by Victor Hugo
Here Thénardier paused, then he added, emphasising each word and casting a smile towards the furnace:
“I give you notice that I shall not accept that you cannot write.”
A grand inquisitor might have envied that smile.
Thénardier pushed the table close up to Monsieur Leblanc, and took the inkstand, a pen, and a sheet of paper from the drawer, which he left partly open, and in which gleamed the long blade of the knife.
He laid the sheet of paper before Monsieur Leblanc.
“Write,” said he.
The prisoner spoke at last:
“How do you expect me to write? I am tied.”
“That is true, pardon me!” said Thénardier, “you are quite right.”
And turning towards Bigrenaille:
“Untie monsieur’s right arm.”
Panchaud, alias Printanier, alias Bigrenaille, executed Thénardier’s order. When the prisoner’s right hand was free, Thénardier dipped the pen into the ink, and presented it to him.
“Remember, monsieur, that you are in our power, at our discretion, that no human power can take you away from here, and that we should be really grieved to be obliged to proceed to unpleasant extremities. I know neither your name nor your address, but I give you notice that you will remain tied until the person whose duty it will be to carry the letter which you are about to write, has returned. Have the kindness now to write.”
“What?” asked the prisoner.
“I will dictate.”
M. Leblanc took the pen.
Thénardier began to dictate:
“My daughter—”
The prisoner shuddered and lifted his eyes to Thénardier.
“Put ‘my dear daughter,”’ said Thénardier. M. Leblanc obeyed. Thénardier continued:
“Come immediately—”
He stopped.
“You call her daughter, do you not?”
“Who?” asked M. Leblanc.
“Zounds!” said Thénardier, “the little girl, the Lark.”
M. Leblanc answered without the least sign of emotion:
“I do not know what you mean.”
“Well, go on,” said Thénardier, and he began to dictate again.
“Come immediately, I have imperative need of you. The person who will give you this note is directed to bring you to me. I am waiting for you. Come with confidence.”
M. Leblanc had written the whole. Thénardier added:
“Ah! strike out come with confidence, that might lead her to suppose that the thing is not quite clear and that distrust is possible.”
M. Leblanc erased the three words.
“Now,” continued Thénardier, “sign it. What is your name?”
The prisoner laid down the pen and asked:
“For whom is this letter?”
“You know very well,” answered Thénardier, “for the little girl, I have just told you.”
It was evident that Thénardier avoided naming the young girl in question. He said “the Lark,” he said “the little girl,” but he did not pronounce the name. The precaution of a shrewd man preserving his own secret before his accomplices. To speak the name would have been to reveal the whole “affair” to them, and to tell them more than they needed to know.
He resumed:
“Sign it. What is your name?”
“Urbain Fabre,” said the prisoner.
Thénardier, with the movement of a cat, thrust his hand into his pocket and pulled out the handkerchief taken from M. Leblanc. He looked for the mark upon it and held it up to the candle.
“U. F. That is it. Urbain Fabre. Well, sign U. F.”
The prisoner signed.
“As it takes two hands to fold the letter, give it to me, I will fold it.”
This done, Thénardier resumed:
“Put on the address, Mademoiselle Fabre, at your house. I know that you live not very far from here, in the neighbourhood of Saint Jacques du Haut Pas, since you go there to mass every day, but I do not 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. Put it on yourself.”
The prisoner remained thoughtful for a moment, then he took the pen and wrote:
“Mademoiselle Fabre, at Monsieur Urbain Fabre‘s, Rue Saint Dominique d’Enfer, No.17.”
Thénardier seized the letter with a sort of feverish convulsive movement.
“Wife!” cried he.
The Thénardiess sprang forward.
“Here is the letter. You know what you have to do. There is a fiacre below. Go right away, and come back ditto.”
And addressing the man with the pole-axe:
“Here, since you have taken off your mask, go with the woman. You will ride behind the fiacre. You know where you left the maringotte?”
“Yes,” said the man.
And, laying down his pole-axe in a comer, he followed the Thénardiess.
As they were going away, Thénardier put his head through the half-open door and screamed into the hall:
“Above all things do not lose the letter! remember that you have two hundred thousand francs with you.”
The harsh voice of the Thénardiess answered:
“Rest assured, I have put it in my bosom.”
A minute had not passed when the snapping of a whip was heard, which grew fainter and rapidly died away.
“Good!” muttered Thénardier. “They are going good speed. At that speed the bourgeoise will be back in three quarters of an hour.”dz
He drew a chair near the fireplace and sat down, folding his arms and holding his muddy boots up to the furnace.
“My feet are cold,” said he.
There were now but five bandits left in the den with Thénardier and the prisoner. These men, through the masks or the black varnish which covered their faces and made of them, as fear might suggest, charcoal men, negroes, or demons, had a heavy and dismal appearance, and one felt that they would execute a crime as they would any drudgery, quietly, without anger and without mercy, with a sort of irksomeness. They were heaped together in a corner like brutes, and were silent. Thénardier was warming his feet. The prisoner had relapsed into his taciturnity. A gloomy stillness had succeeded the savage tumult which filled the garret a few moments before.
