CHAPTER VI.

FOUR O'CLOCK IN THE AFTERNOON.

At about four o'clock P.M. the situation of the English army was serious. The Prince of Orange commanded the centre, Hill the right, and Picton the left. The Prince of Orange, wild and intrepid, shouted to the Dutch Belgians: "Nassau! Brunswick! never yield an inch." Hill, fearfully weakened, had just fallen back on Wellington, while Picton was dead. At the very moment when the English took from the French the flag of the 105th line regiment, the French killed General Picton with a bullet through his head. The battle had two bases for Wellington, Hougomont and La Haye Sainte. Hougomont still held out, though on fire, while La Haye Sainte was lost. Of the German battalion that defended it, forty-two men only survived; all the officers but five were killed or taken prisoners. Three thousand combatants had been massacred in that focus; a sergeant of the English Guards, the first boxer of England, and reputed invulnerable by his comrades, had been killed there by a little French drummer. Baring was dislodged, and Alten was sabred; several flags had been lost, one belonging to Alten's division and one to the Luxembourg battalion, which was borne by a Prince of the Deux-ponts family. The Scotch Grays no longer existed; Ponsonby's heavy dragoons were cut to pieces,—this brave cavalry had given way before the lancers of Bro and the cuirassiers of Travers. Of twelve hundred sabres only six hundred remained; of three lieutenant-colonels, two were kissing the ground, Hamilton wounded, and Mather killed. Ponsonby had fallen, pierced by seven lance wounds; Gordon was dead, March was dead, and two divisions, the fifth and sixth, were destroyed. Hougomont attacked, La Haye Sainte taken; there was only one knot left, the centre, which still held out, Wellington reinforced it; he called in Hill from Merbe-Braine and Chassé from Braine l'Alleud.

The centre of the English army, which was slightly concave, very dense and compact, was strongly situated; it occupied the plateau of Mont St. Jean, having the village behind it, and before it the slope, which at that time was rather steep. It was supported by that strong stone house, which at that period was a domainial property of Nivelles, standing at the cross-road, and an edifice dating from the 16th century, so robust that the cannon-balls rebounded without doing it any injury. All round the plateau the English had cut through the hedges at certain spots, formed embrasures in the hawthorns, thrust guns between branches and loop-holed the shrubs,—their artillery was ambuscaded under the brambles. This Punic task, incontestably authorized by the rules of war which permit snares, had been so well effected that Haxo, who had been sent by the Emperor at eight o'clock to reconnoitre the enemy's batteries, returned to tell Napoleon that there was no obstacle, with exception of the barricades blocking the Nivelles and Genappe roads. It was the season when the wheat is still standing, and along the edge of the plateau a battalion of Kempt's brigade, the 95th, was lying in the tall corn. Thus assured and supported, the centre of the Anglo-Dutch army was in a good position.

The peril of this position was the forest of Soignies, at that time contiguous to the battle-field and intersected by the ponds of Groenendæl and Boitsford. An army could not have fallen back into it without being dissolved, regiments would have been broken up at once, and the artillery lost in the marshes. The retreat, according to the opinion of several professional men, contradicted, it is true, by others, would have been a flight. Wellington added to this centre a brigade of Chassé's removed from the right wing, one of Wicke's from the left wing, and Clinton's division. He gave his English— Halkett's regiments, Mitchell's brigade, and Maitland's guards—as epaulments and counterforts, the Brunswick infantry, the Nassau contingent, Kielmansegge's Hanoverians, and Ompteda's Germans. He had thus twenty-six battalions under his hand; as Charras says, "the right wing deployed behind the centre." An enormous battery was masked by earth-bags, at the very spot where what is called "the Museum of Waterloo" now stands, and Wellington also had in a little hollow Somerset's Dragoon Guards, counting one thousand four hundred sabres. They were the other moiety of the so justly celebrated English cavalry; though Ponsonby was destroyed, Somerset remained. The battery which, had it been completed, would have been almost a redoubt, was arranged behind a very low wall, hastily lined with sand-bags and a wide slope of earth. This work was not finished, as there was not time to palisade it.

