Les Miserables by Victor Hugo.

Digne was a little town set in Northern Provence, a picturesque region of Southeast France. It was bordered partly by mountains which were often infested with bandits.

In 1806 Monsieur Charles Myriel was appointed to be the new bishop of Digne. 
When Bishop Myriel arrived in town he was accompanied by his younger sister, Mademoiselle Baptistine, and their maid, Madame Malgoire. 

Their new home, The Bishop’s Palace, was built of stone, spacious and beautiful. It was nicely complemented by a garden planted with magnificent trees. 

The palace was located next to a hospital. The hospital  was a long, narrow one story building with a small garden. 

Three days after his arrival in Digne the bishop paid a visit to the hospital. Before his neighborly call was over, he invited the hospital director to drop by his palace for a visit. 

“ Monsieur, ” he said to the director, “ How many patients do you have? ” 
“ Twenty-six, monseigneur. ” 
The bishop ran his eyes over the hall, seemingly taking measure and making calculations. 
“ It will hold twenty beds, ” he said to himself, then raising his voice, he said: 
​
“ Listen, Monsieur Director, to what I have to say. There is evidently a mistake here. There are twenty-six of you in five or six small rooms; there are only three of us, and space for sixty. There is a mistake, I tell you. You have my house and I have yours. 
Restore mine to me; you are at home.” 
The next day twenty-six poor invalids were installed in the bishop’s palace and the bishop was in the hospital. 
In a short time donations of money began to come in. Those who had and those who had not knocked at the bishop’s door ; some came to receive alms and others to bestow them. In less than a year he had become the treasurer of all the benevolent and the dispenser to all needy. Large sums of  money passed through his hands. Nevertheless, he changed in no way his style of life, nor added the least luxury to his simple fare. The poor people of the district always called him Monsieur Bienvenu. 

By 1815 he had reached his 76th year, but he did not appear to be more than sixty. He was not tall. He frequently took long walks and he had a firm step. He was good humoured and everyone felt at ease in his presence. From his whole person joy seemed to radiate. His ruddy and fresh complexion and his white teeth, all of which were well preserved and which he showed when he laughed gave him an open and easy air. People regarded him as warm and gentle. He was a thoughtful person and respected by all who knew him.  

Prayer, alms, consoling the afflicted, gardening, study and work filled up each day of his life. The bishop’s day was full to the brim with good thoughts, good words and good actions. 
Each fine evening he spent an hour or two in his garden meditating in the presence of the great spectacle of the starry firmament. Sitting there alone he compared the serenity of his heart with the serenity of the skies, moved in the darkness by the visible splendors of the constellations, and the invisible splendor of God, opening his soul to the thoughts which fall from the unknown. 
    What more was needed by this old man who divided the leisure hours of his life, where he had so little leisure, between gardening in the daytime, and contemplation at night? A little garden to walk, and immensity to reflect upon. A few flowers on the earth, and all the stars in the sky.

THE FALL 

An hour before sunset, on an evening of a day in the beginning of October, 1815, a man travelling afoot entered the little town of DIGNE. The few persons who at the time were at their windows or their doors, regarded this traveler with a sort of distrust. It would have been hard to find a passer-by more wretched in appearance. He was a man of middle height, stout and hardy,  in the strength of maturity; he may have been forty-six or seven. A slouched leather cap half hid his face, bronzed by the sun and wind, and dripping with sweat. His shaggy breast was seen through the coarse yellow shirt which at the neck was fastened by a small silver anchor; he wore a cravat twisted like a rope, coarse blue trousers, worn and shabby, white on one knee, and with holes in the other, and an old ragged gray blouse, patched on one side with a piece of green cloth sewed with twine; upon his back was a well-filled knapsack, strongly buckled and quite new. In his hand he carried an enormous knotted stick; his stockingless feet were in hobnailed shoes; his hair was cropped and his beard long. 

The sweat, the heat, his long walk, and the dust, added an indescribable meanness to his tattered appearance. 
His hair was shorn, but bristly, for it had begun to grow a little, and seemingly had not been cut for sometime. 
When he reached the corner of the rue Poichevert he turned to the left and went towards the mayor’s office. He went in, and a quarter of an hour afterward he came out. 
There was then in Digne a good inn called La Croix de Colbas. 
The traveler turned his steps towards this inn, which was the best in the place, and went at once to the kitchen. All the ranges were fuming, and a great fire was burning briskly in the chimney place. Mine host, who was at the same time head cook, was going from the fireplace to the saucepans, very busy superintending an excellent dinner for some wagoners who were laughing and talking noisily in the next room. 
A fat marmot, flanked by white partridges and goose, was turning on a long spit before the fire; upon the ranges were cooking two large carps from Lake Laucet, and a trout from Lake Alloz. 
The host, hearing the door open, and a newcomer enter, said, without raising his eyes from his ranges: 
“ What will monsieur have? ” 
“ Something to eat and lodging ” 
“ Nothing more easy, ” said mine host, but on turning his head and taking an observation of the traveler, he added: “ For pay. ” 
The man drew from his pocket a large leather purse, and answered: 
“ I have money. ” 
“ Then, ” said mine host, “ I am at your service ” 
The man put his purse back into his pocket, took off his knapsack and put it down hard by the door, and holding his stick in his hand, sat down on a low stool by the fire. 
However, as the host passed backward and forward, he kept a careful eye on the traveler. 
“ Is dinner almost ready? ” said the man. 
“ Directly, ” said mine host.
While the newcomer was warming himself with his back turned, the worthy innkeeper, 
Jacquin Labarre, took a pencil from his pocket, and then tore off the corner of an old paper which he pulled from a little table near the window. On the margin he wrote a line or two. Folded it, and handed the scrap of paper to a child. The innkeeper whispered a word to the boy and he ran off in the direction of the mayor’s office.  
The traveler saw nothing of this 
He asked a second time: “ Is dinner ready? ” 
“ Yes, in a few moments, ” said the host. 
The boy came back with the paper. The host unfolded it hurriedly, as one who is expecting an answer. He seemed to read with attention, then throwing his head on one side, thought for a moment. Then he took a step towards the traveler, who seemed drowned in troublous thought. 
“ Monsieur, ” said he, “ I cannot receive you. I have no room.”
“ Well,” responded the man, “ a corner in the garret, a bed of straw. We will see about that after dinner. ” 
“ I cannot give you any dinner. ”
This declaration, made in a measured but firm tone, appeared serious to the traveler. 
He got up.
“ Ah, bah! But I am dying with hunger. ” 
“ I have nothing, ” said the host. 
The man burst into a laugh, and turned toward the fireplace and the ranges. 
“ Nothing! And all that? ”
“ All that is engaged. ” 
The man sat down again and said, without raising his voice: 
“ I am at an inn. I am hungry, and I shall stay. ” 
The host bent down his ear, and said in a voice that made him tremble: 

“ Go away! ”
At these words the traveler, who was bent over, poking some embers in the fire with the ironshod end of his stick, turned suddenly around, and opened his mouth as if to reply, when the host, looking steadily at him, added in the same lone tone: “ Stop, no more of that. It is my custom to be polite to all. Go! ”
The man bowed his head, picked up his knapsack, and went out.
He took the principal street; he walked at random, slinking near the houses like a sad and humiliated man; he did not once turn around. If he had turned, he would have seen the innkeeper of the Croix de Colbas, standing in his doorway with all his guests, and the passers-by gathered about him, speaking excitedly, and pointing him out, and from the looks of fear and distrust which were exchanged, he would have guessed that before long his arrival would be the talk of the whole town. 
He walked along in this way some time, going by chance down streets unknown to him, and forgetting fatigue, as is the case in sorrow. 
Suddenly he felt a pang of hunger; night was at hand.
He walked along in this way some time, going by chance down the streets unknown to him, and forgetting the fatigue, as is the case of sorrow.Suddenly he felt a pang of hunger; night was at hand.
Some children who had followed him from the Croix de Colbas threw sticks at him. He turned angrily and threatened them with his stick, and they scattered like a flock of birds. 
He passed the prison; an iron chain hung from the door attached to a bell. He rang.  
The grating opened.
“ Monsieur Turnkey, ” said he, talking off his cap respectfully, 
“ Will you open and let me stay here tonight ? ” 
A voice answered: 
“ A prison is not a tavern; get yourself arrested and we will open. ”
The grating closed.
Night came on apace; the cold Alpine winds were blowing.
He began to tramp again, taking his way out of town, hoping to find some tree or haystack beneath which he could shelter himself. He walked on for some time, his head bowed down. When he thought he was far away from all human habitation, he raised his eyes, and looked about him inguiringly. He was in a field; before him was a low hillock covered with stubble. 
The sky was very dark; it was not simply the darkness of night, but there were very low clouds, which seemed to rest upon the hills, and covered the whole heavens. 
There was nothing in the field nor upon the hill but one ugly tree, a few steps from the traveler, which seemed to be twisting and contorting itself. 
He retraced his steps; the gates of Digne were closed. He passed through a breach and entered the town. 
It was about eight o’clock in the evening. As he did not know the streets, he walked at hazard. 
On passing by the cathedral square, he shook his fist at the church. 
At the corner of this square stands a printing office. Exhausted with fatigue, and hoping for nothing better, he lay down on a stone bench in front of this printing office.  
Just then an old woman came out of the church. She saw the man lying there in the dark and said: 
“ What are you doing there my friend ? ” 
He replied harshly, and with anger in his tone:
“ You see my good woman, I am going to sleep. “
The good woman, who really merited the name, was Madame la Marquise de R___ .
“ Upon the bench ? ” said she. “ You cannot pass the night so. You must be cold and hungry. They should give you lodging for charity. ”
“ I have knocked at every door. ”
“ Well, what then ? ” 
“ Everybody has driven me away. ” 
The good woman touched the man’s arm and pointed out to him, on the other side of the square, a little low house beside the bishop’s palace. 
“ You have knocked at every door ? ” she asked. 
“ Yes. “
“ Have you knocked at that one there ? ”
“ No.”
“ Knock there. ” 

That evening after his walk in the town, the Bishop of Digne remained quite late in his room. 
He was busy with his great work on Duty, which unfortunately is left incomplete. 
At eight o’clock he was still at work, when Madame Malgoire, as usual, came in to take the silver from the panel near the bed. A moment after, the bishop, knowing that the table was laid, and that his sister was perhaps waiting, closed his book and went into the living room.

Madame Malgoire had just finished placing the plates. 
While she was arranging the table, she was talking with Mademoiselle Baptistine. 
The lamp was on the table, which was near the fireplace, where a good fire was burning. 
One can readily fancy these two women, both past their sixtieth year: Madame Magloire, small, fat, and quick in her movements; Mademoiselle Baptistine, sweet, thin, fragile, a little taller than her brother. Madame Malgoire had the air of a peasant, and Mademoiselle Baptistine that of a lady.
Just as the bishop entered, Madame Malgoire was speaking with some warmth. She was talking to mademoiselle upon a familiar subject, and one to which the bishop was quite accustomed. It was a discussion on the means of fastening the front door. 
It seems that while Madame Malgoire was out making provision for supper, she had heard the news in sundry places. There was talk that an ill-favored runaway, a suspicious vagabond, had arrived and was lurking somewhere in the town, and that some unpleasant adventures might befall those who should come home late at night. Then Mademoiselle Baptistine ventured to say timidly:
“ Brother, do you hear what Madame Malgoire says ? ”
“ I heard something of it indistinctly, ” said the bishop. Then turning his chair half around, putting his hands on his knees, and raising toward the old servant his cordial and good-humoured face, which the firelight shone upon, he said: “ Well, well ! What is the matter ? Are we in any great danger ? ” 
Then Madame Malgoire began her story again, unconsciously exaggerating it a little. 
It appeared that a barefooted gypsy man, a sort of a dangerous beggar, was in the town. He had gone for lodging to Jacquin Labarre, who had refused to receive him; he had been seen to enter the town by the Boulevard Gassendi, and to roam through the street at dusk. 
A man with a knapsack and a rope, and a terrible-looking face. 
“ Indeed ! ” said the bishop.
She continued: “ Yes, monseigneur; it is true. There will something happen tonight in the town; everyone says so. And I say, monseigneur, and mademoiselle says also - ” 
“ Me ? ” interrupted the sister. “ I say nothing. ”
Madame Malgoire went on as if she had not heard this protestation: 
“ We say that this house is not safe at all, and if monseigneur will permit me, I will go and tell Paulin Musebois, the locksmith, to come and put the old bolts in the door again; they are there, and it will take but a minute. I say we must have bolts, were it only for tonight, for I say that a door which opens by a latch on the outside to  the first comer, nothing could be more horrible , and then monseigneur has the habit of always saying ‘Come in, ’even at midnight. But, my goodness ! There is no need even to ask leave- ”
At this moment there was a violent knock on the door. 
“ Come in ! “ said the bishop. 
The door opened. 
It opened quickly, quite wide, as if pushed by someone boldly and with energy. 
A man entered. 
That man, who we know already; it was the traveler we have seen wandering about in search of a lodging. 
He came in, took one step, and paused, leaving the door open behind him. He had his knapsack on his back, his stick in his hand, and a rough, hard, tired, and fierce look in his eyes, as seen by the firelight. He was hideous. It was an apparition of ill omen. 
Madame Malgoire had not even the strength to scream. She stood trembling with her mouth open. 
Mademoiselle Baptistine turned, saw the man enter, and started up half alarmed; then, slowly turning back again toward the fire, she looked at her brother, and her face resumed its usual calmness and serenity. 
The bishop looked upon the man with a tranquil eye. 
As he was opening his mouth to speak, doubtless to ask the stranger what he wanted, the man, leaning with both hands on his club, glanced from one to another in turn, and without waiting for the bishop to speak, said in a loud voice;

“ See here! My name is Jean Valjean, I am a convict; I have been nineteen years in the galleys. Four days ago I was set free, and started for Pontarlier, which is my destination; during those four days I have walked from Toulon.  Today I have walked twelve leagues. 
When I reached this place this evening I went to an inn, and they sent me away on account of my yellow passport, which I had shown at the mayor’s office, as was necessary.  I went to the prison, and the turnkey would not let me in. I went into the fields to sleep beneath the stars: there were no stars; I thought it would rain, and there was not good God to stop the drops, so  I came back to the town to get the shelter of some good doorway. There in the square I lay down upon a stone; a good woman showed me your house, and said: “ Knock there! “ I have knocked. What is this place? Are you an inn? I have money; my savings, one hundred and nine francs and fifteen sous which I have earned in the galleys by my work for nineteen years.  I will pay. What do I care? I have money. I am tired-twelve leagues on foot, and I am so hungry. Can I stay? ”   

“ Madame Malgoire, “ said the bishop, ” put on another plate.”
The man took three steps, and came near the lamp which stood on the table. “Stop,” he exclaimed, as if he had not been understood, “not that, did you understand me? I am a galley slave-a convict-I am just from the galleys. There is my passport, yellow as you see. 
That is enough to have me kicked out wherever I go. There you have it! Everybody has thrust me out; will you receive me? Is this an inn? Can you give me something to eat, and a place to sleep? Have you a stable?” 
“Madame Malgoire, ” said the bishop, “put some sheets on the bed in the alcove. ”
Madame Malgoire went out to fulfill her orders. 
The bishop turned to the man. 
“Monsieur, sit down and warm yourself; we are going to have supper presently, and your bed will be made ready while you sup. ”
At last the man quite understood; his face, the expression of which till then had been gloomy and hard, now expressed stupefaction, doubt, and joy, and became absolutely wonderful. 
He began to stutter like a madman.
“True? What! You will keep me? You won’t drive me away? A convict! You call me monsieur and don’t say “Get out, dog! “ as everybody else does. You are really willing that I should stay? 
You are good people! Besides I have money; I will pay well. I beg your pardon, Monsieur Innkeeper, what is your name? I will pay all you say.  You are a fine man. You are an innkeeper, an’t you? ” 

“ I am a priest who lives here, ” said the bishop.
“ A priest, ” said the man. “ Oh, noble priest! Then you do not ask any money? You are the cure’, an’t you? The cure’ of this big church? Yes, that’s it. How stupid I am; I didn’t notice your cap.”
While speaking, he had deposited his knapsack and stick in the corner, replaced his passport in his pocket, and sat down. Mademoiselle Baptistine looked at him pleasantly. 
He continued: 
“ You are humane, Monsieur Cure’; you don’t despise me. A good priest is a good thing. 
Then you don’t want me to pay you? ”
“ No,” said the bishop, “keep your money.”
The bishop shut the door. 

Madame Malgoire brought in a plate and set it on the table. 
“ Madame Malgoire,” said the bishop, “ put this plate as near the fire as you can.” Then turning towards his guest, he added: 
“ The night wind is raw in the Alps; you must be cold, monsieur.”
Every time he said this word monsieur, with his gently solemn, and heartily hospitable voice, the man’s countenance lighted up. “ Monsieur ” to a convict is a glass of water to a man dying of thirst at sea. 
“ The lamp,” said the bishop, “ gives a very poor light.”
Madame Malgoire understood him, and going to his bed-chamber, took from the mantel the two candlesticks, lighted the candles, and placed them on the table. 
“Monsieur Cure’,” said the man, “ you are good; you don’t despise me. You take me into your house; you light your candles for me, and I haven’t hid from you where I come from, and how miserable I am.”
The bishop, who was sitting near him, touched his hand gently and said: “ You need not tell me who you are. This is not my house; it is the house of Christ. It does not ask any comer whether he has a name, but whether he has an affliction. You are suffering; you are hungry and thirsty; be welcome. And do not thank me;do not tell me that I take you into my house. This is the home of no man, except him who needs an asylum. I tell you, you are a traveler, that you are more at home here than I; whatever is here is yours. 
What need have I to know your name? Besides, before you told me, I knew it.”
The man opened his eyes in astonishment. 
“ Really? You knew my name? ”
“ Yes,” answered the bishop, “ Your name is My Brother.”
“ Stop, stop, Monsieur Cure’, “ exclaimed the man. ” I was famished when I came in, but you are so kind that now I don’t know what I am; that is all gone.”
The bishop looked at him again and said: 
“ You have seen much suffering? ”
“ Oh, the red blouse, the ball and chain, the plank to sleep on, the heat, the cold, the galley’s crew, the lash, the double chain for nothing, the dungeon for a word-even when sick in bed, the chain. The dogs, the dogs are happier! Nineteen years! And I am forty-six, and now a yellow passport. That is all.”

“Yes,” answered the bishop, “ you have left a place of suffering. But listen, there will be more joy in heaven over the tears of a repentant sinner than over the white robes of a hundred good men. If you are leaving that sorrowful place with hate and anger against men, you are worthy of compassion; if you leave it with good will, gentleness and peace, you are better than any of us.”
Meantime Madame Magloire had served up supper; it consisted of soup made of water, oil, bread, and salt, a little pork, a scrap of mutton, a few figs, a green cheese, and a large loaf of rye bread. She had, without asking, added to the usual dinner of the bishop a bottle of fine old Mauves Wine. 
The bishop’s countenance was lighted up with this expression of pleasure, peculiar to hospital natures. 
“ To supper! ” he said briskly, as was his habit when he had a guest. He seated the man at his right. Mademoiselle Baptistine, perfectly quiet and natural, took her place at his left. 
The bishop said the blessing, and then served the soup himself, according to the usual custom. The man fell to, eating greedily. 
Suddenly the bishop said: “ It seems to me something is lacking on the table. ”
The fact was that Madame Malgoire had set out only the three plates that were necessary. 
Now it was the custom of the house, when the bishop had anyone to supper, to set all six of the silver plates on the table, an innocent display. This graceful appearance of luxury was a sort of childlikeness which was full of charm in this gentle but austere household, which elevated poverty to dignity. 
Madame Malgoire understood the remark; without a word she went out, and a moment afterward the three plates for which the bishop had asked were shining on the cloth, symmetrically arranged before each of the three guests. 

CONCLUSION OF UNITS I-III

IV

After having said good-night to his sister, Monseigneur Bienvenue took one of the silver candlesticks from the table, handed the other to his guest, and said to him: 
“ Monsieur, I will show you to your room.”

The man followed him. 
The house was so arranged that one could reach the alcove in the oratory only by passing through the bishop’s sleeping chamber. Just as they were passing through this room Madame Magloire was putting up the silver in the cupboard at the head of the bed. 
It was the last thing she did every night before going to bed. 
The bishop left his guest in the alcove, before a clean white bed. The man set down the candlestick upon a small table.  
“ Come, “said the bishop, “ a good night’s rest to you; tomorrow morning, before you go, you shall have a cup of warm milk from our cows. ”
“ Thank-you, Monsieur L’Abbe’,” said the man. 
Scarcely had he pronounced these words of peace, when suddenly he made a singular motion which would have chilled the two good women of the house with horror, had they witnessed it. He turned abruptly toward the old man, crossed his arms, and casting a wild look upon his host, exclaimed in a harsh voice;
“ Ah, now, indeed! You lodge me in your house, as near you as that! ”
He checked himself, and added, with a laugh, in which there was something horrible: 
“ Have you reflected upon it? Who tells you that I am not a murderer? ”
The bishop responded: 
“ God will take care of that.” 
Then with gravity, moving his lips like one praying or talking to himself, he raised two fingers of his right hand and blessed the man, who, however, did not bow, and without turning his head or looking behind him, went into his chamber. 
A few moments afterwards all in the little house slept. 
Toward the middle of the night, Jean Valjean awoke. 
Jean Valjean was born of a poor peasant family of Brie. In his childhood he had not been taught to read; when he was grown up, he chose the occupation of a pruner at Faverolles. 

Jean Valjean was of a thoughtful disposition. He had lost his parents when very young. 
His mother died of malpractice in a milk fever; his father, a pruner before him, was killed by a fall from a tree. Jean Valjean now had one relative left, his sister, a widow with seven children, girls and boys. This sister had brought up Jean Valjean, and, as long as her husband lived, she had taken care of her younger brother. Her husband died, leaving the eldest of these children eight, the youngest one year old. Jean Valjean had just reached his twenty-fifth year; he took the father’s place, and, in his turn, supported the sister who reared him. This he did naturally, as a duty. His youth was spent in rough and ill-recompensed labor: he never was known to have a sweetheart; he had not time to be in love. 
At night he came in weary and ate his soup without saying a word. While he was eating, his sister, Mere Jeanne, frequently took from his bowl the best of his meal: a bit of meat, a slice of pork, the heart of the cabbage, to give to one of her children. He went on eating, his head bent down nearly into the soup, his long hair falling over his dish, hiding his eyes; he did not seem to notice anything that was done. 

He earned in the pruning season eighteen sous a day; after that he hired out as a reaper, workman, teamster or laborer. 
He did whatever he could find to do. His sister worked also, but what could she do with seven little children? It was a sad group, which misery was grasping and closing upon, little by little.  There was a very severe winter; Jean had no work; the family had no bread; literally, no bread, and seven children. 
One Sunday night, Maubert Isabeau, the baker on the Place de l’Eglise, in Faverolles, was just going to bed when he heard a violent blow against the barred window of his shop. He got down in time to see an arm thrust through the aperture made by the blow of a fist on the glass. The arm seized a loaf of bread and took it out. Isabeau rushed out; the thief used his legs valiantly; Isabeau pursued him and caught him.The thief had thrown away the bread, but his arm was still bleeding. It was Jean Valjean. 
All that happened in 1795. Jean Valjean was brought before the tribunals of the time for              “ burglary at night, in an inhabited house.” He was found guilty. Valjean was sentenced to five years in the galleys. 
He was taken to Toulon, at which place he arrived after a journey of twenty-seven days,on a cart, the chain still about his neck. At Toulon he was dressed in a red blouse, all his past life was effaced, even to his name. He was no longer Jean Valjean; he was Number 24,601. What became of his sister? What became of the seven children? 
Who troubled himself about that? What becomes of the handfuls of leaves of the young tree when it is sawn at the trunk?
Near the end of the fourth year, his chance of liberty came for Jean Valjean. His comrades helped him as they always do in that dreary place, and he escaped. He wandered two days through the fields. During the evening of the second day, he was retaken; he had neither eaten nor slept for thirty-six hours. The maritime tribunal extended his sentence three years for this attempt, which made eight. In the sixth year his turn of escape came again; he tried it, but failed again. He did not answer at roll call, and the alarm cannon was fired. At night the people in the vicinity discovered him hidden beneath the keel of a vessel on the stocks; he resisted the galley guard which seized him. Escape and resistence. This the provisions of the special code punished him by an addition of five years, two with the double chain. Thirteen years. The tenth year his turn came around again; He made another attempt with no better success. Three years for this new attempt. Sixteen years. And finally, I think it was in the thirteenth year, he made yet another, and was retaken after an absence of only four hours. Nineteen years. In October, 1815, he was set at large; he had entered in 1796 for having broken a pane of glass, and taken a loaf of bread. 
Jean Valjean entered the galleys sobbing and shuddering: he went out hardened; he entered in despair; he went out sullen. 
What had been the life of this soul? 

VI. 

Let us endeavor to tell. 
He was, as we have said, ignorant, but he was not an imbecile.
Never, since his infancy, since his mother, since his sister, never had he been greeted with a friendly word or a kind regard. Through suffering on suffering he came little by little to the conviction that life was a war, and that in that war he was the vanquished. He had no weapon but his hate. He resolved to sharpen it in the galleys and to take it with him when he went out. 
There was at Toulon a school for the prisoners conducted by some not very skillful friars, the most essential branches were taught to such of these poor men who were willing. He was one of the willing ones. He went to school at forty and learned to read, write, and cipher. 
Jean Valjean was not, we have seen, of an evil nature. His heart was still right when he arrived at the galleys. While there he condemned society, and felt that he had become wicked; he condemned Providence, and felt that he became impious. 
We must not omit one circumstance, which is, that in physical strength he far surpassed all the other inmates of the prison. At hard work, at twisting a cable, or turning a windlass, Jean Valjean was equal to four men.  At one time, while the balcony of the City Hall of Toulon was undergoing repairs, one of Puget’s admirable caryatids ( figures of women in long robes, serving as supportive columns ) slipped from its place, and was about to fall, when Jean Valjean, who happened to be there, held it up on his shoulders until the workmen came. 
His suppleness surpassed his strength and skill combined-the science of the muscles. A mysterious system of statics is practiced throughout daily by prisoners, who are eternally envying the birds and flies. To scale a wall, and to find a foothold where you could hardly see a projection was play for Jean Valjean. Given an angle in a wall, with the tension of his back and knees, with elbow and hands braced against the rough face of the stone, he would ascend, as if by magic, to a third story. Sometimes he climbed up in this manner to the roof of the galleys. 
He talked but little, and never laughed. Some extreme emotion was required to draw from him, once or twice a year, that lugubrious ( mournful ) sound of the convict, which is like the echo of a demon’s laugh. To those who saw him, he seemed to be absorbed in continually looking upon something terrible. 
He was absorbed, in fact. 
Sometimes in the midst of his work in the galleys he would stop, and begin to think. His reason, more nature, and, at the same, perturbed more than formerly, would revolt. 
All that had happened to him would appear absurd; all that surrounded him. He would say to himself: 
“ It is all a dream. ” He would look at the jailer standing a few steps from him; the jailer would seem to be a phantom; All at once this phantom would give him a blow with a stick. 
For him the eternal world had scarcely an existence. It would be almost true to say that for Jean Valjean there was no sun, no beautiful summer days, no  radiant sky, no fresh April dawn. Some dim window light was all that shone in his soul. The beginning as well as the end of all his thoughts was hatred of human law, that hatred which, if it be not checked in its growth by some providential event, becomes, in a certain time, hatred of society, then hatred of the human race, and then hatred of creation, and reveals itself by  a vague and incessant desire to injure some living being , it matters not who. So the passport was right which described Jean Valjean as “ a very dangerous man. ” From year to year his soul was withered more and more slowly, but fatally. With his withered heart, he had a dry eye. When he left the galleys, he had not shed a tear for nineteen years. 
 
VII.

As the cathedral clock struck two, Jean Valjean awoke. He had slept something more than four hours. His fatigue had passed away.  He was not accustomed to give many hours to repose.   
He opened his eyes, and looked for a moment into the obscurity about him; then he closed them to go to sleep again. 
When many diverse sensations have disturbed the day, when the mind is preoccupied, we can fall asleep once, but not a second time. Sleep comes at first much more readily than it comes again. Such was the case with Jean Valjean. He could not get to sleep again, and so he began to think. 
He was in one of those moods in which the ideas we have in our minds are perturbed. 
Many thoughts came to him, but there was one which continually presented itself, and which drove away all others. What that thought was, we shall tell directly.  He had noticed the six silver plates and the large ladle that Madame Malgoire had put on the table. 
Those six silver plates took possession of him. There they were, within a few steps. 

At the very moment that he passed through the middle room to reach the one he was now in, the old servant was placing them in a little cupboard at the head of the bed. He had marked that cupboard well on the right, coming from the dining room. They were solid, and old silver. With the big ladle, they would bring at least two hundred francs. 
His mind wavered a whole hour, and a long one, in fluctuation and in struggle. The clock struck three. He opened his eyes, rose up hastily in bed, reached out his arm and felt his haversack, which he had put into the corner of the alcove; then he thrust out his legs and placed his feet on the ground, and found himself, he knew not how, seated on his bed. 
He continued in this situation, and would perhaps have remained there until daybreak, if the clock had not struck the quarter of the half hour. The clock seemed to say to him: “ Come along! ” 
He rose to his feet, hesitated for a moment longer, and listened; all was still in the house; he walked straight and cautiously toward the window, which he could discern. 
The night was not very dark; there was a full moon, across which large clouds were driving before the wind. This produced alternations of light and shade, outdoors eclipses and illuminations, and indoors a kind of glimmer. On reaching the window, Jean Valjean examined it. It had no bars, opened into the garden, and was fastened, according to the fashion of the country, with a little wedge only. He opened it, but as the cold, keen air rushed into the room, he closed it again immediately. He looked into the garden with that absorbed look which studies rather than sees. The garden was enclosed with a white wall, quite low, and readily scaled. Beyond, against the sky, he distinguished the tops of trees at equal distances apart, which showed that this wall separated the garden from an avenue or a lane planted with trees. 
When he had taken this observation, he turned like a man whose mind is made up, went to his alcove, took his haversack, opened it, fumbled in it, took out something which he laid upon the bed, put his shoes into one of his pockets, tied up his bundle, swung it upon his shoulders, put on his cap and pulled the vizor down over his eyes, felt for his stick, and went and put it in the corner of the window, then returned to the bed, and resolutely took up the object which he had laid on it. It looked like a short iron bar, pointed at one end like a spear.      
It would have been hard to distinguish in the darkness for what use this peace of iron had been made. Could it be a lever? Could it be a club? 
In the daytime, it would have been seen to be nothing but a miner’s drill. At that time, the convicts were sometimes employed in quarrying stone on the high hills that surround Toulon, and they often had miners’ tools in their possessions. Miners’ drills are of solid iron, terminating at the lower end in a point, by means of which they are sunk into the rock. 
He took the drill in his right hand, and holding his breath, with stealthy steps, he moved toward the door of the next room, which was the bishop’s as we know. On reaching the door, he found it unlatched. The bishop had not closed it. 
Jean Valjean listened. Not a sound. 
He pushed the door. 
He pushed it lightly with the end of his finger, with the stealthy and timorous carefulness of a cat. The door yielded to the pressure with a silent, imperceptible movement, which made the opening a little wider. 
He waited a moment, and then pushed the door again more boldly. This time a rusty hinge suddenly sent out into the darkness a harsh and prolonged creak. 
He stood still, petrified like a pillar of salt, not daring to stir. Some minutes passed. The door was wide open; he ventured a look into the room. Nothing had moved. He listened. 
Nothing was stirring in the house. The noise of the rusty hinge had wakened nobody.
The first danger was over, but still he felt within him a frightful tumult. Nevertheless he did not flinch. Not even when he thought he was lost had he flinched. His only thought was to make an end of it quickly. He took one step and was in the room.  
A deep calm filled the chamber. Jean Valjean advanced, carefully avoiding the furniture. At the further end of the room he could hear the equal and quiet breathing of the sleeping bishop. 
Suddenly he stopped; he was near the bed, he had reached it sooner than he thought. For nearly a half hour a great cloud had darkened the sky. At the moment when Jean Valjean paused before the bed the cloud broke as if purposely, and a ray of moonlight, crossing the high window, suddenly lighted up the bishop’s face. He slept tranquilly. He was almost entirely dressed, though in bed, on account of the cold nights of the Lower Alps, with a dark woolen garment which covered his arms to the wrists. His head had fallen on the pillow in the unstudied attitude of slumber; over the side of the bed hung his hand, ornamented with the pastoral ring, and which had done so  many good deeds, so many pious acts. His entire countenance was lit up  with a vague expression of content, hope and happiness. It was more than a smile and almost a radiance. On his forehead rested the indescribable reflection of an unseen light. The souls of the upright in sleep  have vision of a mysterious heaven. 
A reflection from this heaven shone upon the bishop. 
The moon in the sky, nature drowsing, the garden without a pulse, the quiet house, the hour, the moment, the silence, added something strangely solemn and unutterable to the venerable repose of this man, and enveloped his white locks with his closed eyes with a serene and majestic glory, his face where all was hope and confidence-this old man’s head and infant’s slumber.  
There was something of divinity almost in this man. 
Jean Valjean was in the shadow with the iron drill in his hand, erect, motionless, terrified, at this radiant figure. He had never seen anything comparable to it. This confidence filled him with fear. The moral world has no greater spectacle than this: a troubled and restless conscience on the verge of committing and evil deed, contemplating the sleep of a good man. 
In a few moments he raised his left hand slowly to his forehead and took off his hat; then, letting his hand fall with the same slowness, Jean Valjean resumed his contemplations, his cap in his left hand, his club in his right, and his hair bristling on his fierce looking head. 
Under this frightful gaze the bishop still slept in profoundest peace. 
The crucifix above the mantlepiece was dimly visible in the moonlight, apparently extending its arms towards both, with a benediction for one and a pardon for the other. 
Suddenly Jean Valjean put on his cap, then passed quickly, without looking at the bishop, along the bed, straight to the cupboard, which he perceived near its head; he raised the drill to force the lock; the key was in it; he opened it; the first thing he saw was the basket of silver; he took it, crossed the room with hasty stride, careless of noise, reached the door, entered the oratory, took his stick, stepped out, put the silver in his knapsack, threw away the basket, ran across the garden, leaped over the wall like a tiger, and fled. 
IX
The next day at sunrise, Monseigneur Bienvenue was walking in the garden. Madame Malgoire ran toward him quite beside herself. 
“ Monseigneur, the man has gone! The silver is stolen! ”
While she was uttering this exclamation her eyes fell on an angle of the garden where she saw traces of an escalade. A capstone of the wall had been thrown down. 
“ See, there is where he got out; he jumped into Cochefilet Lane. The abominable fellow! He has stolen our silver! ”
The bishop was silent for a moment; then raising his serious eyes, he said mildly to Madame Magloire: 
“ Now first, did this silver belong to us ? ” 
Madame Magloire did not answer ; after a moment the bishop continued: 
“ Madame Magloire, I have for a long time wrongfully withheld this silver; it belonged to the poor. Who was this man? A poor man evidently. ”
“ Alas! Alas! “ returned Madame Magloire. ” It is not on my account or mademoiselle’s; it is all the same to us. But it is on yours, monseigneur. What is monsieur going to eat from now ? ” 
The bishop looked at her with amazement: 
“ How so! Have we no tin plates ? ” 
Madame Magloire shrugged her shoulders. 
“ Tin smells. ”
“ Well. then, iron plates. ”
Madame Magloire made an expressive gesture.  
“ Iron Tastes ”
“ Well, ” said the bishop, “ then wooden plates. ”   
In a few minutes he was breakfasting at the same table at which Jean Valjean sat the night before. While breakfasting, Monseigneur Bienvenue pleasantly remarked to his sister who said nothing, and Madame Magloire who was grumbling to herself, that there was really no need even of a wooden spoon or fork to dip a piece of bread into a cup of milk. 

Just as the brother and sister were rising from the table, there was a knock at the door. 
“ Come in, ” said the bishop. 
The door opened. A strange, fierce group appeared on the threshold. Three men were holding a fourth by the collar. The three men were gendarmes; the fourth Jean Valjean. 
A brigadier of gendarmes, who appeared to head the group, was near the door. He advanced toward the bishop, giving a military salute. 
“ Monseigneur- ” said he. 
At this word Jean Valjean, who was sullen and seemed entirely cast down, raised his head with a stupified air. 
“ Monseigneur ! ” he murmured. “ Then it is not the cure’ ! ”
“ Silence ! ” said a gendarme. “ It is monseigneur, the bishop. ”
In the meantime Monseigneur Bienvenu had approached as quickly as his great age permitted. 
“ Ah, there you are ! ” said he, looking toward Jean Valjean. 
“ I am glad to see you. But I gave you the candlesticks also, which are silver like the rest, and would bring two hundred francs. Why did you not take them along with your plates ? ”
Jean Valjean opened his eyes and looked at the bishop with an expression which no human tongue could describe. 
“ Monseigneur, ” said the brigadier, “ then what this man said was true ? We met him. 
He was going like a man who was running away, and we arrested him in order to see. He had this silver. ”   
“ And he told you, ” interrupted the bishop, with a smile, “ that it had been given to him by a good old priest with whom he had passed the night. I see it all. 
And you brought him back here? It is all a mistake. ”
“ If that is so, ” said the brigadier, “ we can let him go ” 
“ Certainly, ” replied the bishop. 
The gendarmes released Jean Valjean, who shrank back. 
“ Is it true that they let me go? ” he said in a voice almost inarticulate, as if he were speaking in his sleep. 
“ Yes! You can go. Do you not understand? ” said a gendarme. 
“ My friend,” said the bishop, “ before you go away, here are your candlesticks; take them.”
He went to the mantlepiece, took the two candlesticks, and brought them to Jean Valjean. The two women beheld the action without a word, or gesture, or look, that might disturb the bishop. 

Jean Valjean was trembling in every limb. He took the two candlesticks mechanically, and with a wild appearance. 
“ Now, ” said the bishop, “ go in peace.”
Then turning to the gendarmes, he said: 
“ Messieurs, you can retire. ” The gendarmes withdrew.
Jean Valjean felt like a man who is just about to faint. 
The bishop approached him, and said in a low voice: 
“ Forget not, never forget that you have promised me to use this silver to become an honest man. ”
Jean Valjean, who had no recollection of this promise, stood confounded. The bishop had laid much stress upon these words as he uttered them. He continued solemnly; 
“ Jean Valjean, my brother, you belong no longer to evil, but to good. It is your soul that I am buying for you, I withdraw it from dark thoughts and the spirit of perdition, and I give it to God! ”

JEAN VALJEAN went out of the city as if he were escaping. He made all haste to get into the open country, taking the first lanes and bypaths that offered without noticing that he was every moment retracing his steps. He wandered thus all the morning. He had eaten nothing, but he felt no hunger. He was the prey of a multitude of new sensations. He felt somewhat angry, he knew not against whom. 

Although the season was well advanced, there were yet here and there a few late flowers in the hedges, the odor of which, as it met him in his walk, recalled the memories of his childhood. These memories were almost insupportable, it was so long since they had occurred to him. Unspeakable thoughts thus gathered in his mind the whole day. 

As the sun was sinking towards the horizon, lengthening the shadow on the ground of the smallest pebble, Jean Valjean was seated behind a thicket in a large reddish plain, an absolute desert. There was no horizon but the Alps. Not even the steeple of a village church. Jean Valjean may have been three leagues from D—--- A bypath which crossed the plain passed a few steps from the thicket. 
In the midst of this meditation he heard a joyous sound. He turned his head, and saw coming along the path a little Savoyard, a dozen years old, singing, with his hurdy-gurdy at his side and his marmot box on his back. 
One of those pleasant and gay youngsters who go from place to place with their knees sticking through their trousers. 
Always singing, the boy stopped from time to time and played at tossing up some pieces of money that he had in his hand, probably his whole fortune. Among them there was one forty-sous piece.
The boy stopped by the side of the thicket without seeing Jean Valjean and tossed up his handful of souls, until this time he had skillfully caught the whole of them upon the back of his hand.  
This time the forty-sous piece escaped him and rolled toward the thicket near Jean Valjean. 
Jean Valjean put his foot upon it. 
The boy, however, had followed the piece with his eye and had seen where it went . 
He was not frightened and walked straight to the man. It was an entirely solitary place. 
Far as the eye could reach there was no one on the plain or in the path. Nothing could be heard but the faint cries of a flock of birds of passage that were flying across the sky at an immense height.  The child turned his back to the sun, which made his hair like threads of gold, and flushed the savage face of Jean Valjean with a lurid glow. 

“ Monsieur,” said the little Savoyard, with that childish confidence which is made up of ignorance and innocence, “my piece?”
“ What is your name? ” said Jean Valjean. 
“ Petit Gervais, monsieur. ”
“ Get out, ” said Jean Valjean. 
“ Monsieur, ” continued the boy, “ give me my piece.” 
Jean Valjean dropped his head and did not answer. 

The child began again:
“ My piece, monsieur! ”
Jean Valjean did not appear to understand. The boy took him by the collar of his blouse and shook him and at the same time he made an effort to move the big, ironsoled shoe which was placed upon his treasure. 
“ I want my piece ! My forty-sous piece! ”
The child began to cry. Jean Valjean raised his head. He still kept his seat. His look was troubled. He looked upon the boy with an air of wonder, then reached out his hand. He still kept his seat. His look was troubled. He looked upon the boy with an air of wonder, then reached out his hand toward his stick and exclaimed in a terrible voice,“ Who is there? Ah! You here yet? ”  And rising hastily to his feet, without releasing the piece of money, he added: “ You’d better take care of your self! ”
The boy looked at him in terror, then began to tremble from head to foot, and after a few seconds of stupor, took to flight and ran with all his might without daring to turn his head or to utter a cry. 
At a little distance, however, he stopped for want of breath, and Jean Valjean in his reverie heard him sobbing. 
In a few minutes the boy was gone. 
The sun had gone down. 
The shadows were deepening around Jean Valjean. He had not eaten during the day; probably he had some fever. 
He had remained standing, and had not changed his attitude since the child fled. His breathing was at long and unequal intervals. His eyes were fixed on a spot ten or twelve steps before him, and seemed to be studying with profound attention the form of an old piece of blue crockery that was lying in the grass. All at once he shivered; he began to feel the cold night air. 
He pulled his cap down over his forehead, sought mechanically to fold and button his blouse around him, stepped forward and stooped to pick up his stick. 
At that instant he perceived the forty-sous piece which his foot had half buried in the ground, and which glistened among the pebbles. It was like an electric shock. “ What is that? ” said he, between his teeth. He drew back  a step or two, then stopped without the power to withdraw his gaze from this point which his foot had covered the instant before, as if the thing that glistened there in the obscurity had been an eye fixed upon him. After a few minutes, he sprung convulsively toward the piece of money, seized it, and, rising, looked away over the plain, straining his eyes towards all points of the horizon, standing and trembling like a frightened deer which is seeking a place of refuge. 

He saw nothing. Night was falling, the plain was cold and bare, thick purple mists were rising in the glimmering twilight. 
He said: “ Oh! ” and began to walk rapidly in the direction in which the child had gone. After some thirty steps, he stopped, looked about, and saw nothing. 
Then he called with his might: “ Petit Gervais! Petit Gervais! ” 
And then he listened. 
There was no answer. 
The country was desolate and gloomy. On all sides was space. There was nothing about him but a shadow in which his gaze was lost and a silence in which his voice was lost.   

A biting norther was blowing, which gave a kind of dismal life to everything about him. 
The bushes shook their little thin arms with an incredible fury. One would have said that they were threatening and pursuing somebody. 
He began to walk again, then quickened his pace to a run and from time to time stopped and called out in that solitude, in almost desolate and terrible voice: 
“ Petit Gervais! Petit Gervais! ” 
Surely, if the child had heard him, he would have been frightened and would have hid himself. 
But doubtless the boy was already far away. 
Jean Valjean began to run again in the direction which he had first taken. 

He went on in this wise for a considerable distance, looking around, calling and shouting, but met nobody else. Two or three times he left the path to look at what seemed to be somebody lying down or crouching; it was only low bushes or rocks. 
Finally, at a place where three paths met, he stopped. The moon had risen. He strained his eyes  in the distance, and called out once more: “ Petit Gervais! ” but with a feeble, and almost inarticulate voice. That was his last effort. His knees suddenly bent under him, as if an invisible power overwhelmed him at a blow, with the weight of his bad conscience; he fell exhausted upon a great stone, his hands clenched in his hair and his face on his knees, and exclaimed: 
“ What a wretch I am ! ”
Then his heart swelled, and he burst into tears. It was the first time he had wept in nineteen years. 

Jean Valjean wept long. He shed hot tears, he wept bitterly, with more weakness than a woman, with more terror than a child. 
While he wept, the light grew brighter and brighter in his mind-an extraordinary light, a light at once transporting and terrible. His past life, his first offence, his long expiation, his brutal exterior, his hardened interior, his release made glad by so many schemes of vengeance, what had happened to him at the bishop’s , his last action, this theft of forty sous from a child, a crime meaner and the more monstrous that it came after the bishop’s pardon, all this returned and appeared to him, clearly, but in a light that he had never seen before. He beheld his life, and it seemed to  him that he was looking upon Satan by the light of paradise. 
How long did he weep thus? What did he do after weeping ? Where did he go ? Nobody ever knew. It is known simply that, on that very night, the stage driver who drove at that time on the Grenoble route, and arrived at D—--about three o’clock in the morning, saw, as he passed through the bishop’s street, a man in the attitude of prayer, kneel upon the pavement in the shadow, before the door of Monseigneur Bienvenu.   

  To Entrust Is Sometimes 
To Abandon.

THERE was, during the first quarter of the present century, at Montfermeil, near París, a sort of chophouse; it is not there now. It was kept by a man and his wife, named Thénardier, and was situated in the Lane Boulanger. Above the door, nailed against the wall, was a board, upon which something was painted that looked like a man carrying on his back another man wearing the heavy epaulettes of a general, gift and with large silver starts; red blotches typified blood; the remainder of the picture was smoke, and probably represented a battle. Beneath was this inscription: To THE SERGEANT OF WATERLOO. 

Nothing is commoner than a cart of wagon before the door of an inn; nevertheless the vehicle , or more properly speaking, the fragment of a vehicle which obstructed the street in front of the Sergeant of Waterloo one evening in the spring of 1818 certainly would have attracted by its bulk the attention of any painter who may have been passing.     

Why was this vehicle in this place in the street, one may ask? First to obstruct the lane, and then to complete its work of rust. 

The middle of the chain was hanging quite near the ground, under the axle, and upon the bend, as on a swinging rope, two little girls were seated that evening in exquisite grouping, the smaller, eighteen months old, in the lap of the larger, who was two-and-a-half years old. 

A handkerchief carefully knotted kept them from falling. 
A mother. Looking upon this frightful chain, had said; “Ah! This is a plaything for my children!” 
The mother, a woman whose appearance was rather forbidding, but touching at this moment, was seated on the sill of the inn, swinging the two children by a long string, while she brooded them with her eyes for fear of accident with that animal but heavenly expression peculiar to  maternity. At each vibration the hideous links uttered a creaking noise like an angry cry, the little ones were in ecstasies, as the setting sun mingled in the joy, 
Suddenly the mother heard a voice say quite near to her ear: “You have two pretty children there, madame.”
A woman was before her at a little distance; she also had a child, which she bore in her arms. 
She was carrying in addition a large carpetbag, which seemed heavy.  
This woman’s child was one of the divinest beings that can be imagined: a little girl of two or three years. She might have entered the lists with the other little ones coquetry of attire; she wore a headdress of fine linen; ribbons at her shoulders and Valenciennes lace on her cap. The folds of her skirt were raised enough to show her plump fine white leg; she was charmingly rosy and beautiful. The pretty little creature gave one a desire to bite her cherry cheeks. We can say nothing of her eyes except that they must have been very large, and were fringed with superb lashes. She was asleep. 


She was sleeping in the absolutely confiding slumber peculiar to her age. A mother’s arms are made of tenderness, and sweet sleep blessed the child who lies therein. 
As to the mother, she seemed poor and sad; she had the appearance of a workingwoman who is seeking to return to the life of a peasant. She was young and pretty? It was possible but in that garb beauty could not be displayed. Her hair, one blond mesh of which had fallen, seemed very thick, but it was severely fastened up beneath an ugly, close, narrow nun’s headdress, tied under the chin.  Laughing shows fine teeth when one has them, but she did not laugh.  Her eyes seemed not to have been tearless for a long time. She was pale,  and looked very weary, and somewhat sick. She gazed upon her child, sleeping in her arms, with that peculiar look  which only a mother possesses who nurses her own child. Her form was clumsily masked by a large blue handkerchief folded across her bosom. Her hands were tanned and spotted with freckles, the forefinger hardened and pricked with the needle;she wore a coarse brown delaine mantle, a calico dress, and large heavy shoes.  


It was one of those beings which are brought forth from the heart of the people . Sprung from the most unfathomable depths of social darkness, she bore on her brow the mark of the anonymous and unknown. She was born at M—--sur m—--- Who were her parents? None could tell; she had never known either father or mother. She was called Fantine–Why so? Because she had never been known by any other name. 
She could have no family name, for she had no family;she could have no baptismal name, for then there was no church. 


She was named after the pleasure of the first passer-by who found her, a mere infant, straying barefoot in the streets. She received a name as she received the water from the clouds on her head when it rained. She was called Little Fantine. No-body knew anything more of her. Such was the manner in which this human being had come into life. At the age of ten, Fantine left the city and went to service among the farmers of the suburbs. At fifteen, she came to Paris, to “ seek her fortune ”. Fantine was beautiful and remained pure as long as she could.She was a pretty blonde with fine teeth. She had gold and pearls for her dowry: but the gold was on her head and the pearls in her mouth.  


She worked to live, then, also to live, for the heart too has its hunger, she loved. 
To him it was an amour; to her a passion. The streets of the Latin Quarter which swarn with students and grisettes, saw the beginning of this dream. In short, the eclogue took place, and the poor girl had a child. 
The father of her child gone—alas, such partings are irrevocable –She found herself absolutely isolated, with the habit of labor lost, and the taste for pleasure acquired. She had committed a fault, but, in the depths of her nature, we know dwelt modesty and virtue.  She had a vague feeling that she was on the eve of falling into distress, of slipping into  the street. 
She must have courage; she had it, and bore up bravely. 


The idea occurred to her of returning to her native village M—--sur m—---; there perhaps someone would know her, and give her work. Yes, but she must hide her fault. And she had a confused glimpse of the possible necessities of a  separation still  more painful than the first. Her heart ached, but she took her resolution. It will be seen that Fantine possessed the stern courage of life. At twenty-two years of age, on a fine spring morning, she left Paris, carrying her child on her back. He who had seen the two passing must have pitied them. The woman had nothing in the world but this child, and this child had nothing in the world but this woman. Fantine had nursed her child –that had weakened her chest somewhat—and she coughed slightly. 


Toward noon, after having, for the sake of rest, traveled from time to time at a cost of three or four cents a league, in what they called then the Petites Voitures of the environs of Paris, Fantine reached Montfermeil, and stood in the Lane Boulanger. 
As she was passing by the Thénardier chophouse, the two little children sitting in delight on their monstrous swings had a sort of dazzling effect upon her, and she paused before this joyous vision.  


There are charms. These two little girls were one for this mother. 
She beheld them with emotion. The presence of angels is a herald of paradise. She thought she saw about this inn the mysterious Here of Providence. These children were evidently happy; she gazed upon them, she admired them, so much affected that at the moment when the mother was taking breath between the verses of her song, she could not  help saying what we have been reading.  “ You have two pretty children there, madame.”
The most ferocious animals are disarmed by caresses to their young. 

The mother raised her head and thanked her, and made the stranger sit down on the stone step, she herself being on the doorstill; the two women began to talk together. 
“My name is Madame Thénardier,” said the mother of the two girls. “We keep this inn.”
This Madame Thénardier was a red-haired, browny, angular woman.
She was still young, scarcely thirty years old. If this woman, who was seated stooping, had been upright, perhaps her towering form and her broad shoulders, those of a movable colossus, fit for a market woman, would have dismayed the traveler, disturbed her confidence, and prevented what we have to relate. A person seated instead of standing - fate hangs on such a thread as that. 
The traveler told her story, a little modified. 
She said she was a workingwoman, and her husband was dead. Not being able to procure work in Paris she was going in search of it elsewhere, in her own province; that she had left Paris that morning on foot; that carrying her child she had become tired, and meeting the Villemomble stage had got in; that from Villemomble she had come on foot to Montfermeil; that the child had walked a little, but not much, she was so young; that she was compelled  to carry her, and the jewel had fallen asleep. 
And at these words she gave her daughter a passionate kiss, which wakened her. The child opened its large blue eyes, like it’s mother’s, and saw - what? Nothing, everything, with that serious and sometimes severe air of little children, which is one of the mysteries of their shining innocence before our shadowy virtues. One would say that they felt themselves to be angels, and knew us to be human. Then the child began to laugh, and, although the mother restrained her, slipped to the ground, with the indomitable energy of a little one that wants to run about. All at once she perceived the two others in their swing, stopped short, and put out her tongue in token of admiration. 
Mother Thénardier untied the children and took them from their swing saying: 
“Play together, all three of you.” 
    At that age acquaintance is easy, and in a moment the little Thénardiers were playing with the newcomer, making holes in the ground to their intense delight. 
This newcomer was very sprightly: the goodness of the mother is written in the gaiety of the child; she had taken a splinter of wood, which she used as a spade, and was stoutly digging a hole fit for a fly. The gravedigger’s work is charming when done by a child.  

The two women continued to chat. 
“What do you call your brat?”
“Cosette”
“How old is she?”
“She is going on three years.”
“The age of my oldest.” 
The three girls were grouped in an attitude of deep anxiety and bliss; a great event had occurred: a large worm had come out of the ground; they were afraid of it, and yet in ecstasies over it. 

Their bright foreheads touched each other - three heads in one halo of glory. 
“Children.” exclaimed the Thénardier Mother. “How soon they know one another. See them! One would swear they were three sisters.”
These words were the sparks which the other mother was probably awaiting. She seized the hand of Madame Thénardier and said: 
“Will you keep my child for me?”
“I must think over it,” said Thénardier. 
“I will give six francs a month.”
Here a man’s voice was heard from within: 
“Not less than seven francs, and six months paid in advance.”
“Six times seven are forty-two,” said Thénardier. 
“I will give it,” said the mother.
“And fifteen francs extra for the first expenses,” added the man. 
“That’s fifty-seven francs,” said Madame Thénardier.
“I will give it,” said the mother.  “I have eighty francs. That will leave me enough to go into the country If I walk. I will earn some money there, and as soon as I have I will come for my little love.” 
The man’s voice returned: 
“Has the child a wardrobe?”
“That is my husband,” said Thénadier.
“Certainly she has, the poor darling. I knew it was your husband. And a fine wardrobe it is too, an extravagant wardrobe, everything in dozens, and silk dresses like a lady. They are there in my carpetbag.”
“You must leave that here,” put in the man’s voice. 
“Of course I shall give it to you.” said the mother. “It would be strange if should leave my child naked.”

The face of the master appeared. 
“It is all right,” said he. 
The bargain was concluded. The mother passed the night at the inn, gave her money and left her child, fastened again her carpetbag, diminished by her child’s wardrobe,  and very light now, and set off next morning, expecting soon to return. 
These partings are arranged tranquilly, but they are full of despair. 

A neighbour of the Thénardiers met this mother on her way, and came in, saying:
“I have just met a woman in the street , who was crying as if her heart would break.” 
When Cosette’s mother had gone, the man said to his wife. 
“That will do me for my note of 110 francs which falls due tomorrow; I was 50 francs short. Do you know I should have had a sheriff and a protest? You have proved a good mouse trap  with your little ones.” 
“Without knowing it,” Said the woman.

II

The captured mouse was a very puny one, but the cat exulted even over a lean mouse. 
What were the Thénardiers?  
They belonged to that bastard class formed of low people who have risen, and intelligent people who have fallen, which lies between the classes called middle and lower, and which unites some of the faults of the latter with nearly all the vices of the former, without possessing the generous impulses of the workman, or the respectability of the bourgeois. 
They were of those dwarfish natures, which, if perchance heated by some sullen fire, easily becomes monstrous. The woman was a heart a brute; the man a blackguard: both in the highest degree capable of that hideous species of progress which can be made toward evil. There are souls which, crablike, crawl continually toward darkness, going back in life rather than advancing in it, using what experience they have to increase their deformity, growing worse without ceasing and becoming steeped more and more thoroughly in an intensifying wickedness. Such souls were this man and this woman. 
To be wicked does not insure prosperity - for the inn did not succeed well. 
Thanks to Fantine’s fifty-seven francs, Thénardier had been able to avoid a protest and to honor his signature. The next month they were still in need of money, and the woman carried Cossete’s wardrobe to Paris and pawned for sixty francs. 
When this sum was spent, the Thénardiers began to look upon the little girl as a child which they sheltered for charity, and treated her as such. 
Her clothes being gone, they dressed her in the cast off garments of the little Thénardiers, that is in rags.
They fed her on the orts and ends, a little better than the dog and a little worse than the cat. The dog and the cat were her messmates. Cosette ate with them under the table in a wooden dish like theirs. 
Her mother, as we shall see hereafter, who had found a place at M__sur m____, wrote or rather had someone write for her, every month, inquiring news of her child. The Thénardiers replied invariably: 
“Cossette is doing wonderfully well.” 

There are certain natures which cannot have love on one side without hatred on the other. This Thénardier mother passionately loved her own little ones — this made her detest the young stranger. Cosette could not stir that she did no draw down upon herself a hailstorm of undeserved and severe chastisements. A weak, soft little one who knew nothing of this world, or of God, continually ill-treated, scolded, punished, beaten, she saw beside her two  other young things like herself, who lived in a halo of glory!
The woman was unkind to Cosette; Eponine and Azelma were unkind also.Children at that age are only copies of the mother; the size is reduced, that is all.
A year passed and then another.
People used to say in the village:
What good people these Thénardiers are! They are not rich, and yet they bring up a poor child that has been left with them.” 
They thought Cosette was forgotten by her mother. 
From  year to year the child grew, and her misery also. 
So long as Cosette was very small, she was the scapegoat of the two other children; as soon as she began to grow a little, that is to say, before she was five years old, she became the servant of the house.
Cosette was made to run errands, sweep the rooms, the yard, the street, wash the dishes, and even carry burdens. The Thénardiers felt doubly authorized to treat her thus, as the mother, who still remained at M—---sur m —----, began to be remiss in her payments. Some months remained due. 
Had this mother return to Montfermeil, at the end of these three years, she would not have known her child, Cosette, so fresh and pretty when she came to that house, now thin and wan. She had a peculiar restless air. “Shy!” said the Thénardiers.
Injustice had made her sullen, and misery had made her ugly. Her fine eyes only remained to  her, and they were painful to look at, for, large as they were, they seemed to increase the sadness. 
It was a harrowing sight to see in the wintertime the poor child, not yet six years old, shivering under the tatters of what was once a calico dress, sweeping the street before daylight with an enormous broom in her little red hands and tears in her large eyes. 

In the place she was called the lark. People like figurative names and were pleased thus to name this little being, not larger than a bird, trembling, frightened, and shivering, awake every morning first of all in the house and the village, always in the street or in the fields before dawn. 
Only the poor lark never sang. 

The Descent


I 

WHAT had become of this mother, in the meanwhile, who, according to the people of Montfermeil, seemed to have abandoned her child? Where was she? What was she doing? 
After leaving her little Cosette with the Thénardiers, she went on her way and arrived at M—------sur m—------. 
This, it will be remembered, was in 1818. 
Fantine had left the province some twelve years before, and M—--sur m—----had greatly changed in appearance. While Fantine had been slowly sinking deeper and deeper into misery, her native village had been prosperous. 
Within about two years there had been accomplished there one of those industrial changes which are the great events of small communities. 

From the immemorial the special occupation of the inhabitants of M—---sur m—-------had been the imitation of English jets and German black-glass trinkets. The business had always been dull in consequence of the high price of the raw material, which reacted upon the manufacture. At the time of Fantine’s return to M—----sur m—----an entire transformation had been effected in the production of these “black goods.” 
Toward the end of the year 1815, an unknown man had established himself in the city, and had conceived the idea of substituting gum-lac for resin in the manufacture, and for bracelets, in particular, he made the clasps by simply bending the ends of the metal together instead of soldering them. 
This very slight change had worked a revolution. 
In less than three years the inventor of this process had become rich, which was well, and had made all around him rich, which was better. He was a stranger in the Department. Nothing was known of his birth, and but little of his early history. 
The story went that he came to the city with very little money, a few hundred francs at most. 
From this slender capital, under the inspiration of an ingenious idea, made fruitful by order and care, he had drawn a fortune for himself, and a fortune for the whole region. 
On his arrival at M—----sur m-—---he had the dress, the manners, and the language of a laborer only.  
It seems that the very day on which he thus obscurely entered the little city of M—---sur m—---, just at dusk on a December evening, with his bundle on his back, and a thorn stick in his hand, a great fire had broken out in the townhouse. 
This man rushed into the fire, and saved, at the peril of his life, two children, who proved to be those of the captain of the gendarmerie, and in the hurry and gratitude of the moment no one thought to ask him for his passport. He was known from that time by the name of Father Madeleine.    

He was a man of about fifty, who always appeared to be preoccupied in mind, and who was good-natured; this was all that could be said about him. 
Thanks to the rapid progress of this manufacture, to which he had given such wonderful life, M—-sur m—---had become a considerable center of business. Immense purchases were made there every year for the Spanish markets, where there is a large demand for jet work, and M—---sur m—----, in this branch of trade, almost competed with London and Berlin. The profits of Father Madeleine were so great that by the end of the second year he was able to build a large factory, in which there were two immense workshops, one for men and the other for women; whoever was needy could go there and be sure of finding work and wages. Before the arrival of Father Madeleine, the whole region was languishing; now it was all alive with the healthy strength of labor. An active circulation kindled everything and penetrated everywhere. Idleness and misery were unknown. There was no pocket so obscure that it did not contain some money and no dwelling so poor that it was not the abode of some joy. 

Father Madeleine employed everybody: he had only one condition: “Be an honest man!” “Be an honest woman!” 
As we have said, in the midst of this activity, of which he was the cause and the pivot, Father Madeleine had made his fortune, but, very strangely for a mere man of business, that did not appear to be his care. It seemed that he thought much for others, and little for himself. In 1820, it was known that he had six hundred and thirty thousand francs for himself, he had expended more than a million for the city and for the poor.  
The hospital was poorly endowed, and he made provision for ten additional beds. M—---sur m—----is divided into the upper city and the lower city. The lower city, where he lived, had only one schoolhouse, a miserable hovel which was fast going to ruin; he built two, one for the girls, and the other for the boys, and paid the two teachers, from his own pocket, double the amount of their meager salary from the government, and one day, he said to a neighbor who expressed surprise at this: 
“The two highest functionaries of the state are the nurse and the schoolmaster.” He built at his own expense, a house of refuge, an institution then almost unknown in France, and provided a fund for old and infirm laborers. About his factory, as a center, a new quarter of the city had rapidly grown up, containing many indigent families, and he established a pharmacy that was free to all. 
At length, in 1819, it was reported in the city one morning, that upon the recommendation of the prefect, and in consideration of the services he had rendered to the country, Father Madeleine had been appointed by the king, Mayor of M—----sur m—---. 

M—---- sur m—----was filled with the rumor, and the report proved to be well founded, for a few days afterward, the nomination appeared in the Moniteur. The next day Father Madeleine declined. 
In 1820, five years after his arrival at M—---sur m—----, the services that he had rendered to the region was so brilliant, and the wish of the whole population was so unanimous, that the king again appointed him mayor of the city. He refused again; but the prefect resisted his determination, the principal citizens came and urged him to accept, and the people in the streets begged him to do so; all insisted so strongly that at last he yielded. It was remarked that what appeared most of all to bring him to this determination was the almost angry exclamation of an old woman belonging to the poorer class, who cried out to him from her doorstone, with some temper: 
“A good mayor is a good thing. Are you afraid of the good you can do?”

LITTLE by little in the lapse of time all opposition had ceased. 

People came from thirty miles around to consult Monsieur Madeleine. He settled differences, he prevented lawsuits, he reconciled enemies. 
Everybody, of his own will, chose him for judge. He seemed to have the book of the natural law by heart. A contagion of veneration had, in the course of six or seven years, step by step, spread over the whole country. 
One man alone, in the city and its neighborhood, held himself entirely clear from this contagion, and, whatever Father Madeleine did, he remained indifferent, as if a sort of instinct unchangeable and imperturbable, kept him awake and on the watch. 
Often, when Monsieur Madeleine passed along the street, calm, affectionate, followed by the benediction of all, it happened that a tall man, wearing a flat hat and an iron gray coat, and armed with a stout cane, would turn around abruptly behind him, and follow him with his eyes until he disappeared, crossing his arms, slowly shaking his head, and pushing his upper with his under lip up to his nose, a sort of significant grimace which might be rendered by: “But what is that man? I am sure I have seen him somewhere. At all events, I at least am not his dupe.”

This personage, grave with an almost threatening gravity, was one of those who, even in a hurried interview, command the attention of the observer. 
His name was Javert, and he was one of the police. 
He exercised at M—sur m— the unpleasant, but useful, function of inspector. He was not there at the date of Madeleine’s arrival. 
Certain police officers have a peculiar physiognomy in which can be traced an air of meanness mingled with an air of authority. Javert had this physiognomy, without meanness. 
He was born in prison. His mother was a fortuneteller whose husband was in the galleys. He grew up to think himself without the pale of society, and despaired of ever entering it. He noticed that society closes its doors, without pity, on two classes of men: those who attack it and those who guard it; he could choose between these two classes only; at the same time he felt that he had an indescribable basis of rectitude, order, and honesty, associated with an irrepressible hatred for that gypsy race to which he belonged. He entered the police, He succeeded. At forty he was an inspector. 
In his youth he had been stationed in the galleys at the South.   
The face of Javert consisted of a snub nose, with two deep nostrils, which were bordered by large bushy whiskers that covered both his cheeks. One felt ill at ease the first time he saw those two forests and those two caverns. When Javert laughed, which was rarely and terribly,  his thin lips parted, and showed, not only his teeth, but his gums, and around his nose there was a wrinkle as broad and wild as the muzzle of a fallow deer.  Javert,  when serious, was a bulldog; when he laughed, he was a tiger. For the rest, a small head, large jaws, hair hiding the forehead and falling over the eyebrows, between the eyes a permanent central frown, a gloomy look, a mouth pinched and frightful, and an air of fierce command. 
This man was a compound of two sentiments, very simple and very good in themselves, but he almost made them evil by his exaggeration of them: respect for authority and hatred of rebellion; in his eyes, theft, murder, all crimes, were only forms of rebellion. In his strong and implicit faith he included all who held any function in the state, from the prime minister to the constable. He had nothing but disdain, aversion, and disgust for all who had once overstepped the bounds of the law.  He was absolute, and admitted no exceptions.
He was stoical, serious, austere: a dreamer of “stern” dreams; humble and haughty, like all fanatics. His stare was cold and as piercing as a gimlet. His whole life was contained in these two words; waking and watching. Woe to him who should fall into his hands! He would have arrested his father if escaping from the galleys, and denounced his mother for violating her ticket of leave. And he would have done it with that sort of interior satisfaction that springs from virtue.His life was a life of privations, isolation, self-denial and chastity: never any amusement. It was implacable duty absorbed in the police as the Spartans were absorbed in Sparta, a pitiless detective, a fierce honesty, a marblehearted informer,   
Such was this formidable man. 
Javert was like an eye always fixed on Monsieur Madeleine, an eye full of suspicion and conjecture. Monsieur Madeleine finally noticed it, but seemed to consider it of no consequence.
He asked no question of Javert, he neither sought him nor shunned him, he endured this unpleasant and annoying stare without appearing to pay any attention to it. He treated Javert as he did everybody else, at ease and with kindness. 
Javert was evidently somewhat disconcerted by the completely natural air and the tranquility of Monsieur Madeleine. 
One day, however, his strange manner appeared to  make an impression upon Monsieur Madeleine. The occasion was this. 


IV
 
MONSIEUR MADELEINE was walking one morning along one of the unpaved alleys of   M—sur m—; he heard a shouting and saw a crowd at a little distance. He went to the spot. An old man, named Father Fauchelevent, had fallen under his cart, his horse being thrown down. 
The horse had his thighs broken, and could not stir. The old man was caught between the wheels. Unluckily he had fallen so that the whole weight rested upon his breast. The cart was heavily loaded. Father Fauchelevent was uttering doleful groans. They had tried to pull him out, but in vain. An unlucky effort, inexpert help, a false push, might crush him. It was impossible to extricate otherwise than by raising the wagon from beneath. Javert, who came up at the moment of the accident, had sent for a jack. 
Monsieur Madeleine came. The crowd fell back with respect. 
“Help,” cried out Fauchelevent. “Who is a good fellow to save an old man?”  
  Monsieur Madeleine turned toward the bystanders. 
“ Has anyone a jack? ”
“They have gone for one,” replied a peasant. 
“ How soon will it be here? ” 
“ We sent to the nearest place, to Flachot Place, where there is a blacksmith, but it will take a good quarter of an hour at least. ” 
“ A quarter of an hour! ” exclaimed Madeleine to the peasants who were looking on. 
“ We must! ”
“ But it will be too late! Don’t you see that the wagon is sinking all the while? ”
“ It can’t be helped.”
“ Listen,” resumed Madeleine, “there is room enough still under the wagon for a man to crawl in, and lift it with his back.  In half a minute we will have the poor man out. Is there nobody here who has strength and courage? Five louis d’ors for him! ”
Nobody stirred in the crowd. 
“Ten louis,” said Madeleine. 
The bystander dropped their eyes. One of them muttered: 
“He’d have to be devilish stout. And then he would risk getting crushed.”
“Come,” said Madeleine, “twenty louis”
The same silence.
“ It is not willingness which they lack,” said a voice. 
Monsieur Madeleine turned and saw Javert. He had not noticed him when he came. 
Javert continued:
“ It is strength. He must be a terrible man who can raise a wagon like that on his back.”
Then, looking fixedly at Monsieur Madeleine, he went on, emphasizing every word that he uttered:  
“ Monsieur Madeleine, I have known but one man capable of doing what you call for.”
Madeleine shuddered. 
Javert added, with an air of indifference, but without taking his eyes from Madeleine: 
“ He was a convict.”
“ Ah! ” said Madeleine: 
“ In the galleys at Toulon.” 
Madeleine became pale. 
“Oh! How it crushes me! ” cried the old man.  
Madeleine raised his head, met the falcon eye of Javert still fixed upon him, looked at the immovable peasants, and smiled sadly. Then, without saying a word, he fell on his knees, and even before the crowd had time to utter a cry, he was under the cart.   

There was an awful moment of suspense and of silence.
Madeleine, lying almost flat under the fearful weight, was twice seen to try in vain to bring his elbows and knees nearer together. They cried out to him: “Father Madeleine! Come out from there!” Old Fauchelevent himself said: “ Monsieur Madeleine! Go away! I must die, you see that; leave me! You will be crushed too.” Madeleine made no answer. The bystanders held their breath. The wheels were still sinking and it had now become almost impossible for Madeleine to extricate himself. 
All at once the enormous mass started, the cart rose slowly, the wheels came half out of the ruts. A smothered voice was heard, crying: “Quick Help!” It was Madeleine, who had just made a final effort. 
They all rushed to the work. The devotion of one man had given strength and courage to all. The cart was lifted by twenty arms. Old Fauchelevent was safe.  
Madeleine arose. He was very pale, though dripping with sweat. His clothes were torn and covered with mud. All wept. The old man kissed his knees and called him to good God. 
He himself wore on his face an indescribable expression of joyous and celestial suffering, and he looked with tranquil eye upon Javert, who was still watching him. 
Fauchelevent got well, but he had a stiff knee. Monsieur Madeleine, through the recommendation of the sisters and the curé, got the old man a place as gardener at a convent in the Quarter Saint Antoine at París. 

V

SUCH was the situation of the country when Fantine returned. No one remembered her. Luckily the door of Monsieur Madeleine’s factory was like the face of a friend. She presented herself there, and was admitted into the workshop for women. 
The business was entirely new to Fantine; she could not be very expert in it, and consequently did not receive much for her day’s work, but that little was enough; the problem was solved; she was earning her living. 
When Fantine realized how she was living, she had a moment of joy. To live honestly by her own labor, what a heavenly boon! The taste for labor returned to her, in truth. 
She bought a mirror, delighted herself with the sight of her youth, her fine hair, and her fine teeth, forgot many things, thought of nothing save Cosette and the possibilities of the future, and was almost happy. She hired a small room and furnished it on the credit of her future labor: 
Not being able to say that she was married, she took good care, as we have already intimated, not to speak of her little girl. 

At first, as we have seen, she paid the Thénardiers punctually. As she only knew how to sign her name she was obliged to write through a public letter writer. 
She wrote often; that was noticed. They began to whisper in the women’s workshop that Fantine “ wrote letters,” and that “she had airs.” 

So Fantine was watched. 
Beyond this, more than one was jealous of her fair hair and of her white teeth. 
It was ascertained that she wrote, at least twice a month and always to the same address, and that she prepaid the postage. They succeeded in learning the address: Monsieur Thénardier, Innkeeper, Montfermeil. The public letter writer, a simple old fellow, who could not fill his stomach with red wine without emptying his pockets of his secrets, was made to reveal this at a drinking house. In short, it became known that Fantine had a child. “She must be that sort of a woman.” And there was one old gossip who went to Montfermeil, talked with the Thénardiers, and said on her return: “For my thirty five francs, I have found out all about it. I have seen the child!”   
All this took time; Fantine had been more than a year at the factory, when one morning the overseer of the workshop handed her, on behalf of the mayor, fifty francs, saying that she was no longer wanted in the shop, and enjoining her, on behalf of the mayor, to leave the city. 

Fantine was thunderstruck. She could not leave the city; she was in debt for her lodging and her furniture. Fifty francs were not enough to clear off that debt. She faltered out some suppliant words. The overseer gave her to understand that she must leave the shop instantly. Fantine was moreover only a moderate worker. Overwhelmed with shame even more than with despair, she left the shop, and returned to her room. Her fault then was now known to all! 
She felt no strength to say a word. She was advised to see the mayor; she dared not. The mayor gave her fifty francs, because he was kind,and sent her away, because he was just. She bowed to that decree.

VI

MONSIEUR MADELEINE had known nothing of all this. The best men are often compelled to delegate their authority. It was in the exercise of this full power, and with the conviction that she was doing right, that the overseer had framed the indictment, tried, condemned, and executed Fantine. 
Fantine offered herself as a servant in the neighborhood; she went from one house to another. Nobody wanted her. She could not leave the city. The secondhand dealer to whom she was in debt for her furniture - and such furniture! - had said to her: “ If you go away, I will have you arrested as a thief. ” The landlord, whom she owed for rent, had said to her: “ You are young and pretty, you can pay. ” She divided the fifty francs between the landlord and the dealer, returned to the latter three-quarters of his goods, kept only what was necessary, and found herself without work, without position, having nothing but her bed, and owing still about a hundred francs. 
She began to make coarse shirts for the soldiers of the garrison, and earned twelve sous a day. Her daughter cost her ten. It was at this time that she began to get behindhand with the Thénardiers. 
However, an old woman, who lit her candle for her when she came home at night, taught her the art of living in misery. 
Behind living on a little lies the art of living on nothing. They are two rooms: the first is obscure; the second is utterly dark. 
Fantine learned how to do entirely without fire in winter, how to give up a bird that eats a farthing’s worth of millet every other day, how to make a coverlid of her petticoat, and a petticoat of her coverlid, how to save her candle in taking her meals by the light of an opposite window. Few know how much certain feeble beings, who have grown old in privation and honesty, can extract from a sou. This finally becomes a talent.  Fantine acquired this sublime talent and took heart a little. 

