1
THE SEVENTH CIRCLE AND THE EIGHTH HEAVEN
THE DAY AFTER a wedding is solitary. The privacy of the happy is respected. And thus their slumber is a little belated. The tumult of visits and felicitations does not commence until later. On the morning of the 17th of February, it was a little after noon, when Basque, his napkin and duster under his arm, busy “doing his antechamber,” heard a light rap at the door. There was no ring, which is considerate on such a day. Basque opened and saw M. Fauchelevent. He introduced him into the parlour, still littered and topsy-turvy, and which had the appearance of the battlefield of the evening’s festivities.
“Faith, monsieur,” observed Basque, “we are waking up late.”
“Has your master risen?” inquired Jean Valjean.
“How is monsieur’s arm?” answered Basque.
“Better. Has your master risen?”
“Which? the old or the new one?”
“Monsieur Pontmercy.”
“Monsieur the Baron?” said Basque, drawing himself up.
One is baron to his domestics above all. Something of it is reflected upon them; they have what a philosopher would call the spattering of the title, and it flatters them. Marius, to speak of it in passing, a republican militant, and he had proved it, was now a baron in spite of himself. A slight revolution had taken place in the family in regard to this title. At present it was M. Gillenormand who clung to it and Marius who made light of it. But Colonel Pontmercy had written: My son will bear my title. Marius obeyed. And then Cosette, in whom the woman was beginning to dawn, was in raptures at being a baroness.
“Monsieur the Baron?” repeated Basque. “I will go and see. I will tell him that Monsieur Fauchelevent is here.”
“No. Do not tell him that it is I. Tell him that somebody asks to speak with him in private, and do not give him any name.”
“Ah!” said Basque.
“I wish to give him a surprise.”
“Ah!” resumed Basque, giving himself his second ah! as an explanation of the first.
And he went out.
Jean Valjean remained alone.
A few minutes elapsed. Jean Valjean was motionless in the spot where Basque had left him. He was very pale. His eyes were hollow, and so sunken in their sockets from want of sleep that they could hardly be seen. His black coat had the weary folds of a garment which has passed the night. The elbows were whitened with that down which is left upon cloth by the chafing of linen. Jean Valjean was looking at the window marked out by the sun upon the floor at his feet.
There was a noise at the door, he raised his eyes.
Marius entered, his head erect, his mouth smiling, an indescribable light upon his face, his forehead radiant, his eye triumphant. He also had not slept.
“It is you, father!” exclaimed he on perceiving Jean Valjean, “that idiot of a Basque with his mysterious air! But you come too early. It is only half an hour after noon yet. Cosette is asleep.”
That word: Father, said to M. Fauchelevent by Marius, signified: Supreme felicity. There had always been, as we know, barrier, coldness, and constraint between them; ice to break or to melt. Marius had reached that degree of intoxication where the barrier was falling, the ice was dissolving, and M. Fauchelevent was to him, as to Cosette, a father.
He continued; words overflowed from him, which is characteristic of these divine paroxysms of joy:
“How glad I am to see you! If you knew how we missed you yesterday! Good morning, father. How is your hand? Better, is it not?”
And, satisfied with the good answer which he made to himself, he went on:
“We have both of us talked much about you. Cosette loves you so much! You will not forget that your room is here. We will have no more of the Rue de l‘Homme Armé. We will have no more of it at all. How could you go to live in a street like that, which is sickly, which is scowling, which is ugly, which has a barrier at one end, where you are cold, and where you cannot get in? you will come and install yourself here. And that to-day. Or you will have a bone to pick with Cosette. She intends to lead us all by the nose, I warn you. You have seen your room, it is close by ours, it looks upon the gardens; the lock has been fixed, the bed is made, it is all ready; you have nothing to do but to come. Cosette has put a great old easy chair of Utrecht velvet beside your bed, to which she said: stretch out your arms for him. Every spring, in the clump of acacias which is in front of your windows, there comes a nightingale, you will have her in two months. You will have her nest at your left and ours at your right. By night she will sing, and by day Cosette will talk. Your room is full in the south. Cosette will arrange your books there for you, your voyage of Captain Cook, and the other, Vancouver’s, all your things. There is, I believe, a little valise which you treasure, I have selected a place of honour for it. You have conquered my grandfather, you suit him. We will live together. Do you know whist? you will overjoy my grandfather, if you know whist. You will take Cosette to walk on my court-days, you will give her your arm, you know, as at the Luxembourg Gardens, formerly. We have absolutely decided to be very happy. And you are part of our happiness, do you understand, father? Come now, you breakfast with us to-day?”
