On the morning of Waterloo, then, Napoleon was cheerful, and had reason to be so,—for the plan he had drawn up was admirable. Once the battle had begun, its various incidents,—the resistance of Hougomont; the tenacity of La Haye Sainte; Bauduin killed, and Foy placed hors de combat; the unexpected wall against which Soye's brigade was broken; the fatal rashness of Guilleminot, who had no petards or powder-bags to destroy the farm gates; the sticking of the artillery in the mud; the fifteen guns without escort captured by Uxbridge in a hollow way; the slight effect of the shells falling in the English lines, which buried themselves in the moistened ground, and only produced a volcano of mud, so that the troops were merely plastered with mud; the inutility of Piret's demonstration on Braine l'Alleud, and the whole of his cavalry, fifteen squadrons, almost annihilated; the English right but slightly disquieted and the left poorly attacked; Ney's strange mistake in massing instead of échelonning the four divisions of the first corps; a depth of twenty-seven ranks and a line of two hundred men given up in this way to the canister; the frightful gaps made by the cannon-balls in these masses; the attacking columns disunited; the oblique battery suddenly unmasked on their flank; Bourgeois, Donzelot, and Durutte in danger; Quiot repulsed; Lieutenant Viot, that Hercules who came from the Polytechnic school, wounded at the moment when he was beating in with an axe the gates of La Haye Sainte, under the plunging fire of the English barricade on the Genappe road; Marcognet's division caught between infantry and cavalry, shot down from the wheat by Best and Pack, and sabred by Ponsonby; its battery of seven guns spiked; the Prince of Saxe Weimar holding and keeping in defiance of Count d'Erlon, Frischemont and Smohain; the flags of the 105th and 45th regiments which he had captured; the Prussian black Hussar stopped by the scouts of the flying column of three hundred chasseurs, who were beating the country between Wavre and Plancenoit; the alarming things which this man said; Grouchy's delay; the fifteen hundred men killed in less than an hour in the orchard of Hougomont; the eighteen hundred laid low even in a shorter space of time round La Haye Sainte,—all these stormy incidents, passing like battle-clouds before Napoleon, had scarce disturbed his glance or cast a gloom over this imperial face. Napoleon was accustomed to look steadily at war; he never reckoned up the poignant details; he cared little for figures, provided that they gave the total—victory. If the commencement went wrong, he did not alarm himself, as he believed himself master and owner of the end; he knew how to wait, and treated Destiny as an equal. He seemed to say to fate, "You would not dare!"
One half light, one half shade, Napoleon felt himself protected in good, and tolerated in evil. There was, or he fancied there was, for him a connivance, we might say almost a complicity, on the part of events, equivalent to the ancient invulnerability; and yet, when a man has behind him the Beresina, Leipsic, and Fontainebleau, it seems as if he might distrust Waterloo. A mysterious frown becomes visible on the face of heaven. At the moment when Wellington retrograded, Napoleon quivered. He suddenly saw the plateau of Mont St. Jean deserted, and the front of the English army disappear. It was rallying, but was screened from sight. The Emperor half raised himself in his stirrups, and the flash of victory passed into his eyes. If Wellington were driven back into the forest of Soignies, and destroyed, it would be the definitive overthrow of England by France: it would be Cressy, Poictiers, Malplaquet, and Ramilies avenged; the man of Marengo would erase Agincourt. The Emperor, while meditating on this tremendous stroke, turned his telescope to all parts of the battle-field. His Guards, standing at ease behind him, gazed at him with a sort of religious awe. He was reflecting, he examined the slopes, noted the inclines, scrutinized the clumps of trees, the patches of barley, and the paths; he seemed to be counting every tuft of gorse. He looked with some fixity at the English barricades,—two large masses of felled trees, the one on the Genappe road defended by two guns, the only ones of all the English artillery which commanded the battlefield, and the one on the Nivelles road, behind which flashed the Dutch bayonets of Chassé's brigade. He remarked near this barricade the old chapel of St. Nicholas, which is at the corner of the cross-road leading to Braine l'Alleud. He bent down and spoke in a low voice to the guide Lacoste. The guide shook his head with a probably perfidious negative.
The Emperor drew himself up and reflected; Wellington was retiring, and all that was needed now was to complete this retreat by an overthrow. Napoleon hurriedly turned and sent off a messenger at full speed to Paris to announce that the battle was gained. Napoleon was one of those geniuses from whom thunder issues, and he had just found his thunder-stroke; he gave Milhaud's cuirassiers orders to carry the plateau of Mont St. Jean.
Cosette could not refrain from taking a side glance at the large doll which was still displayed at the toy-shop, and then tapped at the door; it opened, and Madame Thénardier appeared, candle in hand.
"Oh, it's you, you little devil! Well, I'll be hanged if you have not taken time enough; you've been playing, I expect."
"Madame," said Cosette, with a violent tremor, "this gentleman wants a bed-room."
Madame Thénardier exchanged her coarse look for an amiable grimace,—a change peculiar to landladies,—and greedily turned her eyes on the new-comer.
"Is this the gentleman?" she said.
"Yes, Madame," the man answered, touching his hat.
Rich travellers are not so polite. This gesture and the inspection of the stranger's clothes and luggage, which the landlady took in at a glance, caused the amiable grimace to disappear and the rough look to return. She continued dryly,—
"Come in, my good man."
The "good man" entered; the landlady gave him a second look, carefully examined his threadbare coat and broken-brimmed hat, and consulted her husband, who was still drinking with the carter, by a toss of the head, a curl of her nose, and a wink. The husband answered with that imperceptible movement of the forefinger which, laid on the puffed-out lips, signifies, "No go!" Upon this the landlady exclaimed,—
"My good man, I am very sorry, but I haven't a bed-room disengaged."
