Les Miserables Read Online Free PDF Page A

clothes were shabby. I guessed he was a student.
    From then on, he was
always
in the garden when we were. We passed one another each day but never spoke.
    The next year, the young man began to change. He dressed better. He sat on a bench closer to ours. He gazed shyly at Cosette.
    When I saw Cosette return his gaze, I was upset. She was interested in him also!
    I wanted my life with Cosette to go on forever. She was the only happiness I had ever known. I moved us to a new house. The walks in the garden stopped.
    Cosette never said a word about the move. She missed our walks. And, I knew, she missed the young man. There was a kind of sadness in her now. Our life together was not as it once was.
    But one day things changed. The young man, who had been out of our lives for months, came back.
    I was standing outside the church one winter morning. A girl handed me a note from her father, “P. Fabantou.”
    Fabantou was an actor out of work. He asked me for money. He also asked me to come to his home. He wanted me to see how far he’d fallen.
    I knew the address. It was the same building Cosette and I had lived in years ago! I said I would be there that afternoon.
    I was nervous. Cosette and I had run from that old building with Javert on our heels. I never wanted to see that place again. But I had given my word.
    The building was in even worse shape than before. It was hard to believe that people could live in it. But the streets of Paris are full of people without homes. Many of them would think it was a palace.
    I tapped on Fabantou’s door. It was opened by a small, bony man. He had the sharp stare of a weasel. Where had I seen his face before?
    â€œPlease come in, my dear sir!” he said, bowing low. “Please enter, with your charming young lady.”
    Cosette and I entered.
    I found out later that Marius, the youngman from the garden, lived next door. At that moment, he was peering at us through a hole in the wall. He knew things about Fabantou that I was yet to learn.
    No doubt Marius was shocked to see us. But here we were—the old gentleman and the girl he lost months ago. There she was before his eyes!
    The room was like a cave—dark and cold. A window was broken and an icy breeze blew in. There was no fire in the fireplace.
    Fabantou’s wife was in bed with a cold. A girl sat on the floor by the bed. Her wrist was bleeding. It was wrapped in a piece of torn shirt.
    These were truly
les misérables
—the outcasts, the underdogs. They were as I had been during my prison days. We were people that life destroyed.
    â€œHere are blankets and woolen stockings,”I said. I put a bundle on the table.
    Fabantou asked me how he had signed his letter.
    â€œIt was signed ‘Fabantou, the dramatic artist,’” I replied.
    Only later did I learn that this wicked man used many different names. He wrote letters asking for money. He had a different story to go with each name.
    â€œYou see how we live, monsieur,” said Fabantou. He swept an arm around the room as he spoke.
    â€œThe only rag of clothing I own is this torn shirt of my wife’s. I can’t go out to look for work because I have no coat. I owe a whole year’s rent. Sixty francs! And it’s due tomorrow!”
    I pulled off my brown overcoat and laid it across the back of a broken chair. I gave him five francs.
    â€œThat’s all the money I have on me,” I said. “But I will be back at six with sixty francs for your rent.”
    Cosette and I left. We did not know that Marius ran after us. Our buggy had taken off before he reached the street.
    Marius didn’t have money for a buggy. He stood in the street and watched the girl he loved get away once more.
    And Fabantou? I didn’t know it then. Fabantou was setting a trap for me. I would walk freely into that trap, but barely escape with my life.

Trapped!
    I was back at six o’clock with the money. Cosette was safe at