by Victor Hugo
CHAPTER VIII.
A SUCCESSFUL EXAMINATION.
An hour later two men and a child presented themselves in the darknessof night at No. 69, Little Rue Picpus. The elder of the two men raisedthe knocker and rapped.
The two men had fetched Cosette from the green-grocer's, whereFauchelevent had left her on the previous evening. Cosette had spentthe four-and-twenty hours in understanding nothing and silentlytrembling; she trembled so greatly that she had not cried, nor hadshe eaten nor slept. The worthy green-grocer had asked her a hundredquestions; but had only obtained as answer a gloomy look, ever thesame. Cosette did not breathe a syllable of what she had seen orheard during the last two days; for she guessed that she was passingthrough a crisis, and felt deeply that she must be "good." Who has notexperienced the sovereign power of the words, "say nothing," utteredwith a certain accent in the ear of a little startled being? Fear isdumb; besides, no one can keep a secret like a child.
The only thing was, that when she saw Jean Valjean again after thesemournful four-and-twenty hours, she uttered such a cry of joy that anythoughtful person who had heard it would have divined in this cry anescape from a gulf.
Fauchelevent belonged to the convent, and knew all the pass-words;hence doors readily opened to him, and thus was solved the double andstartling problem, "how to get in, and how to get out." The porter, whohad his instructions, opened the little gate which communicated betweenthe court-yard and the garden, in the wall of the former facing thegateway, which might still be seen from the street twenty years ago.The porter showed them all three through this gate, and thence theyreached the inner private parlor where Fauchelevent had received theorders of the prioress on the previous day.
The prioress was waiting for them, rosary in hand, and a vocal mother,with her veil down, was standing near her. A discreet candle lit up,or to speak more correctly, pretended to light up the parlor. Theprioress took a thorough look at Jean Valjean, for no eye examines likea drooping one. Then she questioned him.
"Are you the brother?"
"Yes, Reverend Mother," Fauchelevent answered.
"What is your name?"
Fauchelevent answered: "Ultime Fauchelevent."
He had really had a brother of that name, who was dead.
"Where do you come from?"
_Fauchelevent._--"From Picquigny near Amiens."
"What is your age?"
_F._--"Fifty."
"What is your trade?"
_F._--"Gardener."
"Are you a good Christian?"
_F._--"All the members of our family are so."
"Is this little girl yours?"
_F._--"Yes, Reverend Mother."
"Are you her father?"
_F._--"Her grandfather."
The vocal mother said to the prioress in a whisper, "He answers well."
Jean Valjean had not said a word. The prioress looked attentively atCosette, and whispered to the vocal mother, "She will be ugly."
The two mothers consulted for a few minutes in a very low voice in acorner of the parlor, and then the prioress turned and said,--
"Father Fauvent, you will get another knee-cap and bell, for we shallrequire two in future."
On the morrow two bells were really heard in the garden, and the nunscould not resist the temptation of raising a corner of their veils.They could see under the shade of the trees two men digging side byside, Fauvent and another. It was an enormous event; and silence was sofar broken that they whispered, "It is an assistant gardener," whilethe vocal mothers added, "It is a brother of Father Fauvent's."
Jean Valjean was in fact permanently installed; he had theleathern knee-cap and bell, and was henceforth official. He calledhimself Ultime Fauchelevent. The most powerful determining causeof his admission was the remark of the prioress with referenceto Cosette,--"She will be ugly." The prioress, once she hadprognosticated this, felt an affection for Cosette, and gave her aplace in the boarding-school. This is very logical after all; foralthough there may be no looking-glasses in a convent, women areconscious of their face. Now, girls who feel themselves pretty have adisinclination to take the veil; and as profession is generally in aninverse ratio to the beauty, more is hoped from ugly than from prettygirls.
All this adventure aggrandized Fauchelevent, for he had a three-foldsuccess,--with Jean Valjean, whom he saved and sheltered; withGribier, who said to himself, "He saved me fifteen francs;" andwith the convent, which, thanks to him, while keeping the coffin ofMother Crucifixion under the altar, eluded Cæsar and sanctified God.There was a coffin with a body at the Little Picpus, and a coffinwithout a body in the Vaugirard cemetery; public order was doubtlessdeeply affected by this, but did not perceive the fact. As for theconvent, its gratitude to Fauchelevent was great; he became the bestof servants, and most precious of gardeners. On the archbishop's verynext visit, the prioress told the whole affair to the Grandeur, partlyin confusion, and partly in a boastful spirit. The archbishop, onleaving the convent, spoke about it applaudingly and in a whisper toM. de Latil, Confessor to Monseigneur, and afterwards Archbishop ofReims and Cardinal. The admiration felt for Fauchelevent travelledall the way to Rome; and we have seen a letter addressed by the thenreigning Pope, Leo XII., to one of his relatives, Monsignore, in theParis Nunciature, and called, like himself, Della Genga, in which werethe following lines,--"It appears that there is at a convent in Parisan excellent gardener, who is a holy man, of the name of Fauvent."Nothing of all this triumph reached Fauchelevent in his hut; he wenton grafting, hoeing, and covering his melon beds, quite unaware of hisexcellence and sanctity. He no more suspected his glory than does aDurham or Surrey steer whose portrait is published in the _IllustratedLondon News_, with the inscription "The ox that gained the Short-hornprize."
CHAPTER IX.
IN THE CONVENT.
Cosette in the convent continued to be silent. She naturally thoughtherself Valjean's daughter, but as she knew nothing, she could saynothing, and in any case would have said nothing, as we have remarked;for nothing trains children to silence like misfortune. Cosette hadsuffered so greatly that she feared everything, even to speak, even tobreathe, for a word had so often brought down an avalanche upon her!She had scarce begun to grow reassured since she had belonged to JeanValjean, but she grew very soon accustomed to the convent. The onlything she regretted was Catherine, but she did not dare say so. Oneday, however, she remarked to Valjean, "If I had known, I would havebrought her with me."
Cosette, on becoming a boarder at the convent, was obliged to assumethe garb of the pupils of the house. Jean Valjean begged, and obtainedthe old clothes she left off; the same mourning clothes he made her puton when he removed her from the Thénardiers', and they were not muchworn. Jean Valjean placed these clothes and her shoes and stockings,with a quantity of camphor and other odorous drugs with which conventsabound, in a small valise which he managed to procure. He placed thisvalise on a chair by his bed-side, and always had the key about him.
"Father," Cosette asked him one day, "what is that box which smells sonice?"
Father Fauchelevent, in addition to the glory we have described and ofwhich he was ignorant, was rewarded for his good deed; in the firstplace, he was happy, and, in the second place, he had much less to do,owing to the division of labor. Lastly, as he was very fond of snuff,he had from M. Madeleine's presence the advantage that he took thriceas much as before, and in a far more voluptuous manner, because M.Madeleine paid for it.
The nuns did not adopt the name of Ultime; they called Jean Valjean"the other Fauvent." Had these holy women had any of Javert's temperabout them, they must have noticed that when anything had to beprocured from outside for the garden it was always the elder Fauvent,the cripple, who went out, and never the other; but either because eyesconstantly fixed on God know not how to spy, or because they preferredto watch one another, they paid no attention to the fact. However, JeanValjean did quite right in keeping shy and not stirring, for Javertwatched the quarter for a whole month.
> This convent was to Jean Valjean like an island surrounded by gulfs,and these four walls were henceforth the world for him; he saw enoughof the sky there to be secure, and enough of Cosette to be happy. Helived with old Fauchelevent in the hovel at the end of the garden.This lath and plaster tenement, which still existed in 1825, wascomposed of three rooms which had only the bare walls. The largestroom was surrendered by force, for Jean Valjean resisted in vain, byFather Fauchelevent to M. Madeleine. The wall of this room had forornament, in addition to the two nails for hanging up the knee-cap andthe basket, a Royalist note for ten livres, date '93, fastened abovethe mantel-piece. This Vendéan assignat had been nailed to the wall bythe previous gardener, an ex-chouan, who died in the convent, and wassucceeded by Fauchelevent.
Jean Valjean worked daily in the garden, and was very useful. As hehad once been a pruner, he was glad to become a gardener. It will beremembered that he had a great number of receipts and secrets whichhe turned to a profit. Nearly all the trees in the orchard were wildstocks; but he grafted them, and made them produce excellent fruit.
Cosette had permission to spend an hour daily with him; and as thesisters were sad and he was kind, the child compared them and adoredhim. At the fixed hour she ran to the cottage, and when she enteredit filled it with paradise. Jean Valjean expanded, and felt his ownhappiness grow with the happiness which he caused Cosette. The joywhich we inspire has this charming thing about it, that far from beingweakened, like ordinary reflections, it returns to us more radiantthan before. Ia her hours of recreation Jean Valjean watched her froma distance, playing and running, and distinguished her laugh from thatof the others, for Cosette now laughed. Her face had also changed toa certain extent; for laughter is the sun which drives winter from thehuman face. When Cosette returned to her studies Jean Valjean watchedthe windows of her school-room, and at night would rise to gaze at thewindows of her dormitory.
God has His inscrutable designs; and the convent contributed, likeCosette, to maintain and complete the Bishop's work in Jean Valjean.It is certain that one of the sides of virtue leads to pride, andthere is a bridge built there by the demon. Jean Valjean was perhapsunconsciously very near this bridge when Providence threw him into theconvent of the Little Picpus. So long as he had only compared himselfwith the Bishop, he had found himself unworthy, and had been humble;but for some time past he had been beginning to compare himself withmen, and pride was growing up. Who knows whether he might not haveended by gently returning to hatred?
The convent checked him on this slope; it was the second place ofcaptivity which he had seen. In his youth, in what had been to him thecommencement of life, and again very recently, he had seen another, afrightful spot, a terrible spot, whose severities had ever appearedto him to be the iniquity of justice and the crime of the law. At thepresent day, after the hulks he saw the convent, and reflecting that hehad been a member of the galleys and was now, so to speak, a spectatorof the convent, he anxiously confronted them in his thoughts.
At times he leaned on his spade, and fell into a profound reverie.He recalled his old comrades; how wretched they were! They rose atdawn and worked till night; they were scarce granted time to sleep;they lay down on camp-beds and were only allowed mattresses two inchesthick; their rooms were only warmed in the severest months of the year;they were dressed in hideous red jackets; they were allowed, as anindulgence, canvas trousers in the great heat, and a woollen bandageon their back in the severe cold; they only ate meat and drank winewhen they worked on fatigue parties; they lived without names, solelydesignated by numbers, lowering their eyes, lowering their voice, withshorn hair, under the stick, and in disgrace.
Then his thoughts turned to the beings whom he had before him. Thesebeings also lived with cropped hair, downcast eyes, and a low voice,not in disgrace, but amid the mockery of the world; and if theirbacks were not bruised by a stick, their shoulders were lacerated bythe discipline. Their names had vanished too among human beings, andthey only existed under severe appellations. They never ate meat nordrank wine; they often remained without food till night; they weredressed, not in a red jacket, but in a black woollen pall, heavy insummer and light in winter, and were unable to reduce it or add toit at all; and they wore for six months in the year serge chemises,which caused them a fever. They slept not in rooms warmed merely inthe severe cold, but in cells in which fires were never kindled; theyslept not on mattresses two inches thick, but on straw; lastly, theywere not even allowed to sleep,--every night, after a day of labor,they were compelled to get up, dress themselves, and go and pray ina freezing dark chapel, with their knees upon the stones. On certaindays, moreover, each of these beings was obliged, in turn, to remainfor twelve hours prostrate on the ground, with her arms extended like across.
The former were men; the latter were women. What had the men done?They had robbed, violated, plundered, killed, assassinated; they werebandits, forgers, poisoners, incendiaries, murderers, and parricides.What had these women done? Nothing. On one side, brigandage and fraud,cozening, violence, lubricity, homicide, every sort of sacrilege, everyvariety of crime; on the other, only one thing,--innocence, perfectinnocence, which was still attached to the earth by virtue, and alreadyattached to heaven by holiness. On one side, confessions of crimes madein a whisper; on the other, confessions of faults made aloud. And whatcrimes, and what faults! On one side miasmas, on the other an ineffableperfume; on one side a moral pestilence, closely guarded, held downby cannon, and slowly devouring its plague-sufferers; on the other, achaste kindling of all the souls on the same hearth. There darkness,here shadow, but a shadow full of light, and light full of radiance.
