by Victor Hugo
"My most respectful homage to Monsieur and Madame Pabourgeot,
"GENFLOT, _man of letters._
"P.S. If it was only forty sous. I appologize for sending my daughter,and not paying my respects personaly, but sad reasons of dress do notallow me, alas! to go out."
Marius then opened the last letter, which was addressed "To theBenevolent gentleman of the church of St. Jacques du Haut-pas," and itcontained the following few lines:--
"BENEVOLENT MAN,--If you will dain to accompany my daughter you willwitness a misserable calamity, and I will show you my certificates.
"At the sight of these dokuments your generous soul will be movedby a feeling of sensitive benevolence, for true philosophers alwaysexperience lively emotions.
"Allow, compasionate man, that a man must experience the most cruelwant, and that it is very painful to obtain any relief, by having itattested by the authorities, as if a man were not at liberty to sufferand die of inanicion, while waiting till our missery is releaved. Fateis too cruel to some and too lavish or protecting for others. I awaityour presence or your offering, if you dain to make one, and I beg youto believe in the grateful feelings with which I have the honor ofbeing, really magnamious sir,
"Your very humble, and most obedient servant, "P. FABANTOU, _dramaticartist."_
After reading these four letters Marius did not find himself muchmore advanced than before. In the first place not one of the writersgave his address; and next they appeared to come from four differentindividuals,--"Don Alvarez, Madame Balizard, the poet Genflot, and thedramatic artist Fabantou;" but these letters offered this peculiarity,that they were all in the same handwriting. What could be concludedfrom this, save that they came from the same person? Moreover--and thisrendered the conjecture even more probable--the paper, which was coarseand yellow, was the same for all four, the tobacco smell was the same,and though an attempt had evidently been made to vary the handwriting,the same orthographical mistakes were reproduced with the most profoundtranquillity, and Genflot, the man of letters, was no more exempt fromthem than the Spanish captain. To strive and divine this mystery wastime thrown away, and if he had not picked it up it would have lookedlike a mystification; Marius was too sad to take kindly even a jestof accident, and lend himself to a game which the street pavementappeared desirous to play with him. He felt as if he were playing atblind-man's-buff among these four letters and they were mocking him.Nothing, besides, indicated that these letters belonged to the girlswhom Marius had met in the boulevard. After all they were papersevidently of no value. Marius returned them to the envelope, threw thelot into a corner, and went to bed.
At about seven in the morning he had got up and breakfasted, and wastrying to set to work, when there came a gentle tap at the door. As hepossessed nothing he never took out his key, except very rarely when hehad a pressing job to finish. As a rule, even when out, he left the keyin the lock. "You will be robbed," said Mame Bougon. "Of what?" Mariusasked. It is a fact, however, that one day a pair of old boots werestolen, to the great triumph of Mame Bougon. There was a second knock,quite as gentle as the first.
"Come in," said Marius.
The door opened.
"What is the matter, Mame Bougon?" Marius continued, without taking hiseyes off the books and manuscripts on his table.
A voice which was not Mame Bougon's replied,--"I beg your pardon, sir."
It was a hollow, cracked, choking voice,--the voice of an old man,rendered hoarse by dram-drinking and exposure to the cold. Mariusturned sharply and noticed a girl.
CHAPTER IV.
A ROSE IN WRETCHEDNESS.
A very young girl was standing in the half-open door. The sky-light,through which light entered, was exactly opposite the door, and threwupon this face a sallow gleam. She was a pale, wretched, fleshlesscreature, and had only a chemise and a petticoat upon her shivering andfrozen nudity. For waist-belt she had a piece of string, for head-dressanother; pointed shoulders emerged from her chemise; she was of ayellow lymphatic pallor, cadaverous collar-bones, hands red, mouth halfopen and degraded, with few teeth, the eye was sunken and hollow, andshe had the outline of an abortive girl and the look of a corrupted oldwoman, or fifty years blended with fifteen. She was one of those beingswho are at once weak and horrible, and who make those shudder whom theydo not cause to weep.
Marius had risen, and was gazing with a species of stupor at thisbeing, who almost resembled the shadows that traverse dreams. What wasmost crushing of all was, that this girl had not come into the world tobe ugly, and in her childhood she must even have been pretty. The graceof youth was still struggling with the hideous and premature senilityof debauchery and poverty. A remnant of beauty was expiring on thiscountenance of sixteen, like the pallid sun which dies out under thefrightful clouds on the dawn of a winter's day. This face was notabsolutely strange to Marius, and he fancied that he had already seenit somewhere.
"What do you want, miss?" he asked.
The girl replied, with her drunken galley-slave's voice,--
"It is a letter for you, Monsieur Marius."
She addressed him by name, and hence he could not doubt but that shehad business with him; but who was this girl, and how did she knowhis name? Without waiting for any authority, she walked in, walked inboldly, looking around her with a sort of assurance that contracted theheart, at the whole room and the unmade bed. Her feet were bare, andlarge holes in her petticoat displayed her long legs and thin knees.She was shivering, and held in her hand a letter, which she offeredto Marius. On opening the letter, he noticed that the large, clumsywafer was still damp, which proved that the missive had not come a longdistance, and he read:--
"MY AMIABLE NEIGHBOR AND YOUNG SIR,--I have herd of your kindness tome, and that you paid my half-year's rent six months ago. I bless youfor it, young sir. My eldest daughter will tell you that we have beenwithout a morsel of bread for two days,--four persons, and my wife ill.If I am not deseived in my opinion, I dare to hope that your generousheart will be affected by this statement, and will subject you to thedesire to be propicious to me, by daining to lavish on me a triflingcharity,
"I am, with the distinguished consideration which is due to thebenefactors of humanity,
"JONDRETTE.
"P. S. My daughter will wait for your orders, my dear Monsieur Marius."
This letter, in the midst of the obscure adventure which had beentroubling Marius since the previous evening, was like a candle in acellar; all was suddenly lit up. This letter came from where the otherletters came. It was the same handwriting, the same style, the sameorthography, the same paper, and the same tobacco smell. They werefive letters, five stories, five names, five signatures, and only onewriter. The Spanish captain Don Alvarez, the unhappy mother Balizard,the dramatic author Genflot, and the old comedian Fabantou, were allfour Jondrette, if, indeed, Jondrette's name were really Jondrette.
During the lengthened period that Marius had lived in this house, hehad, as we stated, but rare occasions to see, or even catch a glimpseof, his very low neighbors; His mind was elsewhere, and where the mindis there is the eye. He must have passed the Jondrettes more thanonce in the passage and on the stairs, but they were to him merelyshadows. He had paid so little attention to them, that on the previousevening he had run against the Jondrette girls on the boulevard withoutrecognizing them, for it was evidently they, and it was with greatdifficulty that the girl, who had just entered the room, arousedin him, through disgust and pity, a vague fancy that he had met hersomewhere before.
Now he saw everything clearly. He comprehended that his neighborJondrette had hit upon the trade in his distress of working upon thecharity of benevolent persons, that he procured addresses and wroteunder supposititious names, to people whom he supposed to be rich andcharitable, letters which his children delivered at their risk andperil, for this father had attained such a stage that he hazardedhis daughters; he was gambling with destiny and staked them. Mariuscomprehended that, in all probability, judging from their flight o
f theprevious evening, their panting, their terror, and the slang words heoverheard, these unfortunates carried on some other dark trades, andthe result of all this was, in the heart of human society such as it isconstituted, two wretched beings, who were neither children, nor girls,nor women, but a species of impure and innocent monsters, which werethe produce of wretchedness; melancholy beings without age, name, orsex, to whom neither good nor evil is any longer possible, and who, onemerging from childhood, have nothing left in the world, not liberty,nor virtue, nor responsibility; souls that expanded yesterday and arefaded to-day, like the flowers which have fallen in the street and areplashed by the mud while waiting till a wheel crushes them.
While Marius was bending on the young girl an astonished and painfulglance, she was walking about the garret with the boldness of aspectre, and without troubling herself in the slightest about herstate of nudity. At some moments her unfastened and torn chemise fellalmost to her waist. She moved the chairs about, disturbed the toilettearticles on the chest of drawers, felt Marius's clothes, and rummagedin every corner.
"Why," she said, "you have a looking-glass!"
And she hummed, as if she had been alone, bits of vaudeville songs andwild choruses, which her guttural and hoarse voice rendered mournful.But beneath this boldness there was something constrained, alarmed, andhumiliated, for effrontery is a disgrace. Nothing could well be moresad than to see her fluttering about the room with the movement of abroken-winged bird startled by a dog. It was palpable that with otherconditions of education and destiny, the gay and free demeanor of thisgirl might have been something gentle and charming. Among animals, thecreature born to be a dove is never changed into an osprey; that isonly possible with men. Marius was thinking, and left her alone, andshe walked up to the table.
"Ah!" she said, "books."
A gleam darted from her glassy eye: she continued, and her accentexpressed the attitude of being able to boast of something to which nohuman creature is insensible,--
"I know how to read."
She quickly seized the book lying on the table, and read ratherfluently,--
"General Bauduin received orders to carry with the five battalions ofhis brigade the Château of Hougomont, which is in the centre of theplain of Waterloo--"
She broke off.
"Ah, Waterloo, I know all about that. It was a battle in which myfather was engaged, for he served in the army. We are thoroughBonapartists, we are. Waterloo was fought against the English."
She laid down the book, took up a pen, and exclaimed, "And I can write,too."
She dipped the pen in the ink, and turned to Marius, saying,--
"Would you like a proof? Stay, I will write a line to show you."
And ere he had time to answer she wrote on a sheet of white paper inthe middle of the table, "_Here are the slops_." Then throwing down thepen, she added,--
"There are no errors in spelling, as you can see, for my sister and Iwere well educated. We have not always been what we are now, we werenot made--"
Here she stopped, fixed her glassy eye on Marius, and burst into alaugh, as she said, with an intonation which contained every possibleagony, blended with every possible cynicism,--
"Bah!"
And then she began humming these words, to a lively air,--
"J'ai faim, mon père, Pas de fricot. J'ai froid, ma mère, Pas de tricot. Grelotte, Lolotte! Sanglote, Jacquot!"
She had scarce completed this verse, ere she exclaimed,--
"Do you ever go to the play, Monsieur Marius? I do so. I have a brotherwho is a friend of the actors, and gives me tickets every now and then.I don't care for the gallery much, though, for you are so squeezed up;at times too there are noisy people there, and others who smell bad."
Then she stared at Marius, gave him a strange look, and said to him,--
"Do you know, M. Marius, that you are a very good-looking fellow!"
And at the same moment the same thought occurred to both, which madeher smile and him blush. She walked up to him, and laid a hand uponhis shoulder,--"You don't pay any attention to me, but I know you,M. Marius. I meet you here on the staircase, and then I see you gointo the house of the one called Father Mabœuf, who lives over atAusterlitz, sometimes when I go that way. Your curly hair becomes youvery well."
Her voice tried to be very soft, and only succeeded in being very low;a part of her words was lost in the passage from the larynx to thelips, as on a piano-forte some keys of which are broken. Marius hadgently recoiled.
"I have a packet," he said, with his cold gravity, "which, I believe,belongs to you. Allow me to deliver it to you."
And he handed her the envelope which contained the four letters; sheclapped her hands and said,--
"We looked for it everywhere."
Then she quickly seized the parcel and undid the envelope, whilesaying,--
"Lord of Lords! how my sister and I did look for it! And so you foundit,--on the boulevard, did you not? It must have been there. You see,it was dropped while we were running, and it was my brat of a sisterwho was such an ass. When we got home we could not find it, and as wedid not wish to be beaten,--which is unnecessary, which is entirelyunnecessary, which is absolutely unnecessary,--we said at home thatwe had delivered the letters, and that the answer was Nix! And hereare the poor letters! Well, and how did you know that they were mine?Ob, yes, by the writing. So, then, it was you that we ran against lastnight? We could not see anything, and I said to my sister, 'Is it agentleman?' and she answered, 'Yes, I think it is a gentleman.'"
While saying this she had unfolded the petition addressed "To theBenevolent gentleman of the church of St. Jacques du Haut-pas."
"Hilloh!" she said, "this is the one for the old swell who goes toMass. Why, 't is just the hour, and I will carry it to him. He willperhaps give us something for breakfast."
Then she burst into a laugh, and added,--
"Do you know what it will be if we breakfast to-day? We shall have ourbreakfast of the day before yesterday, our dinner of the day beforeyesterday, our breakfast of yesterday, our dinner of yesterday, all atonce this morning. Well, hang it all! if you are not satisfied, rot,dogs!"
This reminded Marius of what the hapless girl had come to get fromhim; he fumbled in his waistcoat, but found nothing. The girl went on,and seemed speaking as if no longer conscious of the presence of Marius.
"Sometimes I go out at night. Sometimes I do not come home. Before wecame here last winter we lived under the arches of the bridges, andkept close together not to be frozen. My little sister cried. How sadthe water is! When I thought of drowning myself, I said, 'No, it istoo cold,' I go about all alone when I like, and sleep at times inditches. Do you know, at night, when I walk along the boulevard, I seetrees like forks, I see black houses as tall as the towers of NotreDame, I fancy that the white walls are the river, and I say to myself,'Why, there is water!' The stars are like illumination lamps, and youmight say that they smoke, and the wind puts them out I feel stunned,as if my hair was lashing my ears; however the night may be, I hearbarrel-organs and spinning machinery, but what do I know? I fancy thatstones are being thrown at me, and I run away unconsciously, for allturns round me. When you have not eaten it is funny."
And she gazed at him with haggard eyes.
After feeling in the depths of all his pockets, Marius succeeded ingetting together five francs sixteen sous; it was at this momentall that he possessed in the world. "Here is my to-days dinner," hethought, "and to-morrow will take care of itself." He kept the sixteensous, and gave the girl the five-franc piece, which she eagerlyclutched.
"Good!" she said, "there is sunshine."
And, as if the sunshine had the property of melting in her brainavalanches of slang, she went on,--
"Five francs! a shiner! a monarch! in this crib! that's stunning! Well,you 're a nice kid, and I do the humble to you. Two days' drink and abully feed,--a feast; we 're well fixed. Hurrah, pals!"
She pulled her che
mise up over her shoulders, gave Marius a deepcourtesy and a familiar wave of the hand, and walked toward the door,saying,--
"Good day, sir; but no matter, I'll go and find my old swell."
As she passed she noticed on the drawers an old crust of dry breadmouldering in the dust; she caught it up, and bit into it savagely,grumbling,--
"It is good, it is hard; it breaks my teeth!"
Then she left the room.
CHAPTER V.
A PROVIDENTIAL PEEP-HOLE.
Marius had lived for the past five years in poverty, want, and evendistress, but he now saw that he had never known what real misery was,and he had just witnessed it; it was the phantom which bad just passedbefore him. For, in truth, he who has only seen man's misery has seennothing, he must see woman's misery; while he who has seen woman'smisery has seen nothing, for he must see the misery of the child. Whenman has reached the last extremity he has also reached the limit ofhis resources; and then, woe to the defenceless beings that surroundhim! Work, wages, bread, fire, courage, and food will all fail him atonce; the light of day seems extinguished outside, the moral light isextinguished within him. In these shadows man comes across the weaknessof the wife and the child, and violently bends them to ignominy.
In such a case every horror is possible, and despair is surrounded bythin partitions which all open upon vice and crime. Health, youth,honor, the sacred and retiring delicacy of the still innocent flesh,the heart-virginity and modesty, that epidermis of the soul, arefoully clutched by this groping hand, which seeks resources, findsopprobrium, and puts up with it.