Les Miserables (Movie Tie-in) (9781101612774)

by Hugo, Victor; Donougher, Christine (TRN)

  The place was the tavern at the end of the Rue de Chauffaut. The stranger paused for a moment at the window to peer inside at a low-ceilinged room lighted by a small table-lamp and the glow of a large fire. Some men were drinking while the host warmed himself at the fire, over which a stewpot bubbled hanging from a pot-hook.

  There are two entrances to this tavern, which is also a species of hostelry, one giving on to the street and the other on to a small yard with a midden. The stranger did not venture to use the front entrance. He went into the yard, hesitated again, then diffidently raised the latch and pushed upon the door.

  ‘Who’s that?’ asked the innkeeper.

  ‘Someone looking for a meal and a bed.’

  ‘Then come in. We can give you both.’

  He entered and the heads turned to gaze at him as he stood between the light of the lamp and the light of the fire. They watched in silence while he unloosed his knapsack.

  ‘There’s a stew cooking,’ the innkeeper said. ‘Come and warm yourself, friend.’

  The man sat down by the hearth, stretching out his tired feet to the blaze. A pleasant smell rose from the stewpot. What could be seen of his face under the low-peaked cap conveyed a vague impression of well-being mingled with that other poignant aspect which comes of habitual suffering. In other respects it was a strong face, vigorous and melancholy; and it contained a strange contradiction, appearing at first sight humble but then seeming masterful. The eyes under heavy brows shone like fire under a thicket.

  But one of the company was a fish-merchant who on his way to the tavern had put his horse in Labarre’s stable. As chance would have it, he had met this ill-favoured stranger that morning on the road between Bras d’Asse and some other village of which I forget the name. The man, who already seemed tired, had asked to be allowed to get up behind him, a request which the fishmonger had answered by digging his spurs into his horse. The fishmonger was one of the group which half an hour previously had clustered round Jacquin Labarre, and he had there told the story of this encounter. He now made a covert sign to the innkeeper, who went over to him. They exchanged a few words in an undertone while the stranger sat lost in thought.

  Returning to his fireside, the host tapped the man on the shoulder and said:

  ‘You must clear out of here.’

  The stranger looked up and said gently: ‘So you know?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘They turned me out of the other inn.’

  ‘You’re being turned out of this one.’

  ‘But where am I to go?’

  ‘Somewhere else.’

  The man picked up his stick and knapsack and left.

  Some boys who had followed him from the Croix-de-Colbas, and had evidently been waiting for him to emerge, flung stones at him as he did so. He swung round angrily brandishing his stick, and they scattered like a flock of birds.

  He came to the prison. A bell-chain hung by the doorway and he pulled it. A panel in the door slid back.

  ‘Monsieur,’ said the man, removing his cap, ‘will you be so kind as to let me in and give me lodging for the night?’

  ‘This is a prison, not an inn,’ said the voice of the door-keeper. ‘If you want to be let in you must get yourself arrested.’ The panel closed.

  The stranger moved on into a narrow street where there were a great many gardens, some enclosed only by hedges, to give it a cheerful appearance. Among the gardens and hedges was a small, one-storeyed house with a lighted window. Peering through this window as he had done at the tavern he saw a large, whitewashed room containing a bed draped with printed calico, a cradle standing in a corner, a few wooden chairs and a double-barrelled shotgun hanging on the wall. A table was laid in the middle of the room, and the light from a brass lamp fell upon a cloth of coarse white linen, a pewter jug shining like silver and filled with wine, and a steaming earthenware tureen. A man of about forty with an open, amiable face was seated at the table dancing a small child on his knee while near to him sat a young woman suckling an infant. Father and child were laughing, while the mother smiled.

  The stranger stayed for a moment thoughtfully contemplating this pleasant scene. Only he could have said what he was thinking. He may well have reflected that so happy a household might also be hospitable, and that where there was so much gaiety there might also be a little charity.

  He tapped very gently on the window-pane but was not heard.

  He tapped a second time and heard the wife say to her husband: ‘I think there’s someone knocking.’

  ‘It’s nothing,’ said the man.

  He tapped a third time, and now the husband rose, picked up the lamp and opened the door.

  He was a tall man, part peasant, part craftsman, wearing a large leather apron attached over his left shoulder, in the bulge of which were a hammer, an old handkerchief, a powder-horn, and a variety of other objects, held in place by his belt, so that it constituted a loose pocket. He carried his head high, and his open shirt-front disclosed a powerful, untanned neck. He had thick eyebrows, bushy black side-whiskers, prominent eyes and, above all, that air of being in his own place which cannot be described in words.

  ‘Forgive me, Monsieur,’ said the stranger. ‘If I pay you, will you give me a plate of soup and allow me to sleep in the shed in your garden? Will you do this, Monsieur? If I pay?’

  ‘Who are you?’ asked the master of the house.

  ‘I have come from Puy-Moisson. I’ve been walking all day. Can you do this for me? If I pay?’

  ‘I wouldn’t refuse shelter to any decent man who can pay. But why don’t you go to an inn?’

  ‘There are no rooms.’

  ‘What? But this isn’t market-day. Have you tried Labarre?’

  ‘Yes, I went there.’

  ‘Well?’

  The stranger said awkwardly: ‘I don’t know. He wouldn’t have me.’

  ‘What about the other place – Rue de Chauffaut?’

  The stranger’s embarrassment increased. He muttered: ‘He wouldn’t take me in either.’

  A look of mistrust appeared on the peasant-face. The man’s gaze travelled slowly over the stranger and suddenly he exclaimed with a sort of shudder: ‘Are you the man – ?’

  After a final glance he stepped rapidly backward, set the lamp on the table and took his gun down from the wall. At the words, ‘Are you the man –?’, the woman had gathered the two children into her arms and now stood behind her husband, her bosom uncovered, staring with horrified eyes at the stranger while she murmured in the patois of the hill-country, ‘Tsomaraude, brigand’.

  All this happened in less time than it takes to tell. After examining the stranger for a moment as though he were some kind of wild beast the master of the house returned to the door, gun in hand, and said:

  ‘Clear out!’

  ‘I beseech you,’ said the stranger. ‘A glass of water.’

  ‘A bullet’s what you’ll get,’ said the man.

  He slammed the door and sounds of the shooting of bolts, the closing of shutters and the clang of an iron bar falling into its slot could be heard from outside.

  Night was closing in and the cold alpine wind was blowing. By the last gleam of daylight the stranger saw, in one of the gardens flanking the lane, a sort of hut which looked as though it had been made of turfs. Clambering resolutely over a low wooden fence he went to examine it. It had a very low, narrow doorway and seemed to be one of those temporary shelters which road-workers put up. This was what he assumed it to be.

  He was cold and famished. Hunger he was resigned to, but here at least was some protection against the cold. Places of this sort were not generally occupied at night. Lying flat on his stomach he wriggled inside. It was warm, and there was a bedding of straw. For a moment he lay motionless, too exhausted to move. Then, finding his knapsack uncomfortable, and since in any case it would serve him as a pillow, he began to unbuckle its straps. At this moment he heard a fierce sound of growling and, looking up, saw the head of a lar
ge bull-mastiff outlined against the faint light beyond the entrance.

  The hut was a dog-kennel.

  The man was himself vigorous and formidable. Grasping his stick and using the knapsack as a shield he fought his way out, not without further damage to his tattered clothes. He beat a retreat with his stick outthrust in the defensive posture known to fencers as la rose couverte. When at length, and not without difficulty, he had got back over the fence and found himself again in the lane, alone and shelterless, driven out of a dog-kennel, he sank rather than seated himself on a stone by the roadside, and it seems that a passerby heard him cry aloud:

  ‘I’m not even a dog!’

  Presently he got up and walked on, leaving the town behind, hoping to find a tree or hayrick which would serve him for the night. He walked for some time with his head bowed, but eventually, when he felt himself to be remote from all human habitation, he paused to look about him. He was in a field and before him was a hillock covered with the stubble of the recent harvest, so that it looked like a shaven head.

