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

by Victor Hugo

  Marius, petrified and unable to articulate a word, shook his head.

  The goodman burst into a laugh, winked his old eye, gave him a tap on the knee, looked straight into his eyes with a significant and sparkling expression, and said to him with the most amorous shrug of the shoulders:

  “Stupid! make her your mistress.”

  Marius turned pale. He had understood nothing of all that his grandfather had been saying. This rigmarole of Rue Blomet, of Pamela, of barracks, of a lancer, had passed before Marius like a phantasmagoria. Nothing of all could relate to Cosette, who was a lily. The goodman was wandering. But this wandering had terminated in a word which Marius did understand, and which was a deadly insult to Cosette. That phrase, make her your mistress, entered the heart of the chaste young man like a sword.

  He rose, picked up his hat which was on the floor, and walked towards the door with a firm and assured step. There he turned, bowed profoundly before his grandfather, raised his head again and said:

  “Five years ago you outraged my father; to-day you have outraged my wife. I ask nothing more of you, monsieur. Adieu.”

  Grandfather Gillenormand, astounded, opened his mouth, stretched out his arms, attempted to rise, but before he could utter a word, the door closed and Marius had disappeared.

  The old man was for a few moments motionless, and as it were thunder-stricken, unable to speak or breathe, as if a hand were clutching his throat. At last he tore himself from his chair, ran to the door as fast as a man who is ninety-one can run, opened it and cried:

  “Help! help!”

  His daughter appeared, then the servants. He continued with a pitiful rattle in his voice:

  “Run after him! catch him! what have I done to him! he is mad! he is going away! Oh! my God! oh! my God!—this time he will not come back!”

  He went to the window which looked upon the street, opened it with his tremulous old hands, hung more than half his body, outside, while Basque and Nicolette held him from behind, and cried:

  “Marius! Marius! Marius! Marius!”

  But Marius was already out of hearing, and was at that very moment turning the corner of the Rue Saint Louis.

  The old man carried his hands to his temples two or three times, with an expression of anguish, drew back tottering, and sank into an armchair, pulseless, voiceless, tearless, shaking his head, and moving his lips with a stupid air, having now nothing in his eyes or in his heart but something deep and mournful, which resembled night.

  BOOK NINE

  WHERE ARE THEY GOING?

  1

  JEAN VALJEAN

  THAT VERY DAY, towards four o‘clock in the afternoon, Jean Valjean was sitting alone upon the reverse of one of the most solitary embankments of the Champ de Mars. Whether from prudence, or from a desire for meditation, or simply as a result of one of those insensible changes of habits which creep little by little into all lives, he now rarely went out with Cosette. He wore his working-man’s waistcoat, brown linen trousers, and his cap with the long visor hid his face. He was now calm and happy in regard to Cosette; what had for some time alarmed and disturbed him was dissipated; but within a week or two anxieties of a different nature had come upon him. One day, when walking on the boulevard, he had seen Thénardier; thanks to his disguise, Thénardier had not recognised him; but since then Jean Valjean had seen him again several times, and he was now certain that Thénardier was prowling about the neighbourhood. This was sufficient to make him take a serious step. Thénardier there! this was all dangers at once. Moreover, Paris was not quiet: the political troubles had this inconvenience for him who had anything in his life to conceal, that the police had become very active, and very secret, and that in seeking to track out a man like Pépin or Morey, they would be very likely to discover a man like Jean Valjean. Jean Valjean had decided to leave Paris, and even France, and to pass over to England. He had told Cosette. In less than a week he wished to be gone. He was sitting on the embankment in the Champ de Mars, revolving all manner of thoughts in his mind, Thenardier, the police, the journey, and the difficulty of procuring a passport.

  On all these points he was anxious.

  Finally, an inexplicable circumstance which had just burst upon him, and with which he was still warm, had added to his alarm. On the morning of that very day, being the only one up in the house, and walking in the garden before Cosette’s shutters were open, he had suddenly come upon this line scratched upon the wall, probably with a nail.

