So far he had not uttered a single word, no one seemed to be aware that he was there, and he had remained standing erect and motionless, behind all these happy people.
“What has Mademoiselle Euphrasie to do with the question?” inquired the startled grandfather.
“I am she,” replied Cosette.
“Six hundred thousand francs?” resumed M. Gillenormand.
“Minus fourteen or fifteen thousand francs, possibly,” said Jean Valjean.
And he laid on the table the package which Mademoiselle Gillenormand had mistaken for a book.
Jean Valjean himself opened the package; it was a bundle of bank-notes.
They were turned over and counted.
There were five hundred notes for a thousand francs each, and one hundred and sixty-eight of five hundred.
In all, five hundred and eighty-four thousand francs.
“This is a fine book,” said M. Gillenormand.
“Five hundred and eighty-four thousand francs!” murmured the aunt.
“This arranges things well, does it not, Mademoiselle Gillenormand senior?” said the grandfather.
“That devil of a Marius has ferreted out the nest of a millionaire grisette in his tree of dreams!
Just trust to the love affairs of young folks now, will you!
Students find studentesses with six hundred thousand francs.
Cherubino works better than Rothschild.” “Five hundred and eighty-four thousand francs!” repeated Mademoiselle Gillenormand, in a low tone.
“Five hundred and eighty-four! one might as well say six hundred thousand!”
As for Marius and Cosette, they were gazing at each other while this was going on; they hardly heeded this detail.
CHAPTER V—DEPOSIT YOUR MONEY IN A FOREST RATHER THAN WITH A NOTARY
The reader has, no doubt, understood, without necessitating a lengthy explanation, that Jean Valjean, after the Champmathieu affair, had been able, thanks to his first escape of a few days’ duration, to come to Paris and to withdraw in season, from the hands of Laffitte, the sum earned by him, under the name of Monsieur Madeleine, at Montreuil-sur-Mer; and that fearing that he might be recaptured,—which eventually happened—he had buried and hidden that sum in the forest of Montfermeil, in the locality known as the Blaru-bottom.
The sum, six hundred and thirty thousand francs, all in bank-bills, was not very bulky, and was contained in a box; only, in order to preserve the box from dampness, he had placed it in a coffer filled with chestnut shavings.
In the same coffer he had placed his other treasures, the Bishop’s candlesticks.
It will be remembered that he had carried off the candlesticks when he made his escape from Montreuil-sur-Mer.
The man seen one evening for the first time by Boulatruelle, was Jean Valjean.
Later on, every time that Jean Valjean needed money, he went to get it in the Blaru-bottom.
Hence the absences which we have mentioned.
He had a pickaxe somewhere in the heather, in a hiding-place known to himself alone.
When he beheld Marius convalescent, feeling that the hour was at hand, when that money might prove of service, he had gone to get it; it was he again, whom Boulatruelle had seen in the woods, but on this occasion, in the morning instead of in the evening.
Boulatreulle inherited his pickaxe.
The actual sum was five hundred and eighty-four thousand, five hundred francs.
Jean Valjean withdrew the five hundred francs for himself.—“We shall see hereafter,” he thought.
The difference between that sum and the six hundred and thirty thousand francs withdrawn from Laffitte represented his expenditure in ten years, from 1823 to 1833.
The five years of his stay in the convent had cost only five thousand francs.
Jean Valjean set the two candlesticks on the chimney-piece, where they glittered to the great admiration of Toussaint.
Moreover, Jean Valjean knew that he was delivered from Javert.
The story had been told in his presence, and he had verified the fact in the Moniteur, how a police inspector named Javert had been found drowned under a boat belonging to some laundresses, between the Pont au Change and the Pont-Neuf, and that a writing left by this man, otherwise irreproachable and highly esteemed by his superiors, pointed to a fit of mental aberration and a suicide.—“In fact,” thought Jean Valjean, “since he left me at liberty, once having got me in his power, he must have been already mad.”
CHAPTER VI—THE TWO OLD MEN DO EVERYTHING, EACH ONE AFTER HIS OWN FASHION, TO RENDER COSETTE HAPPY
Everything was made ready for the wedding.
The doctor, on being consulted, declared that it might take place in February.
It was then December.
A few ravishing weeks of perfect happiness passed.
The grandfather was not the least happy of them all.
He remained for a quarter of an hour at a time gazing at Cosette.
“The wonderful, beautiful girl!” he exclaimed.
“And she has so sweet and good an air! she is, without exception, the most charming girl that I have ever seen in my life.
Later on, she’ll have virtues with an odor of violets.
How graceful! one cannot live otherwise than nobly with such a creature.
Marius, my boy, you are a Baron, you are rich, don’t go to pettifogging, I beg of you.”
Cosette and Marius had passed abruptly from the sepulchre to paradise.