The french masters, p.479
The French Masters, page 479
Then his venerable, white head fell forward on the bed, that stoical old heart broke, his face was engulfed, so to speak, in Cosette’s garments, and if any one had passed up the stairs at that moment, he would have heard frightful sobs.
CHAPTER IV — THE IMMORTAL LIVER
The old and formidable struggle, of which we have already witnessed so many phases, began once more.
Jacob struggled with the angel but one night. Alas! how many times have we beheld Jean Valjean seized bodily by his conscience, in the darkness, and struggling desperately against it!
Unheard-of conflict! At certain moments the foot slips; at other moments the ground crumbles away underfoot. How many times had that conscience, mad for the good, clasped and overthrown him! How many times had the truth set her knee inexorably upon his breast! How many times, hurled to earth by the light, had he begged for mercy! How many times had that implacable spark, lighted within him, and upon him by the Bishop, dazzled him by force when he had wished to be blind! How many times had he risen to his feet in the combat, held fast to the rock, leaning against sophism, dragged in the dust, now getting the upper hand of his conscience, again overthrown by it! How many times, after an equivoque, after the specious and treacherous reasoning of egotism, had he heard his irritated conscience cry in his ear: “A trip! you wretch!” How many times had his refractory thoughts rattled convulsively in his throat, under the evidence of duty! Resistance to God. Funereal sweats. What secret wounds which he alone felt bleed! What excoriations in his lamentable existence! How many times he had risen bleeding, bruised, broken, enlightened, despair in his heart, serenity in his soul! and, vanquished, he had felt himself the conqueror. And, after having dislocated, broken, and rent his conscience with red-hot pincers, it had said to him, as it stood over him, formidable, luminous, and tranquil: “Now, go in peace!”
But on emerging from so melancholy a conflict, what a lugubrious peace, alas!
Nevertheless, that night Jean Valjean felt that he was passing through his final combat.
A heart-rending question presented itself.
Predestinations are not all direct; they do not open out in a straight avenue before the predestined man; they have blind courts, impassable alleys, obscure turns, disturbing crossroads offering the choice of many ways. Jean Valjean had halted at that moment at the most perilous of these crossroads.
He had come to the supreme crossing of good and evil. He had that gloomy intersection beneath his eyes. On this occasion once more, as had happened to him already in other sad vicissitudes, two roads opened out before him, the one tempting, the other alarming.
Which was he to take?
He was counselled to the one which alarmed him by that mysterious index finger which we all perceive whenever we fix our eyes on the darkness.
Once more, Jean Valjean had the choice between the terrible port and the smiling ambush.
Is it then true? the soul may recover; but not fate. Frightful thing! an incurable destiny!
This is the problem which presented itself to him:
In what manner was Jean Valjean to behave in relation to the happiness of Cosette and Marius? It was he who had willed that happiness, it was he who had brought it about; he had, himself, buried it in his entrails, and at that moment, when he reflected on it, he was able to enjoy the sort of satisfaction which an armorer would experience on recognizing his factory mark on a knife, on withdrawing it, all smoking, from his own breast.
Cosette had Marius, Marius possessed Cosette. They had everything, even riches. And this was his doing.
But what was he, Jean Valjean, to do with this happiness, now that it existed, now that it was there? Should he force himself on this happiness? Should he treat it as belonging to him? No doubt, Cosette did belong to another; but should he, Jean Valjean, retain of Cosette all that he could retain? Should he remain the sort of father, half seen but respected, which he had hitherto been? Should he, without saying a word, bring his past to that future? Should he present himself there, as though he had a right, and should he seat himself, veiled, at that luminous fireside? Should he take those innocent hands into his tragic hands, with a smile? Should he place upon the peaceful fender of the Gillenormand drawing-room those feet of his, which dragged behind them the disgraceful shadow of the law? Should he enter into participation in the fair fortunes of Cosette and Marius? Should he render the obscurity on his brow and the cloud upon theirs still more dense? Should he place his catastrophe as a third associate in their felicity? Should he continue to hold his peace? In a word, should he be the sinister mute of destiny beside these two happy beings?
We must have become habituated to fatality and to encounters with it, in order to have the daring to raise our eyes when certain questions appear to us in all their horrible nakedness. Good or evil stands behind this severe interrogation point. What are you going to do? demands the sphinx.
This habit of trial Jean Valjean possessed. He gazed intently at the sphinx.
He examined the pitiless problem under all its aspects.
Cosette, that charming existence, was the raft of this shipwreck. What was he to do? To cling fast to it, or to let go his hold?
If he clung to it, he should emerge from disaster, he should ascend again into the sunlight, he should let the bitter water drip from his garments and his hair, he was saved, he should live.
And if he let go his hold?
Then the abyss.
Thus he took sad council with his thoughts. Or, to speak more correctly, he fought; he kicked furiously internally, now against his will, now against his conviction.
Happily for Jean Valjean that he had been able to weep. That relieved him, possibly. But the beginning was savage. A tempest, more furious than the one which had formerly driven him to Arras, broke loose within him. The past surged up before him facing the present; he compared them and sobbed. The silence of tears once opened, the despairing man writhed.
He felt that he had been stopped short.
Alas! in this fight to the death between our egotism and our duty, when we thus retreat step by step before our immutable ideal, bewildered, furious, exasperated at having to yield, disputing the ground, hoping for a possible flight, seeking an escape, what an abrupt and sinister resistance does the foot of the wall offer in our rear!
To feel the sacred shadow which forms an obstacle!
The invisible inexorable, what an obsession!
Then, one is never done with conscience. Make your choice, Brutus; make your choice, Cato. It is fathomless, since it is God. One flings into that well the labor of one’s whole life, one flings in one’s fortune, one flings in one’s riches, one flings in one’s success, one flings in one’s liberty or fatherland, one flings in one’s well-being, one flings in one’s repose, one flings in one’s joy! More! more! more! Empty the vase! tip the urn! One must finish by flinging in one’s heart.
Somewhere in the fog of the ancient hells, there is a tun like that.
Is not one pardonable, if one at last refuses! Can the inexhaustible have any right? Are not chains which are endless above human strength? Who would blame Sisyphus and Jean Valjean for saying: “It is enough!”
The obedience of matter is limited by friction; is there no limit to the obedience of the soul? If perpetual motion is impossible, can perpetual self-sacrifice be exacted?
The first step is nothing, it is the last which is difficult. What was the Champmathieu affair in comparison with Cosette’s marriage and of that which it entailed? What is a re-entrance into the galleys, compared to entrance into the void?
Oh, first step that must be descended, how sombre art thou! Oh, second step, how black art thou!
How could he refrain from turning aside his head this time?
Martyrdom is sublimation, corrosive sublimation. It is a torture which consecrates. One can consent to it for the first hour; one seats oneself on the throne of glowing iron, one places on one’s head the crown of hot iron, one accepts the globe of red hot iron, one takes the sceptre of red hot iron, but the mantle of flame still remains to be donned, and comes there not a moment when the miserable flesh revolts and when one abdicates from suffering?
At length, Jean Valjean entered into the peace of exhaustion.
He weighed, he reflected, he considered the alternatives, the mysterious balance of light and darkness.
Should he impose his galleys on those two dazzling children, or should he consummate his irremediable engulfment by himself? On one side lay the sacrifice of Cosette, on the other that of himself.
At what solution should he arrive? What decision did he come to?
What resolution did he take? What was his own inward definitive response to the unbribable interrogatory of fatality? What door did he decide to open? Which side of his life did he resolve upon closing and condemning? Among all the unfathomable precipices which surrounded him, which was his choice? What extremity did he accept? To which of the gulfs did he nod his head?
His dizzy revery lasted all night long.
He remained there until daylight, in the same attitude, bent double over that bed, prostrate beneath the enormity of fate, crushed, perchance, alas! with clenched fists, with arms outspread at right angles, like a man crucified who has been un-nailed, and flung face down on the earth. There he remained for twelve hours, the twelve long hours of a long winter’s night, ice-cold, without once raising his head, and without uttering a word. He was as motionless as a corpse, while his thoughts wallowed on the earth and soared, now like the hydra, now like the eagle. Any one to behold him thus motionless would have pronounced him dead; all at once he shuddered convulsively, and his mouth, glued to Cosette’s garments, kissed them; then it could be seen that he was alive.
Who could see? Since Jean Valjean was alone, and there was no one there.
The One who is in the shadows.
BOOK SEVENTH. — THE LAST DRAUGHT FROM THE CUP
CHAPTER I — THE SEVENTH CIRCLE AND THE EIGHTH HEAVEN
The days that follow weddings are solitary. People respect the meditations of the happy pair. And also, their tardy slumbers, to some degree. The tumult of visits and congratulations only begins later on. On the morning of the 17th of February, it was a little past midday when Basque, with napkin and feather-duster under his arm, busy in setting his antechamber to rights, heard a light tap at the door. There had been no ring, which was discreet on such a day. Basque opened the door, and beheld M. Fauchelevent. He introduced him into the drawing-room, still encumbered and topsy-turvy, and which bore the air of a field of battle after the joys of the preceding evening.
“Dame, sir,” remarked Basque, “we all woke up late.”
“Is your master up?” asked Jean Valjean.
“How is Monsieur’s arm?” replied Basque.
“Better. Is your master up?”
“Which one? the old one or the new one?”
“Monsieur Pontmercy.”
“Monsieur le Baron,” said Basque, drawing himself up.
A man is a Baron most of all to his servants. He counts for something with them; they are what a philosopher would call, bespattered with the title, and that flatters them. Marius, be it said in passing, a militant republican as he had proved, was now a Baron in spite of himself. A small revolution had taken place in the family in connection with this title. It was now M. Gillenormand who clung to it, and Marius who detached himself from it. But Colonel Pontmercy had written: “My son will bear my title.” Marius obeyed. And then, Cosette, in whom the woman was beginning to dawn, was delighted to be a Baroness.
“Monsieur le Baron?” repeated Basque. “I will go and see. I will tell him that M. Fauchelevent is here.”
“No. Do not tell him that it is I. Tell him that some one wishes to speak to him in private, and mention no name.”
“Ah!” ejaculated Basque.
“I wish to surprise him.”
“Ah!” ejaculated Basque once more, emitting his second “ah!” as an explanation of the first.
And he left the room.
Jean Valjean remained alone.
The drawing-room, as we have just said, was in great disorder. It seemed as though, by lending an air, one might still hear the vague noise of the wedding. On the polished floor lay all sorts of flowers which had fallen from garlands and head-dresses. The wax candles, burned to stumps, added stalactites of wax to the crystal drops of the chandeliers. Not a single piece of furniture was in its place. In the corners, three or four arm-chairs, drawn close together in a circle, had the appearance of continuing a conversation. The whole effect was cheerful. A certain grace still lingers round a dead feast. It has been a happy thing. On the chairs in disarray, among those fading flowers, beneath those extinct lights, people have thought of joy. The sun had succeeded to the chandelier, and made its way gayly into the drawing-room.
Several minutes elapsed. Jean Valjean stood motionless on the spot where Basque had left him. He was very pale. His eyes were hollow, and so sunken in his head by sleeplessness that they nearly disappeared in their orbits. His black coat bore the weary folds of a garment that has been up all night. The elbows were whitened with the down which the friction of cloth against linen leaves behind it.
Jean Valjean stared at the window outlined on the polished floor at his feet by the sun.
There came a sound at the door, and he raised his eyes.
Marius entered, his head well up, his mouth smiling, an indescribable light on his countenance, his brow expanded, his eyes triumphant. He had not slept either.
“It is you, father!” he exclaimed, on catching sight of Jean Valjean; “that idiot of a Basque had such a mysterious air! But you have come too early. It is only half past twelve. Cosette is asleep.”
That word: “Father,” said to M. Fauchelevent by Marius, signified: supreme felicity. There had always existed, as the reader knows, a lofty wall, a coldness and a constraint between them; ice which must be broken or melted. Marius had reached that point of intoxication when the wall was lowered, when the ice dissolved, and when M. Fauchelevent was to him, as to Cosette, a father.
He continued: his words poured forth, as is the peculiarity of divine paroxysms of joy.
“How glad I am to see you! If you only knew how we missed you yesterday! Good morning, father. How is your hand? Better, is it not?”
And, satisfied with the favorable reply which he had made to himself, he pursued:
“We have both been talking about you. Cosette loves you so dearly! You must not forget that you have a chamber here, We want nothing more to do with the Rue de l’Homme Arme. We will have no more of it at all. How could you go to live in a street like that, which is sickly, which is disagreeable, which is ugly, which has a barrier at one end, where one is cold, and into which one cannot enter? You are to come and install yourself here. And this very day. Or you will have to deal with Cosette. She means to lead us all by the nose, I warn you. You have your own chamber here, it is close to ours, it opens on the garden; the trouble with the clock has been attended to, the bed is made, it is all ready, you have only to take possession of it. Near your bed Cosette has placed a huge, old, easy-chair covered with Utrecht velvet and she has said to it: ‘Stretch out your arms to him.’ A nightingale comes to the clump of acacias opposite your windows, every spring. In two months more you will have it. You will have its nest on your left and ours on your right. By night it will sing, and by day Cosette will prattle. Your chamber faces due South. Cosette will arrange your books for you, your Voyages of Captain Cook and the other, — Vancouver’s and all your affairs. I believe that there is a little valise to which you are attached, I have fixed upon a corner of honor for that. You have conquered my grandfather, you suit him. We will live together. Do you play whist? you will overwhelm my grandfather with delight if you play whist. It is you who shall take Cosette to walk on the days when I am at the courts, you shall give her your arm, you know, as you used to, in the Luxembourg. We are absolutely resolved to be happy. And you shall be included in it, in our happiness, do you hear, father? Come, will you breakfast with us to-day?”
“Sir,” said Jean Valjean, “I have something to say to you. I am an ex-convict.”
The limit of shrill sounds perceptible can be overleaped, as well in the case of the mind as in that of the ear. These words: “I am an ex-convict,” proceeding from the mouth of M. Fauchelevent and entering the ear of Marius overshot the possible. It seemed to him that something had just been said to him; but he did not know what. He stood with his mouth wide open.
Then he perceived that the man who was addressing him was frightful. Wholly absorbed in his own dazzled state, he had not, up to that moment, observed the other man’s terrible pallor.
Jean Valjean untied the black cravat which supported his right arm, unrolled the linen from around his hand, bared his thumb and showed it to Marius.
“There is nothing the matter with my hand,” said he.
Marius looked at the thumb.
“There has not been anything the matter with it,” went on Jean Valjean.
There was, in fact, no trace of any injury.
Jean Valjean continued:
“It was fitting that I should be absent from your marriage. I absented myself as much as was in my power. So I invented this injury in order that I might not commit a forgery, that I might not introduce a flaw into the marriage documents, in order that I might escape from signing.”
Marius stammered.
“What is the meaning of this?”
“The meaning of it is,” replied Jean Valjean, “that I have been in the galleys.”
