บทที่ บทที่ 241 · THE CHAIN-GANG

Jean Valjean was the more unhappy of the two. Youth, even in its

sorrows, always possesses its own peculiar radiance.

At times, Jean Valjean suffered so greatly that he became puerile. It

is the property of grief to cause the childish side of man to reappear.

He had an unconquerable conviction that Cosette was escaping from him.

He would have liked to resist, to retain her, to arouse her enthusiasm

by some external and brilliant matter. These ideas, puerile, as we have

just said, and at the same time senile, conveyed to him, by their very

childishness, a tolerably just notion of the influence of gold lace on

the imaginations of young girls. He once chanced to see a general on

horseback, in full uniform, pass along the street, Comte Coutard, the

commandant of Paris. He envied that gilded man; what happiness it would

be, he said to himself, if he could put on that suit which was an

incontestable thing; and if Cosette could behold him thus, she would be

dazzled, and when he had Cosette on his arm and passed the gates of the

Tuileries, the guard would present arms to him, and that would suffice

for Cosette, and would dispel her idea of looking at young men.

An unforeseen shock was added to these sad reflections.

In the isolated life which they led, and since they had come to dwell

in the Rue Plumet, they had contracted one habit. They sometimes took a

pleasure trip to see the sun rise, a mild species of enjoyment which

befits those who are entering life and those who are quitting it.

For those who love solitude, a walk in the early morning is equivalent

to a stroll by night, with the cheerfulness of nature added. The

streets are deserted and the birds are singing. Cosette, a bird

herself, liked to rise early. These matutinal excursions were planned

on the preceding evening. He proposed, and she agreed. It was arranged

like a plot, they set out before daybreak, and these trips were so many

small delights for Cosette. These innocent eccentricities please young

people.

Jean Valjean’s inclination led him, as we have seen, to the least

frequented spots, to solitary nooks, to forgotten places. There then

existed, in the vicinity of the barriers of Paris, a sort of poor

meadows, which were almost confounded with the city, where grew in

summer sickly grain, and which, in autumn, after the harvest had been

gathered, presented the appearance, not of having been reaped, but

peeled. Jean Valjean loved to haunt these fields. Cosette was not bored

there. It meant solitude to him and liberty to her. There, she became a

little girl once more, she could run and almost play; she took off her

hat, laid it on Jean Valjean’s knees, and gathered bunches of flowers.

She gazed at the butterflies on the flowers, but did not catch them;

gentleness and tenderness are born with love, and the young girl who

cherishes within her breast a trembling and fragile ideal has mercy on

the wing of a butterfly. She wove garlands of poppies, which she placed

on her head, and which, crossed and penetrated with sunlight, glowing

until they flamed, formed for her rosy face a crown of burning embers.

Even after their life had grown sad, they kept up their custom of early

strolls.

One morning in October, therefore, tempted by the serene perfection of

the autumn of 1831, they set out, and found themselves at break of day

near the Barrière du Maine. It was not dawn, it was daybreak; a

delightful and stern moment. A few constellations here and there in the

deep, pale azure, the earth all black, the heavens all white, a quiver

amid the blades of grass, everywhere the mysterious chill of twilight.

A lark, which seemed mingled with the stars, was carolling at a

prodigious height, and one would have declared that that hymn of

pettiness calmed immensity. In the East, the Val-de-Grâce projected its

dark mass on the clear horizon with the sharpness of steel; Venus

dazzlingly brilliant was rising behind that dome and had the air of a

soul making its escape from a gloomy edifice.

All was peace and silence; there was no one on the road; a few stray

laborers, of whom they caught barely a glimpse, were on their way to

their work along the side-paths.

Jean Valjean was sitting in a cross-walk on some planks deposited at

the gate of a timber-yard. His face was turned towards the highway, his

back towards the light; he had forgotten the sun which was on the point

of rising; he had sunk into one of those profound absorptions in which

the mind becomes concentrated, which imprison even the eye, and which

are equivalent to four walls. There are meditations which may be called

vertical; when one is at the bottom of them, time is required to return

to earth. Jean Valjean had plunged into one of these reveries. He was

thinking of Cosette, of the happiness that was possible if nothing came

between him and her, of the light with which she filled his life, a

light which was but the emanation of her soul. He was almost happy in

his reverie. Cosette, who was standing beside him, was gazing at the

clouds as they turned rosy.

All at once Cosette exclaimed: “Father, I should think some one was

coming yonder.” Jean Valjean raised his eyes.

Cosette was right. The causeway which leads to the ancient Barrière du

Maine is a prolongation, as the reader knows, of the Rue de Sèvres, and

is cut at right angles by the inner boulevard. At the elbow of the

causeway and the boulevard, at the spot where it branches, they heard a

noise which it was difficult to account for at that hour, and a sort of

confused pile made its appearance. Some shapeless thing which was

coming from the boulevard was turning into the road.

