Les miserables (Abridged) - Victor Hugo [371]
“Well,” resumed Jean Valjean, “I am to deliver the letter to her. Give it to me.”
“In that case you must know that I am sent from the barricade?”
“Of course,” said Jean Valjean.
Gavroche thrust his hand into another of his pockets, and drew out a folded paper.
Then he gave a military salute.
“Respect for the despatch,” said he. “It comes from the provisional government.”
And he handed the paper to Jean Valjean.
“And hurry yourself, Monsieur What‘s-your-name, for Mamselle What’s-her-name is waiting.”
Gavroche was proud of having produced this witticism.
Jean Valjean asked:
“Is it to Saint Merry that the answer is to be sent?”
“In that case,” exclaimed Gavroche, “you would be making one of those pastries commonly called blunders [brioches]. That letter comes from the barricade in the Rue de la Chanvrerie, and I am going back there. Good night, citizen.”
This said, Gavroche went away, or rather, resumed his flight like an escaped bird towards the spot whence he came. He plunged back into the darkness as if he made a hole in it, with the rapidity and precision of a projectile; the little Rue de l‘Homme Armé again became silent and solitary; in a twinkling, this strange child, who had within him shadow and dream, was buried in the dusk of those rows of black houses, and was lost therein like smoke in the darkness; and one might have thought him dissipated and vanished, if, a few minutes after his disappearance, a loud crashing of glass and the splendid patatras of a lamp falling upon the pavement had not abruptly reawakened the indignant bourgeois. It was Gavroche passing along the Rue du Chaume.
3
WHILE COSSETE AND TOUSSAINT SLEEP
JEAN VALJEAN WENT inside with Marius’ letter.
He groped his way upstairs, pleased with the darkness like an owl which holds his prey, opened and softly closed the door, listened to see if he heard any sound, decided that, according to all appearances, Cosette and Toussaint were asleep, plunged three or four matches into the bottle of the Fumade tinder-box before he could raise a spark, his hand trembled so much; there was theft in what he was about to do. At last, his candle was lighted, he leaned his elbows on the table, unfolded the paper, and read.
In violent emotions, we do not read, we wrestle down the paper which we hold, so to speak, we strangle it like a victim, we crush the paper, we bury the nails of our wrath or of our delight in it; we run to the end, we leap to the beginning; the attention has a fever; it comprehends by wholesale, almost, the essential; it seizes a point, and all the rest disappears. In Marius’ note to Cosette, Jean Valjean saw only these words.
“—I die. When you read this, my soul will be near you.”
Before these two lines, he was horribly dazzled; he sat a moment as if crushed by the change of emotion which was wrought within him, he looked at Marius’ note with a sort of drunken astonishment; he had before his eyes that splendour, the death of the hated being.
He uttered a hideous cry of inward joy. So, it was finished. The end came sooner than he had dared to hope. The being who encumbered his destiny was disappearing. He was going away of himself, freely, of his own accord. Without any intervention on his, Jean Valjean’s part, without any fault of his, “that man” was about to die. Perhaps even he was already dead.—Here his fever began to calculate.—No. He is not dead yet. The letter was evidently written to be read by Cosette in the morning; since those two discharges which were heard between eleven o‘clock and midnight, there had been nothing; the barricade will not be seriously attacked till daybreak; but it is all the same, for the moment “that man” meddled with this war, he was lost; he is caught in the net. Jean Valjean felt that he was delivered. He would then find himself once more alone with Cosette. Rivalry ceased; the future began again. He had only to keep the note in his pocket. Cosette would never know what had become of “that man.” “I have only to let things take their course. That man cannot escape. If