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

by Victor Hugo

  “Nor I either. I do not know you,” answered Laigle.

  Marius thought he had met a buffoon, and that this was the beginning of a mystification in the middle of the street. He was not in a pleasant humour just at that moment. He knit his brows; Laigle de Meaux, imperturbable, continued:

  “You were not at school yesterday”

  “It is possible.”

  “It is certain.”

  “You are a student?” inquired Marius.

  “Yes, Monsieur. Like you. The day before yesterday I happened to go into the school. You know, one sometimes has such notions. The professor was about to call the roll. You know that they are very ridiculous just at that time. If you miss the third call, they erase your name. Sixty francs gone.”

  Marius began to listen. Laigle continued:

  “It was Blondeau who was calling the roll. You know Blondeau; he has a very sharp and very malicious nose, and delights in smelling out the absent. He slily commenced with the letter P. I was not listening, not being concerned in that letter. The roll went on well, no erasure, the universe was present, Blondeau was sad. I said to myself, Blondeau, my love, you won’t do the slightest execution to-day Suddenly, Blondeau calls Marius Pontmercy; nobody answers. Blondeau, full of hope, repeats louder: Marius Pontmercy? And he seizes his pen. Monsieur, I have bowels. I said to myself rapidly: Here is a brave fellow who is going to be erased. Attention. This is a real live fellow who is not punctual. He is not a good boy. He is not a book-worm, a student who studies, a white-billed pedant strong on science, letters, theology, and wisdom, one of those numskulls drawn out with four pins, a pin for each faculty. He is an honourable idler who loafs, who likes to rusticate, who cultivates the grisette, who pays his court to beauty, who is perhaps, at this very moment, with my mistress. Let us save him. Death to Blondeau! At that moment Blondeau dipped his pen, black with erasures into the ink, cast his tawny eye over the room, and repeated for the third time: Marius Pontmercy! I answered: Present! In that way you were not erased.”

  “Monsieur!—” said Marius.

  “And I was,” added Laigle de Meaux.

  “I do not understand you,” said Marius.

  Laigle resumed:

  “Nothing more simple. I was near the chair to answer, and near the door to escape. The professor was looking at me with a certain fixedness. Suddenly, Blondeau, who must be the malignant nose of which Boileau speaks, leaps to the letter L. L is my letter; I am of Meaux, and my name is Lesgle.”

  “L‘Aigle!” interrupted Marius, “what a fine name.”

  “Monsieur, the Blondeau re-echoes this fine name and cries: ‘Laigle!’ I answer: Present! Then Blondeau looks at me with the gentleness of a tiger, smiles, and says: If you are Pontmercy, you are not Laigle. A phrase which is uncomplimentary to you, but which brought me only to grief. So saying, he erases me.”

  Marius exclaimed:

  “Monsieur, I am mortified—”

  “First of all,” interrupted Laigle, “I beg leave to embalm Blondeau in a few words of feeling eulogy. I suppose him dead. There wouldn’t be much to change in his thinness, his paleness, his coldness, his stiffness, and his odour. And I say: Erudimini qui judicatis terram. Here lies Blondeau, Blondeau the Nose, Blondeau Nasica, the ox of discipline, bos disciplinœ, the Molossus of his orders, the angel of the roll, who was straight, square, exact, rigid, honest, and hideous. God has erased him as he erased me.”

  Marius resumed:

  “I am very sorry—”

  “Young man,” said Laigle of Meaux, “let this be a lesson to you. In future, be punctual.”

  “I really must give a thousand excuses.”

  “Never expose yourself again to having your neighbour erased.”

  “I am very sorry.”

  Laigle burst out laughing.

  “And I, in raptures; I was on the brink of being a lawyer. This rupture saves me. I renounce the triumphs of the bar. I shall not defend the widow, and I shall not attack the orphan. No more toga, no more probation. Here is my erasure obtained. It is to you that I owe it, Monsieur Pontmercy. I intend to pay you a solemn visit of thanks. Where do you live?”

  “In this cabriolet,” said Marius.

  “A sign of opulence,” replied Laigle calmly. “I congratulate you. You have here rent of nine thousand francs a year.”

  Just then Courfeyrac came out of the café.

  Marius smiled sadly.

  “I have been paying this rent for two hours, and I hope to get out of it; but, it is the usual story, I do not know where to go.”

