THE DAY after a wedding is one of solitude. We respect the privacy of the newly-weds and perhaps their late arising. The hubbub of visits and congratulations does not begin until later. It was a little after midday when Basque, busily ‘doing the antechamber’, heard a tap on the door. There had been no ring, which showed discretion on that particular day. Basque opened and found Monsieur Fauchelevent. He showed him into the salon, which was still in a state of disorder.
‘We’re up late this morning, Monsieur,’ said Basque.
‘Is your master up?’ asked Jean Valjean.
‘How’s monsieur’s arm?’ asked Basque.
‘It’s better. Is your master up?’
‘Which master, the old or the new?’
‘Monsieur Pontmercy.’
‘Ah, Monsieur le Baron,’ said Basque.
Titles are important to servants, upon whom something of their lustre is shed. Marius, as we know, was a militant republican and had fought to prove it; but despite himself he was a baron. The matter had caused something of a revolution in the family. It was now Monsieur Gillenormand who insisted upon the title and Marius who was disposed to ignore it; but since his father had written, ‘My son will bear my title,’ he obeyed. And then Cosette, in whom the woman was beginning to show, was delighted to be Madame la Baronne.
‘I’ll go and see,’ said Basque. ‘I’ll tell him you’re here.’
‘No. Don’t tell him that it’s me. Tell him it is someone who wishes to speak to him in private, but don’t mention my name.’
‘Ah,’ said Basque.
‘I want to surprise him.’
‘Ah,’ said Basque again, as though this second ‘ah’ explained the first.
He went out, leaving Valjean alone.
The salon, as we have said, was in great disorder, almost as though anyone who happened to be listening could still have heard the echoes of last night’s party. Flowers had fallen on the parquet floor, and burnt-out candles had draped the crystal lustre with stalactites of wax. Nothing was in its proper place. Three or four armchairs, grouped together in a corner, seemed to be still carrying on a conversation. But it was a gay disorder, for this had been a happy party. The sun had replaced the candles and shone bravely into the room.
Some minutes elapsed during which Jean Valjean remained motionless where Basque had left him. He was very pale. His eyes were so sunken with sleeplessness that they had almost disappeared, and his black coat had the tired creases of a garment that has been worn all night. He stood looking down at the glow of light cast by the sunshine on the floor.
The sound of the door opening caused him to look up. Marius entered, head up and face aglow with triumphant happiness. He, too, had not slept all night.
‘Why, it’s you, father!’ he exclaimed. ‘That silly fellow Basque chose to make a mystery of it. But you’re early. It’s only half past twelve and Cosette is still asleep.’
His use of the word ‘father’ was most felicitous. As we know, there had always been a certain constraint between them, ice to be broken or melted. Such was Marius’s state of rapture that this no longer existed: ‘Monsieur Fauchelevent’ was father to him as he was to Cosette. He went on, the words pouring out of him:
‘I’m so delighted to see you. We missed you so much last night. Is your hand better?’ He did not wait for a reply. ‘We’ve talked so much about you, Cosette and I. She’s so fond of you. You haven’t forgotten, I hope, that you have a room here. We don’t want any more of the Rue de l’Homme-Armé. That ugly, squalid little street – how in the world did you ever come to live in it? But now you’re coming here, and today, what’s more, or you’ll be in trouble with Cosette. I warn you, she means to have you here if she has to pull you by the nose! You’ve seen your room, it’s very near our own, and it looks out over the garden. It’s all in perfect order. Cosette put a big old velvet-upholstered armchair by the bedside, to open its arms to you, as she said. Every spring a nightingale nests in the acacias, you’ll be hearing it in a couple of months. You’ll have its nest on one side of you and ours on the other. It will sing in the night-time and Cosette will chatter in the daytime. She’ll arrange your books for you and all your belongings. I understand there’s a little valise that you particularly value, and I’ve thought of a special place for it. My grandfather has taken a great liking to you, and if you play whist that will make it perfect. And of course you’ll take Cosette for walks when I’m working, just as you used to do, in the Luxembourg. We’re absolutely determined to be very happy, and you’re part of it, father, do you understand? Talking of which, you’ll be lunching with us today?’
‘Monsieur,’ said Jean Valjean, ‘I have something to tell you. I am an ex-convict.’
There are sounds that the mind cannot absorb although they are registered by the ear. Those words ‘I am an ex-convict’, emerging from the lips of Monsieur Fauchelevent and entering the ear of Marius, went beyond the limit. He knew that something had been said, but he could not grasp what it was. He stood open-mouthed.
And now he perceived what in his blissful state he had not noticed, that the man addressing him was in very bad shape. He was terribly pale.
Valjean took his arm out of the sling which still supported it, removed the bandage, and held his hand out to Marius.
‘There’s nothing wrong with my thumb,’ he said. ‘There never has been.’ He went on: ‘It was right that I should not attend your wedding party. I have kept in the background as much as possible. I invented this injury in order to avoid signing the marriage deeds, which might have nullified them.’
Marius stammered: ‘But what does it mean?’
‘It means,’ said Valjean, ‘that I have been in the galleys. I was imprisoned for nineteen years, first for theft and later as a recidivist. I am at present breaking parole.’
Marius might recoil in horror, might refuse to believe, but in the end he was forced to accept it. Indeed, as commonly happens, he went further. He shuddered as an appalling thought occurred to him.
‘You must tell me everything – everything!’ he cried. ‘You are really Cosette’s father!’ And in horror he took a step backwards.
Jean Valjean raised his head with a gesture of such dignity that he seemed to grow in stature.
‘In this you must believe me,’ he said, ‘although the sworn oaths of such as I are not accepted in any court of law. I swear to you before God, Monsieur Pontmercy, that I am not Cosette’s father or in any way related to her. My name is not Fauchelevent but Jean Valjean. I am a peasant from Faverolles, where once I earned my living as a tree-pruner. You may be sure of that.’
‘But what proof –?’ stammered Marius.
‘My word is the proof.’
Marius looked at him. He was melancholy but calm, with a kind of stony sincerity from which no lie could emerge. The truth was apparent in his very coldness.
‘I believe you,’ said Marius.
Jean Valjean bowed his head in acknowledgement
‘So what am I to Cosette?’ he went on. ‘Someone who came upon her quite by chance. Ten years ago I did not know that she existed. I love her certainly, as who would not? When one is growing old one has a fatherly feeling for all small children. You may perhaps be prepared to believe that I have something that can be called a heart. She was an orphan and she needed me. That is how I came to love her. Children are so defenceless that any man, even a man like me, may want to protect them. That is what I did for Cosette. Whether an act so trifling can be termed a good deed I do not know; but if it is, then let it be said that I did it. Let it be set down in extenuation. Now she has gone out of my life; our roads run in different directions. Besides, there is nothing more that I can do for her. She is Madame Pontmercy. Her life has changed, and she has gained by the change. As for the six hundred thousand francs, I will anticipate your question. It was a sum held for her in trust. As to how it came into my hands, that is quite unimportant. I have fulfilled my trust, and nothing more can be required of me. And I have concluded the matter by telling you my name. I have done so for my own sake, because I wanted you to know who I am.’
Jean Valjean looked steadily at Marius.
As for Marius, his thoughts were tumultuous and incoherent. We all have moments of bewilderment in which our wits seem to desert us; we say the first thing that comes into our head, although it is not the right thing. There are sudden revelations that cannot be endured, inducing a state of intoxication like that caused by a draught of some insidious wine. Marius was so stupefied that he talked almost as though Valjean had done him a deliberate injury.
‘Why have you told me all this? Nobody forced you to. You could have kept it to yourself. You aren’t being pursued, are you? No one has denounced you. You must have some reason of your own for blurting it out like this. Why have you done so? There must be more – something that you haven’t told me. I want to know what it is.’
