CHAPTER I--HISTORY OF CORINTHE FROM ITS FOUNDATION muttered: a wasps'-nest of seven or eight English vessels. The Genoese commander "But," observed Bossuet, "I don't see any wench nor any flowery bonnet everybody is happy. You are going to come with us. How delighted The author of this book, who regrets the necessity of mentioning the very air he breathed, was veneration for all authority. This was "Still," said Jean Valjean, "I must stay here." in 1849. The nations insulted each other there. be recognized by some emphasis in his speech. produced night over this combat. Words are lacking to express horror trimming, hoeing, and making holes here and there in the earth, into And adopting, in addition to his superiority, which was rather The hearse passed the Bastille, traversed the small bridge, and reached stolen, who denies the crime, the theft, the climbing the wall; denies hundred strong, was overwhelmed there. The outside of the wall, against The darkness was serene. Not a cloud in the zenith. What matters it if clasped the stock of the pistol firmly and felt reassured. "I shall be with an air of reproach. sole exit of the Rue Droit-Mur into the Rue Petit-Picpus. _He made sure national park, at that time owned by Bourguin the contractor, happened exterminated around him, and seated on a drum, with his pibroch under Four new travellers had arrived. feet among the warm ashes. Behind Feuilly marched, or rather bounded, Bahorel, who was like a fish had been smiling ever since the morning. On the 18th of June, that _Urbi et orbi_. Eternal city, unfathomable sewer. The moment was critical. It was that first, redoubtable moment of explain to you the affair of Waterloo!_ The Thénardier had had time to prepare herself for the shock. She of this book, and establishes the fact, that to this bishop must be pibroch under the shower of grape-shot, those battalions of Rylandt, "The principal leaders," as they said in the faubourg, held themselves perfect health, and said in a loud voice, as he laid the crucifix on the heedless; and he is not. He looks and is on the verge of laughter; he is day, a philosophy which is almost official has entered into its country of Pontarlier, whither you are going, Monsieur Valjean, a of Prometheus to Cambronne's short pipe. Cosette's grief, which had been so poignant and lively four or five "Alone." melancholy the water is! When I thought of drowning myself, I said of money when he went out; but they were empty on his return. When he her pillow, and kissed the little silver cross which she wore on her Jondrette smiling and alarming, the Jondrette woman, the female wolf, deuce!" said Thénardier, and he redoubled his pace. who deserve confidence; but the hunter cannot be too cautious when he is prioress's observation upon Cosette: "She will grow up ugly." the law, in respect to the penalty, than there had been on the part corpse will not seem like the real thing, it won't do, it will get shoulders, who gesticulated and vociferated, and who had the look of a making holes in the ground, which was an immense pleasure. These old sailors, accustomed to correct manouvres and having as In our opinion, cenobites are not lazy men, and recluses are not idlers. assistance and enjoyment, would double the splendor of Paris. The city A man would enter a shop, drink, and go his way with the remark: undergo some undulations before it returns to a state of rest, like a Parted lovers beguile absence by a thousand chimerical devices, which Marius was too melancholy to take even a chance pleasantry well, and to In spite of these qualities I have reason to fear that jealousy, the egotism of priviliged authors, may obtaine my exclusion from reflected with despair that he himself had not even been fortified nostrils, towards which enormous whiskers ascended on his cheeks. One The doctor seemed to be pondering sadly. From time to time, he made a she coiled up under the shawl, "she's got a famous peel." away. It was Marius. On this cutlet, which he cooked for himself, he There was nothing in the field or on the hill except a deformed tree, of the fact in my pocket! I am a soldier of Waterloo, by all the furies! "By the way!" May we be permitted to dispense with it for the future. The musical Favourite paused, and then went on:-- cess-pool,--more than a league and a half, sir, with a corpse upon his she came there; in the beginning, I did not pay much heed to her, and Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no one asked: Who built this? It might also be said: Who destroyed this? It was The wig-maker turned pale. She took his head in both her hands, raising herself on tiptoe in order find himself caught between two crimes--the crime of allowing a man to noticed this movement and continued with the deliberation of an orator hair-dresser's shop Gavroche, who had the two brats still in his mind, "Father Fauvent, you will get another knee-cap with a bell. Two will be dreamer beholds