‘Don’t you recognize me?’
‘No.’
‘Éponine.’
Marius bent hastily down and saw that it was indeed that unhappy girl, clad in a man’s clothes.
‘How do you come to be here? What are you doing?’
‘I’m dying,’ she said.
There are words and happenings which arouse even souls in the depths of despair. Marius cried, as though starting out of sleep:
‘You’re wounded! I’ll carry you into the tavern. They’ll dress your wound. Is it very bad? How am I to lift you without hurting you? Help, someone! But what are you doing here?’
He tried to get an arm underneath her to raise her up, and in doing so touched her hand. She uttered a weak cry.
‘Did I hurt you?’
‘A little.’
‘But I only touched your hand.’
She lifted her hand for him to see, and he saw a hole in the centre of the palm.
‘What happened?’ he asked.
‘A bullet went through it.’
‘A bullet? But how?’
‘Don’t you remember a musket being aimed at you?’
‘Yes, and a hand was clapped over it.’
‘That was mine.’
Marius shuddered.
‘What madness! You poor child! Still, if that’s all, it might be worse. I’ll get you to a bed and they’ll bind you up. One doesn’t die of a wounded hand.’
She murmured:
‘The ball passed through my hand, but it came out through my back. It’s no use trying to move me. I’ll tell you how you can treat my wound better than any surgeon. Sit down on that stone, close beside me.’
Marius did so. She rested her head on his knee and said without looking at him:
‘Oh, what happiness! What bliss! Now I don’t feel any pain.’
For a moment she was silent, then with an effort she turned to look at Marius.
‘You know, Monsieur Marius, it vexed me when you went into that garden. That was silly, because after all I’d shown you the way there, and anyway I should have known that a young gentleman like you –’ She broke off, and passing from one unhappy thought to another, said with a touching smile: ‘You think I’m ugly, don’t you?’ She went on: ‘But now you’re done for! No one will get out of this place alive. And I’m the one who brought you here! You’re going to die. I was expecting it, and yet I put my hand over that musket barrel. How queer. But I wanted to die before you did. I dragged myself here when I got hurt, and nobody noticed. I’ve been waiting for you. I thought, “Won’t he ever come?” I had to bite my smock, the pain was so bad. But now it’s all right. Do you remember the time when I came into your room and looked at myself in your glass, and the day when I found you by the Lark’s Field? So many birds were singing! It’s not so very long ago. You offered me a hundred sous, and I said, “I don’t want your money.” Did you pick the coin up? I know you weren’t rich. I didn’t think of telling you to pick it up. It was a fine, sunny day not a bit cold. Do you remember, Monsieur Marius? Oh, I’m so, happy! We’re all going to die.’
She was talking distractedly, in a manner that was grave and heartrending. The torn smock disclosed her naked bosom. While she spoke she pressed her injured hand to her breast, where there was another hole from which at that moment the blood spurted like wine from a newly tapped cask. Marius looked down at her in deep compassion, desolate creature that she was.
‘Oh!’ she cried suddenly. ‘It’s starting again. I can’t breathe!’ At this moment the voice of Gavroche rang out in another burst of song like a cock-crow. He was sitting on a table loading his musket, and the song was a highly popular song of the moment:
‘When Lafayette comes in sight,
All the gendarmes take to flight –
Sauvons-nous! Sauvons-nous! Sauvons-nous!…’
Éponine had raised herself on one arm and was listening.
‘That’s him,’ she said. She looked up at Marius. ‘That’s my brother. He mustn’t see me. He’d scold.’
‘Your brother?’ Marius repeated, while in the bitterest and most painful depths of his heart he recalled the obligation to the Thénardier family laid upon him by his father. ‘Whom do you mean?’
‘The boy.’
‘The one who’s singing?’
‘Yes.’
Marius made a movement.
‘Oh, don’t go!’ she said. ‘It won’t be long.’
She was sitting almost upright, but her voice was very low and broken by hiccoughs. At moments she struggled for breath. Raising her face as near as she could to Marius’s, she said, with a strange expression:
‘Look, I can’t cheat you. I have a letter for you in my pocket. I’ve had it since yesterday. I was asked to post it, but I didn’t. I didn’t want you to get it. But you might be angry with me when we meet again. Because we shall all meet again, shan’t we? Take your letter.’
With a convulsive movement she seized Marius’s hand with her own injured one, but without seeming to feel the pain, and guided it to her pocket.
‘Take it,’ she said.
Marius took out the letter, and she made a little gesture of satisfaction and acceptance.
‘Now you must promise me something for my trouble…’ She paused.
‘What?’ asked Marius.
‘Do you promise?’
‘Yes, I promise.’
‘You must kiss me on the forehead after I’m dead… I shall know.’
She let her head fall back on his knees; her lids fluttered, and then she was motionless. He thought that the sad soul had left her. But then, when he thought it was all over, she slowly opened her eyes that were now deep with the shadow of death, and said in a voice so sweet that it seemed already to come from another world:
‘You know, Monsieur Marius, I think I was a little bit in love with you.’
She tried to smile, and died.
VII
Gavroche reckons distances
Marius kept his promise. He kissed the pale forehead, bedewed with an icy sweat. It was no act of infidelity to Cosette, but a deliberate, tender farewell to an unhappy spirit.
He had trembled as he took the letter Éponine had brought him. Instantly sensing its importance, he longed to read it. Such is the nature of man – scarcely had the poor girl closed her eyes than he wanted to open it. But first he laid her gently on the ground, feeling instinctively that he could not read it beside her dead body.
Going into the tavern, he unfolded it by the light of a candle. It was a short note, folded and wafered with feminine elegance, and addressed in a feminine hand to ‘Monsieur Marius Pontmercy, chez M. Courfeyrac, No. 16, Rue de la Verrerie.’ Breaking the seal he read:
My dearest,
Alas, father insists that we must leave here at once. We go tonight to No.7, Rue de l’Homme-Armé, and in a week we shall be in England.
Cosette 4th June.
Such was the innocence of their love that Marius had not even known her handwriting.
What had happened may be briefly told: Éponine was responsible for everything. After the evening of 3 June she had had two things in mind: to frustrate the plan of her father and his friends for robbing the house in the Rue Plumet, and to separate Marius and Cosette. She had exchanged clothes with a youth who thought it amusing to go about dressed as a woman, while she dressed up as a man. It was she who, in the Champ de Mars, had given Jean Valjean the note warning him to change his address. Valjean had gone home and said to Cosette, ‘We’re moving this evening, with Toussaint, to the Rue de L’Homme-Armé, and next week we’re going to London.’ Cosette, shattered by this unexpected blow, had hurriedly written her letter to Marius. But how was it to be posted? She never went out alone and Toussaint, surprised by an errand of this nature, would certainly show the letter to her master. While she was debating the matter Cosette had caught sight of Éponine through the garden gate, wandering in her male attire up and down the street. Thinking she had to do with a you
ng workman, she had called to the girl and given her five francs and the letter, asking her to take it at once to the address given. Éponine had put the letter in her pocket and the next day, the 5th, had gone to Courfeyrac’s lodging, not to give him the letter but simply, as any jealous lover will understand, ‘to have a look’. She had waited there for Marius, or anyway for Courfeyrac, still only ‘having a look’; but when Courfeyrac told her that he and his friends were going to the barricade a sudden impulse had seized her – to plunge into that death, as she would have plunged into any other, and take Marius with her. She had followed Courfeyrac to find out where the barricade was situated, and then, since she was certain, having intercepted Cosette’s letter, that Marius would go as usual to the Rue Plumet, she had gone there herself and passed on the summons, supposedly from his friend, which she had no doubt would lead him to join them. She had counted on Marius’s despair at not finding Cosette, and in this had judged rightly. She had returned separately to the Rue de la Chanvrerie, and we know what had happened there. She had died in the tragic rapture of jealous hearts, who take the beloved with them into death, saying, ‘No one else shall have him!’
Marius covered Cosette’s letter with kisses. So she still loved him! He thought for a moment that now he must not die, but then he thought, ‘She’s going away!’ She was going with her father to England, and his grandfather had refused to consent to their marriage. Nothing was changed in the fate that pursued them. Dreamers such as Marius have their moments of overwhelming despair, from which desperate courses ensue: the burden of life seems insupportable, and dying is soon over.
But he reflected that he had two duties to perform. He must tell Cosette of his death and send her a last message of farewell; and he must save that poor little boy, Éponine’s brother and Thénardier’s son, from the disaster that so nearly threatened them all.
He had his wallet on him, the same one which had contained the notebook in which he had written so many loving thoughts for Cosette. He got out a sheet of paper, and with a pencil wrote the following lines:
Our marriage was impossible. I went to my grandfather, and he refused his consent. I have no fortune; neither have you. I hurried to see you but you were no longer there. You remember the pledge I gave you. I shall keep it. I shall die. I love you. When you read this my soul will be very near at hand and smiling at you.
Having nothing with which to seal the letter he simply folded the paper in four and addressed it as follows: ‘To Mademoiselle Cosette Fauchelevent, chez M. Fauchelevent, 7 Rue de l’Homme-Armé.’
Then after a moment’s reflection he wrote on another sheet of paper:
‘My name is Marius Pontmercy. My body is to be taken to the house of my grandfather, M. Gillenormand, 6 Rue des Filles-du-Calvaire, in the Marais.’
He returned the wallet to his jacket pocket and called to Gavroche.
‘Will you do something for me?’
‘Anything you like,’ said Gavroche. ‘Lord love us, if it weren’t for you I’d have copped it.’
‘You see this letter?’
‘Yes.’
‘I want you to deliver it. You must leave here at once’ – at this Gavroche began to scratch his head – ‘and take it to Mademoiselle Cosette at the address written on the outside – care of Monsieur Fauchelevent, number seven, Rue de l’Homme-Armé.’
‘Yes, but look here,’ said the valiant Gavroche, ‘the barricade may be taken while I’m away.’
‘The chances are that they won’t attack again until daybreak, and the barricade won’t fall until noon.’
The respite granted to the defenders did indeed give every sign of continuing. It was one of those lulls which commonly occur in night fighting, and which are always followed by an assault of redoubled fury.
‘Well, then,’ said Gavroche, ‘why shouldn’t I deliver the letter tomorrow morning?’
‘It would be too late. By then all the streets round us will be guarded and you’d never get out. You must go at once.’
Gavroche had no reply to this. He continued to hesitate, unhappily scratching his head. But then, with one of those swift, birdlike movements that characterized him, he took the letter.
‘Very well,’ he said. And he went off at a run down the narrow Rue Mondétour.
The thought that had decided Gavroche was one that he did not disclose to Marius, for fear that he might raise objections. He had reflected that it was only just midnight, that the Rue de L’Homme-Armé was not far off, and that he could deliver the letter and be back in plenty of time.
Book Fifteen
In the Rue De L’Homme-Armé
I
The treacherous blotter
WHAT IS the turmoil in a city compared with that of the human heart? Man the individual is a deeper being than man in the mass. Jean Valjean, at that moment, was in a state of appalling shock, with all his worst terrors realized. Like Paris itself he was trembling on the verge of a revolution that was both formidable and deep-seated. A few hours had sufficed to bring it about. His destiny and his conscience were both suddenly plunged in shadow. It might be said of him, as of Paris, that within him two principles were at war. The angel of light was about to grapple with the angel of darkness on the bridge over the abyss. Which would overthrow the other? Which would gain the day?
On the evening of that 5 June, Valjean, with Cosette and Toussaint, had removed to the Rue de l’Homme-Armé, and it was here that the unforeseen awaited him.
