DEPOSIT YOUR MONEY IN A FOREST RATHER THAN WITH A NOTARY.

Of course our readers have understood, and no lengthened explanation will be required, that Jean Valjean after the Champmathieu affair was enabled by his escape for a few days to come to Paris, and withdraw in time from Laffitte's the sum he had gained under the name of M. Madeleine at M.-sur-M.; and that, afraid of being recaptured, which in fact happened to him shortly after, he buried this sum in the forest of Montfermeil, at the spot called the Blaru bottom. This sum, six hundred and thirty thousand francs, all in bank-notes, occupied but little space, and was contained in a box; but in order to protect the box from damp he placed it in an oak coffer filled with chips of chestnut-wood. In the same coffer he placed his other treasure, the Bishop's candlesticks. It will be remembered that he carried off these candlesticks in his escape from M.-sur-M. The man seen on one previous evening by Boulatruelle was Jean Valjean, and afterwards, whenever Jean Valjean required money, he fetched it from the Blaru clearing, and hence his absences to which we have referred. He had a pick concealed somewhere in the shrubs, in a hiding-place known to himself alone. When he found Marius to be convalescent, feeling that the hour was at hand when this money might be useful, he went to fetch it; and it was also he whom Boulatruelle saw in the wood, but this time in the morning, and not at night. Boulatruelle inherited the pick.

The real sum was five hundred and eighty-four thousand five hundred francs, but Jean Valjean kept back the five hundred francs for himself. "We will see afterwards," he thought. The difference between this sum and the six hundred and thirty thousand francs withdrawn from Laffitte's represented the expenditure of ten years from 1823 to 1833. The five years' residence in the convent had cost only five thousand francs. Jean Valjean placed the two silver candlesticks on the mantel-piece, where they glistened, to the great admiration of Toussaint. Moreover, Jean Valjean knew himself freed from Javert; it had been stated in his presence, and he verified the fact in the Moniteur which had published it, that an Inspector of Police of the name of Javert had been found drowned under a washer-woman's boat between the Pont-au-change and the Pont-Neuf, and that a letter left by this man, hitherto irreproachable and highly esteemed by his chiefs, led to the belief in an attack of dementia and suicide. "In truth," thought Jean Valjean, "since he let me go when he had hold of me, he must have been mad at that time."

CHAPTER VI.

THE TWO OLD MEN, EACH IN HIS FASHION,
DO EVERYTHING FOR COSETTE'S HAPPINESS.

All preparations were made for the marriage, and the physician, on being consulted, declared that it might take place in February. It was now December; and a few ravishing weeks of perfect happiness slipped away. The least happy man was not the grandfather: he sat for a whole quarter of an hour contemplating Cosette.

"The admirably pretty girl!" he would exclaim, "and she has so soft and kind an air! She is the most charming creature I have ever seen in my life. Presently she will have virtues with a violet scent. She is one of the Graces, on my faith! A man can only live nobly with such a creature. Marius, my lad, you are a baron, you are rich; so do not be a pettifogger, I implore you."

Cosette and Marius had suddenly passed from the sepulchre into paradise: the transition had not been prepared, and they would have been stunned if they had not been dazzled.

"Do you understand anything of all this?" Marius would say to Cosette.

"No," Cosette answered; "but it seems to me as if the good God were looking at us."

Jean Valjean did everything, smoothed everything, conciliated everything, and rendered everything easy. He hurried toward Cosette's happiness with as much eagerness and apparently with as much joy as Cosette herself. As he had been Mayor, he was called to solve a delicate problem, the secret of which he alone possessed,—the civil status of Cosette. To tell her origin openly might have prevented the marriage; but he got Cosette out of all the difficulties. He arranged for her a family of dead people, a sure method of not incurring any inquiry. Cosette was the only one left of an extinct family. Cosette was not his daughter, but the daughter of another Fauchelevent. Two brothers Fauchelevent had been gardeners at the convent of the Little Picpus. They proceeded to this convent; the best testimonials and most satisfactory character were given; for the good nuns, little suited and but little inclined to solve questions of paternity, had never known exactly of which of the two Fauchelevents Cosette was the daughter. They said what was wanted, and said it zealously. An instrument was drawn up by a notary and Cosette became by law Mademoiselle Euphrasie Fauchelevent, and was declared an orphan both on the father's and mother's side. Jean Valjean managed so as to be designated, under the name of Fauchelevent, as guardian of Cosette, with M. Gillenormand as supervising guardian. As for the five hundred and eighty-four thousand francs, they were a legacy left to Cosette by a dead person who wished to remain unknown. The original legacy had been five hundred and ninety-four thousand francs, but ten thousand had been spent in the education of Mademoiselle Euphrasie, five thousand of which had been paid to the convent. This legacy, deposited in the hands of a third party, was to be handed over to Cosette upon her majority, or at the period of her marriage. All this was highly acceptable, as we see, especially when backed up by more than half a million francs. There were certainly a few singular points here and there, but they were not seen, for one of the persons interested had his eyes bandaged by love, and the others by the six hundred thousand francs.

Cosette learned that she was not the daughter of the old man whom she had so long called father; he was only a relation, and another Fauchelevent was her real father. At another moment this would have grieved her, but in the ineffable hour she had now reached it was only a slight shadow, a passing cloud; and she had so much joy that this cloud lasted but a short time. She had Marius. The young man came; the old man disappeared: life is so. And then, Cosette had been accustomed for many long years to see enigmas around her; every being who has had a mysterious childhood is ever ready for certain renunciations. Still she continued to call Jean Valjean "father." Cosette, who was among the angels, was enthusiastic about Father Gillenormand; it is true that he overwhelmed her with madrigals and presents. While Jean Valjean was constructing for Cosette an unassailable position in society, M. Gillenormand attended to the wedding trousseau. Nothing amused him so much as to be magnificent; and he had given Cosette a gown of Binche guipure, which he inherited from his own grandmother. "These fashions spring up again," he said; "antiquities are the great demand, and the young ladies of my old days dress themselves like the old ladies of my youth." He plundered his respectable round-bellied commodes of Coromandel lacquer, which had not been opened for years. "Let us shrive these dowagers," he said, "and see what they have in their paunch." He noisily violated drawers full of the dresses of all his wives, all his mistresses, and all his female ancestry. He lavished on Cosette Chinese satins, damasks, lampas, painted moires, gros de Naples dresses, Indian handkerchiefs embroidered with gold that can be washed, Genoa and Alençon point lace, sets of old jewelry, ivory bonbon boxes adorned with microscopic battles, laces, and ribbons. Cosette, astounded, wild with love for Marius and with gratitude to M. Gillenormand, dreamed of an unbounded happiness, dressed in satin and velvet. Her wedding-basket seemed to her supported by seraphim, and her soul floated in ether with wings of Mechlin lace. The intoxication of the lovers was only equalled, as we stated, by the ecstasy of the grandfather, and there was something like a flourish of trumpets in the Rue des Filles du Calvaire. Each morning there was a new offering of bric-à-brac from the grandfather to Cosette, and all sorts of ornaments were spread out splendidly around her. One day Marius, who not unfrequently talked gravely through his happiness, said, with reference to some incident which I have forgotten,—

"The men of the revolution are so great that they already possess the prestige of centuries, like Cato and like Phocion, and each of them seems a mémoire antique."

"Moire antique!" exclaimed the old gentleman; "thank you, Marius, that is the very idea which I was seeking for."

And on the morrow a splendid tea-colored moire antique dress was added to Cosette's outfit. The grandfather extracted a wisdom from this frippery:—

"Love is all very well, but this is required with it. Something useless is required in happiness; happiness is only what is absolutely necessary, but season it, say I, with an enormous amount of superfluity. A palace and her heart; her heart and the Louvre. Give me my shepherdess, and try that she be a duchess. Bring me Phillis crowned with corn-flowers, and add to her one thousand francs a year. Open for me an endless Bucolic under a marble colonnade. I consent to the Bucolic and also to the fairy scene in marble and gold. Dry happiness resembles dry bread; you eat it, but you do not dine. I wish for superfluity, for the useless, for extravagance, for that which is of no use. I remember to to have seen in Strasburg Cathedral a clock as tall as a three-storied house, which marked the hour, which had the kindness to mark the hour, but did not look as if it was made for the purpose; and which, after striking midday or midnight,—midday, the hour of the sun, and midnight, the hour of love, or any other hour you please,—gave you the moon and the stars, earth and sea, birds and fishes, Phœbus and Phœbe, and a heap of things that came out of a corner, and the twelve apostles, and the Emperor Charles V., and Éponine and Sabinus, and a number of little gilt men who played the trumpet into the bargain, without counting the ravishing chimes which it scattered in the air on every possible occasion, without your knowing why. Is a wretched, naked clock, which only marks the hours, worth that? I am of the opinion of the great clock of Strasburg, and prefer it to the Black Forest cuckoo clock."

M. Gillenormand talked all sorts of nonsense about the marriage, and all the ideas of the eighteenth century passed pell-mell into his dithyrambs.

"You are ignorant of the art of festivals, and do not know how to get up a day's pleasure in these times," he exclaimed. "Your nineteenth century is soft, and is deficient in excess: it is ignorant of what is rich and noble. In everything it is close-shorn. Your third estate is insipid and has no color, smell, or shape. The dream of your bourgeoises, who establish themselves, as they call it, is a pretty boudoir freshly decorated with mahogany and calico. Make way, there! The Sieur Grigou marries the Demoiselle Grippesou. Sumptuousness and splendor. A louis d'or has been stuck to a wax candle. Such is the age. I insist on flying beyond the Sarmatians. Ah, so far back as 1787 I predicted that all was lost on the day when I saw the Due de Rohan, Prince de Léon, Duc de Chabot, Duc de Montbazon, Marquis de Soubise, Vicomte de Thouars, Peer of France, go to Longchamps in a tapecul: that bore its fruits. In this century men have a business, gamble on the Stock Exchange, win money, and are mean. They take care of and varnish their surface: they are carefully dressed, washed, soaped, shaved, combed, rubbed, brushed, and cleaned externally, irreproachable, as polished as a pebble, discreet, trim, and at the same time,—virtue of my soul!—they have at the bottom of their conscience dungheaps and cess-pools, at which a milkmaid who blows her nose with her fingers would recoil. I grant the present age this motto,—dirty cleanliness. Marius, do not be annoyed; grant me the permission to speak, for I have been saying no harm of the people, you see. I have my mouth full of your people, but do let me give the bourgeoisie a pill. I tell you point-blank that at the present day people marry, but no longer know how to marry. Ah, it is true, I regret the gentility of the old manners; I regret it all,—that elegance, that chivalry, that courteous and dainty manner, that rejoicing luxury which every one possessed, the music forming part of the wedding, symphony above and drums beating below stairs, the joyous faces seated at table, the spicy madrigals, the songs, the fireworks, the hearty laugh, the devil and his train, and the large ribbon bows. I regret the bride's garter, for it is first cousin of the girdle of Venus. On what does the siege of Troy turn? Parbleu! on Helen's garter. Why do men fight? Why does the divine Diomedes smash on the head of Merioneus that grand brass helmet with the ten points? Why do Achilles and Hector tickle each other with lances? Because Helen let Paris take her garter. With Cosette's garter Homer would write the Iliad; he would place in his poem an old chatterer like myself, and call him Nestor. My friends, in former times, in those amiable former times, people married learnedly: they made a good contract and then a good merry-making. So soon as Cujas had gone out, Gamacho came in. Hang it all! the stomach is an agreeable beast, that demands its due, and wishes to hold its wedding too. We supped well, and had at table a pretty neighbor without a neckerchief, who only concealed her throat moderately. Oh, the wide laughing mouths, and how gay people were in those days! Youth was a bouquet, every young man finished with a branch of lilac or a posy of roses; if he were a warrior, he was a shepherd, and if by chance he were a captain of dragoons, he managed to call himself Florian. All were anxious to be pretty fellows, and they wore embroidery and rouge. A bourgeois looked like a flower, and a marquis like a precious stone. They did not wear straps, they did not wear boots; they were flashing, lustrous, gilt, light, dainty, and coquettish, but it did not prevent them wearing a sword by their side; they were humming-birds with beak and nails. It was the time of the Indes galantes. One of the sides of that age was delicate, the other magnificent; and, by the vertu-choux! people amused themselves. At the present day they are serious; the bourgeois is miserly, the bourgeoise prudish,—your age is out of shape. The Graces would be expelled because their dresses were cut too low in the neck. Alas! beauty is concealed as an ugliness. Since the revolution all wear trousers, even the ballet girls; a ballet girl must be serious, and your rigadoons are doctrinaire. A man must be majestic, and would feel very much annoyed at not having his chin in his cravat. The idea of a scamp of twenty, who is about to marry, is to resemble Monsieur Royer-Collard. And do you know what people reach by this majesty? They are little. Learn this fact: joy is not merely joyous, it is grand. Be gayly in love; though, hang it all! marry, when you do marry, with fever and amazement and tumult, and a hurly-burly of happiness. Gravity at church, if you will; but so soon as the mass is ended, sarpejeu! you ought to make a dream whirl round your wife. A marriage ought to be royal and chimerical, and parade its ceremony from the Cathedral of Rheims to the Pagoda of Chante-loup. I have a horror of a scrubby marriage. Ventre-goulette! Be in Olympus at least upon that day. Be gods. Ah, people might be sylphs, jests and smiles, Argyraspides, but they are scrubs! My friends, every newly-married man ought to be Prince Aldobrandini. Take advantage of this unique moment of life to fly into the Empyrean with the swans and the eagles, even if you fall back to-morrow into the bourgeoisie of frogs. Do not save upon the hymeneal rites; do not nibble at this splendor, nor split farthings on the day when you are radiant. A wedding is not housekeeping. Oh, if I had my way it should be a gallant affair, and violins should be heard in the trees. Here is my programme: sky-blue and silver. I would mingle in the fête the rustic divinities, and convene the Dryads and the Nereids. The wedding of Amphitrite, a pink cloud, nymphs with their hair carefully dressed and quite nude, an academician offering quatrains to the Deess, a car drawn by marine monsters.

'Triton trottait devant, et tirait de sa conque,
Des sons si ravissants qu'il ravissait quiconque!'

There is a programme for a fête, or I'm no judge, sac à papier!"

While the grandfather, in the heat of his lyric effusion, was listening to himself, Cosette and Marius were intoxicating themselves by looking freely at each other. Aunt Gillenormand regarded all this with her imperturbable placidity; she had, during the last five or six months, a certain amount of emotions; Marius returned, Marius brought back bleeding, Marius brought from a barricade, Marius dead, then living, Marius reconciled, Marius affianced, Marius marrying a poor girl, Marius marrying a millionnaire. The six hundred thousand francs had been her last surprise, and then the indifference of a leading communicant returned to her. She went regularly to her mass, told her beads, read her euchology, whispered in one corner of the house her Aves, while "I love you" was being whispered in another, and saw Marius and Cosette vaguely like two shadows. The shadow was herself. There is a certain state of inert asceticism in which the mind, neutralized by torpor, and a stranger to what might be called the business of living, does not perceive, with the exception of earthquakes and catastrophes, any human impressions, either pleasant or painful. "This devotion," Father Gillenormand would say to his daughter, "resembles a cold in the head; you smell nothing of life, neither a good odor nor a bad one." However, the six hundred thousand francs had settled the old maid's indecision. Her father was accustomed to take her so little into account that he had not consulted her as to the consent to Marius's marriage. He had acted impetuously, according to his wont, having, as a despot who had become a slave, but one thought, that of satisfying Marius. As for the aunt, he had scarce remembered that the aunt existed, and that she might have an opinion of her own, and, sheep though she was, this had offended her. Somewhat roused internally, but externally impassive, she said to herself, "My father settles the marriage question without me, and I will settle the question of the inheritance without him." She was rich, in fact, and her father was not so, and it is probable that if the marriage had been poor she would have left it poor. "All the worse for my nephew! If he chose to marry a beggar, he may be a beggar too." But Cosette's half a million of francs pleased the aunt and changed her feelings with respect to the loving couple; consideration is due to six hundred thousand francs, and it was evident that she could not do otherwise than leave her fortune to these young people, because they no longer required it.

It was arranged that the couple should reside at M. Gillenormand's, and the grandfather insisted on giving them his bed-room, the finest room in the house. "It will make me younger," he declared. "It is an old place. I always had the idea that the wedding should take place in my room." He furnished this room with a heap of old articles of gallantry; he had it hung with an extraordinary fabric which he had in the piece, and believed to be Utrecht, a gold satin ground with velvet auriculas. "It was with that stuff," he said, "that the bed of the Duchess d'Anville à la Rocheguyon was hung." He placed on the mantel-piece a figure in Saxon porcelain carrying a muff on its naked stomach. M. Gillenormand's library became the office which Marius required; for an office, it will be borne in mind, is insisted upon by the council of the order.

CHAPTER VII.