"Put me where you like," the man said,—"in the loft or the stable. I will pay as if it were a bed-room."
"Forty sous."
"Be it so."
"Forty sous!" a carrier whispered to the landlady; "why, it is only twenty sous."
"It's forty for a man like him," Madame Thénardier replied in the same tone; "I do not lodge poor people under."
"That is true," the husband added gently; "it injures a house to have customers of that sort."
In the mean while the man, after leaving his bundle and stick on a form, sat down at a table on which Cosette had hastened to place a bottle of wine and a glass. The pedler who had asked for the bucket of water himself carried it to his horse, while Cosette returned to her place under the kitchen table and her knitting. The man, who had scarce moistened his lips with the glass of wine he poured out, gazed at the child with strange attention. Cosette was ugly, but had she been happy she might possibly have been pretty. We have already sketched her little overclouded face: Cosette was thin and sickly, and, though eight years of age, looked hardly six. Her large eyes, buried in a species of shadow, were almost extinguished by constant crying, while the corners of her mouth had the curve of habitual agony, which may be observed in condemned prisoners and in patients who are given over. "Her hands were," as her mother had foretold, "ruined with chilblains." The fire-light, which shone upon her at this moment, brought out the angles of her bones and rendered her thinness frightfully visible; as she constantly shivered, she had grown into the habit of always keeping her knees pressed against each other. Her entire clothing was one rag, which would have aroused pity in summer, and caused horror in winter. She had only torn calico upon her person, and not a morsel of woollen stuff: her skin was here and there visible, and everywhere could be distinguished blue or black marks, indicating the spots where her mistress had beaten her. Her bare legs were red and rough, and the hollow between her shoulder-blades would have moved you to tears. The whole person of this child, her attitude, the sound of her voice, the interval between one word and the next, her look, her silence, her slightest movement, expressed and translated but one idea,—fear. Fear was spread over her; she was, so to speak, clothed in it; fear drew up her elbows against her hips, withdrew her heels under her petticoats, made her occupy as little room as possible, breathe only when absolutely necessary, and had become what might be called the habit of her body, without any possible variation save that of increasing. There was a corner in her eye in which terror lurked. This fear was so great that Cosette on returning wet through did not dare go to the fire, but silently began her work again. The expression of this child's eye was habitually so gloomy and at times so tragical, that it seemed at certain moments as if she were on the point of becoming either an idiot or a demon. Never, as we said, had she known what prayer was; never had she set foot in a church. "Can I spare the time for it?" Madame Thénardier used to say. The man in the yellow coat did not take his eyes off Cosette. All at once her mistress cried,—
"Hilloh! where's the loaf?"
Cosette, according to her custom whenever Madame Thénardier raised her voice, quickly came from under the table. She had completely forgotten the loaf, and had recourse to the expedient of terrified children,—she told a falsehood.
"Madame, the baker's was shut up."
"You ought to have knocked."
"I did do so, but he would not open."
"I shall know to-morrow whether that is the truth," said her mistress; "and if it is not, look out, that's all. In the mean while give me back my fifteen-sous piece."
Cosette plunged her hand into the pocket of her apron and turned green: the coin was no longer in it.
"Well," her mistress said, "did you not hear me?"
Cosette turned her pocket out, but there was nothing in it: what could have become of the money? The wretched little creature could not find a word to say; she was petrified.
"Have you lost it," her mistress asked, "or are you trying to rob me?"
At the same time she stretched out her hand to the cat-o'-nine-tails; this formidable gesture restored Cosette the strength to cry,—
"Mercy, Madame! I will never do it again."
Madame Thénardier took down the whip.
The man in the yellow coat had been feeling in his waistcoat pocket, though no one noticed it. Moreover, the other guests were drinking or card-playing, and paid no attention to him. Cosette had retreated in agony to the chimney-corner, shivering to make herself as little as she could, and protect her poor half-naked limbs. Her mistress raised her arm.
"I beg your pardon, Madame," said the man, "but just now I saw something fall out of the little girl's pocket and roll away. It may be that."
At the same time he stooped and appeared to be searching for a moment.
"Yes, here it is," he continued, as he rose and held out a coin to the landlady.
"Yes, that's it," she said.
It was not the real coin, it was a twenty-sous piece, but Madame made a profit by the transaction. She put it in her pocket, and confined herself to giving the child a stern glance, saying,—"That had better not happen again."
Cosette returned to what her mistress called her niche, and her large eyes, fixed on the strange traveller, began to assume an expression they had never had before. It was no longer a simple astonishment, but a sort of stupefied confidence was mingled with it.
"Do you want any supper?" the landlady asked the traveller.
He did not reply, but seemed to be lost in thought. "What can this man be?" she muttered to herself. "He is some wretched beggar who has not a penny to pay for his supper. Will he be able to pay for his bed-room? It is lucky, after all, that he did not think of stealing the silver coin that was on the ground."
At this moment a door opened, and Éponine and Azelma came in. They were really two pretty little girls, of the middle class rather than peasants, and very charming, one with her auburn well-smoothed tresses, the other with long black plaits hanging down her back; both were quick, clean, plump, fresh, and pleasant to look on through their beaming health. They were warmly clothed, but with such maternal art that the thickness of the stuff did not remove anything of the coquetry of the style; winter was foreseen, but spring was not effaced. In their dress, their gayety, and the noise which they made, there was a certain queenliness. When they came in, their mother said to them in a scolding voice, which was full of adoration, "There you are, then."
