Les Miserables (abridged) (Barnes & Noble Classics Series) (125 page)

“Angel!” said Marius.

Angel is the only word in the language which cannot be worn out. No other word would resist the pitiless use which lovers make of it.

Then, as there were spectators, they stopped, and did not say another word, contenting themselves with touching each other’s hands very gently.

M. Gillenormand turned towards all those who were in the room and cried:

“Why don’t you talk loud, the rest of you? Make a noise, behind the scenes. Come, a little uproar, the devil! so that these children can chatter at their ease.”

And, approaching Marius and Cosette, he said to them very low:

“Say
tu.
Don’t let us bother you.”

Aunt Gillenormand witnessed with amazement this irruption of light into her aged interior. This amazement was not at all aggressive; it was not the least in the world the scandalised and envious look of an owl upon two ringdoves; it was the dull eye of a poor innocent girl of fifty-seven; it was incomplete life beholding that triumph, love.

“Mademoiselle Gillenormand the elder,” said her father to her, “I told you plainly that this would happen.”

He remained silent a moment and added:

“Behold the happiness of others.”

Then he turned towards Cosette:

“How pretty she is! how pretty she is! She is a Greuze.
^gx
You are going to have her all alone to yourself then, rascal! Ah! my rogue, you have a narrow escape from me, you are lucky, if I were not fifteen years too old, we would cross swords for who should have her.

“She is exquisite, this darling. She is a masterpiece, this Cosette. She is a very little girl and a very great lady. She will be only a baroness, that is stooping,she was born a marchioness. Hasn’t she lashes for you? My children, fix it well in your noddles that you are in the right of it. Love one another. Be foolish about it. Love is the foolishness of men, and the wisdom of God. Adore each other. Only,” added he, suddenly darkening, ”what a misfortune! This is what I am thinking of! More than half of what I have is in annuity; as long as I live, it’s all well enough, but after my death, twenty years from now, ah! my poor children, you will not have a sou. Your beautiful white hands, Madame the Baroness, will do the devil the honour to pull him by the tail.“
^gy

“Mademoiselle Euphrasie Fauchelevent has six hundred thousand francs.”

It was Jean Valjean’s voice.

He had not yet uttered a word, nobody seemed even to remember that he was there, and he stood erect and motionless behind all these happy people.

“How is Mademoiselle Euphrasie in question?” asked the grandfather, startled.

“That is me,” answered Cosette.

“Six hundred thousand francs!” resumed M. Gillenormand.

“Less fourteen or fifteen thousand francs, perhaps,” said Jean Valjean.

And he laid on the table the package which Aunt Gillenormand had taken for a book.

Jean Valjean opened the package himself; it was a bundle of banknotes. They ran through them, and they counted them. There were five hundred bills of a thousand francs, and a hundred and sixty-eight of five hundred. In all, five hundred and eighty-four thousand francs.

“That is a good book,” said M. Gillenormand.

“Five hundred and eighty-four thousand francs!” murmured the aunt.

“This arranges things very well, does it not, Mademoiselle Gillenormand the elder?” resumed the grandfather. “This devil of a Marius, he has found you a grisette millionaire on the tree of dreams! Then trust in the love-making of young folks nowadays! Students find studentesses with six hundred thousand francs. Chérubin works better than Rothschild.”

“Five hundred and eighty-four thousand francs!” repeated Mademoiselle Gillenormand in an undertone. “Five hundred and eighty-four! you might call it six hundred thousand, indeed!”

As for Marius and Cosette, they were looking at each other during this time; they paid little attention to this incident.

