by Victor Hugo
Jean Valjean took Fantine’s head in his hands and arranged it on the pillow, as a mother would have done for her child, then fastened the string of her night-dress, and replaced her hair beneath her cap. This done, he closed her eyes.
The face of Fantine, at this instant, seemed strangely illumined.
Death is the entrance into the great light.
Fantine’s hand hung over the side of the bed. Jean Valjean knelt before this hand, raised it gently, and kissed it.
Then he rose, and, turning to Javert, said:
“Now, I am at your disposal.”
5
A FITTING TOMB
JAVERT put Jean Valjean in the city prison.
The arrest of Monsieur Madeleine produced a sensation, or rather an extraordinary commotion, at M——sur M——. We are sorry not to be able to disguise the fact that, on this single sentence, he was a galley slave, almost everybody abandoned him. In less than two hours, all the good he had done was forgotten, and he was “nothing but a galley slave.” It is fair to say that the details of the scene at Arras were not yet known. All day long, conversations like this were heard in every part of the town: “Don’t you know, he was a discharged convict!” “He! Who?” “The mayor.” “Bah! Monsieur Madeleine.” “Yes.” “Indeed!” “His name was not Madeleine; he has a horrid name, Béjean, Bojean, Bonjean!” “Oh! bless me!” “He has been arrested.” “Arrested!” “In prison, in the city prison to await his removal.” “His removal! where will he be taken?” “To the Circuit Court for a highway robbery that he once committed.” “Well! I always did suspect him. The man was too good, too perfect, too sweet. He refused the Legion of Honor, and gave money to every little blackguard he met. I always thought that there must be something bad at the bottom of all this.”
“Society,” especially, was entirely of this opinion.
An old lady, a subscriber to the Drapeau Blanc, made this remark, the depth of which it is almost impossible to fathom:
“I am not sorry for it. That will teach the Bonapartists!”
In this manner the phantom which had been called Monsieur Madeleine was dissipated at M——sur M——. Three or four persons alone in the whole city remained faithful to his memory The old portress who had been his servant was among the number.
On the evening of this same day, the worthy old woman was sitting in her lodge, still quite bewildered and sunk in sad reflections. The factory had been closed all day, the carriage ports were bolted, the street was deserted. There was no one in the house but the two nuns, Sister Perpétue and Sister Simplice, who were watching the corpse of Fantine.
Towards the time when Monsieur Madeleine had been accustomed to return, the honest portress rose mechanically, took the key of his room from a drawer, with the taper-stand that he used at night to light himself up the stairs, then hung the key on a nail from which he had been in the habit of taking it, and placed the taper-stand by its side, as if she were expecting him. She then seated herself again in her chair, and resumed her reflections. The poor old woman had done all this without being conscious of it.
More than two hours had elapsed when she started from her reverie and exclaimed, “Why, bless me! I have hung his key on the nail!”
Just then, the window of her box opened, a hand passed through the opening, took the key and stand, and lighted the taper at the candle which was burning.
The portress raised her eyes; she was transfixed with astonishment; a cry rose to her lips, but she stifled it.
She knew the hand, the arm, the coat-sleeve.
It was M. Madeleine.
She was speechless for some seconds, thunderstruck, as she said herself, afterwards, in giving her account of the affair.
“My God! Monsieur Mayor!” she exclaimed, “I thought you were—”
She stopped; the end of her sentence would not have been respectful to the beginning. To her, Jean Valjean was still Monsieur the Mayor.
He completed her thought.
“In prison,” said he. “I was there, I broke a bar from a window, let myself fall from the top of a roof, and here I am. I am going to my room; go for Sister Simplice. She is doubtless beside that poor woman.”
The old servant hastily obeyed.
He gave her no warning, very sure she would protect him better than he would protect himself.
It has never been known how he had succeeded in gaining entrance into the court-yard without opening the carriage port. He had, and always carried about him, a pass-key which opened a little side door, but he must have been searched, and this taken from him. This point is not yet cleared up.
He ascended the staircase which led to his room. On reaching the top, he left his taper stand on the upper stair, opened his door with little noise, felt his way to the window and closed the shutter, then came back, took his taper, and went into the chamber.
The precaution was not useless; it will be remembered that his window could be seen from the street.
He cast a glance about him, over his table, his chair, his bed, which had not been slept in for three days. There remained no trace of the disorder of the night before the last. The portress had “put the room to rights.” Only, she had picked up from the ashes and laid in order on the table, the ends of the weighted club, and the forty-sous coin, blackened by the fire.
He took a sheet of paper and wrote: These are the ends of my loaded club and the forty-sous coin stolen from Petit Gervais, of which I spoke at
the Court; then placed the two bits of iron and the piece of silver on the sheet in such a way that it would be the first thing perceived on entering the room. He took from a closet an old shirt which he tore into several pieces and in which he packed the two silver candlesticks. In all this there was neither haste nor agitation. And even while packing the bishop’s candlesticks, he was eating a piece of black bread. It was probably prison-bread, which he had brought away in escaping.
