Chapter Chapter 221 · THE TRAP
The door of the garret had just opened abruptly, and allowed a view of
three men clad in blue linen blouses, and masked with masks of black
paper. The first was thin, and had a long, iron-tipped cudgel; the
second, who was a sort of colossus, carried, by the middle of the
handle, with the blade downward, a butcher’s pole-axe for slaughtering
cattle. The third, a man with thick-set shoulders, not so slender as
the first, held in his hand an enormous key stolen from the door of
some prison.
It appeared that the arrival of these men was what Jondrette had been
waiting for. A rapid dialogue ensued between him and the man with the
cudgel, the thin one.
“Is everything ready?” said Jondrette.
“Yes,” replied the thin man.
“Where is Montparnasse?”
“The young principal actor stopped to chat with your girl.”
“Which?”
“The eldest.”
“Is there a carriage at the door?”
“Yes.”
“Is the team harnessed?”
“Yes.”
“With two good horses?”
“Excellent.”
“Is it waiting where I ordered?”
“Yes.”
“Good,” said Jondrette.
M. Leblanc was very pale. He was scrutinizing everything around him in
the den, like a man who understands what he has fallen into, and his
head, directed in turn toward all the heads which surrounded him, moved
on his neck with an astonished and attentive slowness, but there was
nothing in his air which resembled fear. He had improvised an
intrenchment out of the table; and the man, who but an instant
previously, had borne merely the appearance of a kindly old man, had
suddenly become a sort of athlete, and placed his robust fist on the
back of his chair, with a formidable and surprising gesture.
This old man, who was so firm and so brave in the presence of such a
danger, seemed to possess one of those natures which are as courageous
as they are kind, both easily and simply. The father of a woman whom we
love is never a stranger to us. Marius felt proud of that unknown man.
Three of the men, of whom Jondrette had said: “They are
chimney-builders,” had armed themselves from the pile of old iron, one
with a heavy pair of shears, the second with weighing-tongs, the third
with a hammer, and had placed themselves across the entrance without
uttering a syllable. The old man had remained on the bed, and had
merely opened his eyes. The Jondrette woman had seated herself beside
him.
Marius decided that in a few seconds more the moment for intervention
would arrive, and he raised his right hand towards the ceiling, in the
direction of the corridor, in readiness to discharge his pistol.
Jondrette having terminated his colloquy with the man with the cudgel,
turned once more to M. Leblanc, and repeated his question, accompanying
it with that low, repressed, and terrible laugh which was peculiar to
him:—
“So you do not recognize me?”
M. Leblanc looked him full in the face, and replied:—
“No.”
Then Jondrette advanced to the table. He leaned across the candle,
crossing his arms, putting his angular and ferocious jaw close to M.
Leblanc’s calm face, and advancing as far as possible without forcing
M. Leblanc to retreat, and, in this posture of a wild beast who is
about to bite, he exclaimed:—
“My name is not Fabantou, my name is not Jondrette, my name is
Thénardier. I am the inn-keeper of Montfermeil! Do you understand?
Thénardier! Now do you know me?”
An almost imperceptible flush crossed M. Leblanc’s brow, and he replied
with a voice which neither trembled nor rose above its ordinary level,
with his accustomed placidity:—
“No more than before.”
Marius did not hear this reply. Any one who had seen him at that moment
through the darkness would have perceived that he was haggard, stupid,
thunder-struck. At the moment when Jondrette said: “My name is
Thénardier,” Marius had trembled in every limb, and had leaned against
the wall, as though he felt the cold of a steel blade through his
heart. Then his right arm, all ready to discharge the signal shot,
dropped slowly, and at the moment when Jondrette repeated, “Thénardier,
do you understand?” Marius’s faltering fingers had come near letting
the pistol fall. Jondrette, by revealing his identity, had not moved M.
Leblanc, but he had quite upset Marius. That name of Thénardier, with
which M. Leblanc did not seem to be acquainted, Marius knew well. Let
the reader recall what that name meant to him! That name he had worn on
his heart, inscribed in his father’s testament! He bore it at the
bottom of his mind, in the depths of his memory, in that sacred
injunction: “A certain Thénardier saved my life. If my son encounters
him, he will do him all the good that lies in his power.” That name, it
will be remembered, was one of the pieties of his soul; he mingled it
with the name of his father in his worship. What! This man was that
Thénardier, that inn-keeper of Montfermeil whom he had so long and so
vainly sought! He had found him at last, and how? His father’s saviour
was a ruffian! That man, to whose service Marius was burning to devote
himself, was a monster! That liberator of Colonel Pontmercy was on the
point of committing a crime whose scope Marius did not, as yet, clearly
comprehend, but which resembled an assassination! And against whom,
great God! what a fatality! What a bitter mockery of fate! His father
had commanded him from the depths of his coffin to do all the good in
his power to this Thénardier, and for four years Marius had cherished
no other thought than to acquit this debt of his father’s, and at the
moment when he was on the eve of having a brigand seized in the very
act of crime by justice, destiny cried to him: “This is Thénardier!” He
could at last repay this man for his father’s life, saved amid a
hail-storm of grape-shot on the heroic field of Waterloo, and repay it
with the scaffold! He had sworn to himself that if ever he found that
Thénardier, he would address him only by throwing himself at his feet;
and now he actually had found him, but it was only to deliver him over
to the executioner! His father said to him: “Succor Thénardier!” And he
replied to that adored and sainted voice by crushing Thénardier! He was
about to offer to his father in his grave the spectacle of that man who
had torn him from death at the peril of his own life, executed on the
Place Saint-Jacques through the means of his son, of that Marius to
whom he had entrusted that man by his will! And what a mockery to have
so long worn on his breast his father’s last commands, written in his
own hand, only to act in so horribly contrary a sense! But, on the
other hand, now look on that trap and not prevent it! Condemn the
victim and to spare the assassin! Could one be held to any gratitude
towards so miserable a wretch? All the ideas which Marius had cherished
for the last four years were pierced through and through, as it were,
by this unforeseen blow.
He shuddered. Everything depended on him. Unknown to themselves, he
held in his hand all those beings who were moving about there before
his eyes. If he fired his pistol, M. Leblanc was saved, and Thénardier
lost; if he did not fire, M. Leblanc would be sacrificed, and, who
knows? Thénardier would escape. Should he dash down the one or allow
the other to fall? Remorse awaited him in either case.
What was he to do? What should he choose? Be false to the most
imperious souvenirs, to all those solemn vows to himself, to the most
sacred duty, to the most venerated text! Should he ignore his father’s
testament, or allow the perpetration of a crime! On the one hand, it
seemed to him that he heard “his Ursule” supplicating for her father
and on the other, the colonel commending Thénardier to his care. He
felt that he was going mad. His knees gave way beneath him. And he had
not even the time for deliberation, so great was the fury with which
the scene before his eyes was hastening to its catastrophe. It was like
a whirlwind of which he had thought himself the master, and which was
now sweeping him away. He was on the verge of swooning.
In the meantime, Thénardier, whom we shall henceforth call by no other
name, was pacing up and down in front of the table in a sort of frenzy
and wild triumph.
He seized the candle in his fist, and set it on the chimney-piece with
so violent a bang that the wick came near being extinguished, and the
tallow bespattered the wall.
Then he turned to M. Leblanc with a horrible look, and spit out these
words:—
“Done for! Smoked brown! Cooked! Spitchcocked!”
And again he began to march back and forth, in full eruption.
“Ah!” he cried, “so I’ve found you again at last, Mister
philanthropist! Mister threadbare millionnaire! Mister giver of dolls!
you old ninny! Ah! so you don’t recognize me! No, it wasn’t you who
came to Montfermeil, to my inn, eight years ago, on Christmas eve,
1823! It wasn’t you who carried off that Fantine’s child from me! The
Lark! It wasn’t you who had a yellow great-coat! No! Nor a package of
duds in your hand, as you had this morning here! Say, wife, it seems to
be his mania to carry packets of woollen stockings into houses! Old
charity monger, get out with you! Are you a hosier, Mister
millionnaire? You give away your stock in trade to the poor, holy man!
What bosh! merry Andrew! Ah! and you don’t recognize me? Well, I
recognize you, that I do! I recognized you the very moment you poked
your snout in here. Ah! you’ll find out presently, that it isn’t all
roses to thrust yourself in that fashion into people’s houses, under
the pretext that they are taverns, in wretched clothes, with the air of
a poor man, to whom one would give a sou, to deceive persons, to play
the generous, to take away their means of livelihood, and to make
threats in the woods, and you can’t call things quits because
afterwards, when people are ruined, you bring a coat that is too large,
and two miserable hospital blankets, you old blackguard, you
child-stealer!”
He paused, and seemed to be talking to himself for a moment. One would
have said that his wrath had fallen into some hole, like the Rhone;
then, as though he were concluding aloud the things which he had been
saying to himself in a whisper, he smote the table with his fist, and
shouted:—
“And with his goody-goody air!”
And, apostrophizing M. Leblanc:—
“Parbleu! You made game of me in the past! You are the cause of all my
misfortunes! For fifteen hundred francs you got a girl whom I had, and
who certainly belonged to rich people, and who had already brought in a
great deal of money, and from whom I might have extracted enough to
live on all my life! A girl who would have made up to me for everything
that I lost in that vile cook-shop, where there was nothing but one
continual row, and where, like a fool, I ate up my last farthing! Oh! I
wish all the wine folks drank in my house had been poison to those who
drank it! Well, never mind! Say, now! You must have thought me
ridiculous when you went off with the Lark! You had your cudgel in the
forest. You were the stronger. Revenge. I’m the one to hold the trumps
to-day! You’re in a sorry case, my good fellow! Oh, but I can laugh!
Really, I laugh! Didn’t he fall into the trap! I told him that I was an
actor, that my name was Fabantou, that I had played comedy with
Mamselle Mars, with Mamselle Muche, that my landlord insisted on being
paid tomorrow, the 4th of February, and he didn’t even notice that the
8th of January, and not the 4th of February is the time when the
quarter runs out! Absurd idiot! And the four miserable Philippes which
he has brought me! Scoundrel! He hadn’t the heart even to go as high as
a hundred francs! And how he swallowed my platitudes! That did amuse
me. I said to myself: ‘Blockhead! Come, I’ve got you! I lick your paws
this morning, but I’ll gnaw your heart this evening!’”
Thénardier paused. He was out of breath. His little, narrow chest
panted like a forge bellows. His eyes were full of the ignoble
happiness of a feeble, cruel, and cowardly creature, which finds that
it can, at last, harass what it has feared, and insult what it has
flattered, the joy of a dwarf who should be able to set his heel on the
head of Goliath, the joy of a jackal which is beginning to rend a sick
bull, so nearly dead that he can no longer defend himself, but
sufficiently alive to suffer still.
M. Leblanc did not interrupt him, but said to him when he paused:—
“I do not know what you mean to say. You are mistaken in me. I am a
very poor man, and anything but a millionnaire. I do not know you. You
are mistaking me for some other person.”
“Ah!” roared Thénardier hoarsely, “a pretty lie! You stick to that
pleasantry, do you! You’re floundering, my old buck! Ah! You don’t
remember! You don’t see who I am?”
“Excuse me, sir,” said M. Leblanc with a politeness of accent, which at
that moment seemed peculiarly strange and powerful, “I see that you are
a villain!”
Who has not remarked the fact that odious creatures possess a
susceptibility of their own, that monsters are ticklish! At this word
“villain,” the female Thénardier sprang from the bed, Thénardier
grasped his chair as though he were about to crush it in his hands.
“Don’t you stir!” he shouted to his wife; and, turning to M. Leblanc:—
“Villain! Yes, I know that you call us that, you rich gentlemen! Stop!
it’s true that I became bankrupt, that I am in hiding, that I have no
bread, that I have not a single sou, that I am a villain! It’s three
days since I have had anything to eat, so I’m a villain! Ah! you folks
warm your feet, you have Sakoski boots, you have wadded great-coats,
like archbishops, you lodge on the first floor in houses that have
porters, you eat truffles, you eat asparagus at forty francs the bunch
in the month of January, and green peas, you gorge yourselves, and when
you want to know whether it is cold, you look in the papers to see what
the engineer Chevalier’s thermometer says about it. We, it is we who
are thermometers. We don’t need to go out and look on the quay at the
corner of the Tour de l’Horologe, to find out the number of degrees of
cold; we feel our blood congealing in our veins, and the ice forming
round our hearts, and we say: ‘There is no God!’ And you come to our
caverns, yes our caverns, for the purpose of calling us villains! But
we’ll devour you! But we’ll devour you, poor little things! Just see
here, Mister millionnaire: I have been a solid man, I have held a
license, I have been an elector, I am a bourgeois, that I am! And it’s
quite possible that you are not!”
Here Thénardier took a step towards the men who stood near the door,
and added with a shudder:—
“When I think that he has dared to come here and talk to me like a
cobbler!”
Then addressing M. Leblanc with a fresh outburst of frenzy:—
“And listen to this also, Mister philanthropist! I’m not a suspicious
character, not a bit of it! I’m not a man whose name nobody knows, and
who comes and abducts children from houses! I’m an old French soldier,
I ought to have been decorated! I was at Waterloo, so I was! And in the
battle I saved a general called the Comte of I don’t know what. He told
me his name, but his beastly voice was so weak that I didn’t hear. All
I caught was Merci [thanks]. I’d rather have had his name than his
thanks. That would have helped me to find him again. The picture that
you see here, and which was painted by David at Bruqueselles,—do you
know what it represents? It represents me. David wished to immortalize
that feat of prowess. I have that general on my back, and I am carrying
him through the grape-shot. There’s the history of it! That general
never did a single thing for me; he was no better than the rest! But
nonetheless, I saved his life at the risk of my own, and I have the
certificate of the fact in my pocket! I am a soldier of Waterloo, by
all the furies! And now that I have had the goodness to tell you all
this, let’s have an end of it. I want money, I want a deal of money, I
must have an enormous lot of money, or I’ll exterminate you, by the
thunder of the good God!”
Marius had regained some measure of control over his anguish, and was
listening. The last possibility of doubt had just vanished. It
certainly was the Thénardier of the will. Marius shuddered at that
reproach of ingratitude directed against his father, and which he was
on the point of so fatally justifying. His perplexity was redoubled.
Moreover, there was in all these words of Thénardier, in his accent, in
his gesture, in his glance which darted flames at every word, there
was, in this explosion of an evil nature disclosing everything, in that
mixture of braggadocio and abjectness, of pride and pettiness, of rage
and folly, in that chaos of real griefs and false sentiments, in that
immodesty of a malicious man tasting the voluptuous delights of
violence, in that shameless nudity of a repulsive soul, in that
conflagration of all sufferings combined with all hatreds, something
which was as hideous as evil, and as heart-rending as the truth.
The picture of the master, the painting by David which he had proposed
that M. Leblanc should purchase, was nothing else, as the reader has
divined, than the sign of his tavern painted, as it will be remembered,
by himself, the only relic which he had preserved from his shipwreck at
Montfermeil.
As he had ceased to intercept Marius’ visual ray, Marius could examine
this thing, and in the daub, he actually did recognize a battle, a
background of smoke, and a man carrying another man. It was the group
composed of Pontmercy and Thénardier; the sergeant the rescuer, the
colonel rescued. Marius was like a drunken man; this picture restored
his father to life in some sort; it was no longer the signboard of the
wine-shop at Montfermeil, it was a resurrection; a tomb had yawned, a
phantom had risen there. Marius heard his heart beating in his temples,
he had the cannon of Waterloo in his ears, his bleeding father, vaguely
depicted on that sinister panel terrified him, and it seemed to him
that the misshapen spectre was gazing intently at him.
When Thénardier had recovered his breath, he turned his bloodshot eyes
on M. Leblanc, and said to him in a low, curt voice:—
“What have you to say before we put the handcuffs on you?”
M. Leblanc held his peace.
In the midst of this silence, a cracked voice launched this lugubrious
sarcasm from the corridor:—
“If there’s any wood to be split, I’m there!”
It was the man with the axe, who was growing merry.
At the same moment, an enormous, bristling, and clayey face made its
appearance at the door, with a hideous laugh which exhibited not teeth,
but fangs.
It was the face of the man with the butcher’s axe.
“Why have you taken off your mask?” cried Thénardier in a rage.
“For fun,” retorted the man.
For the last few minutes M. Leblanc had appeared to be watching and
following all the movements of Thénardier, who, blinded and dazzled by
his own rage, was stalking to and fro in the den with full confidence
that the door was guarded, and of holding an unarmed man fast, he being
armed himself, of being nine against one, supposing that the female
Thénardier counted for but one man.
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.
Before the seven men had time to collect their senses and dash forward,
he had bent down into the fireplace, had stretched out his hand to the
brazier, and had then straightened himself up again, and now
Thénardier, the female Thénardier, and the ruffians, huddled in
amazement at the extremity of the hovel, stared at him in stupefaction,
as almost free and in a formidable attitude, he brandished above his
head the red-hot chisel, which emitted a threatening glow.
The judicial examination to which the ambush in the Gorbeau house
eventually gave rise, established the fact that a large sou piece, cut
and worked in a peculiar fashion, was found in the garret, when the
police made their descent on it. This sou piece was one of those
marvels of industry, which are engendered by the patience of the
galleys in the shadows and for the shadows, marvels which are nothing
else than instruments of escape. These hideous and delicate products of
wonderful art are to jewellers’ work what the metaphors of slang are to
poetry. There are Benvenuto Cellinis in the galleys, just as there are
Villons in language. The unhappy wretch who aspires to deliverance
finds means sometimes without tools, sometimes with a common
wooden-handled knife, to saw a sou into two thin plates, to hollow out
these plates without affecting the coinage stamp, and to make a furrow
on the edge of the sou in such a manner that the plates will adhere
again. This can be screwed together and unscrewed at will; it is a box.
In this box he hides a watch-spring, and this watch-spring, properly
handled, cuts good-sized chains and bars of iron. The unfortunate
convict is supposed to possess merely a sou; not at all, he possesses
liberty. It was a large sou of this sort which, during the subsequent
search of the police, was found under the bed near the window. They
also found a tiny saw of blue steel which would fit the sou.
It is probable that the prisoner had this sou piece on his person at
the moment when the ruffians searched him, that he contrived to conceal
it in his hand, and that afterward, having his right hand free, he
unscrewed it, and used it as a saw to cut the cords which fastened him,
which would explain the faint noise and almost imperceptible movements
which Marius had observed.
As he had not been able to bend down, for fear of betraying himself, he
had not cut the bonds of his left leg.
The ruffians had recovered from their first surprise.
“Be easy,” said Bigrenaille to Thénardier. “He still holds by one leg,
and he can’t get away. I’ll answer for that. I tied that paw for him.”
In the meanwhile, the prisoner had begun to speak:—
“You are wretches, but my life is not worth the trouble of defending
it. When you think that you can make me speak, that you can make me
write what I do not choose to write, that you can make me say what I do
not choose to say—”
He stripped up his left sleeve, and added:—
“See here.”
At the same moment he extended his arm, and laid the glowing chisel
which he held in his left hand by its wooden handle on his bare flesh.
The crackling of the burning flesh became audible, and the odor
peculiar to chambers of torture filled the hovel.
[Illustration: Red Hot Chisel]
Marius reeled in utter horror, the very ruffians shuddered, hardly a
muscle of the old man’s face contracted, and while the red-hot iron
sank into the smoking wound, impassive and almost august, he fixed on
Thénardier his beautiful glance, in which there was no hatred, and
where suffering vanished in serene majesty.
With grand and lofty natures, the revolts of the flesh and the senses
when subjected to physical suffering cause the soul to spring forth,
and make it appear on the brow, just as rebellions among the soldiery
force the captain to show himself.
“Wretches!” said he, “have no more fear of me than I have for you!”
And, tearing the chisel from the wound, he hurled it through the
window, which had been left open; the horrible, glowing tool
disappeared into the night, whirling as it flew, and fell far away on
the snow.
The prisoner resumed:—
“Do what you please with me.” He was disarmed.
“Seize him!” said Thénardier.
Two of the ruffians laid their hands on his shoulder, and the masked
man with the ventriloquist’s voice took up his station in front of him,
ready to smash his skull at the slightest movement.
At the same time, Marius heard below him, at the base of the partition,
but so near that he could not see who was speaking, this colloquy
conducted in a low tone:—
“There is only one thing left to do.”
“Cut his throat.”
“That’s it.”
It was the husband and wife taking counsel together.
Thénardier walked slowly towards the table, opened the drawer, and took
out the knife. Marius fretted with the handle of his pistol.
Unprecedented perplexity! For the last hour he had had two voices in
his conscience, the one enjoining him to respect his father’s
testament, the other crying to him to rescue the prisoner. These two
voices continued uninterruptedly that struggle which tormented him to
agony. Up to that moment he had cherished a vague hope that he should
find some means of reconciling these two duties, but nothing within the
limits of possibility had presented itself.
However, the peril was urgent, the last bounds of delay had been
reached; Thénardier was standing thoughtfully a few paces distant from
the prisoner.
Marius cast a wild glance about him, the last mechanical resource of
despair. All at once a shudder ran through him.
At his feet, on the table, a bright ray of light from the full moon
illuminated and seemed to point out to him a sheet of paper. On this
paper he read the following line written that very morning, in large
letters, by the eldest of the Thénardier girls:—
“THE BOBBIES ARE HERE.”
An idea, a flash, crossed Marius’ mind; this was the expedient of which
he was in search, the solution of that frightful problem which was
torturing him, of sparing the assassin and saving the victim.
He knelt down on his commode, stretched out his arm, seized the sheet
of paper, softly detached a bit of plaster from the wall, wrapped the
paper round it, and tossed the whole through the crevice into the
middle of the den.
It was high time. Thénardier had conquered his last fears or his last
scruples, and was advancing on the prisoner.
“Something is falling!” cried the Thénardier woman.
“What is it?” asked her husband.
The woman darted forward and picked up the bit of plaster. She handed
it to her husband.
“Where did this come from?” demanded Thénardier.
“Pardie!” ejaculated his wife, “where do you suppose it came from?
Through the window, of course.”
“I saw it pass,” said Bigrenaille.
Thénardier rapidly unfolded the paper and held it close to the candle.
“It’s in Éponine’s handwriting. The devil!”
He made a sign to his wife, who hastily drew near, and showed her the
line written on the sheet of paper, then he added in a subdued voice:—
“Quick! The ladder! Let’s leave the bacon in the mousetrap and decamp!”
“Without cutting that man’s throat?” asked, the Thénardier woman.
“We haven’t the time.”
“Through what?” resumed Bigrenaille.
“Through the window,” replied Thénardier. “Since Ponine has thrown the
stone through the window, it indicates that the house is not watched on
that side.”
The mask with the ventriloquist’s voice deposited his huge key on the
floor, raised both arms in the air, and opened and clenched his fists,
three times rapidly without uttering a word.
This was the signal like the signal for clearing the decks for action
on board ship.
The ruffians who were holding the prisoner released him; in the
twinkling of an eye the rope ladder was unrolled outside the window,
and solidly fastened to the sill by the two iron hooks.
The prisoner paid no attention to what was going on around him. He
seemed to be dreaming or praying.
As soon as the ladder was arranged, Thénardier cried:
“Come! the bourgeoise first!”
And he rushed headlong to the window.
But just as he was about to throw his leg over, Bigrenaille seized him
roughly by the collar.
“Not much, come now, you old dog, after us!”
“After us!” yelled the ruffians.
“You are children,” said Thénardier, “we are losing time. The police
are on our heels.”
“Well,” said the ruffians, “let’s draw lots to see who shall go down
first.”
Thénardier exclaimed:—
“Are you mad! Are you crazy! What a pack of boobies! You want to waste
time, do you? Draw lots, do you? By a wet finger, by a short straw!
With written names! Thrown into a hat!—”
“Would you like my hat?” cried a voice on the threshold.
All wheeled round. It was Javert.
He had his hat in his hand, and was holding it out to them with a
smile.