‘My reason …’ said Jean Valjean, in a voice so low that he might have been talking to himself. ‘Why should an ex-convict proclaim himself to be an ex-convict? Well, it’s a strange reason – a matter of honesty. There is a bond in my heart that cannot be broken, and such bonds become stronger as one grows older. Whatever may happen in one’s life, they still hold. If I could have broken that bond, dishonoured it, all would have been well. I could simply have gone away. Coaches leave from the Rue Bouloi and you are happy, there was nothing to keep me. I tried to tear out that bond, but I could not do it without tearing out my heart as well. I thought to myself, since I cannot live anywhere else, I must stay here. You will think me a fool, and rightly. Why not just stay and say nothing? You have offered me a home. Cosette – but I should now call her Madame Pontmercy – loves me. Your grandfather would welcome me. We could live together as a happy, united family.’
But as he spoke that last word Jean Valjean’s expression changed. He stood scowling at the floor as though he would like to kick a hole in it, and there was a new ring in his voice.
‘A family! But I belong to no family, least of all yours. I am sundered from all mankind. There are moments when I wonder whether I ever had a father and mother. Everything ended for me with that child’s marriage. She is happy with the man she loves, a worthy old man to watch over her, a comfortable home, servants, everything that makes for happiness; but I said to myself, “That is not for me.” I might have lied and deceived you all by continuing to be “Monsieur Fauchelevent”. I did it where she was concerned; but now it is a matter of my own conscience and I can do it no longer. That is my answer to you when you ask me why I have felt compelled to speak. Conscience is a strange thing. It would have been so easy to say nothing. I spent the whole night trying to persuade myself to do so. I did my utmost. I gave myself excellent reasons. But it was no use. I could not break that bond in my heart or silence the voice that speaks to me when I am alone. That is why I have come here to confess everything to you, or nearly everything. There is no point in telling you things that only concern myself. I have told you what matters, disclosed my secret to you, and, believe me, it was not easy to do. I had to wrestle with myself all night. You may believe me when I say that in concealing my real name I was harming no one. It was Fauchelevent himself who gave it me, in return for a service I had done him. I could have been very happy in the home you have offered me, keeping to my own corner, disturbing no one, content to be under the same roof as Cosette. To continue to be Monsieur Fauchelevent would have settled everything – except my conscience. No matter how great the happiness around me, my soul would have been in darkness. The circumstances of happiness are not enough, there must also be peace of mind. I should have been a figure of deceit, a shadow in your sunshine, sitting at your table with the thought that if you knew who and what I really was you would turn me out – the very servants would have exclaimed in horror! When we were alone together, your grandfather, you two children and myself, talking unconstrainedly, all seeming at our ease, one of us would have been a stranger, a dead man battening on the living; and condemned to this for the rest of his life! Does it not make you shudder? I should have been not only the most desolate of men but the most infamous, living the same lie day after day. Cheating you day after day, my beloved, trusting children! It is not so easy to keep silent when the silence is a lie. I should never have ceased to be sickened by my own treachery and cowardice. My “good morning” would have been a lie, and my “good night”. I should have slept with the lie, eaten with it, returned Cosette’s angelic smile with a grimace of the damned. And all for what? To be happy! But what right have I to happiness? I tell you, monsieur, I am an outcast from life.’
Jean Valjean paused. Marius had been listening without attempting to interrupt, for there are times when interruption is impossible. Valjean again lowered his voice, but now it contained a harsh note.
‘You may ask why I should tell you this, if I have not been exposed and am not in any danger of pursuit. But I have been exposed, I am pursued – by myself! That is a pursuer that does not readily let go.’ He gripped his coat collar and thrust it out towards Marius. ‘Look at that fist,’ the said. ‘Don’t you think it has a firm grip on that collar? That is what conscience is like. If you want to be happy you must have no sense of duty, because a sense of duty is implacable. To have it is to be punished, but it is also to be rewarded, for it thrusts you into a hell in which you feel the presence of God at your side. Your heart may be broken, but you are at peace with yourself.’
Then again his voice changed, containing a note of poignancy.
‘This is not a matter of common sense, Monsieur Pontmercy. I am an honourable man. In debasing myself in your eyes I am raising myself in my own. Yes, an honourable man; but I should not be one if, through my fault, you continued to esteem me. That is the cross I bear, that any esteem I may win is falsely won; it is a thought that humiliates and shames me, that I can only win the respect of others at the cost of despising myself. So I have to take a stand. I am a felon acting according to his conscience. It may be a contradiction in terms, but what else can I do? I made a pact with myself and I am holding to it. There are chances that create duties. So many things, Monsieur Pontmercy, have happened to me in my life.’
