Les Misérables
which the robbers called the Fosse-aux-Lions (The Lion’s Ditch), on
that wall covered with scales and leprosy, which rose on the left to a
level with the roofs, near an old door of rusty iron which led to the
ancient chapel of the ducal residence of La Force, then turned in a
dormitory for ruffians, there could still be seen, twelve years ago, a
sort of fortress roughly carved in the stone with a nail, and beneath
it this signature:—
BRUJON, 1811.
The Brujon of 1811 was the father of the Brujon of 1832.
The latter, of whom the reader caught but a glimpse at the Gorbeau
house, was a very cunning and very adroit young spark, with a
bewildered and plaintive air. It was in consequence of this plaintive
air that the magistrate had released him, thinking him more useful in
the Charlemagne yard than in close confinement.
Robbers do not interrupt their profession because they are in the hands
of justice. They do not let themselves be put out by such a trifle as
that. To be in prison for one crime is no reason for not beginning on
another crime. They are artists, who have one picture in the salon, and
who toil, nonetheless, on a new work in their studios.
Brujon seemed to be stupefied by prison. He could sometimes be seen
standing by the hour together in front of the sutler’s window in the
Charlemagne yard, staring like an idiot at the sordid list of prices
which began with: _garlic_, 62 _centimes_, and ended with: _cigar_, 5
_centimes_. Or he passed his time in trembling, chattering his teeth,
saying that he had a fever, and inquiring whether one of the eight and
twenty beds in the fever ward was vacant.
All at once, towards the end of February, 1832, it was discovered that
Brujon, that somnolent fellow, had had three different commissions
executed by the errand-men of the establishment, not under his own
name, but in the name of three of his comrades; and they had cost him
in all fifty sous, an exorbitant outlay which attracted the attention
of the prison corporal.
Inquiries were instituted, and on consulting the tariff of commissions
posted in the convict’s parlor, it was learned that the fifty sous
could be analyzed as follows: three commissions; one to the Panthéon,
ten sous; one to Val-de-Grâce, fifteen sous; and one to the Barrière de
Grenelle, twenty-five sous. This last was the dearest of the whole
tariff. Now, at the Panthéon, at the Val-de-Grâce, and at the Barrière
de Grenelle were situated the domiciles of the three very redoubtable
prowlers of the barriers, Kruideniers, alias Bizarro, Glorieux, an
ex-convict, and Barre-Carosse, upon whom the attention of the police
was directed by this incident. It was thought that these men were
members of Patron Minette; two of those leaders, Babet and Gueulemer,
had been captured. It was supposed that the messages, which had been
addressed, not to houses, but to people who were waiting for them in
the street, must have contained information with regard to some crime
that had been plotted. They were in possession of other indications;
they laid hand on the three prowlers, and supposed that they had
circumvented some one or other of Brujon’s machinations.
About a week after these measures had been taken, one night, as the
superintendent of the watch, who had been inspecting the lower
dormitory in the Bâtiment-Neuf, was about to drop his chestnut in the
box—this was the means adopted to make sure that the watchmen performed
their duties punctually; every hour a chestnut must be dropped into all
the boxes nailed to the doors of the dormitories—a watchman looked
through the peep-hole of the dormitory and beheld Brujon sitting on his
bed and writing something by the light of the hall-lamp. The guardian
entered, Brujon was put in a solitary cell for a month, but they were
not able to seize what he had written. The police learned nothing
further about it.
What is certain is, that on the following morning, a “postilion” was
flung from the Charlemagne yard into the Lions’ Ditch, over the
five-story building which separated the two court-yards.
What prisoners call a “postilion” is a pallet of bread artistically
moulded, which is sent _into Ireland_, that is to say, over the roofs
of a prison, from one courtyard to another. Etymology: over England;
from one land to another; _into Ireland_. This little pellet falls in
the yard. The man who picks it up opens it and finds in it a note
addressed to some prisoner in that yard. If it is a prisoner who finds
the treasure, he forwards the note to its destination; if it is a
keeper, or one of the prisoners secretly sold who are called _sheep_ in
prisons and _foxes_ in the galleys, the note is taken to the office and
handed over to the police.
On this occasion, the postilion reached its address, although the
person to whom it was addressed was, at that moment, in solitary
confinement. This person was no other than Babet, one of the four heads
of Patron Minette.
The postilion contained a roll of paper on which only these two lines
were written:—
“Babet. There is an affair in the Rue Plumet. A gate on a garden.”
This is what Brujon had written the night before.
In spite of male and female searchers, Babet managed to pass the note
on from La Force to the Salpêtrière, to a “good friend” whom he had and
who was shut up there. This woman in turn transmitted the note to
another woman of her acquaintance, a certain Magnon, who was strongly
suspected by the police, though not yet arrested. This Magnon, whose
name the reader has already seen, had relations with the Thénardier,
which will be described in detail later on, and she could, by going to
see Éponine, serve as a bridge between the Salpêtrière and Les
Madelonettes.
It happened, that at precisely that moment, as proofs were wanting in
the investigation directed against Thénardier in the matter of his
daughters, Éponine and Azelma were released. When Éponine came out,
Magnon, who was watching the gate of the Madelonettes, handed her
Brujon’s note to Babet, charging her to look into the matter.
Éponine went to the Rue Plumet, recognized the gate and the garden,
observed the house, spied, lurked, and, a few days later, brought to
Magnon, who delivers in the Rue Clocheperce, a biscuit, which Magnon
transmitted to Babet’s mistress in the Salpêtrière. A biscuit, in the
shady symbolism of prisons, signifies: Nothing to be done.
So that in less than a week from that time, as Brujon and Babet met in
the circle of La Force, the one on his way to the examination, the
other on his way from it:—
“Well?” asked Brujon, “the Rue P.?”
“Biscuit,” replied Babet. Thus did the fœtus of crime engendered by
Brujon in La Force miscarry.
This miscarriage had its consequences, however, which were perfectly
distinct from Brujon’s programme. The reader will see what they were.
Often when we think we are knotting one thread, we are tying quite
another.
CHAPTER III—APPARITION TO FATHER MABEUF
Marius no longer went to see any one, but he sometimes encountered
Father Mabeuf by chance.
While Marius was slowly descending those melancholy steps which may be
called the cellar stairs, and which lead to places without light, where
the happy can be heard walking overhead, M. Mabeuf was descending on
his side.
The _Flora of Cauteretz_ no longer sold at all. The experiments on
indigo had not been successful in the little garden of Austerlitz,
which had a bad exposure. M. Mabeuf could cultivate there only a few
plants which love shade and dampness. Nevertheless, he did not become
discouraged. He had obtained a corner in the Jardin des Plantes, with a
good exposure, to make his trials with indigo “at his own expense.” For
this purpose he had pawned his copperplates of the _Flora_. He had
reduced his breakfast to two eggs, and he left one of these for his old
servant, to whom he had paid no wages for the last fifteen months. And
often his breakfast was his only meal. He no longer smiled with his
infantile smile, he had grown morose and no longer received visitors.
Marius did well not to dream of going thither. Sometimes, at the hour
when M. Mabeuf was on his way to the Jardin des Plantes, the old man
and the young man passed each other on the Boulevard de l’Hôpital. They
did not speak, and only exchanged a melancholy sign of the head. A
heart-breaking thing it is that there comes a moment when misery looses
bonds! Two men who have been friends become two chance passers-by.
Royol the bookseller was dead. M. Mabeuf no longer knew his books, his
garden, or his indigo: these were the three forms which happiness,
pleasure, and hope had assumed for him. This sufficed him for his
living. He said to himself: “When I shall have made my balls of
blueing, I shall be rich, I will withdraw my copperplates from the
pawn-shop, I will put my _Flora_ in vogue again with trickery, plenty
of money and advertisements in the newspapers and I will buy, I know
well where, a copy of Pierre de Médine’s _Art de Naviguer_, with
wood-cuts, edition of 1655.” In the meantime, he toiled all day over
his plot of indigo, and at night he returned home to water his garden,
and to read his books. At that epoch, M. Mabeuf was nearly eighty years
of age.
One evening he had a singular apparition.
He had returned home while it was still broad daylight. Mother
Plutarque, whose health was declining, was ill and in bed. He had dined
on a bone, on which a little meat lingered, and a bit of bread that he
had found on the kitchen table, and had seated himself on an overturned
stone post, which took the place of a bench in his garden.
Near this bench there rose, after the fashion in orchard-gardens, a
sort of large chest, of beams and planks, much dilapidated, a
rabbit-hutch on the ground floor, a fruit-closet on the first. There
was nothing in the hutch, but there were a few apples in the
fruit-closet,—the remains of the winter’s provision.
M. Mabeuf had set himself to turning over and reading, with the aid of
his glasses, two books of which he was passionately fond and in which,
a serious thing at his age, he was interested. His natural timidity
rendered him accessible to the acceptance of superstitions in a certain
degree. The first of these books was the famous treatise of President
Delancre, _De l’Inconstance des Démons_; the other was a quarto by
Mutor de la Rubaudière, _Sur les Diables de Vauvert et les Gobelins de
la Bièvre_. This last-mentioned old volume interested him all the more,
because his garden had been one of the spots haunted by goblins in
former times. The twilight had begun to whiten what was on high and to
blacken all below. As he read, over the top of the book which he held
in his hand, Father Mabeuf was surveying his plants, and among others a
magnificent rhododendron which was one of his consolations; four days
of heat, wind, and sun without a drop of rain, had passed; the stalks
were bending, the buds drooping, the leaves falling; all this needed
water, the rhododendron was particularly sad. Father Mabeuf was one of
those persons for whom plants have souls. The old man had toiled all
day over his indigo plot, he was worn out with fatigue, but he rose,
laid his books on the bench, and walked, all bent over and with
tottering footsteps, to the well, but when he had grasped the chain, he
could not even draw it sufficiently to unhook it. Then he turned round
and cast a glance of anguish toward heaven which was becoming studded
with stars.
The evening had that serenity which overwhelms the troubles of man
beneath an indescribably mournful and eternal joy. The night promised
to be as arid as the day had been.
“Stars everywhere!” thought the old man; “not the tiniest cloud! Not a
drop of water!”