by Victor Hugo
He so determined, and pushed the door a third time, harder than before. This time a rusty hinge suddenly sent out into the darkness a harsh and prolonged creak.
Jean Valjean shivered. The noise of this hinge sounded in his ears as clear and terrible as the trumpet of the Judgment Day.
In the fantastic exaggeration of the first moment, he almost imagined that this hinge had become animate, and suddenly endowed with a terrible life; and that it was barking like a dog to warn everybody, and rouse the sleepers.
He stopped, shuddering and distracted, and dropped from his tiptoes to his feet. He felt the pulses of his temples beat like trip-hammers, and it appeared to him that his breath came from his chest with the roar of wind from a cavern. It seemed impossible that the horrible sound of this incensed hinge had not shaken the whole house with the shock of an earthquake: the door pushed by him had taken alarm, and had called out; the old man would arise, the two old women would scream; help would come; in a quarter of an hour the town would be alive with it, and the gendarmes in pursuit. For a moment he thought he was lost.
He stood still, petrified like the pillar of salt,o not daring to stir. Some minutes passed. The door was wide open; he ventured a look into the room. Nothing had moved. He listened. Nothing was stirring in the house. The noise of the rusty hinge had wakened nobody.
This first danger was over, but still he felt within him a frightful tumult. Nevertheless he did not flinch. Not even when he thought he was lost had he flinched. His only thought was to make an end of it quickly. He took one step and was inside.
A deep calm filled the chamber. Here and there indistinct, dim forms could be distinguished; which by day, were papers scattered over a table, open folios, books piled on a stool, an arm-chair with clothes on it, a prayer stool, but now were only dark corners and whitish spots. Jean Valjean advanced, carefully avoiding the furniture. At the further end of the room he could hear the regular, quiet breathing of the sleeping bishop.
Suddenly he stopped: he was near the bed, he had reached it sooner than he thought.
Nature sometimes joins her effects and her appearances to our acts with a sort of gloomy, intelligent appropriateness, as if she would compel us to reflect. For nearly a half hour a great cloud had darkened the sky. At the moment when Jean Valjean paused before the bed the cloud broke as if purposely, and a ray of moonlight crossing the high window, suddenly lighted up the bishop’s pale face. He slept tranquilly. He was almost entirely dressed, though in bed, on account of the cold nights of the lower Alps, with a dark woollen garment which covered his arms to the wrists. His head had fallen on the pillow in the unstudied attitude of slumber; over the side of the bed hung his hand, ornamented with the pastoral ring, and which had done so many good deeds, so many pious acts. His entire countenance was lit up with a vague expression of content, hope, and happiness. It was more than a smile and almost a radiance. On his forehead rested the indescribable reflection of an unseen light.p The souls of the upright in sleep have vision of a mysterious heaven.
A reflection from this heaven shone upon the bishop.
But it was also a luminous transparency, for this heaven was within him; this heaven was his conscience.
At the instant when the moonbeam overlay, so to speak, this inward radiance, the sleeping bishop appeared as if in a halo. But it was very mild, and veiled in an ineffable twilight. The moon in the sky, nature drowsing, the garden without a quiver, the quiet house, the hour, the moment, the silence, added something strangely solemn and unutterable to the venerable repose of this man, and enveloped his white locks and his closed eyes with a serene and majestic glory, this face where all was hope and confidence—this old man’s head and infant’s slumber.
There was something of divinity almost in this man, thus unconsciously august.
Jean Valjean was in the shadow with the iron drill in his hand erect, motionless, terrified, at this radiant figure. He had never seen anything comparable to it. This confidence filled him with fear. The moral world has no greater spectacle than this; a troubled and restless conscience on the verge of committing an evil deed, contemplating the sleep of a righteous man.
This sleep in this solitude, with a neighbour such as he, contained a touch of the sublime, which he felt vaguely but powerfully.
