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WHAT HE DOES
Jean Valjean listened.
Not a sound.
He gave the door a push.
He pushed it gently with the tip of his finger, lightly, with
the furtive and uneasy gentleness of a cat which is desirous of
entering.
The door yielded to this pressure, and made an imperceptible
and silent movement, which enlarged the opening a little.
He waited a moment; then gave the door a second and a bolder
push.
It continued to yield in silence.
The opening was now large enough to allow him to pass.
But near the door there stood a little table, which formed
an embarrassing angle with it, and barred the entrance.
Jean Valjean recognized the difficulty.
It was necessary, at any cost, to enlarge the aperture still
further.
He decided on his course of action, and gave the door a third
push, more energetic than the two preceding.
This time a badly oiled hinge suddenly emitted amid the silence
a hoarse and prolonged cry.
Jean Valjean shuddered.
The noise of the hinge rang in his ears with something of
the piercing and formidable sound of the trump of the Day of Judgment.
In the fantastic exaggerations of the first moment he almost
imagined that that hinge had just become animated, and had suddenly
assumed a terrible life, and that it was barking like a dog to
arouse every one, and warn and to wake those who were asleep.
He halted, shuddering, bewildered, and fell back from the
tips of his toes upon his heels. He heard the arteries in his
temples beating like two forge hammers, and it seemed to him that
his breath issued from his breast with the roar of the wind issuing
from a cavern.
It seemed impossible to him that the horrible clamor of that
irritated hinge should not have disturbed the entire household,
like the shock of an earthquake; the door, pushed by him, had
taken the alarm, and had shouted; the old man would rise at once;
the two old women would shriek out; people would come to their
assistance; in less than a quarter of an hour the town would be
in an uproar, and the gendarmerie on hand. For a moment he thought
himself lost.
He remained where he was, petrified like the statue of salt,
not daring to make a movement.
Several minutes elapsed.
The door had fallen wide open.
He ventured to peep into the next room. Nothing had stirred
there.
He lent an ear.
Nothing was moving in the house.
The noise made by the rusty hinge had not awakened any one.
This first danger was past; but there still reigned a frightful
tumult within him.
Nevertheless, he did not retreat.
Even when he had thought himself lost, he had not drawn back.
His only thought now was to finish as soon as possible.
He took a step and entered the room.
This room was in a state of perfect calm.
Here and there vague and confused forms were distinguishable,
which in the daylight were papers scattered on a table, open folios,
volumes piled upon a stool, an arm-chair heaped with clothing,
a prie-Dieu, and which at that hour were only shadowy corners
and whitish spots.
Jean Valjean advanced with precaution, taking care not to
knock against the furniture. He could hear, at the extremity of
the room, the even and tranquil breathing of the sleeping Bishop.
He suddenly came to a halt.
He was near the bed.
He had arrived there sooner than he had thought for.
Nature sometimes mingles her effects and her spectacles with
our actions with sombre and intelligent appropriateness, as though
she desired to make us reflect.
For the last half-hour a large cloud had covered the heavens.
At the moment when Jean Valjean paused in front of the bed,
this cloud parted, as though on purpose, and a ray of light, traversing
the long window, suddenly illuminated the Bishop's pale face.
He was sleeping peacefully.
He lay in his bed almost completely dressed, on account of
the cold of the Basses-Alps, in a garment of brown wool, which
covered his arms to the wrists.
His head was thrown back on the pillow, in the careless attitude
of repose; his hand, adorned with the pastoral ring, and whence
had fallen so many good deeds and so many holy actions, was hanging
over the edge of the bed.
His whole face was illumined with a vague expression of satisfaction,
of hope, and of felicity. It was more than a smile, and almost
a radiance.
He bore upon his brow the indescribable reflection of a light
which was invisible. The soul of the just contemplates in sleep
a mysterious heaven.
A reflection of that heaven rested on the Bishop.
It was, at the same time, a luminous transparency, for that
heaven was within him.
That heaven was his conscience.
At the moment when the ray of moonlight superposed itself,
so to speak, upon that inward radiance, the sleeping Bishop seemed
as in a glory. It remained, however, gentle and veiled in an ineffable
half-light. That moon in the sky, that slumbering nature, that
garden without a quiver, that house which was so calm, the hour,
the moment, the silence, added some solemn and unspeakable quality
to the venerable repose of this man, and enveloped in a sort of
serene and majestic aureole that white hair, those closed eyes,
that face in which all was hope and all was confidence, that head
of an old man, and that slumber of an infant.
There was something almost divine in this man, who was thus
august, without being himself aware of it.
Jean Valjean was in the shadow, and stood motionless, with
his iron candlestick in his hand, frightened by this luminous
old man. Never had he beheld anything like this.
This confidence terrified him. The moral world has no grander
spectacle than this:
a troubled and uneasy conscience, which has arrived on the
brink of an evil action, contemplating the slumber of the just.
That slumber in that isolation, and with a neighbor like himself,
had about it something sublime, of which he was vaguely but imperiously
conscious.
No one could have told what was passing within him, not even
himself. In order to attempt to form an idea of it, it is necessary
to think of the most violent of things in the presence of the
most gentle. Even on his visage it would have been impossible
to distinguish anything with certainty.
It was a sort of haggard astonishment. He gazed at it, and
that was all.
But what was his thought? It would have been impossible to
divine it.
What was evident was, that he was touched and astounded.
But what was the nature of this emotion?
His eye never quitted the old man.
The only thing which was clearly to be inferred from his attitude
and his physiognomy was a strange indecision. One would have said
that he was hesitating between the two abysses,-- the one in which
one loses one's self and that in which one saves one's self.
He seemed prepared to crush that skull or to kiss that hand.
At the expiration of a few minutes his left arm rose slowly
towards his brow, and he took off his cap; then his arm fell back
with the same deliberation, and Jean Valjean fell to meditating
once more, his cap in his left hand, his club in his right hand,
his hair bristling all over his savage head.
The Bishop continued to sleep in profound peace beneath that
terrifying gaze.
The gleam of the moon rendered confusedly visible the crucifix
over the chimney-piece, which seemed to be extending its arms
to both of them, with a benediction for one and pardon for the
other.
Suddenly Jean Valjean replaced his cap on his brow; then stepped
rapidly past the bed, without glancing at the Bishop, straight
to the cupboard, which he saw near the head; he raised his iron
candlestick as though to force the lock; the key was there; he
opened it; the first thing which presented itself to him was the
basket of silverware; he seized it, traversed the chamber with
long strides, without taking any precautions and without troubling
himself about the noise, gained the door, re-entered the oratory,
opened the window, seized his cudgel, bestrode the window-sill
of the ground-floor, put the silver into his knapsack, threw away
the basket, crossed the garden, leaped over the wall like a tiger,
and fled.
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