الفصل الفصل 114 · WHICH WOULD BE IMPOSSIBLE WITH GAS LANTERNS

At that moment a heavy and measured sound began to be audible at some

distance. Jean Valjean risked a glance round the corner of the street.

Seven or eight soldiers, drawn up in a platoon, had just debouched into

the Rue Polonceau. He saw the gleam of their bayonets. They were

advancing towards him; these soldiers, at whose head he distinguished

Javert’s tall figure, advanced slowly and cautiously. They halted

frequently; it was plain that they were searching all the nooks of the

walls and all the embrasures of the doors and alleys.

This was some patrol that Javert had encountered—there could be no

mistake as to this surmise—and whose aid he had demanded.

Javert’s two acolytes were marching in their ranks.

At the rate at which they were marching, and in consideration of the

halts which they were making, it would take them about a quarter of an

hour to reach the spot where Jean Valjean stood. It was a frightful

moment. A few minutes only separated Jean Valjean from that terrible

precipice which yawned before him for the third time. And the galleys

now meant not only the galleys, but Cosette lost to him forever; that

is to say, a life resembling the interior of a tomb.

There was but one thing which was possible.

Jean Valjean had this peculiarity, that he carried, as one might say,

two beggar’s pouches: in one he kept his saintly thoughts; in the other

the redoubtable talents of a convict. He rummaged in the one or the

other, according to circumstances.

Among his other resources, thanks to his numerous escapes from the

prison at Toulon, he was, as it will be remembered, a past master in

the incredible art of crawling up without ladder or climbing-irons, by

sheer muscular force, by leaning on the nape of his neck, his

shoulders, his hips, and his knees, by helping himself on the rare

projections of the stone, in the right angle of a wall, as high as the

sixth story, if need be; an art which has rendered so celebrated and so

alarming that corner of the wall of the Conciergerie of Paris by which

Battemolle, condemned to death, made his escape twenty years ago.

Jean Valjean measured with his eyes the wall above which he espied the

linden; it was about eighteen feet in height. The angle which it formed

with the gable of the large building was filled, at its lower

extremity, by a mass of masonry of a triangular shape, probably

intended to preserve that too convenient corner from the rubbish of

those dirty creatures called the passers-by. This practice of filling

up corners of the wall is much in use in Paris.

This mass was about five feet in height; the space above the summit of

this mass which it was necessary to climb was not more than fourteen

feet.

The wall was surmounted by a flat stone without a coping.

Cosette was the difficulty, for she did not know how to climb a wall.

Should he abandon her? Jean Valjean did not once think of that. It was

impossible to carry her. A man’s whole strength is required to

successfully carry out these singular ascents. The least burden would

disturb his centre of gravity and pull him downwards.

A rope would have been required; Jean Valjean had none. Where was he to

get a rope at midnight, in the Rue Polonceau? Certainly, if Jean

Valjean had had a kingdom, he would have given it for a rope at that

moment.

All extreme situations have their lightning flashes which sometimes

dazzle, sometimes illuminate us.

Jean Valjean’s despairing glance fell on the street lantern-post of the

blind alley Genrot.

At that epoch there were no gas-jets in the streets of Paris. At

nightfall lanterns placed at regular distances were lighted; they were

ascended and descended by means of a rope, which traversed the street

from side to side, and was adjusted in a groove of the post. The pulley

over which this rope ran was fastened underneath the lantern in a

little iron box, the key to which was kept by the lamp-lighter, and the

rope itself was protected by a metal case.

Jean Valjean, with the energy of a supreme struggle, crossed the street

at one bound, entered the blind alley, broke the latch of the little

box with the point of his knife, and an instant later he was beside

Cosette once more. He had a rope. These gloomy inventors of expedients

work rapidly when they are fighting against fatality.

We have already explained that the lanterns had not been lighted that

night. The lantern in the Cul-de-Sac Genrot was thus naturally extinct,

like the rest; and one could pass directly under it without even

noticing that it was no longer in its place.

Nevertheless, the hour, the place, the darkness, Jean Valjean’s

absorption, his singular gestures, his goings and comings, all had

begun to render Cosette uneasy. Any other child than she would have

given vent to loud shrieks long before. She contented herself with

plucking Jean Valjean by the skirt of his coat. They could hear the

sound of the patrol’s approach ever more and more distinctly.

“Father,” said she, in a very low voice, “I am afraid. Who is coming

yonder?”

“Hush!” replied the unhappy man; “it is Madame Thénardier.”

Cosette shuddered. He added:—

“Say nothing. Don’t interfere with me. If you cry out, if you weep, the

Thénardier is lying in wait for you. She is coming to take you back.”

Then, without haste, but without making a useless movement, with firm

and curt precision, the more remarkable at a moment when the patrol and

Javert might come upon him at any moment, he undid his cravat, passed

it round Cosette’s body under the armpits, taking care that it should

not hurt the child, fastened this cravat to one end of the rope, by

means of that knot which seafaring men call a “swallow knot,” took the

other end of the rope in his teeth, pulled off his shoes and stockings,

which he threw over the wall, stepped upon the mass of masonry, and

began to raise himself in the angle of the wall and the gable with as

much solidity and certainty as though he had the rounds of a ladder

under his feet and elbows. Half a minute had not elapsed when he was

resting on his knees on the wall.

Cosette gazed at him in stupid amazement, without uttering a word. Jean

Valjean’s injunction, and the name of Madame Thénardier, had chilled

her blood.

All at once she heard Jean Valjean’s voice crying to her, though in a

very low tone:—

“Put your back against the wall.”

She obeyed.

“Don’t say a word, and don’t be alarmed,” went on Jean Valjean.

And she felt herself lifted from the ground.

Before she had time to recover herself, she was on the top of the wall.

Jean Valjean grasped her, put her on his back, took her two tiny hands

in his large left hand, lay down flat on his stomach and crawled along

on top of the wall as far as the cant. As he had guessed, there stood a

building whose roof started from the top of the wooden barricade and

descended to within a very short distance of the ground, with a gentle

slope which grazed the linden-tree. A lucky circumstance, for the wall

was much higher on this side than on the street side. Jean Valjean

could only see the ground at a great depth below him.

He had just reached the slope of the roof, and had not yet left the

crest of the wall, when a violent uproar announced the arrival of the

patrol. The thundering voice of Javert was audible:—

“Search the blind alley! The Rue Droit-Mur is guarded! so is the Rue

Petit-Picpus. I’ll answer for it that he is in the blind alley.”

The soldiers rushed into the Genrot alley.

Jean Valjean allowed himself to slide down the roof, still holding fast

to Cosette, reached the linden-tree, and leaped to the ground. Whether

from terror or courage, Cosette had not breathed a sound, though her

hands were a little abraded.