“Monsieur,” said Jean Valjean, “I have something to tell you. I am a former convict.”
The limit of perceptible acute sounds may be passed quite as easily for the mind as for the ear. Those words: I am a former convict, coming from M. Fauchelevent’s mouth and entering Marius’ ear, went beyond the possible. Marius did not hear. It seemed to him that something had just been said to him; but he knew not what. He stood aghast.
He then perceived that the man who was talking to him was terrible. Excited as he was, he had not until this moment noticed that frightful pallor.
Jean Valjean untied the black cravat which sustained his right arm, took off the cloth wound about his head, laid his thumb bare, and showed it to Marius.
“There is nothing the matter with my hand,” said he.
Marius looked at the thumb.
“There has never been anything the matter with it,” continued Jean Valjean.
There was, in fact, no trace of a wound.
Jean Valjean pursued:
“It was best that I should be absent from your marriage. I absented myself as much as I could. I feigned this wound so as not to commit a forgery, not to introduce a nullity into the marriage acts, to be excused from signing.”
Marius stammered out:
“What does this mean?”
“It means,” answered Jean Valjean, “that I have been in the galleys.”
“You drive me mad!” exclaimed Marius in dismay.
“Monsieur Pontmercy,” said Jean Valjean, “I was nineteen years in the galleys. For robbery. Then I was sentenced for life. For robbery. For a second offence. If they knew I was alive, there’d be a warrant out for my arrest.”
It was useless for Marius to recoil before the reality, to refuse the fact, to resist the evidence; he was compelled to yield. He began to comprehend, and as always happens in such a case, he comprehended beyond the truth. He felt the shiver of a horrible interior flash; an idea which made him shudder, crossed his mind. He caught a glimpse in the future of a hideous destiny for himself.
“Tell all, tell all!” cried he. “You are Cosette’s father!”
And he took two steps backward with an expression of unspeakable horror.
Jean Valjean raised his head with such a majesty of attitude that he seemed to rise to the ceiling.
“It is necessary that you believe me in this, monsieur; although the oath of such as I be not received.”
Here he made a pause; then, with a sort of sovereign and sepulchral authority, he added, articulating slowly and emphasising his syllables:
“——You will believe me. I, the father of Cosette! before God, no. Monsieur Baron Pontmercy, I am a peasant of Faverolles. I earned my living by pruning trees. My name is not Fauchelevent, my name is Jean Valjean. I am nothing to Cosette. Compose yourself.”
Marius faltered:
“Who proves it to me——”
“I. Since I say so.”
Marius looked at this man. He was mournful, yet self-possessed. No lie could come out of such a calmness. That which is frozen is sincere. We feel the truth in that sepulchral coldness.
“I believe you,” said Marius.
Jean Valjean inclined his head as if taking oath, and continued: “What am I to Cosette? a passer-by. Ten years ago, I did not know that she existed. I love her, it is true. A child whom one has seen when little, being himself already old, he loves. When a man is old, he feels like a grandfather towards all little children. You can, it seems to me, suppose that I have something which resembles a heart. She was an orphan. Without father or mother. She had need of me. That is why I began to love her. Children are so weak, that anybody, even a man like me, may be their protector. I performed that duty with regard to Cosette. I do not think that one could truly call so little a thing a good deed; but if it is a good deed; well, set it down that I have done it. Record that mitigating circumstance. Today Cosette leaves my life; our two roads separate. Henceforth I can do nothing more for her. She is Madame Pontmercy. Her protector is changed. And Cosette gains by the change. All is well. As for the six hundred thousand francs, you have not spoken of them to me, but I anticipate your thought; that is a trust. How did this trust come into my hands? What matters it? I make over the trust. Nothing more can be asked of me. I complete the restitution by telling my real name. This again concerns me. I desire, myself, that you should know who I am.”
And Jean Valjean looked Marius in the face.
All that Marius felt was tumultuous and incoherent. Certain blasts of destiny make such waves in our soul.
