第 九十三 章 · THE ANKLE-CHAIN MUST HAVE UNDERGONE A CERTAIN PREPARATORY

MANIPULATION TO BE THUS BROKEN WITH A BLOW FROM A HAMMER

Towards the end of October, in that same year, 1823, the inhabitants of

Toulon beheld the entry into their port, after heavy weather, and for

the purpose of repairing some damages, of the ship _Orion_, which was

employed later at Brest as a school-ship, and which then formed a part

of the Mediterranean squadron.

This vessel, battered as it was,—for the sea had handled it

roughly,—produced a fine effect as it entered the roads. It flew some

colors which procured for it the regulation salute of eleven guns,

which it returned, shot for shot; total, twenty-two. It has been

calculated that what with salvos, royal and military politenesses,

courteous exchanges of uproar, signals of etiquette, formalities of

roadsteads and citadels, sunrises and sunsets, saluted every day by all

fortresses and all ships of war, openings and closings of ports, etc.,

the civilized world, discharged all over the earth, in the course of

four and twenty hours, one hundred and fifty thousand useless shots. At

six francs the shot, that comes to nine hundred thousand francs a day,

three hundred millions a year, which vanish in smoke. This is a mere

detail. All this time the poor were dying of hunger.

The year 1823 was what the Restoration called “the epoch of the Spanish

war.”

This war contained many events in one, and a quantity of peculiarities.

A grand family affair for the house of Bourbon; the branch of France

succoring and protecting the branch of Madrid, that is to say,

performing an act devolving on the elder; an apparent return to our

national traditions, complicated by servitude and by subjection to the

cabinets of the North; M. le Duc d’Angoulême, surnamed by the liberal

sheets _the hero of Andujar_, compressing in a triumphal attitude that

was somewhat contradicted by his peaceable air, the ancient and very

powerful terrorism of the Holy Office at variance with the chimerical

terrorism of the liberals; the _sansculottes_ resuscitated, to the

great terror of dowagers, under the name of _descamisados_; monarchy

opposing an obstacle to progress described as anarchy; the theories of

’89 roughly interrupted in the sap; a European halt, called to the

French idea, which was making the tour of the world; beside the son of

France as generalissimo, the Prince de Carignan, afterwards Charles

Albert, enrolling himself in that crusade of kings against people as a

volunteer, with grenadier epaulets of red worsted; the soldiers of the

Empire setting out on a fresh campaign, but aged, saddened, after eight

years of repose, and under the white cockade; the tricolored standard

waved abroad by a heroic handful of Frenchmen, as the white standard

had been thirty years earlier at Coblentz; monks mingled with our

troops; the spirit of liberty and of novelty brought to its senses by

bayonets; principles slaughtered by cannonades; France undoing by her

arms that which she had done by her mind; in addition to this, hostile

leaders sold, soldiers hesitating, cities besieged by millions; no

military perils, and yet possible explosions, as in every mine which is

surprised and invaded; but little bloodshed, little honor won, shame

for some, glory for no one. Such was this war, made by the princes

descended from Louis XIV., and conducted by generals who had been under

Napoleon. Its sad fate was to recall neither the grand war nor grand

politics.

Some feats of arms were serious; the taking of the Trocadéro, among

others, was a fine military action; but after all, we repeat, the

trumpets of this war give back a cracked sound, the whole effect was

suspicious; history approves of France for making a difficulty about

accepting this false triumph. It seemed evident that certain Spanish

officers charged with resistance yielded too easily; the idea of

corruption was connected with the victory; it appears as though

generals and not battles had been won, and the conquering soldier

returned humiliated. A debasing war, in short, in which the _Bank of

France_ could be read in the folds of the flag.

Soldiers of the war of 1808, on whom Saragossa had fallen in formidable

ruin, frowned in 1823 at the easy surrender of citadels, and began to

regret Palafox. It is the nature of France to prefer to have

Rostopchine rather than Ballesteros in front of her.

From a still more serious point of view, and one which it is also

proper to insist upon here, this war, which wounded the military spirit

of France, enraged the democratic spirit. It was an enterprise of

enthralment. In that campaign, the object of the French soldier, the

son of democracy, was the conquest of a yoke for others. A hideous

contradiction. France is made to arouse the soul of nations, not to

stifle it. All the revolutions of Europe since 1792 are the French

Revolution: liberty darts rays from France. That is a solar fact. Blind

is he who will not see! It was Bonaparte who said it.

The war of 1823, an outrage on the generous Spanish nation, was then,

at the same time, an outrage on the French Revolution. It was France

who committed this monstrous violence; by foul means, for, with the

exception of wars of liberation, everything that armies do is by foul

means. The words _passive obedience_ indicate this. An army is a

strange masterpiece of combination where force results from an enormous

sum of impotence. Thus is war, made by humanity against humanity,

despite humanity, explained.

