Les misérables, Fantine : a romance

Front matter

MELLIN'S

FOR

INFANTS.

Preface

CO long as there shall exist, by reason of law and custom a social condemnation, which, in the face of civilization, artificially creates hells on earth, and complicates a destiny that is divine with human fatality ; so long as the three problems of the age — the degradation of man by poverty, the ruin of woman by starvation, and the dwarfing of childhood by physical and spiritual night — are not s olved ; so long as, in certain regions, social asphyxia shall be possible ; in other words, and from a yet more extended point of view, so long as ignorance and misery remain on ?ai th, books like this cannot be useless.

Hauteville Housk.

Book The First— The Good Bishop. Pagb

I. M. Myriel g

II. M. Myriel becomes Monseigneur Bienvenu . . 12

III. Good Bishop— Hard Bishopric 19

IV. Works Answering Words 21

V. How Monseigneur Bienvenu made his Cassock Last

so Long 29

VI. How he Protected his House 33

VII. Cravatte 39

VIII. After-Dinner Philosophy 43

IX. The Brother Portrayed by the Sister ... 47

X. The Bishop in the Presence of an Unknown Light . 52

XI. A Qualification 65

XII. Solitude of Monseigneur Bienvenu . ... 70

XIII. What he Believed 73

XIV. What he Thought 78

Book Second.— The Fall

I. The Night of a Day's Tramp 81

II. Prudence Commended to Wisdom 94

III. The Heroism of Passive Obedience .... 98

IV. Some Account of the Dairies of Pontarlier . . 104 V. Tranquillity 108

VI. Jean Valjean no

VII. The Depths of Despair 116

VIII. The Waters and the Shadow 124

IX. New Griefs 127

X. The Man Awakes 128

XI. What he Does 132

XII. The Bishop at Work 136

XIII. Little Gervais 139

Book Third.— In The Year 1817

I. The Yeak 1817 150

II. Four to Four 161

III. Tholomyes is so Merry that he Sings a Spanish Song 166

IV. At Bombarda's 169

V. A Chapter of Self-Admiration 172

VI. The Wisdom of Tholomyes *73

VH. Death of a Horse v.9

VJ . Joyous End of Joy ........ iSa

Contents.

Book Fourth.— To Entrust Is Sometimes To Abandon. Pagb

I. One Mother Meets Another 186

II. First Sketch of Two Equivocal Faces . . . 196 III. The Lark 199

Book Fifth.— The Descent

I. History of an Improvement in Jet-Work . . .202

II. Madeleine 204

III. Moneys Deposited with Laffitte 208

IV. Monsieur Madeleine in Mourning .... 212 V. Vague Flashes in the Horizon 214

VI. Father Fauchelevent 220

VII. Fauchelevent becomes a Gardener at Paris . . 22} VIII. Madame Victurnien Spends Thirty Francs on

Morality 225

IX. Success of Madame Victurnien 229

X. Results of the Success 232

XII. The Idleness of Monsieur Bamatabois . . . 239

XIII. Solution of some Questions of Municipal Police . 242

Book Sixth.— Javert

I. The Beginning of the Rest B54

Book Seventh.— The Champmathieu Affair

I. Sister Simplice 269

II. Shrewdness of Master Scaufflaire .... 272

HI. A Tempest in a Brain 278

IV. Forms assumed by Suffering during Sleep. . . 300

V. Clogs in the Wheels 304

VI. Sister Simplice put to the Proof 317

VII. The Travki.ler Arrives and Provides for his Return 325

III. Admission by Favour 330

IX. A Place for arriving at Convictions .... 334

X. The System of Denegations 342

XI. Champmathieu more and more Astonished. . . 350

Book Eighth.— Counter-stroke

I. In what Mirror M. Madeleine Looked at his Hair 356

H. Fantine Happy 359

(II. J avert Satisfied 363

?V. Authority resumes its Sway 368

V. A Fitting Tomb wi

24S jHtaerafcles

F AN T I N E

£3oofc jFirst

THE GOOD BISHOP

M, MYRIEL.

IT was in the year 1815, that M. Charles Franc,ois-Bien< venu Myriel was Bishop of D . He was then

seventy-five, and had occupied the bishopric of D since

1 806. Although it does not concern, even in the remotest degree, what we have to relate, it may not be useless, were it only for the sake of exactness in all things, to notice here the reports and gossip which had arisen about him from the time of his arrival in the diocese.

