Les Miserables (Movie Tie-in) (9781101612774)

by Hugo, Victor; Donougher, Christine (TRN)

  ‘Yes, Monseigneur, that kind of man. Something dreadful will happen tonight, everyone says so. When you think of the state of the police, and a town buried in the mountains like this with not a single lantern in the streets so that it’s black as pitch when you go out … Well, what I say, and Mademoiselle agrees with me –’

  ‘I am saying nothing,’ murmured Mademoiselle. ‘Whatever my brother does is right.’

  Mme Magloire ignored the interruption.

  ‘What we both say is that this house is not safe and that, if Monseigneur permits, I should go round to Paulin Musebois, the locksmith, and ask him to put back the bolts on the front door. We have them here, it wouldn’t take him a minute. I say the door should be bolted, even if it’s only for tonight, and anyway it’s a shocking thing for the door to be simply on the latch so that any stranger can walk in, to say nothing of Monseigneur’s habit of always inviting people in, even at midnight, gracious Heaven, they don’t even need to ask, and when you think –’

  At this moment there was a heavy knock on the door.

  ‘Come in,’ said the bishop.

  III

  The gallantry of absolute obedience

  The door opened. It was flung widely open, as though in response to a vigorous and determined thrust. A man entered.

  We know the man already. He stepped across the threshold and then stood motionless with the door still open behind him. His knapsack hung from his shoulder and his stick was in his hand. The firelight falling on his face disclosed an expression of exhaustion, desperation, and brutish defiance. He was an ugly and terrifying spectacle.

  Mme Magloire was too startled even to exclaim. She stood trembling and open-mouthed. Mlle Baptistine half rose in alarm but then, as she turned towards her brother, her face recovered its customary tranquillity.

  The bishop was calmly regarding the stranger. He opened his mouth to speak, but before he could do so the man, leaning on his stick with both hands and gazing round at the three elderly people, said in a harsh voice:

  ‘Look. My name is Jean Valjean. I’m a convict on parole. I’ve done nineteen years in prison. They let me out four days ago and I’m on my way to Pontarlier. I’ve walked from Toulon in four days and today I covered a dozen leagues [about thirty miles]. When I reached this place I went to an inn and they turned me out because of my yellow ticket-of-leave which I’d shown at the Mairie as I’m obliged to do. I tried another inn and they told me to clear out. Nobody wants me anywhere. I tried the prison and the doorkeeper wouldn’t open. I crawled into a dog-kennel and the dog bit me and drove me out just as if he were a man and knew who I was. I thought I’d sleep in a field under the stars, but there weren’t any stars and it looked as though it was going to rain, and no God to stop it raining, so I came back here hoping to find a doorway to sleep in. I lay down on a bench in the square outside and a good woman pointed to your door and told me to knock on it. So I’ve knocked. What is this place? Is it an inn? I’ve got money. I’ve got one hundred and nine francs and fifteen sous, the money I earned by nineteen years’ work in prison. I’m ready to pay, I don’t care how much, I’ve got the money. I’m very tired, twelve leagues on foot, and I’m hungry. Will you let me stay?’

  ‘Mme Magloire,’ said the bishop, ‘will you please lay another place.’

  The man moved nearer to the light of the table-lamp, seeming not to understand.

  ‘It’s not like that,’ he said. ‘Weren’t you listening? I’m a convict, a felon, I’ve served in the galleys.’ He pulled a sheet of yellow paper out of his pocket and unfolded it. ‘This is my ticket-of-leave – yellow, as you see. That’s why everybody turns me away. Do you want to read it? I can read. There were classes in prison for anyone who wanted to learn. You can see what it says – “Jean Valjean, released convict, born in –” not that that matters “– served nineteen years, five years for robbery with violence, fourteen years for four attempts to escape – a very dangerous man.” So there you are. Everybody kicks me out. Will you take me in? Is this an inn? Can you give me food and a bed for the night? Have you a stable?’

  ‘Mme Magloire,’ said the bishop, ‘you must put clean sheets on the bed in the alcove.’

  We have already described the absolute obedience of the two women. Mme Magloire went off without a word.

  The bishop turned to the man.

  ‘Sit down and warm yourself, Monsieur. Supper will very soon be ready, and the bed can be made up while you’re having a meal.’

  And now the man had really understood. His face, which had been so hard and sombre, was suddenly and remarkably transformed by an expression of amazement, incredulity and pleasure. He began to babble like a child.

  ‘You really mean it? You’ll let me stay? A convict – and you aren’t turning me out! You called me “Monsieur”. “Clear off, you dog,” is what they mostly say. I thought you’d be bound to send me away, that’s why I told you at once who I was. I’m grateful to the good lady who sent me here. Supper and a bed, with a mattress and sheets! It’s nineteen years since I slept in a bed. Well, I’ve got the money, I’m ready to pay. May I ask your name, sir? I’ll pay whatever you ask. You’re a good man. You are an innkeeper, aren’t you?’

  ‘I’m a priest,’ said the bishop, ‘and this is where I live.’

  ‘A priest! But a good priest. So you won’t ask for payment. I suppose you’re the curé of this great church. But of course! I’m stupid. I hadn’t noticed your cap.’

  He had put his knapsack and stick in a corner while he was speaking, and after returning the yellow document to his pocket he sat down. Mlle Baptistine was looking kindly at him.

  ‘You’re human, Monsieur le curé,’ he went on. ‘You don’t despise people. A good priest is a fine thing. So I don’t need to pay anything?’

  ‘No,’ said the bishop, ‘keep your money. How much did you say – a hundred and nine francs?’

  ‘And fifteen sous.’

  ‘And how long did it take you to earn it?’

  ‘Nineteen years.’

  ‘Nineteen years!’ The bishop sighed profoundly.

  ‘I’ve still got it all,’ the man said. ‘All I’ve spent in these four days is twenty-five sous I earned by helping to unload some carts in Grasse. As you’re a priest I may tell you that we had an almoner in the prison. And once I saw a bishop – a Monseigneur, as they say. He was from Marseilles. A bishop’s a priest who’s higher than the other priests, not that I’ve any need to tell you that, but for us it’s all so strange, for men like me. He said mass at an altar in the prison yard and he had a sort of pointed hat on his head, gold, it glittered in the sun at midday. We were drawn up in ranks on three sides of the yard, with the guns pointing at us, fuses lighted. We couldn’t see him very well. He talked, but he was too far off and we couldn’t hear. That’s what a bishop’s like.’

  The bishop had risen while he was speaking to shut the door, which had remained wide open. Mme Magloire came back into the room with the additional cutlery.

  ‘Put them as near as possible to the fire, Mme Magloire,’ the bishop said. He turned to his guest. ‘The night wind is raw in the Alps. You must be cold, Monsieur.’

  Each time he uttered the word ‘Monsieur’ in his mild, companionable voice the man’s face lighted up. The courtesy, to the exconvict, was like fresh water to a shipwrecked man. Ignominy thirsts for respect.

  ‘This lamp doesn’t give much light,’ the bishop said.

  Perceiving what he had in mind, Mme Magloire fetched the two silver candlesticks from his bedroom mantelpiece, lit them and set them on the table.

  ‘Monsieur le curé,’ said the man, ‘you are very good. You don’t despise me. You have taken me in and lighted your candles for me. But I have not concealed from you where I come from and what I am.’

  The bishop, seated at his side, laid a hand gently on his arm.

  ‘You need have told me nothing. This house is not mine but Christ’s. It does not ask a man his name but whether he is in need.
You are in trouble, you are hungry and thirsty, and so you are welcome. You need not thank me for receiving you in my house. No one is at home here except those seeking shelter. Let me assure you, passer-by though you are, that this is more your home than mine. Everything in it is yours. Why should I ask your name? In any case I knew it before you told me.’

  The man looked up with startled eyes. ‘You know my name?’

  ‘Of course,’ said the bishop. ‘Your name is brother.’

  ‘Monsieur le curé,’ the man cried, ‘I was famished when I came in here. Now I scarcely know what I feel. Everything has changed.’

  The bishop was regarding him. ‘You have suffered a great deal,’ he said.

