Les Misérables, page 99
CHAPTER III--THE ANKLE-CHAIN MUST HAVE UNDERGONE A CERTAIN PREPARATORYMANIPULATION TO BE THUS BROKEN WITH A BLOW FROM A HAMMER
Towards the end of October, in that same year, 1823, the inhabitants ofToulon beheld the entry into their port, after heavy weather, and forthe purpose of repairing some damages, of the ship _Orion_, which wasemployed later at Brest as a school-ship, and which then formed a partof the Mediterranean squadron.
This vessel, battered as it was,--for the sea had handled itroughly,--produced a fine effect as it entered the roads. It flew somecolors which procured for it the regulation salute of eleven guns, whichit returned, shot for shot; total, twenty-two. It has been calculatedthat what with salvos, royal and military politenesses, courteousexchanges of uproar, signals of etiquette, formalities of roadsteads andcitadels, sunrises and sunsets, saluted every day by all fortresses andall ships of war, openings and closings of ports, etc., the civilizedworld, discharged all over the earth, in the course of four and twentyhours, one hundred and fifty thousand useless shots. At six francs theshot, that comes to nine hundred thousand francs a day, three hundredmillions a year, which vanish in smoke. This is a mere detail. All thistime the poor were dying of hunger.
The year 1823 was what the Restoration called "the epoch of the Spanishwar."
This war contained many events in one, and a quantity of peculiarities.A grand family affair for the house of Bourbon; the branch of Francesuccoring and protecting the branch of Madrid, that is to say,performing an act devolving on the elder; an apparent return to ournational traditions, complicated by servitude and by subjection to thecabinets of the North; M. le Duc d'Angoulême, surnamed by the liberalsheets _the hero of Andujar_, compressing in a triumphal attitude thatwas somewhat contradicted by his peaceable air, the ancient and verypowerful terrorism of the Holy Office at variance with the chimericalterrorism of the liberals; the _sansculottes_ resuscitated, to the greatterror of dowagers, under the name of _descamisados_; monarchy opposingan obstacle to progress described as anarchy; the theories of '89roughly interrupted in the sap; a European halt, called to the Frenchidea, which was making the tour of the world; beside the son of Franceas generalissimo, the Prince de Carignan, afterwards Charles Albert,enrolling himself in that crusade of kings against people as avolunteer, with grenadier epaulets of red worsted; the soldiers of theEmpire setting out on a fresh campaign, but aged, saddened, after eightyears of repose, and under the white cockade; the tricolored standardwaved abroad by a heroic handful of Frenchmen, as the white standard hadbeen thirty years earlier at Coblentz; monks mingled with our troops;the spirit of liberty and of novelty brought to its senses by bayonets;principles slaughtered by cannonades; France undoing by her arms thatwhich she had done by her mind; in addition to this, hostile leaderssold, soldiers hesitating, cities besieged by millions; no militaryperils, and yet possible explosions, as in every mine which is surprisedand invaded; but little bloodshed, little honor won, shame for some,glory for no one. Such was this war, made by the princes descended fromLouis XIV., and conducted by generals who had been under Napoleon. Itssad fate was to recall neither the grand war nor grand politics.
Some feats of arms were serious; the taking of the Trocadéro, amongothers, was a fine military action; but after all, we repeat, thetrumpets of this war give back a cracked sound, the whole effect wassuspicious; history approves of France for making a difficulty aboutaccepting this false triumph. It seemed evident that certain Spanishofficers charged with resistance yielded too easily; the idea ofcorruption was connected with the victory; it appears as though generalsand not battles had been won, and the conquering soldier returnedhumiliated. A debasing war, in short, in which the _Bank of France_could be read in the folds of the flag.
Soldiers of the war of 1808, on whom Saragossa had fallen in formidableruin, frowned in 1823 at the easy surrender of citadels, and began toregret Palafox. It is the nature of France to prefer to have Rostopchinerather than Ballesteros in front of her.
From a still more serious point of view, and one which it is also properto insist upon here, this war, which wounded the military spiritof France, enraged the democratic spirit. It was an enterprise ofinthralment. In that campaign, the object of the French soldier, theson of democracy, was the conquest of a yoke for others. A hideouscontradiction. France is made to arouse the soul of nations, not tostifle it. All the revolutions of Europe since 1792 are the FrenchRevolution: liberty darts rays from France. That is a solar fact. Blindis he who will not see! It was Bonaparte who said it.
The war of 1823, an outrage on the generous Spanish nation, was then,at the same time, an outrage on the French Revolution. It was Francewho committed this monstrous violence; by foul means, for, with theexception of wars of liberation, everything that armies do is by foulmeans. The words _passive obedience_ indicate this. An army is a strangemasterpiece of combination where force results from an enormous sumof impotence. Thus is war, made by humanity against humanity, despitehumanity, explained.
As for the Bourbons, the war of 1823 was fatal to them. They took it fora success. They did not perceive the danger that lies in having an ideaslain to order. They went astray, in their innocence, to such a degreethat they introduced the immense enfeeblement of a crime into theirestablishment as an element of strength. The spirit of the ambushentered into their politics. 1830 had its germ in 1823. The Spanishcampaign became in their counsels an argument for force and foradventures by right Divine. France, having re-established _el rey netto_in Spain, might well have re-established the absolute king at home. Theyfell into the alarming error of taking the obedience of the soldier forthe consent of the nation. Such confidence is the ruin of thrones. It isnot permitted to fall asleep, either in the shadow of a machineel tree,nor in the shadow of an army.
Let us return to the ship _Orion_.
During the operations of the army commanded by the prince generalissimo,a squadron had been cruising in the Mediterranean. We have just statedthat the _Orion_ belonged to this fleet, and that accidents of the seahad brought it into port at Toulon.
The presence of a vessel of war in a port has something about it whichattracts and engages a crowd. It is because it is great, and the crowdloves what is great.
A ship of the line is one of the most magnificent combinations of thegenius of man with the powers of nature.
A ship of the line is composed, at the same time, of the heaviest andthe lightest of possible matter, for it deals at one and the same timewith three forms of substance,--solid, liquid, and fluid,--and it mustdo battle with all three. It has eleven claws of iron with which toseize the granite on the bottom of the sea, and more wings and moreantennæ than winged insects, to catch the wind in the clouds. Its breathpours out through its hundred and twenty cannons as through enormoustrumpets, and replies proudly to the thunder. The ocean seeks to lead itastray in the alarming sameness of its billows, but the vessel has itssoul, its compass, which counsels it and always shows it the north. Inthe blackest nights, its lanterns supply the place of the stars. Thus,against the wind, it has its cordage and its canvas; against the water,wood; against the rocks, its iron, brass, and lead; against the shadows,its light; against immensity, a needle.
If one wishes to form an idea of all those gigantic proportions which,taken as a whole, constitute the ship of the line, one has only to enterone of the six-story covered construction stocks, in the ports of Brestor Toulon. The vessels in process of construction are under a bell-glassthere, as it were. This colossal beam is a yard; that great column ofwood which stretches out on the earth as far as the eye can reach isthe main-mast. Taking it from its root in the stocks to its tip in theclouds, it is sixty fathoms long, and its diameter at its base isthree feet. The English main-mast rises to a height of two hundred andseventeen feet above the water-line. The navy of our fathers employedcables, ours employs chains. The simple pile of chains on a ship of ahundred guns is four feet high, twenty feet in breadth, and eightfeet in depth. And how much wood is required to make this ship? Threethousand cubic metres. It is a floating forest.
And moreover, let this be borne in mind, it is only a question here ofthe military vessel of forty years ago, of the simple sailing-vessel;steam, then in its infancy, has since added new miracles to that prodigywhich is called a war vessel. At the present time, for example, themixed vessel with a screw is a surprising machine, propelled by threethousand square metres of canvas and by an engine of two thousand fivehundred horse-power.
Not to mention these new marvels, the ancient vessel of ChristopherColumbus and of De Ruyter is one of the masterpieces of man. It is asinexhaustible in force as is the Infinite in gales; it stores upthe wind in its sails, it is precise in the immense vagueness of thebillows, it floats, and it reigns.
There comes an hour, nevertheless, when the gale breaks that sixty-footyard like a straw, when the wind bends that mast four hundred feet tall,when that anchor, which weighs tens of thousands, is twisted in the jawsof the waves like a fisherman's hook in the jaws of a pike, when thosemonstrous cannons utter plaintive and futile roars, which the hurricanebears forth into the void and into night, when all that power and allthat majesty are engulfed in a power and majesty which are superior.
Every time that immense force is displayed to culminate in an immensefeebleness it affords men food for thought. Hence in the ports curiouspeople abound around these marvellous machines of war and of navigation,without being able to explain perfectly to themselves why. Every day,accordingly, from morning until night, the quays, sluices, and thejetties of the port of Toulon were covered with a multitude of idlersand loungers, as they say in Paris, whose business consisted in staringat the _Orion_.
The _Orion_ was a ship that had been ailing for a long time; in thecourse of its previous cruises thick layers of barnacles had collectedon its keel to such a degree as to deprive it of half its speed; ithad gone into the dry dock the year before this, in order to have thebarnacles scraped off, then it had put to sea again; but this cleaninghad affected the bolts of the keel: in the neighborhood of the BalearicIsles the sides had been strained and had opened; and, as the platingin those days was not of sheet iron, the vessel had sprung a leak.A violent equinoctial gale had come up, which had first staved ina grating and a porthole on the larboard side, and damaged theforetop-gallant-shrouds; in consequence of these injuries, the _Orion_had run back to Toulon.
It anchored near the Arsenal; it was fully equipped, and repairs werebegun. The hull had received no damage on the starboard, but some of theplanks had been unnailed here and there, according to custom, to permitof air entering the hold.
One morning the crowd which was gazing at it witnessed an accident.
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The crew was busy bending the sails; the topman, who had to take theupper corner of the main-top-sail on the starboard, lost his balance;he was seen to waver; the multitude thronging the Arsenal quay uttered acry; the man's head overbalanced his body; the man fell around the yard,with his hands outstretched towards the abyss; on his way he seized thefootrope, first with one hand, then with the other, and remained hangingfrom it: the sea lay below him at a dizzy depth; the shock of his fallhad imparted to the foot-rope a violent swinging motion; the man swayedback and forth at the end of that rope, like a stone in a sling.
It was incurring a frightful risk to go to his assistance; not oneof the sailors, all fishermen of the coast, recently levied for theservice, dared to attempt it. In the meantime, the unfortunate topmanwas losing his strength; his anguish could not be discerned on his face,but his exhaustion was visible in every limb; his arms were contractedin horrible twitchings; every effort which he made to re-ascend servedbut to augment the oscillations of the foot-rope; he did not shout, forfear of exhausting his strength. All were awaiting the minute when heshould release his hold on the rope, and, from instant to instant, headswere turned aside that his fall might not be seen. There are momentswhen a bit of rope, a pole, the branch of a tree, is life itself, andit is a terrible thing to see a living being detach himself from it andfall like a ripe fruit.
All at once a man was seen climbing into the rigging with the agilityof a tiger-cat; this man was dressed in red; he was a convict; he wore agreen cap; he was a life convict. On arriving on a level with the top, agust of wind carried away his cap, and allowed a perfectly white head tobe seen: he was not a young man.
A convict employed on board with a detachment from the galleys had, infact, at the very first instant, hastened to the officer of the watch,and, in the midst of the consternation and the hesitation of the crew,while all the sailors were trembling and drawing back, he had askedthe officer's permission to risk his life to save the topman; at anaffirmative sign from the officer he had broken the chain riveted to hisankle with one blow of a hammer, then he had caught up a rope, and haddashed into the rigging: no one noticed, at the instant, with what easethat chain had been broken; it was only later on that the incident wasrecalled.
In a twinkling he was on the yard; he paused for a few seconds andappeared to be measuring it with his eye; these seconds, during whichthe breeze swayed the topman at the extremity of a thread, seemedcenturies to those who were looking on. At last, the convict raised hiseyes to heaven and advanced a step: the crowd drew a long breath. He wasseen to run out along the yard: on arriving at the point, he fastenedthe rope which he had brought to it, and allowed the other end to hangdown, then he began to descend the rope, hand over hand, and then,--andthe anguish was indescribable,--instead of one man suspended over thegulf, there were two.
One would have said it was a spider coming to seize a fly, only here thespider brought life, not death. Ten thousand glances were fastened onthis group; not a cry, not a word; the same tremor contracted everybrow; all mouths held their breath as though they feared to add theslightest puff to the wind which was swaying the two unfortunate men.
In the meantime, the convict had succeeded in lowering himself to aposition near the sailor. It was high time; one minute more, and theexhausted and despairing man would have allowed himself to fall intothe abyss. The convict had moored him securely with the cord to whichhe clung with one hand, while he was working with the other. At last, hewas seen to climb back on the yard, and to drag the sailor up after him;he held him there a moment to allow him to recover his strength, then hegrasped him in his arms and carried him, walking on the yard himself tothe cap, and from there to the main-top, where he left him in the handsof his comrades.
At that moment the crowd broke into applause: old convict-sergeantsamong them wept, and women embraced each other on the quay, and allvoices were heard to cry with a sort of tender rage, "Pardon for thatman!"
He, in the meantime, had immediately begun to make his descent to rejoinhis detachment. In order to reach them the more speedily, he droppedinto the rigging, and ran along one of the lower yards; all eyes werefollowing him. At a certain moment fear assailed them; whether it wasthat he was fatigued, or that his head turned, they thought they saw himhesitate and stagger. All at once the crowd uttered a loud shout: theconvict had fallen into the sea.
The fall was perilous. The frigate _Algésiras_ was anchored alongsidethe _Orion_, and the poor convict had fallen between the two vessels: itwas to be feared that he would slip under one or the other of them. Fourmen flung themselves hastily into a boat; the crowd cheered them on;anxiety again took possession of all souls; the man had not risen tothe surface; he had disappeared in the sea without leaving a ripple, asthough he had fallen into a cask of oil: they sounded, they dived. Invain. The search was continued until the evening: they did not even findthe body.
On the following day the Toulon newspaper printed these lines:--
"Nov. 17, 1823. Yesterday, a convict belonging to the detachment onboard of the _Orion_, on his return from rendering assistance to asailor, fell into the sea and was drowned. The body has not yet beenfound; it is supposed that it is entangled among the piles of theArsenal point: this man was committed under the number 9,430, and hisname was Jean Valjean."
BOOK THIRD.--ACCOMPLISHMENT OF THE PROMISE MADE TO THE DEAD WOMAN
