Les Miserables (Movie Tie-in) (9781101612774)

by Hugo, Victor; Donougher, Christine (TRN)

  Thus those two beings, so exclusively and touchingly devoted, who had lived so long for each other alone, came to suffer side by side, each through the other, without ever speaking of the matter, without reproaches, each wearing a smile.

  VIII

  The chain-gang

  Jean Valjean was the more unhappy of the two. Youth, whatever its griefs, still has its consolations. There were moments when he suffered to the point of becoming childish, and indeed it is the quality of suffering that it brings out the childish side of a man. He felt overwhelmingly that Cosette was escaping from him, and he sought to combat this, to keep his hold on her, by providing her with dazzling distractions. This notion, childish, as we have said, but at the same time doting, by its very childishness gave him some insight into the effect of gaudy trappings on a girl’s imagination. It happened once that he saw a general in full uniform riding along the street, the Comte Coutard, military commander of Paris. He greatly envied that braided, ornate figure, and he thought to himself how splendid it would be to be dressed with a similar magnificence, how it would delight Cosette, so that when they strolled arm-in-arm past the gates of the Tuileries Palace, and the guard presented arms, she would be far too much impressed to take any interest in young men.

  An unexpected shock came to dispel these pathetic fancies. They had formed the habit, since coming to live their solitary lives in the Rue Plumet, of going out to watch the sun rise, a quiet pleasure suited to those who are at the beginning of life and those who are approaching its end. To any lover of solitude, a stroll in the early morning is as good as a stroll after dark, with the added attraction of the brightness of nature. The streets are deserted and the birds in full song. Cosette, herself a bird, enjoyed getting up early. They planned these little outings the night before, he proposing and she agreeing. It was a conspiracy between them; they were out before daybreak and this was an especial pleasure to Cosette. Such harmless eccentricities delight the young.

  Jean Valjean, as we know, had an especial fondness for unfrequented places, neglected nooks and corners. At this time there were many of these just beyond the Paris barriers, sparse fields that had been almost absorbed into the town, in which crops of stunted corn grew in summer and which, after reaping, looked more shaved than harvested. They were the places Valjean preferred, and Cosette did not dislike them. For him they represented solitude and for her, liberty. She could become a child again, run and frolic, leave her hat on Valjean’s knees and fill it with bunches of wild flowers. She could watch the butterflies, although she never tried to catch them; tenderness and compassion are a part of loving, and a girl cherishing something equally fragile in her heart is mindful of the wings of butterflies. She made poppy-wreaths and put them on her head where, red-glowing in the sunshine, they set off her flushed face like a fiery crown.

  They kept up this habit of early morning outings even after their lives had become overcast, and so it happened that, on an October morning, in the perfect serenity of the autumn of 1831, they found themselves at daybreak near the Barrière du Maine. It was the first flush of dawn, a still, magical moment, with a few stars yet to be seen in the pale depths of the sky, the earth still dark and a shiver running over the grass. A lark, seeming at one with the stars, was singing high in the heavens, and this voice of littleness, hymning the infinite, seemed to narrow its immensity. To the east the black mass of the Val-de-Grâce rose against a steel-bright sky, with the planet Venus shining above it like a soul escaped from darkness. Everywhere was silence and peace. Nothing stirred on the high road, and on the side-lanes only occasional labourers were to be glimpsed in passing on their way to work.

  Jean Valjean had seated himself on a pile of logs at the side of a lane, by the gateway of a timber-yard. He was looking towards the high road, seated with his back to the sunrise, which he was ignoring, being absorbed in one of those moments of concentrated thought by which even the eyes are imprisoned, as though in enclosing walls. There are states of meditation which may be termed vertical: when one has plunged into their depths it takes time to return to the surface. Valjean was thinking about Cosette and the happiness which might be theirs if nothing came between them, about the light with which she filled his life, enabling his soul to breathe. He was almost happy in this daydream, while Cosette, standing beside him, watched the clouds turn pink. Suddenly she exclaimed:

  ‘Father, I think something’s coming.’

