Les Misérables, Victor Hugo [best love novels of all time .TXT] 📗
- Author: Victor Hugo
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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.
CHAPTER XXI—ONE SHOULD ALWAYS BEGIN BY ARRESTING THE VICTIMS
At nightfall, Javert had posted his men and had gone into ambush himself between the trees of the Rue de la Barrière-des-Gobelins which faced the Gorbeau house, on the other side of the boulevard. He had begun operations by opening “his pockets,” and dropping into it the two young girls who were charged with keeping a watch on the approaches to the den. But he had only “caged” Azelma. As for Éponine, she was not at her post, she had disappeared, and he had not been able to seize her. Then Javert had made a point and had bent his ear to waiting for the signal agreed upon. The comings and goings of the fiacres had greatly agitated him. At last, he had grown impatient, and, sure that there was a nest there, sure of being in “luck,” having recognized many of the ruffians who had entered, he had finally decided to go upstairs without waiting for the pistol-shot.
It will be remembered that he had Marius’ pass-key.
He had arrived just in the nick of time.
The terrified ruffians flung themselves on the arms which they had abandoned in all the corners at the moment of flight. In less than a second, these seven men, horrible to behold, had grouped themselves in an attitude of defence, one with his meat-axe, another with his key, another with his bludgeon, the rest with shears, pincers, and hammers. Thénardier had his knife in his fist. The Thénardier woman snatched up an enormous paving-stone which lay in the angle of the window and served her daughters as an ottoman.
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Javert put on his hat again, and advanced a couple of paces into the room, with arms folded, his cane under one arm, his sword in its sheath.
“Halt there,” said he. “You shall not go out by the window, you shall go through the door. It’s less unhealthy. There are seven of you, there are fifteen of us. Don’t let’s fall to collaring each other like men of Auvergne.”
Bigrenaille drew out a pistol which he had kept concealed under his blouse, and put it in Thénardier’s hand, whispering in the latter’s ear:—
“It’s Javert. I don’t dare fire at that man. Do you dare?”
“Parbleu!” replied Thénardier.
“Well, then, fire.”
Thénardier took the pistol and aimed at Javert.
Javert, who was only three paces from him, stared intently at him and contented himself with saying:—
“Come now, don’t fire. You’ll miss fire.”
Thénardier pulled the trigger. The pistol missed fire.
“Didn’t I tell you so!” ejaculated Javert.
Bigrenaille flung his bludgeon at Javert’s feet.
“You’re the emperor of the fiends! I surrender.”
“And you?” Javert asked the rest of the ruffians.
They replied:—
“So do we.”
Javert began again calmly:—
“That’s right, that’s good, I said so, you are nice fellows.”
“I only ask one thing,” said Bigrenaille, “and that is, that I may not be denied tobacco while I am in confinement.”
“Granted,” said Javert.
And turning round and calling behind him:—
“Come in now!”
A squad of policemen, sword in hand, and agents armed with bludgeons and cudgels, rushed in at Javert’s summons. They pinioned the ruffians.
This throng of men, sparely lighted by the single candle, filled the den with shadows.
“Handcuff them all!” shouted Javert.
“Come on!” cried a voice which was not the voice of a man, but of which no one would ever have said: “It is a woman’s voice.”
The Thénardier woman had entrenched herself in one of the angles of the window, and it was she who had just given vent to this roar.
The policemen and agents recoiled.
She had thrown off her shawl, but retained her bonnet; her husband, who was crouching behind her, was almost hidden under the discarded shawl, and she was shielding him with her body, as she elevated the paving-stone above her head with the gesture of a giantess on the point of hurling a rock.
“Beware!” she shouted.
All crowded back towards the corridor. A broad open space was cleared in the middle of the garret.
The Thénardier woman cast a glance at the ruffians who had allowed themselves to be pinioned, and muttered in hoarse and guttural accents:—
“The cowards!”
Javert smiled, and advanced across the open space which the Thénardier was devouring with her eyes.
“Don’t come near me,” she cried, “or I’ll crush you.”
“What a grenadier!” ejaculated Javert; “you’ve got a beard like a man, mother, but I have claws like a woman.”
And he continued to advance.
The Thénardier, dishevelled and terrible, set her feet far apart, threw herself backwards, and hurled the paving-stone at Javert’s head. Javert ducked, the stone passed over him, struck the wall behind, knocked off a huge piece of plastering, and, rebounding from angle to angle across the hovel, now luckily almost empty, rested at Javert’s feet.
At the same moment, Javert reached the Thénardier couple. One of his big hands descended on the woman’s shoulder; the other on the husband’s head.
“The handcuffs!” he shouted.
The policemen trooped in in force, and in a few seconds Javert’s order had been executed.
The Thénardier female, overwhelmed, stared at her pinioned hands, and at those of her husband, who had dropped to the floor, and exclaimed, weeping:—
“My daughters!”
“They are in the jug,” said Javert.
In the meanwhile, the agents had caught sight of the drunken man asleep behind the door, and were shaking him:—
He awoke, stammering:—
“Is it all over, Jondrette?”
“Yes,” replied Javert.
The six pinioned ruffians were standing, and still preserved their spectral mien; all three besmeared with black, all three masked.
“Keep on your masks,” said Javert.
And passing them in review with a glance of a Frederick II. at a Potsdam parade, he said to the three “chimney-builders”:—
“Good day, Bigrenaille! good day, Brujon! good day, Deuxmilliards!”
Then turning to the three masked men, he said to the man with the meat-axe:—
“Good day, Gueulemer!”
And to the man with the cudgel:—
“Good day, Babet!”
And to the ventriloquist:—
“Your health, Claquesous.”
At that moment, he caught sight of the ruffians’ prisoner, who, ever since the entrance of the police, had not uttered a word, and had held his head down.
“Untie the gentleman!” said Javert, “and let no one go out!”
That said, he seated himself with sovereign dignity before the table, where the candle and the writing-materials still remained, drew a stamped paper from his pocket, and began to prepare his report.
When he had written the first lines, which are formulas that never vary, he raised his eyes:—
“Let the gentleman whom these gentlemen bound step forward.”
The policemen glanced round them.
“Well,” said Javert, “where is he?”
The prisoner of the ruffians, M. Leblanc, M. Urbain Fabre, the father of Ursule or the Lark,
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