{"chapter_no":"44","chapter_title":"Jean Valjean, A Tree Pruner","book_id":"3","book_name":"Springville","subchapter_no":"0","page_no":"591","page_number":"1","verses_count":0,"total_pages":3,"page_content":"

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Chapter 44<\/p>

Jean Valjean, A Tree Pruner<\/h1><\/p>

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The story of Jean Valjean as a tree-pruner<\/i> and his later crime—for which he was imprisoned—of
stealing a loaf of bread<\/i>.<\/i><\/p>

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Jean Valjean came from a poor peasant family of Brie. He had not learned to read in his
childhood. When he reached man's estate, he became a tree-pruner at Faverolles. His mother
was named Jeanne Mathieu; his father was called Jean Valjean or Vlajean, probably a
sobriquet, and a contraction of viola Jean, \"here's Jean.\" Jean Valjean was of that thoughtful but
not gloomy disposition which constitutes the peculiarity of affectionate natures. On the whole,
however, there was something decidedly sluggish and insignificant about Jean Valjean in
appearance, at least. He had lost his father and mother at a very early age. His mother had died
of a milk fever, which had not been properly attended to. His father, a tree-pruner, like himself,
had been killed by a fall from a tree. All that remained to Jean Valjean was a sister older than
himself,—a widow with seven children, boys and girls. This sister had brought up Jean Valjean,
and so long as she had a husband she lodged and fed her young brother. The husband died. The
eldest of the seven children was eight years old. The youngest, one. Jean Valjean had just
attained his twenty-fifth year. He took the father's place, and, in his turn, supported the sister
who had brought him up. This was done simply as a duty and even a little churlishly on the part
of Jean Valjean. Thus his youth had been spent in rude and ill-paid toil. <\/i><\/p>

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He had never known a \"kind woman friend\" in his native parts. He had not had the time
to fall in love. He returned at night weary, and ate his broth without uttering a word. His sister,
mother Jeanne, often took the best part of his repast from his bowl while he was eating,—a bit of
meat, a slice of bacon, the heart of the cabbage,—to give to one of her children. As he went on
eating, with his head bent over the table and almost into his soup, his long hair falling about his
bowl and concealing his eyes, he had the air of perceiving nothing and allowing it.<\/i><\/p>

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There was at Faverolles, not far from the Valjean thatched cottage, on the other side of
the lane, a farmer's wife named Marie-Claude; the Valjean children, habitually famished,
sometimes went to borrow from Marie-Claude a pint of milk, in their mother's name, which they
drank behind a hedge or in some alley corner, snatching the jug from each other so hastily that
the little girls spilled it on their aprons and down their necks. If their mother had known of this
marauding, she would have punished the delinquents severely. Jean Valjean gruffly and
grumblingly paid Marie-Claude for the pint of milk behind their mother's back, and the children
were not punished. <\/i><\/p>

In pruning season he earned eighteen sous a day; then he hired out as a hay-maker, as
laborer, as neat-herd on a farm, as a drudge. He did whatever he could. His sister worked also
but what could she do with seven little children? It was a sad group enveloped in misery, which
was being gradually annihilated. A very hard winter came. Jean had no work. The family had no
bread. No bread literally. Seven children! <\/i><\/p>

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One Sunday evening, Maubert<\/i> <\/i>Isabeau, the baker on the Church Square at Faverolles,
was preparing to go to bed, when he heard a violent blow on the grated front of his shop. He
arrived in time to see an arm passed through a hole made by a blow from a fist, through the
grating and the glass. The arm seized a loaf of bread and carried it off. Isabeau ran out in haste;
the robber fled at the full speed of his legs. Isabeau ran after him and stopped him. The thief had
flung away the loaf, but his arm was still bleeding. It was Jean Valjean. <\/i><\/p>

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This took place in 1795. Jean Valjean was taken before the tribunals of the time for theft
and breaking and entering an inhabited house at night. He had a gun which he used better than
any one else in the world, he was a bit of a poacher, and this injured his case. There exists a
legitimate prejudice against poachers. The poacher, like the smuggler, smacks too strongly of the
brigand. Nevertheless, we will remark cursorily, there is still an abyss between these races of
men and the hideous assassin of the towns. The poacher lives in the forest, the smuggler lives in
the mountains or on the sea. The cities make ferocious men because they make corrupt men. The
mountain, the sea, <\/i>the forest<\/i>, make savage men; they develop the fierce side, but often without
destroying the humane side. Jean Valjean was pronounced guilty. The terms of the Code were
explicit. There occur formidable hours in our civilization; there are moments when the penal
laws decree a shipwreck. What an ominous minute is that in which society draws back and
consummates the irreparable abandonment of a sentient being! Jean Valjean was condemned to
five years in the galleys.<\/i><\/p>

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On the 22d of April, 1796, the victory of Montenotte, won by the general-in-chief of the
army of Italy, whom the message of the Directory to the Five Hundred, of the 2d of Floreal, year
IV., calls Buona-Parte, was announced in Paris; on that same day a great gang of galley-slaves
was put in chains at Bicêtre. Jean Valjean formed a part of that gang. An old turnkey of the
prison, who is now nearly eighty years old, still recalls perfectly that unfortunate wretch who
was chained to the end of the fourth line, in the north angle of the courtyard. He was seated on
the ground like the others. He did not seem to comprehend his position, except that it was
horrible. It is probable that he, also, was disentangling from amid the vague ideas of a poor
man, ignorant of everything, something excessive. While the bolt of his iron collar was being
riveted behind his head with heavy blows from the hammer, he wept, his tears stifled him, they
impeded his speech; he only managed to say from time to time, \"I was a tree-pruner at
Faverolles.\" Then still sobbing, he raised his right hand and lowered it gradually seven times, as
though he were touching in succession seven heads of unequal heights, and from this gesture it
was divined that the thing which he had done, whatever it was, he had done for the sake of
clothing and nourishing seven little children. <\/i><\/p>

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He set out for Toulon. He arrived there, after a journey of twenty-seven days, on a cart,
with a chain on his neck. At Toulon he was clothed in the red cassock. All that had constituted
his life, even to his name, was effaced; he was no longer even Jean Valjean; he was number <\/i><\/p>

24,601. What became of his sister? What became of the seven children? Who troubled himself
about that? What becomes of the handful of leaves from the young tree which is sawed off at the
root?<\/i><\/p>

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It is always the same story. These poor living beings, these creatures of God, henceforth
without support, without guide, without refuge, wandered away at random,—who even knows?—
each in his own direction perhaps, and little by little buried themselves in that cold mist which
engulfs solitary destinies; gloomy shades, into which disappear in succession so many unlucky
heads, in the sombre march of the human race. They quitted the country. The clock-tower of
what had been their village forgot them; the boundary line of what had been their field forgot
them; after a few years' residence in the galleys, Jean Valjean himself forgot them. In that heart,
where there had been a wound, there was a scar. That is all. <\/i><\/p>

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Only once, during all the time which he spent at Toulon, did he hear his sister mentioned.
This happened, I think, towards the end of the fourth year of his captivity. I know not through
what channels the news reached him. Some one who had known them in their own country had
seen his sister. She was in Paris. She lived in a poor street Rear Saint-Sulpice, in the Rue du
Gindre. She had with her only one child, a little boy, the youngest. Where were the other six?
Perhaps she did not know herself. Every morning she went to a printing office, No. 3 Rue du
Sabot, where she was a folder and stitcher. She was obliged to be there at six o'clock in the
morning—long before daylight in winter. In the same building with the printing office there was
a school, and to this school she took her little boy, who was seven years old. But as she entered
the printing office at six, and the school only opened at seven, the child had to wait in the
courtyard, for the school to open, for an hour—one hour of a winter night in the open air! They
would not allow the child to come into the printing office, because he was in the way, they said.
When the workmen passed in the morning, they beheld this poor little being seated on the
pavement, overcome with drowsiness, and often fast asleep in the shadow, crouched down and
doubled up over his basket. When it rained, an old woman, the portress, took pity on him; she
took him into her den, where there was a pallet, a spinning-wheel, and two wooden chairs, and
the little one slumbered in a corner, pressing himself close to the cat that he might suffer less
from cold. At seven o'clock the school opened, and he entered. That is what was told to Jean
Valjean. They talked to him about it for one day; it was a moment, a flash, as though a window
had suddenly been opened upon the destiny of those things whom he had loved; then all closed
again. He heard nothing more forever. Nothing from them ever reached him again; he never
beheld them; he never met them again; and in the continuation of this mournful history they will
not be met with any more.<\/i><\/p>"}