________________________________________________
_ He allowed Marius to slide down upon the shore.
They were in the open air!
The miasmas, darkness, horror lay behind him. The pure, healthful,
living, joyous air that was easy to breathe inundated him.
Everywhere around him reigned silence, but that charming silence when
the sun has set in an unclouded azure sky. Twilight had descended;
night was drawing on, the great deliverer, the friend of all those
who need a mantle of darkness that they may escape from an anguish.
The sky presented itself in all directions like an enormous calm.
The river flowed to his feet with the sound of a kiss. The aerial
dialogue of the nests bidding each other good night in the elms
of the Champs-Elysees was audible. A few stars, daintily piercing
the pale blue of the zenith, and visible to revery alone,
formed imperceptible little splendors amid the immensity. Evening was
unfolding over the head of Jean Valjean all the sweetness of the infinite.
It was that exquisite and undecided hour which says neither yes nor no.
Night was already sufficiently advanced to render it possible
to lose oneself at a little distance and yet there was sufficient
daylight to permit of recognition at close quarters.
For several seconds, Jean Valjean was irresistibly overcome by that
august and caressing serenity; such moments of oblivion do come
to men; suffering refrains from harassing the unhappy wretch;
everything is eclipsed in the thoughts; peace broods over the dreamer
like night; and, beneath the twilight which beams and in imitation
of the sky which is illuminated, the soul becomes studded with stars.
Jean Valjean could not refrain from contemplating that vast,
clear shadow which rested over him; thoughtfully he bathed in the sea
of ecstasy and prayer in the majestic silence of the eternal heavens.
Then he bent down swiftly to Marius, as though the sentiment
of duty had returned to him, and, dipping up water in the hollow
of his hand, he gently sprinkled a few drops on the latter's face.
Marius' eyelids did not open; but his half-open mouth still breathed.
Jean Valjean was on the point of dipping his hand in the river once more,
when, all at once, he experienced an indescribable embarrassment, such
as a person feels when there is some one behind him whom he does not see.
We have already alluded to this impression, with which everyone
is familiar.
He turned round.
Some one was, in fact, behind him, as there had been a short
while before.
A man of lofty stature, enveloped in a long coat, with folded arms,
and bearing in his right fist a bludgeon of which the leaden head
was visible, stood a few paces in the rear of the spot where Jean
Valjean was crouching over Marius.
With the aid of the darkness, it seemed a sort of apparition.
An ordinary man would have been alarmed because of the twilight,
a thoughtful man on account of the bludgeon. Jean Valjean
recognized Javert.
The reader has divined, no doubt, that Thenardier's pursuer was
no other than Javert. Javert, after his unlooked-for escape from
the barricade, had betaken himself to the prefecture of police,
had rendered a verbal account to the Prefect in person in a brief
audience, had then immediately gone on duty again, which implied--
the note, the reader will recollect, which had been captured on
his person--a certain surveillance of the shore on the right bank
of the Seine near the Champs-Elysees, which had, for some time past,
aroused the attention of the police. There he had caught sight
of Thenardier and had followed him. The reader knows the rest.
Thus it will be easily understood that that grating, so obligingly
opened to Jean Valjean, was a bit of cleverness on Thenardier's part.
Thenardier intuitively felt that Javert was still there;
the man spied upon has a scent which never deceives him; it was
necessary to fling a bone to that sleuth-hound. An assassin,
what a godsend! Such an opportunity must never be allowed
to slip. Thenardier, by putting Jean Valjean outside in his stead,
provided a prey for the police, forced them to relinquish his scent,
made them forget him in a bigger adventure, repaid Javert for
his waiting, which always flatters a spy, earned thirty francs,
and counted with certainty, so far as he himself was concerned,
on escaping with the aid of this diversion.
Jean Valjean had fallen from one danger upon another.
These two encounters, this falling one after the other,
from Thenardier upon Javert, was a rude shock.
Javert did not recognize Jean Valjean, who, as we have stated,
no longer looked like himself. He did not unfold his arms, he made
sure of his bludgeon in his fist, by an imperceptible movement,
and said in a curt, calm voice:
"Who are you?"
"I."
"Who is `I'?"
"Jean Valjean."
Javert thrust his bludgeon between his teeth, bent his knees,
inclined his body, laid his two powerful hands on the shoulders of
Jean Valjean, which were clamped within them as in a couple of vices,
scrutinized him, and recognized him. Their faces almost touched.
Javert's look was terrible.
Jean Valjean remained inert beneath Javert's grasp, like a lion
submitting to the claws of a lynx.
"Inspector Javert," said he, "you have me in your power. Moreover,
I have regarded myself as your prisoner ever since this morning.
I did not give you my address with any intention of escaping from you.
Take me. Only grant me one favor."
Javert did not appear to hear him. He kept his eyes riveted on
Jean Valjean. His chin being contracted, thrust his lips upwards
towards his nose, a sign of savage revery. At length he released
Jean Valjean, straightened himself stiffly up without bending,
grasped his bludgeon again firmly, and, as though in a dream,
he murmured rather than uttered this question:
"What are you doing here? And who is this man?"
He still abstained from addressing Jean Valjean as thou.
Jean Valjean replied, and the sound of his voice appeared to rouse Javert:
"It is with regard to him that I desire to speak to you.
Dispose of me as you see fit; but first help me to carry him home.
That is all that I ask of you."
Javert's face contracted as was always the case when any one seemed
to think him capable of making a concession. Nevertheless, he did
not say "no."
Again he bent over, drew from his pocket a handkerchief which he
moistened in the water and with which he then wiped Marius'
blood-stained brow.
"This man was at the barricade," said he in a low voice and as
though speaking to himself. "He is the one they called Marius."
A spy of the first quality, who had observed everything,
listened to everything, and taken in everything, even when he thought
that he was to die; who had played the spy even in his agony,
and who, with his elbows leaning on the first step of the sepulchre,
had taken notes.
He seized Marius' hand and felt his pulse.
"He is wounded," said Jean Valjean.
"He is a dead man," said Javert.
Jean Valjean replied:
"No. Not yet."
"So you have brought him thither from the barricade?" remarked Javert.
His preoccupation must indeed have been very profound for him not
to insist on this alarming rescue through the sewer, and for him
not to even notice Jean Valjean's silence after his question.
Jean Valjean, on his side, seemed to have but one thought.
He resumed:
"He lives in the Marais, Rue des Filles-du-Calvaire, with
his grandfather. I do not recollect his name."
Jean Valjean fumbled in Marius' coat, pulled out his pocket-book,
opened it at the page which Marius had pencilled, and held it
out to Javert.
There was still sufficient light to admit of reading. Besides this,
Javert possessed in his eye the feline phosphorescence of night birds.
He deciphered the few lines written by Marius, and muttered:
"Gillenormand, Rue des Filles-duCalvaire, No. 6."
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. _
Read next: VOLUME V: BOOK THIRD - MUD BUT THE SOUL: CHAPTER X. Return of the Son Who Was Prodigal of His Life
Read previous: VOLUME V: BOOK THIRD - MUD BUT THE SOUL: CHAPTER VIII. The Torn Coat-Tail
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