Les Misérables
The bridge once crossed, he perceived some timber-yards on his right.
He directed his course thither. In order to reach them, it was
necessary to risk himself in a tolerably large unsheltered and
illuminated space. He did not hesitate. Those who were on his track had
evidently lost the scent, and Jean Valjean believed himself to be out
of danger. Hunted, yes; followed, no.
A little street, the Rue du Chemin-Vert-Saint-Antoine, opened out
between two timber-yards enclosed in walls. This street was dark and
narrow and seemed made expressly for him. Before entering it he cast a
glance behind him.
From the point where he stood he could see the whole extent of the Pont
d’Austerlitz.
Four shadows were just entering on the bridge.
These shadows had their backs turned to the Jardin des Plantes and were
on their way to the right bank.
These four shadows were the four men.
Jean Valjean shuddered like the wild beast which is recaptured.
One hope remained to him; it was, that the men had not, perhaps,
stepped on the bridge, and had not caught sight of him while he was
crossing the large illuminated space, holding Cosette by the hand.
In that case, by plunging into the little street before him, he might
escape, if he could reach the timber-yards, the marshes, the
market-gardens, the uninhabited ground which was not built upon.
It seemed to him that he might commit himself to that silent little
street. He entered it.
CHAPTER III—TO WIT, THE PLAN OF PARIS IN 1727
Three hundred paces further on, he arrived at a point where the street
forked. It separated into two streets, which ran in a slanting line,
one to the right, and the other to the left.
Jean Valjean had before him what resembled the two branches of a Y.
Which should he choose? He did not hesitate, but took the one on the
right.
Why?
Because that to the left ran towards a suburb, that is to say, towards
inhabited regions, and the right branch towards the open country, that
is to say, towards deserted regions.
However, they no longer walked very fast. Cosette’s pace retarded Jean
Valjean’s.
He took her up and carried her again. Cosette laid her head on the
shoulder of the good man and said not a word.
He turned round from time to time and looked behind him. He took care
to keep always on the dark side of the street. The street was straight
in his rear. The first two or three times that he turned round he saw
nothing; the silence was profound, and he continued his march somewhat
reassured. All at once, on turning round, he thought he perceived in
the portion of the street which he had just passed through, far off in
the obscurity, something which was moving.
He rushed forward precipitately rather than walked, hoping to find some
side-street, to make his escape through it, and thus to break his scent
once more.
He arrived at a wall.
This wall, however, did not absolutely prevent further progress; it was
a wall which bordered a transverse street, in which the one he had
taken ended.
Here again, he was obliged to come to a decision; should he go to the
right or to the left.
He glanced to the right. The fragmentary lane was prolonged between
buildings which were either sheds or barns, then ended at a blind
alley. The extremity of the cul-de-sac was distinctly visible,—a lofty
white wall.
He glanced to the left. On that side the lane was open, and about two
hundred paces further on, ran into a street of which it was the
affluent. On that side lay safety.
At the moment when Jean Valjean was meditating a turn to the left, in
an effort to reach the street which he saw at the end of the lane, he
perceived a sort of motionless, black statue at the corner of the lane
and the street towards which he was on the point of directing his
steps.
It was some one, a man, who had evidently just been posted there, and
who was barring the passage and waiting.
Jean Valjean recoiled.
The point of Paris where Jean Valjean found himself, situated between
the Faubourg Saint-Antoine and la Râpée, is one of those which recent
improvements have transformed from top to bottom,—resulting in
disfigurement according to some, and in a transfiguration according to
others. The market-gardens, the timber-yards, and the old buildings
have been effaced. To-day, there are brand-new, wide streets, arenas,
circuses, hippodromes, railway stations, and a prison, Mazas, there;
progress, as the reader sees, with its antidote.
Half a century ago, in that ordinary, popular tongue, which is all
compounded of traditions, which persists in calling the Institut _les
Quatre-Nations_, and the Opera-Comique _Feydeau_, the precise spot
whither Jean Valjean had arrived was called _le Petit-Picpus_. The
Porte Saint-Jacques, the Porte Paris, the Barrière des Sergents, the
Porcherons, la Galiote, les Célestins, les Capucins, le Mail, la
Bourbe, l’Arbre de Cracovie, la Petite-Pologne—these are the names of
old Paris which survive amid the new. The memory of the populace hovers
over these relics of the past.
Le Petit-Picpus, which, moreover, hardly ever had any existence, and
never was more than the outline of a quarter, had nearly the monkish
aspect of a Spanish town. The roads were not much paved; the streets
were not much built up. With the exception of the two or three streets,
of which we shall presently speak, all was wall and solitude there. Not
a shop, not a vehicle, hardly a candle lighted here and there in the
windows; all lights extinguished after ten o’clock. Gardens, convents,
timber-yards, marshes; occasional lowly dwellings and great walls as
high as the houses.
Such was this quarter in the last century. The Revolution snubbed it
soundly. The republican government demolished and cut through it.
