OF THE U N I V LR5 ITY or ILLINOIS 845H87 is<^e) V. 3 t Return this book on or before the Latest Date stamped below. University of Illinois Library ta r\pi\ X o c.q f E-' 8 r •. V.-- « 10V- 1 3 1989 AUG 2 9 [1989 NOV 1 5 1389 Jf, IH-.P-S I":? Ii97» MOV 2 O^-’o 1989. b issi L161 — H41 LES MISEEABLES. VOL. III. / Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2017 with funding from University of Illinois Ujibana^Champaign Alternates https://archive.org/details/lesmiserables03hugo_0 LES MISEEABLES. BY VICTOE HUGO. AUTHORIZED ENGLISH TRANSLATION (COPYRIGHT) IN THREE VOLUMES. VOL. III. LONDON : HURST AND BLACKETT, PUBLISHERS, SUCCESSORS TO HENRY COLBURN, 13, GREAT MARLBOROUGH STREET. 1863. JOHN CHILDS AND SO S, PRINTKRS CONTESTS TO VOl. Ill CHAP. PAGE I. THE oumm OF SLANO . . . . . . 1 II. BOOTS OF SLANO . . . . . . 7 III. LAUGHIHO SLANG AND CBYING SLANG . . 14 lY. TWO DUTIES. WATCHING AND HOPING . . 18 Y. BBIGHT LIGHT . . . . . . . . 21 YI. THE BEGINNING OF THE SHADOW . . . . 26 YII. A CAB BUNS IN ENGLISH AND BABBS IN SLANG 30 YIII. MABIUS GIYES COSETTE HIS ADDBESS .. 37 IX. AN OLD HEABT AND A YOUNG HEABT FACE EACH OTHEB . . . . . . . . 42 X. THE TWO WABNINGS . . . . , . 53 XI. M. MAB(EUF . . . . . . . . 56 XII. A DIFFICULT PROBLEM TO SOLYE . . . . 60 XIII. A BURIAL GIYES OPPORTUNITY FOB A BEYIYAL 67 XIY. THE EBULLITIONS OF OTHEB DAYS . . 72 XY. ORIGINALITY OF PARTS .. .. • • 76 XYI. GAYBOCHE ON THE MARCH . . • • 79 VI CONTENTS, CHAP. XYII. XVIII. XIX. XX. XXI. XXII. XXIII. XXIY. XXY. XXYI. XXYII. XXYIII. XXIX. XXX. XXXI. XXXII. xxxiii. XXXIY. XXXY. XXXYI. XXXYII. XXXYIII. XXXIX. XL. XLI. XLII. XLIII. XLIY. , XLY. XLYI. XLYII. THE OLD MAX HISTOHY OF CORIXTH FROM ITS FOUXDATIOX PRELIMIXARY GAIETIES PREPARATIOXS THE RECRUIT OF THE RUE DES BILLETTES . . WAS HIS XAME LE CABUC ? FROM THE RUE PLUMET TO THE RUE ST DEXIS THE EXTREME BRIXK THE FLAG THE BARREL; qp GUNPOWDER • • THE AGONY OF DEATH AND THE AGONY OF LIFE GAYROCHE CALCULATES DISTANCES . . THE TREACHEROUS BLOTTING-BOOK WHILE COSETTE SLEEPS gayroche’s excess of zeal THE CHARYBDIS OF THE FAUBOURG ST ANTOINE LIGHTS AND SHADOWS FIVE LESS AND ONE MORE THE PROSPECT FROM A BARRICADE THE ARTILLERY SETS TO WORK . . ’ . . DAWN . . . . PASSING FLASHES . . GAYROCHE OUTSIDE . . . . HOW A BROTHER BECOMES A FATHER JEAN YALJEAN’S REVENGE . ^ THE DEAD ARE RIGHT AND THE LIVING ARE NOT WRONG . . THE HEROES . . FOOT TO FOOT . . . . ORESTES SOBER AND PYLADES DRUNK PRISONER ! THE EARTH ’IMPOVERISHED BY THE SEA . 1 - PAGE 85 89 94 104 109 112 116 121 126 131 135 139 142 149 153 a58 164 168 174 179 186 189 194 198 205 212 219 223 225 228 230 QONTENTS. VIT CHAP. XLTIfl. XLIX. L, V: LIT. LIJI. LIT. LY. LYI. LYII. LYIII. LIX. LX. LXI. LXII. LXIIT. LXIY. LXY. LXYI. LXYII. LXYIII, LXIX. LXX. LXXT. LXXII. LXXIII. LXXIY. THE OLD HISTOBT OF THE ^EWEB BBIJNESEAIT . . .... PBESEJfT PBOGEESS: FIJTUBE PBOGBESS THE SEWER AXD ITS SURPRISES . . THE TRACKED MAX . . . . ... HE TP.O BEARS HIS CROSS THE FOXTIS . . : . . . . THE TORX COAT-SKIRT MARIUS APPEARS DEAD TO A COXXOISSEXJR RETURX OF THE SOX PRODIGAL OF HIS LIFE THE GRAXDFATHER THE EXD OF JAYERT IX THE WOOD AGAIX MARIUS PREPARES FOR A DOMESTIC WAR . . MARIIJ3 ATTACKS . . MLLE. GILLEXORMAXD HAS XO OEJECTIOX TO THE MATCH . . . . . . THE OLD MEX REXDER COSETTE HAPPY TWO MEX IMPOSSIBLE TO FIXD FEBRUARY 16, 1833 JEAX YALJEAX STILL HAS HIS ARM IX A SLIXG IMMORTALE JECUR THE SEYEXTH CIRCLE AXD THE EIGHTH HEAYEX THE OBSCURITY WHICH A REYELATIOX MAY COXTAIX THE GROUXD-FLOOR ROOM OTHER BACKWARD STEPS . . THEY REMEMBER THE GARDEX IX THE RUE PLUMET ATTRACTIOX AXD EXTIXCTIOX PAGE 234 237 242 247 253 257 260 265 271 274 277 282 292 294 299 301 307 314 319 327 334 340 355 361 366 363 372 Vlll CONTENTS- CHAP. PAGE LXXV. PITT THE UNHAPPY, BUT BE INDULGENT TO THE HAPPY . . . . . . 373 LXXYI. A PEN IS TOO HEAYY EOB THE MAN WHO SAYED EAUCHELEYENT . . . . 375 LXXYII. A BOTTLE OE INK WHICH ONLY WHITENS . . 379 LXXYIII. A NIGHT BEHIND WHICH IS DAY . . . . 395 LXXIX. THE GRASS HIDES, AND THE RAIN EEEACES 403 LES IISMABLES. CHAPTEE I. THE OEIGIH OE SLAl^G. “ PiGBiTiA ” is a terrible word, for it engeDders a world, la jpegre^ for which read — robbery ; and a Hades, la pegrenne^ for which read — hunger. Hence indolence is a mother, and has a son, robbery, and a daughter, hunger. AVhere are we at this moment ? in slang. What is slang ? it is at once the nation and the idiom, it is robbery in its two species, people and lan- guage. Pour- and- thirty years ago, when the narrator of this grave and sombre history introduced into the middle of a work written with the same object as this one^ a robber speaking slang, there was amazement and clamour. “Why! what! slang ! why, it is frightful, it is the language of the chain-gang, of hulks and prisons, of everything that is the most abomin- able in society,” &c. &c. &c. We could never understand objections of this nature. Since that period two powerful ro- mance-writers, of whom one was a profound observer of hu- manity, the other an intrepid friend of the people, Balzac and Eugene Sue, having made bandits talk in their natural tongue, as the author of “ Le dernier Jour d’un Condamne ” did in 1828 , the same objections were raised, and people repeated, — “ AVhat do writers w^ant with this repulsive patois ? slang is odious, and produces a shudder.” Who denies it ? of course it does. When the object is to probe a wound, a gulf, or a so- ciety, when did it become a fault to drive the probe too deep ? w’^e have always thought that it w^as sometimes an act of cour- age and at the very least a simple and useful action, worthy of the sympathetic attention which a duty accepted and carried out deserves. Why should we not explore and study every- * Le dernier Jour d’un Condamne. 1 VOL. III. 2 THE ORIGIN OF SLANG. thing, and why stop on the way ? Stopping is the function of the probe, and not of the prober. Certainly it is neither an attractive nor an easy task to seek in the lowest depths of social order, where the earth leaves off and mud begins, to grope in these vague densities, to pursue, seize, and throw quivering on the pavement that abject idiom which drips with tilth when thus brought to light, that pustul- ous vocabulary of which each word seems an unclean ring of a monster of the mud and darkness. Nothing is more mournful than thus to contemplate, by the light of thought, the frightful vermin swarm of slang in its nudity. It seems, in fact, as if you have just drawn from its sewer a sort of horrible beast made for the night, and you fancy you see a frightful, living, and brist- ling polype, winch shivers, moves, is agitated, demands the shadow again, menaces, and looks. One word resembles a claiv, another a lustreless and bleeding eye, and some phrases seem to snap like the pincers of a crab. All this lives wdth the hideous vitality of things w^hich are organized in disorganization. Now, let us ask, when did horror begin to exclude study ? or the malady drive away the physician ? Can we imagine a naturalist who would refuse to examine a viper, a bat, a scorpion, a scolo- pendra, or a tarantula, and throw them into the darkness, say- ing, “ Fie, how ugly they are ! ” The thinker who turned away from slang would resemble a surgeon who turned aw^ay from an ulcer or a wart. He would be a philologist hesitating to examine a fact of language, a philosoplier hesitating to scruti- nize a fact of humanity. For we must tell all those ignorant of the fact, that slang is at once a literary phenomenon and a social result. What is slang, properly so called ? it is the lan- guage of misery. Here we may, perhaps, be stopped ; the fact may be gener- alized, which is sometimes a way of alternating it ; it may be observed that every trade, every profession, we might also say all the accidents of the social hierarchy, and all the forms of intelligence, have their slang. The merchant who says, “ Mont- pellier in demand, Marseille fine quality ; ” the broker who says, carrying forward, and buying for the account ; ” the gambler who says, pique, repique, and capote ; ” the usher of the Norman isles who says, ‘Hhe holder in fee cannot make any claim during the hereditary seizure of the property of the mortgager ; ” the playwright who says, “ the piece was goosed ; ” the actor who says, “ I made a hit ; ” the philosopher who says, “ plienomenal triplicity ; ” the sportsman who says, a covey of partridges, a leash of woodcocks ; ” the phrenologist who says, ‘‘ amativeness, combativeness, secretiveness ; ” the infantry THE ORIGIN OF SLANG. soldier who says, “ my clarionette ; ” the dragoon who says, my turkey-cock ; ” the fencing-master who says, ‘‘ tierce, carte, disengage;” the printer who says, hold a chapel;” all- printer, fencing-master, dragoon, infantry man, phrenologist, sportsman, philosopher, actor, playwright, gambler, stock-broker, and merchant — talk slang. The painter who says, my grind- er; ” the attorney who says, “ my spring-over-the-gutter ; ” the barber who says, “ my clerk ; ” and the cobbler who says, ‘‘ my scrub,” — all talk slang, lligorously taken, all the different ways of saying right and left, the sailor’s larboard and starboard, the scene-shifter’s off-side and prompt-side, and the beadle’s Epistle-side and Grospel-side, are slang. There is the slang of the poppets as there was the slang of the precieuses, and the Hotel de Earnbouillet bordered to some slight extent the Cour des Miracles. There is the slang of duchesses, as is proved by this sentence, written in a note by a very great lady and very pretty woman of the Eestoration ; Vous trouverez dans ces potains-la une foultitude de raisons pour que je me libertise.”'"^ Diplomatic cyphers are slang, and the Pontifical Chancery, writ- ing 26 for ‘‘ Home,” grkztntgzyal for “ Envoy,” and abfxusU grnogrfczu tu XI. for the Duke of Modena,” talk slang. The medieval physicians wEo, in order to refer to carrots, radishes, and turnips, said, opoponach^ perfroscliiniim^ reptitalinus, draca- tholicum angelorum^ and postmegorum, talk slang. The sugar- baker who says, “ clarified lumps, molasses, bastard, common, burned, loaves,” — this honest manufacturer talks slang. A certain school of critics, who twenty years ago said, “ one half of Shakespere is puns and playing on words,” spoke slang. The poet and artist who with profound feeling would call M. de Montmorency a bourgeois, if he were not a connoisseur in verses and statues, talk slang. The classic academician who calls flowers Flora, the fruits Pomona, the sea Xeptune, love the flames, beauty the charms, a horse a cliarger, the white or tricolour cockade the rose of Bellona, the three-cornered hat the triangle of Mars, — that classic academician talks slang. Algebra, medicine, and botany have their slang. The language employed on ship-board, that admirable sea-language so com- plete and picturesque, which Jean Bart, Dufresne, Suffren, and Duperre spoke, which is mingled with the straining of the rigging, the sound of the speaking-trumpets, the clang of boarding axe, the rolling, the wind, the gusts, and the cannon— is an heroic and brilliant slang, which is to the ferocious slang of robbers what the lion is to the jackal. * “You will find in that tittle-tattle a multitude of reasons why I should take my liberty.” 4 THE ORIGIN OF SLANG. All this is perfectly true, but, whatever people may say^ this mode of comprehending the word slang is an extension which everybody will not be prepared to admit. For our part, we perceive the precise circumscribed and settled accepta- tion of the word, and restrict slang to slang. The true slang, the slang par excellence^ if the two words can be coupled, the immemorial slang which was a kingdom, is nothing else, we repeat, than the ugly, anxious, cunning, treacherous, venomous, cruel, blear-eyed, vile, profound, and fatal language of misery. There is at the extremity of all abasements and all misfortunes a last misery, which revolts and resolves to contend with the ensemble of fortunate facts and reigning rights : a frightful struggle, in which, at one moment crafty, at another violent, at once unhealthy and ferocious, it attacks the social order with pin-pricks by vice, and with heavy blows by crime. For the necessities of this struggle, misery has invented a fighting language, which is called slang. To hold up on the surface and keep from forgetfulness, from the gulf, only a fragment of any language, which man has spoken, and which would be lost, that is to say, one of the elements, good or bad, of which civiliza- tion is composed and complicated, is to extend the data of social observation and serve civilization itself. Plautus rendered this service, whether voluntarily or involuntarily, by making tw^o Carthaginian soldiers speak Phoenician ; Moliere rendered it also by making so many of his characters talk Levantine and all sorts of patois. Here objections crop out afresh ; Phoenician, excellent, Levantine, very good, and even patois may be allowed, for they are languages which have belonged to nations or provinces — but slang ? of what service is it to preserve slang and help it to float on the surface r To this we will only make one remark. Assuredly, if the language which a nation or a province has spoken is worthy of interest, there is a thing still more worthy of attention and study, and that is the language which a wretchedness has spoken. It is the language which has been spoken in France, for instance, for more than four centuries, not only by a wretch- edness, but by every wretchedness, by every human wretch- edness possible. And, then, we insist upon the fact, to study social deformities and infirmities, and point them out for cure, is not a task in which choice is permissible. The historian of morals and ideas has a mission no less austere than the historian of events. The latter has the surface of civilization, the struggles of crowned heads, the births of princes, the marriages of kings, assemblies, great public men and revolutions, — all the external part : the other historian has the interior, the basis, THE ORIGIN OF SLANG. 5 the people that labours, suffers, and waits, the crushed woman, the child dying in agony, the dull warfare of man with man, obscene ferocities, prejudices, allowed iniquities, the subter- ranean counterstrokes of the law, the secret revolutions of minds, the indistinct shivering of multitudes, those who die of hunger, the bare-footed, the bare-armed, the disinherited, the orphans, the unhappy, the infamous, and all the ghosts that wander about in obscurity. He must go down with his heart full of charity and severity, at once as a brother and as a judge, into the impene- trable casemates in which crawl pell-mell those who bleed and those who wound, those who weep and those who cure, those who fast and those who devour, those that endure evil and those who commit it. Are the duties of the historians of hearts and souls inferior to those of the historians of external facts ? can we believe that Alighieri has less to say than Machiavelli ? is the lower part of civilization, because it is deeper and more gloomy, less important than the upper ? Do we know the mountain thoroughly if we do not know the caverns ? We will notice, by the way, that from our previous remarks a marked separation, which does not exist in our mind, might be inferred between the two classes of historians. No one is a good historian of the patent, visible, glistening, and public life of a people, unless he is at the same time and to a certain extent the historian of their profound and hidden life, and no one is a good historian of the interior unless he can be, whenever it is required, historian of the exte- rior. The history of morals and ideas penetrates the his- tory of events, and vice versa; they are two orders of dif- ferent facts which answer to each other, are always linked together, and often engender one another. All the lineaments which providence traces on the surface of a nation have their gloomy but distinct parallels at the base, and all the convulsions of the interior produce up-heavings on the surface. As true history is a medley of everything, the real historian attends to everything. Man is not a circle with only one centre ; he is an ellipse with two foci, facts being the one, and ideas the other ; slang is nothing but a vestibule in which language, having some wicked action to commit, disguises itself. It puts on these masks of words and rags of metaphors. In this w^ay it becomes horrible, and can scarce be recognized : is it really the French language, the great human tongue ? it is ready to go on the stage and take up the cue of crime, and suited for all the parts in the repertory of evil. It no longer walks, but shambles ; it limps upon the crutch of the Cour des Miracles, which may be THE OKIGIN OF SLANG. e metamorpliosed into a club : all the spectres, its dressers^ have daubed its face, and it crawls along and stands erect with the double movement of the reptile. It is henceforth ready for any part, for it has been made to squint by the forger, has been verdigrised by the poisoner, blackened by the soot of the in- cendiary, and ruddled by the murderer. When you listen at the door of society, on the side of honest men, you catch the dialogue of those outside. You distinguish questions and answers, and notice, without com- prehending it, a hideous murmur, sounding almost like the human accent, but nearer to a yell than to speech. It is slang ; the w^ords are deformed, wild, imprinted with a species of fantastic bestiality. You fancy that you hear hydras con- versing. It is unintelligibility in darkness, it gnashes its teeth and talks in whispers, supplementing the gloom by enigmas. There is darkness in misfortune, and greater darkness still in crime, and these two darknesses amalgamated compose slang. There is obscurity in the atmosphere, obscurity in the deeds, ob- scurit}" in the voices. It is a horrifying, frog-like language, which goes, comes, hops, crawls, slavers, and moves monstrously in that common grey mist composed of crime, night, hunger, vice, falsehood, injustice, nudity, asphyxia, and winter, which is the high noon of the wretched. Let us take compassion on the chastised, for, alas ! what are we ourselves ? who am I, who am speaking to you ? who are you, who are listening to me ? whence do we come ? and is it quite sure that w^e did nothing before we were born ? The earth is not without a resemblance to a gaol, and who knows whether man is not the ticket-of-leave of Divine justice ? If we look at life closely we find it so made, that there is punish- ment everywhere to be seen. Are you what is called a happy man ? well, you are sad every day, and each of them has its great grief or small anxiety. Yesterday, you trembled for a health which is dear to you, to-day you are frightened about your own, to-morrow it will be a monetary anxiety, and the day after the diatribe of a calumniator, and the day after that again the misfortune of some friend ; then the weather, then some- thing broken or lost, or a pleasure for wliich your conscience and your backbone reproach you ; or, another time, the pro- gress of public affairs, and we do not take into account heart- pangs. And SO it goes on ; one cloud is dissipated, another forms, and there is hardly one day in one hundred of real joy and bright sunshine. And you are one of that small number who are happy : as for other men, the stagnation of night is. EOOTS OF SLANG. 7 around them. E/efleqting minds rarely use the expressions the happy and the unhappy, for in this world, which is evidently the vestibule of another, there are no happy beings. The true human division is into the luminous and the dark. To dimin- ish the number of the dark, and augment that of the luminous, is the object, and that is why we cry, “ Instruction and learn- ing! ” Learning to read is lighting the fire, and every syllable spelt is a spark. When we say light, however, we do not ne- cessarily mean light ; for men suffer in light, and excess of light burns. Elaine is the enemy of the wings, and to burn without ceasing to fly is the prodigy of genius. When you know and when you love you will still suffer, for the day is born in tears, and the luminous weep, be it only for the sake of those in darkness. CHAPTEE IL ROOTS OE SLANG. Slang is the language of those in darkness. Thought is affected in its gloomiest depths, and social philosophy is ha- rassed in its mo'st poignant undulations, in the presence of this enigmatical dialect, which is at once branded and in a state of revolt. There is in this a visible chastisement, and each syllable looks as if it were marked. The words of the common language appear in it, as if branded and hardened by the hangman’s red- hot irons, and some of them seem to be still smoking ; some phrases produce in you the effect of a robber’s fleur-de-lysed shoulder suddenly exposed, and ideas almost refuse to let them- selves be represented by these convict substantives. The meta- phors are at times so daring that you feel that they have worn fetters. Still, in spite of all this, and in consequence of all this, this strange patois has by right its compartment in that great impartial museum, in which there is room for the oxydized sou as well as the gold medal, and which is called toleration. Slang, whether people allow it or no, has its syntax and poetry, and is a language. If, by the deforming of certain vowels, we per- ceive that it has been chewed by Maudrin, we feel from cer- tain metonyms that Yillon spoke it. That exquisite and so celebrated line, Mais ou sont les neigcs d’antau r is a verse of slang. An tan — ante annum^ is a slang word ol 8 ROOTS OF SLANG. Thunes, which signified the past year, and, by extension, form- erly. Five-and-thirty years ago, on the departure of the great chain-gang, in 1827, there might be read in one of the dun- geons of Bicetre this maxim, engraved with a nail upon the wall by a king of Thunes condemned to the galleys, “ les dabs d’antan trimaient siempre pour la pierre du Coesre,” which means, “ the kings of former days used always to go to be con- secrated.” In the thought of that king, the consecration was the galleys. The word decarade, which expresses the departure of a heavy coach at a gallop, is attributed to Villon, and is worthy of him. This word, which strikes fire, contains in a masterly onomatopoeia the whole of Lafontaine’s admirable line, “ Six forts ckevaux tiraient un cocke.’* From a purely literary point of view, few studies would be more curious or fertile than that of slang. It is an entire lan- guage within a language, a sort of sickly grafting which has produced a vegetation, a parasite which has its roots in the old Graulish trunk, and whose sinister foliage crawls up the whole of one side of the language. This is what might be called the first or common notion of slang, but to those who study the language as it should be studied, that is to say, as geologists study the earth, slang appears like a real alluvium. According as we dig more or less deeply, we find in slang, beneath the old popular French, Proven9al, Spanish, Italian, Levantine, that language of the Mediterranean ports, English, and German, E/omanic, in its three varieties of French, Italian and Eoman, Latin, and finally, Basque and Celtic. It is a deep and strange formation, a subterranean edifice built up in common by all scoundrels. Each accursed race has deposited its stratum, each suffering has let its stone fall, each heart has given its pebble. A multitude of wicked, low, or irritated souls who passed through life, and have faded away in eternity, are found there almost entire, and to some extent still visible, in the shape of a monstrous word. Do you want Spanish ? the old Gothic slang swarms with it. Thus we have hoffette, a box on the ears, which comes from hofe- ton ; vantane, a window (afterwards vanterne), from vantana ; gat, a cat, from gato ; acite, oil, from aceyte. Do you want Italian ? we have spade, a sword, which comes from spada, and carvel, a boat, which comes from caravella. From the English we have hichot, the Bishop, raille, a spy, from rascal, and pilche, a case, from pilclier, a scabbard. Of German origin are calner, the waiter, from Jcelner, hers, the master, from lierzog, or duke. ROOTS OF SLANG. 9 In Latin we frangir, to break, iromfrangere, offurer, to steal, ivom fur ^ and cadene^ a chain, from catena. There is one word which is found in all continental language with a sort of mysterious power and authority, and that is the word magnus : Scotland makes of it, for instance, mac,, and slang reduces it to mitJc, afterwards Meg,, that is to say, the Deity. Do you wish for Basque ? here is gahisto, the devil, which is derived from gaiztoa, bad, and sorgahon^ good-night, w^hich comes from galon, good-evening. In Celtic we find hlavin^ a handkerchief, derived from hla'bet, running water ; menesse, a woman (in a bad sense), from meinc, full of stones ; bar ant ^ a stream, from baranton,, a fountain ; goffeur, a locksmith, from goff,, a blacksmith ; and gue- douze, death, which comes from guenn^du, white and black. Lastly, do you wush for a bit of history ? Slang calls crowms “the Maltese,” in memory of the change w^hich w^as current aboard the Maltese galleys. In addition to the philological origins which we have indi- cated, slang has other and more natural roots, which issue, so to speak, directly from the human mind. In the first place, there is the direct creation of w^ords, for it is the mystery of language to paint with words which have, we know not how or why, faces. This is the primitive foundation of every human language, or what might be called the granite. Slang swarms with words of this nature, immediate words created all of one piece, it is im- possible to say when, or by whom, without etymologies, analo- logies, or derivatives, — solitary, barbarous, and at times hideous words, which have a singular power of expression, and are alive. The executioner, le taule ; the forest, le sabri ; fear or flight, taf ; the footman, le larbin ; the general, prefect, or minister, fharos ; and the devil, le rabouin. Nothing can be stranger than these words, which form transparent masks : some of them, le rabouin,, for instance, are at the same time grotesque and terri- ble, and produce the effect of a Cyclopean grimace. In the second place, there is metaphor, and it is the peculiarity of a language which wishes to say everything and conceal everything to abound in figures. Metaphor is an enigma in which the robber who is scheming a plot, or the prisoner arranging an escape, takes the refuge No idiom is more metaphorical than slang ; devisser le coco, to twist the neck ; tortiller, to eat ; etre gerbe, to be tried ; un rat, a stealer of bread ; il lansq^uine, it rains — an old striking figure, wliich bears to some extent its date with it, assimilates the long oblique lines of rain to the serried sloping pikes of the lansquenets, and contains in one word the popular adage, “ It is raining halberts.” At times, in proportion as slang passes from the first to the second stage, 10 ROOTS OF SLANG. words pass from tlie savage and primitive state to the metaphori- cal sense. The devil ceases to be le rabouin, and becomes “ the baker,” or he who puts in the oven. This is wittier but not so grand, something like E^acine after Corneille, or Euripides after ^schylus. Some slang phrases which belong to both periods, and have at once a barbarous and a metaphorical character, re- semble phantasmagorias : Les sorgueurs vont sollicer les gails a la lune (the prowlers are going to steal horses at night). This passes before the mind like a group of spectres, and we know not what we see. Thirdly, there is expediency : slang lives upon the language, uses it as it pleases, and when the neces- sity arises limits itself to denaturalizing it summarily and coarsely. At times, with the ordinary words thus deformed and complicated with pure slang, picturesque sentences are composed, in which the admission of the two previous elements, direct creation and metaphor, is visible — le cab jaspine, je mar- ronne qiie la roulette Pantin trime dans le sabri, the dog barks, I suspect that the Paris diligence is passing through the wood; le dab est sinve, la dabuge est merloussiere^ la fee est bative, the master is stupid, the mistress is cunning, and the daughter pretty. Most frequently, in order to throw out listeners, slang confines itself to adding indistinctly to all the words of the lan- guage, a species of ignoble tail, a termination in aille^ orgue, iergue, or uclie. Thus : Vouziergiie trouvaille bonorgue ee gigot- muclie ? Do you find that leg of mutton good ? This was a remark made by Cartouche to a jailer, in order to learn whether the sum offered hitn for an escape suited him. The termination in maT has been very recently added. Slang, being the idiom of corruption, is itself quickly cor- rupted. Moreover, as it always tries to hide itself so soon as it feels that it is understood, it transforms itself. Exactly opposed to all other vegetables, every sunbeam kills what it falls on in it. Hence slang is being constantly decomposed and recomposed, and this is an obscure and rapid labour wdiich never ceases, and it makes more way in ten years than lan- guage does in ten centuries. Thus larton (head) becomes lartif gail (a horse) gage, fertanclie (straw) fertille, momig- nard (the child) momaque, fiques (clothes) frusques, cJiique (the church) Vegrugeoir, and colabre (the neck) colas. The devil is first galiisto, then le rabouin, and next the baker ; a priest is the raticlion, and then the sanglier ; a dagger is the vingt-deux, next a surin, and lastly a lingre ; the police are railles, then roussms, then marcJiands de laeet, then coqueurs, and lastly cognes ; the executioner is the taule, then Chariot, then the atigeur, and then the becquillard. In the seven- ROOTS OF SLANG. i: teenth century to fight was to ‘‘take snufF,” in the nineteenth it is “to have a quid in the throat,” but twenty different names have passed away between these two extremes, and Car- touche would speak Hebrew to Lacenaire. All the words of this language are perpetually in flight, like the men who employ them. Still, from time to time, and owing to this very movement, the old slang reappears and becomes new again. It has its head-quarters where it holds its ground : the Temple preserved the slang of the seventeenth century, and Bicetre, when it was a prison, that of Thunes. There the termination in anche of the old Thuners could be heard : Boy- anclies-tu ? (do you drink?), il or oy anche (he believes). But perpetual motion does not the less remain the law. If the philosopher succeeds in momentarily fixing, for the purpose of observation, this language, Vv^hich is necessarily evaporating, he falls into sorrowful and useful meditations, and no study is more eflicacious or more fertile and instructive. There is not a metaphor or an etymology of slang which does not contain a lesson. Among these mew fighting memi^ pretending : they “fight” a disease, for cunning is their strength. With them the idea of man is not separated from the idea of a shadow'. I**Iight is called la sorgue and man Vorgue ; man is a derivative of night, They have formed the habit of regarding society as an atmo-r sphere which kills them, as a fatal force, and they talk of their liberty as they would talk of their health. A man arrested is a “patient;” a man sentenced is a “corpse.” The most terrible thing for the prisoner within the four stone w'alls which form his sepulchre is a sort of freezing chastity, and hence he alw^ays calls the dungeon the castus. In this funereal place external life will appear under its most smiling aspect. The prisoner has irons on his feet, and you may per- haps fancy that he thinks how people walk with their feet : no, he thinks that they dance with them, hence, if he succeed in cutting through his fetters, his first idea is that he can now dance, and he calls the saw a hastringue. A name is a centre^ a profound assimilation. The bandit has twm heads, — the one wdiich revolves his deeds and guides him through life, the other which he has on his shoulders on the day of his death : he calls the head which counsels him in crime, the sorbonne, and the one that expiates it the tronche. When a man has nothing but rags on his body and vices in his heart, — when he has reached that double moral and material degradation which the word gueux characterizes in its two significations, he is ripe for mime : he is like a well-sharpened blade : he has two edges, 12 ROOTS OF SLANG. his distress and his villany, and hence slang does not call him a “gueux” hut a reguise. What is the bagne ? a furnace of damnation, a hell, and the convict calls himself a “faggot.” Lastly, what name do malefactors give to the prison r the “college.” A whole penitentiary system might issue from this word. Would you like to know whence came most of the galley songs, — those choruses called in the special vocabularies the lirlonfa ? Listen to this : There was at the Chatelet of Paris a large, long cellar, which was eight feet below the level of the Seine. It had neither windows nor gratings, and the sole opening was the door : men could enter it, but air not. This cellar had for ceiling a stone arch, and for floor ten inches of mud : it had been paved, but, owing to the leakage of the water, the paving had rotted and fallen to pieces. Eight feet above the ground, a long massive joist ran from one end to the other of this vault : from this joist hung at regular distances chains, three feet long, and at the end of these chains were collars. In this cellar men condemned to the galleys were kept until the day of their departure for Toulon : they were thrust under this beam, where each had his fetters oscillating in the darkness and waiting for him. The chains, like pendant arms, and the collars, like open hands, seized these wretches by the neck: they were riveted and left there. As the chain was too short, they could not lie down : they remained motionless in this cellar, in this night, under this beam, almost hung, forced to make extraordinary eflbrts to reach their loaf or water-jug, with the vault above their heads and mud up to their knees, drawn and quartered by fatigue, giving way at the hips and knees, hanging on by their hands to the chain to rest them- selves, only able to sleep standing, and awakened every mo- ment by the choking of the collar ; — some did not awake. To eat they were compelled to draw up their bread, which was thrown into the mud, with the heel all along the thigh to their hand. How long did they remain in this state ? one month, two months, sometimes six months : one man remained a year. It was the antechamber of the galleys, and men were put in it for stealing a hare from the king. In this hellish sepulchre what did they ? they died by inches, as people can do in a sepulchre, and sang, which they can do in a hell, for when there is no longer hope, song remains ; — in the Maltese waters, when a galley was approaching, the singing was heard before the sound of the oars. The poor poacher Survincent, who passed through the cellar-prison of the Chatelet, said, “ rhymes ROOTS OF SLANG. 13 sustained meP Poetry is useless : what is the good of rhymes ? In this cellar nearly all the slang songs were born, and it is from the dungeon of the Grreat Chatelet of Paris that comes the melancholy chorus of Montgomery’s galley : Timalou- misaine, timoulamison'^ Most of the songs are sad, some are gay, and one is tender: Icicaille est le theatre Du petit dardant.”* Do you what you will, you cannot destroy that eternal relic of man’s heart, love. In this world of dark deeds secrets are kept, for secrets are a thing belonging to all, and with these wretches secrecy is the unity which serves as the basis of union. To break secrecy is to tear from each member of this ferocious community some- thing of himself. To denounce is called in the energetic lan- guage of slang “ to eat the piece,” as if the denouncer took a little of the substance of each, and supported himself on a piece of the desh of each. What is receiving a buffet ? the conventional metaphor answers, “ It is seeing six-and-thirty candles.” Here slang interferes and reads camovfle for candle ; life in its ordin- ary language takes camouflei as a synonym for a box on the ears. Hence, by a sort of penetration from bottom to top, and by the aid of metaphor, that incalculable trajectory, slang ascends from the cellar to the academy, and Poulailler saying, I light my camoujie^'' makes Yoltaire write, “ Langleviel la Beaumelle de- serves a hundred camoujietsy Searching in slang is a discovery at every step, and the study and investigation of this strange idiom lead to the point of intersection of regular with accursed society. The robber has also his food for powder, or stealable matter in you, in me, in the first passer-by, the pantre {pan, everybody). Slang is the word converted into a convict. It produces a consternation to reflect that the thinking principle of man can be hurled down so deep that it can be dragged there and bound by the obscure tyranny of fatality, and be fastened to some unknown rivets on this precipice. Alas ! will no one come to the help of the human soul in this darkness ? Is it its destiny ever to await the mind, the liberator, the immense tamer of Pegasuses and hippogryphs, the dawn-coloured com- batant, who descends from the azure sky between two wings, the radiant knight of the future ? will it ever call in vain to its help the lance of the light of idealism ? is it condemned always to look down into the gulf of evil and see closer and closer to * The archer Cupid. 14 LAUGHING SLANG AND CRYING SLANG. it beneath the hideous water the demoniac head, this slavering mouth, and this serpentine undulation of claws, swellings, and rings ? Must it remain there without a gleam of hope, left to the horror of this formidable and vaguely-smelt approach of the monster, shuddering, i with dishevelled hair, wringing its arms and eternally chained to the rock of night, like a sombre white and naked Andromeda in the darkness P CHAPTEE III. LAUaHIKG SLAIS^G AND CRTING SLANG. As we see, the whole of slang, the slang of four hundred years ago,, as well as that of the present day, is penetrated by that gloomy symbolic spirit which gives to every word at one moment a suffering accent, at another a menacing air : we see in it the old ferocious sorrow of those mumpers of the Cour des Miracles, who played at cards with packs of their own, some of which have been preserved for us. The eight of clubs, for instance, represented a tall man bearing eight enormous clover leaves, a sort of fantastic personification of the forest. At the foot of this tree could be seen a lighted fire, at which three hares were roasting a game-keeper on a spit, and behind, over another fire, a steaming cauldron from which a dog’s head emerged. Nothing can be more lugubrious than these reprisals in paint- ing upon a pack of cards, in the face of the pyres for smug- glers and the cauldron for coiners. The various forms which thought assumed in the kingdom of slang, singing, jests, and menaces, all had this impotent and crushed character. All the songs of which a few melodies have come down to us were humble and lamentable enough to draw tears. The pegre calls himself the poor pegre, for he is always the hare that hides itself, the mouse that escapes, or the bird that fiies away. He hardly protests, but restricts himself to sighing, and one of his groans has reached us : Je n'^entrave que le dail comment meclc^ le daron des orgues, pent atiger ses mSmes et ses momignards, et les locJier crihlant sans etre atige lui-meme. (I do not understand how God, the father of men, can torture His children, and His grandchildren, and hear them cry, without being tortured Him- self.) The wretch, whenever he has time to think, makes him- LAUGHING SLANG AND CRYING SLANG. 15 self little before the law and paltry before society: he lies down on his stomach, supplicates, and implores pity, and we can. see that he knows himself to be in the wrong. Toward the middle of the last century a change took place : the person, songs, and choruses of the robbers assumed, so to speak, an insolent and jovial gesture. The larijla was substituted for the plaintive mature^ and we find in nearly all the songs of the galleys, the hulks, and the chain-gangs, a dia- bolical and enigmatical gaiety. We hear in them that shrill and leaping chorus which seems illumined by a phosphorescent gleam, and appears cast into the forest by a will-o’-the-wisp playing the fife. Mirlababi surlababo Mirliton ribonribette, Surlababi mirlababo Mirliton ribonribo. They sang this while cutting a man’s throat in a cellar or a thicket. It is a serious symptom that in the eighteenth century the old melancholy of three desponding classes is dissipated, and they begin to laugh; they mock the grand ‘‘meg” and the grand “Dab,” and Louis XV. being given they call the King of Prance the Marquis de Pantin. The wretches are nearly gay, and a sort of dancing light issues from them, as if their conscience no longer weighed them down. These lament- able tribes of darkness no longer possess the despairing audacity of deeds, but the careless audacity of the mind ; this is a sign that they are losing the feeling of their criminality, and finding some support, of which they are themselves ignorant, among the thinkers and dreamers. It is a sign that robbery and plunder are beginning to be filtered even into doctrines and sophisms, so as to lose a little of their ugliness, and give a good deal of it to the sophisms and the doctrine. Lastly, it is a sign of a prodigious and speedy eruption, unless some diversion arise. Let us halt here for a moment. Whom do we accuse? is it the eighteenth century ? is it all philosophy ? certainly not. The work of the eighteenth century is healthy and good, and the Encyclopaedists, with Diderot at their head, the phy- siocists under Turgot, the philosophers led by Voltaire, and the TJtopists commanded by Kousseau, are four sacred legions. The immense advance of humanity toward the light is due to them, and they are the four advanced guards of the human races, going toward the four cardinal points of progress — Diderot toward the beautiful, Turgot toward the useful, Vol- taire toward truth, and Eousseau toward justice. But by the side of and below the philosophers were the. sophists, a venom- 16 LAUGHING SLANG AND CRYING SLANG. ous vegetation mingled with a healthy growth, a hemlock in the virgin forest. While the hangman was burning on the grand staircase of the Palace of Justice the grand liberating books of the age, writers now forgotten were publishing, with the royal privilege, strangely disorganizing books, which were eagerly read by the scoundrels. Some of these publications, patronized, strange to say, by a prince, will be found in the Bibliotheque secrete.” These facts, profound but unknown, were unnoticed on the surface, but at times the very obscurity of a fact constitutes its danger, and it is obscure because it is subterranean. Of all the writers, the one who perhaps dug the most unhealthy gallery at that day in the masses was Bestif de la Bretonne. This work, peculiar to all Europe, produced greater ravages in Germany than anywhere else. In Germany, during a certain period, which was summed up by Schiller in his famous drama of the Bobbers, robbery and plunder were raised into a protest against property and labour, they appropriated certain element- ary ideas, specious and false, apparently just, and in reality ab- surd, wrapped themselves up in these ideas, and to some extent disappeared in them, assumed an abstract name, and passed into a theoretical state, and in this way circulated among the laborious, suffering, and honest masses, without even the cognizance of the imprudent chemists who prepared the mixture, and the masses that accepted it. Whenever a fact of this nature is produced it is serious ; suffering engenders passion ; and while the pros- perous blind themselves, or go to sleep, the hatred of the unfortunate classes kindles its torch at some sullen or ill- constituted mind, which is dreaming in a corner, and sets to work examining society. The examination of hatred is a ter- rible thing. Hence come, if the misfortune of the age desires it, those frightful commotions, formerly called Jacqueries, by the side of which purely political commotions are child’s-play, and which are no longer the struggle of the oppressed with the oppressor, but the revolt of want against comfort. Everything is overthrown at such a time, and Jacqueries are the earthquakes of nations. The Erench Bevolution, that immense act of probity, cut short this peril, which was perhaps imminent in Europe toward the close of the eighteenth century. The Erench Bevolution, which was nothing but the ideal armed with a sword, rose, and by the same sudden movement closed the door of evil and opened the door of good. It disengaged the question, promul- gated the truth, expelled the miasma, ventilated the age, and crowned the people. We may say that it created man a second LAUGHING SLANG AND CRYING SLANG. 17 time by giving him a second soul — ^justice. The nineteenth century inherits and profits by its work, and at the present day the social catastrophe which we just now indicated is sim- ply impossible. He is a blind man who denounces it, a fool who fears it, for the devolution is the vaccine of Jacquerie. Thanks to the devolution, the social conditions are altered, and the feudal and monarchical diseases are no longer in. our blood. There is no middle age left in our constitution, and we are no longer at the time when formidable internal com- motions broke out, when the obscure course of a dull sound could be heard beneath the feet ; when the earth thrown out from the mole-holes appeared on the surface of civilization, when the soil cracked, when the roof of caverns opened, and monstrous heads suddenly emerged from the ground. The revolutionary sense is a moral sense, and the feeling of right being developed, developes the feeling of duty. The law of all is liberty, which ends where the liberty of an- other man begins, according to Robespierre’s admirable defini- tion. Since 1789 the wRole people has been dilated in the sublimated individual ; there is no poor man wlio, having his right, has not his radiance ; the man, dying of hunger, feels within himself the honesty of France. The dignity of the citizen is an internal armour ; the man who is free is scrupu- lous, and the voter reigns. Hence comes incorruptibility; hence comes the abortion of unhealthy covetousness, and hence eyes heroically lowered before temptation. The revolutionary healthiness is so great, that on a day of deliverance, a 14th of July, or a 10th of August, there is no populace, and the first cry of the enlightened and progressing crowds is, “ Death to the robbers ! ” Progress is an honest man, and the ideal and the absolute do not steal pocket-handkerchiefs. By whom were the carriages containing the wealth of the Tuileries escort- ed in 1848 ? by the rag-pickers of the Faubourg St Antoine. Rags mounted guard over the treasure, and virtue rendered these mendicants splendid. In these carts, in barely-closed ■chests — some, indeed, still opened — there was, amid a hundred dazzling cases, that old crown of France, all made of diamonds, surmounted by the royal carbuncle and the Regent diamonds, worth thirty millions of francs ; they guarded this crown with bare feet. Hence Jacquerie is no longer possible, and I feel sorry for the clever men ; it is an old fear which has made its last effort, and could no longer be employed in politics. The great spring of the red spectre is now broken, and every bird is aware of the fact, the scarecrow no longer horrifies. The birds VOL. III. 2 18 TWO DUTIES. WATCHING AND HOPING. treat the mannikin familiarly, and deposit their guano upon it^ and the bourgeois laugh at it. CHAPTEE IV. TWO DUTIES. WATCHINa HOPIFO. This being the case, is every social danger dissipated ? cer- tainly not. There is no Jacquerie, and society may be reassured on that side ; the blood will not again rush to its head, but it must pay attention to the way in which it breathes. Apoplexy is no longer to be apprehended, but there is consumption, and social consumption is called wretchedness. People die as well when undermined as when struck by lightning. We shall never grow weary of repeating, that to think before all of the disinherited and sorrowful classes, to relieve, ventilate, en- lighten, and love them, to magnificently enlarge their horizon, to lavish upon them education in every shape, to offer them the example of labour, and never that of indolence, to lessen the weight of the individual burden by increasing the notion of the universal object, to limit poverty without limiting wealth, to create vast fields of public and popular activity, to have, like Briareus, a hundred hands to stretch out on all sides to the crushed and the weak, to employ the collective powder in open- ing workshops for every arm, schools for every aptitude, and laboratories for every intellect, to increase wages, diminish the toil, and balance the debit and credit, that is to say, propor- tion the enjoyment to the effort, and the satisfaction to the wants ; in a word, to evolve from the social machine, on behalf of those who suffer and those who are ignorant, more light and more comfort, — is, and sympathetic souls must not forget it, the first of brotherly obligations, and, let egotistic hearts learn the fact, the first of political necessities. And all this, w^e are bound to add, is only a beginning, and the true question is this, labour cannot be law without being a right. But this is not the place to dwell on such a subject. If nature is called providence, society ought to call itself foresight. Intellectual and moral growth is no less indispens- able than natural amelioraticn ; know^ledge is a viaticum ; think- ing is a primary necessity, and truth is nourishment, like wheat. A reason fasting for knowledge and wisdom grows TWO DUTIES. WATCHING AND HOPING. 19 thin, and we must nurse minds that do not eat quite as much as stomachs. If there he anything more poignant than a body pining away for want of bread, it is a mind that dies of hunger for enlightenment. The whole of our progress tends toward the solution, and some day people will be stupefied. As the human race ascends, the deepest strata will naturally emerge from the zone of distress, and the efiacement of wretchedness will be eftected by a simple elevation of the level. People would do wrong to doubt this blessed solution. The past, we grant, is very powerful at the present hour, and is beginning again. This rejuvenescence of a dead man is surprising, and he marches straight toward us. He appears a victor, and is a con- queror; he arrives with his legion, superstitions; with his sword, despotism ; with his barrier, ignorance ; and during some time past he has gained his battles. He advances, he threatens, he laughs, he is at our gates. But we have no reason to despair ; let us sell the field on which Hannibal is encamped, for what can we, who believe, fear ? A recoil of ideas is no more pos- sible than it is for a river to flow up a hill. But those who desire no future ought to reflect ; by saying no to progress they do not condemn the future, but themselves, and they give themselves a deadly disease by inoculating themselves with the past. There is only one way of refusing to-morrow, and that is, by dying ; but we wish for no death, — that of the body, as late as possible, and that of the soul, never. Yes, the sphynx will speak, and the problem will be solved; the people sketched by the eighteenth century will be finished by the nineteenth. He is an idiot who doubts it. The future, the speedy bursting into flower of universal welfare, is a divinely fatal phenomenon. Immense and combined impulsions pushing together govern hu- man facts, and lead them all within a given time to the logical state, that is to say, to equilibrium, or in other words, to equity. A force composed of earth and heaven results from humanity and governs it; this force is a performer of miracles, and marvellous denouements are as easy to it as extraordinary incidents. Aided by science, which comes from man, and the event, which comes from another source, it is but little frightened by those contra- dictions in the setting of problems which seem to the vulgar herd impossibilities. It is no less skilful in producing a solution from the approximation of ideas than in producing instruction from the approximation of facts, and we may expect anything and every- thing from the mysterious power of progress, which, on fine days, confronts the east and the west in a sepulchre, and makes the Imams hold conference with Bonaparte in the interior of the great Pyramid. In the mean while, there is no halt, no 20 TWO DUTIES. WATCHING AND HOPING. hesitation, no check, in the grand forward march of minds. Social philosophy is essentially the source of peace ; it has for its object, and must have as result, the dissolution of passions by the study of antagonisms. It examines, scrutinizes, and analyzes, and then it recomposes ; and it proceeds by the reducing process, by removing hatred from everything. It has more than once occurred, that a society has been sunk by the wind which is let loose on men ; history is full of the shipwrecks of peoples and empires ; one day, that stranger, the hurricane, passes, and carries away manners, laws, and religions. The civilizations of India, Chaldaea, Persia, Assyria, and Egypt have disappeared in turn ; why ? we are ignorant. What are the causes of these disasters ? we do not know. Could those societies have been saved ? was it any fault of their own ? did they obstinately adhere to some fatal vice which destroyed them ? What amount of suicide is there in these terrible deaths of a nation and a race ? These are unanswer- able questions, for darkness covers the condemned civilizations. They have been under water, since they sank, and we have no more to say, and it is with a species of terror that we see in the back-ground of that sea which is called the past, and behind those gloomy waves, centuries, those immense vessels, Babylon, Nineveh, Tarsus, Thebes, and Home, sunk by the terrific blast which blows from all the mouths of the darkness. But there was darkness then, and we have light ; and if we are ignorant of the diseases of ancient civilizations, we know the infirmities of our own, and we contemplate its beauties and lay bare its deformities. Wherever it is wounded we probe it, and at once the suffering is decided, and the study of the cause leads to the discovery of the remedy. Our civilization, the work of twenty centuries, is at once the monster and the prodigy, and is worth saving ; it will be saved. To retain it is much, and to enlighten it is also something. All the labours of modern social philo- sophy ought to converge to this object, and the thinker of the present day has a grand duty to apply the stethoscope to civilization. We repeat it, this auscultation is encouraging; and we intend to finish these few pages, which are an austere interlude in a mournful drama, by laying a stress on this en- couragement. Beneath the social mortality the human im- perishableness is felt, and the globe does not die, because here and there are wounds in the shape of craters, and ringworms in the shape of solfatari, and a volcano which breaks out and scatters its fires around. The diseases of the people do not kill the man. And yet some of those who follow the social clinics shake BRIGHT LIGHT. 21 their heads at times, and the strongest, the most tender, and the most logical, have their hours of despondency. Will the future arrive ? it seems as if we may almost ask this question on seeing so much terrible shadow. There is a sombre, face-to- face meeting of the egotists and the wretched. In the egotist Ave trace prejudices, the cloudiness of a caste education, appe- tite growing with intoxication, and prosperity that stuns, a fear of suffering which in some goes so far as an aversion from the sufferers, an implacable satisfaction, and the feeling of self so swollen that it closes the soul. In the wretched we find covetousness, envy, the hatred of seeing others successful, the profound bounds of the human wild beast at satisfaction, and hearts full of mist, sorrow, want, fatality, and impure and sim- ple ignorance. Must we still raise our eyes to heaven ? is the luminous point which we notice there one of those which die out ? The ideal is frightful to look on thus lost in the depths, small, isolated, imperceptible, and brilliant, but sur- rounded by all those great black menaces monstrously collect- ed around it : for all that, though, it is in no more danger than a star in the yawning throat of the clouds. CHAPTEE V. BRiaHT LIGHT. The reader has of course understood that Eponine, on re- cognizing through the railings the inhabitant of the house in the Eue Plumet, to which Magnon sent her, began by keeping the bandits aloof from the house, then led Marius to it, and that after several days of ecstasy before the railings, Marius, impelled by that force which attracts iron to the loadstone, and the lover toward the stones of the house in which she whom he loves resides, had eventually entered Cosette’s garden, as Eomeo did Juliet’s. This had even been an easier task for him than for Eomeo, for Eomeo was obliged to escalade a wall, while Marius had merely to move one of the bars of the decrepit railing loose in its rusty setting, after the fashion of the teeth of old people. As Marius was thin he easily passed. As there never was anybody in the street, and as Marius never entered the garden save at night, he ran no risk of being seen. Erom that blessed and holy hour when a kiss affianced these 22 BRIGHT LIGHT. two souls, Marius went to the garden every night. If, at this moment of her life, Cosette had fallen in love with an unscrupulous libertine, she would have been lost, for there are generous natures that surrender themselves, and Cosette was one of them. One of the magnanimities of a woman is to yield, and love, at that elevation where it is absolute, is complicated by a certain celestial blindness of modesty. But what dangers you incur, ye noble souls ! you often give the heart and we take the body : your heart is left you, and you look at it in the darkness with a shudder. Love has no middle term : it either saves or destroys, and this dilemma is the whole of human destiny. No fatality offers this dilemma of ruin or salvation more inexorably than does love, for love is life, if it be not death : it is a cradle, but also a coffin. The same feeling says yes and no in the human heart, and of all the things which God has made, the human heart is the one which evolves the most light, and, alas ! the most darkness. God willed it that the love which Cosette came across was one of those loves which save. So long as the month of May of that year, 1832, lasted, there were every night in this poor untrimmed garden, and under this thicket, which daily became more fragrant and more thick, two beings composed of all the chastities and all the innocences, overflowing with all the felicities of heaven, nearer to the archangels than to man, pure, honest, intoxicated, and radiant, and who shone for each other in the darkness. It seemed to Cosette as if Marius had a crown, and to Marius as if Cosette had a glory. They touched each other, they looked at each other, they took each other by the hand, they drew close to each other; but there was a distance which they never crossed. Not that they respected it, but they were ignorant of it. Ma- rius felt a barrier in Cosette’s purity, and Cosette felt a sup- port in the loyalty of Marius. The first kiss had also been the last : since then Marius had never gone beyond touching Co- sette’s hand or neckhandkerchief or a curl with his lips. Co- sette was to him a perfume, and not a woman, and he inhaled her. She refused nothing, and he asked for nothing : Cosette was happ3^ and Marius satisfied. They lived in that ravishing state which might be called the bedazzdement of a soul by a soul ; it was the ineffable first embrace of two virginities in the ideal, two swans meeting on the Jungfrau. At this hour of love, the hour when voluptuousness is absolutely silenced by the omnipotence of ecstasy, Marius, the pure and seraphic Marius, would have sooner been able to go home with a street- walker than raise Cosette’s gown as high as her ankle. Once in the moonlight, Cosette stooped to pick up something on the BRIGHT LIGHT. 