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

by Victor Hugo

  He felt beneath his feet a terrible disaggregation which was not, however, a crumbling into dust—France being more France than ever.

  Dark drifts covered the horizon. A strange shadow approaching nearer and nearer, was spreading little by little over men, over things, over ideas; a shadow which came from indignations and from systems. All that had been hurriedly stifled was stirring and fermenting. Sometimes the conscience of the honest man caught its breath, there was so much confusion in that air in which sophisms were mingled with truths. Minds trembled in the social anxiety like leaves at the approach of the storm. The electric tension was so great that at certain moments any chance-comer, though unknown, flashed out. Then the twilight darkness fell again. At intervals, deep and sullen mut terings enabled men to judge of the amount of lightning in the cloud.

  BOOK Two

  EPONINE

  1(2)

  EMBRYONIC FORMATION OF CRIMES IN THE INCUBATION OF PRISONS

  JAVERT’S TRIUMPH in the Gorbeau tenement had seemed complete, but it was not so.

  In the first place, and this was his principal regret, Javert had not made the prisoner prisoner. The victim who slips away is more suspicious than the assassin; and it was probable that this personage, so precious a capture to the bandits, would be a not less valuable prize to the authorities.

  And then, Montparnasse had escaped Javert.

  He must await another occasion to lay his hand upon “that devilish dandy.” Montparnasse, in fact, having met Eponine, who was standing sentry under the trees of the boulevard, had led her away, liking rather to be Némorin with the daughter than to be Schinderhannes with the father. Well for him that he did so. He was free. As to Eponine, Javert “nabbed” her; trifling consolation. Eponine had rejoined Azelma at Les Madelonnettes.

  Finally, on the trip from the Gorbeau tenement to La Force, one of the principal prisoners, Claquesous, had been lost. Nobody knew how it was done, the officers and sergeants “didn’t understand it,” he had changed into vapour, he had glided out of the handcuffs, he had slipped through the cracks of the carriage, the fiacre was leaky, and had fled; nothing could be said, save that on reaching the prison there was no Claquesous. There were either fairies or police in the matter. Had Claquesous melted away into the darkness like a snowflake in the water? Was there some secret connivance of the officers? Did this man belong to the double enigma of disorder and of order? Was he concentric with infraction and with repression? Had this sphinx forepaws in crime and hind-paws in authority? Javert in no wise accepted these combinations, and his hair rose on end in view of such an exposure; but his squad contained other inspectors besides himself, more deeply initiated, perhaps, than himself, although his subordinates, in the secrets of the precinct, and Claquesous was so great a scoundrel that he might be a very good officer. To be on such intimate juggling relations with darkness is excellent for brigandage and admirable for the police. There are such two-edged rascals. However it might be, Claquesous was lost, and was not found again. Javert appeared more irritated than astonished at it.

  As to Marius, “that dolt of a lawyer,” who was “probably frightened,” and whose name Javert had forgotten, Javert cared little for him. Besides he was a lawyer, they are always found again. But was he a lawyer merely?

  The trial commenced.

  The police judge thought it desirable not to put one of the men of the Patron-Minette band into solitary confinement, hoping for some blabbing. This was Brujon, the long-haired man of the Rue du Petit Banquier. He was left in the Charlemagne court, and the watchmen kept their eyes upon him.

  This name, Brujon, is one of the traditions of La Force. In the hideous court in what was called the New Building, which the administration named Court Saint Bernard, and which the robbers named La Fosse aux Lions, upon that wall covered with filth and with mould, which rises on the left to the height of the roofs, near an old rusty iron door which leads into the former chapel of the ducal hotel of La Force, now become a dormitory for brigands, a dozen years ago there could still be seen a sort of bastille coarsely cut in the stone with a nail, and below it this signature:

  BRUJON, 1811.

  The Brujon of 1811 was the father of the Brujon of 1832.

