Les Miserables (abridged) (Barnes & Noble Classics Series) (132 page)

Cosette was so intoxicated with her walk to “the garden,” and so happy over having “lived a whole day in her past,” that she did not speak of anything else the next day. It did not occur to her that she had not seen Jean Valjean.

“How did you go there?” Jean Valjean asked her.

“We walked.”

“And how did you return?”

“In a fiacre.”

For some time Jean Valjean had noticed the frugal life which the young couple led. He was annoyed at it. Marius’ economy was severe, and the word to Jean Valjean had its absolute sense. He ventured a question:

“Why have you no carriage of your own? A pretty brougham would cost you only five hundred francs a month. You are rich.”

“I don’t know,” answered Cosette.

“So with Toussaint,” continued Jean Valjean. “She has gone away. You have not replaced her. Why not?”

“Nicolette is enough.”

“But you must have a waiting maid.”

“Have not I Marius?”

“You ought to have a house of your own, servants of your own, a carriage, a box at the theatre. There is nothing too good for you. Why not have the advantages of being rich? Riches add to happiness.”

Cosette made no answer.

Jean Valjean’s visits did not grow shorter. Far from it. When the heart is slipping we do not stop on the descent.

When Jean Valjean desired to prolong his visit, and to make the hours pass unnoticed, he eulogised Marius; he thought him beautiful, noble, courageous, intellectual, eloquent, good. Cosette surpassed him. Jean Valjean began again. They were never silent. Marius, this word was inexhaustible; there were volumes in these six letters. In this way Jean Valjean succeeded in staying a long time. To see Cosette, to forget at her side, it was so sweet to him. It was the staunching of his wound. It happened several times that Basque came down twice to say: “Monsieur Gillenormand sends me to remind Madame the Baroness that dinner is served.”

On those days, Jean Valjean returned home very thoughtful.

Was there, then, some truth in that comparison of the chrysalis which had presented itself to Marius’ mind? Was Jean Valjean indeed a chrysalis who was obstinate, and who came to make visits to his butterfly?

One day he stayed longer than usual. The next day, he noticed that there was no fire in the fireplace. “What!” thought he. “No fire.” And he made the explanation to himself: “It is a matter of course. We are in April. The cold weather is over.”

“Goodness! how cold it is here!” exclaimed Cosette as she came in.

“Why no,” said Jean Valjean.

“So it is you who told Basque not to make a fire?”

“Yes. We are close upon May.”

“But we have fire until the month of June. In this cellar, it is needed the year round.”

“I thought that the fire was unnecessary.”

“That is just one of your ideas!” replied Cosette.

The next day there was a fire. But the two arm-chairs were placed at the other end of the room, near the door. “What does that mean?” thought Jean Valjean.

He went for the arm-chairs, and put them back in their usual place near the chimney.

This fire being kindled again encouraged him, however. He continued the conversation still longer than usual. As he was getting up to go away, Cosette said to him:

“My husband said a funny thing to me yesterday.”

“What was it?”

“He said: ‘Cosette, we have an income of thirty thousand francs. Twenty-seven that you have, three that my grandfather allows me.’ I answered: ‘That makes thirty.’ ‘Would you have the courage to live on three thousand?’ I answered: ‘Yes, on nothing. Provided it be with you.’ And then I asked: ‘Why do you say this?’ He answered: ‘To know.’ ”

Jean Valjean did not say a word. Cosette probably expected some explanation from him; he listened to her in a mournful silence. He went back to the Rue de l‘Homme Armé; he was so deeply absorbed that he mistook the door, and instead of entering his own house, he entered the next one. Not until he had gone up almost to the second story did he perceive his mistake, and go down again.

His mind was racked with conjectures. It was evident that Marius had doubts in regard to the origin of these six hundred thousand francs, that he feared some impure source, who knows? that he had perhaps discovered that this money came from him, Jean Valjean, that he hesitated before this suspicious fortune, and disliked to take it as his own, preferring to remain poor, himself and Cosette, than to be rich with a doubtful wealth.

Besides, vaguely, Jean Valjean began to feel that the door was shown him.

The next day, he received, on entering the basement room, something like a shock. The arm-chairs had disappeared. There was not even a chair of any kind.

“Ah now,” exclaimed Cosette as she came in, “no chairs! Where are the arm-chairs, then?”

“They are gone,” answered Jean Valjean.

“That is a pretty business!”

Jean Valjean stammered:

“I told Basque to take them away.”

“And what for?”

“I shall stay only a few minutes to-day.”

“Staying a little while is no reason for standing while you do stay.”

“I believe that Basque needed some arm-chairs for the parlour.”

“What for?”

“You doubtless have company this evening.”

“We have nobody.”

Jean Valjean could not say a word more.

Cosette shrugged her shoulders.

“To have the chairs carried away! The other day you had the fire put out. How singular you are!”

“Good-bye,” murmured Jean Valjean.

He did not say: “Good-bye, Cosette.” But he had not the strength to say: “Good-bye, madame.”

He went away overwhelmed.

This time he had understood.

The next day he did not come. Cosette did not notice it until night.

“Why,” said she, “Monsieur Jean has not come to-day.”

She felt something like a slight oppression of the heart, but she hardly perceived it, being immediately diverted by a kiss from Marius.

The next day he did not come.

Cosette paid no attention to it, passed the evening and slept as usual, and thought of it only on awaking. She was so happy! She sent Nicolette very quickly to Monsieur Jean’s to know if he were sick, and why he had not come the day before. Nicolette brought back Monsieur Jean’s answer. He was not sick. He was busy. He would come very soon. As soon as he could. However, he was going to make a little journey. Madame must remember that he was in the habit of making journeys from time to time. Let there be no anxiety. Let them not be troubled about him.

Nicolette, on entering Monsieur Jean’s house, had repeated to him the very words of her mistress. That madame sent to know “why Monsieur Jean had not come the day before.” “It is two days that I have not been there,” said Jean Valjean mildly.

But the remark escaped the notice of Nicolette, who reported nothing of it to Cosette.

DURING the last months of the spring and the first months of the summer of 1833, the scattered wayfarers in the Marais, the storekeepers, the idlers upon the doorsteps, noticed an old man neatly dressed in black, every day, about the same hour, at nightfall, come out of the Rue de l‘Homme Armé, in the direction of the Rue Sainte Croix de la Bretonnerie, pass by the Blancs Manteaux, to the Rue Culture Sainte Catherine, and, reaching the Rue de l’Echarpe, turn to the left, and enter the Rue Saint Louis.

There he walked with slow steps, his head bent forward, seeing nothing, hearing nothing, his eye immovably fixed upon one point, always the same, which seemed studded with stars to him, and which was nothing more nor less than the corner of the Rue des Filles du Calvaire. As he approached the corner of that street, his face lighted up; a kind of joy illuminated his eye like an interior halo, he had a fascinated and softened expression, his lips moved vaguely, as if he were speaking to some one whom he did not see, he smiled faintly, and he advanced as slowly as he could. You would have said that even while wishing to reach some destination, he dreaded the moment when he should be near it. When there were but a few houses left between him and that street which appeared to attract him, his pace became so slow, that at times you might have supposed he had ceased to move. The vacillation of his head and the fixedness of his eye reminded you of the needle seeking the pole. However long he succeeded in deferring it, he must arrive at last; he reached the Rue des Filles du Calvaire; then he stopped, he trembled, he put his head with a kind of gloomy timidity beyond the corner of the last house, and he looked into that street, and there was in that tragical look something which resembled the bewilderment of the impossible, and the reflection of a forbidden paradise. Then a tear, which had gradually gathered in the corner of his eye, grown large enough to fall, glided over his cheek, and sometimes stopped at his mouth. The old man tasted its bitterness. He remained thus a few minutes, as if he had been stone; then he returned by the same route and at the same pace; and, in proportion as he receded, that look was extinguished.

Little by little, this old man ceased to go as far as the corner of the Rue des Filles du Calvaire; he stopped half way down the Rue Saint Louis; sometimes a little further, sometimes a little nearer. One day, he stopped at the corner of the Rue Culture Sainte Catherine, and looked at the Rue des Filles du Calvaire from the distance. Then he silently moved his head from right to left as if he were refusing himself something, and retraced his steps.

Very soon he no longer came even as far as the Rue Saint Louis. He reached the Rue Pavée, shook his head, and went back; then he no longer went beyond the Rue des Trois Pavillons; then he no longer passed the Blancs Manteaux. You would have said a pendulum which has not been wound up, and the oscillations of which are growing shorter ere they stop.

Every day, he came out of his house at the same hour, he commenced the same walk, but he did not finish it, and, perhaps unconsciously, he continually shortened it. His whole countenance expressed this single idea; What is the use? The eye was dull; no more radiance. The tear also was gone; it no longer gathered at the corner of the lids; that thoughtful eye was dry. The old man’s head was still bent forward; his chin quivered at times; the wrinkles of his thin neck were painful to behold. Sometimes, when the weather was bad, he carried an umbrella under his arm, which he never opened. The good women of the neighbourhood said: “He is a natural.” The children followed him laughing.

IT is a fearsome thing to be happy! How pleased we are with it! How all-sufficient we think it! How, being in possession of the false aim of life, happiness, we forget the true aim, duty!

We must say, however, that it would be unjust to blame Marius.

Marius as we have explained, before his marriage, had put no questions to M. Fauchelevent, and, since, he had feared to put any to Jean Valjean. He had regretted the promise into which he had allowed himself to be led. He had reiterated to himself many times that he had done wrong in making that concession to despair. He did nothing more than gradually to banish Jean Valjean from his house, and to obliterate him as much as possible from Cosette’s mind. He had in some sort constantly placed himself between Cosette and Jean Valjean, sure that in that way she would not notice him, and would never think of him. It was more than obliteration, it was eclipse.

Marius did what he deemed necessary and just. He supposed he had, for discarding Jean Valjean, without harshness, but without weakness, serious reasons, which we have already seen, and still others which we shall see further on. Having chanced to meet, in a cause in which he was engaged, an old clerk of the house of Laffitte, he had obtained, without seeking it, some mysterious information which he could not, in truth, probe to the bottom, from respect for the secret which he had promised to keep, and from care for Jean Valjean’s perilous situation. He believed, at that very time, that he had a solemn duty to perform, the restitution of the six hundred thousand francs to somebody whom he was seeking as cautiously as possible. In the meantime, he abstained from using that money.

As for Cosette, she was in none of these secrets; but it would be hard to condemn her also.

There was an all-powerful magnetism flowing from Marius to her, which compelled her to do, instinctively and almost mechanically, what Marius wished. She felt, in regard to “Monsieur Jean,” a will from Marius; she conformed to it. Her husband had had nothing to say to her; she experienced the vague, but clear pressure of his unspoken wishes, and obeyed blindly. Her obedience in this consisted in not remembering what Marius forgot. She had to make no effort for that. Without knowing why herself, and without affording any grounds for censure, her soul had so thoroughly become her husband’s soul, that whatever was covered with shadow in Marius’ thought, was obscured in hers.

We must not go too far, however; in what concerns Jean Valjean, this forgetfulness and this obliteration were only superficial. She was rather thoughtless than forgetful. At heart, she really loved him whom she had so long called father. But she loved her husband still more. It was that which had somewhat swayed the balance of this heart, inclined in a single direction.

It sometimes happened that Cosette spoke of Jean Valjean, and wondered. Then Marius calmed her: “He is absent, I think. Didn’t he say that he was going away on a journey?” “That is true,” thought Cosette. “He was in the habit of disappearing in this way. But not for so long.” Two or three times she sent Nicolette to inquire in the Rue de l‘Homme Armé if Monsieur Jean had returned from his journey. Jean Valjean had the answer returned that he had not.