Les Misérables, v. 2/5: Cosette

1887.

THE PROMISE TO THE DEAD FULFILLEDI. THE WATER QUESTION AT MONTFERMEIL:

II. TWO FULL-LENGTH PORTRAITS

III. MEN WANT WINE AND HORSES WATER

IV. A DOLL COMES ON THE STAGE

V. THE LITTLE ONE ALONEVI. BOULATRUELLE MAY HAVE BEEN RIGHT:
VII. COSETTE IN THE DARK WITH THE STRANGER:

VIIIIS HE RICH OR POOR?

IXTHÉNARDIER AT WORK
X. THÉNARDIER HAS ONE REGRET

XI. NO9430 REAPPEARS, AND COSETTE WINS IT IN THE LOTTERY
BOOK IV.

THE GORBEAU TENEMENT

I. MASTER GORBEAU

II. THE NEST OF AN OWL AND A LINNET

III. TWO EVILS MAKE A GOOD

IV. THE REMARKS OF THE CHIEF LODGERV. NOISE MADE BY A FALLING FIVE-FRANC PIECE:

FOR A STILL HUNT A DUMB PACK

I. STRATEGIC ZIGZAGS

IIIT IS FORTUNATE THAT THE BRIDGE OF AUSTERLITZ WILL CARRY WAGONS
III. CONSULT THE PLAN OF PARIS IN 1727:

IV. ATTEMPTS TO ESCAPE

V. A THING IMPOSSIBLE IN GASLIGHT

VI. THE BEGINNING OF AN ENIGMA

VII. CONTINUATION OF THE ENIGMA

VIII. THE ENIGMA INCREASES

IX. THE MAN WITH THE BELL

X. HOW JAVERT ONLY FOUND THE NESTBOOK VI.

PETIT PICPUS

I. NO62, RUE PICPUS

II. THE OBEDIENCE OF MARTIN VERGA

III. SEVERITIES

IV. GAYETIES

V. AMUSEMENTS

VI. THE LITTLE CONVENT

VII. A FEW PROFILES FROM THE SHADOW

VIII. POST CORDA LAPIDES

IX. A CENTURY UNDER A WIMPLEX. ORIGIN OF THE PERPETUAL ADORATION:

XI. THE END OF LITTLE PICPUSBOOK VII.

A PARENTHESIS

I. THE CONVENT AS AN ABSTRACT IDEAII. THE CONVENT AS AN HISTORICAL FACT:
III. ON WHAT TERMS THE PAST IS VENERABLE:
IV. THE CONVENT FROM THE MORAL STANDPOINT:

V. PRAYER

VI. ABSOLUTE GOODNESS OF PRAYERVII. CARE TO BE EXERCISED IN CONDEMNING:

VIIIFAITH, LAW
BOOK VIII.

CEMETERIES TAKE WHAT IS GIVEN THEM

I. HOW TO GET INTO A CONVENTII. FAUCHELEVENT FACES THE DIFFICULTY:

III. MOTHER INNOCENT

IV. A PLAN OF ESCAPE

V. A DRUNKARD IS NOT IMMORTAL

VI. BETWEEN FOUR PLANKS

VII. FAUCHELEVENT HAS AN IDEA

VIII. A SUCCESSFUL EXAMINATION

IX. IN THE CONVENT

ILLUSTRATIONSFAUCHELEVENT AND THE GRAVE-DIGGER, Vol. II. Frontispiece
Drawn by G. Jeanniot.
"SHE GLIDED ALONG RATHER THAN WALKED"
Drawn by G. Jeanniot.
BOOK I.

WATERLOOCHAPTER I.

On a fine May morning last year (1861) a wayfarer, the person who is telling this story, was coming from Nivelles, and was proceeding toward La Hulpe. He was on foot and following, between two rows of trees, a wide paved road which undulates over a constant succession of hills, that raise the road and let it fall again, and form, as it were, enormous waves. He had passed Lillois and Bois-Seigneur Isaac, and noticed in the west the slate-covered steeple of Braine l'Alleud, which looks like an overturned vase. He had just left behind him a wood on a hill, and at the angle of a cross-road, by the side of a sort of worm-eaten gallows which bore the inscription, "Old barrier, No. 4," a wine-shop, having on its front the following notice: "The Four Winds, Échabeau, private coffee-house." About half a mile beyond this pot-house, he reached a small valley, in which there is a stream that runs through an arch formed in the causeway. The clump of trees, wide-spread but very green, which fills the valley on one side of the road, is scattered on the other over the fields, and runs gracefully and capriciously toward Braine l'Alleud. On the right, and skirting the road, were an inn, a four-wheeled cart in front of the door, a large bundle of hop-poles, a plough, a pile of dry shrubs near a quick-set hedge, lime smoking in a square hole, and a ladder lying along an old shed with straw partitions. A girl was hoeing in a field, where a large yellow bill--probably of a show at some Kermesse--was flying in the wind. At the corner of the inn, a badly-paved path ran into the bushes by the side of a pond, on which a flotilla of ducks was navigating. The wayfarer turned into this path. After proceeding about one hundred yards, along a wall of the 15th century, surmounted by a coping of crossed bricks, he found himself in front of a large arched stone gate, with a rectangular moulding, in the stern style of Louis XIV., supported by two flat medallions. A severe façade was over this gate; a wall perpendicular to the façade almost joined the gate and flanked it at a right angle. On the grass-plat in front of the gate lay three harrows, through which the May flowers

were growing pell-mell. The gate was closed by means of two decrepit folding-doors, ornamented by an old rusty hammer. The sun was delightful, and the branches made that gentle May rustling, which seems to come from nests even more than from the wind. A little bird, probably in love, was singing with all its might. The wayfarer stooped and looked at a rather large circular excavation in the stone to the right of the gate, which resembled a sphere. At this moment the gates opened and a peasant woman came out. She saw the wayfarer and noticed what he was looking at. "It was a French cannon-ball that made it," she said, and then added: "What you see higher up there, on the gate near a nail, is the hole of a heavy shell, which did not penetrate the wood." "What is the name of this place?" the wayfarer asked. "Hougomont," said the woman. The wayfarer drew himself up, he walked a few steps, and then looked over the hedge. He could see on the horizon through the trees a species of mound, and on this mound something which, at a distance, resembled a lion. He was on the battlefield of Waterloo. CHAPTER II.

Hougomont was a mournful spot, the beginning of the obstacle, the first resistance which that great woodman of Europe, called Napoleon, encountered at Waterloo; the first knot under the axe-blade. It was a château, and is now but a farm. For the antiquarian Hougomont is Hugo-mons: it was built by Hugo, Sire de Sommeril, the same who endowed the sixth chapelry of the Abbey of Villers. The wayfarer pushed open the door, elbowed an old carriage under a porch, and entered the yard. The first thing that struck him in this enclosure was a gate of the 16th century, which now resembles an arcade, as all has fallen around it. A monumental aspect frequently springs up from ruins. Near the arcade there is another gateway in the wall, with key-stones in the style of Henri IV., through which can be seen the trees of an orchard. By the side of this gateway a dung-hill, mattocks, and shovels, a few carts, an old well with its stone slab and iron windlass, a frisking colt, a turkey displaying its tail, a chapel surmounted by a little belfry, and a blossoming pear-tree growing in espalier along the chapel wall,--such is this yard, the conquest of which was a dream of Napoleon's. This nook of earth, had he been able to take it, would probably have given him the world. Chickens are scattering the dust there with their beaks, and you hear a growl,--it is a large dog, which shows its teeth and fills the place of the English. The English did wonders here; Cooke's four companies of Guards resisted at this spot for seven hours the obstinate attack of an army. Hougomont, seen on a map, buildings and enclosures included, presents an irregular quadrangle, of which one angle has been broken off. In this angle is the southern gate within point-blank range of this wall. Hougomont has two gates,--the southern one which belongs to the château, and the northern which belongs to the farm. Napoleon sent against Hougomont his brother Jérôme; Guilleminot's, Foy's, and Bachelie's divisions were hurled at it; nearly the whole of Reille's corps was employed there and failed; and Kellermann's cannon-balls rebounded from this heroic wall. Bauduin's brigade was not strong

