It was a gay, delightful evening, the tone being set by their host, who was so nearly a hundred years old. There was a little dancing and a great deal of laughter and happy commotion. But suddenly a silence fell. The newly married pair had disappeared. Shortly after midnight Monsieur Gillenormand’s house became a temple.
And here we must pause. At the door of every bridal bedchamber an angel stands, smiling, with a finger to his lips.
There should be a radiance about houses such as this, the rapture they contain should somehow escape through their stones. Love is the sublime melting-pot in which man and woman are fused together, and this melting of two souls into one must stir the outer darkness. The lover is a priest, the ravished virgin a consenting, trembling sacrifice. If it were given to us to peer into a higher world, should we not see beneficent forms clustered over that glowing house; and would not the lovers, thinking themselves alone in their ecstasies, hear the flutter of wings? That small and secret bedchamber is wide open to Heaven. When two mouths, consecrated by love, draw close together in the act of creation it is impossible that this ineffable kiss does not cause a tremor among the stars.
This is the true felicity and there is no joy outside the ecstasy of love. The rest is tears. To love or to have loved is all-sufficing. We must not ask for more. No other pearl is to be found in the shadowed folds of life. To love is an accomplishment.
III
Inseparable
What had become of Jean Valjean?
After he had smiled at Cosette’s gentle request, he had risen unnoticed and gone into the room next door, the same room into which, ragged and caked with mud, he had eight months earlier carried Monsieur Gillenormand’s grandson. Its ancient woodwork was now decked with flowers, and the musicians were seated on the settee on which Marius had been laid. Basque was there, placing small bouquets on the dinner-plates. Valjean told him the reason for his departure and left.
The dining-room windows looked out on to the street, and Jean Valjean stood beneath them for a few moments listening to the sounds of the party behind him, the predominating voice of Monsieur Gillenormand, the violins, the laughter, the rattle of crockery and, distinguishable amid it all, the gentle happy voice of Cosette. Then he left the Rue des Filles-du-Calvaire and returned to the Rue de l’Homme-Armé.
He went by way of the Rue Saint-Louis and the Blancs-Manteaux, which, though rather longer, was the route he was accustomed to follow when walking between the two houses, to avoid the crowds and muddiness of the Rue Vieille-du-Temple. It was the way he had always come with Cosette, so he could take no other.
He arrived home, lit his candle, and went upstairs. The apartment was empty. Toussaint was not there and the sound of his footsteps, was louder than usual. All the cupboards were empty and Cosette’s bed was unmade, the pillow, without its lacy pillowslip, lying on a pile of folded blankets. All the feminine knick-knacks that had been Cosette’s had been taken away, nothing remained in the room but its heavy furniture and bare walls. Toussaint’s bed was also stripped. The only one that could be slept in was his own. He wandered from one room to another, shutting the cupboard doors. Then he went back to his own bedroom and put his candle on the table. He had taken his arm out of its sling and was using it as though it caused him no discomfort.
He went towards his bed, and as he did so his eye rested – was it by chance or was it intentional? – on the little black box that Cosette had called his ‘inseparable’. When they had moved into the Rue de l’Homme-Armé he had placed it on a foot-stool beside his bed. He now got a key out of his pocket and opened it.
Slowly he took out the clothes in which Cosette had left Montfermeil, ten years before. First the little black dress, then the black scarf, then the stout child’s shoes which Cosette could still have worn, so small were her feet, then the thick fustian camisole, the woollen petticoat, and, still bearing the impress of a small leg, two stockings scarcely longer than his hand. Everything was black, and it was he who had brought them when he took her from Montfermeil, He laid the garments on the bed, recalling that occasion. It had been a very cold December, and she had been shivering in rags, her small feet red from the clogs she wore. Her mother in her grave must have been happy to know that her daughter was in mourning, and that she was decently and warmly clad. He thought of those Montfermeil woods, through which they had walked together, the leafless trees, the absence of birds, the sunless sky; but still it had been delightful. He spread the garments on the bed and stood looking at them. She had been so little, carrying that big doll and with her golden louis in her apron pocket. She had laughed as they walked hand-in-hand, and he had become all the world to her.
Then the ageing white head sank forward, the stoical heart gave way and his face was buried in Cosette’s garments. Anyone passing on the stairs at that moment would have heard the sound of dreadful sobbing.
