Les Misérables, v. 1/5: Fantine

by Victor Hugo

  CHAPTER IX.

  THE TRIAL.

  He advanced a step, closed the door mechanically after him, and gazedat the scene before him. It was a dimly-lighted large hall, at onemoment full of sounds, and at another of silence, in which all themachinery of a criminal trial was displayed, with its paltry andlugubrious gravity, in the midst of a crowd. At one of the ends ofthe hall, the one where he was, judges with a vacant look, in shabbygowns, biting their nails or shutting their eye-lids; barristers inall sorts of attitudes; soldiers with honest harsh faces; old stainedwainscoting, a dirty ceiling; tables covered with baize, which wasrather yellow than green; doors blackened by hands; pot-house sconcesthat produced more smoke than light, hanging from nails driven intothe wall; upon the tables brass candlesticks,--all was obscurity,ugliness, and sadness. But all this yet produced an austere and augustimpression, for the grand human thing called law, and the great divinething called justice, could be felt in it.

  No one in this crowd paid any attention to him, for all eyes convergedon a single point,--a wooden bench placed against a little door,along the wall on the left of the President; on this bench, whichwas illumined by several candles, sat a man between two gendarmes.This man was the man; he did not seek him, he saw him; his eyes wentthere naturally, as if they had known beforehand where that face was.He fancied he saw himself, aged, not absolutely alike in face, butexactly similar in attitude and appearance, with his bristling hair,with his savage restless eyeballs, and the blouse, just as he was onthe day when he entered D----, full of hatred, and concealing in hismind that hideous treasure of frightful thoughts which he had spentnineteen years in collecting on the pavement of the bagne. He said tohimself with a shudder, "My God! shall I become again like that?" Thisbeing appeared to be at least sixty years of age; he had somethingabout him rough, stupid, and startled. On hearing the sound of thedoor, persons made way for the new comer, the President had turned hishead, and guessing that the gentleman who had just entered was theMayor of M----, he bowed to him. The public prosecutor who had seenM. Madeleine at M----, whither his duties had more than once calledhim, recognized him and also bowed. He scarce noticed it, for he wasunder a species of hallucination; he was looking at a judge, a clerk,gendarmes, a number of cruelly curious faces,--he had seen all thisonce, formerly, seven-and-twenty years ago. These mournful things hefound again,--they were there, stirring, existing; it was no longer aneffort of his memory, a mirage of his mind; they were real gendarmes,real judges, a real crowd, and real men in flesh and bone. He saw allthe monstrous aspect of his past reappear, and live again around him,with all the terror that reality possesses. All this was yawning beforehim; he felt terrified, closed his eyes, and exclaimed in the depthsof his mind. Never! And by a tragic sport of fate which made all hisideas terrible and rendered him nearly mad, it was another himself whowas there. This man who was being tried everybody called Jean Valjean.He had before him an unheard-of vision, a species of representation ofthe most horrible moment of his life played by his phantom. All wasthere,--it was the same machinery, the same hour of the night, almostthe same faces of judges, soldiers, and spectators. The only differencewas that there was a crucifix over the President's head, which had beenremoved from the courts at the time of his condemnation. When he wastried God was absent. There was a chair behind him, into which he fell,terrified by the idea that people could see him. When he was seated hetook advantage of a pile of paste-board cases on the judges' desk tohide his face from the spectators. He could now see without being seen:he fully regained the feeling of the real, and gradually recovered. Heattained that phase of calmness in which a man can listen. MonsieurBamatabois was serving on the jury. He looked for Javert, but could notsee him, for the witnesses' bench was hidden by the clerk's table, andthen, as we have said, the court was hardly lighted.

