Les Miserables (Movie Tie-in) (9781101612774)

by Hugo, Victor; Donougher, Christine (TRN)

  He felt as though his head were on fire. The sheer ecstasy! She had come to him! And the way she had looked at him. He thought her more beautiful than ever, with a beauty that was at once feminine and angelic, that wholeness of beauty that had moved Petrarch to song and brought Dante to his knees. And at the same time he was horribly put out because his boots were dusty. He was sure that she had noticed his boots.

  He gazed after her until she had vanished from sight, then got up and strode madly about the garden. In all likelihood he laughed at times and talked to himself aloud. He gazed so fondly at the children’s nurses that each one thought he must be in love with her.

  Finally he left the Luxembourg in the vague hope of seeing her in the street, but instead he ran into Courfeyrac under the Odéon arcade and promptly invited him to a meal. They dined chez Rousseau at a cost of six francs and a six-sou tip to the waiter. Marius ate like a starving man while babbling of anything that came into his head. ‘Have you seen today’s paper? That was a fine speech by Audry de Puyraveau’… He was head over heels in love.

  After dinner he took Courfeyrac to the theatre. They saw Frédérick Lemaître at the Théâtre de la Porte-Saint-Martin playing in Robert Macaire’s melodrama, L’Auberge des Adrets, and Marius was hugely entertained. But his conduct was increasingly strange. He refused, when they had left the theatre, to stare at the legs of a shopgirl skipping over a gutter, and was sternly disapproving when Courfeyrac said, ‘I wouldn’t mind adding her to my collection.’

  Courfeyrac invited him to luncheon next day at the Café Voltaire, and he ate even more than he had done the previous evening. He was absent-minded and at the same time in a high state of exuberance, seeming to jump at any excuse to burst into laughter. He warmly embraced a young man from the country who was introduced to him. A circle of students had gathered round their table. After commenting on the state-salaried imbeciles who occupied professors’ chairs at the Sorbonne, they went on to discuss the shortcomings and omissions of the compilers of dictionaries and in particular of Louis Quicherat. But Marius cut short the discussion by saying:

  ‘All the same, it’s very pleasant to have the Cross of the Légion d’honneur.’

  ‘That’s odd, coming from him,’ murmured Courfeyrac in an aside to Jean Prouvaire.

  ‘No,’ said Jean Prouvaire. ‘That’s serious.’

  It was indeed serious. Marius was in the first violent and entranced throes of a grand passion.

  A single look had done it. When the charge is prepared and the fuse is laid nothing can be simpler. A glance is all the spark that is needed.

  A woman’s gaze is like a mechanical contrivance of a kind that seems harmless but in fact is deadly. We encounter it daily and give no thought to it – to the point, indeed, of ignoring its existence. We live untroubled lives until suddenly we find that we are caught. The machinery, the gaze, has laid hold of us, snatching at a loose end of thought, a momentary absence of mind, and we are lost. The machine swallows us up. We are in the grip of forces against which we struggle in vain, drawn from cog-wheel to cog-wheel, from agony to agony and torment to torment, our mind and spirit, fortune and future, our whole being; and according to whether we have fallen into the clutches of a base creature or a gentle heart we shall be disfigured by shame or transformed by worship.

  VII

  Confusion over the letter U

  Solitude and detachment, pride, independence, a love of nature, the absence of regular employment, life lived for its own sake, the secret struggles of chastity and an overflowing goodwill towards all created things – all this had paved the way in Marius for the advent of what is known as passion. His feeling for his father had by degrees become a religion and like all religions had receded to the background of his mind. Something was needed to occupy the foreground, and what came to him was love.

  A whole month went by during which he went daily to the Luxembourg. Nothing was allowed to deter him. ‘He might be on sentry-go,’ said Courfeyrac. He was in a state of constant rapture, knowing that the girl saw him.