  “Monsieur,” said Courfeyrac, “come home with me.”

  “I should have priority,” observed Laigle, “but I have no home.”

  “Silence, Bossuet,” replied Courfeyrac.

  “Bossuet,” said Marius, “but I thought you called yourself Laigle.

  “Of Meaux,” answered Laigle; “metaphorically, Bossuet.”

  Courfeyrac got into the cabriolet.

  “Driver,” said he, “Hôtel de la Porte Saint Jacques.”

  And that same evening, Marius was installed in a room at the Hotel de la Porte Saint Jacques, side by side with Courfeyrac.

  3

  THE ASTONISHMENTS OF MARIUS

  IN A FEW DAYS, Marius was the friend of Courfeyrac. Youth is the season of prompt weldings and rapid cicatrisations. Marius, in Courfeyrac’s presence, breathed freely, a new thing for him. Courfeyrac asked him no questions. He did not even think of it. At that age, the countenance tells all at once. Speech is useless. There are some young men of whom we might say their physiog nomies are talkative. They look at one another, they know one another.

  One morning, however, Courfeyrac abruptly put this question to him.

  “By the way, have you any political opinions?”

  “What do you mean?” said Marius, almost offended at the question.

  “What are you?”

  “Bonapartist democrat.”

  “Grey shade of quiet mouse colour,” said Courfeyrac.

  The next day, Courfeyrac introduced Marius to the Café Musain. Then he whispered in his ear with a smile: “I must give you your admission into the revolution.” And he took him into the room of the Friends of the A B C. He presented him to the other members, saying in an undertone this simple word which Marius did not understand: “A pupil.”

  Marius had fallen into a mental wasps’ nest. Still, although silent and serious, he was not the less winged, nor the less armed.

  Marius, up to this time solitary and inclined to speak in soliloquies and asides by habit and by taste, was a little bewildered at this flock of young men about him. All these different progressives attacked him at once, and perplexed him. The tumultuous sweep and sway of all these minds at liberty and at work set his ideas in a whirl. Sometimes, in the confusion, they went so far from him that he had some difficulty in finding them again. He heard talk of philosophy, of literature, of art, of history, of religion, in a style he had not looked for. He caught glimpses of strange appearances; and, as he did not bring them into perspective, he was not sure that it was not a chaos that he saw. On abandoning his grandfather’s opinions for his father’s he had thought himself settled; he now suspected, with anxiety, and without daring to confess it to himself, that he was not. The angle under which he saw all things was beginning to change anew. A certain oscillation shook the whole horizon of his brain. A strange internal moving-day He almost suffered from it.

  It seemed that there were to these young men no “sacred things.” Marius heard, upon every subject, singular ways of speaking that were awkward for his still timid mind.

  A theatre poster presented itself, decorated with the title of a tragedy of the old repertory, called classic: “Down with tragedy dear to the bourgeois!” cried Bahorel. And Marius heard Combeferre reply.

  “You are wrong, Bahorel. The bourgeoisie love tragedy, and upon that point we must let the bourgeoisie alone. Tragedy in a wig has its reason for being, and I am not one of those who,
in the name of Æschylus, deny it the right of existence. There are rough drafts in nature; there are, in creation, ready-made parodies; a bill which is not a bill, wings which are not wings, fins which are not fins, claws which are not claws, a mournful cry which inspires us with the desire to laugh, there is the duck. Now, since the fowl exists along with the bird, I do not see why classic tragedy should not exist in the face of antique tragedy.”

  At another time Marius happened to be passing through the Rue Jean Jacques Rousseau between Enjolras and Courfeyrac.

  Courfeyrac took his arm:

  “Pay attention. This is the Rue Plâtrière, now called Rue Jean Jacques Rousseau, on account of a singular household which lived on it sixty years ago. It consisted of Jean Jacques and Thérèse. From time to time, little creatures were born in it. Thérèse brought them forth. Jean Jacques turned them forth.”cp

  And Enjolras replied with severity:

  “Silence before Jean Jacques! I admire that man. He disowned his children; very well; but he adopted the people.”

  None of these young men uttered this word: the emperor. Jean Prouvaire alone sometimes said Napoleon; all the rest said Bonaparte. Enjolras pronounced Buonaparte.

  Marius became confusedly astonished. Initium sapientiœ. cq

  4

  THE BACK ROOM OF THE CAFÉ MUSAIN

  OF THE CONVERSATIONS among these young men which Marius frequented and in which he sometimes took part, one shocked him severely.

