Les Misérables by Victor Hugo (early reader books txt) 📕
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- Author: Victor Hugo
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“The deuce!” said the Fleming. “Twenty leagues!”
“Yes.”
“Hitched to a cabriolet?”
“Yes.”
“And how long can he rest at the end of his journey?”
“He must be able to set out again on the next day if necessary.”
“To traverse the same road?”
“Yes.”
“The deuce! the deuce! And it is twenty leagues?”
M. Madeleine drew from his pocket the paper on which he had pencilled some figures. He showed it to the Fleming. The figures were 5, 6, 8½.
“You see,” he said, “total, nineteen and a half; as well say twenty leagues.”
“Mr. Mayor,” returned the Fleming, “I have just what you want. My little white horse—you may have seen him pass occasionally; he is a small beast from Lower Boulonnais. He is full of fire. They wanted to make a saddle-horse of him at first. Bah! He reared, he kicked, he laid everybody flat on the ground. He was thought to be vicious, and no one knew what to do with him. I bought him. I harnessed him to a carriage. That is what he wanted, sir; he is as gentle as a girl; he goes like the wind. Ah! indeed he must not be mounted. It does not suit his ideas to be a saddle-horse. Every one has his ambition. ‘Draw? Yes. Carry? No.’ We must suppose that is what he said to himself.”
“And he will accomplish the trip?”
“Your twenty leagues all at a full trot, and in less than eight hours. But here are the conditions.”
“State them.”
“In the first place, you will give him half an hour’s breathing spell midway of the road; he will eat; and some one must be by while he is eating to prevent the stable boy of the inn from stealing his oats; for I have noticed that in inns the oats are more often drunk by the stable men than eaten by the horses.”
“Some one will be by.”
“In the second place—is the cabriolet for Monsieur le Maire?”
“Yes.”
“Does Monsieur le Maire know how to drive?”
“Yes.”
“Well, Monsieur le Maire will travel alone and without baggage, in order not to overload the horse?”
“Agreed.”
“But as Monsieur le Maire will have no one with him, he will be obliged to take the trouble himself of seeing that the oats are not stolen.”
“That is understood.”
“I am to have thirty francs a day. The days of rest to be paid for also—not a farthing less; and the beast’s food to be at Monsieur le Maire’s expense.”
M. Madeleine drew three napoleons from his purse and laid them on the table.
“Here is the pay for two days in advance.”
“Fourthly, for such a journey a cabriolet would be too heavy, and would fatigue the horse. Monsieur le Maire must consent to travel in a little tilbury that I own.”
“I consent to that.”
“It is light, but it has no cover.”
“That makes no difference to me.”
“Has Monsieur le Maire reflected that we are in the middle of winter?”
M. Madeleine did not reply. The Fleming resumed:—
“That it is very cold?”
M. Madeleine preserved silence.
Master Scaufflaire continued:—
“That it may rain?”
M. Madeleine raised his head and said:—
“The tilbury and the horse will be in front of my door to-morrow morning at half-past four o’clock.”
“Of course, Monsieur le Maire,” replied Scaufflaire; then, scratching a speck in the wood of the table with his thumb-nail, he resumed with that careless air which the Flemings understand so well how to mingle with their shrewdness:—
“But this is what I am thinking of now: Monsieur le Maire has not told me where he is going. Where is Monsieur le Maire going?”
He had been thinking of nothing else since the beginning of the conversation, but he did not know why he had not dared to put the question.
“Are your horse’s forelegs good?” said M. Madeleine.
“Yes, Monsieur le Maire. You must hold him in a little when going down hill. Are there many descends between here and the place whither you are going?”
“Do not forget to be at my door at precisely half-past four o’clock to-morrow morning,” replied M. Madeleine; and he took his departure.
The Fleming remained “utterly stupid,” as he himself said some time afterwards.
The mayor had been gone two or three minutes when the door opened again; it was the mayor once more.
He still wore the same impassive and preoccupied air.
“Monsieur Scaufflaire,” said he, “at what sum do you estimate the value of the horse and tilbury which you are to let to me,—the one bearing the other?”
“The one dragging the other, Monsieur le Maire,” said the Fleming, with a broad smile.
“So be it. Well?”
“Does Monsieur le Maire wish to purchase them or me?”
“No; but I wish to guarantee you in any case. You shall give me back the sum at my return. At what value do you estimate your horse and cabriolet?”
“Five hundred francs, Monsieur le Maire.”
“Here it is.”
M. Madeleine laid a bank-bill on the table, then left the room; and this time he did not return.
Master Scaufflaire experienced a frightful regret that he had not said a thousand francs. Besides the horse and tilbury together were worth but a hundred crowns.
The Fleming called his wife, and related the affair to her. “Where the devil could Monsieur le Maire be going?” They held counsel together. “He is going to Paris,” said the wife. “I don’t believe it,” said the husband.
M. Madeleine had forgotten the paper with the figures on it, and it lay on the chimney-piece. The Fleming picked it up and studied it. “Five, six, eight and a half? That must designate the posting relays.” He turned to his wife:—
“I have found out.”
“What?”
“It is five leagues from here to Hesdin, six from Hesdin to Saint-Pol, eight and a half from Saint-Pol to Arras. He is going to Arras.”
Meanwhile, M. Madeleine had returned home. He had taken the longest way to return from Master Scaufflaire’s, as though the parsonage door had been a temptation for him, and he had wished to avoid it. He ascended to his room, and there he shut himself up, which was a very simple act, since he liked to go to bed early. Nevertheless, the portress of the factory, who was, at the same time, M. Madeleine’s only servant, noticed that the latter’s light was extinguished at half-past eight, and she mentioned it to the cashier when he came home, adding:—
“Is Monsieur le Maire ill? I thought he had a rather singular air.”
This cashier occupied a room situated directly under M. Madeleine’s chamber. He paid no heed to the portress’s words, but went to bed and to sleep. Towards midnight he woke up with a start; in his sleep he had heard a noise above his head. He listened; it was a footstep pacing back and forth, as though some one were walking in the room above him. He listened more attentively, and recognized M. Madeleine’s step. This struck him as strange; usually, there was no noise in M. Madeleine’s chamber until he rose in the morning. A moment later the cashier heard a noise which resembled that of a cupboard being opened, and then shut again; then a piece of furniture was disarranged; then a pause ensued; then the step began again. The cashier sat up in bed, quite awake now, and staring; and through his window-panes he saw the reddish gleam of a lighted window reflected on the opposite wall; from the direction of the rays, it could only come from the window of M. Madeleine’s chamber. The reflection wavered, as though it came rather from a fire which had been lighted than from a candle. The shadow of the window-frame was not shown, which indicated that the window was wide open. The fact that this window was open in such cold weather was surprising. The cashier fell asleep again. An hour or two later he waked again. The same step was still passing slowly and regularly back and forth overhead.
The reflection was still visible on the wall, but now it was pale and peaceful, like the reflection of a lamp or of a candle. The window was still open.
This is what had taken place in M. Madeleine’s room.
The reader has, no doubt, already divined that M. Madeleine is no other than Jean Valjean.
We have already gazed into the depths of this conscience; the moment has now come when we must take another look into it. We do so not without emotion and trepidation. There is nothing more terrible in existence than this sort of contemplation. The eye of the spirit can nowhere find more dazzling brilliance and more shadow than in man; it can fix itself on no other thing which is more formidable, more complicated, more mysterious, and more infinite. There is a spectacle more grand than the sea; it is heaven: there is a spectacle more grand than heaven; it is the inmost recesses of the soul.
To make the poem of the human conscience, were it only with reference to a single man, were it only in connection with the basest of men, would be to blend all epics into one superior and definitive epic. Conscience is the chaos of chimæras, of lusts, and of temptations; the furnace of dreams; the lair of ideas of which we are ashamed; it is the pandemonium of sophisms; it is the battlefield of the passions. Penetrate, at certain hours, past the livid face of a human being who is engaged in reflection, and look behind, gaze into that soul, gaze into that obscurity. There, beneath that external silence, battles of giants, like those recorded in Homer, are in progress; skirmishes of dragons and hydras and swarms of phantoms, as in Milton; visionary circles, as in Dante. What a solemn thing is this infinity which every man bears within him, and which he measures with despair against the caprices of his brain and the actions of his life!
Alighieri one day met with a sinister-looking door, before which he hesitated. Here is one before us, upon whose threshold we hesitate. Let us enter, nevertheless.
We have but little to add to what the reader already knows of what had happened to Jean Valjean after the adventure with Little Gervais. From that moment forth he was, as we have seen, a totally different man. What the Bishop had wished to make of him, that he carried out. It was more than a transformation; it was a transfiguration.
He succeeded in disappearing, sold the Bishop’s silver, reserving only the candlesticks as a souvenir, crept from town to town, traversed France, came to M. sur M., conceived the idea which we have mentioned, accomplished what we have related, succeeded in rendering himself safe from seizure and inaccessible, and, thenceforth, established at M. sur M., happy in feeling his conscience saddened by the past and the first half of his existence belied by the last, he lived in peace, reassured and hopeful, having henceforth only two thoughts,—to conceal his name and to sanctify his life; to escape men and to return to God.
These two thoughts were so closely intertwined in his mind that they formed but a single one there; both were equally absorbing and imperative and ruled his slightest actions. In general, they conspired to regulate the conduct of his life; they turned him towards the gloom; they rendered him kindly and simple; they counselled him to the same things. Sometimes, however, they conflicted. In that case, as the reader will remember, the man whom all the country of M. sur M. called M. Madeleine did not hesitate to sacrifice the first to the second—his security to his virtue. Thus, in spite of all his reserve and all his prudence, he had preserved the Bishop’s candlesticks, worn mourning for him, summoned and interrogated all the little Savoyards who passed that way, collected information regarding the families at Faverolles, and saved old Fauchelevent’s life, despite the disquieting insinuations of Javert. It seemed, as we have already remarked, as though he thought, following the example of all those who have been wise, holy, and just, that his first duty was not towards himself.
At the same time, it must be confessed, nothing just like this had yet presented itself.
Never had the two ideas which governed the unhappy man whose sufferings we are narrating, engaged in so serious a struggle. He understood this confusedly but profoundly at the very first words pronounced by Javert, when the latter entered his study. At the moment when that name, which he had buried beneath so many layers, was so strangely articulated, he was struck with stupor, and as though intoxicated with the sinister eccentricity of his destiny; and through this stupor he felt that shudder which precedes great shocks. He bent like an oak at the approach of a storm, like a soldier at the approach of an assault. He felt shadows filled with thunders and lightnings descending upon his head. As
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