LES MISERABLES (Illustrated Edition). Victor Hugo

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СКАЧАТЬ him, things would have rested there, and it is probable that we should not have had to relate any of the occurrences which the reader is about to peruse; but this conversation had taken place in the street. Any colloquy in the street inevitably attracts a crowd. There are always people who ask nothing better than to become spectators. While he was questioning the wheelwright, some people who were passing back and forth halted around them. After listening for a few minutes, a young lad, to whom no one had paid any heed, detached himself from the group and ran off.

      At the moment when the traveller, after the inward deliberation which we have just described, resolved to retrace his steps, this child returned. He was accompanied by an old woman.

      “Monsieur,” said the woman, “my boy tells me that you wish to hire a cabriolet.”

      These simple words uttered by an old woman led by a child made the perspiration trickle down his limbs. He thought that he beheld the hand which had relaxed its grasp reappear in the darkness behind him, ready to seize him once more.

      He answered:—

      “Yes, my good woman; I am in search of a cabriolet which I can hire.”

      And he hastened to add:—

      “But there is none in the place.”

      “Certainly there is,” said the old woman.

      “Where?” interpolated the wheelwright.

      “At my house,” replied the old woman.

      He shuddered. The fatal hand had grasped him again.

      The old woman really had in her shed a sort of basket spring-cart. The wheelwright and the stableman, in despair at the prospect of the traveller escaping their clutches, interfered.

      “It was a frightful old trap; it rests flat on the axle; it is an actual fact that the seats were suspended inside it by leather thongs; the rain came into it; the wheels were rusted and eaten with moisture; it would not go much further than the tilbury; a regular ramshackle old stage-wagon; the gentleman would make a great mistake if he trusted himself to it,” etc., etc.

      All this was true; but this trap, this ramshackle old vehicle, this thing, whatever it was, ran on its two wheels and could go to Arras.

      He paid what was asked, left the tilbury with the wheelwright to be repaired, intending to reclaim it on his return, had the white horse put to the cart, climbed into it, and resumed the road which he had been travelling since morning.

      At the moment when the cart moved off, he admitted that he had felt, a moment previously, a certain joy in the thought that he should not go whither he was now proceeding. He examined this joy with a sort of wrath, and found it absurd. Why should he feel joy at turning back? After all, he was taking this trip of his own free will. No one was forcing him to it.

      And assuredly nothing would happen except what he should choose.

      As he left Hesdin, he heard a voice shouting to him: “Stop! Stop!” He halted the cart with a vigorous movement which contained a feverish and convulsive element resembling hope.

      It was the old woman’s little boy.

      “Monsieur,” said the latter, “it was I who got the cart for you.”

      “Well?”

      “You have not given me anything.”

      He who gave to all so readily thought this demand exorbitant and almost odious.

      “Ah! it’s you, you scamp?” said he; “you shall have nothing.”

      He whipped up his horse and set off at full speed.

      He had lost a great deal of time at Hesdin. He wanted to make it good. The little horse was courageous, and pulled for two; but it was the month of February, there had been rain; the roads were bad. And then, it was no longer the tilbury. The cart was very heavy, and in addition, there were many ascents.

      He took nearly four hours to go from Hesdin to Saint-Pol; four hours for five leagues.

      At Saint-Pol he had the horse unharnessed at the first inn he came to and led to the stable; as he had promised Scaufflaire, he stood beside the manger while the horse was eating; he thought of sad and confusing things.

      The inn-keeper’s wife came to the stable.

      “Does not Monsieur wish to breakfast?”

      “Come, that is true; I even have a good appetite.”

      He followed the woman, who had a rosy, cheerful face; she led him to the public room where there were tables covered with waxed cloth.

      “Make haste!” said he; “I must start again; I am in a hurry.”

      A big Flemish servant-maid placed his knife and fork in all haste; he looked at the girl with a sensation of comfort.

      “That is what ailed me,” he thought; “I had not breakfasted.”

      His breakfast was served; he seized the bread, took a mouthful, and then slowly replaced it on the table, and did not touch it again.

      A carter was eating at another table; he said to this man:—

      “Why is their bread so bitter here?”

      The carter was a German and did not understand him.

      He returned to the stable and remained near the horse.

      An hour later he had quitted Saint-Pol and was directing his course towards Tinques, which is only five leagues from Arras.

      What did he do during this journey? Of what was he thinking? As in the morning, he watched the trees, the thatched roofs, the tilled fields pass by, and the way in which the landscape, broken at every turn of the road, vanished; this is a sort of contemplation which sometimes suffices to the soul, and almost relieves it from thought. What is more melancholy and more profound than to see a thousand objects for the first and the last time? To travel is to be born and to die at every instant; perhaps, in the vaguest region of his mind, he did make comparisons between the shifting horizon and our human existence: all the things of life are perpetually fleeing before us; the dark and bright intervals are intermingled; after a dazzling moment, an eclipse; we look, we hasten, we stretch out our hands to grasp what is passing; each event is a turn in the road, and, all at once, we are old; we feel a shock; all is black; we distinguish an obscure door; the gloomy horse of life, which has been drawing us halts, and we see a veiled and unknown person unharnessing amid the shadows.

      Twilight was falling when the children who were coming out of school beheld this traveller enter Tinques; it is true that the days were still short; he did not halt at Tinques; as he emerged from the village, a laborer, who was mending the road with stones, raised his head and said to him:— “That horse is very much fatigued.”

      The poor beast was, in fact, going at a walk.

      “Are you going to Arras?” added the road-mender.

      “Yes.”

      “If СКАЧАТЬ