This has been established by crumbs of bread found on the floor of the room, when the court afterwards ordered a search.
Two gentle taps were heard at the door.
“Come in,” said he.
It was Sister Simplice.
She was pale, her eyes were red, and the candle which she held trembled in her hand. The shocks of destiny have this peculiarity; however subdued or disciplined our feelings may be, they draw out the human nature from the depths of our souls, and compel us to exhibit it to others. In the agitation of this day the nun had again become a woman. She had wept, and she was trembling.
Jean Valjean had written a few lines on a piece of paper, which he handed to the nun, saying: “Sister, you will give this to the curé.”
The paper was not folded. She cast her eyes on it.
“You may read it,” said he.
She read: “I beg Monsieur the Cure to take charge of all that I leave here. He will please defray therefrom the expenses of my trial, and of the burial of the woman who died this morning. The remainder is for the poor.”
The sister attempted to speak, but could scarcely stammer out a few inarticulate sounds. She succeeded, however, in saying:
“Does not Monsieur the Mayor wish to see this poor unfortunate again for the last time?”
“No,” said he, “I am pursued; I should only be arrested in her chamber; it would disturb her.”az
He had scarcely finished when there was a loud noise on the staircase. They heard a tumult of steps ascending, and the old portress exclaiming in her loudest and most piercing tones:
“My good sir, I swear to you in the name of God, that nobody has come in here the whole day, and the whole evening; that I have not even once been away from my door!”
A man replied: “But yet, there is a light in this room.”
They recognised the voice of Javert.
The chamber was so arranged that the door in opening covered the corner of the wall to the right. Jean Valjean blew out the taper, and placed himself in this corner.
Sister Simplice fell on
her knees near the table.
The door opened.
Javert entered.
The whispering of several men, and the protestations of the portress were heard in the hall.
The nun did not raise her eyes. She was praying.
The candle was on the mantel, and gave but a dim light.
Javert perceived the sister, and stopped abashed.
It will be remembered that the very foundation of Javert, his element, the medium in which he breathed, was veneration for all authority. He was perfectly homogeneous, and admitted of no objection, or restriction. To him, be it understood, ecclesiastical authority was the highest of all; he was devout, superficial, and correct, upon this point as upon all others. In his eyes, a priest was a spirit who was never mistaken, a nun was a being who never sinned. They were souls walled in from this world, with a single door which never opened but for the exit of truth.
On perceiving the sister, his first impulse was to retire.
But there was also another duty which held him, and which urged him imperiously in the opposite direction. His second impulse was to remain, and to venture at least one question.
This was the Sister Simplice, who had never lied in her life. Javert knew this, and venerated her especially on account of it.
“Sister,” said he, “are you alone in this room?”
There was a fearful instant during which the poor portress felt her limbs falter beneath her. The sister raised her eyes, and replied:
“Yes.”
Then continued Javert—“Excuse me if I persist, it is my duty—you have not seen this evening a person, a man—he has escaped and we are in search of him—Jean Valjean—you have not seen him?”
The sister answered—“No.”
She lied. Two lies in succession, one upon another, without hesitation, quickly, as if she were an adept in it.
“Your pardon!” said Javert, and he withdrew, bowing reverently.
Oh, holy maiden! for many years you have been no more in this world; you have joined the sisters, the virgins, and thy brethren, the angels, in glory; may this falsehood be credited to you in Paradise.
The sister’s assertion was to Javert something so decisive that he did not even notice the singularity of this taper, just blown out, and smoking on the table.
An hour afterwards, a man was walking rapidly in the darkness beneath the trees from M——sur M——in the direction of Paris. This man was Jean Valjean. It has been established, by the testimony of two or three waggoners who met him, that he carried a bundle, and was dressed in a smock. Where did he get this smock? It was never known. Nevertheless, an old artisan had died in the infirmary of the factory a few days before, leaving nothing but his smock. This might have been the one.
A last word in regard to Fantine.
We have all one mother—the earth. Fantine was restored to this mother. The cure thought best, and did well perhaps, to reserve out of what Jean Valjean had left, the largest amount possible for the poor. After all, who were in question?—a convict and a woman of the town. This was why he simplified the burial of Fantine, and reduced it to that bare necessity called the Potter’s field.
And so Fantine was buried in the common grave of the cemetery, which is for everybody and for all, and in which the poor are lost. Happily, God knows where to find the soul. Fantine was laid away in the darkness with bodies which had no name; she suffered the promiscuity of dust. She was thrown into the public pit. Her tomb was like her bed.
COSETTE
BOOK ONE WATERLOO
1
WHAT YOU MEET IN COMING FROM NIVELLES
Hugo describes himself revisiting the Battlefield of Waterloo, in Belgium, in 1861. There the English had defeated Napoleon for the last time, forcing him to surrender. Hugo recalls the details of the battle. He admires the bravery and gallantry of both sides. Napoleon was a great general facing Wellington, a mediocre one, but Providence wanted Napoleon’s tyranny to end so that democracy could progress throughout Europe. Many minor circumstances and unexpected setbacks led to the Emperor’s defeat.