THE READER has doubtless understood, without it being necessary to explain at length, that Jean Valjean, after the Champmathieu affair, had been able, thanks to his first escape for a few days to come to Paris, and to withdraw the sum made by him, under the name of Monsieur Madeleine, at M—sur M——, from Laffitte’s in time; and that, in the fear of being recaptured, which happened to him, in fact, a short time after, he had concealed and buried that sum in the forest of Montfermeil, in the place called the Blaru grounds. The sum, six hundred and thirty thousand francs, all in bank-notes, was of small bulk, and was contained in a box; but to preserve the box from moisture he had placed it in an oaken chest, full of chestnut shavings. In the same chest, he had put his other treasure, the bishop’s candlesticks. It will be remembered that he carried away these candlesticks when he escaped from M——sur M—. The man perceived one evening, for the first time, by Boulatruelle, was Jean Valjean.—Afterwards, whenever Jean Valjean was in need of money, he went to the Blaru glade for it. Hence the absences of which we have spoken. He had a pickaxe somewhere in the bushes, in a hiding-place known only to himself. When he saw Marius convalescent, feeling that the hour was approaching when this money might be useful, he had gone after it; and it was he again whom Boulatruelle saw in the wood, but this time in the morning, and not at night. Boulatruelle inherited the pickaxe.

The real sum was five hundred and eighty-four thousand five hundred francs. Jean Valjean took out five hundred francs for himself. “We will see afterwards,” thought he.

The difference between this sum and the six hundred and thirty thousand francs withdrawn from Laffitte’s represented the expenses of ten years, from 1823 to 1833. The five years spent in the convent had cost only five thousand francs.

Jean Valjean put the two silver candlesticks upon the mantel, where they shone, to Toussaint’s great admiration.

Moreover, Jean Valjean knew that he was delivered from Javert. It had been mentioned in his presence, and he had verified the fact in the
Moniteur,
which published it, that an inspector of police, named Javert, had been found drowned under a washerwoman’s boat between the Pont au Change and Pont Neuf, and that a paper left by this man, otherwise irreproachable and highly esteemed by his chiefs, led to a belief that he had committed suicide during a fit of mental aberration. “In fact,” thought Jean Valjean, “since having me in his power, he let me go, he must already have been crazy.”

ALL the preparations were made for the marriage. The physician being consulted said that it might take place in February. This was in December. Some ravishing weeks of perfect happiness rolled away.

The least happy, was not the grandfather. He would remain for a quarter of an hour at a time gazing at Cosette.

“The wonderful pretty girl!” he exclaimed. “And her manners are so sweet and so good. It is of no use to say my love my heart, she is the most charming girl that I have ever seen in my life. Besides, she will have virtues for you sweet as violets. She is a grace, indeed! You can but live nobly with such a creature. Marius, my boy, you are a baron, you are rich, don’t pettifog, I beg of you.”

Cosette and Marius had passed abruptly from the grave to paradise. There had been but little caution in the transition, and they would have been stunned if they had not been dazzled.

“Do you understand anything about it?” said Marius to Cosette. “No,” answered Cosette, “but it seems to me that the good God is caring for us.”

Jean Valjean did all, smoothed all, conciliated all, made all easy. He hastened towards Cosette’s happiness with as much eagerness, and apparently as much joy, as Cosette herself.

As he had been a mayor, he knew how to solve a delicate problem, in the secret of which he was alone: Cosette’s civil state. To bluntly give her origin, who knows? that might prevent the marriage. He drew Cosette out of all difficulty. He arranged a family of dead people for her, a sure means of incurring no objection. Cosette was what remained of an extinct family; Cosette was not his daughter, but the daughter of another Fauchelevent. Two brothers Fauchelevent had been gardeners at the convent of the Petit Picpus. They went to this convent, the best recommendations and the most respectable testimonials abounded; the good nuns, little apt and little inclined to fathom questions of paternity, and understanding no malice, had never known very exactly of which of the two Fauchelevents little Cosette was the daughter. They said what was wanted of them, and said it with zeal. A notary’s act was drawn up. Cosette became before the law Mademoiselle Euphrasie Fauchelevent. She was declared an orphan. Jean Valjean arranged matters in such a way as to be designated, under the name of Fauchelevent, as Cosette’s guardian, with M. Gillenormand as overseeing guardian.

