Free eBooks at Planet eBook.com 141
mon, from moralizing, from allusions? and is not the truest
pity, when a man has a sore point, not to touch it at all? It has
seemed to me that this might have been my brother’s private
thought. In any case, what I can say is that, if he entertained
all these ideas, he gave no sign of them; from beginning to
end, even to me he was the same as he is every evening, and
he supped with this Jean Valjean with the same air and in
the same manner in which he would have supped with M.
Gedeon le Provost, or with the curate of the parish.
‘Towards the end, when he had reached the figs, there
came a knock at the door. It was Mother Gerbaud, with her
little one in her arms. My brother kissed the child on the
brow, and borrowed fifteen sous which I had about me to
give to Mother Gerbaud. The man was not paying much
heed to anything then. He was no longer talking, and he
seemed very much fatigued. After poor old Gerbaud had
taken her departure, my brother said grace; then he turned
to the man and said to him, ‘You must be in great need of
your bed.’ Madame Magloire cleared the table very prompt-
ly. I understood that we must retire, in order to allow this
traveller to go to sleep, and we both went up stairs. Never-
theless, I sent Madame Magloire down a moment later, to
carry to the man’s bed a goat skin from the Black Forest,
which was in my room. The nights are frigid, and that keeps
one warm. It is a pity that this skin is old; all the hair is fall-
ing out. My brother bought it while he was in Germany, at
Tottlingen, near the sources of the Danube, as well as the
little ivory-handled knife which I use at table.
‘Madame Magloire returned immediately. We said our