CHAPTER VIII

AN ENTRANCE BY FAVOR


Although he did not suspect the fact, the mayor of M. sur M. enjoyed
a sort of celebrity. For the space of seven years his reputation
for virtue had filled the whole of Bas Boulonnais; it had eventually
passed the confines of a small district and had been spread abroad
through two or three neighboring departments. Besides the service
which he had rendered to the chief town by resuscitating the black
jet industry, there was not one out of the hundred and forty communes
of the arrondissement of M. sur M. which was not indebted to him
for some benefit. He had even at need contrived to aid and multiply
the industries of other arrondissements. It was thus that he had,
when occasion offered, supported with his credit and his funds the
linen factory at Boulogne, the flax-spinning industry at Frevent,
and the hydraulic manufacture of cloth at Boubers-sur-Canche.
Everywhere the name of M. Madeleine was pronounced with veneration.
Arras and Douai envied the happy little town of M. sur M. its mayor.

The Councillor of the Royal Court of Douai, who was presiding over
this session of the Assizes at Arras, was acquainted, in common
with the rest of the world, with this name which was so profoundly
and universally honored. When the usher, discreetly opening the door
which connected the council-chamber with the court-room, bent over the
back of the President's arm-chair and handed him the paper on which was
inscribed the line which we have just perused, adding: "The gentleman
desires to be present at the trial," the President, with a quick
and deferential movement, seized a pen and wrote a few words at
the bottom of the paper and returned it to the usher, saying, "Admit him."

The unhappy man whose history we are relating had remained near
the door of the hall, in the same place and the same attitude in
which the usher had left him. In the midst of his revery he heard
some one saying to him, "Will Monsieur do me the honor to follow me?"
It was the same usher who had turned his back upon him but a
moment previously, and who was now bowing to the earth before him.
At the same time, the usher handed him the paper. He unfolded it,
and as he chanced to be near the light, he could read it.

"The President of the Court of Assizes presents his respects
to M. Madeleine."

He crushed the paper in his hand as though those words contained
for him a strange and bitter aftertaste.

He followed the usher.

A few minutes later he found himself alone in a sort of wainscoted
cabinet of severe aspect, lighted by two wax candles, placed upon a table
with a green cloth. The last words of the usher who had just quitted him
still rang in his ears: "Monsieur, you are now in the council-chamber;
you have only to turn the copper handle of yonder door, and you will
find yourself in the court-room, behind the President's chair."
These words were mingled in his thoughts with a vague memory
of narrow corridors and dark staircases which he had recently traversed.

The usher had left him alone. The supreme moment had arrived.
He sought to collect his faculties, but could not. It is chiefly
at the moment when there is the greatest need for attaching them
to the painful realities of life, that the threads of thought
snap within the brain. He was in the very place where the judges
deliberated and condemned. With stupid tranquillity he surveyed this
peaceful and terrible apartment, where so many lives had been broken,
which was soon to ring with his name, and which his fate was at that
moment traversing. He stared at the wall, then he looked at himself,
wondering that it should be that chamber and that it should be he.

He had eaten nothing for four and twenty hours; he was worn
out by the jolts of the cart, but he was not conscious of it.
It seemed to him that he felt nothing.

He approached a black frame which was suspended on the wall,
and which contained, under glass, an ancient autograph letter
of Jean Nicolas Pache, mayor of Paris and minister, and dated,
through an error, no doubt, the 9th of June, of the year II., and
in which Pache forwarded to the commune the list of ministers and
deputies held in arrest by them. Any spectator who had chanced to see
him at that moment, and who had watched him, would have imagined,
doubtless, that this letter struck him as very curious, for he did
not take his eyes from it, and he read it two or three times.
He read it without paying any attention to it, and unconsciously.
He was thinking of Fantine and Cosette.

As he dreamed, he turned round, and his eyes fell upon the brass
knob of the door which separated him from the Court of Assizes.
He had almost forgotten that door. His glance, calm at first,
paused there, remained fixed on that brass handle, then grew terrified,
and little by little became impregnated with fear. Beads of
perspiration burst forth among his hair and trickled down upon
his temples.

At a certain moment he made that indescribable gesture of a sort
of authority mingled with rebellion, which is intended to convey,
and which does so well convey, "Pardieu! who compels me to this?"
Then he wheeled briskly round, caught sight of the door through which he
had entered in front of him, went to it, opened it, and passed out.
He was no longer in that chamber; he was outside in a corridor, a long,
narrow corridor, broken by steps and gratings, making all sorts
of angles, lighted here and there by lanterns similar to the night
taper of invalids, the corridor through which he had approached.
He breathed, he listened; not a sound in front, not a sound behind him,
and he fled as though pursued.

When he had turned many angles in this corridor, he still listened.
The same silence reigned, and there was the same darkness around him.
He was out of breath; he staggered; he leaned against the wall.
The stone was cold; the perspiration lay ice-cold on his brow;
he straightened himself up with a shiver.

Then, there alone in the darkness, trembling with cold and with
something else, too, perchance, he meditated.

He had meditated all night long; he had meditated all the day:
he heard within him but one voice, which said, "Alas!"

A quarter of an hour passed thus. At length he bowed his head,
sighed with agony, dropped his arms, and retraced his steps.
He walked slowly, and as though crushed. It seemed as though some one
had overtaken him in his flight and was leading him back.

He re-entered the council-chamber. The first thing he caught
sight of was the knob of the door. This knob, which was round
and of polished brass, shone like a terrible star for him.
He gazed at it as a lamb might gaze into the eye of a tiger.

He could not take his eyes from it. From time to time he advanced
a step and approached the door.

Had he listened, he would have heard the sound of the adjoining
hall like a sort of confused murmur; but he did not listen, and he
did not hear.

Suddenly, without himself knowing how it happened, he found himself
near the door; he grasped the knob convulsively; the door opened.

He was in the court-room.