M. Myriel's domestic life was full of the same thoughts as his public life. To any one who could inspect it closely, the voluntary poverty in which the Bishop lived would have been a solemn and charming spectacle. Like all old men, and like most thinkers, he slept little, but that short sleep was deep. In the morning he remained in contemplation for an hour, and then read mass either at the cathedral or in his house. Mass over, he breakfasted on rye bread dipped in the milk of his own cows. Then he set to work.
A bishop is a very busy man. He must daily receive the secretary to the bishopric, who is generally a canon, and almost every day his grand vicars. He has congregations to control, permissions to grant, a whole ecclesiastical library to examine, in the shape of diocesan catechisms, books of hours, etc.; mandates to write, sermons to authorize, curés and mayors to reconcile, a clerical correspondence, an administrative correspondence, on one side the State, on the other the Holy See; in a word, a thousand tasks. The time which these thousand tasks, his offices, and his breviary left him, he gave first to the needy, the sick, and the afflicted; the time which the afflicted, the sick, and the needy left him he gave to work. Sometimes he hoed in his garden, at others he read and wrote. He had only one name for both sorts of labor, he called them gardening. "The mind is a garden," he would say.
Toward mid-day, when the weather was fine, he went out and walked in the country or the town, frequently entering the cottages. He could be seen walking alone in deep thought, looking down, leaning on his long cane, dressed in his violet wadded and warm great coat, with his violet stockings thrust into clumsy shoes, and wearing his flat hat, through each corner of which were passed three golden acorns as tassels. It was a festival wherever he appeared, it seemed as if his passing had something warming and luminous about it; old men and children came to the door to greet the Bishop as they did the sun. He blessed them and they blessed him, and his house was pointed out to anybody who was in want of anything. Now and then he stopped, spoke to the little boys and girls, and smiled on their mothers. He visited the poor so long as he had any money; when he had none he visited the rich. As he made his cassocks last a long time, and he did not wish the fact to be noticed, he never went into town save in his wadded violet coat. This was rather tiresome in summer.
On returning home he dined. The dinner resembled the breakfast. At half-past eight in the evening he supped with his sister, Madame Magloire standing behind them and waiting on them. Nothing could be more frugal than this meal; but if the Bishop had a curé to supper, Madame Magloire would take advantage of it to serve Monseigneur with some excellent fish from the lake, or famous game from the mountain. Every curé was the excuse for a good meal, and the Bishop held his tongue. On other occasions his repast only consisted of vegetables boiled in water and soup made with oil. Hence it was said in the town: "When the Bishop does not fare like a curé he fares like a trappist."
After supper he conversed for half an hour with Mlle. Baptistine and Madame Magloire; then he returned to his room and began writing again, either on loose leaves or on the margin of some folio. He was well read, and a bit of a savant, and has left five or six curious MSS. on theological subjects, among others a dissertation on the verse from Genesis, "In the beginning the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters." He compared this verse with three texts,—the Arabic, which says, "The winds of God breathed;" Flavius Josephus, who said, "A wind from on high fell upon the earth;" and lastly the Chaldaic of Onkelos, "A wind coming from God breathed on the face of the waters." In another dissertation he examines the works of Hugo, Bishop of Ptolemaïs, great-grand-uncle of him who writes this book, and he proves that to this bishop must be attributed the various opuscules published in the last century under the pseudonym of Barleycourt. At times, in the midst of his reading, no matter what book he held in his hands, he would suddenly fall into a deep meditation, from which he only emerged to write a few lines on the pages of the book. These lines have frequently no connection with the book that contains them. We have before us a note written by him on the margin of a quarto entitled, "Correspondence of Lord Germain with Generals Clinton and Cornwallis, and the Admirals of the American Station. Versailles, Prinçot; and Paris, Pissot, Quai des Augustins." Here is the note.
"O thou who art! Ecclesiastes calls you Omnipotence; the Maccabees call you Creator; the Epistle to the Ephesians calls you Liberty; Baruch calls you Immensity; the Psalms call you Wisdom and Truth; St. John calls you Light; the Book of Kings calls you Lord; Exodus calls you Providence; Leviticus, Holiness; Esdras, Justice; Creation calls you God; man calls you the Father; but Solomon calls you Mercy, and that is the fairest of all your names."
About nine o'clock the two females withdrew and went up to their bed-rooms on the first floor, leaving him alone till morning on the ground floor. Here it is necessary that we should give an exact idea of the Bishop's residence.
After bidding his sister good-night, Monseigneur Welcome took up one of the silver candlesticks, handed the other to his guest, and said,—
"I will lead you to your room, sir."
The man followed him. The reader will remember, from our description, that the rooms were so arranged that in order to reach the oratory where the alcove was it was necessary to pass through the Bishop's bed-room. At the moment when he went through this room Madame Magloire was putting away the plate in the cupboard over the bed-head: it was the last job she did every night before retiring. The Bishop led his guest to the alcove, where a clean bed was prepared for him; the man placed the branched candlestick on a small table.
"I trust you will pass a good night," said the Bishop. "To-morrow morning, before starting, you will drink a glass of milk fresh from our cows."
"Thank you, Monsieur l'Abbé," the man said. He had hardly uttered these peaceful words when, suddenly and without any transition, he had a strange emotion, which would have frightened the two old females to death had they witnessed it. Even at the present day it is difficult to account for what urged him at the moment. Did he wish to warn or to threaten? was he simply obeying a species of instinctive impulse which was obscure to himself? He suddenly turned to the old gentleman, folded his arms, and, fixing on him a savage glance, he exclaimed hoarsely,—
"What! you really lodge me so close to you as that?" He broke off and added with a laugh, in which there was something monstrous,—
"Have you reflected fully? who tells you that I have not committed a murder?"
The Bishop answered: "That concerns God."
Then gravely moving his lips, like a man who is praying and speaking to himself, he stretched out two fingers of his right hand and blessed the man, who did not bow his head, and returned to his bed-room, without turning his head or looking behind him. When the alcove was occupied, a large serge curtain drawn right across the oratory concealed the altar. The Bishop knelt down as he passed before this curtain, and offered up a short prayer; a moment after he was in his garden, walking, dreaming, contemplating, his soul and thoughts entirely occupied by those grand mysteries which God displays at night to eyes that remain open.
As for the man, he was really so wearied that he did not even take advantage of the nice white sheets. He blew out the candle with his nostrils, after the fashion of convicts, and threw himself in his clothes upon the bed, where he at once fell into a deep sleep. Midnight was striking as the Bishop returned from the garden to his room, and a few minutes later everybody was asleep in the small house.
The Russian mountain exhausted, they thought about dinner, and the radiant eight, at length somewhat weary, put into the Cabaret Bombarda, an offshoot established in the Champs Élysées by that famous restaurateur Bombarda, whose sign could be seen at that time at the Rue de Rivoli by the side of the Delorme passage.
A large but ugly room, with an alcove and a bed at the end (owing to the crowded state of the houses on Sundays they were compelled to put up with it); two windows from which the quay and river could be contemplated through the elm-trees; a magnificent autumn sun illumining the windows; two tables, on one of them a triumphal mountain of bottles, mixed up with hats and bonnets, at the other four couples joyously seated round a mass of dishes, plates, bottles, and glasses, pitchers of beer, mingled with wine-bottles; but little order on the table, and some amount of disorder under it.
"Ils faisaient sous la table
Un bruit, un trique-trac de pieds épouvantable,"
as Molière says. Such was the state of the pastoral which began at 5 A.M.; at half-past 4 P.M. the sun was declining and appetite was satisfied.
The Champs Élysées, full of sunshine and crowd, were nought but light and dust, two things of which glory is composed. The horses of Marly, those neighing marbles, reared amid a golden cloud. Carriages continually passed along; a squadron of splendid guards, with the trumpeter at their head, rode down the Neuilly avenue; the white flag, tinged with pink by the setting sun, floated above the dome of the Tuileries. The Place de la Concorde, which had again become the Place Louis XV., was crowded with merry promenaders. Many wore a silver fleur de lys hanging from a black moiré ribbon, which, in 1817, had not entirely disappeared from the buttonholes. Here and there, in the midst of applauding crowds, little girls were singing a royalist bourrée, very celebrated at that time, intended to crush the hundred days, and which had a chorus of,—
"Rendez nous notre père de Gand,
Rendez vous notre père."
Heaps of suburbans, dressed in their Sunday clothes, and some wearing fleur de lys like the cits, were scattered over the squares, playing at quintain or riding in roundabouts; others were drinking; some who were printers' apprentices wore paper caps, and their laughter was the loudest. All was radiant; it was a time of undeniable peace, and of profound royalist security; it was a period when a private and special report of Anglès, prefect of police to the King, terminated with these lines: "All things duly considered, Sire, there is nothing to fear from these people. They are as careless and indolent as cats, and though the lower classes in the provinces are stirring, those in Paris are not so. They are all little men, Sire, and it would take two of them to make one of your grenadiers. There is nothing to fear from the populace of the capital. It is remarkable that their height has decreased during the last fifty years, and the people of the suburbs of Paris are shorter than they were before the Revolution. They are not dangerous, and, in a word, are good-tempered canaille."
Prefects of police do not believe it possible that a cat can be changed into a lion; it is so, however, and that is the miracle of the people of Paris. The cat, so despised by Count Anglès, possessed the esteem of the old Republics; it was the incarnation of liberty in their eyes, and as if to serve as a pendant to the Minerva Apteros of the Piræus, there was on the public square of Corinth a colossal bronze statue of a cat. The simple police of the restoration had too favorable an opinion of the people of Paris, and they were not such good-tempered canaille as they were supposed to be. The Parisian is to the French-man what the Athenian is to the Greek; no one sleeps sounder than he; no one is more frankly frivolous and idle than he; no one can pretend to forget so well as he,—but he must not be trusted; he is suited for every species of nonchalance, but when there is a glory as the result, he is admirable for every sort of fury. Give him a pike and he will make August 10; give him a musket, and you will have Austerlitz. He is the support of Napoleon, and the resource of Danton. If the country is in danger, he enlists; if liberty is imperilled, he tears up the pavement. His hair, full of wrath, is epical, his blouse assumes the folds of a chlamys. Take care; for of the first Rue Grenétat he comes to be will make Caudine forks. If the hour strikes, this suburban grows, the little man looks in a terrible manner, his breath becomes a tempest, and from his weak chest issues a blast strong enough to uproot the Alps. It was through the Parisian suburban that the Revolution, joined with armies, conquered Europe. He sings, and that forms his delight; proportion his song to his nature, and you shall see! So long as he has no burden but the Carmagnole, he will merely overthrow Louis XVI.; but make him sing the Marseillaise, and he will deliver the world.
After writing this note on the margin of Count Anglès' report, we will return to our four couples. The dinner, as we said, was drawing to a close.
By degrees and with time all the opposition died out; at first there had been calumnies against M. Madeleine,—a species of law which all rising men undergo; then it was only backbiting; then it was only malice; and eventually all this faded away. The respect felt for him was complete, unanimous, and cordial, and the moment arrived in 1821 when the name of the Mayor was uttered at M—— with nearly the same accent as "Monseigneur the Bishop" had been said at D—— in 1815. People came for ten leagues round to consult M. Madeleine; he settled disputes, prevented lawsuits, and reconciled enemies. Everybody was willing to accept him as arbiter, and it seemed as if he had the book of natural law for his soul. It was a sort of contagious veneration, which in six or seven years spread all over the country-side.
Only one man in the town and bailiwick resisted this contagion, and whatever M. Madeleine might do, remained rebellious to it, as if a sort of incorruptible and imperturbable instinct kept him on his guard. It would appear, in fact, as if there is in certain men a veritable bestial instinct, though pure and honest as all instincts are, which creates sympathies and antipathies; which fatally separates one nature from another; which never hesitates; which is not troubled, is never silent, and never contradicts itself; which is clear in its obscurity, infallible, imperious; refractory to all the counsels of intelligence and all the solvents of the reason, and which, whatever the way in which destinies are made, surely warns the man-dog of the man-cat, and the man-fox of the presence of the man-lion. It often happened when M. Madeleine passed along a street, calmly, kindly, and greeted by the blessings of all, that a tall man, dressed in an iron-gray great-coat, armed with a thick cane, and wearing a hat with turned-down brim, turned suddenly and looked after him till he disappeared; folding his arms, shaking his head, and raising his upper lip with the lower as high as his nose, a sort of significant grimace, which may be translated,—"Who is that man? I am certain that I have seen him somewhere. At any rate, I am not his dupe."
This person, who was grave, with an almost menacing gravity, was one of those men who, though only noticed for a moment, preoccupy the observer. His name was Javert, and he belonged to the police, and performed at M—— the laborious but useful duties of an inspector. He had not seen Madeleine's beginning, for he was indebted for the post he occupied to the Secretary of Count Angle, at that time Prefect of Police at Paris. When Javert arrived at M——, the great manufacturer's fortune was made, and Father Madeleine had become Monsieur Madeleine. Some police officers have a peculiar face, which is complicated by an air of baseness, blended with an air of authority. Javert had this face, less the baseness. In our conviction, if souls were visible, we should distinctly see the strange fact that every individual of the human species corresponds to some one of the species of animal creation; and we might occurred to the thinker, that, from the oyster to the eagle, from the hog to the tiger, all animals are in man, and that each of them is in a man; at times several of them at once. Animals are nothing else than the figures of our virtues and our vices, wandering before our eyes, the visible phantoms of our souls. God shows these to us in order to make us reflect; but, as animals are only shadows, God has not made them capable of education in the complete sense of the term, for of what use would it be? On the other hand, our souls being realities and having an end of their own, God has endowed them with intelligence; that is to say, possible education. Social education, properly carried out, can always draw out of a soul, no matter its nature, the utility which it contains.
Now, if the reader will admit with me for a moment that in every man there is one of the animal species of creation, it will be easy for us to say what Javert the policeman was. The Asturian peasants are convinced that in every litter of wolves there is a dog which is killed by the mother, for, otherwise, when it grew it would devour the other whelps. Give a human face to this dog-son of a she-wolf, and we shall have Javert. He was born in prison; his mother was a fortune-teller, whose husband was at the galleys. When he grew up he thought that he was beyond the pale of society, and despaired of ever entering it. He noticed that society inexorably keeps at bay two classes of men,—those who attack it, and those who guard it; he had only a choice between these two classes, and at the same time felt within him a rigidness, regularity, and probity, combined with an inexpressible hatred of the race of Bohemians to which he belonged. He entered the police, got on, and at the age of forty was an inspector. In his youth he was engaged in the Southern Bagnes.
Before going further, let us explain the words "human face" which we applied just now to Javert. His human face consisted of a stub-nose, with two enormous nostrils, toward which enormous whiskers mounted on his cheeks. You felt uncomfortable the first time that you saw these two forests and these two caverns. When Javert laughed, which was rare and terrible, his thin lips parted, and displayed, not only his teeth, but his gums, and a savage flat curl formed round his nose, such as is seen on the muzzle of a wild beast. Javert when serious was a bull-dog; when he laughed he was a tiger. To sum up, he had but little skull and plenty of jaw; his hair hid his forehead and fell over his brows; he had between his eyes a central and permanent frown, like a star of anger, an obscure glance, a pinched-up and formidable mouth, and an air of ferocious command.
This man was made up of two very simple and relatively excellent feelings, but which he almost rendered bad by exaggerating them,—respect for authority and hatred of rebellion; and in his eyes, robbery, murder, and every crime were only forms of rebellion. He enveloped in a species of blind faith everybody in the service of the State, from the Prime Minister down to the game-keeper. He covered with contempt, aversion, and disgust, every one who had once crossed the legal threshold of evil. He was absolute, and admitted of no exceptions; on one side he said: "A functionary cannot be mistaken, a magistrate can do no wrong;" on the other he said: "They are irremediably lost: no good can come of them." He fully shared the opinion of those extreme minds that attribute to the human law some power of making or verifying demons, and that place a Styx at the bottom of society. He was stoical, stern, and austere; a sad dreamer, and humble yet haughty, like all fanatics. His glance was a gimlet, for it was cold and piercing. His whole life was composed in the two words, watching and overlooking. He had introduced the straight line into what is the most tortuous thing in the world; he was conscious of his usefulness, had religious respect for his duties, and was a spy as well as another is a priest. Woe to the wretch who came into his clutches! he would have arrested his father if escaping from prison, and denounced his mother had she broken her ban. And he would have done it with that sort of inner satisfaction which virtue produces. With all this he spent a life of privation, isolation, self-denial, chastity. He was the implacable duty, the police comprehended as the Spartans comprehended Sparta, a pitiless watchman, a savage integrity, a marble-hearted spy, a Brutus contained in a Vidocq.
