Les Miserables (abridged) (Barnes & Noble Classics Series) (121 page)

“Speaking of the quagmire, you are a proud animal. Why didn’t you throw the man in there?”

Jean Valjean preserved silence.

Thénardier resumed, raising the rag which served him as a cravat up to his Adam’s apple, a gesture which completes the air of sagacity of a serious man:

“Indeed, perhaps you have acted prudently. The workmen when they come to-morrow to stop the hole, would certainly have found the dummy forgotten there, and they would have been able, thread by thread, straw by straw, to find the trace, and to get to you. Something has passed through the sewer? Who? Where did he come out? Did anybody see him come out? The police has plenty of brains. The sewer is treacherous and informs against you. Such a discovery is a rarity, it attracts attention, few people use the sewer in their business while the river is at everybody’s service. The river is the true grave. At the month’s end, they fish you up the man at the nets of Saint Cloud. Well, what does that amount to? It is a carcass, indeed! Who killed this man? Paris. And justice don’t even inquire into it. You have done right.”

The more loquacious Thénardier was, the more dumb was Jean Valjean. Thénardier pushed his shoulder anew.

“Now, let us finish the business. Let us divide. You have seen my key, show me your money.”

Thénardier was haggard, savage, shady, a little threatening, nevertheless friendly.

There was one strange circumstance; Thénardier’s manner was not natural; he did not appear entirely at his ease; while he did not affect an air of mystery, he talked low; from time to time he laid his finger on his mouth, and muttered: “Hush!” It was difficult to guess why. There was nobody there but them. Jean Valjean thought that perhaps some other bandits were hidden in some recess not far off, and that Thénardier did not care to share with them.

Thénardier resumed:

“Let us finish. How much did the stiff have in his deeps?”

Jean Valjean felt in his pockets.

It was, as will be remembered, his custom always to have money about him. The gloomy life of expedients to which he was condemned, made this a law to him. This time, however, he was caught unprepared. On putting on his National Guard’s uniform, the evening before, he had forgotten, gloomily absorbed as he was, to take his pocket-book with him. He had only some coins in his waistcoat pocket. He turned out his pocket, all soaked with filth, and displayed upon the curb of the sewer a louis d‘or, two five-franc coins, and five or six big sous.

Thénardier thrust out his under lip with a significant twist of the neck.

“You didn’t kill him very dear,” said he.

He began to handle, in all familiarity, the pockets of Jean Valjean and Marius. Jean Valjean, principally concerned in keeping his back to the light, did not interfere with him. While he was feeling of Marius’ coat, Thénardier, with the dexterity of a juggler, found means, without attracting Jean Valjean’s attention, to tear off a strip, which he hid under his smock, probably thinking that this scrap of cloth might assist him afterwards to identify the assassinated man and the assassin. He found, however, nothing more than the thirty francs.

“It is true,” said he, “both together, you have no more than that.”

And, forgetting his words, go
halves,
he took the whole.

He hesitated a little before the big sous. Upon reflection, he took them also, mumbling:

“No matter! this is sticking people too cheap.”

This said, he took the key from under his smock anew.

“Now, friend, you must go out. This is like the fair, you pay on going out. You have paid, go out.”

And he began to laugh.

That he had, in extending to an unknown man the help of this key, and in causing another man than himself to go out by this door, the pure and disinterested intention of saving an assassin, is something which it is permissible to doubt.

Thénardier helped Jean Valjean to replace Marius upon his shoulders; then he went towards the grating upon the points of his bare feet, beckoning to Jean Valjean to follow him, he looked outside, laid his finger on his mouth, and stood a few seconds as if in suspense; the inspection over, he put the key into the lock. The bolt slid and the door turned. There was neither snapping nor grinding. It was done very quietly. It was plain that this grating and its hinges, oiled with care, were opened oftener than would have been guessed. This quiet was ominous; you felt in it the furtive goings and comings, the silent entrances and exits of the men of the night, and the wolf-like tread of crime. The sewer was evidently in complicity with some mysterious band. This taciturn grating harboured fugitives from justice.
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Thénardier half opened the door, left just enough room for Jean Valjean, closed the grating again, turned the key twice in the lock, and plunged back into the darkness, without making more noise than a breath. He seemed to walk with the velvet paws of a tiger. A moment afterwards, this hideous providence had entered again into the invisible.

