"A coat of black cloth, trowsers of black wool, a silk waistcoat, boots and linen." On the margin there stood: ex-ambassador, and a note which we also copy: "In a separate box, a neatly frizzed peruke, green glasses, seals, and two small quills an inch long, wrapped in cotton." All this belonged to the statesman, the ex-ambassador. This whole costume was, if we may so express ourselves, debilitated; the seams were white, a vague button-hole yawned at one of the elbows; moreover, one of the coat buttons was missing on the breast; but this was only detail; as the hand of the statesman should always be thrust into his coat and laid upon his heart, its function was to conceal the absent button.


If Marius had been familiar with the occult institutions of Paris, he would instantly have recognized upon the back of the visitor whom Basque had just shown in, the statesman's suit borrowed from the pick-me-down-that shop of the Changer.


Marius' disappointment on beholding another man than the one whom he expected to see turned to the newcomer's disadvantage.


He surveyed him from head to foot, while that personage made exaggerated bows, and demanded in a curt tone:


The man replied with an amiable grin of which the caressing smile of a crocodile will furnish some idea:


"It seems to me impossible that I should not have already had the honor of seeing Monsieur le Baron in society. I think I actually did meet monsieur personally, several years ago, at the house of Madame la Princesse Bagration and in the drawing-rooms of his Lordship the Vicomte Dambray, peer of France."


It is always a good bit of tactics in knavery to pretend to recognize some one whom one does not know.


Marius paid attention to the manner of this man's speech. He spied on his accent and gesture, but his disappointment increased; the pronunciation was nasal and absolutely unlike the dry, shrill tone which he had expected.


He was utterly routed.


"I know neither Madame Bagration nor M. Dambray," said he. "I have never set foot in the house of either of them in my life."


The reply was ungracious. The personage, determined to be gracious at any cost, insisted.


"Then it must have been at Chateaubriand's that I have seen Monsieur! I know Chateaubriand very well. He is very affable. He sometimes says to me: 'Thénard, my friend . . . won't you drink a glass of wine with me?'"


Marius' brow grew more and more severe:


"I have never had the honor of being received by M. de Chateaubriand. Let us cut it short. What do you want?"


The man bowed lower at that harsh voice.


"Monsieur le Baron, deign to listen to me. There is in America, in a district near Panama, a village called la Joya. That village is composed of a single house, a large, square house of three stories, built of bricks dried in the sun, each side of the square five hundred feet in length, each story retreating twelve feet back of the story below, in such a manner as to leave in front a terrace which makes the circuit of the edifice, in the centre an inner court where the provisions and munitions are kept; no windows, loopholes, no doors, ladders, ladders to mount from the ground to the first terrace, and from the first to the second, and from the second to the third, ladders to descend into the inner court, no doors to the chambers, trap-doors, no staircases to the chambers, ladders; in the evening the traps are closed, the ladders are withdrawn, carbines and blunderbusses trained from the loopholes; no means of entering, a house by day, a citadel by night, eight hundred inhabitants,—that is the village. Why so many precautions? because the country is dangerous; it is full of cannibals. Then why do people go there? because the country is marvellous; gold is found there."


"What are you driving at?" interrupted Marius, who had passed from disappointment to impatience.


"At this, Monsieur le Baron. I am an old and weary diplomat. Ancient civilization has thrown me on my own devices. I want to try savages."


"Monsieur le Baron, egotism is the law of the world. The proletarian peasant woman, who toils by the day, turns round when the diligence passes by, the peasant proprietress, who toils in her field, does not turn round. The dog of the poor man barks at the rich man, the dog of the rich man barks at the poor man. Each one for himself. Self-interest—that's the object of men. Gold, that's the loadstone."


"What then? Finish."


"I should like to go and establish myself at la Joya. There are three of us. I have my spouse and my young lady; a very beautiful girl. The journey is long and costly. I need a little money."


"What concern is that of mine?" demanded Marius.


The stranger stretched his neck out of his cravat, a gesture characteristic of the vulture, and replied with an augmented smile.


There was some truth in this. The fact is, that the contents of the epistle had slipped Marius' mind. He had seen the writing rather than read the letter. He could hardly recall it. But a moment ago a fresh start had been given him. He had noted that detail: "my spouse and my young lady."


He fixed a penetrating glance on the stranger. An examining judge could not have done the look better. He almost lay in wait for him.


He confined himself to replying:


"State the case precisely."


The stranger inserted his two hands in both his fobs, drew himself up without straightening his dorsal column, but scrutinizing Marius in his turn, with the green gaze of his spectacles.


"So be it, Monsieur le Baron. I will be precise. I have a secret to sell to you."


"A secret?"


"A secret."


"Which concerns me?"


"Somewhat."


"What is the secret?"


Marius scrutinized the man more and more as he listened to him.


"I commence gratis," said the stranger. "You will see that I am interesting."


"Monsieur le Baron, you have in your house a thief and an assassin."


Marius shuddered.


"In my house? no," said he.


The imperturbable stranger brushed his hat with his elbow and went on:


"An assassin and a thief. Remark, Monsieur le Baron, that I do not here speak of ancient deeds, deeds of the past which have lapsed, which can be effaced by limitation before the law and by repentance before God. I speak of recent deeds, of actual facts as still unknown to justice at this hour. I continue. This man has insinuated himself into your confidence, and almost into your family under a false name. I am about to tell you his real name. And to tell it to you for nothing."


"His name is Jean Valjean."


"I know it."


"I am going to tell you, equally for nothing, who he is."


"He is an ex-convict."


"You know it since I have had the honor of telling you."


"No. I knew it before."


Marius' cold tone, that double reply of "I know it," his laconicism, which was not favorable to dialogue, stirred up some smouldering wrath in the stranger. He launched a furious glance on the sly at Marius, which was instantly extinguished. Rapid as it was, this glance was of the kind which a man recognizes when he has once beheld it; it did not escape Marius. Certain flashes can only proceed from certain souls; the eye, that vent-hole of the thought, glows with it; spectacles hide nothing; try putting a pane of glass over hell!


The stranger resumed with a smile:


"I will not permit myself to contradict Monsieur le Baron. In any case, you ought to perceive that I am well informed. Now what I have to tell you is known to myself alone. This concerns the fortune of Madame la Baronne. It is an extraordinary secret. It is for sale—I make you the first offer of it. Cheap. Twenty thousand francs."


"I know that secret as well as the others," said Marius.


The personage felt the necessity of lowering his price a trifle.


"Monsieur le Baron, say ten thousand francs and I will speak."


"I repeat to you that there is nothing which you can tell me. I know what you wish to say to me."


A fresh flash gleamed in the man's eye. He exclaimed:


"But I must dine to-day, nevertheless. It is an extraordinary secret, I tell you. Monsieur le Baron, I will speak. I speak. Give me twenty francs."


Marius gazed intently at him:


"I know your extraordinary secret, just as I knew Jean Valjean's name, just as I know your name."


"That is not difficult, Monsieur le Baron. I had the honor to write to you and to tell it to you. Thénard."


"Who's that?"


In danger the porcupine bristles up, the beetle feigns death, the old guard forms in a square; this man burst into laughter.


Then he flicked a grain of dust from the sleeve of his coat with a fillip.


"You are also Jondrette the workman, Fabantou the comedian, Genflot the poet, Don Alvarès the Spaniard, and Mistress Balizard."


"Mistress what?"


"And you kept a pot-house at Montfermeil."


"A pot-house! Never."


"And I tell you that your name is Thénardier."


"And that you are a rascal. Here."


And Marius drew a bank-note from his pocket and flung it in his face.


"Thanks! Pardon me! five hundred francs! Monsieur le Baron!"


And the man, overcome, bowed, seized the note and examined it.


"Five hundred francs!" he began again, taken aback. And he stammered in a low voice: "An honest rustler."69


Then brusquely:


"Well, so be it!" he exclaimed. "Let us put ourselves at our ease."


And with the agility of a monkey, flinging back his hair, tearing off his spectacles, and withdrawing from his nose by sleight of hand the two quills of which mention was recently made, and which the reader has also met with on another page of this book, he took off his face as the man takes off his hat.


His eye lighted up; his uneven brow, with hollows in some places and bumps in others, hideously wrinkled at the top, was laid bare, his nose had become as sharp as a beak; the fierce and sagacious profile of the man of prey reappeared.


"Monsieur le Baron is infallible," he said in a clear voice whence all nasal twang had disappeared, "I am Thénardier."


And he straightened up his crooked back.


Thénardier, for it was really he, was strangely surprised; he would have been troubled, had he been capable of such a thing. He had come to bring astonishment, and it was he who had received it. This humiliation had been worth five hundred francs to him, and, taking it all in all, he accepted it; but he was nonetheless bewildered.


He beheld this Baron Pontmercy for the first time, and, in spite of his disguise, this Baron Pontmercy recognized him, and recognized him thoroughly. And not only was this Baron perfectly informed as to Thénardier, but he seemed well posted as to Jean Valjean. Who was this almost beardless young man, who was so glacial and so generous, who knew people's names, who knew all their names, and who opened his purse to them, who bullied rascals like a judge, and who paid them like a dupe?


Thénardier, the reader will remember, although he had been Marius' neighbor, had never seen him, which is not unusual in Paris; he had formerly, in a vague way, heard his daughters talk of a very poor young man named Marius who lived in the house. He had written to him, without knowing him, the letter with which the reader is acquainted.


No connection between that Marius and M. le Baron Pontmercy was possible in his mind.


As for the name Pontmercy, it will be recalled that, on the battlefield of Waterloo, he had only heard the last two syllables, for which he always entertained the legitimate scorn which one owes to what is merely an expression of thanks.


However, through his daughter Azelma, who had started on the scent of the married pair on the 16th of February, and through his own personal researches, he had succeeded in learning many things, and, from the depths of his own gloom, he had contrived to grasp more than one mysterious clew. He had discovered, by dint of industry, or, at least, by dint of induction, he had guessed who the man was whom he had encountered on a certain day in the Grand Sewer. From the man he had easily reached the name. He knew that Madame la Baronne Pontmercy was Cosette. But he meant to be discreet in that quarter.


Who was Cosette? He did not know exactly himself. He did, indeed, catch an inkling of illegitimacy, the history of Fantine had always seemed to him equivocal; but what was the use of talking about that? in order to cause himself to be paid for his silence? He had, or thought he had, better wares than that for sale. And, according to all appearances, if he were to come and make to the Baron Pontmercy this revelation—and without proof: "Your wife is a bastard," the only result would be to attract the boot of the husband towards the loins of the revealer.


From Thénardier's point of view, the conversation with Marius had not yet begun. He ought to have drawn back, to have modified his strategy, to have abandoned his position, to have changed his front; but nothing essential had been compromised as yet, and he had five hundred francs in his pocket. Moreover, he had something decisive to say, and, even against this very well-informed and well-armed Baron Pontmercy, he felt himself strong. For men of Thénardier's nature, every dialogue is a combat. In the one in which he was about to engage, what was his situation? He did not know to whom he was speaking, but he did know of what he was speaking, he made this rapid review of his inner forces, and after having said: "I am Thénardier," he waited.


Marius had become thoughtful. So he had hold of Thénardier at last. That man whom he had so greatly desired to find was before him. He could honor Colonel Pontmercy's recommendation.


