Les miserables (Abridged) - Victor Hugo [436]
“While at present, I am relieved!”
He resumed his walk and went to the other end of the parlour. Just as he began to turn, he perceived that Marius was noticing his walk. He said to him with an inexpressible accent:
“I drag one leg a little. You understand why now.”
Then he turned quite round towards Marius:
“And now, monsieur, picture this to yourself: I have said nothing, I have remained Monsieur Fauchelevent, I have taken my place in your house, I am one of you, I am in my room, I come to breakfast in the morning in slippers, at night we all three go to the theatre, I accompany Madame Pontmercy to the Tuileries and to the Place Royale, we are together, you suppose me your equal; some fine day I am there, you are there, we are chatting, we are laughing, suddenly you hear a voice shout this name: Jean Valjean! and you see that appalling hand, the police, spring out of the shadow and abruptly tear off my mask!”
He ceased again; Marius had risen with a shudder. Jean Valjean resumed: “What say you?”
Marius’ silence answered.
Jean Valjean continued:
“You see very well that I am right in not keeping quiet. Go on, be happy, be in heaven, be an angel of an angel, be in the sunshine, and be contented with it, and do not trouble yourself about the way which a poor condemned man takes to open his heart and do his duty; you have a wretched man before you, monsieur.”
Marius crossed the parlour slowly, and, when he was near Jean Valjean, extended him his hand.
But Marius had to take that hand which did not offer itself, Jean Valjean was passive, and it seemed to Marius that he was grasping a hand of marble.
“My grandfather has friends,” said Marius. “I will procure your pardon.”
“It is useless,” answered Jean Valjean. “They think me dead, that is enough. The dead are not subjected to surveillance. They are supposed to moulder tranquilly. Death is the same thing as pardon.”
And, disengaging his hand, which Marius held, he added with a sort of inexorable dignity:
“Besides, to do my duty, that is the friend to which I have recourse; and I need pardon of but one, that is my conscience.”
Just then, at the other end of the parlour, the door was softly opened a little way, and Cosette’s head made its appearance. They saw only her sweet face, her hair was in charming disorder, her eyelids were still swollen with sleep. She made the movement of a bird passing its head out of its nest, looked first at her husband, then at Jean Valjean, and called to them with a laugh, you would have thought you saw a smile at the bottom of a rose:
“I’ll wager that you’re talking politics. How stupid that is, instead of being with me!”
Jean Valjean shuddered.
“Cosette,” faltered Marius—and he stopped. One would have said that they were two culprits.
Cosette, radiant, continued to look at them both. The frolic of paradise was in her eyes.
“I catch you in the very act,” said Cosette. “I just heard my father Fauchelevent say, through the door: ‘Conscience—Do his duty.’—It is politics, that is. I will not have it. You ought not to talk politics the very next day. It is not right.”
“You are mistaken, Cosette,” answered Marius. “We were talking business. We are talking of the best investment for your six hundred thousand francs——”
“That’s not all there is to talk about,” interrupted Cosette. “I am coming. Do you want me here?”
And, passing resolutely through the door, she came into the parlour. She was dressed in a full white morning gown, with a thousand folds and with wide sleeves which, starting from the neck, fell to her feet. There are in the golden skies of old Gothic pictures such charming robes for angels to wear.
She viewed herself from head to foot in a large glass, then exclaimed with an explosion of ineffable ecstasy:
“Once there was a king and a queen. Oh! how happy I am!”
So saying, she made a reverence to Marius and