  Growing gradually bolder, he went nearer to the bench where she sat. But he did not walk directly in front of it. Partly from shyness, but also because, with the instinctive caution of lovers, he thought it prudent not to attract her father’s notice. So with a Machiavellian cunning he took shelter behind trees and statues, posting himself so as to be visible as much as possible to her and as little as possible to the old gentleman. Sometimes he would stand for half an hour on end in the shadow of a Leonidas or a Spartacus, holding an open book over which he would discreetly glance at her, while she, for her part, turned her delightful head his way with a faint smile on her lips. While still talking calmly and naturally to her father, she would bestow on Marius all the dreams and secret fervours of her virgin gaze: a proceeding known to Eve from the day the world began, and to every woman from the day of her birth. While her lips spoke to the one, her eyes spoke to the other.

  But it seemed that Monsieur Leblanc had begun to suspect what was happening, because quite often when Marius appeared he got to his feet and they strolled on. He exchanged their usual bench for one at the other end of the alleyway, evidently to see whether Marius would follow them there. Marius failed to understand and made the mistake of doing so. Then Monsieur Leblanc became irregular in his visits and did not always bring his daughter with him. When this happened Marius did not linger, which was another mistake.

  Marius took no account of these portents. He had progressed by a natural transition from the stage of extreme caution to one of complete blindness. His passion was growing; he dreamed of his enchantress every night. Moreover an unexpected bounty had befallen him, casting oil on the flames and adding to the mist in his eyes. One evening he found a handkerchief lying on the bench which Monsieur Leblanc and his daughter had just left. It was a plain, unembroidered handkerchief, but white and of fine material, and it seemed to him to be impregnated with the most exquisite of scents. He snatched it up with rapture. It bore the initials U.F. At that time Marius knew nothing whatever about the girl, her name, her family, her dwelling-place; the two letters were a first clue on which he at once proceeded to erect a scaffolding of surmise. Clearly the U stood for her Christian name – ‘Ursula,’ he thought. ‘A delicious name!’ He kissed the handkerchief, breathed its scent, wore it next to his heart by day and kept it under his pillow at night. ‘I can feel her whole soul in it!’ he told himself.

  In fact, the handkerchief belonged to the old gentleman and had simply fallen out of his pocket.

  Thereafter Marius never appeared in the Luxembourg without the handkerchief, pressing it to his lips or clasping it to his breast. The girl could make nothing of this and showed as much by her expression.

  ‘Such modesty!’ sighed Marius.

  VIII

  A puff of wind

  Since we have used the word ‘modesty’ and are resolved to conceal nothing, we must now disclose that once, amid all his raptures, Marius was seriously displeased with his ‘Ursula’. It was on a day when she and Monsieur Leblanc had left their bench and were strolling along the alley. A brisk breeze was blowing, bending the tops of the plane trees. Father and daughter, walking arm-in-arm, had passed by Marius’s bench, and, as was to be expected of one in his desperate state, he had risen to his feet and was gazing after them

  Suddenly a gust of wind livelier than the rest, and no doubt more officiously concerned with the business of the spring, blew across the alleyway from under the trees, setting the girl’s dress in a delicious flutter, worthy of the nymphs of Virgil and the fauns of Theocritus, and swept up her skirts – those skirts more sacrosanct than the robes of Isis! – very nearly to the level of her garter. A beautifully shaped leg was revealed, and Marius, seeing it, was dismayed and furious. Nor was his sense of outrage lessened by the fact that with a startled movement she hastily smoothed down her skirt. It was true that no one else was there to see her, but supposing there had been someone! A dreadful thought, and her
conduct was disgraceful! The poor child was, of course, in no way to blame; the wind was the only offender; but Marius, possessed by the Bartolo lurking in every Cherubino, was determined to disapprove and ready to be jealous of his own shadow. Thus it is that without justice or reason the extraordinary and bitter flame of jealousy of the flesh flares up in the heart of man. What is more, and setting aside this matter of jealousy, the sight of that charming leg had given him no pleasure; he would have been better pleased by a glimpse of any other woman’s stocking.