As for the five hundred and eighty-four thousand francs, that was a legacy left to Cosette by a dead person who desired to remain unknown. The original legacy had been five hundred and ninety-four thousand francs; but ten thousand francs had been expended for Mademoiselle Euphrasie’s education, of which five thousand francs were paid to the convent itself. This legacy, deposited in the hands of a third party, was to be given up to Cosette at her majority or at the time of her marriage. Altogether this was very acceptable, as we see, especially with a basis of more than half a million. There were indeed a few singularities here and there, but nobody saw them; one of those interested had his eyes bandaged by love, the other by the six hundred thousand francs.

Cosette learned that she was not the daughter of that old man whom she had so long called father. He was only a relative; another Fauchelevent was her real father. At any other time, this would have broken her heart. But at this ineffable hour, it was only a little shadow, a darkening, and she had so much joy that this cloud was of short duration. She had Marius. The young man came, the goodman faded away, such is life.

And then, Cosette had been accustomed for long years to see enigmas about her: everybody who has had a mysterious childhood is always ready for certain renunciations.

She continued, however, to say “Father” to Jean Valjean.

Cosette, in raptures, was enthusiastic about Grandfather Gillenormand. It is true that he loaded her with madrigals and with presents. While Jean Valjean was building a normal condition in society for Cosette, and a possession of an unimpeachable state, M. Gillenormand was watching over the wedding basket. Nothing amused him so much as being magnificent. He had given Cosette a dress of Binche guipure which had come down to him from his own grandmother. “These fashions have come round again,” said he, “old things are the rage, and the young women of my old age dress like the old women of my childhood.”

It was arranged that the couple should live with the grandfather. M. Gillenormand absolutely insisted upon giving them his room, the finest in the house.
“It will rejuvenate me,”
he declared.
“It is an old project.
I
always had the idea of having a wedding party in my room.”
^ha
He filled this room with a profusion of gay old furniture. He hung the walls and the ceiling with an extraordinary stuff which he had in a bolt, and which he believed to be from Utrecht, a satin background with golden immortelles, and velvet auriculas. “With this stuff,” said he, “the Duchess d‘Anville’s bed was draped at La Roche Guyon.” He put a little Saxony figure on the mantel, holding a muff over her naked belly.

M. Gillenormand’s library became the attorney’s office which Marius required; an office, it will be remembered, being rendered necessary by the rules of the order.

THE LOVERS saw each other every day. Cosette came with M. Fauchelevent. “It is reversing the order of things,” said Mademoiselle Gillenormand, “that the intended should come to the house to be courted like this.” But Marius’ convalescence had led to the habit; and the armchairs in the Rue des Filles du Calvaire, better for long talks than the straw chairs of the Rue de l‘Homme Armé, had rooted it. Marius and M. Fauchelevent saw one another, but did not speak to each other. That seemed to be understood. Every girl needs a chaperon. Cosette could not have come without M. Fauchelevent. To Marius, M. Fauchelevent was the condition of Cosette. He accepted it. In bringing upon the carpet, vaguely and generally, matters of policy, from the point of view of the general amelioration of the lot of all, they succeeded in saying a little more than yes and no to each other. Once, on the subject of education, which Marius wished gratuitous and obligatory, multiplied under all forms, lavished upon all like the air and the sunshine, in one word, respirable by the entire people, they fell into unison and almost into a conversation. Marius remarked on this occasion that M. Fauchelevent talked well, and even with a certain elevation of language. There was, however, something wanting. M. Fauchelevent had something less than a man of the world, and something more.

Marius, inwardly and in the depth of his thought, surrounded this M. Fauchelevent, who was to him simply benevolent and cold, with all sorts of silent questions. There came to him at intervals doubts about his own recollections. In his memory there was a hole, a black place, an abyss scooped out by four months of agony. Many things were lost in it. He was led to ask himself if it were really true that he had seen M. Fauchelevent, such a man, so serious and so calm, in the barricade.

And himself, was he really the same man? He, the poor, he was rich; he, the abandoned, he had a family: he, the despairing, he was marrying Cosette. It seemed to him that he had passed through a tomb, and that he had gone in black, and that he had come out white. And in this tomb, the others had remained. At certain moments, all these beings of the past, returned and present, formed a circle about him and rendered him gloomy; then he thought of Cosette, and again became serene; but it required nothing less than this felicity to efface this catastrophe.