Javert's entire person expressed the man who spies and hides himself. The mystic school of Joseph de Maîstre, which at this epoch was seasoning with high cosmogony what were called the ultra journals, would not have failed to say that Javert was a symbol. His forehead could not be seen, for it was hidden by his hat; his eyes could not be seen, because they were lost under his eye-brows; his chin was plunged into his cravat, his hands were covered by his cuffs, and his cane was carried under his coat. But when the opportunity arrived, there could be seen suddenly emerging from all this shadow, as from an ambush, an angular, narrow forehead, a fatal glance, a menacing chin, enormous hands, and a monstrous rattan. In his leisure moments, which were few, he read, though he hated books, and this caused him not to be utterly ignorant, as could be noticed through a certain emphasis in his language. As we have said, he had no vice; when satisfied with himself, he indulged in a pinch of snuff, and that was his connecting link with humanity. Our readers will readily understand that Javert was the terror of all that class whom the yearly statistics of the minister of justice designate under the rubric—vagabonds. The name of Javert, if uttered, set them to flight; the face of Javert, if seen, petrified them. Such was this formidable man.
Javert was like an eye ever fixed on M. Madeleine, an eye fall of suspicion and conjectures. M. Madeleine noticed it in the end; but he considered it a matter of insignificance. He did not even ask Javert his motive, he neither sought nor shunned him, and endured his annoying glance without appearing to notice it. He treated Javert like every one else, easily and kindly. From some remarks that dropped from Javert, it was supposed that he had secretly sought, with that curiosity belonging to the breed, and in which there is as much instinct as will, all the previous traces which Father Madeleine might have left. He appeared to know, and sometimes said covertly, that some one had obtained certain information in a certain district about a certain family which had disappeared. Once he happened to say, talking to himself, "I believe that I have got him;" then he remained thoughtful for three days without saying a word. It seems that the thread which he fancied he held was broken. However, there cannot be any theory really infallible in a human creature, and it is the peculiarity of instinct that it can be troubled, thrown out, and routed. If not, it would be superior to intelligence, and the brute would have a better light than man. Javert was evidently somewhat disconcerted by M. Madeleine's complete naturalness and calmness. One day, however, his strange manner seemed to produce an impression on M. Madeleine. The occasion was as follows.
The letter-bags between Arras and M—— were still carried in small mail-carts, dating from the Empire. They were two-wheeled vehicles, lined with tawny leather, hung on springs, and having only two seats, one for the driver, and another for a passenger. The wheels were armed with those long offensive axle-trees, which kept other carriages at a distance, and may still be seen on German roads. The compartment for the bags was an immense oblong box at the back; it was painted black, and the front part was yellow. These vehicles, like which we have nothing at the present day, had something ugly and humpbacked about them, and when you saw them pass at a distance or creeping up a hill on the horizon, they resembled those insects called, we think, termites, and which with a small body drag a heavy burden after them. They went very fast, however, and the mail which left Arras at one in the morning, after the Paris mail had arrived, reached M—— a little before five A.M.
On this morning, the mail-cart, just as it entered M——, and while turning a corner, ran into a tilbury drawn by a white horse, coming in the opposite direction, and in which there was only one sitter, a man wrapped in a cloak. The wheel of the tilbury received a rather heavy blow, and though the driver of the mail-cart shouted to the man to stop, he did not listen, but went on at a smart trot.
"The man is in a deuce of a hurry," said the courier.
The man in this hurry was he whom we have just seen struggling in convulsions, assuredly deserving of pity. Where was he going? He could not have told. Why was he hurrying? He did not know. He was going onwards unthinkingly. Where to? Doubtless to Arras; but he might also be going elsewhere.
He buried himself in the darkness as in a gulf. Something urged him on; something attracted him. What was going on in him no one could tell, but all will understand it,—for what man has not entered, at least once in his life, this obscure cavern of the unknown? However, he had settled, decided, and done nothing; not one of the acts of his conscience had been definitive, and he was still as unsettled as at the beginning.
Why was he going to Arras? He repeated what he had already said on hiring the gig of Scaufflaire—that, whatever the result might be, there would be no harm in seeing with his own eyes, and judging matters for himself—that this was prudent; and he was bound to know what was going on—that he could not decide anything till he had observed and examined—that, at a distance, a man made mountains of molehills—that after all, when he had seen this Champmathieu, his conscience would probably be quietly relieved, and he could let the scoundrel go to the galleys in his place: that Javert would be there and the three convicts who had known him,—but, nonsense! they would not recognize him, for all conjectures and suppositions were fixed on this Champmathieu, and there is nothing so obstinate as conjectures and suppositions,—and that hence he incurred no danger. It was doubtless a black moment, but he would emerge from it. After all, he held his destiny, however adverse it might try to be, in his own hands, and was master of it. He clung wildly to the latter thought.
