Les Miserables (abridged) (Barnes & Noble Classics Series)

by Victor Hugo

  “THE COPS ARE HERE.”

  An idea, a flash crossed Marius’ mind; that was the means which he sought; the solution of this dreadful problem which was torturing him, to spare the assassin and to save the victim. He knelt down upon his bureau, reached out his arm, caught up the sheet of paper, quietly detached a bit of plaster from the partition, wrapped it in the paper, and threw the whole through the crevice into the middle of the den.

  It was time. Thénardier had conquered his last fears, or his last scruples, and was moving towards the prisoner.

  “Something fell!” cried the Thénardiess.

  “What is it?” said the husband.

  The woman had sprung forward, and picked up the piece of plaster wrapped in the paper. She handed it to her husband.

  “How did this come in?” asked Thénardier.

  “Egad!” said the woman, “how do you suppose it got in? It came through the window.”

  “I saw it pass,” said Bigrenaille.

  Thénardier hurriedly unfolded the paper, and held it up to the candle.

  “It is Eponine’s writing. The devil!”

  He made a sign to his wife, who approached quickly, and he showed her the line written on the sheet of paper; then he added in a hollow voice:

  “Quick! the ladder! leave the meat in the trap, and clear the camp!”

  “Without cutting the man’s throat?” asked the Thénardiess.

  “We have not the time.”

  “Which way?” inquired Bigrenaille.

  “Through the window,” answered Thénardier. “As Ponine threw the stone through the window, that shows that the house is not watched on that side.”

  The mask with the ventriloquist’s voice laid down his big key, lifted both arms into the air, and opened and shut his hands rapidly three times, without saying a word. This was like the signal to clear the decks in a fleet. The brigands, who were holding the prisoner, let go of him; in the twinkling of an eye, the rope ladder was unrolled out of the window, and firmly fixed to the casing by the two iron hooks.

  The prisoner paid no attention to what was passing about him. He seemed to be dreaming or praying.

  As soon as the ladder was fixed, Thénardier cried:

  “Come, old lady!”

  And he rushed towards the window.

  But as he was stepping out, Bigrenaille seized him roughly by the collar.

  “No way, old joker! after us.”

  “After us!” howled the bandits.

  “You are children,” said Thénardier. “We are losing time. The fuzz is at our heels.”

  “Well,” said one of the bandits, “let us draw lots who shall go out first.”

  Thénardier exclaimed:

  “Are you fools? are you cracked? You are a mess of bunglers! Losing time, isn’t it? drawing lots, isn’t it? with a wet finger! for the short straw! write our names! put them in a cap!—”

  “Would you like my hat?” cried a voice from the door.

  They all turned round. It was Javert.

  He had his hat in his hand, and was holding it out smiling.

  20 (21)

  THE VICTIMS SHOULD ALWAYS BE ARRESTED FIRST

  JAVERT, at nightfall, had posted his men and hid himself behind the trees on the Rue de la Barrière des Gobelins, which fronts the Gorbeau tenement on the other side of the boulevard. He commenced by opening “his pocket,” to put into it the two young girls, who were charged with watching the approaches to the den. But he only “bagged” Azelma. As for Eponine, she was not at her post; she had disappeared and he could not take her. Then Javert held off, and listened for the signal agreed upon. The going and coming of the fiacre made him very anxious. At last, he became impatient, and, sure that there was a nest there, sure of being “in good luck,” having recognised several of the bandits who had gone in, he finally decided to go up without waiting for the pistol shot.

  It will be remembered that he had Marius’ pass-key.

  He had come at the right time.

  The frightened bandits rushed for the weapons which they had thrown down anywhere when they had attempted to escape. In less than a second, these seven men, terrible to look upon, were grouped in a posture of defence; one with his pole-axe, another with his key, a third with his club, the others with the shears, the pincers, and the hammers, Thénardier grasping his knife. The Thénardiess seized a huge paving-stone which was in the corner of the window, and which served her daughters for a stool.

  Javert put on his hat again, and stepped into the room, his arms folded, his cane under his arm, his sword in its sheath.

  “Halt there,” said he. “You will not pass out through the window, you will pass out through the door. It is less unwholesome. There are seven of you, fifteen of us. Don’t let us collar you like peasants. Let’s be nice.”

