CHAPTER V.

THE HORIZON ONE SEES FROM BARRICADE'S SUMMIT.

The situation of the whole party in this fatal hour, and at this inexorable spot, had as result and pinnacle the supreme melancholy of Enjolras. Enjolras had within him the plenitude of the revolution; he was imperfect, however, so far as the absolute can be so,—he had too much of St. Just and not enough of Anacharsis Clootz; still his mind in the society of the Friends of the A. B. C. had eventually received a certain magnetism of Combeferre's ideas. For some time past he had been gradually emerging from the narrow form of dogmatism and yielding to the expansion of progress, and in the end he had accepted, as the definitive and magnificent evolution, the transformation of the great French republic into the immense human republic. As for the immediate means, a violent situation being given, he was willing to be violent; in that he did not vary, and he still belonged to that epic and formidable school which is resumed in the words "'93." Enjolras was standing on the paving-stone steps, with one of his elbows on the muzzle of his gun. He was thinking; he trembled, as men do when a blast passes, for spots where death lurks produce this tripod effect. A sort of stifled fire issued from beneath his eyelashes, which were full of the internal glance. All at once he raised his head, his light hair fell back like that of the angel on the dark quadriga composed of stars, and he cried:—

"Citizens, do you represent the future to yourselves? The streets of towns inundated with light, green branches on the thresholds, nations sisters, men just, old men blessing children, the past loving the present, men thinking at perfect liberty, believers enjoying perfect equality, for religion the heaven, God, the direct priest, the human conscience converted into an altar, no more hatred, the fraternity of the workshop and the school, notoriety the sole punishment and reward, work for all, right for all, peace for all, no more bloodshed, no more wars, and happy mothers! To subdue the matter is the first step, to realize the ideal is the second. Reflect on what progress has already done; formerly the first human races saw with terror the hydra that breathed upon the waters, the dragon that vomited fire, the griffin which was the monster of the air, and which flew with the wings of an eagle and the claws of a tiger, pass before their eyes,—frightful beasts which were below man. Man, however, set his snares, the sacred snares of intellect, and ended by catching the monsters in them. We have subdued the hydra, and it is called the steamer; we have tamed the dragon, and it is called the locomotive; we are on the point of taming the griffin, we hold it already, and it is called the balloon. The day on which that Promethean task is terminated and man has definitively attached to his will the triple antique chimera, the dragon, the hydra, and the griffin, he will be master of water, fire, and air, and he will be to the rest of animated creation what the ancient gods were formerly to him. Courage, and forward! Citizens, whither are we going? To science made government, to the strength of things converted into the sole public strength, to the natural law having its sanction and penalty in itself and promulgating itself by evidence, and to a dawn of truth corresponding with the dawn of day. We are proceeding to a union of the peoples; we are proceeding to a unity of man. No more fictions, no more parasites. The real governed by the true is our object. Civilization will hold its assize on the summit of Europe, and eventually in the centre of the continent, in a great Parliament of intellect. Something like this has been seen already; the Amphictyons held two sessions a year, one at Delphi, the place of the gods, the other at Thermopylæ, the place of heroes. Europe will have her Amphictyons, the globe will have its Amphictyons, France bears the sublime future within her, and this is the gestation of the 19th century. What Greece sketched out is worthy of being finished by France. Hearken to me, Feuilly, valiant workman, man of the people, man of the people. I venerate thee; yes, thou seest clearly future times; yes, thou art right. Thou hast neither father nor mother, Feuilly, and thou hast adopted humanity as thy mother and right as thy father. Thou art about to die here, that is to say, to triumph. Citizens, whatever may happen to-day, we are about to make a revolution, by our defeat as well as by our victory. In the same way as fires light up a whole city, revolutions light up the whole human race. And what a revolution shall we make? I have just told you, the revolution of the True. From the political point of view, there is but one principle, the sovereignty of man over himself. This sovereignty of me over me is called liberty, and where two or three of these liberties are associated the State begins. But in this association there is no abdication, and each sovereignty concedes a certain amount of itself to form the common right. This quality is the same for all, and this identity of concession which each makes to all is called Equality. The common right is nought but the protection of all radiating over the right of each. This protection of all over each is termed Fraternity. The point of intersection of all aggregated societies is called Society, and this intersection being a junction, the point is a knot. Hence comes what is called the social tie; some say the social contract, which is the same thing, as the word contract is etymologically formed with the idea of a tie. Let us come to an understanding about equality; for if liberty be the summit, equality is the base. Equality, citizens, is not all vegetation on a level, a society of tall blades of grass and small oaks, or a neighborhood of entangled jealousies; it is, civilly, every aptitude having the same opening, politically, all votes having the same weight, and religiously, all consciences having the same right. Equality has an organ in gratuitous and compulsory education, and it should begin with the right to the alphabet. The primary school imposed on all, the secondary school offered to all, such is the law, and from the identical school issues equal instruction. Yes, instruction! Light, light! Everything comes from light and everything returns to it Citizens, the 19th century is great, but the 20th century will be happy. Then there will be nothing left resembling ancient history, there will be no cause to fear, as at the present day, a conquest, an invasion, usurpation, an armed rivalry of nations, an interruption of civilization depending on a marriage of kings, a birth in hereditary tyrannies, a division of peoples by Congress, a dismemberment by the collapse of dynasties, a combat of two religions, clashing, like two goats of the darkness, on the bridge of infinity; there will be no cause longer to fear famine, exhaustion, prostitution through destiny, misery through stoppage of work, and the scaffold, and the sword, and battles, and all the brigandage of accident in the forest of events; we might almost say there will be no more events, we shall be happy; the human race will accomplish its law as the terrestrial globe does its law; harmony will be restored between the soul and the planet, and the soul will gravitate round the truth as the planet does round light. Friends, the hour we are now standing in is a gloomy hour, but there are such terrible purchases of the future. Oh, the human race will be delivered, relieved, and consoled! We affirm it on this barricade, and where should the cry of love be raised if not on the summit of the sacrifice? Oh, my brothers, this is the point of junction between those who think and those who suffer. This barricade is not made of paving-stones, beams, and iron bars; it is made of two masses,—a mass of ideas and a mass of sorrows. Misery meets then the ideal; day embraces the night there, and says to it, 'I am about to die with thee, and thou wilt be born again with me.' Faith springs from the embrace of all the desolations; sufferings bring hither their agony, and ideas their immortality. This agony and this immortality are about to be mingled and compose one death. Brothers, the man who dies here dies in the radiance of the future, and we shall enter a tomb all filled with dawn."

