Les Misérables
Jondrette had allowed his pipe to go out, a serious sign of
preoccupation, and had again seated himself. The candle brought out the
fierce and the fine angles of his countenance. He indulged in scowls
and in abrupt unfoldings of the right hand, as though he were
responding to the last counsels of a sombre inward monologue. In the
course of one of these dark replies which he was making to himself, he
pulled the table drawer rapidly towards him, took out a long kitchen
knife which was concealed there, and tried the edge of its blade on his
nail. That done, he put the knife back in the drawer and shut it.
Marius, on his side, grasped the pistol in his right pocket, drew it
out and cocked it.
The pistol emitted a sharp, clear click, as he cocked it.
Jondrette started, half rose, listened a moment, then began to laugh
and said:—
“What a fool I am! It’s the partition cracking!”
Marius kept the pistol in his hand.
CHAPTER XVIII—MARIUS’ TWO CHAIRS FORM A VIS-A-VIS
Suddenly, the distant and melancholy vibration of a clock shook the
panes. Six o’clock was striking from Saint-Médard.
Jondrette marked off each stroke with a toss of his head. When the
sixth had struck, he snuffed the candle with his fingers.
Then he began to pace up and down the room, listened at the corridor,
walked on again, then listened once more.
“Provided only that he comes!” he muttered, then he returned to his
chair.
He had hardly reseated himself when the door opened.
Mother Jondrette had opened it, and now remained in the corridor making
a horrible, amiable grimace, which one of the holes of the dark-lantern
illuminated from below.
“Enter, sir,” she said.
“Enter, my benefactor,” repeated Jondrette, rising hastily.
M. Leblanc made his appearance.
He wore an air of serenity which rendered him singularly venerable.
He laid four louis on the table.
“Monsieur Fabantou,” said he, “this is for your rent and your most
pressing necessities. We will attend to the rest hereafter.”
“May God requite it to you, my generous benefactor!” said Jondrette.
And rapidly approaching his wife:—
“Dismiss the carriage!”
She slipped out while her husband was lavishing salutes and offering M.
Leblanc a chair. An instant later she returned and whispered in his
ear:—
“’Tis done.”
The snow, which had not ceased falling since the morning, was so deep
that the arrival of the fiacre had not been audible, and they did not
now hear its departure.
Meanwhile, M. Leblanc had seated himself.
Jondrette had taken possession of the other chair, facing M. Leblanc.
Now, in order to form an idea of the scene which is to follow, let the
reader picture to himself in his own mind, a cold night, the solitudes
of the Salpêtrière covered with snow and white as winding-sheets in the
moonlight, the taper-like lights of the street lanterns which shone
redly here and there along those tragic boulevards, and the long rows
of black elms, not a passer-by for perhaps a quarter of a league
around, the Gorbeau hovel, at its highest pitch of silence, of horror,
and of darkness; in that building, in the midst of those solitudes, in
the midst of that darkness, the vast Jondrette garret lighted by a
single candle, and in that den two men seated at a table, M. Leblanc
tranquil, Jondrette smiling and alarming, the Jondrette woman, the
female wolf, in one corner, and, behind the partition, Marius,
invisible, erect, not losing a word, not missing a single movement, his
eye on the watch, and pistol in hand.
However, Marius experienced only an emotion of horror, but no fear. He
clasped the stock of the pistol firmly and felt reassured. “I shall be
able to stop that wretch whenever I please,” he thought.
He felt that the police were there somewhere in ambuscade, waiting for
the signal agreed upon and ready to stretch out their arm.
Moreover, he was in hopes, that this violent encounter between
Jondrette and M. Leblanc would cast some light on all the things which
he was interested in learning.
CHAPTER XIX—OCCUPYING ONE’S SELF WITH OBSCURE DEPTHS
Hardly was M. Leblanc seated, when he turned his eyes towards the
pallets, which were empty.
“How is the poor little wounded girl?” he inquired.
“Bad,” replied Jondrette with a heart-broken and grateful smile, “very
bad, my worthy sir. Her elder sister has taken her to the Bourbe to
have her hurt dressed. You will see them presently; they will be back
immediately.”
“Madame Fabantou seems to me to be better,” went on M. Leblanc, casting
his eyes on the eccentric costume of the Jondrette woman, as she stood
between him and the door, as though already guarding the exit, and
gazed at him in an attitude of menace and almost of combat.
“She is dying,” said Jondrette. “But what do you expect, sir! She has
so much courage, that woman has! She’s not a woman, she’s an ox.”
The Jondrette, touched by his compliment, deprecated it with the
affected airs of a flattered monster.
“You are always too good to me, Monsieur Jondrette!”
“Jondrette!” said M. Leblanc, “I thought your name was Fabantou?”
“Fabantou, alias Jondrette!” replied the husband hurriedly. “An
artistic sobriquet!”