  The last, of whom only a glimpse was caught in the Gorbeau ambush was a sprightly young fellow, very cunning and very adroit, with a flurried and plaintive appearance. It was on account of this flurried air that the judge had selected him, thinking that he would be of more use in the Charlemagne court than in a solitary cell.

  Robbers do not cease operations because they are in the hands of justice. They are not disconcerted so easily. Being in prison for one crime does not prevent starting another crime. They are artists who have a picture in the parlour, and who labour none the less for that on a new work in their studio.

  Brujon seemed stupefied by the prison. He was sometimes seen whole hours in the Charlemagne court, standing near the canteen, and staring like an idiot at that dirty list of prices of supplies which began with: garlic, 62 centimes, and ended with: cigars, cinq centimes. Or instead, he would pass his time in trembling and making his teeth chatter, saying that he had a fever, and inquiring if one of the twenty-eight beds in the fever ward was not vacant.

  Suddenly, about the second fortnight in February, 1832, it was discovered that Brujon, that sleepy fellow, had arranged, through the agents of the house, not in his own name, but in the name of three of his comrades, three different errands, which had cost him in all fifty sous, a tremendous expense which attracted the attention of the prison brigadier.

  He inquired into it, and by consulting the price list for errands hung up in the convicts’ waiting-room, he found that the fifty sous were made up thus: three errands; one to the Pantheon, ten sous; one to the Val de Grace, fifteen sous; and one to the Barrière de Grenelle, twenty-five sous. This was the most expensive of the whole list. Now the Pantheon, the Val de Grace, and the Barrière de Grenelle happened to be the residences of three of the most dreaded prowlers of the barriers, Kruideniers alias Bizarro, Glorieux, a liberated convict, and Barrecarrosse, upon whom this incident fixed the eyes of the police. They thought they divined that these men were affiliated with Patron-Minette, two of whose chiefs, Babet and Gueulemer, were secured. It was supposed that Brujon’s messages sent, not addressed to any houses, but to persons who were waiting for them in the street, must have been notices of some projected crime. There were still other indications; they arrested the three prowlers, and thought they had foiled Brujon’s machination whatever it was.

  About a week after these measures were taken, one night, a watchman, who was watching the dormitory in the lower part of the New Building, at the instant of putting his chestnut into the chestnut-box-this is the means employed to make sure that the watchmen do their duty with exactness; every hour a chestnut must fall into every box nailed on the doors of the dormitories—a watchman then saw through the peep-hole of the dormitory, Brujon sitting up in his bed and writing something by the light of the reflector. The warden entered, Brujon was put in solitary for a month, but they could not find what he had written. The police knew nothing more.

  It is certain, however, that the next day “a postman” was thrown from the Charlemagne court into the Fosse aux Lions, over the five-story building which separates the two courts.

  Prisoners call a ball of bread artistically kneaded, which is sent into Ireland, that is to say, over the roof of a prison from one court to the other, a postman. Etymology: over England; from one county to the other; into Ireland. This ball falls in the court. He who picks it up opens it, and finds a letter in it addressed to some prisoner in the court. If it be a convict who finds it, he hands the letter to its destination; if it be a warden, or one of those secretly bribed prisoners who are called sheep in the prisons and foxes in the galleys, the letter is carried to the office and delivered to the police.

  This time the postman reached its address, although he for whom the message was destined was then in solitary.
Its recipient was none other than Babet, one of the four heads of Patron-Minette.

  The postman contained a paper rolled up, on which there were only these two lines:

  “Babet, there is an affair on hand in the Rue Plumet. A grating in a garden.”

  This was the thing that Brujon had written in the night.

  In spite of spies, both male and female, Babet found means to send the letter from La Force to La Salpêtrière to “a friend” of his who was shut up there. This girl in her turn transmitted the letter to another whom she knew, named Magnon, who was closely watched by the police, but not yet arrested. This Magnon, whose name the reader has already seen, had some relations with the Thénardiers which will be related hereafter, and could, by going to see Eponine, serve as a bridge between La Salpêtrière and Les Madelonnettes.

  It happened just at that very moment, the proofs in the prosecution of Thénardier failing in regard to his daughters, that Eponine and Azelma were released.

  When Eponine came out, Magnon, who was watching for her at the door of Les Madelonnettes, handed her Brujon’s note to Babet, charging her to scout out the affair.

  Eponine went to the Rue Plumet, reconnoitred the grating and the garden, looked at the house, spied, watched, and, a few days after, carried to Magnon, who lived in the Rue Clocheperce, a biscuit, which Magnon transmitted to Babet’s mistress at La Salpêtrière. A biscuit, in the dark symbolism of the prisons, signifies: nothing to do.

  So that in less than a week after that, Babet and Brujon, meeting on the way from La Force, as one was going “to examination,” and the other was returning from it: “Well,” asked Brujon, “the Rue P.?” “Biscuit,” answered Babet.

  This was the end of that foetus of crime, engendered by Brujon in La Force.

  This abortion, however, led to results entirely foreign to Brujon’s programme. We shall see them.

  Often, when thinking to knot one thread, we tie another.

  2 (4)

  AN APPARITION TO MARIUS

  Distracted by Cosette’s disappearance, and unable to concentrate on the translation work Marius does to survive, he goes out nearly every day to sit on a bench in “The Field of the Lark,” which reminds him of her because of the coincidence of that name with Cosette’s nickname.

  One day, a few days after this visit of a “spirit” to Father Mabeuf, one morning—it was Monday, the day on which Marius borrowed the hundred-sous coin of Courfeyrac for Thénardier—Marius had put this hundred-sous coin into his pocket and before carrying it to the prison once, he had gone “to take a little walk,” hoping that it would enable him to work on his return. It was eternally so. As soon as he rose in the morning, he sat down before a book and a sheet of paper to work upon some translation; the work he had on hand at that time was the translation into French of a celebrated quarrel between two Germans, the controversy between Gans and Savigny; he took Savigny, he took Gans, read four lines, tried to write one of them, could not, saw a star between his paper and his eyes, and rose from his chair, saying: “I will go out. That will put me in trim.”

  And he would go to the Field of the Lark.

  There he saw the star more than ever, and Savigny and Gans less than ever.

  He returned, tried to resume his work, and did not succeed; he found no means of tying a single one of the broken threads in his brain; then he would say: “I will not go out to-morrow. It prevents my working.” Yet he went out every day.

  He lived in the Field of the Lark rather than in Courfeyrac’s room. This was his real address: Boulevard de la Santé, seventh tree from the Rue Croulebarbe.

  That morning, he had left this seventh tree, and sat down on the bank of the brook of the Gobelins. The bright sun was gleaming through the new and glossy leaves.

  He was thinking of “Her!” And his dreaminess, becoming reproachful, fell back upon himself; he thought sorrowfully of the idleness, the paralysis of the soul, which was growing up within him, and of that night which was thickening before him hour by hour so rapidly that he had already ceased to see the sun.

  Meanwhile, through this painful evolution of indistinct ideas which were not even a soliloquy, so much had action become enfeebled within him, and he no longer had even strength to develop his grief—through this melancholy distraction, the sensations of the world without reached him. He heard behind and below him, on both banks of the stream, the washerwomen of the Gobelins beating their linen; and over his head, the birds chattering and singing in the elms. On the one hand the sound of liberty, of happy unconcern, of winged leisure; on the other, the sound of labour. A thing which made him muse profoundly, and almost reflect, these two joyous sounds.

  All at once, in the midst of his ecstasy of exhaustion, he heard a voice which was known to him, say:

  “Ah! there he is!”

  He raised his eyes and recognised the unfortunate child who had come to his room one morning, the elder of the Thénardier girls, Eponine; he now knew her name. Singular fact, she had become more wretched and more beautiful, two steps which seemed impossible. She had accomplished a double progress towards the light, and towards distress. She was bare footed and in rags, as on the day when she had so resolutely entered his room, only her rags were two months older; the holes were larger, the tatters dirtier. It was the same rough voice, the same forehead tanned and wrinkled by exposure; the same free, wild, and wandering gaze. She had, in addition to her former expression, that mixture of fear and sorrow which the experience of a prison adds to misery.

