However this may be, this last bad action had a decisive effect upon him: it suddenly darted through the chaos which filled his mind and dissipated it, placed on one side the dark mists, on the other the light, and acted on his soul, in its present condition, as certain chemical re-agents act upon a troubled mixture, by precipitating one element and clarifying another. At first, before even examining himself or reflecting, he wildly strove to find the boy again and return him his money; then, when he perceived that this was useless and impossible, he stopped in despair. At the moment when he exclaimed, "I am a scoundrel!" he had seen himself as he really was, and was already so separated from himself that he fancied himself merely a phantom, and that he had there before him, in flesh and blood, his blouse fastened round his hips, his knapsack full of stolen objects on his back, with his resolute and gloomy face and his mind full of hideous schemes, the frightful galley-slave, Jean Valjean.
As we have remarked, excessive misfortune had made him to some extent a visionary, and this therefore was a species of vision. He really saw that Jean Valjean with his sinister face before him, and almost asked himself who this man who so horrified him was. His brain was in that violent and yet frightfully calm stage when the reverie is so deep that it absorbs reality. He contemplated himself, so to speak, face to face, and at the same time he saw through this hallucination a species of light which he at first took for a torch. On looking more attentively at this light which appeared to his conscience, he perceived that it had a human shape and was the Bishop. His conscience examined in turn the two men standing before him, the Bishop and Jean Valjean. By one of those singular effects peculiar to an ecstasy of this nature, the more his reverie was prolonged, the taller and more brilliant the Bishop appeared, while Jean Valjean grew less and faded out of sight. At length he disappeared and the Bishop alone remained, who filled the wretched man's soul with a magnificent radiance.
Jean Valjean wept for a long time, and sobbed with more weakness than a woman, more terror than a child. While he wept the light grew brighter in his brain, – an extraordinary light, at once ravishing and terrible. His past life, his first fault, his long expiation, his external brutalization, his internal hardening, his liberation, accompanied by so many plans of vengeance, what had happened at the Bishop's, the last thing he had done, the robbery of the boy, a crime the more cowardly and monstrous because it took place after the Bishop's forgiveness, – all this recurred to him, but in a light which he had never before seen. He looked at his life, and it appeared to him horrible; at his soul, and it appeared to him frightful. Still a soft light was shed over both, and he fancied that he saw Satan by the light of Paradise.
How many hours did he weep thus? what did he do afterwards? whither did he go? No one ever knew. It was stated, however, that on this very night the mail carrier from Grenoble, who arrived at D – at about three o'clock in the morning, while passing through the street where the Bishop's Palace stood, saw a man kneeling on the pavement in the attitude of prayer in front of Monseigneur Welcome's door.
BOOK III
IN THE YEAR 1817
CHAPTER I
THE YEAR 1817
1817 is the year which Louis XVIII., with a certain royal coolness which was not deficient in pride, entitled the twenty-second of his reign. It is the year in which M. Bruguière de Sorsum was celebrated. All the wig-makers' shops, hoping for powder and the return of the royal bird, were covered with azure and fleurs de lys. It was the candid time when Count Lynch sat every Sunday as churchwarden at St. Germain-des-Près in the coat of a peer of France, with his red ribbon, his long nose, and that majestic profile peculiar to a man who has done a brilliant deed. The brilliant deed done by M. Lynch was having, when Mayor of Bordeaux, surrendered the town rather prematurely on March 12, 1814, to the Duc d'Angoulême; hence his peerage. In 1817 fashion buried little boys of the age of six and seven beneath vast morocco leather caps with earflaps, much resembling Esquimaux fur-bonnets. The French army was dressed in white, like the Austrian; the regiments were called Legions, and bore the names of the departments instead of numbers. Napoleon was at St Helena, and as England refused him green cloth he had his old coats turned. In 1817 Pellegrini sang, and Mlle. Bigottini danced, Potier reigned, and Odry was not as yet. Madame Saqui succeeded Forioso. There were still Prussians in France. M. Delalot was a personage. Legitimacy had just strengthened itself by cutting off the hand and then the head of Pleignier, Carbonneau, and Tolleron. Prince de Talleyrand, Lord High Chamberlain, and the Abbé Louis, Minister Designate of Finance, looked at each other with the laugh of two augurs. Both had celebrated on July 14, 1790, the Mass of the confederation