  Bigrenaille took a pistol which he had concealed under his smock, and put it into Thénardier’s hand, whispering in his ear:

  “It is Javert. I dare not fire at that man. Dare you?”

  “Damn right!” answered Thénardier.

  “Well, fire.”

  Thénardier took the pistol, and aimed at Javert.

  Javert, who was within three paces, looked at him steadily, and contented himself with saying:

  “Don’t fire, now! It will flash in the pan.”

  Thénardier pulled the trigger. The pistol flashed in the pan.

  “I told you so!” said Javert.

  Bigrenaille threw his tomahawk at Javert’s feet.

  “You are the emperor of the devils! I surrender.”

  “And you?” asked Javert of the other bandits.

  They answered:

  “We, too.”

  Javert replied calmly:

  “That is it, that is well, I said so, we’re being nice.”

  “I only ask one thing,” said Bigrenaille, “that is, that I shan’t be refused tobacco while I am in solitary.”

  “Granted,” said Javert.

  And turning round and calling behind him: “Come in now!”

  A squad of sergents de ville with drawn swords, and officers armed with axes and clubs, rushed in at Javert’s call. They bound the bandits. This crowd of men, dimly lighted by a candle, filled the den with shadow.

  “Handcuffs on all!” cried Javert.

  “Come on, then!” cried a voice which was not a man’s voice, but of which nobody could have said: “It is the voice of a woman.”

  The Thénardiess had intrenched herself in one of the corners of the window, and it was she who had just uttered this roar.

  The sergents de ville and officers fell back.

  She had thrown off her shawl, but kept on her hat; her husband, crouched down behind her, was almost hidden beneath the fallen shawl, and she covered him with her body, holding the paving-stone with both hands above her head with the poise of a giantess who is going to hurl a rock.

  “Take care!” she cried.

  They all crowded back towards the hall. A wide space was left in the middle of the garret.

  The Thénardiess cast a glance at the bandits who had allowed themselves to be tied, and muttered in a harsh and guttural tone:

  “The cowards!”

  Javert smiled, and advanced into the open space which the Thénardiess was watching with all her eyes.

  “Don’t come near! get out,” cried she, “or I will crush you!”

  “What a grenadier!” said Javert; “mother, you have a beard like a man, but I have claws like a woman.”

  And he continued to advance.

  The Thénardiess, her hair flying wildly and terrible, braced her legs, bent backwards, and threw the paving-stone wildly at Javert’s head. Javert stooped, the stone passed over him, hit the wall behind, from which it knocked down a large piece of the plastering, and returned, bounding from corner to corner across the room, luckily almost empty, finally stopping at Javert’s heels.

  At that moment Javert reached the Thénardier couple. One of his huge hands fell upon the
shoulder of the woman, and the other upon her husband’s head.

  “The handcuffs!” cried he.

  The police officers returned in a body, and in a few seconds Javert’s order was executed.

  The Thénardiess, completely crushed, looked at her manacled hands and those of her husband, dropped to the floor and exclaimed, with tears in her eyes:

  “My daughters!”

  “They are provided for,” said Javert.

  Meanwhile the officers had found the drunken fellow who was asleep behind the door, and shook him. He awoke stammering.

  “Is it over, Jondrette?”

  “Yes,” answered Javert.

  The six manacled bandits were standing; however, they still retained their spectral appearance, three blackened, three masked.

  “Keep on your masks,” said Javert.

  And, passing them in review with the eye of a Frederic II at parade at Potsdam, he said to the three “chimney doctors:”

  “Good day, Bigrenaille. Good day, Brujon. Good day, Deux Milliards.”

  Then, turning towards the three masks, he said to the man with the pole-axe:

  “Good day, Gueulemer.”

  And to the man of the cudgel:

  “Good day, Babet.”

  And to the ventriloquist:

  “Your health, Claquesous.”

  Just then he perceived the prisoner of the bandits, who, since the entrance of the police, had not uttered a word, and had held his head down.

  “Untie monsieur!” said Javert, “and let nobody go out.”