Once again Jean Valjean paused. Then he resumed talking with an effort, as though the words left a bitter taste in his mouth.
‘When a man is under a shadow of this kind he has no more right to inflict it upon others without their knowledge than he has to infect them with the plague. To draw near to the healthy, to touch them with hands that are secretly contagious, that is a shameful thing. Fauchelevent may have lent me his name, but I have no right to use it. A name is an identity. Although I was born a peasant, monsieur, I have done a little reading and thinking in my time; I have learnt the value of things. As you see, I can express myself fluently. I have done something to educate myself. To make use of a borrowed name is an act of dishonesty, as much a theft as to steal a purse or a watch. I cannot cheat decent people in that way – never, never, never! Better to suffer the tortures of the damned! And that is why I have told you all this.’ He sighed and added a last word: ‘Once I stole a loaf of bread to stay alive; but now I cannot steal a name in order to go on living.’
‘Go on living!’ cried Marius. ‘Surely you don’t need the name simply for that.’
‘I know what it means to me,’ said Valjean and nodded his head several times.
For a time there was silence. Both men were occupied with their own thoughts. Marius was seated by a table with his chin resting on his hand. Valjean had been pacing up and down. He stopped in front of a mirror and stood motionless, staring into it but seeing nothing. Then, as though replying to some observations of his own, he said:
‘For the present, at least, I have a sense of relief.’
He began once more to pace the room. Then, seeing Marius’s eyes upon him, he said:
‘I drag my leg a little as I walk. Now you know why … I ask you to consider this, monsieur. Let us suppose that I had said nothing but had come to live with you as Monsieur Fauchelevent, to share your daily lives, to walk with Madame Pontmercy in the Tuileries and the Place Royale, to be accepted as one of yourselves and then one day, when we are talking and laughing together, a voice cries “Jean Valjean!” and the terrible hand of the police descends on my shoulder and strips the mask away! … What do you think of that?’
Marius had nothing to say.
‘Now you know why I could not keep silent. But no matter. Be happy, be Cosette’s guardian angel, live in the sun and do not worry about how an outcast goes about his duty. You are facing a wretched man, monsieur.’
Marius walked slowly across the room, holding out his hand. But he had to reach for Valjean’s hand, which made no response, and it was like grasping a hand of marble.
‘My grandfather has friends’ he said. ‘I will get you a reprieve.’
‘There is no need,’ said Valjean. ‘The fact that I am presumed dead is enough.’ Releasing his hand from Marius’s clasp he added, with an implacable dignity: ‘All that matters is that I should do my duty. The only reprieve I need is that of my own conscience.’
At this moment the door at the other end of the salon was half-opened and Cosette’s head peeped round it. Her hair was charmingly disordered and her eyes still heavy with sleep. With a movement like that of a bird peeping out of its nest she looked first at her husband and then at Jean Valjean, and exclaimed laughingly,
‘I’m sure you’ve been talking politics. How absurd of you, when you might have been talking to me!’
Valjean started. Marius stammered, ‘Cosette …’ and then was silent. They might have been two guilty men.
Cosette continued to gaze at them, her eyes shining.
‘I’ve caught you out,’ she said. ‘I heard a few words that father Fauchelevent spoke just as I opened the door. Something about conscience and duty. Well, that’s politics and I won’t have it. Nobody’s allowed to talk politics the day after a wedding.’
‘You’re mistaken,’ said Marius. ‘We were talking business. We were discussing how to invest your six hundred thousand francs.’
‘Is that all?’ said Cosette. ‘Then I’m going to join you.’ And she walked determinedly into the room.
She was wearing a voluminous white peignoir with wide sleeves which covered her from neck to toes. She looked herself over in a long mirror and then exclaimed in sheer delight.
