Les Misérables
CHAPTER VII—ONE SOMETIMES RUNS AGROUND WHEN ONE FANCIES THAT ONE IS
DISEMBARKING
He set out on his way once more.
However, although he had not left his life in the fontis, he seemed to
have left his strength behind him there. That supreme effort had
exhausted him. His lassitude was now such that he was obliged to pause
for breath every three or four steps, and lean against the wall. Once
he was forced to seat himself on the banquette in order to alter
Marius’ position, and he thought that he should have to remain there.
But if his vigor was dead, his energy was not. He rose again.
He walked on desperately, almost fast, proceeded thus for a hundred
paces, almost without drawing breath, and suddenly came in contact with
the wall. He had reached an elbow of the sewer, and, arriving at the
turn with head bent down, he had struck the wall. He raised his eyes,
and at the extremity of the vault, far, very far away in front of him,
he perceived a light. This time it was not that terrible light; it was
good, white light. It was daylight. Jean Valjean saw the outlet.
A damned soul, who, in the midst of the furnace, should suddenly
perceive the outlet of Gehenna, would experience what Jean Valjean
felt. It would fly wildly with the stumps of its burned wings towards
that radiant portal. Jean Valjean was no longer conscious of fatigue,
he no longer felt Marius’ weight, he found his legs once more of steel,
he ran rather than walked. As he approached, the outlet became more and
more distinctly defined. It was a pointed arch, lower than the vault,
which gradually narrowed, and narrower than the gallery, which closed
in as the vault grew lower. The tunnel ended like the interior of a
funnel; a faulty construction, imitated from the wickets of
penitentiaries, logical in a prison, illogical in a sewer, and which
has since been corrected.
Jean Valjean reached the outlet.
There he halted.
It certainly was the outlet, but he could not get out.
The arch was closed by a heavy grating, and the grating, which, to all
appearance, rarely swung on its rusty hinges, was clamped to its stone
jamb by a thick lock, which, red with rust, seemed like an enormous
brick. The keyhole could be seen, and the robust latch, deeply sunk in
the iron staple. The door was plainly double-locked. It was one of
those prison locks which old Paris was so fond of lavishing.
Beyond the grating was the open air, the river, the daylight, the
shore, very narrow but sufficient for escape. The distant quays, Paris,
that gulf in which one so easily hides oneself, the broad horizon,
liberty. On the right, downstream, the bridge of Jéna was discernible,
on the left, upstream, the bridge of the Invalides; the place would
have been a propitious one in which to await the night and to escape.
It was one of the most solitary points in Paris; the shore which faces
the Grand-Caillou. Flies were entering and emerging through the bars of
the grating.
It might have been half-past eight o’clock in the evening. The day was
declining.
Jean Valjean laid Marius down along the wall, on the dry portion of the
vaulting, then he went to the grating and clenched both fists round the
bars; the shock which he gave it was frenzied, but it did not move. The
grating did not stir. Jean Valjean seized the bars one after the other,
in the hope that he might be able to tear away the least solid, and to
make of it a lever wherewith to raise the door or to break the lock.
Not a bar stirred. The teeth of a tiger are not more firmly fixed in
their sockets. No lever; no prying possible. The obstacle was
invincible. There was no means of opening the gate.
Must he then stop there? What was he to do? What was to become of him?
He had not the strength to retrace his steps, to recommence the journey
which he had already taken. Besides, how was he to again traverse that
quagmire whence he had only extricated himself as by a miracle? And
after the quagmire, was there not the police patrol, which assuredly
could not be twice avoided? And then, whither was he to go? What
direction should he pursue? To follow the incline would not conduct him
to his goal. If he were to reach another outlet, he would find it
obstructed by a plug or a grating. Every outlet was, undoubtedly,
closed in that manner. Chance had unsealed the grating through which he
had entered, but it was evident that all the other sewer mouths were
barred. He had only succeeded in escaping into a prison.
All was over. Everything that Jean Valjean had done was useless.
Exhaustion had ended in failure.
They were both caught in the immense and gloomy web of death, and Jean
Valjean felt the terrible spider running along those black strands and
quivering in the shadows. He turned his back to the grating, and fell
upon the pavement, hurled to earth rather than seated, close to Marius,
who still made no movement, and with his head bent between his knees.
This was the last drop of anguish.
Of what was he thinking during this profound depression? Neither of
himself nor of Marius. He was thinking of Cosette.
CHAPTER VIII—THE TORN COAT-TAIL
In the midst of this prostration, a hand was laid on his shoulder, and
a low voice said to him:
“Half shares.”
Some person in that gloom? Nothing so closely resembles a dream as
despair. Jean Valjean thought that he was dreaming. He had heard no
footsteps. Was it possible? He raised his eyes.
A man stood before him.
This man was clad in a blouse; his feet were bare; he held his shoes in
his left hand; he had evidently removed them in order to reach Jean
Valjean, without allowing his steps to be heard.
Jean Valjean did not hesitate for an instant. Unexpected as was this
encounter, this man was known to him. The man was Thénardier.
Although awakened, so to speak, with a start, Jean Valjean, accustomed
to alarms, and steeled to unforeseen shocks that must be promptly
parried, instantly regained possession of his presence of mind.
