Les Misérables
all settled already. Everything is arranged. I have seen some people.
He will come here this evening at six o’clock. To bring sixty francs,
the rascal! Did you notice how I played that game on him, my sixty
francs, my landlord, my fourth of February? I don’t even owe for one
quarter! Isn’t he a fool! So he will come at six o’clock! That’s the
hour when our neighbor goes to his dinner. Mother Bougon is off washing
dishes in the city. There’s not a soul in the house. The neighbor never
comes home until eleven o’clock. The children shall stand on watch. You
shall help us. He will give in.”
“And what if he does not give in?” demanded his wife.
Jondrette made a sinister gesture, and said:—
“We’ll fix him.”
And he burst out laughing.
This was the first time Marius had seen him laugh. The laugh was cold
and sweet, and provoked a shudder.
Jondrette opened a cupboard near the fireplace, and drew from it an old
cap, which he placed on his head, after brushing it with his sleeve.
“Now,” said he, “I’m going out. I have some more people that I must
see. Good ones. You’ll see how well the whole thing will work. I shall
be away as short a time as possible, it’s a fine stroke of business, do
you look after the house.”
And with both fists thrust into the pockets of his trousers, he stood
for a moment in thought, then exclaimed:—
“Do you know, it’s mighty lucky, by the way, that he didn’t recognize
me! If he had recognized me on his side, he would not have come back
again. He would have slipped through our fingers! It was my beard that
saved us! my romantic beard! my pretty little romantic beard!”
And again he broke into a laugh.
He stepped to the window. The snow was still falling, and streaking the
gray of the sky.
“What beastly weather!” said he.
Then lapping his overcoat across his breast:—
“This rind is too large for me. Never mind,” he added, “he did a
devilish good thing in leaving it for me, the old scoundrel! If it
hadn’t been for that, I couldn’t have gone out, and everything would
have gone wrong! What small points things hang on, anyway!”
And pulling his cap down over his eyes, he quitted the room.
He had barely had time to take half a dozen steps from the door, when
the door opened again, and his savage but intelligent face made its
appearance once more in the opening.
“I came near forgetting,” said he. “You are to have a brazier of
charcoal ready.”
And he flung into his wife’s apron the five-franc piece which the
“philanthropist” had left with him.
“A brazier of charcoal?” asked his wife.
“Yes.”
“How many bushels?”
“Two good ones.”
“That will come to thirty sous. With the rest I will buy something for
dinner.”
“The devil, no.”
“Why?”
“Don’t go and spend the hundred-sou piece.”
“Why?”
“Because I shall have to buy something, too.”
“What?”
“Something.”
“How much shall you need?”
“Whereabouts in the neighborhood is there an ironmonger’s shop?”
“Rue Mouffetard.”
“Ah! yes, at the corner of a street; I can see the shop.”
“But tell me how much you will need for what you have to purchase?”
“Fifty sous—three francs.”
“There won’t be much left for dinner.”
“Eating is not the point to-day. There’s something better to be done.”
“That’s enough, my jewel.”
At this word from his wife, Jondrette closed the door again, and this
time, Marius heard his step die away in the corridor of the hovel, and
descend the staircase rapidly.
At that moment, one o’clock struck from the church of Saint-Médard.
CHAPTER XIII—SOLUS CUM SOLO, IN LOCO REMOTO, NON COGITABUNTUR ORARE
PATER NOSTER
Marius, dreamer as he was, was, as we have said, firm and energetic by
nature. His habits of solitary meditation, while they had developed in
him sympathy and compassion, had, perhaps, diminished the faculty for
irritation, but had left intact the power of waxing indignant; he had
the kindliness of a brahmin, and the severity of a judge; he took pity
upon a toad, but he crushed a viper. Now, it was into a hole of vipers
that his glance had just been directed, it was a nest of monsters that
he had beneath his eyes.
“These wretches must be stamped upon,” said he.
Not one of the enigmas which he had hoped to see solved had been
elucidated; on the contrary, all of them had been rendered more dense,
if anything; he knew nothing more about the beautiful maiden of the
Luxembourg and the man whom he called M. Leblanc, except that Jondrette
was acquainted with them. Athwart the mysterious words which had been
uttered, the only thing of which he caught a distinct glimpse was the
fact that an ambush was in course of preparation, a dark but terrible
trap; that both of them were incurring great danger, she probably, her
father certainly; that they must be saved; that the hideous plots of
the Jondrettes must be thwarted, and the web of these spiders broken.
He scanned the female Jondrette for a moment. She had pulled an old
sheet-iron stove from a corner, and she was rummaging among the old
heap of iron.
He descended from the commode as softly as possible, taking care not to
make the least noise. Amid his terror as to what was in preparation,
and in the horror with which the Jondrettes had inspired him, he
experienced a sort of joy at the idea that it might be granted to him
perhaps to render a service to the one whom he loved.
But how was it to be done? How warn the persons threatened? He did not
know their address. They had reappeared for an instant before his eyes,
and had then plunged back again into the immense depths of Paris.
Should he wait for M. Leblanc at the door that evening at six o’clock,
at the moment of his arrival, and warn him of the trap? But Jondrette
and his men would see him on the watch, the spot was lonely, they were
stronger than he, they would devise means to seize him or to get him
away, and the man whom Marius was anxious to save would be lost. One
o’clock had just struck, the trap was to be sprung at six. Marius had
five hours before him.
There was but one thing to be done.
He put on his decent coat, knotted a silk handkerchief round his neck,
took his hat, and went out, without making any more noise than if he
had been treading on moss with bare feet.
Moreover, the Jondrette woman continued to rummage among her old iron.
Once outside of the house, he made for the Rue du Petit-Banquier.
He had almost reached the middle of this street, near a very low wall
which a man can easily step over at certain points, and which abuts on
a waste space, and was walking slowly, in consequence of his
preoccupied condition, and the snow deadened the sound of his steps;
all at once he heard voices talking very close by. He turned his head,
the street was deserted, there was not a soul in it, it was broad
daylight, and yet he distinctly heard voices.
It occurred to him to glance over the wall which he was skirting.
There, in fact, sat two men, flat on the snow, with their backs against
the wall, talking together in subdued tones.
These two persons were strangers to him; one was a bearded man in a
blouse, and the other a long-haired individual in rags. The bearded man
had on a fez, the other’s head was bare, and the snow had lodged in his
hair.
By thrusting his head over the wall, Marius could hear their remarks.
The hairy one jogged the other man’s elbow and said:—
“—With the assistance of Patron-Minette, it can’t fail.”
“Do you think so?” said the bearded man.
And the long-haired one began again:—
“It’s as good as a warrant for each one, of five hundred balls, and the
worst that can happen is five years, six years, ten years at the most!”
The other replied with some hesitation, and shivering beneath his fez:—
“That’s a real thing. You can’t go against such things.”
“I tell you that the affair can’t go wrong,” resumed the long-haired
man. “Father What’s-his-name’s team will be already harnessed.”
Then they began to discuss a melodrama that they had seen on the
preceding evening at the Gaîté Theatre.
Marius went his way.
It seemed to him that the mysterious words of these men, so strangely
hidden behind that wall, and crouching in the snow, could not but bear
some relation to Jondrette’s abominable projects. That must be _the
affair_.
He directed his course towards the faubourg Saint-Marceau and asked at
the first shop he came to where he could find a commissary of police.
He was directed to Rue de Pontoise, No. 14.
Thither Marius betook himself.
As he passed a baker’s shop, he bought a two-penny roll, and ate it,
foreseeing that he should not dine.
On the way, he rendered justice to Providence. He reflected that had he
not given his five francs to the Jondrette girl in the morning, he
would have followed M. Leblanc’s fiacre, and consequently have remained
ignorant of everything, and that there would have been no obstacle to
the trap of the Jondrettes and that M. Leblanc would have been lost,
and his daughter with him, no doubt.
CHAPTER XIV—IN WHICH A POLICE AGENT BESTOWS TWO FISTFULS ON A LAWYER
On arriving at No. 14, Rue de Pontoise, he ascended to the first floor
and inquired for the commissary of police.
“The commissary of police is not here,” said a clerk; “but there is an
inspector who takes his place. Would you like to speak to him? Are you
in haste?”
“Yes,” said Marius.
The clerk introduced him into the commissary’s office. There stood a
tall man behind a grating, leaning against a stove, and holding up with
both hands the tails of a vast topcoat, with three collars. His face
was square, with a thin, firm mouth, thick, gray, and very ferocious
whiskers, and a look that was enough to turn your pockets inside out.
Of that glance it might have been well said, not that it penetrated,
but that it searched.
This man’s air was not much less ferocious nor less terrible than
Jondrette’s; the dog is, at times, no less terrible to meet than the
wolf.
“What do you want?” he said to Marius, without adding “monsieur.”
“Is this Monsieur le Commissaire de Police?”
“He is absent. I am here in his stead.”
“The matter is very private.”
“Then speak.”
“And great haste is required.”
“Then speak quick.”
This calm, abrupt man was both terrifying and reassuring at one and the
same time. He inspired fear and confidence. Marius related the
adventure to him: That a person with whom he was not acquainted
otherwise than by sight, was to be inveigled into a trap that very
evening; that, as he occupied the room adjoining the den, he, Marius
Pontmercy, a lawyer, had heard the whole plot through the partition;
that the wretch who had planned the trap was a certain Jondrette; that
there would be accomplices, probably some prowlers of the barriers,
among others a certain Panchaud, alias Printanier, alias Bigrenaille;
that Jondrette’s daughters were to lie in wait; that there was no way
of warning the threatened man, since he did not even know his name; and
that, finally, all this was to be carried out at six o’clock that
evening, at the most deserted point of the Boulevard de l’Hôpital, in
house No. 50-52.
At the sound of this number, the inspector raised his head, and said
coldly:—
“So it is in the room at the end of the corridor?”
“Precisely,” answered Marius, and he added: “Are you acquainted with
that house?”
The inspector remained silent for a moment, then replied, as he warmed
the heel of his boot at the door of the stove:—
“Apparently.”
He went on, muttering between his teeth, and not addressing Marius so
much as his cravat:—
“Patron-Minette must have had a hand in this.”
This word struck Marius.