Les Misérables, page 34
CHAPTER XIII--LITTLE GERVAIS
Jean Valjean left the town as though he were fleeing from it. He set outat a very hasty pace through the fields, taking whatever roads and pathspresented themselves to him, without perceiving that he was incessantlyretracing his steps. He wandered thus the whole morning, without havingeaten anything and without feeling hungry. He was the prey of a throngof novel sensations. He was conscious of a sort of rage; he did notknow against whom it was directed. He could not have told whether he wastouched or humiliated. There came over him at moments a strange emotionwhich he resisted and to which he opposed the hardness acquired duringthe last twenty years of his life. This state of mind fatigued him.He perceived with dismay that the sort of frightful calm which theinjustice of his misfortune had conferred upon him was giving way withinhim. He asked himself what would replace this. At times he would haveactually preferred to be in prison with the gendarmes, and that thingsshould not have happened in this way; it would have agitated him less.Although the season was tolerably far advanced, there were still a fewlate flowers in the hedge-rows here and there, whose odor as he passedthrough them in his march recalled to him memories of his childhood.These memories were almost intolerable to him, it was so long since theyhad recurred to him.
Unutterable thoughts assembled within him in this manner all day long.
As the sun declined to its setting, casting long shadows athwart thesoil from every pebble, Jean Valjean sat down behind a bush upon a largeruddy plain, which was absolutely deserted. There was nothing on thehorizon except the Alps. Not even the spire of a distant village. JeanValjean might have been three leagues distant from D---- A path whichintersected the plain passed a few paces from the bush.
In the middle of this meditation, which would have contributed nota little to render his rags terrifying to any one who might haveencountered him, a joyous sound became audible.
He turned his head and saw a little Savoyard, about ten years of age,coming up the path and singing, his hurdy-gurdy on his hip, and hismarmot-box on his back.
One of those gay and gentle children, who go from land to land affordinga view of their knees through the holes in their trousers.
Without stopping his song, the lad halted in his march from time totime, and played at knuckle-bones with some coins which he had in hishand--his whole fortune, probably.
Among this money there was one forty-sou piece.
The child halted beside the bush, without perceiving Jean Valjean, andtossed up his handful of sous, which, up to that time, he had caughtwith a good deal of adroitness on the back of his hand.
This time the forty-sou piece escaped him, and went rolling towards thebrushwood until it reached Jean Valjean.
Jean Valjean set his foot upon it.
In the meantime, the child had looked after his coin and had caughtsight of him.
He showed no astonishment, but walked straight up to the man.
The spot was absolutely solitary. As far as the eye could see there wasnot a person on the plain or on the path. The only sound was the tiny,feeble cries of a flock of birds of passage, which was traversing theheavens at an immense height. The child was standing with his back tothe sun, which cast threads of gold in his hair and empurpled with itsblood-red gleam the savage face of Jean Valjean.
"Sir," said the little Savoyard, with that childish confidence which iscomposed of ignorance and innocence, "my money."
"What is your name?" said Jean Valjean.
"Little Gervais, sir."
"Go away," said Jean Valjean.
"Sir," resumed the child, "give me back my money."
Jean Valjean dropped his head, and made no reply.
The child began again, "My money, sir."
Jean Valjean's eyes remained fixed on the earth.
"My piece of money!" cried the child, "my white piece! my silver!"
It seemed as though Jean Valjean did not hear him. The child grasped himby the collar of his blouse and shook him. At the same time he made aneffort to displace the big iron-shod shoe which rested on his treasure.
"I want my piece of money! my piece of forty sous!"
The child wept. Jean Valjean raised his head. He still remained seated.His eyes were troubled. He gazed at the child, in a sort of amazement,then he stretched out his hand towards his cudgel and cried in aterrible voice, "Who's there?"
"I, sir," replied the child. "Little Gervais! I! Give me back my fortysous, if you please! Take your foot away, sir, if you please!"
Then irritated, though he was so small, and becoming almost menacing:--
"Come now, will you take your foot away? Take your foot away, or we'llsee!"
"Ah! It's still you!" said Jean Valjean, and rising abruptly to hisfeet, his foot still resting on the silver piece, he added:--
"Will you take yourself off!"
The frightened child looked at him, then began to tremble from head tofoot, and after a few moments of stupor he set out, running at the topof his speed, without daring to turn his neck or to utter a cry.
Nevertheless, lack of breath forced him to halt after a certaindistance, and Jean Valjean heard him sobbing, in the midst of his ownrevery.
At the end of a few moments the child had disappeared.
The sun had set.
The shadows were descending around Jean Valjean. He had eaten nothingall day; it is probable that he was feverish.
He had remained standing and had not changed his attitude after thechild's flight. The breath heaved his chest at long and irregularintervals. His gaze, fixed ten or twelve paces in front of him, seemedto be scrutinizing with profound attention the shape of an ancientfragment of blue earthenware which had fallen in the grass. All at oncehe shivered; he had just begun to feel the chill of evening.
He settled his cap more firmly on his brow, sought mechanically tocross and button his blouse, advanced a step and stopped to pick up hiscudgel.
At that moment he caught sight of the forty-sou piece, which his foothad half ground into the earth, and which was shining among the pebbles.It was as though he had received a galvanic shock. "What is this?"he muttered between his teeth. He recoiled three paces, then halted,without being able to detach his gaze from the spot which his foot hadtrodden but an instant before, as though the thing which lay glitteringthere in the gloom had been an open eye riveted upon him.
At the expiration of a few moments he darted convulsively towards thesilver coin, seized it, and straightened himself up again and began togaze afar off over the plain, at the same time casting his eyes towardsall points of the horizon, as he stood there erect and shivering, like aterrified wild animal which is seeking refuge.
He saw nothing. Night was falling, the plain was cold and vague, greatbanks of violet haze were rising in the gleam of the twilight.
He said, "Ah!" and set out rapidly in the direction in which the childhad disappeared. After about thirty paces he paused, looked about himand saw nothing.
Then he shouted with all his might:--
"Little Gervais! Little Gervais!"
He paused and waited.
There was no reply.
The landscape was gloomy and deserted. He was encompassed by space.There was nothing around him but an obscurity in which his gaze waslost, and a silence which engulfed his voice.
An icy north wind was blowing, and imparted to things around him asort of lugubrious life. The bushes shook their thin little arms withincredible fury. One would have said that they were threatening andpursuing some one.
He set out on his march again, then he began to run; and from time totime he halted and shouted into that solitude, with a voice which wasthe most formidable and the most disconsolate that it was possible tohear, "Little Gervais! Little Gervais!"
Assuredly, if the child had heard him, he would have been alarmed andwould have taken good care not to show himself. But the child was nodoubt already far away.
He encountered a priest on horseback. He stepped up to him and said:--
"Monsieur le Curé, have you seen a child pass?"
"No," said the priest.
"One named Little Gervais?"
"I have seen no one."
He drew two five-franc pieces from his money-bag and handed them to thepriest.
"Monsieur le Curé, this is for your poor people. Monsieur le Curé, hewas a little lad, about ten years old, with a marmot, I think, and ahurdy-gurdy. One of those Savoyards, you know?"
"I have not seen him."
"Little Gervais? There are no villages here? Can you tell me?"
"If he is like what you say, my friend, he is a little stranger. Suchpersons pass through these parts. We know nothing of them."
Jean Valjean seized two more coins of five francs each with violence,and gave them to the priest.
"For your poor," he said.
Then he added, wildly:--
"Monsieur l'Abbé, have me arrested. I am a thief."
The priest put spurs to his horse and fled in haste, much alarmed.
Jean Valjean set out on a run, in the direction which he had firsttaken.
In this way he traversed a tolerably long distance, gazing, calling,shouting, but he met no one. Two or three times he ran across the plaintowards something which conveyed to him the effect of a human beingreclining or crouching down; it turned out to be nothing but brushwoodor rocks nearly on a level with the earth. At length, at a spot wherethree paths intersected each other, he stopped. The moon had risen. Hesent his gaze into the distance and shouted for the last time, "LittleGervais! Little Gervais! Little Gervais!" His shout died away in themist, without even awakening an echo. He murmured yet once more, "LittleGervais!" but in a feeble and almost inarticulate voice. It was his lasteffort; his legs gave way abruptly under him, as though an invisiblepower had suddenly overwhelmed him with the weight of his evilconscience; he fell exhausted, on a large stone, his fists clenched inhis hair and his face on his knees, and he cried, "I am a wretch!"
Then his heart burst, and he began to cry. It was the first time that hehad wept in nineteen years.
When Jean Valjean left the Bishop's house, he was, as we have seen,quite thrown out of everything that had been his thought hitherto. Hecould not yield to the evidence of what was going on within him. Hehardened himself against the angelic action and the gentle words of theold man. "You have promised me to become an honest man. I buy your soul.I take it away from the spirit of perversity; I give it to the goodGod."
This recurred to his mind unceasingly. To this celestial kindnesshe opposed pride, which is the fortress of evil within us. He wasindistinctly conscious that the pardon of this priest was the greatestassault and the most formidable attack which had moved him yet; that hisobduracy was finally settled if he resisted this clemency; that if heyielded, he should be obliged to renounce that hatred with which theactions of other men had filled his soul through so many years, andwhich pleased him; that this time it was necessary to conquer or to beconquered; and that a struggle, a colossal and final struggle, had beenbegun between his viciousness and the goodness of that man.
In the presence of these lights, he proceeded like a man who isintoxicated. As he walked thus with haggard eyes, did he have a distinctperception of what might result to him from his adventure at D----? Didhe understand all those mysterious murmurs which warn or importune thespirit at certain moments of life? Did a voice whisper in his ear thathe had just passed the solemn hour of his destiny; that there no longerremained a middle course for him; that if he were not henceforth thebest of men, he would be the worst; that it behooved him now, so tospeak, to mount higher than the Bishop, or fall lower than the convict;that if he wished to become good be must become an angel; that if hewished to remain evil, he must become a monster?
Here, again, some questions must be put, which we have already putto ourselves elsewhere: did he catch some shadow of all this in histhought, in a confused way? Misfortune certainly, as we have said, doesform the education of the intelligence; nevertheless, it is doubtfulwhether Jean Valjean was in a condition to disentangle all that we havehere indicated. If these ideas occurred to him, he but caught glimpsesof, rather than saw them, and they only succeeded in throwing him intoan unutterable and almost painful state of emotion. On emerging fromthat black and deformed thing which is called the galleys, the Bishophad hurt his soul, as too vivid a light would have hurt his eyes onemerging from the dark. The future life, the possible life which offereditself to him henceforth, all pure and radiant, filled him with tremorsand anxiety. He no longer knew where he really was. Like an owl, whoshould suddenly see the sun rise, the convict had been dazzled andblinded, as it were, by virtue.
That which was certain, that which he did not doubt, was that he was nolonger the same man, that everything about him was changed, that it wasno longer in his power to make it as though the Bishop had not spoken tohim and had not touched him.
In this state of mind he had encountered little Gervais, and had robbedhim of his forty sous. Why? He certainly could not have explained it;was this the last effect and the supreme effort, as it were, of theevil thoughts which he had brought away from the galleys,--a remnant ofimpulse, a result of what is called in statics, _acquired force?_ Itwas that, and it was also, perhaps, even less than that. Let us say itsimply, it was not he who stole; it was not the man; it was the beast,who, by habit and instinct, had simply placed his foot upon that money,while the intelligence was struggling amid so many novel and hithertounheard-of thoughts besetting it.
When intelligence re-awakened and beheld that action of the brute, JeanValjean recoiled with anguish and uttered a cry of terror.
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It was because,--strange phenomenon, and one which was possible onlyin the situation in which he found himself,--in stealing the money fromthat child, he had done a thing of which he was no longer capable.
However that may be, this last evil action had a decisive effect onhim; it abruptly traversed that chaos which he bore in his mind, anddispersed it, placed on one side the thick obscurity, and on the otherthe light, and acted on his soul, in the state in which it then was, ascertain chemical reagents act upon a troubled mixture by precipitatingone element and clarifying the other.
First of all, even before examining himself and reflecting, allbewildered, like one who seeks to save himself, he tried to find thechild in order to return his money to him; then, when he recognized thefact that this was impossible, he halted in despair. At the moment whenhe exclaimed "I am a wretch!" he had just perceived what he was, and hewas already separated from himself to such a degree, that he seemed tohimself to be no longer anything more than a phantom, and as if he had,there before him, in flesh and blood, the hideous galley-convict, JeanValjean, cudgel in hand, his blouse on his hips, his knapsack filledwith stolen objects on his back, with his resolute and gloomy visage,with his thoughts filled with abominable projects.
Excess of unhappiness had, as we have remarked, made him in some sorta visionary. This, then, was in the nature of a vision. He actually sawthat Jean Valjean, that sinister face, before him. He had almost reachedthe point of asking himself who that man was, and he was horrified byhim.
His brain was going through one of those violent and yet perfectly calmmoments in which revery is so profound that it absorbs reality. One nolonger beholds the object which one has before one, and one sees, asthough apart from one's self, the figures which one has in one's ownmind.
Thus he contemplated himself, so to speak, face to face, and at the sametime, athwart this hallucination, he perceived in a mysterious depth asort of light which he at first took for a torch. On scrutinizingthis light which appeared to his conscience with more attention, herecognized the fact that it possessed a human form and that this torchwas the Bishop.
His conscience weighed in turn these two men thus placed before it,--theBishop and Jean Valjean. Nothing less than the first was required tosoften the second. By one of those singular effects, which are peculiarto this sort of ecstasies, in proportion as his revery continued, as theBishop grew great and resplendent in his eyes, so did Jean Valjean growless and vanish. After a certain time he was no longer anything morethan a shade. All at once he disappeared. The Bishop alone remained; hefilled the whole soul of this wretched man with a magnificent radiance.
Jean Valjean wept for a long time. He wept burning tears, he sobbed withmore weakness than a woman, with more fright than a child.
As he wept, daylight penetrated more and more clearly into his soul; anextraordinary light; a light at once ravishing and terrible. His pastlife, his first fault, his long expiation, his external brutishness, hisinternal hardness, his dismissal to liberty, rejoicing in manifold plansof vengeance, what had happened to him at the Bishop's, the last thingthat he had done, that theft of forty sous from a child, a crime all themore cowardly, and all the more monstrous since it had come after theBishop's pardon,--all this recurred to his mind and appeared clearlyto him, but with a clearness which he had never hitherto witnessed.He examined his life, and it seemed horrible to him; his soul, and itseemed frightful to him. In the meantime a gentle light rested over thislife and this soul. It seemed to him that he beheld Satan by the lightof Paradise.
How many hours did he weep thus? What did he do after he had wept?Whither did he go! No one ever knew. The only thing which seems to beauthenticated is that that same night the carrier who served Grenoble atthat epoch, and who arrived at D---- about three o'clock in the morning,saw, as he traversed the street in which the Bishop's residence wassituated, a man in the attitude of prayer, kneeling on the pavement inthe shadow, in front of the door of Monseigneur Welcome.
BOOK THIRD.--IN THE YEAR 1817