We have all had such moments of trouble, in which everything within us is dispersed; we say the first things that come to mind, which are not always precisely those that we should say. There are sudden revelations which we cannot bear, and which intoxicate like a noxious wine. Marius was so stupefied at the new condition of affairs which opened before him that he spoke to this man almost as though he were angry with him for his avowal.
“But after all,” exclaimed he, “why do you tell me all this? What compels you to do so? You could have kept the secret to yourself. You are neither denounced, nor pursued, nor hunted. You have some reason for voluntarily making such a revelation. Finish it. There is something else. In connection with what do you make this avowal? From what motive?”
“From what motive?” answered Jean Valjean, in a voice so low and so hollow that one would have said it was to himself he was speaking rather than to Marius. “From what motive, indeed, does this convict come and say: I am a convict? Well, yes! the motive is strange. It is from honour. Yes, my misfortune is a cord which I have here in my heart and which holds me fast. When one is old these cords are strong. The whole life wastes away about them; they hold fast. If I had been able to tear out this cord, to break it, to untie the knot, or to cut it, to go far away, I had been saved, I had only to depart; there are stagecoaches in the Rue du Bouloy; you are happy, I go away. I have tried to break this cord, I have pulled upon it, it held firmly, it did not snap, I was tearing my heart out with it. Then I said I cannot live away from here. I must stay. Well, yes; but you are right, I am a fool, why not just simply stay? You offer me a room in the house, Madame Pontmercy loves me well, she says to that arm-chair: Stretch out your arms for him, your grandfather asks nothing better than to have me, I suit him, we shall all live together, eat in common, I will give my arm to Cosette—to Madame Pontmercy, pardon me, it is from habit—we will have but one roof, but one table, but one fire, the same chimney corner in winter, the same promenade in summer, that is joy, that is happiness, that, it is everything. We will live as one family, one family!”
At this word Jean Valjean grew wild. He folded his arms, gazed at the floor at his feet as if he wished to hollow out an abyss in it, and his voice suddenly became piercing.
“One family! no. I am of no family. I am not of yours. I am not of the family of men. In houses where people are at home I am an incumbrance. There are families, but they are not for me. I am the unfortunate; I am outside. Had I a father and a mother? I almost doubt it. The day that I married off that child it was all over, I saw that she was happy, and that she was with the man whom she loved, and that there was a good old man here, a household of two angels, all joys in this house, and that it was well, I said to myself: Enter thou not. I could have lied, it is true, have deceived you all, have remained Monsieur Fauchelevent. As long as it was for her, I could lie; but now it would be for myself, I must not do it. It was enough to remain silent, it is true, and everything would continue. You ask me what forces me to speak? a strange thing; my conscience. To remain silent was, however, very easy. I have passed the night in trying to persuade myself to do so; you are confessing me, and what I come to tell you is so strange that you have a right to do so; well, yes, I have passed the night in giving myself reasons, I have given myself very good reasons, I have done what I could, it was of no use. But there are two things in which I did not succeed; neither in breaking the cord which holds me by the heart fixed, riveted, and sealed here, nor in silencing some one who speaks low to me when I am alone. That is why I have come to confess all to you this morning. All, or almost all. It is useless to tell what concerns only myself; I keep it for myself. The essential you know. So I have taken my mystery, and brought it to you. And I have ripped open my secret under your eyes. It was not an easy resolution to form. All night I have struggled with myself. Ah! you think I have not said to myself that this is not the Champmathieu affair, that in concealing my name I do no harm to anybody, that the name of Fauchelevent was given to me by Fauchelevent himself in gratitude for a service rendered, and I could very well keep it, and that I should be happy in this room which you offer me, that I should interfere with nothing, that I should be in my little corner, and that, while you would have Cosette, I should have the idea of being in the same house with her. Each one would have had his due share of happiness. To continue to be Monsieur Fauchelevent, smoothed the way for everything. Yes, except for my soul. There was joy everywhere about me, the depths of my soul were still black. It is not enough to be happy, we must be satisfied with ourselves. Thus I should have remained Monsieur Fauchelevent, thus I should have concealed my real face, thus, in presence of your cheerfulness, I should have borne an enigma, thus, in the midst of your broad day, I should have been darkness, thus, without openly crying beware, I should have introduced the galleys at your hearth, I should have sat down at your table with the thought that, if you knew who I was, you would drive me away, I should have let myself be served by domestics who, if they had known, would have said: How horrible! I should have