Les Misérables
six sous a day. It may be necessary to cut off her arm.”
“Really?” said the old gentleman, in alarm.
The little girl, taking this seriously, fell to sobbing more violently
than ever.
“Alas! yes, my benefactor!” replied the father.
For several minutes, Jondrette had been scrutinizing “the benefactor”
in a singular fashion. As he spoke, he seemed to be examining the other
attentively, as though seeking to summon up his recollections. All at
once, profiting by a moment when the newcomers were questioning the
child with interest as to her injured hand, he passed near his wife,
who lay in her bed with a stupid and dejected air, and said to her in a
rapid but very low tone:—
“Take a look at that man!”
Then, turning to M. Leblanc, and continuing his lamentations:—
“You see, sir! All the clothing that I have is my wife’s chemise! And
all torn at that! In the depths of winter! I can’t go out for lack of a
coat. If I had a coat of any sort, I would go and see Mademoiselle
Mars, who knows me and is very fond of me. Does she not still reside in
the Rue de la Tour-des-Dames? Do you know, sir? We played together in
the provinces. I shared her laurels. Célimène would come to my succor,
sir! Elmire would bestow alms on Bélisaire! But no, nothing! And not a
sou in the house! My wife ill, and not a sou! My daughter dangerously
injured, not a sou! My wife suffers from fits of suffocation. It comes
from her age, and besides, her nervous system is affected. She ought to
have assistance, and my daughter also! But the doctor! But the
apothecary! How am I to pay them? I would kneel to a penny, sir! Such
is the condition to which the arts are reduced. And do you know, my
charming young lady, and you, my generous protector, do you know, you
who breathe forth virtue and goodness, and who perfume that church
where my daughter sees you every day when she says her prayers?—For I
have brought up my children religiously, sir. I did not want them to
take to the theatre. Ah! the hussies! If I catch them tripping! I do
not jest, that I don’t! I read them lessons on honor, on morality, on
virtue! Ask them! They have got to walk straight. They are none of your
unhappy wretches who begin by having no family, and end by espousing
the public. One is Mamselle Nobody, and one becomes Madame Everybody.
Deuce take it! None of that in the Fabantou family! I mean to bring
them up virtuously, and they shall be honest, and nice, and believe in
God, by the sacred name! Well, sir, my worthy sir, do you know what is
going to happen to-morrow? To-morrow is the fourth day of February, the
fatal day, the last day of grace allowed me by my landlord; if by this
evening I have not paid my rent, to-morrow my oldest daughter, my
spouse with her fever, my child with her wound,—we shall all four be
turned out of here and thrown into the street, on the boulevard,
without shelter, in the rain, in the snow. There, sir. I owe for four
quarters—a whole year! that is to say, sixty francs.”
Jondrette lied. Four quarters would have amounted to only forty francs,
and he could not owe four, because six months had not elapsed since
Marius had paid for two.
M. Leblanc drew five francs from his pocket and threw them on the
table.
Jondrette found time to mutter in the ear of his eldest daughter:—
“The scoundrel! What does he think I can do with his five francs? That
won’t pay me for my chair and pane of glass! That’s what comes of
incurring expenses!”
In the meanwhile, M. Leblanc had removed the large brown great-coat
which he wore over his blue coat, and had thrown it over the back of
the chair.
“Monsieur Fabantou,” he said, “these five francs are all that I have
about me, but I shall now take my daughter home, and I will return this
evening,—it is this evening that you must pay, is it not?”
Jondrette’s face lighted up with a strange expression. He replied
vivaciously:—
“Yes, respected sir. At eight o’clock, I must be at my landlord’s.”
“I will be here at six, and I will fetch you the sixty francs.”
“My benefactor!” exclaimed Jondrette, overwhelmed. And he added, in a
low tone: “Take a good look at him, wife!”
M. Leblanc had taken the arm of the young girl, once more, and had
turned towards the door.
“Farewell until this evening, my friends!” said he.
“Six o’clock?” said Jondrette.
“Six o’clock precisely.”
At that moment, the overcoat lying on the chair caught the eye of the
elder Jondrette girl.
“You are forgetting your coat, sir,” said she.
Jondrette darted an annihilating look at his daughter, accompanied by a
formidable shrug of the shoulders.
M. Leblanc turned back and said, with a smile:—
“I have not forgotten it, I am leaving it.”
“O my protector!” said Jondrette, “my august benefactor, I melt into
tears! Permit me to accompany you to your carriage.”
“If you come out,” answered M. Leblanc, “put on this coat. It really is
very cold.”
Jondrette did not need to be told twice. He hastily donned the brown
great-coat. And all three went out, Jondrette preceding the two
strangers.
CHAPTER X—TARIFF OF LICENSED CABS: TWO FRANCS AN HOUR
Marius had lost nothing of this entire scene, and yet, in reality, had
seen nothing. His eyes had remained fixed on the young girl, his heart
had, so to speak, seized her and wholly enveloped her from the moment
of her very first step in that garret. During her entire stay there, he
had lived that life of ecstasy which suspends material perceptions and
precipitates the whole soul on a single point. He contemplated, not
that girl, but that light which wore a satin pelisse and a velvet
bonnet. The star Sirius might have entered the room, and he would not
have been any more dazzled.
