Chapter Chapter 25 · THE MAN AROUSED

As the Cathedral clock struck two in the morning, Jean Valjean awoke.

What woke him was that his bed was too good. It was nearly twenty years

since he had slept in a bed, and, although he had not undressed, the

sensation was too novel not to disturb his slumbers.

He had slept more than four hours. His fatigue had passed away. He was

accustomed not to devote many hours to repose.

He opened his eyes and stared into the gloom which surrounded him; then

he closed them again, with the intention of going to sleep once more.

When many varied sensations have agitated the day, when various matters

preoccupy the mind, one falls asleep once, but not a second time. Sleep

comes more easily than it returns. This is what happened to Jean

Valjean. He could not get to sleep again, and he fell to thinking.

He was at one of those moments when the thoughts which one has in one’s

mind are troubled. There was a sort of dark confusion in his brain. His

memories of the olden time and of the immediate present floated there

pell-mell and mingled confusedly, losing their proper forms, becoming

disproportionately large, then suddenly disappearing, as in a muddy and

perturbed pool. Many thoughts occurred to him; but there was one which

kept constantly presenting itself afresh, and which drove away all

others. We will mention this thought at once: he had observed the six

sets of silver forks and spoons and the ladle which Madame Magloire had

placed on the table.

Those six sets of silver haunted him.—They were there.—A few paces

distant.—Just as he was traversing the adjoining room to reach the one

in which he then was, the old servant-woman had been in the act of

placing them in a little cupboard near the head of the bed.—He had

taken careful note of this cupboard.—On the right, as you entered from

the dining-room.—They were solid.—And old silver.—From the ladle one

could get at least two hundred francs.—Double what he had earned in

nineteen years.—It is true that he would have earned more if “the

_administration_ had not _robbed him_.”

His mind wavered for a whole hour in fluctuations with which there was

certainly mingled some struggle. Three o’clock struck. He opened his

eyes again, drew himself up abruptly into a sitting posture, stretched

out his arm and felt of his knapsack, which he had thrown down on a

corner of the alcove; then he hung his legs over the edge of the bed,

and placed his feet on the floor, and thus found himself, almost

without knowing it, seated on his bed.

He remained for a time thoughtfully in this attitude, which would have

been suggestive of something sinister for any one who had seen him thus

in the dark, the only person awake in that house where all were

sleeping. All of a sudden he stooped down, removed his shoes and placed

them softly on the mat beside the bed; then he resumed his thoughtful

attitude, and became motionless once more.

Throughout this hideous meditation, the thoughts which we have above

indicated moved incessantly through his brain; entered, withdrew,

re-entered, and in a manner oppressed him; and then he thought, also,

without knowing why, and with the mechanical persistence of reverie, of

a convict named Brevet, whom he had known in the galleys, and whose

trousers had been upheld by a single suspender of knitted cotton. The

checkered pattern of that suspender recurred incessantly to his mind.

He remained in this situation, and would have so remained indefinitely,

even until daybreak, had not the clock struck one—the half or quarter

hour. It seemed to him that that stroke said to him, “Come on!”

He rose to his feet, hesitated still another moment, and listened; all

was quiet in the house; then he walked straight ahead, with short

steps, to the window, of which he caught a glimpse. The night was not

very dark; there was a full moon, across which coursed large clouds

driven by the wind. This created, outdoors, alternate shadow and gleams

of light, eclipses, then bright openings of the clouds; and indoors a

sort of twilight. This twilight, sufficient to enable a person to see

his way, intermittent on account of the clouds, resembled the sort of

livid light which falls through an air-hole in a cellar, before which

the passers-by come and go. On arriving at the window, Jean Valjean

examined it. It had no grating; it opened in the garden and was

fastened, according to the fashion of the country, only by a small pin.

He opened it; but as a rush of cold and piercing air penetrated the

room abruptly, he closed it again immediately. He scrutinized the

garden with that attentive gaze which studies rather than looks. The

garden was enclosed by a tolerably low white wall, easy to climb. Far

away, at the extremity, he perceived tops of trees, spaced at regular

intervals, which indicated that the wall separated the garden from an

avenue or lane planted with trees.

Having taken this survey, he executed a movement like that of a man who

has made up his mind, strode to his alcove, grasped his knapsack,

opened it, fumbled in it, pulled out of it something which he placed on

the bed, put his shoes into one of his pockets, shut the whole thing up

again, threw the knapsack on his shoulders, put on his cap, drew the

visor down over his eyes, felt for his cudgel, went and placed it in

the angle of the window; then returned to the bed, and resolutely

seized the object which he had deposited there. It resembled a short

bar of iron, pointed like a pike at one end. It would have been

difficult to distinguish in that darkness for what employment that bit

of iron could have been designed. Perhaps it was a lever; possibly it

was a club.

In the daytime it would have been possible to recognize it as nothing

more than a miner’s candlestick. Convicts were, at that period,

sometimes employed in quarrying stone from the lofty hills which

environ Toulon, and it was not rare for them to have miners’ tools at

their command. These miners’ candlesticks are of massive iron,

terminated at the lower extremity by a point, by means of which they

are stuck into the rock.

He took the candlestick in his right hand; holding his breath and

trying to deaden the sound of his tread, he directed his steps to the

door of the adjoining room, occupied by the Bishop, as we already know.

On arriving at this door, he found it ajar. The Bishop had not closed

it.