Book 4, Chapter 1, of Les Miserables, translated by Isabelle F. Hepgut. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Melissa. Les Miserables by Victor Hugo. Book 4. To confide is sometimes to deliver into a person's power. Chapter 1. One Mother Meets Another Mother. There was, at Mont Fermat, near Paris, during the first quarter of their century, a sort of cook-shop which no longer exists. This cook-shop was kept by some people named Théanardier, husband and wife. It was situated in Boulanger Lane. Over the door there was a board nailed flat against the wall. Upon this board was painted something which resembled a man carrying another man on his back. The latter wearing the big gilt epaulets of a general, with large silver stars, red spots represented blood, the rest of the picture consisted of smoke and probably represented a battle. Below ran this inscription, at the sign of Sergeant of Waterloo, au sargent de Waterloo. Nothing is more common than a cart or a truck at the door of a hostelry. Nevertheless the vehicle, or to speak more accurately the fragment of a vehicle, which encumbered the street in front of the cook-shop of the Sergeant of Waterloo, one evening at the spring of 1818, would certainly have attracted by its mass the attention of any painter who had passed that way. It was the forecarriage of one of those trucks which are used in wooded tracks of country and which serve to transport thick planks and the trunks of trees. This forecarriage was composed of a massive iron axel tree with a pivot into which was fitted a heavy shaft and which was supported by two huge wills. The whole thing was compact, overwhelming and misshapen. It seemed like the gun carriage of an enormous cannon. The ruts of the road had bestowed on the wheels, the fellies, the hub, the axel and the shaft, a layer of mud, a hideous yellowish-dabbing hue, tolerably like that with which people are fond of ornamenting cathedrals. The wood was disappearing under mud and the iron beneath rust. Under the axel tree hung, like drapery, a huge chain, worthy of some goliath of a convict. This chain suggested, not the beams, which it was its office to transport, but the mast, dons and mammoths which it might have served to harness. It had the air of the galleys, but of cyclopean and superhuman galleys, and it seemed to have been detached from some monster. Homer would have bound Polyphemus with it, and Shakespeare, Taliban. Why was that forecarriage of a truck in that place in the street, in the first place to encumber the street, next in order that it might finish the process of rusting? There is a throng of institutions in the old social order, which one comes across in this fashion as one walks about outdoors, and which have no other reasons for existence than the above. The center of the chain swung very near the ground in the middle, and in the loop, as in the rope of the swing, there were seated and grouped on that particular evening in exquisite interlacement two little girls, one about two-and-a-half years old, the other eighteen months, the younger in the arms of the other. A handkerchief, cleverly knotted about them, perfended their falling out.  The two children, who were dressed prettily and with some elegance, were radiant with pleasure. One would have said that they were two roses at mid-old iron. Their eyes were triumphed. Their fresh cheeks were full of laughter. One had chestnut hair, the other brown. Their innocent faces were two delighted surprises, a blossoming shrub which grew near wafted to the pressers by perfumes, which seemed to emanate from them. The child of eighteen months displayed her pretty little bare stomach with the chaste indecency of childhood. Above and around these two delicate heads, all made of happiness and steeped in light, a giant four-carriage, black with rust, almost terrible, all entangled in curves and wild angles, rose in a vault like the entrance of a cavern. A few paces apart, crouching down upon the threshold of the hostel reek, the mother, not a very prepossessing woman, by the way, though touching at that moment, was swinging the two children by means of a long horde, watching them carefully for fear of accidents with that animal and celestial expression which is peculiar to maternity. At every backward and forward swing the hideous slinks emitted a strident sound which resembled a cry of rage. The little girls were in ecstasies. The setting sun mingled in this joy and nothing could be more charming than this caprice of chants which had made a chain of titans the swing of cherubim.  It must be, said the warrior. Her song and the contemplation of her daughters prevented her hearing and seeing what was going on in the street. In the meantime, someone had approached her as she was beginning the first couplet of the romance, and suddenly she heard a voice saying very near her ear, You have two beautiful children there, right, madame? To the fair and tender Imogene, replied the mother, containing her romance, then she turned her head. A woman stood before her a few paces distant. This woman also had a child which she carried in her arms. She was carrying, in addition, a large carpet bag which seemed very heavy. This woman's child was one of the most divine creatures that it was possible to behold. It was a girl, two or three years of age. She could have entered into competition with the other two little ones, so far as the coquetry of her dress was concerned. She wore a cap of fine linen, ribbons on her bodice, and valcy and lace in her cap. The folds of her skirt were raised so as to permit a view of her white, firm and dimble leg. She was admirably rosy and healthy. The little beauty inspired a desire to take a bite from the apples of her cheeks. Of her eyes nothing could be known except that they must be very large and that they had magnificent lashes. She was asleep. She slept with that slumber of absolute confidence peculiar to her age. The arms of mothers are made of tenderness. In them children sleep profoundly. As for the mother, her appearance was sad and poverty stricken. She was dressed like a working woman who was inclined to turn into a peasant again. She was young. Was she handsome? Perhaps, but in that attire it was not apparent. Her hair, a golden lock of which it escaped, seemed very thick, but it was severely concealed beneath an ugly, tight, close, numb-like cap tied under the chin. A smile displays beautiful teeth when one has them, but she did not smile. Her eyes did not seem to have been dry for a very long time. She was pale. She had a very weary and rather sickly appearance. She gazed upon her daughter asleep in her arms with the air peculiar to a mother who has nursed her own child. A large blue handkerchief, such as the Anvalid use, was folds it into a fissue, and concealed her figure clumsily. Her hands were sunburnt and all dotted with freckles. Her forefinger was hardened and lacerated with a needle.  It was vantine. It was vantine, but difficult to recognize. Nevertheless, on scrutinizing her attentively, it was evident that she still retained her beauty. A melancholy fold which resembled the beginning of irony wrinkled her right cheek. As for her toilette, that aerial toilette of buzzlin' and ribbons, which seemed made of mirth, of folly, and of music, full of bells and perfumed with lilacs, had vanished like that beautiful and dazzling whorefrost which is mistaken for diamonds in the sunlight. It melts and leaves the branch quite black. Ten months had elapsed since the pretty farce. What had taken place during those ten months? It can be divine. After abandonment, strange circumstances, vantine had immediately lost sight of Favriete, Zephine, and Dahlia. The bond once broken on the side of the men, it was loosened between the women. It would have been greatly astonished had any one of them told them a fortnight later that they had been friends. There no longer existed any reason for such a thing. Vantine had remained alone. The father for child gone. Alas, such ruptures were irrevocable. She found herself absolutely isolated, minus the habit of work, and plus the taste for pleasure. Drawn away by her liaison with Tholomaze, to disdain the pretty trade which she knew, she had neglected to keep her market open. It was now closed to her. She had no resource. Vantine barely knew how to read and did not know how to write. In her childhood she had only been taught to sign her name. She had a public letter writer, indite in the pistols with Tholomaze. Then a second, then a third. Tholomaze replied to none of them. Vantine heard the gossip say as they looked at her child. Who takes those children seriously? One only shrugs one's shoulders over such children. Then she thought of Tholomaze, who had shrugged his shoulders over his child, and who did not take that innocent being seriously, and her heart coo-gluing me toward that man. But what was she to do? She no longer knew to whom to apply. She had committed a fault, but the foundation of her nature's will be remembered was modesty and virtue. She was vaguely conscious that she was on the verge of falling into distress and of gliding into a worse state. Courage was necessary. She possessed it and held herself firm. The idea of returning to her native town of Montreux-sur-Mer occurred to her. There, someone might possibly know her and give her work. Yes, but it would be necessary to conceal her fault. In a confused way she perceived the necessity of a separation, which would be more painful than the first one. Her heart contracted, but she took her resolution. Vantine, as we shall see, had the fierce bravery of life. She had already valiantly renounced finery, had dressed herself in linen, and had put all her silks, all her ornaments, all her ribbons, and all her laces on her daughter, the only vanity which was left to her, and a holy one it was. She sold all that she had, which produced for her two hundred franc. While debts paid, she had only about eighty franc left. At the age of twenty-two, on a beautiful spring morning, she quitted Paris, bearing her child on her back. Anyone who had seen these two pasts would have had pity on them.  Vantine had nursed her child, and this had tired her chest, and she coughed a little. We shall have no further occasion to speak of Mr. Felix Tholomais. Let us confine ourselves to saying, that twenty years later, under King Louis Philippe, he was a great provincial lawyer, wealthy, influential, a wise elector, and a very severe juryman. He was still a man of pleasure. Towards the middle of the day, after having, from time to time, for the sake of resting herself, traveled, for three or four sous a league, and what was then known as the Petit Voiture des Anvérons de Paris, the little suburban coach-service. Vantine filmed herself at Mont-Fermais, in the Alive-Boulanger. As she passed the Thénaurier de Hostelry, the two little girls, blissful in the monster's swing, had dazzled her in a manner, and she had halted in front of that vision of joy. Charms exist.  She gazed at them in much emotion. The presence of angels is an announcement of paradise. If they thought that, above the sin, she beheld the mysterious hear of Providence. These two little creatures were evidently happy. She gazed at them. She admired them in such emotion that at the moment when their mother was recovering her breath, between two couplets of her song, she could not refrain from addressing to her the remark which we have just read. You have two pretty children, Madame. The most ferocious creatures are disarmed by caresses bestowed on their young. The mother raised her head and thanked her, and bade the wayfarer sit down on the bench at the door. She herself being seated on the threshold. The two women began to chat.  We keep this in. Then her mind still running on her romance, she continued humming between her teeth. It must be so I am a knight, and I am off to Palestine. This Madame Thénaurier de Hostelry was a sandy, complexioned woman, then an angular, the type of the soldier's wife in all of its unpleasantness, and what was odd with the languishing air which she owed to her perusal of romances. She was a simpering but masculine creature. Old romances produced that effect when rubbed against the imagination of cook-shop women. She was still young, she was barely thirty. If this crouching woman had stood upright, her lofty stature and her frame of an arrambulating colossus suitable for fairs might have frightened the traveller at the outset, troubled her confident, and disturbed what caused what we have to relate to vanish. A person who has seated, instead of standing erect, destinies hang upon such a thing as that. The traveller told her story with slight modifications, that she was a working woman, that her husband was dead, that her work in Paris had failed her, and that she was on her way to seek it elsewhere in her own native parts, that she had left Paris that morning on foot, that as she was carrying her child and felt fatigued, she had got into the Villemobile coach when she'd met it, that from Villemobile she had come to mow from eye on foot, that the little one had walked a little, but not much, because she was so young, and that she'd been obliged to take her up, and the jewel had fallen asleep. At this word she bestowed on her daughter a passionate kiss, which woke her. The child opened her eyes, great blue eyes like her mother's, and looked at, what, nothing, with that serious and sometimes severe air of little children, which is a mystery of their luminous innocence in the presence of our twilight that avert you. One would say that they feel themselves to be angels, and that they know us to be men. Then the child began to laugh, and although the mother held fast to her, she slipped to the ground with the unconquerable energy of a little being which wished to run. All at once she caught sight of the two others in the swing, stopped short, and put out her tongue inside of admiration. Mother Théinardier released her daughters, made them descend from the swing, and said, Now amuse yourselves, all three of you. Children become acquainted quickly at that age, and at the expiration of the minute the little Théinardier were playing with the newcomer, and making holes in the dirt, which was an immense pleasure. The newcomer was very gay, the goodness of the mother was written in the gayity of the child. She had seized a scrap of wood which served for a shovel, and energetically dug a cavity big enough for a fly. The gravedigger's business becomes a subject for laughter when performed by a child. The two women pursued their chat. What is your little one's name? Cossette. For Cossette, read Euphraecy. The child's name was Euphraecy, but out of Euphraecy the mother had made Cossette by the sweet and graceful instinct of mothers and of the populace, which changed Josepha into Papita and François into Select. It is a sort of derivative which disarranges and disconcerts the whole science of etymologies. We have known a grandmother who succeeded in turning Theodore into Nôme. How old is she? She's going on three. That's the age of my oldest. In the meantime, the three little girls were grouped in an attitude of profound anxiety and blissfulness. An event had happened. A big worm had emerged from the ground, and they were afraid, and they were in ecstasies over it. Their radiant brows touched each other. One would have said that there were three hoods in one areole. How easily children get acquainted at once, exclaimed by the Thane RDA. One would swear that they were three sisters. This remark was probably the spark which the other mother had been waiting for. She seized the Thane RDA's hand, looked at her fixedly, and said, Will you keep my child for me? The Thane RDA made one of those movements of surprise, which signified neither ascent nor refusal. Gosset's mother continued, You see, I cannot take my daughter to the country. My work will not permit it. With a child one can find no situation. People are ridiculous in the country. It was the good God who caused me to pass you in. When I caught sight of your little one so pretty, so clean, and so happy, it overwhelmed me. I said, Here is a good mother. That is just the thing they will make three sisters. And then it will not be long before I return. Will you keep my child for me? I must see about it, replied the Thane RDA. I will give you six franc a month. Here a man's voice called from the depths of the cook shop, not for less than seven franc, and six months paid in advance. Six times seven makes forty-two, said the Thane RDA. I will give it, said the mother. And fifteen franc in addition for preliminary expenses, added the man's voice. Total, fifty-seven franc, said Madame Thane RDA. And she hummed vaguely with these figures. It must be, said the warrior. I will pay it, said the mother. I have eighty franc. I shall have enough left to reach the country by traveling on foot. I shall earn money there, and as soon as I have a little I will return for my darling. The man's voice resumed. The little one has an outfit. That is my husband, said the Thane RDA. Of course she has an outfit, the poor treasure. I understood perfectly that it was your husband, and a beautiful outfit, too, a senseless outfit, everything by the dozen and silk scounds like a lady. It is here in my carpet bag. You must hand it over, struck in the man's voice again. Of course I shall give it to you, said the mother. It would be very queer if I were to leave my daughter quite naked. The master's face appeared. That's good, he said. The bargain was concluded. The mother passed the night at the end, gave up her money, and left her child, fastened her carpet bag once more, now reduced in volume by the removal of the outfit and light henceforth, and set out on the following morning, intending to return soon. People arranged such departures tranquilly, but they are despairs.  When Cossette's mother had taken her departure, the man said to the woman, That will serve to pay my note for one hundred and ten francs, which falls due to-morrow. I lacked fifty francs. Do you know that I should have had a bailiff and a protest after me? You played in the mousetrap nicely with your young ones. Without suspecting it, said the woman. End of Book 4, Chapter 1, recording by Melissa. Book 4, Chapter 2 of Les Miserables, translated by Isabelle F. Hapgood. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org, recording by Melissa. The Miserable by Victor Hugo. Book 4. To confide is sometimes to deliver into a person's power. Chapter 2. First sketch of two unprepossessing figures. The mouse, which has been caught, was a frightful specimen, but the cat rejoices even over a lean mouse. Who were these Théinardier? Let us say a word of two of them now. We will complete the sketch later on. These beings belong to that bastard class composed of coarse people who have been successful, and of intelligent people who have descended in the scale, which is between the class called middle, and the class denominated as inferior, and which combines some of the defects of the second with nearly all of the vices of the first, without possessing the generous impulse of the working man nor the honest order of the bourgeois. They were of those dwarfed natures, which if at dull fire a chance is to warm them up, easily become monstrous. There was in the woman a substratum of the brute, and in the man the material for a blackard. Both were susceptible, in the highest degree, of the sort of hideous progress which is accomplished in the direction of evil. There exist crab-like souls which are continually retreating towards the darkness, retrograding in life rather than advancing, employing experience to augment their deformity, growing incessantly worse, and becoming more and more impregnated with an ever-augmenting blackness. This man and woman possessed such souls. Thin RDA, in particular, was troublesome for a fizzogamist. One can only look at some men to distrust them, for one feels that they are dark in both directions. They are uneasy in the rear and threatening in front. There is something of the unknown about them. One can no more answer for what they have done than for what they will do. The shadow which they bear in their glance denounces them, for merely hearing them utter a word or seeing them make a gesture, one obtains a glimpse of somber secrets in their past and of somber mysteries in their future. This Thin RDA, if he himself was to be believed, had been a soldier, a sergeant, he said. He had probably been through the campaign of 1850, and had even conducted himself with tolerable valor it would seem. We shall see later on how much truth there was in this. The sign of his hostelry was an allusion to one of his feats of arms. He had painted it himself, for he knew how to do a little of everything, and badly. It was at the epic when the ancient classical romance, which after having been cellier, was no longer anything but Lidoiske, still noble but ever more and more vulgar, having fallen from Mademoiselle de Scuderi to Madame von Norma-Larm and from Madame de Lafayette to Madame Bartholome Haddow, was setting the loving hearts of the fortresses of Paris aflame, and even ravaging the suburbs to some extent. Madame Thin RDA was just intelligent enough to read this sort of books. She lived on them. In them she drowned what brains she possessed. This had given her, when very young, and even a little later, a sort of pensive attitude towards her husband, a scamp of a certain depth, a ruffian letter to the same extent of the grammar, just and fine at one, in the same time. But so fine a sensationalism was concerned, given to the perusal of Pigot-Lebron, and in what concerns the sex, as he said in his jargon, a downright, unmitigated lout. His wife was twelve or fifteen years younger than he was.  Now one cannot read nonsense with impunity. The result was that her eldest daughter was named a Panin. As for the younger, poor little Thin came near being called Gullnair. I know to what diversion, affected by a romance of Ducre Duminil, she owed the fact that she merely bore the name of Azelma. However, we will remark, by the way, everything was not ridiculous and superficial in that curious epic to which we were alluding, and which may be designated as the anarchy of baptismal names. By the side of this romantic element which we have just indicated, there is the social symptom. It is not rare for the Nethards boy nowadays to bear the name of Arthur, Alfred, or Alphonse, and for the Vicomte, if there are still any Vicomte, to be called Tomas, Pierre, or Jacques. This displacement, which places the elegant name on the plebeian and the rustic name on the aristocrat, is nothing else than an edity of equality. The irresistible penetration of the new inspiration is there as everywhere else. Beneath this apparent discord there is a great and profound thing. The French Revolution. End of Book 4, Chapter 2, Recording by Melissa. Book 4, Chapter 3 of Les Miserables, translated by Isabel F. Habkud. This is a Leopervox recording. All Leopervox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit Leopervox.org, recording by Melissa. Les Miserables, by Victor Hugo. Book 4. To confide is sometimes to deliver into a person's power. Chapter 3. The Lark. It is not all and all sufficient to be wicked in order to prosper. The cook-shop was in a bad way. Thanks to the travellers 57 Francs, Théinardier had been able to avoid a protest and to honour his signature. On the following month they were again in need of money. The woman took Cossette's outfit to Paris and pondered at the pawnbrokers for 60 Francs. As soon as that sum was spent, the Théinardier grew accustomed to look on the little girl merely as a child whom they were caring for out of charity and they treated her accordingly. As she had no longer any clothes, they dressed her in the cast-off petticoats and extremises of the Théinardier brats, that is to say, in rags.  Moreover, the cat and dog were her habitual table-companions, Cossette ate with them under the table from a wooden bowl similar to theirs. The mother, who'd established herself, as we shall see later on, and will throw some air, wrote, or more correctly, cost to be written, a letter every month that she might have news of her child. The Théinardier replied invariably, Cossette is doing wonderfully well. At the expiration of the first six months, the mother sent seven Francs for the seven month, and continued her admittances with tolerable regularity for month to month. The year was not completed when Théinardier said, a fine favour she is doing us in soup. What does she expect us to do with her seven Francs? And he wrote to demand twelve Francs. The mother, whom they had persuaded into the belief that her child was happy and was coming on well, submitted and forwarded the twelve Francs. Certain natures cannot love on the one hand without hating on the other. Mother Théinardier loved her two daughters passionately, which caused her to hate the stranger. It is sad to think that the love of a mother can possess villainous aspects. Little as was the space occupied by Cossette, it seemed to her as though it were taken from her own, and that that little child diminished the air which her daughters breathed. This woman, like many women of her sort, had a load of caresses and a burden of blows and injuries to dispense each day. If she had not had Cossette, it is certain that her daughters, idolized as they were, would have received the whole of it. But the stranger did them the service to divert the blows to herself. Her daughters received nothing but caresses. Cossette could not make a motion which would not draw down upon her head a heavy shower of violent blows and unmarried to chastisement. The sweet feeble being, who should not have understood anything of this world or of God, incessantly punished, scolded, ill-used, beaten and seeing beside her two little creatures like herself who lived in a ray of dawn. Madame Théinardier was vicious with Cossette. A peonine and azelma were vicious. Children at that age are only copies of their mother. The size is small, if that is all. A year passed, then another. People in the village said, Those Théinardier are good people. They are not rich, and yet they are bringing up a poor child who was abandoned along their hands. They thought that Cossette's mother had forgotten her. In the meanwhile, Théinardier, having learned, it was impossible to say about what obscure means, that the child was probably a bastard and that the mother could not acknowledge it, exacted fifteen fronk a month, saying that the creature was growing and eating and threatened to send her away. Let her not bother me, he exclaimed, or I'll fire her right into the middle of her secrets. I must have an increase. The mother paid the fifteen fronk. From year to year the child grew, and so did her wretchedness. As long as Cossette was little, she was the scapegoat of the two other children. As soon as she began to develop a little, that is to say, before she was even five years old, she became the servant of the household. Five years old, the reader will say, that is not probable. Alas, it is true. Little suffering begins at all ages. Have we not recently seen the trial of a man named Domilar, an orphan turned bandit, who at the age of five, as the official document state, being alone in the world, worked for his living and stole? Cossette was made to run on errands, to sweep the rooms, the courtyard, the street, to wash the dishes, to even curry burdens. The Théinardier considered themselves all the more authorized to behave in this manner, since the mother, who was still at Montrose-sur-Mer, had become irregular in her payments. Some months she was in arrears. If this mother had returned to Montfermais at the end of these three years, she would not have recognized her child. Cossette, so pretty and rosy on her arrival in that house, was now thin and pale. She had an indescribably uneasy look, the sly creature, said the Théinardier. Injustice had made her peevish, and misery had made her ugly. Nothing remained to her except her beautiful eyes, which inspired pain, because large as they were, seemed as though one beheld in them a still larger amount of sideness. It was a heartbreaking thing to see this poor child, not yet six years old, shivering in the winter in her old rags of linen, full of holes sweeping the street before daylight, with an enormous broom in her tiny red hands and a tear in her great eyes. She was called the Lark in the neighborhood. The populace, who are fond of these figures of speech, had taken fancy to bestow this name on this trembling, frightened and shivering little creature, no bigger than a bird, who was awake every morning before anyone else in the house or the village, and was always in the street or the fields before daybreak. Only the little lark never sang. End of Book 4, Chapter 3, Recording by Melissa. And in the meantime, what had become of that mother, who, according to the people at Montfermets, seemed to have abandoned her child? Where was she? What was she doing? After leaving her little casette with the Thénardiers, she had continued her journey, and had reached Montrées-sur-Mer. This, it will be remembered, was in 1818. Fantine had quitted her province ten years before. Montrées-sur-Mer had changed its aspect. While Fantine had been slowly descending from wretchedness to wretchedness, her native town had prospered. About two years previously one of those industrial facts, which are the grand events of small districts, had taken place. This detail is important, and we regard it as useful to develop it at length. We should almost say to underline it. From time immemorial, Montrées-sur-Mer had had for its special industry the imitation of English jet and the black glass trinkets of Germany. This industry had always vegetated on account of the high price of the raw material, which reacted on the manufacture. At the moment when Fantine returned to Montrées-sur-Mer, an unheard of transformation had taken place in the production of black goods. Towards the close of 1815 a man, a stranger, had established himself in the town, and had been inspired with the idea of substituting, in this manufacture, gumlack for resin, and for bracelets in particular, slides of sheet-iron simply laid together for slides of soldered sheet-iron. This very small change had affected a revolution. This very small change had, in fact, prodigiously reduced the cost of the raw material, which had rendered it possible in the first place to raise the price of manufacture, a benefit to the country, in the second place to improve the workmanship and advantage to the consumer, in the third place to sell at a lower price while trebling the profit, which was a benefit to the manufacturer. Thus three results ensued from one idea. In less than three years the inventor of this process had become rich, which is good, and had made everyone about him rich, which is better. He was a stranger in the department. Of his origin nothing was known, of the beginning of his career very little. It was rumoured that he had come to town with very little money, a few hundred francs at the most. It was from this slender capital enlisted in the service of an ingenious idea developed by method and thought that he had drawn his own fortune and the fortune of the whole countryside. On his arrival at Montré-sur-mer, he had only the garments, the appearance, and the language of a working man. It appears that on the very day when he made his obscure entry into the little town of Montré-sur-mer, just at nightfall, on a December evening, knapsack on back and thorn club in hand, a large fire had broken out in the town hall. This man had rushed into the flames and saved, at the risk of his own life, two children who belonged to the captain of the gendarmerie. This is why they had forgotten to ask him for his passport. Afterwards they had learned his name. He was called Father Madeleine. End of book five, chapter one. Book five, chapter two of Les Miserables, translated by Isabelle F. Hapgood. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For further information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recorded by Joel Portinga. Les Miserables by Victor Hugo. Book five, The Descent. Chapter two, Madeleine. He was a man about 50 years of age who had a preoccupied heir and who was good. That was all that could be said about him. Thanks to the rapid progress of the industry which he had so admirably reconstructed, Montré-sur-mer had become a rather important centre of trade. Spain, which consumes a good deal of black jet, made enormous purchases there each year. Montré-sur-mer almost rivaled London and Berlin in this branch of commerce. Father Madeleine's profits were such that at the end of the second year he was able to erect a large factory in which there were two vast workrooms, one for the men and the other for women. Anyone who was hungry could present himself there and was sure of finding employment and bread. Father Madeleine required of the men good will and of the women pure morals and of all probity. He had separated the workrooms in order to separate the sexes and so that the women and girls might remain discreet. On this point he was inflexible. It was the only thing in which he was in a manner intolerant. He was all the more firmly set on this severity since Montré-sur-mer, being a garrison town, opportunities for corruption abounded. However, his coming had been a boon and his presence was a godsend. Before Father Madeleine's arrival everything had languished in the country. Now everything lived with a healthy life of toil. A strong circulation warmed everything and penetrated everywhere. Slack seasons and wretchedness were unknown. There was no pocket so obscure that it had not a little money in it, no dwelling so lowly that there was not some little joy within it. Father Madeleine gave employment to everyone. He exacted but one thing. Be an honest man. Be an honest woman. As we have said, in the midst of this activity of which he was the cause and the pivot Father Madeleine made his fortune but a singular thing in a simple man of business it did not seem as though that were his chief care. He appeared to be thinking much of others and little of himself. In 1820 he was known to have a sum of 630,000 francs lodged in his name with La Fite. But before reserving these 630,000 francs he had spent more than a million for the town and its poor. The hospital was badly endowed. He founded six beds there. Montreux-sur-Mer is divided into the upper and the lower town. The lower town, in which he lived, had but one school, a miserable hovel which was falling to ruin. He constructed two, one for girls, the other for boys. He allotted a salary from his own funds to the two instructors. A salary twice as large as their meager official salary. And one day he said to someone who expressed surprise, the two prime functionaries of the state are the nurse and the schoolmaster. He created at his own expense an infant school, a thing then almost unknown in France, and a fund for aiding old and infirm workmen. As his factory was a centre, a new quarter, in which there were a good many indigent families, rose rapidly around him. He established there a free dispensary. At first when they watched his beginnings, the good souls said, he's a jolly fellow who means to get rich. When they saw him enriching the country before he enriched himself, the good souls said, he is an ambitious man. This seemed all the more probable since the man was religious and even practiced his religion to a certain degree, a thing which was very favourably viewed at that epoch. He went regularly to low mass every Sunday. The local deputy, who knows doubt all rivalry everywhere, soon began to grow uneasy over this religion. This deputy had been a member of the legislative body of the empire and shared the religious ideas of a father of the Orétoire, known under the name of Fouche, Duke d'Entrente, whose creature and friend he had been. He indulged in gentle railery at God with closed doors. But when he beheld the wealthy manufacturer, Madeleine, going to low mass at seven o'clock, he perceived in him a possible candidate and resolved to outdo him. He took a Jesuit confessor and went to high mass and to Vespers. Ambition was, at that time, in the direct acceptation of the word, a race to the steeple. The poor profited by this terror as well as the good God, for the honorable deputy also founded two beds in the hospital, which made twelve. Nevertheless, in 1819, a rumour one morning circulated through the town to the effect that, on the representations of the prefect and in consideration of the services rendered by him to the country, Father Madeleine was to be appointed by the king, mayor of Montress-sur-Mer. Those who had pronounced this newcomer to be an ambitious fellow seized with delight on this opportunity which all men desire to exclaim, there, what did we say? All Montress-sur-Mer was in an uproar. The rumour was well founded. Several days later, the appointment appeared in the monitor. On the following day, Father Madeleine refused. In the same year of 1819, the products of the new process invented by Madeleine figured in the industrial exhibition. When the jury made their report, the king appointed the inventor a chevalier of the Legion of Honor, a fresh excitement in the little town. Well, so it was the cross that he wanted. Father Madeleine refused the cross. Decidedly, this man was an enigma. The good souls got out of their predicament by saying, after all, he is some sort of an adventurer. We have seen that the country owed much to him, the poor owed him everything. He was so useful and he was so gentle that the people had been obliged to honor and respect him. His workmen in particular adored him, and he endured this adoration with a sort of melancholy gravity. When he was known to be rich, people in society bowed to him, and he received invitations in the town. He was called in town, Monsieur Madeleine. His workmen and the children continued to call him Father Madeleine, and that was what was most adapted to make him smile. In proportion as he mounted, throve, invitations rained down upon him, society claimed him for its own. The prim little drawing rooms on Montréal-sur-Mer, which, of course, had at first been closed to the artisan, opened both leaves of their folding doors to the millionaire. They made a thousand advances to him. He refused. This time, the good gossips had no trouble.  No one knows where he came from. He would not know how to behave in society. It has not been absolutely proved that he knows how to read. When they saw him making money, they said, he's a man of business. When they saw him scattering his money about, they said, he is an ambitious man. When he was seen to decline honors, they said, he is an adventurer. When they saw him repulse society, they said, he is a brute. In 1820, five years after his arrival in Montréal-sur-Mer, the services which he had rendered to the district were so dazzling, the opinion of the whole country roundabout was so unanimous that the king again appointed him mayor of the town. He again declined, but the prefect resisted his refusal. All the notabilities of the place came to implore him. The people in the street besought him. The urging was so vigorous that he ended by accepting. It was noticed that the thing which seemed chiefly to bring him to a decision was the almost irritated apostrophe addressed to him by an old woman of the people who called to him from her threshold in an angry way. A good mayor is a useful thing. Is he drawing back before the good which he can do? This was the third phase of his assent. Father Madeleine had become Monsieur Madeleine. Monsieur Madeleine had become Monsieur Le Maire. End of chapter two. Book five, chapter three of Les Miserables, translated by Isabelle F. Hapgood. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Joel Poringa. Les Miserables by Victor Hugo. Book five, The Descent. Chapter three, sums deposited with La Fite. On the other hand, he remained as simple as on the first day. He had gray hair, a serious eye, the sunburned complexion of a labourer, the thoughtful visage of a philosopher. He habitually wore a hat with a wide brim and a long coat of coarse cloth buttoned to the chin. He fulfilled his duties as mayor, but with that exception he lived in solitude. He spoke to but few people. He avoided polite attentions. He escaped quickly. He smiled to relieve himself of the necessity of talking. He gave in order to get rid of the necessity for smiling. The women said of him, What a good-natured bear! His pleasure consisted in strolling in the fields. He always took his meals alone with an open book before him, which he read. He had a well-selected little library. He loved books. Books are cold, but safe, friends. In proportion, as Leser came to him with fortune, he seemed to take advantage of it to cultivate his mind. It had been observed that, ever since his arrival at Montréal-sur-Mer, his language had grown more polished, more choice, and more gentle with every passing year. He liked to carry a gun with him on his strolls, but he rarely made use of it. When he did happen to do so, his shooting was something so infallible as to inspire terror. He never killed an inoffensive animal. He never shot at a little bird. Although he was no longer young, it was thought that he was still prodigiously strong. He offered his assistance to anyone who was in need of it, lifted a horse, released a wheel clogged in the mud, or stopped a runaway bull by the horns. He always had his pocket full of money when he went out, but they were empty on his return. When he passed through a village, the ragged brats ran joyously after him and surrounded him like a swarm of gnats. It was thought that he must, in the past, have lived a country life, since he knew all sorts of useful secrets which he taught to the peasants. He taught them how to destroy scurff on wheat by sprinkling it and the granary and inundating the cracks in the floor with a solution of common salt, and how to chase away weevils by hanging up Orviet in bloom everywhere, on the walls and the ceilings, among the grass and in the houses. He had recipes for exterminating from a field, blight, tears, foxtail, and all parasitic growths which destroy the wheat. He defended a rabbit warren against rats simply by the odor of a guinea pig which he placed in it. One day, he saw some country people busily engaged in pulling up nettles. He examined the plants which were uprooted and already dried and said, they are dead. Nevertheless, it would be a good thing to know how to make use of them. When the nettle is young, the leaf makes an excellent vegetable. When it is older, it has filaments and fibers like hemp and flax. Nettle cloth is as good as linen cloth. Chopped up, nettles are good for poultry. Pounded, they are good for horned cattle. The seed of the nettle, mixed with fodder, gives gloss to the hair of the animals. The root, mixed with salt, produces a beautiful yellow coloring matter. Moreover, it is an excellent hay which can be cut twice. And what is required for the nettle?  Only the seed falls as it is ripe and it is difficult to collect it. That is all. With the exercise of a little care, the nettle could be made useful. It is neglected and it becomes hurtful. It is exterminated. How many men resemble the nettle? He added after a pause. Remember this, my friends. There are no such things as bad plants or bad men. There are only bad cultivators. The children loved him because he knew how to make charming little trifles of straw and coconuts. When he saw the door of a church hung in black, he entered. He sought out funerals as other men seek christenings. Widowhood and the grief of others attracted him because of his great gentleness. He mingled with the friends clad in mourning, with families dressed in black, with the priests groaning around a coffin. He seemed to like to give to his thoughts for text these funeral psalmodes filled with the vision of the other world. With his eyes fixed on heaven, he listened with a sort of aspiration towards all the mysteries of the infinite, those sad voices which sing on the verge of the obscure abyss of death. He performed a multitude of good actions, concealing his agency in them as a man conceals himself because of evil actions. He penetrated houses privately at night. He ascended staircases furtively. A poor wretch on returning to his attic would find that his door had been opened, sometimes even forced during his absence. The poor man made a clamor over it. Some malifactor had been there.  The malifactor who had been there was Father Madeleine. He was affable and sad. The people said, there is a rich man who has not a haughty heir. There is a happy man who has not a contented heir. Some people maintained that he was a mysterious person and that no one ever entered his chamber, which was a regular anchorite cell furnished with winged hourglasses and enlivened by crossbones and skulls of dead men. This was much talked of so that one of the elegant and malicious young women of Montreux-sur-mer came to him one day and asked, Monsieur Le Maire, pray show us your chamber. It is said to be a grotto. He smiled and introduced them instantly into this grotto. They were well punished for their curiosity. The room was very simply furnished in mahogany, which was rather ugly. Like all furniture of that sort and hung with paper worth 12 sous, they could see nothing remarkable about it except two candlesticks of antique pattern which stood on the chimney piece and appeared to be silver. For they were hallmarked, an observation full of the type of wit of petty towns. Nevertheless, people continued to say that no one ever got into the room and that it was a hermit's cave, a mysterious retreat, a hole, a tomb. It was also whispered about that he had immense sums deposited with Le Fitt, with this particular feature that they were always at his immediate disposal so that it was added. Monsieur Madeleine could make his appearance at Le Fitt's any morning, sign a receipt, and carry off his two or three millions in 10 minutes. In reality, these two or three millions were reducible, as we have said, to 630 or 40,000 francs. End of book five, chapter three. Book five, chapter four of Les Miserables, translated by Isabelle F. Hapgood. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Joel Pordinga. Les Miserables by Victor Hugo. Book five, The Descent. Chapter four, Madeleine in Morning. At the beginning of 1820, the newspapers announced the death of Monsieur Muriel, Bishop of Dignier, surnamed Monseigneur Bienvenu, who had died in the odor of sanctity at the age of 82. The Bishop of Dignier, to supply here a detail which the papers omitted, had been blind for many years before his death and content to be blind as his sister was beside him. Let us remark, by the way, that to be blind and to be loved is, in fact, one of the most strangely exquisite forms of happiness upon this earth, where nothing is complete. To have continually at one side a woman, a daughter, a sister, a charming being, who is there because you need her and because she cannot do without you, to know that we are indispensable to a person who is necessary to us, to be able to incessantly measure one's affection by the amount of her presence which she bestows on us, and to say to ourselves, since she consecrates the whole of her time to me, it is because I possess the whole of her heart, to behold her thought in lieu of her face, to be able to verify the fidelity of one being amid the eclipse of the world, to regard the rustle of a gown as the sound of wings, to hear her come and go, retire, speak, return, sing, and to think that one is the center of these steps, of this speech, to manifest at each instant one's personal attraction, to feel oneself all the more powerful because of one's infirmity, to become in one's obscurity, and through one's obscurity, the star around which this angel gravitates, few felicities equal this. The supreme happiness of life consists in the conviction that one is loved, loved for one's own sake, let us say rather, loved in spite of oneself. This conviction the blind man possesses, to be served in distress is to be caressed. Does he lack anything? No. One does not lose the sight when one has love. And what love? A love wholly constituted of virtue. There is no blindness where there is certainty. Soul seeks soul, gropingly, and finds it.     To have everything of her, from her worship to her pity, never to be left, to have that sweet weakness aiding you, to lean upon that immovable reed, to touch providence with one's hands, and to be able to take it in one's arms. God made tangible, what bliss. The heart, that obscure celestial flower, undergoes a mysterious blossoming. One would not exchange that shadow for all brightness. The angel soul is there, uninterruptedly there. If she departs, it is but to return again. She vanishes like a dream, and reappears like reality. One feels warmth approaching, and behold, she is there. One overflows with serenity, with gaiety, with ecstasy. One is a radiance amid the night.  Nothings, which are enormous in that void. The most ineffable accents of the feminine voice employed to lull you, and supplying the vanished universe to you. One is caressed with the soul. One sees nothing, but one feels that one is adored. It is a paradise of shadows. It was from this paradise that Monseigneur Welcome had passed to the other. The announcement of his death was reprinted by the local journal of Montréal-sur-Mer. On the following day, Monsieur Madeleine appeared clad wholly in black, and with crepe on his hat. This morning was noticed in the town, and commented on, it seemed to throw light on Monsieur Madeleine's origin. It was concluded that some relationship existed between him and the venerable bishop. He has gone into mourning for the Bishop of Dignay, said the drawing rooms. This raised Monsieur Madeleine's credit greatly, and procured for him instantly, and at one blow, a certain consideration in that noble world of Montréal-sur-Mer. The microscopic Faubourg Saint-Germain of the place meditated raising the quarantine against Monsieur Madeleine, the probable relative of a bishop. Monsieur Madeleine perceived the advancement which he had obtained by the more numerous courtesies of the old women, and the more plentiful smiles of the young ones. One evening, a ruler in that petty great world, who was curious by rite of seniority, ventured to ask him, Monsieur Le Mer is doubtless a cousin of the late Bishop of Dignay. He said, no, madame. But, resumed the dowager, you are wearing mourning for him. He replied, it is because I was a servant in his family and my youth. Another thing which was remarked was that every time that he encountered in the town a young Savoyard who was roaming about the country and seeking chimneys to sweep, the mayor had him summoned, inquired his name, and gave him money. The little Savoyards told each other about it. A great many of them passed that way. End of book five, chapter two. Book five, chapter five of Les Miserables, translated by Isabelle F. Hapgood. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Joel Pordinga. Les Miserables by Victor Hugo. Book five, The Descent. Chapter five, vague flashes on the horizon. Little by little and in the course of time all this opposition subsided. Their head at first been exercised against Monsieur Madeleine in virtue of a sort of law which all those who rise must submit to, blackening and columnies.  Then merely malicious remarks. Then even this entirely disappeared. Respect became complete, unanimous, cordial. And towards 1821 the moment arrived when the word Monsieur Le Maire was pronounced et montré sur maire with almost the same accent as Monseigneur the Bishop had been pronounced in Dignier in 1815. People came from a distance of 10 leagues around to consult Monsieur Madeleine. He put an end to differences. He prevented lawsuits. He reconciled enemies. Everyone took him for the judge and with good reason. It seemed as though he had for a soul the book of the natural law. It was like an epidemic of veneration which in the course of six or seven years gradually took possession of the whole district. One single man in the town, in the arrondissement, absolutely escaped this contagion and whatever Father Madeleine did remained his opponent as though a sort of incorruptible and imperturbable instinct kept him on the alert and uneasy. It seems in fact as though there existed in certain men a veritable, bestial instinct, though pure and upright like all instincts, which creates antipathies and sympathies which fatally separates one nature from another nature, which does not hesitate, which feels no disquiet, which does not hold its peace, which never belies itself, clear in its obscurity, infallible, imperious, intractable, stubborn to all councils of the intelligence and to all the dissolvents of reason and which in whatever manner destinies are arranged secretly warns the man dog of the presence of the man cat and the man fox of the presence of the man lion. It frequently happened that when Monsieur Madeleine was passing along the street, calm, affectionate, surrounded by the blessings of all, a man of lofty stature clad in an iron gray frock coat armed with a heavy cane and wearing a battered hat turned round abruptly behind him and followed him with his eyes until he disappeared with folded arms and a slow shake of the head and his upper lip raised in company with his lower to his nose, a sort of significant grimace which might be translated by, what is that man after all? I certainly have seen him somewhere. In any case, I am not his dupe. This person, grave with a gravity which was almost menacing, was one of those men who, even when only seen by a rapid glimpse, arrest the spectator's attention. His name was Javert and he belonged to the police. At Montréal-sur-Mer, he exercised the unpleasant but useful functions of an inspector. He had not seen Madeleine's beginnings. Javert owed the post which he occupied to the protection of Monsieur Chabouillet, the Secretary of the Minister of State, Comte Anglais, then prefect of police at Paris. When Javert arrived at Montréal-sur-Mer, the fortune of the great manufacturer was already made and Father Madeleine had become Monsieur Madeleine. Certain police officers have a peculiar physiognomy which is complicated with an air of baseness mingled with an air of authority. Javert possessed this physiognomy minus the baseness. It is our conviction that if souls were visible to the eyes we should be able to see distinctly that strange thing that each one individual of the human race corresponds to one of the species of the animal creation. And we could easily recognize this truth, hardly perceived by the thinker, that from the oyster to the eagle, from the pig to the tiger, all animals exist in man and that each one of them is in a man, sometimes even several of them at a time. Animals are nothing else than the figures of our virtues and our vices, straying before our eyes the visible phantoms of our souls. God shows them to us in order to induce us to reflect. Only since animals are mere shadows, God has not made them capable of education in the full sense of the word. What is the use? On the contrary, our souls being realities and having a goal which is appropriate to them, God has bestowed on them intelligence. That is to say, the possibility of education. Social education, when well done, can always draw from a soul of whatever sort it may be, the utility which it contains. This, be it said, is of course from the restricted point of view of the terrestrial life which is apparent and without prejudging the profound question of the anterior or ulterior personality of the beings which are not man. The visible eye in no wise authorizes the thinker to deny the latent eye. Having made this reservation, let us pass on. Now, if the reader will admit for a moment with us that in every man there is one of the animal species of creation, it will be easy for us to say that there was in police officer Javert. The peasants of the Asturias are convinced that in every litter of wolves there is one dog which is killed by the mother because otherwise as he grew up, he would devour the other little ones. Give to this dog's son of a wolf a human face and the result will be Javert. Javert had been born in prison of a fortune teller whose husband was in the galleys. As he grew up, he thought he was outside the pale of society and he despaired of ever reentering it. He observed that society unparteningly excludes two classes of men, those who attack it and those who guard it. He had no choice except between these two classes. At the same time he was conscious of an indescribable foundation of rigidity, regularity, and probity complicated with an inexpressible hatred for the race of Bohemians whence he was sprung. He entered the police, he succeeded there. At forty years of age he was an inspector. During his youth he had been employed in the convict establishments of the South. Before proceeding further, let us come to an understanding as to these words, human face, which we have just applied to Javert. The human face of Javert consisted of a flat nose with two deep nostrils, towards which enormous whiskers ascended on his cheeks. One felt ill at ease when he saw these two forests and these two caverns for the first time. When Javert laughed, and his laugh was rare and terrible, his thin lips parted and revealed to view not only his teeth but his gums and around his nose there formed a flattened and savage fold as on the muzzle of a wild beast. Javert, serious, was a watchdog when he laughed he was like a tiger. As for the rest, he had very little skull and a great deal of jaw. His hair concealed his forehead and fell over his eyebrows, between his eyes there was a permanent central frown, like an imprint of wrath.  His air that of ferocious command. This man was composed of two very simple and two very good sentiments comparatively, but he rendered them almost bad by dint of exaggerating them. Respect for authority, hatred of rebellion, and in his eyes murder, robbery, all crimes are only forms of rebellion. He enveloped in a blind and profound faith everyone who had a function in the state from the prime minister to the rural policeman. He covered with scorn aversion and disgust every one who had once crossed the legal threshold of evil. He was absolute and admitted no exceptions. On the one hand he said, the functionary can make no mistake, the magistrate is never the wrong. On the other hand he said, these men are irremediably lost. Nothing good can come from them. He fully shared the opinion of those extreme minds which attribute to human law, I know not what power of making, or if the reader will have it so, of authenticating demons and who place a sticks at the base of society. He was stoical, serious, austere, a melancholy dreamer, humble and haughty, like fanatics. His glance was like a gimlet cold and piercing. His whole life hung on these two words, watchfulness and supervision. He had introduced a straight line into what is the most crooked thing in the world. He possessed the conscience of his usefulness, the religion of his functions, and he was a spy as other men are priests. Woe to the man who fell into his hands. He would have arrested his own father if the latter had escaped from the galleys and would have denounced his mother if she had broken her ban.  It was implacable duty the police understood as the Spartans understood Sparta, a pitiless lying in wait, a ferocious honesty, a marble informer, Brutus in Vidoc. Javert's whole person was expressive of the man who spies and who withdraws himself from observation. The mystical school of Joseph de Maistre, which at that epoch seasoned with lofty cosmogony, those things which were called the ultra-newspapers, would not have failed to declare that Javert was a symbol. His brow was not visible. It disappeared beneath his hat. His eyes were not visible since they were lost under his eyebrows. His chin was not visible for it was plunged in his cravat. His hands were not visible. They were drawn up in his sleeves. And his cane was not visible. He carried it under his coat. But when the occasion presented itself, there was suddenly seen to emerge from all this shadow as from an ambuscade, a narrow and angular forehead, a baleful glance, a threatening chin, enormous hands, and a monstrous cudgel. In his leisure moments, which were far from frequent, he read, although he hated books. This caused him to be not wholly illiterate. This could be recognized by some emphasis in his speech. As we have said, he had no vices. When he was pleased with himself, he permitted himself a pinch of snuff. Therein lay his connection with humanity. The reader will have no difficulty in understanding that Javert was the terror of that whole class which the annual statistics of the Ministry of Justice designates under the rubric Vagrants. The name of Javert routed them by its mere utterance. The face of Javert petrified them at sight. Such was this formidable man. Javert was like an eye constantly fixed on Monsieur Madeleine, an eye full of suspicion and conjecture. Monsieur Madeleine had finally perceived the fact, but it seemed to be of no importance to him. He did not even put a question to Javert. He neither sought nor avoided him. He bore that embarrassing and almost oppressive gaze without appearing to notice it. He treated Javert with ease and courtesy as he did all the rest of the world. It was divine from some words which escaped Javert that he had secretly investigated with that curiosity which belongs to the race and into which there enters as much instinct as will all the anterior traces which Father Madeleine might have left elsewhere. He seemed to know and he sometimes said in covert words that someone had gleaned certain information in a certain district about a family which had disappeared. Once he chanced to say as he was talking to himself, I think I have him. Then he remained pensive for three days and uttered not a word. It seemed that the thread which he thought he held had broken. Moreover, and this furnishes the necessary corrective for the two absolute sense which certain words might present, there could be nothing really infallible in a human creature and the peculiarity of instinct is that it can be confused, thrown off the track and defeated. Otherwise, it would be superior to intelligence and the beast would be found to be provided with a better light than man. Javert was evidently somewhat disconcerted by the perfect naturalness and tranquility of Monsieur Madeleine. One day, nevertheless, his strange manner appeared to produce an impression on Monsieur Madeleine. It was on the following occasion. End of chapter five. Book five, chapter six of Les Miserables, translated by Isabelle F. Hapgood. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Joel Portinga. Les Miserables by Victor Hugo. Book five, The Descent. Chapter six, Father Fauchelavan. One morning, Monsieur Madeleine was passing through an unpaved alley of Montreux-sur-Mer. He heard a noise and saw a group some distance away. He approached. An old man named Father Fauchelavan had just fallen beneath his cart, his horse having tumbled down. This Fauchelavan was one of the few enemies whom Monsieur Madeleine had at that time. When Madeleine arrived in the neighborhood, Fauchelavan, an ex-notary and a peasant who was almost educated, had a business which was beginning to be in a bad way. Fauchelavan had seen this simple workman grow rich while he, a lawyer, was being ruined. This had filled him with jealousy and he had done all he could on every occasion to injure Madeleine. Then bankruptcy had come. And as the old man had nothing left but a cart and a horse, and neither family nor children, he had turned carter. The horse had two broken legs and could not rise. The old man was caught in the wheels. The fall had been so unlucky that the whole weight of the vehicle rested on his breast. The cart was quite heavily laden. Father Fauchelavan was rattling in the throat in the most lamentable manner. They had tried but in vain to drag him out. An unmythorical effort, aid awkwardly given, a wrong shake might kill him. It was impossible to disengage him otherwise than by lifting the vehicle off of him. Javert, who had come up at the moment of the accident, had sent for a jackscrew. Monsieur Madeleine arrived. People stood aside respectfully. Help! cried old Fauchelavan. Who will be good and save the old man? Monsieur Madeleine turned towards those present. Is there a jackscrew to be had? One has been sent for, answered the peasant. How long will it take to get it? They have gone for the market to Flechot's place, where there is a farrier, but it makes no difference. It will take a good quarter of an hour. A quarter of an hour, exclaimed Madeleine. It had rained on the preceding night. The soil was soaked. The cart was sinking deeper into the earth every moment and crushing the old carter's breast more and more. It was evident that his ribs would be broken in five minutes more. It is impossible to wait another quarter of an hour, said Madeleine to the peasants who were staring at him. We must, but it will be too late then. Don't you see that the cart is sinking? Well, listen, resumed Madeleine. There's still room enough under the cart to allow a man to crawl beneath it and raise it with his back. Only half a minute and the poor man can be taken out. Is there anyone here who has stout loins in heart? There are five Louis door to be earned. Not a man in the group stirred. Ten Louis, said Madeleine. The peasants present dropped their eyes. One of them muttered, man would need to be devilish strong and then he runs the risk of getting crushed. Come, began Madeleine again. Twenty Louis, the same silence. It is not the will which is lacking, said a voice. Monsieur Madeleine turned round and recognized Javert. He had not noticed him on his arrival. Javert went on. It is strength.  Then, gazing fixedly at Monsieur Madeleine, he went on, emphasizing every word that he uttered. Monsieur Madeleine, I have never known, but one man capable of doing what you ask. Madeleine shuddered. Javert added with an air of indifference, but without removing his eyes from Madeleine, he was a convict. Ah, said Madeleine. In the galleys at Toulon. Madeleine turned pale. Meanwhile, the cart continued to sink slowly. Father Fauchelivant rattled in the throat and shrieked, I'm strangling, my ribs are breaking, a screw, something, ah! Madeleine glanced about him. Is there, then, no one who wishes to earn 20 Louis and save the life of this poor old man? No one stirred. Javert resumed, I have never known, but one man who could take the place of a screw and he was that convict. Ah, it is crushing me, cried the old man. Madeleine raised his head, met Javert's falcon eyes still fixed upon him and looked at the motionless peasants and smiled, sadly. Then, without saying a word, he fell on his knees and before the crowd had even time to utter a cry, he was underneath the vehicle. A terrible moment of expectation and silence ensued. They beheld Madeleine almost flat on his stomach beneath that terrible weight, make two vain efforts to bring his knees and his elbows together. They shouted to him, Father Madeleine, come out! Old Fochelvain himself said to him, Mr. Madeleine, go away! You see that I am fated to die, leave me! You will get yourself crushed also! Madeleine made no reply. All the spectators were panting. The wheels had continued to sink and it had become almost impossible for Madeleine to make his way from under the vehicle. Suddenly the enormous mass was seen to quiver. The cart rose slowly. The wheels half emerged from the ruts. They heard a stifled voice crying, Make haste! Help! It was Madeleine who had just made a final effort. They rushed forwards. The devotion of a single man had given force and courage to all. The cart was raised by twenty arms. Old Fochelvain was saved. Madeleine rose. He was pale, though dripping with perspiration. His clothes were torn and covered with mud. All wept. The old man kissed his knees and called him the good God. As for him, he bore upon his countenance an indescribable expression of happy and celestial suffering, and he fixed his tranquil eye on Javert, who was still staring at him. End of chapter six. Book five, chapter seven of Les Miserables, translated by Isabelle F. Hapgood. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Peter Eastman. Les Miserables by Victor Hugo. Book five, The Descent. Chapter seven, Fochelvain becomes a gardener in Paris. Fochelvain had dislocated his knee-pan in his fall. Father Madeleine had him conveyed to an infirmary, which he had established for his workmen in the factory building itself, and which was served by two sisters of charity. On the following morning, the old man found a thousand franc banknote on his nightstand, with these words in Father Madeleine's writing. I purchase your horse and cart. The cart was broken and the horse was dead. Fochelvain recovered, but his knee remained stiff. Monsieur Madeleine, on the recommendation of the sisters of charity and of his priest, got the good man a place as gardener in a female convent in the rue Saint-Antoine in Paris. Some time afterwards, Monsieur Madeleine was appointed mayor. The first time that Javert beheld Monsieur Madeleine clothed in the scarf which gave him authority over the town, he felt the sort of shutter which a watchdog might experience on smelling a wolf in his master's clothes. From that time forth, he avoided him as much as he possibly could. When the requirements of the service imperatively demanded it and he could not do otherwise than meet the mayor, he addressed him with profound respect. This prosperity created à mon trés en mer by Father Madeleine had, besides the visible signs which we have mentioned, another symptom which was none the less significant for not being visible. This never deceives. When the population suffers, when work is lacking, when there is no commerce, the taxpayer resists imposts through penury. He exhausts and oversteps his respite and the state expends a great deal of money in the charges for compelling and collection. When work is abundant, when the country is rich and happy, the taxes are paid easily and cost the state nothing. It may be said that there is one infallible thermometer of the public misery and riches, the cost of collecting the taxes. In the course of seven years, the expense of collecting the taxes had diminished three-fourths in the arrondissement of mon trés en mer. And this led to this arrondissement being frequently cited from all the rest by Monsieur de Vélal, then Minister of Finance. Such was the condition of the country when Fantine returned thither. No one remembered her. Fortunately, the door of Monsieur Madeleine's factory was like the face of a friend. She presented herself there and was admitted to the women's workroom. The trade was entirely new to Fantine. She could not be very skillful at it and she therefore earned but little by her day's work. But it was sufficient. The problem was solved. She was earning her living. End of Book 5, Chapter 7. Chapter 8 Mme Vittonniens expends 30 francs on morality. When Fantine saw that she was making her living, she felt joyful for a moment, to live honestly by her own labour what mercy from heaven. The taste for work had really returned to her. She bought a looking-glass, took pleasure in surveying in it her youth, her beautiful hair, her fine teeth. She forgot many things. She thought only of Cozette and of the possible future and was almost happy. She hired a little room and furnished on credit on the strength of her future work, a lingering trace of her improvident ways. As she was not able to say that she was married, she took good care, as we have seen, not to mention her little girl. At first, as the reader has seen, she paid the tenardier promptly. As she only knew how to sign her name, she was obliged to write through a public letter-writer. She wrote often, and this was noticed. It began to be said in an undertone in the women's workroom that Fantine wrote letters and that she had ways about her. There is no one for spying on people's actions like those who are not concerned in them. Why does that gentleman never come except at nightfall? Why does Mr. So-and-so never hang his key on its nail on Tuesday? Why does he always take the narrow streets? Why does Madame always descend from her hackney-coach before reaching her house? Why does she send out to purchase six sheets of note-paper when she has a whole station or shop full of it, et cetera? There exist beings who, for the sake of obtaining the key to these enigmas, which are, moreover, of no consequence whatever to them, spend more money, waste more time, take more trouble, than would be required for ten good actions, and that gratuitously for their own pleasure without receiving any other payment for their curiosity than curiosity. They will follow up such and such a man or woman for whole days. They will do sentry duty for hours at a time on the corners of the streets under alleyway doors at night in cold and rain. They will bribe errand-porters. They will make the drivers of hackney-coaches and lackeys tipsy, buy a waiting maid, suborn a porter. Why? For no reason. A pure passion for seeing, knowing, and penetrating into things, a pure itch for talking. And often these secrets once known, these mysteries made public, these enigmas illuminated by the light of day, bring on catastrophes, duels, failures, the ruin of families and broken lives, to the great joy of those who have found out everything, without any interest in the matter, and by pure instinct. A sad thing. Certain persons are malicious solely through a necessity for talking. Their conversation, the chat of the drawing-room, gossip of the anti-room, is like those chimneys which consume wood rapidly. They need a great amount of combustibles, and their combustibles are furnished by their neighbors. So Fantine was watched. In addition, many a one was jealous of her golden hair and of her white teeth. It was remarked that in the work-room she often turned aside in the midst of the rest to wipe away a tear. These were the moments when she was thinking of her child, perhaps also of the man whom she had loved. Breaking the gloomy bonds of the past is a mournful task. It was observed that she wrote twice a month at least, and that she paid the carriage on the letter. They managed to obtain the address, Monsieur, Monsieur, Tel-Nardier, innkeeper at Mont-Fermet. The public writer, a good old man who could not fill his stomach with red wine without emptying his pocket of secrets, was made to talk in the wine-shop. In short, it was discovered that Fantine had a child. She must be a pretty sort of woman. An old gossip was found, who made the trip to Mont-Fermet, talked to the Tel-Nardier, and said on her return, for my five and thirty francs I have freed my mind, I have seen the child. The gossip who did this thing was a gorgon named Madame Victorlien, the guardian and doorkeeper of everyone's virtue. Madame Victorlien was fifty-six, and reinforced the mask of ugliness with the mask of age. A quavering voice, a whimsical mind. This old dame had once been young, astonishing fact. In her youth, in ninety-three, she had married a monk who had fled from his cloister in a red cap and passed from the Ben-Aldine to the Jacobins. She was dry, rough, peevish, sharp, captious, almost venomous, all this in memory of her monk, whose widow she was, and who had ruled over her masterfully and bent her to his will. She was a nettle in which the rustle of the cassock was visible. At the restoration she had turned bigot, and that with so much energy that the priests had forgiven her her monk. She had a small property, which she bequeathed with much ostentation to a religious community, she was in high favor at the Episcopal Palace of Arras. So this Madame Victor Nien went to Montfermets, and returned with the remark, I have seen the child. All this took time. Fantine had been at the factory for more than a year when, one morning, the superintendent of the workroom handed her fifty francs from the mayor, told her that she was no longer employed in the shop and requested her in the mayor's name to leave the neighborhood. This was the very month when the Thénaultier, after having demanded twelve francs instead of six, had just exacted fifteen francs instead of twelve. Fantine was overwhelmed. She could not leave the neighborhood. She was in debt for her rent and furniture. Fifty francs was not sufficient to cancel this debt. She stammered a few supplicating words. The superintendent ordered her to leave the shop on the instant. Besides, Fantine was only a moderately good workwoman. Overcome with shame, even more than with despair, she quitted the shop and returned to her room, so her fault was now known to everyone. She no longer felt strong enough to say a word. She was advised to see the mayor. She did not dare. The mayor had given her fifty francs because he was good, and had dismissed her because he was just. She bowed before the decision. End of book five, chapter eight. Recording by Zachary Brewstergeis, Greenbelt, Maryland, June 2007. Book five, chapter nine of Les Miserables, translated by Isabelle F. Hapgood. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Zachary Brewstergeis. Les Miserables by Victor Hugo. Book fifth, The Descent. Chapter nine, Madame Victorine's Success. So the monk's widow was good for something. But Monsieur Madeline had heard nothing of all this. Life is full of just such combinations of events. Monsieur Madeline was in the habit of almost never entering the women's workroom. At the head of this room he had placed an elderly spinster, whom the priest had provided for him, and he had full confidence in this superintendent—a truly respectable person, firm, equitable, upright, full of the charity which consists in giving, but not having in the same degree that charity which consists in understanding and in forgiving. Monsieur Madeline relied wholly on her. The best men are often obliged to delegate their authority. It was with this full power and the conviction that she was doing right that the superintendent had instituted the suit, judged, condemned, and executed Fontaine. As regards the 50 francs she had given them from a fund which Monsieur Madeline had entrusted to her for charitable purposes, and for giving assistance to the work women, and of which she rendered no account. Fontaine tried to obtain a situation as a servant in the neighborhood. She went from house to house. No one would have her. She could not leave town—the second-hand dealer to whom she was in debt for her furniture, and what furniture? Said to her, If you leave, I will have you arrested as a thief. The householder, whom she owed for her rent, said to her, You are young and pretty. You can pay. She divided the 50 francs between the landlord and the furniture dealer, returned to the latter three quarters of his goods, kept only necessaries, and found herself without work, without a trade, with nothing but her bed, and still about 50 francs in debt. She began to make coarse shirts for soldiers of the garrison, and earned twelve sews a day. Her daughter cost her ten. It was at this point that she began to pay the ténal dier irregularly. However, the old woman who lighted her candle for her when she returned at night taught her the art of living in misery. Back of living on little, there is the living on nothing. These are the two chambers. The first is dark, the second is black. Fontein learned how to live without fire entirely in the winter, how to give up a bird which eats a half-a-farthing's worth of millet every two days, how to make a coverlet of one's petticoat and a petticoat of one's coverlet, how to save one's candle by taking one's meals by the light of the opposite window.  It ends by being a talent. Fontein acquired this sublime talent and regained a little courage. At this epoch she said to a neighbor, I say to myself, by only sleeping five hours and working all the rest of the time at my sewing, I shall always manage to nearly earn my bread. And then, when one is sad, one eats less. Well, sufferings, uneasiness, a little bread on one hand, trouble on the other. All this will support me. It would have been a great happiness to have her little girl with her in this distress. She thought of having her come. But what then? Make her share her own destitution. And then she was in debt to the Ténartier. How could she pay them? And the journey, how pay for that? The old woman who had given her lessons in what may be called the life of indigence was a sainted spinster named Marguerite, who was pious with the true piety, poor and charitable towards the poor, and even towards the rich, knowing how to write just sufficiently to sign herself Marguerite and believing in God, which is science. There are many such virtuous people in this lower world. Someday they will be in the world above. This life has a morrow. At first Fontein had been so ashamed that she had not dared to go out. When she was in the street she divined that people turned round behind her and pointed at her. Everyone stared at her and no one greeted her. The cold and bitter scorn of the passers-by penetrated her very flesh and soul like a north wind. It seems as though an unfortunate woman were utterly bare beneath the sarcasm and the curiosity of all in small towns. In Paris at least no one knows you and the obscurity is a garment. Oh, how she would have liked to but take herself to Paris! Impossible! She was obliged to accustom herself to disrepute as she had accustomed herself to indigence. Gradually she decided on her course. At the expiration of two or three months she shook off her shame and began to go about as though there were nothing the matter. It is all the same to me, she said. She went and came, bearing her head well up, with a bitter smile, and was conscious that she was becoming brazen-faced. Madame Victolnière sometimes saw her passing from her window, noticed the distress of that creature who, thanks to her, had been put back in her proper place and congratulated herself. The happiness of the evil-minded is black. Excessive toil wore out Fontein, and the little dry cough which troubled her increased. She sometimes said to her neighbor, Marguerite, Just feel how hot my hands are! Nevertheless, when she combed her beautiful hair in the morning with an old broken comb, and it flowed about her like floss silk, she experienced a moment of happy cockatry. End of Part 5, Chapter 9, read by Zachary Brewster Geis, Greenbelt, Maryland, June 2007. Book 5, Chapter 10 of Les Miserables. Translated by Isabelle F. Hapgood. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Zachary Brewster Geis. Les Miserables by Victor Hugo. Book 5. The Descent Chapter 10, Result of the Success. She had been dismissed towards the end of the winter. The summer passed, but winter came again. Short days, less work. Winter, no warmth, no light, no noonday. The evening joining onto the morning, fogs, twilight. The window is gray. It is impossible to see clearly at it. The sky is but a vent hole. The whole day is a cavern. The sun has the air of a beggar. A frightful season. Winter changes the water of heaven and the heart of man into a stone. Her creditors harassed her. Fontine earned too little. Her debts had increased. The Tainaldier, who were not promptly paid, wrote to her constantly letters whose contents drove her to despair and whose carriage ruined her. One day they wrote to her that her little cassette was entirely naked in that cold weather, that she needed a woolen skirt and that her mother must send at least 10 francs for this. She received the letter and crushed it in her hands all day long. That evening she went into a barber's shop at the corner of the street and pulled out her comb. Her admirable golden hair fell to her knees. What splendid hair! exclaimed the barber. How much will you give me for it? said she. 10 francs. Cut it off. She purchased a knitted petticoat and sent it to the Tainaldier. This petticoat made the Tainaldier furious. It was the money that they wanted. They gave the petticoat to Eponine. The poor lark continued to shiver. Fontine thought, My child is no longer cold. I have clothed her with my hair. She put on little round caps which concealed her shorn head and in which she was still pretty. Dark thoughts held possession of Fontine's heart. When she saw that she could no longer dress her hair, she began to hate everyone about her. She had long shared the universal veneration for Father Madeleine, yet by dint of repeating to herself that it was he who had discharged her, that he was the cause of her unhappiness. She came to hate him also and most of all. When he passed the factory in working hours when the work people were at the door, she effected to laugh and sing. An old work woman who once saw her laughing and singing in this fashion said, There's a girl who will come to a bad end. She took a lover, the first who offered, a man whom she did not love, out of bravado and with rage in her heart.  She adored her child. The lower she descended, the darker everything grew about her, the more radiant shown that little angel at the bottom of her heart. She said, When I get rich, I will have my cosette with me. And she laughed. Her cough did not leave her and she had sweats on her back. One day she received from the Tainaldier a letter couched in the following terms. Cosette is ill with a malady which is going the rounds of the neighborhood. A milliary fever, they call it. Expensive drugs are required. This is ruining us and we can no longer pay for them. If you do not send us Fortefranc before the week is out, the little one will be dead. She burst out laughing and said to her old neighbor, Ah, they are good. Fortefranc, the idea that makes two Napoleons. Where do they think I am to get them?  Nevertheless she went to a dormer window in the staircase and read the letter once more. Then she descended the stairs and emerged running and leaping and still laughing. Someone met her and said to her, What makes you so gay?  They demand Fortefrancs of me.  