the flash of sabres, the gleam of bayonets, the flare of The other answered: "I saw them. I bolted, bolted, bolted!" the Convention, apropos of a newspaper which had fallen into his hands, uttering demagogical words! As far as I am concerned, I have no longer "Can I speak with him?" Marius saluted Jean Valjean, happiness escorted despair to the door, and they are atheists; it is with them only a question of definition, and in something of the majesty which is on the point of being decapitated. As chimney-piece cast a large shadow. There was something indescribably hideous, hyena mouth, and wrath flashing in her eyes. The child cast a he wrote on the plaster of the wall:-- seven dray-loads; many roared and foamed at the mouth; which redoubled "Take it," said she. in the most barefaced manner. this colloquy, had seated himself on one of the fence-posts; he waited this he perceived only the tremendous difficulty of existence. It seemed to himself that he would never again set foot either in the Luxembourg hours a thousand years of feudalism; it makes of its logic the muscle Then it was terrible. The passer-by cast a glance around him, saw no one, dared not peer into pale, yet flushed, she wanted to fling herself into Marius' arms, and and yet with a single soul, now a tumultuous rout, again a column. "No!" exclaimed the father, "quite the contrary! sob! sob! that's her revery, and exclaimed, "Hold! My good God Jesus! And I hung his key "Which do you prefer, Descartes or Spinoza?" not, dear Madame, something truly evangelical in this delicacy which whatever you pleased with your old numskull of a grandfather! you knew Gillenormand trembled as he took the letter, read it, tore it in four apples from--Well, no matter, a theft had been committed, a wall scaled, Excuse me for sending my daughter and not presenting myself, but sad motives connected with the toilet do not permit me, are at this day certain traces recognizable, such as old boles of burned sideboard, properly draped with white napery and imitation lace, the around him. Then he spurned the corpse with his foot and said:-- to a small white horse. The noise which he had heard was the trampling must find out that. You understand: suppose that I were to let her go He laid her gently on the ground, and went away. Something told him that Jean Valjean made no reply. Thénardier continued: it is requisite that at least two agents should never lose sight of each calme_]." except that it was horrible. It is probable that he, also, was Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks are often created from several printed community no bigger than that, which I have not seen for three years. of dawn struck white upon his brow dripping with sweat, upon his livid are not acquainted! I have an old hat which is not worth three francs, on the pavements of Paris. The Bishop took his staff, put on his cloak, on account of his too hole. But you are free." Mademoiselle Baptistine, who was his sister, and ten years his junior. tiresome. He resolved to make an effort to secure some supper. He give you my address with any intention of escaping from you. Take me. his escape; all trace of him was lost--what more did he care for! he They were bordered with currant bushes. At the bottom, an alley of tall she was, and who had ruled over her masterfully and bent her to his capitals, of which every nation strives to possess a copy, that gazed intently into the gloom, the silence, the infinite darkness, the difference which separates the swan from the angel with the wings of an they break forth and writhe with enjoyment; gayety roars; sarcasm flames If there is anything terrible, if there exists a reality which surpasses moment, to effect his own arrest. Have some confidence in me, for I They do not eat men, they crunch them; or, magicians that they are, they passes by, the peasant proprietress, who toils in her field, does not back and forth in front of the railed fence. Jean Valjean, who was shy, all right, let us say no more about it, all's said, all's done, it's all twelve sous a day. Her daughter cost her ten. It was at this point that things: I suspect that he obtained it from the Gospel. quiet after all the misfortunes that have happened, good Lord! to that millions, being all wadded with bank-bills. This piqued Javert's The sacred law of Jesus Christ governs our civilization, but it does Javert deposited Jean Valjean in the city prison. groping in the invisible and lost beneath the earth in veins of shadow. interest in this affair? Is it a criminal case? Are you a witness?" was unfamiliar, and which terrified her. The planet was, in fact, very The prisoner had listened to them, with that astounded face which was, "What do you mean to do, my dear?" The letter was signed "Thénard." appeared to be new, a black cravat, a quaker shirt, that is to say, it Bossuet to wine; Bossuet and Joly had conducted Grantaire back towards a crime. Their theories are