Les Misérables, v. 4/5: The Idyll and the Epic

  CHAPTER I.

  THE MYSTERIOUS HOUSE.

  About the middle of the last century a president of the Parliament ofParis who kept a mistress under the rose--for at that day the nobilitydisplayed their mistresses and the bourgeois concealed theirs--had "unepetite maison" built in the Faubourg St. Germain, in the deserted RueBlomet, which is now called Rue Plumet, and not far from the spot whichwas formerly known as the "Combat des Animaux." This house consistedof a pavilion only one story in height, there were two sitting-roomson the ground-floor, two bedrooms on the first, a kitchen below, aboudoir above, an attic beneath the roof, and the whole was surroundedby a large garden with railings looking out on the street. This wasall that passers-by could see. But behind the pavilion was a narrowyard, with an outhouse containing two rooms, where a nurse and a childcould be concealed if necessary. In the back of this outhouse was asecret door leading into a long, paved, winding passage, open to thesky, and bordered by two lofty walls. This passage, concealed withprodigious art, and, as it were, lost between the garden walls, whoseevery turn and winding it followed, led to another secret door, whichopened about a quarter of a mile off almost in another quarter, at thesolitary end of the Rue de Babylone. The president went in by thisdoor, so that even those who might have watched him, and observed thathe mysteriously went somewhere every day, could not have suspected thatgoing to the Rue de Babylone was going to the Rue Blomet. By cleverpurchases of ground, the ingenious magistrate had been enabled to makethis hidden road upon his own land, and consequently uncontrolled.At a later date he sold the land bordering the passage in small lotsfor gardens, and the owners of these gardens on either side believedthat they had a parting-wall before them, and did not even suspectthe existence of this long strip of pavement winding between twowalls among their flower-beds and orchards. The birds alone saw thiscuriosity, and it is probable that the linnets and tomtits of the lastcentury gossiped a good deal about the President.

  The pavilion, built of stone, in the Mansard taste, and panelled andfurnished in the Watteau style, rock-work outside, old-fashionedwithin, and begirt by a triple hedge of flowers, had somethingdiscreet, coquettish, and solemn about it, befitting the caprices oflove and a magistrate. This house and this passage, which have nowdisappeared, still existed fifteen years ago. In 1793 a brazier boughtthe house for the purpose of demolishing it, but as he could not pay,the nation made him bankrupt, and thus it was the house that demolishedthe brazier. Since then the house bad remained uninhabited, and fellslowly into ruins, like every residence to which the presence of manno longer communicates life. The old furniture was left in it, andthe ten or twelve persons who pass along the Rue Plumet were informedthat it was for sale or lease by a yellow and illegible placard whichhad been fastened to the garden gate since 1810. Toward the end ofthe Restoration the same passers-by might have noticed that the billhad disappeared, and even that the first-floor shutters were open.The house was really occupied, and there were short curtains at thewindows, a sign that there was a lady in the house. In October, 1829,a middle-aged man presented himself and took the house as it stood,including of course the outhouse and the passage leading to the Ruede Babylone, and he had the two secret doors of this passage put inrepair. The house was still furnished much as the president had leftit, so the new tenant merely ordered a few necessary articles, had thepaving of the yard put to rights, new stairs put in, and the windowsmended, and eventually installed himself there with a young girl andan old woman, without any disturbance, and rather like a man slippingin than one entering his own house. The neighbors, however, did notchatter, for the simple reason that he had none.

  The tenant was in reality Jean Valjean, and the girl was Cosette. Thedomestic was a female of the name of Toussaint, whom Jean Valjean hadsaved from the hospital and wretchedness, and who was old, rustic, andstammered,--three qualities which determined Jean Valjean on taking herwith him. He hired the house in the name of M. Fauchelevent, annuitant.In all we have recently recorded, the reader will have doubtlessrecognized Valjean even sooner than Thénardier did. Why had he leftthe convent of the Little Picpus, and what had occurred there? Nothinghad occurred. It will be borne in mind that Jean Valjean was happy inthe convent, so happy that his conscience at last became disturbed byit. He saw Cosette daily, he felt paternity springing up and beingdeveloped in him more and more; he set his whole soul on the girl; hesaid to himself that she was his, that no power on earth could rob himof her, that it would be so indefinitely, that she would certainlybecome a nun, as she was daily gently urged to it, that henceforththe convent was the world for him as for her, that he would grow oldin it and she grow up, that she would grow old and he die there; andthat, finally, no separation was possible. While reflecting on this,he began falling into perplexities: he asked himself if all thishappiness were really his, if it were not composed of the happiness ofthis child, which he confiscated and deprived her of, and whether thiswere not a robbery? He said to himself that this child had the rightto know life before renouncing it, that depriving her beforehand, andwithout consulting her, of all joys under the pretext of saving herfrom all trials, and profiting by her ignorance and isolation to makean artificial vocation spring up in her, was denaturalizing a humancreature and being false to God. And who knew whether Cosette, some daymeditating on this, and feeling herself a reluctant nun, might not growto hate him? It was a last thought, almost selfish and less heroic thanthe others, but it was insupportable to him. He resolved to leave theconvent.

  He resolved, and recognized with a breaking heart that he must doso. As for objections, there were none, for six years of residencebetween these walls, and of disappearance, had necessarily destroyedor dispersed the element of fear. He could return to human society athis ease, for he had grown old and all had changed. Who would recognizehim now? And then, looking at the worst, there was only danger forhimself, and he had not the right to condemn Cosette to a cloister, forthe reason that he had been condemned to the galleys; besides, whatis danger in the presence of duty? Lastly, nothing prevented him frombeing prudent and taking precautions; and as for Cosette's education,it was almost completed and terminated. Once the resolution was formed,he awaited the opportunity, which soon offered: old Fauchelevent died.Jean Valjean requested an audience of the reverend prioress, and toldher that as he had inherited a small property by his brother's death,which would enable him to live without working, he was going to leavethe convent, and take his daughter with him; but as it was not fairthat Cosette, who was not going to profess, should have been educatedgratuitously, he implored the reverend prioress to allow him to offerthe community, for the five years which Cosette had passed among them,the sum of five thousand francs. It was thus that Jean Valjean quittedthe Convent of the Perpetual Adoration.

  On leaving it he carried with his own hands, and would not intrust toany porter, the small valise, of which he always had the key abouthim. This valise perplexed Cosette, owing to the aromatic smell whichissued from it. Let us say at once that this trunk never quitted himagain, he always had it in his bed-room, and it was the first and attimes the only thing which he carried away in his removals. Cosettelaughed, called this valise "the inseparable," and said, "I am jealousof it." Jean Valjean, however, felt a profound anxiety when he returnedto the outer air. He discovered the house in the Rue Plumet, and hidhimself in it, henceforth remaining in possession of the name of UltimeFauchelevent. At the same time he hired two other lodgings in Paris,so that he might attract less attention than if he had always remainedin the same quarter; that he might, if necessary, absent himself fora while if anything alarmed him; and, lastly, that he might not betaken unaware, as on the night when he so miraculously escaped fromJavert. These two lodgings were of a very mean appearance, and intwo quarters very distant from each other, one being in the Rue del'Ouest, the other in the Rue de l'Homme-armé. He spent a few weeks nowand then at one or the other of these lodgings, taking Cosette withhim and leaving Toussaint behind. He was waited on by the porters,and represented hi
mself as a person living in the country, who had alodging in town. This lofty virtue had three domiciles in Paris inorder to escape the police.