Les Misérables
disappeared under the horrible group of ruffians like the wild boar
beneath a howling pile of dogs and hounds.
They succeeded in overthrowing him upon the bed nearest the window, and
there they held him in awe. The Thénardier woman had not released her
clutch on his hair.
“Don’t you mix yourself up in this affair,” said Thénardier. “You’ll
tear your shawl.”
The Thénardier obeyed, as the female wolf obeys the male wolf, with a
growl.
“Now,” said Thénardier, “search him, you other fellows!”
M. Leblanc seemed to have renounced the idea of resistance.
They searched him.
He had nothing on his person except a leather purse containing six
francs, and his handkerchief.
Thénardier put the handkerchief into his own pocket.
“What! No pocket-book?” he demanded.
“No, nor watch,” replied one of the “chimney-builders.”
“Never mind,” murmured the masked man who carried the big key, in the
voice of a ventriloquist, “he’s a tough old fellow.”
Thénardier went to the corner near the door, picked up a bundle of
ropes and threw them at the men.
“Tie him to the leg of the bed,” said he.
And, catching sight of the old man who had been stretched across the
room by the blow from M. Leblanc’s fist, and who made no movement, he
added:—
“Is Boulatruelle dead?”
“No,” replied Bigrenaille, “he’s drunk.”
“Sweep him into a corner,” said Thénardier.
Two of the “chimney-builders” pushed the drunken man into the corner
near the heap of old iron with their feet.
“Babet,” said Thénardier in a low tone to the man with the cudgel, “why
did you bring so many; they were not needed.”
“What can you do?” replied the man with the cudgel, “they all wanted to
be in it. This is a bad season. There’s no business going on.”
The pallet on which M. Leblanc had been thrown was a sort of hospital
bed, elevated on four coarse wooden legs, roughly hewn.
M. Leblanc let them take their own course.
The ruffians bound him securely, in an upright attitude, with his feet
on the ground at the head of the bed, the end which was most remote
from the window, and nearest to the fireplace.
When the last knot had been tied, Thénardier took a chair and seated
himself almost facing M. Leblanc.
Thénardier no longer looked like himself; in the course of a few
moments his face had passed from unbridled violence to tranquil and
cunning sweetness.
Marius found it difficult to recognize in that polished smile of a man
in official life the almost bestial mouth which had been foaming but a
moment before; he gazed with amazement on that fantastic and alarming
metamorphosis, and he felt as a man might feel who should behold a
tiger converted into a lawyer.
“Monsieur—” said Thénardier.
And dismissing with a gesture the ruffians who still kept their hands
on M. Leblanc:—
“Stand off a little, and let me have a talk with the gentleman.”
All retired towards the door.
He went on:—
“Monsieur, you did wrong to try to jump out of the window. You might
have broken your leg. Now, if you will permit me, we will converse
quietly. In the first place, I must communicate to you an observation
which I have made which is, that you have not uttered the faintest
cry.”
Thénardier was right, this detail was correct, although it had escaped
Marius in his agitation. M. Leblanc had barely pronounced a few words,
without raising his voice, and even during his struggle with the six
ruffians near the window he had preserved the most profound and
singular silence.
Thénardier continued:—
“Mon Dieu! You might have shouted ‘stop thief’ a bit, and I should not
have thought it improper. ‘Murder!’ That, too, is said occasionally,
and, so far as I am concerned, I should not have taken it in bad part.
It is very natural that you should make a little row when you find
yourself with persons who don’t inspire you with sufficient confidence.
You might have done that, and no one would have troubled you on that
account. You would not even have been gagged. And I will tell you why.
This room is very private. That’s its only recommendation, but it has
that in its favor. You might fire off a mortar and it would produce
about as much noise at the nearest police station as the snores of a
drunken man. Here a cannon would make a _boum_, and the thunder would
make a _pouf_. It’s a handy lodging. But, in short, you did not shout,
and it is better so. I present you my compliments, and I will tell you
the conclusion that I draw from that fact: My dear sir, when a man
shouts, who comes? The police. And after the police? Justice. Well! You
have not made an outcry; that is because you don’t care to have the
police and the courts come in any more than we do. It is because,—I
have long suspected it,—you have some interest in hiding something. On
our side we have the same interest. So we can come to an
understanding.”
As he spoke thus, it seemed as though Thénardier, who kept his eyes
fixed on M. Leblanc, were trying to plunge the sharp points which
darted from the pupils into the very conscience of his prisoner.
Moreover, his language, which was stamped with a sort of moderated,
subdued insolence and crafty insolence, was reserved and almost choice,
and in that rascal, who had been nothing but a robber a short time
previously, one now felt “the man who had studied for the priesthood.”
The silence preserved by the prisoner, that precaution which had been
carried to the point of forgetting all anxiety for his own life, that
resistance opposed to the first impulse of nature, which is to utter a
cry, all this, it must be confessed, now that his attention had been
called to it, troubled Marius, and affected him with painful
astonishment.
Thénardier’s well-grounded observation still further obscured for
Marius the dense mystery which enveloped that grave and singular person
on whom Courfeyrac had bestowed the sobriquet of Monsieur Leblanc.
But whoever he was, bound with ropes, surrounded with executioners,
half plunged, so to speak, in a grave which was closing in upon him to
the extent of a degree with every moment that passed, in the presence
of Thénardier’s wrath, as in the presence of his sweetness, this man
remained impassive; and Marius could not refrain from admiring at such
a moment the superbly melancholy visage.
Here, evidently, was a soul which was inaccessible to terror, and which
did not know the meaning of despair. Here was one of those men who
command amazement in desperate circumstances. Extreme as was the
crisis, inevitable as was the catastrophe, there was nothing here of
the agony of the drowning man, who opens his horror-filled eyes under
the water.
Thénardier rose in an unpretending manner, went to the fireplace,
shoved aside the screen, which he leaned against the neighboring
pallet, and thus unmasked the brazier full of glowing coals, in which
the prisoner could plainly see the chisel white-hot and spotted here
and there with tiny scarlet stars.
Then Thénardier returned to his seat beside M. Leblanc.
“I continue,” said he. “We can come to an understanding. Let us arrange
this matter in an amicable way. I was wrong to lose my temper just now,
I don’t know what I was thinking of, I went a great deal too far, I
said extravagant things. For example, because you are a millionnaire, I
told you that I exacted money, a lot of money, a deal of money. That
would not be reasonable. Mon Dieu, in spite of your riches, you have
expenses of your own—who has not? I don’t want to ruin you, I am not a
greedy fellow, after all. I am not one of those people who, because
they have the advantage of the position, profit by the fact to make
themselves ridiculous. Why, I’m taking things into consideration and
making a sacrifice on my side. I only want two hundred thousand
francs.”
M. Leblanc uttered not a word.
Thénardier went on:—
“You see that I put not a little water in my wine; I’m very moderate. I
don’t know the state of your fortune, but I do know that you don’t
stick at money, and a benevolent man like yourself can certainly give
two hundred thousand francs to the father of a family who is out of
luck. Certainly, you are reasonable, too; you haven’t imagined that I
should take all the trouble I have to-day and organized this affair
this evening, which has been labor well bestowed, in the opinion of
these gentlemen, merely to wind up by asking you for enough to go and
drink red wine at fifteen sous and eat veal at Desnoyer’s. Two hundred
thousand francs—it’s surely worth all that. This trifle once out of
your pocket, I guarantee you that that’s the end of the matter, and
that you have no further demands to fear. You will say to me: ‘But I
haven’t two hundred thousand francs about me.’ Oh! I’m not
extortionate. I don’t demand that. I only ask one thing of you. Have
the goodness to write what I am about to dictate to you.”
Here Thénardier paused; then he added, emphasizing his words, and
casting a smile in the direction of the brazier:—
“I warn you that I shall not admit that you don’t know how to write.”
A grand inquisitor might have envied that smile.
Thénardier pushed the table close to M. Leblanc, and took an inkstand,
a pen, and a sheet of paper from the drawer which he left half open,
and in which gleamed the long blade of the knife.
He placed the sheet of paper before M. Leblanc.
“Write,” said he.
The prisoner spoke at last.
“How do you expect me to write? I am bound.”
“That’s true, excuse me!” ejaculated Thénardier, “you are quite right.”
And turning to Bigrenaille:—
“Untie the gentleman’s right arm.”
Panchaud, alias Printanier, alias Bigrenaille, executed Thénardier’s
order.
When the prisoner’s right arm was free, Thénardier dipped the pen in
the ink and presented it to him.
“Understand thoroughly, sir, that you are in our power, at our
discretion, that no human power can get you out of this, and that we
shall be really grieved if we are forced to proceed to disagreeable
extremities. I know neither your name, nor your address, but I warn
you, that you will remain bound until the person charged with carrying
the letter which you are about to write shall have returned. Now, be so
good as to write.”
“What?” demanded the prisoner.
“I will dictate.”
M. Leblanc took the pen.
Thénardier began to dictate:—
“My daughter—”
The prisoner shuddered, and raised his eyes to Thénardier.
“Put down ‘My dear daughter’—” said Thénardier.
M. Leblanc obeyed.
Thénardier continued:—
“Come instantly—”
He paused:—
“You address her as _thou_, do you not?”
“Who?” asked M. Leblanc.
“Parbleu!” cried Thénardier, “the little one, the Lark.”
M. Leblanc replied without the slightest apparent emotion:—
“I do not know what you mean.”
“Go on, nevertheless,” ejaculated Thénardier, and he continued to
dictate:—
“Come immediately, I am in absolute need of thee. The person who will
deliver this note to thee is instructed to conduct thee to me. I am
waiting for thee. Come with confidence.”
M. Leblanc had written the whole of this.
Thénardier resumed:—
“Ah! erase ‘come with confidence’; that might lead her to suppose that
everything was not as it should be, and that distrust is possible.”
M. Leblanc erased the three words.
“Now,” pursued Thénardier, “sign it. What’s your name?”
The prisoner laid down the pen and demanded:—
“For whom is this letter?”
“You know well,” retorted Thénardier, “for the little one I just told
you so.”
It was evident that Thénardier avoided naming the young girl in
question. He said “the Lark,” he said “the little one,” but he did not
pronounce her name—the precaution of a clever man guarding his secret
from his accomplices. To mention the name was to deliver the whole