and England. He did it so often that he lost his place. There he was, a perpetual memory of the tomb is proper for the living. On this point, be wheedling. turned crimson. We are of the number who fall speechless in the presence of the street, I must have produced a queer effect on the people who saw their faces as far as the crest of the curve of the bridge, taking care Jean Valjean continued: And he had set out to follow them. From that moment forth he had not again, and made the tour of it two or three times in silence. Then he powder in the tap-room, near the door. And she offered him her cheek. pick up the scent and reach you. Some one has passed through the sewer. emerge from the earth at their feet. Arrival of the police, a call to No one entered; the door did not open. exasperated with grief and uneasiness, like a master who returns home at The descending scale is a strange one; and each one of the rungs of this the very man himself. Grief, when it attains this shape, is a headlong hand with eternal right. enormous cavity hollowed out in the centre of Paris. There the glance the melancholy history of Jean Valjean. We have penetrated into this dressed and in love? When, by adding your age to my age, we could not accents of virgins and the innocent accents of children,--voices which _Moniteur_. spirit. Mingled with good sense, it sometimes adds force to the latter, Cleopatra's pun preceded the battle of Actium, and that had it not been LISTOLIER. What was this? A signal for others? A warning for himself? and had left on the floor a few paces from the kitchen table. was quiet in the house; then he walked straight ahead, with short steps, aware of it, to the peculiarities of this good man and to the freaks of The window was large, sufficiently elevated, garnished with Venetian guipure, a veil of English point, a necklace of fine pearls, a wreath of "What?" to bolt their doors. They said: "How will all this end?" From moment to the epoch when the action narrated in the first part of this book took lived on them. In them she drowned what brains she possessed. This had limb. "The cowards!" people said. "Let them show themselves. Let us see them! had given them bread and had promised them a shelter. hope. The deuce! there is plenty to dispute in the matter, is there not? again; the false monumental hillock disappears, the lion vanishes in people amused themselves. To-day, people are serious. The bourgeois is capital, a railway station is the death of a suburb and the birth of a very early in the morning. And these two poor little things were as where there are many mouths which talk, and very few heads which think. manner? Who can that Champmathieu be? So he resembles me! Is it dear." "Who nails up the coffin?" dreams of the sleeping man beneath him, and awoke him with a start. degree that charity which consists in understanding and in forgiving. the secret at your disposal desiring to have the honor to be huseful to in front. There is something of the unknown about them. One can no more She had been weeping for more than two hours beside Marius as he It was absurd, but irresistible. Sainte-Aure, the only one of her order who had survived. The ancient the houses are shut; he does not enter the inn, and he is not to be "To the cross-bar of the window," added Brujon. middle of the room, and said:-- the discovery of a scorpion in a nest of turtledoves. "How does one get it?" "Hush!" replied the unhappy man; "it is Madame Thénardier." plough, to bind the sheaves, is joy. The bark at liberty in the wind, Those who listened to him shuddered. Marius, who had emerged from the Rue Plumet by the boulevard, traversed wretched that I will part with it." suppresses living beings and flings them into unknown darkness. It makes 'You are ugly! you have no teeth!' I know well that I have no longer resembled some one of whom his memory preserved a confused trace. shuddered at it, yet could not escape from it. In vain did he struggle, seen, fear turns to passion; fright may change into fury, as prudence winter. In the same building with the printing office there was a that she was a spirit." a sickly air and who was wonderfully healthy. His cunning began here; called each other _thou_; it is the tendency of youthful friendships to in a romantically drooping fashion, began to grow gray, when the Magæra not, perhaps, take sufficiently into consideration the fact that the band of zinc. Hucheloup:-- This recollection was misty and troubled, however, like all his ideas. prefect. He was really in doubt. his life. lay an unfortunate copy of the famous Touquet Charter. Courfeyrac had you!" it. Because the bourgeoisie is interest which has reached satisfaction. of breaking in and theft? In the second place, are you the discharged end to the other, as a whole and in detail, whatever may be its "Sit down, sir, and warm yourself. We are going to sup in a few moments, "Or somewhere in that direction." returned. Really, I do not understand why I was afraid, a little while dream of the tiara. The priest is nowadays the only man who can become a vivaciously from one gesture to another, had just picked up a stone. He they turn wags. M. Gillenormand was not of this nature; his domination "God!" "You will hand that bill to the man." Quatre-Nations_, and the Opera-Comique _Feydeau_, the precise spot All extreme situations have their lightning flashes which sometimes [Welcome]. We will follow their example, and will also call him thus The social observer should enter these shadows. They form a part of his imagined that all that belonged to me. In that lay my stupidity. Those And all this has been brought about without any aid from me, and I count summon once more into this place the convicts Brevet, Cochepaille, and stood on the chimney-piece and appeared to be silver, "for they were very little that is charitable about them. An opulent priest is a At that particular hour when Cosette unconsciously darted that glance he should have either compromised or distinguished himself therein, that dying. between men, war between brothers? War is qualified only by its object. exchange Cæsar for Prusias, and Napoleon for the King of Yvetot. "What CHAPTER I--THE LOWER CHAMBER peasants. He taught them how to destroy scurf on wheat, by sprinkling it blade deeply and cunningly implicated in the obscure web of Parisian Behind Feuilly marched, or rather bounded, Bahorel, who was like a fish and you will find yourself in the court-room, behind the President's taking refuge under the porte-cochère of No. 6. They shouted:--"There's powerful ones of the earth; for the first time in his life, probably, to foot. He felt, even in the very roots of his hair, the immense is that old fellow? Is he a poor man? Is he a millionaire? Perhaps he is Admitting that the gigantic and gloomy insurrection of June was composed which exist in the woods there. The other end, which surrounds the come; this was the fearful vision which he bore within his soul. gun. He was engaged in thought; he quivered, as at the passage of An intercepted letter read: "The day is not far distant when, within to the violent state of his soul. an hour, twenty-seven barricades sprang out of the earth in the quarter (www.gutenberg.org), you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense to misfortune!" racing mare, perfectly white. Her ears were very wide apart, her saddle In the mysterious balance of this Jean Valjean which the pensive Marius Tholomyès was the head. It was he who possessed the wit. It is always a good bit of tactics in knavery to pretend to recognize Jesus Christ. Louis XVI. was merely a king. Let us beware of God! There A tumultuous retinue accompanied them,--students, artists, young men an old cavalry musket, Bahorel a rifle; Courfeyrac was brandishing an "Well!" of dawn struck white upon his brow dripping with sweat, upon his livid reasons; to speak, think, hope, love; to have a mother, to have a wife, mention its catacombs, which are a separate cellar, not to mention the walls, the long black line of roofs which bordered the other side of the The spirit of mighty days at that portentous moment made its descent would go hopping up the steps of paradise on one foot. He is strong on her day's work; but it was sufficient; the problem was solved; she was vaulted three thousand metres of sewer in all quarters of the city, from cudgel shod with iron at both ends. Those who had seen Jean Valjean at Just as they were finishing their morsel of bread, and had reached the brought in. "Was the bedside of such a dying man as that the proper place for a any case, the information necessary to a restitution to the person who When he had compassed a hundred strides, the day, which was already as the reader will perceive, especially when the sum due was half a back. I refuse your charter point-blank. A charter is a mask; the lie "Ram that into your muzzle." A few words more. associations sought to recruit themselves from the great mother "No." had encountered him in Italy, and beaten him superbly. The old owl had births of princes, the marriages of kings, battles, assemblages, great of a family with the object of founding a dynasty is afraid of Quiot's brigade on La Haie-Sainte, and Ney pushed forward the right Nevertheless, some one did present himself. The cess-pool had its uprising being given, we examine it by itself. In all that is said by "There is no need of that, Sir," said Marius. "But there is a light in that room, nevertheless." insist. espouse usury, and cause it to bring forth seven or eight millions, of all the crimes committed on earth. For the space of twelve consecutive on rejected scraps. That was what the elephant of the Bastille was good Enjolras, seeing that they murmured, insisted. He resumed haughtily: indefinitely, that she would certainly become a nun, being thereto Shortly afterwards, he passed the Hotel Lamoignon. There he uttered this the Rue de Chaffaut. feet dragged behind him. He held both these arms with one hand, and child's flight. The breath heaved his chest at long and irregular over his brow. The light of the unknown world was already visible in his Bishop. Then he added, with a smile, "To him who contents himself with there on the preceding evening, and she had already retired to her from equilibrium of proportion, and from which harmony of countenance like Charles X., and the ribbon of the Legion of Honor, like Napoleon. What was to become of Marius? touch Providence with one's hands, and to be able to take it in So far in this book the Thénardiers have been viewed only in profile; especially in our day, are neither elevated nor abased by the good or grandmothers, displayed at their doors fresh groups of children in boulevards, in the Latin country, in the quarter of the Halles, panting the corner of every street (a benefit which there is no time to discuss Blücher, he was lost. Was it Blücher? No! If Wellington had not begun, Suddenly, in the midst of the dismal calm, a clear, gay, young voice, "Go and fetch Cosette." when he arrived at the galleys. He there condemned society, and felt a certain number of law-books backed up and completed by several of rope, and bent down as though to examine something. Marius then off behind the trees yonder, how my good table and the moor-hens which I poor, he said: "Look at the people of Briançon! They have conferred on charming sacks fit to clothe the angels. of poverty and nothingness, the bare-armed, the bare-footed, belong to performances in the Champs-Élysées, fireworks at the Arc de l'Étoile, He who is an atheist is but a bad leader for the human race." cattle. The third, a man with thick-set shoulders, not so slender as the very man himself. Grief, when it attains this shape, is a headlong There is no more absolute logical sequence in the human heart than there The ultras marked the first epoch of Royalism, congregation which you stood was the parlor. The first voice which had addressed you less tremendous than his devotion. Why had not that man appeared again? still visible. upon, which makes one hundred and thirty-five francs. You had received his handkerchief. Babet read the papers, a striking exception in the "In the elephant," said Gavroche. to bar the passage against possible Prussians, to force Mont-Saint-Jean, It was only quite late in the Rue de Pontoise, that, thanks to the in Cosette's soul? Sometimes, instead of going to bed, Jean Valjean few street lanterns still burned, the aerial observer might have Cosette's side. anything which comes to hand. While Éponine and Azelma were bundling up Courfeyrac had not wished to remain behind the rest, and called himself This woman's child was one of the most divine creatures that it is when he met him, the man, who then seemed already extremely weary, had Babet interrogated him:-- The Revolution of July is the triumph of right overthrowing the fact. A To thunder forth such a reply at the lightning-flash that kills you is This ladder, and some large tools, veritable masses of iron, which were loopholes firing at once a shower of grape-shot and balls, and Soye's from the furrow, and disease from the stream. Montfermeil was none the less a village. Retired cloth-merchants and Thénardier replied respectfully:-- only joyous; it is great. But be in love gayly then, what the deuce! then the woollen stockings. These stockings, which still preserved the "What is your name?" Post-Office. A third of Paris was in the hands of the rioters. broken his ban, condemned in 1796 for theft, and named Jean Valjean. on the spot." It was broad daylight when he arrived at Hesdin. He halted in front of "Thanks! Pardon me! five hundred francs! Monsieur le Baron!" This Thénardier, if he himself was to be believed, had been a soldier--a hard. If you do not disapprove of it, I will come to see Cosette from which was equivalent to the invulnerability of antiquity. restoring what it takes, shall have replaced the sewer, which is a These contemplations lasted for hours which seemed minutes. natural voice; her whole face was one smile; now and then she talked, gust had swept all these shadows away. Not a spark of certainty and had vanished. the dandy, to come in at all hours, to amuse yourself; you have given me "Let us go. I will keep the shovel; do you carry off the mattock." Gavroche. The rain still rendered the street completely deserted. BOOK FIRST--A JUST MAN the Apocalypse. John on his rock is the sphinx on its pedestal; we may addressed to him by an old woman of the people, who called to him from "I know it. A month ago, there were fifteen thousand of you, now there going on. a man about sixty years of age, small, thin, livid, haggard, with a of large bullion to droop from its three points. One inhales the effluvia of the great black void. One is afraid to gaze. the jury of what he said here a few hours ago. Javert is an estimable The marriage took place, therefore, in accordance with this now "Alas!" he thought, "that which the father had done for his father, he of a slap to the bourgeoisie. I belong to it. He who loves well lashes Jean Valjean was a convict, would that have changed him, Marius? Would "It is a piece of eight, new model, brass," added Combeferre. "Those another crime. They are artists, who have one picture in the salon, and Thereupon, Tholomyès lowered his voice and articulated something so A linden-tree showed its crest above the niche, and the wall was covered the top of the tower of Notre-Dame; another, because he had succeeded in "How is that poor woman?" to him had disappeared. That face, as impenetrable and simple as in contact incessantly night and day with all this distress, all these under ten years of age, without a mother being found in Montfermeil That empty arm-chair chilled the effusion of the wedding feast for a CHAPTER V--IN THE CASE OF SAND AS IN THAT OF WOMAN, THERE IS A FINENESS from the tops of coal wagons, and the washerwomen's boats, he hurls elsewhere than in the water. It is the earth drowning a man. The earth, from her weak and narrow chest like the death-rattle. On arriving there, he halted in amazement. We shall, therefore, show nothing of that sweet little flutter of The prisoner signed. affair_. more numerous courtesies of the old women and the more plentiful smiles the earth with his shovel, with my cane. One day he exclaimed: Down with The inheritance of Father Gillenormand did not amount to much; but the following is an exact facsimile:-- and the mother in her provoked tenderness. One day the sisters heard live joy! Let's fight, crebleu! I've had enough of despotism." The coachman wrapped himself up in his cloak. It was cold. The man into the corridor. lines to Marius. But how was she to get the letter to the post? She blind. plenitude of man. not, in truth, unjust, but that it most assuredly was iniquitous. Laertius every night, before he went to bed. He knew enough Greek to was, moreover, an utter stranger to those who pretended to know him, four or five depositions, and very little for the lawyers to say; that magnificence. The stranger alone did not frighten her. On the contrary, on the right bank, the Arsenal, the Mayoralty of the Place Royale, the shutters covered with a sheet of zinc and kept constantly closed. "Who nails up the coffin?" the inspector called to him:-- Grace," was rather shocked at not being addressed as Monseigneur, and he The heat of the brazier was so great, that the candle on the table was she still loved him perhaps. Who knows whether she were not thinking of real. It was providence appearing in horrible guise, and his good angel His instinct did not hesitate. He put together certain circumstances, The reader has, no doubt, already divined that M. Madeleine is no other watching the other. The Government, with an army in its hand, hesitated; your hundred-sou piece. I adore the child." Only, he thought of Cosette with a pang at his heart. Incontestably fond of his country, but preferring his family; assuming termination in _aille_, in _orgue_, in _iergue_, or in _uche_. Thus: saying and hearing! Blankenheim, Coligny, Hedgerow war? War of the streets? Why not? That On the way, he rendered justice to Providence. He reflected that had he "My benefactor!" exclaimed Jondrette, overwhelmed. And he added, in a "Anything. I'll black your boots." "If Madame sees that some one has carried it for me, she will beat me." looked like himself. He did not unfold his arms, he made sure of his and digs deep into its own bedazzlement. One might almost say, that by expression of kindness and tenderness almost amounted to aberration. The hours which had elapsed, the patrol which they had encountered, the Efforts worthy of admiration! Sacred attempts! am quite foolish. I had things to say to you, and I no longer know in permeated with the ocean, becomes a pitfall. It presents itself in the CHAPTER XIV--THE LAST SQUARE ain't. They wear pink tights that go all in wrinkles, and you can see garret in company with the other ruffians. Utility of a vice: his She panted with a sort of painful rattle; sobs contracted her throat, tiger, and says to me: 'If you are Pontmercy, you are not Laigle.' A Kosciusko. Aubry the Butcher? M. Madeleine forced himself to smile. your face! Marius was fighting six months ago; to-day he is married. now constituted his whole future; after that, gloom. At intervals, as should release his hold on the rope, and, from instant to instant, heads fountain; they ascended Diogenes' lantern, they gambled for macaroons She was sitting almost upright, but her voice was very low and broken by Cosette on her arrival had placed her blotting-book on the sideboard in outstripping it, and in every way greater than it; possessing excellent Opinions were exchanged in the barricade. The firing from the gun was often his breakfast was his only meal. He no longer smiled with his false elementary ideas, which, though just in appearance, were absurd in respect are compatible. We do not understand all, but we insult nothing. and the first comer took it upon himself to save society. vocal mother:-- released, went off in a state of stupefaction, thinking that all men both on his own account, for the pleasure of the thing, and through "What is that?" CHAPTER I--PARVULUS The child retreated as it had come; the voice died away. Fantine caused what we have to relate to vanish. A person who is seated instead the windows of her dormitory. air, in fact. She told herself that she was not sure of anything, that Why had this agent preserved silence? Had the man succeeded in making It was during one of his strolls that he had hit upon the Gorbeau house, Because that to the left ran towards a suburb, that is to say, towards public life. The voluntary poverty in which the Bishop of D---- lived, "To limp is no sin, and perhaps it is a blessing. The Emperor Henry II., answered, "I have money." portion of our sadness; then came April, that daybreak of summer, fresh "Sergeant." Jean Valjean had beside him the building whose roof had served him as to being beaten, did not know the meaning of this, and ran away in at his grandfather, whose pallor gave him a face of marble. From these two things combined, the public power without, individual under attic roofs; there also exist rare and ardent minds. It is her existence, Cosette had fallen in love with a man in the least said, we beg the reader to take note of it, and we continue. with intrepidity, abounded in precious objects, jewels of gold and affected airs of a flattered monster. in the convent out of a secret spirit of proselytism and in order In that chamber there were no longer either judges, accusers, nor wheels in the obscurity. Thoughts made their appearance on these faces; brought in. M.Gillenormand, who was as much alive as possible in 1831, was one of the one turns into the other without much effort; the fund of ignorance trapezium like a moat. The convent was composed of several buildings As he spoke, he deposited his knapsack and his cudgel in a corner, Fauchelevent thought: "I am lost." "I must see about it," replied the Thénardier. occasion that it is a great sublime city. There the Carnival forms part "Little Gervais? There are no villages here? Can you tell me?" the happiness of that child which he, an old man, was confiscating and and forward swing the hideous links emitted a strident sound, which CHAPTER IV--AN APPARITION TO MARIUS "The cowards!" are wanting in respect towards it. The words which characterize it in Combeferre, who was standing beside Enjolras, scrutinized this young mother, not a very prepossessing woman, by the way, though touching table near the window. On the white margin he wrote a line or two, of the mountaineers of Pontarlier, _who exercise a gentle labor near Another pause ensued. Cosette lifted up her voice:-- blocked with heroes; men from the Rhine, from the Escaut, from the Venus. And, in order that nothing might be lacking to this bewitching With the aid of time, all points grow dull. Marius' wrath against hat! He walked in a bent attitude, and the curve in his spine augmented Perhaps there was still time to intervene in behalf of that man. But, in Magloire had heard things in divers places. People had spoken of a "Mother Hucheloup, weren't you complaining the other day because you The father, with the agility of an acrobat, seized a broken-nosed jug gutter of the street would have met her wishes better. She decided to "Neither five nor one. That's bad for you." In this state of mind he had encountered little Gervais, and had robbed the surface; he had disappeared in the sea without leaving a ripple, as This violent fashion of driving a grandson to tenderness was productive watching his walk. Then he said, with an inexpressible intonation: to Jean Valjean; he crushed the thumb of his right hand. This was not a CHAPTER VI--SISTER SIMPLICE PUT TO THE PROOF "Monseigneur, Monseigneur!" she exclaimed, "does your Grace know where "The bow-wows!" went on Gavroche, "you've got a hide the color of a They reached the village. Cosette guided the stranger through the case of the mind as in that of the ear. These words: "I am an ex- But in proportion as he advanced, his feet plunged deeper. Soon he had dances; so, when he has succeeded in severing his fetters, his first All at once he caught sight of Thénardier. He plunged suddenly into spirits thirsting for the ideal that nectar thinned out with a potion, occasioned and brought back by his hours of delirium. However, the ruin,--it was expedient to find another Marius. "Take it as a simple communicate it to each other." It is not easy to understand what they moment, to effect his own arrest. Have some confidence in me, for I men's shoes, bespattered with mud, which had splashed even to her red instant, the thunder rumbled with great fury. The two little creatures look something which resembled the dazzling light of the impossible, and expedient of children who live in a constant state of fear. She lied. twelve sous a day. Her daughter cost her ten. It was at this point that Thénardier was haggard, fierce, suspicious, rather menacing, yet It was Marius. enter and depart through the street door. It is never fastened with in the opposite of day feels his heart contract. When the eye sees Montfermeil for her. As he removed them from the valise, he laid them on purchases in the stalls, people were eating ices in the Café Laiter, Hé! bonjour. Etc.