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AN ENTRANCE BY FAVOR
Although he did not suspect the fact, the mayor of M. sur
M. enjoyed a sort of celebrity.
For the space of seven years his reputation for virtue had
filled the whole of Bas Boulonnais; it had eventually passed the
confines of a small district and had been spread abroad through
two or three neighboring departments.
Besides the service which he had rendered to the chief town
by resuscitating the black jet industry, there was not one out
of the hundred and forty communes of the arrondissement of M.
sur M. which was not indebted to him for some benefit.
He had even at need contrived to aid and multiply the industries
of other arrondissements.
It was thus that he had, when occasion offered, supported
with his credit and his funds the linen factory at Boulogne, the
flax-spinning industry at Frevent, and the hydraulic manufacture
of cloth at Boubers-sur-Canche. Everywhere the name of M. Madeleine
was pronounced with veneration. Arras and Douai envied the happy
little town of M. sur M. its mayor.
The Councillor of the Royal Court of Douai, who was presiding
over this session of the Assizes at Arras, was acquainted, in
common with the rest of the world, with this name which was so
profoundly and universally honored.
When the usher, discreetly opening the door which connected
the council-chamber with the court-room, bent over the back of
the President's arm-chair and handed him the paper on which was
inscribed the line which we have just perused, adding:
"The gentleman desires to be present at the trial,"
the President, with a quick and deferential movement, seized a
pen and wrote a few words at the bottom of the paper and returned
it to the usher, saying, "Admit him."
The unhappy man whose history we are relating had remained
near the door of the hall, in the same place and the same attitude
in which the usher had left him.
In the midst of his revery he heard some one saying to him,
"Will Monsieur do me the honor to follow me?" It was
the same usher who had turned his back upon him but a moment previously,
and who was now bowing to the earth before him. At the same time,
the usher handed him the paper.
He unfolded it, and as he chanced to be near the light, he
could read it.
"The President of the Court of Assizes presents his respects
to M. Madeleine."
He crushed the paper in his hand as though those words contained
for him a strange and bitter aftertaste.
He followed the usher.
A few minutes later he found himself alone in a sort of wainscoted
cabinet of severe aspect, lighted by two wax candles, placed upon
a table with a green cloth.
The last words of the usher who had just quitted him still
rang in his ears:
"Monsieur, you are now in the council-chamber; you have
only to turn the copper handle of yonder door, and you will find
yourself in the court-room, behind the President's chair."
These words were mingled in his thoughts with a vague memory of
narrow corridors and dark staircases which he had recently traversed.
The usher had left him alone.
The supreme moment had arrived. He sought to collect his faculties,
but could not.
It is chiefly at the moment when there is the greatest need
for attaching them to the painful realities of life, that the
threads of thought snap within the brain.
He was in the very place where the judges deliberated and
condemned.
With stupid tranquillity he surveyed this peaceful and terrible
apartment, where so many lives had been broken, which was soon
to ring with his name, and which his fate was at that moment traversing.
He stared at the wall, then he looked at himself, wondering
that it should be that chamber and that it should be he.
He had eaten nothing for four and twenty hours; he was worn
out by the jolts of the cart, but he was not conscious of it.
It seemed to him that he felt nothing.
He approached a black frame which was suspended on the wall,
and which contained, under glass, an ancient autograph letter
of Jean Nicolas Pache, mayor of Paris and minister, and dated,
through an error, no doubt, the 9th of June, of the year II.,
and in which Pache forwarded to the commune the list of ministers
and deputies held in arrest by them.
Any spectator who had chanced to see him at that moment, and
who had watched him, would have imagined, doubtless, that this
letter struck him as very curious, for he did not take his eyes
from it, and he read it two or three times. He read it without
paying any attention to it, and unconsciously. He was thinking
of Fantine and Cosette.
As he dreamed, he turned round, and his eyes fell upon the
brass knob of the door which separated him from the Court of Assizes.
He had almost forgotten that door.
His glance, calm at first, paused there, remained fixed on
that brass handle, then grew terrified, and little by little became
impregnated with fear.
Beads of perspiration burst forth among his hair and trickled
down upon his temples.
At a certain moment he made that indescribable gesture of
a sort of authority mingled with rebellion, which is intended
to convey, and which does so well convey, "Pardieu! who compels
me to this?" Then he wheeled briskly round, caught sight
of the door through which he had entered in front of him, went
to it, opened it, and passed out. He was no longer in that chamber;
he was outside in a corridor, a long, narrow corridor, broken
by steps and gratings, making all sorts of angles, lighted here
and there by lanterns similar to the night taper of invalids,
the corridor through which he had approached. He breathed, he
listened; not a sound in front, not a sound behind him, and he
fled as though pursued.
When he had turned many angles in this corridor, he still
listened. The same silence reigned, and there was the same darkness
around him. He was out of breath; he staggered; he leaned against
the wall. The stone was cold; the perspiration lay ice-cold on
his brow; he straightened himself up with a shiver.
Then, there alone in the darkness, trembling with cold and
with something else, too, perchance, he meditated.
He had meditated all night long; he had meditated all the
day: he heard within him but one voice, which said, "Alas!"
A quarter of an hour passed thus.
At length he bowed his head, sighed with agony, dropped his
arms, and retraced his steps. He walked slowly, and as though
crushed.
It seemed as though some one had overtaken him in his flight
and was leading him back.
He re-entered the council-chamber. The first thing he caught
sight of was the knob of the door.
This knob, which was round and of polished brass, shone like
a terrible star for him. He gazed at it as a lamb might gaze into
the eye of a tiger.
He could not take his eyes from it.
From time to time he advanced a step and approached the door.
Had he listened, he would have heard the sound of the adjoining
hall like a sort of confused murmur; but he did not listen, and
he did not hear.
Suddenly, without himself knowing how it happened, he found
himself near the door; he grasped the knob convulsively; the door
opened.
He was in the court-room.
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