Be it true or false, what is said about men often has as much influence upon their lives, and especially upon their destinies, as what they do.

IO Les Miserables — Fan tine.

M. Myriel was the son of a counsellor of the Parlement of Aix; of the rank given to the legal profession. His father, intending him to inherit his place, had contracted a marriage for him at the early age of eighteen or twenty, according to a widespread custom among parliamentary families. Charles Myriel, notwithstanding this marriage, had, it was said, been an object of much attention. His person was admirably moulded ; although of slight figure, he was elegant and graceful ; all the earlier part of his life had been devoted to the world and to its pleasures. The Revolution came, events crowded upon each other ; the parliamentary families, decimated, hunted, and pursued, were soon dispersed. M. Charles Myriel, on the first outbreak of the Revolution, emigrated to Italy. His wife died there of a lung disease with which she had long been threatened. They had no children. What followed in the fate of M. Myriel ? The decay of the old French society, the fall of his own family, the tragic sights of '93, still more fearful, perhaps, to the exiles who beheld them from afar, magnified by fright— did these arouse in him ideas of renunciation and of solitude ? Was he, in the midst of one of the reveries or emotions which then consumed his life, suddenly attacked by one of those mysterious and terrible blows which sometimes overwhelm, by smiting to the heart, the man whom public disasters could not shake, by aiming at life or fortune ? No one could have answered ; all that was known was that when he returned from Italy he was a priest.

In 1804, M. Myriel was cure of B (Brignolles). He

was then an old man, and lived in the deepest seclasion.

Near the time of the Coronation, a trifling matter of business belonging to his curacy — what it was, is not now known precisely — took him to Paris.

Among other personages of authority he went to Cardinal Fesch on behalf of his parishioners.

One day, when the Emperor had come to visit his uncle,

M. Myriel. 1 1

the worthy cure, who was waiting in the anteroom, happened to be on the way of his Majesty. Napoleon noticing that the old man looked at him with a certain curiousness, turned around and said brusquely : —

" Who is this goodman who looks at me ? "

" Sire," said M. Myriel, " you behold a goodman, and I a great man. Each of us may profit by it."

That evening the Emperor asked the Cardinal the name of the curd, and some time afterwards M. Myriel was overwhelmed with surprise on learning that he had been appointed Bishop of D .

Beyond this, no one knew how much truth there was in the stories which passed current concerning the first portion of M. Myriel's life. But few families had known the Myriels before the Revolution.

M. Myriel had to submit to the fate of every new-comer in a small town, where there are many tongues to talk, and but few heads to think. He had to submit, although he was bishop, and because he was bishop. But, after all, the gossip with which his name was connected was only gossip : noise, talk, words, less than words — palabres, as they say in the forcible language of the South.

Be that as it may, after nine years of episcopacy and of

residence in D , all these stories, topics of talk, which

engross at first petty towns and petty people, were entirely forgotten. Nobody would have dared to speak of, or even to remember them.

When M. Myriel came to D he was accompanied by

an old lady, Mademoiselle Baptistine, who was his sister, ten years younger than himself.

Their only domestic was a woman of about the same age as Mademoiselle Baptistine, who was called Madam? Magloire, and who, after having been the servant of M. le cure, now took the double title of femme de chambre oi Mademoiselle and housekeeper of Monseigneur.

Mademoiselle Baptistine was a tall, pale, thin, sweet person. She fully realized the idea which is expressed by the word "respectable/' for it seems as if it were necessary that a woman should be a mother to be venerable. She had never been pretty ; her whole life, which had been but a succession of pious works, had produced upon her a kind of transparent whiteness, and in growing old she had acquired what may be called the beauty of goodness. What had been thinness in her youth had become in maturity transparency, and this etherialness permitted gleams of the angel within. She was more a spirit than a virgin mortal. Her form was shadow-like, hardly enough body to convey the thought of sex — a little earth containing a spark — large eyes, always cast down ; a pretext for a soul to remain on earth.

Madame Magloire was a little, white, fat, jolly, bustling old woman, always out of breath, caused first by her activity, and then by the asthma.