‘Once upon a time there was a king and queen … Oh, I’m so happy!’ After which she curtseyed to Marius and Valjean. ‘And now I’m going to sit down with you. Luncheon is in half an hour. You can talk about anything you like and I won’t interrupt. I’m a very good girl. I know men have to talk.’
Marius took her by the arm and said affectionately:
‘We were talking business.’
‘By the way,’ said Cosette, ‘when I opened my window I saw a flock of starlings in the garden – real ones, not masks. This is Ash Wednesday, but the birds can’t be expected to know that.’
‘I said we were talking business, dearest. Figures and that sort of thing. It would only bore you.’
‘What a nice necktie you’re wearing, Marius. You’re looking very smart. No, it wouldn’t bore me.’
‘I’m sure it would.’
‘No. I shan’t understand, but I shall enjoy listening. When it’s two people you love the words don’t matter, the sound of their voices is enough. I just want to be with you, and so I’m going to stay.’
‘My beloved Cosette, it’s really impossible.’
‘Impossible!’
‘Yes.’
‘Well,’ said Cosette. ‘And I was going to tell you such interesting things. For instance, that grandfather is still asleep and Aunt Gillenormand has gone to Mass, and father Fauchelevent’s chimney is smoking and Nicolette has sent for the sweep, and she and Toussaint have quarrelled already because she teased Toussaint about her stammer. You see, you don’t know a thing about what’s going on. Impossible, is it? Well, you be careful, or I’ll say “impossible” to you, and then where would you be! Darling Marius, please, please let me stay with you.’
‘My sweet Cosette, I do promise you that we have to be alone.’
‘But surely I don’t count as just anyone.’
Jean Valjean had not spoken a word. She turned to him.
‘In the first place, father, I must ask you to come and kiss me. Why haven’t you been standing up for me? What sort of a father are you? Can’t you see how unhappy I am? My husband beats me. So come and kiss me at once.’
Valjean moved towards her and she turned back to Marius.
‘As for you, I’m frowning at you.’
Valjean had drawn close, and she offered him her forehead to kiss. But then she took a step back.
‘Father, how pale you are! Is your hand still hurting you?’
‘No, it’s better,’ said Valjean.
‘Well, did you sleep badly?’
‘No.’
‘Are you feeling unhappy?’
‘No.’
‘Then kiss me. If you’re well and happy I shan’t scold you.’
Again she offered him her forehead, and he touched it with his lips.
‘But you must smile.’
He did so, a spectral smile.
‘And now you must take my side against my husband.’
‘Cosette …’ said Marius.
‘Be cross with him. Tell him I can stay here. You can talk in front of me. You must think I’m very silly. Business indeed, investing money and all that nonsense – as if it were so difficult to understand! Men make mysteries out of nothing. I want to stay. I’m looking particularly pretty this morning, aren’t I, Marius?’
She turned to him with a look of enchanting archness and it was as though a spark passed between them. The presence of a third party was unimportant.
‘I love you,’ said Marius.
‘I adore you.’
And they fell into each other’s arms.
‘And now,’ said Cosette smoothing her peignoir with a little smile of triumph, ‘I’m staying.’
‘My dear, no,’ said Marius beseechingly. “There’s something we have got to settle.’
‘It’s still no?’
‘I assure you, it’s impossible.’
‘Well, of course, when you talk to me in that solemn voice … Very well then, I’ll go. Father, you didn’t support me. You and my husband are both tyrants. I shall complain to grandfather. And if you think I’m going to come back and talk sweet nothings to you, you’re very much mistaken. I shall wait for you to come to me, and you’ll find that you’ll very soon get bored without me. So now I’m going.’
She went out; but a moment later the door opened again and her glowing face reappeared peeping round it. ‘I’m very cross with you both!’ she said.
The door closed once more and the darkness returned. It was as though a ray of light had lost its way and flashed through a world of shadow.
Marius made sure that the door was firmly closed.
‘Poor Cosette!’ he murmured. ‘When she hears …’
At these words Jean Valjean trembled in every limb and gazed frantically at Marius.
