Kabanata Kabanata 26 · 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

armchair 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.

[Illustration: The Fall]

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.