While the young girl was engaged in opening the package, unfolding the
clothing and the blankets, questioning the sick mother kindly, and the
little injured girl tenderly, he watched her every movement, he sought
to catch her words. He knew her eyes, her brow, her beauty, her form,
her walk, he did not know the sound of her voice. He had once fancied
that he had caught a few words at the Luxembourg, but he was not
absolutely sure of the fact. He would have given ten years of his life
to hear it, in order that he might bear away in his soul a little of
that music. But everything was drowned in the lamentable exclamations
and trumpet bursts of Jondrette. This added a touch of genuine wrath to
Marius’ ecstasy. He devoured her with his eyes. He could not believe
that it really was that divine creature whom he saw in the midst of
those vile creatures in that monstrous lair. It seemed to him that he
beheld a humming-bird in the midst of toads.
When she took her departure, he had but one thought, to follow her, to
cling to her trace, not to quit her until he learned where she lived,
not to lose her again, at least, after having so miraculously
re-discovered her. He leaped down from the commode and seized his hat.
As he laid his hand on the lock of the door, and was on the point of
opening it, a sudden reflection caused him to pause. The corridor was
long, the staircase steep, Jondrette was talkative, M. Leblanc had, no
doubt, not yet regained his carriage; if, on turning round in the
corridor, or on the staircase, he were to catch sight of him, Marius,
in that house, he would, evidently, take the alarm, and find means to
escape from him again, and this time it would be final. What was he to
do? Should he wait a little? But while he was waiting, the carriage
might drive off. Marius was perplexed. At last he accepted the risk and
quitted his room.
There was no one in the corridor. He hastened to the stairs. There was
no one on the staircase. He descended in all haste, and reached the
boulevard in time to see a fiacre turning the corner of the Rue du
Petit-Banquier, on its way back to Paris.
Marius rushed headlong in that direction. On arriving at the angle of
the boulevard, he caught sight of the fiacre again, rapidly descending
the Rue Mouffetard; the carriage was already a long way off, and there
was no means of overtaking it; what! run after it? Impossible; and
besides, the people in the carriage would assuredly notice an
individual running at full speed in pursuit of a fiacre, and the father
would recognize him. At that moment, wonderful and unprecedented good
luck, Marius perceived an empty cab passing along the boulevard. There
was but one thing to be done, to jump into this cab and follow the
fiacre. That was sure, efficacious, and free from danger.
Marius made the driver a sign to halt, and called to him:—
“By the hour?”
Marius wore no cravat, he had on his working-coat, which was destitute
of buttons, his shirt was torn along one of the plaits on the bosom.
The driver halted, winked, and held out his left hand to Marius,
rubbing his forefinger gently with his thumb.
“What is it?” said Marius.
“Pay in advance,” said the coachman.
Marius recollected that he had but sixteen sous about him.
“How much?” he demanded.
“Forty sous.”
“I will pay on my return.”
The driver’s only reply was to whistle the air of La Palisse and to
whip up his horse.
Marius stared at the retreating cabriolet with a bewildered air. For
the lack of four and twenty sous, he was losing his joy, his happiness,
his love! He had seen, and he was becoming blind again. He reflected
bitterly, and it must be confessed, with profound regret, on the five
francs which he had bestowed, that very morning, on that miserable
girl. If he had had those five francs, he would have been saved, he
would have been born again, he would have emerged from the limbo and
darkness, he would have made his escape from isolation and spleen, from
his widowed state; he might have re-knotted the black thread of his
destiny to that beautiful golden thread, which had just floated before
his eyes and had broken at the same instant, once more! He returned to
his hovel in despair.
He might have told himself that M. Leblanc had promised to return in
the evening, and that all he had to do was to set about the matter more
skilfully, so that he might follow him on that occasion; but, in his
contemplation, it is doubtful whether he had heard this.
As he was on the point of mounting the staircase, he perceived, on the
other side of the boulevard, near the deserted wall skirting the Rue De
la Barrière-des-Gobelins, Jondrette, wrapped in the “philanthropist’s”
great-coat, engaged in conversation with one of those men of
disquieting aspect who have been dubbed by common consent, _prowlers of
the barriers_; people of equivocal face, of suspicious monologues, who
present the air of having evil minds, and who generally sleep in the
daytime, which suggests the supposition that they work by night.
These two men, standing there motionless and in conversation, in the
snow which was falling in whirlwinds, formed a group that a policeman
would surely have observed, but which Marius hardly noticed.
Still, in spite of his mournful preoccupation, he could not refrain
from saying to himself that this prowler of the barriers with whom
Jondrette was talking resembled a certain Panchaud, alias Printanier,
alias Bigrenaille, whom Courfeyrac had once pointed out to him as a
very dangerous nocturnal roamer. This man’s name the reader has learned
in the preceding book. This Panchaud, alias Printanier, alias
Bigrenaille, figured later on in many criminal trials, and became a
notorious rascal. He was at that time only a famous rascal. To-day he
exists in the state of tradition among ruffians and assassins. He was
at the head of a school towards the end of the last reign. And in the
evening, at nightfall, at the hour when groups form and talk in
whispers, he was discussed at La Force in the Fosse-aux-Lions. One