23 ground, and lier dress opened and displayed her neck. Marius turned his eyes away. What passed between these two lovers ? Nothing, they adored each other. At night, when they were there, this gar- den seemed a living and sacred spot. All the flowers opened around them and sent them their incense; and they opened their souls and spread them over the flowers. The wanton and vigorous vegetation quivered, full of sap and intoxication, around these two innocents, and they uttered words of love at which the trees shivered. What were these words ? Nothings, and nothing more, but they were sufficient to trouble and affect all this nature. It is a magic power which it would be difficult to understand, were we to read in a book this convers- ation made to be carried away and dissipated like smoke beneath the leaves by the wind. Take away from these whispers of two lovers the melody which issues from the soul, and accompanies them like a lyre, and what is left is only a shadow, and you say, “ What ! is it only that ? ” Well, yes, child’s-play, repetitions, laughs at nothing, absurdities, foolish- ness, all that is the most sublime and profound in the world ! the only things which are worth the trouble of being said and being listened to. The man who has never heard, the man who has never uttered, these absurdities and poor things is an imbecile and a wicked man. Said Cosette to Marius, — “ Do you know that my name is Euphrasie ? ” “ Euphrasie ? no, it is Cosette.” “ Oh ! Cosette is an ugly name, which was given me when I was little, but my real name is Euphrasie. Don’t you like that name ? ” “ Yes, but Cosette is not ugly.” “ Do you like it better than Euphrasie ? ” Well— yes.” In that case, I like it better too. That is true, Cosette is pretty. Call me Cosette.” Another time she looked at him intently, and exclaimed, — ‘‘ You are handsome, sir, you are good-looking, you have wit, you are not at all stupid, you are much more learned than I, but I challenge you with, ‘ I love you.’ ” A nd Marius fancied that he heard a strophe sung by a star. Or else she gave him a little tap, when he coughed, and said, — “ Do not cough, sir, I do not allow anybody to cough in my house without permission. It is very wrong to cough and frighten me. I wish you to be in good health, because if you were not I should be very unhappy, and what would you have me do ? ” 24 BRIGHT LIGHT. And this was simply divine. Once Marius said to Cosette, — “ Just fancy, I supposed for a while that your name was Ursula.” This made them laugh the whole evening. In the middle of another conversation he happened to exclaim, — • “ Oh 1 one day at the Luxembourg I felt disposed to settle an invalid ! ” But he stopped short, and did not complete the sentence,, for he would have been obliged to allude to Cosette’s garter, and that was impossible. There was a strange feeling connected with the flesh, before which this immense innocent love recoiled with a sort of holy terror. Marius imagined life with Cosette like this, without anything else ; to come every evening to the Bue Plumet, remove the old complacent bar of the President’s railings, sit down elbow to elbow on this bench, look through Jihe trees at the scintillation of the commencing night, bring the fold in his trouser-knee into cohabitation with Cosette’s ample skirts, to caress her thumb-nail, and to inhale the same flower in turn for ever and indefinitely. During this time the clouds passed over their heads, and each time the wind blows it carries off more of a man’s thoughts than of clouds from the sky. We cannot affirm that this chaste, almost stern love was absolutely without gallantry. ‘‘Paying compliments” to her whom we love is the first way of giving caresses and an attempted semi-boldness. A compliment is something like a kiss through a veil, and pleasure puts its sweet point upon it, while concealing itself. The cajoleries of Marius, all saturated with chimera, were, so to speak, of an azure blue. The birds when they fly in the direction of the angels must hear words of the same nature, still life, humanity, and the whole amount of positivism of which Marius was capable were mingled with it. It v/as w^hat is said in the grotto, as a prelude to what will be said in the alcove ; a lyrical effusion, the strophe and the sonnet commingled, the gentle hyperboles of cooing, all the refine- ments of adoration arranged in a posy, and exhaling a subtle and celestial perfume, an ineffable prattling of heart to heart. “ Oh ! ” Marius muttered, “ how" lovely you are ! I dare not look at you, and that is the reason why I contemplate you. You are a grace, and I know not what is the matter with me. The hem of your dress, w^here the end of your slipper passes through, upsets me. And then, what an enchanting light w hen your thoughts become visible, for your reason astonishes me, and you appear to me for instants to be a dream. Speak, I am listening to you, and admiring you. Oh, Cosette, how^ strange and BRIGHT LIGHT. 25 charming it is, I am really mad. You are adorable, and I study your feet in the microscope and your soul with the telescope.” And Cosette made answer, — And I love you a little more through all the time which has passed since this morning.” Questions and answers went on as they could in this dia- logue, which always agreed in the subject of love, like the elder-pith balls on the nail. Cosette’s entire person was sim- plicity, ingenuousness, whiteness, candour, and radiance, and it might have been said of her that she was transparent. She pro- duced on every one who saw her a sensation of April and day- break, and she had dew in her eyes. Cosette was a condensation of the light of dawn in a woman’s form. It was quite simple that Marius, as he adored, should admire. But the truth is, that this little boarding-school Miss, just freshly turned out of a convent, talked with exquisite penetration, and made at times all sorts of true and delicate remarks. Her chattering was con- versation, and she was never mistaken about anything, and con- versed correctly. Woman feels and speaks with the infallibility which is the tender instinct of the heart. JSTo one knows like a woman how to say things which are at once gentle and deep. Gentleness and depth, in those things the whole of woman is contained, and it is heaven. And in this perfect felicity tears welled in their eyes at every moment. A lady-bird crushed, a feather that fell from a nest, a branch of hawthorn broken, moved their pity, and then ecstasy, gently drowned by melan- choly, seemed to ask for nothing better than to weep. The most sovereign symptom of love is a tenderness which becomes at times almost insupportable. And by the side of all this — for contradictions are the lightning sport of love — they were fond of laughing with a ravishing liberty, and so familiarly that, at times, they almost seemed like two lads. Still, even without these two hearts intoxicated with chastity being conscious of it, unforgettable nature is ever there, ever there with its brutal and sublime object, and whatever the innocence of souls may be, they feel in the most chaste tete-a-tete the mysterious and adorable distinction which separates a couple of lovers from a couple of friends. They idolized each other. The permanent and the immut- able exist ; a couple love, they laugh, they make little pouts with their lips, they intertwine their fingers, and that does not prevent eternity. Two lovers conceal themselves in a garden in the twilight, in the invisible, with the birds and the roses, they fascinate each other in the darkness with their souls which 26 THE BEGINNING OF THE SHADOW. they place in their eyes, they mutter, they whisper, and during this period immense constellations of planets fill infinity. CHAPTEH VI. THE BEGIHKIIS^U OE THE SHADOW. CosETTE and Marius lived vaguely in the intoxication of their madness, and they did not notice the cholera which was de- cimating Paris in that very month. They had made as many confessions to each other as they could, but they had not ex- tended very far beyond their names. Marius had told Cosette that he was an orphan, Pontmercy by name, a barrister by pro- fession, and gaining a livelihood by writing things for publishers ; his father was a colonel, a hero, and he, Marius, had quarrelled with his grandfather who was very rich. He also incidentally remarked that he was a baron, but this did not produce much effect on Cosette. Marius a baron ? she did not understand it, and did not know what the word meant, and Marius was Marius to her. For her part, she confided to him that she had been educated at the convent of the Little Picpus, that her mother was dead, like his, that her father’s name was Fauchele- vent, that he was very good and gave a great deal to the poor, but was himself poor, and deprived himself of everything, w'hile depriving her of nothing. Strange to say, in the species of symphony which Marius had lived in since he found Cosette again, the past, even the most recent, had become so confused and distant to him that what Cosette told him completely satisfied him. He did not even dream of talking to her about the nocturnal adventure in the garret, the Thenardiers, the burning, the strange attitude and singular flight of her father. Marius momentarily forgot all this ; he did not know at night what he had done in the morning, where he had breakfasted or who had spoken to him ; he had a song in his ears which ren- dered him deaf to every other thought, and he only existed during the hours when he saw Cosette. As he was in heaven at that time, it was perfectly simple that he should forget the earth. Both of them bore languidly the undeflnable weiglit of immaterial joys ; that is the way in which those somnambulists called lovers live. THE BEGINNING OF THE SHADOW. 27 Alas ! who is there that has not experienced these things ? why does an hour arrive when we emerge from this azure, and Avhy does life go on afterwards ? Love almost takes the place of thought, and is an ardent forgetfulness of the rest. It is absurd to ask passion for logic, for there is no more an abso- lute logical concatenation in the human heart than there is a perfect geometric figure in the celestial mechanism. Eor Cosette and Marius nothing more existed than Marius and Cosette ; the whole universe around them had fallen into a gulf, and they lived in a golden moment, with nothing before them, nothing behind them. Marius scarce remembered that Cosette had a father, and in his brain there was the effacement of bedazzlement. Of what did these lovers talk ? as we have seen, of flowers, swallows, the setting sun, the rising moon, and all the important things. They had told themselves every thingexcept everything, for the everything of lovers is nothing. Of what use would it be to talk of her father, the realities, that den, those bandits, that adventure ? and was it quite certain that the nightmare had existed ? They were two, they adored each other, and there was only that, there was nothing else. It is probable that this evanishment of death behind us is inherent to the arrival in Paradise. Have we seen demons ? are there any ? have we trembled ? have we suffered ? we no longer know, and there is a roseate cloud over it all. Hence these two beings lived in this way, very high up, and with all the unverisimilitude which there is in nature ; neither at the nadir nor at the zenith, but between man and the seraphs, above the mud and below the aether, in the clouds ; they were not so much flesh and bone as soul and ecstasy from head to foot, already too sublimated to walk on earth, and still too loaded with humanity to disappear in aether, and held in suspense like atoms which are waiting to be precipitated ; apparently beyond the pale of destiny, and ignor- ant of that rut, yesterday, to-day, and to-morrow ; amazed, trans- ported, and floating at moments with a lightness sufficient for a flight in the infinitude, and almost ready for the eternal de- parture. They slept awake in this svveet lulling ; oh splendid lethargy of the real overpowered by the ideal! At times Cosette was so beautiful that Marius closed his eyes before ber. The best way of gazing at the soul is with closed eyes. Marius and Cosette did not ask themselves to what this would lead them, and looked at each other as if they had already arrived. It is a strange claim on the part of men to wish that love should lead them somewhere. Jean Valjean suspected nothing, for Cosette, not quite such a dreamer as Marius, 28 THE BEGINNING OF THE SHADOW. was gay, and that sufficed to render Jean Valjean happy. Cosette’s thoughts, her tender preoccupations, and the image of Marius which filled her soul, removed none of the incom- parable purity of her splendid, chaste, and smiling forehead. She was at the age when the virgin wears her love as the angel wears its lily. Jean Valjean was, therefore, happy ; and, besides, when two lovers understand each other, things always go well, and any third party who might trouble their love is kept in a perfect state of blindness by a small number of pre- cautions, which are always the same with all lovers. Hence Cosette never made any objections ; if he wished to take a walk, very good, my little papa, and if he stayed at home, very good, and if he wished to spend the evening with Cosette, she was enchanted. As he always went to his out-house at ten o’clock at night, on those occasions Marius did not reach the garden till after that hour, when he heard from the street Cosette opening the door. We need hardly say that Marius was never visible by day, and Jean Valjean did not even remember that Marius existed. One morning, however, he happened to say to Cosette, “Why, the back of your dress is all white!” On the previous evening Marius in a transport had pressed Cosette against the wall. Old Toussaint, who went to bed at an early hour, only thought of sleeping so soon as her work was finished, and was ignorant of everything like Jean Valjean. Marius never set foot in the house when he was with Cosette ; they concealed themselves in a niche near the steps, so as not to be seen or heard from the street, and sat there, often contenting themselves with the sole conversation of pressing hands twenty times a minute, and gazing at the branches of the trees. At such moments, had a thunderbolt fallen within thirty feet of them, they would not have noticed it, so profoundly was the reverie of the one absorbed and plunged in the reverie of the other. It was a limpid purity, and the houses were all white, and nearly all alike. This genus of love is a collection of lily leaves and dove’s feathers. The whole garden was between them and the street, and each time that Marius came in and out he carefully restored the bar of the railings, so that no disarrangement was visible. He went away generally at midnight, and went back to Courfey- rac’s lodgings. Courfeyrac said to Bahorel, — “ Can you believe it ? Marius returns home at present at one in the morning.” Bahorel answered, — THE BEGINNING OF THE SHADOW. 29 “ What would you have ? There is always a bombshell inside a seminarist.” At times Courfeyrac crossed his arms, assumed a stern air, and said to Marius, — ‘‘ Young man, you are becoming irregular in your habits.” Courfeyrac, who was a practical man, was not pleased with this reflection of an invisible paradise cast on Marius ; he was but little accustomed to unpublished passions, hence he grew impatient, and at times summoned Marius to return to reality. One morning he cast this admonition to him, — “ My dear fellow, you produce on me the effect at present of being a denizen of the moon, in the kingdom of dreams, the province of illusion, whose chief city is soap-bubble. Come, don’t play the prude, — what is her name ?” But nothing could make Marius speak, and his nails could have been dragged from him more easily than one of the three sacred syllables of which the ineffable name Cosette was com- posed. True love is luminous as the dawn, and silent as the tomb. Still Courfeyrac found this change in Marius, that his taciturnity was radiant. During the sweet month of May, Marius and Cosette knew this immense happiness — to quarrel and become reconciled, to talk for a long time, and with the most minute details, about people who did not interest them the least in the world, — a further proof that in that ravishing opera which is called love, the libretto is nothing. For Marius it was heaven to listen to Cosette talking of dress ; for Cosette to listen to Marius talking politics, to listen, knee against knee, to the vehicles passing along the Bue de Babylone, to look at the same planet in space, or the same worm glistening in the grass, to be silent together, a greater pleasure still than talking, &c. &e. &c. Still various complications were approaching. One evening Marius w^as going to the rendezvous along the Boulevard des Invalides ; he was walking as usual with his head down, and as he 'was turning the corner of the Eue Plumet, he heard some one say close to him, — “ (Good evening, Monsieur Marius.” He raised his head, and recognized Eponine. This produced a singular effect : he had not once thought of this girl since the day when she led him to the Bue Plumet ; he had not seen her again, and she had entirely left his mind. He had only motives to be grateful to her, he owed her his present happiness, and yet it annoyed him to meet her. It is an error to believe that passion, when it is happy and pure, leads a man to a state of per- 30 A CAB RUNS IN ENGLISH fection ; it leads him simply, as we have shown, to a state of for- getfulness. In this situation, man forgets to be wicked, but he also forgets to be good, and gratitude, duty, and essential and material recollections, fade away. At any other time Marius would have been very different to Eponine, but, absorbed by Cosette, he had not very clearly comprehended that this Eponine was Eponine Thenardier, and that she bore a name written in his father’s will — that name to which he would have so ardently devoted himself a few months previously. We show Marius as he was, and his father himself slightly disappeared in his mind beneath the splendour of his love. Hence he replied with some embarassment, — Ah, is it you, Eponine ? ” Why do you treat me so coldly ? Have I done you any injury?” “ jN’o,” he answered. Certainly he had no fault to find with her ; on the con- trary. Still he felt that he could not but say “ you ” to Epo- nine, now that he said “ thou ” to Cosette. As he remained silent, she exclaimed, — “ Tell me — ” Then she stopped, and it seemed as if words failed this crea- ture, who was formerly so impudent and bold. She tried to smile and could not, so continued, — ‘‘ Well?” Then she was silent again, and looked down on the ground. Good night, Monsieur Marius,” she suddenly said, and went away. CHAPTEE VIL A CAE ElINS m ENGLISH AND BAEKS IN SLANG. The next day — it was June 3rd, 1832, a date to which we draw attention owing to the grave events which were at that moment hanging over the horizon of Paris in the state of light- ning-charged clouds — Marius at night-fall was following the same road as on the previous evening, with the same ravishing thoughts in his heart, when he saw between the boulevard trees Eponine coming toward him. Two days running, — that was too much ; so he sharply turned back, changed his course, and AND BARKS IN SLANG. 