Then, drawing them on to her knees in turn, smoothing their hair, re-tying their ribbons, and letting them go with that gentle shake which is peculiar to mothers, she exclaimed, "How smart they are!" They sat down by the fire-side, with a doll which they turned over on their knees with all sorts of joyous prattle. At times Cosette raised her eyes from her knitting and mournfully watched their playing, Éponine and Azelma did not look at Cosette, for to them she was like the dog. These three little girls did not count four-and-twenty years between them, and already represented human society,—on one side envy, on the other, disdain. The doll was very old and broken, but it did not appear the less wonderful to Cosette, who never in her life possessed a doll,—a "real doll," to employ an expression which all children will understand. All at once the landlady, who was going about the room, noticed that Cosette was idling, and watching the children instead of working.
"Ah, I have caught you," she exclaimed; "that's the way you work, is it? I'll make you work with the cat-o'-nine tails."
The stranger, without leaving his chair, turned to Madame Thénardier.
"Oh, Madame," he said with an almost timid smile, "let her play!"
Such a wish would have been a command from any traveller who had ordered a good supper and drunk a couple of bottles of wine, and who did not look like a beggar. But the landlady did not tolerate a man who had such a hat, having a desire, and one who wore such a coat, daring to have a will of his own! Hence she answered sharply,—
"She must work, since she eats; I do not keep her to do nothing."
"What is she doing, pray?" the stranger continued, in that gentle voice which formed such a strange contrast with his beggar clothes and porter shoulders.
The landlady deigned to reply,—
"She is knitting stockings, if you please, for my little girls, who have none, so to speak, and are forced to go about barefooted."
The man looked at Cosette's poor red feet, and said,—
"When will she have finished that pair of stockings?"
"She has three or four good days' work, the idle slut!"
"And how much may such a pair be worth when finished?"
The landlady gave him a contemptuous glance.
"At least thirty sous."
"Will you sell them to me for five francs?" the man continued.
"Pardieu!" a carrier who was listening exclaimed, with a coarse laugh, "I should think so,—five balls!"
Thénardier thought it his duty to speak.
"Yes, sir, if such be your fancy, you can have the pair of stockings for five francs; we cannot refuse travellers anything."
"Cash payment," the landlady said in her peremptory voice.
"I buy the pair of stockings," the man said, and added, as he drew a five-franc piece from his pocket and laid it on the table, "I pay for them."
Then he turned to Cosette,—
"Your labor is now mine; so play, my child."
The carrier was so affected by the five-franc piece that he left his glass and hurried up.
"It is real," he exclaimed, after examining it; "a true hind-wheel, and no mistake."
Thénardier came up and silently put the coin in his pocket. The landlady could make no answer, but she bit her lips, and her face assumed an expression of hatred. Cosette was trembling, but still ventured to ask,—
"Is it true, Madame? May I play?"
"Play!" her mistress said, in a terrible voice.
And while her lips thanked the landlady, all her little soul thanked the traveller. Thénardier had returned to his glass, and his wife whispered in his ear,—
"What can this yellow man be?"
"I have seen," Thénardier replied, with a sovereign air, "millionnaires who wore a coat like his."
Cosette had laid down her needle, but did not dare leave her place, for, as a rule, she moved as little as possible. She took from a box behind her a few old rags and her little leaden sword, Éponine and Azelma paid no attention to what was going on, for they were carrying out a very important operation. They had seized the cat, thrown the doll on the ground, and Éponine, who was the elder, was wrapping up the kitten, in spite of its meawings and writhings, in a quantity of red and blue rags. While performing this serious and difficult task, she was saying to her sister in the sweet and adorable language of children, the grace of which, like the glistening of butterflies' wings, disappears when you try to fix it,—
"This doll, sister, is more amusing than the other, you see, for it moves, cries, and is warm; so we will play with it. It is my little daughter, and I am a lady; you will call upon me, and look at it. By degrees you will see its whiskers, and that will surprise you, and then you will see its ears and its tail, and that will surprise you too, and you will say to me, 'Oh, my goodness!' and I shall answer, 'Yes, Madame, it is a little child I have like that; little children are so at present.'"
Azelma listened to Éponine in admiration; in the mean while the topers had begun singing an obscene song at which they laughed till the ceiling shook, Thénardier encouraging and accompanying them. In the same way as birds make a nest of everything, children make a doll of no matter what. While Éponine and Azelma were wrapping up the kitten, Cosette on her side was performing the same operation on her sword. This done, she laid it on her arm, and sang softly to lull it to sleep. A doll is one of the most imperious wants, and at the same time one of the most delicious instincts, of feminine childhood. To clean, clothe, adorn, dress, undress, dress again, teach, scold a little, nurse, lull, send to sleep, and imagine that something is somebody,—the whole future of a woman is contained in this. While dreaming and prattling, making little trousseaux and cradles, while sewing little frocks and aprons, the child becomes a girl, the girl becomes a maiden, and the maiden a woman. The first child is a continuation of the last doll. A little girl without a doll is nearly as unhappy and quite as impossible as a wife without children; Cosette, therefore, made a doll of her sword. The landlady, in the mean while, walked up to the "yellow man." "My husband is right," she thought, "it is perhaps M. Lafitte. Some rich men are so whimsical." She leaned her elbow on the table and said, "Sir—"
At the word "Sir" the man turned round, for the female Thénardier had up to the present only addressed him as "My good man."
"You see, sir," she continued, assuming her gentle air, which was still more dreadful to see than her fierce look, "I am glad to see the child play, and do not oppose it, and it is all right for once, as you are generous. But, you see, she has nothing, and must work."
