Les Miserables (Movie Tie-in) (9781101612774)

by Hugo, Victor; Donougher, Christine (TRN)

  As we have said, the lamps had not been lit that night because of the brightness of the moon. The lamp in the Cul-de-sac Genrot was extinguished like the rest, and any passer-by would have been unlikely to notice that it was not in its proper place. But meanwhile the lateness of the hour, the darkness, the strangeness of their surroundings and the singular behaviour of Jean Valjean were beginning to distress Cosette. Any other child would long since have been in tears. She did no more than tug at his coat-tails. And the sound of the approaching patrol was growing steadily louder.

  ‘I’m frightened, father,’ she said. ‘Who’s that coming?’

  ‘Quiet!’ the hard-pressed man replied. ‘It’s Madame Thénardier.’ She started convulsively and he went on: ‘Don’t talk. Leave everything to me. If you make a sound she’ll hear you. She’s coming to fetch you back.’

  Then, without haste but without fumbling, with a cool precision that was the more remarkable in that Javert and the patrol might arrive at any moment, he removed his cravat, passed it round Cosette under her armpits, adjusting it carefully so that it would not hurt her, tied the ends to one end of his rope, using the knot which sailors call a bowline, took the other end of the rope between his teeth, removed his shoes and stockings and tossed them over the wall, climbed on to the block of masonry and thence climbed up the angle formed by the wall and the end of the building, doing so with as much ease and certainty as if he had had stair-treads under his elbows and heels. Within half a minute he was kneeling on top of the wall

  Cosette stared up at him in amazement, frozen to silence by the mention of Mme Thénardier. Then she heard his voice calling to her in a whisper.

  ‘Stand with your back to the wall.’ She did so. ‘Don’t make a sound and don’t be afraid.’

  She felt herself lifted off the ground. Before she had time to realize what was happening she too was on the wall. Jean Valjean seized hold of her and put her on his back. Grasping both her hands in one of his, he crawled on his stomach along the top of the wall until he reached the recess. As he had guessed, on the other side of the wood-work that had looked like a door there was a small building of which the sloping roof at its highest point was on a level with the wall. Fortunately the lime tree was very near, because the ground was considerably lower on this side than on the other. From where he crouched it looked a long way down.

  He had just slipped down on to the roof of the buildings, but without letting go of the top of the wall, when a hubbub of voices announced the arrival of the patrol. Javert bellowed:

  ‘Search the cul-de-sac! The Rue Droit-Mur and the Rue Picpus are both covered. I’ll swear he’s in the cul-de-sac!’

  The soldiers dashed along the Cul-de-sac Genrot.

  Jean Valjean let himself slide down the roof, still with Cosette on his back, and with the help of the lime tree dropped to the ground. Whether from terror or bravery, Cosette had not uttered a sound. Her hands were slightly grazed.

  VI

  Beginning of a puzzle

  Jean Valjean found himself in a rather strange garden, one of those that seem made to be seen only in winter and by night. It was oblong in shape, with a poplar-walk along the far side, tall shrubs at the corners, and at the centre a cleared space in which a solitary, very large tree was to be seen, a few gnarled and stunted fruit-trees, vegetable-plots, a melon-patch with glass cloches gleaming in the moonlight and an old well-head. Here and there were stone benches seemingly covered with moss. The paths, which all ran straight, were bordered with small bushes and overgrown with moss and grass.

  Valjean was standing beside the building whose roof he had used in his descent, with a pile of faggots at his side and, against the wall behind the faggots, a stone statue of which the face was so mutilated that it looked in the darkness like a shapeless mask. The building itself, which was in ruins, was divided into a number of small rooms, in one of which was a clutter of objects and apparently served as a storage shed.

  The large building extending along the Rue Droit-Mur to the Petite Rue Picpus overlooked this garden in a double frontage forming a right-angle, its general appearance even more forbidding than on the street side. All the windows were barred and those on the upper storey were hooded like the windows of a prison. No light showed. One part of this double façade was buried in the shadow of the other, which lay like a black carpet over the garden.

  No other house was to be seen. The end of the garden was lost in mist and darkness; but the tops of adjoining walls could be discerned, suggesting that there were cultivated plots of land beyond it, and the low roofs of the houses in the Rue Polonceau were also visible.

  Any place more lonely and desolate it would have been hard to imagine. That the garden was deserted at that hour was understandable; but there was nothing about it to suggest that anyone ever walked there, even by day.

  Jean Valjean’s first act was to retrieve his shoes and stockings, after which he and Cosette entered the storage-shed. No fugitive ever feels wholly secure. With the thought of Mme Thénardier in her mind, the child’s instinct was to hide. She clung to him trembling. Outside they could hear the noise of the patrol searching the cul-de-sac, the clatter of musket-butts on the cobbles, the voice of Javert calling to the man he had posted on guard and his stream of imprecations mingled with words that they did not catch.

  Time passed and the commotion seemed to be receding. Valjean was still holding his breath. He had laid a hand gently over Cosette’s mouth. Throughout this time the solitude in which they found themselves remained miraculously calm and wholly untroubled by the furious hubbub proceeding from so close at hand, as though the walls were built of the unheeding stones of which the Scriptures speak.

  But suddenly, amid this profound tranquillity, a new sound arose, a sound both exquisite and divine, as ravishing to the senses as those other sounds were horrible. A hymn rose out of the shadows, an outburst of prayer and harmony in the dark and terrible silence of the night. The voices were those of women, blending the pure accents of virgins with the innocent tones of children, voices not of this earth, resembling the notes still ringing in the ears of the newly-born and those which reach the ears of the dying. The singing came from the gloomy edifice overlooking the garden. It was as though, while the howling of demons faded away in the distance, a chorus of angels had taken its place.

  Cosette and Jean Valjean fell on their knees. They did not know the meaning of this or where they were, but both felt instinctively – man and child, penitent and innocent – that they must kneel. The singing had the strange quality that it did not rob the building of its apparent solitude, but was like a supernatural song issuing from an empty house.

  While the singing continued Jean Valjean was bereft of thought, no longer conscious of the darkness but seeing a blue sky, feeling the spread of those wings that are a part of all of us. When it died down he could not have said whether it had lasted a long or a short time. The hour of ecstasy may be no more than an instant.

  And now all was silence, nothing more to be heard in the street or in the garden. The threat and the reassurance, both had vanished. Only the stir of dried grass in the breeze made a soft and mournful sound.

  VII

  Continuation of the puzzle

  A night breeze had risen, which suggested that it must be between one and two in the morning. Cosette was silent, and since she was sitting with her head against him, Valjean supposed that she had fallen asleep. But when he bent to look at her he saw that her eyes were wide open and staring with an expression that shocked him. She was shivering.

  ‘Aren’t you sleepy?’ he asked.

  ‘I’m cold … ’ And then after a moment she said: ‘Is she still there?’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Madame Thénardier.’

  He had forgotten the means he had used to ensure her silence.

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘She’s gone. You have nothing to fear.’

  She sighed as though a great weight had been lifted from her spirit.

>   The earth floor of the shed was damp, and the shed itself was open on all sides to the growing breeze. He took off his coat and wrapped her in it.

  ‘Is that better?’

  ‘Yes, father.’

  ‘Lie down and wait for me. I’ll be back very soon.’

  Leaving the shed, he began to explore the outside of the large building in the hope of finding a better place of refuge. He came to doors but they were all locked, and all the ground-floor windows were barred. Crossing the interior angle of the building, he came to a row of arched windows beyond which was a faint light. Standing on tip-toe, he peered in at one of these. He was looking into a spacious room or hall, paved with large flagstones and broken with pillars, in which nothing was at first visible except masses of shadow and the dim glow of a night-light in one corner. The place was deserted and nothing moved in it. But after staring for some time he seemed to discern, lying on the stone floor, something that looked like a human form covered by a shroud. It was lying face down with its arms crossed in the posture of death; and a thin line trailing like a snake over the flags suggested that it had a rope round its neck. The misty half-darkness of the place added to the horror of this sight.

  Jean Valjean was to say afterwards that in a life which had witnessed many terrors he had seen nothing more chilling to the blood than that inexplicable figure enacting some mysterious rite in those sombre surroundings. It was terrifying to suppose the figure dead; more terrifying still to suppose that it was alive.

  Summoning his resolution, he pressed his face to the window-pane and remained there for what seemed to him a long time, seeking to discern in the figure some sign of life. But he saw no movement, and suddenly, being seized with a sense of inexpressible terror, he turned and ran. He ran back to the shed, not venturing to look round lest he see the figure bounding after him with waving arms. He was gasping by the time he reached the shed, his knees giving way and the sweat running down his back.

  Where was he? Who could have imagined anything of the kind in a sort of sepulchre in the heart of Paris? What was this place of nocturnal mystery where angel voices cried out to the soul and, when it answered the summons, offered it a vision of horror, promising the radiance of Heaven and providing the blackness of the tomb? Yet it was a real house with a numbered doorway giving on to a street. It was not a dream. He had to touch the stones in order to convince himself of this.

  The coldness of the night, its many stresses and anxieties and the present bewilderment of his mind, all this had rendered him feverish. He bent over Cosette and found that she was asleep.

  VIII

  The puzzle deepens

  Cosette had fallen asleep with her head resting on a stone. He sat down beside her, and gradually, as he gazed at her, he grew calmer and recovered his wits.

  He now clearly perceived the truth which was henceforth to be the centre of his life, namely, that while she was there, while he had her near him, he would need nothing except for her sake and fear nothing except on her account. He was not even conscious of feeling extremely cold, having taken off his coat to cover her.

  He sat thinking, and only by degrees became aware of an odd sound that he had been unconsciously hearing for some time. It came from within the garden, the sound of a bell tinkling, faint but distinct, like a sheep-bell in the fields at night.

  The sound caused him to turn his head, and, peering, he saw that there was someone else in the garden. A person, seemingly a man, was walking amid the rows of cloches on the melon-patch, pausing, stooping, and straightening with regular movements as though spreading something over the ground. He appeared to be limping.

  Jean Valjean drew back with the instinctive recoil of the hunted, for whom all things are hostile and suspect. They fear daylight because it may cause them to be seen, and darkness because they may be taken by surprise. It was not long since the loneliness of the garden had caused him to shudder, but now he trembled because someone was there.

  Turning abruptly from fanciful terrors to real ones, he reflected that perhaps Javert and his helpers were still in the vicinity, that very likely a man had been left to keep watch in the street, and that if this individual in the garden were to see him he would cry out and give the alarm. Taking the sleeping Cosette gently in his arms, he carried her behind a pile of old, disused furniture in the furthest corner of the shed. She did not stir.

  He then resumed his observation of the man in the melon-patch. What was strange was that each of his movements was accompanied by this tinkle of a bell, which sounded more loudly when he was nearer, fainter as he moved away. If he made a rapid movement the tinkle became a tremolo; only when he was motionless was the bell silent. Clearly it was attached to him; but what did that mean? What kind of man was it who was ‘belled’ like a wether or a cow?

  While he was wondering about this he felt Cosette’s hands. They were ice-cold.

  ‘Oh, God!’ he exclaimed; and he said in a low voice, ‘Cosette!’ She did not open her eyes.

  He shook her vigorously, but she did not wake.

  ‘Is she dead?’ he thought and stood upright, trembling from head to foot.

  Appalling thoughts ran through his mind. There are times when the fears that assail us are like a regiment of furies beating at the walls of our brain. Where those we love are affected terror knows no bounds. He reflected that sleep in the open air may prove fetal on a cold night.

  The child was lying motionless at his feet. He bent and listened to her breathing, which seemed to him so weak that at any moment it might cease.

  How could he warm her? How revive her? He had no thought for anything but this.

  He ran despairingly out of the shed. Whatever happened, within a quarter of an hour Cosette must be in a warm place and in bed.

  IX

  The man with the bell

  He made straight for the man on the melon-patch, holding in his hand the roll of coins that had been in his waistcoat pocket. The man was bending down and did not see him. Valjean went up to him and said without preliminaries:

  ‘A hundred francs!’

  The man started and looked up.

  ‘A hundred francs for you,’ Valjean repeated, ‘if you can give me shelter for tonight.’

  The moonlight shone full on his tormented face.

  ‘Why,’ said the man, ‘why, it’s you, Père Madeleine!’

  The sound of his own name, spoken at that hour and in that place by an unknown person, caused Valjean to start in utter amazement. He had been prepared for anything except this. The speaker was a bent and crippled old man clad in working garments, with a leather kneeling-pad on his left knee to which a fair sized bell was fixed. His face, which was in shadow, was not clearly visible. He took off his cap and burst into a torrent of quavering speech.

  ‘In God’s name how do you come to be here, Père Madeleine? How did you get in? It’s as though you’d fallen from the sky, and that’s no joke because if you fell from anywhere that’s where it would be. But look at you, the clothes you’re wearing – no necktie, no hat, no overcoat! You’d have scared the life out of me if I hadn’t recognized you. But what’s the meaning of it? Have even the saints gone crazy? How in the world did you get in?’

  The words tumbled over one another in a stream of country volubility that was in no way disquieting, a mingling of bewilderment and innocent goodwill.

  ‘Who are you, and what is this place?’ Jean Valjean asked.

  ‘What! Well, that’s rich! I’m the man you put here, and this is the place you put me in. Do you mean to say you don’t know me?’

  ‘No. Nor do I understand how you know me.’

  ‘You saved my life,’ the old man said.

  He turned, and the moonlight falling upon his face revealed the features of Fauchelevent, who had once been nearly crushed to death beneath a cart.

  ‘Ah,’ said Valjean. ‘Yes. I know you now.’

  ‘So I should hope,’ the old man said reproachfully.

  ‘But what are yo
u doing out here at this hour?’

  ‘I’m covering up my melons, d’you see.’

  Fauchelevent still held in his hand the strip of straw matting which he had been in the act of spreading on the ground when Valjean had surprised him. He had been thus employed for some time, and it was this that accounted for the movements that Valjean had watched from the shed.

  ‘I said to myself, well it’s a fine, clear night and there’s going to be a frost, so I might as well get my melons into their jackets.’ He laughed. ‘What’s more, it’s what you’d have done yourself in my place. But how do you come to be here?’

  Finding himself known to the old man, at least by the name of Madeleine, Jean Valjean was still on his guard. He went on to question him in a strange reversal of roles, the midnight intruder become interrogator.

  ‘What’s that bell you’re wearing on your knee?’

  ‘That?’ said Fauchelevent. ‘That’s to warn people off.’

  ‘But why should anyone be warned off?’

  The old man wagged his head and grinned.

  ‘Bless you, there’s nothing but women in this place, a lot of them young girls. It seems it might be dangerous for them to meet me. When they hear the bell they keep their distance.’

  ‘But what is this place?’

  ‘Go on, you must surely know.’

  ‘I assure you I don’t.’

  ‘But seeing you got me the job here as gardener.’

  ‘I still don’t understand. You will have to tell me.’

  ‘Why, then, it’s the Convent of the Petit-Picpus.’

  And then Valjean remembered. Chance, but it is better to say Providence, had led him to the very convent in the Saint-Antoine quarter where old Fauchelevent, crippled after his accident, had been engaged on his recommendation. That had happened two years ago. Valjean repeated, as though to himself, ‘The Convent of the Petit-Picpus!’