Cosette had not left the Rue Plumet without protest. For the first time in their life together her wishes and those of Jean Valjean had shown themselves to be separate matters which, if not wholly opposed, were at least contradictory. Objections on the one side had been met by inflexibility on the other. The abrupt warning to Valjean to change his abode, flung at him by a stranger, had so alarmed him as to make him overbearing. He had thought that his secret was discovered and that the police were after him. Cosette had been forced to give way.
They had arrived in tight-lipped silence at the Rue de l’Homme-Armé, each concerned with a personal problem, Valjean so perturbed that he did not perceive Cosette’s distress, and Cosette so unhappy that she failed to discern his state of alarm.
Valjean had brought Toussaint with them, a thing he had never done on their previous removals. He foresaw that he might never go back to the Rue Plumet, and he could neither leave Toussaint behind not tell her his secret. In any event, he could trust her to be faithful. The start of betrayal, as between servant and master, is curiosity. But Toussaint, as though she had been born to be Val – jean’s servant, was quite incurious. She said in her stumbling peasant dialect, ‘It’s all one to me. I do my work, and the rest is no affair of mine.’
In their departure from the Rue Plumet, so hasty as to be almost flight, Jean Valjean had taken nothing with him except the cherished box of child’s clothing which Cosette had nicknamed his ‘inseparable’. A pile of luggage would have necessitated the services of a carrier, and a carrier is a witness. A fiacre had been summoned to the door in the Rue de Babylone, and they had driven off. It was only with difficulty that Toussaint had obtained permission to make up a few packages of clothes and toilet articles. Cosette had taken nothing but her letter-case and blotter. Valjean, as a further precaution, had arranged for them to leave at nightfall, which had allowed her time to write her letter to Marius. It was dark when they reached the Rue de l’Homme-Armé.
They went to bed in silence. The apartment in the Rue de l’Homme-Armé was on the second floor overlooking the courtyard at the back of the house, and consisted of two bedrooms, a living-room with a kitchen adjoining, and an attic room furnished with a truckle-bed, which fell to Toussaint. The living-room was also the entrance-lobby and it separated the two bedrooms. The apartment was equipped with all the necessary domestic paraphernalia.
Panic, such is human nature, may the down as irrationally as it arises. Scarcely had they reached their new dwelling than Valjean’s alarm subsided until finall
y it had vanished altogether. There are places of which the calm communicates itself almost mechanically to the human spirit. The Rue de l’Homme-Armé is a small, unimportant street inhabited by peaceful citizens, so narrow that it is barred to vehicles at either end, silent amid the tumult of Paris, dark even in broad daylight, seemingly incapable of any emotion between its two rows of tall, century-old houses which keep them-selves to themselves like the ancients they are. It is a street of placid forgetfulness, and Jean Valjean, breathing its odour of tranquillity, was caught by the contagion. How could anyone find him here?
His first act was to put the ‘inseparable’ beside his bed. He slept well. The night brings counsel, and, one may add, it soothes. He was almost light-hearted when he got up next morning. He found the living-room delightful, hideous though it was with its old round dining-table, the low sideboard with a mirror hanging on the wall above it, a worm-eaten armchair, and a few other chairs loaded with Toussaint’s packages. A tear in one of these showed that it contained Valjean’s National Guard uniform.
As for Cosette, she had asked Toussaint to bring her a cup of soup in her bedroom and she did not appear until the evening. At about five o’clock Toussaint, who had been busy all day putting things to rights, set a dish of cold chicken on the table and Cosette deigned to attend the meal, out of deference to her father.
This done, and saying that she had a headache, Cosette bade her father good night and went back to her bedroom. Valjean, having eaten a wing of chicken with a good appetite, sat with his elbows on the table, basking in his present security. He had been vaguely aware, while he was eating, of Toussaint’s stammer as she tried to tell him the news – ‘Monsieur, there’s something happening. There’s fighting in the town.’ Absorbed in his own thoughts, he had paid no attention to this. In fact, he had not really listened. He got up presently and began to walk up and down the room, from the door to the window and back, feeling more and more at ease.
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