Although, to tell the whole truth, he would have preferred not to go to Arras, yet he went. While reflecting he lashed the horse, which was going at that regular and certain trot which covers two leagues and a half in an hour; and as the gig advanced, he felt something within him recoil. At day-break he was in the open country, and the town of M—— was far behind him. He watched the horizon grow white; he looked, without seeing them, at all the cold figures of a winter dawn. Morning has its spectres like night. He did not see them, but unconsciously, and through a sort of almost physical penetration, these black outlines of trees and hills added something gloomy and sinister to the violent state of his soul. Each time that he passed one of those isolated houses which skirt high roads, he said to himself: "And yet there are people asleep in them." The trot of the horse, the bells on the harness, the wheels on the stones, produced a gentle and monotonous sound, which is delightful when you are merry, and mournful when you are sad.
It was broad daylight when he reached Hesdin, and he stopped at the inn to let the horse breathe and give it a feed. This horse, as Scaufflaire had said, belonged to that small Boulonnais breed, which has too large a head, too much stomach, and not enough neck, but which also has a wide crupper, lean, slender legs, and a solid hoof: it is an ugly but strong and healthy breed. The capital little beast had done five leagues in two hours, and had not turned a hair.
He did not get out of the tilbury; the ostler who brought the oats suddenly stooped down and examined the left wheel.
"Are you going far in this state?" the man said.
He answered almost without emerging from his reverie,—
"Why do you ask?"
"Have you come any distance?" the ostler continued.
"Five leagues."
"Ah!"
"Why do you say, 'Ah'?"
The ostler bent down again, remained silent for a moment, with his eye fixed on the wheel, and then said as he drew himself up,—
"Because this wheel, which may have gone five leagues, cannot possibly go another mile."
He jumped out of the tilbury.
"What are you saying, my friend?"
"I say that it is a miracle you and your horse did not roll into a ditch by the road-side. Just look."
The wheel was, in fact, seriously damaged. The blow dealt it by the mail-cart had broken two spokes, and almost carried away the axle-tree.
"My good fellow," he said to the ostler, "is there a wheelwright here?"
"Of course, sir."
"Be good enough to go and fetch him."
"He lives close by. Hilloh, Master Bourgaillard."
Master Bourgaillard was standing in his doorway: he examined the wheel, and made a face like a surgeon regarding a broken leg.
"Can you mend this wheel?"
"Yes, sir."
"When can I start again?"
"To-morrow: there is a good day's work. Are you in a hurry, sir?"
"In a great hurry: I must set out again in an hour at the latest."
"It is impossible, sir."
"I will pay anything you ask."
"Impossible."
"Well, in two hours?"
"It is impossible for to-day; you will not be able to go on till to-morrow."
"My business cannot wait till to-morrow. Suppose, instead of mending this wheel, you were to put another on?"
"How so?"
"You are a wheelwright, and have probably a wheel you can sell me, and then I could set out again directly."
"I have no ready-made wheel to suit your gig, for wheels are sold in pairs, and it is not easy to match one."
"In that case, sell me a pair of wheels."
"All wheels, sir, do not fit all axle-trees."
"At any rate try."
"It is useless, sir; I have only cart-wheels for sale, for ours is a small place."
"Have you a gig I can hire?"
The wheelwright had noticed at a glance that the tilbury was a hired vehicle; he shrugged his shoulders.
"You take such good care of gigs you hire, that if I had one I would not let it to you."
"Well, one to sell me?"
"I have not one."
"What, not a tax-cart? I am not particular, as you see."
"This is a small place. I have certainly," the wheelwright added, "an old calèche in my stable, which belongs to a person in the town, and who uses it on the thirty-sixth of every month. I could certainly let it out to you, for it is no concern of mine, but the owner must not see it pass; and besides, it is a calèche, and will want two horses."
"I will hire post-horses."
"Where are you going to, sir?"
"To Arras."
"And you wish to arrive to-day?"
"Certainly."
"By taking post-horses?"
"Why not?"
"Does it make any difference to you if you reach Arras at four o'clock to-morrow morning?"
"Of course it does."
"There is one thing to be said about hiring post-horses; have you your passport, sir?"
"Yes."
"Well, if you take post-horses, you will not reach Arras before to-morrow. We are on a cross-country road. The relays are badly served, and the horses are out at work. This is the ploughing season, and as strong teams are required, horses are taken anywhere, from the post-houses like the rest. You will have to wait three or four hours, sir, at each station, and only go at a foot-pace, for there are many hills to ascend."
"Well, I will ride. Take the horse out. I suppose I can purchase a saddle here?"
"Of course, but will this horse carry a saddle?"
"No, I remember now that it will not."
"In that case—"
"But surely I can hire a saddle-horse in the village?"
"What! to go to Arras without a break?"
"Yes."
"You would want a horse such as is not to be found in these parts. In the first place, you would have to buy it, as you are a stranger, but you would not find one to buy or hire for five hundred francs,—not for a thousand."
"What is to be done?"
"The best thing is to let me mend the wheel and put off your journey till to-morrow."
"To-morrow will be too late."
"Hang it!"
"Is there not the Arras mail-cart? When does that pass?"
"Not till to-night."
"What! you will take a whole day in mending that wheel?"
"An honest day."
"Suppose you employed two workmen?"
"Ay, if I had ten."
"Suppose the spokes were tied with cords?"
"What is to be done with the axle? Besides, the felloe is in a bad state."
"Is there any one who lets out vehicles in the town?"
"No."
"Is there another wheelwright?"