in the Champ de Mars. Talleyrand had read it as bishop, Louis had served it as deacon. In 1817, in the side walks of the same Champ de Mars, could be seen large wooden cylinders, lying in the wet and rotting in the grass, painted blue, with traces of eagles and bees which had lost their gilding. These were the columns which two years previously supported the Emperor's balcony at the Champ de Mai. They were partly blackened by the bivouac fires of the Austrians encamped near Gros Caillou, and two or three of the columns had disappeared in the bivouac fires, and warmed the coarse hands of the Kaiserlichs. The Champ de Mai had this remarkable thing about it, that it was held in the month of June, and on the Champ de Mars. In this year, 1817, two things were popular, – the Voltaire Touquet and the snuff-box à la charte. The latest Parisian sensation was the crime of Dautun, who threw his brother's head into the basin on the Flower Market. People were beginning to grow anxious at the Admiralty that no news arrived about that fatal frigate la Méduse, which was destined to cover Chaumareix with shame and Géricault with glory. Colonel Selves proceeded to Egypt to become Soliman Pacha there. The palace of the Thermes, in the Rue de la Harpe, served as a shop for a cooper. On the platform of the octagonal tower of the Hotel de Cluny, could still be seen the little wooden house, which had served as an observatory for Messier, astronomer to the Admiralty under Louis XVI. The Duchesse de Duras was reading to three or four friends in her boudoir furnished with sky-blue satin X's, her unpublished romance of Ourika. The N's were scratched off the Louvre. The Austerlitz bridge was forsworn, and called the Kings' Gardens' bridge, – a double enigma which at once disguised the Austerlitz bridge and the Jardin des Plantes. Louis XVIII., while annotating Horace with his nail, was troubled by heroes who make themselves emperors and cobblers who make themselves dauphins; he had two objects of anxiety, – Napoleon and Mathurin Bruneau. The French Academy offered as subject for the prize essay the happiness produced by study. M. Billart was officially eloquent; and in his shadow could be seen growing up that future Advocate-General de Broë, promised to the sarcasms of Paul Louis Courier. There was a false Châteaubriand called Marchangy, while waiting till there should be a false Marchangy, called d'Arlincourt. "Claire d'Albe" and "Malek-Adel" were master-pieces; and Madame Cottin was declared the first writer of the age. The Institute erased from its lists the Academician Napoleon Bonaparte. A royal decree constituted Angoulême a naval school, for, as the Duc d'Angoulême was Lord High Admiral, it was evident that the city from which he derived his title possessed de jure all the qualifications of a seaport; if not, the monarchical principle would be encroached on. In the cabinet-council the question was discussed whether the wood-cuts representing tumblers, which seasoned Franconi's bills and caused the street scamps to congregate, should be tolerated. M. Paër, author of l'Agnese, a square-faced man with a carbuncle on his chin, directed the private concerts of the Marchioness de Sassenaye in the Rue de la Ville'd'Evêque. All the young ladies were singing, "L'ermite de Saint Avelle," words by Edmond Géraud. The Yellow Dwarf was transformed into the Mirror. The Café Lemblin stood up for the Emperor against the Café Valois, which supported the Bourbons. The Duc de Berry, whom Louvel was already gazing at from the darkness, had just been married to a princess of Sicily. It was a year since Madame de Staël had died. The Life Guards hissed Mademoiselle Mars. The large papers were all small; their size was limited, but the liberty was great. The Constitutionnel was constitutional, and the Minerva called Châteaubriand, Châteaubriant; this t made the city laugh heartily, at the expense of the great writer. Prostituted journalists insulted in sold journals the proscripts of 1815. David had no longer talent, Arnault wit, Carnot probity. Soult never had won a battle. It is true that Napoleon no longer had genius. Everybody knows that it is rare for letters sent by post to reach an exile, for the police make it a religious duty to intercept them. The fact is not new, for Descartes when banished complained of it. David having displayed some temper in a Belgian paper at not receiving letters written to him, this appeared very amusing to the Royalist journals, which ridiculed the proscribed man. The use of the words regicides or voters, enemies or allies, Napoleon or Buonaparte, separated two men more than an abyss. All persons of common sense were agreed that the era of revolutions was eternally closed by Louis XVIII., surnamed "the immortal author of the Charter." On the platform of the Pont Neuf the word "Redivivus" was carved on the pedestal which was awaiting the statue of Henri IV. M. Piet was excogitating at No. 4 Rue Thérèse his council to consolidate the monarchy. The leaders of the Right said in grave complications, "Bacot must be written to." Messieurs Canuel, O'Mahony, and de Chappedelaine, were sketching under the covert approval of Monsieur what was destined to be at a later date "the conspiracy du Bord de l'eau." The "Black Pin" was plotting on its side. Delaverderie was coming to an understanding with Trogoff. M. Decazes, a rather liberally-minded man, was in the ascendant. Châteaubriand, standing each morning at his No. 27 Rue Saint Dominique, in trousers and slippers, with his gray hair fastened by a handkerchief, with his eyes fixed on a mirror, and a case of dentist's instruments open before him, – was cleaning his teeth, which were splendid, while dictating "the Monarchy according to the Charter" to M. Pilorge, his secretary. Authoritative critics preferred Lafon to Talma. M. de Feletz signed A; M. Hoffman signed Z. Charles Nodier was writing "Thérèse Aubert." Divorce was abolished. The lyceums were called colleges. The collegians, with a gold fleur de lys on their collar, were fighting about the King of Rome. The counter-police of the Château denounced to her Royal Highness Madame, the universally exposed portrait of the Duc d'Orléans, who looked much handsomer in his uniform of Colonel General of Hussars than the Duc de Berry did in his uniform as Colonel General of Dragoons, which was a serious annoyance. The city of Paris was having the dome of the Invalides regilt at its own cost. Serious-minded men asked themselves what M. de Trinquelague would do in such and such a case. M. Clausel de Montais diverged on certain points from M. Clausel de Coussergues; M. de Salaberry was not satisfied. Picard the comedian, who belonged to the Academy of which Molière was not a member, was playing the two Philiberts at the Odéon, on the façade of which could still be distinctly read: THÉÂTRE DE L'IMPÉRATRICE, although the letters had been torn down. People were taking sides for or against Cugnet de Montarlot. Fabvier was factious; Bavoux was revolutionary; Pelicier the publisher brought out an edition of Voltaire with the title "The Works of Voltaire, of the Académie Française." "That catches purchasers," the simple publisher said. It was the general opinion that M. Charles Loyson would be the genius of the age; envy was beginning to snap at him, which is a sign of glory, and the following line was written about him.
"Même quand Loyson vole, on sent qu'il a des pattes."
As Cardinal Fesch refused to resign, M. de Pins, Archbishop of Amasia, was administering the diocese of Lyons. The quarrel about the Dappes valley began between Switzerland and France, through a memorial of Captain Dufour, who has since become a general. Saint Simon, utterly ignored, was building up his sublime dream. There were in the Academy of Sciences a celebrated Fourier whom posterity has forgotten, and in some obscure garret a Fourier whom the future will remember. Lord Byron was beginning to culminate; a note to a poem of Millevoye's announced him to France in these terms, "un certain Lord Baron." David d'Angers was trying to mould marble. The Abbé Caron spoke in terms of praise to a select audience in the Alley of the Feuillantines of an unknown priest called Félicité Robert, who was at a later date Lamennais. A thing that smoked and plashed on the Seine with the noise of a swimming dog, went under the Tuileries windows from the Pont Royal to the Pont Louis XV.; it was a mechanism not worth much, a sort of plaything, a reverie of a dreamy inventor, an Utopia: a steamboat. The Parisians looked at this useless thing with indifference. M. de Vaublanc, reformer of the Institute by coup d'état, and distinguished author of several academicians, after making them, could not succeed in becoming one himself. The Faubourg St Germain and the Pavilion Marson desired to have M. Delvau as Prefect of police on account of his devotion. Dupuytren and Récamier quarrelled in the theatre of the School of Medicine, and were going to fight about the divinity of the Saviour. Cuvier, with one eye on Genesis and the other on nature, was striving to please the bigoted reaction by placing forms in harmony with texts, and letting Moses be flattered by the Mastodons. M. François de Neufchâteau, the praiseworthy cultivator of the memory of Parmentier, was making a thousand efforts to have "pommes de terre" pronounced "parmentière," but did not succeed. The Abbé Grégoire, ex-bishop, ex-conventionalist, and ex-senator, had reached in the royal polemics the state of the "infamous Grégoire," which was denounced as a neologism by M. Royer-Collard. In the third arch of the Pont de Jéna, the new stone could still be distinguished through its whiteness, with which two years previously the mine formed by Blucher to blow up the bridge was stopped up. Justice summoned to her bar a man who, on seeing the Comte d'Artois enter Notre Dame, said aloud: "Sapristi! I regret the days when I saw Napoleon and Talma enter the Bal Sauvage arm in arm," seditious remarks punished with six months' imprisonment.
Traitors displayed themselves unblushingly; some, who had passed over to the enemy on the eve of a battle, did not conceal their reward, but walked immodestly in the sunshine with the cynicism of wealth and dignities; the deserters at Ligny and Quatre Bras, well rewarded for their turpitude, openly displayed their monarchical devotion.
Such are a few recollections of the year 1817, which is now forgotten. History neglects nearly all these details, and cannot do otherwise, as the infinity would crush it. Still these details, wrongly called little, – there are no little facts in humanity or little leaves in vegetation, – are useful, for the face of ages is composed of the physiognomy of years.
In this year 1817 four young Parisians played a capital joke.
CHAPTER II
A DOUBLE QUARTETTE
These Parisians came, one from Toulouse, the second from Limoges, the third from Cahors, the fourth from Montauban, but they were students, and thus Parisians; for studying in Paris is being born in Paris. These young men were insignificant, four every-day specimens, neither good nor bad, wise nor ignorant, geniuses nor idiots, and handsome with that charming Aprilia which is called twenty years. They were four Oscars, for at that period Arthurs did not yet exist. "Burn for him the perfumes of Arabia," the romance said; "Oscar is advancing, I am about to see him." People had just emerged from Ossian: the elegant world was Scandinavian and Caledonian, the English style was not destined to prevail till a later date, and the first of the Arthurs, Wellington, had only just won the battle of Waterloo.
The names of these Oscars were Félix Tholomyès, of Toulouse; Listolier, of Cahors; Fameuil, of Limoges; and Blachevelle, of Montauban. Of course each had a mistress; Blachevelle loved Favourite, so called because she had been to England; Listolier adored Dahlia, who had taken the name of a flower for her nom de guerre; Fameuil idolized Zéphine, an abridgment of Josephine; while Tholomyès had Fantine, called the Blonde, owing to her magnificent suncolored hair. Favourite, Dahlia, Zéphine, and Fantine were four exquisitely pretty girls, still to some extent workwomen. They had not entirely laid down the needle, and though unsettled by their amourettes, they still had in their faces a remnant of the serenity of toil, and in their souls that flower of honesty, which in a woman survives the first fall. One of the four was called the young one, because she was the youngest, and one called the old one, who was only three-and-twenty. To conceal nothing, the three first were more experienced, more reckless, and had flown further into the noise of life than Fantine the Blonde, who was still occupied with her first illusion.
Dahlia, Zéphine, and especially Favourite, could not have said the same. There was already more than one episode in their scarce-begun romance, and the lover who was called Adolphe in the first chapter, became Alphonse in the second, and Gustave in the third. Poverty and coquettishness are two fatal counsellors: one scolds, the other flatters, and the poor girls of the lower classes have them whispering in both ears. Badly-guarded souls listen, and hence come the falls they make, and the stones hurled at them. They are crushed with the splendor of all that is immaculate and inaccessible. Alas! what if the Jungfrau had hunger? Favourite, who had been to England, was admired by Zéphine and Dahlia. She had a home of her own from an early age. Her father was an old brutal and boasting professor of mathematics, unmarried, and still giving lessons in spite of his age. This professor, when a young man, had one day seen a lady's maid's gown caught in a fender; he fell in love with this accident, and Favourite was the result. She met her father from time to time, and he bowed to her. One morning, an old woman with a hypocritical look came into her room and said, "Do you not know me, Miss?" "No." "I am your mother." Then the old woman opened the cupboard, ate and drank, sent for a mattress she had, and installed herself. This mother, who was grumbling and proud, never spoke to Favourite, sat for hours without saying a word, breakfasted, dined, and supped for half a dozen, and spent her evenings in the porter's lodge, where she abused her daughter. What drew Dahlia toward Listolier, towards others perhaps, towards idleness, was having too pretty pink nails. How could she employ such nails in working? A girl who wishes to remain virtuous must not have pity on her hands. As for Zéphine, she had conquered Fameuil by her little saucy and coaxing way of saying "Yes, Sir." The young men were comrades, the girls friends. Such amours are always doubled by such friendships.