None could have told what was happening within him, not even himself To attempt to realise it, the utmost violence must be imagined in the presence of the most extreme mildness. In his face nothing could be distinguished with certainty. It was a sort of haggard astonishment. He saw it; that was all. But what were his thoughts; it would have been impossible to guess. It was clear that he was moved and agitated. But of what nature was this emotion?
He did not remove his eyes from the old man. The only thing which was plain from his attitude and his countenance was a strange indecision. You would have said he was hesitating between two realms, that of the doomed and that of the saved. He appeared ready either to cleave this skull, or to kiss this hand.
In a few moments he raised his left hand slowly to his forehead and took off his hat; then, letting his hand fall with the same slowness, Jean Valjean resumed his contemplations, his cap in his left hand, his club in his right, and his hair bristling on his fierce-looking head.
Under this frightful gaze the bishop still slept in profoundest peace.
The crucifix above the mantelpiece was dimly visible in the moonlight, apparently extending its arms towards both, with a blessing for the one and a pardon for the other.
Suddenly Jean Valjean put on his cap, then passed quickly, without looking at the bishop, along the bed, straight to the cupboard which he perceived near its head; he raised the drill to force the lock; the key was in it; he opened it; the first thing he saw was the basket of silver, he took it, crossed the room with hasty stride, careless of noise, reached the door, entered the oratory, took his stick, stepped out, put the silver in his knapsack, threw away the basket, ran across the garden, leaped over the wall like a tiger, and fled.q
10 (12)
THE BISHOP AT WORK
THE NEXT DAY AT SUNRISE, Monseigneur Bienvenu was walking in the garden. Madame Magloire ran towards him quite beside herself.
“Monseigneur, monseigneur,” cried she, “does your greatness know where the silver basket is?”
“Yes,” said the bishop.
“God be praised!” said she, “I did not know what had become of it.”
The bishop had just found the basket on a flower-bed. He gave it to Madame Magloire and said: “There it is.”
“Yes,” said she, “but there is nothing in it. The silver?”
“Ah!” said the bishop, “it is the silver then that troubles you. I do not know where that is.”
“Good heavens! it is stolen. That man who came last night stole it.”
And in the twinkling of an eye, with all the agility of which her age was capable, Madame Magloire ran to the oratory, went into the alcove, and came back to the bishop. The bishop was bending with some sadness over a cochlearia des Guillons, which the basket had broken in falling. He looked up at Madame Magloire’s cry:
“Monseigneur, the man has gone! the silver is stolen!”
While she was uttering this exclamation her eyes fell on an angle of the garden where she saw traces left by someone who had clambered over the wall. A capstone had been knocked down.
“See, there is where he got out; he jumped into Cochefilet lane. The abominable fellow! he has stolen our silver!”
The bishop was silent for a moment, then raising his serious eyes, he said mildly to Madame Magloire:
“Now first, did this silver belong to us?”
Madame Magloire did not answer; after a moment the bishop continued:
“Madame Magloire, I have for a long time wrongfully withheld this silver; it belonged to the poor. Who was this man? A poor man evidently.”
“Alas! alas!” returned Madame Magloire. “It is not on my account or mademoiselle’s; it is all the sam
e to us. But it is on yours, monseigneur. What is monsieur going to eat from now?”
The bishop looked at her with amazement:
“How so! have we no pewter plates?”
Madame Magloire shrugged her shoulders.
“Pewter smells bad.”
“Well, then, iron plates.”
Madame Magloire grimaced.
“Iron leaves a taste.”
“Well,” said the bishop, “then, wooden plates.”
In a few minutes he was breakfasting at the same table at which Jean Valjean sat the night before. While breakfasting, Monseigneur Bienvenu pleasantly remarked to his sister who said nothing, and Madame Magloire who was grumbling to herself, that there was really no need even of a wooden spoon or fork to dip a piece of bread into a cup of milk.
“Was there ever such an idea?” said Madame Magloire to herself, as she went backwards and forwards: “to take in a man like that, and to give him a bed beside him; and yet what a blessing it was that he did nothing but steal! Oh, my stars! it makes the chills run over me when I think of it!”
