1.F.2.11. 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
the furtive and uneasy gentleness of a cat which is desirous of
entering.
The door yielded to this pressure, and made an imperceptible
and silent movement, 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 to allow him to pass. But near the door there stood
a little table, which formed 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, more energetic than the two preceding. This time a
badly oiled hinge suddenly emitted amid the silence a hoarse
and prolonged cry.
Jean Valjean shuddered. The noise of the hinge rang in
his ears with something of the piercing and formidable sound
of the trump of the Day of Judgment.
In the fantastic exaggerations of the first moment he almost
imagined that that hinge had just become animated, and had
suddenly assumed a terrible 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. He heard the arteries
in his temples beating like two forge hammers, and it seemed
to him that his breath issued from his breast with the roar of
the wind issuing from a cavern. It seemed impossible to him
that the horrible clamor of that irritated hinge should not have
disturbed the entire household, like the shock of an earthquake;
the door, pushed by him, had taken the alarm, and
had shouted; the old man would rise at once; the two old
women would shriek out; people would come to their assistance;
in less than a quarter of an hour the town would be in
an uproar, and the gendarmerie on hand. For a moment he
thought himself lost.
He remained where he was, petrified like the statue of
salt, not daring to make a movement. Several minutes
elapsed. The door had fallen wide open. 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 the rusty hinge had not awakened any one.
This first danger was past; but there still reigned a frightful
tumult within him. Nevertheless, he did not retreat.
Even when he had thought himself lost, he had not drawn
back. His only thought now was to finish as soon as possible.
He took a step and entered the room.
This room was in a state of perfect calm. Here and there
vague and confused forms were distinguishable, which in the
daylight were papers scattered on a table, open folios, volumes
piled upon a stool, an arm-chair heaped with clothing, a prie-Dieu,
and which at that hour were only shadowy corners and
whitish spots. Jean Valjean advanced with precaution, taking
care not to knock against the furniture. He could hear, at the
extremity of the room, the even and tranquil breathing of the
sleeping Bishop.
He suddenly came to a halt. He was near the bed. He had
arrived there sooner than he had thought for.
Nature sometimes mingles her effects and her spectacles
with our actions with sombre and intelligent appropriateness,
as though she desired to make us reflect. For the last half-hour
a large cloud had covered the heavens. At the moment
when Jean Valjean paused in front of the bed, this cloud
parted, as though on purpose, and a ray of light, traversing
the long window, suddenly illuminated the Bishop's pale face.
He was sleeping peacefully. He lay in his bed almost completely
dressed, on account 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 the pillow, in the careless
attitude of repose; his hand, adorned with the pastoral
ring, and whence had fallen so many good deeds and so many
holy actions, was hanging over the edge of the bed. His whole
face was illumined with a vague expression of satisfaction, of
hope, and of felicity. It was more than a smile, and almost a
radiance. He bore upon his 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 was within him. That heaven was his conscience.
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. It remained, however, gentle and veiled
in an ineffable half-light. That moon in the sky, that
slumbering nature, that garden without a quiver, that house
which was so calm, the hour, the moment, the silence, added
some solemn and unspeakable quality to the venerable repose
of this man, and enveloped in a sort of serene and majestic
aureole that white hair, those closed eyes, that face in which
all was hope and all was confidence, 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 iron candlestick in his hand, frightened by this luminous
old man. Never had he beheld anything like this. This
confidence terrified him. The moral world has no grander
spectacle than this: a troubled and uneasy 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, had about it something sublime, of which he was
vaguely but imperiously conscious.
No one could have told what was passing within him, not
even himself. In order to attempt to form an idea of it, it
is necessary to think of the most violent of things in the presence
of the most gentle. Even on his visage it would have
been impossible to distinguish anything with certainty. It
was a sort of haggard astonishment. He gazed at it, and that
was all. But what was his thought? It would have been
impossible to divine it. What was evident was, that he was
touched and astounded. But what was the nature of this
emotion?
His eye never quitted the old man. The only thing which
was clearly to be inferred from his attitude and his physiognomy
was a strange indecision. One would have said that he
was hesitating between the two abysses, — the one in which one
loses one's self and that in which one saves one's self. He
seemed prepared to crush that skull or to kiss that hand.
At the expiration of a few minutes his left arm rose slowly
towards his brow, and he took off his cap; then his arm fell
back with the same deliberation, and Jean Valjean fell to
meditating once more, his cap in his left hand, his club in his
right hand, his hair bristling all over his savage head.
The Bishop continued to sleep in profound peace beneath
that terrifying gaze.
The gleam of the moon rendered confusedly visible the
crucifix over the chimney-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 rapidly past the bed, without glancing at the Bishop,
straight to the cupboard, which he saw near the head; he
raised his iron candlestick as though to force the lock; the key
was there; he opened it; the first thing which presented itself
to him was the basket of silverware; he seized it, traversed the
chamber with long strides, without taking any precautions and
without troubling himself about the noise, gained the door,
re-entered the oratory, opened the window, seized his cudgel,
bestrode the window-sill of the ground-floor, put the silver
into his knapsack, threw away the basket, crossed the garden,
leaped over the wall like a tiger, and fled.