3.V.3.9. MARIUS PRODUCES ON SOME ONE WHO IS A JUDGE OF THE
MATTER, THE EFFECT OF BEING DEAD
HE allowed Marius to slide down upon the shore.
They were in the open air!
The miasmas, darkness, horror lay behind him. The pure,
healthful, living, joyous air that was easy to breathe inundated
him. Everywhere around him reigned silence, but that
charming silence when the sun has set in an unclouded azure
sky. Twilight had descended; night was drawing on, the
great deliverer, the friend of all those who need a mantle of
darkness that they may escape from an anguish. The sky
presented itself in all directions like an enormous calm. The
river flowed to his feet with the sound of a kiss. The aerial
dialogue of the nests bidding each other good night in the
elms of the Champs-Elysees was audible. A few stars,
daintily piercing the pale blue of the zenith, and visible to
revery alone, formed imperceptible little splendors amid the
immensity. Evening was unfolding over the head of Jean
Valjean all the sweetness of the infinite.
It was that exquisite and undecided hour which says
neither
yes nor no. Night was already sufficiently advanced to render
it possible to lose oneself at a little distance and yet there
was sufficient daylight to permit of recognition at close
quarters.
For several seconds, Jean Valjean was irresistibly
overcome
by that august and caressing serenity; such moments of oblivion
do come to men; suffering refrains from harassing the
unhappy wretch; everything is eclipsed in the thoughts; peace
broods over the dreamer like night; and, beneath the twilight
which beams and in imitation of the sky which is illuminated,
the soul becomes studded with stars. Jean Valjean could not
refrain from contemplating that vast, clear shadow which
rested over him; thoughtfully he bathed in the sea of ecstasy
and prayer in the majestic silence of the eternal heavens.
Then he bent down swiftly to Marius, as though the sentiment
of duty had returned to him, and, dipping up water in the
hollow of his hand, he gently sprinkled a few drops on the
latter's face. Marius' eyelids did not open; but his half-open
mouth still breathed.
Jean Valjean was on the point of dipping his hand in the
river once more, when, all at once, he experienced an
indescribable
embarrassment, such as a person feels when there is
some one behind him whom he does not see.
We have already alluded to this impression, with which
everyone is familiar.
He turned round.
Some one was, in fact, behind him, as there had been a
short
while before.
A man of lofty stature, enveloped in a long coat, with
folded arms, and bearing in his right fist a bludgeon of which
the leaden head was visible, stood a few paces in the rear of
the spot where Jean Valjean was crouching over Marius.
With the aid of the darkness, it seemed a sort of
apparition.
An ordinary man would have been alarmed because of the
twilight, a thoughtful man on account of the bludgeon. Jean
Valjean recognized Javert.
The reader has divined, no doubt, that Thenardier's
pursuer
was no other than Javert. Javert, after his unlooked-for
escape from the barricade, had betaken himself to the prefecture
of police, had rendered a verbal account to the Prefect in
person in a brief audience, had then immediately gone on
duty again, which implied — the note, the reader will recollect,
which had been captured on his person — a certain surveillance
of the shore on the right bank of the Seine near the Champs-Elysees,
which had, for some time past, aroused the attention
of the police. There he had caught sight of Thenardier and
had followed him. The reader knows the rest.
Thus it will be easily understood that that grating, so
obligingly
opened to Jean Valjean, was a bit of cleverness on Thenardier's
part. Thenardier intuitively felt that Javert was
still there; the man spied upon has a scent which never deceives
him; it was necessary to fling a bone to that sleuth-hound.
An assassin, what a godsend! Such an opportunity
must never be allowed to slip. Thenardier, by putting Jean
Valjean outside in his stead, provided a prey for the police,
forced them to relinquish his scent, made them forget him
in a bigger adventure, repaid Javert for his waiting, which
always flatters a spy, earned thirty francs, and counted with
certainty, so far as he himself was concerned, on escaping
with the aid of this diversion.
Jean Valjean had fallen from one danger upon another.
These two encounters, this falling one after the other,
from
Thenardier upon Javert, was a rude shock.
Javert did not recognize Jean Valjean, who, as we have
stated, no longer looked like himself. He did not unfold
his arms, he made sure of his bludgeon in his fist, by an
imperceptible
movement, and said in a curt, calm voice:
"Who are you?"
"I."
"Who is 'I'?"
"Jean Valjean."
Javert thrust his bludgeon between his teeth, bent his
knees,
inclined his body, laid his two powerful hands on the shoulders
of Jean Valjean, which were clamped within them as in
a couple of vices, scrutinized him, and recognized him. Their
faces almost touched. Javert's look was terrible.
Jean Valjean remained inert beneath Javert's grasp, like a
lion submitting to the claws of a lynx.
"Inspector Javert," said he, "you have me in your power.
Moreover, I have regarded myself as your prisoner ever since
this morning. I did not give you my address with any intention
of escaping from you. Take me. Only grant me one
favor."
Javert did not appear to hear him. He kept his eyes
riveted
on Jean Valjean. His chin being contracted, thrust his
lips upwards towards his nose, a sign of savage revery. At
length he released Jean Valjean, straightened himself stiffly
up without bending, grasped his bludgeon again firmly, and,
as though in a dream, he murmured rather than uttered this
question:
"What are you doing here? And who is this man?"
He still abstained from addressing Jean Valjean as
thou.
Jean Valjean replied, and the sound of his voice appeared
to rouse Javert:
"It is with regard to him that I desire to speak to you.
Dispose of me as you see fit; but first help me to carry him
home. That is all that I ask of you."
Javert's face contracted as was always the case when any
one seemed to think him capable of making a concession.
Nevertheless, he did not say "no."
Again he bent over, drew from his pocket a handkerchief
which he moistened in the water and with which he then wiped
Marius' blood-stained brow.
"This man was at the barricade," said he in a low voice
and
as though speaking to himself. "He is the one they called
Marius."
A spy of the first quality, who had observed everything,
listened to everything, and taken in everything, even when he
thought that he was to die; who had played the spy even in
his agony, and who, with his elbows leaning on the first step
of the sepulchre, had taken notes.
He seized Marius' hand and felt his pulse.
"He is wounded," said Jean Valjean.
"He is a dead man," said Javert.
Jean Valjean replied:
"No. Not yet."
"So you have brought him thither from the barricade?"
remarked Javert.
His preoccupation must indeed have been very profound
for him not to insist on this alarming rescue through the
sewer, and for him not to even notice Jean Valjean's silence
after his question.
Jean Valjean, on his side, seemed to have but one thought.
He resumed:
"He lives in the Marais, Rue des Filles-du-Calvaire, with
his grandfather. I do not recollect his name."
Jean Valjean fumbled in Marius' coat, pulled out his
pocket-book, opened it at the page which Marius had pencilled,
and held it out to Javert.
There was still sufficient light to admit of reading.
Besides
this, Javert possessed in his eye the feline phosphorescence
of night birds. He deciphered the few lines written by
Marius, and muttered: "Gillenormand, Rue des Filles-du-Calvaire, No. 6."
Then he exclaimed: "Coachman!"
The reader will remember that the hackney-coach was
waiting in case of need.
Javert kept Marius' pocket-book.
A moment later, the carriage, which had descended by
the inclined plane of the watering-place, was on the shore.
Marius was laid upon the back seat, and Javert seated himself
on the front seat beside Jean Valjean.
The door slammed, and the carriage drove rapidly away,
ascending the quays in the direction of the Bastille.
They quitted the quays and entered the streets. The
coachman,
a black form on his box, whipped up his thin horses. A
glacial silence reigned in the carriage. Marius, motionless,
with his body resting in the corner, and his head drooping on
his breast, his arms hanging, his legs stiff, seemed to be
awaiting
only a coffin; Jean Valjean seemed made of shadow, and
Javert of stone, and in that vehicle full of night, whose
interior,
every time that it passed in front of a street lantern,
appeared to be turned lividly wan, as by an intermittent
flash of lightning, chance had united and seemed to be bringing
face to face the three forms of tragic immobility, the
corpse, the spectre, and the statue.