Enjolras interrupted himself rather than was silent; his lips moved silently as if he were talking to himself, which attracted attention, and in order still to try to hear him they held their tongues. There was no applause, but they whispered together for a long time. Language being breath, the rustling of intellects resembles the rustling of leaves.


CHAPTER V.

PRESENT PROGRESS.

At the present day the sewer is clean, cold, straight, and correct, and almost realizes the ideal of what is understood in England by the word "respectable." It is neat and gray, built with the plumb-line,—we might almost say coquettishly. It resembles a contractor who has become a Councillor of State. You almost see clearly in it, and the mud behaves itself decently. At the first glance you might be inclined to take it for one of those subterranean passages so common formerly, and so useful for the flights of monarchs and princes in the good old times "when the people loved its kings." The present sewer is a handsome sewer; the pure style prevails there,—the classic rectilinear Alexandrine, which, expelled from poetry, appears to have taken refuge in architecture, seems blended with all the stones of this long, dark, and white vault; each vomitory is an arcade, and the Rue de Rivoli sets the fashion even in the cloaca. However, if the geometric line be anywhere in its place, it is assuredly so in the stercoraceous trench of a great city, where everything must be subordinated to the shortest road. The sewer has at the present day assumed a certain official aspect, and the police reports of which it is sometimes the object are no longer deficient in respect to it. The words which characterize it in the administrative language are lofty and dignified; what used to be called a gut is now called a gallery, and what used to be a hole is now a "look." Villon would no longer recognize the ancient lodgings he used for emergencies. This network of cellars still has its population of rodents, pullulating more than ever; from time to time a rat, an old veteran, ventures his head at the window of the drain and examines the Parisians: but even these vermin are growing tame, as they are satisfied with their subterranean palace. The cloaca no longer retains its primitive ferocity, and the rain which sullied the sewer of olden times, washes that of the present day. Still, do not trust to it too entirely, for miasmas yet inhabit it, and it is rather hypocritical than irreproachable. In spite of all the préfecture of police and the Board of Health have done, it exhales a vague suspicious odor, like Tartuffe after confession. Still, we must allow that, take it all together, sweeping is an homage which the sewer pays to civilization, and as from this point of view Tartuffe's conscience is a progress upon the Augean stable, it is certain that the sewer of Paris has been improved. It is more than a progress, it is a transmutation; between the old and the present sewer there is a revolution. Who effected this revolution? The man whom every one forgets, and whom we have named,—Bruneseau.