Jean Valjean found himself outside.

HE LET Marius slide down upon the quai.

They were outside!

The miasmas, the darkness, the horror were behind him. The balmy air, pure, living, joyful, freely respirable, flowed around him. Everywhere about him silence, but the charming silence of a sunset in a clear sky. Twilight had fallen; night was coming, the great liberator, the friend of all those who need a mantle of darkness to escape from an anguish. The sky extended on every side like an enormous calm. The river came to his feet with the sound of a kiss. He heard the airy dialogues of the nests bidding each other good night in the elms of the Champs-Elysées. A few stars, faintly piercing the pale blue of the zenith, and visible to reverie alone, produced their imperceptible little resplendencies in the immensity. Evening was unfolding over Jean Valjean’s head all the caresses of the infinite.

It was the undecided and exquisite hour which says neither yes nor no. There was already night enough for one to be lost in it at a little distance, and still day enough for one to be recognised near at hand.

Jean Valjean was for a few seconds irresistibly overcome by all this august and caressing serenity; there are such moments of forgetfulness; suffering refuses to harass the wretched; all is eclipsed in thought; peace covers the dreamer like a night; and, under the twilight which is flinging forth its rays, and in imitation of the sky which is lighting up, the soul becomes starry. Jean Valjean could not but gaze at that vast clear shadow which was above him; pensive, in the majestic silence of the eternal heavens, he took a bath of ecstasy and prayer. Then, hastily, as if a feeling of duty came back to him, he bent over Marius, and, dipping up some water in the hollow of his hand, he threw a few drops gently into his face. Marius’ eyelids did not part; but his half-open mouth breathed.

Jean Valjean was plunging his hand into the river again, when suddenly he felt an indescribable uneasiness, such as we feel when we have somebody behind us, without seeing him.

We have already referred elsewhere to this impression, with which everybody is acquainted.

He turned round.

As just a few minutes earlier, somebody was indeed behind him.

A man of tall stature, wrapped in a long overcoat, with folded arms, and holding in his right hand a club, the leaden knob of which could be seen, stood erect a few steps in the rear of Jean Valjean, who was stooping over Marius.

It was, with the aid of the shadow, a sort of apparition. A simple-minded man would have been afraid on account of the twilight, and a reflective man on account of the club.

Jean Valjean recognised Javert.

The reader has doubtless guessed that Thénardier’s pursuer was none other than Javert. Javert, after his unhoped-for departure from the barricade, had gone to the prefecture of police, had given an account verbally to the prefect in person in a short audience, had then immediately returned to his duty, which implied—the note found upon him will be remembered—a certain surveillance of the shore on the right bank near the Champs- Elysées, which for some time had attracted the attention of the police. There he had seen Thénardier, and had followed him. The rest is known.

It is understood also that the opening of that grating so obligingly before Jean Valjean was a piece of shrewdness on the part of Thénardier. Thénardier felt that Javert was still there; the man who is watched has a scent which does not deceive him; a bone must be thrown to this hound. An assassin, what a godsend! It was the scapegoat, which must never be refused. Thénardier, by putting Jean Valjean out in his place, gave a victim to the police, threw them off his own track, caused himself to be forgotten in a larger matter, rewarded Javert for his delay, which always flatters a spy, gained thirty francs, and counted surely, as for himself, upon escaping by the aid of this diversion.

Jean Valjean had passed from one shoal to another.

These two encounters, blow on blow, to fall from Thénardier upon Javert, it was hard.

Javert did not recognise Jean Valjean, who, as we have said, no longer resembled himself. He did not unfold his arms, he secured his club in his grasp by an imperceptible movement, and said in a clipped, calm voice:

“Who are you?”

“I.”