touched you with my elbow which you have a right to shrink from, I should have stolen the clasp of your hand! There would have been in your house a division of respect between venerable white hairs and dishonoured white hairs; at your most intimate hours, when all hearts would have thought themselves open to each other to the bottom, when we should have been all four together, your grandfather, you two, and myself; there would have been a stranger there! I should have been side by side with you in your existence, having but one care, never to displace the covering of my terrible pit. Thus I, a dead man, should have imposed myself upon you, who are alive. Her I should have condemned to myself for ever. You, Cosette, and I, we should have been three heads in the lifer’s green cap! Do you not shudder? I am only the most depressed of men, I should have been the most monstrous. And this crime I should have committed every day! And this lie I should have acted every day! And this face of night I should have worn every day! And of my disgrace, I should have given to you your share every day! every day! to You, my loved ones, you, my children, you, my innocents! To be quiet is nothing? to keep silence is simple? No, it is not simple. There is a silence which lies. And my lie, and my fraud, and my unworthiness, and my cowardice, and my treachery, and my crime, I should have drunk drop by drop, I should have spit it out, then drunk again, I should have finished at midnight and recommenced at noon, and my good-morning would have lied, and my good-night would have lied, and I should have slept upon it, and I should have eaten it with my bread, and I should have looked Cosette in the face, and I should have answered the smile of the angel with the smile of the damned, and I should have been a detestable impostor! What for? to be happy. To be happy, I! Have I the right to be happy? I am outside of life, monsieur.”
Jean Valjean stopped. Marius listened. Such a chain of ideas and of pangs cannot be interrupted. Jean Valjean lowered his voice anew, but it was no longer a hollow voice, it was an ominous voice.
“You ask why I speak? I am neither informed against, nor pursued, nor hunted, say you. Yes! I am informed against! yes! I am pursued! yes! I am hunted? By whom? by myself. It is I myself who bar the way before myself, and I drag myself, and I urge myself, and I check myself, and I exert myself, and when one holds himself he is well held.”
And seizing his own coat in his clenched hand and drawing it towards Marius:
“Look at this hand, now,” continued he. “Don’t you think that it holds this collar in such a way as not to let go? Well! conscience has quite another grasp! If we wish to be happy, monsieur, we must never comprehend duty; for, as soon as we comprehend it, it is implacable. One would say that it punishes you for comprehending it; but no, it rewards you for it; for it puts you into a hell where you feel God at your side. Your heart is not so soon lacerated when you are at peace with yourself.”
And, with a bitter emphasis, he added:
“Monsieur Pontmercy, this is not common sense, but I am an honest man. It is by degrading myself in your eyes that I elevate myself in my own. This has already happened to me once, but it was less grievous then; it was nothing. Yes, an honest man. I should not be one if you had, by my fault, continued to esteem me; now that you despise me, I am one. I have this fatality upon me that, being forever unable to have any but stolen consideration, that consideration humiliates me and depresses me inwardly, and in order that I may respect myself, I must be despised. Then I hold myself erect. I am a galley slave who obeys his conscience. I know well that is improbable. But what would you have me do? it is so. I have assumed engagements towards myself; I keep them. There are accidents which bind us, there are chances which drag us into duties. You see, Monsieur Pontmercy, some things have happened to me in my life?”
Jean Valjean paused again, swallowing his saliva with effort, as if his words had a bitter after-taste, and resumed:
“When one has such a horror over him, he has no right to make others share it without their knowledge, he has no right to communicate his pestilence to them, he has no right to make them slip down his precipice without warning of it, he has no right to let his convict’s cap be placed upon them, he has no right craftily to encumber the happiness of others with his own misery. To approach those who are well, and to touch them in the shadow with his invisible ulcer, that is horrible. Fauchelevent lent me his name in vain. I had no right to make use of it; he could give it to me, I could not take it. A name is a Me. You see, monsieur, I have thought a little, I have read a little, although I am a peasant; and you see that I express myself tolerably. I form my own idea of things. I have given myself an education of my own. Well, yes, to purloin a name, and to put yourself under it, is dishonest. The letters of the alphabet may be stolen as well as a purse or a watch. To be a false signature in flesh and blood, to be a living false key, to enter the houses of honest people by picking their locks, never to look again, always to squint, to be infamous within myself, no! no! no! no! It is better to suffer, to bleed, to weep, to tear the skin from the flesh with the nails, to pass the nights in writhing, in anguish, to gnaw away body and soul. That is why I come to tell you all this. Voluntarily, as you say.”