CHAPTER V.

SAND, LIKE WOMAN, AS A FINENESS THAT IS PERFIDIOUS.

He felt that he was entering water, and that he had under his feet no longer stone but mud. It often happens on certain coasts of Brittany or Scotland that a man, whether traveller or fisherman, walking at low tide on the sand, some distance from the shore, suddenly perceives that during the last few minutes he has found some difficulty in walking. The shore beneath his feet is like pitch, his heels are attached to it, it is no longer sand but bird-lime; the sand is perfectly dry, but at every step taken, so soon as the foot is raised the imprint it leaves fills with water. The eye, however, has perceived no change, the immense expanse is smooth and calm, all the sand seems alike, nothing distinguishes the soil which is solid from that which is no longer so, and the little merry swarm of water-fleas continue to leap tumultuously round the feet of the wayfarer. The man follows his road, turns toward the land, and tries to approach the coast, not that he is alarmed; alarmed at what? Still, he feels as if the heaviness of his feet increased at every step that he takes; all at once he sinks in, sinks in two or three inches. He is decidedly not on the right road, and stops to look about him. Suddenly he looks at his feet, but they have disappeared, the sand covers them. He draws his feet out of the sand and tries to turn back, but he sinks in deeper still. The sand comes up to his ankle; he pulls it out and turns to his left, when the sand comes to his knee; he turns to the right, and the sand comes up to his thigh; then he recognizes with indescribable terror that he is caught in a quicksand, and has under him the frightful medium in which a man can no more walk than a fish can swim. He throws away his load, if he have one, and lightens himself like a ship in distress; but it is too late, for the sand is already above his knees. He calls out, waves his hat or handkerchief, but the sand gains on him more and more. If the shore is deserted, if land is too distant, if the sand-bank is too ill-famed, if there is no hero in the vicinity, it is all over with him, and he is condemned to be swallowed by the quicksands. He is doomed to that long, awful, implacable interment, impossible to delay or hasten, which lasts hours; which never ends; which seizes you when erect, free, and in perfect health; which drags you by the feet; which, at every effort you attempt, every cry you utter, drags you a little deeper; which seems to punish you for your resistance by a redoubled clutch; which makes a man slowly enter the ground while allowing him ample time to regard the houses, the trees, the green fields, the smoke from the villages on the plain, the sails of the vessels on the sea, the birds that fly and sing, the sun, and the sky. A quicksand is a sepulchre that converts itself into a tide, and ascends from the bottom of the earth toward a living man. Each moment inexorably wraps grave-clothes about him. The wretch tries to sit, to lie down, to walk, to crawl; all the movements that he makes bury him; he draws himself up, and only sinks deeper; he feels himself being swallowed up; he yells, implores, cries to the clouds, writhes his arms, and grows desperate. Then he is in the sand up to his waist; the sand reaches his chest, he is but a bust. He raises his hands, utters furious groans, digs his nails into the sand, tries to hold by this dust, raises himself on his elbows to tear himself from this soft sheath, and sobs frenziedly. The sand mounts, the sand reaches his shoulders, the sand reaches his neck, the face alone is visible now. The mouth cries, the sand fills it; silence. The eyes still look, the sand closes them; night. Then the forehead sinks, and a little hair waves above the sand; a hand emerges, digs up the sand, is waved, and disappears,—a sinister effacement of a man.

