Les Miserables by Victor Hugo, trans. Isabel F. Hapgood

Part 18 out of 36

a glance either to the right or to the left, with his hand thrust
into his coat like a statesman. At the moment when he passed,--
under the cannon of the place,--he felt his heart beat wildly.
As on the preceding day, she wore her damask gown and her crape bonnet.
He heard an ineffable voice, which must have been "her voice."
She was talking tranquilly. She was very pretty. He felt it,
although he made no attempt to see her. "She could not, however,"
he thought, "help feeling esteem and consideration for me, if she
only knew that I am the veritable author of the dissertation on
Marcos Obregon de la Ronde, which M. Francois de Neufchateau put,
as though it were his own, at the head of his edition of Gil Blas."
He went beyond the bench as far as the extremity of the walk,
which was very near, then turned on his heel and passed once
more in front of the lovely girl. This time, he was very pale.
Moreover, all his emotions were disagreeable. As he went further
from the bench and the young girl, and while his back was turned
to her, he fancied that she was gazing after him, and that made
him stumble.

He did not attempt to approach the bench again; he halted near
the middle of the walk, and there, a thing which he never did,
he sat down, and reflecting in the most profoundly indistinct depths
of his spirit, that after all, it was hard that persons whose white
bonnet and black gown he admired should be absolutely insensible
to his splendid trousers and his new coat.

At the expiration of a quarter of an hour, he rose, as though he
were on the point of again beginning his march towards that bench
which was surrounded by an aureole. But he remained standing there,
motionless. For the first time in fifteen months, he said to himself
that that gentleman who sat there every day with his daughter, had,
on his side, noticed him, and probably considered his assiduity singular.

For the first time, also, he was conscious of some irreverence
in designating that stranger, even in his secret thoughts,
by the sobriquet of M. le Blanc.

He stood thus for several minutes, with drooping head, tracing figures
in the sand, with the cane which he held in his hand.

Then he turned abruptly in the direction opposite to the bench,
to M. Leblanc and his daughter, and went home.

That day he forgot to dine. At eight o'clock in the evening he
perceived this fact, and as it was too late to go down to the Rue
Saint-Jacques, he said: "Never mind!" and ate a bit of bread.

He did not go to bed until he had brushed his coat and folded it
up with great care.

CHAPTER V

DIVRS CLAPS OF THUNDER FALL ON MA'AM BOUGON

On the following day, Ma'am Bougon, as Courfeyrac styled the old
portress-principal-tenant, housekeeper of the Gorbeau hovel,
Ma'am Bougon, whose name was, in reality, Madame Burgon, as we have
found out, but this iconoclast, Courfeyrac, respected nothing,--
Ma'am Bougon observed, with stupefaction, that M. Marius was going
out again in his new coat.

He went to the Luxembourg again, but he did not proceed further
than his bench midway of the alley. He seated himself there, as on
the preceding day, surveying from a distance, and clearly making out,
the white bonnet, the black dress, and above all, that blue light.
He did not stir from it, and only went home when the gates of the
Luxembourg closed. He did not see M. Leblanc and his daughter retire.
He concluded that they had quitted the garden by the gate on the Rue
de l'Ouest. Later on, several weeks afterwards, when he came to think
it over, he could never recall where he had dined that evening.

On the following day, which was the third, Ma'am Bougon
was thunderstruck. Marius went out in his new coat.
"Three days in succession!" she exclaimed.

She tried to follow him, but Marius walked briskly, and with immense
strides; it was a hippopotamus undertaking the pursuit of a chamois.
She lost sight of him in two minutes, and returned breathless,
three-quarters choked with asthma, and furious. "If there is
any sense," she growled, "in putting on one's best clothes every day,
and making people run like this!"

Marius betook himself to the Luxembourg.

The young girl was there with M. Leblanc. Marius approached
as near as he could, pretending to be busy reading a book, but he
halted afar off, then returned and seated himself on his bench,
where he spent four hours in watching the house-sparrows who were
skipping about the walk, and who produced on him the impression
that they were making sport of him.

A fortnight passed thus. Marius went to the Luxembourg no longer
for the sake of strolling there, but to seat himself always in the
same spot, and that without knowing why. Once arrived there, he did
not stir. He put on his new coat every morning, for the purpose
of not showing himself, and he began all over again on the morrow.

She was decidedly a marvellous beauty. The only remark approaching
a criticism, that could be made, was, that the contradiction between
her gaze, which was melancholy, and her smile, which was merry,
gave a rather wild effect to her face, which sometimes caused this
sweet countenance to become strange without ceasing to be charming.

CHAPTER VI

TAKEN PRISONER

On one of the last days of the second week, Marius was seated on
his bench, as usual, holding in his hand an open book, of which he
had not turned a page for the last two hours. All at once he started.
An event was taking place at the other extremity of the walk.
Leblanc and his daughter had just left their seat, and the daughter
had taken her father's arm, and both were advancing slowly, towards the
middle of the alley where Marius was. Marius closed his book,
then opened it again, then forced himself to read; he trembled;
the aureole was coming straight towards him. "Ah! good Heavens!"
thought he, "I shall not have time to strike an attitude."
Still the white-haired man and the girl advanced. It seemed to him
that this lasted for a century, and that it was but a second.
"What are they coming in this direction for?" he asked himself.
"What! She will pass here? Her feet will tread this sand,
this walk, two paces from me?" He was utterly upset, he would have
liked to be very handsome, he would have liked to own the cross.
He heard the soft and measured sound of their approaching footsteps.
He imagined that M. Leblanc was darting angry glances at him.
"Is that gentleman going to address me?" he thought to himself.
He dropped his head; when he raised it again, they were very near him.
The young girl passed, and as she passed, she glanced at him.
She gazed steadily at him, with a pensive sweetness which
thrilled Marius from head to foot. It seemed to him that she
was reproaching him for having allowed so long a time to elapse
without coming as far as her, and that she was saying to him: "I am
coming myself." Marius was dazzled by those eyes fraught with rays
and abysses.

He felt his brain on fire. She had come to him, what joy!
And then, how she had looked at him! She appeared to him more
beautiful than he had ever seen her yet. Beautiful with a beauty
which was wholly feminine and angelic, with a complete beauty which
would have made Petrarch sing and Dante kneel. It seemed to him
that he was floating free in the azure heavens. At the same time,
he was horribly vexed because there was dust on his boots.

He thought he felt sure that she had looked at his boots too.

He followed her with his eyes until she disappeared. Then he
started up and walked about the Luxembourg garden like a madman.
It is possible that, at times, he laughed to himself and talked aloud.
He was so dreamy when he came near the children's nurses, that each
one of them thought him in love with her.

He quitted the Luxembourg, hoping to find her again in the street.

He encountered Courfeyrac under the arcades of the Odeon, and said
to him: "Come and dine with me." They went off to Rousseau's and spent
six francs. Marius ate like an ogre. He gave the waiter six sous.
At dessert, he said to Courfeyrac. "Have you read the paper?
What a fine discourse Audry de Puyraveau delivered!"

He was desperately in love.

After dinner, he said to Courfeyrac: "I will treat you to the play."
They went to the Porte-Sainte-Martin to see Frederick in l'Auberge
des Adrets. Marius was enormously amused.

At the same time, he had a redoubled attack of shyness.
On emerging from the theatre, he refused to look at the garter
of a modiste who was stepping across a gutter, and Courfeyrac,
who said: "I should like to put that woman in my collection,"
almost horrified him.

Courfeyrac invited him to breakfast at the Cafe Voltaire on the
following morning. Marius went thither, and ate even more than on
the preceding evening. He was very thoughtful and very merry.
One would have said that he was taking advantage of every occasion
to laugh uproariously. He tenderly embraced some man or other from
the provinces, who was presented to him. A circle of students
formed round the table, and they spoke of the nonsense paid for
by the State which was uttered from the rostrum in the Sorbonne,
then the conversation fell upon the faults and omissions in Guicherat's
dictionaries and grammars. Marius interrupted the discussion
to exclaim: "But it is very agreeable, all the same to have the cross!"

"That's queer!" whispered Courfeyrac to Jean Prouvaire.

"No," responded Prouvaire, "that's serious."

It was serious; in fact, Marius had reached that first violent
and charming hour with which grand passions begin.

A glance had wrought all this.

When the mine is charged, when the conflagration is ready,
nothing is more simple. A glance is a spark.

It was all over with him. Marius loved a woman. His fate was
entering the unknown.

The glance of women resembles certain combinations of wheels,
which are tranquil in appearance yet formidable. You pass close to
them every day, peaceably and with impunity, and without a suspicion
of anything. A moment arrives when you forget that the thing
is there. You go and come, dream, speak, laugh. All at once you
feel yourself clutched; all is over. The wheels hold you fast,
the glance has ensnared you. It has caught you, no matter where
or how, by some portion of your thought which was fluttering loose,
by some distraction which had attacked you. You are lost. The whole
of you passes into it. A chain of mysterious forces takes possession
of you. You struggle in vain; no more human succor is possible.
You go on falling from gearing to gearing, from agony to agony,
from torture to torture, you, your mind, your fortune, your future,
your soul; and, according to whether you are in the power of a
wicked creature, or of a noble heart, you will not escape from
this terrifying machine otherwise than disfigured with shame,
or transfigured by passion.

CHAPTER VII

ADVENTURES OF THE LETTER U DELIVERED OVER TO CONJECTURES

Isolation, detachment, from everything, pride, independence,
the taste of nature, the absence of daily and material activity,
the life within himself, the secret conflicts of chastity,
a benevolent ecstasy towards all creation, had prepared Marius
for this possession which is called passion. His worship of his
father had gradually become a religion, and, like all religions,
it had retreated to the depths of his soul. Something was required
in the foreground. Love came.

A full month elapsed, during which Marius went every day to
the Luxembourg. When the hour arrived, nothing could hold him
back.--"He is on duty," said Courfeyrac. Marius lived in a state
of delight. It is certain that the young girl did look at him.

He had finally grown bold, and approached the bench. Still, he did
not pass in front of it any more, in obedience to the instinct
of timidity and to the instinct of prudence common to lovers.
He considered it better not to attract "the attention of the father."
He combined his stations behind the trees and the pedestals of
the statues with a profound diplomacy, so that he might be seen
as much as possible by the young girl and as little as possible
by the old gentleman. Sometimes, he remained motionless by the
half-hour together in the shade of a Leonidas or a Spartacus,
holding in his hand a book, above which his eyes, gently raised,
sought the beautiful girl, and she, on her side, turned her charming
profile towards him with a vague smile. While conversing in the most
natural and tranquil manner in the world with the white-haired man,
she bent upon Marius all the reveries of a virginal and passionate eye.
Ancient and time-honored manoeuvre which Eve understood from the
very first day of the world, and which every woman understands
from the very first day of her life! her mouth replied to one,
and her glance replied to another.

It must be supposed, that M. Leblanc finally noticed something,
for often, when Marius arrived, he rose and began to walk about.
He had abandoned their accustomed place and had adopted the bench
by the Gladiator, near the other end of the walk, as though with
the object of seeing whether Marius would pursue them thither.
Marius did not understand, and committed this error. "The father"
began to grow inexact, and no longer brought "his daughter"
every day. Sometimes, he came alone. Then Marius did not stay.
Another blunder.

Marius paid no heed to these symptoms. From the phase of timidity,
he had passed, by a natural and fatal progress, to the phase
of blindness. His love increased. He dreamed of it every night.
And then, an unexpected bliss had happened to him, oil on the fire,
a redoubling of the shadows over his eyes. One evening, at dusk,
he had found, on the bench which "M. Leblanc and his daughter"
had just quitted, a handkerchief, a very simple handkerchief,
without embroidery, but white, and fine, and which seemed to
him to exhale ineffable perfume. He seized it with rapture.
This handkerchief was marked with the letters U. F. Marius knew
nothing about this beautiful child,--neither her family name,
her Christian name nor her abode; these two letters were the first
thing of her that he had gained possession of, adorable initials,
upon which he immediately began to construct his scaffolding.
U was evidently the Christian name. "Ursule!" he thought,
"what a delicious name!" He kissed the handkerchief, drank it in,
placed it on his heart, on his flesh, during the day, and at night,
laid it beneath his lips that he might fall asleep on it.

"I feel that her whole soul lies within it!" he exclaimed.

This handkerchief belonged to the old gentleman, who had simply
let it fall from his pocket.

In the days which followed the finding of this treasure, he only
displayed himself at the Luxembourg in the act of kissing the
handkerchief and laying it on his heart. The beautiful child understood
nothing of all this, and signified it to him by imperceptible signs.

"O modesty!" said Marius.

CHAPTER VIII

THE VETERANS THEMSELVES CAN BE HAPPY

Since we have pronounced the word modesty, and since we conceal nothing,
we ought to say that once, nevertheless, in spite of his ecstasies,
"his Ursule" caused him very serious grief. It was on one of the
days when she persuaded M. Leblanc to leave the bench and stroll
along the walk. A brisk May breeze was blowing, which swayed
the crests of the plaintain-trees. The father and daughter,
arm in arm, had just passed Marius' bench. Marius had risen
to his feet behind them, and was following them with his eyes,
as was fitting in the desperate situation of his soul.

All at once, a gust of wind, more merry than the rest, and probably
charged with performing the affairs of Springtime, swept down from
the nursery, flung itself on the alley, enveloped the young girl
in a delicious shiver, worthy of Virgil's nymphs, and the fawns
of Theocritus, and lifted her dress, the robe more sacred than that
of Isis, almost to the height of her garter. A leg of exquisite
shape appeared. Marius saw it. He was exasperated and furious.

The young girl had hastily thrust down her dress, with a divinely troubled
motion, but he was none the less angry for all that. He was alone
in the alley, it is true. But there might have been some one there.
And what if there had been some one there! Can any one comprehend
such a thing? What she had just done is horrible!--Alas, the poor
child had done nothing; there had been but one culprit, the wind;
but Marius, in whom quivered the Bartholo who exists in Cherubin,
was determined to be vexed, and was jealous of his own shadow.
It is thus, in fact, that the harsh and capricious jealousy of
the flesh awakens in the human heart, and takes possession of it,
even without any right. Moreover, setting aside even that jealousy,
the sight of that charming leg had contained nothing agreeable for him;
the white stocking of the first woman he chanced to meet would have
afforded him more pleasure.

When "his Ursule," after having reached the end of the walk,
retraced her steps with M. Leblanc, and passed in front of the bench
on which Marius had seated himself once more, Marius darted a sullen
and ferocious glance at her. The young girl gave way to that slight
straightening up with a backward movement, accompanied by a raising
of the eyelids, which signifies: "Well, what is the matter?"

This was "their first quarrel."

Marius had hardly made this scene at her with his eyes,
when some one crossed the walk. It was a veteran, very much bent,
extremely wrinkled, and pale, in a uniform of the Louis XV.
pattern, bearing on his breast the little oval plaque of red cloth,
with the crossed swords, the soldier's cross of Saint-Louis,
and adorned, in addition, with a coat-sleeve, which had no arm
within it, with a silver chin and a wooden leg. Marius thought
he perceived that this man had an extremely well satisfied air.
It even struck him that the aged cynic, as he hobbled along
past him, addressed to him a very fraternal and very merry wink,
as though some chance had created an understanding between them,
and as though they had shared some piece of good luck together.
What did that relic of Mars mean by being so contented? What had
passed between that wooden leg and the other? Marius reached a
paroxysm of jealousy.--"Perhaps he was there!" he said to himself;
"perhaps he saw!"--And he felt a desire to exterminate the veteran.

With the aid of time, all points grow dull. Marius' wrath against
"Ursule," just and legitimate as it was, passed off. He finally
pardoned her; but this cost him a great effort; he sulked for three days.

Nevertheless, in spite of all this, and because of all this,
his passion augmented and grew to madness.

CHAPTER IX

ECLIPSE

The reader has just seen how Marius discovered, or thought that
he discovered, that She was named Ursule.

Appetite grows with loving. To know that her name was Ursule
was a great deal; it was very little. In three or four weeks,
Marius had devoured this bliss. He wanted another. He wanted
to know where she lived.

He had committed his first blunder, by falling into the ambush
of the bench by the Gladiator. He had committed a second, by not
remaining at the Luxembourg when M. Leblanc came thither alone.
He now committed a third, and an immense one. He followed "Ursule."

She lived in the Rue de l'Ouest, in the most unfrequented spot,
in a new, three-story house, of modest appearance.

From that moment forth, Marius added to his happiness of seeing
her at the Luxembourg the happiness of following her home.

His hunger was increasing. He knew her first name, at least,
a charming name, a genuine woman's name; he knew where she lived;
he wanted to know who she was.

One evening, after he had followed them to their dwelling,
and had seen them disappear through the carriage gate, he entered
in their train and said boldly to the porter:--

"Is that the gentleman who lives on the first floor, who has just
come in?"

"No," replied the porter. "He is the gentleman on the third floor."

Another step gained. This success emboldened Marius.

"On the front?" he asked.

"Parbleu!" said the porter, "the house is only built on the street."

"And what is that gentleman's business?" began Marius again.

"He is a gentleman of property, sir. A very kind man who does
good to the unfortunate, though not rich himself."

"What is his name?" resumed Marius.

The porter raised his head and said:--

"Are you a police spy, sir?"

Marius went off quite abashed, but delighted. He was getting on.

"Good," thought he, "I know that her name is Ursule, that she is
the daughter of a gentleman who lives on his income, and that she
lives there, on the third floor, in the Rue de l'Ouest."

On the following day, M. Leblanc and his daughter made only a very
brief stay in the Luxembourg; they went away while it was still
broad daylight. Marius followed them to the Rue de l'Ouest, as he
had taken up the habit of doing. On arriving at the carriage
entrance M. Leblanc made his daughter pass in first, then paused,
before crossing the threshold, and stared intently at Marius.

On the next day they did not come to the Luxembourg. Marius waited
for them all day in vain.

At nightfall, he went to the Rue de l'Ouest, and saw a light
in the windows of the third story.

He walked about beneath the windows until the light was extinguished.

The next day, no one at the Luxembourg. Marius waited all day,
then went and did sentinel duty under their windows. This carried
him on to ten o'clock in the evening.

His dinner took care of itself. Fever nourishes the sick man,
and love the lover.

He spent a week in this manner. M. Leblanc no longer appeared
at the Luxembourg.

Marius indulged in melancholy conjectures; he dared not watch
the porte cochere during the day; he contented himself with going
at night to gaze upon the red light of the windows. At times
he saw shadows flit across them, and his heart began to beat.

On the eighth day, when he arrived under the windows, there was
no light in them.

"Hello!" he said, "the lamp is not lighted yet. But it is dark.
Can they have gone out?" He waited until ten o'clock. Until midnight.
Until one in the morning. Not a light appeared in the windows of the
third story, and no one entered the house.

He went away in a very gloomy frame of mind.