31 went to the Eue Plumet hj the Eue Monsieur. This caused Eponine to follow him as far as the Eue Plumet, a thing she had never done before; hitherto, she had contented herself with watching him as he passed along the boulevard, without attempting to meet him : last evening was the first time that she ventured to address him. Eponine followed him, then, without his suspecting it : she saw him move the railing-bar aside and step into the garden. Hilloh ! ” she said, “ he enters the house.” She went up to the railing, felt the bars in turn, and easily distinguished the one which Marius had removed ; and she muttered in a low voice, and with a lugubrious accent — ‘‘ None of that, Lisette ! ” She sat down on the stone work of the railing, close to the bar, as if she were guarding it. It was exactly at the spot where the railings joined the next wall, and there was there a dark corner, in which Eponine entirely disappeared. She re- mained thus for more than an hour without stirring or breath- ing, absorbed in thought. About ten o’clock at night, one of the two or three passers along the Eue Plumet, an old belated citizen, who was hurrying along the deserted and ill-famed street, while passing the railing, heard a dull menacing voice saying,— am not surprised now that he comes every evening.” The passer-by looked around him, saw nobody, did not dare to peer into this dark corner, and felt horribly alarmed. He redoubled his speed, and was quite right in doing so, for in a few minutes six men, who were walking separately, and at some dis- tance from each other, under the walls, and who might have been taken for a drunken patrol, entered the Eue Plumet : the first who reached the railings stopped and waited for the rest, and a second after, all six were together, and began talking in whis- pered slang, — “ It’s here,” said one of them. ‘‘ Is there a dog in the garden ? ” another asked. “ I don’t know. In any case I have brought a ball which we will make it swallow.” Have you got some mastic to break a pane ? ” Yes.” ‘‘ The railings are old,” remarked the fifth man, who seemed to have the voice of a ventriloquist. ^^All the better,” said the second speaker, ‘^it will make no noise when sawn, and won’t be so hard to cut through.” The sixth, who had not yet opened his mouth, began ex- amining the railings as Eponine had done an hour ago, and 32 A CAB RUNS IN ENGLISH thus reached the bar which Marius had unfastened. Just as he was about to seize this bar, a hand suddenly emerging from the darkness, clutched his arm ; he felt himself roughly thrust back, and a hoarse voice whispered to him, “ There’s a cab (a dog).” At the same time he saw a pale girl standing in front of him. The man had that emotion which is always produced by things unexpected ; his hair stood hideously on end. Nothing is more formidable to look at than startled wild beasts. He fell back and stammered, — “ Who is this she-devil ? ” ‘‘Tour daughter.” It was, in truth, Eponine speaking to Thenardier. Upon her apparition, the other five men, that is to say, Claquesous, G-ueulemer, Babet, Montparnasse, and Brujon, approached noiselessly, without hurry or saying a word, but with the sinister slowness peculiar to these men of the night. Some hideous tools could be distinguished in their hands, and Gueule- mer held a pair of those short pincers which burglars call fauchons, “ Well, what are you doing here ? what do you want ? are you mad ? ” Thenardier exclaimed, as far as is possible to exclaim in a whisper. “ Have you come to prevent us from working ? ” Eponine burst into a laugh and leapt on his neck. “ I am here, my dear little pappy, because I am here ; are not people allowed to sit down in copings at present ? it is you w^ho oughtn’t to be here ; and what have you come to do, since it is a biscuit ? I told Magnon so, and there is nothing to be done here. But embrace me, my dear pappy, it is such a time since I saw you. You are out, then ! ” Thenardier tried to free himself from Eponine’s arms, and growled, — “ There, there, you have embraced me. Yes, I am out, and not in. Now be off.” But Eponine did not loose her hold, and redoubled her caresses. “ My dear pappy, how ever did you manage ? You must have been very clever to get out of that scrape, so tell me all about it. And where is mamma ? give me some news of her.” Thenardier answered, — “ She’s all right. I don’t know, leave me and be off, I tell you.” “ I do not exactly want to go off,” Eponine said with the pout of a spoiled child ; “ you send me away, though I haven’t AND BARKS IN SLANG. 83 seen you now for four months, and I have scarce had time to embrace you.” And she caught her father again round the neck. “ Oh, come, this is a bore,” said Babet. “ Make haste,” said Gueulemer, “ the police may pass.” The ventriloquial voice hummed, — “ Nous n’somTnes pas le jour de I’an, A becoter papa, maman.” Eponine turned to the five bandits : ‘‘Why, that’s Monsieur Brujon. Grood evening. Monsieur Babet ; good evening. Monsieur Claquesous. What, don’t you know me. Monsieur Gueulemer ? How are you, Montpar- nasse ? ” “ Yes, they know you,” said Thenardier ; “ but now good night, and be off ; leave us alone.” “ It is the hour of the foxes, and not of the chickens,” said Montparnasse. “ Don’t you see that we have work here ? ” Babet added. Eponine took Montparnasse by the hand. “ Mind,” he said, “ you will cut yourself, for I have an open knife.” “ My dear Montparnasse,” Eponine replied very gently, “ confidence ought to be placed in people, and I am ray father’s daughter, perhaps. Monsieur Babet, Monsieur Gueulemer, I was ordered to examine into this affair.” It is remarkable that Eponine did not speak slang ; ever since she had known Marius that frightful language had be- come impossible to her. She pressed Gueulemer’s great coarse fingers in her little bony hand, which was as weak as that of a skeleton, and continued, — “ You know very well that I am no fool, and people generally believe me. I have done you a ser- vice now and then ; well, I have made inquiries, and you would run a needless risk. I swear to you that there is nothing to be done in this house.” “ There are lone women,” said Gueulemer. “ No, they have moved away.” “ Well, the candles haven’t,” Babet remarked, and he pointed over the trees to a light which was moving about the garret ; it was Toussaint who was up so late in order to hang up some linen to dry. Eponine made a final efibrt. “ Well,” she said, “ they are very poor people, and there isn’t a penny piece in the house.” “ Go to the devil,” cried Thenardier ; “ when we have turned the house topsy-turvy, and placed the cellar at top VOL. III. 3 A CAB RUNS IN ENGLISH and the attics at the bottom, we will tell you what there is im side, and whether they are francs, sous, or liards.** And he thrust her away that he might pass. “ My kind M. Montparnasse,” Eponine said, “ I ask you, who are a good fellow, not to go in.” “ Take care, you’ll cut yourself,” Montparnasse replied. Thenardier remarked, with that decisive accent of his, — “Decamp, fairy, and leave men to do their business.” Eponine let go Montparnasse’s hand, which she had seized again, and said, — “ So you intend to enter this house ? ” “ A little,” the ventriloquist said with a grin. She leant against the railings, faced these six men armed to the teeth, to whom night gave demoniac faces, and said in a firm, low voice, — - “ Well, I will not let you ! ” They stopped in stupefaction, but the ventriloquist com- pleted his laugh. She continued, — “ Eriends, listen to me, for it’s now my turn to speak. If you enter this garden or touch this railing 1 will scream, knock at doors, wake people ; I will have you all six seized, and call the police.” “ She is capable of doing it,” Thenardier whispered to the ventriloquist and Brnjon. She shook her head, and added, — “ Beginning with my father.” Thenardier approached her. “Not so close, my good man,” she said. He fell back, growling between his teeth “ Why, what is the matter ? ” and added, “ the b .” She burst into a terrible laugh. “ As you please, but you shall not enter ; but I am not the daughter of a dog, since I am the whelp of a wolf You are six, but what do I care for that ? You are men and 1 am a woman. You won’t frighten me, I can tell you, and you shall not enter this house because it does not please me. If you come nearer I bark, and I told you there was a dog, and I am it. I do not care a farthing for you, so go your way, for you annoy me ! Gro where you like, but don’t come here, for I forbid it. Come on as you like, you with your knives, and I have my feet.” She advanced a step toward the bandits and said, with the same frightful laugh, — “ Confound it ! I’m not frightened. This summer I shall AND BARKS IN SLANG. 35 be hungry, and this winter I shall he cold. What asses these men must be to think they can frighten a girl ! Afraid of what? You have got dolls of mistresses who crawl under the bed when you talk big, but I am afraid of nothing ! ” She fixed her eye on Thenardier, and said, — “ Not even of you, father.” Then she continued, as she turned her spectral, blood-shot eyeballs on each of the bandits in turn, — AVhat do I care whether I am picked up to-morrow on the pavement of the Eue Plumet stabbed by my father, or am found within a year in the nets of St Cloud or on Swan’s island, among old rotting corks and drowned dogs ! ” She was compelled to break off, for she was attacked by a dry cough, and her breath came from her weak, narrow chest like the death-rattle. She continued, — “ I have only to cry out and people will come, patatras. You are six, but I am all Paris.” Thenardier moved a step toward her. ‘‘ Don’t come near me,” she cried. He stopped, and said gently, — “ Well, no, I will not approach you, but do not talk so loud. Do you wish to prevent us from working, my daughter ? And yet we must earn a livelihood. Do you no longer feel any af- fection for your father ? ” “ You bore me,” said Eponine. “ Still we must live, we must eat — ” Eot of hunger.” This said, she sat down on the coping of the railings and sang, — Mon bras si dodu, Ma jambe bien faite, Et le temps perdu. She had her elbow on her knee, and her chin in her hand, and balanced her foot with a careless air. Her ragged gown dis- played her thin shoulder-blades, and the neighbouring lamp lit up her profile and attitude. Nothing more resolute or more surprising could well be imagined. The six burglars, amazed and savage at being held in check by a girl, went under the shadow of the lamp and held council, with humiliated and furious shrugs of their shoulders. She, however, looked at them with a peaceful and stern air. “ There’s something the matter with her,” said Babet, some reason for it. Can she be in love with the dog ? and, yet, it’s a pity to miss the affair. There are two women who live 36 A CAB RUNS IN ENGLISH AND BARKS IN SLANG. alone, an old cove who lives in a yard, and very decent curtains up to the windows. The old swell must be a Jew, and I con- sider the afiair a good one.” “Well, do you fellows go in,” Montparnasse exclaimed, “ and do the trick. I will remain here with the girl, and if she stirs — ” He let the knife which he held in his hand glisten in the lamp-light. Thenardier did not say a word, and seemed ready for anything they pleased. Brujon, who was a bit of an oracle, and who, as we know, “put up the job,” had not yet spoken, and seemed thoughtful. He was supposed to recoil at nothing, and it was notorious that he had plundered a police-office through sheer bravado. Moreover, he wrote verses and songs, which gave him a great authority. Babet questioned him. “ Have you nothing to say, Brujon ? ” Brujon remained silent for a moment, then tossed his head in several different ways, and at length decided on speaking. “ Look here. I saw this morning two sparrows fighting, and to-night I stumble over a quarrelsome woman : all that is bad, so let us be off.” They went away, and while doing so Montparnasse mut- tered, — “No matter, if you had been agreeable I would have cut her throat.” Babet replied, — “ I wouldn’t, for I never strike a lady.” At the corner of the street they stopped and exchanged in a low voice this enigmatical dialogue. “ Where shall we go and sleep to-night?” “ Under Paris.” “ Have you your key about you, Thenardier ? ” “ Of course.” Eponine, who did not take her eyes off them, saw them return by the road along which they had come. She rose and crawled after them, along the walls and the houses. She fol- lowed them thus along the boulevard ; there they separated, and she saw the six men bury themselves in the darkness, where they seemed to fade away. 37 CHAPTER VIII. MARITJS GIYES COSETTE HIS ADDEESS. Aetee the departure of the bandits the rue Plumet resumed its calm, nocturnal aspect. What had just taken place in this street would not have astonished a forest, for the thickets, the coppices, the heather, the interlaced branches, and the tall grass, exist in a sombre way; the savage crowd catches glimpses there of the sudden apparitions of the invisible world. What there is below man distinguishes there through the mist what there is beyond man ; and things unknown to us living beings confront each other there in the night. Bristling and savage nature is startled by certain approaches, in which it seems to feel the supernatural ; the forces of the shadow know each other and maintain a mysterious equilibrium between themselves. Teeth and claws fear that which is unseizable, and blood-drinking bes- tiality, voracious, starving appetites in search of prey, the in- stincts armed with nails and jaws, which have for their source and object the stomach, look at and sniff anxiously the impas- sive spectral lineaments prowling about in a winding-sheet or standing erect in this vaguely-rustling robe, and which seems to them to live a dead and terrible life. These brutalities, which are only matter, have a confused fear at having to deal with the immense condensed obscurity in an unknown being. A black figure barring the passage stops the wild beast short ; what comes from the cemetery intimidates and disconcerts what comes from the den ; ferocious things are afraid of sinister things, and wolves recoil on coming across a ghoule. While this sort of human-faced dog was mounting guard against the railing, and six bandits fied before a girl, Marius was by Cosette’s side. The sky had never been more star-spangled and more charming, the trees more rustling, or the smell of the grass more penetrating ; never had the birds fallen asleep beneath the frondage with a softer noise ; never had the univer- sal harmonies of serenity responded better to the internal music of the soul; never had Marius been more enamoured, happier, or in greater ecstasy. But he had found Cosette sad, she had been crying, and her eyes were red. It was the first cloud in this admirable dream. Marius’ first remark was, — “ What is the matter with you ? ” And she replied, — 38 MARIUS GIVES COSETTE HIS ADDRESS. I will tell you.” Then she sat down on the bench near the house, and while he took his seat, all trembling, by her side, she continued, — “ My father told me this morning to hold myself in readi- ness, for he had business to attend to, and we were probably going away.” Marius shuddered from head to foot. When we reach the end of life, death signifies a departure, but at the beginning, departure means death. Tor six weeks past Marius had slowly and gradually taken possession of Cosette ; it was a perfectly ideal, but profound, possession. As we have explained, in first love men take the soul long before the body ; at a later date they take the body before the soul, and at times they do not take the soul at all, — the Uaublas and Prud- hommes add, because there is no such thing, but the sarcasm is fortunately a blasphemy. Marius, then, possessed Cosette in the way that minds possess ; but he enveloped her with his entire soul, and jealously seized her with an incredible conviction. He possessed her touch, her breath, her perfume, the deep flash of her blue eyes, the softness of her skin when he touched her hand, the charming mark which she had on her neck, and all her thoughts. They had agreed never to sleep without dreaming of each other, and had kept their word. He, therefore, possessed all Cosette’s dreams. He looked at her incessantly, and sometimes breathed on the short hairs which she had on her neck, and said to himself that there was not one of those hairs which did not belong to him. He con- templated and adored the things she wore, her bows, her cuffs, her gloves, and slippers, like sacred objects, of which he was the master. He thought that he was the lord of the small tortoiseshell combs which she had in her hair, and he said to himself, in the confused stammering of voluptuousness, that there w^as not a seam of her dress, not a mesh of her stockings, not a wrinkle in her boddice, which was not his. By the side of Cosette he felt close to his property, near his creature, who was at once his despot and his slave. It seemed that they had so blended their souls that, if they had wished to take them back, it would have been impossible for them to recognize them. This is mine — no, it is mine — I assure you that you are mis- taken. This is really I — what you take for yourself is myself; Marius was something which formed part of Cosette, and Cosette was something that formed part of Marius. Marius felt Cosette live in him ; to have Cosette, to possess Cosette, was to him not very difterent from breathing. It was in the midst of MARIUS GIVES COSETTE HIS ADDRESS. 89 this faith, this intoxication, this virgin, extraordinary, and absolute possession, and this sovranty, that the words We are going away ” suddenly fell on him, and the stern voice of reality shouted to him, “Cosette is not thine.” Marius awoke. For six weeks, as we said, he had been living out of life, and the word “ depart ” made him roughly re-enter it. He could not find a word to say, and Cosette merely noticed that his hand was very cold. She said to him in her turn, — - What is the matter with you ? ” He answered, in so low a voice that Cosette could scarce hear him, — “ I do not understand what you said.” She continued, — ‘‘ This morning my father told me to prepare my clothes and hold myself ready, that he would give me his linen to put in a portmanteau, that he was obliged to make a journey, that we were going away, that we must have a large trunk for myself and a small one for him, to get all this ready within a week, and that we should probably go to England.” “ Why, it is monstrous ! ” Alarius exclaimed. It is certain that, at this moment, in Marius’ mind, no abuse of power, no violence, no abomination of the most pro- digious tyrants, no deed of Busiris, Tiberius, or Henry VIII., equalled in ferocity this one, — M. Fauchelevent taking his daughter to England because he had business to attend to. He asked, in a faint voice, — “ And when will you start ? ” He did not say when.” And when will you return ? ” “ He did not tell me.” And Marius rose and said coldly, — Will you go, Cosette ? ” Cosette turned to him, her beautiful eyes full of agony, and answered, with a species of wildness, — “ Where P ” “ To England ; will you go ? ” What can I do ? ” she said, clasping her hands. Then you will go ? ” ‘‘ If my father goes.” So you are determined to go ? ” Cosette seized Marius’ hand, and pressed it as sole reply. “Very well,” said Marius, ^‘in that case I shall go else- where.” Cosette felt the meaning of this remark even more than 40 MARIUS GIVES COSETTE HIS ADDRESS. she comprehended it ; she turned so pale that her face became white in the darkness, and stammered, — ■ “ What do you mean ? ” Marius looked at her, then slowly raised his eyes to heaven, and replied, — “ Nothing.” When he looked down again he saw Cosette smiling at him ; the smile of the woman whom we love has a brilliancy which is visible at night. “ How foolish we are ! Marius, I have an idea.” What is it ? ” “ Follow us if we go away ! I will tell you whither ! and you can join me where I am.” Marius was now a thoroughly wide-awake man, and had fallen back into reality ; hence he cried to Cosette, — “ Go with you ! are you mad ? why, it would require money, and I have none ! Go to England ! why, I already owe more than ten louis to Coiirfeyrac, one of my friends, whom you do not know ! I have an old hat, which is not worth three francs, a coat with buttons missing in front, my shirt is all torn, my boots let in water, I am out at elbows, but I have not thought of it for six weeks, and did not tell you. Cosette, I am a wretch ; you only see me at night and give me your love : were you to see me by day you would give me a halfpenny. Go to England ! Why I have not enough to pay for the pass- port 1 ” He threw himself against a tree, with his arms over his head, and his forehead pressed to the bark, neither feeling the wood that grazed his skin nor the fever which spotted his tem- ples, motionless and ready to fall, like the statue of despair. He remained for a long time in this state — people would re- main for an eternity in such abysses. At length he turned and heard behind a little stifled, soft, and sad sound ; it was Cosette sobbing ; she had been crying for more than two hours by the side of Marius, who was reflecting. He went up to her, fell on his knees, seized her foot, which peeped out from under her skirt, and kissed it. She let him do so in silence, for there are moments when a woman accepts, like a sombre and resigned duty, the worship of love. “ Do not weep,” he said. She continued, — “But I am, perhaps, going away, and you are not able to come with me.” He said, “ Do you love me ? ” MARIUS GIVES COSETTE HIS ADDRESS. 