Les Misérables, Victor Hugo [reading rainbow books .txt] 📗
- Author: Victor Hugo
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Then he exclaimed: “Coachman!”
The reader will remember that the hackney-coach was waiting in case of need.
Javert kept Marius’ pocket-book.
A moment later, the carriage, which had descended by the inclined plane of the watering-place, was on the shore. Marius was laid upon the back seat, and Javert seated himself on the front seat beside Jean Valjean.
The door slammed, and the carriage drove rapidly away, ascending the quays in the direction of the Bastille.
They quitted the quays and entered the streets. The coachman, a black form on his box, whipped up his thin horses. A glacial silence reigned in the carriage. Marius, motionless, with his body resting in the corner, and his head drooping on his breast, his arms hanging, his legs stiff, seemed to be awaiting only a coffin; Jean Valjean seemed made of shadow, and Javert of stone, and in that vehicle full of night, whose interior, every time that it passed in front of a street lantern, appeared to be turned lividly wan, as by an intermittent flash of lightning, chance had united and seemed to be bringing face to face the three forms of tragic immobility, the corpse, the spectre, and the statue.
At every jolt over the pavement, a drop of blood trickled from Marius’ hair.
Night had fully closed in when the carriage arrived at No. 6, Rue des Filles-du-Calvaire.
Javert was the first to alight; he made sure with one glance of the number on the carriage gate, and, raising the heavy knocker of beaten iron, embellished in the old style, with a male goat and a satyr confronting each other, he gave a violent peal. The gate opened a little way and Javert gave it a push. The porter half made his appearance yawning, vaguely awake, and with a candle in his hand.
Everyone in the house was asleep. People go to bed betimes in the Marais, especially on days when there is a revolt. This good, old quarter, terrified at the Revolution, takes refuge in slumber, as children, when they hear the Bugaboo coming, hide their heads hastily under their coverlet.
In the meantime Jean Valjean and the coachman had taken Marius out of the carriage, Jean Valjean supporting him under the armpits, and the coachman under the knees.
As they thus bore Marius, Jean Valjean slipped his hand under the latter’s clothes, which were broadly rent, felt his breast, and assured himself that his heart was still beating. It was even beating a little less feebly, as though the movement of the carriage had brought about a certain fresh access of life.
Javert addressed the porter in a tone befitting the government, and the presence of the porter of a factious person.
“Some person whose name is Gillenormand?”
“Here. What do you want with him?”
“His son is brought back.”
“His son?” said the porter stupidly.
“He is dead.”
Jean Valjean, who, soiled and tattered, stood behind Javert, and whom the porter was surveying with some horror, made a sign to him with his head that this was not so.
The porter did not appear to understand either Javert’s words or Jean Valjean’s sign.
Javert continued:
“He went to the barricade, and here he is.”
“To the barricade?” ejaculated the porter.
“He has got himself killed. Go waken his father.”
The porter did not stir.
“Go along with you!” repeated Javert.
And he added:
“There will be a funeral here to-morrow.”
For Javert, the usual incidents of the public highway were categorically classed, which is the beginning of foresight and surveillance, and each contingency had its own compartment; all possible facts were arranged in drawers, as it were, whence they emerged on occasion, in variable quantities; in the street, uproar, revolt, carnival, and funeral.
The porter contented himself with waking Basque. Basque woke Nicolette; Nicolette roused great-aunt Gillenormand.
As for the grandfather, they let him sleep on, thinking that he would hear about the matter early enough in any case.
Marius was carried up to the first floor, without any one in the other parts of the house being aware of the fact, and deposited on an old sofa in M. Gillenormand’s antechamber; and while Basque went in search of a physician, and while Nicolette opened the linen-presses, Jean Valjean felt Javert touch him on the shoulder. He understood and descended the stairs, having behind him the step of Javert who was following him.
The porter watched them take their departure as he had watched their arrival, in terrified somnolence.
They entered the carriage once more, and the coachman mounted his box.
“Inspector Javert,” said Jean, “grant me yet another favor.”
“What is it?” demanded Javert roughly.
“Let me go home for one instant. Then you shall do whatever you like with me.”
Javert remained silent for a few moments, with his chin drawn back into the collar of his great-coat, then he lowered the glass and front:
“Driver,” said he, “Rue de l’Homme Armé, No. 7.”
They did not open their lips again during the whole space of their ride.
What did Jean Valjean want? To finish what he had begun; to warn Cosette, to tell her where Marius was, to give her, possibly, some other useful information, to take, if he could, certain final measures. As for himself, so far as he was personally concerned, all was over; he had been seized by Javert and had not resisted; any other man than himself in like situation would, perhaps, have had some vague thoughts connected with the rope which Thénardier had given him, and of the bars of the first cell that he should enter; but, let us impress it upon the reader, after the Bishop, there had existed in Jean Valjean a profound hesitation in the presence of any violence, even when directed against himself.
Suicide, that mysterious act of violence against the unknown which may contain, in a measure, the death of the soul, was impossible to Jean Valjean.
At the entrance to the Rue de l’Homme Armé, the carriage halted, the way being too narrow to admit of the entrance of vehicles. Javert and Jean Valjean alighted.
The coachman humbly represented to “monsieur l’Inspecteur,” that the Utrecht velvet of his carriage was all spotted with the blood of the assassinated man, and with mire from the assassin. That is the way he understood it. He added that an indemnity was due him. At the same time, drawing his certificate book from his pocket, he begged the inspector to have the goodness to write him “a bit of an attestation.”
Javert thrust aside the book which the coachman held out to him, and said:
“How much do you want, including your time of waiting and the drive?”
“It comes to seven hours and a quarter,” replied the man, “and my velvet was perfectly new. Eighty francs, Mr. Inspector.”
Javert drew four napoleons from his pocket and dismissed the carriage.
Jean Valjean fancied that it was Javert’s intention to conduct him on foot to the post of the Blancs-Manteaux or to the post of the Archives, both of which are close at hand.
They entered the street. It was deserted as usual. Javert followed Jean Valjean. They reached No. 7. Jean Valjean knocked. The door opened.
“It is well,” said Javert. “Go upstairs.”
He added with a strange expression, and as though he were exerting an effort in speaking in this manner:
“I will wait for you here.”
Jean Valjean looked at Javert. This mode of procedure was but little in accord with Javert’s habits. However, he could not be greatly surprised that Javert should now have a sort of haughty confidence in him, the confidence of the cat which grants the mouse liberty to the length of its claws, seeing that Jean Valjean had made up his mind to surrender himself and to make an end of it. He pushed open the door, entered the house, called to the porter who was in bed and who had pulled the cord from his couch: “It is I!” and ascended the stairs.
On arriving at the first floor, he paused. All sorrowful roads have their stations. The window on the landing-place, which was a sash-window, was open. As in many ancient houses, the staircase got its light from without and had a view on the street. The street-lantern, situated directly opposite, cast some light on the stairs, and thus effected some economy in illumination.
Jean Valjean, either for the sake of getting the air, or mechanically, thrust his head out of this window. He leaned out over the street. It is short, and the lantern lighted it from end to end. Jean Valjean was overwhelmed with amazement; there was no longer any one there.
Javert had taken his departure.
Basque and the porter had carried Marius into the drawing-room, as he still lay stretched out, motionless, on the sofa upon which he had been placed on his arrival. The doctor who had been sent for had hastened thither. Aunt Gillenormand had risen.
Aunt Gillenormand went and came, in affright, wringing her hands and incapable of doing anything but saying: “Heavens! is it possible?” At times she added: “Everything will be covered with blood.” When her first horror had passed off, a certain philosophy of the situation penetrated her mind, and took form in the exclamation: “It was bound to end in this way!” She did not go so far as: “I told you so!” which is customary on this sort of occasion. At the physician’s orders, a camp bed had been prepared beside the sofa. The doctor examined Marius, and after having found that his pulse was still beating, that the wounded man had no very deep wound on his breast, and that the blood on the corners of his lips proceeded from his nostrils, he had him placed flat on the bed, without a pillow, with his head on the same level as his body, and even a trifle lower, and with his bust bare in order to facilitate respiration. Mademoiselle Gillenormand, on perceiving that they were undressing Marius, withdrew. She set herself to telling her beads in her own chamber.
The trunk had not suffered any internal injury; a bullet, deadened by the pocket-book, had turned aside and made the tour of his ribs with a hideous laceration, which was of no great depth, and consequently, not dangerous. The long, underground journey had completed the dislocation of the broken collar-bone, and the disorder there was serious. The arms had been slashed with sabre cuts. Not a single scar disfigured his face; but his head was fairly covered with cuts; what would be the result of these wounds on the head? Would they stop short at the hairy cuticle, or would they attack the brain? As yet, this could not be decided. A grave symptom was that they had caused a swoon, and that people do not always recover from such swoons. Moreover, the wounded man had been exhausted by hemorrhage. From the waist down, the barricade had protected the lower part of the body from injury.
Basque and Nicolette tore up linen and prepared bandages; Nicolette sewed them, Basque rolled them. As lint was lacking, the doctor, for the time being, arrested the bleeding with layers of wadding. Beside the bed, three candles burned on a table where the case of surgical instruments lay spread out. The doctor bathed Marius’ face and hair with cold water. A full pail was reddened in an instant. The porter, candle in hand, lighted them.
The doctor seemed to be pondering sadly. From time to time, he made a negative sign with his head, as though replying to some question which he had inwardly addressed to himself.
A bad sign for the sick man are these mysterious dialogues of the doctor with himself.
At the moment when the doctor was wiping Marius’ face, and lightly touching his still closed eyes with his finger, a door opened at the end of the drawing-room, and a long, pallid figure made its appearance.
This was the grandfather.
The revolt had, for the past two days, deeply agitated, enraged and engrossed the mind of M. Gillenormand. He had not been able to sleep on the previous night, and he had been in a fever all day long. In the evening, he had gone to bed very early, recommending that everything in the house should be well barred, and he had fallen into a doze through sheer fatigue.
Old men sleep lightly; M. Gillenormand’s chamber adjoined the drawing-room, and in spite of all the precautions that had been taken, the noise had awakened him. Surprised at the rift of light which he saw under his door, he had risen from his bed, and had groped his way thither.
He stood astonished on the threshold, one hand on the handle of the half-open door, with his head bent a little forward and quivering, his body wrapped in a white dressing-gown, which was straight and as destitute of folds
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