The ostler and the wheelwright replied simultaneously—,
"No."
He felt an immense joy, for it was evident that Providence was interfering. Providence had broken the tilbury wheel and stopped his journey. He had not yielded to this species of first summons; he had made every possible effort to continue his journey; he had loyally and scrupulously exhausted all resources; he had not recoiled before the season, fatigue, or expense; and he had nothing to reproach himself with. If he did not go farther, it did not concern him; it was not his fault, it was not the doing of his conscience, but of Providence. He breathed freely and fully for the first time since Javert's visit. He felt as if the iron hand which had been squeezing his heart for twenty hours had relaxed its grasp; God now appeared to be on his side, and declared Himself openly. He said to himself that he had done all in his power, and at present need only return home quietly.
Had the conversation with the wheelwright taken place in an inn-room, it would probably have not been heard by any one,—matters would have remained in this state, and we should probably not have had to record any of the following events; but the conversation took place in the street. Any colloquy in the street inevitably produces a crowd, for there are always people who only ask to be spectators. While he was questioning the wheelwright, some passers-by stopped around, and a lad to whom no one paid any attention, after listening for some moments, ran off. At the instant when the traveller made up his mind to turn back, this boy returned, accompanied by an old woman.
"Sir," the woman said, "my boy tells me that you wish to hire a conveyance?"
This simple remark, made by an old woman led by a child, made the perspiration pour down his back. He fancied he saw the hand which had let him loose reappear in the shadow behind him, ready to clutch him again. He replied,—
"Yes, my good woman, I want to hire a gig."
And he hastily added, "But there is not one in the town."
"Yes there is," said the old woman.
"Where?" the wheelwright remarked.
"At my house," the old crone answered.
He gave a start, for the fatal hand had seized him again. The poor woman really had a sort of wicker-cart under a shed. The wheelwright and the ostler, sorry to see the traveller escape them, interfered:—
"It was a frightful rattle-trap, and had no springs,—it is a fact that the inside seats were hung with leathern straps—the rain got into it—the wheels were rusty, and ready to fall to pieces—it would not go much farther than the tilbury—the gentleman had better not get into it,"—and so on.
All this was true; but the rattle-trap, whatever it might be, rolled on two wheels, and could go to Arras. He paid what was asked, left the tilbury to be repaired against his return, had the horse put into the cart, got in, and went his way. At the moment when the cart moved ahead, he confessed to himself that an instant before he had felt a sort of joy at the thought that he could not continue his journey. He examined this joy with a sort of passion, and found it absurd. Why did he feel joy at turning back? After all, he was making this journey of his free will, and no one forced him to do so. And assuredly nothing could happen, except what he liked. As he was leaving Hesdin, he heard a voice shouting to him, "Stop, stop!" He stopped the cart with a hurried movement in which there was something feverish and convulsive that resembled joy. It was the old woman's boy.
"Sir," he said, "it was I who got you the cart."
"Well?"
"You have given me nothing."
He who gave to all, and so easily, considered this demand exorbitant, and almost odious.
"Oh, it's you, scamp," he said; "well, you will not have anything."
He flogged his horse, which started again at a smart trot. He had lost much time at Hesdin, and would have liked to recover it. The little horse was courageous, and worked for two; but it was February, it had been raining, and the roads were bad. The cart too ran much more heavily than the tilbury, and there were numerous ascents. He took nearly four hours in going from Hesdin to St. Pol: four hours for five leagues! At St. Pol he pulled up at the first inn he came to, and had the horse put in a stable. As he had promised Scaufflaire, he stood near the crib while it was eating, and had troubled and confused thoughts. The landlady entered the stable.
"Do you not wish to breakfast, sir?"
"It is true," said he, "I am very hungry."
He followed the woman, who had a healthy, ruddy face; she led him to a ground-floor room, in which were tables covered with oil-cloth.
"Make haste," he remarked, "for I am in a great hurry."
A plump Flemish servant-girl hastened to lay the cloth, and he looked at her with a feeling of comfort.
"That was the trouble," he thought; "I had not breakfasted."
He pounced upon the bread, bit a mouthful, and then slowly laid it back on the table, and did not touch it again. A wagoner was sitting at another table, and he said to him,—
"Why is their bread so bitter?"
The wagoner was a German, and did not understand him; he returned to his horse. An hour later he had left St. Pol, and was proceeding toward Tinques, which is only five leagues from Arras. What did he do during the drive? What was he thinking of? As in the morning, he looked at the trees, the roofs, the ploughed fields, and the diversities of a landscape which every turn in the road changes, as he passed them. To see a thousand different objects for the first and last time is most melancholy! Travelling is birth and death at every moment. Perhaps in the vaguest region of his mind he made a comparison between the changing horizon and human existence, for everything in this life is continually flying before us. Shadow and light are blended; after a dazzling comes an eclipse; every event is a turn in the road, and all at once you are old. You feel something like a shock, all is black, you distinguish an obscure door, and the gloomy horse of life which dragged you, stops, and you see a veiled, unknown form unharnessing it. Twilight was setting in at the moment when the school-boys, leaving school, saw this traveller enter Tinques. He did not halt there, but as he left the village, a road-mender, who was laying stones, raised his head, and said to him,—
"Your horse is very tired."
The poor brute, in fact, could not get beyond a walk.
"Are you going to Arras?" the road-mender continued.
"Yes."
"If you go at that pace, you will not reach it very soon."
He stopped his horse, and asked the road-mender—,
"How far is it from here to Arras?"