41 She replied by sobbing that Paradisaic word, which is nerer more charming than through tears, “ I adore you.” He pursued, with an accent which was an inexpressible caress, — ‘‘ Do not weep. Will you do so much for me as to check your tears ? ” ‘‘ Do you love me ? ” she said. He took her hand. “ Cosette, I have never pledged my word of honour to any one, because it frightens me, and I feel that my father is by the side of it. Well, I pledge you my most sacred word of honour that if you go away I shall die.” There was in the accent with which he uttered these words such a solemn and calm melancholy that Cosette trembled, and she felt that chill which is produced by the passing of a sombre and true thing. In her terror she ceased to weep. ‘‘Now listen to me,” he said; “do not expect me to- morrow.” “ Why not ? ” “ Do not expect me till the day after.” “ Oh, why ? ” “ You will see.” “ A day without your coming ! — oh, it is impossible.” “ Let us sacrifice a day to have, perhaps, one whole life.” And Marius added in a low voic^ and aside, — “ He is a man who makes no change in his habits, and he never received any- body before the evening.” “ What man are you talking about ? ” Cosette asked. “ I ? I did not say anything.” “ What do you hope for, then ? ” “Wait till the day after to-morrow.” “ Do you desire it ? ” “Yes, Cosette.” He took her head between his two hands, as she stood on tip-toe to reach him, and tried to see his hopes in his eyes. Marius added, — “ By the by, you must know my address, for something might happen; I live with my friend Courfeyrac, at No. 16 , E/ue de la Verrerie.” He felt in his pockets, took out a knife, and scratched the address on the plaster of the wall. In the mean while, Co- sette had begun looking in his eyes again. “ Tell me your thought, Marius, for you have one. Tell it to me. Oh, tell it to me, so that I may pass a good night.” 42 AK OLD HEART AND A YOUNG HEAR “ My thought is this ; it is impossible that God can wish to separate us. Expect me the day after to-morrow.” ‘‘ What shall I do till then ? ” Cosette said. “ Ton are in the world, and come and go ; how happy men are ! hut I shall remain all alone. Oh, I shall be so sad ! what will you do to- morrow night, tell me ? ” “ I shall try something.” ‘‘ In that case I shall pray to heaven, and think of you, so that you may succeed. I will not question you any more, as you do not wish it, and you are my master. I will spend my evening in singing the song from Tluryanthe^ of which you are so fond, and which you heard one night under my shutters. But you will come early the next evening, and I shall expect you at nine o’clock exactly. I warn you. Oh, good Heaven ! how sad it is that the days are so long ! You hear ; I shall be in the garden as it is striking nine.” “ And I too.” And without saying a word, moved by the same thought, carried away by those electric currents which place two lovers in continual communication, both intoxicated with voluptuous- ness, even in their grief, fell into each other’s arms without noticing that their lips were joined together, while their uprais- ed eyes, overflowing with ecstasy and full of tears, contemplated the stars. When Marius left, the street was deserted, for it was the moment when Eponine followed the bandits into the boulevard. AVhile Marius dreamed with hi« head leaning against a tree an idea had crossed his mind, an idea, alas ! which himself considered mad and impossible. He had formed a vio- lent resolution. CHAPTEE IX. AN OLD HEAET AND A YOUNG HEAET EACE EACH OTHER. Eather Gillenormand at this period had just passed his ninety-first birth-day, and still lived with his daughter at Xo. 6, Eue des Eilles-de-Calvaire, in the old house, which was his own property. He was, it will be remembered, one of those antique old men whose age falls on without bending them, and whom even sorrow cannot bow. Still, for some time past,Jiis daughter had said, “ My father is breaking.” He no longer FACE EACH OTHER. 43 boxed tbe ears of tbe maid- servants, or banged so violently the staircase railing where Basque kept him waiting. The revo- lution of July had not exasperated him for more than six months, and he had seen almost with tranquillity in the Monu teiir this association of words, M. Humblot-Conte, Peer of France. The truth is, that the old man was filled with grief ; he did not bend, he did not surrender, for that was not possible, either with his moral or physical nature ; but he felt himself failing inwardly. For four years he had been awaiting Marius with a firm foot, that is really the expression, with the convic- tion that the cursed young scamp would ring his bell some day, and now he had begun to say to himself that Marius might re- main away a little too long. It was not death that was insup- portable to him, but the idea that perhaps he might not see Marius again. This idea had never occurred to him till one day, and at present it rose before him constantly, and chilled him to death. Absence, as ever happens in natural and true feel- ings, had only heightened the grandfather’s love for the ungrate- ful boy who had gone away like that, and it is on December nights, when the thermometer is almost down at zero, that people think most of the sun. M. Gillenormand was, or fancied himself, utterly incapable of taking a step toward his grandson ; I would rot first, he said to himself. He did not think himself at all in the wrong, but he only thought of Marius with pro- found tenderness, and the dumb despair of an old man who is going down into the valley of the shadows. He was beginning to lose his teeth, which added to his sorrow. M. Gilleiior- mand, without confessing it to himself, however,. for he would have been furious and ashamed of it, had never loved a mistress as he loved Marius. He had hung up in his room, as the first thing he might see on awaking, an old portrait of his other daughter, the one who was dead, Madame de Pontmercy, taken when she was eighteen. He incessantly regarded this portrait, and happened to say one day, while gazing at it, — “ I can notice a likeness.” “ To my sister ? ” Mile Gillenormand remarked, “ oh, certainly.” The old man added, “ And to him too.” When he was once sitting, with his knees against each other, and his eyes almost closed in a melancholy posture, his daughter ventured to say to him, — “ Father, are you still so furious against — ?” She stopped, not daring to go further. ‘‘Against whom ?” he asked. AN OLD HEART AND A YOUNG HEART 4i “ That poor Marius.” He raised his old head, laid his thin wrinkled fist on the table, and cried, in his loudest and most irritated accent, — Poor Marius, you say ! that gentleman is a scoundrel, a scamp, a little vain ingrate, without heart or soul, a proud and wicked man ! ” And he turned away, so that his daughter might not see a tear which he had in his eyes. Three days later he interrupted a silence which had lasted four hours to say to his daughter gruffly,— “ I had had the honour of begging Mademoiselle Gillenor- mand never to mention his name to me.” Aunt Gillenormand gave up all attempts, and formed this pro- found diagnostic; “My father was never very fond of my sister after her folly. It is clear that he detests Marius.” “ After her folly ” meant, “ since she married the colonel.” Still, as may bo conjectured. Mademoiselle Gillenormand failed in her attempt to substitute her favourite, the officer of lancers, in Marius’ place. Theodule had met with no success, and M. Gillenor- mand refused to accept the qui 'pro quo ; for the vacuum in the heart cannot be stopped by a bung. Theodule, on his side, while sniffing the inheritance, felt a repugnance to the duty of pleasing, and the old gentleman annoyed the lancer, while the lancer offended the old gentleman. Lieutenant Theodule was certainly gay but gossiping, frivolous but vulgar, a good liver but bad company ; he had mistresses, it is true, and he talked a good deal about them, it is also true, but then he talked badly. All his qualities had a defect, and M. Gillenormand was worn out with listening to the account of the few amours he had had round his barracks in the Rue Babylone. And then Lieutenant Theodule called sometimes in uniform with the tricolour cockade, which rendered him simply impossible. M. Gillenormand eventually said to his daughter, “ I have had enough of Theodule, for I care but little for a warrior in peace times. You can receive him if you like, but for my part I do not know whether I do not prefer the sabrers to the trailing of sabres, and the clash of blades in a battle is less wretched, after all, than the noise of scabbards on the pavement. And, then, to throw up one’s head like a king of clubs, and to lace one’s self like a woman, to wear stays under a cuirass, is doubly ridiculous. When a man is a real man he keeps himself at an equal distance from braggadocio and foppishness. So keep your Theodule for yourself.” Though his daughter said to him, “ After all, he is your grand-nephew,” it happened that M. Gillenormand, who was grandfather to the end of his FACE EACH OTHER. 45 nails, was not a grand-uncle at all ; the fact is, that as he was a man of sense and comparison, Theodule only served to make him regret Marius the more. On the evening of June 4th, which did not prevent Father Gillenormand from having an excellent fire in his chimney, he had dismissed his daughter, who was sewing in the adjoining room. He was alone in his apartment with the pastoral hang- ings, with his feet on the andirons, half enveloped in his nine- leaved Coromandel screen, sitting at a table on which two candles burned under a green shade, swallowed up in his needle- worked easy chair, and holding a book in his hand, which he was not reading. He was dressed, according to his wont, as an “ Incroyable,” and resembled an old portrait of Garat. This would have caused him to be followed in the streets, but when- ever he went out, his daughter wrapped him up in a sort of episcopal wadded coat, which hid his clothing. At home he never wore a dressing-gown, save when he got up and went to bed. “ It gives an old look,” he was wont to say. Father Gillenormand was thinking of Marius bitterly and lovingly, and, as^ usual, bitterness gained the upper hand. His savage tenderness always ended by boiling over and turning into in- dignation, and he was at the stage when a man seeks to make up his mind and accept that which is to be. He was ex- plaining to himself that there was no longer any reason for Marius’ return, that if he had meant to come home he would have done so long before, and all idea of it must be given up. He tried to form the idea that it was all over, and that he should die without seeing that gentleman” again. But his 'whole nature revolted, and his old paternity could not consent. “ What,” he said, and it was his mournful burthen, “ he will not come back!” and his old bald head fell on his chest, and he vaguely fixed a lamentable and irritated glance upon the ashes on his hearth. In the depth of this reverie his old servant Basque came in and asked, — “ Can you receive M. Marius, sir ? ” The old man sat up, livid, and like a corpse which is roused by a galvanic shock. All his blood flowed to his heart, and he stammered, — “ M. Marius ! who ? ” “I do not know,” Basque replied, intimidated and dis- concerted by his master’s air, “ for I did not see him. It was Hicolette who said to me just now, ‘There is a young man here, say it is M. Marius.’ ” Father Gillenormand stammered in a low voice, “ Show him in.” 46 AN OLD HEART AND A YOUNG HEART And he remained in the same attitude with hanging head and eye fixed on the door. It opened, and a young man ap- peared — it was Marius, who stopped in the door-way as if waiting to be asked in. His almost wretched clothes could not be seen in the obscurity produced by the shade, and only his calm, grave, but strangely sorrowful face could be distinguished. Father Grillenormand, as if stunned by stupor and joy, re- mained for a few minutes, seeing nothing but a brilliancy, as when an apparition rises before us. He was ready to faint, and perceived Marius through a mist. It was really he, it was really Marius ! At length, after four years! He took him in en- tirely, so to speak, at a glance, and found him handsome, noble, distinguished, grown, a thorough man, with a proper attitude and a charming air. He felt inclined to open his arms and call the boy to him, his entrails were swelled with ravishment, affec- tionate words welled up and overflowed his bosom. At length all this tenderness burst forth and reached his lips, and through the contrast which formed the basis of his character a harsh- ness issued from it. He said roughly, — “ What do you want here ? ” Marius replied with an embarrassed air, — ‘‘ Sir — ” Monsieur Gillenormand would have liked for Marius to throw himself into his arms, and he was dissatisfied both with Marius and himself. He felt that he was rough and Marius cold, and it was an insupportable and irritating anxiety to the old gentleman to feel himself so tender and imploring within, and unable to be otherwise than harsh externally. His bitter- ness returned, and he abruptly interrupted Marius. “In that case why do you come ? ” The “in that case” meant“ have not cometo embrace Marius gazed at his ancestor’s marble face. “ Sir—” The old gentleman resumed in a stern voice, — “ Have you come to ask my pardon ? have you recognized your error ? ” He believed that he was putting Marius on the right track, and that “ the boy ” was going to give way. Marius trembled, for it was a disavowal of his father that was asked of him, and he lowered his eyes and replied, “JSTo, sir.” “Well, in that case,” the old man exclaimed impetuously, and with a sharp sorrow full of anger, “ what is it you want of me ? ” Marius clasped his hands, advanced a step, and said, in a weak, trembling voice, — FACE EACH OTHEK. 47 “ Take pity on me, sir.” This word moved M. Grillenormand ; had it come sooner it would have softened him, but it came too late. The old gentle- man rose, and rested both hands on his cane ; his lips were white, his forehead vacillated, but his lofty stature towered over the stooping Marius. Pity on you, sir ! the young man asks pity of an old man of ninety-one ! You are entering life, and I am leaving it ; you go to the play, to balls, to the coffee-house, the billiard-table ; you are witty, you please women, you are a pretty fellow, while I spit on my logs in the middle of summer ; you are rich with the only wealth there is, while I have all the poverty of old age, infirmity, and isolation. You have your two- and-thirty teeth, a good stomach, a quick eye, strength, ap- petite, health, gaiety, a forest of black hair, while I have not even my white hair left. I have lost my teeth, I am losing my legs, I am losing my memory, for there are three names of streets which I incessantly confound, the Hue Chariot, the Hue du Chaume, and the Hue St Claude. Such is my state ; you have a whole future before you, full of sun- shine, while I am beginning to see nothing, as I have ad- vanced so far into night. You are in love, that is a matter of course, while I am not beloved by a soul in the world, and yet you ask me for pity I By Jove, Moliere forgot that. If that is the way in which you barristers jest at the palace of justice, I compliment you most sincerely upon it, for you are droll fellows.” And the octogenarian added, in a serious and wrathful voice, — “ Well, what is it you want of me ? ” “ I am aware, sir,” said Marius, that my presence here dis- pleases you, but I have only come to ask one thing of you, and then I shall go away at once.” “You are a fool,” the old man said; “who told you to go away ? ” This was the translation of the tender words which he had at the bottom of his heart. “ Ask my pardon, why don’t you ? and throw your arms round my neck.” M. Grillenormand felt that Marius was going to leave him in a few moments, that his bad reception offended him, and that his harshness expelled him ; he said all this to himself, and his grief was augmented by it ; as his grief immediately turned into passion and his harshness grew the greater. He had wished that Marius should under- stand, and Marius did not understand, which rendered the old gentleman furious. He continued, — ' 48 AN OLD HEART AND A YOUNG HEART What ! you insulted me, your grandfather ; you left my house to go the Lord knows whither ; you broke your aunt’s heart ; you went away to lead a bachelor’s life, of course that’s more convenient, to play the fop, come home at all hours, and amuse yourself ; you have given me no sign of life, you have incurred debts without even asking me to pay them, you have been a breaker of windows and a brawler, and at the end of four years you return to my house and have nothing more to say to me than that ! ” This violent way of forcing the grandson into tenderness only produced silence on the part of Marius. M. Gillenormand folded his arms, a gesture which with him was peculiarly im- perious, and bitterly addressed Marius, — ‘‘ Let us come to an end. You have come to ask some- thing of me, you say ! well, what is it ? speak.” “ Sir,” said Marius, with the look of a man who feels that he is going to fall over a precipice, “ I have come to ask your permission to marry.” M. Gillenormand rang the bell, and Basque poked his head into the door. “ Send my daughter here.” A second later, the door opened again, and Mile Gille- normand did not enter, but showed herself. Marius was standing silently, with drooping arms and the face of a criminal, while M. Gillenormand walked up and down the room. He turned to his daughter and said to her, — “ It is nothing. This is M. Marius, wish him good evening. This gentleman desires to marry, that will do. Be off.” The sound of the old man’s sharp, hoarse voice announced a mighty fury raging within him. The aunt looked at Marius in terror, seemed scarce to recognize him, did not utter a syllable, and disappeared before her father’s breath, like a straw before a hurricane. In the meanwhile M. Gillenormand had turned back, and was now leaning against the mantel-piece. “ You marry ! at the age of one-and-twenty ! you have settled all that, and have only a permission to ask, a mere for- mality ! Sit down, sir. Well, you have had a revolution since I had the honour of seeing you last, the Jacobins had the best of it, and you are of course pleased ; are you not a republican since you became a baron ? those two things go famously to- gether, and the republic is a sauce for the barony. Are you one of the decorated of July ? did you give your small aid to take the Louvre, sir ? Close by, in the Hue St Antoine, opposite the Hue des Nonaindieres, there is a cannon-ball imbedded in the wall of a house three storeys up, with the inscription, July FACE EACH OTHER. 49 28, 1830. Gro and look at it, for it produces a famous effect. Ah 1 your friends do very pretty things ! By the way, are they not erecting a fountain on the site of the Due de Berry’s monu- ment. So you wish to marry ? May I ask, without any indis- cretion, who the lady is ? ” He stopped, and before Marius had time to answer, he added violently, — “ Ah ! have you a profession, a fortune ? how much do you earn by your trade as a lawyer ? ” “ Nothing,” said Marius, with a sort of fierceness and almost stern resolution. “ Nothing ? then you have only the twelve hundred livres which I allow you to live on ? ” Marius made no reply, and M. Gillenormand continued, — In that case, I presume that the young lady is wealthy ? ” “ Like myself.” “ What ? no dowry ? ” ‘‘ No.” “ Any expectations ? ” “ I do not think so.” Quite naked ! and what is the father ? ” ‘‘ I do not know.” “And what is her name ? ” “ Mademoiselle Fauchelevent.” “ Mademoiselle Fauchewhat ? ” “ Fauchelevent.” “ Ptt ! ” said the old gentleman.. “ Sir ! ” Marius exclaimed. M. Gillenormand interrupted him, with the air of a man who is talking to himself, — “ That is it, one-and-twenty, no profession, twelve hundred livres a year, and the Baroness Pontmercy will go and buy a penn’orth of parsley at the green-grocer’s.” “ Sir,” Marius replied in the wildness of the last vanishing hope, “ I implore you, I conjure you in Heaven’s name, with clasped hands I throw myself at your feet, — sir, permit me to marry her ! ” The old man burst into a sharp, melancholy laugh, through which he coughed and spoke, — “ Ah, ah, ah ! you said to yourself, ‘ I’ll go and see that old periwig, that absurd ass ! What a pity that I am not five- and-twenty yet, how I would send him a respectful summons ! Old fool, you are too glad to see me, I feel inclined to marry Miss Lord-knows-who, the daughter of M. Lord-knows-what. VOL. in. 4 50 A YOUNG HEART AND AN OLD HEART She has no shoes, and I have no shirt, that matches ; I am in- clined to throw into the river my career, my youth, my future, my life, and take a plunge into wretchedness with a wife round my neck — that is my idea, and you must consent and the old fossil will consent. Go in, my lad, fasten your paving-stone round your neck, marry your Pousselevent, your Coupel event, — never, sir, never!” ‘‘ Pather— ” ‘‘ JS'ever 1” Marius lost all hope through the accent with which this ‘‘ never ” was pronounced. He crossed the room slowly, with hanging head, tottering, and more like a man that is dying than one who is going away. M. Gillen ormand looked after him, and at the moment when the door opened and Marius was about to leave the room he took four strides with the senile vivacity of an impetuous and spoiled old man, seized Marius by the collar, pulled him back energetically into the room, threw him into an easy chair, and said, — “ Tell me all about it.” The word Jhf her which had escaped from Marius’ lips pro- duced this revolution. Marius looked at M. Gillenormand haggardly, but his inflexible face expressed nought now but a rough and inefiable goodness. The ancestor had made way for the grandfather. “ Well, speak ; tell me of your love episodes, tell me all. Sapristi ! how stupid young men are!” “ My father 1 ” Marius resumed. The old gentleman’s entire face was lit up with an in- describable radiance. •‘Yes, that is it, call me father, and you’ll see.” There was now something so gentle, so good, so open, and so paternal, in this sharpness, that Marius, in this sudden passage from discouragement to hope, w^as, as it were, stunned and intoxicated. As he was seated near the table the light of the candles fell on his seedy attire, which Father Gillenormand studied with amazement. “ Well, father,” said Marius. “ What,” M. Gillenormand interrupted him, “ have you really no money ? You are dressed like a thief.” He felt in a drawer and pulled out a purse, which he laid on the table. “ Here are one hundred louis to buy a hat with.” “My father,” Marius continued, “ my kind father. If you only knew how I love her! You cannot imagine it. The first time I saw her was at the Luxembourg, where she came to FACE EACH OTHER. 51 walk. At tke begiuning I paid no great attention to her, and then I know not how it happened, but I fell in love with her. Oh ! how wretched it made me. I see her now every day at her own house, and her father knows nothing about it : just fancy, they are going away, we see each other at night in the garden, her father means to take her to England, and then I said to myself, ‘ I will go and see my grandfather and tell him about it.’ I should go mad first, I should die, I should have a brain fever, I should throw myself into the water. I must marry her, or else I shall go mad. That is the whole truth, and I do not believe that I have forgotten anything. She lives in a garden with a railing to it, in the Hue Pin met : it is on the side of the Invalides.” Father Gillenormand was sitting radiantly by Marius’ side : while listening and enjoying the sound of his voice he enjoyed at the same time a lengthened pinch of snuff. At the words Hue Plumet he broke off his snifidug, and allowed the rest of the snuff to fall on his knees. “ Hue Plumet ! did you say Hue Plumet ? only think ! there not a barrack down there? oh jes, of course there is: your cousin, Theodule, the officer, the lancer, told me about it — a poppet, my dear fellow, a poppet! By Jove, yes. Hue Plumet, which used formerly to be called Hue Blomet. I remember it all now, and I have heard about the little girl behind the railings in the Hue Plumet. In a garden. A Pamela. Tour taste is not bad. I am told she is very tidy. Between ourselves, I believe that ass of a lancer has courted her a little, I do not exactly know how far matters have gone, but, after all, that is of no consequence. Besides, there is no be- lieving him, for he boasts. Marius 1 I think it very proper that a young man like you should be in love, for it becomes your age, and I would sooner have you in love than a Jacobin. I would rather know you caught by a petticoat, ay, by twenty petticoats, than by Monsieur de Hobespierre. For my part, I do myself the justice of saying that, as regards sans-culottes, I never loved any but women. Pretty girls are pretty girls, hang it all ! and there is no harm in that. And so she re- ceives you behind her father’s back, does she ? that’s all right, and I had affairs of the same sort, more than one. Do you know what a man does in such cases ? he does not regard the matter ferociously, he does not hurl himself into matri- mony, or conclude with marriage and M. le Maire in his scarf. No, he is very stupidly a sharp fellow, and a man of common sense. Glide, mortals, but do not marry. Such a young man goes to his grandfather, who is well inclined after all, and who 52 A YOUNG HEART AND AN OLD HEART has always a few rolls of louis in an old drawer, and he says to him, ‘ Grrandpapa, that’s how matters stand,’ and grandpapa says, ‘ It is very simple, youth must enjoy itself, and old age be smashed up. I have been young and you will be old. All right, my lad, you will requite it to your grandson. Here are two hundred pistoles, go and amuse yourself, confound you !’ that is the way in which the matter should be arranged; a man does not marry, but that is no obstacle : do you understand ?” Marius, petrified and incapable of uttering a word, shook his head in the negative. The old gentleman burst into a laugh, winked his aged eyelid, tapped him on the knee, looked at him between the eyes with a mysterious and radiant air, and said with the tenderest shrug of the shoulders possible, — “ You goose ! make her your mistress ! ” Marius turned pale ; he had understood nothing of what his grandfather had been saying, and this maundering about the Hue Blomet, Pamela, the barracks, the lancer, had passed before Marius like a phantasmagoria. Nothing of all this could af- fect Cosette who was a lily, and the old gentleman was wander- ing. But this derogation had resulted in a sentence which Marius understood, and which was a mortal insult to Cosette, and the words. Make her your mistress^ passed through the stern young man’s heart like a sword-blade. He rose, picked up his hat which was on the ground, and walked to the door with a firm, assured step. Then he turned, gave his grand- father a low bow, drew himself up again, and said, — “ Five years ago you outraged my father ; to-day you out- raged my wife. I have nothing more to ask of you, sir ; fare- well ! ” Father Grillenormand, who was stupefied, opened his mouth, stretched out his arms, strove to rise, and ere he was able to utter a word, the door had closed again, and Marius had disap- peared. The old gentleman remained for a few minutes motion- less, and as if thunderstruck, unable tospeak or breathe,as though a garotter’s hand were compressing his throat. At length he tore himself out of his easy chair, ran to the door as fast as a man can run at ninety-one, opened it, and cried, — “ Help ! help ! ” His daughter appeared, and then his servants ; he went on with a lamentable rattle in his throat, — ‘‘ Hun after him ! catch him up ! how did I offend him ? he is mad and going away ! Oh Lord, oh Lord ! this time he will not return.” He went to the window which looked on the street, openedi FACE EACH OTHER. 53 it with his old trembling hands, bent half his body out of it, while Basque and Nicolette held his skirts, and cried, — Marius ! Marius ! Marius ! Marius ! ” But Marius could not hear him, for at this very moment he was turning the corner of the Hue St Louis. The nonagenarian raised his hands twice or thrice to his temples with an expres- sion of agony, tottered back, and sank into an easy chair, pulse- less, voiceless, and tearless, shaking his head and moving his lips with a stupid air, and having nothing left in his eyes or heart but a profound and gloomy rigidity which resembled night. CHAPTEB X. THE TWO WAENINGS. That same day, about four in the afternoon, Jean Valjean was seated on one of the most solitary slopes of the Champ de Mars. Either through prudence, a desire to reflect, or simply in consequence of one of those insensible changes of habits which gradually introduce themselves into all existences, he now went out very rarely with Cosette. He had on his work- man’s jacket and grey canvas trousers, and his long peaked cap concealed his face. He was at present calm and happy by Cosette’s side ; what had startled and troubled him for a while was dissipated ; but, during the last week or fortnight, anxieties of a fresh nature had sprung up. One day, while walking along the boulevard, he noticed Thenardier ; thanks to his disguise, Thenardier did not recognize him, but after that Jean Valjean saw him several times again, and now felt a certainty that Thenardier was prowling about the quarter. This was sufficient to make him form a grand resolution, for Thenardier present was every peril at once ; moreover, Paris was not quiet, and political troubles offered this inconvenience to any man who had something in his life to hide, that the police had be- come very restless and suspicious, and, when trying to find a man like Pepin or Morey, might very easily discover a man like Jean Valjean. He, therefore, resolved to leave Paris, even France, and go to England ; he had warned Cosette, and hoped to be off within a week. He was sitting on the slope, revolv- ing in his mind all sorts of thoughts, — Thenardier, the police, the 54 THE TWO WARNINGS. journey, and the difficulty of obtaining a passport. From all these points of view he was anxious ; and lastly, an inexplicable fact, which had just struck him, and from which he was still hot, added to his alarm. On the morning of that very day he, the only person up in the house, and walking in the garden be- fore Cosette’s shutters were opened, suddenly perceived this line on the wall, probably scratched with a nail, — 16, Hue de la Verrerie, It was quite recent, the lines were white on the old black mortar, and a bed of nettles at the foot of the wall was powder- ed with fine fresh plaster. This had probably been inscribed during the night. What was it ? an address ? a signal for others, or a warning for himself ? In any case, it was evident that the secrecy of the garden was violated, and that strangers entered it. He remembered the strange incidents which had already alarmed the house, and his mind was at work on this subject ; but he was careful not to say a word to Cosette about the line written on the wall, for fear of alarming her. In the midst of his troubled thoughts he perceived, from a shadow which the sun threw, that some one was standing on the crest of the slope immediately behind him. He was just going to turn, when a folded paper fell on his knees, as, if a hand had thrown it over his head ; he opened the paper, and read these words, written in large characters, and in pencil, — Leate tour house. Jean Valjean rose smartly, but there was no longer any one on the slope ; he looked round him, and perceived a person, taller than a child and shorter than a man, dressed in a grey blouse and dust-coloured cotton-velvet trousers, bestriding the parapet, and slipping down into the moat of the Champ de Mars. Jean Yaljean at once went home very pensively. Marius had left M. Gillenormand’s house in a wretched state ; he had gone in with very small hopes, and came out with an im- mense despair. However — those who have watched the beginning of the human heart will comprehend it — the lancer, the officer, the fop, cousin Theodule, had left no shadow on his mind, not the slightest. The dramatic poet might apparently hope for some complications to be produced by this revelation, so coarsely made to the grandson by the grandfather, but what the drama would gain by it truth would lose. Marius was at that age when a man believes nothing that is WTong ; later comes the age when he believes everything. Suspicions are only wrinkles, and early youth has none ; what upsets Othello glides over THE TWO WARNINGS. 65 Candide. Suspect Cosette ? Marius could have committed a multitude of crimes more easily. He began walking about the streets, the resource of those who suffer, and he thought of no- thing which he might have remembered. At two in the morn- ing he went to Courfeyrac’s lodging, and threw himself on his mattress full dressed : it was bright sunshine when he fell asleep, with that frightful oppressive sleep which allows ideas to come and go in the brain. When he awoke he saw Cour- feyrac, Enjolras, Feuilly, and Combeferre, all ready to go out, and extremely busy. Courfeyrac said to him, — “ Are you coming to General Lamarque’s funeral ? ” It seemed to him as if Courfeyrac were talking Chinese. He went out shortly after them, and put in his pockets the pistols which Javert had intrusted to him at the affair of Feb. 3, and which still remained in his possession. They were still loaded, and it would be difficult to say what obscure notion he had in his brain when he took them up. The whole day he wandered about, without knowing where ; it rained at times, but he did not perceive it; he bought for his dinner a half- penny roll, put it in his pocket, and forgot it. It appears that he took a bath in the Seine without being conscious of it, for there are moments when a man has a furnace under his skull, and Marius had reached one of those moments. He hoped for nothing, feared nothing now, and had taken this step since the previous day. He awaited the evening with a feverish im- patience, for he had but one clear idea left, that at nine o’clock he should see Cosette. This last happiness was now his sole future, after that came the shadow. At times, while walking along the most deserted boulevards, he imagined that he could hear strange noises in Paris ; then he thrust his head out of his reverie, and said, — “ Can they be fighting ? ” At night- fall, at nine o’clock precisely, he was at the Eue Plumet, as he had promised Cosette. He had not seen her for eight-and-forty hours, he was about to see her again. Every other thought was effaced, and he only felt an extraordinary and profound joy. Those minutes in which men live ages have this sovereign and admirable thing about them, that, at the moment when they pass, they entirely occupy the heart. Marius removed the railing and rushed into the garden. Cosette was not at the place where she usually waited for him, and he crossed the garden, and went to the niche near the terrace. “ She is waiting for me there,” he said, but Cosette was not there. He raised his eyes and saw that the shutters of the house were closed ; he walked round the garden, and the garden was deserted. Then he returned to the garden, and, 56 M. MABCEUF. mad with love, terrified, exasperated with grief and anxiety, he rapped at the shutters, like a master who returns home at a late hour. He rapped, he rapped again, at the risk of seeing the window open and the father’s frowning face appear, and ask him, — “ What do you want ? ” This was nothing to what he caught a glimpse of. When he had rapped, he raised his voice, and called Cosette. “ Cosette ! ” he cried : “ Cosette ! ” he repeated imperiously. There was no answer, and it was all over ; there was no one in the garden, no one in the house. Marius fixed his desperate eyes on this mournful house, which was as black, as silent, and more empty, than a tomb. He gazed at the stone bench on which he had spent so many adorable hours by Cosette’s side ; then he sat down on the garden steps, with his heart full of gentleness and resolution ; he blessed his love in his heart, and said to himself that since Cosette was gone all left him was to die. AU at once he heard a voice which seemed to come from the street, crying through the trees, — “ Monsieur Marius !” He drew himself up. “Hilloh?” he said. “ Are you there, M. Marius ? ” “ Yes.” “ Monsieur Marius,” the voice resumed, “ your friends are waiting for you at the barricade in the Hue de la Chan- vrerie.” This voice was not entirely strange to him, and resembled Eponine’s rough, hoarse accents. Marius ran to the railings, pulled aside the shifting bar, passed his head through, and saw some one, who seemed to be a young man, running away in the gloaming. CHAPTEE XI. M. MABCEUr. Jean Valjean’s purse was useless to M. Maboeuf, who, in his venerable childish austerity, had not accepted the gift of the stars ; he had not allow^ed that a star could coin itself into louis d’or, and he had not guessed that what fell from heaven came from Gavroche. Hence he carried the purse to the police M. MABCEUF. 57 commissary of the district, as a lost object, placed by the finder at the disposal of the claimants. The purse was really lost, we need hardly say that no one claimed it, and it did not help M. Maboeuf. In other respects M. Maboeuf had continued to descend : and the indigo experiments had succeeded no better at the Jardin des Plantes than in his garden of Austerlitz. The previous year he owed his housekeeper her wages, and now, as we have seen, he owed his landlord his rent. The Government pawnbrokers’ office sold the copper-plates of his Flora, at the expiration of thirteen months, and some brazier had made stew-pans of them. When his plates had disappeared, as he could no longer complete the unbound copies of his Flora, which he still possessed, he sold ofl:‘ plates and text to a second-hand bookseller, as defective. Nothing was then left him of the labour of his whole life, and he began eating the money produced by the copies. When he saw that this poor resource was growing exhausted he gave up his garden, and did not attend to it ; before, and long before, he had given up the two eggs and the slice of beef which he ate from time to time, and now dined on bread and potatoes. He had sold his last articles of furniture, then everything he had in duplicate, in linen, clothes, and coverlids, and then his herbals and plates ; but he still had his most precious books, among them being several of great rarity, such as the “ Les Quadrins Historiques de la Bible,” the edition of 15G0 ; La Concordance des Bibles,” of Pierre de Besse; “ Les Marguerites de la Marguerite,” of J ean de la Haye, with a dedication to the Queen of Navarre ; the work on the “ duties and dignity of an ambassador,” by the Sieur de Villiers Hotman; a “Florilegium Eabbinicum,” of 1G44; a ‘^Tibullus,” of 15G7, with the splendid imprint Vene- tiis, in (sdihus Manutianis,^^ and lastly a Diogenes Laertius,” printed at Lyons in 1G44, in which were the famous various readings of the Vatican MS. 411, of the thirteenth century, and those of the two Venetian codices 393 and 394, so usefully consulted by Henri Estiennes, and all the passages in the Doric dialect, only to be found in the celebrated twelfth cen- tury MS. of the Naples library. M. Maboeuf never lit a fire in his room, and went to bed with the sun, in order not to burn a candle ; it seemed as if he no longer had neighbours, for they shunned him when he went out, and he noticed it. The wretchedness of a child interests a mother, the wretchedness of a youth interests an old man, but the wretchedness of an old man interests nobody, and it is the coldest of all distresses. Still M. Maboeuf had not entirely lost his childlike serenity ; his eye acquired some vivacity when it settled on his books, 58 M. MABCEUF. and he smiled when he regarded the Diogenes Laertius, which was a unique copy. His glass case was the only furniture which he had retained beyond what was indispensable. One day Mother Plutarch said to him, — “ I have no money to buy dinner with.” What she called dinner consisted of a loaf and four or five potatoes. ‘‘ Can’t you get it on credit ? ” said M. Maboeuf. ‘ You know very well that it is refused me.” M. Maboeuf opened his book-case, looked for a long time at all his books in turn, as a father, obliged to decimate his children, would look at them before selecting, then took one up quickly, put it under his arm, and went out. He returned two hours after vdth nothing under his arm, laid thirty sous on the table, and said, — “ You will get some dinner.” From this moment Mother Plutarch saw a dark veil, which was not raised again, settle upon the old gentleman’s candid face. The next day, the next after that, and every day, M. Maboeuf had to begin again ; he went out with a book and returned with a piece of silver. As the second-hand book- sellers saw that he was compelled to sell they bought for twenty sous books for which he had paid twenty francs, and frequently to the same dealers. Volume by volume his whole library passed away, and he said at times ‘‘ and yet I am eighty years of age,” as if he had some lurking hope that he should reach the end of his days ere he reached the end of his books. His sorrow grew, but once he had a joy : he went out with a Robert Estienne, which he sold for thirty-five sous on the Quai Malaquais, and came home with an Aldus which he had bought for forty sous in the Rue de Grres. “ 1 owe five sous,” he said quite radiantly to Mother Plutarch, but that day he did not dine. He belonged to the Horticultural Society, and his poverty was known. The President of the Society called on him, promised to speak about him to the Minister of Com- merce and Agriculture, and did so. What do you say ? ” the minister exclaimed, “ I should think so ! an old savant ! a botanist ! an inoffensive man ! we must do something for him.” The next day M. Maboeuf received an invitation to dine with the minister, and, trembling with joy, showed the letter to Mother Plutarch. “We are saved ! ” he said. On the appointed day he went to the minister’s, and noticed that his ragged cravat, his long, square-cut coat, and shoes varnished with white of egg, astounded the footman. JN'o one spoke to him, not even the minister, and at about ten in the evening, while M. MABCEUF. 