Les Misérables
unequal line; it mounted and descended, it dropped at the firemen’s
barracks, it rose towards the bath-house, it was cut in twain by
buildings, it was not even of the same height on the Hotel Lamoignon as
on the Rue Pavée; everywhere occurred falls and right angles; and then,
the sentinels must have espied the dark form of the fugitive; hence,
the route taken by Thénardier still remains rather inexplicable. In two
manners, flight was impossible. Had Thénardier, spurred on by that
thirst for liberty which changes precipices into ditches, iron bars
into wattles of osier, a legless man into an athlete, a gouty man into
a bird, stupidity into instinct, instinct into intelligence, and
intelligence into genius, had Thénardier invented a third mode? No one
has ever found out.
The marvels of escape cannot always be accounted for. The man who makes
his escape, we repeat, is inspired; there is something of the star and
of the lightning in the mysterious gleam of flight; the effort towards
deliverance is no less surprising than the flight towards the sublime,
and one says of the escaped thief: “How did he contrive to scale that
wall?” in the same way that one says of Corneille: “Where did he find
_the means of dying?_”
At all events, dripping with perspiration, drenched with rain, with his
clothes hanging in ribbons, his hands flayed, his elbows bleeding, his
knees torn, Thénardier had reached what children, in their figurative
language, call _the edge_ of the wall of the ruin, there he had
stretched himself out at full length, and there his strength had failed
him. A steep escarpment three stories high separated him from the
pavement of the street.
The rope which he had was too short.
There he waited, pale, exhausted, desperate with all the despair which
he had undergone, still hidden by the night, but telling himself that
the day was on the point of dawning, alarmed at the idea of hearing the
neighboring clock of Saint-Paul strike four within a few minutes, an
hour when the sentinel was relieved and when the latter would be found
asleep under the pierced roof, staring in horror at a terrible depth,
at the light of the street lanterns, the wet, black pavement, that
pavement longed for yet frightful, which meant death, and which meant
liberty.
He asked himself whether his three accomplices in flight had succeeded,
if they had heard him, and if they would come to his assistance. He
listened. With the exception of the patrol, no one had passed through
the street since he had been there. Nearly the whole of the descent of
the market-gardeners from Montreuil, from Charonne, from Vincennes, and
from Bercy to the markets was accomplished through the Rue
Saint-Antoine.
Four o’clock struck. Thénardier shuddered. A few moments later, that
terrified and confused uproar which follows the discovery of an escape
broke forth in the prison. The sound of doors opening and shutting, the
creaking of gratings on their hinges, a tumult in the guard-house, the
hoarse shouts of the turnkeys, the shock of musket-butts on the
pavement of the courts, reached his ears. Lights ascended and descended
past the grated windows of the dormitories, a torch ran along the
ridge-pole of the top story of the New Building, the firemen belonging
in the barracks on the right had been summoned. Their helmets, which
the torch lighted up in the rain, went and came along the roofs. At the
same time, Thénardier perceived in the direction of the Bastille a wan
whiteness lighting up the edge of the sky in doleful wise.
He was on top of a wall ten inches wide, stretched out under the heavy
rains, with two gulfs to right and left, unable to stir, subject to the
giddiness of a possible fall, and to the horror of a certain arrest,
and his thoughts, like the pendulum of a clock, swung from one of these
ideas to the other: “Dead if I fall, caught if I stay.” In the midst of
this anguish, he suddenly saw, the street being still dark, a man who
was gliding along the walls and coming from the Rue Pavée, halt in the
recess above which Thénardier was, as it were, suspended. Here this man
was joined by a second, who walked with the same caution, then by a
third, then by a fourth. When these men were re-united, one of them
lifted the latch of the gate in the fence, and all four entered the
enclosure in which the shanty stood. They halted directly under
Thénardier. These men had evidently chosen this vacant space in order
that they might consult without being seen by the passers-by or by the
sentinel who guards the wicket of La Force a few paces distant. It must
be added, that the rain kept this sentinel blocked in his box.
Thénardier, not being able to distinguish their visages, lent an ear to
their words with the desperate attention of a wretch who feels himself
lost.
Thénardier saw something resembling a gleam of hope flash before his
eyes,—these men conversed in slang.
The first said in a low but distinct voice:—
“Let’s cut. What are we up to here?”
The second replied: “It’s raining hard enough to put out the very
devil’s fire. And the bobbies will be along instanter. There’s a
soldier on guard yonder. We shall get nabbed here.”
These two words, _icigo_ and _icicaille_, both of which mean _ici_, and
which belong, the first to the slang of the barriers, the second to the
slang of the Temple, were flashes of light for Thénardier. By the
_icigo_ he recognized Brujon, who was a prowler of the barriers, by the
_icicaille_ he knew Babet, who, among his other trades, had been an
old-clothes broker at the Temple.
The antique slang of the great century is no longer spoken except in
the Temple, and Babet was really the only person who spoke it in all
its purity. Had it not been for the _icicaille_, Thénardier would not
have recognized him, for he had entirely changed his voice.
In the meanwhile, the third man had intervened.
“There’s no hurry yet, let’s wait a bit. How do we know that he doesn’t
stand in need of us?”
By this, which was nothing but French, Thénardier recognized
Montparnasse, who made it a point in his elegance to understand all
slangs and to speak none of them.