"Then, she is not a child of yours?" the man asked.
"Oh! Lord, no, sir; she is a poor little girl we took in out of charity. She is a sort of imbecile, and I think has water on the brain, for she has a big head. We do all we can for her; but we are not rich, and though we write to her people, we have not had an answer for six months. It looks as if the mother were dead."
"Ah!" said the man, and fell back into his reverie.
"The mother could n't have been much," the landlady added, "for she deserted her child."
During the whole of the conversation Cosette, as if an instinct warned her that she was being talked about, did not take her eyes off her mistress. She listened, and heard two or three indistinct words here and there. In the mean while, the drinkers, who were three parts intoxicated, struck up their unclean song again with redoubled gayety, and Madame Thénardier went to take part in the bursts of laughter. Cosette, under her table, looked at the fire, which was reflected in her fixed eyes; she had begun rocking the species of doll which she had made, and while lulling it to sleep, sang in a low voice,—"My mother is dead, my mother is dead, my mother is dead." On being pressed again by the landlady, the yellow man, the "millionnaire," consented to take some supper.
"What will you have, sir?"
"Bread and cheese."
"He is certainly a beggar," the landlady thought. The drunkards were still singing their song, and the child, under the table, still sang hers. All at once Cosette broke off: she turned, and perceived, lying on the ground a few paces from the kitchen table, the doll which the children had thrown down on taking up the kitten. She let the wrapped-up sword, which only half satisfied her, fall, and then slowly looked round the room. The landlady was whispering to her husband and reckoning some change, Éponine and Azelma were playing with the kitten; the guests were eating, drinking, or singing, and no one noticed her. She had not a moment to lose, so she crept on her hands and knees from under the table, assured herself once again that she was not watched, and seized the doll. A moment after she was back in her seat, and turned so that the doll which she held in her arms should be in the shadow. The happiness of playing with this doll was almost too much for her. No one had seen her, excepting the traveller, who was slowly eating his poor supper. This joy lasted nearly a quarter of an hour.
But in spite of the caution which Cosette took, she did not notice that one of the doll's feet was peeping out, and that the fire lit it up very distinctly. This pink luminous foot emerging from the glow suddenly caught the eye of Azelma, who said to Éponine, "Look, sister!"
The two little girls were stupefied. Cosette had dared to take their doll! Éponine rose, and without letting the cat go, ran to her mother and plucked the skirt of her dress.
"Let me be," said the mother; "what do you want now?"
"Mother," said the girl, "just look!"
And she pointed to Cosette, who, yielding entirely to the ecstasy of possession, saw and heard nothing more. The landlady's face assumed that peculiar expression which is composed of the terrible blended with the trifles of life, and which has caused such women to be christened Megæras. This time wounded pride exasperated her wrath: Cosette had leaped over all bounds, and had made an assault on the young ladies' doll. A czarina who saw a moujik trying on her Imperial son's blue ribbon would not have a different face. She cried in a voice which indignation rendered hoarse,—"Cosette!"
Cosette started as if the earth had trembled beneath her, and turned round.
"Cosette!" her mistress repeated.
Cosette gently laid the doll on the ground with a species of veneration mingled with despair; then, without taking her eyes off it, she clasped her hands, and, frightful to say of a child of her age, wrung them, and then burst into tears, a thing which none of the emotions of the day had caused,—neither the walk in the wood, the weight of the bucket, the loss of the coin, the sight of the lash, nor the harsh remarks of her mistress. The traveller had risen from his chair. "What is the matter?" he asked the landlady.
"Don't you see?" she replied, pointing to the corpus delicti which lay at Cosette's feet.
"Well, what?" the man continued.
"That wretch," the landlady answered, "has had the audacity to touch my children's doll!"
"So much noise about that!" the man said. "Well, suppose that she did play with the doll!"
"She has touched it with her dirty hands," the landlady continued,—"her frightful hands."
Here Cosette redoubled her sobs.
"Will you be quiet?" her mistress yelled.
The man went straight to the street door, opened it, and walked out; the landlady took advantage of his absence to give Cosette a kick under the table, which made her scream. The door opened again, and the man reappeared, carrying in his hands the fabulous doll to which we have alluded, and which all the village children had been contemplating since the morning. He placed it on its legs before Cosette, saying,—
"Here, this is for you."
We must suppose that, during the hour he had been sitting in a reverie, he had confusedly noticed the toyman's shop, which was so brilliantly lit with lamps and candles that it could be seen through the tap-room window like an illumination. Cosette raised her eyes: she had looked at the man coming toward her with the doll, as if he were the sun; she heard the extraordinary words "This is for you;" she looked at him, looked at the doll, then drew back slowly, and concealed herself entirely in a corner under the table. She did not cry, she did not speak, but looked as if she dared hardly breathe. The landlady, Éponine, and Azelma were so many statues: the topers themselves had stopped drinking, and there was a solemn silence in the tap-room. The mother, petrified and dumb, began her conjectures again. "Who is this man? Is he poor, or a millionnaire? He is, perhaps, both; that is to say, a thief." The husband's face offered that expressive wrinkle which marks the human face each time that the ruling instinct appears on it with all its bestial power. The landlord looked in turn at the doll and the traveller: he seemed to be sniffing round the man, as he would have done round a money-bag. This only lasted for a second; then he went up to his wife and whispered:
"That machine costs at least thirty francs. No nonsense; crawl in the dust before the man."
Coarse natures have this in common with simple natures, that they have no transitions.
"Well, Cosette," the landlady said, in a voice which strove to be gentle, and which was composed of the bitter honey of wicked women, "why don't you take your doll?"
