Jean Valjean was the more unhappy of the two. Youth, even in its sorrows, always possesses its own peculiar radiance. At times, Jean Valjean suffered so greatly that he became puerile. It is the property of grief to cause the childish side of man to reappear. He had an unconquerable conviction that Cosette was escaping from him. He would have liked to resist, to retain her, to arouse her enthusiasm by some external and brilliant matter. He once chanced to see a general on horseback, in full uniform, pass along the street, Comte Coutard, the commandant of Paris. He envied that gilded man; what happiness it would be, he said to himself, if he could put on that suit which was an incontestable thing; and if Cosette could behold him thus, she would be dazzled, and when he had Cosette on his arm and passed the gates of the Tuileries, the guard would present arms to him, and that would suffice for Cosette, and would dispel her idea of looking at young men. An unforeseen shock was added to these sad reflections. In the isolated life which they led, and since they had come to dwell in the Rue Plumet, they had contracted one habit. They sometimes took a pleasure trip to see the sun rise, a mild species of enjoyment which befits those who are entering life and those who are quitting it. Cosette, a bird herself, liked to rise early. These matutinal excursions were planned on the preceding evening. He proposed, and she agreed. It was arranged like a plot, they set out before daybreak, and these trips were so many small delights for Cosette. Jean Valjean's inclination led him to the least frequented spots, to solitary nooks, to forgotten places. There then existed, in the vicinity of the barriers of Paris, a sort of poor meadows, which were almost confounded with the city. Jean Valjean loved to haunt these fields. Cosette was not bored there. It meant solitude to him and liberty to her. There, she became a little girl once more, she could run and almost play; she took off her hat, laid it on Jean Valjean's knees, and gathered bunches of flowers. She gazed at the butterflies on the flowers, but did not catch them; gentleness and tenderness are born with love, and the young girl who cherishes within her breast a trembling and fragile ideal has mercy on the wing of a butterfly. She wove garlands of poppies, which she placed on her head, and which, crossed and penetrated with sunlight, formed for her rosy face a crown of burning embers. Even after their life had grown sad, they kept up their custom of early strolls.
One morning in October, therefore, tempted by the serene perfection of the autumn of 1831, they set out, and found themselves at break of day near the Barrière du Maine. It was not dawn, it was daybreak; a delightful and stern moment. A few constellations here and there in the deep, pale azure, the earth all black, the heavens all white, a quiver amid the blades of grass, everywhere the mysterious chill of twilight. A lark, which seemed mingled with the stars, was carolling at a prodigious height, and one would have declared that that hymn of pettiness calmed immensity. In the East, the Val-de-Grâce projected its dark mass on the clear horizon with the sharpness of steel; Venus dazzlingly brilliant was rising behind that dome and had the air of a soul making its escape from a gloomy edifice. All was peace and silence; there was no one on the road. Jean Valjean was sitting in a cross-walk on some planks deposited at the gate of a timber-yard. His face was turned towards the highway, his back towards the light; he had forgotten the sun which was on the point of rising; he had sunk into one of those profound absorptions which imprison even the eye, and which are equivalent to four walls. He was thinking of Cosette, of the happiness that was possible if nothing came between him and her, of the light with which she filled his life. He was almost happy in his reverie. Cosette, who was standing beside him, was gazing at the clouds as they turned rosy. All at once Cosette exclaimed: Father, I should think some one was coming yonder. Jean Valjean raised his eyes. Cosette was right. At the elbow of the causeway and the boulevard they heard a noise which it was difficult to account for at that hour, and a sort of confused pile made its appearance. It grew larger, it seemed to move in an orderly manner, though it was bristling and quivering; seven chariots made their appearance in succession, the heads of the horses touching the rear of the wagon in front. Figures were moving on these vehicles, flashes were visible through the dusk as though there were naked swords there, a clanking became audible which resembled the rattling of chains, and as this something advanced, the sound of voices waxed louder, and it turned into a terrible thing such as emerges from the cave of dreams. Seven wagons were driving in a file along the road. The first six resembled coopers' drays: long ladders on two wheels, four horses tandem, twenty-four men on each, twelve on a side, back to back, their legs dangling, an iron collar on each neck, and one chain for all, so that if they alighted they were obliged to wind over the ground with the chain for a backbone, somewhat after the fashion of millepeds. In the back and front of each vehicle, two men armed with muskets held the chain underfoot. The seventh wagon, a huge rack-sided baggage wagon, carried iron boilers, pots, braziers, and chains, among which lay several men pinioned and stretched at full length, who seemed to be ill. On each side marched a double hedge of guards of infamous aspect; at the head and in the rear rode mounted gendarmes. A throng sprang up from both sides of the road, as is frequently the case in Paris. The men massed upon the drays allowed themselves to be jolted along in silence. They were livid with the chill of morning. Nothing is more funereal than the harlequin in rags. There were no eyes there which were not either dry, dulled, or flaming with an evil light. The escort troop cursed, the men in chains did not utter a syllable; from time to time the sound of a blow became audible; in the rear of the convoy ran a band of children screaming with laughter. It was impossible not to shudder at the sight of these human beings thus bound and passive beneath the cold clouds of autumn, and delivered over to the rain, to the blast, to all the furies of the air, like trees and stones. Suddenly, the sun made its appearance; the immense light of the Orient burst forth, and one would have said that it had set fire to all those ferocious heads. Their tongues were unloosed; a conflagration of grins, oaths, and songs exploded. Thoughts made their appearance on these faces; it was a terrible moment; visible demons with their masks removed, fierce souls laid bare. Each chain exhaled a common soul, and each dray-load had its own physiognomy: one singing, one howling, one begging, one gnashing, one menacing, one blaspheming, the last as silent as the tomb. Dante would have thought that he beheld his seven circles of hell on the march. An old woman in the crowd pointed them out to her little boy five years old, and said to him: Rascal, let that be a warning to you! As the songs and blasphemies increased, the captain cracked his whip, and a fearful dull and blind flogging, which produced the sound of hail, fell upon the seven dray-loads.
Jean Valjean's eyes had assumed a frightful expression. They were no longer eyes; they were those deep and glassy objects which replace the glance in the case of certain wretched men, which seem unconscious of reality, and in which flames the reflection of terrors and of catastrophes. He was not looking at a spectacle, he was seeing a vision. He tried to rise, to flee, to make his escape; he could not move his feet. Sometimes, the things that you see seize upon you and hold you fast. He remained nailed to the spot, petrified, stupid, asking himself, athwart confused and inexpressible anguish, what this sepulchral persecution signified, and whence had come that pandemonium which was pursuing him. All at once, he raised his hand to his brow, a gesture habitual to those whose memory suddenly returns; he remembered that this was, in fact, the usual itinerary, that it was customary to make this detour in order to avoid all possibility of encountering royalty on the road to Fontainebleau, and that, five and thirty years before, he had himself passed through that barrier. Cosette was no less terrified, but in a different way. She did not understand; what she beheld did not seem to her to be possible; at length she cried: Father! What are those men in those carts? Jean Valjean replied: Convicts. Whither are they going? To the galleys. At that moment the cudgelling became zealous; a hideous obedience was evoked by the torture, and all held their peace, darting glances like chained wolves. Cosette trembled in every limb; she resumed: Father, are they still men? Sometimes, answered the unhappy man. It was the chain-gang, in fact, which had set out before daybreak from Bicêtre, and had taken the road to Mans in order to avoid Fontainebleau, where the King then was. This caused the horrible journey to last three or four days longer; but torture may surely be prolonged with the object of sparing the royal personage a sight of it. Jean Valjean returned home utterly overwhelmed. He did not observe that, on his way back to the Rue de Babylone with Cosette, the latter was plying him with other questions; perhaps he was too much absorbed in his own dejection to notice her words and reply to them. But when Cosette was leaving him in the evening, to betake herself to bed, he heard her say in a low voice, and as though talking to herself: It seems to me, that if I were to find one of those men in my pathway, oh, my God, I should die merely from the sight of him close at hand. Fortunately, on the morrow of that tragic day, there was some official solemnity, fêtes in Paris, a review in the Champ de Mars, jousts on the Seine, fireworks at the Arc de l'Étoile, illuminations everywhere. Jean Valjean did violence to his habits, and took Cosette to see these rejoicings, for the purpose of diverting her from the memory of the day before, and of effacing, beneath the smiling tumult of all Paris, the abominable thing which had passed before her. He donned his uniform of a national guard with the vague inward feeling of a man who is betaking himself to shelter. Cosette, who made it her law to please her father, accepted this diversion with the light and easy good grace of youth, so that Jean Valjean was able to believe that he had succeeded, and that no trace of that hideous vision remained. Some days later, one morning, when the sun was shining brightly, and they were both on the steps leading to the garden, Cosette, in a wrapper, her head bathed in light, rosy after a good sleep, was picking a daisy to pieces. Cosette did not know the delightful legend, I love a little, passionately; she was handling the flower instinctively, innocently, without a suspicion that to pluck a daisy apart is to do the same by a heart. Jean Valjean was fascinated by the contemplation of those tiny fingers on that flower, and forgetful of everything in the radiance emitted by that child. A red-breast was warbling in the thicket. White cloudlets floated across the sky, so gayly, that one would have said that they had just been set at liberty. Cosette went on attentively tearing the leaves from her flower; she seemed to be thinking about something; but whatever it was, it must be something charming; all at once she turned her head over her shoulder with the delicate languor of a swan, and said to Jean Valjean: Father, what are the galleys like?