  She had spears of straw and grass in her hair, not like Ophelia from having gone mad through the contagion of Hamlet’s madness but because she had slept in some stable loft.

  And with all this, she was beautiful. What a star thou art, O youth!

  Meantime, she had stopped before Marius, with an expression of pleasure upon her livid face, and something which resembled a smile.

  She stood for a few seconds, as if she could not speak.

  “I have found you, then?” said she at last. “Father Mabeuf was right; it was on this boulevard. How I have looked for you! if you only knew! Do you know? I have been in the jug. A fortnight! They have let me out! seeing that there was nothing against me and then I was not of the age of discernment. It lacked two months. Oh! how I have looked for you! it is six weeks now. You don’t live down there any longer?”

  “No,” said Marius.

  “Oh! I understand. On account of the affair. Such scares are disagreeable. You have moved. What! why do you wear such an old hat as that? a young man like you ought to have fine clothes. Do you know, Monsieur Marius? Father Mabeuf calls you Baron Marius, I forget what more. It’s not true that you are a baron? barons are old fellows, they go to the Luxembourg Gardens in front of the château where there is the most sun, they read the Quotidienne for a sou. I went once for a letter to a baron’s like that. He was more than a hundred years old. But tell me, where do you live now?”

  Marius did not answer.

  “Ah!” she continued, “you have a hole in your shirt. I must mend it for you.”

  She resumed with an expression which gradually grew darker:

  “You don’t seem to be glad to see me?”

  Marius said nothing; she herself was silent for a moment, then exclaimed:

  “But if I would, I could easily make you glad!”

  “How?” inquired Marius. “What does that mean?”

  “Ah! you used to speak more kindly to me!” replied she.

  “Well, what is it that you mean?”

  She bit her lip; she seemed to hesitate, as if passing through a kind of interior struggle. At last, she appeared to decide upon her course.

  “So much the worse, it makes no difference. You look sad, I want you to be glad. But promise me that you will laugh, I want to see you laugh and hear you say: Ah, well! that is good. Poor Monsieur Marius! you know, you promised me that you would give me whatever I should ask—”

  “Yes! but tell me!”

  She looked i
nto Marius’ eyes and said:

  “I have the address.”

  Marius turned pale. All his blood flowed back to his heart.

  “What address?”

  “The address you asked me for.”

  She added as if she were making an effort:

  “The address—you know well enough!”

  “Yes!” stammered Marius.

  “Of the young lady!”

  Having pronounced this word, she sighed deeply.

  Marius sprang up from the bank on which he was sitting, and took her wildly by the hand.

  “Oh! come! show me the way, tell me! ask me for whatever you will! Where is it?”

  “Come with me,” she answered. “I am not sure of the street and the number; it is away on the other side from here, but I know the house very well. I will show you.”

  She withdrew her hand and added in a tone which would have pierced the heart of an observer, but which did not even touch the intoxicated and transported Marius:

  “Oh! how glad you are!”

  A cloud passed over Marius’ brow. He seized Eponine by the arm:

  “Swear to me one thing!”

  “Swear?” said she, “what does that mean? Ah! you want me to swear?”

  And she laughed.

  “Your father! promise me, Eponine! swear to me that you will not give this address to your father!”

  She turned towards him with an astounded appearance.

  “Eponine! How do you know that my name is Eponine?”

  “Promise what I ask you!”

  But she did not seem to understand.

  “That is nice! you called me Eponine!”

  Marius caught her by both arms at once. “But answer me now, in heaven’s name! pay attention to what I am saying, swear to me that you will not give the address you know to your father!”

  “My father?” said she. “Oh! yes, my father! Do not be concerned on his account. He is in solitary. Besides, do I busy myself about my father!”