  Valjean looked up. The high road leading to the Barrière du Maine is joined at a right angle by the inner boulevard. Sounds were coming from the point of intersection which at that hour were not easy to account for. A strange object appeared, turning the corner into the high road. It seemed to be moving in an orderly fashion, although by fits and starts, and it appeared to be some kind of conveyance, although its load was not distinguishable. There were horses and wheels, shouting voices and the cracking of whips. By degrees, as it emerged from the half-light, it could be seen to be a vehicle of sorts heading for the barrier near which Jean Valjean was sitting. It was followed by a second cart, similar in aspect, and by a third and fourth; altogether seven of these long carts rounded the corner, forming a tight procession with the horses’ heads almost touching the back of the vehicle in front. Heads became visible, and here and there a gleam like that of a drawn sabre; there was a sound like the rattle of chains, and as the procession drew nearer, with sounds and outlines growing more distinct, it was like the approach of something in a dream. Bit by bit the details became clear, and the darkly silhouetted heads, bathed in the pallid glow of the rising sun, came to resemble the heads of corpses.

  This is what it was. Of the seven vehicles proceeding in line along the high road the first six were of a singular design. They were like coopers’ drays, long ladders on wheels with shafts at the forward end. Each of these drays, or ladders, was drawn by four horses in single file and their load consisted of tight clusters of men, twenty-four to each dray, seated in two rows of twelve, back to back with their legs dangling over the side; and the thing rattling at their backs was a chain, and the thing gleaming round their necks was a yoke or collar of iron. Each had his own collar, but the chain was shared by all of them, so that when they descended from the vehicle these parties of twenty-four men had to move in concert like a body with a single backbone, a sort of centipede. Pairs of men armed with muskets stood at the front and rear end of each vehicle, with their feet on the ends of the chain. The iron collars were square. The seventh vehicle, a large four-wheeled wagon with high sides but no roof, was drawn by six horses and carried a clattering load of iron cook-pots, stoves, and chains among which lay a few men with bound wrists and ankles who seemed to be ill. The sides of this wagon were constructed of rusty metal frames which looked as though they might once have served as whipping-blocks.

  The procession, moving along the middle of the high road, was escorted on either side by a line of troops of infamous aspect wearing the three-cornered hats of soldiers under the Directory, dirty and bedraggled pensioners’ tunics, tattered trousers, something between grey and blue, like those of funeral mutes, red epaulettes and yellow bandoliers; and they were armed with axes, muskets, and clubs. Mercenary soldiers bearing themselves with the abjectness of beggars and the truculence of prison-guards. The man who seemed to be their commander carried a horsewhip. These details, shrouded at first in the half-light, became steadily clearer as the light increased. At the front and rear of the procession rode parties of mounted gendarmes, grim-faced men with drawn sabres.

  The procession was so long that by the time its head reached the barrier the last vehicle had only just turned into the high road. A crowd of spectators, sprung up in an instant as so commonly happens in Paris, had gathered on either side of the road to stand and stare. Voices could be heard of men calling to their mates to come and look, followed by the clatter of clogs as they came hurrying in from the fields.

  The chained men in the drays, pallid in the chill of the morning, bore the lurching jour
ney in silence. They were all clad in cotton trousers, with clogs on their bare feet. The rest of their attire was a dismally variegated picture of misery, a harlequinade in tatters, with shapeless headgear of felt or tarred cloth, while a few wore women’s hats, or even baskets, on their heads and out-at-elbows workers’ smocks or black jackets open to uncover hairy chests. Through the rents in their clothing tattoo-marks were visible – temples of love, bleeding hearts, cupids – and also the sores and blotches of disease. One or two had a rope slung from the side of the dray which supported their feet like a stirrup, and one was conveying a hard, black substance to his mouth which looked like rock but was in fact bread. Eyes were expressionless, apathetic or gleaming with an evil light. The men of the escort cursed them but drew not a murmur in reply. Now and then there was the sound of a cudgel thudding on shoulder-blades or on a head. Some of the prisoners yawned while their bothes lurched and swayed, heads knocked together and the chains rattled; others darted venomous looks. Some fists were clenched and others hung limply like the hands of dead men. A party of jeering children followed in the rear of the convoy.

  Whatever else it was, this procession of carts was a most melancholy sight. It was certain that sooner or later, within an hour or a day, rain would fall, one shower succeeding another, and that with their miserable garments soaked the poor wretches would have no chance to get dry. Chilled to the bone, they would have no hope of getting warm; the chain would still hold them by the neck, their feet would still dangle in waterlogged clogs; and the thud of cudgels and the crack of whips would do nothing to still the chattering of their teeth. It was impossible to contemplate without a shiver these human creatures exposed like trees or stones to all the fury of the elements.

  But suddenly the sun came out, a broad beam of light spread from the east and it was as though it set all those dishevelled heads on fire. Tongues were loosed, and there was an explosion of mocking laughter, oaths, and songs. The horizontal glow cut the picture in two, illuminating heads and torsos and leaving legs and the wheels of the carts in shadow. This was a terrible moment, for awareness returned to the faces like an unmasking of demons, wild spirits nakedly exposed. But lighted though it was, the picture was still one of darkness. Some of the livelier spirits had quills in their mouths through which they blew spittle at the spectators, for preference at the women. The dawn light threw their haggard faces into relief, not one that was not malformed by misery; and the effect was monstrous, as though the warmth of sunlight had been transformed into the cold brightness of a lightning-flash. The men in the first cart were bellowing the chorus of an old popular song, while the trees shivered and the respectable onlookers in the side-lanes listened with imbecile satisfaction to this rousing clamour of ghosts.

  Every aspect of misery was to be seen in that procession, as though it were a depiction of chaos; every animal face was there represented, old men and youths, grey beards and hairless cheeks, cynical monstrosity, embittered resignation, savage leers, half-wit grins, gargoyles wearing caps, faces like those of girls with locks of hair straying over their temples, faces like those of children and the more horrible on that account, fleshless skeleton faces lacking only death. There was a Negro in the first cart who perhaps had been a slave and so was familiar with chains. All bore the stamp of ignominy, that dreadful leveller; all had reached that lowest depth of abasement where ignorance changed to witlessness is the equal of intelligence changed to despair. There was no choosing between these men who seemed, from their appearance, to be the scum of the underworld, and it was evident that whoever had organized this procession had made no attempt to distinguish between them. They had been chained together haphazard, probably in alphabetical order, and loaded haphazard on to the carts. But even horror assembled in groups acquires a common denominator, every aggregation of miseries results in a total: each of the separate chain-gangs had a character of its own, each cartload bore its own countenance. Besides the one that sang there was one that merely shouted, one that begged for money, one that ground its teeth, one that uttered threats, one that blasphemed, and the last was silent as the grave. Dante might have seen in them the seven circles of Hell on the move.

  It was a march of the condemned on the way to torment, borne not on the flaming chariots of the Apocalypse but on the shabby tumbrils of the damned. One of the guards who had a hook on the end of his club gesticulated with it as though to plunge it into that heap of human garbage. Among the onlookers a woman with a five-year-old boy shook a warning finger at him and said: ‘Perhaps that’ll teach you to behave!’ As the roar of singing and blasphemy increased the man who seemed to be in command of the escort cracked his whip, and at this signal a rain of blows fell on the passengers in the carts, some of whom bellowed while others foamed at the mouth, to the delight of the urchins swarming round the procession like flies round an open wound.

