Chapter 26 ten people woke up

The cathedral clock was striking two in the morning when Jean Valjean awoke. The bed was so comfortable that he woke up.He hadn't slept in a bed for nearly nineteen years. Although he didn't take off his clothes, the feeling was too novel to affect his sleep. He had slept for more than four hours, and his fatigue had passed.He has long been used to not spending too much time on rest. He opened his eyes for a moment to look into the darkness around him, then closed them again, trying to sleep a little longer. If the feelings during the day are too complicated and there are too many things in our minds, we can only sleep, but not fall asleep again. It is easy to fall asleep, but difficult to fall asleep again.Such was the case with Jean Valjean.He can't sleep anymore, he thought.

He was going through this moment of disorganized thought, with this unseen thing coming and going in his head.His old hatreds and new sorrows tossed and tossed in his heart, messy and incoherent, lost their shape, and expanded their scope infinitely, and then seemed to disappear suddenly in a raging turbid current .He thought of many things, but one of them came up again and again, and excluded the rest.This one, we said at once, and he noticed the six sets of silverware and the large spoon that Madame Magloire had first placed on the table. Those six sets of silver irritated him.Those things are there.Just a few steps.When he came into his room through the next room just now, the old lady was putting those things in the small closet by the bed.He paid special attention to the closet.Into the dining room, go right.How heavy are those things!And it is ancient silverware, even the big spoon can sell for at least two hundred francs.It was double what he had earned in nineteen years.Indeed, if the "government" hadn't "stealed" him, he might have earned a few more coins.

He went back and forth in his mind, hesitated, and struggled for a whole hour.Three o'clock struck.He opened his eyes again, sat up suddenly, stretched out his hand to touch the cloth bag that he had thrown in the corner of the alcove earlier, then he dropped his legs and put his feet on the ground again, hardly knowing how he could sit on the edge of the bed . He sat like that, dazed for a while, everyone in the house fell asleep, but he alone was awake, if anyone saw him sitting like that in a dark corner, they would be surprised.He suddenly bent down, took off his shoes, put them lightly on the mat in front of the bed, and resumed his dazed look, staying still.

In that dreadful thought, the idea we have just pointed out was constantly turning in his mind, going in and out, coming out and going in again, which made him feel a kind of pressure; With the mechanical obstinacy of his dreams, he thought of a prisoner named Brevet whom he had once known in prison, whose trousers were only hung by a cotton suspenders.The checkerboard pattern of the suspenders kept replaying in his mind. He remained motionless in that state, and might have remained there till morning, if the wall clock hadn't struck that one--a quarter or a half-hour.That one seemed to say to him: "Come on!"

He stood up, hesitated for a while, and listened carefully, but there was no sound in the house, so he walked forward in small steps to the faintly discernible window.The night was not very dark at that time, the wind was high and the moon was full, covered by white clouds; the clouds came and went, and the moon was hidden, and the clouds passed the moon, so it was sometimes bright and sometimes dark outside the window, and there were occasional glimmers of light inside.That kind of dim light is enough to make people walk in the room, and because of the effect of moving clouds, the room is also bright and dark, as if people are in the basement and see people coming and going outside the windshield from time to time, so the dim light in the room also becomes stronger and stronger. weak.Jean Valjean went to the window, and looked at it carefully. It had no iron bars, but was fastened only by its live ends, as was the custom in that place.Outside the window is the garden.He opened the window, and a sudden blast of cold air entered the room, and he closed it again at once.He took a good look at the garden, or rather, studied it.The garden was surrounded by a white wall, rather low and easy to climb over.At the end of the garden, beyond the wall, he saw rows of treetops at equal distances from one another, indicating that beyond the wall was an avenue, or a path planted with trees.

After that glance, he made a gesture of determination, went to the alcove, picked up his cloth bag, opened it, found something inside, put it on the bed, and stuffed his shoes into the bag , buttoned the cloth bag, put it on his shoulders, put on his cap, the brim of which reached his eyebrows, reached for his stick, put it on the corner of the window, returned to the bed, and resolutely picked up the stick that had been placed on the bed first. that thing.It looked like a short iron rod, one end ground to a point like a javelin. In the dark, it is not easy for us to discern the purpose of the iron rod to make it that way.This may be a crowbar, or an iron pestle.

Had it been daylight we would have recognized it as a miner's candle.At that time, convicts were often sent to collect rocks on the high hills around Toulon, and they often had miners' implements.A miner's candlestick is made of a thick iron bar, with a point at the lower end, so that it can be inserted into the rock. He held the candlestick in his right hand, held his breath, and walked lightly to the next room, which we knew to be the bishop's bedroom.Going to the door, he saw that the door was closed, leaving a gap.Bishop didn't shut it down.