Wellington, restless but impassive, was mounted, and remained for the whole day in the same attitude, a little in front of the old mill of Mont St. Jean, which still exists, and under an elm-tree, which an Englishman, an enthusiastic Vandal, afterwards bought for two hundred francs, cut down, and carried away. Wellington was coldly heroic; there was a shower of cannon-balls, and his aide-de-camp Gordon was killed by his side. Lord Hill, pointing to a bursting shell, said to him, "My Lord, what are your instructions, and what orders do you leave us, if you are killed?" "Do as I am doing," Wellington answered. To Clinton he said laconically, "Hold out here to the last man." The day was evidently turning badly, and Wellington cried to his old comrades of Vittoria, Talavera, and Salamanca, "Boys, can you think of giving way? Remember old England."

About four o'clock the English line fell back all at once; nothing was visible on the crest of the plateau but artillery and sharp-shooters, the rest had disappeared. The regiments, expelled by the French shell and cannon-balls, fell back into the hollow, which at the present day is intersected by the lane that runs to the farm of Mont St. Jean. A retrograde movement began, the English front withdrew. Wellington was recoiling. "It is the beginning of the retreat," Napoleon cried.


CHAPTER VI.

BOULATRUELLE MAY HAVE BEEN RIGHT.

On the afternoon of this same Christmas day, 1823, a man walked for a long time about the most desolate part of the Boulevard de l'Hôpital, at Paris. He seemed to be looking for a lodging, and to stop for choice at the most shabby houses in this skirt of the Faubourg St. Marceau. As we shall see presently, this man had really hired a bed-room in this isolated district. Both in dress and person he realized the type of what might be called the respectable mendicant, or extreme misery combined with extreme cleanliness. This is a very rare blending, which inspires intelligent minds with the twofold respect which is felt for the very poor and the very worthy man. He wore a very old and carefully-brushed round hat, a threadbare coat of coarse yellow-ochre colored cloth,—a color which was not absolutely odd at that day,—a long waistcoat with enormous pockets, black breeches which had turned gray at the knees, black worsted stockings, and stout shoes with brass buckles. He looked like the ex-tutor of a good family returned from emigration. From his white hair, wrinkled forehead, livid lips, and his face in which everything revealed weariness of life, he might have been supposed much beyond sixty years of age; but his firm though slow step, and the singular vigor imprinted on all his movements, made him look scarce fifty. The wrinkles on his forehead were well placed, and would have favorably disposed any one who observed him closely; his lip was contracted by a strange curve, which seemed stern, but was humble, and there was a lugubrious serenity in his look. He carried in his left hand a small parcel tied up in a handkerchief; and in his right he had a stick cut from a hedge. This stick had been carved with some care, and was not too bad-looking; advantage had been taken of the knots, and a coral knob had been made with red sealing-wax,—it was a cudgel and seemed a cane.

Few people pass along this boulevard, especially in winter; this man, however, seemed to avoid rather than seek them, though without affectation. At this period Louis XVIII. went almost daily to Choisy le Roi, which was one of his favorite drives. At two o'clock the royal carriage and escort could almost invariably be seen passing at full gallop along the Boulevard de l'Hôpital. This did as well as a clock or watch for the poor women of the district, who said, "It is two o'clock, for he is returning to the Tuileries." And some ran up and others drew up, for a king who passes always produces a tumult. Moreover, the appearance and disappearance of Louis XVIII. produced a certain effect in the streets of Paris, for it was rapid but majestic. This impotent king had a taste for galloping; unable to walk, he wished to run; and this cripple would have liked to be drawn by lightning. He passed, peaceful and stern, amid drawn sabres; his heavy gilded berline, with large branches of lilies painted on the panels, rolled noisily along. There was scarce time to take a glance at him; you saw in the right-hand corner a broad, firm, red face, a healthy forehead powdered à l'oiseau royal, a proud, harsh, artful eye, an intelligent smile, two heavy epaulettes with hanging fringe upon a civilian coat; the golden fleece, the Cross of St. Louis, the Cross of the Legion of Honor, the silver plate of the Holy Ghost, a large stomach, and a wide blue ribbon,—it was the king. When out of Paris he carried his white feathered hat on his knees, up to which came tall English gaiters; when he returned to the city he put his hat on his head, and bowed rarely. He looked at the people coldly, and they returned the compliment; when he appeared for the first time in the Faubourg St. Marceau, his entire success consisted in a remark made by a workman to his chum,—"That fat man is the government."

The infallible passage of the king at the same hour was hence the daily event of the Boulevard de l'Hôpital. The promenader in the yellow coat plainly did not belong to that quarter, and probably not to Paris, for he was ignorant of the fact. When at two o'clock the royal carriage, surrounded by Life Guards with their silver aiguillettes, turned into the boulevard, after coming round the Salpêtrière, he seemed surprised and almost terrified. As he was alone in the walk, he quickly concealed himself behind an angle of the wall; but this did not prevent the Duc d'Havre from noticing him. As Captain of the Guards on duty that day, he was seated in the carriage opposite to the king, and said to his Majesty,—"There is an ill-looking fellow." The policemen, who cleared the way for the king, also noticed him, and one of them received orders to follow him. But the man turned into the solitary streets of the Faubourg, and, as night was setting in, the agent lost his trail, as is proved by a report addressed the same evening to Count Anglès, Minister of State and Prefect of Police. When the man in the yellow coat had thrown out the agent, he doubled his pace, though not without looking back many times to make sure that he was not followed. At a quarter-past four, that is to say, at nightfall, he passed in front of the Porte St. Martin theatre, where the "Two Convicts" would be performed that evening. This bill, lit up by theatre lamps, struck him, for though he was walking rapidly, he stopped to read it. A moment later he entered "The Pewter Platter," which was at that time the office of the Lagny coach, which started at half-past four. The horses were put in, and the passengers, summoned by the driver, were hastily clambering up the iron steps of the vehicle. The man asked,—

"Have you a seat left?"

"Only one, by my side, on the box," the driver said.

"I will take it."

"Get up," the driver said.

Before starting, however, he took a glance at the passenger's poor dress and the smallness of his bundle, and asked for the fare.

"Are you going all the way to Lagny?" he said.

"Yes," the man answered.

The traveller paid his fare to Lagny and the coach started. After passing the city gate, the driver tried to get up a conversation, but the traveller only answered in monosyllables; so the driver began whistling and swearing at his horses. As the night was cold, he wrapped himself in his cloak, but the passenger did not seem to notice it. At about six o'clock they reached Chelles, where the driver stopped for a moment to let his horses breathe, at an inn opened in the old buildings of the Royal Abbey.

"I shall get down here," the man said.

He took his bundle and stick and jumped off the coach. A moment after he had disappeared, but he did not enter the inn. When the coachman started again a few moments after, he did not meet him in the high street of Lagny, and he turned round to his inside passengers:—

"That man," he said, "does not belong to these parts, for I do not know him. He looks as if he had not a penny; and yet he don't care for money, as he paid his fare to Lagny and only came as far as Chelles. It is night, all the houses are closed, he has not gone into the inn, and yet I can't see him, so he must have sunk into the ground."

The man had not sunk into the ground, but walked hastily along the main street of Chelles, in the darkness; then he turned to his left before reaching the church, into a cross-road that runs to Montfermeil, like a man who knows the country and had been there before. He followed this road rapidly, and at the spot where it is intersected by the old road that runs from Lagny to Gagny, he heard wayfarers coming. He hurriedly concealed himself in a ditch, and waited till they had passed; the precaution, however, was almost superfluous, for, as we have said, it was a very dark December night, and only two or three stars were visible in the sky. The man did not return to the Montfermeil road, but went to his right, across the fields, and hurried in the direction of the wood. When he was in it, he slackened his pace, and began looking carefully at all the trees, walking step by step, as if seeking and following a mysterious road known to himself alone. There was a moment at which he seemed to lose himself and appeared undecided; but at last, by repeated groping, he reached a glade in which there was a pile of large white stones. He walked hurriedly toward these stones and attentively examined them, as if passing them in review. A large tree, covered with those excrescences which are the warts of vegetation, was a few paces from the heap; he went up to it and passed his hand over the back as if trying to recognize and count all the warts. Opposite this tree, which was an ash, there was a sickly chestnut shedding its bark, upon which a ring of zinc had been placed as a poultice. He stood on tip-toe and felt this ring; then he examined for some time the ground in the space contained between the tree and the stones, as if assuring himself that the ground had not been freshly turned up. This done, he looked about him, and resumed his walk through the wood.

It was this man who came across Cosette. While proceeding in the direction of Montfermeil, he perceived this little shadow depositing a load on the ground, then taking it up again and continuing her journey. He went up and saw that it was a young child carrying an enormous bucket; then he drew to her side and silently took the bucket handle.


CHAPTER VI.

THE BEGINNING OF AN ENIGMA.

Jean Valjean found himself in a large garden of most singular appearance, one of those gloomy gardens that appear made to be looked at in winter, and by night. This garden was of an oblong shape, with a walk of tall poplars at the end, tall shrubs in the corner, and an unshadowed space, in the centre of which an isolated tree could be distinguished. There were also a few stunted fruit-trees bristling like brambles, vegetable plots, a melon-bed, whose frames glistened in the moonlight, and an old well. Here and there were stone benches that seemed black with moss; the walks were bordered with small gloomy-looking and upright shrubs; grass covered one half of the walks, and a green mould the other half.

Jean Valjean had by his side the building by help of whose roof he had descended, a pile of fagots, and behind the latter, close to the wall, a stone statue whose mutilated face was merely a shapeless mask appearing indistinctly in the darkness. The building was a species of ruin, containing several dismantled rooms, of which one was apparently employed as a shed. The large edifice of the Rue Droit-mur had two façades looking into this garden at right angles, and these façades were even more melancholy than those outside. All the windows were barred, and not a single light could be seen, while at the upper window there were scuttles as in prisons. One of these frontages threw its shadow upon the other, which fell back on the garden like an immense black cloth. No other house could be noticed, and the end of the garden was lost in mist and night. Still, walls could be indistinctly noticed intersecting each other, as if there were other gardens beyond, and the low roofs in the Rue Polonceau. Nothing more stern and solitary than this garden could well be imagined; there was no one in it, as was natural at such an hour, but it did not look as if the spot were made for any one to walk in even in bright daylight.

Jean Valjean's first care was to put on his shoes and stockings again, and then enter the shed with Cosette. A man who is escaping never considers himself sufficiently concealed, and the child, who was still thinking of Madame Thénardier, shared his instinct for concealment. Cosette trembled and clung close to him: for she could hear the tumultuous noise of the patrol searching the street and lane, the blows of musket-butts against the stones, Javert's appeals to the men whom he had posted, and his oaths, mingled with words which could not be distinguished. At the expiration of a quarter of an hour this species of stormy grumbling appeared to be retiring, and Jean Valjean could scarce breathe. He had gently laid his hand on Cosette's mouth. The solitude in which he found himself was so strangely calm, however, that the furious uproar so close at hand did not even cast the shadow of a trouble over it. All at once in the midst of this profound calm a new sound burst forth,—a heavenly, divine, ineffable sound, as ravishing as the other had been horrible. It was a hymn, that issued from the darkness, a dazzling blending of prayer and harmony in the dark and fearful silence of the night: female voices, but composed at once of the pure accent of virgins and the simple voices of children,—such voices as do not belong to earth, and resemble those which the new-born still hear, and the dying begin to hear. This chant came from the gloomy building that commanded the garden, and at the moment when the noise of the demons was retiring it seemed like a choir of angels approaching in the dark. Cosette and Jean Valjean fell on their knees. They knew not what it was, they knew not where they were; but both man and child, the penitent and the innocent, felt that they must fall on their knees. The voices had this strangeness about them, that they did not prevent the edifice from appearing deserted; it seemed like a supernatural chant in an uninhabited house. While the voices sang, Jean Valjean thought of nothing else; he no longer saw the night, but an azure sky. He fancied that the wings which we all of us have within us were expanding in him. The singing ceased; it had probably lasted some time, but Jean Valjean could not have said how long, for hours of ecstasy never occupy more than a minute. All had become silent again: there was no sound in the garden, no sound in the street; that which threatened, that which reassured, all had vanished. The wind shook on the coping of the wall some dry grass, which produced a soft and melancholy sound.


CHAPTER VI.

THE LITTLE CONVENT.

There were within the walls of Little Picpus three perfectly distinct buildings,—the great convent inhabited by the nuns, the schoolhouse in which the boarders were lodged, and, lastly, what was called the little convent. The latter was a house with a garden, in which all sorts of old nuns of various orders, the remains of convents broken up in the Revolution, dwelt in common; a reunion of all the black, white, and gray gowns of all the communities, and all the varieties possible; what might be called, were such a conjunction of words permissible, a hotch-potch convent. Under the Empire all these dispersed and homeless women were allowed to shelter themselves under the wings of the Bernardo-Benedictines; the Government paid them a small pension, and the ladies of Little Picpus eagerly received them. It was a strange pell-mell, in which each followed her rule. At times the boarders were allowed, as a great recreation, to pay them a visit, and it is from this that these young minds have retained a recollection of Holy Mother Bazile, Holy Mother Scholastica, and Mother Jacob.

One of these refugees was almost at home here; she was a nun of Sainte Aure, the only one of her order who survived. The old convent of the ladies of Sainte Aure occupied at the beginning of the 18th century the same house which at a later date belonged to the Benedictines of Martin Verga. This holy woman, who was too poor to wear the magnificent dress of her order, which was a white robe with a scarlet scapulary, had piously dressed up in it a small doll, which she was fond of showing, and left at her death to the house. In 1820 only one nun of this order remained; at the present day only a doll is left. In addition to these worthy mothers, a few old ladies of the world, like Madame Albertine, had gained permission from the prioress to retire into the little convent. Among them were Madame de Beaufort d'Hautpoul and the Marquise Dufresne; another was only known in the convent by the formidable noise she made in using her handkerchief, and hence the boarders called her Madame Vacarmini. About the year 1820 Madame de Genlis, who edited at that period a small periodical called L'Intrépide, asked leave to board at the Little Picpus, and the Duc d'Orleans recommended her. There was a commotion in the hive, and the vocal mothers were all of a tremor, for Madame de Genlis had written romances; but she declared that she was the first to detest them, and moreover she had reached her phase of savage devotion. By the help of Heaven and of the prince she entered, and went away again at the end of six or eight months, alleging as a reason that the garden had no shade. The nuns were delighted at it. Although very old, she still played the harp, and remarkably well too. When she went away she left her mark on her cell. Madame de Genlis was superstitious and a Latin scholar, and these two terms give a very fair idea of her. A few years ago there might still be seen, fixed in the inside of a small cupboard of her cell, in which she kept her money and jewelry, the following five Latin verses, written in her own hand with red ink on yellow paper, and which, in her opinion, had the virtue of frightening away robbers:—

"Imparibus meritis pendent tria corpora ramis:
Dismas et Gesmas, media est divina potestas:
Alta petit Dismas, infelix, infima, Gesmas:
Nos et res nostras conservet summa potestas.
Hos versus dicas, ne tu furto tua perdas."

These verses, in sixteenth-century Latin, raise the question whether the two thieves of Calvary were called, as is commonly believed, Demas and Gestas, or Dismas and Gesmas. The latter orthography would thwart the claims made in the last century by the Viscomte de Gestas to be descended from the wicked thief. However, the useful virtue attached to these verses is an article of faith in the order of the Hospitaler nuns. The church, so built as to separate the great convent from the boarding-school, was common to the school, and the great and little convents. The public were even admitted by a sort of quarantine entrance from the street: but everything was so arranged that not one of the inhabitants of the convent could see a single face from the outer world. Imagine a church whose choir was seized by a gigantic hand, and crushed so as no longer to form, as in ordinary chapels, a prolongation behind the altar, but a sort of obscure cavern on the side of the officiating priest; imagine this hall closed by the green baize curtain to which we have referred; pile up in the shadow of this curtain upon wooden seats the nuns on the left, the boarders on the right, and the lay sisters and novices at the end, and you will have some idea of the Little Picpus nuns attending divine service. This cavern, which was called the choir, communicated with the convent by a covered way, and the church obtained its light from the garden. When the nuns were present at those services at which their rule commanded silence, the public were only warned of their presence by the sound of the seats being noisily raised and dropped.


CHAPTER VI.

ABSOLUTE GOODNESS OF PRATER.

As to the manner of prayer, all are good, provided that they are sincere. Turn your book upside down, and be in the infinite.

There is, as we know, a philosophy which denies the infinite. There is also a philosophy, in pathological classification, which denies the sun; this philosophy is called blindness.

To set up as a source of truth a sense which we lack is the consummate assurance of a blind man.

The strange part of it lies in the lofty, superior, and pitying airs which this groping philosophy takes on in the presence of the philosophy which sees God. You fancy you hear the mole exclaim, "How I pity the poor men with their sun!"

There are some eminent and able atheists, we admit. These at bottom being brought back to the truth by their very ability, are not sure that they are atheists; it is scarcely more than a matter of definition with them; and at any rate, if they do not believe in God, being great minds, they bear unconscious witness to His existence.

We hail in them the philosopher, while we deny relentlessly their philosophy.

Let us go on.

It is wonderful, too, to see how easily they amuse themselves with words, A metaphysical school of the North, a little impregnated with fog, thought that it was making a revolution in the human understanding when it replaced the word "Force" by the word "Will."

To say "the plant wills" instead of "the plant grows;" this would amount to something, if they added "the universe wills," Why? Because it would lead to this: the plant wills, then it has a self; the universe wills, then it has a God.

To us, however, who, unlike this school, reject nothing a priori, a will in the plant, which this school admits, seems more difficult to admit than a will in the universe, which this school denies.

To deny the will of the infinite, that is to say, God, is impossible without denying the infinite. This we have demonstrated.

The denial of the infinite leads straight to nihilism. Everything becomes "a conception of the mind."

With nihilism no argument is possible; for the logical nihilist doubts the existence of his opponent in the discussion, and is not quite sure that he exists himself.

From his point of view it may be that his own existence is only a "conception of his mind."

He does not see, however, that all that he has denied he admits in the lump by merely using this word "mind."

In short, no way is left open for thought by a philosophy which makes everything end in the mono-syllable "No."

To "No," there is but one answer, "Yes."

Nihilism has no range.

There is no nothing. Zero does not exist. Everything is something. Nothing is nothing.

Man lives by affirmation even more than by bread.

To see and point out the way is not enough. Philosophy ought to be a living force; it ought to have for end and aim the amelioration of mankind. Socrates ought to enter into Adam, and produce Marcus Aurelius; in other words, turn the man of selfish enjoyment into the wise and good man. Change Eden into the Lyceum. Knowledge ought to be a stimulant. To enjoy life, what a poor aim, what a mean ambition! The brute enjoys. To think, that is the true triumph of the soul.

To hold out thought to quench men's thirst, to give to all men as an elixir the idea of God, to make conscience and knowledge fraternize in them, and by this mysterious partnership to make them just,—this is the work for real philosophy. Morality is a blossoming of truths. Thought leads to action. The absolute ought to be practical. The ideal must be brought into such form that it can be breathed, drunk, and eaten by the human soul. The ideal is the very one to say, "Take, eat; this is my body, this is my blood." Knowledge is a holy communion. Thus it ceases to be a sterile love of knowledge to become the one and sovereign means of human advancement, and from philosophy it is exalted to religion.

Philosophy ought not to be an arch built over mystery, the better to look down on it, merely as a convenience for curiosity.

Postponing to another time the development of this thought, we content ourselves now with saying that we understand neither man as the point of departure nor progress as the goal, without these two motive forces, faith and love.

Progress is the goal, the ideal is the type.

What is the ideal? It is God.

Ideal, absolute, perfection, infinite,—all mean the same.


CHAPTER VI.

BETWEEN FOUR PLANKS.

Who was in the coffin? It was, as we know, Jean Valjean, who had so contrived as to be able to live in it, and could almost breathe. It is a strange thing to what an extent security of conscience produces other security; the whole combination premeditated by Valjean had been going on since the previous evening, and was still going on excellently. He calculated, like Fauchelevent, upon Father Mestienne, and did not suspect the end. Never was a situation more critical or a calamity more perfect.

The four planks of a coffin exhale a species of terrible peace; and it seemed as if some of the repose of the dead were blended with Valjean's tranquillity. From the bottom of this coffin he had been able to follow and did follow all the phases of the formidable drama which he performed with death. A short while after Fauchelevent had finished nailing down the coffin lid, Valjean felt himself raised and then carried along. Through the cessation of the jolting he felt that they had passed from the pavement to the stamped earth, that is to say, the hearse had left the streets and had turned into the boulevards. From the hollow sound he guessed that he was crossing the bridge of Austerlitz; at the first halt, he understood that he was entering the cemetery, and at the sound he said to himself, "Here is the grave."

He suddenly felt hands seize the coffin, and then noticed a rumbling grating on the planks; he guessed that a rope was being fastened round the coffin in order to let it down into the grave. After this, he felt dizzy for a while; in all probability the men had made the coffin oscillate and let the head down before the feet. He perfectly recovered when he found himself horizontal and motionless. He felt a certain amount of cold, as a chill and solemn voice was raised above him, and he heard the Latin words which he did not understand pass away so slowly that he could distinguish each in turn.

"Qui dormiunt in terræ pulvere, evigilabunt; alii in vitam æternam, et alii in opprobrium, ut videant semper."

A boyish voice said, "De profundis."

The grave voice began again, "Requiem æternam dona ei, Domine!"

The boyish voice replied, "Et lux perpetua luceat ei!"

He heard something like the gentle plash of rain upon the coffin lid; it was probably the holy water. He thought: "It is finished, and I only need a little patience. The priest will go away, and Fauchelevent take Mestienne off to drink. I shall be left here till Fauchelevent returns alone, and I shall get out. It will take about an hour."

The grave voice continued, "Requiescat in pace!"

And the boyish voice said, "Amen."

Jean Valjean, who was listening attentively, heard something like the sound of retreating footsteps.

"They are going away," he thought. "I am alone." All at once he heard over his head a noise which appeared to him like a thunder-clap; it was a spadeful of earth falling on the coffin; a second spadeful fell, and one of the holes by which he breathed was stopped; a third spadeful fell, and then a fourth. There are some things stronger than the strongest man, and Jean Valjean lost his senses.