"Nearly seven long leagues."
"How so? The post-book says only five and a quarter leagues."
"Ah" the road-mender continued, "you do not know that the road is under repair; you will find it cut up about a mile farther on, and it is impossible to pass."
"Indeed!"
"You must take the road on the left, that runs to Carency, and cross the river; when you reach Camblin you will turn to the right, for it is the Mont St. Eloy road that runs to Arras."
"But I shall lose my way in the dark."
"You do not belong to these parts?"
"No."
"And it is a cross-road; stay, sir," the road-mender continued; "will you let me give you a piece of advice? Your horse is tired, so return to Tinques, where there is a good inn; sleep there, and go to Arras to-morrow."
"I must be there to-night."
"That is different. In that case go back to the inn all the same, and hire a second horse. The stable boy will act as your guide across the country."
He took the road-mender's advice, turned back, and half an hour after passed the same spot at a sharp trot with a strong second horse. A stable lad, who called himself a postilion, was sitting on the shafts of the cart. Still he felt that he had lost time, for it was now dark. They entered the cross-road, and it soon became frightful; the cart tumbled from one rut into another, but he said to the postilion,—
"Keep on at a trot, and I will give you a double fee."
In one of the jolts the whipple-tree broke.
"The whipple-tree is broken, sir," said the postilion, "and I do not know how to fasten my horse, and the road is very bad by night. If you will go back and sleep at Tinques, we can get to Arras at an early hour to-morrow."
He answered, "Have you a piece of rope and a knife?"
"Yes, sir."
He cut a branch and made a whipple-tree; it was a further loss of twenty minutes, but they started again at a gallop. The plain was dark, and a low, black fog was creeping over the hills. A heavy wind, which came from the sea, made in all the corners of the horizon a noise like that of furniture being moved. All that he could see had an attitude of terror, for how many things shudder beneath the mighty breath of night! The cold pierced him, for he had eaten nothing since the previous morning. He vaguely recalled his other night-excursion, on the great plain of D—— eight years before, and it seemed to him to be yesterday. A clock struck from a distant steeple, and he asked the lad,—
"What o'clock is that?"
"Seven, sir, and we shall be at Arras by eight, for we have only three leagues to go."
At this moment he made for the first time this reflection—and considered it strange that it had not occurred to him before—that all the trouble he was taking was perhaps thrown away; he did not even know the hour for the trial, and he might at least have asked about that; it was extravagant to go on thus, without knowing if it would be of any service. Then he made some mental calculations: usually the sittings of assize courts began at nine o'clock; this matter would not occupy much time, the theft of the apples would be easily proved, and then there would be merely the identification, four or five witnesses to hear, and little for counsel to say. He would arrive when it was all over.
The postilion flogged the horses; they had crossed the river and left Mont St Hoy behind them; the night was growing more and more dark.
Javert placed Jean Valjean in the town jail. The arrest of M. Madeleine produced an extraordinary commotion in M——, but it is sad to have to say that nearly everybody abandoned him on hearing that he was a galley-slave. In less than two hours all the good he had done was forgotten, and he was only a galley-slave. It is but fair to say, though, that they did not yet know the details of the affair at Arras. The whole day through, conversations like the following could be heard in all parts of the town:—
"Don't you know? he is a liberated convict.—Who is?—The Mayor.—Nonsense. M. Madeleine?—Yes.—Really?—His name is not Madeleine, but some hideous thing like Béjean, Bojean, Boujean.—Oh, my goodness—he has been arrested, and will remain in the town jail till he is removed.—Removed! where to?—He will be tried at the assizes for a highway robbery which he formerly committed.—Well, do you know, I always suspected that man, for he was too kind, too perfect, too devout. He refused the cross, and gave sous to all the little scamps he met. I always thought that there was some black story behind."
The "drawing-rooms" greatly improved the occasion. An old lady, who subscribed to the Drapeau Blanc, made this remark, whose depth it is almost impossible to fathom,—
"Well, I do not feel sorry at it, for it will be a lesson to the Buonapartists."
It is thus that the phantom which called itself M. Madeleine faded away at M——; only three or four persons in the whole town remained faithful to his memory, and his old servant was one of them. On the evening of the same day this worthy old woman was sitting in her lodge, still greatly startled and indulging in sad thoughts. The factory had been closed all day, the gates were bolted, and the street was deserted. There was no one in the house but the two nuns, who were watching by Fantine's body. Toward the hour when M. Madeleine was wont to come in, the worthy portress rose mechanically, took the key of M. Madeleine's bed-room from a drawer, and the candlestick which he used at night to go up-stairs; then she hung the key on the nail from which he usually took it, and placed the candlestick by its side, as if she expected him. Then she sat down again and began thinking. The poor old woman had done all this unconsciously. She did not break off her reverie for two or three hours, and then exclaimed: "Only think of that! I have hung his key on the nail!"
At this moment the window of the lodge was opened, a hand was passed through the opening, which seized the key and lit the candle by hers. The portress raised her eyes, and stood with gaping mouth, but she repressed the cry which was in her throat; for she recognized this hand, this arm, this coat-sleeve, as belonging to M. Madeleine. It was some minutes ere she could speak, for she "was struck," as she said afterwards when describing the adventure.
"Good gracious, M. le Maire!" she at length exclaimed, "I fancied—"
She stopped, for the end of the sentence would have been disrespectful to the first part. Jean Valjean was still Monsieur le Maire with her. He completed her thought.
