Victor Hugo Fullscreen Les Miserables 1 (1862)

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At the expiration of a few minutes his left arm rose slowly towards his brow, and he took off his cap; then his arm fell back with the same deliberation, and Jean Valjean fell to meditating once more, his cap in his left hand, his club in his right hand, his hair bristling all over his savage head.

The Bishop continued to sleep in profound peace beneath that terrifying gaze.

The gleam of the moon rendered confusedly visible the crucifix over the chimney-piece, which seemed to be extending its arms to both of them, with a benediction for one and pardon for the other.

Suddenly Jean Valjean replaced his cap on his brow; then stepped rapidly past the bed, without glancing at the Bishop, straight to the cupboard, which he saw near the head; he raised his iron candlestick as though to force the lock; the key was there; he opened it; the first thing which presented itself to him was the basket of silverware; he seized it, traversed the chamber with long strides, without taking any precautions and without troubling himself about the noise, gained the door, re-entered the oratory, opened the window, seized his cudgel, bestrode the window-sill of the ground floor, put the silver into his knapsack, threw away the basket, crossed the garden, leaped over the wall like a tiger, and fled.

CHAPTER XII—THE BISHOP WORKS

The next morning at sunrise Monseigneur Bienvenu was strolling in his garden.

Madame Magloire ran up to him in utter consternation.

“Monseigneur, Monseigneur!” she exclaimed, “does your Grace know where the basket of silver is?”

“Yes,” replied the Bishop.

“Jesus the Lord be blessed!” she resumed; “I did not know what had become of it.”

The Bishop had just picked up the basket in a flower-bed.

He presented it to Madame Magloire.

“Here it is.”

“Well!” said she.

“Nothing in it!

And the silver?”

“Ah,” returned the Bishop, “so it is the silver which troubles you?

I don’t know where it is.”

“Great, good God!

It is stolen!

That man who was here last night has stolen it.”

In a twinkling, with all the vivacity of an alert old woman, Madame Magloire had rushed to the oratory, entered the alcove, and returned to the Bishop.

The Bishop had just bent down, and was sighing as he examined a plant of cochlearia des Guillons, which the basket had broken as it fell across the bed.

He rose up at Madame Magloire’s cry.

“Monseigneur, the man is gone!

The silver has been stolen!”

As she uttered this exclamation, her eyes fell upon a corner of the garden, where traces of the wall having been scaled were visible.

The coping of the wall had been torn away.

“Stay! yonder is the way he went.

He jumped over into Cochefilet Lane.

Ah, the abomination!

He has stolen our silver!”

The Bishop remained silent for a moment; then he raised his grave eyes, and said gently to Madame Magloire:—

“And, in the first place, was that silver ours?”

Madame Magloire was speechless.

Another silence ensued; then the Bishop went on:—

“Madame Magloire, I have for a long time detained that silver wrongfully.

It belonged to the poor.

Who was that man?

A poor man, evidently.”

“Alas! Jesus!” returned Madame Magloire. “It is not for my sake, nor for Mademoiselle’s. It makes no difference to us.

But it is for the sake of Monseigneur.

What is Monseigneur to eat with now?”

The Bishop gazed at her with an air of amazement.

“Ah, come!

Are there no such things as pewter forks and spoons?”

Madame Magloire shrugged her shoulders.

“Pewter has an odor.”

“Iron forks and spoons, then.”

Madame Magloire made an expressive grimace.