Marius made sure that the door was firmly closed.
‘Poor Cosette!’ he murmured. ‘When she hears …’
At these words Jean Valjean trembled in every limb and gazed frantically at Marius.
‘Of course that’s true. You’ll tell Cosette. I hadn’t thought of that. One has the strength to bear some things but not others. Monsieur, I beseech you to promise me not to tell her. Surely if you yourself know, that is enough. I might have told her of my own accord; I might have told everyone. But Cosette – she doesn’t even know what it means. A felon, a man condemned for life to forced labour, a man who has been in the galleys. She would be appalled I Once she saw a convict chain-gang pass … Oh, my God!’
He sank into an armchair and buried his face in his hands. He made no sound, but the heaving of his shoulders showed that he was weeping. He was overtaken by a sort of convulsion and lay back in the chair as though he were unable to breathe, with his arms hanging limply at his sides. Marius saw his tear-stained face and heard his murmur, ‘I wish I were dead.’
‘Don’t worry,’ said Marius. ‘I’ll keep your secret.’
He went on in a voice that was perhaps less sympathetic than it should have been, conscious as he was of the new situation that had arisen and the huge gulf that lay between them:
‘I am bound to speak of the trust money that you have so honourably and faithfully handed over. It was an act of probity for which you deserve to be rewarded. You yourself shall name the sum, and you need not hesitate to make it a large one.’
‘I thank you, monsieur,’ Valjean said gently. He sat thinking, mechanically rubbing thumb and forefinger together. ‘Nearly everything is now settled, except for one last thing.’
‘What is that?’
Making a supreme effort, Valjean said in a scarcely audible voice:
‘You are the master. Do you think, now you know everything, that I should not see Cosette again?’
‘I think it would be better,’ Marius said coldly.
‘Then I will not do so,’ said Valjean, and getting up, he went to the door.
But with the door half opened he stood for a moment motionless, then closed it again and came back to Marius. He was now no longer pale but deathly white, and instead of tears in his eyes there was a sort of tragic flame. His voice had become strangely calm.
‘Monsieur,’ he said, ‘if you will permit me I would like to come and see her. Believe me, I greatly desire to do so. If I had not wanted to go on seeing Cosette I should not have told you what I have; I should simply have gone away. But because I so wanted to go on seeing her, I was bound in honour to tell you everything. You understand, I am sure. She has been my constant companion for nine years. We lived first in that tenement, then at the convent and then not far from the Luxembourg, where you saw her for the first time. Later we moved to the Invalides quarter, to a house in the Rue Plumet with a garden and a wrought-iron gate. My own dwelling was in the backyard, where I could hear her play the piano. That has been my life. We were never separated during those nine years and a few months. She was like my own child. To go away and never see or speak to her again – to have nothing left to live for – that would be very hard. I wouldn’t come often or stay for long. We could meet in that little room on the ground floor. I would be quite willing to come by the servants’ entrance, but that would give rise to talk, and so it might be better for me to come by the ordinary way. Monsieur, if I cannot see her from time to time there will be nothing left for me in life, but it will be for you to decide how often. And there is another thing. We have to be careful. If I never came at all, that too would give rise to talk. It occurs to me that I might come in the evening, when it’s beginning to grow dark.’
‘You shall come every evening,’ said Marius.
‘Monsieur, you are very kind,’ said Jean Valjean.
They shook hands. Happiness escorted despair to the door, and so they parted.
II
Questions that may be contained in a revelation
Marius was distracted. The lack of contact he had always felt for the man he had supposed to be Cosette’s father was now explained … He had felt instinctively that Monsieur Fauchelevent was concealing something, and now he knew what it was. To have learned this secret in the midst of his happiness was like discovering a scorpion in a dove’s nest. Was his happiness and that of Cosette henceforth to depend upon that man, was he to be accepted as a part of their marriage bond? Was there nothing more to be done? Was he linked to an ex-convict? It was a thought to make even angels shudder.