At times the rider is swallowed up with his horse, at times the carter with his cart. It is a shipwreck otherwhere than in the water; it is the land drowning man. The land penetrated by the ocean becomes a snare; it offers itself as a plain, and opens like a wave. The abyss has its acts of treachery.

Such a mournful adventure, always possible on some seashore, was also possible some thirty years ago in the sewer of Paris. Before the important works began in 1833 the subway of Paris was subject to sudden breakings-in. The water filtered through a subjacent and peculiarly friable soil; and the roadway, if made of paving-stones, as in the old drains, or of concrete upon béton, as in the new galleries, having no support, bent. A bend in a planking of this nature is a crevice, and a crevice is a bursting-in. The roadway broke away for a certain length, and such a gap, a gulf of mud, was called in professional language fontis. What is a fontis? It is the quicksand of the seashore suddenly met with underground; it is the strand of Mont St. Michel in a sewer. The moistened soil is in a state of fusion, all its particles are held in suspense in a shifting medium; it is not land and it is not water. The depth is at times very great. Nothing can be more formidable than meeting with such a thing; if water predominate death is quick, for a man is drowned; if earth predominate death is slow, for he is sucked down.

Can our readers imagine such a death? If it be frightful to sink in the sea-strand, what is it in a cloaca? Instead of fresh air, daylight, a clear horizon, vast sounds, the free clouds from which life rains, the barque perceived in the distance, that hope under every form, of possible passers-by, of possible help up to the last minute,—instead of all this, deafness, blindness, a black archway, the interior of a tomb already made, death in the mud under a tombstone! Slow asphyxia by uncleanliness, a sarcophagus where asphyxia opens its claws in the filth and clutches you by the throat; fetidness mingled with the death-rattle, mud instead of the sand, sulphuretted hydrogen in lieu of the hurricane, ordure instead of the ocean! And to call and gnash the teeth, and writhe and struggle and expire, with this enormous city which knows nothing of it above one's head.

Inexpressible the horror of dying thus! Death sometimes expiates its atrocity by a certain terrible dignity. On the pyre, in shipwreck, a man may be great; in the flames, as in the foam, a superb attitude is possible, and a man transfigures himself. But in this case it is not so, for the death is unclean. It is humiliating to expire in such a way, and the last floating visions are abject. Mud is the synonym of shame, and is little, ugly, and infamous. To die in a butt of Malmsey like Clarence,—very well; but in a sewer like d'Escoubleau is horrible. To struggle in it is hideous, for at the same time as a man is dying, he is dabbling. There is enough darkness for it to be Hell, and enough mud for it to be merely a slough, and the dying man does not know whether he is about to become a spectre or a frog. Everywhere else the sepulchre is sinister, but here it is deformed.

The depth of the fontis varied, as did the length and density, according to the nature of the subsoil. At times a fontis was three or four feet deep, at times eight or ten, and sometimes it was bottomless. In one the mud was almost solid, in another nearly liquid. In the Lunière fontis, a man would have taken a day in disappearing, while he would have been devoured in five minutes by the Phélippeaux slough. The mud bears more or less well according to its degree of density, and a lad escapes where a man is lost. The first law of safety is to throw away every sort of loading, and every sewer-man who felt the ground giving way under him began by getting rid of his basket of tools. The fontis had various causes,—friability of soil, some convulsion at a depth beyond a man's reach, violent summer showers, the incessant winter rain, and long drizzling rains. At times the weight of the surrounding houses upon a marshy or sandy soil broke the roofs of the subterranean galleries and made them shrink, or else it happened that the roadway broke and slit up under the terrific pressure. The pile of the Panthéon destroyed in this way about a century ago a portion of the cellars in Mont Sainte Geneviève. When a sewer gave way under the weight of the houses, the disorder was expressed above in the street by a sort of saw-toothed parting between the paving-stones. This rent was developed in a serpentine line, along the whole length of the cracked vault, and in such a case, the evil being visible, the remedy might be prompt. It often happened also that the internal ravage was not revealed by any scar outside, and in that case, woe to the sewer-men. Entering the injured drain incautiously, they might be lost in it The old registers mention several night-men buried in this manner in the fontis. They mention several names, among others that of the sewer-man swallowed up in a slough under the opening on the Rue Carême Prenant, of the name of Blaise Poutrain; this Blaise was brother of Nicholas Poutrain, who was the last sexton of the cemetery called the Charnier des Innocents in 1785, when that cemetery expired. There was also the young and charming Vicomte d'Escoubleau, to whom we have alluded, one of the heroes of the siege of Lerida, where the assault was made in silk stockings and with violins at their head. D'Escoubleau, surprised one night with his cousin, the Duchesse de Sourdis, drowned himself in a cesspool of the Beautreillis sewer, where he had taken refuge to escape the Duc. Madame de Sourdis, when told the story of this death, asked for her smelling-bottle, and forgot to weep through inhaling her salts. In such a case there is no love that holds out; the cloaca extinguishes it. Hero refuses to wash the corpse of Leander. Thisbe holds her nose in the presence of Pyramus, and says, Pah!


CHAPTER V.

DEPOSIT YOUR MONEY IN A FOREST RATHER THAN WITH A NOTARY.

Of course our readers have understood, and no lengthened explanation will be required, that Jean Valjean after the Champmathieu affair was enabled by his escape for a few days to come to Paris, and withdraw in time from Laffitte's the sum he had gained under the name of M. Madeleine at M.-sur-M.; and that, afraid of being recaptured, which in fact happened to him shortly after, he buried this sum in the forest of Montfermeil, at the spot called the Blaru bottom. This sum, six hundred and thirty thousand francs, all in bank-notes, occupied but little space, and was contained in a box; but in order to protect the box from damp he placed it in an oak coffer filled with chips of chestnut-wood. In the same coffer he placed his other treasure, the Bishop's candlesticks. It will be remembered that he carried off these candlesticks in his escape from M.-sur-M. The man seen on one previous evening by Boulatruelle was Jean Valjean, and afterwards, whenever Jean Valjean required money, he fetched it from the Blaru clearing, and hence his absences to which we have referred. He had a pick concealed somewhere in the shrubs, in a hiding-place known to himself alone. When he found Marius to be convalescent, feeling that the hour was at hand when this money might be useful, he went to fetch it; and it was also he whom Boulatruelle saw in the wood, but this time in the morning, and not at night. Boulatruelle inherited the pick.

The real sum was five hundred and eighty-four thousand five hundred francs, but Jean Valjean kept back the five hundred francs for himself. "We will see afterwards," he thought. The difference between this sum and the six hundred and thirty thousand francs withdrawn from Laffitte's represented the expenditure of ten years from 1823 to 1833. The five years' residence in the convent had cost only five thousand francs. Jean Valjean placed the two silver candlesticks on the mantel-piece, where they glistened, to the great admiration of Toussaint. Moreover, Jean Valjean knew himself freed from Javert; it had been stated in his presence, and he verified the fact in the Moniteur which had published it, that an Inspector of Police of the name of Javert had been found drowned under a washer-woman's boat between the Pont-au-change and the Pont-Neuf, and that a letter left by this man, hitherto irreproachable and highly esteemed by his chiefs, led to the belief in an attack of dementia and suicide. "In truth," thought Jean Valjean, "since he let me go when he had hold of me, he must have been mad at that time."


CHAPTER V.

A NIGHT BEHIND WHICH IS DAY.

At the knock he heard at his door Jean Valjean turned round.

"Come in," he said feebly.

The door opened, and Cosette and Marius appeared. Cosette rushed into the room. Marius remained on the threshold, leaning against the doorpost.

"Cosette!" said Jean Valjean, and he sat up in his chair, with his arms outstretched and opened, haggard, livid, and sinister, but with an immense joy in his eyes. Cosette, suffocated with emotion, fell on Jean Valjean's breast.

"Father!" she said.

Jean Valjean, utterly overcome, stammered, "Cosette! She—you—Madame! It is thou! Oh, my God!"

And clasped in Cosette's arms, he exclaimed,—

"It is you! You are here; you forgive me, then!"

Marius, drooping his eyelids to keep his tears from flowing, advanced a step, and muttered between his lips, which were convulsively clenched to stop his sobs,—

"Father!"

"And you too, you forgive me!" said Jean Valjean.

Marius could not find a word to say, and Jean Valjean added, "Thank you." Cosette took off her shawl, and threw her bonnet on the bed.

"It is in my way," she said.

And sitting down on the old man's knees, she parted his gray hair with an adorable movement, and kissed his forehead. Jean Valjean, who was wandering, let her do so. Cosette, who only comprehended very vaguely, redoubled her caresses, as if she wished to pay Marius's debt, and Jean Valjean stammered,—

"How foolish a man can be! I fancied that I should not see her again. Just imagine, Monsieur Pontmercy, that at the very moment when you came in I was saying, 'It is all over.' There is her little dress. 'I am a wretched man, I shall not see Cosette again,' I was saying at the very moment when you were coming up the stairs. What an idiot I was! A man can be as idiotic as that! But people count without the good God, who says, 'You imagine that you are going to be abandoned; no, things will not happen like that. Down below there is a poor old fellow who has need of an angel.' And the angel comes, and he sees Cosette again, and he sees his little Cosette again. Oh, I was very unhappy!"

For a moment he was unable to speak; then he went on,—

"I really wanted to see Cosette for a little while every now and then, for a heart requires a bone to gnaw. Still, I knew well that I was in the way. I said to myself, 'They do not want you, so stop in your corner; a man has no right to pay everlasting visits,' Ah, blessed be God! I see her again. Do you know, Cosette, that your husband is very handsome? What a pretty embroidered collar you are wearing; I like that pattern. Your husband chose it, did he not? And then, you will need cashmere shawls. Monsieur Pontmercy, let me call her Cosette, it will not be for long."

And Cosette replied,—

"How unkind to have left us like that! Where have you been to? Why were you away so long? Formerly your absences did not last over three or four days. I sent Nicolette, and the answer always was, 'He has not returned.' When did you get back? Why did you not let us know? Are you aware that you are greatly changed? Oh, naughty papa, he has been ill, and we did not know it. Here, Marius, feel how cold his hand is!"

"So you are here! So you forgive me, Monsieur Pontmercy?" Jean Valjean repeated.

At this remark, all that was swelling in Marius's heart found a vent, and he burst forth,—

"Do you hear, Cosette? He asks my pardon. And do you know what he did for me, Cosette? He saved my life; he did more, he gave you to me, and, after saving me, and after giving you to me, Cosette, what did he do for himself? He sacrificed himself. That is the man. And to me, who am so ungrateful, so pitiless, so forgetful, and so guilty, he says, 'Thank you!' Cosette, my whole life spent at this man's feet would be too little. That barricade, that sewer, that furnace, that pit,—he went through them all for me and for you, Cosette! He carried me through every form of death, which he held at bay from me and accepted for himself. This man possesses every courage, every virtue, every heroism, and every holiness, and he is an angel, Cosette!"

"Stop, stop!" Jean Valjean said in a whisper; "why talk in that way?"

"But why did you not tell me of it?" exclaimed Marius, with a passion in which was veneration; "it is your fault also. You save people's lives, and conceal the fact from them! You do more; under the pretext of unmasking yourself, you calumniate yourself. It is frightful!"

"I told the truth," Jean Valjean replied.

"No!" Marius retorted, "the truth is the whole truth, and you did not tell that. You were Monsieur Madeleine; why not tell me so? You saved Javert; why not tell me so? I owed you my life; why not tell me so?"

"Because I thought like you, and found that you were right. It was necessary that I should leave you. Had you known of the sewer, you would have compelled me to remain with you, and hence I held my tongue. Had I spoken, I should have been in the way."

"Been in the way of whom,—of what?" Marius broke out. "Do you fancy that you are going to remain here? We mean to take you back with us. Oh, good heaven! when I think that I only learned all this by accident! We shall take you away with us, for you form a part of ourselves. You are her father and mine. You shall not spend another day in this frightful house, so do not fancy you will be here to-morrow."

"To-morrow," said Jean Valjean, "I shall be no longer here; but I shall not be at your house."

"What do you mean?" Marius asked. "Oh, no! we shall not let you travel any more. You shall not leave us again, for you belong to us, and we will not let you go."

"This time it is for good," Cosette added. "We have a carriage below, and I mean to carry you off; if necessary, I shall employ force."

And laughing, she feigned to raise the old man in her arms.

"Your room is still all ready in our house," she went on. "If you only knew how pretty the garden is just at present! The azaleas are getting on splendidly; the walks are covered with river sand, and there are little violet shells. You shall eat my strawberries, for it is I who water them. And no more Madame and no more Monsieur Jean, for we live in a republic, do we not, Marius? The programme is changed. If you only knew, father, what a sorrow I had; a redbreast had made its nest in a hole in the wall, and a horrible cat killed it for me. My poor, pretty little redbreast, that used to thrust its head out of its window and look at me! I cried at it, and could have killed the cat! But now, nobody weeps, everybody laughs, everybody is happy. You will come with us; how pleased grandfather will be! You will have your bed in the garden, you will cultivate it, and we will see whether your strawberries are as fine as mine. And then, I will do all you wish, and you will obey me."

Jean Valjean listened without hearing; he heard the music of her voice rather than the meaning of her words, and one of those heavy tears, which are the black pearls of the soul, slowly collected in his eye. He murmured,—

"The proof that God is good is that she is here."

"My father!" said Cosette.

Jean Valjean continued,—

"It is true it would be charming to live together. They have their trees full of birds, and I should walk about with Cosette. It is sweet to be with persons who live, who say to each other good-morning, and call each other in the garden. We should each cultivate a little bed; she would give me her strawberries to eat, and I would let her pick my roses. It would be delicious, but—"

He broke off, and said gently, "It is a pity!"

The tear did not fall, it was recalled, and Jean Valjean substituted a smile for it. Cosette took both the old man's hands in hers.

"Good Heaven!" she said, "your hands have grown colder. Can you be ill? Are you suffering?"

"I—no," Jean Valjean replied, "I am quite well. It is only—" He stopped.

"Only what?"

"I am going to die directly."

Marius and Cosette shuddered.

"Die!" Marius exclaimed.

"Yes; but that is nothing," said Jean Valjean.

He breathed, smiled, and added,—

"Cosette, you were talking to me; go on, speak again. Your redbreast is dead, then? Speak, that I may hear your voice."

Marius, who was petrified, looked at the old man, and Cosette uttered a piercing shriek.

"Father, father, you will live! You are going to live. I insist on your living, do you hear?"

Jean Valjean raised his head to her with adoration.

"Oh, yes, forbid me dying. Who knows? Perhaps I shall obey. I was on the road to death when you arrived, but that stopped me. I fancied I was coming to life again."

"You are full of strength and life," Marius exclaimed; "can you suppose that a man dies like that? You have known grief, but you shall know no more. It is I who ask pardon of you, and on my knees! You are going to live, and live with us, and live a long time. We will take you with us, and shall have henceforth but one thought, your happiness!"

"You hear," said Cosette, who was all in tears. "Marius says that you will not die."

Jean Valjean continued to smile.

