Les Misérables, page 32
CHAPTER XI--WHAT HE DOES
Jean Valjean listened. Not a sound.
He gave the door a push.
He pushed it gently with the tip of his finger, lightly, with thefurtive and uneasy gentleness of a cat which is desirous of entering.
The door yielded to this pressure, and made an imperceptible and silentmovement, 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 toallow him to pass. But near the door there stood a little table, whichformed 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, moreenergetic than the two preceding. This time a badly oiled hinge suddenlyemitted amid the silence a hoarse and prolonged cry.
Jean Valjean shuddered. The noise of the hinge rang in his ears withsomething of the piercing and formidable sound of the trump of the Dayof Judgment.
In the fantastic exaggerations of the first moment he almost imaginedthat that hinge had just become animated, and had suddenly assumed aterrible 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. Heheard the arteries in his temples beating like two forge hammers, andit seemed to him that his breath issued from his breast with the roarof the wind issuing from a cavern. It seemed impossible to him that thehorrible clamor of that irritated hinge should not have disturbed theentire household, like the shock of an earthquake; the door, pushed byhim, had taken the alarm, and had shouted; the old man would rise atonce; the two old women would shriek out; people would come to theirassistance; in less than a quarter of an hour the town would be in anuproar, and the gendarmerie on hand. For a moment he thought himselflost.
He remained where he was, petrified like the statue of salt, not daringto make a movement. Several minutes elapsed. The door had fallen wideopen. 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 therusty hinge had not awakened any one.
This first danger was past; but there still reigned a frightful tumultwithin him. Nevertheless, he did not retreat. Even when he had thoughthimself lost, he had not drawn back. His only thought now was to finishas soon as possible. He took a step and entered the room.
This room was in a state of perfect calm. Here and there vague andconfused forms were distinguishable, which in the daylight were papersscattered on a table, open folios, volumes piled upon a stool, anarm-chair heaped with clothing, a prie-Dieu, and which at that hourwere only shadowy corners and whitish spots. Jean Valjean advanced withprecaution, taking care not to knock against the furniture. He couldhear, at the extremity of the room, the even and tranquil breathing ofthe sleeping Bishop.
He suddenly came to a halt. He was near the bed. He had arrived theresooner than he had thought for.
Nature sometimes mingles her effects and her spectacles with our actionswith sombre and intelligent appropriateness, as though she desired tomake us reflect. For the last half-hour a large cloud had covered theheavens. At the moment when Jean Valjean paused in front of the bed,this cloud parted, as though on purpose, and a ray of light, traversingthe long window, suddenly illuminated the Bishop's pale face. He wassleeping peacefully. He lay in his bed almost completely dressed, onaccount 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 thepillow, in the careless attitude of repose; his hand, adorned with thepastoral ring, and whence had fallen so many good deeds and so manyholy actions, was hanging over the edge of the bed. His whole facewas illumined with a vague expression of satisfaction, of hope, and offelicity. It was more than a smile, and almost a radiance. He bore uponhis 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 waswithin him. That heaven was his conscience.
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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. Itremained, however, gentle and veiled in an ineffable half-light. Thatmoon in the sky, that slumbering nature, that garden without a quiver,that house which was so calm, the hour, the moment, the silence, addedsome solemn and unspeakable quality to the venerable repose of this man,and enveloped in a sort of serene and majestic aureole that whitehair, those closed eyes, that face in which all was hope and all wasconfidence, 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 ironcandlestick in his hand, frightened by this luminous old man. Never hadhe beheld anything like this. This confidence terrified him. Themoral world has no grander spectacle than this: a troubled anduneasy 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, hadabout it something sublime, of which he was vaguely but imperiouslyconscious.
No one could have told what was passing within him, not even himself. Inorder to attempt to form an idea of it, it is necessary to think of themost violent of things in the presence of the most gentle. Even onhis visage it would have been impossible to distinguish anything withcertainty. It was a sort of haggard astonishment. He gazed at it, andthat was all. But what was his thought? It would have been impossible todivine it. What was evident was, that he was touched and astounded. Butwhat was the nature of this emotion?
His eye never quitted the old man. The only thing which was clearlyto be inferred from his attitude and his physiognomy was a strangeindecision. One would have said that he was hesitating between the twoabysses,--the one in which one loses one's self and that in which onesaves one's self. He seemed prepared to crush that skull or to kiss thathand.
At the expiration of a few minutes his left arm rose slowly towardshis brow, and he took off his cap; then his arm fell back with the samedeliberation, and Jean Valjean fell to meditating once more, his cap inhis left hand, his club in his right hand, his hair bristling all overhis savage head.
The Bishop continued to sleep in profound peace beneath that terrifyinggaze.
The gleam of the moon rendered confusedly visible the crucifix over thechimney-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 rapidlypast the bed, without glancing at the Bishop, straight to the cupboard,which he saw near the head; he raised his iron candlestick as though toforce the lock; the key was there; he opened it; the first thing whichpresented itself to him was the basket of silverware; he seized it,traversed the chamber with long strides, without taking any precautionsand without troubling himself about the noise, gained the door,re-entered the oratory, opened the window, seized his cudgel, bestrodethe window-sill of the ground-floor, put the silver into his knapsack,threw away the basket, crossed the garden, leaped over the wall like atiger, and fled.