But then, as always happens, he began to wonder whether he himself were not also at fault. Had he been lacking in perspicacity and prudence, had he deliberately closed his eyes? Perhaps there was some truth in this; perhaps he had plunged impulsively into the love-affair with Cosette without paying sufficient attention to the circumstances of her life. He could even admit (and it is by admissions of this kind that life teaches us self-knowledge) that there was a visionary side of his nature, a kind of imaginative haziness that pervaded his whole being. We have more than once drawn attention to this. He remembered how during those six or seven rapturous weeks in the Rue Plumet he had not once referred to the drama in the Gorbeau tenement in which the victim had behaved so strangely. Why had he never asked her about it, or mentioned the Thénardiers, particularly on the day when he had met Éponine? He could not account for this, but he took note of it. Looking back coolly, he recalled the ecstasy of their falling in love, the absolute fusion of their souls, and the vague instinct which had impelled him to put that episode – in which, after all, he had played no part – out of his mind. In any event those few weeks had sped by like a dream; there had been no time to do anything except love one another. And what would have happened if he had told Cosette that story, naming Thénardier? If he had learned the truth about Jean Valjean? Would it have changed his feeling for Cosette, caused him to love her less? Assuredly not. So he had nothing to regret, no reason to reproach himself, and all was well. He had blindly followed the path he would have followed with eyes wide open. Love, in blinding him, had led to him to Paradise.
But that paradise now had its infernal aspect. The slight coolness that had existed between himself and the man whom he now knew as Jean Valjean contained an element of horror; pity as well, it must be said, and also amazement. That thief, that recidivist convict, had handed over the sum of six hundred thousand francs, all of which he might have kept for himself. Also, although nothing had obliged him to do so, he had revealed his secret, accepting both the humiliation and the risk. A false name is a safeguard to a condemned man. He might have lived out his life with a respectable family, but he had not yielded to that temptation, simply, it seemed, from motives of conscience. Whatever else Jean Valjean might be, he was assuredly a man of principle. It seemed that at some time or other a mysterious transformation must have taken place in him, since when his life had been changed. Such rectitude was not to be found in base motives; it was an indication of greatness of soul. And his sincerity could not be doubted; the very suffering his avowal had caused him, the painful meticulousness with which he had omitted no detail, was sufficient evidence. And here a contradiction occurred to Marius. About Monsieur Fauchelevent there had always been a hint of defiance; but in Jean Valjean it was trustfulness.
In his consideration of Jean Valjean, weighing one thing with another, Marius sought to achieve a balance. But it was like peering through a tempest. The more he strove to see him as a whole, as it were to penetrate to his heart, the more he lost him only to find again a figure in a mist. On the one hand there was his honourable handing over of the trust money, on the other hand the extraordinary affair in the Jondrette attic. Why had he slipped away when the police arrived, instead of staying to testify against his persecutors? Here at least the answer was not far to seek. He was a man wanted by the police. But then again, how had he come to be on the barricade and what was he doing there? As Marius now recalled, he had taken
no active part in the fighting. At this question a ghost arose to supply an answer, Javert. Marius perfectly remembered Javert’s bound form being taken outside by Valjean, and soon afterwards the sound of a pistol shot. So presumably there had been a personal vendetta between the two men and Valjean had gone there from motives of revenge. The fact that he had been late in arriving suggested that he had only just discovered that Javert had been taken prisoner. The Corsican vendetta had penetrated to certain sectors of the underworld where it was accepted as law; and there were men, more or less reformed, who, although they would be scrupulous in the matter of theft, would not be deterred from an act of vengeance. There seemed to be no doubt that Valjean had killed Javert.