  16, Rue de la Verrerie.

  It was quite recent, the lines were white in the old black mortar, a tuft of nettles at the foot of the wall was powdered with fresh fine plaster. It had probably been written during the night. What was it? an address? a signal for others? a warning for him? At all events, it was evident that the garden had been violated, and that some persons unknown had penetrated into it. He recalled the strange incidents which had already alarmed the house. His mind worked upon this canvass. He took good care not to speak to Cosette of the line written on the wall, for fear of frightening her.

  In the midst of these meditations, he perceived, by a shadow which the sun had projected, that somebody had just stopped upon the crest of the embankment immediately behind him. He was about to turn round, when a folded paper fell upon his knees, as if a hand had dropped it from above his head. He took the paper, unfolded it, and read on it this word, written in large letters with a pencil:

  MOVE OUT.

  Jean Valjean rose hastily, there was no longer anybody on the embankment; he looked about him, and perceived a species of being larger than a child, smaller than a man, dressed in a grey smock and trousers of dirt-coloured cotton velvet, which jumped over the parapet and let itself slide into the ditch of the Champ de Mars.

  Jean Valjean returned home immediately, full of thought.

  2

  MARIUS

  MARIUS HAD LEFT M. Gillenormand’s desolate. He had entered with a very small hope; he came out with an immense despair.

  He began to walk the streets, the resource of those who suffer. He thought of nothing which he could ever remember. At two o‘clock in the morning he returned to Courfeyrac’s, and threw himself, dressed as he was, upon his mattress. It was broad sunlight when he fell asleep, with that frightful, heavy slumber in which the ideas come and go in the brain. When he awoke, he saw standing in the room, their hats upon their heads, all ready to go out, very busy, Courfeyrac, Enjolras, Feuilly, and Combeferre.

  Courfeyrac said to him:

  “Are you going to the funeral of General Lamarque?”

  It seemed to him that Courfeyrac was speaking Chinese.

  He went out some time after them. He put into his pocket the pistols which Javert had confided to him at the time of the adventure of the 3rd of February, and which had remained in his hands. These pistols were still loaded. It would be difficult to say what dark thought he had in his mind in taking them with him.

  He rambled about all day without knowing where; it rained at intervals, he did not perceive it; for his dinner he bought a penny roll at a baker‘s, put it in his pocket, and forgot it. It would appear that he took a bath in the Seine without being conscious of it. There are moments when a man has a furnace in his brain. Marius was in one of those moments. He hoped nothing more, he feared nothing more; he had reached this condition since the evening before. He waited for night with feverish impatience, he had but one clear idea; that was, that at nine o’clock he should see Cosette. This last happiness was now his whole future; afterwards, darkness. At intervals, while walking along the most deserted boulevards, he seemed to hear strange sounds in Paris. He roused himself from his reverie, and said: “Are they fighting?”

  At nightfall, at precisely nine o‘clock, as he had promised Cosette, he was in the Rue Plumet. When he approached the grating he forgot everything else. It was forty-eight hours since he had seen Cosette, he was going to see her again, every other thought faded away, and he felt now only a deep and wonderful joy. Those minutes in
which we live centuries always have this sovereign and wonderful peculiarity, that for the moment while they are passing, they entirely fill the heart.

  Marius displaced the grating, and sprang into the garden. Cosette was not at the place where she usually waited for him. He crossed the thicket and went to the recess near the steps. “She is waiting for me there,” said he. Cosette was not there. He raised his eyes, and saw the shutters of the house were closed. He took a turn around the garden, the garden was deserted. Then he returned to the house, and, mad with love, intoxicated, dismayed, exasperated with grief and anxiety, like a master who returns home in an untoward hour, he rapped on the shutters. He rapped, he rapped again, at the risk of seeing the window open and the forbidding face of the father appear and ask him: “What do you want?” This was nothing compared with what he now began to see. When he had rapped, he raised his voice and called Cosette. “Cosette!” cried he. “Cosette!” repeated he imperiously. There was no answer. It was settled. Nobody in the garden; nobody in the house.