M. Myriel, upon his arrival, was installed in his episcopal palace with the honours ordained by the imperial decrees, which class the Bishop next in rank to the Field-marshal. The Mayor and the President made him the first visit, and he, on his part, paid like honour to the General and the Prefect.

The installation being completed, the town was curious to see its Bishop at work.

II

M. MYRIEL BECOMES MONSEIGNEUR BIENVENU.

The Bishop's palace at D was contiguous to the

hospital : the palace was a spacious and beautiful edifice, built of stone, near the beginning of the last century, by Monscieneur Henri Pujet, a doctor of theology of the

M. Myriel becomes Monseigneur Bienvcnu. 13

Faculty of Paris, abbe of Simore, who was Bishop of D

in 1 7 1 2. The palace was in truth a lordly dwelling : there was an air of grandeur about everything, the apartments of the Bishop, the saloons, the chambers, the court of honour, which was very large, with arched walks after the antique Florentine style ; and a garden planted with magnificent trees.

In the dining-hall was a long, superb gallery, ivhich was level with the ground, opening upon the garden ; Monseigneur Henri Pujet had given a grand banquet on the 29th of July, 1714, to Monseigneur Charles Brulart de Genlis, archbishop, Prince d'Embrun, Antoine de Mesgrigny, capuchin bishop of Grasse, Philippe de Vendome, grand-prior de France, the Abbe de Saint Honore de Le'rins, Francois de Berton de Grillon, lord bishop of Vence, Cesar de Sabran de Forcalquier, lord bishop of Glandeve, and Jean Soanen, priest of the oratory, preacher in ordinary to the King, lord bishop of Senez; the portraits of the seven reverend personages decorated the hall, and this memorable date, July 29th, 1 7 14, appeared in letters of gold on a white marbletablet.

The hospital was a low, narrow, one-stcry building with a small garden.

Three days after the Bishop's advent he visited the hospital ; when the visit was ended, he invited the Director to oblige him by coming to the palace.

" Monsieur," he said to the Director of the hospital, " how many patients have you ?"

" Twenty-six, Monseigneur."

" That is as I counted them," said the Bishop.

" The beds," continued the Director, " are very much crowded."

" I noticed it."

" The wards are but small chambers, and are not easily ventilated."

14 Les Misdrables — Fan tint.

" It seems so to me."

" And then, when the sun does shine, the garden is very small for the convalescents."

" That was what I was thinking."

" Of epidemics we have had typhus fever this year ; two years ago we had miliary fever, sometimes one hundred patients, and we did not know what to do."

" That occurred to me."

" What can we do, Monseigneur ?" said the Director ; " we must be resigned."

This conversation took place in the dining gallery on the ground floor.

The Bishop was then silent a few moments : then he turned suddenly towards the Director.

" Monsieur," he said, " how many beds do you think this hall alone would contain?"

" The dining-hall of Monseigneur !" exclaimed the Director, stupefied.

The Bishop ran his eyes over the hall, seemingly taking measure and making calculations.

"It will hold twenty beds," said he to himself; then raising his voice, he said :

" Listen, Monsieur Director, to what I have to say. There is evidently a mistake here. There are twenty-six of you in five or six small rooms : there are only three of us, and space for sixty. There is a mistake, I tell you. You have my house, and I have yours. Restore mine to me ; you are at home."

Next day the twenty-six poor invalids were installed in the Bishop's palace, and the Bishop was in the hospital.

M. Myriel had no property, his family having been impoverished by the Revolution. His sister had a life estate of five hundred francs, which in the vicarage sufficed for her personal needs. M. Myriel received from the Government, as Bishop, a salary of fifteen thousand francs. The

M. Myriel becomes Monseigneur Bienvenn. 15

day on which he took up his residence in the hospital building, he resolved to appropriate this sum once for all to charitable uses, leaving for his own personal expenses only 1,000 francs.

" Schedule for the regulation of my household expenses.

For the little seminary, fifteen hundred livres.

Mission congregation, one hundred livres.

For the Lazaristes of Montdidier, one hundred livres.

Seminary of foreign missions in Paris, two hundred livres.

Congregation of the Saint-Esprit, one hundred and fifty livres.

Religious establishments in the Holy Land, one hundred livres.

Maternal charitable societies, three hundred livres.

For that of Aries, fifty livres.

For the amelioration of prisons, four hundred livres.

