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

by Victor Hugo

  “I know your extraordinary secret; just as I knew Jean Valjean’s name: just as I know your name.”

  “My name?”

  “Yes.”

  “That is not difficult, Monsieur Baron. I have had the honour of writing it to you and telling it to you. Thénard.”

  “Dier.”

  “Eh?”

  “Thénardier.”

  “Who is that?”

  In danger the porcupine bristles, the beetle feigns death, the Old Guard forms a square; this man began to laugh.

  Then, with a fillip, he brushed a speck of dust from his coat-sleeve.

  Marius continued:

  “You are also the working-man Jondrette, the comedian Fabantou, the poet Genflot, the Spaniard Don Alvarès, and the woman Balizard.”

  “The woman what?”

  “And you have kept a tavern at Montfermeil.”

  “A tavern! never.”

  “And I tell you that you are Thénardier.”

  “I deny it.”

  “And that you are a scoundrel. Here.”

  And Marius, taking a bank-note from his pocket, threw it in his face.

  “Thanks! pardon! five hundred francs! Monsieur Baron!”

  And the man, bewildered, bowing, catching the note, examined it.

  “Five hundred francs!” he repeated in astonishment. And he stammered out in an undertone: “A serious fafiot [bundle]!”

  Then bluntly:

  “Well, so be it,” exclaimed he. “Let us make ourselves comfortable.”

  And, with the agility of a monkey, throwing his hair off backwards, pulling off his spectacles, taking out of his nose and pocketing the two quill tubes of which we have just spoken, and which we have already seen elsewhere on another page of this book, he took off his countenance as one takes off his hat.

  His eye kindled; his forehead, uneven, ravined, humped in spots, hideously wrinkled at the top, emerged; his nose became as sharp as a beak; the fierce and cunning profile of the man of prey appeared again.

  “Monsieur the Baron is infallible,” said he in a clear voice from which all nasality has disappeared, “I am Thénardier.”

  And he straightened his bent back.

  Thénardier, for it was indeed he, was strangely surprised; he would have been disconcerted if he could have been. He had come to bring astonishment, and he himself received it. This humiliation had been compensated by five hundred francs, and, all things considered, he accepted it; but he was none the less astounded.

  He saw this Baron Pontmercy for the first time, and in spite of his disguise, this Baron Pontmercy recognised him and recognised him thoroughly. And not only was this baron fully informed, in regard to Thénardier, but he seemed fully informed in regard to Jean Valjean. Who was this almost beardless young man, so icy and so generous, who knew people’s names, who knew all their names, and who opened his purse to them, who abused rogues like a judge and who paid them like a dupe?

  Thénardier, it will be remembered, although he had been a neighbour of Marius, had never seen him, which is frequent in Paris; he had once heard some talk of his daughters about a very poor young man named Marius who lived in the house. He had written to him, without knowing him, the letter which we have seen. No connection was possible in his mind between that Marius and M. the Baron Pontmercy.

  Through his daughter Azelma, however, whom he had put upon the track of the couple married on the 16th of February, and through his own researches, he had succeeded in finding out many things and, from the depth of his darkness, he had been able to seize more than one mysterious clue. He had, by dint of industry, discovered, or, at least, by dint of induction, guessed who the man was whom he had met on a certain day in the Grand Sewer. From the man, he had easily arrived at the name. He knew that Madame the Baroness Pontmercy was Cosette. But, in that respect, he intended to be prudent. Who was Cosette? He did not know exactly himself. He suspected indeed some illegitimacy. Fantine’s story had always seemed to him ambiguous; but why speak of it? to get paid for his silence? He had, or thought he had, something better to sell than that. And to all appearances, to come and make, without any proof, this revelation to Baron Pontmercy: Your wife is a bastard, would only have attracted the husband’s boot towards the revelator’s back.