And launching at his wife a shrug of the shoulders which M. Leblanc did
not catch, he continued with an emphatic and caressing inflection of
voice:—
“Ah! we have had a happy life together, this poor darling and I! What
would there be left for us if we had not that? We are so wretched, my
respectable sir! We have arms, but there is no work! We have the will,
no work! I don’t know how the government arranges that, but, on my word
of honor, sir, I am not Jacobin, sir, I am not a bousingot.30 I don’t
wish them any evil, but if I were the ministers, on my most sacred
word, things would be different. Here, for instance, I wanted to have
my girls taught the trade of paper-box makers. You will say to me:
‘What! a trade?’ Yes! A trade! A simple trade! A bread-winner! What a
fall, my benefactor! What a degradation, when one has been what we have
been! Alas! There is nothing left to us of our days of prosperity! One
thing only, a picture, of which I think a great deal, but which I am
willing to part with, for I must live! Item, one must live!”
While Jondrette thus talked, with an apparent incoherence which
detracted nothing from the thoughtful and sagacious expression of his
physiognomy, Marius raised his eyes, and perceived at the other end of
the room a person whom he had not seen before. A man had just entered,
so softly that the door had not been heard to turn on its hinges. This
man wore a violet knitted vest, which was old, worn, spotted, cut and
gaping at every fold, wide trousers of cotton velvet, wooden shoes on
his feet, no shirt, had his neck bare, his bare arms tattooed, and his
face smeared with black. He had seated himself in silence on the
nearest bed, and, as he was behind Jondrette, he could only be
indistinctly seen.
That sort of magnetic instinct which turns aside the gaze, caused M.
Leblanc to turn round almost at the same moment as Marius. He could not
refrain from a gesture of surprise which did not escape Jondrette.
“Ah! I see!” exclaimed Jondrette, buttoning up his coat with an air of
complaisance, “you are looking at your overcoat? It fits me! My faith,
but it fits me!”
“Who is that man?” said M. Leblanc.
“Him?” ejaculated Jondrette, “he’s a neighbor of mine. Don’t pay any
attention to him.”
The neighbor was a singular-looking individual. However, manufactories
of chemical products abound in the Faubourg Saint-Marceau. Many of the
workmen might have black faces. Besides this, M. Leblanc’s whole person
was expressive of candid and intrepid confidence.
He went on:—
“Excuse me; what were you saying, M. Fabantou?”
“I was telling you, sir, and dear protector,” replied Jondrette placing
his elbows on the table and contemplating M. Leblanc with steady and
tender eyes, not unlike the eyes of the boa-constrictor, “I was telling
you, that I have a picture to sell.”
A slight sound came from the door. A second man had just entered and
seated himself on the bed, behind Jondrette.
Like the first, his arms were bare, and he had a mask of ink or
lampblack.
Although this man had, literally, glided into the room, he had not been
able to prevent M. Leblanc catching sight of him.
“Don’t mind them,” said Jondrette, “they are people who belong in the
house. So I was saying, that there remains in my possession a valuable
picture. But stop, sir, take a look at it.”
He rose, went to the wall at the foot of which stood the panel which we
have already mentioned, and turned it round, still leaving it supported
against the wall. It really was something which resembled a picture,
and which the candle illuminated, somewhat. Marius could make nothing
out of it, as Jondrette stood between the picture and him; he only saw
a coarse daub, and a sort of principal personage colored with the harsh
crudity of foreign canvasses and screen paintings.
“What is that?” asked M. Leblanc.
Jondrette exclaimed:—
“A painting by a master, a picture of great value, my benefactor! I am
as much attached to it as I am to my two daughters; it recalls
souvenirs to me! But I have told you, and I will not take it back, that
I am so wretched that I will part with it.”
Either by chance, or because he had begun to feel a dawning uneasiness,
M. Leblanc’s glance returned to the bottom of the room as he examined
the picture.
There were now four men, three seated on the bed, one standing near the
door-post, all four with bare arms and motionless, with faces smeared
with black. One of those on the bed was leaning against the wall, with
closed eyes, and it might have been supposed that he was asleep. He was
old; his white hair contrasting with his blackened face produced a
horrible effect. The other two seemed to be young; one wore a beard,
the other wore his hair long. None of them had on shoes; those who did
not wear socks were barefooted.
Jondrette noticed that M. Leblanc’s eye was fixed on these men.
“They are friends. They are neighbors,” said he. “Their faces are black
because they work in charcoal. They are chimney-builders. Don’t trouble
yourself about them, my benefactor, but buy my picture. Have pity on my
misery. I will not ask you much for it. How much do you think it is
worth?”
“Well,” said M. Leblanc, looking Jondrette full in the eye, and with
the manner of a man who is on his guard, “it is some signboard for a
tavern, and is worth about three francs.”
Jondrette replied sweetly:—
“Have you your pocket-book with you? I should be satisfied with a
thousand crowns.”
M. Leblanc sprang up, placed his back against the wall, and cast a
rapid glance around the room. He had Jondrette on his left, on the side
next the window, and the Jondrette woman and the four men on his right,
on the side next the door. The four men did not stir, and did not even
seem to be looking on.
Jondrette had again begun to speak in a plaintive tone, with so vague
an eye, and so lamentable an intonation, that M. Leblanc might have
supposed that what he had before him was a man who had simply gone mad
with misery.
“If you do not buy my picture, my dear benefactor,” said Jondrette, “I
shall be left without resources; there will be nothing left for me but
to throw myself into the river. When I think that I wanted to have my
two girls taught the middle-class paper-box trade, the making of boxes
for New Year’s gifts! Well! A table with a board at the end to keep the
glasses from falling off is required, then a special stove is needed, a
pot with three compartments for the different degrees of strength of