As for the Bourbons, the war of 1823 was fatal to them. They took it

for a success. They did not perceive the danger that lies in having an

idea slain to order. They went astray, in their innocence, to such a

degree that they introduced the immense enfeeblement of a crime into

their establishment as an element of strength. The spirit of the ambush

entered into their politics. 1830 had its germ in 1823. The Spanish

campaign became in their counsels an argument for force and for

adventures by right Divine. France, having re-established _el rey

netto_ in Spain, might well have re-established the absolute king at

home. They fell into the alarming error of taking the obedience of the

soldier for the consent of the nation. Such confidence is the ruin of

thrones. It is not permitted to fall asleep, either in the shadow of a

machineel tree, nor in the shadow of an army.

Let us return to the ship _Orion_.

During the operations of the army commanded by the prince

generalissimo, a squadron had been cruising in the Mediterranean. We

have just stated that the _Orion_ belonged to this fleet, and that

accidents of the sea had brought it into port at Toulon.

The presence of a vessel of war in a port has something about it which

attracts and engages a crowd. It is because it is great, and the crowd

loves what is great.

A ship of the line is one of the most magnificent combinations of the

genius of man with the powers of nature.

A ship of the line is composed, at the same time, of the heaviest and

the lightest of possible matter, for it deals at one and the same time

with three forms of substance,—solid, liquid, and fluid,—and it must do

battle with all three. It has eleven claws of iron with which to seize

the granite on the bottom of the sea, and more wings and more antennæ

than winged insects, to catch the wind in the clouds. Its breath pours

out through its hundred and twenty cannons as through enormous

trumpets, and replies proudly to the thunder. The ocean seeks to lead

it astray in the alarming sameness of its billows, but the vessel has

its soul, its compass, which counsels it and always shows it the north.

In the blackest nights, its lanterns supply the place of the stars.

Thus, against the wind, it has its cordage and its canvas; against the

water, wood; against the rocks, its iron, brass, and lead; against the

shadows, its light; against immensity, a needle.

If one wishes to form an idea of all those gigantic proportions which,

taken as a whole, constitute the ship of the line, one has only to

enter one of the six-story covered construction stocks, in the ports of

Brest or Toulon. The vessels in process of construction are under a

bell-glass there, as it were. This colossal beam is a yard; that great

column of wood which stretches out on the earth as far as the eye can

reach is the main-mast. Taking it from its root in the stocks to its

tip in the clouds, it is sixty fathoms long, and its diameter at its

base is three feet. The English main-mast rises to a height of two

hundred and seventeen feet above the water-line. The navy of our

fathers employed cables, ours employs chains. The simple pile of chains

on a ship of a hundred guns is four feet high, twenty feet in breadth,

and eight feet in depth. And how much wood is required to make this

ship? Three thousand cubic metres. It is a floating forest.

And moreover, let this be borne in mind, it is only a question here of

the military vessel of forty years ago, of the simple sailing-vessel;

steam, then in its infancy, has since added new miracles to that

prodigy which is called a war vessel. At the present time, for example,

the mixed vessel with a screw is a surprising machine, propelled by

three thousand square metres of canvas and by an engine of two thousand

five hundred horse-power.

Not to mention these new marvels, the ancient vessel of Christopher

Columbus and of De Ruyter is one of the masterpieces of man. It is as

inexhaustible in force as is the Infinite in gales; it stores up the

wind in its sails, it is precise in the immense vagueness of the

billows, it floats, and it reigns.

There comes an hour, nevertheless, when the gale breaks that sixty-foot

yard like a straw, when the wind bends that mast four hundred feet

tall, when that anchor, which weighs tens of thousands, is twisted in

the jaws of the waves like a fisherman’s hook in the jaws of a pike,

when those monstrous cannons utter plaintive and futile roars, which

the hurricane bears forth into the void and into night, when all that

power and all that majesty are engulfed in a power and majesty which

are superior.

Every time that immense force is displayed to culminate in an immense

feebleness it affords men food for thought. Hence in the ports curious

people abound around these marvellous machines of war and of

navigation, without being able to explain perfectly to themselves why.

Every day, accordingly, from morning until night, the quays, sluices,

and the jetties of the port of Toulon were covered with a multitude of

idlers and loungers, as they say in Paris, whose business consisted in

staring at the _Orion_.

The _Orion_ was a ship that had been ailing for a long time; in the

course of its previous cruises thick layers of barnacles had collected

on its keel to such a degree as to deprive it of half its speed; it had

gone into the dry dock the year before this, in order to have the

barnacles scraped off, then it had put to sea again; but this cleaning

had affected the bolts of the keel: in the neighborhood of the Balearic

Isles the sides had been strained and had opened; and, as the plating

in those days was not of sheet iron, the vessel had sprung a leak. A

violent equinoctial gale had come up, which had first staved in a

grating and a porthole on the larboard side, and damaged the

foretop-gallant-shrouds; in consequence of these injuries, the _Orion_

had run back to Toulon.

It anchored near the Arsenal; it was fully equipped, and repairs were

begun. The hull had received no damage on the starboard, but some of

the planks had been unnailed here and there, according to custom, to

permit of air entering the hold.

One morning the crowd which was gazing at it witnessed an accident.