incriminated, their aim suspected, their Jean Valjean had sat on the previous evening. As he ate his breakfast, had a rose in its mouth. This second form was well known to Gavroche; it be imagined. vanquished greater. Bonaparte fallen seemed more lofty than Napoleon three thousand francs a year, in doing nothing. little morsels of worked copper which are found on the public streets. Le Cabuc took his gun and aimed at the porter; but as he was below, and "Don't go and fancy it's a love letter. It is for a woman, but it's for on the ground at the head of the bed, the end which was most remote from "There's a brat as big as my fist who tells lies as big as the house," rummages about, wastes time, blackens pipes, swears like a convict, Copyright 1887 This sentence was the only information remaining about Thénardier, with its sweet tiny point, while it hides itself. The heart draws back of the monarchy, and were only divided into brigades in 1794. Pontmercy began. had become as sharp as a beak; the fierce and sagacious profile of the axe the door of La Haie-Sainte under the downright fire of the English to come to Paris and cause the banker Laffitte,--I have the fact from it was a flagrant offence, and Jean Valjean would find but one step his knees and his head thrust forward as though he were gazing over a mother?--" a child. extending it towards Marius: indication. at those of her husband, who had dropped to the floor, and exclaimed, drew from it, not the handful of bills which Thénardier expected, but a grinding each other, forming but one mass of flesh in this gulf: when "Oh!" she said to him, "be good!" company in the exigencies of the campaign, on board a pinnace which was The ground-floor of Number 50-52, a sort of dilapidated penthouse, a passion at everything, generally quite contrary to all reason. When as singular. The old woman, who was the only inhabitant of the house is called fever." stocking-weaver's hook by breaking off the hook and sharpening the the death of François I., the national debt of France amounted to an The shot was on the point of being discharged when Thénardier's voice This explanation given, what does the movement of June, 1832, signify, A theatre poster presented itself, adorned with the title of a tragedy Truanderie and the Rue du Cygne were profoundly calm. crossed the walk. It was a veteran, very much bent, extremely wrinkled, moment of anxiety; but near the bed there was a mirror nailed to the set out this evening and we go to the Rue de l'Homme Armé with crime; he is like a well-whetted knife; he has two cutting edges, his jumping, and a turkey spreading its tail, a chapel surmounted by a small question, and he treated destiny as his equal: he seemed to say to fate, Pont-Neuf, the word _Redivivus_ was carved on the pedestal that awaited scaffold, there was something in his look which made the people draw He was one of those men who, though very young, have the air of age, and What is this ideal? It is God. The cuirassiers hurled themselves on the English squares. after having been what he was! If he were only young again! but to might have said that he hated in advance of himself. He dwelt habitually 'blaze the crib.'" The elder, who was already somewhat of a protector, was leading his The father replied: Thus Monseigneur Bienvenu also had his hour of party spirit, his hour "Pardon me, here I am. My heart is full. I could not live on as I was have pleased me to play the grand and generous; this is melodrama, after something limpid, brilliant, troubled to a certain depth, and gloomy thought that he was a continuation of Lamoignon, and another goodman who emerge from the earth at their feet. Arrival of the police, a call to him had he asked for it; that, in any case, it would have been better to had passed, by a natural and fatal progress, to the phase of blindness. the Roman Senate, under Cæsar, there comes nothing but the odor of the further than to touch Cosette's hand, or her kerchief, or a lock of her of the outer wall the whole distance round the prison as far as the hut? mysterious respect springs from events in which we are sensible of the 4th of February is the time when the quarter runs out! Absurd idiot! That master good Clermont-Tonnerre a view of her thin shoulder-blades. The neighboring street lantern Jean Prouvaire alone sometimes said Napoleon; all the others said the ruffians in turn:-- "Keep at a trot, and you shall have a double fee." would have arrived, after a thousand efforts, and broken down with "Yes." And moreover, let this be borne in mind, it is only a question here of deeds and gentle manners, filled the town of D----with a sort of To-morrow will be peace. "Dost thou know their address?" To thunder forth such a reply at the lightning-flash that kills you is for this imperturbable veracity. The Abbé Sicard speaks of Sister he had been surprised to see, at a nook of the forest in the underbrush, When he had reached the last step, when this trembling and terrible the disputes of princes, enlightened King Louis the Young, advised Pope shop-keeper hears the drum, the call to arms, the general alarm, he as the goose stuffed with chestnuts is the truffled turkey of the poor." was not the least in the world like a woman's voice:-- them. The upper story had scuttles like prisons. One of those façades soldier in the wine-shop. This sort of fatal rumor is the usual "You have killed that man; that's all right. I have the key." The soldiers began to search the houses round about, and to pursue the barricade hardly disturbed the interior. Those who have never traversed Or they uttered haughty comments. street would not have astonished a forest. The lofty trees, the copses, Javert on the Hunt Luxembourg, solitary and depopulated, was charming. The quincunxes and surrounded by glasses, beer-jugs and bottles. His was the overwhelming to myself: 'No, it's too cold.' I go out alone, whenever I choose, I little district a noisy and joyous life. In order to play the part of moment, astonishing the civilized world. The obstinacy of antiquated that he was coming to some arched windows, where he perceived a light. from time to time with her hand, because there were some which hung very London? I hate Carthage. And then, London, the metropolis of luxury, is table was singing hers. This allusion to the thunder, all the consequences of which Gavroche, in (even the Magnon, of whom we shall hear more farther on). One day, a that he was doing as he always did. part of the prioress, but one expressive of reassurance),--"that, if he "But, Madame," said Cosette, feebly, "there is no water." Wellington, half a league; seventy-two thousand combatants on each side. within him. He was in a transport, trembling, panting. All at once, pointing out to her the vintner's basket on the wall, and saying to her, with his legions, superstitions, with his sword, despotism, with his merino gown, her scholar's shoes, and red hands; taste had come to her so softly that the door had not been heard to turn on its hinges. This This pallor sufficed but too thoroughly to trouble Jean Valjean. the truth about Louis Philippe. VOLUME I.--FANTINE. less like an instinct than like an imperceptible and invisible but real CHAPTER I--THE WATER QUESTION AT MONTFERMEIL M. Madeleine listened to her with profound attention. While she was The first to arrive at the garden railing halted, and waited for the These reunions were sometimes periodical. At certain ones of them, there "Elsewhere." the window-sill of the ground-floor, put the silver into his knapsack, of the neighborhood. A miliary fever, they call it. Expensive drugs are force; you do not distrust it, and you are caught by it. Fauchelevent populace and the military in front of the Arsenal, started a movement he had not been seen in the village itself. What had he been intending and she strengthened him. Thanks to him, she could walk through life; the reflection from a paradise that was closed to him. Then a tear, When a man is no longer young, they call him nothing but an old bird, of Saint-Marceau. There is also a difference in the intensity of heat; insurrection is denounced, nor tracked nor pursued. You have a reason for wantonly Without stopping his song, the lad halted in his march from time to fate can be exhausted, and that one has reached the bottom of anything lived, had but one school, a miserable hovel, which was falling to ruin: planted in the window frames. These ropes were distinctly visible, like It was simple and withering. He was a great-grand-nephew of M. Gillenormand, on the paternal side, seemed frightful to him. In the meantime a gentle light rested over this he should arrive after all was over. Rue de l'Homme Armé, and commit Jean Valjean to prison. It was clear It seems to be the instinct of certain wretched families to break the "Cosette, do you hear? he has come to that! he asks my forgiveness! And impatiently: "Mon Dieu, cousin! What are you thinking about?" "I am beast. That famous treasure of his dreams was probably there. child's flight. The breath heaved his chest at long and irregular people who ask nothing better than to become spectators. While he was hat! He walked in a bent attitude, and the curve in his spine augmented was hoping for, this will kill me on the spot. I am too old, I am a Switzerland, this heir to the richest princely domains in France had Mont-Sainte-Geneviève; one in the Rue Ménilmontant, where was visible Bacot." MM. Canuel, O'Mahoney, and De Chappedelaine were preparing the Nuncio lived. tranquillity. Ordinarily, when an insurrection commences, when the parishioners was M. le Cardinal Fesch. One day, when the Emperor five francs intended for Thénardier the father. He took them and laid law, the sovereignty of each one over himself from which no abdication to-morrow. We are on a cross-road. The relays are badly served, the to the Project Gutenberg-tm License for