Cosette ventured to crawl out of her hole.
"My little Cosette," her mistress continued fawningly, "this gentleman gives you the doll; so take it, for it is yours."
Cosette gazed at the wonderful doll with a sort of terror; her face was still bathed in tears, but her eyes were beginning to fill, like the sky at dawn, with strange rays of joy. What she felt at this moment was something like what she would have felt had some one suddenly said to her, "Little girl, you are Queen of France."
It seemed to her that if she touched this doll thunder would issue from it; and this was true to a certain point, for she said to herself that her mistress would scold and beat her. Still, the attraction gained the victory; she at length crawled up to the doll and murmured timidly as she turned to the landlady,—
"May I, Madame?"
No expression could render this air, which was at once despairing, terrified, and ravished.
"Of course," said her mistress, "since this gentleman gives it to you."
"Is it true, sir?" Cosette continued. "Is the lady really mine?"
The stranger's eyes were full of tears, and he seemed to have reached that point of emotion when a man does not speak in order that he may not weep. He nodded to Cosette, and placed the "lady's" little hand in hers. Cosette quickly drew back her hand as if the lady's burned her, and looked down at the brick floor. We are compelled to add that at this moment she put her tongue out to an enormous length; all at once she turned and passionately seized the doll.
"I will call her Catherine," she said.
It was a strange sight when Cosette's rags met and held the doll's ribbons and fresh muslins.
"May I put her in a chair, Madame?" she continued.
"Yes, my child," her mistress answered.
It was now the turn of Éponine and Azelma to look enviously at Cosette. She placed Catherine in a chair, and then sat down on the ground before her, motionless, without saying a word, and in a contemplative attitude.
"Play, Cosette," the stranger said.
"Oh, I am playing!" the child answered.
This unknown man, this stranger who had the air of a visitor sent by Providence to Cosette, was at the moment the person whom Madame Thénardier hated most in the world; still, she must put a constraint on herself. This emotion was more than she could endure, accustomed to dissimulation though she was by the copy which she had to take of her husband in all his actions. She hastened to send her children to bed, and then asked the yellow man's leave to send off Cosette, "who had been very tired during the day," she added with a maternal air. Cosette went off to bed carrying Catherine in her arms. The landlady went from time to time to the other end of the room, where her husband was, in order to relieve her mind. She exchanged with him a few sentences, which were the more furious because she dared not utter them aloud.
"Old ass! what has he got in his noddle to come and disturb us in this way; to wish that little monster to play; to give her dolls,—dolls worth forty francs, to a wretch whom I would gladly sell for forty sous? A little more, and he would call her 'Your Majesty,' like the Duchesse de Berry. Can he be in his senses? The mysterious old fellow must be cracked!"
"Why so? It is very simple," Thénardier replied. "Suppose it amuses him? It amuses you that the little one should work; it amuses him to see her play. He has a right, for a traveller can do as he likes so long as he pays. If this old man is a philanthropist, how does it concern you? If he is an ass, it is no business of yours. Why do you interfere, so long as he has money?"
This was the language of a master and the reasoning of a landlord, neither of which admitted a reply.
The man was resting his elbow on the table, and had resumed his thoughtful attitude; the other travellers, pedlers, and carriers had gone away or left off singing. They regarded him from a distance with a sort of respectful fear; this poorly-clad individual, who drew hind-wheels from his pocket with such ease and lavished gigantic dolls on ragged girls, was assuredly a magnificent and formidable man. Several hours passed, midnight mass was finished, the matin bell had been rung, the drinkers had gone away, the pot-house was closed, the fire was out in the tap-room, but the stranger still remained at the same spot and in the same posture. From time to time he changed the elbow on which he was leaning, that was all; but he had not uttered a syllable since Cosette went off to bed. The Thénardiers alone remained in the room, through politeness and curiosity.
"Is he going to pass the night like that?" the landlady pouted. When it struck two, she declared herself conquered, and said to her husband, "I am off to bed; you can do as you like." The husband sat down at a table in a corner, lit a candle, and began reading the Courrier Français. A good hour passed, during which the worthy host read the paper through thrice from the date of the number to the imprint, but the stranger did not stir. Thénardier moved, coughed, spat, and made his chair creak, but the man made no movement. "Can he be asleep?" Thénardier thought. The man was not asleep, but no movement aroused him. At length the landlord doffed his cap, walked up gently, and ventured to say,—
"Do you not wish to repose, sir?"
"To sleep" would have appeared to him excessive and familiar, while "repose" hinted at luxury, and was respectful. Such words have the mysterious and admirable quality of swelling the bill on the next morning: a room in which you sleep costs twenty sous; one in which you repose costs twenty francs.
"Why, you are right," said the stranger; "where is your stable?"
"I will show you the way, sir," Thénardier replied with a smile.
He took the candle; the man fetched his stick and bundle, and Thénardier led him to a room on the first floor, which was most luxurious, with its mahogany furniture, and the bed with its red cotton curtains.
"What is this?" the traveller asked.
"Our own wedding bed-room," the landlord replied; "my wife and I occupy another, and this room is only entered three or four times a year."
"I should have preferred the stable," the man said roughly. Thénardier pretended not to hear this disagreeable reflection, but lit two new wax candles standing on the mantel-piece. A rather large fire was flashing in the grate. Upon the mantel-piece was also a woman's head-dress, made of silver tissue and orange-flowers, under a glass shade.
"And what is this?" the stranger continued.
"That, sir," Thénardier said, "is my wife's wedding bonnet."
The traveller looked at the object in a way that seemed to say,—"Then there was a moment when this monster was a virgin."