The candle, on which a large mushroom had formed, hardly lighted up the enormous den, the fire had grown dull, and all these monstrous heads made huge shadows on the walls and on the ceiling.
No sound could be heard save the quiet breathing of the drunken old man, who was asleep.
Marius was waiting in an anxiety which everything increased. The riddle was more impenetrable than ever. Who was this “little girl,” whom Thénardier had also called the Lark? was it his “Ursula”? The prisoner had not seemed to be moved by this word, the Lark, and answered in the most natural way in the world: I do not know what you mean. On the other hand, the two letters U. F. were explained; it was Urbain Fabre, and Ursula’s name was no longer Ursula. This Marius saw most clearly. A sort of hideous fascination held him spellbound to the place from which he observed and commanded the whole scene. There he was, almost incapable of reflection and motion, as if annihilated by such horrible things in so close proximity. He was waiting, hoping for some movement, no matter what, unable to collect his ideas and not knowing what course to take.
“At all events,” said he, “if the Lark is she, I shall certainly see her, for the Thénardiess is going to bring her here. Then all will be plain. I will give my blood and my life if need be, but I will deliver her. Nothing shall stop me.”
Nearly half an hour passed thus. Thénardier appeared absorbed in a dark meditation, the prisoner did not stir. Nevertheless Marius thought he had heard at intervals and for some moments a little dull noise from the direction of the prisoner.
Suddenly Thénardier addressed the prisoner:
“Monsieur Fabre, here, I may as well tell you this much right away.”
These few wor
ds seemed to promise a clearing up. Marius listened closely. Th6nardier continued:
“My spouse is coming back, do not be impatient. I think the Lark is really your daughter, and I find it quite natural that you should keep her. But listen a moment; with your letter, my wife is going to find her. I told my wife to dress up, as you saw, so that your young lady would follow her without hesitation. They will both get into the fiacre with my comrade behind. There is somewhere outside one of the barriers a maringotte with two very good horses harnessed. They will take your young lady there. She will get out of the carriage. My comrade will get into the maringotte with her, and my wife will come back here to tell us: ‘It is done.’ As to your young lady, no harm will be done her; the maringotte will take her to a place where she will be quiet, and as soon as you have given me the little two hundred thousand francs, she will be sent back to you. If you have me arrested, my comrade will take care of the Lark, that is all.”
The prisoner did not utter a word. After a pause, Thénardier continued:
“It is very simple, as you see. There will be no harm done unless you wish there should be. That is the whole story. I tell you in advance so that you may know.”
He stopped; the prisoner did not break the silence, and Thénardier resumed:
“As soon as my spouse has got back and said: ‘The Lark is on her way,’ we will release you, and you will be free to go home to bed. You see that we have no bad intentions.”
Appalling images passed before Marius’ mind. What! this young girl whom they were kidnapping, they were not going to bring her here? One of those monsters was going to carry her off into the gloom? where?—And if it were she! And it was clear that it was she. Marius felt his heart cease to beat. What was he to do? Fire off the pistol? put all these wretches into the hands of justice? But the hideous man of the pole-axe would none the less be out of all reach with the young girl, and Marius remembered these words of Thénardier, the bloody signification of which he divined: If you have me arrested, my comrade will take care of the Lark.
Now it was not by the colonel’s will alone, it was by his love itself, by the peril of her whom he loved, that he felt himself held back.
This fearful situation, which had lasted now for more than an hour, changed its aspect at every moment. Marius had the strength to pass in review successively all the most heart-rending conjectures, seeking some hope and finding more. The tumult of his thoughts strangely contrasted with the deathly silence of the den.
In the midst of this silence they heard the sound of the door of the stairway which opened, then closed.
The prisoner made a movement in his bonds.
“Here is the bourgeoise,” said Thénardier.
He had hardly said this, when in fact the Thénardiess burst into the room, red, breathless, panting, with glaring eyes, and cried, striking her hands upon her hips both at the same time:
“False address!”
The bandit whom she had taken with her, came in behind her and picked up his pole-axe again:
“False address?” repeated Thénardier.
She continued:
“Nobody! Rue Saint Dominique, number seventeen, no Monsieur Urbain Fabre! They do not know who he is!”
She stopped for lack of breath, then continued:
“Monsieur Thénardier! this old fellow has cheated you! you are too kind, do you see! I would have sliced up his mug, to begin with! And if he had acted up, I would have cooked him alive! Then he would have had to talk, and had to tell where the girl is, and had to tell where the rhino [dough] is! That is how I would have fixed it! No wonder that they say men are stupider than women! Nobody! number seventeen! It is a large porte-cochère! No Monsieur Fabre! Rue Saint Dominique, full gallop, and drink-money to the driver, and all! I spoke to the porter and the portress, who is a fine stout woman, they did not know the fellow.”
Marius breathed. She, Ursula or the Lark, she whom he no longer knew what to call, was safe.
