3.V.7.2. THE OBSCURITIES WHICH A REVELATION CAN CONTAIN
MARIUS was quite upset.
The sort of estrangement which he had always felt towards
the man beside whom he had seen Cosette, was now explained
to him. There was something enigmatic about that person, of
which his instinct had warned him.
This enigma was the most hideous of disgraces, the
galleys.
This M. Fauchelevent was the convict Jean Valjean.
To abruptly find such a secret in the midst of one's
happiness
resembles the discovery of a scorpion in a nest of turtle-doves.
Was the happiness of Marius and Cosette thenceforth
condemned
to such a neighborhood? Was this an accomplished
fact? Did the acceptance of that man form a part of the
marriage now consummated? Was there nothing to be done?
Had Marius wedded the convict as well?
In vain may one be crowned with light and joy, in vain
may one taste the grand purple hour of life, happy love, such
shocks would force even the archangel in his ecstasy, even the
demigod in his glory, to shudder.
As is always the case in changes of view of this nature,
Marius asked himself whether he had nothing with which to
reproach himself. Had he been wanting in divination? Had
he been wanting in prudence? Had he involuntarily dulled
his wits? A little, perhaps. Had he entered upon this love
affair, which had ended in his marriage to Cosette, without
taking sufficient precautions to throw light upon the
surroundings?
He admitted, — it is thus, by a series of successive admissions
of ourselves in regard to ourselves, that life amends
us, little by little, — he admitted the chimerical and visionary
side of his nature, a sort of internal cloud peculiar to many
organizations, and which, in paroxysms of passion and sorrow,
dilates as the temperature of the soul changes, and invades
the entire man, to such a degree as to render him nothing
more than a conscience bathed in a mist. We have more
than once indicated this characteristic element of Marius'
individuality.
He recalled that, in the intoxication of his love, in the
Rue
Plumet, during those six or seven ecstatic weeks, he had not
even spoke to Cosette of that drama in the Gorbeau hovel,
where the victim had taken up such a singular line of silence
during the struggle and the ensuing flight. How had it
happened that he had not mentioned this to Cosette? Yet
it was so near and so terrible! How had it come to pass that
he had not even named the Thenardiers, and, particularly, on
the day when he had encountered Eponine? He now found it
almost difficult to explain his silence of that time.
Nevertheless,
he could account for it. He recalled his benumbed state,
his intoxication with Cosette, love absorbing everything, that
catching away of each other into the ideal, and perhaps also,
like the imperceptible quantity of reason mingled with this
violent and charming state of the soul, a vague, dull instinct
impelling him to conceal and abolish in his memory that
redoubtable adventure, contact with which he dreaded, in
which he did not wish to play any part, his agency in which
he had kept secret, and in which he could be neither narrator
nor witness without being an accuser.
Moreover, these few weeks had been a flash of lightning;
there had been no time for anything except love.
In short, having weighed everything, turned everything
over in his mind, examined everything, whatever might have
been the consequences if he had told Cosette about the Gorbeau
ambush, even if he had discovered that Jean Valjean
was a convict, would that have changed him, Marius? Would
that have changed her, Cosette? Would he have drawn back?
Would he have adored her any the less? Would he have refrained
from marrying her? No. Then there was nothing
to regret, nothing with which he need reproach himself. All
was well. There is a deity for those drunken men who are
called lovers. Marius blind, had followed the path which he
would have chosen had he been in full possession of his sight.
Love had bandaged his eyes, in order to lead him whither?
To paradise.
But this paradise was henceforth complicated with an
infernal
accompaniment.
Marius' ancient estrangement towards this man, towards
this Fauchelevent who had turned into Jean Valjean, was at
present mingled with horror.
In this horror, let us state, there was some pity, and
even a
certain surprise.
This thief, this thief guilty of a second offence, had
restored
that deposit. And what a deposit! Six hundred thousand
francs.
He alone was in the secret of that deposit. He might have
kept it all, he had restored it all.