  At the moment when he came in, the counsel for the defence was endinghis speech. The attention of all was excited to the highest pitch; forthree hours they had seen a man, a stranger, a species of miserablebeing, deeply stupid or deeply clever, being gradually crushed by theweight of a terrible resemblance. This man, as we know already, was avagabond who was found in a field, carrying a branch covered with ripeapples, which had been broken off a tree in a neighboring orchard. Whowas this man? Inquiries had been made, and witnesses heard; they wereunanimous, and light had flashed all through the trial. The accusationsaid,--"We have got hold not only of a fruit-stealer, a marauder,but we hold under our hand a bandit, a man who has broken his ban,an ex-convict, a most dangerous villain, a malefactor of the name ofJean Valjean, whom justice has been seeking for a long time, and who,eight years ago, on leaving Toulon, committed a highway robbery withviolence on a Savoyard lad, called Little Gervais, a crime providedfor by Article 383 of the penal code, for which we intend to prosecutehim hereafter, when the identity has been judicially proved. He hasjust committed a fresh robbery, and that is a case of relapse. Find himguilty of the new offence, and he will be tried at a later date forthe old one." The prisoner seemed highly amazed at this accusation andthe unanimity of the witnesses; he made gestures and signs intended todeny, or else looked at the ceiling. He spoke with difficulty, answeredwith embarrassment, but from head to foot his whole person denied.He was like an idiot in the presence of all these intellects rangedin battle-array round him, and like a stranger in the midst of thissociety which seized him. Still, a most menacing future was hangingover him; the probability of his being Jean Valjean increased with eachmoment, and the entire crowd regarded with greater anxiety than himselfthe sentence full of calamity which was gradually settling down on him.An eventuality even offered a glimpse of a death-penalty, should theidentity be proved, and he was hereafter found guilty of the attack onLittle Gervais. Who was this man? Of what nature was his apathy? Was itimbecility or cunning? Did he understand too much, or did he understandnothing at all? These questions divided the crowd, and the jury seemedto share their opinion. There was in this trial something terrific andsomething puzzling; the drama was not only gloomy, but it was obscure.

  The counsel for the defence had argued rather cleverly, in thatprovincial language which for a long time constituted the eloquenceof the bar, and which all barristers formerly employed, not only atParis but at Romorantin or Montbrison, and which at the present day,having become classical, is only spoken by public prosecutors, whomit suits through its serious sonorousness and majestic movements. Itis the language in which a husband is called a "consort;" a wife,a "spouse;" Paris, "the centre of the arts and of civilization;"the king, "the Monarch;" the bishop, a "holy Pontiff;" the publicprosecutor, the "eloquent interpreter of the majesty of the law;"the pleadings, the "accents which we have just heard;" the age ofLouis XIV., "the great age;" a theatre, the "temple of Melpomene;"the reigning family, the "august blood of our kings;" a concert, "amusical solemnity;" the general commanding in the department, "theillustrious warrior who, etc.;" the pupils of the seminary, "thosetender Levites;" the mistakes imputed to the newspapers, "the imposturewhich distils its venom in the columns of these organs," etc., etc.The barrister had, consequently, begun by explaining away the robberyof the apples,--rather a difficult thing in this grand style; butB?nigne Bossuet himself was obliged to allude to a fowl in the midstof a formal speech, and got out of the difficulty with glory. Thebarrister had established the fact that the apple robbery was notmaterially proved,--his client, whom, in his quality as defender, hepersistently called Champmathieu, had not been seen by any one scalinga wall or breaking the branch; he had been arrested with the branchin his possession, but he declared that he found it on the groundand picked it up. Where was the proof of the contrary? This branchhad been broken off and then thrown away by the frightened robber,for doubtless there was one. But where was the evidence that thisChampmathieu was a robber? Only one thing, his being an ex-convict.The counsel did not deny that this fact seemed unluckily proved. Theprisoner had lived at Faverolles; he had been a wood-cutter; the nameof Champmathieu might possibly be derived from Jean Mathieu;
lastly,four witnesses unhesitatingly recognized Champmathieu as the galleyslave, Jean Valjean. To these indications, to this testimony, thecounsel could only oppose his client's denial, which was certainlyinterested: but, even supposing that he was the convict Jean Mathieu,did that prove he was the apple-stealer? It was a presumption at themost, but not a proof. The accused, it was true,--and his counsel wasobliged "in his good faith" to allow it,--had adopted a bad system ofdefence; he insisted in denying everything,--not merely the robbery,but his quality as convict. A confession on the latter point would havedoubtless been better, and gained him the indulgence of his judges;the counsel had advised him to do so, but the prisoner had obstinatelyrefused, probably in the belief that he would save everything byconfessing nothing. This was wrong, but should not his scanty intellectbe taken into consideration? This man was visibly stupid: a long miseryat the galleys, a long wretchedness out of them, had brutalized him,etc., etc.; his defence was bad, but was that a reason to find himguilty? As for the offence on Little Gervais, the counsel need notargue that, as it was not included in the indictment. The counsel woundup by imploring the jury and the court, if the identity of Jean Valjeanappeared to them proved, to punish him as a criminal who had broken hisban, and not apply the fearful chastisement which falls on the relapsedconvict.