  The horizon was very dark, not only with the darkness of night but also with low cloud which seemed to emanate from the hillock itself and, rising, to fill the sky. At the same time, since the moon was not yet risen and there was still a last, faint glimmer of twilight, the clouds formed a pallid vault reflecting this light back to earth.

  The earth was thus more brightly illumined than the heavens, producing a strangely sinister effect, and the sparse outline of the hillock loomed mistily and bleakly against a shadowed horizon. The whole scene was ugly, mean, desolate, and drab. There was no object in the field or on the hillock except a single misshapen tree rustling its branches a few yards from where the outcast stood.

  Clearly he was a man largely lacking in those finer sensibilities which cause the spirit to respond to the mysteries of nature; nevertheless that prospect of sky and plain, the hillock and the tree, was so profoundly desolating that after standing a few moments in motionless contemplation he turned abruptly away. There are times when nature seems hostile.

  He went back to Digne, of which the gates were now shut. In 1815 Digne was still enclosed by the walls and square towers which had sustained sieges during the wars of religion, although these have since been demolished. Passing through a breach in the ramparts he re-entered the town.

  The time was about eight. Being unfamiliar with the streets he resumed his haphazard wanderings, passing by the Prefecture and the Seminary. As he crossed the cathedral square he shook his fist at the church.

  There is a printing works at one corner of the square. It was here that the proclamations of the Emperor and the Imperial Guard to the army, brought from Elba and dictated by Napoleon himself, were first printed. Exhausted and with no further hope the outcast stretched himself on a stone bench by the doorway of this establishment.

  An elderly lady who came out of the cathedral at this moment saw him lying there and asked, ‘What are you doing?’

  He answered roughly and angrily:

  ‘My good woman, you can see what I’m doing. I’m sleeping here.’

  The good woman, who indeed merited the designation, was the Marquise de R—.

  ‘On this bench?’ she asked.

  ‘I’ve slept for nineteen years on a wooden mattress,’ the man said. ‘Now it’s stone.’

  ‘Were you a soldier?’

  ‘Yes – a soldier.’

  ‘Why don’t you go to an inn?’

  ‘Because I haven’t any money.’

  ‘Alas,’ said Madame de R—, ‘I have only four sous in my purse.’

  ‘That’s better than nothing.’

  The man took the four sous and Madame de R— said:

  ‘It’s not enough to pay for lodging at an inn. But have you tried everything? You can’t possibly spend the night here. You must be cold and hungry. Someone would surely take you in out of charity.’

  ‘I’ve knocked at every door.’

  ‘You really mean –?’

  ‘I’ve been turned away everywhere.’

  The lady touched his arm and pointed across the square to a small house beside the bishop’s palace.

  ‘Have you really knocked at every door?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Have you knocked at that one?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Then do.’

  II

  Prudence urged upon wisdom

  That evening the Bishop of Digne, after returning from his customary walk through the town, had stayed late in his own room. He was busy with a large work on Christian Duty which, alas, was never completed. The book, which was to be a careful survey of all that the learned Fathers and Doctors have said upon this weighty matter, was to be divided in two parts, treating first the duties of the community as a whole and secondly of the duties of the individual according to the category to which he belonged. The duties of the community are major duties and St Matthew has resolved them into four: duty to God, duty to self, duty to one’s neighbour, duty to all living creatures. As for the more particular duties, the bishop had found these defined and prescribed elsewhere. The duties of monarchs and their subjects were dealt with in the Epistle to the Romans; those of magistrates, wives, mothers, and young men by St Peter; those of husbands, fathers, children, and servants in the Epistle to the Ephesians; those of the Faithful in the Epistle to the Hebrews and those of virgins in the Epistle to the Corinthians. He was engaged in the laborious task of reassembling these prescriptions in a harmonious whole for the good of all men’s souls.