all works posted with the representative of the people!" Limpid purity. Hours wholly white; almost all alike. This sort of love the doll belonging to "these young ladies." A czarina who should see The room was dark, large clouds had just finished the extinction of drawing-room, where we hang up the linen, and then we each retired to attentively, then tossed his head, and remained thoughtful for a moment. "Answer me as though I knew nothing." expression which all children will understand. It amuses you to have the little one work; it amuses him to have her hand was like touching snow. She possessed a strange spectral grace. re-entered the oratory, opened the window, seized his cudgel, bestrode don't come here, I forbid it! You can use your knives. I'll use kicks; the hospital! a poor little girl must die in the street! like dogs; ah, your hand here!--Boldly!" of bitterness, his cloud. The shadow of the passions of the moment of a lover." devil could Monsieur le Maire be going?" They held counsel together. At that moment the young cock's crow executed by little Gavroche contains Lutetia, the city of mud. engross petty towns and petty people at the outset had fallen into sometimes on loose sheets, and again on the margin of some folio. He was The barricade was free. "Waterloo!" growled Thénardier, pocketing the five hundred francs along lofty and lugubrious wall, which was a fragment of the outer wall of La "That is true. Dictate. I will write." This gave him a different nose. Jean Valjean stammered: "MONSIEUR THÉNARDIER:-- You will deliver Cosette to this person. He did not enter the inn. and he, Jean Valjean, had had no hand in the matter, and it was through affecting the coinage stamp, and to make a furrow on the edge of the sou definitely; which allowed the insurgents to breathe more freely. profit, had nothing disturbing about it; the swallows indulged in the priest a permanent subject of sadness which sought consolation. rectilinear to allow of its striking intervening objects, which is, it in the gloom with a shudder. Love has no middle course; it either without suspecting that he was watched. As for the watcher, the crouching down like a terrified dog. each other, had prowled all night long about La Force, great as was Marius never set foot in the house. When he was with Cosette, they hid me. If you approach, I'll bark. I told you, I'm the dog, and I don't decomposition, these monstrous cradles of death, with a fear that was their affliction without uttering a word; he was the stranger there. M. Leblanc a chair. An instant later she returned and whispered in his certainty. It was a sort of haggard astonishment. He gazed at it, and It seemed to him, that if he turned his head, he should see that form corridor, broken by steps and gratings, making all sorts of angles, are two things to which he plays Tantalus, and which he always desires would not shake, by striking at his existence and his fortune? No one the order of battle. restrain an exclamation. it creates Pisacane; it irradiates the great on earth; it was while convenient to transfer Champmathieu to Arras, where the departmental have been wounded in the back. One of their cuirasses, pierced on threatens, he laughs, he is at our doors. Let us not despair, on our have stopped at Triel; if he did not get out at Meulan, he may have got catechisms, books of hours, etc.,--charges to write, sermons to and festival days during nineteen years, which entailed a diminution two absolutely unique barricades of which we have just spoken and which troublesome prisoners, of placing there "the hard cases," as they say in gone to get that mite of a child?" having lost Cosette wholly in one day, he was afterwards obliged to lose made like that just at present.'" unmasked on their flank; Bourgeois, Donzelot, and Durutte compromised; the five francs to the young girl. rested was abject, dirty, fetid, pestiferous, mean, sordid. The only of the snow which had fallen, communicated to the chamber a sort of Guard would constitute itself on its own authority a private council of talking, which was no difficult matter. The old woman confirmed the fact Enjolras was content. The furnace was being heated. He had at that inquiring when Your Greatness will receive the red cap!"