It grew larger, it seemed to move in an orderly manner, though it was

bristling and quivering; it seemed to be a vehicle, but its load could

not be distinctly made out. There were horses, wheels, shouts; whips

were cracking. By degrees the outlines became fixed, although bathed in

shadows. It was a vehicle, in fact, which had just turned from the

boulevard into the highway, and which was directing its course towards

the barrier near which sat Jean Valjean; a second, of the same aspect,

followed, then a third, then a fourth; seven chariots made their

appearance in succession, the heads of the horses touching the rear of

the wagon in front. Figures were moving on these vehicles, flashes were

visible through the dusk as though there were naked swords there, a

clanking became audible which resembled the rattling of chains, and as

this something advanced, the sound of voices waxed louder, and it

turned into a terrible thing such as emerges from the cave of dreams.

As it drew nearer, it assumed a form, and was outlined behind the trees

with the pallid hue of an apparition; the mass grew white; the day,

which was slowly dawning, cast a wan light on this swarming heap which

was at once both sepulchral and living, the heads of the figures turned

into the faces of corpses, and this is what it proved to be:—

Seven wagons were driving in a file along the road. The first six were

singularly constructed. They resembled coopers’ drays; they consisted

of long ladders placed on two wheels and forming barrows at their rear

extremities. Each dray, or rather let us say, each ladder, was attached

to four horses harnessed tandem. On these ladders strange clusters of

men were being drawn. In the faint light, these men were to be divined

rather than seen. Twenty-four on each vehicle, twelve on a side, back

to back, facing the passers-by, their legs dangling in the air,—this

was the manner in which these men were travelling, and behind their

backs they had something which clanked, and which was a chain, and on

their necks something which shone, and which was an iron collar. Each

man had his collar, but the chain was for all; so that if these four

and twenty men had occasion to alight from the dray and walk, they were

seized with a sort of inexorable unity, and were obliged to wind over

the ground with the chain for a backbone, somewhat after the fashion of

millepeds. In the back and front of each vehicle, two men armed with

muskets stood erect, each holding one end of the chain under his foot.

The iron necklets were square. The seventh vehicle, a huge rack-sided

baggage wagon, without a hood, had four wheels and six horses, and

carried a sonorous pile of iron boilers, cast-iron pots, braziers, and

chains, among which were mingled several men who were pinioned and

stretched at full length, and who seemed to be ill. This wagon, all

lattice-work, was garnished with dilapidated hurdles which appeared to

have served for former punishments. These vehicles kept to the middle

of the road. On each side marched a double hedge of guards of infamous

aspect, wearing three-cornered hats, like the soldiers under the

Directory, shabby, covered with spots and holes, muffled in uniforms of

veterans and the trousers of undertakers’ men, half gray, half blue,

which were almost hanging in rags, with red epaulets, yellow shoulder

belts, short sabres, muskets, and cudgels; they were a species of

soldier-blackguards. These myrmidons seemed composed of the abjectness

of the beggar and the authority of the executioner. The one who

appeared to be their chief held a postilion’s whip in his hand. All

these details, blurred by the dimness of dawn, became more and more

clearly outlined as the light increased. At the head and in the rear of

the convoy rode mounted gendarmes, serious and with sword in fist.

This procession was so long that when the first vehicle reached the

barrier, the last was barely debauching from the boulevard. A throng,

sprung, it is impossible to say whence, and formed in a twinkling, as

is frequently the case in Paris, pressed forward from both sides of the

road and looked on. In the neighboring lanes the shouts of people

calling to each other and the wooden shoes of market-gardeners

hastening up to gaze were audible.

The men massed upon the drays allowed themselves to be jolted along in

silence. They were livid with the chill of morning. They all wore linen

trousers, and their bare feet were thrust into wooden shoes. The rest

of their costume was a fantasy of wretchedness. Their accoutrements

were horribly incongruous; nothing is more funereal than the harlequin

in rags. Battered felt hats, tarpaulin caps, hideous woollen nightcaps,

and, side by side with a short blouse, a black coat broken at the

elbow; many wore women’s headgear, others had baskets on their heads;

hairy breasts were visible, and through the rent in their garments

tattooed designs could be descried; temples of Love, flaming hearts,

Cupids; eruptions and unhealthy red blotches could also be seen. Two or

three had a straw rope attached to the cross-bar of the dray, and

suspended under them like a stirrup, which supported their feet. One of

them held in his hand and raised to his mouth something which had the

appearance of a black stone and which he seemed to be gnawing; it was

bread which he was eating. There were no eyes there which were not

either dry, dulled, or flaming with an evil light. The escort troop

cursed, the men in chains did not utter a syllable; from time to time

the sound of a blow became audible as the cudgels descended on

shoulder-blades or skulls; some of these men were yawning; their rags

were terrible; their feet hung down, their shoulders oscillated, their

heads clashed together, their fetters clanked, their eyes glared

ferociously, their fists clenched or fell open inertly like the hands

of corpses; in the rear of the convoy ran a band of children screaming

with laughter.

This file of vehicles, whatever its nature was, was mournful. It was

evident that to-morrow, that an hour hence, a pouring rain might

descend, that it might be followed by another and another, and that

their dilapidated garments would be drenched, that once soaked, these

men would not get dry again, that once chilled, they would not again

get warm, that their linen trousers would be glued to their bones by

the downpour, that the water would fill their shoes, that no lashes

from the whips would be able to prevent their jaws from chattering,

that the chain would continue to bind them by the neck, that their legs

would continue to dangle, and it was impossible not to shudder at the

sight of these human beings thus bound and passive beneath the cold

clouds of autumn, and delivered over to the rain, to the blast, to all

the furies of the air, like trees and stones.

Blows from the cudgel were not omitted even in the case of the sick

men, who lay there knotted with ropes and motionless on the seventh

wagon, and who appeared to have been tossed there like sacks filled

with misery.

Suddenly, the sun made its appearance; the immense light of the Orient

burst forth, and one would have said that it had set fire to all those

ferocious heads. Their tongues were unloosed; a conflagration of grins,

oaths, and songs exploded. The broad horizontal sheet of light severed

the file in two parts, illuminating heads and bodies, leaving feet and

wheels in the obscurity. Thoughts made their appearance on these faces;

it was a terrible moment; visible demons with their masks removed,

fierce souls laid bare. Though lighted up, this wild throng remained in

gloom. Some, who were gay, had in their mouths quills through which

they blew vermin over the crowd, picking out the women; the dawn

accentuated these lamentable profiles with the blackness of its

shadows; there was not one of these creatures who was not deformed by

reason of wretchedness; and the whole was so monstrous that one would

have said that the sun’s brilliancy had been changed into the glare of

the lightning. The wagon-load which headed the line had struck up a

song, and were shouting at the top of their voices with a haggard

joviality, a pot-pourri by Desaugiers, then famous, called _The

Vestal_; the trees shivered mournfully; in the cross-lanes,

countenances of bourgeois listened in an idiotic delight to these

coarse strains droned by spectres.

All sorts of distress met in this procession as in chaos; here were to

be found the facial angles of every sort of beast, old men, youths,

bald heads, gray beards, cynical monstrosities, sour resignation,

savage grins, senseless attitudes, snouts surmounted by caps, heads

like those of young girls with corkscrew curls on the temples,

infantile visages, and by reason of that, horrible thin skeleton faces,

to which death alone was lacking. On the first cart was a negro, who

had been a slave, in all probability, and who could make a comparison

of his chains. The frightful leveller from below, shame, had passed

over these brows; at that degree of abasement, the last transformations

were suffered by all in their extremest depths, and ignorance,

converted into dulness, was the equal of intelligence converted into

despair. There was no choice possible between these men who appeared to

the eye as the flower of the mud. It was evident that the person who

had had the ordering of that unclean procession had not classified

them. These beings had been fettered and coupled pell-mell, in

alphabetical disorder, probably, and loaded hap-hazard on those carts.

Nevertheless, horrors, when grouped together, always end by evolving a

result; all additions of wretched men give a sum total, each chain

exhaled a common soul, and each dray-load had its own physiognomy. By

the side of the one where they were singing, there was one where they

were howling; a third where they were begging; one could be seen in

which they were gnashing their teeth; another load menaced the

spectators, another blasphemed God; the last was as silent as the tomb.

Dante would have thought that he beheld his seven circles of hell on

the march. The march of the damned to their tortures, performed in

sinister wise, not on the formidable and flaming chariot of the

Apocalypse, but, what was more mournful than that, on the gibbet cart.

One of the guards, who had a hook on the end of his cudgel, made a

pretence from time to time, of stirring up this mass of human filth. An

old woman in the crowd pointed them out to her little boy five years

old, and said to him: “Rascal, let that be a warning to you!”

As the songs and blasphemies increased, the man who appeared to be the

captain of the escort cracked his whip, and at that signal a fearful

dull and blind flogging, which produced the sound of hail, fell upon

the seven dray-loads; many roared and foamed at the mouth; which

redoubled the delight of the street urchins who had hastened up, a

swarm of flies on these wounds.

Jean Valjean’s eyes had assumed a frightful expression. They were no

longer eyes; they were those deep and glassy objects which replace the

glance in the case of certain wretched men, which seem unconscious of

reality, and in which flames the reflection of terrors and of

catastrophes. He was not looking at a spectacle, he was seeing a

vision. He tried to rise, to flee, to make his escape; he could not

move his feet. Sometimes, the things that you see seize upon you and

hold you fast. He remained nailed to the spot, petrified, stupid,

asking himself, athwart confused and inexpressible anguish, what this

sepulchral persecution signified, and whence had come that pandemonium

which was pursuing him. All at once, he raised his hand to his brow, a

gesture habitual to those whose memory suddenly returns; he remembered

that this was, in fact, the usual itinerary, that it was customary to

make this detour in order to avoid all possibility of encountering

royalty on the road to Fontainebleau, and that, five and thirty years

before, he had himself passed through that barrier.

Cosette was no less terrified, but in a different way. She did not

understand; what she beheld did not seem to her to be possible; at

length she cried:—

“Father! What are those men in those carts?”

Jean Valjean replied: “Convicts.”

“Whither are they going?”

“To the galleys.”

At that moment, the cudgelling, multiplied by a hundred hands, became

zealous, blows with the flat of the sword were mingled with it, it was

a perfect storm of whips and clubs; the convicts bent before it, a

hideous obedience was evoked by the torture, and all held their peace,

darting glances like chained wolves.

Cosette trembled in every limb; she resumed:—

“Father, are they still men?”

“Sometimes,” answered the unhappy man.

It was the chain-gang, in fact, which had set out before daybreak from

Bicêtre, and had taken the road to Mans in order to avoid

Fontainebleau, where the King then was. This caused the horrible

journey to last three or four days longer; but torture may surely be

prolonged with the object of sparing the royal personage a sight of it.

Jean Valjean returned home utterly overwhelmed. Such encounters are

shocks, and the memory that they leave behind them resembles a thorough

shaking up.

Nevertheless, Jean Valjean did not observe that, on his way back to the

Rue de Babylone with Cosette, the latter was plying him with other

questions on the subject of what they had just seen; perhaps he was too

much absorbed in his own dejection to notice her words and reply to

them. But when Cosette was leaving him in the evening, to betake

herself to bed, he heard her say in a low voice, and as though talking

to herself: “It seems to me, that if I were to find one of those men in

my pathway, oh, my God, I should die merely from the sight of him close

at hand.”

Fortunately, chance ordained that on the morrow of that tragic day,

there was some official solemnity apropos of I know not what,—fêtes in

Paris, a review in the Champ de Mars, jousts on the Seine, theatrical

performances in the Champs-Élysées, fireworks at the Arc de l’Étoile,

illuminations everywhere. Jean Valjean did violence to his habits, and

took Cosette to see these rejoicings, for the purpose of diverting her

from the memory of the day before, and of effacing, beneath the smiling

tumult of all Paris, the abominable thing which had passed before her.

The review with which the festival was spiced made the presence of

uniforms perfectly natural; Jean Valjean donned his uniform of a

national guard with the vague inward feeling of a man who is betaking

himself to shelter. However, this trip seemed to attain its object.

Cosette, who made it her law to please her father, and to whom,

moreover, all spectacles were a novelty, accepted this diversion with

the light and easy good grace of youth, and did not pout too

disdainfully at that flutter of enjoyment called a public fête; so that

Jean Valjean was able to believe that he had succeeded, and that no

trace of that hideous vision remained.

Some days later, one morning, when the sun was shining brightly, and

they were both on the steps leading to the garden, another infraction

of the rules which Jean Valjean seemed to have imposed upon himself,

and to the custom of remaining in her chamber which melancholy had

caused Cosette to adopt, Cosette, in a wrapper, was standing erect in

that negligent attire of early morning which envelops young girls in an

adorable way and which produces the effect of a cloud drawn over a

star; and, with her head bathed in light, rosy after a good sleep,

submitting to the gentle glances of the tender old man, she was picking

a daisy to pieces. Cosette did not know the delightful legend, _I love

a little, passionately, etc_.—who was there who could have taught her?

She was handling the flower instinctively, innocently, without a

suspicion that to pluck a daisy apart is to do the same by a heart. If

there were a fourth, and smiling Grace called Melancholy, she would

have worn the air of that Grace. Jean Valjean was fascinated by the

contemplation of those tiny fingers on that flower, and forgetful of

everything in the radiance emitted by that child. A red-breast was

warbling in the thicket, on one side. White cloudlets floated across

the sky, so gayly, that one would have said that they had just been set

at liberty. Cosette went on attentively tearing the leaves from her

flower; she seemed to be thinking about something; but whatever it was,

it must be something charming; all at once she turned her head over her

shoulder with the delicate languor of a swan, and said to Jean Valjean:

“Father, what are the galleys like?”

BOOK FOURTH—SUCCOR FROM BELOW MAY TURN OUT TO BE SUCCOR FROM ON HIGH