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THE OBSCURITIES WHICH A REVELATION CAN CONTAIN
Marius was quite upset.
The sort of estrangement which he had always felt towards
the man beside whom he had seen Cosette, was now explained to
him. There was something enigmatic about that person, of which
his instinct had warned him.
This enigma was the most hideous of disgraces, the galleys.
This M. Fauchelevent was the convict Jean Valjean.
To abruptly find such a secret in the midst of one's happiness
resembles the discovery of a scorpion in a nest of turtledoves.
Was the happiness of Marius and Cosette thenceforth condemned
to such a neighborhood?
Was this an accomplished fact?
Did the acceptance of that man form a part of the marriage
now consummated? Was there nothing to be done?
Had Marius wedded the convict as well?
In vain may one be crowned with light and joy, in vain may
one taste the grand purple hour of life, happy love, such shocks
would force even the archangel in his ecstasy, even the demigod
in his glory, to shudder.
As is always the case in changes of view of this nature, Marius
asked himself whether he had nothing with which to reproach himself.
Had he been wanting in divination?
Had he been wanting in prudence? Had he involuntarily dulled
his wits?
A little, perhaps.
Had he entered upon this love affair, which had ended in his
marriage to Cosette, without taking sufficient precautions to
throw light upon the surroundings?
He admitted,--it is thus, by a series of successive admissions
of ourselves in regard to ourselves, that life amends us, little
by little,--he admitted the chimerical and visionary side of his
nature, a sort of internal cloud peculiar to many organizations,
and which, in paroxysms of passion and sorrow, dilates as the
temperature of the soul changes, and invades the entire man, to
such a degree as to render him nothing more than a conscience
bathed in a mist.
We have more than once indicated this characteristic element
of Marius' individuality.
He recalled that, in the intoxication of his love, in the
Rue Plumet, during those six or seven ecstatic weeks, he had not
even spoke to Cosette of that drama in the Gorbeau hovel, where
the victim had taken up such a singular line of silence during
the struggle and the ensuing flight.
How had it happened that he had not mentioned this to Cosette?
Yet it was so near and so terrible! How had it come to pass
that he had not even named the Thenardiers, and, particularly,
on the day when he had encountered Eponine? He now found it almost
difficult to explain his silence of that time. Nevertheless, he
could account for it.
He recalled his benumbed state, his intoxication with Cosette,
love absorbing everything, that catching away of each other into
the ideal, and perhaps also, like the imperceptible quantity of
reason mingled with this violent and charming state of the soul,
a vague, dull instinct impelling him to conceal and abolish in
his memory that redoubtable adventure, contact with which he dreaded,
in which he did not wish to play any part, his agency in which
he had kept secret, and in which he could be neither narrator
nor witness without being an accuser.
Moreover, these few weeks had been a flash of lightning; there
had been no time for anything except love.
In short, having weighed everything, turned everything over
in his mind, examined everything, whatever might have been the
consequences if he had told Cosette about the Gorbeau ambush,
even if he had discovered that Jean Valjean was a convict, would
that have changed him, Marius? Would that have changed her, Cosette?
Would he have drawn back? Would he have adored her any the
less?
Would he have refrained from marrying her?
No. Then there was nothing to regret, nothing with which he
need reproach himself.
All was well. There is a deity for those drunken men who are
called lovers. Marius blind, had followed the path which he would
have chosen had he been in full possession of his sight.
Love had bandaged his eyes, in order to lead him whither?
To paradise.
But this paradise was henceforth complicated with an infernal
accompaniment.
Marius' ancient estrangement towards this man, towards this
Fauchelevent who had turned into Jean Valjean, was at present
mingled with horror.
In this horror, let us state, there was some pity, and even
a certain surprise.
This thief, this thief guilty of a second offence, had restored
that deposit.
And what a deposit!
Six hundred thousand francs.
He alone was in the secret of that deposit.
He might have kept it all, he had restored it all.
Moreover, he had himself revealed his situation.
Nothing forced him to this.
If any one learned who he was, it was through himself. In
this avowal there was something more than acceptance of humiliation,
there was acceptance of peril.
For a condemned man, a mask is not a mask, it is a shelter.
A false name is security, and he had rejected that false name.
He, the galley-slave, might have hidden himself forever in
an honest family; he had withstood this temptation. And with what
motive?
Through a conscientious scruple. He himself explained this
with the irresistible accents of truth. In short, whatever this
Jean Valjean might be, he was, undoubtedly, a conscience which
was awakening.
There existed some mysterious re-habilitation which had begun;
and, to all appearances, scruples had for a long time already
controlled this man.
Such fits of justice and goodness are not characteristic of
vulgar natures. An awakening of conscience is grandeur of soul.
Jean Valjean was sincere.
This sincerity, visible, palpable, irrefragable, evident from
the very grief that it caused him, rendered inquiries useless,
and conferred authority on all that that man had said.
Here, for Marius, there was a strange reversal of situations.
What breathed from M. Fauchelevent? distrust.
What did Jean Valjean inspire? confidence.
In the mysterious balance of this Jean Valjean which the pensive
Marius struck, he admitted the active principle, he admitted the
passive principle, and he tried to reach a balance.
But all this went on as in a storm.
Marius, while endeavoring to form a clear idea of this man,
and while pursuing Jean Valjean, so to speak, in the depths of
his thought, lost him and found him again in a fatal mist.
The deposit honestly restored, the probity of the confession--
these were good.
This produced a lightening of the cloud, then the cloud became
black once more.
Troubled as were Marius' memories, a shadow of them returned
to him.
After all, what was that adventure in the Jondrette attic?
Why had that man taken to flight on the arrival of the police,
instead of entering a complaint?
Here Marius found the answer.
Because that man was a fugitive from justice, who had broken
his ban.
Another question:
Why had that man come to the barricade?
For Marius now once more distinctly beheld that recollection
which had re-appeared in his emotions like sympathetic ink at
the application of heat.
This man had been in the barricade. He had not fought there.
What had he come there for?
In the presence of this question a spectre sprang up and replied:
"Javert."
Marius recalled perfectly now that funereal sight of Jean
Valjean dragging the pinioned Javert out of the barricade, and
he still heard behind the corner of the little Rue Mondetour that
frightful pistol shot.
Obviously, there was hatred between that police spy and the
galley-slave. The one was in the other's way.
Jean Valjean had gone to the barricade for the purpose of
revenging himself. He had arrived late.
He probably knew that Javert was a prisoner there. The Corsican
vendetta has penetrated to certain lower strata and has become
the law there; it is so simple that it does not astonish souls
which are but half turned towards good; and those hearts are so
constituted that a criminal, who is in the path of repentance,
may be scrupulous in the matter of theft and unscrupulous in the
matter of vengeance.
Jean Valjean had killed Javert.
At least, that seemed to be evident.
This was the final question, to be sure; but to this there
was no reply.
This question Marius felt like pincers.
How had it come to pass that Jean Valjean's existence had
elbowed that of Cosette for so long a period?
What melancholy sport of Providence was that which had placed
that child in contact with that man?
Are there then chains for two which are forged on high? and
does God take pleasure in coupling the angel with the demon?
So a crime and an innocence can be room-mates in the mysterious
galleys of wretchedness? In that defiling of condemned persons
which is called human destiny, can two brows pass side by side,
the one ingenuous, the other formidable, the one all bathed in
the divine whiteness of dawn, the other forever blemished by the
flash of an eternal lightning? Who could have arranged that inexplicable
pairing off?
In what manner, in consequence of what prodigy, had any community
of life been established between this celestial little creature
and that old criminal?
Who could have bound the lamb to the wolf, and, what was still
more incomprehensible, have attached the wolf to the lamb? For
the wolf loved the lamb, for the fierce creature adored the feeble
one, for, during the space of nine years, the angel had had the
monster as her point of support.
Cosette's childhood and girlhood, her advent in the daylight,
her virginal growth towards life and light, had been sheltered
by that hideous devotion. Here questions exfoliated, so to speak,
into innumerable enigmas, abysses yawned at the bottoms of abysses,
and Marius could no longer bend over Jean Valjean without becoming
dizzy.
What was this man-precipice?
The old symbols of Genesis are eternal; in human society,
such as it now exists, and until a broader day shall effect a
change in it, there will always be two men, the one superior,
the other subterranean; the one which is according to good is
Abel; the other which is according to evil is Cain.
What was this tender Cain?
What was this ruffian religiously absorbed in the adoration
of a virgin, watching over her, rearing her, guarding her, dignifying
her, and enveloping her, impure as he was himself, with purity?
What was that cess-pool which had venerated that innocence
to such a point as not to leave upon it a single spot?
What was this Jean Valjean educating Cosette?
What was this figure of the shadows which had for its only
object the preservation of the rising of a star from every shadow
and from every cloud?
That was Jean Valjean's secret; that was also God's secret.
In the presence of this double secret, Marius recoiled.
The one, in some sort, reassured him as to the other.
God was as visible in this affair as was Jean Valjean.
God has his instruments. He makes use of the tool which he
wills.
He is not responsible to men.
Do we know how God sets about the work?
Jean Valjean had labored over Cosette.
He had, to some extent, made that soul. That was incontestable.
Well, what then?
The workman was horrible; but the work was admirable.
God produces his miracles as seems good to him.
He had constructed that charming Cosette, and he had employed
Jean Valjean.
It had pleased him to choose this strange collaborator for
himself.
What account have we to demand of him? Is this the first time
that the dung-heap has aided the spring to create the rose?
Marius made himself these replies, and declared to himself
that they were good.
He had not dared to press Jean Valjean on all the points which
we have just indicated, but he did not confess to himself that
he did not dare to do it.
He adored Cosette, he possessed Cosette, Cosette was splendidly
pure.
That was sufficient for him. What enlightenment did he need?
Cosette was a light.
Does light require enlightenment?
He had everything; what more could he desire?
All,-- is not that enough?
Jean Valjean's personal affairs did not concern him.
And bending over the fatal shadow of that man, he clung fast,
convulsively, to the solemn declaration of that unhappy wretch:
"I am nothing to Cosette.
Ten years ago I did not know that she was in existence."
Jean Valjean was a passer-by. He had said so himself. Well,
he had passed.
Whatever he was, his part was finished.
Henceforth, there remained Marius to fulfil the part of Providence
to Cosette.
Cosette had sought the azure in a person like herself, in
her lover, her husband, her celestial male.
Cosette, as she took her flight, winged and transfigured,
left behind her on the earth her hideous and empty chrysalis,
Jean Valjean.
In whatever circle of ideas Marius revolved, he always returned
to a certain horror for Jean Valjean.
A sacred horror, perhaps, for, as we have just pointed out,
he felt a quid divinum in that man. But do what he would, and
seek what extenuation he would, he was certainly forced to fall
back upon this:
the man was a convict; that is to say, a being who has not
even a place in the social ladder, since he is lower than the
very lowest rung.
After the very last of men comes the convict.
The convict is no longer, so to speak, in the semblance of
the living.
The law has deprived him of the entire quantity of humanity
of which it can deprive a man.
Marius, on penal questions, still held to the inexorable system,
though he was a democrat and he entertained all the ideas of the
law on the subject of those whom the law strikes.
He had not yet accomplished all progress, we admit.
He had not yet come to distinguish between that which is written
by man and that which is written by God, between law and right.
He had not examined and weighed the right which man takes
to dispose of the irrevocable and the irreparable. He was not
shocked by the word vindicte.
He found it quite simple that certain breaches of the written
law should be followed by eternal suffering, and he accepted,
as the process of civilization, social damnation.
He still stood at this point, though safe to advance infallibly
later on, since his nature was good, and, at bottom, wholly formed
of latent progress.
In this stage of his ideas, Jean Valjean appeared to him hideous
and repulsive.
He was a man reproved, he was the convict. That word was for
him like the sound of the trump on the Day of Judgment; and, after
having reflected upon Jean Valjean for a long time, his final
gesture had been to turn away his head. Vade retro.
Marius, if we must recognize and even insist upon the fact,
while interrogating Jean Valjean to such a point that Jean Valjean
had said:
"You are confessing me," had not, nevertheless,
put to him two or three decisive questions.
It was not that they had not presented themselves to his mind,
but that he had been afraid of them.
The Jondrette attic? The barricade?
Javert?
Who knows where these revelations would have stopped?
Jean Valjean did not seem like a man who would draw back,
and who knows whether Marius, after having urged him on, would
not have himself desired to hold him back?
Has it not happened to all of us, in certain supreme conjunctures,
to stop our ears in order that we may not hear the reply, after
we have asked a question?
It is especially when one loves that one gives way to these
exhibitions of cowardice.
It is not wise to question sinister situations to the last
point, particularly when the indissoluble side of our life is
fatally intermingled with them.
What a terrible light might have proceeded from the despairing
explanations of Jean Valjean, and who knows whether that hideous
glare would not have darted forth as far as Cosette?
Who knows whether a sort of infernal glow would not have lingered
behind it on the brow of that angel? The spattering of a lightning-flash
is of the thunder also. Fatality has points of juncture where
innocence itself is stamped with crime by the gloomy law of the
reflections which give color. The purest figures may forever preserve
the reflection of a horrible association.
Rightly or wrongly, Marius had been afraid. He already knew
too much.
He sought to dull his senses rather than to gain further light.
In dismay he bore off Cosette in his arms and shut his eyes
to Jean Valjean.
That man was the night, the living and horrible night. How
should he dare to seek the bottom of it?
It is a terrible thing to interrogate the shadow.
Who knows what its reply will be? The dawn may be blackened
forever by it.
In this state of mind the thought that that man would, henceforth,
come into any contact whatever with Cosette was a heartrending
perplexity to Marius.
He now almost reproached himself for not having put those
formidable questions, before which he had recoiled, and from which
an implacable and definitive decision might have sprung. He felt
that he was too good, too gentle, too weak, if we must say the
word.
This weakness had led him to an imprudent concession. He had
allowed himself to be touched.
He had been in the wrong. He ought to have simply and purely
rejected Jean Valjean.
Jean Valjean played the part of fire, and that is what he
should have done, and have freed his house from that man.
He was vexed with himself, he was angry with that whirlwind
of emotions which had deafened, blinded, and carried him away.
He was displeased with himself.
What was he to do now?
Jean Valjean's visits were profoundly repugnant to him.
What was the use in having that man in his house?
What did the man want?
Here, he became dismayed, he did not wish to dig down, he
did not wish to penetrate deeply; he did not wish to sound himself.
He had promised, he had allowed himself to be drawn into a promise;
Jean Valjean held his promise; one must keep one's word even to
a convict, above all to a convict.
Still, his first duty was to Cosette. In short, he was carried
away by the repugnance which dominated him.
Marius turned over all this confusion of ideas in his mind,
passing from one to the other, and moved by all of them. Hence
arose a profound trouble.
It was not easy for him to hide this trouble from Cosette,
but love is a talent, and Marius succeeded in doing it.
However, without any apparent object, he questioned Cosette,
who was as candid as a dove is white and who suspected nothing;
he talked of her childhood and her youth, and he became more and
more convinced that that convict had been everything good, paternal
and respectable that a man can be towards Cosette. All that Marius
had caught a glimpse of and had surmised was real. That sinister
nettle had loved and protected that lily.
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