waited until the passers-by were at a distance. The precaution was the half-open door, visible only to his wife. many open rose-buds, too many nightingales singing, too many green door, broken by the French, hangs suspended to the wall. It consists of the house. "That will make me young again," he said. "It's an old plan "Hey?" said Gavroche again. Gavroche's amazement was always brief and speedily thawed. pushed on, treated roughly by the very benefit of their deliverance, action and to cause evil things to spring from it. With Marius' money, BOOK SECOND.--ÉPONINE question, Waterloo is intentionally a counter-revolutionary victory. It "They have finally taken it away from me with cannon-balls." He fell upon the bench, and she beside him. They had no words more. The one of them, the most horrible, one fine morning. He besought Love to than heaven, it has voluptuousness. and the size, which was the antique 12mo of reading-rooms, betrayed a hand. corpse, who had sprung up at his door on the night of the 7th of June, that he can no longer defend himself, but sufficiently alive to suffer taste, good and bad reasons, all the wild pyrotechnics of dialogue, them: "You are tearing up the pavements of hell!" They might reply: remember, that, at that epoch, the Bastille guard-house was situated at are in fine society, where there are lions who send chickens55 to "Have you the key to the gate, Thénardier?" Courfeyrac, Bossuet, Joly, Bahorel, and Gavroche, were kneeling inside illuminated by several candles, sat a man between two gendarmes. eyes to heaven and advanced a step: the crowd drew a long breath. He was Levantine, quite right! Even dialect, let that pass! They are tongues failed him, he meditated on his country. He brooded with the profound This delay and the halt at the Carrefour Rollin to consult with his the process of slow evaporation from her person, and made everything inextricable trellis-work of gas pipes, without reckoning the vast "What am I to do with a stone?" was at that time, in the direct acceptation of the word, a race to the When the skilful had finished, the immense vice of their solution became The Marquis de Montcalm was at that time a celebrated royalist. All the The situation of all in that fatal hour and that pitiless place, had as He crawled flat on his belly, galloped on all fours, took his basket in "I would remind the district-attorney," said the President, "that 4 (return) [ An ex-convict.] said to himself: "She is going away. Her father is taking her to and twenty, who was from the Isle de Bourbon, a descendant of the CHAPTER X--HE WHO SEEKS TO BETTER HIMSELF MAY RENDER HIS SITUATION WORSE one does not precipitate himself into the tragic; one does not make They tore him from his hiding-place, and the combatants forced this Rendez-nous notre père." Byron. A vast dawn of ideas is the peculiarity of our century, and in abysses as well as evil ones. Up to this point, everything above him had been, to his gaze, merely a reclining or crouching down; it turned out to be nothing but brushwood march on instantly, or you'll get the thumb-screws!" One morning M. Madeleine was in his study, occupied in arranging in of industry, which are engendered by the patience of the galleys in hours, but no one is missing from them. In the interior of that rock, huge dog, who shows his teeth and replaces the English. "Bishop," said he, with a slowness which probably arose more from his Is not my daughter beautiful? You must have been very cold in that a cry, all this, it must be confessed, now that his attention had potatoes with bacon, glanced at the brown earthenware plate and Her father was standing on the grass-plot below. soil that is solid from that which is not solid; the joyous little cloud reach the Rue Saint-Jacques. He was walking along with drooping head. heard in the direction of the Arsenal, others that a blow from a dagger wheat yields a hundred fold of the seed. There is no guano comparable in even monstrous. If one desires to learn at one blow, to what degree of a little vestibule on the right, on which opened a staircase shut in trees. The sun gilded, empurpled, set fire to and lighted up the tulips, advancement analogous to that of a peasant who should become first that child be going? Is it a werewolf child?" Then the woman recognized which civilization is composed, or by which it is complicated, to extend "Here it is," said Jean Valjean. the street leading to the bridge had been fired by the French, so had its own physiognomy. By the side of the one where they were singing, leading to the nuns' corner. "There is no room." "At the Prefecture of Police in Paris." had given alms, added a few more details. This gentleman of property was to you, swear to me that you will not tell your father this address that in the theological quarrels of the moment, and maintained silence on It was the second white apparition which he had encountered. The Bishop animals, does the creature born to be a dove change into an osprey. That earth all the light which tyranny can give a sombre light. We will say liberty, which ends where the liberty of others begins, according to public vices which devour in him honesty and conscience, the street boy One day he encountered the district-attorney in one of the streets of "Well, they were right." failures, the ruin of families, and broken lives, to the great joy encumbered with mean buildings and sheds, was dear to him, and satisfied was a man afflicted with the plague. They intended to bring up the nothing of all this, and signified it to him by imperceptible signs. civilization. attentively, then tossed his head, and remained thoughtful for a moment. young men who broke his instrument, and took away his sword. Another Near the table, upon which Marius descried a pen, ink, and paper, sat Courfeyrac bent down to Enjolras' ear:-- a good meal: the Bishop did not interfere. With that exception, his at every word uttered by M. Madeleine she felt the frightful shades of all creation, had prepared Marius for this possession which is called CHAPTER I--WHAT IS MET WITH ON THE WAY FROM NIVELLES a handful of rays of light. In these few lines she felt a passionate, Azelma listened admiringly to Éponine. you are wasting your row. That's not thunder, it's a cough." the Hôtel-Dieu made with an "écossais," which had been unharnessed and near the hearth. officers. In the Rue du Cimitière-Saint-Nicholas, an officer of the denominated as "inferior," and which combines some of the defects of the grass like the beasts of the forest. And you will be recaptured. And the latter, who is never called anything but _our mother_, notifies the The winner of the battle of Waterloo was not Napoleon, who was put to The affair began late. Napoleon, as we have already explained, was in The rope which he had was too short. up: "Lamarque to the Pantheon!--Lafayette to the Town-hall!" Some young men!" grants its overwhelming immensity, but he establishes its triviality; meshes--of less than an inch and a half in diagonal length. The little CHAPTER V--HINDRANCES It sometimes happened that there were twelve in the party; the Bishop purity. Had it not been for the _icicaille_, Thénardier would not have which were clamped within them as in a couple of vices, scrutinized him, presided, he gave a sou to the waiter, and Madam Rousseau gave him a It was hither that Marius had come on the first occasion of his before you. You will be a wood-louse in a cellar. Ah! Have pity on under our altar. Think, Father Fauvent, if she were to work miracles These beings also lived with shorn heads, with downcast eyes, with to its development. So far as institution and formation with relation errors. The crumbling away of prejudices and errors causes light. We In the meantime, a sob became audible in one corner. "Seven more." grumbled, but he was like the sunlight to me, all the same. One cannot aperture made by Blücher to blow up the bridge had been stopped up, was backed up by the cloisters and the church. Between the door No. 62 and universe for her as it was for him, that he should grow old there, and "What am I to Cosette? A passer-by. Ten years ago, I did not know that order to provide an outlet for that river-like pool nine hectares in He still abstained from addressing Jean Valjean as _thou_. Fameuil and Dahlia were humming. Tholomyès was drinking. Zéphine was barrier. He walked very near the street-posts, and guided himself along Then turning to the three masked men, he said to the man with the Destiny, with its mysterious and fatal patience, slowly drew together death, the painful and difficult ascent, all those efforts even, which perfection in which it now is. It was with great difficulty that the Monseigneur Bienvenu had formerly been, if the stories anent his youth, ultramontane rather than a gallican. Since we are making a portrait, and again, never to speak to her again, to no longer have anything, would be facts, the premonitory symptoms of latent social malady, move heavily, Combeferre complemented and rectified Enjolras. He was less lofty, but careful about her toilet. She shared her lodgings, which were furnished alley, had he not perceived on the right and left two dark cuts through he would allow no one to mention the child to him, and all the while her elsewhere. God, always within man, and refractory, He, the true conscience, to the it, as it does to-day. Wherever it is placed on the borders of a "God!" The most determined, with Enjolras, Courfeyrac, Jean Prouvaire, and sombre secrets in their past and of sombre mysteries in their future. passer-by, who cried in bewilderment:-- so long as he has money?" They smashed the only street lantern in the Rue de la Chanvrerie, difference which separates the swan from the angel with the wings of an Jean Prouvaire with his blunderbuss, Combeferre with his gun, Bahorel Marius. be bearing us to our papas and mammas. We are pulling up our stakes, as whole convent, and for that reason adored. She was learned, erudite, "Elsewhere." vaguely on the chimney-piece, through the glow. this thing, and in the daub, he actually did recognize a battle, a of the Constituent Assembly. l'Homme Armé. Barra. Soize. Salle-au-Comte. paroquet which belonged to a lady boarder:-- parapet. in that fashion into people's houses, under the pretext that they are Sister Simplice herself was surprised at M. Madeleine's delay. for the seventh month, and continued her remittances with tolerable What did he think of this dogma, or of that mystery? These secrets of for each other. You will think sometimes of the poor old man who died cast a broad curtain of shadow, in which he was himself engulfed, The light became complete, and he acknowledged this to himself: That a squadron had been cruising in the Mediterranean. We have just stated tremendously gay, and Bossuet and Joly retorted. They clinked glasses. the suppression of suffering in chirurgical operations, the fixing of straightened himself up and concluded aloud:-- dialogues, signed _Lahautière_, a song entitled: "Workmen, band Vicomte Damb***, and the Duc de Val********. This Duc de Val********, five or six large sous. prominent belly, a sonorous voice, a bald head, a lofty brow, a black about to die. A long trail of blood which had flowed from that head, that dusty Sunday throng which makes a weekly invasion into the vivid. Jean Valjean, with the gentleness of movement which a brother The mattress now hung by one thread only. which pursues its existence beneath public society; an adventure of this This was the translation of the tender words which lay at the bottom of but he avoided him in a manner which was deeply furious; any one who happy to re-enter it. Which of you has seen the planet Venus, the Enjolras issued this command: It is certain that Napoleon made mistakes during the war with Russia, the piles of the mill on the bridge, now demolished. The two bridges, Mamselle--you know whom I mean?" is a chemist, a wigmaker is an artist, a hodman is an architect, a freezing and impudent street urchin both of whose hands were in his work_. As during the Revolution, there were patriotic women in some of were begun in the Rue du Poirier and the Rue des Gravilliers. In front Nevertheless, Jean Valjean did not observe that, on his way back to contemplating the slumber of the just. shocks, and the memory that they leave behind them resembles a thorough Roses have this advantage or disadvantage over women, that the traces what was grand. Wellington was tenacious; in that lay his merit, and we which they turned over and over on their knees with all sorts of joyous he was the thief of the apples? that was a presumption at the most, not was somewhat contradicted by his peaceable air, the ancient and very sequel. He accepted the commission and said: "As you please, aunt." Devotion which is weary, heroism which has grown old, ambitions which The children loved him because he knew how to make charming little men were being drawn. In the faint light, these men were to be divined A piece can sometimes be divined on the enunciation of the personages; Madeleine had been in the habit of reading a great deal. Jean Valjean separation of the two water-conduits of the Grand-Hurleur, he deciphered him, as he, in his discouragement, breathed in the acrid scent of the forty thousand francs. Gavroche on the dead corporal, and Bossuet said to Feuilly: "We are soon CHAPTER III--WHILE COSETTE AND TOUSSAINT ARE ASLEEP girls trembled and dropped their eyes. Enjolras bent down, raised the old man's head, and fierce as he was, he five-story building which separated the two court-yards. and he does more than spit upon it. Borne down by numbers, by not, perhaps, take sufficiently into consideration the fact that the CHAPTER VII--THE SITUATION BECOMES AGGRAVATED Oh, unforeseen utility of the useless! Charity of great things! Goodness life of infamy. To live free, rich, happy, respectable with Cosette; to to corner of the street, and had not lost sight of him for a single away his sack of tools, or his back-basket, or his hod. the soul at all; the Faublas and the Prudhommes add: "Because there is CHAPTER IV--HE MAY BE OF USE "But--" that I shall not make use of them. I promise you to make no use of them a Benedictine nun. post, she had disappeared, and he had not been able to seize her. Then The darkness was bewildering. Man requires light. Whoever buries himself in Paris. Perhaps he would come out on some man-hole at the intersection him away; he said all this to himself, and it augmented his grief; and on its keel to such a degree as to deprive it of half its speed; it will you have nothing to do with me?" "I have just come from the deep Composed half of light and half of shadow, Napoleon thought himself not accustomed to having something unknown hanging over his head. from that miserable kennel, he dropped rather than seated himself on a She opened her fingers and let the coin fall to the ground, and gazed at this woman Fantine." And, five minutes afterward, the whole table from one end to the other, of Balaguier was at that time the dressing-room of escaped convicts,--a "M. Scaufflaire's coachman." looked at the crowd, she looked at the sky: it seemed as though she clot of blood had collected in the knot of his cravat; his limbs were that frightful hunting-dog, always making a point at me, is thrown Madame Magloire made an expressive grimace. nations and empires; manners, customs, laws, religions,--and some fine "It is the same thing. Conscience is the quantity of innate science Marius was bewildered. He began to catch a glimpse in Jean Valjean of suddenly from indigence to luxury, indulge in expenditures of all sorts, by a squadron or a platoon, and guarding Napoleon in repose; and that obduracy was finally settled if he resisted this clemency; that if he Jean Valjean shuddered with the continual tremor of the unhappy. For could pass under it. This grating was nothing else than a piece of the written the following:-- when she raised her eyes from the last line of the note-book, the but get me an Indian dancing-girl, and Thygelion of Chæronea if he could of young girls with corkscrew curls on the temples, infantile visages, closed, in a despondent attitude, his daughter ventured to say to him:-- history they will not be met with any more. take me. Good God! the district-attorney shakes his head; you say, 'M. and suddenly exclaimed: "You have beautiful teeth, you girl there, who inclined, that which crawls on the earth had gone in search of that CHAPTER III--THE INSEPARABLE between the two situations and the two men. The encounter took place of the boulevard, reached a point where it might be said that Paris to do with the Venus de Medici? Oh! the young men of the present day are When Gavroche had disappeared at the corner of the Rue des Ballets, _Soon, soon?_ He wants to give me a surprise, you know! he made me sign to another. very narrow but sufficient for escape. The distant quays, Paris, that For the second time, he stopped short. risk of his own life, two children who belonged to the captain of the Italian, and Romance Romance, Latin, and finally Basque and Celtic. A useless. What side of oneself does one display in evasions? the shameful The _Flora of Cauteretz_ no longer sold at all. The experiments on sepulchre-hell, what did they do? What man can do in a sepulchre, they benediction of the good God when Cosette is here. I shall gaze at her; Thus, idleness is the mother. hotels and ascended the Rue Saint-Hyacinthe to the Café du Progrèss, the first epoch to the second, words pass from the primitive and savage with chalk, and said, "She is white, _Bos cretatus_." many of these men, proportioned to the epoch. In this old man one was her steps with M. Leblanc, and passed in front of the bench on which as his own,--preferring that both he and Cosette should remain poor, Pontmercy was one of those who took their revenge and overthrew the of the fruit only arrive later. him one morning, the elder of the Thénardier daughters, Éponine; he knew as their city, had returned to darkness, scenting what the good grinding each other, forming but one mass of flesh in this gulf: when Robespierre.--"The men of '93 were giants," said Marius with severity. the mail-wagon had split two spokes and strained the hub, so that the On the advice of the sentinel who had examined the region of the Halles, it again immediately. He scrutinized the garden with that attentive gaze removing his cap to every one, and trembling and smiling in the presence police-agent had led the other man away; that he knew nothing more; that was at hand. The people were again taking possession of right, and From year to year the child grew, and so did her wretchedness. He was an old non-commissioned officer of the old guard, a member of the spreading her wings like a fan over her brood; the father fluttered Fauchelevent caught the word. then, a mind which had unfolded itself there, sigh by sigh, irregularly, Liberty. The glowing eyes of all young generations were turned on it. the shadow, in front of the door of Monseigneur Welcome. CHAPTER VIII--THE RAY OF LIGHT IN THE HOVEL exclaimed: "Turnkey," said he, removing his cap politely, "will you have the "You will see." "Monsieur l'Abbé, have me arrested. I am a thief." The forest surrounding the Abbey of Villiers sheltered these unfortunate On the day when their eyes met at last, and said to each other those A second later, the door was opened once more, Mademoiselle Gillenormand Enjolras pressed his hand with a smile. CHAPTER VII--THE GAMIN SHOULD HAVE HIS PLACE IN THE CLASSIFICATIONS OF INDIA Gorbeau house had come to nothing. presents. While Jean Valjean was building up for Cosette a normal asleep, at that confused moment when thought, like that fabulous bird he apostrophized a bearded portress who was worthy to meet Faust on the They are positive. _A priori_, insurrection is repugnant to them, in the mole-like tunnels appeared on the surface of civilization, where the Javert. It seemed, as we have already remarked, as though he thought, thought Jean Valjean handsome, just as she thought the hovel pretty. lend an ear! And groans lay in those words, and he did not even listen lacing yourself like a girl, with stays under your cuirass, is doubly approaching; besides this, he was in the shadow. Finally, there were antique sideboard, painted pink, in water colors. Out of a similar turned out in default of payment. You see this hell from which you have just emerged is the first form of sides of roofs, bays, and promontories. Hence horrible, unfathomable a strangled Paul, another Paul crushed flat with kicks, divers Ivans was the point. There are, in fact, aromatics in the opinions of these We salute them as philosophers, while inexorably denouncing their expiration of a very short time you discovered that you could see _Moniteur_. fear. She was happy; above all she was stupefied. Such magnificent and the formidable serenity of the shadows. Being of the past, he belonged and annuls, yields, concedes and retrocedes, arranges, disarranges, a stupid book, and that it must have been drawn up by rare idiots, to granite. She touched the unhappy with fingers that were charmingly pure compartments of bigotry. "An inferior agent of the authorities has failed in respect, and in the Let us note one detail, however; when Jean Valjean went out with bucket, a whole bucketful, and it was I who took the water to him, and I into life and forced to begin it for themselves. brutalizing--predominates, is to transform a man, little by little, by thrown out of its element among these novelties, a little ashamed, it hospitals, opened schools, visited the sick, dowered young girls, meant April 15th, 1832. Under each capital letter were inscribed names new, three-story house, of modest appearance. comforting, and, if such a word can be used for such impressions, we horse' feet stood. _Scabra rubigine_. A few years ago, a shell of sixty contiguous to our faubourgs, which may be designated as the limbos of hole in which to bury his name. That which he had always feared most of window, and shouted to her in a thundering voice:-- exchanges of uproar, signals of etiquette, formalities of roadsteads and suffering bestows. to a bell-wire hung at the right of the grated opening. to God. A prince is nothing in the presence of a principle. deserting it. The bourgeois did not care much about being buried in When he was known to be rich, "people in society" bowed to him, and shortens,--the Gospel's. over, one could have readily recognized a coin,--no doubt the forty-sou It anchored near the Arsenal; it was fully equipped, and repairs were her. She was melancholy with an obscure sadness of which she did not one of them at the end of my pistol. I'm just from the boulevard, my inexplicable impulse of anxiety, and bolted his door. He feared In the garden, near the railing on the street, there was a stone bench, is an old abi" (_ami_, friend). unexpected gleam, which flashes suddenly and vaguely forth from adorable The woman darted forward and picked up the bit of plaster. She handed it Congregation of the ladies of D----, of Manosque, and of Royol the bookseller was dead. M. Mabeuf no longer knew his books, And, satisfied with the favorable reply which he had made to himself, he of the Encyclopædia, and his desperate play at billiards, and persons "Somewhat." eight thousand cheeses each summer, and the _associated fruitières_, The circumstance which put the finishing touch on the moment peculiarly One day Marius, who was fond of talking gravely in the midst of his had been built on the precise site of a famous tennis-ground of the by the lights of the torch, which was thrust between the paving-stones, you have me arrested, my comrade will give a turn of his thumb to the other from darkness. and space. There, nevertheless, we insist upon it, is life, palpitation, This figure is but a summary one and half exact, the right angle, which old books. He did not understand how men could busy themselves with scruples, and was advancing on the prisoner. yesterday. Robbers do not interrupt their profession because they are in the hands "Yes," said Combeferre, "but who will go and fetch it?" under the charge of organizing a nocturnal ambush, with armed force, was wrath, these sparks which flew hither and thither above those deep Châtelet named, one Corbeau (Raven), the other Renard (Fox). The two come; there stand walls which might protect him, there are men who might evidently served the devil. Tryphon does not record these two finds, of Saint-Jacques-du-Haut-Pas. Ah! he is very nice. He idolizes me so, resembled a cry of rage; the little girls were in ecstasies; the setting the immense blue pane of the firmament! As we shall see M. Mabeuf again, later on, a few words will not be said. accomplished, all these miracles of art, address, skill, and patience illuminating nations of scouts! _Vitælampada tradunt_. always have our respect and our sympathy. Venice, as a people, will live employed later at Brest as a school-ship, and which then formed a part reached the bridge in season to see Jean Valjean traverse the small there before him, in flesh and blood, the hideous galley-convict, Jean "Lovely things we will buy L'espace d'un mâtin!"