Kabanata Kabanata 252 · THE VICISSITUDES OF FLIGHT

This is what had taken place that same night at the La Force:—

An escape had been planned between Babet, Brujon, Guelemer, and

Thénardier, although Thénardier was in close confinement. Babet had

arranged the matter for his own benefit, on the same day, as the reader

has seen from Montparnasse’s account to Gavroche. Montparnasse was to

help them from outside.

Brujon, after having passed a month in the punishment cell, had had

time, in the first place, to weave a rope, in the second, to mature a

plan. In former times, those severe places where the discipline of the

prison delivers the convict into his own hands, were composed of four

stone walls, a stone ceiling, a flagged pavement, a camp bed, a grated

window, and a door lined with iron, and were called _dungeons_; but the

dungeon was judged to be too terrible; nowadays they are composed of an

iron door, a grated window, a camp bed, a flagged pavement, four stone

walls, and a stone ceiling, and are called _chambers of punishment_. A

little light penetrates towards midday. The inconvenient point about

these chambers which, as the reader sees, are not dungeons, is that

they allow the persons who should be at work to think.

So Brujon meditated, and he emerged from the chamber of punishment with

a rope. As he had the name of being very dangerous in the Charlemagne

courtyard, he was placed in the New Building. The first thing he found

in the New Building was Guelemer, the second was a nail; Guelemer, that

is to say, crime; a nail, that is to say, liberty. Brujon, of whom it

is high time that the reader should have a complete idea, was, with an

appearance of delicate health and a profoundly premeditated languor, a

polished, intelligent sprig, and a thief, who had a caressing glance,

and an atrocious smile. His glance resulted from his will, and his

smile from his nature. His first studies in his art had been directed

to roofs. He had made great progress in the industry of the men who

tear off lead, who plunder the roofs and despoil the gutters by the

process called _double pickings_.

The circumstance which put the finishing touch on the moment peculiarly

favorable for an attempt at escape, was that the roofers were re-laying

and re-jointing, at that very moment, a portion of the slates on the

prison. The Saint-Bernard courtyard was no longer absolutely isolated

from the Charlemagne and the Saint-Louis courts. Up above there were

scaffoldings and ladders; in other words, bridges and stairs in the

direction of liberty.

The New Building, which was the most cracked and decrepit thing to be

seen anywhere in the world, was the weak point in the prison. The walls

were eaten by saltpetre to such an extent that the authorities had been

obliged to line the vaults of the dormitories with a sheathing of wood,

because stones were in the habit of becoming detached and falling on

the prisoners in their beds. In spite of this antiquity, the

authorities committed the error of confining in the New Building the

most troublesome prisoners, of placing there “the hard cases,” as they

say in prison parlance.

The New Building contained four dormitories, one above the other, and a

top story which was called the Bel-Air (Fine-Air). A large

chimney-flue, probably from some ancient kitchen of the Dukes de la

Force, started from the ground floor, traversed all four stories, cut

the dormitories, where it figured as a flattened pillar, into two

portions, and finally pierced the roof.

Guelemer and Brujon were in the same dormitory. They had been placed,

by way of precaution, on the lower story. Chance ordained that the

heads of their beds should rest against the chimney.

Thénardier was directly over their heads in the top story known as

Fine-Air. The pedestrian who halts on the Rue Culture-Sainte-Catherine,

after passing the barracks of the firemen, in front of the

porte-cochère of the bathing establishment, beholds a yard full of

flowers and shrubs in wooden boxes, at the extremity of which spreads

out a little white rotunda with two wings, brightened up with green

shutters, the bucolic dream of Jean Jacques.

Not more than ten years ago, there rose above that rotunda an enormous

black, hideous, bare wall by which it was backed up.

This was the outer wall of La Force.

This wall, beside that rotunda, was Milton viewed through Berquin.

Lofty as it was, this wall was overtopped by a still blacker roof,

which could be seen beyond. This was the roof of the New Building.

There one could descry four dormer-windows, guarded with bars; they

were the windows of the Fine-Air.

A chimney pierced the roof; this was the chimney which traversed the

dormitories.

