by Victor Hugo
“Pshaw! who is there to hear? our neighbour? I saw him go out just now. Besides, does he hear, that big dummy? and then I tell you that I saw him go out.”
Nevertheless, by a sort of instinct, Jondrette lowered his voice, not enough, however, for his words to escape Marius. A favourable circumstance, and one which enabled Marius to lose nothing of this conversation, was that the fallen snow muffled the sound of the carriages on the boulevard.
Marius heard this:
“Listen up. He is caught, the Crœsus! or he might as well be. It is already done. Everything is arranged. I have seen the men. He will come this evening at six o‘clock. To bring his sixty francs, the rascal! did you see how I got that out, my sixty francs, my landlord, my 4th of February! it is not even a quarter! was that stupid! He will come then at six o’clock! our neighbour is gone to dinner then. Mother Bougon is washing dishes in the city. There is nobody in the house. Our neighbour never comes back before eleven o‘clock. The girls will stand watch. You shall help us. He will comply.”
“And if he should not be his own executor,” asked the wife.
Jondrette made a sinister gesture and said:
“We will execute him.”du
And he burst into a laugh.
It was the first time that Marius had seen him laugh. This laugh was cold and soft, and made him shudder.
Jondrette opened a closet near the chimney, took out an old cap and put it on his head after brushing it with his sleeve.
“Now,” said he, “I am going out. I have still some men to see. Some good ones. You will see how it is going to work. I shall be back as soon as possible, it is a great hand to play, watch the house.”
And with his two fists in the two pockets of his trousers, he stood a moment in thought, then exclaimed:
“Do you know that it is very lucky indeed that he did not recognise me? If he had been the one to recognise me he would not have come back. He would escape us! It is my beard that saved me! my romantic goatee! my pretty little romantic beard!”
And he began to laugh again.
He went to the window. The snow was still falling, and blotted out the grey sky.
“What villainous weather!” said he.
Then folding his coat:
“The skin is too large. It doesn’t matter,” added he, “he did devilish well to leave it for me, the old scoundrel! Without this I should not have been able to go out and the whole thing would have been spoiled! But on what do things hang!”
And pulling his cap over his eyes, he went out.
Hardly had he had time to take a few steps in the hall, when the door opened and his tawny and cunning face again appeared.
“I forgot,” said he. “You will have a charcoal fire.”
And he threw into his wife’s apron the five-franc coin which the “philanthropist” had left him.
“A charcoal fire?” asked the woman.
“Yes.”
“How many bushels?”
“Two good ones.”
“That will be thirty sous. With the rest, I will buy something for dinner.”
“The devil, no.”
“Why?”
“The coin of a hundred sous is not to be spent.”
“Why?”
“Because I shall have something to buy.”
“What?”
“Something.”
“How much will you need?”
“Where is there a hardware store near here?”
“Rue Mouffetard.”
“Oh! yes, at the corner of some street; I remember the shop.”
“But tell me now how much you will need for what you have to buy?”
“Fifty sous or three francs.”
“There won’t be much left for dinner.”
“Don’t bother about eating to-day. There is better business.”
“All right, my jewel.”
At this word from his wife, Jondrette closed the door, and Marius heard his steps recede along the hall and go rapidly down the stairs.
Just then the clock of Saint Médard struck one.
12 (13)
SOLUS CUM SOLO, IN LOCO REMOTO, NON COGITABANTUR ORARE PATER NOSTERdv
MARIUS, all dreamer as he was, was, as we have said, of a firm and energetic nature. His habits of solitary meditation, while developing sympathy and compassion in him, had perhaps diminished his liability to become irritated, but left intact the faculty of indignation; he had the benevolence of a brahmin and the severity of a judge; he would have pitied a toad, but he would have crushed a viper. Now it was into a viper’s hole that he had just been looking; it was a nest of monsters that he had before his eyes.
“I must put my foot on these wretches,” said he.
None of the enigmas which he hoped to see unriddled were yet cleared up; on the contrary, all had perhaps become still darker; he knew nothing more of the beautiful child of the Luxembourg Gardens or of the man whom he called M. Leblanc, except that Jondrette knew them. Across the dark words which had been uttered, he saw distinctly but one thing, that an ambush was in the works, obscure, but terrible; that they were both running a great risk, she probably, her father certainly; that he must foil the hideous schemes of the Jondrettes and break the web of these spiders.
He looked for a moment at the female Jondrette. She had pulled an old sheet-iron furnace out of a corner and she was fumbling among the old scraps of iron.
He got down from the bureau as quietly as he could, taking care to make no noise.
In the midst of his dread at what was in preparation, and the horror with which the Jondrettes had inspired him, he felt a sort of joy at the idea that it would perhaps be given to him to render so great a service to her whom he loved.
But what was he to do? warn the persons threatened? where should he find them? He did not know their address. They had reappeared to his eyes for an instant, then they had again plunged into the boundless depths of Paris. Wait at the door for M. Leblanc at six o‘clock in the evening, the time when he would arrive, and warn him of the plot? But Jondrette and his men would see him watching, the place was solitary, they would be stronger than he, they would find means to seize him or get him out of the way, and he whom Marius wished to save would be lost. One o’clock had just struck, the ambush was to be carried out at six. Marius had five hours before him.
There was but one thing to be done.
He put on his presentable coat, tied a cravat about his neck, took his hat, and went out, without making any more noise than if he had been walking barefooted upon moss.
Besides the Jondrette woman was still fumbling with her old scrap iron.
Once out of the house, he went to the Rue du Petit Banquier.
He was about midway of that street near a very low wall which he could have stepped over in some places and which bordered a broad field, he was walking slowly, absorbed in his thoughts as he was, and the snow deafened his steps; all at once he heard voices talking very near him. He turned his head, the street was empty, there was nobody in it, it was broad daylight, and yet he heard voices distinctly.
It occurred to him to look over this wall.
There were in fact two men there with their backs to the wall, seated in the snow, and talking in a low tone.
These two forms were unknown to him, one was a bearded man in a smock, and the other a long-haired man in tatters. The bearded man had on a Greek cap, the other was bare-headed, and there was snow in his hair.
By bending his head over above them, Marius could hear.
The long-haired one jogged the other with his elbow, and said:
“With Patron-Minette, it can’t fail.”
“Do you think so?” said the bearded one; and the long-haired one replied:
“It will be a fafiot of five hundred balles for each of us, and the worst that can happen: five years, six years, ten years at most!”dw
The other answered hesitatingly, shivering under his Greek cap:
“Yes, that’s real money. We can
’t pass it up.”
“I tell you that the deal can’t fail,” replied the long-haired one. “We’ll fix Old What‘s-his-name’s waggon for him.”
Then they began to talk about a melodrama which they had seen the evening before at La Gaîté.
Marius went on his way.
It seemed to him that the obscure words of these men, so strangely hidden behind that wall, and crouching down in the snow, were not perhaps without some connection with Jondrette’s terrible projects. That must be the deal.
He went towards the Faubourg Saint Marceau, and asked at the first shop in his way where he could find a chief of police.
Number 14, Rue de Pontoise, was pointed out to him.
Marius went thither.
Passing a baker’s shop, he bought a two-sou loaf and ate it, foreseeing that he would have no dinner.
On his way he rendered to Providence its due. He thought that if he had not given his five francs to the Jondrette girl in the morning, he would have followed M. Leblanc’s fiacre, and consequently known nothing of this, so that there would have been no obstacle to the ambush of the Jondrettes, and M. Leblanc would have been lost, and doubtless his daughter with him.
13 (14)
IN WHICH A POLICE OFFICER GIVES A LAWYER TWO COUPS DE POIGN
ON REACHING Number 14, Rue de Pontoise, he went upstairs and asked for the chief of police.
“The chief of police is not in,” said one of the office boys; “but there is an inspector who answers for him. Would you like to speak to him? is it urgent?”
“Yes,” said Marius.
The office boy introduced him into the chiefs office. A man of tall stature was standing there, behind a railing, in front of a stove, and holding up with both hands the flaps of a huge overcoat with three layered flaps. He had a square face, a thin and firm mouth, very fierce, bushy, greyish whiskers, and an eye that would turn your pockets inside out. You might have said of this eye, not that it penetrated, but that it ransacked.
This man’s appearance was not much less ferocious or formidable than Jondrette’s; it is sometimes no less startling to meet the dog than the wolf.
“What do you wish?” said he to Marius, without adding monsieur.
“The chief of police?”
“He is absent. I answer for him.”
“It is a very secret affair.”
“Speak, then.”
“And very urgent.”
“Then speak quickly.”
This man, calm and abrupt, was at the same time alarming and reassuring. He inspired fear and confidence. Marius related his adventure.—That a person whom he only knew by sight was to be drawn into an ambush that very evening; that occupying the room next the place, he, Marius Pontmercy, attorney, had heard the whole plot through the partition; that the scoundrel who had contrived the plot was named Jondrette; that he had accomplices, probably prowlers of the barrières, among others a certain Panchaud, alias Printanier, alias Bigrenaille; that Jondrette’s daughters would stand watch; that there was no means of warning the threatened man, as not even his name was known; and finally, that all this was to be done at six o‘clock that evening, at the most desolate spot on the Boulevard de l’Hôpital, in the house numbered 50-52.
At that number the inspector raised his head, and said coolly:
“It is then in the room at the end of the hall?”
“Exactly,” said Marius, and he added, “Do you know that house?”
The inspector remained silent a moment, then answered, warming the heel of his boot at the door of the stove:
“It seems so.”
He continued between his teeth, speaking less to Marius than to his cravat.
“There ought to be a dash of Patron-Minette in this.”
That word struck Marius.
“Patron-Minette,” said he. “Indeed, I heard that word pronounced.”
And he related to the inspector the dialogue between the long-haired man and the bearded man in the snow behind the wall on the Rue du Petit Banquier.
The inspector muttered:
“The long-haired one must be Brujon, and the bearded one must be Demi-Liard, alias Deux-Milliards.”
He had dropped his eyes again, and was considering.
“As to the Father What‘s-his-name, I have a suspicion of who he is. There, I have burnt my coat. They always make too much fire in these cursed stoves. Number 50-52. Old Gorbeau property.”
Then he looked at Marius:
“You have seen only this bearded man and this long-haired man?”
“And Panchaud.”
“You did not see a sort of little devilish rat prowling about there?”
“No.”
“Nor a great, big, clumsy heap, like the elephant in the Jardin des Plantes?”
“No.”
“Nor a villain who has the appearance of an old red cue?”
“No.”
“As to the fourth nobody sees him, not even his helpers, clerks, and agents. It is not very surprising that you did not see him.”
“No. What are all these beings?” inquired Marius.
The inspector answered:
“And then it is not their hour.”
He relapsed into silence, then resumed:
“No. 50-52. I know the shanty. Impossible to hide ourselves in the interior without the artists perceiving us, then they would leave and break up the play. They are so modest! the public bothers them. No way, no way. I want to hear them sing, and make them dance.”
This monologue finished, he turned towards Marius and asked him looking steadily at him:
“Will you be afraid?”
“Of what?” said Marius.
“Of these men?”
“No more than of you!” replied Marius rudely, who began to notice that this police spy had not yet called him monsieur.
The inspector looked at Marius still more steadily and continued with a sententious solemnity:
“You speak now like a brave man and an honest man. Courage does not fear crime, and honesty does not fear authority.”
Marius interrupted him:
“That is well enough; but what are you going to do?”
The inspector merely answered:
“The lodgers in that house have latch-keys to get in with at night. You must have one?”
“Yes,” said Marius.
“Do you have it with you?”
“Yes.”
“Give it to me,” said the inspector.
Marius took his key from his waistcoat, handed it to the inspector, and added:
“If you trust me you will come in force.”
The inspector threw a glance upon Marius such as Voltaire would have thrown upon a provincial academician who had proposed a rhyme to him; with a single movement he plunged both his hands, which were enormous, into the two immense pockets of his overcoat, and took out two small steel pistols, of the kind called fisticuffs. He presented them to Marius, saying hastily and abruptly:
“Take these. Go back home. Hide yourself in your room; let them think you have gone out. They are loaded. Each with two balls. You will watch; there is a hole in the wall, as you have told me. The men will come. Let them go on a little. When you deem the affair at a point, and when it is time to stop it, you will fire off a pistol. Not too soon. The rest is my affair. A pistol shot in the air, into the ceiling, no matter where. Above all, not too soon. Wait till they start committing the felony; you are a lawyer, you know what that is.”
Marius took the pistols and put them in the side pocket of his coat.
“They make a bulge that way, they show,” said the inspector. “Put them in your vest pockets rather.”
Marius hid the pistols in his vest pockets.
“Now,” pursued the inspector, “there is not a minute to be lost by anybody. What time is it? Half past two. It is at seven?”
“Six o‘clock,” said Marius.
“I have time enough,” continued the inspector, “but I have only enough
. Forget nothing of what I have told you. Bang. A pistol shot.”
“Be assured,” answered Marius.
And as Marius placed his hand on the latch of the door to go out, the inspector called to him:
“By the way, if you need me between now and then, come or send here. You will ask for Inspector Javert.”
14 (15)
JONDRETTE MAKES HIS PURCHASE
ON THE WAY HOME, Marius had in fact seen Jondrette passing along the Rue Mouffetard, and followed him.
Jondrette went straight on without suspecting that there was now an eye fixed upon him.
He left the Rue Mouffetard, and Marius saw him go into one of the most wretched places on the Rue Gracieuse; he stayed there about a quarter of an hour, and then returned to the Rue Mouffetard. He stopped at a hardware store, which there was in those times at the corner of the Rue Pierre Lombard, and, a few minutes afterwards, Marius saw him come out of the shop holding in his hand a large cold chisel with a pine handle which he concealed under his coat. At the upper end of the Rue de Petit Gentilly, he turned to the left and walked rapidly to the Rue du Petit Banquier. Night was falling; the snow which had ceased to fall for a moment was beginning again; Marius hid just at the corner of the Rue du Petit Banquier, which was deserted, as usual, and did not follow Jondrette further. It was fortunate that he did, for, on reaching the low wall where Marius had heard the long-haired man and the bearded man talking, Jondrette turned around, made sure that nobody was following him or saw him, then stepped over the wall, and disappeared.
The grounds which this wall bounded communicated with the rear court of an old livery stable-keeper of bad repute, who had failed, but who had still a few old vehicles under his sheds.
Marius thought it best to take advantage of Jondrette’s absence to get home; besides it was getting late; every evening, Ma‘am Burgon, on going out to wash her dishes in the city, was in the habit of closing the house door, which was always locked at dusk; Marius had given his key to the inspector of police; it was important, therefore, that he should make haste.
Evening had come; night had almost closed in; there was now but one spot in the horizon or in the whole sky which was lighted by the sun; that was the moon.
