peasant bishop.”_

The fact is that he displeased them. Among other strange things, it is
said that he chanced to remark one evening, when he found himself at
the house of one of his most notable colleagues: “What beautiful
clocks! What beautiful carpets! What beautiful liveries! They must be a
great trouble. I would not have all those superfluities, crying
incessantly in my ears: ‘There are people who are hungry! There are
people who are cold! There are poor people! There are poor people!’”


Let us remark, by the way, that the hatred of luxury is not an
intelligent hatred. This hatred would involve the hatred of the arts.
Nevertheless, in churchmen, luxury is wrong, except in connection with
representations and ceremonies. It seems to reveal habits which have
very little that is charitable about them. An opulent priest is a
contradiction. The priest must keep close to the poor. Now, can one
come in contact incessantly night and day with all this distress, all
these misfortunes, and this poverty, without having about one’s own
person a little of that misery, like the dust of labor? Is it possible
to imagine a man near a brazier who is not warm? Can one imagine a
workman who is working near a furnace, and who has neither a singed
hair, nor blackened nails, nor a drop of sweat, nor a speck of ashes on
his face? The first proof of charity in the priest, in the bishop
especially, is poverty.

This is, no doubt, what the Bishop of D—— thought.

It must not be supposed, however, that he shared what we call the
“ideas of the century” on certain delicate points. He took very little
part in the theological quarrels of the moment, and maintained silence
on questions in which Church and State were implicated; but if he had
been strongly pressed, it seems that he would have been found to be an
ultramontane rather than a gallican. Since we are making a portrait,
and since we do not wish to conceal anything, we are forced to add that
he was glacial towards Napoleon in his decline. Beginning with 1813, he
gave in his adherence to or applauded all hostile manifestations. He
refused to see him, as he passed through on his return from the island
of Elba, and he abstained from ordering public prayers for the Emperor
in his diocese during the Hundred Days.

Besides his sister, Mademoiselle Baptistine, he had two brothers, one a
general, the other a prefect. He wrote to both with tolerable
frequency. He was harsh for a time towards the former, because, holding
a command in Provence at the epoch of the disembarkation at Cannes, the
general had put himself at the head of twelve hundred men and had
pursued the Emperor as though the latter had been a person whom one is
desirous of allowing to escape. His correspondence with the other
brother, the ex-prefect, a fine, worthy man who lived in retirement at
Paris, Rue Cassette, remained more affectionate.

Thus Monseigneur Bienvenu also had his hour of party spirit, his hour
of bitterness, his cloud. The shadow of the passions of the moment
traversed this grand and gentle spirit occupied with eternal things.
Certainly, such a man would have done well not to entertain any
political opinions. Let there be no mistake as to our meaning: we are
not confounding what is called “political opinions” with the grand
aspiration for progress, with the sublime faith, patriotic, democratic,
humane, which in our day should be the very foundation of every
generous intellect. Without going deeply into questions which are only
indirectly connected with the subject of this book, we will simply say
this: It would have been well if Monseigneur Bienvenu had not been a
Royalist, and if his glance had never been, for a single instant,
turned away from that serene contemplation in which is distinctly
discernible, above the fictions and the hatreds of this world, above
the stormy vicissitudes of human things, the beaming of those three
pure radiances, truth, justice, and charity.

While admitting that it was not for a political office that God created
Monseigneur Welcome, we should have understood and admired his protest
in the name of right and liberty, his proud opposition, his just but
perilous resistance to the all-powerful Napoleon. But that which
pleases us in people who are rising pleases us less in the case of
people who are falling. We only love the fray so long as there is
danger, and in any case, the combatants of the first hour have alone
the right to be the exterminators of the last. He who has not been a
stubborn accuser in prosperity should hold his peace in the face of
ruin. The denunciator of success is the only legitimate executioner of
the fall. As for us, when Providence intervenes and strikes, we let it
work. 1812 commenced to disarm us. In 1813 the cowardly breach of
silence of that taciturn legislative body, emboldened by catastrophe,
possessed only traits which aroused indignation. And it was a crime to
applaud, in 1814, in the presence of those marshals who betrayed; in
the presence of that senate which passed from one dunghill to another,
insulting after having deified; in the presence of that idolatry which
was loosing its footing and spitting on its idol,—it was a duty to turn
aside the head. In 1815, when the supreme disasters filled the air,
when France was seized with a shiver at their sinister approach, when
Waterloo could be dimly discerned opening before Napoleon, the mournful
acclamation of the army and the people to the condemned of destiny had
nothing laughable in it, and, after making all allowance for the
despot, a heart like that of the Bishop of D——, ought not perhaps to
have failed to recognize the august and touching features presented by
the embrace of a great nation and a great man on the brink of the
abyss.

With this exception, he was in all things just, true, equitable,
intelligent, humble and dignified, beneficent and kindly, which is only
another sort of benevolence. He was a priest, a sage, and a man. It
must be admitted, that even in the political views with which we have
just reproached him, and which we are disposed to judge almost with
severity, he was tolerant and easy, more so, perhaps, than we who are
speaking here. The porter of the town-hall had been placed there by the
Emperor. He was an old non-commissioned officer of the old guard, a
member of the Legion of Honor at Austerlitz, as much of a Bonapartist
as the eagle. This poor fellow occasionally let slip inconsiderate
remarks, which the law then stigmatized as _seditious speeches_. After
the imperial profile disappeared from the Legion of Honor, he never
dressed himself in his regimentals, as he said, so that he should not
be obliged to wear his cross. He had himself devoutly removed the
imperial effigy from the cross which Napoleon had given him; this made
a hole, and he would not put anything in its place. _“I will die,”_ he
said, _“rather than wear the three frogs upon my heart!”_ He liked to
scoff aloud at Louis XVIII. “The gouty old creature in English
gaiters!” he said; _“let him take himself off to Prussia with that
queue of his.”_ He was happy to combine in the same imprecation the two
things which he most detested, Prussia and England. He did it so often
that he lost his place. There he was, turned out of the house, with his
wife and children, and without bread. The Bishop sent for him, reproved
him gently, and appointed him beadle in the cathedral.

In the course of nine years Monseigneur Bienvenu had, by dint of holy
deeds and gentle manners, filled the town of D——with a sort of tender
and filial reverence. Even his conduct towards Napoleon had been
accepted and tacitly pardoned, as it were, by the people, the good and
weakly flock who adored their emperor, but loved their bishop.




CHAPTER XII—THE SOLITUDE OF MONSEIGNEUR WELCOME


A bishop is almost always surrounded by a full squadron of little
abbés, just as a general is by a covey of young officers. This is what
that charming Saint François de Sales calls somewhere “les prêtres
blancs-becs,” callow priests. Every career has its aspirants, who form
a train for those who have attained eminence in it. There is no power
which has not its dependents. There is no fortune which has not its
court. The seekers of the future eddy around the splendid present.
Every metropolis has its staff of officials. Every bishop who possesses
the least influence has about him his patrol of cherubim from the
seminary, which goes the round, and maintains good order in the
episcopal palace, and mounts guard over monseigneur’s smile. To please
a bishop is equivalent to getting one’s foot in the stirrup for a
sub-diaconate. It is necessary to walk one’s path discreetly; the
apostleship does not disdain the canonship.

Just as there are bigwigs elsewhere, there are big mitres in the
Church. These are the bishops who stand well at Court, who are rich,
well endowed, skilful, accepted by the world, who know how to pray, no
doubt, but who know also how to beg, who feel little scruple at making
a whole diocese dance attendance in their person, who are connecting
links between the sacristy and diplomacy, who are abbés rather than
priests, prelates rather than bishops. Happy those who approach them!
Being persons of influence, they create a shower about them, upon the
assiduous and the favored, and upon all the young men who understand
the art of pleasing, of large parishes, prebends, archidiaconates,
chaplaincies, and cathedral posts, while awaiting episcopal honors. As
they advance themselves, they cause their satellites to progress also;
it is a whole solar system on the march. Their radiance casts a gleam
of purple over their suite. Their prosperity is crumbled up behind the
scenes, into nice little promotions. The larger the diocese of the
patron, the fatter the curacy for the favorite. And then, there is
Rome. A bishop who understands how to become an archbishop, an
archbishop who knows how to become a cardinal, carries you with him as
conclavist; you enter a court of papal jurisdiction, you receive the
pallium, and behold! you are an auditor, then a papal chamberlain, then
monsignor, and from a Grace to an Eminence is only a step, and between
the Eminence and the Holiness there is but the smoke of a ballot. Every
skull-cap may dream of the tiara. The priest is nowadays the only man
who can become a king in a regular manner; and what a king! the supreme
king. Then what a nursery of aspirations is a seminary! How many
blushing choristers, how many youthful abbés bear on their heads
Perrette’s pot of milk! Who knows how easy it is for ambition to call
itself vocation? in good faith, perchance, and deceiving itself,
devotee that it is.

Monseigneur Bienvenu, poor, humble, retiring, was not accounted among
the big mitres. This was plain from the complete absence of young
priests about him. We have seen that he “did not take” in Paris. Not a
single future dreamed of engrafting itself on this solitary old man.
Not a single sprouting ambition committed the folly of putting forth
its foliage in his shadow. His canons and grand-vicars were good old
men, rather vulgar like himself, walled up like him in this diocese,
without exit to a cardinalship, and who resembled their bishop, with
this difference, that they were finished and he was completed. The
impossibility of growing great under Monseigneur Bienvenu was so well
understood, that no sooner had the young men whom he ordained left the
seminary than they got themselves recommended to the archbishops of Aix
or of Auch, and went off in a great hurry. For, in short, we repeat it,
men wish to be pushed. A saint who dwells in a paroxysm of abnegation
is a dangerous neighbor; he might communicate to you, by contagion, an
incurable poverty, an anchylosis of the joints, which are useful in
advancement, and in short, more renunciation than you desire; and this
infectious virtue is avoided. Hence the isolation of Monseigneur
Bienvenu. We live in the midst of a gloomy society. Success; that is
the lesson which falls drop by drop from the slope of corruption.

Be it said in passing, that success is a very hideous thing. Its false
resemblance to merit deceives men. For the masses, success has almost
the same profile as supremacy. Success, that Menæchmus of talent, has
one dupe,—history. Juvenal and Tacitus alone grumble at it. In our day,
a philosophy which is almost official has entered into its service,
wears the livery of success, and performs the service of its
antechamber. Succeed: theory. Prosperity argues capacity. Win in the
lottery, and behold! you are a clever man. He who triumphs is
venerated. Be born with a silver spoon in your mouth! everything lies
in that. Be lucky, and you will have all the rest; be happy, and people
will think you great. Outside of five or six immense exceptions, which
compose the splendor of a century, contemporary admiration is nothing
but short-sightedness. Gilding is gold. It does no harm to be the first
arrival by pure chance, so long as you do arrive. The common herd is an
old Narcissus who adores himself, and who applauds the vulgar herd.
That enormous ability by virtue of which one is Moses, Æschylus, Dante,
Michael Angelo, or Napoleon, the multitude awards on the spot, and by
acclamation, to whomsoever attains his object, in whatsoever it may
consist. Let a notary transfigure himself into a deputy: let a false
Corneille compose _Tiridate;_ let a eunuch come to possess a harem; let
a military Prudhomme accidentally win the decisive battle of an epoch;
let an apothecary invent cardboard shoe-soles for the army of the
Sambre-and-Meuse, and construct for himself, out of this cardboard,
sold as leather, four hundred thousand francs of income; let a
pork-packer espouse usury, and cause it to bring forth seven or eight
millions, of which he is the father and of which it is the mother; let
a preacher become a bishop by force of his nasal drawl; let the steward
of a fine family be so rich on retiring from service that he is made
minister of finances,—and men call that Genius, just as they call the
face of Mousqueton _Beauty_, and the mien of Claude _Majesty_. With the
constellations of space they confound the stars of the abyss which are
made in the soft mire of the puddle by the feet of ducks.




CHAPTER XIII—WHAT HE BELIEVED


We are not obliged to sound the Bishop of D—— on the score of
orthodoxy. In the presence of such a soul we feel ourselves in no mood
but respect. The conscience of the just man should be accepted on his
word. Moreover, certain natures being given, we admit the possible
development of all beauties of human virtue in a belief that differs
from our own.

What did he think of this dogma, or of that mystery? These secrets of
the inner tribunal of the conscience are known only to the tomb, where
souls enter naked. The point on which we are certain is, that the
difficulties of faith never resolved themselves into hypocrisy in his
case. No decay is possible to the diamond. He believed to the extent of
his powers. _“Credo in Patrem,”_ he often exclaimed. Moreover, he drew
from good works that amount of satisfaction which suffices to the
conscience, and which whispers to a man, “Thou art with God!”


The point which we consider it our duty to note is, that outside of and
beyond his faith, as it were, the Bishop possessed an excess of love.
It was in that quarter, _quia multum amavit_,—because he loved
much—that he was regarded as vulnerable by “serious men,” “grave
persons” and “reasonable people”; favorite locutions of our sad world
where egotism takes its word of command from pedantry. What was this
excess of love? It was a serene benevolence which overflowed men, as we
have already pointed out, and which, on occasion, extended even to
things. He lived without disdain. He was indulgent towards God’s
creation. Every man, even the best, has within him a thoughtless
harshness which he reserves for animals. The Bishop of D—— had none of
that harshness, which is peculiar to many priests, nevertheless. He did
not go as far as the Brahmin, but he seemed to have weighed this saying
of Ecclesiastes: “Who knoweth whither the soul of the animal goeth?”
Hideousness of aspect, deformity of instinct, troubled him not, and did
not arouse his indignation. He was touched, almost softened by them. It
seemed as though he went thoughtfully away to seek beyond the bounds of
life which is apparent, the cause, the explanation, or the excuse for
them. He seemed at times to be asking God to commute these penalties.
He examined without wrath, and with the eye of a linguist who is
deciphering a palimpsest, that portion of chaos which still exists in
nature. This reverie sometimes caused him to utter odd sayings. One
morning he was in his garden, and thought himself alone, but his sister
was walking behind him, unseen by him: suddenly he paused and gazed at
something on the ground; it was a large, black, hairy, frightful
spider. His sister heard him say:—

“Poor beast! It is not its fault!”


