His heart overflowed and he wept, for the first time in nineteen years.
When he left the bishop’s dwelling Jean Valjean, as we know, had been in a state of mind unlike anything he had ever experienced before and was quite unable to account for what was taking place within him. He had sought to harden his heart against the old man’s saintly act and moving words. ‘You have promised me to become an honest man. I am buying your soul. I am rescuing it from the spirit of perversity and giving it to God.’ The words constantly returned to him and he sought to suppress them with arrogance, which in all of us is the stronghold of evil. Obscurely he perceived that the priest’s forgiveness was the most formidable assault he had ever sustained; that if he resisted it his heart would be hardened once and for all, and that if he yielded he must renounce the hatred which the acts of men had implanted in him during so many years, and to which he clung. He saw dimly that this time he must either conquer or be conquered, and that the battle was now joined, a momentous and decisive battle between the evil in himself and the goodness in that other man.
Beset by these intimations, he reeled like a drunken man: but as, haggard-eyed, he went on his way, had he any clear notion of what must be the outcome for him of that episode in Digne? Did he truly understand all that it implied? Did any voice whisper to him that he was at a turning-point in his life, that henceforth there could be no middle way for him, that he must become either the best of men or the worst, rise even higher than the bishop himself or sink lower than the felon, reach supreme heights of goodness or become a monster of depravity?
We must again ask the question, did any dim understanding of all this enter his mind? It is true that misfortune sharpens the wits; but still it may be doubted whether Jean Valjean was in a condition to grasp so much. Such notions as occurred to him were glimpsed rather than clearly seen and did no more than plunge him into a state of agonized and almost intolerable confusion. The encounter with the bishop, immediately following his release from the black limbo of prison, had dazed him spiritually in the way that the eyes may be dazzled by the brilliance of daylight after a period of total darkness. The prospect now proposed to him, a life of goodness and purity, caused him to tremble with apprehension. He was truly at a loss. Like an owl overtaken by a sudden sunrise, he was blinded by the radiance of virtue.
What was certain, although he did not realize it, was that he was no longer the same man. Everything in him was changed. It was no longer in his power to behave as though the bishop had not spoken to him and touched his heart.
And it was in this state of disarray that he had encountered Petit-Gervais and stolen his forty sous. Why had he done so? Assuredly he could not have answered the question. Had it been a last stirring of the evil generated in him by prison, a lingering impulse akin to what the physicists term latent energy? It had been that, and perhaps it had also been something less. In simple terms, it was not the man who had stolen; it was the animal which, from habit and instinct, had brutally set its foot on the coin while the man’s intelligence wrestled with the new and dumbfounding thoughts that preoccupied it. When the man saw what the animal had done, Jean Valjean recoiled with a cry of horror.
The fact is – a strange phenomenon, only conceivable in the situation in which he found himself – that in robbing the boy he had committed an act of which he was no longer capable.
In any event, this last misdeed had a decisive effect upon him. It piercingly dispelled the chaos in his mind, separating light from darkness and working upon his spirit like a chemical reagent introduced into a turgid solution, which clarifies one element and precipitates another.
His immediate impulse, before taking time for thought, like a man clutching at a straw, had been to find the boy and return his money, and when he failed to do this he gave way to despair. In the moment when he uttered the words ‘vile wretch’, he had seen himself for what he was, being so far detached from himself as to see something that was like a ghost. What he saw was the flesh-and-blood man, stick in hand, clothing bedraggled, knapsack stuffed with stolen goods on his back, dark of face and darker still in thought, Jean Valjean the felon.
Excess of suffering, as we have seen, had made him in some sort a visionary. This was a vision. He truly saw that Jean Valjean, that evil countenance confronting him. At that moment he was near to asking who the man was, and he was appalled.
It was one of those moments of blinding and yet frighteningly calm insight when the thought goes so deep that it passes beyond reality. The tangible world is no longer seen; all that we see, as though from outside, is the world of our own spirit.
Thus he contemplated himself, as it were face to face, and there arose in his vision, at some mysterious depth, a sort of light resembling that of a torch. But as he looked more closely at this light growing in his consciousness he saw that it had a human form and that it was the bishop.
His mind’s eye considered these two men now presented to him, the bishop and Jean Valjean. Only the first could have overshadowed the second. By a singular process special to this kind of ecstasy, as his trance continued the bishop grew and gained splendour in his eyes, while Jean Valjean shrank and faded. A moment came when Valjean was no more than a shadow, and then he vanished entirely. The bishop alone remained, flooding that unhappy soul with radiance.
Jean Valjean wept for a long time, sobbing convulsively with more than a woman’s abandon, more than the anguish of a child. And as he wept a new day dawned in his spirit, a day both wonderful and terrible. He saw all things with a clarity that he had never known before – his past life, his first offence and long expiation, his outward coarsening and inward hardening, his release enriched with so many plans for revenge, the incident at the bishop’s house, and this last abominable act, the robbing of a child, rendered the more shameful by the fact that it followed the bishop’s forgiveness. He saw all this, the picture of his life, which was horrible, and of his own soul, hideous in its ugliness. Yet a new day had now dawned for that life and soul; and he seemed to see Satan bathed in the light of Paradise.
How long did he stay weeping? What did he then do and where did he go? We do not know. But it is said on that same night the stage-driver from Grenoble, passing through the cathedral square in Digne at three in the morning, saw in the shadows the figure of a man kneeling in an attitude of prayer outside the door of Monseigneur Bienvenu.
Book Three
In the Year 1817
I
The year 1817
1817 WAS the year which Louis XVIII, with a royal aplomb not lacking in arrogance, called the twenty-second of his reign. It was the year in which M. Bruguière de Sorsum, the translator of Shakespeare, became celebrated. The hairdressing establishments, hoping for the return of powdered wigs and birds of paradise, broke out in a rash of azure and fleur-de-lis. It was the guileless period when Comte Lynch sat every Sunday as a churchwarden on the high bench in Saint-Germain-des-Prés, clad in the robes of a Peer of France, with his red ribbon and long nose and the stately bearing proper to a man who has performed a notable act. M. Lynch’s notable act was as follows: on 12 March 1814, being then Mayor of Bordeaux, he had handed over the town a little too soon to the Duc d’Angoulême. Hence his peerage. It was the fashion in 1817 to engulf the heads of six- to eight-year-old boys in enormous fur hats with ear-flaps, which made them look like Eskimos. The French Army wore white uniforms in the Austrian fashion. Regiments were styled legions and instead of being numbered bore the names of départements. Napoleon was at St Helena, and since the English would not allow him any green cloth he had his old tunics turned. Pellegrini was singing, Mlle Bigottini was dancing, Potier was presiding at the Théâtre des Variètés and Mme Saqui had succeeded Forioso on the tight-rope. There were still Prussian troops in France. Legitimacy had asserted itself by cutting off first the hands and then the heads of Pleignier, Cabonneau, and Tolleron, convicted of having plotted to blow up the Tuileries. The Prince de Talleyrand, grand chamberlain, and the Abbé Louis, financ
e minister designate, exchanged the smiles of rewarded prescience, both having celebrated the Mass of the Federation held on the Champ de Mars on 14 July 1790, one as a bishop, the other as a deacon. In 1817 large wooden posts, painted blue and still bearing traces of gilt eagles and bees, lay rotting on the grass in that same Champ de Mars, some scorched by Austrian bivouac fires. They were what remained of the podium erected two years previously by order of the Emperor for the ceremonial known as the Champ de Mai – a celebration remarkable for the fact that it was held on the Champ de Mars in the month of June. Two things were popular in the year 1817, the selected edition of the works of Voltaire issued by a certain Colonel Touquet and the ‘Charter snuff-boxes’, engraved with the People’s Charter, designed by the same gentleman. The latest Paris sensation was the murder committed by Dautun, who had flung his brother’s head into the pool in the Marché-aux-fleurs. An official inquiry was opened into the loss of the frigate Méduse, which was in due course to cover her captain with shame and the painter Géricault with glory. Colonel Selves went to Egypt, there to become a Moslem and assume the title of Suleiman Pasha. The Ns were erased from the Louvre. The Pont d’Austerlitz was swallowed up in the Jardin du Roi, a designation embracing both the bridge and the Jardin des Plantes. Louis XVIII, searching his Horace for instances of heroes who became emperors and shoemakers who became heirs apparent, had two particular cases in mind, Napoleon and Mathurin Bruneau, the cobbler whose claim to be the Dauphin had won some support among the royalists of Normandy. The Académie Française announced that the subject of its essay award was ‘The Happiness to be Derived from Scholarship’.* An imitation Chateaubriand named Marchangy cropped up, to be followed by an imitation Marchangy named d’Arlincourt. In recognition of her masterpieces Claire d’Albe and Malek-Adel, Mme Cottin was proclaimed the greatest writer of the age. The Institut de France struck the name of Napoleon Bonaparte off its rolls. By Royal Decree a naval college was established at Angoulême: since the Duc d’Angoulême was Grand Admiral of the Fleet, clearly the town must be given the status of a seaport or the whole principle of monarchy would be undermined. Mme de Stael died in July. Political differences were still not unknown, the Café Lemblin, in the Palais-Royal, favouring the Emperor as opposed to the Café Valois which favoured the Bourbons. The newspapers had shrunk, but if the format was diminished the freedom of expression was tremendous. Le Constitutionnel was constitutional and La Minerve spelt the name of Chateaubriand with a final ‘t’, causing much mirth among the citizenry at the expense of that great writer.
The suborned press showered insults on the persons exiled in 1815 – David was denied all talent, Arnault all wit, Carnot all integrity; Soult had never won a battle and Napoleon had lost his genius. It is rare, as we know, for exiles to receive letters from their native country, since the police make it their particular duty to intercept them. David, who complained of this in a Belgian newspaper, was handsomely mocked in the Royalist press. Differences of terminology – ‘regicides’ as opposed to ‘voters’, ‘enemies’ instead of ‘allies’, ‘Napoleon’ for ‘Buonaparte’ – represented something more than a gulf between individuals. All sensible persons were agreed that King Louis XVIII, ‘the immortal author of the Charter’, had put an end for ever to the age of revolutions. The word ‘Redivivus’ was being carved on the pedestal in the garden by the Pont-Neuf destined for the statue of Henry VI. Plans were under discussion for the consolidation of the Monarchy, and in critical moments the right-wing leaders said, ‘We must consult Bacol,’ a deputy notable only for his ultra-monarchist views. But there was also a movement (cautiously approved by ‘Monsieur’, the king’s brother) in favour of the Comte d’Artois; this was to become known as ‘the waterside conspiracy’ since the conspirators were accustomed to meet on the terrace of the Tuileries overlooking the Seine. Nor were other plots lacking. The Minister of Police was the Due Decazes, a gentleman of moderately liberal views. Chateaubriand, clad in pyjama trousers and slippers, with a cap of Madras cotton on his grey head, stood every morning at his window in the Rue Saint-Dominique, peering into a mirror and cleaning his excellent teeth with a complete set of dentist’s equipment while he dictated drafts of La Monarchie selon la Charte to his secretary, M. Pilorge. The leading critics rated Lafon higher than Talma. Charles Clodier was writing Thérèse Aubert. Divorce had been abolished. High schools were called colleges, and the young collegians, their collars adorned with a golden fleur-de-lis, brawled over the Roi de Rome. The palace secret police complained to Her Royal Highness, Madame, about the portrait of her husband, the Duc d’Orléans, which was to be seen everywhere: the duke in his hussar uniform looked a great deal more imposing than the Duc de Berry in the uniform of the dragoons – a most uncomfortable circumstance. The City of Paris had the dome of the Invalides re-gilded at its own expense. The actor Picard – a member of the Academy, which Molière had never succeeded in becoming – was playing in Les deux Philberts at the Théâtre de l’Odéon, over the front of which the partly effaced words, ‘Théâtre de l’Impératrice’, could still be clearly discerned. It was generally agreed that M. Charles Loyson would become the genius of the century; envy, a sure sign of fame, was already beginning to assail him and the following line was written about him – ‘Même quand Loyson vole, on sent qu’il a des pattes.’* The philosopher Saint-Simon, largely unknown, was a celebrated Fourier in the Académie des Sciences whom posterity has forgotten and an unknown Fourtier living in an attic whom the future will remember. Byron was beginning to emerge: a footnote to a poem by Milleboye introduced him to France with the words ‘a certain Lord Byron’. David of Angers was trying to shape marble. A contraption which reeked and spluttered was manoeuvring on the Seine between the Pont-Royal and the Pont-Louis-XV: a useless mechanical toy, an inventor’s daydream observed with indifference by the Parisians – in fact, a steamboat. The aristocracy of the Faubourg Saint-Germain supported M. Delaveau for the post of Prefect of Police, because of his piety. Two leading surgeons quarrelled in the lecture-hall of the Ecole de Médicine over the divinity of Christ, shaking their fists at each other. Cuvier, with one eye on Genesis and the other on the natural world, sought to placate religious bigotry by adapting fossils to the Scriptures and demonstrating the superiority of Moses to the mastodons. A man who, at the sight of the Comte d’Artois entering Notre-Dame, was so rash as to exclaim aloud, ‘God, how I regret the day when I saw Bonaparte and Talma go arm-in-arm into the Bal-Sauvage!’ was tried and sentenced to six months’ imprisonment for sedition. But the traitors under Napoleon now came out of hiding. Men who had gone over to the enemy on the eve of battle cynically paraded their rewards and dignities; the deserters of Ligny and Quatre-Bras flaunted their monarchist allegiance with a brazenness that disregarded the injunction to be read on the walls of English public lavatories – ‘Please adjust your dress before leaving.’
Such is a random, superficial picture of the year 1817, now largely forgotten. History discards nearly all these odds and ends and cannot do otherwise; the larger scene absorbs them. Nevertheless such details, which are wrongly called trifling – there are no trifles in the human story, no trifling leaves on the tree – are not without value. It is the lineaments of the years which form the countenance of the century.
And in that year of 1817 four young gentlemen of Paris played ‘a merry prank’.
II
Double foursome
The four Parisians came, one from Toulouse, one from Limoges, the third from Cahors, and the fourth from Montauban; but they were students, and to say ‘student’ is to say ‘Parisian’. To study in Paris is to belong to Paris.
They were unremarkable young men, average representatives of their kind, neither good nor bad, learned nor ignorant, brilliant nor doltish; handsome with the April lustre of their twenty-odd years. Four commonplace Oscars, for the Arthurs had not yet arrived. Ossian was still in vogue and the mode was Scandinavian and Caledonian. The pure English style was to come later, the first of the Arthurs, Wellingto
n, having only just won the Battle of Waterloo.
The Oscars were named Felix Tholomyès, from Toulouse, Listolier from Cahors, Fameuil from Limoges, and Blachevelle from Montauban. Each, of course, had his mistress. Blachevelle loved Favourite, so-called because she had been in England: Listolier adored Dahlia, who had chosen a flower for her nom de guerre; Fameuil idolized Zéphine, short for Josephine; and Tholomyès had Fantine, called ‘la Blonde’ because of her golden hair.
Favourite, Dahlia, Zéphine, and Fantine were enchanting girls, scented and glowing, still with a flavour of the working-class since they had not altogether abandoned the use of their needles, distracted by love-affairs but with a last trace of the serenity of toil in their expressions, and in their hearts that seed of purity which in a woman survives her first fall from grace. One of the four, the youngest, was known as ‘the baby’; and one was ‘big sister’. Big sister was aged twenty-three. It must be said that the three older ones were more experienced, more heedless, and more versed in the ways of the world than Fantine la Blonde, who was encountering her first illusion.
Dahlia, Zéphine, and particularly Favourite could not have said as much. There had already been more than one episode in the tale of their love-affairs, and the Adolphe of Chapter One had become the Alphonse of Chapter Two and the Gustave of Chapter Three. Poverty and coquetry are fateful counsellors; the one complains and the other flatters, and both whisper in the ear of pretty working girls, defenceless creatures who cannot forbear to listen. Hence their disasters and the stones that are flung at them. They are swept off their feet by the prospect of all that is glorious and inaccessible.
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