He breathed with difficulty, and forced out these final words:
“To live, once I stole a loaf of bread; to-day, to live, I will not steal a name.”
“To live!” interrupted Marius. “You have no need of that name to live!”
“Ah! I understand,” answered Jean Valjean, raising and lowering his head several times in succession.
There was a pause. Both were silent, each sunk in an abyss of thought. Marius had seated himself beside a table, and was resting the corner of his mouth on one of his bent fingers. Jean Valjean was walking back and forth. He stopped before a glass and stood motionless. Then, as if answering some inward reasoning, he said, looking at that glass in which he did not see himself:
“While at present, I am relieved!”
He resumed his walk and went to the other end of the parlour. Just as he began to turn, he perceived that Marius was noticing his walk. He said to him with an inexpressible accent:
“I drag one leg a little. You understand why now.”
Then he turned quite round towards Marius:
“And now, monsieur, picture this to yourself: I have said nothing, I have remained Monsieur Fauchelevent, I have taken my place in your house, I am one of you, I am in my room, I come to breakfast in the morning in slippers, at night we all three go to the theatre, I accompany Madame Pontmercy to the Tuileries and to the Place Royale, we are together, you suppose me your equal; some fine day I am there, you are there, we are chatting, we are laughing, suddenly you hear a voice shout this name: Jean Valjean! and you see that appalling hand, the police, spring out of the shadow and abruptly tear off my mask!”
He ceased again; Marius had risen with a shudder. Jean Valjean resumed: “What say you?”
Marius’ silence answered.
Jean Valjean continued:
“You see very well that I am right in not keeping quiet. Go on, be happy, be in heaven, be an angel of an angel, be in the sunshine, and be contented with it, and do not trouble yourself about the way which a poor condemned man takes to open his heart and do his duty; you have a wretched man before you, monsieur.”
Marius crossed the parlour slowly, and, when he was near Jean Valjean, extended him his hand.
But Marius had to take that hand which did not offer itself, Jean Valjean was passive, and it seemed to Marius that he was grasping a hand of marble.
“My grandfather has friends,” said Marius. “I will procure your pardon.”
“It is useless,” answered Jean Valjean. “They think me dead, that is enough. The dead are not subjected to surveillance. They are supposed to moulder tranquilly. Death is the same thing as pardon.”
And, disengaging his hand, which Marius held, he added with a sort of inexorable dignity:
“Besides, to do my duty, that is the friend to which I have recourse; and I need pardon of but one, that is my conscience.”
Just then, at the other end of the parlour, the door was softly opened a little way, and Cosette’s head made its appearance. They saw only her sweet face, her hair was in charming disorder, her eyelids were still swollen with sleep. She made the movement of a bird passing its head out of its nest, looked first at her husband, then at Jean Valjean, and called to them with a laugh, you would have thought you saw a smile at the bottom of a rose:
“I’ll wager that you’re talking politics. How stupid that is, instead of being with me!”
Jean Valjean shuddered.
“Cosette,” faltered Marius—and he stopped. One would have said that they were two culprits.
Cosette, radiant, continued to look at them both. The frolic of paradise was in her eyes.
“I catch you in the very act,” said Cosette. “I just heard my father Fauchelevent say, through the door: ‘Conscience—Do his duty.’—It is politics, that is. I will not have it. You ought not to talk politics the very next day. It is not right.”
“You are mistaken, Cosette,” answered Marius. “We were talking business. We are talking of the best investment for your six hundred thousand francs——”
“That’s not all there is to talk about,” interrupted Cosette. “I am coming. Do you want me here?”
And, passing resolutely through the door, she came into the parlour. She was dressed in a full white morning gown, with a thousand folds and with wide sleeves which, starting from the neck, fell to her feet. There are in the golden skies of old Gothic pictures such charming robes for angels to wear.