‘Of course that’s true. You’ll tell Cosette. I hadn’t thought of that. One has the strength to bear some things but not others. Monsieur, I beseech you to promise me not to tell her. Surely if you yourself know, that is enough. I might have told her of my own accord; I might have told everyone. But Cosette – she doesn’t even know what it means. A felon, a man condemned for life to forced labour, a man who has been in the galleys. She would be appalled I Once she saw a convict chain-gang pass … Oh, my God!’
He sank into an armchair and buried his face in his hands. He made no sound, but the heaving of his shoulders showed that he was weeping. He was overtaken by a sort of convulsion and lay back in the chair as though he were unable to breathe, with his arms hanging limply at his sides. Marius saw his tear-stained face and heard his murmur, ‘I wish I were dead.’
‘Don’t worry,’ said Marius. ‘I’ll keep your secret.’
He went on in a voice that was perhaps less sympathetic than it should have been, conscious as he was of the new situation that had arisen and the huge gulf that lay between them:
‘I am bound to speak of the trust money that you have so honourably and faithfully handed over. It was an act of probity for which you deserve to be rewarded. You yourself shall name the sum, and you need not hesitate to make it a large one.’
‘I thank you, monsieur,’ Valjean said gently. He sat thinking, mechanically rubbing thumb and forefinger together. ‘Nearly everything is now settled, except for one last thing.’
‘What is that?’
Making a supreme effort, Valjean said in a scarcely audible voice:
‘You are the master. Do you think, now you know everything, that I should not see Cosette again?’
‘I think it would be better,’ Marius said coldly.
‘Then I will not do so,’ said Valjean, and getting up, he went to the door.
But with the door half opened he stood for a moment motionless, then closed it again and came back to Marius. He was now no longer pale but deathly white, and instead of tears in his eyes there was a sort of tragic flame. His voice had become strangely calm.
‘Monsieur,’ he said, ‘if you will permit me I would like to come and see her. Believe me, I greatly desire to do so. If I had not wanted to go on seeing Cosette I should not have told you what I have; I should simply have gone away. But because I so wanted to go on seeing her, I was bound in honour to tell you everything. You understand, I am sure. She has been my constant companion for nine years. We lived first in that tenement, then at the convent and then not far from the Luxembourg, where you saw her for the first time. Later we moved to the Invalides quarter, to a house in the Rue Plumet with a garden and a wrought-iron gate. My own dwelling was in the backyard, where I could hear her play the piano. That has been my life. We were never separated during those nine years and a few months. She was like my own child. To go away and never see or speak to her again – to have nothing left to live for – that would be very hard. I wouldn’t come often or stay for long. We could meet in that little room on the ground floor. I would be quite willing to come by the servants’ entrance, but that would give rise to talk, and so it might be better for me to come by the ordinary way. Monsieur, if I cannot see her from time to time there will be nothing left for me in life, but it will be for you to decide how often. And there is another thing. We have to be careful. If I never came at all, that too would give rise to talk. It occurs to me that I might come in the evening, when it’s beginning to grow dark.’
‘You shall come every evening,’ said Marius.
‘Monsieur, you are very kind,’ said Jean Valjean.
They shook hands. Happiness escorted despair to the door, and so they parted.
Marius was distracted. The lack of contact he had always felt for the man he had supposed to be Cosette’s father was now explained … He had felt instinctively that Monsieur Fauchelevent was concealing something, and now he knew what it was. To have learned this secret in the midst of his happiness was like discovering a scorpion in a dove’s nest. Was his happiness and that of Cosette henceforth to depend upon that man, was he to be accepted as a part of their marriage bond? Was there nothing more to be done? Was he linked to an ex-convict? It was a thought to make even angels shudder.
But then, as always happens, he began to wonder whether he himself were not also at fault. Had he been lacking in perspicacity and prudence, had he deliberately closed his eyes? Perhaps there was some truth in this; perhaps he had plunged impulsively into the love-affair with Cosette without paying sufficient attention to the circumstances of her life. He could even admit (and it is by admissions of this kind that life teaches us self-knowledge) that there was a visionary side of his nature, a kind of imaginative haziness that pervaded his whole being. We have more than once drawn attention to this. He remembered how during those six or seven rapturous weeks in the Rue Plumet he had not once referred to the drama in the Gorbeau tenement in which the victim had behaved so strangely. Why had he never asked her about it, or mentioned the Thénardiers, particularly on the day when he had met Éponine? He could not account for this, but he took note of it. Looking back coolly, he recalled the ecstasy of their falling in love, the absolute fusion of their souls, and the vague instinct which had impelled him to put that episode – in which, after all, he had played no part – out of his mind. In any event those few weeks had sped by like a dream; there had been no time to do anything except love one another. And what would have happened if he had told Cosette that story, naming Thénardier? If he had learned the truth about Jean Valjean? Would it have changed his feeling for Cosette, caused him to love her less? Assuredly not. So he had nothing to regret, no reason to reproach himself, and all was well. He had blindly followed the path he would have followed with eyes wide open. Love, in blinding him, had led to him to Paradise.
But that paradise now had its infernal aspect. The slight coolness that had existed between himself and the man whom he now knew as Jean Valjean contained an element of horror; pity as well, it must be said, and also amazement. That thief, that recidivist convict, had handed over the sum of six hundred thousand francs, all of which he might have kept for himself. Also, although nothing had obliged him to do so, he had revealed his secret, accepting both the humiliation and the risk. A false name is a safeguard to a condemned man. He might have lived out his life with a respectable family, but he had not yielded to that temptation, simply, it seemed, from motives of conscience. Whatever else Jean Valjean might be, he was assuredly a man of principle. It seemed that at some time or other a mysterious transformation must have taken place in him, since when his life had been changed. Such rectitude was not to be found in base motives; it was an indication of greatness of soul. And his sincerity could not be doubted; the very suffering his avowal had caused him, the painful meticulousness with which he had omitted no detail, was sufficient evidence. And here a contradiction occurred to Marius. About Monsieur Fauchelevent there had always been a hint of defiance; but in Jean Valjean it was trustfulness.
In his consideration of Jean Valjean, weighing one thing with another, Marius sought to achieve a balance. But it was like peering through a tempest. The more he strove to see him as a whole, as it were to penetrate to his heart, the more he lost him only to find again a figure in a mist. On the one hand there was his honourable handing over of the trust money, on the other hand the extraordinary affair in the Jondrette attic. Why had he slipped away when the police arrived, instead of staying to testify against his persecutors? Here at least the answer was not far to seek. He was a man wanted by the police. But then again, how had he come to be on the barricade and what was he doing there? As Marius now recalled, he had taken no active part in the fighting. At this question a ghost arose to supply an answer, Javert. Marius perfectly remembered Javert’s bound form being taken outside by Valjean, and soon afterwards the sound of a pistol shot. So presumably there had been a personal vendetta between the two men and Valjean had gone there from motives of revenge. The fact that he had been late in arriving suggested that he had only just discovered that Javert had been taken prisoner. The Corsican vendetta had penetrated to certain sectors of the underworld where it was accepted as law; and there were men, more or less reformed, who, although they would be scrupulous in the matter of theft, would not be deterred from an act of vengeance. There seemed to be no doubt that Valjean had killed Javert.
A final question remained to which there was no reply, one that tortured Marius’s mind. How had this long association with Cosette been formed? What strange fatality had brought them together? Were there links forged in Heaven with which it pleased God to join angels and demons, and could crime and innocence be united in some mysterious prison of the underworld? How was it to be explained? By what extraordinary conjunction of circumstances had it come about, the lamb attached to the wolf – or, still more inexplicable, the wolf attached to the lamb? For the wolf truly loved the lamb and for nine years had been the centre of the lamb’s existence. Cosette’s childhood and adolescence, her growth to womanhood, had taken place in the shadow of that monstrous devotion. And this gave rise to endless riddles. Considering Jean Valjean, Marius felt his mind reel. What was one to make of that extraordinary man?
The two symbolic figures in the book of Genesis are eternal. Until some deeper comprehension throws a new light upon our understanding of these things, human society will always be divided into two types of men, Abel and Cain, the higher and the lower. But what was one to make of this gentle-hearted Cain, the ruffian who had watched over Cosette, cherished her, protected her, seen to her education? What was it but a figure of darkness whose sole care had been to safeguard the rising of a star. And that was Jean Valjean’s secret. It was also the secret of God.
At this twofold secret Marius recoiled, although the one half in some sort reassured him as to the other. God forges his own instruments, using what tools he needs. He is not responsible to Man. Jean Valjean had formed Cosette; in some degree he had shaped her soul. This was undeniable. Very well then, the craftsman might be deplorable but the result was admirable. God worked his miracle in his own way. He had created the exquisite Cosette and for the purpose had employed Jean Valjean, a strange collaboration. Are we to reproach him for this? Is it the first time dung has helped the spring to give birth to a rose?
Marius himself supplied the answers to these questions and he told himself that the answers were good. They were all points which he had not ventured to put to Valjean. But what further explanation did he need? Cosette was his; he adored her and she was utterly unsullied. What else mattered? The personal affairs of Jean Valjean were no concern of his. He concentrated on the words the unhappy man had spoken: ‘I am not related to Cosette. Ten years ago I did not know that she existed.’ As he said, he had been no more than an episode in her life, and now his part in it was over. It was for Marius henceforth to take care of her. Cosette had found her lover and husband, and, growing wings, had soared upward into Heaven, leaving the ugly, earthbound Jean Valjean behind.
Wherever Marius’s thoughts led him, he always returned with a kind of horror to Valjean. Whatever the extenuating circumstances might be, there could be no escaping the fact that the man was a felon, a creature, that is to say, rejected by society, below the lowest rung of the social ladder, the lowest and the least of men. The law deprived men of his kind of all rights; and Marius, democrat though he was, was in this matter implacably on the side of the law. He was not, let us say, wholly progressive, able to distinguish between what has been written by Man and what was written by God, between what is law and what is right. He had not fully weighed these matters and was not repelled by the idea of revenge. He thought it natural that certain infractions of the law should be subject to lifelong punishment, and he accepted total ostracism as a normal social procedure. Until then, that was as far as he had gone, although it was certain that he would go further, being by nature well-disposed and instinctively progressive. But in the present state of his thinking he was bound to find Jean Valjean repulsive. A felon! The very word was like the voice of judgement. His reaction was to turn away his head. ‘Get thee behind me …’
As to the questions which Marius had not put to Valjean, although they had all occurred to him – the Jondrette attic, the barricade, Javert – who can say where they might have led? The truth is that he had been afraid to ask them. It can happen to any of us, in a critical moment, that we may ask a question and then try not to hear the reply; and this is particularly so when love enters into the matter. It is not always wise to probe too deeply, most especially when we ourselves are affected. Who could say what the consequences to Cosette would have been of the answers to those questions, what infernal light would have been shed on her innocent life? The purest natures may be tainted by such revelations. So, rightly or wrongly, Marius had been afraid. He knew too much already. Desolated, he clasped Cosette in his arms and closed his eyes to Jean Valjean.
But, this being his attitude, it was agonizing to him that Cosette would still be in contact with the man. And thus he came near to reproaching himself for not having pressed his questions, which might have led him to a more drastic decision. He had been too magnanimous – in a word, too weak. He began to think that he had been wrong. He should have turned Valjean out of the house. He blamed himself for the wave of sentiment that had momentarily carried him away against his better judgement. He was displeased with himself.
And now what was he to do? The thought of Valjean’s visits was repugnant; but here he checked himself, not wishing to probe too deeply into his own thoughts. He had made a promise, or been led into making a promise, and a promise must be kept, even, and indeed especially, a promise to a felon. In any event, his first duty was to Cosette.
This confusion of thought caused him to be greatly troubled in spirit, which was not easily hidden from Cosette. But love has its own cunning, and he managed. He asked her apparently casual questions, to which with innocent candour she unhesitatingly replied. Talking to her about her childhood and upbringing, he became more and more convinced that where she was concerned this one-time convict had been everything that was good, fatherly, and honourable. His first impulse had been the true one. The rank weed had cherished and protected the lily.