He felt humiliated that that hero should have owned anything to this villain, and that the letter of change drawn from the depths of the tomb by his father upon him, Marius, had been protested up to that day. It also seemed to him, in the complex state of his mind towards Thénardier, that there was occasion to avenge the Colonel for the misfortune of having been saved by such a rascal. In any case, he was content. He was about to deliver the Colonel's shade from this unworthy creditor at last, and it seemed to him that he was on the point of rescuing his father's memory from the debtors' prison. By the side of this duty there was another—to elucidate, if possible, the source of Cosette's fortune. The opportunity appeared to present itself. Perhaps Thénardier knew something. It might prove useful to see the bottom of this man.


He commenced with this.


Thénardier had caused the "honest rustler" to disappear in his fob, and was gazing at Marius with a gentleness that was almost tender.


Marius broke the silence.


"Thénardier, I have told you your name. Now, would you like to have me tell you your secret—the one that you came here to reveal to me? I have information of my own, also. You shall see that I know more about it than you do. Jean Valjean, as you have said, is an assassin and a thief. A thief, because he robbed a wealthy manufacturer, whose ruin he brought about. An assassin, because he assassinated police-agent Javert."


"I don't understand, sir," ejaculated Thénardier.


"I will make myself intelligible. In a certain arrondissement of the Pas de Calais, there was, in 1822, a man who had fallen out with justice, and who, under the name of M. Madeleine, had regained his status and rehabilitated himself. This man had become a just man in the full force of the term. In a trade, the manufacture of black glass goods, he made the fortune of an entire city. As far as his personal fortune was concerned he made that also, but as a secondary matter, and in some sort, by accident. He was the foster-father of the poor. He founded hospitals, opened schools, visited the sick, dowered young girls, supported widows, and adopted orphans; he was like the guardian angel of the country. He refused the cross, he was appointed Mayor. A liberated convict knew the secret of a penalty incurred by this man in former days; he denounced him, and had him arrested, and profited by the arrest to come to Paris and cause the banker Laffitte,—I have the fact from the cashier himself,—by means of a false signature, to hand over to him the sum of over half a million which belonged to M. Madeleine. This convict who robbed M. Madeleine was Jean Valjean. As for the other fact, you have nothing to tell me about it either. Jean Valjean killed the agent Javert; he shot him with a pistol. I, the person who is speaking to you, was present."


Thénardier cast upon Marius the sovereign glance of a conquered man who lays his hand once more upon the victory, and who has just regained, in one instant, all the ground which he has lost. But the smile returned instantly. The inferior's triumph in the presence of his superior must be wheedling.


Thénardier contented himself with saying to Marius:


"Monsieur le Baron, we are on the wrong track."


And he emphasized this phrase by making his bunch of seals execute an expressive whirl.


"What!" broke forth Marius, "do you dispute that? These are facts."


"They are chimæras. The confidence with which Monsieur le Baron honors me renders it my duty to tell him so. Truth and justice before all things. I do not like to see folks accused unjustly. Monsieur le Baron, Jean Valjean did not rob M. Madeleine and Jean Valjean did not kill Javert."


"This is too much! How is this?"


"For two reasons."


"What are they? Speak."


"This is the first: he did not rob M. Madeleine, because it is Jean Valjean himself who was M. Madeleine."


"What tale are you telling me?"


"And this is the second: he did not assassinate Javert, because the person who killed Javert was Javert."


"That Javert committed suicide."


"Prove it! prove it!" cried Marius beside himself.


Thénardier resumed, scanning his phrase after the manner of the ancient Alexandrine measure:


"Police-agent-Ja-vert-was-found-drowned-un-der-a-boat-of-the-Pont-au- Change."


"But prove it!"


Thénardier drew from his pocket a large envelope of gray paper, which seemed to contain sheets folded in different sizes.


"I have my papers," he said calmly.


"Monsieur le Baron, in your interests I desired to know Jean Valjean thoroughly. I say that Jean Valjean and M. Madeleine are one and the same man, and I say that Javert had no other assassin than Javert. If I speak, it is because I have proofs. Not manuscript proofs—writing is suspicious, handwriting is complaisant,—but printed proofs."


As he spoke, Thénardier extracted from the envelope two copies of newspapers, yellow, faded, and strongly saturated with tobacco. One of these two newspapers, broken at every fold and falling into rags, seemed much older than the other.


"Two facts, two proofs," remarked Thénardier. And he offered the two newspapers, unfolded, to Marius.


The reader is acquainted with these two papers. One, the most ancient, a number of the Drapeau Blanc of the 25th of July, 1823, the text of which can be seen in the first volume, established the identity of M. Madeleine and Jean Valjean.


The other, a Moniteur of the 15th of June, 1832, announced the suicide of Javert, adding that it appeared from a verbal report of Javert to the prefect that, having been taken prisoner in the barricade of the Rue de la Chanvrerie, he had owed his life to the magnanimity of an insurgent who, holding him under his pistol, had fired into the air, instead of blowing out his brains.


Marius read. He had evidence, a certain date, irrefragable proof, these two newspapers had not been printed expressly for the purpose of backing up Thénardier's statements; the note printed in the Moniteur had been an administrative communication from the Prefecture of Police. Marius could not doubt.


The information of the cashier-clerk had been false, and he himself had been deceived.


Jean Valjean, who had suddenly grown grand, emerged from his cloud. Marius could not repress a cry of joy.


"Well, then this unhappy wretch is an admirable man! the whole of that fortune really belonged to him! he is Madeleine, the providence of a whole countryside! he is Jean Valjean, Javert's savior! he is a hero! he is a saint!"


"He's not a saint, and he's not a hero!" said Thénardier. "He's an assassin and a robber."


And he added, in the tone of a man who begins to feel that he possesses some authority:


Robber, assassin—those words which Marius thought had disappeared and which returned, fell upon him like an ice-cold shower-bath.


"Always," ejaculated Thénardier. "Jean Valjean did not rob Madeleine, but he is a thief. He did not kill Javert, but he is a murderer."


"Will you speak," retorted Marius, "of that miserable theft, committed forty years ago, and expiated, as your own newspapers prove, by a whole life of repentance, of self-abnegation and of virtue?"


"I say assassination and theft, Monsieur le Baron, and I repeat that I am speaking of actual facts. What I have to reveal to you is absolutely unknown. It belongs to unpublished matter. And perhaps you will find in it the source of the fortune so skilfully presented to Madame la Baronne by Jean Valjean. I say skilfully, because, by a gift of that nature it would not be so very unskilful to slip into an honorable house whose comforts one would then share, and, at the same stroke, to conceal one's crime, and to enjoy one's theft, to bury one's name and to create for oneself a family."


"I might interrupt you at this point," said Marius, "but go on."


"Monsieur le Baron, I will tell you all, leaving the recompense to your generosity. This secret is worth massive gold. You will say to me: 'Why do not you apply to Jean Valjean?' For a very simple reason; I know that he has stripped himself, and stripped himself in your favor, and I consider the combination ingenious; but he has no longer a son, he would show me his empty hands, and, since I am in need of some money for my trip to la Joya, I prefer you, you who have it all, to him who has nothing. I am a little fatigued, permit me to take a chair."


Marius seated himself and motioned to him to do the same.


Thénardier installed himself on a tufted chair, picked up his two newspapers, thrust them back into their envelope, and murmured as he pecked at the Drapeau Blanc with his nail: "It cost me a good deal of trouble to get this one."


That done he crossed his legs and stretched himself out on the back of the chair, an attitude characteristic of people who are sure of what they are saying, then he entered upon his subject gravely, emphasizing his words:


"Monsieur le Baron, on the 6th of June, 1832, about a year ago, on the day of the insurrection, a man was in the Grand Sewer of Paris, at the point where the sewer enters the Seine, between the Pont des Invalides and the Pont de Jéna."


Marius abruptly drew his chair closer to that of Thénardier. Thénardier noticed this movement and continued with the deliberation of an orator who holds his interlocutor and who feels his adversary palpitating under his words:


"This man, forced to conceal himself, and for reasons, moreover, which are foreign to politics, had adopted the sewer as his domicile and had a key to it. It was, I repeat, on the 6th of June; it might have been eight o'clock in the evening. The man hears a noise in the sewer. Greatly surprised, he hides himself and lies in wait. It was the sound of footsteps, some one was walking in the dark, and coming in his direction. Strange to say, there was another man in the sewer besides himself. The grating of the outlet from the sewer was not far off. A little light which fell through it permitted him to recognize the newcomer, and to see that the man was carrying something on his back. He was walking in a bent attitude. The man who was walking in a bent attitude was an ex-convict, and what he was dragging on his shoulders was a corpse. Assassination caught in the very act, if ever there was such a thing. As for the theft, that is understood; one does not kill a man gratis. This convict was on his way to fling the body into the river. One fact is to be noticed, that before reaching the exit grating, this convict, who had come a long distance in the sewer, must, necessarily, have encountered a frightful quagmire where it seems as though he might have left the body, but the sewermen would have found the assassinated man the very next day, while at work on the quagmire, and that did not suit the assassin's plans. He had preferred to traverse that quagmire with his burden, and his exertions must have been terrible, for it is impossible to risk one's life more completely; I don't understand how he could have come out of that alive."


Marius' chair approached still nearer. Thénardier took advantage of this to draw a long breath. He went on:


"Monsieur le Baron, a sewer is not the Champ de Mars. One lacks everything there, even room. When two men are there, they must meet. That is what happened. The man domiciled there and the passer-by were forced to bid each other good-day, greatly to the regret of both. The passer-by said to the inhabitant:—"You see what I have on my back, I must get out, you have the key, give it to me." That convict was a man of terrible strength. There was no way of refusing. Nevertheless, the man who had the key parleyed, simply to gain time. He examined the dead man, but he could see nothing, except that the latter was young, well dressed, with the air of being rich, and all disfigured with blood. While talking, the man contrived to tear and pull off behind, without the assassin perceiving it, a bit of the assassinated man's coat. A document for conviction, you understand; a means of recovering the trace of things and of bringing home the crime to the criminal. He put this document for conviction in his pocket. After which he opened the grating, made the man go out with his embarrassment on his back, closed the grating again, and ran off, not caring to be mixed up with the remainder of the adventure and above all, not wishing to be present when the assassin threw the assassinated man into the river. Now you comprehend. The man who was carrying the corpse was Jean Valjean; the one who had the key is speaking to you at this moment; and the piece of the coat . . ."


Thénardier completed his phrase by drawing from his pocket, and holding, on a level with his eyes, nipped between his two thumbs and his two forefingers, a strip of torn black cloth, all covered with dark spots.


Marius had sprung to his feet, pale, hardly able to draw his breath, with his eyes riveted on the fragment of black cloth, and, without uttering a word, without taking his eyes from that fragment, he retreated to the wall and fumbled with his right hand along the wall for a key which was in the lock of a cupboard near the chimney.


He found the key, opened the cupboard, plunged his arm into it without looking, and without his frightened gaze quitting the rag which Thénardier still held outspread.


"Monsieur le Baron, I have the strongest of reasons for believing that the assassinated young man was an opulent stranger lured into a trap by Jean Valjean, and the bearer of an enormous sum of money."


"The young man was myself, and here is the coat!" cried Marius, and he flung upon the floor an old black coat all covered with blood.


Then, snatching the fragment from the hands of Thénardier, he crouched down over the coat, and laid the torn morsel against the tattered skirt. The rent fitted exactly, and the strip completed the coat.


Thénardier was petrified.


This is what he thought: "I'm struck all of a heap."


Marius rose to his feet trembling, despairing, radiant.


He fumbled in his pocket and stalked furiously to Thénardier, presenting to him and almost thrusting in his face his fist filled with bank-notes for five hundred and a thousand francs.


"You are an infamous wretch! you are a liar, a calumniator, a villain. You came to accuse that man, you have only justified him; you wanted to ruin him, you have only succeeded in glorifying him. And it is you who are the thief! And it is you who are the assassin! I saw you, Thénardier Jondrette, in that lair on the Rue de l'Hôpital. I know enough about you to send you to the galleys and even further if I choose. Here are a thousand francs, bully that you are!"


And he flung a thousand franc note at Thénardier.


"Ah! Jondrette Thénardier, vile rascal! Let this serve you as a lesson, you dealer in second-hand secrets, merchant of mysteries, rummager of the shadows, wretch! Take these five hundred francs and get out of here! Waterloo protects you."


"Waterloo!" growled Thénardier, pocketing the five hundred francs along with the thousand.


"Yes, assassin! You there saved the life of a Colonel. . ."


"Of a General," said Thénardier, elevating his head.


"Of a Colonel!" repeated Marius in a rage. "I wouldn't give a ha'penny for a general. And you come here to commit infamies! I tell you that you have committed all crimes. Go! disappear! Only be happy, that is all that I desire. Ah! monster! here are three thousand francs more. Take them. You will depart to-morrow, for America, with your daughter; for your wife is dead, you abominable liar. I shall watch over your departure, you ruffian, and at that moment I will count out to you twenty thousand francs. Go get yourself hung elsewhere!"


"Monsieur le Baron!" replied Thénardier, bowing to the very earth, "eternal gratitude." And Thénardier left the room, understanding nothing, stupefied and delighted with this sweet crushing beneath sacks of gold, and with that thunder which had burst forth over his head in bank-bills.


Struck by lightning he was, but he was also content; and he would have been greatly angered had he had a lightning rod to ward off such lightning as that.


Let us finish with this man at once.


Two days after the events which we are at this moment narrating, he set out, thanks to Marius' care, for America under a false name, with his daughter Azelma, furnished with a draft on New York for twenty thousand francs.


The moral wretchedness of Thénardier, the bourgeois who had missed his vocation, was irremediable. He was in America what he had been in Europe. Contact with an evil man sometimes suffices to corrupt a good action and to cause evil things to spring from it. With Marius' money, Thénardier set up as a slave-dealer.


As soon as Thénardier had left the house, Marius rushed to the garden, where Cosette was still walking.


"Cosette! Cosette!" he cried. "Come! come quick! Let us go. Basque, a carriage! Cosette, come. Ah! My God! It was he who saved my life! Let us not lose a minute! Put on your shawl."


Cosette thought him mad and obeyed.


He could not breathe, he laid his hand on his heart to restrain its throbbing. He paced back and forth with huge strides, he embraced Cosette:


"Ah! Cosette! I am an unhappy wretch!" said he.


Marius was bewildered. He began to catch a glimpse in Jean Valjean of some indescribably lofty and melancholy figure. An unheard-of virtue, supreme and sweet, humble in its immensity, appeared to him. The convict was transfigured into Christ.


Marius was dazzled by this prodigy. He did not know precisely what he beheld, but it was grand.


In an instant, a hackney-carriage stood in front of the door.


Marius helped Cosette in and darted in himself.


The carriage drove off.


"Ah! what happiness!" ejaculated Cosette. "Rue de l'Homme Armé, I did not dare to speak to you of that. We are going to see M. Jean."


"Thy father! Cosette, thy father more than ever. Cosette, I guess it. You told me that you had never received the letter that I sent you by Gavroche. It must have fallen into his hands. Cosette, he went to the barricade to save me. As it is a necessity with him to be an angel, he saved others also; he saved Javert. He rescued me from that gulf to give me to you. He carried me on his back through that frightful sewer. Ah! I am a monster of ingratitude. Cosette, after having been your providence, he became mine. Just imagine, there was a terrible quagmire enough to drown one a hundred times over, to drown one in mire. Cosette! he made me traverse it. I was unconscious; I saw nothing, I heard nothing, I could know nothing of my own adventure. We are going to bring him back, to take him with us, whether he is willing or not, he shall never leave us again. If only he is at home! Provided only that we can find him, I will pass the rest of my life in venerating him. Yes, that is how it should be, do you see, Cosette? Gavroche must have delivered my letter to him. All is explained. You understand."


"You are right," she said to him.


Meanwhile the carriage rolled on.


Jean Valjean turned round at the knock which he heard on his door.


"Come in," he said feebly.


Cosette and Marius made their appearance.


Cosette rushed into the room.


Marius remained on the threshold, leaning against the jamb of the door.


And he sat erect in his chair, his arms outstretched and trembling, haggard, livid, gloomy, an immense joy in his eyes.


Cosette, stifling with emotion, fell upon Jean Valjean's breast.


"Father!" said she.


Jean Valjean, overcome, stammered:


"Cosette! she! you! Madame! it is thou! Ah! my God!"


And, pressed close in Cosette's arms, he exclaimed:


"It is thou! thou art here! Thou dost pardon me then!"


Marius, lowering his eyelids, in order to keep his tears from flowing, took a step forward and murmured between lips convulsively contracted to repress his sobs:


"My father!"


"And you also, you pardon me!" Jean Valjean said to him.


Marius could find no words, and Jean Valjean added:


"Thanks."


Cosette tore off her shawl and tossed her hat on the bed.


"It embarrasses me," said she.


And, seating herself on the old man's knees, she put aside his white locks with an adorable movement, and kissed his brow.


Jean Valjean, bewildered, let her have her own way.


Cosette, who only understood in a very confused manner, redoubled her caresses, as though she desired to pay Marius' debt.


"How stupid people are! I thought that I should never see her again. Imagine, Monsieur Pontmercy, at the very moment when you entered, I was saying to myself: 'All is over. Here is her little gown, I am a miserable man, I shall never see Cosette again,' and I was saying that at the very moment when you were mounting the stairs. Was not I an idiot? Just see how idiotic one can be! One reckons without the good God. The good God says:


"'You fancy that you are about to be abandoned, stupid! No. No, things will not go so. Come, there is a good man yonder who is in need of an angel.' And the angel comes, and one sees one's Cosette again! and one sees one's little Cosette once more! Ah! I was very unhappy."


For a moment he could not speak, then he went on:


"I really needed to see Cosette a little bit now and then. A heart needs a bone to gnaw. But I was perfectly conscious that I was in the way. I gave myself reasons: 'They do not want you, keep in your own course, one has not the right to cling eternally.' Ah! God be praised, I see her once more! Dost thou know, Cosette, thy husband is very handsome? Ah! what a pretty embroidered collar thou hast on, luckily. I am fond of that pattern. It was thy husband who chose it, was it not? And then, thou shouldst have some cashmere shawls. Let me call her thou, Monsieur Pontmercy. It will not be for long."


And Cosette began again:


"How wicked of you to have left us like that! Where did you go? Why have you stayed away so long? Formerly your journeys only lasted three or four days. I sent Nicolette, the answer always was: 'He is absent.' How long have you been back? Why did you not let us know? Do you know that you are very much changed? Ah! what a naughty father! he has been ill, and we have not known it! Stay, Marius, feel how cold his hand is!"


"So you are here! Monsieur Pontmercy, you pardon me!" repeated Jean Valjean.


At that word which Jean Valjean had just uttered once more, all that was swelling Marius' heart found vent.


He burst forth:


"Cosette, do you hear? he has come to that! he asks my forgiveness! And do you know what he has done for me, Cosette? He has saved my life. He has done more—he has given you to me. And after having saved me, and after having given you to me, Cosette, what has he done with himself? He has sacrificed himself. Behold the man. And he says to me the ingrate, to me the forgetful, to me the pitiless, to me the guilty one: Thanks! Cosette, my whole life passed at the feet of this man would be too little. That barricade, that sewer, that furnace, that cesspool,—all that he traversed for me, for thee, Cosette! He carried me away through all the deaths which he put aside before me, and accepted for himself. Every courage, every virtue, every heroism, every sanctity he possesses! Cosette, that man is an angel!"


"Hush! hush!" said Jean Valjean in a low voice. "Why tell all that?"


"But you!" cried Marius with a wrath in which there was veneration, "why did you not tell it to me? It is your own fault, too. You save people's lives, and you conceal it from them! You do more, under the pretext of unmasking yourself, you calumniate yourself. It is frightful."


"I told the truth," replied Jean Valjean.


"No," retorted Marius, "the truth is the whole truth; and that you did not tell. You were Monsieur Madeleine, why not have said so? You saved Javert, why not have said so? I owed my life to you, why not have said so?"


"Because I thought as you do. I thought that you were in the right. It was necessary that I should go away. If you had known about that affair, of the sewer, you would have made me remain near you. I was therefore forced to hold my peace. If I had spoken, it would have caused embarrassment in every way."


"It would have embarrassed what? embarrassed whom?" retorted Marius. "Do you think that you are going to stay here? We shall carry you off. Ah! good heavens! when I reflect that it was by an accident that I have learned all this. You form a part of ourselves. You are her father, and mine. You shall not pass another day in this dreadful house. Do not imagine that you will be here to-morrow."


"To-morrow," said Jean Valjean, "I shall not be here, but I shall not be with you."


"What do you mean?" replied Marius. "Ah! come now, we are not going to permit any more journeys. You shall never leave us again. You belong to us. We shall not loose our hold of you."


"This time it is for good," added Cosette. "We have a carriage at the door. I shall run away with you. If necessary, I shall employ force."


And she laughingly made a movement to lift the old man in her arms.


"Your chamber still stands ready in our house," she went on. "If you only knew how pretty the garden is now! The azaleas are doing very well there. The walks are sanded with river sand; there are tiny violet shells. You shall eat my strawberries. I water them myself. And no more 'madame,' no more 'Monsieur Jean,' we are living under a Republic, everybody says thou, don't they, Marius? The programme is changed. If you only knew, father, I have had a sorrow, there was a robin redbreast which had made her nest in a hole in the wall, and a horrible cat ate her. My poor, pretty, little robin red-breast which used to put her head out of her window and look at me! I cried over it. I should have liked to kill the cat. But now nobody cries any more. Everybody laughs, everybody is happy. You are going to come with us. How delighted grandfather will be! You shall have your plot in the garden, you shall cultivate it, and we shall see whether your strawberries are as fine as mine. And, then, I shall do everything that you wish, and then, you will obey me prettily."


Jean Valjean listened to her without hearing her. He heard the music of her voice rather than the sense of her words; one of those large tears which are the sombre pearls of the soul welled up slowly in his eyes.


He murmured:


"The proof that God is good is that she is here."


"Father!" said Cosette.


"It is quite true that it would be charming for us to live together. Their trees are full of birds. I would walk with Cosette. It is sweet to be among living people who bid each other 'good-day,' who call to each other in the garden. People see each other from early morning. We should each cultivate our own little corner. She would make me eat her strawberries. I would make her gather my roses. That would be charming. Only . . ."


He paused and said gently:


"It is a pity."


The tear did not fall, it retreated, and Jean Valjean replaced it with a smile.


Cosette took both the old man's hands in hers.


"My God!" said she, "your hands are still colder than before. Are you ill? Do you suffer?"


"I? No," replied Jean Valjean. "I am very well. Only . . ."


He paused.


"Only what?"


"I am going to die presently."


Cosette and Marius shuddered.


"Yes, but that is nothing," said Jean Valjean.


He took breath, smiled and resumed:


"Cosette, thou wert talking to me, go on, so thy little robin red-breast is dead? Speak, so that I may hear thy voice."


Marius gazed at the old man in amazement.


Cosette uttered a heartrending cry.


"Father! my father! you will live. You are going to live. I insist upon your living, do you hear?"


Jean Valjean raised his head towards her with adoration.


"Oh! yes, forbid me to die. Who knows? Perhaps I shall obey. I was on the verge of dying when you came. That stopped me, it seemed to me that I was born again."


"You are full of strength and life," cried Marius. "Do you imagine that a person can die like this? You have had sorrow, you shall have no more. It is I who ask your forgiveness, and on my knees! You are going to live, and to live with us, and to live a long time. We take possession of you once more. There are two of us here who will henceforth have no other thought than your happiness."


"You see," resumed Cosette, all bathed in tears, "that Marius says that you shall not die."


Jean Valjean continued to smile.


"Even if you were to take possession of me, Monsieur Pontmercy, would that make me other than I am? No, God has thought like you and myself, and he does not change his mind; it is useful for me to go. Death is a good arrangement. God knows better than we what we need. May you be happy, may Monsieur Pontmercy have Cosette, may youth wed the morning, may there be around you, my children, lilacs and nightingales; may your life be a beautiful, sunny lawn, may all the enchantments of heaven fill your souls, and now let me, who am good for nothing, die; it is certain that all this is right. Come, be reasonable, nothing is possible now, I am fully conscious that all is over. And then, last night, I drank that whole jug of water. How good thy husband is, Cosette! Thou art much better off with him than with me."


A noise became audible at the door.


It was the doctor entering.


"Good-day, and farewell, doctor," said Jean Valjean. "Here are my poor children."


Marius stepped up to the doctor. He addressed to him only this single word: "Monsieur? . . ." But his manner of pronouncing it contained a complete question.


The doctor replied to the question by an expressive glance.


"Because things are not agreeable," said Jean Valjean, "that is no reason for being unjust towards God."


All breasts were oppressed.


Jean Valjean turned to Cosette. He began to gaze at her as though he wished to retain her features for eternity.


In the depths of the shadow into which he had already descended, ecstasy was still possible to him when gazing at Cosette. The reflection of that sweet face lighted up his pale visage.


The doctor felt of his pulse.


"Ah! it was you that he wanted!" he murmured, looking at Cosette and Marius.


And bending down to Marius' ear, he added in a very low voice:


Jean Valjean surveyed the doctor and Marius serenely, almost without ceasing to gaze at Cosette.


These barely articulate words were heard to issue from his mouth:


"It is nothing to die; it is dreadful not to live."


All at once he rose to his feet. These accesses of strength are sometimes the sign of the death agony. He walked with a firm step to the wall, thrusting aside Marius and the doctor who tried to help him, detached from the wall a little copper crucifix which was suspended there, and returned to his seat with all the freedom of movement of perfect health, and said in a loud voice, as he laid the crucifix on the table:


"Behold the great martyr."


Then his chest sank in, his head wavered, as though the intoxication of the tomb were seizing hold upon him.


His hands, which rested on his knees, began to press their nails into the stuff of his trousers.


Cosette supported his shoulders, and sobbed, and tried to speak to him, but could not.


Among the words mingled with that mournful saliva which accompanies tears, they distinguished words like the following:


"Father, do not leave us. Is it possible that we have found you only to lose you again?"


It might be said that agony writhes. It goes, comes, advances towards the sepulchre, and returns towards life. There is groping in the action of dying.


Jean Valjean rallied after this semi-swoon, shook his brow as though to make the shadows fall away from it and became almost perfectly lucid once more.


He took a fold of Cosette's sleeve and kissed it.


"He is coming back! doctor, he is coming back," cried Marius.


"You are good, both of you," said Jean Valjean. "I am going to tell you what has caused me pain. What has pained me, Monsieur Pontmercy, is that you have not been willing to touch that money. That money really belongs to your wife. I will explain to you, my children, and for that reason, also, I am glad to see you. Black jet comes from England, white jet comes from Norway. All this is in this paper, which you will read. For bracelets, I invented a way of substituting for slides of soldered sheet iron, slides of iron laid together. It is prettier, better and less costly. You will understand how much money can be made in that way. So Cosette's fortune is really hers. I give you these details, in order that your mind may be set at rest."


The portress had come upstairs and was gazing in at the half-open door. The doctor dismissed her.


But he could not prevent this zealous woman from exclaiming to the dying man before she disappeared: "Would you like a priest?"


"I have had one," replied Jean Valjean.


And with his finger he seemed to indicate a point above his head where one would have said that he saw some one.


It is probable, in fact, that the Bishop was present at this death agony.


Cosette gently slipped a pillow under his loins.


"Have no fear, Monsieur Pontmercy, I adjure you. The six hundred thousand francs really belong to Cosette. My life will have been wasted if you do not enjoy them! We managed to do very well with those glass goods. We rivalled what is called Berlin jewellery. However, we could not equal the black glass of England. A gross, which contains twelve hundred very well cut grains, only costs three francs."


When a being who is dear to us is on the point of death, we gaze upon him with a look which clings convulsively to him and which would fain hold him back.


Cosette gave her hand to Marius, and both, mute with anguish, not knowing what to say to the dying man, stood trembling and despairing before him.


Jean Valjean sank moment by moment. He was failing; he was drawing near to the gloomy horizon.


His breath had become intermittent; a little rattling interrupted it. He found some difficulty in moving his forearm, his feet had lost all movement, and in proportion as the wretchedness of limb and feebleness of body increased, all the majesty of his soul was displayed and spread over his brow. The light of the unknown world was already visible in his eyes.


His face paled and smiled. Life was no longer there, it was something else.


His breath sank, his glance grew grander. He was a corpse on which the wings could be felt.


He made a sign to Cosette to draw near, then to Marius; the last minute of the last hour had, evidently, arrived.


He began to speak to them in a voice so feeble that it seemed to come from a distance, and one would have said that a wall now rose between them and him.


"Draw near, draw near, both of you. I love you dearly. Oh! how good it is to die like this! And thou lovest me also, my Cosette. I knew well that thou still felt friendly towards thy poor old man. How kind it was of thee to place that pillow under my loins! Thou wilt weep for me a little, wilt thou not? Not too much. I do not wish thee to have any real griefs. You must enjoy yourselves a great deal, my children. I forgot to tell you that the profit was greater still on the buckles without tongues than on all the rest. A gross of a dozen dozens cost ten francs and sold for sixty. It really was a good business. So there is no occasion for surprise at the six hundred thousand francs, Monsieur Pontmercy. It is honest money. You may be rich with a tranquil mind. Thou must have a carriage, a box at the theatres now and then, and handsome ball dresses, my Cosette, and then, thou must give good dinners to thy friends, and be very happy. I was writing to Cosette a while ago. She will find my letter. I bequeath to her the two candlesticks which stand on the chimney-piece. They are of silver, but to me they are gold, they are diamonds; they change candles which are placed in them into wax-tapers. I do not know whether the person who gave them to me is pleased with me yonder on high. I have done what I could. My children, you will not forget that I am a poor man, you will have me buried in the first plot of earth that you find, under a stone to mark the spot. This is my wish. No name on the stone. If Cosette cares to come for a little while now and then, it will give me pleasure. And you too, Monsieur Pontmercy. I must admit that I have not always loved you. I ask your pardon for that. Now she and you form but one for me. I feel very grateful to you. I am sure that you make Cosette happy. If you only knew, Monsieur Pontmercy, her pretty rosy cheeks were my delight; when I saw her in the least pale, I was sad. In the chest of drawers, there is a bank-bill for five hundred francs. I have not touched it. It is for the poor. Cosette, dost thou see thy little gown yonder on the bed? dost thou recognize it? That was ten years ago, however. How time flies! We have been very happy. All is over. Do not weep, my children, I am not going very far, I shall see you from there, you will only have to look at night, and you will see me smile. Cosette, dost thou remember Montfermeil? Thou wert in the forest, thou wert greatly terrified; dost thou remember how I took hold of the handle of the water-bucket? That was the first time that I touched thy poor, little hand. It was so cold! Ah! your hands were red then, mademoiselle, they are very white now. And the big doll! dost thou remember? Thou didst call her Catherine. Thou regrettedest not having taken her to the convent! How thou didst make me laugh sometimes, my sweet angel! When it had been raining, thou didst float bits of straw on the gutters, and watch them pass away. One day I gave thee a willow battledore and a shuttlecock with yellow, blue and green feathers. Thou hast forgotten it. Thou wert roguish so young! Thou didst play. Thou didst put cherries in thy ears. Those are things of the past. The forests through which one has passed with one's child, the trees under which one has strolled, the convents where one has concealed oneself, the games, the hearty laughs of childhood, are shadows. I imagined that all that belonged to me. In that lay my stupidity. Those Thénardiers were wicked. Thou must forgive them. Cosette, the moment has come to tell thee the name of thy mother. She was called Fantine. Remember that name—Fantine. Kneel whenever thou utterest it. She suffered much. She loved thee dearly. She had as much unhappiness as thou hast had happiness. That is the way God apportions things. He is there on high, he sees us all, and he knows what he does in the midst of his great stars. I am on the verge of departure, my children. Love each other well and always. There is nothing else but that in the world: love for each other. You will think sometimes of the poor old man who died here. Oh my Cosette, it is not my fault, indeed, that I have not seen thee all this time, it cut me to the heart; I went as far as the corner of the street, I must have produced a queer effect on the people who saw me pass, I was like a madman, I once went out without my hat. I no longer see clearly, my children, I had still other things to say, but never mind. Think a little of me. Come still nearer. I die happy. Give me your dear and well-beloved heads, so that I may lay my hands upon them."


Cosette and Marius fell on their knees, in despair, suffocating with tears, each beneath one of Jean Valjean's hands. Those august hands no longer moved.


He had fallen backwards, the light of the candles illuminated him.


His white face looked up to heaven, he allowed Cosette and Marius to cover his hands with kisses.


He was dead.


The night was starless and extremely dark. No doubt, in the gloom, some immense angel stood erect with wings outspread, awaiting that soul.


[Illustration: Darkness]


In the cemetery of Père-Lachaise, in the vicinity of the common grave, far from the elegant quarter of that city of sepulchres, far from all the tombs of fancy which display in the presence of eternity all the hideous fashions of death, in a deserted corner, beside an old wall, beneath a great yew tree over which climbs the wild convolvulus, amid dandelions and mosses, there lies a stone. That stone is no more exempt than others from the leprosy of time, of dampness, of the lichens and from the defilement of the birds. The water turns it green, the air blackens it. It is not near any path, and people are not fond of walking in that direction, because the grass is high and their feet are immediately wet. When there is a little sunshine, the lizards come thither. All around there is a quivering of weeds. In the spring, linnets warble in the trees.


This stone is perfectly plain. In cutting it the only thought was the requirements of the tomb, and no other care was taken than to make the stone long enough and narrow enough to cover a man.


No name is to be read there.


Only, many years ago, a hand wrote upon it in pencil these four lines, which have become gradually illegible beneath the rain and the dust, and which are, to-day, probably effaced:


Publisher of the Italian translation of Les Misérables in Milan.


HAUTEVILLE-HOUSE, October 18, 1862.


You are right, sir, when you tell me that Les Misérables is written for all nations. I do not know whether it will be read by all, but I wrote it for all. It is addressed to England as well as to Spain, to Italy as well as to France, to Germany as well as to Ireland, to Republics which have slaves as well as to Empires which have serfs. Social problems overstep frontiers. The sores of the human race, those great sores which cover the globe, do not halt at the red or blue lines traced upon the map. In every place where man is ignorant and despairing, in every place where woman is sold for bread, wherever the child suffers for lack of the book which should instruct him and of the hearth which should warm him, the book of Les Misérables knocks at the door and says: "Open to me, I come for you."


At the hour of civilization through which we are now passing, and which is still so sombre, the miserable's name is Man; he is agonizing in all climes, and he is groaning in all languages.


Your Italy is no more exempt from the evil than is our France. Your admirable Italy has all miseries on the face of it. Does not banditism, that raging form of pauperism, inhabit your mountains? Few nations are more deeply eaten by that ulcer of convents which I have endeavored to fathom. In spite of your possessing Rome, Milan, Naples, Palermo, Turin, Florence, Sienna, Pisa, Mantua, Bologna, Ferrara, Genoa, Venice, a heroic history, sublime ruins, magnificent ruins, and superb cities, you are, like ourselves, poor. You are covered with marvels and vermin. Assuredly, the sun of Italy is splendid, but, alas, azure in the sky does not prevent rags on man.


Like us, you have prejudices, superstitions, tyrannies, fanaticisms, blind laws lending assistance to ignorant customs. You taste nothing of the present nor of the future without a flavor of the past being mingled with it. You have a barbarian, the monk, and a savage, the lazzarone. The social question is the same for you as for us. There are a few less deaths from hunger with you, and a few more from fever; your social hygiene is not much better than ours; shadows, which are Protestant in England, are Catholic in Italy; but, under different names, the vescovo is identical with the bishop, and it always means night, and of pretty nearly the same quality. To explain the Bible badly amounts to the same thing as to understand the Gospel badly.


Is it necessary to emphasize this? Must this melancholy parallelism be yet more completely verified? Have you not indigent persons? Glance below. Have you not parasites? Glance up. Does not that hideous balance, whose two scales, pauperism and parasitism, so mournfully preserve their mutual equilibrium, oscillate before you as it does before us? Where is your army of schoolmasters, the only army which civilization acknowledges?


Where are your free and compulsory schools? Does every one know how to read in the land of Dante and of Michael Angelo? Have you made public schools of your barracks? Have you not, like ourselves, an opulent war-budget and a paltry budget of education? Have not you also that passive obedience which is so easily converted into soldierly obedience? military establishment which pushes the regulations to the extreme of firing upon Garibaldi; that is to say, upon the living honor of Italy? Let us subject your social order to examination, let us take it where it stands and as it stands, let us view its flagrant offences, show me the woman and the child. It is by the amount of protection with which these two feeble creatures are surrounded that the degree of civilization is to be measured. Is prostitution less heartrending in Naples than in Paris? What is the amount of truth that springs from your laws, and what amount of justice springs from your tribunals? Do you chance to be so fortunate as to be ignorant of the meaning of those gloomy words: public prosecution, legal infamy, prison, the scaffold, the executioner, the death penalty? Italians, with you as with us, Beccaria is dead and Farinace is alive. And then, let us scrutinize your state reasons. Have you a government which comprehends the identity of morality and politics? You have reached the point where you grant amnesty to heroes! Something very similar has been done in France. Stay, let us pass miseries in review, let each one contribute his pile, you are as rich as we. Have you not, like ourselves, two condemnations, religious condemnation pronounced by the priest, and social condemnation decreed by the judge? Oh, great nation of Italy, thou resemblest the great nation of France! Alas! our brothers, you are, like ourselves, Miserables.


From the depths of the gloom wherein you dwell, you do not see much more distinctly than we the radiant and distant portals of Eden. Only, the priests are mistaken. These holy portals are before and not behind us.


I resume. This book, Les Misérables, is no less your mirror than ours. Certain men, certain castes, rise in revolt against this book,—I understand that. Mirrors, those revealers of the truth, are hated; that does not prevent them from being of use.


As for myself, I have written for all, with a profound love for my own country, but without being engrossed by France more than by any other nation. In proportion as I advance in life, I grow more simple, and I become more and more patriotic for humanity.


This is, moreover, the tendency of our age, and the law of radiance of the French Revolution; books must cease to be exclusively French, Italian, German, Spanish, or English, and become European, I say more, human, if they are to correspond to the enlargement of civilization.


Hence a new logic of art, and of certain requirements of composition which modify everything, even the conditions, formerly narrow, of taste and language, which must grow broader like all the rest.


In France, certain critics have reproached me, to my great delight, with having transgressed the bounds of what they call "French taste"; I should be glad if this eulogium were merited.


In short, I am doing what I can, I suffer with the same universal suffering, and I try to assuage it, I possess only the puny forces of a man, and I cry to all: "Help me!"


This, sir, is what your letter prompts me to say; I say it for you and for your country. If I have insisted so strongly, it is because of one phrase in your letter. You write:—


"There are Italians, and they are numerous, who say: 'This book, Les Misérables, is a French book. It does not concern us. Let the French read it as a history, we read it as a romance.'"—Alas! I repeat, whether we be Italians or Frenchmen, misery concerns us all. Ever since history has been written, ever since philosophy has meditated, misery has been the garment of the human race; the moment has at length arrived for tearing off that rag, and for replacing, upon the naked limbs of the Man-People, the sinister fragment of the past with the grand purple robe of the dawn.


If this letter seems to you of service in enlightening some minds and in dissipating some prejudices, you are at liberty to publish it, sir. Accept, I pray you, a renewed assurance of my very distinguished sentiments.


1 (return) [ Patois of the French Alps: chat de maraude, rascally marauder.]


3 (return) [ She belonged to that circle where cuckoos and carriages share the same fate; and a jade herself, she lived, as jades live, for the space of a morning (or jade).]


5 (return) [ This parenthesis is due to Jean Valjean.]


6 (return) [ A bullet as large as an egg.]


7 (return) [ Walter Scott, Lamartine, Vaulabelle, Charras, Quinet, Thiers.]


8 (return) [ This is the inscription:—D. O. M. CY A ETE ÉCRASÉ PAR MALHEUR SOUS UN CHARIOT, MONSIEUR BERNARD DE BRYE MARCHAND A BRUXELLE LE [illegible] FEVRIER 1637.]


9 (return) [ A heavy rifled gun.]


10 (return) [ "A battle terminated, a day finished, false measures repaired, greater successes assured for the morrow,—all was lost by a moment of panic, terror."—Napoleon, Dictées de Sainte Hélène.]


11 (return) [ Five winning numbers in a lottery]


12 (return) [ Literally "made cuirs"; i. e., pronounced a t or an s at the end of words where the opposite letter should occur, or used either one of them where neither exists.]


13 (return) [ Lawyer Corbeau, perched on a docket, held in his beak a writ of execution; Lawyer Renard, attracted by the smell, addressed him nearly as follows, etc.]


14 (return) [ This is the factory of Goblet Junior: Come choose your jugs and crocks, Flower-pots, pipes, bricks. The Heart sells Diamonds to every comer.]


15 (return) [ On the boughs hang three bodies of unequal merits: Dismas and Gesmas, between is the divine power. Dismas seeks the heights, Gesmas, unhappy man, the lowest regions; the highest power will preserve us and our effects. If you repeat this verse, you will not lose your things by theft.]


16 (return) [ Instead of porte cochère and porte bàtarde.]


17 (return) [ Jesus-my-God-bandy-leg—down with the moon!]


18 (return) [ Chicken: slang allusion to the noise made in calling poultry.]


19 (return) [ Louis XVIII. is represented in comic pictures of that day as having a pear-shaped head.]


20 (return) [ Tuck into your trousers the shirt-tail that is hanging out. Let it not be said that patriots have hoisted the white flag.]


21 (return) [ In order to re-establish the shaken throne firmly on its base, soil (Des solles), greenhouse and house (Decazes) must be changed.]


23 (return) [ L'Aile, wing.]


24 (return) [ The slang term for a painter's assistant.]


25 (return) [ If Cæsar had given me glory and war, and I were obliged to quit my mother's love, I would say to great Cæsar, "Take back thy sceptre and thy chariot; I prefer the love of my mother."]


26 (return) [ Whether the sun shines brightly or dim, the bear returns to his cave.]


27 (return) [ The peep-hole is a Judas in French. Hence the half-punning allusion.]


28 (return) [ Our love has lasted a whole week, but how short are the instants of happiness! To adore each other for eight days was hardly worth the while! The time of love should last forever.]


29 (return) [ You leave me to go to glory; my sad heart will follow you everywhere.]


31 (return) [ King Bootkick went a-hunting after crows, mounted on two stilts. When one passed beneath them, one paid him two sous.]


32 (return) [ In olden times, fouriers were the officials who preceded the Court and allotted the lodgings.]


33 (return) [ A game of ninepins, in which one side of the ball is smaller than the other, so that it does not roll straight, but describes a curve on the ground.]


34 (return) [ From April 19 to May 20.]


35 (return) [ Merlan: a sobriquet given to hairdressers because they are white with powder.]


36 (return) [ The scaffold.]


37 (return) [ Argot of the Temple.]


38 (return) [ Argot of the barriers.]


39 (return) [ The Last Day of a Condemned Man.]


41 (return) [ It must be observed, however, that mac in Celtic means son.]


42 (return) [ Smoke puffed in the face of a person asleep.]


44 (return) [ At night one sees nothing, by day one sees very well; the bourgeois gets flurried over an apocryphal scrawl, practice virtue, tutu, pointed hat!]


46 (return) [ Here is the morn appearing. When shall we go to the forest, Charlot asked Charlotte. Tou, tou, tou, for Chatou, I have but one God, one King, one half-farthing, and one boot. And these two poor little wolves were as tipsy as sparrows from having drunk dew and thyme very early in the morning. And these two poor little things were as drunk as thrushes in a vineyard; a tiger laughed at them in his cave. The one cursed, the other swore. When shall we go to the forest? Charlot asked Charlotte.]


47 (return) [ There swings the horrible skeleton of a poor lover who hung himself.]


48 (return) [ She astounds at ten paces, she frightens at two, a wart inhabits her hazardous nose; you tremble every instant lest she should blow it at you, and lest, some fine day, her nose should tumble into her mouth.]


49 (return) [ Matelote: a culinary preparation of various fishes. Gibelotte: stewed rabbits.]


50 (return) [ Treat if you can, and eat if you dare.]


51 (return) [ Bipède sans plume: biped without feathers—pen.]


52 (return) [ Municipal officer of Toulouse.]


53 (return) [ Do you remember our sweet life, when we were both so young, and when we had no other desire in our hearts than to be well dressed and in love? When, by adding your age to my age, we could not count forty years between us, and when, in our humble and tiny household, everything was spring to us even in winter. Fair days! Manuel was proud and wise, Paris sat at sacred banquets, Foy launched thunderbolts, and your corsage had a pin on which I pricked myself. Everything gazed upon you. A briefless lawyer, when I took you to the Prado to dine, you were so beautiful that the roses seemed to me to turn round, and I heard them say: Is she not beautiful! How good she smells! What billowing hair! Beneath her mantle she hides a wing. Her charming bonnet is hardly unfolded. I wandered with thee, pressing thy supple arm. The passers-by thought that love bewitched had wedded, in our happy couple, the gentle month of April to the fair month of May. We lived concealed, content, with closed doors, devouring love, that sweet forbidden fruit. My mouth had not uttered a thing when thy heart had already responded. The Sorbonne was the bucolic spot where I adored thee from eve till morn. 'Tis thus that an amorous soul applies the chart of the Tender to the Latin country. O Place Maubert! O Place Dauphine! When in the fresh spring-like hut thou didst draw thy stocking on thy delicate leg, I saw a star in the depths of the garret. I have read a great deal of Plato, but nothing of it remains by me; better than Malebranche and then Lamennais thou didst demonstrate to me celestial goodness with a flower which thou gavest to me, I obeyed thee, thou didst submit to me; oh gilded garret! to lace thee! to behold thee going and coming from dawn in thy chemise, gazing at thy young brow in thine ancient mirror! And who, then, would forego the memory of those days of aurora and the firmament, of flowers, of gauze and of moire, when love stammers a charming slang? Our gardens consisted of a pot of tulips; thou didst mask the window with thy petticoat; I took the earthenware bowl and I gave thee the Japanese cup. And those great misfortunes which made us laugh! Thy cuff scorched, thy boa lost! And that dear portrait of the divine Shakespeare which we sold one evening that we might sup! I was a beggar and thou wert charitable. I kissed thy fresh round arms in haste. A folio Dante served us as a table on which to eat merrily a centime's worth of chestnuts. The first time that, in my joyous den, I snatched a kiss from thy fiery lip, when thou wentest forth, dishevelled and blushing, I turned deathly pale and I believed in God. Dost thou recall our innumerable joys, and all those fichus changed to rags? Oh! what sighs from our hearts full of gloom fluttered forth to the heavenly depths!]


54 (return) [ My nose is in tears, my friend Bugeaud, lend me thy gendarmes that I may say a word to them. With a blue capote and a chicken in his shako, here's the banlieue, co-cocorico.]


"The bird slanders in the elms, And pretends that yesterday, Atala Went off with a Russian, Where fair maids go. Lon la.


My friend Pierrot, thou pratest, because Mila knocked at her pane the other day and called me. The jades are very charming, their poison which bewitched me would intoxicate Monsieur Orfila. I'm fond of love and its bickerings, I love Agnes, I love Pamela, Lise burned herself in setting me aflame. In former days when I saw the mantillas of Suzette and of Zéila, my soul mingled with their folds. Love, when thou gleamest in the dark thou crownest Lola with roses, I would lose my soul for that. Jeanne, at thy mirror thou deckest thyself! One fine day, my heart flew forth. I think that it is Jeanne who has it. At night, when I come from the quadrilles, I show Stella to the stars, and I say to them: "Behold her." Where fair maids go, lon la.]


57 (return) [ But some prisons still remain, and I am going to put a stop to this sort of public order. Does any one wish to play at skittles? The whole ancient world fell in ruin, when the big ball rolled. Good old folks, let us smash with our crutches that Louvre where the monarchy displayed itself in furbelows. We have forced its gates. On that day, King Charles X. did not stick well and came unglued.]


58 (return) [ Steps on the Aventine Hill, leading to the Tiber, to which the bodies of executed criminals were dragged by hooks to be thrown into the Tiber.]


59 (return) [ Mustards.]


60 (return) [ From casser, to break: break-necks.]


61 (return) [ "Jeanne was born at Fougère, a true shepherd's nest; I adore her petticoat, the rogue." "Love, thou dwellest in her; For 'tis in her eyes that thou placest thy quiver, sly scamp!" "As for me, I sing her, and I love, more than Diana herself, Jeanne and her firm Breton breasts."]


62 (return) [ In allusion to the expression, coiffer Sainte-Catherine, "to remain unmarried."]


63 (return) [ "Thus, hemming in the course of thy musings, Alcippus, it is true that thou wilt wed ere long."]


65 (return) [ "Triton trotted on before, and drew from his conch-shell sounds so ravishing that he delighted everyone!"]


66 (return) [ "A Shrove-Tuesday marriage will have no ungrateful children."]


67 (return) [ A short mask.]


68 (return) [ In allusion to the story of Prometheus.]


69 (return) [ Un fafiot sérieux. Fafiot is the slang term for a bank-bill, derived from its rustling noise.]


70 (return) [ He sleeps. Although his fate was very strange, he lived. He died when he had no longer his angel. The thing came to pass simply, of itself, as the night comes when day is gone.]


Title: Beowulf: An Anglo-Saxon Epic Poem


Release date: July 19, 2005 [eBook #16328] Most recently updated: February 13, 2021


Credits: David Starner, Dainis Millers and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team


Professor of English and History in The College of William and Mary


Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1892, by


in the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington.


Bibliography of Translations xi


Glossary of Proper Names xiii


List of Words and Phrases not in General Use xviii


The Life and Death of Scyld (I.) 1


Scyld's Successors } (II.) 3 Hrothgar's Great Mead-Hall


Beowulf Goes to Hrothgar's Assistance (IV.) 8


The Geats Reach Heorot (V.) 10


Beowulf Introduces Himself at the Palace (VI.) 12


Hrothgar and Beowulf (VII.) 14


Hrothgar and Beowulf (continued) (VIII.) 17


Unferth Taunts Beowulf (IX.) 19


Beowulf Silences Unferth } (X.) 21 Glee is High


Grendel is Vanquished (XIII.) 28


Rejoicing of the Danes (XIV.) 30


Hrothgar's Gratitude (XV.) 33


Hrothgar Lavishes Gifts upon his Deliverer (XVI.) 35


Banquet (continued) } (XVII.) 37 The Scop's Song of Finn and Hnæf


The Finn Episode (continued) } (XVIII.) 39 The Banquet Continues


Beowulf Receives Further Honor (XIX.) 41


The Mother of Grendel (XX.) 44


Hrothgar's Account of the Monsters (XXI.) 46


Beowulf's Fight with Grendel's Mother (XXIII.) 51


Beowulf is Double-Conqueror (XXIV.) 53


[vi] Beowulf Brings his Trophies } (XXV.) 57 Hrothgar's Gratitude


Hrothgar Moralizes } (XXVI.) 60 Rest after Labor


Sorrow at Parting (XXVII.) 62


The Homeward Journey } (XXVIII.) 64 The Two Queens


Beowulf and Higelac (XXIX.) 67


Beowulf Narrates his Adventures to Higelac (XXX.) 69


Gift-Giving is Mutual (XXXI.) 73


The Hoard and the Dragon (XXXII.) 75


Brave Though Aged } (XXXIII.) 78 Reminiscences


Beowulf Seeks the Dragon } (XXXIV.) 81 Beowulf's Reminiscences


Reminiscences (continued) } (XXXV.) 83 Beowulf's Last Battle


Wiglaf the Trusty } (XXXVI.) 88 Beowulf is Deserted by Friends and by Sword


The Fatal Struggle } (XXXVII.) 91 Beowulf's Last Moments


Wiglaf Plunders the Dragon's Den } (XXXVIII.) 93 Beowulf's Death


The Dead Foes } (XXXIX.) 95 Wiglaf's Bitter Taunts


The Messenger of Death (XL.) 97


The Messenger's Retrospect (XLI.) 99


Wiglaf's Sad Story } (XLII.) 103 The Hoard Carried Off


The Burning of Beowulf (XLIII.) 106


The present work is a modest effort to reproduce approximately, in modern measures, the venerable epic, Beowulf. Approximately, I repeat; for a very close reproduction of Anglo-Saxon verse would, to a large extent, be prose to a modern ear.


The Heyne-Socin text and glossary have been closely followed. Occasionally a deviation has been made, but always for what seemed good and sufficient reason. The translator does not aim to be an editor. Once in a while, however, he has added a conjecture of his own to the emendations quoted from the criticisms of other students of the poem.


This work is addressed to two classes of readers. From both of these alike the translator begs sympathy and co-operation. The Anglo-Saxon scholar he hopes to please by adhering faithfully to the original. The student of English literature he aims to interest by giving him, in modern garb, the most ancient epic of our race. This is a bold and venturesome undertaking; and yet there must be some students of the Teutonic past willing to follow even a daring guide, if they may read in modern phrases of the sorrows of Hrothgar, of the prowess of Beowulf, and of the feelings that stirred the hearts of our forefathers in their primeval homes.


In order to please the larger class of readers, a regular cadence has been used, a measure which, while retaining the essential characteristics of the original, permits the reader to see ahead of him in reading.


Perhaps every Anglo-Saxon scholar has his own theory as to how Beowulf should be translated. Some have given us prose versions of what we believe to be a great poem. Is it any reflection on our honored Kemble and Arnold to say that their translations fail to show a layman that Beowulf is justly called our first epic? Of those translators who have used verse, several have written from what would seem a mistaken point of view. Is it proper, for instance, that the grave and solemn speeches of Beowulf and Hrothgar be put in ballad measures, tripping lightly and airily along? Or, again, is it fitting that the rough martial music of Anglo-Saxon verse be interpreted to us in the smooth measures of modern blank verse? Do we hear what has been beautifully called "the clanging tread of a warrior in mail"?


Of all English translations of Beowulf, that of Professor Garnett alone gives any adequate idea of the chief characteristics of this great Teutonic epic.


The measure used in the present translation is believed to be as near a reproduction of the original as modern English affords. The cadences closely resemble those used by Browning in some of his most striking poems. The four stresses of the Anglo-Saxon verse are retained, and as much thesis and anacrusis is allowed as is consistent with a regular cadence. Alliteration has been used to a large extent; but it was thought that modern ears would hardly tolerate it on every line. End-rhyme has been used occasionally; internal rhyme, sporadically. Both have some warrant in Anglo-Saxon poetry. (For end-rhyme, see 153, 154; for internal rhyme, 221, 640.)


What Gummere[1] calls the "rime-giver" has been studiously kept; viz., the first accented syllable in the second half-verse always carries the alliteration; and the last accented syllable alliterates only sporadically. Alternate alliteration is occasionally used as in the original. (See 761, 85.)


No two accented syllables have been brought together, except occasionally after a cæsural pause. (See 219 and 121.) Or, scientifically speaking, Sievers's C type has been avoided as not consonant with the plan of translation. Several of his types, however, constantly occur; e.g. A and a variant (/ x | / x) (/ x x | / x); B and a variant (x / | x / ) (x x / | x / ); a variant of D (/ x | / x x); E (/ x x | / ). Anacrusis gives further variety to the types used in the translation.


The parallelisms of the original have been faithfully preserved. (E.g., 116 and 117: "Lord" and "Wielder of Glory"; 130, 131, 132; 212 and 213; 227 and 228; 35 and 3_6.) Occasionally, some loss has been sustained; but, on the other hand, a gain has here and there been made.


The effort has been made to give a decided flavor of archaism to the translation. All words not in keeping with the spirit of the poem have been avoided. Again, though many archaic words have been used, there are none, it is believed, which are not found in standard modern poetry.


With these preliminary remarks, it will not be amiss to give an outline of the story of the poem.


Hrothgar, king of the Danes, or Scyldings, builds a great mead-hall, or palace, in which he hopes to feast his liegemen and to give them presents. The joy of king and retainers is, however, of short duration. Grendel, the monster, is seized with hateful jealousy. He cannot brook the sounds of joyance that reach him down in his fen-dwelling near the hall. Oft and anon he goes to the joyous building, bent on direful mischief. Thane after thane is ruthlessly carried off and devoured, while no one is found strong enough and bold enough to cope with the monster. For twelve years he persecutes Hrothgar and his vassals.


Over sea, a day's voyage off, Beowulf, of the Geats, nephew of Higelac, king of the Geats, hears of Grendel's doings and of Hrothgar's misery. He resolves to crush the fell monster and relieve the aged king. With fourteen chosen companions, he sets sail for Dane-land. Reaching that country, he soon persuades Hrothgar of his ability to help him. The hours that elapse before night are spent in beer-drinking and conversation. When Hrothgar's bedtime comes he leaves the hall in charge of Beowulf, telling him that never before has he given to another the absolute wardship of his palace. All retire to rest, Beowulf, as it were, sleeping upon his arms.


Grendel comes, the great march-stepper, bearing God's anger. He seizes and kills one of the sleeping warriors. Then he advances towards Beowulf. A fierce and desperate hand-to-hand struggle ensues. No arms are used, both combatants trusting to strength and hand-grip. Beowulf tears Grendel's shoulder from its socket, and the monster retreats to his den, howling and yelling with agony and fury. The wound is fatal.


The next morning, at early dawn, warriors in numbers flock to the hall Heorot, to hear the news. Joy is boundless. Glee runs high. Hrothgar and his retainers are lavish of gratitude and of gifts.


Grendel's mother, however, comes the next night to avenge his death. She is furious and raging. While Beowulf is sleeping in a room somewhat apart [x] from the quarters of the other warriors, she seizes one of Hrothgar's favorite counsellors, and carries him off and devours him. Beowulf is called. Determined to leave Heorot entirely purified, he arms himself, and goes down to look for the female monster. After traveling through the waters many hours, he meets her near the sea-bottom. She drags him to her den. There he sees Grendel lying dead. After a desperate and almost fatal struggle with the woman, he slays her, and swims upward in triumph, taking with him Grendel's head.


Joy is renewed at Heorot. Congratulations crowd upon the victor. Hrothgar literally pours treasures into the lap of Beowulf; and it is agreed among the vassals of the king that Beowulf will be their next liegelord.


Beowulf leaves Dane-land. Hrothgar weeps and laments at his departure.


When the hero arrives in his own land, Higelac treats him as a distinguished guest. He is the hero of the hour.


Beowulf subsequently becomes king of his own people, the Geats. After he has been ruling for fifty years, his own neighborhood is wofully harried by a fire-spewing dragon. Beowulf determines to kill him. In the ensuing struggle both Beowulf and the dragon are slain. The grief of the Geats is inexpressible. They determine, however, to leave nothing undone to honor the memory of their lord. A great funeral-pyre is built, and his body is burnt. Then a memorial-barrow is made, visible from a great distance, that sailors afar may be constantly reminded of the prowess of the national hero of Geatland.


The poem closes with a glowing tribute to his bravery, his gentleness, his goodness of heart, and his generosity.


It is the devout desire of this translator to hasten the day when the story of Beowulf shall be as familiar to English-speaking peoples as that of the Iliad. Beowulf is our first great epic. It is an epitomized history of the life of the Teutonic races. It brings vividly before us our forefathers of pre-Alfredian eras, in their love of war, of sea, and of adventure.


My special thanks are due to Professors Francis A. March and James A. Harrison, for advice, sympathy, and assistance.


~Arnold, Thomas.~--Beowulf. A heroic poem of the eighth century. London, 1876. With English translation. Prose.


~Botkine, L.~--Beowulf. Epopée Anglo-Saxonne. Havre, 1877. First French translation. Passages occasionally omitted.


~Conybeare, J.J.~--Illustrations of Anglo-Saxon Poetry. London, 1826. Full Latin translation, and some passages translated into English blank-verse.


~Garnett, J.M.~--Beowulf: an Anglo-Saxon Poem, and the Fight at Finnsburg. Boston, 1882. An accurate line-for-line translation, using alliteration occasionally, and sometimes assuming a metrical cadence.


~Heyne, M.~--A translation in iambic measures. Paderborn, 1863.


~Kemble, J.M.~--The Anglo-Saxon Poems of Beowulf, the Traveller's Song, and the Battle of Finnsburg. London, 1833. The second edition contains a prose translation of Beowulf.


~Leo, H.~--Ueber Beowulf. Halle, 1839. Translations of extracts.


~Lumsden, H.W.~--Beowulf, translated into modern rhymes. London, 1881. Ballad measures. Passages occasionally omitted.


~Sandras, G.S.~--De carminibus Cædmoni adjudicatis. Paris, 1859. An extract from Beowulf, with Latin translation.


~Schaldmose, F.~--Beowulf og Scopes Widsith, to Angelsaxiske Digte. Copenhagen, 1847.


~Thorkelin, G.J.~--De Danorum rebus gestis secul. III. et IV. poema Danicum dialecto Anglosaxonica. Havniæ, 1815. Latin translation.


~Thorpe, B.~--The Anglo-Saxon Poems of Beowulf, the Scôp or Gleeman's Tale, and the Fight at Finnsburg. Oxford, 1855. English translation in short lines, generally containing two stresses.


~Wackerbarth, A.D.~--Beowulf, translated into English verse. London, 1849.


[The figures refer to the divisions of the poem in which the respective names occur. The large figures refer to fitts, the small, to lines in the fitts.]


~Ælfhere~.--A kinsman of Wiglaf.--36_3.


~Æschere~.--Confidential friend of King Hrothgar. Elder brother of Yrmenlaf. Killed by Grendel.--213; 3089.


~Beanstan~.--Father of Breca.--9_26.


~Beowulf~.--Son of Scyld, the founder of the dynasty of Scyldings. Father of Healfdene, and grandfather of Hrothgar.--118; 21.


~Beowulf~.--The hero of the poem. Sprung from the stock of Geats, son of Ecgtheow. Brought up by his maternal grandfather Hrethel, and figuring in manhood as a devoted liegeman of his uncle Higelac. A hero from his youth. Has the strength of thirty men. Engages in a swimming-match with Breca. Goes to the help of Hrothgar against the monster Grendel. Vanquishes Grendel and his mother. Afterwards becomes king of the Geats. Late in life attempts to kill a fire-spewing dragon, and is slain. Is buried with great honors. His memorial mound.--626; 72; 79; 93; 98; 1228; 1243; 231, etc.


~Breca~.--Beowulf's opponent in the famous swimming-match.--98; 919; 921; 922.


~Brondings~.--A people ruled by Breca.--9_23.


~Brosinga mene~.--A famous collar once owned by the Brosings.--19_7.


~Cain~.--Progenitor of Grendel and other monsters.--256; 2011.


~Dæghrefn~.--A warrior of the Hugs, killed by Beowulf.--35_40.


~Danes~.--Subjects of Scyld and his descendants, and hence often called Scyldings. Other names for them are Victory-Scyldings, Honor-Scyldings, Armor-Danes, Bright-Danes, East-Danes, West-Danes, North-Danes, South-Danes, Ingwins, Hrethmen.--11; 21; 32; 514; 7_1, etc.


~Ecglaf~.--Father of Unferth, who taunts Beowulf.--9_1.


~Ecgtheow~.--Father of Beowulf, the hero of the poem. A widely-known Wægmunding warrior. Marries Hrethel's daughter. After slaying Heatholaf, a Wylfing, he flees his country.--73; 56; 8_4.


~Ecgwela~.--A king of the Danes before Scyld.--25_60.


~Elan~.--Sister of Hrothgar, and probably wife of Ongentheow, king of the Swedes.--2_10.


~Eagle Cape~.--A promontory in Geat-land, under which took place Beowulf's last encounter.--41_87.


~Eadgils~.--Son of Ohthere and brother of Eanmund.--34_2.


~Eanmund~.--Son of Ohthere and brother of Eadgils. The reference to these brothers is vague, and variously understood. Heyne supposes as follows: Raising a revolt against their father, they are obliged to leave Sweden. They go to the land of the Geats; with what intention, is not known, but probably to conquer and plunder. The Geatish king, Heardred, is slain by one of the brothers, probably Eanmund.--3610; 3154 to 3160; 3366 to 34_6.


~Eofor~.--A Geatish hero who slays Ongentheow in war, and is rewarded by Hygelac with the hand of his only daughter.--4118; 4148.


~Eormenric~.--A Gothic king, from whom Hama took away the famous Brosinga mene.--19_9.


~Eomær~.--Son of Offa and Thrytho, king and queen of the Angles.--28_69.


~Finn~.--King of the North-Frisians and the Jutes. Marries Hildeburg. At his court takes place the horrible slaughter in which the Danish general, Hnæf, fell. Later on, Finn himself is slain by Danish warriors.--1718; 1730; 1744; 184; 18_23.


~Fin-land~.--The country to which Beowulf was driven by the currents in his swimming-match.--10_22.


~Fitela~.--Son and nephew of King Sigemund, whose praises are sung in XIV.--1442; 1453.


~Folcwalda~.--Father of Finn.--17_38.


~Franks~.--Introduced occasionally in referring to the death of Higelac.--1919; 4021; 40_24.


~Frisians~.--A part of them are ruled by Finn. Some of them were engaged in the struggle in which Higelac was slain.--1720; 1742; 1752; 4021.


~Freaware~.--Daughter of King Hrothgar. Married to Ingeld, a Heathobard prince.--2960; 3032.


~Froda~.--King of the Heathobards, and father of Ingeld.--29_62.


~Garmund~.--Father of Offa.--28_71.


~Geats, Geatmen~.--The race to which the hero of the poem belongs. Also called Weder-Geats, or Weders, War-Geats, Sea-Geats. They are ruled by Hrethel, Hæthcyn, Higelac, and Beowulf.--47; 74; 1045; 118; 2714; 288.


~Gepids~.--Named in connection with the Danes and Swedes.--35_34.


~Grendel~.--A monster of the race of Cain. Dwells in the fens and moors. Is furiously envious when he hears sounds of joy in Hrothgar's palace. Causes the king untold agony for years. Is finally conquered by Beowulf, and dies of his wound. His hand and arm are hung up in Hrothgar's hall Heorot. His head is cut off by Beowulf when he goes down to fight with Grendel's mother.--250; 31; 313; 819; 1117; 122; 1327; 153.


~Guthlaf~.--A Dane of Hnæf's party.--18_24.


~Half-Danes~.--Branch of the Danes to which Hnæf belonged.--17_19.


~Halga~.--Surnamed the Good. Younger brother of Hrothgar.--2_9.


~Hama~.--Takes the Brosinga mene from Eormenric.--19_7.


~Hæreth~.--Father of Higelac's queen, Hygd.--2839; 2918.


~Hæthcyn~.--Son of Hrethel and brother of Higelac. Kills his brother Herebeald accidentally. Is slain at Ravenswood, fighting against Ongentheow.--3443; 3523; 40_32.


~Helmings~.--The race to which Queen Wealhtheow belonged.--10_63.


~Heming~.--A kinsman of Garmund, perhaps nephew.--2854; 2870.


~Hengest~.--A Danish leader. Takes command on the fall of Hnæf.--1733; 1741.


~Herebeald~.--Eldest son of Hrethel, the Geatish king, and brother of Higelac. Killed by his younger brother Hæthcyn.--3443; 3447.


~Heremod~.--A Danish king of a dynasty before the Scylding line. Was a source of great sorrow to his people.--1464; 2559.


~Hereric~.--Referred to as uncle of Heardred, but otherwise unknown.--31_60.


~Hetwars~.--Another name for the Franks.--33_51.


~Healfdene~.--Grandson of Scyld and father of Hrothgar. Ruled the Danes long and well.--25; 41; 8_14.


~Heardred~.--Son of Higelac and Hygd, king and queen of the Geats. Succeeds his father, with Beowulf as regent. Is slain by the sons of Ohthere.--3156; 3363; 33_75.


~Heathobards~.--Race of Lombards, of which Froda is king. After Froda falls in battle with the Danes, Ingeld, his son, marries Hrothgar's daughter, Freaware, in order to heal the feud.--301; 306.


~Heatholaf~.--A Wylfing warrior slain by Beowulf's father.--8_5.


~Heathoremes~.--The people on whose shores Breca is cast by the waves during his contest with Beowulf.--9_21.


~Heorogar~.--Elder brother of Hrothgar, and surnamed 'Weoroda Ræswa,' Prince of the Troopers.--29; 812.


~Hereward~.--Son of the above.--31_17.


~Heort~, ~Heorot~.--The great mead-hall which King Hrothgar builds. It is invaded by Grendel for twelve years. Finally cleansed by Beowulf, the Geat. It is called Heort on account of the hart-antlers which decorate it.--225; 332; 3_52.


~Hildeburg~.--Wife of Finn, daughter of Hoce, and related to Hnæf,--probably his sister.--1721; 1834.


~Hnæf~.--Leader of a branch of the Danes called Half-Danes. Killed in the struggle at Finn's castle.--1719; 1761.


~Hondscio~.--One of Beowulf's companions. Killed by Grendel just before Beowulf grappled with that monster.--30_43.


~Hoce~.--Father of Hildeburg and probably of Hnæf.--17_26.


~Hrethel~.--King of the Geats, father of Higelac, and grandfather of Beowulf.--74; 3439.


~Hrethla~.--Once used for Hrethel.--7_82.


~Hrethmen~.--Another name for the Danes.--7_73.


~Hrethric~.--Son of Hrothgar.--1865; 2719.


~Hreosna-beorh~.--A promontory in Geat-land, near which Ohthere's sons made plundering raids.--35_18.


~Hrothgar~.--The Danish king who built the hall Heort, but was long unable to enjoy it on account of Grendel's persecutions. Marries Wealhtheow, a Helming lady. Has two sons and a daughter. Is a typical Teutonic king, lavish of gifts. A devoted liegelord, as his lamentations over slain liegemen prove. Also very appreciative of kindness, as is shown by his loving gratitude to Beowulf.--29; 212; 41; 810; 15_1; etc., etc.


~Hrothmund~.--Son of Hrothgar.--18_65.


~Hrothulf~.--Probably a son of Halga, younger brother of Hrothgar. Certainly on terms of close intimacy in Hrothgar's palace.--1626; 1857.


~Hrunting~.--Unferth's sword, lent to Beowulf.--2271; 259.


~Hugs~.--A race in alliance with the Franks and Frisians at the time of Higelac's fall.--35_41.


~Hun~.--A Frisian warrior, probably general of the Hetwars. Gives Hengest a beautiful sword.--18_19.


~Hunferth~.--Sometimes used for Unferth.


~Hygelac~, ~Higelac~.--King of the Geats, uncle and liegelord of Beowulf, the hero of the poem.--His second wife is the lovely Hygd, daughter of Hæreth. The son of their union is Heardred. Is slain in a war with the Hugs, Franks, and Frisians combined. Beowulf is regent, and afterwards king of the Geats.--46; 54; 2834; 299; 2921; 3156.


~Hygd~.--Wife of Higelac, and daughter of Hæreth. There are some indications that she married Beowulf after she became a widow.--28_37.


~Ingeld~.--Son of the Heathobard king, Froda. Marries Hrothgar's daughter, Freaware, in order to reconcile the two peoples.--2962; 3032.


~Ingwins~.--Another name for the Danes.--1652; 2069.


~Jutes~.--Name sometimes applied to Finn's people.--1722; 1738; 18_17.


~Lafing~.--Name of a famous sword presented to Hengest by Hun.--18_19.


~Merewing~.--A Frankish king, probably engaged in the war in which Higelac was slain.--40_29.


~Offa~.--King of the Angles, and son of Garmund. Marries the terrible Thrytho who is so strongly contrasted with Hygd.--2859; 2866.


~Ohthere~.--Son of Ongentheow, king of the Swedes. He is father of Eanmund and Eadgils.--4035; 4039.


~Onela~.--Brother of Ohthere.--3615; 4039.


~Ongentheow~.--King of Sweden, of the Scylfing dynasty. Married, perhaps, Elan, daughter of Healfdene.--3526; 4116.


~Oslaf~.--A Dane of Hnæf's party.--18_24.


~Ravenswood~.--The forest near which Hæthcyn was slain.--4031; 4041.


~Scefing~.--Applied (1_4) to Scyld, and meaning 'son of Scef.'


~Scyld~.--Founder of the dynasty to which Hrothgar, his father, and grandfather belonged. He dies, and his body is put on a vessel, and set adrift. He goes from Daneland just as he had come to it--in a bark.--14; 119; 1_27.


~Scyldings~.--The descendants of Scyld. They are also called Honor-Scyldings, Victory-Scyldings, War-Scyldings, etc. (See 'Danes,' above.)--21; 71; 8_1.


~Scylfings~.--A Swedish royal line to which Wiglaf belonged.--36_2.


~Sigemund~.--Son of Wæls, and uncle and father of Fitela. His struggle with a dragon is related in connection with Beowulf's deeds of prowess.--1438; 1447.


~Swerting~.--Grandfather of Higelac, and father of Hrethel.--19_11.


~Swedes~.--People of Sweden, ruled by the Scylfings.--35_13.


~Thrytho~.--Wife of Offa, king of the Angles. Known for her fierce and unwomanly disposition. She is introduced as a contrast to the gentle Hygd, queen of Higelac.--2842; 2856.


~Unferth~.--Son of Ecglaf, and seemingly a confidential courtier of Hrothgar. Taunts Beowulf for having taken part in the swimming-match. Lends Beowulf his sword when he goes to look for Grendel's mother. In the MS. sometimes written Hunferth. 91; 1841.


~Wæls~.--Father of Sigemund.--14_60.


~Wægmunding~.--A name occasionally applied to Wiglaf and Beowulf, and perhaps derived from a common ancestor, Wægmund.--366; 3861.


~Weders~.--Another name for Geats or Wedergeats.


~Wayland~.--A fabulous smith mentioned in this poem and in other old Teutonic literature.--7_83.


~Wendels~.--The people of Wulfgar, Hrothgar's messenger and retainer. (Perhaps = Vandals.)--6_30.


~Wealhtheow~.--Wife of Hrothgar. Her queenly courtesy is well shown in the poem.--10_55.


~Weohstan~, or ~Wihstan~.--A Wægmunding, and father of Wiglaf.--36_1.


~Whale's Ness~.--A prominent promontory, on which Beowulf's mound was built.--3852; 4276.


~Wiglaf~.--Son of Wihstan, and related to Beowulf. He remains faithful to Beowulf in the fatal struggle with the fire-drake. Would rather die than leave his lord in his dire emergency.--361; 363; 36_28.


~Wonred~.--Father of Wulf and Eofor.--4120; 4126.


~Wulf~.--Son of Wonred. Engaged in the battle between Higelac's and Ongentheow's forces, and had a hand-to-hand fight with Ongentheow himself. Ongentheow disables him, and is thereupon slain by Eofor.--4119; 4129.


~Wulfgar~.--Lord of the Wendels, and retainer of Hrothgar.--618; 630.


~Wylfings~.--A people to whom belonged Heatholaf, who was slain by Ecgtheow.--86; 816.


~Yrmenlaf~.--Younger brother of Æschere, the hero whose death grieved Hrothgar so deeply.--21_4.


BAIRN.--Son, child.


BARROW.--Mound, rounded hill, funeral-mound.


BATTLE-SARK.--Armor.


BOSS.--Ornamental projection.


BRACTEATE.--A round ornament on a necklace.


BURN.--Stream.


BURNIE.--Armor.


CARLE.--Man, hero.


EARL.--Nobleman, any brave man.


EKE.--Also.


ERST.--Formerly.


ERST-WORTHY.--Worthy for a long time past.


FERRY.--Bear, carry.


FEY.--Fated, doomed.


FLOAT.--Vessel, ship.


HEFT.--Handle, hilt; used by synecdoche for 'sword.'


HELM.--Helmet, protector.


HIGHT.--Am (was) named.


HOLM.--Ocean, curved surface of the sea.


HIMSEEMED.--(It) seemed to him.


MERE.--Sea; in compounds, 'mere-ways,' 'mere-currents,' etc.


NATHLESS.--Nevertheless.


NESS.--Edge.


NICKER.--Sea-beast.


RATHE.--Quickly.


SETTLE.--Seat, bench.


SKINKER.--One who pours.


SOOTHLY.--Truly.


SWINGE.--Stroke, blow.


TARGE, TARGET.--Shield.


THROUGHLY.--Thoroughly.


TOLD.--Counted.


UNNETHE.--Difficult.


WAR-SPEED.--Success in war.


WEB.--Tapestry (that which is 'woven').


WEEDED.--Clad (cf. widow's weeds).


WEIRD.--Fate, Providence.


WHILOM.--At times, formerly, often.


WIELDER.--Ruler. Often used of God; also in compounds, as 'Wielder of Glory,' 'Wielder of Worship.'


WOLD.--Plane, extended surface.


YOUNKER.--Youth.


{The famous race of Spear-Danes.}


Lo! the Spear-Danes' glory through splendid achievements The folk-kings' former fame we have heard of, How princes displayed then their prowess-in-battle.


{Scyld, their mighty king, in honor of whom they are often called Scyldings. He is the great-grandfather of Hrothgar, so prominent in the poem.}


Oft Scyld the Scefing from scathers in numbers 5 From many a people their mead-benches tore. Since first he found him friendless and wretched, The earl had had terror: comfort he got for it, Waxed 'neath the welkin, world-honor gained, Till all his neighbors o'er sea were compelled to 10 Bow to his bidding and bring him their tribute: An excellent atheling! After was borne him