Just as the brother and sister were rising from the table, there was a knock at the door.
“Come in,” said the bishop.
The door opened. A strange, violent group appeared on the threshold. Three men were holding a fourth by the collar. The three men were gendarmes; the fourth Jean Valjean.
A brigadier of gendarmes, who appeared to head the group, was near the door. He advanced towards the bishop, giving a military salute.
“Monseigneur,” said he—
At this word Jean Valjean, who was sullen and seemed entirely cast down, raised his head with a stupefied air—
“Monseigneur!” he murmured, “then it is not the cure!”
“Silence!” said a gendarme, “it is monseigneur, the bishop.”
In the meantime Monsieur Bienvenu had approached as quickly as his great age permitted:
“Ah, there you are!” said he, looking towards Jean Valjean. “I am glad to see you. But! I gave you the candlesticks also, which are silver like the rest, and would bring two hundred francs. Why did you not take them along with your plates?”
Jean Valjean opened his eyes and looked at the venerable bishop with an expression which no human tongue could describe.
“Monseigneur,” said the brigadier, “then what this man said was true? We met him. He seemed to be running away, and we arrested him in order to see. He had this silver.”
“And he told you,” interrupted the bishop, with a smile, “that it had been given him by a good old priest with whom he had passed the night. I see it all. And you brought him back here? It is all a mistake.”
“If that is so,” said the brigadier, “we can let him go.”
“Certainly,” replied the bishop.
The gendarmes released Jean Valjean, who shrank back—
“Is it true that they let me go?” he said in a voice almost inarticulate, as if he were speaking in his sleep.
“Yes! you can go. Do you not understand?” said a gendarme.
“My friend,” said the bishop, “before you go away, here are your candlesticks; take them.”
He went to the mantelpiece, took the two candlesticks, and brought them to Jean Valjean. The two women beheld the action without a word, or gesture, or look, that might disturb the bishop.
Jean Valjean was trembling in every limb. He took the two candlesticks mechanically, and with a wild appearance.
“Now,” said the bishop, “go in peace. By the way, my friend, when you come again, you need not come through the garden. You can always come in and go out by the front door. It is closed only with a latch, day or night.”
Then turning to the gendarmes, he said:
“Messieurs, you can retire.” The gendarmes withdrew.
Jean Valjean felt like a man who is just about to faint.
The bishop approached him, and said, in a low voice:
“Forget not, never forget that you have promised me to use this silver to become an honest man.”
Jean Valjean, who had no recollection of this promise, stood confounded. The bishop had laid much stress upon these words as he uttered them. He continued, solemnly:
“Jean Valjean, my brother: you belong no longer to evil, but to good. It is your soul that I am buying for you. I am withdrawing it from dark thoughts and from the spirit of perdition, and I am giving it to God!”
11 (13)
PETIT GERVAIS
JEAN VALJEAN went out of the city as if he were escaping. He made all haste to get into the open country, taking the first lanes and bypaths that offered, without noticing that he was every moment retracing his steps. He wandered thus all the morning. He had eaten nothing, but he felt no hunger. He was the prey of a multitude of new sensations. He felt somewhat angry, he knew not against whom. He could not have told whether he were touched or humiliated. There came over him, at times, a strange relenting which he struggled with, and to which he opposed the hardening of his past twenty years. This condition wearied him. He saw, with disquietude, shaken within him that species of frightful calm which the injustice of his fate had given him. He asked himself what should replace it. At times he would really have liked better to be in prison with the gendarmes, and that things had not happened thus; that would have given him less agitation. Although the season was well advanced, there were yet here and there a few late flowers in the hedges, the odour of which, as it met him in his walk, recalled the memories of his childhood. These memories were almost unbearable, it was so long since they had occurred to him.
Inexpressible thoughts thus gathered in his mind the whole day.
As the sun was sinking towards the horizon, lengthening the shadow on the ground of the smallest pebble, Jean Valjean was seated behind a thicket in a large reddish plain, absolutely deserted. There was no horizon but the Alps. Not even the steeple of a village church. Jean Valjean might have been seven miles from D—. A by-path which crossed the plain passed a few steps from the thicket.
In the midst of this meditation, which would have heightened not a little the frightful effect of his rags to any one who might have met him, he heard a joyous sound.
He turned his head, and saw coming along the path a little Savoyard,r a dozen years old, singing, with his hurdygurdy at his side, and his cherrywood box on his back.
One of those pleasant and gay youngsters who go from place to place, with their knees sticking through their trousers.
Always singing, the boy stopped from time to time, and played at tossing up some pieces of money that he had in his hand, probably his whole fortune. Among them there was one forty-sous coin.
The boy stopped by the side of the thicket without seeing Jean Valjean, and tossed up his handful of sous; until this time he had skilfully caught the whole of them upon the back of his hand.
This time the forty-sous coin got away from him, and rolled towards the thicket, near Jean Valjean.
Jean Valjean put his foot upon it.
The boy, however, had followed the coin with his eye, and had seen where it went.
He was not frightened, and walked straight to the man.
It was an entirely solitary place. Far as the eye could reach there was no one on the plain or in the path. Nothing could be heard, but the faint cries of a flock of birds of passage, that were flying across the sky at an immense height. The child turned his back to the sun, which made his hair like threads of gold, and flushed the savage face of Jean Valjean with a lurid glow.
“Monsieur,” said the little Savoyard, with that childish confidence which is made up of ignorance and innocence, “my coin?”
“What is your name?” said Jean Valjean.
“Petit Gervais, monsieur.”
“Go away,” said Jean Valjean.
“Monsieur,” continued the boy, “give me my coin.”
Jean Valjean dropped his head and did not answer.
The child repeated:
“My coin, monsieur!”
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Jean Valjean’s eye remained fixed on the ground.
“My coin!” exclaimed the boy, “my white coin! my silver!”
Jean Valjean did not appear to understand. The boy took him by the collar of his smock and shook him. And at the same time he made an effort to move the big, iron-soled shoe which was placed upon his treasure.
“I want my coin! my forty-sous coin!”
The child began to cry. Jean Valjean raised his head. He still kept his seat. His look was troubled. He looked upon the boy with an air of wonder, then reached out his hand towards his stick, and exclaimed in a terrible voice: “Who is there?”
“Me, monsieur,” answered the boy. “Petit Gervais! me! me! give me back my forty sous, if you please! Take away your foot, monsieur, if you please!” Then becoming angry, small as he was, and almost threatening:
“Come, now, will you take away your foot? Why don’t you take away your foot?”
“Ah! you here yet!” said Jean Valjean, and rising hastily to his feet, without releasing the coin, he added: “You’d better run!”
The boy looked at him in terror, then began to tremble from head to foot, and after a few seconds of stupor, took to flight and ran with all his might without daring to turn his head or to utter a cry.
At a little distance, however, he stopped for want of breath, and Jean Valjean in his reverie heard him sobbing.
In a few minutes the boy was gone.
The sun had gone down.
The shadows were deepening around Jean Valjean. He had not eaten during the day; probably he had some fever.
He had remained standing, and had not changed his position since the child fled. His breathing came at long and unequal intervals. His eyes were fixed on a spot ten or twelve steps before him, and seemed to be studying with profound attention the form of an old piece of blue crockery that was lying in the grass. All at once he shivered; he began to feel the cold night air.
He pulled his cap down over his forehead, sought mechanically to fold and button his smock around him, stepped forward and stooped to pick up his stick.
At that instant he perceived the forty-sous coin which his foot had half buried in the ground, and which glistened among the pebbles. It was like an electric shock. “What is that?” said he, between his teeth. He drew back a step or two, then stopped without the power to withdraw his gaze from this point which his foot had covered the instant before, as if the thing that glistened there in the obscurity had been an open eye fixed upon him.