  This said, he sat down with authority before the table, on which the candle and the writing materials still were, drew a stamped sheet from his pocket, and commenced his procès verbal.

  When he had written the first lines, a part of the formula, which is always the same, he raised his eyes:

  “Bring forward the gentleman whom these gentlemen had bound.”

  The officers looked about them.

  “Well,” asked Javert, “where is he now?”

  The prisoner of the bandits, M. Leblanc, M. Urbain Fabre, the father of Ursula, or the Lark, had disappeared.

  The door was guarded, but the window was not. As soon as he saw that he was unbound, and while Javert was writing, he had taken advantage of the disturbance, the tumult, the confusion, the darkness, and a moment when their attention was not fixed upon him, to leap out of the window.

  An officer ran to the window, and looked out; nobody could be seen outside.

  The rope ladder was still trembling.

  “The devil!” said Javert, between his teeth, “that must have been the best one.”

  THE EPIC ON THE RUE SAINT-DENIS AND THE IDYLL OF THE RUE PLUMET

  BOOK ONE A FEW PAGES OF HISTORY

  1

  WELL CUT

  THE YEARS 1831 AND 1832, the two years immediately connected with the Revolution of July, are one of the most peculiar and most striking periods in history. These two years, among those which precede and those which follow them, are like two mountains. They have revolutionary grandeur. In them we discern precipices. In them the social masses, the very strata of civilisation, the consolidated group of superimposed and cohering interests, the venerable profile of the old French formation, appear and disappear at every instant through the stormy clouds of systems, passions, and theories. These appearances and disappearances have been named resistance and movement. At intervals we see truth gleaming forth, that daylight of the human soul.

  This remarkable period is short enough, and is beginning to be far enough from us, so that it is henceforth possible to catch its principal outlines.

  We will make the endeavour.

  The Restoration had been one of those intermediate phases, hard to define, in which there are fatigue, buzzings, murmurs, slumber, tumult, and which are nothing more nor less than a great nation making a temporary halt. These periods are peculiar, and deceive the politicians who would take advantage of them. At first, the nation asks only for repose; men have but one thirst, for peace; they have but one ambition, to be little. That is a translation of being quiet. Great events, great fortunes, great ventures, great men, thank God, they have seen enough of them; they have been submerged in them. They would exchange Cæsar for Prusias, and Napoleon for the king of Yvetot. “What a good little king he was!” They have walked since daybreak, it is the evening of a long, hard day; they made the first relay with Mirabeau, the second with Robespierre, the third with Bonaparte, they are thoroughly exhausted. Every one of them asks for a bed.

  Devotions wearied, heroisms grown old, ambitions sated, fortunes made, all seek, demand, implore, solicit, what? A place to lie down? They have it. They take possession of peace, quietness, and leisure; they are content. At the same time, however, certain facts arise, compel recognition, and knock at the door on their side, also. These facts have sprung from revolutions and wars; they exist, they live, they have a right to instal themselves in society, and they do instal themselves; and the most of the time the facts are pioneers and quartermasters that merely prepare a bivouac for principles.

  Then, this is what appears to the political philosopher.

  At the same time that weary men demand repose, accomplished facts demand guarantees. Guarantees to facts are the same thing as repose to men.

  This is what England demanded of the Stuarts after the Protector; this is what France demanded of the Bourbons after the empire.

  These guarantees are a necessity of the times. They must be accorded. The princes “grant” them, but in reality it is the force of circumstances which gives them. A profound truth, and a piece of useful knowledge, of which the Stuarts had no suspicion in 1662, and of which the Bourbons had not even a glimpse in 1814.

  The predestined family which returned to France when Napoleon fell, had the fatal simplicity to believe that it was it that gave, and that what it had given it could take back; that the house of Bourbon possessed Divine Right, that France possessed nothing, and that the political rights conceded in the Charter of Louis XVIII were only a branch of the divine right, detached by the house of Bourbon and graciously given to the people until such day as it should please the king to take it back again. Still, by the regret which the gift cost them, the Bourbons should have felt that it did not come from them.

  They were surly with the nineteenth century. They made a sour face at every development of the nation. To adopt a commonplace word, that is to say, a popular and a true one, they looked glum. The people saw it.