  When his ‘Ursula’ and Monsieur Leblanc, having reached the end of the alley, walked back past the bench on which he was seated, Marius gave her the most ferocious of frowns. The girl started slightly and her eyelids fluttered in a manner which plainly said, ‘What’s got into him?’

  It was their first quarrel.

  This exchange of glances was scarcely concluded when another person appeared in the alleyway. He was an old war-veteran, bowed and white-haired, wearing the uniform of Louis XV, the red oval badge with crossed swords, and the Saint-Louis cross awarded to soldiers, with an empty sleeve and a wooden leg. It seemed to Marius that he was looking extremely gratified, and, what is more, that as he limped by he glanced in his direction with a conspiratorial wink, as though they had shared some pleasurable experience. What had the old relic got to be so happy about? What link was there between that wooden leg and a certain other leg? Marius was now in a paroxysm of jealousy. ‘He may have been there after all,’ he reflected. ‘He may have seen!’ He wanted to strangle him.

  But time heals all things. Marius’s wrath abated, righteous though he held it to have been. He forgave her in the end; but it cost him an effort and he nursed his grievance for three whole days.

  In spite of this, and also because of it, his infatuation increased.

  IX

  Disappearance

  He had discovered, or thought he had, that her name was Ursula. But the appetite grows with loving. It was something to know her name, but it was not enough. In a few weeks he had exhausted that satisfaction and longed for more. He resolved to discover where she lived.

  He had already made two blunders, the first in continuing to haunt them after they had changed their bench, and the second in leaving the garden whenever Monsieur Leblanc went there alone. Now he was guilty of a third and far greater one. He followed his ‘Ursula’.

  He found that she lived in the Rue de l’Ouest, in a modest-seeming house at the quiet end of the street. Thanks to this discovery he could add to the joy of seeing her in the Luxembourg the delight of following her home. But his appetite still grew. He had found out her name, or at least her first name, and a very charming one it was, and he knew where she lived; but now he wanted to know who she was.

  One evening, having followed them to the house and seen them go in by the porte cocière, he went in after them and boldly addressed the porter.

  ‘Was that the gentleman on the first floor, the one who has just come in?’

  ‘No, Monsieur. He’s the gentleman on the third floor.’

  ‘The third floor front?’

  ‘Well, but there is only the front. The whole house faces the street.’

  ‘What kind of a gentleman is he?’

  ‘A gentleman of private means. A good-hearted gentleman who does what he can for the poor, although he is not rich.’

  ‘What is his name?’ asked Marius.

  The porter looked hard at him and asked:

  ‘Is Monsieur connected with the police?’

  This silenced Marius, but nevertheless he went off highly pleased with himself. He was making progress.

  The next day Monsieur Leblanc and his daughter paid only a short visit to the Luxembourg, leaving early in the afternoon. Marius followed them home as usual; but when they reached the door Monsieur Leblanc, after standing aside to let the girl go in, turned and stared at him.

  On the next day they did not come to the Luxembourg at all. After waiting until nightfall Marius walked to the house in the Rue de l’Ouest and saw lights behind the third-floor windows. He stayed there, strolling up and down, until the lights went out.

  Again, on the following day, they did not appear in the Luxembourg, and again Marius kept watch under their windows. It was ten by the time their lights went out, and his dinner went by the board. Just as fever nourishes sickness, so does love sustain a lover.

  A week passed in this fashion. Monsieur Leblanc and his daughter no longer came to the Luxembourg. Marius was plunged in melancholy conjecture. Fearing to keep watch on the house by daylight he relieved his anxieties by gazing up at the lighted windows after dark. Occasionally he saw a shadow pass in front of a lamp, and his heart beat faster.

  But on the eighth day there was no light in the windows. Perhaps they had gone out for the evening. He waited, not merely until ten but until midnight and later. Still no light showed, and no one had entered the house. He left in a state of deep dejection.

  On the morrow – for he was living now from tomorrow to tomorrow, and ‘today’ could be said scarcely to exist for him – on the morrow, having gone to the Luxembourg and, as he expected, failed to see them, he again went to the house as night was falling. And again there were no lights to be seen; the blinds were drawn and the third floor was in darkness.