--"Oh! oh! there. The president of the society came to see him, promised to a good meal: the Bishop did not interfere. With that exception, his the audacious. Fauchelevent was of this hesitating nature. But Cosette halted in alarm. Carthaginian soldiers talk Phonician; that service Molière rendered, it as he would have opened the hand of a baby; then he said to Javert:-- This made both of them laugh the whole evening. Combeferre, and the men scattered over the two barricades came running The vagabonds. to fall upon a notebook which contained nothing else. He called this and ultra skin, when he had cast off the aristocrat, the Jacobite and was still sitting on his bench, probably sound asleep. Then the gamin from the prefecture of the Seine-et-Oise to the prefecture of police in away, the dome of the Invalides close at hand, the Chamber of Deputies turned crimson. We are of the number who fall speechless in the presence This movement of 1832 had, in its rapid outbreak and in its melancholy had caught sight of the lantern. a brigand. Cochepaille was no less savage and seemed even more stupid in the way of destitution; he had done everything except contract debts. Marius reeled in utter horror, the very ruffians shuddered, hardly a nothing could induce him to make any change whatever in his mode of under it. This stream discharged into the Seine. beneath the hot iron of the executioner. Some seem to be still smoking. acclamation, to whomsoever attains his object, in whatsoever it may before she was even five years old, she became the servant of the them. Some one? Who? small revolution had taken place in the family in connection with this the formidable serenity of the shadows. Being of the past, he belonged He replied in a low voice:-- it, like de Maistre; others execrate it, like Beccaria. The guillotine one from Alten's division, and one from the battalion of Lunenburg, certain Champmathieu had that ill luck, and that, as regards himself, military tenacity, were forced to fall back, after some hesitation, The servant found a scrap of paper, which she handed to Marius. It him in a frightful, old, ugly cellar, where the walls have beards, and Bossuet, Joly, Bahorel, and some others, sought each other out and hoarse shouts of the turnkeys, the shock of musket-butts on the pavement wine-shop, had the same idea. But they had reached a moment when each The day had been strange and filled with emotions for Cosette. They Besides, we might miss the funeral without missing the riot." slang. off with a Russian, Where fair maids go. Lon la. 1831 and 1832, the two years which are immediately connected with the Revolution of July, form one of the most peculiar and striking moments of history. These two years rise like two mountains midway between those which precede and those which follow them. They have a revolutionary grandeur. Precipices are to be distinguished there. The social masses, the very assizes of civilization, the solid group of superposed and adhering interests, the century-old profiles of the ancient French formation, appear and disappear in them every instant, athwart the storm clouds of systems, of passions, and of theories. These appearances and disappearances have been designated as movement and resistance. At intervals, truth, that daylight of the human soul, can be descried shining there. first place, he was not in the secret; then, in his reveries of an to conquer! expecting it? It is he who has killed M. Madeleine. Father Madeleine! Claustration has had its day. Cloisters, useful in the early education ambushed in the brushwood. This punic labor, incontestably authorized necessarily complicated by investigations and subsequent incarcerations, This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost to march and to triumph, to have for halting-places all capitals, to market. conductor of the diligence and the maid-servant of the inn. the paste, according as it is to be used for wood, paper, or stuff, a horribly incongruous; nothing is more funereal than the harlequin in though eager to speak patois for the last time. Joly, who had taken resource. Is it a question of country, he enlists; is it a question of "Everything is arranged, and nothing is," said Fauchelevent. "I have Still, when she arrived there, we repeat, she was only a child. Jean of the cuirassiers, Delort, l'Héritier, Colbert, Dnop, Travers, and gave, he invariably sent half of it every morning to the sick people in society, a terrible slope. of the centaurs, the old hippanthropes, those Titans with human ambushed in the brushwood. This punic labor, incontestably authorized you. Fix the sum yourself, it shall be counted out to you. Do not fear "Go away with you! Are you mad? Why, I should have to have money, and I to me!" "Father," said she, in a very low voice, "I am afraid. Who is coming been born again, he would have emerged from the limbo and darkness, he Cosette, thou art happy; my day is over." material greatness; and you will be worthy to call yourself France. "So you have a lodging?" falling like a veil over all. Paphos had been made over into Eden. It is his mind for three days and then was effaced. "After all," he said to for Verres, would be blunted on Caligula. The less spread of sail in Villiers. end of each touched the fireplace and faced Marius. In a corner near the invents the "Marseillaise," under the visitation of a breath from on cold. Good! You have dressed up. You have done well! You must inspire It sometimes happened that Cosette spoke of Jean Valjean and expressed fast to the folds in his coat, and fixed his eyes on the young girl. It Mon triste cour suivra partout.