This was a falsehood of Thénardier's. When he hired the house to convert it into a public, he found this room thus furnished, and bought the lot, thinking that it would cast a graceful shadow over his "spouse," and that his house would derive from it what the English call respectability. When the traveller turned round, Thénardier had disappeared, without saying good-evening, as he did not wish to treat with disrespectful cordiality a man whom he intended to flay royally the next morning. The landlord went to his room, where his wife was in bed, but not asleep. So soon as she heard her husband's footstep, she said to him,—
"You know that I mean to turn Cosette out to-morrow?" Thénardier coldly answered,—
"How you go on!"
They exchanged no more words, and a few minutes after the candle was extinguished. For his part, the stranger had placed his stick and bundle in a corner. When the landlord had withdrawn, he sat down in an easy-chair and remained thoughtful for a time; then he took off his shoes, seized one of the candlesticks, and left the room, looking about him as if in search of something. He went along a passage and reached the staircase; here he heard a very gentle sound, like the breathing of a child. He followed this sound, and reached a triangular closet under the stairs, or, to speak more correctly, formed by the stairs themselves. Here, among old hampers and potsherds, in dust and cobwebs, there was a bed, if we may apply the term to a paillasse so rotten as to show the straw, and a blanket so torn as to show the mattress. There were no sheets, and all this lay on the ground; in this bed Cosette was sleeping. The man walked up and gazed at her. Cosette was fast asleep and had all her clothes on; in winter she did not undress, that she might be less cold. She was holding to her bosom the doll, whose large open eyes glistened in the darkness; from time to time she gave a heavy sigh, as if about to awake, and pressed the doll almost convulsively in her arms. There was nothing by her bed-side but one of her wooden shoes. Through an open door close by a large dark room could be seen, through which the stranger entered. At the end, two little white beds, belonging to Éponine and Azelma, were visible through a glass door. Behind this a wicker curtainless cradle was half hidden, in which slept the little boy who had been crying all the evening.
The stranger conjectured that this room communicated with that of the Thénardiers. He was about to return, when his eye fell on the chimney,—one of those vast inn chimneys, in which there is always so little fire when there is a frost, and which are so cold to look at. In this chimney there was no fire, not even ashes; but what there was in it attracted the travellers attention. He saw two little child's shoes of coquettish shape and unequal size; and the traveller recollected the graceful and immemorial custom of children who place their shoe in the chimney on Christmas night, in order to obtain some glittering present from their good fairy in the darkness. Éponine and Azelma had not failed in this observance. The traveller bent down; the fairy, that is, the mother, had already paid her visit, and in each shoe a handsome ten-sou piece could be seen shining. The man rose and was going away, when he observed another object in the darkest corner of the hearth; he looked at it, and recognized a hideous wooden shoe, half broken and covered with ashes and dried mud. It was Cosette's; with the touching confidence of children who may be disappointed, but are never discouraged, she had also placed her shoe in the chimney. Hope in a child that has never known aught but despair is a sublime and affecting thing. There was nothing in this shoe; but the stranger felt in his pocket and laid a louis d'or in it; then he crept noiselessly back to his bed-room.
The child had rested her head on a stone and fallen asleep. Jean Valjean sat down by her side and began gazing at her; gradually, as he looked, he grew calm and regained possession of his freedom of mind.
He clearly perceived this truth, the basis of his future life, that, so long as she was there, so long as he had her by his side, he would require nothing except for her, nor fear anything save on her account. He did not even feel the cold particularly; for, though he had taken off his coat, it was to cover her. Still, through the reverie into which he had fallen he had heard for some time past a singular noise, like a bell being rung, and it was in the garden. It could be heard distinctly, though faintly, and resembled those cattle-bells which produce a gentle melody at night in the grazing fields. This noise made Jean Valjean turn, and he saw that there was some one in the garden. A being looking like a man was walking among the melon-frames, rising, stooping, and stopping with regular movements, as if he was dragging or stretching out something on the ground. This man was apparently lame. Jean Valjean gave the continual, trembling start of the unhappy; everything is hostile and suspicious to them; they distrust the day because it allows them to be seen, and night because it helps in surprising them. Just now he shuddered because the garden was deserted, and now he shuddered because there was some one in it. He fell back from chimerical into real terror; he said to himself that Javert and the police had probably not gone away, that they had, in any case, left watchmen in the street; and that if this man discovered him he would give an alarm and hand him over to the police. He gently raised the still sleeping Cosette in his arms, and carried her behind a mass of old furniture in the most remote part of the shed; Cosette did not stir. From this spot he observed the movements of the being in the melon-ground; the strange thing was that the noise of the bell followed this man's every movement. When he approached the sound approached; when he went away the sound went away. If he made a sudden movement a little peal followed the movement, and when he stopped the noise ceased. It appeared evident that the bell was fastened to this man; but in that case what could be the meaning of it? Who was the man to whom a bell was fastened as if he were a ram or an ox? While asking himself these questions he touched Cosette's hands; they were chilled.
"Oh, Heaven!" he said.
And he asked in a whisper,—"Cosette!"
She did not open her eyes. He shook her sharply, but she did not awake.
"Can she be dead?" he said to himself; and he rose shivering from head to foot.
The most frightful thoughts crossed his mind pell-mell. There are moments when hideous suppositions assail us like a band of furies and violently force the bolts of our brain. When it is a question about people whom we love, our prudence invents all sorts of follies. He remembered that sleep in the open air on a cold night might be mortal. Cosette was lying stretched out motionless at his feet. He listened for her breath; she was breathing, but so faintly that it seemed as if the respiration would cease at any moment. How was he to warm her? How was he to wake her? All that did not refer to this slipped from his mind, and he rushed wildly from the shed. It was absolutely necessary that Cosette should be in bed before a fire within a quarter of an hour.