Moreover, the situation could not be made worse, a certain degree of
distress is no longer capable of a crescendo, and Thénardier himself
could add nothing to this blackness of this night.
A momentary pause ensued.
Thénardier, raising his right hand to a level with his forehead, formed
with it a shade, then he brought his eyelashes together, by screwing up
his eyes, a motion which, in connection with a slight contraction of
the mouth, characterizes the sagacious attention of a man who is
endeavoring to recognize another man. He did not succeed. Jean Valjean,
as we have just stated, had his back turned to the light, and he was,
moreover, so disfigured, so bemired, so bleeding that he would have
been unrecognizable in full noonday. On the contrary, illuminated by
the light from the grating, a cellar light, it is true, livid, yet
precise in its lividness, Thénardier, as the energetic popular metaphor
expresses it, immediately “leaped into” Jean Valjean’s eyes. This
inequality of conditions sufficed to assure some advantage to Jean
Valjean in that mysterious duel which was on the point of beginning
between the two situations and the two men. The encounter took place
between Jean Valjean veiled and Thénardier unmasked.
Jean Valjean immediately perceived that Thénardier did not recognize
him.
They surveyed each other for a moment in that half-gloom, as though
taking each other’s measure. Thénardier was the first to break the
silence.
“How are you going to manage to get out?”
Jean Valjean made no reply. Thénardier continued:
“It’s impossible to pick the lock of that gate. But still you must get
out of this.”
“That is true,” said Jean Valjean.
“Well, half shares then.”
“What do you mean by that?”
“You have killed that man; that’s all right. I have the key.”
Thénardier pointed to Marius. He went on:
“I don’t know you, but I want to help you. You must be a friend.”
Jean Valjean began to comprehend. Thénardier took him for an assassin.
Thénardier resumed:
“Listen, comrade. You didn’t kill that man without looking to see what
he had in his pockets. Give me my half. I’ll open the door for you.”
And half drawing from beneath his tattered blouse a huge key, he added:
“Do you want to see how a key to liberty is made? Look here.”
Jean Valjean “remained stupid”—the expression belongs to the elder
Corneille—to such a degree that he doubted whether what he beheld was
real. It was Providence appearing in horrible guise, and his good angel
springing from the earth in the form of Thénardier.
Thénardier thrust his fist into a large pocket concealed under his
blouse, drew out a rope and offered it to Jean Valjean.
“Hold on,” said he, “I’ll give you the rope to boot.”
“What is the rope for?”
“You will need a stone also, but you can find one outside. There’s a
heap of rubbish.”
“What am I to do with a stone?”
“Idiot, you’ll want to sling that stiff into the river, you’ll need a
stone and a rope, otherwise it would float on the water.”
Jean Valjean took the rope. There is no one who does not occasionally
accept in this mechanical way.
Thénardier snapped his fingers as though an idea had suddenly occurred
to him.
“Ah, see here, comrade, how did you contrive to get out of that slough
yonder? I haven’t dared to risk myself in it. Phew! you don’t smell
good.”
After a pause he added:
“I’m asking you questions, but you’re perfectly right not to answer.
It’s an apprenticeship against that cursed quarter of an hour before
the examining magistrate. And then, when you don’t talk at all, you run
no risk of talking too loud. That’s no matter, as I can’t see your face
and as I don’t know your name, you are wrong in supposing that I don’t
know who you are and what you want. I twig. You’ve broken up that
gentleman a bit; now you want to tuck him away somewhere. The river,
that great hider of folly, is what you want. I’ll get you out of your
scrape. Helping a good fellow in a pinch is what suits me to a hair.”
While expressing his approval of Jean Valjean’s silence, he endeavored
to force him to talk. He jostled his shoulder in an attempt to catch a
sight of his profile, and he exclaimed, without, however, raising his
tone:
“Apropos of that quagmire, you’re a hearty animal. Why didn’t you toss
the man in there?”
Jean Valjean preserved silence.
Thénardier resumed, pushing the rag which served him as a cravat to the
level of his Adam’s apple, a gesture which completes the capable air of
a serious man:
“After all, you acted wisely. The workmen, when they come to-morrow to
stop up that hole, would certainly have found the stiff abandoned
there, and it might have been possible, thread by thread, straw by
straw, to pick up the scent and reach you. Some one has passed through
the sewer. Who? Where did he get out? Was he seen to come out? The
police are full of cleverness. The sewer is treacherous and tells tales
of you. Such a find is a rarity, it attracts attention, very few people
make use of the sewers for their affairs, while the river belongs to
everybody. The river is the true grave. At the end of a month they fish
up your man in the nets at Saint-Cloud. Well, what does one care for
that? It’s carrion! Who killed that man? Paris. And justice makes no
inquiries. You have done well.”
The more loquacious Thénardier became, the more mute was Jean Valjean.
Again Thénardier shook him by the shoulder.
“Now let’s settle this business. Let’s go shares. You have seen my key,
show me your money.”
Thénardier was haggard, fierce, suspicious, rather menacing, yet
amicable.
There was one singular circumstance; Thénardier’s manners were not
simple; he had not the air of being wholly at his ease; while affecting