II. THE OBSCURITIES A REVELATION MAY CONTAIN
Marius was shattered.
The sort of distance he had always felt for the man he used to see Cosette with was now explained for him. There was something indefinably enigmatic about that character that his instinct had warned him about. The enigma turned out to be the most shameful disgrace, jail. This Monsieur Fauchelevent was the convict Jean Valjean.
To abruptly find such a secret in the midst of his happiness was like discovering a scorpion in a nest of turtledoves. Was Marius and Cosette’s happiness from now on condemned to such kinship? Was it a fait accompli? Was acceptance of this man part of the marriage that had been consummated? Wasn’t there anything that could now be done? Had Marius also married the convict?
It is all very well to be crowned with light and joy, it is all very well to savor life’s great golden hour, happy love; such shocks would force even an archangel in his ecstasy, even a demigod in his glory, to quake.
As always happens in changes of perspective of this kind, where the earth shifts under our feet, Marius wondered if he wasn’t himself at fault somewhere here? Had he lacked astuteness? Had he lacked prudence? Had he unintentionally let things go to his head? A little, perhaps. Had he embarked on this amorous adventure that had ended in his marriage to Cosette a bit too carelessly to take in his surroundings? He took stock—which is the way it goes: By a series of successive stocktakings of ourselves by ourselves, life gets us to mend our ways little by little—he took stock of the fanciful and visionary side of his nature, a sort of inner cloud cover peculiar to many organisms and that, in the paroxysms of passion and of pain, expands, changing the temperature of the soul and invading the whole man, to the point where there is nothing left of him but a conscience blanketed by haze. We have more than once pointed out this characteristic feature of Marius’s makeup as an individual. He recalled that, in the intoxication of his love, in the rue Plumet, for six or seven ecstatic weeks, he had not even spoken to Cosette of the baffling drama that had taken place in the Gorbeau slum, in which the victim had taken the odd course of keeping quiet during the struggle and of running away after it. Why hadn’t he spoken about it to Cosette? Yet it was all so close and so frightening. Why hadn’t he even mentioned the Thénardiers to her and, especially, the day he had run into Éponine? He now almost had trouble explaining to himself his silence at the time. He did register it, though. He remembered his giddy exhilaration, his intoxication with Cosette, how love absorbed everything, how they’d kidnapped each other and carried each other off into the ideal, and perhaps, also, as the imperceptible dose of reason mixed in with that violent and wonderful state of the soul, a vague and nameless instinct to hide and to wipe from his memory that fearful episode he did not want to go near, in which he did not want to play any kind of rôle, which he himself shunned and in which he could be neither narrator nor witness without also being accuser. Besides, those few weeks had gone by in a flash; they hadn’t had time for anything but love. In the end, when he weighed everything up, turned it over, examined it, if he had told Cosette about the Gorbeau ambush, if he had named the Thénardiers to her, what would the consequences have been? Even if he had discovered that Jean Valjean was a convict, would that have changed him, Marius? Would it have changed her, Cosette? Would he have withdrawn? Would he have adored her any the less? Would he have married her any the less? No. Would it have changed anything that had happened? No. Nothing to regret, then, nothing to reproach himself for. All was well. There is a god for those drunks known as lovers. Blind, Marius had followed the course he would have followed with his eyes wide open. Love had blindfolded him, to take him where? To paradise.
But this paradise was complicated from now on by an infernal contact.
Marius’s erstwhile sense of distance from this man, from this Fauchelevent–cum–Jean Valjean, was now mixed with horror. In this horror, we have to say, there was some pity and even a certain amazement.
This thief, this recidivist thief, had restored a trust of six hundred thousand francs. He was the only one to know about the secret trust. He could have kept it all, yet he had handed it all over.
On top of that, he had himself revealed his situation of his own accord. Nothing obliged him to. If anyone knew who he was, it was his own doing. There was in that confession more than the acceptance of humiliation, there was the acceptance of danger. For a condemned man, a mask is not a mask, it is a refuge. He had given up that refuge. A false name means security; he had cast off that false name. He, a galley slave, could have hidden himself away forever in a respectable family; he had resisted the temptation. And for what motive? The scruples of conscience. He had explained this himself in the irresistible voice of truth. To sum up, whatever this Jean Valjean was, his was unarguably a conscience that was stirring. There was some mysterious rehabilitation already at work there, and to all appearances, for a long time already, scruples had had this man under strict control. Such attacks of justness and goodness are not given to vulgar natures. The stirring of conscience is the grandeur of the soul.
Jean Valjean was sincere. This sincerity, which was visible, palpable, indisputable, evident even in the pain that it caused him, made further information pointless and lent weight to all the man said. Here, for Marius, a strange turning of tables occurred. What came from Monsieur Fauchelevent? Distrust. What emanated from Jean Valjean? Trust.
In this mysterious balance sheet that the reflective Marius was drawing up for Jean Valjean, he noted the credit, he noted the debit, and he tried to reach a balance. But all this was happening in a storm. In endeavoring to get a clear picture of the man and pursuing Jean Valjean, so to speak, in his innermost thoughts, he kept losing him and finding him again in an inescapable haze.
The honesty in handing over the trust, the probity of the confession, that was good. It was like a break in the clouds, but then the clouds would turn black again. As muddled as Marius’s memories were, a shadow of them came back to him.
What exactly was that business in the Jondrette garret all about? Why, at the arrival of the police, instead of lodging a complaint, did the man make his escape? Here Marius found the answer. Because the man was a fugitive from justice in breach of ban.
Another question: Why had the man come to the barricade? For now Marius distinctly saw that episode again, resurfacing like indelible ink over a flame. This man was at the barricade. He didn’t fight, though. So what had he come there to do? Before this question a specter rose up, and gave the answer. Javert. Marius recalled perfectly clearly at that moment the funereal vision of Jean Valjean dragging the trussed-up Javert beyond the barricade, and he could still hear the awful pistol shot ringing out from around the corner of the petite rue Mondétour. There was probably hate between that spy and this galley slave. One was in the other’s way. Jean Valjean had gone to the barricade to take his revenge. He had got there late. He doubtless knew that Javert was held prisoner there. The Corsican vendetta1 had spread among the dregs in certain sectors of the underworld and was the rule there; it is so simple that it doesn’t even shock semi-reformed souls; and people like that are so made that a criminal, in the process of repenting, may be scrupulous about theft but not about revenge. Jean Valjean had killed Javert. At least that much seemed clear.
Finally, one last question; but this one had no answer. Marius felt this question like a jab to the heart. How was it that Jean Valjean’s existence had rubbed shoulders so long with Cosette’s? What was this somber game of Providence that had placed this child in such close contact with this man? Could there also be coupling chains, forged up above, and does God amuse himself by pairing an angel with a demon? Can crime and innocence be roommates in the mysterious prison of misery and destitution? In that parade of the condemned known as human destiny, can two heads come together, one naïve, the other fearsome, one all bathed in the divine white washes of dawn, the other forever blanched by the glimmer of endless lightning? Who could have decided on this inexplicable pairing? In what way, as the result of what miracle, could a shared life have been set up between the heavenly little girl and the doomed old man? Who could have tied the lamb to the wolf, and, even more incomprehensible, tethered the wolf to the lamb? For the wolf loved the lamb, for the savage one adored the frail one, for over the course of nine years, the angel had had the monster to lean on. Cosette’s childhood and adolescence, her coming into the world, her virginal growth toward life and the light, had been protected by that warped devotion. Here, the questions peeled off, so to speak, into countless puzzles, abysses opened at the bottom of abysses, and Marius could no longer lean over Jean Valjean without vertigo. So what was this sheer cliff of a man, then?
The old symbols from Genesis2 are eternal; in human society, as it exists, until the day that a greater clarity shall change it, there are and always will be two men, the one on top, the other subterranean; the one who follows good is Abel; the one who follows bad is Cain. Who was this loving Cain? Who was this felon so religiously absorbed in the adoration of a virgin, watching over her, raising her, keeping her, dignifying her, and enveloping her, himself impure, in purity? What was this cesspit that had revered such innocence to the point of not leaving a stain on her? Who was this Jean Valjean who had seen to Cosette’s education? What was this figure of darkness whose sole concern had been to protect a rising star from all shadow and from all cloud?
There lay Jean Valjean’s secret; and there lay God’s secret.
Faced with this twin secret, Marius shrank back. The one in a way reassured him about the other. God was as visible in this enterprise as Jean Valjean. God has His instruments. He uses whatever tool He pleases. He is not answerable to man. Do we know the ways of God? Jean Valjean had worked on Cosette. He had more or less made that soul. This was incontestable. So, what then? The worker was awful, but his work was wonderful. God performs His miracles however He sees fit. He had built the lovely Cosette, and He had put Jean Valjean to work to do it. It had pleased Him to choose this strange collaborator. What account have we to ask of Him? Is it the first time that manure has helped spring make a rose?
Marius gave himself these answers and told himself that they were right. On all the points we have just listed, he had not dared press Jean Valjean—without admitting to himself that he simply did not dare. He adored Cosette. He possessed Cosette, Cosette was splendidly unsullied. That was enough for him. What further clarification did he need? Cosette was a ray of light. Does light need to be clarified? He had everything; what more could he want? Isn’t everything enough? Jean Valjean’s personal affairs were none of his business. In crouching over the fatal shadow of that man, he clung to the solemn declaration the poor miserable man had made: “I am nothing to Cosette. Ten years ago, I didn’t know she existed.”
Jean Valjean had just been passing through. He had said so himself. Well then, let him keep going. Whatever he was, his rôle was over. Marius was there from now on to carry out the job of Providence by Cosette’s side. Cosette had soared off into the blue to find her mate, her lover, her spouse, her celestial male. In taking flight, winged and transfigured, Cosette was leaving behind her on the ground, empty and hideous, her chrysalis, Jean Valjean. Into whatever circle of ideas Marius spiraled off, he always came back to a certain feeling of horror for Jean Valjean. A sacred horror perhaps, for, as we just pointed out, he sensed a quid divinum3 in this man. But, no matter what he did, and no matter what extenuating circumstances he looked for, he could not avoid falling back on this: The man was a convict; that is, the one who does not even have a place on the social ladder, being below the lowest rung. Below the lowest of men comes the convict. The convict is no longer the like of the living, so to speak. The law has stripped him of all the amount of humanity it can deprive a man of. On penal questions, Marius, though he remained a democrat, was still stuck on the side of the ruthless legal system and he had, about those whom the law strikes, all the ideas of the law. He had not yet, we have to say, gone all the way as far as progress goes. He had not yet come to distinguish between what is written by man and what is written by God, between the law and justice. He had not examined and weighed up the right man claims to dispose of the irrevocable and the irreparable. He was not revolted by the notion of vindicte4—prosecution and punishment. He found it perfectly natural that certain infringements of the written law be followed by eternal punishments, and he accepted social damnation as civilized procedure. That was as far as he had got, though he reserved the right to advance infallibly later, his nature being good and basically entirely made up of latent progress.
In this conceptual environment, Jean Valjean looked disfigured and repulsive to him. He was the reprobate. He was the convict. This word was for him like a trumpet blast at the Last Judgment;5 and, after thinking about Jean Valjean for a long time, his final movement was to turn his head away. Vade retro6—get thee behind me.
Marius, it must be acknowledged and even underlined, even while interrogating Jean Valjean to the point where Jean Valjean had said to him, “You are hearing my confession,” had not, however, put two or three decisive questions to him. It was not that they had not occurred to him, but he had been frightened of them. The Jondrette garret? The barricade? Javert? Who knows how far such revelations might have gone? Jean Valjean did not seem like a man who would shrink from the truth, and who knows whether Marius, after goading him on, would not have wanted to gag him? In certain extreme situations, surely all of us have wanted to block our ears after posing a question so we don’t hear the answer. It is especially when we love someone that we experience this sort of cowardice. It is not wise to question sinister situations to the nth degree, especially when the indissoluble side of our own life is fatally involved. From Jean Valjean’s desperate explanations, some unbearable light might be shone, and who knows whether this hideous clarity might not even reflect on Cosette? Who knows whether a sort of infernal glimmer might not remain on that angelic brow? The flare of light in a thunderstorm is still lightning. Fate has such interlocking connections whereby innocence itself is stamped with crime by the grim law of bleeding reflections. The purest natures may forever preserve the lurid reflections of some horrible association. Rightly or wrongly, Marius had been afraid. He already knew too much. He sought to turn a deaf ear rather than to find out more. Distraught, he carried Cosette off in his arms and shut his eyes to Jean Valjean.
That man was of the night, of the living and terrible night. How could Marius dare to try and plumb the depths? It is terrifying, questioning the shadows. Who knows what they might answer? The dawn could be blackened by it forever.
In this frame of mind, it was a gut-wrenching torment for Marius to think that the man would have any further contact whatever with Cosette. These fearful questions, in the face of which he had recoiled, yet which might have given rise to a final and implacable decision—he could almost have kicked himself now for not having asked them. He thought he’d been too kind, too soft, we might as well say it, too weak. This weakness had led him to make a foolish concession. He’d let himself be moved. He’d been wrong. He should have thrown Jean Valjean out, purely and simply. Jean Valjean meant playing with fire, he should have done it, and rid his house of the man. He was angry with himself, he was angry with this sudden whirlwind of emotions that had deafened him, blinded him, and swept him away. He was unhappy with himself.
What was he to do now? Jean Valjean’s visits were profoundly repugnant to him now. What was the good of having the man there at his place? What could he do? Here, his head spun, he did not want to dig any deeper; he did not want to go into it any further, he did not want to probe his own feelings. He had made a promise, he had let himself be carried away into making a promise; Jean Valjean had his promise; even with a convict, especially with a convict, a man must keep his word. Still, his first duty was to Cosette. In short, he was racked with repulsion, which dominated everything.
Marius rolled this whole set of ideas around confusedly in his mind, going from one idea to the next and stirred by all of them. Hence his deep commotion. It was not easy for him to hide this commotion from Cosette, but love is a talent and Marius managed.
On top of this, he put questions to Cosette, apparently aimlessly, and she, candid as a dove is white, did not suspect a thing; he talked to her about her childhood and her youth and he convinced himself more and more that all that a man can be that is good, fatherly, and respectable, this convict had been for Cosette. All that Marius had glimpsed and assumed was real. That sinister stinging nettle had loved and protected this lily.