JEAN VALJEAN was in the Paris sewer. And here is another resemblance between Paris and the sea: as with the sea, the diver can vanish into it.
The change was unbelievable. In the very heart of the town, Valjean had left the town; in a matter of moments, the time to lift a lid and let it fall, he had passed from daylight into total darkness, from midday to midnight, from tumult to silence and the stillness of the tomb; and, by a chance even more prodigious than that in the Rue Polonceau, from utmost peril to absolute safety. He stayed for some moments listening, as though in a stupor. The trapdoor of salvation had suddenly opened beneath him. Celestial benevolence had in some sort caught him by betrayal; the wonderful ambushes of Providence!
Meanwhile the injured man did not move, and Valjean did not know whether his burden was living or dead.
His first sensation was one of utter blindness; he could see nothing. It seemed to him also that he had suddenly become deaf. He could hear nothing. The tempest of slaughter going on only a few feet above his head reached him only as a distant murmur. He could feel solid ground beneath his feet and that was all, but it was enough. He reached out one arm and then the other, touching the wall on either side, and perceived the narrowness of the passage; he slipped, and knew that the floor was wet. He cautiously advanced a foot, fearing a pitfall, and noted that the floor continued. A gust of foetid air told him where he was.
After some moments, as his eyes became adjusted, he began to see by the dim light of the hatchway by which he had entered. He could make out that the passage in which he had landed was walled up behind him. It was a dead-end. In front of him was another wall, a wall of darkness. The light from the hatchway died a few paces from where he stood, throwing a pallid gleam on a few feet of damp wall. Beyond was massive blackness, to enter which was to be swallowed up. Nevertheless it could and must be done, and with speed. Valjean reflected that the grille he had perceived might also be seen by the soldiers, who might come in search of him. There was no time to be lost. He had laid Marius on the ground; he picked him up and taking him on his shoulders marched resolutely into the darkness.
The truth is that they were less safe than Valjean supposed. Other dangers no less fearful, might await them. After the turbulence of battle came the cave of evil mists and pitfalls; after chaos, the cloaca. Valjean had moved from one circle of Hell into another. After walking fifty paces he had to stop. A question had arisen. The passage ran into another, so that now there were two ways he might go. Which to choose – left or right? How was he to steer in that black labyrinth? But the labyrinth, as we have said, provides a clue – its slope. Follow the downward slope and you must come to the river.
Jean Valjean instantly realized this. He thought that he was probably in the sewer of Les Halles, and that if he went left, following the slope, he would arrive within a quarter of an hour at some outlet to the Seine between the Pont-au-Change and the Pont-Neuf – appear, that is to say, in broad daylight in the most frequented part of Paris, perhaps even at a crossroads, to the stupefaction of the passers-by. Arrest would then be certain. It was better to press deeper into the labyrinthine darkness, trusting to chance to provide a way out. He moved upwards, turning to the right.
When he had turned the corner into the new passageway the distant light from the hatch vanished completely and he was again blind. He pressed on nonetheless, as rapidly as he could. Marius’s arms were round his neck while his feet hung down behind. He held both arms with one hand, following the wall with the other. Marius’s cheek was pressed against his own and stuck to it, since it was bleeding; he felt the warm stream trickling beneath his clothes. But the faint breathing in his ear was a sign of life. The passage he was now following was less narrow than the first, but he struggled painfully along it. Yesterday’s rain had not yet drained away; it made a stream in the middle of the floor, and he had to keep close to the wall if he was not to have his feet in water. Thus he went darkly on, like some creature of the night.
But little by little, either because widely spaced openings let through a glimmer of light, or because his eyes had grown accustomed to the darkness, he recovered some degree of sight, so that he had a dim perception of the wall he was touching or the vaulted roof. The pupil dilates in darkness and in the end finds light, just as the soul dilates in misfortune and in the end finds God.
It was difficult to choose his path. The direction of the sewers in general follows that of the streets above them. At that time there were 2,200 streets in Paris; and one may picture a similar tangle below. The system of sewers existing at that time laid end to end would have had a length of eleven leagues. As we have said, the present network, thanks to the work of the past thirty years has a length of not less than sixty leagues.
Valjean started by making a mistake. He thought he was under the Rue Saint-Denis and it was unfortunate that he was not. There is an old stone sewer dating from Louis XIII under the Rue Saint-Denis, having only a single turn, under the former Cour des Miracles, and a single branch, the Saint-Martin sewer, of which the four arms intersect. But the Petite-Truanderie passage, of which the entrance is near the Corinth tavern, has never communicated with that under the Rue Saint-Denis; it runs into the Montmartre sewer, and this was the way Valjean had followed. Here there are endless chances of going astray, the Montmartre sewer being one of the most labyrinthine of all. Fortunately he had left behind him the Les Halles sewer, the plan of which is like a forest of ship’s masts; but more than one perplexity lay ahead of him, more than one street corner (for streets are what they really are) offered itself in the darkness like a question mark. First, on his left, the huge Plâtrière sewer, a sort of Chinese puzzle, running with countless twists and turns under the Hotel des Postes and the cornmarket to the Seine; secondly, on his right, the Rue du Cadran with its three blind alleys; thirdly, again on the left, a sort of fork zig-zagging into the basin of the Louvre; and finally, on the right, the blind alley of the Rue des Jeûneurs, without counting small offshoots here and there–all this before he reached the ring sewer, which alone could take him to some place sufficiently far off to be safe.
Had Valjean known all this he would have realized, simply by feeling the wall, that he could not be under the Rue Saint-Denis. Instead of the old cut stone, the costly old-time architecture which had dignity even in its sewers, he would have felt cheap modern materials under his hand, bourgeois masonry; but he knew nothing of this. He went anxiously but calmly ahead, seeing and knowing nothing, trusting to chance, or to Providence.
And by degrees the horror grew upon him, the darkness pierced his soul. He was walking through a riddle. He had to pick his way, almost to invent it, without seeing it. Every step he took might be his last. Would he find a way out, and in time? Would this huge underground sponge with interstices of stone allow itself to be conquered? Would he come to some impenetrable place where Marius would bleed to death and he himself would die of hunger, leaving two skeletons in the darkness? He asked himself these questions and had no answer; he was Jonah in the body of the whale.
Suddenly he was startled. He perceived that he was no longer going uphill. The stream washed round the heels of his boots, instead of round the toes. The sewer was going downwards. Would he arrive suddenly at the Seine? The danger was great, but the danger of turning back was greater still. He pressed on.
He was not going towards the Seine. The ridge of sand on the right bank caused one of the streams to flow into the Seine, the other into the main sewer. The crest of the ridge follows a capricious line, its culminating point, where the streams separate, being beneath the Rue Sainte-Avoye and the Rue Montmartre. This was the point which Valjean had reached. He was on the right road moving towards the ring-sewer; but this he did not know.
Whenever he came to a branch he measured its dimensions with his hand, and if he found the opening less wide than the passage he was following he passed it, rightly considering that every smaller passageway must be a dead end. Thus he avoided the fourfold trap we have described.
A moment came when he realized that he had left behind the Paris petrified by the uprising and was under the Paris living its everyday life. There was a sound like distant steady thunder above his head, the sound of cartwheels. He had been walking for half an hour, according to his reckoning, without any thought of rest, only changing the hand with which he held Marius. The darkness was greater than ever, but this reassured him.
Suddenly he saw his own shadow, faintly visible on the floor of the passage in front of him. He was conscious of a dim light on the viscous walls. He looked back in stupefaction.
Behind him, at what seemed a great distance, there shone a dim, flickering light, as it were a star that was observing him. It was a police lantern, and within its glow some eight or ten moving figures were to be seen.
On that morning a search of the sewers had been ordered, since it was considered that these might be used by the defeated rebels. Hidden Paris was to be ransacked while General Bugeaud cleared the open streets: a combined operation involving both the army and the police. Three squads of police agents and sewage men were exploring the underside of Paris, one the Right Bank, the second the Left Bank and the third the Cité. The police were armed with carbines, batons, swords and daggers. What Jean Valjean now saw was the lantern of the right-bank squad.
The squad had visited the curved passage and the three deadends under the Rue du Cadran. Valjean had passed them while they were in one of the dead-ends, which he found to be narrower than the main passageway. The police, emerging from the Cadran passageway, had thought they heard footsteps in the direction of the ring sewer. They were those of Valjean. The sergeant raised his lantern and they stared in his direction.
It was a bad moment for Valjean. Fortunately, although he could see the lantern, the lantern saw very little. It was light and he was in shadow, far from it and buried in darkness. He stopped, pressed against the wall. He did not know what was behind him. Sleeplessness, lack of food, and strong emotion had brought him to a state of hallucination. He saw a glow and moving forms, but did not know what they were.
When he ceased to move the sound ceased. The men listened and heard nothing, stared and saw nothing. They consulted together.
There was at this time an open space in the Montmartre sewer which has since been abolished because of the pool that formed in it when the heavy rains came down. The squad were able to assemble here. Valjean saw them form a sort of circle, heads close together. The outcome of their discussion was that they had heard nothing and there was no one there. To move towards the ring sewer would be a waste of time, and it would be better to make haste towards Saint-Merry where, if any rebel had escaped, he was more likely to be found.
The sergeant gave the order to go left towards the Seine. If they had divided into two parties and followed both directions Valjean would have been captured. It was as near as that. Probably, to guard against the possibility of an encounter with a number of rebels, they had been ordered not to separate. They turned away, leaving Valjean behind, but all he knew of it was the sudden vanishing of the lantern. For a long time he stayed motionless with his back to the wall, hearing the receding echo of that spectral patrol.
It must be said for the police of that time that even in the gravest circumstances they continued imperturbably to perform their duties. An uprising was not, in their view, a reason for giving villains a free hand, nor could society be neglected because the government was in danger. Ordinary duties were correctly carried out together with extraordinary ones. In the midst of an incalculable political event, and under the threat of revolution, without letting himself be distracted by all this, the policeman pursued the criminal.
This is precisely what happened on the Right Bank of the Seine on that afternoon of 6 June, a short way beyond the Pont des Invalides.
There is no bank there now. The aspect of the place has changed. But on that bank, some distance apart, two men seemed to be observing one another, one seeking to avoid the other. It was like a game of chess played remotely and in silence. Neither seemed in a hurry; both moved slowly as though each feared that by hastening he might speed up the other. As it were, an appetite in pursuit of a prey, without seeming to be acting with intent. The prey was wary and constantly alert. Due distance between tracker and tracked was preserved. The would-be escaper was a puny creature; the hunter a tall robust man, hard of aspect and probably of person.
The first, the weaker, sought to avoid the second, but he did so in a furious manner, and anyone looking closely at him would have seen in his eyes all the dark hostility of flight, the menace that resides in fear.
The river-bank was deserted. There were no strollers, nor even a boatman on any of the barges moored here and there. The men could best be seen from the opposite bank, and to anyone viewing them at that distance the first would have appeared a ragged, furtive creature, shivering under a thin smock, while the other had an aspect of officialdom, with the coat of authority buttoned close under his chin.
The reader would perhaps recognize the men, could he see them more closely. What was the second man seeking to do? Probably to clothe the first more warmly. When a man clothed by the State pursues a man clad in rags, it is to make him, too, a man clothed by the State. But the matter of colour is important. To be clad in blue is splendid; to be clad in red is disagreeable. There is a purple of the depths. It was probably this disagreeable purple that the first man was anxious to avoid.
If the other let him go on without attempting to lay hands on him, it was probably because he hoped to see him reach some significant spot – the delicate operation known as ‘shadowing’. What makes this appear likely is that the uniformed man, seeing an empty fiacre pass along the quay, signalled to the driver, and the latter, evidently knowing with whom he had to deal, turned and kept pace with the two men. This was not noticed by the ragged fugitive.
The fiacre rolled past the trees of the Champs-Élysées, its driver being visible above the parapet, whip in hand. Among the secret instructions issued to the police is the following: ‘Always have a vehicle handy, in case of need.’
Each manoeuvring with admirable strategy, the two men drew near a ramp running from the quay down to the bank, which enabled cab-drivers reaching Passy to water their horses. This has since been abolished in the name of symmetry. The horses go thirsty, but the eye is flattered.
It seemed likely that the man in the smock intended to climb this ramp and attempt to escape by the Champs-Élysées, a place abounding in trees but also in policemen. That part of the quay is very little distant from the house brought from Moret to Paris in 1824 by Colonel Brack, known as the house of François I. There is a guard-post very near it
Surprisingly, the pursued man did not go up the ramp to the quay, but continued to move along the bank. His position was plainly becoming desperate. Apart from plunging into the Seine, what was he to do? He had no access to the quay other than the ramp or stairway, and he was near the spot, at the bend of the Seine towards the Pont d’Iéna, where the bank, growing ever more narrow, finally vanished underwater. There he would find himself trapped between the sheer wall on his right and the river on his left, with authority close behind him. It is true that the ending of the bank was concealed from him by a heap of rubble some seven or eight feet high, the remains of some demolition. But did he really hope to hide behind it? Surely not. The ingenuousness of thieves is not so great.
The heap of rubble formed a sort of hillock running from the water’s edge to the quay wall. The fugitive reached this hillock and hurried round it, so that his pursuer could not see him. The latter, not seeing, was himself unseen; accordingly he abandoned all pretence and quickened his pace. He reached the heap and went round it, and then stood still in amazement. The man he was pursuing was not there! He had completely disappeared. Only some thirty feet of bank lay beyond the heap before it vanished into the river. The fugitive could not have plunged into the Seine or climbed on to the quay without being seen by his pursuer. What had become of him?
The man in the buttoned coat went to the extreme end of the bank and stood there reflecting, fists clenched and eyes gleaming. Suddenly he clapped a hand to his forehead. He had seen, at the point where the bank ended, a wide, low iron grille with a heavy lock and three massive hinges. It opened as much on to the river as on to the bank, and a dark stream flowed from it, running into the Seine.
Beyond the thick, rusty bars a dark vaulted corridor was to be seen. The man folded his arms and looked angrily at the grille. Since this served no purpose, he attempted to force it open, but it resisted all his shaking. It must certainly have been opened, although he had heard nothing, which was strange considering its rusty state. And it had been closed. This meant that whoever had opened it had done so not with a hook but with a key. The idea dawned suddenly on the pursuer and drew from him a roar of indignation:
‘Upon my soul, a government key!’
Calming down immediately, he gave vent to his thoughts in a series of ironic monosyllables:
‘Well! Well! Well! Well!’
Having said this, and hoping for he knew not what – to see the man emerge or other men arrive – he settled down by the heap of rubble to keep watch with the patience of a game-dog.
The driver of the fiacre, following all his movements, had come to a stop near the parapet above him. Foreseeing a long wait, he put nosebags on his horses. Occasional strollers from the Pont d’Iéna paused to observe those two motionless features of the landscape – the man on the bank and the fiacre on the quay.
Jean Valjean had resumed his journey without again stopping. It became more and more laborious. The height of the passageway varies, being of an average five feet six inches; Valjean had to bend down to prevent Marius rubbing against the roof, and he had to feel his way constantly along the wall. The dampness of the stone and the slipperiness of the floor offered insecure hand- and foot-holds. He staggered in the horrid excrement of the town. The lights of vent-holes appeared only at long intervals, so pallid that what was sunlight might have been moonlight; all else was mist, miasma, and darkness. Valjean was both hungry and thirsty, especially thirsty, in that place of water where there was none to drink. Even his great strength, so little diminished with age, was beginning to flag, and the weight of his burden increased with his fatigue. He was carrying Marius so as best to allow him freedom to breathe. He felt the scuttle of rats between his feet, and one was so startled as to bite him. From time to time he was revived by a gust of fresh air from the vent-holes.
It was perhaps three o’clock in the afternoon when he reached the ring sewer. He was at first astonished by the suddenly increased width, finding himself in a passageway where his outstretched hands could not touch both walls nor his head the roof. This main sewer is in fact eight feet wide and seven feet high.
At the point where the Montmartre sewer joins the main sewer two other passageways form an intersection. Faced by four alternatives, a less sagacious man might have been undecided. Valjean took the widest way, the ring sewer. But here again the question arose – to go up or down? He felt that time was running out and that he must at all costs try to reach the Seine. That is to say, downward; and he turned to the left.
It was well that he did so, for the main sewer, being nothing but the former stream of Ménilmontant, ends, if one goes upwards, in a cul-de-sac, at the spring which was its original source. Had Valjean gone upwards he would finally have arrived, exhausted, at a blank wall. At a pinch, by turning back he might eventually have reached the Amelot sewer and thence, if he did not go astray in the maze beneath the Bastille, have come to the outlet to the Seine near the Arsenal. But for this he would have needed a detailed knowledge of the system, and, we must repeat, he knew nothing of it. Had he been asked where he was he could only have answered, ‘In darkness.’
Instinct served him well. Descent was the way of safety. A little way beyond an effluent which probably came from the Madeleine, he stopped. A large hatchway, probably in the Rue d’Anjou, gave a light that was almost bright. With the gentleness of a man handling a wounded brother, Valjean laid Marius down at the edge of the sewer. Marius’s bloodstained face in the pallid light of the hatchway was like a face of death. His eyes were closed, the hair plastered to his temples, his hands limp and dangling, and there was blood at the corners of his mouth. Gently thrusting inside his shirt, Valjean laid a hand on his chest and found that his heart was still beating. Tearing strips off his own shirt, he bandaged Marius’s wounds as best he could.
Then, bending over the unconscious form in that dim light, he stared at him with inexpressible hatred.
He found two objects in Marius’s clothing, the piece of bread left from the day before and his wallet. He ate the bread and, opening the wallet, found on the first page the lines Marius had written: ‘My name is Marius Pontmercy. My body is to be taken to the house of my grandfather, M. Gillenormand, 6 Rue des Filles-du-Calvaire, in the Marais.’
Valjean pored over the message, memorizing the address; then he replaced the wallet in Marius’s pocket. He had eaten and regained his strength. Taking Marius on his back with his head on his right shoulder, he resumed his downward path.
The main sewer, following the slope of the Ménilmontant valley, is nearly two leagues in length, and paved to a large extent; but the list of names with which we have enlightened the reader was not known to Valjean. He did not know what part of the town he was passing under or how far he had come. Only the increasing dimness of the occasional hatchways told him that the sun was setting, and the rumble of vehicles above his head had now almost ceased. He concluded that he was no longer under the centre of Paris but was nearing some outlying district where there were fewer streets and houses and, in consequence, fewer hatchways. He pressed on, feeling his way in the darkness, which suddenly became terrible.
He found that he was moving in water, and that what he had under his feet was not stone but sludge.
It happens sometimes on the sea coast that a man walking at low tide far out along the beach suddenly finds that he is moving with difficulty. The going is heavy beneath his feet, no longer sand but glue. The surface is dry, but every footprint fills with water. Yet all the beach wears the same aspect, so that the eye cannot distinguish between what is firm and what is not. The walker continues on his way, tending to move inland and feeling no disquiet. Why should he? But it is as though the heaviness of his feet increases with every step he takes. Suddenly he sinks several inches. He pauses, and looking down at his feet sees that they have disappeared. He picks up his feet and tries to turn back, but only sinks in deeper. The sand is over his ankles. He struggles and finds it reaching his calves. With indescribable terror he realizes that he is in a patch of shifting sand, where a man cannot walk any more than a fish can swim. He flings away whatever he is carrying, shedding his cargo like a vessel in distress. It is too late, the sand has reached his knees.
He shouts, waving hat or handkerchief, while the sand gains upon him. If the beach is deserted and there is no heroic rescuer at hand, then he is done for, destined to be swallowed up, condemned to that appalling burial which can be neither hastened nor delayed, which may take hours, dragging down a strong and healthy man the more remorselessly the more he struggles. He sees the world vanish from his gaze; sky, land, and sea. There is nothing he can do. The sand creeps up to his stomach, his chest. He waves his arms, shouts and groans in torment; the sand reaches his shoulders and neck, until nothing is left but staring eyes and a crying mouth that is suddenly silenced. Only an extended arm remains. The man is gone.
This fateful occurrence, still possible on some seashores, was also possible thirty years ago in the Paris sewer. During the work begun in 1833 the underground network was subject to sudden collapses, when in particularly friable stretches of soil the bottom, whether of paving stones as in the old sewers, or concrete, as in the new, gave way. There were crevasses composed of shifting sand from the seashore, neither earth nor water. Sometimes the depth was very great.
Terrible to the in such a fashion. Death may mitigate its horror with dignity; at the stake or in a shipwreck nobility is possible. But this suffocation in the sewer is unclean. It is humiliating. Filth is synonymous with shame; it is squalid and infamous. To die in a butt of Malmsey, like the Duke of Clarence, may pass; but to die in a pit of slime … There is the darkness of Hell, the filth of evil; the dying man does not know whether he is to become a ghost or a toad.
Everywhere else the grave is sinister; here it is shapeless. The depth of these pits varied as did their length and density, according to the nature of the subsoil. Some were three or four feet in depth, others eight or ten; some had no bottom. The slime was almost solid in some places, almost liquid in others. A man might have taken a day to be swallowed up in the Lunière pit, a few minutes only in that of Phélippeaux, depending on the thickness of the slime. A child might be safe where a man would be lost. The first resource was to rid oneself of every burden, fling away one’s bag of tools or whatever it might be; and this was what every sewage-man did when he felt the ground unsafe beneath his feet.
The pits were due to various causes: the friability of the earth, collapses at some lower level, heavy showers in summer, incessant rain in winter, long steady drizzle. Sometimes the weight of the houses broke the roof of a gallery or caused a floor to give way. The settling of the Panthéon, a quarter of a century ago, destroyed a part of the caves under the Mont Sainte-Geneviève. When such things happened the evil in some cases was manifest in cracks in the street, and could be quickly remedied. But it also happened that nothing was visible from above, in which case, woe to the sewage-men. Entering the collapsed place unawares, they might be lost. Such cases are entered in the records. There are a number of names, including that of one Blaise Poutrain, buried in a pit under the Rue Carème-Prenant.
There was also the youthful and charming Vicomte d’Escoubleau, one of the heroes of the siege of Lerida, which they assailed in silk stockings, violins leading the way. D’Escoubleau, surprised one night in the bed of his cousin the Duchesse de Sourdis, was drowned in a pit in the Beautrellis sewer, when he sought to escape from the Duke. Madame de Sourdis, learning the manner of his death, called for her smelling salts and was too busy inhaling them to weep. No love can survive such an event. Hero refuses to wash the corpse of Leander; This be holds her nose before Pyramus, saying, ‘Pooh!’.
Jean Valjean had come to a pit. These were numerous under the Champs-Élysées, which because of its excessive fluidity did not lend itself to the work of construction and conservation. When in 1836 the old stone sewer beneath the Faubourg Saint-Honoré, where we find Valjean at this moment, was rebuilt, the shifting sand which runs from the Champs-Élysées to the Seine delayed the operation for six months, to the indignation of the surface dwellers, particularly those with private houses and carriages. The work was not only difficult but dangerous. It is true that there were four and a half months of rain, and the Seine was three times flooded.
The pit Valjean reached had been caused by the rain of the previous day. A depression in the flooring, insufficiently supported by the sand beneath, had led to a flood of rainwater, and the collapse of the floor had followed. The broken floor had subsided into the swamp, it was impossible to say over what distance. The darkness was greater here than anywhere else. It was a hole of mud in a cavern of night.
Valjean felt the surface slip away from under him, water on top, sludge beneath. He had to go on. Marius was at death’s door and he himself exhausted. So he struggled on, and at first the bog did not seem unduly deep. But then it grew deeper – slime halfway up his legs and water above his knees. He had to keep Marius as best he could above the water, which had now reached his waist. The mire, thick enough to support a single man, evidently could not sustain two. Either of them might have passed through separately. Valjean went on, carrying what might already be a corpse.
The water reached his armpits and he felt himself sinking; it was all he could do to move. His own sturdiness that kept him upright was also an obstacle. Still carrying Marius, and by the use of unbelievable strength, he pressed on, sinking ever deeper. Only his head was now above water, and his two arms carrying Marius. In old paintings of the flood there is one of a mother carrying her child in this fashion.
He went on, tilting his face upwards so that he could continue to breathe. Anyone seeing him at that moment might have thought him a mask floating in the darkness. Dimly above him he could see the livid face of Marius. He made a last desperate effort, thrusting a foot forward, and it rested upon something solid – only just in time. He straightened and thrust with a kind of fury on this support, feeling that he had found the first step of a stairway back to life.
In fact this foothold, reached at the supreme moment, was the other end of the floor, which had sagged under the weight of water but without breaking. Well-built floors have this solidity; the floor still existed, and, climbing its further slope, Valjean was saved.
Emerging from the water, he stumbled on a stone and fell on his knees. This he thought proper, and he stayed in this posture for some time, his spirit absorbed in the thought of God. Then he stood upright, shivering and foul, bowed beneath his burden, dripping with mire; but with his soul filled with a strange lightness.
He went on again. If he had not left his life in that pit, he seemed certainly to have left his strength there. The final effort had exhausted him. His weariness was now such that at every few paces he had to pause for breath. Once he had to sit down while he altered Marius’s position, and he thought that he would never get up again. But if his strength was flagging his will was not, and he rose.
He went on despairingly, but almost quickly, and covered a hundred paces without looking up, almost without breathing, until suddenly he bumped into the wall. He had reached a turning without seeing it. Looking up, he saw in the far distance a light, and this was no cavern light, but the clear white light of day.
He saw the way of escape, and his feelings were those of a damned soul seeing the way out of Hell. He was no longer conscious of fatigue or of the weight of Marius; his muscles were revived, and he ran rather than walked. As he drew near to it he saw the outlet more plainly. It was a pointed arch, less high than the ceiling, which was growing gradually lower, and less wide than the passageway, which was narrowing. The tunnel ended in a bottleneck, logical enough in a prison but not in a sewer, and something which has now been corrected.
But when he reached it, Valjean stopped short, It was an outlet, but it offered no way out. The arch was closed with a stout grille, fastened with a huge, rusty lock. He could see the keyhole and the bolt securely in place – clearly it was double-locked. It was one of those prison locks that were common in Paris at that time. And beyond the grille was open air, daylight, the river and a strip of bank, very narrow but sufficient to escape by. All Paris, all liberty, lay beyond it; to the right, downstream, the Pont d’Iéna, to the left the Pont des Invalides. One of the most deserted spots in Paris, a good place to escape from after dark. Flies came and went through the grille.
The time was perhaps half past eight in the evening, and dusk was falling. Valjean set Marius down by the wall, where the floor was dry; then, going to the grille, he seized it with both hands. But his frantic shaking had no effect. He tried one bar after another hoping to find one less solid that might be used as a lever, or to break the lock. But no bar shifted. He had no lever, no possible purchase, no way of opening the gate.
Was this to be the end of it? He had not the strength to turn back, and could not, in any case, have struggled again through the pit from which he had so miraculously emerged. And could he hope to escape the police patrol for a second time? In any event, where was he to go? Another outlet might be similarly obstructed. Probably all outlets were closed in this way. By chance he had entered by one that was not, and in so doing had escaped into a prison. It was the end. All his efforts had been futile. God had rejected him.
Both men were caught in the great, grim cobweb of death, and Valjean felt the running feet of the deadly spider. He turned his back to the grille and sank on to the floor beside the motionless form of Marius, crouched rather than seated, his head sunk between his knees. There was no way out. It was the last extreme of anguish. Of whom did he think in that moment? Not of himself or of Marius. He thought of Cosette.
While he was in this state of despair a hand was laid on his shoulder and a low voice said:
‘We’ll go halves.’
Valjean thought he was dreaming. He had not heard a sound. He looked up and saw a man standing beside him.
The man was clad in a smock. His feet were bare and he carried his shoes in his hand, having removed them so that he might approach Valjean in silence. Valjean did not hesitate. Unexpected though this meeting was, he knew the man instantly. It was Thénardier.
Despite his astonishment, Valjean was too accustomed to sudden emergencies, too weary and alert, to lose his self-possession. In any event his situation could not be made worse by the presence of Thénardier. There was a brief pause. Thénardier raised a hand to his forehead, knitting his brow and pursing his lips in the manner of a man seeking to recognize another. He failed to do so. Jean Valjean had his back to the light, and was anyway so begrimed and bloodstained that even in the brightest light he would have been unrecognizable. Thénardier, on the other hand, his face illumined by the light from the grille, faint though it was, was immediately known to Valjean, and this gave the latter a certain advantage in the dialogue that was to take place between them.
Valjean saw at once that Thénardier did not know him. The two men contemplated one another in the dim light, each taking the measure of the other. It was Thénardier who broke the silence.
‘How are you going to get out?’
Valjean made no reply. Thénardier went on:
‘No way of unlocking the door. But you’ve got to get away from here.’
‘That’s true.’
‘So we’ll go halves.’
‘How do you mean?’
‘You’ve killed a man. All right. I have a key.’ Thénardier pointed at Marius and went on: ‘I don’t know you but I’m ready to help you. You must be a friend.’
Valjean began to understand. Thénardier supposed him to be a murderer.
‘Listen, comrade,’ Thénardier went on. ‘You won’t have killed that man without looking to see what he has in his pocket. Give me half and I’ll unlock the door.’ He produced a large key from under his smock. ‘Want to see what a master key looks like? Here it is.’
Valjean ‘stayed stupid’, in Corneille’s phrase, to the point of scarcely believing his ears. Providence had come to his rescue in a horrid guise, sending a good angel in the shape of Thénardier.
Thénardier fished in a large pocket concealed under his smock and brought out a length of rope which he offered to Valjean.
‘I’ll give you this as well.’
‘What for?’
‘And you’ll need a stone. But you’ll find plenty of those outside.’
‘What am I to do with it?’
‘Fool. You’ll have to chuck the body in the river, and if it isn’t tied to a stone it’ll float.’
Valjean took the rope. We are all subject to such mechanical gestures. Thénardier snapped his fingers as a thought occurred to him.
‘Come to that, how did you manage to get through the pit down there? I wouldn’t have risked it. You smell foul.’
After a pause he went on:
‘I keep asking questions and you’re right not to answer. It’s a preparation for the nasty quarter of an hour in court. And by not talking you don’t risk talking too loud. Anyway, just because I can’t see your face and don’t know your name, that isn’t to say I don’t know what you are and what you want. I know, all right. You’ve done that cove in, and now you’ve got to get rid of him. Well, I’ll help you. Helping a good man in trouble, that’s my line.’
While professing to approve of Valjean’s silence, he was evidently trying to get him to talk. He nudged his shoulder, seeking to see his profile, and exclaimed without raising his voice;
‘Talking of that pit, you’re a fine fool, aren’t you? Why didn’t you leave him there?’
Valjean remained silent. Thénardier tightened the rag that served him as a neck-tie, putting a finishing touch to his appearance of a capable, reliable man. He went on:
‘Well, perhaps you were right. The workmen will be along tomorrow to fill in the pit. They’d find him, and bit by bit, one way or another, it would have been traced to you. Somebody must have come through the sewer. Who was it, and how did he get out? The police have their wits about them. The sewer would give you away. A discovery like that’s uncommon, it attracts notice; not many people use the sewer for their business, while the river belongs to everyone. The river’s the real drain. In a month’s time your man is fished out at Saint-Cloud. So what does that prove? Nothing. A lump of carcass. And who killed him? Paris. No need for any inquiry. You were right.’
The more loquacious Thénardier became the more silent was Valjean. Thénardier again shook his shoulder.
‘Well, now, let’s settle up. I’ve shown you my key, let’s see your money.’
Thénardier was haggard, wild, shabby, slightly threatening but friendly. And his manner was strangely equivocal. He did not seem quite at his ease, talking furtively in a low voice, and now and then putting a finger to his lips. It was hard to guess why. There were only the two of them. Valjean reflected that there might be other footpads hidden somewhere near, and that Thénardier did not want to share with them.
‘Let’s have it,’ he said. ‘How much did the chap have on him?’
Valjean searched his pockets. We may recall that he always carried money on him from the necessity of the hazardous life he lived. But this time he was caught short. In his preoccupation when he had donned his National Guard uniform the previous evening he had forgotten to take his wallet. He had only a little change in his waistcoat pocket, a mere thirty francs. He turned the muddy garment inside out and spread them on the floor – a louis d’or, two five-franc pieces and five or six sous.
‘You didn’t kill for much,’ said Thénardier.
He began familiarly to pat Valjean’s pockets and those of Marius, and Valjean, anxious to keep his back to the light, did not stop him. While searching Marius, Thénardier, with a pickpocket’s adroitness, managed to tear off a fragment of material which he hid in his smock without Valjean’s noticing; probably he thought that this would later help him to identify the murdered man and his murderer. But he found no more money.
‘It’s true,’ he said. ‘That’s all there is.’
Forgetting what he had said about sharing, he took the lot. He hesitated over the sous, but on consideration took those as well.
‘It’s helping a cove on the cheap,’ he said.
He again produced the key.
‘Well, pal, you’d better go out It’s like a fair, you pay when you leave. You’ve paid.’ And he laughed. In helping an unknown man to escape, was he disinterestedly concerned to save a murderer? We may doubt it.
After helping Valjean to lift Marius on to his shoulders he crept to the grille on his bare feet and peered out with a finger to his lips. Then he put the key in the lock. The bolt slid back and the gate opened without a sound; evidently the hinges were carefully oiled and it was used more often than one might think, presumably by some criminal gang, for which the sewer was a place of refuge.
Thénardier opened the gate just enough to allow Valjean to pass through, closed it after him, turned the key in the lock and then vanished into the darkness, as silently as if he walked on tiger’s paws. An instant later the sinister agent of providence was invisible.
And Valjean was outside.
He laid Marius on the bank. He was outside!
The darkness, stench, and horror were all behind him. He was bathed in pure, fresh air and surrounded by silence, the delicious silence of sunset in a clear sky. It was dusk; night was falling, the great liberator, the friend of all those needing darkness to escape from distress. The sky offered a prospect of immense calm; the river lapped at his feet with the sound of a kiss. There was a goodnight murmur from the nests in the trees on the Champs-Élysées and a few stars faintly showed in the deepening blue of the sky. The evening bestowed on Jean Valjean all the tenderness of infinity, in that enchanting hour which says neither no nor yes, dark enough for distance to be lost, but light enough for nearness to be seen.
For some moments he was overwhelmed by this serenity, and forgetful of what had passed, all suffering lost in this drowsy glow of dark and light, where his spirit soared. He could not refrain from contemplating the huge chiaroscuro above him, and the majestic silence of the eternal sky moved him to ecstasy and prayer. Then, recalled to a sense of duty, he bent over Marius and sprinkled a few drops of water on his face from the hollow of his hand. Marius’s eyelids did not move, but his open mouth still breathed.
Valjean was again about to dip his hand in the water when he had that familiar sense of someone behind him. He looked sharply round and found this to be the case. A tall man in a long coat, with folded arms and a cudgel in his right hand, was standing a few paces away. In the half-darkness it seemed a spectral figure; but Valjean recognized Javert.
The reader has doubtless guessed that the pursuer of Thénardier was Javert. After his unhoped-for escape from the rebel stronghold the inspector had gone to the Préfecture de Police, where he had reported to the prefect in person. He had then immediately returned to his duties, which entailed keeping watch on the right bank near the Champs-Élysées, a spot which for some time had been attracting the notice of the police. Seeing Thénardier, he had followed him. The rest we know.
We may also gather that the gate so obligingly opened for Valjean was a stratagem on the part of Thénardier. With the instinct of a hunted man, Thénardier had sensed that Javert was still there and he wanted to distract him. What could be better than to supply him with a murderer? Producing Valjean in his place, Thénardier would send the police off on another trail: Javert would be rewarded for his patience, and he himself, besides gaining thirty francs, would have a better chance of getting away.
Valjean had fallen out of the frying-pan into the fire. The two encounters, first with Thénardier and then Javert, caused him a severe shock.
Javert did not recognize Valjean, who, as we have said, looked quite unlike himself. Without unfolding his arms, but securely gripping his cudgel, he asked calmly:
‘Who are you?’
‘Myself.’
‘Who is that?’
‘Jean Valjean.’
Javert put the cudgel between his teeth and leaning forward clapped his hands on Valjean’s shoulders, seizing them in a vice-like grip. Staring hard, he recognized him. Their faces were nearly touching. Javert’s gaze was terrible. Jean Valjean stayed unresisting, like a lion consenting to the clutch of a lynx.
‘Inspector Javert,’ he said, ‘you have got me. In any case, since this morning I have considered myself your prisoner. I did not give you my address in order to escape from you. But grant me one thing.’
Javert did not seem to hear. He was gazing intently at Valjean with an expression of wild surmise. Finally, releasing him, he took his cudgel again in his hand, and, as though in a dream, murmured:
‘What are you doing here? Who is this man?’
‘It is about him I wished to speak,’ said Valjean. ‘You may do what you like with me, but help me first to take him home. That is all I ask.’
Javert’s face twitched, as always happened when someone thought him capable of making a concession. But he did not refuse. Bending down, he took a handkerchief from his pocket, soaked it in water, and bathed Marius’s blood-stained forehead.
‘He was at the barricade,’ he muttered; ‘the one called Marius.’ First-class agent that he was, he had taken note of everything, even when he thought himself on the verge of death. He took Marius’s wrist, feeling for his pulse.
‘He’s wounded,’ said Valjean.
‘He’s dead,’ said Javert.
‘No. Not yet.’
‘You brought him here from the barricade?’ asked Javert. His state of preoccupation must have been great indeed for him not to have dwelt on that disquieting rescue, or even to have noted Valjean’s failure to reply.
Jean Valjean, for his part, seemed to have only one thought in mind.
‘He lives in the Marais, Rue des Filles-du-Calvaire,’ he said, ‘with a relative whose name I forget.’ He felt in Marius’s jacket, found the wallet, opened it at the written page and handed it to Javert.
There was still just light enough to read by, and Javert, in any case, had the eyes of a cat. He studied the words and grunted. ‘Gillenormand, 6 Rue des Filles-du-Calvaire.’ Then he shouted: ‘Coachman!’
We may recall the fiacre which was waiting ‘just in case’. In a very short time it had come down the ramp and Marius had been placed on the back seat, while Javert and Valjean sat in front. The fiacre drove off rapidly along the quay in the direction of the Bastille.
Leaving the quay it entered the streets, the coachman whipping up his horses. There was stony silence in the fiacre. Marius was prostrate in a corner, head drooping, arms and legs limp, as though he had only a coffin to look forward to. Valjean was a figure of shadow and Javert like a figure carved in stone. The dark interior of the fiacre, when it passed under a street lamp, was momentarily lighted and the three tragic figures were thrown into relief – the seeming corpse, the spectre, and the statue.
At every lurch a drop of blood fell from Marius’s hair. It was quite dark when they reached 6 Rue des Filles-du-Calvaire. Javert got out first, and raising the heavy iron knocker, moulded in the ancient design of goat and satyr, knocked loudly. The door opened to disclose a yawning porter with a candle. Everyone was asleep. They retire early in the Marais, particularly in times of upheaval. That respectable old quarter, terrified of revolution, takes refuge in slumber like a child hiding its head under the sheets.
Jean Valjean and the coachman brought Marius from the fiacre, Valjean carrying him under the armpits and the coachman carrying him by the legs. As they did so Valjean thrust a hand under his torn clothes to feel his chest and make sure that his heart was still beating. It was in fact beating a little less feebly, as though the jolting of the fiacre had restored to it some degree of life.
Javert questioned the porter in a brisk, official tone.
‘Anyone live here called Gillenormand?’
‘Yes. What do you want of him?’
‘We’re bringing back his son.’
‘His son?’ exclaimed the porter in amazement.
‘He’s dead.’
Valjean, at whom the porter had been staring with horror as he stood, ragged and covered in mud in the background, shook his head. The porter seemed to understand neither of them.
‘He was at the barricade,’ said Javert, ‘and here he is.’
‘At the barricade!’
‘He got himself killed. Go and wake his father.’ The porter did not stir. ‘Go on,’ said Javert, and added: ‘He’ll be buried tomorrow.’
For Javert, the common incidents of the town were strictly classified, this being the basis of foresight and alertness, and every contingency had its place. Possible facts were, so to speak, in drawers from which they could be brought out as the case required, in varying quantities. Happenings in the street came under the headings of commotion, upheaval, carnival, funeral.
The porter awakened Basque. Basque awakened Nicolette, who awakened Aunt Gillenormand. They let the old man sleep on, thinking that he would know soon enough.
Marius was taken up to the first floor, without anyone in other parts of the house knowing what went on, and laid on an old settee in Monsieur Gillenormand’s sitting-room. While Basque went in search of a doctor and Nicolette ransacked the linen cupboard, Valjean felt Javert’s hand on his arm. He understood and went downstairs, with Javert close behind him. The porter watched them go as he had watched them arrive, with startled drowsiness. They got back into the fiacre, and the driver climbed on to his seat.
‘Inspector,’ said Valjean, ‘grant me one last favour.’
‘What is it?’ Javert asked harshly.
‘Let me go home for a minute. After that you can do what you like with me.’
Javert was silent for some moments, his chin sunk in the collar of his greatcoat. Then he pulled down the window in front of him.
‘Drive to No. 7 Rue de l’Homme-Armé,’ he said.
Neither spoke a word during the journey.
What did Jean Valjean wish to do? He wished to finish what he had begun: to tell Cosette the news of Marius, give her perhaps some other useful information and, if possible, make certain final arrangements. Where he personally was concerned, all was over. He had been taken by Javert and had made no resistance. Another man in his place might have thought of the rope Thénardier had given him and the bars of the first prison cell he would enter; but since his encounter with the bishop there was in Valjean a profound religious abhorrence of any act of violence, even against himself. Suicide, that mysterious plunge into the unknown, which might entail some degree of death of the soul, was impossible for Jean Valjean.
At the entrance to the Rue de l’Homme-Armé, the fiacre stopped, since the street was too narrow to admit vehicles. Javert and Valjean got out. The coachman respectfully pointed out to Monsieur l’Inspecteur that the velvet upholstery of his cab was stained by the blood of the murdered man and the mud of his murderer, which is what he understood them to be. Bringing a notebook out of his pocket he requested the inspector to write a few words to this effect. Javert thrust the book aside.
‘How much does it come to, including the time of waiting and the distance travelled?’
‘I waited seven hours and a quarter,’ the coachman replied, ‘and my upholstery is new. It comes to eighty francs, Monsieur.’
Javert got four napoleons out of his pocket and dismissed him.
Valjean thought that Javert intended to escort him on foot to either the Blancs-Manteaux or the Archives police post, both of which were near at hand. They walked along the street which, as usual, was deserted. Valjean knocked on the door of No. 7 and it was opened.
‘Go up,’ said Javert. He had a strange expression, as though it cost him an effort to speak. I’ll wait for you here.’
Valjean looked at him. This was little in accordance with his usual habits. But Javert now had an air of lofty confidence, that of a cat that allows a mouse a moment’s respite; and since Valjean had resolved to give himself up and be done with it, this did not greatly surprise him. He entered the house, called ‘It’s me’ to the porter, who had pulled the cord from his bed, and went upstairs.
On the first floor he paused. All Calvaries had their stations. The sash window was open. As in many old houses the staircase looked on to the street and was lighted at night by the street lamp immediately outside. Perhaps automatically, or simply to draw breath, Valjean thrust out his head. He looked down into the street, which was short and lighted from end to end by its single lamp. He gave a start of amazement. There was no one there.
Javert had gone.
Basque and the porter had carried Marius, lying motionless on the settee, into the salon. The doctor had arrived and Aunt Gillenormand had got up. Aunt Gillenormand paced to and fro wringing her hands, incapable of doing more than say, ‘Heavens, is it possible!’ After the first shock she took a more philosophical view, to the point of saying, ‘It was bound to end like this.’ But she did not go so far as to say, ‘I told you so’, as is customary on these occasions.
At the doctor’s orders a camp-bed was set up beside the settee. The doctor found that Marius’s pulse was still beating, that he had no deep wound in his chest and that the blood at the corner of his lips came from the nasal cavity. He had him laid flat on the bed, without a pillow, his torso bare and his head on the same level as his body, to facilitate breathing. Seeing that he was to be undressed, Mlle Gillenormand withdrew and went to tell her beads in her own room.
There was no sign of internal injury. A bullet, diverted by his wallet, had inflicted an ugly gash along the ribs but had not gone deep, so that this was not dangerous. The long underground journey had completed the dislocation of the shattered shoulder-blade, and this was more serious. The arms had been slashed, but there was no injury to the face. The head, on the other hand, was covered with cuts, and it remained to be seen how deep they went, and whether they had penetrated the skull. What was serious was that they had caused unconsciousness of a kind from which one does not always recover. The haemorrhage had exhausted the patient; but there was no injury to the lower part of the body, which had been protected by the barricade.
Basque and Nicolette tore up rags for bandages. Lacking lint, the doctor temporarily staunched the wounds with wadding. Three candles burned on the bedside table, on which his instruments were spread. He washed Marius’s face and hair with cold water, which rapidly turned red in the bowl.
The doctor looked despondent, now and then shaking his head as though in answer to himself. A doctor’s voiceless dialogue is a bad omen for the patient. Suddenly, as he was gently touching the closed lids, the door of the room opened and a long, pale face appeared. It was the grandfather.
The fighting had greatly agitated and angered Monsieur Gillenormand. He had not been able to sleep the previous night, and had been in a fever all day. That night he had gone to bed early, ordering every door in the house to be locked, and had quickly fallen asleep. But old men sleep lightly. His bedroom was next to the salon, and despite all precautions the noise had awakened him. Seeing light under his door, he had got out of bed.
He stood in the doorway with a hand on the door-handle, his head thrust forward, his body covered by a white bedgown that hung straight down without folds like a shroud, so that he looked like a ghost peering into a tomb. He saw the bed and the wax-white young man, eyes closed and mouth open, lips colourless, bared to the waist and covered with bright red scars.
He shook from head to foot with the tremor that afflicts old bones; his eyes, yellowed with age, had a glassy look, while his whole face took on the sharp contours of a skull. His arms sank to his sides as though a spring had been broken, and his stupefaction was manifest in the way he spread out his old, shaking fingers. His knees thrust forward, disclosing through the opening of his garment his skinny legs. He muttered:
‘Marius!’
‘He has just been brought here, Monsieur,’ said Basque. ‘He was on the barricade, and …’
‘He’s dead!’ cried the old man in a terrible voice. ‘The brigand!’
A sort of sepulchral transformation caused him to straighten up like a young man. ‘You’re the doctor?’ he went on. ‘Tell me one thing. Is he truly dead?’
The doctor, filled with anxiety, said nothing. Monsieur Gillenormand wrung his hands and burst into dreadful laughter.
‘Dead! Dead on the barricade, in hatred of me! He did this against me, the bloodthirsty ruffian, and this is how he comes back to me. Misery of my life, he’s dead!’
He went to the window, flung it wide as though he were stifling, and talked into the night:
‘Gashed, slashed and done for, that’s what he is now! He knew I was waiting for him, that his room was kept in readiness and his boyhood picture at my bedside. He knew he had only to return and I would be waiting at the fireside half mad with longing. You knew it. You had only to say, “Here I am,” and you would be master of the house and I would obey you in all things, your old fool of a grandfather. You knew it and you said, “No, he’s a royalist, I won’t go.” You went to the barricade instead and got yourself killed from sheer perversity. That is what is infamous! Well, sleep in peace. That is my word to you.’
The doctor, feeling that he had two patients to worry about, went to Monsieur Gillenormand and took his arm. The old man turned, and gazing at him with eyes that seemed to have grown larger, said quietly:
‘Thank you, but I am calm, I am a man. I saw the death of Louis XVI, I can confront events. What is terrible is the thought that it is your newspapers that make all the trouble. Scribbles, orators, tribunes, debates, the rights of man, the freedom of the press – that’s what your children are brought up on. Oh, Marius, it’s abominable! Dead before me! The barricades! Doctor, you live in this quarter, I believe. Yes, I know you. I see you pass by in your cabriolet. I tell you, you are wrong to think that I am angry. To rage against death is folly. This was a child I brought up. I was old already, and he was small. He played in the Tuileries, and to save him from the keeper’s wrath I filled in the holes that he dug with his spade. One day he cried, “Down with Louis XVIII” and off he went. It is not my fault. He was pink and fair-haired. His mother is dead. Have you noticed that all small children are fair? Why is that? He was the son of one of the brigands of the Loire, but children are not responsible for their father’s crimes. I remember when he was so high. He could not pronounce the letter “d”. He talked like a little bird. I remember people turning to look at him, he was so beautiful, pretty as a picture. I talked sternly to him and flourished my stick, but he knew that it was only a joke. When he came to my room in the morning I might be grumpy, but it was as though the sun had come in. There is no defence against those little creatures. They take you and hold you and never let you go. The truth is that there was no one more lovely than that child. You talk of your Lafayettes, your revolutionaries – they kill me. It can’t go on like this.’
He moved towards the still motionless Marius, to whom the doctor had returned, and again wrung his hands. His old lips moved mechanically, emitting disjointed words – ‘Heartless! The rebel! The scoundrel!’ – words loaded with reproach. By degrees coherence returned to him, but it seemed that he had scarcely strength to utter the words he spoke, so low and distant was his voice.
‘It makes no difference, I too shall die. To think that in all Paris there was no wench to make that wretched boy happy! A young fool who went and fought instead of enjoying life. And for what? For a republic, instead of dancing, as a young man should do. What use is it to be twenty years old? A republic, what imbecility! Woe to the mothers who make pretty boys. So he’s dead. Two funerals to go through the door of this house. So he did it for the glory of General Lamarque, that ranting swashbuckler – he got himself killed for the sake of a dead man. At twenty. It’s enough to drive one mad. And never looking round to see what he was leaving behind. So now the old men have to the alone. Well, so much the better, it’s what I hoped for, it will finish me off. I’m too old – a hundred, a thousand years old – I should have been dead long ago. This settles it. What good does it do to make him breathe ammonia and those other things you’re trying on him? You’re wasting your time, you fool of a doctor. He’s well and truly dead. I should know, being dead myself. He hasn’t done it by halves. Oh, this is a disgusting time, and that’s what I think of you all, your ideas, your systems, your masters, your oracles, your learned doctors, your rascally writers and threadbare philosophers – and all the revolutions which for sixty years have startled the crows in the Tuileries! And since without pity you got yourself killed I shall not grieve for your death – do you hear me, murderer?’
At this moment Marius’s eyes slowly opened and his gaze, in drowsy astonishment, rested upon Monsieur Gillenormand.
‘Marius!’ the old man cried. ‘Marius, my child, my beloved son! You’re living after all!’
And he fell fainting to the floor.