  Marius knocked at the porte-cochère and said to the porter:

  ‘The gentleman on the third floor?’

  ‘He’s left,’ the man said.

  Marius reeled and asked feebly:

  ‘When did he leave?’

  ‘Yesterday.’

  ‘Where has he gone?’

  ‘I’ve no idea.’

  ‘Didn’t he leave an address?’

  ‘No.’

  The porter then recognized Marius. He glared at him and said:

  ‘So it’s you again! Well, you must certainly be a nark of some kind.’

  Book Seven

  Patron-Minette

  I

  Mines and miners

  ALL HUMAN societies have what is known to the theatre as an ‘under-stage’. The social earth is everywhere mined and tunnelled, for better or for worse. There are higher and lower galleries, upper and lower strata in that subsoil which sometimes collapse under the weight of civilization, and which in our ignorance and indifference we tread underfoot. The Encyclopedia, in the last century, was a mine very near the surface. The catacombs, that dark cradle of primitive Christianity, lay waiting for the chance to explode under the Caesars and flood the world with light. For in the deepest shadow there is latent light. The volcano is filled with darkness capable of bursting into flame; lava at the start is black. Those catacombs where the first Mass was celebrated were not only the cellars of Rome, they were the under-stage of the world.

  Beneath the social structure, that complex labyrinth, there are tunnellings of every kind. There are mines of religion and philosophy, politics, economics and revolution, galleries driven in the name of a theory or a principle, or mined in anger. Voices call from one gallery to the next. Utopias are born in these subterranean channels and spread their roots all ways. Sometimes they meet and fraternize. Rousseau offers his pickaxe to Diogenes, who lends his lantern in return. Calvin takes issue with Socin, the Italian heretic. But nothing can check or diminish the pressure of all these pertinacious activities, the huge concourse of energy seething in darkness, rising and falling and by slow degrees transforming the upper world from below and the outer world from within; a vast, secret turbulence. Society is scarcely aware of this process of burrowing which, leaving the surface untouched, gnaws at its entrails. So many different underground levels, different objectives, different harvests. And what comes of it all? The future.

  The deeper one goes, the more unpredictable are the workers. At the level which social philosophy can recognize, good work is done; at a lower level it becomes doubtful, of questionable value; at the lowest level it is fearsome. There are depths to which the spirit of civilization cannot penetrate, a limit beyond
which the air is not breatheable by men; and it is here that monsters may be born.

  This descending ladder is a strange one, each of its rungs a platform where philosophy of some kind takes its stand and where its workers may be found, some divine and some misshapen. Below Hus there is Luther, below Luther Descartes, below Descartes Voltaire, below Voltaire Condorcet, below Condorcet Robespierre, below Robespierre Marat, below Marat Babeuf … and so on until, past the borderline separating the indistinct from the invisible, we are confusedly aware of shadowy figures that perhaps do not yet exist. Those belonging to yesterday are ghosts; those belonging to tomorrow are embryos. The mind’s eye dimly perceives them. This conception of the future is a vision for philosophers. A foetal world in the womb of the state, unimaginable in shape.

  Saint-Simon, Owen, and Fourier are also there, in divergent galleries. Indeed, although these underground pioneers are all linked by an invisible bond of which they are nearly always unaware, believing themselves to be isolated, their works are very different, the light shed by each being in conflict with that of the others. Their life and work may be uplifting or it may be tragic. Nevertheless, whatever the gulf between them, from the highest to the most obscure, the wisest to the most insane, they have this in common: they are all disinterested. Marat is as forgetful of self as was Jesus. They leave themselves wholly out of account, being concerned with something else. Their eyes are all intent upon one thing. They are searching for an Absolute. The greatest may have all Heaven in his eyes; but the least of them, no matter how confined, still has in his gaze a pale glimmer of the Infinite. So, no matter what he does, we must honour the man who bears this sign – a gleam of starlight in his eyes.