enough to force Hougomont on the north, and Soye's brigade could only attack it on the south without carrying it. The farm-buildings border the court-yard on the south, and a piece of the northern gate, broken by the French, hangs from the wall. It consists of four planks nailed on two cross-beams, and the scars of the attack may still be distinguished on it. The northern gate, which was broken down by the French, and in which a piece has been let in to replace the panel hanging to the wall, stands, half open, at the extremity of the yard; it is cut square in a wall which is stone at the bottom, brick at the top, and which closes the yard on the north side. It is a simple gate, such as may be seen in all farm-yards, with two large folding-doors made of rustic planks; beyond it are fields. The dispute for this entrance was furious; for a long time all sorts of marks of bloody hands could be seen on the side-post of the gate, and it was here that Bauduin fell. The storm of the fight still lurks in the court-yard: horror is visible there; the incidents of the fearful struggle are petrified in it; people are living and dying in it,--it was only yesterday. The walls are in the pangs of death, the stones fall, the breaches cry out, the holes are wounds, the bent and quivering trees seem making an effort to fly. This yard was more built on in 1815 than it is now; buildings which have since been removed, formed in it redans and angles. The English barricaded themselves in it; the French penetrated, but could not hold their ground there. By the side of the chapel stands a wing of the château, the sole relic left of the Manor of Hougomont, in ruins; we might almost say gutted. The château was employed as a keep, the chapel served as a block-house. Men exterminated each other there. The French, fired on from all sides, from behind walls, from granaries, from cellars, from every window, from every air-hole, from every crack in the stone, brought up fascines, and set fire to the walls and men; the musketry fire was replied to by arson. In the ruined wing you can look through windows defended by iron bars, into the dismantled rooms of a brick building; the English Guards were

ambuscaded in these rooms, and the spiral staircase, hollowed out from ground-floor to roof, appears like the interior of a broken shell. The staircase has two landings; the English, besieged on this landing and massed on the upper stairs, broke away the lowest. They are large slabs of blue stone which form a pile among the nettles. A dozen steps still hold to the wall; on the first the image of a trident is carved, and these inaccessible steps are solidly set in their bed. All the rest resemble a toothless jaw. There are two trees here, one of them dead, and the other, which was wounded at the root, grows green again in April. Since 1815 it has taken to growing through the staircase. Men massacred each other in the chapel, and the interior, which is grown quiet again, is strange. Mass has not been said in it since the carnage, but the altar has been left,--an altar of coarse wood supported by a foundation of rough stone. Four whitewashed walls, a door opposite the altar, two small arched windows, a large wooden crucifix over the door, above the crucifix a square air-hole stopped up with hay; in a corner, on the ground, an old window sash, with the panes all broken,--such is the chapel. Near the altar is a wooden statue of St. Anne, belonging to the 15th century; the head of the infant Saviour has been carried away by a shot. The French, masters for a moment of the chapel and then dislodged, set fire to it. The flames filled the building, and it became a furnace; the door burned, the flooring burned, but the wooden Christ was not burned; the fire nibbled away the feet, of which only the blackened stumps can now be seen, and then stopped. It was a miracle, say the country people. The walls are covered with inscriptions. Near the feet of Christ you read the name Henquinez; then these others, Conde de Rio Maïor, Marquis y Marquisa de Almagro (Habana). There are French names with marks of admiration, signs of anger. The wall was whitewashed again in 1849, for the nations insulted each other on it. It was at the door of this chapel that a body was picked up, holding an axe in its hand; it was the body of Sub-lieutenant Legros.

On leaving the chapel you see a well on your left hand. As there are two wells in this yard, you ask yourself why this one has no bucket and windlass? Because water is no longer drawn from it. Why is it not drawn? Because it is full of skeletons. The last man who drew water from this well was a man called William van Kylsom: he was a peasant who lived at Hougomont, and was gardener there. On June 18, 1815, his family took to flight and concealed themselves in the woods. The forest round the Abbey of Villers sheltered for several days and nights the dispersed luckless country people. Even at the present day certain vestiges, such as old burnt trunks of trees, mark the spot of these poor encampments among the thickets. Van Kylsom remained at Hougomont to "take care of the château," and concealed himself in a cellar. The English discovered him there; he was dragged from his lurking-place, and the frightened man was forced by blows with the flat of a sabre to wait on the combatants. They were thirsty, and he brought them drink, and it was from this well he drew the water. Many drank there for the last time, and this well, from which so many dead men drank, was destined to die too. After the action, the corpses were hastily interred; death has a way of its own of harassing victory, and it causes pestilence to follow glory. Typhus is an annex of triumph. This well was deep and was converted into a tomb. Three hundred dead were thrown into it, perhaps with too much haste. Were they all dead? The legend says no. And it seems that, on the night following the burial, weak voices were heard calling from the well. This well is isolated in the centre of the yard; three walls, half of brick, half of stone, folded like the leaves of a screen, and forming a square tower, surround it on three sides, while the fourth is open. The back wall has a sort of shapeless peep-hole, probably made by a shell. This tower once had a roof of which only the beams remain, and the iron braces of the right-hand wall form a cross. You bend over and look down into a deep brick cylinder full of gloom. All round the well the lower