Les Misérables, v. 1/5: Fantine

by Victor Hugo

  CHAPTER VI.

  JEAN VALJEAN.

  Toward the middle of the night Jean Valjean awoke. He belonged toa poor peasant family of La Brie. In his childhood he had not beentaught to read, and when he was of man's age he was a wood-lopper atFaverolles. His mother's name was Jeanne Mathieu, his father's JeanValjean or Vlajean, probably a sobriquet and a contraction of _Voil?Jean._ Jean Valjean possessed a pensive but not melancholy character,which is peculiar to affectionate natures; but altogether he was adull, insignificant fellow, at least apparently. He had lost father andmother when still very young: the latter died of a badly-managed milkfever; the former, a pruner like himself, was killed by a fall from atree. All that was left Jean Valjean was a sister older than himself,a widow with seven children, boys and girls. This sister brought JeanValjean up, and so long as her husband was alive she supported herbrother. When the husband died, the oldest of the seven children waseight years of age, the youngest, one, while Jean Valjean had justreached his twenty-fifth year; he took the place of the father, and inhis turn supported the sister who had reared him. This was done simplyas a duty, and even rather roughly by Jean Valjean; and his youth wasthus expended in hard and ill-paid toil. He was never known to have hada sweetheart, for he had no time for love-making.

  At night he came home tired, and ate his soup without saying a word.His sister, mother Jeanne, while he was eating, often took out of hisporringer the best part of his meal, the piece of meat, the slice ofbacon, or the heart of the cabbage, to give it to one of her children;he, still eating, bent over the table with his head almost in the soup,and his long hair falling round his porringer and hiding his eyes,pretended not to see it, and let her do as she pleased. There was atFaverolles, not far from the Valjeans' cottage, on the other side ofthe lane, a farmer's wife called Marie Claude. The young Valjeans,who were habitually starving, would go at times and borrow in theirmother's name a pint of milk from Marie Claude, which they drank behinda hedge or in some corner, tearing the vessel from each other soeagerly that the little girls spilt the milk over their aprons. Theirmother, had she been aware of this fraud, would have severely correctedthe delinquents, but Jean Valjean, coarse and rough though he was, paidMarie Claude for the milk behind his sister's back, and the childrenwere not punished.

  He earned in the pruning season eighteen sous a day, and besides hiredhimself out as reaper, laborer, neat-herd, and odd man. He did whathe could; his sister worked too, but what could she do with sevenchildren? It was a sad group, which wretchedness gradually envelopedand choked. One winter was hard, and Jean had no work to do, and thefamily had no bread. No bread, literally none, and seven children!

  One Sunday evening, Maubert Isabeau, the baker in the church square atFaverolles, was just going to bed when he heard a violent blow dealtthe grating in front of his shop. He arrived in time to see an armpassed through a hole made by a fist through the grating and windowpane; the arm seized a loaf, and carried it off. Isabeau ran outhastily; the thief ran away at his hardest, but the baker caught himand stopped him. The thief had thrown away the loaf, but his arm wasstill bleeding; it was Jean Valjean.

  This took place in 1795. Jean Valjean was brought before the courts ofthe day, charged "with burglary committed with violence at night, inan inhabited house." He had a gun, was a splendid shot, and a bit of apoacher, and this injured him. There is a legitimate prejudice againstpoachers, for, like smugglers, they trench very closely on brigandage.Still we must remark that there is an abyss between these classes andthe hideous assassins of our cities: the poacher lives in the forest;the smuggler in the mountains and on the sea. Cities produce ferociousmen, because they produce corrupted men; the forest, the mountain, andthe sea produce savage men, but while they develop their ferociousside, they do not always destroy their human part. Jean Valjean wasfound guilty, and the terms of the code were precise. There are in ourcivilization formidable hours; they are those moments in which penaljustice pronounces a shipwreck. What a mournful minute is that in whichsociety withdraws and consummates the irreparable abandonment of athinking being! Jean Valjean was sentenced to five years at the galleys.

  On April 22d, 1796, men were crying in the streets of Paris thevictory of Montenotte, gained by the General-in-chief of the army ofItaly, whom the message of the Directory to the Five Hundred, of the2 Flor?al, year IV., calls Buona-Parte; and on the same day a heavygang was put in chains at Bicetre, and Jean Valjean formed part of thechain. An ex-jailer of the prison, who is now nearly ninety years ofage, perfectly remembers the wretched man, who was chained at the endof the fourth cordon, in the north angle of the court-yard. He wasseated on the ground like the rest, and seemed not at all to understandhis position, except that it was horrible. It is probable that he alsosaw something excessive through the vague ideas of an utterly ignorantman. While the bolt of his iron collar was being riveted with heavyhammer-blows behind his head, he wept, tears choked him, and preventedhim from speaking, and he could only manage to say from time to time:"I was a wood-cutter at Faverolles." Then, while still continuing tosob, he raised his right hand, and lowered it gradually seven times, asif touching seven uneven heads in turn, and from this gesture it couldbe guessed that whatever the crime he had committed, he had done it tofeed and clothe seven children.