"Even if you were to take me home with you, Monsieur Pontmercy, would that prevent me being what I am? No. God has thought the same as you and I, and he does not alter his opinion. It is better for me to be gone. Death is an excellent arrangement, and God knows better than we do what we want. I am certain that it is right, that you should be happy, that Monsieur Pontmercy should have Cosette, that youth should espouse the dawn, that there should be around you, my children, lilacs and nightingales, that your life should be a lawn bathed in sunlight, that all the enchantments of Heaven should fill your souls, and that I who am good for nothing should now die. Come, be reasonable; nothing is possible now, and I fully feel that all is over. An hour ago I had a fainting-fit, and last night I drank the whole of that jug of water. How kind your husband is, Cosette! You are much better with him than with me!"

There was a noise at the door; it was the physician come to pay his visit.

"Good-day, and good-by, doctor," said Jean Valjean; "here are my poor children."

Marius went up to the physician, and addressed but one word to him, "Sir?"—but in the manner of pronouncing it there was a whole question. The physician answered the question by an expressive glance.

"Because things are unpleasant," said Jean Valjean, "that is no reason to be unjust to God."

There was a silence, and every breast was oppressed. Jean Valjean turned to Cosette, and began contemplating her, as if he wished to take the glance with him into eternity. In the deep shadow into which he had already sunk ecstasy was still possible for him in gazing at Cosette. The reflection of her sweet countenance illumined his pale face, for the sepulchre may have its brilliancy. The physician felt his pulse.

"Ah, it was you that he wanted," he said, looking at Marius and Cosette.

And bending down to Marius's ear, he whispered, "Too late!"

Jean Valjean, almost without ceasing to regard Cosette, looked at Marius and the physician with serenity, and the scarcely articulated words could be heard passing his lips.

"It is nothing to die, but it is frightful not to live."

All at once he rose; such return of strength is at times a sequel of the death-agony. He walked with a firm step to the wall, thrust aside Marius and the doctor, who wished to help him, detached from the wall the small copper crucifix hanging on it, returned to his seat with all the vigor of full health, and said, as he laid the crucifix on the table,—

"There is the great Martyr."

Then his chest sank in, his head vacillated, as if the intoxication of the tomb were seizing on him, and his hands, lying on his knees, began pulling at the cloth of his trousers. Cosette supported his shoulders, and sobbed, and tried to speak to him, but was unable to do so. Through the words mingled with that lugubrious saliva which accompanies tears, such sentences as this could be distinguished: "Father, do not leave us. Is it possible that we have only found you again to lose you?" It might be said that the death-agony moves like a serpent; it comes, goes, advances toward the grave, and then turns back toward life; there is groping in the action of death. Jean Valjean, after this partial syncope, rallied, shook his forehead as if to make the darkness fall off it, and became again almost lucid. He caught hold of Cosette's sleeve and kissed it.

"He is recovering, doctor, he is recovering," Marius cried.

"You are both good," said Jean Valjean, "and I am going to tell you what causes me sorrow. It causes me sorrow, Monsieur Pontmercy, that you have refused to touch that money; but it is really your wife's. I will explain to you, my children, and that is why I am so glad to see you. Black jet comes from England, and white jet from Norway; it is all in that paper there, which you will read. I invented the substitution of rolled-up snaps for welded snaps in bracelets; they are prettier, better, and not so dear. You can understand what money can be earned by it; so Cosette's fortune is really hers. I give you these details that your mind may be at rest!"

The porter's wife had come up, and was peeping through the open door; the physician sent her off, but could not prevent the zealous old woman shouting to the dying man before she went,—

"Will you have a priest?"

"I have one," Jean Valjean answered.

And he seemed to point with his finger to a spot over his head, where it seemed as if he saw some one; it is probable, in truth, that the Bishop was present at this death-scene. Cosette gently placed a pillow behind Jean Valjean's loins, and he continued,—

"Monsieur Pontmercy, have no fears, I conjure you. The six hundred thousand francs are really Cosette's! I should have thrown away my life if you did not enjoy them! We had succeeded in making those beads famously, and we competed with what is called Berlin jewelry. For instance, the black beads of Germany cannot be equalled; for a gross, which contains twelve hundred well-cut beads, only costs three francs."