After sketching the moral figure, it may not be time lost to indicate in a few words the material configuration, of which the reader already possesses some idea.
The convent of the Little Picpus occupied a large trapeze, formed by the four streets to which we have so frequently alluded, and which surrounded it like a moat. The convent was composed of several buildings and a garden. The main building, regarded in its entirety, was a juxtaposition of hybrid constructions, which, looked at from a balloon, would very exactly form a gallows laid on the ground. The long arm of the gallows occupied the whole of the Rue Droit-mur, comprised between the Little Rue Picpus and the Rue Polonceau; while the shorter arm was a tall, gray, stern, grated façade, looking on the Little Rue Picpus, of which the carriage-entrance, No. 62, was the extremity. Toward the centre of this façade dust and ashes whitened an old, low-arched gate, where the spiders made their webs, and which was only opened for an hour or two on Sundays, and on the rare occasions when the coffin of a nun left the convent; this was the public entrance to the church. The elbow of the gallows was a square room, used as an office, and which the nuns called the "buttery." In the long arm were the cells of the mothers, sisters, and novices; in the short one the kitchens, the refectory, along which a cloister ran, and the church. Between No. 62 and the corner of Aumarais Lane was the school, which could not be seen from the exterior. The rest of the trapeze formed the garden, which was much lower than the level of the Rue Polonceau, and this caused the walls to be much loftier inside than out. The garden, which was slightly arched, had at its centre and on the top of a mound a fine-pointed and conical fir-tree, from which ran, as from the boss of a shield, four large walks, with eight smaller ones arranged two and two, so that, had the enclosure been circular, the geometrical plan of the walks would have resembled a cross laid upon a wheel. The walks, which all ran to the extremely irregular walls of the garden, were of unequal length, and were bordered by gooseberry-bushes. At the end a poplar walk ran from the ruins of the old convent, which was at the angle of the Rue Droit-mur, to the little convent, which was at the corner of Aumarais Lane. In front of the little convent was what was called the small garden. If we add to this ensemble a court-yard, all sorts of varying angles formed by the inside buildings, prison walls, and the long black line of roofs that ran along the other side of the Rue Polonceau, as the sole prospect, we can form an exact idea of what the house of the Bernardines of Little Picpus was five-and-forty years ago. This sacred house was built on the site of a famous racket-court in the 16th century, which was called the "Tripot des onze mille diables." All these streets, indeed, were the oldest in Paris; the names Droit-mur and Aumarais are very old, but the streets that bear them are far older. Aumarais Lane was before called Maugout Lane; the Rue Droit-mur was called the Rue des Eglantines, for God opened the flowers before man cut building-stones.
A few words more. We blame the Church when it is steeped in intrigues. We scorn the spiritual when it is not in accord with the temporal; but we honor the thoughtful man wherever we find him.
We bow to the man who kneels.
A faith of some kind is necessary to man. Alas for him who believes nothing!
We are not necessarily idle because we are absorbed. Labor may be invisible as well as visible.
To reflect is to labor; to think is to act.
The folded arms labor, the clasped hands work. The gaze directed to heaven is a labor.
Thales stayed immovable for four years. He founded philosophy.
In our opinion, monks are not drones, and hermits are not idlers.
To think of the future life is a serious business.
Without withdrawing at all from the position which we have just taken, we believe that a continual reminder of the tomb is good for the living. On this point the priest and the philosopher agree. We must die. The Trappist Abbé replies to Horace.
To mix with his life some presence of the tomb is the law of the wise man; and it is also the law of the recluse. Here recluse and wise man agree.
There is such a thing as material growth; we are glad of it. There is also such a thing as moral grandeur; we insist upon it.
Thoughtless and hasty spirits say: "What is the use of these figures motionless by the side of mystery? What purpose do they serve? What good do they do?"
Alas! In presence of the darkness which envelops us, and which awaits us, not knowing what will become of us in the dispersion of all things, we answer, "There is no work more sublime, perhaps, than that which these souls are doing." And we add, "There is, perhaps, no work more useful."
Those who always pray are needed for those who never pray.
In our opinion, it all depends on the amount of thought that enters into the prayer.
Leibnitz in prayer, this is grand. Voltaire in adoration, this is sublime. Deo erexit Voltaire.
We are on the side of religion against religions.
We believe in the worthlessness of supplications and the sublimity of worship.
Besides, at this moment through which we are passing, a moment which luckily will not leave its imprint upon the nineteenth century, at this hour when so many men have the forehead low and the soul far from lofty, among so many beings whose code is selfish enjoyment, and who are taken up with material things, ephemeral and shapeless, he who exiles himself seems to us worthy of veneration.
The monastery is a renunciation. Mistaken sacrifice is still sacrifice. To mistake for duty a serious error, this has its noble side.
Taken by itself ideally, and looking on all sides of truth until we have exhausted impartially all its aspects, the monastery and still more the convent for women,—for in our society woman is the greatest sufferer, and her protest appears in this exile of the cloister,—the convent for women has undeniably a certain grandeur.
This cloistered life so austere and so sad, some of whose features we have pointed out, is not life, for it is not liberty; it is not the tomb, for it is not lasting. It is the weird place from which is seen as from the crest of a high mountain on one side the abyss in which we now are, on the other, the abyss in which we shall be; it is a narrow and misty boundary which separates two worlds, cast into light and into shadow by both at a time, where the weak ray of life blends with the flickering ray of death; it is the penumbra of the tomb.