Why not mention these almost divinely childish sayings of kindness?
Puerile they may be; but these sublime puerilities were peculiar to
Saint Francis d’Assisi and of Marcus Aurelius. One day he sprained his
ankle in his effort to avoid stepping on an ant. Thus lived this just
man. Sometimes he fell asleep in his garden, and then there was nothing
more venerable possible.

Monseigneur Bienvenu had formerly been, if the stories anent his youth,
and even in regard to his manhood, were to be believed, a passionate,
and, possibly, a violent man. His universal suavity was less an
instinct of nature than the result of a grand conviction which had
filtered into his heart through the medium of life, and had trickled
there slowly, thought by thought; for, in a character, as in a rock,
there may exist apertures made by drops of water. These hollows are
uneffaceable; these formations are indestructible.

In 1815, as we think we have already said, he reached his seventy-fifth
birthday, but he did not appear to be more than sixty. He was not tall;
he was rather plump; and, in order to combat this tendency, he was fond
of taking long strolls on foot; his step was firm, and his form was but
slightly bent, a detail from which we do not pretend to draw any
conclusion. Gregory XVI., at the age of eighty, held himself erect and
smiling, which did not prevent him from being a bad bishop. Monseigneur
Welcome had what the people term a “fine head,” but so amiable was he
that they forgot that it was fine.

When he conversed with that infantile gayety which was one of his
charms, and of which we have already spoken, people felt at their ease
with him, and joy seemed to radiate from his whole person. His fresh
and ruddy complexion, his very white teeth, all of which he had
preserved, and which were displayed by his smile, gave him that open
and easy air which cause the remark to be made of a man, “He’s a good
fellow”; and of an old man, “He is a fine man.” That, it will be
recalled, was the effect which he produced upon Napoleon. On the first
encounter, and to one who saw him for the first time, he was nothing,
in fact, but a fine man. But if one remained near him for a few hours,
and beheld him in the least degree pensive, the fine man became
gradually transfigured, and took on some imposing quality, I know not
what; his broad and serious brow, rendered august by his white locks,
became august also by virtue of meditation; majesty radiated from his
goodness, though his goodness ceased not to be radiant; one experienced
something of the emotion which one would feel on beholding a smiling
angel slowly unfold his wings, without ceasing to smile. Respect, an
unutterable respect, penetrated you by degrees and mounted to your
heart, and one felt that one had before him one of those strong,
thoroughly tried, and indulgent souls where thought is so grand that it
can no longer be anything but gentle.

As we have seen, prayer, the celebration of the offices of religion,
alms-giving, the consolation of the afflicted, the cultivation of a bit
of land, fraternity, frugality, hospitality, renunciation, confidence,
study, work, filled every day of his life. _Filled_ is exactly the
word; certainly the Bishop’s day was quite full to the brim, of good
words and good deeds. Nevertheless, it was not complete if cold or
rainy weather prevented his passing an hour or two in his garden before
going to bed, and after the two women had retired. It seemed to be a
sort of rite with him, to prepare himself for slumber by meditation in
the presence of the grand spectacles of the nocturnal heavens.
Sometimes, if the two old women were not asleep, they heard him pacing
slowly along the walks at a very advanced hour of the night. He was
there alone, communing with himself, peaceful, adoring, comparing the
serenity of his heart with the serenity of the ether, moved amid the
darkness by the visible splendor of the constellations and the
invisible splendor of God, opening his heart to the thoughts which fall
from the Unknown. At such moments, while he offered his heart at the
hour when nocturnal flowers offer their perfume, illuminated like a
lamp amid the starry night, as he poured himself out in ecstasy in the
midst of the universal radiance of creation, he could not have told
himself, probably, what was passing in his spirit; he felt something
take its flight from him, and something descend into him. Mysterious
exchange of the abysses of the soul with the abysses of the universe!

He thought of the grandeur and presence of God; of the future eternity,
that strange mystery; of the eternity past, a mystery still more
strange; of all the infinities, which pierced their way into all his
senses, beneath his eyes; and, without seeking to comprehend the
incomprehensible, he gazed upon it. He did not study God; he was
dazzled by him. He considered those magnificent conjunctions of atoms,
which communicate aspects to matter, reveal forces by verifying them,
create individualities in unity, proportions in extent, the innumerable
in the infinite, and, through light, produce beauty. These conjunctions
are formed and dissolved incessantly; hence life and death.

He seated himself on a wooden bench, with his back against a decrepit
vine; he gazed at the stars, past the puny and stunted silhouettes of
his fruit-trees. This quarter of an acre, so poorly planted, so
encumbered with mean buildings and sheds, was dear to him, and
satisfied his wants.

What more was needed by this old man, who divided the leisure of his
life, where there was so little leisure, between gardening in the
daytime and contemplation at night? Was not this narrow enclosure, with
the heavens for a ceiling, sufficient to enable him to adore God in his
most divine works, in turn? Does not this comprehend all, in fact? and
what is there left to desire beyond it? A little garden in which to
walk, and immensity in which to dream. At one’s feet that which can be
cultivated and plucked; over head that which one can study and meditate
upon: some flowers on earth, and all the stars in the sky.




CHAPTER XIV—WHAT HE THOUGHT


One last word.

Since this sort of details might, particularly at the present moment,
and to use an expression now in fashion, give to the Bishop of D—— a
certain “pantheistical” physiognomy, and induce the belief, either to
his credit or discredit, that he entertained one of those personal
philosophies which are peculiar to our century, which sometimes spring
up in solitary spirits, and there take on a form and grow until they
usurp the place of religion, we insist upon it, that not one of those
persons who knew Monseigneur Welcome would have thought himself
authorized to think anything of the sort. That which enlightened this
man was his heart. His wisdom was made of the light which comes from
there.

No systems; many works. Abstruse speculations contain vertigo; no,
there is nothing to indicate that he risked his mind in apocalypses.
The apostle may be daring, but the bishop must be timid. He would
probably have felt a scruple at sounding too far in advance certain
problems which are, in a manner, reserved for terrible great minds.
There is a sacred horror beneath the porches of the enigma; those
gloomy openings stand yawning there, but something tells you, you, a
passer-by in life, that you must not enter. Woe to him who penetrates
thither!

Geniuses in the impenetrable depths of abstraction and pure
speculation, situated, so to speak, above all dogmas, propose their
ideas to God. Their prayer audaciously offers discussion. Their
adoration interrogates. This is direct religion, which is full of
anxiety and responsibility for him who attempts its steep cliffs.

Human meditation has no limits. At his own risk and peril, it analyzes
and digs deep into its own bedazzlement. One might almost say, that by
a sort of splendid reaction, it with it dazzles nature; the mysterious
world which surrounds us renders back what it has received; it is
probable that the contemplators are contemplated. However that may be,
there are on earth men who—are they men?—perceive distinctly at the
verge of the horizons of reverie the heights of the absolute, and who
have the terrible vision of the infinite mountain. Monseigneur Welcome
was one of these men; Monseigneur Welcome was not a genius. He would
have feared those sublimities whence some very great men even, like
Swedenborg and Pascal, have slipped into insanity. Certainly, these
powerful reveries have their moral utility, and by these arduous paths
one approaches to ideal perfection. As for him, he took the path which
shortens,—the Gospel’s.

He did not attempt to impart to his chasuble the folds of Elijah’s
mantle; he projected no ray of future upon the dark groundswell of
events; he did not see to condense in flame the light of things; he had
nothing of the prophet and nothing of the magician about him. This
humble soul loved, and that was all.

That he carried prayer to the pitch of a superhuman aspiration is
probable: but one can no more pray too much than one can love too much;
and if it is a heresy to pray beyond the texts, Saint Theresa and Saint
Jerome would be heretics.

He inclined towards all that groans and all that expiates. The universe
appeared to him like an immense malady; everywhere he felt fever,
everywhere he heard the sound of suffering, and, without seeking to
solve the enigma, he strove to dress the wound. The terrible spectacle
of created things developed tenderness in him; he was occupied only in
finding for himself, and in inspiring others with the best way to
compassionate and relieve. That which exists was for this good and rare
priest a permanent subject of sadness which sought consolation.

There are men who toil at extracting gold; he toiled at the extraction
of pity. Universal misery was his mine. The sadness which reigned
everywhere was but an excuse for unfailing kindness. _Love each other;_
he declared this to be complete, desired nothing further, and that was
the whole of his doctrine. One day, that man who believed himself to be
a “philosopher,” the senator who has already been alluded to, said to
the Bishop: “Just survey the spectacle of the world: all war against
all; the strongest has the most wit. Your _love each other_ is
nonsense.”—_“Well,”_ replied Monseigneur Welcome, without contesting
the point, _“if it is nonsense, the soul should shut itself up in it,
as the pearl in the oyster.”_ Thus he shut himself up, he lived there,
he was absolutely satisfied with it, leaving on one side the prodigious
questions which attract and terrify, the fathomless perspectives of
abstraction, the precipices of metaphysics—all those profundities which
converge, for the apostle in God, for the atheist in nothingness;
destiny, good and evil, the way of being against being, the conscience
of man, the thoughtful somnambulism of the animal, the transformation
in death, the recapitulation of existences which the tomb contains, the
incomprehensible grafting of successive loves on the persistent _I_,
the essence, the substance, the Nile, and the Ens, the soul, nature,
liberty, necessity; perpendicular problems, sinister obscurities, where
lean the gigantic archangels of the human mind; formidable abysses,
which Lucretius, Manou, Saint Paul, Dante, contemplate with eyes
flashing lightning, which seems by its steady gaze on the infinite to
cause stars to blaze forth there.

Monseigneur Bienvenu was simply a man who took note of the exterior of
mysterious questions without scrutinizing them, and without troubling
his own mind with them, and who cherished in his own soul a grave
respect for darkness.




BOOK SECOND—THE FALL




CHAPTER I—THE EVENING OF A DAY OF WALKING


Early in the month of October, 1815, about an hour before sunset, a man
who was travelling on foot entered the little town of D—— The few
inhabitants who were at their windows or on their thresholds at the
moment stared at this traveller with a sort of uneasiness. It was
difficult to encounter a wayfarer of more wretched appearance. He was a
man of medium stature, thickset and robust, in the prime of life. He
might have been forty-six or forty-eight years old. A cap with a
drooping leather visor partly concealed his face, burned and tanned by
sun and wind, and dripping with perspiration. His shirt of coarse
yellow linen, fastened at the neck by a small silver anchor, permitted
a view of his hairy breast: he had a cravat twisted into a string;
trousers of blue drilling, worn and threadbare, white on one knee and
torn on the other; an old gray, tattered blouse, patched on one of the
elbows with a bit of green cloth sewed on with twine; a tightly packed
soldier knapsack, well buckled and perfectly new, on his back; an
enormous, knotty stick in his hand; iron-shod shoes on his stockingless
feet; a shaved head and a long beard.

The sweat, the heat, the journey on foot, the dust, added I know not
what sordid quality to this dilapidated whole. His hair was closely
cut, yet bristling, for it had begun to grow a little, and did not seem
to have been cut for some time.

No one knew him. He was evidently only a chance passer-by. Whence came
he? From the south; from the seashore, perhaps, for he made his
entrance into D—— by the same street which, seven months previously,
had witnessed the passage of the Emperor Napoleon on his way from
Cannes to Paris. This man must have been walking all day. He seemed
very much fatigued. Some women of the ancient market town which is
situated below the city had seen him pause beneath the trees of the
boulevard Gassendi, and drink at the fountain which stands at the end
of the promenade. He must have been very thirsty: for the children who
followed him saw him stop again for a drink, two hundred paces further
on, at the fountain in the market-place.

On arriving at the corner of the Rue Poichevert, he turned to the left,
and directed his steps toward the town-hall. He entered, then came out
a quarter of an hour later. A gendarme was seated near the door, on the
stone bench which General Drouot had mounted on the 4th of March to
read to the frightened throng of the inhabitants of D—— the
proclamation of the Gulf Juan. The man pulled off his cap and humbly
saluted the gendarme.

The gendarme, without replying to his salute, stared attentively at
him, followed him for a while with his eyes, and then entered the
town-hall.

There then existed at D—— a fine inn at the sign of the _Cross of
Colbas_. This inn had for a landlord a certain Jacquin Labarre, a man
of consideration in the town on account of his relationship to another
Labarre, who kept the inn of the _Three Dauphins_ in Grenoble, and had
served in the Guides. At the time of the Emperor’s landing, many rumors
had circulated throughout the country with regard to this inn of the
_Three Dauphins_. It was said that General Bertrand, disguised as a
carter, had made frequent trips thither in the month of January, and
that he had distributed crosses of honor to the soldiers and handfuls
of gold to the citizens. The truth is, that when the Emperor entered
Grenoble he had refused to install himself at the hotel of the
prefecture; he had thanked the mayor, saying, _“I am going to the house
of a brave man of my acquaintance”;_ and he had betaken himself to the
_Three Dauphins_. This glory of the Labarre of the _Three Dauphins_ was
reflected upon the Labarre of the _Cross of Colbas_, at a distance of
five and twenty leagues. It was said of him in the town, _“That is the
cousin of the man of Grenoble.”_

The man bent his steps towards this inn, which was the best in the
country-side. He entered the kitchen, which opened on a level with the
street. All the stoves were lighted; a huge fire blazed gayly in the
fireplace. The host, who was also the chief cook, was going from one
stew-pan to another, very busily superintending an excellent dinner
designed for the wagoners, whose loud talking, conversation, and
laughter were audible from an adjoining apartment. Any one who has
travelled knows that there is no one who indulges in better cheer than
wagoners. A fat marmot, flanked by white partridges and heather-cocks,
was turning on a long spit before the fire; on the stove, two huge
carps from Lake Lauzet and a trout from Lake Alloz were cooking.