A final question remained to which there was no reply, one that tortured Marius’s mind. How had this long association with Cosette been formed? What strange fatality had brought them together? Were there links forged in Heaven with which it pleased God to join angels and demons, and could crime and innocence be united in some mysterious prison of the underworld? How was it to be explained? By what extraordinary conjunction of circumstances had it come about, the lamb attached to the wolf – or, still more inexplicable, the wolf attached to the lamb? For the wolf truly loved the lamb and for nine years had been the centre of the lamb’s existence. Cosette’s childhood and adolescence, her growth to womanhood, had taken place in the shadow of that monstrous devotion. And this gave rise to endless riddles. Considering Jean Valjean, Marius felt his mind reel. What was one to make of that extraordinary man?
The two symbolic figures in the book of Genesis are eternal. Until some deeper comprehension throws a new light upon our understanding of these things, human society will always be divided into two types of men, Abel and Cain, the higher and the lower. But what was one to make of this gentle-hearted Cain, the ruffian who had watched over Cosette, cherished her, protected her, seen to her education? What was it but a figure of darkness whose sole care had been to safeguard the rising of a star. And that was Jean Valjean’s secret. It was also the secret of God.
At this twofold secret Marius recoiled, although the one half in some sort reassured him as to the other. God forges his own instruments, using what tools he needs. He is not responsible to Man. Jean Valjean had formed Cosette; in some degree he had shaped her soul. This was undeniable. Very well then, the craftsman might be deplorable but the result was admirable. God worked his miracle in his own way. He had created the exquisite Cosette and for the purpose had employed Jean Valjean, a strange collaboration. Are we to reproach him for this? Is it the first time dung has helped the spring to give birth to a rose?
Marius himself supplied the answers to these questions and he told himself that the answers were good. They were all points which he had not ventured to put to Valjean. But what further explanation did he need? Cosette was his; he adored her and she was utterly unsullied. What else mattered? The personal affairs of Jean Valjean were no concern of his. He concentrated on the words the unhappy man had spoken: ‘I am not related to Cosette. Ten years ago I did not know that she existed.’ As he said, he had been no more than an episode in her life, and now his part in it was over. It was for Marius henceforth to take care of her. Cosette had found her lover and husband, and, growing wings, had soared upward into Heaven, leaving the ugly, earthbound Jean Valjean behind.
Wherever Marius’s thoughts led him, he always returned with a kind of horror to Valjean. Whatever the extenuating circumstances might be, there could be no escaping the fact that the man was a felon, a creature, that is to say, rejected by society, below the lowest rung of the social ladder, the lowest and the least of men. The law deprived men of his kind of all rights; and Marius, democrat though he was, was in this matter implacably on the side of the law. He was not, let us say, wholly progressive, able to distinguish between what has been written by Man and what was written by God, between what is law and what is right. He had not fully weighed these matters and was not repelled by the idea of revenge. He thought it natural that certain infractions of the law should be subject to lifelong punishment, and he accepted total ostracism as a normal social procedure. Until then, that was as far as he had gone, although it was certain that he would go further, being by nature well-disposed and instinctively progressive. But in the present state of his thinking he was bound to find Jean Valjean repulsive. A felon! The very word was like the voice of judgement. His reaction was to turn away his head. ‘Get thee behind me …’
As to the questions which Marius had not put to Valjean, although they had all occurred to him – the Jondrette attic, the barricade, Javert – who can say where they might have led? The truth is that he had been afraid to ask them. It can happen to any of us, in a critical moment, that we may ask a question and then try not to hear the reply; and this is particularly so when love enters into the matter. It is not always wise to probe too deeply, most especially when we ourselves are affected. Who could say what the consequences to Cosette would have been of the answers to those questions, what infernal light would have been shed on her innocent life? The purest natures may be tainted by such revelations. So, rightly or wrongly, Marius had been afraid. He knew too much already. Desolated, he clasped Cosette in his arms and closed his eyes to Jean Valjean.
But, this being his attitude, it was agonizing to him that Cosette would still be in contact with the man. And thus he came near to reproaching himself for not having pressed his questions, which might have led him to a more drastic decision. He had been too magnanimous – in a word, too weak. He began to think that he had been wrong. He should have turned Valjean out of the house. He blamed himself for the wave of sentiment that had momentarily carried him away against his better judgement. He was displeased with himself.
And now what was he to do? The thought of Valjean’s visits was repugnant; but here he checked himself, not wishing to probe too deeply into his own thoughts. He had made a promise, or been led into making a promise, and a promise must be kept, even, and indeed especially, a promise to a felon. In any event, his first duty was to Cosette.
This confusion of thought caused him to be greatly troubled in spirit, which was not easily hidden from Cosette. But love has its own cunning, and he managed. He asked her apparently casual questions, to which with innocent candour she unhesitatingly replied. Talking to her about her childhood and upbringing, he became more and more convinced that where she was concerned this one-time convict had been everything that was good, fatherly, and honourable. His first impulse had been the true one. The rank weed had cherished and protected the lily.
Book Eight
The Fading Light
I
The downstairs room
AT NIGHTFALL on the following day Jean Valjean knocked at the door of Monsieur Gillenormand’s house and was received by Basque, who had evidently been told to expect him.
‘Monsieur le Baron requested me to ask Monsieur whether he wished to go upstairs or would rather stay down here,’ said Basque.
‘I’ll stay down here,’ said Valjean.
Basque accordingly, treating the visitor with every sign of respect, showed him into the downstairs room. ‘I will inform Madame,’ he said.
The room on the ground floor was small and damp, with a low, arched ceiling, and was occasionally used as a cellar. It looked on to the street and was dimly lighted by a single barred window. Nor was it a room much visited by cleaners. Dust lay undisturbed and the spiders were untroubled. A large, blackened web, hung with the bodies of dead flies, covered one of the window-panes. A pile of empty bottles occupied one corner. Plaster was peeling off the yellow-painted wall. A fire had been lighted in the wooden fireplace at the far end, and two armchairs, placed on either side of a worn bedside rug which served as a carpet, were an indication that Valjean’s preference for staying downstairs had been foreseen. The fire and the dingy window supplied the only light.
Jean Valjean was tired, having neither eaten nor slept for several days. He sank into one of the armchairs. Bas
que returned with a lighted candle and again withdrew. Valjean, seated with his chin sunk on his chest, gave no sign of having seen him. But suddenly he started to his feet, knowing that Cosette was standing behind him. He had not seen her enter, but he felt her presence. He turned and looked at her. She was enchantingly pretty. But it was not her beauty that he contemplated with that deeply penetrating gaze, but her soul.
‘Well, of all things!’ Cosette exclaimed. ‘Father, I knew that you were a strange person, but I never expected this! Marius tells me that it is at your request that we’re meeting down here.’
‘That’s quite true.’
‘As I expected. Well, I warn you, there’s going to be a scene. But let us start properly. Give me a kiss.’ And she offered her cheek.
Valjean stayed motionless.
‘So you don’t move. The posture of a guilty man! Well, never mind, you’re forgiven. The Lord told us to turn the other cheek, and here it is.’
She offered him her other cheek, but still he did not move. His feet seemed nailed to the floor.
‘But this is serious,’ said Cosette. ‘What have I done to you? I’m at my wits’ end. You owe it to me to make amends. You must dine with us.’
‘I’ve dined already.’
‘I don’t believe you. I shall ask Monsieur Gillenormand to give you a good scolding. Grandfathers are the right people to keep fathers in order. So you’re to come up to the salon with me this instant.’
‘That’s impossible.’
Cosette felt that she was losing ground. She stopped giving orders and resorted to questions.
‘But why? And you have chosen the ugliest room in the house for us to meet in. This place is horrible.’
‘Tu sais …’ But then, having addressed her with the familiar tu, Valjean corrected himself. ‘Vous savez madame, that I’m peculiar. I have my whims.’
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