While we do not believe as these women do, we live like them by faith; and we have never been able to think, without a kind of terror, religious and tender, without a sort of pity mixed with envy, of these devoted creatures, trembling and trusting, these souls humble and proud, who dare to live on the very border of mystery, waiting between the world which is closed, and heaven which is not yet open, faced toward the light which they do not see, having only the consolation of thinking that they know where it is, longing for the gulf and the unknown, with eyes fixed upon the motionless darkness, kneeling, distracted, stupefied, shuddering, half lifted at times by the deep breathing of eternity.
An hour later two men and a child presented themselves in the darkness of night at No. 69, Little Rue Picpus. The elder of the two men raised the knocker and rapped.
The two men had fetched Cosette from the green-grocer's, where Fauchelevent had left her on the previous evening. Cosette had spent the four-and-twenty hours in understanding nothing and silently trembling; she trembled so greatly that she had not cried, nor had she eaten nor slept. The worthy green-grocer had asked her a hundred questions; but had only obtained as answer a gloomy look, ever the same. Cosette did not breathe a syllable of what she had seen or heard during the last two days; for she guessed that she was passing through a crisis, and felt deeply that she must be "good." Who has not experienced the sovereign power of the words, "say nothing," uttered with a certain accent in the ear of a little startled being? Fear is dumb; besides, no one can keep a secret like a child.
The only thing was, that when she saw Jean Valjean again after these mournful four-and-twenty hours, she uttered such a cry of joy that any thoughtful person who had heard it would have divined in this cry an escape from a gulf.
Fauchelevent belonged to the convent, and knew all the pass-words; hence doors readily opened to him, and thus was solved the double and startling problem, "how to get in, and how to get out." The porter, who had his instructions, opened the little gate which communicated between the court-yard and the garden, in the wall of the former facing the gateway, which might still be seen from the street twenty years ago. The porter showed them all three through this gate, and thence they reached the inner private parlor where Fauchelevent had received the orders of the prioress on the previous day.
The prioress was waiting for them, rosary in hand, and a vocal mother, with her veil down, was standing near her. A discreet candle lit up, or to speak more correctly, pretended to light up the parlor. The prioress took a thorough look at Jean Valjean, for no eye examines like a drooping one. Then she questioned him.
"Are you the brother?"
"Yes, Reverend Mother," Fauchelevent answered.
"What is your name?"
Fauchelevent answered: "Ultime Fauchelevent."
He had really had a brother of that name, who was dead.
"Where do you come from?"
Fauchelevent.—"From Picquigny near Amiens."
"What is your age?"
F.—"Fifty."
"What is your trade?"
F.—"Gardener."
"Are you a good Christian?"
F.—"All the members of our family are so."
"Is this little girl yours?"
F.—"Yes, Reverend Mother."
"Are you her father?"
F.—"Her grandfather."
The vocal mother said to the prioress in a whisper, "He answers well."
Jean Valjean had not said a word. The prioress looked attentively at Cosette, and whispered to the vocal mother, "She will be ugly."
The two mothers consulted for a few minutes in a very low voice in a corner of the parlor, and then the prioress turned and said,—
"Father Fauvent, you will get another knee-cap and bell, for we shall require two in future."
On the morrow two bells were really heard in the garden, and the nuns could not resist the temptation of raising a corner of their veils. They could see under the shade of the trees two men digging side by side, Fauvent and another. It was an enormous event; and silence was so far broken that they whispered, "It is an assistant gardener," while the vocal mothers added, "It is a brother of Father Fauvent's."
Jean Valjean was in fact permanently installed; he had the leathern knee-cap and bell, and was henceforth official. He called himself Ultime Fauchelevent. The most powerful determining cause of his admission was the remark of the prioress with reference to Cosette,—"She will be ugly." The prioress, once she had prognosticated this, felt an affection for Cosette, and gave her a place in the boarding-school. This is very logical after all; for although there may be no looking-glasses in a convent, women are conscious of their face. Now, girls who feel themselves pretty have a disinclination to take the veil; and as profession is generally in an inverse ratio to the beauty, more is hoped from ugly than from pretty girls.
All this adventure aggrandized Fauchelevent, for he had a three-fold success,—with Jean Valjean, whom he saved and sheltered; with Gribier, who said to himself, "He saved me fifteen francs;" and with the convent, which, thanks to him, while keeping the coffin of Mother Crucifixion under the altar, eluded Cæsar and sanctified God. There was a coffin with a body at the Little Picpus, and a coffin without a body in the Vaugirard cemetery; public order was doubtless deeply affected by this, but did not perceive the fact. As for the convent, its gratitude to Fauchelevent was great; he became the best of servants, and most precious of gardeners. On the archbishop's very next visit, the prioress told the whole affair to the Grandeur, partly in confusion, and partly in a boastful spirit. The archbishop, on leaving the convent, spoke about it applaudingly and in a whisper to M. de Latil, Confessor to Monseigneur, and afterwards Archbishop of Reims and Cardinal. The admiration felt for Fauchelevent travelled all the way to Rome; and we have seen a letter addressed by the then reigning Pope, Leo XII., to one of his relatives, Monsignore, in the Paris Nunciature, and called, like himself, Della Genga, in which were the following lines,—"It appears that there is at a convent in Paris an excellent gardener, who is a holy man, of the name of Fauvent." Nothing of all this triumph reached Fauchelevent in his hut; he went on grafting, hoeing, and covering his melon beds, quite unaware of his excellence and sanctity. He no more suspected his glory than does a Durham or Surrey steer whose portrait is published in the Illustrated London News, with the inscription "The ox that gained the Short-horn prize."