Les Miserables (abridged) (Barnes & Noble Classics Series) (133 page)

Cosette did not inquire further, having but one need on earth, Marius. We must also say that, on their part, Marius and Cosette had been absent. They had been to Vernon. Marius had taken Cosette to his father’s grave.

Marius had little by little withdrawn Cosette from Jean Valjean. Cosette was passive.

Moreover, what is called much too harshly, in certain cases, the ingratitude of children, is not always as blameworthy a thing as is supposed. It is the ingratitude of nature. Nature, as we have said elsewhere, “looks forward.” Nature divides living beings into the coming and the going. The going are turned towards the shadow, the coming towards the light. Hence a separation, which, on the part of the old, is a fatality, and, on the part of the young, involuntary. This separation, at first insensible, gradually increases, like every separation of branches. The limbs, without parting from the trunk, recede from it. It is not their fault. Youth goes where joy is, to festivals, to brilliant lights, to loves. Old age goes to its end. They do not lose sight of each other, but the ties are loosened. The affection of the young is chilled by life; that of the old by the grave. We must not blame these poor children.

ONE DAY Jean Valjean went down stairs, took three steps into the street, sat down upon a stone block, upon that same block where Gavroche, on the night of the 5th of June, had found him musing; he remained there a few minutes, then went upstairs again. This was the last oscillation of the pendulum. The next day, he did not leave his room. The day after he did not leave his bed.

His portress, who prepared his frugal meal, some cabbage, a few potatoes with a little pork, looked into the brown earthen plate, and exclaimed:

“Why, you didn’t eat anything yesterday, poor dear man!”

“Yes, I did,” answered Jean Valjean.

“The plate is all full.”

“Look at the water-pitcher. That is empty.”

“That shows that you have drunk; it don’t show that you have eaten.”

“Well,” said Jean Valjean, “suppose I have only been hungry for water?”

“That is called thirst, and, when people don’t eat at the same time, it is called fever.”

“I will eat to-morrow.”

“Or at Christmas. Why not eat to-day? Do people say: I will eat tomorrow! To leave me my whole plateful without touching it! My cole slaw, which was so good!”

Jean Valjean took the old woman’s hand:

“I promise to eat it,” said he to her in his benevolent voice.

“I am not satisfied with you,” answered the portress.

Jean Valjean scarcely ever saw any other human being than this good woman. There are streets in Paris in which nobody walks, and houses into which nobody comes. He was in one of those streets, and in one of those houses.

While he still went out, he had bought of a brazier for a few sous a little copper crucifix, which he had hung upon a nail before his bed. The cross is always good to look upon.

A week elapsed, and Jean Valjean had not taken a step in his room. He was still in bed. The portress said to her husband: “The goodman upstairs does not get up any more, he does not eat any more, he won’t last long. He has trouble, he has. Nobody can get it out of my head that his daughter has made a bad match.”

The porter replied, with the accent of the marital sovereignty:

“If he is rich, let him have a doctor. If he is not rich, let him not have any. If he doesn’t have a doctor, he will die.”

“And if he does have one?”

“He will die,” said the porter.

The portress began to dig up with an old knife some grass which was sprouting in what she called her pavement, and, while she was pulling up the grass, she muttered:

“It is a pity. An old man who is so nice! He is white as a chicken.”

She saw a physician of the neighbourhood passing at the end of the street; she took it upon herself to beg him to go up.

“It is on the third floor,” said she to him. “You will have nothing to do but go in. As the goodman does not stir from his bed now, the key is in the door all the time.”

The physician saw Jean Valjean, and spoke with him.

When he came down, the portress questioned him:

“Well, doctor?”

“Your sick man is very sick.”

“What is the matter with him?”

“Everything and nothing. He is a man who, to all appearance, has lost some dear friend. People die of that.”

“What did he tell you?”

“He told me that he was well.”

“Will you come again, doctor?”

“Yes,” answered the physician. “But another than I must come again.”

ONE EVENING Jean Valjean had difficulty in raising himself upon his elbow; he felt his wrist and found no pulse; his breathing was shallow, and stopped at intervals; he realised that he was weaker than he had been before. Then, undoubtedly under the pressure of some supreme desire, he made an effort, sat up in bed, and dressed himself. He put on his old working-man’s garb. As he went out no longer, he had returned to it, and he preferred it. He was obliged to stop several times while dressing; the mere effort of putting on his waistcoat, made the sweat roll down his forehead.

Since he had been alone, he had made his bed in the ante-room, so as to occupy this desolate tenement as little as possible.

He opened the valise and took out Cosette’s outfit.

He spread it out upon his bed.

The bishop’s candlesticks were in their place, on the mantel. He took two wax tapers from a drawer, and put them into the candlesticks. Then, although it was still broad daylight, it was in summer, he lighted them. We sometimes see torches lighted thus in broad day, in rooms where the dead lie.

Each step that he took in going from one piece of furniture to another exhausted him, and he was obliged to sit down. One of the chairs upon which he sank was standing before that mirror, so fatal for him, so providential for Marius, in which he had read Cosette’s note, reversed on the blotter. He saw himself in this mirror, and did not recognise himself. He was eighty years old; before Marius’ marriage, one would hardly have thought him fifty; this year had counted thirty. What was now upon his forehead was not the wrinkle of age, it was the mysterious mark of death.

Night had come. With much labour he drew a table and an old arm-chair near the fireplace, and put upon the table pen, ink, and paper.