"That I was in prison?" he said. "I was so, but I pulled out a bar, leaped out, and here I am. I am going up to my room; go and fetch Sister Simplice, who doubtless is by the side of that poor woman."
The old servant hastened to obey; he said nothing further to her, for he was quite sure that she would guard him better than he could himself. It was never known how he managed to get into the yard without having the gate opened. He always carried about him a master-key, which opened a little side door, but he must have been searched and this key taken from him. This point was not cleared up. He went up the stairs that led to his room, and on reaching the landing, left the candle on the top stair, closed his window and shutters, and then entered the room with the candle. This precaution was useful, for it will be remembered that his window could be noticed from the street. He took a glance around him, at his table, his chair, his bed, which had not been slept in for three nights. No trace of that night's disorder remained, for the portress "had done his room;" but she had picked out of the ashes and laid neatly on the table the two iron ends of the stick and the forty-sous piece, which was blackened by the fire. He took a sheet of paper, on which he wrote, "This is the two-franc piece stolen from Little Gervais to which I alluded in court," and he laid the coin on the paper, so that it should be the first thing seen on entering the room. He took from a drawer an old shirt which he tore up, and wrapped the two candlesticks in the rags. Still, he displayed no haste or agitation, and while wrapping up the candlesticks he ate a piece of black bread,—probably the prison bread which he took with him on his escape. This fact was proved by the crumbs found on the boards when the authorities made an investigation at a later date. There were two gentle taps at the door. "Come in," he said.
It was Sister Simplice; she was pale, her eyes were red, and the candle she held shook in her hand. Violent events of destiny have this peculiarity, that however perfect or cold we may be, they draw human nature out of our entrails and compel it to reappear on the surface. In the emotions of this day the nun had become a woman again; she had wept and was trembling. Jean Valjean had just finished writing some lines on a piece of paper, which he handed to the sister, with the remark, "Sister, you will deliver this to the Curé?"
As the paper was open, she turned her eyes on it. "You may read it," he said.
She read, "I request the Curé to take charge of all that I leave here. He will be good enough to defray out of it the costs of my trial and the interment of the woman who died this morning. The rest will be for the poor."
The sister attempted to speak, but could only produce a few inarticulate sounds: at length she managed to say,—
"Do you not wish to see the poor unhappy girl for the last time, sir?"
"No," he said; "I am pursued, and if I were to be arrested in her room it would disturb her."
He had scarce said this, ere a great noise broke out on the staircase: they heard a tumult of ascending steps, and the old servant cry in her loudest and most piercing voice,—
"My good sir, I can take my oath that no one has come in here all day or all the evening, and I have not left my lodge once."
A man answered,—
"But there is a light in that room."
They recognized Javert's voice. The room was so built that the door, on being thrown open, concealed a nook in the right-hand wall: Jean Valjean blew out the light and crept into the nook. Sister Simplice fell on her knees by the table, as the door opened and Javert entered. The voices of several men and the protestations of the old portress could be heard. The nun did not raise her eyes: she was praying. Her candle was on the chimney and gave but little light, and on noticing the nun, Javert halted in great confusion. It will be remembered that the very basis of Javert, his element, the air he breathed, was reverence for all authority: he was all of one piece, and allowed no objection or limitation. With him, of course, ecclesiastical authority was the highest of all: he was religious, superficial, and correct on this point as on all. In his eyes, a priest was a spirit that does not deceive, a nun a creature who does not sin. Theirs were souls walled up against the world with only one door, which never opened except to let truth pass out. On noticing the sister, his first movement was to withdraw, but he had another duty too, which imperiously urged him in an opposite direction. His second impulse was to remain, and at least venture one question. Sister Simplice had never told a falsehood in her life: Javert was aware of this, and especially revered her for it.
"Sister," he asked, "are you alone in the room?"
There was a terrible moment, during which the old servant felt as if she were going to faint: the sister raised her eyes and said, "Yes."
"In that case," Javert continued, "I beg your pardon for pressing you, but it is my duty,—you have not seen this evening a person, a man who has escaped and we are seeking,—that fellow of the name of Jean Valjean. Have you seen him?"
The sister answered "No."
She had told two falsehoods, one upon the other, without hesitation, rapidly, as if devoting herself.
"I beg your pardon," said Javert; and he withdrew with a deep bow.
Oh, holy woman! it is many years since you were on this earth; you have rejoined in the light your sisters the virgins and your brothers the angels; may this falsehood be placed to your credit in Paradise!
The sister's assertion was so decisive for Javert that he did not notice the singular fact of the candle just blown out, and which was still smoking on the table. An hour later a man, making his way through the fog, was hurrying away from M—— in the direction of Paris. This man was Jean Valjean; and it was proved, by the testimony of two or three carriers who met him, that he was carrying a bundle and was dressed in a blouse. Where did he procure this blouse from? It was never known; but a few days before, an old workman had died in the infirmary of the sailors, leaving only a blouse. It might have been that one.
One last word about Fantine. We have all one mother, the earth, and Fantine was given back to that mother. The Curé thought he was doing his duty, and perhaps did it, in keeping as much money for the poor as he possibly could out of what Jean Valjean left him. After all, who were the people interested? A convict and a street-walker: hence he simplified Fantine's interment, and reduced it to what is called the "public grave." Fantine was therefore interred in the free corner of the cemetery, which belongs to everybody and to nobody, and where the poor are lost. Fortunately God knows where to look for a soul. Fantine was laid in the darkness among a pile of promiscuous bones in the public grave. Her tomb resembled her bed.
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