  They believed that they were strong, because the empire had been swept away before them like a stage set. They did not perceive that they themselves had been brought in in the same way. They did not see that they also were in that hand which had taken off Napoleon.ea

  They believed that they were rooted because they were the past. They were mistaken; they were a portion of the past, but the whole past was France. The roots of French society were not in Bourbons but in the nation. These obscure, undying roots did not constitute the right of a family, but the history of a people. They were everywhere except under the throne.

  The house of Bourbon was to France the illustrious and bloodstained knot of her history, but it was not the principal element of her destiny, or the essential basis of her politics. She could do without the Bourbons; she had done without them for twenty-two years; there had been a break; they did not suspect it. And how should they suspect it, they who imagined that Louis XVII reigned on the 9th of Thermidor, and that Louis XVIII reigned on the day of Marengo.eb Never, since the beginning of history, have princes been so blind in the presence of facts, and of the portion of divine authority which facts contain and promulgate. Never had that earthly pretension which is called the right of kings, denied the divine right to such an extent.

  A capital error which led that family to lay its hand upon the guarantees “granted” in 1814, upon the concessions, as it called them. Sad thing! what they called their concessions were our conquests; what they called our encroachments w
ere our rights.1

  When its hour seemed come, the Restoration, supposing itself victorious over Bonaparte, and rooted in the country, that is to say, thinking itself strong and thinking itself deep, made up its mind and risked its throw.ec One morning it rose in the face of France, and, lifting up its voice, it denied the collective title and the individual title, sovereignty to the nation, liberty to the citizen. In other words, it denied to the nation what made it a nation, and to the citizen what made him a citizen.

  This is the essence of those famous acts which are called the ordinances of July.

  The Restoration fell.

  It fell justly. We must say, however, that it had not been absolutely hostile to all forms of progress. Some grand things were done in its presence.

  Under the Restoration the nation became accustomed to discussion with calmness, which was wanting in the republic; and to grandeur in peace, which was wanting in the empire. France, free and strong, had been an encouraging spectacle to the other peoples of Europe. The Revolution had had its say under Robespierre; the cannon had had its say under Bonaparte; under Louis XVIII and Charles X intelligence in its turn had a chance to speak. The wind ceased, the torch was relighted. The pure light of mind was seen trembling upon the serene summits. A magnificent spectacle, instructive and charming. For fifteen years there were seen at work, in complete peace, and openly in public places, these great principles, so old to the thinker, so new to the statesman: equality before the law, freedom of conscience, freedom of speech, freedom of the press, the accessibility of every talent to every employment. This went on thus until 1830. The Bourbons were an instrument of civilisation, which broke in the hands of Providence.

  The fall of the Bourbons was full of grandeur, not on their part but on the part of the nation. They left the throne with gravity, but without authority; their descent into the night was not one of those solemn disappearances which leave a dark emotion to history; it was neither the spectral calmness of Charles I, nor the eagle cry of Napoleon. They went away, that is all. They laid off the crown, and did not keep the halo. They were worthy, but they were not august. They fell short, to some extent, of the majesty of their misfortune. Charles X, during the voyage from Cherbourg, having a round tableed cut into a square table, appeared more solicitous of imperilled etiquette than of the falling monarchy. This pettiness saddened the devoted men who loved them, and the serious men who honoured their race. The people, for its part, was wonderfully noble. The nation, attacked one morning by force and arms, by a sort of royal insurrection, felt so strong that it had no anger. It defended itself, restrained itself, put things into their places, the government into the hands of the law, the Bourbons into exile, alas! and stopped. It took the old king, Charles X, from under that dais which had sheltered Louis XIV, and placed him gently on the ground. It touched the royal personages sadly and with precaution. It was not a man, it was not a few men, it was France, all France, France victorious and intoxicated with her victory, seeming to remember herself, and putting in practice before the eyes of the whole world these grave words of Guillaume du Vair after the day of the barricades: “It is easy for those who are accustomed to gather the favours of the great, and to leap, like a bird, from branch to branch, from a grievous to a flourishing fortune, to show themselves bold towards their prince in his adversity; but to me the fortune of my kings will always be venerable, and principally when they are in distress.”