Then he fainted. When he regained consciousness he was thirsty. Being unable to lift the water-pitcher, with great effort he tipped it towards his mouth, and drank a swallow.

Then he turned to the bed, and, still sitting, for he could stand but a moment, he looked at the little black dress, and all those dear objects.

Such contemplations last for hours which seem minutes. Suddenly he shivered, he felt that the chill was coming, he leaned upon the table which was lighted by the bishop’s candlesticks, and took the pen.

As neither the pen nor the ink had been used for a long time, the tip of the pen was bent back, the ink was dried, he was obliged to get up and put a few drops of water into the ink, which he could not do without stopping and sitting down two or three times, and he was compelled to write with the back of the pen. He wiped his forehead from time to time.

His hand trembled. He slowly wrote the few lines which follow:

“Cosette, I bless you. I am going to make an explanation to you. Your husband was quite right in giving me to understand that I ought to leave; there is some mistake in what he believed, but he was right. He is very good. Always love him well when I am dead. Monsieur Pontmercy, always love my darling child. Cosette, this paper will be found, this is what I want to tell you, you shall see the figures, if I have the strength to recall them, listen well, this money is really your own.

Here he stopped, the pen fell from his fingers, he gave way to one of those despairing sobs which rose at times from the depths of his being, the poor man clasped his head with both hands, and reflected.

“Oh!” exclaimed he within himself (pitiful cries, heard by God alone), “it is all over. I shall never see her more. She is a smile which has passed over me. I am going to enter into the night without even seeing her again. Oh! a minute, an instant, to hear her voice, to touch her dress, to look at her, the angel! and then to die! It is nothing to die, but it is dreadful to die without seeing her. She would smile upon me, she would say a word to me. Would that harm anybody? No, it is over, forever. Here I am, all alone. My God! my God! I shall never see her again.”

At this moment there was a rap at his door.

THAT VERY DAY, or rather that very evening, just as Marius had left the table and retired into his office, having a dossier to study, Basque had handed him a letter, saying: “the person who wrote the letter is in the antechamber.”

Cosette had taken grandfather’s arm, and was walking in the garden.

A letter, as well as a man, may have a forbidding appearance. Coarse paper, clumsy fold, the mere sight of certain missives displeases. The letter which Basque brought was of this kind.

Marius took it. It smelt of tobacco. Nothing awakens a reminiscence like an odour. Marius recognised this tobacco. He looked at the address: To
Monsieur, Monsieur the Baron Pommerci. In his hôtel.
The recognition of the tobacco made him recognise the handwriting. We might say that astonishment has its flashes. Marius was, as it were, illuminated by one of those flashes.

The scent, the mysterious aid-memory, revived a whole world within him. Here was the very paper, the manner of folding, the paleness of the ink; here was, indeed, the well-known handwriting; above all, here was the tobacco. The Jondrette garret appeared before him.

Thus, strange freak of chance! one of the two traces which he had sought so long, the one which he had again recently made so many efforts to find, and which he believed forever lost, came of itself to him.

He broke the seal eagerly, and read:

The letter was signed “THÉNARD.”

This signature was not a false one. It was only a little abridged.

Besides the rigmarole and the orthography completed the revelation. The certificate of origin was perfect. There was no doubt possible.

The emotion of Marius was deep. After the feeling of surprise, he had a feeling of happiness. Let him now find the other man whom he sought, the man who had saved him, Marius, and he would have nothing more to wish.

He opened one of his secretary drawers, took out some bank-notes, put them in his pockets, closed the secretary, and rang. Basque appeared.

“Show him in,” said Marius.

Basque announced:

“Monsieur Thénard.”

A man entered.

A new surprise for Marius. The man who came in was perfectly unknown to him.

This man, old withal, had a large nose, his chin in his cravat, green spectacles, with double shade of green silk over his eyes, his hair polished and smoothed down, his forehead close to the eyebrows, like the wigs of English coachmen in high life. His hair was grey. He was dressed in black from head to foot, in a well worn but tidy black; a bunch of trinkets, hanging from his fob, suggested a watch. He held an old hat in his hand. He walked with a stoop, and the crook of his back increased the lowliness of his bow.

 

 

Marius’ disappointment, on seeing another man enter than the one he was expecting, turned into dislike towards the new-comer. He examined him from head to foot, while the personage bowed without measure, and asked him in a sharp tone:

“What do you want?”

The man answered with an amiable grin of which the caressing smile of a crocodile would give some idea:

“It seems to me impossible that I have not already had the honour of seeing Monsieur the Baron in society. I really think that I met him privately some years ago, at Madame the Princess Bagration’s and in the salons of his lordship the Viscount Dambray, peer of France.”

It is always good tactics in rascality to pretend to recognise one whom you do not know.

Marius listened attentively to the voice of this man. He watched for the tone and gesture eagerly, but his disappointment increased; it was a whining pronunciation, entirely different from the sharp and dry sound of the voice which he expected. He was completely bewildered.

“I don’t know,” said he, “either Madame Bagration or M. Dambray. I have never in my life set foot in the house of either the one or the other.”

The answer was testy. The person, gracious notwithstanding, persisted:

“Then it must be at Chateaubriand’s that I have seen monsieur? I know Chateaubriand well. He is very affable. He says to me sometimes: ‘Thénard, my friend, won’t you drink a glass of wine with me?’ ”