Hugo recalls the daring cavalry charge in which Marius’s father, Baron and Colonel Pontmercy, fell into a concealed sunken road with his horse, to be buried beneath other horses and men. Their bodies arched over him, preventing him from being crushed. The robber Thenardier inadvertently revived him and thus saved his life while stripping his body of all valuables.
2 (19)
THE FIELD OF BATTLE AT NIGHT
WE RETURN, for it is a requirement of this book, to the fatal field of battle.
On the 18th of June, 1815, the moon was full. Its light favoured the ferocious pursuit of Blücher, disclosed the traces of the fugitives, delivered this helpless mass to the bloodthirsty Prussian cavalry, and aided in the massacre. Night sometimes lends such tragic assistance to catastrophe.
When the last gun had been fired the plain of Mont Saint Jean remained deserted.
The moon was an evil genius on this plain.
Towards midnight a man was prowling or rather crawling along the sunken road of Ohain. He was, to all appearance, one of those whom we have just described, neither English nor French, peasant nor soldier, less a man than a ghoul, attracted by the scent of the corpses, counting theft for victory, coming to rifle Waterloo. He was dressed in a workman’s smock which was in part an overcoat, was restless and daring, looking behind and before as he went. Who was this man? Night, probably, knew more of his doings than day! He had no knapsack, but evidently wide pockets under his overcoat. From time to time he stopped, examined the plain around him as if to see if he were observed, stooped down suddenly, stirred on the ground something silent and motionless, then rose up and skulked away. His gliding movement, his attitudes, his rapid and mysterious gestures, made him seem like those twilight spectres which haunt ruins and which the old Norman legends call the Goers.
Certain nocturnal water-birds make such motions in marshes.
An eye which had carefully penetrated all this haze, might have noticed at some distance, standing as it were concealed behind the ruin which is on the Nivelle road at the corner of the route from Mont Saint Jean to Braine l‘Alleud, a sort of little canteen owner’s waggon, covered with tarred osiers, harnessed to a famished jade browsing nettles through her bit, and in the waggon a sort of woman seated on some trunks and packages. Perhaps there was some connection between this waggon and the prowler.
The night was serene. Not a cloud was in the zenith. What mattered it that the earth was red, the moon retained her whiteness. Such is the indifference of heaven. In the meadows, branches of trees broken by grapeshot, but not fallen, and held by the bark, swung gently in the night wind. A breath, almost a respiration, moved the brushwood. There was a quivering in the grass which seemed like the departure of souls.
The tread of the patrols and sentries of the English camp could be heard dimly in the distance.
Hougomont and La Haie Sainte continued to burn, making, one in the east and the other in the west, two great flames, to which was attached, like a necklace of rubies with two carbuncles at its extremities, the cordon of bivouac fires of the English, extending in an immense semicircle over the hills of the horizon.
We have spoken of the catastrophe of the sunken road to Ohain. The heart almost sinks with terror at the thought of such a death for so many brave men.
There, where this terrible death-rattle had been, all was now silent. The cut of the sunken road was filled with horses and riders inextricably heaped together. Terrible entanglement. There were no longer slopes to the road; dead bodies filled it even with the plain and came to the edge of the banks like a well-measured bushel of barley. A mass of dead above, a river of blood below—such was this road on the evening of the 18th of June, 1815. The blood ran as far as the Nivelles road, and oozed through in a large pool in front of the abattis of trees, which barred that road, at a spot which is still shown. It was, it will be remembered, at the opposite point towards the road from Genap
pe, that the burying of the cuirassiers took place. The thickness of the mass of bodies was proportioned to the depth of the hollow road. Towards the middle, at a spot where it became shallower, over which Delord’s division had passed, this bed of death became thinner.
The night prowler which we have just introduced to the reader went in this direction. He ferreted through this immense grave. He looked about. He passed an indescribably hideous review of the dead. He walked with his feet in blood.
Suddenly he stopped.
A few steps before him, in the sunken road, at a point where the mound of corpses ended, from under this mass of men and horses appeared an open hand, lighted by the moon.
This hand had something upon a finger which sparkled: it was a gold ring. The man stooped down, remained a moment, and when he rose again there was no ring upon that hand.
He did not rise up precisely; he remained in a sinister and startled attitude, turning his back to the pile of dead, scrutinising the horizon, on his knees, all the front of his body being supported on his two fore-fingers, his head raised just enough to peep above the edge of the hollow road. The four paws of the jackal are adapted to certain actions.
Then, deciding upon his course, he arose.
At this moment he experienced a shock. He felt that he was held from behind.
He turned; it was the open hand, which had closed, seizing the lapel of his overcoat.
An honest man would have been frightened. This man began to laugh.
“Oh,” said he, “it’s only the dead man. I like a ghost better than a gendarme.”
However, the hand relaxed and let go its hold. Strength is soon exhausted in the tomb.