CHAPTER V--A PROVIDENTIAL PEEP-HOLE

  Marius had lived for five years in poverty, in destitution, even indistress, but he now perceived that he had not known real misery. Truemisery he had but just had a view of. It was its spectre which had justpassed before his eyes. In fact, he who has only beheld the misery ofman has seen nothing; the misery of woman is what he must see; he whohas seen only the misery of woman has seen nothing; he must see themisery of the child.

  When a man has reached his last extremity, he has reached his lastresources at the same time. Woe to the defenceless beings who surroundhim! Work, wages, bread, fire, courage, good will, all fail himsimultaneously. The light of day seems extinguished without, the morallight within; in these shadows man encounters the feebleness of thewoman and the child, and bends them violently to ignominy.

  Then all horrors become possible. Despair is surrounded with fragilepartitions which all open on either vice or crime.

  Health, youth, honor, all the shy delicacies of the young body, theheart, virginity, modesty, that epidermis of the soul, are manipulatedin sinister wise by that fumbling which seeks resources, whichencounters opprobrium, and which accommodates itself to it. Fathers,mothers, children, brothers, sisters, men, women, daughters, adhereand become incorporated, almost like a mineral formation, in that duskypromiscuousness of sexes, relationships, ages, infamies, and innocences.They crouch, back to back, in a sort of hut of fate. They exchangewoe-begone glances. Oh, the unfortunate wretches! How pale they are! Howcold they are! It seems as though they dwelt in a planet much furtherfrom the sun than ours.

  This young girl was to Marius a sort of messenger from the realm of sadshadows. She revealed to him a hideous side of the night.

  Marius almost reproached himself for the preoccupations of revery andpassion which had prevented his bestowing a glance on his neighbors upto that day. The payment of their rent had been a mechanical movement,which any one would have yielded to; but he, Marius, should have donebetter than that. What! only a wall separated him from those abandonedbeings who lived gropingly in the dark outside the pale of the rest ofthe world, he was elbow to elbow with them, he was, in some sort, thelast link of the human race which they touched, he heard them live, orrather, rattle in the death agony beside him, and he paid no heed tothem! Every day, every instant, he heard them walking on the other sideof the wall, he heard them go, and come, and speak, and he did not evenlend an ear! And groans lay in those words, and he did not even listento them, his thoughts were elsewhere, given up to dreams, to impossibleradiances, to loves in the air, to follies; and all the while, humancreatures, his brothers in Jesus Christ, his brothers in the people,were agonizing in vain beside him! He even formed a part of theirmisfortune, and he aggravated it. For if they had had another neighborwho was less chimerical and more attentive, any ordinary and charitableman, evidently their indigence would have been noticed, their signals ofdistress would have been perceived, and they would have been taken holdof and rescued! They appeared very corrupt and very depraved, nodoubt, very vile, very odious even; but those who fall without becomingdegraded are rare; besides, there is a point where the unfortunate andthe infamous unite and are confounded in a single word, a fatal word,_the miserable_; whose fault is this? And then should not the charity beall the more profound, in proportion as the fall is great?

  While reading himself this moral lesson, for there were occasions onwhich Marius, like all truly honest hearts, was his own pedagogue andscolded himself more than he deserved, he stared at the wall whichseparated him from the Jondrettes, as though he were able to make hisgaze, full of pity, penetrate that partition and warm these wretchedpeople. The wall was a thin layer of plaster upheld by lathes and beams,and, as the reader had just learned, it allowed the sound of voices andwords to be clearly distinguished. Only a man as dreamy as Marius couldhave failed to perceive this long before. There was no paper pasted onthe wall, either on the side of the Jondrettes or on that of Marius; thecoarse construction was visible in its nakedness. Marius examined thepartition, almost unconsciously; sometimes revery examines, observes,and scrutinizes as thought would. All at once he sprang up; he had justperceived, near the top, close to the ceiling, a triangular hole, whichresulted from the space between three lathes. The plaster which shouldhave filled this cavity was missing, and by mounting on the commode,a view could be had through this aperture into the Jondrettes' attic.Commiseration has, and should have, its curiosity. This aperture formeda sort of peep-hole. It is permissible to gaze at misfortune like atraitor in order to succor it.27

  "Let us get some little idea of what these people are like," thoughtMarius, "and in what condition they are."

  He climbed upon the commode, put his eye to the crevice, and looked.