________________________________________________
_ Jean Valjean listened. Not a sound.
He gave the door a push.
He pushed it gently with the tip of his finger, lightly, with the
furtive and uneasy gentleness of a cat which is desirous of entering.
The door yielded to this pressure, and made an imperceptible
and silent movement, which enlarged the opening a little.
He waited a moment; then gave the door a second and a bolder push.
It continued to yield in silence. The opening was now large enough
to allow him to pass. But near the door there stood a little table,
which formed an embarrassing angle with it, and barred the entrance.
Jean Valjean recognized the difficulty. It was necessary, at any cost,
to enlarge the aperture still further.
He decided on his course of action, and gave the door a third push,
more energetic than the two preceding. This time a badly oiled hinge
suddenly emitted amid the silence a hoarse and prolonged cry.
Jean Valjean shuddered. The noise of the hinge rang in his ears
with something of the piercing and formidable sound of the trump
of the Day of Judgment.
In the fantastic exaggerations of the first moment he almost imagined
that that hinge had just become animated, and had suddenly assumed
a terrible life, and that it was barking like a dog to arouse every one,
and warn and to wake those who were asleep. He halted, shuddering,
bewildered, and fell back from the tips of his toes upon his heels.
He heard the arteries in his temples beating like two forge hammers,
and it seemed to him that his breath issued from his breast with
the roar of the wind issuing from a cavern. It seemed impossible
to him that the horrible clamor of that irritated hinge should not
have disturbed the entire household, like the shock of an earthquake;
the door, pushed by him, had taken the alarm, and had shouted;
the old man would rise at once; the two old women would shriek out;
people would come to their assistance; in less than a quarter of an
hour the town would be in an uproar, and the gendarmerie on hand.
For a moment he thought himself lost.
He remained where he was, petrified like the statue of salt,
not daring to make a movement. Several minutes elapsed. The door
had fallen wide open. He ventured to peep into the next room.
Nothing had stirred there. He lent an ear. Nothing was moving
in the house. The noise made by the rusty hinge had not awakened
any one.
This first danger was past; but there still reigned a frightful
tumult within him. Nevertheless, he did not retreat. Even when he
had thought himself lost, he had not drawn back. His only thought
now was to finish as soon as possible. He took a step and entered
the room.
This room was in a state of perfect calm. Here and there vague
and confused forms were distinguishable, which in the daylight were
papers scattered on a table, open folios, volumes piled upon a stool,
an arm-chair heaped with clothing, a prie-Dieu, and which at that hour
were only shadowy corners and whitish spots. Jean Valjean advanced
with precaution, taking care not to knock against the furniture.
He could hear, at the extremity of the room, the even and tranquil
breathing of the sleeping Bishop.
He suddenly came to a halt. He was near the bed. He had arrived
there sooner than he had thought for.
Nature sometimes mingles her effects and her spectacles with our
actions with sombre and intelligent appropriateness, as though she
desired to make us reflect. For the last half-hour a large cloud
had covered the heavens. At the moment when Jean Valjean paused
in front of the bed, this cloud parted, as though on purpose,
and a ray of light, traversing the long window, suddenly illuminated
the Bishop's pale face. He was sleeping peacefully. He lay in
his bed almost completely dressed, on account of the cold of the
Basses-Alps, in a garment of brown wool, which covered his arms to
the wrists. His head was thrown back on the pillow, in the careless
attitude of repose; his hand, adorned with the pastoral ring,
and whence had fallen so many good deeds and so many holy actions,
was hanging over the edge of the bed. His whole face was illumined
with a vague expression of satisfaction, of hope, and of felicity.
It was more than a smile, and almost a radiance. He bore upon his
brow the indescribable reflection of a light which was invisible.
The soul of the just contemplates in sleep a mysterious heaven.
A reflection of that heaven rested on the Bishop.
It was, at the same time, a luminous transparency, for that heaven
was within him. That heaven was his conscience.
At the moment when the ray of moonlight superposed itself, so to speak,
upon that inward radiance, the sleeping Bishop seemed as in a glory.
It remained, however, gentle and veiled in an ineffable half-light. That
moon in the sky, that slumbering nature, that garden without a quiver,
that house which was so calm, the hour, the moment, the silence,
added some solemn and unspeakable quality to the venerable repose
of this man, and enveloped in a sort of serene and majestic aureole
that white hair, those closed eyes, that face in which all was hope
and all was confidence, that head of an old man, and that slumber
of an infant.
There was something almost divine in this man, who was thus august,
without being himself aware of it.
Jean Valjean was in the shadow, and stood motionless, with his iron
candlestick in his hand, frightened by this luminous old man.
Never had he beheld anything like this. This confidence terrified him.
The moral world has no grander spectacle than this: a troubled and
uneasy conscience, which has arrived on the brink of an evil action,
contemplating the slumber of the just.
That slumber in that isolation, and with a neighbor like himself,
had about it something sublime, of which he was vaguely but
imperiously conscious.
No one could have told what was passing within him, not even himself.
In order to attempt to form an idea of it, it is necessary to think
of the most violent of things in the presence of the most gentle.
Even on his visage it would have been impossible to distinguish
anything with certainty. It was a sort of haggard astonishment.
He gazed at it, and that was all. But what was his thought?
It would have been impossible to divine it. What was evident was,
that he was touched and astounded. But what was the nature of this
emotion?
His eye never quitted the old man. The only thing which was clearly to be
inferred from his attitude and his physiognomy was a strange indecision.
One would have said that he was hesitating between the two abysses,--
the one in which one loses one's self and that in which one saves
one's self. He seemed prepared to crush that skull or to kiss that hand.
At the expiration of a few minutes his left arm rose slowly towards
his brow, and he took off his cap; then his arm fell back with the
same deliberation, and Jean Valjean fell to meditating once more,
his cap in his left hand, his club in his right hand, his hair
bristling all over his savage head.
The Bishop continued to sleep in profound peace beneath that
terrifying gaze.
The gleam of the moon rendered confusedly visible the crucifix
over the chimney-piece, which seemed to be extending its arms
to both of them, with a benediction for one and pardon for the other.
Suddenly Jean Valjean replaced his cap on his brow; then stepped
rapidly past the bed, without glancing at the Bishop, straight to
the cupboard, which he saw near the head; he raised his iron
candlestick as though to force the lock; the key was there;
he opened it; the first thing which presented itself to him was
the basket of silverware; he seized it, traversed the chamber with
long strides, without taking any precautions and without troubling
himself about the noise, gained the door, re-entered the oratory,
opened the window, seized his cudgel, bestrode the window-sill
of the ground-floor, put the silver into his knapsack, threw away
the basket, crossed the garden, leaped over the wall like a tiger,
and fled. _
Read next: VOLUME I - FANTINE: BOOK SECOND - THE FALL: CHAPTER XII. The Bishop works
Read previous: VOLUME I - FANTINE: BOOK SECOND - THE FALL: CHAPTER X. The Man aroused
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