A sage and a philosopher are two persons; and what proves it is that, after making all reservations for these little irregular households, Favourite, Zéphine, and Dahlia were philosophic girls, and Fantine a prudent girl. Prudent, it will be said, and Tholomyès? Solomon would reply, that love forms part of wisdom. We confine ourselves to saying that Fantine's love was a first love, a single love, a faithful love. She was the only one of the four who was addressed familiarly by one man alone.
Fantine was one of those beings who spring up from the dregs of the people; issuing from the lowest depths of the social darkness, she had on her forehead the stamp of the anonymous and the unknown. She was born at M. sur M.; of what parents, who could say? She had never known either father or mother. She called herself Fantine, and why Fantine? She was never known by any other name. At the period of her birth, the Directory was still in existence. She had no family name, as she had no family; and no Christian name, as the Church was abolished. She accepted the name given her by the first passer-by, who saw her running barefooted about the streets. She was called little Fantine, and no one knew any more. This human creature came into the world in that way. At the age of ten, Fantine left the town, and went into service with farmers in the neighborhood. At the age of fifteen she went to Paris, "to seek her fortune." Fantine was pretty and remained pure as long as she could. She was a charming blonde, with handsome teeth; she had gold and pearls for her dower, but the gold was on her head, and the pearls in her mouth.
She worked for a livelihood; and then she loved, still for the sake of living, for the heart is hungry too. She loved Tholomyès; it was a pastime for him, but a passion with her. The streets of the Quartier Latin, which are thronged with students and grisettes, saw the beginning of this dream. Fantine, in the labyrinth of the Pantheon Hill, where so many adventures are fastened and unfastened, long shunned Tholomyès, but in such a way as to meet him constantly. There is a manner of avoiding which resembles seeking, – in a word, the eclogue was played.
Blachevelle, Listolier, and Fameuil formed a sort of group, of which Tholomyès was the head, for it was he who had the wit. Tholomyès was the antique old student; he was rich, for he had an income of 4000 francs a year, a splendid scandal on the Montagne St. Geneviève. Tholomyès was a man of the world, thirty years of age, and in a bad state of preservation. He was wrinkled and had lost teeth, and he had an incipient baldness, of which he himself said without sorrow: "The skull at thirty, the knee at forty." He had but a poor digestion, and one of his eyes was permanently watery. But in proportion as his youth was extinguished, his gayety became brighter; he substituted jests for his teeth, joy for his hair, irony for his health, and his weeping eye laughed incessantly. He was battered, but still flowering. His youth had beaten an orderly retreat, and only the fire was visible. He had had a piece refused at the Vaudeville Theatre, and wrote occasional verses now and then. In addition, he doubted everything in a superior way, which is a great strength in the eyes of the weak. Hence, being ironical and bald, he was the leader. We wonder whether irony, is derived from the English word "iron"? One day Tholomyès took the other three aside, made an oracular gesture, and said, —
"It is nearly a year that Fantine, Dahlia, Zéphine, and Favorite have been asking us to give them a surprise, and we promised solemnly to do so. They are always talking about it, especially to me. In the same way as the old women of Naples cry to Saint Januarius, "Yellow face, perform your miracle!" our beauties incessantly say to me, "Tholomyès, when will you be delivered of your surprise?" At the same time our parents are writing to us, so let us kill two birds with one stone. The moment appears to me to have arrived, so let us talk it over."
Upon this, Tholomyès lowered his voice, and mysteriously uttered something so amusing that a mighty and enthusiastic laugh burst from four mouths simultaneously, and Blacheville exclaimed "That is an idea!" An estaminet full of smoke presenting itself, they went in, and the remainder of their conference was lost in the tobacco clouds. The result of the gloom was a brilliant pleasure excursion, that took place on the following Sunday, to which the four young men invited the girls.