Les miserables (Abridged) - Victor Hugo [62]
“Go away,” said Jean Valjean.
“Monsieur,” continued the boy, “give me my coin.”
Jean Valjean dropped his head and did not answer.
The child repeated:
“My coin, monsieur!”
Jean Valjean’s eye remained fixed on the ground.
“My coin!” exclaimed the boy, “my white coin! my silver!”
Jean Valjean did not appear to understand. The boy took him by the collar of his smock and shook him. And at the same time he made an effort to move the big, iron-soled shoe which was placed upon his treasure.
“I want my coin! my forty-sous coin!”
The child began to cry. Jean Valjean raised his head. He still kept his seat. His look was troubled. He looked upon the boy with an air of wonder, then reached out his hand towards his stick, and exclaimed in a terrible voice: “Who is there?”
“Me, monsieur,” answered the boy. “Petit Gervais! me! me! give me back my forty sous, if you please! Take away your foot, monsieur, if you please!” Then becoming angry, small as he was, and almost threatening:
“Come, now, will you take away your foot? Why don’t you take away your foot?”
“Ah! you here yet!” said Jean Valjean, and rising hastily to his feet, without releasing the coin, he added: “You’d better run!”
The boy looked at him in terror, then began to tremble from head to foot, and after a few seconds of stupor, took to flight and ran with all his might without daring to turn his head or to utter a cry.
At a little distance, however, he stopped for want of breath, and Jean Valjean in his reverie heard him sobbing.
In a few minutes the boy was gone.
The sun had gone down.
The shadows were deepening around Jean Valjean. He had not eaten during the day; probably he had some fever.
He had remained standing, and had not changed his position since the child fled. His breathing came at long and unequal intervals. His eyes were fixed on a spot ten or twelve steps before him, and seemed to be studying with profound attention the form of an old piece of blue crockery that was lying in the grass. All at once he shivered; he began to feel the cold night air.
He pulled his cap down over his forehead, sought mechanically to fold and button his smock around him, stepped forward and stooped to pick up his stick.
At that instant he perceived the forty-sous coin which his foot had half buried in the ground, and which glistened among the pebbles. It was like an electric shock. “What is that?” said he, between his teeth. He drew back a step or two, then stopped without the power to withdraw his gaze from this point which his foot had covered the instant before, as if the thing that glistened there in the obscurity had been an open eye fixed upon him.
After a few minutes, he sprang convulsively towards the coin, seized it, and, rising, looked away over the plain, straining his eyes towards all points of the horizon, standing and trembling like a wild beast which is seeking a place of refuge.
He saw nothing. Night was falling, the plain was cold and bare, thick purple mists were rising in the glimmering twilight.
He said: “Oh!” and began to walk rapidly in the direction in which the child had gone. After some thirty steps, he stopped, looked about, and saw nothing.
Then he called with all his might “Petit Gervais! Petit Gervais!”
And then he listened.
There was no answer.
The countryside was desolate and gloomy. On all sides was space. There was nothing about him but a shadow in which his gaze was lost, and a silence in which his voice was lost.
A biting norther was blowing, which gave a kind of dismal life to everything about him. The bushes shook their little thin arms with an incredible fury. One would have said that they were threatening and pursuing somebody. s
He began to walk again, then quickened his pace to a run, and from time to time stopped and called out in that solitude, in a most desolate and terrible voice:
“Petit Gervais! Petit Gervais!”
Surely, if the child had heard him, he would have been frightened, and would have hid himself. But doubtless the boy was already far away.
He met a priest on horseback. He went up to him and said: