Les Misérables, v. 5/5: Jean Valjean
Page 62
CHAPTER IV.
ATTRACTION AND EXTINCTION.
During the last months of spring and the early months of summer,1833, the scanty passers-by in the Marais, the shop-keepers, and theidlers in the door-ways, noticed an old gentleman, decently dressed inblack, who every day, at nearly the same hour in the evening, left theRue de l'Homme Armé, in the direction of the Rue Sainte Croix de laBretonnerie, passed in front of the Blancs Manteaux, reached the RueCulture Sainte Catharine, and on coming to the Rue de l'Écharpe, turnedto his left and entered the Rue St. Louis. There he walked slowly, withhead stretched forward, seeing nothing, hearing nothing, with his eyeincessantly fixed on a spot which always seemed his magnet, and whichwas nought else than the corner of the Rue des Filles du Calvaire.The nearer he came to this corner the more brightly his eye flashed;a sort of joy illumined his eyeballs, like an internal dawn; he had afascinated and affectionate air, his lips made obscure movements asif speaking to some one whom he could not see, he smiled vaguely, andhe advanced as slowly as he could. It seemed as if, while wishing toarrive, he was afraid of the moment when he came quite close. When hehad only a few houses between himself and the street which appeared toattract him, his step became so slow that at moments he seemed not tobe moving at all. The vacillation of his head and the fixedness of hiseye suggested the needle seeking the pole. However he might delay hisarrival, he must arrive in the end; when he reached the corner of theRue des Filles du Calvaire, he trembled, thrust his head with a speciesof gloomy timidity beyond the corner of the last house, and looked intothis street, and there was in this glance something that resembled thebedazzlement of the impossible and the reflection of a closed paradise.Then a tear, which had been gradually collecting in the corner of hiseyelashes, having grown large enough to fall, glided down his cheeks,and sometimes stopped at his mouth. The old man tasted its bitterflavor. He stood thus for some minutes as if he were of stone; thenreturned by the same road, at the same pace, and the farther he gotaway the more lustreless his eye became.
By degrees this old man ceased going as far as the corner of the Ruedes Filles du Calvaire; he stopped half-way in the Rue St. Louis:at times a little farther off, at times a little nearer. One day hestopped at the corner of the Rue Culture Sainte Catharine and gazedat the Rue des Filles du Calvaire from a distance; then he silentlyshook his head from right to left, as if refusing himself something,and turned back. Ere long he did not reach even the Rue St Louis; hearrived at the Rue Pavie, shook his head, and turned back; then he didnot go beyond the Rue des Trois Pavilions; and then he did not passthe Blancs Manteaux. He seemed like a clock which was not wound up, andwhose oscillations grow shorter and shorter till they stop. Every dayhe left his house at the same hour, undertook the same walk but did notfinish it, and incessantly shortened it, though probably unconscious ofthe fact. His whole countenance expressed this sole idea, Of what goodis it? His eyes were lustreless, and there was no radiance in them. Thetears were also dried up; they no longer collected in the corner of hiseyelashes, and this pensive eye was dry. The old man's head was stillthrust forward; the chin moved at times, and the creases in his thinneck were painful to look on. At times, when the weather was bad, hehad an umbrella under his arm, which he never opened. The good women ofthe district said, "He is an innocent," and the children followed himwith shouts of laughter.