Les MisĂ©rables by Victor Hugo (early reader books txt) đ
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- Author: Victor Hugo
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It was so sweet to see Cosette, to forget by her side! It alleviated his wounds. It frequently happened that Basque came twice to announce: âM. Gillenormand sends me to remind Madame la Baronne that dinner is served.â
On those days, Jean Valjean was very thoughtful on his return home.
Was there, then, any truth in that comparison of the chrysalis which had presented itself to the mind of Marius? Was Jean Valjean really a chrysalis who would persist, and who would come to visit his butterfly?
One day he remained still longer than usual. On the following day he observed that there was no fire on the hearth.ââHello!â he thought. âNo fire.ââAnd he furnished the explanation for himself.ââIt is perfectly simple. It is April. The cold weather has ceased.â
âHeavens! how cold it is here!â exclaimed Cosette when she entered.
âWhy, no,â said Jean Valjean.
âWas it you who told Basque not to make a fire then?â
âYes, since we are now in the month of May.â
âBut we have a fire until June. One is needed all the year in this cellar.â
âI thought that a fire was unnecessary.â
âThat is exactly like one of your ideas!â retorted Cosette.
On the following day there was a fire. But the two armchairs were arranged at the other end of the room near the door. ââWhat is the meaning of this?â thought Jean Valjean.
He went for the armchairs and restored them to their ordinary place near the hearth.
This fire lighted once more encouraged him, however. He prolonged the conversation even beyond its customary limits. As he rose to take his leave, Cosette said to him:
âMy husband said a queer thing to me yesterday.â
âWhat was it?â
âHe said to me: âCosette, we have an income of thirty thousand livres. Twenty-seven that you own, and three that my grandfather gives me.â I replied: âThat makes thirty.â He went on: âWould you have the courage to live on the three thousand?â I answered: âYes, on nothing. Provided that it was with you.â And then I asked: âWhy do you say that to me?â He replied: âI wanted to know.ââ
Jean Valjean found not a word to answer. Cosette probably expected some explanation from him; he listened in gloomy silence. He went back to the Rue de lâHomme ArmĂ©; he was so deeply absorbed that he mistook the door and instead of entering his own house, he entered the adjoining dwelling. It was only after having ascended nearly two stories that he perceived his error and went down again.
His mind was swarming with conjectures. It was evident that Marius had his doubts as to the origin of the six hundred thousand francs, that he feared some source that was not pure, who knows? that he had even, perhaps, discovered that the money came from him, Jean Valjean, that he hesitated before this suspicious fortune, and was disinclined to take it as his own,âpreferring that both he and Cosette should remain poor, rather than that they should be rich with wealth that was not clean.
Moreover, Jean Valjean began vaguely to surmise that he was being shown the door.
On the following day, he underwent something like a shock on entering the ground-floor room. The armchairs had disappeared. There was not a single chair of any sort.
âAh, whatâs this!â exclaimed Cosette as she entered, âno chairs! Where are the armchairs?â
âThey are no longer here,â replied Jean Valjean.
âThis is too much!â
Jean Valjean stammered:
âIt was I who told Basque to remove them.â
âAnd your reason?â
âI have only a few minutes to stay to-day.â
âA brief stay is no reason for remaining standing.â
âI think that Basque needed the chairs for the drawing-room.â
âWhy?â
âYou have company this evening, no doubt.â
âWe expect no one.â
Jean Valjean had not another word to say.
Cosette shrugged her shoulders.
âTo have the chairs carried off! The other day you had the fire put out. How odd you are!â
âAdieu!â murmured Jean Valjean.
He did not say: âAdieu, Cosette.â But he had not the strength to say: âAdieu, Madame.â
He went away utterly overwhelmed.
This time he had understood.
On the following day he did not come. Cosette only observed the fact in the evening.
âWhy,â said she, âMonsieur Jean has not been here today.â
And she felt a slight twinge at her heart, but she hardly perceived it, being immediately diverted by a kiss from Marius.
On the following day he did not come.
Cosette paid no heed to this, passed her evening and slept well that night, as usual, and thought of it only when she woke. She was so happy! She speedily despatched Nicolette to M. Jeanâs house to inquire whether he were ill, and why he had not come on the previous evening. Nicolette brought back the reply of M. Jean that he was not ill. He was busy. He would come soon. As soon as he was able. Moreover, he was on the point of taking a little journey. Madame must remember that it was his custom to take trips from time to time. They were not to worry about him. They were not to think of him.
Nicolette on entering M. Jeanâs had repeated to him her mistressâ very words. That Madame had sent her to inquire why M. Jean had not come on the preceding evening. ââIt is two days since I have been there,â said Jean Valjean gently.
But the remark passed unnoticed by Nicolette, who did not report it to Cosette.
During the last months of spring and the first months of summer in 1833, the rare passers-by in the Marais, the petty shopkeepers, the loungers on thresholds, noticed an old man neatly clad in black, who emerged every day at the same hour, towards nightfall, from the Rue de lâHomme ArmĂ©, on the side of the Rue Sainte-Croix-de-la-Bretonnerie, passed in front of the Blancs Manteaux, gained the Rue Culture-Sainte-Catherine, and, on arriving at the Rue de lâĂcharpe, turned to the left, and entered the Rue Saint-Louis.
There he walked at a slow pace, with his head strained forward, seeing nothing, hearing nothing, his eye immovably fixed on a point which seemed to be a star to him, which never varied, and which was no other than the corner of the Rue des Filles-du-Calvaire. The nearer he approached the corner of the street the more his eye lighted up; a sort of joy illuminated his pupils like an inward aurora, he had a fascinated and much affected air, his lips indulged in obscure movements, as though he were talking to some one whom he did not see, he smiled vaguely and advanced as slowly as possible. One would have said that, while desirous of reaching his destination, he feared the moment when he should be close at hand. When only a few houses remained between him and that street which appeared to attract him his pace slackened, to such a degree that, at times, one might have thought that he was no longer advancing at all. The vacillation of his head and the fixity of his eyeballs suggested the thought of the magnetic needle seeking the pole. Whatever time he spent on arriving, he was obliged to arrive at last; he reached the Rue des Filles-du-Calvaire; then he halted, he trembled, he thrust his head with a sort of melancholy timidity round the corner of the last house, and gazed into that street, and there was in that tragic look something which resembled the dazzling light of the impossible, and the reflection from a paradise that was closed to him. Then a tear, which had slowly gathered in the corner of his lids, and had become large enough to fall, trickled down his cheek, and sometimes stopped at his mouth. The old man tasted its bitter flavor. Thus he remained for several minutes as though made of stone, then he returned by the same road and with the same step, and, in proportion as he retreated, his glance died out.
Little by little, this old man ceased to go as far as the corner of the Rue des Filles-du-Calvaire; he halted half way in the Rue Saint-Louis; sometimes a little further off, sometimes a little nearer.
One day he stopped at the corner of the Rue Culture-Sainte-Catherine and looked at the Rue des Filles-du-Calvaire from a distance. Then he shook his head slowly from right to left, as though refusing himself something, and retraced his steps.
Soon he no longer came as far as the Rue Saint-Louis. He got as far as the Rue Pavée, shook his head and turned back; then he went no further than the Rue des Trois-Pavillons; then he did not overstep the Blancs-Manteaux. One would have said that he was a pendulum which was no longer wound up, and whose oscillations were growing shorter before ceasing altogether.
Every day he emerged from his house at the same hour, he undertook the same trip, but he no longer completed it, and, perhaps without himself being aware of the fact, he constantly shortened it. His whole countenance expressed this single idea: What is the use?âHis eye was dim; no more radiance. His tears were also exhausted; they no longer collected in the corner of his eye-lid; that thoughtful eye was dry. The old manâs head was still craned forward; his chin moved at times; the folds in his gaunt neck were painful to behold. Sometimes, when the weather was bad, he had an umbrella under his arm, but he never opened it.
The good women of the quarter said: âHe is an innocent.â The children followed him and laughed.
It is a terrible thing to be happy! How content one is! How all-sufficient one finds it! How, being in possession of the false object of life, happiness, one forgets the true object, duty!
Let us say, however, that the reader would do wrong were he to blame Marius.
Marius, as we have explained, before his marriage, had put no questions to M. Fauchelevent, and, since that time, he had feared to put any to Jean Valjean. He had regretted the promise into which he had allowed himself to be drawn. He had often said to himself that he had done wrong in making that concession to despair. He had confined himself to gradually estranging Jean Valjean from his house and to effacing him, as much as possible, from Cosetteâs mind. He had, in a manner, always placed himself between Cosette and Jean Valjean, sure that, in this way, she would not perceive nor think of the latter. It was more than effacement, it was an eclipse.
Marius did what he considered necessary and just. He thought that he had serious reasons which the reader has already seen, and others which will be seen later on, for getting rid of Jean Valjean without harshness, but without weakness.
Chance having ordained that he should encounter, in a case which he had argued, a former employee of the Laffitte establishment, he had acquired mysterious information, without seeking it, which he had not been able, it is true, to probe, out of respect for the secret which he had promised to guard, and out of consideration for Jean Valjeanâs perilous position. He believed at that moment that he had a grave duty to perform: the restitution of the six hundred thousand francs to some one whom he sought with all possible discretion. In the meanwhile, he abstained from touching that money.
As for Cosette, she had not been initiated into any of these secrets; but it would be harsh to condemn her also.
There existed between Marius and her an all-powerful magnetism, which caused her to do, instinctively and almost mechanically, what Marius wished. She was conscious of Mariusâ will in the direction of âMonsieur Jean,â she conformed to it. Her husband had not been obliged to say anything to her; she yielded to the vague but clear pressure of his tacit intentions, and obeyed blindly. Her obedience in this instance consisted in not remembering what Marius forgot. She was not obliged to make any effort to accomplish this. Without her knowing why herself, and without his having any cause to accuse her of it, her soul had become so wholly her husbandâs that that which was shrouded in gloom in Mariusâ mind became overcast in hers.
Let us not go too far, however; in what concerns Jean Valjean, this forgetfulness and obliteration were merely superficial. She was rather heedless than forgetful. At bottom, she was sincerely attached to the man whom she had so long called her
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