  This was held in the back room of the Café Musain. Nearly all the Friends of the A B C were together that evening. The large lamp was ceremoniously lighted. They talked of one thing and another without passion and with noise. Save Enjolras and Marius, who were silent! each one harangued a little at random. The talk of comrades does sometimes amount to these harmless tumults. It was a play and a fracas as much as a conversation. One threw out words which another caught up. They were talking in each of the four corners.

  5

  ENLARGEMENT OF THE HORIZON

  THE JOSTLINGS of young minds against each other have this wonderful attribute, that one can never foresee the spark, nor predict the flash. What may spring up in a moment? Nobody knows. A burst of laughter follows a scene of tenderness. In a moment of buffoonery, the serious makes its entrance. Impulses depend upon a chance word. The wit of each is sovereign. A jest suffices to open the door to the unlooked for. These are conferences with sharp turns, where the perspective suddenly changes. Chance is the director of these conversations.

  A stern thought, oddly brought out of a clatter of words, suddenly crossed the tumult of speech in which Grantaire, Bahorel, Prouvaire, Bossuet, Combeferre, and Courfeyrac were confusedly fencing.

  How does a phrase make its way into a dialogue? whence comes it that it makes its mark all at once upon the attention of those who hear it? We have just said, nobody knows. In the midst of the uproar Bossuet suddenly ended some apostrophe to Combeferre with this date:

  “The 18th of June, 1815: Waterloo.”

  At this name, Waterloo, Marius, who was leaning on a table with a glass of water by him, took his hand away from under his chin and began to look earnestly about the room.

  “Bygod,” exclaimed Courfeyrac (Bygosh, at that period, was falling into disuse), “that number 18 is strange, and striking to me. It is the fatal number of Bonaparte. Put Louis before and Brumaire behind, you have the whole destiny of the man, with this expressive peculiarity, that the beginning is hard pressed by the end.”

  Enjolras, till now dumb, broke the silence, and thus addressed Courfeyrac:

  “You mean the crime by the expiation.”

  This word, crime, exceeded the limits of the endurance of Marius, already much excited by the abrupt evocation of Waterloo.

  He rose, he walked slowly towards the map of France spread out upon the wall, at the bottom of which could be seen an island in a separate compartment; he laid his finger upon this compartment and said:

  “Corsica. A little island which has made France truly great.”

  This was a breath of freezing air. All was silent. They felt that now something was to be said.

  Bahorel, replying to Bossuet, was just assuming a pet attitude. He gave it up to listen.

  Enjolras, whose blue eye was not fixed upon anybody, and seemed staring into space, answered without looking at Marius:

  “France needs no Corsica to be great. France is great because she is France. Quia nominor leo.”cr

  Marius felt not the slightest desire to retreat, he turned towards Enjolras, and his voice rang with a vibration which came from the quivering of his nerves:

  “God forbid that I should diminish France! but it is not lessening her to join her with Napoleon. Come, let us talk then. I am a new-comer among you, but I confess that you astound me. Where are we? who are we? who are you? who am I? Let us explain ourselves about the emperor. I hear you say Buonaparte, accenting the u like the royalists. I can tell you that my grandfather does better yet; he says Buonaparté. I thought you were young men. Where is your enthusiasm then? and what do you do with it? whom do you admire, if you do not admire the emperor? and what more must you have? If you do not like that great man, what great men would you have? He was everything. He was complete. He had in his brain the cube of human faculties. He made codes like Justinian, he dictated like Cæsar, his conversation joined the lightning of Pascal to the thunderbolt of Tacitus, he made history and he wrote it, his bulletins are Iliads, he combined the figures of Newton with the metaphors of Mahomet, he left behind him in the Orient words as grand as the pyramids, at Tilsit he taught majesty to emperors, at the Academy of Sciences he replied to Laplace, in the Council of State he held his ground with Merlin, he gave a soul to the geometry of those and to the trickery of these, he was legal with the attorneys and sidereal with the astronomers; like Cromwell blowing out one candle when two were lighted, he went to the Temple to cheapen a curtain tassel; he saw everything; he knew everything; which did not prevent him from laughing a goodman’s laugh by the cradle of his little child; and all at once, startled Europe listened, armies set themselves in march, parks of artillery rolled along, bridges of boats stretched over the rivers, clouds of cavalry galloped in the hurricane, cries, trumpets, a trembling of thrones everywhere, the frontiers of the kingdoms oscillated upon the map, the sound of a superhuman blade was heard leaping from its sheath, men saw him, him, standing erect in the horizon with a flame in his hands and a resplendence in his eyes, unfolding in the thunder his two wings, the Grand Army and the Old Guard, and he was the archangel of war!”

