Les Misérables

CHAPTER XVI – IN WHICH WILL BE FOUND THE WORDS TO AN ENGLISH AIR WHICH WAS IN FASHION IN 1832

Marius seated himself on his bed. It might have been half-past five o’clock. Only half an hour separated him from what was about to happen. He heard the beating of his arteries as one hears the ticking of a watch in the dark. He thought of the double march which was going on at that moment in the dark, – crime advancing on one side, justice coming up on the other. He was not afraid, but he could not think without a shudder of what was about to take place. As is the case with all those who are suddenly assailed by an unforeseen adventure, the entire day produced upon him the effect of a dream, and in order to persuade himself that he was not the prey of a nightmare, he had to feel the cold barrels of the steel pistols in his trousers pockets.

It was no longer snowing; the moon disengaged itself more and more clearly from the mist, and its light, mingled with the white reflection of the snow which had fallen, communicated to the chamber a sort of twilight aspect.

There was a light in the Jondrette den. Marius saw the hole in the wall shining with a reddish glow which seemed bloody to him.

It was true that the light could not be produced by a candle. However, there was not a sound in the Jondrette quarters, not a soul was moving there, not a soul speaking, not a breath; the silence was glacial and profound, and had it not been for that light, he might have thought himself next door to a sepulchre.

Marius softly removed his boots and pushed them under his bed.

Several minutes elapsed. Marius heard the lower door turn on its hinges; a heavy step mounted the staircase, and hastened along the corridor; the latch of the hovel was noisily lifted; it was Jondrette returning.

Instantly, several voices arose. The whole family was in the garret. Only, it had been silent in the master’s absence, like wolf whelps in the absence of the wolf.

“It’s I,” said he.

“Good evening, daddy,” yelped the girls.

“Well?” said the mother.

“All’s going first-rate,” responded Jondrette, “but my feet are beastly cold. Good! You have dressed up. You have done well! You must inspire confidence.”

“All ready to go out.”

“Don’t forget what I told you. You will do everything sure?”

“Rest easy.”

“Because – ” said Jondrette. And he left the phrase unfinished.

Marius heard him lay something heavy on the table, probably the chisel which he had purchased.

“By the way,” said Jondrette, “have you been eating here?”

“Yes,” said the mother. “I got three large potatoes and some salt. I took advantage of the fire to cook them.”

“Good,” returned Jondrette. “To-morrow I will take you out to dine with me. We will have a duck and fixings. You shall dine like Charles the Tenth; all is going well!”

Then he added: —

“The mouse-trap is open. The cats are there.”

He lowered his voice still further, and said: —

“Put this in the fire.”

Marius heard a sound of charcoal being knocked with the tongs or some iron utensil, and Jondrette continued: —

“Have you greased the hinges of the door so that they will not squeak?”

“Yes,” replied the mother.

“What time is it?”

“Nearly six. The half-hour struck from Saint-Médard a while ago.”

“The devil!” ejaculated Jondrette; “the children must go and watch. Come you, do you listen here.”

A whispering ensued.

Jondrette’s voice became audible again: —

“Has old Bougon left?”

“Yes,” said the mother.

“Are you sure that there is no one in our neighbor’s room?”

“He has not been in all day, and you know very well that this is his dinner hour.”

“You are sure?”

“Sure.”

“All the same,” said Jondrette, “there’s no harm in going to see whether he is there. Here, my girl, take the candle and go there.”

Marius fell on his hands and knees and crawled silently under his bed.

Hardly had he concealed himself, when he perceived a light through the crack of his door.

“P’pa,” cried a voice, “he is not in here.”

He recognized the voice of the eldest daughter.

“Did you go in?” demanded her father.

“No,” replied the girl, “but as his key is in the door, he must be out.”

The father exclaimed: —

“Go in, nevertheless.”

The door opened, and Marius saw the tall Jondrette come in with a candle in her hand. She was as she had been in the morning, only still more repulsive in this light.

She walked straight up to the bed. Marius endured an indescribable moment of anxiety; but near the bed there was a mirror nailed to the wall, and it was thither that she was directing her steps. She raised herself on tiptoe and looked at herself in it. In the neighboring room, the sound of iron articles being moved was audible.

She smoothed her hair with the palm of her hand, and smiled into the mirror, humming with her cracked and sepulchral voice: —

In the meantime, Marius trembled. It seemed impossible to him that she should not hear his breathing.

She stepped to the window and looked out with the half-foolish way she had.

“How ugly Paris is when it has put on a white chemise!” said she.

She returned to the mirror and began again to put on airs before it, scrutinizing herself full-face and three-quarters face in turn.

“Well!” cried her father, “what are you about there?”

“I am looking under the bed and the furniture,” she replied, continuing to arrange her hair; “there’s no one here.”

“Booby!” yelled her father. “Come here this minute! And don’t waste any time about it!”

“Coming! Coming!” said she. “One has no time for anything in this hovel!”

She hummed: —

She cast a parting glance in the mirror and went out, shutting the door behind her.

A moment more, and Marius heard the sound of the two young girls’ bare feet in the corridor, and Jondrette’s voice shouting to them: —

“Pay strict heed! One on the side of the barrier, the other at the corner of the Rue du Petit-Banquier. Don’t lose sight for a moment of the door of this house, and the moment you see anything, rush here on the instant! as hard as you can go! You have a key to get in.”

The eldest girl grumbled: —

“The idea of standing watch in the snow barefoot!”

“To-morrow you shall have some dainty little green silk boots!” said the father.

They ran downstairs, and a few seconds later the shock of the outer door as it banged to announced that they were outside.

There now remained in the house only Marius, the Jondrettes and probably, also, the mysterious persons of whom Marius had caught a glimpse in the twilight, behind the door of the unused attic.

CHAPTER XVII – THE USE MADE OF MARIUS’ FIVE-FRANC PIECE

Marius decided that the moment had now arrived when he must resume his post at his observatory. In a twinkling, and with the agility of his age, he had reached the hole in the partition.

He looked.

The interior of the Jondrette apartment presented a curious aspect, and Marius found an explanation of the singular light which he had noticed. A candle was burning in a candlestick covered with verdigris, but that was not what really lighted the chamber. The hovel was completely illuminated, as it were, by the reflection from a rather large sheet-iron brazier standing in the fireplace, and filled with burning charcoal, the brazier prepared by the Jondrette woman that morning. The charcoal was glowing hot and the brazier was red; a blue flame flickered over it, and helped him to make out the form of the chisel purchased by Jondrette in the Rue Pierre-Lombard, where it had been thrust into the brazier to heat. In one corner, near the door, and as though prepared for some definite use, two heaps were visible, which appeared to be, the one a heap of old iron, the other a heap of ropes. All this would have caused the mind of a person who knew nothing of what was in preparation, to waver between a very sinister and a very simple idea. The lair thus lighted up more resembled a forge than a mouth of hell, but Jondrette, in this light, had rather the air of a demon than of a smith.

The heat of the brazier was so great, that the candle on the table was melting on the side next the chafing-dish, and was drooping over. An old dark-lantern of copper, worthy of Diogenes turned Cartouche, stood on the chimney-piece.

The brazier, placed in the fireplace itself, beside the nearly extinct brands, sent its vapors up the chimney, and gave out no odor.

The moon, entering through the four panes of the window, cast its whiteness into the crimson and flaming garret; and to the poetic spirit of Marius, who was dreamy even in the moment of action, it was like a thought of heaven mingled with the misshapen reveries of earth.

A breath of air which made its way in through the open pane, helped to dissipate the smell of the charcoal and to conceal the presence of the brazier.

The Jondrette lair was, if the reader recalls what we have said of the Gorbeau building, admirably chosen to serve as the theatre of a violent and sombre deed, and as the envelope for a crime. It was the most retired chamber in the most isolated house on the most deserted boulevard in Paris. If the system of ambush and traps had not already existed, they would have been invented there.

The whole thickness of a house and a multitude of uninhabited rooms separated this den from the boulevard, and the only window that existed opened on waste lands enclosed with walls and palisades.

Jondrette had lighted his pipe, seated himself on the seatless chair, and was engaged in smoking. His wife was talking to him in a low tone.

If Marius had been Courfeyrac, that is to say, one of those men who laugh on every occasion in life, he would have burst with laughter when his gaze fell on the Jondrette woman. She had on a black bonnet with plumes not unlike the hats of the heralds-at-arms at the coronation of Charles X., an immense tartan shawl over her knitted petticoat, and the man’s shoes which her daughter had scorned in the morning. It was this toilette which had extracted from Jondrette the exclamation: “Good! You have dressed up. You have done well. You must inspire confidence!”

As for Jondrette, he had not taken off the new surtout, which was too large for him, and which M. Leblanc had given him, and his costume continued to present that contrast of coat and trousers which constituted the ideal of a poet in Courfeyrac’s eyes.

All at once, Jondrette lifted up his voice: —

“By the way! Now that I think of it. In this weather, he will come in a carriage. Light the lantern, take it and go downstairs. You will stand behind the lower door. The very moment that you hear the carriage stop, you will open the door, instantly, he will come up, you will light the staircase and the corridor, and when he enters here, you will go downstairs again as speedily as possible, you will pay the coachman, and dismiss the fiacre.”