Moreover, he had himself revealed his situation. Nothing
forced him to this. If any one learned who he was, it was
through himself. In this avowal there was something more
than acceptance of humiliation, there was acceptance of peril.
For a condemned man, a mask is not a mask, it is a shelter.
A false name is security, and he had rejected that false name.
He, the galley-slave, might have hidden himself forever in an
honest family; he had withstood this temptation. And with
what motive? Through a conscientious scruple. He himself
explained this with the irresistible accents of truth. In short,
whatever this Jean Valjean might be, he was, undoubtedly, a
conscience which was awakening. There existed some mysterious
re-habilitation which had begun; and, to all appearances,
scruples had for a long time already controlled this
man. Such fits of justice and goodness are not characteristic
of vulgar natures. An awakening of conscience is grandeur
of soul.
Jean Valjean was sincere. This sincerity, visible,
palpable,
irrefragable, evident from the very grief that it caused him,
rendered inquiries useless, and conferred authority on all that
that man had said.
Here, for Marius, there was a strange reversal of
situations.
What breathed from M. Fauchelevent? distrust. What did
Jean Valjean inspire? confidence.
In the mysterious balance of this Jean Valjean which the
pensive Marius struck, he admitted the active principle, he
admitted the passive principle, and he tried to reach a balance.
But all this went on as in a storm. Marius, while
endeavoring
to form a clear idea of this man, and while pursuing
Jean Valjean, so to speak, in the depths of his thought, lost
him and found him again in a fatal mist.
The deposit honestly restored, the probity of the
confession
— these were good. This produced a lightening of the cloud,
then the cloud became black once more.
Troubled as were Marius' memories, a shadow of them
returned
to him.
After all, what was that adventure in the Jondrette attic?
Why had that man taken to flight on the arrival of the police,
instead of entering a complaint?
Here Marius found the answer. Because that man was a
fugitive from justice, who had broken his ban.
Another question: Why had that man come to the barricade?
For Marius now once more distinctly beheld that
recollection
which had re-appeared in his emotions like sympathetic ink
at the application of heat. This man had been in the barricade.
He had not fought there. What had he come there for?
In the presence of this question a spectre sprang up and replied:
"Javert."
Marius recalled perfectly now that funereal sight of Jean
Valjean dragging the pinioned Javert out of the barricade,
and he still heard behind the corner of the little Rue Mondetour
that frightful pistol shot. Obviously, there was hatred
between that police spy and the galley-slave. The one was in
the other's way. Jean Valjean had gone to the barricade for
the purpose of revenging himself. He had arrived late. He
probably knew that Javert was a prisoner there. The Corsican
vendetta has penetrated to certain lower strata and has
become the law there; it is so simple that it does not astonish
souls which are but half turned towards good; and those
hearts are so constituted that a criminal, who is in the path
of repentance, may be scrupulous in the matter of theft and
unscrupulous in the matter of vengeance. Jean Valjean had
killed Javert. At least, that seemed to be evident.
This was the final question, to be sure; but to this there
was no reply. This question Marius felt like pincers. How
had it come to pass that Jean Valjean's existence had elbowed
that of Cosette for so long a period?
What melancholy sport of Providence was that which had
placed that child in contact with that man? Are there then
chains for two which are forged on high? and does God take
pleasure in coupling the angel with the demon? So a crime and
an innocence can be room-mates in the mysterious galleys
of wretchedness? In that defiling of condemned persons
which is called human destiny, can two brows pass side by
side, the one ingenuous, the other formidable, the one all
bathed in the divine whiteness of dawn, the other forever
blemished by the flash of an eternal lightning? Who could
have arranged that inexplicable pairing off? In what manner,
in consequence of what prodigy, had any community of life
been established between this celestial little creature and that
old criminal?
Who could have bound the lamb to the wolf, and, what was
still more incomprehensible, have attached the wolf to the
lamb? For the wolf loved the lamb, for the fierce creature
adored the feeble one, for, during the space of nine years, the
angel had had the monster as her point of support. Cosette's
childhood and girlhood, her advent in the daylight, her virginal
growth towards life and light, had been sheltered by that
hideous devotion. Here questions exfoliated, so to speak, into
innumerable enigmas, abysses yawned at the bottoms of
abysses, and Marius could no longer bend over Jean Valjean
without becoming dizzy. What was this man-precipice?
The old symbols of Genesis are eternal; in human society,
such as it now exists, and until a broader day shall effect a
change in it, there will always be two men, the one superior,
the other subterranean; the one which is according to good
is Abel; the other which is according to evil is Cain. What
was this tender Cain? What was this ruffian religiously absorbed
in the adoration of a virgin, watching over her, rearing
her, guarding her, dignifying her, and enveloping her,
impure as he was himself, with purity?
What was that cess-pool which had venerated that innocence
to such a point as not to leave upon it a single spot? What
was this Jean Valjean educating Cosette? What was this
figure of the shadows which had for its only object the
preservation
of the rising of a star from every shadow and from
every cloud?
That was Jean Valjean's secret; that was also God's
secret.
In the presence of this double secret, Marius recoiled.
The
one, in some sort, reassured him as to the other. God was
as visible in this affair as was Jean Valjean. God has his
instruments. He makes use of the tool which he wills. He
is not responsible to men. Do we know how God sets about
the work? Jean Valjean had labored over Cosette. He had,
to some extent, made that soul. That was incontestable.
Well, what then? The workman was horrible; but the work
was admirable. God produces his miracles as seems good to
him. He had constructed that charming Cosette, and he had
employed Jean Valjean. It had pleased him to choose this
strange collaborator for himself. What account have we to
demand of him? Is this the first time that the dung-heap
has aided the spring to create the rose?
Marius made himself these replies, and declared to himself
that they were good. He had not dared to press Jean Valjean
on all the points which we have just indicated, but he did not
confess to himself that he did not dare to do it. He adored
Cosette, he possessed Cosette, Cosette was splendidly pure.
That was sufficient for him. What enlightenment did he
need? Cosette was a light. Does light require enlightenment?
He had everything; what more could he desire? All,
— is not that enough? Jean Valjean's personal affairs did not
concern him.
And bending over the fatal shadow of that man, he clung
fast, convulsively, to the solemn declaration of that unhappy
wretch: "I am nothing to Cosette. Ten years ago I did not
know that she was in existence."
Jean Valjean was a passer-by. He had said so himself.
Well, he had passed. Whatever he was, his part was finished.
Henceforth, there remained Marius to fulfil the part of
Providence to Cosette. Cosette had sought the azure in a
person like herself, in her lover, her husband, her celestial
male. Cosette, as she took her flight, winged and transfigured,
left behind her on the earth her hideous and empty
chrysalis, Jean Valjean.
In whatever circle of ideas Marius revolved, he always
returned to a certain horror for Jean Valjean. A sacred horror,
perhaps, for, as we have just pointed out, he felt a
quid
divinum in that man. But do what he would, and seek what
extenuation he would, he was certainly forced to fall back
upon this: the man was a convict; that is to say, a being who
has not even a place in the social ladder, since he is lower
than the very lowest rung. After the very last of men comes
the convict. The convict is no longer, so to speak, in the
semblance of the living. The law has deprived him of the
entire quantity of humanity of which it can deprive a man.
Marius, on penal questions, still held to the inexorable
system,
though he was a democrat and he entertained all the
ideas of the law on the subject of those whom the law strikes.
He had not yet accomplished all progress, we admit. He had
not yet come to distinguish between that which is written by
man and that which is written by God, between law and
right. He had not examined and weighed the right which
man takes to dispose of the irrevocable and the irreparable.
He was not shocked by the word vindicte. He found it
quite
simple that certain breaches of the written law should be
followed
by eternal suffering, and he accepted, as the process of
civilization, social damnation. He still stood at this point,
though safe to advance infallibly later on, since his nature
was good, and, at bottom, wholly formed of latent progress.
In this stage of his ideas, Jean Valjean appeared to him
hideous and repulsive. He was a man reproved, he was the
convict. That word was for him like the sound of the trump
on the Day of Judgment; and, after having reflected upon
Jean Valjean for a long time, his final gesture had been to
turn away his head. Vade retro.
Marius, if we must recognize and even insist upon the
fact,
while interrogating Jean Valjean to such a point that Jean
Valjean had said: "You are confessing me," had not, nevertheless,
put to him two or three decisive questions.
It was not that they had not presented themselves to his
mind, but that he had been afraid of them. The Jondrette
attic? The barricade? Javert? Who knows where these
revelations would have stopped? Jean Valjean did not seem
like a man who would draw back, and who knows whether
Marius, after having urged him on, would not have himself
desired to hold him back?
Has it not happened to all of us, in certain supreme
conjunctures,
to stop our ears in order that we may not hear the
reply, after we have asked a question? It is especially when
one loves that one gives way to these exhibitions of cowardice.
It is not wise to question sinister situations to the last point,
particularly when the indissoluble side of our life is fatally
intermingled with them. What a terrible light might have
proceeded from the despairing explanations of Jean Valjean,
and who knows whether that hideous glare would not have
darted forth as far as Cosette? Who knows whether a sort
of infernal glow would not have lingered behind it on the
brow of that angel? The spattering of a lightning-flash is of
the thunder also. Fatality has points of juncture where
innocence
itself is stamped with crime by the gloomy law of the
reflections which give color. The purest figures may forever
preserve the reflection of a horrible association. Rightly or
wrongly, Marius had been afraid. He already knew too much.
He sought to dull his senses rather than to gain further light.
In dismay he bore off Cosette in his arms and shut his
eyes
to Jean Valjean.
That man was the night, the living and horrible night.
How should he dare to seek the bottom of it? It is a terrible
thing to interrogate the shadow. Who knows what its reply
will be? The dawn may be blackened forever by it.
In this state of mind the thought that that man would,
henceforth, come into any contact whatever with Cosette was
a heartrending perplexity to Marius.
He now almost reproached himself for not having put those
formidable questions, before which he had recoiled, and from
which an implacable and definitive decision might have
sprung. He felt that he was too good, too gentle, too weak,
if we must say the word. This weakness had led him to an
imprudent concession. He had allowed himself to be touched.
He had been in the wrong. He ought to have simply and
purely rejected Jean Valjean. Jean Valjean played the part
of fire, and that is what he should have done, and have freed
his house from that man.
He was vexed with himself, he was angry with that
whirlwind
of emotions which had deafened, blinded, and carried
him away. He was displeased with himself.
What was he to do now? Jean Valjean's visits were
profoundly
repugnant to him. What was the use in having that
man in his house? What did the man want? Here, he
became dismayed, he did not wish to dig down, he did not
wish to penetrate deeply; he did not wish to sound himself.
He had promised, he had allowed himself to be drawn into a
promise; Jean Valjean held his promise; one must keep one's
word even to a convict, above all to a convict. Still, his first
duty was to Cosette. In short, he was carried away by the
repugnance which dominated him.
Marius turned over all this confusion of ideas in his
mind,
passing from one to the other, and moved by all of them.
Hence arose a profound trouble.
It was not easy for him to hide this trouble from Cosette,
but love is a talent, and Marius succeeded in doing it.
However, without any apparent object, he questioned
Cosette,
who was as candid as a dove is white and who suspected
nothing; he talked of her childhood and her youth, and he
became more and more convinced that that convict had been
everything good, paternal and respectable that a man can be
towards Cosette. All that Marius had caught a glimpse of
and had surmised was real. That sinister nettle had loved
and protected that lily.