  At eight o’clock that evening he was still at work, writing rather uncomfortably on small slips of paper with a large volume open on his knees, when Mme Magloire entered as usual to get the silver cutlery out of the cupboard by the bed. A few minutes later the bishop, suspecting that the table was laid and that his sister might be waiting, closed his book and went into the dining-room. It was a rectangular room with a fireplace, a door giving directly on to the street, as we have said, and a window opening on to the garden.

  Mme Magloire had just finished laying the table and was chatting with Mlle Baptistine before serving the meal. A lamp stood on the table, which was near the hearth where a fire was burning. The two women, both over sixty, may readily be pictured – Mme Magloire short, plump, and lively; Mlle Baptistine mild, slender, and fragile, a little taller than her brother, clad in a dress of the plum-coloured silk that had been fashionable in 1806, the year she had bought it in Paris, and which she had been wearing ever since. To borrow one of those popular expressions which have the merit that they say more in a word than can be achieved by a page of writing, Mme Magloire had the look of a peasant and Mlle Baptistine that of a lady. Mme Magloire wore a white cap with piping, a small gold cross at her neck (the only article of feminine jewellery in the house), a very white kerchief emerging from her dress of black homespun with its wide, short sleeves, which was tied at the waist with a green ribbon, and a stomacher of the same material fixed with two pins in front. On her feet she wore thick shoes and yellow stockings of the kind worn by the women of Marseilles. Mlle Baptistine’s dress was cut in the 1806 pattern, high and narrow-waisted, with puffed shoulders, tabs, and buttons. She hid her grey hair under a curled peruke of the kind called à l’enfant. Mme Magloire had a look of bright intelligence and warmth of heart; the uneven corners of her mouth, with its upper lip thicker than the lower, gave an impression of imperious obstinacy. While the bishop remained silent she would address him with a forthright mingling of respect and familiarity, but directly he spoke she lapsed, like her mistress, into mute obedience. Mlle Baptistine talked very little, being content to obey and acquiesce. Even as a girl she had not been pretty, with her large, overprominent blue eyes and her long, pinched nose. She had been predestined to meekness, but faith, hope and charity, those virtues that enrich the soul, had raised meekness to saintliness. Nature had made her a lamb, religion had made her an angel of goodness.

  Mlle Baptistine was later to tell the story of tha
t night’s events so often that there are persons still living who can recall its every detail. At the moment when the bishop entered the dining-room Mme Magloire was talking with some vehemence to her mistress about a matter which constantly occupied her mind and with which her master was well acquainted, namely, the fastening of the front door. It seemed that while she had been out shopping for the evening meal she had heard rumours. There was talk of a stranger in the town, a vagabond of forbidding aspect who must still be lurking in the streets, which made it inadvisable for anyone to be out late that night; the more so since the police service was not all it should be owing to bad blood between the prefect and the mayor, each of whom would be glad to make trouble for the other. In short the prudent citizen would do well to see after his own safety by shuttering and barricading his house and making sure that his front door was securely locked.

  Mme Magloire laid particular stress on those last words, but the bishop, whose own room was rather cold, had sat down to warm himself by the fire and paid no attention. Accordingly she repeated them, and Mlle Baptistine, wishing to support her without vexing her brother, said cautiously:

  ‘Brother, did you hear what Mme Magloire said?’

  ‘Only vaguely,’ said the bishop. He half turned with his hands on his knees and smiled at the old servant with the glow of firelight on his friendly, cheerful face. ‘Well now, what is it? Do I understand that we are in some grave danger?’

  Mme Magloire told the story again, instinctively elaborating it. The man was a gipsy, a ne’er-do-well, a dangerous beggar. He had tried to get a lodging with Jacquin Labarre, who had turned him away. He had arrived by way of the Boulevard Gassendi and had been seen wandering about the streets in the mist, a man with a knapsack and a terrible look on his face.

  ‘Really?’ said the bishop.

  Encouraged by this show of interest, which suggested that the bishop shared something of her alarm, Mme Magloire continued triumphantly: