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 Frévent, 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 armchair 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 reverie 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.