บทที่ บทที่ 27 · THE BISHOP WORKS

The next morning at sunrise Monseigneur Bienvenu was strolling in his

garden. Madame Magloire ran up to him in utter consternation.

“Monseigneur, Monseigneur!” she exclaimed, “does your Grace know where

the basket of silver is?”

“Yes,” replied the Bishop.

“Jesus the Lord be blessed!” she resumed; “I did not know what had

become of it.”

The Bishop had just picked up the basket in a flower-bed. He presented

it to Madame Magloire.

“Here it is.”

“Well!” said she. “Nothing in it! And the silver?”

“Ah,” returned the Bishop, “so it is the silver which troubles you? I

don’t know where it is.”

“Great, good God! It is stolen! That man who was here last night has

stolen it.”

In a twinkling, with all the vivacity of an alert old woman, Madame

Magloire had rushed to the oratory, entered the alcove, and returned to

the Bishop. The Bishop had just bent down, and was sighing as he

examined a plant of cochlearia des Guillons, which the basket had

broken as it fell across the bed. He rose up at Madame Magloire’s cry.

“Monseigneur, the man is gone! The silver has been stolen!”

As she uttered this exclamation, her eyes fell upon a corner of the

garden, where traces of the wall having been scaled were visible. The

coping of the wall had been torn away.

“Stay! yonder is the way he went. He jumped over into Cochefilet Lane.

Ah, the abomination! He has stolen our silver!”

The Bishop remained silent for a moment; then he raised his grave eyes,

and said gently to Madame Magloire:—

“And, in the first place, was that silver ours?”

Madame Magloire was speechless. Another silence ensued; then the Bishop

went on:—

“Madame Magloire, I have for a long time detained that silver

wrongfully. It belonged to the poor. Who was that man? A poor man,

evidently.”

“Alas! Jesus!” returned Madame Magloire. “It is not for my sake, nor

for Mademoiselle’s. It makes no difference to us. But it is for the

sake of Monseigneur. What is Monseigneur to eat with now?”

The Bishop gazed at her with an air of amazement.

“Ah, come! Are there no such things as pewter forks and spoons?”

Madame Magloire shrugged her shoulders.

“Pewter has an odor.”

“Iron forks and spoons, then.”

Madame Magloire made an expressive grimace.

“Iron has a taste.”

“Very well,” said the Bishop; “wooden ones then.”

A few moments later he was breakfasting at the very table at which Jean

Valjean had sat on the previous evening. As he ate his breakfast,

Monseigneur Welcome remarked gayly to his sister, who said nothing, and

to Madame Magloire, who was grumbling under her breath, that one really

does not need either fork or spoon, even of wood, in order to dip a bit

of bread in a cup of milk.

“A pretty idea, truly,” said Madame Magloire to herself, as she went

and came, “to take in a man like that! and to lodge him close to one’s

self! And how fortunate that he did nothing but steal! Ah, mon Dieu! it

makes one shudder to think of it!”

As the brother and sister were about to rise from the table, there came

a knock at the door.

“Come in,” said the Bishop.

The door opened. A singular and violent group made its appearance on

the threshold. Three men were holding a fourth man by the collar. The

three men were gendarmes; the other was Jean Valjean.

A brigadier of gendarmes, who seemed to be in command of the group, was

standing near the door. He entered and advanced to the Bishop, making a

military salute.

“Monseigneur—” said he.

At this word, Jean Valjean, who was dejected and seemed overwhelmed,

raised his head with an air of stupefaction.

“Monseigneur!” he murmured. “So he is not the curé?”

“Silence!” said the gendarme. “He is Monseigneur the Bishop.”

In the meantime, Monseigneur Bienvenu had advanced as quickly as his

great age permitted.

“Ah! here you are!” he exclaimed, looking at Jean Valjean. “I am glad

to see you. Well, but how is this? I gave you the candlesticks too,

which are of silver like the rest, and for which you can certainly get

two hundred francs. Why did you not carry them away with your forks and

spoons?”

Jean Valjean opened his eyes wide, and stared at the venerable Bishop

with an expression which no human tongue can render any account of.

“Monseigneur,” said the brigadier of gendarmes, “so what this man said

is true, then? We came across him. He was walking like a man who is

running away. We stopped him to look into the matter. He had this

silver—”

“And he told you,” interposed the Bishop with a smile, “that it had

been given to him by a kind old fellow of a priest with whom he had

passed the night? I see how the matter stands. And you have brought him

back here? It is a mistake.”

“In that case,” replied the brigadier, “we can let him go?”

“Certainly,” replied the Bishop.

The gendarmes released Jean Valjean, who recoiled.

“Is it true that I am to be released?” he said, in an almost

inarticulate voice, and as though he were talking in his sleep.

“Yes, thou art released; dost thou not understand?” said one of the

gendarmes.

“My friend,” resumed the Bishop, “before you go, here are your

candlesticks. Take them.”

He stepped to the chimney-piece, took the two silver candlesticks, and

brought them to Jean Valjean. The two women looked on without uttering

a word, without a gesture, without a look which could disconcert the

Bishop.

Jean Valjean was trembling in every limb. He took the two candlesticks

mechanically, and with a bewildered air.

“Now,” said the Bishop, “go in peace. By the way, when you return, my

friend, it is not necessary to pass through the garden. You can always

enter and depart through the street door. It is never fastened with

anything but a latch, either by day or by night.”

Then, turning to the gendarmes:—

“You may retire, gentlemen.”

The gendarmes retired.

Jean Valjean was like a man on the point of fainting.

The Bishop drew near to him, and said in a low voice:—

“Do not forget, never forget, that you have promised to use this money

in becoming an honest man.”

Jean Valjean, who had no recollection of ever having promised anything,

remained speechless. The Bishop had emphasized the words when he

uttered them. He resumed with solemnity:—

“Jean Valjean, my brother, you no longer belong to evil, but to good.

It is your soul that I buy from you; I withdraw it from black thoughts

and the spirit of perdition, and I give it to God.”