Les Misérables, page 250
CHAPTER VIII--THE CHAIN-GANG
Jean Valjean was the more unhappy of the two. Youth, even in itssorrows, always possesses its own peculiar radiance.
At times, Jean Valjean suffered so greatly that he became puerile. It isthe property of grief to cause the childish side of man to reappear. Hehad an unconquerable conviction that Cosette was escaping from him. Hewould have liked to resist, to retain her, to arouse her enthusiasm bysome external and brilliant matter. These ideas, puerile, as we havejust said, and at the same time senile, conveyed to him, by their verychildishness, a tolerably just notion of the influence of gold lace onthe imaginations of young girls. He once chanced to see a general onhorseback, in full uniform, pass along the street, Comte Coutard, thecommandant of Paris. He envied that gilded man; what happiness itwould be, he said to himself, if he could put on that suit which was anincontestable thing; and if Cosette could behold him thus, she would bedazzled, and when he had Cosette on his arm and passed the gates of theTuileries, the guard would present arms to him, and that would sufficefor Cosette, and would dispel her idea of looking at young men.
An unforeseen shock was added to these sad reflections.
In the isolated life which they led, and since they had come to dwellin the Rue Plumet, they had contracted one habit. They sometimes tooka pleasure trip to see the sun rise, a mild species of enjoyment whichbefits those who are entering life and those who are quitting it.
For those who love solitude, a walk in the early morning is equivalentto a stroll by night, with the cheerfulness of nature added. The streetsare deserted and the birds are singing. Cosette, a bird herself, likedto rise early. These matutinal excursions were planned on the precedingevening. He proposed, and she agreed. It was arranged like a plot, theyset out before daybreak, and these trips were so many small delights forCosette. These innocent eccentricities please young people.
Jean Valjean's inclination led him, as we have seen, to the leastfrequented spots, to solitary nooks, to forgotten places. There thenexisted, in the vicinity of the barriers of Paris, a sort of poormeadows, which were almost confounded with the city, where grew insummer sickly grain, and which, in autumn, after the harvest had beengathered, presented the appearance, not of having been reaped, butpeeled. Jean Valjean loved to haunt these fields. Cosette was not boredthere. It meant solitude to him and liberty to her. There, she became alittle girl once more, she could run and almost play; she took off herhat, laid it on Jean Valjean's knees, and gathered bunches of flowers.She gazed at the butterflies on the flowers, but did not catch them;gentleness and tenderness are born with love, and the young girl whocherishes within her breast a trembling and fragile ideal has mercy onthe wing of a butterfly. She wove garlands of poppies, which she placedon her head, and which, crossed and penetrated with sunlight, glowinguntil they flamed, formed for her rosy face a crown of burning embers.
Even after their life had grown sad, they kept up their custom of earlystrolls.
One morning in October, therefore, tempted by the serene perfection ofthe autumn of 1831, they set out, and found themselves at break ofday near the Barrière du Maine. It was not dawn, it was daybreak; adelightful and stern moment. A few constellations here and there in thedeep, pale azure, the earth all black, the heavens all white, a quiveramid the blades of grass, everywhere the mysterious chill of twilight. Alark, which seemed mingled with the stars, was carolling at a prodigiousheight, and one would have declared that that hymn of pettiness calmedimmensity. In the East, the Val-de-Grâce projected its dark mass on theclear horizon with the sharpness of steel; Venus dazzlingly brilliantwas rising behind that dome and had the air of a soul making its escapefrom a gloomy edifice.
All was peace and silence; there was no one on the road; a few straylaborers, of whom they caught barely a glimpse, were on their way totheir work along the side-paths.
Jean Valjean was sitting in a cross-walk on some planks deposited at thegate of a timber-yard. His face was turned towards the highway, his backtowards the light; he had forgotten the sun which was on the point ofrising; he had sunk into one of those profound absorptions in which themind becomes concentrated, which imprison even the eye, and which areequivalent to four walls. There are meditations which may be calledvertical; when one is at the bottom of them, time is required to returnto earth. Jean Valjean had plunged into one of these reveries. He wasthinking of Cosette, of the happiness that was possible if nothing camebetween him and her, of the light with which she filled his life, alight which was but the emanation of her soul. He was almost happy inhis revery. Cosette, who was standing beside him, was gazing at theclouds as they turned rosy.
All at once Cosette exclaimed: "Father, I should think some one wascoming yonder." Jean Valjean raised his eyes.
Cosette was right. The causeway which leads to the ancient Barrière duMaine is a prolongation, as the reader knows, of the Rue de Sèvres,and is cut at right angles by the inner boulevard. At the elbow of thecauseway and the boulevard, at the spot where it branches, they heard anoise which it was difficult to account for at that hour, and a sort ofconfused pile made its appearance. Some shapeless thing which was comingfrom the boulevard was turning into the road.
It grew larger, it seemed to move in an orderly manner, though it wasbristling and quivering; it seemed to be a vehicle, but its load couldnot be distinctly made out. There were horses, wheels, shouts; whipswere cracking. By degrees the outlines became fixed, although bathedin shadows. It was a vehicle, in fact, which had just turned from theboulevard into the highway, and which was directing its course towardsthe barrier near which sat Jean Valjean; a second, of the same aspect,followed, then a third, then a fourth; seven chariots made theirappearance in succession, the heads of the horses touching the rear ofthe wagon in front. Figures were moving on these vehicles, flashes werevisible through the dusk as though there were naked swords there, aclanking became audible which resembled the rattling of chains, and asthis something advanced, the sound of voices waxed louder, and it turnedinto a terrible thing such as emerges from the cave of dreams.
As it drew nearer, it assumed a form, and was outlined behind the treeswith the pallid hue of an apparition; the mass grew white; the day,which was slowly dawning, cast a wan light on this swarming heap whichwas at once both sepulchral and living, the heads of the figures turnedinto the faces of corpses, and this is what it proved to be:--
Seven wagons were driving in a file along the road. The first six weresingularly constructed. They resembled coopers' drays; they consistedof long ladders placed on two wheels and forming barrows at their rearextremities. Each dray, or rather let us say, each ladder, was attachedto four horses harnessed tandem. On these ladders strange clusters ofmen were being drawn. In the faint light, these men were to be divinedrather than seen. Twenty-four on each vehicle, twelve on a side, back toback, facing the passers-by, their legs dangling in the air,--this wasthe manner in which these men were travelling, and behind their backsthey had something which clanked, and which was a chain, and on theirnecks something which shone, and which was an iron collar. Each man hadhis collar, but the chain was for all; so that if these four and twentymen had occasion to alight from the dray and walk, they were seized witha sort of inexorable unity, and were obliged to wind over the groundwith the chain for a backbone, somewhat after the fashion of millepeds.In the back and front of each vehicle, two men armed with musketsstood erect, each holding one end of the chain under his foot. The ironnecklets were square. The seventh vehicle, a huge rack-sided baggagewagon, without a hood, had four wheels and six horses, and carried asonorous pile of iron boilers, cast-iron pots, braziers, and chains,among which were mingled several men who were pinioned and stretched atfull length, and who seemed to be ill. This wagon, all lattice-work,was garnished with dilapidated hurdles which appeared to have served forformer punishments. These vehicles kept to the middle of the road. Oneach side marched a double hedge of guards of infamous aspect, wearingthree-cornered hats, like the soldiers under the Directory, shabby,covered with spots and holes, muffled in uniforms of veterans and thetrousers of undertakers' men, half gray, half blue, which were almosthanging in rags, with red epaulets, yellow shoulder belts, short sabres,muskets, and cudgels; they were a species of soldier-blackguards.These myrmidons seemed composed of the abjectness of the beggar and theauthority of the executioner. The one who appeared to be their chiefheld a postilion's whip in his hand. All these details, blurred by thedimness of dawn, became more and more clearly outlined as the lightincreased. At the head and in the rear of the convoy rode mountedgendarmes, serious and with sword in fist.
This procession was so long that when the first vehicle reached thebarrier, the last was barely debauching from the boulevard. A throng,sprung, it is impossible to say whence, and formed in a twinkling, asis frequently the case in Paris, pressed forward from both sides ofthe road and looked on. In the neighboring lanes the shouts of peoplecalling to each other and the wooden shoes of market-gardeners hasteningup to gaze were audible.
The men massed upon the drays allowed themselves to be jolted along insilence. They were livid with the chill of morning. They all wore linentrousers, and their bare feet were thrust into wooden shoes. The restof their costume was a fantasy of wretchedness. Their accoutrements werehorribly incongruous; nothing is more funereal than the harlequin inrags. Battered felt hats, tarpaulin caps, hideous woollen nightcaps,and, side by side with a short blouse, a black coat broken at the elbow;many wore women's headgear, others had baskets on their heads; hairybreasts were visible, and through the rent in their garments tattooeddesigns could be descried; temples of Love, flaming hearts, Cupids;eruptions and unhealthy red blotches could also be seen. Two or threehad a straw rope attached to the cross-bar of the dray, and suspendedunder them like a stirrup, which supported their feet. One of them heldin his hand and raised to his mouth something which had the appearanceof a black stone and which he seemed to be gnawing; it was bread whichhe was eating. There were no eyes there which were not either dry,dulled, or flaming with an evil light. The escort troop cursed, the menin chains did not utter a syllable; from time to time the sound ofa blow became audible as the cudgels descended on shoulder-blades orskulls; some of these men were yawning; their rags were terrible;their feet hung down, their shoulders oscillated, their heads clashedtogether, their fetters clanked, their eyes glared ferociously, theirfists clenched or fell open inertly like the hands of corpses; in therear of the convoy ran a band of children screaming with laughter.
This file of vehicles, whatever its nature was, was mournful. Itwas evident that to-morrow, that an hour hence, a pouring rain mightdescend, that it might be followed by another and another, and thattheir dilapidated garments would be drenched, that once soaked, thesemen would not get dry again, that once chilled, they would not againget warm, that their linen trousers would be glued to their bones by thedownpour, that the water would fill their shoes, that no lashes fromthe whips would be able to prevent their jaws from chattering, that thechain would continue to bind them by the neck, that their legs wouldcontinue to dangle, and it was impossible not to shudder at the sightof these human beings thus bound and passive beneath the cold clouds ofautumn, and delivered over to the rain, to the blast, to all the furiesof the air, like trees and stones.
Blows from the cudgel were not omitted even in the case of the sick men,who lay there knotted with ropes and motionless on the seventh wagon,and who appeared to have been tossed there like sacks filled withmisery.
Suddenly, the sun made its appearance; the immense light of the Orientburst forth, and one would have said that it had set fire to all thoseferocious heads. Their tongues were unloosed; a conflagration of grins,oaths, and songs exploded. The broad horizontal sheet of light severedthe file in two parts, illuminating heads and bodies, leaving feet andwheels in the obscurity. Thoughts made their appearance on these faces;it was a terrible moment; visible demons with their masks removed,fierce souls laid bare. Though lighted up, this wild throng remained ingloom. Some, who were gay, had in their mouths quills through which theyblew vermin over the crowd, picking out the women; the dawn accentuatedthese lamentable profiles with the blackness of its shadows; therewas not one of these creatures who was not deformed by reason ofwretchedness; and the whole was so monstrous that one would havesaid that the sun's brilliancy had been changed into the glare of thelightning. The wagon-load which headed the line had struck up a song,and were shouting at the top of their voices with a haggard joviality,a pot-pourri by Desaugiers, then famous, called _The Vestal_; the treesshivered mournfully; in the cross-lanes, countenances of bourgeoislistened in an idiotic delight to these coarse strains droned byspectres.
All sorts of distress met in this procession as in chaos; here were tobe found the facial angles of every sort of beast, old men, youths,bald heads, gray beards, cynical monstrosities, sour resignation, savagegrins, senseless attitudes, snouts surmounted by caps, heads like thoseof young girls with corkscrew curls on the temples, infantile visages,and by reason of that, horrible thin skeleton faces, to which deathalone was lacking. On the first cart was a negro, who had been a slave,in all probability, and who could make a comparison of his chains. Thefrightful leveller from below, shame, had passed over these brows; atthat degree of abasement, the last transformations were suffered by allin their extremest depths, and ignorance, converted into dulness, wasthe equal of intelligence converted into despair. There was no choicepossible between these men who appeared to the eye as the flower of themud. It was evident that the person who had had the ordering of thatunclean procession had not classified them. These beings had beenfettered and coupled pell-mell, in alphabetical disorder, probably, andloaded hap-hazard on those carts. Nevertheless, horrors, when groupedtogether, always end by evolving a result; all additions of wretched mengive a sum total, each chain exhaled a common soul, and each dray-loadhad its own physiognomy. By the side of the one where they were singing,there was one where they were howling; a third where they were begging;one could be seen in which they were gnashing their teeth; another loadmenaced the spectators, another blasphemed God; the last was as silentas the tomb. Dante would have thought that he beheld his seven circlesof hell on the march. The march of the damned to their tortures,performed in sinister wise, not on the formidable and flaming chariotof the Apocalypse, but, what was more mournful than that, on the gibbetcart.
One of the guards, who had a hook on the end of his cudgel, made apretence from time to time, of stirring up this mass of human filth.An old woman in the crowd pointed them out to her little boy five yearsold, and said to him: "Rascal, let that be a warning to you!"
As the songs and blasphemies increased, the man who appeared to be thecaptain of the escort cracked his whip, and at that signal a fearfuldull and blind flogging, which produced the sound of hail, fell upon theseven dray-loads; many roared and foamed at the mouth; which redoubledthe delight of the street urchins who had hastened up, a swarm of flieson these wounds.
Jean Valjean's eyes had assumed a frightful expression. They were nolonger eyes; they were those deep and glassy objects which replace theglance in the case of certain wretched men, which seem unconsciousof reality, and in which flames the reflection of terrors and ofcatastrophes. He was not looking at a spectacle, he was seeing a vision.He tried to rise, to flee, to make his escape; he could not move hisfeet. Sometimes, the things that you see seize upon you and hold youfast. He remained nailed to the spot, petrified, stupid, asking himself,athwart confused and inexpressible anguish, what this sepulchralpersecution signified, and whence had come that pandemonium which waspursuing him. All at once, he raised his hand to his brow, a gesturehabitual to those whose memory suddenly returns; he remembered that thiswas, in fact, the usual itinerary, that it was customary to make thisdetour in order to avoid all possibility of encountering royalty on theroad to Fontainebleau, and that, five and thirty years before, he hadhimself passed through that barrier.
Cosette was no less terrified, but in a different way. She did notunderstand; what she beheld did not seem to her to be possible; atlength she cried:--
"Father! What are those men in those carts?"
Jean Valjean replied: "Convicts."
"Whither are they going?"
"To the galleys."
At that moment, the cudgelling, multiplied by a hundred hands, becamezealous, blows with the flat of the sword were mingled with it, it was aperfect storm of whips and clubs; the convicts bent before it, a hideousobedience was evoked by the torture, and all held their peace, dartingglances like chained wolves.
Cosette trembled in every limb; she resumed:--
"Father, are they still men?"
"Sometimes," answered the unhappy man.
It was the chain-gang, in fact, which had set out before daybreak fromBicêtre, and had taken the road to Mans in order to avoid Fontainebleau,where the King then was. This caused the horrible journey to last threeor four days longer; but torture may surely be prolonged with the objectof sparing the royal personage a sight of it.
Jean Valjean returned home utterly overwhelmed. Such encounters areshocks, and the memory that they leave behind them resembles a thoroughshaking up.
Nevertheless, Jean Valjean did not observe that, on his way back tothe Rue de Babylone with Cosette, the latter was plying him with otherquestions on the subject of what they had just seen; perhaps he wastoo much absorbed in his own dejection to notice her words and reply tothem. But when Cosette was leaving him in the evening, to betake herselfto bed, he heard her say in a low voice, and as though talking toherself: "It seems to me, that if I were to find one of those men in mypathway, oh, my God, I should die merely from the sight of him close athand."
Fortunately, chance ordained that on the morrow of that tragic day,there was some official solemnity apropos of I know not what,--fêtes inParis, a review in the Champ de Mars, jousts on the Seine, theatricalperformances in the Champs-Élysées, fireworks at the Arc de l'Étoile,illuminations everywhere. Jean Valjean did violence to his habits, andtook Cosette to see these rejoicings, for the purpose of diverting herfrom the memory of the day before, and of effacing, beneath the smilingtumult of all Paris, the abominable thing which had passed before her.The review with which the festival was spiced made the presence ofuniforms perfectly natural; Jean Valjean donned his uniform of anational guard with the vague inward feeling of a man who is betakinghimself to shelter. However, this trip seemed to attain its object.Cosette, who made it her law to please her father, and to whom,moreover, all spectacles were a novelty, accepted this diversionwith the light and easy good grace of youth, and did not pout toodisdainfully at that flutter of enjoyment called a public fête; so thatJean Valjean was able to believe that he had succeeded, and that notrace of that hideous vision remained.
Some days later, one morning, when the sun was shining brightly, andthey were both on the steps leading to the garden, another infraction ofthe rules which Jean Valjean seemed to have imposed upon himself, andto the custom of remaining in her chamber which melancholy had causedCosette to adopt, Cosette, in a wrapper, was standing erect in thatnegligent attire of early morning which envelops young girls in anadorable way and which produces the effect of a cloud drawn over a star;and, with her head bathed in light, rosy after a good sleep, submittingto the gentle glances of the tender old man, she was picking a daisy topieces. Cosette did not know the delightful legend, _I love a little,passionately, etc_.--who was there who could have taught her? She washandling the flower instinctively, innocently, without a suspicion thatto pluck a daisy apart is to do the same by a heart. If there were afourth, and smiling Grace called Melancholy, she would have worn the airof that Grace. Jean Valjean was fascinated by the contemplation of thosetiny fingers on that flower, and forgetful of everything in the radianceemitted by that child. A red-breast was warbling in the thicket, on oneside. White cloudlets floated across the sky, so gayly, that one wouldhave said that they had just been set at liberty. Cosette went onattentively tearing the leaves from her flower; she seemed to bethinking about something; but whatever it was, it must be somethingcharming; all at once she turned her head over her shoulder with thedelicate languor of a swan, and said to Jean Valjean: "Father, what arethe galleys like?"
BOOK FOURTH.--SUCCOR FROM BELOW MAY TURN OUT TO BE SUCCOR FROM ON HIGH
