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THE SEVENTH CIRCLE AND THE EIGHTH HEAVEN
The days that follow weddings are solitary.
People respect the meditations of the happy pair.
And also, their tardy slumbers, to some degree.
The tumult of visits and congratulations only begins later
on.
On the morning of the 17th of February, it was a little past
midday when Basque, with napkin and feather-duster under his arm,
busy in setting his antechamber to rights, heard a light tap at
the door.
There had been no ring, which was discreet on such a day.
Basque opened the door, and beheld M. Fauchelevent.
He introduced him into the drawing-room, still encumbered
and topsy-turvy, and which bore the air of a field of battle after
the joys of the preceding evening.
"Dame, sir," remarked Basque, "we all woke
up late."
"Is your master up?" asked Jean Valjean.
"How is Monsieur's arm?" replied Basque.
"Better.
Is your master up?"
"Which one? the old one or the new one?"
"Monsieur Pontmercy."
"Monsieur le Baron," said Basque, drawing himself
up.
A man is a Baron most of all to his servants.
He counts for something with them; they are what a philosopher
would call, bespattered with the title, and that flatters them.
Marius, be it said in passing, a militant republican as he
had proved, was now a Baron in spite of himself.
A small revolution had taken place in the family in connection
with this title.
It was now M. Gillenormand who clung to it, and Marius who
detached himself from it. But Colonel Pontmercy had written:
"My son will bear my title." Marius obeyed.
And then, Cosette, in whom the woman was beginning to dawn,
was delighted to be a Baroness.
"Monsieur le Baron?" repeated Basque.
"I will go and see. I will tell him that M. Fauchelevent
is here."
"No. Do not tell him that it is I. Tell him that some
one wishes to speak to him in private, and mention no name."
"Ah!" ejaculated Basque.
"I wish to surprise him."
"Ah!" ejaculated Basque once more, emitting his
second "ah!" as an explanation of the first.
And he left the room.
Jean Valjean remained alone.
The drawing-room, as we have just said, was in great disorder.
It seemed as though, by lending an air, one might still hear the
vague noise of the wedding.
On the polished floor lay all sorts of flowers which had fallen
from garlands and head-dresses. The wax candles, burned to stumps,
added stalactites of wax to the crystal drops of the chandeliers.
Not a single piece of furniture was in its place. In the corners,
three or four arm-chairs, drawn close together in a circle, had
the appearance of continuing a conversation. The whole effect
was cheerful.
A certain grace still lingers round a dead feast.
It has been a happy thing.
On the chairs in disarray, among those fading flowers, beneath
those extinct lights, people have thought of joy.
The sun had succeeded to the chandelier, and made its way
gayly into the drawing-room.
Several minutes elapsed.
Jean Valjean stood motionless on the spot where Basque had
left him.
He was very pale.
His eyes were hollow, and so sunken in his head by sleeplessness
that they nearly disappeared in their orbits.
His black coat bore the weary folds of a garment that has
been up all night.
The elbows were whitened with the down which the friction
of cloth against linen leaves behind it.
Jean Valjean stared at the window outlined on the polished
floor at his feet by the sun.
There came a sound at the door, and he raised his eyes.
Marius entered, his head well up, his mouth smiling, an indescribable
light on his countenance, his brow expanded, his eyes triumphant.
He had not slept either.
"It is you, father!" he exclaimed, on catching sight
of Jean Valjean; "that idiot of a Basque had such a mysterious
air!
But you have come too early.
It is only half past twelve.
Cosette is asleep."
That word:
"Father," said to M. Fauchelevent by Marius, signified:
supreme felicity.
There had always existed, as the reader knows, a lofty wall,
a coldness and a constraint between them; ice which must be broken
or melted.
Marius had reached that point of intoxication when the wall
was lowered, when the ice dissolved, and when M. Fauchelevent
was to him, as to Cosette, a father.
He continued:
his words poured forth, as is the peculiarity of divine paroxysms
of joy.
"How glad I am to see you!
If you only knew how we missed you yesterday! Good morning,
father.
How is your hand?
Better, is it not?"
And, satisfied with the favorable reply which he had made
to himself, he pursued:
"We have both been talking about you.
Cosette loves you so dearly! You must not forget that you
have a chamber here, We want nothing more to do with the Rue de
l'Homme Arme.
We will have no more of it at all. How could you go to live
in a street like that, which is sickly, which is disagreeable,
which is ugly, which has a barrier at one end, where one is cold,
and into which one cannot enter?
You are to come and install yourself here.
And this very day.
Or you will have to deal with Cosette.
She means to lead us all by the nose, I warn you. You have
your own chamber here, it is close to ours, it opens on the garden;
the trouble with the clock has been attended to, the bed is made,
it is all ready, you have only to take possession of it. Near
your bed Cosette has placed a huge, old, easy-chair covered with
Utrecht velvet and she has said to it:
`Stretch out your arms to him.'
A nightingale comes to the clump of acacias opposite your
windows, every spring.
In two months more you will have it. You will have its nest
on your left and ours on your right.
By night it will sing, and by day Cosette will prattle.
Your chamber faces due South.
Cosette will arrange your books for you, your Voyages of Captain
Cook and the other,--Vancouver's and all your affairs. I believe
that there is a little valise to which you are attached, I have
fixed upon a corner of honor for that.
You have conquered my grandfather, you suit him.
We will live together.
Do you play whist? you will overwhelm my grandfather with
delight if you play whist.
It is you who shall take Cosette to walk on the days when
I am at the courts, you shall give her your arm, you know, as
you used to, in the Luxembourg.
We are absolutely resolved to be happy.
And you shall be included in it, in our happiness, do you
hear, father?
Come, will you breakfast with us to-day?"
"Sir," said Jean Valjean, "I have something
to say to you. I am an ex-convict."
The limit of shrill sounds perceptible can be overleaped,
as well in the case of the mind as in that of the ear.
These words: "I am an ex-convict," proceeding from
the mouth of M. Fauchelevent and entering the ear of Marius overshot
the possible.
It seemed to him that something had just been said to him;
but he did not know what. He stood with his mouth wide open.
Then he perceived that the man who was addressing him was
frightful. Wholly absorbed in his own dazzled state, he had not,
up to that moment, observed the other man's terrible pallor.
Jean Valjean untied the black cravat which supported his right
arm, unrolled the linen from around his hand, bared his thumb
and showed it to Marius.
"There is nothing the matter with my hand," said
he.
Marius looked at the thumb.
"There has not been anything the matter with it,"
went on Jean Valjean.
There was, in fact, no trace of any injury.
Jean Valjean continued:
"It was fitting that I should be absent from your marriage.
I absented myself as much as was in my power.
So I invented this injury in order that I might not commit
a forgery, that I might not introduce a flaw into the marriage
documents, in order that I might escape from signing."
Marius stammered.
"What is the meaning of this?"
"The meaning of it is," replied Jean Valjean, "that
I have been in the galleys."
"You are driving me mad!" exclaimed Marius in terror.
"Monsieur Pontmercy," said Jean Valjean, "I
was nineteen years in the galleys.
For theft.
Then, I was condemned for life for theft, for a second offence.
At the present moment, I have broken my ban."
In vain did Marius recoil before the reality, refuse the fact,
resist the evidence, he was forced to give way.
He began to understand, and, as always happens in such cases,
he understood too much. An inward shudder of hideous enlightenment
flashed through him; an idea which made him quiver traversed his
mind.
He caught a glimpse of a wretched destiny for himself in the
future.
"Say all, say all!" he cried.
"You are Cosette's father!"
And he retreated a couple of paces with a movement of indescribable
horror.
Jean Valjean elevated his head with so much majesty of attitude
that he seemed to grow even to the ceiling.
"It is necessary that you should believe me here, sir;
although our oath to others may not be received in law . . ."
Here he paused, then, with a sort of sovereign and sepulchral
authority, he added, articulating slowly, and emphasizing the
syllables:
". . . You will believe me.
I the father of Cosette! before God, no. Monsieur le Baron
Pontmercy, I am a peasant of Faverolles. I earned my living by
pruning trees.
My name is not Fauchelevent, but Jean Valjean.
I am not related to Cosette.
Reassure yourself."
Marius stammered:
"Who will prove that to me?"
"I. Since I tell you so."
Marius looked at the man.
He was melancholy yet tranquil.
No lie could proceed from such a calm.
That which is icy is sincere. The truth could be felt in that
chill of the tomb.
"I believe you," said Marius.
Jean Valjean bent his head, as though taking note of this,
and continued:
"What am I to Cosette?
A passer-by. Ten years ago, I did not know that she was in
existence.
I love her, it is true.
One loves a child whom one has seen when very young, being
old oneself.
When one is old, one feels oneself a grandfather towards all
little children. You may, it seems to me, suppose that I have
something which resembles a heart.
She was an orphan.
Without either father or mother. She needed me.
That is why I began to love her.
Children are so weak that the first comer, even a man like
me, can become their protector.
I have fulfilled this duty towards Cosette. I do not think
that so slight a thing can be called a good action; but if it
be a good action, well, say that I have done it. Register this
attenuating circumstance.
To-day, Cosette passes out of my life; our two roads part.
Henceforth, I can do nothing for her.
She is Madame Pontmercy.
Her providence has changed. And Cosette gains by the change.
All is well.
As for the six hundred thousand francs, you do not mention
them to me, but I forestall your thought, they are a deposit.
How did that deposit come into my hands?
What does that matter?
I restore the deposit. Nothing more can be demanded of me.
I complete the restitution by announcing my true name.
That concerns me.
I have a reason for desiring that you should know who I am."
And Jean Valjean looked Marius full in the face.
All that Marius experienced was tumultuous and incoherent.
Certain gusts of destiny produce these billows in our souls.
We have all undergone moments of trouble in which everything
within us is dispersed; we say the first things that occur to
us, which are not always precisely those which should be said.
There are sudden revelations which one cannot bear, and which
intoxicate like baleful wine.
Marius was stupefied by the novel situation which presented
itself to him, to the point of addressing that man almost like
a person who was angry with him for this avowal.
"But why," he exclaimed, "do you tell me all
this?
Who forces you to do so?
You could have kept your secret to yourself. You are neither
denounced, nor tracked nor pursued.
You have a reason for wantonly making such a revelation.
Conclude.
There is something more.
In what connection do you make this confession? What is your
motive?"
"My motive?" replied Jean Valjean in a voice so
low and dull that one would have said that he was talking to himself
rather than to Marius. "From what motive, in fact, has this
convict just said `I am a convict'? Well, yes! the motive is strange.
It is out of honesty. Stay, the unfortunate point is that
I have a thread in my heart, which keeps me fast.
It is when one is old that that sort of thread is particularly
solid.
All life falls in ruin around one; one resists.
Had I been able to tear out that thread, to break it, to undo
the knot or to cut it, to go far away, I should have been safe.
I had only to go away; there are diligences in the Rue Bouloy;
you are happy; I am going.
I have tried to break that thread, I have jerked at it, it
would not break, I tore my heart with it. Then I said:
`I cannot live anywhere else than here.'
I must stay. Well, yes, you are right, I am a fool, why not
simply remain here? You offer me a chamber in this house, Madame
Pontmercy is sincerely attached to me, she said to the arm-chair:
`Stretch out your arms to him,' your grandfather demands nothing
better than to have me, I suit him, we shall live together, and
take our meals in common, I shall give Cosette my arm . . . Madame
Pontmercy, excuse me, it is a habit, we shall have but one roof,
one table, one fire, the same chimney-corner in winter, the same
promenade in summer, that is joy, that is happiness, that is everything.
We shall live as one family. One family!"
At that word, Jean Valjean became wild.
He folded his arms, glared at the floor beneath his feet as
though he would have excavated an abyss therein, and his voice
suddenly rose in thundering tones:
"As one family!
No. I belong to no family.
I do not belong to yours. I do not belong to any family of
men.
In houses where people are among themselves, I am superfluous.
There are families, but there is nothing of the sort for me.
I am an unlucky wretch; I am left outside.
Did I have a father and mother?
I almost doubt it. On the day when I gave that child in marriage,
all came to an end. I have seen her happy, and that she is with
a man whom she loves, and that there exists here a kind old man,
a household of two angels, and all joys in that house, and that
it was well, I said to myself: `Enter thou not.'
I could have lied, it is true, have deceived you all, and
remained Monsieur Fauchelevent.
So long as it was for her, I could lie; but now it would be
for myself, and I must not.
It was sufficient for me to hold my peace, it is true, and
all would go on. You ask me what has forced me to speak? a very
odd thing; my conscience. To hold my peace was very easy, however.
I passed the night in trying to persuade myself to it; you
questioned me, and what I have just said to you is so extraordinary
that you have the right to do it; well, yes, I have passed the
night in alleging reasons to myself, and I gave myself very good
reasons, I have done what I could. But there are two things in
which I have not succeeded; in breaking the thread that holds
me fixed, riveted and sealed here by the heart, or in silencing
some one who speaks softly to me when I am alone. That is why
I have come hither to tell you everything this morning. Everything
or nearly everything.
It is useless to tell you that which concerns only myself;
I keep that to myself.
You know the essential points.
So I have taken my mystery and have brought it to you.
And I have disembowelled my secret before your eyes. It was
not a resolution that was easy to take.
I struggled all night long.
Ah! you think that I did not tell myself that this was no
Champmathieu affair, that by concealing my name I was doing no
one any injury, that the name of Fauchelevent had been given to
me by Fauchelevent himself, out of gratitude for a service rendered
to him, and that I might assuredly keep it, and that I should
be happy in that chamber which you offer me, that I should not
be in any one's way, that I should be in my own little corner,
and that, while you would have Cosette, I should have the idea
that I was in the same house with her.
Each one of us would have had his share of happiness.
If I continued to be Monsieur Fauchelevent, that would arrange
everything.
Yes, with the exception of my soul. There was joy everywhere
upon my surface, but the bottom of my soul remained black.
It is not enough to be happy, one must be content. Thus I
should have remained Monsieur Fauchelevent, thus I should have
concealed my true visage, thus, in the presence of your expansion,
I should have had an enigma, thus, in the midst of your full noonday,
I should have had shadows, thus, without crying `'ware,' I should
have simply introduced the galleys to your fireside, I should
have taken my seat at your table with the thought that if you
knew who I was, you would drive me from it, I should have allowed
myself to be served by domestics who, had they known, would have
said: `How horrible!'
I should have touched you with my elbow, which you have a
right to dislike, I should have filched your clasps of the hand!
There would have existed in your house a division of respect
between venerable white locks and tainted white locks; at your
most intimate hours, when all hearts thought themselves open to
the very bottom to all the rest, when we four were together, your
grandfather, you two and myself, a stranger would have been present!
I should have been side by side with you in your existence, having
for my only care not to disarrange the cover of my dreadful pit.
Thus, I, a dead man, should have thrust myself upon you who are
living beings.
I should have condemned her to myself forever. You and Cosette
and I would have had all three of our heads in the green cap!
Does it not make you shudder?
I am only the most crushed of men; I should have been the
most monstrous of men. And I should have committed that crime
every day!
And I should have had that face of night upon my visage every
day! every day! And I should have communicated to you a share
in my taint every day! every day! to you, my dearly beloved, my
children, to you, my innocent creatures!
Is it nothing to hold one's peace? is it a simple matter to
keep silence?
No, it is not simple.
There is a silence which lies.
And my lie, and my fraud and my indignity, and my cowardice
and my treason and my crime, I should have drained drop by drop,
I should have spit it out, then swallowed it again, I should have
finished at midnight and have begun again at midday, and my `good
morning' would have lied, and my `good night' would have lied,
and I should have slept on it, I should have eaten it, with my
bread, and I should have looked Cosette in the face, and I should
have responded to the smile of the angel by the smile of the damned
soul, and I should have been an abominable villain! Why should
I do it? in order to be happy.
In order to be happy. Have I the right to be happy?
I stand outside of life, Sir."
Jean Valjean paused.
Marius listened.
Such chains of ideas and of anguishes cannot be interrupted.
Jean Valjean lowered his voice once more, but it was no longer
a dull voice--it was a sinister voice.
"You ask why I speak?
I am neither denounced, nor pursued, nor tracked, you say.
Yes!
I am denounced! yes!
I am tracked!
By whom? By myself.
It is I who bar the passage to myself, and I drag myself,
and I push myself, and I arrest myself, and I execute myself,
and when one holds oneself, one is firmly held."
And, seizing a handful of his own coat by the nape of the
neck and extending it towards Marius:
"Do you see that fist?" he continued.
"Don't you think that
it holds that collar in such a wise as not to release it? Well!
conscience is another grasp!
If one desires to be happy, sir, one must never understand
duty; for, as soon as one has comprehended it, it is implacable.
One would say that it punished you for comprehending it; but
no, it rewards you; for it places you in a hell, where you feel
God beside you.
One has no sooner lacerated his own entrails than he is at
peace with himself."
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