The host, hearing the door open and seeing a newcomer enter, said,
without raising his eyes from his stoves:—

“What do you wish, sir?”


“Food and lodging,” said the man.

“Nothing easier,” replied the host. At that moment he turned his head,
took in the traveller’s appearance with a single glance, and added, “By
paying for it.”


The man drew a large leather purse from the pocket of his blouse, and
answered, “I have money.”


“In that case, we are at your service,” said the host.

The man put his purse back in his pocket, removed his knapsack from his
back, put it on the ground near the door, retained his stick in his
hand, and seated himself on a low stool close to the fire. D—— is in
the mountains. The evenings are cold there in October.

But as the host went back and forth, he scrutinized the traveller.

“Will dinner be ready soon?” said the man.

“Immediately,” replied the landlord.

While the newcomer was warming himself before the fire, with his back
turned, the worthy host, Jacquin Labarre, drew a pencil from his
pocket, then tore off the corner of an old newspaper which was lying on
a small table near the window. On the white margin he wrote a line or
two, folded it without sealing, and then intrusted this scrap of paper
to a child who seemed to serve him in the capacity both of scullion and
lackey. The landlord whispered a word in the scullion’s ear, and the
child set off on a run in the direction of the town-hall.

The traveller saw nothing of all this.

Once more he inquired, “Will dinner be ready soon?”


“Immediately,” responded the host.

The child returned. He brought back the paper. The host unfolded it
eagerly, like a person who is expecting a reply. He seemed to read it
attentively, then tossed his head, and remained thoughtful for a
moment. Then he took a step in the direction of the traveller, who
appeared to be immersed in reflections which were not very serene.

“I cannot receive you, sir,” said he.

The man half rose.

“What! Are you afraid that I will not pay you? Do you want me to pay
you in advance? I have money, I tell you.”


“It is not that.”


“What then?”


“You have money—”


“Yes,” said the man.

“And I,” said the host, “have no room.”


The man resumed tranquilly, “Put me in the stable.”


“I cannot.”


“Why?”


“The horses take up all the space.”


“Very well!” retorted the man; “a corner of the loft then, a truss of
straw. We will see about that after dinner.”


“I cannot give you any dinner.”


This declaration, made in a measured but firm tone, struck the stranger
as grave. He rose.

“Ah! bah! But I am dying of hunger. I have been walking since sunrise.
I have travelled twelve leagues. I pay. I wish to eat.”


“I have nothing,” said the landlord.

The man burst out laughing, and turned towards the fireplace and the
stoves: “Nothing! and all that?”


“All that is engaged.”


“By whom?”


“By messieurs the wagoners.”


“How many are there of them?”


“Twelve.”


“There is enough food there for twenty.”


“They have engaged the whole of it and paid for it in advance.”


The man seated himself again, and said, without raising his voice, “I
am at an inn; I am hungry, and I shall remain.”


Then the host bent down to his ear, and said in a tone which made him
start, “Go away!”


At that moment the traveller was bending forward and thrusting some
brands into the fire with the iron-shod tip of his staff; he turned
quickly round, and as he opened his mouth to reply, the host gazed
steadily at him and added, still in a low voice: “Stop! there’s enough
of that sort of talk. Do you want me to tell you your name? Your name
is Jean Valjean. Now do you want me to tell you who you are? When I saw
you come in I suspected something; I sent to the town-hall, and this
was the reply that was sent to me. Can you read?”


So saying, he held out to the stranger, fully unfolded, the paper which
had just travelled from the inn to the town-hall, and from the
town-hall to the inn. The man cast a glance upon it. The landlord
resumed after a pause.

“I am in the habit of being polite to every one. Go away!”


The man dropped his head, picked up the knapsack which he had deposited
on the ground, and took his departure.

He chose the principal street. He walked straight on at a venture,
keeping close to the houses like a sad and humiliated man. He did not
turn round a single time. Had he done so, he would have seen the host
of the _Cross of Colbas_ standing on his threshold, surrounded by all
the guests of his inn, and all the passers-by in the street, talking
vivaciously, and pointing him out with his finger; and, from the
glances of terror and distrust cast by the group, he might have divined
that his arrival would speedily become an event for the whole town.

He saw nothing of all this. People who are crushed do not look behind
them. They know but too well the evil fate which follows them.

Thus he proceeded for some time, walking on without ceasing, traversing
at random streets of which he knew nothing, forgetful of his fatigue,
as is often the case when a man is sad. All at once he felt the pangs
of hunger sharply. Night was drawing near. He glanced about him, to see
whether he could not discover some shelter.

The fine hostelry was closed to him; he was seeking some very humble
public house, some hovel, however lowly.

Just then a light flashed up at the end of the streets; a pine branch
suspended from a cross-beam of iron was outlined against the white sky
of the twilight. He proceeded thither.

It proved to be, in fact, a public house. The public house which is in
the Rue de Chaffaut.

The wayfarer halted for a moment, and peeped through the window into
the interior of the low-studded room of the public house, illuminated
by a small lamp on a table and by a large fire on the hearth. Some men
were engaged in drinking there. The landlord was warming himself. An
iron pot, suspended from a crane, bubbled over the flame.

The entrance to this public house, which is also a sort of an inn, is
by two doors. One opens on the street, the other upon a small yard
filled with manure. The traveller dare not enter by the street door. He
slipped into the yard, halted again, then raised the latch timidly and
opened the door.

“Who goes there?” said the master.

“Some one who wants supper and bed.”


“Good. We furnish supper and bed here.”


He entered. All the men who were drinking turned round. The lamp
illuminated him on one side, the firelight on the other. They examined
him for some time while he was taking off his knapsack.

The host said to him, “There is the fire. The supper is cooking in the
pot. Come and warm yourself, comrade.”


He approached and seated himself near the hearth. He stretched out his
feet, which were exhausted with fatigue, to the fire; a fine odor was
emitted by the pot. All that could be distinguished of his face,
beneath his cap, which was well pulled down, assumed a vague appearance
of comfort, mingled with that other poignant aspect which habitual
suffering bestows.

It was, moreover, a firm, energetic, and melancholy profile. This
physiognomy was strangely composed; it began by seeming humble, and
ended by seeming severe. The eye shone beneath its lashes like a fire
beneath brushwood.

One of the men seated at the table, however, was a fishmonger who,
before entering the public house of the Rue de Chaffaut, had been to
stable his horse at Labarre’s. It chanced that he had that very morning
encountered this unprepossessing stranger on the road between Bras
d’Asse and—I have forgotten the name. I think it was Escoublon. Now,
when he met him, the man, who then seemed already extremely weary, had
requested him to take him on his crupper; to which the fishmonger had
made no reply except by redoubling his gait. This fishmonger had been a
member half an hour previously of the group which surrounded Jacquin
Labarre, and had himself related his disagreeable encounter of the
morning to the people at the _Cross of Colbas_. From where he sat he
made an imperceptible sign to the tavern-keeper. The tavern-keeper went
to him. They exchanged a few words in a low tone. The man had again
become absorbed in his reflections.

The tavern-keeper returned to the fireplace, laid his hand abruptly on
the shoulder of the man, and said to him:—

“You are going to get out of here.”


The stranger turned round and replied gently, “Ah! You know?—”


“Yes.”


“I was sent away from the other inn.”


“And you are to be turned out of this one.”


“Where would you have me go?”


“Elsewhere.”


The man took his stick and his knapsack and departed.

As he went out, some children who had followed him from the _Cross of
Colbas_, and who seemed to be lying in wait for him, threw stones at
him. He retraced his steps in anger, and threatened them with his
stick: the children dispersed like a flock of birds.

He passed before the prison. At the door hung an iron chain attached to
a bell. He rang.

The wicket opened.

“Turnkey,” said he, removing his cap politely, “will you have the
kindness to admit me, and give me a lodging for the night?”


A voice replied:—

“The prison is not an inn. Get yourself arrested, and you will be
admitted.”


The wicket closed again.

He entered a little street in which there were many gardens. Some of
them are enclosed only by hedges, which lends a cheerful aspect to the
street. In the midst of these gardens and hedges he caught sight of a
small house of a single story, the window of which was lighted up. He
peered through the pane as he had done at the public house. Within was
a large whitewashed room, with a bed draped in printed cotton stuff,
and a cradle in one corner, a few wooden chairs, and a double-barrelled
gun hanging on the wall. A table was spread in the centre of the room.
A copper lamp illuminated the tablecloth of coarse white linen, the
pewter jug shining like silver, and filled with wine, and the brown,
smoking soup-tureen. At this table sat a man of about forty, with a
merry and open countenance, who was dandling a little child on his
knees. Close by a very young woman was nursing another child. The
father was laughing, the child was laughing, the mother was smiling.

The stranger paused a moment in reverie before this tender and calming
spectacle. What was taking place within him? He alone could have told.
It is probable that he thought that this joyous house would be
hospitable, and that, in a place where he beheld so much happiness, he
would find perhaps a little pity.

He tapped on the pane with a very small and feeble knock.

They did not hear him.

He tapped again.

He heard the woman say, “It seems to me, husband, that some one is
knocking.”


“No,” replied the husband.

He tapped a third time.

The husband rose, took the lamp, and went to the door, which he opened.

He was a man of lofty stature, half peasant, half artisan. He wore a
huge leather apron, which reached to his left shoulder, and which a
hammer, a red handkerchief, a powder-horn, and all sorts of objects
which were upheld by the girdle, as in a pocket, caused to bulge out.
He carried his head thrown backwards; his shirt, widely opened and
turned back, displayed his bull neck, white and bare. He had thick
eyelashes, enormous black whiskers, prominent eyes, the lower part of
his face like a snout; and besides all this, that air of being on his
own ground, which is indescribable.

“Pardon me, sir,” said the wayfarer, “Could you, in consideration of
payment, give me a plate of soup and a corner of that shed yonder in
the garden, in which to sleep? Tell me; can you? For money?”


“Who are you?” demanded the master of the house.

The man replied: “I have just come from Puy-Moisson. I have walked all
day long. I have travelled twelve leagues. Can you?—if I pay?”


“I would not refuse,” said the peasant, “to lodge any respectable man
who would pay me. But why do you not go to the inn?”


“There is no room.”


“Bah! Impossible. This is neither a fair nor a market day. Have you
been to Labarre?”


“Yes.”


“Well?”


The traveller replied with embarrassment: “I do not know. He did not
receive me.”


“Have you been to What’s-his-name’s, in the Rue Chaffaut?”


The stranger’s embarrassment increased; he stammered, “He did not
receive me either.”


The peasant’s countenance assumed an expression of distrust; he
surveyed the newcomer from head to feet, and suddenly exclaimed, with a
sort of shudder:—

“Are you the man?—”


He cast a fresh glance upon the stranger, took three steps backwards,
placed the lamp on the table, and took his gun down from the wall.

Meanwhile, at the words, _Are you the man?_ the woman had risen, had
clasped her two children in her arms, and had taken refuge
precipitately behind her husband, staring in terror at the stranger,
with her bosom uncovered, and with frightened eyes, as she murmured in
a low tone, _“Tso-maraude.”_1

All this took place in less time than it requires to picture it to
one’s self. After having scrutinized the man for several moments, as
one scrutinizes a viper, the master of the house returned to the door
and said:—

“Clear out!”


“For pity’s sake, a glass of water,” said the man.

“A shot from my gun!” said the peasant.

Then he closed the door violently, and the man heard him shoot two
large bolts. A moment later, the window-shutter was closed, and the
sound of a bar of iron which was placed against it was audible outside.

Night continued to fall. A cold wind from the Alps was blowing. By the
light of the expiring day the stranger perceived, in one of the gardens
which bordered the street, a sort of hut, which seemed to him to be
built of sods. He climbed over the wooden fence resolutely, and found
himself in the garden. He approached the hut; its door consisted of a
very low and narrow aperture, and it resembled those buildings which
road-laborers construct for themselves along the roads. He thought
without doubt, that it was, in fact, the dwelling of a road-laborer; he
was suffering from cold and hunger, but this was, at least, a shelter
from the cold. This sort of dwelling is not usually occupied at night.
He threw himself flat on his face, and crawled into the hut. It was
warm there, and he found a tolerably good bed of straw. He lay, for a
moment, stretched out on this bed, without the power to make a
movement, so fatigued was he. Then, as the knapsack on his back was in
his way, and as it furnished, moreover, a pillow ready to his hand, he
set about unbuckling one of the straps. At that moment, a ferocious
growl became audible. He raised his eyes. The head of an enormous dog
was outlined in the darkness at the entrance of the hut.

It was a dog’s kennel.

He was himself vigorous and formidable; he armed himself with his
staff, made a shield of his knapsack, and made his way out of the
kennel in the best way he could, not without enlarging the rents in his
rags.

He left the garden in the same manner, but backwards, being obliged, in
order to keep the dog respectful, to have recourse to that manœuvre
with his stick which masters in that sort of fencing designate as _la
rose couverte_.

When he had, not without difficulty, repassed the fence, and found
himself once more in the street, alone, without refuge, without
shelter, without a roof over his head, chased even from that bed of
straw and from that miserable kennel, he dropped rather than seated
himself on a stone, and it appears that a passer-by heard him exclaim,
“I am not even a dog!”


He soon rose again and resumed his march. He went out of the town,
hoping to find some tree or haystack in the fields which would afford
him shelter.

He walked thus for some time, with his head still drooping. When he
felt himself far from every human habitation, he raised his eyes and
gazed searchingly about him. He was in a field. Before him was one of
those low hills covered with close-cut stubble, which, after the
harvest, resemble shaved heads.

The horizon was perfectly black. This was not alone the obscurity of
night; it was caused by very low-hanging clouds which seemed to rest
upon the hill itself, and which were mounting and filling the whole
sky. Meanwhile, as the moon was about to rise, and as there was still
floating in the zenith a remnant of the brightness of twilight, these
clouds formed at the summit of the sky a sort of whitish arch, whence a
gleam of light fell upon the earth.

The earth was thus better lighted than the sky, which produces a
particularly sinister effect, and the hill, whose contour was poor and
mean, was outlined vague and wan against the gloomy horizon. The whole
effect was hideous, petty, lugubrious, and narrow.

There was nothing in the field or on the hill except a deformed tree,
which writhed and shivered a few paces distant from the wayfarer.

This man was evidently very far from having those delicate habits of
intelligence and spirit which render one sensible to the mysterious
aspects of things; nevertheless, there was something in that sky, in
that hill, in that plain, in that tree, which was so profoundly
desolate, that after a moment of immobility and reverie he turned back
abruptly. There are instants when nature seems hostile.

He retraced his steps; the gates of D—— were closed. D——, which had
sustained sieges during the wars of religion, was still surrounded in
1815 by ancient walls flanked by square towers which have been
demolished since. He passed through a breach and entered the town
again.

It might have been eight o’clock in the evening. As he was not
acquainted with the streets, he recommenced his walk at random.

In this way he came to the prefecture, then to the seminary. As he
passed through the Cathedral Square, he shook his fist at the church.

At the corner of this square there is a printing establishment. It is
there that the proclamations of the Emperor and of the Imperial Guard
to the army, brought from the Island of Elba and dictated by Napoleon
himself, were printed for the first time.

Worn out with fatigue, and no longer entertaining any hope, he lay down
on a stone bench which stands at the doorway of this printing office.

At that moment an old woman came out of the church. She saw the man
stretched out in the shadow. “What are you doing there, my friend?”
said she.

He answered harshly and angrily: “As you see, my good woman, I am
sleeping.” The good woman, who was well worthy the name, in fact, was
the Marquise de R——

“On this bench?” she went on.

“I have had a mattress of wood for nineteen years,” said the man;
“to-day I have a mattress of stone.”


“You have been a soldier?”


“Yes, my good woman, a soldier.”


“Why do you not go to the inn?”


“Because I have no money.”


“Alas!” said Madame de R——, “I have only four sous in my purse.”


“Give it to me all the same.”


The man took the four sous. Madame de R—— continued: “You cannot obtain
lodgings in an inn for so small a sum. But have you tried? It is
impossible for you to pass the night thus. You are cold and hungry, no
doubt. Some one might have given you a lodging out of charity.”


“I have knocked at all doors.”


“Well?”


“I have been driven away everywhere.”


The “good woman” touched the man’s arm, and pointed out to him on the
other side of the street a small, low house, which stood beside the
Bishop’s palace.

“You have knocked at all doors?”


“Yes.”


“Have you knocked at that one?”


“No.”


“Knock there.”





CHAPTER II—PRUDENCE COUNSELLED TO WISDOM.


That evening, the Bishop of D——, after his promenade through the town,
remained shut up rather late in his room. He was busy over a great work
on _Duties_, which was never completed, unfortunately. He was carefully
compiling everything that the Fathers and the doctors have said on this
important subject. His book was divided into two parts: firstly, the
duties of all; secondly, the duties of each individual, according to
the class to which he belongs. The duties of all are the great duties.
There are four of these. Saint Matthew points them out: duties towards
God (_Matt._ vi.); duties towards one’s self (_Matt._ v. 29, 30);
duties towards one’s neighbor (_Matt._ vii. 12); duties towards animals
(_Matt._ vi. 20, 25). As for the other duties the Bishop found them
pointed out and prescribed elsewhere: to sovereigns and subjects, in
the Epistle to the Romans; to magistrates, to wives, to mothers, to
young men, by Saint Peter; to husbands, fathers, children and servants,
in the Epistle to the Ephesians; to the faithful, in the Epistle to the
Hebrews; to virgins, in the Epistle to the Corinthians. Out of these
precepts he was laboriously constructing a harmonious whole, which he
desired to present to souls.

At eight o’clock he was still at work, writing with a good deal of
inconvenience upon little squares of paper, with a big book open on his
knees, when Madame Magloire entered, according to her wont, to get the
silver-ware from the cupboard near his bed. A moment later, the Bishop,
knowing that the table was set, and that his sister was probably
waiting for him, shut his book, rose from his table, and entered the
dining-room.

The dining-room was an oblong apartment, with a fireplace, which had a
door opening on the street (as we have said), and a window opening on
the garden.

Madame Magloire was, in fact, just putting the last touches to the
table.

As she performed this service, she was conversing with Mademoiselle
Baptistine.

A lamp stood on the table; the table was near the fireplace. A wood
fire was burning there.

One can easily picture to one’s self these two women, both of whom were
over sixty years of age. Madame Magloire small, plump, vivacious;
Mademoiselle Baptistine gentle, slender, frail, somewhat taller than
her brother, dressed in a gown of puce-colored silk, of the fashion of
1806, which she had purchased at that date in Paris, and which had
lasted ever since. To borrow vulgar phrases, which possess the merit of
giving utterance in a single word to an idea which a whole page would
hardly suffice to express, Madame Magloire had the air of a _peasant_,
and Mademoiselle Baptistine that of a _lady_. Madame Magloire wore a
white quilted cap, a gold Jeannette cross on a velvet ribbon upon her
neck, the only bit of feminine jewelry that there was in the house, a
very white fichu puffing out from a gown of coarse black woollen stuff,
with large, short sleeves, an apron of cotton cloth in red and green
checks, knotted round the waist with a green ribbon, with a stomacher
of the same attached by two pins at the upper corners, coarse shoes on
her feet, and yellow stockings, like the women of Marseilles.
Mademoiselle Baptistine’s gown was cut on the patterns of 1806, with a
short waist, a narrow, sheath-like skirt, puffed sleeves, with flaps
and buttons. She concealed her gray hair under a frizzed wig known as
the _baby_ wig. Madame Magloire had an intelligent, vivacious, and
kindly air; the two corners of her mouth unequally raised, and her
upper lip, which was larger than the lower, imparted to her a rather
crabbed and imperious look. So long as Monseigneur held his peace, she
talked to him resolutely with a mixture of respect and freedom; but as
soon as Monseigneur began to speak, as we have seen, she obeyed
passively like her mistress. Mademoiselle Baptistine did not even
speak. She confined herself to obeying and pleasing him. She had never
been pretty, even when she was young; she had large, blue, prominent
eyes, and a long arched nose; but her whole visage, her whole person,
breathed forth an ineffable goodness, as we stated in the beginning.
She had always been predestined to gentleness; but faith, charity,
hope, those three virtues which mildly warm the soul, had gradually
elevated that gentleness to sanctity. Nature had made her a lamb,
religion had made her an angel. Poor sainted virgin! Sweet memory which
has vanished!

Mademoiselle Baptistine has so often narrated what passed at the
episcopal residence that evening, that there are many people now living
who still recall the most minute details.

At the moment when the Bishop entered, Madame Magloire was talking with
considerable vivacity. She was haranguing Mademoiselle Baptistine on a
subject which was familiar to her and to which the Bishop was also
accustomed. The question concerned the lock upon the entrance door.

It appears that while procuring some provisions for supper, Madame
Magloire had heard things in divers places. People had spoken of a
prowler of evil appearance; a suspicious vagabond had arrived who must
be somewhere about the town, and those who should take it into their
heads to return home late that night might be subjected to unpleasant
encounters. The police was very badly organized, moreover, because
there was no love lost between the Prefect and the Mayor, who sought to
injure each other by making things happen. It behooved wise people to
play the part of their own police, and to guard themselves well, and
care must be taken to duly close, bar and barricade their houses, and
to _fasten the doors well_.

Madame Magloire emphasized these last words; but the Bishop had just
come from his room, where it was rather cold. He seated himself in
front of the fire, and warmed himself, and then fell to thinking of
other things. He did not take up the remark dropped with design by
Madame Magloire. She repeated it. Then Mademoiselle Baptistine,
desirous of satisfying Madame Magloire without displeasing her brother,
ventured to say timidly:—

“Did you hear what Madame Magloire is saying, brother?”


“I have heard something of it in a vague way,” replied the Bishop. Then
half-turning in his chair, placing his hands on his knees, and raising
towards the old servant woman his cordial face, which so easily grew
joyous, and which was illuminated from below by the firelight,—“Come,
what is the matter? What is the matter? Are we in any great danger?”


Then Madame Magloire began the whole story afresh, exaggerating it a
little without being aware of the fact. It appeared that a Bohemian, a
bare-footed vagabond, a sort of dangerous mendicant, was at that moment
in the town. He had presented himself at Jacquin Labarre’s to obtain
lodgings, but the latter had not been willing to take him in. He had
been seen to arrive by the way of the boulevard Gassendi and roam about
the streets in the gloaming. A gallows-bird with a terrible face.

“Really!” said the Bishop.

This willingness to interrogate encouraged Madame Magloire; it seemed
to her to indicate that the Bishop was on the point of becoming
alarmed; she pursued triumphantly:—

“Yes, Monseigneur. That is how it is. There will be some sort of
catastrophe in this town to-night. Every one says so. And withal, the
police is so badly regulated” (a useful repetition). “The idea of
living in a mountainous country, and not even having lights in the
streets at night! One goes out. Black as ovens, indeed! And I say,
Monseigneur, and Mademoiselle there says with me—”


“I,” interrupted his sister, “say nothing. What my brother does is well
done.”


Madame Magloire continued as though there had been no protest:—

“We say that this house is not safe at all; that if Monseigneur will
permit, I will go and tell Paulin Musebois, the locksmith, to come and
replace the ancient locks on the doors; we have them, and it is only
the work of a moment; for I say that nothing is more terrible than a
door which can be opened from the outside with a latch by the first
passer-by; and I say that we need bolts, Monseigneur, if only for this
night; moreover, Monseigneur has the habit of always saying ‘come in’;
and besides, even in the middle of the night, O mon Dieu! there is no
need to ask permission.”


At that moment there came a tolerably violent knock on the door.

“Come in,” said the Bishop.




CHAPTER III—THE HEROISM OF PASSIVE OBEDIENCE.


The door opened.

It opened wide with a rapid movement, as though some one had given it
an energetic and resolute push.

A man entered.

We already know the man. It was the wayfarer whom we have seen
wandering about in search of shelter.

He entered, advanced a step, and halted, leaving the door open behind
him. He had his knapsack on his shoulders, his cudgel in his hand, a
rough, audacious, weary, and violent expression in his eyes. The fire
on the hearth lighted him up. He was hideous. It was a sinister
apparition.

Madame Magloire had not even the strength to utter a cry. She trembled,
and stood with her mouth wide open.

Mademoiselle Baptistine turned round, beheld the man entering, and half
started up in terror; then, turning her head by degrees towards the
fireplace again, she began to observe her brother, and her face became
once more profoundly calm and serene.

The Bishop fixed a tranquil eye on the man.

As he opened his mouth, doubtless to ask the newcomer what he desired,
the man rested both hands on his staff, directed his gaze at the old
man and the two women, and without waiting for the Bishop to speak, he
said, in a loud voice:—

“See here. My name is Jean Valjean. I am a convict from the galleys. I
have passed nineteen years in the galleys. I was liberated four days
ago, and am on my way to Pontarlier, which is my destination. I have
been walking for four days since I left Toulon. I have travelled a
dozen leagues to-day on foot. This evening, when I arrived in these
parts, I went to an inn, and they turned me out, because of my yellow
passport, which I had shown at the town-hall. I had to do it. I went to
an inn. They said to me, ‘Be off,’ at both places. No one would take
me. I went to the prison; the jailer would not admit me. I went into a
dog’s kennel; the dog bit me and chased me off, as though he had been a
man. One would have said that he knew who I was. I went into the
fields, intending to sleep in the open air, beneath the stars. There
were no stars. I thought it was going to rain, and I re-entered the
town, to seek the recess of a doorway. Yonder, in the square, I meant
to sleep on a stone bench. A good woman pointed out your house to me,
and said to me, ‘Knock there!’ I have knocked. What is this place? Do
you keep an inn? I have money—savings. One hundred and nine francs
fifteen sous, which I earned in the galleys by my labor, in the course
of nineteen years. I will pay. What is that to me? I have money. I am
very weary; twelve leagues on foot; I am very hungry. Are you willing
that I should remain?”


“Madame Magloire,” said the Bishop, “you will set another place.”


The man advanced three paces, and approached the lamp which was on the
table. “Stop,” he resumed, as though he had not quite understood;
“that’s not it. Did you hear? I am a galley-slave; a convict. I come
from the galleys.” He drew from his pocket a large sheet of yellow
paper, which he unfolded. “Here’s my passport. Yellow, as you see. This
serves to expel me from every place where I go. Will you read it? I
know how to read. I learned in the galleys. There is a school there for
those who choose to learn. Hold, this is what they put on this
passport: ‘Jean Valjean, discharged convict, native of’—that is nothing
to you—‘has been nineteen years in the galleys: five years for
house-breaking and burglary; fourteen years for having attempted to
escape on four occasions. He is a very dangerous man.’ There! Every one
has cast me out. Are you willing to receive me? Is this an inn? Will
you give me something to eat and a bed? Have you a stable?”


“Madame Magloire,” said the Bishop, “you will put white sheets on the
bed in the alcove.” We have already explained the character of the two
women’s obedience.

Madame Magloire retired to execute these orders.

The Bishop turned to the man.

“Sit down, sir, and warm yourself. We are going to sup in a few
moments, and your bed will be prepared while you are supping.”


At this point the man suddenly comprehended. The expression of his
face, up to that time sombre and harsh, bore the imprint of
stupefaction, of doubt, of joy, and became extraordinary. He began
stammering like a crazy man:—

“Really? What! You will keep me? You do not drive me forth? A convict!
You call me _sir!_ You do not address me as _thou?_ ‘Get out of here,
you dog!’ is what people always say to me. I felt sure that you would
expel me, so I told you at once who I am. Oh, what a good woman that
was who directed me hither! I am going to sup! A bed with a mattress
and sheets, like the rest of the world! a bed! It is nineteen years
since I have slept in a bed! You actually do not want me to go! You are
good people. Besides, I have money. I will pay well. Pardon me,
monsieur the inn-keeper, but what is your name? I will pay anything you
ask. You are a fine man. You are an inn-keeper, are you not?”


