by Victor Hugo
CHAPTER XXIV.
PRISONER!
Marius was really a prisoner;--prisoner to Jean Valjean.
The hand which had clutched him behind at the moment when he wasfalling, and of which he felt the pressure as he lost his senses, wasthat of Jean Valjean.
Jean Valjean had taken no other part in the struggle than that ofexposing himself. Had it not been for him, in the supreme moment ofagony no one would have thought of the wounded. Thanks to him, who waseverywhere present in the carnage like a Providence, those who fellwere picked up, carried to the ground-floor room, and had their woundsdressed, and in the intervals he repaired the barricade. But nothingthat could resemble a blow, an attack, or even personal defence, couldbe seen with him, and he kept quiet and succored. However, he had onlya few scratches, and the bullets had no billet for him. If suicideformed part of what he dreamed of when he came to this sepulchre, hehad not been successful; but we doubt whether he thought of suicide,which is an irreligious act. Jean Valjean did not appear to see Mariusin the thick of the combat; but in truth he did not take his eyes offhim. When a bullet laid Marius low, Jean Valjean leaped upon him withthe agility of a tiger, dashed upon him as on a prey, and carried himoff.
The whirlwind of the attack was at this moment so violentlyconcentrated on Enjolras and the door of the wine-shop, that no onesaw Jean Valjean, supporting the fainting Marius in his arms, crossthe unpaved ground of the barricade and disappear round the corner ofCorinth. Our readers will remember this corner, which formed a sortof cape in the street, and protected a few square feet of ground frombullets and grape-shot, and from glances as well. There is thus attimes in fires a room which does not burn, and in the most raging seas,beyond a promontory, or at the end of a reef, a little quiet nook. Itwas in this corner of the inner trapeze of the barricade that Époninedrew her last breath. Here Jean Valjean stopped, let Marius slip to theground, leaned against a wall, and looked around him.
The situation was frightful; for the instant, for two or three minutesperhaps, this piece of wall was a shelter, but how to get out of thismassacre? He recalled the agony he had felt in the Rue Polonceau, eightyears previously, and in what way he had succeeded in escaping; it wasdifficult then, but now it was impossible. He had in front of him thatimplacable and silent six-storied house, which only seemed inhabitedby the dead man leaning out of his window; he had on his right thelow barricade which closed the Petite Truanderie; to climb over thisobstacle appeared easy, but a row of bayonet-points could be seen overthe crest of the barricade; they were line troops posted beyond thebarricade and on the watch. It was evident that crossing the barricadewas seeking a platoon fire, and that any head which appeared above thewall of paving-stones would serve as a mark for sixty muskets. He hadon his left the battle-field, and death was behind the corner of thewall.
What was he to do? A bird alone could have escaped from this place.And he must decide at once, find an expedient, and make up his mind.They were fighting a few paces from him, but fortunately all wereobstinately engaged at one point, the wine-shop door; but if a singlesoldier had the idea of turning the house or attacking it on the flankall would be over. Jean Valjean looked at the house opposite to him,he looked at the barricade by his side, and then looked on the ground,with the violence of supreme extremity, wildly, and as if he would haveliked to dig a hole with his eyes. By much looking, something vaguelydiscernible in such an agony became perceptible, and assumed a shape athis feet, as if the eyes had the power to produce the thing demanded.He perceived a few paces from him, at the foot of the small barricadeso pitilessly guarded and watched from without, and beneath a pile ofpaving-stones which almost concealed it, an iron grating, laid flat andflush with the ground. This grating made of strong cross-bars was abouttwo feet square, and the framework of paving-stones which supportedit had been torn out, and it was as it were dismounted. Through thebars a glimpse could be caught of an obscure opening, something likea chimney-pot or the cylinder of a cistern. Jean Valjean dashed up,and his old skill in escapes rose to his brain like a beam of light.To remove the paving-stones, tear up the grating, take Marius, who wasinert as a dead body, on his shoulders, descend with this burden onhis loins, helping himself with his elbows and knees, into this sortof well which was fortunately of no great depth, to let the gratingfall again over his head, to set foot on a paved surface, about tenfeet below the earth,--all this was executed like something done indelirium, with a giant's strength and the rapidity of an eagle: thisoccupied but a few minutes. Jean Valjean found himself with the stillfainting Marius in a sort of long subterranean corridor, where therewas profound peace, absolute silence, and night. The impression whichhe had formerly felt in falling out of the street into the conventrecurred to him; still, what he now carried was not Cosette, but Marius.
He had scarce heard above his head like a vague murmur the formidabletumult of the wine-shop being taken by assault.
BOOK II.
THE INTESTINE OF LEVIATHAN.
