Les miserables (Abridged) - Victor Hugo [50]
The bishop left his guest in the alcove, before a clean white bed. The man set down the candlestick upon a small table.
“Come,” said the bishop, “a good night’s rest to you: to-morrow morning, before you go, you shall have a cup of warm milk from our cows.”
“Thank you, Monsieur l‘Abbé,” said the man.
Scarcely had he pronounced these words of peace, when suddenly he made a singular motion which would have chilled the two good women of the house with horror, had they witnessed it. Even now it is hard for us to understand what impulse he obeyed at that moment. Did he intend to give a warning or a threat? or was he simply obeying a sort of instinctive impulse, obscure even to himself? He turned abruptly towards the old man, crossed his arms, and casting a wild look upon his host, exclaimed in a harsh voice:
“Ah, now, indeed! you lodge me in your house, as near you as that!”
He checked himself, and added, with a laugh, in which there was something horrible:
“Have you reflected upon it? Who tells you that I am not a murderer?”
The bishop responded:
“God will take care of that.”
Then with gravity, moving his lips like one praying or talking to himself, he raised two fingers of his right hand and blessed the man, who, however, did not bow; and without turning his head or looking behind him, went back into his room.
When the alcove was occupied, a heavy serge curtain was drawn in the oratory, concealing the altar. Before this curtain the bishop knelt as he passed out, and offered a short prayer.
A moment afterwards he was walking in the garden, surrendering mind and soul to a dreamy contemplation of these grand and mysterious works of God, which night makes visible to the eye.
As to the man, he was so completely exhausted that he did not even avail himself of the clean white sheets; he blew out the candle with his nostril, after the manner of convicts, and fell on the bed, dressed as he was, into a sound sleep.
Midnight struck as the bishop came back to his room.
A few moments afterwards all in the little house slept.
5 (6)
JEAN VALJEAN
TOWARDS THE MIDDLE of the night, Jean Valjean awoke.
Jean Valjean was born of a poor peasant family of Brie. In his childhood he had not been taught to read: when he was grown up, he chose the occupation of a pruner at Faverolles. His mother’s name was Jeanne Mathieu, his father’s Jean Valjean or Vlajean, probably a nickname, a contraction of Voilà Jean.
Jean Valjean was of a thoughtful disposition, but not sad, which is characteristic of affectionate natures. Upon the whole, however, there was something torpid and insignificant, in the appearance at least, of Jean Valjean. He had lost his parents when very young. His mother died of malpractice in an undulant fever: his father, a pruner before him, was killed by a fall from a tree. Jean Valjean now had but one relative left, his sister, a widow with seven children, girls and boys. This sister had brought up Jean Valjean, and, as long as her husband lived, she had taken care of her younger brother. Her husband died, leaving the eldest of these children eight, the youngest one year old. Jean Valjean had just reached his twenty-fifth year: he took the father’s place, and, in his turn, supported the sister who reared him. This he did naturally, as a duty, and even with a sort of moroseness on his part. His youth was spent in rough and ill-recompensed labour: he never was known to have a sweetheart; he had not time to be in love.
At night he came in weary and ate his soup without saying a word. While he was eating, his sister, Mere Jeanne, frequently took from his porringer the best of his meal, a bit of meat, a slice of pork, the heart of the cabbage, to give to one of her children. He went on eating, his head bent down nearly into the soup, his long hair falling over his dish, hiding his eyes, he did not seem to notice anything that was done. At Faverolles, not far from the house of the Valjeans, there was on the other side of the road a farmer’s wife named Marie Claude;