  In Thénardier’s opinion, the conversation with Marius had not yet commenced. He had been obliged to retreat, to modify his strategy, to abandon a position, to change his base; but nothing essential was yet lost, and he had five hundred francs in his pocket. Moreover, he had something decisive to say, and even against this Baron Pontmercy, so well informed and so well armed, he felt himself strong. To men of Thénardier’s nature, every dialogue is a battle. In that which was about to be commenced what was his situation? He did not know to whom he was speaking, but he knew about what he was speaking. He rapidly made this interior review of his forces, and after saying: “I am Thénardier,” he waited.

  Marius remained absorbed in thought. At last, then, he had caught Thénardier; this man, whom he had so much desired to find again, was before him: so he would be able to do honour to Colonel Pontmercy’s injunction. He was humiliated that that hero should owe anything to this bandit, and that the bill of exchange drawn by his father from the depth of the grave upon him, Marius, should have remained unpaid until this day. It appeared to him, also, in the complex position of his mind with regard to Thénardier, that here was an opportunity to avenge the colonel for the misfortune of having been saved by such a rascal. However that might be, he was pleased. He was about to deliver the colonel’s shade at last from his unworthy creditor, and it seemed to him that he was about to release his father’s memory from imprisonment for debt.

  Besides this duty, he had another, to clear up, if he could, the source of Cosette’s fortune. The opportunity seemed to present itself. Thénardier knew something, perhaps. It might be useful to probe this man to the bottom. He began with that.

  Thénardier had slipped the “serious fafiot” into his fob, and was looking at Marius with an almost affectionate humility.

  Marius interrupted the silence.

  “Thénardier, I have told you your name. Now your secret, what you came to make known to me, do you want me to tell you that? I too have my means of information. You shall see that I know more about it than you do. Jean Valjean, as you have said, is an assassin and a robber. A robber, because he robbed a rich manufacturer, M. Madeleine, whose ruin he caused. An assassin, because he assassinated the police-officer, Javert.”

  “I don’t understand, Monsieur Baron,” said Thénardier.

  “I will make myself understood. Listen. There was, in an arrondissement of the Pas-de-Calais, about 1822, a man who had had some old difficulty with justice, and who, under the name of M. Madeleine, had reformed and re-established himself. He had become in the full force of the term an upright man. By means of a manufacture, that of black glass trinkets, he had made the fortune of an entire city. As for his own personal fortune, he had made it also, but secondarily, and, in some sort, incidentally. He was the foster-father of the poor. He founded hospitals, opened schools, visited the sick, endowed daughters, supported widows, adopted orphans; he was, as it were, the guardian of the country. He had refused the Cross, he had been appointed mayor. A liberated convict knew the secret of a penalty once incurred by this man; he informed against him and had him arrested, and took advantage of the arrest to come to Paris and draw from the banker, Laffitte—I have the fact from the cashier himself—by means of a false signature, a sum of more than half a million which belonged to M. Madeleine. This convict who robbed M. Madeleine is Jean Valjean. As to the other act, you have just as little to tell me. Jean Valjean killed the officer Javert; he killed him with a pistol. I, who am now speaking to you, I was present.”

  Thénardier cast upon Marius the sovereign glance of a beaten man, who lays hold on victory again, and who has just recovered in one minute all the ground which he had lost. But the smile returned immediately; the inferior b
efore the superior can only have a skulking triumph, and Thénardier merely said to Marius:

  “Monsieur Baron, we are on the wrong track.”

  And he emphasised this phrase by giving his bunch of trinkets an expressive twirl.

  “What!” replied Marius, “do you deny that? These are facts.”

  “They are chimeras. The confidence with which Monsieur the Baron honours me makes it my duty to tell him so. Before all things, truth and justice. I do not like to see people accused unjustly. Monsieur Baron, Jean Valjean never robbed Monsieur Madeleine, and Jean Valjean never killed Javert.”

  “You speak strongly! how is that?”

  “For two reasons.”

  “What are they? tell me.”

  “The first is this: he did not rob Monsieur Madeleine, since it is Jean Valjean himself who was Monsieur Madeleine.”

  “What is that you are telling me?”

  “And the second is this: he did not assassinate Javert, since Javert himself killed Javert.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “That Javert committed suicide.”

  “Prove it! prove it!” cried Marius, beside himself.

