Early in October 1815, about an hour before sunset, a man travelling on foot enters D. The few people at windows stare with uneasiness. He is thickset, in the prime of life, perhaps forty-six or forty-eight, leather visor, yellow linen, silver anchor, blue trousers white on one knee, a new soldier knapsack, iron-shod shoes, no stockings, a shaved head and a long beard. Sweat and dust add a sordid quality. He comes from the south, by the street that saw Napoleon seven months earlier. Women below the town saw him drink at the fountain on the boulevard Gassendi, then again in the market-place. He turns toward the town-hall, stays a quarter of an hour, comes out, and humbly salutes a gendarme on the stone bench General Drouot once used. The gendarme does not return the salute. He stares, follows the man with his eyes, then goes inside.
The best inn is the Cross of Colbas, whose landlord Jacquin Labarre shines by cousinship with the Three Dauphins in Grenoble, where the Emperor once refused the prefecture. The man asks for food and lodging. Nothing easier, says Labarre, until he looks, and adds, by paying for it. The man shows a large leather purse. He sits by the fire with his stick. Labarre tears a newspaper margin, writes a line, and sends a child running to the town-hall. The traveller sees nothing of this. He asks twice if dinner will be ready. The child returns. Labarre reads, tosses his head, and says he cannot receive him. Not for want of money: he has no room. The stable is full of horses. The loft is refused. Dinner is refused. All that on the spit is engaged by twelve wagoners who paid in advance, though there is food for twenty. The man laughs, then says he is at an inn, he is hungry, and he shall remain. Labarre bends to his ear. Go away. Do you want me to tell you your name? Your name is Jean Valjean. He holds out the unfolded paper. I am in the habit of being polite to every one. Go away. The man drops his head, picks up the knapsack, and takes the principal street without turning. People who are crushed do not look behind them. Had he turned, he would have seen the host on the threshold pointing him out, and the glances of terror that would make his arrival an event for the whole town.
Hunger returns. A pine branch marks a low public house in the Rue de Chaffaut. He dares not use the street door and slips through a manure yard. Come and warm yourself, comrade, says the host, until a fishmonger who refused him a crupper that morning, and who has just come from Labarre's group, makes a sign. The hand on the shoulder is abrupt. You are going to get out of here. Ah, you know? He leaves. Children who have followed from the Cross of Colbas throw stones. He threatens with his stick; they scatter like birds. At the prison he rings, cap in hand, and asks for a lodging. The prison is not an inn. Get yourself arrested, and you will be admitted. The wicket closes. In a street of gardens he sees a lighted window: a man dandling a child, a young woman nursing, soup, a pewter jug, a gun on the wall. He taps three times. The peasant will lodge a respectable man who pays. Why not the inn? There is no room. Labarre? He did not receive me. The Rue Chaffaut? The same. Are you the man? The woman snatches both children and hides behind her husband, murmuring Tso-maraude. The gun comes down. Clear out. For pity's sake, a glass of water. A shot from my gun. Two bolts, a shutter, an iron bar. He crawls into a sod hut that is a dog's kennel, fights his way out with staff and knapsack, and drops on a stone in the street. A passer-by hears him: I am not even a dog.
He walks out of town, hoping for a tree or haystack. The field is a low hill of stubble like a shaved head, a deformed tree, clouds that make the earth lighter than the sky. Nature seems hostile. He turns back. The gates are closed. He enters by a breach in the old walls. In Cathedral Square he shakes his fist at the church. Worn out, he lies on a stone bench at the printing office where Napoleon's Elba proclamations were first printed. An old woman coming out of church asks what he is doing. Sleeping. He has had a mattress of wood for nineteen years; today a mattress of stone. A soldier? Yes. Why not the inn? He says he has no money. She has four sous. He takes them. He has knocked at all doors and been driven away everywhere. She points across the street to a small low house beside the Bishop's palace. You have knocked at all doors? Yes. Have you knocked at that one? No. Knock there.