While his exasperated wife was vociferating, Thénardier had seated himself on the table; he sat a few seconds without saying a word, swinging his right leg, which was hanging down, and gazing upon the furnace with a look of savage reverie.
At last he said to the prisoner with a slow and singularly ferocious inflexion:
“A false address! what did you hope for by that?”
“To gain time!” cried the prisoner with a ringing voice.
And at the same moment he shook off his bonds; they were cut. The prisoner was no longer fastened to the bed save by one leg.
Before the seven men had had time to recover themselves and spring upon him he had bent over to the fireplace, reached his hand towards the furnace, then rose up, and now Thénardier, the Thénardiess, and the bandits, thrown by the shock into the back part of the room, beheld him with stupefaction, holding above his head the glowing chisel, from which fell an ominous light, almost free and in a formidable attitude.
At the judicial inquest, to which the ambush in the Gorbeau tenement gave rise in the sequel, it appeared that a big sou, cut and worked in a peculiar fashion, was found in the garret, when the police made a descent upon it; this big sou was one of those marvels of labour which the patience of the galleys produces in the darkness and for the darkness, marvels which are nothing else but instruments of escape. These hideous and delicate products of a wonderful art are to jewellery what the metaphors of argot are to poetry. There are Benvenuto Cellinis in the galleys, even as there are Villons in language. The unhappy man who aspires to deliverance, finds the means, sometimes without tools, with a folding knife, with an old case knife, to split a sou into two thin plates, to hollow out these two plates without touching the stamp of the mint, and to cut a screw-thread upon the edge of the sou, so as to make the plates adhere anew. This screws and unscrews at will; it is a box. In this box, they conceal a watch-spring, and this watch-spring, well handled, cuts through thick leg-irons and iron bars. The unfortunate convict seems to possess only a sou; no, he possesses liberty. A big sou of this kind, on subsequent examination by the police, was found open and in two pieces in the room under the pallet near the window. There was also discovered a little saw of blue steel which could be concealed in the big sou. It is probable that when the bandits were searching the prisoner’s pockets, he had this big sou upon him and succeeded in hiding it in his hand; and that afterwards, having his right hand free, he unscrewed it and used the saw to cut the ropes by which he was fastened, which would explain the slight noise and the imperceptible movements which Marius had noticed.
Being unable to stoop down for fear of betraying himself, he had not cut the cords on his left leg.
The bandits had recovered their first surprise.
“Be easy,” said Bigrenaille to Thénardier. “He holds yet by one leg, and he will not go off, I answer for that. I tied that shank for him.”
The prisoner now raised his voice:
“You are pitiable, but my life is not worth the trouble of so long a defence. As to your imagining that you could make me speak, that you could make me write what I do not wish to write, that you could make me say what I do not wish to say—”
He pulled up the sleeve of his left arm, and added:
“Here.”
At the same time he extended his arm, and laid upon the naked flesh the glowing chisel, which he held in his right hand, by the wooden handle.
They heard the hissing of the burning flesh; the odour peculiar to chambers of torture spread through the den. Marius staggered lost in horror; the brigands themselves felt a shudder; the face of the wonderful old man hardly contracted, and while the red iron was sinking into the smoking, impassable, and almost august wound, he turned upon Thénardier his fine face, in which there was no hatred, and in which suffering was swallowed up in a serene majesty.
With great and lofty natures the revolt of the flesh and the senses against the assaults of physical pain, brings out the soul, and makes it appear on the countenance, in the same way as muti
nies of the soldiery force the captain to show himself.
“Wretches,” said he, “have no more fear for me than I have of you.”
And drawing the chisel out of the wound, he threw it through the window, which was still open; the horrible glowing tool disappeared, whirling into the night, and fell in the distance, and was quenched in the snow.
The prisoner resumed:
“Do with me what you will.”
He was disarmed.
“Lay hold of him,” said Thénardier.
Two of the brigands laid their hands upon his shoulders, and the masked man with the ventriloquist’s voice placed himself in front of him, ready to knock out his brains with a blow of the key, at the least motion.
At the same time Marius heard beneath him, at the foot of the partition, but so near that he could not see those who were talking, this colloquy, exchanged in a low voice:
“There is only one thing more to do.”
“Do him in!”
“That is it.”
It was the husband and wife who were holding counsel.
Thénardier walked with slow steps towards the table, opened the drawer, and took out the knife.
Marius was tormenting the trigger of his pistol. Unparalleled perplexity! For an hour there had been two voices in his conscience, one telling him to respect the will of his father, the other crying to him to succour the prisoner. These two voices, without interruption, continued their struggle, which threw him into agony. He had vaguely hoped up to that moment to find some means of reconciling these two duties but no possible way had arisen. The peril was now urgent, the last limit of hope was passed; at a few steps from the prisoner, Thénardier was reflecting, with the knife in his hand.
Marius cast his eyes wildly about him; the last mechanical resource of despair.
Suddenly he started.
At his feet, on the table, a clear ray of the full moon illuminated and seemed to point out to him a sheet of paper. Upon that sheet he read this line, written in large letters that very morning, by the elder of the Thénardier girls:
