الفصل الفصل 348 · TWO MEN IMPOSSIBLE TO FIND

Marius’ enchantment, great as it was, could not efface from his mind

other pre-occupations.

While the wedding was in preparation, and while awaiting the date fixed

upon, he caused difficult and scrupulous retrospective researches to be

made.

He owed gratitude in various quarters; he owed it on his father’s

account, he owed it on his own.

There was Thénardier; there was the unknown man who had brought him,

Marius, back to M. Gillenormand.

Marius endeavored to find these two men, not intending to marry, to be

happy, and to forget them, and fearing that, were these debts of

gratitude not discharged, they would leave a shadow on his life, which

promised so brightly for the future.

It was impossible for him to leave all these arrears of suffering

behind him, and he wished, before entering joyously into the future, to

obtain a quittance from the past.

That Thénardier was a villain detracted nothing from the fact that he

had saved Colonel Pontmercy. Thénardier was a ruffian in the eyes of

all the world except Marius.

And Marius, ignorant of the real scene in the battle field of Waterloo,

was not aware of the peculiar detail, that his father, so far as

Thénardier was concerned was in the strange position of being indebted

to the latter for his life, without being indebted to him for any

gratitude.

None of the various agents whom Marius employed succeeded in

discovering any trace of Thénardier. Obliteration appeared to be

complete in that quarter. Madame Thénardier had died in prison pending

the trial. Thénardier and his daughter Azelma, the only two remaining

of that lamentable group, had plunged back into the gloom. The gulf of

the social unknown had silently closed above those beings. On the

surface there was not visible so much as that quiver, that trembling,

those obscure concentric circles which announce that something has

fallen in, and that the plummet may be dropped.

Madame Thénardier being dead, Boulatruelle being eliminated from the

case, Claquesous having disappeared, the principal persons accused

having escaped from prison, the trial connected with the ambush in the

Gorbeau house had come to nothing.

That affair had remained rather obscure. The bench of Assizes had been

obliged to content themselves with two subordinates. Panchaud, alias

Printanier, alias Bigrenaille, and Demi-Liard, alias Deux-Milliards,

who had been inconsistently condemned, after a hearing of both sides of

the case, to ten years in the galleys. Hard labor for life had been the

sentence pronounced against the escaped and contumacious accomplices.

Thénardier, the head and leader, had been, through contumacy, likewise

condemned to death.

This sentence was the only information remaining about Thénardier,

casting upon that buried name its sinister light like a candle beside a

bier.

Moreover, by thrusting Thénardier back into the very remotest depths,

through a fear of being re-captured, this sentence added to the density

of the shadows which enveloped this man.

As for the other person, as for the unknown man who had saved Marius,

the researches were at first to some extent successful, then came to an

abrupt conclusion. They succeeded in finding the carriage which had

brought Marius to the Rue des Filles-du-Calvaire on the evening of the

6th of June.

The coachman declared that, on the 6th of June, in obedience to the

commands of a police-agent, he had stood from three o’clock in the

afternoon until nightfall on the Quai des Champs-Élysées, above the

outlet of the Grand Sewer; that, towards nine o’clock in the evening,

the grating of the sewer, which abuts on the bank of the river, had

opened; that a man had emerged therefrom, bearing on his shoulders

another man, who seemed to be dead; that the agent, who was on the

watch at that point, had arrested the living man and had seized the

dead man; that, at the order of the police-agent, he, the coachman, had

taken “all those folks” into his carriage; that they had first driven

to the Rue des Filles-du-Calvaire; that they had there deposited the

dead man; that the dead man was Monsieur Marius, and that he, the

coachman, recognized him perfectly, although he was alive “this time”;

that afterwards, they had entered the vehicle again, that he had

whipped up his horses; a few paces from the gate of the Archives, they

had called to him to halt; that there, in the street, they had paid him

and left him, and that the police-agent had led the other man away;

that he knew nothing more; that the night had been very dark.

Marius, as we have said, recalled nothing. He only remembered that he

had been seized from behind by an energetic hand at the moment when he

was falling backwards into the barricade; then, everything vanished so

far as he was concerned.

He had only regained consciousness at M. Gillenormand’s.

He was lost in conjectures.

He could not doubt his own identity. Still, how had it come to pass

that, having fallen in the Rue de la Chanvrerie, he had been picked up

by the police-agent on the banks of the Seine, near the Pont des

Invalides?

Some one had carried him from the Quartier des Halles to the

Champs-Élysées. And how? Through the sewer. Unheard-of devotion!

Some one? Who?

This was the man for whom Marius was searching.

Of this man, who was his savior, nothing; not a trace; not the faintest

indication.

Marius, although forced to preserve great reserve, in that direction,

pushed his inquiries as far as the prefecture of police. There, no more

than elsewhere, did the information obtained lead to any enlightenment.

The prefecture knew less about the matter than did the

hackney-coachman. They had no knowledge of any arrest having been made

on the 6th of June at the mouth of the Grand Sewer.

No report of any agent had been received there upon this matter, which

was regarded at the prefecture as a fable. The invention of this fable

was attributed to the coachman.

A coachman who wants a gratuity is capable of anything, even of

imagination. The fact was assured, nevertheless, and Marius could not

doubt it, unless he doubted his own identity, as we have just said.

Everything about this singular enigma was inexplicable.

What had become of that man, that mysterious man, whom the coachman had

seen emerge from the grating of the Grand Sewer bearing upon his back

the unconscious Marius, and whom the police-agent on the watch had

arrested in the very act of rescuing an insurgent? What had become of

the agent himself?

Why had this agent preserved silence? Had the man succeeded in making

his escape? Had he bribed the agent? Why did this man give no sign of

life to Marius, who owed everything to him? His disinterestedness was

no less tremendous than his devotion. Why had not that man appeared

again? Perhaps he was above compensation, but no one is above

gratitude. Was he dead? Who was the man? What sort of a face had he? No

one could tell him this.

The coachman answered: “The night was very dark.” Basque and Nicolette,

all in a flutter, had looked only at their young master all covered

with blood.

The porter, whose candle had lighted the tragic arrival of Marius, had

been the only one to take note of the man in question, and this is the

description that he gave:

“That man was terrible.”

Marius had the blood-stained clothing which he had worn when he had

been brought back to his grandfather preserved, in the hope that it

would prove of service in his researches.

On examining the coat, it was found that one skirt had been torn in a

singular way. A piece was missing.

One evening, Marius was speaking in the presence of Cosette and Jean

Valjean of the whole of that singular adventure, of the innumerable

inquiries which he had made, and of the fruitlessness of his efforts.

The cold countenance of “Monsieur Fauchelevent” angered him.

He exclaimed, with a vivacity which had something of wrath in it:

“Yes, that man, whoever he may have been, was sublime. Do you know what

he did, sir? He intervened like an archangel. He must have flung

himself into the midst of the battle, have stolen me away, have opened

the sewer, have dragged me into it and have carried me through it! He

must have traversed more than a league and a half in those frightful

subterranean galleries, bent over, weighed down, in the dark, in the

cesspool,—more than a league and a half, sir, with a corpse upon his

back! And with what object? With the sole object of saving the corpse.

And that corpse I was. He said to himself: ‘There may still be a

glimpse of life there, perchance; I will risk my own existence for that

miserable spark!’ And his existence he risked not once but twenty

times! And every step was a danger. The proof of it is, that on

emerging from the sewer, he was arrested. Do you know, sir, that that

man did all this? And he had no recompense to expect. What was I? An

insurgent. What was I? One of the conquered. Oh! if Cosette’s six

hundred thousand francs were mine….”

“They are yours,” interrupted Jean Valjean.

“Well,” resumed Marius, “I would give them all to find that man once

more.”

Jean Valjean remained silent.

BOOK SIXTH—THE SLEEPLESS NIGHT