  The look in Jean Valjean’s eyes was dreadful to behold. They were eyes no longer, but had become those fathomless mirrors which in men who have known the depths of suffering may replace the conscious gaze, so that they no longer see reality but reflect the memory of past events. Valjean was not observing the present scene but was gripped by a vision. He wanted to jump to his feet and run, but could not move. There are times when the thing we see holds us paralysed. He stayed dazedly seated, wondering, in indescribable anguish, what was the meaning of this hideous spectacle and the pandemonium that accompanied it. And presently he clapped a hand to his forehead in a gesture of sudden recollection; he remembered that this was the convoy’s usual itinerary, that it was accustomed to make this detour in order to avoid any encounter with royal personages, always possible on the road to Fontainebleau; and he remembered that he himself had passed through that barrier thirty-five years before.

  Cosette was no less shaken, although for other reasons. She was staring in breathless bewilderment, scarcely able to believe her eyes. She cried:

  ‘Father, what are those men?’

  ‘Felons condemned to hard labour,’ said Valjean.

  ‘Where are they going?’

  ‘To the galleys.’

  At this moment the lashing and cudgelling reached its climax, with the flat of swords now being used. The prisoners, yielding to punishment, fell silent, glaring about them like captive wolves. Cosette was trembling. She asked:

  ‘Father, are they still human?’

  ‘Sometimes,’ the wretched man replied.

  It was in fact the chain-gang from Bicêtre, which was travelling by way of Le Mans to avoid Fontainebleau where the king was in residence. The detour lengthened the unspeakable journey by three or four days, but this was a small matter if thereby the royal susceptibilities could be spared.

  Jean Valjean returned home deeply oppressed. The shock of encounters such as this may cause a profound revulsion of the spirit. So absorbed was he in his thoughts that he paid little attention, on their way home, to Cosette’s further questions about what they had seen, and perhaps he did not even hear much of what she said. But that evening, when she was about to take leave of him and go to bed, he heard her murmur as though to herself: ‘I believe if I were to meet a man like that in the street I should the of fright just from seeing him so close.’

  It happened fortunately that on the next day some sort of official celebration was held in Paris, the occasion being marked by a military parade on the Champ de Mars, water-jousting on the Seine, fireworks, festivities and illuminations everywhere. Contrary to his general practice, Valjean took Cosette out to see the sights, hoping thus to efface from her mind the nightmare she had witnessed the previous day, and since the military review was the main event, and the wearing of uniforms was proper to the occasion, he wore his National Guard uniform, partly from an instinctive desire to escape notice. Their outing seemed to be successful. Cosette, who made a point of always seeking to please her father, and for whom in any case every show was a novelty, joined in the fun with the eager, lighthearted acceptance of youth, and gave no sign of despisi
ng that hotch-potch of organized rejoicing which is known as a ‘public festival’ – so much so that Valjean could feel that she had forgotten the previous day’s events entirely.

  But a few days later they happened to stand together on the steps leading to the garden, warming themselves in the sunshine of a fine morning. This was another departure from Valjean’s general rule, and from Cosette’s habit, in her unhappy state, of staying indoors. Cosette was wearing a peignoir, one of those gauzy morning garments which adorn a girl like the mist surrounding a star, and, bathed in sunlight, her cheeks still rosy after a sound night’s sleep, was playing with a daisy while her father tenderly watched her. Cosette knew nothing of the old children’s game, ‘He loves me … he don’t … he’ll have me …he won’t …’ – when had she had the chance to learn it? She was innocently and instinctively picking off the petals, not knowing that the daisy stands for a heart. If to those Graces a fourth could be added bearing the name of Melancholy, but smiling, she might well have played the role. Valjean watched her, fascinated by the contemplation of her slim fingers as she toyed with the little flower, forgetful of all else in the delight of her presence. A redbreast was chirruping on a branch above their heads. White clouds were sailing across the sky, so gaily that one might suppose they had only just been released from confinement. Cosette continued to play with the flower but absently, as though she were thinking of something else – surely it must be something charming. But suddenly, with the slow, graceful movement of a swan, her head turned on her shoulders and she asked:

  ‘Father, that place, the galleys. What does it mean?’