  Thénardier resumed, scanning his phrase in the fashion of an ancient Alexandrine:

  “The—police—of—ficer—Ja—vert—was—found—drowned—under—a—boat—by—the—Pont—au—Change.”

  “But prove it now!”

  Thénardier took from his pocket a large envelope of grey paper, which seemed to contain folded sheets of different sizes.

  “I have my documents,” said he, with calmness.

  And he added: “Monsieur Baron, in your interest, I wished to find out Jean Valjean to the bottom. I say that Jean Valjean and Madeleine are the same man; and I say that Javert had no other assassin than Javert; and when I speak I have the proofs. Not manuscript proofs; writing is suspicious; writing is complaisant, but proofs in print.”

  While speaking, Thénardier took out of the envelope two newspapers, yellow, faded, and strongly saturated with tobacco. One of these two newspapers, broken at all the folds, and falling in square pieces, seemed much older than the other.

  “Two facts, two proofs,” said Thénardier. And unfolding the two papers, he handed them to Marius.

  With these two newspapers the reader is acquainted. One, the oldest, a copy of the Drapeau Blanc, of the 25th of July, 1823, established the identity of M. Madeleine and Jean Valjean. The other, a Moniteur of the 15th of June, 1832, verified the suicide of Javert, adding that it appeared from a verbal report made by Javert to the prefect that, taken prisoner in the barricade of the Rue de la Chanvrerie, he had owed his life to the magnanimity of an insurgent who, though he had him at the muzzle of his pistol, instead of blowing out his brains, had fired into the air.

  Marius read. There was evidence, certain date, unquestionable proof; these two newspapers had not been printed expressly to support Thénardier’s words. The note published in the Moniteur was an official communication from the prefecture of police. Marius could not doubt. The information derived from the cashier was false, and he himself was mistaken. Jean Valjean, suddenly growing grand, arose from the cloud. Marius could not restrain a cry of joy:

  “Well, then, this unhappy man is a wonderful man! all that fortune was really his own! he is Madeleine, the providence of a whole region! he is Jean Valjean, the saviour of Javert! he is a hero! he is a saint!”

  “He is not a saint, and he is not a hero,” said Thénardier. “He is an assassin and a robber.”

  And he added with the tone of a man who begins to feel some authority in himself: “Let us be calm.”

  Robber, assassin; these words, which Marius supposed were gone, yet which came back, fell upon him like a shower of ice.

  “Let’s start again,” said he.

  “Still,” said Thénardier. “Jean Valjean did not rob Madeleine, but he is a robber. He did not kill Javert, but he is a murderer.”

  “Are you referring,” resumed Marius, “to that petty theft of forty years ago, expiated, as appears from your newspapers themselves, by a whole life of repentance, abnegation, and virtue?”

  “I said assassination and robbery, Monsieur Baron. And I repeat that I speak of recent facts. What I have to reveal to you is absolutely unknown. It belongs to the unpublished. And perhaps you will find in it the source of the fortune adroitly presented by Jean Valjean to Madame the Baroness. I say adroitly, for, by a donation of this kind, to glide into an honourable house, the comforts of which he will share, and, by the same stroke, to conceal his crime to enjoy his robbery, to bury his name, and to create himself a family, that would not be very unskilful.”

  “I might interrupt you here,” observed Marius; “but continue.”

  “Monsieur Baron, I will tell you all, leaving the recompense to your generosity. This secret is worth a pile of gold. You will say to me: why have you not gone to Jean Valjean? For a very simple reason: I know that he has dispossessed himself, and dispossessed in your favour, and I think the contrivance ingenious; but he has not a sou left, he would show me his empty hands, and, since I need some money for my voyage to La Joya, I prefer you, who have all, to him who has nothing. I am somewhat fatigued; allow me to take a chair.”

  Marius sat down, and made sign to him to sit down.