As for the fourth, he held his peace, but his huge shoulders betrayed
him. Thénardier did not hesitate. It was Guelemer.
Brujon replied almost impetuously but still in a low tone:—
“What are you jabbering about? The tavern-keeper hasn’t managed to cut
his stick. He don’t tumble to the racket, that he don’t! You have to be
a pretty knowing cove to tear up your shirt, cut up your sheet to make
a rope, punch holes in doors, get up false papers, make false keys,
file your irons, hang out your cord, hide yourself, and disguise
yourself! The old fellow hasn’t managed to play it, he doesn’t
understand how to work the business.”
Babet added, still in that classical slang which was spoken by
Poulailler and Cartouche, and which is to the bold, new, highly colored
and risky argot used by Brujon what the language of Racine is to the
language of André Chenier:—
“Your tavern-keeper must have been nabbed in the act. You have to be
knowing. He’s only a greenhorn. He must have let himself be taken in by
a bobby, perhaps even by a sheep who played it on him as his pal.
Listen, Montparnasse, do you hear those shouts in the prison? You have
seen all those lights. He’s recaptured, there! He’ll get off with
twenty years. I ain’t afraid, I ain’t a coward, but there ain’t
anything more to do, or otherwise they’d lead us a dance. Don’t get
mad, come with us, let’s go drink a bottle of old wine together.”
“One doesn’t desert one’s friends in a scrape,” grumbled Montparnasse.
“I tell you he’s nabbed!” retorted Brujon. “At the present moment, the
inn-keeper ain’t worth a ha’penny. We can’t do nothing for him. Let’s
be off. Every minute I think a bobby has got me in his fist.”
Montparnasse no longer offered more than a feeble resistance; the fact
is, that these four men, with the fidelity of ruffians who never
abandon each other, had prowled all night long about La Force, great as
was their peril, in the hope of seeing Thénardier make his appearance
on the top of some wall. But the night, which was really growing too
fine,—for the downpour was such as to render all the streets
deserted,—the cold which was overpowering them, their soaked garments,
their hole-ridden shoes, the alarming noise which had just burst forth
in the prison, the hours which had elapsed, the patrol which they had
encountered, the hope which was vanishing, all urged them to beat a
retreat. Montparnasse himself, who was, perhaps, almost Thénardier’s
son-in-law, yielded. A moment more, and they would be gone. Thénardier
was panting on his wall like the shipwrecked sufferers of the _Méduse_
on their raft when they beheld the vessel which had appeared in sight
vanish on the horizon.
He dared not call to them; a cry might be heard and ruin everything. An
idea occurred to him, a last idea, a flash of inspiration; he drew from
his pocket the end of Brujon’s rope, which he had detached from the
chimney of the New Building, and flung it into the space enclosed by
the fence.
This rope fell at their feet.
“A widow,”37 said Babet.
“My tortouse!”38 said Brujon.
“The tavern-keeper is there,” said Montparnasse.
They raised their eyes. Thénardier thrust out his head a very little.
“Quick!” said Montparnasse, “have you the other end of the rope,
Brujon?”
“Yes.”
“Knot the two pieces together, we’ll fling him the rope, he can fasten
it to the wall, and he’ll have enough of it to get down with.”
Thénardier ran the risk, and spoke:—
“I am paralyzed with cold.”
“We’ll warm you up.”
“I can’t budge.”
“Let yourself slide, we’ll catch you.”
“My hands are benumbed.”
“Only fasten the rope to the wall.”
“I can’t.”
“Then one of us must climb up,” said Montparnasse.
“Three stories!” ejaculated Brujon.
An ancient plaster flue, which had served for a stove that had been
used in the shanty in former times, ran along the wall and mounted
almost to the very spot where they could see Thénardier. This flue,
then much damaged and full of cracks, has since fallen, but the marks
of it are still visible.
It was very narrow.
“One might get up by the help of that,” said Montparnasse.
“By that flue?” exclaimed Babet, “a grown-up cove, never! it would take
a brat.”
“A brat must be got,” resumed Brujon.
“Where are we to find a young ’un?” said Guelemer.
“Wait,” said Montparnasse. “I’ve got the very article.”
He opened the gate of the fence very softly, made sure that no one was
passing along the street, stepped out cautiously, shut the gate behind
him, and set off at a run in the direction of the Bastille.
Seven or eight minutes elapsed, eight thousand centuries to Thénardier;
Babet, Brujon, and Guelemer did not open their lips; at last the gate
opened once more, and Montparnasse appeared, breathless, and followed
by Gavroche. The rain still rendered the street completely deserted.
Little Gavroche entered the enclosure and gazed at the forms of these
ruffians with a tranquil air. The water was dripping from his hair.
Guelemer addressed him:—
“Are you a man, young ’un?”
Gavroche shrugged his shoulders, and replied:—
“A young ’un like me’s a man, and men like you are babes.”
“The brat’s tongue’s well hung!” exclaimed Babet.
“The Paris brat ain’t made of straw,” added Brujon.
“What do you want?” asked Gavroche.
Montparnasse answered:—
“Climb up that flue.”
“With this rope,” said Babet.
“And fasten it,” continued Brujon.
“To the top of the wall,” went on Babet.
“To the cross-bar of the window,” added Brujon.
“And then?” said Gavroche.
“There!” said Guelemer.