  ‘Well, yes – the red smock, the ball-and-chain, a plank to sleep on, heat, cold and hard labour, the galleys and the lash. The double-chain for a trifle, solitary for a single word. Chained even when you’re sick in bed. And the dogs – well, they’re better off than we were. Nineteen years of it. I’m forty-six. And now a yellow ticket. That’s the story.’

  ‘Yes. You have come from an unhappy place. But listen. There is more rejoicing in Heaven over the tears of one sinner who repents than over the white robes of a hundred who are virtuous. If you leave your place of suffering with hatred in your heart, and anger against men, you will be deserving of our pity; but if you leave with goodwill, in gentleness and peace, you will have risen above any of us.’

  Mme Magloire had meanwhile dished up the meal, which consisted of a broth of water, oil, bread and salt with some scraps of bacon and mutton, figs, a fresh cheese, and a large loaf of rye bread. She had taken it upon herself to supplement the bishop’s table-wine with a bottle of old wine from Mauves.

  The bishop had recovered the cheerful expression of a man who is hospitable by nature. ‘Supper is served,’ he said gaily, and, as his custom was, he seated the guest at his right hand while Mlle Baptistine, naturally and unassumingly, took her place on his left.

  The bishop said grace and himself served the broth. The man began to eat hungrily. But suddenly the bishop said:

  ‘There seems to be something lacking on this table.’

  Mme Magloire had, in fact, only laid places for three. But it was the custom of the house, when there was a guest, to set out the full set of silver cutlery for six persons, an innocent and childlike display of elegance, in that simple and austere household, which graced its poverty with dignity.

  Again reading his thought Mme Magloire went out without speaking, and a minute later the rest of the set, laid for three additional guests, gleamed on the white tablecloth.

  IV

  The cheese-makers of Pontarlier

  To convey some notion of what took place during that meal we cannot do better than quote part of a letter written by Mlle Baptistine to Mme de Boischevron in which she gives a detailed and artless account of the conversation between the bishop and the exconvict.

  … The man at first paid no attention to anyone. He ate as though he were starving. But after the broth he said:

  ‘Monsieur le curé, all this is too good for me, but let me tell you that the waggoners, who would not let me share, their meal, eat better than you.’

  I may confess that this remark rather shocked me. But my brother replied:

  ‘Their work is more tiring than mine.’

  ‘No,’ said the man. ‘They have more money. I can see that you are poor. Perhaps you are not even a curé. Are you a curé? If God were just you would be that at least.’

  ‘God is more than just,’ said my brother, and he went on after a pause. ‘I understand, Monsieur Jean Valjean, that you are on your way to Pontarlier.’

  ‘On a route which I am under orders to follow.’ This, I think, is what the man said. He continued: ‘I have to start tomorrow at daybreak. It’s a hard journey. The nights may be cold but the days are hot.’

  ‘You are going to a good part of the country,’ my brother said. ‘My family was ruined in the Revolution and for a time I took refuge in the Franche-Comté where I got my living by manual labour. I was willing and I had no difficulty in finding work. There is plenty to be had. There are paper-mills, distilleries, oil-refineries, clockmakers, steel and copper mills, and at least twenty iron foundries, of which four, at Lods, Chatillon, Audincourt, and Beure, are very large.’

  I think those are the places my brother named. He then turned to me and said:

  ‘My dear, have we not relatives in the region?’

  ‘We used to have,’ I replied. ‘Among others there was Monsieur de Lucenet, who was Captain of the Gates at Pontarlier under the ancien régime.’

  ‘But we had no relatives left in ’93,’ said my brother. ‘We had only our hands. I worked. In the region of Pontarlier, where you are going, Monsieur Valjean, there is a charming patriarchal industry consisting of the cheese-farms which they call fruitières.’

  While encouraging the man to go on eating my brother described these Pontarlier fruitières to him in great detail. There are two kinds, those known as the grosses granges, the property of rich owners, with a herd of forty or fifty cows, which produce seven or eight thousand cheeses in a summer, and the fruitières d’associations formed by groups of the poorer peasants in the middle hills who share the cows and their produce and receive payment from a cheese-maker who is known as the grurin. The grurin takes three deliveries of milk a day and enters the quantities in a double register. Cheese-making begins towards the end of April, and the peasants take their cows up to the hill-pastures about the middle of June.

  The man was reviving as he ate, and my brother encouraged him to drink the good Mauves wine which he himself does not drink because he says it costs too much. He told him about the cheese-making in the light and easy way with which you are familiar, breaking off occasionally to bring me into the conversation. He referred more than once to the excellent standing of the grurin as though he wished to convey to the man, without presuming directly to advise him, that this was a field of employment which he might do well to enter. One thing particularly struck me. I have told you the kind of man this was. Well, throughout the meal, and indeed throughout the evening, except for those few words at the beginning, my brother said nothing to remind him of what he was, nor did he tell him who he himself was. Clearly this was a possible occasion for a little sermonizing and for the bishop to make himself known to the malefactor in order to impress him. Another man, having him at his mercy, might have seized the opportunity to fortify his soul as well as his body with words of reproof and moral exhortation, or of sympathy mingled with the hope that he would mend his ways in the future. But my brother did not so much as ask the man where he was born. He did not ask his story. For the story must have included some account of his crimes and my brother clearly wished to avoid all reference to these. To the point, indeed, that when he was talking about the hill-people of Pontarlier and ‘their pleasant labours high under heaven’ and their contentment because they were innocent, he broke off abruptly as though fearing that he might say something to offend the man. Thinking it over afterwards, I believe I know what was in my brother’s mind. He must have reflected that the man, this Jean Valjean, was sufficiently oppressed already with the burden of his wretchedness, and that it was better to distract his thoughts and make him feel, if only for a little while, that he was a man like any other. Was not this true charity? Is there not true evangelism in the delicacy which refrains from preaching and moralizing? To avoid probing an open wound, is not that the truest sympathy? This, I believe, was my brother’s inmost thought. But I can also affirm that if this was his thought he gave no sign of it, even to me. From start to finish he was his ordinary self, and he dined with Jean Valjean precisely as he would have done with the provost or the curé of the parish.

  Near the end of the meal, when we were at dessert, there was a knock at the door. It was Mme Gerbaud with her child in her arms. My brother kissed the child on the forehead and borrowed fifteen sous which I had handy and gave them to her. Valjean pai
d little attention to this. He had fallen silent and was looking very tired. When the old woman had left, my brother said grace, and then, turning to Valjean, he said, ‘I’m sure you’re ready for bed.’ Mme Magloire quickly cleared the table. I realized that it was time for us to withdraw and leave the man to sleep, and we both went upstairs. But I sent Mme Magloire down a moment later with a goatskin rug from the Black Forest which I have in my room. The nights are bitterly cold and although it is old, more’s the pity, and the hair is very worn, it would help to warm his bed. My brother bought it in Germany, at Tottlingen, near the source of the Danube, and also the little ivory-handled knife which I use at table.

  Mme Magloire came back almost at once and we said our prayers in the room where we hang the washing to dry. Then each of us went to her own room without a word.

  V

  Quietude

  Having bidden his sister good night Monseigneur Bienvenu picked up one of the two silver candlesticks and handed the other to his guest, saying, ‘I will show you to your room, Monsieur.’ The man followed him.

  As we have seen, the arrangement of the rooms was such that to reach the oratory with its alcove, or to leave it, one had to go through the bishop’s bedroom. They did so while Mme Magloire was in the act of replacing the silver in the cupboard by the bed, this being invariably the last thing she did before retiring.

  The bishop showed his guest into the alcove, where the bed was newly made. The man put the candle on a small table.

  ‘Sleep well,’ said the bishop. ‘Before you leave tomorrow you must have a bowl of warm milk from our cows.’

  ‘Thank you, Monsieur l’abbé,’ the man said.

  And then, having uttered those peaceable words, suddenly and without warning he assumed a posture that would have horrified the two women had they been there to witness it. It is hard, even now, to say what impulse seized him at that moment. Did he intend to convey a warning or a threat, or was it simply a sort of instinctive movement incomprehensible even to himself? He swung round upon his elderly host, folded his arms, glared at him, and harshly exclaimed: