Les Miserables (abridged) (Barnes & Noble Classics Series) (76 page)

While he thus preached to himself, for there were times when Marius, like all truly honest hearts, was his own monitor, and scolded himself more than he deserved, he looked at the wall which separated him from the Jondrettes, as if he could send his pitying glance through that partition to warn those unfortunate beings. The wall was a thin layer of plaster, upheld by laths and joists, through which, as we have just seen, voices and words could be distinguished perfectly. None but the dreamer, Marius, would not have perceived this before. There was no paper hung on this wall either on the side of the Jondrettes, or on Marius’ side; its coarse construction was bare to the eye. Almost unconsciously, Marius examined this partition; sometimes reverie examines, observes, and scrutinises, as thought would do. Suddenly he arose, he noticed towards the top, near the ceiling, a triangular hole, where three laths left a space between them. The plaster which should have stopped this hole was gone, and by getting upon the bureau he could see through that hole into the Jondrettes’ garret. Pity has and should have its curiosity. This gap made a kind of spyhole. It is lawful to look upon misfortune like a betrayer for the sake of relieving it. “Let us see what these people are,” thought Marius, “and to what they are reduced.”

He climbed upon the bureau, put his eye to the crevice, and looked.

CITIES, like forests, have their dens in which hide all their most evil and terrible monsters. But in cities, what hides thus is ferocious, unclean, and small, that is to say, ugly; in forests, what hides is ferocious, savage, and large, that is to say, beautiful. Den for den, those of beasts are preferable to those of men. Caverns are better than the wretched holes which shelter humanity.

What Marius saw was a hole.

Marius was poor and his room was poorly furnished, but even as his poverty was noble, his garret was clean. The den into which his eyes were at that moment directed, was abject, filthy, fetid, infectious, gloomy, sordid. All the furniture was a straw chair, a rickety table, a few old broken dishes, and in two of the corners two indescribable pallets; all the light came from a dormer window of four panes, curtained with spiders’ webs. Just enough light came through that loophole to make a man’s face appear like the face of a phantom. The walls had a leprous look, and were covered with seams and scars like a face disfigured by some horrible malady; a putrid moisture oozed from them. Obscene pictures could be discovered upon them coarsely sketched in charcoal.

The room which Marius occupied had a broken brick pavement; this one was neither paved nor floored; the inmates walked immediately upon the old plastering of the ruinous tenement, which had grown black under their feet. Upon this uneven soil where the dust was, as it were, incrusted, and which was virgin soil in respect only of the broom, were grouped at random constellations of socks, old shoes, and hideous rags; however, this room had a fireplace; so it rented for forty francs a year. In the fireplace there was a little of everything, a chafing-dish, a kettle, some broken boards, rags hanging on nails, a bird cage, some ashes, and even a little fire. Two embers were smoking sullenly.

The size of this garret added still more to its horror. It had projections, angles, black holes, recesses under the roof, bays, and promontories. Beyond were hideous, unfathomable corners, which seemed as if they must be full of spiders as big as one’s fist, centipedes as large as one’s foot, and perhaps even some unknown monsters of humanity.

One of the pallets was near the door, the other near the window. Each had one end next the fireplace and both were opposite Marius. In a corner near the opening through which Marius was looking, hanging upon the wall in a black wooden frame, was a coloured engraving at the bottom of which was written in large letters: THE DREAM. It represented a sleeping woman and a sleeping child, the child upon the woman’s lap, an eagle in a cloud with a crown in his beak, and the woman pushing away the crown from the child’s head, but without waking; in the background Napoleon in a halo, leaning against a large blue column with a yellow capital adorned with this inscription:

Below this frame a sort of wooden panel longer than it was wide was standing on the floor and leaning at an angle against the wall. It had the appearance of a picture set against the wall, of a frame probably daubed on the other side, of a pier glass taken down from a wall and forgotten there while waiting to be hung again.

By the table, upon which Marius saw a pen, ink, and paper, was seated a man of about sixty, small, thin, livid, haggard, with a keen, cruel, and restless air; a hideous harpy.

Lavater, if he could have studied this face, would have found in it a mixture of vulture and shyster; the bird of prey and the con man rendering each other ugly and complete, the con man making the bird of prey ignoble, the bird of prey making the con man horrible.

This man had a long grey beard. He was dressed in a woman’s chemise, which showed his shaggy chest and his naked arms bristling with grey hairs. Below this chemise were a pair of muddy trousers and boots from which the toes stuck out.

He had a pipe in his mouth, and was smoking. There was no more bread in the den, but there was still tobacco.

He was writing, probably some such letter as those which Marius had read.

On one comer of the table was an old odd volume with a reddish cover, the size of which, the old duodecimo of series of books, betrayed that it was a novel. On the cover was displayed the following title, printed in huge capitals : GOD, THE KING, HONOUR AND THE LADIES, BY DUCRAY DUMINIL,1814.

As he wrote, the man talked aloud, and Marius heard his words:

“To think that there is no equality even when we are dead! Look at Père Lachaise! The great, those who are rich, are in the upper part, in the avenue of the acacias, which is paved. They can go there in a carriage. The low, the poor, the unfortunate, they are put in the lower part, where there is mud up to the knees, in holes, in the wet. They are put there so that they may rot sooner! You cannot go to see them without sinking into the ground.”

Here he stopped, struck his fist on the table, and added, gnashing his teeth:

“Oh! I could eat the world!”

A big woman, who might have been forty years old or a hundred, was squatting near the fireplace, upon her bare feet.

She also was dressed only in a chemise and a knit skirt patched with pieces of old cloth. A coarse tow apron covered half the skirt. Although this woman was bent and drawn up into herself, it could be seen that she was very tall. She was a kind of giantess by the side of her husband. She had hideous hair, light red sprinkled with grey, that she pushed back from time to time with her huge shining hands which had flat nails.

Lying on the ground, at her side, wide open, was a volume of the same appearance as the other, and probably of the same novel.

Upon one of the pallets Marius could discern a sort of slender little wan girl seated, almost naked, with her feet hanging down, having the appearance neither of listening, nor of seeing, nor of living.

The younger sister, doubtless, of the one who had come to his room.

She appeared to be eleven or twelve years old. On examining her attentively, he saw that she must be fourteen. It was the child who, the evening before, on the boulevard, said:
“I cavalé, cavalé, cavalé!”

She was of that sickly species which long remain backward, then pushes forward rapidly, and all at once. These sorry human plants are produced by want. These poor creatures have neither childhood nor youth. At fifteen they appear to be twelve; at sixteen they appear to be twenty. To-day a little girl, to-morrow a woman. One would say that they leap through life, to have done with it sooner.

This being now had the appearance of a child.

Nothing, moreover, indicated the performance of any labour in this room; not a loom, not a spinning wheel, not a tool. In one corner a few dubious-looking scraps of iron. It was that gloomy idleness which follows despair, and which precedes the death-agony.

Marius looked for some time into that funereal interior, more fearful than the interior of a tomb; for here were felt the movements of a human soul, and the palpitation of life.

The garret, the cellar, the deep ditch, in which some of the wretched crawl at the bottom of the social edifice, are not the sepulchre itself; they are its antechamber; but like those rich men who display their greatest magnificence at the entrance of their palace, death, who is close at hand, seems to display his greatest wretchedness in this vestibule.

The man became silent, the woman did not speak, the girl did not seem to breathe. Marius could hear the pen scratching over the paper.

The man muttered out, without ceasing to write:—“Rabble! rabble! all is rabble!”

This variation upon the ejaculation of Solomon
^dt
drew a sigh from the woman.

“My darling, be calm,” said she. “Do not hurt yourself, dear. You are too good to write to all those people, my man.”

In poverty bodies hug close to each other as in the cold, but hearts grow distant. This woman, according to all appearance, must have loved this man with as much love as was in her; but probably, in the repeated mutual reproaches which grew out of the frightful distress that weighed upon them all, this love had become extinguished. She now felt towards her husband nothing more than the ashes of affection. Still the words of endearment, as often happens, had survived. She said to him:
Dear; my darling; my man,
etc., with her lips, her heart was silent.

The man returned to his writing.

MARIUS, with a heavy heart, was about to get down from the sort of observatory which he had improvised, when a sound attracted his attention, and induced him to remain in his place.

The door of the garret was hastily opened. The eldest daughter appeared upon the threshold. On her feet she had coarse men’s shoes, covered with mud, which had been spattered as high as her red ankles, and she was wrapped in a ragged old gown which Marius had not seen upon her an hour before, but which she had probably left at his door that she might inspire the more pity, and which she must have put on upon going out. She came in, pushed the door to behind her, stopped to take breath, for she was quite breathless, then cried with an expression of joy and triumph:

“He is coming!”

The father turned his eyes, the woman turned her head, the younger sister did not stir.

“Who?” asked the father.

“The gentleman!”

“The philanthropist?”

“Yes.”

“Of the church of Saint Jacques?”

“Yes.”

“That old man?”

“Yes.”

“He is going to come?”

“He is behind me.”

“You are sure?”

“I am sure.”

“There, true, he is coming?”

“He is coming in a fiacre.”

“In a fiacre. It is Rothschild?”

The father arose.

“How are you sure? if he is coming in a fiacre, how is it that you get here before him? you gave him the address, at least? you told him the last door at the end of the hall on the right? provided he does not make a mistake ? you found him at the church then? did he read my letter? what did he say to you?”

“Tut, tut, tut!” said the girl, “how you run on, goodman! I’ll tell you: I went into the church, he was at his usual place, I made a curtsey to him, and I gave him the letter, he read it and said to me: Where do you live, my child? I said: Monsieur, I will show you. He said to me: No, give me your address; my daughter has some purchases to make, I am going to take a carriage and I will get to your house as soon as you do. I gave him the address. When I told him the house, he appeared surprised and hesitated an instant, then he said: It is all the same, I will go. When mass was over, I saw him leave the church with his daughter. I saw them get into a fiacre. And I told him plainly the last door at the end of the hall on the right.”

“And how do you know that he will come?”

“I just saw the fiacre coming into the Rue du Petit Banquier. That is what made me run.”

“How do you know it is the same fiacre?”

“Because I had noticed the number.”

“What is the number?”

“Four hundred and forty.”

“Good, you are a clever girl.”

The girl looked resolutely at her father, and showing the shoes which she had on, said:

“A clever girl that may be, but I tell you that I shall never put on these shoes again, and that I will not do it, for health first, and then for hygiene. I know nothing more irritating than soles that squeak and go ghee, ghee, ghee, all along the street. I would rather go barefoot.”

“You are right,” answered the father, in a mild tone which contrasted with the rudeness of the young girl, “but they would not let you go into the churches; the poor must have shoes. People do not go to God’s house barefooted,” added he bitterly. Then returning to the subject which occupied his thoughts—

“And you are sure then, sure that he is coming?”

“He is at my heels,” said she.

The man sprang up. There was a sort of illumination on his face.

“Wife!” cried he, “you hear. Here is the philanthropist. Put out the fire.”

The astounded woman did not stir.

The father, with the agility of a mountebank, caught a broken pot which stood on the mantel, and threw some water upon the embers.

Then turning to his elder daughter:

“You! unbottom the chair!”

His daughter did not understand him at all.

He seized the chair, and with a kick he ruined the seat. His leg went through it.