“What you?”

“Jean Valjean.”

Javert put the club between his teeth, bent his knees, inclined his body, laid his two powerful hands upon Jean Valjean’s shoulders, which they clamped like two vices, examined him, and recognised him. Their faces almost touched. Javert’s look was terrible.

Jean Valjean stood inert under the grasp of Javert like a lion who should submit to the claw of a lynx.

“Inspector Javert,” said he, “you have got me. Besides, since this morning, I have considered myself your prisoner. I did not give you my address to try to escape you. Take me. Only grant me one thing.”

Javert seemed not to hear. He rested his fixed eye upon Jean Valjean. His rising chin pushed his lips towards his nose, a sign of savage musing. At last, he let go of Jean Valjean, rose up as straight as a stick, took his club firmly in his grasp, and, as if in a dream, murmured rather than pronounced this question:

“What are you doing here? and who is this man?”

Jean Valjean answered, and the sound of his voice appeared to awaken Javert:

“It is precisely of him that I wished to speak. Dispose of me as you please; but help me first to carry him home. I ask only that of you.”

Javert’s face contracted, as it happened to him whenever anybody seemed to consider him capable of a concession. Still he did not say no.

He stooped down again, took a handkerchief from his pocket, which he dipped in the water, and wiped Marius’ blood-stained forehead.

“This man was in the barricade,” said he in an undertone, and as if speaking to himself. “This is he whom they called Marius.”

A spy of the first quality, who had observed everything, listened to everything, heard everything, and recollected everything, believing he was about to die; who spied even in his death-agony, and who, leaning upon the first step of the grave, had taken notes.

He seized Marius’ hand, seeking for his pulse.

“He is wounded,” said Jean Valjean.

“He is dead,” said Javert.

Jean Valjean answered:

“No. Not yet.”

“You have brought him, then, from the barricade here?” observed Javert.

His preoccupation must have been deep, as he did not dwell longer upon this perplexing escape through the sewer, and did not even notice Jean Valjean’s silence after his question.

Jean Valjean, for his part, seemed to have but one idea. He resumed:

“He lives in the Marais, Rue des Filles du Calvaire, at his grandfather’s —I forget the name.”

Jean Valjean felt in Marius’ coat, took out the pocket-book, opened it at the page pencilled by Marius, and handed it to Javert.

There was still enough light floating in the air to enable one to read. Javert, moreover, had in his eye the feline phosphorescence of the birds of the night. He deciphered the few lines written by Marius, and muttered: “Gillenormand, Rue des Filles du Calvaire, No. 6.”

Then he cried: “Driver?”

The reader will remember the fiacre which was waiting, in case of need.

Javert kept Marius’ pocket-book.

A moment later, the carriage, descending by the slope of the watering-place, was on the quai. Marius was laid upon the back seat, and Javert sat down by the side of Jean Valjean on the front seat.

When the door was shut, the fiacre moved rapidly off, going up the quai in the direction of the Bastille.

They left the quai and entered the streets. The driver, a black silhouette upon his box, whipped up his bony horses. Icy silence in the coach. Marius, motionless, his body braced in the corner of the carriage, his head dropping down upon his breast, his arms hanging, his legs rigid, appeared to await nothing now but a coffin; Jean Valjean seemed made of shadow, and Javert of stone; and in that carriage full of night, the interior of which, whenever it passed before a lamp, appeared to turn lividly pale, as if from an intermittent flash, chance grouped together, and seemed dismally to confront the three tragic immobilities, the corpse, the spectre, and the statue.

AT EVERY JOLT over the pavement, a drop of blood fell from Marius’ hair.

It was after nightfall when the fiacre arrived at No. 6, in the Rue des Filles du Calvaire.

Javert first set foot on the ground, verified at a glance the number above the porte-cochère, and, lifting the heavy wrought-iron knocker, embellished in the old fashion, with a goat and a satyr defying each other, struck a violent blow. The panel of the door partly opened, and Javert pushed it. The porter showed himself, gaping and half-awake, a candle in his hand.