Les Misérables, v. 3

CHAPTER VII

ADVENTURES OF THE LETTER "U" LEFT TO CONJECTURES

Isolation, separation from everything, pride, independence, a taste for nature, the absence of daily and material labor, the soul-struggles of chastity, and his benevolent ecstasy in the presence of creation, had prepared Marius for that possession which is called passion. His reverence for his father had gradually become a religion, and, like all religions, withdrew into the depths of the soul: something was wanting for the foreground, and love came. A whole month passed, during which Marius went daily to the Luxembourg: when the hour arrived nothing could stop him. "He is on duty," Courfeyrac said. Marius lived in rapture, and it is certain that the young lady looked at him. In the end he had grown bolder, and went nearer the bench; still he did not pass in front of it, obeying at once the timid instincts and prudent instincts of lovers. He thought it advisable not to attract the father's attention, and hence arranged his stations behind trees and the pedestals of statues, with profound Machiavellism, so as to be seen as much as possible by the young lady and as little as possible by the old gentleman. At times he would be standing for half an hour motionless in the shadow of some Leonidas or Spartacus, holding in one hand a book, over which his eyes, gently raised, sought the lovely girl; and she, for her part, turned her charming profile toward him with a vague smile. While talking most naturally and quietly with the white-haired man, she fixed upon Marius all the reveries of a virginal and impassioned glance. It is an old and immemorial trick which Eve knew from the first day of the world, and which every woman knows from the first day of her life. Her mouth replied to the one and her eye answered the other.

It must be supposed, however, that M. Leblanc eventually noticed something, for frequently when Marius arrived he got up and began walking. He left their accustomed seat, and adopted at the other end of the walk the bench close to the Gladiator, as if to see whether Marius would follow them. Marius did not understand it, and committed this fault. "The father" began to become unpunctual, and no longer brought "his daughter" every day. At times he came alone, and then Marius did not stop, and this was another fault. Marius paid no attention to these symptoms: from the timid phase he had passed by a natural and fatal progress into a blind phase. His love was growing, and he dreamed of it every night, and then an unexpected happiness occurred to him, like oil on fire, and redoubled the darkness over his eyes. One evening at twilight he found on the bench which "M. Leblanc and his daughter" had just quitted, a simple, unembroidered handkerchief, which, however, was white and pure, and seemed to him to exhale ineffable odors. He seized it with transport, and noticed that it was marked with the letters "U. F." Marius knew nothing about the lovely girl, neither her family, her name, nor her abode; these two letters were the first thing of hers which he seized, – adorable initials, upon which he at once began to erect his scaffolding. "U" was evidently the Christian name: "Ursule!" he thought; "what a delicious name!" He kissed the handkerchief, smelt it, placed it on his heart during the day, and at night upon his lips to go to sleep.

"I can see her whole soul!" he exclaimed.

This handkerchief belonged to the old gentleman, who had simply let it fall from his pocket. On the following days, when Marius went to the Luxembourg, he kissed the handkerchief, and pressed it to his heart. The lovely girl did not understand what this meant, and expressed her surprise by imperceptible signs.

"Oh, modesty!" said Marius.

CHAPTER VIII

EVEN INVALIDS MAY BE LUCKY

Since we have uttered the word modesty, and as we conceal nothing, we are bound to say, however, that notwithstanding his ecstasy, on one occasion "his Ursule" caused him serious vexation. It was on one of the days when she induced M. Leblanc to leave the bench and walk about. There was a sharp spring breeze which shook the tops of the plane-trees; and father and daughter, arm in arm, had just passed in front of Marius, who rose and watched them, as was fitting for a man in his condition. All at once a puff of wind, more merry than the rest, and probably ordered to do the business of spring, dashed along the walk, enveloped the maiden in a delicious rustling worthy of the nymphs of Virgil and the Fauns of Theocritus, and raised her dress – that dress more sacred than that of Isis – almost as high as her garter. A leg of exquisite shape became visible. Marius saw it, and he was exasperated and furious. The maiden rapidly put down her dress, with a divinely startled movement, but he was not the less indignant. There was no one in the walk, it was true, but there might have been somebody; and if that somebody had been there! Is such a thing conceivable? What she has just done is horrible! Alas! the poor girl had done nothing, and there was only one culprit, the wind; but Marius, in whom faintly quivered the Bartholo which is in Cherubino, was determined to be dissatisfied, and was jealous of his shadow; it is thus, in fact, that the bitter and strange jealousy of the flesh is aroused in the human heart, and dominates it, even unjustly. Besides, apart from his jealousy, the sight of this charming leg was not at all agreeable to him, and any other woman's white stocking would have caused him more pleasure.

When "his Ursule," after reaching the end of the walk, turned back with M. Leblanc, and passed in front of the bench on which Marius was sitting, he gave her a stern, savage glance. The girl drew herself slightly up, and raised her eyelids, which means, "Well, what is the matter now?" This was their first quarrel. Marius had scarce finished upbraiding her in this way with his eyes, when some one crossed the walk. It was a bending invalid, all wrinkled and white, wearing the uniform of Louis XV., having on his chest the little oval red cloth badge with crossed swords, the soldier's cross of Saint Louis, and decorated besides with an empty coat-sleeve, a silver chin, and a wooden leg. Marius fancied he could notice that this man had an air of satisfaction; it seemed to him that the old cynic, while hobbling past him, gave him a fraternal and extremely jovial wink, as if some accident had enabled them to enjoy in common some good thing. Why was this relic of Mars so pleased? What had occurred, between this wooden leg and the other? Marius attained the paroxysm of jealousy, "He was perhaps there," he said to himself; "perhaps he saw," and he felt inclined to exterminate the invalid.

With the help of time every point grows blunted, and Marius's anger with "Ursule," though so just and legitimate, passed away. He ended by pardoning her; but it was a mighty effort, and he sulked with her for three days. Still, through all this, and owing to all this, his passion increased, and became insane.

CHAPTER IX

ECLIPSE

We have seen how Marius discovered, or fancied he had discovered, that her name was Ursule. Appetite comes while loving, and to know that her name was Ursule was a great deal already, but it was little. In three or four weeks Marius had devoured this happiness and craved another; he wished to know where she lived. He had made the first fault in falling into the trap of the Gladiator's bench; he had committed a second by not remaining at the Luxembourg when M. Leblanc went there alone; and he now committed a third, an immense one, – he followed "Ursule." She lived in the Rue de l'Ouest, in the most isolated part, in a new three-storied house of modest appearance. From this moment Marius added to his happiness of seeing her at the Luxembourg the happiness of following her home. His hunger increased; he knew what her name was, her Christian name at least, the charming, the real name of a woman; he knew where she lived; and he now wanted to know who she was. One evening after following them home, and watching them disappear in the gateway, he went in after them, and valiantly addressed the porter.

"Is that the gentleman of the first floor who has just come in?"

"No," the porter answered, "it is the gentleman of the third floor."

Another step made! This success emboldened Marius.

"Front?" he asked.

"Hang it!" said the porter, "our rooms all look on the street."

"And what is the gentleman?" Marius continued.

"He lives on his property. He is a very good man, who does a deal of good to the unhappy, though he is not rich."

"What is his name?" Marius added.

The porter raised his head and said, —

"Are you a police spy, sir?"

Marius went off much abashed, but highly delighted, for he was progressing.

"Good!" he thought; "I know that her name is Ursule, that she is the daughter of a retired gentleman, and that she lives there, on a third floor in the Rue de l'Ouest."

On the morrow M. Leblanc and his daughter made but a short appearance at the Luxembourg, and went away in broad daylight. Marius followed them to the Rue de l'Ouest, as was his habit, and on reaching the gateway M. Leblanc made his daughter go in first, then stopped, turned, and looked intently at Marius. The next day they did not come to the Luxembourg, and Marius waited in vain the whole day. At nightfall he went to the Rue de l'Ouest, and noticed a light in the third-floor windows, and he walked about beneath these windows till the light was extinguished. The next day there was no one at the Luxembourg; Marius waited all day, and then went to keep his night-watch under the windows. This took him till ten o'clock, and his dinner became what it could; for fever nourishes the sick man and love the lover. Eight days passed in this way, and M. Leblanc and his daughter did not again appear at the Luxembourg. Marius made sorrowful conjectures, for he did not dare watch the gateway by day; he contented himself with going at night to contemplate the reddish brightness of the window-panes. He saw shadows pass now and then, and his heart beat.

On the eighth day, when he arrived beneath the windows, there was no light. "What!" he said to himself, "the lamp is not lighted! can they have gone out?" He waited till ten o'clock, till midnight, till one o'clock, but no light was kindled at the third-floor windows, and nobody entered the house. He went away with very gloomy thoughts. On the morrow – for he only lived from morrow to morrow, and he had no to-day, so to speak – he saw nobody at the Luxembourg, as he expected, and at nightfall he went to the house. There was no light at the windows, the shutters were closed, and the third floor was all darkness. Marius rapped, walked in, and said to the porter, —

"The gentleman on the third floor?"

"Moved," the porter answered.

Marius tottered, and asked feebly, —

"Since when?"

"Yesterday."

"Where is he living now?"

"I do not know."

"Then he did not leave his new address?"

"No."

And the porter, raising his nose, recognized Marius.

"What! it's you, is it?" he said; "why, you must really be a police spy."

BOOK VII

PATRON MINETTE

CHAPTER I

MINES AND MINERS

Human societies have ever what is called in theatres "un troisième dessous," and the social soil is everywhere undermined, here for good and there for evil. These works are upon one another; there are upper mines and lower mines, and there is a top and bottom in this obscure sub-soil, which at times gives way beneath the weight of civilization, and which our indifference and carelessness trample under foot. The Encyclopædia was in the last century an almost open mine, and the darkness, that gloomy brooder of primitive Christianity, only awaited an occasion to explode beneath the Cæsars and inundate the human race with light. For in the sacred darkness there is latent light, and the volcanoes are full of a shadow which is capable of flashing, and all lava begins by being night. The catacombs in which the first Mass was read were not merely the cellar of Rome but also the vault of the world.

There are all sorts of excavations beneath the social building, that marvel complicated by a hovel; there is the religious mine, the philosophic mine, the political mine, the social economic mine, and the revolutionary mine. One man picks with the idea, another with figure, another with auger, and they call to and answer each other from the catacombs. Utopias move in subterranean passages and ramify in all directions; they meet there at times and fraternize. Jean Jacques lends his pick to Diogenes, who lends him his lantern in turn; at times, though, they fight, and Calvin clutches Socinus by the hair. But nothing arrests or interrupts the tension of all their energies toward the object, and the vast simultaneous energy, which comes and goes, ascends, descends, and reascends, in the obscurity, and which slowly substitutes top for bottom and inside for out; it is an immense and unknown ant-heap. Society hardly suspects this excavation, which leaves no traces on its surface and yet changes its insides; and there are as many different works and varying extractions as there are subterranean tiers. What issues from all these deep excavations? The future.

The deeper we go the more mysterious the mines become. To a certain point which the social philosopher is able to recognize the labor is good; beyond that point it is doubtful and mixed, and lower still it becomes terrible. At a certain depth the excavations can no longer be endured by the spirit of civilization, and man's limit of breathing is passed: a commencement of monsters becomes possible. The descending ladder is strange, and each rung corresponds with a stage upon which philosophy can land, and meet one of these miners, who are sometimes divine, at others deformed. Below John Huss there is Luther; below Luther, Descartes; below Descartes, Voltaire; below Voltaire, Condorcet; below Condorcet, Robespierre; below Robespierre, Marat; and below Marat, Babeuf; and so it goes on. Lower still we notice confusedly, at the limit which separates the indistinct from the invisible, other gloomy men, who perhaps do not yet exist: those of yesterday are spectres, those of the morrow grubs. The mental eye can only distinguish them obscurely, and the embryonic labor of the future is one of the visions of the philosopher. A world in limbo at the fœtus stage – what an extraordinary sketch! St Simon, Owen, and Founder are also there in the side-passages.

Assuredly, although a divine and invisible chain connects together without their cognizance all these subterranean miners, who nearly always fancy themselves isolated but are not so, their labors vary greatly, and the light of the one contrasts with the dazzle of the other: some are celestial and others tragical. Still, however great the contrast may be, all these laborers, from the highest to the most nocturnal, from the wisest down to the maddest, have a similitude in their disinterestedness: they leave themselves on one side, omit themselves, do not think of themselves, and see something different from themselves. They have a glance, and that glance seeks the absolute; the first has heaven in his eyes, and the last, however enigmatical he may be, has beneath Ids eyebrow the pale brightness of infinity. Venerate every man, no matter what he may be doing, – any man who has the sign, a starry eyeball. The dark eyeball is the other sign, and with it evil begins. Before the man who has this look, think and tremble. Social order has its black miners. There is a point where profundity is burial and where light is extinguished. Below all these mines which we have indicated, – below all these galleries, below all this immense subterranean arterial system of progress and Utopia, far deeper in the ground, below Marat, below Babeuf, much, much lower, there is the last passage, which has no connection with the upper drifts. It is a formidable spot, and what we termed the troisième dessous. It is the grave of darkness and the cave of the blind, Inferi, and communicates with the abysses.

CHAPTER II

THE BOTTOM

Here disinterestedness fades away, and the dream is vaguely sketched. Every one for himself. The eyeless I yells, seeks, gropes, and groans: the social Ugolino is in this gulf. The ferocious shadows which prowl about this grave, almost brutes, almost phantoms, do not trouble themselves about human progress; they are ignorant of ideas and language, and thus they care for nought beyond individual gratification. They are almost unconscious, and there is within them a species of frightful obliteration. They have two mothers, both step-mothers, – ignorance and wretchedness. They have for their guide want, and for all power of satisfaction appetite; they are brutally voracious, that is to say, ferocious, – not after the fashion of the tyrant, but that of the tiger. From suffering these grubs pass to crime, – it is a fetal affiliation, a ghastly propagation, the logic of darkness; what crawls in the lowest passage is no longer the stifled demand of the absolute, but the protest of matter. Man becomes a dragon then; his starting-point is to be hungry and thirsty, and his terminus is to be Satan. Lacenaire issued from this cave.

We have just seen one of the compartments of the upper mine, the great political, revolutionary, and philosophic sap. There, as we said, all is noble, pure, worthy, and honest: men may be mistaken in it, and are mistaken, but the error must be revered, because it implies so much heroism, and the work performed there has a name, – Progress. The moment has now arrived to take a glance at other and hideous depths. There is beneath society, and there ever will be, till the day when ignorance is dissipated, the great cavern of evil. This cavern is below all the rest, and the enemy of all; it is hatred without exception. This cavern knows no philosophers, and its dagger never made a pen, while its blackness bears no relation with the sublime blackness of the inkstand. The fingers of night, which clench beneath this asphyxiating roof, never opened a book or unfolded a newspaper. Babeuf is to Cartouche a person who takes advantage of his knowledge, and Marat an aristocrat in the sight of Schinderhannes, and the object of this cavern is the overthrow of everything.

Of everything, – including the upper levels, which it execrates. It not only undermines in its hideous labor the existing social order, but it undermines philosophy, science, the law, human thought, civilization, revolution, and progress, and it calls itself most simply, robbery, prostitution, murder, and assassination. It is darkness, and desires chaos, and its roof is composed of ignorance. All the other mines above it have only one object, to suppress it; and philosophy and progress strive for this with all their organs simultaneously, by the amelioration of the real, as well as the contemplation of the ideal. Destroy the cave, Ignorance, and you destroy the mole, Crime. Let us condense in a few words a portion of what we have just written. The sole social evil is darkness; humanity is identity, for all men are of the same clay, and in this nether world, at least, there is no difference in predestination; we are the same shadow before, the same flesh during, and the same ashes afterwards: but ignorance, mixed with the human paste, blackens it, and this incurable blackness enters man and becomes Evil there.

CHAPTER III

BABET, GUEULEMER, CLAQUESOUS, AND MONTPARNASSE

A quartette of bandits, Babet, Gueulemer, Claquesous, and Montparnasse, governed, from 1830 to 1835, the lowest depths of Paris. Gueulemer was a Hercules out of place, and his den was the Arche-Marion sewer. He was six feet high, had lungs of marble, muscles of bronze, the respiration of a cavern, the bust of a colossus, and a bird's skull. You fancied you saw the Farnèse Hercules, attired in ticking trousers and a cotton-velvet jacket. Gueulemer built in this mould might have subdued monsters, but he had found it shorter to be one. A low forehead, wide temples, under forty years of age, but with crow's-feet, rough short hair, and a bushy beard, – you can see the man. His muscles demanded work, and his stupidity would not accept it: he was a great slothful strength, and an assassin through nonchalance. People believed him to be a Creole, and he had probably laid his hands upon Marshal Brune when massacred, as he was a porter at Avignon in 1815. From that stage he had become a bandit.

Babet's transparency contrasted with the meat of Gueulemer; he was thin and learned, – transparent but impenetrable: you might see the light through his bones, but not through his eyes. He called himself a chemist, had been a clown with Bobêche and a harlequin with Bobino, and had played in the vaudeville at St. Mihiel. He was a man of intentions, and a fine speaker, who underlined his smiles and placed his gestures between inverted commas. His trade was to sell in the open air plaster busts and portraits of the "chief of the State," and, in addition, he pulled teeth out. He had shown phenomena at fairs, and possessed a booth with a trumpet and the following show-board, – "Babet, dentist, and member of the academies, performs physical experiments on metals and metalloids, extirpates teeth, and undertakes stumps given up by the profession. Terms: one tooth, one franc fifty centimes; two teeth, two francs; three teeth, two francs fifty centimes. Take advantage of the opportunity." (The last sentence meant, Have as many teeth pulled out as possible.) He was married and had children, but did not know what had become of wife or children: he had lost them, just as another man loses his handkerchief. Babet was a high exception in the obscure world to which he belonged, for he read the newspapers. One day, at the time when he still had his family with him in his caravan, he read in the Moniteur that a woman had just been delivered of a child with a calf's snout, and exclaimed, "There's a fortune! My wife would not have the sense to produce me a child like that!" Since then he had given up everything to "undertake Paris: " the expression is his own.

What was Claquesous? He was night; and never showed himself till the sky was bedaubed with blackness. In the evening he emerged from a hole, to which he returned before daybreak. Where was this hole? No one knew. In the greatest darkness, and when alone with his accomplices, he turned his back when he spoke to them. Was his name Claquesous? No: he said, "My name is Not-at-all." If a candle were brought in he put on a mask, and he was a ventriloquist into the bargain, and Babet used to say, "Claquesous is a night-bird with two voices." Claquesous was vague, wandering, and terrible: no one was sure that he had a name, for Claquesous was a nickname; no one was sure that he had a voice, for his stomach spoke more frequently than his mouth; and no one was sure that he had a face, as nothing had ever been seen but his mask. He disappeared like a ghost, and when he appeared he seemed to issue from the ground.

Montparnasse was a sorry sight. He was a lad not yet twenty, with a pretty face, lips that resembled cherries, beautiful black hair, and the brightness of spring in his eyes: he had every vice, and aspired to every crime, and the digestion of evil gave him an appetite for worse. He was the gamin turned pickpocket, and the pickpocket had become a garroter. He was genteel, effeminate, graceful, robust, soft, and ferocious. The left-hand brim of his hat was turned up to make room for the tuft of hair, in the style of 1829. He lived by robbery committed with violence, and his coat was cut in the latest fashion, though worn at the seams. Montparnasse was an engraving of the fashions, in a state of want, and committing murders. The cause of all the attacks made by this young man was a longing to be well dressed: the first grisette who said to him, "You are handsome," put the black spot in his heart, and made a Cain of this Abel. Finding himself good-looking, he wished to be elegant, and the first stage of elegance is idleness: but the idleness of the poor man is crime. Few prowlers were so formidable as Montparnasse, and at the age of eighteen he had several corpses behind him. More than one wayfarer lay in the shadow of this villain with outstretched arms, and with his face in a pool of blood. Curled, pomaded, with his waist pinched in, the hips of a woman, the bust of a Prussian officer, the buzz of admiration of the girls of the boulevard around him, a carefully-tied cravat, a life-preserver in his pocket, and a flower in his buttonhole, – such was this dandy of the tomb.