1.F.7.8. AN ENTRANCE BY FAVOR
ALTHOUGH he did not suspect the fact, the mayor of M. sur
M. enjoyed a sort of celebrity. For the space of seven years
his reputation for virtue had filled the whole of Bas Boulonnais;
it had eventually passed the confines of a small district
and had been spread abroad through two or three neighboring
departments. Besides the service which he had rendered
to the chief town by resuscitating the black jet industry, there
was not one out of the hundred and forty communes of the
arrondissement of M. sur M. which was not indebted to him
for some benefit. He had even at need contrived to aid and
multiply the industries of other arrondissements. It was thus
that he had, when occasion offered, supported with his credit
and his funds the linen factory at Boulogne, the flax-spinning
industry at Frevent, and the hydraulic manufacture of cloth
at Boubers-sur-Canche. Everywhere the name of M. Madeleine
was pronounced with veneration. Arras and Douai
envied the happy little town of M. sur M. its mayor.
The Councillor of the Royal Court of Douai, who was presiding
over this session of the Assizes at Arras, was acquainted,
in common with the rest of the world, with this name which
was so profoundly and universally honored. When the usher,
discreetly opening the door which connected the council-chamber
with the court-room, bent over the back of the President's
arm-chair and handed him the paper on which was
inscribed the line which we have just perused, adding: "The
gentleman desires to be present at the trial," the President,
with a quick and deferential movement, seized a pen and wrote
a few words at the bottom of the paper and returned it to the
usher, saying, "Admit him."
The unhappy man whose history we are relating had
remained near the door of the hall, in the same place and the
same attitude in which the usher had left him. In the midst
of his revery he heard some one saying to him, "Will Monsieur
do me the honor to follow me?" It was the same usher who
had turned his back upon him but a moment previously, and
who was now bowing to the earth before him. At the same
time, the usher handed him the paper. He unfolded it, and
as he chanced to be near the light, he could read it.
"The President of the Court of Assizes presents his respects
to M. Madeleine."
He crushed the paper in his hand as though those words
contained for him a strange and bitter aftertaste.
He followed the usher.
A few minutes later he found himself alone in a sort of
wainscoted cabinet of severe aspect, lighted by two wax
candles, placed upon a table with a green cloth. The last
words of the usher who had just quitted him still rang in his
ears: "Monsieur, you are now in the council-chamber; you
have only to turn the copper handle of yonder door, and you
will find yourself in the court-room, behind the President's
chair." These words were mingled in his thoughts with a
vague memory of narrow corridors and dark staircases which
he had recently traversed.
The usher had left him alone. The supreme moment had
arrived. He sought to collect his faculties, but could not. It
is chiefly at the moment when there is the greatest need for
attaching them to the painful realities of life, that the threads
of thought snap within the brain. He was in the very place
where the judges deliberated and condemned. With stupid
tranquillity he surveyed this peaceful and terrible apartment,
where so many lives had been broken, which was soon to ring
with his name, and which his fate was at that moment traversing.
He stared at the wall, then he looked at himself,
wondering that it should be that chamber and that it should
be he.
He had eaten nothing for four and twenty hours; he was
worn out by the jolts of the cart, but he was not conscious
of it. It seemed to him that he felt nothing.
He approached a black frame which was suspended on the
wall, and which contained, under glass, an ancient autograph
letter of Jean Nicolas Pache, mayor of Paris and minister,
and dated, through an error, no doubt, the 9th of June, of the
year II., and in which Pache forwarded to the commune the
list of ministers and deputies held in arrest by them. Any
spectator who had chanced to see him at that moment, and
who had watched him, would have imagined, doubtless, that
this letter struck him as very curious, for he did not take his
eyes from it, and he read it two or three times. He read it
without paying any attention to it, and unconsciously. He
was thinking of Fantine and Cosette.
As he dreamed, he turned round, and his eyes fell upon the
brass knob of the door which separated him from the Court of
Assizes. He had almost forgotten that door. His glance,
calm at first, paused there, remained fixed on that brass
handle, then grew terrified, and little by little became impregnated
with fear. Beads of perspiration burst forth among
his hair and trickled down upon his temples.
At a certain moment he made that indescribable gesture of
a sort of authority mingled with rebellion, which is intended
to convey, and which does so well convey, "Pardieu! who compels
me to this?" Then he wheeled briskly round, caught
sight of the door through which he had entered in front of
him, went to it, opened it, and passed out. He was no longer
in that chamber; he was outside in a corridor, a long, narrow
corridor, broken by steps and gratings, making all sorts of
angles, lighted here and there by lanterns similar to the night
taper of invalids, the corridor through which he had approached.
He breathed, he listened; not a sound in front,
not a sound behind him, and he fled as though pursued.
When he had turned many angles in this corridor, he still
listened. The same silence reigned, and there was the same
darkness around him. He was out of breath; he staggered;
he leaned against the wall. The stone was cold; the perspiration
lay ice-cold on his brow; he straightened himself up
with a shiver.
Then, there alone in the darkness, trembling with cold and
with something else, too, perchance, he meditated.
He had meditated all night long; he had meditated all the
day: he heard within him but one voice, which said, "Alas!"
A quarter of an hour passed thus. At length he bowed his
head, sighed with agony, dropped his arms, and retraced his
steps. He walked slowly, and as though crushed. It seemed
as though some one had overtaken him in his flight and was
leading him back.
He re-entered the council-chamber. The first thing he
caught sight of was the knob of the door. This knob, which
was round and of polished brass, shone like a terrible star for
him. He gazed at it as a lamb might gaze into the eye of a
tiger.
He could not take his eyes from it. From time to time he
advanced a step and approached the door.
Had he listened, he would have heard the sound of the
adjoining hall like a sort of confused murmur; but he did not
listen, and he did not hear.
Suddenly, without himself knowing how it happened, he
found himself near the door; he grasped the knob convulsively;
the door opened.
He was in the court-room.