  The public prosecutor replied. He was violent and flowery, as publicprosecutors usually are. He congratulated the counsel for the defenceon his "fairness," and cleverly took advantage of it; he attackedthe prisoner with all the concessions which his counsel had made. Heappeared to allow that the prisoner was Jean Valjean, and he thereforewas so. This was so much gained for the prosecution, and could not becontested; and here, reverting cleverly to the sources and causes ofcriminality, the public prosecutor thundered against the immoralityof the romantic school, at that time in its dawn under the name ofthe "Satanic school," which the critics of the _Quotidienne_ and the_Oriflamme_ had given it; and he attributed, not without some show ofreason, the crime of Champmathieu, or to speak more correctly, of JeanValjean, to this perverse literature. These reflections exhausted,he passed to Jean Valjean himself. Who was this Jean Valjean? Herecame a description of Jean Valjean, a monster in human form, etc. Themodel of this sort of description will be found in the recitation ofTh?ram?ne, which is not only useful to tragedy but daily renders greatservices to judicial eloquence. The audience and the jury "quivered,"and when the description was ended, the public prosecutor went on, withan oratorical outburst intended to excite to the highest pitch theenthusiasm of the country papers which would appear the next morning."And it is such a man, etc., etc., etc., a vagabond, a beggar, havingno means of existence, etc., etc., etc., accustomed through his pastlife to culpable actions, and but little corrected by confinement inthe bagne, as is proved by the crime committed on little Gervais, etc.,etc., etc.,--it is such a man, who, found on the high road with theproof of robbery in his hand, and a few paces from the wall he hadclimbed over, denies the fact, the robbery, denies everything, even tohis name and his identity. In addition to a hundred proofs to which wewill not revert, four witnesses recognize him,--Javert, the uprightInspector of Police, and three of his old comrades in ignominy, theconvicts Brevet, Chenildieu, and Cochepaille. And what does he opposeto this crushing unanimity? He denies. What hardness of heart! But youwill do justice, gentlemen of the jury, etc., etc., etc."

  While the public prosecutor was speaking, the prisoner listened withopen mouth, and with a sort of amazement in which there was certainlysome admiration. He was evidently surprised that a man could speaklike this. From time to time, at the most energetic apostrophes, wheneloquence, unable to restrain itself, overflows in a flux of brandingepithets, and envelopes the prisoner in a tempest, he slowly moved hishead from right to left, and from left to right, in a sort of dumb andmelancholy protest, with which he had contented himself ever sincethe beginning of the trial. Twice or thrice the spectators standingnearest to him heard him say in a low voice: "All this comes from notasking Monsieur Baloup." The public prosecutor drew the attention ofthe jury to this dull attitude, which was evidently calculated, andwhich denoted, not imbecility, but skill, cunning, and the habit ofdeceiving justice, and which brought out in full light the "profoundperverseness" of this man. He concluded by reserving the affair ofLittle Gervais, and by demanding a severe sentence. The counsel forthe defence rose, began by complimenting the public prosecutor on his"admirable speech," and then replied as well as he could, but feebly;it was plain that the ground was giving way under him.