As she crossed the square she saw great many people collected around a carriage of eccentric shape, upon the top of which stood a man dressed in red who was holding forth. He was a quack dentist on his rounds, who was offering to the public full sets of teeth, opiates, powders, and elixirs. Fontine mingled in the group and began to laugh for the rest at the harangue, which contained slang for the populace and jargon for respectable people. The tooth-puller aspired the lovely laughing-girl and suddenly exclaimed, You have beautiful teeth, you girl there who are laughing. If you want to sell me your pallets, I will give you a gold Napoleon a piece for them. What are my pallets? asked Fontine. The pallets replied the dental professor. Are the front teeth the two upper ones? How horrible! exclaimed Fontine. Two napoleons! grumbled a toothless old woman who was present. Yes, a lucky girl. Fontine fled and stopped her ears that she might not hear the hoarse voice of the man shouting to her. Reflect my beauty! Two napoleons! They may prove of service. If your heart bids you come this evening to the inn of Detilac d'Argent, you will find me there. Fontine returned home. She was furious and related the occurrence to her good neighbor Marguerite. Can you understand such a thing? Is he not an abominable man? How could they allow such people to go about the country? Pull out my two front teeth! Why, I should be horrible! My hair will grow again, but my teeth? What a monster of a man! I should prefer to throw myself headfirst on the pavement from the fifth story. He told me that he should be at the Detilac d'Argent this evening. And what did he offer? asked Marguerite. Two napoleons. That makes forty francs? Yes, said Fontine. That makes forty francs. She remained thoughtful and began her work. At the expiration of a quarter of an hour she left her sewing and went to read the Thénaudier's letter once more on the staircase. On her return she said to Marguerite who was at work beside her. What is a miliary fever, do you know? Yes, answered the old spinster. It is a disease. Does it require many drugs? Oh, terrible drugs! How does one get it? It is a malady that one gets without knowing how. Then it attacks children? Children in particular. Do people dive it? They may, said Marguerite. Fontine left the room and went to read her letter once more on the staircase. That evening she went out and was seen to turn her steps in the direction of the Rue de Paris where the inns are situated. The next morning when Marguerite entered Fontine's room before daylight, for they always worked together and in this manner used only one candle for the two. She found Fontine seated on her bed, pale and frozen. She had not lain down. Her cap had fallen on her knees. Her candle had burned all night and was almost entirely consumed Marguerite halted on the threshold, petrified at this tremendous wastefulness, and exclaimed, Look! The candle is all burned out! Something has happened! Then she looked at Fontine, who had turned toward her head bereft of its hair. Fontine had grown ten years older since the preceding night. Jesus! said Marguerite.  Nothing, replied Fontine. Quite the contrary. My child will not die of that frightful malady or lack of succour. I am content. So saying, she pointed out to the spinster two Napoleons which were glittering on the table. Ah! Jesus! God! cried Marguerite. Quiet is a fortune! Where did you get those Louis d'Or? I got them, replied Fontine. At the same time she smiled, the candle illuminated her countenance.   The two teeth had been extracted. She sent the Forty-Fanck to Mont-Fermet. After all, it was a ruse of the Tenaldier to obtain money. Cozette was not ill. Fontine threw her mirror out of the window. She had long since quitted her cell on the second floor for an attic with only a latch to fasten it next to the roof. One of those attics whose extremity forms an angle with the floor and knocks you on the head every instant, the poor occupant can reach the end of his chamber as he can the end of his destiny only by bending over more and more. She had no longer a bed, a rag which she called her coverlet, a mattress on the floor, and a seatless chair still remained. A little rose-bush which she had had dried up, forgotten in one corner. In the other corner was a butter-pot to hold water, which rose in winter, and in which the various levels of the water remained long marked by those circles of ice. She had lost her shame, she lost her coquetry, a final sign. She went out with dirty caps, whether from lack of time or from indifference, she no longer mended her linen. As the heels wore out, she dragged her stockings down into her shoes. This was evident from the perpendicular wrinkles. She patched her bodice, which was old and worn out, with scraps of calico which tore at the slightest movement. The people to whom she was indebted made scenes and gave her no peace. She found them in the street, she found them again on her staircase. She passed many a night weeping and thinking. Her eyes were very bright, and she felt a steady pain in her shoulder towards the top of the left shoulder-blade. She coughed a great deal. She deeply hated Father Madeleine, but made no complaint. She sewed seventeen hours a day, but a contractor for the work of prisons, who made the prisoners work at a discount, suddenly made prices fall, which reduced the daily earnings of working women to nine sous. Seventeen hours of toil and nine sous a day. Her creditors were more pitiless than ever. The second-hand dealer, who had taken back nearly all his furniture, said to her incessantly, When will you pay me, you hussy? What did they want of her good God? She felt that she was being hunted and something of the wild beast developed in her. About the same time, Tenardier wrote to her that he had waited with decidedly too much amiability and that he must have a hundred francs at once. Otherwise he would turn little cosette out of doors, convalescent as she was from her heavy illness, into the cold and the streets, and that she might do what she liked with herself and die if she chose. A hundred francs, thought Fontaine, but in what trade can one earn a hundred sous a day? Come, said she, let us sell what is left. The unfortunate girl became a woman of the town. End of Book Five, Chapter Ten Read by Zachary Brewster Geis, Greenbelt, Maryland, June 2007 Book Five, Chapter Eleven of Les Miserables Translated by Isabelle F. Hapgood This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org Recording by Zachary Brewster Geis Les Miserables by Victor Hugo Book Fifth, The Descent Chapter Eleven Christus Nos Librivit What is this history of Fontaine? It is society purchasing a slave. From whom? From misery. From hunger, cold, isolation, destitution, a dolerous bargain, a soul for a morsel of bread. Misery offers, society accepts. The sacred law of Jesus Christ governs our civilization, but it does not as yet permeate it. It is said that slavery has disappeared from European civilization. This is a mistake. It still exists. But it weighs only upon the woman, and it is called prostitution. It weighs upon the woman, that is to say, upon grace, weakness, beauty, maternity. This is not one of the least of man's disgraces. At the point in this melancholy drama which we have now reached, nothing is left of Fontaine, of that which had formerly been. She has become marble in becoming mire. Whoever touches her feels cold. She passes. She endures you. She ignores you. She is the severe and dishonored figure. Life in the social order has said their last word for her. All has happened to her that will happen to her. She has felt everything, born everything, experienced everything, suffered everything, lost everything, mourned everything. She is resigned with that resignation which resembles indifference, as death resembles sleep. She no longer avoids anything. Let all the clouds fall upon her, and all the ocean sweep over her. What matters it to her? She is a sponge that is soaked. At least she believes it to be so. But it is an error to imagine that fate can be exhausted, and that one has reached the bottom of anything whatever. Alas, what are all these fates driven on Pell-Mell? Where are they going? Why are they thus? He who knows that sees the whole of the shadow. He is alone. His name is God. End of Book 5, Chapter 10. Read by Zachary Brewster Geis, Greenbelt, Maryland, June 2007. Book 5, Chapter 12 of Les Miserables. Translated by Isabelle F. Hapgood. Les Miserables by Victor Hugo. Book 5, The Descent. Chapter 12. Monsieur Bama Tabois's Inactivity. There is in all small towns, and there was at Montrées-Sommer in particular, a class of young men who nibble away an income of 1500 francs, with the same air with which their prototypes devour 200 000 francs a year in Paris. These are beings of the great neuter species, impotent men, parasites, ciphers, who have a little land, a little folly, a little wit, who would be rustics in a drawing room, and who think themselves gentlemen in the dram shop, who say, my fields, my peasants, my woods, who hiss actresses at the theatre to prove that they are persons of taste, quarrel with the officers of the garrison to prove that they are men of war, hunt, smoke, yawn, drink, smell of tobacco, play billiards, stare at travellers as they descend from the diligence, live at the café, dine at the inn, have a dog which eats the bones under the table, and a mistress who eats the dishes on the table, who stick it asou, exaggerate the fashions, admire tragedy, despise women, wear out their old boots, copy London through Paris and Paris through the medium of Pont à Mousson, grow old as dullards, never work, serve no use, and do no great harm. Monsieur Félix Tolomai, had he remained in his own province and never beheld Paris, would have been one of these men. If they were richer one could say they are dandies, if they were poorer one would say they are idlers. They are simply men without employment. Among these unemployed there are boars, the board, dreamers, and some naves. At that period a dandy was composed of a tall collar, a big cravat, a watch with trinkets, three vests of different colours, worn one on top of the other, the red and blue inside. Of a short-waisted olive coat with a codfish tail, a double row of silver buttons set close to each other and running up to the shoulder, and a pair of trousers of a lighter shade of olive ornamented on the two seams with an indefinite but always uneven number of lines, varying from one to eleven, a limit which was never exceeded. Add to this high shoes with little irons on the heels, a tall hat with a narrow brim, hair worn in a tuft, an enormous cane, and conversation set off by puns of potier. Overall spurs and a moustache. At that epoch moustaches indicated the bourgeois and spurs the pedestrian. The provincial dandy wore the longest of spurs and the fiercest of moustaches. It was the period of the conflict of the republics of South America with the king of Spain, of Bolivar against Murillo. Narrow brimmed hats were royalist, and were called Murillo's. Liberals wore hats with wide brims, which were called Bolivars. Eight or ten months then, after that which is related in the preceding pages, towards the first of January 1823, on a snowy evening, one of these dandies, one of these unemployed, a right thinker for he wore a Murillo, and was moreover warmly enveloped in one of those large cloaks which completed the fashionable costume in cold weather, was amusing himself by tormenting a creature who was prowling about in a bald dress, with neck uncovered and flowers in her hair in front of the officer's café. This dandy was smoking, for he was decidedly fashionable.  This gentleman was known as Monsieur Bama Taboua. The woman, a melancholy decorated specter which went and came through the snow, made him no reply, did not even glance at him, and nevertheless continued her promenade in silence, and with a sombre regularity which brought her every five minutes when the reach of this sarcasm like the condemned soldier who returns under the rods. The small effect which he produced no doubt peaked the lounger, and taking advantage of a moment when her back was turned he crept up behind her with the gate of a wolf, and stifling his laugh bent down picked up a handful of snow from the pavement, and thrust it abruptly into her back between her bare shoulders.  These insults poured forth in a voice roughened by Brandy did indeed proceed in hideous wise from a mouth which lacked its two front teeth. It was fontine. At the noise thus produced the officers ran out in throngs from the cafe, passersby collected, and a large and merry circle hooting and applauding was formed around this whirlwind composed of two beings whom there was some difficulty in recognizing as a man and a woman. The man struggling his hat on the ground, the woman striking out with feet and fists, bareheaded, howling, minus hair and teeth, livid with wrath, horrible. Suddenly a man of lofty stature emerged vivaciously from the crowd, seized the woman by her satin bodice which was covered with mud and said to her, follow me. The woman raised her head. Her furious voice suddenly died away. Her eyes were glassy. She turned pale instead of livid, and she trembled with a quiver of terror. She had recognized Javert. The dandy took advantage of the incident to make his escape. End of Book 5 Chapter 12 Read by Zachary Boostergeis Greenbelt, Maryland