She viewed herself from head to foot in a large glass, then exclaimed with an explosion of ineffable ecstasy:
“Once there was a king and a queen. Oh! how happy I am!”
So saying, she made a reverence to Marius and to Jean Valjean.
“There,” said she, “I am going to install myself by you in an arm-chair; we breakfast in half an hour, you shall say all you wish to; I know very well that men must talk, I shall be very good.”
Marius took her arm, and said to her lovingly:
“We are talking business.”
“By the way,” answered Cosette, “I have opened my window, a flock of pierrots [sparrows or masks] have just arrived in the garden. Birds, not masks. It is Ash Wednesday to-day; but not for the birds.”
“I tell you that we are talking business; go, my darling Cosette, leave us a moment. We are talking figures. It will tire you.”
“You have put on a charming cravat this morning, Marius. You are very coquettish, monsieur. It will not tire me.”
“I assure you that it will tire you.”
“No. Because it is you. I shall not understand you, but I will listen to you. When we hear voices that we love, we need not understand the words they say.To be here together is all that I want. I shall stay with you; pshaw!”
“You are my darling Cosette! Impossible.”
“Impossible!”
“Yes.”
“Very well,” replied Cosette. “I would have told you the news. I would have told you that grandfather is still asleep, that your aunt is at mass, that the chimney in my father Fauchelevent’s room smokes, that Nicolette has sent for the sweep, that Toussaint and Nicolette have had a quarrel already, that Nicolette makes fun of Toussaint’s stuttering. Well, you shall know nothing. Ah! it is impossible! I too, in my turn, you shall see, monsieur, I will say: it is impossible. Then who will be caught? I pray you, my darling Marius, let me stay here with you two.”
“I swear to you that we must be alone.”
“Well, am I anybody?”
Jean Valjean did not utter a word. Cosette turned towards him. “In the first place, father, I want you to come and kiss me. What are you doing there, saying nothing, instead of taking my part? who gave me such a father as that? You see plainly that I am very unfortunate in my domestic affairs. My husband beats me. Come, kiss me this instant.”
Jean Valjean approached.
Cosette turned towards Marius. “You, sir, I make faces at you.”
Then she offered her forehead to Jean Valjean.
Jean Valjean took a step towards her.
Cosette drew back.
“Father, you are pale. Does your arm hurt you?”
“It is well,” said Jean Valjean.
“Have you slept badly?”
“No.”
“Are you sad?”
“No.”
“Kiss me. If you are well, if you sleep well, if you are happy, I will not scold you.”
And again she offered him her forehead.
Jean Valjean kissed that forehead, upon which there was a celestial reflection.
“Smile.”
Jean Valjean obeyed. It was the smile of a spectre.
“Now defend me against my husband.”
“Cosette!—” said Marius.
“Get angry, father. Tell him that I must stay. You can surely talk before me. So you think me very silly. It is very astonishing then what you are saying! business, putting money in a bank, that is a great affair. Men play the mysterious for nothing. I want to stay. I am very pretty this morning. Look at me, Marius.”
And with an adorable shrug of the shoulders and an inexpressibly exquisite pout, she looked at Marius. It was like a flash between these two beings. That somebody was there mattered little.
“I love you!” said Marius.
“I adore you!” said Cosette.
And they fell irresistibly into each other’s arms.
“Now,” resumed Cosette, readjusting a fold of her gown with a little triumphant pout, “I shall stay.”
“What, no,” answered Marius, in a tone of entreaty, “we have something to finish.”
“No, still?”
Marius assumed a grave tone of voice:
“I assure you, Cosette, that it is impossible.”
“Ah! you put on your man’s voice, monsieur. Very well, I’ll go. You, father, you have not supported me. Monsieur my husband, monsieur my papa, you are tyrants. I am going to tell grandfather on you. If you think that I shall come back and talk nonsense to you, you are mistaken. I am proud. I wait for you now, you will see that it is you who will get bored without me. I am going away, very well.”
And she went out.
Two seconds later, the door opened again, her fresh rosy face passed once more between the two folding doors, and she cried to them:
“I am very angry.”
The door closed again and the darkness returned.
It was like a stray sunbeam which, without suspecting it, should have suddenly traversed the night.
Marius made sure that the door was well closed.
