Les miserables (Abridged) - Victor Hugo [134]
Jean Valjean, his iron bar in hand, walked slowly towards the bed of Fantine. On reaching it, he turned and said to Javert in a voice that could scarcely be heard:
“I advise you not to disturb me now.”
Nothing is more certain than that Javert trembled.
He had an idea of calling the guard, but Jean Valjean might profit by his absence to escape. He remained, therefore, grasped the bottom of his cane, and leaned against the framework of the door without taking his eyes from Jean Valjean.
Jean Valjean rested his elbow upon the post, and his head upon his hand, and gazed at Fantine, stretched motionless before him. He remained thus, mute and absorbed, evidently lost to everything of this life. His countenance and attitude bespoke nothing but inexpressible pity.
After a few moments’ reverie, he bent down to Fantine, and addressed her in a whisper.
What did he say? What could this condemned man say to this dead woman? What were these words? They were heard by none on earth. Did the dead woman hear them? There are touching illusions which perhaps are sublime realities. One thing is beyond doubt; Sister Simplice, the only witness of what happened, has often related that, at the moment when Jean Valjean whispered in the ear of Fantine, she distinctly saw an ineffable smile beam on those pale lips and in those dim eyes, full of the wonder of the tomb.13
Jean Valjean took Fantine’s head in his hands and arranged it on the pillow, as a mother would have done for her child, then fastened the string of her night-dress, and replaced her hair beneath her cap. This done, he closed her eyes.
The face of Fantine, at this instant, seemed strangely illumined.
Death is the entrance into the great light.
Fantine’s hand hung over the side of the bed. Jean Valjean knelt before this hand, raised it gently, and kissed it.
Then he rose, and, turning to Javert, said:
“Now, I am at your disposal.”
5
A FITTING TOMB
JAVERT put Jean Valjean in the city prison.
The arrest of Monsieur Madeleine produced a sensation, or rather an extraordinary commotion, at M——sur M——. We are sorry not to be able to disguise the fact that, on this single sentence, he was a galley slave, almost everybody abandoned him. In less than two hours, all the good he had done was forgotten, and he was “nothing but a galley slave.” It is fair to say that the details of the scene at Arras were not yet known. All day long, conversations like this were heard in every part of the town: “Don’t you know, he was a discharged convict!” “He! Who?” “The mayor.” “Bah! Monsieur Madeleine.” “Yes.” “Indeed!” “His name was not Madeleine; he has a horrid name, Béjean, Bojean, Bonjean!” “Oh! bless me!” “He has been arrested.” “Arrested!” “In prison, in the city prison to await his removal.” “His removal! where will he be taken?” “To the Circuit Court for a highway robbery that he once committed.” “Well! I always did suspect him. The man was too good, too perfect, too sweet. He refused the Legion of Honor, and gave money to every little blackguard he met. I always thought that there must be something bad at the bottom of all this.”
“Society,” especially, was entirely of this opinion.
An old lady, a subscriber to the Drapeau Blanc, made this remark, the depth of which it is almost impossible to fathom:
“I am not sorry for it. That will teach the Bonapartists!”
In this manner the phantom which had been called Monsieur Madeleine was dissipated at M——sur M——. Three or four persons alone in the whole city remained faithful to his memory The old portress who had been his servant was among the number.
On the evening of this same day, the worthy old woman was sitting in her lodge, still quite bewildered and sunk in sad reflections. The factory had been closed all day, the carriage ports were bolted, the street was deserted. There was no one in the house but the two nuns, Sister Perpétue and Sister Simplice, who were watching the corpse of Fantine.
Towards the time when Monsieur Madeleine had been accustomed