Les miserables (Abridged) - Victor Hugo [140]
It will not be forgotten that Jean Valjean had at M——sur M——certain religious habits. Some of the newspapers and, among them, the Constitutionnel, held up this commutation as a triumph of the clerical party.1
Jean Valjean changed his number at the galleys. He became 9430.
After Jean valjean’s arrest, the town of which he had been mayor rapidly declines, as greedy minor capitalists squabble over the remains of his business. Poverty and misery ensue.
A second chapter tells of the local superstition that the Devil buries treasure in the woods near Montfermeil, where Fantine had left Cosette with the Thénardiers. Glimpsing Jean Valjean there, the drunken road worker Boulatruelle thinks he must have buried treasure there—as he in fact had done—and feverishly searches for it.
2 (3)
SHOWING THAT THE CHAIN OF THE SHACKLE MUST NEEDS HAVE UNDERGONE A CERTAIN PREPARATION TO BE THUS BROKEN BY ONE BLOW OF THE HAMMER
Towards THE END of October, in that same year, 1823, the inhabitants of Toulon saw coming back into their port, in consequence of heavy weather, and in order to repair some damages, the ship Orion, which was at a later period employed at Brest as a training ship, and which then formed a part of the Mediterranean squadron.
During the operations of the army of the Prince, commander-in-chief, a squadron cruised in the Mediterranean. We have said that the Orion belonged to that squadron, and that she had been driven back by bad weather to the port of Toulon.
The presence of a vessel of war in port has about it a certain influence which attracts and engages the multitude. It is because it is something grand, and the crowd likes what is imposing.
The Orion was a ship that had long been in bad condition. During her previous voyages, thick layers of shellfish had gathered on her bottom to such an extent as to seriously impede her progress; she had been put on the dry-dock the year before, to be scraped, and then she had gone to sea again. But this scraping had injured her fastening.
In the latitude of the Balearic Isles, her planking had loosened and opened, and as there was in those lays no copper sheathing, the ship had leaked. A fierce equinoctial came on, which had stove in the larboard bows and a porthole, and damaged the fore-chain-wales. In consequence of these injuries, the Orion had put back to Toulon.
She was moored near the arsenal. She was in commission, and they were repairing her. The hull had not been injured on the starboard side, but a few planks had been taken off here and there, according to custom, to admit the air to the framework.
One morning, the throng which was gazing at her witnessed an accident.
The crew was engaged in furling sail. The topman, whose duty it was to take in the starboard upper corner of the main top-sail, lost his balance. He was seen tottering; the dense throng assembled on the wharf of the arsenal uttered a cry, the man’s head overbalanced his body, and he whirled over the yard, his arms outstretched towards the deep; as he went over, he grasped the man-ropes, first with one hand, and then with the other, and hung suspended in that manner. The sea lay far below him at a giddy depth. The shock of his fall had given to the man-ropes a violent swinging motion, and the poor fellow hung dangling to and fro at the end of this line, like a stone in a sling.
To go to his aid was to run a frightful risk. None of the crew, who were all fishermen of the coast recently taken into service, dared attempt it. In the meantime, the poor topman was becoming exhausted; his agony could not be seen in his countenance, but his increasing weakness could be detected in the movements of all his limbs. His arms twisted about in horrible contortions. Every attempt he made to reascend only increased the oscillations of the man-ropes. He did not cry out, for fear of losing his strength. All were now looking forward to the moment when he should let go of the rope, and,