The old woman, who had given her what might be called lessons in indigent life, was a pious woman,  Marguerite by name, a devotee of genuine devotion, poor, and charitable to the poor, and also to the rich, knowing how to write just enough to sign MARGERITTE, and believing in God, which is science. 
There are many of these virtues in low places; someday they will be on high. This life has a morrow. 
At first, Fantine was so much ashamed that she did not dare to go out. 
When she was in the street, she imagined that people turned behind her and pointed at her; everybody looked at her and no one greeted her; the sharp and cold disdain of the passers-by  penetrated her, body and soul, like a north wind. 

She must indeed become accustomed to disrespect as she had to poverty. Little by little she learned her part. After two or three months she shook off her shame and went out as if there were nothing in the way.  “ It is all one to me,” said she. 
She went and came,  holding her head up and wearing a bitter smile, and felt that she was becoming shameless. 

Excessive work fatigued Fantine, and the slight dry cough that she had increased. She sometimes said to her neighbor, Marguerite: “ Just feel how hot  my hands are. ” 
In the morning, however, when with an old broken comb she combed her fine hair which flowed down in silky waves, she enjoyed a moment of happiness. 

VII

SHE had been discharged toward the end of winter; summer passed away, but winter returned. Short days, less work. In winter there is no heat, no light, no noon, evening touches morning, there is fog, and mist, the window is frosted, and you cannot see clearly. The sky is but the mouth of a cave. The whole day is the cave. The sun has the appearance of a pauper. Frightful season! Winter changes into stone the water of heaven and the heart of man. Her creditors harassed her. Fantine earned too little. Her debts had increased. The Thénardiers, being poorly paid, were constantly writing letters to her, the contents of which disheartened her, while the postage was ruining her.  One day they wrote to her that her little Cosette was entirely destitute of clothing for the cold weather, that she needed a woolen skirt, and that her mother must send at least ten francs for that. She received the letter and crushed it in her hand for a whole day. In the evening she went into a barber’s shop at the corner of the street, and pulled out her comb. Her beautiful fair hair fell below her waist. 
“ What beautiful hair! ” exclaimed the barber.
“ How much will you give me for it? ” said she. 
“ Ten francs. ” 
“ Cut it off. ” 
She bought a knit skirt and sent it to the Thénardiers. 
This skirt made the Thénardiers furious. It was the money that they wanted.  They gave the skirt to Eponine. The poor lark still shivered. 
Fantine thought: “ My child is no longer cold; I have clothed her with my hair. ” She put on a little round cap which concealed her shorn head, and with that she was still pretty. 
A gloomy work was going on in Fantine’s heart. 
When she saw that she could  no longer dress her hair, she began to look with hatred on all around her. She had long shared in the universal veneration for Father Madeleine; nevertheless by dint of repeating to herself that it was he who had turned her away and that he was the cause of her misfortunes, she came to hate him also, and especially. When she passed the factory at the hours in which the laborers were at the door, she forced herself to laugh and sing.
An old workingwoman who saw her once singing and laughing in this way said: “ There is a girl who will come to a bad end. ”  
She took a lover, the first corner, a man whom she did not love, through bravado, and with rage in her heart. He was a wretch, a kind of mendicant musician, a lazy ragamuffin, who beat her, and who left her, as she had taken him, with disgust. 
She worshiped her child. 
The lower she sank, the more all became gloomy around her, the more the sweet little angel shone out in the bottom of her heart. She would say: “ When I am rich, I shall have my Cosette with me. ” and she laughed. The cough did not leave her, and she had night sweats. 
One day she received from the Thénardiers a letter in these words: “ Cosette is sick of an epidemic disease. A military fever they call it. The drugs necessary are dear. It is ruining us, and we can no longer pay for them. Unless you send us forty francs within a week the little one will die.”
She burst out laughing, and said to her old neighbor: 
“ Oh! They are nice! Forty francs! Think of that! That is two Napoleons! Where do they think I can get them ? Are they fools, these boors ? ”
She went, however, to the staircase, near a dormer window, and read the letter again. 
Then she went downstairs and outdoors, running and jumping, still laughing. 
As she passed through the square, she saw many people gathered about an odd-looking carriage on top of which stood a man in red clothes, declaiming. He was a juggler and a traveling dentist,  and was offering to the public complete sets of teeth, opiates, powders, and elixirs. 
Fantine joined the crowd and began to laugh with the rest at this harangue. The puller of teeth saw this beautiful girl laughing, and suddenly called out: “ You have pretty teeth, you girl who are laughing there. If you will sell me your two incisors, I will give you a gold Napoleon for each of them. ”
“ What is that ? What are my incisors ? ” asked Fantine. 
“ The incisors,” resumed the professor of dentistry, “ are the front teeth, the two upper ones.”
“ How horrible! ” cried Fantine.  
“ Two Napoleons! ” grumbled a toothless old hag who stood by. “ How lucky she is! ”
Fantine fled away and stopped her ears not to hear the shrill voice of the man who  called after her: “ Consider, my beauty! Two Napoleons! How much good they will do you.If you have the courage for it, come this evening to the inn of the Tillac d’ Argent; you will find me there.”

Fantine returned home. 
She was raving, and told the story to her good neighbor Marguerite.
“ And what was it he offered you? ” asked Marguerite.  
“ Two Napoleons.”
“ That is forty francs.” 
“ Yes,” said Fantine, “ that makes forty francs.” 
She became thoughtful and went about her work.  In a quarter of an hour she left her sewing and went to the stairs to read again the Thénardiers’ letter. 
On her return she said to Marguerite, who who was at work near her: 
“ What does this mean, a military fever? Do you know? ”
“ Yes,” answered the old woman, “ it is a disease.”
“ Does it attack children? ”
“ Children especially.” 
“ Do people die of it? ”
“ Very often,” said Marguerite. 
Fantine withdrew and went once more to read over the letter on the stairs. 
 
In the evening she went out, and took the direction of the rue de Paris where the inns are. 
The next morning, when Marguerite went into Fantine’s chamber before daybreak, for they always worked together, and so made one candle do for the two, she found Fantine seated upon her couch, pale and icy. She had not been in bed. Her cap had fallen upon her knees. The candle had burned all night, and was almost consumed.  
Marguerite stopped upon the threshold, petrified by this wild disorder, and exclaimed: “Good Lord! The candle is all burned out. Something has happened.” 
Then she looked at Fantine, who sadly turned her shorn head. 
Fantine had grown ten years older since evening. 
“ Bless us! ” said Marguerite. “What is the matter with you, Fantine ? ” 
“ Nothing,” said Fantine. “ Quite the contrary. My child will not die with that frightful sickness for lack of aid. I am satisfied.” 
So saying, she showed the old woman two Napoleons that glistened on the table. 
“ Oh! Good God! ” said Marguerite. “ Why there is a fortune! Where did you get these louis d’or? ”
“ I got them,” answered Fantine. 
At the same time she smiled. The candle lit up her face. 
It was a sickening smile, for the corners of her mouth were stained with blood, and a dark cavity revealed itself there. 
The two teeth were gone.  
She sent the forty francs to Montfermeil. 
And this was a ruse of the Thénardiers to get money. 
Cosette was not sick. 

Fantine threw her looking glass out of the window. Long before, she had left her little room on the second story for an attic room with no other fastening than a latch, one of those garret rooms the ceiling of which makes an angle with the floor and hits your head at every moment. The poor cannot go to the end of their chamber or to the end of their destiny, but by bending continually more and more. Her creditors were more pitiless than ever. The secondhand dealer, who had taken back nearly all his furniture, was constantly saying to her: “ When  will you pay me, wench? ”
Good God! What did they want her to do? She felt herself hunted down, and something of the wild beast began to  develop within her. About the same time, Thenardier wrote to her that really he had waited with too much generosity, and that he must have a hundred francs immediately, or else little Cosette, just convalescing after her severe sickness, would be turned outdoors into the cold and upon the highway, and that she would become what she could,and would perish if she must. “ A hundred francs,” thought Fantine. “ But when is there a place where one can earn a hundred sous a day? ”
“ Come! ” said she, “ I will sell what is left.” 
The unfortunate creature became a woman of the town.     
 
VIII

WHAT is this history of Fantine? It is society buying a slave. 
From whom? From misery. 
From hunger, from cold, from loneliness, from abandonment, from privation. Melancholy barter. A soul for a bit of bread. Misery makes the offer, society accepts. 
The holy law of Jesus Christ governs our civilization, but it does not yet permeate it; it is said that slavery has disappeared from European civilization. This is a mistake. It still exists, but it weighs now only upon woman, and it is called prostitution.  
It weighs upon woman, that is to say, upon grace, upon beauty, upon maternity.  This is not one of the least of man’s shames. 
At the stage of this mournful drama at which we have now arrived, Fantine has nothing left of what she had formerly been. She has become marble in becoming corrupted. Whoever touches her feels a chill. She goes her ways, she endured you, and she knows you not; she wears a dishonored and severe face. Life and social order have spoken their last word to her. All that can  happen to her has happened. She has endured all, borne all, experienced all, suffered all, lost all, wept for all. 

She is resigned, with that resignation that resembles indifference as death resembles sleep. She shuns nothing now. She fears nothing now. Every cloud falls upon her, and all the ocean sweeps over her! What matters it to her! The sponge is already drenched. 
She believed so at least, but it is a mistake to imagine that man can exhaust his destiny, or can reach the bottom of anything whatever. 
Alas! What are all these destinies thus driven pell-mell? 
Whither go they? Why are they so? 
He who knows that, sees all the shadow. 
He is alone. His name is God. 

IX 


There is in all small cities, and there was at M—sur m— in particular, a set of young men who nibble their fifteen hundred livres of income in the country with the same air with which their fellows devour two hundred thousand francs a year at Paris. They are beings of the great neuter species: geldings, parasites, nobodies,  who have a little land, a little folly, and a little wit, who would be clowns in a drawing room, and think themselves gentlemen in a barroom, who talk about “ my fields, my woods, my peasants,” hiss the actresses at the theater to prove that they are persons of taste, quarrel with the officers of the garrison to show that they are gallant, hunt, smoke, gape, drink, take snuff, play billiards, stare at passengers getting out of the coach, live at the café, dine at the inn, have a dog who eats the bones under the table, and a mistress who sets the dishes upon it, hold fast to a sou, overdo the fashions, admire tragedy, despise women, wear out their old boots, copy London as reflected from Paris, and Paris as reflected from Pont-á-Mousson, grow stupid as they grow old, do no work, do no good, and not much harm. 
Eight or ten months after what has been related in the preceding pages, in the early part of January, 1823, one evening when it had been snowing, one of these dandies, one of these idlers, a “well-intentioned” man, very warmly wrapped in one of those large cloaks which completed the fashionable costume in cold weather, was amusing himself with tormenting a creature who was walking back and forth before the window of the officers’ café, in a ball dress, with her neck and shoulders bare, and flowers upon her head. The dandy was smoking, for that was decidedly the fashion.  
Every time that the woman passed before him, he threw out at her, with a puff of smoke from his cigar,  some remark which he thought was witty and pleasant as: “How ugly you are! ”

 “ Are you trying to hide? ” “ You have lost your teeth! ” etc., etc. This gentleman’s name was Monsieur Bamatabois. The woman, a rueful, bedizened specter, who was walking backward and forward upon the snow, did not answer him, did not even look at him, but continued her walk in silence and with a dismal regularity that brought her under his sarcasm every five minutes, like the condemned  soldier who at stated periods returns under the rods. This failure to secure attention doubtless piqued the loafer, who , taking advantage of the moment when she turned, came up behind her with a stealthy step, and stifling his laughter stooped down, seized a handful of snow from the sidewalk, and threw it hastily into her back between her naked shoulders.  The girl roared with rage, turned, bounded like a panther, and rushed upon the man, burying her nails in his face, and using the most frightful words that ever fell from the off-scouring of a guardhouse. 
These insults were thrown out in a voice roughened by brandy, from a hideous mouth which lacked the two front teeth. It was Fantine.  

At the noise which this made, the officers came out of the café, a crowd gathered, and a large circle was formed, laughing,  jeering and applauding, around this center of attraction composed of two beings who could hardly be recognized as a man and a woman, the man defending himself, his hat knocked off,  the woman kicking and striking, her head bare, shrieking, toothless, and without hair, livid with wrath, and horrible. 
Suddenly a tall man advanced quickly from the crowd , seized the woman by her muddy satin waist, and said: “ Follow me! ”
The woman raised her head; her furious voice died out at once. Her eyes were glassy, from livid she had become pale, and she shuddered with a shudder of terror. She recognized Javert. 
The dandy profited by this to steal away. 

X 


JAVERT dismissed the bystanders, broke up the circle, and walked off rapidly toward the Bureau of Police, which is at the end of the square, dragging the poor creature after him. She made no resistance, but followed mechanically. Neither spoke a word. The flock of spectators followed with their jokes. The deepest misery, an opportunity for  obscenity. 

When they reached the Bureau of Police, which was a low hall warmed by a stove, and guarded by a sentinel, with a grated window looking on the street, Javert opened the door, entered with Fantine, and closed the door behind him. 
On entering, Fantine crouched down in a corner, motionless and silent, like a frightened dog. 
 The sergeant of the guard placed a lighted candle on the table. Javert sat down, drew from his pocket a sheet of stamped paper, and began to write. 
Javert was impassible; his grave face betrayed no emotion. He was, however, engaged in serious and earnest consideration. At this moment he felt that his policeman’s stool was a bench of justice. He was conducting a trial. He was trying and condemning. He called all the ideas of which his mind was capable around the grand thing that he was doing. The more he examined the conduct of this girl, the more he revolted at it. It was clear that he had seen a crime committed. He had seen, there in the street, society represented by a property holder and an elector, insulted and attacked by a creature who was an outlaw and an outcast.  A prostitute had assaulted a citizen. He, Javert, had seen that himself. He wrote in silence. 
When he had finished, he signed his name, folded the paper, and handed it to the sergeant of the guard, saying: “ Take three men, and carry this girl to jail.” Then turning to Fantine: “ You are in for six months.” 
The hapless woman shuddered.  
“ Six months! Six months in prison! ” cried she. “ Six months to earn seven sous a day! But what will become of Cosette! My daughter! My daughter! Why, I still owe more than a hundred francs to the Thénardiers. Monsieur Inspector, do you know that? ”
She dragged herself along on the floor, dirtied by the muddy boots of all these men, without rising, clasping her hands, and moving rapidly on her  knees. 
“ Monsieur Javert,” said she, “ I beg your pity. I assure you that I was not in the wrong. If you had seen the beginning, you would have seen. I swear to you by the good God that I was not in the wrong. That gentleman, whom I do not know, threw snow in my back. Have they the right to throw snow into our backs  when we are going along quietly like that without doing any harm to anybody? That made me wild. I am not very well, you see! And then he had already been saying things to me for some time. “ You are homely! ” “ You have no teeth! ” I know too well that I have lost  my teeth. I did not do anything; I thought: “ He is a gentleman who is assuming himself.” “I was not immodest with him, I did not speak to him.” 

It was then that he threw the snow at me. Monsieur Javert, my good Monsieur Inspector! Just think that I have a hundred francs to pay, or else they will turn away my little one. Oh! My God! I cannot have her with me. What I do is so vile! Do you see, she is a little one that they will put out on the highway, to do what she can, in the very heart of the winter; you must feel pity for such a thing, good Monsieur Javert. 
If she were older, she could earn her living, but she cannot at such an age. Have pity on me, Monsieur Javert.” 
She talked thus, bent double, shaken with sobs, blinded by tears, her neck bare, clenching her hands, coughing with a dry and short cough, stammering very feeble with an agonized voice. Great grief is a divine and terrible radiance which transfigures the wretched. At that moment Fantine had again become beautiful. At certain instants she stopped and tenderly kissed the policeman’s coat. She would have softened a heart of granite, but you cannot soften a heart of wood. 
“ Come,” said Javert, “ I have heard you. Haven’t you got through? March off at once! You have your six months! The Eternal Father in person could do nothing for you.”
At those solemn words: “ The Eternal Father in person could do nothing for you,” she understood that her sentence was fixed. She sank down murmuring: 
“ Mercy! ” 
Javert turned his back. 
The soldiers seized her by the arms. 
A few minutes before  a man had entered without being noticed. He had closed the door, and stood with his back against it and heard the despairing supplication of Fantine. When the soldiers put their hands upon the wretched being, who would not rise, he stepped forward out of the shadow and said: 
“ One moment, if you please! ”
Javert raised his eyes and recognized Monsieur Madeleine.  
He took off his hat, and bowing with a sort of angry awkwardness: 
“ Pardon, Monsieur Mayor- ” 
This word, Monsieur Mayor, had a strange effect upon Fantine. She sprang to her feet at once, like a specter rising from the ground, pushed back the soldiers with her arms, walked straight to Monsieur Madeleine before they could stop her, and gazing at him fixedly, with a wild  look, she exclaimed: 
“ Ah! It is you then who are Monsieur Mayor! ”
Then she burst out laughing and spit in his face, 
Monsieur Madeleine wiped his face and said: 
“Inspector Javert, set this woman at liberty.” 

Javert felt as though he were on the point of losing his senses.    
He was stupefied with amazement; thought and speech alike failed him; the sum of possible astonishment had been overpassed. He remained speechless. 
The mayor’s words were not less strange a blow to Fantine. 
She raised her bare arm and clung to the damper of the stove as if she were staggered. Meanwhile she looked all around and began to talk in a low voice, as if speaking to herself:
 “ At liberty! They let me go! I am not to go to prison for six months?  Who was it said that? It is not possible that anybody said that. I misunderstood. That cannot be this  monster of a mayor! Oh, Monsieur Javert, It is you who said that they must let me go, is it not? Go and inquire, speak to my landlord; I pay my rent, and he will surely tell you that I am honest. Oh dear, I beg your pardon, I have touched - I did not know it - the damper of the stove, and it smokes.” 
Then addressing herself to the soldiers: 
“Say now, did you see how I spit in his  face? Oh! You old scoundrel of a mayor, you come here to frighten me, but I am not afraid of you. I am afraid of Monsieur Javert. I am afraid of my good Monsieur Javert! ” 
As she said this she turned again toward the inspector: 
“ Now, you see, Monsieur Inspector, you must be just. I know that you are just, Monsieur Inspector; in fact, it is very simple, a man who jocosely throws a little snow into a woman’s back, that makes them laugh, the officers, they must divert themselves with something, and we poor things are only for their amusement. And then, you, you come, you are obliged to keep order, you arrest the woman who has done wrong, but on reflection as you are good, you tell them to set me at liberty, that is for my little one, because six months in prison, that would prevent my supporting my child. Only never come back again, wretch! Oh! I will never come back again, Monsieur Javert! They may do anything they like with me now, I will not stir. Only, today, you see, I cried out because that hurt me. I  did not in the least expect that snow from that gentleman, and then, I have told you, I am not very well, I cough, I have something in my chest like a ball which burns me, and the doctor tells me: “ Be careful. ” Stop, feel, give me your hand, don’t be afraid, here it is. ” 
Suddenly she hastily adjusted the disorder of her garments, smoothed down the folds of her dress, which, in dragging herself about, had been raised almost as high as her knees, and walked toward the door, saying in an undertone to the soldiers, with a friendly nod of the head: 
“ Boys, Monsieur the Inspector said that you must release me; I am going.” 
She put her hand upon the latch. One more step and she would be in the street. 

Javert until that moment had remained standing, motionless, his eyes fixed on the ground, looking, in the midst of the scene, like a statue which was waiting to be placed in position. 
The sound of the latch roused him. He raised his head with an expression of sovereign authority, an expression always the more frightful in proportion as power is vested in beings of lower grade, ferocious in the wild beast, atrocious in the undeveloped man. 
“ Sergeant, ” exclaimed he, “ don’t you see that this vagabond is going off? Who told you to let her go? 
“ I ” said Madeleine. 
At the words of Javert, Fantine had trembled and dropped the latch, as a thief who is caught drops what he has stolen. When Madeleine spoke, she turned, and from that moment , without saying a word, without even daring to breathe freely, she looked by turns from Madeleine to  Javert and from Javert to Madeleine, as the one or the other was speaking. 

When Monsieur Madeleine pronounced that “ I ” which we have just heard, the inspector of police, Javert, turned toward the mayor, pale, cold, with blue lips, a  desperate look, his whole body agitated with an imperceptible tremor, and, an unheard-of thing, said to him with a downcast look, but a firm voice: 
“Monsieur Mayor, that cannot be done.”
“Why?” said Monsieur Madeleine. 
“ This wretched woman has insulted a citizen.”  
“ Inspector Javert, ” replied Monsieur Madeleine, in a conciliating and calm tone, “ listen.  You are an honest man, and I have no objection to explaining myself to you. The truth is this. I was passing through the square when you arrested this woman; there was a crowd still there; I learned the circumstances; I know all about it; it is the citizen who was in the wrong, and who, by a faithful police, would have been arrested.”    
Javert went on: 
“ This wretch has just insulted Monsieur the Mayor.” 
“ That concerns me,” said Monsieur Madeleine. “ The insult to me rests with myself, perhaps. I can do what I please about it.” 
“ I beg Monsieur the Mayor’s pardon. The insult rests not with him, it rests with justice.”  
“ Inspector Javert,” replied Monsieur Madeleine, “ the highest justice is conscience. I have heard this woman. I know what I am doing.”  
“ And for my part, Monsieur Mayor, I do not know what I am  seeing.” 
“ Then content yourself with obeying.”
“ I obey my duty. My duty requires that this woman spend six months in prison.”   
Monsieur Madeleine answered mildly: 
“ Listen to this. She shall not a day.” 
“ Monsieur Mayor, permit —”
“ Not another word.” 
“ However— ”
“ Retire,” said Monsieur Madeleine. 
Javert received the blow, standing in front, and with open breast like a Russian soldier. He bowed to the ground before the mayor, and went out. 

Fantine stood by the door and looked at him with stupor as he passed before her. 
Meanwhile she also was the subject of a strange revolution. 
She listened  with dismay, she looked around with alarm, and at each word that Monsieur Madeleine uttered, she felt the fearful darkness of her hatred melt within and flow away while there was born in her heart an indescribable and unspeakable warmth of joy, of confidence, and of love. 
When Javert was gone, Monsieur Madeleine turned toward her, and said to her, speaking slowly and with difficulty, like a man who is struggling that he may not weep: 
“ I have heard you. I  knew nothing of what you have said. I believe that it is true. I did not even know that you had left my workshop. Why did you not apply to me? But now, I will pay your debts, I will have your child come to you, or you shall go to her.  You shall live here, at Paris, or where you will. I take charge of your child and you. You shall do no more work, if you do not wish to. I will give you all the money that you need.  You shall again become honest in again becoming happy. More than that, listen. I declare to you from this moment, if all is as you say, and I do  not doubt it, that you have never ceased to  be virtuous and holy before  God.  Oh, poor woman! ”    

This was more than poor Fantine could bear. To have Cosette! To leave this infamous life! To live free, rich, happy, honest, with Cosette! To see suddenly spring up in the midst of her misery all these realities of paradise! She looked as if she were stupefied at the man who was speaking to  her, and could only pour out two or three sobs: “Oh! Oh! Oh! ” Her limbs gave way, she threw herself  on her knees before Monsieur Madeleine, and, before he could prevent it, he felt that she had seized his hand and carried it to her lips. 
Then she fainted. 
 
Javert 
I  
  
MONSIEUR MADELEINE had Fantine taken to the infirmary, which was in his own house. He confided her to the sisters, who put her to bed. A violent fever came on, and she passed a part of the night in delirious ravings. Finally, she fell asleep. 
Toward noon the following day, Fantine awoke. She heard a breathing near her bed, drew aside the curtain, and saw Monsieur Madeleine standing gazing at something above his head. His look was full of compassionate and supplicating agony.  She followed its direction, and saw that it was fixed upon a crucifix nailed against the wall.  
From that moment Monsieur Madeleine was transfigured in the eyes of Fantine; he seemed to her clothed upon with light. 
He was absorbed in a kind of prayer. She gazed at him for a long while without daring to interrupt him; at last she said timidly: 
“ What are you doing? ”
Monsieur Madeleine had been in that place for an hour waiting for Fantine to  awake. He took her hand, felt her pulse, and said: 
“ How do you feel? ”
“ Very well. I have slept.” she said. “ I think I am getting better –this will be nothing.” 
Then he said, answering the question she had first asked him, as if she had just asked it: 
“ I was praying to the martyr who is on high.” 
And in his thought he added: “ For the martyr who is here below.” 
Monsieur Madeleine had passed the night and morning in informing himself about Fantine. He knew all now, he had learned, even in all its poignant details, the history of Fantine. 
He went on: 
“ You have suffered greatly, poor mother. Oh! Do not lament, you have now the portion of the elect. It is in this way that mortals become angels. It is not their fault; they do not know how to set about it otherwise. This hell from which you have come out is the first step toward heaven. We must begin by that.” 
He sighed deeply; but she smiled with this sublime smile from which two teeth were gone. 
Monsieur Madeleine wrote immediately to the Thénardiers. 
Fantine owed them a hundred and twenty francs. He sent them three hundred francs, telling them to pay themselves out of it, and bring the child at once to M—sur m—, where her mother, who was sick, wanted her. 
This astonished Thénardier. 
“ The Devill” he said to his wife. “ We won’t let go of the child. It may be that this lark will become a milch cow. I guess some silly fellow has been smitten by the mother.” 
He replied by a bill of five hundred  and some odd francs carefully drawn up. In this bill figured two incontestable items for upward of three hundred francs, one of a physician and the other of an apothecary who had attended and supplied Eponine and Azelma during two long illnesses. Cossette, as we have said, had not been ill. This was only a slight substitution of names. Thénardier wrote at the bottom of the bill: “ Received on account three hundred francs.” 
“ Monsieur Madeleine immediately sent three hundred francs more, and wrote: “ Make haste to  bring Cossette.” 
“ Christy! ” said Thénardier. “ We won”t let go of the girl.” 
Meanwhile Fantine had not recovered.  She still remained in the infirmary.  
Monsieur Madeleine came to see her twice a day, and at each visit she asked him: 
“ Shall I see my Cosette soon?
He answered: 
“ Perhaps tomorrow, I expect her every moment .” 
And the mother’s pale face would brighten. 
“ Ah! ”  She would say. “ How happy I shall be.” 
We have just said she did not recover; on the contrary, her condition seemed to become worse from week to week. The doctor sounded her lungs and shook his head. 
Monsieur Madeleine said to him: 
“ Well? ”
“ Has she not a child she is anxious to see? ” said the doctor. 
“ Yes.” 
“ Well then, make haste to bring her.” 
Monsieur Madeleine gave a shudder. 
Fantine asked him: “ What did the doctor say? ”
Monsieur Madeleine tried to smile.  
“ He told us to bring your child at once. That will restore your health.”

One morning Monsieur Madeleine was in his office arranging for some pressing business of the mayoralty, when he was informed that Javert, the inspector of police, wished to speak with him. 
“ Let him come in,” said he. 
Javert entered. 
He respectfully saluted the mayor, who had his back towards him. The mayor did not look up, but continued to make notes on the papers. 
Javert advanced a few steps, and paused without breaking the silence. His whole person expressed abasement and firmness and an indescribably courageous dejection. 
At last the mayor laid down his pen and turned partly around: 
“ Well, what is it? What is the matter, Javert? ”
Javert remained silent a moment as if collecting himself then raised his voice with a sad solemnity which did not, however, exclude simplicity: “ There has been a criminal act committed, Monsieur Mayor.” 
“ What act? ”
“ An inferior agent  of the government has been wanting in respect to a magistrate, in the gravest manner, I come,  as is my duty, to bring the fact to your knowledge.” 
“ Who is this agent? ” asked Monsieur Madeleine. 
“ I, ” said Javert. 
“ You? ”
“ I. “ 
“ And who is the magistrate who has to complain of this agent? ”
“ You, Monsieur Mayor.” 
Monsieur Madeleine straightened himself in his chair. Javert continued, with serious looks and eyes still cast down.  
“ Monsieur Mayor, I come to ask you to be so kind as to make charges and procure my dismissal.” 
Monsieur Madeleine, amazed, opened his mouth. Javert interrupted him: 
“ You will say that I may tender my resignation, but that is not enough.  To resign is honorable; I have done wrong. I ought to be punished. I must be dismissed.” 
“ Ah, indeed! Why? ”
“ You will understand, Monsieur Mayor,” Javert sighed deeply, and continued sadly and coldly:
“ Monsieur Mayor, six weeks ago, after that scene about that girl, I was enraged and I denounced you.” 
“ Denounced me? ” 
“ To the Prefecture of Police at Paris.” 
Monsieur Madeleine, who did not laugh much oftener than Javert, began to laugh: 
“As a mayor having encroached upon the police? ”
“ As a former convict.” 
The mayor became livid. 
Javert, who had not raised his eyes, continued: 
“ I believed it. For a long while I had had suspicions. A resemblance, information you obtained at Faverolles, your immense strength, the affair of  old Fauchelevent – and in fact I don’t know what other stupidities; but at last I took you for a man named Jean Valjean.” 
“ Named what? How did you call that name? ”
“ Jean Valjean. He was a convict I saw twenty years ago, when I was adjutant of the galley guard at Toulon. After leaving the galleys this Valjean, it appears, robbed a bishop’s palace, then he committed another robbery with weapons in his hands, on a highway, on a little Savoyard.For eight years his whereabouts have been unknown, and search has been made for him. I fancied – in short, I have done this thing. 
Anger determined me, and I denounced you to the prefect.” 
Monsieur Madeleine, who had taken up the file of papers again, a few moments before, said with a tone of perfect indifference: “ And what answer did you get? ” 
“ That I was crazy.” 
“ Well! ”
“ Well, they were right.”
“It is fortunate that you think so! ”
“ It must be so, for the real Jean Valjean has been found.” 
The paper that Monsieur Madeleine held fell from his hand; he raised his head, looked steadily at Javert, and said in an inexpressible tone: 
“ Ah! ” 
Javert continued: 
“ I will tell you how it is, Monsieur Mayor. There was, it appears, in the country, near Ailly-le-Haut Clocher, a simple sort of fellow who was called Father Champmathieu. He was very poor. Nobody paid any attention to him. Such folks live, one hardly knows how. Finally, this last fall, Father Champmathieu was arrested for stealing cider apples from —, but that is of no  consequence. There was a theft, a wall scaled, branches of trees broken. Our Champmathieu was arrested; he had even then a branch of an apple tree in his hand.  The rogue was caged. So far, it was nothing more than a penitentiary matter. But here comes in the hand of providence. The jail being in a bad condition, the police justice thought it best to take him to Arras, where the prison of the department is. In this prison at Arras there was a former convict named Brevet, who is there for some trifle, and who, for his good conduct, has been made turnkey. No sooner was Champmathieu set down, than Brevet cried out: “ Ha, ha ! I know that man. He is a fagot. Look up here, my good man. You are Jean Valjean.  “ Jean Valjean, who is Jean Valjean? ” Champmathieu plays off the astonished. “ Don’t play ignorance,” said Brevet. “ You are Jean Valjean; you were in the galleys at Toulon. It is twenty years ago. We were there together.” Champmathieu denied it all. Faith! You understand; they fathomed it. The case was worked up and this was what they found. This Champmathieu thirty years ago was a pruner in diverse places, particularly in Faverolles. There we lose trace of him. You follow me, do you not? Search has been made at Faverolles; the family of Jean Valjean are no longer there. Nobody knows where they are. You know in such classes these disappearances of families often occur. You search, but can find nothing. Such people, when they are not mud, are dust. And then as the commencement of this story dates back thirty years, there is nobody now at Faverolles who knew Jean Valjean. But search has been at Toulon. Besides Brevet there are only two convicts who have seen Jean Valjean. They are convicts for life; their names are Cochepaille and Chenildieu. These men were brought from the galleys and confronted with the pretended Champmathieu. They did not hesitate. To them as well as to  Brevet it was Jean Valjean. Same age, fifty-four years old, same height, same appearance, in fact the same man; it is he. At this time it was that I sent my denunciation to the Prefecture at Paris. They replied that I was out of my mind, and that Jean Valjean was at Arras in the hands of justice.  
You may imagine how that astonished me, I who believed that I had here the same Jean Valjean. I wrote to the justice; he sent for me and brought Champmathieu before me.” 
“ Well,” interrupted Monsieur Madeleine. 
Javert replied,  with an incorruptible and sad face: 
“ Monsieur Mayor, truth is truth. I am sorry for it, but that man is Jean Valjean. I recognized him also.” 
Monsieur Madeleine said in a very low voice: 
“ Are you sure ”
Javert began to  laugh with the suppressed laugh which indicates profound conviction. 
“ H’m, sure! But this man pretends not to understand; he says: “ I am Champmathieu: I have no more to say.” He puts on an appearance of astonishment; he plays the brute. Oh, the rascal is cunning! But it is all the same, there is the evidence. Four persons have recognized him, and the old villain will be condemned. It has been taken to the assizes at Arras. I am going to  testify. I have been summoned.” 

Monsieur Madeleine had turned again to his desk, and was quietly looking over his papers, reading and writing alternatively, like a man pressed with business. He turned again toward Javert: 
“ That will do, Javert, indeed all these details interest me very little. We are wasting time, and we have urgent business. But did you not tell me you were going to Arras in eight or ten days on this matter? ”
“ Sooner than that, Monsieur Mayor.” 
“ What day then? ”
“ I think I told Monsieur that the case would be tried tomorrow, and that I should leave by the diligence tonight.” 
Monsieur Madeleine made an imperceptible motion. 
“ And how long will the matter last? ”
“ One day at longest. Sentence will be pronounced at latest tomorrow evening. But I shall not wait for the sentence, which is certain; as soon as my testimony is given I shall return here.” 
“ Very well,” said Monsieur Madeleine. 
And he dismissed him with a wave of his hand. 
Javert did not go. 
“ Your pardon, monsieur,” said he.  
“ What more is there?” asked Monsieur Madeleine. 
“ Monsieur Mayor, there is one thing more to which I desire to call your attention.” 
“ What is it? ”
“ It is that I ought to  be dismissed.” 
Monsieur Madeleine arose. 
“ Javert, you are a man of honor and I esteem you. You exaggerate your fault. Besides, this is an offense which concerns me.  You are worthy of  promotion rather than disgrace.  I desire you to keep your place.” 
Javert looked at Monsieur Madeleine with his calm eyes, in whose depths it seemed that one beheld his conscience, unenlightened, but stern and pure, and said in a tranquil voice: 
“ Monsieur Mayor, I cannot agree to that. I ought to treat myself as I would treat anybody else. When I put down malefactors, when I rigorously brought up  offenders, I often said to myself; “You, if you ever trip, if ever I catch you doing wrong, look out! I have tripped, I have caught myself doing wrong. So much the worse! I must be sent away, broken, dismissed; that is right. I have hands: I can till the ground. It is all the same to me. Monsieur  Mayor, the good of the service demands an example. I simply ask the dismissal of Inspector Javert.” 

All this was said in a tone of proud humility, a desperate and resolute tone, which gave an indescribably whimsical grandeur to this oddly honest man. 
“ We will see,” said  Monsieur Madeleine. 
And he held out his hand to him. 
Javert started back, and said fiercely: 
“Pardon, Monsieur Mayor, that should not be. A mayor does not give his hand to a spy.” 
He added between his teeth: 
“ Spy, yes; from the moment I abused the power of my position, I  have been nothing better than a spy! ”
Then he  bowed profoundly, and went toward the door. 
There he turned around, his eyes yet downcast. 
“ Monsieur Mayor, I will continue in the service until I am relieved.” 
He went out. Monsieur Madeleine sat musing, listening to his firm and resolute step as it died away along the corridor.   


The Champmathieu Affair 

I 


THE reader has doubtless divined that Monsieur Madeleine is none other than Jean Valjean. 
We have already looked into the depths of that conscience; the time has come to look into them again.  We do so not without emotion, nor without trembling. There exists nothing more terrific than this kind of contemplation. The mind’s eye can nowhere find anything more dazzling or more dark than in man; it can fix itself upon nothing which is more awful, more complex, more mysterious or more infinite. There is one spectacle grander than the sea, that is the sky; there is one spectacle grander than the sky, that is the interior of the soul. 

From the first words that Javert pronounced on entering his office,  at the moment when that name which he had so deeply buried was so strangely uttered, he was seized with stupor, and as if intoxicated by the sinister grotesqueness of his destiny, through that stupor he felt the shudder which precedes great shocks; he bent like an oak at the approach of a storm, like a soldier at the approach of an assault. He felt clouds full of thunderings and lightnings gathering upon his head. Even while listening to Javert, his first thought was to go, to run, to denounce himself, to drag this Champmathieu out of prison, and to put himself in his place; it was painful and sharp as an incision into the living flesh, but passed away, and he said to himself: “Let us see! Let us see! ” He repressed this first generous impulse and recoiled before such heroism. 
Doubtless it would have been fine if, after the holy words of the bishop, after so many years of repentance and self-denial, in the midst of a penitence admirably commenced, even in the presence of so terrible a conjecture, he had not faltered an instant, and had continued to march on with even pace toward that yawning pit at the bottom of which was heaven – this would have been fine, but this was not the case. We must render an account of what took place in that soul, and we can relate only what was there. What first gained control was the instinct of self-preservation; he collected his ideas hastily, stifled his emotions, took into consideration the presence of Javert, the great danger, postponed any decision with the firmness of terror, banished from his mind all consideration of the course he should pursue, and resumed his calmness as a gladiator retakes his buckler. 
For the rest of the day he was in this state, a tempest within, a perfect calm without. He went according to his habit to the sick bed of Fantine, and prolonged his visit, by an instinct of kindness, saying to himself that he ought to do so and recommend her earnestly to the sisters, in case it should happen that he would have to be absent. He felt vaguely that it would perhaps be necessary for him to go to Arras, and without having in the least decided upon this journey, he said to himself that, entirely free from suspicion as he was, there would be no difficulty in being a witness of what might pass, and he engaged a tilbury,  in order to  be prepared  for any emergency. 
He dined with a good appetite.  
Returning to his room  he collected his thoughts. He examined the situation and found it an unheard–of one, so unheard–of that in the midst of his reverie, by some strange impulse of almost inexplicable anxiety, he rose from his chair, and bolted his door. He feared  lest something might yet enter.  He barricaded himself against  all  possibilities. 
A moment afterward he blew out his light. It annoyed him. 
It seemed to him  that somebody could see him. 
Who? Somebody?  
Alas! What he wanted to keep outdoors had entered; what he wanted to render blind was looking upon him. His conscience. 
His conscience, that is to say, God.  
At the first moment, however, he deluded himself; he had a feeling of safety and solitude; the bolt drawn, he believed himself invisible. Then he took possession of himself; he placed his elbows on the table, rested his head on his hand and set himself to  meditating in the darkness. 
His brain had lost the power of retaining its ideas; then passed away like waves, and he grasped his forehead with both hands to stop them.  
Out of this tumult, which overwhelmed his will and his reason, and from which he sought to draw a certainty and a resolution, nothing came clearly  forth but anguish. 
His brain was burning. He went to the window and threw it wide open. Not a star was in the sky. He returned and sat down by the table. 
The first hour thus rolled away.  
Little by little,  however, vague outlines began to take form and to fix themselves in his meditation; he could perceive, with the precision of reality, not the whole situation, but a few details. 
     It seemed to him that he had awakened from some wondrous slumber, and that he found himself gliding over a precipice in the middle of the night, standing, shivering, recoiling in vain, upon the very edge of an abyss. He perceived distinctly in the gloom an unknown man, a stranger, whom fate had mistaken for him, and was pushing into the gulf in his place. It was necessary, in order that the gulf should be closed, that someone should fall in, he or the other. 
He had only to let it alone. 
All this was so violent and so strange that he suddenly felt that kind of indescribable movement that no man experience more than two or three times in his life, a sort of convulsion of the conscience that stirs up all that is dubious in the heart, which is composed of irony, of joy, and of despair, and which might be called a burst of interior laughter. 
He hastily relighted his candle. 
“ Well, what! ” said he, “ What am  I afraid of ? Why do I ponder over these things? I am now safe; all is finished. Ah, yes, but, what is there unfortunate in all this! People who should see me, upon my honor, would think that a catastrophe had befallen me! After all, if there is any harm done to anybody, it is in nowise my fault. Providence has done it all. This is what He wishes apparently. Have I the right to disarrange what He arranges? What is it that I ask for now? Why do I interfere? It does not concern me. How! I am not satisfied! But what would I have then? The aim to which I have aspired for so many years, my nightly dream, the object of my prayers to heaven, security– I have gained it. It is God’s will. I must do nothing contrary to the will of God. And why is it God’s will? That I may carry on what I have begun, that I may do good, that I may be one day a grand and encouraging example, that it may be said that there was finally some little happiness resulting from this suffering which I have undergone and this virtue to which I have returned! It is decided, let the matter alone! Let us not interfere with God ” 
Thus he spoke in the depths of his conscience, hanging over what might be called his own abyss. He rose from  his chair, and began to walk the room. “ Come,” said he, “ let us think of it no more. The resolution is formed! ” But he felt no joy. 
Quite the contrary, 
One can no more prevent the mind from returning to an idea than the sea from returning to a shore. In the case of the sailor, this is called the tide; in the case of the guilty, it is called remorse. God upheaves the soul as well as the ocean. 
After the lapse of a few moments, he could do no otherwise; he resumed this somber dialogue, in which it was himself who spoke and himself who listened, saying what he wished to keep silent, listening to what he did not wish to hear, yielding to that mysterious power which said to him: “ Think! ” as it said two thousand years ago to another condemned: “ March! ”
He asked himself then where he was. He questioned himself upon this “ resolution formed.” He confessed to himself that all that he had been arranging in his mind was monstrous, that “ to let the matter alone, not to interfere with God,” was simply horrible, to let this mistake of destiny and of men be accomplished,  not to prevent it, to  lend himself to it by his silence;to  do nothing, finally, was to do all! It was the last degree of hypocritical meanness! It was a base, cowardly, lying, abject, hideous crime! 
For the first time within eight years,  the unhappy man had just tasted the bitter flavor of a wicked thought and a wicked action.
He spit it out with disgust. 
He continued to question himself. He sternly asked himself what he had understood by this:
“ My object is attained. ” He declared that his life, in truth, did have an object. But what object? To conceal his name? To deceive the police? Was it for so petty a thing that he had done all that he had done? 
Had he no other object, which was the great one, which was the true one? To save, not his body, but his soul. To become honest and good again. To be an upright man! Was it not that above all, that alone, which he had always wished,and which the bishop had enjoined upon him? To close the door on his past? But he was not closing it, great God! He was reopening it by committing an infamous act! For he became a robber again, and the most odious of robbers! He robbed another of his existence, his life, his peace, his place in the world; he became an assassin! He murdered, he murdered in a moral sense a wretched man, he inflicted upon him that frightful life in death, that living burial, which is called the galleys; on the contrary, to deliver himself up, to save this man stricken by so ghastly a mistake, to reassume his name, to become again from duty to convict Jean Valjean – that was really to achieve his resurrection and to close forever the hell from whence he had emerged! To fall back into it in appearance was to emerge in reality! He must do that! All he had done was nothing, if he did not do that! All his life was useless, all his suffering was lost. He had only to ask the question: “ What is the use? ” He felt that the bishop was there, that the bishop was present all the more that he was dead, that the bishop was looking fixedly at him, that henceforth Mayor Madeleine with all his virtues would be abominable to him, and the galley slave, Jean Valjean, would be admirable and pure in his sight. That man saw his mask, but the bishop saw his face. 
That man saw his life, but the bishop saw his conscience. He must then go to Arras, deliver the wrong Jean Valjean, denounce the right one. Alas! That was the greatest of sacrifices, the most poignant of victories, the final step to be taken, but he must do it. Mournful destiny! He could only enter into sanctity in the eyes of God, by returning into infamy in the eyes of men! 
“ Well,” said he, “ let us take this course! Let us do our duty! Let us save this man!” 
He pronounced these words in a loud voice, without perceiving that he was speaking aloud. 
He took his books, verified them, and put them in order.
He threw into the fire a package of notes which he held against needy small traders. He wrote a letter, which he sealed, and upon the envelope of which might have been read, if there had been anyone in the room at the time: 
Monsieur Laffitte, Banker, rue d’ Artois, Paris.  
The letter to Monsieur Lafitte finished, he put in his pocket as well as a pocketbook, and began to walk again. 
The current of his thought had not changed. He still  saw his duty clearly written in luminous letters which flared out before his eyes, and moved with his gaze: “ Go! Avow thy name! Denounce thyself! ” 
He felt that he had reached the second decisive movement of his conscience, and his destiny; that the bishop had marked the first phase of his new life, and that this Champmathieu marked the second . After a great crisis, a great trial. 
His blood rushed violently to his temples. He walked back and forth constantly. Midnight was struck first from the parish church, then from the city hall. He counted the twelve strokes of the two clocks, and he compared the sound of the two bells.  It reminded him that, a few days before, he had seen at a junkshop an old bell for sale, upon which was this name: 
ANTOINE ALBIN DE ROMAINVILLE. 
He was cold. He kindled a fire. He did not think to close the window. 
Meanwhile he had fallen distracted into his stupor again. It required not a little effort to recall his mind to what he was thinking of before the clock struck.  He succeeded at last. 
“ Ah! Yes,” said he, “ I had formed the resolution to denounce myself.” 
And then all at once he thought of Fantine. 
“ Stop! ” said he. “ This poor woman!” 
Here was a new crisis. 
Fantine, abruptly appearing in his reverie, was like a ray of unexpected light. It seemed to him that everything around him was changing its aspect; he exclaimed: 
“ Ah! Yes, indeed! So far I have only thought of myself! I have only looked to my own convenience! It is whether I shall keep silent or denounce myself, conceal my body or save my soul, be a despicable and respected magistrate, or an infamous  and venerable galley slave: it is myself, always myself, only myself.  But, good God! All this is egotism. Different forms of egotism, but still egotism! Suppose I should think a little of others? The highest duty is to think of others. let us see, let us examine!

To be continue...