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WHILE COSETTE AND TOUSSAINT ARE ASLEEP
Jean Valjean went into the house with Marius' letter.
He groped his way up the stairs, as pleased with the darkness
as an owl who grips his prey, opened and shut his door softly,
listened to see whether he could hear any noise,--made sure that,
to all appearances, Cosette and Toussaint were asleep, and plunged
three or four matches into the bottle of the Fumade lighter before
he could evoke a spark, so greatly did his hand tremble. What
he had just done smacked of theft.
At last the candle was lighted; he leaned his elbows on the
table, unfolded the paper, and read.
In violent emotions, one does not read, one flings to the
earth, so to speak, the paper which one holds, one clutches it
like a victim, one crushes it, one digs into it the nails of one's
wrath, or of one's joy; one hastens to the end, one leaps to the
beginning; attention is at fever heat; it takes up in the gross,
as it were, the essential points; it seizes on one point, and
the rest disappears. In Marius' note to Cosette, Jean Valjean
saw only these words:--
"I die.
When thou readest this, my soul will be near thee."
In the presence of these two lines, he was horribly dazzled;
he remained for a moment, crushed, as it were, by the change of
emotion which was taking place within him, he stared at Marius'
note with a sort of intoxicated amazement, he had before his eyes
that splendor, the death of a hated individual.
He uttered a frightful cry of inward joy.
So it was all over. The catastrophe had arrived sooner than
he had dared to hope. The being who obstructed his destiny was
disappearing.
That man had taken himself off of his own accord, freely,
willingly.
This man was going to his death, and he, Jean Valjean, had
had no hand in the matter, and it was through no fault of his.
Perhaps, even, he is already dead.
Here his fever entered into calculations. No, he is not dead
yet.
The letter had evidently been intended for Cosette to read
on the following morning; after the two discharges that were heard
between eleven o'clock and midnight, nothing more has taken place;
the barricade will not be attacked seriously until daybreak; but
that makes no difference, from the moment when "that man"
is concerned in this war, he is lost; he is caught in the gearing.
Jean Valjean felt himself delivered. So he was about to find
himself alone with Cosette once more. The rivalry would cease;
the future was beginning again.
He had but to keep this note in his pocket.
Cosette would never know what had become of that man.
All that there requires to be done is to let things take their
own course.
This man cannot escape. If he is not already dead, it is certain
that he is about to die. What good fortune!
Having said all this to himself, he became gloomy.
Then he went down stairs and woke up the porter.
About an hour later, Jean Valjean went out in the complete
costume of a National Guard, and with his arms.
The porter had easily found in the neighborhood the wherewithal
to complete his equipment. He had a loaded gun and a cartridge-box
filled with cartridges.
He strode off in the direction of the markets.
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