  Marius fixed his despairing eyes upon that dismal house, as black, as silent, and more empty than a tomb. He looked at the stone bench where he had passed so many adorable hours with Cosette. Then he sat down upon the steps, his heart full of tenderness and resolution, he blessed his love in the depths of his thought, and he said to himself that since Cosette was gone, there was nothing more for him but to die.

  Suddenly he heard a voice which appeared to come from the street, and which cried through the trees:

  “Monsieur Marius!”

  He arose.

  “Hey?” said he.

  “Monsieur Marius, is it you?”

  “Yes.”

  “Monsieur Marius,” added the voice, “your friends are expecting you at the barricade, in the Rue de la Chanvrerie.”

  This voice was not entirely unknown to him. It resembled the harsh and roughened voice of Eponine. Marius ran to the grating, pushed aside the movable bar, passed his head through, and saw somebody who appeared to him to be a young man rapidly disappearing in the twilight.

  [Book Ten “June 5th, 1832, ” does not appear in this abridged edition.J

  BOOK ELEVEN

  THE ATOM FRATERNISES WITH THE HURRICANE

  1 (6)

  RECRUITS

  THE BAND INCREASED at every moment. Towards the Rue des Billettes a man of tall stature, who was turning grey, whose rough and bold mien Courfeyrac, Enjolras, and Combeferre noticed, but whom none of them knew, joined them. Gavroche, busy singing, whistling, humming, going forward and rapping on the shutters of the shops with the butt of his ham merless pistol, paid no attention to this man.

  It happened that, in the Rue de la Verrerie, they passed by Courfeyrac’s door.

  “That is lucky,” said Courfeyrac, “I have forgotten my purse and I have lost my hat.” He left the company and went up to his room, four stairs at a time. He took an old hat and his purse. He took also a large square box, of the size of a big valise, which was hidden among his dirty clothes. As he was running down again, the portress hailed him:

  “Monsieur de Courfeyrac?”

  “Portress, what is your name?” responded Courfeyrac.

  The portress stood aghast.

  “Why, you know it very well; I am the portress, my name is Mother Veuvain.”

  “Well, if you call me Monsieur de Courfeyrac again, I shall call you Mother de Veuvain. Now, speak, what is it? What do you want?”

  “There is somebody who wishes to speak to you.”

  “Who is it?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Where is he?”

  “In my lodge.”

  “The devil!” said Courfeyrac.

  “But he has been waiting more than an hour for you to come home!” replied the portress.

  At the same time, a sort of young working-man, thin, pale, small, freckled, dressed in a torn smock and patched trousers of ribbed velvet, and who had rather the appearance of a girl in boy’s clothes than of a man, came out of the lodge and said to Courfeyrac in a voice which, to be sure, was not the least in the world like a woman’s voice.

  “Monsieur Marius, if you please?”

  “He is not in.”

  “Will he be in this evening?”

  “I don’t know anything about it.”

  And Courfeyrac added: “As for myself, I shall not be in.”

  The young man looked fixedly at him, and asked him:

  “Why so?”

  “Because.”

  “Where are you going then?”

  “What is that to you?”

  “Do you want me to carry your box?”

  “I am going to the barricades.”

  “Do you want me to go with you?”

  “If you like,” answered Courfeyrac. “The road is free; the streets belong to everybody.”

  And he ran off to rejoin his friends. When he had rejoined them, he gave the box to one of them to carry. It was not until a quarter of an hour afterwards that he perceived that the young man had in fact followed them.

  A mob does not go precisely where it wishes. We have explained that a gust of wind carries it along. They went beyond Saint Merry and found themselves, without really knowing how, in the Rue Saint-Denis.

  BOOK TWELVE

  CORINTH

  1

  HISTORY OF CORINTH FROM ITS FOUNDATION

  THE PARISIANS who, to-day, upon entering the Rue Rambuteau from the side of the markets, notice on their right, opposite the Rue Mondétour, a basket-maker’s shop, with a basket for a sign, in the shape of the Emperor Napoleon the Great, with this inscription: do not suspect the terrible scenes which this very place saw thirty years ago.

  NAPOLEON EST FAIT

  TOUT EN OSIER,gf

  Here were the Rue de la Chanvrerie, which the old signs spelled Chan verrerie, and the celebrated tavern called Corinth.

  The reader will remember all that has been said about the barricade erected on this spot and eclipsed elsewhere by the barricade of Saint Merry. Upon this famous barricade of the Rue de la Chanvrerie, now fallen into deep obscurity, we are about to throw some little light.

  Permit us to resort, for the sake of clearness, to the simple means already employed by us for Waterloo. Those who would picture to themselves with sufficient exactness the confused blocks of houses which stood at that period near the Pointe Saint Eustache, at the northeast comer of the markets of Paris, where is now the mouth of the Rue Rambuteau, have only to figure to themselves, touching the Rue Saint-Denis at its summit, and the markets at its base, an N, of which the two vertical strokes would be the Rue de la Grande Truanderie and the Rue de la Chanvrerie, and the Rue de la Petite Truanderie would make the transverse stroke. The old Rue Mondétour cut the three strokes at the most awkward angles. So that the labyrinthine entanglement of these four streets sufficed to make, in a space of four hundred square yards, between the markets and the Rue Saint-Denis, in one direction, and between the Rue du Cygne and the Rue des Prêcheurs in the other direction, seven islets of houses, oddly intersecting, of various sizes, placed crosswise and as if by chance, and separated but slightly, like blocks of stone in a stone yard, by narrow crevices.

  We say narrow crevices, and we cannot give a more just idea of those dark, contracted, angular lanes, bordered by ruins eight stories high. These houses were so dilapidated, that in the Rues de la Chanvrerie and de la Petite Truanderie, the fronts were shored up with beams, reaching from one house to another. The street was narrow and the gutter wide, the passer-by walked along a pavement which was always wet, beside shops that were like cellars, great stone blocks encircled with iron, immense garbage heaps, and alley gates armed with enormous and venerable gratings. The Rue Rambuteau has devastated all this.

  The name Mondétour pictures marvellously well the windings of all this route. A little further along you found them still better expressed by the Rue Pirouette, which ran into the Rue Mondétour.

  The pedestrian who came from the Rue Sai
nt-Denis into the Rue de la Chanvrerie saw it gradually narrow away before him as if he had entered an elongated funnel. At the end of the street, which was very short, he found the passage barred on the market side, and he would have thought himself in a cul-de-sac, if he had not perceived on the right and on the left two black openings by which he could escape. These were the Rue Mondétour, which communicated on the one side with the Rue des Prêcheurs, on the other with the Rues du Cygne and Petite Truanderie. At the end of this sort of cul-de-sac, at the corner of the opening on the right, might be seen a house lower than the rest, and forming a kind of cape on the street.

  In this house, only three stories high, had been festively installed for three hundred years an illustrious tavern. The location was good. The proprietorship descended from father to son.

  As we have said, Corinth was one of the meeting, if not rallying places, of Courfeyrac and his friends. It was Grantaire who had discovered Corinth. He had entered on account of Carpe Horas, and he returned on account of Carpes au Gras. They drank there, they ate there, they shouted there; they paid little, they paid poorly, they did not pay at all, they were always welcome. Father Hucheloup was a goodman.

  Hugo characterizes Corinth, its proprietors—the late Father Hucheloup and the Widow Hucheloup, and its two waitresses “Chowder and Fricassee.” At nine in the morning of the day the revolutionary barricade will be erected, the friends Joly, Laigle de Meaux (“Bossuet”), and Grantaire gather there. They become very drunk. Grantaire, who loves and admires Enjolras, laments that the latter—the fiery revolutionary heart of their conspiratorial group-despises him.