  He started for Toulon, and arrived there after a journey oftwenty-seven days in a cart, with the chain on his neck. At Toulon hewas dressed in the red jacket. All that had hitherto been his life,even to his name, was effaced. He was no longer Jean Valjean, but No.24,601. What became of his sister? What became of the seven children?Who troubles himself about that? What becomes of the spray of leaveswhen the stem of the young tree has been cut at the foot? It is alwaysthe same story. These poor living beings, these creatures of God,henceforth without support, guide, or shelter, went off hap-hazard,and gradually buried themselves in that cold fog in which solitarydestinies are swallowed up, that mournful gloom in which so manyunfortunates disappear during the sullen progress of the human race.They left their country; what had once been their steeple forgot them;what had once been their hedge-row forgot them; and after a few years'stay in the bagne, Jean Valjean himself forgot them. In that heartwhere there had once been a wound there was now a scar: that was all.He only heard about his sister once during the whole time he spent atToulon; it was, I believe, toward the end of the fourth year of hiscaptivity, though I have forgotten in what way the information reachedhim. She was in Paris, living in the Rue du Geindre, a poor street,near St. Sulpice, and had only one child with her, the youngest, aboy. Where were the other six? Perhaps she did not know herself. Everymorning she went to a printing-office, No. 3, Rue du Sabot, whereshe was a folder and stitcher; she had to be there at six in themorning, long before daylight in winter. In the same house as theprinting-office there was a day-school, to which she took the littleboy, who was seven years of age, but as she went to work at six and theschool did not open till seven o'clock, the boy was compelled to waitin the yard for an hour, in winter,--an hour of night in the open air.The boy was not allowed to enter the printing-office, because it wassaid that he would be in the way. The workmen as they passed in themorning saw the poor little fellow seated on the pavement, and oftensleeping in the darkness, with his head on his satchel. When it rained,an old woman, the portress, took pity on him; she invited him into herden, where there were only a bed, a spinning-wheel, and two chairs,when the little fellow fell asleep in a corner, clinging to the cat, tokeep him warm. This is what Jean Valjean was told; it was a momentaryflash, as it were a window suddenly opened in the destiny of the beingshe had loved, and then all was closed again; he never heard about themmore. Nothing reached him from them; he never saw them again, nevermet them, and we shall not come across them in the course of thismelancholy narrative.

  Toward the end of this fourth year, Jean Valjean's turn to escapearrived, and his comrades aided him as they always do in thissorrowful place. He escaped and wandered about the fields at libertyfor two days: if it is liberty to be hu
nted down; to turn ones headat every moment; to start at the slightest sound; to be afraid ofeverything,--of a chimney that smokes, a man who passes, a barking dog,a galloping horse, the striking of the hour, of day because peoplesee, of night because they do not see, of the highway, the path, thethicket, and even sleep. On the evening of the second day he wasrecaptured; he had not eaten or slept for six-and-thirty hours. Themaritime tribunal added three years to his sentence for his crime,which made it eight years. In the sixth year, it was again his turn toescape; he tried, but could not succeed. He was missing at roll-call,the gun was fired, and at night the watchman found him hidden under thekeel of a ship that was building, and he resisted the _garde chiourme_,who seized him. Escape and rebellion: this fact, foreseen by thespecial code, was punished by an addition of five years, of which twowould be spent in double chains. Thirteen years. In his tenth year histurn came again, and he took advantage of it, but succeeded no better:three years for this new attempt, or sixteen years in all. Finally, Ithink it was during his thirteenth year that he made a last attempt,and only succeeded so far as to be recaptured in four hours: threeyears for these four hours, and a total of nineteen years. In October,1815, he was liberated; he had gone in in 1796 for breaking a windowand stealing a loaf.

  Let us make room for a short parenthesis. This is the second time that,during his essays on the penal question and condemnation by the law,the author of this book has come across a loaf as the starting point ofthe disaster of a destiny. Claude Gueux stole a loaf, and so did JeanValjean, and English statistics prove that in London four robberies outof five have hunger as their immediate cause. Jean Valjean entered thebagne sobbing and shuddering: he left it stoically. He entered it indespair: he came out of it gloomy. What had taken place in this soul?