Rubbish shoots were established there. Thirty years ago, this quarter
was disappearing under the erasing process of new buildings. To-day, it
has been utterly blotted out. The Petit-Picpus, of which no existing
plan has preserved a trace, is indicated with sufficient clearness in
the plan of 1727, published at Paris by Denis Thierry, Rue
Saint-Jacques, opposite the Rue du Plâtre; and at Lyons, by Jean Girin,
Rue Mercière, at the sign of Prudence. Petit-Picpus had, as we have
just mentioned, a Y of streets, formed by the Rue du
Chemin-Vert-Saint-Antoine, which spread out in two branches, taking on
the left the name of Little Picpus Street, and on the right the name of
the Rue Polonceau. The two limbs of the Y were connected at the apex as
by a bar; this bar was called Rue Droit-Mur. The Rue Polonceau ended
there; Rue Petit-Picpus passed on, and ascended towards the Lenoir
market. A person coming from the Seine reached the extremity of the Rue
Polonceau, and had on his right the Rue Droit-Mur, turning abruptly at
a right angle, in front of him the wall of that street, and on his
right a truncated prolongation of the Rue Droit-Mur, which had no issue
and was called the Cul-de-Sac Genrot.
It was here that Jean Valjean stood.
As we have just said, on catching sight of that black silhouette
standing on guard at the angle of the Rue Droit-Mur and the Rue
Petit-Picpus, he recoiled. There could be no doubt of it. That phantom
was lying in wait for him.
What was he to do?
The time for retreating was passed. That which he had perceived in
movement an instant before, in the distant darkness, was Javert and his
squad without a doubt. Javert was probably already at the commencement
of the street at whose end Jean Valjean stood. Javert, to all
appearances, was acquainted with this little labyrinth, and had taken
his precautions by sending one of his men to guard the exit. These
surmises, which so closely resembled proofs, whirled suddenly, like a
handful of dust caught up by an unexpected gust of wind, through Jean
Valjean’s mournful brain. He examined the Cul-de-Sac Genrot; there he
was cut off. He examined the Rue Petit-Picpus; there stood a sentinel.
He saw that black form standing out in relief against the white
pavement, illuminated by the moon; to advance was to fall into this
man’s hands; to retreat was to fling himself into Javert’s arms. Jean
Valjean felt himself caught, as in a net, which was slowly contracting;
he gazed heavenward in despair.
CHAPTER IV—THE GROPINGS OF FLIGHT
In order to understand what follows, it is requisite to form an exact
idea of the Droit-Mur lane, and, in particular, of the angle which one
leaves on the left when one emerges from the Rue Polonceau into this
lane. Droit-Mur lane was almost entirely bordered on the right, as far
as the Rue Petit-Picpus, by houses of mean aspect; on the left by a
solitary building of severe outlines, composed of numerous parts which
grew gradually higher by a story or two as they approached the Rue
Petit-Picpus side; so that this building, which was very lofty on the
Rue Petit-Picpus side, was tolerably low on the side adjoining the Rue
Polonceau. There, at the angle of which we have spoken, it descended to
such a degree that it consisted of merely a wall. This wall did not
abut directly on the street; it formed a deeply retreating niche,
concealed by its two corners from two observers who might have been,
one in the Rue Polonceau, the other in the Rue Droit-Mur.
Beginning with these angles of the niche, the wall extended along the
Rue Polonceau as far as a house which bore the number 49, and along the
Rue Droit-Mur, where the fragment was much shorter, as far as the
gloomy building which we have mentioned and whose gable it intersected,
thus forming another retreating angle in the street. This gable was
sombre of aspect; only one window was visible, or, to speak more
correctly, two shutters covered with a sheet of zinc and kept
constantly closed.
The state of the places of which we are here giving a description is
rigorously exact, and will certainly awaken a very precise memory in
the mind of old inhabitants of the quarter.
The niche was entirely filled by a thing which resembled a colossal and
wretched door; it was a vast, formless assemblage of perpendicular
planks, the upper ones being broader than the lower, bound together by
long transverse strips of iron. At one side there was a carriage gate
of the ordinary dimensions, and which had evidently not been cut more
than fifty years previously.
A linden-tree showed its crest above the niche, and the wall was
covered with ivy on the side of the Rue Polonceau.
In the imminent peril in which Jean Valjean found himself, this sombre
building had about it a solitary and uninhabited look which tempted
him. He ran his eyes rapidly over it; he said to himself, that if he
could contrive to get inside it, he might save himself. First he
conceived an idea, then a hope.
In the central portion of the front of this building, on the Rue
Droit-Mur side, there were at all the windows of the different stories
ancient cistern pipes of lead. The various branches of the pipes which
led from one central pipe to all these little basins sketched out a
sort of tree on the front. These ramifications of pipes with their
hundred elbows imitated those old leafless vine-stocks which writhe
over the fronts of old farm-houses.
This odd espalier, with its branches of lead and iron, was the first
thing that struck Jean Valjean. He seated Cosette with her back against
a stone post, with an injunction to be silent, and ran to the spot
where the conduit touched the pavement. Perhaps there was some way of
climbing up by it and entering the house. But the pipe was dilapidated
and past service, and hardly hung to its fastenings. Moreover, all the
windows of this silent dwelling were grated with heavy iron bars, even
the attic windows in the roof. And then, the moon fell full upon that