“I am,” replied the Bishop, “a priest who lives here.”


“A priest!” said the man. “Oh, what a fine priest! Then you are not
going to demand any money of me? You are the curé, are you not? the
curé of this big church? Well! I am a fool, truly! I had not perceived
your skull-cap.”


As he spoke, he deposited his knapsack and his cudgel in a corner,
replaced his passport in his pocket, and seated himself. Mademoiselle
Baptistine gazed mildly at him. He continued:

“You are humane, Monsieur le Curé; you have not scorned me. A good
priest is a very good thing. Then you do not require me to pay?”


“No,” said the Bishop; “keep your money. How much have you? Did you not
tell me one hundred and nine francs?”


“And fifteen sous,” added the man.

“One hundred and nine francs fifteen sous. And how long did it take you
to earn that?”


“Nineteen years.”


“Nineteen years!”


The Bishop sighed deeply.

The man continued: “I have still the whole of my money. In four days I
have spent only twenty-five sous, which I earned by helping unload some
wagons at Grasse. Since you are an abbé, I will tell you that we had a
chaplain in the galleys. And one day I saw a bishop there. Monseigneur
is what they call him. He was the Bishop of Majore at Marseilles. He is
the curé who rules over the other curés, you understand. Pardon me, I
say that very badly; but it is such a far-off thing to me! You
understand what we are! He said mass in the middle of the galleys, on
an altar. He had a pointed thing, made of gold, on his head; it
glittered in the bright light of midday. We were all ranged in lines on
the three sides, with cannons with lighted matches facing us. We could
not see very well. He spoke; but he was too far off, and we did not
hear. That is what a bishop is like.”


While he was speaking, the Bishop had gone and shut the door, which had
remained wide open.

Madame Magloire returned. She brought a silver fork and spoon, which
she placed on the table.

“Madame Magloire,” said the Bishop, “place those things as near the
fire as possible.” And turning to his guest: “The night wind is harsh
on the Alps. You must be cold, sir.”


Each time that he uttered the word _sir_, in his voice which was so
gently grave and polished, the man’s face lighted up. _Monsieur_ to a
convict is like a glass of water to one of the shipwrecked of the
_Medusa_. Ignominy thirsts for consideration.

“This lamp gives a very bad light,” said the Bishop.

Madame Magloire understood him, and went to get the two silver
candlesticks from the chimney-piece in Monseigneur’s bed-chamber, and
placed them, lighted, on the table.

“Monsieur le Curé,” said the man, “you are good; you do not despise me.
You receive me into your house. You light your candles for me. Yet I
have not concealed from you whence I come and that I am an unfortunate
man.”


The Bishop, who was sitting close to him, gently touched his hand. “You
could not help telling me who you were. This is not my house; it is the
house of Jesus Christ. This door does not demand of him who enters
whether he has a name, but whether he has a grief. You suffer, you are
hungry and thirsty; you are welcome. And do not thank me; do not say
that I receive you in my house. No one is at home here, except the man
who needs a refuge. I say to you, who are passing by, that you are much
more at home here than I am myself. Everything here is yours. What need
have I to know your name? Besides, before you told me you had one which
I knew.”


The man opened his eyes in astonishment.

“Really? You knew what I was called?”


“Yes,” replied the Bishop, “you are called my brother.”


“Stop, Monsieur le Curé,” exclaimed the man. “I was very hungry when I
entered here; but you are so good, that I no longer know what has
happened to me.”


The Bishop looked at him, and said,—

“You have suffered much?”


“Oh, the red coat, the ball on the ankle, a plank to sleep on, heat,
cold, toil, the convicts, the thrashings, the double chain for nothing,
the cell for one word; even sick and in bed, still the chain! Dogs,
dogs are happier! Nineteen years! I am forty-six. Now there is the
yellow passport. That is what it is like.”


“Yes,” resumed the Bishop, “you have come from a very sad place.
Listen. There will be more joy in heaven over the tear-bathed face of a
repentant sinner than over the white robes of a hundred just men. If
you emerge from that sad place with thoughts of hatred and of wrath
against mankind, you are deserving of pity; if you emerge with thoughts
of good-will and of peace, you are more worthy than any one of us.”


In the meantime, Madame Magloire had served supper: soup, made with
water, oil, bread, and salt; a little bacon, a bit of mutton, figs, a
fresh cheese, and a large loaf of rye bread. She had, of her own
accord, added to the Bishop’s ordinary fare a bottle of his old Mauves
wine.

The Bishop’s face at once assumed that expression of gayety which is
peculiar to hospitable natures. “To table!” he cried vivaciously. As
was his custom when a stranger supped with him, he made the man sit on
his right. Mademoiselle Baptistine, perfectly peaceable and natural,
took her seat at his left.

The Bishop asked a blessing; then helped the soup himself, according to
his custom. The man began to eat with avidity.

All at once the Bishop said: “It strikes me there is something missing
on this table.”


Madame Magloire had, in fact, only placed the three sets of forks and
spoons which were absolutely necessary. Now, it was the usage of the
house, when the Bishop had any one to supper, to lay out the whole six
sets of silver on the table-cloth—an innocent ostentation. This
graceful semblance of luxury was a kind of child’s play, which was full
of charm in that gentle and severe household, which raised poverty into
dignity.

Madame Magloire understood the remark, went out without saying a word,
and a moment later the three sets of silver forks and spoons demanded
by the Bishop were glittering upon the cloth, symmetrically arranged
before the three persons seated at the table.




CHAPTER IV—DETAILS CONCERNING THE CHEESE-DAIRIES OF PONTARLIER.


Now, in order to convey an idea of what passed at that table, we cannot
do better than to transcribe here a passage from one of Mademoiselle
Baptistine’s letters to Madame Boischevron, wherein the conversation
between the convict and the Bishop is described with ingenious
minuteness.

“. . . This man paid no attention to any one. He ate with the voracity
of a starving man. However, after supper he said:

“‘Monsieur le Curé of the good God, all this is far too good for me;
but I must say that the carters who would not allow me to eat with them
keep a better table than you do.’

“Between ourselves, the remark rather shocked me. My brother replied:—

“‘They are more fatigued than I.’

“‘No,’ returned the man, ‘they have more money. You are poor; I see
that plainly. You cannot be even a curate. Are you really a curé? Ah,
if the good God were but just, you certainly ought to be a curé!’

“‘The good God is more than just,’ said my brother.

“A moment later he added:—

“‘Monsieur Jean Valjean, is it to Pontarlier that you are going?’

“‘With my road marked out for me.’

“I think that is what the man said. Then he went on:—

“‘I must be on my way by daybreak to-morrow. Travelling is hard. If the
nights are cold, the days are hot.’

“‘You are going to a good country,’ said my brother. ‘During the
Revolution my family was ruined. I took refuge in Franche-Comté at
first, and there I lived for some time by the toil of my hands. My will
was good. I found plenty to occupy me. One has only to choose. There
are paper mills, tanneries, distilleries, oil factories, watch
factories on a large scale, steel mills, copper works, twenty iron
foundries at least, four of which, situated at Lods, at Châtillon, at
Audincourt, and at Beure, are tolerably large.’

“I think I am not mistaken in saying that those are the names which my
brother mentioned. Then he interrupted himself and addressed me:—

“‘Have we not some relatives in those parts, my dear sister?’

“I replied,—

“‘We did have some; among others, M. de Lucenet, who was captain of the
gates at Pontarlier under the old régime.’

“‘Yes,’ resumed my brother; ‘but in ’93, one had no longer any
relatives, one had only one’s arms. I worked. They have, in the country
of Pontarlier, whither you are going, Monsieur Valjean, a truly
patriarchal and truly charming industry, my sister. It is their
cheese-dairies, which they call _fruitières_.’

“Then my brother, while urging the man to eat, explained to him, with
great minuteness, what these _fruitières_ of Pontarlier were; that they
were divided into two classes: the _big barns_ which belong to the
rich, and where there are forty or fifty cows which produce from seven
to eight thousand cheeses each summer, and the _associated fruitières_,
which belong to the poor; these are the peasants of mid-mountain, who
hold their cows in common, and share the proceeds. ‘They engage the
services of a cheese-maker, whom they call the _grurin_; the _grurin_
receives the milk of the associates three times a day, and marks the
quantity on a double tally. It is towards the end of April that the
work of the cheese-dairies begins; it is towards the middle of June
that the cheese-makers drive their cows to the mountains.’

“The man recovered his animation as he ate. My brother made him drink
that good Mauves wine, which he does not drink himself, because he says
that wine is expensive. My brother imparted all these details with that
easy gayety of his with which you are acquainted, interspersing his
words with graceful attentions to me. He recurred frequently to that
comfortable trade of _grurin_, as though he wished the man to
understand, without advising him directly and harshly, that this would
afford him a refuge. One thing struck me. This man was what I have told
you. Well, neither during supper, nor during the entire evening, did my
brother utter a single word, with the exception of a few words about
Jesus when he entered, which could remind the man of what he was, nor
of what my brother was. To all appearances, it was an occasion for
preaching him a little sermon, and of impressing the Bishop on the
convict, so that a mark of the passage might remain behind. This might
have appeared to any one else who had this, unfortunate man in his
hands to afford a chance to nourish his soul as well as his body, and
to bestow upon him some reproach, seasoned with moralizing and advice,
or a little commiseration, with an exhortation to conduct himself
better in the future. My brother did not even ask him from what country
he came, nor what was his history. For in his history there is a fault,
and my brother seemed to avoid everything which could remind him of it.
To such a point did he carry it, that at one time, when my brother was
speaking of the mountaineers of Pontarlier, _who exercise a gentle
labor near heaven, and who_, he added, _are happy because they are
innocent_, he stopped short, fearing lest in this remark there might
have escaped him something which might wound the man. By dint of
reflection, I think I have comprehended what was passing in my
brother’s heart. He was thinking, no doubt, that this man, whose name
is Jean Valjean, had his misfortune only too vividly present in his
mind; that the best thing was to divert him from it, and to make him
believe, if only momentarily, that he was a person like any other, by
treating him just in his ordinary way. Is not this indeed, to
understand charity well? Is there not, dear Madame, something truly
evangelical in this delicacy which abstains from sermon, from
moralizing, from allusions? and is not the truest pity, when a man has
a sore point, not to touch it at all? It has seemed to me that this
might have been my brother’s private thought. In any case, what I can
say is that, if he entertained all these ideas, he gave no sign of
them; from beginning to end, even to me he was the same as he is every
evening, and he supped with this Jean Valjean with the same air and in
the same manner in which he would have supped with M. Gédéon le
Prévost, or with the curate of the parish.

“Towards the end, when he had reached the figs, there came a knock at
the door. It was Mother Gerbaud, with her little one in her arms. My
brother kissed the child on the brow, and borrowed fifteen sous which I
had about me to give to Mother Gerbaud. The man was not paying much
heed to anything then. He was no longer talking, and he seemed very
much fatigued. After poor old Gerbaud had taken her departure, my
brother said grace; then he turned to the man and said to him, ‘You
must be in great need of your bed.’ Madame Magloire cleared the table
very promptly. I understood that we must retire, in order to allow this
traveller to go to sleep, and we both went upstairs. Nevertheless, I
sent Madame Magloire down a moment later, to carry to the man’s bed a
goat skin from the Black Forest, which was in my room. The nights are
frigid, and that keeps one warm. It is a pity that this skin is old;
all the hair is falling out. My brother bought it while he was in
Germany, at Tottlingen, near the sources of the Danube, as well as the
little ivory-handled knife which I use at table.

“Madame Magloire returned immediately. We said our prayers in the
drawing-room, where we hang up the linen, and then we each retired to
our own chambers, without saying a word to each other.”





CHAPTER V—TRANQUILLITY


After bidding his sister good night, Monseigneur Bienvenu took one of
the two silver candlesticks from the table, handed the other to his
guest, and said to him,—

“Monsieur, I will conduct you to your room.”


The man followed him.

As might have been observed from what has been said above, the house
was so arranged that in order to pass into the oratory where the alcove
was situated, or to get out of it, it was necessary to traverse the
Bishop’s bedroom.

At the moment when he was crossing this apartment, Madame Magloire was
putting away the silverware in the cupboard near the head of the bed.
This was her last care every evening before she went to bed.

The Bishop installed his guest in the alcove. A fresh white bed had
been prepared there. The man set the candle down on a small table.

“Well,” said the Bishop, “may you pass a good night. To-morrow morning,
before you set out, you shall drink a cup of warm milk from our cows.”


“Thanks, Monsieur l’ Abbé,” said the man.

Hardly had he pronounced these words full of peace, when all of a
sudden, and without transition, he made a strange movement, which would
have frozen the two sainted women with horror, had they witnessed it.
Even at this day it is difficult for us to explain what inspired him at
that moment. Did he intend to convey a warning or to throw out a
menace? Was he simply obeying a sort of instinctive impulse which was
obscure even to himself? He turned abruptly to the old man, folded his
arms, and bending upon his host a savage gaze, he exclaimed in a hoarse
voice:—

“Ah! really! You lodge me in your house, close to yourself like this?”


He broke off, and added with a laugh in which there lurked something
monstrous:—

“Have you really reflected well? How do you know that I have not been
an assassin?”


The Bishop replied:—

“That is the concern of the good God.”


Then gravely, and moving his lips like one who is praying or talking to
himself, he raised two fingers of his right hand and bestowed his
benediction on the man, who did not bow, and without turning his head
or looking behind him, he returned to his bedroom.

When the alcove was in use, a large serge curtain drawn from wall to
wall concealed the altar. The Bishop knelt before this curtain as he
passed and said a brief prayer. A moment later he was in his garden,
walking, meditating, contemplating, his heart and soul wholly absorbed
in those grand and mysterious things which God shows at night to the
eyes which remain open.

