Part 3 Book 8 Chapter 4 A Rose in Misery 19世纪30年代的法国。富人乘坐马车,用金餐具吃喝。穷人没有工作,没有食物,没有希望——他们是穷苦人,起义一触即发。法国人民还记得1789年的法国大革命。当时,民众在巴黎街头筑起街垒,死去的人数以千计。这样的时刻又要到来了吗? 这是冉阿让的故事。他坐了19年的牢,终于恢复了自由身。可是,他怎么生活,到哪里去找工作呢?像他这样一个人,还有什么希望呢?这也是沙威的故事,他是一个督察,一个残忍的人,一个冷酷的人。他的人生只有一个目标——把冉阿让再次送进大牢。这还是芳汀的故事,芳汀和她的女儿珂赛特。她们的故事是怎样改变了冉阿让的一生?这也是马吕斯的故事。他是巴黎的一名学生,做好了为起义而牺牲的准备——或是为爱情而死。最后,还有伽弗洛什——一个在巴黎街头流浪的孩子,他没有家,没有亲人,没有鞋穿……可他的脸上总是挂着笑容,心中总是有歌儿在欢唱。 不过,我们要先从冉阿让讲起…… France in the 1830s. The rich ride in carriages, and eat from gold plates. The poor have no work, no food, no hope – they are Les Misérables, and rebellion is in the air. France remembers the French Revolution in 1789, when the people built barricades in the streets of Paris, and the dead were counted in thousands. Is that time coming again? This is the story of Jean Valjean. A prisoner for nineteen years, now at last he is a free man. But how can he live, where can he find work? What hope is there for a man like him? It is also the story of Javert, a police inspector, a cruel man, a hard man. He wants one thing in life – to send Valjean back to prison. And it is Fantine’s story too, Fantine and her daughter Cosette. How does their story change Valjean’s life? And it is also Marius’s story. He is a student in Paris, ready to die for the rebellion – or for love. And last, there is Gavroche – a boy of the Paris streets, with no home, no family, no shoes... But a boy with a smile on his face and a song in his heart. But we begin with Jean Valjean...
A very young girl was standing in the half-open door. The dormer window of the garret, through which the light fell, was precisely opposite the door, and illuminated the figure with a wan light. She was a frail, emaciated, slender creature; there was nothing but a chemise and a petticoat upon that chilled and shivering nakedness. Her girdle was a string, her head ribbon a string, her pointed shoulders emerged from her chemise, a blond and lymphatic pallor, earth-colored collar-bones, red hands, a half-open and degraded mouth, missing teeth, dull, bold, base eyes; she had the form of a young girl who has missed her youth, and the look of a corrupt old woman; fifty years mingled with fifteen; one of those beings which are both feeble and horrible, and which cause those to shudder whom they do not cause to weep.
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Marius had risen, and was staring in a sort of stupor at this being, who was almost like the forms of the shadows which traverse dreams.
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The most heart-breaking thing of all was, that this young girl had not come into the world to be homely. In her early childhood she must even have been pretty. The grace of her age was still struggling against the hideous, premature decrepitude of debauchery and poverty. The remains of beauty were dying away in that face of sixteen, like the pale sunlight which is extinguished under hideous clouds at dawn on a winter’s day.
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That face was not wholly unknown to Marius. He thought he remembered having seen it somewhere.
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"What do you wish, Mademoiselle?" he asked.
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The young girl replied in her voice of a drunken convict:--
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"Here is a letter for you, Monsieur Marius."
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She called Marius by his name; he could not doubt that he was the person whom she wanted; but who was this girl? How did she know his name?
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Without waiting for him to tell her to advance, she entered. She entered resolutely, staring, with a sort of assurance that made the heart bleed, at the whole room and the unmade bed. Her feet were bare. Large holes in her petticoat permitted glimpses of her long legs and her thin knees. She was shivering.
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She held a letter in her hand, which she presented to Marius.
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Marius, as he opened the letter, noticed that the enormous wafer which sealed it was still moist. The message could not have come from a distance. He read:--
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My amiable neighbor, young man: I have learned of your goodness to me, that you paid my rent six months ago. I bless you, young man. My eldest daughter will tell you that we have been without a morsel of bread for two days, four persons and my spouse ill. If I am not deseaved in my opinion, I think I may hope that your generous heart will melt at this statement and the desire will subjugate you to be propitious to me by daigning to lavish on me a slight favor.
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I am with the distinguished consideration which is due to the benefactors of humanity,-- Jondrette.
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P.S. My eldest daughter will await your orders, dear Monsieur Marius.
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This letter, coming in the very midst of the mysterious adventure which had occupied Marius’ thoughts ever since the preceding evening, was like a candle in a cellar. All was suddenly illuminated.
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This letter came from the same place as the other four. There was the same writing, the same style, the same orthography, the same paper, the same odor of tobacco.
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There were five missives, five histories, five signatures, and a single signer. The Spanish Captain Don Alvares, the unhappy Mistress Balizard, the dramatic poet Genflot, the old comedian Fabantou, were all four named Jondrette, if, indeed, Jondrette himself were named Jondrette.
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Marius had lived in the house for a tolerably long time, and he had had, as we have said, but very rare occasion to see, to even catch a glimpse of, his extremely mean neighbors. His mind was elsewhere, and where the mind is, there the eyes are also. He had been obliged more than once to pass the Jondrettes in the corridor or on the stairs; but they were mere forms to him; he had paid so little heed to them, that, on the preceding evening, he had jostled the Jondrette girls on the boulevard, without recognizing them, for it had evidently been they, and it was with great difficulty that the one who had just entered his room had awakened in him, in spite of disgust and pity, a vague recollection of having met her elsewhere.
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Now he saw everything clearly. He understood that his neighbor Jondrette, in his distress, exercised the industry of speculating on the charity of benevolent persons, that he procured addresses, and that he wrote under feigned names to people whom he judged to be wealthy and compassionate, letters which his daughters delivered at their risk and peril, for this father had come to such a pass,that he risked his daughters; he was playing a game with fate, and he used them as the stake. Marius understood that probably, judging from their flight on the evening before, from their breathless condition, from their terror and from the words of slang which he had overheard, these unfortunate creatures were plying some inexplicably sad profession, and that the result of the whole was, in the midst of human society, as it is now constituted, two miserable beings who were neither girls nor women, a species of impure and innocent monsters produced by misery.
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Sad creatures, without name, or sex, or age, to whom neither good nor evil were any longer possible, and who, on emerging from childhood, have already nothing in this world, neither liberty, nor virtue, nor responsibility. Souls which blossomed out yesterday, and are faded to-day, like those flowers let fall in the streets, which are soiled with every sort of mire, while waiting for some wheel to crush them. Nevertheless, while Marius bent a pained and astonished gaze on her, the young girl was wandering back and forth in the garret with the audacity of a spectre. She kicked about, without troubling herself as to her nakedness. Occasionally her chemise, which was untied and torn, fell almost to her waist. She moved the chairs about,she disarranged the toilet articles which stood on the commode,she handled Marius’ clothes, she rummaged about to see what therewas in the corners.
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"Hullo!" said she, "you have a mirror!"
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And she hummed scraps of vaudevilles, as though she had been alone, frolicsome refrains which her hoarse and guttural voice rendered lugubrious.
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An indescribable constraint, weariness, and humiliation were perceptible beneath this hardihood. Effrontery is a disgrace.
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Nothing could be more melancholy than to see her sport about the room, and, so to speak, flit with the movements of a bird which is frightened by the daylight, or which has broken its wing. One felt that under other conditions of education and destiny, the gay and over-free mien of this young girl might have turned out sweet and charming. Never, even among animals, does the creature born to be a dove change into an osprey. That is only to be seen among men.
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Marius reflected, and allowed her to have her way.
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She approached the table.
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"Ah!" said she, "books!"
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A flash pierced her glassy eye. She resumed, anter: `Is it a gentleman?’ My sister said to me: `I think it is a gentleman.’"
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In the meanwhile she had unfolded the petition addressed to "the benevolent gentleman of the church of Saint-Jacquesdu-Haut-Pas."
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"Here!" said she, "this is for that old fellow who goes to mass. By the way, this is his hour. I’ll go and carry it to him.
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Perhaps he will give us something to breakfast on."
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Then she began to laugh again, and added:--
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"Do you know what it will mean if we get a breakfast today? It will mean that we shall have had our breakfast of the day before yesterday, our breakfast of yesterday, our dinner of to-day, and all that at once, and this morning. Come! Parbleu! if you are not satisfied, dogs, burst!"
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This reminded i T?
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She dipped her pen in the ink, and turning to Marius:--
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"Do you want to see? Look here, I’m going to write a word to show you."
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And before he had time to answer, she wrote on a sheet of white paper,which lay in the middle of the table: "The bobbies are here."
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Then throwing down the pen:--
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"There are no faults of orthography. You can look. We have received an education, my sister and I. We have not always been as we are now. We were not made--"
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Here she paused, fixed her dull eyes on Marius, and burst out laughing, saying, with an intonation which contained every form of anguish, stifled by every form of cynicism:--
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She had hardly finished this couplet, when she exexclaimed:--
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"Do you ever go to the play, Monsieur Marius? I do. I have a little brother who is a friend of the artists, and who gives me tickets sometimes. But I don’t like the benches in the galleries. One is cramped and uncomfortable there. There are rough people there sometimes; and people who smell bad."