For the relief and deliverance of prisoners, five hundred livres.

For the liberation of fathers of families imprisoned for debt, one thousand livres.

Additions to the salaries of poor schoolmasters of the diocese, two thousand livres.

Public storehouse of Hautes-Alpes, one hundred livres.

Association of the ladies of D of Manosque and

Sisteron for the gratuitous instruction of poor girls, fifteen hundred livres.

For the poor, six thousand livres.

My personal expenses, one thousand livres.

Total, fifteen thousand livres."

M. Myriel made no alteration in this plan during the

time he held the see of D ; he called it the regulation oj

bis household expenses.

Mademoiselle Baptistine accepted this arrangement with entire submission : M. Myriel was to her at once her brother and her Bishop, her companion by ties of blood and her superior by ecclesiastical authority. She loved and venerated him unaffectedly : when he spoke, she listened: when he acted, she gave him her co-operation. Madame Magloire, however, their servant, grumbled a little. The Bishop had reserved but a thousand francs ; this, added to the income of Mademoiselle Baptistine, gave them a yearly dependence of fifteen hundred francs, upon which the three old people subsisted.

Thanks, however, to the rigid economy of Madame Magloire, and the excellent management of Mademoiselle

Baptistine, whenever a curate came to D , the Bishop

found means to extend to him his hospitality.

About three months after the installation, the Bishop said one day: "With all this lam very much cramped." "I think so too," said Madame Magloire : " Monseigneur has not even asked for the sum due him by the department for his carriage expenses in town, and in his circuits in the diocese. It was formerly the custom with all bishops."

" Yes !" said the Bishop ; " you are right, Madame Magloire."

He made his application.

Some time afterwards the Conseil-gene'ral took his claim into consideration and voted him an annual stipend of three thousand francs under this head : " Allowance to the Bishop for carriage expenses, and travelling expenses for pastoral visits."

The bourgeoisie of the town were much excited on the subject, and in regard to it a senator of the Empire, formerly a member of the Council of Five Hundred, an advocate of the Eighteenth Brumaire, now provided with a rich

senatorial seat near D , wrote to M. Bigot de Pre'a-

meneu, Minister of Public Worship, a fault-finding, con-

M. Myriel becomes Monseigneur Bien-vciiu. \)

fidential epistle, from which we make the following extract : —

" Carriage expenses ! What can he want of it in a town of less than 4,000 inhabitants ? Expenses of pastoral visits ! And what good do they do, in the first place ; and then, how is it possible to travel by post in this mountain region ? There are no roads ; he can go only on horseback. Even the bridge over the Durance at Chateau-Arnoux is scarcely passable for ox-carts. These priests are always so ; avaricious and miserly. This one played the good apostle at the outset : now he acts like the rest ; he must have a carriage and post-chaise. He must have luxury like the old bishops. Bah ! this whole priesthood ! Monsieur le Comte, things will never be better till the Emperor delivers us from thest macaroni priests. Down with the Pope ! (Matters were getting embroiled with Rome.) As for me, I am for Caesat alone," &c, &c, &c.

This application, on the other hand, pleased Madame Magloire exceedingly. " Good," said she to Mademoiselle Biptistine ; " Monseigneur began with others, but he has found at last that he must end by taking care of himself. He has arranged all his charities, and so now here are three thousand francs for us."

The same evening the Bishop wrote and gave to his sister a note couched in these terms :

" Carriage and Travelling Expenses.

For beef-tea for the Hospital, fifteen hundred livres.

For the Aix Maternal Charity Association, two hundred and fifty livres.

For the Draguignan Maternal Charity Association, two hundred and fifty livres.

For Foundlings, five hundred livres.

For Orphans, five hundred livres.

Total, three thousand livres."

B

Such was the budget of M. Myriel.

In regard to the official perquisites, marriago licenses, dispensations, private baptisms, and preaching, consecrations of churches or chapels, marriages, &c, the Bishop gathered them from the wealthy with as much exactness as he dis pensed them to the poor.

In a short time donations of money began to come in ; these who had and those who had not, knocked at the Bishop's door; some came to receive alms and others to bestow them, and in less than a year he had become the treasurer of all the benevolent, and the dispenser to all the needy. Large sums passed through his hands; nevertheless he changed in nowise his mode of life, nor added the le?*st luxury to his simple fair.

On the contrary, as there is always more misery among th<? lower classes than there is humanity in the higher, everything was given away, so to speak, before it was received, like water upon thirsty soil ; it was well that money came to him, for he never kept any : and besides he robbed himself. It being the custom that all bishops should put their baptismal names at the head of their orders and pastoral letters, the poor people of the district had chosen by a sort of affectionate instinct, from among the names of the Bishop, that which was expressive to them, and they always called him Monseigneur Bienvenu. We shall follow their example and shall call him thus; besides, this pleased him. " 1 like this name," said he ; " Bienvenu counterbalances Monseigneur."

We do not claim that the portrait which we present hare is a proDabie one ; we say only that it is a true one.

l9 III.

GOOD BISHOP — HARD BISHOPRIC-

The Bishop, after converting his carriage into aims, cone tne less regularly made his round of visits, and in the

diocese of D this was a wearisome task. There was

very little plain, a good deal of mountain ; and hardly any roads, as a matter of course ; thirty-two curacies, forty-one vicarages, and two hundred and eighty-five sub-curacies. To visit all these is a great labour, but the Bishop went through with it. He travelled on foot in his own neighbourhood, in a cart when he was in the plains, and in a cacokt, a basket strapped on the back of a mule, when in the mountains. The two women usually accompanied him, but when the journey was too difficult for them he went alone.

One day he arrived at Senez, formerly the seat of a bishopric, mounted on an ass. His purse was very empty at the time, and would not permit any better conveyance. The mayor of the city came to receive him at the gate of the episcopal residence, and saw him dismount from his ass with astonishment and mortificatioa. Several of the citizens stood near by, laughing. "Monsieur Mayor,'"' said the Bishop, " and Messieurs citizens, I see what astonishes you ; you think that it shows a good deal of pride for a poor priest to use the same conveyance which was used by Jesus Christ. I have done it from necessity, I assure you, and not from vanity."

In his visits he was indulgent and gentle, and preached less than he talked. He never used far-fetched reasons or examples. To the inhabitants of one region he would cite the example of a neighbouring region. In the cantons where the necessitous werp treated with severity he would

20 Les Miser t&,les — Fan tine.

say, " Look at the people of Briangon. They have given to the poor, and to widows and orphans, the right to mow their meadows three days before any one else. When their houses are in ruins they rebuild them without cost. And so it is a country blessed of God. For a whole century they have not had a single murderer."

In villages where the people were greedy for gain at harvest time, he would say, " Look at Embrun. If a father of a family, at harvest time, has his sons in the army, and his daughters at service in the city, and he is sick, the priest recommends him in his sermons, and on Sunday, after mass, the whole population of the village, men, women, and children, go into the poor man's field and harvest his crop, and put the straw and the grain into his granary." To families divided by questions of property and inheritance, he would say, " See the mountaineers of Devolny, a country so wild that the nightingale is not heard there once in fifty years. Well, now, when the father dies, in a family, the boys go away to seek their fortunes, and leave the property to the girls, so that they may get husbands." In those cantons where there was a taste for the law, and where the farmers were ruining themselves with stamped paper, he would say, " Look at those good peasants of the valley of Quey ras. There are three thousand souls there. Why, it is like a little republic ! Neither judge nor constable is known there. The mayor does everything. He apportions the impost, taxes each one according to his judgment, decides their quarrels without charge, distributes their patrimony without fees, gives judgment without expense ; and he is obeyed, because he is a just man among simple-hearted men." In the villages which he found without a schoolmaster, he would again hold up the valley of Queyras. " Do you know how they do ? " he would say. " As a little district of twelve or fifteen houses cannot always support a teacher, they have schoolmasters that are paid by the

Works Answering Words. 21

whole valley, who go around from village to village, passing a week in this place, and ten days in that, and give instruction. These masters attend the fairs, where I have seen them. They are known by quills which they wear in their hat-band. Those who teach only how to read have one quill ; those who teach reading and arithmetic have two j and those who teach reading, arithmetic, and Latin, have three ; the latter are esteemed great scholars. But what a shame to be ignorant ! Do like the people of Queyras."

In such fashion would he talk, gravely and paternally ; in default of examples he would invent parables, going straight to his object, with few phrases and many images, which was the very eloquence of Jesus Christ, convincing and persuasive.