As for the man, he was actually so fatigued that he did not even profit
by the nice white sheets. Snuffing out his candle with his nostrils
after the manner of convicts, he dropped, all dressed as he was, upon
the bed, where he immediately fell into a profound sleep.

Midnight struck as the Bishop returned from his garden to his
apartment.

A few minutes later all were asleep in the little house.




CHAPTER VI—JEAN VALJEAN


Towards the middle of the night Jean Valjean woke.

Jean Valjean came from a poor peasant family of Brie. He had not
learned to read in his childhood. When he reached man’s estate, he
became a tree-pruner at Faverolles. His mother was named Jeanne
Mathieu; his father was called Jean Valjean or Vlajean, probably a
sobriquet, and a contraction of _voilà_ Jean, “here’s Jean.”


Jean Valjean was of that thoughtful but not gloomy disposition which
constitutes the peculiarity of affectionate natures. On the whole,
however, there was something decidedly sluggish and insignificant about
Jean Valjean in appearance, at least. He had lost his father and mother
at a very early age. His mother had died of a milk fever, which had not
been properly attended to. His father, a tree-pruner, like himself, had
been killed by a fall from a tree. All that remained to Jean Valjean
was a sister older than himself,—a widow with seven children, boys and
girls. This sister had brought up Jean Valjean, and so long as she had
a husband she lodged and fed her young brother.

The husband died. The eldest of the seven children was eight years old.
The youngest, one.

Jean Valjean had just attained his twenty-fifth year. He took the
father’s place, and, in his turn, supported the sister who had brought
him up. This was done simply as a duty and even a little churlishly on
the part of Jean Valjean. Thus his youth had been spent in rude and
ill-paid toil. He had never known a “kind woman friend” in his native
parts. He had not had the time to fall in love.

He returned at night weary, and ate his broth without uttering a word.
His sister, mother Jeanne, often took the best part of his repast from
his bowl while he was eating,—a bit of meat, a slice of bacon, the
heart of the cabbage,—to give to one of her children. As he went on
eating, with his head bent over the table and almost into his soup, his
long hair falling about his bowl and concealing his eyes, he had the
air of perceiving nothing and allowing it. There was at Faverolles, not
far from the Valjean thatched cottage, on the other side of the lane, a
farmer’s wife named Marie-Claude; the Valjean children, habitually
famished, sometimes went to borrow from Marie-Claude a pint of milk, in
their mother’s name, which they drank behind a hedge or in some alley
corner, snatching the jug from each other so hastily that the little
girls spilled it on their aprons and down their necks. If their mother
had known of this marauding, she would have punished the delinquents
severely. Jean Valjean gruffly and grumblingly paid Marie-Claude for
the pint of milk behind their mother’s back, and the children were not
punished.

In pruning season he earned eighteen sous a day; then he hired out as a
hay-maker, as laborer, as neat-herd on a farm, as a drudge. He did
whatever he could. His sister worked also but what could she do with
seven little children? It was a sad group enveloped in misery, which
was being gradually annihilated. A very hard winter came. Jean had no
work. The family had no bread. No bread literally. Seven children!

One Sunday evening, Maubert Isabeau, the baker on the Church Square at
Faverolles, was preparing to go to bed, when he heard a violent blow on
the grated front of his shop. He arrived in time to see an arm passed
through a hole made by a blow from a fist, through the grating and the
glass. The arm seized a loaf of bread and carried it off. Isabeau ran
out in haste; the robber fled at the full speed of his legs. Isabeau
ran after him and stopped him. The thief had flung away the loaf, but
his arm was still bleeding. It was Jean Valjean.

This took place in 1795. Jean Valjean was taken before the tribunals of
the time for theft and breaking and entering an inhabited house at
night. He had a gun which he used better than any one else in the
world, he was a bit of a poacher, and this injured his case. There
exists a legitimate prejudice against poachers. The poacher, like the
smuggler, smacks too strongly of the brigand. Nevertheless, we will
remark cursorily, there is still an abyss between these races of men
and the hideous assassin of the towns. The poacher lives in the forest,
the smuggler lives in the mountains or on the sea. The cities make
ferocious men because they make corrupt men. The mountain, the sea, the
forest, make savage men; they develop the fierce side, but often
without destroying the humane side.

Jean Valjean was pronounced guilty. The terms of the Code were
explicit. There occur formidable hours in our civilization; there are
moments when the penal laws decree a shipwreck. What an ominous minute
is that in which society draws back and consummates the irreparable
abandonment of a sentient being! Jean Valjean was condemned to five
years in the galleys.

On the 22d of April, 1796, the victory of Montenotte, won by the
general-in-chief of the army of Italy, whom the message of the
Directory to the Five Hundred, of the 2d of Floréal, year IV., calls
Buona-Parte, was announced in Paris; on that same day a great gang of
galley-slaves was put in chains at Bicêtre. Jean Valjean formed a part
of that gang. An old turnkey of the prison, who is now nearly eighty
years old, still recalls perfectly that unfortunate wretch who was
chained to the end of the fourth line, in the north angle of the
courtyard. He was seated on the ground like the others. He did not seem
to comprehend his position, except that it was horrible. It is probable
that he, also, was disentangling from amid the vague ideas of a poor
man, ignorant of everything, something excessive. While the bolt of his
iron collar was being riveted behind his head with heavy blows from the
hammer, he wept, his tears stifled him, they impeded his speech; he
only managed to say from time to time, “I was a tree-pruner at
Faverolles.” Then still sobbing, he raised his right hand and lowered
it gradually seven times, as though he were touching in succession
seven heads of unequal heights, and from this gesture it was divined
that the thing which he had done, whatever it was, he had done for the
sake of clothing and nourishing seven little children.

He set out for Toulon. He arrived there, after a journey of
twenty-seven days, on a cart, with a chain on his neck. At Toulon he
was clothed in the red cassock. All that had constituted his life, even
to his name, was effaced; he was no longer even Jean Valjean; he was
number 24,601. What became of his sister? What became of the seven
children? Who troubled himself about that? What becomes of the handful
of leaves from the young tree which is sawed off at the root?

It is always the same story. These poor living beings, these creatures
of God, henceforth without support, without guide, without refuge,
wandered away at random,—who even knows?—each in his own direction
perhaps, and little by little buried themselves in that cold mist which
engulfs solitary destinies; gloomy shades, into which disappear in
succession so many unlucky heads, in the sombre march of the human
race. They quitted the country. The clock-tower of what had been their
village forgot them; the boundary line of what had been their field
forgot them; after a few years’ residence in the galleys, Jean Valjean
himself forgot them. In that heart, where there had been a wound, there
was a scar. That is all. Only once, during all the time which he spent
at Toulon, did he hear his sister mentioned. This happened, I think,
towards the end of the fourth year of his captivity. I know not through
what channels the news reached him. Some one who had known them in
their own country had seen his sister. She was in Paris. She lived in a
poor street near Saint-Sulpice, in the Rue du Gindre. She had with her
only one child, a little boy, the youngest. Where were the other six?
Perhaps she did not know herself. Every morning she went to a printing
office, No. 3 Rue du Sabot, where she was a folder and stitcher. She
was obliged to be there at six o’clock in the morning—long before
daylight in winter. In the same building with the printing office there
was a school, and to this school she took her little boy, who was seven
years old. But as she entered the printing office at six, and the
school only opened at seven, the child had to wait in the courtyard,
for the school to open, for an hour—one hour of a winter night in the
open air! They would not allow the child to come into the printing
office, because he was in the way, they said. When the workmen passed
in the morning, they beheld this poor little being seated on the
pavement, overcome with drowsiness, and often fast asleep in the
shadow, crouched down and doubled up over his basket. When it rained,
an old woman, the portress, took pity on him; she took him into her
den, where there was a pallet, a spinning-wheel, and two wooden chairs,
and the little one slumbered in a corner, pressing himself close to the
cat that he might suffer less from cold. At seven o’clock the school
opened, and he entered. That is what was told to Jean Valjean.

They talked to him about it for one day; it was a moment, a flash, as
though a window had suddenly been opened upon the destiny of those
things whom he had loved; then all closed again. He heard nothing more
forever. Nothing from them ever reached him again; he never beheld
them; he never met them again; and in the continuation of this mournful
history they will not be met with any more.

Towards the end of this fourth year Jean Valjean’s turn to escape
arrived. His comrades assisted him, as is the custom in that sad place.
He escaped. He wandered for two days in the fields at liberty, if being
at liberty is to be hunted, to turn the head every instant, to quake at
the slightest noise, to be afraid of everything,—of a smoking roof, of
a passing man, of a barking dog, of a galloping horse, of a striking
clock, of the day because one can see, of the night because one cannot
see, of the highway, of the path, of a bush, of sleep. On the evening
of the second day he was captured. He had neither eaten nor slept for
thirty-six hours. The maritime tribunal condemned him, for this crime,
to a prolongation of his term for three years, which made eight years.
In the sixth year his turn to escape occurred again; he availed himself
of it, but could not accomplish his flight fully. He was missing at
roll-call. The cannon were fired, and at night the patrol found him
hidden under the keel of a vessel in process of construction; he
resisted the galley guards who seized him. Escape and rebellion. This
case, provided for by a special code, was punished by an addition of
five years, two of them in the double chain. Thirteen years. In the
tenth year his turn came round again; he again profited by it; he
succeeded no better. Three years for this fresh attempt. Sixteen years.
Finally, I think it was during his thirteenth year, he made a last
attempt, and only succeeded in getting retaken at the end of four hours
of absence. Three years for those four hours. Nineteen years. In
October, 1815, he was released; he had entered there in 1796, for
having broken a pane of glass and taken a loaf of bread.

Room for a brief parenthesis. This is the second time, during his
studies on the penal question and damnation by law, that the author of
this book has come across the theft of a loaf of bread as the point of
departure for the disaster of a destiny. Claude Gaux had stolen a loaf;
Jean Valjean had stolen a loaf. English statistics prove the fact that
four thefts out of five in London have hunger for their immediate
cause.

Jean Valjean had entered the galleys sobbing and shuddering; he emerged
impassive. He had entered in despair; he emerged gloomy.

What had taken place in that soul?




CHAPTER VII—THE INTERIOR OF DESPAIR


Let us try to say it.

It is necessary that society should look at these things, because it is
itself which creates them.

He was, as we have said, an ignorant man, but he was not a fool. The
light of nature was ignited in him. Unhappiness, which also possesses a
clearness of vision of its own, augmented the small amount of daylight
which existed in this mind. Beneath the cudgel, beneath the chain, in
the cell, in hardship, beneath the burning sun of the galleys, upon the
plank bed of the convict, he withdrew into his own consciousness and
meditated.

He constituted himself the tribunal.

He began by putting himself on trial.

He recognized the fact that he was not an innocent man unjustly
punished. He admitted that he had committed an extreme and blameworthy
act; that that loaf of bread would probably not have been refused to
him had he asked for it; that, in any case, it would have been better
to wait until he could get it through compassion or through work; that
it is not an unanswerable argument to say, “Can one wait when one is
hungry?” That, in the first place, it is very rare for any one to die
of hunger, literally; and next, that, fortunately or unfortunately, man
is so constituted that he can suffer long and much, both morally and
physically, without dying; that it is therefore necessary to have
patience; that that would even have been better for those poor little
children; that it had been an act of madness for him, a miserable,
unfortunate wretch, to take society at large violently by the collar,
and to imagine that one can escape from misery through theft; that that
is in any case a poor door through which to escape from misery through
which infamy enters; in short, that he was in the wrong.

Then he asked himself:—

Whether he had been the only one in fault in his fatal history. Whether
it was not a serious thing, that he, a laborer, out of work, that he,
an industrious man, should have lacked bread. And whether, the fault
once committed and confessed, the chastisement had not been ferocious
and disproportioned. Whether there had not been more abuse on the part
of the law, in respect to the penalty, than there had been on the part
of the culprit in respect to his fault. Whether there had not been an
excess of weights in one balance of the scale, in the one which
contains expiation. Whether the over-weight of the penalty was not
equivalent to the annihilation of the crime, and did not result in
reversing the situation, of replacing the fault of the delinquent by
the fault of the repression, of converting the guilty man into the
victim, and the debtor into the creditor, and of ranging the law
definitely on the side of the man who had violated it.

Whether this penalty, complicated by successive aggravations for
attempts at escape, had not ended in becoming a sort of outrage
perpetrated by the stronger upon the feebler, a crime of society
against the individual, a crime which was being committed afresh every
day, a crime which had lasted nineteen years.

He asked himself whether human society could have the right to force
its members to suffer equally in one case for its own unreasonable lack
of foresight, and in the other case for its pitiless foresight; and to
seize a poor man forever between a defect and an excess, a default of
work and an excess of punishment.

Whether it was not outrageous for society to treat thus precisely those
of its members who were the least well endowed in the division of goods
made by chance, and consequently the most deserving of consideration.

These questions put and answered, he judged society and condemned it.

He condemned it to his hatred.

He made it responsible for the fate which he was suffering, and he said
to himself that it might be that one day he should not hesitate to call
it to account. He declared to himself that there was no equilibrium
between the harm which he had caused and the harm which was being done
to him; he finally arrived at the conclusion that his punishment was
not, in truth, unjust, but that it most assuredly was iniquitous.

Anger may be both foolish and absurd; one can be irritated wrongfully;
one is exasperated only when there is some show of right on one’s side
at bottom. Jean Valjean felt himself exasperated.

And besides, human society had done him nothing but harm; he had never
seen anything of it save that angry face which it calls Justice, and
which it shows to those whom it strikes. Men had only touched him to
bruise him. Every contact with them had been a blow. Never, since his
infancy, since the days of his mother, of his sister, had he ever
encountered a friendly word and a kindly glance. From suffering to
suffering, he had gradually arrived at the conviction that life is a
war; and that in this war he was the conquered. He had no other weapon
than his hate. He resolved to whet it in the galleys and to bear it
away with him when he departed.

There was at Toulon a school for the convicts, kept by the Ignorantin
friars, where the most necessary branches were taught to those of the
unfortunate men who had a mind for them. He was of the number who had a
mind. He went to school at the age of forty, and learned to read, to
write, to cipher. He felt that to fortify his intelligence was to
fortify his hate. In certain cases, education and enlightenment can
serve to eke out evil.

This is a sad thing to say; after having judged society, which had
caused his unhappiness, he judged Providence, which had made society,
and he condemned it also.

Thus during nineteen years of torture and slavery, this soul mounted
and at the same time fell. Light entered it on one side, and darkness
on the other.

Jean Valjean had not, as we have seen, an evil nature. He was still
good when he arrived at the galleys. He there condemned society, and
felt that he was becoming wicked; he there condemned Providence, and
was conscious that he was becoming impious.

It is difficult not to indulge in meditation at this point.

Does human nature thus change utterly and from top to bottom? Can the
man created good by God be rendered wicked by man? Can the soul be
completely made over by fate, and become evil, fate being evil? Can the
heart become misshapen and contract incurable deformities and
infirmities under the oppression of a disproportionate unhappiness, as
the vertebral column beneath too low a vault? Is there not in every
human soul, was there not in the soul of Jean Valjean in particular, a
first spark, a divine element, incorruptible in this world, immortal in
the other, which good can develop, fan, ignite, and make to glow with
splendor, and which evil can never wholly extinguish?

Grave and obscure questions, to the last of which every physiologist
would probably have responded no, and that without hesitation, had he
beheld at Toulon, during the hours of repose, which were for Jean
Valjean hours of reverie, this gloomy galley-slave, seated with folded
arms upon the bar of some capstan, with the end of his chain thrust
into his pocket to prevent its dragging, serious, silent, and
thoughtful, a pariah of the laws which regarded the man with wrath,
condemned by civilization, and regarding heaven with severity.

Certainly,—and we make no attempt to dissimulate the fact,—the
observing physiologist would have beheld an irremediable misery; he
would, perchance, have pitied this sick man, of the law’s making; but
he would not have even essayed any treatment; he would have turned
aside his gaze from the caverns of which he would have caught a glimpse
within this soul, and, like Dante at the portals of hell, he would have
effaced from this existence the word which the finger of God has,
nevertheless, inscribed upon the brow of every man,—hope.

Was this state of his soul, which we have attempted to analyze, as
perfectly clear to Jean Valjean as we have tried to render it for those
who read us? Did Jean Valjean distinctly perceive, after their
formation, and had he seen distinctly during the process of their
formation, all the elements of which his moral misery was composed? Had
this rough and unlettered man gathered a perfectly clear perception of
the succession of ideas through which he had, by degrees, mounted and
descended to the lugubrious aspects which had, for so many years,
formed the inner horizon of his spirit? Was he conscious of all that
passed within him, and of all that was working there? That is something
which we do not presume to state; it is something which we do not even
believe. There was too much ignorance in Jean Valjean, even after his
misfortune, to prevent much vagueness from still lingering there. At
times he did not rightly know himself what he felt. Jean Valjean was in
the shadows; he suffered in the shadows; he hated in the shadows; one
might have said that he hated in advance of himself. He dwelt
habitually in this shadow, feeling his way like a blind man and a
dreamer. Only, at intervals, there suddenly came to him, from without
and from within, an access of wrath, a surcharge of suffering, a livid
and rapid flash which illuminated his whole soul, and caused to appear
abruptly all around him, in front, behind, amid the gleams of a
frightful light, the hideous precipices and the sombre perspective of
his destiny.

The flash passed, the night closed in again; and where was he? He no
longer knew. The peculiarity of pains of this nature, in which that
which is pitiless—that is to say, that which is
brutalizing—predominates, is to transform a man, little by little, by a
sort of stupid transfiguration, into a wild beast; sometimes into a
ferocious beast.

Jean Valjean’s successive and obstinate attempts at escape would alone
suffice to prove this strange working of the law upon the human soul.
Jean Valjean would have renewed these attempts, utterly useless and
foolish as they were, as often as the opportunity had presented itself,
without reflecting for an instant on the result, nor on the experiences
which he had already gone through. He escaped impetuously, like the
wolf who finds his cage open. Instinct said to him, “Flee!” Reason
would have said, “Remain!” But in the presence of so violent a
temptation, reason vanished; nothing remained but instinct. The beast
alone acted. When he was recaptured, the fresh severities inflicted on
him only served to render him still more wild.

One detail, which we must not omit, is that he possessed a physical
strength which was not approached by a single one of the denizens of
the galleys. At work, at paying out a cable or winding up a capstan,
Jean Valjean was worth four men. He sometimes lifted and sustained
enormous weights on his back; and when the occasion demanded it, he
replaced that implement which is called a jack-screw, and was formerly
called _orgueil_ [pride], whence, we may remark in passing, is derived
the name of the Rue Montorgueil, near the Halles [Fishmarket] in Paris.
His comrades had nicknamed him Jean the Jack-screw. Once, when they
were repairing the balcony of the town-hall at Toulon, one of those
admirable caryatids of Puget, which support the balcony, became
loosened, and was on the point of falling. Jean Valjean, who was
present, supported the caryatid with his shoulder, and gave the workmen
time to arrive.

His suppleness even exceeded his strength. Certain convicts who were
forever dreaming of escape, ended by making a veritable science of
force and skill combined. It is the science of muscles. An entire
system of mysterious statics is daily practised by prisoners, men who
are forever envious of the flies and birds. To climb a vertical
surface, and to find points of support where hardly a projection was
visible, was play to Jean Valjean. An angle of the wall being given,
with the tension of his back and legs, with his elbows and his heels
fitted into the unevenness of the stone, he raised himself as if by
magic to the third story. He sometimes mounted thus even to the roof of
the galley prison.

He spoke but little. He laughed not at all. An excessive emotion was
required to wring from him, once or twice a year, that lugubrious laugh
of the convict, which is like the echo of the laugh of a demon. To all
appearance, he seemed to be occupied in the constant contemplation of
something terrible.

He was absorbed, in fact.

Athwart the unhealthy perceptions of an incomplete nature and a crushed
intelligence, he was confusedly conscious that some monstrous thing was
resting on him. In that obscure and wan shadow within which he crawled,
each time that he turned his neck and essayed to raise his glance, he
perceived with terror, mingled with rage, a sort of frightful
accumulation of things, collecting and mounting above him, beyond the
range of his vision,—laws, prejudices, men, and deeds,—whose outlines
escaped him, whose mass terrified him, and which was nothing else than
that prodigious pyramid which we call civilization. He distinguished,
here and there in that swarming and formless mass, now near him, now
afar off and on inaccessible table-lands, some group, some detail,
vividly illuminated; here the galley-sergeant and his cudgel; there the
gendarme and his sword; yonder the mitred archbishop; away at the top,
like a sort of sun, the Emperor, crowned and dazzling. It seemed to him
that these distant splendors, far from dissipating his night, rendered
it more funereal and more black. All this—laws, prejudices, deeds, men,
things—went and came above him, over his head, in accordance with the
complicated and mysterious movement which God imparts to civilization,
walking over him and crushing him with I know not what peacefulness in
its cruelty and inexorability in its indifference. Souls which have
fallen to the bottom of all possible misfortune, unhappy men lost in
the lowest of those limbos at which no one any longer looks, the
reproved of the law, feel the whole weight of this human society, so
formidable for him who is without, so frightful for him who is beneath,
resting upon their heads.

In this situation Jean Valjean meditated; and what could be the nature
of his meditation?

If the grain of millet beneath the millstone had thoughts, it would,
doubtless, think that same thing which Jean Valjean thought.

All these things, realities full of spectres, phantasmagories full of
realities, had eventually created for him a sort of interior state
which is almost indescribable.

At times, amid his convict toil, he paused. He fell to thinking. His
reason, at one and the same time riper and more troubled than of yore,
rose in revolt. Everything which had happened to him seemed to him
absurd; everything that surrounded him seemed to him impossible. He
said to himself, “It is a dream.” He gazed at the galley-sergeant
standing a few paces from him; the galley-sergeant seemed a phantom to
him. All of a sudden the phantom dealt him a blow with his cudgel.

Visible nature hardly existed for him. It would almost be true to say
that there existed for Jean Valjean neither sun, nor fine summer days,
nor radiant sky, nor fresh April dawns. I know not what vent-hole
daylight habitually illumined his soul.

To sum up, in conclusion, that which can be summed up and translated
into positive results in all that we have just pointed out, we will
confine ourselves to the statement that, in the course of nineteen
years, Jean Valjean, the inoffensive tree-pruner of Faverolles, the
formidable convict of Toulon, had become capable, thanks to the manner
in which the galleys had moulded him, of two sorts of evil action:
firstly, of evil action which was rapid, unpremeditated, dashing,
entirely instinctive, in the nature of reprisals for the evil which he
had undergone; secondly, of evil action which was serious, grave,
consciously argued out and premeditated, with the false ideas which
such a misfortune can furnish. His deliberate deeds passed through
three successive phases, which natures of a certain stamp can alone
traverse,—reasoning, will, perseverance. He had for moving causes his
habitual wrath, bitterness of soul, a profound sense of indignities
suffered, the reaction even against the good, the innocent, and the
just, if there are any such. The point of departure, like the point of
arrival, for all his thoughts, was hatred of human law; that hatred
which, if it be not arrested in its development by some providential
incident, becomes, within a given time, the hatred of society, then the
hatred of the human race, then the hatred of creation, and which
manifests itself by a vague, incessant, and brutal desire to do harm to
some living being, no matter whom. It will be perceived that it was not
without reason that Jean Valjean’s passport described him as _a very
dangerous man_.

From year to year this soul had dried away slowly, but with fatal
sureness. When the heart is dry, the eye is dry. On his departure from
the galleys it had been nineteen years since he had shed a tear.




CHAPTER VIII—BILLOWS AND SHADOWS


A man overboard!

What matters it? The vessel does not halt. The wind blows. That sombre
ship has a path which it is forced to pursue. It passes on.

The man disappears, then reappears; he plunges, he rises again to the
surface; he calls, he stretches out his arms; he is not heard. The
vessel, trembling under the hurricane, is wholly absorbed in its own
workings; the passengers and sailors do not even see the drowning man;
his miserable head is but a speck amid the immensity of the waves. He
gives vent to desperate cries from out of the depths. What a spectre is
that retreating sail! He gazes and gazes at it frantically. It
retreats, it grows dim, it diminishes in size. He was there but just
now, he was one of the crew, he went and came along the deck with the
rest, he had his part of breath and of sunlight, he was a living man.
Now, what has taken place? He has slipped, he has fallen; all is at an
end.

He is in the tremendous sea. Under foot he has nothing but what flees
and crumbles. The billows, torn and lashed by the wind, encompass him
hideously; the tossings of the abyss bear him away; all the tongues of
water dash over his head; a populace of waves spits upon him; confused
openings half devour him; every time that he sinks, he catches glimpses
of precipices filled with night; frightful and unknown vegetations
seize him, knot about his feet, draw him to them; he is conscious that
he is becoming an abyss, that he forms part of the foam; the waves toss
him from one to another; he drinks in the bitterness; the cowardly
ocean attacks him furiously, to drown him; the enormity plays with his
agony. It seems as though all that water were hate.

Nevertheless, he struggles.

He tries to defend himself; he tries to sustain himself; he makes an
effort; he swims. He, his petty strength all exhausted instantly,
combats the inexhaustible.

Where, then, is the ship? Yonder. Barely visible in the pale shadows of
the horizon.

The wind blows in gusts; all the foam overwhelms him. He raises his
eyes and beholds only the lividness of the clouds. He witnesses, amid
his death-pangs, the immense madness of the sea. He is tortured by this
madness; he hears noises strange to man, which seem to come from beyond
the limits of the earth, and from one knows not what frightful region
beyond.

There are birds in the clouds, just as there are angels above human
distresses; but what can they do for him? They sing and fly and float,
and he, he rattles in the death agony.

He feels himself buried in those two infinities, the ocean and the sky,
at one and the same time: the one is a tomb; the other is a shroud.

Night descends; he has been swimming for hours; his strength is
exhausted; that ship, that distant thing in which there were men, has
vanished; he is alone in the formidable twilight gulf; he sinks, he
stiffens himself, he twists himself; he feels under him the monstrous
billows of the invisible; he shouts.

There are no more men. Where is God?

He shouts. Help! Help! He still shouts on.

Nothing on the horizon; nothing in heaven.

He implores the expanse, the waves, the seaweed, the reef; they are
deaf. He beseeches the tempest; the imperturbable tempest obeys only
the infinite.

Around him darkness, fog, solitude, the stormy and nonsentient tumult,
the undefined curling of those wild waters. In him horror and fatigue.
Beneath him the depths. Not a point of support. He thinks of the gloomy
adventures of the corpse in the limitless shadow. The bottomless cold
paralyzes him. His hands contract convulsively; they close, and grasp
nothingness. Winds, clouds, whirlwinds, gusts, useless stars! What is
to be done? The desperate man gives up; he is weary, he chooses the
alternative of death; he resists not; he lets himself go; he abandons
his grip; and then he tosses forevermore in the lugubrious dreary
depths of engulfment.

Oh, implacable march of human societies! Oh, losses of men and of souls
on the way! Ocean into which falls all that the law lets slip!
Disastrous absence of help! Oh, moral death!

The sea is the inexorable social night into which the penal laws fling
their condemned. The sea is the immensity of wretchedness.

The soul, going downstream in this gulf, may become a corpse. Who shall
resuscitate it?




CHAPTER IX—NEW TROUBLES


When the hour came for him to take his departure from the galleys, when
Jean Valjean heard in his ear the strange words, _Thou art free!_ the
moment seemed improbable and unprecedented; a ray of vivid light, a ray
of the true light of the living, suddenly penetrated within him. But it
was not long before this ray paled. Jean Valjean had been dazzled by
the idea of liberty. He had believed in a new life. He very speedily
perceived what sort of liberty it is to which a yellow passport is
provided.