“And the money?” inquired the woman.

Jondrette fumbled in his trousers pocket and handed her five francs.

“What’s this?” she exclaimed.

Jondrette replied with dignity: —

“That is the monarch which our neighbor gave us this morning.”

And he added: —

“Do you know what? Two chairs will be needed here.”

“What for?”

“To sit on.”

Marius felt a cold chill pass through his limbs at hearing this mild answer from Jondrette.

“Pardieu! I’ll go and get one of our neighbor’s.”

And with a rapid movement, she opened the door of the den, and went out into the corridor.

Marius absolutely had not the time to descend from the commode, reach his bed, and conceal himself beneath it.

“Take the candle,” cried Jondrette.

“No,” said she, “it would embarrass me, I have the two chairs to carry. There is moonlight.”

Marius heard Mother Jondrette’s heavy hand fumbling at his lock in the dark. The door opened. He remained nailed to the spot with the shock and with horror.

The Jondrette entered.

The dormer window permitted the entrance of a ray of moonlight between two blocks of shadow. One of these blocks of shadow entirely covered the wall against which Marius was leaning, so that he disappeared within it.

Mother Jondrette raised her eyes, did not see Marius, took the two chairs, the only ones which Marius possessed, and went away, letting the door fall heavily to behind her.

She re-entered the lair.

“Here are the two chairs.”

“And here is the lantern. Go down as quick as you can.”

She hastily obeyed, and Jondrette was left alone.

He placed the two chairs on opposite sides of the table, turned the chisel in the brazier, set in front of the fireplace an old screen which masked the chafing-dish, then went to the corner where lay the pile of rope, and bent down as though to examine something. Marius then recognized the fact, that what he had taken for a shapeless mass was a very well-made rope-ladder, with wooden rungs and two hooks with which to attach it.

This ladder, and some large tools, veritable masses of iron, which were mingled with the old iron piled up behind the door, had not been in the Jondrette hovel in the morning, and had evidently been brought thither in the afternoon, during Marius’ absence.

“Those are the utensils of an edge-tool maker,” thought Marius.

Had Marius been a little more learned in this line, he would have recognized in what he took for the engines of an edge-tool maker, certain instruments which will force a lock or pick a lock, and others which will cut or slice, the two families of tools which burglars call cadets and fauchants.

The fireplace and the two chairs were exactly opposite Marius. The brazier being concealed, the only light in the room was now furnished by the candle; the smallest bit of crockery on the table or on the chimney-piece cast a large shadow. There was something indescribably calm, threatening, and hideous about this chamber. One felt that there existed in it the anticipation of something terrible.

Jondrette had allowed his pipe to go out, a serious sign of preoccupation, and had again seated himself. The candle brought out the fierce and the fine angles of his countenance. He indulged in scowls and in abrupt unfoldings of the right hand, as though he were responding to the last counsels of a sombre inward monologue. In the course of one of these dark replies which he was making to himself, he pulled the table drawer rapidly towards him, took out a long kitchen knife which was concealed there, and tried the edge of its blade on his nail. That done, he put the knife back in the drawer and shut it.

Marius, on his side, grasped the pistol in his right pocket, drew it out and cocked it.

The pistol emitted a sharp, clear click, as he cocked it.

Jondrette started, half rose, listened a moment, then began to laugh and said: —

“What a fool I am! It’s the partition cracking!”

Marius kept the pistol in his hand.

CHAPTER XVIII – MARIUS’ TWO CHAIRS FORM A VIS-A-VIS

Suddenly, the distant and melancholy vibration of a clock shook the panes. Six o’clock was striking from Saint-Médard.

Jondrette marked off each stroke with a toss of his head. When the sixth had struck, he snuffed the candle with his fingers.

Then he began to pace up and down the room, listened at the corridor, walked on again, then listened once more.

“Provided only that he comes!” he muttered, then he returned to his chair.

He had hardly reseated himself when the door opened.

Mother Jondrette had opened it, and now remained in the corridor making a horrible, amiable grimace, which one of the holes of the dark-lantern illuminated from below.

“Enter, sir,” she said.

“Enter, my benefactor,” repeated Jondrette, rising hastily.

M. Leblanc made his appearance.

He wore an air of serenity which rendered him singularly venerable.

He laid four louis on the table.

“Monsieur Fabantou,” said he, “this is for your rent and your most pressing necessities. We will attend to the rest hereafter.”

“May God requite it to you, my generous benefactor!” said Jondrette.

And rapidly approaching his wife: —

“Dismiss the carriage!”

She slipped out while her husband was lavishing salutes and offering M. Leblanc a chair. An instant later she returned and whispered in his ear: —

“‘Tis done.”

The snow, which had not ceased falling since the morning, was so deep that the arrival of the fiacre had not been audible, and they did not now hear its departure.

Meanwhile, M. Leblanc had seated himself.

Jondrette had taken possession of the other chair, facing M. Leblanc.

Now, in order to form an idea of the scene which is to follow, let the reader picture to himself in his own mind, a cold night, the solitudes of the Salpêtrière covered with snow and white as winding-sheets in the moonlight, the taper-like lights of the street lanterns which shone redly here and there along those tragic boulevards, and the long rows of black elms, not a passer-by for perhaps a quarter of a league around, the Gorbeau hovel, at its highest pitch of silence, of horror, and of darkness; in that building, in the midst of those solitudes, in the midst of that darkness, the vast Jondrette garret lighted by a single candle, and in that den two men seated at a table, M. Leblanc tranquil, Jondrette smiling and alarming, the Jondrette woman, the female wolf, in one corner, and, behind the partition, Marius, invisible, erect, not losing a word, not missing a single movement, his eye on the watch, and pistol in hand.

However, Marius experienced only an emotion of horror, but no fear. He clasped the stock of the pistol firmly and felt reassured. “I shall be able to stop that wretch whenever I please,” he thought.

He felt that the police were there somewhere in ambuscade, waiting for the signal agreed upon and ready to stretch out their arm.

Moreover, he was in hopes, that this violent encounter between Jondrette and M. Leblanc would cast some light on all the things which he was interested in learning.

CHAPTER XIX – OCCUPYING ONE’S SELF WITH OBSCURE DEPTHS

Hardly was M. Leblanc seated, when he turned his eyes towards the pallets, which were empty.

“How is the poor little wounded girl?” he inquired.

“Bad,” replied Jondrette with a heart-broken and grateful smile, “very bad, my worthy sir. Her elder sister has taken her to the Bourbe to have her hurt dressed. You will see them presently; they will be back immediately.”

“Madame Fabantou seems to me to be better,” went on M. Leblanc, casting his eyes on the eccentric costume of the Jondrette woman, as she stood between him and the door, as though already guarding the exit, and gazed at him in an attitude of menace and almost of combat.

“She is dying,” said Jondrette. “But what do you expect, sir! She has so much courage, that woman has! She’s not a woman, she’s an ox.”

The Jondrette, touched by his compliment, deprecated it with the affected airs of a flattered monster.

“You are always too good to me, Monsieur Jondrette!”

“Jondrette!” said M. Leblanc, “I thought your name was Fabantou?”

“Fabantou, alias Jondrette!” replied the husband hurriedly. “An artistic sobriquet!”

And launching at his wife a shrug of the shoulders which M. Leblanc did not catch, he continued with an emphatic and caressing inflection of voice: —

“Ah! we have had a happy life together, this poor darling and I! What would there be left for us if we had not that? We are so wretched, my respectable sir! We have arms, but there is no work! We have the will, no work! I don’t know how the government arranges that, but, on my word of honor, sir, I am not Jacobin, sir, I am not a bousingot.30 I don’t wish them any evil, but if I were the ministers, on my most sacred word, things would be different. Here, for instance, I wanted to have my girls taught the trade of paper-box makers. You will say to me: ‘What! a trade?’ Yes! A trade! A simple trade! A bread-winner! What a fall, my benefactor! What a degradation, when one has been what we have been! Alas! There is nothing left to us of our days of prosperity! One thing only, a picture, of which I think a great deal, but which I am willing to part with, for I must live! Item, one must live!”

While Jondrette thus talked, with an apparent incoherence which detracted nothing from the thoughtful and sagacious expression of his physiognomy, Marius raised his eyes, and perceived at the other end of the room a person whom he had not seen before. A man had just entered, so softly that the door had not been heard to turn on its hinges. This man wore a violet knitted vest, which was old, worn, spotted, cut and gaping at every fold, wide trousers of cotton velvet, wooden shoes on his feet, no shirt, had his neck bare, his bare arms tattooed, and his face smeared with black. He had seated himself in silence on the nearest bed, and, as he was behind Jondrette, he could only be indistinctly seen.

That sort of magnetic instinct which turns aside the gaze, caused M. Leblanc to turn round almost at the same moment as Marius. He could not refrain from a gesture of surprise which did not escape Jondrette.

“Ah! I see!” exclaimed Jondrette, buttoning up his coat with an air of complaisance, “you are looking at your overcoat? It fits me! My faith, but it fits me!”