They were two places of slavery; but in the former there was a possibledeliverance, a constantly visible legal limit, and besides, escape;in the second, perpetuity, the only hope being that gleam of libertywhich men call death, upon the extreme horizon. In the former, peoplewere only held by chains, in the latter, by faith. What emerged fromthe former? An immense curse, gnashing of teeth, hatred, desperatewickedness, a cry of rage against human society, and sarcasms hurledat heaven. What issued from the latter? Blessings, love. And in thesetwo places, which were so similar and yet so varying, these two sodifferent species of beings accomplished the same work of expiation.
Jean Valjean perfectly understood the expiation of the former, aspersonal; but he did not understand the expiation of the others, ofthese creatures who were without reproach or stain, and he askedhimself with trembling: Expiation for what? A voice answered in hisconscience: The most divine proof of human generosity, expiation forothers.
Here we lay aside any and every personal theory; we are only thenarrator, we are standing in Jean Valjean's place, and transferring hisimpressions. He had before his eyes the sublime summit of abnegation,the highest pinnacle of possible virtue, that innocence which forgivesmen their faults, and expiates them in their place; servitude endured,torture accepted, punishment demanded by souls which have not sinned,that they may absolve souls which have erred; the love of humanityswallowed up in the love of God, but remaining distinct and suppliantin it; gentle, feeble beings who have the wretchedness of those who arepunished and the smile of those who are rewarded.
And he remembered that he had dared to complain. He often rose in themiddle of the night to listen to the grateful song of these innocentcreatures, weighed down by severity; and his blood ran cold when hethought that men who were justly chastised only raised their voices toheaven to blaspheme, and that he, wretch as he was, had threatened God.It was a striking thing, which made him reflect deeply, and imagine ita warning of Providence, that all the things he had done to escape fromthe other place of expiation,--such as climbing walls, difficulties,dangerous adventures, and risks of death,--he had gone through again,in entering the present place. Was it a symbol of his destiny?
This house was a prison too, and bore a mournful likeness to the otherabode from which he had fled, and yet he had never had such an ideahere. He saw again the bars, bolts, and iron bars, to gua
rd whom?Angels. The lofty walls which he had seen around tigers he saw againaround lambs.
It was a place of expiation, and not of punishment, and yet it was evenmore austere, gloomy, and pitiless than the other. These virgins weremore harshly bowed than the galley slaves. A rough cold wind, the windwhich had chilled his youth, blew through the barred and padlocked cageof the vultures; but a sharper and more painful wind passed throughthe cotes of these doves.
Why was this?
When he thought of these things, all within him bowed down before thismystery of sublimity. In these meditations pride vanished: he felthimself insignificant, and wept many times: all that had entered hislife during the past six months, led him back to the Bishop's holyinjunctions,--Cosette by love, the convent by humility.
At times, in those hours of the night when the garden was deserted, hemight have been seen kneeling in front of that window through which hehad gazed on the night of his arrival, turned toward the spot wherehe knew that the sister who was making reparation was prostrated inprayer. He prayed thus, kneeling before this sister,--it seemed as ifhe dared not kneel directly to God.
All that surrounded him--this peaceful garden, these fragrant flowers,these children uttering merry cries, these grave and simple women,these silent cloisters;--slowly penetrated him and gradually his soulwas composed of silence like this cloister, of perfume like theseflowers, of peace like this garden, of simplicity like these women, andof joy like these children. And then he thought how two houses of Godhad in turn received him at the two critical moments of his life,--thefirst when all doors were closed and human society repulsed him, thesecond at the moment when human society was beginning to hunt him downagain, and the hulks were yawning for him; and that, had it not beenfor the former, he would have fallen back into crime; and but for thelatter, into punishment. All his heart melted into gratitude, and heloved more and more.
Several years passed thus, and Cosette grew.
END OF PART SECOND.