On the morrow,--for he only existed from morrow to morrow,
there was, so to speak, no to-day for him,--on the morrow,
he found no one at the Luxembourg; he had expected this. At dusk,
he went to the house.

No light in the windows; the shades were drawn; the third floor
was totally dark.

Marius rapped at the porte cochere, entered, and said to the porter:--

"The gentleman on the third floor?"

"Has moved away," replied the porter.

Marius reeled and said feebly:--

"How long ago?"

"Yesterday."

"Where is he living now?"

"I don't know anything about it."

"So he has not left his new address?"

"No."

And the porter, raising his eyes, recognized Marius.

"Come! So it's you!" said he; "but you are decidedly a spy then?"

BOOK SEVENTH.--PATRON MINETTE

CHAPTER I

MINES AND MINERS

Human societies all have what is called in theatrical parlance,
a third lower floor. The social soil is everywhere undermined,
sometimes for good, sometimes for evil. These works are superposed
one upon the other. There are superior mines and inferior mines.
There is a top and a bottom in this obscure sub-soil, which sometimes
gives way beneath civilization, and which our indifference and
heedlessness trample under foot. The Encyclopedia, in the last century,
was a mine that was almost open to the sky. The shades, those sombre
hatchers of primitive Christianity, only awaited an opportunity to
bring about an explosion under the Caesars and to inundate the human
race with light. For in the sacred shadows there lies latent light.
Volcanoes are full of a shadow that is capable of flashing forth.
Every form begins by being night. The catacombs, in which the first
mass was said, were not alone the cellar of Rome, they were the vaults
of the world.

Beneath the social construction, that complicated marvel of a structure,
there are excavations of all sorts. There is the religious mine,
the philosophical mine, the economic mine, the revolutionary mine.
Such and such a pick-axe with the idea, such a pick with ciphers.
Such another with wrath. People hail and answer each other from one
catacomb to another. Utopias travel about underground, in the pipes.
There they branch out in every direction. They sometimes meet,
and fraternize there. Jean-Jacques lends his pick to Diogenes,
who lends him his lantern. Sometimes they enter into combat there.
Calvin seizes Socinius by the hair. But nothing arrests nor interrupts
the tension of all these energies toward the goal, and the vast,
simultaneous activity, which goes and comes, mounts, descends,
and mounts again in these obscurities, and which immense unknown
swarming slowly transforms the top and the bottom and the inside
and the outside. Society hardly even suspects this digging
which leaves its surface intact and changes its bowels. There are
as many different subterranean stages as there are varying works,
as there are extractions. What emerges from these deep excavations?
The future.

The deeper one goes, the more mysterious are the toilers.
The work is good, up to a degree which the social philosophies
are able to recognize; beyond that degree it is doubtful and mixed;
lower down, it becomes terrible. At a certain depth, the excavations
are no longer penetrable by the spirit of civilization, the limit
breathable by man has been passed; a beginning of monsters is possible.

The descending scale is a strange one; and each one of the rungs of this
ladder corresponds to a stage where philosophy can find foothold,
and where one encounters one of these workmen, sometimes divine,
sometimes misshapen. Below John Huss, there is Luther; below Luther,
there is Descartes; below Descartes, there is Voltaire; below Voltaire,
there is Condorcet; below Condorcet, there is Robespierre;
below Robespierre, there is Marat; below Marat there is Babeuf.
And so it goes on. Lower down, confusedly, at the limit which separates
the indistinct from the invisible, one perceives other gloomy men,
who perhaps do not exist as yet. The men of yesterday are spectres;
those of to-morrow are forms. The eye of the spirit distinguishes
them but obscurely. The embryonic work of the future is one of the
visions of philosophy.

A world in limbo, in the state of foetus, what an unheard-of spectre!

Saint-Simon, Owen, Fourier, are there also, in lateral galleries.

Surely, although a divine and invisible chain unknown to themselves,
binds together all these subterranean pioneers who, almost always,
think themselves isolated, and who are not so, their works vary greatly,
and the light of some contrasts with the blaze of others. The first
are paradisiacal, the last are tragic. Nevertheless, whatever may be
the contrast, all these toilers, from the highest to the most nocturnal,
from the wisest to the most foolish, possess one likeness, and this
is it: disinterestedness. Marat forgets himself like Jesus.
They throw themselves on one side, they omit themselves, they think
not of themselves. They have a glance, and that glance seeks
the absolute. The first has the whole heavens in his eyes; the last,
enigmatical though he may be, has still, beneath his eyelids,
the pale beam of the infinite. Venerate the man, whoever he may be,
who has this sign--the starry eye.

The shadowy eye is the other sign.

With it, evil commences. Reflect and tremble in the presence of any
one who has no glance at all. The social order has its black miners.

There is a point where depth is tantamount to burial, and where
light becomes extinct.

Below all these mines which we have just mentioned, below all
these galleries, below this whole immense, subterranean, venous system
of progress and utopia, much further on in the earth, much lower
than Marat, lower than Babeuf, lower, much lower, and without
any connection with the upper levels, there lies the last mine.
A formidable spot. This is what we have designated as the le
troisieme dessous. It is the grave of shadows. It is the cellar
of the blind. Inferi.

This communicates with the abyss.

CHAPTER II

THE LOWEST DEPTHS

There disinterestedness vanishes. The demon is vaguely outlined;
each one is for himself. The _I_ in the eyes howls, seeks, fumbles,
and gnaws. The social Ugolino is in this gulf.

The wild spectres who roam in this grave, almost beasts,
almost phantoms, are not occupied with universal progress; they are
ignorant both of the idea and of the word; they take no thought
for anything but the satisfaction of their individual desires.
They are almost unconscious, and there exists within them a sort
of terrible obliteration. They have two mothers, both step-mothers,
ignorance and misery. They have a guide, necessity; and for all
forms of satisfaction, appetite. They are brutally voracious,
that is to say, ferocious, not after the fashion of the tyrant,
but after the fashion of the tiger. From suffering these spectres
pass to crime; fatal affiliation, dizzy creation, logic of darkness.
That which crawls in the social third lower level is no longer
complaint stifled by the absolute; it is the protest of matter.
Man there becomes a dragon. To be hungry, to be thirsty--that is
the point of departure; to be Satan--that is the point reached.
From that vault Lacenaire emerges.

We have just seen, in Book Fourth, one of the compartments
of the upper mine, of the great political, revolutionary, and
philosophical excavation. There, as we have just said, all is pure,
noble, dignified, honest. There, assuredly, one might be misled;
but error is worthy of veneration there, so thoroughly does it imply
heroism. The work there effected, taken as a whole has a name: Progress.

The moment has now come when we must take a look at other depths,
hideous depths. There exists beneath society, we insist upon
this point, and there will exist, until that day when ignorance
shall be dissipated, the great cavern of evil.

This cavern is below all, and is the foe of all. It is hatred,
without exception. This cavern knows no philosophers; its dagger has
never cut a pen. Its blackness has no connection with the sublime
blackness of the inkstand. Never have the fingers of night which
contract beneath this stifling ceiling, turned the leaves of a book
nor unfolded a newspaper. Babeuf is a speculator to Cartouche;
Marat is an aristocrat to Schinderhannes. This cavern has for its
object the destruction of everything.

Of everything. Including the upper superior mines, which it execrates.
It not only undermines, in its hideous swarming, the actual social order;
it undermines philosophy, it undermines human thought, it undermines
civilization, it undermines revolution, it undermines progress.
Its name is simply theft, prostitution, murder, assassination.
It is darkness, and it desires chaos. Its vault is formed of ignorance.

All the others, those above it, have but one object--to suppress it.
It is to this point that philosophy and progress tend, with all
their organs simultaneously, by their amelioration of the real,
as well as by their contemplation of the absolute. Destroy the cavern
Ignorance and you destroy the lair Crime.

Let us condense, in a few words, a part of what we have just written.
The only social peril is darkness.

Humanity is identity. All men are made of the same clay.
There is no difference, here below, at least, in predestination.
The same shadow in front, the same flesh in the present, the same
ashes afterwards. But ignorance, mingled with the human paste,
blackens it. This incurable blackness takes possession of the
interior of a man and is there converted into evil.

CHAPTER III

BABET, GUEULEMER, CLAQUESOUS, AND MONTPARNASSE

A quartette of ruffians, Claquesous, Gueulemer, Babet, and Montparnasse
governed the third lower floor of Paris, from 1830 to 1835.

Gueulemer was a Hercules of no defined position. For his lair he had
the sewer of the Arche-Marion. He was six feet high, his pectoral muscles
were of marble, his biceps of brass, his breath was that of a cavern,
his torso that of a colossus, his head that of a bird. One thought
one beheld the Farnese Hercules clad in duck trousers and a cotton
velvet waistcoat. Gueulemer, built after this sculptural fashion,
might have subdued monsters; he had found it more expeditious to
be one. A low brow, large temples, less than forty years of age,
but with crow's-feet, harsh, short hair, cheeks like a brush, a beard
like that of a wild boar; the reader can see the man before him.
His muscles called for work, his stupidity would have none of it.
He was a great, idle force. He was an assassin through coolness.
He was thought to be a creole. He had, probably, somewhat to do
with Marshal Brune, having been a porter at Avignon in 1815.
After this stage, he had turned ruffian.

The diaphaneity of Babet contrasted with the grossness of Gueulemer.
Babet was thin and learned. He was transparent but impenetrable.
Daylight was visible through his bones, but nothing through his eyes.
He declared that he was a chemist. He had been a jack of all trades.
He had played in vaudeville at Saint-Mihiel. He was a man of purpose,
a fine talker, who underlined his smiles and accentuated his gestures.
His occupation consisted in selling, in the open air, plaster busts
and portraits of "the head of the State." In addition to this,
he extracted teeth. He had exhibited phenomena at fairs,
and he had owned a booth with a trumpet and this poster:
"Babet, Dental Artist, Member of the Academies, makes physical
experiments on metals and metalloids, extracts teeth, undertakes
stumps abandoned by his brother practitioners. Price: one tooth,
one franc, fifty centimes; two teeth, two francs; three teeth,
two francs, fifty. Take advantage of this opportunity."
This Take advantage of this opportunity meant: Have as many teeth
extracted as possible. He had been married and had had children.
He did not know what had become of his wife and children. He had
lost them as one loses his handkerchief. Babet read the papers,
a striking exception in the world to which he belonged. One day,
at the period when he had his family with him in his booth on wheels,
he had read in the Messager, that a woman had just given birth to a child,
who was doing well, and had a calf's muzzle, and he exclaimed:
"There's a fortune! my wife has not the wit to present me with a child
like that!"

Later on he had abandoned everything, in order to "undertake Paris."
This was his expression.

Who was Claquesous? He was night. He waited until the sky was daubed
with black, before he showed himself. At nightfall he emerged from
the hole whither he returned before daylight. Where was this hole?
No one knew. He only addressed his accomplices in the most absolute
darkness, and with his back turned to them. Was his name Claquesous?
Certainly not. If a candle was brought, he put on a mask.
He was a ventriloquist. Babet said: "Claquesous is a nocturne
for two voices." Claquesous was vague, terrible, and a roamer.
No one was sure whether he had a name, Claquesous being a sobriquet;
none was sure that he had a voice, as his stomach spoke more
frequently than his voice; no one was sure that he had a face,
as he was never seen without his mask. He disappeared as though he
had vanished into thin air; when he appeared, it was as though he
sprang from the earth.

A lugubrious being was Montparnasse. Montparnasse was a child;
less than twenty years of age, with a handsome face, lips like cherries,
charming black hair, the brilliant light of springtime in his eyes;
he had all vices and aspired to all crimes.

The digestion of evil aroused in him an appetite for worse. It was
the street boy turned pickpocket, and a pickpocket turned garroter.
He was genteel, effeminate, graceful, robust, sluggish, ferocious.
The rim of his hat was curled up on the left side, in order to make
room for a tuft of hair, after the style of 1829. He lived by robbery
with violence. His coat was of the best cut, but threadbare.
Montparnasse was a fashion-plate in misery and given to the commission
of murders. The cause of all this youth's crimes was the desire
to be well-dressed. The first grisette who had said to him:
"You are handsome!" had cast the stain of darkness into his heart,
and had made a Cain of this Abel. Finding that he was handsome,
he desired to be elegant: now, the height of elegance is idleness;
idleness in a poor man means crime. Few prowlers were so dreaded
as Montparnasse. At eighteen, he had already numerous corpses
in his past. More than one passer-by lay with outstretched arms
in the presence of this wretch, with his face in a pool of blood.
Curled, pomaded, with laced waist, the hips of a woman, the bust
of a Prussian officer, the murmur of admiration from the boulevard
wenches surrounding him, his cravat knowingly tied, a bludgeon
in his pocket, a flower in his buttonhole; such was this dandy of
the sepulchre.

CHAPTER IV

COMPOSITION OF THE TROUPE

These four ruffians formed a sort of Proteus, winding like a serpent
among the police, and striving to escape Vidocq's indiscreet
glances "under divers forms, tree, flame, fountain," lending each
other their names and their traps, hiding in their own shadows,
boxes with secret compartments and refuges for each other,
stripping off their personalities, as one removes his false nose
at a masked ball, sometimes simplifying matters to the point of
consisting of but one individual, sometimes multiplying themselves
to such a point that Coco-Latour himself took them for a whole throng.

These four men were not four men; they were a sort of mysterious
robber with four heads, operating on a grand scale on Paris;
they were that monstrous polyp of evil, which inhabits the crypt
of society.

Thanks to their ramifications, and to the network underlying
their relations, Babet, Gueulemer, Claquesous, and Montparnasse
were charged with the general enterprise of the ambushes of the
department of the Seine. The inventors of ideas of that nature,
men with nocturnal imaginations, applied to them to have their
ideas executed. They furnished the canvas to the four rascals,
and the latter undertook the preparation of the scenery. They labored
at the stage setting. They were always in a condition to lend
a force proportioned and suitable to all crimes which demanded
a lift of the shoulder, and which were sufficiently lucrative.
When a crime was in quest of arms, they under-let their accomplices.
They kept a troupe of actors of the shadows at the disposition
of all underground tragedies.

They were in the habit of assembling at nightfall, the hour when they
woke up, on the plains which adjoin the Salpetriere. There they
held their conferences. They had twelve black hours before them;
they regulated their employment accordingly.

Patron-Minette,--such was the name which was bestowed in the
subterranean circulation on the association of these four men.
In the fantastic, ancient, popular parlance, which is vanishing day
by day, Patron-Minette signifies the morning, the same as entre chien
et loup--between dog and wolf--signifies the evening. This appellation,
Patron-Minette, was probably derived from the hour at which their
work ended, the dawn being the vanishing moment for phantoms and for the
separation of ruffians. These four men were known under this title.
When the President of the Assizes visited Lacenaire in his prison,
and questioned him concerning a misdeed which Lacenaire denied,
"Who did it?" demanded the President. Lacenaire made this response,
enigmatical so far as the magistrate was concerned, but clear
to the police: "Perhaps it was Patron-Minette."

A piece can sometimes be divined on the enunciation of the personages;
in the same manner a band can almost be judged from the list
of ruffians composing it. Here are the appellations to which
the principal members of Patron-Minette answered,--for the names
have survived in special memoirs.

Panchaud, alias Printanier, alias Bigrenaille.

Brujon. [There was a Brujon dynasty; we cannot refrain from
interpolating this word.]

Boulatruelle, the road-mender already introduced.

Laveuve.

Finistere.

Homere-Hogu, a negro.

Mardisoir. (Tuesday evening.)

Depeche. (Make haste.)

Fauntleroy, alias Bouquetiere (the Flower Girl).

Glorieux, a discharged convict.

Barrecarrosse (Stop-carriage), called Monsieur Dupont.

L'Esplanade-du-Sud.

Poussagrive.

Carmagnolet.

Kruideniers, called Bizarro.

Mangedentelle. (Lace-eater.)

Les-pieds-en-l'Air. (Feet in the air.)

Demi-Liard, called Deux-Milliards.

Etc., etc.

We pass over some, and not the worst of them. These names have
faces attached. They do not express merely beings, but species.
Each one of these names corresponds to a variety of those misshapen
fungi from the under side of civilization.

Those beings, who were not very lavish with their countenances,
were not among the men whom one sees passing along the streets.
Fatigued by the wild nights which they passed, they went off by day
to sleep, sometimes in the lime-kilns, sometimes in the abandoned
quarries of Montmatre or Montrouge, sometimes in the sewers.
They ran to earth.

What became of these men? They still exist. They have always existed.
Horace speaks of them: Ambubaiarum collegia, pharmacopolae,
mendici, mimae; and so long as society remains what it is,
they will remain what they are. Beneath the obscure roof of
their cavern, they are continually born again from the social ooze.
They return, spectres, but always identical; only, they no longer
bear the same names and they are no longer in the same skins.
The individuals extirpated, the tribe subsists.

They always have the same faculties. From the vagrant to the tramp,
the race is maintained in its purity. They divine purses in pockets,
they scent out watches in fobs. Gold and silver possess an odor
for them. There exist ingenuous bourgeois, of whom it might be said,
that they have a "stealable" air. These men patiently pursue
these bourgeois. They experience the quivers of a spider at the
passage of a stranger or of a man from the country.

These men are terrible, when one encounters them, or catches
a glimpse of them, towards midnight, on a deserted boulevard.
They do not seem to be men but forms composed of living mists;
one would say that they habitually constitute one mass with the shadows,
that they are in no wise distinct from them, that they possess
no other soul than the darkness, and that it is only momentarily
and for the purpose of living for a few minutes a monstrous life,
that they have separated from the night.

What is necessary to cause these spectres to vanish? Light.
Light in floods. Not a single bat can resist the dawn.
Light up society from below.

BOOK EIGHTH.--THE WICKED POOR MAN

CHAPTER I

MARIUS, WHILE SEEKING A GIRL IN A BONNET, ENCOUNTERS A MAN IN A CAP

Summer passed, then the autumn; winter came. Neither M. Leblanc
nor the young girl had again set foot in the Luxembourg garden.
Thenceforth, Marius had but one thought,--to gaze once more on that
sweet and adorable face. He sought constantly, he sought everywhere;
he found nothing. He was no longer Marius, the enthusiastic dreamer,
the firm, resolute, ardent man, the bold defier of fate, the brain
which erected future on future, the young spirit encumbered with plans,
with projects, with pride, with ideas and wishes; he was a lost dog.
He fell into a black melancholy. All was over. Work disgusted him,
walking tired him. Vast nature, formerly so filled with forms,
lights, voices, counsels, perspectives, horizons, teachings, now lay
empty before him. It seemed to him that everything had disappeared.

He thought incessantly, for he could not do otherwise; but he
no longer took pleasure in his thoughts. To everything that they
proposed to him in a whisper, he replied in his darkness:
"What is the use?"

He heaped a hundred reproaches on himself. "Why did I follow her?
I was so happy at the mere sight of her! She looked at me;
was not that immense? She had the air of loving me. Was not
that everything? I wished to have, what? There was nothing
after that. I have been absurd. It is my own fault," etc., etc.
Courfeyrac, to whom he confided nothing,--it was his nature,--
but who made some little guess at everything,--that was his nature,--
had begun by congratulating him on being in love, though he was
amazed at it; then, seeing Marius fall into this melancholy state,
he ended by saying to him: "I see that you have been simply
an animal. Here, come to the Chaumiere."

Once, having confidence in a fine September sun, Marius had allowed
himself to be taken to the ball at Sceaux by Courfeyrac, Bossuet,
and Grantaire, hoping, what a dream! that he might, perhaps,
find her there. Of course he did not see the one he sought.--"But
this is the place, all the same, where all lost women are found,"
grumbled Grantaire in an aside. Marius left his friends at the ball
and returned home on foot, alone, through the night, weary, feverish,
with sad and troubled eyes, stunned by the noise and dust of the
merry wagons filled with singing creatures on their way home from
the feast, which passed close to him, as he, in his discouragement,
breathed in the acrid scent of the walnut-trees, along the road,
in order to refresh his head.

He took to living more and more alone, utterly overwhelmed,
wholly given up to his inward anguish, going and coming in his pain
like the wolf in the trap, seeking the absent one everywhere,
stupefied by love.

On another occasion, he had an encounter which produced on him
a singular effect. He met, in the narrow streets in the vicinity
of the Boulevard des Invalides, a man dressed like a workingman
and wearing a cap with a long visor, which allowed a glimpse
of locks of very white hair. Marius was struck with the beauty
of this white hair, and scrutinized the man, who was walking slowly
and as though absorbed in painful meditation. Strange to say,
he thought that he recognized M. Leblanc. The hair was the same,
also the profile, so far as the cap permitted a view of it, the mien
identical, only more depressed. But why these workingman's clothes?
What was the meaning of this? What signified that disguise?
Marius was greatly astonished. When he recovered himself,
his first impulse was to follow the man; who knows whether he did
not hold at last the clue which he was seeking? In any case,
he must see the man near at hand, and clear up the mystery.
But the idea occurred to him too late, the man was no longer there.
He had turned into some little side street, and Marius could not
find him. This encounter occupied his mind for three days and then
was effaced. "After all," he said to himself, "it was probably only
a resemblance."

CHAPTER II

TREASURE TROVE

Marius had not left the Gorbeau house. He paid no attention
to any one there.

At that epoch, to tell the truth, there were no other inhabitants
in the house, except himself and those Jondrettes whose rent he had
once paid, without, moreover, ever having spoken to either father,
mother, or daughters. The other lodgers had moved away or had died,
or had been turned out in default of payment.

One day during that winter, the sun had shown itself a little
in the afternoon, but it was the 2d of February, that ancient
Candlemas day whose treacherous sun, the precursor of a six weeks'
cold spell, inspired Mathieu Laensberg with these two lines,
which have with justice remained classic:--

Qu'il luise ou qu'il luiserne,
L'ours rentre dans en sa caverne.[26]

[26] Whether the sun shines brightly or dim, the bear returns
to his cave.

Marius had just emerged from his: night was falling. It was the hour
for his dinner; for he had been obliged to take to dining again,
alas! oh, infirmities of ideal passions!

He had just crossed his threshold, where Ma'am Bougon was sweeping
at the moment, as she uttered this memorable monologue:--

"What is there that is cheap now? Everything is dear.

There is nothing in the world that is cheap except trouble;
you can get that for nothing, the trouble of the world!"

Marius slowly ascended the boulevard towards the barrier, in order
to reach the Rue Saint-Jacques. He was walking along with drooping head.

All at once, he felt some one elbow him in the dusk; he wheeled round,
and saw two young girls clad in rags, the one tall and slim, the other
a little shorter, who were passing rapidly, all out of breath,
in terror, and with the appearance of fleeing; they had been coming
to meet him, had not seen him, and had jostled him as they passed.
Through the twilight, Marius could distinguish their livid faces,
their wild heads, their dishevelled hair, their hideous bonnets,
their ragged petticoats, and their bare feet. They were talking as
they ran. The taller said in a very low voice:--

"The bobbies have come. They came near nabbing me at the half-circle."
The other answered: "I saw them. I bolted, bolted, bolted!"

Through this repulsive slang, Marius understood that gendarmes
or the police had come near apprehending these two children,
and that the latter had escaped.

They plunged among the trees of the boulevard behind him,
and there created, for a few minutes, in the gloom, a sort
of vague white spot, then disappeared.

Marius had halted for a moment.

He was about to pursue his way, when his eye lighted on a little
grayish package lying on the ground at his feet. He stooped and picked
it up. It was a sort of envelope which appeared to contain papers.

"Good," he said to himself, "those unhappy girls dropped it."

He retraced his steps, he called, he did not find them; he reflected
that they must already be far away, put the package in his pocket,
and went off to dine.

On the way, he saw in an alley of the Rue Mouffetard, a child's coffin,
covered with a black cloth resting on three chairs, and illuminated
by a candle. The two girls of the twilight recurred to his mind.

"Poor mothers!" he thought. "There is one thing sadder than to see
one's children die; it is to see them leading an evil life."

Then those shadows which had varied his melancholy vanished
from his thoughts, and he fell back once more into his habitual
preoccupations. He fell to thinking once more of his six months
of love and happiness in the open air and the broad daylight,
beneath the beautiful trees of Luxembourg.

"How gloomy my life has become!" he said to himself. "Young girls
are always appearing to me, only formerly they were angels and now
they are ghouls."

CHAPTER III

QUADRIFRONS

That evening, as he was undressing preparatory to going to bed,
his hand came in contact, in the pocket of his coat, with the packet
which he had picked up on the boulevard. He had forgotten it.
He thought that it would be well to open it, and that this package
might possibly contain the address of the young girls, if it really
belonged to them, and, in any case, the information necessary to a
restitution to the person who had lost it.

He opened the envelope.

It was not sealed and contained four letters, also unsealed.

They bore addresses.

All four exhaled a horrible odor of tobacco.

The first was addressed: "To Madame, Madame la Marquise de Grucheray,
the place opposite the Chamber of Deputies, No.--"

Marius said to himself, that he should probably find in it the
information which he sought, and that, moreover, the letter being open,
it was probable that it could be read without impropriety.

It was conceived as follows:--

Madame la Marquise: The virtue of clemency and piety is that which
most closely unites sosiety. Turn your Christian spirit and cast
a look of compassion on this unfortunate Spanish victim of loyalty
and attachment to the sacred cause of legitimacy, who has given
with his blood, consecrated his fortune, evverything, to defend
that cause, and to-day finds himself in the greatest missery.
He doubts not that your honorable person will grant succor to preserve
an existence exteremely painful for a military man of education
and honor full of wounds, counts in advance on the humanity which
animates you and on the interest which Madame la Marquise bears
to a nation so unfortunate. Their prayer will not be in vain,
and their gratitude will preserve theirs charming souvenir.

My respectful sentiments, with which I have the honor to be
Madame,
Don Alvares, Spanish Captain
of Cavalry, a royalist who
has take refuge in France,
who finds himself on travells
for his country, and the
resources are lacking him to
continue his travells.

No address was joined to the signature. Marius hoped to find
the address in the second letter, whose superscription read:
A Madame, Madame la Comtesse de Montvernet, Rue Cassette, No. 9.
This is what Marius read in it:--

Madame la Comtesse: It is an unhappy mother of a family of six
children the last of which is only eight months old. I sick
since my last confinement, abandoned by my husband five months ago,
haveing no resources in the world the most frightful indigance.

In the hope of Madame la Comtesse, she has the honor to be,
Madame, with profound respect,
Mistress Balizard.

Marius turned to the third letter, which was a petition like
the preceding; he read:--

Monsieur Pabourgeot, Elector, wholesale stocking merchant,
Rue Saint-Denis on the corner of the Rue aux Fers.

I permit myself to address you this letter to beg you to grant me
the pretious favor of your simpaties and to interest yourself in a man
of letters who has just sent a drama to the Theatre-Francais. The subject
is historical, and the action takes place in Auvergne in the time
of the Empire; the style, I think, is natural, laconic, and may have
some merit. There are couplets to be sung in four places. The comic,
the serious, the unexpected, are mingled in a variety of characters,
and a tinge of romanticism lightly spread through all the intrigue
which proceeds misteriously, and ends, after striking altarations,
in the midst of many beautiful strokes of brilliant scenes.

My principal object is to satisfi the desire which progressively
animates the man of our century, that is to say, the fashion,
that capritious and bizarre weathervane which changes at almost
every new wind.

In spite of these qualities I have reason to fear that jealousy,
the egotism of priviliged authors, may obtaine my exclusion from
the theatre, for I am not ignorant of the mortifications with which
new-comers are treated.

Monsiuer Pabourgeot, your just reputation as an enlightened protector
of men of litters emboldens me to send you my daughter who will
explain our indigant situation to you, lacking bread and fire
in this wynter season. When I say to you that I beg you to accept
the dedication of my drama which I desire to make to you and of all
those that I shall make, is to prove to you how great is my ambition
to have the honor of sheltering myself under your protection,
and of adorning my writings with your name. If you deign to honor
me with the most modest offering, I shall immediately occupy myself
in making a piesse of verse to pay you my tribute of gratitude.
Which I shall endeavor to render this piesse as perfect as possible,
will be sent to you before it is inserted at the beginning of the
drama and delivered on the stage.
To Monsieur
and Madame Pabourgeot,
My most respectful complements,
Genflot, man of letters.
P. S. Even if it is only forty sous.

Excuse me for sending my daughter and not presenting myself,
but sad motives connected with the toilet do not permit me,
alas! to go out.

Finally, Marius opened the fourth letter. The address ran:
To the benevolent Gentleman of the church of Saint-Jacquesdu-haut-Pas.
It contained the following lines:--

Benevolent Man: If you deign to accompany my daughter, you will
behold a misserable calamity, and I will show you my certificates.

At the aspect of these writings your generous soul will be moved
with a sentiment of obvious benevolence, for true philosophers
always feel lively emotions.

Admit, compassionate man, that it is necessary to suffer the most
cruel need, and that it is very painful, for the sake of obtaining
a little relief, to get oneself attested by the authorities as though
one were not free to suffer and to die of inanition while waiting
to have our misery relieved. Destinies are very fatal for several
and too prodigal or too protecting for others.

I await your presence or your offering, if you deign to make one,
and I beseech you to accept the respectful sentiments with which I
have the honor to be,
truly magnanimous man,
your very humble
and very obedient servant,
P. Fabantou, dramatic artist.

After perusing these four letters, Marius did not find himself much
further advanced than before.

In the first place, not one of the signers gave his address.

Then, they seemed to come from four different individuals, Don Alveras,
Mistress Balizard, the poet Genflot, and dramatic artist Fabantou;
but the singular thing about these letters was, that all four were
written by the same hand.

What conclusion was to be drawn from this, except that they all
come from the same person?

Moreover, and this rendered the conjecture all the more probable,
the coarse and yellow paper was the same in all four, the odor
of tobacco was the same, and, although an attempt had been made
to vary the style, the same orthographical faults were reproduced
with the greatest tranquillity, and the man of letters Genflot was
no more exempt from them than the Spanish captain.

It was waste of trouble to try to solve this petty mystery. Had it
not been a chance find, it would have borne the air of a mystification.
Marius was too melancholy to take even a chance pleasantry well,
and to lend himself to a game which the pavement of the street seemed
desirous of playing with him. It seemed to him that he was playing
the part of the blind man in blind man's buff between the four letters,
and that they were making sport of him.

Nothing, however, indicated that these letters belonged to the two
young girls whom Marius had met on the boulevard. After all,
they were evidently papers of no value. Marius replaced them
in their envelope, flung the whole into a corner and went to bed.
About seven o'clock in the morning, he had just risen and breakfasted,
and was trying to settle down to work, when there came a soft knock
at his door.

As he owned nothing, he never locked his door, unless occasionally,
though very rarely, when he was engaged in some pressing work.
Even when absent he left his key in the lock. "You will be robbed,"
said Ma'am Bougon. "Of what?" said Marius. The truth is, however,
that he had, one day, been robbed of an old pair of boots, to the
great triumph of Ma'am Bougon.

There came a second knock, as gentle as the first.

"Come in," said Marius.

The door opened.

"What do you want, Ma'am Bougon?" asked Marius, without raising
his eyes from the books and manuscripts on his table.

A voice which did not belong to Ma'am Bougon replied:--

"Excuse me, sir--"

It was a dull, broken, hoarse, strangled voice, the voice
of an old man, roughened with brandy and liquor.

Marius turned round hastily, and beheld a young girl.

CHAPTER IV

A ROSE IN MISERY

A very young girl was standing in the half-open door. The dormer
window of the garret, through which the light fell, was precisely
opposite the door, and illuminated the figure with a wan light.
She was a frail, emaciated, slender creature; there was nothing but a
chemise and a petticoat upon that chilled and shivering nakedness.
Her girdle was a string, her head ribbon a string, her pointed
shoulders emerged from her chemise, a blond and lymphatic pallor,
earth-colored collar-bones, red hands, a half-open and degraded mouth,
missing teeth, dull, bold, base eyes; she had the form of a young
girl who has missed her youth, and the look of a corrupt old woman;
fifty years mingled with fifteen; one of those beings which are both
feeble and horrible, and which cause those to shudder whom they do not
cause to weep.

Marius had risen, and was staring in a sort of stupor at this being,
who was almost like the forms of the shadows which traverse dreams.

The most heart-breaking thing of all was, that this young girl had not
come into the world to be homely. In her early childhood she must
even have been pretty. The grace of her age was still struggling
against the hideous, premature decrepitude of debauchery and poverty.
The remains of beauty were dying away in that face of sixteen,
like the pale sunlight which is extinguished under hideous clouds
at dawn on a winter's day.

That face was not wholly unknown to Marius. He thought he remembered
having seen it somewhere.

"What do you wish, Mademoiselle?" he asked.

The young girl replied in her voice of a drunken convict:--

"Here is a letter for you, Monsieur Marius."

She called Marius by his name; he could not doubt that he was the person
whom she wanted; but who was this girl? How did she know his name?

Without waiting for him to tell her to advance, she entered.
She entered resolutely, staring, with a sort of assurance that made
the heart bleed, at the whole room and the unmade bed. Her feet
were bare. Large holes in her petticoat permitted glimpses of her
long legs and her thin knees. She was shivering.

She held a letter in her hand, which she presented to Marius.

Marius, as he opened the letter, noticed that the enormous wafer
which sealed it was still moist. The message could not have come
from a distance. He read:--

My amiable neighbor, young man: I have learned of your goodness to me,
that you paid my rent six months ago. I bless you, young man.
My eldest daughter will tell you that we have been without a morsel
of bread for two days, four persons and my spouse ill. If I am
not deseaved in my opinion, I think I may hope that your generous
heart will melt at this statement and the desire will subjugate you
to be propitious to me by daigning to lavish on me a slight favor.

I am with the distinguished consideration which is due to the
benefactors of humanity,--
Jondrette.

P.S. My eldest daughter will await your orders, dear Monsieur Marius.

This letter, coming in the very midst of the mysterious adventure
which had occupied Marius' thoughts ever since the preceding evening,
was like a candle in a cellar. All was suddenly illuminated.

This letter came from the same place as the other four.
There was the same writing, the same style, the same orthography,
the same paper, the same odor of tobacco.

There were five missives, five histories, five signatures,
and a single signer. The Spanish Captain Don Alvares, the unhappy
Mistress Balizard, the dramatic poet Genflot, the old comedian Fabantou,
were all four named Jondrette, if, indeed, Jondrette himself
were named Jondrette.

Marius had lived in the house for a tolerably long time,
and he had had, as we have said, but very rare occasion to see,
to even catch a glimpse of, his extremely mean neighbors. His mind
was elsewhere, and where the mind is, there the eyes are also.
He had been obliged more than once to pass the Jondrettes in the
corridor or on the stairs; but they were mere forms to him; he had
paid so little heed to them, that, on the preceding evening, he had
jostled the Jondrette girls on the boulevard, without recognizing them,
for it had evidently been they, and it was with great difficulty
that the one who had just entered his room had awakened in him,
in spite of disgust and pity, a vague recollection of having met
her elsewhere.

Now he saw everything clearly. He understood that his neighbor
Jondrette, in his distress, exercised the industry of speculating
on the charity of benevolent persons, that he procured addresses,
and that he wrote under feigned names to people whom he judged to be
wealthy and compassionate, letters which his daughters delivered
at their risk and peril, for this father had come to such a pass,
that he risked his daughters; he was playing a game with fate,
and he used them as the stake. Marius understood that probably,
judging from their flight on the evening before, from their
breathless condition, from their terror and from the words of slang
which he had overheard, these unfortunate creatures were plying
some inexplicably sad profession, and that the result of the
whole was, in the midst of human society, as it is now constituted,
two miserable beings who were neither girls nor women, a species
of impure and innocent monsters produced by misery.

Sad creatures, without name, or sex, or age, to whom neither good nor
evil were any longer possible, and who, on emerging from childhood,
have already nothing in this world, neither liberty, nor virtue,
nor responsibility. Souls which blossomed out yesterday, and are faded
to-day, like those flowers let fall in the streets, which are soiled
with every sort of mire, while waiting for some wheel to crush them.
Nevertheless, while Marius bent a pained and astonished gaze on her,
the young girl was wandering back and forth in the garret with the
audacity of a spectre. She kicked about, without troubling herself
as to her nakedness. Occasionally her chemise, which was untied
and torn, fell almost to her waist. She moved the chairs about,
she disarranged the toilet articles which stood on the commode,
she handled Marius' clothes, she rummaged about to see what there
was in the corners.

"Hullo!" said she, "you have a mirror!"

And she hummed scraps of vaudevilles, as though she had
been alone, frolicsome refrains which her hoarse and guttural
voice rendered lugubrious.

An indescribable constraint, weariness, and humiliation were
perceptible beneath this hardihood. Effrontery is a disgrace.

Nothing could be more melancholy than to see her sport about
the room, and, so to speak, flit with the movements of a bird
which is frightened by the daylight, or which has broken its wing.
One felt that under other conditions of education and destiny,
the gay and over-free mien of this young girl might have turned out
sweet and charming. Never, even among animals, does the creature
born to be a dove change into an osprey. That is only to be seen
among men.

Marius reflected, and allowed her to have her way.

She approached the table.

"Ah!" said she, "books!"

A flash pierced her glassy eye. She resumed, and her accent
expressed the happiness which she felt in boasting of something,
to which no human creature is insensible:--

"I know how to read, I do!"

She eagerly seized a book which lay open on the table, and read
with tolerable fluency:--

"--General Bauduin received orders to take the chateau of Hougomont
which stands in the middle of the plain of Waterloo, with five
battalions of his brigade."

She paused.

"Ah! Waterloo! I know about that. It was a battle long ago.
My father was there. My father has served in the armies. We are
fine Bonapartists in our house, that we are! Waterloo was against
the English."

She laid down the book, caught up a pen, and exclaimed:--

"And I know how to write, too!"

She dipped her pen in the ink, and turning to Marius:--

"Do you want to see? Look here, I'm going to write a word to show you."

And before he had time to answer, she wrote on a sheet of white paper,
which lay in the middle of the table: "The bobbies are here."

Then throwing down the pen:--

"There are no faults of orthography. You can look. We have received
an education, my sister and I. We have not always been as we are now.
We were not made--"

Here she paused, fixed her dull eyes on Marius, and burst
out laughing, saying, with an intonation which contained
every form of anguish, stifled by every form of cynicism:--

"Bah!"

And she began to hum these words to a gay air:--

"J'ai faim, mon pere." I am hungry, father.
Pas de fricot. I have no food.
J'ai froid, ma mere. I am cold, mother.
Pas de tricot. I have no clothes.
Grelotte, Lolotte!
Lolotte! Shiver,
Sanglote, Sob,
Jacquot!" Jacquot!"

She had hardly finished this couplet, when she exexclaimed:--

"Do you ever go to the play, Monsieur Marius? I do. I have a
little brother who is a friend of the artists, and who gives me
tickets sometimes. But I don't like the benches in the galleries.
One is cramped and uncomfortable there. There are rough people
there sometimes; and people who smell bad."

Then she scrutinized Marius, assumed a singular air and said:--

"Do you know, Mr. Marius, that you are a very handsome fellow?"

And at the same moment the same idea occurred to them both,
and made her smile and him blush. She stepped up to him, and laid
her hand on his shoulder: "You pay no heed to me, but I know you,
Mr. Marius. I meet you here on the staircase, and then I often see
you going to a person named Father Mabeuf who lives in the direction
of Austerlitz, sometimes when I have been strolling in that quarter.
It is very becoming to you to have your hair tumbled thus."

She tried to render her voice soft, but only succeeded in making
it very deep. A portion of her words was lost in the transit
from her larynx to her lips, as though on a piano where some notes
are missing.

Marius had retreated gently.

"Mademoiselle," said he, with his cool gravity, "I have here a package
which belongs to you, I think. Permit me to return it to you."

And he held out the envelope containing the four letters.

She clapped her hands and exclaimed:--

"We have been looking everywhere for that!"

Then she eagerly seized the package and opened the envelope,
saying as she did so:--

"Dieu de Dieu! how my sister and I have hunted! And it was you
who found it! On the boulevard, was it not? It must have been
on the boulevard? You see, we let it fall when we were running.
It was that brat of a sister of mine who was so stupid. When we
got home, we could not find it anywhere. As we did not wish
to be beaten, as that is useless, as that is entirely useless,
as that is absolutely useless, we said that we had carried the
letters to the proper persons, and that they had said to us:
`Nix.' So here they are, those poor letters! And how did you find
out that they belonged to me? Ah! yes, the writing. So it was
you that we jostled as we passed last night. We couldn't see.
I said to my sister: `Is it a gentleman?' My sister said to me:
`I think it is a gentleman.'"

In the meanwhile she had unfolded the petition addressed to "the
benevolent gentleman of the church of Saint-Jacquesdu-Haut-Pas."

"Here!" said she, "this is for that old fellow who goes to mass.
By the way, this is his hour. I'll go and carry it to him.
Perhaps he will give us something to breakfast on."

Then she began to laugh again, and added:--

"Do you know what it will mean if we get a breakfast today?
It will mean that we shall have had our breakfast of the day
before yesterday, our breakfast of yesterday, our dinner of to-day,
and all that at once, and this morning. Come! Parbleu! if you
are not satisfied, dogs, burst!"

This reminded Marius of the wretched girl's errand to himself.
He fumbled in his waistcoat pocket, and found nothing there.

The young girl went on, and seemed to have no consciousness
of Marius' presence.

"I often go off in the evening. Sometimes I don't come home again.
Last winter, before we came here, we lived under the arches
of the bridges. We huddled together to keep from freezing.
My little sister cried. How melancholy the water is! When I
thought of drowning myself, I said to myself: `No, it's too cold.'
I go out alone, whenever I choose, I sometimes sleep in the ditches.
Do you know, at night, when I walk along the boulevard, I see the trees
like forks, I see houses, all black and as big as Notre Dame, I fancy
that the white walls are the river, I say to myself: `Why, there's
water there!' The stars are like the lamps in illuminations,
one would say that they smoked and that the wind blew them out,
I am bewildered, as though horses were breathing in my ears;
although it is night, I hear hand-organs and spinning-machines, and I
don't know what all. I think people are flinging stones at me,
I flee without knowing whither, everything whirls and whirls.
You feel very queer when you have had no food."

And then she stared at him with a bewildered air.

By dint of searching and ransacking his pockets, Marius had finally
collected five francs sixteen sous. This was all he owned in the world
for the moment. "At all events," he thought, "there is my dinner
for to-day, and to-morrow we will see." He kept the sixteen sous,
and handed the five francs to the young girl.

She seized the coin.

"Good!" said she, "the sun is shining!"

And, as though the sun had possessed the property of melting
the avalanches of slang in her brain, she went on:--

"Five francs! the shiner! a monarch! in this hole! Ain't this fine!
You're a jolly thief! I'm your humble servant! Bravo for the
good fellows! Two days' wine! and meat! and stew! we'll have
a royal feast! and a good fill!"

She pulled her chemise up on her shoulders, made a low bow to Marius,
then a familiar sign with her hand, and went towards the door, saying:--

"Good morning, sir. It's all right. I'll go and find my old man."

As she passed, she caught sight of a dry crust of bread on the commode,
which was moulding there amid the dust; she flung herself upon it
and bit into it, muttering:--

"That's good! it's hard! it breaks my teeth!"

Then she departed.

CHAPTER V

A PROVIDENTIAL PEEP-HOLE

Marius had lived for five years in poverty, in destitution,
even in distress, but he now perceived that he had not known
real misery. True misery he had but just had a view of.
It was its spectre which had just passed before his eyes.
In fact, he who has only beheld the misery of man has seen nothing;
the misery of woman is what he must see; he who has seen only the
misery of woman has seen nothing; he must see the misery of the child.

When a man has reached his last extremity, he has reached his last
resources at the same time. Woe to the defenceless beings who
surround him! Work, wages, bread, fire, courage, good will, all fail
him simultaneously. The light of day seems extinguished without,
the moral light within; in these shadows man encounters the feebleness
of the woman and the child, and bends them violently to ignominy.

Then all horrors become possible. Despair is surrounded with fragile
partitions which all open on either vice or crime.

Health, youth, honor, all the shy delicacies of the young body,
the heart, virginity, modesty, that epidermis of the soul,
are manipulated in sinister wise by that fumbling which seeks resources,
which encounters opprobrium, and which accomodates itself to it.
Fathers, mothers, children, brothers, sisters, men, women, daughters,
adhere and become incorporated, almost like a mineral formation,
in that dusky promiscuousness of sexes, relationships, ages, infamies,
and innocences. They crouch, back to back, in a sort of hut of fate.
They exchange woe-begone glances. Oh, the unfortunate wretches!
How pale they are! How cold they are! It seems as though they
dwelt in a planet much further from the sun than ours.

This young girl was to Marius a sort of messenger from the realm
of sad shadows. She revealed to him a hideous side of the night.

Marius almost reproached himself for the preoccupations of revery
and passion which had prevented his bestowing a glance on his
neighbors up to that day. The payment of their rent had been
a mechanical movement, which any one would have yielded to;
but he, Marius, should have done better than that. What! only
a wall separated him from those abandoned beings who lived
gropingly in the dark outside the pale of the rest of the world,
he was elbow to elbow with them, he was, in some sort, the last link
of the human race which they touched, he heard them live, or rather,
rattle in the death agony beside him, and he paid no heed to them!
Every day, every instant, he heard them walking on the other side
of the wall, he heard them go, and come, and speak, and he did
not even lend an ear! And groans lay in those words, and he did
not even listen to them, his thoughts were elsewhere, given up
to dreams, to impossible radiances, to loves in the air, to follies;
and all the while, human creatures, his brothers in Jesus Christ,
his brothers in the people, were agonizing in vain beside him!
He even formed a part of their misfortune, and he aggravated it.
For if they had had another neighbor who was less chimerical and
more attentive, any ordinary and charitable man, evidently their
indigence would have been noticed, their signals of distress would have
been perceived, and they would have been taken hold of and rescued!
They appeared very corrupt and very depraved, no doubt, very vile,
very odious even; but those who fall without becoming degraded
are rare; besides, there is a point where the unfortunate and the
infamous unite and are confounded in a single word, a fatal word,
the miserable; whose fault is this? And then should not the charity
be all the more profound, in proportion as the fall is great?

While reading himself this moral lesson, for there were occasions
on which Marius, like all truly honest hearts, was his own pedagogue
and scolded himself more than he deserved, he stared at the wall
which separated him from the Jondrettes, as though he were able
to make his gaze, full of pity, penetrate that partition and warm
these wretched people. The wall was a thin layer of plaster
upheld by lathes and beams, and, as the reader had just learned,
it allowed the sound of voices and words to be clearly distinguished.
Only a man as dreamy as Marius could have failed to perceive this
long before. There was no paper pasted on the wall, either on the
side of the Jondrettes or on that of Marius; the coarse construction
was visible in its nakedness. Marius examined the partition,
almost unconsciously; sometimes revery examines, observes,
and scrutinizes as thought would. All at once he sprang up;
he had just perceived, near the top, close to the ceiling,
a triangular hole, which resulted from the space between three lathes.
The plaster which should have filled this cavity was missing, and by
mounting on the commode, a view could be had through this aperture
into the Jondrettes' attic. Commiseration has, and should have,
its curiosity. This aperture formed a sort of peep-hole. It is
permissible to gaze at misfortune like a traitor in order to succor it.[27]

[27] The peep-hole is a Judas in French. Hence the half-punning allusion.

"Let us get some little idea of what these people are like,"
thought Marius, "and in what condition they are."

He climbed upon the commode, put his eye to the crevice, and looked.

CHAPTER VI

THE WILD MAN IN HIS LAIR

Cities, like forests, have their caverns in which all the most
wicked and formidable creatures which they contain conceal
themselves. Only, in cities, that which thus conceals itself
is ferocious, unclean, and petty, that is to say, ugly; in forests,
that which conceals itself is ferocious, savage, and grand,
that is to say, beautiful. Taking one lair with another,
the beast's is preferable to the man's. Caverns are better than hovels.

What Marius now beheld was a hovel.

Marius was poor, and his chamber was poverty-stricken, but as his
poverty was noble, his garret was neat. The den upon which his eye now
rested was abject, dirty, fetid, pestiferous, mean, sordid. The only
furniture consisted of a straw chair, an infirm table, some old bits
of crockery, and in two of the corners, two indescribable pallets;
all the light was furnishd by a dormer window of four panes,
draped with spiders' webs. Through this aperture there penetrated
just enough light to make the face of a man appear like the face
of a phantom. The walls had a leprous aspect, and were covered with
seams and scars, like a visage disfigured by some horrible malady;
a repulsive moisture exuded from them. Obscene sketches roughly
sketched with charcoal could be distinguished upon them.

The chamber which Marius occupied had a dilapidated brick pavement;
this one was neither tiled nor planked; its inhabitants stepped
directly on the antique plaster of the hovel, which had grown black
under the long-continued pressure of feet. Upon this uneven floor,
where the dirt seemed to be fairly incrusted, and which possessed
but one virginity, that of the broom, were capriciously grouped
constellations of old shoes, socks, and repulsive rags; however,
this room had a fireplace, so it was let for forty francs a year.
There was every sort of thing in that fireplace, a brazier, a pot,
broken boards, rags suspended from nails, a bird-cage, ashes,
and even a little fire. Two brands were smouldering there in a
melancholy way.

One thing which added still more to the horrors of this garret was,
that it was large. It had projections and angles and black holes,
the lower sides of roofs, bays, and promontories. Hence horrible,
unfathomable nooks where it seemed as though spiders as big as one's fist,
wood-lice as large as one's foot, and perhaps even--who knows?--
some monstrous human beings, must be hiding.

One of the pallets was near the door, the other near the window.
One end of each touched the fireplace and faced Marius. In a corner
near the aperture through which Marius was gazing, a colored
engraving in a black frame was suspended to a nail on the wall,
and at its bottom, in large letters, was the inscription: THE DREAM.
This represented a sleeping woman, and a child, also asleep, the child
on the woman's lap, an eagle in a cloud, with a crown in his beak,
and the woman thrusting the crown away from the child's head,
without awaking the latter; in the background, Napoleon in a glory,
leaning on a very blue column with a yellow capital ornamented with
this inscription:

MARINGO
AUSTERLITS
IENA
WAGRAMME
ELOT

Beneath this frame, a sort of wooden panel, which was no longer
than it was broad, stood on the ground and rested in a sloping
attitude against the wall. It had the appearance of a picture
with its face turned to the wall, of a frame probably showing
a daub on the other side, of some pier-glass detached from a wall
and lying forgotten there while waiting to be rehung.

Near the table, upon which Marius descried a pen, ink, and paper,
sat a man about sixty years of age, small, thin, livid, haggard,
with a cunning, cruel, and uneasy air; a hideous scoundrel.

If Lavater had studied this visage, he would have found the vulture
mingled with the attorney there, the bird of prey and the pettifogger
rendering each other mutually hideous and complementing each other;
the pettifogger making the bird of prey ignoble, the bird of prey
making the pettifogger horrible.

This man had a long gray beard. He was clad in a woman's chemise,
which allowed his hairy breast and his bare arms, bristling with
gray hair, to be seen. Beneath this chemise, muddy trousers
and boots through which his toes projected were visible.

He had a pipe in his mouth and was smoking. There was no bread
in the hovel, but there was still tobacco.

He was writing probably some more letters like those which Marius
had read.

On the corner of the table lay an ancient, dilapidated, reddish volume,
and the size, which was the antique 12mo of reading-rooms,
betrayed a romance. On the cover sprawled the following title,
printed in large capitals: GOD; THE KING; HONOR AND THE LADIES;
BY DUCRAY DUMINIL, 1814.

As the man wrote, he talked aloud, and Marius heard his words:--

"The idea that there is no equality, even when you are dead!
Just look at Pere Lachaise! The great, those who are rich, are up above,
in the acacia alley, which is paved. They can reach it in a carriage.
The little people, the poor, the unhappy, well, what of them? they
are put down below, where the mud is up to your knees, in the
damp places. They are put there so that they will decay the sooner!
You cannot go to see them without sinking into the earth."

He paused, smote the table with his fist, and added, as he ground
his teeth:--

"Oh! I could eat the whole world!"

A big woman, who might be forty years of age, or a hundred,
was crouching near the fireplace on her bare heels.

She, too, was clad only in a chemise and a knitted petticoat
patched with bits of old cloth. A coarse linen apron concealed
the half of her petticoat. Although this woman was doubled up and
bent together, it could be seen that she was of very lofty stature.
She was a sort of giant, beside her husband. She had hideous hair,
of a reddish blond which was turning gray, and which she thrust
back from time to time, with her enormous shining hands, with their
flat nails.

Beside her, on the floor, wide open, lay a book of the same form
as the other, and probably a volume of the same romance.

On one of the pallets, Marius caught a glimpse of a sort of tall
pale young girl, who sat there half naked and with pendant feet,
and who did not seem to be listening or seeing or living.

No doubt the younger sister of the one who had come to his room.

She seemed to be eleven or twelve years of age. On closer
scrutiny it was evident that she really was fourteen. She was
the child who had said, on the boulevard the evening before:
"I bolted, bolted, bolted!"

She was of that puny sort which remains backward for a long time,
then suddenly starts up rapidly. It is indigence which produces
these melancholy human plants. These creatures have neither childhood
nor youth. At fifteen years of age they appear to be twelve,
at sixteen they seem twenty. To-day a little girl, to-morrow a woman.
One might say that they stride through life, in order to get through
with it the more speedily.

At this moment, this being had the air of a child.

Moreover, no trace of work was revealed in that dwelling;
no handicraft, no spinning-wheel, not a tool. In one corner lay
some ironmongery of dubious aspect. It was the dull listlessness
which follows despair and precedes the death agony.

Marius gazed for a while at this gloomy interior, more terrifying
than the interior of a tomb, for the human soul could be felt
fluttering there, and life was palpitating there. The garret,
the cellar, the lowly ditch where certain indigent wretches crawl at
the very bottom of the social edifice, is not exactly the sepulchre,
but only its antechamber; but, as the wealthy display their greatest
magnificence at the entrance of their palaces, it seems that death,
which stands directly side by side with them, places its greatest
miseries in that vestibule.

The man held his peace, the woman spoke no word, the young girl did
not even seem to breathe. The scratching of the pen on the paper
was audible.

The man grumbled, without pausing in his writing. "Canaille! canaille!
everybody is canaille!"

This variation to Solomon's exclamation elicited a sigh from the woman.

"Calm yourself, my little friend," she said. "Don't hurt yourself,
my dear. You are too good to write to all those people, husband."

Bodies press close to each other in misery, as in cold, but hearts
draw apart. This woman must have loved this man, to all appearance,
judging from the amount of love within her; but probably,
in the daily and reciprocal reproaches of the horrible distress
which weighed on the whole group, this had become extinct. There no
longer existed in her anything more than the ashes of affection
for her husband. Nevertheless, caressing appellations had survived,
as is often the case. She called him: My dear, my little friend,
my good man, etc., with her mouth while her heart was silent.

The man resumed his writing.

CHAPTER VII

STRATEGY AND TACTICS

Marius, with a load upon his breast, was on the point of descending
from the species of observatory which he had improvised, when a
sound attracted his attention and caused him to remain at his post.

The door of the attic had just burst open abruptly. The eldest girl
made her appearance on the threshold. On her feet, she had large,
coarse, men's shoes, bespattered with mud, which had splashed even
to her red ankles, and she was wrapped in an old mantle which hung
in tatters. Marius had not seen it on her an hour previously,
but she had probably deposited it at his door, in order that she
might inspire the more pity, and had picked it up again on emerging.
She entered, pushed the door to behind her, paused to take breath,
for she was completely breathless, then exclaimed with an expression
of triumph and joy:--

"He is coming!"

The father turned his eyes towards her, the woman turned her head,
the little sister did not stir.

"Who?" demanded her father.

"The gentleman!"

"The philanthropist?"

"Yes."

"From the church of Saint-Jacques?"

"Yes."

"That old fellow?"

"Yes."

"And he is coming?"

"He is following me."

"You are sure?"

"I am sure."

"There, truly, he is coming?"

"He is coming in a fiacre."

"In a fiacre. He is Rothschild."

The father rose.

"How are you sure? If he is coming in a fiacre, how is it that you

Back to Full Books