59 still waiting for a word, lie heard the minister’s wife, a hand- some lady in a low-necked dress, whom he had not dared to approach, ask, “ Who can that old gentleman be ? ” He went home a-foot at midnight through the pouring rain ; he had sold an Elzevir, to pay his hackney coach in going. Every evening, before going to bed, he had fallen into the habit of reading a few pages of his Diogenes Laertius ; for he knew enough of Greek to enjoy the peculiarities of the text which he possessed, and had no other joy now left him. A few weeks passed away, and all at once Mother Plutarch fell ill. There is one thing even more sad than having no money to buy bread at a baker’s, and that is, not to have money to buy medicine at the chemist’s. One night the doctor had ordered a most expensive potion, and then the disease grew worse, and a nurse was necessary. M. Maboeuf opened his book- case, but there was nothing left in it ; the last volume had departed, and the only thing left him was the Diogenes Laertius. He placed the unique copy under his arm and went out — it was June 4, 1832 ; he proceeded to Eoyol’s successor at the Porte St Jacques, and returned with one hundred francs. He placed the pile of five-franc pieces on the old servant’s table, and entered his bed-room without uttering a syllable. At dawn of the next day he seated himself on the overturned post in his garden, and over the hedge he might have been seen the whole morning, motionless, with drooping head, and eyes vaguely fixed on the faded flower-beds. It rained every now and then, but the old man did not seem to notice it : but in the afternoon extraordinary noises broke out in Paris, re- sembling musket-shots, and the clamour of a multitude. Father Maboeuf raised his head, noticed a gardener passing, and said, — What is the matter ? ” The gardener replied, with the spade on his back, and with the most peaceful accent, — “ It’s the rebels.” ‘‘What! rebels?” “ Yes, they are fighting.” “ Why are they flighting ? ” “ The Lord alone knows,” said the gardener. “ In what direction ? ” “ Over by the arsenal.” Father Maboeuf went into his house, took his hat, mechan- ically sought for a book to place under his arm, found none, said, “Ah, it is true 1 ” and w^ent out with a wandering look. 60 CHAPTEE XIL A DIFFICULT PROBLEM TO SOLTE. Of wbat is a revolt composed ? of nothing and of every- thing, of an electricity suddenly disengaged, of a flame which suddenly breaks out, of a wandering strength and a passing breath. This breath meets with heads that talk, brains that dream, souls that suffer, passions that burn, and miseries which yell, and carries them off with it. Whither ? it is chance work ; through the state, through the laws, through prosperity and the insolence of others. Irritated convictions, embittered enthusiasms, aroused indignations, martial instincts suppressed, youthful courage exalted, and generous blindnesses; curiosity, a taste for a change, thirst for something unexpected, the feeling which causes us to find pleasure in reading the announcement of a new piece, or on hearing the Machinist’s whistle ; vague hatreds, rancours, disappointments, every vanity wEich believes that destiny has been a bankrupt to it ; strait- ened circumstances, empty dreams, ambitions surrounded with escarpments, every man who hopes for an issue from an overthrow, and, lastly, at the very bottom, the mob, that mud which takes fire — such are the elements of riot. The greatest and the most infamous, beings who prowl about beyond the pale of everything while awaiting an opportunity, gipsies, nameless men, highway vagabonds, the men who sleep o’ nights in a desert of houses wdth no other roof but the cold clouds of heaven, those who daily ask their bread of chance, and not of toil ; the unknown men of wretchedness and nothing- ness, bare arms and bare feet, belong to the riot. Every man who has in his soul a secret revolt against any act of the state, of life, or of destiny, is on the border line of riot, and so soon as it appears, he begins to quiver and to feel himself lifted by the whirlwind. Eiot is a species of social atmospheric waterspout, which is suddenly formed in certain conditions of temperature, and wEich in its revolutions mounts, runs, thunders, tears up, razes, crushes, demolishes, and uproots, bearing with it grand and paltry natures, the strong man and the weak mind, the trunk of a tree and the wisp of straw. Woe to the man whom it carries as well as to the one it dashes at, for it breaks one against the other. It communicates to those whom it seizes a A DIFFICULT PROBLEM TO SOLVE. 61 strange and extraordinary power ; it fills tlie first comer with the force of events and converts everything into projectiles; it makes a cannon-ball of a stone, and a general of a porter. If we may believe certain oracles of the crafty policy, a little amount of riot is desirable from the governing point of view. The system is, that riot strengthens those governments which it does not overthrow ; it tries the army ; it concentrates the bourgeoisie, strengthens the muscles of the police, and displays the force of the social fulcrum. It is a lesson in gymnastics, and almost a Turkish bath, and power feels better after a riot, as a man does after a rubbing down. Hiot, thirty years ago, was also re- garded from other stand-points. There is for everything a the- ory which proclaims itself as “ common sense,” a mediation offered between the true and the false : explanation, admoni- tion, and a somewhat haughty extenuation which, because it is composed of blame and apology, believes itself wisdom, and is often nothing but pedantry. An entire political school, called the Juste milieu,” emanated from this, and between cold water and hot water there is the lukewarm water party. This school, with its false depth entirely superficial, which dissects effects without going back to causes, scolds, from the elevation of semi-science, the agitations of the public streets. If we listen to this school we hear ; “ the riots which com- plicated the deed of 1830 deprived that grand event of a portion of its purity. The revolution of July was a fine blast of the po- pular wind, suddenly followed by a blue sky, and the riot caused a cloudy sky to reappear, and compelled the revolution, originally so remarkable through unanimity, to degenerate into a quarrel. In the revolution of July, as in every progress produced by a jerk, there were secret fractures which riots cause to be noticed. After the revolution of July only the deliverance was felt, but after the riots the catastrophe was felt. Every riot closes shops, depresses the funds, consternates the Stock Exchange, sus- pends trade, checks business, and entails bankruptcies : there is no money, trade is disconcerted, capital is withdrawn, labour is at a discount, there is fear everywhere, and counterstrokes take place in every city, whence come gulfs. It is calculated that the first day of riot costs France twenty millions of francs, the second forty, and the third sixty. Hence a riot of three days costs one hundred and twenty millions, that is to say, if we only regard the financial result, is equivalent to a disaster, shipwreck, or lost action, which might annihilate a fieet of sixty vessels of the line. Indubitably, riots, historically re- garded, had their beauty : the war of the paving-stones is no less grand or pathetic than the war of thickets : in the one 62 A DIFFICULT PROBLEM TO SOLVE. there is the soul of forests, in the other the heart of cities : one has Jean Chouan, the other has Jeanne. E/iots lit up luridly hut splendidly all the most original features of the Parisian character, — generosity, devotion, stormy gaiety, students prov- ing that bravery forms a part of intellect, the National Gruard unswerving, bivouacs formed by shop-keepers, fortresses held by gamins, and contempt of death in the passers-by. Schools and legions came into collision, but, after all, there was only the difference of age between the combatants, and they are the same race ; the same stoical men who die at the age of twenty for their ideas, and at forty for their families ; the army, ever sad in civil wars, opposed prudence to audacity ; and the riots, while manifesting the popular intrepidity, were the education of the bourgeois courage. That is all very well, but is all this worth the blood shed ? And then add to the bloodshed the future darkened, progress compromised, anxiety among the better classes, honest liberals despairing, foreign absolutism delighted at these wounds dealt to revolution by itself, and the conquered of 1830 triumphing and shouting, ‘ Did we not say so ? ’ Add Paris possibly aggrandized, France assuredly diminished. Add — for we must tell the whole truth — the massacres which too often dishonoured the victory of order, which became ferocious, over liberty which went mad, and we must arrive at the conclusion that riots have been fatal.” Thus speaks that almost wisdom with which the bourgeoisie, that almost people, are so readily contented. For our part, we regret the word riots, as being too wide, and consequently too convenient, and make a distinction between one popular movement and another ; we do not ask ourselves whether a riot costs as much as a battle. In the first place, why a battle ? here the question of war arises. Is war less a scourge than riot is a calamity ? and, then, are all riots calamities ? and even supposing that July I4th cost one hundred and twenty millions, the establishment of Philip V. in Spain cost France two billions, and even were the price equal we should prefer the 14th July. Besides, we repulse these figures, which seem reasons and are only words, and a riot being given, we examine it in itself. In all that the doctrinaire objection we have just reproduced says, the only question is about effect, and we are seeking for the cause. There is riot, and there is insurrection ; they are two pas- sions, one of which is just, the other unjust. In democratic states, the only ones based on justice, it sometimes happens that the fraction usurps power ; in that case, the whole people rises, and the necessary demand for its rights may go so far as A DIFFICULT PROBLEM TO SOLVE. 63 taking up arms. In all tlie questions which result from col- lective sovereignty the war of all against the fraction is insur- rection, and the attack of the fraction on the masses is a riot ; according as the Tuileries contain the king or the convention they are justly or unjustly attacked. The same guns pointed at the mob are in the wrong on Aug. 14th, and in the right on the 14th Yendemiaire. Their appearance is alike, but the base is different ; the Swiss defend what is false, and Bonaparte what is true. What universal suffrage has done in its liberty and its sovereignty cannot be undone by the street. It is the same in matters of pure civilization, and the instinct of the masses, clear-sighted yesterday, may be perturbed to-morrow. The same fury is legitimate against Terray and absurd against Turgot. Smashing engines, pillaging store-houses, tearing up rails, the demolition of docks, the false roads of multitude, the denial of popular justice to progress, Bam us assassinated by the scholars, and Eousseau expelled from Switzerland by stones — all this is riot. Israel rising against Moses, Athens against Phocion, Home against Scipio, are riots, while Paris attacking the Bastille is insurrection. The soldiers opposing Alexander, the sailors mutinying against Christopher Columbus, are the same revolt, an impious revolt ; why ? because Alexander does for Asia with the sword what Columbus does for America with the compass ; Alexander, like Columbus, finds a world. These gifts of a world to civilization are such increments of light, that any resistance in such a case is culpable. At times the people breaks its fidelity to itself, and the mob behave treacherously to the people. Can anything, for instance, be stranger than the long and sanguinary protest of the false Saulniers, a legitimate chronic revolt which at the decisive moment, on the day of salvation, and in the hour of the popular victory, espouses the throne, turns into chouannerie, and from an insurrection against the government becomes a riot for it ! These are gloomy masterpieces of ignorance ! The false Saulniers escapes from the royal gallows, and with th6 noose still round his neck mounts the white cockade. ‘‘Death to the salt taxes” brings into the world, “ Long live the king.” The killers of St Bartholomew, the murderers of September, the massacrers of Avignon, the assassins of Coligny, of Ma- dame de Lamballe, the assassins of Brue, the Miquelets, the Verdets, and the Cadenettes, the Companions of Jehu, and the Chevaliers du Brassard — all this is riot. The Yendee is a grand Catholic riot. The sound of right in motion can be recognized, and it does not always come from the trembling of the overthrown masses; there are mad furies and cracked 64 A DIFFICULT PROBLEM TO SOLVE. bells, and all the tocsins do not give the sound of bronze The commotion of passions and ignorances dilFers from the shock of progress. Rise, if you like, but only to grow, and show me in what direction you are going, for insurrection is only possible with a forward movement. Any other uprising is bad, every violent step backwards is riot, and recoiling is an assault upon the human race. Insurrection is the out- burst of the fury of truth ; the paving-stones which insurrec- tion tears up emit the spark of right, and they only leave to riot their mud. Danton rising against Louis XYI. is insurrection ; Hebert against Danton is riot. Hence it comes that if insurrection in given cases may be, as Lafayette said, the most holy of duties, riot may be the most fatal of attacks. There is also some difference in the intensity of caloric ; insurrection is often a volcano, a riot often a straw fire. Revolt, as we have said, is sometimes found in the power. Polignac is a rioter, and Camille Des- moulins is a government. At times insurrection is a resur- rection. The solution of everything by universal suffrage being an absolutely modern fact, and all history anterior to that fact being for four thousand years filled with violated right and the suffering of the peoples, each epoch of history brings with it the protest which is possible to it. Under the Csesars there was no insurrection, but there was Juvenal, and the facit indignatio takes the place of the Giracchi. Under the Caesars there is the Exile of Syene, and there is also the man of the ‘‘Annals.” We will not refer to the immense Exile of Patmos, who also crushes the real world with a protest in the name of the ideal world, converts a vision into an enormous satire, and casts on Rome-Nineveh, Rome-Babylon, and Rome- Sodom, the flashing reflection of the Apocalypse. John on his rock is the sphynx on its pedestal ; we cannot under- stand him, for he is a Jew, and writes in Hebrew, but the man who writes the Annals is a Latin, or, to speak more correctly, a Roman. As the Neros reign in the black manner, they must be painted in the same. Work produced by the graver alone would be pale, and so a concentrated biting prose must be poured into the lines. Despots are of some service to thinkers, for chained language is terrible language, and the writer doubles and triples his style when silence is imposed by a master on the people. There issues from this silence a certain mysterious fulness which filters and fixes itself in bronze in the thought. Compression in history produces conciseness in the historian, and the granitic solidity of certain celebrated prose is nothing but a pressure put on by the tyrant. Tyranny forces the A DIFFICULT PROBLEM TO SOLVE. 65 writer into contraction of the diameter, which is increase of strength. The Ciceronian period, scarce sufficient for Verres, would be blunted upon a Caligula. Though there is less breadth in the sentence, there is more intensity in the blow, and Tacitus thinks with a drawn-back arm. The honesty of a great heart condensed in justice and truth is annihilating. We must observe, by the way, that Tacitus is not historically superimposed on CsDsar, and the Tiberii are reserved for him. Caesar and Tacitus are two successive phenomena, whose meeting seems to be mysteriously prevented by Him who regulates the entrances and exits on the stage of centuries. Caesar is great, Tacitus is great, and Gron spares these two grandeurs by not bringing them into collision. The judge, in striking Caesar, might strike too hard and be unjust, and God does not wish that. The great wars of Africa and Spain, the Cilician pirates destroyed, civilization introduced into Gaul, Britain, and Germany — all this glory covers the Bubicon. There is in this a species of delicacy on the part of divine justice, hesitating to let loose on the illustrious usurper the formidable historian, saving Caesar from the sentence of a Tacitus, and granting extenuating circumstances to genius. Assuredly despotism remains despotism, even under the despot of genius. There is corruption under illustrious tyrants, but the moral plague is more hideous still under infamous tyrants. In such reigns nothing veils the shame ; and the producers of examples, Tacitus like Juvenal, buffet more usefully in the presence of this human race this ignominy, which has no reply to make. Borne smells worse under Vitellius than under Sylla ; under Claudius and Domitian there is a deformity of baseness corresponding with the ugliness of the tyrant. The foulness of the slaves is the direct product of the despots ; a miasma is extracted from these crouching consciences in which the master is reflected; the public power is unclean, heads are small, consciences flat, and souls vermin ; this is the case under Caracalla, Commodus, and Heliogabalus, while from the Boman senate under CsDsar there only issues the guano smell peculiar to eagles’ nests. Hence the apparently tardy arrival of J iivenal and Tacitus, for the demonstrator steps in at the hour for the experiment to be performed. But Juvenal or Tacitus, like Isaiah in biblical times and Dante in the Middle Ages, is the man ; riot and insurrection are the multitude, which is sometimes wrong, sometimes right. In the most general cases riot issues from a material fact, but in- surrection is always a moral phenomenon. Biot is Masaniello ; VOL. III. 5 63 A DIFFICULT PROBLEM TO SOLVE. insurrection is Spartacus. Insurrection is related to the mind, riot to the stomach ; Gaster is irritated, but Gaster is certainly not always in the wrong. In questions of famine, riot, the Euzan 9 ais one, for instance, has a true, pathetic, and just start- ing point, and yet it remains a riot. Why ? because, though right in the abstract, it is wrong in form. Ferocious though legitimate, violent though strong, it has marched hap-hazard, crushing things in its passage like a blind elephant ; it has left behind it the corpses of old men, women, and children, and has