IV
Undying faith
The fearful struggle, of which we have recorded more than one phase, had begun again. Jacob’s battle with the angel lasted only one night; but how often had Jean Valjean been darkly joined in mortal conflict with his own conscience! A desperate struggle: his foot slipping at moments and, at others, the ground seeming to give way beneath his feet. How stubbornly his conscience had fought, against him! How often had inexorable truth borne down like a great weight on his breast. How often, in that implacable light, had he begged for mercy – the light that the bishop had lit for him. How often had his rebellious spirit groaned beneath the knowledge of his plain duty. Opposition to God himself: self-inflicted wounds of whose bleeding he alone was conscious. Until finally, shaken, he had risen from despair above himself to say, ‘Now it is settled. I may go in peace.’ A melancholy peace!
But this night Valjean knew that the struggle had reached its climax. An agonizing question presented itself. Predestination does not always offer a straight road to the predestined; there are many twists and turns, forks and crossroads. Valjean had come to the most perilous of these. He had reached the ultimate intersection between good and evil and he saw it clearly. As had happened before, at critical moments of his life, two roads lay open to him, one seductive and the other terrifying. Which was he to take?
The road that appalled him was the one indicated by that mysterious finger that we always see when we try to peer into the darkness. Once more he was faced by the choice between the terrible haven and the alluring trap.
Is it true, then, that though the soul may be cured, destiny may not? Incurable destiny – how terrible a thing!
The question was this: how was he, Jean Valjean, to ensure the continued happiness of Cosette and Marius? It was he who had brought about that happiness, he who had forged it, and he could contemplate it with something of the satisfaction of the armourer who has worked well. They had each other, Marius and Cosette, and they were wealthy into the bargain; and all this was his doing.
But what was he now to do with it, this happiness that he had brought about? Should he take advantage of it, treat it as though it belonged to him? Cosette was another man’s, but he still retained as much of her as he could ever possess. Could he not continue to be almost her father, respected as he had always been, able when he chose to enter her house? And could he, without saying a word, bring his past into that future, seat himself by that fireside as though it were his right? Could he greet them smiling with his tragic hands, and cross that innocent threshold casting behind him the infamous shadow of the law? Could he still keep silent?
One must have grown accustomed to the harsher face of destiny to be able to confront facts in all their hideous nakedness. Good and evil are behind the vigorous question-mark: ‘Well,’ demands the sphinx, ‘what are you going to do?’ Valjean, from long habit, looked it steadily in the eye. Pitilessly he considered the facts in all their aspects. Cosette, that exquisite creature, was his lifeline. Was he to cling to it or let it go? If he clung to it, then he was safe; he could go on living. But if he let it go … Then, the abyss.<
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Thus did he wrestle with himself, torn between conviction and desire. It was a relief to him that he had been able to weep. This may have calmed him, although the beginning had been fearful, a tempest fiercer than the one that had once driven him to Arras. But now he was brought to a stop. It is terrible, in the battle à outrance between self-will and duty, when we seek in vain for a way out, to find ourselves caught with our back to the wall. But there is no end to conscience, for this is God himself. It is a bottomless well into which one may fling the labour of a lifetime, liberty and country, peace of mind and happiness; but in the end one has to fling in one’s heart. In the shades of the ancient hells there are pits like that.
Is it not permissible in the end to refuse? Cannot an endless bond be too much for human strength? Who would blame Sisyphus or Jean Valjean if at the last they said, ‘That is enough.’ The movement of matter is delimited by the forces to which it is subjected; may there not be a similar limitation on the movement of the soul? If perpetual motion is impossible, must we then insist upon perpetual devotion? The first step is nothing; it is the last which is difficult. Compared with Cosette’s marriage and all that would ensue from it, what was the Champmathieu affair? What was the return to prison compared with entry into limbo? The first step downward may be obscured, but the second is pitch black. Why not this time look the other way?
Martyrdom is a sublimation, but a sublimation that corrodes. It is a torment that sanctifies. One may endure it at first, the pincers, the red-hot iron, but must not the tortured flesh give way in the end?
In the calm of exhaustion, Jean Valjean considered the two alternatives, the balance between light and dark. Was he to inflict his prison record on those two happy children, or accept the loss of his own soul? Was Cosette to be sacrificed, or himself?
His meditation lasted through the night. He remained until daylight in the same posture, seated and bent double on the bed, with fists clenched and arms out-flung like those of a man cut down from the cross. He was motionless as a corpse, while the thoughts flew and tumbled in his mind. Until suddenly he shuddered convulsively and pressed Cosette’s garments to his lips. Only then did one see that he was alive.
One. Who was that one, when there was no one else there?
The One who is present in the shadows.
Book Seven
The Bitter Cup
I
The seventh circle and the eighth heaven
THE DAY after a wedding is one of solitude. We respect the privacy of the newly-weds and perhaps their late arising. The hubbub of visits and congratulations does not begin until later. It was a little after midday when Basque, busily ‘doing the antechamber’, heard a tap on the door. There had been no ring, which showed discretion on that particular day. Basque opened and found Monsieur Fauchelevent. He showed him into the salon, which was still in a state of disorder.
‘We’re up late this morning, Monsieur,’ said Basque.
‘Is your master up?’ asked Jean Valjean.
‘How’s monsieur’s arm?’ asked Basque.
‘It’s better. Is your master up?’
‘Which master, the old or the new?’
‘Monsieur Pontmercy.’
‘Ah, Monsieur le Baron,’ said Basque.
Titles are important to servants, upon whom something of their lustre is shed. Marius, as we know, was a militant republican and had fought to prove it; but despite himself he was a baron. The matter had caused something of a revolution in the family. It was now Monsieur Gillenormand who insisted upon the title and Marius who was disposed to ignore it; but since his father had written, ‘My son will bear my title,’ he obeyed. And then Cosette, in whom the woman was beginning to show, was delighted to be Madame la Baronne.
‘I’ll go and see,’ said Basque. ‘I’ll tell him you’re here.’
‘No. Don’t tell him that it’s me. Tell him it is someone who wishes to speak to him in private, but don’t mention my name.’
‘Ah,’ said Basque.
‘I want to surprise him.’
‘Ah,’ said Basque again, as though this second ‘ah’ explained the first.
He went out, leaving Valjean alone.
The salon, as we have said, was in great disorder, almost as though anyone who happened to be listening could still have heard the echoes of last night’s party. Flowers had fallen on the parquet floor, and burnt-out candles had draped the crystal lustre with stalactites of wax. Nothing was in its proper place. Three or four armchairs, grouped together in a corner, seemed to be still carrying on a conversation. But it was a gay disorder, for this had been a happy party. The sun had replaced the candles and shone bravely into the room.
Some minutes elapsed during which Jean Valjean remained motionless where Basque had left him. He was very pale. His eyes were so sunken with sleeplessness that they had almost disappeared, and his black coat had the tired creases of a garment that has been worn all night. He stood looking down at the glow of light cast by the sunshine on the floor.
The sound of the door opening caused him to look up. Marius entered, head up and face aglow with triumphant happiness. He, too, had not slept all night.
‘Why, it’s you, father!’ he exclaimed. ‘That silly fellow Basque chose to make a mystery of it. But you’re early. It’s only half past twelve and Cosette is still asleep.’
His use of the word ‘father’ was most felicitous. As we know, there had always been a certain constraint between them, ice to be broken or melted. Such was Marius’s state of rapture that this no longer existed: ‘Monsieur Fauchelevent’ was father to him as he was to Cosette. He went on, the words pouring out of him:
‘I’m so delighted to see you. We missed you so much last night. Is your hand better?’ He did not wait for a reply. ‘We’ve talked so much about you, Cosette and I. She’s so fond of you. You haven’t forgotten, I hope, that you have a room here. We don’t want any more of the Rue de l’Homme-Armé. That ugly, squalid little street – how in the world did you ever come to live in it? But now you’re coming here, and today, what’s more, or you’ll be in trouble with Cosette. I warn you, she means to have you here if she has to pull you by the nose! You’ve seen your room, it’s very near our own, and it looks out over the garden. It’s all in perfect order. Cosette put a big old velvet-upholstered armchair by the bedside, to open its arms to you, as she said. Every spring a nightingale nests in the acacias, you’ll be hearing it in a couple of months. You’ll have its nest on one side of you and ours on the other. It will sing in the night-time and Cosette will chatter in the daytime. She’ll arrange your books for you and all your belongings. I understand there’s a little valise that you particularly value, and I’ve thought of a special place for it. My grandfather has taken a great liking to you, and if you play whist that will make it perfect. And of course you’ll take Cosette for walks when I’m working, just as you used to do, in the Luxembourg. We’re absolutely determined to be very happy, and you’re part of it, father, do you understand? Talking of which, you’ll be lunching with us today?’
‘Monsieur,’ said Jean Valjean, ‘I have something to tell you. I am an ex-convict.’
There are sounds that the mind cannot absorb although they are registered by the ear. Those words ‘I am an ex-convict’, emerging from the lips of Monsieur Fauchelevent and entering the ear of Marius, went beyond the limit. He knew that something had been said, but he could not grasp what it was. He stood open-mouthed.
Les Miserables (Movie Tie-in) (9781101612774) Page 136