  All were silent, and Enjolras bowed his head. Silence always has something of the effect of an acquiescence or of a sort of pushing to the wall. Marius, almost without taking breath, continued with a burst of enthusiasm:

  “Be just, my friends! to be the empire of such an emperor, what a splendid destiny for a people, when that people is France, and when it adds its genius to the genius of such a man! To appear and to reign, to march and to triumph, to have every capital for a stage in the journey, to take his grenadiers and make kings of them, to decree the downfall of dynasties, to transfigure Europe at a double quickstep, so that men feel, when you threaten, that you lay your hand on the hilt of the sword of God, to follow, as a single man, Hannibal, Cæsar, and Charlemagne, to be the people of one who mingles with your every dawn the glorious announcement of a battle won, to be wakened in the morning by the cannon of the Invalides, to hurl into the vault of day mighty words which blaze for ever, Marengo, Arcola, Austerlitz, Jena, Wagram! to call forth at every moment constellations of victories in the zenith of the centuries, to make the French Empire, the successor of the Roman Empire, to be the grand nation and to bring forth the grand army, to send your legions flying over the whole earth as a mountain sends its eagles upon all sides, to vanquish, to rule, to thunderstrike, to be in Europe a kind of gilded people through much glory, to sound through history a Titan trumpet call, to conquer the world twice, by conquest and by resplendence,
this is sublime, and what can be more grand?”

  “To be free,” said Combeferre.

  Marius in his turn bowed his head: these cold and simple words had pierced his epic effusion like a blade of steel, and he felt it vanish within him. When he raised his eyes, Combeferre was there no longer. Satisfied probably with his reply to the apotheosis, he had gone out, and all, except Enjolras, had followed him. The room was empty. Enjolras, remaining alone with Marius, was looking at him gravely. Marius, meanwhile, having rallied his ideas a little, did not consider himself beaten; there was still something left of the ebullition within him, which doubtless was about to find expression in syllogisms arrayed against Enjolras, when suddenly they heard somebody singing as he was going downstairs. It was Combeferre, and what he was singing is this:

  Si César m‘avait donné

  La gloire et la guerre,

  Et qu’il me fallut quitter

  L‘amour de ma mere,

  Je dirais au grand César:

  Reprends ton sceptre et ton char,

  J’aime mieux ma mere, ô gué!

  J‘aime mieux ma mère.cs

  The wild and tender accent with which Combeferre sang, gave to this stanza a strange grandeur. Marius, thoughtful and with his eyes directed to the ceiling, repeated almost mechanically: “my mother—”

  At this moment, he felt Enjolras’ hand on his shoulder.

  “Citizen,” said Enjolras to him, “my mother is the republic.”

  6

  ANGUISH

  THAT EVENING left Marius in a profound agitation, with a sorrowful darkness in his soul. He was experiencing what perhaps the earth experiences at the moment when it is sliced with the iron blade so that the grains of wheat may be sown; it feels the wound alone; the thrill of the germ and the joy of the fruit do not come until later.

  Marius was gloomy. He had but just attained a faith; could he so soon reject it? He decided within himself that he could not. He declared to himself that he would not doubt, and he began to doubt in spite of himself. To be between two religions, one which you have not yet abandoned, and another which you have not yet adopted, is unbearable; and twilight is pleasant only to bat-like souls. Marius was an open eye, and he needed the true light. To him the dusk of doubt was harmful. Whatever might be his desire to stop where he was, and to hold fast there, he was irresistibly compelled to continue, to advance, to examine, to think, to go forward. Where was that going to lead him? he feared, after having taken so many steps which had brought him nearer to his father, to take now any steps which should separate them. His dejection increased with every reflection which occurred to him. Steep cliffs rose about him. He was on good terms neither with his grandfather nor with his friends; rash towards the former, backward towards the others; and he felt doubly isolated, from old age, and also from youth. He went no more to the Café Musain.