The Bel-Air, that top story of the New Building, was a sort of large

hall, with a Mansard roof, guarded with triple gratings and double

doors of sheet iron, which were studded with enormous bolts. When one

entered from the north end, one had on one’s left the four

dormer-windows, on one’s right, facing the windows, at regular

intervals, four square, tolerably vast cages, separated by narrow

passages, built of masonry to about the height of the elbow, and the

rest, up to the roof, of iron bars.

Thénardier had been in solitary confinement in one of these cages since

the night of the 3d of February. No one was ever able to discover how,

and by what connivance, he succeeded in procuring, and secreting a

bottle of wine, invented, so it is said, by Desrues, with which a

narcotic is mixed, and which the band of the _Endormeurs_, or

_Sleep-compellers_, rendered famous.

There are, in many prisons, treacherous employees, half-jailers,

half-thieves, who assist in escapes, who sell to the police an

unfaithful service, and who turn a penny whenever they can.

On that same night, then, when Little Gavroche picked up the two lost

children, Brujon and Guelemer, who knew that Babet, who had escaped

that morning, was waiting for them in the street as well as

Montparnasse, rose softly, and with the nail which Brujon had found,

began to pierce the chimney against which their beds stood. The rubbish

fell on Brujon’s bed, so that they were not heard. Showers mingled with

thunder shook the doors on their hinges, and created in the prison a

terrible and opportune uproar. Those of the prisoners who woke,

pretended to fall asleep again, and left Guelemer and Brujon to their

own devices. Brujon was adroit; Guelemer was vigorous. Before any sound

had reached the watcher, who was sleeping in the grated cell which

opened into the dormitory, the wall had been pierced, the chimney

scaled, the iron grating which barred the upper orifice of the flue

forced, and the two redoubtable ruffians were on the roof. The wind and

rain redoubled, the roof was slippery.

“What a good night to leg it!” said Brujon.

An abyss six feet broad and eighty feet deep separated them from the

surrounding wall. At the bottom of this abyss, they could see the

musket of a sentinel gleaming through the gloom. They fastened one end

of the rope which Brujon had spun in his dungeon to the stumps of the

iron bars which they had just wrenched off, flung the other over the

outer wall, crossed the abyss at one bound, clung to the coping of the

wall, got astride of it, let themselves slip, one after the other,

along the rope, upon a little roof which touches the bath-house, pulled

their rope after them, jumped down into the courtyard of the

bath-house, traversed it, pushed open the porter’s wicket, beside which

hung his rope, pulled this, opened the porte-cochère, and found

themselves in the street.

Three-quarters of an hour had not elapsed since they had risen in bed

in the dark, nail in hand, and their project in their heads.

A few moments later they had joined Babet and Montparnasse, who were

prowling about the neighborhood.

They had broken their rope in pulling it after them, and a bit of it

remained attached to the chimney on the roof. They had sustained no

other damage, however, than that of scratching nearly all the skin off

their hands.

That night, Thénardier was warned, without any one being able to

explain how, and was not asleep.

Towards one o’clock in the morning, the night being very dark, he saw

two shadows pass along the roof, in the rain and squalls, in front of

the dormer-window which was opposite his cage. One halted at the

window, long enough to dart in a glance. This was Brujon.

Thénardier recognized him, and understood. This was enough.

Thénardier, rated as a burglar, and detained as a measure of precaution

under the charge of organizing a nocturnal ambush, with armed force,

was kept in sight. The sentry, who was relieved every two hours,

marched up and down in front of his cage with loaded musket. The

Fine-Air was lighted by a skylight. The prisoner had on his feet

fetters weighing fifty pounds. Every day, at four o’clock in the

afternoon, a jailer, escorted by two dogs,—this was still in vogue at

that time,—entered his cage, deposited beside his bed a loaf of black

bread weighing two pounds, a jug of water, a bowl filled with rather

thin bouillon, in which swam a few Mayagan beans, inspected his irons

and tapped the bars. This man and his dogs made two visits during the

night.

Thénardier had obtained permission to keep a sort of iron bolt which he

used to spike his bread into a crack in the wall, “in order to preserve

it from the rats,” as he said. As Thénardier was kept in sight, no

objection had been made to this spike. Still, it was remembered

afterwards, that one of the jailers had said: “It would be better to

let him have only a wooden spike.”

At two o’clock in the morning, the sentinel, who was an old soldier,

was relieved, and replaced by a conscript. A few moments later, the man

with the dogs paid his visit, and went off without noticing anything,

except, possibly, the excessive youth and “the rustic air” of the “raw

recruit.” Two hours afterwards, at four o’clock, when they came to

relieve the conscript, he was found asleep on the floor, lying like a

log near Thénardier’s cage. As for Thénardier, he was no longer there.

There was a hole in the ceiling of his cage, and, above it, another

hole in the roof. One of the planks of his bed had been wrenched off,

and probably carried away with him, as it was not found. They also

seized in his cell a half-empty bottle which contained the remains of

the stupefying wine with which the soldier had been drugged. The

soldier’s bayonet had disappeared.

At the moment when this discovery was made, it was assumed that

Thénardier was out of reach. The truth is, that he was no longer in the

New Building, but that he was still in great danger.

Thénardier, on reaching the roof of the New Building, had found the

remains of Brujon’s rope hanging to the bars of the upper trap of the

chimney, but, as this broken fragment was much too short, he had not

been able to escape by the outer wall, as Brujon and Guelemer had done.

When one turns from the Rue des Ballets into the Rue du Roi-de-Sicile,

one almost immediately encounters a repulsive ruin. There stood on that

spot, in the last century, a house of which only the back wall now

remains, a regular wall of masonry, which rises to the height of the

third story between the adjoining buildings. This ruin can be

recognized by two large square windows which are still to be seen

there; the middle one, that nearest the right gable, is barred with a

worm-eaten beam adjusted like a prop. Through these windows there was

formerly visible a lofty and lugubrious wall, which was a fragment of

the outer wall of La Force.

The empty space on the street left by the demolished house is

half-filled by a fence of rotten boards, shored up by five stone posts.

In this recess lies concealed a little shanty which leans against the

portion of the ruin which has remained standing. The fence has a gate,

which, a few years ago, was fastened only by a latch.

It was the crest of this ruin that Thénardier had succeeded in

reaching, a little after one o’clock in the morning.

How had he got there? That is what no one has ever been able to explain

or understand. The lightning must, at the same time, have hindered and

helped him. Had he made use of the ladders and scaffoldings of the

slaters to get from roof to roof, from enclosure to enclosure, from

compartment to compartment, to the buildings of the Charlemagne court,

then to the buildings of the Saint-Louis court, to the outer wall, and

thence to the hut on the Rue du Roi-de-Sicile? But in that itinerary

there existed breaks which seemed to render it an impossibility. Had he

placed the plank from his bed like a bridge from the roof of the

Fine-Air to the outer wall, and crawled flat, on his belly on the

coping of the outer wall the whole distance round the prison as far as

the hut? But the outer wall of La Force formed a crenellated and

unequal line; it mounted and descended, it dropped at the firemen’s

barracks, it rose towards the bath-house, it was cut in twain by

buildings, it was not even of the same height on the Hotel Lamoignon as

on the Rue Pavée; everywhere occurred falls and right angles; and then,

the sentinels must have espied the dark form of the fugitive; hence,

the route taken by Thénardier still remains rather inexplicable. In two

manners, flight was impossible. Had Thénardier, spurred on by that

thirst for liberty which changes precipices into ditches, iron bars

into wattles of osier, a legless man into an athlete, a gouty man into

a bird, stupidity into instinct, instinct into intelligence, and

intelligence into genius, had Thénardier invented a third mode? No one

has ever found out.

The marvels of escape cannot always be accounted for. The man who makes

his escape, we repeat, is inspired; there is something of the star and

of the lightning in the mysterious gleam of flight; the effort towards

deliverance is no less surprising than the flight towards the sublime,

and one says of the escaped thief: “How did he contrive to scale that

wall?” in the same way that one says of Corneille: “Where did he find

_the means of dying?_”

At all events, dripping with perspiration, drenched with rain, with his

clothes hanging in ribbons, his hands flayed, his elbows bleeding, his

knees torn, Thénardier had reached what children, in their figurative

language, call _the edge_ of the wall of the ruin, there he had

stretched himself out at full length, and there his strength had failed

him. A steep escarpment three stories high separated him from the

pavement of the street.

The rope which he had was too short.

There he waited, pale, exhausted, desperate with all the despair which

he had undergone, still hidden by the night, but telling himself that

the day was on the point of dawning, alarmed at the idea of hearing the

neighboring clock of Saint-Paul strike four within a few minutes, an

hour when the sentinel was relieved and when the latter would be found

asleep under the pierced roof, staring in horror at a terrible depth,

at the light of the street lanterns, the wet, black pavement, that

pavement longed for yet frightful, which meant death, and which meant

liberty.

He asked himself whether his three accomplices in flight had succeeded,

if they had heard him, and if they would come to his assistance. He

listened. With the exception of the patrol, no one had passed through

the street since he had been there. Nearly the whole of the descent of

the market-gardeners from Montreuil, from Charonne, from Vincennes, and

from Bercy to the markets was accomplished through the Rue

Saint-Antoine.

Four o’clock struck. Thénardier shuddered. A few moments later, that

terrified and confused uproar which follows the discovery of an escape

broke forth in the prison. The sound of doors opening and shutting, the

creaking of gratings on their hinges, a tumult in the guard-house, the

hoarse shouts of the turnkeys, the shock of musket-butts on the

pavement of the courts, reached his ears. Lights ascended and descended

past the grated windows of the dormitories, a torch ran along the

ridge-pole of the top story of the New Building, the firemen belonging

in the barracks on the right had been summoned. Their helmets, which

the torch lighted up in the rain, went and came along the roofs. At the

same time, Thénardier perceived in the direction of the Bastille a wan

whiteness lighting up the edge of the sky in doleful wise.

He was on top of a wall ten inches wide, stretched out under the heavy

rains, with two gulfs to right and left, unable to stir, subject to the

giddiness of a possible fall, and to the horror of a certain arrest,

and his thoughts, like the pendulum of a clock, swung from one of these

ideas to the other: “Dead if I fall, caught if I stay.” In the midst of

this anguish, he suddenly saw, the street being still dark, a man who

was gliding along the walls and coming from the Rue Pavée, halt in the

recess above which Thénardier was, as it were, suspended. Here this man

was joined by a second, who walked with the same caution, then by a

third, then by a fourth. When these men were re-united, one of them

lifted the latch of the gate in the fence, and all four entered the

enclosure in which the shanty stood. They halted directly under

Thénardier. These men had evidently chosen this vacant space in order

that they might consult without being seen by the passers-by or by the

sentinel who guards the wicket of La Force a few paces distant. It must

be added, that the rain kept this sentinel blocked in his box.

Thénardier, not being able to distinguish their visages, lent an ear to

their words with the desperate attention of a wretch who feels himself

lost.

Thénardier saw something resembling a gleam of hope flash before his

eyes,—these men conversed in slang.

The first said in a low but distinct voice:—

“Let’s cut. What are we up to here?”

The second replied: “It’s raining hard enough to put out the very

devil’s fire. And the bobbies will be along instanter. There’s a

soldier on guard yonder. We shall get nabbed here.”

These two words, _icigo_ and _icicaille_, both of which mean _ici_, and

which belong, the first to the slang of the barriers, the second to the

slang of the Temple, were flashes of light for Thénardier. By the

_icigo_ he recognized Brujon, who was a prowler of the barriers, by the

_icicaille_ he knew Babet, who, among his other trades, had been an

old-clothes broker at the Temple.

The antique slang of the great century is no longer spoken except in

the Temple, and Babet was really the only person who spoke it in all

its purity. Had it not been for the _icicaille_, Thénardier would not

have recognized him, for he had entirely changed his voice.

In the meanwhile, the third man had intervened.

“There’s no hurry yet, let’s wait a bit. How do we know that he doesn’t

stand in need of us?”

By this, which was nothing but French, Thénardier recognized

Montparnasse, who made it a point in his elegance to understand all

slangs and to speak none of them.

As for the fourth, he held his peace, but his huge shoulders betrayed

him. Thénardier did not hesitate. It was Guelemer.

Brujon replied almost impetuously but still in a low tone:—

“What are you jabbering about? The tavern-keeper hasn’t managed to cut

his stick. He don’t tumble to the racket, that he don’t! You have to be

a pretty knowing cove to tear up your shirt, cut up your sheet to make

a rope, punch holes in doors, get up false papers, make false keys,

file your irons, hang out your cord, hide yourself, and disguise

yourself! The old fellow hasn’t managed to play it, he doesn’t

understand how to work the business.”

Babet added, still in that classical slang which was spoken by

Poulailler and Cartouche, and which is to the bold, new, highly colored

and risky argot used by Brujon what the language of Racine is to the

language of André Chenier:—

“Your tavern-keeper must have been nabbed in the act. You have to be

knowing. He’s only a greenhorn. He must have let himself be taken in by

a bobby, perhaps even by a sheep who played it on him as his pal.

Listen, Montparnasse, do you hear those shouts in the prison? You have

seen all those lights. He’s recaptured, there! He’ll get off with

twenty years. I ain’t afraid, I ain’t a coward, but there ain’t

anything more to do, or otherwise they’d lead us a dance. Don’t get

mad, come with us, let’s go drink a bottle of old wine together.”

“One doesn’t desert one’s friends in a scrape,” grumbled Montparnasse.

“I tell you he’s nabbed!” retorted Brujon. “At the present moment, the

inn-keeper ain’t worth a ha’penny. We can’t do nothing for him. Let’s

be off. Every minute I think a bobby has got me in his fist.”

Montparnasse no longer offered more than a feeble resistance; the fact

is, that these four men, with the fidelity of ruffians who never

abandon each other, had prowled all night long about La Force, great as

was their peril, in the hope of seeing Thénardier make his appearance

on the top of some wall. But the night, which was really growing too

fine,—for the downpour was such as to render all the streets

deserted,—the cold which was overpowering them, their soaked garments,

their hole-ridden shoes, the alarming noise which had just burst forth

in the prison, the hours which had elapsed, the patrol which they had

encountered, the hope which was vanishing, all urged them to beat a

retreat. Montparnasse himself, who was, perhaps, almost Thénardier’s

son-in-law, yielded. A moment more, and they would be gone. Thénardier

was panting on his wall like the shipwrecked sufferers of the _Méduse_

on their raft when they beheld the vessel which had appeared in sight

vanish on the horizon.

He dared not call to them; a cry might be heard and ruin everything. An

idea occurred to him, a last idea, a flash of inspiration; he drew from

his pocket the end of Brujon’s rope, which he had detached from the

chimney of the New Building, and flung it into the space enclosed by

the fence.

This rope fell at their feet.

“A widow,”37 said Babet.

“My tortouse!”38 said Brujon.

“The tavern-keeper is there,” said Montparnasse.

They raised their eyes. Thénardier thrust out his head a very little.

“Quick!” said Montparnasse, “have you the other end of the rope,

Brujon?”

“Yes.”

“Knot the two pieces together, we’ll fling him the rope, he can fasten

it to the wall, and he’ll have enough of it to get down with.”

Thénardier ran the risk, and spoke:—

“I am paralyzed with cold.”

“We’ll warm you up.”

“I can’t budge.”

“Let yourself slide, we’ll catch you.”

“My hands are benumbed.”

“Only fasten the rope to the wall.”

“I can’t.”

“Then one of us must climb up,” said Montparnasse.

“Three stories!” ejaculated Brujon.

An ancient plaster flue, which had served for a stove that had been

used in the shanty in former times, ran along the wall and mounted

almost to the very spot where they could see Thénardier. This flue,

then much damaged and full of cracks, has since fallen, but the marks

of it are still visible.

It was very narrow.

“One might get up by the help of that,” said Montparnasse.

“By that flue?” exclaimed Babet, “a grown-up cove, never! it would take

a brat.”

“A brat must be got,” resumed Brujon.

“Where are we to find a young ’un?” said Guelemer.

“Wait,” said Montparnasse. “I’ve got the very article.”

He opened the gate of the fence very softly, made sure that no one was

passing along the street, stepped out cautiously, shut the gate behind

him, and set off at a run in the direction of the Bastille.

Seven or eight minutes elapsed, eight thousand centuries to Thénardier;

Babet, Brujon, and Guelemer did not open their lips; at last the gate

opened once more, and Montparnasse appeared, breathless, and followed

by Gavroche. The rain still rendered the street completely deserted.

Little Gavroche entered the enclosure and gazed at the forms of these

ruffians with a tranquil air. The water was dripping from his hair.

Guelemer addressed him:—

“Are you a man, young ’un?”

Gavroche shrugged his shoulders, and replied:—

“A young ’un like me’s a man, and men like you are babes.”

“The brat’s tongue’s well hung!” exclaimed Babet.

“The Paris brat ain’t made of straw,” added Brujon.

“What do you want?” asked Gavroche.

Montparnasse answered:—

“Climb up that flue.”

“With this rope,” said Babet.

“And fasten it,” continued Brujon.

“To the top of the wall,” went on Babet.

“To the cross-bar of the window,” added Brujon.

“And then?” said Gavroche.

“There!” said Guelemer.

The gamin examined the rope, the flue, the wall, the windows, and made

that indescribable and disdainful noise with his lips which signifies:—

“Is that all!”

“There’s a man up there whom you are to save,” resumed Montparnasse.

“Will you?” began Brujon again.

“Greenhorn!” replied the lad, as though the question appeared a most

unprecedented one to him.

And he took off his shoes.

Guelemer seized Gavroche by one arm, set him on the roof of the shanty,

whose worm-eaten planks bent beneath the urchin’s weight, and handed

him the rope which Brujon had knotted together during Montparnasse’s

absence. The gamin directed his steps towards the flue, which it was

easy to enter, thanks to a large crack which touched the roof. At the

moment when he was on the point of ascending, Thénardier, who saw life

and safety approaching, bent over the edge of the wall; the first light

of dawn struck white upon his brow dripping with sweat, upon his livid

cheek-bones, his sharp and savage nose, his bristling gray beard, and

Gavroche recognized him.

“Hullo! it’s my father! Oh, that won’t hinder.”

And taking the rope in his teeth, he resolutely began the ascent.

He reached the summit of the hut, bestrode the old wall as though it

had been a horse, and knotted the rope firmly to the upper cross-bar of

the window.

A moment later, Thénardier was in the street.

As soon as he touched the pavement, as soon as he found himself out of

danger, he was no longer either weary, or chilled or trembling; the

terrible things from which he had escaped vanished like smoke, all that

strange and ferocious mind awoke once more, and stood erect and free,

ready to march onward.

These were this man’s first words:—

“Now, whom are we to eat?”

It is useless to explain the sense of this frightfully transparent

remark, which signifies both to kill, to assassinate, and to plunder.

_To eat_, true sense: _to devour_.

“Let’s get well into a corner,” said Brujon. “Let’s settle it in three

words, and part at once. There was an affair that promised well in the

Rue Plumet, a deserted street, an isolated house, an old rotten gate on

a garden, and lone women.”

“Well! why not?” demanded Thénardier.

“Your girl, Éponine, went to see about the matter,” replied Babet.

“And she brought a biscuit to Magnon,” added Guelemer. “Nothing to be

made there.”

“The girl’s no fool,” said Thénardier. “Still, it must be seen to.”

“Yes, yes,” said Brujon, “it must be looked up.”

In the meanwhile, none of the men seemed to see Gavroche, who, during

this colloquy, had seated himself on one of the fence-posts; he waited

a few moments, thinking that perhaps his father would turn towards him,

then he put on his shoes again, and said:—

“Is that all? You don’t want any more, my men? Now you’re out of your

scrape. I’m off. I must go and get my brats out of bed.”

And off he went.

The five men emerged, one after another, from the enclosure.

When Gavroche had disappeared at the corner of the Rue des Ballets,

Babet took Thénardier aside.

“Did you take a good look at that young ’un?” he asked.

“What young ’un?”

“The one who climbed the wall and carried you the rope.”

“Not particularly.”

“Well, I don’t know, but it strikes me that it was your son.”

“Bah!” said Thénardier, “do you think so?”

BOOK SEVENTH—SLANG

[Illustration: Slang]