Once More the Conquered
Note: The dialogue from the part where he sees the bishop again comes from the book except for the last line.
Jean Valjean did not know where he was going, only that he had to get away. He had wandered at random before arriving at the cure's residence and so he would not have been able to head anywhere specific even had he not been too preoccupied to plan that far ahead.
He just knew that he had to get away. The deed was done, the silver was stolen, and now there was nothing to do but escape. Images flashed through his mind that might have been memories from his first escape when he had been just as terrified of being caught as he was now. Before he had not had to fear because before he may have been turned out from even a dog's kennel, in case he had managed to forget his place in the world for a single moment, but before they could not arrest him merely because they did not want him there.
Now every slight sound was the footsteps of the gendarme and every movement or even distant tree was a potential enemy lying in wait. Waiting to take him back to the hell that he had not deserved to waste half of his life in and that was not so far behind him that he did not still waken surprised to find himself unchained.
He knew that there was no reason someone looking at him should be able to tell that he had stolen silver in his knapsack. But the silver burned just the same and it seemed mad to think that everyone could not tell. And even before he had stolen anything he was stopped by every gendarme he had passed and searched. A search then had been more fuel for the anger burning deep inside of him. A search now would mean the end of everything before it had even begun!
He could not get caught. Why had he taken the silver? Why had he not taken it earlier? He could be out of Digne by now! He had to get away.
He was so focused on avoiding the gendarmes that might be hiding in the trees or sneaking up behind him that he had almost missed the gendarmes that suddenly appeared right in front of him. Where had they come from? He could not go back. The silver burned. He was not even touching it but that made no difference.
There were four of them and one of them stepped forward.
"Well," he drawled. "It seems a strange time of day for an honest man to be travelling."
Valjean froze immediately.
"Don't you know these streets are not safe?" another asked.
"Perhaps he knows that," the first said. "Perhaps he is why the streets are not safe."
"He does look like he is running away," the third noted. "But what is he fleeing? Thieves and murderers in the night or the good arm of the law?"
"We shall have to see," decided the first. "We will need to see your papers."
He should say something, he thought vaguely. He did not know what to say. They would see his papers and then it would not have mattered if the silver was a gift because they would never believe him. He had no words that could improve the situation and so it was best to stay silent lest he say something that somehow made it worse.
He silently reached into his pocket and pulled out his yellow passport. What else could he do? They would not let him leave until they saw it. They would not let him leave once they had seen it.
The gendarme practically snatched it from his hands.
"Yellow," a different one said. "That's no surprise. I wonder what he's up to."
"I was right, then, that he was running away."
"Jean Valjean," the first one read off. "Discharged convict, native of Faverolles. Has been nineteen years in the galleys: five years for house-breaking and burglary; fourteen years for having attempted to escape on four occasions. He is a very dangerous man."
"House-breaking and burglary? We don't need any of that around here," one of them said. "We'd best check his pack and see if he's been up to his old tricks again."
"Give us your bag," the gendarme ordered him.
He did not want to. He knew what that would mean. He knew that if he did not hand it over they would take it anyway and perhaps even beat him. They might beat him anyway. What could he do?
He handed it over.
They quickly opened the bag and found the stolen silver. Why had he not at least put it at the bottom of the bag so that it was less obviously stolen? They would have found it anyway, they would have taken him anyway, but he was irrationally annoyed just the same.
"Well," the gendarme said quietly. "That answers that question. It's too late to do anything tonight but if we wait until tomorrow somebody will report their silver gone and that will answer that question. Unless you would like to save us some time and just tell us what poor soul you took this from?"
At being addressed, Valjean started. He reminded himself that he was not back in Toulon yet. He had not even been placed in handcuffs yet though that would come soon. They would not believe him but he did not have to stand here and just watch the rest of his life disappear into that cursed place he had only just been delivered from.
"Please, Monsieur, I did not steal it," he said hurriedly. "There was a priest. The cure, I believe, of that great church. It is his silver, that is true, but I did not steal it. H-He gave it to me."
The disbelief on the gendarme's face was painfully clear. "Did he now?"
"He did. He…He told me that I had come from a very unhappy place and that I was welcome in his home, the home of Jesus Christ. He said that everything there was mine. He let me eat at his table and sleep in his spare bed and he gave this to me," Valjean lied. He hoped he was not lying badly. He really did not know how well he lied because he did not believe that he had lied overmuch before Toulon and once he was a convict nobody believed him no matter what he had said. Probably these men would not believe him either because he was a convict.
"If he let you stay and gave you this silver then why are you behaving so suspiciously and why leave at this hour, in the middle of the night?" challenged the gendarme.
"I must be at Pontarlier soon," Valjean replied. "I have a lot of walking to do and cannot afford to wait."
"That is a lot of silver," the gendarme replied. "You could not afford to travel any way but walking?"
"It is not perhaps a question of being able to afford it as being able to find somebody who will not turn me away when they see my passport," Valjean said, though in truth it had not occurred to him to look for another way. Travel was hard but he had bled for that money and would not waste it on such frivolities when he had two perfectly good feet. He had been willing to pay the whole of his money for a spot in the stable just yesterday but that was then and this was now.
The gendarme nodded thoughtfully. "Ah, yes, I can see that. I cannot blame them for being cautious."
No, no one ever blamed them. They spoke of wanting to be safe and yet had no problem sending the 'dangerous man' out in the cold when if he were truly dangerous he would make them pay for what they had done.
"I know that parolees have a very strict schedule so as to give them no time to commit crimes while they are unsupervised and have not yet reached their parole destination," he continued. "But we will either send you back to Toulon – it is Toulon that you are from, yes? Convicts around here usually are – or release you once your story is confirmed. We cannot possibly wake someone up to ask if they have been stolen from and so you will remain with us until a more reasonable hour."
Valjean felt his blood run cold. They were not going to send him back immediately and were at least going to make sure that he was guilty. That was more than he had expected but he could not be grateful for it because he was, in fact, quite guilty. He had just a few hours of freedom left before he was sent back to Toulon for the rest of his life. Before he had stopped truly believing that he would ever be let go sometime between his second and third escape attempts. How could he count down the time until release when the years to go kept increasing? But at least he had been told that it would not be forever, that if he just stopped running and waited then he would be released. And he had been. This time…this time he knew it would be forever. It would not matter if he never escaped or escaped every single day because the end result would be the same: a lifetime of Toulon.
And what freedom he had had! Four days of being told where to go and spending most of the time walking. He was not in the habit of walking very far and he did not believe he had ever had to walk that far in his life. There was a reason that it was carts that carried them to Toulon and not the power of their own feet. Four days of being shut out from everywhere by everyone. And now he would lose even that illusion of freedom and wait in the custody of the gendarmes until he would return to the cure who would denounce him.
He suddenly felt his arms seized. Instinctively he tensed but he had spent too many years being grabbed in various ways by various guards to react more than that. The last time he had resisted like that it had cost him two more years of his life. It would appear that he was not to be chained at this point but seized by the arms and marched forward. It did not matter. At least he would not feel the chains for a little while longer.
The four of them set out, Valjean not paying any particular attention to where they were going. It did not matter. He would not leave Digne until he was taken back to Toulon or a place where he would wait until he was returned. But it was not unwelcome to have a little more time out of his chains before they were fitted back into place and he would wear them until he died.
It was a silent march to the jail and he was placed in a cell. He sat down on the floor, suddenly feeling very tired. He and the gendarmes were the only ones in there except for the turnkey and two guards. Digne was a town without much crime then. Perhaps that was why everyone was so interested in him that word of who he was spread faster than he could walk.
"Fourteen years for escape?" one of the gendarmes murmured by the exit. Valjean wondered vaguely if they thought he could not hear them or if it just did not matter to them. "That's not very bright, is it?"
"Convicts are rarely smart," another told him. Valjean would have been angered by this line of talk once but he had heard it all too frequently these past nineteen years, especially right after a failed escape. "That's how they end up convicts in the first place."
"I suppose that's true. Still, you'd think even he would have understood after a few tries that he was just not going to be able to escape."
"Maybe he did. They did eventually let him out."
"A mistake, clearly."
"We cannot keep people past their sentence and those that continue to lead a life of crime go back to prison where they belong."
"That's only once we've caught them. They can do so much evil before they are caught sometimes. And even this convict could have committed other crimes before we caught him here. Do we even know that no one has been hurt or killed?"
"We will find out in the morning. But do recall that, while it's probable that this man stole, we will not know that for sure until tomorrow morning."
The second gendarme gave his grudging agreement and then the four of them left.
The turnkey approached Valjean curiously. "I've seen you, haven't I?"
Valjean kept silent. Until an answer was demanded of him, he did not feel like talking.
The turnkey was undaunted by this and nodded. "Yes, yes! You asked if you could please stay the night here and I told you that if you wanted to do that you would have to be arrested." He laughed. "Well, I suppose you were just not going to take no for an answer!"
Valjean blinked up at him. He had been so desperate for a place to stay that he had gone to the jail seeking refuge and even they had refused him though they had not released their hold of him for nineteen long years. He wished, suddenly, that they had. He would have slept in a cell much like this one and not been woken up by the abundance of comfort. There would be nothing for him to steal and so he would not have been caught fleeing. He could have just been allowed to go on his way to Pontarlier.
He felt a burning resentment for this man before him for driving him away and into the arms of that cure and his silver. The cure had been poor but not so poor that he did not have regular meals and a place to stay and his own servant! He did not need the silver, not like Valjean did, and yet it would be returned to him in the morning and Valjean would be in a place where money was once more meaningless.
There was anger for the cure, too, for taking him in, for trusting him when it was obvious that he could not be trusted. Valjean had almost killed him and the cure had just said that it was God's affair. Why had he let Valjean see where the silver was and why had he not even locked it up? How could he have possibly resisted?
"You may have lodgings for the night and perhaps tomorrow night, too, we shall see," the turnkey said magnanimously. "And then I suspect you will never have to worry about lodgings another day for the rest of your life."
That much was true but he would rather have spent the rest of his life wandering around like he had in Digne than go back to Toulon. He would rather do just about anything rather than go back to Toulon, even die. But there was no choice. The cure would soon tell them everything and he would be lost.
The turnkey soon lost interest in his unresponsive prisoner and so left Valjean's immediate line of sight. From his place on the floor, he could not see the two guards but they must still be there. He could have stood up or moved to try and find them but he did not see the point.
It was all over. Nineteen years he had been waiting for this chance and now it was over. A loaf of bread, a windowpane, and now back again!
He thought about his predicament but it just did not make sense. How had he come to be here? How had that little shattering of glass led him to this? It was unreal. No matter how many times he thought about it, no matter the fact that he had lived it, it just did not make any sense.
Feeling very sorry for himself and desirous of escaping his situation, he lay down on the floor. It was much more comfortable than that bed had been for the very reason that it was familiarly uncomfortable. The floor was filthy but then so was he. He wondered absently what those nice white sheets had looked like after he had slept in them. He hadn't thought to look. It did not matter.
That silver could have bought him a new life for himself. Even if the government had cheated him out of sixty-one francs and nine sous from all of his labor (and he had surely deserved more than that for the work they forced out of him!) and nobody would hire him unless they intended to cheat him out of half of his wages he would still have money to survive. Perhaps he could have kept the one hundred and nine francs and fifteen sous that he had earned in the galleys. It was important that that money, earned so painstakingly, not be parted from him so easily. But they would take it back when he was really arrested. They would take it back and it would be the government's, with him robbed again!
And now the silver would ruin him. At least this would be worth something. His initial crime had not been worth five years. His futile attempts to escape had not been worth three years. The courts said that he had been trying to steal himself, always the thief, but he did not see how it was possible to steal yourself. His struggling against the guards come to condemn him to the two years left on his sentence and another three (then five) after that. This silver was not worth forever. He was forty-six! He had once been twenty-seven! He would die in Toulon. He had been so scared, as the time kept piling up around him, that that would be his fate and now it seemed that it would be.
He should have known. When had he ever been successful at crime? He was a thief. He had stolen once and now twice and that made him a thief. The passport they gave him said that he was a dangerous man. But was it any less madness to think that he could seize society by the throat now than he had back when he was still free? He had not successfully taken the loaf. He had not successfully escaped despite trying four times. And now he had not successfully taken the silver. It was a shame that it should be his fate to be a criminal because it had not served him very well.
It was just the latest of a very long list of roles society had cast on him that he had failed at. The anger at society flared up but it was familiar and it did not bother him.
He replayed the moment in his head, the moment he had taken the silver. He imagined himself just leaving the house or perhaps even going back up to bed. He could almost believe that it had happened but he just had to open his eyes to look around to see that it had not.
He had not been able to fall asleep again in that nice, comfortable white bed with his confusion over the cure's foolish kindness and his blind trust. Now, however, lying on a floor that felt like a plank and hopeless thoughts drifting through his mind it felt like being back at Toulon and he easily fell asleep again.
He was woken up by the gendarmes returning. He had felt less confused waking up this time than he had every other time he had woken up in his brief break from Toulon. He stood up and they unlocked the door.
Three of them grabbed him and the third held his knapsack.
The gendarmes exchanged a few words with the guards and turnkey but Valjean wasn't listening. He kept his eyes firmly on the ground. They always liked that in Toulon and, though he was not yet there, he had no desire to see the cure's face when he was returned to him along with the silver.
All he could think about was how he never wanted the moment when the cure proved him a liar to come, how he never wanted the moment he would be back in that hell to come. But no matter how much he dreaded it, he could not stop the inevitable from occurring.
As they walked back to the cure's house, he could feel the dread rising up in him with every step. He wished that they would just arrest him and not bother with this. They all knew what they were going to find. Perhaps if he just admitted it then they would not take him back there. But he found that he could not. He could not play an active role in damning himself once again.
But he did not want to see the cure again. The cure had been so bewildering last night. Valjean had told him who he was immediately and he had welcomed him in. He did not want money or to treat Valjean as less than an honest man because he was not an honest man. He had given him wine when he would not drink any himself. He had been good, really good. Valjean did not believe in that sort of goodness and yet he could think of no other way to explain what had happened. The cure had not even cared when Valjean said that he might have killed somebody. The cure, he concluded, must have been a good man because the world had been good to him and he had known no suffering. What reason did one who had never been wronged by the world have to be bitter or to not trust? Valjean must have been the first convict he had ever met. He seemed to be the first convict anyone else in town had known.
The cure would be so angry. He had trusted Valjean and given him the best that he had had and look what had happened. 'The townspeople were right', he would say. 'I should have turned this man out.' If he had then he would not have lost his silver, however temporarily, and Valjean might be free to go right now. He would be hurt that someone would take from him when he had been so good. He would be disappointed that not everyone was a saint like him. Valjean did not want to see it. Why were these gendarmes going to make him see it?
He did not notice when they reached the cure's house and almost walked into the gendarme not holding him.
"Come in," the cure called.
It was just like the day before when he had been welcomed inside. This time things would go worse than he had imagined they would go the day before and he had expected to be told to leave. He did not entirely know why he even knocked on the cure's door in the first place since he had been so sure of how he would be treated. Perhaps he had wanted to be able to say truthfully that he had gone everywhere and had been turned out everywhere. He did not want anyone to be able to say 'If you had just knocked on that door then you would have had a place to stay.' But that woman was right; he was given a place to stay. And now he was going back to Toulon.
The one not holding onto him said, "Monseigneur-"
Valjean had long-since known that he should not speak to the guards unless they spoke to him and even then only if they were expecting some sort of response. He should definitely not interrupt them. He did not speak very much in Toulon and so those were easy rules to follow. But he could not help it now.
"Monseigneur! So he is not the cure?" Valjean murmured, his head rising to study the priest who was not a cure. He was not surprised that he was not the cure because, though he did not know much of the church, it seemed to him that a cure would not be so poor. He did have that silver but he could not even afford the food of the carters. But Monseigneur. One did not call a cure, let alone someone lower than that, Monseigneur. But he did not look like a Monseigneur. What was happening?
"Silence!" the gendarme in front of him snapped. He did not hit him, though. He was expecting to be hit. "He is Monseigneur the Bishop."
No. No that couldn't be right. He had seen a bishop before. Bishops had pointed gold on their heads and fine robes. They went to a prison once in nineteen years and stood too far away to have been heard. He would not appear without cannons pointed at the prisoners to make absolutely sure that he was safe. He was rich and lived in a palace like the one nearby. He wanted nothing to do with a convict and would not invite such a man to stay when everyone else had rejected him. He could not be a bishop. He had seen a bishop before and this man was nothing like him.
But the gendarmes who lived in this town would know who their bishop was, wouldn't they? And they would have no reason to insult anybody by pretending that this priest was a bishop when he was not one.
This was a bishop.
So he had stolen from a bishop who was kind to him instead of a priest. If he had not already been going back to Toulon forever he would go back even longer for that.
The cure who was actually a bishop hurried towards them as fast as he could at his age. If Valjean lived to be his age would he still be in Toulon or would he be transferred to a prison for those who could not work?
"Ah! Here you are!" the bishop exclaimed. He did not sound angry or hurt or disappointed. If the gendarmes were surprised at his respectful address then Valjean did not see it. "I am glad to see you. Well, but how is this? I gave you the candlesticks too, which are of silver like the rest, and for which you can certainly get two hundred francs. Why did you not carry them away with your forks and spoons?"
Valjean's eyes widened and he stared at the bishop. It was only his long habit of silence and his shock that kept him from asking why the bishop was saying this when it was not true. He almost said it as it was. What madness was this? Was he pretending that Valjean had been given the silver? Was he taunting him by pretending he had given the silver when they all knew that he hadn't and reminding him just how bad of a thief he was that he hadn't even taken everything? To be a thief was bad enough but he could not even be a proper one. But that did not seem right. The bishop was not a cruel man. He would be denounced, yes, because he had stolen the silver but he would not be taunted. So why had he said that he had given Valjean the silver? Was he really saying that he had given more?
The gendarme seemed to have no more of an idea than he did. "Monseigneur, so what this man said is true, then? We came across him. He was walking like a man who is running away. We stopped him to look into the matter. He had this silver-"
"And he told you that it had been given to him by a kind old fellow of a priest with whom he had passed the night?" the bishop interrupted, smiling. No one dared say anything to him when he interrupted. Nobody looked like they minded. It was like how nobody had ever minded when a convict had been interrupted by a guard. "I see how the matter stands. And you have brought him back here? It is a mistake."
That was exactly what he had said. How had he known?
It is a mistake. What did that mean? He could not really be lying to the gendarmes to protect Jean Valjean, the thief who had abused his kindness and stolen nearly everything he had!
It was a mistake. What the bishop was saying now was a mistake and he would soon realize it.
"In that case we can let him go?" the gendarme asked, sounding surprised and reluctant. He had caught a thief, a convict, and he did not want to let him go. But if the thief had said that he had not stolen and the victim had agreed then what could he do?
Here was where the bishop would come to his senses, would realize that if he said this then Valjean would go free and he would not get his silver back. Valjean had broken the law so the bishop, however kind he was, would not be doing anything wrong in admitting that it had happened. If he did not want to send Valjean back to that unhappy place then it was not his fault. People never blamed themselves when they were not the one arrested no matter how much they had to do with the crime and all the bishop had done was shelter him and let him see the silver.
"Certainly."
No. No this was not right, this could not be. He must be dreaming. This was not how life went. He was once a thief and forever a thief and there was no mercy or pity to be found anywhere. There were no second chances and there was no new life waiting, least of all for him.
But the gendarmes released him and stepped away and he couldn't help but shrink back.
After a moment he managed to compose himself enough to ask, "Is it true that I am to be released?"
He had already been released but it did not make sense.
"Yes, you are released, do you not understand?" the gendarme asked, looking at him like he was a fool for not understanding or for questioning his good fortune. Perhaps he was a fool. Perhaps that was why things had turned out so. Normally, this sort of thing would make him angry but he just stood there uncomprehendingly. It was not so difficult of a concept, being let go. He would not go to prison as the bishop said a crime had not happened. It should be simple. It was not.
"My friend," the bishop said warmly. Was he talking to Valjean? How could he be? He had stolen from him and made a man of God lie for him. Why was he doing this? Why was he not throwing Valjean out of the house now that the danger had passed? "Before you go, here are your candlesticks. Take them."
He had really meant that? He really meant to give Valjean the last bit of luxury that he possessed? A bishop was a wealthy man, he knew that. To live like a poor man did not make sense and now he would live as an even poorer one? Why? Because Valjean needed it more? Valjean had certainly believed that he had but no one else ever thought Valjean needed as much as an honest man.
He couldn't stop the trembling. His whole body was trembling. He wondered vaguely if he would be able to stay on his feet. The bishop brought the candlesticks over and held them out. What else could he do but accept them? He did not understand.
"Now go in peace," the bishop invited. Who was this man? "By the way, when you return, my friend, it is not necessary to pass through the garden. You can always enter and depart through the street door. It is never fastened with anything but a latch, either by day or by night."
Was that the closest to censure that he was going to get? The next time he was going to escape from the bishop's house he could use the front door because the bishop trusted so much that he never locked it? How had this man stayed alive for so long if he never locked his doors? Valjean had almost killed him last night! But…he hadn't and perhaps no one else had been able to bring themselves to, either.
But how did the bishop know that he had gone through the garden? Ah, the empty silver basket, of course.
He had stolen from the bishop and the bishop had saved him from prison. He had let him keep the silver he had stolen and given him more. He was speaking more kindly still than last night before Valjean had wronged him. And now he was inviting him to return. This did not make any sense. None of this had gone the way that it was supposed to. He had not wanted to be returned in Toulon but he found that he did not want this either.
"You may retire, gentlemen," the bishop said, nodding to the gendarmes.
They bowed and left.
He was free. Or as free as he had been before he had taken the silver. Parole was hard and miserable but not as hard or miserable as Toulon had been. Why had he been given this second chance? This first time ever that the gendarmes or guards had come and he had not been taken with them to Toulon.
It did not make sense. Why was this happening? What was he to do now? Go to Pontarlier? Find a place to sell his stolen then gifted silver? They could not really be gone. It was obvious he had not been given that silver.
He felt faint.
The bishop stepped closer to him and quietly said, "Do not forget, never forget, that you have promised to use this money in becoming an honest man. Jean Valjean, my brother, you no longer belong to evil, but to good. It is your soul that I buy from you; I withdraw it from black thoughts and the spirit of perdition, and I give it to God."
Valjean did not recall having ever made such a promise. How could he have? He had never asked for the silver, only taken it. Would the bishop have asked him to make just such a promise if he had asked for the silver? Might he have been given it? It was like the bread except this time it was not going to ruin his life. This time it would…he did not even know.
The world did not work like this. People were not this good.
The bishop turned around. "Ah, Madame Magloire will you bring a glass of warm milk? I believe that I promised one to our guest. And it's much too late to send him away without breakfast! I do believe we have some bread left."
The door was not shut. The gendarmes must have been expecting that he would be leaving shortly after them.
He did remember that the bishop had promised him the warm milk but that had been before he had stolen from him and run away. If he had not been caught and returned then he would not have had to face the bishop's forgiveness and continued generosity. The end result would be the same, he would still be free, but it would be so much easier if he had just never been brought back here.
And now, to face the prospect of sitting down to breakfast with the bishop and his sister again and to be treated like any other man as if the last few hours had never happened…he could not do that. It was intolerable.
And so what else could he do but flee?
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