  Thénardier installed himself in an upholstered chair, took up the two newspapers, thrust them back into the envelope, and muttered, striking the Drapeau Blanc with his nail: “It cost me some hard work to get this one.” This done, he crossed his legs and lay back in his chair, an attitude characteristic of people who are sure of what they are saying, then entered into the subject seriously, and emphasising his words:

  “Monsieur Baron, on the 6th of June, 1832, about a year ago, the day of the émeute, a man was in the Grand Sewer of Paris, near where the sewer empties into the Seine, between the Pont des Invalides and the Pont d‘Iéna.”

  Marius suddenly drew his chair near Thénardier’s. Thénardier noticed this movement, and continued with the deliberation of a speaker who holds his interlocutor fast, and who feels the palpitation of his adversary beneath his words:

  “This man, compelled to conceal himself, for reasons foreign to politics, however, had taken the sewer for his dwelling, and had a key to it. It was, I repeat it, the 6th of June; it might have been eight o‘clock in the evening. The man heard a noise in the sewer. Very much surprised, he hid himself, and watched. It was a sound of steps, somebody was walking in the darkness; somebody was coming in his direction. Strange to say, there was another man in the sewer beside him. The grating of the outlet of the sewer was not far off. A little light which came from it enabled him to recognise the new-comer, and to see that this man was carrying something on his back. He walked bent over. The man who was walking bent over was a former convict, and what he was carrying upon his shoulders was a corpse. Assassination in flagrante delicto, if ever there was such a thing. As for the robbery, it follows of course; nobody kills a man for nothing. This convict was going to throw his corpse into the river. It is a noteworthy fact, that before reaching the grating of the outlet, this convict, who came from a distance in the sewer, had been compelled to pass through a horrible quagmire in which it would seem that he might have left the corpse; but, the sewermen working upon the quagmire might, the very next day, have found the assassinated man, and that was not the assassin’s game. He preferred to go through the quagmire with his load, and his efforts must have been terrible; it is impossible to put one’s life in greater peril; I do not understand how he came out of it alive.”

  Marius’ chair drew still nearer. Thénardier took advantage of it to draw a long breath. He continued:

  “Monsieur Baron, a sewer is not the Champ de Mars. One lacks everything there, even room. When two men are in a sewer, they must meet each other. That is what happened. The resident and the traveller were compelled to say good-day to each other, to their mutual regret. The traveller said to the resident: ”You see what I hav
e on my back, I must get out, you have the key, give it to me. ” This convict was a man of terrible strength. There was no refusing him. Still he who had the key parleyed, merely to gain time. He examined the dead man, but he could see nothing, except that he was young, well dressed, apparently a rich man, and all disfigured with blood. While he was talking, he found means to cut and tear off from behind, without the assassin perceiving it, a piece of the assassinated man’s coat. A piece of evidence, you understand; means of getting trace of the affair, and proving the crime upon the criminal. He put this piece of evidence in his pocket. After which he opened the grating, let the man out with his incumbrance on his back, shut the grating again and escaped, little caring to be mixed up with the remainder of the adventure, and especially desiring not to be present when the assassin should throw the assassinated man into the river. You understand now. He who was carrying the corpse was Jean Valjean; he who had the key is now speaking to you, and the piece of the coat”

  Thénardier finished the phrase by drawing from his pocket and holding up, on a level with his eyes, between his thumbs and his forefingers, a strip of ragged black cloth, covered with dark stains.

  Marius had risen, pale, hardly breathing, his eye fixed upon the scrap of black cloth, and, without uttering a word, without losing sight of this rag, he retreated to the wall, and, with his right hand stretched behind him, groped about for a key which was in the lock of a closet near the chimney. He found this key, opened the closet, and thrust his arm into it without looking, and without removing his startled eyes from the fragment that Thénardier held up.

  Meanwhile Thénardier continued:

  “Monsieur Baron, I have the strongest reasons to believe that the assassinated young man was an opulent stranger drawn into a snare by Jean Valjean, and the bearer of an enormous sum.”

  “The young man was myself, and there is the coat!” cried Marius, and he threw an old black coat covered with blood upon the carpet.

  Then, snatching the fragment from Thénardier’s hands, he bent down over the coat, and applied the piece to the cut skirt. The edges fitted exactly, and the strip completed the coat.