Les miserables (Abridged) - Victor Hugo [110]
“Monsieur Mayor, what shall I say?”
“Say that it is fine, and I am coming down.”
4 (5)
OBSTACLES10
THE POSTAL SERVICE from Arras to M—sur M—was still performed at this time by the little mail waggons dating from the empire. These mail waggons were two-wheeled cabriolets lined with buckskin, hung upon jointed springs, and having but two seats, one for the driver, the other for the traveller. The wheels were armed with those long threatening hubs which keep other vehicles at a distance, and which are still seen upon the roads of Germany. The letters were carried in a huge oblong box placed behind the cabriolet and forming a part of it. This box was painted black and the cabriolet yellow.
These vehicles, which nothing resembles today, were indescribably misshapen and clumsy, and when they were seen from a distance crawling along some road in the horizon, they were like those insects called, I think, termites, which with a slender body draw a great train behind. They went, however, very fast. The mail that left Arras every night at one o‘clock, after the passing of the dispatches from Paris, arrived at M—sur M—a little before five in the morning.
That night the mail that came down into M—sur M—by the road from Hesdin, at the turn of a street just as it was entering the city, clipped a little tilbury drawn by a white horse, which was going in the opposite direction, and in which there was only one person, a man wrapped in a cloak. The wheel of the tilbury received a very severe blow. The courier cried out to the man to stop, but the traveller did not listen and kept on his way at a rapid trot.
“There is a man in a devilish hurry!” said the courier.
The man who was in such a hurry was he whom we have seen struggling in such pitiable convulsions.
Where was he going? He could not have said. Why was he in haste? He did not know. He went forward as if randomly. Whither? To Arras, doubtless; but perhaps he was going elsewhere also. At moments he felt this, and he shuddered. He plunged into that darkness as into a yawning gulf. Something pushed him, something drew him on. What was happening within him, no one could describe, but all will understand. What man has not entered, at least once in his life, into this dark cavern of the unknown?
But he had resolved upon nothing, decided nothing, determined nothing, done nothing. None of the acts of his conscience had been final. He was more than ever as if at the first moment.
Why was he going to Arras?
He repeated what he had already said to himself when he engaged the cabriolet of Scaufflaire, that, whatever might be the result, there could be no objection to seeing with his own eyes, and judging of the circumstances for himself; that it was even prudent, that he ought to know what took place; that he could decide nothing without having observed and scrutinised; that in the distance every little thing seems a mountain; that after all, when he should have seen this Champmathieu, some wretch probably, his conscience would be very much reconciled to letting him go to the galleys in his place; that it was true that Javert would be there, and Brevet, Chenildieu, Cochepaille, former convicts who had known him; but surely they would not recognise him; bah! what an idea! that Javert was a hundred miles off the track; that all conjectures and all suppositions were fixed upon this Champmathieu, and that nothing is so stubborn as suppositions and conjectures; that there was, therefore, no danger.
That it was no doubt a dark hour, but that he should get through it; that after all he held his destiny, evil as it might be, in his own hand; that he was master of it. He clung to that thought.
In reality, to tell the truth, he would have preferred not to go to Arras.
Still he was on the way.
Although absorbed in thought, he whipped up his horse, which trotted away at that regular and sure full trot that gets over