[Illustration: The Ship Orion, an Accident]

The crew was busy bending the sails; the topman, who had to take the

upper corner of the main-top-sail on the starboard, lost his balance;

he was seen to waver; the multitude thronging the Arsenal quay uttered

a cry; the man’s head overbalanced his body; the man fell around the

yard, with his hands outstretched towards the abyss; on his way he

seized the footrope, first with one hand, then with the other, and

remained hanging from it: the sea lay below him at a dizzy depth; the

shock of his fall had imparted to the foot-rope a violent swinging

motion; the man swayed back and forth at the end of that rope, like a

stone in a sling.

It was incurring a frightful risk to go to his assistance; not one of

the sailors, all fishermen of the coast, recently levied for the

service, dared to attempt it. In the meantime, the unfortunate topman

was losing his strength; his anguish could not be discerned on his

face, but his exhaustion was visible in every limb; his arms were

contracted in horrible twitchings; every effort which he made to

re-ascend served but to augment the oscillations of the foot-rope; he

did not shout, for fear of exhausting his strength. All were awaiting

the minute when he should release his hold on the rope, and, from

instant to instant, heads were turned aside that his fall might not be

seen. There are moments when a bit of rope, a pole, the branch of a

tree, is life itself, and it is a terrible thing to see a living being

detach himself from it and fall like a ripe fruit.

All at once a man was seen climbing into the rigging with the agility

of a tiger-cat; this man was dressed in red; he was a convict; he wore

a green cap; he was a life convict. On arriving on a level with the

top, a gust of wind carried away his cap, and allowed a perfectly white

head to be seen: he was not a young man.

A convict employed on board with a detachment from the galleys had, in

fact, at the very first instant, hastened to the officer of the watch,

and, in the midst of the consternation and the hesitation of the crew,

while all the sailors were trembling and drawing back, he had asked the

officer’s permission to risk his life to save the topman; at an

affirmative sign from the officer he had broken the chain riveted to

his ankle with one blow of a hammer, then he had caught up a rope, and

had dashed into the rigging: no one noticed, at the instant, with what

ease that chain had been broken; it was only later on that the incident

was recalled.

In a twinkling he was on the yard; he paused for a few seconds and

appeared to be measuring it with his eye; these seconds, during which

the breeze swayed the topman at the extremity of a thread, seemed

centuries to those who were looking on. At last, the convict raised his

eyes to heaven and advanced a step: the crowd drew a long breath. He

was seen to run out along the yard: on arriving at the point, he

fastened the rope which he had brought to it, and allowed the other end

to hang down, then he began to descend the rope, hand over hand, and

then,—and the anguish was indescribable,—instead of one man suspended

over the gulf, there were two.

One would have said it was a spider coming to seize a fly, only here

the spider brought life, not death. Ten thousand glances were fastened

on this group; not a cry, not a word; the same tremor contracted every

brow; all mouths held their breath as though they feared to add the

slightest puff to the wind which was swaying the two unfortunate men.

In the meantime, the convict had succeeded in lowering himself to a

position near the sailor. It was high time; one minute more, and the

exhausted and despairing man would have allowed himself to fall into

the abyss. The convict had moored him securely with the cord to which

he clung with one hand, while he was working with the other. At last,

he was seen to climb back on the yard, and to drag the sailor up after

him; he held him there a moment to allow him to recover his strength,

then he grasped him in his arms and carried him, walking on the yard

himself to the cap, and from there to the main-top, where he left him

in the hands of his comrades.

At that moment the crowd broke into applause: old convict-sergeants

among them wept, and women embraced each other on the quay, and all

voices were heard to cry with a sort of tender rage, “Pardon for that

man!”

He, in the meantime, had immediately begun to make his descent to

rejoin his detachment. In order to reach them the more speedily, he

dropped into the rigging, and ran along one of the lower yards; all

eyes were following him. At a certain moment fear assailed them;

whether it was that he was fatigued, or that his head turned, they

thought they saw him hesitate and stagger. All at once the crowd

uttered a loud shout: the convict had fallen into the sea.

The fall was perilous. The frigate _Algésiras_ was anchored alongside

the _Orion_, and the poor convict had fallen between the two vessels:

it was to be feared that he would slip under one or the other of them.

Four men flung themselves hastily into a boat; the crowd cheered them

on; anxiety again took possession of all souls; the man had not risen

to the surface; he had disappeared in the sea without leaving a ripple,

as though he had fallen into a cask of oil: they sounded, they dived.

In vain. The search was continued until the evening: they did not even

find the body.

On the following day the Toulon newspaper printed these lines:—

“Nov. 17, 1823. Yesterday, a convict belonging to the detachment on

board of the _Orion_, on his return from rendering assistance to a

sailor, fell into the sea and was drowned. The body has not yet been

found; it is supposed that it is entangled among the piles of the

Arsenal point: this man was committed under the number 9,430, and his

name was Jean Valjean.”

BOOK THIRD—ACCOMPLISHMENT OF THE PROMISE MADE TO THE DEAD WOMAN