And this was encompassed with much bitterness. He had calculated that
his earnings, during his sojourn in the galleys, ought to amount to a
hundred and seventy-one francs. It is but just to add that he had
forgotten to include in his calculations the forced repose of Sundays
and festival days during nineteen years, which entailed a diminution of
about eighty francs. At all events, his hoard had been reduced by
various local levies to the sum of one hundred and nine francs fifteen
sous, which had been counted out to him on his departure. He had
understood nothing of this, and had thought himself wronged. Let us say
the word—robbed.

On the day following his liberation, he saw, at Grasse, in front of an
orange-flower distillery, some men engaged in unloading bales. He
offered his services. Business was pressing; they were accepted. He set
to work. He was intelligent, robust, adroit; he did his best; the
master seemed pleased. While he was at work, a gendarme passed,
observed him, and demanded his papers. It was necessary to show him the
yellow passport. That done, Jean Valjean resumed his labor. A little
while before he had questioned one of the workmen as to the amount
which they earned each day at this occupation; he had been told _thirty
sous_. When evening arrived, as he was forced to set out again on the
following day, he presented himself to the owner of the distillery and
requested to be paid. The owner did not utter a word, but handed him
fifteen sous. He objected. He was told, _“That is enough for thee.”_ He
persisted. The master looked him straight between the eyes, and said to
him _“Beware of the prison.”_

There, again, he considered that he had been robbed.

Society, the State, by diminishing his hoard, had robbed him wholesale.
Now it was the individual who was robbing him at retail.

Liberation is not deliverance. One gets free from the galleys, but not
from the sentence.

That is what happened to him at Grasse. We have seen in what manner he
was received at D——




CHAPTER X—THE MAN AROUSED


As the Cathedral clock struck two in the morning, Jean Valjean awoke.

What woke him was that his bed was too good. It was nearly twenty years
since he had slept in a bed, and, although he had not undressed, the
sensation was too novel not to disturb his slumbers.

He had slept more than four hours. His fatigue had passed away. He was
accustomed not to devote many hours to repose.

He opened his eyes and stared into the gloom which surrounded him; then
he closed them again, with the intention of going to sleep once more.

When many varied sensations have agitated the day, when various matters
preoccupy the mind, one falls asleep once, but not a second time. Sleep
comes more easily than it returns. This is what happened to Jean
Valjean. He could not get to sleep again, and he fell to thinking.

He was at one of those moments when the thoughts which one has in one’s
mind are troubled. There was a sort of dark confusion in his brain. His
memories of the olden time and of the immediate present floated there
pell-mell and mingled confusedly, losing their proper forms, becoming
disproportionately large, then suddenly disappearing, as in a muddy and
perturbed pool. Many thoughts occurred to him; but there was one which
kept constantly presenting itself afresh, and which drove away all
others. We will mention this thought at once: he had observed the six
sets of silver forks and spoons and the ladle which Madame Magloire had
placed on the table.

Those six sets of silver haunted him.—They were there.—A few paces
distant.—Just as he was traversing the adjoining room to reach the one
in which he then was, the old servant-woman had been in the act of
placing them in a little cupboard near the head of the bed.—He had
taken careful note of this cupboard.—On the right, as you entered from
the dining-room.—They were solid.—And old silver.—From the ladle one
could get at least two hundred francs.—Double what he had earned in
nineteen years.—It is true that he would have earned more if “the
_administration_ had not _robbed him_.”


His mind wavered for a whole hour in fluctuations with which there was
certainly mingled some struggle. Three o’clock struck. He opened his
eyes again, drew himself up abruptly into a sitting posture, stretched
out his arm and felt of his knapsack, which he had thrown down on a
corner of the alcove; then he hung his legs over the edge of the bed,
and placed his feet on the floor, and thus found himself, almost
without knowing it, seated on his bed.

He remained for a time thoughtfully in this attitude, which would have
been suggestive of something sinister for any one who had seen him thus
in the dark, the only person awake in that house where all were
sleeping. All of a sudden he stooped down, removed his shoes and placed
them softly on the mat beside the bed; then he resumed his thoughtful
attitude, and became motionless once more.

Throughout this hideous meditation, the thoughts which we have above
indicated moved incessantly through his brain; entered, withdrew,
re-entered, and in a manner oppressed him; and then he thought, also,
without knowing why, and with the mechanical persistence of reverie, of
a convict named Brevet, whom he had known in the galleys, and whose
trousers had been upheld by a single suspender of knitted cotton. The
checkered pattern of that suspender recurred incessantly to his mind.

He remained in this situation, and would have so remained indefinitely,
even until daybreak, had not the clock struck one—the half or quarter
hour. It seemed to him that that stroke said to him, “Come on!”


He rose to his feet, hesitated still another moment, and listened; all
was quiet in the house; then he walked straight ahead, with short
steps, to the window, of which he caught a glimpse. The night was not
very dark; there was a full moon, across which coursed large clouds
driven by the wind. This created, outdoors, alternate shadow and gleams
of light, eclipses, then bright openings of the clouds; and indoors a
sort of twilight. This twilight, sufficient to enable a person to see
his way, intermittent on account of the clouds, resembled the sort of
livid light which falls through an air-hole in a cellar, before which
the passers-by come and go. On arriving at the window, Jean Valjean
examined it. It had no grating; it opened in the garden and was
fastened, according to the fashion of the country, only by a small pin.
He opened it; but as a rush of cold and piercing air penetrated the
room abruptly, he closed it again immediately. He scrutinized the
garden with that attentive gaze which studies rather than looks. The
garden was enclosed by a tolerably low white wall, easy to climb. Far
away, at the extremity, he perceived tops of trees, spaced at regular
intervals, which indicated that the wall separated the garden from an
avenue or lane planted with trees.

Having taken this survey, he executed a movement like that of a man who
has made up his mind, strode to his alcove, grasped his knapsack,
opened it, fumbled in it, pulled out of it something which he placed on
the bed, put his shoes into one of his pockets, shut the whole thing up
again, threw the knapsack on his shoulders, put on his cap, drew the
visor down over his eyes, felt for his cudgel, went and placed it in
the angle of the window; then returned to the bed, and resolutely
seized the object which he had deposited there. It resembled a short
bar of iron, pointed like a pike at one end. It would have been
difficult to distinguish in that darkness for what employment that bit
of iron could have been designed. Perhaps it was a lever; possibly it
was a club.

In the daytime it would have been possible to recognize it as nothing
more than a miner’s candlestick. Convicts were, at that period,
sometimes employed in quarrying stone from the lofty hills which
environ Toulon, and it was not rare for them to have miners’ tools at
their command. These miners’ candlesticks are of massive iron,
terminated at the lower extremity by a point, by means of which they
are stuck into the rock.

He took the candlestick in his right hand; holding his breath and
trying to deaden the sound of his tread, he directed his steps to the
door of the adjoining room, occupied by the Bishop, as we already know.

On arriving at this door, he found it ajar. The Bishop had not closed
it.




CHAPTER XI—WHAT HE DOES


Jean Valjean listened. Not a sound.

He gave the door a push.

He pushed it gently with the tip of his finger, lightly, with the
furtive and uneasy gentleness of a cat which is desirous of entering.

The door yielded to this pressure, and made an imperceptible and silent
movement, which enlarged the opening a little.

He waited a moment; then gave the door a second and a bolder push.

It continued to yield in silence. The opening was now large enough to
allow him to pass. But near the door there stood a little table, which
formed an embarrassing angle with it, and barred the entrance.

Jean Valjean recognized the difficulty. It was necessary, at any cost,
to enlarge the aperture still further.

He decided on his course of action, and gave the door a third push,
more energetic than the two preceding. This time a badly oiled hinge
suddenly emitted amid the silence a hoarse and prolonged cry.

Jean Valjean shuddered. The noise of the hinge rang in his ears with
something of the piercing and formidable sound of the trump of the Day
of Judgment.

In the fantastic exaggerations of the first moment he almost imagined
that that hinge had just become animated, and had suddenly assumed a
terrible life, and that it was barking like a dog to arouse every one,
and warn and to wake those who were asleep. He halted, shuddering,
bewildered, and fell back from the tips of his toes upon his heels. He
heard the arteries in his temples beating like two forge hammers, and
it seemed to him that his breath issued from his breast with the roar
of the wind issuing from a cavern. It seemed impossible to him that the
horrible clamor of that irritated hinge should not have disturbed the
entire household, like the shock of an earthquake; the door, pushed by
him, had taken the alarm, and had shouted; the old man would rise at
once; the two old women would shriek out; people would come to their
assistance; in less than a quarter of an hour the town would be in an
uproar, and the gendarmerie on hand. For a moment he thought himself
lost.

He remained where he was, petrified like the statue of salt, not daring
to make a movement. Several minutes elapsed. The door had fallen wide
open. He ventured to peep into the next room. Nothing had stirred
there. He lent an ear. Nothing was moving in the house. The noise made
by the rusty hinge had not awakened any one.

This first danger was past; but there still reigned a frightful tumult
within him. Nevertheless, he did not retreat. Even when he had thought
himself lost, he had not drawn back. His only thought now was to finish
as soon as possible. He took a step and entered the room.

This room was in a state of perfect calm. Here and there vague and
confused forms were distinguishable, which in the daylight were papers
scattered on a table, open folios, volumes piled upon a stool, an
armchair heaped with clothing, a prie-Dieu, and which at that hour were
only shadowy corners and whitish spots. Jean Valjean advanced with
precaution, taking care not to knock against the furniture. He could
hear, at the extremity of the room, the even and tranquil breathing of
the sleeping Bishop.

He suddenly came to a halt. He was near the bed. He had arrived there
sooner than he had thought for.

Nature sometimes mingles her effects and her spectacles with our
actions with sombre and intelligent appropriateness, as though she
desired to make us reflect. For the last half-hour a large cloud had
covered the heavens. At the moment when Jean Valjean paused in front of
the bed, this cloud parted, as though on purpose, and a ray of light,
traversing the long window, suddenly illuminated the Bishop’s pale
face. He was sleeping peacefully. He lay in his bed almost completely
dressed, on account of the cold of the Basses-Alps, in a garment of
brown wool, which covered his arms to the wrists. His head was thrown
back on the pillow, in the careless attitude of repose; his hand,
adorned with the pastoral ring, and whence had fallen so many good
deeds and so many holy actions, was hanging over the edge of the bed.
His whole face was illumined with a vague expression of satisfaction,
of hope, and of felicity. It was more than a smile, and almost a
radiance. He bore upon his brow the indescribable reflection of a light
which was invisible. The soul of the just contemplates in sleep a
mysterious heaven.

A reflection of that heaven rested on the Bishop.

It was, at the same time, a luminous transparency, for that heaven was
within him. That heaven was his conscience.


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At the moment when the ray of moonlight superposed itself, so to speak,
upon that inward radiance, the sleeping Bishop seemed as in a glory. It
remained, however, gentle and veiled in an ineffable half-light. That
moon in the sky, that slumbering nature, that garden without a quiver,
that house which was so calm, the hour, the moment, the silence, added
some solemn and unspeakable quality to the venerable repose of this
man, and enveloped in a sort of serene and majestic aureole that white
hair, those closed eyes, that face in which all was hope and all was
confidence, that head of an old man, and that slumber of an infant.

There was something almost divine in this man, who was thus august,
without being himself aware of it.

Jean Valjean was in the shadow, and stood motionless, with his iron
candlestick in his hand, frightened by this luminous old man. Never had
he beheld anything like this. This confidence terrified him. The moral
world has no grander spectacle than this: a troubled and uneasy
conscience, which has arrived on the brink of an evil action,
contemplating the slumber of the just.

That slumber in that isolation, and with a neighbor like himself, had
about it something sublime, of which he was vaguely but imperiously
conscious.

No one could have told what was passing within him, not even himself.
In order to attempt to form an idea of it, it is necessary to think of
the most violent of things in the presence of the most gentle. Even on
his visage it would have been impossible to distinguish anything with
certainty. It was a sort of haggard astonishment. He gazed at it, and
that was all. But what was his thought? It would have been impossible
to divine it. What was evident was, that he was touched and astounded.
But what was the nature of this emotion?

His eye never quitted the old man. The only thing which was clearly to
be inferred from his attitude and his physiognomy was a strange
indecision. One would have said that he was hesitating between the two
abysses,—the one in which one loses one’s self and that in which one
saves one’s self. He seemed prepared to crush that skull or to kiss
that hand.

At the expiration of a few minutes his left arm rose slowly towards his
brow, and he took off his cap; then his arm fell back with the same
deliberation, and Jean Valjean fell to meditating once more, his cap in
his left hand, his club in his right hand, his hair bristling all over
his savage head.

The Bishop continued to sleep in profound peace beneath that terrifying
gaze.

The gleam of the moon rendered confusedly visible the crucifix over the
chimney-piece, which seemed to be extending its arms to both of them,
with a benediction for one and pardon for the other.

Suddenly Jean Valjean replaced his cap on his brow; then stepped
rapidly past the bed, without glancing at the Bishop, straight to the
cupboard, which he saw near the head; he raised his iron candlestick as
though to force the lock; the key was there; he opened it; the first
thing which presented itself to him was the basket of silverware; he
seized it, traversed the chamber with long strides, without taking any
precautions and without troubling himself about the noise, gained the
door, re-entered the oratory, opened the window, seized his cudgel,
bestrode the window-sill of the ground floor, put the silver into his
knapsack, threw away the basket, crossed the garden, leaped over the
wall like a tiger, and fled.




CHAPTER XII—THE BISHOP WORKS


The next morning at sunrise Monseigneur Bienvenu was strolling in his
garden. Madame Magloire ran up to him in utter consternation.

“Monseigneur, Monseigneur!” she exclaimed, “does your Grace know where
the basket of silver is?”


“Yes,” replied the Bishop.

“Jesus the Lord be blessed!” she resumed; “I did not know what had
become of it.”


The Bishop had just picked up the basket in a flower-bed. He presented
it to Madame Magloire.

“Here it is.”