“Poor Cosette!” murmured he, “when she knows——”
At these words, Jean Valjean trembled in every limb. He fixed upon Marius a bewildered eye.
“Cosette! Oh, yes, it is true, you will tell this to Cosette. That is right. Stop, I had not thought of that. People have the strength for some things, but not for others. Monsieur, I beseech you, I entreat you, Monsieur, give me your most sacred word, do not tell her. Is it not enough that you know it yourself? I could have told it by myself without being forced to it, I would have told it to the universe, to all the world, that would be nothing to me. But she, she doesn’t know what it is, it would appall her. A convict, why! you would have to explain it to her, to tell her: It is a man who has been in the galleys. She saw the chain pass by one day. Oh, my God!”
He sank into an arm-chair and hid his face in both hands. He could not be heard, but by the shaking of his shoulders it could be seen that he was weeping. Silent tears, terrible tears.
There is a stifling in the sob. A sort of convulsion seized him, he bent over upon the back of the arm-chair as if to breathe, letting his arms hang down and allowing Marius to see his face bathed in tears, and Marius heard him murmur so low that his voice seemed to come from a bottomless depth: “Oh! would that I could die!”
“Don’t worry,” said Marius, “I will keep your secret for myself alone.”
And, less softened perhaps than he should have been, but obliged for an hour past to familiarise himself with a fearful surprise, seeing by degrees a convict superimposed before his eyes upon M. Fauchelevent, possessed little by little of this dismal reality, and led by the natural tendency of the position to determine the distance which had just been put between this man and himself, Marius added:
“It is impossible that I should not say a word to you of the trust which you have so faithfully and so honestly restored. That is an act of probity. It is just that a recompense should be given you. Fix the sum yourself, it shall be counted out to you. Do not be afraid to fix it very high.”
“I thank you, monsieur,” answered Jean Valjean gently.
He remained thoughtful a moment, passing the end of his forefinger over his thumb-nail mechanically, then he raised his voice:
“It is all nearly finished. There is one thing left——”
“What?”
Jean Valjean had as it were a supreme hesitation, and, voiceless, almost breathless, he faltered out rather than said:
“Now that you know, do you think, monsieur, you who are the master, that I ought not to see Cosette again?”
“I think that would be best,” answered Marius coldly.
“I shall not see her again,” murmured Jean Valjean.
And he walked towards the door.
He placed his hand upon the knob, the latch yielded, the door started, Jean Valjean opened it wide enough to enable him to pass out, stopped a second motionless, then shut the door, and turned towards Marius.
He was no longer pale, he was livid. There were no longer tears in his eyes, but a sort of tragical flame. His voice had again become strangely calm.
“But, monsieur,” said he, “if you are willing, I will come and see her. I assure you that I desire it very much. If I had not clung to seeing Cosette, I should not have made the avowal which I have made, I should have gone away; but wishing to stay in the place where Cosette is and to continue to see her, I was compelled in honour to tell you all. You follow my reasoning, do you not? that is a thing which explains itself. You see, for nine years past, I have had her near me. We lived first in that ruin on the boulevard, then in the convent, then near the Luxembourg Gardens. It was there that you saw her for the first time. You remember her blue plush hat. We were afterwards in the neighborhood of the Invalides where there was a grating and a garden. Rue Plumet. I lived in a little back-yard where I heard her piano. That was my life. We never left each other. That lasted nine years and some months. I was like her father, and she was my child. I don’t know whether you understand me, Monsieur Pontmercy, but from the present time, to see her no more, to speak to her no more, to have nothing more, that would be hard. If you do not think it wrong, I will come from time to time to see Cosette. I should not come often. I would not stay long. You might say I should be received in the little low room. On the ground floor. I would willingly come in by the back door, which is for the servants, but that would excite wonder, perhaps. It is better, I suppose, that I should enter by the usual door. Monsieur, indeed, I would really like to see Cosette a little still. As rarely as you please. Put yourself in my place, it is all that I have. And then, we must take care. If I should not come at all, it would have a bad effect, it would be thought singular. For instance, what I can do, is to come in the evening, at nightfall.”
“You will come every evening,” said Marius, “and Cosette will expect you.”
“You are kind, monsieur,” said Jean Valjean.
Marius bowed to Jean Valjean, happiness conducted despair to the door, and these two men separated.