Les Misérables

During his address to the man with the pole-axe, he had turned his back to M. Leblanc.

M. Leblanc seized this moment, overturned the chair with his foot and the table with his fist, and with one bound, with prodigious agility, before Thénardier had time to turn round, he had reached the window. To open it, to scale the frame, to bestride it, was the work of a second only. He was half out when six robust fists seized him and dragged him back energetically into the hovel. These were the three “chimney-builders,” who had flung themselves upon him. At the same time the Thénardier woman had wound her hands in his hair.

At the trampling which ensued, the other ruffians rushed up from the corridor. The old man on the bed, who seemed under the influence of wine, descended from the pallet and came reeling up, with a stone-breaker’s hammer in his hand.

One of the “chimney-builders,” whose smirched face was lighted up by the candle, and in whom Marius recognized, in spite of his daubing, Panchaud, alias Printanier, alias Bigrenaille, lifted above M. Leblanc’s head a sort of bludgeon made of two balls of lead, at the two ends of a bar of iron.

Marius could not resist this sight. “My father,” he thought, “forgive me!”

And his finger sought the trigger of his pistol.

The shot was on the point of being discharged when Thénardier’s voice shouted: —

“Don’t harm him!”

This desperate attempt of the victim, far from exasperating Thénardier, had calmed him. There existed in him two men, the ferocious man and the adroit man. Up to that moment, in the excess of his triumph in the presence of the prey which had been brought down, and which did not stir, the ferocious man had prevailed; when the victim struggled and tried to resist, the adroit man reappeared and took the upper hand.

“Don’t hurt him!” he repeated, and without suspecting it, his first success was to arrest the pistol in the act of being discharged, and to paralyze Marius, in whose opinion the urgency of the case disappeared, and who, in the face of this new phase, saw no inconvenience in waiting a while longer.

Who knows whether some chance would not arise which would deliver him from the horrible alternative of allowing Ursule’s father to perish, or of destroying the colonel’s saviour?

A herculean struggle had begun. With one blow full in the chest, M. Leblanc had sent the old man tumbling, rolling in the middle of the room, then with two backward sweeps of his hand he had overthrown two more assailants, and he held one under each of his knees; the wretches were rattling in the throat beneath this pressure as under a granite millstone; but the other four had seized the formidable old man by both arms and the back of his neck, and were holding him doubled up over the two “chimney-builders” on the floor.

Thus, the master of some and mastered by the rest, crushing those beneath him and stifling under those on top of him, endeavoring in vain to shake off all the efforts which were heaped upon him, M. Leblanc disappeared under the horrible group of ruffians like the wild boar beneath a howling pile of dogs and hounds.

They succeeded in overthrowing him upon the bed nearest the window, and there they held him in awe. The Thénardier woman had not released her clutch on his hair.

“Don’t you mix yourself up in this affair,” said Thénardier. “You’ll tear your shawl.”

The Thénardier obeyed, as the female wolf obeys the male wolf, with a growl.

“Now,” said Thénardier, “search him, you other fellows!”

M. Leblanc seemed to have renounced the idea of resistance.

They searched him.

He had nothing on his person except a leather purse containing six francs, and his handkerchief.

Thénardier put the handkerchief into his own pocket.

“What! No pocket-book?” he demanded.

“No, nor watch,” replied one of the “chimney-builders.”

“Never mind,” murmured the masked man who carried the big key, in the voice of a ventriloquist, “he’s a tough old fellow.”

Thénardier went to the corner near the door, picked up a bundle of ropes and threw them at the men.

“Tie him to the leg of the bed,” said he.

And, catching sight of the old man who had been stretched across the room by the blow from M. Leblanc’s fist, and who made no movement, he added: —

“Is Boulatruelle dead?”

“No,” replied Bigrenaille, “he’s drunk.”

“Sweep him into a corner,” said Thénardier.

Two of the “chimney-builders” pushed the drunken man into the corner near the heap of old iron with their feet.

“Babet,” said Thénardier in a low tone to the man with the cudgel, “why did you bring so many; they were not needed.”

“What can you do?” replied the man with the cudgel, “they all wanted to be in it. This is a bad season. There’s no business going on.”

The pallet on which M. Leblanc had been thrown was a sort of hospital bed, elevated on four coarse wooden legs, roughly hewn.

M. Leblanc let them take their own course.

The ruffians bound him securely, in an upright attitude, with his feet on the ground at the head of the bed, the end which was most remote from the window, and nearest to the fireplace.

When the last knot had been tied, Thénardier took a chair and seated himself almost facing M. Leblanc.

Thénardier no longer looked like himself; in the course of a few moments his face had passed from unbridled violence to tranquil and cunning sweetness.

Marius found it difficult to recognize in that polished smile of a man in official life the almost bestial mouth which had been foaming but a moment before; he gazed with amazement on that fantastic and alarming metamorphosis, and he felt as a man might feel who should behold a tiger converted into a lawyer.

“Monsieur – ” said Thénardier.

And dismissing with a gesture the ruffians who still kept their hands on M. Leblanc: —

“Stand off a little, and let me have a talk with the gentleman.”

All retired towards the door.

He went on: —

“Monsieur, you did wrong to try to jump out of the window. You might have broken your leg. Now, if you will permit me, we will converse quietly. In the first place, I must communicate to you an observation which I have made which is, that you have not uttered the faintest cry.”

Thénardier was right, this detail was correct, although it had escaped Marius in his agitation. M. Leblanc had barely pronounced a few words, without raising his voice, and even during his struggle with the six ruffians near the window he had preserved the most profound and singular silence.

Thénardier continued: —

“Mon Dieu! You might have shouted ‘stop thief’ a bit, and I should not have thought it improper. ‘Murder!’ That, too, is said occasionally, and, so far as I am concerned, I should not have taken it in bad part. It is very natural that you should make a little row when you find yourself with persons who don’t inspire you with sufficient confidence. You might have done that, and no one would have troubled you on that account. You would not even have been gagged. And I will tell you why. This room is very private. That’s its only recommendation, but it has that in its favor. You might fire off a mortar and it would produce about as much noise at the nearest police station as the snores of a drunken man. Here a cannon would make a boum, and the thunder would make a pouf. It’s a handy lodging. But, in short, you did not shout, and it is better so. I present you my compliments, and I will tell you the conclusion that I draw from that fact: My dear sir, when a man shouts, who comes? The police. And after the police? Justice. Well! You have not made an outcry; that is because you don’t care to have the police and the courts come in any more than we do. It is because, – I have long suspected it, – you have some interest in hiding something. On our side we have the same interest. So we can come to an understanding.”

As he spoke thus, it seemed as though Thénardier, who kept his eyes fixed on M. Leblanc, were trying to plunge the sharp points which darted from the pupils into the very conscience of his prisoner. Moreover, his language, which was stamped with a sort of moderated, subdued insolence and crafty insolence, was reserved and almost choice, and in that rascal, who had been nothing but a robber a short time previously, one now felt “the man who had studied for the priesthood.”

The silence preserved by the prisoner, that precaution which had been carried to the point of forgetting all anxiety for his own life, that resistance opposed to the first impulse of nature, which is to utter a cry, all this, it must be confessed, now that his attention had been called to it, troubled Marius, and affected him with painful astonishment.

Thénardier’s well-grounded observation still further obscured for Marius the dense mystery which enveloped that grave and singular person on whom Courfeyrac had bestowed the sobriquet of Monsieur Leblanc.

But whoever he was, bound with ropes, surrounded with executioners, half plunged, so to speak, in a grave which was closing in upon him to the extent of a degree with every moment that passed, in the presence of Thénardier’s wrath, as in the presence of his sweetness, this man remained impassive; and Marius could not refrain from admiring at such a moment the superbly melancholy visage.

Here, evidently, was a soul which was inaccessible to terror, and which did not know the meaning of despair. Here was one of those men who command amazement in desperate circumstances. Extreme as was the crisis, inevitable as was the catastrophe, there was nothing here of the agony of the drowning man, who opens his horror-filled eyes under the water.

Thénardier rose in an unpretending manner, went to the fireplace, shoved aside the screen, which he leaned against the neighboring pallet, and thus unmasked the brazier full of glowing coals, in which the prisoner could plainly see the chisel white-hot and spotted here and there with tiny scarlet stars.

Then Thénardier returned to his seat beside M. Leblanc.

“I continue,” said he. “We can come to an understanding. Let us arrange this matter in an amicable way. I was wrong to lose my temper just now, I don’t know what I was thinking of, I went a great deal too far, I said extravagant things. For example, because you are a millionnaire, I told you that I exacted money, a lot of money, a deal of money. That would not be reasonable. Mon Dieu, in spite of your riches, you have expenses of your own – who has not? I don’t want to ruin you, I am not a greedy fellow, after all. I am not one of those people who, because they have the advantage of the position, profit by the fact to make themselves ridiculous. Why, I’m taking things into consideration and making a sacrifice on my side. I only want two hundred thousand francs.”

M. Leblanc uttered not a word.

Thénardier went on: —

“You see that I put not a little water in my wine; I’m very moderate. I don’t know the state of your fortune, but I do know that you don’t stick at money, and a benevolent man like yourself can certainly give two hundred thousand francs to the father of a family who is out of luck. Certainly, you are reasonable, too; you haven’t imagined that I should take all the trouble I have to-day and organized this affair this evening, which has been labor well bestowed, in the opinion of these gentlemen, merely to wind up by asking you for enough to go and drink red wine at fifteen sous and eat veal at Desnoyer’s. Two hundred thousand francs – it’s surely worth all that. This trifle once out of your pocket, I guarantee you that that’s the end of the matter, and that you have no further demands to fear. You will say to me: ‘But I haven’t two hundred thousand francs about me.’ Oh! I’m not extortionate. I don’t demand that. I only ask one thing of you. Have the goodness to write what I am about to dictate to you.”

Here Thénardier paused; then he added, emphasizing his words, and casting a smile in the direction of the brazier: —

“I warn you that I shall not admit that you don’t know how to write.”

A grand inquisitor might have envied that smile.

Thénardier pushed the table close to M. Leblanc, and took an inkstand, a pen, and a sheet of paper from the drawer which he left half open, and in which gleamed the long blade of the knife.

He placed the sheet of paper before M. Leblanc.

“Write,” said he.

The prisoner spoke at last.

“How do you expect me to write? I am bound.”

“That’s true, excuse me!” ejaculated Thénardier, “you are quite right.”

And turning to Bigrenaille: —

“Untie the gentleman’s right arm.”

Panchaud, alias Printanier, alias Bigrenaille, executed Thénardier’s order.

When the prisoner’s right arm was free, Thénardier dipped the pen in the ink and presented it to him.

“Understand thoroughly, sir, that you are in our power, at our discretion, that no human power can get you out of this, and that we shall be really grieved if we are forced to proceed to disagreeable extremities. I know neither your name, nor your address, but I warn you, that you will remain bound until the person charged with carrying the letter which you are about to write shall have returned. Now, be so good as to write.”

“What?” demanded the prisoner.

“I will dictate.”

M. Leblanc took the pen.

Thénardier began to dictate: —

“My daughter – ”

The prisoner shuddered, and raised his eyes to Thénardier.

“Put down ‘My dear daughter’ – ” said Thénardier.

M. Leblanc obeyed.

Thénardier continued: —

“Come instantly – ”

He paused: —

“You address her as thou, do you not?”

“Who?” asked M. Leblanc.

“Parbleu!” cried Thénardier, “the little one, the Lark.”

M. Leblanc replied without the slightest apparent emotion: —

“I do not know what you mean.”

“Go on, nevertheless,” ejaculated Thénardier, and he continued to dictate: —

“Come immediately, I am in absolute need of thee. The person who will deliver this note to thee is instructed to conduct thee to me. I am waiting for thee. Come with confidence.”

M. Leblanc had written the whole of this.

Thénardier resumed: —

“Ah! erase ‘come with confidence’; that might lead her to suppose that everything was not as it should be, and that distrust is possible.”

M. Leblanc erased the three words.

“Now,” pursued Thénardier, “sign it. What’s your name?”

The prisoner laid down the pen and demanded: —

“For whom is this letter?”

“You know well,” retorted Thénardier, “for the little one I just told you so.”

It was evident that Thénardier avoided naming the young girl in question. He said “the Lark,” he said “the little one,” but he did not pronounce her name – the precaution of a clever man guarding his secret from his accomplices. To mention the name was to deliver the whole “affair” into their hands, and to tell them more about it than there was any need of their knowing.

He went on: —

“Sign. What is your name?”

“Urbain Fabre,” said the prisoner.

Thénardier, with the movement of a cat, dashed his hand into his pocket and drew out the handkerchief which had been seized on M. Leblanc. He looked for the mark on it, and held it close to the candle.

“U. F. That’s it. Urbain Fabre. Well, sign it U. F.”

The prisoner signed.

“As two hands are required to fold the letter, give it to me, I will fold it.”

That done, Thénardier resumed: —

“Address it, ‘Mademoiselle Fabre,’ at your house. I know that you live a long distance from here, near Saint-Jacques-du-Haut-Pas, because you go to mass there every day, but I don’t know in what street. I see that you understand your situation. As you have not lied about your name, you will not lie about your address. Write it yourself.”

The prisoner paused thoughtfully for a moment, then he took the pen and wrote: —

“Mademoiselle Fabre, at M. Urbain Fabre’s, Rue Saint-Dominique-D’Enfer, No. 17.”

Thénardier seized the letter with a sort of feverish convulsion.

“Wife!” he cried.

The Thénardier woman hastened to him.

“Here’s the letter. You know what you have to do. There is a carriage at the door. Set out at once, and return ditto.”

And addressing the man with the meat-axe: —

“Since you have taken off your nose-screen, accompany the mistress. You will get up behind the fiacre. You know where you left the team?”

“Yes,” said the man.

And depositing his axe in a corner, he followed Madame Thénardier.

As they set off, Thénardier thrust his head through the half-open door, and shouted into the corridor: —

“Above all things, don’t lose the letter! remember that you carry two hundred thousand francs with you!”

The Thénardier’s hoarse voice replied: —

“Be easy. I have it in my bosom.”

A minute had not elapsed, when the sound of the cracking of a whip was heard, which rapidly retreated and died away.

“Good!” growled Thénardier. “They’re going at a fine pace. At such a gallop, the bourgeoise will be back inside three-quarters of an hour.”

He drew a chair close to the fireplace, folding his arms, and presenting his muddy boots to the brazier.

“My feet are cold!” said he.

Only five ruffians now remained in the den with Thénardier and the prisoner.

These men, through the black masks or paste which covered their faces, and made of them, at fear’s pleasure, charcoal-burners, negroes, or demons, had a stupid and gloomy air, and it could be felt that they perpetrated a crime like a bit of work, tranquilly, without either wrath or mercy, with a sort of ennui. They were crowded together in one corner like brutes, and remained silent.

Thénardier warmed his feet.

The prisoner had relapsed into his taciturnity. A sombre calm had succeeded to the wild uproar which had filled the garret but a few moments before.

The candle, on which a large “stranger” had formed, cast but a dim light in the immense hovel, the brazier had grown dull, and all those monstrous heads cast misshapen shadows on the walls and ceiling.

No sound was audible except the quiet breathing of the old drunken man, who was fast asleep.

Marius waited in a state of anxiety that was augmented by every trifle. The enigma was more impenetrable than ever.

Who was this “little one” whom Thénardier had called the Lark? Was she his “Ursule”? The prisoner had not seemed to be affected by that word, “the Lark,” and had replied in the most natural manner in the world: “I do not know what you mean.” On the other hand, the two letters U. F. were explained; they meant Urbain Fabre; and Ursule was no longer named Ursule. This was what Marius perceived most clearly of all.

A sort of horrible fascination held him nailed to his post, from which he was observing and commanding this whole scene. There he stood, almost incapable of movement or reflection, as though annihilated by the abominable things viewed at such close quarters. He waited, in the hope of some incident, no matter of what nature, since he could not collect his thoughts and did not know upon what course to decide.

“In any case,” he said, “if she is the Lark, I shall see her, for the Thénardier woman is to bring her hither. That will be the end, and then I will give my life and my blood if necessary, but I will deliver her! Nothing shall stop me.”

Nearly half an hour passed in this manner. Thénardier seemed to be absorbed in gloomy reflections, the prisoner did not stir. Still, Marius fancied that at intervals, and for the last few moments, he had heard a faint, dull noise in the direction of the prisoner.

All at once, Thénardier addressed the prisoner:

“By the way, Monsieur Fabre, I might as well say it to you at once.”

These few words appeared to be the beginning of an explanation. Marius strained his ears.

“My wife will be back shortly, don’t get impatient. I think that the Lark really is your daughter, and it seems to me quite natural that you should keep her. Only, listen to me a bit. My wife will go and hunt her up with your letter. I told my wife to dress herself in the way she did, so that your young lady might make no difficulty about following her. They will both enter the carriage with my comrade behind. Somewhere, outside the barrier, there is a trap harnessed to two very good horses. Your young lady will be taken to it. She will alight from the fiacre. My comrade will enter the other vehicle with her, and my wife will come back here to tell us: ‘It’s done.’ As for the young lady, no harm will be done to her; the trap will conduct her to a place where she will be quiet, and just as soon as you have handed over to me those little two hundred thousand francs, she will be returned to you. If you have me arrested, my comrade will give a turn of his thumb to the Lark, that’s all.”

The prisoner uttered not a syllable. After a pause, Thénardier continued: —

“It’s very simple, as you see. There’ll be no harm done unless you wish that there should be harm done. I’m telling you how things stand. I warn you so that you may be prepared.”

He paused: the prisoner did not break the silence, and Thénardier resumed: —

“As soon as my wife returns and says to me: ‘The Lark is on the way,’ we will release you, and you will be free to go and sleep at home. You see that our intentions are not evil.”

Terrible images passed through Marius’ mind. What! That young girl whom they were abducting was not to be brought back? One of those monsters was to bear her off into the darkness? Whither? And what if it were she!

It was clear that it was she. Marius felt his heart stop beating.

What was he to do? Discharge the pistol? Place all those scoundrels in the hands of justice? But the horrible man with the meat-axe would, nonetheless, be out of reach with the young girl, and Marius reflected on Thénardier’s words, of which he perceived the bloody significance: “If you have me arrested, my comrade will give a turn of his thumb to the Lark.”

Now, it was not alone by the colonel’s testament, it was by his own love, it was by the peril of the one he loved, that he felt himself restrained.

This frightful situation, which had already lasted above half an hour, was changing its aspect every moment.

Marius had sufficient strength of mind to review in succession all the most heart-breaking conjectures, seeking hope and finding none.

The tumult of his thoughts contrasted with the funereal silence of the den.

In the midst of this silence, the door at the bottom of the staircase was heard to open and shut again.

The prisoner made a movement in his bonds.

“Here’s the bourgeoise,” said Thénardier.

He had hardly uttered the words, when the Thénardier woman did in fact rush hastily into the room, red, panting, breathless, with flaming eyes, and cried, as she smote her huge hands on her thighs simultaneously: —

“False address!”

The ruffian who had gone with her made his appearance behind her and picked up his axe again.

She resumed: —

“Nobody there! Rue Saint-Dominique, No. 17, no Monsieur Urbain Fabre! They know not what it means!”

She paused, choking, then went on: —

“Monsieur Thénardier! That old fellow has duped you! You are too good, you see! If it had been me, I’d have chopped the beast in four quarters to begin with! And if he had acted ugly, I’d have boiled him alive! He would have been obliged to speak, and say where the girl is, and where he keeps his shiners! That’s the way I should have managed matters! People are perfectly right when they say that men are a deal stupider than women! Nobody at No. 17. It’s nothing but a big carriage gate! No Monsieur Fabre in the Rue Saint-Dominique! And after all that racing and fee to the coachman and all! I spoke to both the porter and the portress, a fine, stout woman, and they know nothing about him!”

Marius breathed freely once more.

She, Ursule or the Lark, he no longer knew what to call her, was safe.

While his exasperated wife vociferated, Thénardier had seated himself on the table.

For several minutes he uttered not a word, but swung his right foot, which hung down, and stared at the brazier with an air of savage reverie.

Finally, he said to the prisoner, with a slow and singularly ferocious tone:

“A false address? What did you expect to gain by that?”

“To gain time!” cried the prisoner in a thundering voice, and at the same instant he shook off his bonds; they were cut. The prisoner was only attached to the bed now by one leg.